Peace Theories and the Balkan War

CHAPTER II.

“PEACE” AND “WAR” IN THE BALKA­NS.

“Peace” in the Balka­ns un­der the Turk­ish Sys­tem--The in­ad­equa­cy of our terms--The re­pul­sion of the Turk­ish in­va­sion--The Chris­tian ef­fort to bring the reign of force and con­quest to an end--The dif­fer­ence be­tween ac­tion de­signed to set­tle re­la­tion­ship on force and counter ac­tion de­signed to pre­vent such set­tle­ment--The force of the po­lice­man and the force of the brig­and--The fail­ure of con­quest as ex­em­pli­fied by the Turk--Will the Balkan peo­ples prove Paci­fist or Bel­li­cist; adopt the Turk­ish or the Chris­tian Sys­tem?

Had we thrashed out the ques­tion of war and peace as we must fi­nal­ly, it would hard­ly be nec­es­sary to ex­plain that the ap­par­ent para­dox in An­swer No. 4 (that war is fu­tile, and that this war will have im­mense ben­efits) is due to the in­ad­equa­cy of our lan­guage, which com­pels us to use the same word for two op­posed pur­pos­es, not to any re­al con­tra­dic­tion of fact.

We called the con­di­tion of the Balkan penin­su­la “Peace” un­til the oth­er day, mere­ly be­cause the re­spec­tive Am­bas­sadors still hap­pened to be res­ident in the cap­itals to which they were ac­cred­it­ed.

Let us see what “Peace” un­der Turk­ish rule re­al­ly meant, and who is the re­al in­vad­er in this war. Here is a very friend­ly and im­par­tial wit­ness--Sir Charles El­liot--who paints for us the char­ac­ter of the Turk as an “ad­min­is­tra­tor”:--

“The Turk in Eu­rope has an over­ween­ing sense of his su­pe­ri­or­ity, and re­mains a na­tion apart, mix­ing lit­tle with the con­quered pop­ula­tions, whose cus­toms and ideas he tol­er­ates, but makes lit­tle ef­fort to un­der­stand. The ex­pres­sion in­deed, 'Turkey in Eu­rope' means in­deed no more than 'Eng­land in Asia,' if used as a des­ig­na­tion for In­dia.... The Turks have done lit­tle to as­sim­ilate the peo­ple whom they have con­quered, and still less, been as­sim­ilat­ed by them. In the larg­er part of the Turk­ish do­min­ions, the Turks them­selves are in a mi­nor­ity.... The Turks cer­tain­ly re­sent the dis­mem­ber­ment of their Em­pire, but not in the sense in which the French re­sent the con­quest of Al­sace-​Lor­raine by Ger­many. They would nev­er use the word 'Turkey' or even its ori­en­tal equiv­alent, 'The High Coun­try' in or­di­nary con­ver­sa­tion. They would nev­er say that Syr­ia and Greece are parts of Turkey which have been de­tached, but mere­ly that they are trib­utaries which have be­come in­de­pen­dent, provinces once oc­cu­pied by Turks where there are no Turks now. As soon as a province pass­es un­der an­oth­er Gov­ern­ment, the Turks find it the most nat­ural thing in the world to leave it and go some­where else. In the same spir­it the Turk talks quite pleas­ant­ly of leav­ing Con­stantino­ple some day, he will go over to Asia and found an­oth­er cap­ital. One can hard­ly imag­ine En­glish­men speak­ing like that of Lon­don, but they might con­ceiv­ably speak so of Cal­cut­ta.... The Turk is a con­queror and noth­ing else. The his­to­ry of the Turk is a cat­alogue of bat­tles. His con­tri­bu­tions to art, lit­er­ature, sci­ence and re­li­gion, are prac­ti­cal­ly nil. Their de­sire has not been to in­struct, to im­prove, hard­ly even to gov­ern, but sim­ply to con­quer.... The Turk makes noth­ing at all; he takes what­ev­er he can get, as plun­der or pil­lage. He lives in the hous­es which he finds, or which he or­ders to be built for him. In un­favourable cir­cum­stances he is a ma­raud­er. In favourable, a _Grand Seigneur_ who thinks it his right to en­joy with grace and dig­ni­ty all that the world can hold, but who will not low­er him­self by en­gag­ing in art, lit­er­ature, trade or man­ufac­ture. Why should he, when there are oth­er peo­ple to do these things for him. In­deed, it may be said that he takes from oth­ers even his re­li­gion, clothes, lan­guage, cus­toms; there is hard­ly any­thing which is Turk­ish and not bor­rowed. The re­li­gion is Ara­bic; the lan­guage half Ara­bic and Per­sian; the lit­er­ature al­most en­tire­ly im­ita­tive; the art Per­sian or Byzan­tine; the cos­tumes, in the Up­per Class­es and Army most­ly Eu­ro­pean. There is noth­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic in man­ufac­ture or com­merce, ex­cept an aver­sion to such pur­suits. In fact, all oc­cu­pa­tions, ex­cept agri­cul­ture and mil­itary ser­vice are dis­taste­ful to the true Os­man­li. He is not much of a mer­chant. He may keep a stall in a bazaar, but his op­er­ations are rarely un­der­tak­en on a scale which mer­its the name of com­merce or fi­nance. It is strange to ob­serve how, when trade be­comes ac­tive in any sea­port, or up­on the rail­way lines, the Os­man­li re­tires and dis­ap­pears, while Greeks, Ar­me­ni­ans and Lev­an­tines thrive in his place. Nei­ther does he much af­fect law, medicine or the learned pro­fes­sions. Such call­ings are fol­lowed by Moslims but they are apt to be of non-​Turk­ish race. But though he does none of these things ... the Turk is a sol­dier. The mo­ment a sword or ri­fle is put in­to his hands, he in­stinc­tive­ly knows how to use it with ef­fect, and feels at home in the ranks or on a horse. The Turk­ish Army is not so much a pro­fes­sion or an in­sti­tu­tion ne­ces­si­tat­ed by the fears and aims of the Gov­ern­ment as the quite nor­mal state of the Turk­ish na­tion.... Ev­ery Turk is a born sol­dier, and adopts oth­er pur­suits chiefly be­cause times are bad. When there is a ques­tion of fight­ing, if on­ly in a ri­ot, the stol­id peas­ant wakes up and shows sur­pris­ing pow­er of find­ing or­gan­isa­tion and ex­pe­di­ents, and alas! a sur­pris­ing fe­roc­ity. The or­di­nary Turk is an hon­est and good-​hu­moured soul, kind to chil­dren and an­imals, and very pa­tient; but when the fight­ing spir­it comes on him, he be­comes like the ter­ri­ble war­riors of the Huns or Henghis Khan, and slays, burns and rav­ages with­out mer­cy or dis­crim­ina­tion.”[1]

Such is the ver­dict of an in­struct­ed, trav­elled and ob­ser­vant En­glish au­thor and diplo­ma­tist, who lived among these peo­ple for many years, and who learned to like them, who stud­ied them and their his­to­ry. It does not dif­fer, of course, ap­pre­cia­bly, from what prac­ti­cal­ly ev­ery stu­dent of the Turk has dis­cov­ered: the Turk is the typ­ical con­queror. As a na­tion, he has lived by the sword, and he is dy­ing by the sword, be­cause the sword, the mere ex­er­cise of force by one man or group of men up­on an­oth­er, con­quest in oth­er words, is an im­pos­si­ble form of hu­man re­la­tion­ship.

And in or­der to main­tain this evil form of re­la­tion­ship--its evil and fu­til­ity is the whole ba­sis of the prin­ci­ples I have at­tempt­ed to il­lus­trate--he has not even ob­served the rough chival­ry of the brig­and. The brig­and, though he might knock men on the head, will re­frain from hav­ing his force take the form of butcher­ing wom­en and dis­em­bow­elling chil­dren. Not so the Turk. His at­tempt at Gov­ern­ment will take the form of the ob­scene tor­ture of chil­dren, of a bes­tial fe­roc­ity which is not a mat­ter of dis­pute or ex­ag­ger­ation, but a thing to which scores, hun­dreds, thou­sands even of cred­ible Eu­ro­pean, wit­ness­es have tes­ti­fied. “The finest gen­tle­man, sir, that ev­er butchered a wom­an or burned a vil­lage,” is the phrase that _Punch_ most just­ly puts in­to the mouth of the de­fend­er of our tra­di­tion­al Tur­cophil pol­icy.

And this con­di­tion is “Peace,” and the act which would put a stop to it is “War.” It is the in­ex­ac­ti­tude and in­ad­equa­cy of our lan­guage which cre­ates much of the con­fu­sion of thought in this mat­ter; we have the same term for ac­tion des­tined to achieve a giv­en end and for a counter-​ac­tion des­tined to pre­vent it.

Yet we man­age, in oth­er than the in­ter­na­tion­al field, in civ­il mat­ters, to make the thing clear enough.

Once an Amer­ican town was set light to by in­cen­di­aries, and was threat­ened with de­struc­tion. In or­der to save at least a part of it, the au­thor­ities de­lib­er­ate­ly burned down a block of build­ings in the path­way of the fire. Would those in­cen­di­aries be en­ti­tled to say that the town au­thor­ities were in­cen­di­aries al­so, and “be­lieved in set­ting light to towns?” Yet this is pre­cise­ly the point of view of those who tax Paci­fists with ap­prov­ing war be­cause they ap­prove the mea­sure aimed at bring­ing it to an end.

Put it an­oth­er way. You do not be­lieve that force should de­ter­mine the trans­fer of prop­er­ty or con­for­mi­ty to a creed, and I say to you: “Hand me your purse and con­form to my creed or I kill you.” You say: “Be­cause I do not be­lieve that force should set­tle these mat­ters, I shall try and pre­vent it set­tling them, and there­fore if you at­tack I shall re­sist; if I did not I should be al­low­ing force to set­tle them.” I at­tack; you re­sist and dis­arm me and say: “My force hav­ing neu­tralised yours, and the equi­lib­ri­um be­ing now es­tab­lished, I will hear any rea­sons you may have to urge for my pay­ing you mon­ey; or any ar­gu­ment in favour of your creed. Rea­son, un­der­stand­ing, ad­just­ment shall set­tle it.” You would be a Paci­fist. Or, if you deem that that word con­notes non-​re­sis­tance, though to the im­mense bulk of Paci­fists it does not, you would be an an­ti-​Bel­li­cist to use a dread­ful word coined by M. Emile Faguet in the dis­cus­sion of this mat­ter. If, how­ev­er, you said: “Hav­ing dis­armed you and es­tab­lished the equi­lib­ri­um, I shall now up­set it in my favour by tak­ing your weapon and us­ing it against you un­less you hand me _your_ purse and sub­scribe to _my_ creed. I do this be­cause force alone can de­ter­mine is­sues, and be­cause it is a law of life that the strong should eat up the weak.” You would then be a Bel­li­cist.

In the same way, when we pre­vent the brig­and from car­ry­ing on his trade--tak­ing wealth by force--it is not be­cause we be­lieve in force as a means of liveli­hood, but pre­cise­ly be­cause we do not. And if, in pre­vent­ing the brig­and from knock­ing out brains, we are com­pelled to knock out his brains, is it be­cause we be­lieve in knock­ing out peo­ple's brains? Or would we urge that to do so is the way to car­ry on a trade, or a na­tion, or a gov­ern­ment, or make it the ba­sis of hu­man re­la­tion­ship?

In ev­ery civilised coun­try, the ba­sis of the re­la­tion­ship on which the com­mu­ni­ty rests is this: no in­di­vid­ual is al­lowed to set­tle his dif­fer­ences with an­oth­er by force. But does this mean that if one threat­ens to take my purse, I am not al­lowed to use force to pre­vent it? That if he threat­ens to kill me, I am not to de­fend my­self, be­cause “the in­di­vid­ual cit­izens are not al­lowed to set­tle their dif­fer­ences by force?” It is _be­cause_ of that, be­cause the act of self-​de­fence is an at­tempt to pre­vent the set­tle­ment of a dif­fer­ence by force, that the law jus­ti­fies it.[2]

But the law would not jus­ti­fy me, if hav­ing dis­armed my op­po­nent, hav­ing neu­tralised his force by my own, and re-​es­tab­lished the so­cial equi­lib­ri­um, I im­me­di­ate­ly pro­ceed­ed to up­set it, by ask­ing him for his purse on pain of mur­der. I should then be set­tling the mat­ter by force--I should then have ceased to be a Paci­fist, and have be­come a Bel­li­cist.

For that is the dif­fer­ence be­tween the two con­cep­tions: the Bel­li­cist says: “Force alone can set­tle these mat­ters; it is the fi­nal ap­peal; there­fore fight it out. Let the best man win. When you have pre­pon­der­ant strength, im­pose your view; force the oth­er man to your will; not be­cause it is right, but be­cause you are able to do so.” It is the “ex­cel­lent pol­icy” which Lord Roberts at­tributes to Ger­many and ap­proves.

We an­ti-​Bel­li­cists take an ex­act­ly con­trary view. We say: “To fight it out set­tles noth­ing, since it is not a ques­tion of who is stronger, but of whose view is best, and as that is not al­ways easy to es­tab­lish, it is of the ut­most im­por­tance in the in­ter­est of all par­ties, in the long run, to keep force out of it.”

The for­mer is the pol­icy of the Turks. They have been ob­sessed with the idea that if on­ly they had enough of phys­ical force, ruth­less­ly ex­er­cised, they could solve the whole ques­tion of gov­ern­ment, of ex­is­tence for that mat­ter, with­out trou­bling about so­cial ad­just­ment, un­der­stand­ing, eq­ui­ty, law, com­merce; “blood and iron” were all that was need­ed. The suc­cess of that pol­icy can now be judged.

And whether good or evil comes of the present war will de­pend up­on whether the Balkan States are on the whole guid­ed by the Bel­li­cist prin­ci­ple or the op­posed one. If hav­ing now mo­men­tar­ily elim­inat­ed force as be­tween them­selves, they re-​in­tro­duce it, if the strongest, pre­sum­ably Bul­gar­ia, adopts Lord Roberts' “ex­cel­lent pol­icy” of strik­ing be­cause she has the pre­pon­der­ant force, en­ters up­on a ca­reer of con­quest of oth­er mem­bers of the Balkan League, and the pop­ula­tions of the con­quered ter­ri­to­ries, us­ing them for ex­ploita­tion by mil­itary force--why then there will be no set­tle­ment and this war will have ac­com­plished noth­ing save fu­tile waste and slaugh­ter. For they will have tak­en un­der a new flag, the path­way of the Turk to sav­agery, de­gen­er­ation, death.

But if on the oth­er hand they are guid­ed more by the Paci­fist prin­ci­ple, if they be­lieve that co-​op­er­ation be­tween States is bet­ter than con­flict be­tween them, if they be­lieve that the com­mon in­ter­est of all in good Gov­ern­ment is greater than the spe­cial in­ter­est of any one in con­quest, that the un­der­stand­ing of hu­man re­la­tion­ships, the ca­pac­ity for the or­gan­isa­tion of so­ci­ety are the means by which men progress, and not the im­po­si­tion of force by one man or group up­on an­oth­er, why, they will have tak­en the path­way to bet­ter civil­isa­tion. But then they will have dis­re­gard­ed Lord Roberts' ad­vice.

And this dis­tinc­tion be­tween the two sys­tems, far from be­ing a mat­ter of ab­stract the­ory of meta­physics or log­ic chop­ping, is just the dif­fer­ence which dis­tin­guish­es the Briton from the Turk, which dis­tin­guish­es Britain from Turkey. The Turk has just as much phys­ical vigour as the Briton, is just as vir­ile, man­ly and mil­itary. The Turk has the same raw ma­te­ri­als of Na­ture, soil and wa­ter. There is no dif­fer­ence in the ca­pac­ity for the ex­er­cise of phys­ical force--or if there is, the dif­fer­ence is in favour of the Turk. The re­al dif­fer­ence is a dif­fer­ence of ideas, of mind and out­look on the part of the in­di­vid­uals com­pos­ing the re­spec­tive so­ci­eties; the Turk has one gen­er­al con­cep­tion of hu­man so­ci­ety and the code and prin­ci­ples up­on which it is found­ed, main­ly a mil­itarist one; and the En­glish­man has an­oth­er, main­ly a Paci­fist one. And whether the Eu­ro­pean so­ci­ety as a whole is to drift to­wards the Turk­ish ide­al or to­wards the En­glish ide­al will de­pend up­on whether it is an­imat­ed main­ly by the Paci­fist or main­ly by the Bel­li­cist doc­trine; if the for­mer, it will stag­ger blind­ly like the Turk along the path to bar­barism; if the lat­ter, it will take a bet­ter road.

[Foot­note 1: “Turkey in Eu­rope,” pp. 88-9 and 91-2.

It is sig­nif­icant, by the way, that the “born sol­dier” has now been crushed by a non-​mil­itary race whom he has al­ways de­spised as hav­ing no mil­itary tra­di­tion. Capt. F.W. von Her­bert (“Bye Paths in the Balka­ns”) wrote (some years be­fore the present war): “The Bul­gars as Chris­tian sub­jects of Turkey ex­empt from mil­itary ser­vice, have tilled the ground un­der stag­nant and en­fee­bling peace con­di­tions, and the pro­fes­sion of arms is new to them.”

“Stag­nant and en­fee­bling peace con­di­tions” is, in view of sub­se­quent events dis­tinct­ly good.]

[Foot­note 2: I dis­like to weary the read­er with such damnable it­er­ation, but when a Cab­inet Min­is­ter is un­able in this dis­cus­sion to dis­tin­guish be­tween the fol­ly of a thing and its pos­si­bil­ity, one _must_ make the fun­da­men­tal point clear.]