|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 4
Here is the crux of the question, the earth has so much surface and
to-day this is divided up in a certain way by international frontiers.
Yesterday it was divided up in a different way. To-morrow it will again
be divided up in a new way, unless some world federation steps in and
says: "Stop! There are to be no more wars. The present frontiers of the
existing fifty-three nations are to be considered as righteously and
permanently established. After this no act of violence shall change
them."
Think what that would mean! It would mean that nations like Russia, Great
Britain and the United States, which happened to possess vast dominions
when this world federation peace plan was adopted would continue to
possess vast dominions, while other nations like Italy, Greece, Turkey,
Holland, Sweden, France, Spain (all great empires once), Germany and
Japan, whose present share of the earth's surface might be only one-tenth
or one-fiftieth or one-five-hundredth as great as Russia's share or Great
Britain's share, would be expected to remain content with that small
portion.
Impossible! These less fortunate, but not less aspiring nations would
never agree to such a policy of national stagnation, to such a stifling
of their legitimate longings for a "greater place in the sun." They would
point to the pages of history and show how small nations have become
great and how empires have fallen. What was the mighty United States of
America but yesterday? A handful of feeble colonies far weaker than the
Balkan States to-day.
"Why should this particular moment be chosen," they would protest, "to
render immovable international frontiers that have always been shifting?
Why should the maps of the world be now finally crystallised so as to
give England millions of square miles in every quarter of the globe,
Canada, Australia, India, Egypt, while we possess so little? Did God make
England so much better than he made us? Why should the Russian Empire
sweep across two continents while our territory is crowded into a corner
of one? Is Russia so supremely deserving? And why should the United
States possess as much of the earth's surface as Germany, France, Italy,
Belgium, Holland, Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria,
Roumania, Spain, Norway, Sweden and Japan all together and, besides that,
claim authority to say, through the Monroe Doctrine, what shall happen or
shall not happen in South America, Mexico, the West Indies and the
Pacific? How did the United States get this authority and this vast
territory? How did Russia get her vast territory? How did England get her
vast territory?"
The late Professor J. A. Cramb, an Englishman himself, gives us one
answer in his powerful and illuminating book, "Germany and England," and
shows us how England, in the view of many, got _her_ possessions:
England! The successful burglar, who, an immense fortune amassed, has
retired from business, and having broken every law, human and divine,
violated every instinct of honour and fidelity on every sea and on every
continent, desires now the protection of the police!... So long as
England, the great robber-state, retains her booty, the spoils of a
world, what right has she to expect peace from the nations?
In reply to Mr. Bryan's peace exhortations, some of the smaller but more
efficient world powers, certainly Germany and Japan, would recall similar
cynical teachings of history and would smilingly answer: "We approve of
your beautiful international peace plan, of your admirable world police
plan, but before putting it into execution, we prefer to wait a few
hundred years and see if we also, in the ups and downs of nations, cannot
win for ourselves, by conquest or cunning or other means not provided for
in the law of love, a great empire covering a vast portion of the earth's
surface."
The force and justice of this argument will be appreciated, to use a
homely comparison, by those who have studied the psychology of poker
games and observed the unvarying willingness of heavy winners to end the
struggle after a certain time, while the losers insist upon playing
longer.
It will be the same in this international struggle for world supremacy,
the only nations willing to stop fighting will be the ones that are far
ahead of the game, like Great Britain, Russia and the United States.
We may be sure that wars will continue on the earth. War may be a
biological necessity in the development of the human race--God's
housecleaning, as Ella Wheeler Wilcox calls it. War may be a great soul
stimulant meant to purge mankind of evils greater than itself, evils of
baseness and world degeneration. We know there are blighted forests that
must be swept clean by fire. Let us not scoff at such a theory until we
understand the immeasurable mysteries of life and death. We know that,
through the ages, two terrific and devastating racial impulses have made
themselves felt among men and have never been restrained, sex attraction
and war. Perhaps they were not meant to be restrained.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|