natural products there can only be made by the Mos-
quitos ; (6) and they alone can regulate their trade ;
(7) and in particular Nicaragua cannot fix a tariff for
Greytown.

1 Treaty of Managua, 50 S.P. 96 (i860). - 72 S.P. 1212.

IS



274 TERRITORIALISM [chap, vi

In point of fact, it was the mixed community at Grey-
town, and not the Indians at all, who were concerned
with the international validity of the rights reserved to
the Mosquitos. The United States, in 1889, supported
Nicaragua in the assertion of a right to establish post-
offices and military stations at Greytown and elsewhere.
" Such a right is an essential incident of paramount
sovereignty, and can properly be exercised by no other
agency. ... If the Republic of Nicaragua is to be
limited to the mere formal right of hoisting a flag and
maintaining a commission within the Reservation, how
can it be called upon to perform any of its international
obligations ? " ' We have elsewhere referred to this con-
troversy. 2

In 1895 a British admiral occupied for a week the
custom-house and port of Corinto. 3 The difficulty arose,
as usual, in the Mosquito Reserve. The Nicaraguans
began to enforce their sway in that district, and arrested
and expelled nineteen British subjects on the ground
of complicity in riot. Lord Kimberley claimed £15,000,
in a rather peremptory way (for the British had not been
hurt), and refused arbitration. The quasi-independence
of Mosquito was, of course, threatened by the Nicaraguan
action. Honduras mediation brought about a settlement.
But hardly was it concluded, than Nicaragua repaid
herself handsomely by incorporating the Mosquito
territory absolutely in her dominions.

The Mosquito question was " definitely " settled by the
Brito-Nicaraguan treaty of 1905. " The absolute sove-
reignty of Nicaragua is recognized, and the Mosquitos
are practically thrown over. Though secured for fifty
years from military service and all taxation, they are
subjected to the Nicaraguan laws.

1 81 S.P. 746, Bayard to Phelps, 23 Nov. 1888.

2 Infra, p. 294(11).

3 U.S. Dipt. Corr. (1895), 1025. See p. 251, supra.
* For. Rel. U.S. (1905), 703.



chap, vi] SANCTITY OF TERRITORY 275

According to Roosevelt, 1 the Treaty of 1846 (United
States and Colombia), Art. 35, which guaranteed a right
of way to the former across Panama, " vested in the
United States a substantial property right carved out of
the rights of sovereignty and property which New Granada
then had and possessed over the said territory." And
in defence of this " real " right, troops were landed, and
acts of authority done, at various times in 1902 and 1903. 2
Prior to that date, the States had only interfered in aid of,
and with the assent of, Colombia. The effect of the
interference was to prevent Colombia from suppressing
insurrection.

Enough has been said to indicate that, as the world
is at present organized, the only alternative to the firm
preservation of the absolute sanctity of territory, inland
and coastal, is anarchy, which could not be long delayed
if such events as we have remarked were to become
recognized as regular. At present they are nothing
more formidable than the thin end of a wedge. It is
very certain that there is a thick edge behind it. Any one
who has no admiration for a universal scramble for
advantages, backed by force of arms, indiscriminately
all the world over, must feel the necessity of allowing
no reasons of immediate convenience to serve as excuses
for the forcible exercise of so-called "peaceable' force
in a neighbour's territory, or off his coasts.

*■■ Message, 7 Dec. 1903.
2 Moore, Digest, III. § 344.



CHAPTER VII

STRATIFICATION

But, though "territoriality" is the magic word of the
modern state, forgetting which it will crumble away like
the palace of an Arab djinn when its controlling spell
is withdrawn, it is not the only possible basis of social
organization. The careless infringement of territory by
a state whose very existence depends on the security
of the territorial principle is suicidal and anarchical.
But that is a conclusion pro loco ct tempore. We have
nothing at present to put in the place of the territorial
principle.

There has never been a time when there has not existed
some organization cutting across the boundaries of
national limits. The Orthodox Catholic Church is
a more powerful political force than the mushroom king-
doms of the Balkans. The Roman Catholic Church
through the mediaeval ages shot the glittering threads
of its high ideals through the rough warp of feudal life.
Orders of chivalry such as the Knights Templars stretched
their branches into many lands. In Julius II. 's time
the envoys of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes
claimed and obtained audience at the court of Rome
as a sovereign's ambassadors. 1 In the old Hellenic days
cults united their votaries from different cities. In
the dark ages, society was definitely organized on a
racial and not a territorial basis. Hun, Burguudian and
Italian in Italy enjoyed different laws.

1 Nys, apud Rev, de D.I, (1893), 517.
276



chap, vii] SOCIALISM 277

And in our own time we are confronted with the patent
fact that the strongest political force which is displaying
active energy is frankly anti-national, and consists in
the organization of class-interests.

The force which seeks to abolish the extremes of
poverty that fester in the towns of modern countries,
by subjecting the individual to the absolute dictation
of an elective authority, we shall call for brevity socialism.
From the first it has aimed at " Internationalism " ; and
its earliest formidable propaganda was known as " The
International." The solidarity of interest of the classes
engaged in manual labour in all countries is emphasized
by its leaders. Their unity, and their omnipotence in
realizing that unity, as against the classes who, to use
a favourite catch-word of the party, " exploit " them,
is a commonplace of the literature of the movement.
The necessary consequence will inevitably be the organiza-
tion of the threatened classes as classes, and independently
of territorial distinctions. Nor will the stratification
stop there. The quarrel is not between the mass of the
manual labourers on the one hand, and the bankers,
civil servants, shopkeepers, professional people, land-
owners and funds-holders on the other. The artificer
earning £2 or £3 a week is in a different position, and
must inevitably take a different attitude, from that
of the poorly paid carter or hodman. The regularly
employed, if poorly paid, labourer in a provincial district
is in quite another situation than the casual labourer
in a large town. The casual labourer's interests are
not those of the submerged population who live partly
on chance earnings, partly on charity and partly on
nothing. On the other hand, the clerk's interests are
diverse from all of these : while the small shopkeeper's,
who makes ends meet on a net profit of £50, are much
more like the labourer's than those of the tradesman
with a turnover of £5,000. The manager and the London
shopwalker have another set of interests ; the higher



278 STRATIFICATION [chap, vii

Civil Service is in many respects antagonistic to the
merchant ; and besides all these there is the army of
artists, musicians and designers, whose position in a
socialist state managed from the bottom — (or even
from half-way up) — would be one of considerable delicacy.
Services in such a state would have to be reduced to
a common denominator. A difficult process at best,
this would have to proceed on materialistic and obvious
lines. It could never give due weight to the truth
that " maidens gathering hawthorn in May " are doing
as much — nay, much more — real service to the com-
munity than the miner in the cavern or the cook in
the kitchen. The common sneer against the non-workers
is without point, when it arraigns them for not " pro-
ducing." It is equally applicable to the artist and the
philosopher. The leisured classes are artists in conduct.
It is their function to set a standard of beauty and
refinement which shall act as a stimulus and an
inspiration to the whole community. This justifies their
high wages : and it is only when they abandon their
duty, and, leaving refinement for vulgarity, and con-
sideration for tactlessness, they become no longer an
example of manners, that they arouse the abhorrence
of the mass.

Some of these strata may, and probably will, under
pressure coalesce. At the same time there is every
probability that the literal class warfare of the future
will not be a warfare between the poor and their sym-
pathizers on the one hand and the well-to-do on the
other : it will be a conflict of a much more complex sort ;
in which whole sections of the world's population may
at times remain neutral.

There are things less likely than that the old struggle
of Catholic and Protestant may be repeated, and that
the lay Catholicism which is the brain-matter of socialism
may capture whole states for its purpose ;— so that we
might see a socialist England, Germany and Russia con-



chap, vn] COSMOPOLITANISM 2yq

fronting an individualistic France, America and Austria.

It is more likely that the conception of territorial states
will fail to stand the strain. Apart from superficial
sentiment, the tic of nationality is rapidly weakening.

' We have accustomed ourselves," says Montague
Bernard, " to divide society into classes rather than into
peoples, and to study the component strata more than
the superficial plan." ' To the denizen of a bygone age
his country meant to him a magnified copy of the
district where he was born and bred, and which he
knew to the finger-tips ; in whose life he was steeped,
as his ancestors had been. He did not know the rest
of the country : he pictured it as an extension of his
own neighbourhood which he knew and loved. His
country was near his heart as an eidolon of his home.
Now, he travels about it far and wide : he finds
himself a stranger everywhere in its borders. The
Northumbrian meets no more kind and friendly people
in Dorset than he does in Normandy ; none pleasanter
in Ramsgate than in Christiania. Every class travels
and tramps — and finds England a strange country.

Stratification, therefore, seems likely to exert its
principal influence, not in capturing states for particular
classes and so creating " faults " in the strata, but in
breaking states up. It is impossible to ignore the signi-
ficance of the international congresses, not only of
socialism, but of pacificism, of esperantism, of feminism,
of every kind of art and science, that so conspicuously
set their seal upon the holiday season. Nationality as
a limiting force is breaking down before Cosmopolitanism.
In directing its forces into an international channel,
socialism will have no difficulty whatever, except with
the ignorant devotion of Muscovy, the caste system of
India, and the individual self-consciousness of Japan.
Capital will have less.

We do not forget that on recent occasions the cosmo-
1 Growth of Laws and Usages of War, 88.



280 STRATIFICATION [chap, vii

politan views of Mr. Herve and his school have been
disclaimed with at least sufficient emphasis by other
socialist orators and bodies. It is an emphasis which
strikes one as overdone. It sounds like the cry of
a leader who feels, in spite of himself, that his followers
are travelling on a road which will bring them to an
unlooked-for goal, and who thinks to avert that result
by telling them very loudly that they are all right
and on the proper track. English socialists, at any
rate, are under little doubt as to the propriety or
otherwise of maintaining the frontier-posts. Some of
their most popular, if not their most trusted, protagonists,
hailed the extinction of the South African Republic as
a small step towards the ideal cosmopolitanism. The
opposition to Mr. Herve's cosmopolitanism is, in fact,
a German product. It arises because socialism is in
Germany not a doctrinal creed, but a rallying ground
for all who are discontented with the regime of autocracy.
The socialist party in Germany is a bourgeois party. A
logical socialism cannot stop at limits of territory or
race, any more than a living religion can stop there.
National freedom is only a large-scale individualism.
But a socialism which is little more than a compre-
hensive and intensified Opposition, has no need to take
the world to its arms. And if, as in Germany, it has
not yet exhausted the stimulus and impulse of a great
demonstration of national solidarity and success, it is
not very likely to do so. German patriotic socialism
is, we conceive, a by-product, arising from a particular
set of causes, and unlikely to prove of any permanent
interest. As little likely would it be that the patriotic
fireworks of the imperialistic financier should have any
true significance. The patriotic socialist is not really
a socialist : the patriotic market-rigger is not really
patriotic.

We are therefore confronted with a coming condition
of affairs, in which (lie force of nationality will be dis-



chap, vn] COSMOPOLITAN CLASSES 28l

tinctly inferior to the force of class-cohesion ; and in
which classes will be internationally organized so as
to wield their force with effect. The prospect induces
some curious reflections.

As in former times the individual imaged his country
as a wader reflection of his home, so in these days the
individual finds the wider reflection of his home in his
class. It is of them that he has the intimate experience
and knowledge that the man of a bygone day had of
his commune and his neighbours. They are his -patria :
the people of his father's house, among whom he spent
the impressionable days of his child-life. It is they by
whom he will stand for the rest of his time. The fact
that his class is not really as homogeneous as he thinks
it is, is indifferent. He has moved amongst his class,
and it does not matter that he has moved among only
a small section of it. He has had playmates of his class ;
has gone to school with people of his class ; has visited
friends of his class ; has sat with others of his class at
the theatre, or in church or chapel. He thoroughly
knows his section of it ; and he thinks he knows the
whole : — which, for our purpose, is as good as if he did
know it.

All over the world, society is organizing itself by
strata. The English merchant goes on business to
Warsaw, Hamburg or Leghorn : he finds in the merchants
of Italy, Germany and Russia the ideas, the standard
of living, the sympathies and the aversions which are
familiar to him at home. Printing and the locomotive
have enormously reduced the importance of locality :
it is the mental atmosphere of its fellows, and not of
its neighbourhood, which the child of the yoimger genera-
tion is beginning to breathe. Whether he reads the
Revue des Deux Mondcs or Tit-Bits, the modern citizen
is becoming at once cosmopolitan and class-centred.
Let the process work for a few more years : we shall
see the common interests of cosmopolitan classes re-



282 STRATIFICATION [chap, vh

vealing themselves as far more potent factors than
the shadowy common interests of the subjects of states.
The Argentine merchant and the British capitalist alike
regard the trade union as a possible enemy — whether
British or Argentine matters to them less than nothing.
The Hamburg docker and his brother of London do
not put national interests before the primary claims
of caste. International class feeling is a reality — and
not even a nebulous reality : the nebula has developed
centres of condensation. Only the other day Sir W.
Runciman, who is certainly not a Conservative, pre-
sided over a meeting at which there were laid the founda-
tions of an International Shipping Union, which is
intended to unite ship-owners of whatever country in a
common organization. When it is once recognized that
the real interests of modern people are not national, but
social, the results may be surprising.

There is no more exclusive and proud society than
that of Austria. But that of Hungary is equally proud
and equally exclusive. Supposing that the solidarity
of class arrived at the stage at which the people of pro-
perty and culture were driven to combine against the
dictation of swarming barbarism, and were thus led to
realize their common unity, the crux of the difficulties
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would disappear.
And so with wider racial animosities — those of Slav and
Teuton, Celt and Teuton, Aryan and Turanian.

The Finn, the Lett and the Pole might forget the
secular oppression of Russia, the Servian that of the
Turk. Indeed, we have seen how easily, even in the
Balkans, ancient feuds are calmed by the presence of
a novel danger and allayed by the experience of a new
irritation. And, although the compulsive force might
not comprehend the Orient in its orbit, it could not but
profoundly affect it. The flamboyant national sentiment
which is characteristic of Australia would appear in
its true light as a class sentiment. The political fetishes



chap, vii] DECAY OF LEGISLATION 283

of America and England would dwindle to infinitesimal
proportions before the facts of class-union.

We should then have arrived at much the same state
of suppressed anarchy as existed in Europe before the
advent of feudalism. The obligations of the individual
would be measured in the main by his caste, as then
they were by his tribe. Legislation would be paralysed ;
the old organs would be repudiated by the contending
forces, whilst they on their part would have no authority
to create new ones, for their powers would be limited
by the very conditions of their being. Existing to protect
definite common interests, they would have no mandate
for general legislation. Sporadic attempts at legislation
would be made, but they would be exceptional. They
would threaten the nascent unity of the caste : which
would be visibly willing to unite for self-protection and
aggrandisement, but not for sudden alterations in the
habits of its various branches throughout the world.

Would any Byzantium, like an island amid the surge
of novel surroundings, remain unaffected and retain the
old traditions of sovereignty ? It is possible that Tokio —
like Byzantium, the Eastern outpost of Western thought
— might escape the confusion and clash, and that to
future ages the coherent unity of Japan might hand on
the conception of a Territorial Empire.



CHAPTER VIII

FEDERATION

If there is one attitude of mind more than another which
is out of favour at the present time, it is Particularism.
The wave of racial feeling which made itself felt in the
middle of the last century had great material triumphs.
A united Germany has in war and in peace secured results
in the material sphere which command the attention of
all, and excite the envy of the crowd. A united Slav or
Anglican Empire is the dream of her neighbours. And if
a united Italy has been unable to point to any conspicuous
successes in one direction or another, it is undeniable
that she nevertheless exercises an influence in the councils
of Europe which was not hers prior to 1870. The result
has been megalomania. As in the sphere of private busi-
ness we are told that the day of small things is over, and
that the only hope of prosperity lies with the vast con-
cerns whose capital is counted in hundreds of thousands,
so in politics the cry is that the era of moderately sized
states is passing, and that the immediate future will see
the world divided between the four or five great empires
which alone are fitted to survive : the Austro-German,
the Anglo-Saxon, the Russian, the Latin, and the Mongol.
The anti-imperialist is reduced to confronting this vision
with the not very different one of a single World Empire.

Yet the commercial expert is not so certain as he
was that the largest concerns are the most prosperous.
There is a limit, after which it seems that the agglomera-
tion of capital is of no furl her use. The managers of
brandies become independent. The central secretariat

284



chap, vin] LOCAL PATRIOTISM 285

becomes a drain upon the business. Personal interest
in the welfare of the establishment becomes dissipated.
The possible savings which are effected are much more
than balanced by the wastage and slackness which the
withdrawal of control to a distant eyrie renders inevitable.
Control at seventh or eighth hand may be theoretically
perfect. But in practice there is a leakage at each trans-
mission of power, and it increases in geometrical pro-
gression. The compact business, in which the master's
hand is felt at every turn, is not benefited by absorption
into a larger whole. Is the same true of states ?

From the Slavonic wilderness there comes the voice of
a prophet telling the world that the day of great empires
is not coming, but passing. Tolstoy looks to the near
dissolution of the unwieldy giants who are leaders in the
family of nations — stupid with the stupidity of giants,
ferocious with their ferocity — and the rise in their stead
of a multiplicity of self-contained, self-knowing com-
munities, whose members will be united together by or-
ganic and vital sympathies, and not by their common
submission to a common policeman.

In point of fact, the only respectable patriotism is local
patriotism. One must know a thing in order to love it,
and it is not possible to love a thing by sample. Devotion
to an idea — to a sort of amalgam of green lanes, solid com-
fort and straightforward f airplay — may be magnificent,
but it is not patriotism, even though you label the amalgam
" England." Patriotism is devotion to a concrete
country — its land and its people. To be devoted to it,
you must know every mile of the land and every clan of
the folk. You must have worked the fibres of your heart
into it. It is not possible to do this with more than a
small area : hardly possible to do it at all, past seventeen.
The patriotism of Japan is not patriotism in our sense :
it is religion. It is devotion to an idea, to a divine per-
sonality, but it is by no means devotion to a people. The
ecstatic preachers of patriotism are led into strange corners



286 FEDERATION [chap, vth

by failing to realize the distinction. Contempt was
poured by them, nine years ago, upon the idealist known
as the " Little Englander," because he withstood the great
mass of the English people in the name of the English
Ideal. Now, they themselves are doing precisely that
very thing. Because the great mass of the English people
do not rush to the rifle butts and embrace the military
career with both hands, stern patriots like Mr. Stanley
Little solemnly throw them over, in the name of their own
Ideal England. In truth, neither idealist is patriotic
in the least ; for the simple cause that nobody can be.
It is impossible to know a complex mixture like England
well enough to be patriotic about it in any but a super-
ficial and sentimental fashion. Neither the Little Eng-
lander, nor the militarist, nor anybody else is fond of
the English population, as such. The thirty-two million
actual living English are not their England.

For a genuine patriotism, we need a limited population
whom we can know well. The Greek appreciated this
when he doubted whether there could be a 7ro'Xt? of more
than a few thousand freemen. A community reckoned
by millions must be a despotism. Not even the Radical
pretends that in a democracy the people govern them-
selves. He only urges that they have security for good
government. They can dismiss their governors. So the
slave might have liberty to change his master. Behind the
ostensible governors who can be changed, there remains,
unchanged and unchangeable, the spirit of officialism. A
million people cannot, in the nature of things, either know
their governors, or know who are best fitted to replace
them, or how to effect the change. They can change the
men who turn the handle of the machine of government,
but they cannot mend the machine. They hardly know
that it exists. They are incapable of forming, much less
of expressing, a united and coherent opinion on anything.
That is not because they are unintelligent ; but because
it is not possible that a million scattered people should



chap, vui] UNBALANCED GOVERNMENT 287

know one another's real views, and be thoroughly informed
of the arcana of government. The press undoubtedly
is no clue to their wishes. Leading articles are written
for, and read by, keen and prejudiced party men. And