Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope

In 1965 one of the nation's leading professors quietly finished the last draft of a 1311 page book on world history. He walked over to his typewriter and secured the last pages of the book and placed them into a small box and wrapped it for mailing. He then walked to the Post Office and mailed the final draft to his publisher in New York City. The editor was somewhat overwhelmed and perhaps even inhibited by the scholarly treatise. The last thing he wanted to do was to read the huge draft. He knew and trusted the professor. After all, he was one of the leading scholars in the western world. They had been acquaintances for several years. He had already signed an agreement to publish the book before it was finished. He had read several chapters of the early draft. They were boring, at least to him. He decided to give the book to a young editor who had just been promoted to his assistant. The young editor was also overwhelmed but happy to oblige the Senior Editor. The young editor was unaware of the importance of the manuscript and of the revelations which it contained. To the young editor this was just another textbook or so he thought.

Somehow one of the most revealing books ever published slipped through the editorial of offices of one of the major publishing houses in New York and found it way into the bookstores of America in 1966.

Five years later I was meandering through a used bookstore and stumbled upon this giant book. I picked up the book, blew the dust off and opened it to a page where the author stated that:

"...[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. this system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations....

"It must not be felt that these heads of the world's chief central banks were themselves substantive powers in world finance. They were not. Rather, they were the technicians and agents of the dominant investment bankers of their own countries, who had raised them up and were perfectly capable of throwing them down. The substantive financial powers of the world were in the hands of these investment bankers (also called 'international' or 'merchant' bankers) who remained largely behind the scenes in their own unincorporated private banks. These formed a system of international cooperation and national dominance which was more private, more powerful, and more secret than that of their agents in the central banks. this dominance of investment bankers was based on their control over the flows of credit and investment funds in their own countries and throughout the world. They could dominate the financial and industrial systems of their own countries by their influence over the flow of current funds though bank loans, the discount rate, and the re-discounting of commercial debts; they could dominate governments by their own control over current government loans and the play of the international exchanges. Almost all of this power was exercised by the personal influence and prestige of men who had demonstrated their ability in the past to bring off successful financial coupes, to keep their word, to remain cool in a crisis, and to share their winning opportunities with their associates."

I could hardly believe what I was reading. I sat in the bookstore and read until closing time. I then bought the book and went home where I read almost all night. For the next twenty-five years I traveled throughout the United States, Europe and the Middle East following one lead after another to determine if the incredible words of the professor were really true. While serving as the Editor of a scholarly journal on international affairs, Director of the Center for Global Studies and foreign policy advisor for a key U. S. Senator in Washington, D. C., I conducted over 1000 interviews with influential world leaders, government officials, military generals, intelligence officers, scholars and businessmen, including corporate CEOs and prominent international bankers and investment bankers. I went through over 25,000 books and over 50,000 documents. I learned for myself that the professor was telling the truth.

There really is a "world system of financial control in private hands" that is "able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world." I call this system the World Trade Federation. It is an ultra-secret group of the most powerful men on the earth. They now control every major international institution, every major multinational and transnational corporation both public and private, every major domestic and international banking institution, every central bank, every nation-state on earth, the natural resources on every continent and the people around the world through complicated inter-locking networks that resemble giant spider webs. This group is comprised of the leading family dynasties of the Canada, United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and China. This self-perpetuating group has developed an elaborate system of control that enables them to manipulate government leaders, consumers and people throughout the world. They are in the last stages of developing a World Empire that will rival the ancient Roman Empire. However, this new Empire will rule the entire world, not just a goodly portion of it as Rome did long ago, from its ultra-secret world headquarters in Germany. This group is responsible for the death and suffering of over 180 million men, women and children. They were responsible for World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam, etc. They have created periods of inflation and deflation in order to confiscate and consolidate the wealth of the world. They were responsible for the enslavement of over two billion people in all communist nations—Russia, China, Eastern Europe, etc., inasmuch as they were directly responsible for the creation of communism in these nations. They built up and sustain these evil totalitarian systems for private gain. They brought Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Roosevelt to power and guided their governments from behind the scenes to achieve a state of plunder unparalleled in world history. They make Attila the Hun look like a kindergarten child compared to their accomplishments. Six million Jews were tortured and killed in order to confiscate billions of dollars in assets, gold, silver, currency, diamonds and art work from the Tribe of Judah–a special group of people. The people in Eastern Europe suffered a similar fate as the armies of Hitler overran these countries, murdered, enslaved, robbed and plundered the unique people who resided there. For the last two and one half centuries wealth and power have been concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer men and women. This wealth is now being used to construct and maintain the World Empire that is in the last stages of development. The World Empire is partly visible and partly invisible today.

The chief architects of this new World Empire are planning another war—World War III—to eliminate any vestiges of political, economic or religious freedom from the face of the earth. They will then completely control the earth. and its natural resources. The people will be completely enslaved just as the people were in the ancient Roman Empire. While the above may sound like fiction, I can assure you that it is true. I wish it was fiction, but it is not, it is reality.

The above recitation is quite blunt, perhaps more blunt than the professor would have liked, but he knows and I know that what I have just written is true. However, most people do not want to know that such a Machiavellian group of men, spread strategically throughout the world, really exists. They prefer to believe that all is well and that we are traveling down the road to world peace, global interdependence and economic prosperity. This is not true.

The above professor describes the network I have just described in elaborate detail—far too elaborate for most people. That is why I am truly surprised that it was ever published. The above fictional account of its publication may not be far from the truth. The contents of the above book will probably astound most people. Most people will undoubtedly not believe the professor. That will be a great mistake. Why? Because many of the tragedies of the future may be avoided with proper action.

If all our efforts resulted in saving just one life, wouldn't it be worth it? What if we could save 100 lives? What if we could save 1000 lives? What about 10,000 lives? What about 1,000,000 lives? What if we could free the billions of inhabitants of Tibet, China, Russia and other communist nations and ensure the survival of the people of Taiwan and Israel? Would not all our efforts be worth it? I believe so. The tragedies occurring today in Russia, China, Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, Western Europe or the Middle East could be avoided.

The apathy and indifference of people in the Western World to the suffering, torture, misery, bondage and death of millions and millions of people around the world in the years ahead may be one of the greatest tragedies of the twenty first century.

The message of the above volume is that the last century was a tragedy that could have been avoided. The author argues that wars and depressions are man-made. The hope is that we may avoid similar tragedies in the future. That will not happen unless we give diligent heed to the warnings of the professor. Unless we carefully study his book and learn the secret history of the twentieth century and avoid allowing these same people, their heirs and associates—the rulers of various financial, corporate and governmental systems around the world—from ruining the twenty first century, his work and the work of countless others will have been in vain.

The above professor was named Carroll Quigley and the book he wrote was entitled, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. It was published in 1966 and is clearly one of the most important books ever written. Professor Quigley was an extraordinarily gifted historian and geo-political analyst. The insights and information contained in his massive study open the door to a true understanding of world history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In fact, if the scholar, student, businessman, businesswoman, government official and general reader has not thoroughly studied Tragedy and Hope there is no way they can understand the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is a work of exceptional scholarship and is truly a classic. The author should have received a Nobel Prize for his work.

In 1961 Carroll Quigley published The Evolution of Civilizations. It was derived from a course he taught on world history at Georgetown University. One of Quigley’s closest friends was Harry J. Hogan. In the foreword to The Evolution of Civilizations he wrote:

"The Evolution of Civilizations expresses two dimensions of its author, Carroll Quigley, that most extraordinary historian, philosopher, and teacher. In the first place, its scope is wide-ranging, covering the whole of man's activities throughout time. Second, it is analytic, not merely descriptive. It attempts a categorization of man's activities in sequential fashion so as to provide a causal explanation of the stages of civilization.

"Quigley coupled enormous capacity for work with a peculiarly "scientific" approach. He believed that it should be possible to examine the data and draw conclusions. As a boy at the Boston Latin School, his academic interests were mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Yet during his senior year he was also associate editor of the Register, the oldest high school paper in the country. His articles were singled out for national awards by a national committee headed by George Gallup.

"At Harvard, biochemistry was to be his major. But Harvard, expressing then a belief regarding a well-rounded education to which it has now returned, required a core curriculum including a course in the humanities. Quigley chose a history course, "Europe Since the Fall of Rome." Always a contrary man, he was graded at the top of his class in physics and calculus and drew a C in the history course. But the development of ideas began to assert its fascination for him, so he elected to major in history. He graduated magna cum laude as the top history student in his class.

"Quigley was always impatient. He stood for his doctorate oral examination at the end of his second year of graduate studies. Charles Howard McIlwain, chairman of the examining board, was very impressed by Quigley's answer to his opening question; the answer included a long quotation in Latin from Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln in the thirteenth century. Professor McIlwain sent Quigley to Princeton University as a graduate student instructor.

"In the spring of 1937 I was a student in my senior year at Princeton. Quigley was my preceptor in medieval history. He was Boston Irish; I was New York Irish. Both of us, Catholics adventuring in a strangely Protestant establishment world, were fascinated by the Western intellectual tradition anchored in Augustine, Abelard, and Aquinas that seemed to have so much more richness and depth than contemporary liberalism. We became very close in a treasured friendship that was terminated only by his death.

"In the course of rereading The Evolution of Civilizations I was reminded of the intensity of our dialogue. In Quigley's view, which I shared, our age was one of irrationality. That spring we talked about what career decisions I should make. At his urging I applied to and was admitted by the Harvard Graduate School in History. But I had reservations about an academic career in the study of the history that I loved, on the ground that on Quigley’s own analysis the social decisions of importance in our lifetime would be made in ad hoc irrational fashion in the street. On that reasoning, finally I transferred to law school.

"In Princeton, Carroll Quigley met and married Lillian Fox. They spent their honeymoon in Paris and Italy on a fellowship to write his doctoral dissertation, a study of the public administration of the Kingdom of Italy, 1805-14. The development of the state in western Europe over the last thousand years always fascinated Quigley. He regarded the development of public administration in the Napoleonic states as a major step in the evolution of the modern state. It always frustrated him that each nation, including our own, regards its own history as unique and the history of other nations as irrelevant to it.

"In 1938-41, Quigley served a stint at Harvard, tutoring graduate students in ancient and medieval history. It offered little opportunity for the development of cosmic views and he was less than completely content there. It was, however, a happy experience for me. I had entered Harvard Law School. We began the practice of having breakfast together at Carroll and Lillian's apartment.

"In 1941 Quigley accepted a teaching appointment at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. It was to engage his primary energies throughout the rest of his busy life. There he became an almost legendary teacher. He chose to teach a course, "The Development of Civilization," required of the incoming class, and that course ultimately provided the structure and substance for The Evolution of Civilizations. As a course in his hands, it was a vital intellectual experience for young students, a mind-opening adventure. Foreign Service School graduates, meeting years later in careers around the world, would establish rapport with each other by describing their experience in his class. It was an intellectual initiation with remembered impact that could be shared by people who had graduated years apart.

"The fortunes of life brought us together again. During World War II, I served as a very junior officer on Admiral King's staff in Washington. Carroll and I saw each other frequently. Twenty years later, after practicing law in Oregon, I came into the government with President Kennedy. Our eldest daughter became a student under Carroll at Georgetown University. We bought a house close by Carroll and Lillian. I had Sunday breakfast with them for years and renewed our discussions of the affairs of a disintegrating world.

"Superb teacher Quigley was, and could justify a lifetime of prodigious work on that success alone. But ultimately he was more. To me he was a figure—he would scoff at this— like Augustine, Abelard, and Aquinas, searching for the truth through examination of ultimate reality as it was revealed in history. Long ago, he left the church in the formal sense. Spiritually and intellectually he never left it. He never swerved from his search for the meaning of life. He never placed any goal in higher priority. If the God of the Western civilization that Quigley spent so many years studying does exist in the terms that he saw ascribed to him by our civilization, that God will now have welcomed Quigley as one who has pleased him." (Carroll Quigley, The Evolution of Civilizations. New York: Macmillan, 1961, pp. 13-16.)

Carroll Quigley was a professor of history at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown University. He taught at Princeton and at Harvard. He had done extensive research in the archives of France, Italy, and England. He was a member of the editorial board of Current History. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Anthropological Association and the American Economic Association. For many years he lectured on Russian history at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces and on Africa at the Brookings Institution. He was also a frequent lecturer at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, the Foreign Service Institute at the U. S. State Department, and the Naval College at Norfolk, Virginia. In 1958 he served as a consultant to the Congressional Select Committee which set up the National Space Agency. He was a historical advisor to the Smithsonian Institution and was involved with the establishment of the new Museum of History and Technology. In the summer of 1964 he was a consultant at the Navy Post-Graduate School, Monterey, California on Project Seabed. The project was created to visualize the status of future American weapons systems.

Tragedy and Hope will enlighten the mind of every sincere seeker of truth and will unveil the secret powers that have been carefully manipulating the Western Hemisphere, America, Europe, Asia, Russia, China and the Middle East for over 250 years.

In 1996 I published a 24 volume study entitled Global Governance in the Twenty First Century. The multi-volume work was the result of my extensive travels and research throughout the United States, Europe and Middle East. It fully collaborates the assertions and statements made by professor Carroll Quigley in Tragedy and Hope. It is my sincere hope the reader will take the time to carefully peruse and ponder the words of this rather remarkable book. And afterwards, I hope the reader will have a desire to thoroughly read and ponder the contents of Global Governance in the Twenty First Century.

Preface

The expression "contemporary history" is probably self-contradictory, because what is contemporary is not history, and what is history is not contemporary. Sensible historians usually refrain from writing accounts of very recent events because they realize that the source materials for such events, especially the indispensable official documents, are not available and that, even with the documentation which is available, it is very difficult for anyone to obtain the necessary perspective on the events of one's own mature life. But I must clearly not be a sensible or, at least, an ordinary historian, for, having covered, in an earlier book, the whole of human history in a mere 271 pages, I now use more than 1300 pages for the events of a single lifetime. There is a connection here. It will be evident to any attentive reader that I have devoted long years of study and much original research, even where adequate documentation is not available, but it should be equally evident that whatever value this present work has rests on its broad perspective. I have tried to remedy deficiencies of evidence by perspective, not only by projecting the patterns of past history into the present and the future but also by trying to place the events of the present in their total context by examining all the varied aspects of these events, not merely the political and economic, as is so frequently done, but by my efforts to bring into the picture the military, technological, social, and intellectual elements as well.

The result of all this, I hope, is an interpretation of the present as well as the immediate past and the near future, which is free from the accepted cliches, slogans, and self-justifications which mar so much of "contemporary history." Much of my adult life has been devoted to training undergraduates in techniques of historical analysis which will help them to free their understanding of history from the accepted categories and cognitive classifications of the society in which we live, since these, however necessary they may be for our processes of thought and for the concepts and symbols needed for us to communicate about reality, nevertheless do often serve as barriers which shield us from recognition of the underlying realities themselves. The present work is the result of such an attempt to look at the real situations which lie beneath the conceptual and verbal symbols. I feel that it does provide, as a consequence of this effort, a fresher, somewhat different, and (I hope) more satisfying explanation of how we arrived at the situation in which we now find ourselves.

More than twenty years have gone into the writing of this work. Although most of it is based on the usual accounts of these events, some portions are based on fairly intensive personal research (including research among manuscript materials). These portions include the following: the nature and techniques of financial capitalism, the economic structure of France under the Third Republic, the social history of the United States, and the membership and activities of the English Establishment. On other subjects, my reading has been as wide as I could make it, and I have tried consistently to view all subjects from as wide and as varied points of view as I am capable. Although I regard myself, for purposes of classification, as a historian, I did a great deal of study in political science at Harvard, have persisted in the private study of modern psychological theory for more than thirty years, and have been a member of the American Anthropological Association, the American Economic Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as the American Historical Association for many years.

Thus my chief justification for writing a lengthy work on contemporary history, despite the necessarily restricted nature of the documentation, must be based on my efforts to remedy this inevitable deficiency by using historical perspective to permit me to project the tendencies of the past into the present and even the future and my efforts to give this attempt a more solid basis by using all the evidence from a wide variety of academic disciplines.

As a consequence of these efforts to use this broad, and perhaps complex, method, this book is almost inexcusably lengthy. For this I must apologize, with the excuse that I did not have time to make it shorter and that an admittedly tentative and interpretative work must necessarily be longer than a more definite or more dogmatic presentation. To those who find the length excessive, I can only say that I omitted chapters, which were already written, on three topics: the agricultural history of Europe, the domestic history of France and Italy, and the intellectual history of the twentieth century in general. To do this I introduced enough on these subjects into other chapters.

Although I project the interpretation into the near future on a number of occasions, the historical narrative ceases in 1964, not because the date of writing caught up with the march of historical events but because the period 1862-1864 seems to me to mark the end of an era of historical development and a period of pause before a quite different era with quite different problems begins. This change is evident in a number of obvious events, such as the fact that the leaders of all the major countries (except Red China and France) and of many lesser ones (such as Canada, India, West Germany, the Vatican, Brazil, and Israel) were changed in this period. Much more important is the fact that the Cold War, which culminated in the Cuban crisis of October 1962, began to dwindle toward its end during the next two years, a process which w as evident in a number of events, such as the rapid replacement of the Cold War by "Competitive Coexistence"; the disintegration of the two super-blocs which had faced each other during the Cold War; the rise of neutralism, both within the super-blocs and in the buffer fringe of third-bloc powers between them; the swamping of the United Nations General Assembly under a flood of newly independent, sometimes microscopic, pseudo-powers; the growing parallelism of the Soviet Union and the United States; and the growing emphasis in all parts of the world on problems of living standards, of social maladjustments, and of mental health, replacing the previous emphasis on armaments, nuclear tensions, and heavy industrialization. At such a period, when one era seems to be ending and a different, if yet indistinct era appearing, it seemed to me as good a time as any to evaluate the past and to seek some explanation of how we arrived where we are.

In any preface such as this, it is customary to conclude with acknowledgment of personal obligations. My sense of these is so broad that I find it invidious to single out some and to omit others. But four must be mentioned. Much of this book was typed, in her usual faultless way, by my wife. This was done originally and in revised versions, in spite of the constant distractions of her domestic obligations, of her own professional career in a different university, and of her own writing and publication. For her cheerful assumption of this great burden, I am very grateful.

Similarly, I am grateful to the patience, enthusiasm, and amazingly wide knowledge of my editor at The Macmillan Company, Peter V. Ritner.

I wish to express my gratitude to the University Grants Committee of Georgetown University, which twice provided funds for summer research.

And, finally, I must say a word of thanks to my students over many years who forced me to keep up with the rapidly changing customs and outlook of our young people and sometimes also compelled me to recognize that my way of looking at the world is not necessarily the only way, or even the best way, to look at it. Many of these students, past, present, and future, are included in the dedication of this book.

Carroll Quigley

Washington, D. C.

March 8, 1965

Part One—Introduction: Western Civilization In Its World Setting

Chapter 1—Cultural Evolution in Civilizations

There have always been men who have asked, "Where are we going?" But never, it would seem, have there been so many of them. And surely never before have these myriads of questioners asked their question in such dolorous tones or rephrased their question in such despairing words: "Can man survive?" Even on a less cosmic basis, questioners appear on all sides, seeking "meaning" or "identity," or even, on the most narrowly egocentric basis, "trying to find myself."

One of these persistent questions is typical of the twentieth century rather than of earlier times: Can our way of life survive? Is our civilization doomed to vanish, as did that of the Incas, the Sumerians, and the Romans? From Giovanni Battista Vico in the early eighteenth century to Oswald Spengler in the early twentieth century and Arnold J. Toynbee in our own day, men have been puzzling over the problem whether civilizations have a life cycle and follow a similar pattern of change. From this discussion has emerged a fairly general agreement that men live in separately organized societies, each with its own distinct culture; that some of these societies, having writing and city life, exist on a higher level of culture than the rest, and should be called by the different term "civilizations"; and that these civilizations tend to pass through a common pattern of experience.

From these studies it would seem that civilizations pass through a process of evolution which can be analyzed briefly as follows: each civilization is born in some inexplicable fashion and, after a slow start, enters a period of vigorous expansion, increasing its size and power, both internally and at the expense of its neighbors, until gradually a crisis of organization appears. When this crisis has passed and the civilization has been reorganized, it seems somewhat different. Its vigor and morale have weakened. It becomes stabilized and eventually stagnant. After a Golden Age of peace and prosperity, internal crises again arise. At this point there appears, for the first time, a moral and physical weakness which raises, also for the first time, questions about the civilization's ability to defend itself against external enemies. Racked by internal struggles of a social and constitutional character, weakened by loss of faith in its older ideologies and by the challenge of newer ideas incompatible with its past nature, the civilization grows steadily weaker until it is submerged by outside enemies, and eventually disappears.

When we come to apply this process, even in this rather vague form, to our own civilization, Western Civilization, we can see that certain modifications are needed. Like other civilizations, our civilization began with a period of mixture of cultural elements from other societies, formed these elements into a culture distinctly its own, began to expand with growing rapidity as others had done, and passed from this period of expansion into a period of crisis. But at that point the pattern changed.

In more than a dozen other civilizations the Age of Expansion was followed by an Age of Crisis, and this, in turn, by a period of Universal Empire in which a single political unit ruled the whole extent of the civilization. Western Civilization, on the contrary, did not pass from the Age of Crisis to the Age of Universal Empire, but instead was able to reform itself and entered upon a new period of expansion. Moreover, Western Civilization did this not once, but several times. It was this ability to reform or reorganize itself again and again which made Western Civilization the dominant factor in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century.

As we look at the three ages forming the central portion of the life cycle of a civilization, we can see a common pattern. The Age of Expansion is generally marked by four kinds of expansion: (1) of population, (2) of geographic area, (3) of production, and (4) of knowledge. The expansion of production and the expansion of knowledge give rise to the expansion of population, and the three of these together give rise to the expansion of geographic extent. This geographic expansion is of some importance because it gives the civilization a kind of nuclear structure made up of an older core area (which had existed as part of the civilization even before the period of expansion) and a newer peripheral area (which became part of the civilization only in the period of expansion and later). If we wish, we can make, as an additional refinement, a third, semi-peripheral area between the core area and the fully peripheral area.

These various areas are readily discernible in various civilizations of the past, and have played a vital role in historic change in these civilizations. In Mesopotamian Civilization (6000 B.C.-300 B.C.) the core area was the lower valley of Mesopotamia; the semi-peripheral area was the middle and upper valley, while the peripheral area included the highlands surrounding this valley, and more remote areas like Iran, Syria, and even Anatolia. The core area of Cretan Civilization (3500 B.C.-1100 B.C.) was the island of Crete, while the peripheral area included the Aegean islands and the Balkan coasts. In Classical Civilization the core area was the shores of the Aegean Sea; the semi-peripheral area was the rest of the northern portion of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, while the peripheral area covered the rest of the Mediterranean shores and ultimately Spain, North Africa, and Gaul. In Canaanite Civilization (2200 B.C.-100 B.C.) the core area was the Levant, while the peripheral area was in the western Mediterranean at Tunis, western Sicily, and eastern Spain. The core area of Western Civilization (A.D. 400 to some time in the future) has been the northern half of Italy, France, the extreme western part of Germany, and England; the semi-peripheral area has been central, eastern, and southern Europe and the Iberian peninsula, while the peripheral areas have included North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and some other areas.

This distinction of at least two geographic areas in each civilization is of major importance. The process of expansion, which begins in the core area, also begins to slow up in the core at a time when the peripheral area is still expanding. In consequence, by the latter part of the Age of Expansion, the peripheral areas of a civilization tend to become wealthier and more powerful than the core area. Another way of saying this is that the core passes from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict before the periphery does. Eventually, in most civilizations the rate of expansion begins to decline everywhere.

It is this decline in the rate of expansion of a civilization which marks its passage from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict. This latter is the most complex, most interesting, and most critical of all the periods of the life cycle of a civilization. It is marked by four chief characteristics: (a) it is a period of declining rate of expansion; (b) it is a period of growing tensions and class conflicts; (c) it is a period of increasingly frequent and increasingly violent imperialist wars; and (d) it is a period of growing irrationality, pessimism, superstitions, and otherworldliness. All these phenomena appear in the core area of a civilization before they appear in more peripheral portions of the society.

The decreasing rate of expansion of the Age of Conflict gives rise to the other characteristics of the age, in part at least. After the long years of the Age of Expansion, people's minds and their social organizations are adjusted to expansion, and it is a very difficult thing to readjust these to a decreasing rate of expansion. Social classes and political units within the civilization try to compensate for the slowing of expansion through normal growth by the use of violence against other social classes or against other political units. From this come class struggles and imperialist wars. The outcomes of these struggles within the civilization are not of vital significance for the future of the civilization itself. What would be of such significance would be the reorganization of the structure of the civilization so that the process of normal growth would be resumed. Because such a reorganization requires the removal of the causes of the civilization's decline, the triumph of one social class over another or of one political unit over another, within the civilization, will not usually have any major influence on the causes of the decline, and will not (except by accident) result in such a reorganization of structure as will give rise to a new period of expansion. Indeed, the class struggles and imperialist wars of the Age of Conflict will probably serve to increase the speed of the civilization's decline because they dissipate capital and divert wealth and energies from productive to nonproductive activities.

In most civilizations the long-drawn agony of the Age of Conflict finally ends in a new period, the Age of the Universal Empire. As a result of the imperialist wars of the Age of Conflict, the number of political units in the civilization are reduced by conquest. Eventually one emerges triumphant. When this occurs we have one political unit for the whole civilization. Just at the core area passes from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict earlier than the peripheral areas, sometimes the core area is conquered by a single state before the whole civilization is conquered by the Universal Empire. When this occurs the core empire is generally a semi-peripheral state, while the Universal Empire is generally a peripheral state. Thus, Mesopotamia's core was conquered by semi-peripheral Babylonia about 1700 B.C., while the whole of Mesopotamian civilization was conquered by more peripheral Assyria about 7 2 5 H.C. (replaced by fully peripheral Persia about 525 B.C.). In Classical Civilization the core area was conquered by semi-peripheral Macedonia about 336 B.C., while the whole civilization was conquered by peripheral Rome about 146 B.C. In other civilizations the Universal Empire has consistently been a peripheral state even when there was no earlier conquest of the core area by a semi-peripheral state. In Mayan Civilization (1000 B.C.-A.D. 1550) the core area was apparently in Yucatan and Guatemala, but the Universal Empire of the Aztecs centered in the peripheral highlands of central Mexico. In Andean Civilization (1500 B.C.-A.D. 1600) the core areas were on the lower slopes and valleys of the central and northern Andes, but the Universal Empire of the Incas centered in the highest Andes, a peripheral area. The Canaanite Civilization (2200 B.C.-146 B.C.) had its core area in the Levant, but its Universal Empire, the Punic Empire, centered at Carthage in the western Mediterranean. If we turn to the Far East we see no less than three civilizations. Of these the earliest, Sinic Civilization, rose in the valley of the Yellow River after 2000 B.C., culminated in the Chin and Han empires after 200 B.C., and was largely destroyed by Ural-Altaic invaders after A.D. 400. From this Sinic Civilization, in the same way in which Classical Civilization emerged from Cretan Civilization or Western Civilization emerged from Classical Civilization, there emerged two other civilizations: (a) Chinese Civilization, which began about A.D. 400, culminated in the Manchu Empire after 1644, and was disrupted by European invaders in the period 1790-1930, and (b) Japanese Civilization, which began about the time of Christ, culminated in the Tokugawa Empire after 1600, and may have been completely disrupted by invaders from Western Civilization in the century following 1853.

In India, as in China, two civilizations have followed one another. Although we know relatively little about the earlier of the two, the later (as in China) culminated in a Universal Empire ruled by an alien and peripheral people. Indic Civilization, which began about 3500 B.C., was destroyed by Aryan invaders about 1700 B.C. Hindu Civilization, which emerged from Indic Civilization about 1700 B.C., culminated in the Mogul Empire and was destroyed by invaders from Western Civilization in the period 1500-1900.

Turning to the extremely complicated area of the Near East, we can see a similar pattern. Islamic Civilization, which began about A.D. 500, culminated in the Ottoman Empire in the period 1300-1600 and has been in the process of being destroyed by invaders from Western Civilization since about 1750.

Expressed in this way, these patterns in the life cycles of various civilizations may seem confused. But if we tabulate them, the pattern emerges with some simplicity.

From this table a most extraordinary fact emerges. Of approximately twenty civilizations which have existed in all of human history, we have listed sixteen. Of these sixteen, twelve, possibly fourteen, are already dead or dying, their cultures destroyed by outsiders able to come in with sufficient power to disrupt the civilization, destroy its established modes of thought and action, and eventually wipe it out. Of these twelve dead or dying cultures, six have been destroyed by Europeans bearing the culture of Western Civilization. When we consider the untold numbers of other societies, simpler than civilizations, which Western Civilization has destroyed or is now destroying, societies such as the Hottentots, the Iroquois, the Tasmanians, the Navahos, the Caribs, and countless others, the full frightening power of Western Civilization becomes obvious.

Universal Final Their

Civilization Its Dates Empire Invasion Dates

Mesopotamian 6000 B.C.- Assyrian/ Greeks 335 B.C.-

300 B.C. Persian— 300 B.C.

725-333 B.C.

Egyptian 5500 B. C.- Egyptian Greeks 334 B. C.-

300 B. C. 300 B. C.

Cretan 3500 B. C.- Minoan- Dorian 1200 B. C.-

1150 B. C. Mycenaean Greeks 1000 B. C.

Indic 3500 B. C. - Harappa? Aryans 1800 B. C.-

1700 B. C. 1600 B. C.

Canaanite 2200 B. C. - Punic Romans 264 B. C. -

100 B. C. 146 B. C.

Sinic 2000 B. C. - Chin/ Ural-Altaic A. D. 200

A. D. 400 Han 500

Hittite 1800 - Hittite Indo- 1200 B. C. -

1150 European A. D. 1000

Classical 1150 B. C. - Roman Germanic A. D. 350 -

A. D. 500 600

Andean 1500 B. C. - Inca Europeans 1534

A. D. 1600

Mayan 1000 B. C. - Aztec Europeans 1519

A. D. 1550

Hindu 1800 B. C. - Mogul Europeans 1500 -

A. D. 1900 1900

Chinese 400 - Manchu Europeans 1790 -

1930 1930

Japanese 850 B. C. - ? Tokugawa Europeans 1853 -

Islamic 500 B. C. - ? Ottoman Europeans 1750 -

Western 350 - ? United States? Future? ?

Orthodox 350 - ? Soviet Future? ?

One cause, although by no means the chief cause, of the ability of Western Civilization to destroy other cultures rests on the fact that it has been expanding for a long time. This fact, in turn, rests on another condition to which we have already alluded, the fact that Western Civilization has passed through three periods of expansion, has entered into an Age of Conflict three times, each time has had its core area conquered almost completely by a single political unit, but has failed to go on to the Age of the Universal Empire because from the confusion of the Age of Conflict there emerged each time a new organization of society capable of expanding by its own organizational powers, with the result that the four phenomena characteristic of the Age of Conflict (decreasing rate of expansion, class conflicts, imperialist wars, irrationality) were gradually replaced once again by the four kinds of expansion typical of an Age of Expansion (demographic, geographic, production, knowledge). From a narrowly technical point of view, this shift from an Age of Conflict to an Age of Expansion is marked by a resumption of the investment of capital and the accumulation of capital on a large scale, just as the earlier shift from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict was marked by a decreasing rate of investment and eventually by a decreasing rate of accumulation of capital.

Western Civilization began, as all civilizations do, in a period of cultural mixture. In this particular case it was a mixture resulting from the barbarian invasions which destroyed Classical Civilization in the period 350-700. By creating a new culture from the various elements offered from the barbarian tribes, the Roman world, the Saracen world, and above all the Jewish world (Christianity), Western Civilization became a new society.

This society became a civilization when it became organized, in the period 700-970, so that there was accumulation of capital and the beginnings of the investment of this capital in new methods of production. These new methods are associated with a change from infantry forces to mounted warriors in defense, from manpower (and thus slavery) to animal power in energy use, from the scratch plow and two-field, fallow agricultural technology of Mediterranean Europe to the eight-oxen, gang plow and three-field system of the Germanic peoples, and from the centralized, state-centered political orientation of the Roman world to the decentralized, private-power feudal network of the medieval world. In the new system a small number of men, equipped and trained to fight, received dues and services from the overwhelming majority of men who were expected to till the soil. From this inequitable but effective defensive system emerged an inequitable distribution of political power and, in turn, an inequitable distribution of the social economic income. This, in time, resulted in an accumulation of capital, which, by giving rise to demand for luxury goods of remote origin, began to shift the whole economic emphasis of the society from its earlier organization in self-sufficient agrarian units (manors) to commercial interchange, economic specialization, and, by the thirteenth century, to an entirely new pattern of society with towns, a bourgeois class, spreading literacy, growing freedom of alternative social choices, and new, often disturbing, thoughts.

From all this came the first period of expansion of Western Civilization, covering the years 970-1270. At the end of this period, the organization of society was becoming a petrified collection of vested interests, investment was decreasing, and the rate of expansion was beginning to fall. Accordingly, Western Civilization, for the first time, entered upon the Age of Conflict. This period, the time of the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, the great heresies, and severe class conflicts, lasted from about 1270 to 1420. By the end of it, efforts were arising from England and Burgundy to conquer the eve of Western Civilization. But, just at that moment, a new Age of Expansion, using a new organization of society which circumvented the old vested interests of the feudal-manorial system, began.

This new Age of Expansion, frequently called the period of commercial capitalism, lasted from about 1440 to about 1680. The real impetus to economic expansion during the period came from efforts to obtain profits by the interchange of goods, especially semi-luxury or luxury goods, over long distances. In time, this system of commercial capitalism became petrified into a structure of vested interests in which profits were sought by imposing restrictions on the production or interchange of goods rather than by encouraging these activities. This new vested-interest structure, usually called mercantilism, became such a burden on economic activities that the rate of expansion of economic life declined and even gave rise to a period of economic decline in the decades immediately following 1690. The class struggles and imperialist wars engendered by this Age of Conflict are sometimes called the Second Hundred Years' War. The wars continued until 1815, and the class struggles even later. As a result of the former, France by 1810 had conquered most of the eve of Western Civilization. But here, just as had occurred in 1420 when England had also conquered part of the core of the civilization toward the latter portion of an Age of Conflict, the victory was made meaningless because a new period of expansion began. Just as commercial capitalism had circumvented the petrified institution of the feudal-manorial system (chivalry) after 1440, so industrial capitalism circumvented the petrified institution of commercial capitalism (mercantilism) after 1820.

The new Age of Expansion which made Napoleon's military-political victory of 1810 impossible to maintain had begun in England long before. It appeared as the Agricultural Revolution about 1725 and as the Industrial Revolution about 1775, but it did not get started as a great burst of expansion until after 1820. Once started, it moved forward with an impetus such as the world had never seen before, and it looked as if Western Civilization might cover the whole globe. The dates of this third Age of Expansion might be fixed at 1770-1929, following upon the second Age of Conflict of 1690-1815. The social organization which was at the center of this new development might be called "industrial capitalism." In the course of the last decade of the nineteenth century, it began to become a structure of vested interests to which we might give the name "monopoly capitalism." As early, perhaps, as 1890, certain aspects of a new Age of Conflict, the third in Western Civilization, began to appear, especially in the core area, with a revival of imperialism, of class struggle, of violent warfare, and of irrationalities.

By 1930 it was clear that Western Civilization was again in an Age of Conflict; by 1942 a semi-peripheral state, Germany, had conquered much of the core of the civilization. That effort was defeated by calling into the fray a peripheral state (the United States) and another, outside civilization (the Soviet society). It is not yet clear whether Western Civilization will continue along the path marked by so many earlier civilizations, or whether it will be able to reorganize itself sufficiently to enter upon a new, fourth, Age of Expansion. If the former occurs, this Age of Conflict will undoubtedly continue with the fourfold characteristics of class struggle, war, irrationality, and declining progress. In this case, we shall undoubtedly get a Universal Empire in which the United States will rule most of Western Civilization. This will be followed, as in other civilizations, by a period of decay and ultimately, as the civilization grows weaker, by invasions and the total destruction of Western culture. On the other hand, if Western Civilization is able to reorganize itself and enters upon a fourth Age of Expansion, the ability of Western Civilization to survive and go on to increasing prosperity and power will be bright. Leaving aside this hypothetical future, it would appear thus that Western Civilization, in approximately fifteen hundred years, has passed through eight periods, thus:

1. Mixture 350-700

2. Gestation, 700-970

3A. First Expansion, 970-1270

4A. First Conflict, 1270-1440

Core Empire: England, 1420

3B. Second Expansion, 1440-1690

4B. Second Conflict, 1690-1815

Core Empire: France, 1810

3C. Third Expansion, 1770-1929

4C. Third Conflict, 1893-

Core Empire: Germany, 1942

The two possibilities which lie in the future can be listed as follows:

Reorganization Continuation of the Process

3D. Fourth Expansion, 1944- 5. Universal Empire (the United States)

6. Decay

7. Invasion (end of the civilization)

From the list of civilizations previously given, it becomes somewhat easier to see how Western Civilization was able to destroy (or is still destroying) the cultures of six other civilizations. In each of these six cases the victim civilization had already passed the period of Universal Empire and was deep in the Age of Decay. In such a situation Western Civilization played a role as invader similar to that played by the Germanic tribes in Classical Civilization, by the Dorians in Cretan Civilization, by the Greeks in Mesopotamian or Egyptian Civilization, by the Romans in Canaanite Civilization, or by the Ayrans in Indic Civilization. The Westerners who burst in upon the Aztecs in 1519, on the Incas in 1534, on the Mogul Empire in the eighteenth century, on the Manchu Empire after 1790, on the Ottoman Empire after 1774, and on the Tokugawa Empire after 1853 were performing the same role as the Visigoths and the other barbarian tribes to the Roman Empire after 377. In each case, the results of the collision of two civilizations, one in the Age of Expansion and the other in the Age of Decay, was a foregone conclusion. Expansion would destroy Decay.

In the course of its various expansions Western Civilization has collided with only one civilization which was not already in the stage of decay. This exception was its half-brother, so to speak, the civilization now represented by the Soviet Empire. It is not clear what stage this "Orthodox" Civilization is in, but it clearly is not in its stage of decay. It would appear that Orthodox Civilization began as a period of mixture (500-1300) and is now in its second period of expansion. The first period of expansion, covering 1500-1900, had just begun to change into an Age of Conflict (1900-1920) when the vested interests of the society were wiped away by the defeat at the hands of Germany in 1917 and replaced by a new organization of society which gave rise to a second Age of Expansion (since 1921). During much of the last four hundred years culminating in the twentieth century, the fringes of Asia have been occupied by a semicircle of old dying civilizations (Islamic, Hindu, Chinese, Japanese). These have been under pressure from Western Civilization coming in from the oceans and from Orthodox Civilization pushing outward from the heart of the Eurasian land mass. The Oceanic pressure began with Vasco da Gama in India in 1498, culminated aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay in 1945, and still continued with the Anglo-French attack on Suez in 1956. The Russian pressure from the continental heartland was applied to the inner frontiers of China, Iran, and Turkey from the seventeenth century to the present. Much of the world's history in the twentieth century has arisen from the interactions of these three factors (the continental heartland of Russian power, the shattered cultures of the Buffer Fringe of Asia, and the oceanic powers of Western Civilization).

Chapter 2—Cultural Diffusion in Western Civilization

We have said that the culture of a civilization is created in its core area originally and moves outward into peripheral areas which thus become part of the civilization. This movement of cultural elements is called "diffusion" by students of the subject. It is noteworthy that material elements of a culture, such as tools, weapons, vehicles, and such, diffuse more readily and thus more rapidly than do the nonmaterial elements such as ideas, art forms, religious outlook, or patterns of social behavior. For this reason the peripheral portions of a civilization (such as Assyria in Mesopotamian Civilization, Rome or Spain in Classical Civilization, and the United States or Australia in Western Civilization) tend to have a somewhat cruder and more material culture than the core area of the same civilization.

Material elements of a culture also diffuse beyond the boundaries of a civilization into other societies, and do so much more readily than the nonmaterial elements of the culture. For this reason the nonmaterial and spiritual elements of a culture are what give it its distinctive character rather than its tools and weapons which can be so easily exported to entirely different societies. Thus, the distinctive character of Western Civilization rests on its Christian heritage, its scientific outlook, its humanitarian elements, and its distinctive point of view in regard to the rights of the individual and respect for women rather than in such material things as firearms, tractors, plumbing fixtures, or skyscrapers, all of which are exportable commodities.

The export of material elements in a culture, across its peripheral areas and beyond, to the peoples of totally different societies has strange results. As elements of material culture move from core to periphery inside a civilization, they tend, in the long run, to strengthen the periphery at the expense of the core because the core is more hampered in the use of material innovations by the strength of past vested interests and because the core devotes a much greater part of its wealth and energy to nonmaterial culture. Thus, such aspects of the Industrial Revolution as automobiles and radios are European rather than American inventions, but have been developed and utilized to a far greater extent in America because this area was not hampered in their use by surviving elements of feudalism, of church domination, of rigid class distinctions (for example, in education), or by widespread attention to music, poetry, art, or religion such as we find in Europe. A similar contrast can be seen in Classical Civilization between Greek and Roman or in Mesopotamian Civilization between Sumerian and Assyrian or in Mayan Civilization between Mayan and Aztec.

The diffusion of culture elements beyond the boundaries of one society into the culture of another society presents quite a different case. The boundaries between societies present relatively little hindrance to the diffusion of material elements, and relatively greater hindrance to the diffusion of nonmaterial elements. Indeed, it is this fact which determines the boundary of the society, for, if the nonmaterial elements also diffused, the new area into which they flowed would be a peripheral portion of the old society rather than a part of a quite different society.

The diffusion of material elements from one society to another has a complex effect on the importing society. In the short run it is usually benefitted by the importation, but in the long run it is frequently disorganized and weakened. When white men first came to North America, material elements from Western Civilization spread rapidly among the different Indian tribes. The Plains Indians, for example, were weak and impoverished before 1543, but in that year the horse began to diffuse northward from the Spaniards in Mexico. Within a century the Plains Indians were raised to a much higher standard of living (because of ability to hunt buffalo from horseback) and were immensely strengthened in their ability to resist Americans coming westward across the continent. In the meantime, the trans-Appalachian Indians who had been very powerful in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries began to receive firearms, steel traps, measles, and eventually whiskey from the French and later the English by way of the St. Lawrence. These greatly weakened the woods Indians of the trans-Appalachian area and ultimately weakened the Plains Indians of the trans-Mississippi area, because measles and whiskey were devastating and demoralizing and because the use of traps and guns by certain tribes made them dependent on whites for supplies at the same time that they allowed them to put great physical pressure on the more remote tribes which had not yet received guns or traps. Any united front of reds against whites was impossible, and the Indians were disrupted, demoralized, and destroyed. In general, importation of an element of material culture from one society to another is helpful to the importing society in the long run only if it is (a) productive, (b) can be made within the society itself, and (c) can be fitted into the nonmaterial culture of the importing society without demoralizing it. The destructive impact of Western Civilization upon so many other societies rests on its ability to demoralize their ideological and spiritual culture as much as its ability to destroy them in a material sense with firearms.

When one society is destroyed by the impact of another society, the people are left in a debris of cultural elements derived from their own shattered culture as well as from the invading culture. These elements generally provide the instruments for fulfilling the material needs of these people, but they cannot be organized into a functioning society because of the lack of an ideology and spiritual cohesive. Such people either perish or are incorporated as individuals and small groups into some other culture, whose ideology they adopt for themselves and, above all, for their children. In some cases, however, the people left with the debris of a shattered culture are able to reintegrate the cultural elements into a new society and a new culture. They are able to do this because they obtain a new nonmaterial culture and thus a new ideology and morale which serve as a cohesive for the scattered elements of past culture they have at hand. Such a new ideology may be imported or may be indigenous, but in either case it becomes sufficiently integrated with the necessary elements of material culture to form a functioning whole and thus a new society. It is by some such process as this that all new societies, and thus all new civilizations, have been born. In this way, Classical Civilization was born from the wreckage of Cretan Civilization in the period 1150 B.C.—900 B.C., and Western Civilization was born from the wreckage of Classical Civilization in the period A.D. 350—700. It is possible that new civilizations may be born in the debris from the civilizations wrecked by Western Civilization on the fringes of Asia. In this wreckage is debris from Islamic, Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese civilizations. lt would appear at the present time that new civilizations may be in the throes of birth in Japan, possibly in China, less likely in India, and dubiously in Turkey or Indonesia. The birth of a powerful civilization at any or several of these points would be of primary significance in world history, since it would serve as a counterbalance to the expansion of Soviet Civilization on the land mass of Eurasia.

Turning from a hypothetical future to a historical past, we can trace the diffusion of cultural elements within Western Civilization from its core area across peripheral areas and outward to other societies. Some of these elements are sufficiently important to command a more detailed examination.

Among the elements of the Western tradition which have diffused only very slowly or not at all are a closely related nexus of ideas at the basis of Western ideology. These include Christianity, the scientific outlook, humanitarianism, and the idea of the unique value and rights of the individual. But from this nexus of ideas have sprung a number of elements of material culture of which the most noteworthy are associated with technology. These have diffused readily, even to other societies. This ability of Western technology to emigrate and the inability of the scientific outlook, with which such technology is fairly closely associated, to do so have created an anomalous situation: societies such as Soviet Russia which have, because of lack of the tradition of scientific method, shown little inventiveness in technology are nevertheless able to threaten Western Civilization by the use, on a gigantic scale, of a technology almost entirely imported from Western Civilization. A similar situation may well develop in any new civilizations which come into existence on the fringes of Asia.

The most important parts of Western technology can be listed under four headings:

1. Ability to kill: development of weapons

2. Ability to preserve life: development of sanitation and medical services

3. Ability to produce both food and industrial goods

4. Improvements in transportation and communications

We have already spoken of the diffusion of Western firearms. The impact which these have had on peripheral areas and other societies, from Cortez's invasion of Mexico, in 1519 to the use of the first atom bomb on Japan in 1945, is obvious. Less obvious, but in the long run of much greater significance, is the ability of Western Civilization to conquer disease and to postpone death hy sanitation and medical advances. These advances began in the core of Western Civilization before 1500 but have exercised their full impact only since about 1750 with the advent of vaccination, the conquest of plague, and the steady advance in saving lives through the discovery of antisepsis in the nineteenth century and of the antibiotics in the twentieth century. These discoveries and techniques have diffused outward from the core of Western Civilization and have resulted in a fall in the death rate in western Europe and America almost immediately, in southern Europe and eastern Europe somewhat later, and in Asia only in the period since 1900. The world-shaking significance of this diffusion will be discussed in a moment.

Western Civilization's conquest of the techniques of production are so outstanding that they have been honored by the term "revolution" in all history books concerned with the subject. The conquest of the problem of producing food, known as the Agricultural Revolution, began in England as long ago as the early eighteenth century, say about 1725. The conquest of the problem of producing manufactured goods, known as the Industrial Revolution, also began in England, about fifty years after the Agricultural Revolution, say about 1775. The relationship of these two "revolutions" to each other and to the "revolution" in sanitation and public health and the differing rates at which these three "revolutions" diffused is of the greatest importance for understanding both the history of Western Civilization and its impact on other societies.

Agricultural activities, which provide the chief food supply of all civilizations, drain the nutritive elements from the soil. Unless these elements are replaced, the productivity of the soil will be reduced to a dangerously low level. In the medieval and early modern period of European history, these nutritive elements, especially nitrogen, were replaced through the action of the weather by leaving the land fallow either one year in three or even every second year. This had the effect of reducing the arable land by half or one-third. The Agricultural Revolution was an immense step forward, since it replaced the year of fallowing with a leguminous crop whose roots increased the supply of nitrogen in the soil by capturing this gas from the air and fixing it in the soil in a form usable by plant life. Since the leguminous crop which replaced the fallow year of the older agricultural cycle was generally a crop like alfalfa, clover, or sainfoin which provided feed for cattle, this Agricultural Revolution not only increased the nitrogen content of the soil for subsequent crops of grain but also increased the number and quality of farm animals, thus increasing the supply of meat and animal products for food, and also increasing the fertility of the soil by increasing the supply of animal manure for fertilizers. The net result of the whole Agricultural Revolution was an increase in both the quantity and the quality of food. Fewer men were able to produce so much more food that many men were released from the burden of producing it and could devote their attention to other activities, such as government, education, science, or business. It has been said that in 1700 the agricultural labor of twenty persons was required in order to produce enough food for twenty-one persons, while in some areas, by 1900, three persons could produce enough food for twenty-one persons, thus releasing seventeen persons for nonagricultural activities.

This Agricultural Revolution which began in England before 1725 reached France after 1800, but did not reach Germany or northern Italy until after 1830. As late as 1900 it had hardly spread at all into Spain, southern Italy and Sicily, the Balkans, or eastern Europe generally. In Germany, about 1840, this Agricultural Revolution was given a new boost forward by the introduction of the use of chemical fertilizers, and received another boost in the United States after 1880 by the introduction of farm machinery which reduced the need for human labor. These same two areas, with contributions from some other countries, gave another considerable boost to agricultural output after 1900 by the introduction of new seeds and better crops through seed selection and hybridization.

These great agricultural advances after 1725 made possible the advances in industrial production after 1775 by providing the food and thus the labor for the growth of the factory system and the rise of industrial cities. Improvements in sanitation and medical services after 1775 contributed to the same end by reducing the death rate and by making it possible for large numbers of persons to live in cities without the danger of epidemics.

The "Transportation Revolution" also contributed its share to making the modern world. This contribution began, slowly enough, about 1750, with the construction of canals and the building of turnpikes by the new methods of road construction devised by John L. McAdam ("macadamized" roads). Coal came by canal and food by the new roads to the new industrial cities after 1800. After 1825 both were greatly improved by the growth of a network of railroads, while communications were speeded by the use of the telegraph (after 1837) and the cable (after 1850). This "conquest of distance" was unbelievably accelerated in the twentieth century by the use of internal-combustion engines in automobiles, aircraft, and ships and by the advent of telephones and radio communications. The chief result of this tremendous speeding up of communications and transportation was that all parts of the world were brought closer together, and the impact of European culture on the non-European world was greatly intensified. This impact was made even more overwhelming by the fact that the Transportation Revolution spread outward from Europe extremely rapidly, diffusing almost as rapidly as the spread of European weapons, somewhat more rapidly than the spread of European sanitation and medical services, and much more rapidly than the spread of European industrialism, European agricultural techniques, or European ideology. As we shall see in a moment, many of the problems which the world faced at the middle of the twentieth century were rooted in the fact that these different aspects of the European way of life spread outward into the non-European world at such different speeds that the non-European world obtained them in an entirely different order from that in which Europe had obtained them.

One example of this difference can be seen in the fact that in Europe the Industrial Revolution generally took place before the Transportation Revolution, but in the non-European world this sequence was reversed.

This means that Europe was able to produce its own iron, steel, and copper to build its own railroads and telegraph wires, but the non-European world could construct these things only by obtaining the necessary industrial materials from Europe and thus becoming the debtor of Europe. The speed with which the Transportation Revolution spread out from Europe can be seen in the fact that in Europe the railroad began before 1830, the telegraph before 1840, the automobile about 1890, and the wireless about 1900. The transcontinental railroad in the United States opened in 1869; by 1900 the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Cape-to-Cairo railroad were under full construction, and the Berlin-to-Baghdad enterprise was just beginning. By that same date—1900—India, the Balkans, China, and Japan were being covered with a network of railroads, although none of these areas, at that date, was sufficiently developed in an industrial sense to provide itself with the steel or copper to construct or to maintain such a network. Later stages in the Transportation Revolution, such as automobiles or radios, spread even more rapidly and were being used to cross the deserts of the Sahara or of Arabia within a generation of their advent in Europe.

Another important example of this situation can be seen in the fact that in Europe the Agricultural Revolution began before the Industrial Revolution. Because of this, Europe was able to increase its output of food and thus the supply of labor necessary for industrialization. But in the non-European world (except North America) the effort to industrialize generally began before there had been any notable success in obtaining a more productive agricultural system. As a result, the increased supply of food (and thus of labor) needed for the growth of industrial cities in the non-European world has generally been obtained, not from increased output of food so much as from a reduction of the peasants' share of the food produced. In the Soviet Union, especially, the high speed of industrialization in the period 1926-1940 was achieved by a merciless oppression of the rural community in which millions of peasants lost their lives. The effort to copy this Soviet method in Communist China in the 1950'5 brought that area to the verge of disaster.

The most important example of such differential diffusion rates of two European developments appears in the difference between the spread of the food-producing revolution and the spread of the revolution in sanitation and medical services. This difference became of such worldshaking consequences by the middle of the twentieth century that we must spend considerable time examining it.

In Europe the Agricultural Revolution which served to increase the supply of food began at least fifty years before the beginnings of the revolution in sanitation and medical services which decreased the number of deaths and thus increased the number of the population. The two dates for these two beginnings might be put roughly at 1725 and 1775. As a result of this difference, Europe generally had sufficient food to feed its increased population. When the population reached a point where Europe itself could no longer feed its own people (say about 1850), the outlying areas of the European and non-European worlds were so eager to be industrialized (or to obtain railroads) that Europe was able to obtain non-European food in exchange for European industrial products. This sequence of events was a very happy combination for Europe. But the sequence of events in tile non-European world was quite different and much less happy. Not only did the non-European world get industrialization before it got the revolution in food production; it also got the revolution in sanitation and medical services before it got a sufficient increase in food to take care of the resulting increase in population. As a result, the demographic explosion which began in northwestern Europe early in the nineteenth century spread outward to eastern Europe and to Asia with increasingly unhappy consequences as it spread. The result was to create the greatest social problem of the twentieth-century world.

Most stable and primitive societies, such as the American Indians before 1492 or medieval Europe, have no great population problem because the birthrate is balanced by the death rate. In such societies both of these are high, the population is stable, and the major portion of that population is young (below eighteen years of age). This kind of society (frequently called Population Type A) is what existed in Europe in the medieval period (say about 1400) or even in part of the early modern period (say about 1700). As a result of the increased supply of food in Europe after 1725, and of men's increased ability to save lives because of advances in sanitation and medicine after 1775, the death rate began to fall, the birthrate remained high, the population began to increase, and the number of older persons in the society increased. This gave rise to what we have called the demographic explosion (or Population Type B). As a result of it, the population of Europe (beginning in western Europe) increased in the nineteenth century, and the major portion of that population was in the prime of life (ages eighteen to forty-five), the arms-bearing years for men and the childbearing years for women.

At this point the demographic cycle of an expanding population goes into a third stage (Population Type C) in which the birthrate also begins to fall. The reasons for this fall in the birthrate have never been explained in a satisfactory way, but, as a consequence of it, there appears a new demographic condition marked by a falling birthrate, a low death rate, and a stabilizing and aging population whose major part is in the mature years from thirty to sixty. As the population gets older because of the decrease in births and the increase in expectation of life, a larger and larger part of the population has passed the years of hearing children or bearing arms. This causes the birthrate to decline even more rapidly, and eventually gives a population so old that the death rate begins to rise again because of the great increase in deaths from old age or from the casualties of inevitable senility. Accordingly, the society passes into a fourth stage of the demographic cycle (Population Type D). This stage is marked by a declining birthrate, a rising death rate, a decreasing population, and a population in which the major part is over fifty years of age.

It must be confessed that the nature of the fourth stage of this demographic cycle is based on theoretical considerations rather than on empirical observation, because even western Europe, where the cycle is most advanced, has not yet reached this fourth stage. However, it seems quite likely that it will pass into such a stage by the year 2000, and already the increasing number of older persons has given rise to new problems and to a new science called geriatrics both in western Europe and in the eastern United States.

As we have said, Europe has already experienced the first three stages of this demographic cycle as a result of the Agricultural Revolution after 1725 and the Sanitation-Medical Revolution after 1775. As these two revolutions have diffused outward from western Europe to more peripheral areas of the world (the lifesaving revolution passing the food-producing revolution in the process), these more remote areas have entered, one by one, upon the demographic cycle. This means that the demographic explosion (Population Type B) has moved outward from western Europe to Central Europe to eastern Europe and finally to Asia and Africa. By the middle of the twentieth century, India was fully in the grasp of the demographic explosion, with its population shooting upward at a rate of about 5 million a year, while Japan's population rose from 55 million in 1920 to 94 million in 1960. A fine example of the working of this process can be seen in Ceylon where in 1920 the birthrate was 40 per thousand and the death rate was 32 per thousand, but in 1950 the birthrate was still at 40 while the death rate had fallen to 12. Before we examine the impact of this development on world history in the twentieth century let us look at two brief tables which will clarify this process.

The demographic cycle may be divided into four stages which we have designated by the first four letters of the alphabet. These four stages can be distinguished in respect to four traits: the birthrate, the death rate, the number of the population, and its age distribution. The nature of the four stages in these four respects can be seen in the following table:

The Demographic Cycle

Stage A B C D

Birthrate High High Falling Low

Death rate High Falling Low Rising

Numbers Stable Rising Stable Falling

Age Many young Many in prime Many Middle-aged Many old

Distribution (Below 18) (18-45) (Over 30) (Over 50)

The consequences of this demographic cycle (and the resulting demographic explosion) as it diffuses outward from western Europe to more peripheral areas of the world may be gathered from the following table which sets out the chronology of this movement in the four areas of western Europe, central Europe, eastern Europe, and Asia:

Diffusion of the Demographic Cycle

Areas

Western Central Eastern

Dates Europe Europe Europe Asia

1700 A A A A

1800 B A A A

_______

1850 B | B A A

|________________

1900 C B | B A

|________________

1950 C C B | B

|____________

2000 D D C B

In this table the line of greatest population pressure (the demographic explosion of Type B population) has been marked by a dotted line. This shows that there has been a sequence, at intervals of about fifty years, of four successive population pressures which might be designated with the following names:

Anglo-French pressure, about 1850

Germanic-Italian pressure, about 1900

Slavic pressure, about 1950

Asiatic pressure, about 2000

This diffusion of pressure outward from the western European core of Western Civilization can contribute a great deal toward a richer understanding of the period 1850-2000. It helps to explain the Anglo-French rivalry about 1850, the Anglo-French alliance based on fear of Germany after 1900, the free-world alliance based on fear of Soviet Russia after 1950, and the danger to both Western Civilization and Soviet Civilization from Asiatic pressure by 2000.

These examples show how our understanding of the problems of the twentieth century world can be illuminated by a study of the various developments of western Europe and of the varying rates by which they diffused outward to the more peripheral portions of Western Civilization and ultimately to the . non-Western world. In a rough fashion we might list these developments in the order in which they appeared in western Europe as well as the order in which they appeared in the more remote non-Western world:

Developments in Western Europe

1. Western ideology

2. Revolution in weapons (especially firearms)

3. Agricultural Revolution

4. Industrial Revolution

5. Revolution in sanitation and medicine

6. Demographic explosion

7. Revolution in transportation and communications

Developments in Asia

1. Revolution in weapons

2. Revolution in transport and communications

3. Revolution in sanitation and medicine

4. Industrial Revolution

5. Demographic explosion

6. Agricultural Revolution

7. And last (if at all), Western ideology

Naturally, these two lists are only a rough approximation to the truth. In the European list it should be quite clear that each development is listed in the order of its first beginning and that each of these traits has been a continuing process of development since. In the Asiatic list it should be clear that the order of arrival of the different traits is quite different in different areas and that the order given on this list is merely one which seems to apply to several important areas. Naturally, the problems arising from the advent of these traits in Asiatic areas depend on the order in which the traits arrive, and thus are quite different in areas where this order of arrival is different. The chief difference arises from a reversal of order between items 3 and 4.

The fact that Asia obtained these traits in a different order from that of Europe is of the greatest significance. We shall devote much of the rest of this book to examining this subject. At this point we might point out two aspects of it. In 1830 democracy was growing rapidly in Europe and in America. At that time the development of weapons had reached a point where governments could not get weapons which were much more effective than those which private individuals could get. Moreover, private individuals could obtain good weapons because they had a high enough standard of living to afford it (as a result of the Agricultural Revolution) and such weapons were cheap (as a result of the Industrial Revolution). By 1930 (and even more by 1950) the development of weapons had advanced to the point where governments could obtain more effective weapons (dive-bombers, armored cars, flamethrowers, poisonous gases, and such) than private individuals. Moreover, in Asia, these better weapons arrived before standards of living could be raised by the Agricultural Revolution or costs of weapons reduced sufficiently by the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, standards of living were held down in Asia because the Sanitation Medical Revolution and the demographic explosion arrived before the Agricultural Revolution. As a result, governments in Europe in 1830 hardly dared to oppress the people, and democracy was growing; hut in the non-European world by 1930 (and even more by 1950) governments did dare to, and could, oppress their peoples, who could do little to prevent it. When we add to this picture the fact that the ideology of Western Europe had strong democratic elements derived from its Christian and scientific traditions, while Asiatic countries had authoritarian traditions in political life, we can see that democracy had a hopeful future in Europe in 1830 but a very dubious future in Asia m 1950.

From another point of view we can sec that in Europe the sequence of Agricultural-Industrial-Transportation revolutions made it possible for Europe to have rising standards of living and little rural oppression, since the Agricultural Revolution provided the food and thus the labor for industrialism and for transport facilities. But in Asia, where the sequence of these three revolutions was different (generally: Transportation-Industrial-Agricultural), labor could be obtained from the Sanitary-Medical Revolution, hut food for this labor could be obtained only by oppressing the rural population and preventing any real improvements in standards of living. Some countries tried to avoid this by borrowing capital for railroads and steel mills from European countries rather than by raising capital from the savings of their own people, but this meant that these countries became the debtors (and thus to some extent the subordinates) of Europe. Asiatic nationalism usually came to resent this debtor role and to prefer the role of rural oppression of its own people by its own government. The most striking example of this preference for rural oppression over foreign indebtedness was made in the Soviet Union in 1928 with the opening of the Five-Year plans. Somewhat similar but less drastic choices were made even earlier in Japan and much later in China. But we must never forget that these and other difficult choices had to be made by Asiatics because they obtained the diffused traits of Western Civilization in an order different from that in which Europe obtained them.

Chapter 3—Europe's Shift to the Twentieth Century

While Europe's traits were diffusing outward to the non-European world, Europe was also undergoing profound changes and facing difficult choices at home. These choices were associated with drastic changes, in some cases we might say reversals, of Europe's point of view. These changes may be examined under eight headings. The nineteenth century was marked by (2) belief in the innate goodness of man; (2) secularism; (3) belief in progress; (4) liberalism; (5) capitalism; (6) faith in science; (7) democracy; (8) nationalism. In general, these eight factors went along together in the nineteenth century. They were generally regarded as being compatible with one another; the friends of one were generally the friends of the others; and the enemies of one were generally the enemies of the rest. Metternich and De Maistre were generally opposed to all eight; Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill were generally in favor of all eight..

The belief in the innate goodness of man had its roots in the eighteenth century when it appeared to many that man was born good and free but was everywhere distorted, corrupted, and enslaved by bad institutions and conventions. As Rousseau said, "Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains." Thus arose the belief in the "noble savage," the romantic nostalgia for nature and for the simple nobility and honesty of the inhabitants of a faraway land. If only man could be freed, they felt, freed from the corruption of society and its artificial conventions, freed from the burden of property, of the state, of the clergy, and of the rules of matrimony, then man, it seemed clear, could rise to heights undreamed of before—could, indeed, become a kind of superman, practically a god. It was this spirit which set loose the French Revolution. It was this spirit which prompted the outburst of self-reliance and optimism so characteristic of the whole period from 1770 to 1914.

Obviously, if man is innately good and needs but to be freed from social restrictions, he is capable of tremendous achievements in this world of time, and does not need to postpone his hopes of personal salvation into eternity. Obviously, if man is a god-like creature whose ungod-like actions are due only to the frustrations of social conventions, there is no need to worry about service to God or devotion to any other worldly end. Man can accomplish most by service to himself and devotion to the goals of this world. Thus came the triumph of secularism.

Closely related to these nineteenth century beliefs that human nature is good, that society is bad, and that optimism and secularism were reasonable attitudes were certain theories about the nature of evil..

To the nineteenth century mind evil, or sin, was a negative conception. It merely indicated a lack or, at most, a distortion of good. Any idea of sin or evil as a malignant positive force opposed to good, and capable of existing by its own nature, was completely lacking in the typical nineteenth-century mind. To such a mind the only evil was frustration and the only sin, repression.

Just as the negative idea of the nature of evil flowed from the belief that human nature was good, so the idea of liberalism flowed from the belief that society was bad. For, if society was bad, the state, which was the organized coercive power of society, was doubly bad, and if man was good, he should be freed, above all, from the coercive power of the state. Liberalism was the crop which emerged from this soil. In its broadest aspect liberalism believed that men should be freed from coercive power as completely as possible. In its narrowest aspect liberalism believed that the economic activities of man should be freed completely from "state interference." This latter belief, summed up in the battle-cry "No government in business," was commonly called "laissez-faire." Liberalism, which included laissez-faire, was a wider term because it would have freed men from the coercive power of any church, army, or other institution, and would have left to society little power beyond that required to prevent the strong from physically oppressing the weak.

From either aspect liberalism was based on an almost universally accepted nineteenth-century superstition known as the "community of interests." This strange, and unexamined, belief held that there really existed, in the long run, a community of interests between the members of a society. It maintained that, in the long run, what was good for one member of society was good for all and that what was bad for one w as had for all. But it went much further than this. The theory of the "community of interests" believed that there did exist a possible social pattern in which each member of society would be secure, free, and prosperous, and that this pattern could be achieved by a process of adjustment so that each person could fall into that place in the pattern to which his innate abilities entitled him. This implied two corollaries which the nineteenth century was prepared to accept: (1) that human abilities are innate and can only be distorted or suppressed by social discipline and (2) that each individual is the best judge of his own self-interest. All these together form the doctrine of the "community of interests," a doctrine which maintained that if each individual does what seems best for himself the result, in the long run, will be best for society as a whole..

Closely related to the idea of the "community of interests" were two other beliefs of the nineteenth century: the belief in progress and in democracy. The average man of 1880 was convinced that he was the culmination of a long process of inevitable progress which had been going on for untold millennia and which would continue indefinitely into the future. This belief in progress was so fixed that it tended to regard progress as both inevitable and automatic. Out of the struggles and conflicts of the universe better things were constantly emerging, and the wishes or plans of the objects themselves had little to do with the process.

The idea of democracy was also accepted as inevitable, although not always as desirable, for the nineteenth century could not completely submerge a lingering feeling that rule by the best or rule by the strong would be better than rule by the majority. But the facts of political development made rule by the majority unavoidable, and it came to he accepted, at least in western Europe, especially since it was compatible with liberalism and with the community of interests.

Liberalism, community of interests, and the belief in progress led almost inevitably to the practice and theory of capitalism. Capitalism was an economic system in which the motivating force was the desire for private profit as determined in a price system. Such a system, it was felt, by seeking the aggrandization of profits for each individual, would give unprecedented economic progress under liberalism and in accord with the community of interests. In the nineteenth century this system, in association with the unprecedented advance of natural science, had given rise to industrialism (that is, power production) and urbanism (that is, city life), both of which were regarded as inevitable concomitants of progress by most people, but with the greatest suspicion by a persistent and vocal minority.

The nineteenth century was also an age of science. By this term we mean the belief that the universe obeyed rational laws which could be found by observation and could be used to control it. This belief was closely connected with the optimism of the period, with its belief in inevitable progress, and with secularism. The latter appeared as a tendency toward materialism. This could be defined as the belief that all reality is ultimately explicable in terms of the physical and chemical laws which apply to temporal matter.

The last attribute of the nineteenth century is by no means the least: nationalism. It was the great age of nationalism, a movement which has been discussed in many lengthy and inconclusive books but which can be defined for our purposes as "a movement for political unity with those with whom we believe we are akin." As such, nationalism in the nineteenth century had a dynamic force which worked in two directions. On the one side, it served to bind persons of the same nationality together into a tight, emotionally satisfying, unit. On the other side, it served to divide persons of different nationality into antagonistic groups, often to the injury of their real mutual political, economic, or cultural advantages. Thus, in the period to which we refer, nationalism sometimes acted as a cohesive force, creating a united Germany and a united Italy out of a medley of distinct political units. But sometimes, on the other hand, nationalism acted as a disruptive force within such dynastic states as the Habsburg Empire or the Ottoman Empire, splitting these great states into a number of distinctive political units.

These characteristics of the nineteenth century have been so largely modified in the twentieth century that it might appear, at first glance, as if the latter were nothing more than the opposite of the former. This is not completely accurate, but there can be no doubt that most of these characteristics have been drastically modified in the twentieth century. This change has arisen from a series of shattering experiences which have profoundly disturbed patterns of behavior and of belief, of social organizations and human hopes. Of these shattering experiences the chief were the trauma of the First World War, the long-drawn-out agony of the world depression, and the unprecedented violence of destruction of the Second World War. Of these three, the First World War was undoubtedly the most important. To a people who believed in the innate goodness of man, in inevitable progress, in the community of interests, and in evil as merely the absence of good, the First World War, with its millions of persons dead and its billions of dollars wasted, was a blow so terrible as to be beyond human ability to comprehend. As a matter of fact, no real success was achieved in comprehending it. The people of the day regarded it as a temporary and inexplicable aberration to be ended as soon as possible and forgotten as soon as ended. Accordingly, men were almost unanimous, in 1919, in their determination to restore the world of 1913. This effort was a failure. After ten years of effort to conceal the new reality of social life by a facade painted to look like 1913, the facts burst through the pretense, and men were forced, willingly or not, to face the grim reality of the twentieth century. The events which destroyed the pretty dream world of 1919-1929 were the stock-market crash, the world depression, the world financial crisis, and ultimately the martial clamor of rearmament and aggression. Thus depression and war forced men to realize that the old world of the nineteenth century had passed forever, and made them seek to create a new world in accordance with the facts of present-day conditions. This new world, the child of the period of 1914-1945, assumed its recognizable form only as the first half of the century drew to a close.

In contrast with the nineteenth-century belief that human nature is innately good and that society is corrupting, the twentieth century came to believe that human nature is, if not innately bad, at least capable of being very evil. Left to himself, it seems today, man falls very easily to the level of the jungle or even lower, and this result can be prevented only by training and the coercive power of society. Thus, man is capable of great evil, but society can prevent this. Along with this change from good men and bad society to bad men and good society has appeared a reaction from optimism to pessimism and from secularism to religion. At the same time the view that evil is merely the absence of good has been replaced with the idea that evil is a very positive force which must 'ne resisted and overcome. The horrors of Hitler's concentration camps and of Stalin's slave-labor units are chiefly responsible for this change.

Associated with these changes are a number of others. The belief that human abilities are innate and should be left free from social duress in order to display themselves has been replaced by the idea that human abilities are the result of social training and must be directed to socially acceptable ends. Thus liberalism and laissez-faire are to be replaced, apparently, by social discipline and planning. The community of interests which would appear if men were merely left to pursue their own desires has been replaced by the idea of the welfare community, which must be created by conscious organizing action. The belief in progress has been replaced by the fear of social retrogression or even human annihilation. The old march of democracy now yields to the insidious advance of authoritarianism, and the individual capitalism of the profit motive seems about to be replaced by the state capitalism of the welfare economy. Science, on all sides, is challenged by mysticisms, some of which march under the banner of science itself; urbanism has passed its peak and is replaced by suburbanism or even "flight to the country"; and nationalism finds its patriotic appeal challenged by appeals to much wider groups of class, ideological, or continental scope..

We have already given some attention to the fashion in which a number of western-European innovations, such as industrialism and the demographic explosion, diffused outward to the peripheral non-European world at such different rates of speed that they arrived in Asia in quite a different order from that in which they had left western Europe. The same phenomenon can be seen within Western Civilization in regard to the nineteenth-century characteristics of Europe which we have enumerated. For example, nationalism was already evident in England at the time of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588; it raged through France in the period after 1789; it reached Germany and Italy only after 1815, became a potent force in Russia and the Balkans toward the end of the nineteenth century, and was noticeable in China, India, and Indonesia, and even Negro Africa, only in the twentieth century. Somewhat similar patterns of diffusion can be found in regard to the spread of democracy, of parliamentary government, of liberalism, and of secularism. The rule, however, is not so general or so simple as it appears at first glance. The exceptions and the complications appear more numerous as we approach the twentieth century. Even earlier it was evident that the arrival of the sovereign state did not follow this pattern, enlightened despotism and the growth of supreme public authority appearing in Germany, and even in Italy, before it appeared in France. Universal free education also appeared in central Europe before it appeared in a western country like England. Socialism also is a product of central Europe rather than of western Europe, and moved from the former to the latter only in the fifth decade of the twentieth century. These exceptions to the general rule about the eastward movement of modern historical developments have various explanations. Some of these are obvious, but others are very complicated. As an example of such a complication we might mention that in Western Europe nationalism, industrialism, liberalism, and democracy were generally reached in this order. But in Germany they all appeared about the same time. To the Germans it appeared that they could achieve nationalism and industrialism (both of which they wanted) more rapidly and more successfully if they sacrificed liberalism and democracy. Thus, in Germany nationalism was achieved in an undemocratic way, by "blood and iron," as Bismarck put it, while industrialism was achieved under state auspices rather than through liberalism. This selection of elements and the resulting playing off of elements against one another was possible in more peripheral areas only because these areas had the earlier experience of western Europe to study, copy, avoid, or modify. Sometimes they had to modify these traits as they developed. This can be seen from the following considerations. When the Industrial Revolution began in England and France, these countries were able to raise the necessary capital for new factories because they already had the Agricultural Revolution and because, as the earliest producers of industrial goods, they made excessive profits which could he used to provide capital. But in Germany and in Russia, capital was much more difficult to find, because they obtained the Industrial Revolution later, when they had to compete with England and France, and could not earn such large profits and also because they did not already have an established Agricultural Revolution on which to build their Industrial Revolution. Accordingly, while western Europe, with plenty of capital and cheap, democratic weapons, could finance its industrialization with liberalism and democracy, central and eastern Europe had difficulty financing industrialism, and there the process was delayed to a period when cheap and simple democratic weapons were being replaced by expensive and complicated weapons. This meant that the capital for railroads and factories had to be raised with government assistance; liberalism waned; rising nationalism encouraged this tendency; and the undemocratic nature of existing weapons made it clear that both liberalism and democracy were living a most precarious existence.

As a consequence of situations such as this, some of the traits which arose in western Europe in the nineteenth century moved outward to more peripheral areas of Europe and Asia with great difficulty and for only a brief period. Among these less sturdy traits of western Europe's great century we might mention liberalism, democracy, the parliamentary system, optimism, and the belief in inevitable progress. These were, we might say, flowers of such delicate nature that they could not survive any extended period of stormy weather. That the twentieth century subjected them to long periods of very stormy weather is clear when we consider that it brought a world economic depression sandwiched between two world wars.

Part Two—Western Civilization to 1914

Chapter 4—The Pattern of Change

In order to obtain perspective we sometimes divide the culture of a society, in a somewhat arbitrary fashion, into several different aspects. For example, we can divide a society into six aspects: military, political, economic, social, religious, intellectual. Naturally there are very close connections between these various aspects; and in each aspect there are very close connections between what exists today and what existed in an earlier day. For example, we might want to talk about democracy as a fact on the political level (or aspect). In order to talk about it in an intelligent way we would not only have to know what it is today we would also have to see what relationship it has to earlier facts on the political level as well as its relationship to various facts on the other five levels of the society. Naturally we cannot talk intelligently unless we have a fairly clear idea of what we mean by the words we use. For that reason we shall frequently define the terms we use in discussing this subject.

The Organization of Power

The military level is concerned with the organization of force, the political level with the organization of power, and the economic level with the organization of wealth. By the "organization of power" in a society we mean the ways in which obedience and consent (or acquiescence) are obtained. The close relationships between levels can be seen from the fact that there are three basic ways to win obedience: by force, by buying consent with wealth, and by persuasion. Each of these three leads us to another level (military, economic, or intellectual) outside the political level. At the same time, the organization of power today (that is, of the methods for obtaining obedience in the society) is a development of the methods used to obtain obedience in the society in an earlier period.

Major Change in the 20th Century

These relationships are important because in the twentieth century in Western Civilization all six levels are changing with amazing rapidity, and the relationships between levels are also shifting with great speed. When we add to this confusing picture of Western Civilization the fact that other societies are influencing it or being influenced by it, it would seem that the world in the twentieth century is almost too complicated to understand. This is indeed true, and we shall have to simplify (perhaps even oversimplify) these complexities in order to reach a low level of understanding. When we have reached such a low level perhaps we shall be able to raise the level of our understanding by bringing into our minds, little by little, some of the complexities which do exist in the world itself.

The Military Level in Western Civilization

On the military level in Western Civilization in the twentieth century the chief development has been a steady increase in the complexity and the cost of weapons. When weapons are cheap to get and so easy to use that almost anyone can use them after a short period of training, armies are generally made up of large masses of amateur soldiers. Such weapons we call "amateur weapons," and such armies we might call "mass armies of citizen-soldiers." The Age of Pericles in Classical Greece and the nineteenth century in Western Civilization were periods of amateur weapons and citizen-soldiers. But the nineteenth century was preceded (as was the Age of Pericles also) by a period in which weapons were expensive and required long training in their use. Such weapons we call "specialist" weapons. Periods of specialist weapons are generally periods of small armies of professional soldiers (usually mercenaries). In a period of specialist weapons the minority who have such weapons can usually force the majority who lack them to obey; thus a period of specialist weapons tends to give rise to a period of minority rule and authoritarian government. But a period of amateur weapons is a period in which all men are roughly equal in military power, a majority can compel a minority to yield, and majority rule or even democratic government tends to rise. The medieval period in which the best weapon was usually a mounted knight on horseback (clearly a specialist weapon) was a period of minority rule and authoritarian government. Even when the medieval knight was made obsolete (along with his stone castle) by the invention of gunpowder and the appearance of firearms, these new weapons were so expensive and so difficult to use (until 1800) that minority rule and authoritarian government continued even though that government sought to enforce its rule by shifting from mounted knights to professional pike-men and musketeers. But after 1800, guns became cheaper to obtain and easier to use. By 1840 a Colt revolver sold for $27 and a Springfield musket for not much more, and these were about as good weapons as anyone could get at that time. Thus, mass armies of citizens, equipped with these cheap and easily used weapons, began to replace armies of professional soldiers, beginning about 1800 in Europe and even earlier in America. At the same time, democratic government began to replace authoritarian governments (but chiefly in those areas where the cheap new weapons were available and local standards of living were high enough to allow people to obtain them).

The arrival of the mass army of citizen-soldiers in the nineteenth century created a difficult problem of control, because techniques of transportation and of communications had not reached a high-enough level to allow any flexibility of control in a mass army. Such an army could be moved on its own feet or by railroad; the government could communicate with its various units only by letter post or by telegram. The problem of handling a mass army by such techniques was solved partially in the American Civil War of 1861-1865 and completely by Helmuth von Moltke for the Kingdom of Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The solution was a rigid one: a plan of campaign was prepared beforehand against a specific opponent, with an established timetable and detailed instructions for each military unit; communications were prepared and even issued beforehand, to be used according to the timetable. This plan was so inflexible that the signal to mobilize was practically a signal to attack a specified neighboring state because the plan, once initiated, could not be changed and could hardly even be slowed up. With this rigid method Prussia created the German Empire by smashing Austria in 1866 and France in 1871. By 1900 all the states of Europe had adopted the same method and had fixed plans in which the signal for mobilization constituted an attack on some neighbor—a neighbor, in some cases (as in the German invasion of Belgium), with whom the attacker had no real quarrel. Thus, when the signal for mobilization was given in 1914 the states of Europe leaped at each other.

The Rise of Authoritarian Government

In the twentieth century the military situation was drastically changed in two ways. On the one hand, communications and transportation were so improved by the invention of the radio and the internal-combustion engine that control and movement of troops and even of individual soldiers became very flexible; mobilization ceased to be equivalent to attack, and attack ceased to be equivalent to total war. On the other hand, beginning with the first use of tanks, gas, high-explosive shells, and tactical bombing from the air in 1915-1918, and continuing with all the innovations in weapons leading up to the first atomic bomb in 1945, specialist weapons became superior to amateur weapons. This had a double result which was still working itself out at mid-century: the drafted army of citizen-soldiers began to be replaced by a smaller army of professional specialist soldiers, and authoritarian government began to replace democratic government.

The Political Level in Western Civilization

On the political level equally profound changes took place in the twentieth century. These changes were associated with the basis on which an appeal for allegiance could be placed, and especially with the need to find a basis of allegiance which could win loyalty over larger and larger areas from more numerous groups of people. In the early Middle Ages when there had been no state and no public authority, political organization had been the feudal system which was held together by obligations of personal fealty among a small number of people. With the reappearance of the state and of public authority, new patterns of political behavior were organized in what is called the "feudal monarchy." This allowed the state to reappear for the first time since the collapse of Charlemagne's Empire in the ninth century, but with restricted allegiance to a relatively small number of persons over a relatively small area. The development of weapons and the steady improvement in transportation and in communications made it possible to compel obedience over wider and wider areas, and made it necessary to base allegiance on something wider than personal fealty to a feudal monarch. Accordingly, the feudal monarchy was replaced by the dynastic monarchy. In this system subjects owed allegiance to a royal family (dynasty), although the real basis of the dynasty rested on the loyalty of a professional army of pike-men and musketeers.

The Rise of the Nation State

The shift from the professional army of mercenaries to the mass army of citizen-soldiers, along with other factors acting on other levels of culture, made it necessary to broaden the basis of allegiance once again after 1800. The new basis was nationalism, and gave rise to the national state as the typical political unit of the nineteenth century. This shift was not possible for the larger dynastic states which ruled over many different language and national groups. By the year 1900 three old dynastic monarchies were being threatened with disintegration by the rising tide of nationalistic agitation. These three, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire of the Romanovs, did disintegrate as a consequence of the defeats of the First World War. But the smaller territorial units which replaced them, states like Poland, Czechoslovakia, or Lithuania, organized largely on the basis of language groups, may have reflected adequately enough the nationalistic sentiments of the nineteenth century, but they reflected very inadequately the developments in weapons, in communications, in transportation, and in economics of the twentieth century. By the middle of this latter century these developments were reaching a point where states which could produce the latest instruments of coercion were in a position to compel obedience over areas much larger than those occupied by peoples speaking the same language or otherwise regarding themselves as sharing a common nationality. Even as early as 1940 it began to appear that some new basis more continental in scope than existing nationality groups must be found for the new super-states which were beginning to be born. It became clear that the basis of allegiance for these new super-states of continental scope must be ideological rather than national. Thus the nineteenth century's national state began to be replaced by the twentieth century's ideological bloc. At the same time, the shift from amateur to specialist weapons made it likely that the new form of organization would be authoritarian rather than democratic as the earlier national state had been. However, the prestige of Britain's power and influence in the nineteenth century was so great in the first third of the twentieth century that the British parliamentary system continued to be copied everywhere that people were called upon to set up a new form of government. This happened in Russia in 1917, in Turkey in 1908, in Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1918-1919 and in most of the states of Asia (such as China in 1911).

The Economic Level of Western Civilization

When we turn to the economic level, we turn to a series of complex developments. It would be pleasant if we could just ignore these, but obviously we cannot, because economic issues have been of paramount importance in the twentieth century, and no one can understand the period without at least a rudimentary grasp of the economic issues. In order to simplify these somewhat, we may divide them into four aspects: (a) energy; (b) materials; (c) organization; and (d) control.

It is quite clear that no economic goods can be made without the use of energy and of materials. The history of the former falls into two chief parts each of which is divided into two sub-parts. The main division, about 1830, separates an earlier period when production used the energy delivered through living bodies and a later period when production used energy from fossil fuels delivered through engines. The first half is subdivided into an earlier period of manpower (and slavery) and a later period using the energy of draft animals. This subdivision occurred roughly about A. D. 1000. The second half (since 1830) is subdivided into a period which used coal in steam engines, and a period which used petroleum in internal-combustion engines. This subdivision occurred about 1900 or a little later.

The development of the use of materials is familiar to everyone. We can speak of an age of iron (before 1830), an age of steel (1830-1910), and an age of alloys, light metals, and synthetics (since 1910). Naturally, all these dates are arbitrary and approximate, since the different periods commenced at different dates in different areas, diffusing outward from their origin in the core area of Western Civilization in northwestern Europe.

Six Periods of Development

When we turn to the developments which took place in economic organization, we approach a subject of great significance. Here again we can see a sequence of several periods. There were six of these periods, each with its own typical form of economic organization. At the beginning, in the early Middle Ages, Western Civilization had an economic system which was almost entirely agricultural, organized in self-sufficient manors, with almost no commerce or industry. To this manorial-agrarian system there was added, after about 1050, a new economic system based on trade in luxury goods of remote origin for the sake of profits. This we might call commercial capitalism. It had two periods of expansion, one in the period 1050-1270, and the other in the period 1440-1690. The typical organization of these two periods was the trading company (in the second we might say the chartered trading company, like the Massachusetts Bay Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, or the various East India companies). The next period of economic organization was the stage of industrial capitalism, beginning about 1770, and characterized by owner management through the single-proprietorship or the partnership. The third period we might call financial capitalism. It began about 1850, reached its peak about 1914, and ended about 1932. Its typical forms of economic organization were the limited-liability corporation and the holding company. It was a period of financial or banker management rather than one of owner management as in the earlier period of industrial capitalism. This period of financial capitalism was followed by a period of monopoly capitalism. In this fourth period, typical forms of economic organization were cartels and trade associations. This period began to appear about 1890, took over control of the economic system from the bankers about 1932, and is distinguished as a period of managerial dominance in contrast with the owner management and the financial management of the two periods immediately preceding it. Many of its characteristics continue, even today, but the dramatic events of World War II and the post-war period put it in such a different social and historical context as to create a new, sixth, period of economic organization which might be called "the pluralist economy." The features of this sixth period will be described later.

Stages of Economic Development

The approximate relationship of these various stages may be seen in the following table:

Typical

Name Dates Organization Management

Manorial 6701 Manor Custom

Commercial capitalism a. 1050-1270 Company Municipal mercantilism

b. 440-1690 Chartered State mercantilism

company

Industrial capitalism 1770-1870 Private firm Owners

or partnership

Financial capitalism 1850-1932 Corporation and Bankers

holding company

Monopoly capitalism 1890-1950 Cartels and trade Managers

association

Pluralist economy 1934-present Lobbying groups Technocrats

Finance and Monopoly Capitalism

Two things should be noted. In the first place, these various stages or periods are additive in a sense. and there are many survivals of earlier stages into later ones. As late as 1925 there was a manor still functioning in England, and Cecil Rhodes's chartered company which opened up Rhodesia (the British South Africa Company) was chartered as late as 1889. In the same way owner-managed private firms engaging in industrial activities, or corporations and holding companies engaging in financial activities, could be created today. In the second place all the later periods are called capitalism. This term means "an economic system motivated by the pursuit of profits within a price system." The commercial capitalist sought profits from the exchange of goods; the industrial capitalist sought profits from the manufacture of goods; the financial capitalist sought profits from the manipulation of claims on money; and the monopoly capitalist sought profits from manipulation of the market to make the market price and the amount sold such that his profits would be maximized.

Four Major Stages of Economic Expansion

It is interesting to note that, as a consequence of these various stages of economic organization, Western Civilization has passed through four major stages of economic expansion marked by the approximate dates 970-1270, 1440-1690, 1770-1928, and since 1950. Three of these stages of expansion were followed by the outbreak of imperialist wars, as the stage of expansion reached its conclusion. These were the Hundred Years' War and the Italian Wars (1338-1445, 1494-1559), the Second Hundred Years' War (1667-1815), and the world wars (1914-1945). The economic background of the third of these will be examined later in this chapter, but now we must continue our general survey of the conditions of Western Civilization in regard to other aspects of culture. One of these is the fourth and last portion of the economic level, that concerned with economic control.

Four Stages of Economic Control

Economic control has passed through four stages in Western Civilization. Of these the first and third were periods of "automatic control" in the sense that there was no conscious effort at a centralized system of economic control, while the second and fourth stages were periods of conscious efforts at control. These stages, with approximate dates, were as follows:

1. Automatic control: manorial custom, 650-1150

2. Conscious control a. municipal mercantilism, 1150-1450 b. state mercantilism, 1450-1815

3. Automatic control: laissez-faire in the competitive market, 1815-1934

4. Conscious control: planning (both public and private), 1934

It should be evident that these five stages of economic control are closely associated with the stages previously mentioned in regard to kinds of weapons on the military level or the forms of government on the political level. The same five stages of economic control have a complex relationship to the six stages of economic organization already mentioned, the important stage of industrial capitalism overlapping the transition from state mercantilism to laissez-faire.

The Social Level of a Culture

When we turn to the social level of a culture, we can note a number of different phenomena, such as changes in growth of population, changes in aggregates of this population (such as rise or decline of cities), and changes in social classes. Most of these things are far too complicated for us to attempt to treat them in any thorough fashion here. We have already discussed the various stages in population growth, and shown that Europe was, about 1900, generally passing from a stage of population growth with many persons in the prime of life (Type B), to a stage of population stabilization with a larger percentage of middle-aged persons (Type C). This shift from Type B to Type C population in Europe can be placed most roughly at the time that the nineteenth century gave rise to the twentieth century. At about the same time or shortly after, and closely associated with the rise of monopoly capitalism (with its emphasis on automobiles, telephones, radio, and such), was a shift in the aggregation of population. This shift was from the period we might call "the rise of the city" (in which, year by year, a larger portion of the population lived in cities) to what we might call "the rise of the suburbs" or even "the period of megapolis" (in which the growth of residential concentration moved outward from the city itself into the surrounding area).

Changes in Social Classes

The third aspect of the social level to which we might turn our attention is concerned with changes in social classes. Each of the stages in the development of economic organization was accompanied by the rise to prominence of a new social class. The medieval system had provided the feudal nobility based on the manorial agrarian system. The growth of commercial capitalism (in two stages) gave a new class of commercial bourgeoisie. The growth of industrial capitalism gave rise to two new classes, the industrial bourgeoisie and the industrial workers (or proletariat, as they were sometimes called in Europe). The development of financial and monopoly capitalism provided a new group of managerial technicians. The distinction between industrial bourgeoisie and managers essentially rests on the fact that the former control industry and possess power because they are owners, while managers control industry (and also government or labor unions or public opinion) because they are skilled or trained in certain techniques. As we shall see later, the shift from one to the other was associated with a separation of control from ownership in economic life. The shift was also associated with what we might call a change from a two-class society to a middle-class society. Under industrial capitalism and the early part of financial capitalism, society began to develop into a polarized two-class society in which an entrenched bourgeoisie stood opposed to a mass proletariat. It was on the basis of this development that Karl Marx, about 1850, formed his ideas of an inevitable class struggle in which the group of owners would become fewer and fewer and richer and richer while the mass of workers became poorer and poorer but more and more numerous, until finally the mass would rise up and take ownership and control from the privileged minority. By 1900 social developments took a direction so different from that expected by Marx that his analysis became almost worthless, and his system had to be imposed by force in a most backward industrial country (Russia) instead of occurring inevitably in the most advanced industrial country as he had expected.

The Shift of Control

The social developments which made Marx's theories obsolete were the result of technological and economic developments which Marx had not foreseen. The energy for production was derived more and more from inanimate sources of power and less and less from human labor. As a result, mass production required less labor. But mass production required mass consumption so that the products of the new technology had to be distributed to the working groups as well as to others so that rising standards of living for the masses made the proletariat fewer and fewer and richer and richer. At the same time, the need for managerial and white-collar workers of the middle levels of the economic system raised the proletariat into the middle class in large numbers. The spread of the corporate form of industrial enterprise allowed control to be separated from ownership and allowed the latter to be dispersed over a much wider group, so that, in effect, owners became more and more numerous and poorer and poorer. And, finally, control shifted from owners to managers. The result was that the polarized two-class society envisaged by Marx was, after 1900, increasingly replaced by a mass middle-class society, with fewer poor and, if not fewer rich, at least a more numerous group of rich who were relatively less rich than in an earlier period. This process of leveling up the poor and leveling down the rich originated in economic forces but was speeded up and extended by governmental policies in regard to taxation and social welfare, especially after 1945.

The Religious and Intellectual Stages of Culture

When we turn to the higher levels of culture, such as the religious and intellectual aspects, we can discern a sequence of stages similar to those which have been found in the more material levels. We shall make no extended examination of these at this time except to say that the religious level has seen a shift from a basically secularist, materialist, and antireligious outlook in the late nineteenth century to a much more spiritualist and religious point of view in the course of the twentieth century. At the same time a very complex development on the intellectual level has shown a profound shift in outlook from an optimistic and scientific point of view in the period 1860-1890 to a much more pessimistic and irrationalist point of view in the period following 1890. This shift in point of view, which began in a rather restricted group forming an intellectual vanguard about 1890, a group which included such figures as Freud, Sorel, Bergson, and Proust, spread downward to larger and larger sections of Western society in the course of the new century as a result of the devastating experience of two world wars and the great depression. The results of this process can be seen in the striking contrast between the typical outlook of Europe in the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century as outlined in the preceding chapter.

Chapter 5—European Economic Developments

Commercial Capitalism

Western Civilization is the richest and most powerful social organization ever made by man. One reason for this success has been its economic organization. This, as we have said, has passed through six successive stages, of which at least four are called "capitalism." Three features are notable about this development as a whole.

In the first place, each stage crated the conditions which tended to bring about the next stage; therefore we could say, in a sense, that each stage committed suicide. The original economic organization of self-sufficient agrarian units (manors) was in a society organized so that its upper ranks—the lords, lay and ecclesiastical—found their desires for necessities so well met that they sought to exchange their surpluses of necessities for luxuries of remote origin. This gave rise to a trade in foreign luxuries (spices, fine textiles, fine metals) which was the first evidence of the stage of commercial capitalism. In this second stage, mercantile profits and widening markets created a demand for textiles and other goods which could be met only by application of power to production. This gave the third stage: industrial capitalism. The stage of industrial capitalism soon gave rise to such an insatiable demand for heavy fixed capital, like railroad lines, steel mills, shipyards, and so on, that these investments could not be financed from the profits and private fortunes of individual proprietors. New instruments for financing industry came into existence in the form of limited-liability corporations and investment banks. These were soon in a position to control the chief parts of the industrial system, since they provided capital to it. This gave rise to financial capitalism. The control of financial capitalism was used to integrate the industrial system into ever-larger units with interlinking financial controls. This made possible a reduction of competition with a resulting increase in profits. As a result, the industrial system soon found that it was again able to finance its own expansion from its own profits, and, with this achievement, financial controls were weakened, and the stage of monopoly capitalism arrived. In this fifth stage, great industrial units, working together either directly or through cartels and trade associations, were in a position to exploit the majority of the people. The result was a great economic crisis which soon developed into a struggle for control of the state—the minority hoping to use political power to defend their privileged position, the majority hoping to use the state to curtail the power and privileges of the minority. Both hoped to use the power of the state to find some solution to the economic aspects of the crisis. This dualist struggle dwindled with the rise of economic and social pluralism after 1945.

A Depression Accompanies Transition to Various Stages

The second notable feature of this whole development is that the transition of each stage to the next was associated with a period of depression or low economic activity. This was because each stage, after an earlier progressive phase, became later, in its final phase, an organization of vested interests more concerned with protecting its established modes of action than in continuing progressive changes by the application of resources to new, improved methods. This is inevitable in any social organization, but is peculiarly so in regard to capitalism.

The Primary Goal of Capitalism

The third notable feature of the whole development is closely related to this special nature of capitalism. Capitalism provides very powerful motivations for economic activity because it associates economic motivations so closely with self-interest. But this same feature, which is a source of strength in providing economic motivation through the pursuit of profits, is also a source of weakness owing to the fact that so self-centered a motivation contributes very readily to a loss of economic coordination. Each individual, just because he is so powerfully motivated by self-interest, easily loses sight of the role which his own activities play in the economic system as a whole, and tends to act as if his activities were the whole, with inevitable injury to that whole. We could indicate this by pointing out that capitalism, because it seeks profits as its primary goal, is never primarily seeking to achieve prosperity, high production, high consumption, political power, patriotic improvement, or moral uplift. Any of these may be achieved under capitalism, and any (or all) of them may he sacrificed and lost under capitalism, depending on this relationship to the primary goal of capitalist activity—the pursuit of profits. During the nine-hundred-year history of capitalism, it has, at various times, contributed both to the achievement and to the destruction of these other social goals.

Commercial Capitalism

The different stages of capitalism have sought to win profits by different kinds of economic activities. The original stage, which we call commercial capitalism, sought profits by moving goods from one place to another. In this effort, goods went from places where they were less valuable to places where they were more valuable, while money, doing the same thing, moved in the opposite direction. This valuation, which determined the movement both of goods and of money and which made them move in opposite directions, was measured by the relationship between these two things. Thus the value of goods was expressed in money. and the value of money was expressed in goods. Goods moved from low-price areas to high-price areas, and money moved from high-price areas to low-price areas, because goods were more valuable where prices were high and money was more valuable where prices were low.

Money and Goods Are Different

Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary, exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from failure to recognize this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion. The value of goods, expressed in money, is called "prices," while the value of money, expressed in goods, is called "value."

The Rise of Commercial Capitalism

Commercial capitalism arose when merchants, carrying goods from one area to another, were able to sell these goods at their destination for a price which covered original cost, all costs of moving the goods, including the merchant's expenses, and a profit. This development, which began as the movement of luxury goods, increased wealth because it led to specialization of activities both in crafts and in agriculture, which increased skills and output, and also brought into the market new commodities.

The Development of Mercantilism

Eventually, this stage of commercial capitalism became institutionalized into a restrictive system, sometimes called "mercantilism," in which merchants sought to gain profits, not from the movements of goods but from restricting the movements of goods. Thus the pursuit of profits, which had earlier led to increased prosperity by increasing trade and production, became a restriction on both trade and production, because profit became an end in itself rather than an accessory mechanism in the economic system as a whole.

The way in which commercial capitalism (an expanding economic organization) was transformed into mercantilism (a restrictive economic organization) twice in our past history is very revealing not only of the nature of economic systems, and of men themselves, but also of the nature of economic crisis and what can be done about it.

Merchants Restrict Trade to Increase Profits

Under commercial capitalism, merchants soon discovered that an increasing flow of goods from a low-price area to a high-price area tended to raise prices in the former and to lower prices in the latter. Every time a shipment of spices came into London, the price of spices there began to fall, while the arrival of buyers and ships in Malacca gave prices there an upward spurt. This trend toward equalization of price levels between two areas because of the double, and reciprocal, movement of goods and money jeopardized profits for merchants, however much it may have satisfied producers and consumers at either end. It did this by reducing the price differential between the two areas and thus reducing the margin within which the merchant could make his profit. It did not take shrewd merchants long to realize that they could maintain this price differential, and thus their profits, if they could restrict the flow of goods, so that an equal volume of money flowed for a reduced volume of goods. In this way, shipments were decreased, costs were reduced, but profits were maintained.

Two things are notable in this mercantilist situation. In the first place, the merchant, by his restrictive practices, was, in essence, increasing his own satisfaction by reducing that of the producer at one end and of the consumer at the other end; he was able to do this because he was in the middle between them. ln the second place, so long as the merchant, in his home port, was concerned with goods, he was eager that the prices of goods should be, and remain, high.

Merchants Became Concerned with Lending of Money

In the course of time, however, some merchants began to shift their attention from the goods aspect of commercial interchange to the other, monetary, side of the exchange. They began to accumulate the profits of these transactions, and became increasingly concerned, not with the shipment and exchange of goods, but with the shipment and exchange of moneys. In time they became concerned with the lending of money to merchants to finance their ships and their activities, advancing money for both, at high interest rates, secured by claims on ships or goods as collateral for repayment.

The New Bankers Were Eager for High Interest Rates

In this process the attitudes and interests of these new bankers became totally opposed to those of the merchants (although few of either recognized the situation). Where the merchant had been eager for high prices and was increasingly eager for low interest rates, the banker was eager for a high value of money (that is, low prices) and high interest rates. Each was concerned to maintain or to increase the value of the half of the transaction (goods for money) with which he was directly concerned, with relative neglect of the transaction itself (which was of course the concern of the producers and the consumers).

The Operations of Banking and Finance Were Concealed So

They Appeared Difficult to Master

In sum, specialization of economic activities, by breaking up the economic process, had made it possible for people to concentrate on one portion of the process and, by maximizing that portion, to jeopardize the rest. The process was not only broken up into producers, exchangers, and consumers but there were also two kinds of exchangers (one concerned with goods, the other with money), with almost antithetical, short-term, aims. The problems which inevitably arose could be solved and the system reformed only by reference to the system as a whole. Unfortunately, however, three parts of the system, concerned with the production, transfer, and consumption of goods, were concrete and clearly visible so that almost anyone could grasp them simply by examining them, while the operations of banking and finance were concealed, scattered, and abstract so that they appeared to many to be difficult. To add to this, bankers themselves did everything they could to make their activities more secret and more esoteric. Their activities were reflected in mysterious marks in ledgers which were never opened to the curious outsider.

The Relationship Between Goods and Money

Is Clear to Bankers

In the course of time the central fact of the developing economic system, the relationship between goods and money, became clear, at least to bankers. This relationship, the price system, depended upon five things: the supply and the demand for goods, the supply and the demand for money, and the speed of exchange between money and goods. An increase in three of these (demand for goods, supply of money, speed of circulation) would move the prices of goods up and the value of money down. This inflation was objectionable to bankers, although desirable to producers and merchants. On the other hand, a decrease in the same three items would be deflationary and would please bankers, worry producers and merchants, and delight consumers (who obtained more goods for less money). The other factors worked in the opposite direction, so that an increase in them (supply of goods, demand for money, and slowness of circulation or exchange) would be deflationary.

Inflationary and Deflationary Prices Have Been a Major

Force in History for 600 Years

Such changes of prices, either inflationary or deflationary, have been major forces in history for the last six centuries at least. Over that long period, their power to modify men's lives and human history has been increasing. This has been reflected in two ways. On the one hand, rises in prices have generally encouraged increased economic activity, especially the production of goods, while, on the other hand, price changes have served to redistribute wealth within the economic system. Inflation, especially a slow steady rise in prices, encourages producers, because it means that they can commit themselves to costs of production on one price level and then, later, offer the finished product for sale at a somewhat higher price level. This situation encourages production because it gives confidence of an almost certain profit margin. On the other hand, production is discouraged in a period of falling prices, unless the producer is in the very unusual situation where his costs are falling more rapidly than the prices of his product.

Bankers Obsessed With Maintaining Value of Money

The redistribution of wealth by changing prices is equally important but attracts much less attention. Rising prices benefit debtors and injure creditors, while falling prices do the opposite. A debtor called upon to pay a debt at a time when prices are higher than when he contracted the debt must yield up less goods and services than he obtained at the earlier date, on a lower price level when he borrowed the money. A creditor, such as a bank, which has lent money—equivalent to a certain quantity of goods and services—on one price level, gets back the same amount of money—but a smaller quantity of goods and services—when repayment comes at a higher price level, because the money repaid is then less valuable. This is why bankers, as creditors in money terms, have been obsessed with maintaining the value of money, although the reason they have traditionally given for this obsession—that "sound money" maintains "business confidence"—has been propagandist rather than accurate.

The Two Major Goals of Bankers

Hundreds of years ago, bankers began to specialize, with the richer and more influential ones associated increasingly with foreign trade and foreign-exchange transactions. Since these were richer and more cosmopolitan and increasingly concerned with questions of political significance, such as stability and debasement of currencies, war and peace, dynastic marriages, and worldwide trading monopolies, they became the financiers and financial advisers of governments. Moreover, since their relationships with governments were always in monetary terms and not real terms, and since they were always obsessed with the stability of monetary exchanges between one country's money and another, they used their power and influence to do two things: (1) to get all money and debts expressed in terms of a strictly limited commodity—ultimately gold; and (2) to get all monetary matters out of the control of governments and political authority, on the ground that they would be handled better by private banking interests in terms of such a stable value as gold.

These efforts ... [were accelerated] with the shift of commercial capitalism into mercantilism and the destruction of the whole pattern of social organization based on dynastic monarchy, professional mercenary armies, and mercantilism, in the series of wars which shook Europe from the middle of the seventeenth century to 1815. Commercial capitalism passed through two periods of expansion each of which deteriorated into a later phase of war, class struggles, and retrogression. The first stage, associated with the Mediterranean Sea, was dominated by the North Italians and Catalonians but ended in a phase of crisis after 1300, which was not finally ended until 1558. The second stage of commercial capitalism, which was associated with the Atlantic Ocean, was dominated by the West Iberians, the Netherlanders, and the English. It had begun to expand by 1440, was in full swing by 1600, but by the end of the seventeenth century had become entangled in the restrictive struggles of state mercantilism and the series of wars which ravaged Europe from 1667 to 1815.

Supremacy of Charter Companies

The commercial capitalism of the 1440-1815 period was marked by the supremacy of the Chartered Companies, such as the Hudson's Bay, the Dutch and British East Indian companies, the Virginia Company, and the Association of Merchant Adventurers (Muscovy Company). England's greatest rivals in all these activities were defeated by England's greater power, and, above all, its greater security derived from its insular position.

Industrial Capitalism 1770-1850

Britain's victories over Louis XIV in the period 1667-1715 and over the French Revolutionary governments and Napoleon in 1792-1815 had many causes, such as its insular position, its ability to retain control of the sea, its ability to present itself to the world as the defender of the freedoms and rights of small nations and of diverse social and religious groups. Among these numerous causes, there were a financial one and an economic one. Financially, England had discovered the secret of credit. Economically, England had embarked on the Industrial Revolution.

The Founding of the Bank of England Is One of the

Great Dates in World History

Credit had been known to the Italians and Netherlanders long before it became one of the instruments of English world supremacy. Nevertheless, the founding of the Bank of England by William Paterson and his friends in 1694 is one of the great dates in world history. For generations men had sought to avoid the one drawback of gold, its heaviness, by using pieces of paper to represent specific pieces of gold. Today we call such pieces of paper gold certificates. Such a certificate entitles its bearer to exchange it for its piece of gold on demand, but in view of the convenience of paper, only a small fraction of certificate holders ever did make such demands. It early became clear that gold need be held on hand only to the amount needed to cover the fraction of certificates likely to be presented for payment; accordingly, the rest of the gold could be used for business purposes, or, what amounts to the same thing, a volume of certificates could be issued greater than the volume of gold reserved for payment of demands against them. Such an excess volume of paper claims against reserves we now call bank notes.

Bankers Create Money Out of Nothing

In effect, this creation of paper claims greater than the reserves available means that bankers were creating money out of nothing. The same thing could be done in another way, not by note-issuing banks but by deposit banks. Deposit bankers discovered that orders and checks drawn against deposits by depositors and given to third persons were often not cashed by the latter but were deposited to their own accounts. Thus there were no actual movements of funds, and payments were made simply by bookkeeping transactions on the accounts. Accordingly, it was necessary for the banker to keep on hand in actual money (gold, certificates, and notes) no more than the fraction of deposits likely to be drawn upon and cashed; the rest could be used for loans, and if these loans were made by creating a deposit for the borrower, who in turn would draw checks upon it rather than withdraw it in money, such "created deposits" or loans could also be covered adequately by retaining reserves to only a fraction of their value. Such created deposits also were a creation of money out of nothing, although bankers usually refused to express their actions, either note issuing or deposit lending, in these terms. William Paterson, however, on obtaining the charter of the Bank of England in 1694, to use the moneys he had won in privateering, said, "The Bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing." This was repeated by Sir Edward Holden, founder of the Midland Bank, on December 18, 1907, and is, of course, generally admitted today.

The Creation of Credit

This organizational structure for creating means of payment out of nothing, which we call credit, was not invented by England but was developed by her to become one of her chief weapons in the victory over Napoleon in 1815. The emperor, as the last great mercantilist, could not see money in any but concrete terms, and was convinced that his efforts to fight wars on the basis of "sound money," by avoiding the creation of credit, would ultimately win him a victory by bankrupting England. He was wrong, although the lesson has had to be relearned by modern financiers in the twentieth century.

Britain's Victory Over Napoleon

Britain's victory over Napoleon was also helped by two economic innovations: the Agricultural Revolution, which was well established there in 1720, and the Industrial Revolution, which was equally well established there by 1776, when Watt patented his steam engine. The Industrial Revolution, like the Credit Revolution, has been much misunderstood, both at the time and since. This is unfortunate, as each of these has great significance, both to advanced and to underdeveloped countries, in the twentieth century. The Industrial Revolution was accompanied by a number of incidental features, such as growth of cities through the factory system, the rapid growth of an unskilled labor supply (the proletariat), the reduction of labor to the status of a commodity in the competitive market, and the shifting of ownership of tools and equipment from laborers to a new social class of entrepreneurs. None of these constituted the essential feature of industrialism, which was, in fact, the application of nonliving power to the productive process. This application, symbolized in the steam engine and the water wheel, in the long run served to reduce or eliminate the relative significance of unskilled labor and the use of human or animal energy in the productive process (automation) and to disperse the productive process from cities, but did so, throughout, by intensifying the vital feature of the system, the use of energy from sources other than living bodies.

The Rise of Large Industrial Enterprises in Britain

In this continuing process, Britain's early achievement of industrialism gave it such great profits that these, combined with the profits derived earlier from commercial capitalism and the simultaneous profits derived from the unearned rise in land values from new cities and mines, made its early industrial enterprises largely self-financed or at least locally financed. They were organized in proprietorships and partnerships, had contact with local deposit banks for short-term current loans, but had little to do with international bankers, investment banks, central governments, or corporative forms of business organization.

This early stage of industrial capitalism, which lasted in England from about 1770 to about 1850, was shared to some extent with Belgium and even France, but took quite different forms in the United States, Germany, and Italy, and almost totally different forms in Russia or Asia. The chief reason for these differences was the need for raising funds (capital) to pay for the rearrangement of the factors of production (]and, labor, materials, skill, equipment, and so on) which industrialism required. Northwestern Europe, and above all England, had large savings for such new enterprises. Central Europe and North America had much less, while eastern and southern Europe had very little in private hands.

The Role of the International Investment Banker

The more difficulty an area had in mobilizing capital for industrialization, the more significant was the role of investment bankers and of governments in the industrial process. In fact, the early forms of industrialism based on textiles, iron, coal, and steam spread so slowly from England to Europe that England was itself entering upon the next stage, financial capitalism, by the time Germany and the United States (about 1850) were just beginning to industrialize. This new stage of financial capitalism, which continued to dominate England, France, and the United States as late as 1930, was made necessary by the great mobilizations of capital needed for railroad building after 1830. The capital needed for railroads, with their enormous expenditures on track and equipment, could not be raised from single proprietorships or partnerships or locally, but, instead, required a new form of enterprise—the limited-liability stock corporation—and a new source of funds—the international investment banker who had, until then, concentrated his attention almost entirely on international flotations of government bonds. The demands of railroads for equipment carried this same development, almost at once, into steel manufacturing and coal mining.

Financial Capitalism, 1850 - 1931

This third stage of capitalism is of such overwhelming significance in the history of the twentieth century, and its ramifications and influences have been so subterranean and even occult, that we may be excused if we devote considerate attention to its organization and methods. Essentially what it did was to take the old disorganized and localized methods of handling money and credit and organize them into an integrated system, on an international basis, which worked with incredible and well-oiled facility for many decades. The center of that system was in London, with major offshoots in New York and Paris, and it has left, as its greatest achievement, an integrated banking system and a heavily capitalized—if now largely obsolescent—framework of heavy industry, reflected in railroads, steel mills, coal mines, and electrical utilities.

This system had its center in London for four chief reasons. First was the great volume of savings in England, resting on England's early successes in commercial and industrial capitalism. Second was England's oligarchic social structure (especially as reflected in its concentrated landownership and limited access to educational opportunities) which provided a very inequitable distribution of incomes with large surpluses coming to the control of a small, energetic upper class. Third was the fact that this upper class was aristocratic but not noble, and thus, based on traditions rather than birth, was quite willing to recruit both money and ability from lower levels of society and even from outside the country, welcoming American heiresses and central-European Jews to its ranks, almost as willingly as it welcomed monied, able, and conformist recruits from the lower classes of Englishmen, whose disabilities from educational deprivation, provincialism, and Nonconformist (that is non-Anglican) religious background generally excluded them from the privileged aristocracy. Fourth (and by no means last) in significance was the skill in financial manipulation, especially on the international scene, which the small group of merchant bankers of London had acquired in the period of commercial and industrial capitalism and which lay ready for use when the need for financial capitalist innovation became urgent.

The Dynasties of International Bankers

The merchant bankers of London had already at hand in 1810-1850 the Stock Exchange, the Bank of England, and the London money market when the needs of advancing industrialism called all of these into the industrial world which they had hitherto ignored. In time they brought into their financial network the provincial banking centers, organized as commercial banks and savings banks, as well as insurance companies, to form all of these into a single financial system on an international scale which manipulated the quantity and flow of money so that they were able to influence, if not control, governments on one side and industries on the other. The men who did this, looking backward toward the period of dynastic monarchy in which they had their own roots, aspired to establish dynasties of international bankers and were at least as successful at this as were many of the dynastic political rulers. The greatest of these dynasties, of course, were the descendants of Meyer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812) of Frankfort, whose male descendants, for at least two generations, generally married first cousins or even nieces. Rothschild's five sons, established at branches in Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris, as well as Frankfort, cooperated together in ways which other international banking dynasties copied but rarely excelled.

The Financial Activities of International Bankers

In concentrating, as we must, on the financial or economic activities of international bankers, we must not totally ignore their other attributes. They were, especially in later generations, cosmopolitan rather than nationalistic.... They were usually highly civilized, cultured gentlemen, patrons of education and of the arts, so that today colleges, professorships, opera companies, symphonies, libraries, and museum collections still reflect their munificence. For these purposes they set a pattern of endowed foundations which still surround us today.

The Key International Banking Families

The names of some of these banking families are familiar to all of us and should he more so. They include Raring, Lazard, Erlanger, Warburg, Schroder, Seligman, the Speyers, Mirabaud, Mallet, Fould, and above all Rothschild and Morgan. Even after these banking families became fully involved in domestic industry by the emergence of financial capitalism, they remained different from ordinary bankers in distinctive ways: (1) they were cosmopolitan and international; (2) they were close to governments and were particularly concerned with questions of government debts, including foreign government debts, even in areas which seemed, at first glance, poor risks, like Egypt, Persia, Ottoman Turkey, Imperial China, and Latin America; (3) their interests were almost exclusively in bonds and very rarely in goods, since they admired "liquidity" and regarded commitments in commodities or even real estate as the first step toward bankruptcy; (4) they were, accordingly, fanatical devotees of deflation (which they called "sound" money from its close associations with high interest rates and a high value of money) and of the gold standard, which, in their eyes, symbolized and ensured these values; and (5) they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of financial influence in political life. These bankers came to be called "international bankers" and, more particularly, were known as "merchant bankers" in England, "private bankers" in France, and "investment bankers" in the United States. In all countries they carried on various kinds of banking and exchange activities, but everywhere they were sharply distinguishable from other, more obvious, kinds of banks, such as savings banks or commercial banks.

The International Banking Fraternity Operates

As Secretive Private Firms

One of their less obvious characteristics was that they remained as private unincorporated firms, usually partnerships, until relatively recently, offering no shares, no reports, and usually no advertising to the public. This risky status, which deprived them of limited liability, was retained, in most cases, until modern inheritance taxes made it essential to surround such family wealth with the immortality of corporate status for tax-avoidance purposes. This persistence as private firms continued because it ensured the maximum of anonymity and secrecy to persons of tremendous public power who dreaded public knowledge of their activities as an evil almost as great as inflation. As a consequence, ordinary people had no way of knowing the wealth or areas of operation of such firms, and often were somewhat hazy as to their membership. Thus, people of considerable political knowledge might not associate the names Walter Burns, Clinton Dawkins, Edward Grenfell, Willard Straight, Thomas Lamont, Dwight Morrow, Nelson Perkins, Russell Leffingwell, Elihu Root, John W. Davis, John Foster Dulles, and S. Parker Gilbert with the name "Morgan," yet all these and many others were parts of the system of influence which centered on the J. P. Morgan office at :3 Wall Street. This firm, like others of the international banking fraternity, constantly operated through corporations and governments, yet remained itself an obscure private partnership until international financial capitalism was passing from its deathbed to the grave. J. P. Morgan and Company, originally founded in London as George Peabody and Company in 1838, was not incorporated until March 21, 1940, and went out of existence as a separate entity on April 24, 1959, when it merged with its most important commercial bank subsidiary, the Guaranty Trust Company. The London affiliate, Morgan Grenfell, was incorporated in , and still exists.

International Bankers Felt Politicians Could Not Be Trusted

With Control of the Monetary System

The influence of financial capitalism and of the international bankers who created it was exercised both on business and on governments, but could have done neither if it had not been able to persuade both these to accept two "axioms" of its own ideology. Both of these were based on the assumption that politicians were too weak and too subject to temporary popular pressures to be trusted with control of the money system; accordingly, the sanctity of all values and the soundness of money must be protected in two ways: by basing the value of money on gold and by allowing bankers to control the supply of money. To do this it was necessary to conceal, or even to mislead, both governments and people about the nature of money and its methods of operation.

The Gold Standard

For example, bankers called the process of establishing a monetary system on gold "stabilization," and implied that this covered, as a single consequence, stabilization of exchanges and stabilization of prices. It really achieved only stabilization of exchanges, while its influence on prices were quite independent and incidental, and might be un-stabilizing (from its usual tendency to force prices downward by limiting the supply of money). As a consequence, many persons, including financiers and even economists, were astonished to discover, in the twentieth century, that the gold standard gave stable exchanges and unstable prices. It had, however, already contributed to a similar, but less extreme, situation in much of the nineteenth century.

Exchanges were stabilized on the gold standard because by law, in various countries, the monetary unit was made equal to a fixed quantity of gold, and the two were made exchangeable at that legal ratio. In the period before 1914, currency was stabilized in certain countries as follows:

In Britain: 77s. 10 ½ d. equaled a standard ounce (11/12 pure gold).

In the United States: $20.67 equaled a fine ounce (12/12 pure gold).

In France: 3,447.74 francs equaled a fine kilogram of gold.

In Germany: 2,790 marks equaled a fine kilogram of gold.

These relationships were established by the legal requirement that a person who brought gold, gold coins, or certificates to the public treasury (or other designated places) could convert any one of these into either of the others in unlimited amounts for no cost. As a result, on a full gold standard, gold had a unique position: it was, at the same time, in the sphere of money and in the sphere of wealth. In the sphere of money, the value of all other kinds of money was expressed in terms of gold: and, in the sphere of real wealth, the values of all other kinds of goods were expressed in terms of gold as money. If we regard the relationships between money and goods as a seesaw in which each of these was at opposite ends, so that the value of one rose just as much as the value of the other declined, then we must see gold as the fulcrum of the seesaw on which this relationship balances, but which does not itself go up or down.

It Is Impossible to Understand World History Without an

Understanding of Money

Since it is quite impossible to understand the history of the twentieth century without some understanding of the role played by money in domestic affairs and in foreign affairs, as well as the role played by bankers in economic life and in political life, we must take at least a glance at each of these four subjects.

Central Banks Were Private Institutions Owned by Shareholders

In each country the supply of money took the form of an inverted pyramid or cone balanced on its point. In the point was a supply of gold and its equivalent certificates; on the intermediate levels was a much larger supply of notes; and at the top, with an open and expandable upper surface, was an even greater supply of deposits. Each level used the levels below it as its reserves, and, since these lower levels had smaller quantities of money, they were "sounder." A holder of claims on the middle or upper level could increase his confidence in his claims on wealth by reducing them to a lower level, although, of course, if everyone, or any considerable number of persons, tried to do this at the same time the volume of reserves would be totally inadequate. Notes were issued by "banks of emission" or "banks of issue," and were secured by reserves of gold or certificates held in their own coffers or in some central reserve. The fraction of such a note issue held in reserve depended upon custom, banking regulations (including the terms of a bank's charter), or statute law. There were formerly many banks of issue, but this function is now generally restricted to a few or even to a single "central bank" in each country. Such banks, even central banks, were private institutions, owned by shareholders who profited by their operations. In the 1914-1939 period, in the United States, Federal Reserve Notes were covered by gold certificates to 40 percent of their value, but this was reduced to 25 percent in 1945. The Bank of England, by an Act of 1928, had its notes uncovered up to [250 million, and covered by gold for 100 percent value over that amount. The Bank of France, in the same year, set its note cover at 35 percent. These provisions could always be set aside or changed in an emergency, such as war.

Determining the Volume of Money in the Community

Deposits on the upper level of the pyramid were called by this name, with typical bankers' ambiguity, in spite of the fact that they consisted of two utterly different kinds of relationships: (1) "lodged deposits," which were real claims left by a depositor in a bank, on which the depositor might receive interest, since such deposits were debts owed by the bank to the depositor; and (2) "created deposits," which were claims created by the bank out of nothing as loans from the bank to "depositors" who had to pay interest on them, since these represented debt from them to the bank. In both cases, of course, checks could be drawn against such deposits to make payments to third parties, which is why both were called by the same name. Both form part of the money supply. Lodged deposits as a form of savings are deflationary, while created deposits, being an addition to the money supply, are inflationary. The volume of the latter depends on a number of factors of which the chief are the rate of interest and the demand for such credit. These two play a very significant role in determining the volume of money in the community, since a large portion of that volume, in an advanced economic community, is made up of checks drawn against deposits. The volume of deposits banks can create, like the amount of notes they can issue, depends upon the volume of reserves available to pay whatever fraction of checks are cashed rather than deposited. These matters may be regulated by laws, by bankers' rules, or simply by local customs. In the United States deposits were traditionally limited to ten times reserves of notes and gold. In Britain it was usually nearer twenty times such reserves. In all countries the demand for and volume of such credit was larger in time of a boom and less in time of a depression. This to a considerable extent explains the inflationary aspect of a depression, the combination helping to form the so-called "business cycle."

Central Banks Surrounded by Invisible Private

Investment Banking Firms

In the course of the nineteenth century, with the full establishment of the gold standard and of the modern banking system, there grew up around the fluctuating inverted pyramid of the money supply a plethora of financial establishments which came to assume the configurations of a solar system; that is, of a central bank surrounded by satellite financial institutions. In most countries the central bank was surrounded closely by the almost invisible private investment banking firms. These, like the planet Mercury, could hardly be seen in the dazzle emitted by the central bank which they, in fact, often dominated. Yet a close observer could hardly fail to notice the close private associations between these private, international bankers and the central bank itself. In France, for example, in 1936 when the Bank of France was reformed, its Board of Regents (directors) was still dominated by the names of the families who had originally set it up in 1800; to these had been added a few more recent names, such as Rothschild (added in 1819); in some cases the name might not be readily recognized because it was that of a son-in-law rather than that of a son. Otherwise, in 1914, the names, frequently those of Protestants of Swiss origin (who arrived in the eighteenth century) or of Jews of German origin (who arrived in the nineteenth century), had been much the same for more than a century.

The Bank of England and Its Private Banking Firms

In England a somewhat similar situation existed, so that even in the middle of the twentieth century the Members of the Court of the Bank of England were chiefly associates of the various old "merchant banking" firms such as Baring Brothers, Morgan Grenfell, Lazard Brothers, and others.

Commercial Banks Operate Outside Central Banks and Private Banking Firms

In a secondary position, outside the central core, are the commercial banks, called in England the "joint-stock banks," and on the Continent frequently known as "deposit banks." These include such famous names as Midland Bank, Lloyd's Bank, Barclays Bank in England, the National City Bank in the United States, the Credit Lyonnais in France, and the Darmstädter Bank in Germany.

Savings Banks, Insurance Funds and Trust Companies

Operate on the Outside Ring

Outside this secondary ring is a third, more peripheral, assemblage of institutions that have little financial power but do have the very significant function of mobilizing funds from the public. This includes a wide variety of savings banks, insurance firms, and trust companies.

Naturally, these arrangements vary greatly from place to place, especially as the division of banking functions and powers are not the same in all countries. In France and England the private bankers exercised their powers through the central bank and had much more influence on the government and on foreign policy and much less influence on industry, because in these two countries, unlike Germany, Italy, the United States, or Russia, private savings were sufficient to allow much of industry to finance itself without recourse either to bankers or government. In the United States much industry was financed by investment bankers directly, and the power of these both on industry and on government was very great, while the central bank (the New York Federal Reserve Bank) was established late (1913) and became powerful much later (after financial capitalism was passing from the scene). In Germany industry was financed and controlled by the discount banks, while the central bank was of little power or significance before 1914. In Russia the role of the government was dominant in much of economic life, while in Italy the situation was backward and complicated.

The Supply of Money

We have said that two of the five factors which determined the value of money (and thus the price level of goods) are the supply and the demand for money. The supply of money in a single country was subject to no centralized, responsible control in most countries over recent centuries. Instead, there were a variety of controls of which some could be influenced by bankers, some could be influenced by the government, and some could hardly be influenced by either. Thus, the various parts of the pyramid of money were but loosely related to each other. Moreover, much of this looseness arose from the fact that the controls were compulsive in a deflationary direction and were only permissive in an inflationary direction.

This last point can be seen in the fact that the supply of gold could be decreased but could hardly be increased. If an ounce of gold was added to the point of the pyramid in a system where law and custom allowed To percent reserves on each level, it could permit an increase of deposits equivalent to $2067 on the uppermost level. If such an ounce of gold were withdrawn from a fully expanded pyramid of money, this would compel a reduction of deposits by at least this amount, probably by a refusal to renew loans.

The Money Power Persuaded Governments to Establish a

Deflationary Monetary Unit

Throughout modern history the influence of the gold standard has been deflationary, because the natural output of gold each year, except in extraordinary times, has not kept pace with the increase in output of goods. Only new supplies of gold, or the suspension of the gold standard in wartime, or the development of new kinds of money (like notes and checks) which economize the use of gold, have saved our civilization from steady price deflation over the last couple of centuries. As it was, we had two long periods of such deflation from 1818 to 1850 and from 1872 to about 1897. The three surrounding periods of inflation (1790-1817, 1850-1872, 1897-1921) were caused by (1) the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon when most countries were not on gold; (2) the new gold strikes of California and Alaska in 1849-1850, followed by a series of wars, which included the Crimean War of 1854-1856, the Austrian-French War of 1859, the American Civil War of 1861-1865, the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars of 1866 and 1870, and even the Russo-Turkish War of 1877; and (3) the Klondike and Transvaal gold strikes of the late 1890's, supplemented by the new cyanide method of refining gold (about 1897) and the series of wars from the Spanish-American War of 1898-1899, the Boer War of 1899-1902, and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, to the almost uninterrupted series of wars in the decade 1911-1921. In each case, the three great periods of war ended with an extreme deflationary crisis (1819, 1873, 1921) as the influential Money Power persuaded governments to reestablish a deflationary monetary unit with a high gold content.

Money Power Is More Concerned With Money Than Goods

The obsession of the Money Power with deflation was partly a result of their concern with money rather than with goods, but was also founded on other factors, one of which was paradoxical. The paradox arose from the fact that the basic economic conditions of the nineteenth century were deflationary, with a money system based on gold and an industrial system pouring out increasing supplies of goods, but in spite of falling prices (with its increasing value of money) the interest rate tended to fall rather than to rise. This occurred because the relative limiting of the supply of money in business was not reflected in the world of finance where excess profits of finance made excess funds available for lending. Moreover, the old traditions of merchant banking continued to prevail in financial capitalism even to its end in 1931. It continued to emphasize bonds rather than equity securities (stocks), to favor government issues rather than private offerings, and to look to foreign rather than to domestic investments. Until 1825, government bonds made up almost the whole of securities on the London Stock Exchange. In 1843, such bonds, usually foreign, were 80 percent of the securities registered, and in 1875 they were still 68 percent. The funds available for such loans were so great that there were, in the nineteenth century, sometimes riots by subscribers seeking opportunities to buy security flotations; and offerings from many remote places and obscure activities commanded a ready sale. The excess of savings led to a fall in the price necessary to hire money, so that the interest rate on British government bonds fell from 4.42 percent in 1820 to 3.11 in 1850 to 2.76 in 1900. This tended to drive savings into foreign fields where, on the whole, they continued to seek government issues and fixed interest securities. All this served to strengthen the merchant bankers' obsession both with government influence and with deflation (which would increase value of money and interest rates).

Banker Policies Lead to Inflation and Deflation

Another paradox of banking practice arose from the fact that bankers, who loved deflation, often acted in an inflationary fashion from their eagerness to lend money at interest. Since they make money out of loans, they are eager to increase the amounts of bank credit on loan. But this is inflationary. The conflict between the deflationary ideas and inflationary practices of bankers had profound repercussions on business. The bankers made loans to business so that the volume of money increased faster than the increase in goods. The result was inflation. When this became clearly noticeable, the bankers would flee to notes or specie by curtailing credit and raising discount rates. This was beneficial to bankers in the short run (since it allowed them to foreclose on collateral held for loans), but it could be disastrous to them in the long run (by forcing the value of the collateral below the amount of the loans it secured). But such bankers' deflation was destructive to business and industry in the short run as well as the long run.

Changing the Quality of Money

The resulting fluctuation in the supply of money, chiefly deposits, was a prominent aspect of the "business cycle." The quantity of money could be changed by changing reserve requirements or discount (interest) rates. In the United States, for example, an upper limit has been set on deposits by requiring Federal Reserve member banks to keep a certain percentage of their deposits as reserves with the local Federal Reserve Bank. The percentage (usually from 7 to 26 percent) varies with the locality and the decisions of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Central Banks Vary Money in Circulation

Central banks can usually vary the amount of money in circulation by "open market operations" or by influencing the discount rates of lesser banks. In open market operations, a central bank buys or sells government bonds in the open market. If it buys, it releases money into the economic system; if it sells it reduces the amount of money in the community. The change is greater than the price paid for the securities. For example, if the Federal Reserve Bank buys government securities in the open market, it pays for these by check which is soon deposited in a bank. It thus increases this bank's reserves with the Federal Reserve Bank. Since banks are permitted to issue loans for several times the value of their reserves with the Federal Reserve Bank, such a transaction permits them to issue loans for a much larger sum.

Central Banks Raise and Lower Interest Rates

Central banks can also change the quantity of money by influencing the credit policies of other banks. This can be done by various methods, such as changing the re-discount rate or changing reserve requirements. By changing the re-discount rate we mean the interest rate which central banks charge lesser banks for loans backed by commercial paper or other security which these lesser banks have taken in return for loans. By raising the re-discount rate the central bank forces the lesser bank to raise its discount rate in order to operate at a profit; such a raise in interest rates tends to reduce the demand for credit and thus the amount of deposits (money). Lowering the re-discount rate permits an opposite result.

Central Banks Force Local Banks to Decrease Credit

Changing the reserve requirements as a method by which central banks can influence the credit policies of other banks is possible only in those places (like the United States) where there is a statutory limit on reserves. Increasing reserve requirements curtails the ability of lesser banks to grant credit, while decreasing it expands that ability.

It is to be noted that the control of the central bank over the credit policies of local banks are permissive in one direction and compulsive in the other. They can compel these local banks to curtail credit and can only permit them to increase credit. This means that they have control powers against inflation and not deflation—a reflection of the old banking idea that inflation was bad and deflation was good.

The Powers of Government Over Money

The powers of governments over the quantity of money are of various kinds, and include (a) control over a central bank, (b) control over public taxation, and (c) control over public spending. The control of governments over central banks varies greatly from one country to another, but on the whole has been increasing. Since most central banks have been (technically) private institutions, this control is frequently based on custom rather than on law. In any case, the control over the supply of money which governments have through centra! banks is exercised by the regular banking procedures we have discussed. The powers of the government over the quantity of money in the community exercised through taxation and public spending are largely independent of banking control. Taxation tends to reduce the amount of money in a community and is usually a deflationary force; government spending tends to increase the amount of money in a community and is usually an inflationary force. The total effects of a government's policy will depend on which item is greater. An unbalanced budget will be inflationary; a budget with a surplus will be deflationary.

A government can also change the amount of money in a community by other, more drastic, methods. By changing the gold content of the monetary unit they can change the amount of money in the community by a much greater amount. If, for example, the gold content of the dollar is cut in half, the amount of gold certificates will be able to be doubled, and the amount of notes and deposits reared on this basis will be increased many fold, depending on the customs of the community in respect to reserve requirements. Moreover, if a government goes off the gold standard completely—that is, refuses to exchange certificates and notes for specie—the amount of notes and deposits can be increased indefinitely because these are no longer limited by limited amounts of gold reserves.

The Money Power—Controlled by International Investment Bankers—

Dominates Business and Government

In the various actions which increase or decrease the supply of money, governments, bankers, and industrialists have not always seen eye to eye. On the whole, in the period up to 1931, bankers, especially the Money Power controlled by the international investment bankers, were able to dominate both business and government. They could dominate business, especially in activities and in areas where industry could not finance its own needs for capital, because investment bankers had the ability to supply or refuse to supply such capital. Thus, Rothschild interests came to dominate many of the railroads of Europe, while Morgan dominated at least 26,000 miles of American railroads. Such bankers went further than this. In return for flotations of securities of industry, they took seats on the boards of directors of industrial firms, as they had already done on commercial banks, savings banks, insurance firms, and finance companies. From these lesser institutions they funneled capital to enterprises which yielded control and away from those who resisted. These firms were controlled through interlocking directorships, holding companies, and lesser banks. They engineered amalgamations and generally reduced competition, until by the early twentieth century many activities were so monopolized that they could raise their noncompetitive prices above costs to obtain sufficient profits to become self-financing and were thus able to eliminate the control of bankers. But before that stage was reached a relatively small number of bankers were in positions of immense influence in European and American economic life. As early as 1909, Walter Rathenau, who was in a position to know (since he had inherited from his father control of the German General Electric Company and held scores of directorships himself), said, "Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves."

The Power of Investment Bankers Over Governments

The power of investment bankers over governments rests on a number of factors, of which the most significant, perhaps, is the need of governments to issue short-term treasury bills as well as long-term government bonds. Just as businessmen go to commercial banks for current capital advances to smooth over the discrepancies between their irregular and intermittent incomes and their periodic and persistent outgoes (such as monthly rents, annual mortgage payments, and weekly wages), so a government has to go to merchant bankers (or institutions controlled by them) to tide over the shallow places caused by irregular tax receipts. As experts in government bonds, the international bankers not only handled the necessary advances but provided advice to government officials and, on many occasions, placed their own members in official posts for varied periods to deal with special problems. This is so widely accepted even today that in 1961 a Republican investment banker became Secretary of the Treasury in a Democratic Administration in Washington without significant comment from any direction.

The Money Power Reigns Supreme and Unquestioned

Naturally, the influence of bankers over governments during the age of financial capitalism (roughly 1850-1931) was not something about which anyone talked freely, but it has been admitted frequently enough by those on the inside, especially in England. In 1852 Gladstone, chancellor of the Exchequer, declared, "The hinge of the whole situation was this: the government itself was not to be a substantive power in matters of Finance, but was to leave the Money Power supreme and unquestioned." On September 26, 1921, The Financial Times wrote, "Half a dozen men at the top of the Big Five Banks could upset the whole fabric of government finance by refraining from renewing Treasury Bills." In 1924 Sir Drummond Fraser, vice-president of the Institute of Bankers, stated, "The Governor of the Bank of England must be the autocrat who dictates the terms upon which alone the Government can obtain borrowed money."

Montagu Norman and J. P. Morgan Dominate the Financial World

In addition to their power over government based on government financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in ways they wished them to go by other pressures. Since most government officials felt ignorant of finance, they sought advice from bankers whom they considered to be experts in the field. The history of the last century shows, as we shall see later, that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally. Such advice could be enforced if necessary by manipulation of exchanges, gold flows, discount rates, and even levels of business activity. Thus Morgan dominated Cleveland's second administration by gold withdrawals, and in 1936-1938 French foreign exchange manipulators paralyzed the Popular Front governments. As we shall see, the powers of these international bankers reached their peak in the last decade of their supremacy, 1919-1931, when Montagu Norman and J. P. Morgan dominated not only the financial world but international relations and other matters as well. On November I l, 1927, the Wall Street Journal called Mr. Norman "the currency dictator of Europe." This was admitted by Mr. Norman himself before the Court of the Bank on March Zl, 1930, and before the Macmillan Committee of the House of Commons five days later. On one occasion, just before international financial capitalism ran, at full speed, on the rocks which sank it, Mr. Norman is reported to have said, "I hold the hegemony of the world." At the time, some Englishmen spoke of "the second Norman Conquest of England" in reference to the fact that Norman's brother was head of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It might be added that Governor Norman rarely acted in major world problems without consulting with J. P. Morgan's representatives, and as a consequence he was one of the most widely traveled men of his day.

The Development of Monopoly Capitalism

This conflict of interests between bankers and industrialists has resulted in most European countries in the subordination of the former either to the latter or to the government (after 1931). This subordination was accomplished by the adoption of "unorthodox financial policies"—that is, financial policies not in accordance with the short-run interests of bankers. This shift by which bankers were made subordinate reflected a fundamental development in modern economic history—a development which can be described as the growth from financial capitalism to monopoly capitalism. This took place in Germany earlier than in any other country and was well under way by 1926. It came in Britain only after 1931 and in Italy only in 1934. It did not occur in France to a comparable extent at all, and this explains the economic weakness of France in 1938-1940 to a considerable degree.

International Financial Practices

The financial principals which apply to the relationships between different countries are an expansion of those which apply within a single country. When goods are exchanged between countries, they must be paid for by commodities or gold. They cannot be paid for by the notes, certificates, and checks of the purchaser's country, since these are of value only in the country of issue. To avoid shipment of gold with every purchase, bills of exchange are used. These are claims against a person in another country which are sold to a person in the same country. The latter will buy such a claim if he wants to satisfy a claim against himself held by a person in the other country. He can satisfy such a claim by sending to his creditor in the other country the claim which he has bought against another person in that other country, and let his creditor use that claim to satisfy his own claim. Thus, instead of importers in one country sending money to exporters in another country, importers in one country pay their debts to exporters in their own country, and their creditors in the other country receive payment for the goods they have exported from importers in their own country. Thus, payment for goods in an international trade is made by merging single transactions involving two persons into double transactions involving four persons. In many cases, payment is made by involving a multitude of transactions, frequently in several different countries. These transactions were carried on in the so-called foreign-exchange market. An exporter of goods sold bills of exchange into that market and thus drew out of it money in his own country's units. An importer bought such bills of exchange to send to his creditor, and thus he put his own country's monetary units into the market. Since the bills available in any market were drawn in the monetary units of many different foreign countries, there arose exchange relationships between the amounts of money available in the country's own units (put there by importers) and the variety of bills drawn in foreign moneys and put into the market by exporters. The supply and demand for bills (or money) of any country in terms of the supply and demand of the country's own money available in the foreign-exchange market determined the value of the other countries' moneys in relation to domestic money. These values could fluctuate—widely for countries not on the gold standard, but only narrowly (as we shall see) for those on gold.

The Foreign Exchange Market Acted as Regulator of International Trade

Under normal conditions a foreign-exchange market served to pay for goods and services of foreigners without any international shipment of money (gold). It also acted as a regulator of international trade. If the imports of any country steadily exceeded exports to another country, more importers would be in the market offering domestic money for bills of exchange drawn in the money of their foreign creditor. There thus would be an increased supply of domestic money and an increased demand for that foreign money. As a result, importers would have to offer more of their money for these foreign bills, and the value of domestic money would fall, while the value of the foreign money would rise in the foreign-exchange market. This rise (or fall) on a gold relationship would be measured in terms of "par" (the exact gold content equivalent of the two currencies).

As the value of the domestic currency sagged below par in relationship to that of some foreign currency, domestic exporters to that foreign country will increase their activities, because when they receive payment in the form of a bill of exchange they can sell it for more of their own currency than they usually expect and can thus increase their profits. A surplus of imports, by lowering the foreign-exchange value of the importing country's money, will lead eventually to an increase in exports which, by providing more bills of exchange, will tend to restore the relationship of the moneys back toward par. Such a restoration of parity in foreign exchange will reflect a restoration of balance in international obligations, and this in turn will reflect a restored balance in the exchange of goods and services between the two countries. This means, under normal conditions, that a trade disequilibrium will create trade conditions which will tend to restore trade equilibrium.

Wide Fluctuations in Foreign Exchange Market

When countries are not on the gold standard, this foreign-exchange disequilibrium (that is, the decline in the value of one monetary unit in relation to the other unit) can go on to very wide fluctuations—in fact, to whatever degree is necessary to restore the trade equilibrium by encouraging importers to buy in the other country because its money is so low in value that the prices of goods in that country are irresistible to importers in the other country.

Foreign Exchange Market Does Not Fluctuate on the Gold Standard

But when countries are on the gold standard, the result is quite different. In this case the value of a country's money will never go below the amount equal to the cost of shipping gold between the two countries. An importer who wishes to pay his trade partner in the other country will not offer more and more of his own country's money for foreign-exchange bills, but will bid up the price of such bills only to the point where it becomes cheaper for him to buy gold from a bank and pay the costs of shipping and insurance on the gold as it goes to his foreign creditor. Thus, on the gold standard, foreign-exchange quotations do not fluctuate widely, but move only between the two gold points which are only slightly above (gold export point) and slightly below (gold import point) parity (the legal gold relationship of the two currencies).

Since the cost of packing, shipping and insuring gold used to be about ½ percent of its value, the gold export and import points were about this amount above and below the parity point. In the case of the dollar-pound relationship, when parity was at £ 1 = $4.866, the gold export point was about $4.885 and the gold import point was about $4.845. Thus:

Gold export point $4.885

(excess demand for bills by importers)

Parity $4.866

Gold import point $4.845

(excess supply of bills by exporters)

The situation which we have described is overly simplified. In practice the situation is made more complicated by several factors. Among these are the following: (1) middlemen buy and sell foreign exchange for present or future delivery as a speculative activity; (2) the total supply of foreign exchange available in the market depends on much more than the international exchange of commodities. It depends on the sum total of all international payments, such as interest, payment for services, tourist spending, borrowings, sales of securities, immigrant remittances, and so on; (3) the total exchange balance depends on the total of the relationships of all countries, not merely between two.

Elimination of the Gold Standard

The flow of gold from country to country resulting from unbalanced trade tends to create a situation which counteracts the flow. If a country exports more than it imports so that gold flows in to cover the difference, this gold will become the basis for an increased quantity of money, and this will cause a rise of prices within the country sufficient to reduce exports and increase imports. At the same time, the gold by flowing out of some other country will reduce the quantity of money there and will cause a fall in prices within that country. These shifts in prices will cause shifts in the flow of goods because of the obvious fact that goods tend to flow to higher-priced areas and cease to flow to lower-priced areas. These shifts in the flow of goods will counteract the original unbalance in trade which caused the flow of gold. As a result, the flow of gold will cease, and a balanced international trade at slightly different price levels will result. The whole process illustrates the subordination of internal price stability to stability of exchanges. It was this subordination which was rejected by most countries after 1931. This rejection was signified by (a) abandonment of the gold standard at least in part, (b) efforts at control of domestic prices, and (c) efforts at exchange control. All these were done because of a desire to free the economic system from the restricting influence of a gold-dominated financial system.

Major Countries Forced to Abandon Gold Standard

This wonderful, automatic mechanism of international payments represents one of the greatest social instruments ever devised by man. It requires, however, a very special group of conditions for its effective functioning and, as we shall show, these conditions were disappearing by 1900 and were largely wiped away as a result of the economic changes brought about by the First World War. Because of these changes it became impossible to restore the financial system which had existed before 1914. Efforts to restore it were made with great determination, but by 1933 they had obviously failed, and all major countries had been forced to abandon the gold standard and automatic exchanges.

When the gold standard is abandoned, gold flows between countries like any other commodity, and the value of foreign exchanges (no longer tied to gold) can fluctuate much more widely. In theory an unbalance of international payments can be rectified either through a shift in exchange rates or through a shift in internal price levels. On the gold standard this rectification is made by shifts in exchange rates only between the gold points. When the unbalance is so great that exchanges would be forced beyond the gold points, the rectification is made by means of changing internal prices caused by the fact that gold flows at the gold points, instead of the exchanges passing beyond the gold points. On the other hand, when a currency is off the gold standard, fluctuation of exchanges is not confined between any two points but can go indefinitely in either direction. In such a case, the unbalance of international payments is worked out largely by a shift in exchange rates and only remotely by shifts in internal prices. In the period of 1929-1936, the countries of the world went off gold because they preferred to bring their international balances toward equilibrium by means of fluctuating exchanges rather than by means of fluctuating price levels. They feared these last because changing (especially falling) prices led to declines in business activity and shifts in the utilization of economic resources (such as labor, land, and capital) from one activity to another.

Reestablishing the Balance of International Payments

The reestablishment of the balance of international payments when a currency is off gold can be seen from an example. If the value of the pound sterling falls to $4.00 or $3.00, Americans will buy in England increasingly because English prices are cheap for them, but Englishmen will buy in America only with reluctance because they have to pay so much for American money. This will serve to rectify the original excess of exports to England which gave the great supply of pound sterling necessary to drive its value down to $3.00. Such a depreciation in the exchange value of a currency will cause a rise in prices within the country as a result of the increase in demand for the goods of that country.

The Situation before 1914

The key to the world situation in the period before 1914 is to be found in the dominant position of Great Britain. This position was more real than apparent. In many fields (such as naval or financial) the supremacy of Britain was so complete that it almost never had to be declared by her or admitted by others. It was tacitly assumed by both. As an unchallenged ruler in these fields, Britain could afford to be a benevolent ruler. Sure of herself and of her position, she could be satisfied with substance rather than forms. If others accepted her dominance in fact, she was quite willing to leave to them independence and autonomy in law.

The Supremacy of Britain

This supremacy of Britain was not an achievement of the nineteenth century alone. Its origins go back to the sixteenth century—to the period in which the discovery of America made the Atlantic more important than the Mediterranean as a route of commerce and a road to wealth. In the Atlantic, Britain's position was unique, not merely because of her westernmost position, but much more because she was an island. This last fact made it possible for her to watch Europe embroil itself in internal squabbles while she retained freedom to exploit the new worlds across the seas. On this basis, Britain had built up a naval supremacy which made her ruler of the seas by 1900. Along with this was her preeminence in merchant shipping which gave her control of the avenues of world transportation and ownership of 39 percent of the world's oceangoing vessels (three times the number of her nearest rival).

To her supremacy in these spheres, won in the period before 1815, Britain added new spheres of dominance in the period after 1815. These arose from her early achievement of the Industrial Revolution. This was applied to transportation and communications as well as to industrial production. In the first it gave the world the railroad and the steamboat; in the second it gave the telegraph, the cable, and the telephone; in the third it gave the factory system.

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution existed in Britain for almost two generations before it spread elsewhere. It gave a great increase in output of manufactured goods and a great demand for raw materials and food; it also gave a great increase in wealth and savings. As a result of the first two and the improved methods of transportation, Britain developed a world trade of which it was the center and which consisted chiefly of the export of manufactured goods and the import of raw materials and food. At the same time, the savings of Britain tended to flow out to North America, South America, and Asia, seeking to increase the output of raw materials and food in these areas. By 1914 these exports of capital had reached such an amount that they were greater than the foreign investments of all other countries put together. In 1914 British overseas investment was about $20 billion (or about one-quarter of Britain's national wealth, yielding about a tenth of the total national income). The French overseas investment at the same time was about $9 billion (or one-sixth the French national wealth, yielding 6 percent of the national income), while Germany had about $5 billion invested overseas (one-fifteenth the national wealth, yielding 3 percent of the national income). The United States at that time was a large-scale debtor.

The World's Great Commercial Markets Were in Britain

The dominant position of Britain in the world of 1913 was, as I have said, more real than apparent. In all parts of the world people slept more securely' worked more productively, and lived more fully because Britain existed. British naval vessels in the Indian Ocean and the Far East suppressed slave raiders, pirates, and headhunters. Small nations like Portugal, the Netherlands, or Belgium retained their overseas possessions under the protection of the British fleet. Even the United States, without realizing it, remained secure and upheld the Monroe Doctrine behind the shield of the British Navy. Small nations were able to preserve their independence in the gaps between the Great Powers, kept in precarious balance by the Foreign Office's rather diffident balance-of-power tactics. Mos; of the world's great commercial markets, even in commodities like cotton, rubber, and tin, which she did not produce in quantities herself, were in England, the world price being set from the auction bidding of skilled specialist traders there. If a man in Peru wished to send money to a man in Afghanistan, the final payment, as like as not, would be made by a bookkeeping transaction in London. The English parliamentary system and some aspects of the English judicial system, such as the rule of law, were being copied, as best as could be, in all parts of the world.

Britain Was the Center of World Finance and World Trade

The profitability of capital outside Britain—a fact which caused the great export of capital—was matched by a profitability of labor. As a result, the flow of capital from Britain and Europe was matched by a flow of persons. Both of these served to build up non-European areas on a modified European pattern. In export of men, as in export of capital, Britain was easily first (over 20 million persons emigrating from the United Kingdom in the period 1815-1938). As a result of both, Britain became the center of world finance as well as the center of world commerce. The system of international financial relations, which we described earlier, was based on the system of industrial, commercial, and credit relationships which we have just described. The former thus required for its existence a very special group of circumstances—a group which could not be expected to continue forever. In addition, it required a group of secondary characteristics which were also far from permanent. Among these were the following: (1) all the countries concerned must be on the full gold standard; (2) there must be freedom from public or private interference with the domestic economy of any country; that is, prices must be free to rise and fall in accordance with the supply and demand for both goods and money; (3) there must also be free flow of international trade so that both goods and money can go without hindrance to those areas where each is most valuable; (4) the international financial economy must be organized about one center with numerous subordinate centers, so that it would be possible to cancel out international claims against one another in some clearinghouse and thus reduce the flow of gold to a minimum; (5) the flow of goods and funds in international matters should be controlled by economic factors and not be subject to political, psychological, or ideological influences.

These conditions, which made the international financial and commercial system function so beautifully before 1914, had begun to change by 1890. The fundamental economic and commercial conditions changed first, and were noticeably modified by 1910; the group of secondary characteristics of the system were changed by the events of the First World War. As a result, the system of early international financial capitalism is now only a dim memory. Imagine a period without passports or visas, and with almost no immigration or customs restrictions. Certainly the system had many incidental drawbacks, but they were incidental. Socialized if not social, civilized if not cultured, the system allowed individuals to breathe freely and develop their individual talents in a way unknown before and in jeopardy since.

Chapter 6—The United States to 1917

Just as Classical culture spread westward from the Greeks who created it to the Roman peoples who adopted and changed it, so Europe's culture spread westward to the New World, where it was profoundly modified while still remaining basically European. The central fact of American history is that people of European origin and culture came to occupy and use the immensely rich wilderness between the Atlantic and the Pacific. In this process the wilderness was developed and exploited area by area, the Tidewater, the Piedmont, the trans-Appalachian forest, the trans-Mississippi prairies, the Pacific Coast, and finally the Great Plains. By 1900 the period of occupation which had begun in 1607 was finished, but the era of development continued on an intensive rather than extensive basis. This shift from extensive to intensive development, frequently called the "closing of the frontier," required a readjustment of social outlook and behavior from a largely individualistic to a more cooperative basis and from an emphasis on mere physical prowess to emphasis on other less tangible talents of managerial skills, scientific training, and intellectual capacity able to fill the

newly occupied frontiers with a denser population, producing a higher standard of living, and utilizing more extensive leisure.

The ability of the people of the United States to make this readjustment of social outlook and behavior at the "ending of the frontier" about 1900 was hampered by a number of factors from its earlier historical experience. Among these we should mention the growth of sectionalism, past political and constitutional experiences, isolationism, and emphasis on physical prowess and unrealistic idealism.

Three Major Geographic Sections Arise in U.S.

The occupation of the United States had given rise to three chief geographic sections: a commercial and later financial and industrial East, an agrarian and later industrial West, and an agrarian South. Unfortunately, the two agrarian sections were organized quite differently, the South on the basis of slave labor and the West on the basis of free labor. On this question the East allied with the West to defeat the South in the Civil War (1861-1865) and to subject it to a prolonged military occupation as a conquered territory (1865-1877). Since the war and the occupation were controlled by the new Republican Party, the political organization of the country became split on a sectional basis: the South refused to vote Republican until 1928, and the West refused to vote Democratic until 1932. In the East the older families which inclined toward the Republican Party because of the Civil War were largely submerged by waves of new immigrants from Europe, beginning with Irish and Germans after 1846 and continuing with even greater numbers from eastern Europe and Mediterranean Europe after 1890. These new immigrants of the eastern cities voted Democratic because of religious, economic, and cultural opposition to the upper-class Republicans of the same eastern section. The class basis in voting patterns in the East and the sectional basis in voting in the South and West proved to be of major political significance after 1880.

Major Changes in Government Occur in 1830

The Founding Fathers had assumed that the political control of the country would be conducted by men of property and leisure who would generally know each other personally and, facing no need for urgent decisions, would move government to action when they agreed and be able to prevent it from acting, without serious damage, when they could not agree. The American Constitution, with its provisions for division of powers and selection of the chief executive by an electoral college, reflected this point of view. So also did the use of the party caucus of legislative assemblies for nomination to public office and the election of senators by the same assemblies. The arrival of a mass democracy after 1830 changed this situation, establishing the use of party conventions for nominations and the use of entrenched political party machines, supported on the patronage of public office, to mobilize sufficient votes to elect their candidates.

Forces of Finance and Business Grow in Wealth and Power

As a result of this situation, the elected official from 1840 to 1880 found himself under pressure from three directions: from the popular electorate which provided him with the votes necessary for election, from the party machine which provided him with the nomination to run for office as well as the patronage appointments by which he could reward his followers, and from the wealthy economic interests which gave him the money for campaign expenses with, perhaps, a certain surplus for his own pocket. This was a fairly workable system, since the three forces were approximately equal, the advantage, if any, resting with the party machine. This advantage became so great in the period 1865-1880 that the forces of finance, commerce, and industry were forced to contribute ever-increasing largesse to the political machines in order to obtain the services from government which they regarded as their due, services such as higher tariffs, land grants to railroads, better postal services, and mining or timber concessions. The fact that these forces of finance and business were themselves growing in wealth and power made them increasingly restive under the need to make constantly larger contributions to party political machines. Moreover, these economic tycoons increasingly felt it to be unseemly that they should be unable to issue orders but instead have to negotiate as equals in order to obtain services or favors from party bosses.

The U.S. Government Was Controlled by the Forces of

Investment Banking and Industry

By the late 1870's business leaders determined to make an end to this situation by cutting with one blow the taproot of the system of party machines, namely, the patronage system. This system, which they called by the derogatory term "spoils system," was objectionable to big business not so much because it led to dishonesty or inefficiency but because it made the party machines independent of business control by giving them a source of income (campaign contributions from government employees) which was independent of business control. If this source could be cut off or even sensibly reduced, politicians would be much more dependent upon business contributions for campaign expenses. At a time when the growth of a mass press and of the use of chartered trains for political candidates were greatly increasing the expense of campaigning for office, any reduction in campaign contributions from officeholders would inevitably make politicians more subservient to business. It was with this aim in view that civil service reform began in the Federal government with the Pendleton Bill of 1883. As a result, the government was controlled with varying degrees of completeness by the forces of investment banking and heavy industry from 1884 to 1933.

A Group of 400 Individuals Mobilize Enormous Wealth and Power

This period, 1884-1933, was the period of financial capitalism in which investment bankers moving into commercial banking and insurance on one side and into railroading and heavy industry on the other were able to mobilize enormous wealth and wield enormous economic, political, and social power. Popularly known as "Society," or the "400," they lived a life of dazzling splendor. Sailing the ocean in great private yachts or traveling on land by private trains, they moved in a ceremonious round between their spectacular estates and town houses in Palm Beach, Long Island, the Berkshires, Newport, and Bar Harbor; assembling from their fortress-like New York residences to attend the Metropolitan Opera under the critical eye of Mrs. Astor; or gathering for business meetings of the highest strategic level in the awesome presence of J. P. Morgan himself.

Big Banking and Business Control the Federal Government

The structure of financial controls created by the tycoons of "Big Banking" and "Big Business" in the period 1880-1933 was of extraordinary complexity, one business fief being built on another, both being allied with semi-independent associates, the whole rearing upward into two pinnacles of economic and financial power, of which one, centered in New York, was headed by J. P. Morgan and Company, and the other, in Ohio, was headed by the Rockefeller family. When these two cooperated, as they generally did, they could influence the economic life of the country to a large degree and could almost control its political life, at least on the Federal level. The former point can be illustrated by a few facts. In the United States the number of billion-dollar corporations rose from one in 1909 (United States Steel, controlled by Morgan) to fifteen in 1930. The share of all corporation assets held by the 200 largest corporations rose from 32 percent in 1909 to 49 percent in 1930 and reached 57 percent in 1939. By 1930 these 200 largest corporations held 49.2 percent of the assets of all 40,000 corporations in the country ($81 billion out of $165 billion); they held 38 percent of all business wealth, incorporated or unincorporated (or $81 billion out of $212 billion); and they held 22 percent of all the wealth in the country (or $81 billion out of $367 billion). In fact, in 1930, one corporation (American Telephone and Telegraph, controlled by Morgan) had greater assets than the total wealth in twenty-one states of the Union.

The Influence and Power of the Morgan and Rockefeller Groups

The influence of these business leaders was so great that the Morgan and Rockefeller groups acting together, or even Morgan acting alone, could have wrecked the economic system of the country merely by throwing securities on the stock market for sale, and, having precipitated a stock-market panic, could then have bought back the securities they had sold but at a lower price. Naturally, they were not so foolish as to do this, although Morgan came very close to it in precipitating the "panic of 1907," but they did not hesitate to wreck individual corporations, at the expense of the holders of common stocks, by driving them to bankruptcy. In this way, to take only two examples, Morgan wrecked the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad before 1914 by selling to it, at high prices, the largely valueless securities of myriad New England steamship and trolley lines; and William Rockefeller and his friends wrecked the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad before 1925 by selling to it, at excessive prices, plans to electrify to the Pacific, copper, electricity, and a worthless branch railroad (the Gary Line). These are but examples of the discovery by financial capitalists that they made money out of issuing and selling securities rather than out of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and accordingly led them to the point where they discovered that the exploiting of an operating company by excessive issuance of securities or the issuance of bonds rather than equity securities not only was profitable to them but made it possible for them to increase their profits by bankruptcy of the firm, providing fees and commissions of reorganization as well as the opportunity to issue new securities.

Control of Political Parties in America

When the business interests, led by William C. Whitney, pushed through the first installment of civil service reform in 1883, they expected that they would be able to control both political parties equally. Indeed, some of them intended to contribute to both and to allow an alternation of the two parties in public office in order to conceal their own influence, inhibit any exhibition of independence by politicians, and allow the electorate to believe that they were exercising their own free choice. Such an alternation of the parties on the Federal scene occurred in the period 1880-1896, with business influence (or at least Morgan's influence) as great in Democratic as in Republican administrations. But in 1896 came a shocking experience. The business interests discovered that they could control the Republican Party to a large degree but could not be nearly so confident of controlling the Democratic Party. The reason for this difference lay in the existence of the Solid South as a Democratic section with almost no Republican voters. This section sent delegates to the Republican National Convention as did the rest of the country, but, since these delegates did not represent voters, they came to represent those who were prepared to pay their expenses to the Republican National Convention. In this way these delegates came to represent the business interests of the North, whose money they accepted. Mark Hanna has told us in detail how he spent much of the winter of 1895-1896 in Georgia buying over two hundred delegates for McKinley to the Republican National Convention of 1896. As a result of this system, about a quarter of the votes in a Republican Convention were "controlled" votes from the Solid South, not representing the electorate. After the split in the Republican Party in 1912, this portion of the delegates was reduced to about 17 percent.

The Monetary Tactics of the Banking Oligarchy

The inability of the investment bankers and their industrial allies to control the Democratic Convention of 1896 was a result of the agrarian discontent of the period 1868-1896. This discontent in turn was based, very largely, on the monetary tactics of the banking oligarchy. The bankers were wedded to the gold standard for reasons we have already explained. Accordingly, at the end of the Civil War, they persuaded the Grant Administration to curb the postwar inflation and go back on the gold standard (crash of 1873 and resumption of specie payments in 1875). This gave the bankers a control of the supply of money which they did not hesitate to use for their own purposes, as Morgan ruthlessly pressurized Cleveland in 1893-1896. The bankers' affection for low prices was not shared by the farmers, since each time prices of farm products went down the burden of farmers' debts (especially mortgages) became greater. Moreover, farm prices, being much more competitive than industrial prices, and not protected by a tariff, fell much faster than industrial prices, and farmers could not reduce costs or modify their production plans nearly so rapidly as industrialists could. The result was a systematic exploitation of the agrarian sectors of the community by the financial and industrial sectors. This exploitation took the form of high industrial prices, high (and discriminatory) railroad rates, high interest charges, low farm prices, and a very low level of farm services by railroads and the government. Unable to resist by economic weapons, the farmers of the West turned to political relief, but were greatly hampered by their reluctance to vote Democratic (because of their memories of the Civil War). Instead, they tried to work on the state political level through local legislation (so-called Granger Laws) and set up third-party movements (like the Greenback Party in 1878 or the Populist Party in 1892). By 1896, however, agrarian discontent rose so high that it began to overcome the memory of the Democratic role in the Civil War. The capture of the Democratic Party by these forces of discontent under William Jennings Bryan in 1896, who was determined to obtain higher prices by increasing the supply of money on a bimetallic rather than a gold basis, presented the electorate with an election on a social and economic issue for the first time in a generation. Though the forces of high finance and of big business were in a state of near panic, by a mighty effort involving large-scale spending they were successful in electing McKinley.

Money Power Seeks to Control Both Political Parties

The inability of plutocracy to control the Democratic Party as it had demonstrated it could control the Republican Party, made it advisable for them to adopt a one-party outlook on political affairs, although they continued to contribute to some extent to both parties and did not cease their efforts to control both. In fact on two occasions, in 1904 and in 1924, J. P. Morgan was able to sit back with a feeling of satisfaction to watch a presidential election in which the candidates of both parties were in his sphere of influence. In 1924 the Democratic candidate was one of his chief lawyers, while the Republican candidate was the classmate and handpicked choice of his partner, Dwight Morrow. Usually, Morgan had to share this political influence with other sectors of the business oligarchy, especially with the Rockefeller interest (as was done, for example, by dividing the ticket between them in 1900 and in 1920).

The Growth of Monopolies and the Excesses of Wall Street

The agrarian discontent, the growth of monopolies, the oppression of labor, and the excesses of Wall Street financiers made the country very restless in the period 1890-1900. All this could have been alleviated merely by increasing the supply of money sufficiently to raise prices somewhat, but the financiers in this period, just as thirty years later, were determined to defend the gold standard no matter what happened. In looking about for some issue which would distract public discontent from domestic economic issues, what better solution than a crisis in foreign affairs? Cleveland had stumbled upon this alternative, more or less accidentally, in 1895 when he stirred up a controversy with Great Britain over Venezuela. The great opportunity, however, came with the Cuban revolt against Spain in 1895. While the "yellow press," led by William Randolph Hearst, roused public opinion, Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt plotted how they could best get the United States into the fracas. They got the excuse they needed when the American battleship Maine was sunk by a mysterious explosion in Havana harbor in February 1898. In two months the United States declared war on Spain to fight for Cuban independence. The resulting victory revealed the United States as a world naval power, established it is an imperialist power with possession of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, whetted some appetites for imperialist glory, and covered the transition from the long-drawn age of semi-depression to a new period of prosperity. This new period of prosperity was spurred to some extent by the increased demand for industrial products arising from the war, but even more by the new period of rising prices associated with a considerable increase in the world production of gold from. South Africa and Alaska after 1895.

America's entrance upon the stage as a world power continued with the annexation of Hawaii in 1808, the intervention in the Boxer uprising in 1900, the seizure of Panama in 1903, the diplomatic intervention in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the round-the-world cruise of the American Navy in 1908, the military occupation of Nicaragua in 1912, the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, and military intervention in Mexico in 1916.

The Birth of the Progressive Movement

During this same period, there appeared a new movement for economic and political reform known as Progressivism. The Progressive movement resulted from a combination of forces, some new and some old. Its foundation rested on the remains of agrarian and labor discontent which had struggled so vainly before 1897. There was also, as a kind of afterthought on the part of successful business leaders, a weakening of acquisitive selfishness and a revival of the older sense of social obligation and idealism. To some extent this feeling was mixed with a realization that the position and privileges of the very wealthy could be preserved better with superficial concessions and increased opportunity for the discontented to blow off steam than from any policy of blind obstructionism on the part of the rich. As an example of the more idealistic impulse we might mention the creation of the various Carnegie foundations to work for universal peace or to extend scholarly work in science and social studies. As an example of the more practical point of view we might mention the founding of The New Republic, a "liberal weekly paper," by an agent of Morgan financed with Whitney money (1914). Somewhat similar to this last point was the growth of a new "liberal press," which found it profitable to print the writings of "muckrakers," and thus expose to the public eye the seamy side of Big Business and of human nature itself. But the great opportunity for the Progressive forces arose from a split within Big Business between the older forces of financial capitalism led by Morgan and the newer forces of monopoly capitalism organized around the Rockefeller bloc. As a consequence, the Republican Party was split between the followers of Theodore Roosevelt and those of William Howard Taft, so that the combined forces of the liberal East and the agrarian West were able to capture the Presidency under Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

The Establishment of the Income Tax and the Federal Reserve System

Wilson roused a good deal of popular enthusiasm with his talk of "New Freedom" and the rights of the underdog, but his program amounted to little more than an attempt to establish on a Federal basis those reforms which agrarian and labor discontent had been seeking on a state basis for many years. Wilson was by no means a radical (after all, he had been accepting money for his personal income from rich industrialists like Cleveland Dodge and Cyrus Hall McCormick during his professorship at Princeton, and this kind of thing by no means ceased when he entered politics in 1910), and there was a good deal of unconscious hypocrisy in many of his resounding public speeches. Be this as it may, his political and administrative reforms were a good deal more effective than his economic or social reforms. The Clayton Antitrust Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act (1913) were soon tightly wrapped in litigation and futility. On the other hand, the direct election of senators, the establishment of an income tax and of the Federal Reserve System, and the creation of a Federal Farm Loan System (1916) and of rural delivery of mail and parcel post, as well as the first steps toward various laboring enactments, like minimum wages for merchant seamen, restrictions on child labor, and an eight-hour day for railroad workers, justified the support which Progressives had given to Wilson.

The Wilson Administration

The first Administration of Wilson (1913-1917) and the earlier Administration of Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) made a substantial contribution to the process by which the United States redirected its aim from extensive expansion of physical frontiers to an intensive exploitation of its natural and moral resources. The earlier Roosevelt used his genius as a showman to publicize the need to conserve the country's natural resources, while Wilson, in his own professorial fashion, did much to extend equality of opportunity to wider groups of the American people. These people were so absorbed in the controversies engendered by these efforts that they hardly noticed the rising international tensions in Europe or even the outbreak of war in August, 1914, until by 1915 the clamorous controversy of the threat of war quite eclipsed the older domestic controversies. By the end of 1915 America was being summoned, in no gentle fashion, to play a role on the world's stage. This is a story to which we must return in a later chapter.

Part Three—The Russian Empire to 1917

Chapter 7—Creation of the Russian Civilization

In the nineteenth century most historians regarded Russia as part of Europe but it is now becoming increasingly clear that Russia is another civilization quite separate from Western Civilization. Both of these civilizations are descended from Classical Civilization, but the connection with this predecessor was made so differently that two quite different traditions came into existence. Russian traditions were derived from Byzantium directly; Western traditions were derived from the more moderate Classical Civilization indirectly, having passed through the Dark Ages when there was no state or government in the West.

Russian civilization was created from three sources originally: (1) the Slav people, (2) Viking invaders from the north, and (3) the Byzantine tradition from the south. These three were fused together as the result of a common experience arising from Russia's exposed geographical position on the western edge of a great flat-land stretching for thousands of miles to the east. This flat-land is divided horizontally into three zones of which the most southern is open plain, while the most northern is open bush and tundra. The middle zone is forest. The southern zone (or steppes) consists of two parts: the southern is a salty plain which is practically useless, while the northern part, next to the forest, is the famous black-earth region of rich agricultural soil. Unfortunately the eastern portion of this great Eurasian plain has been getting steadily drier for thousands of years, with the consequence that the Ural-Altaic-speaking peoples of central and east-central Asia, peoples like the Huns, Bulgars, Magyars, Mongols, and Turks, have pushed westward repeatedly along the steppe corridor between the Urals and the Caspian Sea, making the black-earth steppes dangerous for sedentary agricultural peoples.

The Slavs first appeared more than two thousand years ago as a peaceful, evasive people, with an economy based on hunting and rudimentary agriculture, in the forests of eastern Poland. These people slowly increased in numbers, moving northeastward through the forests, mixing with the scattered Finnish hunting people who were there already. About A.D. 700 or so, the Northmen, whom we know as Vikings, came down from the Baltic Sea, by way of the rivers of eastern Europe, and eventually reached the Black Sea and attacked Constantinople. These Northmen were trying to make a way of life out of militarism, seizing booty and slaves, imposing tribute on conquered peoples, collecting furs, honey, and wax from the timid Slavs lurking in their forests, and exchanging these for the colorful products of the Byzantine south. In time the Northmen set up fortified trading posts along their river highways, notably at Novgorod in the north, at Smolensk in the center, and at Kiev in the south. They married Slav women and imposed on the rudimentary agricultural-hunting economy of the Slavs a superstructure of a tribute-collecting state with an exploitative, militaristic, commercial economy. This created the pattern of a two-class Russian society which has continued ever since, much intensified by subsequent historical events.

In time the ruling class of Russia became acquainted with Byzantine culture. They were dazzled by it, and sought to import it into their wilderness domains in the north. In this way they imposed on the Slav peoples many of the accessories of the Byzantine Empire, such as Orthodox Christianity, the Byzantine alphabet, the Byzantine calendar, the used of domed ecclesiastical architecture, the name Czar (Caesar) for their ruler, and innumerable other traits. Most important of all, they imported the Byzantine totalitarian autocracy, under which all aspects of life, including political, economic, intellectual, and religious, were regarded as departments of government, under the control of an autocratic ruler. These beliefs were part of the Greek tradition, and were based ultimately on Greek inability to distinguish between state and society. Since society includes all human activities, the Greeks had assumed that the state must include all human activities. In the days of Classical Greece this all-inclusive entity was called the polis, a term which meant both society and state; in the later Roman period this all-inclusive entity was called the imperium. The only difference was that the polis was sometimes (as in Pericles's Athens about 450 B.C.) democratic, while the imperium was always a military autocracy. Both were totalitarian, so that religion and economic life were regarded as spheres of governmental activity. This totalitarian autocratic tradition was carried on to the Byzantine Empire and passed from it to the Russian state in the north and to the later Ottoman Empire in the south. In the north this Byzantine tradition combined with the experience of the Northmen to intensify the two-class structure of Slav society. In the new Slav (or Orthodox) Civilization this fusion, fitting together the Byzantine tradition and the Viking tradition, created Russia. From Byzantium came autocracy and the idea of the state as an absolute power and as a totalitarian power, as well as such important applications of these principles as the idea that the state should control thought and religion, that the Church should be a branch of the government, that law is an enactment of the state, and that the ruler is semi-divine. From the Vikings came the idea that the state is a foreign importation, based on militarism and supported by booty and tribute, that economic innovations are the function of the government, that power rather than law is the basis of social life, and that society, with its people and its property, is the private property of a foreign ruler.

These concepts of the Russian system must be emphasized because they are so foreign to our own traditions. In the West, the Roman Empire (which continued in the East as the Byzantine Empire) disappeared in 476 and, although many efforts were made to revive it, there was clearly a period, about goo, when there was no empire, no state, and no public authority in the West. The state disappeared, yet society continued. So also, religious and economic life continued. This clearly showed that the state and society were not the same thing, that society was the basic entity, and that the state was a crowning, but not essential, cap to the social structure. This experience had revolutionary effects. It was discovered that man can live without a state; this became the basis of Western liberalism. It was discovered that the state, if it exists, must serve men and that it is incorrect to believe that the purpose of men is to serve the state. It was discovered that economic life, religious life, law, and private property can all exist and function effectively without a state. From this emerged laissez-faire, separation of Church and State, rule of law, and the sanctity of private property. In Rome, in Byzantium, and in Russia, law was regarded as an enactment of a supreme power. In the West, when no supreme power existed, it was discovered that law still existed as the body of rules which govern social life. Thus law was found by observation in the West, not enacted by autocracy as in the East. This meant that authority was established by law and under the law in the West, while authority was established by power and above the law in the East. The West felt that the rules of economic life were found and not enacted; that individuals had rights independent of, and even opposed to, public authority; that groups could exist, as the Church existed, by right and not by privilege, and without the need to have any charter of incorporation entitling them to exist as a group or act as a group; that groups or individuals could own property as a right and not as a privilege and that such property could not be taken by force but must be taken by established process of law. It was emphasized in the West that the way a thing was done was more important than what was done, while in the East what was done was far more significant than the way in which it was done.

There was also another basic distinction between Western Civilization and Russian Civilization. This was derived from the history of Christianity. This new faith came into Classical Civilization from Semitic society. In its origin it was a this-worldly religion, believing that the world and the flesh were basically good, or at least filled with good potentialities, because both were made by God; the body was made in the image of God; God became Man in this world with a human body, to save men as individuals, and to establish "Peace on earth." The early Christians intensified the "this-worldly" tradition, insisting that salvation was possible only because God lived and died in a human body in this world, that the individual could be saved only through God's help (grace) and by living correctly in this body on this earth (good works), that there would be, some day, a millennium on this earth and that, at that Last Judgment, there would be a resurrection of the body and life everlasting. In this way the world of space and time, which God had made at the beginning with the statement, "It was good" (Book of Genesis), would, at the end, be restored to its original condition.

This optimistic, "this-worldly" religion was taken into Classical Civilization at a time when the philosophic outlook of that society was quite incompatible with the religious outlook of Christianity. The Classical philosophic outlook, which we might call Neoplatonic, was derived from the teachings of Persian Zoroastrianism, Pythagorean rationalism, and Platonism. It was dualistic, dividing the universe into two opposed worlds, the world of matter and flesh and the world of spirit and ideas. The former world was changeable, unknowable, illusionary, and evil; the latter world was eternal, knowable, real, and good. Truth, to these people, could be found by the use of reason and logic alone, not hy use of the body or the senses, since these were prone to error, and must be spurned. The body, as Plato said, was the "tomb of the soul."

Thus the Classical world into which Christianity came about A.D. 60 believed that the world and the body were unreal, unknowable, corrupt, and hopeless and that no truth or success could be found by the use of the body, the senses, or matter. A small minority, derived from Democritus and the early Ionian scientists through Aristotle, Epicurus, and Lucretius, rejected the Platonic dualism, preferring materialism as an explanation of reality. These materialists were equally incompatible with the new Christian religion. Moreover, even the ordinary citizen of Rome had an outlook whose implications were not compatible with the Christian religion. To give one simple example: while the Christians spoke of a millennium in the future, the average Roman continued to think of a "Golden Age" in the past, just as Homer had.

As a consequence of the fact that Christian religion came into a society with an incompatible philosophic outlook, the Christian religion was ravaged by theological and dogmatic disputes and shot through with "otherworldly" heresies. In general, these heresies felt that God was so perfect and so remote and man was so imperfect and such a worm that the gap between God and man could not be bridged by any act of man, that salvation depended on grace rather than on good works, and that, if God ever did so lower Himself as to occupy a human body, this was not an ordinary body, and that, accordingly, Christ could be either True God or True Man but could not be both. This point of view was opposed by the Christian Fathers of the Church, not always successfully; but in the decisive battle, at the first Church Council, held at Nicaea in 325, the Christian point of view was enacted into the formal dogma of the Church. Although the Church continued to exist for centuries thereafter in a society whose philosophic outlook was ill adapted to the Christian religion, and obtained a compatible philosophy only in the medieval period, the basic outlook of Christianity reinforced the experience of the Dark Ages to create the outlook of Western Civilization. Some of the elements of this outlook which were of great importance were the following: (1) the importance of the individual, since he alone is saved; (2) the potential goodness of the material world and of the body; (3) the need to seek salvation by use of the body and the senses in this world (good works); (4) faith in the reliability of the senses (which contributed much to Western science); (5) faith in the reality of ideas (which contributed much to Western mathematics); (6) mundane optimism and millennianism (which contributed much to faith in the future and the idea of progress); (7) the belief that God (and not the devil) reigns over this world by a system of established rules (which contributed much to the ideas of natural law, natural science, and the rule of law).

These ideas which became part of the tradition of the West did not become part of the tradition of Russia. The influence of Greek philosophic thought remained strong in the East. The Latin West before goo used a language which was not, at that time, fitted for abstract discussion, and almost all the dogmatic debates which arose from the incompatibility of Greek philosophy and Christian religion were carried on in the Greek language and fed on the Greek philosophic tradition. In the West the Latin language reflected a quite different tradition, based on the Roman emphasis on administrative procedures and ethical ideas about human behavior to one's fellow man. As a result, the Greek philosophic tradition remained strong in the East, continued to permeate the Greek-speaking Church, and went with that Church into the Slavic north. The schism between the Latin Church and the Greek Church strengthened their different points of view, the former being more this-worldly, more concerned with human behavior, and continuing to believe in the efficacy of good works, while the latter was more otherworldly, more concerned with God's majesty and power, and emphasized the evilness and weakness of the body and the world and the efficacy of God's grace. As a result, the religious outlook and, accordingly, the world outlook of Slav religion and philosophy developed in quite a different direction from that in the West. The body, this world, pain, personal comfort, and even death were of little importance; man could do little to change his lot, which was determined by forces more powerful than he; resignation to Fate, pessimism, and a belief in the overwhelming power of sin and of the devil dominated the East.

To this point we have seen the Slavs formed into Russian civilization as the result of several factors. Before we go on we should, perhaps, recapitulate. The Slavs were subjected at first to the Viking exploitative system. These Vikings copied Byzantine culture, and did it very consciously, in their religion, in their writing, in their state, in their laws, in art, architecture, philosophy, and literature. These rulers were outsiders who innovated all the political, religious, economic, and intellectual life of the new civilization. There was no state: foreigners brought one in. There was no organized religion: one was imported from Byzantium and imposed on the Slavs. The Slav economic life was on a low level, a forest subsistence economy with hunting and rudimentary agriculture: on this the Vikings imposed an international trading system. There was no religious-philosophic outlook: the new State-Church superstructure imposed on the Slavs an outlook derived from Greek dualistic idealism. And, finally, the East never experienced a Dark Ages to show it that society is distinct from the state and more fundamental than the state.

This summary brings Russian society down to about 1200. In the next six hundred years new experiences merely intensified the Russian development. These experiences arose from the fact that the new Russian society found itself caught between the population pressures of the raiders from the steppes to the east and the pressure of the advancing technology of Western Civilization.

The pressure of the Ural-Altaic speakers from the eastern steppes culminated in the Mongol (Tarter) invasions after 1200. The Mongols conquered Russia and established a tribute-gathering system which continued for generations. Thus there continued to be a foreign exploiting system imposed over the Slav people. In time the Mongols made the princes of Moscow their chief tribute collectors for most of Russia. A little later the Mongols made a court of highest appeal in Moscow, so that both money and judicial cases flowed to Moscow. These continued to flow even after the princes of Moscow (1380) led the successful revolt which ejected the Mongols.

As the population pressure from the East decreased, the technological pressure from the West increased (after 1500). By Western technology we mean such things as gunpowder and firearms, better agriculture, counting and public finance, sanitation, printing, and the spread of education. Russia did not get the full impact of these pressures until late, and then from secondary sources, such as Sweden and Poland, rather than from England or France. However, Russia was hammered out between the pressures from the East and those from the West. The result of this hammering was the Russian autocracy, a military, tribute-gathering machine superimposed on the Slav population. The poverty of this population made it impossible for them to get firearms or any other advantages of Western technology. Only the state had these things, but the state could afford them only by draining wealth from the people. This draining of wealth from below upward provided arms and Western technology for the rulers but kept the ruled too poor to obtain these things, so that all power was concentrated at the top. The continued pressure from the West made it impossible for the rulers to use the wealth that accumulated in their hands to finance economic improvements which might have raised the standards of living of the ruled, since this accumulation had to be used to increase Russian power rather than Russian wealth. As a consequence, pressure downward increased and the autocracy became more autocratic. In order to get a bureaucracy for the army and for government service, the landlords were given personal powers over the peasants, creating a system of serfdom in the East just at the time that medieval serfdom was disappearing in the West. Private property, personal freedom, and direct contact with the state (for taxation or for justice) were lost to the Russian serfs. The landlords were given these powers so that the landlords would be free to fight and willing to fight for Moscow or to serve in Moscow's autocracy.

By 1730 the direct pressure of the West upon Russia began to weaken somewhat because of the decline of Sweden, of Poland, and of Turkey, while Prussia was too occupied with Austria and with France to press very forcibly on Russia. Thus, the Slavs, using an adopted Western technology of a rudimentary character, were able to impose their supremacy on the peoples to the East. The peasants of Russia, seeking to escape from the pressures of serfdom in the area west of the Urals, began to flee eastward, and eventually reached the Pacific. The Russian state made every effort to stop this movement because it felt that the peasants must remain to work the land and pay taxes if the landlords were to be able to maintain the military autocracy which was considered necessary. Eventually the autocracy followed the peasants eastward, and Russian society came to occupy the whole of northern Asia.

As the pressure from the East and the pressure from the West declined, the autocracy, inspired perhaps by powerful religious feelings, began to have a bad conscience toward its own people. At the same time it still sought to westernize itself. It became increasingly clear that this process of westernization could not be restricted to the autocracy itself, but must be extended downward to include the Russian people. The autocracy found, in 1812, that it could not defeat Napoleon's army without calling on the Russian people. Its inability to defeat the Western allies in the Crimean War of 1854-1856, and the growing threat of the Central Powers after the Austro-German alliance of 1879, made it clear that Russia must be westernized, in technology if not in ideology, throughout all classes of the society, in order to survive. This meant, very specifically, that Russia had to obtain the Agricultural Revolution and industrialism; but these in turn required that ability to read and write be extended to the peasants and that the rural population be reduced and the urban population be increased. These needs, again, meant that serfdom had to be abolished and that modern sanitation had to be introduced. Thus one need led to another, so that the whole society had to be reformed. In typically Russian fashion all these things were undertaken by government action, but as one reform led to another it became a question whether the autocracy and the landed upper classes would be willing to allow the reform movement to go so far as to jeopardize their power and privileges. For example, the abolition of serfdom made it necessary for the landed nobility to cease to regard the peasants as private property whose only contact with the state was through themselves. Similarly, industrialism and urbanism would create new social classes of bourgeoisie and workers. These new classes inevitably would make political and social demands very distasteful to the autocracy and the landed nobility. If the reforms led to demands for nationalism, how could a dynastic monarchy such as the Romanov autocracy yield to such demands without risking the loss of Finland, Poland, the Ukraine, or Armenia?

As long as the desire to westernize and the bad conscience of the upper classes worked together, reform advanced. But as soon as the lower classes began to make demands, reaction appeared. On this basis the history of Russia was an alternation of reform and reaction from the eighteenth century to the Revolution of 1917. Peter the Great (1689-1725) and Catherine the Great (1762-1796) were supporters of westernization and reform. Paul I (1796-1801) was a reactionary. Alexander I (1801-1825) and Alexander II (1855-1881) were reformers, while Nicholas I (1825-1855) and Alexander III (1881-1894) were reactionaries. As a consequence of these various activities, by r 864 serfdom had been abolished, and a fairly modern system of law, of justice, and of education had been established; local government had been somewhat modernized; a fairly good financial and fiscal system had been established; and an army based on universal military service (but lacking in equipment) had been created. On the other hand, the autocracy continued, with full power in the hands of weak men, subject to all kinds of personal intrigues of the basest kind; the freed serfs had no adequate lands; the newly literate were subject to a ruthless censorship which tried to control their reading, writing, and thinking; the newly freed and newly urbanized were subject to constant police supervision; the non-Russian peoples of the empire were subjected to waves of Russification and Pan-Slavism; the judicial system and the fiscal system were administered with an arbitrary disregard of all personal rights or equity; and, in general, the autocracy was both tyrannical and weak.

The first period of reform in the nineteenth century, that under Alexander I, resulted from a fusion of two factors: the "conscience-stricken gentry" and the westernizing autocracy. Alexander himself represented both factors. As a result of his reforms and those of his grandmother, Catherine the Great, even earlier, there appeared in Russia, for the first time, a new educated class which was wider than the gentry, being recruited from sons of Orthodox priests or of state officials (including army officers) and, in general, from the fringes of the autocracy and the gentry. When the autocracy became reactionary under Nicholas I, this newly educated group, with some support from the conscience-stricken gentry, formed a revolutionary group generally called the "Intelligentsia." At first this new group was pro-Western, but later it became increasingly anti-Western and "Slavophile" because of its disillusionment with the West. In general, the Westernizers argued that Russia was merely a backward and barbaric fringe of Western Civilization, that it had made no cultural contribution of its own in its past, and that it must pass through the same economic, political, and social developments as the West. The Westernizers wished to speed up these developments.

The Slavophiles insisted that Russia was an entirely different civilization from Western Civilization and was much superior because it had a profound spirituality (as contrasted with Western materialism), it had a deep irrationality in intimate touch with vital forces and simple living virtues (in contrast to Western rationality, artificiality, and hypocrisy), it had its own native form of social organization, the peasant village (commune) providing a fully satisfying social and emotional life (in contrast to Western frustration of atomistic individualism in sordid cities); and that a Socialist society could be built in Russia out of the simple self-governing, cooperative peasant commune without any need to pass along the Western route marked by industrialism, bourgeoisie supremacy, or parliamentary democracy.

As industrialism grew in the West, in the period 1830-1850, the Russian Westernizers like P. Y. Chaadayev (1793-1856) and Alexander Herzen (1812-1870) became increasingly disillusioned with the West, especially with its urban slums, factory system, social disorganization, middle-class money-grubbing and pettiness, its absolutist state, and its advanced weapons. Originally the Westernizers in Russia had been inspired by French thinkers, while the Slavophiles had been inspired by German thinkers like Schelling and Hegel, so that the shift from Westernizers to Slavophiles marked a shift from French to Germanic teachers.

The Slavophiles supported orthodoxy and monarchy, although they were very critical of the existing Orthodox Church and of the existing autocracy. They claimed that the latter was a Germanic importation, and that the former, instead of remaining a native organic growth of Slavic spirituality, had become little more than a tool of autocracy. Instead of supporting these institutions, many Slavophiles went out into the villages to get in touch with pure Slavic spirituality and virtue in the shape of the untutored peasant. These missionaries, called "narodniki," were greeted with unconcealed suspicion and distaste by the peasants, because they were city-bred strangers, were educated, and expressed anti-Church and anti-governmental ideas.

Already disillusioned with the West, the Church, and the government, and now rejected by the peasants, the Intelligentsia could find no social group on which to base a reform program. The result was the growth of nihilism and of anarchism.

Nihilism was a rejection of all conventions in the name of individualism, both of these concepts understood in a Russian sense. Since man is a man and not an animal because of his individual development and growth in a society made up of conventions, the nihilist rejection of conventions served to destroy man rather than to liberate him as they expected. The destruction of conventions would not raise man to be an angel, but would lower him to be an animal. Moreover, the individual that the nihilists sought to liberate by this destruction of conventions was not what Western culture understands by the word "individual." Rather it was "humanity." The nihilists had no respect whatever for the concrete individual or for individual personality. Rather, by destroying all conventions and stripping all persons naked of all conventional distinctions, they hoped to sink everyone, and especially themselves, into the amorphous, indistinguishable mass of humanity. The nihilists were completely atheist materialist, irrational, doctrinaire, despotic, and violent. They rejected all thought of self so long as humanity suffered; they "became atheists because they could not accept a Creator Who made an evil, incomplete world full of suffering"; they rejected all thought, all art, all idealism, all conventions, because these were superficial, unnecessary luxuries and therefore evil; they rejected marriage, because it was conventional bondage on the freedom of love; they rejected private property, because it was a tool of individual oppression; some even rejected clothing as a corruption of natural innocence; they rejected vice and licentiousness as unnecessary upper-class luxuries; as Nikolai Berdyaev put it: "It is Orthodox asceticism turned inside out, and asceticism without Grace. At the base of Russian nihilism, when grasped in its purity and depth, lies the Orthodox rejection of the world . . ., the acknowledgment of the sinfulness of all riches and luxury, of all creative profusion in art and in thought.... Nihilism considers as sinful luxury not only art, metaphysics, and spiritual values, but religion also.... Nihilism is a demand for nakedness, for the stripping of oneself of all the trappings of culture, for the annihilation of all historical traditions, for the setting free of the natural man.... The intellectual asceticism of nihilism found expression in materialism; any more subtle philosophy was proclaimed a sin.... Not to be a materialist was to be taken as a moral suspect. If you were not a materialist, then you were in favour of the enslavement of man both intellectually and politically." [N. Berdyaev, Origin of Russian Communism (London, Geoffrey Bles, 1948), p. 45.]

This fantastic philosophy is of great significance because it prepared the ground for Bolshevism. Out of the same spiritual sickness which produced nihilism emerged anarchism. To the anarchist, as revealed by the founder of the movement, Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), the chief of all enslaving and needless conventionalities was the state. The discovery that the state was not identical with society, a discovery which the West had made a thousand years earlier than Russia, could have been a liberating discovery to Russia if, like the West, the Russians had been willing to accept both state and society, each in its proper place. But this was quite impossible in the Russian tradition of fanatical totalitarianism. To this tradition the totalitarian state had been found evil and must, accordingly, be completely destroyed, and replaced by the totalitarian society in which the individual could be absorbed. Anarchism was the next step after the disillusionment of the narodniki and the agitations of the nihilists. The revolutionary Intelligentsia, unable to find any social group on which to base a reform program, and convinced of the evil of all conventional establishments and of the latent perfection in the Russian masses, adopted a program of pure political direct action of the simplest kind: assassination. Merely by killing the leaders of states (not only in Russia but throughout the world), governments could be eliminated and the masses freed for social cooperation and agrarian Socialism. From this background came the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881, of King Humbert of Italy in 1900, of President McKinley in 1901, as well as many anarchist outrages in Russia, Spain, and Italy in the period 1890-1910. The failure of governments to disappear in the face of this terrorist agitation, especially in Russia, where the oppression of autocracy increased after 1881, led, little by little, to a fading of the Intelligentsia’s faith in destructive violence as a constructive action, as well as in the satisfying peasant commune, and in the survival of natural innocence in the unthinking masses.

Just at this point, about 1890, a great change began in Russia. Western industrialism began to grow under governmental and foreign auspices; an urban proletariat began to appear, and Marxist social theory came in from Germany. The growth of industrialism settled the violent academic dispute between Westerners and Slavophiles as to whether Russia must follow the path of Western development or could escape it by falling back on some native Slavic solutions hidden in the peasant commune; the growth of a proletariat gave the revolutionaries once again a social group on which to build; and Marxist theory gave the Intelligentsia an ideology which they could fanatically embrace. These new developments, by lifting Russia from the impasse it had reached in 1885, were generally welcomed. Even the autocracy lifted the censorship to allow Marxist theory to circulate, in the belief that it would alleviate terrorist pressure since it eschewed direct political action, especially assassination, and postponed revolution until after industrialization had proceeded far enough to create a fully developed bourgeois class and a fully developed proletariat. To be sure, the theory created by Marx's mid-nineteenth century Germanic background was (as we shall see) gradually changed by the age-long Russian outlook, at first by the Leninist Bolshevik triumph over the Mensheviks and later by Stalin's Russian nationalist victory over Lenin's more Western rationalism, but in the period 1890-1914 the stalemate of opposed violence was broken, and progress, punctuated by violence and intolerance, appeared.

This period of progress punctuated by violence which lasted from 1890 to 1914 has a number of aspects. Of these, the economic and social development will be discussed first, followed by the political and, lastly, the ideological.

As late as the liberation of the serfs in 1863, Russia was practically untouched by the industrial process, and was indeed more backward by far than Britain and France had been before the invention of the steam engine itself. Owing to lack of roads, transportation was very poor except for the excellent system of rivers, and these were frozen for months each year. Mud tracks, impassable for part of the year and only barely passable for the rest of the time, left villages relatively isolated, with the result that almost all handicraft products and much agricultural produce were locally produced and locally consumed. The serfs were impoverished after liberation, and held at a low standard of living by having a large part of their produce taken from them as rents to landlords and as taxes to the state bureaucracy. This served to drain a considerable fraction of the country's agricultural and mineral production to the cities and to the export market. This fraction provided capital for the growth of a modern economy after 1863, being exported to pay for the import of the necessary machinery and industrial raw materials. This was supplemented by the direct importation of capital from abroad, especially from Belgium and France, while much capital, especially for railroads, was provided by the government. Foreign capital amounted to about one-third of all industrial capital in 1890 and rose to almost one-half by 1900. The proportions varied from one activity to another, the foreign portion being, in 1900, at 70 percent in the field of mining, 42 percent in the field of metallurgical industry, but less than lo percent in textiles. At the same date the entire capital of the railroads amounted to 4,700 million rubles, of which 3,500 belonged to the government. These two sources were of very great importance because, except in textiles, most industrial development was based on the railroads, and the earliest enterprises in heavy industry, apart from the old charcoal metallurgy of the Ural Mountains, were foreign. The first great railroad concession, that of the Main Company for 2,650 miles of line, was given to a French company in 1857. A British corporation opened the exploitation of the great southern iron ore basin at Krivoi Rog, while the German Nobel brothers began the development of the petroleum industry at Baku (both about 1880).

As a consequence of these factors the Russian economy remained largely, but decreasingly, a colonial economy for most of the period 1863-1914. There was a very low standard of living for the Russian people, with excessive exportation of consumers' commodities, even those badly needed by the Russian people themselves, these being used to obtain foreign exchange to buy industrial or luxury commodities of foreign origin to be owned by the very small ruling class. This pattern of Russian economic organization has continued under the Soviet regime since 1917.

The first Russian railroad opened in 1838, but growth was slow until the establishment of a rational plan of development in 1857. This plan sought to penetrate the chief agricultural regions, especially the black-earth region of the south, in order to connect them with the chief cities of the north and the export ports. At that time there were only 663 miles of railroads, but this figure went up over tenfold by 1871, doubled again by 1881 (with 14,000 miles), reached 37,000 by 1901, and 46,600 by 1915. This building took place in two great waves, the first in the decade 18661875 and the second in the fifteen years 1891-1905. In these two periods averages of over 1,400 miles of track were constructed annually, while in the intervening fifteen years, from 1876 to 1890, the average construction was only 631 miles per year. The decrease in this middle period resulted from the "great depression" in western Europe in 1873-1893, and culminated, in Russia, in the terrible famine of 1891. After this last date, railroad construction was pushed vigorously by Count Sergei Witte, who advanced from station-master to Minister of Finance, holding the latter post from 1892 to 1903. His greatest achievement was the single-tracked Trans-Siberian line, which ran 6,365 miles from the Polish frontier to Vladivostok and was built in the fourteen years 1891-1905. This line, by permitting Russia to increase her political pressure in the Far East, brought Britain into an alliance with Japan (1902) and brought Russia into war with Japan (1904-1905).

The railroads had a most profound effect on Russia from every point of view, binding one-sixth of the earth's surface into a single political unit and transforming that country's economic, political, and social life. New areas, chiefly in the steppes, which had previously been too far from markets to be used for any purpose but pastoral activities, were brought under cultivation (chiefly for grains and cotton), thus competing with the central black-soil area. The drain of wealth from the peasants to the urban and export markets was increased, especially in the period before 1890. This process was assisted hy the advent of a money economy to those rural areas which had previously been closer to a self-sufficient or a barter basis. This increased agricultural specialization and weakened handicraft activities. The collection of rural products, which had previously been in the hands of a few large commercial operators who worked slowly on a long-term basis, largely through Russia's more than six thousand annual fairs, w ere, after 1870, thanks to the railroad replaced hy a horde of small, quick-turnover middlemen who swarmed like ants through the countryside, offering the contents of their small pouches of money for grain, hemp, hides, fats, bristles, and feathers. This drain of goods from the rural areas was encouraged by the government through quotas and restrictions, price differentials and different railroad rates and taxes for the same commodities with different destinations. As a result, Russian sugar sold in London for about 40 percent of its price in Russia itself. Russia, with a domestic consumption of 10.5 pounds of sugar per capita compared to England’s 92 pounds per capita, nevertheless exported in 1900 a quarter of its total production of 1,802 million pounds. In the same year Russia exported almost 12 million pounds of cotton goods (chiefly to Persia and China), although domestic consumption of cotton in Russia was only 5.3 pounds per capita compared to England's 39 pounds. In petroleum products, where Russia had 48 percent of the total world production in 1900, about 13.3 percent was exported, although Russian consumption was only 12 pounds per capita each year compared to Germany’s 42 pounds. In one of these products kerosene (where Russia had the strongest potential domestic demand), almost 60 percent of the domestic production was exported. The full extent of this drain of wealth from the rural areas can be judged from the export figures in general. In 1891-1895 rural products formed 75 percent (and cereals 40 percent) of the total value of all Russian exports. Moreover, it was the better grains which were exported, a quarter of the wheat drop compared to one-fifteenth of the crop in 1900. That there was a certain improvement in this respect, as time passed, can be seen from the fact that the portion of the wheat crop exported fell from half in the 1800's to one-sixth in 1912-1913.

This policy of siphoning wealth into the export market gave Russia a favorable balance of trade (that is, excess of exports over imports) for the whole period after 1875, providing gold and foreign exchange which allowed the country to build up its gold reserve and to provide capital for its industrial development. In addition, billions of rubles were obtained by sales of bonds of the Russian government, largely in France as part of the French effort to build up the Triple Entente. The State Bank, which had increased its gold reserve from 475 million to 1,095 million rubles in the period 1890-1897, was made a bank of issue in 1897 and was required by law to redeem its notes in gold, thus placing Russia on the international gold standard. The number of corporations in Russia increased from 504 with 912 million rubles capital (of which 215 million was foreign) in 1889 to 1,181 corporations with 1,737 million rubles capital (of which over 800 million was foreign) in 1899. The proportion of industrial concerns among these corporations steadily increased, being 58 percent of the new capital flotations in 1874-1881 as compared to only 11 percent in 1861-1873.

Much of the impetus to industrial advance came from the railroads, since these, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, were by far tile chief purchasers of ferrous metals, coal, and petroleum products. As a result, there was a spectacular outburst of economic productivity in this decade, followed by a decade of lower prosperity after 1900. The production of pig iron in the period 1860-1870 ranged about 350 thousand tons a year, rose to 997 thousand tons in 1890, to almost 1.6 million tons in 1895, and reached a peak of 3.3 million tons in 1900. During this period, iron production shifted from the charcoal foundries of the Urals to the modern coke furnaces of the Ukraine, the percentages of the total Russian production being 67 percent from the Urals to 6 percent from the south in 1870 and 20 percent from the Urals with 67 percent from the south in 1913. The production figure for 1900 was not exceeded during the next decade, but rose after 1909 to reach 4.6 million tons in 1913. This compared with 14.4 million tons in Germany, 31.5 million in the United States, or almost 9 million in the United Kingdom.

Coal production presents a somewhat similar picture, except that its growth continued through the decade 1900-1910. Production rose from 750 thousand tons in 1870 to over 3.6 million tons in 1880 and reached almost 7 million in 1890 and almost 17.5 million in 1900. From this point, coal production, unlike pig iron, continued upward to 26.2 million tons in 1908 and to 36 million in 1913. This last figure compares to Germany's production of 190 million tons, American production of 517 million tons, and British production of 287 million tons in that same year of 1913. In coal, as in pig iron, there was a geographic shift of the center of production, one-third of the Russian coal coming from the Donetz area in 1860 while more than two-thirds came from that area in 1900 and 70 percent in 1913.

In petroleum there was a somewhat similar geographic shift in the center of production, Baku having better than go percent of the total in every year from 1870 until after 1900 when the new Grozny fields and a steady decline in Baku's output reduced the latter's percentage to 85 in 1910 and to 83 in 1913. Because of this decline in Baku's output, Russian production of petroleum, which soared until 1901, declined after that year. Production was only 35,000 tons in 1 870, rose to 600,000 tons in 1880, then leaped to 4.8 million tons in 1890, to 11.3 million in 1900, and reached its peak of over 12 million tons in the following year. For the next twelve years output hovered somewhat below 8.4 million tons.

Because the industrialization of Russia came so late, it was (except in textiles) on a large-scale basis from the beginning and was organized on a basis of financial capitalism after 1870 and of monopoly capitalism after 1902. Although factories employing over 500 workers amounted to only 3 percent of all factories in the 1890's, 4 percent in 1903, and 5 percent in 1910, these factories generally employed over half of all factory workers. This was a far higher percentage than in Germany or the United States, and made it easier for labor agitators to organize the workers in these Russian factories. Moreover, although Russia as a whole was not highly industrialized and output per worker or per unit for Russia as a whole was low (because of the continued existence of older forms of production), the new Russian factories were built with the most advanced technological equipment, sometimes to a degree which the untrained labor supply could not utilize. In 1912 the output of pig iron per furnace in the Ukraine was higher than in western Europe by a large margin, although smaller than in the United States by an equally large margin. Although the quantity of mechanical power available on a per capita basis for the average Russian was low in 1908 compared to western Europe or America (being only 1.6 horsepower per 100 persons in Russia compared to 25 in the United States, 24 in England, and 13 in Germany), the horsepower per industrial worker was higher in Russia than in any other continental country (being 92 horsepower per 100 workers in Russia compared to 85 in France, 73 in Germany, 153 in England, and 282 in the United States). All this made the Russian economy an economy of contradictions. Though the range of technical methods was very wide, advanced techniques were lacking completely in some fields, and even whole fields of necessary industrial activities (such as machine tools or automobiles) were lacking. The economy w as poorly integrated, was extremely dependent on foreign trade (both for markets and for essential products), and was very dependent on government assistance, especially on government spending

While the great mass of the Russian people continued, as late as 1914, to live much as they had lived for generations, a small number lived in a new, and very insecure, world of industrialism, where they were at the mercy of foreign or governmental forces over which they had little control. The managers of this new world sought to improve their positions, not by any effort to create a mass market in the other, more primitive, Russian economic world by improved methods of distribution, by reduction of prices, or by rising standards of living, but rather sought to increase their own profit margins on a narrow market by ruthless reduction of costs, especially wages, and by monopolistic combinations to raise prices. These efforts led to labor agitation on one hand and to monopolistic capitalism on the other. Economic progress, except in some lines, was slowed up for these reasons during the whole decade 1900-1909. Only in 1909, when a largely monopolistic structure of industry had been created, was the increase in output of goods resumed and the struggle with labor somewhat abated. The earliest Russian cartels were formed with the encouragement of the Russian government and in those activities where foreign interests were most prevalent. In 1887 a sugar cartel was formed in order to permit foreign dumping of this commodity. A similar agency was set up for kerosene in 1892, but the great period of formation of such organizations (usually in the form of joint-selling agencies) began after the crisis of 1901. In 1902 a cartel created by a dozen iron and steel firms handled almost three-fourths of all Russian sales of these products. It was controlled by four foreign banking groups. A similar cartel, ruled from Berlin, took over the sales of almost all Russian production of iron pipe. Six Ukraine iron-ore firms in 1908 set up a cartel controlling 80 percent of Russia's ore production. In 1907 a cartel was created to control about three-quarters of Russia's agricultural implements. Others handled 97 percent of railway cars, 94 percent of locomotives, and 94 percent of copper sales. Eighteen Donetz coal firms in 1906 set up a cartel which sold three-quarters of the coal output of that area.

The creation of monopoly was aided by a change in tariff policy. Free trade, which had been established in the tariff of 1857, was curtailed in 1877 and abandoned in 1891. The protective tariff of this latter year resulted in a severe tariff war with Germany as the Germans sought to exclude Russian agricultural products in retaliation for the Russian tariff on manufactured goods. This "war" was settled in 1894 by a series of compromises, but the reopening of the German market to Russian grain led to political agitation for protection on the part of German landlords. They were successful, as we shall see, in 1900 as a result of a deal with the German industrialists to support Tirpitz's naval building program.

On the eve of the First World War, the Russian economy was in a very dubious state of health. As we have said, it was a patchwork affair, very much lacking in integration, very dependent on foreign and government support, racked by labor disturbances, and, what was even more threatening, by labor disturbances based on political rather than on economic motives, and shot through with all kinds of technological weaknesses and discords. As an example of the last, we might mention the fact that over half of Russia's pig iron was made with charcoal as late as 1900 and some of Russia's most promising natural resources were left unused as a result of the restrictive outlook of monopoly capitalists. The failure to develop a domestic market left costs of distribution fantastically high and left the Russian per capita consumption of almost all important commodities fantastically low. Moreover, to make matters worse, Russia as a consequence of these things was losing ground in the race of production with France, Germany, and the United States.

These economic developments had profound political effects under the weak-willed Czar Nicholas II (1894-1917). For about a decade Nicholas tried to combine ruthless civil repression, economic advance, and an imperialist foreign policy in the Balkans and the Far East, with pious worldwide publicity for peace and universal disarmament, domestic distractions like anti-Semitic massacres (pogroms), forged terroristic documents, and faked terroristic attempts on the lives of high officials, including himself. This unlikely melange collapsed completely in 1905-1908. When Count Witte attempted to begin some kind of constitutional development by getting in touch with the functioning units of local government (the zemstvos, which had been effective in the famine of 1891), he was ousted from his position by an intrigue led by the murderous Minister of Interior Vyacheslav Plehve (1903). The civil head of the Orthodox Church, Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827-1907) persecuted all dissenting religions, while allowing the Orthodox Church to become enveloped in ignorance and corruption. Most Roman Catholic monasteries in Poland were confiscated, while priests of that religion were forbidden to leave their villages. In Finland construction of Lutheran churches was forbidden, and schools of this religion were taken over by the Moscow government. The Jews were persecuted, restricted to certain provinces (the Pale), excluded form most economic activities, subjected to heavy taxes (even on their religious activities), and allowed to form only ten percent of the pupils in schools (eve in villages which were almost completely Jewish and where the schools were supported entirely by Jewish taxes). Hundreds of Jews were massacred and thousands of their buildings wrecked in systematic three-day pogroms tolerated and sometimes encouraged by the police. Marriages (and children) of Roman Catholic Uniates were made illegitimate. The Moslems in Asia and elsewhere were also persecuted.

Every effort was made to Russify non-Russian national groups, especially on the western frontiers. The Finns, Baltic Germans, and Poles were not allowed to use their own languages in public life, and had to use Russian even in private schools and even on the primary level. Administrative autonomy in these areas, even that solemnly promised to Finland long before, was destroyed, and they were dominated by Russian police, Russian education, and the Russian Army. The peoples of these areas were subjected to military conscription more rigorously than the Russians themselves, and were Russified while in the ranks.

Against the Russians themselves, unbelievable extremes of espionage, counterespionage, censorship, provocation, imprisonment without trial, and outright brutality were employed. The revolutionaries responded with similar measures crowned by assassination. No one could trust anyone else, because revolutionaries were in the police, and members of the police were in the highest ranks of the revolutionaries. Georgi Gapon, a priest secretly in the pay of the government, was encouraged to form labor unions and lead workers' agitations in order to increase the employers' dependence on the autocracy, but when, in 1905, Gapon led a mass march of workers to the Winter Palace to present a petition to the czar, they were attacked by the troops and hundreds were shot. Gapon was murdered the following year by the revolutionaries as a traitor. In order to discredit the revolutionaries, the central Police Department in St. Petersburg "printed at the government expense violent appeals to riot" which were circulated all over the country by an organization of reactionaries. In one year (1906) the government exiled 35,000 persons without trial and executed over 600 persons under a new decree which fixed the death penalty for ordinary crimes like robbery or insults to officials. In the three years 1906-1908, 5,140 officials were killed or wounded, and 2,328 arrested persons were executed. In 1909 it was revealed that a police agent, Azeff, had been a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionaries for years and had participated in plots to murder high officials, including Plehve and the Grand Duke Sergius, without warning these. The former chief of police who revealed this fact was sent to prison for doing so.

Under conditions such as these no sensible government was possible and all appeals for moderation were crushed between the extremists from both sides. The defeats of Russian forces in the war with Japan in 1904-1905 brought events to a head. All dissatisfied groups began to agitate, culminating in a successful general strike in October 1905. The emperor began to offer political reforms, although what was extended one day was frequently taken back shortly after. A consultative assembly, the Duma, was established, elected on a broad suffrage but by very complicated procedures designed to reduce the democratic element. In the face of agrarian atrocities, endless strikes, and mutinies in both the army and navy, the censorship was temporarily lifted, and the first Duma met (May 1906). It had a number of able men and was dominated by two hastily organized political parties, the Cadets (somewhat left of Center) and the Octobrists (somewhat right of Center). Plans for wholesale reform were in the w-ind, and, when the czar's chief minister rejected such plans, he was overwhelmingly censured by the Duma. After weeks of agitation the czar tried to form an Octobrist ministry, but this group refused to govern without Cadet cooperation, and the latter refused to join a coalition government. The czar named Pëtr Stolypin chief minister, dissolved the first Duma, and called for election of a new one. Stolypin was a severe man, willing to move slowly in the direction of economic and political reform but determined to crush without mercy any suspicion of violence or illegal actions. The full power of the government was used to get a second Duma more to its taste, outlawing most of the Cadets, previously the largest party, and preventing certain classes and groups from campaigning or voting. The result was a new Duma of much less ability, much less discipline, and with many unknown faces. The Cadets were reduced from 150 to 123, the Octobrists from about 42 to 32, while there were 46 extreme Right, 54 Marxist Social Democrats, 35 Social Revolutionaries, at least 100 assorted Laborites, and scattered others. This group devoted much of its time to debating whether terrorist violence should be condemned. W hen Stolypin demanded that the Social Democrats (Marxists) should be kicked out, the Duma referred the matter to a committee; the assembly was immediately dissolved, and new elections were fixed for a third Duma (June, 1908). Under powerful government intimidation, which included sending 31 Social Democrats to Siberia, the third Duma was elected. It was mostly an upperclass and upper-middle-class body, with the largest groups being 154 Octobrists and 54 Cadets. This body was sufficiently docile to remain for five years (1907-1912). During this period both the Duma and the government followed a policy of drift, except for Stolypin. Until 1910 this energetic administrator continued his efforts to combine oppression and reform, especially agrarian reform. Rural credit banks were established; various measures were taken to place larger amounts of land in the hands of peasants; restrictions on the migration of peasants, especially to Siberia, were removed; participation in local government was opened to lower social classes previously excluded; education, especially technical education, w as made more accessible; and certain provisions for social insurance were enacted into law. After the Bosnian crisis of 1908 (to be discussed later), foreign affairs became increasingly absorbing, and by 1910 Stolypin had lost his enthusiasm for reform, replacing it by senseless efforts at Russification of the numerous minority groups. He was assassinated in the presence of the czar in 1911.

The fourth Duma (1912-1916) was similar to the third, elected by complicated procedures and on a restricted suffrage. The policy of drift continued, and was more obvious since no energetic figure like Stolypin was to be found. On the contrary, the autocracy sank deeper into a morass of superstition and corruption. The influence of the czarina became more pervasive, and through her was extended the power of a number of religious mystics and charlatans, especially Rasputin. The imperial couple had ardently desired a son from their marriage in 1894. After the births of four daughters, their wish was fulfilled in 1904. Unfortunately, the new czarevich, Alexis, had inherited from his mother an incurable disease, hemophilia. Since his blood would not clot, the slightest cut endangered his life. This weakness merely exaggerated the czarina's fanatical devotion to her son and her determination to see him become czar with the powers of that office undiminished by any constitutional or parliamentary innovations. After 1907 she fell under the influence of a strange wanderer, Rasputin, a man whose personal habits and appearance were both vicious and filthy but who had the power, she believed, to stop the czarevich’s bleeding. The czarina fell completely under Rasputin’s control and, since the czar was completely under her control, Rasputin became the ruler of Russia, intermittently at first, but then completely. This situation lasted until he was murdered in December 1916. Rasputin used his power to satisfy his personal vices, to accumulate wealth by corruption, and to interfere in every branch of the government, always in a destructive and unprogressive sense. As Sir Bernard Pares put it, speaking of the czarina, "Her letters to Nicholas day by day contain the instructions which Rasputin gave on every detail of administration of the Empire—the Church, the Ministers, finance, railways, food supply, appointments, military operations, and above all the Duma, and a simple comparison of the dates with the events which followed shows that in almost every case they were carried out. In all her recommendations for ministerial posts, most of which are adopted, one of the primary considerations is always the attitude of the given candidate to Rasputin."

As the autocracy became increasingly corrupt and irresponsible in this way, the slow growth toward a constitutional system which might have developed from the zemstvo system of local government and the able membership of the first Duma was destroyed. The resumption of economic expansion after 1909 could not counterbalance the pernicious influence of the political paralysis. This situation was made even more hopeless by the growing importance of foreign affairs after 1908 and the failure of intellectual life to grow in any constructive fashion. The first of these complications will be discussed later; the second deserves a few words here.

The general trend of intellectual development in Russia in the years before 1914 could hardly be regarded as hopeful. To be sure, there were considerable advances in some fields such as literacy, natural science, mathematics, and economic thought, but these contributed little to any growth of moderation or to Russia's greatest intellectual need, a more integrated outlook on life. The influence of the old Orthodox religious attitude continued even in those who most emphatically rejected it. The basic attitude of the Western tradition had grown toward diversity and toleration, based on the belief that every aspect of life and of human experience and every individual has some place in the complex structure of reality if that place can only be found and that, accordingly, unity of the whole of life can be reached by way of diversity rather than by any compulsory uniformity. This idea was entirely foreign to the Russian mind. Any Russian thinker, and hordes of other Russians with no capacity for thought, were driven by an insatiable thirst to find the "key" to life and to truth. Once this "key" has been found, all other aspects of human experience must be rejected as evil, and all men must be compelled to accept that key as the whole of life in a dreadful unity of uniformity. To make matters worse' many Russian thinkers sought to analyze the complexities of human experience by polarizing these into antitheses of mutually exclusive dualisms: Westerners versus Slavophiles, individualism versus community, freedom versus fate, revolutionary versus reactionary, nature versus conventions, autocracy versus anarchy, and such. There was no logical correlation between these, so that individual thinkers frequently embraced either side of any antithesis, forming an incredible mixture of emotionally held faiths. Moreover, individual thinkers frequently shifted from one side to another, or even oscillated back and forth between the extremes of these dualisms. In the most typical Russian minds both extremes were held simultaneously, regardless of logical compatibility, in some kind of higher mystic unity beyond rational analysis. Thus, Russian thought provides us with striking examples of God-intoxicated atheists, revolutionary reactionaries, violent non-resisters, belligerent pacifists, compulsory liberators, and individualistic totalitarians.

The basic characteristic of Russian thought is its extremism. This took two forms: (1) any portion of human experience to which allegiance was given became the whole truth, demanding total allegiance, all else being evil deception; and (2) every living person was expected to accept this same portion or be damned as a minion of anti-Christ. Those who embraced the state were expected to embrace it as an autocracy in which the individual had no rights, else their allegiance was not pure; those who denied the state were expected to reject it utterly by adopting anarchism. Those who became materialists had to become complete nihilists without place for any convention, ceremony, or sentiment. Those who questioned some minor aspect of the religious system were expected to become militant atheists, and if they did not take this step themselves, were driven to it by the clergy. Those who were considered to be spiritual or said they were spiritual were forgiven every kind of corruption and lechery (like Rasputin) because such material aspects were irrelevant. Those who sympathized with the oppressed were expected to bury themselves in the masses, living like them, eating dike them, dressing like them, and renouncing all culture and thought (if they believed the masses lacked these things).

The extremism of Russian thinkers can be seen in their attitudes toward such basic aspects of human experience as property, reason, the state, art, sex, or power. Always there was a fanatical tendency to eliminate as sinful and evil anything except the one aspect which the thinker considered to be the key to the cosmos. Alexei Khomyakov (1804-1860), a Slavophile, wanted to reject reason completely, regarding it as “the mortal sin of the West,” while Fëdor Dostoevski (1821-1881) went so far in this direction that he wished to destroy all logic and all arithmetic, seeking, he said, “to free humanity from the tyranny of two plus two equals four.” Many Russian thinkers, long before the Soviets, regarded all property as sinful. Others felt the same way about sex. Leo Tolstoi, the great novelist and essayist (1828-1910), considered all property and all sex to be evil. Western thought, which has usually tried to find a place in the cosmos for everything and has felt that anything is acceptable in its proper place, recoils from such fanaticism. The West, for example, has rarely felt it necessary to justify the existence of art, but many thinkers in Russia (like Plato long ago) have rejected all art as evil. Tolstoi, among others, had moments (as in the essay What Is Art? Of 1897 or On Shakespeare and the Drama of 1903) when he denounced most art and literature, including his own novels, as vain, irrelevant, and satanic. Similarly the West, while it has sometimes looked askance at sex and more frequently has over-emphasized it, has generally felt that sex had a proper function in its proper place. In Russia, however, many thinkers including once again Tolstoi (The Kreutzer Sonata of 1889), have insisted that sex was evil in all places and under all circumstances, and most sinful in marriage. The disruptive effects of such ideas upon social or family life can be seen in the later years of Tolstoi's personal life, culminating in his last final hatred of his long-suffering wife whom he came to regard as the instrument of his fall from grace. But while Tolstoi praised marriage without sex, other Russians, with even greater vehemence, praised sex without marriage, regarding this social institution as an unnecessary impediment in the path of pure human impulse.

In some ways we find in Tolstoi the culmination of Russian thought. He rejected all power, all violence, most art, all sex, all public authority, and all property as evil. To him the key of the universe was to he found in Christ's injunction, "Resist not evil." All other aspects of Christ's teachings except those which flow directly from this were rejected, including any belief in Christ's divinity or in a personal God. From this injunction flowed Tolstoi's ideas of nonviolence and nonresistance and his faith that only in this way could man's capacity for a spiritual love so powerful that it could solve all social problems he liberated. This idea of Tolstoi, although based on Christ's injunction, is not so much a reflection of Christianity as it is of the basic Russian assumption that any physical defeat must represent a spiritual victory, and that the latter could be achieved only through the former.

Such a point of view could be held only by persons to whom all prosperity or happiness is not only irrelevant but sinful. And this point of view could be held with such fanaticism only by persons to whom life, family, or any objective gain is worthless. This is a dominant idea in all the Russian Intelligentsia, an idea going back through Plato to ancient Asia: All objective reality is of no importance except as symbols for some subjective truth. This was, of course, the point of view of the Neoplatonic thinkers of the early Christian period. It was generally the point of view of the early Christian heretics and of those Western heretics like the Cathari (Albigenses) who were derived from this Eastern philosophic position. In modern Russian thought it is well represented by Dostoevski, who while chronologically earlier than Tolstoi is spiritually later. To Dostoevski every object and every act is merely a symbol for some elusive spiritual truth. From this point of view comes an outlook which makes his characters almost incomprehensible to the average person in the Western tradition: if such a character obtains a fortune, he cries, "I am ruined!" If he is acquitted on a murder charge, or seems likely to be, he exclaims, "I am condemned," and seeks to incriminate himself in order to ensure the punishment which is so necessary for his own spiritual self-acquittal. If he deliberately misses his opponent in a duel, he has a guilty conscience, and says, "I should not have injured him thus; I should have killed him!" In each case the speaker cares nothing about property, punishment, or life. He cares only about spiritual values: asceticism, guilt, remorse, injury to one's self-respect. In the same way, the early religious thinkers, both Christian and non-Christian, regarded all objects as symbols for spiritual values, all temporal success as an inhibition on spiritual life, and felt that wealth could be obtained only by getting rid of property, life could be found only by dying (a direct quotation from Plato), eternity could be found only if time ended, and the soul could be freed only if the body were enslaved. Thus, as late as 1910 when Tolstoi died, Russia remained true to its Greek-Byzantine intellectual tradition.

We have noted that Dostoevski, who lived slightly before Tolstoi, nevertheless had ideas which were chronologically in advance of Tolstoi's ideas. In fact, in many ways, Dostoevski was a precursor of the Bolsheviks. Concentrating his attention on poverty, crime, and human misery, always seeking the real meaning behind every overt act or word, he eventually reached a position where the distinction between appearance and significance became so wide that these two were in contradiction with each other. This contradiction was really the struggle between God and the Devil in the soul of man. Since this struggle is without end, there is no solution to men's problems except to face suffering resolutely. Such suffering purges men of all artificiality and joins them together in one mass. In this mass the Russian people, because of their greater suffering and their greater spirituality, are the hope of the world and must save the world from the materialism, violence, and selfishness of Western civilization. The Russian people, on the other hand, filled with self-sacrifice, and with no allegiance to luxury or material gain, and purified by suffering which makes them the brothers of all other suffering people, will save the world by taking up the sword of righteousness against the forces of evil stemming from Europe. Constantinople will be seized, all the Slavs will be liberated, and Europe and the world will be forced into freedom by conquest, so that Moscow many become the Third Rome. Before Russia is fit to save the world in this way, however, the Russian intellectuals must merge themselves in the great mass of the suffering Russian people, and the Russian people must adopt Europe's science and technology uncontaminated by any European ideology. The blood spilled in this effort to extend Slav brotherhood to the whole world by force will aid the cause, for suffering shared will make men one.

This mystical Slav imperialism with its apocalyptical overtones was by no means uniquely Dostoevski's. It was held in a vague and implicit fashion by many Russian thinkers, and had a wide appeal to the unthinking masses. It was implied in much of the propaganda of Pan-Slavism, and became semiofficial with the growth of this propaganda after 1908. It was widespread among the Orthodox clergy, who emphasized the reign of righteousness which would follow the millennialist establishment of Moscow as the "Third Rome." It was explicitly stated in a book, Russia and Europe, published in 1869 by Nicholas Danilevsky (1822-1885). Such ideas, as we shall see, did not die out with the passing of the Romanov autocracy in 1917, but became even more influential, merging with the Leninist revision of Marxism to provide the ideology of Soviet Russia after 1917.

Part Four—The Buffer Fringe

In the first half of the twentieth century the power structure of the world was entirely transformed. In 1900, European civilization, led by Britain and followed by other states at varying distances, was still spreading outward, disrupting the cultures of other societies unable to resist and frequently without any desire to resist. The European structure which pushed outward formed a hierarchy of power, wealth, and prestige with Britain at the top, followed by a secondary rank of other Great Powers, by a tertiary rank of the wealthy secondary Powers (like Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden), and by a quaternary rank of the lesser or decadent Powers (like Portugal or Spain, whose world positions were sustained by British power).

At the turn of the twentieth century the first cracklings of impending disaster were emitted from this power structure but were generally ignored: in 1896 the Italians were massacred by the Ethiopians at Adowa; in 1899-1902 the whole might of Britain was held in check by the small Boer republics in the South African War; and in 1904-1905 Russia was defeated by a resurgent Japan. These omens were generally not heeded, and European civilization continued on its course to Armageddon.

By the second half of the twentieth century, the power structure of the world presented a quite different picture. In this new situation the world consisted of three great zones: (1) Orthodox civilization under the Soviet Empire, occupying the heartland of Eurasia; (2) surrounding this, a fringe of dying and shattered cultures: Islamic, Hindu, Malayan, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, and others: and (3) outside this fringe, and chiefly responsible for shattering its cultures, Western Civilization. Moreover, Western Civilization had been profoundly modified. In 1900 it had consisted of a core area in Europe with peripheral areas in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and the fringes of Africa. By 1950 Western Civilization had its center of power in America, the fringes in Africa were being lost, and Europe had been so reduced in power, in wealth, and in prestige that it seemed to many that it must make a choice between becoming a satellite in an American-dominated Western Civilization or joining with the buffer fringe to try to create a Third Force able to hold a balance of power between America and the Soviet bloc. This impression was mistaken, and by the late 1950's Europe was in a position, once again, to play an independent role in world affairs.

In previous chapters we have examined the background of Western Civilization and of the Russian Empire to the second decade of the twentieth century. In the present chapter we shall examine the situation in the buffer fringe until about the end of that same decade. At the beginning of the twentieth century the areas which were to become the buff r fringe consisted of (1) the Near East dominated by the Ottoman Empire, (2) the Middle East dominated by the British Empire in India, and (3) the Far East, consisting of two old civilizations, China and Japan. On the outskirts of these were the lesser colonial areas of Africa, Malaysia, and Indonesia. At this point we shall consider the three major areas of the buffer fringe with a brief glance at Africa.

Chapter 8—The Near East to 1914

For the space of over a century, from shortly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until 1922, the relationships of the Great Powers were exacerbated by what was known as the "Near East Question." This problem, which arose from the growing weakness of the Ottoman Empire, was concerned with the question of what would become of the lands and peoples left without government by the retreat of Turkish power. The problem was made more complex by the fact that Turkish power did not withdraw but rather decayed right were it was, so that in many areas it continued to exist in law when it had already ceased to function in fact because of the weakness and corruption of the sultan's government. The Turks themselves sought to maintain their position, not by remedying their weakness and corruption by reform, but by playing off one European state against another and hy using cruel and arbitrary actions against any of their subject peoples who dared to become restive under their rule.

The Ottoman Empire reached its peak in the period 1526-1533 with the conquest of Hungary and the first siege of Vienna. A second siege, also unsuccessful, came in 1683. From this point Turkish power declined and Turkish sovereignty withdrew, but unfortunately the decline was much more rapid than the withdrawal, with the result that subject peoples were encouraged to revolt and foreign Powers were encouraged to intervene because of the weakness of Turkish power in areas which were still nominally under the sultan's sovereignty.

At its height the Ottoman Empire was larger than any contemporary European state in both area and population. South of the Mediterranean it stretched from the Atlantic Ocean in Morocco to the Persian Gulf; north of the Mediterranean it stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Caspian Sea, including the Balkans as far north as Poland and the whole northern shore of the Black Sea. This vast empire was divided into twenty-one governments and subdivided into seventy vilayets, each under a pasha. The whole structure was held together as a tribute-gathering military system by the fact that the rulers in all parts were Muslims. The supreme ruler in Constantinople was not only sultan (and thus head of the empire) but was also caliph (and thus defender of the Muslim creed). In most of the empire the mass of the people were Muslims like their rulers, but in much of the empire the masses of the peoples were non-Muslims, being Roman Christians, Orthodox Christians, Jews, or other creeds.

Linguistic variations were even more notable than religious distinctions. Only the peoples of Anatolia generally spoke Turkish, while those of North Africa and the Near East spoke various Semitic and Hamitic dialects of which the most prevalent was Arabic. From Syria to the Caspian Sea across the base of Anatolia were several languages, of which the chief were Kurdish and Armenian. The shores of the Aegean Sea, especially the western, were generally Greek-speaking. The northern shore was a confused mixture of Turkish, Greek, and Bulgarian speaking peoples. The eastern shore of the Adriatic was Greek-speaking up to the 40th parallel, then Albanian for almost three degrees of latitude, merging gradually into various South Slav languages like Croat, Slovens, and (in the interior) Serb. The Dalmatian shore and Istria had many Italian speakers. On the Black Sea shore Thrace itself was a mixture of Turkish, Greek, and Bulgar from the Bosporus to the 42nd parallel where there was a solid mass of Bulgarians. The central Balkans w as a confused area, especially in Macedonia where Turkish, Greek, Albanian, Serb, and Bulgar met and mingled. North of the Bulgarian-speaking groups, and generally separated from them by the Danube, were Romanians. North of the Croatians and Serbs, and generally separated from them by the Drava River, were the Hungarians. The district where the Hungarians and Romanians met, Transylvania, was confused, with great blocs of one language being separated from their fellows by blocs of the other, the confusion being compounded by the presence of considerable numbers of Germans and Gypsies.

The religious and linguistic divisions of the Ottoman Empire were complicated by geographic, social, and cultural divisions, especially in the Balkans. This last-named area provided such contrasts as the relatively advanced commercial and mercantile activities of the Greeks; primitive pastoral groups like Albanian goat-herders; subsistence farmers scratching a living from small plots of Macedonia's rocky soils; peasant-size farms on the better soils of Serbia and Romania; great rich landed estates producing for a commercial market and worked by serf labor in Hungary and Romania. Such diversity made any hopes of political unity by consent or by federation almost impossible in the Balkans. Indeed, it was almost impossible to draw any political lines which would coincide with geographic and linguistic or religious lines, because linguistic and religious distinctions frequently indicated class distinctions. Thus the upper and lower classes or the commercial and the agricultural groups even in the same district often had different languages or different religions. Such a pattern of diversity could be held together most easily by a simple display of military force. This was what the Turks provided. Militarism and fiscalism were the two keynotes of Turkish rule, and were quite sufficient to hold the empire together as long as both remained effective and the empire was free from outside interference. But in the course of the eighteenth century Turkish administration became ineffective and outside interference became important.

The sultan, who was a completely absolute ruler, became very quickly a completely arbitrary ruler. This characteristic extended to all his activities. He filled his harem with any women who pleased his fancy, without any formal ceremony. Such numerous and temporary liaisons produced numerous children, of whom many were neglected or even forgotten. Accordingly, the succession to the throne never became established and was never based on primogeniture. As a consequence, the sultan came to fear murder from almost any direction. To avoid this, he tended to surround himself with persons who could have no possible chance of succeeding him: women, children, Negroes, eunuchs, and Christians. All the sultans from 1451 onward were born of slave mothers and only one sultan after this date even bothered to contract a formal marriage. Such a way of life isolated the sultan from his subjects completely.

This isolation applied to the process of government as well as to the ruler's personal life. Most of the sultans paid little heed to government, leaving this to their grand viziers and the local pashas. The former had no tenure, being appointed or removed in accordance with the whims of harem intrigue. The pashas tended to become increasingly independent, since they collected local taxes and raised local military forces. The fact that the sultan was also caliph (and thus religious successor to Muhammad), and the religious belief that the government was under divine guidance and should be obeyed, however unjust and tyrannical, made all religious thinking on political or social questions take the form of justification of the status quo, and made any kind of reform almost impossible. Reform could come only from the Sultan, but his ignorance and isolation from society made reform unlikely. In consequence the whole system became increasingly weak and corrupt. The administration was chaotic, inefficient, and arbitrary. Almost nothing could be done without gifts and bribes to officials, and it was not always possible to know what official or series of officials were the correct ones to reward.

The chaos and weakness which we have described were in full blossom by the seventeenth century, and grew worse during the next two hundred years. As early as 1699 the sultan lost Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, and Slavonia to the Habsburgs, parts of the western Balkans to Venice, and districts in the north to Poland. In the course of the eighteenth century, Russia acquired areas north of the Black Sea, notably the Crimea.

During the nineteenth century, the Near East question became increasingly acute. Russia emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as a Great Power, able to increase its pressure on Turkey. This pressure resulted from three motivations. Russian imperialism sought to win an outlet to open waters in the south by dominating the Black Sea and by winning access to the Aegean through the acquisition of the Straits and Constantinople. Later this effort was supplemented by economic and diplomatic pressure on Persia in order to reach the Persian Gulf. At the same time, Russia regarded itself as the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and as early as 1774 had obtained the sultan's consent to this protective role. Moreover, as the most powerful Slav state, Russia had ambitions to be regarded as the protector of the Slavs in the sultan's domains.

These Russian ambitions could never have been thwarted by the sultan alone, but he did not need to stand alone. He generally found support from Britain and increasingly from France. Britain was obsessed with the need to defend India, which was a manpower pool and military staging area vital to the defense of the whole empire. From 1840 to 1907, it faced the nightmare possibility that Russia might attempt to cross Afghanistan to northwest India, or cross Persia to the Persian Gulf, or penetrate through the Dardanelles and the Aegean onto the British "lifeline to India" by way of the Mediterranean. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 increased the importance of this Mediterranean route to the east in British eyes. It was protected by British forces in Gibraltar, Malta (acquired 1800), Cyprus (1878), and Egypt (1882). In general, in spite of English humanitarian sympathy for the peoples subject to the tyranny of the Turk, and in spite of England's regard for the merits of good government, British imperial policy considered that its interests would be safer with a weak, if corrupt, Turkey in the Near East than they would be with any Great Power in that area or with the area broken up into small independent states which might fall under the influence of the Great Powers.

The French concern with the Near East was parallel to, but weaker than, that of Britain. They had cultural and trade relations with the Levant going back, in some cases, to the Crusades. In addition the French had ancient claims, revived in 1854, to he considered the protectors of Roman Catholics in the Ottoman Empire and of the "holy places" in Jerusalem.

Three other influences which became increasingly strong in the Near East were the growth of nationalism and the growing interests of Austria (after 1866) and of Germany (after 1889). The first stirrings of Balkan nationalism can be seen in the revolt of the Serbs in 1804-1812. By seizing Bessarabia from Turkey in 1812, Russia won the right for local self-government for the Serbs. Unfortunately, these latter began almost immediately to fight one another, the chief split being between a Russophile group led by Milan Obrenovich and a Serb nationalist group led by George Petroviæ (better known as Karageorge). The Serb state, formally established in 1830, was bounded by the rivers Dvina, Save, Danube, and Timok. With local autonomy under Turkish suzerainty, it continued to pay tribute to the sultan and to support garrisons of Turkish troops. The vicious feud between Obrenovich and Karageorgevic continued after Serbia obtained complete independence in 1878. The Obrenovich dynasty ruled in 1817-1842 and 1858-1903, while the Karageorgevic group ruled in 1842-1858 and 1903-1945. The intrigues of these two against each other broadened into a constitutional conflict in which the Obrenovich group supported the somewhat less liberal constitution of 1869, while the Karageorgevic group supported the somewhat more liberal constitution of 1889. The former constitution was in effect in 1869 1889 and again in 1894-1903, while the latter was in effect in 1889-1894 and again in 1903-1921. In order to win popular support by an appeal to nationalist sentiments, both groups plotted against Turkey and later against Austria-Hungary.

A second example of Balkan nationalism appeared in the Greek struggle for independence from the sultan (1821-1830). After Greeks and Muslims had massacred each other by the thousands, Greek independence was established with a constitutional monarchy under the guarantee of the three Great Powers. A Bavarian prince was placed on the throne and began to establish a centralized, bureaucratic, constitutional state which was quite unsuited for a country with such unconstitutional traditions, poor transportation and communications, a low level of literacy, and a high level of partisan localism. After thirty turbulent years (1832-1862), Otto of Bavaria was deposed and replaced by a Danish prince and a completely democratic unicameral government which functioned only slightly better. The Danish dynasty continues to rule, although supplanted by a republic in 1924-1935 and by military dictatorships on sundry occasions, notably that of Joannes Metaxas (1936-1941).

The first beginnings of Balkan nationalism must not be overemphasized. While the inhabitants of the area have always been unfriendly to outsiders and resentful of burdensome governments, these sentiments deserve to be regarded as provincialism or localism rather than nationalism. Such feelings are prevalent among all primitive peoples and must not be regarded as nationalism unless they are so wide as to embrace loyalty to all peoples of the same language and culture and are organized in such fashion that this loyalty is directed toward the state as the core of nationalist strivings. Understood in this way, nationalism became a very potent factor in the disruption of the Ottoman Empire only after 1878.

Closely related to the beginnings of Balkan nationalism were the beginnings of Pan-Slavism and the various "pan-movements" in reaction to this, such as Pan-Islamism. These rose to a significant level only at the very end of the nineteenth century. Simply defined, Pan-Slavism was a movement for cultural unity, and, perhaps in the long run, political unity among the Slavs. In practice it came to mean the right of Russia to assume the role of protector of the Slav peoples outside Russia itself. At times it was difficult for some peoples, especially Russia's enemies, to distinguish between Pan-Slavism and Russian imperialism. Equally simply defined, Pan-Islamism was a movement for unity or at least cooperation among all the Muslim peoples in order to resist the encroachments of the European Powers on Muslim territories. In concrete terms it sought to give the caliph a religious leadership, and perhaps in time a political leadership such as he had really never previously possessed. Both of these pan-movements are of no importance until the end of the nineteenth century, while Balkan nationalism was only slightly earlier than they in its rise to importance.

These Balkan nationalists had romantic dreams about uniting peoples of the same language, and generally looked back, with a distorted historical perspective, to some period when their co-linguists had played a more important political role. The Greeks dreamed of a revived Byzantine state or even of a Periclean Athenian Empire. The Serbs dreamed of the days of Stephen Dushan, while the Bulgars went further back to the days of the Bulgarian Empire of Symeon in the early tenth century. However, we must remember that even as late as the beginning of the twentieth century such dreams were found only among the educated minority of Balkan peoples. In the nineteenth century, agitation in the Balkans was much more likely to be caused by Turkish misgovernment than by any stirrings of national feeling. Moreover, when national feeling did appear it was just as likely to appear as a feeling of animosity against neighbors who were different, rather than a feeling of unity with peoples who were the same in culture and religion. And at all times localism and class antagonisms (especially rural hostility against urban groups) remained at a high level.

Russia made war on Turkey five times in the nineteenth century. On the last two occasions the Great Powers intervened to prevent Russia from imposing its will on the sultan. The first intervention led to the Crimean War (1854-1856) and the Congress of Paris (1856), while the second intervention, at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, rewrote a peace treaty which the czar had just imposed on the sultan (Treaty of San Stefano, 1877) .

In 1853 the czar, as protector of the Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire, occupied the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia north of the Danube and east of the Carpathians. Under British pressure the sultan declared war on Russia, and was supported by Britain, France, and Sardinia in the ensuing "Crimean War." Under threat of joining the anti-Russian forces, Austria forced the czar to evacuate the principalities and occupied them herself, thus exposing an Austro-Russian rivalry in the Balkans which continued for two generations and ultimately precipitated the World War of 1914-1918.

The Congress of Paris of 1856 sought to remove all possibility of any future Russian intervention in Turkish affairs. The integrity of Turkey was guaranteed, Russia gave up its claim as protector of the sultan's Christian subjects, the Black Sea was "neutralized" by prohibiting all naval vessels and naval arsenals on its waters and shores, an International Commission was set up to assure free navigation of the Danube, and in 1862, after several years of indecision, the two principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, along with Bessarabia, were allowed to form the state of Romania. The new state remained technically under Turkish suzerainty until 1878. It was the most progressive of the successor states of the Ottoman Empire, with advanced educational and judicial systems based on those of Napoleonic France, and a thorough-going agrarian reform. This last, which was executed in two stages (1863-1866 and 1918-1921), divided up the great estates of the Church and the nobility, and wiped away all vestiges of manorial dues or serfdom. Under a liberal, but not democratic, constitution, a German prince, Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1866-1914), established a new dynasty which was ended only in 1948. During this whole period the cultural and educational systems of the country continued to be orientated toward France in sharp contrast to the inclinations of the ruling dynasty, which had German sympathies. The Romanian possession of Bessarabia and their general pride in their Latin heritage, as reflected in the name of the country, set up a barrier to good relations with Russia, although the majority of Romanians were members of the Orthodox Church.

The political and military weakness of the Ottoman Empire in the face of Russian pressure and Balkan nationalisms made it obvious that it must westernize and it must reform, if it was going to survive. Broad verbal promises in this direction were made by the sultan in the period 1839-1877, and there were even certain efforts to execute these promises. The army was reorganized on a European basis with the assistance of Prussia. Local government was reorganized and centralized, and the fiscal system greatly improved, chiefly by curtailing the use of tax farmers; government officials were shifted from a fee-paid basis to a salaried basis; the slave market was abolished, although this meant a large reduction in the sultan's income; the religious monopoly in education was curtailed and a considerable impetus given to secular technical education. Finally, in 1856, in an edict forced on the sultan by the Great Powers, an effort was made to establish a secular state in Turkey by abolishing all inequalities based on creed in respect to personal freedom, law, property, taxation, and eligibility for office or military service.

In practice, none of these paper reforms was very effective. It was not possible to change the customs of the Turkish people by paper enactments. Indeed, any attempt to do so aroused the anger of many Muslims to the point where their personal conduct toward non-Muslims became worse. At the same time, these promises led the non-Muslims to expect better treatment, so that relations between the various groups were exacerbated. Even if the sultan had had every intention of carrying out his stated reforms, he would have had extraordinary difficulties in doing so because of the structure of Turkish society and the complete lack of trained administrators or even of literate people. The Turkish state was a theocratic state, and Turkish society was a patriarchal or even a tribal society. Any movement toward secularization or toward social equality could easily result, not in reform, but in complete destruction of the society by dissolving the religious and authoritarian relationships which held both the state and society together. But the movement toward reform lacked the wholehearted support of the sultan; it aroused the opposition of the more conservative, and in some ways more loyal, groups of Muslims; it aroused the opposition of many liberal Turks because it was derived from Western pressure on Turkey; it aroused opposition from many Christian or non-Turkish groups who feared that a successful reform might weaken their chances of breaking up the Ottoman Empire completely; and the efforts at reform, being aimed at the theocratic character of the Turkish state, counteracted the sultan's efforts to make himself the leader of Pan-Islamism and to use his title of caliph to mobilize non-Ottoman Muslims in India, Russia, and the East to support him in his struggles with the European Great Powers.

On the other hand, it was equally clear that Turkey could not meet any European state on a basis of military equality until it was westernized. At the same time, the cheap machinery-made industrial products of the Western Powers began to pour into Turkey and to destroy the ability of the handicraft artisans of Turkey to make a living. This could not be prevented by tariff protection because the sultan was bound by international agreements to keep his customs duties at a low level. At the same time, the appeal of Western ways of life began to be felt by some of the sultan's subjects who knew them. These began to agitate for industrialism or for railroad construction, for wider opportunities in education, especially technical education, for reforms in the Turkish language, and for new, less formal, kinds of Turkish literature, for honest and impersonal methods of administration in justice and public finance, and for all those things which, by making the Western Powers strong, made them a danger to Turkey.

The sultan made feeble efforts to reform in the period 1838-1875, but by the latter date he was completely disillusioned with these efforts, and shifted over to a policy of ruthless censorship and repression; this repression led, at last, to the so-called "Young Turk" rebellion of 1908.

The shift from feeble reform to merciless repression coincided with a renewal of the Russian attacks on Turkey. These attacks were incited by Turkish butchery of Bulgarian agitators in Macedonia and a successful Turkish war on Serbia. Appealing to the doctrine of Pan-Slavism, Russia came to the rescue of the Bulgars and Serbs, and quickly defeated the Turks, forcing them to accept the Treaty of San Stefano before any of the Western Powers could intervene (1877). Among other provisions, this treaty set up a large state of Bulgaria, including much of Macedonia, independent of Turkey and under Russian military occupation.

This Treaty of San Stefano, especially the provision for a large Bulgarian state, which, it was feared, would be nothing more than a Russian tool, was completely unacceptable to England and Austria. Joining with France, Germany, and Italy, they forced Russia to come to a conference at Berlin where the treaty was completely rewritten (1878). The independence of Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania was accepted, as were the Russian acquisitions of Kars and Batum, east of the Black Sea. Romania had to give Bessarabia to Russia, but received Dobruja from the sultan. Bulgaria itself, the crucial issue of the conference, was divided into three parts: (a) the strip between the Danube and the Balkan mountains was set up as an autonomous and tribute-paying state under Turkish suzerainty; (b) the portion of Bulgaria south of the mountains was restored to the sultan as the province of Eastern Rumelia to be ruled by a Christian governor approved by the Powers; and (c) Macedonia, still farther south, was restored to Turkey in return for promises of administrative reforms. Austria was given the right to occupy Bosnia, Herzegovina, and the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar (a strip between Serbia and Montenegro). The English, by a separate agreement with Turkey, received the island of Cyprus to hold as long as Russia held Batum and Kars. The other states received nothing, although Greece submitted claims to Crete, Thessaly, Epirus, and Macedonia, while France talked about her interest in Tunis, and Italy made no secret of her ambitions in Tripoli and Albania. Only Germany asked for nothing, and received the sultan's thanks and friendship for its moderation.

The Treaty of Berlin of 1878 was a disaster from almost every point of view because it left every state, except Austria, with its appetite whetted and its hunger unsatisfied. The Pan-Slavs, the Romanians, the Bulgars, the South Slavs, the Greeks, and the Turks were all disgruntled with the settlement. The agreement turned the Balkans into an open powder keg from which the spark was kept away only with great difficulty and only for twenty years. It also opened up the prospect of the liquidation of the Turkish possessions in North Africa, thus inciting a rivalry between the Great Powers which was a constant danger to the peace in the period 1878-1912. The Romanian loss of Bessarabia, the Bulgarian loss of Eastern Rumelia, the South Slav loss of its hope of reaching the Adriatic or even of reaching Montenegro (because of the Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Novi-Bazar), the Greek failure to get Thessaly or Crete, and the complete discomfiture of the Turks created an atmosphere of general dissatisfaction. In the midst of this, the promise of reforms to Macedonia without any provision for enforcing this promise called forth hopes and agitations which could neither be satisfied nor quieted. Even Austria, which, on the face of it, had obtained more than she could really have expected, had obtained in Bosnia the instrument which was to lead eventually to the total destruction of the Habsburg Empire. This acquisition had been encouraged by Bismarck as a method of diverting Austrian ambitions southward to the Adriatic and out of Germany. But by placing Austria, in this way, in the position of being the chief obstacle in the path of the South Slav dreams of unity, Bismarck was also creating the occasion for the destruction of the Hohenzollern Empire. It is clear that European diplomatic history from 1878 to 1919 is little more than a commentary on the mistakes of the Congress of Berlin.

To Russia the events of 1878 were a bitter disappointment. Even the small Bulgarian state which emerged from the settlement gave them little satisfaction. With a constitution dictated by Russia and under a prince, Alexander of Battenberg, who was a nephew of the czar, the Bulgarians showed an uncooperative spirit which profoundly distressed the Russians. As a result, when Eastern Rumelia revolted in 188; and demanded union with Bulgaria, the change was opposed by Russia and encouraged by Austria. Serbia, in its bitterness, went to war with Bulgaria but was defeated and forced to make peace by Austria. The union of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia was accepted, on face-saving terms, by the sultan. Russian objections were kept within limits by the power of Austria and England but were strong enough to force the abdication of Alexander of Battenberg. Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was elected to succeed Alexander, but was unacceptable to Russia and was recognized by none of the Powers until his reconciliation with Russia in 1896. The state was generally in turmoil during this period, plots and assassinations steadily following one another. A Macedonian revolutionary organization known as IMRO, working for independence for their area, adopted an increasingly terrorist policy, killing any Bulgarian or Romanian statesman who did not work wholeheartedly in cooperation with their efforts. Agitated Bulgarians formed insurgent bands which made raids into Macedonia, and insurrection became endemic in the province, bursting out in full force in 1902. By that date Serb and Greek bands had joined in the confusion. The Powers intervened at that point to inaugurate a program of reform in Macedonia under Austro-Russian supervision.

The Congress of Berlin began the liquidation of the Turkish position in North Africa. France, which had been occupying Algeria since 1830, established a French protectorate over Tunis as well in 1881. This led to the British occupation of Egypt the following year. Not to be outdone, Italy put in a claim for Tripoli but could get no more than an exchange of notes, known as the Mediterranean Agreement of 1887, by which England, Italy, Austria, Spain, and Germany promised to maintain the status quo in the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Aegean, and the Black seas, unless all parties agreed to changes. The only concrete advantage to Italy in this was a British promise of support in North Africa in return for Italian support of the British position in Egypt. This provided only tenuous satisfaction for the Italian ambitions in Tripoli, but it was reinforced in 1900 by a French-Italian agreement by which Italy gave France a free hand in Morocco in return for a free hand in Tripoli.

Berlin to Baghdad Railroad Scheme

By 1900 an entirely new factor began to intrude into the Eastern Question. Under Bismarck (1862-1890) Germany had avoided all non-European adventures. Under William II (1888-1918) any kind of adventure, especially a remote and uncertain one, was welcomed. In the earlier period Germany had concerned itself with the Near East Question only as a member of the European "concert of Powers" and with a few incidental issues such as the use of German officers to train the Turkish Army. After 1889 the situation was different. Economically, the Germans began to invade Anatolia by establishing trading agencies and banking facilities; politically, Germany sought to strengthen Turkey's international position in every way. This effort was symbolized by the German Kaiser's two visits to the sultan in 1889 and 1898. On the latter occasion he solemnly promised his friendship to "the Sultan Abdul Hamid and the three hundred million Muhammadans who revere him as caliph." Most important, perhaps, was the projected "Berlin to Bagdad" railway scheme which completed its main trunk line from the Austro-Hungarian border to Nusaybin in northern Mesopotamia by September 1918. This project was of the greatest economic, strategic, and political importance not only to the Ottoman Empire and the Near East but to the whole of Europe. Economically, it tapped a region of great mineral and agricultural resources, including the world's greatest petroleum reserves. These were brought into contact with Constantinople and, beyond that, with central and northwestern Europe. Germany, which was industrialized late, had a great, unsatisfied demand for food and raw materials and a great capacity to manufacture industrial products which could be exported to pay for such food and raw materials. Efforts had been made and continued to be made by Germany to find a solution to this problem by opening trade relations with South America, the Far East, and North America. Banking facilities and a merchant marine were being established to encourage such trade relations. But the Germans, with their strong strategic sense, knew well that relations with the areas mentioned were at the mercy of the British fleet, which would, almost unquestionably, control the seas during wartime. The Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway solved these crucial problems. It put the German metallurgical industry in touch with the great metal resources of Anatolia; it put the German textile industry in touch with the supplies of wool, cotton, and hemp of the Balkans, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia; in fact, it brought to almost every branch of German industry the possibility of finding a solution for its critical market and raw-material problems. Best of all, these connections, being almost entirely overland, would be within reach of the German Army and beyond the reach of the British Navy.

For Turkey itself the railway was equally significant. Strategically it made it possible, for the first time, for Turkey to mobilize her full power in the Balkans, the Caucasus area, the Persian Gulf, or the Levant. It greatly increased the economic prosperity of the whole country; it could be run (as it was after 1911) on Mesopotamian petroleum; it provided markets and thus incentives for increased production of agricultural and mineral products; it greatly reduced political discontent, public disorder, and banditry in the areas through which it ran; it greatly increased the revenues of the Ottoman treasury in spite of the government's engagement to pay subsidies to the railroad for each mile of track built and for a guaranteed income per mile each year.

The Ottoman Empire Was Divided into Exclusive Spheres of

Influence by Money Powers

The Great Powers showed mild approval of the Baghdad Railway until about 1900. Then, for more than ten years, Russia, Britain, and France showed violent disapproval, and did all they could to obstruct the project. After 1910 this disapproval was largely removed by a series of agreements by which the Ottoman Empire was divided into exclusive spheres of influence. During the period of disapproval the Great Powers concerned issued such a barrage of propaganda against the plan that it is necessary, even today, to warn against its influence. They described the Baghdad Railway as the entering wedge of German imperialist aggression seeking to weaken and destroy the Ottoman Empire and the stakes of the other Powers in the area. The evidence shows quite the contrary. Germany was the only Great Power which wanted the Ottoman Empire to be strong and intact. Britain wanted it to be weak and intact. France generally shared the British point of view, although the French, with a $500,000,000 investment in the area, wanted Turkey to be prosperous as well. Russia wanted it to be weak and partitioned, a view which was shared by the Italians and, to some extent, by the Austrians.

The Baghdad Railway

The Germans were not only favorably inclined toward Turkey; their conduct seems to have been completely fair in regard to the administration of the Baghdad Railway itself. At a time when American and other railways were practicing wholesale discrimination between customers in regard to rates and freight handling, the Germans had the same rates and same treatment for all, including Germans and non-Germans. They worked to make the railroad efficient and profitable, although their income from it was guaranteed by the Turkish government. In consequence the Turkish payments to the railroad steadily declined, and the government was able to share in its profits to the extent of almost three million francs in 1914. Moreover, the Germans did not seek to monopolize control of the railroad, offering to share equally with France and England and eventually with other Powers. France accepted this offer in 1899, but Britain continued to refuse, and placed every obstacle in the path of the project. When the Ottoman government in 1911 sought to raise their customs duties from 1 l to 14 percent in order to finance the continued construction of the railway, Britain prevented this. In order to carry on the project, the Germans sold their railroad interests in the Balkans and gave up the Ottoman building subsidy of $275,000 a kilometer. In striking contrast to this attitude, the Russians forced the Turks to change the original route of the line from northern Anatolia to southern Anatolia by threatening to take immediate measures to collect all the arrears, amounting to over 57 million francs, due to the czar from Turkey under the Treaty of 1878. The Russians regarded the projected railway as a strategic threat to their Armenian frontier. Ultimately, in 1900, they forced the sultan to promise to grant no concessions to build railways in northern Anatolia or Armenia except with Russian approval. The French government, in spite of the French investments in Turkey of :.5 billion francs, refused to allow Baghdad Railway securities to be handled on the Paris Stock Exchange: To block the growth of German Catholic missionary activities in the Ottoman Empire, the French persuaded the Pope to issue an encyclical ordering all missionaries in that empire to communicate with the Vatican through the French consulates. The British opposition became intense only in April, 1903. Early in that month Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne made an agreement for joint German, French, and British control of the railroad. Within three weeks this agreement was repudiated by the government because of newspaper protests against it, although it would have reduced the Turks and Germans together to only fourteen out of thirty votes on the board of directors of the railway. When the Turkish government in 1910 tried to borrow abroad $30 million, secured by the customs receipts of the country, it was summarily rebuffed in Paris and London, but obtained the sum without hesitation in Berlin. In view of these facts, the growth of German prestige and the decline in favor of the Western Powers at the sultan's court is not surprising, and goes far to explain the Turkish intervention on the side of the Central Powers in the war of 1914-1918.

Secret Agreement Divides Turkey into Spheres of Foreign Influence

The Baghdad Railway played no real role in the outbreak of the war of 1914 because the Germans in the period 1910-1914 were able to reduce the Great Powers' objections to the scheme. This was done through a series of agreements which divided Turkey into spheres of foreign influence. In November, 1910, a German-Russian agreement at Potsdam gave Russia a free hand in northern Persia, withdrew all Russian opposition to the Baghdad Railway, and pledged both parties to support equal trade opportunities for all (the "open-door" policy) in their respective areas of influence in the Near East. The French were given 2,000 miles of railway concessions in western and northern Anatolia and in Syria in 1910-1912 and signed a secret agreement with the Germans in February 1914, by which these regions were recognized as French "spheres of influence," while the route of the Baghdad Railway was recognized as a German sphere of influence; both Powers promised to work to increase the Ottoman tax receipts; the French withdrew their opposition to the railway; and the French gave the Germans the 70-million-franc investment which the French already had in the Baghdad Railway in return for an equal amount in the Turkish bond issue of 1911, which France had earlier rebuffed, plus a lucrative discount on a new Ottoman bond issue of 1914.

Various Monopolies Over Natural Resources Established

The British drove a much harder bargain with the Germans. By an agreement of June 1914, Britain withdrew her opposition to the Baghdad Railway, allowed Turkey to raise her customs from 11 percent to 15 percent, and accepted a German sphere of interest along the railway route in return for promises (1) that the railway would not be extended to the Persian Gulf 'out would stop at Basra on the Tigris River, (2) that British capitalists would be given a monopoly on the navigation of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and exclusive control over irrigation projects based on these rivers, (3) that two British subjects would be given seats on the board of directors of the Baghdad Railway, (4) that Britain would have exclusive control over the commercial activities of Kuwait, the only good port on the upper Persian Gulf: (5) that a monopoly over the oil resources of the area from Mosul to Baghdad would be given to a new corporation in which British finances would have a half-interest, Royal Dutch Shell Company a quarter-interest, and the Germans a quarter-interest; and (6) that both Powers would support the "open-door" policy in commercial activities in Asiatic Turkey. Unfortunately, this agreement, as well as the earlier ones with other Powers, became worthless with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. However, it is still important to recognize that the Entente Powers forced upon the Germans a settlement dividing Turkey into "spheres of interest" in place of the projected German settlement based on international cooperation in the economic reconstruction of the area.

The Struggles of the Money Powers for Profit and Influence

These struggles of the Great Powers for profit and influence in the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire could not fail to have profound effects in Turkish domestic affairs. Probably the great mass of the sultan's subjects were still untouched by these events, but an animated minority was deeply stirred. This minority received no encouragement from the despotic Abdul-Hamid II, sultan from 1876 to 1909. While eager for economic improvements, Abdul-Hamid II was opposed to the spread of the Western ideas of liberalism, constitutionalism, nationalism, or democracy, and did all he could to prevent their propagation by censorship, by restrictions on foreign travel or study abroad by Turks, and by an elaborate system of arbitrary police rule and governmental espionage. As a result, the minority of liberal, nationalistic, or progressive Turks had to organize abroad. This they did at Geneva in 1891 in a group which is generally known as the "Young Turks." Their chief difficulty was to reconcile the animosities which existed between the many linguistic groups among the sultan's subjects. This was done in a series of congresses held in Paris, notably in 190' and in 1907. At the latter meeting were representatives of the Turks, Armenians, Bulgars, Jews, Arabs, and Albanians. In the meantime, this secret organization had penetrated the sultan's army, which was seething with discontent. The plotters were so successful that they were able to revolt in July 1908, and force the sultan to reestablish the Constitution of 1876. At once divisions appeared among the rebel leaders, notably between those who wished a centralized state and those who accepted the subject nationalities' demands for decentralization. Moreover, the orthodox Muslims formed a league to resist secularization, and the army soon saw that its chief demands for better pay and improved living conditions were not going to be met. Abdul-Hamid took advantage of these divisions to organize a violent counterrevolution (April 1909). It was crushed, the sultan was deposed, and the Young Turks began to impose their ideas of a dictatorial Turkish national state with ruthless severity. A wave of resistance arose from the non-Turkish groups and the orthodox Muslims. No settlement of these disputes was achieved by the outbreak of the World War in 1914. Indeed, as we shall see in a later chapter, the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 precipitated a series of international crises of which the outbreak of war in 1914 was the latest and most disastrous.

Chapter 9—The British Imperial Crisis:Africa, Ireland, and India to 1926

Introduction

The old statement that England acquired its empire in a fit of absentmindedness is amusing but does not explain very much. It does, however, contain an element of truth: much of the empire was acquired by private individuals and commercial firms, and was taken over by the British government much later. The motives which impelled the government to annex areas which its citizens had been exploiting were varied, both in time and in place, and were frequently much different from what an outsider might believe.

Britain acquired the world's greatest empire because it possessed certain advantages which other countries lacked. We mention three of these advantages: (1) that it was an island, (2) that it was in the Atlantic, and (3) that its social traditions at home produced the will and the talents for imperial acquisition.

English Channel Provides Security for Britain

As an island off the coast of Europe, Britain had security as long as it had control of the narrow seas. It had such control from the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 until the creation of new weapons based on air power in the period after 1935. The rise of the German Air Force under Hitler, the invention of the long-range rocket projectiles (V-2 weapon) in 1944, and the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs in 1945-1955 destroyed England's security by reducing the defensive effectiveness of the English Channel. But in the period 1588-1942, in which Britain controlled the seas, the Channel gave England security and made its international position entirely different from that of any continental Power. Because Britain had security, it had freedom of action. That means it had a choice whether to intervene or to stay out of the various disputes which arose on the Continent of Europe or elsewhere in the world. Moreover, if it intervened, it could do so on a limited commitment, restricting its contribution of men, energy, money, and wealth to whatever amount it wished. If such a limited commitment were exhausted or lost, so long as the British fleet controlled the seas, Britain had security, and thus had freedom to choose if it would break off its intervention or increase its commitment. Moreover, England could make even a small commitment of its resources of decisive importance by using this commitment in support of the second strongest Power on the Continent against the strongest Power, thus hampering the strongest Power and making the second Power temporarily the strongest, as long as it acted in accord with Britain's wishes. In this way, by following balance-of-power tactics, Britain was able to play a decisive role on the Continent, keep the Continent divided and embroiled in its own disputes, and do this with a limited commitment of Britain's own resources, leaving a considerable surplus of energy, manpower, and wealth available for acquiring an empire overseas. In addition, Britain's unique advantage in having security through a limited commitment of resources by control of the sea was one of the contributing factors which allowed Britain to develop its unique social structure, its parliamentary system, its wide range of civil liberties, and its great economic advance.

European Wars

The Powers on the Continent had none of these advantages. Since each could be invaded by its neighbors at any time, each had security, and thus freedom of action, only on rare and brief occasions. When the security of a continental Power was threatened by a neighbor, it had no freedom of action, but had to defend itself with all its resources. Clearly, it would be impossible for France to say to itself, "We shall oppose German hegemony on the Continent only to the extent of 50,000 men or of $10 million." Yet as late as 1939, Chamberlain informed France that England's commitment on the Continent for this purpose would be no more than two divisions.

European Powers Focus on the Continent

Since the continental Powers had neither security nor freedom of action, their position on the Continent always was paramount over their ambitions for world empire, and these latter always had to be sacrificed for the sake of the former whenever a conflict arose. France was unable to hold on to its possessions in India or in North America in the eighteenth century because so much of its resources had to be used to bolster French security against Prussia or Austria. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803 because his primary concern had to be his position on the Continent. Bismarck tried to discourage Germany from embarking on any overseas adventures in the period after 1871 because he saw that Germany must be a continental power or be nothing. Again, France in 1882 had to yield Egypt to Britain, and in 1898 had to yield the Sudan in the same way, because it saw that it could not engage in any colonial dispute with Britain while the German Army stood across the Rhineland. This situation was so clear that all the lesser continental Powers with overseas colonial possessions, such as Portugal, Belgium, or the Netherlands, had to collaborate with Britain, or, at the very least, be carefully neutral. So long as the ocean highway from these countries to their overseas empires was controlled by the British fleet, they could not afford to embark on a policy hostile to Britain, regardless of their personal feelings on the subject. It is no accident that Britain's most constant international backing in the two centuries following the Methuen Treaty of 1703 came from Portugal and that Britain has felt free to negotiate with a third Power, like Germany, regarding the disposition of the Portuguese colonies, as she did in 1898 and tried to do in 1937-1939.

Britain's Control of the Sea

Britain's position on the Atlantic, combined with her naval control of the sea, gave her a great advantage when the new lands to the west of that ocean became one of the chief sources of commercial and naval wealth in the period after 1588. Lumber, tar, and ships were supplied from the American colonies to Britain in the period before the advent of iron, steam-driven ships (after 1860), and these ships helped to establish Britain's mercantile supremacy. At the same time, Britain's insular position deprived her monarchy of any need for a large professional, mercenary army such as the kings on the Continent used as the chief bulwark of royal absolutism. As a result, the kings of England were unable to prevent the landed gentry from taking over the control of the government in the period 1642-1690, and the kings of England became constitutional monarchs. Britain's security behind her navy allowed this struggle to go to a decision without any important outside interference, and permitted a rivalry between monarch and aristocracy which would have been suicidal on the insecure grounds of continental Europe.

The Landed Oligarchy in Britain

Britain's security combined with the political triumph of the landed oligarchy to create a social tradition entirely unlike that on the Continent. One result of these two factors was that England did not obtain a bureaucracy such as appeared on the Continent. This lack of a separate bureaucracy loyal to the monarch can be seen in the weakness of the professional army (already mentioned) and also in the lack of a bureaucratic judicial system. In England, the gentry and the younger sons of the landed oligarchy studied law in the Inns of Court and obtained a feeling for tradition and the sanctity of due process of law while still remaining a part of the landed class. In fact this class became the landed class in England just because they obtained control of the bar and the bench and were, thus, in a position to judge all disputes about real property in their own favor. Control of the courts and of the Parliament made it possible for this ruling group in England to override the rights of the peasants in land, to eject them from the land, to enclose the open fields of the medieval system, to deprive the cultivators of their manorial rights and thus to reduce them to the condition of landless rural laborers or of tenants. This advance of the enclosure movement in England made possible the Agricultural Revolution, greatly depopulated the rural areas of England (as described in The Deserted Village of Oliver Goldsmith), and provided a surplus population for the cities, the mercantile and naval marine, and for overseas colonization.

The Unique Status of the Landed Oligarchy in Britain

The landed oligarchy which arose in England differed from the landed aristocracy of continental Europe in the three points already mentioned: (1) it got control of the government; (2) it was not opposed by a professional army, a bureaucracy, or a professional judicial system, but, on the contrary, it took over the control of these adjuncts of government itself, generally serving without pay, and making access to these positions difficult for outsiders by making such access expensive; and (3) it obtained complete control of the land as well as political, religious, and social control of the villages. In addition, the landed oligarchy of England was different from that on the Continent because it was not a nobility. This lack was reflected in three important factors. On the Continent a noble was excluded from marrying outside his class or from engaging in commercial enterprise; moreover, access to the nobility by persons of non-noble birth was very difficult, and could hardly be achieved in much less than three generations. In England, the landed oligarchy could engage in any kind of commerce or business and could marry anyone without question (provided she was rich); moreover, while access to the gentry in England was a slow process which might require generations of effort acquiring land-holdings in a single locality, access to the peerage by act of the government took only a moment, and could be achieved on the basis of either wealth or service. As a consequence of all these differences, the landed upper class in England was open to the influx of new talent, new money, and new blood, while the continental nobility was deprived of these valuable acquisitions.

England Developed an Aristocracy

While the landed upper class of England was unable to become a nobility (that is, a caste based on exalted birth), it was able to become an aristocracy (that is, an upper class distinguished by traditions and behavior). The chief attributes of this aristocratic upper class in England were (1) that it should be trained in an expensive, exclusive, masculine, and relatively Spartan educational system centering about the great boys' schools like Eton, Harrow, or Winchester; (2) that it should imbibe from this educational system certain distinctive attitudes of leadership, courage, sportsmanship, team play, self-sacrifice, disdain for physical comforts, and devotion to duty; (3) that it should be prepared in later life to devote a great deal of time and energy to unpaid tasks of public significance, as justices of the peace, on county councils, in the county militia, or in other services. Since all the sons of the upper classes received the same training, while only the oldest, by primogeniture, was entitled to take over the income-yielding property of the family, all the younger sons had to go out into the world to seek their fortunes, and, as likely as not, would do their seeking overseas. At the same time, the uneventful life of the typical English village or county, completely controlled by the upperclass oligarchy, made it necessary for the more ambitious members of the lower classes to seek advancement outside the county and even outside England. From these two sources were recruited the men who acquired Britain's empire and the men who colonized it.

The British Empire

The English have not always been unanimous in regarding the empire as a source of pride and benefit. In fact, the middle generation of the nineteenth century was filled with persons, such as Gladstone, who regarded the empire with profound suspicion. They felt that it was a source of great expense; they were convinced that it involved England in remote strategic problems which could easily lead to wars England had no need to fight; they could see no economic advantage in having an empire, since the existence of free trade (which this generation accepted) would allow commerce to flow no matter who held colonial areas; they were convinced that any colonial areas, no matter at what cost they might be acquired, would eventually separate from the mother country, voluntarily if they were given the rights of Englishmen, or by rebellion, as the American colonies had done, if they were deprived of such rights. In general, the "Little Englanders," as they were called, were averse to colonial expansion on the grounds of cost.

Colonies Could Be a Source of Riches

Although upholders of the "Little England" point of view, men like Gladstone or Sir William Harcourt, continued in political prominence until 1895, this point of view was in steady retreat after 1870. In the Liberal Party the Little Englanders were opposed by imperialists like Lord Rosebery even before 1895; after that date, a younger group of imperialists, like Asquith, Grey, and Haldane took over the party. In the Conservative Party, where the anti-imperialist idea had never been strong, moderate imperialists like Lord Salisbury were followed by more active imperialists like Joseph Chamberlain, or Lords Curzon, Selborne, and Milner. There were many factors which led to the growth of imperialism after 1870, and many obvious manifestations of that growth. The Royal Colonial Institute was founded in 1868 to fight the "Little England" idea; Disraeli as prime minister (1874-1880) dramatized the profit and glamour of empire by such acts as the purchase of control of the Suez Canal and by granting Queen Victoria the title of Empress of India; after 1870 it became increasingly evident that, however expensive colonies might be to a government, they could be fantastically profitable to individuals and companies supported by such governments; moreover, with the spread of democracy and the growing influence of the press and the expanding need for campaign contributions, individuals who made fantastic profits in overseas adventures could obtain favorable support from their governments by contributing some part of their profits to politicians' expenses; the efforts of King Leopold II of Belgium, using Henry Stanley, to obtain the Congo area as his own preserve in 1876-1880, started a contagious fever of colony-grabbing in Africa which lasted for more than thirty years; the discovery of diamonds (in 1869) and of gold (in 1886) in South Africa, especially in the Boer Transvaal Republic, intensified this fever.

John Ruskin

The new imperialism after 1870 was quite different in tone from that which the Little Englanders had opposed earlier. The chief changes were that it was justified on grounds of moral duty and of social reform and not, as earlier, on grounds of missionary activity and material advantage. The man most responsible for this change was John Ruskin.

Until 1870 there was no professorship of fine arts at Oxford, but in that year, thanks to the Slade bequest, John Ruskin was named to such a chair. He hit Oxford like an earthquake, not so much because he talked about fine arts, but because he talked also about the empire and England's downtrodden masses, and above all because he talked about all three of these things as moral issues. Until the end of the nineteenth century the poverty-stricken masses in the cities of England lived in want, ignorance, and crime very much as they have been described by Charles Dickens. Ruskin spoke to the Oxford undergraduates as members of the privileged, ruling class. He told them that they were the possessors of a magnificent tradition of education, beauty, rule of law, freedom, decency, and self-discipline but that this tradition could not be saved, and did not deserve to be saved, unless it could be extended to the lower classes in England itself and to the non-English masses throughout the world. If this precious tradition were not extended to these two great majorities, the minority of upper-class Englishmen would ultimately be submerged by these majorities and the tradition lost. To prevent this, the tradition must be extended to the masses and to the empire.

Cecil Rhodes Sets Up a Monopoly Over the Gold and

Diamond Mines in South Africa

Ruskin's message had a sensational impact. His inaugural lecture was copied out in longhand by one undergraduate, Cecil Rhodes, who kept it with him for thirty years. Rhodes (1853-1902) feverishly exploited the diamond and goldfields of South Africa, rose to be prime minister of the Cape Colony (1890-1896), contributed money to political parties, controlled parliamentary seats both in England and in South Africa, and sought to win a strip of British territory across Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to Egypt and to join these two extremes together with a telegraph line and ultimately with a Cape-to-Cairo Railway. Rhodes inspired devoted support for his goals from others in South Africa and in England. With financial support from Lord Rothschild and Alfred Beit, he was able to monopolize the diamond mines of South Africa as De Beers Consolidated Mines and to build up a great gold mining enterprise as Consolidated Gold Fields. In the middle 1890's Rhodes had a personal income of at least a million pounds sterling a year (then about five million dollars) which was spent so freely for his mysterious purposes that he was usually overdrawn on his account. These purposes centered on his desire to federate the English-speaking peoples and to bring all the habitable portions of the world under their control. For this purpose Rhodes left part of his great fortune to found the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford in order to spread the English ruling class tradition throughout the English-speaking world as Ruskin had wanted.

Cecil Rhodes Organized a Secret Society in 1891

Among Ruskin's most devoted disciples at Oxford were a group of intimate friends including Arnold Toynbee, Alfred (later Lord) Milner, Arthur Glazebrook, George (later Sir George) Parkin, Philip Lyttelton Gell, and Henry (later Sir Henry) Birchenough. These were so moved by Ruskin that they devoted the rest of their lives to carrying out his ideas. A similar group of Cambridge men including Reginald Baliol Brett (Lord Esher), Sir John B. Seeley, Albert (Lord) Grey, and Edmund Garrett were also aroused by Ruskin's message and devoted their lives to extension of the British Empire and uplift of England's urban masses as two parts of one project which they called "extension of the English-speaking idea." They were remarkably successful in these aims because England's most sensational journalist William T. Stead (1849-1912), an ardent social reformer and imperialist, brought them into association with Rhodes. This association was formally established on February 5, 1891, when Rhodes and Stead organized a secret society of which Rhodes had been dreaming for sixteen years. In this secret society Rhodes was to be leader; Stead, Brett (Lord Esher), and Milner were to form an executive committee; Arthur (Lord) Balfour, (Sir) Harry Johnston, Lord Rothschild, Albert (Lord) Grey, and others were listed as potential members of a "Circle of Initiates"; while there was to be an outer circle known as the "Association of Helpers" (later organized by Milner as the Round Table organization). Brett was invited to join this organization the same day and Milner a couple of weeks later, on his return from Egypt. Both accepted with enthusiasm. Thus the central part of the secret society was established by March 1891. It continued to function as a formal group, although the outer circle was, apparently, not organized until 1909-1913.

Financial Backing of the Secret Society

This group was able to get access to Rhodes's money after his death in 1902 and also to the funds of loyal Rhodes supporters like Alfred Beit (1853-1906) and Sir Abe Bailey (1864-1940). With this backing they sought to extend and execute the ideals that Rhodes had obtained from Ruskin and Stead. Milner was the chief Rhodes Trustee and Parkin was Organizing Secretary of the Rhodes Trust after 1902, while Gell and Birchenough, as well as others with similar ideas, became officials of the British South Africa Company. They were joined in their efforts by other Ruskinite friends of Stead's like Lord Grey, Lord Esher, and Flora Shaw (later Lady Lugard). In 1890, by a stratagem too elaborate to describe here, Miss Shaw became Head of the Colonial Department of The Times while still remaining on the payroll of Stead's Pall Mall Gazette, In this post she played a major role in the next ten years in carrying into execution the imperial schemes of Cecil Rhodes, to whom Stead had introduced her in 1889.

The Toynbee Hall Is Set Up

In the meantime, in 1884, acting under Ruskin's inspiration, a group which included Arnold Toynbee, Milner, Gell, Grey, Seeley, and Michael Glazebrook founded the first "settlement house," an organization by which educated, upper-class people could live in the slums in order to assist, instruct, and guide the poor, with particular emphasis on social welfare and adult education. The new enterprise, set up in East London with P. L. Gell as chairman, was named Toynbee Hall after Arnold Toynbee who died, aged 31, in 1883. This was the original model for the thousands of settlement houses, such as Hull House in Chicago, now found throughout the world, and was one of the seeds from which the modern movement for adult education and university extension grew.

Roundtable Group Established

As governor-general and high commissioner of South Africa in the period 1897-1905, Milner recruited a group of young men, chiefly from Oxford and from Toynbee Hall, to assist him in organizing his administration. Through his influence these men were able to win influential posts in government and international finance and became the dominant influence in British imperial and foreign affairs up to 1939. Under Milner in South Africa they were known as Milner's Kindergarten until 1910. In 1909-1913 they organized semi-secret groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the chief British dependencies and the United States. These still function in eight countries. They kept in touch with each other by personal correspondence and frequent visits, and through an influential quarterly magazine, The Round Table, founded in 1910 and largely supported by Sir Abe Bailey's money.

The Royal Institute and Council on Foreign Relations Are Set Up

In 1919 they founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) for which the chief financial supporters were Sir Abe Bailey and the Astor family (owners of The Times). Similar Institutes of International Affairs were established in the chief British dominions and in the United States (where it is known as the Council on Foreign Relations) in the period 1919-1927. After 1925 a somewhat similar structure of organizations, known as the Institute of Pacific Relations, was set up in twelve countries holding territory in the Pacific area, the units in each British dominion existing on an interlocking basis with the Round Table Group and the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the same country. In Canada the nucleus of this group consisted of Milner's undergraduate friends at Oxford (such as Arthur Glazebrook and George Parkin), while in South Africa and India the nucleus was made up of former members of Milner's Kindergarten. These included (Sir) Patrick Duncan, B. K. Long, Richard Feetham, and (Sir) Dougal Malcolm in South Africa and (Sir) William Marris, James (Lord) Meston, and their friend Malcolm (Lord) Hailey in India. The groups in Australia and New Zealand had been recruited by Stead (through his magazine The Review of Reviews) as early as 1890-1893; by Parkin, at Milner instigation, in the period 1889-1910, and by Lionel Curtis, also at Milner's request, in 1910-1919. The power and influence of this Rhodes-Milner group in British imperial affairs and in foreign policy since 1889, although not widely recognized, can hardly be exaggerated. We might mention as an example that this group dominated The Times from 1890 to 191, and has controlled it completely since 1912 (except for the years 1919-1922). Because The Times has been owned by the Astor family since 1922, this Rhodes-Milner group was sometimes spoken of as the "Cliveden Set," named after the Astor country house where they sometimes assembled. Numerous other papers and journals have been under the control or influence of this group since 1889. They have also established and influenced numerous university and other chairs of imperial affairs and international relations. Some of these are the Beit chairs at Oxford, the Montague Burton chair at Oxford, the Rhodes chair at London, the Stevenson chair at Chatham House, the Wilson chair at Aberystwyth, and others, as well as such important sources of influence as Rhodes House at Oxford.

Roundtable Groups Seek to Extend the British Empire

From 1884 to about 1915 the members of this group worked valiantly to extend the British Empire and to organize it in a federal system. They were constantly harping on the lessons to be learned from the failure of the American Revolution and the success of the Canadian federation of 1867, and hoped to federate the various parts of the empire as seemed feasible, then confederate the whole of it, with the United Kingdom, into a single organization. They also hoped to bring the United States into this organization to whatever degree was possible. Stead was able to get Rhodes to accept, in principle, a solution which might have made Washington the capital of the whole organization or allow parts of the empire to become states of the American Union. The varied character of the British imperial possessions, the backwardness of many of the native peoples involved, the independence of many of the white colonists overseas, and the growing international tension which culminated in the First World War made it impossible to carry out the plan for Imperial Federation, although the five colonies in Australia were joined into the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 and the four colonies in South Africa were joined into the Union of South Africa in 1910.

Egypt and the Sudan to 1922

Disraeli's purchase, with Rothschild money, of 176,602 shares of Suez Canal stock for £3,680,000 from the Khedive of Egypt in 1875 was motivated by concern for the British communications with India, just as the British acquisition of the Cape of Good Hope in 1814 had resulted from the same concern. But in imperial matters one step leads to another, and every acquisition obtained to protect an earlier acquisition requires a new advance at a later date to protect it. This was clearly true in Africa where such motivations gradually extended British control southward from Egypt and northward from the Cape until these were joined in central Africa with the conquest of German Tanganyika in 1916.

The extravagances of the Khedive Ismail (1863-1879), which had compelled the sale of his Suez Canal shares, led ultimately to the creation of an Anglo-French condominium to manage the Egyptian foreign debt and to the deposition of the khedive by his suzerain, the Sultan of Turkey. The condominium led to disputes and finally to open fighting between Egyptian nationalists and Anglo-French forces. When the French refused to join the British in a joint bombardment of Alexandria in 1882, the condominium was broken, and Britain reorganized the country in such a fashion that, while all public positions were held by Egyptians, a British army was in occupation, British "advisers" controlled all the chief governmental posts, and a British "resident," Sir Evelyn Baring (known as Lord Cromer after 1892), controlled all finances and really ruled the country until 1907.

Inspired by fanatical Muslim religious agitators (dervishes), the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmed led a Sudanese revolt against Egyptian control in 1883, massacred a British force under General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon at Khartoum, and maintained an independent Sudan for fifteen years. In 1898 a British force under (Lord) Kitchener, seeking to protect the Nile water supply of Egypt, fought its way southward against fanatical Sudanese tribesmen and won a decisive victory at Omdurman. An Anglo-Egyptian convention established a condominium known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in the area between Egypt and the Congo River. This area, which had lived in disorder for centuries, was gradually pacified, brought under the rule of law, irrigated by extensive hydraulic works, and brought under cultivation, producing, chiefly, long staple cotton.

East Central Africa to 19 10

South and east of the Sudan the struggle for a British Africa was largely in the hands of H. H. (Sir Harry) Johnston (1858-1927) and Frederick (later Lord) Lugard (1858-1945). These two, chiefly using private funds but frequently holding official positions, fought all over tropical Africa, ostensibly seeking to pacify it and to wipe out the Arab slave trade, but always possessing a burning desire to extend British rule. Frequently, these ambitions led to rivalries with supporters of French and German ambitions in the same regions. In 1884 Johnston obtained many concessions from native chiefs in the Kenya area, turning these over to the British East Africa Company in 1887. When this company went bankrupt in '895, most of its rights were taken over by the British government. In the meantime, Johnston had moved south, into a chaos of Arab slavers' intrigues and native unrest in Nyasaland (1888). Here his exploits were largely financed by Rhodes (1889-1893) in order to prevent the Portuguese Mozambique Company from pushing westward toward the Portuguese West African colony of Angola to block the Cape-to-Cairo route. Lord Salisbury made Nyasaland a British Protectorate after a deal with Rhodes in which the South African promised to pay £1,000 a year toward the cost of the new territory. About the same time Rhodes gave the Liberal Party a substantial financial contribution in return for a promise that they would not abandon Egypt. He had already (1888) given £10,000 to the Irish Home Rule Party on condition that it seek Home Rule for Ireland while keeping Irish members in the British Parliament as a step toward Imperial Federation.

Rhodes's plans received a terrible blow in 1890-1891 when Lord Salisbury sought to end the African disputes with Germany and Portugal by delimiting their territorial claims in South and East Africa. The Portuguese agreement of 1891 was never ratified, but the Anglo-German agreement of 1890 blocked Rhodes's route to Egypt by extending German East Africa (Tanganyika) west to the Belgium Congo. By the same agreement Germany abandoned Nyasaland, Uganda, and Zanzibar to Britain in return for the island of Heligoland in the Baltic Sea and an advantageous boundary in German Southwest Africa.

As soon as the German agreement was published, Lugard was sent by the British East Africa Company to overcome the resistance of native chiefs and slavers in Uganda (1890-1894). The bankruptcy of this company in 1895 seemed likely to lead to the abandonment of Uganda because of the Little Englander sentiment in the Liberal Party (which was in office in 1892-1895). Rhodes offered to take the area over himself and run it for £25,000 a year, but was refused. As a result of complex and secret negotiations in which Lord Rosebery was the chief figure, Britain kept Uganda, Rhodes was made a privy councilor, Rosebery replaced his father-in-law, Lord Rothschild, in Rhodes's secret group and was made a Trustee under Rhodes's next (and last) will. Rosebery tried to obtain a route for Rhodes's railway to the north across the Belgian Congo; Rosebery was informed of Rhodes's plans to finance an uprising of the English within the Transvaal (Boer) Republic and to send Dr. Jameson on a raid into that country "to restore order"; and, finally, Rhodes found the money to finance Kitchener's railway from Egypt to Uganda, using the South African gauge and engines given by Rhodes.

The economic strength which allowed Rhodes to do these things rested in his diamond and gold mines, the latter in the Transvaal, and thus not in British territory. North of Cape Colony, across the Orange River, was a Boer republic, the Orange Free State. Beyond this, and separated by the Vaal River, was another Boer republic, the Transvaal. Beyond this, across the Limpopo River and continuing northward to the Zambezi River, was the savage native kingdom of the Matabeles. With great personal daring, unscrupulous opportunism, and extravagant expenditure of money, Rhodes obtained an opening to the north, passing west of the Boer republics, by getting British control in Griqualand West (1880), Bechuanaland, and the Bechuanaland Protectorate (1885). In 1888 Rhodes obtained a vague but extensive mining concession from the Matabeles' chief, Lobengula, and gave it to the British South Africa Company organized for the purpose (1889). Rhodes obtained a charter so worded that the company had very extensive powers in an area without any northern limits beyond Bechuanaland Protectorate. Four years later the Matabeles were attacked and destroyed by Dr. Jameson, and their lands taken by the company. The company, however, was not a commercial success, and paid no dividends for thirty-five years (1889-1924) and only 12.5 shillings in forty-six years. This compares with 793.5 percent dividends paid by Rhodes's Consolidated Gold Fields in the five years 1889-1894 and the 125 percent dividend it paid in 1896. Most of the South Africa Company's money was used on public improvements like roads and schools, and no rich mines were found in its territory (known as Rhodesia) compared to those farther south in the Transvaal.

In spite of the terms of the Rhodes wills, Rhodes himself was not a racist. Nor was he a political democrat. He worked as easily and as closely with Jews, black natives, or Boers as he did with English. But he had a passionate belief in the value of a liberal education, and was attached to a restricted suffrage and even to a non-secret ballot. In South Africa he was a staunch friend of the Dutch and of the blacks, found his chief political support among the Boers, until at least 1895, and wanted restrictions on natives put on an educational rather than on a color basis. These ideas have generally been held by his group since and have played an important role in British imperial history. His greatest weakness rested on the fact that his passionate attachment to his goals made him overly tolerant in regard to methods. He did not hesitate to use either bribery or force to attain his ends if he judged they would be effective. This weakness led to his greatest errors, the Jameson Raid of 1895 and the Boer War of 1899-1902, errors which were disastrous for the future of the empire he loved.

South Africa, 1895-1933

By 1895 the Transvaal Republic presented an acute problem. All political control was in the hands of a rural, backward, Bible-reading, racist minority of Boers, while all economic wealth was in the hands of a violent, aggressive majority of foreigners (Uitlanders), most of whom lived in the new city of Johannesburg. The Uitlanders, who were twice as numerous as the Boers and owned two-thirds of the land and nine-tenths of the wealth of the country, were prevented from participating in political life or from becoming citizens (except after fourteen years' residence) and were irritated by a series of minor pinpricks and extortions such as tax differentials, a dynamite monopoly, and transportation restrictions) and by rumors that the Transvaal president, Paul Kruger, was intriguing to obtain some kind of German intervention and protection. At this point in 1895, Rhodes made his plans to overthrow Kruger's government by an uprising in Johannesburg, financed by himself and Beit, and led by his brother Frank Rhodes, Abe Bailey, and other supporters, followed by an invasion of the Transvaal by a force led by Jameson from Bechuanaland and Rhodesia. Flora Shaw used The Times to prepare public opinion in England, while Albert Grey and others negotiated with Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain for the official support that was necessary. Unfortunately, when the revolt fizzled out in Johannesburg, Jameson raided anyway in an effort to revive it, and was easily captured by the Boers. The public officials involved denounced the plot, loudly proclaimed their surprise at the event, and were able to whitewash most of the participants in the subsequent parliamentary inquiry. A telegram from the German Kaiser to President Kruger of the Transvaal, congratulating him on his success "in preserving the independence of his country without the need to call for aid from his friends," was built up by The Times into an example of brazen German interference in British affairs, and almost eclipsed Jameson's aggression.

Rhodes was stopped only temporarily, but he had lost the support of many of the Boers. For almost two years he and his friends stayed quiet, waiting for the storm to blow over. Then they began to act again. Propaganda, most of it true, about the plight of Uitlanders in the Transvaal Republic flooded England and South Africa from Flora Shaw, W. T. Stead, Edmund Garrett, and others; Milner was made high commissioner of South Africa (1897); Brett worked his way into the confidence of the monarchy to become its chief political adviser during a period of more than twenty-five years (he wrote almost daily letters of advice to King Edward during his reign, 1901-1910). By a process whose details are still obscure, a brilliant, young graduate of Cambridge, Jan Smuts, who had been a vigorous supporter of Rhodes and acted as his agent in Kimberley as late as 1895 and who was one of the most important members of the Rhodes-Milner group in the period 1908-1950, went to the Transvaal and, by violent anti-British agitation, became state secretary of that country (although a British subject) and chief political adviser to President Kruger; Milner made provocative troop movements on the Boer frontiers in spite of the vigorous protests of his commanding general in South Africa, who had to be removed; and, finally, war was precipitated when Smuts drew up an ultimatum insisting that the British troop movements cease and when this was rejected by Milner.

The Boer War (1899-1902) was one of the most important events in British imperial history. The ability of 40,000 Boer farmers to hold off ten times as many British for three years, inflicting a series of defeats on them over that period, destroyed faith in British power. Although the Boer republics were defeated and annexed in 1902, Britain's confidence was so shaken that it made a treaty with Japan in the same year providing that if either signer became engaged in war with two enemies in the Far East the other signer would come to the rescue. This treaty, which allowed Japan to attack Russia in 1904, lasted for twenty years, being extended to the Middle East in 1912. At the same time Germany's obvious sympathy with the Boers, combined with the German naval construction program of 1900, alienated the British people from the Germans and contributed greatly toward the Anglo-French entente of 1904.

Milner took over the two defeated Boer republics and administered them as occupied territory until 1905, using a civil service of young men recruited for the purpose. This group, known as "Milner's Kindergarten," reorganized the government and administration of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony and played a major role in South African life generally. When Milner left public life in 1905 to devote himself to international finance and the Rhodes enterprises, Lord Selborne, his successor as high commissioner, took over the Kindergarten and continued to use it. In 1906 a new Liberal government in London granted self-government to the two Boer states. The Kindergarten spent the next four years in a successful effort to create a South African Federation. The task was not an easy one, even with such powerful backing as Selborne, Smuts (who was now the dominant political figure in the Transvaal, although Botha held the position of prime minister), and Jameson (who was the prime minister of the Cape Colony in 1904-1908). The subject was broached through a prearranged public interchange of letters between Jameson and Selborne. Then Selborne published a memorandum, written by Philip Kerr (Lothian) and Lionel Curtis, calling for a union of the four colonies. Kerr founded a periodical (The State, financed by Sir Abe Bailey) which advocated federation in every issue; Curtis and others scurried about organizing "Closer Union" societies; Robert H. (Lord) Brand and (Sir) Patrick Duncan laid the groundwork for the new constitution. At the Durban constitutional convention (where Duncan and B. K. Long were legal advisers) the Transvaal delegation was controlled by Smuts and the Kindergarten. This delegation, which was heavily financed, tightly organized, and knew exactly what it wanted, dominated the convention, wrote the constitution for the Union of South Africa, and succeeded in having it ratified (1910). Local animosities were compromised in a series of ingenious arrangements, including one by which the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the new government were placed in three different cities. The Rhodes-Milner group recognized that Boer nationalism and color intolerance were threats to the future stability and loyalty of South Africa, but they had faith in the political influence of Smuts and Botha, of Rhodes's allies, and of the four members of the Kindergarten who stayed in South Africa to hold off these problems until time could moderate the irreconcilable Boers. In this they were mistaken, because, as men like Jameson (1917), Botha (1919), Duncan (1943), Long (1943), and Smuts (1950) died off, they were not replaced by men of equal loyalty and ability, with the result that the Boer extremists under D. F. Malan came to power in 1948.

The first Cabinet of the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 by the South African Party, which was largely Boer, with Louis Botha as prime minister. The real master of the government was Smuts, who held three out of nine portfolios, all important ones, and completely dominated Botha. Their policy of reconciliation with the English and of loyal support for the British connection was violently opposed by the Boer Nationalists within the party led by J. B. M. Hertzog. Hertzog was eager to get independence from Britain and to reserve political control in a South African republic to Boers only. He obtained growing support by agitating on the language and educational issues, insisting that all government officials must speak Afrikaans and that it be a compulsory language in schools, with English a voluntary, second language.

The opposition party, known as Unionist, was largely English and was led by Jameson supported by Duncan, Richard Feetham, Hugh Wyndham, and Long. Financed by Milner's allies and the Rhodes Trust, its leaders considered that their chief task was "to support the prime minister against the extremists of his own party." Long, as the best speaker, was ordered to attack Hertzog constantly. When Hertzog struck back with too violent language in 1912, he was dropped from the Cabinet and soon seceded from the South African Party, joining with the irreconcilable Boer republicans like Christiaan De Wet to form the Nationalist Party. The new party adopted an extremist anti-English and anti-native platform.

Jameson's party, under his successor, Sir Thomas Smartt (a paid agent of the Rhodes organization), had dissident elements because of the growth of white labor unions which insisted on anti-native legislation. By 1914 these formed a separate Labour Party under F. H. P. Creswell, and were able to win from Smuts a law excluding natives from most semiskilled or skilled work or any high-paving positions (1911). The natives were compelled to work for wages, however low, by the need to obtain cash for taxes and by the inadequacy of the native reserves to support them from their own agricultural activities. By the Land Act of 1913 about 7 percent of the land area was reserved for future land purchases by natives and the other 93 percent for purchase by whites. At that time the native population exceeded the whites by at least fourfold.

As a result of such discriminations, the wages of natives were about one-tenth those of whites. This discrepancy in remuneration permitted white workers to earn salaries comparable to those earned in North America, although national income was low and productivity per capita was very low (about $125 per year).

The Botha-Smuts government of 1910-1924 did little to cope with the almost insoluble problems which faced South Africa. As it became weaker, and the Hertzog Nationalists grew stronger, it had to rely with increasing frequency on the support of the Unionist party. In 1920 a coalition was formed, and three members of the Unionist party, including Duncan, took seats in Smuts's Cabinet. In the next election in 1924 Cresswell's Labourites and Hertzog's Nationalists formed an agreement which dropped the republican-imperial issue and emphasized the importance of economic and native questions. This alliance defeated Smuts's party and formed a Cabinet which held office for nine years. It was replaced in March 1933 by a Smuts-Hertzog coalition formed to deal with the economic crisis arising from the world depression of 1929-1935.

The defeat of the Smuts group in 1924 resulted from four factors, besides his own imperious personality. These were (1 ) his violence toward labor unions and strikers; (2) his strong support for the imperial connection, especially during the war of 1914-1918; (3) his refusal to show any enthusiasm for an anti-native program, and (4) the economic hardships of the postwar depression and the droughts of 1919-1923. A miners' strike in 1913 was followed by a general strike in 1914; in both, Smuts used martial law and machine-gun bullets against the strikers and in the latter case illegally deported nine union leaders to England. This problem had hardly subsided before the government entered the war against Germany and actively participated in the conquest of German Africa as w ell as in the fighting in France. Opposition from Boer extremists to this evidence of the English connection was so violent that it resulted in open revolt against the government and mutiny by various military contingents which sought to join the small German forces in Southwest Africa. The rebels were crushed, and thousands of their supporters lost their political rights for ten years.

Botha and, even more, Smuts played major roles in the Imperial War Cabinet in London and at the Peace Conference of 1919. The former died as soon as he returned home, leaving Smuts, as prime minister, to face the acute postwar problems. The economic collapse of 1920-1923 was especially heavy in South Africa as the ostrich-feather and diamond markets were wiped out, the gold and export markets were badly injured, and years of drought were prevalent. Efforts to reduce costs in the mines by increased use of native labor led to strikes and eventually to a revolution on the Rand (1922). Over 200 rebels were killed. As a result, the popularity of Smuts in his own country reached a low ebb just at the time when he was being praised almost daily in England as one of the world's greatest men.

These political shifts in South Africa's domestic affairs did little to relieve any of the acute economic and social problems which faced that country. On the contrary these grew worse year by year. In 1921 the Union had only 1.5 million whites, 4.7 million natives, 545 thousand mulattoes ("coloured"), and 166 thousand Indians. By 1936 the whites had increased by only half a million, while the number of natives had gone up almost two million. These natives lived on inadequate and eroded reserves or in horrible urban slums, and were drastically restricted in movements, residence, or economic opportunities, and had almost no political or even civil rights. By 1950 most of the native workers of Johannesburg lived in a distant suburb where 90,000 Africans were crowded onto 600 acres of shacks with no sanitation, with almost no running water, and with such inadequate bus service that they had to stand in line for hours to get a bus into the city to work. In this way the natives were steadily "detribalized," abandoning allegiance to their own customs and beliefs (including religion) without assuming the customs or beliefs of the whites. Indeed, they were generally excluded from this because of the obstacles placed in their path to education or property ownership. The result was that the natives were steadily ground downward to the point where they were denied all opportunity except for animal survival and reproduction.

Almost half of the whites and many of the blacks were farmers, but agricultural practices w ere so deplorable that water shortages and erosion grew with frightening rapidity, and rivers which had flowed steadily in 1880 largely disappeared by 1950. As lands became too dry to farm, they were turned to grazing, especially under the spur of high wool prices during the two great wars, but the soil continued to drift away as dust.

Because of low standards of living for the blacks, there was little domestic market either for farm products or for industrial goods. As a result, most products of both black and white labor were exported, the receipts being used to pay for goods which were locally unavailable or for luxuries for whites. But most of the export trade was precarious. The gold mines and diamond mines had to dig so deeply (below 7,000-foot levels) that costs arose sharply, while the demand for both products fluctuated widely, since neither was a necessity of life. Nonetheless, each year over half of the Union's annual production of all goods was exported, with about one-third of the total represented by gold.

The basic problem was lack of labor, not so much the lack of hands but the low level of productivity of those hands. This in turn resulted from lack of capitalization and from the color bar which refused to allow native labor to become skilled. Moreover, the cheapness of unskilled labor, especially on the farms, meant that most work was left to blacks, and many whites fell into lazy habits. Unskilled whites, unwilling and unable to compete as labor with the blacks, became indolent "poor whites." Milner's Kindergarten had, at the end of the Boer War, the sum of £3 million provided by the peace treaty to be used to restore Boer families from concentration camps to their farms. They were shocked to discover that one-tenth of the Boers were "poor whites," had no land and wanted none. The Kindergarten decided that this sad condition resulted from the competition of cheap black labor, a conclusion which was incorporated into the report of a commission established by Selborne to study the problem.

This famous Report of the Transvaal Indigency Commission, published in 1908, was written by Philip Kerr (Lothian) and republished by the Union government twenty years later. About the same time, the group became convinced that black labor not only demoralized white labor and prevented it from acquiring the physical skills necessary for self-reliance and high personal morale but that blacks were capable of learning such skills as well as whites were. As Curtis expressed it in 1952: "I came to see how the colour bar reacted on Whites and Blacks. Exempt from drudgery by custom and law, Whites acquire no skill in crafts, because the school of skill is drudgery. The Blacks, by doing drudgery, acquire skill. All skilled work in mines such as rock-drilling was done by miners imported from Cornwall who worked subject to the colour bar. The heavy drills were fixed and driven under their direction by Natives. These Cornish miners earned £1 a day, the Natives about 2s. The Cornish miners struck for higher pay, but the Blacks, who in doing the drudgery had learned how to work the drills, kept the mines running at a lower cost."

Accordingly, the Milner-Round Table group worked out a scheme to reserve the tropical portions of Africa north of the Zambezi River for natives under such attractive conditions that the blacks south of that river would be enticed to migrate northward. As Curtis envisioned this plan, an international state or administrative body "would take over the British, French, Belgian, and Portuguese dependencies in tropical Africa.... Its policy would be to found north of the Zambezi a Negro Dominion in which Blacks could own land, enter professions, and stand on a footing of equality with Whites. The inevitable consequence would be that Black laborers south of the Zambezi would rapidly emigrate from South Africa and leave South African Whites to do their own drudgery which would be the salvation of the Whites." Although this project has not been achieved, it provides the key to Britain's native and central-African policies from 1917 onward. For example, in 19371939 Britain made many vain efforts to negotiate a settlement of Germany's colonial claims under which Germany would renounce forever its claims on Tanganyika and be allowed to participate as a member of an international administration of all tropical Africa (including the Belgian Congo and Portuguese Angola as well as British and French territory) as a single unit in which native rights would be paramount.

The British tradition of fair conduct toward natives and nonwhites generally was found most frequently among the best educated of the English upper class and among those lower-class groups, such as missionaries, where religious influences were strongest. This tradition was greatly strengthened by the actions of the Rhodes-Milner group, especially after 1920. Rhodes aroused considerable ill-feeling among the whites of South Africa when he announced that his program included "equal rights for all civilized men south of the Zambezi," and went on to indicate that "civilized men" included ambitious, literate Negroes. When Milner took over the Boer states in 1901, he tried to follow the same policy. The peace treaty of 1902 promised that the native franchise would not be forced on the defeated Boers, but Milner tried to organize the governments of municipalities, beginning with Johannesburg, so that natives could vote. This was blocked by the Kindergarten (led by Curtis who was in charge of municipal reorganization in 1901-1906) because they considered reconciliation with the Boers as a preliminary to a South African Union to be more urgent. Similarly, Smuts as the chief political figure in South Africa after 1910 had to play down native rights in order to win Boer and English labor support for the rest of his program.

The Rhodes-Milner group, however, was in a better position to carry out its plans in the non-self-governing portions of Africa outside the Union. In South Africa the three native protectorates of Swaziland, Bechuanaland, and Basutoland were retained by the imperial authorities as areas where native rights were paramount and where tribal forms of living could be maintained at least partially. However, certain tribal customs, such as those which required a youth to prove his manhood by undergoing inhuman suffering or engaging in warfare or cattle stealing before he could marry or become a full-fledged member of the tribe, had to be curtailed. They were replaced in the twentieth century by the custom of taking work in the mines of South Africa as contract laborers for a period of years. Such labor was as onerous and killing as tribal warfare had been earlier because deaths from disease and accident were very high. But, by undergoing this test for about five years, the survivors obtained sufficient savings to allow them to return to their tribes and buy sufficient cattle and wives to support them as full members of the tribe for the rest of their days. Unfortunately, this procedure did not result in good agricultural practices but rather in overgrazing, growing drought and erosion, and great population pressure in the native reserves. It also left the mines without any assured labor supply so that it became necessary to recruit contract labor farther and farther north. Efforts by the Union government to set northern limits beyond which labor recruiting was forbidden led to controversy with employers, frequent changes in regulations, and widespread evasions. As a consequence of an agreement made by Milner with Portuguese authorities, about a quarter of the natives working in South African mines came from Portuguese East Africa even as late as 1936.

Making the Commonwealth, 1910-1926

As soon as South Africa was united in 1910, the Kindergarten returned to London to try to federate the whole empire by the same methods. They were in a hurry to achieve this before the war with Germany which they believed to be approaching. With Abe Bailey money they founded The Round Table under Kerr's (Lothian's) editorship, met in formal conclaves presided over by Milner to decide the fate of the empire, and recruited new members to their group, chiefly from New College, of which Milner was a fellow. The new recruits included a historian, F. S. Oliver, (Sir) Alfred Zimmern, (Sir) Reginald Coupland, Lord Lovat, and Waldorf (Lord) Astor. Curtis and others were sent around the world to organize Round Table groups in the chief British dependencies.

For several years (1910 1916) the Round Table groups worked desperately trying to find an acceptable formula for federating the empire. Three books and many articles emerged from these discussions, but gradually it became clear that federation was not acceptable to the English-speaking dependencies. Gradually, it was decided to dissolve all formal bonds between these dependencies, except, perhaps, allegiance to the Crow-n, and depend on the common outlook of Englishmen to keep the empire together. This involved changing the name "British Empire" to "Commonwealth of Nations," as in the title of Curtis's book of 1916, giving the chief dependencies, including India and Ireland, their complete independence (but gradually- and by free gift rather than under duress), working to bring the United States more closely into this same orientation, and seeking to solidify the intangible links of sentiment by propaganda among financial, educational, and political leaders in each country.

Efforts to bring the dependencies into a closer relationship with the mother country were by no means new in 1910, nor were they supported only by the Rhodes-Milner group. Nevertheless, the actions of this group were all-pervasive. The poor military performance of British forces during the Boer War led to the creation of a commission to investigate the South African War, with Lord Esher (Brett) as chairman (1903). Among other items, this commission recommended creation of a permanent Committee of Imperial Defence. Esher became (unofficial) chairman of this committee, holding the position for the rest of his life (1905-1930). He was able to establish an Imperial General Staff in 1907 and to get a complete reorganization of the military forces of New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa so that they could be incorporated into the imperial forces in an emergency (1909- 1912). On the committee itself he created an able secretariat which cooperated loyally with the Rhodes-Milner group thereafter. These men included (Sir) Maurice (later Lord) Hankey and (Sir) Ernest Swinton (who invented the tank in 1915). When, in 1916-1917, Milner and Esher persuaded the Cabinet to create a secretariat for the first time, the task was largely given to this secretariat from the Committee on Imperial Defence. Thus Hankey was secretary to the committee for thirty years (1908-1938), to the Cabinet for twenty-two years (1916-1938), clerk to the Privy Council for fifteen years (1923-1938), secretary-general of the five imperial conferences held between 1921 and 1937, secretary to the British delegation to almost every important international conference held between the Versailles Conference of 1919 and the Lausanne Conference of 1932, and one of the leading advisers to the Conservative governments after 1939.

Until 1907 the overseas portions of the Empire (except India) communicated with the imperial government through the secretary of state for colonies. To supplement this relationship, conferences of the prime ministers of the self-governing colonies were held in London to discuss common problems in 1887, 1897, 1902, 1907, 1911, 1917, and 1918. In 1907 it was decided to hold such conferences every four years, to call the self-governing colonies "Dominions," and to by-pass the Colonial Secretary by establishing a new Dominion Department. Ruskin's influence, among others, could be seen in the emphasis of the Imperial Conference of 1911 that the Empire rested on a triple foundation of (1) rule of law, (2) local autonomy, and (3) trusteeship of the interests and fortunes of those fellow subjects who had not yet attained self -government.

The Conference of 1915 could not be held because of the war, but as soon as Milner became one of the four members of the War Cabinet in 1915 his influence began to be felt everywhere. We have mentioned that he established a Cabinet secretariat in 1916-1917 consisting of two proteges of Esher (Hankey and Swinton) and two of his own (his secretaries, Leopold Amery and W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, later Lord Harlech). At the same time he gave the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, a secretariat from the Round Table, consisting of Kerr (Lothian), Grigg (Lord Altrincham), W. G. S. Adams (Fellow of All Souls College), and Astor. He created an Imperial War Cabinet by adding Dominion Prime Ministers (particularly Smuts) to the United Kingdom War Cabinet. He also called the Imperial Conferences of 1917 and 1918 and invited the dominions to establish Resident Ministers in London. A' the war drew to a close in 1918, Milner took the office of Colonia] Secretary, with Amery as his assistant, negotiated an agreement providing independence for Egypt, set up a new self-government constitution in Malta, sent Curtis to India (where he drew up the chief provisions of the Government of India Act of 1919), appointed Curtis to the post of Adviser on Irish Affairs (where he played an important role in granting dominion status to southern Ireland in 1921), gave Canada permission to establish separate diplomatic relations with the United States (the firs minister being the son-in-law of Milner's closest collaborator on the Rhodes Trust), and called the Imperial Conference of 1921.

During this decade 1919-1929 the Rhodes-Milner group gave the chief impetus toward transforming the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations and launching India on the road to responsible self-government. The creation of the Round Table groups by Milner's Kindergarten in 1909-1913 opened a new day in both these fields, although the whole group was so secretive that, even today, many close students of the subject are not aware of its significance. These men had formed their intellectual growth at Oxford on Pericle's funeral oration as described in a book by a member of the group, (Sir) Alfred Zimmern's The Greek Commonwealth (1911), on Edmund Burke's On Conciliation with America, on Sir J. B. Seeley's Growth of British Policy, on A. V. Dicey's The Law and Custom of the Constitution, and on The New Testament's "Sermon on the Mount." The last was especially influential on Lionel Curtis. He had a fanatical conviction that with the proper spirit and the proper organization (local self-government and federalism), the Kingdom of God could be established on earth. He was sure that if people were trusted just a bit beyond what they deserve they would respond by proving worthy of such trust. As he wrote in The Problem of a Commonwealth (1916), "if political power is granted to groups before they are fit they will tend to rise to the need." This was the spirit which Milner's group tried to use toward the Boers in 1902-1910, toward India in 1910 1947, and, unfortunately, toward Hitler in 1933-1939. This point of view was reflected in Curtis's three volumes on world history, published as Civitas Dei in 1938. In the case of Hitler, at least, these high ideals led to disaster; this seems also to be the case in South Africa; whether this group succeeded in transforming the British Empire into a Commonwealth of Nations or merely succeeded in destroying the British Empire is not yet clear, but one seems as likely as the other.

That these ideas were not solely those of Curtis but were held by the group as a whole will be clear to all who study it. When Lord Lothian died in Washington in 1940, Curtis published a volume of his speeches and included the obituary which Grigg had written for The Round Table. Of Lothian this said, "He held that men should strive to build the Kingdom of Heaven here upon this earth, and that the leadership in that task must fall first and foremost upon the English-speaking peoples." Other attitudes of this influential group can be gathered from some quotations from four books published by Curtis in 1916-1920: "The rule of law as contrasted with the rule of an individual is the distinguishing mark of the Commonwealth. In despotisms government rests on the authority of the ruler or of the invisible and uncontrollable power behind him. In a commonwealth rulers derive their authority from the law, and the law from a public opinion which is competent to change it . . . The idea that the principle of the Commonwealth implies universal suffrage betrays an ignorance of its real nature. That principle simply means that government rests on the duty of the citizens to each other, and is to be vested in those who are capable of setting public interests before their own.... The task of preparing for freedom the races which cannot as yet govern themselves is the supreme duty of those who can. It is the spiritual end for which the Commonwealth exists, and material order is nothing except as a means to it.... The peoples of India and Egypt, no less than those of the British Isles and Dominions, must be gradually schooled in the management of their national affairs.... The whole effect of the war [of 1914-1918] has been to bring movements long gathering to a sudden head.... Companionship in arms has fanned . . . long smouldering resentment against the presumption that Europeans are destined to dominate the rest of the world. In every part of Asia and Africa it is bursting into flames. . . . Personally I regard this challenge to the long unquestioned claim of the white man to dominate the world as inevitable and wholesome, especially to ourselves.... The world is in the throes which precede creation or death. Our whole race has outgrown the merely national state and, as surely as day follows night or night the day, will pass either to a Commonwealth of Nations or else to an empire of slaves. And the issue of these agonies rests with us."

In this spirit the Rhodes-Milner group tried to draw plans for a federation of the British Empire in 1909-1916. Gradually this project was replaced or postponed in favor of the commonwealth project of free cooperation. Milner seems to have accepted the lesser aim after a meeting, sponsored by the Empire Parliamentary Association, on July 28, 1916, at which he outlined the project for federation with many references to the writings of Curtis, but found that not one Dominion member present would accept it. At the Imperial Conference of 1917, under his guidance, it was resolved that "any re-adjustment of constitutional relations . . . should be based on a full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth and of India as an important portion of the same, should recognize the right of the Dominions and India to an adequate voice in foreign policy and in foreign relations, and should provide effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important matters of common Imperial concern." Another resolution called for full representation for India in future Imperial Conferences. This was done in 1918. At this second wartime Imperial Conference it was resolved that Prime Ministers of Dominions could communicate directly with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and that each dominion (and India) could establish Resident Ministers in London who would have seats on the Imperial War Cabinet. Milner was the chief motivating force in these developments. He hoped that the Imperial War Cabinet would continue to meet annually after the war but this did not occur.

During these years 1917-1918, a declaration was drawn up establishing complete independence for the dominions except for allegiance to the crown. This was not issued until 1926. Instead, on July 9, 1919 Milner issued an official statement which said, "The United Kingdom and the Dominions are partner nations; not yet indeed of equal power, but for good and all of equal status.... The only possibility of a continuance of the British Empire is on a basis of absolute out-and-out equal partnership between the United Kingdom and the Dominions. I say that without any kind of reservation whatsoever." This point of view was restated in the so-called Balfour Declaration of 1926 and was enacted into law as the Statute of Westminster in 1931. B. K. Long of the South African Round Table group (who was Colonial Editor of The Times in 1913-1921 and Editor of Rhodes's paper, The Cape Times, in South Africa in 1922-1935) tells us that the provisions of the declaration of 1926 were agreed on in 1917 during the Imperial Conference convoked by Milner. They were formulated by John W. Dafoe, editor of the Winnipeg Free Press for 43 years and the most influential journalist in Canada for much of that period. Dafoe persuaded the Canadian Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, to accept his ideas and then brought in Long and Dawson (Editor of The Times). Dawson negotiated the agreement with Milner, Smuts, and others. Although Australia and New Zealand were far from satisfied, the influence of Canada and of South Africa carried the agreement. Nine years later it was issued under Balfour's name at a conference convoked by Amery.

East Africa, 1910-1931

In the dependent empire, especially in tropical Africa north of the Zambezi River, the Rhodes-Milner group was unable to achieve most of its desires, but was able to win wide publicity for them, especially for its views on native questions. It dominated the Colonial Office in London, at least for the decade 1919-1929. There Milner was secretary of state in 1919-1921 and Amery in 1924-1929, while the post of parliamentary under-secretary was held by three members of the group for most of the decade. Publicity for their views on civilizing the natives and training them for eventual self-government received wide dissemination, not only by official sources but also by the academic, scholarly, and journalistic organizations they dominated. As examples of this we might mention the writings of Coupland, Hailey, Curtis, Grigg, Amery, and Lothian, all Round Tablers. In 1938 Lord Hailey edited a gigantic volume of 1,837 pages called An Africa Survey. This work was first suggested by Smuts at Rhodes House, Oxford, in 1929, had a foreword by Lothian, and an editorial board of Lothian, Hailey, Coupland, Curtis, and others. It remains the greatest single book on modern Africa. These people, and others, through The Times, The Round Table, The Observer, Chatham House, and other conduits, became the chief source of ideas on colonial problems in the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, they were unable to achieve their program.

In the course of the 1920's the Round Table program for East Africa was paralyzed by a debate on the priority which should be given to the three aspects of group’s project for a Negro Dominion north of the Zambezi. The three parts were (1) native rights, (2) “Closer Union,” and (3) international trusteeship. Generally, the group gave priority to Closer Union (federation of Kenya with Uganda and Tanganyika), but the ambiguity of their ideas on native rights made it possible for Dr. Joseph H. Oldham, spokesman for the organized Nonconformist missionary groups, to organize a successful opposition movement to federation of East Africa. In this effort Oldham found a powerful ally in Lord Lugard, and considerable support from other informed persons, including Margery Perham.

The Round Tablers, who had no firsthand knowledge of native life or even of tropical Africa, were devoted supporters of the English way of life, and could see no greater benefit conferred on natives than to help them to move in that direction. This, however, would inevitably destroy the tribal organization of life, as well as the native systems of land tenure, which were generally based on tribal holding of land. The white settlers were eager to see these things disappear, since they generally wished to bring the native labor force and African lands into the commercial market. Oldham and Lugard opposed this, since they felt it would lead to white ownership of large tracts of land on which detribalized and demoralized natives would subsist as wage slaves. Moreover, to Lugard, economy in colonial administration required that natives be governed under his system of "indirect rule" through tribal chiefs. Closer Union became a controversial target in this dispute because it involved a gradual increase in local self-government which would lead to a greater degree of white settler rule.

The opposition to Closer Union in East Africa was successful in holding up this project in spite of the Round Table domination of the Colonial Office, chiefly because of Prime Minister Baldwin's refusal to move quickly. This delayed change until the Labour government took over in 1929; in this the pro-native, nonconformist (especially Quaker) influence was stronger.

The trusteeship issue came into this controversy because Britain was bound, as a mandate Power, to maintain native rights in Tanganyika to the satisfaction of the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. This placed a major obstacle in the path of Round Table efforts to join Tanganyika with Kenya and Uganda into a Negro Dominion which would be under quite a different kind of trusteeship of the African colonial Powers. Father south, in the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, the Round Table obsession with federation did not meet this obstacle, and that area was eventually federated, over native protests, in 1953, but this creation, the Central African Federation, broke up again in 1964. Strangely enough, the League of Nations Mandate System which became such an obstacle to the Round Table plans was largely a creation of the Round Table itself.

The Milner Group used the defeat of Germany in 1918 as an opportunity to impose an international obligation on certain Powers to treat the natives fairly in the regions taken from Germany. This opportunity was of great significance because just at that time the earlier impetus in this direction arising from missionaries was beginning to weaken as a consequence of the general weakening of religious feeling in European culture.

The chief problem in East Africa arose from the position of the white settlers of Kenya. Although this colony rests directly on the equator, its interior highlands, 4,000 to 10,000 feet up, were well adapted to white settlement and to European agricultural methods. The situation was dangerous by 1920, and grew steadily worse as the years passed, until by 1950 Kenya had the most critical native problem in Africa. It differed from South Africa in that it lacked self-government, rich mines, or a divided white population, but it had many common problems, such as overcrowded native reserves, soil erosion, and discontented and detribalized blacks working for low wages on lands owned by whites. It had about two million blacks and only 3,000 whites in 1910. Forty years later it had about 4 million blacks, 100,000 Indians, 24,000 Arabs, and only 30,000 whites (of which 40 percent were government employees). But what the whites lacked in numbers they made up in determination. The healthful highlands were reserved for white ownership as early as 1908, although they were not delimited and guaranteed until 1939. They were organized as very large, mostly undeveloped, farms of which there were only 2,000 covering 10,000 square miles in 1940. Many of these farms were of more than 30,000 acres and had been obtained from the government, either by purchase or on very long (999-year) leases for only nominal costs (rents about two cents per year per acre). The native reserves amounted to about 50,000 square miles of generally poorer land, or five times as much land for the blacks, although they had at least 150 times as many people. The Indians, chiefly in commerce and crafts, were so industrious that they gradually came to own most of the commercial areas both in the towns and in the native reserves.

The two great subjects of controversy in Kenya were concerned with the supply of labor and the problem of self-government, although less agitated problems, like agricultural technology, sanitation, and education were of vital significance. The whites tried to increase the pressure on natives to work on white farms rather than to seek to make a living on their own lands within the reserves, by forcing them to pay taxes in cash, by curtailing the size or quality of the reserves, by restricting improvements in native agricultural techniques, and by personal and political pressure and compulsion. The effort to use political compulsion reached a peak in 1919 and was stopped by Milner, although his group, like Rhodes in South Africa, was eager to make natives more industrious and more ambitious by any kinds of social, educational, or economic pressures. The settlers encouraged natives to live off the reserves in various ways: for example, hy permitting them to settle as squatters on white estates in return for at least 180 clays of work a year at the usual low wage rates. To help both back and white farmers, not only in Kenya but throughout the world, Milner created, as a research organization, an Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture at Trinidad in 1919.

As a consequence of various pressures which we have mentioned, notably the need to pay taxes which averaged, perhaps, one month's wages a year and, in the aggregate, took from the natives a larger sum than that realized from the sale of native products, the percentage of adult males working off the reservations increased from about 35 percent in 1925 to over 80 percent in 1940. This had very deleterious effects on tribal life, family life, native morality, and family discipline, although it seems to have had beneficial effects on native health and general education.

The real crux of controversy before the Mau Mau uprising of 1948-1955 was the problem of self-government. Pointing to South Africa, the settlers in Kenya demanded self-rule which would allow them to enforce restrictions on nonwhites. A local colonial government was organized under the Colonial Office in 1906; as was usual in such cases it consisted of an appointive governor assisted by an appointed Executive Council and advised by a legislative Council. The latter had, also as usual, a majority of officials and a minority of "unofficial" outsiders. Only in 1922 did the unofficial portion become elective, and only in 1949 did it become a majority of the whole body. The efforts to establish an elective element in the Legislative Council in 1919-1923 resulted in violent controversy. The draft drawn by the council itself provided for only European members elected by a European electorate. Milner added two Indian members elected by a separate Indian electorate. In the resulting controversy the settlers sought to obtain their original plan, while London sought a single electoral roll restricted in size by educational and property qualifications but without mention of race. To resist this, the settlers organized a Vigilance Committee and planned to seize the colony, abduct the governor, and form a republic federated in some way with South Africa. From this controversy came eventually a compromise, the famous Kenya White Paper of 1923, and the appointment of Sir Edward Grigg as governor for the period of 1925-1931. The compromise gave Kenya a Legislative Council containing representatives of the imperial government, the white settlers, the Indians, the Arabs, and a white missionary to represent the blacks. Except for the settlers and Indians, most of these were nominated rather than elected, but by 1949, as the membership was enlarged, election was extended, and only the official and Negro members (4 out of 41) were nominated.

The Kenya White Paper of 1923 arose from a specific problem in a single colony, but remained the formal statement of imperial policy in tropical Africa. It said: "Primarily Kenya is an African territory, and His Majesty's Government think it necessary definitely to record their considered opinion that the interests of the African natives must be paramount, and that if and when those interests and the interests of the immigrant races should conflict, the former should prevail.... In the administration of Kenya His Majesty's Government regard themselves as exercising a trust on behalf of the African population, and they are unable to delegate or share this trust, the object of which may be defined as the protection and advancement of the native races."

As a result of these troubles in Kenya and the continued encroachment of white settlers on native reserves, Amery sent one of the most important members of Milner's group to the colony as governor and commander in chief. This was Sir Edward Grigg (Lord Altrincham), who had been a member of Milner's Kindergarten, an editor of The Round Table and of The Times (1903-1905, 1908-1913), a secretary to Lloyd George and to the Rhodes Trustees (1923-1925), and a prolific writer on British imperial, colonial, and foreign affairs. In Kenya he tried to protect native reserves while still forcing natives to develop habits of industry by steady work, to shift white attention from political to technical problems such as agriculture, and to work toward a consolidation of tropical Africa into a single territorial unit. He forced through the Colonial Legislature in 1930 the Native Land Trust Ordinance which guaranteed native reserves. But these reserves remained inadequate and were increasingly damaged by bad agricultural practices. Only in 1925 did any sustained effort to improve such practices by natives begin. About the same time efforts were made to extend the use of native courts, native advisory councils, and to train natives for an administrative service. All of these met slow, varied, and (on the whole) indifferent success, chiefly because of natives' reluctance to cooperate and the natives' growing suspicion of white men's motives even when these whites were most eager to help. The chief cause of this growing suspicion (which in some cases reached a psychotic level) would seem to be the native's insatiable hunger for religion and his conviction that the whites were hypocrites who taught a religion that they did not obey, were traitors to Christ's teachings, and were using these to control the natives and to betray their interests, under cover of religious ideas which the whites themselves did not observe in practice.

India to 1926

In the decade 1910-1920, the two greatest problems to be faced in creating a Commonwealth of Nations were India and Ireland. There can be no doubt that India provided a puzzle infinitely more complex, as it was more remote and less clearly envisioned, than Ireland. When the British East India Company became the dominant power in India about the middle of the eighteenth century, the Mogul Empire was in the last stages of disintegration. Provincial rulers had only nominal titles, sufficient to bring them immense treasure in taxes and rents, but they generally lacked either the will or the strength to maintain order. The more vigorous tried to expand their domains at the expense of the more feeble, oppressing the peace-loving peasantry in the process, while all legal power was challenged by roaming upstart bands and plundering tribes. Of these willful tribes, the most important were the Marathas. These systematically devastated much of south-central India in the last half of the eighteenth century, forcing each village to buy temporary immunity from destruction, but steadily reducing the capacity of the countryside to meet their demands because of the trail of death and economic disorganization they left in their wake. By 1900 only one-fifth of the land in some areas was cultivated.

Although the East India Company was a commercial firm, primarily interested in profits, and thus reluctant to assume a political role in this chaotic countryside, it had to intervene again and again to restore order, replacing one nominal ruler by another and even taking over the government of those areas where it was more immediately concerned. In addition the cupidity of many of its employees led them to intervene as political powers in order to divert to their own pockets some of the fabulous wealth which they saw flowing by. For these two reasons the areas under company rule, although not contiguous, expanded steadily until by 1858 they covered three-fifths of the country. Outside the British areas were over five hundred princely domains, some no larger than a single village but others as extensive as some states of Europe. At this point, in 1857-1858, a sudden, violent insurrection of native forces, known as the Great Mutiny, resulted in the end of the Mogul Empire and of the East India Company, the British government taking over their political activities. From this flowed a number of important consequences. Annexation of native principalities ceased, leaving 562 outside British India, but under British protection and subject to British intervention to ensure good government; within British India itself, good government became increasingly dominant and commercial profit decreasingly so for the whole period 1858-1947; British political prestige rose to new heights from 1858 to 1890 and then began to dwindle, f ailing precipitously in 1919-1922.

The task of good government in India was not an easy one. In this great subcontinent with a population amounting to almost one-fifth of the human race were to be found an almost unbelievable diversity of cultures, religions, languages, and attitudes. Even in 1950 modern locomotives linked together great cities with advanced industrial production by passing through jungles inhabited by tigers, elephants, and primitive pagan tribes. The population, which increased from 284 million in 1901 to 389 million in 1941 and reached 530 million in 1961, spoke more than a dozen major languages divided into hundreds of dialects, and were members of dozens of antithetical religious beliefs. There were, in 1941, 255 million Hindus, 92 million Muslims, 6.3 million Christians, 5.7 million Sikhs, 1.5 million Jains, and almost 26 million pagan animists of various kinds. In addition, the Hindus and even some of the non-Hindus were divided into four major hereditary castes subdivided into thousands of sub-castes, plus a lowest group of outcastes ("untouchables"), amounting to at least 30 million persons in 1900 and twice this number in 1950. These thousands of groups were endogamous, practiced hereditary economic activities, frequently had distinctive marks or garb, and were usually forbidden to marry, eat or drink with, or even to associate with, persons of different caste. Untouchables were generally forbidden to come in contact, even indirectly, with members of other groups and were, accordingly, forbidden to enter many temples or public buildings, to draw water from the public wells, even to allow their shadows to fall on any person of a different group, and were subject to other restrictions, all designed to avoid a personal pollution which could be removed only by religious rituals of varying degrees of elaborateness. Most sub-castes were occupational groups covering all kinds of activities, so that there were hereditary groups of carrion collectors, thieves, high-way robbers, or murderers (thugs), as well a farmers, fishermen, storekeepers, drug mixers, or copper smelters. For most peoples of India, cast was the most important fact of life, submerging their individuality into a group from which they could never escape, and regulating all their activities from birth to death. As a result, India, even as late as 1900, was a society in which status was dominant, each individual having a place in a group which, in turn, had a place in society. This place, known to all and accepted by all, operated by established procedures in its relationships with other groups so that there was in spite of diversity, a minimum of intergroup friction and a certain peaceful tolerance so long as intergroup etiquette was known and accepted.

The diversity of social groups and beliefs was naturally reflected in an extraordinarily wide range of social behavior from the most degraded and bestial activities based on crude superstitions to even more astounding levels of exalted spiritual self-sacrifice and cooperation. Although the British refrained from interfering with religious practices, in the course of the nineteenth century they abolished or greatly reduced the practice of thuggism (in which a secret caste strangled strangers in honor of the goddess Kali), suttee (in which the widow of a deceased Hindu was expected to destroy herself on his funeral pyre), infanticide, temple prostitution, and child marriages. At the other extreme, most Hindus abstained from all violence; many had such a respect for life that they would eat no meat, not even eggs, while a few carried this belief so far that they would not molest a cobra about to strike, a mosquito about to sting, or even walk about at night, less they unknowingly step on an ant or worm. Hindus, who considered cows so sacred that the worse crime would be to cause the death of one (even by accident), who allowed millions of these beasts to have free run of the country to the great detriment of cleanliness or standards of living, who would not wear shoes of leather, and would rather die than taste beef, ate pork and associated daily with Muslims who ate beef but considered pigs to be polluting. In general, most Indians lived in abject poverty and want; only about one in a hundred could read in 1858, while considerably less could understand the English language. The overwhelming majority at that time were peasants, pressed down by onerous taxes and rents, isolated in small villages unconnected by roads, and decimated at irregular intervals by famine or disease.

British rule in the period 1858-1947 tied India together by railroads, roads, and telegraph lines. It brought the country into contact with the Western world, and especially with world markets, by establishing a uniform system of money, steamboat connections with Europe by the Suez Canal, cable connections throughout the world, and the use of English as the language of government and administration. Best of all, Britain established the rule of law, equality before the law, and a tradition of judicial fairness to replace the older practice of inequality and arbitrary, violence. A certain degree of efficiency, and a certain ambitious, if discontented, energy directed toward change replaced the older abject resignation to inevitable fate.

The modern postal, telegraphic, and railroad systems all began in 1854. The first grew to such dimensions that by the outbreak of war in 1939 it handled over a billion pieces of mail and forty million rupees in money orders each year. The railroad grew from zoo miles in 1855 to 9,000 in 1880, to 25,000 in 1901, and to 43,000 in 1939. This, the third largest railroad system in the world, carried 600 million passengers and go million tons of freight a year. About the same time, the dirt tracks of 1858 had been partly replaced by over 300,000 miles of highways, of which only about a quarter could be rated as first class. From 1925 onward, these highways were used increasingly by passenger buses, crowded and ramshackle in many cases, but steadily breaking down the isolation of the villages.

Improved communications and public order served to merge the isolated village markets, smoothing out the earlier alternations of scarcity and glut with their accompanying phenomena of waste and of starvation in the midst of plenty. All this led to a great extension of cultivation into more remote areas and the growing of a greater variety of crops. Sparsely settled areas of forests and hills, especially in Assam and the Northwest Provinces, were occupied, without the devastation of deforestation (as in China or in non-Indian Nepal) because of a highly developed forestry conservation service. Migration, permanent and seasonal, became regular features of Indian life, the earnings of the migrants being sent back to their families in the villages they had left. A magnificent system of canals, chiefly for irrigation, was constructed, populating desolate wastes, especially in the northwestern parts of the country, and encouraging whole tribes which had previously been pastoral freebooters to settle down as cultivators. By 1939 almost 60 million acres of land were irrigated. For this and other reasons, the sown area of India increased from 195 to 228 million acres in about forty years (1900-1939). Increases in yields were much less satisfactory because of reluctance to change, lack of knowledge or capital, and organizational problems.

The tax on land traditionally had been the major part of public revenue in India, and remained near so percent as late as 1900. Under the Moguls these land revenues had been collected by tax farmers. In many areas, notably Bengal, the British tended to regard these land revenues as rents rather than taxes, and thus regarded the revenue collectors as the owners of the land. Once this was established, these new landlords used their powers to raise rents, to evict cultivators who had been on the same land for years or even generations, and to create an unstable rural proletariat of tenants and laborers unable or unwilling to improve their methods. Numerous legislative enactments sought, without great success, to improve these conditions. Such efforts were counterbalanced by the growth of population, the great rise in the value of land, the inability of industry or commerce to drain surplus population from the land as fast as it increased, the tendency of the government to favor industry or commerce over agriculture by tariffs, taxation, and public expenditures, the growing frequency of famines (from droughts), of malaria (from irrigation projects), and of plague (from trade with the Far East) which wiped out in one year gains made in several years, the growing burden of peasant debt at onerous terms and at high interest rates, and the growing inability to supplement incomes from cultivation by incomes from household crafts because of the growing competition from cheap industrial goods. Although slavery was abolished in 1843, many of the poor were reduced to peonage by contracting debts at unfair terms and binding themselves and their heirs to work for their creditors until the debt was paid. Such a debt could never be paid, in many cases, because the rate at which it was reduced was left to the creditor and could rarely be questioned by the illiterate debtor.

All of these misfortunes culminated in the period 1895-1901. There had been a long period of declining prices in 1873-1896, which increased the burden on debtors and stagnated economic activities. In 1897 the monsoon rains failed, with a loss of 18 million tons of food crops and of one million lives from famine. This disaster was repeated in 1899-1900. Bubonic plague was introduced to Bombay from China in 1895 and killed about two million persons in the next six years.

From this low point in 1901, economic conditions improved fairly steadily, except for a brief period in 1919-1922 and the long burden of the world depression in 1929-1934. The rise in prices in 1900 1914 benefitted India more than others, as the prices of her exports rose more rapidly. The war of 1914-1918 gave India a great economic opportunity, especially by increasing the demand for her textiles. Tariffs were raised steadily after 1916, providing protection for industry, especially in metals, textiles, cement, and paper. The customs became the largest single source of revenue, alleviating to some extent the pressure of taxation on cultivators. However, the agrarian problem remained acute, for most of the factors listed above remained in force. In 1931 it was estimated that, in the United Provinces, 30 percent of the cultivators could not make a diving from their holdings even in good years, while 52 percent could make a living in good years but not in bad ones.

There was great economic advance in mining, industry, commerce, and finance in the period after 1900. Coal output went up from 6 to 21 million tons in 1900-1924, and petroleum output (chiefly from Burma) \vent up from 37 to 294 million gallons. Production in the protected industries also improved in the same period until, by 1932, India could produce three-quarters of her cotton cloth, three-quarters of her steel, and most of her cement, matches, and sugar. In one product, jute, India became the chief source for the world's supply, and this became the leading export after 1925.

A notable feature of the growth of manufacturing in India after 1900 lies in the fact that Hindu capital largely replaced British capital, chiefly for political reasons. In spite of India's poverty, there was a considerable volume of saving, arising chiefly from the inequitable distribution of income to the landlord class and to the moneylenders (if these two groups can be separated in this way). Naturally, these groups preferred to invest their incomes back in the activities whence they had been derived, but, after 1919, nationalist agitation and especially Gandhi's influence inclined many Hindus to make contributions to their country's strength by investing in industry.

The growth of industry should not be exaggerated, and its influences were considerably less than one might believe at first glance. There was little growth of an urban proletariat or of a permanent class of factory workers, although this did exist. Increases in output came largely from power production rather than from increases in the labor force. This labor force continued to be rural in its psychological and social orientation, being generally temporary migrants from the villages, living under urban industrial conditions only for a few years, with every intention of returning to the village eventually, and generally sending savings back to their families and visiting them for weeks or even months each year (generally at the harvest season). This class of industrial laborers did not adopt either an urban or a proletarian point of view, were almost wholly illiterate, formed labor organizations only reluctantly (because of refusal to pay dues), and rarely acquired industrial skills. After 1915 labor unions did appear, but membership remained small, and they were organized and controlled by non-laboring persons, frequently middle-class intellectuals. Moreover, industry remained a widely scattered activity found in a few cities but absent from the rest. Although India had 35 cities of over 100,000 population in 19:1, most of these remained commercial and administrative centers and not manufacturing centers. That the chief emphasis remained on rural activities can be seen from the fact that these 35 centers of population had a total of 8.2 million inhabitants compared to 310.7 million outside their limits in 1921. In fact, only 30 million persons lived in the 1,623 centers of over 5,000 persons each, while 289 million lived in centers smaller than 5,000 persons.

One of the chief ways in which the impact of Western culture reached India was by education. The charge has frequently been made that the British neglected education in India or that they made an error in emphasizing education in English for the upper classes rather than education in the vernacular languages for the masses of the people. History does not sustain the justice of these charges. In England itself the government assumed little responsibility for education until 1902, and in general had a more advanced policy in this field in India than in England until well into the present century. Until 1835 the English did try to encourage native traditions of education, but their vernacular schools failed from lack of patronage; the Indians themselves objected to being excluded, as they regarded it, from English education. Accordingly, from 1835 the British offered English-language education on the higher levels in the hope that Western science, technology, and political attitudes could be introduced without disrupting religious or social life and that these innovations would "infiltrate" downward into the population. Because of the expense, government-sponsored education had to be restricted to the higher levels, although encouragement for vernacular schools on the lower levels began (without much financial obligation) in 1854. The "infiltration downward" theory was quite mistaken because those who acquired knowledge of English used it as a passport to advancement in government service or professional life and became renegades from, rather than missionaries to, the lower classes of Indian society. In a sense the use of English on the university level of education did not lead to its spread in Indian society but removed those who acquired it from that society, leaving them in a kind of barren ground which was neither Indian nor Western but hovered uncomfortably between the two. The fact that knowledge of English and possession of a university degree could free one from the physical drudgery of Indian life by opening the door to public service or the professions created a veritable passion to obtain these keys (but only in a minority).

The British had little choice but to use English as the language of government and higher education. In India the languages used in these two fields had been foreign ones for centuries. The language of government and of the courts was Persian until 1837. Advanced and middle-level education had always been foreign, in Sanskrit for the Hindus and in Arabic for the Muslims. Sanskrit, a "dead" language, was that of Hindu religious literature, while Arabic was the language of the Koran, the only writing the ordinary Muslim would wish to read. In fact, the allegiance of the Muslims to the Koran and to Arabic was so intense that they refused to participate in the new English-language educational system and, in consequence, had been excluded from government, the professions, and much of the economic life of the country by 1900.

No vernacular language could have been used to teach the really valuable contributions of the West, such as science, technology, economics, agricultural science, or political science, because the necessary vocabulary was lacking in the vernaculars. When the university of the native state of Hyderabad tried to translate Western works into Urdu for teaching purposes after 1920, it was necessary to create about 40,000 new words. Moreover, the large number of vernacular languages would have made the choice of any one of them for the purpose of higher education invidious. And, finally, the natives themselves had no desire to learn to read their vernacular languages, at least during the nineteenth century; they wanted to learn English because it provided access to knowledge, to government positions, and to social advancement as no vernacular could. But it must be remembered that it was the exceptional Indian, not the average one, who wanted to learn to read at all. The average native was content to remain illiterate, at least until deep into the twentieth century. Only then did the desire to read spread under the stimulus of growing nationalism, political awareness, and growing concern with political and religious tensions. These fostered the desire to read, in order to read newspapers, but this had adverse effects: each political or religious group had its own press and presented its own biased version of world events so that, by 1940, these different groups had entirely different ideas of reality.

Moreover, the new enthusiasm for the vernacular languages, the influence of extreme Hindu nationalists like B. G. Tilak (1859-1920) or anti-Westerners like M. K. Gandhi (1869-1948), led to a wholesale rejection of all that was best in British or in European culture. At the same time, those who sought power, advancement, or knowledge continued to learn English as the key to these ambitions. Unfortunately, these semi-westernized Indians neglected much of the practical side of the European way of life and tended to be intellectualist and doctrinaire and to despise practical learning and physical labor. They lived, as we have said, in a middle world which was neither Indian nor Western, spoiled for the Indian way of life, but often unable to find a position in Indian society which would allow them to live their own version of a Western way of life. At the university they studied literature, law, and political science, all subjects which emphasized verbal accomplishments. Since India did not provide sufficient jobs for such accomplishments, there was a great deal of ''academic unemployment," with resulting discontent and growing radicalism. The career of Gandhi was a result of the efforts of one man to avoid this problem by fusing certain elements of Western teaching with a purified Hinduism to create a nationalist Indian way of life on a basically moral foundation.

It is obvious that one of the chief effects of British educational policy has been to increase the social tensions within India and to give them a political orientation. This change is usually called the "rise of Indian nationalism," but it is considerably more complex than this simple name might imply. It began to rise about 1890, possibly under the influence of the misfortunes at the end of the century, grew steadily until it reached the crisis stage after 1917, and finally emerged in the long-drawn crisis of 1930-1947.

India's outlook was fundamentally religious, just as the British outlook was fundamentally political. The average Indian derived from his religious outlook a profound conviction that the material world and physical comfort were irrelevant and unimportant in contrast with such spiritual matters as the proper preparation for the life to come after the body's death. From his English education the average Indian student derived the conviction that liberty and self-government were the highest goods of life and must be sought by such resistance to authority as had been shown in the Magna Carta, the opposition to Charles I, the "Glorious Revolution" of 1689, the writings of John Locke and of John Stuart Mill, and the general resistance to public authority found in nineteenth century liberalism and laissez-faire. These two points of view tended to merge in the minds of Indian intellectuals into a point of view in which it seemed that English political ideals should be sought by Indian methods of religious fervor, self-sacrifice, and contempt for material welfare or physical comforts. As a result, political and social tensions were acerbated between British and Indians, between Westernizers and Nationalists, between Hindus and Muslims, between Brahmins and lower castes, and between caste members and outcastes.

In the early part of the nineteenth century there had been a revival of interest in Indian languages and literatures. This revival soon revealed that many Hindu ideas and practices had no real support in the earliest evidence. Since these later innovations included some of the most objectionable features of Hindu life, such as suttee, child marriage, female inferiority, image worship, and extreme polytheism, a movement began that sought to free Hinduism from these extraneous elements and to restore it to its earlier "purity" by emphasizing ethics, monotheism, and an abstract idea of deity. This tendency was reinforced by the influence of Christianity and of Islam, so that the revived Hinduism w as really a synthesis of these three religions. As a consequence of these influences, the old, and basic, Hindu idea of Karma was played down. This idea maintained that each individual soul reappeared again and again, throughout eternity, in a different physical form and in a different social status, each difference being a reward or punishment for the soul's conduct at its previous appearance. There was no real hope for escape from this cycle, except by a gradual improvement through a long series of successive appearances to the ultimate goal of complete obliteration of personality (Nirvana) by ultimate mergence in the soul of the universe (Brahma). This release (moksha) from the endless cycle of existence could be achieved only by the suppression of all desire, of all individuality, and of all will to live.

The belief in Karma was the key to Hindu ideology and to Hindu society, explaining not only the emphasis on fate and resignation to fate, the idea that man was a part of nature and brother to the beasts, the submergence of individuality and the lack of personal ambition, but also specific social institutions such as caste or even suttee. How could castes be ended if these are God-given gradations for the rewards or punishments earned in an earlier existence? How could suttee be ended if a wife is a wife through all eternity, and must pass from one life to another when her husband does?

The influence of Christianity and of Islam, of Western ideas and of British education, in changing Hindu society was largely a consequence of their ability to reduce the average Hindu's faith in Karma. One of the earliest figures in this growing synthesis of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam was Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), founder of the Brahma Samaj Society in 1828. Another was Keshab Chandra Sen (1841-1884), who hoped to unite Asia and Europe into a common culture on the basis of a synthesis of the common elements of these three religions. There were many reformers of this type. Their most notable feature was that they were universalist rather than nationalist and were Westernizers in their basic inclinations. About 1870 a change began to appear, perhaps from the influence of Rama Krishna (1834-1886) and his disciple Swami Vivekananda (1862-1902), founder of Vedanta. This new tendency emphasized India's spiritual power as a higher value than the material power of the West. It advocated simplicity, asceticism, self-sacrifice, cooperation, and India's mission to spread these virtues to the world. One of the disciples of this movement was Gopal Krishna Gokhale ( 1866-1915), founder of the Servants of India Society (1905). This was a small band of devoted persons who took vows of poverty and obedience, to regard all Indians as brothers irrespective of caste or creed, and to engage in no personal quarrels. The members scattered among the most diverse groups of India to teach, to weld India into a single spiritual unit, and to seek social reform.

In time these movements became increasingly nationalistic and anti-Western, tending to defend orthodox Hinduism rather than to purify it and to oppose Westerners rather than to copy them. This tendency culminated in Bal Gangathar Tilak (1859-1920), a Marathi journalist of Poona, who started his career in mathematics and law but slowly developed a passionate love for Hinduism, even in its most degrading details, and insisted that it must be defended against outsiders, even with violence. He was not opposed to reforms which appeared as spontaneous developments of Indian sentiment, but he was violently opposed to any attempt to legislate reform from above or to bring in foreign influences from European or Christian sources. He first became a political figure in 1891 when he vigorously opposed a government bill which would have curtailed child marriage by fixing the age of consent for girls at twelve years. By 1897 he was using his paper to incite to murder and riots against government officials.

A British official w ho foresaw this movement toward violent nationalism as early as 1878 sought to divert it into more legal and more constructive channels by establishing the Indian National Congress in 1885. The official in question, Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1912), had the secret support of the viceroy, Lord Dufferin. They hoped to assemble each year an unofficial congress of Indian leaders to discuss Indian political matters in the hope that this experience would provide training in the working of representative institutions and parliamentary government. For twenty years the Congress agitated for extension of Indian participation in the administration, and for the extension of representation and eventually of parliamentary government within the British system. It is notable that this movement renounced violent methods, did not seek separation from Britain, and aspired to form a government based on the British pattern.

Support for the movement grew very slowly at first, even among Hindus, and there was open opposition, led by Sir Saiyid Ahmad Khan, among the Muslims. As the movement gathered momentum, after 1890, many British officials began to oppose it. At the same time, under pressure from Tilak, the Congress itself advanced its demands and began to use economic pressure to obtain these. As a result, after 1900, fewer Muslims joined the Congress: there were 156 Muslims out of 702 delegates in 1890, but only 17 out of 756 in 1905. All these forces came to a head in 1904-1907 when the Congress, for the first time, demanded self-government within the empire for India and approved the use of economic pressures (boycott) against Britain.

The Japanese victory over Russia in 1905, which was regarded as an Asiatic triumph over Europe, the Russian revolt of 1905, the growing power of Tilak over Gokhale in the Indian National Congress, and public agitation over Lord Curzon's efforts to push through an administrative division of the huge-province of Bengal (population 78 million) brought matters to a head. There was open agitation by Hindu extremists to spill English blood to satisfy the goddess of destruction, Kali. In the Indian National Congress of 1907, the followers of Tilak stormed the platform and disrupted the meeting. Much impressed with the revolutionary violence in Russia against the czar and in Ireland against the English, this group advocated the use of terrorism rather than of petitions in India. The viceroy, Lord Hardinge, was wounded by a bomb in 1912. For many Nears, racial intolerance against Indians by English residents in India had been growing, and was increasingly manifested in studied insults and even physical assaults. In 1906 a Muslim League was formed in opposition to tile Hindu extremists and in support of the British position, but in 1913 it also demanded self-government. Tilak's group boycotted the Indian National Congress for nine years (1907-1916), and Tilak himself was in prison for sedition for six years (1908-1914).

The constitutional development of India did not stand still during this tumult. In 1861 appointive councils with advisory powers had been created, both at the center to assist the viceroy and in the provinces. These had nonofficial as well as official members, and the provincial ones had certain legislative powers, but all these activities were under strict executive control and veto. In 1892 these powers were widened to allow discussion of administrative questions, and various non-governmental groups (called "communities") were allowed to suggest individuals for the unofficial seats in the councils.

A third act, of 1909, passed by the Liberal government with John (Lord) Morley as secretary of state and Lord Minto as viceroy, enlarged the councils, making a nonofficial majority in the provincial councils, allowed the councils to vote on all issues, and gave the right to elect the nonofficial members to various communal groups, including Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, on a fixed ratio. This last provision was a disaster. By establishing separate electoral lists for various religious groups, it encouraged religious extremism in all groups, made it likely that the more extremist candidates would be successful, and made religious differences the basic and irreconcilable fact of political life. By giving religious minorities more seats than their actual proportions of the electorate entitled them to (a principle known as "weightage"), it made it politically advantageous to he a minority. By emphasizing minority rights (in which they did believe) over majority rule (in which they did not believe) the British made religion a permanently disruptive force in political life, and encouraged the resulting acerbated extremism to work out its rivalries outside the constitutional framework and the scope of legal action in riots rather than at the polls or in political assemblies. Moreover, as soon as the British had given the Muslims this special constitutional position in 1909 they lost the support of the Muslim community in 1911-1919. This loss of Muslim support was the result of several factors. Curzon's division of Bengal, which the Muslims had supported (since it gave them East Bengal as a separate area with a Muslim majority) was countermanded in 1911 without any notice to the Muslims. British foreign policy after 1911 was increasingly anti-Turkish, and thus opposed to the caliph (the religious leader of the Muslims). As a result the Muslim League called for self-government for India for the first time in 1913, and four years later formed an alliance with the Indian National Congress which continued until 1924.

In 1909, while Philip Kerr (Lothian), Lionel Curtis, and (Sir) William Marris were in Canada laying the foundations for the Round Table organization there, Marris persuaded Curtis that "self-government, . . . however far distant was the only intelligible goal of British policy in India...the existence of political unrest in India, so far from being a reason for pessimism, was the surest sign that the British, with all their manifest failings, had not shirked their primary duty of extending western education to India and so preparing Indians to govern themselves." Four years later the Round Table group in London decided to investigate how this could be done. It formed a study group of eight members, under Curtis, adding to the group three officials from the India Office. This group decided, in 1915, to issue a public declaration favoring "the progressive realization of responsible government in India." A declaration to this effect was drawn up by Lord Milner and was issued on August 20, 1917, by Secretary of State for India Edwin S. Montagu. It said that "the policy of His Majesty's Government, with which the Government of India are in complete accord, is that of the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire."

This declaration was revolutionary because, for the first time, it specifically enunciated British hopes for India's future and because it used, for the first time, the words "responsible government." The British had spoken vaguely for over a century about "self-government" for India; they had spoken increasingly about "representative government"; but they had consistently avoided the expression "responsible government." This latter term meant parliamentary government, which most English conservatives regarded as quite unsuited for Indian conditions, since it required, they believed, an educated electorate and a homogeneous social system, both of which were lacking in India. The conservatives had talked for years about ultimate self-government for India on some indigenous Indian model, but had done nothing to find such a model. Then, without any clear conception of where they were going, they had introduced "representative government," in which the executive consulted with public opinion through representatives of the people (either appointed, as in 1871, or elected, as in 1909), but with the executive still autocratic and in no way responsible to these representatives. The use of the expression "responsible government" in the declaration of 1917 went back to the Round Table group and ultimately to the Marris-Curtis conversation in the Canadian Rockies in 1909.

In the meantime, the Round Table study-group had worked for three years (1913-1916) on methods for carrying out this promise. Through the influence of Curtis and F. S. Oliver the federal constitution of the United States contributed a good deal to the drafts which were made, especially to provisions for dividing governmental activities into central and provincial portions, with gradual Indianization of the latter and 166 ultimately of the former. This approach to the problem was named "dyarchy" by Curtis. The Round Table draft was sent to the Governor of New South Wales, Lord Chelmsford, a Fellow of All Souls College, who believed that it came from an official committee of the India Office. After he accepted it in principle he was made Viceroy of India in 1916. Curtis went to India immediately to consult with local authorities there (including Meston, Marris, Hailey, and the retired Times Foreign Editor, Sir Valentine Chirol) as well as with Indians. From these conferences emerged a report, written by Marris, which was issued as the Montagu-Chelmsford Report in 1917. The provisions of this report were drawn up as a bill, passed by Parliament (after substantial revision by a Joint Committee under Lord Selborne) and became the Government of India Act of 1919.

The Act of 1919 was the most important law in Indian constitutional history before 1935. It divided governmental activities into "central" and "provincial." The former included defense, foreign affairs, railways and communications, commerce, civil and criminal law and procedures and others; the latter included public order and police, irrigation, forests, education, public health, public works, and other activities. Furthermore, the provincial activities were divided into "transferred" departments and "reserved" departments, the former being entrusted to native ministers who were responsible to provincial assemblies. The central government remained in the hands of the governor-general and viceroy, who was responsible to Britain and not to the Indian Legislature. His Cabinet (Executive Council) usually had three Indian members after 1921. The legislature was bicameral, consisting of a Council of State and a Legislative Assembly. In both, some members were appointed officials, but the majority were elected on a very restricted suffrage. There were, on the electoral lists, no more than 900,000 voters for the lower chamber and only 16,000 for the upper chamber. The provincial unicameral legislatures had a wider, but still limited, franchise, with about a million on the list of voters in Bengal, half as many in Bombay. Moreover, certain seats, on the principle of "weightage," were reserved to Muslims elected by a separate Muslim electoral list. Both legislatures had the power to enact laws, subject to rather extensive powers of veto and of decree in the hands of the governor-general and the appointed provincial governors. Only the "transferred" departments of the provincial governments were responsible to elective assemblies, the "reserved" activities on the provincial level and all activities in the central administration being responsible to the appointed governors and governor-general and ultimately to Britain.

It was hoped that the Act of 1919 would provide opportunities in parliamentary procedures, responsible government, and administration to Indians so that self-government could be extended by successive steps later, but these hopes were destroyed in the disasters of 1919-1922. The violence of British reactionaries collided with the nonviolent refusal to cooperate of Mahatma Gandhi, crushing out the hopes of the Round Table reformers between them.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), known as "Mahatma," or "Great Soul," was the son and grandson of prime ministers of a minute princely state in western India. Of the Vaisya caste (third of the four), he grew up in a very religious and ascetic atmosphere of Hinduism. Married at thirteen and a father at fifteen, Gandhi was sent to England to study law by his older brother when he was seventeen. Such a voyage was forbidden by the rules of his caste, and he was expelled from it for going. Before he left he gave a vow to his family not to touch wine, women, or meat. After three years in England he passed the bar at Inner Temple. Most of his time in Europe was passed in dilettante fads, experimenting with vegetarian diets and self-administered medicines or in religious or ethical discussions with English faddists and Indiophiles. He was much troubled by religious scruples and feelings of guilt. Back in India in 1891, he was a failure as a lawyer because of his inarticulate lack of assurance and his real lack of interest in the law. In 1893 a Muslim firm sent him to Natal, South Africa, on a case. There Gandhi found his vocation.

The population of Natal in 1896 consisted of 50,000 Europeans, mostly English, 400,000 African natives, and 51,000 Indians, chiefly outcastes. The last group had been imported from India, chiefly as indentured workers on three or five-year contracts, to work the humid low land plantations where the Negroes refused to work. Most of the Indians stayed, after their contracts were fulfilled, and were so industrious and intelligent that they began to rise very rapidly in an economic sense, especially in the retail trades. The whites, who were often indolent, resented such competition from dark-skinned persons and were generally indignant at Indian economic success. As Lionel Curtis told Gandhi in the Transvaal in 1903, "It is not the vices of Indians that Europeans in this country fear but their virtues."

When Gandhi first arrived in Natal in 1893, he found that that country, like most of South Africa, was rent with color hatred and group animosities. All political rights were in the hands of whites, while the nonwhites were subjected to various kinds of social and economic discriminations and segregations. When Gandhi first appeared in court. the judge ordered him to remove his turban (worn with European clothes); Gandhi refused, and left. Later, traveling on business in a first-class railway carriage to the Transvaal, he was ejected from the train at the insistence of a white passenger. He spent a bitterly cold night on the railway platform rather than move to a second- or third-class compartment when he had been sold a first-class ticket. For the rest of his life he traveled only third class. In the Transvaal he was unable to get a room in a hotel because of his color. These episodes gave him his new vocation: to establish that Indians were citizens of the British Empire and therefore entitled to equality under its laws. He was determined to use only peaceful methods of passive mass non-cooperation to achieve his goal. His chief weapon would be love and submissiveness, even to those who treated him most brutally. His refusal to fear death or to avoid pain and his efforts to return love to those who tried to inflict injuries upon him made a powerful weapon, especially if it were practiced on a mass basis.

Gandhi's methods were really derived from his own Hindu tradition, but certain elements in this tradition had been reinforced by reading Ruskin, Thoreau, Tolstoi, and the Sermon on the Mount. When he was brutally beaten by whites in Natal in 1897, he refused to prosecute, saying that it was not their fault that they had been taught evil ideas.

These methods gave the Indians of South Africa a temporary respite from the burden of intolerance under Gandhi's leadership in the period 1893-1914. When the Transvaal proposed an ordinance compelling all Indians to register, be fingerprinted, and carry identity cards at all times, Gandhi organized a mass, peaceful refusal to register. Hundreds went to jail. Smuts worked out a compromise with Gandhi: if the Indians would register "voluntarily" the Transvaal would repeal the ordinance. After Gandhi had persuaded his compatriots to register, Smuts failed to carry out his part of the agreement, and the Indians solemnly burned their registration cards at a mass meeting. Then, to test the Transvaal ban on Indian immigration, Gandhi organized mass marches of Indians into the Transvaal from Natal. Others went from the Transvaal to Natal and returned, being arrested for crossing the frontier. At one time 2,500 of the 13,000 Indians in the Transvaal were in jail and 6,000 were in exile.

The struggle was intensified after the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 because the Transvaal restrictions on Indians, which forbade them to own land, to live outside segregated districts, or to vote, were not repealed, and a Supreme Court decision of 1913 declared all non-Christian marriages to be legally invalid. This last decision deprived most nonwhite wives and children of all legal protection of their family rights. Mass civil disobedience by Indians increased, including a march by 6,000 from Natal to the Transvaal. Finally, after much controversy, Gandhi and Smuts worked out an elaborate compromise agreement in 1914. This revoked some of the discriminations against Indians in South Africa, recognized Indian marriages, annulled a discriminatory £3 annual tax on Indians, and stopped all importation of indentured labor from India in 1920. Peace was restored in this civil controversy just in time to permit a united front in the external war with Germany. But in South Africa by 1914 Gandhi had worked out the techniques he would use against the British in India after 1919.

Until 1919 Gandhi Noms very loyal to the British connection. Both in South Africa and in India he had found that the English from England were much more tolerant and understanding than most of the English-speaking whites of middle-class origin in the overseas areas. In the Boer War he was the active leader of an 1,100-man Indian ambulance corps which worked with inspiring courage even under fire on the field of battle. During World War I, he worked constantly on recruiting campaigns for the British forces. On one of these in 1915 he said, "I discovered that the British Empire had certain ideals with which I have fallen in love, and one of these ideals is that every subject of the British Empire has the freest scope possible for his energy and honor and whatever he thinks is due to his conscience." By 1918 this apostle of nonviolence was saying: "We are regarded as a cowardly people. If we want to become free from that reproach, we should learn to use arms.... Partnership in the Empire is our definite goal. We should suffer to the utmost of our ability and even lay down our lives to defend the Empire. If the Empire perishes, with it perishes our cherished aspiration."

During this period Gandhi's asceticism and his opposition to all kinds of discrimination were winning him an outstanding moral position among the Indian people. He was opposed to all violence and bloodshed, to alcohol, meat, and tobacco, even to the eating of milk and eggs, and to sex (even in marriage). More than this, he was opposed to Western industrialism, to Western science and medicine, and to the use of Western rather than Indian languages. He demanded that his followers make fixed quotas of homespun cotton each day, wore a minimum of homespun clothing himself, spun on a small wheel throughout all his daily activities, and took the small hand spinning wheel as the symbol of his movement— all this in order to signify the honorable nature of handwork, the need for Indian economic self-sufficiency, and his opposition to Western industrialism. He worked for equality for the untouchables, calling them "God's children" (Harijans), associating with them whenever he could, taking them into his own home, even adopting one as his own daughter. He worked to relieve economic oppression, organizing strikes against low wages or miserable working conditions, supporting the strikers with money he had gathered from India's richest Hindu industrialists. He attacked Western medicine and sanitation, supported all kinds of native medical nostrums and even quackery, yet went to a Western-trained surgeon for an operation when he had appendicitis himself. Similarly he preached against the use of milk, but drank goat's milk for his health much of his life. These inconsistencies he attributed to his own weak sinfulness. Similarly, he permitted hand-spun cotton to be sewn on Singer sewing machines, and conceded that Western-type factories were necessary to provide such machines.

During this period he discovered that his personal fasts from food, which he had long practiced, could be used as moral weapons against those who opposed him while they strengthened his moral hold over those who supported him. "I fasted," he said, "to reform those who loved me. You cannot fast against a tyrant." Gandhi never seemed to recognize that his fasting and nonviolent civil disobedience were effective against the British in India and in South Africa only to the degree that the British had the qualities of humanity, decency, generosity, and fair play which he most admired, but that by attacking the British through these virtues he was weakening Britain and the class which possessed these virtues and making it more likely that they would be replaced by nations and by leaders who did not have these virtues. Certainly Hitler and the Germans who exterminated six million Jews in cold blood during World War II would not have shared the reluctance of Smuts to imprison a few thousand Indians or Lord Halifax's reluctance to see Gandhi starve himself to death. This was the fatal weakness of Gandhi's aims and his methods, but these aims and methods were so dear to Indian hearts and so selflessly pursued by Gandhi that he rapidly became the spiritual leader of the Indian National Congress after Gokhale's death in 1915. In this position Gandhi by his spiritual power succeeded in something which no earlier Indian leader had achieved and few had hoped for: he spread political awareness and nationalist feeling from the educated class down into the great uneducated mass of the Indian people.

This mass and Gandhi expected and demanded a greater degree of self-government after the end of World War I. The Act of 1919 provided that, and probably provided as much of it as the political experience of Indians entitled them to. Moreover, the Act anticipated expansion of the areas of self-government as Indian political experience increased. But the Act was largely a failure, because Gandhi had aroused political ambitions in great masses of Indians who lacked experience in political activities, and these demands gave rise to intense opposition to Indian self-government in British circles which did not share the ideals of the Round Table group. Finally, the actions of this British opposition drove Gandhi from "nonresistance" through complete "non-cooperation," to "civil disobedience," thus destroying the whole purpose of the Act of 1919.

Many British conservatives both at home and in India opposed the Act of 1919. Lord Ampthill, who had long experience in India and had valiantly supported Gandhi in South Africa, attacked the Act and Lionel Curtis for making it. In the House of Lords he said: "The incredible fact is that, but for the chance visit to India of a globe-trotting doctrinaire with a positive mania for constitution-mongering [Curtis], nobody in the world would ever have thought of so peculiar a notion as Dyarchy. And yet the Joint [Selborne] Committee tells us in an airy manner that no better plan can be conceived." In India men like the governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, were even more emphatically opposed to Indian self-government or Indian nationalist agitation. Many Conservatives who were determined to maintain the empire intact could not see how this could be done without India as the major jewel in it, as in the nineteenth century. India not only provided a large share of the manpower in the peacetime imperial army, hut this army was largely stationed in India and paid for out of the revenues of the Government of India. Moreover, this self-paying manpower pool was beyond the scrutiny of the British reformer as well as the British taxpayers. The older Tories, with their strong army connections, and others, like Winston Churchill, with an appreciation of military matters, did not see how England could face the military demands of the twentieth century without Indian military manpower, at least in colonial areas.

Instead of getting more freedom at the end of the war in 1918, the Indians got less. The conservative group pushed through the Rowlatt Act in March 1919. This continued most of the wartime restrictions on civil liberties in India, to be used to control nationalist agitations. Gandhi called for civil disobedience and a series of scattered local general strikes (hartels) in protest. These actions led to violence, especially to Indian attacks on the British. Gandhi bewailed this violence, and inflicted a seventy-two-hour fast on himself as penance.

In Amritsar an Englishwoman was attacked in the street (April 10, 1919). The Congress Party leaders in the city were deported, and Brigadier R. E. H. Dyer was sent to restore order. On arrival he prohibited all processions and meetings; then, without waiting for the order to be publicized, went with fifty men to disperse with gunfire a meeting already in progress (April 13, 1919). He fired 1,650 bullets into a dense crowd packed in a square with inadequate exits, inflicting 1,516 casualties, of which 379 met death. Leaving the wounded untended on the ground, General Dyer returned to his office and issued an order that all Indians passing through the street where the Englishwoman had been assaulted a week before must do so by crawling on hands and knees. There is no doubt that General Dyer was looking for trouble. In his own words: "I had made up my mind I would do all men to death.... It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect from a military point of view not only on those who were present, but more especially throughout the Punjab."

The situation might still have been saved from Dyer's barbarity but the Hunter Committee, which investigated the atrocity, refused to condemn Dyer except for "a grave error of judgment" and "an honest but mistaken conception of duty." A majority of the House of Lords approved his action by refusing to censure him, and, when the government forced him to resign from the army, his admirers in England presented him with a sword and a purse of 120,000.

At this point Gandhi committed a grave error of judgment. In order to solidify the alliance of Hindu and Muslim which had been in existence since 1917, he supported the Khilafat movement of Indian Muslims to obtain a lenient peace treaty for the Turkish sultan (and caliph) following World War I. Gandhi suggested that the Khilafat adopt "non-cooperation" against Britain to enforce its demands. This would have involved a boycott of British goods, schools, law courts, offices, honors, and of all goods subject to British taxes (such as alcohol). This was an error of judgment because the sultan was soon overthrown by his own people organized in a Turkish Nationalist movement and seeking a secularized Turkish state, in spite of all Britain was already doing (both in public and in private) to support him. Thus, the Khilafat movement was seeking to force Britain to do something it already wanted to do and was not able to do. Moreover, by bringing up "non-cooperation" as a weapon against the British, Gandhi had opened a number of doors he had no desire to open, with very bad consequences for India.

At the Indian National Congress of December, 1919, Tilak and Gandhi were the leading figures. Both were willing to accept the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, Tilak because he believed this would be the best way to prove that they were not adequate. But on August I, 1920, Gandhi proclaimed "non-cooperation" in behalf of the Khilafat movement. On the same day Tilak died, leaving Gandhi as undisputed leader of the Congress. At the 1920 meeting he won unanimous approval for "non-cooperation," and then moved a resolution for swaraj (self-rule) either within or outside the British Empire. The Muslims in Congress, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, refused to accept an independent India outside the British Empire because this would subject the Muslims to a Hindu majority without Britain's protecting restraint. As a result, from that point, many Muslims left the Congress.

Non-cooperation was a great public success. But it did not get self-rule for India, and made the country less fitted for self-rule by making it impossible for Indians to get experience in government under the Act of 1919. Thousands of Indians gave up medals and honors, gave up the practice of law in British courts, left the British schools, and burned British goods. Gandhi held great mass meetings at which thousands of persons stripped themselves of their foreign clothing to throw it on raging bonfires. This did not, however, give them training in government. It merely roused nationalist violence. On February 1, 1922, Gandhi informed the viceroy that he was about to begin mass civil disobedience, in one district at a time, beginning in Bardoli near Bombay. Civil disobedience, including refusal to pay taxes or obey the laws, was a step beyond non-cooperation, since it involved illegal acts rather than legal ones. On February 5, 1922, a Hindu mob attacked twenty-two police constables and killed them by burning the police station down over their heads. In horror Gandhi canceled the campaign against Britain. He was at once arrested and condemned to six years in prison for sedition.

Very great damage had been done by the events of 1919-1922. Britain and India were alienated to the point where they no longer trusted one another. The Congress Party itself had been split, the moderates forming a new group called the Indian Liberal Federation. The Muslims had also left the Congress Party to a large extent and gone to strengthen the Muslim League. From this point onward, Muslim-Hindu riots were annual occurrences in India. And finally the boycott had crippled the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, almost two-thirds of the eligible voters refusing to vote in the Councils elections of November, 1920.

Ireland to 1939

While the Indian crisis was at its height in 1919-1922, an even more violent crisis was raging in Ireland. Throughout the nineteenth century Ireland had been agitated by grievances of long standing. The three major problems were agrarian, religious, and political. The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the seventeenth century had transferred much Irish land, as plunder of war, to absentee English landlords. In consequence high rents, insecure tenure, lack of improvements, and legalized economic exploitation, supported by English judges and English soldiers, gave rise to violent agrarian unrest and rural atrocities against English lives and properties.

Beginning with Gladstone's Land Act of 1870, the agrarian problems were slowly alleviated and, by 1914, were well in hand. The religious problem arose from the fact that Ireland was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, and resented being ruled by persons of a different religion. Moreover, until the Irish (Episcopal) Church was dis-established in 1869, Irish Catholics had to support a structure of Anglican clergy and bishops, most of whom had few or no parishioners in Ireland and resided in England, supported by incomes from Ireland. Finally, the Act of Union of 1801 had made Ireland a part of the United Kingdom, with representatives in the Parliament at Westminster.

By 1871 those representatives who were opposed to union with England formed the Irish Home Rule Party. It sought to obtain separation by obstructing the functions of Parliament and disrupting its proceedings. At times this group exercised considerable influence in Parliament by holding a balance of power between Liberals and Conservatives. The Gladstone Liberals were willing to give Ireland Home Rule, with no representatives at Westminster; the Conservatives (with the support of a majority of Englishmen) were opposed to Home Rule; the Rhodes-Milner group wanted self-government for the Irish in their home affairs with Irish representatives retained at Westminster for foreign and imperial matters. The Liberal government of 1906- 1916 tried to enact a Home Rule bill with continued Irish representation in the House of Commons, but was repeatedly blocked by the opposition of the House of Lords; the bill did not become law until September, 1914.

The chief opposition arose from the fact that Protestant Ulster (Northern Ireland) would be submerged in an overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland. The Ulster opposition, led by Sir Edward (later Lord) Carson, organized a private army, armed it with guns smuggled from Germany, and prepared to seize control of Belfast at a signal from London. Carson was on his way to the telegraph station to send this signal in 1914 when he received a message from the prime minister that war was about to break out with Germany. Accordingly, the Ulster revolt was canceled and the Home Rule Act was suspended until six months after the peace with Germany. As a consequence the revolt with German arms in Ireland was made by the Irish Nationalists in 1916, instead of by their Ulster opponents in 1914. This so-called Easter Revolt of 1916 was crushed and its leaders executed, but discontent continued to simmer in Ireland, with violence only slightly below the surface.

In the parliamentary election of 1918, Ireland elected 6 Nationalists (who wanted Home Rule for all Ireland), 73 Sinn Fein (who wanted an Irish Republic free from England), and 23 Unionists (who wanted to remain part of Britain). Instead of going to Westminster, the Sinn Fein organized their own Parliament in Dublin. Efforts to arrest its members led to open civil war. This was a struggle of assassination, treachery, and reprisal, fought out in back alleys and on moonlit fields. Sixty thousand British troops could not maintain order. Thousands of lives were lost, with brutal inhumanity on both sides, and property damage rose to £50 million in value.

Lionel Curtis, who helped edit The Round Table in 1919-1921, advocated in the March 1920 issue that Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland be separated and each given Home Rule as autonomous parts of Great Britain. This was enacted into law eight months later as the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, but was rejected by the Irish Republicans led by Eamon de Valera. The civil war continued. The Round Table group worked valiantly to stop the extremists on both sides, but with only moderate success. Amery's brother-in-law, Hamar (Lord) Greenwood, was appointed chief secretary for Ireland, the last incumbent of that post, while Curtis was appointed adviser on Irish affairs to the Colonial Office (which was headed by Milner and Amery). The Times and The Round Table condemned British repression in Ireland, the latter saying, "If the British Commonwealth can only be preserved by such means, it would become a negation of the principle for which it has stood." But British violence could not be curtailed until Irish violence could be curtailed. One of the chief leaders of the Irish Republicans was Erskine Childers, an old schoolboy friend of Curtis who had been with him in South Africa, but nothing could be done through him, since he had become fanatically anti-British. Accordingly, Smuts was called in. He wrote a conciliatory speech for King George to deliver at the opening of the Ulster Parliament, and made a secret visit to the rebel hiding place in Ireland to try to persuade the Irish Republican leaders to be reasonable. He contrasted the insecurity of the Transvaal Republic before 1895 with its happy condition under dominion status since 1910, saying: "Make no mistake about it, you have more privilege, more power, more peace, more security in such a sisterhood of equal nations than in a small, nervous republic having all the time to rely on the good will and perhaps the assistance of foreigners. What sort of independence do you call that?"

Smuts arranged an armistice and a conference to negotiate a settlement. From this conference, at which Curtis was secretary, came the Articles of Agreement of December, 1921, which gave Southern Ireland dominion status as the Irish Free State, Northern Ireland continuing under the Act of 1920. The boundary line between the two countries was drawn by a committee of three of which the British member (and chairman) was Richard Feetham of Milner's Kindergarten and the Round Table group, later Supreme Court judge in South Africa.

De Valera's Irish Republicans refused to accept the settlement, and went into insurrection, this time against the moderate Irish leaders, Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins. Collins was assassinated, and Griffith died, exhausted by the strain, but the Irish people themselves were now tired of turmoil. De Valera's forces were driven underground and were defeated in the election of 1922. When De Valera's party' the Fianna Fail, did win an election in 1932 and he became President of Ireland, he abolished the oath of loyalty to the king and the office of governor-general, ended annual payments on seized English lands and appeals to the Privy Council, engaged in a bitter tariff war with Britain, and continued to demand the annexation of Ulster. One of the last links with Britain was ended in 1938, when the British naval bases in Eire were turned over to the Irish, to the great benefit of German submarines in 1939-1945

Chapter 10—The Far East to World War I

The Collapse of China to 1920

The destruction of traditional Chinese culture under the impact of Western Civilization was considerably later than the similar destruction of Indian culture by Europeans. This delay arose from the fact that European pressure on India was applied fairly steadily from the early sixteenth century, while in the Far East, in Japan even more completely than in China, this pressure was relaxed from the early seventeenth century for almost two hundred years, to 1794 in the case of China and to 1854 in the case of Japan. As a result, we can see the process by which European culture was able to destroy the traditional native cultures of Asia more clearly in China than almost anywhere else.

The traditional culture of China, as elsewhere in Asia, consisted of a military and bureaucratic hierarchy superimposed on a great mass of hardworking peasantry. It is customary, in studying this subject, to divide this hierarchy into three levels. Politically, these three levels consisted of the imperial authority at the top, an enormous hierarchy of imperial and provincial officials in the middle, and the myriad of semi-patriarchal, semi-democratic local villages at the bottom. Socially, this hierarchy was similarly divided into the ruling class, the gentry, and the peasants. And, economically, there was a parallel division, the uppermost group deriving its incomes as tribute and taxes from its possession of military and political power, while the middle group derived its incomes from economic sources, as interest on loans, rents from lands, and the profits of commercial enterprise, as well as from the salaries, graft, and other emoluments arising from his middle group's control of the bureaucracy. At the bottom the peasantry, which was the only really productive group in the society, derived its incomes from the sweat of its collective brows, and had to survive on what was left to it after a substantial fraction of its product had gone to the two higher groups in the form of rents, taxes, interest, customary bribes (called "squeeze"), and excessive profits on such purchased "necessities" of life as salt, iron, or opium.

Although the peasants were clearly an exploited group in the traditional society of China, this exploitation was impersonal and traditional and this more easily borne shall if it had been personal or arbitrary. In the course of time, a workable system of customary relationships had come into existence among the three levels of society. Each group knew its established relationships with the others, and used those relationships to avoid any sudden or excessive pressures which might disrupt the established patterns of the society. The political and military force of the imperial regime rarely impinged directly on the peasantry, since the bureaucracy intervened between them as a protecting buffer. This buffer followed a pattern of deliberate amorphous inefficiency so that the military and political force from above had been diffused, dispersed, and blunted by the time it reached down to the peasant villages. The bureaucracy followed this pattern because it recognized that the peasantry was the source of its incomes, and it had no desire to create such discontent as would jeopardize the productive process or the payments of rents, taxes, and interest on which it lived. Furthermore, the inefficiency of the system was both customary and deliberate, since it allowed a large portion of the wealth which was being drained from the peasantry to be diverted and diffused among the middle class of gentry before the remnants of it reached the imperial group at the top.

This imperial group, in its turn, had to accept this system of inefficiency and diversion of incomes and its own basic remoteness from the peasantry because of the great size of China, the ineffectiveness of its systems of transportation and communications, and the impossibility of keeping records of population, or of incomes and taxes except through the indirect mediation of the bureaucracy. The semi-autonomous position of the bureaucracy depended, to a considerable extent, on the fact that the Chinese system of writing was so cumbersome, so inefficient, and so difficult to learn that the central government could not possibly have kept any records or have administered tax collection, public order, or justice except through a bureaucracy of trained experts. This bureaucracy was recruited from the gentry because the complex systems of writing, of law, and of administrative traditions could be mastered only by a group possessing leisure based on unearned incomes. To be sure, in time, the training for this bureaucracy and for the examinations admitting to it became quite unrealistic, consisting largely of memorizing of ancient literary texts for examination purposes rather than for any cultural or administrative ends. This was not so bad as it sounds, for many of the memorized texts contained a good deal of ancient wisdom with an ethical or practical slant, and the possession of this store of knowledge engendered in its possessors a respect for moderation and for tradition which was just what the system required. No one regretted that the system of education and of examinations leading to the bureaucracy did not engender a thirst for efficiency, because efficiency was not a quality which anyone desired. The bureaucracy itself did not desire efficiency because this would have reduced its ability to divert the funds flowing upward from the peasantry.

The peasantry surely did not want any increase in efficiency, which would have led to an increase in pressure on it and would have made it less easy to blunt or to avoid the impact of imperial power. The imperial power itself had little desire for any increased efficiency in its bureaucracy, since this might have led to increased independence on the part of the bureaucracy. So long as the imperial superstructure of Chinese society obtained its share of the wealth flowing upward from the peasantry, it was satisfied. The share of this wealth which the imperial group obtained was very large, in absolute figures, although proportionately it was only a small part of the total amount which left the peasant class, the larger part being diverted by the gentry and bureaucracy on its upward flow.

The exploitative nature of this three-class social system was alleviated, as we have seen, by inefficiency, by traditional moderation and accepted ethical ideas, by a sense of social interdependence, and by the power of traditional law and custom which protected the ordinary peasant from arbitrary treatment or the direct impact of force. Most important of all, perhaps, the system was alleviated by the existence of careers open to talent. China never became organized into hereditary groups or castes, being in this respect like England and quite unlike India. The way was open to the top in Chinese society, not for any individual peasant in his own lifetime, but to any individual peasant family over a period of several generations. Thus an individual's position in society depended, not on the efforts of his own youth, but on the efforts of his father and grandfather.

If a Chinese peasant was diligent, shrewd, and lucky, he could expect to accumulate some small surplus beyond the subsistence of his own family and the drain to the upper classes. This surplus could be invested in activities such as iron-making, opium selling, lumber or fuel selling, pig-trading and such. The profits from these activities could then be invested in small bits of land to be rented out to less fortunate peasants or in loans to other peasants. If times remained good, the owner of the surpluses began to receive rents and interest from his neighbors; if times became bad he still had his land or could take over his debtor's land as forfeited collateral on his loan. In good times or bad, the growth of population in China kept the demand for land high, and peasants were able to rise in the social scale from peasantry to gentry by slowly expanding their legal claims over land. Once in the gentry, one's children or grandchildren could be educated to pass the bureaucratic examinations and be admitted to the group of mandarins. A family which had a member or two in this group gained access to the whole system of "squeeze" and of bureaucratic diversion of income flows, so that the family as a whole could continue to rise in the social and economic structure. Eventually some member of the family might move into the imperial center from the provincial level on which this rise began, and might even gain access to the imperial ruling group itself.

In these higher levels of the social structure many families were able to maintain a position for generations, but in general there was a steady, if slow, "circulation of the elite," most families remaining in a high social position for only a couple of generations, after about three generations of climb, to be followed by a couple of generations of decline. Thus, the old American saying that it took only three generations "from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves" would, in the old China, have to be extended to allow about six or seven generations from the rice paddy's drudgery back to the rice paddy again. But the hope of such a rise contributed much to increase individual diligence and family solidarity and to reduce peasant discontent. Only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century did peasants in China come to regard their positions as so hopeless that violence became preferable to diligence or conformity. This change arose from the fact, as we shall see, that the impact of Western culture on China did, in fact, make the peasant’s position economically hopeless.

In traditional Chinese society the bureaucrats recruited through examinations from the gentry class were called mandarins. They became, for all practical purposes, the dominant element in Chinese society. Since their social and economic position did not rest on political or military power but on traditions, the legal structure, social stability, accepted ethical teachings, and the rights of property, this middle-level group gave Chinese society a powerful traditionalist orientation. Respect for old traditions, for the accepted modes of thought and action, for the ancestors in society and religion, and for the father in the family became the salient characteristics of Chinese society. That this society was a complex network of vested interests, was unprogressive, and was shot through with corruption was no more objectionable to the average Chinese, on any level, than the fact that it was also shot through with inefficiency.

These things became objectionable only when Chinese society came directly in contact with European culture during the nineteenth century. As these two societies collided, inefficiency, unprogressiveness, corruption, and the whole nexus of vested interests and traditions which constituted Chinese society was unable to survive in contact with the efficiency, the progressiveness, and the instruments of penetration and domination of Europeans. A system could not hope to survive which could not provide itself with firearms in large quantities or with mass armies of loyal soldiers to use such weapons, a system which could not increase its taxes or its output of wealth or which could not keep track of its own population or its own incomes by effective records or which had no effective methods of communication and transportation over an area of 3.5 million square miles.

The society of the West which began to impinge on China about 1800 was powerful, efficient, and progressive. It had no respect for the corruption, the traditions, the property rights, the family solidarity, or the ethical moderation of traditional Chinese society. As the weapons of the West, along with its efficient methods of sanitation, of writing, of transportation and communications, of individual self-interest, and of corrosive intellectual rationalism came into contact with Chinese society, they began to dissolve it. On the one hand, Chinese society w as too weak to defend itself against the West. When it tried to do so, as in the Opium Wars and other struggles of 1841-1861, or in the Boxer uprising of 1900, such Chinese resistance to European penetration was crushed by the armaments of the Western Powers, and all kinds of concessions to these Powers were imposed on China.

Until 1841 Canton was the only port allowed for foreign imports, and opium was illegal. As a consequence of Chinese destruction of illegal Indian opium and the commercial exactions of Cantonese authorities, Britain imposed on China the treaties of Nanking (1842) and of Tientsin (1858). These forced China to cede Hong Kong to Britain and to open sixteen ports to foreign trade, to impose a uniform import tariff of no more than 5 percent, to pay an indemnity of about $100 million, to permit foreign legations in Peking, to allow a British official to act as head of the Chinese customs service, and to legalize the import of opium. Other agreements were imposed by which China lost various fringe areas such as Burma (to Britain), Indochina (to France), Formosa and the Pescadores (to Japan), and Macao (to Portugal), while other areas were taken on leases of various durations, from twenty-five to ninety-nine years. In this way Germany took Kiaochow, Russia took southern Liaotung (including Port Arthur), France took Kwangcho-wan, and Britain took Kowloon and Weihaiwei. In this same period various Powers imposed on China a system of extraterritorial courts under which foreigners, in judicial cases, could not be tried in Chinese courts or under Chinese law.

The political impact of Western civilization on China, great as it was, was overshadowed by the economic impact. We have already indicated that China was a largely agrarian country. Years of cultivation and the slow growth of population had given rise to a relentless pressure on the soil and to a destructive exploitation of its vegetative resources. .Most of the country was deforested, resulting in shortage of fuel, rapid runoff of precipitation, constant danger of floods, and large-scale erosion of the soil. Cultivation had been extended to remote valleys and up the slopes of hills by population pressures, with a great increase in the same destructive consequences, in spite of the fact that many slopes were rebuilt in terraces. The fact that the southern portion of the country depended on rice cultivation created many problems, since this crop, of relatively low nutritive value, required great expenditure of labor (transplanting and weeding) under conditions which were destructive of good health. Long periods of wading in rice paddies exposed most peasants to various kinds of joint diseases, and to water-borne infections such as malaria or parasitical flukes.

The pressure on the soil was intensified by the fact that 60 percent of China was over 6,000 feet above sea level, too high for cultivation, while more than half the land had inadequate rainfall (below twenty inches a year). Moreover, the rainfall was provided by the erratic monsoon winds which frequently brought floods and occasionally failed completely, causing wholesale famine. In the United States 140 million people were supported by the labor of 6.5 million farmers on 365 million acres of cultivated land in 1945; China, about the same time, had almost 500 million persons supported by the labor of 65 million farmers on only 217 million acres of cultivated land. In China the average farm was only a little over four acres (compared to 157 in the United States) but was divided into five or six separate fields and had, on the average, 6.2 persons living on it (compared to 4.2 persons on the immensely larger American farm). As a result, in China there was only about half an acre of land for each person living on the land, compared to the American figure of 15.7 acres per person.

As a consequence of this pressure on the land, the average Chinese peasant had, even in earlier times, no margin above the subsistence level, especially when we recall that a certain part of his income flowed upward to the upper classes. Since, on his agricultural account alone, the average Chinese peasant was below the subsistence level, he had to use various ingenious devices to get up to that level. All purchases of goods produced off the farm were kept at an absolute minimum. Every wisp of grass, fallen leaf, or crop residue was collected to serve as fuel. All human waste products, including those of the cities, were carefully collected and restored to the soil as fertilizer. For this reason, farmlands around cities, because of the greater supply of such wastes, were more productive than more remote farms which were dependent on local supplies of such human wastes. Collection and sale of such wastes became an important link in the agricultural economics of China. Since the human digestive system extracts only part of the nutritive elements in food, the remaining elements were frequently extracted by feeding such wastes to swine, thus passing them through the pig's digestive system before these wastes returned to the soil to provide nourishment for new crops and, thus, for new food. Every peasant farm had at least one pig which was purchased young, lived in the farm latrine until it was full grown, and then was sold into the city to provide a cash margin for such necessary purchases as salt, sugar, oils, or iron products. In a somewhat similar way the rice paddy was able to contribute to the farmer's supply of proteins by acting as a fishpond and an aquarium for minute freshwater shrimp.

In China, as in Europe, the aims of agricultural efficiency were quite different from the aims of agricultural efficiency in new countries, such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, or Australia. In these newer countries there was a shortage of labor and a surplus of land, while in Europe and Asia there was a shortage of land and a surplus of labor. Accordingly, the aim of agricultural efficiency in newer lands was high output of crops per unit of labor. It was for this reason that American agriculture put such emphasis on labor-saving agricultural machinery and soil-exhausting agricultural practices, while Asiatic agriculture put immense amounts of hand labor on small amounts of land in order to save the soil and to win the maximum crop from the limited amount of land. In America the farmer could afford to spend large sums for farm machinery because the labor such machinery replaced would have been expensive anyway and because the cost of that machinery was spread over such a large acreage that its cost per acre was relatively moderate. In Asia there was no capital for such expenditures on machinery because there was no margin of surplus above subsistence in the hands of the peasantry and because the average farm was so small that the cost of machinery per acre (either to buy or even to operate) would have been prohibitive. The only surplus in Asia was of labor, and every effort was made, by putting more and more labor on the land, to make the limited amount of land more productive. One result of this investment of labor in land in China can be seen in the fact that about half of the Chinese farm acreage was irrigated while about a quarter of it was terraced. Another result of this excess concentration of labor on land was that such labor was underemployed and semi-idle for about three-quarters of the year, being fully busy only in the planting and harvest seasons. From this semi-idleness of the Asiatic rural population came the most important effort to supplement peasant incomes through rural handicrafts. Before we turn to this crucial point, we should glance at the relative success of China's efforts to achieve high-unit yields in agriculture.

In the United States, about 1940, each acre of wheat required 1.2 man-days of work each year; in China an acre of wheat took 26 man-days of labor. The rewards of such expenditures of labor were quite different. In China the output of grain for each man-year of labor was 3,080 pounds; in the United States the output was 44,000 pounds per man-year of labor. This low productivity of agricultural labor in China would have been perfectly acceptable if China had, instead, achieved high output per acre. Unfortunately, even in this alternative aim China was only moderately successful, more successful than the United States, it is true, but far less successful than European countries which aimed at the same type of agricultural efficiency (high yields per acre) as China did. This can be seen from the following figures:

Output Per Acre

In Rice In Wheat

United States 47 bushes United States 14 bushels

China 67 bushes China 16 bushels

Italy 93 bushels England 32 bushels

These figures indicate the relative failure of Chinese (and other Asiatic) agriculture even in terms of its own aims. This relative failure was not caused by lack of effort, but by such factors as (I) farms too small for efficient operation; (2) excessive population pressure which forced farming onto less productive soil and which drew more nutritive elements out of the soil than could be replaced, even by wholesale use of human wastes as fertilizer; ( 3) lack of such scientific agricultural techniques as seed selection or crop rotation; and (4) the erratic character of a monsoon climate on a deforested and semi-eroded land.

Because of the relatively low productivity of Chinese (and all Asiatic) agriculture, the whole population was close to the margin of subsistence and, at irregular intervals, was forced below that margin into widespread famine. In China the situation was alleviated to some extent by three forces. In the first place, the irregular famines which we have mentioned, and somewhat more frequent onslaughts of plague disease, kept the population within manageable bounds. These two irregular occurrences reduced the population by millions, in both China and India, when they occurred. Even in ordinary years the death rate was high, about 30 per thousand in China compared to 25 in India, 12.3 in England, or 8.7 in Australia. Infant mortality (in the first year of life) was about 159 per thousand in China compared to 240 in India, about 70 in western Europe, and about 32 in New Zealand. At birth an infant could be expected to live less than 27 years in India, less than 35 years in China, about 60 years in England or the United States, and about 66 years in New Zealand (all figures are about 1930). In spite of this "expectation of death" in China, the population was maintained at a high level by a birth rate of about 38 per thousand of the population compared to 34 in India, 18 in the United States or Australia, and 15 in England. The skyrocketing effect which the use of modern sanitary or medical practices might have upon China's population figures can be gathered from the fact that about three-quarters of Chinese deaths are from causes which are preventable (usually easily preventable) in the West. For example, a quarter of all deaths are from diseases spread by human wastes; about 10 percent come from childhood diseases like smallpox, measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and whooping cough; about 15 percent arise from tuberculosis; and about 7 percent are in childbirth..

The birthrate was kept up, in traditional Chinese society as a consequence of a group of ideas which are usually known as "ancestor worship." Every Chinese family had, as its most powerful motivation, the conviction that the family line must be continued in order to have descendants to keep up the family shrines, to maintain the ancestral graves, and to support the living members of the family after their productive years had ended. The expense of such shrines, graves, and old persons was a considerable burden on the average Chinese family and a cumulative burden as well, since the diligence of earlier generations frequently left a family with shrines and graves so elaborate that upkeep alone was a heavy expense to later generations. At the same time the urge to have sons kept the birth rate up and led to such undesirable social practices, in traditional Chinese society, as infanticide, abandonment, or sale of female offspring. Another consequence of these ideas was that more well-to-do families in China tended to have more children than poor families. This was the exact opposite of the situation in Western civilization, where a rise in the economic scale resulted in the acquisition of a middle-class outlook which included restriction of the family's offspring.

The pressure of China's population on the level of subsistence was relieved to some extent by wholesale Chinese emigration in the period after 1800. This outward movement was toward the less settled areas of Manchuria, Mongolia, and southwestern China, overseas to America and Europe, and, above all, to the tropical areas of southeastern Asia (especially to Malaya and Indonesia). In these areas, the diligence, frugality, and shrewdness of the Chinese provided them with a good living and in some cases with considerable wealth. They generally acted as a commercial middle class pushing inward between the native Malaysian or Indonesian peasants and the upper group of ruling whites. This movement, which began centuries ago, steadily accelerated after 1900 and gave rise to unfavorable reactions from the non-Chinese residents of these areas. The Malay, Siamese, and Indonesians, for example, came to regard the Chinese as economically oppressive and exploitative, while the white rulers of these areas, especially in Australia and New Zealand, regarded them with suspicion for political and racial reasons. Among the causes of this political suspicion were that emigrant Chinese remained loyal to their families at home and to the homeland itself, that they were generally excluded from citizenship in areas to which they emigrated, and that they continued to be regarded as citizens by successive Chinese governments. The loyalty of emigrant Chinese to their families at home became an important source of economic strength to these families and to China itself, because emigrant Chinese sent very large savings back to their families.

We have already mentioned the important role played by peasant handicrafts in traditional Chinese society. It would, perhaps, not be any real exaggeration to say that peasant handicrafts were the factor which permitted the traditional form of society to continue, not only in China but in all of Asia. This society was based on an inefficient agricultural system in which the political, military, legal, and economic claims of the upper classes drained from the peasantry such a large proportion of their agricultural produce that the peasant was kept pressed down to the subsistence level (and, in much of China, below this level). Only by this process could Asia support its large urban populations and its large numbers of rulers, soldiers, bureaucrats, traders, priests, and scholars (none of whom produced the food, clothing, or shelter they were consuming). In all Asiatic countries the peasants on the land were underemployed in agricultural activities, because of the seasonal nature of their work. In the course of time there had grown up a solution to this social-agrarian problem: in their spare time the peasantry occupied themselves with handicrafts and other nonagricultural activities and then sold the products of their labor to the cities for money to be used to buy necessities. In real terms this meant that the agricultural products which were flowing from the peasantry to the upper classes (and generally from rural areas to the cities) were replaced in part by handicrafts, leaving a somewhat larger share of the peasants' agricultural products in the hands of peasants. It was this arrangement which made it possible for the Chinese peasantry to raise their incomes up to the subsistence level.

The importance of this relationship should be obvious. If it were destroyed, the peasant would be faced with a cruel alternative: either he could perish by falling below the subsistence level or he could turn to violence in order to reduce the claims which the upper classes had on his agricultural products. In the long run every peasant group was driven toward the second of these alternatives. As a result, all Asia by 1940 was in the grip of a profound political and social upheaval because, a generation earlier the demand for the products of peasants' handicrafts had been reduced.

The destruction of this delicately balanced system occurred when cheap, machine-made products of Western manufacture began to flow into Asiatic countries. Native products such as textiles, metal goods, paper, wood carvings, pottery, hats, baskets, and such found it increasingly difficult to compete with Western manufactures in the markets of their own cities. As a result, the peasantry found it increasingly difficult to shift the legal and economic claims which the upper, urban, classes held against them from agricultural products to handicraft products. And, as a consequence of this, the percentage of their agricultural products which was being taken from the peasantry by the claims of other classes began to rise..

This destruction of the local market for native handicrafts could have been prevented if high customs duties had been imposed on European industrial goods. But one point on which the European Powers were agreed was that they would not allow "backward" countries to exclude their products with tariffs. In India, Indonesia, and some of the lesser states of southeastern Asia this was prevented by the European Powers taking over the government of the areas; in China, Egypt, Turkey, Persia, and some Malay states the European Powers took over no more than the financial system or the customs service. As a result, countries like China, Japan, and Turkey had to sign treaties maintaining their tariffs at 5 or 8 percent and allowing Europeans to control these services. Sir Robert Hart was head of the Chinese customs from 1863 to 1906, just as Sir Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer) was head of the Egyptian financial system from 1879 to 1907, and Sir Edgar Vincent (Lord D'Abernon) was the chief figure in the Turkish financial system from 1882 to 1897.

As a consequence of the factors we have described, the position of the Chinese peasant was desperate by 1900, and became steadily worse. A moderate estimate (published in 1940) showed that lo percent of the farm population owned 53 percent of the cultivated land, while the other go percent had only 47 percent of the land. The majority of Chinese farmers had to rent at least some land, for which they paid, as rent, from one-third to one-half of the crop. Since their incomes were not adequate, more than half of all Chinese farmers had to borrow each year. On borrowed grain the interest rate was 85 percent a year; on money loans the interest rate was variable, being over 20 percent a year on nine-tenths of all loans made and over so percent a year on one-eighth of the loans made. Under such conditions of landownership, rental rates, and interest charges, the future was hopeless for the majority of Chinese farmers long before 1940. Yet the social revolution in China did not come until after 1940.

The slow growth of the social revolution in China was the result of many influences. Chinese population pressure was relieved to some extent in the last half of the nineteenth century by the famines of 1877-1879 (which killed about 12 million people), by the political disturbances of the Tai-Ping and other rebellions in 1848-1875 (which depopulated large areas), and by the continued high death rate. The continued influence of traditional ideas, especially Confucianism and respect for ancestral ways, held the lid on this boiling pot until this influence was destroyed in the period after 1900. Hope that some solution might be found by the republican regime after the collapse of the imperial regime in 1911 had a similar effect. And, lastly, the distribution of European weapons in Chinese society was such as to hinder rather than to assist revolution until well into the twentieth century. Then this distribution turned in a direction quite different from that in Western civilization. These last three points are sufficiently important to warrant a closer examination.

We have already mentioned that effective weapons which are difficult to use or expensive to obtain encourage the development of authoritarian regimes in any society. In the late medieval period, in Asia, cavalry provided such a weapon. Since the most effective cavalry was that of the pastoral Ural-Altaic-speaking peoples of central Asia, these peoples were able to conquer the peasant peoples of Russia, of Anatolia, of India, and of China. In the course of time, the alien regimes of three of these areas (not in Russia) were able to strengthen their authority by the acquisition of effective, and expensive, artillery. In Russia, the princes of Moscow, having been the agents of the Mongols, replaced them by becoming their imitators, and made the same transition to a mercenary army, based on cavalry and artillery, as the backbone of the ruling despotism. In Western civilization similar despotisms, but based on infantry and artillery, were controlled by figures like Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, or Gustavus Adolphus. In Western Civilization, however, the Agricultural Revolution after 1725 raised standards of living, while the Industrial Revolution after 1800 so lowered the cost of firearms that the ordinary citizen of western Europe and of North America could acquire the most effective weapon existing (the musket). As a result of this, and other factors, democracy came to these areas, along with mass armies of citizen-soldiers. In central and southern Europe where the Agricultural and Industrial revolutions came late or not at all, the victory of democracy was also late and incomplete.

In Asia generally, the revolution in weapons (meaning muskets and later rifles) came before the Agricultural Revolution or the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, most firearms were not locally made, but were imported and, being imported, came into the possession of the upper class of rulers, bureaucrats, and landlords and not into the hands of peasants or city masses. As a result, these ruling groups were generally able to maintain their position against their own masses even when they could not defend themselves against European Powers. As a consequence of this, any hope of partial reform or of a successful revolution early enough to be a moderate revolution became quite unlikely. In Russia and in Turkey it required defeat in a foreign war with European states to destroy the corrupt imperial regimes (1917-1921). Earlier, the czar had been able to crush the revolt of 1905, because the army remained loyal to the regime, while the sultan, in 1908, had to yield to a reform movement because it was supported by the army. In India, Malaya, and Indonesia the disarmed native peoples offered no threat of revolt to the ruling European Powers before 1940. In Japan the army, as we shall see, remained loyal to the regime and was able to dominate events so that no revolution was conceivable before 1940. But in China the trend of events was much more complex.

In China the people could not get weapons because of their low standards of living and the high cost of imported arms. As a result, power remained in the hands of the army, except for small groups who were financed by emigrant Chinese with relatively high incomes overseas. By 1911 the prestige of the imperial regime had fallen so low that it obtained support from almost no one, and the army refused to sustain it. As a result, the revolutionaries, supported by overseas money, were able to overthrow the imperial regime in an almost bloodless revolution, but were not able to control the army after they had technically come to power. The army, leaving the politicians to squabble over forms of government or areas of jurisdiction, became independent political powers loyal to their own chiefs ("warlords"), and supported themselves and maintained their supply of imported arms by exploiting the peasantry of the provinces. The result was a period of "warlordism" from 1920 to 1941.

In this period the Republican government was in nominal control of the whole country but was actually in control only of the seacoast and river valleys, chiefly in the south, while various warlords, operating as bandits, were in control of the interior and most of the north. In order to restore its control to the whole country, the Republican regime needed money and imported arms. Accordingly, it tried two expedients in sequence. The first expedient, in the period 1920-1927, sought to restore its power in China by obtaining financial and military support from foreign countries (Western countries, Japan, or Soviet Russia). This expedient failed, either because these foreign Powers were unwilling to assist or (in the case of Japan and Soviet Russia) were willing to help only on terms which would have ended China's independent political status. As a consequence, after 1927, the Republican regime underwent a profound change, shifting from a democratic to an authoritarian organization, changing its name from Republican to Nationalist, and seeking the money and arms to restore its control over the country by making an alliance with the landlord, commercial, and banking classes of the eastern Chinese cities. These propertied classes could provide the Republican regime with the money to obtain foreign arms in order to fight the warlords of the west and north, but these groups would not support any Republican effort to deal with the social and economic problems facing the great mass of the Chinese peoples.

While the Republican armies and the warlords were struggling with each other over the prostrate backs of the Chinese masses, the Japanese attacked China in 1931 and 1937. In order to resist the Japanese it became necessary, after 1940, to arm the Chinese masses. This arming of the masses of Chinese in order to defeat Japan in 1941-1945 made it impossible to continue the Republican regime after 1945 so long as it continued to be allied with the upper economic and social groups of China, since the masses regarded these groups as exploiters. At the same time, changes to more expensive and more complex weapons made it impossible either for warlordism to revive or for the Chinese masses to use their weapons to establish a democratic regime. The new weapons, like airplanes and tanks, could not be supported by peasants on a provincial basis nor could they be operated by peasants. The former fact ended warlordism, while the latter fact ended any possibility of democracy. In view of the low productivity of Chinese agriculture and the difficulty of accumulating sufficient capital either to buy or to manufacture such expensive weapons, these weapons (in either way) could be acquired only by a government in control of most of China and could be used only by a professional army loyal to that government. Under such conditions it was to be expected that such a government would be authoritarian and would continue to exploit the peasantry (in order to accumulate capital either to buy such weapons abroad or to industrialize enough to make them at home, or both).

From this point of view the history of China in the twentieth century presents five phases, as follows:

1. The collapse of the imperial regime, to 1911

2. The failure of the Republic, 1911-1920

3. The struggle with warlordism, 1920-1941

a. Efforts to obtain support abroad, 1920-1927

b. Efforts to obtain support form the propertied groups, 1927-1941

4. The struggle with Japan, 1931-1945

5. The authoritarian triumph, 1945—

The collapse of the imperial regime has already been discussed as a political and economic development. It was also an ideological development. The authoritarian and traditionalist ideology of the old China, in which social conservatism, Confucianist philosophy, and ancestor worship were intimately blended together, was well fitted to resist the intrusion of new ideas and new patterns of action. The failure of the imperial regime to resist the military, economic, and political penetration of Western Civilization gave a fatal blow to this ideology. New ideas of Western origin were introduced, at first by Christian missionaries and later by Chinese students who had studied abroad. By 1900 there were thousands of such students. They had acquired Western ideas which were completely incompatible with the older Chinese system. In general, such Western ideas were not traditionalist or authoritarian, and were, thus, destructive to the Chinese patriarchal family, to ancestor worship, or to the imperial autocracy. The students brought back from abroad Western ideas of science, of democracy, of parliamentarianism, of empiricism, of self-reliance, of liberalism, of individualism, and of pragmatism. Their possession of such ideas made it impossible for them to fit into their own country. As a result, they attempted to change it, developing a revolutionary fervor which merged with the anti-dynastic secret societies which had existed in China since the Manchus took over the country in 1644.

Japan's victory over China in 1894-1895 in a war arising from a dispute over Korea, and especially the Japanese victory over Russia in the war of 1904-1905, gave a great impetus to the revolutionary spirit in China because these events seemed to show that an Oriental country could adopt Western techniques successfully. The failure of the Boxer movement in 1900 to expel Westerners without using such Western techniques also increased the revolutionary fervor in China. As a consequence of such events, the supporters of the imperial regime began to lose faith in their own system and in their own ideology. They began to install piecemeal, hesitant, and ineffective reforms which disrupted the imperial system without in any way strengthening it. Marriage between Manchu and Chinese was sanctioned for the first time (1902); Manchuria was opened to settlement by Chinese (1907); the system of imperial examinations based on the old literary scholarship for admission to the civil service and the mandarinate were abolished and a Ministry of Education, copied from Japan, was established (1905); a drafted constitution was published providing for provincial assemblies and a future national parliament (1908); the law was codified (1910).

These concessions did not strengthen the imperial regime, but merely intensified the revolutionary feeling. The death of the emperor and of Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, who had been the real ruler of the country (1908), brought to the throne a two-year-old child, P'u-I. The reactionary elements made use of the regency to obstruct reform, dismissing the conservative reform minister Yüan Shih-k’ai (1859-1916). Discovery of the headquarters of the revolutionists at Hankow in 1911 precipitated the revolution. While Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) hurried back to China from abroad, whence he had directed the revolutionary movement for many years, the tottering imperial regime recalled Yuan Shih-K'ai to take command of the anti-revolutionary armies. Instead he cooperated with the revolutionists, forced the abdication of the Manchu dynasty, and plotted to have himself elected as president of the Chinese Republic. Sun Yat-sen who had already been elected provisional president by the National Assembly at Nanking, accepted this situation, retiring from office, and calling on all Chinese to support President Yuan.

The contrast between Dr. Sun and General Yüan, the first and second presidents of the Chinese Republic, was as sharp as could be. Dr. Sun was a believer in Western ideas, especially in science, democracy, parliamentary government, and socialism, and had lived for most of his life as an exile overseas. He was self-sacrificing, idealistic, and somewhat impractical. General Yuan, on the other hand, was purely Chinese, a product of the imperial bureaucracy, who had no knowledge of Western ideas and no faith in either democracy or parliamentary government. He was vigorous, corrupt, realistic, and ambitious. The real basis of his power rested in the new westernized army which he had built up as governor-general of Chihli in 1901-1907. In this force there were five divisions, well trained and completely loyal to Yüan. The officers of these units had been picked and trained by Yuan, and played principal roles in Chinese politics after 1916.

As president, Yüan opposed almost everything for which Dr. Sun had dreamed. He expanded the army, bribed politicians, and eliminated those who could not be bribed. The chief support of his policies came from a £25 million loan from Britain, France, Russia, and Japan in 1913. This made him independent of the assembly and of Dr. Sun's political party, the Kuomintang, which dominated the assembly. In 1913 one element of Sun's followers revolted against Yuan but were crushed. Yuan dissolved the Kuomintang, arrested its members, dismissed the Parliament, and revised the constitution to give himself dictatorial powers as president for life, with the right to name his own successor. He was arranging to have himself proclaimed emperor when he died m 1916.

As soon as Yüan died, the military leaders stationed in various parts of the country began to consolidate their power on a local basis. One of them even restored the Manchu dynasty, but it was removed again within two weeks. By the end of 1916 China was under the nominal rule of two governments, one at Peking under Feng Kuo-chang (one of Yuan's militarists) and a secession government at Canton under Dr. Sun. Both of these functioned under a series of fluctuating paper constitutions, but the real power of both was based on the loyalty of local armies. Because in both cases the armies of more remote areas were semi-independent, government in those areas was a matter of negotiation rather than of commands from the capital. Even Dr. Sun saw this situation sufficiently clearly to organize the Cantonese government as a military system with himself as generalissimo (1917). Dr. Sun was so unfitted for this military post that on two occasions he had to flee from his own generals to security in the French concession at Shanghai (1918-1922). Under such conditions Dr. Sun was unable to achieve any of his pet schemes, such as the vigorous political education of the Chinese people, a widespread network of Chinese railways built with foreign capital, or the industrialization of China on a socialist basis. Instead, by 1920, warlordism was supreme, and the Westernized Chinese found opportunity to exercise their new knowledge only in education and in the diplomatic service. Within China itself, command of a well-drilled army in control of a compact group of local provinces was far more valuable than any Westernized knowledge acquired as a student abroad.

The Resurgence of Japan to 1918

The history of Japan in the twentieth century is quite distinct from that of the other Asiatic peoples. Among the latter the impact of the West led to the disruption of the social and economic structure, the abandonment of the traditional ideologies, and the revelation of the weakness of native political and military systems. In Japan these events either did not occur or occurred in a quite different fashion. Until 1945 Japan's political and military systems were strengthened by Western influences; the older Japanese ideology was retained, relatively intact, even by those who were most energetic copiers of Western ways; and the changes in the older social and economic structure were kept within manageable limits and were directed in a progressive direction. The real reason for these differences probably rests in the ideological factor—that the Japanese, even the vigorous Westernizers, retained the old Japanese point of view and, as a consequence, were allied with the older Japanese political, economic, and social structure rather than opposed to it (as, for example, Westernizers were in India, in China, or in Turkey). The ability of the Japanese to westernize without going into opposition to the basic core of the older system gave a degree of discipline and a sense of unquestioning direction to their lives which allowed Japan to achieve a phenomenal amount of westernization without weakening the older structure or without disrupting it. In a sense until about 1950, Japan took from Western culture only superficial and material details in an imitative way and amalgamated these newly acquired items around the older ideological, political, military, and social structure to make it more powerful and effective. The essential item which the Japanese retained from their traditional society and did not adopt from Western civilization was the ideology. In time, as we shall see, this was very dangerous to both of the societies concerned, to Japan and to the West.

Originally Japan came into contact with Western civilization in the sixteenth century, about as early as any other Asiatic peoples, but, within a hundred years, Japan was able to eject the West, to exterminate most of its Christian converts, and to slam its doors against the entrance of any Western influences. A very limited amount of trade was permitted on a restricted basis, but only with the Dutch and only through the single port of Nagasaki.

Japan Is Dominated by the Tokugawa Family

Japan, thus isolated from the world, was dominated by the military dictatorship (or shogunate) of the Tokugawa family. The imperial family had been retired to a largely religious seclusion whence it reigned but did not rule. Beneath the shogun the country was organized in a hereditary hierarchy, headed by local feudal lords. Beneath these lords there were, in descending ranks, armed retainers (samurai), peasants, artisans, and merchants. The whole system was, in theory at least, rigid and unchanging, being based on the double justification of blood and of religion. This was in obvious and sharp contrast with the social organization of China, which was based, in theory, on virtue and on educational training. In Japan virtue and ability were considered to be hereditary rather than acquired characteristics, and, accordingly, each social class had innate differences which had to be maintained by restrictions on intermarriage. The emperor was of the highest level, being descended from the supreme sun goddess, while the lesser lords were descended from lesser gods of varying degrees of remoteness from the sun goddess. Such a point of view discouraged all revolution or social change and all "circulation of the elites," with the result that China's multiplicity of dynasties and rise and fall of families was matched in Japan by a single dynasty whose origins ran back into the remote past, while the dominant individuals of Japanese public life in the twentieth century were members of the same families and clans which were dominating Japanese life centuries ago.

All Non-Japanese Are Basically Inferior Beings

From this basic idea flowed a number of beliefs which continued to be accepted by most Japanese almost to the present. Most fundamental was the belief that all Japanese were members of a single breed consisting of many different branches or clans of superior or inferior status, depending on their degree of relationship to the imperial family. The individual was of no real significance, while the families and the breed were of major significance, for individuals lived but briefly and possessed little beyond what they received from their ancestors to pass on to their descendants. In this fashion it was accepted by all Japanese that society was more important than any individual and could demand any sacrifice from him, that men were by nature unequal and should be prepared to serve loyally in the particular status into which each had been born, that society is nothing but a great patriarchal system, that in this system authority is based on the personal superiority of man over man and not on any rule of law, that, accordingly, all law is little more than some temporary order from some superior being, and that all non-Japanese, lacking divine ancestry, are basically inferior beings, existing only one cut above the level of animals and, accordingly, having no basis on which to claim any consideration, loyalty, or consistency of treatment at the hands of Japanese.

Japanese World View Is Anti-thetical to Christian World View

This Japanese ideology was as anti-thetical to the outlook of the Christian West as any which the West encountered in its contacts with other civilizations. It was also an ideology which was peculiarly fitted to resist the intrusion of Western ideas. As a result, Japan was able to accept and to incorporate into its way of life all kinds of Western techniques and material culture without disorganizing its own outlook or its own basic social structure.

The Tokugawa Shogunate was already long past its prime when, in 1853, the "black ships" of Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay. That these vessels could move against the wind, and carried guns more powerful than any the Japanese had ever imagined, was a great shock to the natives of Nippon. The feudal lords who had been growing restive under Tokugawa rule used this event as an excuse to end that rule. These lords, especially the representatives of four western clans, demanded that the emergency be met by abolishing the shogunate and restoring all authority to the hands of the emperor. For more than a decade the decision whether to open Japan to the West or to try to continue the policy of exclusion hung in the balance. In 1863-1866 a series of naval demonstrations and bombardments of Japanese ports by Western Powers forced the opening of Japan and imposed on the country a tariff agreement which restricted import duties to 5 percent until 1899. A new and vigorous emperor came to the throne and accepted the resignation of the last shogun (1867). Japan at once embarked on a policy of rapid Westernization.

Shift in Power from the Shogun to Four Western Japanese Clans

The period in Japanese history from the so-called Meiji Restoration of 1867 to the granting of a constitution in 1889 is of the most vital importance. In theory what had occurred had been a restoration of Japan's rule from the hands of the shogun back into the hands of the emperor. In fact what occurred was a shift in power from the shogun to the leaders of four western Japanese clans who proceeded to rule Japan in the emperor's name and from the emperor's shadow. These four clans of Satsuma, Choshu, Hizen, and Tosa won the support of certain nobles of the imperial court (such as Saionji and Konoe) and of the richer mercantile families (such as Mitsui) and were able to overthrow the shogun, crush his supporters (in the Battle of Uemo in 1868), and win control of the government and of the emperor himself. The emperor did not assume control of the government, but remained in a semi-religious seclusion, too exalted to concern himself with the functioning of the governmental system except in critical emergencies. In such emergencies the emperor generally did no more than issue a statement or order ("imperial rescript") which had been drawn up by the leaders of the Restoration.

The Meiji Oligarchy

These leaders, organized in a shadowy group known as the Meiji oligarchy, had obtained complete domination of Japan by 1889. To cover this fact with camouflage, they unleashed a vigorous propaganda of revived Shintoism and of abject submission to the emperor which culminated in the extreme emperor worship of 1941-1945. To provide an administrative basis for their rule, the oligarchy created an extensive governmental bureaucracy recruited from their supporters and inferior members. To provide an economic basis for their rule, this oligarchy used their political influence to pay themselves extensive pensions and governmental grants (presumably as compensation for the ending of their feudal incomes) and to engage in corrupt business relationships with their allies in the commercial classes (like Mitsui or Mitsubishi). To provide a military basis for their rule, the oligarchy created a new imperial army and navy and penetrated the upper ranks of these so that they were able to dominate these forces as they dominated the civil bureaucracy. To provide a social basis for their rule, the oligarchy created an entirely new peerage of five ranks of nobility recruited from their own members and supporters.

The Japanese Oligarchy Draw Up a Constitution That Would Conceal Their

Political Domination of the Country

Having thus assured their dominant position in the administrative, economic, military, and social life of Japan, the oligarchy in 1889 drew up a constitution which would assure, and yet conceal, their political domination of the country. This constitution did not pretend to be a product of the Japanese people or of the Japanese nation; popular sovereignty and democracy had no place in it. Instead this constitution pretended to be an emission from the emperor, setting up a system in which all government would be in his name, and all officials would be personally responsible to him. It provided for a bicameral Diet as a legislature. The House of Peers consisted of the new nobility which had been created in 1884, while the House of Representatives was to be elected "according to the law." All legislation had to pass each house by majority vote and be signed by a minister of state.

These ministers, established as a Council of State in 1885, were responsible to the emperor and not to the Diet. Their tasks were carried out through the bureaucracy which was already established. All money appropriations, like other laws, had to obtain the assent of the Diet, but, if the budget was not accepted by this body, the budget of the preceding year was repeated automatically for the following year. The emperor had extensive powers to issue ordinances which had the force of law and required a minister's signature, as did other laws.

Japanese Constitution Based upon the Constitution of Imperial Germany

This constitution of 1889 was based on the constitution of Imperial Germany and was forced on Japan by the Meiji oligarchy in order to circumvent and anticipate any future agitation for a more liberal constitution based on British, American, or French models. Basically, the form and functioning of the constitution was of little significance, for the country continued to be run by the Meiji oligarchy through their domination of the army and navy, the bureaucracy, economic and social life, and the opinion-forming agencies such as education and religion. In political life this oligarchy was able to control the emperor, the Privy Council, the House of Peers, the judiciary, and the bureaucracy.

The Oligarchy's Chief Aim Was to Westernize Japan

This left only one possible organ of government, the Diet, through which the oligarchy might be challenged. Moreover, the Diet had only one means (its right to pass the annual budget) by which it could strike back at the oligarchy. This right was of little significance so long as the oligarchy did not want to increase the budget, since the budget of the previous year would be repeated if the Diet rejected the budget of the following year. However, the oligarchy could not be satisfied with a repetition of an earlier budget, for the oligarchy's chief aim, after they had ensured their own wealth and power, was to westernize Japan rapidly enough to be able to defend it against the pressure of the Great Powers of the West.

Controlling the Elections to the Diet

All these things required a constantly growing budget, and thus gave the Diet a more important role than it would otherwise have had. This role, however, was more of a nuisance than a serious restriction on the power of the Meiji oligarchy because the power of the Diet could be overcome in various ways. Originally, the oligarchy planned to give the Imperial Household such a large endowment of property that its income would be sufficient to support the army and navy outside the national budget. This plan was abandoned as impractical, although the Imperial Household and all its rules were put outside the scope of the constitution. Accordingly, an alternative plan was adopted: to control the elections to the Diet so that its membership would be docile to the wishes of the Meiji oligarchy. As we shall see, controlling the elections to the Diet was possible, but ensuring its docility was quite a different matter.

The Meiji Oligarchy Controls the Police and the Government

The elections to the Diet could be controlled in three ways: by a restricted suffrage, by campaign contributions, and by bureaucratic manipulation of the elections and the returns. The suffrage was restricted for many years on a property basis, so that, in 1900, only one person in a hundred had the right to vote. The close alliance between the Meiji oligarchy and the richest members of the expanding economic system made it perfectly easy to control the flow of campaign contributions. And if these two methods failed, the Meiji oligarchy controlled both the police and the prefectural bureaucracy which supervised the elections and counted the returns. In case of need, they did not hesitate to use these instruments, censoring opposition papers, prohibiting opposition meetings, using violence, if necessary, to prevent opposition voting, and reporting, through the prefects, as elected candidates who had clearly failed to obtain the largest vote.

The Meiji Oligarchy Controls the Emperor

These methods were used from the beginning. In the first Diet of 1889, gangsters employed by the oligarchy prevented opposition members from entering the Diet chamber, and at least twenty-eight other members were bribed to shift their votes. In the elections of 189: violence was used, mostly in districts opposed to the government, so that 25 persons were killed and 388 were injured. The government still lost that election but continued to control the Cabinet. It even dismissed eleven prefectural governors who had been stealing votes, as much for their failure to steal enough as for their action in stealing any. When the resulting Diet refused to appropriate for an enlarged navy, it was sent home for eighteen days, and then reassembled to receive an imperial rescript which gave 1.8 million yen over a six-year period from the Imperial Household for the project and went on to order all public officials to contribute one-tenth of their salaries each year for the duration of the naval building program which the Diet had refused to finance. In this fashion, the Diet's control of increased appropriations was circumvented by the Meiji oligarchy's control of the emperor.

In view of the dominant position of the Meiji oligarchy in Japanese life from 1867 until after 1992, it would be a mistake to interpret such occurrences as unruly Diets, the growth of political parties, or even the establishment of adult manhood suffrage (in 1925) as such events would be interpreted in European history. In the West we are accustomed to narrations about heroic struggles for civil rights and individual liberties, or about the efforts of commercial and industrial capitalists to capture at least a share of political and social power from the hands of the landed aristocracy, the feudal nobility, or the Church. We are acquainted with movements by the masses for political democracy, and with agitations by peasants and workers for economic advantages. All these movements, which fill the pages of European history books, are either absent or have an entirely different significance in Japanese history.

Shintoism Was Promoted by the Meiji Oligarchy to Control the People

In Japan history presents a basic solidarity of outlook and of purpose, punctuated with brief conflicting outbursts which seem to be contradictory and inexplicable. The explanation of this is to be found in the fact that there was, indeed, a solidarity of outlook but that this solidarity was considerably less solid than it appeared, for, beneath it, Japanese society was filled with fissures and discontents. The solidarity of outlook rested on the ideology which we have mentioned. This ideology, sometimes called Shintoism, was propagated by the upper classes, especially by the Meiji oligarchy but was more sincerely embraced by the lower classes, especially by the rural masses, than it was by the oligarchy which propagated it. This ideology accepted an authoritarian, hierarchical, patriarchal society, based on families, clans, and nation, culminating in respect and subordination to the emperor. In this system there was no place for individualism, self-interest, human liberties, or civil rights.

Shintoism Allowed the Meiji Oligarchy to Pursue Policies of Self-Aggrandizement

In general, this system was accepted by the mass of the Japanese peoples. As a consequence, these masses allowed the oligarchy to pursue policies of selfish self-aggrandizement, of ruthless exploitation, and of revolutionary economic and social change with little resistance. The peasants were oppressed by universal military service, by high taxes and high interest rates, by low farm prices and high industrial prices, and by the destruction of the market for peasant handicrafts. They revolted briefly and locally in 1884-1885, but were crushed and never revolted again, although they continued to be exploited. All earlier legislation seeking to protect peasant proprietors or to prevent monopolization of the land was revoked in the 1870's.

In the 1880's there was a drastic reduction in the number of landowners, through heavy taxes, high interest rates, and low prices for farm products. At the same time the growth of urban industry began to destroy the market for peasant handicrafts and the rural "putting-out system" of manufacture. In seven years, 1883-1890, about 360,000 peasant proprietors were dispossessed of 5 million yen worth of land because of total tax arrears of only 114,178 yen (or arrears of only one-third yen, that is, 17 American cents, per person). In the same period, owners were dispossessed of about one hundred times as much land by foreclosure of mortgages. This process continued at varying rates, until, by 1940, three-quarters of Japanese peasants were tenants or part-tenants paying rents of at least half of their annual crop.

Pressures on Japanese Peasants

In spite of their acceptance of authority and Shinto ideology, the pressures on Japanese peasants would have reached the explosive point if safety valves had not been provided for them. Among these pressures we must take notice of that arising from population increase, a problem arising, as in most Asiatic countries, from the introduction of Western medicine and sanitation. Before the opening of Japan, its population had remained fairly stable at 28-30 million for several centuries. This stability arose from a high death rate supplemented by frequent famines and the practice of infanticide and abortion. By 1870 the population began to grow, rising from 30 million to 56 million in 1920, to 73 million in 1940, and reaching 87 million in 1955.

Meiji Oligarchy Controls Shipping, Railroads, Industry and Services

The safety valve in the Japanese peasant world resided in the fact that opportunities were opened, with increasing rapidity, in nonagricultural activities in the period 1870-1920. These nonagricultural activities were made available from the fact that the exploiting oligarchy used its own growing income to create such activities by investment in shipping, railroads, industry, and services. These activities made it possible to drain the growing peasant population from the rural areas into the cities. A law of 1873 which established primogeniture in the inheritance of peasant property made it evident that the rural population which migrated to the cities would be second and third sons rather than heads of families. This had numerous social and psychological results, of which the chief was that the new urban population consisted of men detached from the discipline of the patriarchal family and thus less under the influence of the general authoritarian Japanese psychology and more under the influence of demoralizing urban forces. As a consequence, this group, after 1920, became a challenge to the stability of Japanese society.

Exploitation of Japanese Society

In the cities the working masses of Japanese society continued to be exploited, but now by low wages rather than by high rents, taxes, or interest rates. These urban masses, like the rural masses whence they had been drawn, submitted to such exploitation without resistance for a much longer period than Europeans would have done because they continued to accept the authoritarian, submissive Shintoist ideology. They were excluded from participation in political life until the establishment of adult manhood suffrage in 1925. It was not until after this date that any noticeable weakening of the authoritarian Japanese ideology began to appear among the urban masses.

Resistance of the urban masses to exploitation through economic or social organizations was weakened by the restrictions on workers' organizations of all kinds. The general restrictions on the press, on assemblies, on freedom of speech, and on the establishment of "secret" societies were enforced quite strictly against all groups and doubly so against laboring groups. There were minor socialistic and laborers' agitations in the twenty years 1890-1910. These were brought to a violent end in 1910 by the execution of twelve persons for anarchistic agitations. The labor movement did not raise its head again until the economic crisis of 1919-1922.

The Low-Wage Policy of Japanese Originated in the Self-Interest of the Elite

The low-wage policy of the Japanese industrial system originated in the self-interest of the early capitalists, but came to be justified with the argument that the only commodity Japan had to offer the world, and the only one on which it would construct a status as a Great Power, was its large supply of cheap labor. Japan's mineral resources, including coal, iron, or petroleum, were poor in both quality and quantity; of textile raw materials it had only silk, and lacked both cotton and wool. It had no natural resources of importance for which there was world demand such as were to be found in the tin of Malaya, the rubber of Indonesia, or the cocoa of West Africa; it had neither the land nor the fodder to produce either dairy or animal products as Argentina, Denmark, New Zealand, or Australia. The only important resources it had which could be used to provide export goods to exchange for imported coal, iron, or oil were silk, forest products, and products of the sea. All these required a considerable expenditure of labor, and these products could be sold abroad only if prices were kept low by keeping wage rates down.

Since these products did not command sufficient foreign exchange to allow Japan to pay for the imports of coal, iron, and oil which a Great Power must have, Japan had to find some method by which it could export its labor and obtain pay for it. This led to the growth of manufacturing industries based on imported raw materials and the development of such service activities as fishing and ocean shipping. At an early date Japan began to develop an industrial system in which raw materials such as coal, wrought iron, raw cotton, or wool were imported, fabricated into more expensive and complex forms, and exported again for a higher price in the form of machinery or finished textiles. Other products which were exported included such forest products as tea, carved woods, or raw silk, or such products of Japanese labor as finished silks, canned fish, or shipping services.

The Meiji Oligarchy Is Controlled by a Small Group of Men

The political and economic decisions which led to these developments and which exploited the rural and urban masses of Japan were made by the Meiji oligarchy and their supporters. The decision-making powers in this oligarchy were concentrated in a surprisingly small group of men, in all, no more than a dozen in number, and made up, chiefly, of the leaders of the four western clans which had led the movement against the shogun in 1867. These leaders came in time to form a formal, if extralegal, group known as the Genro (or Council of Elder Statesmen). Of this group Robert Reischauer wrote in 1938: "It is these men who have been the real power behind the Throne. It became customary for their opinion to be asked and, more important still, to be followed in all matters of great significance to the welfare of the state. No Premier was ever appointed except from the recommendation of these men who became known as Genro. Until 1922 no important domestic legislation, no important foreign treaty escaped their perusal and sanction before it was signed by the Emperor. These men, in their time, were the actual rulers of Japan."

The Eight Members of the Genro Control Japan

The importance of this group can be seen from the fact that the Genro had only eight members, yet the office of prime minister was held by a Genro from 1885 to 1916, and the important post of president of the Privy Council was held by a Genro from its creation in 1889 to 1922 (except for the years 1890-1892 when Count Oki of the Hizen clan held it for Okuma). If we list the eight Genro with three of their close associates, we shall be setting down the chief personnel of Japanese history in the period covered by this chapter. To such a list we might add certain other significant facts, such as the social origins of these men, the dates of their deaths, and their dominant connections with the two branches of the defense forces and with the two greatest Japanese

industrial monopolies. The significance of these connections will appear in a moment.

The Meij Oligarchy

Name Date

Social (Genro of Linked

Origin Marked*) Death Dominated With

*Ito 1909

Choshu *Yamagata 1922 Army Mitsui

*Inoue 1915

*Katsura 1913

*Oyama 1916

*Matsukata 1924

Satsuma Kuroda Navy

Yamamoto

Progressive

Hizen Okuma 1922 Party from 1882

Liberal Party

Tosa Itagaki 1920 from 1881 Mitsubishi

Noble Saionji 1940 Last of the

Court Genro" Sumitomo

(1924-1940)

The Unofficial Rules of Japan

Japanese history from 1890 to 1940 is largely a commentary on this table. We have said that the Meiji Restoration of 1868 resulted from an alliance of four western clans and some court nobles against the shogunate and that this alliance was financed by commercial groups led by Mitsui. The leaders of this movement who were still alive after 1890 came to form the Genro, the real but unofficial rulers of Japan. As the years passed and the Genro became older and died, their power became weaker, and there arose two claimants to succeed them: the militarists and the political parties. In this struggle the social groups behind the political parties were so diverse and so corrupt that their success was never in the realm of practical politics. In spite of this fact, the struggle between the militarists and the political parties looked fairly even until 1935, not because of any strength or natural ability in the ranks of the latter but simply because Saionji, the "Last of the Genro" and the only non-clan member in that select group, did all he could to delay or to avoid the almost inevitable triumph of the militarists.

All the factors in this struggle and the political events of Japanese history arising from the interplay of these factors go back to their roots in the Genro as it existed before 1900. The political parties and Mitsubishi were built up as Hizen-Tosa weapons to combat the Choshu-Satsuma domination of the power nexus organized on the civilian-military bureaucracy allied with Mitsui; the army-navy rivalry (which appeared in 1912 and became acute after 1931) had its roots in an old competition between Choshu and Satsuma within the Genro; while the civilian-militarist struggle went back to the personal rivalry between Ito and Yamagata before 1900. Yet, in spite of these fissures and rivalries, the oligarchy as a whole generally presented a united front against outside groups (such as peasants, workers, intellectuals, or Christians) in Japan itself or against non-Japanese.

Ito—the Most Powerful Man in Japan

From 1882 to 1898 Ito was the dominant figure in the Meiji oligarchy, and the most powerful figure in Japan. As minister of the Imperial Household, he was charged with the task of drawing up the constitution of 1889; as president of the Privy Council, he guided the deliberations of the assembly which ratified this constitution; and as first prime minister of the new Japan, he established the foundations on which it would operate. In the process he entrenched the Sat-Cho oligarchy so firmly in power that the supporters of Tosa and Hizen began to agitate against the government, seeking to obtain what they regarded as their proper share of the plums of office.

Political Parties Arise in Japan

In order to build up opposition to the government, they organized the first real political parties, the Liberal Party of Itagaki (1881) and the Progressive Party of Okuma (1882). These parties adopted liberal and popular ideologies from bourgeois Europe, but, generally, these were not sincerely held or clearly understood. The real aim of these two groups was to make themselves so much of a nuisance to the prevailing oligarchy that they could obtain, as a price for relaxing their attacks, a share of the patronage of public office and of government contracts. Accordingly, the leaders of these parties, again and again, sold out their party followers in return for these concessions, generally dissolving their parties, to re-create them at some later date when their discontent with the prevailing oligarchy had risen once again. As a result, the opposition parties vanished and reappeared, and their leaders moved into and out of public office in accordance with the whims of satisfied or discontented personal ambitions.

The Great Monopolies of Japan

Just as Mitsui became the greatest industrial monopoly of Japan on the basis of its political connections with the prevalent Sat-Cho oligarchy, so Mitsubishi became Japan's second greatest monopoly on the basis of its political connections with the opposition groups of Tosa-Hizen. Indeed, Mitsubishi began its career as the commercial firm of the Tosa clan, and Y. Iwasaki, who had managed it in the latter role, continued to manage it when it blossomed into Mitsubishi. Both of these firms, and a handful of other monopolistic organizations which grew up later, were completely dependent for their profits and growth on political connections.

The Rise of the Zaibatsu

The task of building Japan into a modern industrial power in a single lifetime required enormous capital and stable markets. In a poor country like Japan, coming late into the industrial era, both of these requirements could be obtained from the government, and in no other way. As a result business enterprise became organized in a few very large monopolistic structures, and these (in spite of their size) never acted as independent powers, even in economic matters, but cooperated in a docile fashion with those who controlled government expenditures and government contracts. Thus they cooperated with the Meiji oligarchy before 1922, with the political party leaders in 1922-1932, and with the militarists after 1932. Taken together, these monopolistic industrial and financial organizations were known as zaibatsu. There were eight important organizations of this kind in the period after World War I, but three were so powerful that they dominated the other five, as well as the whole economic system. These three were Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Sumitomo (controlled by Saionji's relatives). These competed with one another in a halfhearted fashion, but such competition was political rather than economic, and always remained within the rules of a system which they all accepted.

The Elite Oligarchy Maintains Control of Japan

In the period 1885-1901, during which Ito was premier four times, Matsukata twice, and Yamagata twice, it became evident that the oligarchy could not be controlled by the Diet or by the Tosa-Hizen political parties but could always rule Japan through its control of the emperor, the armed forces, and the civil bureaucracy. This victory was hardly established before a rivalry appeared between Ito, supported by the civil bureaucracy, and Yamagata, supported by the armed services. By 1900 Yamagata won a decisive victory over Ito and formed his second Cabinet (1898-1900), from which the Ito group was, for the first time, completely excluded. During this administration Yamagata extended the franchise from half a million to a million voters in order to obtain city support for imposing taxes on rural lands to pay for military expansion. Far more important than this, he established a law that the ministries of the army and the navy must be headed by Cabinet posts held by active generals and admirals of the highest rank. This law made civilian rule of Japan impossible thereafter because no prime minister or member of the Cabinet could fill the two defense posts unless they made concessions to the armed services.

Internal Feuds for Power

In retaliation for this defeat, Ito made an alliance with the Liberal Party of Itagaki (1900) and took office as prime minister for the third time (1900-1901). But he had little freedom of action, since the minister of war, in accordance with the new law, was Yamagata's man, Katsura, and the minister of the navy was Admiral Yamamoto.

In 1903 Yamagata obtained an imperial rescript forcing Ito to retire from active political life to the shelter of the Privy Council. Ito did so, leaving the Liberal Party and the leadership of the civilian forces to his protégé, Saionji. Yamagata had already retired behind the scenes, but still dominated political life through his protégé, Katsura.

The period 1901-1913 saw an alternation of Katsura and Saionji governments, in which the former clearly controlled the government, while the latter, through the Liberal Party, won large and meaningless victories at the polls. Both in 1908 and in 1912 Saionji's party won easy victories in general elections held while he was in office, and in both cases Katsura forced him out of office in spite of his majority in the Diet.

At this point Katsura's ruthless use of the emperor and the militarists to increase the size and power of the army brought a new factor into Japanese political life by leading to a split with the navy. In 1912, when Saionji and Katsura had each headed two governments since 1901, the former refused to increase the army by two divisions (for service in Korea). Katsura at once threw the Saionji government out of office by having the minister of war resign. When Saionji could find no eligible general willing to serve, Katsura formed his third Cabinet (1912-1913) and created the new divisions.

The navy, alienated by the army's high-handed political tactics, tried to keep Katsura out of office in 1912 by refusing to provide an admiral to serve as minister of the navy. They were defeated when Katsura produced an imperial rescript from the new Emperor Taisho (1912-1926) ordering them to provide an admiral. The navy retaliated the following year by forming an alliance with the Liberals and other anti-Katsura forces, on the grounds that his frequent use of imperial intervention in behalf of the lowest partisan politics was an insult to the exalted sanctity of the imperial position. For the first and only time, in 1913, an imperial rescript was refused acceptance, by the Liberal Party; Katsura had to resign, and a new Cabinet, under Admiral Yamamoto, was formed (1913-1914). This alliance of the navy, the Satsuma clan, and the Liberal Party so enraged the Choshu clan that the military and civilian wings of that group came together on an anti-Satsuma basis.

Japanese Officials Receive Bribes from Foreign Munitions Firms

In 1914 it was revealed that several high admirals had accepted bribes from foreign munitions firms such as German Siemens and British Vickers. Choshu used this as a club to force Yamamoto to resign, but since they could not form a government themselves they called Okuma out of retirement to form a temporary government completely dependent on them. The old man was given a majority in the Diet by turning the existing Liberal Party majority out of office and, in a completely corrupt election, providing a majority for a new Constitutional Believers' Party, which Katsura had created in 1913. Okuma was completely dependent on the Choshu oligarchy (which meant on Yamagata, as Ito died in 1909 and Inoue in 1915). He gave them two new army divisions and a strong anti-Chinese policy, but was replaced by General Terauchi, a Choshu militarist and favorite of Yamagata, in 1916. To provide this new government with less obviously corrupt party support, a deal was made with the Liberal Party. In return for seats in the Diet, places in the bureaucracy, and Mitsui money, this old Tosa party sold out to Choshu militarism, and was provided, by the prefectural governors, with a satisfying majority in the general election of 1916.

Control of Japan under Domination of One Man

Under the Terauchi government, Choshu militarism and Yamagata's personal power reached their culmination. By that time every high officer in the army owed his position to Yamagata's patronage. His old civilian rivals, like Ito or Inoue, were dead. Of the four remaining Genro, only Yamagata, aged eighty-one in 1918, still had his hands on the tiller; Matsukata, aged eighty-four, was a weakling; Okuma, aged eighty-one, was an outsider; and Saionji, aged seventy, was a semi-outsider. The emperor, as a result of the protests of 1913, no longer intervened in political life. The political parties were demoralized and subservient, prepared to sacrifice any principle for a few jobs. The economic organizations, led by the great zaibatsu, were completely dependent on government subsidies and government contracts. In a word, the controls of the Meiji oligarchy had come almost completely into the hands of one man.

The Incredible Degree of Concentration of Power in Japan

It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree of concentration of power in Japan in the period covered by this chapter. In thirty-three years of Cabinet government, there had been eighteen Cabinets but only nine different premiers. Of these nine premiers, only two (Saionji and Okuma) were not of Choshu or Satsuma, while five were military men.

The growing militarization of Japanese life in the period ending in 1918 had ominous implications for the future. Not only did militarists control growing sectors of Japanese life; they had also succeeded in merging loyalty to the emperor and subservience to militarism into a single loyalty which no Japanese could reject without, at the same time, rejecting his country, his family, and his whole tradition. Even more ominous was the growing evidence that Japanese militarism was insanely aggressive, and prone to find the solution for internal problems in foreign wars.

Japan Becomes Aggressive

On three occasions in thirty years, against China in 1894-1895, against Russia in 1904-1905, and against China and Germany in 1914-1918, Japan had entered upon warlike action for purely aggressive purposes. As a consequence of the first action, Japan acquired Formosa and the Pescadores and forced China to recognize the independence of Korea (1895). The subsequent Japanese penetration of Korea led to a rivalry with Russia, whose Trans-Siberian Railway was encouraging her to compensate for her rebuffs in the Balkans by increasing her pressure in the Far East.

In order to isolate the approaching conflict with Russia, Japan signed a treaty with Britain (1902). By this treaty each signer could expect support from the other if it became engaged in war with more than one enemy in the Far East. With Russia thus isolated in the area, Japan attacked the czar's forces in 1904. These forces were destroyed on land by Japanese armies under the Satsuma Genro Oyama, while the Russian fleet of thirty-two vessels, coming from Europe, was destroyed by the Satsuma Admiral Togo in Tsushima Straits. By the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905) Russia renounced her influence in Korea, yielded southern Sakhalin and the lease on Liaotung to Japan, and agreed to a joint renunciation of Manchuria (which was to be evacuated by both Powers and restored to China). Korea, which had been made a Japanese protectorate in 1904, was annexed in 1910.

Outbreak of War in 1914

The outbreak of war in 1914 provided a great opportunity for Japanese expansion. While all the Great Powers were busy elsewhere, the Far East was left to Japan. Declaring war on Germany on August 23, 1914, Nipponese troops seized the German holdings on the Shantung Peninsula and the German Pacific islands north of the equator (Marshall Islands, Marianas, and Carolines). This was followed, almost immediately (January 1915), by presentation of "Twenty-one Demands" on China. These demands at once revealed Japan's aggressive ambitions on the continent of Asia, and led to a decisive change in world opinion about Japan, especially in the United States. As preparation for such demands Japan had been able to build up a very pro-Japanese feeling in most of the Great Powers. Formal agreements or notes had been made with these, recognizing, in one way or another, Japan's special concern with East Asia. In respect to Russia a series of agreements had established spheres of influence. These gave northern Manchuria and western Inner Mongolia as spheres to Russia, and southern Manchuria with eastern Inner Mongolia as spheres for Japan.

Japanese Agree upon an Open-Door Policy in China

A number of diplomatic notes between the United States and Japan had arranged a tacit American acceptance of the Japanese position in Manchuria in return for a Japanese acceptance of the "Open-Door" or free-trade policy in China. The Twenty-one Demands broke this agreement with the United States since they sought to create for Japan a special economic position in China. In combination with the injury inflicted on Japanese pride by the rigid American restrictions on Japanese immigration into the United States, this marked a turning point in Japanese-American feeling from the generally favorable tone which it had possessed before 1915 to the growing unfavorable tone it assumed after 1915.

Unfavorable world opinion forced Japan to withdraw the most extreme of her Twenty-one Demands (those which were concerned with the use of Japanese advisers in various Chinese administrative functions), but many of the others were accepted by China under pressure of a Japanese ultimatum. The chief of these permitted Japan to arrange with Germany regarding the disposition of the German concessions in China without interference from China itself. Other demands, which were accepted, gave Japan numerous commercial, mining, and industrial concessions, mostly in eastern Inner Mongolia and southern Manchuria.

Japan Was the Preeminent Power in East Asia

In spite of her growing alienation of world opinion in the years of the First World War, the war brought Japan to a peak of prosperity and power it had not previously attained. The demand for Japanese goods by the belligerent countries resulted in a great industrial boom. The increase in the Japanese fleet and in Japanese territories in the northern Pacific, as well as the withdrawal of her European rivals from the area, gave Japan a naval supremacy there which was formally accepted by the other naval Powers in the Washington Agreements of 1922. And the Japanese advances in northern China made her the preeminent Power in East Asian economic and political life. All in all, the successors of the Meiji Restoration of 1868 could look with profound satisfaction on Japan's progress by 1918.

Part Five—The First World War: 1914: 1918

Chapter 11—The Growth of International Tensions, 1871-1914

Introduction

The unification of Germany in the decade before 1871 ended a balance of power in Europe which had existed for 250 or even 300 years. During this long period, covering almost ten generations, Britain had been relatively secure and of growing power. She had found this power challenged only by the states of western Europe. Such a challenge had come from Spain under Philip II, from France under Louis XIV and under Napoleon, and, in an economic sense, from the Netherlands during much of the seventeenth century. Such a challenge could arise because these states were as rich and almost as unified as Britain herself, but, above all, it could arise because the nations of the West could face seaward and challenge England so long as central Europe was disunited and economically backward.

The unification of Germany by Bismarck destroyed this situation politically, while the rapid economic growth of that country after 1871 modified the situation economically. For a long time Britain did not see this change but rather tended to welcome the rise of Germany because it relieved her, to a great extent, from the pressure of France in the political and colonial fields. This failure to see the changed situation continued until after 1890 because of Bismarck's diplomatic genius, and because of the general failure of non-Germans to appreciate the marvelous organizing ability of the Germans in industrial activities. After 1890 Bismarck's masterful grip on the tiller was replaced by the vacillating hands of Kaiser William II and a succession of puppet chancellors. These incompetents alarmed and alienated Britain by challenging her in commercial, colonial, and especially naval affairs. In commercial matters the British found German salesmen and their agents offering better service, better terms, and lower prices on goods of at least equal quality, and in metric rather than Anglo-Saxon sizes and measurements. In the colonial field after 1884, Germany acquired African colonies which threatened to cut across the continent from east to west and thus checkmate the British ambitions to build a railway from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo. These colonies included East Africa (Tanganyika), South-West Africa, Cameroons, and Togo. The German threat became greater as a result of German intrigues in the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, and above all by the German encouragement of the Boers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State before their war with Britain in 1899-1902. In the Pacific area Germany acquired by 1902 the Caroline, Marshall, and Marianas Islands, parts of New Guinea and Samoa, and a base of naval and commercial importance at Kiaochau on the Shantung Peninsula of China. In naval affairs Germany presented her greatest threat as a result of the German Naval bills of 1898, 1900, and 1902, which were designed to be an instrument of coercion against Britain. Fourteen German battleships were launched between 1900 and 1905. As a consequence of these activities Britain joined the anti-German coalition by 1907, the Powers of Europe became divided into two antagonistic coalitions, and a series of crises began which led, step by step, to the catastrophe of 1914.

International affairs in the period 1871-1914 can be examined under four headings: (1) the creation of the Triple Alliance, 1871-1890; (2) the creation of the Triple Entente, 1890-1907; (3) the efforts to bridge the gap between the two coalitions, 1890-1914; and (4) the series of international crises, 1905-1914. These are the headings under which we shall examine this subject.

The Creation of the Triple Alliance, 1871-1890

The establishment of a German Empire dominated by the Kingdom of Prussia left Bismarck politically satisfied. He had no desire to annex any additional Germans to the new empire, and the growing ambitions for colonies and a worldwide empire left him cold. As a satisfied diplomat he concentrated on keeping what he had, and realized that France, driven by fear and vengeance, was the chief threat to the situation. His immediate aim, accordingly, was to keep France isolated. This involved the more positive aim to keep Germany in friendly relations with Russia and the Habsburg Empire and to keep Britain friendly by abstaining from colonial or naval adventures. As part of this policy Bismarck made two tripartite agreements with Russia and Austro-Hungary: (a) the Three Emperors' League of 1873 and (b) the Three Emperors' Alliance of 1881. Both of these were disrupted by the rivalry between Austria and Russia in southeastern Europe, especially in Bulgaria. The Three Emperors' League broke down in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin because of Habsburg opposition to Russia's efforts to create a great satellite state in Bulgaria after her victory in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. The Three Emperors' Alliance of 1881 broke down in the "Bulgarian crisis" of 1885. This crisis arose over the Bulgarian annexation of Eastern Rumelia, a union which was opposed by Russia but favored by Austria, thus reversing the attitude these Powers had displayed at Berlin in 1878.

The rivalry between Russia and Austria in the Balkans made it clear to Bismarck that his efforts to form a diplomatic front of the three great empires were based on weak foundations. Accordingly, he made a second string for his bow. It was this second string which became the Triple Alliance. Forced to choose between Austria and Russia, Bismarck took the former because it was weaker and thus easier to control. He made an Austro-German alliance in 1879, following the disruption of the Three Emperors' League, and in 188: expanded it into a Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy. This alliance, originally made for five years, was renewed at intervals until 1915. After the disruption of the Three Emperors' Alliance in 1885, the Triple Alliance became the chief weapon in Germany's diplomatic armory, although Bismarck, in order to keep France isolated, refused to permit Russia to drift completely out of the German sphere, and tried to bind Germany and Russia together by a secret agreement of friendship and neutrality known as the Reinsurance Treaty (1887). This treaty, which ran for three years, was not renewed in 1890 after the new Emperor, William II, had discharged Bismarck. The Kaiser argued that the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia was not compatible with the Triple Alliance with Austria and Italy, since Austria and Russia were so unfriendly. By failing to renew, William left Russia and France both isolated. From this condition they naturally moved together to form the Dual Alliance of 1894. Subsequently, by antagonizing Britain, the German government helped to transform this Dual Alliance into the Triple Entente. Some of the reasons why Germany made these errors will be examined in a subsequent chapter on Germany's internal history.

The Creation of the Tripe Entente, 1890-1907

The diplomatic isolation of Russia and France combined with a number of more positive factors to bring about the Dual Alliance of 1894. Russian antagonism toward Austria in the Balkans and French fear of Germany along the Rhine were increased by Germany's refusal to renew the Reinsurance Treaty and by the early renewal of the Triple Alliance in 1891. Both powers were alarmed by growing signs of Anglo-German friendship at the time of the Heligoland Treaty (1890) and on the occasion of the Kaiser's visit to London in 1891. Finally, Russia needed foreign loans for railroad building and industrial construction, and these could be obtained most readily in Paris. Accordingly, the agreement was closed during the New Year celebrations of 1894 in the form of a military convention. This provided that Russia would attack Germany if France were attacked by Germany or by Italy supported by Germany, while France would attack Germany if Russia were attacked by Germany or by Austria supported by Germany..

This Dual Alliance of France and Russia became the base of a triangle whose other sides were "ententes," that is, friendly agreements between France and Britain (1904) and between Russia and Britain (1907).

To us looking back on it, the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain seems inevitable, yet to contemporaries, as late as 1898, it must have appeared as a most unlikely event. For many years Britain had followed a policy of diplomatic isolation, maintaining a balance of power on the Continent by shifting her own weight to whatever side of Europe's disputes seemed the weaker. Because of her colonial rivalries with France in Africa and southwest Asia and her disputes with Russia in the Near, Middle, and Far East, Britain was generally friendly to the Triple Alliance and estranged from the Dual Alliance as late as 1902. Her difficulties with the Boers in South Africa, the growing strength of Russia in the Near and Far East, and Germany's obvious sympathy with the Boers led Britain to conclude the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 190 in order to obtain support against Russia in China. About the same time, Britain became convinced of the need and the possibility of an agreement with France. The need arose from Germany's direct threat to Britain's most sensitive spot by Tirpitz's naval-building program of 1898. The possibility of agreement with France emerged in the wake of the most acute Anglo-French crisis of modern times, the Fashoda crisis of 1898. At Fashoda on the Nile, a band of French under Colonel Jean Marchand, who had been crossing the Sahara from west to east, came face to face with a force of British under General Kitchener, who had been moving up the Nile from Egypt in order to subdue the tribes of the Sudan. Each ordered the other to withdraw. Passions rose to fever heat while both sides consulted their capitals for instructions. As a consequence of these instructions the French withdrew. As passions cooled and the dust settled, it became clear to both sides that their interests were reconcilable, since France's primary interest was on the Continent, where she faced Germany, while Britain's primary interest was in the colonial field w here she increasingly found herself facing Germany. France's refusal to engage in a colonial war with Britain while the German Army sat across the Rhine made it clear that France could arrive at a colonial agreement with Britain. This agreement was made in 1904 by putting all their disputes together on the negotiation table and balancing one against another. The French recognized the British occupation of Egypt in return for diplomatic support for their ambitions in Morocco. They gave up ancient rights in Newfoundland in return for new territories in Gabon and along the Niger River in Africa. Their rights in Madagascar were recognized in return for accepting a British "sphere of interests" in Siam. Thus, the ancient Anglo-French enmity was toned down in the face of the rising power of Germany. This Entente Cordiale was deepened in the period 1906-1914 by a series of Anglo-French "military conversations," providing, at first, for unofficial discussions regarding behavior in a quite hypothetical war with Germany but hardening imperceptibly through the years into a morally binding agreement for a British expeditionary force to cover the French left wing in the event of a French war with Germany. These "military conversations" were broadened after 1912 by a naval agreement by which the British undertook to protect France from the North Sea in order to free the French fleet for action against the Italian Navy in the Mediterranean.

The British agreement with Russia in 1907 followed a course not dissimilar to that of the British agreement with France in 1904. British suspicions of Russia had been fed for years by their rivalry in the Near East. By 1904 these suspicions were deepened by a growing Anglo-Russian rivalry in Manchuria and North China, and were brought to a head by Russian construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway (finished in 1905). A violent crisis arose over the Dogger Bank incident of 1904, when the Russian fleet, en route from the Baltic Sea to the Far East, fired on British fishing vessels in the North Sea in the belief that they were Japanese torpedo boats. The subsequent destruction of that Russian fleet by the Japanese and the ensuing victory of Britain's ally in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 made clear to both parties that agreement between them was possible. German naval rivalry with Britain and the curtailment of Russian ambitions in Asia as a result of the defeat by Japan made possible the agreement of 1907. By this agreement Persia was divided into three zones of influence, of which the northern was Russian, the southern was British, and the center was neutral. Afghanistan was recognized as under British influence; Tibet was declared to be under Chinese suzerainty; and Britain expressed her willingness to modify the Straits Agreements in a direction favorable to Russia.

One influence which worked to create and strengthen the Triple Entente was that of the international banking fraternity. These were largely excluded from the German economic development, but had growing links with France and Russia. Prosperous enterprises like the Suez Canal Company, the Rothschild copper enterprise, Rio Tinto, in Spain, and many newer joint activities in Morocco created numerous unobtrusive links which both preceded and strengthened the Triple Entente. The Rothschilds, close friends of Edwards VII and of France, were linked to the French investment bank, Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas. This, in turn, was the chief influence in selling nine billion rubles of Russian bonds in France before 1914. The most influential of London bankers, Sir Ernest Cassel, a great and mysterious person (1852-1921), had come from Germany to England at the age of seventeen, built up an immense fortune, which he gave away with a lavish hand, was closely connected with Egypt, Sweden, New York, Paris, and Latin America, became one of King Edward’s closest personal friends and employer of the greatest wire-puller of the period, the ubiquitous mole, Lord Esher. These generally anti-Prussian influences around King Edward played a significant part in building up the Triple Entente and in strengthening it when Germany foolishly challenged their projects in Morocco in the 1904-1912 period.

Efforts to Bridge the Gap between the Two Coalitions, 1890-1914

At the beginning, and even up to 1913, the two coalitions on the international scene were not rigid or irreconcilably alienated. The links between the members of each group were variable and ambiguous. The Triple Entente was called an entente just because two of its three links were not alliances. The Triple Alliance was by no means solid, especially in respect to Italy, which had joined it originally to obtain support against the Papacy over the Roman question but which soon tried to obtain support for an aggressive Italian policy in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Failure to obtain specific German support in these areas, and continued enmity with Austro-Hungary in the Adriatic, made the Italian link with the Central Powers rather tenuous.

We shall mention at least a dozen efforts to bridge the gap which was slowly forming in the European "concert of the Powers." First in chronological order were the Mediterranean Agreements of 1887. In a series of notes England, Italy, Austria, and Spain agreed to preserve the status quo in the Mediterranean and its adjoining seas or to see it modified only by mutual agreement. These agreements were aimed at the French ambitions in Morocco and the Russian ambitions at the Straits.

A second agreement was the Anglo-German Colonial Treaty of 1890 by which German claims in East Africa, especially Zanzibar, were exchanged for the British title to the island of Heligoland in the Baltic Sea. Subsequently, numerous abortive efforts were made by the Kaiser and others on the German side, and by Joseph Chamberlain and others on the British side, to reach some agreement for a common front in world affairs. This resulted in a few minor agreements, such as one of 1898 regarding a possible disposition of the Portuguese colonies in Africa, one of 1899 dividing Samoa, and one of 1900 to maintain the "Open Door" in China, but efforts to create an alliance or even an entente broke down over the German naval program, German colonial ambitions in Africa (especially Morocco), and German economic penetration of the Near East along the route of the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway. German jealousy of England's world supremacy, especially the Kaiser's resentment toward his uncle, King Edward VII, was ill concealed.

Somewhat similar negotiations were conducted between Germany and Russia, but with meager results. A Commercial Agreement of 1894 ended a long-drawn tariff war, much to the chagrin of the German landlords who enjoyed the previous exclusion of Russian grain, but efforts to achieve any substantial political agreement failed because of the German alliance with Austria (which faced Russia in the Balkans) and the Russian alliance with France (which faced Germany along the Rhine). These obstacles wrecked the so-called Bjorkö Treaty, a personal agreement between the Kaiser and Nicholas made during a visit to each other's yachts in 1905, although the Germans were able to secure Russian consent to the Baghdad Railway by granting the Russians a free hand in northern Persia (1910).

Four other lines of negotiation arose out of the French ambitions to obtain Morocco, the Italian desire to get Tripoli, the Austrian ambition to annex Bosnia, and the Russian determination to open the Straits to their warships. All four of these were associated with the declining power of Turkey, and offered opportunities for the European Powers to support one another's ambitions at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. In 1898 Italy signed a commercial treaty with France, and followed this up, two years later, by a political agreement which promised French support for the Italian ambitions in Tripoli in return for Italian support for the French designs in Morocco. The Italians further weakened the Triple Alliance in 1902 by promising France to remain neutral in the event that France was attacked or had to fight "in defense of her honor or of her security."

In a somewhat similar fashion Russia and Austria tried to reconcile the former's desire to obtain an outlet through the Dardanelles into the Aegean with the latter's desire to control Slav nationalism in the Balkans and reach the Aegean at Saloniki. In 1897 they reached an agreement to maintain the status quo in the Balkans or, failing this, to partition the area among the existing Balkan states plus a new state of Albania. In 1903 these two Powers agreed on a program of police and financial reform for the disturbed Turkish province of Macedonia. In 1908 a disagreement over Austrian efforts to construct a railway toward Saloniki was glossed over briefly by an informal agreement between the respective foreign ministers, Aleksandr Izvolski and Lexa von Aehrenthal, to exchange Austrian approval of the right of Russian warships to traverse the Straits for Russian approval of an Austrian annexation of the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. All this tentative goodwill evaporated in the heat of the Bosnian crisis of 1908, as we shall see in a moment.

After 1905 the recurrent international crises and the growing solidarity of the coalitions (except for Italy) made the efforts to bridge the gap between the two coalitions less frequent and less fruitful. However, two episodes are worthy of attention. These are the Haldane Mission of 1912 and the Baghdad Railway agreement of 1914. In the former, British Secretary of State for War Lord Haldane went to Berlin to try to restrain Tirpitz's naval program. Although the German Navy had been built in the hope that it would bring England to the conference table, and without any real intention of using it in a war with England, the Germans were not able to grasp the opportunity when it occurred. The Germans wanted a conditional promise of British neutrality in a continental war as a price for suspension of the new naval bill. Since this might lead to German hegemony on the Continent, Haldane could not agree. He returned to London convinced that the Germany of Goethe and Hegel which he had learned to love in his student days was being swallowed up by the German militarists. The last bridge between London and Berlin seemed down, but in June, 1914, the two countries initialed the agreement by which Britain withdrew her opposition to the Baghdad Railway in return for a German promise to remain north of Basra and recognize Britain's preeminence on the Euphrates and Persian Gulf. This solution to a long-standing problem was lost in the outbreak of war six weeks later.

The International Crisis, 1905 - 1914

The decade from the Entente Cordiale to the outbreak of war witnessed a series of political crises which brought Europe periodically to the brink of war and hastened the growth of armaments, popular hysteria, nationalistic chauvinism, and solidity of alliances to a point where a relatively minor event in 1914 plunged the world into a war of unprecedented range and intensity. There were nine of these crises which must be mentioned here. In chronological order they are:

1905-1906 The First Moroccan Crisis and the Algeciras Conference

1908 The Bosnian Crisis

1911 Agadir and the Second Moroccan Crisis

1912 The First Balkan War

1913 The Second Balkan War

1913 The Albanian Crisis

1913 The Liman von Sanders Affairs

1914 Sarajevo

The first Moroccan crisis arose from German opposition to French designs on Morocco. This opposition was voiced by the Kaiser himself in a speech in Tangier, after the French had won Italian, British, and Spanish acquiescence by secret agreements with each of these countries. These agreements were based on French willingness to yield Tripoli to Italy, Egypt to Britain, and the Moroccan coast to Spain. The Germans insisted on an international conference in the hope that their belligerence would disrupt the Triple Entente and isolate France. Instead, when the conference met at Algeciras, near Gilbraltar, in 1906, Germany found herself supported only by Austria. The conference reiterated the integrity of Morocco but set up a state bank and a police force, both dominated by French influence. The crisis reached a very high pitch, but in both France and Germany the leaders of the more belligerent bloc (Théophile Delcassé and Friedrich von Holstein) were removed from office at the critical moment.

The Bosnian crisis of 1908 arose from the Young Turk revolt of the same year. Fearful that the new Ottoman government might be able to strengthen the empire, Austria determined to lose no time in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been under Austrian military occupation since the Congress of Berlin (1878). Since the annexation would permanently cut Serbia off from the Adriatic Sea, Aehrenthal, the Austrian foreign minister, consulted with Serbia's protector, Russia. The czar's foreign minister, Izvolski, was agreeable to the Austrian plan if Austria would yield to Izvolski's desire to open the Straits to Russian warships, contrary to the Congress of Berlin. Aehrenthal agreed, subject to Izvolski's success in obtaining the consent of the other Powers. While Izvolski was wending his way from Germany to Rome and Paris in an effort to obtain this consent, Aehrenthal suddenly annexed the two districts, leaving Izvolski without his Straits program (October 6, 1908). It soon became clear that he could not get this program. About the same time, Austria won Turkish consent to its annexation of Bosnia. A war crisis ensued, fanned by the refusal of Serbia to accept the annexation and its readiness to precipitate a general war to prevent it. The danger of such a war was intensified by the eagerness of the military group in Austria, led by Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorff, to settle the Serb irritation once and for all. A stiff German note to Russia insisting that she abandon her support of Serbia and recognize the annexation cleared the air, for Izvolski yielded and Serbia followed, but it created a very bad psychological situation for the future.

The second Moroccan crisis arose (July, 1911) when the Germans sent a gunboat, the Panther, to Agadir in order to force the French to evacuate Fez, which they had occupied, in violation of the Algeciras agreement, in order to suppress native disorders. The crisis became acute but subsided when the Germans gave up their opposition to French plans in Morocco in return for the cession of French territory in the Congo area (November 4, 1911).

As soon as Italy saw the French success in Morocco, it seized neighboring Tripoli, leading to the Tripolitan war between Italy and Turkey (September 28, 1911). All the Great Powers had agreements with Italy not to oppose her acquisition of Tripoli, but they disapproved of her methods, and were alarmed to varying degrees by her conquest of the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean and her bombardment of the Dardanelles (April, 1912).

The Balkan States decided to profit from the weakness of Turkey by driving her out of Europe completely. Accordingly, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro attacked Turkey in the First Balkan War and had considerable success (1912). The Triple Alliance opposed the Serbian advance to the Adriatic, and suggested the creation of a new state in Albania to keep Serbia from the sea. A brief war crisis died down when Russia again abandoned the Serbian territorial claims and Austria was able to force Serbia and Montenegro to withdraw from Durazzo and Scutari. By the Treaty of London (1913) Turkey gave up most of her territory in Europe. Serbia, embittered by her failure to obtain the Adriatic coast, attempted to find compensation in Macedonia at the expense of Bulgaria's gains from Turkey. This led to the Second Balkan War, in which Serbia, Greece, Romania, and Turkey attacked Bulgaria. By the ensuing treaties of Bucharest and Constantinople (August-September, 1913), Bulgaria lost most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, much of Dobruja to Romania, and parts of Thrace to Turkey. Embittered at the Slavs and their supporters, Bulgaria drifted rapidly toward the Triple Alliance.

Ultimatums from Austria and from Austria and Italy jointly (October, 1913), forced Serbia and Greece to evacuate Albania, and made it possible to organize that country within frontiers agreeable to the Conference of Ambassadors at London. This episode hardly had time to develop into a crisis when it was eclipsed by the Liman von Sanders Affair.

Liman von Sanders was the head of a German military mission invited to the Ottoman Empire to reorganize the Turkish Army, an obvious necessity in view of its record in the Balkan Wars. When it became clear that Liman was to be actual commander of the First Army Corps at Constantinople and practically chief of staff in Turkey, Russia and France protested violently. The crisis subsided in January, 1914, when Liman gave up his command at Constantinople to become inspector-general of the Turkish Army.

The series of crises from April, 1911, to January, 1914, had been almost uninterrupted. The spring of 1914, on the contrary, was a period of relative peace and calm, on the surface at least. But appearances were misleading. Beneath the surface each power was working to consolidate its own strength and its links with its allies in order to ensure that it would have better, or at least no worse, success in the next crisis, which everyone knew was bound to come. And come it did, with shattering suddenness, when the heir to the Habsburg throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, was assassinated by Serb extremists in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo on the 28th of June, 1914. There followed a terrible month of fear, indecision, and hysteria before the World War was begun by an Austrian attack on Serbia on July 28, 1914.

Whole volumes have been written on the crisis of July, 1914, and it is hardly to be expected that the story could be told in a few paragraphs. The facts themselves are woven into a tangled skein, which historians have now unraveled; but more important than the facts, and considerably more elusive, are the psychological conditions surrounding these facts. The atmosphere of nervous exhaustion after ten years of crisis; the physical exhaustion from sleepless nights; the alternating moods of patriotic pride and cold fear; the underlying feeling of horror that nineteenth century optimism and progress were leading to such a disaster; the brief moments of impatient rage at the enemy for starting the whole thing; the nervous determination to avoid war if possible, but not to be caught off guard when it came and, if possible, to catch your opponent off guard instead; and, finally, the deep conviction that the whole experience was only a nightmare and that at the last moment some power would stop it—these were the sentiments which surged to and fro in the minds of millions of Europeans in those five long weeks of mounting tension.

A number of forces made the crises of the period before the outbreak of war more dangerous than they would have been a generation or so earlier. Among these we should mention the influence of the mass army, the influence of the alliance system, the influence of democracy, the effort to obtain diplomatic ends by intimidation, the mood of desperation among politicians, and, lastly, the increasing influence of imperialism.

The influence of the mass army will be discussed more extensively in the next chapter. Briefly, the mass army in a period in which communication was generally by telegraph and travel was by rail was an unwieldy thing which could be handled only in a rather rigid and inflexible fashion. As worked out by the Germans, and used with such success in 1866 and in 1870, this fashion required the creation, long before the war began, of detailed plans executed in sequence from an original signal and organized in such a way that every single person had his fixed role like a part in a great and intricate machine. As used by the Germans in early wars, extended by them and copied by others in the period before 1914, each soldier began to move from his home at a given signal. As they advanced, hour by hour, and day by day, these men assembled their equipment and organized into larger and larger groups, at first in platoons, companies, and regiments, then in divisions and armies. As they assembled they were advancing along lines of strategic attack made long before and, as likely as not, the convergence into armies would not be accomplished until the advance had already penetrated deep into enemy territory. As formulated in theory, the final assembly into a complete fighting machine would take place only a brief period before the whole mass hurled itself on an, as yet, only partially assembled enemy force. The great drawback to this plan of mobilization was its inflexibility and its complexity, these two qualities being so preponderant that, once the original signal was given, it was almost impossible to stop the forward thrust of the whole assemblage anywhere short of its decisive impact on the enemy forces in their own country. This meant that an order to mobilize was almost equivalent to a declaration of war; that no country could allow its opponent to give the original signal much before it gave its own signal; and that the decisions of politicians were necessarily subordinate to the decisions of generals.

The alliance system worsened this situation in two ways. On the one hand, it meant that every local dispute was potentially a world wear, because the signal to mobilize given anywhere in Europe would start the machines of war everywhere. On the other hand, it encouraged extremism, because a country with allies would be bolder than a country with no allies, and because allies in the long run did not act to restrain one another, either because they feared that lukewarm support to an ally in his dispute would lead to even cooler support from an ally in one's own dispute later or because a restraining influence in an earlier dispute so weakened an alliance that it was necessary to give unrestrained support in a later dispute in order to save the alliance for the future. There can be little doubt that Russia gave excessive support to Serbia in a bad dispute in 1914 to compensate for the fact that she had let Serbia down in the Albanian disputes of 1913; moreover, Germany gave Austria a larger degree of support in 1914, although lacking sympathy with the issue itself, to compensate for the restraint which Germany had exercised on Austria during the Balkan Wars.

The influence of democracy served to increase the tension of a crisis because elected politicians felt it necessary to pander to the most irrational and crass motivations of the electorate in order to ensure future election, and did this by playing on hatred and fear of powerful neighbors or on such appealing issues as territorial expansion, nationalistic pride, "a place in the sun," "outlets to the sea," and other real or imagined benefits. At the same time, the popular newspaper press, in order to sell papers, played on the same motives and issues, arousing their peoples, driving their own politicians to extremes, and alarming neighboring states to the point where they hurried to adopt similar kinds of action in the name of self-defense. Moreover, democracy made it impossible to examine international disputes on their merits, but instead transformed every petty argument into an affair of honor and national prestige so that no dispute could be examined on its merits or settled as a simple compromise because such a sensible approach would at once be hailed by one's democratic opposition as a loss of face and an unseemly compromise of exalted moral principles.

The success of Bismarck's policy of "blood and iron" tended to justify the use of force and intimidation in international affairs, and to distort the role of diplomacy so that the old type of diplomacy began to disappear. Instead of a discussion between gentlemen to find a workable solution, diplomacy became an effort to show the opposition how strong one was in order to deter him from taking advantage of one's obvious weaknesses. Metternich's old definition, that "a diplomat was a man who never permitted himself the pleasure of a triumph," became lost completely, although it was not until after 1930 that diplomacy became the practice of polishing one's guns in the presence of the enemy.

The mood of desperation among politicians served to make international crises more acute in the period after 1904. This desperation came from most of the factors we have already discussed, especially the pressure of the mass army and the pressure of the newspaper-reading electorate. But it was intensified by a number of other influences. Among these was the belief that war was inevitable. When an important politician, as, for example, Poincaré, decides that war is inevitable, he acts as if it were inevitable, and this makes it inevitable. Another kind of desperation closely related to this is the feeling that war now is preferable to war later, since time is on the side of the enemy. Frenchmen dreaming of the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine, looked at the growing power and population of Germany and felt that war would be better in 1914 than later. Germans, dreaming of "a place in the sun" or fearing an "Entente encirclement," looked at the Russian rearmament program and decided that they would have more hope of victory in 1914 than in 1917 when that rearmament program would be completed. Austria, as a dynastic state, had her own kind of desperation based on the belief that nationalistic agitation by the Slavs doomed her anyway if she did nothing, and that it would be better to die fighting than to disintegrate in peace.

Lastly, the influence of imperialism served to make the crises of 1905-1914 more acute than those of an earlier period. This is a subject which has given rise to much controversy since 1914 and has, in its crudest form, been presented as the theory that war was a result of the machinations of "international bankers" or of the international armaments merchants, or was an inevitable result of the fact that the European capitalist economic system had reached maturity. All these theories will be examined in another place where it will be shown that they are, at worst, untrue, or, at best, incomplete. However, one fact seems to be beyond dispute. This is the fact that international economic competition was, in the period before 1914, requiring increasing political support. British gold and diamond miners in South Africa, German railroad builders in the Near East, French tin miners in the southwest Pacific, American oil prospectors in Mexico, British oil prospectors in the Near East, even Serbian pork merchants in the Habsburg domains sought and expected to get political support from their home governments. It may be that things were always thus. But before 1914 the number of such foreign entrepreneurs was greater than ever, their demands more urgent, their own politicians more attentive, with the result that international relations were exasperated.

It was in an atmosphere such as this that Vienna received news of the assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne on June 28, 1914. The Austrians were convinced of the complicity of the Serbian government, although they had no real proof. We now know that high officials of the Serbian government knew of the plot and did little to prevent it. This lack of activity was not caused by the fact that Francis Ferdinand was unfriendly to the Slavs within the Habsburg Empire but, on the contrary, by the fact that he was associated with plans to appease these Slavs by concessions toward political autonomy within the Habsburg domains and had even considered a project for changing the Dual Monarchy of Austrian and Hungarian into a Triple Monarchy of Austrian, Hungarian, and Slav. This project was feared by the Serbs because, by preventing the disintegration of Austria-Hungary, it would force postponement of their dreams of making Serbia the "Prussia of the Balkans." The project was also regarded with distaste by the Hungarians, who had no desire for that demotion associated with a shift from being one of two to being one of three joint rulers. Within the Hapsburg Cabinet there was considerable doubt as to what action to take toward Serbia. Hungary was reluctant to go to war for fear that a victory might lead to the annexation of more Serbs, thus accentuating the Slav problem within the empire and making the establishment of a Triple Monarchy more likely. Ultimately, they were reassured by the promise that no more Slavs would be annexed and that Serbia itself would, after its defeat, be compelled to stop its encouragement of Slav nationalist agitation within the empire and could, if necessary, be weakened by transfer of part of its territory to Bulgaria. On this irresponsible basis, Austria, having received a promise of support from Germany, sent a forty-eight-hour ultimatum to Belgrade. This document, delivered on July 23rd, was far-reaching. It bound Serbia to suppress anti-Habsburg publications, societies, and teaching; to remove from Serbian official positions persons to be named later by Austria; to allow Hapsburg officials to cooperate with the Serbs inside Serbia in apprehending and trying those implicated in the Sarajevo plot; and to offer explanations of various anti-Austrian utterances by Serbian officials.

Serbia, confident of Russian support, answered in a reply which was partly favorable, partly evasive, and in one particular at least (use of Austrian judges in Serbian tribunals) negative. Serbia mobilized before making her reply; Austria mobilized against her as soon as it was received, and, on July 28th, declared war. The Russian czar, under severe pressure from his generals, issued, retracted, modified, and reissued an order for general mobilization. Since the German military timetable for a two-front war provided that France must be defeated before Russian mobilization was completed, France and Germany both ordered mobilization on August 1st, and Germany declared war on Russia. As the German armies began to pour westward, Germany declared war on France (August 3rd) and Belgium (August 4th). Britain could not allow France to be defeated, and in addition was morally entangled by the military conversations of 1906-1914 and by the naval agreement of 1912. Moreover, the German challenge on the high seas, in commercial activities throughout the world, and in colonial activities in Africa could not go unanswered. On August 4th Britain declared war on Germany, emphasizing the iniquity of her attack on Belgium, although in the Cabinet meeting of July 28th it had been agreed that such an attack would not legally obligate Britain to go to war. Although this issue was spread among the people, and endless discussions ensued about Britain's obligation to defend Belgian neutrality under the Treaty of 1839, those who made the decision saw clearly that the real reason for war was that Britain could not allow Germany to defeat France.

Chapter 12—Military History, 1914-1918

For the general student of history, the military history of the First World War is not merely the narration of advancing armies, the struggles of men, their deaths, triumphs, or defeats. Rather, it presents an extraordinary discrepancy between the facts of modern warfare and the ideas on military tactics which dominated the minds of men, especially the minds of military men. This discrepancy existed for many years before the war and began to disappear only in the course of 1918. As a result of its existence, the first three years of the war witnessed the largest military casualties in human history. These occurred as a result of the efforts of military men to do things which were quite impossible to do.

The German victories of 1866 and 1870 were the result of theoretical study, chiefly by the General Staff, and exhaustive detailed training resulting from that study. They were emphatically not based on experience, for the army of 1866 had had no actual fighting experience for two generations, and was commanded by a leader, Helmuth von Moltke, who had never commanded a unit so large as a company previously. Moltke's great contribution was to be found in the fact that, by using the railroad and the telegraph, he was able to merge mobilization and attack into a single operation so that the final concentration of his forces took place in the enemy country, practically on the battlefield itself, just before contact with the main enemy forces took place.

This contribution of Moltke's was accepted and expanded by Count von Schlieffen, chief of the Great General Staff from 1891 to 1905. Schlieffen considered it essential to overwhelm the enemy in one great initial onslaught. He assumed that Germany would be outnumbered and economically smothered in any fighting of extended duration, and sought to prevent this by a lightning war of an exclusively offensive character. He assumed that the next war would be a two-front war against France and Russia simultaneously and that the former would have to be annihilated before the latter was completely mobilized. Above all, he was determined to preserve the existing social structure of Germany, especially the superiority of the Junker class; accordingly, he rejected either an enormous mass army, in which the Junker control of the Officers' Corps would be lost by simple lack of numbers, or a long-drawn war of resources and attrition which would require a reorganized German economy.

The German emphasis on attack was shared by the French Army command, hut in a much more extreme and even mystical fashion. Under the influence of Ardant Du Picq and Ferdinand Foch, the French General Staff came to believe that victory depended only on attack and that the success of any attack depended on morale and not on any physical factors. Du Picq went so far as to insist that victory did not depend at all on physical assault or on casualties, because the former never occurs and the latter occurs only during flight after the defeat. According to him, victory was a matter of morale, and went automatically to the side with the higher morale. The sides charge at each other; there is never any shock of attack, because one side breaks and flees before impact; this break is not the result of casualties, because the flight occurs before casualties are suffered and always begins in the rear ranks where no casualties could be suffered; the casualties are suffered in the flight and pursuit after the break. Thus the whole problem of war resolved itself into the problem of how to screw up the morale of one's army to the point where it is willing to fling itself headlong on the enemy. Technical problems of equipment or maneuvers are of little importance.

These ideas of Du Picq were accepted by an influential group in the French Army as the only possible explanation of the French defeat in 1870. This group, led by Foch, propagated throughout the army the doctrine of morale and the offensive à outrance. Foch became professor at the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre in 1894, and his teaching could be summed up in the four words, "Attaquez! Attaquez! Toujours, attaquez! "

This emphasis on the offensive à outrance by both sides led to a concentration of attention on three factors which were obsolete by 1914. These three were (a) cavalry, (b) the bayonet, and (c) the headlong infantry assault. These were obsolete in 1914 as the result of three technical innovations: (a) rapid-fire guns, especially machine guns; (b) barbed-wire entanglements, and (c) trench warfare. The orthodox military leaders generally paid no attention to the three innovations while concentrating all their attention on the three obsolete factors. Foch, from his studies of the Russo-Japanese War, decided that machine guns and barbed wire were of no importance, and ignored completely the role of trenches. Although cavalry was obsolete for assault by the time of the Crimean War (a fact indicated in Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade"), and although this was clearly demonstrated to be so in the American Civil War (a fact explicitly recognized in The Army and Navy Journal for October 31, 1868), cavalry and cavalry officers continued to dominate armies and military preparations. During the War of 1914-1918 many commanding officers, like John French, Douglas Haig, and John J. Pershing, were cavalry officers and retained the mentality of such officers. Haig, in his testimony before the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa (1903), testified, "Cavalry will have a larger sphere of action in future wars." Pershing insisted on the necessity to keep large numbers of horses behind the lines, waiting for the "breakthrough" which was to be obtained by bayonet charge. In every army, transportation was one of the weakest points, yet feed for the horses was the largest item transported, being greater than ammunition or other supplies. Although transport across the Atlantic was critically short throughout the war, one-third of all shipping space was in feed for horses. Time for training recruits was also a critical bottleneck, but most armies spent more time on bayonet practice than on anything else. Yet casualties inflicted on the enemy by bayonet were so few that they hardly appear in the statistics dealing with the subject.

The belief of military men that an assault made with high morale could roll through wire, machine guns, and trenches was made even more unrealistic by their insistence that such an offensive unit maintain a straight front. This meant that it was not to be permitted to move further in a soft spot, but was to hold back where advance was easy in order to break down the defensive strong points so that the whole front could precede at approximately the same rate. This was done, they explained, in order to avoid exposed flanks and enemy cross fire on advanced salients.

There was some opposition to these unrealistic theories, especially in the German Army, and there were important civilians in all countries who fought with their own military leaders on these issues. Clemenceau in France, and, above all, Lord Esher and the members of the Committee on Imperial Defence in England should be-mentioned here.

At the outbreak of war in August 1914, both sides began to put into effect their complicated strategic plans made much earlier. On the German side this plan, known as the Schlieffen Plan, was drawn up in 1905 and modified by the younger Helmuth von Moltke (nephew of the Moltke of 1870) after 1906. On the French side the plan was known as Plan XVII, and was drawn up by Joffre in 1912.

The original Schlieffen Plan proposed to hold the Russians, as best as could be done, with ten divisions, and to face France with a stationary left wing of eight divisions and a great wheeling right and center of fifty-three divisions going through Holland and Belgium and coming down on the flank and rear of the French armies by passing west of Paris. Moltke modified this by adding two divisions to the right wing (one from the Russian front and one new) and eight new divisions to the left. He also cut out the passage through Holland, making it necessary for his right wing to pass through the Liege gap, between the Maastricht appendix of Holland and the forested terrain of the Ardennes.

The French Plan XVII proposed to stop an anticipated German attack into eastern France from Lorraine by an assault of two enlarged French armies on its center, thus driving victoriously into southern Germany whose Catholic and separatist peoples were not expected to rally with much enthusiasm to the Protestant, centralist cause of a Prussianized German Empire. While this was taking place, a force of 800,000 Russians was to invade East Prussia, and 150,000 British were to bolster the French left wing near Belgium.

The execution of these plans did not completely fulfill the expectations of their supporters. The French moved 3,781,000 men in 7,000 trains in 16 days (August 2-18), opening their attack on Lorraine on 29 August 14th. By August 20th they were shattered, and by August 25th, after eleven days of combat, had suffered 300,000 casualties. This was almost 25 percent of the number of men engaged, and represented the most rapid wastage of the war.

In the meantime the Germans in 7 days (August 6-12) transported 1,500,000 men across the Rhine at the rate of 550 trains a day. These men formed 70 divisions divided into 7 armies and forming a vast arc from northwest to southeast. Within this arc were 49 French divisions organized in 5 armies and the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) of 4 divisions. The relationship of these forces, the commanding generals of the respective armies, and their relative strength can be seen from the following list:

Entente Forces (North to South)

Army Commander Divisions

B. E. F. Sir John French 4

V Lanrezac 10

IV De Langle de Cary/

III Ruffey 20

II Castelnau/

I Dubail 19

German Forces (North to South)

Army Commander Divisions

I von Kluck/

II von Bülow/

III von Hausen/ 34

IV Prince Albrecht of Württemberg/

V Crown Prince Frederick 21

VI Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria/

VII von Heeringen 15

The German right wing passed Liege, without reducing that great fortress, on the night of August 5-6 under the instructions of General Erich Ludendorff of the General Staff. The Belgian Army, instead of retreating southwestward before the German wave, moved northwestward to cover Antwerp. This put them ultimately on the rear of the advancing German forces. These forces peeled off eight and a half divisions to reduce the Belgian forts and seven divisions to cover the Belgian force before Antwerp. This reduced the strength of the German right wing, which was increasingly exhausted by the rapidity of its own advance. When the German plan became clear on August 18th, Joffre formed a new Sixth Army, largely from garrison troops, under Michel-Joseph Maunoury but really commanded by Joseph Galliéni, Minitary Governor of Paris. By August 22nd the whole French line west of Verdun was in retreat. Three days later, Moltke, believing victory secure, sent two army corps to Russia from the Second and Third armies. These arrived on the Eastern Front only after the Russian advance into Prussia had been smashed at Tannenberg and around the Masurian Lakes (August 26th-September Isth). In the meantime in the west, Schlieffen's project swept onward toward fiasco. When Lanrezac slowed up Bülow's advance on August 28th, Kluck, who was already a day's march ahead of Bülow, tried to close the gap between the two by turning southeastward. This brought his line of advance east of Paris rather than est of that city as originally planned. Galliéni, bringing the Sixth Army from Paris in any vehicles he could commandeer, threw it at Kluck's exposed right flank. Kluck turned again to face Galliéni, moving northwestward in a brilliant maneuver in order to envelop him within the German arc before resuming his advance southeastward. This operation was accompanied hy considerable success except that it opened a gap thirty miles wide between Kluck and Bülow. Opposite this gap was the B.E.F., which was withdrawing southward with even greater speed than the French. On September 5th the French retreat stopped; on the following day they began a general counterattack, ordered by Joffre on the insistence of Galliéni. Thus began the First Battle of the Marne.

Kluck was meeting with considerable success over the Sixth French Army, although Bülow was being badly mauled by Lanrezac, when the B.E.F. began to move into the gap between the First and Second German armies (September 8th). A German staff officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Hentsch, ordered the whole German right to fall back to the Aisne River where a front was formed on September 13th by the arrival of some of the German forces which had been attacking the Belgian forts. The Germans were willing to fall back to the Aisne because they believed the advance could be resumed when they wished to do so. In the next few months the Germans tried to resume their advance, and the French tried to dislodge the Germans from their positions. Neither was able to make any headway against the firepower of the other. A succession of futile efforts to outflank each other's positions merely succeeded in bringing the ends of the front to the English Channel on one extreme and to Switzerland on the other. In spite of millions of casualties, this line, from the sea to the mountains across the fair face of France, remained almost unchanged for over three years.

During these terrible years, the dream of military men was to break through the enemy line by infantry assault, then roll up his flanks and disrupt his rearward communications by pouring cavalry and other reserves through the gap. This was never achieved. The effort to attain it led to one experiment after another. In order these were: (1) bayonet assault, (2) preliminary artillery barrage, (3) use of poison gas, (4) use of the tank, (5) use of infiltration. The last four of these innovations were devised alternately by the Allies and by the Central Powers.

Bayonet assault was a failure by the end of 1914. It merely created mountains of dead and wounded without any real advance, although some officers continued to believe that an assault would be successful if the morale of the attackers could be brought to a sufficiently high pitch to overcome machine-gun fire.

An artillery barrage as a necessary preliminary to infantry assault was used almost from the beginning. It was ineffectual. At first no army had the necessary quantity of munitions. Some armies insisted on ordering shrapnel rather than high-explosive shells for such barrages. This resulted in a violent controversy between Lloyd George and the generals, the former trying to persuade the latter that shrapnel was not effective against defensive forces in ground trenches. In time it should have become clear that high-explosive barrages were not effective either, although they were used in enormous quantities. They failed because: (1) earth and concrete fortifications provided sufficient protection to the defensive forces to allow them to use their own firepower against the infantry assault which followed the barrage; (2) a barrage notified the defense where to expect the following infantry assault, so that reserves could be brought up to strengthen that position; and (3) the doctrine of the continuous front made it impossible to penetrate the enemy positions on a wide-enough front to break through. The efforts to do so, however, resulted in enormous casualties. At Verdun in 1916 the French lost 350,000 and the Germans 300,000. On the Eastern Front the Russian General Aleksei Brusilov lost a million men in an indecisive attack through Galicia (June-August, 1916). On the Somme in the same year the British lost 410,000, the French lost 190,000, and the Germans lost 450,000 for a maximum gain of 7 miles on a front about 25 miles wide (July-November, 1916). The following year the slaughter continued. At Chemin des Dames in April, 1917, the French, under a new commander, Robert Nivelle, fired 11 million shells in a 10-day barrage on a 30-mile front. The attack failed, suffering losses of 118,000 men in a brief period. Many corps mutinied, and large numbers of combatants were shot to enforce discipline. Twenty-three civilian leaders were also executed. Nivelle was replaced by Pétain. Shortly afterward, at Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres), Haig used a barrage of 4 1/4 million shells, almost 5 tons for every yard of an 1 r-mile front, but lost 400,000 men in the ensuing assault (August-November, 1917).

The failure of the barrage made it necessary to devise new methods, but military men were reluctant to try any innovations. In April, 1915, the Germans were forced by civilian pressure to use poison gas, as had been suggested by the famous chemist Fritz Haber. Accordingly, without any effort at concealment and with no plans to exploit a breakthrough if it came, they sent a wave of chlorine gas at the place where the French and British lines joined. The junction was wiped out, and a great gap was opened through the line. Although it was not closed for five weeks, nothing was done by the Germans to use it. The first use of gas by the Western Powers (the British) in September, 1915, was no more successful. At the terrible Battle of Passchendaele in July 1917, the Germans introduced mustard gas, a weapon which was copied by the British in July 1918. This was the most effective gas used in the war, but it served to strengthen the defense rather than the offense, and was especially valuable to the Germans in their retreat in the autumn of 1918, serving to slow up the pursuit and making difficult any really decisive blow against them.

The tank as an offensive weapon devised to overcome the defensive strength of machine-gun fire was invented by Ernest Swinton in 1915. Only his personal contacts with the members of the Committee of Imperial Defence succeeded in bringing his idea to some kind of realization. The suggestion was resisted by the generals. When continued resistance proved impossible, the new weapon was misused, orders for more were canceled, and all military supporters of the new weapon were removed from responsible positions and replaced by men who were distrustful or at least ignorant of the tanks. Swinton sent detailed instructions to Headquarters, emphasizing that they must be used for the first time in large numbers, in a surprise assault, without any preliminary artillery barrage, and with close support by infantry reserves. Instead they were used quite incorrectly. While Swinton was still training crews for the first 150 tanks, fifty were taken to France, the commander who had been trained in their use was replaced by an inexperienced man, and a mere eighteen w-ere sent against the Germans. This occurred on September 15, 1916, in the waning stages of the Battle of the Somme. An unfavorable report on their performance was sent from General Headquarters to the War Office in London and, as a result, an order for manufacture of a thousand more was canceled without the knowledge of the Cabinet. This was overruled only by direct orders from Lloyd George. Only on November 20, 1917, were tanks used as Swinton had instructed. On that day 381 tanks supported by six infantry divisions struck the Hindenburg Line before Cambrai and burst through into open country. These forces were exhausted by a five-mile gain, and stopped. The gap in the German line was not utilized, for the only available reserves were two divisions of cavalry which were ineffective. Thus the opportunity was lost. Only in 1918 were massed tank attacks used with any success and in the fashion indicated by Swinton.

The year 1917 was a bad one. The French and British suffered through their great disasters at Chemin des Dames and Passchendaele. Romania entered the war and was almost completely overrun, Bucharest being captured on December 5th. Russia suffered a double revolution, and was obliged to surrender to Germany. The Italian Front was completely shattered by a surprise attack at Caporetto and only by a miracle was it reestablished along the Piave (October-December, 1917). The only bright spots in the year were the British conquests of Palestine and Mesopotamia and the entrance into the war of the United States, but the former was not important and the latter was a promise for the future rather than a help to 1917.

Nowhere, perhaps, is the unrealistic character of the thinking of most high military leaders of World War I revealed more clearly than in the British commander in chief, Field Marshal Sir Douglas (later Earl) Haig, scion of a Scottish distillery family. In June, 1917, in spite of a decision of May 4th by the Inter-Allied Conference at Paris against any British offensive, and at a time when Russia and Serbia had been knocked out of the war, French military morale was shattered after the fiasco of the Nivelle offensive, and American help was almost a year in the future, Haig determined on a major offensive against the Germans to win the war. He ignored all discouraging information from his intelligence, wiped from the record the known figures about German reserves, and deceived the Cabinet, both in respect to the situation and to his own plans. Throughout the discussion the civilian political leaders, who were almost universally despised as ignorant amateurs by the military men, were proved more correct in their judgments and expectations. Haig obtained permission for his Passchendaele offensive only because General (later Field Marshal and Baronet) William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, covered up Haig's falsifications about German reserves and because First Sea Lord Admiral John Jellicoe told the Cabinet that unless Haig could capture the- submarine bases on the Belgian coast (an utterly impossible objective) he considered it "improbable that we could go on with the war next year for lack of shipping." On this basis, Haig won approval for a "step by step" offensive "not involving heavy losses." He was so optimistic that he told his generals that "opportunities for the employment of cavalry in masses are likely to offer." The offensive, opened on July 31st, developed into the most horrible struggle of the war, fought week after week in a sea of mud, with casualties mounting to 400,000 men after three months. In October, when the situation had been hopeless for weeks, Haig still insisted that the Germans were at the point of collapse, that their casualties were double the British (they were considerably less than the British), and that the breakdown of the Germans, and the opportunity for the tanks and cavalry to rush through them, might come at any moment.

One of the chief reasons for the failure of these offensives was the doctrine of the continuous front, which led commanders to hold back their offensives where resistance was weak and to throw their reserves against the enemy's strong points. This doctrine was completely reversed by Ludendorff in the spring of 1918 in a new tactic known as "infiltration." By this method advance was to be made around strong points by penetrating as quickly as possible and with maximum strength through weak resistance, leaving the centers of strong resistance surrounded and isolated for later attention. Although Ludendorff did not carry out this plan with sufficient conviction to give it full success, he did achieve amazing results. The great losses by the British and French in 1917, added to the increase in German strength from forces arriving from the defunct Russian and Romanian fronts, made it possible for Ludendorff to strike a series of sledgehammer blows along the Western Front between Douai and Verdun in March and April 1918. Finally, on May 27th, after a brief but overwhelming bombardment, the German flood burst over Chemin des Dames, poured across the Aisne, and moved relentlessly toward Paris. By May 30th it was on the Marne, thirty-seven miles from the capital. There, in the Second Battle of the Marne, were reenacted the events of September 1914. On June 4th the German advance was stopped temporarily by the Second American Division at Château-Thierry. In the next six weeks a series of counterattacks aided by nine American divisions were made on the northern flank of the German penetration. The Germans fell back behind the Vesle River, militarily intact, but so ravaged by influenza that many companies had only thirty men. The crown prince demanded that the war be ended. Before this could be done, on August 8, 1918—"the black day of the German Army," as Ludendorff called it—the British broke the German line at Amiens by a sudden assault with 456 tanks supported by 13 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions. When the Germans rushed up 18 reserve divisions to support the six which were attacked, the Allied Powers repeated their assault at Saint-Quentin (August 31st) and in Flanders (September 2nd). A German Crown Council, meeting at Spa, decided that victory was no longer possible, but neither civil government nor army leaders would assume the responsibility for opening negotiations for peace. The story of these negotiations will be examined in a moment, as the last of a long series of diplomatic conversations which continued throughout the war.

Looking back on the military history of the First World War, it is clear that the whole war was a siege operation against Germany. Once the original German onslaught was stopped on the Marne, victory for Germany became impossible because she could not resume her advance. On the other hand, the Entente Powers could not eject the German spearhead from French soil, although they sacrificed millions of men and billions of dollars in the effort to do so. Any effort to break in on Germany from some other front was regarded as futile, and was made difficult by the continuing German pressure in France. Accordingly, although sporadic attacks were made on the Italian Front, in the Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire, on the Dardanelles directly in 1915, against Bulgaria through Saloniki in 1915- 1918, and along the whole Russian Front, both sides continued to regard northeastern France as the vital area. And in that area, clearly no decision could be reached.

To weaken Germany the Entente Powers began a blockade of the Central Powers, controlling the sea directly, in spite of the indecisive German naval challenge at Jutland in 1916, and limiting the imports of neutrals near Germany, like the Netherlands. To resist this blockade, Germany used a four-pronged instrument. On the home front every effort was made to control economic life so that all goods would be used in the most effective fashion possible and so that food, leather, and other necessities would be distributed fairly to all. The success of this struggle on the home front was due to the ability of two German Jews. Haber, the chemist, devised a method for extracting nitrogen from the air, and thus obtained an adequate supply of the most necessary constituent of all fertilizers and all explosives. Before 1914 the chief source of nitrogen had been in the guano deposits of Chile, and, but for Haber, the British blockade would have compelled a German defeat in 1915 from lack of nitrates. Walter Rathenau, director of the German Electric Company and of some five dozen other enterprises, organized the German economic system in a mobilization which made it possible for Germany to fight on with slowly dwindling resources.

On the military side Germany made a threefold reply to the British blockade. It tried to open the blockade by defeating its enemies to the south and east (Russia, Romania, and Italy). In 1917 this effort was largely successful, but it was too late. Simultaneously, Germany tried to wear down her Western foes by a policy of attrition in the trenches and to force Britain out of the war by a retaliatory submarine blockade directed at British shipping. The submarine attack, as a new method of naval warfare, was applied with hesitation and ineffectiveness until 1917. Then it was applied with such ruthless efficiency that almost a million tons of shipping was sunk in the month of April 1917, and Britain was driven within three weeks of exhaustion of her food supply. This danger of a British defeat, dressed in the propaganda clothing of moral outrage at the iniquity of submarine attacks, brought the United States into the war on the side of the Entente in that critical month of April, 1917. In the meantime the Germany policy of military attrition on the Western Front worked well until 1918. By January of that year Germany had been losing men at about half her rate of replacement and at about half the rate at which she was inflicting losses on the Entente Powers. Thus the period 1914-1918 saw a race between the economic attrition of Germany by the blockade and the personal attrition of the Entente by military action. This race was never settled on its merits because three new factors entered the picture in 1917. These were the German counter-blockade by submarines on Britain, the increase in German manpower in the West resulting from her victory in the East, and the arrival on the Western Front of new American forces. The first two of these factors were overbalanced in the period March-September, 1918, by the third. By August of 1918 Germany had given her best, and it had not been adequate. The blockade and the rising tide of American manpower gave the German leaders the choice of surrender or complete economic and social upheaval. Without exception, led by the Junker military commanders, they chose surrender.

Chapter 13—Diplomatic History, 1914-1 918

The beginnings of military action in August 1914 did not mark the end of diplomatic action, even between the chief opponents. Diplomatic activity continued, and was aimed, very largely, at two goals: (a) to bring new countries into the military activities or, on the contrary, to keep them out, and (b) to attempt to make peace by negotiations. Closely related to the first of these aims were negotiations concerned with the disposition of enemy territories after the fighting ceased.

Back of all the diplomatic activities of the period 1914-1918 was a fact which impressed itself on the belligerents relatively slowly. This was the changed character of modern warfare. With certain exceptions the wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had been struggles of limited resources for limited objectives. The growth of political democracy, the rise of nationalism, and the industrialization of war led to total war with total mobilization and unlimited objectives. In the eighteenth century, when rulers were relatively free from popular influences, they could wage wars for limited objectives and could negotiate peace on a compromise basis when these were objectives were attained or appeared unattainable. Using a mercenary army which fought for pay, they could put that army into war or out of war, as seemed necessary, without vitally affecting its morale or its fighting qualities. The arrival of democracy and of the mass army required that the great body of the citizens give wholehearted support for any war effort, and made it impossible to wage wars for limited objectives. Such popular support could be won only in behalf of great moral goals or universal philosophic values or, at the very least, for survival. At the same time the growing industrialization and economic integration of modern society made it impossible to mobilize for war except on a very extensive basis which approached total mobilization. This mobilization could not be directed toward limited objectives. From these factors came total war with total mobilization and unlimited objectives, including the total destruction or unconditional surrender of the enemy. Having adopted such grandiose goals and such gigantic plans, it became almost impossible to allow the continued existence of noncombatants within the belligerent countries or neutrals outside them. It became almost axiomatic that "who is not with me is against me." At the same time, it became almost impossible to compromise sufficiently to obtain the much more limited goals which would permit a negotiated peace. As Charles Seymour put it: "Each side had promised itself a peace of victory. The very phrase 'negotiated peace' became synonymous with treachery." Moreover, the popular basis of modern war required a high morale which might easily be lowered if the news leaked out that the government was negotiating peace in the middle of the fighting. As a consequence of these conditions, efforts to negotiate peace during the First World War were generally very secret and very unsuccessful.

The change from limited wars with limited objectives fought with mercenary troops to unlimited wars of economic attrition with unlimited objectives fought with national armies had far-reaching consequences. The distinction between combatants and noncombatants and between belligerents and neutrals became blurred and ultimately undistinguishable. International law, which had grown up in the period of limited dynastic wars, made a great deal of these distinctions. Noncombatants had extensive rights which sought to protect their ways of life as much as possible during periods of warfare; neutrals had similar rights. In return, strict duties to remain both noncombatant and neutral rested on these "outsiders." All these distinctions broke down in 1914-1915, with the result that both sides indulged in wholesale violations of existing international law. Probably on the whole these violations were more extensive (although less widely publicized) on the part of the Entente than on the part of the Central Powers. The reasons for this were that the Germans still maintained the older traditions of a professional army, and their position, both as an invader and as a "Central Power" with limited manpower and economic resources, made it to their advantage to maintain the distinctions between combatant and noncombatant and between belligerent and neutral. If they could have maintained the former distinction, they would have had to fight the enemy army and not the enemy civilian population, and, once the former was defeated, would have had little to fear from the latter, which could have been controlled by a minimum of troops. If they could have maintained the distinction between belligerent and neutral, it would have been impossible to blockade Germany, since basic supplies could have been imported through neutral countries. It was for this reason that Schlieffen's original plans for an attack on France through Holland and Belgium were changed by Moltke to an attack through Belgium alone. Neutral Holland was to remain as a channel of supply for civilian goods. This was possible because international law made a distinction between war goods, which could be declared contraband, and civilian goods (including food), which could not be so declared. Moreover, the German plans, as we have indicated, called for a short, decisive war against the enemy armed forces, and they neither expected nor desired a total economic mobilization or even a total military mobilization, since these might disrupt the existing social and political structure in Germany. For these reasons, Germany made no plans for industrial or economic mobilization, for a long war, or for withstanding a blockade, and hoped to mobilize a smaller proportion of its manpower than its immediate enemies.

The failure of the Schlieffen plan showed the error of these ideas. Not only did the prospect of a long war make economic mobilization necessary, but the occupation of Belgium showed that national feeling was tending to make the distinction between combatant and noncombatant academic. When Belgian civilians shot at German soldiers, the latter took civilian hostages and practiced reprisals on civilians. These German actions were publicized throughout the world by the British propaganda machine as "atrocities" and violations of international law (which they were), while the Belgian civilian snipers were excused as loyal patriots ( although their actions were even more clearly violations of international law and, as such, justified severe German reactions). These "atrocities" were used by the British to justify their own violations of international law. As early as August 20, 1914, they were treating food as contraband and interfering with neutral shipments of food to Europe. On November 5, 1914, they declared the whole sea from Scotland to Iceland a "war zone," covered it with fields of explosive floating mines, and ordered all ships going to the Baltic, Scandinavia, or the Low Countries to go by way of the English Channel, where they were stopped, searched, and much of their cargoes seized, even when these cargoes could not be declared contraband under existing international law. In reprisal the Germans on February 18, 1915 declared the English Channel a "war zone," announced that their submarines would sink shipping in that area, and ordered shipping for the Baltic area to use the route north of Scotland. The United States, which rejected a Scandinavian invitation to protest against the British war zone closed with mines north of Scotland, protested violently against the German war zone closed with submarines on the Narrow Seas, although, as one American senator put it, the "humanity of the submarine was certainly on a higher level than that of the floating mine, which could exercise neither discretion nor judgment."

The United States accepted the British "war zone," and prevented its ships from using it. On the other hand, it refused to accept the German war zone, and insisted that American lives and property were under American protection even when traveling on armed belligerent ships in this war zone. Moreover, the United States insisted that German submarines must obey the laws of the sea as drawn for surface vessels. These laws provided that merchant ships could be stopped by a war vessel and inspected, and could be sunk, if carrying contraband, after the passengers and the ships' papers were put in a place of safety. A place of safety was not the ships' boats, except in sight of land or of other vessels in a calm sea. The merchant vessel so stopped obtained these rights only if it made no act of hostility against the enemy war vessel. It was not only difficult, or even impossible, for German submarines to meet these conditions; it was often dangerous, since British merchant ships received instructions to attack German submarines at sight, by ramming if possible. It was even dangerous for the German submarines to apply the established law of neutral vessels; for British vessels, with these aggressive orders, frequently flew neutral flags and posed as neutrals as long as possible. Nevertheless, the United States continued to insist that the Germans obey the old laws, while condoning British violations of the same laws to the extent that the distinction between war vessels and merchant ships was blurred. Accordingly, German submarines began to sink British merchant ships with little or no warning. Their attempts to justify this failure to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants on the ground that British floating mines, the British food blockade, and the British instructions to merchant ships to attack submarines made no such distinction were no more successful than their efforts to show that their severity against the civilian population of Belgium was justified by civilian attacks on German troops. They were trying to carry on legal distinctions remaining from an earlier period when conditions were entirely different, and their ultimate abandonment of these distinctions on the grounds that their enemies had already abandoned them merely made matters worse, because if neutrals became belligerents and noncombatants became combatants, Germany and her allies would suffer much more than Britain and her friends. In the final analysis this is why the distinctions were destroyed; but beneath all legal questions was to be found the ominous fact that war, by becoming total, had made both neutrality and negotiated peace almost impossible. We shall now turn our attention to this struggle over neutrality and the struggle over negotiated peace.

So far as legal or diplomatic commitments went, Germany, in July, 1914, had the right to expect that Austria-Hungary, Italy, Romania, and perhaps Turkey would be at her side and that her opponents would consist of Serbia, Montenegro, Russia, and France, with England maintaining neutrality, at the beginning, at least. Instead, Italy and Romania fought against her, a loss which was not balanced by the accession of Bulgaria to her side. In addition, she found her opponents reinforced by England, Belgium, Greece, the United States, China, Japan, the Arabs, and twenty other "Allied and Associated Powers." The process by which the reality turned out to be so different from Germany's legitimate expectations will now take our attention.

Turkey, which had been growing closer to Germany since before 1890, offered Germany an alliance on July 27, 1914, when the Sarajevo crisis was at its height. The document was signed secretly on August 1st, and bound Turkey to enter the war against Russia if Russia attacked Germany or Austria. In the meantime, Turkey deceived the Entente Powers by conducting long negotiations with them regarding its attitude toward the war. On October 29th it removed its mask of neutrality by attacking Russia, thus cutting her off from her Western allies by the southern route. To relieve the pressure on Russia, the British made an ineffectual attack on Gallipoli at the Dardanelles (February-December, 1915). Only at the end of 1916 did any real attack on Turkey begin, this time from Egypt into Mesopotamia, where Baghdad was captured in March 1917, and the way opened up the valley as well as across Palestine to Syria. Jerusalem fell to General Allenby in December 1917, and the chief cities of Syria fell the following October (1918)..

Bulgaria, still smarting from the Second Balkan War (1913), in which it had lost territory to Romania, Serbia, Greece, and Turkey, was from the outbreak of war in 1914 inclined toward Germany, and was strengthened in that inclination by the Turkish attack on Russia in October. Both sides tried to buy Bulgaria's allegiance, a process in which the Entente Powers were hampered by the fact that Bulgaria's ambitions could be satisfied only at the expense of Greece, Romania, or Serbia, whose support they also desired. Bulgaria wanted Thrace from the Maritsa River to the Vardar, including Kavalla and Saloniki (which were Greek), most of Macedonia (which was Greek or Serbian), and Dobruja (from Romania). The Entente Powers offered Thrace to the Vardar in November 1914, and added some of Macedonia in May 1915, compensating Serbia with an offer of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and the Dalmatian coast. Germany, on the other hand, gave Bulgaria a strip of Turkish territory along the Maritsa River in July 1915, added to this a loan of 200,000,000 francs six weeks later, and, in September 1915, accepted all Bulgaria's demands provided they were at the expense of belligerent countries. Within a month Bulgaria entered the war by attacking Serbia (October Il, 1915). It had considerable success, driving westward across Serbia into Albania, but exposed its left flank in this process to an attack from Entente forces which were already based on Saloniki. This attack came in September 1918, and within a month forced Bulgaria to ask for an armistice (September 30th). This marked the first break in the united front of the Central Powers.

When war began in 1914, Romania remained neutral, in spite of the fact that it had joined the Triple Alliance in 1883. This adherence had been made because of the Germanic sympathies of the royal family, and was so secret that only a handful of people even knew about it. The Romanian people themselves were sympathetic to France. At that time Romania consisted of three parts (Moldavia, Wallachia, and Dobruja) and had ambitions to acquire Bessarabia from Russia and Transylvania from Hungary. It did not seem possible that Romania could get both of these, yet that is exactly what happened, because Russia was defeated by Germany and ostracized by the Entente Powers after its revolution in 1917, while Hungary was defeated by the Entente Powers in 1918. The Romanians were strongly anti-Russian after 1878, but this feeling decreased in the course of time, while animosities against the Central Powers rose, because of the Hungarian mistreatment of the Romanian minority in Transylvania. As a result, Romania remained neutral in 1914. Efforts by the Entente Powers to win her to their side were vain until after the death of King Carol in October 1914. The Romanians asked, as the price of their intervention on the Entente side, Transylvania, parts of Bukovina and the Banat of Temesvar, 500,000 Entente troops in the Balkans, 200,000 Russian troops in Bessarabia, and equal status with the Great Powers at the Peace Conference. For this they promised to attack the Central Powers and not to make a separate peace. Only the heavy casualties suffered by the Entente Powers in 1916 brought them to the point of accepting these terms. They did so in August of that year, and Romania entered the war ten days later. The Central Powers at once overran the country, capturing Bucharest in December. The Romanians refused to make peace until the German advance to the Marne in the spring of 1918 convinced them that the Central Powers were going to win. Accordingly, they signed the Treaty of Bucharest with Germany (May 7, 1918) by which they gave Dobruja to Bulgaria, but obtained a claim to Bessarabia,, which Germany had previously taken from Russia. Germany also obtained a ninety-year lease on the Romanian oil wells.

Though the Entente efforts to get Greece into the war were the most protracted and most unscrupulous of the period, they were unsuccessful so long as King Constantine remained on the throne (to June 1917). Greece was offered Smyrna in Turkey if it would give Kavalla to Bulgaria and support Serbia. Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos was favorable, but could not persuade the king, and soon was forced to resign (March 1915). He returned to office in August, after winning a parliamentary election in June. When Serbia asked Greece for the 150,000 men promised in the Serb-Greek treaty of 1913 as protection against a Bulgarian attack on Serbia, Venizelos tried to obtain these forces from the Entente Powers. Four French-British divisions landed at Saloniki (October 1915), but Venizelos was at once forced out of office by King Constantine. The Entente then offered to cede Cyprus to Greece in return for Greek support against Bulgaria but were refused (October 20, 1915). When German and Bulgarian forces began to occupy portions of Greek Macedonia, the Entente Powers blockaded Greece and sent an ultimatum asking for demobilization of the Greek Army and a responsible government in Athens (June, 1916). The Greeks at once accepted, since demobilization made it less likely they could be forced to make war on Bulgaria, and the demand for responsible-government could be met without bringing Venizelos beck 'to office. Thus frustrated, the Entente Powers established a new provisional Greek government under Venizelos at their base at Saloniki. There he declared war on the Central Powers (November 1916). The Entente then demanded that the envoys of the Central Powers be expelled from Athens and that war materials within control of the Athenian government be surrendered. These demands were rejected (November 30, 1916). Entente forces landed at the port of Athens (Piraeus) on the same day, but stayed only overnight, being replaced by an Entente blockade of Greece. The Venizelos government was recognized by Britain (December 1916), but the situation dragged on unchanged. In June 1917, a new ultimatum was sent to Athens demanding the abdication of King Constantine. It was backed up by a seizure of Thessaly and Corinth, and was accepted at once. Venizelos became premier of the Athens government, and declared war on the Central Powers the next day (June 27, 1917) This gave the Entente a sufficient base to drive up the Vardar Valley, under French General Louis Franchet d'Esperey, and force Bulgaria out of the war.

At the outbreak of war in 1914, Italy declared its neutrality on the grounds that the Triple Alliance of 1882, as renewed in 1912, bound it to support the Central Powers only in case of a defensive war and that the Austrian action against Serbia did not fall in this category. To the Italians, the Triple Alliance was still in full force and thus they were entitled, as provided in Article VII, to compensation for any Austrian territorial gains in the Balkans. As a guarantee of this provision, the Italians occupied the Valona district of Albania in November 1914. Efforts of the Central Powers to bribe Italy into the wear were difficult because the Italian demands were largely at the expense of Austria. These demands included the South Tyrol, Gorizia, the Dalmatian Islands, and Valona, with Trieste a free city. A great public controversy took place in Italy between those who supported intervention in the war on the Entente side and those who wished to remain neutral. By skillful expenditure of money, the Entente governments were able to win considerable support. Their chief achievement was in splitting the normally pacifist Socialist Party by large money grants to Benito Mussolini. A rabid Socialist who had been a pacifist leader in the Tripolitan War of 1911 Mussolini was editor of the chief Socialist paper, Avanti. He was expelled from the party when he supported intervention on the Entente side, but, using French money, he established his own paper, Popolo d'ltalia, and embarked upon the unprincipled career which ultimately made him dictator of Italy.

By the secret Treaty of London (April 26, 1915), Italy's demands as listed above were accepted by the Entente Powers and extended to provide that Italy should also obtain Trentino, Trieste, Istria (but not Fiume), South Dalmatia, Albania as a protectorate, the Dodecanese Islands, Adalia in Asia Minor, compensatory areas in Africa if the Entente Powers made any acquisitions on that continent, a loan of £50 million, part of the war indemnity, and exclusion of the Pope from any of the negotiations leading toward peace. For these extensive promises Italy agreed to make war on all the Central Powers within a month. It declared war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915, but on Germany only in August, 1916.

The Treaty of London is of the utmost importance because its ghost haunted the chancelleries of Europe for more than twenty-five years. It was used as an excuse for the Italian attack on Ethiopia in 1935 and on France in 1940.

The Italian war effort was devoted to an attempt to force the Habsburg forces back from the head of the Adriatic Sea. In a series of at least twelve battles on the Isonzo River, on very difficult terrain, the Italians were notably unsuccessful. In the autumn of 1917 Germany gave the Austrians sufficient reinforcements to allow them to break through on to the rear of the Italian lines at Caporetto. The Italian defense collapsed and was reestablished along the Piave River only after losses of over 600,000 men, the majority by desertion. Austria was unable to pursue this advantage because of her war-weariness, her inability to mobilize her domestic economy successfully for war purposes, and, above all, by the growing unrest of the nationalities subject to Habsburg rule. These groups set up governmental committees in Entente capitals and organized "Legions" to fight on the Entente side. Italy organized a great meeting of these peoples at Rome in April 1918. They signed the "Pact of Rome," promising to work for self-determination of subject peoples and agreeing to draw the frontier between the Italians and the South Slavs on nationality lines.

Russia, like Romania, was forced out of the war in 1917, and forced to sign a separate peace by Germany in 1918. The Russian attack on Germany in 1914 had been completely shattered at the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in August and September, but their ability to hold their own against Austrian forces in Galicia made it impossible to bring the war in the east to a conclusion. Russian casualties were very heavy because of inadequate supplies and munitions, while the Austrians lost considerable forces, especially of Slavs, by desertion to the Russians. This last factor made it possible for Russia to organize a "Czech Legion" of over 100,000 men. German reinforcements to the Austrian front in Galicia in 1915 made possible a great Austro-German offensive which crossed Galicia and by September had taken all of Poland and Lithuania. In these operations the Russians lost about a million men. They lost a million more in the "Brusilov" counterattack in 1916 which reached the Carpathians before it was stopped by the arrival of German reinforcements from France. By this time the prestige of the czarist government had fallen so low that it was easily replaced by a parliamentary government under Kerensky in March 1917. The new government tried to carry on the war, but misjudged the temper of the Russian people. As a result the extreme Communist group, known as Bolsheviks, were able to seize the government in November 1917, and hold it by promising the weary Russian people both peace and land. The German demands, dictated by the German General Staff, were so severe that the Bolsheviks refused to sign a formal peace, but on March 3, 1918, were forced to accept the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. By this treaty Russia lost Finland, Lithuania, the Baltic Provinces, Poland, the Ukraine and Transcaucasia. German efforts to exploit these areas in an economic sense during the war were not successful.

The Japanese intervention in the war on August 23, 1914, was determined completely by its ambitions in the Far East and the Pacific area. It intended to use the opportunity arising from the Great Powers' concern with Europe to win concessions from China and Russia and to replace Germany, not only in its colonial possessions in the East but also to take over its commercial position so far as possible. The German island colonies north of the equator were seized at once, and the German concession at Kiaochow was captured after a brief siege. In January 1915, "Twenty-one Demands" were presented to China in the form of an ultimatum, and largely accepted. These demands covered accession to the German position in Shantung, extension of Japanese leases in Manchuria, with complete commercial liberty for the Japanese in that area, extensive rights in certain existing iron and steel enterprises of North China, and the closing of China's coast to any future foreign concessions. A demand for the use of Japanese advisers in Chinese political, military, and financial matters was rejected, and withdrawn. On July 3, 1916, Japan won Russian recognition of its new position in China in return for her recognition of the Russian penetration into Outer Mongolia. New concessions were won from China in February 1917, and accepted by the United States in November in the so-called Lansing-Ishii Notes. In these notes the Japanese gave verbal support to the American insistence on the maintenance of China's territorial integrity, political independence, and the "Open Door" policy in commercial matters.

The outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, followed by the German victory over that country, and the beginning of civil war, gave the Japanese an opportunity in the Far East which they did not hesitate to exploit. With the support of Great Britain and the United States, they landed at Vladivostok in April 1918, and began to move westward along the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Czech Legion on the Russian front had already rebelled against Bolshevik rule and was fighting its way eastward along the same railroad. The Czechs were eventually evacuated to Europe, while the Japanese continued to hold the eastern end of the railroad, and gave support to the anti-Bolshevik factions in the civil war. After a year or more of confused fighting, it became clear that the anti-Bolshevik factions would be defeated and that the Japanese could expect no further concessions from the Bolsheviks. Accordingly, they evacuated Vladivostok in October 1922.

Undoubtedly, the most numerous diplomatic agreements of the wartime period were concerned with the disposition of the Ottoman Empire. As early as February 1915, Russia and France signed an agreement by which Russia was given a free hand in the East in return for giving France a free hand in the West. This meant that Russia could annex Constantinople and block the movement for an independent Poland, while France could take Alsace-Lorraine from Germany and set up a new, independent state under French influence in the Rhineland. A month later, in March 1915, Britain and France agreed to allow Russia to annex the Straits and Constantinople. The immediate activities of the Entente Powers, however, were devoted to plans to encourage the Arabs to rebel against the sultan's authority or at least abstain from supporting his war efforts. The chances of success in these activities were increased hy the fact that the Arabian portions of the Ottoman Empire, while nominally subject to the sultan, were already breaking up into numerous petty spheres of authority, some virtually independent. The Arabs, who were a completely separate people from the Turks, speaking a Semitic rather than a Ural-Altaic language and who had remained largely nomadic in their mode of life while the Turks had become almost completely a peasant people, were united to the Ottoman peoples by little more than their common allegiance to the Muslim religion. This connection had been weakened by the efforts to secularize the Ottoman state and by the growth of Turkish nationalism which called forth a spirit of Arabic nationalism as a reaction to it.

In 1915-1916 the British high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, entered into correspondence with the Sherif Hussein of Mecca. While no binding agreement was signed, the gist of their discussions was that Britain would recognize the independence of the Arabs if they revolted against Turkey. The area covered by the agreement included those parts of the Ottoman Empire south of the 37th degree of latitude except Adana, Alexandretta, and "those portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo, [which] cannot be said to be purely Arab." In addition, Aden was excepted, while Baghdad and Basra were to have a "special administration." The rights of France in the whole area were reserved, the existing British agreements with various local sultans along the shores of the Persian Gulf were to be maintained, and Hussein was to use British advisers exclusively after the war. Extended controversy has risen from this division of areas, the chief point at issue being whether the statement as worded included Palestine in the area which was granted to the Arabs or in the area which was reserved. The interpretation of these terms to exclude Palestine from Arab hands was subsequently made by McMahon on several occasions after 1922 and most explicitly in 1937.

While McMahon was negotiating with Hussein, the Government of India, through Percy Cox, was negotiating with Ibn-Saud of Nejd, and, in an agreement of December 26, 1915, recognized his independence in return for a promise of neutrality in the war. Shortly afterward, on May 16, 1916, an agreement, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement from the names of the chief negotiators, was signed between Russia, France, and Britain. Early in 1917 Italy was added to the settlement. It partitioned the Ottoman Empire in such a way that little was left to the Turks except the area within 200 or 250 miles of Ankara. Russia was to get Constantinople and the Straits, as well as northeastern Anatolia, including the Black Sea coast; Italy was to get the southwestern coast of Anatolia from Smyrna to Adalia; France was to get most of eastern Anatolia, including Mersin, Adana, and Cilicia, as well as Kurdistan, Alexandretta, Syria, and northern Mesopotamia, including Mosul; Britain was to get the Levant from Gaza south to the Red Sea, Transjordan, most of the Syrian Desert, all of Mesopotamia south of Kirkuk (including Baghdad and Basra), and most of the Persian Gulf coast of Arabia. It was also envisaged that western Anatolia around Smyrna would go to Greece. The Holy Land itself was to be internationalized.

The next document concerned with the disposition of the Ottoman Empire was the famous "Balfour Declaration" of November 1917. Probably no document of the wartime period, except Wilson's Fourteen Points, has given rise to more disputes than this brief statement of less than eleven lines. Much of the controversy arises from the belief that it promised something to somebody and that this promise was in conflict with other promises, notably with the "McMahon Pledge" to Sherif Hussein. The Balfour Declaration took the form of a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, one of the leading figures in the British Zionist movement. This movement, which was much stronger in Austria and Germany than in Britain, had aspirations for creating in Palestine, or perhaps elsewhere, some territory to which refugees from anti-Semitic persecution or other Jews could go to find "a national home.'' Balfour's letter said, "His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." It is to be noted that this was neither an agreement nor a promise but merely a unilateral declaration, that it did not promise a Jewish state in Palestine or even Palestine as a home for the Jews, but merely proposed such a home in Palestine, and that it reserved certain rights for the existing groups in the area. Hussein was so distressed when he heard of it that he asked for an explanation, and was assured by D. G. Hogarth, on behalf of the British government, that "Jewish settlement in Palestine would only be allowed in so far as would be consistent with the political and economic freedom of the Arab population." This reassurance apparently was acceptable to Hussein, but doubts continued among other Arab leaders. In answer to a request from seven such leaders, on June 16, 1918, Britain gave a public answer which divided the Arab territories into three parts: (a) the Arabian peninsula from Aden to Akabah (at the head of the Red Sea), where the "complete and sovereign independence of the Arabs" was recognized; (b) the area under British military occupation, covering southern Palestine and southern Mesopotamia, where Britain accepted the principle that government should be based "on the consent of the governed"; and (c) the area still under Turkish control, including Syria and northern Mesopotamia, where Britain assumed the obligation to strive for "freedom and independence." Somewhat similar in tone was a joint Anglo-French Declaration of November 7, 1918, just four days before hostilities ended in the war. It promised "the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turk and the setting up of national governments and administrations that shall derive their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations."

There have been extended discussions of the compatibility of the various agreements and statements made by the Great Powers regarding the disposition of the Ottoman Empire after the war. This is a difficult problem in view of the inaccuracy and ambiguity of the wording of most of these documents. On the other hand, certain facts are quite evident. There is a sharp contrast between the imperialist avarice to be found in the secret agreements like Sykes-Picot and the altruistic tone of the publicly issued statements; there is also a sharp contrast between the tenor of the British negotiations with the Jews and those with the Arabs regarding the disposition of Palestine, with the result that Jews and Arabs were each justified in believing that Britain would promote their conflicting political ambitions in that area: these beliefs, whether based on misunderstanding or deliberate deception, subsequently served to reduce the stature of Britain in the eyes of both groups, although both had previously held a higher opinion of British fairness and generosity than of any other Power; lastly, the raising of false Arab hopes and the failure to reach any clear and honest understanding regarding Syria led to a long period of conflict between the Syrians and the French government, which held the area as a mandate of the League of Nations after 1923.

As a result of his understanding of the negotiations with McMahon, Hussein began an Arab revolt against Turkey on June 5, 1916. From that point on, he received a subsidy of £225,000 a month from Britain. The famous T. E. Lawrence, known as "Lawrence of Arabia," who had been an archaeologist in the Near East in 1914, had nothing to do with the negotiations with Hussein, and did not join the revolt until October 1916. When Hussein did not obtain the concessions he expected at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Lawrence sickened of the whole affair and eventually changed his name to Shaw and tried to vanish from public view.

The Arab territories remained under military occupation until the legal establishment of peace with Turkey in 1923. Arabia itself was under a number of sheiks, of which the chief were Hussein in Hejaz and Ibn-Saud in Nejd. Palestine and Mesopotamia (now called Iraq) were under British military occupation. The coast of Syria was under French military occupation, while the interior of Syria (including the Aleppo-Damascus railway line) and Transjordan were under an Arab force led by Emir Feisal, third son of Hussein of Mecca. Although an American commission of inquiry, known as the King-Crane Commission (1919), and a "General Syrian Congress" of Arabs from the whole Fertile Crescent recommended that France be excluded from the area, that Syria-Palestine be joined to form a single state with Feisal as king, that the Zionists be excluded from Palestine in any political role, as well as other points, a meeting of the Great Powers at San Remo in April 1920 set up two French and two British mandates. Syria and Lebanon went to France, while Iraq and Palestine (including Transjordan) went to Britain. There were Arab uprisings and great local unrest following these decisions. The resistance in Syria was crushed by the French, who then advanced to occupy' the interior of Syria and sent Feisal into exile. The British, who by this time were engaged in a rivalry (over petroleum resources and other issues) with the French, set Feisal up as king in Iraq under British protection (1921) and placed his brother Abdullah in a similar position as King of Transjordan (1923). The father of the two new kings, Hussein, was attacked by Ibn-Saud of Nejd and forced to abdicate in 1924. His kingdom of Hejaz was annexed by Ibn-Saud in 1924.

After 1932 this whole area was known as Saudi Arabia.

The most important diplomatic event of the latter part of the First World War was the intervention of the United States on the side of the Entente Powers in April 1917. The causes of this event have been analyzed at great length. In general there have been four chief reasons given for the intervention from four quite different points of view. These might be summarized as follows: (1) The German submarine attacks on neutral shipping made it necessary for the United States to go to war to secure "freedom of the seas"; (2) the United States was influenced by subtle British propaganda conducted in drawing rooms, universities, and the press of the eastern part of the country where Anglophilism was rampant among the more influential social groups; (3) the United States was inveigled into the war by a conspiracy of international bankers and munitions manufacturers eager to protect their loans to the Entente Powers or their wartime profits from sales to these Powers; and (4) Balance of Power principles made it impossible for the United States to allow Great Britain to be defeated by Germany. Whatever the weight of these four in the final decision, it is quite clear that neither the government nor the people of the United States were prepared to accept a defeat of the Entente at the hands of the Central Powers. Indeed, in spite of the government's efforts to act with a certain semblance of neutrality, it was clear in 1914 that this was the view of the chief leaders in the government with the single exception of Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. Without analyzing the four factors mentioned above, it is quite clear that the United States could not allow Britain to be defeated by any other Power. Separated from all other Great Powers by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the security of America required either that the control of those oceans be in its own hands or in the hands of a friendly Power. For almost a century before 1917 the United States had been willing to allow British control of the sea to go unchallenged, because it was clear that British control of the sea provided no threat to the United States, but on the contrary, provided security for the United States at a smaller cost in wealth and responsibility than security could have been obtained by any other method. The presence of Canada as a British territory adjacent to the United States, and exposed to invasion by land from the United States, constituted a hostage for British naval behavior acceptable to the United States. The German submarine assault on Britain early in 1917 drove Britain close to the door of starvation by its ruthless sinking of the merchant shipping upon which Britain's existence depended. Defeat of Britain could not be permitted because the United States was not prepared to take over control of the sea itself and could not permit German control of the sea because it had no assurance regarding the nature of such German control. The fact that the German submarines w-ere acting in retaliation for the illegal British blockade of the continent of Europe and British violations of international law and neutral rights on the high seas, the fact that the Anglo-Saxon heritage of the United States and the Anglophilism of its influential classes made it impossible for the average American to see world events except through the spectacles made by British propaganda; the fact that Americans had lent the Entente billions of dollars which would be jeopardized by a German victory, the fact that the enormous Entente purchases of war materiel had created a boom of prosperity and inflation which would collapse the very day that the Entente collapsed— all these factors were able to bring weight to bear on the American decision only because the balance-of-power issue laid a foundation on which they could work. The important fact was that Britain was close to defeat in April 1917, and on that basis the United States entered the war. The unconscious assumption by American leaders that an Entente victory was both necessary and inevitable was at the bottom of their failure to enforce the same rules of neutrality and international law against Britain as against Germany. They constantly assumed that British violations of these rules could be compensated with monetary damages, while German violations of these rules must be resisted, by force if necessary. Since they could not admit this unconscious assumption or publicly defend the legitimate basis of international power politics on which it rested, they finally went to war on an excuse which w as legally weak, although emotionally satisfying. As John Bassett Moore, America's most famous international lawyer, put it, "What most decisively contributed to the involvement of the United States in the war was the assertion of a right to protect belligerent ships on which Americans saw fit to travel and the treatment of armed belligerent merchantmen as peaceful vessels. Both assumptions were contrary to reason and to settled law, and no other professed neutral advanced them.''

The Germans at first tried to use the established rules of international law regarding destruction of merchant vessels. This proved so dangerous, because of the peculiar character of the submarine itself, British control of the high seas, the British instructions to merchant ships to attack submarines, and the difficulty of distinguishing between British ships and neutral ships, that most German submarines tended to attack without warning. American protests reached a peak when the Lusitania was sunk in this way nine miles off the English coast on May 7, 1915. The Lusitania was a British merchant vessel "constructed with Government funds as [an] auxiliary cruiser, . . . expressly included in the navy list published by the British Admiralty," with "bases laid for mounting guns of six-inch caliber," carrying a cargo of 2,400 cases of rifle cartridges and 1,250 cases of shrapnel, and with orders to attack German submarines whenever possible. Seven hundred and eighty-five of 1,257 passengers, including 128 of 197 Americans, lost their lives. The incompetence of the acting captain contributed to the heavy loss, as did also a mysterious "second explosion" after the German torpedo struck. The vessel, which had been declared "unsinkable," went down in eighteen minutes. The captain was on a course he had orders to avoid; he was running at reduced speed; he had an inexperienced crew; the portholes had been left open; the lifeboats had not been swung out; and no lifeboat drills had been held.

The propaganda agencies of the Entente Powers made full use of the occasion. The Times of London announced that "four-fifths of her passengers were citizens of the United States" (the actual proportion was 15.6 percent); the British manufactured and distributed a medal which they pretended had been awarded to the submarine crew by the German government; a French paper published a picture of the crowds in Berlin at the outbreak of war in 1914 as a picture of Germans "rejoicing" at news of the sinking of the Lusitania.

The United States protested violently against the submarine warfare while brushing aside German arguments based on the British blockade. It was so irreconcilable in these protests that Germany sent Wilson a note on May 4, 1916, in which it promised that "in the future merchant vessels within and without the war zone shall not be sunk without warning and without safeguarding human lives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance." In return the German government hoped that the United States would put pressure on Britain to follow the established rules of international law in regard to blockade and freedom of the sea. Wilson refused to do so. Accordingly, it became clear to the Germans that they would he starved into defeat unless they could defeat Britain first by unrestricted submarine warfare. Since they were aware that resort to this method would probably bring the United States into the war against them, they made another effort to negotiate peace before resorting to it. When their offer to negotiate, made on December 12, 1916, was rejected hy the Entente Powers on December 27th, the group in the German government which had been advocating ruthless submarine warfare came into a position to control affairs, and ordered the resumption of unrestricted submarine attacks on February 1, 1917. Wilson was notified of this decision on January 31^st. He broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on February 3^rd, and, after two months of indecision, asked the Congress for a declaration of war April 3, 1917. The final decision was influenced by the constant pressure of his closest associates, the realization that Britain was reaching the end of her resources of men, money, and ships, and the knowledge that Germany was planning to seek an alliance with Mexico if war began.

While the diplomacy of neutrality and intervention was moving along the lines we have described, a parallel diplomatic effort was being directed toward efforts to negotiate peace. These efforts were a failure but are, nonetheless, of considerable significance because they reveal the motivations and war aims of the belligerents. They were a failure because any negotiated peace requires a willingness on both sides to make those concessions which will permit the continued survival of the enemy. In 1914-1918, however, in order to win public support for total mobilization, each country's propaganda had been directed toward a total victory for itself and total defeat for the enemy. In time, both sides became so enmeshed in their own propaganda that it became impossible to admit publicly one's readiness to accept such lesser aims as any negotiated peace would require. Moreover, as the tide of battle waxed and waned, giving alternate periods of elation and discouragement to both sides, the side which was temporarily elated became increasingly attached to the fetish of total victory and unwilling to accept the lesser aim of a negotiated peace. Accordingly, peace became possible only when war weariness had reached the point where one side concluded that even defeat was preferable to continuation of the war. This point was reached in Russia in 1917 and in Germany and Austria in 1918. In Germany this point of view was greatly reinforced by the realization that military defeat and political change were preferable to the economic revolution and social upheaval which would accompany any effort to continue the war in pursuit of an increasingly unattainable victory.

From the various efforts to negotiate peace it is clear that Britain was unwilling to accept any peace which would not include the restoration of Belgium or which would leave Germany supreme on the Continent or in a position to resume the commercial, naval, and colonial rivalry which had existed before 1914; France was unwilling to accept any solution which did not restore Alsace-Lorraine to her; the German High Command and the German industrialists were determined not to give up all the occupied territory in the west, but were hoping to retain Lorraine, part of Alsace, Luxembourg, part of Belgium, and Longwy in France because of the mineral and industrial resources of these areas. The fact that Germany had an excellent supply of coking coal with an inadequate supply of iron ore, while the occupied areas had plenty of the latter but an inadequate supply of the former, had a great deal to do with the German objections to a negotiated peace and the ambiguous terms in which their war aims were discussed. Austria was, until the death of Emperor Francis Joseph in 1916, unwilling to accept any peace which would leave the Slavs, especially the Serbs, free to continue their nationalistic agitations for the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire. On the other hand, Italy was determined to exclude the Habsburg Empire from the shores of the Adriatic Sea, while the Serbs were even more determined to reach those shores by the acquisition of Habsburg-ruled Slav areas in the Western Balkans. After the Russian revolutions of 19,7, many of these obstacles to a negotiated peace became weaker. The Vatican, working through Cardinal Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) sought a negotiated peace which would prevent the destruction of the Habsburg Empire, the last Catholic Great Power in Europe. Prominent men in all countries, like Lord Lansdowne (British foreign secretary before 1914), became so alarmed at the spread of Socialism that they were willing to make almost any concessions to stop the destruction of civilized ways of life by continued warfare. Humanitarians like Henry Ford or Romain Rolland became increasingly alarmed at the continued slaughter. But, for the reasons we have already mentioned, peace remained elusive until the great German offensives of 1918 had been broken.

After what Ludendorff called "the black day of the German Army" (August 8, 1918), a German Crown Council, meeting at Spa, decided victory was no longer possible, and decided to negotiate for an armistice. This was not done because of a controversy between the crown prince and Ludendorff in which the former advised an immediate retreat to the "Hindenburg Line" twenty miles to the rear, while the latter wished to make a slow withdrawal so that the Entente could not organize an attack on the Hindenburg Line before winter. Two Entente victories, at Saint-Quentin (August 31st) and in Flanders (September 2nd) made this dispute moot. The Germans began an involuntary retreat, drenching the ground they evacuated with "mustard gas" in order to slow up the Entente pursuit, especially the tanks. The German High Command removed the chancellor, Hertling, and put in the more democratic Prince Max of Baden with orders to make an immediate armistice or face military disaster (September 29-October 1, 1918). On October 5th a German note to President Wilson asked for an armistice on the basis of the Fourteen Points of January 8, 1918, and his subsequent principles of September 27, 1918. These statements of Wilson had captured the imaginations of idealistic persons and subject peoples everywhere. The Fourteen Points promised the end of secret diplomacy; freedom of the seas; freedom of commerce; disarmament; a fair settlement of colonial claims, with the interests of the native peoples receiving equal weight with the titles of imperialist Powers; the evacuation of Russia; the evacuation and restoration of Belgium; the evacuation of France and the restoration to her of Alsace-Lorraine as in 1870; the readjustment of the Italian frontiers on nationality lines; free and autonomous development for the peoples of the Habsburg Empire; the evacuation, restoration, and guarantee of Romania, Montenegro, and Serbia, with the last-named securing free access to the sea; international guarantees to keep the Straits permanently opened to the ships and commerce of all nations; freedom for the autonomous development of the non-Turkish nationalities of the Ottoman Empire, along with a secure sovereignty for the Turks themselves; an independent Polish state with free access to the sea and with international guarantees; a League of Nations to afford "mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike"; and no destruction of Germany or even any alteration of her institutions except those necessary to make it clear when her spokesmen spoke for the Reichstag majority and when they "speak for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination."

In a series of notes between Germany and the United States, Wilson made it clear that he would grant an armistice only if Germany would withdraw from all occupied territory, make an end to submarine attacks, accept the Fourteen Points, establish a responsible government, and accept terms which would preserve the existing Entente military superiority. He was most insistent on the responsible government, warning that if he had to deal "with military masters or monarchical autocrats" he would demand "not negotiations but surrender." The German constitution was changed to give all powers to the Reichstag; Ludendorff was fired; the German Navy at Kiel mutinied, and the Kaiser fled from Berlin (October 28th). In the meantime, the Entente Supreme War Council refused to accept the Fourteen Points as the basis for peace until Colonel House threatened that the United States would makes a separate peace with Germany. They then demanded and received a definition of the meaning of each term, made a reservation on "the freedom of the seas," and expanded the meaning of "restoration of invaded territory" to include compensation to the civilian population for their war losses. On this basis an armistice commission met German negotiators on November 7th. The German Revolution was spreading, and the Kaiser abdicated on November 8th. The German negotiators received the Entente military terms and asked for an immediate ending of hostilities and of the economic blockade and a reduction in the Entente demand for machine guns from 30,000 to 25,000 on the grounds that the difference of 5,000 was needed to suppress the German Revolution. The last point was conceded, but the other two refused. The armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, at 5:00 a.m. to take effect at 11:00 a.m. It provided that the Germans must evacuate all occupied territory (including Alsace-Lorraine) within fourteen days, and the left bank of the Rhine plus three bridgeheads on the right bank within thirty-one days, that they surrender huge specified amounts of war equipment, trucks, locomotives, all submarines, the chief naval vessels, all prisoners of war, and captured merchant ships, as w-ell as the Baltic fortresses, and all valuables and securities taken in occupied territory, including the Russian and Romanian gold reserves. The Germans were also required to renounce the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and of Bucharest, which they had imposed on Russia and on Romania, and to promise to repair the damage of occupied territories. This last point was of considerable importance, as the Germans had systematically looted or destroyed the areas they evacuated in the last few months of the war.

The negotiations with Wilson leading up to the Armistice of 1918 are of great significance, since they formed one of the chief factors in subsequent German resentment at the Treaty of Versailles. In these negotiations Wilson had clearly promised that the peace treaty with Germany would be negotiated and would be based on the Fourteen Points; as we shall see, the Treaty of Versailles was imposed without negotiation, and the Fourteen Points fared very poorly in its provisions. An additional factor connected with these events lies in the subsequent claim of the German militarists that the German Army was never defeated but was "stabbed in the back" by the home front through a combination of international Catholics, international Jews, and international Socialists. There is no merit whatever in these contentions. The German Army was clearly beaten in the field; the negotiations for an armistice were commenced by the civilian government at the insistence of the High Command, and the Treaty of Versailles itself was subsequently signed, rather than rejected, at the insistence of the same High Command in order to avoid a military occupation of Germany. By these tactics the German Army was able to escape the military occupation of Germany which they so dreaded. Although the last enemy forces did not leave German soil until 1931, no portions of Germany were occupied beyond those signified in the armistice itself (the Rhineland and the three bridgeheads on the right hank of the Rhine) except for a brief occupation of the Ruhr district in 1932.

Chapter 14—The Home Front, 1914-1918

The First World War was a catastrophe of such magnitude that, even today, the imagination has some difficulty grasping it. In the year 1916, in two battles (Verdun and the Somme) casualties of over 1,700,000 were suffered by both sides. In the artillery barrage which opened the French attack on Chemin des Dames in April 1917, 11,000,000 shells were fired on a 30-mile front in 10 days. Three months later, on an 11-mile front at Passchendaele, the British fired 4,250,000 shells costing £22,000,000 in a preliminary barrage, and lost 400,000 men in the ensuing infantry assault. In the German attack of March 1918, 62 divisions with 4,500 heavy guns and 1,000 planes were hurled on a front only 45 miles wide. On all fronts in the whole war almost 13,000,000 men in the various armed forces died from wounds and disease. It has been estimated by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that the war destroyed over $400,000,000,000 of property at a time when the value of every object in France and Belgium was not worth over $75,000,000,000.

Obviously, expenditures of men and wealth at rates like these required a tremendous mobilization of resources throughout the world, and could not fail to have far-reaching effects on the patterns of thought and modes of action of people forced to undergo such a strain. Some states were destroyed or permanently crippled. There were profound modifications in finance, in economic life, in social relations, in intellectual outlook, and in emotional patterns. Nevertheless, two facts should be recognized. The war brought nothing really new into the world; rather it sped up processes of change which had been going on for a considerable period and would have continued anyway, with the result that changes which would have taken place over a period of thirty or even fifty years in peacetime were brought about in five years during the war. Also, the changes were much greater in objective facts and in the organization of society than they were in men's ideas of these facts or organization. It was as if the changes were too rapid for men's minds to accept them, or, what is more likely, that men, seeing the great changes which were occurring on all sides, recognized them, but assumed that they were merely temporary wartime aberrations, and that, when peace came, they would pass away and everyone could go back to the slow, pleasant world of 1913. This point of view, which dominated the thinking of the 1920's, was widespread and very dangerous. In their efforts to go back to 1913, men refused to recognize that the wartime changes were more or less permanent, and, instead of trying to solve the problems arising from these changes, set up a false facade of pretense, painted to look like 1913, to cover up the great changes which had taken place. Then, by acting as if this facade were reality, and by neglecting the maladjusted reality which was moving beneath it, the people of the 1920'S drifted in a hectic world of unreality until the world depression of 1929-1935, and the international crises which followed, tore away the facade and showed the horrible, long-neglected reality beneath it.

The magnitude of the war and the fact that it might last for more than six months were quite unexpected for both sides and were impressed upon them only gradually. It first became clear in regard to consumption of supplies, especially ammunition, and in the problem of how to pay for these supplies. In July 1914, the military men were confident that a decision would be reached in six months because their military plans and the examples of 1866 and 1870 indicated an immediate decision. This belief was supported by the financial experts who, while greatly underestimating the cost of fighting, were confident that the financial resources of all states would be exhausted in six months. By "financial resources" they meant the gold reserves of the various nations. These were clearly limited; all the Great Powers were on the gold standard under which bank notes and paper money could be converted into gold on demand. However, each country suspended the gold standard at the outbreak of war. This removed the automatic limitation on the supply of paper money. Then each country proceeded to pay for the war by borrowing from the banks. The banks created the money which they lent by merely giving the government a deposit of any size against which the government could draw checks. The banks were no longer limited in the amount of credit they could create because they no longer had to pay out gold for checks on demand. Thus the creation of money in the form of credit by the banks was limited only by the demands of its borrowers. Naturally, as governments borrowed to pay for their needs, private businesses borrowed in order to be able to fill the government's orders. The gold which could no longer be demanded merely rested in the vaults, except where some of it was exported to pay for supplies from neutral countries or from fellow belligerents. As a result, the percentage of outstanding bank notes covered by gold reserves steadily fell, and the percentage of bank credit covered by either gold or bank notes fell even further.

Naturally, when the supply of money was increased in this fashion faster than the supply of goods, prices rose because a larger supply of money was competing for a smaller supply of goods. This effect was made worse by the fact that the supply of goods tended to be reduced by wartime destruction. People received money for making capital goods, consumers' goods, and munitions, but they could spend their money only to buy consumers' goods, since capital goods and munitions were not offered for sale. Since governments tried to reduce the supply of consumers' goods while increasing the supply of the other two products, the problem of rising prices (inflation) became acute. At the same time the problem of public debt became steadily worse because governments were financing such a large part of their activities by bank credit. These two problems, inflation and public debt, continued to grow, even after the fighting stopped, because of the continued disruption of economic life and the need to pay for past activities. Only in the period 1920-1925 did these two stop increasing in most countries, and they remained problems long after that.

Inflation indicates not only an increase in the prices of goods but also a decrease in the value of money (since it will buy less goods). Accordingly, people in an inflation seek to get goods and to get rid of money. Thus inflation increases production and purchases for consumption or hoarding, but it reduces saving or creation of capital. It benefits debtors (by making a fixed-money debt less of a burden) but injures creditors (by reducing the value of their savings and credits). Since the middle classes of European society, with their bank savings, checking deposits, mortgages, insurance, and bond holdings, were the creditor class, they were injured and even ruined by the wartime inflation. In Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Russia, where the inflation went so far that the monetary unit became completely valueless by 1924, the middle classes were largely destroyed, and their members were driven to desperation or at least to an almost psychopathic hatred of the form of government or the social class that they believed to be responsible for their plight. Since the last stages of inflation which dealt the fatal blow to the middle classes occurred after the war rather than during it (in 1923 in Germany), this hatred was directed against the parliamentary governments which were functioning after 1918 rather than against the monarchical governments which functioned in 1914-1918. In France and Italy, where the inflation went so far that the franc or fire was reduced permanently to one-fifth of its prewar value, the hatred of the injured middle classes was directed against the parliamentary regime which had functioned both during and after the war and against the working class which they felt had profited by their misfortunes. These things were not true in Britain or the United States, where the inflation was brought under control and the monetary unit restored to most of its prewar value. Even in these countries, prices rose by 200 to 300 percent, while public debts rose about 1,000 percent.

The economic effects of the war were more complicated. Resources of all kinds, including land, labor, and raw materials, had to be diverted from peacetime purposes to wartime production; or, in some cases, resources previously not used at all had to be brought into the productive system. Before the war, the allotment of resources to production had been made by the automatic processes of the price system; labor and raw materials going, for example, to manufacture those goods which were most profitable rather than to those goods which were most serviceable or socially beneficial, or in best taste. In wartime, however, governments had to have certain specific goods for military purposes; they tried to get these goods produced by making them more profitable than nonmilitary goods using the same resources, but they were not always successful. The excess of purchasing power in the hands of consumers caused a great rise in demand for goods of a semi-luxury nature, like white cotton shirts for laborers. This frequently made it more profitable for manufacturers to use cotton for making shirts to sell at high prices than to use it to make explosives.

Situations such as these made it necessary for governments to intervene directly in the economic process to secure those results which could not be obtained by the free price system or to reduce those evil effects which emerged from wartime disruption. They appealed to the patriotism of manufacturers to make things that were needed rather than things which were profitable, or to the patriotism of consumers to put their money into government bonds rather than into goods in short supply. They began to build government-owned plants for war production, either using them for such purposes themselves or leasing them out to private manufacturers at attractive terms. They began to ration consumers' goods which were in short supply, like articles of food. They began to monopolize essential raw materials and allot them to manufacturers who had war contracts rather than allow them to flow where prices w ere highest. The materials so treated were generally fuels, steel, rubber, copper, wool, cotton, nitrates, and such, although they varied from country to country, depending upon the supply. Governments began to regulate imports and exports in order to ensure that necessary materials staved in the country and, above all, did not go to enemy states. This ]ed to the British blockade of Europe, the rationing of exports to neutrals, and complicated negotiations to see that goods in neutral countries were not re-exported to enemy countries. Bribery, bargaining, and even force came into these negotiations, as when the British set quotas on the imports of Holland based on the figures for prewar years or cut down necessary shipments of British coal to Sweden until they obtained the concessions they wished regarding sales of Swedish goods to Germany. Shipping and railroad transportation had to be taken over almost completely in most countries in order to ensure that the inadequate space for cargo and freight would be used as effectively as possible, that loading and unloading would be speeded up, and that goods essential to the war effort would be shipped earlier and faster than less essential goods. Labor had to be regulated and directed into essential activities. The rapid rise in prices led to demands for raises in wages. This led to a growth and strengthening of labor unions and increasing threats of strikes. There was no guarantee that the wages of essential workers would go up faster than the wages of nonessential workers. Certainly the wages of soldiers, who were the most essential of all, went up very little. Thus there was no guarantee that labor, if left solely to the influence of wage levels, as was usual before 1914, would flow to the occupations where it was most urgently needed. Accordingly, the governments began to intervene in labor problems, seeking to avoid strikes but also to direct the flow of labor to more essential activities. There were general registrations of men in most countries, at first as part of the draft of men for military service, but later to control services in essential activities. Generally, the right to leave an essential job was restricted, and eventually people were directed into essential jobs from nonessential activities. The high wages and shortage of labor brought into the labor market many persons who would not have been in it in peacetime, such as old persons, youths, clergy, and, above all, women. This flow of women from homes into factories or other services had the most profound effects on social life and modes of living, revolutionizing the relations of the sexes, bringing women up to a level of social, legal, and political equality closer than previously to that of men, obtaining for them the right to vote in some countries, the right to own or dispose of property in other more backward ones, changing the appearance and costume of women by such innovations as shorter skirts, shorter hair, less frills, and generally a drastic reduction in the amount of clothing they wore.

Because of the large number of enterprises involved and the small size of many of them, direct regulation by the government was less likely in the field of agriculture. Here conditions were generally more competitive than in industry, with the result that farm prices had shown a growing tendency to fluctuate more widely than industrial prices. This continued during the war, as agricultural regulation was left more completely to the influence of price changes than other parts of the economy. As farm prices soared, farmers became more prosperous than they had been in decades, and sought madly to increase their share of the rain of money by bringing larger and larger amounts of land under cultivation. This was not possible in Europe because of the lack of men, equipment, and fertilizers; but in Canada, the United States, Australia, and South America land was brought under the plow which, because of lack of rainfall or its inaccessibility to peacetime markets, should never have been brought under cultivation. In Canada the increase in wheat acreage was from 9.9 million in the years 1909-1913 to 22.1 million in the years 1921-25. In the United States the increase in wheat acreage was from 47.0 million to 58.1 million in the same period. Canada increased her share of the world's wheat crop from 14 percent to 39 percent in this decade. Farmers went into debt to obtain these lands, and by 1920 were buried under a mountain of mortgages which would have been considered unbearable before 1914 but which in the boom of wartime prosperity and high prices was hardly given a second thought.

In Europe such expansion of acreage was not possible, although grasslands were plowed up in Britain and some other countries. In Europe as a whole, acreage under cultivation declined, by 15 percent for cereals in 1913-1919. Livestock numbers were also reduced (swine by 22 percent and cattle by 7 percent in 1913-1920). Woodlands were cut for fuel when importation of coal was stopped from England, Germany, or Poland. Since most of Europe was cut off from Chile, which had been the chief prewar source of nitrates, or from North Africa and Germany, which had produced much of the prewar supply of phosphates, the use of these and other fertilizers was reduced. This resulted in an exhaustion of the soil so great that in some countries, like Germany, the soil had not recovered its fertility by 1930. When the German chemist Haber discovered a method for extracting nitrogen from the air which made it possible for his country to survive the cutting off of Chilean nitrates, the new supply was used almost entirely to produce explosives, with little left over for fertilizers. The declining fertility of the soil and the fact that new lands of lesser natural fertility were brought under cultivation led to drastic declines in agricultural output per acre (in cereals about 15 percent in 1914-1919).

These adverse influences were most evident in Germany, where the number of hogs fell from 25.3 million in 1914 to 5.7 million in 1918; the average weight of slaughtered cattle fell from 250 kilos in 1913 to 130 in 1918; the acreage in sugar beets fell from 592,843 hectares in 1914 to 366,505 in 1919, while the yield of sugar beets per hectare fell from 31,800 kilos in 1914 to 16,350 kilos in 1920. German's prewar imports of about 6 ½ million tons of cereals each year ceased, and her home production of these fell by 3 million tons per year. Her prewar imports of over 2 million tons of oil concentrates and other feed for farm animals stopped. The results of the blockade were devastating. Continued for nine months after the armistice, it caused the deaths of 800,000 persons, according to Max Sering. In addition, reparations took about 108,000 horses, 205,000 cattle, 426,000 sheep, and 240,000 fowl.

More damaging than the reduction in the number of farm animals (which was made up in six or seven years), or the drain on the fertility of the soil (which could be made up in twelve or fifteen years), was the disruption of Europe's integration of agricultural production (which was never made up). The blockade of the Central Powers tore the heart out of the prewar integration. When the war ended, it was impossible to replace this, because there were many new political boundaries; these boundaries were marked by constantly rising tariff restrictions, and the non-European world had increased both its agricultural and industrial output to a point where it was much less dependent on Europe.

The heavy casualties, the growing shortages, the slow decline in quality of goods, and the gradual growth of the use of substitutes, as well as the constantly increasing pressure of governments on the activities of their citizens—all these placed a great strain on the morale of the various European peoples. The importance of this question was just as great in the autocratic and semi-democratic countries as it was in the ones with fully democratic and parliamentary regimes. The latter did not generally permit any general elections during the war, but both types required the full support of their peoples in order to maintain their battle lines and economic activities at full effectiveness. At the beginning, the fever of patriotism and national enthusiasm was so great that this was no problem. Ancient and deadly political rivals clasped hands, or even sat in the same Cabinet, and pledged a united front to the enemy of their fatherland. But disillusionment was quick, and appeared as early as the winter of 1914. This change was parallel to the growth of the realization that the war was to be a long one and not the lightning stroke of a single campaign and a single battle which all had expected. The inadequacies of the preparations to deal with the heavy casualties or to provide munitions for the needs of modern war, as well as the shortage or disruption of the supply of civilian goods, led to public agitation. Committees were formed, but proved relatively ineffective, and in most activities in most countries were replaced by single-headed agencies equipped with extensive controls. The use of voluntary or semi-voluntary methods of control generally vanished with the committees and were replaced by compulsion, however covert. In governments as w holes a somewhat similar shifting of personnel took place until each Cabinet came to be dominated by a single man, endowed with greater energy, or a greater willingness to make quick decisions on scanty information than his fellows. In this way Lloyd George replaced Asquith in England; Clemenceau replaced a series of lesser leaders in France; Wilson strengthened his control on his own government in the United States; and, in a distinctly German way, Ludendorff came to dominate the government of his country. In order to build up the morale of their own peoples and to lower that of their enemies, countries engaged in a variety of activities designed to regulate the flow of information to these peoples. This involved censorship, propaganda, and curtailment of civil liberties. These were established in all countries, without a hitch in the Central Powers and Russia where there were long traditions of extensive police authority, but no less effectively in France and Britain. In France a State of Siege was proclaimed on August 2, 1914. This gave the government the right to rule by decree, established censorship, and placed the police under military control. In general, French censorship was not so severe as the German nor so skillful as the British, while their propaganda was far better than the German but could not compare with the British. The complexities of French political life and the slow movement of its bureaucracy allowed all kinds of delays and evasions of control, especially by influential persons. When Clemenceau was in opposition to the government in the early days of the war, his paper, L'homme libre, was suspended; he continued to publish it with impunity under the name L'homme enchainé. The British censorship was established on August 5, 1914, and at once intercepted all cables and private mail which it could reach, including that of neutral countries. These at once became an important source of military and economic intelligence. A Defence of the Realm Act (familiarly known as DORA) was passed giving the government the power to censor all information. A Press Censorship Committee was set up in 1914 and was replaced by the Press Bureau under Frederick E. Smith (later Lord Birkenhead) in 1916. Established in Crewe House, it was able to control all news printed in the press, acting as the direct agent of the Admiralty and War Offices. The censorship of printed books was fairly lenient, and was much more so for books to be read in England than for books for export, with the result that "best sellers" in England were unknown in America. Parallel with the censorship was the War Propaganda Bureau under Sir Charles Masterman, which had an American Bureau of Information under Sir Gilbert Parker at Wellington House. This last agency was able to control almost all information going to the American press, and by 1916 was acting as an international news service itself, distributing European news to about 35 American papers which had no foreign reporters of their own.

The Censorship and the Propaganda bureaus worked together in Britain as well as elsewhere. The former concealed all stories of Entente violations of the laws of war or of the rules of humanity, and reports on their own military mistakes or their own war plans and less altruistic war aims, while the Propaganda Bureau widely publicized the violations and crudities of the Central Powers, their prewar schemes for mobilization, and their agreements regarding war aims. The German violation of Belgian neutrality w as constantly bewailed, while nothing was said of the Entente violation of Greek neutrality. A great deal was made of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, while the Russian mobilization which had precipitated the war was hardly mentioned. In the Central Powers a great deal was made of the Entente “encirclement,” while nothing was said of the Kaiser's demands for "a place in the sun" or the High Command's refusal to renounce annexation of any part of Belgium. In general, manufacture or outright lies by propaganda agencies was infrequent, and the desired picture of the enemy was built up by a process of selection and distortion of evidence until, by 1918, many in the West regarded the Germans as bloodthirsty and sadistic militarists, while the Germans regarded the Russians as ''subhuman monsters." A great deal was made, especially by the British, of "atrocity" propaganda; stories of German mutilation of bodies, violation of women, cutting off of children's hands, desecration of churches and shrines, and crucifixions of Belgians were widely believed in the West by 1916. Lord Bryce headed a committee which produced a volume of such stories in 1915, and it is quite evident that this well-educated man, "the greatest English authority on the United States," was completely taken in by his own stories. Here, again, outright manufacture of falsehoods was infrequent, although General Henry Charteris in 1917 created a story that the Germans were cooking human bodies to extract glycerine, and produced pictures to prove it. Again, photographs of mutilated bodies in a Russian anti-Semitic outrage in 1905 were circulated as pictures of Belgians in 1915. There were several reasons for the use of such atrocity stories: (a) to build up the fighting spirit of the mass army; (b) to stiffen civilian morale; (c) to encourage enlistments, especially in England, where volunteers were used for one and a half years; (d) to increase subscriptions for war bonds; (e) to justify one's own breaches of international law or the customs of war; (f) to destroy the chances of negotiating peace (as in December 1916) or to justify a severe final peace (as Germany did in respect to Brest-Litovsk); and (g) to win the support of neutrals. On the whole, the relative innocence and credulity of the average person, who was not yet immunized to propaganda assaults through mediums of mass communication in 1914, made the use of such stories relatively effective. But the discovery, in the period after 1919, that they had been hoaxed gave rise to a skepticism toward all government communications which was especially noticeable in the Second World War.

Part Six—The Versailles System and the Return to Normalcy: 1919-1929

Chapter 15—The Peace Settlements, 1919-1923

The First World War was ended by dozens of treaties signed in the period 1919-1923. Of these, the five chief documents were the five treaties of peace with the defeated Powers, named from the sites in the neighborhood of Paris where they were signed. These were:

Treaty of Versailles with Germany, June 28, 1919

Treaty of Saint-Germain with Austria, September 10, 1919

Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria, November 27, 1919

Treaty of Trianon with Hungary, June 4, 1920

Treaty of Sèvres with Turkey, August 20, 1920

The last of these, the Treaty of Sèvres with Turkey, was never ratified and was replaced by a new treaty, signed at Lausanne in 1923.

The peace settlements made in this period were subjected to vigorous and detailed criticism in the two decades 1919-1939. This criticism was as ardent from the victors as from the vanquished. Although this attack was largely aimed at the terms of the treaties, the real causes of the attack did not lie in these terms, which were neither unfair nor ruthless, were far more lenient than any settlement which might have emerged from a German victory, and which created a new Europe which was, at least politically, more just than the Europe of 1914. The causes of the discontent with the settlements of 1919-1923 rested on the procedures which were used to make these settlements rather than on the terms of the settlements themselves. Above all, there was discontent at the contrast between the procedures which were used and the procedures which pretended to he used, as well as between the high-minded principles which were supposed to be applied and those which really were applied

The peoples of the victorious nations had taken to heart their wartime propaganda about the rights of small nations, making the world safe for democracy, and putting an end both to power politics and to secret diplomacy. These ideals had been given concrete form in Wilson's Fourteen Points. Whether the defeated Powers felt the same enthusiasm for these high ideals is subject to dispute, but they had been promised, on November 5, 1918, that the peace settlements would be negotiated and would be based on the Fourteen Points. When it became clear that the settlements were to be imposed rather than negotiated, that the Fourteen Points had been lost in the confusion, and that the terms of the settlements had been reached by a process of secret negotiations from which the small nations had been excluded and in which power politics played a much larger role than the safety of democracy, there was a revulsion of feeling against the treaties.

In Britain and in Germany, propaganda barrages were aimed against these settlements until, by 1929, most of the Western World had feelings of guilt and shame whenever they thought of the Treaty of Versailles. There was a good deal of sincerity in these feelings, especially in England and in the United States, but there was also a great deal of insincerity behind them in all countries. In England the same groups, often the same people, who had made the wartime propaganda and the peace settlements were loudest in their complaint that the latter had fallen far below the ideals of the former, while all the while their real aims were to use power politics to the benefit of Britain. Certainly there were grounds for criticism, and, equally certainly, the terms of the peace settlements were far from perfect; but criticism should have been directed rather at the hypocrisy and lack of realism in the ideals of the wartime propaganda and at the lack of honesty of the chief negotiators in carrying on the pretense that these ideals were still in effect while they violated them daily, and necessarily violated them. The settlements were clearly made by secret negotiations, by the Great Powers exclusively, and by power politics. They had to be. No settlements could ever have been made on any other bases. The failure of the chief negotiators (at least the Anglo-Americans) to admit this is regrettable, but behind their reluctance to admit it is the even more regrettable fact that the lack of political experience and political education of the American and English electorates made it dangerous for the negotiators to admit the facts of life in international political relationships.

It is clear that the peace settlements were made by an organization which was chaotic and by a procedure which was fraudulent.... The normal way to make peace after a war in which the victors form a coalition would be for the victors to hold a conference, agree on the terms they hope to get from the defeated, then have a congress with these latter to impose these terms, either with or without discussion and compromise. It was tacitly assumed in October and November, 1918, that this method was to be used to end the existing war. But this congress method could not be used in 1919 for several reasons. The members of the victorious coalition were so numerous (thirty-two Allied and Associated Powers) that they could have agreed on terms only slowly and after considerable preliminary organization. This preliminary organization never occurred, largely because President Wilson was too busy to participate in the process, was unwilling to delegate any real authority to others, and, with a relatively few, intensely held ideas (like the League of Nations, democracy, and self-determination), had no taste for the details of organization. Wilson was convinced that if he could only get the League of Nations accepted, any undesirable details in the terms of the treaties could be remedied later through the League. Lloyd George and Clemenceau made use of this conviction to obtain numerous provisions in the terms which were undesirable to Wilson but highly desirable to them.

The time necessary for a preliminary conference or preliminary planning was also lacking. Lloyd George wanted to carry out his campaign pledge of immediate demobilization, and Wilson wanted to get back to his duties as President of the United States. Moreover, if the terms had been drawn up at a preliminary conference, they would have resulted from compromises between the many Powers concerned, and these compromises would have broken down as soon as any effort was made to negotiate with the Germans later. Since the Germans had been promised the right to negotiate, it became clear that the terms could not first be made the subject of public compromise in a full preliminary conference. Unfortunately, by the time the victorious Great Powers realized all this, and decided to make the terms by secret negotiations among themselves, invitations had already been sent to all the victorious Powers to come to an Inter-Allied Conference to make preliminary terms. As a solution to this embarrassing situation, the peace was made on two levels. On one level, in the full glare of publicity' the Inter-Allied Conference became the Plenary Peace Conference, and, with considerable fanfare, did nothing. On the other level, the Great Powers worked out their peace terms in secret and, when they were ready, imposed them simultaneously on the conference and on the Germans....

As late as February 22nd, Balfour, the British foreign secretary, still believed they were working on "preliminary peace terms," and the Germans believed the same on April 15th.

While the Great Powers were negotiating in secret the full conference met several times under rigid rules designed to prevent action. These sessions were governed by the iron hand of Clemenceau, who heard the motions he wanted, jammed through those he desired, and answered protests by outright threats to make peace without any consultation with the Lesser Powers at all and dark references to the millions of men the Great Powers had under arms. On February 14th the conference was given the draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations, and on April 11th the draft of the International Labor Office; both were accepted on April 28th. On May 6th came the text of the Treaty of Versailles, only one day before it was given to the Germans; at the end of May came the draft of the Treaty of Saint-Germain with Austria.

While this futile show was going on in public, the Great Powers were making peace in secret. Their meetings were highly informal. When the military leaders were present the meetings were known as the Supreme War Council; when the military leaders were absent (as they usually were after January 12th) the group was known as the Supreme Council or the Council of Ten. It consisted of the head of the government and the foreign minister of each of the five Great Powers (Britain, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan). This group met forty-six times from January 12th to March 24, 1919. It worked very ineffectively. At the middle of March, because a sharp dispute over the German-Polish frontier leaked to the press, the Council of Ten was reduced to a Council of Four (Lloyd George, Wilson, Clemenceau, Orlando). These four, with Orlando frequently absent, held over two hundred meetings in a period of thirteen weeks (March 27th to June 28th). They put the Treaty of Versailles into form in three weeks and did the preliminary work on the treaty with Austria.

When the treaty with Germany was signed on June 2 8, 1919, the heads of governments left Paris and the Council of Ten ended. So also did the Plenary Conference. The five foreign ministers (Balfour, Lansing, Pichon, Tittoni, and Makino) were left in Paris as the Council of Heads of Delegations, with full powers to complete the peace settlements. This group finished the treaties with Austria and Bulgaria and had them both signed. They disbanded on January lo, 1920, leaving behind an executive committee, the Conference of Ambassadors. This consisted of the ambassadors of the four Great Powers in Paris plus a French representative. This group held two hundred meetings in the next three years and continued to meet until 1931. It supervised the execution of the three peace treaties already signed, negotiated the peace treaty with Hungary, and performed many purely political acts which had no treaty basis, such as drawing the Albanian frontier in November 1921. In general, in the decade after the Peace Conference, the Conference of Ambassadors was the organization by which the Great Powers ruled Europe. It acted with power, speed, and secrecy in all issues delegated to it. When issues arose which were too important to be treated in this way, the Supreme Council was occasionally reunited. This was done about twenty-five times in the three years 1920-1922, usually in regard to reparations, economic reconstruction, and acute political problems. The most important of these meetings of the Supreme Council were held at Paris, London, San Remo, Boulogne, and Spa in 1920; at Paris and London in 1921; and at Paris, Genoa, The Hague, and London in 1922. This valuable practice was ended by Britain in 1923 in protest against the French determination to use force to compel Germany to fulfill the reparations clauses of the peace treaty.

At all of these meetings, as at the Peace Conference itself, the political leaders were assisted by groups of experts and interested persons, sometimes self-appointed. Many of these "experts" were members or associates of the international-banking fraternity. At the Paris Peace Conference the experts numbered thousands and were organized into official staffs by most countries, even before the war ended. These experts were of the greatest importance. They were formed into committees at Paris and given problem after problem, especially boundary problems, usually without any indication as to what principles should guide their decisions. The importance of these committees of experts can he seen in the fact that in every case hut one where a committee of experts submitted a unanimous report, the Supreme Council accepted its recommendation and incorporated it in the treaty. In cases where the report was not unanimous, the problem was generally resubmitted to the experts for further consideration. The one case where a unanimous report was not accepted was concerned with the Polish Corridor, the same issue which had forced the Supreme Council to be cut down to the Council of Four in 1919 and the issue which led to the Second World War twenty years later. In this case, the experts were much harsher on Germany than the final decision of the politicians.

The treaty with Germany was made by the Council of Four assembling the reports of the various committees, fitting the parts together, and ironing out various disagreements. The chief disagreements were over the size and nature of German reparations, the nature of German disarmament, the nature of the League of Nations, and the territorial settlements in six specific areas: the Polish Corridor, Upper Silesia, the Saar, Fiume, the Rhineland, and Shantung. When the dispute over Fiume reached a peak, Wilson appealed to the Italian people over the heads of the Italian delegation at Paris, in the belief that the people were less nationalistic and more favorable to his idealistic principles than their rather hard-boiled delegation. This appeal was a failure, but the Italian delegation left the conference and returned to Rome in protest against Wilson's action. Thus the Italians were absent from Paris at the time that the German colonial territories were being distributed and, accordingly, did not obtain any colonies. Thus Italy failed to obtain compensation in Africa for the French and British gains in territory on that continent, as promised in the Treaty of London in 1915. This disappointment was given by Mussolini as one of the chief justifications for the Italian attack on Ethiopia in 1935.

The Treaty of Versailles was presented to the Plenary Conference on May 6, 1919, and to the German delegation the next day. The conference was supposed to accept it without comment, but General Foch, commander in chief of the French armies and of the Entente forces in the war, made a severe attack on the treaty in regard to its provisions for enforcement. These provisions gave little more than the occupation of the Rhineland and three bridgeheads on the right bank of the Rhine as already existed under the Armistice of November Il, 1918. According to the treaty, these areas were to be occupied for from five to fifteen years to enforce a treaty whose substantive provisions required Germany to pay reparations for at least a generation and to remain disarmed forever. Foch insisted that he needed the left bank of the Rhine and the three bridgeheads on the right bank for at least thirty years. Clemenceau, as soon as the meeting was over, rebuked Foch for disrupting the harmony of the assembly, but Foch had put his finger on the weakest, yet most vital, portion of the treaty.

The presentation of the text of the treaty to the Germans the next day was no happier. Having received the document, the chief of the German delegation, Foreign Minister Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, made a long speech in which he protested bitterly against the failure to negotiate and the violation of the pre-armistice commitments. As a deliberate insult to his listeners, he spoke from a seated position..

The German delegation sent the victorious Powers short notes of detailed criticism during May and exhaustive counter-proposals on May 28th. Running to 443 pages of German text, these counter-proposals, criticized the treaty, clause by clause, accused the victors of bad faith in violating the Fourteen Points, and offered to accept the League of Nations, the disarmament sections, and reparations of 100 thousand million marks if the Allies would withdraw any statement that Germany had, alone, caused the war and would readmit Germany to the world's markets. Most of the territorial changes were rejected except where they could be shown to be based on self-determination (thus adopting Wilson's point of view).

These proposals led to one of the most severe crises of the conference as Lloyd George, who had been reelected in December on his promise to the British people to squeeze Germany dry and had done his share in this direction from December to May, now began to fear that Germany would refuse to sign and adopt a passive resistance which would require the Allies to use force. Since the British armies were being disbanded, such a need of force would fall largely on the French and would be highly welcome to people like Foch who favored duress against Germany. Lloyd George was afraid that any occupation of Germany by French armies would lead to complete French hegemony on the continent of Europe and that these occupation forces might never be withdrawn, having achieved, with British connivance, what Britain had fought so vigorously to prevent at the time of Louis XIV and Napoleon. In other words, the reduction in German's power as a consequence of her defeat was leading Britain back to her old balance-of-power policies under which Britain opposed the strongest Power on the continent by building up the strength of the second strongest. At the same time, Lloyd George was eager to continue the British demobilization in order to satisfy the British people and to reduce the financial burden on Britain so that the country could balance its budget, deflate, and go back on the gold standard. For these reasons, Lloyd George suggested that the treaty be weakened by reducing the Rhineland occupation from fifteen years to two, that a plebiscite be held in Upper Silesia (which had been given to Poland), that Germany be admitted to the League of Nations at once, and that the reparations burden be reduced. He obtained only the plebiscite in Upper Silesia and certain other disputed areas, Wilson rejecting the other suggestions and upbraiding the prime minister for his sudden change of attitude.

Accordingly, the Allied answer to the German counter-proposals (written by Philip Kerr, later Lord Lothian) made only minor modifications in the original terms (chiefly the addition of five plebiscites in Upper Silesia, Allenstein, Marienwerder, North Schleswig, and the Saar, of which the last was to be held in 1935, the others immediately). It also accused the Germans of sole guilt in causing the war and of inhuman practices during it, and gave them a five-day ultimatum for signing the treaty as it stood. The German delegation at once returned to Germany and recommended a refusal to sign. The Cabinet resigned rather than sign, but a new Cabinet was formed of Catholics and Socialists. Both of these groups were fearful that an Allied invasion of Germany would lead to chaos and confusion which would encourage Bolshevism in the east and separatism in the west; they voted to sign if the articles on war guilt and war criminals could be struck from the treaty. When the Allies refused these concessions, the Catholic Center Party voted 64-14 not to sign. At this critical moment, when rejection seemed certain, the High Command of the German Army, through Chief of Staff Wilhelm Groener, ordered the Cabinet to sign in order to prevent a military occupation of Germany. On June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination at Sarajevo, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles where the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871, the Treaty of Versailles was signed by all the delegations except the Chinese. The latter refused, protest against the disposition of the prewar German concessions in Shantung.

The Austrian Treaty was signed by a delegation headed by Karl Renner but only after the victors had rejected a claim that Austria was a succession state rather than a defeated Po\ver and had forced the country to change its name from the newly adopted "German Austria" to the title "Republic of Austria." The new country was forbidden to make any movement toward union with Germany without the approval of the League of Nations.

The Treaty of Neuilly was signed by a single Bulgarian delegate, the Peasants' Party leader Aleksandr Stamboliski. By this agreement Bulgaria lost western Thrace, her outlet to the Aegean, which had been annexed from Turkey in 1912, as well as certain mountain passes in the west which were ceded from Bulgaria to Yugoslavia for strategic reasons.

The Treaty of Trianon signed in 1920 was the most severe of the peace treaties and the most rigidly enforced. For these and other reasons Hungary was the most active political force for revision of treaties during the period 1924-1934 and was encouraged in this attitude by Italy from 1927 to 1934 in the hope that there might he profitable fishing in such troubled waters. Hungary had good reason to he discontented. The fall of the Habsburg dynasty in 1918 and the uprisings of the subject peoples of Hungary, like the Poles, Slovaks, Romanians, and Croatians, brought to power in Budapest a liberal government under Count Michael Károlyi. This government was at once threatened by a Bolshevik uprising under Béla Kun. In order to protect itself, the Károlyi government asked for an Allied occupation force until after the elections scheduled for April 1919. This request was refused by General Franchet d'Esperey, under the influence of a reactionary Hungarian politician, Count Stephen Bethlen. The Károlyi regime fell before the attacks of Béla Kun and the Romanians in consequence of lack of support from the West. After Béla Kun's reign of Red terrorism, which lasted six months (March-August, 1920), and his flight before a Romanian invasion of Hungary, the reactionaries came to power with Admiral Miklós Horthy as regent and head of the state (1920 1944) and Count Bethlen as prime minister (1921-1931). Count Károlyi, who was pro-Allied, anti-German, pacifist, democratic, and liberal, realized that no progress was possible in Hungary without some solution of the agrarian question and the peasant discontent arising from the monopolization of the land. Because the Allies refused to support this program, Hungary fell into the hands of Horthy and Bethlen, who were anti-Allied, pro-German, undemocratic, militaristic, and unprogressive. This group was persuaded to sign the Treaty of Trianon hy a trick and ever afterward repudiated it. Maurice Paléologue, secretary-general of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (but acting on behalf of France's greatest industrialist, Eugene Schneider), made a deal with the Hungarians that if they would sign the Treaty of Trianon as it stood and give Schneider control of the Hungarian state railways, the port of Budapest, and the Hungarian General Credit Bank (which had a stranglehold on Hungarian industry) France would eventually make Hungary one of the mainstays of its anti-German bloc in eastern Europe, would sign a military convention with Hungary, and would, at the proper time, obtain a drastic revision of the Treaty of Trianon. The Hungarian side of this complex deal was largely carried out, but British and Italian objections to the extension of French economic control into central Europe disrupted the negotiations and prevented Hungary from obtaining its reward. Paléologue, although forced to resign and replaced at the Quai d'Orsay by the anti-Hungarian and pro-Czech Philippe Berthelot, received his reward from Schneider. He was made a director of Schneider's personal holding company for his central-European interests, the Union européene industrielle et financière.

The Treaty of Sèvres with Turkey was the last one made and the only one never ratified. There w-ere three reasons for the delay: (1) the uncertainty about the role of the United States, which was expected to accept control of the Straits and a mandate for Armenia, thus forming a buffer against Soviet Russia; (2) the instability of the Turkish government, which was threatened hy a nationalist uprising led by Mustafa Kemal; and (3) the scandal caused by the Bolshevik publication of the secret treaties regarding the Ottoman Empire, since these treaties contrasted so sharply with the expressed war aims of the Allies. The news that the United States refused to participate in the Near East settlement made it possible to draw up a treaty. This was begun by the Supreme Council at its London Conference of February 1920, and continued at San Remo in April. It was signed by the sultan’s government on August 20, 1920, but the Nationalists under Mustafa Kemal refused to accept it and set up an insurgent government at Ankara. The Greeks and Italians, with Allied support, invaded Turkey and attempted to force the treaty of the Nationalists, but they were much weakened by dissension behind the facade of Entente solidarity. The French believed that greater economic concessions could be obtained from the Kemalist government, while the British felt that richer prospects were to be obtained from the sultan. In particular, the French were prepared to support the claims of Standard Oil to such concessions, while the British were prepared to support Royal-Dutch Shell. The Nationalist forces made good use of these dissensions. After buying off the Italians and French with economic concessions, they launched a counteroffensive against the Greeks. Although England came to the rescue of the Greeks, it received no support from the other Powers, while the Turks had the support of Soviet Russia. The Turks destroyed the Greeks, burned Smyrna. and came face-to-face with the British at Chanak. At this critical moment, the Dominions, in answer to Curzon's telegraphed appeal, refused to support a war with Turkey. The Treaty of Sèvres, already in tatters, had to be discarded. A new conference at Lausanne in November 1922 produced a moderate and negotiated treaty which was signed by the Kemalist government on July 24, 1923. This act ended, in a formal way, the First World War. It also took a most vital step toward establishing a new Turkey which would serve as a powerful force for peace and stability in the Near East. The decline of Turkey, which had continued for four hundred years, was finally ended.

By this Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey gave up all non-Turkish territory except Kurdistan, losing Arabia, Mesopotamia, the Levant, western Thrace, and some islands of the Aegean. The capitulations were abolished in return for a promise of judicial reform. There were no reparations and no disarmament, except that the Straits were demilitarized and were to be open to all ships except those of belligerents if Turkey was at war. Turkey accepted a minorities treaty and agreed to a compulsory exchange with Greece of Greek and Turkish minorities judged on the basis of membership in the Greek Orthodox or Muslim religions. Under this last provision, over 1,250,000 Greeks were removed from Turkey by 1930. Unfortunately, most of these had been urban shopkeepers in Turkey and were settled as farmers on the un-hospitable soil of Macedonia. The Bulgarian peasants who had previously lived in Macedonia were unceremoniously dumped into Bulgaria where they were tinder for the sparks of a revolutionary Bulgarian secret society called the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), whose chief method of political action was assassination.

As a result of the rising tide of aggression in the 1930'5, the clause regarding the demilitarization of the Straits was revoked at the Montreux Convention of July 1936. This gave Turkey full sovereignty over the Straits, including the right to fortify them.

All the original peace treaties consisted of five chief parts: (a) the Covenant of the League of Nations; (b) the territorial provisions; (c) the disarmament provision; (d) the reparations provisions; and (e) penalties and guarantees. The first of these must be reserved until later, but the others should be mentioned here.

In theory, the territorial provisions of the treaties were based on "self-determination," but in fact they were usually based on other considerations: strategic, economic, punitive, legal power, or compensation. By "self-determination" the peacemakers usually meant "nationality," and by "nationality" they usually meant "language," except in the Ottoman Empire where "nationality" usually meant "religion." The six cases where self-determination (that is, plebiscites) was actually used showed that the peoples of these areas were not so nationalistic as the peacemakers believed. Because in Allenstein, where Polish-speaking people were 40 percent of the population, only 2 percent voted to join Poland, the area was returned to Germany; in Upper Silesia, where the comparable figures were 65 percent and 40 percent, the area was split, the more industrial eastern portion going to Poland, while the more rural western part was returned to Germany; in Klagenfurt, where Slovene-speakers formed 68 percent of the population, only 40 percent wanted to join Yugoslavia, so the area was left in Austria. Somewhat similar results occurred in Marienwerder, but not in northern Schleswig, which voted to join Denmark. In each case, the voters, probably for economic reasons, chose to join the economically more prosperous state rather than the one sharing the same language.

In addition to the areas mentioned, Germany had to return Alsace and Lorraine to France, give three small districts to Belgium, and abandon the northern edge of East Prussia around Memel to the Allied Powers. This last area was given to the new state of Lithuania in 1924 by the Conference of Ambassadors.

The chief territorial disputes arose over the Polish Corridor, the Rhineland, and the Saar. The Fourteen Points had promised to establish an independent Poland with access to the Baltic Sea. It had been French policy, since about 1500, to oppose any strong state in central Europe by seeking allies in eastern Europe. With the collapse of Russia in 1917, the French sought a substitute ally in Poland. Accordingly, Foch wanted to give all of East Prussia to Poland. Instead, the experts (who were very pro-Polish) gave Poland access to the sea by severing East Prussia from the rest of Germany by creating a Polish Corridor in the valley of the Vistula. Most of the area was Polish-speaking, and German commerce with East Prussia was largely by sea. However, the city of Danzig, at the mouth of the Vistula, was clearly a German city. Lloyd George refused to give it to Poland. Instead, it was made a Free City under the protection of the League of Nations.

The French wished to detach the whole of Germany west of the Rhine (the so-called Rhineland) to create a separate state and increase French security against Germany. They gave up their separatist agitation in return for Wilson's promise of March 14, 1919 to give a joint Anglo-American guarantee against a German attack. This promise was signed in treaty form on June 28, 1919, but fell through when the United States Senate did not ratify the agreement. Since Clemenceau had been able to persuade Foch and Poincaré to accept the Rhine settlement only because of this guarantee, its failure to materialize ended his political career. The Rhineland settlement as it stood had two quite separate provisions. On the one hand, the Rhineland and three bridgeheads on the right bank of the Rhine were to be occupied by Allied troops for from five to fifteen years. On the other hand the Rhineland and a zone fifty kilometers wide along the right bank were to be permanently demilitarized and any violation of this could be regarded as a hostile act by the signers of the treaty. This meant that any German troops or fortifications were excluded from this area forever. This was the most important clause of the Treaty of Versailles. So long as it remained in effect, the great industrial region of the Ruhr on the right bank of the Rhine, the economic backbone of Germany's ability to wage warfare, was exposed to a quick French military thrust from the west, and Germany could not threaten France or move eastward against Czechoslovakia or Poland if France objected.

Of these two clauses, the military occupation of the Rhineland and the bridgeheads was ended in 1930, five years ahead of schedule. This made it possible for Hitler to destroy the second provision, the demilitarization of western Germany, by remilitarizing the area in March 1936.

The last disputed territorial change of the Treaty of Versailles was concerned with the Saar Basin, rich in industry and coal. Although its population was clearly German, the French claimed most of it in 1919 on the grounds that two-thirds of it had been inside the French frontiers of 1814 and that they should obtain the coal mines as compensation for the French mines destroyed by the Germans in 1918. They did get the mines, but the area was separated politically from both countries to be ruled by the League of Nations for fifteen years and then given a plebiscite. When the plebiscite was held in 1935, after an admirable League administration, only about 2,000 out of about 528,000 voted to join France, while about go percent wished to join Germany, the remainder indicating their desire to continue under League rule. The Germans, as a result of this vote, agreed to buy back the coal mines from France for goo million francs, payable in coal over a five-year period.

The territorial provisions of the treaties of Saint-Germain and Trianon were such as to destroy completely the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria was reduced from 115,000 square miles with 30 million inhabitants to 32,000 square miles with 6.5 million inhabitants. To Czechoslovakia went Bohemia, Moravia, parts of Lower Austria, and Austrian Silesia. To Yugoslavia went Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia. To Romania went Bukovina. To Italy went South Tyrol, Trentino, Istria, and an extensive area north of the Adriatic, including Trieste.

The Treaty of Trianon reduced Hungary from 125,000 square miles with 21 million inhabitants to 35,000 square miles with 8 million inhabitants. To Czechoslovakia went Slovakia and Ruthenia; to Romania went Transylvania, part of the Hungarian plain, and most of the Banat; to Yugoslavia went the rest of the Banat, Croatia-Slavonia, and some other districts.

The treaties of peace set the boundaries of the defeated states but not those of the new states. These latter were fixed by a number of treaties made in the years following 1918. The process lcd to disputes and even to violent clashes of arms, and some issues are still subjects of discord to the present time.

The most violent controversies arose in regard to the boundaries of Poland. Of these, only that with Germany was set by the Treaty of Versailles. The Poles refused to accept their other frontiers as suggested by the Allies at Paris, and by 1920 were at war with Lithuania over Vilna, with Russia over the eastern border, with the Ukrainians over Galicia, and with Czechoslovakia over Teschen. The struggle over Vilna began in 1919 when the Poles took the district from the Russians but soon lost it again. The Russians yielded it to the Lithuanians in 1920, and this was accepted by Poland, but within three months it was seized by Polish freebooters. A plebiscite, ordered by the League of Nations, was held in January 1922 under Polish control and gave a Polish majority. The Lithuanians refused to accept the validity of this vote or a decision of the Conference of Ambassadors of March 1923, giving the area to Poland. Instead, Lithuania continued to consider itself at war with Poland until December 1927.

Poland did not fare so well at the other end of its frontier. There fighting broke out between Czech and Polish forces over Teschen in January 1919. The Conference of Ambassadors divided the area between the two claimants, but gave the valuable coal mines to Czechoslovakia (July ).

Poland's eastern frontier was settled only after a bloody war with the Soviet Union. The Supreme Council in December 1919 had laid down the so-called "Curzon Line" as the eastern boundary of Polish administration, but within six months the Polish armies had crossed this and advanced beyond Kiev. A Russia n counterattack soon drove the Poles back, and Polish territory \vas invaded in its turn. The Poles appealed in panic to the Supreme Council, which was reluctant to intervene. The French, however, did not hesitate, and sent General Weygand with supplies to defend Warsaw. The Russian offensive was broken on the Vistula, and peace negotiations began. The final settlement, signed at Riga in March 1921, gave Poland a frontier 150 miles farther east than the Curzon Line and brought into Poland many non-Polish peoples, including one million White Russians and four million Ukrainians.

Romania also had a dispute with Russia arising from the Romanian occupation of Bessarabia in 1918. In October 1920, the Conference of Ambassadors recognized Bessarabia as part of Romania. Russia protested, and the United States refused to accept the transfer. In view of these disturbances Poland and Romania signed a defensive alliance against Russia in March 1921.

The most important dispute of this kind arose over the disposition of Fiume. This problem was acute because one of the Great Powers was involved. The Italians had yielded Fiume to Yugoslavia in the Treaty of London of 1915 and had promised, in November 1918, to draw the Italian-Yugoslav boundary on lines of nationality. Thus they had little claim to Fiume. Nevertheless, at Paris they insisted on it, for political and economic reasons. Having just excluded the Habsburg Empire from the Adriatic Sea, and not wishing to see any new Power rise in its place, they did all they could to hamper Yugoslavia and to curtail its access to the Adriatic. Moreover, the Italian acquisition of Trieste gave them a great seaport with no future, since it was separated by a political boundary from the hinterland whence it could draw its trade. To protect Trieste, Italy wanted to control all the possible competing ports in the area. The city of Fiume itself was largely Italian, but the suburbs and surrounding countryside were overwhelmingly Slav. The experts at Paris wished to give Italy neither Fiume nor Dalmatia, but Colonel House tried to overrule the experts in order to obtain Italian support for the League of Nations in return. Wilson overruled House and issued his famous appeal to the Italian people which resulted in the temporary withdrawal of the Italian delegation from Paris. After their return, the issue was left unsettled. In September 1919 an erratic Italian poet, Gabriele D'Annunzio, with a band of freebooters, seized Fiume and set up an independent government on a comic-opera basis. The dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia continued with decreasing bitterness until November 1920, when they signed a treaty at Rapallo dividing the area but leaving Fiume itself a free city. This settlement was not satisfactory. A group of Fascists from Italy (where this party was not yet in office) seized the city in March 1922 and were removed by the Italian Army three weeks later. The problem was finally settled by the Treaty of Rome of January 1924, by which Fiume was granted to Italy, but the suburb of Port Baros and a fifty-year lease on one of the three harbor basins went to Yugoslavia.

These territorial disputes are of importance because they continued to lacerate relationships between neighboring states until well into the period of World War II and even later. The names of Fiume, Thrace, Bessarabia, Epirus, Transylvania, Memel, Vilna, Teschen, the Saar, Danzig, and Macedonia were still echoing as battle-cries of overheated nationalists twenty years after the Peace Conference assembled at Paris. The work of that conference had undoubtedly reduced the numbers of minority peoples, but this had only served to increase the intensity of feeling of the minorities remaining. The numbers of these remained large. There were over 1,000,000 Germans in Poland, 550,000 in Hungary, 3,100,000 in Czechoslovakia, about 700,000 in Romania, 500,000 in Yugoslavia, and 250,000 in Italy. There were 450,000 Magyars in Yugoslavia, 750,000 in Czechoslovakia, and about 1,500,000 in Romania. There were about 5,000,000 White Russians and Ukrainians in Poland and about 1,100,000 of these in Romania. To protect these minorities the Allied and Associated Powers forced the new states of central and eastern Europe to sign minority treaties, by which these minorities were granted a certain minimum of cultural and political rights. These treaties were guaranteed by the League of Nations, but there was no power to enforce observation of their terms. The most that could be done was to issue a public reprimand against the offending government, as was done, more than once, for example, against Poland.

The disarmament provisions of the peace treaties were much easier to draw up than to enforce. It was clearly understood that the disarmament of the defeated Powers was but the first step toward the general disarmament of the victor nations as well. In the case of the Germans this connection was explicitly made in the treaty so that it was necessary, in order to keep Germany legally disarmed, for the other signers of the treaty to work constantly toward general disarmament after 1919 lest the Germans claim that they were no longer bound to remain disarmed.

In all of the treaties, certain weapons like tanks, poisonous gas, airplanes, heavy artillery, and warships over a certain size, as well as all international trade in arms, were forbidden. Germany was allowed a small navy fixed in number and size of vessels, while Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria were allowed no navy worthy of the name. Each army was restricted in size, Germany to 100,000 men, Austria to 30,000, Hungary to 35,000, and Bulgaria to 20,000. Moreover, these men had to be volunteers on twelve-year enlistments, and all compulsory military training, general staffs, or mobilization plans were forbidden. These training provisions were a mistake, forced through by the Anglo-Americans over the vigorous protests of the French. The Anglo-Americans regarded compulsory military training as "militaristic"; the French considered it the natural concomitant of universal manhood suffrage and had no objections to its use in Germany, since it would provide only a large number of poorly trained men; they did, however, object to the twelve-year enlistment favored by the British, since this would provide Germany with a large number of highly trained men who could be used as officers in any revived German Army. On this, as in so many issues where the French were overruled by the Anglo-Americans, time was to prove that the French position was correct.

The reparations provisions of the treaties caused some of the most violent arguments at the Peace Conference and were a prolific source of controversy for more than a dozen years after the conference ended. The efforts of the Americans to establish some rational basis for reparations, either by an engineering survey of the actual damage to be repaired or an economic survey of Germany's capacity to pay reparations, were shunted aside, largely because of French objections. At the same time, American efforts to restrict reparations to war damages, and not allow them to be extended to cover the much larger total of war costs, were blocked by the British, who would have obtained much less under damages than under costs. By proving to the French that the German capacity to pay was, in fact, limited, and that the French would get a much larger fraction of Germany's payments under "damages" than under "costs," the Americans were able to cut down on the British demands, although the South African delegate, General Smuts, was able to get military pensions inserted as one of the categories for which Germany had to pay. The French were torn between a desire to obtain as large a fraction as possible of Germany's payments and a desire to pile on Germany such a crushing burden of indebtedness that Germany would be ruined beyond the point where it could threaten French security again.

The British delegation was sharply divided. The chief British financial delegates, Lords Cunliffe and Sumner, were so astronomically unrealistic in their estimates of Germany's ability to pay that they were called the "heavenly twins," while many younger members of the delegation led by John Maynard (later Lord) Keynes, either saw important economic limits on Germany's ability to pay or felt that a policy of fellowship and fraternity should incline Britain toward a lo\v estimate of Germany's obligations. Feeling was so high on this issue that it proved impossible to set an exact figure for Germany's reparations in the treaty itself. Instead a compromise, originally suggested by the American John Foster Dulles, was adopted. By this, Germany was forced to admit an unlimited, theoretical obligation to pay but was actually bound to pay for only a limited list of ten categories of obligations. The former admission has gone down in history as the "war-guilt clause" (Article 231 of the treaty). By it Germany accepted "the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them hy the aggression of Germany and her allies."

The following clause, Article 232, was concerned with the reparations obligation, listing ten categories of damages of which the tenth, concerned with pensions and inserted hy General Smuts, represented a liability larger than the aggregate of the preceding nine categories together. Since a considerable period was needed for the Reparations Commission to discover the value of these categories, the Germans were required to begin immediate delivery to the victors of large quantities of property, chiefly coal and timber. Only in May 1921 was the full reparations obligation presented to the Germans. Amounting to 132 thousand million gold marks (about 32.5 billion dollars), this bill was accepted by Germany under pressure of a six-day ultimatum, which threatened to occupy the Ruhr Valley.

The reparations clauses of the other treaties were of little significance.

Austria was unable to pay any reparations because of the weakened economic condition of that stump of the Habsburg Empire. Bulgaria and Hungary paid only small fractions of their obligations before all reparations were wiped out in the financial debacle of 1931-1932.

The treaties made at Paris had no enforcement provisions worthy of the name except for the highly inadequate Rhineland clauses which we have already mentioned. It is quite clear that the defeated Powers could be made to fulfill the provisions of these treaties only if the coalition which had won the war were to continue to work as a unit. This did not occur. The United States left the coalition as a result of the Republican victory over Wilson in the congressional elections of 1918 and the presidential election of 1920. Italy was alienated by the failure of the treaty to satisfy her ambitions in the Mediterranean and Africa. But these were only details. If the Anglo-French Entente had been maintained, the treaties could have been enforced without either the United States or Italy. It was not maintained. Britain and France saw the world from points of view so different that it was almost impossible to believe that they were looking at the same world. The reason for this was simple, although it had many complex consequences and implications.

Britain, after 1918; felt secure, while France felt completely insecure in the face of Germany. As a consequence of the war, even before the Treaty of Versailles was signed, Britain had obtained all her chief ambitions in respect to Germany. The German Navy was at the bottom of Scapa Flow, scuttled by the Germans themselves; the German merchant fleet was scattered, captured, and destroyed; the German colonial rivalry w-as ended and its areas occupied; the German commercial rivalry was crippled by the loss of its patents and industrial techniques, the destruction of all its commercial outlets and banking connections throughout the world, and the loss of its rapidly growing prewar markets. Britain had obtained these aims by December 1918 and needed no treaty to retain them.

France, on the other hand, had not obtained the one thing it wanted: security. In population and industrial strength Germany was far stronger than France, and still growing. It was evident that France had been able to defeat Germany only hy a narrow margin in 1914-1918 and only because of the help of Britain, Russia, Italy, Belgium, and the United States. France had no guarantee that all these or even any of them would be at its side in any future war with Germany. In fact, it was quite clear that Russia and Italy would not be at its side. The refusal of the United States and Britain to give any guarantee to France against German aggression made it dubious that they would be ready to help either. Even if they were prepared to come to the rescue ultimately, there was no guarantee that France would be able to withstand the initial German assault in any future war as she had withstood, by the barest margin, the assault of 1914. Even if it could be withstood, and if Britain ultimately came to the rescue, France would have to fight, once again, as in the period 1914-1918, with the richest portion of France under enemy military occupation. In such circumstances, what guarantee would there be even of ultimate success? Doubts of this kind gave France a feeling of insecurity which practically became a psychosis, especially as France found its efforts to increase its security blocked at every turn by Britain. It seemed to France that the Treaty of Versailles, which had given Britain everything it could want from Germany, did not give France the one thing it wanted. As a result, it proved impossible to obtain any solution to the two other chief problems of international politics in the period 1919-1929. To these three problems of security, disarmament, and reparations, we now turn.

Chapter 16—Security, 1919-1935

France sought security after 1918 by a series of alternatives. As a first choice, it wanted to detach the Rhineland from Germany; this was prevented by the Anglo-Americans. As a second choice, France wanted a "League with teeth," that is, a League of Nations with an international police force empowered to take automatic and immediate action against an aggressor; this was blocked by the Anglo-Americans. As compensation for the loss of these first two choices, France accepted, as a third choice, an Anglo-American treaty of guarantee, but this was lost in 1919 by the refusal of the United States Senate to ratify the agreement and the refusal of Britain to assume the burden alone. In consequence, the French were forced back on a fourth choice—allies to the east of Germany. The chief steps in this were the creation of a "Little Entente" to enforce the Treaty of Trianon against Hungary in 1920-1921 and the bringing of France and Poland into this system to make it a coalition of "satisfied Powers." The Little Entente was formed by a series of bilateral alliances between Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. This was widened by a French-Polish Treaty (February 1921) and a French-Czechoslovak Treaty (January 1924). This system contributed relatively little to French security because of the weakness of these allies (except Czechoslovakia) and the opposition of Britain to any French pressure against Germany along the Rhine, the only way in which France could guarantee Poland or Czechoslovakia against Germany. In consequence, France continued its agitation both for a British guarantee and to "put teeth" into the League of Nations.

Thus France wanted security, while Britain had security. France needed Britain, while Britain regarded France as a rival outside Europe (especially in the Near East) and the chief challenge to Britain's customary balance-of-power policy in Europe. After 1919 the British, and even some Americans, spoke of "French hegemony" on the Continent of Europe. The first rule of British foreign policy for four centuries had been to oppose any hegemony on the Continent and to do so by seeking to strengthen the second strongest Power against the strongest; after 1919 Britain regarded Germany as the second strongest Power and France as the strongest, a quite mistaken view in the light of the population, industrial productivity, and general organizations of the two countries.

Because France lacked security, its chief concern in every issue was political; because Britain had security, its chief concern was economic. The political desires of France required that Germany should be weakened; the economic desires of Britain required that Germany should be strengthened in order to increase the prosperity of all Europe. While the chief political threat to France was Germany, the chief economic and social threat to Britain was Bolshevism. In any struggle with Bolshevist Russia, Britain tended to regard Germany as a potential ally, especially if it were prosperous and powerful. This was the primary concern of Lord D'Abernon, British ambassador in Berlin in the critical years 1920-1926. On the other hand, while France was completely opposed to the economic and social system of the Soviet Union and could not easily forget the immense French investments which had been lost in that country, it still tended to regard the Russians as potential allies against any revival of Germany (although France did not make an alliance with the Soviet Union until 1935).

Because of its insecurity France tended to regard the Treaty of Versailles as a permanent settlement, wh le Britain regarded it as a temporary arrangement subject to modification. Although dissatisfied with the treaty, France felt that it was the best it could hope to get, especially in view of the narrow margin by which Germany had decided to sign it, even when faced with a worldwide coalition. Britain, which had obtained all of her desires before the treaty was signed, had no reluctance to modify it, although it was only in 1935 (with the Anglo-German naval agreement) that it attempted to modify the colonial, naval, or merchant-marine clauses from which it had benefitted. But in 1935 it had, for more than fifteen years, been seeking to modify the clauses from which France had benefitted.

The French believed that peace in Europe was indivisible, while the British believed that it was divisible. That means that the French believed that the peace of eastern Europe was a primary concern of the states of western Europe and that the latter states could not allow Germany to move eastward because that would permit her to gain strength to strike back westward. The British believed that the peace of eastern Europe and that of western Europe were quite separate things and that it was their concern to maintain peace in the west but that any effort to extend this to eastern Europe would merely involve the West in "every little squabble" of these continually squabbling "backward" peoples and could, as happened in 1914, make a world war out of a local dispute. The Locarno Pacts of 1925 were the first concrete achievement of this British point of view, as we shall see. To the French argument that Germany would get stronger and thus more able to strike westward if allowed to grow eastward the British usually replied that the Germans were equally likely to become satisfied or get mired down in the great open spaces of the East.

France believed that Germany could be made to keep the peace by duress, while Britain believed that Germany could be persuaded to keep the peace by concessions. The French, especially the political Right in France, could see no difference between the Germans of the empire and the Germans of the Weimar Republic: "Scratch a German and you will find a Hun," they said. The British, especially the political Left, regarded the Germans of the Weimar Republic as totally different from the Germans of the empire, purified by suffering and freed from the tyranny of the imperial autocracy; they were prepared to clasp these new Germans to their hearts and to make any concession to encourage them to proceed on the path of democracy and liberalism. When the British began to talk in this fashion, appealing to high principles of international cooperation and conciliation, the French tended to regard them as hypocrites, pointing out that the British appeal to principles did not appear until British interests had been satisfied and until these principles could be used as obstacles to the satisfaction of French interests. The British tended to reply to the French remarks about the dangers of English hypocrisy with a few remarks of their own about the dangers of French militarism. In this sad fashion, the core of the coalition which had beaten Germany dissolved in a confusion of misunderstandings and recriminations.

This contrast between the French and the British attitudes on foreign policy is an oversimplification of both. About 1935 there appeared a considerable change in both countries, and, long before that date, there were differences between different groups within each country.

In both Britain and France (before 1935) there was a difference of opinion in international politics which followed general political outlooks (and even class lines) rather closely. In Britain, persons who were of the Left tended to believe in revision of the Treaty of Versailles in favor of Germany, collective security, general disarmament, and friendship with the Soviet Union. In the same period, the Right were impatient with policies based on humanitarianism, idealism, or friendship for the Soviet Union, and wanted to pursue a policy of "national interest," by which they meant emphasis on strengthening the empire, conducting an aggressive commercial policy against outsiders, and adopting relative isolationism in general policy with no European political commitments except west of the Rhine (where Britain's interests were immediate). The groups of the Left were in office in Britain for only about two years in the twenty years 1919-1939 and then only as a minority government (1924, 1929-1931); the groups of the Right were in power for eighteen of these twenty years, usually with an absolute majority. However, during these twenty years the people of Britain were generally sympathetic to the point of view of the Left in foreign policy, although they generally voted in elections on the basis of domestic rather than foreign politics. This means that the people were in favor of revision of Versailles, of collective security, of international cooperation, and of disarmament.

Knowing this, the British governments of the Right began to follow a double policy: a public policy in which they spoke loudly in support of what we have called the foreign policy of the Left, and a secret policy in which they acted in support of what we have called the foreign policy of the Right. Thus the stated policy of the government and the policy of the British people were based on support of the League of Nations, of international cooperation, and of disarmament. Yet the real policy was quite different. Lord Curzon, who was foreign secretary for four years (1919-1923) called the League of Nations "a good joke"; Britain rejected every effort of France and Czechoslovakia to strengthen the system of collective security; while openly supporting the Naval Disarmament Conference at Geneva (1927) and the World Disarmament Conference (1926-1935), Britain signed a secret agreement with France which blocked disarmament on land as well as on the sea (July 1928) and signed an agreement with Germany which released her from her naval disarmament (1935). After 1935 the contrast between the public policy and the secret policy became so sharp that the authorized biographer of Lord Halifax (foreign secretary in 1938-1940) coined the name "dyarchy" for it. Also, after 1935, the policies of both Right and Left were changed, the Left becoming anti-revisionist as early as 1934, continuing to support disarmament until (in some cases) 1939, and strengthening its insistence on collective security, while the Right became more insistent on revisionism (by that time called "appeasement") and opposition to the Soviet Union.

In France the contrasts between Right and Left were less sharp than in Britain and the exceptions more numerous, not only because of the comparative complexity of French political parties and political ideology, but also because foreign policy in France was not an academic or secondary issue but was an immediate, frightening concern of every Frenchman. Consequently, differences of opinion, however noisy and intense, were really rather slight. One thing all Frenchmen agreed upon: "It must not happen again." Never again must the Hun be permitted to become strong enough to assault France as in 1870 and in 1914. To prevent this, the Right and the Left agreed, there were two methods: by the collective action of all nations and by France's own military power. The two sides differed in the order in which these two should be used, the Left wanting to use collective action first and France's own power as a supplement or a substitute, the Right wanting to use France's own power first, with support from the League or other allies as a supplement. In addition, the Left tried to distinguish between the old imperial Germany and the new republican Germany, hoping to placate the latter and turn its mind away from revisionism by cooperative friendship and collective action. The Right, on the other hand, found it impossible to distinguish one Germany from another or even one German from another, believing that all were equally incapable of understanding any policy but force. Accordingly, the Right wanted to use force to compel Germany to fulfill the Treaty of Versailles, even if France had to act alone.

The policy of the Right was the policy of Poincaré and Barthou; the policy of the Left was the policy of Briand. The former was used in 1918-1924 and, briefly, in 1934-1935; the latter was used in 1924-1929. The policy of the Right failed in 1924 when Poincaré's occupation of the Ruhr in order to force Germany to pay reparations was ended. This showed that France could not act alone even against a weak Germany because of the opposition of Britain and the danger of alienating world opinion. Accordingly, France turned to a policy of the Left (1924-1929). In this period, which is known as the "Period of Fulfillment," Briand, as foreign minister of France, and Stresemann, as foreign minister of Germany, cooperated in friendly terms. This period ended in 1929, not, as is usually said, because Stresemann died and Briand fell from office, but because of a growing realization that the whole policy of fulfillment (1924-1929) had been based on a misunderstanding. Briand followed a policy of conciliation toward Germany in order to win Germany from any desire to revise Versailles; Stresemann followed his policy of fulfillment toward France in order to win from France a revision of the treaty. It was a relationship of cross-purposes, because on the crucial issue (revision of Versailles) Briand stood adamant, like most Frenchmen, and Stresemann was irreconcilable, like most Germans.

In France, as a result of the failure of the policy of the Right in 1924 and of the policy of the Left in 1929, it became clear that France could not act alone toward Germany. It became clear that France did not have freedom of action in foreign affairs and was dependent on Britain for its security. To win this support, which Britain always held out as a bait but did not give until 1939, Britain forced France to adopt the policy of appeasement of the British Right after 1935. This policy forced France to give away every advantage which it held over Germany: Germany was allowed to rearm (1935); Germany was allowed to remilitarize the Rhineland (1936); Italy was alienated (1935); France lost its last secure land frontier (Spain, 1936-1939); France lost all her allies to the east of Germany, including her one strong ally (Czechoslovakia, 19381939); France had to accept the union of Austria with Germany which she had vetoed in 1931 (March 1938); the power and prestige of the League of Nations was broken and the whole system of collective security abandoned (1931-1939); the Soviet Union, which had allied with France and Czechoslovakia against Germany in 1935, was treated as a pariah among nations and lost to the anti-German coalition (1937-1939). And finally, when all these had been lost, public opinion in England forced the British government to abandon the Right's policy of appeasement and adopt the old French policy of resistance. This change was made on a poor issue (Poland, 1939) after the possibility of using the policy of resistance had been destroyed by Britain and after France itself had almost abandoned it.

In France, as in Britain, there were changes in the foreign policies of the Right and the Left after Hitler came to power in Germany (1933). The Left became more anti-German and abandoned Briand's policy of conciliation, while the Right, in some sections, sought to make a virtue of necessity and began to toy with the idea that, if Germany was to become strong anyway, a solution to the French problem of security might be found by turning Germany against the Soviet Union. This idea, which already had adherents in the Right in Britain, was more acceptable to the Right than to the Left in France, because, while the Right was conscious of the political threat from Germany, it was equally conscious of the social and economic threat from Bolshevism. Some members of the Right in France even went so far as to picture France as an ally of Germany in the assault on the Soviet Union. On the other hand, many persons of the Right in France continued to insist that the chief, or even the only, threat to France was from the danger of German aggression.

In France, as in Britain, there appeared a double policy but only after 1935, and, even then, it was more of an attempt to pretend that France was following a policy of her own instead of a policy made in Britain than it was an attempt to pretend it was following a policy of loyalty to collective security and French allies rather than a policy of appeasement. While France continued to talk of her international obligations, of collective security, and of the sanctity of treaties (especially Versailles), this was largely for public consumption, for in fact from the autumn of 1935 to the spring of 1940 France had no policy in Europe independent of Britain's policy of appeasement.

Thus French foreign policy in the whole period 1919-1939 was dominated by the problem of security. These twenty years can be divided into five sub-periods as follows:

1919-1924, Policy of the Right

1924-1929, Policy of the Left

1929-1934, Confusion and Transition

1934-1935, Policy of the Right

1935-1939, Dual Policy of Appeasement

The French feeling that they lacked security was so powerful in 1919 that they were quite willing to sacrifice the sovereignty of the French state and its freedom of action in order to get a League of Nations possessing the powers of a world government. Accordingly, at the first meeting of the League of Nations Committee at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the French tried to establish a League with its own army, its own general staff, and its own powers of police action against aggressors without the permission of the member states. The Anglo-Americans were horrified at what they regarded as an inexcusable example of "power politics and militarism." They rode roughshod over the French and drew up their own draft Covenant in which there was no sacrifice of state sovereignty and where the new world organization had no powers of its own and no right to take action without the consent of the parties concerned. War was not outlawed but merely subjected to certain procedural delays in making it, nor were peaceful procedures for settling international disputes made compulsory but instead were merely provided for those who wished to use them. Finally, no real political sanctions were provided to force nations to use peaceful procedures or even to use the delaying procedures of the Covenant itself. Economic sanctions were expected to be used by member nations against aggressor states which violated the delaying procedures of the Covenant, but no military sanctions could be used except as contributed by each state itself. The League was thus far from being a world government, although both its friends and its enemies, for opposite reasons, tried to pretend that it was more powerful, and more important, than it really was. The Covenant, especially the critical articles l o- 16, had been worded by a skillful British lawyer, Cecil Hurst, who filled it with loopholes cleverly concealed under a mass of impressive verbiage, so that no state's freedom of action was vitally restricted by the document. The politicians knew this, although it was not widely publicized and, from the beginning, those states which wanted a real international organization began to seek to amend the Covenant, to "plug the loopholes" in it. Any real international political organization needed three things: (1) peaceful procedures for settling all disputes, (2) outlawry of non-peaceful procedures for this purpose, and (3) effective military sanctions to compel use of the peaceful procedures and to prevent the use of warlike procedures.

The League of Nations consisted of three parts: (1) the Assembly of all members of the League, meeting generally in September of each year; (2) the Council, consisting of the Great Powers with permanent seats and a number of Lesser Powers holding elective seats for three-year terms; and (3) the Secretariat, consisting of an international bureaucracy devoted to all kinds of international cooperation and having its headquarters in Geneva. The Assembly, in spite of its large numbers and its infrequent meetings, proved to be a lively and valuable institution, full of hard-working and ingenious members, especially from the secondary Powers, like Spain, Greece, and Czechoslovakia. The Council was less effective, was dominated by the Great Powers, and spent much of its time trying to prevent action without being too obvious about it. Originally, it consisted of four permanent and four nonpermanent members, the former including Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. Germany was added in 1926; Japan and Germany withdrew in 1933; the Soviet Union was admitted in 1934 and was expelled in 1939 after its attack on Finland. Since the number of nonpermanent members was increased during this period, the Council ended up in 1940 with two permanent and eleven nonpermanent members.

The Secretariat was slowly built up and, by 1938, consisted of more than eight hundred persons from fifty-two countries. Most of these were idealistically devoted to the principles of international cooperation, and displayed considerable ability and amazing loyalty during the brief existence of the League. They were concerned with every type of international activity, including disarmament, child welfare, education, the drug traffic, slavery, refugees, minorities, the codification of international law, the protection of wild life and natural resources, cultural cooperation, and many others.

Attached to the League were a number of dependent organizations. Two, the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labor Office, were semi-autonomous. Others included the Economic and Financial Organization, the Organization for Communications and Transit, the International Health Organization with offices in Paris, and the Intellectual Cooperation Organization with branches in Paris, Geneva, and Rome.

Many efforts were made, chiefly by France and Czechoslovakia, to "plug the gaps in the Covenant." The chief of these were the Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance (1923), the Geneva Protocol (1924), and the Locarno Pacts (1925). The Draft Treaty bound its signers to renounce aggressive war as an international crime and to bring military assistance to any signer the Council of the League designated to be the victim of an aggression. This project was destroyed in 1924 by the veto of the British Labour government on the grounds that the agreement would increase the burden on the British Empire without increasing its security. The Assembly at once formulated a better agreement known as the Geneva Protocol. This sought to plug all the gaps in the Covenant. It bound its signers to settle international disputes by methods provided in the treaty, defined as aggressor any state which refused to use these peaceful procedures, bound its members to use military sanctions against such aggressors, and ended the "veto" power in the Council by providing that the necessary unanimity for Council decisions could be achieved without counting the votes of the parties to the dispute. This agreement was destroyed by the objections of a newly installed Conservative government in London. The chief British opposition to the Protocol came from the Dominions, especially from Canada, which feared that the agreement might force them, at some time, to apply sanctions against the United States. This was a very remote possibility in view of the fact that the British Commonwealth generally had two seats on the Council and one at least could use its vote to prevent action even if the vote of the other was nullified by being a party to the dispute.

The fact that both the Draft Treaty and the Geneva Protocol had been destroyed by Britain led to an adverse public opinion throughout the world. To counteract this, the British devised a complicated alternative known as the Locarno Pacts. Conceived in the same London circles which had been opposing France, supporting Germany, and sabotaging the League, the Locarno Pacts were the result of a complex international intrigue in which General Smuts played a chief role. On the face of it, these agreements appeared to guarantee the Rhine frontiers, to provide peaceful procedures for all disputes between Germany and her neighbors, and to admit Germany to the League of Nations on a basis of equality with the Great Powers. The Pacts consisted of nine documents of which four were arbitration treaties between Germany and her neighbors (Belgium, France, Poland and Czechoslovakia); two were treaties between France and her eastern allies (Poland and Czechoslovakia); the seventh was a note releasing Germany from any need to apply the sanctions clause of the Covenant against any aggressor nation on the grounds that Germany, being disarmed by the Treaty of Versailles, could not be expected to assume the same obligations as other members of the League; the eighth document v.:as a general introduction to the Pacts j and the ninth document was the "Rhine Pact," the real heart of the agreement. This "Rhine Pact" guaranteed the frontier between Germany and Belgium-France against attack from either side. The guarantee was signed by Britain and Italy, as well as by the three states directly concerned, and covered the demilitarized condition of the Rhineland as established in 1919. This meant that if any one of the three frontier Powers violated the frontier or the demilitarized zone, this violation would bring the four other Powers into action against the violator.

The Locarno Pacts were designed by Britain to give France the security against Germany on the Rhine which France so urgently desired and at the same time (since the guarantee worked both ways) to prevent France from ever occupying the Ruhr or any other part of Germany, as had been done over the violent objections of Britain in 1923-1924. Moreover, by refusing to guarantee Germany's eastern frontier with Poland and Czechoslovakia, Britain established in law the distinction between peace in the east and peace in the west, on which she had been insisting since 1919, and greatly weakened the French alliances with Poland and Czechoslovakia by making it almost impossible for France to honor her alliances with these two countries or to put pressure on Germany in the west if Germany began to put pressure on these French allies in the east, unless Britain consented. Thus, the Locarno Pacts, which were presented at the time throughout the English-speaking world as a sensational contribution to the peace and stability of Europe, really formed the background for the events of 1938 when Czechoslovakia was destroyed at Munich. The only reason why France accepted the Locarno Pacts was that they guaranteed explicitly the demilitarized condition of the Rhineland. So long as this condition continued, France held a complete veto over any movement of Germany either east or west because Germany's chief industrial districts in the Ruhr were unprotected. Unfortunately, as we have indicated, when the guarantee of Locarno became due in March 1936 Britain dishonored its agreement, the Rhine was remilitarized, and the way was opened for Germany to move eastward.

The Locarno Pacts caused considerable alarm in eastern Europe, especially in Poland and Russia. Poland protested violently, issued a long legal justification of her own frontiers, sent her foreign minister to take up residence in Paris, and signed three agreements with Czechoslovakia (ending the dispute over Teschen, as well as a commercial treaty and an arbitration convention). Poland was alarmed by the refusal to guarantee her frontiers, the weakening of her alliance with France, and the special status given to Germany within the League of Nations and on the Council of the League (where Germany could prevent sanctions against Russia, if Russia ever attacked Poland). To assuage this alarm a deal was made with Poland by which this country also received a seat on the Council of the League for the next twelve years (1926-1938).

The Locarno Pacts and the admission of Germany into the League also alarmed the Soviet Union. This country from 1917 had had a feeling of insecurity and isolation which at times assumed the dimensions of mania. For this, there was some justification. Subject to the attacks of propaganda, diplomatic, economic, and even military action, the Soviet Union had struggled for survival for years. By the end of 1921, most of the invading armies had withdrawn (except the Japanese), but Russia continued in isolation and in fear of a worldwide anti-Bolshevik alliance. Germany, at the time, was in similar isolation. The two outcast Powers drifted together and sealed their friendship by a treaty signed at Rapallo in April 1922. This agreement caused great alarm in western Europe, since a union of German technology and organizing ability with Soviet manpower and raw materials would make it impossible to enforce the Treaty of Versailles and might expose much of Europe or even the world to the triumph of Bolshevism. Such a union of Germany and Soviet Russia remained the chief nightmare of much of western Europe from 1919 to 1939. On this last date it was brought into existence by the actions of these same western Powers.

In order to assuage Russia's alarm at Locarno, Stresemann signed a commercial treaty with Russia, promised to obtain a special position for Germany within the League so that it could block any passage of troops as sanctions of the League against Russia, and signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union (April 1926). The Soviet Union, in its turn, as a result of Locarno signed a treaty of friendship and neutrality with Turkey in which the latter country was practically barred from entering the League.

The "Locarno spirit," as it came to be called, gave rise to a feeling of optimism, at least in the western countries. In this favorable atmosphere, on the tenth anniversary of America's entry into the World War, Briand, the foreign minister of France, suggested that the United States and France renounce the use of war between the two countries. This was extended by Frank B. Kellogg, the American secretary of state, into a multilateral agreement by which all countries could "renounce the use of war as an instrument of national policy." France agreed to this extension only after a reservation that the rights of self-defense and of prior obligations were not weakened. The British government reserved certain areas, notably in the Middle East, where it wished to be able to wage wars which could not be termed self-defense in a strict sense. The United States also made a reservation preserving its right to make war under the Monroe Doctrine. None of these reservations was included in the text of the Kellogg-Briand Pact itself, and the British reservation was rejected by Canada, Ireland, Russia, Egypt, and Persia. The net result was that only aggressive war was renounced.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) was a weak and rather hypocritical document and advanced further toward the destruction of international law as it had existed in 1900. We have seen that the First World War did much to destroy the legal distinctions between belligerents and neutrals and between combatants and noncombatants. The Kellogg-Briand Pact took one of the first steps toward destroying the legal distinction between war and peace, since the Powers, having renounced the use of war, began to wage wars without declaring them, as was done by Japan in China in 1937, by Italy in Spain in 1936-1939, and by everyone in Korea in 1950.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed by fifteen nations which were invited to do so, while forty-eight nations were invited to adhere to its terms. Ultimately, sixty-four nations (all those invited except Argentina and Brazil) signed the pact. The Soviet Union was not invited to sign but only to adhere. It was, however, so enthusiastic about the pact that it was the first country of either group to ratify and, when several months passed with no ratifications by the original signers, it attempted to put the terms of the pact into effect in eastern Europe by a separate agreement. Known as the Litvinoff Protocol after the Soviet foreign minister, this agreement was signed by nine countries (Russia, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Lithuania, Turkey, Danzig, and Persia, but not by Finland, which refused), although Poland had no diplomatic relations with Lithuania and the Soviet Union had none with Romania.

The Litvinoff Protocol was one of the first concrete evidences of a shift in Soviet foreign policy which occurred about 1927-1928 Previously, Russia had refused to cooperate with any system of collective security or disarmament on the grounds that these were just "capitalistic tricks." It had regarded foreign relations as a kind of jungle competition and had directed its own foreign policy toward efforts to foment domestic disturbances and revolution in other countries of the world. This was based on the belief that these other Powers were constantly conspiring among themselves to attack the Soviet Union. To the Russians, internal revolution within these countries seemed a kind of self-defense, while the animosity of these countries seemed to them to be a defense against the Soviet plans for world revolution. In 1927 there came a shift in Soviet policy: "world revolution" was replaced by a policy of "Communism in a single country" and a growing support for collective security. This new policy continued for more than a decade and was based on the belief that Communism in a single country could best be secured within a system of collective security. Emphasis on this last point increased after Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 and reached its peak in the so-called "Popular Front" movement of 1935-1937

The Kellogg Pact gave rise to a proliferation of efforts to establish peaceful methods for settling international disputes. A "General Act for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes" was accepted by twenty-three states and came into force in August 1929. About a hundred bilateral agreements for the same purpose were signed in the five years 1924-1929, compared to a dozen or so in the five years 1919-1924. A codification of international law was begun in 1927 and continued for several years, but no portions of it ever came into force because of insufficient ratifications.

The outlawry of war and the establishment of peaceful procedures for settling disputes were relatively meaningless unless some sanctions could be established to compel the use of peaceful methods. Efforts in this direction were nullified by the reluctance of Britain to commit itself to the use of force against some unspecified country at some indefinite date or to allow the establishment of an international police force for this purpose. Even a modest step in this direction in the form of an international agreement providing financial assistance for any state which was a victim of aggression, a suggestion first made by Finland, was destroyed by a British amendment that it was not to go into effect until the achievement of a general disarmament agreement. This reluctance to use sanctions against aggression came to the forefront in the fall of 1931 at the time of the Japanese attack on Manchuria. As a result the "peace structure" based on Versailles, which had been extended by so many well-intended, if usually misdirected, efforts for twelve years, began a process of disintegration which destroyed it completely in eight years (1931-1939).

Chapter 17—Disarmament, 1919-1935

The failure to achieve a workable system of collective security in the period 1919-1935 prevented the achievement of any system of general disarmament in the same period. Obviously, countries which feel insecure are not going to disarm. This point, however obvious, was lost on the English-speaking countries, and the disarmament efforts of the whole period 1919-1935 were weakened by the failure of these countries to see this point and their insistence that disarmament must precede security rather than follow it. Thus disarmament efforts, while continuous in this period (in accordance with the promise made to the Germans in 1919), were stultified by disagreements between the "pacifists" and the "realists" on procedural matters. The "pacifists," including the English-speaking nations, argued that armaments cause wars and insecurity and that the proper way to disarm is simply to disarm. They advocated a "direct" or "technical" approach to the problem, and believed that armaments could be measured and reduced by direct international agreement. The "realists," on the other hand, including most of the countries in Europe, led by France and the Little Entente, argued that armaments are caused by war and the fear of war and that the proper way to disarm is to make nations secure. They advocated an "indirect" or "political" approach to the problem, and believed that once security had been achieved disarmament would present no problem..

The reasons for this difference of opinion are to be found in the fact that the nations which advocated the direct method, like Britain, the United States, and Japan, already had security and could proceed directly to the problem of disarmament, while the nations which felt insecure were bound to seek security before they would bind themselves to reduce the armaments they had. Since the nations with security were all naval powers, the use of the direct method proved to be fairly effective in regard to naval disarmament, while the failure to obtain security for those who lacked it made most of the international efforts for disarmament on land or in the air relatively futile.

The history of naval disarmament is marked by four episodes in the period between the wars: (1) the Washington Conference of 1922; (2) the abortive Geneva Conference of 1927; (3) the London Conference of 1930; and (4) the London Conference of 1936.

The Washington Conference was the most successful disarmament conference of the inter-war period because such a variety of issues came together at that point that it was possible to bargain successfully. Britain wished (1) to avoid a naval race with the United States because of the financial burden, (2) to get rid of the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902, which was no longer needed in view of the collapse of both Germany and Russia, and (3) to reduce the Japanese naval threat in the southwestern Pacific. The United States wished (1) to get Japan out of East Asia and restore the "open door" in China, (2) to prevent the Japanese from fortifying the German-mandated islands which stretched across the American communications from Hawaii to the Philippines, and (3) to reduce the Japanese naval threat to the Philippines. Japan wanted (1) to get out of eastern Siberia without appearing to retreat, (2) to prevent the United States from fortifying Wake Island and Guam, its two bases on the route from Pearl Harbor to Manila, and (3) to reduce American naval power in the extreme western Pacific. By bargaining one of these for another, all three Powers were able to obtain their wishes, although this was possible only because of the goodwill between Britain and the United States and, above all, because at that time, before the use of fleet-tankers and the present techniques of supplying a fleet at sea, the range of any battle fleet was limited by the position of its bases (to which it had to return for supplies at relatively short intervals).

Probably the key to the whole settlement rested in the relative positions of the British and American navies. At the end of 1918, the United States had in its battle line 16 capital ships with 168 guns of 12 to 14 inches; Britain had 42 capital ships with 376 guns of 12 to 15 inches, but the building programs of the two Powers would have given the United States practical equality by 1926. In order to avoid a naval race which would have made it impossible for Britain to balance its budget or get back on the prewar gold standard, that country gave the United States equality in capital ships (with 15 each), while Japan was given 60 percent as much (or 9 capital ships). This small Japanese fleet, however, provided the Japanese with naval supremacy in their home waters, because of an agreement not to build new fortifications or naval bases within striking distance of Japan. The same 10-10-6 ratio of capital ships was also applied to aircraft carriers. France and Italy were brought into the agreements by granting them one-third as much tonnage as the two greatest naval Powers in these two categories of vessels. The two categories themselves were strictly defined and thus limited. Capital ships were combat vessels of from 10,000 to 35,000 tons displacement with guns of not over 16 inches, while carriers were to be limited to 27,000 tons each with guns of no more than 6 inches. The five great naval Powers were to have capital ships and carriers as follows:

Tons of Number of Tons of

Country Ratio Capital Ships Capital Ships Carriers

U.S.A. 5 525,000 15 135,000

Britain 5 525,000 15 135,000

Japan 3 315,000 9 81,000

France 1.67 175,000 not fixed 60,000

Italy 1.67 175,000 not fixed 60,000

These limits were to be achieved by 1931. This required that 76 capital ships, built or projected, be scrapped by that date. Of these the United States scrapped 15 built and 13 building, or 28; the British Empire scrapped 20 built and 4 building, or 24; and Japan scrapped lo built and 14 building, or 24. The areas in which new fortifications in the Pacific were forbidden included (a) all United States possessions west of Hawaii, (b) all British possessions east of 110° East longitude except Canada, New Zealand, and Australia with its territories, and (c) all Japanese possessions except the "home islands" of Japan.

Among the six treaties and thirteen resolutions made at Washington during the six weeks of the conference (November 1921—February 1922) were a Nine-Power Treaty to maintain the integrity of China, an agreement between China and Japan over Shantung, another between the United States and Japan over the Mandated Pacific Islands, and an agreement regarding the Chinese customs. In consequence of these, the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902 was ended, and Japan evacuated eastern Siberia.

Efforts to limit other categories of vessels at Washington failed because of France. This country had accepted equality with Italy in capital ships only on the understanding that its possession of lesser vessels would not be curtailed. France argued that it needed a larger navy than Italy because it had a world empire (while Italy did not) and required protection of its home coasts both in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean) (while Italy could concentrate its navy in the Mediterranean). The same objections led both of these Powers to refuse the American invitation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1927.

The Geneva Conference of 1927 tried to limit other categories of vessels beyond capital ships and carriers. It failed because of a violent dispute between Britain and the United States regarding cruisers. The United States, with few offshore bases and a "high-seas" navy, wanted "heavy" cruisers of about 10,000 tons each, carrying 8-inch guns. The British, with many scattered naval bases, wanted many "light" cruisers of 7,500 tons each with 6-inch guns, and were eager to limit "heavy" cruisers in order to increase the naval importance of their million tons of fast merchant ships (which could be armed with 6-inch guns in an emergency). The United States accepted the British division of cruisers into two classes, but asked for limitation of both in accordance with the Washington ratios and with the lowest possible maximum tonnage. Britain wished to limit only 'heavy" cruisers, and fixed her own "absolute" cruiser needs at 70 vessels aggregating 562,000 tons, or twice the total suggested by the Americans. The British argued that their cruiser needs had nothing to do with the relative size of the American cruiser fleet, but depended on such "absolute" values as the size of the earth and the miles of shipping lanes to be patrolled. On this point Winston Churchill was adamant and was able to force the chief British delegate to the Geneva Conference (Lord Robert Cecil, who wanted to compromise) to resign from the Cabinet.

The conference broke up in a recriminatory atmosphere, to the great joy of the lobbyists of shipbuilding companies and "patriotic" societies. These had harassed the delegates throughout the conference. Three American shipbuilding companies stood to lost contracts worth almost $54 million if the conference had been a success, and they did not hesitate to spend part of that sum to ensure that it would not be a success. Later they were sued for more money by their chief lobbyist at the conference, Mr. William B. Shearer. As a sequel to the conference, Britain signed a secret agreement with France by which France promised to support Britain against the United States on the cruiser and other issues, and Britain promised to support France in preventing limitation of trained infantry reserves at the approaching World Disarmament Conference. This agreement, signed in July 1928, was revealed by pro-American employees of the French Foreign Ministry to William Randolph Hearst and published in his newspapers within two months of its signature. France deported the Hearst reporter in Paris at once, deported Hearst himself on his next visit to France in 1930, and published the text of the agreement with Britain (October 1928).

The London Naval Conference of 1930 was able to reach the agreement which Geneva had failed to achieve. The publicity about Shearer's activities and about the Anglo-French agreement, as well as the arrival of the world depression and the advent of a more pacifist Labour government to office in London, contributed to this success. Cruisers, destroyers, and submarines were defined and limited for the three greatest naval Powers, and certain further limitations were set in the categories fixed at Washington. The agreements were as follows (in tons):

Typed U. S. Britain Japan

Heavy cruisers

with guns over

6.1 inches 180,000 146,800 108,400

Light cruisers

with guns below

6.1 inches 143,500 192,200 100,450

Destroyers 150,000 150,000 105,500

Submarines 52,700 &nb