Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The speed of social change in the nineteenth century, by quickening transportation and communications and by gathering people in amorphous multitudes in the cities, had destroyed most of the older social relationships of the average man, and by leaving him emotionally unattached to neighborhood, parish, vocation, or even family, had left him isolated and frustrated. The paths which the society of his ancestors had provided for the expression of their gregarious, emotional, and intellectual needs were destroyed by the speed of social change, and the task of creating new paths for expressing these needs was far beyond the ability of the average man. Thus he was left, with his innermost drives unexpressed, willing to follow any charlatan who provided a purpose in life, an emotional stimulus, or a place in a group.

The methods of mass propaganda offered by the press and the radio provided the means by which these individuals could be reached and mobilized; the determination of the militarists, landlords, and industrialists to expand their own power and extend their own interests even to the destruction of society itself provided the motive; the world depression provided the occasion. The materials (frustrated men in the mass), the methods (mass communications), the instrument (the psychopathic political organization), and the occasion (the depression) were all available by 1931. Nevertheless, these men could never have come to power or come within a measurable distance of destroying Western Civilization completely if that civilization had not failed in its efforts to protect its own traditions and if the victors of 1919 had not failed in their efforts to defend themselves.

The nineteenth century had been so successful in organizing techniques that it had almost completely lost any vision of goals. Control of nature by the advance of science, increases in production by the growth of industry, the spread of literacy through universal education, the constant speedup of movement and communications, the extraordinary rise in standards of living—all these had extended man’s ability to do things without in any way clarifying his ideas as to what was worth doing. Goals were lost completely or were reduced to the most primitive level of obtaining more power and more wealth. But the constant acquisition of power or wealth, like a narcotic for which the need grows as its use increases without in any way satisfying the user, left man’s “higher” nature unsatisfied. From the past of Western Civilization, as a result of the fusion of Classical, Semitic, Christian, and Medieval contributions, there had emerged a system of values and modes of living which received scant respect in the nineteenth century in spite of the fact that the whole basis of the nineteenth century (its science, its humanitarianism, its liberalism, and its belief in human dignity and human freedom) had come from this older system of values and modes of living. The Renaissance and Reformation had rejected the medieval portion of this system; the eighteenth century had rejected the value of social tradition and of social discipline, the nineteenth century rejected the Classical and the Christian portion of this tradition, and gave the final blow to the hierarchical conception of human needs. The twentieth century reaped where these had sown. With its tradition abandoned and only its techniques maintained, Western Civilization by the middle of the twentieth century reached a point where the chief question was “Can it survive?”

Against this background the aggressive Powers rose after 1931 to challenge Western Civilization and the “satisfied” Powers which had neither the will nor the desire to defend it. The weakness of Japan and Italy from the point of view of industrial development or natural resources made it quite impossible for them to have issued any challenge unless they were faced by weak wills among their victims. In fact, it is quite clear that neither Japan nor Italy could have made a successful aggression without the parallel aggression of Germany. What is not so clear, but is equally true, is that Germany could have made no aggression without the acquiescence, and even in some cases the actual encouragement, of the “satisfied” Powers, especially Britain. The German documents captured since 1944 make this quite evident.

The Japanese Assault, 1931-1941

With one notable exception, Japan’s background for aggression presented a strong parallel to that of Germany. The exception was the industrial strength of the two Powers. Japan was really a “have not” nation, lacking most of the natural resources to sustain a great industrial system. It lacked much of the necessary basic materials such as coal, iron, petroleum, alloy minerals, waterpower, or even food. In comparison, Germany’s claim to be a “have not” nation was merely a propaganda device. Other than this, the similarity of the two countries was striking: each had a completely cartelized industry, a militaristic tradition, a hardworking population which respected authority and loved order, a national obsession with its own unique value and a resentment at the rest of the world for failure to recognize this, and a constitutional structure in which a facade of parliamentary constitutionalism barely concealed the reality of power wielded by an alliance of army, landlords, and industry. The fact that the Japanese constitution of 1889 was copied from the constitution of Bismarck goes far to explain this last similarity.

We have already mentioned the acute problem presented to Japan by the contrast between their limited natural resources and their growing problems. While their resources did not increase, their population grew from 31 million in 1873 to 73 million in 1939, the rate of growth reaching its peak in the period 1925-1930 (8 percent increase in these five years). With great ingenuity and tireless energy, the Japanese people tried to make ends meet. With foreign exchange earned from merchant shipping or from exports of silk, wood products, or seafoods, raw materials were imported, manufactured into industrial products, and exported to obtain the foreign exchange necessary to pay for imports of raw materials or food. By keeping costs and prices low, the Japanese were able to undersell European exporters of cotton textiles and iron products in the markets of Asia, especially in China and Indonesia.

The possibility of relieving their population pressure by emigration, as Europe had done earlier, was prevented by the fact that the obvious colonial areas had already been taken in hand by Europeans. English-speaking persons, who held the best and yet unfilled areas, slammed the door on Japanese immigration in the period after 1901, justifying their actions on racial and economic arguments. American restrictions on Japanese immigration, originated among laboring groups in California, were a very bitter pill for Japan, and injured its pride greatly.

The steady rise in tariffs against Japanese manufactured goods after 1897, a development which was also led by America, served to increase the difficulties of Japan’s position. So also did the slow exhaustion of the Pacific fisheries, the growing (if necessary) restrictions on such fishing by conservationist agreements, the decrease in forestry resources, and political and social unrest in Asia. For a long time, Japan was protected from the full impact of this problem by a series of favorable accidents. The First World War was a splendid windfall. It ended European commercial competition in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific; it increased the demand for Japanese goods and services; and it made Japan an international creditor for the first time. Capital investment in the five years 1915-1920 was eight times as much as in the ten years 1905-1915; laborers employed in factories using over five workers each increased from 948 thousand in 1914 to 1,612 thousand in 1919; ocean shipping rose from 1.5 million tons in 1914 to 3 million tons in 1918, while income from shipping freight rose from 40 million yen in 1914 to 450 million in 1918; the favorable balance of international trade amounted to 1,480 million yen for the four years 1915-1918.