| Every attempt has been made to replicate the original as printed. Some typographical errors have been corrected; a list follows the text. The footnotes follow the text. Table of Contents (etext transcriber's note) |
THE FRUITS OF VICTORY
“THE GREAT ILLUSION”
CONTROVERSY
‘Mr. Angell’s pamphlet was a work as unimposing in form as it wasdaring in expression. For a time nothing was heard of it in public,but many of us will remember the curious way in which ... “NormanAngellism” suddenly became one of the principal topics ofdiscussion amongst politicians and journalists all over Europe.Naturally at first it was the apparently extravagant andparadoxical elements that were fastened upon most—that the wholetheory of the commercial basis of war was wrong, that no modern warcould make a profit for the victors, and that—most astonishingthing of all—a successful war might leave the conquerors whoreceived the indemnity relatively worse off than the conquered whoraid it. People who had been brought up in the acceptance of theidea that a war between nations was analogous to the struggle oftwo errand boys for an apple, and that victory inevitably meanteconomic gain, were amazed into curiosity. Men who had neverexamined a Pacifist argument before read Mr. Angell’s book. Perhapsthey thought that his doctrines sounded so extraordinarily likenonsense that there really must be some sense in them or nobodywould have dared to propound them.’—The New Stateman, October11, 1913.
‘The fundamental proposition of the book is a mistake.... And theproposition that the extension of national territory—that is thebringing of a large amount of property under a singleadministration—is not to the financial advantage of a nationappears to me as illusory as to maintain that business on a smallcapital is as profitable as on a large.... The armaments ofEuropean States now are not so much for protection against conquestas to secure to themselves the utmost possible share of theunexploited or imperfectly exploited regions of the world.’—Thelate Admiral Mahan.
‘I have long ago described the policy of The Great Illusion ...not only as a childish absurdity but a mischievous and immoralsophism.’—Mr. Frederic Harrison.
‘Among the mass of printed books there are a few that may becounted as acts, not books. The Control Social was indisputablyone; and I venture to suggest to you that The Great Illusion isanother. The thesis of Galileo was not more diametrically opposedto current ideas than those of Norman Angell. Yet it had in the enda certain measure of success.’—Viscount Esher.
‘When all criticisms are spent, it remains to express a debt ofgratitude to Mr. Angell. He belongs to the cause ofinternationalism—the greatest of all the causes to which a man canset his hands in these days. The cause will not triumph byeconomics. But it cannot reject any ally. And if the economicappeal is not final, it has its weight. “We shall perish ofhunger,” it has been said, “in order to have succ