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THE COMING REVOLUTION.

Writing in this Review in May, 1916, on "The Trials to Come" I expressed the opinion that the War would end in an industrial revolution here. Since then much has been said and written and much has happened. The Russian revolution has happened. That tremendous event took the world

The

in general by surprise. There may have been some well-informed persons outside Russia who knew that it was coming, but if so they kept their knowledge to themselves by choice or necessity. Others knew that something was going on in Russia but did not divine what would come of it. Even these were few; the many knew nothing and expected nothing; their eyes were turned elsewhere. The effect has been all the greater. revolution was like a thunderstorm breaking over the nations, without warning a sudden flash that lit up the heavens from East to West followed by a roll of thunder that still reverberates throughout the world. I was no wiser than my neighbors, but the event confirmed with startling emphasis an opinion I had long formed about the deeper significance of the War and its eventual consequences.

The War has two aspects for every nation-an external or international and an internal or domestic aspect. The first is obvious and common to all wars other than civil wars; but it is exceptionally prominent in the present case, for never before has nation been

set against

nation in the same way. War, in the usual sense of the word, is essentially an affair of nations; it can only be carried on by the lawfully constituted supreme authority, which the older jurists used to call the Prince but which is now more often called the

State. But this War is an affair of nations beyond all precedent, and that in two ways-(1) the number of nations engaged in it, (2) the active participation of the people in its conduct. With regard to the first point I have often wondered-as no doubt many others have-whether any nation would be able to keep out of it before it was over. In a sense they are all in it already. The list of declared belligerents has steadily lengthened and is still growing as neutrals drop in on our side, but the condition of neutrality is a matter more of form than of substance. The German strategy entails acts of warfare against nearly all neutrals by sea, and Germany's neutral neighbors by land are armed to the teeth and on guard; they are practising an "armed neutrality." A good definition of this ingenious phrase is furnished by Captain Marryat, who knew something about it. "Pray," said the Pacha, "what is the meaning of an armed neutrality?" "It varies according to circumstances, Your Highness,” replied Huckaback, "but generally speaking it means a charge of bayonets." Sooner or later it comes to something of that sort and the armed neutrals of today are constantly expecting it. In effect they are all in the War and standing on guard to defend their nationality. The Germans complain or boast that all the world is against them, and that is so. They have set the world against them; there has never been anything like it. But still more remarkable than the number of nations engaged is the character of the conflict as essentially the affair, not of governments or rulers, but of peoples. Both in principle and in practice the War is their concern in a novel sense. They are more deeply interested in it,

both as soldiers and as citizens, than in any previous wars. The whole strength-physical, economic and moral-of every nation as such is flung into it because it is the national

cause.

It is therefore natural that the larger national aspect should be uppermost, that the War should be thought of in terms of nations, and that its issues and results should be canvassed mainly as questions of international significance. The adjustment of frontiers, annexation, restoration, indemnities, future relations, treaties-these are the problems which chiefly occupy the attention of statesmen and publicists.

It must be so, of course; and I am not caviling at it or belittling the international issues which led to the War and are involved in its termination. But what I feel is that something larger is going on behind them within the nations. It has been called up and set going by the War but now it transcends the ostensible issues. It has grown with the prolongation of the War and nothing can stop it, though its course and development, the form or forms it will take, and its outcome will vary with circumstances and be susceptible of modification and direction. What I refer to is a spontaneous movement among the people. has arisen out of their participation in the War. The external national effort has produced an internal reaction. Last January I wrote in this Review:

It

This War is a volcano in which all the political, social, and economic elements of our life are seething and boiling under the crust, preparing for a great eruption in which the old order will disappear for good.

That was before the Russian revolution, and I was referring particularly to our own country. But a similar process is going on in others, and none

will wholly escape its influence. It varies in kind and degree, but a ferment is at work everywhere. It has suddenly manifested itself in Russia with a force and fulness which have opened men's eyes. The conditions are not changed, but the haze which obscured them has lifted and revealed what men could not or would not see. The atmosphere has changed and the whole horizon looks different. The word "revolution," which was thought exaggerated, if not absurd, and frowned upon or ridiculed when I used it more than a year ago, is now in every mouth, though the meaning attached to it varies widely. A Cabinet Minister of the first rank, Sir E. Carson, has used it plainly and publicly in a certain sense. Speaking at a luncheon given by the British Empire Producers' Organization on the 24th of May he referred to the Russian revolution as "a necessary revolution for freedom brought about by necessary thoughts that came home to men when they were day by day faced with the horrible devastation and peril of war," and then proceeded:

Do not imagine that there is no revolution going on in this country, and do not imagine above all things that there is not a revolution going on in the Empire.

He was alluding to the peaceful political changes which have occurred and are still developing. They do amount to a revolution of a certain kind, and perhaps a Cabinet Minister could not be expected to say more on such an occasion. But I fancy from some further remarks that Sir E. Carson had in his mind at least the probability of a quite different sort of revolution. He attributed the Russian revolution to the fact that "war had brought home to the people there that the power and the real power must be in the people who have to

fight the war." That touches the center. The War is a people's war- a war for popular Liberty. Several States have come into it through the direct pressure of popular opinion upon their Governments. Nationality is a people's affair, and the primary issue was the right of peoples to their own nationality. Nationality is to nations what personality is to individuals. It is a complex of qualities and conditions which in their totality mark off one people from others. Its composition varies indefinitely; there is no uniformity, but its basis is generally racial affinity, its apex a government of the nation's own choice. With race go traditions, customs and language; with government the laws and institutions that suit the nation. The right to enjoy these things constitutes national liberty.

Now the War arose out of a challenge to that right, and from the first it was a people's war. There was a clash of nationalities. That is a truism which has been expounded by a thousand political and historical writers. The Teuton and Magyar elements in the Central Empires-which otherwise detest each other joined hands to challenge the right of the Serbian people to their own nationality. It was a wanton challenge, inspired by the desire of the aggressors to aggrandize themselves at the expense of the Slavs and made with full knowledge that the Russian people would not suffer Serbia to go down. I say the Russian people, not the Russian Government, because the popular feeling in Russia was revealed in extraordinarily clear and vigorous language by Professor Mitrovanoff, of Petrograd, just before the War, in the important German review the Preussische Jahrbücher. Professor Mitrovanoff, who is an old pupil of Professor Delbrück, the editor of the Jahrbücher, had been asked by the latter for his

opinion of the tension between Russia and Germany, and his answer was published in June, 1914. Professor Delbrück evidently knew what was coming and wished to find out what was to be expected of Russia. He got a very straight answer. "It is impossible," wrote Professor Mitrovanoff, "for Russia to remain indifferent to the fate of the Southern Slavs in the Balkan Peninsula." "To let the whole thing go," he continued, “would be moral and political suicide for any Russian Government." And he further made clear the popular feeling. "The ill-feeling against the Germans is in every heart and every mouth; and seldom, it seems to me, has public opinion been more unanimous." He wrote as a calm observer and a friend of Delbrück's, not as a politician or a firebrand; and Delbrück had asked him because he confidence in his capacity and judgment.

had

It was not, then, the Russian Government but the Russian people that were challenged; and the German people knew it perfectly well. With them, too, and the Magyars the quarrel was equally an affair of the people. The German Government had ulterior and far-reaching aims, but the people supported their rulers in the War not only willingly but with enthusiasm, and that before all the arguments about defense and the supposed "encircling" policy instigated by England had been spun out for their edification. They wanted to make their nationality dominant over others, and the justification instilled into them by the intellectuals was their superiority to all others. years the German people had been more keen for war than the Kaiser, who succumbed to the war party only in the autumn of 1913, and, to the last, cherished misgivings not shared by the public. Army and

For

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