When I speak of disappointment everybody knows
at once what I mean.
One need not be a sentimentalist, one may
realize the biological and physiological necessity
of suffering in the economy of human life,
and yet one may condemn the methods and the
aims of war and long for its termination.
To be sure, we used to say that wars cannot
cease as long as nations live under such varied
conditions, as long as they place such different
values upon the individual life, and as long
as the animosities which divide them represent
such powerful psychic forces.
We were therefore quite ready to believe that
for some time to come there would be wars
between primitive and civilized nations and
between those divided by color, as well as
with and among the partly enlightened and
more or less civilized peoples of Europe.
But we dared to hope differently.
We expected that the great ruling nations
of the white race, the leaders of mankind,
who had cultivated world wide interests, and
to whom we owe the technical progress in the
control of nature as well as the creation
of artistic and scientific cultural standards—we
expected that these nations would find some
other way of settling their differences and
conflicting interests.
Each of these nations had set a high moral
standard to which the individual had to conform
if he wished to be a member of the civilized
community.
These frequently over strict precepts demanded
a great deal of him, a great self-restraint
and a marked renunciation of his impulses.
Above all he was forbidden to resort to lying
and cheating, which are so extraordinarily
useful in competition with others.
The civilized state considered these moral
standards the foundation of its existence,
it drastically interfered if anyone dared
to question them and often declared it improper
even to submit them to the test of intellectual
criticism.
It was therefore assumed that the state itself
would respect them and would do nothing that
might contradict the foundations of its own
existence.
To be sure, one was aware that scattered among
these civilized nations there were certain
remnants of races that were quite universally
disliked, and were therefore reluctantly and
only to a certain extent permitted to participate
in the common work of civilization where they
had proved themselves sufficiently fit for
the task.
But the great nations themselves, one should
have thought, had acquired sufficient understanding
for the qualities they had in common and enough
tolerance for their differences so that, unlike
in the days of classical antiquity, the words
“foreign” and “hostile” should no
longer be synonyms.
The enjoyment of this common civilization
was occasionally distuurbed by voices which
warned that in consequence of tradicional
diferences wars were unavoidable even between
those who shared this civilization.
One did not want to believe this, but what
did one imagine such a war to be like if it
should ever come about?
A state at war makes free use of every injustice,
every act of violence, that would dishonor
the individual.
It employs not only permissible cunning but
conscious lies and intentional deception against
the enemy, and this to a degree which apparently
outdoes what was customary in previous wars.
The state demands the utmost obedience and
sacrifice of its citizens, but at the same
time it treats them as children through an
excess of secrecy and a censorship of news
and expression of opinion which render the
minds of those who are thus intellectually
repressed defenseless against every unfavorable
situation and every wild rumor.
It absolves itself from guarantees and treaties
by which it was bound to other states, makes
unabashed confession of its greed and aspiration
to power, which the individual is then supposed
to sanction out of patriotism.
For the individual, too, obedience to moral
standards and abstinence from brutal acts
of violence are as a rule very disadvantageous,
and the state but rarely proves itself capable
of indemnifying the individual for the sacrifice it demands of him.
Nor is it to be wondered at that the loosening of moral ties between the large human units
has had a pronounced effect upon the morality of the individual,
for our conscience is not the inexorable judge that teachers of ethics say it is;
it has its origin in nothing but “social fear.”
Wherever the community suspends its reproach the suppression of evil desire also ceases,
and men commit acts of cruelty, treachery, deception, and brutality,
the very possibility of which would have been considered incompatible with their level of culture.
