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THE

REMAKING OF A MIND

A SOLDIER'S THOUGHTS ON WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION

BY HENRY DE MAN, C. deG.,M.C.

FIRST LIEUTENANT, BELGIAN ARMY

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1919

COPTRIGHT, 1919, BT

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published. August, 1919

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAOB

I. Before the War 1

II. The Collapse of the "Internationale" . . 23

III. Nineteen-Fourteen 46

IV. The Spell of Dogmatism 78

V. German Patriotism 98

VI. German Militarism 117

VII. Why Men Fought 153

VIII. Heroism . . 181

IX. In the Land of Des-potism 213

X. In the Land of Freedom 249

XI. The New Socialism 271

FOREWORD

.... Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-en- during bards?

And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,

The making of perfect soldiers.

Be it 80, then I answer'd, n

I too haughty Shade also sing v/ar, and a longer and greater one than any,

Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering,

(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last), the field the world,

For life and death, for the Body and the eternal Soul,

Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,

I above all promote brave soldiers.

Walt Whitman, As I pondered in silence.

As books go, perhaps I might have written a book on my war experiences.

With a record of three years* service at the battle front, in capacities as various as those of a private in the infantry, a liaison officer, an artillery observer, and a trench mortar officer; with some experience of the Belgian, British, Russian and Roumanian fronts; four months on a diplomatic mission to the Russian revolu- tionary government, and six months on a govern- ment mission to the United States, possibly my war diary might not have proved much more

vii

viii FOREWORD

uninteresting than most similar publications on the market.

As a matter of fact, I believe it would have been less dull to the reading pubhc at large than this book is going to be. For I intend to make this a record of my psychological war experi- ences, without any more reference to actual oc- currences than is necessary for the understand- ing of their reaction on my mind.

I realise perfectly well that a book of this type is going to appeal to a much smaller section of the pubhc than would a miscellany of trench stories, or diplomatic revelations in the style of war correspondents. Yet, rather than swell the number of books of this type, I think it more worth while to contribute some fragmentary ma- terial for those who are seeking an answer to the questions: How has the war affected the mind of those who have done the fighting? Have they formed any new ideals? And what part are these ideals going to play in the reconstruction of Europe?

This book is intended to show the remaking of a mind during the remaking of the world. It will be a succession, in broad chronological order, of the reactions of the war, in its changing mih- tary and pohtical aspects, on the mind of a young European who has been "all through it."

It does not claim to be typical as a psycholog- ical document any more than the writer himself

FOREWORD ix

would claim to be considered typical as a Euro- pean. The reaction of the war on men's minds is bound to differ widely according to their na- tionaUty, their personal dispositions, their social condition, their level of education, the nature of their actual war experiences, and so forth. I doubt whether anybody could at present give first hand personal evidence on a subject like this, and yet make good a claim that it is typical of the European mind at large. As soon as evi- dence ceases to be personal, not much reliance can be placed on its accuracy. And subjective accuracy is all I claim for these confessions. I will make them documentarily autobiographical evidence with the help of my diary, my notes, and my letters to my wife and a few friends.

I realise that the form I have chosen will make a certain demand upon the reader's patience and leniency. Apparent inconsistencies will occa- sionally reflect the contradictory impressions made upon the writer's mind by the diversity and rapid succession of experiences; while any un- couthness of style or expression may be due to the necessity of setting forth my innermost thoughts in a foreign tongue, and this in spite of the assistance of my cousin, George Greenland, Jr., of London, who suggested numerous im- provements in my manuscript. Nevertheless, I have thought that it was better to sacrifice form to the recording of my impressions in the order

X FOREWORD

in which they occurred, and whilst they are still vivid in my mind.

The views recorded in this book are those of what in Europe we used to call a socialist. In America I would probably be called a radical, for I would no more identify myself with the Socialist Party of America than with the Rus- sian Bolshevik. As such, these views are typical only of a minority of the Europeans of the so- called educated class; but, on the other hand, they may throw some light on what post-war socialism is going to be in Western Europe. The war has "radicalized" Europe to such an extent that a constitutional seizure of power by labour in most countries seems to be within the possi- bilities of a near future. But whilst giving social- ism a chance to pass from the stage of agitation to that of realisation, it has been made manifest that, in Western Europe at least, practical so- cialism is going to prove itself very different from theoretical pre-war socialism. I am con- fident that American readers who are anxious to gather first hand information on the state of mind of European socialists will welcome limited and fragmentary, but personally sincere, evi- dence rather than general descriptions, whose ac- curacy is necessarily in inverse ratio to the scope of the ground they cover.

There is another reason why I insist on the subjective sincerity of this book. It is because

FOREWORD xi

I feel the need to apologise beforehand for say- ing things which may hurt the feelings of many people. I shall have, for instance, to analyse and discuss notions as taboo to the common citizen as those of patriotism, heroism, and duty. I trust that the constructive aim of this analysis will not escape the notice of the reader who will be pa- tient enough to follow the story of my mental evolution to the end. Yet I am afraid that the mere fact of admitting doubt, which is of course an essential condition to any analytical thinking, will hurt the sentiment of people who consider doubting itself as an offence. So let those who expect "dulcet rhymes" of me lay this book aside, and, following the advice of Walt Whitman to "a certain civilian," "go lull themselves with piano tunes." The others, I hope, will keep in mind that I have learned my lesson on the battle- fields of a war which has not only changed the map of the world, but also the mind of the men who have fought it. And the greatest lesson I have learned there was to think earnestly, sin- cerely and ruthlessly. Oh, how trivial all I thought and did before the war seems to me now I I feel as though I. did not really start living un- til the constant menace of near death to myself and those for whom I was responsible gave Hfe the value of sacrifice. It is one thing to play with words and theories, and to send them out into the world, the world as it was in those times,

xii FOREWORD

before everything had to be paid for in blood. But it is another thing to see how —

"That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was

given To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven — By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the

wires — To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes — to be cindered by

fires — To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation From crater to crater — " *

And then, to have to kill and maim and bhnd human beings on the other side; to have to answer the shrill voice of one's own conscience with its insistent Why? For at any moment one had to be ready to die with this question satisfied. And I for one could not do this with the argument of the mere accident that made me born a Belgian citizen instead of a subject of the Kaiser. Having been through this cross- examination by Death, and having finally found a satisfactory answer to that great Why gives one the self-confidence required for saying what one believes to be true and good, and the cer- tainty that everything is true and good that pro- motes life and makes mankind fit for it.

So all I can say in defence of this book is that, as a record of the spiritual life of one out of millions of soldiers, it is un livre de bonne foy. Perhaps I am too sanguine in expecting that, with so limited a claim to the interest and per- haps even to the sympathy of the general public,

* R. Kipling. The Honours of War (A Diversity of Creatures).

FOREWORD xiii

it will be welcomed abroad. If I dare to sub- mit it at all to the judgment of the American public, it is because I have been struck during my stay in the United States in 1918 by the great and growing attention paid there to all aspects of war psychology. I came into contact with all sorts and conditions of people in practi- cally every part of the Union, and my conclu- sion was that in no belligerent country has there been more thought given to the philosophy of war and reconstruction than in America. With the exception of a very few, mostly English writers and thinkers, nobody in Europe seems to have known any other war problem than how to win.

I am positive in asserting that the majority, even of young intellectuals whom I have met in Belgian and British officers' messes, have never given an hour's thought to the meaning of the war from a broader viewpoint than that of mili- tary or diplomatic operations. They knew they were fighting for their homes, for their country's independence — exactly as the Germans thought they did themselves — and that was enough. Perhaps they would not have found it so easy to die if they had begun to analyze further, for analyzing means doubting, and doubting means, at least temporarily, a weakening of the purpose. And there was to be no weakening at all if one did not want to be crushed by the "Hun."

xiv FOREWORD

In America it was different. It took nearly three years to bring the nation to reaHze that it had to take part in the war. In the meantime its leaders did the doubting and analyzing, and they ultimately came to a conclusion inspired by a broader viewpoint than that of national in- terest. Even after April, 1917, America as a Democracy, and to a large extent as a Democ- racy of cosmopohtan extraction, had to bring her own people to the realisation of the ideal issues at stake before the full effect of her inter- vention could be felt. Whilst the Belgians, for instance, all knew that they had to fight on the 3rd of August, 1914, because they saw their own homes and cities threatened by a brutal invader, practically every individual American had to be convinced by reasoning that he had to fight, not for his own home, but for less immediate pur- poses common to mankind. That is why I think I may say, without doing any injustice to my compatriots, or their European alhes, that Amer- ica fought with a wider consciousness of her aims than any other nation. Nor did she fight any the worse for having that consciousness!

It is this identification of America with the conscience of mankind, more even than her formidably increased economic and military power, that has made her the umpire in this war. And now the day of the Great Settle- ment has come, a Settlement which involves not

FOREWORD XV

only the fate of empires and territories, but the social and moral regeneration of the peoples of Europe, once more we look across the Atlantic to read America's thoughts. For we need her to help us reconstruct, as much as we needed her to help us fight. We need the assistance of her capital, of her social workers, of her diplo- mats— but above all, we need the inspiration of her ideals.

H. DE Man.

London, April, 1919.

BEFORE THE WAR

Voua me demanderez si j'aime ma patrie. Oui; j'aime fort aussi I'Espagne et la Turquie. Je ne hais pas la Perse et je crois les Indous De tres honn^tes gens qui boivent comme nous. Mais je hais les cites, les paves et les bornes. Tout ce qui porte I'homme a se mettre en troupeau, Pour vivre entre deux murs et quatre faces mornes, Le front sous un moellon, les pieds sur un tombeau. Alfred de Musset, La Coupe et les L^vres (Dedication).

When I joined the Belgian army as a volun- teer on the 3d of August, 1914, I was much less of a citizen of my native country than of Ger- many, England, or France. Since the beginning of my student's career my ambition had been to become a "citizen of the world." From the age of eighteen until a short time before the war I had travelled extensively through most Euro- pean countries, spent five years at German and Austrian universities, one year in England, and shorter periods in France, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. I had learned to speak and write French, German, and Enghsh with nearly the same ease as my native Flemish language. My purpose was to become acquaint- ed with the conditions of hfe, the science and literature of the great European nations, and I

'•\f^-^5'i:!T'H;E/ OF A MIND

do not think that many men of my age have made a greater effort to come near to the type of a world citizen, in the European sense at least than I. Even during the three years — 1914 till 1917 — which I spent mostly in Belgium, I con- tinued to take more interest in international poli- tics than in Belgian affairs. I used to read the great British, German, and French newspapers before the home product, and I do not think that more than five per cent of my library was occu- pied by native authors.

I want to make it quite clear at the outset that my ideal was not cosmopolitanism, but a sort of ectectic internationalism. I never felt attracted by the shallow cosmopolitanism of those who pre- tend to see no difference between nations, be- cause all they see of them are a few material in- stitutions which they have in common, whilst the higher and subtler things that differentiate them escape their notice. This is bound to happen to the traveller who judges France by what he sees of the Paris Boulevards, England by Picca- dilly, Russia by the Newski Prospect, America by New York's Fifth Avenue, and less impor- tant countries by a hasty visit to their ports. This class of migratory cosmopolitans only see that superficial and in itself cosmopolitan aspect of civilisation which the Belgian nationalist writer, Edmond Picard, shrewdly called "Kell- nerism." Kellnerism is as universal as the insti-

BEFORE THE WAR 3

tution of the German waiter used to be. To the "Kellnerists" the world is indeed one, for a ship's cabin or a Pullman car look and smell very much the same in every part of the globe. There is no more difference between the type and manners of the people one meets in a Palace Hotel in Cairo, in Brussels or in Chicago than between the tastes of dishes one gets there. To the cosmopoli- tan all countries look ahke. To the internation- alist the world is a wonderful living mosaic, deriv- ing its beauty from the infinite variety of national colouring. A citizen of Europe meant to me one who strives to understand and to sympathise with those characteristics of every country which are an essential element of what, as a whole, con- stitutes European civilisation. Therefore, in every country where I lived my passionate pur- suit was to look, not for what its culture had in common with that of other nations, but for what was peculiarly its own. To grow acquainted with it meant to love it and make it part of my spirit- ual self. So I gradually became a French patriot, a German patriot, an English patriot, as my knowledge of French, German, and English civihsation grew more intimate. My European internationalism was based, not on a denial of nationahty, but on a conscious attempt to iden- tify myself with the spirit of several great European nations. AVhat makes Central and Western Europe so beautiful and passionately

4 ^ THE REMAKING OF A MIND

interesting to my mind is its infinite variety. On this smallest of all continents — a mere peninsula stretching out beyond the Russian plains from the western extremity of Asia — humanity shows itself more diverse than anywhere else on earth, much more so even than the landscape, thanks to the continuous and intricate blending of races, languages, institutions and civilisations involved in two thousand years of invasions, mi- grations and wars. Yet my European patriot- ism was not at all exclusive of the rest of the world. On the contrary I considered it as only a step towards becoming a citizen of the world at large, which I so far only knew through litera- ture. Walt Whitman gave me a foretaste of what it would be to love America, and Kipling more than anybody else taught me that contact with exotic civilisation was a necessary part of a white man's training.

The love of my native country played but a part in my life. It is true that, when the war broke out, I found that something in the subcon- scious impulses which are after all the main- spring of even an^educated man's actions, was particularly associated with the land of my birth and childhood. These fundamental im- pulses, that really make a man what he is, can no more be obliterated by later attempts to identify oneself with the soul of other nations, than hav- ing learnt foreign languages can make one forget

BEFORE THE WAR 5

the sound of the mother tongue. This sound, the images associated with it, and the instinctive likes and dishkes formed in those early years remain paramount. It takes a strong cause, which, hke dreaming or death agony, releases the strings of self-consciousness, to make one realise how much more of these impulses remain present and active than one would think.

Yet although they are associated with one's native language and the recollections of child- hood, they have little to do with nationality as such. They are an essential part of national feehng, but no more identical with it than are the topographical boundaries of home, or, at the ut- most, of the native town, with the frontiers of the country. This is' especially the case with Belgium, where several languages are spoken, and where my native Flemish tongue, or, more particularly still, my local dialect, does not iden- tify itself with the existence of the State. So though my instinctive patriotism would link me with my home, with my family, with the customs and manners of my class, and with the aspect of the small part of the country where I received my impressions as a child, it would not do so with the country as a whole.

In so far as patriotism means attachment to the institutions and the national spirit of a coun- try, I candidly confess that in the ordinary sense of the term, I never was much of a Belgian

6 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

patriot. If I were asked whether the fact that I have fought for years with the Belgian army, and shared its glory and its sufferings as well as those of the whole nation, has not created a new tie between me and my countrymen, I am afraid that I could only to a limited extent answer in the affirmative. There is certainly a very strong sympathy between me and those whose suffer- ings I have shared, but as far as it is really a bond of feeling, that is, based on actual and per- sonal experience, it only applies to that very small portion of the army with which I have actually been in touch, my own men, and my own comrades. On the other hand, as far as military solidarity is the outcome of conscious thinking, it is not at all confined to my own countrymen, for I naturally extend it to all soldiers who have fought for the same cause. My intellectual sym- pathy goes out to the poilu, the Tommy and the Sammy and all their allies, as well as to the Bel- gian soldier, and to every one of them in direct ratio not so much of their sufferings and their courage as of the extent to which their purpose in fighting was identical with mine. Otherwise I might include the German soldiers as well, who certainly have fought as bravely and suffered as much as most of us. But this is another story. My point for the moment is that military solidar- ity created by the war is either too narrow or too broad a feeling to add much strength to the

BEFORE THE WAR 7

patriotism of a man who never looked upon the war from a purely national viewpoint. ,

The only way in which I ever felt any Belgian patriotism in the real sense of the word is by loving Belgium as a microcosm of Europe. The existence of Belgian nationality, or to put it more exactly, of a pecuhar Belgian quality of civihsation, is a matter of controversy amongst historians. There is no doubt that what mostly differentiates Belgian culture from that of the neighbouring nations is local or provincial char- acteristics; whilst the small class who have any common characteristics beyond those, mostly de- rive them from French, or — in the case of a very few — from Dutch civihsation.

There is no better proof of this than the fact that most books by Belgian writers were read much less in their own country than abroad. Practically all the Belgians who wrote French had their works published in France and sold more copies of them in Paris alone than in the whole of Belgium. The Flemish writers did the same in Holland. The reputation of our French writers was made in Paris, that of the Flemings in Holland, before they attained any popularity in their native land. Even certain translations into German found more readers in Teutonic countries and helped more to advertise their authors in Belgium itself than their original pub- lications had done at home. Pirenne's "History

8 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

of Belgium," the standard work of Belgian neo- nationalism, was published in a German transla- tion and popularised beyond the Rhine before it attracted any notice in Belgium; and the excellent German translation of Verhaeren's poems by Stefan Zweig had made the greatest French writing poet of pre-war Belgium more popular in Germany than in his own country.

The lack of a national culture in Belgium, however, proves nothing against Belgium's right to exist as a State. State and nationality are two different things. Switzerland is another in- stance of a State, formed of fragments of nation- alities, strongly united by their attachment to a common political organisation which has for cen- turies safeguarded their existence, under condi- tions derived from the peculiar natural situation of the country and the uniform economic mode of living that has resulted therefrom. In spite of what I have said above, I do not in the least agree with those who consider that Belgium as a State is an artificial creation of professional diplomacy. There is no doubt anyhow that the great majority of Belgians, Flemish or Walloon, consider the maintenance of the State as an es- sential guarantee for the conservation of certain things, and especially the freedom of their local and provincial institutions, which are dear to them. But these things have very little to do with nationality as a cultural value. The culture

BEFORE THE WAR 9

of the Walloons, and of those educated Flemings who use French as their usual language, links them with France and the Latin world; whilst that of the mass of the Flemings unites them with the Dutch (who speak the same language) and the Teutonic races.

What they have in common, and what consti- tutes the essence of Belgian patriotism, is their attachment to certain civic institutions and a cer- tain civic spirit. These institutions are the out- come of living for centuries, in spite of different language and culture, under similar economic, political and religious conditions; and this civic spirit results from centuries of struggling in common for the defence of these institutions against continuous attempts at absorption by the great neighbouring powers.

The only plausible theory of Belgian patri- otism is that which bases it on those common con- ditions and common sufferings, and not on the existence of a distinctive and peculiar national culture, which is a myth. These conditions arise from the situation of Belgium as a natural gate- way between the three great currents of eco- nomic and cultural life in Western Europe — Latin, Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon. They have made it racially the melting pot, economically the turning plate, militarily the battlefield, politi- cally the buffer state, and spiritually the micro- cosm of Europe.

10 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

In a small country like Belgium, with less than a century's existence as an independent state, and no unity of language or culture based thereon, this universal aspect of Belgium's func- tion as an element in the progress of European civilisation is the only intellectual justification of patriotic feeling. It is the theoretical founda- tion of the writings of Henri Pirenne, and the essential inspiration of our great poet, Emile Verhaeren, to whom Belgium stood as the sym- bol of the intensive life of the modern industrial world.

The only sense in which Belgian, patriotism as a cultural value ever appealed to me, was through my appreciation of its historical func- tion in the ensemble of European civilisation, and through my admiration for the skilful ac- tivity of its artisans and traders, the tenacious devotion to local and provincial independence of its historical heroes, the broad universal vision of its great exponents in art and literature, by which it strove to fulfil this function since the early Middle Ages. The more I loved my coun- try in this wide sense the more I was led to value and venerate the culture of the nations between whom Belgium was the hyphen. Being a Bel- gian was thus only a step towards becoming a European.

So, on the one hand, I was far from believing, like so many pre-war socialists and to-day's

BEFORE THE WAR 11

Bolsheviki, in what the Austrian, Otto Bauer (the first to attempt a scientific analysis of na- tionality from a socialist viewpoint), calls the naive cosmopolitanism which characterises the earlier sentimental stages of socialism. But, on the other hand, I was equally far from allowing my sense of nationality to lead me to jingoism or political nationahsm, which consists in the be- hef that one's own nationality has rights which the others have not. I was always as disgusted by the misuse of patriotism, as a feehng of at- tachment to a particular type of civilisation, for the fostering of political enmity against other nations, and promoting mihtarism and imperial- ism, as I was by the prostitution of religious feel- ing to the purposes of worldly domination. I was convinced that there should be the same dif- ference between patriotism and the State as there is — or ought to be — ^between religion and the Church. Love of one's own country need not involve any hostility towards another coun- try. On the contrary, if it be sincere and en- lightened, it should tend to strengthen the ties of sympathy between them. Real patriotism has an inherent tendency to become universal, just as love of individual men and women helps one to love mankind.

It is true that patriotism involves a desire to maintain the poUtical autonomy of a nation and the peculiar institutions which are an element of

12 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

its cultural life, and which may be threatened by attack from abroad. As long as no trust can be placed in international institutions to make such an attack impossible or fruitless, a patriot will have to be prepared to defend his country. But this does not mean that patriotism justifies any and every sort of war. On the contrary if the only patriots were those who refused to fight save in defence of their country, there would be no wars at all — for lack of aggressors. But this can only be if each people knows the true rela- tion in which it stands towards other nations. Have we not seen in 1914, as often before, a war begin between nations, which were all told by their rulers that they were fighting in self- defence and moreover believed it. For I have no doubt that the great mass of the people of the Central Powers were from the beginning convinced that they were fighting to defend their country against the aggression of a wicked foe intent on their extermination. So easy is it to use the disguise of patriotism for the aggressive purposes of commercial avidity, the pride of a military caste, or the ambitions of a dynasty.

Yet my training as a historian had put me on my guard against a too subjective or too abso- lute outlook on things. In consequence I did not feel towards war in general in the same way as those who probably formed the most numerous class of pacifists. I would call them the ethical

BEFORE THE WAR 13

pacifists, for their hatred of war — not any war in particular, but war in general, at all times, under any circumstances, and from the viewpoint of any of the belHgerents — is based on the ethical principle that no man should kill a man. Their most consistent exponents are the Christian non- resisters of the Tolstoian type.

My hatred of war was based more on history than on ethics. But, indeed, can individual eth- ics be sound if they come into conflict with the laws of social progress? Sound ethics must aim at making mankind fitter to live. This can only be achieved by social progress, that is to say, by evolving forms of human organisation, and civil- isation which are better adapted to assist human society in its struggle with hostile forces of nature. History teaches us that tliis evolution is not a logical, but a dialectical process. I mean, it is realised, not by straight linear development starting from one cause towards one aim, but by a continuous struggle between individuals, classes, tribes, nations, races, according to their own conflicting interests and ideals. Progress consists in the victory of the form of organisation that is fittest to survive, because it proves better adapted to the fulfilment of human needs under given natural circumstances and to the develop- ment of material and moral resources. Wars, like revolutions, racial, class and religious con-

U THE REMAKING OF A MIND

flicts, have been one of the agencies through which this dialectical process is accomplished.

We may conceive of a state of things where humanity will have escaped the iron necessity that has so far condemned it to the sufferings and waste of energy this dialectical process involves. The great exponent of scientific socialism, Karl Marx, has referred to this possibility as "the leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom." This is subject to the condition that humanity (or a sufficiently important part of it to be able to manage without interference from the other more backward parts) should take real control of its common destinies, solidar- ise its class and national interests, and achieve by a common conscious will what is now the re- sult of internal strife. We are still so far from this ideal that we have hardly begun to discern the laws which govern our social hfe and con- flicts. Even our boldest attempts at interfering, either by legislation or by freely organised initi- ative, with the laws that govern the production and distribution of wealth, do not go beyond the surface of things. And as to the relations be- tween nations or states, at present our most opti- mistic expectations are not that we shall see the white race governing itself as a whole according to the rules of its own will and reason; but that we shall perhaps be able to create machinery for gradually replacing war by arbitration and con-

BEFORE THE WAR 15

ciliation. In other words, we cannot hope as yet to make conflicts superfluous or impossible, but only to facilitate their solution by the peaceful estabUshment of an international court of jus- tice to prevent recourse to actual violence.

Far, then, though we be from this "realm of freedom," there is no doubt that it is the ultimate aim of all our conscious efforts, as well as the logical outcome of the increasing power over nature which the unlimited development of hu- man resources gives us. All great religious movements, as well as democracy and socialism, are moving towards that aim, though by different paths. Religious and ethical movements gen- erally strive towards human unity through re- forming individual ethics; political and social movements, through reforming the exterior con- ditions under which men live and which again mainly determine this ethical attitude. Ethical movements as such have failed so far either be- cause they ignored the influence of material con- ditions, or else because (when they interfered with them through conquering pohtical and so- cial power) they lost sight of their original ethical aims and led to intolerance and oppres- sion of freedom.

Democracy ultimately leads to self-govern- ment of mankind as a whole; at least, it is the only instrument by which such self-government can be freely and consciously achieved.

16 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

Socialism aims at making the moral unity of humanity possible by giving society, or some form of organisation which represents the com- man interest, control over those means of pro- ductive ownership of which by private capital- ists now creates an antagonism of interests which makes the hostility between social classes deeper even than that between states.

It is probably through a combination of these three great forces — Christianity, acting on indi- viduals, democracy and socialism, on the political and the economic conditions of life, that we shall get nearer to the ideal of a humanity which, ac- cording to Faust's vision of the future, will enjoy "not safety against nature, perhaps, but activity and freedom."

In the meantime, however, we are still in the "realm of necessity," and any attempt to ignore its laws, by giving individual men ethical direc- tions independent of the conditions under which they live and which it is not in their power to alter single-handed, is doomed to failure. This inadequacy of the means of the ethical pacifists to the end they have in view, as exemphfied by Mr. Henry Ford's adventure with his "Peace Ship," is the tragi-comical expression of this logical impossibility.

Experience then has shown that purposes like those of the pacifists who wanted to make all wars impossible could not be obtained by mere at-

BEFORE THE WAR 17

tempts to reform the ethics of individuals. For the latter live in a world where the material con- ditions of the antagonism of interests between classes and states — originating in the economic structure of society — still rule the actions of men. There have been situations where those whose ideal was the stopping of bloodshed between men have yet had to resort to bloodshed in civil or national war, as the only means of furthering the reaUsation of their ideal. What democrat of to-day, if he had lived in France in 1792, would not have been one of the hundreds of thousands that answered the call of "la patrie est en dan- ger" by taking up arms for the defence of the young republic against the champions of divine right? Was not the duty of Americans who loved freedom equally clear in the Civil War? And in 1914 and 1917, was it not to fight for peace that men took up arms against the main and inmiediate menace that threatened it from Germany? Have we not seen, in the first glori- ous months of the Russian Revolution, such men as the Marxian Plekhanoff, the humanitarian socialist Kerensky, the gentle anarchist-dream- er Prince Kropotkine — who had all repudiated the Czar's war for Constantinople — preach the crusade of republican Russia fighting to defend her new freedom against German and Austrian invasion, and even carrying, by an offensive re- sembhng those of French revolutionary strategy

18 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

in 1792 and 1793, the flag of liberty into the enemy's lands?

If we may judge by results, these lovers of peace, who were not afraid of fighting for the realisation of their ideals, or at least of certain conditions essential to their realisation, have done more to bring humanity nearer to a state of things where there will be no more wars than have our milk-and-water pacifists, those bleating lambs in a world of ravening wolves. Consistent ethical pacifists, who applied the logical conclu- sion of their principles, and actively opposed any warlike activity, such as conscientious object- ors and other martyrs of a forlorn cause, may at least have achieved the moral result of stirring consciences that could only be roused by such loud protests. But most of the others have not even the sentimental excuse of having been dem- onstratively and heroically passive. By declin- ing to take sides when millions of men were en- gaged in a deadly struggle for the maintenance of institutions which are vital to the progress of democracy and the triumph of peace; by striving to weaken the purpose of those who fought; by threatening to spoil them of the results of their sacrifices through advocating an untimely peace of compromise, they have done more harm to their own cause than any promoter of war and militarism could have done. They have justified the indictment of the exponent of active pacifism.

BEFORE THE WAR 19

Bertrand Russell,* who describes this class of people as "those whose impulsive nature is more or less atrophied," and concludes as follows:

"In spite of all destruction which is wrought by the impulses that lead to war, there is more hope for a nation which has these impulses than for a nation in which all impulse is dead. Im- pulse is the expression of life, and while it exists there is hope of its turning towards life instead of towards death; but lack of impulse is death, and out of death no new life will come."

Here we touch the bottom of the problem. The difference between this class of pacifism and my own is not so much a discrepancy of thinking as an antagonism of temperament. With my natural impulses of activity and combativeneas, I was, as a pacifist, temperamentally bound to become either a fanatic conscientious objector or a crusader against Prussian miUtarism.

What saved me from being the former, was not only the intellectual disposition which I largely ascribe to my historical training, but also and primarily my native realism, inherited from generations of Flemish ancestors. Centuries of a prosperous, active and free life as artisans and traders have given the Flemish mind a very marked disposition to concrete thinking, just as they have made their temperament sensual and their philosophic outlook materialistic. It seems

♦ Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight, pp. 16 and 17.

20 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

as though to live as homines forti et bene nutriti on a rich soil gives men that faculty for grasping and expressing realities which has made the Flemings traditionally excel in all plastic arts; in descriptive literature; sciences, as anatomy, medicine, botany, which require observation rather than speculation. For the Flemings show a distinct inability in abstract thinking, and therefore cut a poor figure in philosophy and speculative sciences in general. Abstract sci- ence, in the same way as music, seems to thrive better on a meagre soil, and to appeal most to the minds of peoples who, either through lack of natural resources or through oppression, are de- nied the satisfaction of driving their roots deep down into the friendly earth. Be that as it may, I think I am not far wrong when in looking for the fundamental impulses of my actions, I as- cribe the reahstic nature of my idealism to the practical turn of mind which is in my race.

In fact, I believe that my opposition to war rested, before 1914, not so much on the grounds that war in itself was wrong but that it was a wrong means to the end I had in view. This end I would call Sociahsm— were I not afraid to lay myself open to misunderstandings by accepting without immediate detailed definition a label which covers so many different goods.

But I hope it will be clear to the reader by now that I am trying to explain my actions not so

BEFORE THE WAR 21

much by intellectual reasoning as by the impulses which determined them. Reasoning served mostly to test the strength of impulses, to sift them and summon up other impulses to coimter- act those that appeared hostile to my general purpose. Therefore, to comprehend my attitude in August, 1914, and later, a detailed prelimi- nary description of my poHtical views and ideals is as irrelevant as an understanding of the tem- peramental impulses which led to them is essen- tial.

My social ideals and my social activities, then, were mainly determined by the following causes :

Instinctive sympathy with the under-dog, the result of a certain chivalrous disposition which is probably partly hereditary and partly cultivated by fatherly education. An intense love of life and capacity for happiness, which, combined with this chivalrous disposition, found an outlet in the active desire to make others happy, and espe- cially to communicate to them the knowledge which I owed to my education as a "privileged- born." A certain capacity for intellectual enthu- siasm which made me, from the age of adoles- cence, disgusted with the crudely materiahstic and egoistic outlook of my class — and, more es- pecially, with the indeed very low moral and in- tellectual level of the wealthy classes in my native city — and which at the same time awakened my sympathy with any movement that, like Belgian

22 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

socialism, had a strong idealistic and artistic ap- peal. A constructive turn of the imagination which made my mind receptive to schemes and ideals of social regeneration (my first socialist ideals had a purely Utopian character, and my text-books were the writings of William Morris) . A combative temperament, which irresistibly drove me to action for the reaUsation of the ideals thus conceived; a desire for authority, responsi- bility and command, which still more intimately linked up my will and my ambition with the social movements towards which my combative instincts had driven me.

These impulses, good or bad, are still mine. But the war has considerably changed the direc- tion and aim of the will in which they resulted.

II

THE COLLAPSE OF THE INTERNATIONALE

There is no stir, or walking in the streets, And the complexion of the element In favour's like the work we have in hand, Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible.

SiLAKESPEABB, JuUus Ccesar, I, 3.

On the 1st of August, 1914, I witnessed the mobilisation in Brussels at dawn, and in Paris that same afternoon. The memory of that after- noon remains particularly vivid in my mind. The weather was hot and sultry, there was not a breath of air, nature itself seemed to be waiting in suspense. Huge clouds of a lurid sulphurous colour threatened thunder, which never came. Shortly after noon, they so darkened part of the sky that they gave the light a crepuscular gloom, which cast an imcanny opalescent reflection on the faces of the crowd. Men and women walked about almost in silence with the ghostlike detach- ment of people who have suddenly lost their own volition and henceforth obey the will of a fate which they do not understand, but the hostility of which is brought home to them by everything around them. A slight, but insistent and nause- ous smell, the breath of a great overcrowded city in the hot, still air, permeated the atmosphere.

24 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

as though stealing up from some vast hidden putrefaction. Everybody seemed to be labour- ing under the sensation that, although people were quiet and behaved normally, the visible world was no longer the real world. There was a great invisible Presence, boding unimaginable suffering, that controlled the most trivial word and the most ordinary gesture.

I remember most distinctly how acutely I felt this when I was sitting down to supper, on the evening of the first of August in the stuffy back- room of a little Paris restaurant, with Renaudel, Cachin, and a couple of other French Sociahsts, together with Hermann Miiller, the delegate of the German Social-Democrats, and Camille Huysmans, the secretary of the International Socialist Bureau. After the strain of a long meetings which was to be resumed after supper, we talked detachedly and almost jokingly about indifferent things. We were trying to forget what had brought us together, and that Jean Jaures, the gigantic mind and will whom we had looked up to as the only power that might still have averted the catastrophe, had been shot dead the evening before, after supping like we were in a little Paris restaurant and talking good- humouredly to his friends. The drawn, pale face and the tired suffering eyes of Renaudel, whose devotion to Jaures was dog-like, suddenly struck me again and belied the reahty of any-

THE "INTERNATIONALE" 25

thing he said, of anything he might even have thought at that time, as we sat talking about things that might have mattered two days earlier, but that did not matter any more. My mind then saw Jaures as I had seen him three days before at the historic international mass meeting in Brussels. I had shuddered then when I heard him, at the climax of his almost superhuman elo- quence, conjure up the vision of two loving young human beings walking together in the evening gloom, unsuspicious of the menace of death which was already hanging over them like a vast thundercloud. We were now all in the shadow of that cloud.

Again the only real thing seemed to be that peculiar smell, which I shall always associate with the memory of mobiUsation, for the odour of the stifling city was blended with the sour stench of barracks, coming from old cloth stored in close places, and leather greased long ago. It reminded one of the savage perfimie' of some feline beast, and seemed to call forth by asso- ciation the ancestral, almost forgotten killing in- stincts of men. It was now carried about every- where by the men who were being claimed again by the barracks and the camps, and who filled the streets, the public places, the cars and trains with their gaily coloured, but weary figures.

The acuteness of these impressions was mainly owing to the overexcitement of one's fatigued

26 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

nerves. To this was due one's painful supersen- sitiveness, the hysterically hilarious twist of the mouth, the vacant stare which I have since so often seen on the faces of soldiers under the cloud of death that was then lowering.

The strain of my work during those last days of July might indeed have accounted for tired nerves. I had taken part in the last attempts of the "Internationale," whose seat was in Brussels, to prevent a European war. An endeavour to hold a meeting of the International Socialist Young People's Federation, one of the bodies that were in the best position to act, and of which I was president, was frustrated at the last moment because the Austrians, represented by Danneberg, and the Germans, represented by Karl Liebknecht, could not find means to leave their country. But the International Socialist Bureau met at Brussels on July 26th, 27th and 28th, in the reading-room of the Workers' Edu- cation Institute, of which I was then the director. Along with Camille Huysmans, I acted as an interpreter. As French, German and English were used, every speech had to be translated into two languages, a procedure even more tiring for the interpreter than tiresome for the audience. It was one of the best-spirited meetings of the International Socialist Bureau which I ever at- tended. The goodwill of the representatives of the great labour organisations of Europe to

THE "INTERNATIONALE" 27

attempt anything that might still be attempted to prevent a general conflagration was evident. The personal relations amongst delegates of dif- ferent nations were excellent. I can still see the German Haase, with his hand on Jaures' shoul- der, bent with him over the draft of a resolution which they were going to move together, and which was to be a last joint appeal to the labour organisations of all countries, to bring the full pressure of their power to bear upon their gov- ernments. Two days later, Jaures was assas- sinated. Six days later, before a Reichstag delirious with warlike enthusiasm, after having listened to the Chancellor's announcement of the invasion of Belgium, Haase read the famous statement of the Social-Democratic Party in favour of the war credits. Little did we suspect on the 28th,. how quickly and thoroughly the Internationale of Labour was to be disrupted by bloodshed and treason.

Yet the very goodwill and brotherly spirit of this meeting made it all the more evident that its impotence to originate any real action was due to an inherent vice of the Internationale itself and not to any personal shortcomings of its leaders.

The International Socialist and Labour Con- gresses, and the International Socialist Bureau that was their executive organ, had never been more than federative bodies, linking up autono-

28 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

mous national organisations for purposes of mu- tual help and information. This so-called Sec- ond Internationale, whose origin dates back to 1889, was very different from the first Interna- tionale, which existed from 1864. till 1872. The latter was a real fighting organisation with a central direction, and with a leader — Karl Marx — directing the activity of its national sections. It could thus be centraUsed, for at that time the socialist movement was still in its propagandist stage. In no country had it attained sufficient power to form a constant and responsible ele- ment of national life. It mostly consisted of de- bating clubs, more or less sectarian societies for propaganda, or organisations for the promotion and conduct of sporadic and short-hved strikes. Such a movement might well receive its inspira- tion from the unique international centre by whose propaganda it had in fact been created.

The Second Internationale, however, corre- sponded to a quite different stage of develop- ment. It arose from the desire of national or- ganisations, which after the Franco-Prussian War had sprung up and attained a certain amount of influence in most European countries, to get in touch with each other. The direction of its development was centripetal, whilst that of the first Internationale had been centrifugal. And when, after a few years, the Second Inter- nationale had attained a certain degree of cohe-

THE '^INTERNATIONALE" 29

sion, this was found to be much less strong than the cohesion of labour unions or socialist parties of a particular country with their own national environment. It had been easy enough for the early agitators to conduct their propaganda along the lines of a cosmopolitan doctrine, but it was quite another matter to adapt this doctrine to different national conditions, for this meant to organise, to gain a permanent influence on the settlement of labour conditions, on the legislation and administration of a country, and to accept, in some way or another, a gradually growing amount of responsibility in the conduct of that country's public business.

Thus the Labour Unions and political parties which formed the Second Internationale, had to adapt themselves to the peculiar spirit of the im stitutions and the public mind of their respective countries, and even, to accept a certain amount of national sohdarity with their ruling powers. The more national movements thus increased their strength and influence in their own sphere, the less were they prepared to receive directions from abroad. This explains why, in great Euro- pean countries with a powerful labour movement, like England or Germany, the Internationale was of httle practical account, whilst in coun- tries where the movement was still in its sectarian or propagandist stage, like Russia or the Balkan states, its resolutions were still an article of faith

30 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

and a subject of exegesis. The Second Interna- tionale, moreover, practically always respected the national autonomy of the affiliated organisa- tions and never tried to become more than an or- ganism for mutual information, voluntary assist- ance and free coordination. Its leaders kaew too well that it was not equipped for action beyond that programme. Unfortunately, however, they acted towards the outside world as though it were so equipped and thus created expectations amongst the masses which they were unable to fulfil when the test of action came. This may be explained either by the natural propensity of the leaders of the International Bureau to put this organisation in the limelight and inflate its im- portance, or by the equally natural desire of the national movements to augment their influence at home by adding to their actual strength the prestige of a powerful international organisation always ready to back them. Anyway, there had been of late years a fatal disposition to create the impression, especially as regards the prevention of war, that the Internationale as a body would be capable of decisive action. As a matter of fact, very little attention was paid to examining the concrete conditions of such action, whilst all efforts were concentrated on the demonstrative effect of the announcements that were to make it appear probable. Hence the habit, which had of late become a tradition at International confer-

THE "INTERNATIONALE" 31

ences, to escape the discussion of profound dis- agreements which would have made the choice of common tactics impossible, and mask their exist- ence by the concoction and mostly unanimous adoption of vague but lengthy resolutions.

It is not because it could not prevent war, but because after letting the world believe that it would do so, it proved unable even to attempt it, that one may speak not only of the failure, but of the moral bankruptcy of the Second Interna- tionale.

It was so evident that its executive bodies had no real power whatever to throw into the balance of peace and war, for lack of constitutional means of coercion of the affihated organisations, that the possibiHty of international action, beyond the issuing of a manifesto, was not even discussed at the July conference. The manifesto itself could be no more than an appeal to the national organ- isations to do their duty in their respective coun- tries, with the means which they would see fit to use.

I could not help being struck, at this confer- ence, with the pitiful attitude of the Austrian and Bohemian delegates, whose country at that time was forcing on the war against Serbia. Espe- cially the late Victor Adler, the leader of the German Austrians, and the Bohemian delegates, Nemec and Soukup, seemed almost physically prostrated. I remember hearing Nemec com-

32 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

plaining most discouragingly about what he called the physical impossibihty for the socialists to do anything once mobilisation had been de- clared. In old happy-go-lucky Austria, whose government Victor Adler himself had once de- scribed as "despotism, tempered by slovenliness," people had been used, even amidst the turmoil of the most violent racial and political strife, to a certain almost immoral "Gemiitlichkeit," the result of which was that nobody ever seemed to take anything seriously. But a serious thing had happened at last — war. The government, which was always on the verge of crumbling to pieces, had all of a sudden become a power that disposed of the life and property of all its citizens. Even the most radical elements were struck with amazement and awe when they saw how the huge cruel machinery of mobilisation began to move. Nemec, the old leader of the Bohemian sociaUsts, seemed actually to be struck with physical terror. I remember how, for some unexplained reason, he kept lamenting about the fact that the horses and vans of the transport service of their daily paper, Pravo Lidu, had been requisitioned by the army, as though this particular circumstance were any worse than the suspension of all con- stitutional liberties by the state of siege. I think he told me this story about four times, with such evident signs of discouragement that as far as he was concerned this incident did obviously away

THE "INTERNATIONALE" 33

with any inclination to oppose the Government's policy. In the hght of subsequent events, I have often remembered this, and especially after the attitude of the German and Austrian Social- Democrats had set me thinking that lack of indi- vidual courage might be one of the main causes of their passive attitude. The mere fact of the destruction of the party machine by the mobil- isation must have appeared to these men, who relied on the material strength of their organi- sation rather than on the revolutionary spirit of their membership, as the annihilation of all power and therefore as an excuse for non-resistance. Four years later, the same psychological disposi- tion of the German people was to account for their sudden acquiescence in defeat once the mil- itary machine had run down.

The last attempt to coordinate the action of the socialist parties, before the final breakdown of all relations, was Hermann Muller's journey to Paris on August 1st, with Camille Huysmans and myself.

When I got up that morning, I little expected that I should be in Paris in the afternoon. I felt so tired after the hard work of the previous days, that I had made up my mind to take a day's com- plete rest. I was to go fishing in the country, my usual way of relieving tired nerves. Besides, I felt that there were some more terrible days ahead, and I wanted a day's isolation to let my

34. THE REMAKING OF A MIND

thoughts settle down a bit and make myself in- tellectually fit for the tasks to come.

As a consequence of the declaration of "danger of war" in Germany the day before, the general mobilisation of the Belgian army had been an- nounced that night by the sounding of church bells and by bugle calls in the streets soon after midnight. I found it easy to get up at dawn, for there was little sleep to be had any way. In the streets and on the trolley-car that was to take me to the railroad station I must have cut a funny figure, with my sporting attire, rod and basket, standing like a phantom of bygone peaceful times amongst the crowds of reservists who were hastening towards the camps and barracks. Yet I was determined to have my day's rest, and I was in the habit of sticking to that purpose in spite of everything once I had resolved it to be necessary. But at the station I learned from the newspapers that Jean Jaures had been murdered in Paris the night before. I immediately de- cided to return home. I felt that the time was over when one could rest and think and live as before. I realised instinctively that now the great hostile Fate which so far had only been a menace, had struck mankind. There was to be no more individual wilhng, we were all to be thrown into the whirlpool of the great Madness. Now the first blood had flowed, the spell of sus- pense was broken.

THE "INTERNATIONALE" 35

Objectively speaking, the coincidence of the assassination of Jaures with the other interna- tional events may have been an accident. Up to now, it is not known whether his murderer was the instrument of a French jingo plot, of a Ger- man intrigue or of some machination of Czarism, to which Jaures' insistence on a purely defensive pohcy was disagreeable. Perhaps he was simply a weak-headed man driven to insanity by the chauvinist press. But whether the crime was due to purpose or chance, later events made it ap- pear, what intuition at the time had made me feel it to be. The deadly shot that rang out in the rue du Croissant that Friday night was to call forth a thundering echo all over the world, and arouse the Beast of War.

The diary of my wife, to whom I told the news immediately on my return home, and who re- ceived it with tears — not the last tears she was to weep these four years — bears witness that she had the same intuition. The murder of him who was certainly the greatest individual power ar- rayed against war was a symbolic blow. The last chance of peace had gone.

Soon afterwards I received a call from Camille Huysmans, who asked me to accompany him to Paris with Hermann Miiller, the secretary of the German Social-Democratic Party, who had un- expectedly arrived in Brussels that morning. Miiller, whom I had known for years, had been

36 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

delegated by the Executive of his party to get in touch with the French Sociahsts and labour leaders and report himself back in Berlin before the meeting of the Reichstag that was to be held on Tuesday, the 4th. We decided that, if there were the least chance of a delay on his return journey, I should also go to Berlin, if necessary by Switzerland, whilst Miiller would travel back by Belgium or Holland, so that there would be two chances of reaching Berlin. I am glad that this proved unnecessary and that Miiller found it comparatively easy to get back in time — in fact, he was in Berlin on Monday — for otherwise I should probably have spent the duration of the war in a German internment camp.

Contradictory accounts of Miiller's mission have been published since. German and pro- German papers have accused the French Social- ists of having received Miiller with demonstra- tions of national hatred, and not even treated him fairly in their personal relations. On the other side, Miiller has been represented as having tried to induce the French Sociahsts to vote against the war credits under the false pretence that the German Social-Democrats were going to act in the same way, this abominable treachery being part of a plan of German imperialism to disor- ganise resistance abroad.

Both versions are untrue. As. I remained with' Miiller all the time he spent in Paris, and inter-

THE "IlSrTERNATIONALE" 37

preted everything that was said at the two conferences we had there, I can vouch for the correctness of the following account.

Immediately after our arrival, Miiller was re- ceived by the leaders of the French Sociahst party. We first met in a room of the Chamber of Deputies, and after adjournment for supper, in the office of the paper VHumanite. The re- ception Miiller was given, both officially and per- sonally, was as cordial as could be.

Miiller began by declaring that he had been sent for the purpose of mutual information. The executive of the German Social-Democratic party wanted to inform the French Sociahst s of the real state of affairs in Germany, and at the same time gather information about the probable attitude of the French Sociahst depu- ties on the vote of the war credits. This was in view of the meeting of the Social-Democratic members of the Reichstag which was to precede the full meeting of the House on Tuesday, the 4th.

Miiller laid much stress on the fact that he could not officially commit his party, for neither the executive committee nor the members of the Reichstag had met since the situation had be- come critical. He could not give any informa- tion about what might have happened in Ger- many since Friday morning, when he had left BerUn. Yet he warned us against a too pessi-

38 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

mistic interpretation of the attitude of the im- perial government; he said that the "state of danger of war" was a comparatively harmless step, and much less far-reaching than general mobilisation. He added that he Imew nothing of the mobilisation of the German army, the rumour of which had reached Paris that morning. As Haase had done in Brussels three days be- fore, he insisted on the importance of the recent so^ciahst peace demonstrations in Berlin, and gave us to understand that the government, or at least the Imperial Chancellor, had viewed them with sympathy, and on the whole seemed rather inclined to encourage the anti-war demonstra- tions of the Social-Democrats.

I am to this day convinced that Miiller and Haase both showed genuine candour in taking the "friendhness" of the Chancellor for granted. This judgment is based not only on my knowl- edge of the personal character of these two men, but on my opinion that excessive creduUty towards the government was indeed character- istic of the state of mind of the German Social- Democrats in those days. It is hardly necessary to say that this in my opinion is no excuse, for lack of discernment coupled with lack of cour- age would be anything but an extenuating cir- cumstance.

When seeking a psj^chological ex:planation, however, one should keep in mind that the Ger-

THE "INTERNATIONALE" 39

man Social-Democrats were used to being treated like dogs by the ruling powers. They were sys- tematically kept out of all responsible positions, whether in the imperial or the local government. There were no social relations of any descrip- tion between the Social-Democrats and the representatives of the ruHng classes. It was notorious, for instance, that a Social-Democrat belonging to the bourgeoisie could not marry a woman of his class, unless she were a foreigner or a Jewess — that is to say, another social outlaw. So when suddenly the Social-Democratic leaders found that they were no longer bullied, and that even the Imperial Chancellor graciously conde- scended to talk to them and, seemingly taking them in his confidence, gave them to understand that he considered them as partners in his game, they could not help feeling flattered. People such as these were naturally incUned to beUeve things which favoured the sense of their own importance. This is, probably, the main reason why the Social-Democratic leaders genuinely believed that the Chancellor, and apparently the Kaiser, too, were trying, with their assistance, to maintain peace.

I never had any doubt that Miiller was equally sincere when he represented his party as pre- pared to vote against the war credits. He said that in no case did they intend to vote for them. "Dass man fiir die Kriegskredite stimmt, das

40 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

halte ich fiir ausgeschlossen," were his own words. There were only two appreciable cur- rents of opinion amongst the leaders of his party, those in favour of voting against the war credits, and those who advocated abstention from voting. The latter, however, seemed to him to be a minority.

During the discussion a French Socialist dep- uty asked what would happen if one of the coun- tries involved in the conflict were invaded by surprise. Would there not tlien be a case of self- defence that would justify the vote of the war credits in the country thus attacked?

Miiller answered that he thought this hypothe- sis highly improbable. He based his opinion on the traditional view of the German Social-Dem- ocrats, as often expressed by August Bebel, that modern wars result from general causes of eco- nomic competition between imperialist powers and that the responsibility for them rests on the ruhng classes of all countries. Consequently, the obsolete distinction which some socialists still try to make between the attacking power and the attacked would most probably be impossible to make now. He added that the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 had shown how easy it is for the governments on both sides to represent the enemy as the attacking power, whilst the truth about diplomatic events usually does not become known until all is over. Nevertheless, Miiller

THE ''INTERNATIONALE" 41

said that should, for instance, Russian Cossacks undertake a surprise attack on Eastern Germany without any provocation on the German side, there would probably be made out a case of self- defence that would compel the German Social- Democrats to allow their government the neces- sary means to repulse the invasion. We should not, however, base our probable policy, he con- cluded, on a hypothesis of this sort, but rather on the assumption that it would not be possible to make the necessary distinction between the aggressors and the others. Therefore it would be desirable for the socialists in all countries to adopt a uniform policy.

It soon became apparent that the French So- ciahsts at that time were practically unanimous in considering that the attitude of the French Government left no doubt as to its intention to maintain peace, and, if it should come to the worst, to remain on the defensive. Miiller was given numerous facts to prove this. Renaudel told him how Jaures successfully endeavoured to make the French Cabinet influence Russia in a sense favourable to the peaceful solution of the Austro-Serbian conflict. Reference was also made to the fact, which has since provoked a good deal of comment, that by order of the govern- ment the French troops were being withdrawn to a distance of several miles from the frontier, as an evidence of their defensive intentions and

42 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

wish to avoid provocation. So it seemed un- likely that France should play any other part than of an attacked country, therefore the French Sociahsts did not contemplate voting against the war credits. Part of them, however, might favour abstention, to demonstrate their refusal to accept any responsibility for the con- sequences of a system of competitive armaments which they had always opposed. The conclu- sion, as drawn by the chairman of the confer- ence, was that abstention from voting in every country was the only means by which the Social- ists could maintain a uniform attitude towards the war credits, if circumstances at the time of the vote made such uniformity appear desirable. As Miiller had no authority to give or accept any pledges, it remained well understood that both sociahst parties would act as they thought fit, in the light of the "mutual information" resulting from Miiller's journey.

The effect of Miiller's statements could only be an inducement for the French Socialists to rely on the influence of the German Social-Dem- ocrats with the imperial government, and to re- fuse the vote of the war credits or at least abstain from voting for them. This purpose fitted so well into the general plan of Germany to disor- ganise and demorahse her opponents whilst she was herself collecting all her forces for a supreme blow, that the suspicion that Miiller had acted as

THE "INTERNATIONALE" 43

the tool of the government or of a party abeady an accomplice to it, arose quite naturally. I dare- say, at that time, none of the French SociaHsts who heard Miiller felt any doubt about the hon- esty of his purpose. But when a few months later the facts of the case became public as a con- sequence of an indiscretion from the German side, things were viewed in a different light. In spite of all appearances, I am still convinced there was never any foul play intended. I admit I may err in my belief that Miiller was too hon- est a man to have lent himself to such despicable felony, and that the party executive which sent him was, to my knowledge, not clever enough to conceive it. This is a matter of purely personal judgment. But there are facts to show that the views expressed by Miiller on the 1st of August were identical with those held by the leaders of German Social-Democracy, at least up to the time when he left Berlin. They were quite in the line of the party traditions for several years. The change that made the Social Democrats act in an entirely different way three days later oc- curred during those critical days between Miil- ler's departure from. Berlin on the 30th of July and his return on the 3rd of August.

Some of my friends think I should not be sim- ple enough to believe that a German may be any- thing but a scoundrel, and that it is a mistaken sense of fairness to accept the possibility of any

M THE REMAKING OF A MIND

hypothesis that may be used as an excuse for the attitude of German Social-Democracy. Yet I persist in my judgment. I also think that it provides no excuse whatever for the German socialists. The matter with Germany was some- thing far worse, as I realised soon afterwards, than the wickedness of individual men; and my judgment of the failure of German Social-De- mocracy would be more lenient thati it is now, were I to admit that it was sold by treacherous leaders.

In the same way I should think better than I do of the German nation as a whole if I believed that the Kaiser's responsibility were as colossal as one would gather from a study of contempo- rary history in the "movie" theatres. The more we use fairness in our judgment of individual men and particular events or circumstances, the more severe our indictment of the system will be. And it is to eradicate that system that we set out on a righteous war — and won it.

The story of hoW;, after an arduous and adven- turous journey, during which we were arrested and escaped once, were arrested again, and re- leased after being treated rather roughly by a crowd at Maubeuge, how we finally had to cross the Franco-Belgian frontier on foot under the eye of French gendarmes, does not belong here. We reached Brussels on Sunday afternoon, and there received the assurance that Miiller would

THE "INTERNATIONALE" 45

be back in Berlin in time. I therefore decided not to accompany him any fm^ther and saw him off at the Brussels station. When we shook hands on parting, the last connecting hnk be- tween the socialists of the two groups of powers was severed.

I had told MUller that I would be glad to act again as a Uaison agent if the war broke out and circumstances made it necessary to establish rela- tions between French and German socialists. For I still thought as a citizen of a neutral country. I had indeed considered the possibility of Belgium being dragged into the whirlpool, but I was too absorbed by what was happening among the great Powers to devote much consideration to what might occur at home. I little suspected, on my parting with Miiller, that three days later I should be marching towards the front as a rifle- man in a Belgian volunteer brigade.

Ill

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When the torrent sweeps the man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory.

R. L. Stevenson, Virginihus Puerisque.

On the morning of the 3rd of August, it be- came known that the Belgian Government had refused to consider the proposal made by Berlin the night before, for the passage of the German armies on their march against France. The in- vasion of Belgium began immediately. I was called to arms for garrison duty as a private in the home miUtia. But I made up my mind that it was my duty to do the best I could to help my country repulse the invasion. As I was a good marksman and a fair all-round athlete, this meant more than what I might do with the mil- itia. So I decided to volunteer for service in an active infantry regiment. I enlisted the same afternoon.

Although I believed at the time that my de- cision was the outcome of careful reflection — and in fact, I did as much intensive and serious think- ing as time and circumstances would permit — I realised later that I had obeyed sentiment rather than thought. One may imagine he is listening

46

NINETEEN-FpURTEEN 47

to his intellect in a mental crisis like the one I went through those days, but intellect itself does nothing then but voice the deeper impulses of instinct and temperament. It was not possible to be confronted by a situation so suddenly and so fundamentally different from anything to which my ideas were accustomed, and yet expect the machinery of the mind to act coolly and smoothly as if nothing had changed but certain premises of a logical process.

To most of my countrymen, as to most French- men or Germans at that time, this meant simply to be carried away by the wave of patriotism that swept their country. There was, however, nothing of the sort in my case. I both thought and felt too internationally to act like that ; I had more friends in the German army than in that of my native country. I was perfectly aware — and not only intellectually, but emotionally aware — that there was exactly the same appeal to en- thusiasm and action in the patriotic feelings of the people on either side of the frontier. It did not even require imagination to tell me this. On Saturday, I had witnessed the scenes of mobil- isation in France, the earnest, silent, devoted answer of a whole nation to the call of duty. On Sunday, as I accompanied Hermann Miiller to the station at Brussels, I had been just as im- pressed by the sight of a couple of hundred young Germans taking leave of their parents

48 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

and friends, to obey the order of mobilisation. When their train left amidst the singing of patri- otic hymns and pathetic shouts' of "auf wieder- sehn," I was equally struck with the attitude of a generation that was gladly going to sacrifice itself for a cause in the sacredness of which it believed. On the two following days, I was told by friends who had just returned from Germany, that the outbreak of war, there also, had created an atmosphere of genuine enthusiasm and devo- tion to the duty of what was considered to be national defence. I have learned since, of course, that very soon afterwards, as soon indeed as it seemed that the victorious German armies were going to sweep into Paris, these original feelings became adulterated by brutal "Siegesfreude" and the lust of conquest which the newly discov- ered knowledge of Germany's military superior- ity called forth. But this does not alter the fact that on the 4th of August, whatever the rulers and the mihtary caste may have thought, the mass of the German people honestly believed that they were about to fight for their homes and the integrity of their fatherland, and that there- fore they were inspired by a staunch spirit of patriotic sacrifice. That they were misled does not affect the altruistic nature of such a popular passion, since it leads to the sacrifice of individual safety to a common cause. This is probably why its appeal to the sympathy of those who witness it

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 49

is so strong that to withstand it takes more inde- pendence of character or capacity for cool analy- tical thinking than most people can muster. In fact, most neutrals who lived in Germany in the earlier stages of the war, even amongst those whose sympathies would otherwise have been with the Entente powers, went through the same experience. I have met quite a few Americans in 1918, then rabidly pro-war, who had lived in Germany and remained there through the earlier stages of the war, and who confessed that they too had not escaped the contagion of popular enthusiasm in August, 1914, and even later.

My immunity from it derived from my knowledge that this enthusiasm existed on both sides. Moreover, I had been for years engaged in a peace propaganda which was inspired by the desire to avert such a conflict as had then broken out. And I well knew, as did all those who con- ducted this propaganda, that the creation of such an atmosphere of popular enthusiasm was an es- sential condition to any warfare under the pre- vailing regime of parliamentarianism, control of public opinion by the press, and universal mili- tary service. No government would have dared to risk war without having first created this pop- ular feeling, and facts have proved that every government had at its disposal, directly or indi- rectly, the means to do it.

Yet there was one element of the popular feel-

50 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

ing in Belgium at the time that made me yield to its natural appeal to sympathy. It was very different from the intoxication of a people with the hope of victory. It was a much more exalted feeling than that due to the consciousness that Belgium had been forced into war by the un- provoked attack of an enemy twenty times her superior, with the aggravating circumstance that she sacrificed herself for the sake of loyalty to a pledge.

There was a decisive impulse at last I I felt such an overmastering movement of repulsion against cowardly brutahty, of active sympathy with the victim of an unprovoked aggression, of instinctive desire to share the sacrifice of those who willingly gave up everything for honour's sake, of admiration for the little plucky one against the big brute, that I could not doubt a minute that this call came from what was good and true in me, and had to be obeyed. There was to be no reasoning here beyond ascertaining the fact that Belgium was not using her refusal to break her pledge of neutrality as a mask for the pursuit of selfish interests or some other un- avowed, unclean purpose. And this fact was soon ascertained. I could trust my own judg- ment as to Belgium's innocence, for if anybody could have been biassed against the Belgian Gov- ernment, whose internal and external pohcy I had always execrated, it was I. But no doubt

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 51

was possible here: all Belgium's immediate inter- ests were for yielding to Germany's demand to let her pass; honour alone was against it. The sacrifice was too evident and too grievous to al- low any suspicion as to the purity of the motives that inspired it.

To a systematically suspicious mind, only one alternative remained possible: Belgium's refusal to yield to the German ultimatum might have been a platonic demonstration which, whether followed or not by a feint of mihtary resistance, would have safeguarded her against the suspicion on the French and British side of her having been Germany's accomplice, and at the same time have allowed her to expect reparation from, and reconciliation with, a victorious Germany, whose plans of conquest would not have been seriously hindered.

To entertain such a suspicion would have been, as events showed very soon afterwards, unjust towards the men who then formed the govern- ment. I dare say that on both sides — the ruUng conservative, Roman Cathohc party on the one hand, and the progressive, labour and radical opposition on the other — there was an equal amount of pleasant surprise in finding that the other party too had acted, not on partisan mo- tives, but as men individually hurt in their honour by an insult to the State of which they were citizens.

52 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

German diplomacy had started on its great adventure imder evil auspices indeed. By show- ing right at the outset the brutality of its pur- pose and the ruthlessness of the means which it intended to use, it managed to weld into a common attitude of desperate resistance two powers which otherwise it might perhaps have tried successfully to keep neutral or even favour- ably disposed: the Labour Party and the Roman Cathohcs.

These two antagonistic powers — for in Bel- gium the Roman Catholic Church is essentially a poUtical power, identified with the Conserva- tive Party — together represent practically the whole nation. The Labour Party — probably the strongest of its kind in pre-war Europe — had always been outspokenly socialistic, with particularly accentuated internationalist and an- timilitarist sympathies. The headquarters of the Internationale were in Brussels, so that here the Germans might have found a natural channel to influence labour and socialism the world over. Belgian sociahsm was traditionally opposed to any manifestation of attachment to the State, to such an extent that before the war the waiving of her national flag or the strains of the national anthem would have been taken as an insult in labour circles. Although the Labour Party advo- cated general popular armament, it did so more to oppose the prevailing system of army organ-

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 53

isation, which was calculated to give the ruling classes a willing instrument to support their domination, than to help create a strong weapon for national defence. To the latter it paid in- deed little practical attention. Lastly, the rela- tions between the Belgian Labor Party and the German Social-Democrats were particularly in- timate and cordial, and German socialism was always looked up to for guidance, example and help.

It is true that in the Walloon part of the coun- try, which includes the main industrial districts and socialist strongholds, there was always a great admiration and love for France and French democratic ideals. But this might have been neutralised by the equally strong and nat- ural sympathy of the Flemish for their Teutonic cousins,and by the general execration of Russian Tzarism, which was just then being used in Ger- many as a means to induce the Social-Democrats to support the "holy-war of Teutonic culture against Russian barbarism." A German diplo- mat with no more than the ordinary amount of cunning might thus well have been tempted to use the power of Belgian sociaUsm to create an atmosphere of neutrality and moral isolation around the enemy.

The same is true of the Roman Catholic Party in Belgium, to a greater extent even, for here it was more than neutrality, it was sympathy and

54 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

moral support that Germany might have ex- pected if she had laid her plans more shrewdly. Here she might have relied on the instinctive solidarity of purpose between the supporters of the principle of centraUsed and autocratic au- thority in ecclesiastical and moral matters, as represented by the Roman Church, and the censer-bearers of political despotism, as repre- sented by the Kaiser. The subsequent attitude of many dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church in neutral countries and in Italy, Ire- land and South America, has been significant enough in this respect. Kaiserism and Popery were the alhed crusaders of feudalism, temporal and spiritual. That the rulers of Germany were aware of this natural sympathy is evi- denced by an utterance of Kaiser Wilhelm him- self in the first year of the war^ which was duly reported to the Belgian Government at the time. The Kaiser, whilst on a tour along the Western front and through occupied Belgium, paid a visit to the famous Abbey of Benedictine monks at Maredsous. He had a talk with the Prior, who happens to be a celebrated scholar, one of the most authorised representatives of Cathohcism in Belgium. The Kaiser imbosomed himself to him by complaining bitterly about the lack of understanding and sympathy the Belgian Catho- lics had shown him. "And'yet," he said, "do we not all stand for the maintenance of the same

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 55

principle, authority? Is it not a pity that we have been divided?"

Apart from these general reasons, there are other motives which might have made it worth while for Germany to try to win the support of the Belgian CathoUcs. They looked up to the "Centrum," the political party of the Roman CathoUcs in Germany, much in the same way as the Belgian Socialists did to German Social- Democracy. Their stronghold was in the Flem- ish part of the country, where there was a distinct racial sympathy for Germany. France was in- tensely unpopular with them, for pohtical and isocial reasons as the Mother of Revolutions, and for ecclesiastical motives as the pioneer of the emancipation of the State from clerical power. Especially since the separation of State and Church and the expulsion of the congregations that had rebelled against the law on popular edu- cation, there was hardly a sermon preached in a Belgian church which did not refer to France as an instrument of the devil and a hotbed of cor- ruption and infidelity. Germany, on the con- trary, now that the last echoes of the Bismarck- ian "Kulturkampf" had long ago died out, was praised for the particular friendliness which the imperial government had of late shown towards the Church. Last, but not least, the Hapsburg dynasty, which had so much contributed to strengthen the political position of the Church in

56 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

the eighteenth century, when Belgium was under Austrian rule, was held in veneration by all Bel- gian Catholics. When Austria declared war on Serbia, the newspapers controlled by the Cath- olic government took the Austrian side out- spokenly, and played a conspicuous part in the vituperation of the Serbs.

Yet, after the German ultimatum, there was only one Belgian Catholic — old Count Woeste, the leader of the reactionary wing of his party — who declared himself in favour of a policy of pla- tonic protest, without active resistance to Ger- many's plans. He found nobody to follow him. On the contrary, all through the German occu- pation, the Belgian Catholics, headed by Cardi- nal Mercier, were a very energetic element of patriotic resistance, with the exception of a very small part of the Flemish low clergy who sym- pathised with the so-called activist movement fostered by the German Government.

Thus in a few hours Germany transformed a peace-loving nation, which had always been fa- vourably disposed towards her, over whom she had established an intellectual and commercial influence almost amounting to a protectorate, and which was anything but prone to militant nation- alism, into her bitterest foe. There is something almost pathetic in the curse on Germany's des- tiny that made her, right at the outset, disclose her true purpose by an act that outraged the con-

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 57

science of the whole world, nay, that caused the world to realise that it had a conscience — the act that made a Chinese child say: Belgium is not a road, it is a country. It was the more pathetic, in that it turned a nation of pacifists and anti- militarists into a nation of soldiers.

It was not the accident of my Belgian birth, it was the fate that turned Belgium into the symbol of violated right that made me a soldier. I think I should have felt and acted exactly the same way if I had not been a Belgian. True, if I had lived thousands of miles away, the strength of my impulse would have been less, for exactly the same reason that makes one more impressed by a quarrel next door than by a catastrophe that kills ten thousand people on a faraway conti- nent ; but the nature of the impulse would have been the same. If you walk along the street and see a big hooligan attack a weak, unsuspecting woman, you do not stop to consider who the woman is. You go for the bully. That was ex- actly the impulse that moved me, and as I was right in the middle of the fray, it was strong enough to draw me in.

It mattered precious little what my view of Belgian patriotism was. Who cares who the woman is? I have admitted already that I had several reasons to find fault with her. As a Socialist, and as a supporter of Flemish aspira- tions in favour of cultural autonomy, there were

58 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

many reasons why my patriotism was not ortho- dox. I wished fervently to see all frontiers dis- appear and all civilised nations become part of one vast union; but in the meantime, I felt that the same principles of common honesty that are a condition to organised life amongst individuals should equally apply to relations between states. Indeed, I cannot conceive of any higher form of international organisation — call it if you will, the United States of the World — that could develop except from a gradual recognition and universal application of those same principles of mutual fairness and loyalty. I certainly found many faults in Belgian institutions, laws, and charac- teristics; but after all, it was up to the Belgian people to change these things if they wanted to. Their Constitution, which provides for popular self-government, gives them the means to do it. Nothing, however, can be done unless that self- government be made safe against the aggression of a foreign power. There was such a bitter so- cial struggle in Belgium for the improvement of labour conditions and labour legislation, which were very much behind those of the neighbouring great countries, that Belgian Socialists often quoted Jules Guesde's saying that the wealthy and the poor of a nation have but one thing in common: the battlefield. But even though this should be so, is it not an essential interest of both combatants that this battlefield should be kept

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 59

free from foreign interference? Is it not of equal importance to them that the rules of the tournament, as set by the community of political institutions, of speech and traditions, should not be upset?

As to the grievances of the Flemings, they were serious enough, but since the Belgian Con- stitution puts the Flemish and French languages on the same footing, and since the Flemings form a majority of the nation, there is not one of these grievances — lack of a Flemish University, insuf- ficient administrative autonomy, exclusive use of French in the army, etc. — which could not be re- dressed by using the liberties for propaganda and facilities for amending the law, which the Consti- tution of Belgium provides. More than that, the protection of these liberties and facilities against Prussianism appeared as an essential condi- tion to the realisation of Flemish aspirations. Whether the Flemings liked an army command- ed in French or not, whether they preferred something different from a common army or a common administration altogether, mattered lit- tle, since the German invasion compelled them to use whatever army they had to defend the democratic institutions that were essential to any increase of their cultural autonomy.

But what is the use of going into such details of argument? Regardless of any particular de- sires or ideals as to what our state ought to be

60 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

and ought to do, there, in spite of all its imper- fections and shortcomings, it stood and had to be maintained if any improvement were to be pos- sible. It was being attacked by another, larger state, for having refused to break a pledge to which this other state itself had been a party. It had either to admit that any state stronger than itself, might, regardless of right and treaties, force its will upon it, or else to fight. It chose to fight, and the whole people backed it.

To defend Belgium was, therefore, to fight for something very much more important than that this particular country should continue to exist. It meant fighting for the right of nations to choose their own form of government, and to have that form of government respected by all other states in accordance with the principles of common fairness and loyalty to promises, which, by universal consent, govern the relations of men.

The stronger my reluctance, as an internation- alist and a socialist, to follow the lead of those who beheved in "my country, right or wrong," or to consider the problem of the war from the view- point of any particular nation, the clearer was my realisation that the wrong done to Belgium was but a symbol of the menace of German ag- gression to what is an essential condition to so- cialism, as I conceived it, and to internationalism itself. Not until I shouldered a rifle did I know what it meant to be a citizen of the world.

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The first three or four months of the war were a period of purely animal hfe, void of all think- ing. This period covers the first phase of opera- tions, that of open warfare which preceded the stabihsation of the Belgian front on the Yser. I was first a private in the infantry; later a cor- poral; and then a sergeant. The actual hard- ships were terrible, much more so than anything that happened to any army since, and could prob- ably only be compared to those of the Serbian army in its great retreat. Yet these 'months were one of the happiest times of my life.

This was mostly due to purely physiological reasons: the joy of open-air hfe, of continuous exercise and the exhilaration of physical adven- ture. Add to this the happiness of comradeship, the novelty and freedom of our unconventional life, and the smihng, fatahstic thoughtlessness created by constant danger under continuously varying circumstances. I felt like a boy of fif- teen throughout. Even if I had had time to bother about anything but the elementary needs of physical hfe, I do not think I should have done so. I felt free from all cares. Only one thing mattered: to remain ahve if possible; and that could not be helped by worrying.

Those of my comrades who belonged to the so- called educated classes all felt more or less the same way, with the exception, of course, of those who were physically unable to stand the hard-

62 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

ships of our life. I must, however, have felt the happiness of it with more than usual intensity. Thanks to tKe strength of my health, my train- ing as a sportsman, and my naturally sanguine and gay disposition, the physical sufferings ap- peared to me but as the magnified vicissitudes of a picnic. The filth at one time became very dis- agreeable, but it helped one to appreciate all the more the value of a pail of cold water and some of the main elementary joys of life connected with its use. I have always strongly resented the necessity of doing intellectual work, a real torture to me at times. My native instincts and my bodily constitution are those of a rancher, of a hunter — or of a soldier. I felt unspeakable delight at having at last struck a way of living that suited these fundamental instincts.

Some of the happy carelessness of those days may also have been due to the certainty that, by obeying a good impulse — and the happiness at- tained thereby proved that it was good — I re- lieved myself of the burden of self -questioning. I was moreover no more than a particle of a huge machine over which I had no control. I did not even know enough of its working to be able to form any ideas about it. I certainly knew less about war operations than the man in the street ten thousand miles away from the front; for I hardly ever caught sight of a newspaper, and all that I knew about the operations I was engaged

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in was what concerned my own company or bat- talion. I never dreamt when we were harassing the German lines of communication early in Sep- tember, that we were helping to win the battle of the Marne. I did not know that I had been in the retreat of the Belgian army from Antwerp, until it was all over. All I had to do was to obey orders, and get as many hours of sleep as I could to rest my tired body. With a clear conscience and the constant immanence of death, physical wants and bodily pain became in themselves a joy. So great is the delight of a soul at peace with itself, since it has found in submission to duty a single all-dominating purpose.

It did not require a great effort of imagination to realise that my chances of seeing it through unhurt were but slight. I remember having dis- cussed this subject more than once with some of my comrades, detachedly and almost jokingly, but with the precise judgment of surgeons de- bating a "case." My conclusion was that if I might choose between the certainty of losing a limb and the uncertainty of my fate as a soldier, the odds were such that the safest choice would have been the loss of a limb. This careless state of mind may seem strange in view of the fact that I had left a wife and child at home. I feel bound to confess that, much though I loved them, I bothered very httle about them in those days. My wife had considered my enlistment as a mat-

64 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

ter of course and been very brave, and my atti- tude of mind towards her was exactly the same as towards a soldier-comrade : she too had to take chances. She told me much later that she had never been really worried about me either; the certitude that, whatever happened, I would not get killed, never left her. I can only explain this mutual freedom from fear by the fact that we were both exalted with fighting determination to such a pitch as to trust bhndly in Fate. Such can be the power of spirit over flesh.

It was about this time that Karl Liebknecht came to Brussels and saw my wife. He had been my most intimate friend during my stay in Ger- many, when he was already concentrating his efforts on antimilitarist propaganda. His en- deavor to bring the Social-Democratic Party to an attitude of active opposition against the ultra- militarist tendencies of imperial Germany had then met with little success. He hoped, however, that the younger generation would be more re- ceptive, and therefore took a leading part in the socialist young people's movement, which about that time began to assume a certain importance in Germany. My efforts were directed towards the same aim. Together, we created the Inter- national Socialist Young People's Federation, of which Liebknecht was president and I secre- tary, and which we mainly considered as a means to promote an antimilitarist spirit in Germany

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and Austria. I collaborated with him in writing the pamphlet "Militarismus und Antimihtar- ismus," for which he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment in a fortress.

Our friendship was, however, based on some- thing more than intellectual collaboration. I never agreed with all his ideas, thinking him somewhat crankish and too impulsive at times. I am sure, nevertheless, that he would never have become the fanatic he was, in the last bolshevik stage of his career, had it not been for the over- straining of his nerves, caused by years of perse- cution, that made him forget everything save his fury at the cowardice and hypocrisy of the German Majority Socialists. Yet it was that very downrightness and idealistic impulsiveness which strongly differentiated him from the Ger- mans of his generation, that made me like him so. He, likewise, showed himself very partial to me. He was a great admirer of Belgian social- ism, and he often said that he expected the Bel- gians to give European socialism an intellectual lead, since they combined the thoroughness of mind of the Teutonic races with the energy of the Anglo-Saxons and the fiery enthusiasm of the Latins.

I had not heard from him since he spent a couple of days with me in Brussels, a few weeks before the war. All I knew about his attitude towards the war was that he was one of the

66 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

fourteen Social-Demo6ratie members of the Reichstag who had abstained from voting the war credits on August 4?th. In the second week of September, he visited occupied Belgium to learn the truth about the mutual accusations of atrocities. It is this journey that convinced him of the falsehood of the German stories about franc-tireurs, and of the truth of the atrocities perpetrated by the German soldiery. His de- termination openly to oppose war dates from that visit.

^ On his arrival in Brussels, he went to see my wife. Two Belgian Socialist deputies, who had accompanied him from Liege, were with him. They treated him very cordially, since he had given unmistakable evidence of his friendly feel- ings, not only by his statements in broken French, but by his successful intervention in favour of ill-treated Belgian civilians threatened with execution by the German troops at Andenne and near Tirlemont. These good people were somewhat surprised to find that my wife received Liebknecht rather coolly, and for a couple of hours talked to him in German in a tone of vio- lent reproach, which Liebknecht received with evident signs of emotion. Tears filled his eyes when she told him what she thought of the atti- tude of the German Social-Democrats. He apologised for not having voted against the war credits himself by saying that he was at the time

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too badly informed, but he had since realised that Germany had been the aggressor and that Bel- gium's resistence was justified. When she told him that I, the antimilitarist, had become a sol- dier in order to fight against militarism, he said that I was right, and that in my place he would have done the same. This statement was report- ed to me a few weeks later, and did more to strengthen me in my attitude than anybody else's opinion would have done.

I was to need strengthening sooner than I ex- pected. After the battle of the Yser, the monot- onous routine of trench warfare succeeded the enthusiasm of the first three months of open fighting. I was sent to the rear as an instructor and spent three months drilling recruits in camps in Normandy. Everything was in a terrible state of disorganisation there, and the hardships which had been found so easy to bear in the brunt of fighting now became almost intolerable, all the more so as they were avoidable, and largely due to the incapacity for organisation and improvisa- tion of the military bureaucrats in the rear, who had found themselves suddenly transplanted from their old Belgian barracks into a foreign environment. The loss of many brave comrades fallen in battle, which I had hardly time to think about when it happened, began to weigh heav- ily on my mind, now that I could collect my thoughts. Altogether, it was a time of depres-

68 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

sion, a natural reaction following the exaltation of the beginning. So I seized the first oppor- tunity that presented itself to return to the front, as a Belgian liaison officer attached to a British division in Flanders. Such high expectations were aroused at that time by the ide'a of the "spring offensive" — expectations that were to be renewed with equal want of success for four years — that I little suspected that I would have to remain for fourteen months in the same sector, with Gve different divisions reheving each other in succession. It was the famous "Plug Street Wood" area, a much quieter part of the front than the Ypres salient proper or most places further south, but "lively" enough to make such a long stay without the interruption of a period in rest billets somewhat of a strain on the nerves. Above all, it was a dreary country. There was, along the line of trenches, the desolation of the muddy fields of Flanders; while our billets were situated amid the gloom and sordidness of the dirty industrial villages, with their endless rows of poor brick-houses. It well deserved to be the scene of Captain Bairnsfather's first inspiration as a caricaturist of the grim humour of the front. The whole spirit of the "Plug Street Wood" area lives in his deservedly popular cartoons "Staying at a Farm," "This Muddy War," "Di- recting the Way at the Front," and many others. This period of trench warfare, that, including

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 69

my subsequent return to the front of the Belgian army as a trench mortar officer covers the whole of 1915, 1916 and part of 1917, was a time of painful doubting, searching introspective analy- sis, and uninterrupted struggle against moral depression.

At first the war had appeared to me as a mere fight of the Belgians and the French, helped by England, for the repulse of invasion. Our "war aim" was to protect our homes, the integrity of our territory, the existence of our institutions, our nationahty itself, against aggression from a power that had set out to annihilate them by a sudden, masterly stroke. This aim would have been attained by beating the invader back behind his own frontier.

The stabiUsation of the Western front, how- ever, soon made it appear that a purely strategi- cal decision of that sort was not to be expected. At the same time it became evident that there were other issues involved, incomparably more important and intricate than the mere clearing of the invaded territory from the armies of occupa- tion.

There was Russian Czardom, the presence of which amongst the Entente powers did not fit in with the theory, based on an impulsive general- isation of the case of France and Belgium, that we were fighting in defence of advanced demo- cratic institutions against the aggi-ession of a

70 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

backward despotic regime. Then England, her colonies and her dominions soon began to throw such a weight into the balance, that the war de- veloped primarily into a contest of power be- tween the British and the German empires. The Japanese undertaking against Kiau-Tshau, the expeditions against the German colonies all over the world, the fighting on the Egyptian border, in Mesopotamia and on the Gallipoli Peninsula clearly showed that something more was at stake than the possession of Belgium and the North of France. The British fleet, which in the begin- ning had been but a means to protect the lines of communication between the old country, her expeditionary force and her Empire, and to keep the German navy from the scene of action, now became an offensive weapon in an economic war against blockaded Germany, a war which was much more terrible and promised ultimately to be much more decisive than any operations on land. Germany retaliated by starting on her submarine campaign. The whole world began to take sides. Countries entered the lists whose interests were not, like England's, directly af- fected by the territorial extension of Germany along the shores of the North Sea and the Chan- nel. Italy threw in her lot with the Entente. Turkey and Bulgaria sided with the Central Powers. In practically every neutral country, America included, the propaganda by the bel-

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 71

ligerent powers and the economic problems caused by the blockade of Germany and the sup- ply of the belhgerents with foodstuffs and war implements created antagonistic currents of feel- ing and clashes of interests.

But it also appeared that the war was to be something more than a mihtary and naval con- test of power. Cleavages of opinion became apparent within the borders of both warring groups. The seeming unanimity of the German people at the beginning of the war was broken by the protests of Liebknecht and of a growing minority of Independent Sociahsts, clamouring that they had been misled in August, 1914. In Russia, some of the radical elements supported the war, the others were intensely against it, whilst the government's energetic action in the suppression of vodka and the Czar's promise of independence to Poland suggested fundamental changes in the attitude of the ruling powers. In South Africa there appeared to be a strong re- belhon, not entirely due to German propaganda, against mihtary participation. It seemed as though an increasing fraction of the Irish were going to avail themselves of Britain's difficulties to foster a revolution with or without Germany's support. It became known that the Slav nation- ahties of the Hapsburg monarchy, which seemed at first to have been caught by the general war- fever, now took an independent and almost

72 THE REMAKING. OF A MIND

threatening attitude. The Pope, followed by most of the representatives of the Catholic Church in the neutral states, committed himself to a policy of peace by negotiation that public opinion in the Entente countries took for an at- tempt to favour Germany's ambitions and save his beloved Austria from disruption. It became evident that a considerable part of the popula- tion of Alsace-Lorraine, far from being bullied into submission by the increased ruthlessness of the Prussian methods of administration, mani- fested a desire to return to France. In occu- pied Belgium, the * Germans encouraged the movement of a minority of Flemings that aimed at separation from the Belgian Kingdom with the assistance and under the protectorate of the German Empire. Last but not least, there ap- peared to be amongst the working classes of the Entente countries, which had at first seemed to give wholehearted support to a war of national defence, an active and growing minority of dis- senters, who found strong support amongst the socialists of neutral countries.

The first statements of these latters' views came to my notice in November, 1914, when I again had leisure to read. They were in maga- zines, newspapers and pamphlets by British, French, Dutch and Swiss socialists of the pacifist type. My first impression was painful resent- ment of what I thought to be a wrongful lack

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 73

of appreciation of the motives of those socialists who, hke myself, had accepted the duty of taking part in the defence of their country. But I soon realised that the matter deserved very serious attention. There was nothing in what they said, however unacceptable and unjust it seemed to be at first sight, which did not call forth an echo in my innermost sentiments.

Some of those who were saying that this war was nothing but a conflict between two groups of imperialist powers for world dominion, and that therefore it should be internationally op- posed by labour, I knew to be men and women of high intellectual standing and unexceptional moral character. Up to August, 1914, I had been in complete sympathy with them. What, then, had come between us ? Why, in a crisis like this, when our lives and the fate of our nations were at stake, should we stand in diametrically opposed camps?

The principles on which their reasoning rested had always been mine, and the sentiments to which they appealed were the very sentiments that had made me act as I had acted. They spoke of the ideal of international brotherhood, of the criminal fratricide of workers, whose in- terests were common, in the cause of an egoistic class of oppressors. Was it possible that I should have been misled to the extent of lending a willing hand in such a cause? The very weight

74 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

of the charge made a thorough self-examination necessary.

There was one of their statements, and appar- ently a fundamental one, the truth of which I could not deny. This war had been brought about by the antagonism of interests of imperial- ist powers. It was not a freak of history. It was the outcome, the unavoidable outcome, of the capitalist system of production. The Marxian theory explained how this system led to the pro- duction of a larger quantity of goods than could be bought by the income of those who made them. Hence a growing tendency in all industrial coun- tries to secure new outlets abroad, under the pro- tection of their flag, for this surplus of produc- tion. At the same time, it became more and more necessary to draw raw materials and food supplies from foreign countries. If the latter were on a lower level of civilisation, this was a further incentive to gain political control over their territories. All this meant colonialism, im- perialism and competitive armaments on land and sea. These tendencies were common to all great powers and, as the surface of the world is limited, naturally brought them into conflict with each other. The chief antagonism since the be- ginning of this century was between the British Empire and Germany. Between these two, a tension had arisen that could only lead to war. England's development as an industrial power

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 75

had been earlier than Germany's, and she had secured most of the world before Germany's hunger awoke. But the last score of years had witnessed an enormous expansion of German in- dustry and trade, whilst England's position in the world's trade had remained by comparison stationary. Satiated British imperialism could neither give its possessions away, nor tolerate the formation of another world-wide power, so that German imperialism could not get what it wanted for its continued development without taking it from somebody else. This deadlock was bound to end with a clash of arms.

Similarly, the internationalist argued that the attitude of the other powers, like Russia, France and Italy, was dictated by the desire of their capitalist class for imperiahst expansion. The national interests of the capitalists, they said, need not, however, concern the working classes. Labour's interest was the same the world over, and could only be promoted by international un- derstanding and brotherhood. Therefore, labour should not take any part in this war, for which the capitalist classes alone were responsible and for which they should be held up to universal opprobrium. The only way to end this war, and even to end war altogether, was for the Socialists to oppose it in every country. They should hinder their governments in its prosecution, and, by taking the political and industrial power from

76 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

the then ruling classes, establish a proletarian regime which would make and maintain peace as the natural expression of the international soli- darity of labour. The Sociahsts who for some different reason were helping their governments to prosecute the war were either traitors to the cause of socialism or victims of nationalist intoxi- cation. They were putting the interests of the capitalist class of their country above the inter- ests and ideals of the international proletariat.

This was, in its most consistent and clearest form, the theme of those socialists who called themselves internationalists. It found expres- sion in the international conferences called at Zimmerwald and Kienthal, in Switzerland, by majorities of the socialist parties of Italy and Switzerland, the bolshevik fraction of Russian socialism, and minorities from France, England, Germany, Austria and a few other countries.

There was another section of European social- ism, comprising the majority of the German, Austrian and Hungarian Social - Democrats, more or less openly supported by some fractions of the Sociahst Parties in the Balkan States, Scandinavia (especially in Denmark), Italy and the United States, who took a view that differed both from that of the ''Majority Socialists" of the Entente countries and that of the "interna- tionalists." Like the latter, they emphasised the imperialist character of the war, but they put

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 77

the chief responsibility on the powers arrayed against the Central Empires, and advocated the support of the latter governments by the labour movements in their countries. I hardly need point out that, although I carefully listened to what they had to say in defence of the German and Austrian case, I was from the beginning so unfavourably disposed towards them that my judgment and sentiment were never disturbed. I found it much more troublesome, however, to dispose of the claims of the internationalists. I confess that, for two years at least, they made my mind a prey to doubt. This doubt was a tor- ture, for it threatened to undermine the sound- ness of a cause for which at any moment I might have to give my life. I hasten to add that the frequent mental conflicts thus caused invariably resulted in my conclusion that I had been right in August, 1914. Even while they lasted, they never affected my will to do my duty as a soldier.

IV

THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM

"Alles erklart sich wohl," so sagt mir ein Schiiler, "aus jenen Theorien, die uns weislich der Meister gelehrt." Habt Ihr erst einmal das Kreuz von Holze tiichtig gezimmert, Passt ein lebendiger Leib freilich zur Strafe daran.

Goethe.

In spite of the pain caused me by the doubts arising from the criticisms of the international- ists, they were so beneficial to me that I am grate- ful now for every hour of merciless self -analysis they cost me. For this analysis has given me much more than the certitude that ITiad not been mistaken in my view of what was at stake in August, 1914. To it I owe the lasting benefit of having put my whole method of thinking, my attitude towards society and the world, through a fiery test that, as I now reaUse, has emanci- pated me from many things that were not a part of my true self. It has torn from my eyes the veil of doctrinarianism. It is less to the ordeal of shell and shot than to this hammering test of my conscience that I owe the remaking of my mind.

The premises of the internationalists' thesis — the imperiahst origin of this war — was correct,

78

THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 79

but the deduction they drew from this — the nec- essity of opposition to the war in every country — was entirely wrong. Its original fault was due, not to any technical mistake in the reasoning, but to the method itself on which that reasoning was based. I found this false method to be at the bottom of many more wrong deductions than this particular one. The same logical defect, for in- stance, lies at the root of the theory of bolshe- vikism. It consists in the assumption, which I think illegitimate, that an actual attitude towards an historical fact can be derived by way of logical deduction from abstract predicates gained, not by the study of these facts them- selves, but by induction from other previous facts.

I consider the first part of the international- ists' thesis as unassailable; that the war was the outcome of antagonisms of interest resulting from the need of imperiaUst expansion of coun- tries at an advanced stage of capitalist develop- ment. Many non-socialists undoubtedly agree with it, accepting, for instance, its particular ap- plication to the economic motives of German- British antagonisms. The economic conditions in which this war originated are those of capital- ism in its satiated, imperialist stage, where its faculty of quantitative production has outgrown the possible needs of the home market. In so far it is right to say that this war was a capitalist

80 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

war, or an imperialist war. It is also right to say that socialism, that is an hypothetical social system based on public ownership and democratic control of the main means of production, would make any such war impossible.

But what is capitalism? What is imperialism? What is socialism? Do these words refer to ac- tual historic facts, to things as they are or were in a certain place at a certain time? By no means. Socialism, as a system of social organ- isation, is a hypothesis. And there never has been a moment in history when one could say: now capitaUsm is. Nothing ever is, except an immense diversity of fluctuating facts. Every- thing is on its way to become something else. Our mind cannot even grasp an isolated physical phenomenon until it has already ceased to be what it was when we recorded it. What we call capitalism, or feudalism, or primitive communism, are certain imaginary combinations of charac- teristics which a large number of economic facts over a long historical period have in common. These abstractions do not, however, coincide, at any actual time, with the whole of the economic facts even in a single spot. In every civilised country we now have methods of production of the capitalist system alongside with survivals of pre-capitalist stages, as well as methods which are abeady incompatible with the idea of capi- talism to the extent that they may be called feel-

THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 81

ers towards socialism. But even if we confine ourselves to certain phenomena in which we rec- ognize the characteristics of capitalism, who would say: this is actual capitaUsm? Do not we all see that these phenomena are no more today what they were yesterday, and know that they will not be tomorrow what they are today? Moreover, is not the very assumption that there are eco- nomic facts as distinct from say psychological or political facts, evidence that, for the sake of clear thinking, we draw in our minds imaginary boundaries between different classes of phenom- ena? Yet we know that in the real social world facts are so mingled that we can speak of con- sidering one and the same occurrence from an economic, a psychological, a pohtical, or any other viewpoint.

The mere fact that abstract notions like those of capitalism and sociahsm are static, whilst the actual realities of life are dynamic, proves that coincidence between the two is a mythical as- sumption. For if we stick to the abstraction of say imperialism as the system of politics that cor- responds to the satiated stage of capitalism, and without more ado apply this to facts of contem- porary history, we shall have to put Woodrow Wilson and Kaiser Wilhelm the Second under the same label as representatives of capitalist im- perialism.

To such an absurd conclusion we come if.

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whilst dealing with facts, we indiscriminately use, as elements of the same logical process, facts and categories. Capitahsm, imperialism, social- ism are categories. War itself — ^War with a big W, War in general — is a category. They are imaginary things, equipped with attributes which result from generalisation and analytical induc- tion. We use these categories as instruments necessary to scientific thinking. But we should keep in mind the difference between the instru- ment of thinking and its object. Categories and facts are on as different a plane as a chemical for- mula and the matter it stands for.

This is not an indictment of abstract thinking, but a warning against its misuse. It is thanks to our faculties of imagination and abstraction that we are able to think scientifically. Without the use of such categories as capitalism, imperialism and socialism we should be helpless to find a clue to whatever knowledge that matters in the in- finite variety and complexity of events. To show the limits beyond which they should not be used is to pay a compliment to their usefulness.

I should not think it worth while to expatiate on such commonplace notions if I had not been made to realise the tremendous harm done in these days, when pubUc education and the news- papers give a cheap veneer of knowledge, by the indiscriminate propagation of catchwords which the masses too easily take for granted as facts.

THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 83

I say this with purposed reference to the sociahst movement.

To people with as pronounced a faculty for abstract thinking as the Germans and the Jews, this sort of mischief with catchwords has been a curse. The Russian sociahsts, who have sat at the feet of both German and Jewish masters, have learned from them the lesson of Bolshevik- ism, which is nothing but an attempt to apply to certain actual conditions abstract doctrines which have been derived from conditions entirely different. By this I do not mean to explain the Bolshevik movement by the accident of a flaw in a logical process. To do this would be to make their mistake my own, and confuse the abstract with the concrete. Bolshevikism as a movement has its origin in certain actual conditions, to which I will refer later, but as a theory, it is a brilliant illustration of the absurdity of making actual deductions from categories.

Marx is often held responsible for this propen- sity not only of the Bolsheviki, but of all the doctrinal socialists. It is true that the Bolshe- viki and most of the "Internationahst" Sociahsts claim to be the representatives of "pure" Marx- ianism. But on the other hand we find many, if not most of those socialists who before the war played the main part in the spreading of Marx- ian principles and their apphcation to pohtics, in the ranks of those whom their reaUstic view of

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the war caused to be branded by the Bolsheviki as "vulgar patriots" or "opportunists." I will mention Karl Kautsky foremost, who has achieved more than anybody else as a student and exponent of Marxianism. As one of the leaders of the Independent Social-Democrats in Germany, he has emphatically repudiated the Bolshevik version of internationalism and ac- cepted the theory of German and Austrian re- sponsibility for the war. In England the leader of the Marxian school of socialism, H. M. Hynd- man, has fully deserved the epithet of an ultra- patriotic socialist. The father of Russian Marx- ianism, George Plekhanoff, was one of the most ardent supporters of the war. In France, the old pioneer of Marxianism, Jules Guesde, who in 1914 became a member of the first Ministry of National Defence, represented an almost ex- treme patriotic view, whilst his younger follow- ers like Compere-Morel and those around him were also decidedly pro-war. In Marxian litera- ture, Belgium used to be represented by Louis de Brouckere and myself. We both enlisted the same day. In neighbouring Holland, the father of Dutch Marxianism, Frank van der Goes, from the beginning expressed his agreement with the win-the-war sociahsts of the Entente coun- tries. Even in the United States, the attitude of most of the foreign-born members of the So- cialist Party should not make one forget that

THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 85

there are many Marxians amongst those Amer- ican socialists who left the party because of its failure to support the war.

All these men, by the way, belong to a type very different from the cosmopolitan set pre- dominantly of East European origin, who form the background of international bolshevikism. It strikes me that none of the names I have just mentioned is Jewish, and that half of them de- note an origin from among the so-called upper strata of European society. I point this out merely as a contribution to a psychological ex- planation, and not by any means as an attack on the Jewish race. It is quite wrong to assume that Bolshevik doctrinarianism is practically confined to the Jews, or that there are no Jews among the win-the-war sociahsts of the Entente countries and their sympathisers elsewhere. Al- though the Jews, as a cosmopolitan element par excellence y form a particularly favourable re- cruiting ground for bolshevikism and other "in- ternationalist" doctrines, it would be a danger- ous disregard of the importance of the causes in which these doctrines originate to ascribe them to mere racial circumstances. There is many a Bronstein, alias Trotzki, amongst the bolshevik leaders in all countries, but there are also such aristocratic names as Wladimir Ulianoff Lenine and Henriette Roland Hoist-van der S chalk, be- sides a few as genuinely Prussian as Franz Meh-

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ring, as typically Scandinavian as Sverre Krogh or Hinke Bergegren, as authentically Anglo- Saxon as Lansbury or Debs, or as truly Latin as Bourderon, Loriot, Brizon and Raffin- Dugens. On the other hand, there is no lack of Jews in Russia and elsewhere, amongst those sociahsts, Marxian and otherwise, who sup- ported the war for Democracy or even took a combatant part in it. Yet when all this is said, it remains a fact that, as a rule, the attitude of mind of the Marxian Sociahsts has been largely influenced by the extent to which they were as- sociated with the national civilisation of their countries. Hence the different frame of mind of those whose forefathers have been for many generations linked with this life and those who have never been allowed to strike their roots anywhere.

Marxianism is not a system, but a method. The results obtained by this method depend on who uses it, how he uses it, and what he uses it for. So much is certain, that Marx himself has used it in a very different way from those who now lay claim to the monopoly of his inspiration. If he were still ahve he probably would not be a Marxian.

It is true that the strength of Marx, like that of Spinoza and most Jewish thinkers, lay in his power of abstract thinking. The claim of his faithful famulus Engels that he made socialism

THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 87

scientific is not to be taken in the sense that he equipped the socialist movement with a perfect system of final knowledge about the laws of so- cial development. It merely means that he had been the first to base his view of socialism not on Utopian desires, but on a study, by scientific methods, of the laws of economic and historic development, the unavoidable outcome of which he thought sociahsm would be. He was com- pelled to use inductive analysis in order to dis- cover the laws of capitahst economy. About the middle of the nineteenth century, long before capitalism had reached the acme of its develop- ment, he had to show the historic necessity of so- cialism and to formulate its programme. The concrete knowledge of contemporary facts ar- rived at by Marx, important though it was, is anything but final. Who would go back to works written half a century ago for an accurate description of a system of production which has made more progress since these works were writ- ten than it had before? Surely there are pages in Marx's writings where his prophetic genius still strikes one with amazement; but prophecy, though it may be evidence of the extraordinary power of a scientific method, is not in itself a method. Even such Marxian theories as that of value, which depend on the knowledge of actual facts, no longer appear to us, in the light of what has since happened, as a final explanation;

88 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

they are now merely an important and brilliant chapter in the history of economic doctrine. They were, as all similar theories before and after, no more than a hypothesis of which the relative soundness is to be measured by its rela- tion to the facts known at the time when it was conceived.

A much more lasting value attached to the method of investigation used by Marx. His interpretation of the struggle of economic class interests as the dynamic power of social progress has revolutionised methods of historical investi- gation. His explanation of conflicting class in- terests by the system of production prevailing at a given period, and of this system of production as the result of a given state of development of the means of production has proved a particu- larly valuable clue to historical research. The value of this clue is so far from being exhausted, that there are whole fields of investigation — e. g., the history of science, the progress of strategy, and the development of nationality — ^where the first attempts at utilisation of the Marxia^ method have not been undertaken until quite re- cently. On the other hand, investigations like those set on foot of late years by Rudolf Hilferd- ing on financial capitalism, by Karl Kautsky on the theory of population, and by Rosa Luxem- burg on the economic background of imperialism have shown that even on Marx's own field of re-

THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 89

search, his method could still yield interesting results.

But is it as needful of amendment as, for in- stance, was that of Darwin in the realm of natu- ral science. A method of investigation is but an instrument, and when the instrument ceases to be perfectible, it is no longer of any use. The Marxian method no more leads to absolute truth in matters where truth is but a relative and sub- jective quantity than any other process for the interpretation of history ever has done or could do. But, in my opinion, it is still far from the stage where it will cease to be the most useful of all instruments at our disposal. Whether the label be Marxian or not, I do not think that the European labour movement will readily give up such an intellectual weapon. The appeal of the labour movement to social idealism is all the stronger since it makes even the every-day strug- gle for petty improvements appear as part and parcel of a great historic movement for the re- form of society. It finds supreme self-reliance in the knowledge that its aims, its progress and its ultimate victory are as necessary a conse- quence of the contemporary phase of capitalism as were, in earlier phases, the downfall of feudal- ism, the decay of the guild system, the establish- ment of political democracy, and the abolition of slavery.

If it be true then that Marxianism is but a

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method of investigation, there is no more reason to make Marx responsible for bolshevikism than there would be to blame the discoverer of oil for the crime of an incendiary. His fate is that of ^all scientific innovators and system-builders. The greater their genius, the worse the harm done by the class of people whom Schiller had in mind when he said with reference to Kant: *'When kings build, there's a job for the carters."*

Marx, Hke Kant, and so many others, is a victim of the law of the least effort. It is so very much easier to recite the formula in which he concentrated what was most liable to amend- ment in the results of his research, than to grasp what makes the lasting value of his work — the living spirit of his method. Characteristically enough, this method is never explicitly formu- lated in his own works, so that it has to be dis- tilled from the study of his writings and of his pohtical activity. Whoever undertakes this study will be struck by the numerous instances of Marx's almost prophetic sneering at those who read the letter but are bhnd to the spirit. This spirit was not that of dogmatism. It was not syllogistic, but dialectic. His analysis of the tendencies of capitahst development will be found magnificently alive with the dynamic spirit that checks its own findings by contradiction and

* Wenn die Konige bau'n, haben die Karrner zu tun ( Kant und seine Ausleger),

THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 91

sees perpetually moving facts where others but stare at milestones. It is as pregnant with the sense of dialectic motion and evolution as is the involved and progressing reahty of the capitalist society he surveyed.

Most of this I had abeady realised before the war. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty- two I had myself sinned against the spirit by idol- ising the letter. I had just outgrown then the Utopian and purely sentimental stage of social- ism, and was carried away by the enthusiasm of my discovery of Marxianism as a system that promised to equip my desires with the victorious infalhbihty of science. My dogmaticism, how- ever, did not long withstand the dissolvent influ- ence of a more intimate contact with real life as time went by. Especially during the three years that preceded the war, which were almost entirely devoted to practical social work in Belgium, I had come to a view of things in which a much more modest part was played by abstract the- ories. My connection with the trade union move- ment had had a particularly strong influence in that direction. But not until the war, when I found myself at grasps with the disastrous con- sequences of a doctrinarianism which I had my- self contributed to spread, did I fully reaUse the necessity of a thorough self-examination. The first definite conclusion I then came to was that, just as philosophy begins with the theory of

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knowledge, so the value of any theory of social progress depends on the recognition of the limi- tation of its field.

We Marxian Socialists had succumbed to the fascination of a theory that not only gave us an unsurpassed instrument for the discovery of some of the main causes of historic progress, but ap- pealed at the same time to reason by its fierce analytic power and to constructive imagination by its bold foreknowledge of a future conceived as the resultant of unalterable laws. So far so good. But our propaganda had carried a super- ficial knowledge of the formulae that synthesised these theories into the minds of people who ig- nored the method through which they had been arrived at, and who therefore lacked both the knowledge of the natural limits of this method and the capacity to use it as a means perpetually to revise its own results. So one day we found ourselves confronted by people who used the very formulae which they had learned from us in a way totally dift'erent from the one we had intended. Arguing helped no longer : When we talked facts they answered by dogmas.

It was of course an easy excuse to say that such is the penalty of all vulgarisation of knowledge. I for one have not tried to shield myself in this fashion, but say : mea culpa,

I had to lay the axe at the root of the evil, and start from the principle that theoretical views

THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 93

about the general causes of contemporary wars should not cause one to replace facts by cate- gories. These views should merely help to a better understanding of the facts and to the judgment of each case on its own merits. Thus the solution of the particular problem of labour's attitude towards this war became comparatively simple.

My starting point was the same as that of the "internationalist" sociahsts. This war was due to general causes, internationally inherent to the present social system, and therefore the attitude of socialists should be inspired by a universal view of the case.

I further agreed with the internationalist that in view of the menace to civilisation of a war originating in the opposition of interests between minorities of the involved nations, it was the duty of labour to try to prevent its outbreak by all means. This had indeed been done, as long as there was the slightest chance of averting the con- flict, in what proved to be the only possible way: by bringing pressure to bear in each country upon its government to keep it from aggression and to make it help the other governments in finding an amicable solution. These attempts had been unsuccessful, because the power behind them was insufficient, at least in some of the countries involved. The war had become a fact in spite of our efforts.

94 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

I ceased to be in agreement with the interna- tionalists however when they said that this fact need not alter our policy and that we should con- tinue, irrespective of the strategical or territorial situation, to oppose the conduct of the war in every country.

This policy was based on the twofold assump- tion that the strategical and territorial situation did not affect the interests of labour, and that all the governments engaged in the war were equally responsible and animated by the same detestable motives.

I considered that both these assumptions were false.

First of all, I thought that labour, having been unable to prevent hostilities, had nevertheless, to say the least of it, the same interest as the other classes of a given country in opposing the inva- sion of its territory and the replacement of its self -chosen government by the rule of a foreign domination. This, by the way, was the logical conclusion from one of the most fundamental principles of both the first and the second Inter- nationale: the right of each nation to dispose of itself. All the international Socialist and Labour Congresses had considered it a matter of course that, should a country be attacked by a foreign power threatening to take away this right of self- disposal, the working classes should participate in the duty of national defence.

THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 95

So the decisive question came down to this: was it possible, in this war, to draw a distinction between the aggressors and the victims of ag- gression?

The "internationalists" denied this possibility, on the ground that imperialism was universally responsible. They said that the only aggressor was international capitalism and the only victim the international proletariat; so that there was but one alternative to the war — socialism — and but one policy — international social revolution.

Thus were categories substituted for facts. For the conception of this war was as an aggres- sion of capitalism against labour was an abstrac- tion based on categories, not only different from, but opposed to the facts of the case.

These facts were military and naval opera- tions as a test of power between states. Far from grouping international capitalism against the international proletariat, the war involved at least a temporary rupture of the universal solidarity of interests of these two groups. They were no doubt extremely deplorable facts, but they were very tangible all the same, much more tangible than any armchair-formula to the mil- lions who fought in the firing line, lived in in- vaded territory, or suffered any of the thousand- fold consequences by which the reality of this titanic struggle was brought home to the inhabi- tants of Europe.

96 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

Yet there were but two alternatives: either to shut one's eyes to the facts and withdraw into the reahn of these formulae, or to accept their real- ity, face their consequences, and draw their log- ical conclusions.

For those who, like myself, took the latter course, these conclusions were clear enough. They were :

First, that, although imperialist capitalism had created the conditions which made a world's war possible, the main, immediate and actual respon- sibility for this particular war rested on Ger- many and Austria-Hungary, who had shown their aggressive designs by the latter's attack on Serbia and the former's on Belgium and France.

Second, that the autocratic form of govern- ment and the aggressive militarism of the Cen- tral Empires, together with the lack of disposi- tion on the part of their peoples effectively to oppose this system, made the victory of these powers incompatible with the progress of any movement which requires political freedom, de- mocracy and peace for its normal development.

The dilemma — either to accept this conclusion of the facts, or not to consider the facts at all — was obvious, as was shown by those socialists who sided with the Central Powers, like the majority of Social-Democrats of Germany and Austria themselves. Although they refused to accept the internationalists' postulate of opposition to war

THE SPELL or DOGMATISM 97

in every country, they had to take refuge, to cloak the responsibihty of their governments, in the "internationalist" formula of the universal responsibility of capitalism, and persistently re- fused to consider the case on its actual merits. This is why, even after the armistice, the ma- jority Social-Democrats continued to refuse any discussion of the responsibility for the war. Hy- pocrisy, said La Rochefoucauld, is the homage vice pays to virtue. The attitude of the German Social-Democrats shows that similarly intellect- ual duplicity is the homage falsehood pays to truth.

Once I had thus emancipated my mind from the spell of dogmaticism, and decided to consider facts irrespective of previous general conclu- sions, I had gained control of the weapon that was ultimately to solve my doubts and give my conscience peace. I was armed for the struggle, but the struggle itself had yet to begin.

GERMAN PATRIOTISM

. . . the land of the folk-songs, Where the gifts hang on the tree, Where the girls give ale in the morning And the tears come easily.

G. K. Chestebton, The Ballad of the White Horse, III.

The first problem that arose was the revision of my attitude towards Germany in general and German social-democracy in particular.

In spite of my hatred of German mihtarism and my disgust with German submissiveness, in spite also of the fact that I was constantly in danger of being blown to bits by a German shell or "punctured" by a German bullet, I was still a German patriot. I am one to this day. By this I mean that irrespective of Germany's attitude in this war, the word Germany still suggests to me other things than ''Feldgrau/^ It is associ- ated with many lovable recollections of the coun- try and of the people ; with gratitude for the en- richment that my spiritual life owes to German art, literature and science ; with appreciation for the part Germany has played for centuries in the progress of European civilisation; with the ar-

98

GERMAN PATRIOTISM 99

dent desire to see the German nation, freed from despotism, recover in a league of self-governing peoples a position corresponding to its best qual- ities. I have always felt that this war for the self-government of nations would not be worth winning unless it gave the German people the full rights to dispose, not only of its territory, but of its own fate, and thus enable it to fulfil a better destiny than that of being the tool of a dynasty. It is in this sense I have never ceased to be a German patriot. While fighting against the German army, I was fighting for the Ger- man nation. Or, to put it more accurately, in fighting against the German nation of today I was fighting for the German nation of tomorrow.

But what a tragic contrast between the splen- dour of this aim, and the barbarity of the fratri- cidal means by which it was to be reached !

I never felt this more distinctly than one night in June, 1915, after an evening spent in a village a few miles in the rear of the front with a friend who at that time was in a neighbouring sector and, like myself, had been a student at German universities. I can vouch for it that he was as de- termined a fighter of the "boche," whose bullet marks he bore on his body, as I was myself. But the very intensity and concentration of war- like purpose that had been required for several months made both of us aspire to some relaxation from the thought of war. This we found for a

100 THE HEMAKING OF A MIND

few hours in the house of the good French people who gave us hospitaUty that evening, with a suffi- cient amount of comfort almost to create the illu- sion of being at home. As we two sat alone after supper with a pipe and a glass of wine, we began to talk of Germany — a Germany very different from the grim reality that faced us only half a dozen miles away — ^the Germany we had both known and learned to love in her universities, her libraries, her opera-houses and concert-halls. We sang some of the old folk-songs we had sung as students. Songs of true love and the yearning of sentimental souls ; songs full of the fragrance of woods and moorland, breathing love of nature and Wanderlust; songs of the generation of 1813 and the BurschenscTiaften, fired with the spirit of sacrifice for the freedom of a great nation in the making; songs of eternal friendship and loyalty, songs inspired by the naive legends of a fantastic ''Mdrchenwelt" ; songs sparkling with the gentle mirth of people who, through the glimmering of a glassful of Rhine wine, see a rosy world full of good things, good friends and good feelings. And we asked ourselves : can the soul of a people belie itself like that? Do these songs not speak of Germany as it really was and will be again? Is not the revelhng in crude materialism and utter immorality, which followed its over-rapid rise to industrial power ; the bestiahty of its mili- tarism; the brutal perfidy of its present attempt

GERMAN PATI^IOTISM l<lt

to bully the world into submission — is not all this a bad dream, or an illusion of our hatred?

Thus we debated, forgetting for one evening the pain of reality, as we walked back under the starlit sky of the mild summer night, full of the f ragi-ance of hay and birch leaves, whilst the loud croaking of the frogs in the near brooks and ditches muffled the faint rattUng of machine-guns and the low grimibling of cannon in the distance. Every now and then ahead of us a Verey light went up from the sky-line, leaving a sinuous trail of sparks, and looking for a moment like a star among the stars, then bursting gorgeously into a cascade of greenish light that seemed to fill the horizon with fireworks. The crescendo of our feehngs had made us silently happy. No words were needed to tell each other that we were both dreaming of the happiness of a reconciliated mankind, and that those lights in the sky were but fireworks at the festival of our imagination. When finally one of us took up the motif of the last phrase of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, it echoed in both our minds as the fittest expression of our exaltation. As we hummed the heroic passage of "freudig, wie ein Held zum siegen," we did not think of the real khaki or grey-clad figures, at that very moment crouching, three miles ahead, in fear of death, under the outbursts of light thrown by those fireworks over the shell- torn landscape of sandbags and wire entangle-

lfia;.;.THE iR-EMAKING OF A MIND

merits. Our *'Held" was some Prometheus, fighting humanity's eternal fight against hostile nature, conquering darkness with light. . . . As we came to the climax of the Hymn to Joy, it seemed indeed as though our minds embraced a world reconciled in the universal joy of freedom and as though everything around us were but a passage in the great symphony that was to cul- minate in "Seid umschlungen, Millionen! diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt!"

A shell screamed and threw up a few sods and some mud from a ditch near by. My friend's Satanic laughter greeted this awakening from our dream. A few minutes later, as we neared the cross-roads where our ways parted, a bayonet glittered in the night and a hoarse voice shouted : "Halt! who goes there?" I answered "Friends." But we were no longer thinking of the world- friendship hymned by Schiller and Beethoven. Our friends were all on this side of No Man's Land. Guns and rifles were the instruments with which we were then playing our part in the world's symphony.

Yet could one cease to remember, and, above all, could one cease to hope? I tried hard to do so, for I feared — though this never happened — that" at some decisive moment the strength of my will to fight, which means to kill as many of the enemy as you can, might be impaired. But I tried in vain. And, as I now look back upon

GERMAN PATRIOTISM 103

those years at the front, I am glad that it was so, and that I have been able to kill Germans without ceasing to love Germany. A few hours of painful arguing with myself, a few cruel awak- enings from the world of dreams, and even the risk of being misunderstood by narrow-minded comrades who might have guessed right about my innermost feehngs (though I never talked more about these things than could be helped) — this was not too hea\y a price to pay for the blessing of not having surrendered my soul to bhnd hatred. After all, what I loved Germany for made me hate and fight the Germans all the better.

There are two bad mistakes that can be made in judging a nation. The first is to consider it as a homogeneous entity, irrespective of any dif- ferences between classes or individuals. The second mistake, which is worse still, is to treat national characteristics as always remaining the same. Both errors unfortunately are extremely common. They are both encouraged by the widespread belief in a theory that explains na- tionality by racial characteristics. This offers the undoubted advantage of presenting a very simple explanation of very complicated things, besides opening a wide field to the amusing play of conjecture, of personal sympathies and ani- mosities. Nevertheless, this explanation is as false as it is easy.

104 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

Let the dogmatists of race help us to explain the civilisation of African tribes or the migra- tions of Red Indians. Very well. Let them ex- periment in America with immigrants from East- ern Europe. Very well again. But for the sake of human science let them refrain from any at- tempts to explain national psychology in West- ern Europe by the colour of people's hair or the dimensions of their skull; for there they must either confine themselves to the domain of com- monplace or else jump with both feet into such hopeless conjecture that no benefit can result from it except amusement at the colossal dimen- sions of their fanatic blunders. I wish some- body would explain Belgian or French national- ity to me with the help of the race theory, and tell me something more than that the present racial characteristics are composed of those of all the races, nations, and tribes — Celts, Gauls, Romans, Goths, Franks, Saxons, Swabians, Frisians, Basques, Moors, Arabs, Huns, Britons, Nor- mans, Spaniards, Jews, and whatever else — that have kept wandering about, fighting or mixing uninterruptedly for a score of centuries. Are not the racial characteristics of the Germans very much the same as those of the Anglo-Saxons who descend from the same stock? And yet, what an abyss between German and Anglo-Saxon psy- chology! There is probably much more in com- mon, on the other hand, between the habits and

GERMAN PATRIOTISM 105

traditions of Herr Fritz Schulze, greengrocer of Berlin on the Spree (who is a flaxen-haired doli- chocephalic descendant of the Saxon forest- dwellers of Brandenburg) and Monsieur Marius Latignasse, of Marseilles on the Rhone (a dark- haired brachyacephalic keeper, whose pedigree goes back to Phoenician and Hellenic colonisa- tion) than there is between either of the two aforesaid gentlemen and Mr. John Smith, clerk of London on the Thames. Yet Mr. John Smith's fair hair, pink complexion and long skull make him resemble Herr Schulze like a brother; and the Smiths may have lived in the hut next to Schulze's in that same old Brandenburg forest two thousand years ago, or, for that matter, in the same cavern another score of centuries earlier still. I am of as true a Flemish stock as any (there was a de Man amongst the Flemish free- men who fell in the Battle of Cassel in 1328), yet within the last seven generations, in direct descent alone, there has been Spanish, French and Dutch blood mixed with what may have re- mained of the original fluid, of which nobody knows or cares whether it was Prankish, Saxon, Frisian, Celtic, or of any other tribe of pale- faced men that walked upright on a pair of legs. In the cockpit of races which Western Europe has been for twenty centuries at the very least, it is as ridiculous to base a nation's claim to a soul of its own on race as it is for an aristocrat to think

106 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

that his blood is of a different colour from that of the plehSy forgetting how easy it is to calculate that within the last thousand years, which more or less correspond to the age of feudal aristoc- racy, his blood may have been made, at the rea- sonable rate of three generations per century, out of that of 2,147,483,646 men and women. The corresponding number of sixty generations, which is less than is required to modify the physi- cal characteristics of a race, consists of nineteen figures. One must, of course, make a very hberal allowance for double entries on account of in- breeding; but even so, there remains quite a plehs by itself to say grandpa and grandma to.

The war itself has been the most conclusive of all refutations of the race theory. We have seen the world clearly divided into two camps according to their views as to the fundamental principles of government: for and against de- mocracy, the self-disposal of nationalities, the recognition of international right above the con- venience of single states. Here, then, if ever, there was a test of national psychology, both for the belligerents and the neutral peoples. Yet who could discern the influence of race in this cleavage of the world? Teutons of the British Empire and America, as well as the "low Ger- man" Flemings and Boers, were arrayed against the Teutons of Germany. The Scandinavians of Norway favoured the Entente; a large part of

GERMAN PATHIOTISM 107

the Scandinavians of Sweden, Denmark and Fin- land sided with the Central Powers. The major- ity of the Saxons and Frisians of Holland sympathised enthusiastically with the cause of France; one-third of the names of the Prus- sian Junkers and one-half of those of the Aus- trian officers were Slav; and Slav Bulgaria made war on Slav Serbia and Slav Russia. Half of Latin Spain sympathised with Germany. Arabs attacked the Turks in Hedjaz and Syria; but other Arabs helped the Turks in GalUpoh. Scot- tish Celts died for the Empire at Ypres; whilst Irish Celts died for Sinn Fein in Dublin; Jews fought under every standard, and I mention but a small part of the evidence.

In order not to complicate the problem I will not refer here to the cosmopolitan origin of the population of the United States of America, for there we have to consider nationahty as well as race — two notions which should be kept strictly apart. Yet I might point out that if even the ties that bound immigrated Americans to European nationalities have not been able to disrupt the moral unity of the American people, how much more powerless must racial characteristics have been.

The theory of those who argue that the Ger- mans do not belong to civilised mankind, or are constitutionally vicious, faithless and cruel, be- cause of their racial characteristics, is as childish

108 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

as Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain's claim that the same racial characteristics are those of a Herrenvolk destined by God — or rather, Gott, that old crony of William Hohenzollern — to sub- jugate the world and lead it to greater triumphs. Both theories may be consigned to the Museum for Ethnography, along with the stone or bone utensils of our forefathers, the forest-dwellers.

National characteristics, namely those that re- sult from a historic community of language, in- stitutions and culture, synthesised by a common political organisation, are quite a different mat- ter. Here there is room for sane argument. But it must be observed that once the element of race, which for all practical historical purposes is a constant value, is eliminated, all the other com- ponents that constitute a nation's psychology are at the same time heterogeneous in space and variable in time.

They are heterogeneous, even at a given time, because the same causes, when related to the spirit of a nation's institutions and traditions, may, and very often do, result in different, and, even, in opposed characteristics, according to the features of groups, or individual psychology, with which they combine. Any attempt at scien- tific collective psychology is necessarily based on the hypothesis that the psyche of a man living in society results from a combination of influences that vary according to the different kinds of rela-

GERMAN PATRIOTISM 109

tions existing between this man and other men. To discern the component parts of this combina- tion, individual men must be studied as belong- ing simultaneously to different circles or groups, such as originate in the state, provincial or local community, social class, profession, religious creed, political affiliation, family traditions, kind of public education received and of habitual reading, and so forth. Every one of these groups, which are either a community of interests or of views, or else of both, represents an ele- ment in the total formula of what a man's psy- chology owes to his associations with other men. The relative strength of these influences is vari- able. Class or professional allegiance, for in- stance, may have a more powerful psychological effect upon nationality itself. Thus, kindred in- terests and mode of life may give a working man in Budapest a greater psychological resemblance to another working man in Buenos Ayres than to a Hungarian university professor or landowner in his own city. The same may be true, and very often is true, of this Hungarian university pro- fessor and his Anglo-Saxon colleague in Seattle. Their psychological similarity may be much more manifest, even in their physiognomy and gestures ( say, in the way they put their spectacles on their noses), than is any resemblance between our Budapest professor and his fellow-citizen of a dif- ferent occupation. There is something more than

110 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

a joke in this. The obvious likeness in habits and psychological peculiarities between profes- sional categories all the world over with such pronounced characteristics as those of teachers, cab drivers, costermongers, innkeepers and many others, are but an illustration of the fact that modern conditions of life have created between men stronger ties of common interests and views than those of national allegiance.

The jocular character of these examples must not obscure the much more serious aspect of the universahty of aspirations which the spread of in- dustriahsm has created by approximately stand- ardising the conditions that determine the psy- chology of the working classes throughout the world. And who would deny that there is more similarity in the outlook on life of, say, a French imperiahst steel-magnate and a German imperi- alist steel-magnate, than there is between either of the two and the average peasant or working man of his own country? Independently, how- ever, of the relative value of its component ele- ments, the formula of group psychology resem- bles that of a chemical combination in the way a change in one or several of its elements may totally modify the actual result. So the char- acteristics of nationality may manifest them- selves very differently in various social groups.

Let us choose an example in Germany. The clumsy thoroughness of German thinking is uni-

GERMAN PATRIOTISM 111

versally accepted as a feature of the nation. Now let us see how it can work differently as an element in the formula of class or group psy- chology. The Junker class do not hold intel- lectual functions in very high esteem, because they hardly need them professionally beyond the moderate amount that is required to judge the race or the age of horses or to discern whether some soldier's peccadillo entails eight days *'C. B." or one day "in the black hole." Never- theless, they have certain political interests to defend, which requires action in the press, and in parliamentary and administrative bodies. There, then, the native heaviness of this intellectual mechanism will reveal itself as ruthless dogma- tism in the defence of material interests.

Now let us take a different social group, like the extreme radical element of the proletariat, as represented by the Spartacus movement. Its leaders were intellectuals hke Karl Liebnecht, Franz Mehring, Rosa Luxemburg, inspired by an ideahstic view of the historic task of their movement, and by disgust with the narrow- minded materialism of the party in power. Com- bined with the characteristics of this group, the same thoroughness in thinking leads to a form of abstract idealism which, whatever else its faults may be, is an impulse of the highest moral order, and forms a striking contrast to the results of the intellectual characteristics of the Junkers.

112 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

A similar contrast arises from the comparison of Junker mentality with the lofty but unpracti- cal idealism which, in the case of the old genera- tion of long-haired, spectacled and absent-mind- ed professors, living with their feet in slippers and their thoughts in the clouds, resulted from the combination of this same Teutonic thorough- ness with professional pursuits entirely different from those of the Junkers. The best example of their state of mind, which is still more com- mon than is generally believed, is a story related, if I remember rightly, by a Dutch journalist. I think it is good enough to make the digression pardonable.

An international prize is offered for the best monograph on The Camel. A German, an Eng- lishman and a Frenchman, all three University professors, decide to compete. The Frenchman goes to Paris, takes an apartment in the Quartier Latin for a few weeks and goes for a stroll every afternoon in the Jardin des Plantes — the local Zoo. Then he writes a book, full of witty remarks and hons mots, about the camel with whom he has thus made friends. The English- man packs his trunk; goes to the desert; spends a year there ; then comes back with a short, mat- ter-of-fact, but excellently worded description of the few things really worth knowing about a camel. The German hires a room close to the KonigUche Bibliothek in Berlin, fills it with to-

GERMAN PATRIOTISM 113

bacco smoke for three years, and then publishes six volumes on "The Camel {Camelus Bactri- anus) from an anatomic, biologic, zoologic, eco- nomic, etc., viewpoint, in its relation to, etc., with special reference to, etc., with several appendices, charts, diagrams, etc." The fifth volume is de- voted to the philosophy of the camel as an ab- stract entity, and the sixth is a complete bibliog- raphy of the subject, embracing everything that has been written or printed about camels since the earliest stages of Egyptian civihsation.

It has often been said during the war, to take another example, that Germans have no sense of humour. Now, it can hardly be disputed that the average German lacks the quickness of per- ception and thought that is a condition to what Anglo-Saxons, for instance, consider as a hu- morous disposition. The historieal explanation lies near at hand. Germany's development as an industrial and commercial nation is so recent that it has hardly had time to influence the popu- lar frame of mind. For centuries, and until a very short time ago, the Germans have been a nation of peasants and artisans. The peasants were still practically serfs a century and a quar- ter ago, and the artisans lived in a sphere almost as narrow and in an environment as unchanging as those of the peasants themselves. People who lead this sort of life tend to turn the faculties of their imagination towards music, philosophic

114 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

meditation, and the mythology of home and nature. Imagination does not then leave the domain of a man's own mind and of the small world that limits his outlook. This is probably one of the causes of the Teutonic thoroughness. It certainly accounts for the slowness of the Ger- man mind. Slow working creates slow thinking, and slow thinking cramps the sense of humour.

To develop their sense of humour, the Anglo- Saxons have required the broad expanse of the world they made their own, which they kept wid- ening, and in which they moved about as a na- tion of manufacturers, seafarers, traders and co- lonial pioneers. It was a world full of contrasts and surprises, full also of those adventures that stir the faculty of the human mind to reach against adversity by fun. It is no hazard that the heroic period of English literary humour synchronizes with the heroic period of early Eng- lish industrialism and imperialism, the time of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare. Nor is it mere coincidence that the west of America, with the intensity and speed of its pioneer life, full of changing and unexpected conditions and impres- sions, has produced what to my European mind seems to be the most concentrated and typical form of American humour.

Moreover, until a very few years ago — too short a time to create any new characteristics of mind — there was practically no sporting life in

GERMAN PATRIOTISM 115

Germany. Thus it lacked an element that seems to become more and more a source of popular humour, as is born out by the growing predomi- nance of sporting expressions and images in current Anglo-Saxon humorous literature. Yet it would be false to conclude that there is no such thing as genuine humour in the Teutonic soul. On the contrary, the same contemplative life in the narrow circles of peasantry and petty crafts- manship— that resulted in slow, deep thinking, turned the imagination towards the sentimental life, and animated their environment with mythic creations — has developed a strong sense for any- thing humorous that happens within these cir- cles. Therefore, German humour is essentially a humour of peasants and provincials — ^just as was formerly English and French humour in a corresponding stage of historic development. Germany has never really outgrown that semi- mediseval stage. Such names, however, as Ja- kob Kortum, Wilhelm Busch, and Fritz Renter, which stand for different aspects of German hu- mour at its best, suggest a quality of mirth as genuine and typical as the French, English, or American variety. It does not lack depth and shrewdness, although it has neither the quick mo- tion and directness of the Anglo-Saxon wit, nor the penetrating intellectual finesse of French esprit.

Yet the mistaken assumption that there is

116 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

no sense of humour in Germany is quite ex- cusable, for the classes of Germans with whom foreigners were most hkely to come in contact are just those that live outside of the provincial circles where German humour has its roots. They are the city dwellers and more particularly the commercial classes, whose conditions of hfe have comparatively recently separated them from the sources of sound popular humour, without yet creating the new world of images, tastes and in- tellectual traditions which could inspire up-to- date drollery. About all that the outside world saw of Germany were these classes, whose aver- age mentality was indeed such as to justify the impression that every German was a bullying, bombastic, blunt-witted, tactless and unsports- manhke person, with no senSe of humour beyond his glee in brutality, cruelty or obscenity. There is a sense of humour in German home-life in as far as it resembles that of the peasant or artisan ancestry; but none in German politics, or in Ger- man warfare. If you talk to an officer in the Prussian Guard, you will find that the only sort of humour about him is involuntary; but if you have a friendly chat with a Swabian peasant or with an old shoemaker in some Bavarian town- ship, you will many a time discover a turn of mind, both poetic and humorous, that will make you grasp the meaning of old German "Gemiit- Echkeit."

VI

GERMAN MILITARISM

Les opinions qui different de I'esprit dominant, quel qu'il soit scandalisent toujours le vulgaire: I'etude et Texamen peuvent seuls donner cette Iib6ralit6 du jugement, sans laquelle il est impossible d'acqu^rir des lumieres nouvelles, ou de conserver m6me celles qu'on a; car on se soumet a de certaines id6es re?ues, non comme H des verites, mais comme au pouvoir; et c'est ainsi que la raison bumaine s'babitue k la servitude.

Madame de Stael, de VAllemagne.

The utter impossibility of a theory based on the stability of national characteristics becomes increasingly obvious as soon as we view national- ity as an element that varies with time. A very few examples will suffice to show how these char- acteristics change together with the historic con- ditions that create them.

The history of my own country offers a par- ticularly striking illustration. Walloons and Flemings present the marked contrast of two nationalities with the opposite mental character- istics of industrial and agricultural Ufe. The bulk of the Walloon population lives in the in- dustrial beehives that crowd around our coal dis- tricts; while the Flemings are essentially agri- cultural. The Walloons will tell you that the Flemings are a heavy, slow and stubborn race,

U7

118 THE REMAKING OF A MIND

with a conservative mind, whose ignorance, lack of intellectual independence and inclination to mysticism make them a prey to the most back- ward forms of clericahsm. And in fact, Flan- ders is a stronghold par eoccellence of the politi- cal and social power of Roman Catholicism. It holds the Belgian record of ilUteracy and crimi- nahty: practically all the conservative votes are cast in what the Walloons call the "black dis- tricts" of Flanders; and the Flemish country people who periodically migrate into Walloon territory to do unskilled industrial work are looked upon almost as coolies by Walloon labour. The mentality of Walloon Belgium, on the other hand, compares with that of Flanders hke Lan- cashire with Ireland. It is in the former that all the progressive movements are fostered; three-quarters of the votes cast in the great Walloon centres of the mining, metal, textile and glass industry are for the Labour Party; and it is the only part of the country where agnosticism and protestantism amount to any- thing.

Neither race nor language has anything to do with this contrast. There is no appreciable dif- ference in the ethnological origin and character- istics of Flemings and Walloons; the Teutonic element prevails with both. True, the Flemings speak the same language as the Dutch, and the Walloons as the French; and there is, in conse-

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quence, a Germanic influence in Flanders and a French influence in Walloon Belgium. But this does not at all account for the difference in men- tality which I have just set forth. For the Dutch brethren of our Catholic Flemings are predomi- nantly Calvinists; whilst France — which does not, as many foreigners believe, mean Paris — is a Catholic country, where the conservative psy- chology of the peasantry, and of an economically backward provincial petty bourgeoisie, is as pre- valent as the numerical preponderance of these social classes in the body of the nation is great. On the other hand, the most reactionary and in- tellectually backward element of the Belgian population is the French-speaking bourgeoisie of Flanders. When I add that in those few Wal- loon districts that are purely agricultural, the same conservative spirit prevails as in Flanders, whilst in Flanders itself there is a progressive and non-catholic minority that is practically en- tirely confined to the working classes of the few industrial towns, it will become obvious that so- cial conditions account almost exclusively for the difference in psychology of the two halves of the Belgian population.

But then these mental characteristics are no more permanent than are those social conditions themselves. This is why until the end of the six- teenth century, the mental attitude of Flemings and Walloons was exactly the reverse of what it

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is at present. From the thirteenth century until that time, Flanders was a hotbed of heresy and revolutionism, whilst the Walloon provinces were the "black districts" of poHtical and intellectual servility. In the latter part of the Middle Ages, when all other European countries except the Northern Itahan cities were still the thralls of serfdom, feudalism and popery, the Flemish cities were already self-governing democratic communities. Their internal history is that of an uninterrupted series of social struggles, in which an indomitable spirit of independence and political radicahsm manifested itself. Their ex- ternal history is that of continuous and success- ful fighting in defence of their democratic insti- tutions against those feudal powers which, like the kings and the aristocracy of France, repre- sented the spirit of political conservatism; whilst the repeated ban of the Pope bore testimony to the persistence of their rebellion against the pow- ers of spiritual conservatism. Even the peas- antry followed the example of the communes and freed themselves from feudal serfdom five hun- dred years before the rest of Europe. During all that time, there was no stir of life in the land- lord- and priest-ridden Walloon districts, with the exception of a couple of isolated industrial towns like Liege and Dinant. When the great revolutionary struggle of the Netherlands came to its climax in the rebellion against the clerical

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and despotic regime of the Spanish kings, whose vicissitudes fill the main part of the sixteenth century, protestant, democratic and revolution- ary Flanders found no support in the Walloon provinces. On the contrary, it is largely (thanks to the assistance they lent) to the Spanish that the rebellion was finally drowned in blood. Mass executions, the destruction of cities, the banish- ment or voluntary emigration of the Protestants and revolutionaries marked the beginning of the long period of decay in the democratic civilisation of a country that was too much in advance of the rest of Europe to be allowed to live. The Flem- ings then uttered the same reproach against the Walloons, as the Walloons of nowadays formu- late against the Flemings, namely, that they were of a slow, conservative, backward, servile mind. And they were just about as right as the Wal- loons are now.

How could the mental characteristics of a pop- ulation suffer such a complete inversion within a lapse of time of less than three hundred years? Simply because the social and industrial condi- tions that determine them have been likewise inverted. Mediaeval Flanders was industrial; media3val WaUoonia was agricultural. Flanders was then politically and intellectually in advance of the rest of Europe, because it was in advance economically. As early as the thirteenth cen- tury, more than three quarters of the population

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of practically every Flemish city lived mainly from cloth-making. This semi-capitahst indus- try, which worked for the export trade, was as much of an anomaly in the relative narrowness and stagnation of mediaeval economy as the po- litical regime of the Flemish communes was in the world of feudalism and autocracy. The Wal- loon provinces, on the contrary, were still in the stage of agricultural serfdom. From this they sprang into that of great capitahst industry in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the opening of the era of the steam-engine cre- ated around their coal fields those huge industrial agglomerations which are among the densest in the world.

Since the end of the sixteenth century, on the other hand, Flanders has seen her indus- trial prosperity come to an end as the result both of the opening of new trade-routes and of the exhaustion of her population through dis- astrous social and political struggles. She be- came an agricultural country once more, with nothing to remind her of the former splendour of her urban economic life but her cathedrals, bel- fries, town- and guild-halls — and the dejection of the people who lived in their shadow and be- came a prey to unexampled pauperism, which was at the same time solaced and perpetuated by the Catholic Church and her convents.

The history of the German nation itself, al-

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though it shows no such complete inversion of national characteristics, abounds in examples of profound modifications within a few generations' time.

I might refer the reader back to my analysis of German sense of humour, which shows that at the time when all great European nations lived under the economic regime of peasantry and small artisanship — namely^ until the beginning of modern history — there was not the same dif- ference as at present between the characteristics of the German nation and those of her western neighbours. In the Middle Ages the hterary and artistic expression of the popular soul was as uni- form in countries like Southern and Western Germany, France, England, the Netherlands, etc., as were the social conditions themselves. Their feudal aristocracy had its common mental characteristics, tastes and fashions, including the sense of humour, as evidenced by the internation- ality of such institutions as the troubadours, min- strels and jesters. On the other hand, the uni- versal popularity, and the universal origin even, of the main poetic works, the folk-songs and the mystic literature of that time bear witness to the psychological similarity of the common people. The association of Germany with such universal expressions of plebeian humour as the Historye of Reynard the Fooce — Roman du Renard — Reinaert de Vos — Reineke Fuchs, or as the OwU

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glass — Ulespiegle — Tij I Uylespieghel — Eulen- spiegelj is striking evidence that the Teutonic humour was then on a level with that of other countries. The differentiation only began later, when new economic conditions created national- ity in its modern sense.

The exceptions to the rule of the universality of mediaeval literature only strengthen the argu- ment. They are practically confined to the free bourgeois cities of Northern Italy and Flanders. Their early, hothouse-capitalism created the con- ditions that made the beginnings of modern na- tional poetry, art and literature possible.

But we need not go back to the Middle Ages nor confine ourselves to the controversial ground of hterary taste, to find proofs of the transforma- tion of the German mind. It is fashionable now- adays to explain the hold of military, autocratic and intellectual discipline on the German people, to a racial disposition, inherent to the German spirit. As far as contemporary Germany is con- cerned, I shall be the last to dispute the postulate that, if ever there was anything to characterise the mentahty of a nation, authority-worship is a characteristic of the German people. It applies to the soldier, who stands brutalities from his su- periors to which no other white men would sub- mit without immediate retaliation; as well as to the scholar, who thinks that scientific research consists in the compilation of "authorities"; or to

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the Social-Democrat, who, like Hugo Haase in the Reichstag on the 4th of August, 1914, put party discipline above his own honour by reading, as the president of his group, its historic declara- tion in favour of the war-credits, just after he had opposed this very policy, in the party caucus, as a betrayal of all Socialist principles.

The Belgian historian, Henri Pirenne, whose patriotic attitude during the occupation caused him to be deported to Germany, has told me of some of the talks he used to have with the peas- ants of Kreuzburg, a township where he had been a prisoner for several months. He was allowed to go about in the town, and the Belgian Herr Professor had soon become a local institution. He indulged in frequent discussions of the war with the natives, in order to gain some insight into their psychology. His conclusion, he said, was always the same: "My dear Herr Nachbar, we cannot understand each other; for your grand- father was a serf, whilst I come from a country where there was no serfdom left after the thir- teenth century; in the particular place where my family comes from (the village of Franchimont) it never even existed." No wonder, then, that Freiherr von Bissing, the late German governor of occupied Belgium, called the Belgian mind "a psychological problem."

Some of the friends I had in pre-war Germany may condescend to excuse me for having taken

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up arms against them, but if I am to judge by what their papers wrote at the time, I am afraid they wiU never forgive that in June, 1917, in an address to Russian soldiers, I spoke of the Ger- man people as having "souls of slaves." Yet everything I see happening in Germany up to this day, even in the German RepubUe by the Grace of Foch, convinces me more and more of the truth of what I said then, namely, that in a country so void of democratic traditions and rev- olutionary spirit as> Germany, people do not even understand the meaning of a freedom which they have never tasted. There are quite a few Ger- mans who have realised that too, and said it less politely, though perhaps more adequately. Heine calls a spade a spade when he says :

Es fehlt dem Deutschen zum Hunde nur Ein richtiger Schweif zum wedeln. *

The two founders of German social-democ- racy, August Rebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, must likewise have reahsed this. At any rate, they used to comment bitterly on the lack of grit in their own following since social-democracy had outgrown its early heroic stage and become a mere cog in the wheel of contemporary capitalist and militarist Germany. There was the same difference between the moral calibre of Rebel's and Liebknecht's generation and that of Scheide-

* All that a German lacks to be a dog is a tail to wag.

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mann's and Noske's as there was between the international policy of social-democracy in 1871, when Rebel and Liebknecht went to prison for protesting against the annexation of Alsace-Lor- raine, and that of 1914-18, when social-democ- racy declared itself in favour of a plebiscite in these two provinces — after they had been occu- pied by Foch.

I remember Rebel — ^the "old lion," as he was then called — at the Congress of the Social-Demo- cratic party in Jena in 1905, using the same word as Heine when he referred to the submissiveness of the German workers. It was just after the ruling classes in several cities, like Hamburg, Dresden and Liibeck, had changed the local suf- frage system so as to deprive labour of any chance to become a majority. ^ As in Saxony in 1897, when the three-class system of voting was introduced, there had only been a platonic and ineffective protest. Rebel contrasted this atti- tude with the Russian revolution, which had then just reached its chmax, and with the efforts of the Relgian workers who, in 1893 and 1902, had conquered extensions of the suffrage with the help of the general strike. "We are far behind the bourgeoisie of previous centuries," he said; "for it has continuously struggled for the main- tenance of its liberties ; whilst we seem to be in- different when we are robbed of our right to vote and submissively receive lash upon lash across

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our backs." When his passionate outburst cul- minated in the self -accusation, "Hunde sind wir ja doch!" (What hounds we are!) the audience applauded with fury, not knowing the extent to which, ten years later they were to prove the truth of the indictment.

Karl Liebknecht on the other hand often told me how he had inherited his hatred of German serviUty from his father, Wilhelm, who used to say that he thought the Germans constitutionally unable to undertake anything that was "ver- boten" by the pohce, even though it were a rev- olution. Wilhelrti Liebknecht used to say to his son that although from 1878 till 1890 (when the Bismarckian policy practically outlawed the so- cialists), they had been compelled secretly to evade the law and disobey the police, they did so with a heavy heart and without showing any capacity for conspiring against authority.

Nevertheless, to explain German mihtarism and despotism by this psychological feature is to mistake the cause for the effect. One need not go very far back in the history of Germany to find that, when other social and political condi- tions prevailed, the mentality of the German people was different as well. Those who believe in a permanent and constitutional, or even racial inability of the Germans to revolt against ty- ranny, forget that in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of modern times, the German cities

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like Cologne, Strassburg, Constance, Nuremberg and many others have been the theatre of as rev- olutionary popular risings as those of any other places abroad where the social conditions were similar. They forget that the great rebellion of the German peasantry in the first half of the six- teenth century, though it did not achieve any more lasting political results than did the similar movements in France or England, could well compare with them in intensity and determina- tion. And above all, they forget that the world owes to the German people the fruits of a gigan- tic revolutionary struggle that ranks, with the English revolution of the seventeenth century, and the American and French revolutions of the eighteenth, amongst the great achievements that have founded modern democratic civilisation : the Lutheran Reformation. Where was then the slavishness of the German mind.

Some theorists of national hatred, especially amongst the French and the Belgians, have said that the German nation should be wiped out, be- cause it is psychologically unable to conceive, or to adapt itself to, a pohtical regime other than that of centralised autocratic power. This is not even correct as far as contemporary conditions are concerned.

True, there has been in Germany since 1871, and especially within the last twenty years of its rapid industrial progress a marked propensity to

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create strongly centralised Institutions. Indus- trial enterprises, banking concerns, labour unions, employers' associations, political parties, official insurance bodies, intellectual groupings, all had this feature in common that they had invested their leading organs with an intensely centrahsed power. This, by the way, is not a pecuharly German feature. It is inseparable from indus- trial progress in any country where this progress is rapid and unhampered by survivals of previ- ous stages. Some of the economic institutions in Anglo-Saxon America, for instance, are at least as centralised as similar institutions in Germany. And I am not at all sure that the lack of central- isation in most fields of the economic life in France or Belgium is a token of higher develop- ment.

But if we consider the pohtical institutions of Germany, we find that they are much less cen- trahsed than the French, or than those of any other great civilised country, with the exception of the United States. The German Empire is a federal body, both in its constitution and in its administration; there is a much greater local autonomy in provincial or municipal matters than in France. The latter country has been fet- tered by Napoleon with a system of bureaucratic ' centralisation which the best minds of the coun- try consider as a cause not only of economic back- wardness, but also of a state of mind character-

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ised by the fear of initiative and responsibility that results from overconfidence in the divin- ity of the State. Universities, and educational institutions generally, enjoy an incomparably larger autonomy in Germany than in France or Belgium, and have much more pronounced indi- vidual features.

If we look back into the past, we shall find that until recently German institutions were any- thing but centralised, and the spirit of the Ger- man nation anything but prone to give up pro- vincial, local or individual rights. Worship of centralisation is as modern there as centrahsa- tion itself. Until the creation of the German Empire, 1871 — for the mediaeval or post-medise- val empire was never anything but a loose fed- eration of princes — there was but one sphere of German life where centralisation reigned: the Prussian army and bureaucracy. And even this dates back no further than to the end of the eighteenth century.

It is not German authority-worship that has created German militarism; it is German mili- tarism that has created German authority-wor- ship. And German militarism is the work of Prussia; and Prussian militarism is the outcome of economic and political conditions that date back to the Thirty Years' War.

Until the latter half of the eighteenth century, there was not even such a thing as Prussian mili-

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tarism in the sense we now attach to this word, namely, a permeation of the institutions and in- tellectual hf e of a country with the hierarchic and warlike spirit of a permanent military organisa- tion. Prussia itself was but a small part of the German nation. Its armed power was very lim- ited and, as in all other monarchies and princi- palities of the period, consisted of a small force of mercenaries officered by the aristocracy. Yet conditions in Prussia were such as to make a real militarisation of the country possible. It was the task that tempted the two Fredericks and whicK they successfully achieved. The Prussian soil was barren and the population poor; there were practically no cities, and the feudal system had been maintained in all its original harshness by the Junkers, who, however, on their arid estates did not prosper very much more than their peas- ants. But they owed a warlike disposition to their descent from the colonists who had con- quered this originally Slav country; they dis- posed of plenty of horses and of the human res- ervoir of a strong, hardy, prolific and hungry race, used to obedience through generations of serfdom, and all the more wilUng to obey in war as they had little to lose by absenting themselves from their miserable homes.

Yet Prussia would never have become more than a small robber state like many another in Eastern Europe, if the Thirty Years' War had

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not created circumstances in the more civilised and fertile part of Germany that made her an easy prey to the greed of the Prussian Junkers. This war had left Germany almost as devasta- ted, demoralised and divided as the revolution against Spain had left Belgium a century before. Small and poor though it was, Prussia yet repre- sented, at the end of the eighteenth century, a power more considerable than that of any other political or military body in the mass of petty principahties that then made up Germany.

Prussia's first real chance came in 1813. Ger- many had been invaded and occupied by Napo- leon's armies. For the first time since the Refor- mation a national spirit again manifested itself. It was the indomitable desire of a people not to live imder a foreign despot's rule and pay the price of his wars with its own wealth and blood. When the call to armed resistance came, it found a ready instrument in the Prussian army. True, this instrument had proved worthless at Jena in 1806 against the concentrated and self-confident power of a really national army; but that les- son of ignominious defeat had not been wasted. Prussia's mercenary organisation was replaced by a popular army, based on compulsory gen- eral enlistment, whose creation the popular en- thusiasm for a war of national liberation had made possible.

This was the beginning of Prussian hegemony

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over Germany. It could not, however, be con- summated immediately after the war was over, as there was not then the same imperious need for complete political unification as there was in France or England. Germany was still in the agricultural and artisan stage of local and pro- vincial economy. Its slowly rising commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, who needed national unity for their expansion, and its intellectual class, who were still inspired with the patriotic enthusiasm of 1813, were too weak a minority to prevail against the power ^ of inertia of the princes. An attempt undertaken in 1848, under the influence of the Paris revolution, to create a democratic national state, failed miserably.

Another national war was required to enable Prussia to gather the fruits of 1813. Bismarck, the typical representative of the Junker class, prepared it. It was won in 1870-71, after the prelude of the war with Austria, thanks to the efficiency of the Prussian army and administra- tion. The Prussian Junker stood godfather to the Empire. It has remained true to the aus- pices under which it was born. The Great War was the ultimate outcome of the permeation of the German nation with the spirit of militarism and submissiveness to its lords, which three or four generations had sufficed to instil.

The links of this historic development are so obvious that no mythical explanation by a racial

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disposition towards servility is required. Ger- man national psychology, as it was since the Thirty Years' War, was related to the original causes of the development of Prussian militarism only in so far as the mentality of any population of poor and ignorant peasants — used to tradi- tional submission to their landlords — ^will always make them suitable raw material of soldiers, ir- respective of race or nationality. Exactly the same causes created mihtarism in Russia, the Hapsburg monarchies, the Bulgarian States, and in Japan, with similar psychological results.

Whilst the characteristics of race remain prac- tically permanent within any historical period, those of nationahty may change within one or two generations. There is striking evidence of this in the ease with which the first generation bom on American soil of immigrants of any European nationality becomes Americanised, provided that it really lives under American con- ditions and not in a colony or ghetto which is but an annex of the original fatherland.

Most of the characteristics of contemporary Germany which every free civilised man has such good reasons to abhor have been acquired within the last two generations. To me they appear to be due, not only to the influence of militarism, but altogether to the peculiar circumstances of the over-rapid development of German capital- ism. It should be kept in mind that until the last

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quarter of the nineteenth century, Germany was a predominantly agricultural country, with a peasantry that had so recently been freed from feudal serviUty that it had had no time to lose the mental characteristics of this system. By an abrupt transition, in less than a generation, it be- came a great industrial country of the first order. Now a country may within thirty years develop from a nation of serfs into a nation of capitalists and industrial workmen; but it cannot within such a short space of time evolve industrial civihsation and the higher forms and traditions of political and spiritual life that correspond to it.

England and Germany are about on an equal level of capitalist development. But the English mind has the culture that corresponds to it be- cause it has had three centuries in which to form it; the German mind has not. This is why in the native country of the Hymn of Hate and ''Gott strafe England^ the upper classes, in spite of their proclaimed contempt for the "nation of shopkeepers" across the North Sea, made such hopelessly funny and funnily hopeless attempts at looking like Englishmen. The more a par- venu tries to look smart, the more he looks a par- venu. This showed itself not in fashion alone, but in the whole mental and moral attitude of the German upper classes, whose sudden pros- perity had gone to their heads. It made the dom-

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inant philosophy of the German nation — which until the middle of the nineteenth century had been idealistic and ethical — materialistic and util- itarian. During my stay at German universities, I have often been struck by the contrast between the spirit of what was left of the old idealistic generation, as represented by some of the pro- fessors, and that of the students, whose coarsely materialistic outlook on life and unabashed revel- ling in every form of physical and intellectual brutality gave me a foretaste of what a German invasion would mean. Amongst the older pro- fessors and their generation in general, I have known a few men of as fine and gentlemanly a character as may be met anj^where in the world, even though they did not try to knot their ties like EngUshmen or to produce * 'tooth-brush" moustaches like Americans. But I found none amongst the future reserve-officers of Hinden- burg's army who did not illustrate the truth of the saying that the only thing Germany never succeeded in making out of coal-tar is a gentle- man. I saw another proof of the fact that over- rapid capitalist development had shaken the moral foundations of the nation, in the appalling extension of perversity and of immorality not merely in the conventional, but in the true eth- ical sense of the word. It seemed to me to be the consequence of the natural inability of the nerves and the conscience of a people who had been liv-

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ing for generations in old-fashioned humdrum social surroundings, to adapt themselves sud- denly to the dizzy rhythm of super-modern capi- taUsm, with its unbinding of the traditional ties of a sedentary homelif e and its unbridhng of new needs^ appetites and ambitions.

Now a similar rupture of the moral equiUb- rium is bound to happen wherever similar social causes prevail. There are many instances of it outside of Germany, in other historical epochs, and even in ours. What, however, made Ger- many's case worse, not only for herself, but for the rest of the world, is that these causes were not counterbalanced by the self-adjusting influ- ence of adaptable pohtical institutions and the self -educating effect of political freedom and de- mocracy. The spirit of Germany's government was hardly more than the transposition of a miU- tary hierarchy and discipline into the plane of political institutions. The tragedy of the sudden growth of German capitalism out of semi-feudal conditions was that German capitalism had adapted semi-feudal institutions to its purpose. This purpose was double: to keep the lower classes down, and to conquer the world (as was so nicely expressed by the German military ter- minology which used to refer to the "interior enemy" and the "exterior enemy") . But the in- strument was single: miUtarism.

I have never ceased to be convinced that the

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war which had resulted from this system could only end by its destruction. And thereon I based my hope that Germany, freed from a sys- tem that had turned what was once a true and kindly people into an object of deserved execra- tion by the whole world, might once again become a nation of poets and thinkers, worthy to lay claim on the inspiration of Luther, Kant, Goethe and Beethoven.

So let us hate without moderation, where mod- eration would be weakness, but with discrimina- tion; hate the German system with all the capac- ity of our souls for passion; hate it even outside of Germany, wherever the spirit of militarism, submissiveness to despotism, class-egoism and brutal materialism is to be found — and we shall often find it nearer to ourselves than we imagine. But to hate the eternal soul of a nation, strug- gling hke all others from darkness to light, from crime to virtue, is to fall into the very error that has proved so fatal to Germany herself.

I had never imagined that the ruling classes of Germany would act any better than they did when the beast of German militarism was event- ually let loose. But, like most socialists abroad, I had erred in my favourable judgment of Ger- man social-democracy. The revision of this judgment in the light of facts was one of my main preoccupations during the first stage of the war, and it put my whole conception of socialism

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to a test that upset my belief in many idols which I now found false.

I was known in the Belgian movement not only as a great admirer, but even as a promoter of the methods of German social-democracy. Two years before the war, I had been almost ex- pelled from the Belgian Labour Party for my criticism of its* opportunist short-sightedness and lack of a clear doctrinal conception, a criticism largely inspired by my admiration of the clear- cut rigidity of German social-democratic policy and its permeation with orthodox Marxianism. The Belgian Committee for Workers' Educa- tion, which I had spent three years in setting on foot, had been modelled on the example of the German Arbeiterbildungsausschuss, As an ad- visory member of the executive of the Belgian Federation of Trade Unions, I had successfully promoted a system of national centralisation, or- ganisation by industries, and federative relations between the trade unions and the Labour Party, copied from the German model. I had collected a considerable amount of money for an insti- tution that allowed intelligent young Belgian workmen to spend a few months in Germany, to study German industrial and trade union meth- ods on the spot. I had organised and conducted three extensive tours of Belgian trade union and Labour Party officials to Berlin and other Ger- man cities, with the avowed purpose of convert-

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ing them to the superiority of the German plan of the labour movement. Many of these things I do not regret in the least. I am still as con- vinced as I was then of the superiority,