DISARMAMENT AND FOREIGN TRADE
By Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske, U. S. Navy (Retired)
P.T. Barnum declared "the public like to be humbugged." This seems to be true; for, by merely substituting the word "disarmament" for the word ''pacifism," William J. Bryan, Jane Addams and others are enabled to preach actual pacifism with success, and humbug hordes of people.
They employ the same arguments now in preaching disarmament that they formerly did in preaching pacifism. Their arguments rest actually, though not obviously, on one major premise which may be stated thus—"the world is different from what it actually is and always has been." If the world actually were different, if the nations that comprise it were not engaged in competition with each other, if nations were less selfish than the individuals who comprise them, if those individuals would moderate their desires, or if they could be made to moderate them by other means than force, then the pacifists, or disarmamentists, would be right.
But what kind of a world is this? What does the record of men's activities for more than 5000 years tell us? The most obvious fact is that men have produced a wonderful civilization.
But what is it that has spurred men to exert themselves to achieve this civilization? Obviously, the spur has been the necessity imposed on the individual men to "make a living"; for, except in the warm and moist countries of the tropics where little civilization has been achieved, men have had to work in order to obtain food, shelter and clothing. Unfortunately, some men have been able to get more than others. From this cause, fights have arisen throughout the life of the human race: men have fought for what they wanted, during hundreds of thousands of years; just as now two dogs will fight for a bone.
Now one of the most significant facts of history (and of daily experience) is that men and nations rarely fight merely to fight, even if they seem to do so. Fighting is an exceedingly tiresome and exceedingly dangerous activity; and people do not resort to it without great cause. The usual cause is a desire to get someth.ing, or to keep something that some one else is trying to get. Sometimes, the immediate cause is anger: but that anger has usually been caused by an attack made to get some money, land or other possession. Sometimes, the possession is an immaterial one, such as reputation.
The expression "self-preservation" is usually supposed to mean preservation of one's actual life. But the instinct to preserve our lives carries with it the instinct to surround ourselves with all the safeguards possible, and to make our lives as comfortable and happy as we can. These ends are best served (in the eyes of most people) by "making money"; because money is the best single medium of exchange, and is more accurately standardized than any other of the material and immaterial objects that men strive for. As there are not enough of material and immaterial things to satisfy everybody, there is tremendous competition to get them. Wherever there is competition, there is apt to be strife; and wherever there is strife, there is apt to be fighting of some kind. Back of every fight, there can usually be found competition for some thing.
It is a commonplace remark that nations behave like individuals. It is a fact, but the fact is continually forgotten. If it were not forgotten, we should not hear foreign trade and disarmament advocated by the same people; because armament is the only means by which a nation can guard its foreign trade. The misleading expression "International Law" makes most people forget that no law exists among nations which can control their relations with each other; and it causes many of those wholly wrong conceptions of international affairs that the disarmamentists spread. Let us not forget for an instant that there is no law in existence that controls, or pretends to control, any nation in its dealings with any other. Every nation is an absolutely independent organization, owing allegiance to nobody but itself.
It will help us to clear our mental view, if we visualize nations as actual individuals, engaged in continuous competition with each other, without any enforceable law regulating their conduct; just as jealous of each other as the bitterest individual competitors in trade, just as willing to enter into agreements which promise advantage to themselves, just as shrewd, and just as willing to violate those agreements, when opportunity offers an advantage for so doing. Imagine a city without any enforceable law compelling its merchants to carry out their agreements!
Now no organization capable of enforcing law has ever existed, except a tribe or a nation ; and a tribe or a nation can enforce law within itself only. For this reason, no organization that could secure world peace has ever existed, except a world-dominating nation. The Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian and Roman empires were such organizations, and maintained peace for long intervals over the then known world. To that kind of peace, the name Pax Romana has been given. It was maintained by armament; and, so far as the experience of mankind during 5000 years of recorded history can teach us, armament is the only agency that can maintain even the approximate state of peace that the world has enjoyed in modern times.
Let us laud trade frankly for the benefit it has wrought; but let us realize, at the same time, that the efforts made by traders have not been wholly unselfish. The beautiful white sails of the Phoenicians must have made stirring pictures, as the vessels that bore them flew over the bright blue waters of the Mediterranean, and threw the salt spray over their bows; but the men who spread those sails did so mainly to "make money," wherewith to live and to let their families live. Furthermore, the people who bought the wares that the Phoenicians brought did not buy them in order to help the traders to make money. They bought them to satisfy their own desires.
This brings us to the crux of the whole matter; for, while it is the struggles of men and nations to make money (or its equivalent) that constitute the immediate cause of war, it is the desires of people to secure the things which only money can secure, that causes those struggles to make money. Therefore, it is the desires of people for the things that money buys that constitute the bottom cause of war.
It seems plain, however, that (at least in modern times) it is not the desire of people for mere food, or mere shelter, or mere clothing that causes wars; because these things are not hard to get. At least, they would not be hard to get, if people wanted nothing else, and concentrated their efforts on getting them. In this case, people would have little reason to live any but an agricultural life, spread evenly over the land; few causes of strife would arise, and actually no wars, in the modern meaning of that word. It is the desires of people for fine apparel, for sumptuous houses, for the fruits and the products of foreign lands—for luxury, in a word—that sends ships over the seas, that compels men to work in mines and factories, that causes great cities to be built, that induces people to live among surroundings that are artificial, that creates appetites that are artificial, that makes many a man a mere getter of money.
It has finally produced a Machine of Civilization so complex that not one man in the world can understand it all. This machine is now going at a speed that seems to be increasing and to be going to increase; with no goal in sight, and with so many causes of derangement present, as to suggest the possibility of an accident some day. The Fall of Rome is an example of a complete smash up of a machine of civilization; and the present condition of Russia supplies a similar example, though in a less degree. Both show that a state of civilization is not necessarily a stable or permanent condition.
In such a chaotic state of affairs as exists at present, any advocacy of disarmament, even partial disarmament, seems, to say the least, inopportune. Disarmament cannot possibly lessen the chance of war, and the need seems obvious for more strength in each nation and not less. Nations, fundamentally, fight to get what their men and women want; no matter whether they be savages who use clubs, or highly civilized Christians who use airplanes. The cause of nations fighting is not the weapons that they fight with, but the desires that they fight to gratify.
Many of those who are calling loudly for disarmament are also calling loudly for increasing foreign trade. Clearly, the projects are incompatible.