118

IMPERIALISM AND CAPITALISM THROUGH WAR AND TRADE
THE ENEMIES: SOCIALISM TO THE RESCUE, 122

* * * * *

CHAPTER I

[Greek: moros de thneton ostis ekporthon poleis
naous de tumbous th, iera ton kekmekton,
eremiadous autos oleth usteron.]

Euripides: Tro. 95.

Sec.1

The Massacre of Colleagues

The existence of war in the modern world is primarily a question for the
moral philosopher. It may be of interest to the anthropologist to
consider war as a gallant survival with an impressive ritual and a code
of honour curiously detached from the social environment, like the Hindu
suttee; or with a procedure euphemistically disguised, like some
chthonic liturgy of ancient Athens. But it is a problem too broad for
the anthropologist when we consider that we have reached a stage of
civilisation which regards murder as the most detestable of crimes and
deprives the murderer of all civil rights and often even of the natural
right to live: while in the same community the organised massacre of our
colleagues in civilisation is not only tolerated but assumed to be
necessary by the principal expositors of law and religion, is the
scientific occupation of the most honoured profession in the State, and
constitutes the real sanction of all international intercourse.

Sec.2

The Widening Sphere of Morality

The existence of war stimulates the astonished watcher in the tower of
ivory to examine the development, if any, of human morality; and to
formulate some law of the process whereby political man has been
differentiated from the savage.

Morality being a relation between two or more contracting parties, he
will notice that the history of mankind is marked by a consistent
tendency to extend this relation, to include in the system of
relationships more numerous and more distant objects, so that the moral
agent is surrounded by a continually widening sphere of obligations.

This system of relationship, which may be called the moral sphere, has
grown up under a variety of influences, expediency, custom, religious
emotion and political action; but the moral agents included in it at any
given time are always bound to each other by a theoretical contract
involving both rights and duties, and leading each to expect and to
apply in all his dealings with the others a certain standard of conduct
which is approximately fixed by the enlightened op