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Title: International Thought
Author: John Galsworthy
Release Date: December 19, 2021 [eBook #66973]
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTERNATIONAL THOUGHT ***
INTERNATIONAL
THOUGHT
BY
JOHN GALSWORTHY
CAMBRIDGE
W. HEFFER & SONS LTD.
1923
All profit from the sale of this pamphlet will be given to
the League of Nations Union.—J.G.
PRICE SIXPENCE NET.
[1]
INTERNATIONAL THOUGHT.
“The exchange of international thought is the only
possible salvation of the world.”
To those who, until 1914, believed in civil behaviour between
man and man, the war and its ensuing peace brought disenchantment.
Preoccupied with the humaner pursuits,
and generally unfamiliar with the real struggle for existence,
they were caught napping. The rest of mankind have
experienced no particular astonishment—the doing-down
of man by man was part of daily life, and when it was done
collectively they felt no spiritual change. It was dreadful
but—in a word—natural. This may not be a popular view
of human life in the mass, but it is true. Average life is a
long fight; this man’s success is that man’s failure; co-operation
and justice are only the palliatives of a basic,
and ruthless, competition. The disenchantment of the
few would not have mattered so much but for the fact
that they were the nerves and voice of the community.
Their histories, poems, novels, plays, pictures, treatises,
sermons, were the expression of what we call civilisation.
And disenchanted philosophers, though by so much the
nearer to the truths of existence, are by that much, perhaps,
the less useful to human nature. We need scant reminder
of a truth always with us, we need rather perpetual assertion
that the truth might with advantage be, and may possibly
with effort become, not quite so unpleasant. Though we
ought to look things in the face, a fine afflatus is the essence
of ethical philosophy.
It is a pity, then, that philosophy is, or has been, draggle-tailing—art
avoiding life, taking to contraptions of form
and colour signifying nothing; literature driven in on itself,
or running riot; science more hopeful of perfecting poison[2]
gas than of abating coal-smoke or curing cancer; that
religion should incline to tuck its head under the wing of
spiritualism; that there should be, in fact, a kind of tacit
abandonment of the belief in life. Sport, which still keeps
a flag of idealism flying, is perhaps the most saving grace
in the world at the moment, with its spirit of rules kept,
and regard for the adversary, whether the fight is going
for or against. When, if ever, the fair-play spirit of sport
reigns over international affairs, the cat force which rules
there now will slink away and human life emerge for the
first time from jungle.
Looking the world in the face, we see what may be called
a precious mess. Under a thin veneer—sometimes no
veneer—of regard for civilisation, each country, great and
small, is pursuing its own ends, struggling to rebuild its own
house in the burnt village. The dread of confusion-worse-confounded,
of death recrowned, and pestilence revivified,
alone keeps the nations to the compromise of peace. What
chance has a better spirit?
“The exchange of international thought is the only
possible salvation of the world,” are the words of Thomas
Hardy, and so true that it may be well to cast an eye over
such mediums as we have for the exchange of international
thought. “The Permanent Court of International Justice”;
“The League of Nations”; “The Pan-American Congress”;
certain sectional associations of this nation with that
nation, tarred somewhat with the brush of self-interest;
sporadic international conferences concerned with sectional
interests; and the recently founded P.E.N. Club, an international
association of writers with friendly aims, but no
political intentions. These are about all, and they are
taken none too seriously by the peoples of the earth. The
salvation of a world in which we all live, however, would
seem to have a certain importance. Why, then, is not
more attention paid to the only existing means of salvation?
The argument for neglect is much as follows: Force has
always ruled human life—and always will. Competition
is basic. Co-operation and justice succeed, indeed, in
definite communities so far as to minimise the grosser[3]
forms of crime, but only because general opinion within the
ring fence of a definite community gives them an underlying
force which the individual offender cannot withstand.
There is no such ring-fence round nations, therefore no
general opinion, and no underlying force to ensure the
abstention of individual nations from crime—if, indeed,
transgression of laws which are not fixed can be called
crime.
This is the average hard-headed view at the moment.
If it is to remain dominant, there is no salvation in store
for the world. “Why not?” replies the hard-head: “It
always has been the view, and the world has gone on?”
Quite true! But the last few years have brought a startling
change in the conditions of existence—a change that has
not yet been fully realised. Destructive science has gone
ahead out of all proportion. It is developing so fast that
each irresponsible assertion of national rights or interests
brings the world appreciably nearer to ruin. Without any
doubt whatever, the powers of destruction are gaining fast
on the powers of creation and construction. In old days a
thirty years’ war was needed to exhaust a nation; it will
soon be (if it is not already) possible to exhaust a nation
in a week by the destruction of its big towns from the air.
The conquest of the air, so jubilantly hailed by the unthinking,
may turn out the most sinister event that ever befell us,
simply because it came before we were fit for it—fit to act
reasonably under the temptation of its fearful possibilities.
The use made of it in the last war showed that; and the
sheep-like refusal of the startled nations to face the new
situation, and unanimously ban chemical warfare and the use
of flying for destructive purposes, shows it still more clearly.
No one denies that the conquest of the air was a great—a
wonderful—achievement; no one denies that it could be a
beneficent achievement if the nations would let it be.
But mankind has not yet, apparently, reached a pitch of
decency sufficient to be trusted with such an inviting and
terribly destructive weapon. We are all familiar with the
argument: Make war dreadful enough, and there will be
no war. And we none of us believe in it. The last war[4]
disproved it utterly. Competition in armaments has
already begun, among men who think, to mean competition
in the air. Nothing else will count in a few years’ time.
We have made by our science a monster that will devour
us yet, unless by exchanging international thought, we
can create a general opinion against the new powers of
destruction so strong and so unanimous that no nation
will care to face the force which underlies it.
A well-known advocate of the League of Nations said the
other day: “I do not believe it necessary that the League
should have a definite force at its disposal. It could not
maintain a force that would keep any first-rate power from
breaking the peace. Its strength lies in the use of publicity;
in its being able to voice universal disapproval with all the
latent potentiality of universal action.”
Certainly, the genuine publication of all military movements
and developments throughout the world, the unfathoming
and broadcasting of destructive inventions and
devices, would bring us nearer to salvation than any
covenant can do. If the world’s chemists and the world’s
engineers would hold annual meetings in a friendly spirit,
for the salvation of mankind! If they could agree together
that to exercise their ingenuity on the perfecting of
destructive agents for the use of governments was a
crime; to take money for it a betrayal of their species!
If we could have such exchange of international thought as
that, then indeed we might hear the rustle of salvation’s
wings. And—after all—why not? The answer to the
question: Is there to be happiness or misery, growth or
ruin for the human species, does not now lie with governments.
Governments are competitive trustees for competitive
sections of mankind. Put destruction in their
hands and they will use it to further the interests of those
for whom they are trustees; just as they will use and even
inspire the spiritual poison gas of pressmen. The real
key to the future is in the hands of those who provide the
means of destruction. Are scientists (chemists, inventors,
engineers) to be Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen,
Germans, Japanese, Russians, before they are men, in this[5]
matter of the making of destruction? Are they to be more
concerned with the interests of their own countries, or with
the interests of the human species? That has become the
question they have to answer now that they have for the
first time the future of the human race within their grasp.
Modern invention has taken such a vast stride forward that
the incidence of responsibility is changed. It rests on
Science as it never did before; on Science, and on—Finance.
There again the exchange of international thought has become
terrifically important. The financiers of the world, for
instance, in the light of their knowledge, under the pressure of
their difficulties, out of the motive of mutual aid, could
certainly devise some real and lasting economic betterment
of the present ruination, if only they would set to work
steadily, not spasmodically, to exchange international
thought.
The hard-head’s answer to such suggestions is: “Nonsense!
Inventors, chemists, engineers, financiers, all have
to make their living, and are just as disposed to believe in
their own countries as other men. Their pockets and the
countries who guarantee those pockets, have first call on
them.” Well! That has become the point. If neither
Science nor Finance will agree to think internationally,
there is probably nothing for it but to kennel-up in disenchantment,
and wait for an end which can’t be very long
in coming—not a complete end, of course, say—a general
condition of affairs similar to that in the famine provinces
of Russia.
It is easy to be pessimistic, and easy to indulge in cheap
optimism; to steer between the two is hard. We still have a
chance of saving and improving such civilisation as we
have; but this chance depends on how far we succeed in
exchanging international thought in the next few years.
To some the word international has a socialistic, even communistic,
significance. But, as here used, it has nothing
whatever to do with economic theories, class divisions, or
political aims. The exchange of international thought
which alone can save us, is the exchange of thought between
craftsmen—between the statesmen of the different countries;[6]
the lawyers of the different countries; the scientists, the
financiers, the writers of the different countries. We have
the mediums of exchange (however inadequately made use
of) for the statesmen and the lawyers; but the scientists
(inventors, chemists, engineers) and the financiers, the two
sets of craftsmen in whose hands the future of the world
chiefly lies, at present lack adequate machinery for the
exchange of international thought, and adequate conception
of the extent to which world responsibility now falls on
them. If they could once realise the supreme nature of
that responsibility, the battle of salvation should be half
won.
Coming to the exchange of international thought in my
own craft, there seem three ways in which writers, as such,
can help to ease the future of the world. They can be
friendly and hospitable to the writers of other countries—and
for this purpose exists the international P.E.N. Club,
with its many and increasing branches. They can recognise
and maintain the principle that works of the imagination,
indeed all works of art, are the property of mankind at
large, and not merely of the country of their origin; that to
discontinue (for example) during a war with Germany the
reading of German poetry, the listening to German music,
the looking at German pictures, was a harmful absurdity
which should never be repeated. Any real work of art,
however individual and racial in root and fibre, is impersonal
and universal in its appeal. Art is one of the great natural
links (perhaps the only great natural link) between the
various breeds of men, and to scotch its gentling influence
in time of war is to confess ourselves still apes and tigers.
Only writers can spread this creed, only writers can keep
the door open for art during national feuds; and it is their
plain duty to do this service to mankind.
The third and greatest way in which the writer can ease
the future is simply stated in the words: Fair Play. The
power of the Press is a good third to the powers of Science
and Finance. If the Press, as a whole, never diverged
from fair report; if it refused to give unmeasured service
to party or patriotic passion; if it played the game as Sport[7]
plays it—what a clearance of the air! At present, with, of
course, many and distinguished exceptions, the Press in
every country plays the game according to rules of its own
which have too little acquaintance with those of sport.
The Press is manned by a great crew of writers, the vast
majority of whom have in private life a higher standard of
fair play than that followed by the Press ship they man.
They would, I believe, be the first to confess that. Improvement
in Press standards of international and political fair
play can only come from the individual writers who make up
the Press. And such reform will not come until editors and
journalists acquire the habit of exchanging thought internationally,
of broadening their minds and hearts with other
points of view, of recognising that they must treat as they
would themselves be treated. Only, in short, when they do
as they would, most of them, individually choose to do, will
a sort of word-miasma cease to breed international agues and
fever. We do not commonly hold, in private life, that ends
justify means. Why should they be held to justify means in
Press life—why should report so often be accepted without
due examination when it is favourable to one’s views;
rejected without due examination when it is unfavourable;
why should the other side’s view so often be burked; and so
on, and so on? The Press has great power and professes
high ideals; it has much virtue; it does great service; but
it does greater harm when, for whatever reason, it diverges
from truth, or from the principles of fair play.
To sum up, Governments and Peoples are no longer in
charge. Our fate is really in the hands of the three great
Powers—Science, Finance and the Press. Underneath the
showy political surface of things, those three great Powers are
secretly determining the march of the nations; and there is
little hope for the future unless they can mellow and develop
on international lines. In each of these departments of life
there must be men who feel this, as strongly as the writer of
these words. The world’s hope lies with them; in the
possibility of their being able to institute a sort of craftsman’s
trusteeship for mankind—a new triple alliance, of Science,
Finance and the Press, in service to a new idealism.[8]
Nations, in block, will never join hands, never have much
in common, never be able to see each others’ points of view.
The outstanding craftsmen of the nations have a far better
chance of seeing eye to eye; they have the common ground
of their craft, and a livelier vision. What divides them at
present is a too narrow sense of patriotism, and—to speak
crudely—money. Inventors must exist; financiers live;
and papers pay. And, here, Irony smiles. Though Science,
Finance and the Press at present seem to doubt it, there
is, still, more money to be made out of the salvation of
mankind than out of its destruction; a better and a more
enduring livelihood for these three Estates. And yet without
the free exchange of international thought, we may be
fairly certain that the present purely national basis of their
livelihoods will persist, and if it does the human race will
not, or at least so meagrely that it will be true to say of it,
as of Anatole France’s old woman: ‘It lives but so little!’
Printed by W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., Cambridge, England.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
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