The Great Illusion by Norman Angell

Why aggression upon a State does not correspond to aggression upon an individual -- Our changing conception of collective responsibility -- Psychological progress in this connection -- Recent growth of factors breaking down the homogeneous personality of States.

Despite the common idea to the contrary, we dearly love an abstraction -- especially, apparently, an abstraction which is based on half the facts. Whatever the foregoing chapters may have proved, they have at least proved this: that the character of the modern State, by virtue of a multitude of new factors which are special to our age, is essentially and fundamentally different from that of the ancient. Yet even those who have great and justified authority in this matter will still appeal to Aristotle's conception of the State as final, with the implication that everything which has happened since Aristotle's time should be calmly disregarded.

What some of those things are, the preceding chapters have indicated: First, there is the fact of the change in human nature itself, bound up with the general drift away from the use of physical force -- a drift explained by the unromantic fact that physical force does not give so much response to expended effort as do other forms of energy. There is an interconnection of psychological and purely mechanical development in all this which it is not necessary to disentangle here. The results are evident enough. Very rarely, and to an infinitesimal extent, do we now employ force for the achievement of our ends. There is still a factor, however, which remains to be considered, and which has perhaps a more direct bearing on the question of continued conflict between nations than any of the other factors.

Conflicts between nations and international pugnacity generally imply a conception of a State as a homogeneous whole, having the same sort of responsibility that we attach to a person who, hitting us, provokes us to hit back. Now only to a very small and rapidly diminishing extent can a State be regarded as such a person. There may have been a time -- Aristotle's time -- when this was possible; but it is now impossible. Yet the finespun theories on which are based the necessity for the use of force, as between nations, and the proposition that the relationship of nations can only be determined by force, and that international pugnacity will always be expressed by a physical struggle between nations, all arise from this fatal analogy, which in truth corresponds to very few of the facts.

Thus Professor Spenser Wilkinson, whose contributions to this subject have such deserved weight, implies that what will permanently render the abandonment of force between nations impossible is the principle that "the employment of force for the maintenance of right is the foundation of all civilized human life, for it is the fundamental function of the State, and apart from the State there is no civilization, no life worth living. The mark of the State is sovereignty, or the identification of force and right, and the measure of the perfection of the State is furnished by the completeness of this identification."

This, whether true or not, is irrelevant to the matter in hand. Professor Spenser Wilkinson attempts to illustrate his thesis by quoting a case which would seem to imply that those who take their stand against the necessity of armaments do so on the ground that the employment of force is wicked. There may be those who do this, but it is not necessary to introduce the question of right. If means other than force give the same result more easily, with less effort to ourselves, why discuss the abstract right? When Professor Spenser Wilkinson reinforces the appeal to this irrelevant abstract principle by a case which, while apparently relevant, is in truth irrelevant, he has successfully confused the whole issue. After quoting three verses from the fifth chapter of Matthew, he says: 102

There are those who believe, or fancy they believe, that the words I have quoted involve the principle that the use of force or violence between man and man or between nation and nation is wicked. To the man who thinks it right to submit to any violence or be killed rather than use violence in resistance I have no reply to make; the world cannot conquer him, and fear has no hold upon him. But even he can carry out his doctrine only to the extent of allowing himself to be ill-treated, as I will now convince him. Many years ago the people of Lancashire were horrified by the facts reported in a trial for murder. In a village on the outskirts of Bolton lived a young woman, much liked and respected as a teacher in one of the Board-schools. On her way home from school she was accustomed to follow a footpath through a lonely wood, and here one evening her body was found. She had been strangled by a ruffian who had thought in this lonely place to have his wicked will of her. She had resisted successfully, and he had killed her in the struggle. Fortunately the murderer was caught, and the facts ascertained from circumstantial evidence were confirmed by his confession. Now the question I have to ask the man who takes his stand on the passage quoted from the Gospel is this: "What would have been your duty had you been walking through that wood and came upon the girl struggling with the man who killed her? " This is the crucial factor which, I submit, utterly destroys the doctrine that the use of violence is in itself wrong. The right or wrong is not in the employment of force, but simply in the purpose for which it is used. What the case establishes, I think, is that to use violence in resistance to violent wrong is not only right, but necessary.