214 •
The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
finishing a conflict that somebody else started. His industries meanwhile
played major and decisive roles in both World Wars.
Ford’s achievement, however, was to describe an economic model that
might make war obsolete. Ford and Crowther (1930, p. 270) apply the same
model to crime with the statement that a typical
criminal actually works
harder, and for less remuneration, than an honest worker. Somebody who
can earn a higher wage than he can steal will obviously prefer the honest
job that entails no chance of trouble with the police. It is reasonable to
expand this common sense observation to argue that a nation that can
produce more wealth than it can rob from its neighbors will do the former
and not the latter.
This vision became realistic only with the advent of the Industrial
Revolution. Land was the human species’ predominant
source of wealth
well into the mid-nineteenth century, and land and armies have shared a
close connection throughout history. The most prestigious Greek soldiers
(hoplites) were landowners who could afford costly bronze armor, and they
were willing to fight in ranks with other landowners to protect this source
of immovable wealth. They also were frequently the only people who had
the right to vote in Greece’s democracies, which
was eminently reasonable
because they had the biggest stakes in their communities. Those without
land could simply flee from an invader, while landowners had to stand and
fight if they wanted to keep their property.
Medieval feudal systems also centered on land. A king would typically
grant land to a vassal in return for the vassal’s fealty. The vassal used the
land as a source of wealth, and also to support armed retainers upon whom
the king could call in time of war. The Ottoman Empire’s
timariot system
granted a fief of land to a spahi (cavalryman) who then had to make him-
self and his retainers available for military service.
There was meanwhile a clear class distinction in the British Army
between officers who owned land or were heirs to land, and those who
had no land. The former often purchased commissions, i.e., paid for the
privilege of fighting, which demonstrated to upper-class
society their will-
ingness to defend the nation’s land. This social class tended to look down
on those who earned money from any kind of trade, and might show more
respect to a debt-ridden landowner than to a prosperous industrialist. In
George MacDonald Fraser’s
Flashman (1969), Lord Cardigan expels the
protagonist from his regiment after the latter’s shotgun marriage to the
daughter of a wealthy factory owner.
Things in General • 215
The ability of the factory to transform raw material into enormous
wealth, however, should have begun to change the “land = wealth” para-
digm in the late nineteenth century. Industrialization
provides a nation
with the ability to create far more material wealth than it is likely to seize
from its neighbors. Ford and Crowther (1926, p. 268) conclude that world
peace will come from a working class whose men can afford collared shirts
instead of kerchiefs, and whose women can buy hats instead of shawls.
* * *
Today I am more opposed to war than ever I was, and I think the people of the
world know—even if the politicians do not—that war never settles anything.
It was war that made the orderly and profitable processes of the world what
they are to-day—a loose, disjointed mass. Of course, some men get rich out
of war; others get poor. But the men who get rich are not those who fought or
who really helped behind the lines. No patriot makes money out of war. No
man with true patriotism could make money out of war—out of the sacrifice
of other men’s lives. Until the soldier makes money by fighting, until mothers
make money by giving their sons to death—not until then should any citizen
make money out of providing his country with the means to preserve its life.
If wars are to continue, it will be harder and harder for the upright busi-
ness man to regard war as a legitimate means of high and speedy profits.
War fortunes are losing caste every day. Even greed will some day hesitate
before the overwhelming unpopularity and opposition which will meet the
war profiteer. Business should be on the side of peace, because peace is busi-
ness’s best asset. And, by the way, was inventive genius ever so sterile as it
was during the war?
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