POLITICS AND MORALS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21708, 15 February 1936, Page 17

POLITICS AND MORALS

Politics and Morals. Meritens By Ck-P-vGap tbi&SM FJS.A, Day to Day Pamphlets No. 30: The Hogarth Press. 5i pp , -V.lt/TaioLk. V,v- ui ’.. ' ’ .*• --- *Tw l-t. -*• 1

; .[Reviewed by R. R. MILLIGAN-]

Armaments increase. The men,* ] ace of international chaos increases. , But I think that the merit ■ of the books written, about these ; things also increases. Dr. Gooch for • a long time has enlisted his talents i in the service of international order. | The present threat of nations stirau- ; lates him. This lecture is one of ■ the best things he has ,done. Four' hundred years ago Niccolo Machiavelli, the familiar “Old Nick,” pro- ■ claimed the divorce of politics from : morals. Numberless rulers in all , times and countries had anticipated . in practice the advice he gave in , “The Prince.” But the thought of i the Middle Ages- fan on transcendental lines. Christian monarchs were accustomed to deduce the 1 maxims of their statecraft from* the ■' Old and New Testaments. There was never any lack of learned doc-, tors ready to prove that deity and the monarch thought much the same things. “By contemptuously brushing all this aside,” says pr. Gooch, “the audacious Florentine," far more than Colombus or Copernicus, Erasmus or Luther, ushered in the new world.” “The Prince,” although only a small book, is still very much alive. Machiavellians, stillr govern, 1 _ Perhaps they have always to govern. ' “Is it better,” asks Machiayelli, “to be loved than feared or to b&feared than be loved?” And .he answers: . “Both'would be convenient, but because that is hard to attain, it is better and far more secure to,be feared.” Again: How honourable it is for a prince j to keep his word, everybody understands. Nevertheless experience has shown in our times that those who i have not tied themselves to it, have j done great things,*and by their cunning and sublety have overcome those - who have been superstitiously exact. ; For you. must understand that there i are two ways of contending, by law j and by force. The first is proper to , men, the second to beasts. # But be- ! cause many times the first is insuxH-' j ‘ cient recourse must be had to the sec- < ond. It belongs therefore to the prince i to understand both. Tempter and Mountain. Seeing therefore it is of such importance to take upon him the nature and disposition of a beast, of all the flock he ought to imitate the lion and the fox. A prince who is wise and prudent cannot or ought not-to keep, his word when the keeping of it is to , his prejudice, and the causes for-which he promised are removed. . This is sweet logic. Were all men good, this doctrine should not be taught; but because they are wicked and notlikely to be punc-. tual with you, you are not obliged to any such strictures with them. In these words Machiayelli clarified all former political thought., A new gospel, raison d’etat, has come to earth and the evangelist begins with the most easily persuadable of Borgia. It is the whole nervous system of government cleanly dissected, since ever there was government* Machiavelli sees to it that the word: and the idea, take' on original instincts as in praised Borne and . long before. Not the virtue of househaberdashery and feminine aromas,' but. plainly and simply, vir-tus, Vi-: rility, energy, .force of character;-the head to plan and the arm to strike. The whole stark power of maleness. Obviously we are" not -done " with it yet. Accordingly, the. paramount duty of the representative and guardian of the community is tp survive and succeed. Half-measures,’ hesitation, weakness of will and purpose, in a prince, are the supreme sin. To do him justice, Machiavelli has as little use for the brutal and blundering tyrant as for the ineffectual idealist. To make omelettes -you must break eggs. But there is no excuse for breaking them if you cannot prepare a tasty jdish. “Better than any number of fortresses is hot to be- bated by your people.” Intelligence is as necessary as resolution and remorseless vigour. The state must live dangerously but successfully. It must think, only of .itself. Anticipating Nietzsche, Machiavelli complains that Christianity is the religion of the weak. Virtus, Fortuna, Necessitas; here is the new trinity, which he substituted for, unreal Christian creeds, Christians assenting. The author of “Politics and Morals” is as full of admiration for the honest beauty of these words and the head that begot them, as any Fuhrer or Duce of the modern world. Like Bacon, whose blood was as cool as his brain was clear, he does not hesitate to. pay homage to the formulator of the famous doctrine of raison d’etat. .“We are much beholden to Machiavelli and others that wrote what men do and not what they ought to do”: so said Bacon. But Dr. Gooch,,for all that, is deliberately and vigorously an anti-Machiavellian. There have: been , anti-Machiavellians before, just as there are now. ‘ Kant was one when-he was, not something greater, and J. S. Mill; Frederick the Great, also!; Once, while that prince was waiting, for the throne! he beguiled ‘ li’is' leisure by writing “L’Anti-Machiavel.” years later, now, king, he had. seized Silesia, observing cynically that, the jurists would .be able to discover good reasons for his action. All of us can see that there is a problem here and that cynicism does not say much about it. It is - the prOneness of our minds to be divided,, to see things, as it were, with the ego- , istical convenience of one eye. Dr. Gooch is quite, aware' of this, al-. though, like the rest of us, he cannot entirely rid himself of 'the flaw, Be has to reach his unification by an effort felt as a sense of need, which is faith, too warm to be truth. -Faith’ reached, out of this come discussion and attempts at proof. - But many follow Machiavfelli. “The essence of a State,” declares Treitschke, “is firstly power, secondly power, thirdly power.** To this Dr. Gooch replies: Is the outlook really so hopeless, the problem really so insoluble as these teachers suggest?. That the struggle between Kratos and Ethps will continue indefinitely like the puli' of forces in our individual, lives, .we can readily believe. .But may’ not Ethos extend its sway at the cost of Kratos. even if it cannot hope for victory all along the-line? Our answer to• these questions will depend in the ’main, on our view of human nature. Democracy is far more than a type of government, and what 1 is - called pacifism is more than a mere theory of international relations. They are both the expression of faith in the ultimate sanity of the. common man, in his power, to learn from experience, in his capacity for spirit jal growth.- 1 share this ’faith'. Despite the number and eminence ol his disciples, I.believe that Machiavelli is radically'unfair tp mankind. -The • professed realist saw' only • limited,

portion of toe vast field .of reality. record of strife—the strife, of arms'antl wits; but it is also a .story 1 of toutssal aid., With a longer, experience: -than Machiavelli, we have to T&ofr liise the solid core of truth 4n toehold adage that hpiiesty is'toe best policy. The application of the maxims of “The - Prince” , may v achieve a temporary triumph, hut they provide norfoohds* tion for toe enduring happiness, prosperity, or security of a State. t The. broad testimony of modern history suggests that the average man rises above the level of “The .Prince.”- Itt the long run the community shapes the government more than, the government zhoulds the community. In communities Jike pur own, resting on a solid foundation of ' ordered liberty, the maxims of “The Prince” am.no longer applicable as regards internal affairs, and there the tacit acceptance of a divorce between politics and morals is at an end. But - when we pass beyond. our national frontiers into the field of international relations the progress of the moralisation of, politics -is painfully slow. Here- ’Machiavelli still holds sway, but for the League of Nations almost unchallenged and unchecked. So formidable is he, so insistently do men behave like lion and fox in thfe namfe’of the State* .that even Dr. Gooch fails, for a. time to go on. He is appalled Jay thefhei that for a single State to follow the dictates of private morality, while its neighbours apply the’maxims of undiluted national egoism,' may well bp suicide: And another - important consideration is that, although a private ciffwa may prefer to surrender his life ,rather than his. faith, aState cannot and .must not make such a sacrifice, lor It iftoe trustee of generations to come. I am merely arguing .thattoe supreme obligation of a-State'to survive inay.lnvolve decisions which. an individual might feel bound on ethical grounds to reject .A trustee cannot surrender an estate - which Is not his own. In other ‘ words, the' action of a goyefnment within certain limits is determined by considerations ‘of what we may call a biological rather than a moral order. At this point, in these - words, Dr. Gooch throws away his case, A|td needlessly. . For trusteeship is .not limited to Cabmet Miidatom,,either in affairs within tfae State or hi those , between States, although their trust is peculiar. Moreover, there cau'Jb® 1 no justification here -Jar autocracy, - since; ,if the wards of the government are neither dead nor unborn, •" they may be consulted. Ih visjp ■£& as living citizens have .organised themselves democratically, and jmve institutions for expressing thpir wffl, , they are in justice not to consult, them inall honesty «s is tyranny. In a world ofhaH-ihdi-vxdualised, half community-creating - nations, when representative rpeets,. representative, all too cheat or to brow-beat ’ Such meetings are not. however, of a logical order,”- and are not what * they are because-nf the honour of trustees. They are so uply because most of man&ipd is unetocatojlor uneducable in comprehenc uses of democracy in pH fieldsahd the extravagance of ey&y of 7 autocracy. think maiihim ismae cen^^^-' tivity to pursue. It Is to consultable democracy of nations* ' and after that of peoples, befinag aster points us out as fooh|' and knaves. The League of Nationsis the most consistent sign, of .this ampler . international life, the supra-nurieus of an organisable world. complete moralisation of politics, 1 like the attainment of Christian perfection in. our personal life, is too much to expect m any we can foresee. But * community and nour is growing. The minds and hearts of men arid worneri are enlisting in lyjalpw Inis the great cmisadte. M - 'j ' ” ■ ' There is only one thing to do. Itis to discover, in ourselves, honesty, and to let our rulers know when* for example, they say: .“We are increasing our armaments In order to defend the Covenant of*the League,” it is not this,, we want, but honesty. So does Dr. Gooch himself from' opmbdt with Madtunvelli, with faith and activity hot impaired but increased. MachiaveUl is an aid to all men. His brain worked. Therefore his words are’There is no escaping 7 his meanings. * He must be accepted and masterel Hie hqunds us on. “Politics and Morals” has been like a duel. BeWrilten, although it is wdl writtmi; made compactor, with phrase placed against phrase, it would reach our ears like great music.'