[Gutenberg 38535] • The Great Illusion / A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage

‘Mr. Angell’s pamphlet was a work as unimposing in form as it was daring in expression. For a time nothing was heard of it in public, but many of us will remember the curious way in which ... “Norman Angellism” suddenly became one of the principal topics of discussion amongst politicians and journalists all over Europe. Naturally at first it was the apparently extravagant and paradoxical elements that were fastened upon most—that the whole theory of the commercial basis of war was wrong, that no modern war could make a profit for the victors, and that—most astonishing thing of all—a successful war might leave the conquerors who received the indemnity relatively worse off than the conquered who raid it. People who had been brought up in the acceptance of the idea that a war between nations was analogous to the struggle of two errand boys for an apple, and that victory inevitably meant economic gain, were amazed into curiosity. Men who had never examined a Pacifist argument before read Mr. Angell’s book. Perhaps they thought that his doctrines sounded so extraordinarily like nonsense that there really must be some sense in them or nobody would have dared to propound them.’—The New Stateman, October 11, 1913.

‘The fundamental proposition of the book is a mistake.... And the proposition that the extension of national territory—that is the bringing of a large amount of property under a single administration—is not to the financial advantage of a nation appears to me as illusory as to maintain that business on a small capital is as profitable as on a large.... The armaments of European States now are not so much for protection against conquest as to secure to themselves the utmost possible share of the unexploited or imperfectly exploited regions of the world.’—The late Admiral Mahan.

INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION

THE case which is argued in these pages includes the examination of certain concrete matters which very obviously and directly touch important American interests—American foreign trade and investments, the exchanges, immigration, armaments, taxation, industrial unrest and the effect of these on social and political organisation. Yet the greatest American interest here discussed is not any one of those particular issues, or even the sum of them, but certain underlying forces which more than anything else, perhaps, influence all of them. The American reader will have missed the main bearing of the argument elaborated in these pages unless that point can be made clear.

CONTENTS

OUR DAILY BREAD

THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE

NATIONALITY, ECONOMICS, AND THE ASSERTION OF RIGHT

MILITARY PREDOMINANCE—AND INSECURITY

PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE SOCIAL OUTCOME

THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT

THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT