German Problems and Personalities Part 11

CHAPTER X

THE GERMAN RACE HERESY AND THE WAR

I.

It is the purpose of the following article to single out one aspect of the war which has been strangely neglected. It is our purpose to emphasize the influence which the obsession of one particular idea, the German race theory, has exercised over the German mind and the part which it has played in bringing about the war of the nations.

False ideas have been the dragon's teeth from which have risen the legions of five continents. Amongst those false ideas the most deadly, the most fatal, has been the German heresy of race, the theory of race inequality and race antagonism. It is in the name of that race heresy, in the name of Germanism and Pan-Germanism, of Slavism and Pan-Slavism, of Saxonism and Pan-Saxonism, the war is being waged.

We read the following pa.s.sage in a recent book by Sven Hedin, the official chronicler of the German armies:

"Here is a (German) reservist. What a tremendous figure! What can Latins, Slavs, Celts, j.a.ps, Negroes, Hindus, Ghurkas, Turcos, and whatever they are called, do against such strapping giants of the true Germanic type? His features are superbly n.o.ble, and he seems pleased with his day's work. He does not regret that he has offered his life for Germany's just cause."

In this odious pa.s.sage we have in a few lines the whole history and the whole philosophy of the tragedy. We have the spirit with which the Germans have waged the war, we have the motive for which they have waged it, and we have the ultimate purpose which they hope to achieve-namely, to force upon a subjected Europe the rule of the super-race of Treitschke and the _bionda bestia_ of Nietzsche.

In former times, in the so-called "Dark Age," nations would fight for the human, rational, but impracticable principle of orthodoxy. To-day we are fighting for the inhuman, for the equally impracticable and immoral principle of race antagonism. Germans fight because through their veins courses the red blood of the Teutons of Tacitus. They are fighting because they are convinced that they have the Might and the Right and the Duty of crus.h.i.+ng the French and the Russians, because through French veins courses the tainted blood of the Gauls of Caesar, and because through the veins of the Slavs courses the white fluid of the slave and the yellow fluid of the Tatar.

II.

It is one of the commonplaces of the economic school that the economic motive is the main factor which makes for peace or war, that material interests only count, and that ideas do not matter. It is one of the shallow illusions of the pseudo-rationalist school that the age of religious wars is pa.s.sed for ever. As a matter of fact, this war is as much a religious war as any crusade that was ever waged. The only difference between the religious war of to-day and the religious wars of yesterday is that in the past dogmas were promulgated by priests and saints in the name of Theology. The dogmas of to-day are promulgated in the name of Science by the high-priests of Universities and Academies. A few mystical Greek words, such as _h.o.m.ousios_ and _h.o.m.oiousios_, were the watchwords of the crusades of old. A few equally mystical Greek words, _brachycephalic_ and _dolichocephalic_, are the watchwords of the crusades of to-day.

III.

It may seem the idle conceit of a dreamer out of touch with reality to a.s.sert that it is principles which mainly matter and that it is the ideal which is the ultimate reality. It may seem a ludicrous exaggeration to a.s.sert that a mere abstract scientific theory, apparently so innocuous as is the German race theory, could be held responsible for so t.i.tanic a catastrophe. Surely there seems to be here no relation and no proportion between cause and effect. Yet it does not take a prolonged effort of profound thinking to understand the portentous political significance of the German race heresy. It is not difficult to understand that according as we believe that history is mainly a conflict of ideals or according as we believe that history is mainly a conflict of material interests, or a conflict of races, we shall consistently either believe in peace or in war as the normal condition of humanity. Conflicts of ideas ought rationally to make for peace. Conflicts of material interests will frequently, although not necessarily, make for war. Conflicts of races must inevitably and always make for war.

If you believe in the materialistic theory that human history is mainly made up of the inevitable antagonism between Aryan and Semite, between Slav and Teuton, between Celt and Anglo-Saxon, then you must also believe that war is the permanent and beneficial factor in human history. For the conflicts of races for supremacy can only be solved through war.

On the other hand, if you believe in the idealistic theory that human history is mainly a conflict of spiritual and moral and political ideals, then peace is the ultimate factor. For human experience and human reason equally teach us that a conflict of spiritual ideals cannot be solved by violence. They can only be solved by discussion and argument, by persuasion and conversion, by the spread of education, by clear thinking and strenuous working, by the diffusion of sweetness and light. Both reason and wisdom teach us that truth and faith are like love-they cannot be imposed by force.

IV.

Underlying the theory of race there is a first a.s.sumption that there is such a thing as a distinct racial type; that there are definite breeds of men, Aryans and Semites, Celts and Teutons, just as there are definite breeds of dogs and pigeons; that human breeds are evolved by similar selective processes; that those distinct racial types are the main factor in the history of nations; that those types are endowed with specific anatomical and physiological characteristics, and that those physiological characteristics carry with them equally definite moral, intellectual, and political qualities.

And there is a second a.s.sumption which is the corollary of the first.

Not only is there a separation of races, there is also an inequality of races. "L'Inegalite des Races humaines" is the t.i.tle of the epoch-making book of Count de Gobineau. The "Separation of Race" is a biological and objective fact. But to that biological fact we must add a moral and subjective distinction. Some races are n.o.ble, others are ign.o.ble. Some races are born to rule, other races are born to obey, to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water." The Slav is born a slave to be controlled by the Germans. The Serbian is born a serf to be controlled by the Austrians. The Bohemian is an outcast. The Pole is a drunkard. The Celt is a weakling. The Anglo-Saxon is a mercenary. The Russian is a Tatar and a brute.

V.

The German race theory is propped up by a formidable array of so-called scientific proofs. All the auxiliary disciplines of biology, botany and zoology, physiology and anatomy, are enlisted in the service of anthropology and ethnology. The question as to whether a particular nation is a _Kultur Volk_ or whether it is only a rabble of slaves depends entirely on whether the facies is square or oval, brachycephalic or oligocephalic. It depends entirely-to use the pedantic jargon of the anthropologist-on the "cephalic index" of the race.

The historical sciences are called in to support the conclusions of ethnology. It is especially philology which is the most efficient instrument demonstrating the existence and the superiority of a distinct race. Just as anatomy reveals to us the structure of the cranium, so philology reveals to us the structure of the mind. The philologist reveals the genealogies of words even as the anthropologist studies the genealogies of races.

In the burning controversies which for the last generation have divided the Tchech and Magyar and Croatian and Roumanian races of the Austrian Empire, it is the philologists who have acted as umpires. In Vienna philologists like von Jagic have all the authority and prestige of statesmen. Similarly, in the Balkan States, Serbians and Bulgarians, Roumanians and Greeks, find conclusive evidence of their respective rights in the dialects of the Macedonian populations. Such and such a province must be allotted to the Serbians, and not to the Bulgarians, because such and such a dialect has more affinity to the Serbian than to the Bulgarian language. Similarly, in the Latin elements of their dictionary, Roumanian patriots find convincing evidence of their Latin ancestry, and finally prove that they are the lineal descendants of the Dacian legions of Emperor Trajan.[21]

[21] The Roumanian language is a composite language like English. Even as the English vocabulary is mainly a blend of Anglo-Saxon and Franco-Norman, so the Roumanian language is a blend of Latin and Slavonic words. Many years ago the British and Foreign Bible Society published a Roumanian Bible from which the majority of the Slavonic words had been eliminated.

I pointed out in _Everyman_ that this Roumanian translation was not Roumanian at all. The authorities of the Bible Society indignantly protested and asked me to withdraw. I refused to withdraw. The British and Foreign Bible Society investigated the question, deferring to my criticisms, and prepared and published a new revised version of their Roumanian Bible in which the Slavonic words largely composing the religious vocabulary of Roumania have been restored.

VI.

Those scientific arguments, biological and philological, may satisfy the biologists and the philologists; they certainly satisfy n.o.body else. All those pseudo-scientific facts belong to the realm of fiction. Serious thinkers have ceased to prattle about the application of biology to ethics since Huxley delivered his Romanes lecture on "Evolution and Ethics." The encroachments of scientific materialism have failed as signally in the political sciences as they have failed in ethics.

It is futile to compare the processes which evolve races of man with the processes which evolve breeds of animals. It is true that in the lower stages of humanity the word "race" has a definite meaning. It may be contended that there is a wide gulf between the races at the extreme end of the human scale, a gulf which even the enthusiastic devotion of missionary effort does not seem able to bridge. There is such a thing as the "blackness" of the n.i.g.g.e.r and the "yellowness" of the Chinese and the j.a.panese, although the j.a.panese have proved themselves capable of a.s.similating Western civilization, and although the black race has produced the greatest poet of Russia, Pouchkine, and one of the greatest novelists of France, Alexandre Dumas. But it is an all-important fact that as civilization advances the word "race"

entirely changes its meaning. Evolution entirely modifies its processes. Biological factors steadily decrease in importance. Moral and political and intellectual factors as steadily increase in importance.

Isolation and selection are the main conditions required to produce a definite breed of cattle. On the other hand, if we want to produce a highly civilized type, it is not isolation which is the main condition, but crossing and blending, mixture and intercourse. As we rise in the scale of humanity there are no fixed types. All types are equally plastic. There are no pure types. All types are equally mixed.

Even if we take the Jewish race, which seems to show extraordinary fixity and stability of type, there is not one dominant Jewish type; there are fully fifty different Jewish types. There is hardly any resemblance between the Jew of Tiflis and the Jew of Tangier, between democratic Ashken.a.z.im and the aristocratic Sephardim. Race is not a cause, but an effect. It is not biology which explains politics, it is politics which dominate biology. It is not the physical which explains the moral, it is the moral which produces the physical. It is not the racial type which produces a racial belief and a racial community, it is the religion which produces the race. It is not the Hindu caste which produces the religion, it is religion which produces the caste.

Similarly, it is the religious and political conditions which have kept the Jew apart, and which have preserved the characteristics of the race. Even so, religion and persecution have kept the characteristics of the Armenians or the Pa.r.s.ees and the Greek colonies in the Levant.

VII.

A highly gifted race is invariably the outcome of complex elements, of many cross-currents. Invariably it is the outcome of moral, spiritual, and political factors. It is the outcome of unity of language, of unity of religion, of community of traditions and inst.i.tutions. It is mainly religion which keeps apart the French and the Anglo-Saxon races in Canada, and which divides the Celt from the Ulsterman in Ireland.

Let the religious boundary break down, and the Irish Celt will blend with the Ulster Scot, the French Canadian will mix with the Anglo-Saxon. The race heresy in its modern form is the sinister shadow projected by the biological materialism of the early Darwinians. It is the same materialistic conception which has triumphed in German Marxism and in the economic interpretation of history. It is the same conception which has triumphed in the _Realpolitik_ and _Weltpolitik_, and the elimination of the moral factor from the activities of high policy. The tyranny of the race dogma permeates the majority of the German historians and publicists from the early nineteenth century. We find it in Mommsen's "History of Rome." It has found a striking expression in his famous chapter on the Celts, which is only a veiled attack against the French, who are a.s.sumed to be the lineal descendants of the Gauls. The same dogma is the dominant idea of Treitschke's "History." We find it in the _bionda bestia_ of Nietzsche. We find it in the "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century"

of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. We find it in the works of Count de Gobineau, who, after working unnoticed in his own country, has been heralded as the apostle of Pan-Germanism in the Vaterland. The race heresy has been the _leitmotiv_ of all political controversies in the Empire. We find it equally in the anti-Semitic, in the anti-Russian, in the anti-French propaganda. It has culminated in the triple dogma of the superman, of the super-race, and of the super-State, and this triple dogma of the German _Realpolitik_ has worked for the enslavement of Europe as inevitably as the triple dogma of the French Revolution-_Liberte_, _Egalite_, _Fraternite_-was bound to lead to the liberation of Europe.

VIII.

For the philosophy of race, with all the liberal demonstrations of its votaries, is essentially and inevitably the philosophy of reaction and the philosophy of militarism, if it is carried to its logical conclusion. And, unfortunately, in Germany it has been carried to its logical conclusion. In Britain and France thinkers have advocated the same deadly theories. The same deadly poison of pseudo-science has infected the body politic. But Darwin and Huxley always saved themselves by inconsistency from the ruthless application of their doctrines. The common sense of the community has shrunk from extreme logic. In a country of free discussion and of free inst.i.tutions doctrines are counteracted by other influences. Theories are tested by life. In an autocratic country theories are supreme. The undiluted theories of Rousseau and Robespierre were supreme under the Reign of Terror; the theories of Katkov and the extreme Pan-Slavists were supreme in Russia under the reign of Alexander III. Under a government like Prussia, where all the spiritual forces are mobilized, where Universities, Churches, and newspapers are subject to the State, there is nothing to counteract the doctrinaire spirit. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that the heresy of race should have become a fixed idea, a monomania, in the German Empire. In Great Britain the theories of the apostate Englishman Chamberlain could not have struck deep root, notwithstanding all the enthusiastic praise which Mr. Bernard Shaw has given to the "Foundations." In France the theories of Count de Gobineau pa.s.sed unnoticed. In Germany "Gobineau Societies" have been established in order to propagate the gospel of the French diplomat. In Germany one hundred thousand copies of the "Foundations"

of Chamberlain, with their ponderous twelve hundred pages compact with facts and arguments, have been sold, have poisoned countless brains, and have wielded enormous political influence.

IX.

The first inevitable outcome of the German race heresy has been to stimulate the belief in the supremacy of the Teuton and to transform the natural conceit of patriotism into an odious megalomania. Once the Germans a.s.sumed in accordance with the race dogma that some European races are born to rule and others to obey, it was inevitable that they should draw the further inference that they of all races were the dominant race. It is true that the belief of the Calvinist in religious predestination may lead to a pessimistic as well as to an optimistic conclusion. The believer in predestination may a.s.sume that he is predestined to eternal d.a.m.nation as easily as he a.s.sumes that he is predestined to eternal salvation. But the pseudo-scientific mind and the materialistic mind is not so easily addicted to humility and pessimism. The slave morality of the Christian may lead to meekness and charity and to all the negative virtues of a degenerate Christianity. The master morality of the Anti-Christ Nietzsche must lead to the ruthless a.s.sertion of power. The belief in race predestination can therefore only result in megalomania, and in Germany it has certainly resulted in the most acute, the most insane, inflation of nationalism and imperialism recorded in modern history.

Of that megalomania the Kaiser has been, in innumerable speeches, the eloquent and insolent spokesman.

X.

Even as race heresy must result in racial megalomania, it must result in political reaction and in the government of caste. The principle which is true of the nation as a whole is as true of every section of that nation. And the pride of race in a nation is substantially the same thing as the pride of birth in a cla.s.s. If amongst the races of man there is one particular breed, the Teuton, which const.i.tutes the born aristocracy of humanity, so amongst those Teutons there is one special caste which is the born aristocracy of Teutonism. It is the rooted belief in the race theory which has maintained the rule of Junkerthum. On the race theory an exclusive aristocratic government recruited and maintained by artificial selection is the only logical and sensible government, and democracy is bound to be considered as a principle of decay. The Kings of Prussia select their rulers on the same principle on which King Frederick William selected his regiment of six-foot grenadiers from the military caste.

That is why we find in Prussia the most exclusive aristocratic government in the world. As a sop to Southern German opinion, Bismarck was compelled to grant universal suffrage for the Reichstag, but in the Prussian Parliament, or "Landtag," Bismarck, the Junker of blood and iron, retained the good old principle of aristocratic government.

Under the three-cla.s.s voting system of the Landtag, one voter const.i.tuting by himself the first cla.s.s may have as much political power as the twenty thousand electors const.i.tuting the third cla.s.s.

That is also why the Prussian Junker retains by right of birth a monopoly in the higher ranks of the Army, of the Diplomatic and Civil Service. The Junker is born to greatness even as the princely families of Germany have been born to a monopoly of all the thrones of Europe.

XI.

As the race theory must inevitably lead to megalomania and reaction, so it must inevitably lead to militarism. As it is incompatible with democracy, so it is incompatible with peace. As we pointed out at the beginning of this a.n.a.lysis, if it be indeed true that there are some races which are born to rule, it is their duty to a.s.sert their will to power over inferior races. If "the true Teutonic type"-to use the words of Sven Hedin-be indeed superior to the Celt, to the Anglo-Saxon, to the Slav, and to the Latin, he is morally bound to a.s.sert that superiority. The Teuton will not only achieve the victory, he will deserve it. _Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht_ (World history is world judgment). History is not a conflict between abstractions, between truth and error, between higher and lower principles, between conflicting ideals; it is, above all, the tragic conflict between higher and lower races. War is necessary and war is beneficial. War is not only the instrument, it is also the criterion, of progress. "Might is Right" ceases to be an immoral principle.

"Might is Right" is the ultimate formula of the most sublime morality, for Might is but the Right of the strong to establish the rule of the n.o.ble over the ign.o.ble elements of humanity.