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FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS

Michael Carter

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
( 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or
mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Times New Roman in `3B2' by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carter, Michael, 1950±

Foundations of mathematical economics / Michael Carter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-03289-9 (hc. : alk. paper) Ð ISBN 0-262-53192-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Economics, Mathematical. I. Title.
HB135 .C295 2001
330 0 .01 0 51Ðdc21 2001030482
To my parents, Merle and Maurice Carter, who provided a ®rm
foundation for life
 Contents

Introduction xi
A Note to the Reader xvii

1 Sets and Spaces 1

1.1 Sets 1
1.2 Ordered Sets 9
1.2.1 Relations 10
1.2.2 Equivalence Relations and Partitions 14
1.2.3 Order Relations 16
1.2.4 Partially Ordered Sets and Lattices 23
1.2.5 Weakly Ordered Sets 32
1.2.6 Aggregation and the Pareto Order 33
1.3 Metric Spaces 45
1.3.1 Open and Closed Sets 49
1.3.2 Convergence: Completeness and Compactness 56
1.4 Linear Spaces 66
1.4.1 Subspaces 72
1.4.2 Basis and Dimension 77
1.4.3 A½ne Sets 83
1.4.4 Convex Sets 88
1.4.5 Convex Cones 104
1.4.6 Sperner's Lemma 110
1.4.7 Conclusion 114
1.5 Normed Linear Spaces 114
1.5.1 Convexity in Normed Linear Spaces 125
1.6 Preference Relations 130
1.6.1 Monotonicity and Nonsatiation 131
1.6.2 Continuity 132
1.6.3 Convexity 136
1.6.4 Interactions 137
1.7 Conclusion 141
1.8 Notes 142
2 Functions 145
2.1 Functions as Mappings 145
2.1.1 The Vocabulary of Functions 145
viii Contents

2.1.2 Examples of Functions 156

2.1.3 Decomposing Functions 171
2.1.4 Illustrating Functions 174
2.1.5 Correspondences 177
2.1.6 Classes of Functions 186
2.2 Monotone Functions 186
2.2.1 Monotone Correspondences 195
2.2.2 Supermodular Functions 198
2.2.3 The Monotone Maximum Theorem 205
2.3 Continuous Functions 210
2.3.1 Continuous Functionals 213
2.3.2 Semicontinuity 216
2.3.3 Uniform Continuity 217
2.3.4 Continuity of Correspondences 221
2.3.5 The Continuous Maximum Theorem 229
2.4 Fixed Point Theorems 232
2.4.1 Intuition 232
2.4.2 Tarski Fixed Point Theorem 233
2.4.3 Banach Fixed Point Theorem 238
2.4.4 Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem 245
2.4.5 Concluding Remarks 259
2.5 Notes 259
3 Linear Functions 263
3.1 Properties of Linear Functions 269
3.1.1 Continuity of Linear Functions 273
3.2 A½ne Functions 276
3.3 Linear Functionals 277
3.3.1 The Dual Space 280
3.3.2 Hyperplanes 284
3.4 Bilinear Functions 287
3.4.1 Inner Products 290
3.5 Linear Operators 295
3.5.1 The Determinant 296
3.5.2 Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors 299
3.5.3 Quadratic Forms 302
ix Contents

3.6 Systems of Linear Equations and Inequalities 306

3.6.1 Equations 308
3.6.2 Inequalities 314
3.6.3 Input±Output Models 319
3.6.4 Markov Chains 320
3.7 Convex Functions 323
3.7.1 Properties of Convex Functions 332
3.7.2 Quasiconcave Functions 336
3.7.3 Convex Maximum Theorems 342
3.7.4 Minimax Theorems 349
3.8 Homogeneous Functions 351
3.8.1 Homothetic Functions 356
3.9 Separation Theorems 358
3.9.1 Hahn-Banach Theorem 371
3.9.2 Duality 377
3.9.3 Theorems of the Alternative 388
3.9.4 Further Applications 398
3.9.5 Concluding Remarks 415
3.10 Notes 415
4 Smooth Functions 417
4.1 Linear Approximation and the Derivative 417
4.2 Partial Derivatives and the Jacobian 429
4.3 Properties of Di¨erentiable Functions 441
4.3.1 Basic Properties and the Derivatives of Elementary
Functions 441
4.3.2 Mean Value Theorem 447
4.4 Polynomial Approximation 457
4.4.1 Higher-Order Derivatives 460
4.4.2 Second-Order Partial Derivatives and the Hessian 461
4.4.3 Taylor's Theorem 467
4.5 Systems of Nonlinear Equations 476
4.5.1 The Inverse Function Theorem 477
4.5.2 The Implicit Function Theorem 479
4.6 Convex and Homogeneous Functions 483
4.6.1 Convex Functions 483
x Contents

4.6.2 Homogeneous Functions 491

4.7 Notes 496
5 Optimization 497
5.1 Introduction 497
5.2 Unconstrained Optimization 503
5.3 Equality Constraints 516
5.3.1 The Perturbation Approach 516
5.3.2 The Geometric Approach 525
5.3.3 The Implicit Function Theorem Approach 529
5.3.4 The Lagrangean 532
5.3.5 Shadow Prices and the Value Function 542
5.3.6 The Net Bene®t Approach 545
5.3.7 Summary 548
5.4 Inequality Constraints 549
5.4.1 Necessary Conditions 550
5.4.2 Constraint Quali®cation 568
5.4.3 Su½cient Conditions 581
5.4.4 Linear Programming 587
5.4.5 Concave Programming 592
5.5 Notes 598
6 Comparative Statics 601
6.1 The Envelope Theorem 603
6.2 Optimization Models 609
6.2.1 Revealed Preference Approach 610
6.2.2 Value Function Approach 614
6.2.3 The Monotonicity Approach 620
6.3 Equilibrium Models 622
6.4 Conclusion 632
6.5 Notes 632

References 635
Index of Symbols 641
General Index 643
Introduction

Economics made progress without mathematics, but has made faster progress with it.
Mathematics has brought transparency to many hundreds of economic arguments.
ÐDeirdre N. McCloskey (1994)

Economists rely on models to obtain insight into a complex world. Eco-

nomic analysis is primarily an exercise in building and analyzing models.
An economic model strips away unnecessary detail and focuses attention
on the essential details of an economic problem. Economic models come
in various forms. Adam Smith used a verbal description of a pin factory
to portray the principles of division of labor and specialization. Irving
Fisher built a hydraulic model (comprising ¯oating cisterns, tubes, and
levers) to illustrate general equilibrium. Bill Phillips used a di¨erent
hydraulic model (comprising pipes and colored water) to portray the cir-
cular ¯ow of income in the national economy. Sir John Hicks developed a
simple mathematical model (IS-LM) to reveal the essential di¨erences
between Keynes's General Theory and the ``classics.'' In modern eco-
nomic analysis, verbal and physical models are seen to be inadequate.
Today's economic models are almost exclusively mathematical.
Formal mathematical modeling in economics has two key advantages.
First, formal modeling makes the assumptions explicit. It clari®es intu-
ition and makes arguments transparent. Most important, it uncovers the
limitations of our intuition, delineating the boundaries and uncovering
the occasional counterintuitive special case. Second, the formal modeling
aids communication. Once the assumptions are explicit, participants
spend less time arguing about what they really meant, leaving more time
to explore conclusions, applications, and extensions.
Compare the aftermath of the publication of Keynes's General Theory
with that of von Neumann and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and
Economic Behavior. The absence of formal mathematical modeling in the
General Theory meant that subsequent scholars spent considerable energy
debating ``what Keynes really meant.'' In contrast, the rapid development
of game theory in recent years owes much to the advantages of formal
modeling. Game theory has attracted a predominance of practitioners
who are skilled formal modelers. As their assumptions are very explicit,
practitioners have had to spend little time debating the meaning of others'
writings. Their e¨orts have been devoted to exploring rami®cations and
applications. Undoubtedly, formal modeling has enhanced the pace of
innovation in game-theoretic analysis in economics.
xii Introduction

Economic models are not like replica cars, scaled down versions of the
real thing admired for their verisimilitude. A good economic model strips
away all the unnecessary and distracting detail and focuses attention on
the essentials of a problem or issue. This process of stripping away
unnecessary detail is called abstraction. Abstraction serves the same role
in mathematics. The aim of abstraction is not greater generality but
greater simplicity. Abstraction reveals the logical structure of the mathe-
matical framework in the same way as it reveals the logical structure of an
economic model.
Chapter 1 establishes the framework by surveying the three basic
sources of structure in mathematics. First, the order, geometric and alge-
braic structures of sets are considered independently. Then their interac-
tion is studied in subsequent sections dealing with normed linear spaces
and preference relations.
Building on this foundation, we study mappings between sets or func-
tions in chapters 2 and 3. In particular, we study functions that preserve
the structure of the sets which they relate, treating in turn monotone,
continuous, and linear functions. In these chapters we meet the three
fundamental theorems of mathematical economicsÐthe (continuous)
maximum theorem, the Brouwer ®xed point theorem, and the separating
hyperplane theorem, and outline many of their important applications in
economics, ®nance, and game theory.
A key tool in the analysis of economic models is the approximation of
smooth functions by linear and quadratic functions. This tool is devel-
oped in chapter 4, which presents a modern treatment of what is tradi-
tionally called multivariate calculus.
Since economics is the study of rational choice, most economic models
involve optimization by one or more economic agents. Building and ana-
lyzing an economic model involves a typical sequence of steps. First, the
model builder identi®es the key decision makers involved in the economic
phenomenon to be studied. For each decision maker, the model builder
must postulate an objective or criterion, and identify the tools or instru-
ments that she can use in pursuit of that objective. Next, the model
builder must formulate the constraints on the decision maker's choice.
These constraints normally take the form of a system of equations and
inequalities linking the decision variables and de®ning the feasible set. The
model therefore portrays the decision maker's problem as an exercise in
constrained optimization, selecting the best alternative from a feasible set.
xiii Introduction

Typically analysis of an optimization model has two stages. In the ®rst

stage, the constrained optimization problem is solved. That is, the optimal
choice is characterized in terms of the key parameters of the model. After
a general introduction, chapter 5 ®rst discusses necessary and su½cient
conditions for unconstrained optimization. Then four di¨erent perspec-
tives on the Lagrangean multiplier technique for equality constrained
problems are presented. Each perspective adds a di¨erent insight con-
tributing to a complete understanding. In the second part of the chapter,
the analysis is extended to inequality constraints, including coverage of
constraint quali®cation, su½cient conditions, and the practically impor-
tant cases of linear and concave programming.
In the second stage of analysis, the sensitivity of the optimal solution to
changes in the parameters of the problem is explored. This second stage is
traditionally (in economics) called comparative statics. Chapter 6 outlines
four di¨erent approaches to the comparative static analysis of optimiza-
tion models, including the traditional approaches based on the implicit
function theorem or the envelope theorem. It also introduces a promising
new approach based on order properties and monotonicity, which often
gives strong conclusions with minimal assumptions. Chapter 6 concludes
with a brief outline of the comparative static analysis of equilibrium
(rather than optimization) models.
The book includes a thorough treatment of some material often omitted
from introductory texts, such as correspondences, ®xed point theorems,
and constraint quali®cation conditions. It also includes some recent devel-
opments such as supermodularity and monotone comparative statics. We
have made a conscious e¨ort to illustrate the discussion throughout with
economic examples and where possible to introduce mathematical con-
cepts with economic ideas. Many illustrative examples are drawn from
game theory.
The completeness of the real numbers is assumed, every other result is
derived within the book. The most important results are stated as theo-
rems or propositions, which are proved explicitly in the text. However, to
enhance readability and promote learning, lesser results are stated as exer-
cises, answers for which will be available on the internet (see the note to the
reader). In this sense the book is comprehensive and entirely self-contained,
suitable to be used as a reference, a text, or a resource for self-study.
The sequence of the book, preceding from sets to functions to smooth
functions, has been deliberately chosen to emphasize the structure of the
xiv Introduction

underlying mathematical ideas. However, for instructional purposes or

for self-study, an alternative sequence might be preferable and easier to
motivate. For example, the ®rst two sections of chapter 1 (sets and
ordered sets) could be immediately followed by the ®rst two sections of
chapter 2 (functions and monotone functions). This would enable the
student to achieve some powerful results with a minimum of fuss. A
second theme could then follow the treatment of metric spaces (and the
topological part of section 1.6) with continuous functions culminating in
the continuous maximum theorem and perhaps the Banach ®xed point
theorem. Finally the course could turn to linear spaces, linear functions,
convexity, and linear functionals, culminating in the separating hyper-
plane theorem and its applications. A review of ®xed point theorems
would then highlight the interplay of linear and topological structure in
the Brouwer ®xed point theorem and its generalizations. Perhaps it would
then be advantageous to proceed through chapters 4, 5, and 6 in the given
sequence. Even if chapter 4 is not explicitly studied, it should be reviewed
to understand the notation used for the derivative in the following
chapters.
The book can also be used for a course emphasizing microeconomic
theory rather than mathematical methods. In this case the course would
follow a sequence of topics, such as monotonicity, continuity, convexity,
and homogeneity, interspersed with analytical tools such as constrained
optimization, the maximum, ®xed point, and separating hyperplane
theorems, and comparative statics. Each topic would be introduced and
illustrated via its role in the theory of the consumer and the producer.
Achieving consistency in notation is a taxing task for any author of a
mathematical text. Wherever I could discern a standard notation in the
economics literature, I followed that trend. Where diversity ruled, I have
tended to follow the notation in Hal Varian's Microeconomic Analysis,
since it has been widely used for many years. A few signi®cant exceptions
to these rules are explicitly noted.
Many people have left their mark on this book, and I take great plea-
sure in acknowledging their contribution. Foremost among my creditors
is Graeme Guthrie whose support, encouragement, and patient exposition
of mathematical subtleties has been invaluable. Richard Edlin and Mark
Pilbrow drafted most of the diagrams. Martin Osborne and Carolyn
Pitchik made detailed comments on an early draft of the manuscript and
Martin patiently helped me understand intricacies of TEX and LATEX.
xv Introduction

Other colleagues who have made important comments include Thomas

Cool, John Fountain, Peter Kennedy, David Miller, Peter Morgan, Mike
Peters, Uli Schwalbe, David Starrett, Dolf Talman, Paul Walker, Richard
Watt, and Peyton Young. I am also very grateful for the generous hospi-
tality of Eric van Damme and CentER at the University of Tilburg and
Uli Schwalbe and the University of Hohenheim in providing a productive
haven in which to complete the manuscript during my sabbatical leave.
Finally, I acknowledge the editorial team at The MIT Press, for their
pro®ciency in converting my manuscript into a book. I thank them all.
This page intentionally left blank
A Note to the Reader

Few people rely solely on any social science for their pleasures, and attaining a
suitable level of ecstasy involves work. . . . It is a nuisance, but God has chosen to give
the easy problems to the physicists.
ÐLave and March (1975)

Some people read mathematics books for pleasure. I assume that you are
not one of this breed, but are studying this book to enhance your under-
standing of economics. While I hope this process will be enjoyable, to
make the most of it will require some e¨ort on your part. Your reward
will be a comprehension of the foundations of mathematical economics,
you will appreciate the elegant interplay between economic and mathe-
matical ideas, you will know why as well as how to use particular tools
and techniques.
One of the most important requirements for understanding mathemat-
ics is to build up an appropriate mental framework or structure to relate
and integrate the various components and pieces of information. I have
endeavored to portray a suitable framework in the structure of this book,
in the way it is divided into chapters, sections, and so on. This is especially
true of the early mathematical chapters, whose structure is illustrated in
the following table:

Sets Functions
Ordered sets Monotone functions
Metric spaces Continuous functions
Linear spaces Linear functions
Convex sets Convex functions
Cones Homogeneous functions

This is the framework to keep in mind as you proceed through the book.
You will also observe that there is a hierarchy of results. The most
important results are stated as theorems. You need to be become familiar
with these, their assumptions and their applications. Important but more
specialized results are stated as propositions. Most of the results, however,
are given as exercises. Consequently exercise has a slightly di¨erent
meaning here than in many texts. Most of the 820 exercises in the book
are not ``®nger exercises,'' but substantive propositions forming an inte-
gral part of the text. Similarly examples contain many of the key ideas
and warrant careful attention.
Other documents randomly have
different content
every sign of his making a specially worthless and troublesome
consumer of rations in a trench, then a burning zeal to inflict this
nuisance and danger on some unoffending platoon in France seemed
to invade the ordinary military tribunal. Report said that the
satisfaction of this impulse was called, by the possessed persons,
"giving Haig the men," and sometimes, with a more pungent irony,
"supporting our fellows in the trenches." Non tali auxilio nec
defensoribus istis. Australia's fellows in the trenches were suffered to
vote themselves out of the risk of getting any support of the kind.
Australia is a democracy. Ours were not asked whether they wanted
to see their trenches employed as a penal settlement to which
middle-aged moralists in England might deport, among other
persons, those whom they felt to be morally the least beautiful of
their juniors. So nothing impeded the pious practice of "larning toads
to be toads." For the shirker, the "kicker," the "lawyer," for all the
types of undesirables that contribute most liberally to the wrinkled
appearance of sergeants, those pious men had the nose of
collectors. Wherever there was a spare fifty yards of British front to
be held, they, if anyone, could find a man likely to go to sleep there
on guard, or, in some cyclonic disturbance of spirit, to throw down
his rifle and light out for the coast, across country.
Such episodes were reasonably few. The inveterate mercy that
guards drunken sailors preserved from the worst disaster the cranks
who had made a virtue of giving their country every bad soldier they
could. And the abounding mercy of most courts-martial rendered
few of the episodes fatal to individual conscripts. Nor, indeed, was
the growth in their frequency after conscription wholly due to the
more fantastic tricks played before high Heaven by some of the
Falstaffs who dealt with the Mouldies, Shadows and Bull-calves.
Conscription, in any case, must be dilution. You may get your water
more quickly by throwing the filter away, but don't hope to keep the
quality what it was. And the finer a New Army unit had been, to
begin with, the swifter the autumnal change. Every first-rate
battalion fighting in France or Belgium lost its whole original
numbers over and over again. First, because in action it spared itself
less than the poor ones; secondly, because the best divisions rightly
got the hard jobs. Going out in the late autumn of 1915, a good
battalion with normal luck might have nearly half its original
volunteer strength left after the Battle of the Somme. Drafts of
conscripts would fill up the gap, each draft with a listless or
enigmatic one-tenth that volunteering had formerly kept at a
distance. The Battle of Arras next spring might leave only twenty per
cent of the first volunteers, and the autumn battles in Flanders
would pretty well finish their business. Seasons returned, but not to
that battalion returned the spirit of delight in which it had first learnt
to soldier together and set foot together in France and first marched
through darkness and ruined villages towards the flaring fair-ground
of the front. While a New Army battalion was still very young, and
fully convinced that no crowd of men so good to be with had ever
been brought together before, it used to be always saying how it
would keep things up after the war. No such genial reunions had
ever been held as these were to be. But now the few odd men that
are left only write to each other at long intervals, feeling almost as if
they were raising their voices in an empty church. One of them asks
another has he any idea what the battalion was like after Oppy, or
Bourlon Wood, or wherever their own knock-out came. Like any
other battalion, no doubt—a mere G.C.M. of all conscript battalions;
conscription filed down all special features and characters.
Quick waste and renewal are said to be good for the body; the faster
you burn up old tissues, by good sweaty work, the better your
health; fresh and superior tissue is added unto you all the more
merrily. Capital, too, the economists say, must be swiftly used up
and reborn, over and over again, to do the most good that it can.
And then there is the case of the phoenix—in fact, of all the birds
and all the beasts too, for all evolution would seem to be just the
dying of something worse, as fast as it can, in order that something
better may live in its place. No need for delay in turning your
anthropoid apes into Shakespeares and Newtons.
But what if you found, after all your hard work, that not all the
deceased cells of your flesh were replaced by new cells of the sort
you would like? If some of your good golden pounds should have
perished only that inconvertible paper might live? If out of your
phoenix's ashes only a common-place rooster should spring? If
evolution were guyed and bedevilled into retrovolution, a process by
which the fittest must more and more dwindle away and the less fit
survive them, and species be not multiplied but made fewer?
Something, perhaps, of the sort may go on in the body in its old
age, or in roses in autumn. It must go on in a volunteer army when
it is becoming an army of conscripts during a war that is highly
lethal.
 IV

The fall of the leaf had brought, too, a sad shortage of heroes—of
highly-placed ones, for, of course, every company had its own,
authenticated beyond any proof that crosses or medals could give. A
few very old Regular privates would say, "Ah! if we had Buller here!"
Sir Redvers Buller has always remained, in lofty disregard of
conclusive disproof, the Cæsar or Hannibal of the old Regular
private, who sets little store by such heroes of Whitehall and Fleet
Street as Roberts and Kitchener. But the chiefs of to-day left men
cold, at the best. The name of at least one was a by-word. Haig was
a name and no more, though a name immune in a mysterious
degree from the general scoffing surmise about the demerits of
higher commands. Few subalterns or men had seen him. No one
knew what he was doing or leaving undone. But some power, not
ourselves, making for charity, seemed to recommend him to mercy
in everyone's judgement; as if, from wherever he was, nameless
waves of some sort rippled out through an uncharted ether,
conveying some virtue exhaled by that winning incarnation of
honour, courage, and kindness who, seen and heard in the flesh,
made you wish to find in him all other excellent qualities too. The
front line gave him all the benefit of every doubt. God only knew, it
said, whether he or somebody else would have to answer for
Bullecourt and Serre. It might not be he who had left the door lying
open, unentered, for two nights and days, when the lions had won
the battle of Arras that spring, and the asses had let the victory slip
till the Germans crept back in the dark to the fields east of Vimy
from which they had fled in despair. But slowness to judge can
hardly be called hero-worship: at most, a somewhat sere October
phase of that vernal religion.
One of the heavenly things on which the New Army had almost
counted, in its green faith, was that our higher commands would
have genius. Of course, we had no right to do it. No X has any right
to ask of Y that Y shall be Alexander the Great or Bach or Rembrandt
or Garrick, or any kind of demonic first-rater. As reasonably send
precepts to the Leviathan to come ashore. Yet we had indulged that
insane expectation, just as we had taken it for granted that this time
the nation would be as one man, and nobody "out to do a bit for
himself on the quiet." And now behold the falling leaf and no
Leviathan coming ashore in response to our May-Day desires.
Certainly other things, highly respectable, came. The Second Army
Staff's direction of that autumn's almost continuous battles was of a
competence passing all British precedents. Leap-frogging waves of
assault, box barrages, creeping barrages, actions, interactions, and
counter-actions were timed and concerted as no Staff of ours had
done it before. The intricate dance which has to go on behind a
crowded battle front, so that columns moving east and west and
columns moving north and south shall not coincide at cross roads,
was danced with the circumstantial precision of the best ballets. An
officer cast away somewhere in charge of a wayside smithy for
patching up chipped guns felt that there was a power perched on
the top of the hill at Cassel which smelt out a bit of good work, or of
bad, wherever anyone did it. Sense, keenness, sympathy, resolution,
exactness—all the good things abode in that eyrie which have to be
in attendance before genius can bring off its marvels; every chamber
swept and garnished, and yet—.
Foch tells us what he thinks Napoleon might have said to the Allied
commands if he could have risen in our black times from the dead.
"What cards you people have!" he would have said, "and how little
you do with them! Look!" And then, Foch thinks, within a month or
two he "would have rearranged everything, gone about it all in some
new way, thrown out the enemy's plans and quite crushed him."
That "some new way" was not fated to come. The spark refused to
fall, the divine accident would not happen. How could it? you ask
with some reason. Had not trench warfare reached an impasse? Yes;
there is always an impasse before genius shows a way through.
Music on keyboards had reached an impasse before a person of
genius thought of using his thumb as well as his fingers. Well, that
was an obvious dodge, you may say, but in Flanders what way
through could there have been? The dodge found by genius is
always an obvious dodge, afterwards. Till it is found it can as little
be stated by us common people as can the words of the poems that
Keats might have written if he had lived longer. You would have to
become a Keats to do that, and a Napoleon to say how Napoleon
would have got through to Bruges in the autumn that seemed so
autumnal to us. All that the army knew, as it decreased in the mud,
was that no such uncovenanted mercy came to transmute its
casualties into the swiftly and richly fruitful ones of a Napoleon, the
incidental expenses of some miraculous draught of victory.
Nothing to grouse at in that. The winds of inspiration have to blow
the best way they can. Prospero himself could not raise them; how
could the likes of us hope to? And yet there had been that illogical
hope, almost reliance—part of the high unreason of faith that could
move mountains in 1914 and seems to be scarcely able to shift an
ant-hill to-day.
 CHAPTER X
AUTUMN TINTS IN CHIVALRY
 I

In either of two opposite tempers you may carry on war. In one of

the two you will want to rate your enemy, all round, as high as you
can. You may pursue him down a trench, or he you; but in neither
case do you care to have him described by somebody far, far away
as a fat little short-sighted scrub. Better let him pass for a paladin.
This may at bottom be vanity, sentimentality, all sorts of
contemptible things. Let him who knows the heart of man be
dogmatic about it. Anyhow, this temper comes, as they would say in
Ireland, of decent people. It spoke in Porsena of Clusium's whimsical
prayer that Horatius might swim the Tiber safely; it animates
Velasquez' knightly Surrender of Breda; it prompted Lord Roberts's
first words to Cronje when Paardeberg fell—"Sir, you have made a
very gallant defence"; it is avowed in a popular descant of
Newboldt's—
To honour, while you strike him down,
The foe who comes with eager eyes.

The other temper has its niche in letters, too. There was the man
that "wore his dagger in his mouth." And there was Little Flanigan,
the bailiff's man in Goldsmith's play. During one of our old wars with
France he was always "damning the French, the parle-vous, and all
that belonged to them." "What," he would ask the company, "makes
the bread rising? The parle-vous that devour us. What makes the
mutton fivepence a pound? The parle-vous that eat it up. What
makes the beer threepence-halfpenny a pot?"
Well, your first aim in war is to hit your enemy hard, and the
question may well be quite open—in which of these tempers can he
be hit hardest? If, as we hear, a man's strength be "as the strength
of ten because his heart is pure," possibly it may add a few
footpounds to his momentum in an attack if he has kept a clean
tongue in his head. And yet the production of heavy woollens in the
West Riding, for War Office use, may, for all that we know, have
been accelerated by yarns about crucified Canadians and naked
bodies of women found in German trenches. There is always so
much, so bewilderingly much, to be said on both sides. All I can tell
is that during the war the Newbolt spirit seemed, on the whole, to
have its chief seat in and near our front line, and thence to die down
westward all the way to London. There Little Flanigan was
enthroned, and, like Montrose, would bear no rival near his throne,
so that a man on leave from our trench system stood in some
danger of being regarded as little better than one of the wicked.
Anyhow, he was a kind of provincial. Not his will, but that of
Flanigan, had to be done. For Flanigan was at the centre of things;
he had leisure, or else volubility was his trade; and he had got hold
of the megaphones.
 II

In the first months of the war there was any amount of good
sportsmanship going; most, of course, among men who had seen
already the whites of enemy eyes. I remember the potent emetic
effect of Flaniganism upon a little blond Regular subaltern maimed at
the first battle of Ypres. "Pretty measly sample of the sin against the
Holy Ghost!" the one-legged child grunted savagely, showing a
London paper's comic sketch of a corpulent German running away.
The first words I ever heard uttered in palliation of German
misdoings in Belgium came from a Regular N.C.O., a Dragoon
Guards sergeant, holding forth to a sergeants' mess behind our line.
"We'd have done every damn thing they did," he averred, "if it had
been we." I thought him rather extravagant, then. Later on, when
the long row of hut hospitals, jammed between the Calais-Paris
Railway at Etaples and the great reinforcement camp on the sand-
hills above it, was badly bombed from the air, even the wrath of the
R.A.M.C. against those who had wedged in its wounded and nurses
between two staple targets scarcely exceeded that of our Royal Air
Force against war correspondents who said the enemy must have
done it on purpose.
Airmen, no doubt, or some of them, went to much greater lengths in
the chivalrous line than the rest of us. Many things helped them to
do it. Combatant flying was still new enough to be almost wholly an
officer's job; the knight took the knocks, and the squire stayed
behind and looked after his gear. Air-fighting came to be pretty well
the old duel, or else the mediæval mêlée between little picked
teams. The clean element, too, may have counted—it always looked
a clean job from below, where your airy notions got mixed with
trench mud, while the airman seemed like Sylvia in the song, who so
excelled "each mortal thing upon the dull earth dwelling." Whatever
the cause, he excelled in his bearing towards enemies, dead or alive.
The funeral that he gave to Richthofen in France was one of the few
handsome gestures exchanged in the war. And whenever Little
Flanigan at home began squealing aloud that we ought to take some
of our airmen off fighting and make them bomb German women and
children instead, our airmen's scorn for these ethics of the dirt
helped to keep up the flickering hope that the post-war world might
not be ignoble.
Even on the dull earth it takes time and pains to get a clean-run boy
or young man into a mean frame of mind. A fine N.C.O. of the
Grenadier Guards was killed near Laventie—no one knows how—
while going over to shake hands with the Germans on Christmas
morning. "What! not shake on Christmas Day?" He would have
thought it poor, sulky fighting. Near Armentières at the Christmas of
1914 an incident happened which seemed quite the natural thing to
most soldiers then. On Christmas Eve the Germans lit up their front
line with Chinese lanterns. Two British officers thereupon walked
some way across No Man's Land, hailed the enemy's sentries, and
asked for an officer. The German sentries said, "Go back, or we shall
have to shoot." The Englishmen said "Not likely!" advanced to the
German wire, and asked again for an officer. The sentries held their
fire and sent for an officer. With him the Englishmen made a one-
day truce, and on Christmas Day the two sides exchanged cigarettes
and played football together. The English intended the truce to end
with the day, as agreed, but decided not to shoot next day till the
enemy did. Next morning the Germans were still to be seen washing
and breakfasting outside their wire; so our men, too, got out of the
trench and sat about in the open. One of them, cleaning his rifle,
loosed a shot by accident, and an English subaltern went to tell the
Germans it had not been fired to kill. The ones he spoke to
understood, but as he was walking back a German somewhere wide
on a flank fired and hit him in the knee, and he has walked lame
ever since. Our men took it that some German sentry had
misunderstood our fluke shot. They did not impute dishonour. The
air in such places was strangely clean in those distant days. During
one of the very few months of open warfare a cavalry private of ours
brought in a captive, a gorgeous specimen of the terrific Prussian
Uhlan of tradition. "But why didn't you put your sword through him?"
an officer asked, who belonged to the school of Froissart less
obviously than the private. "Well, sir," the captor replied, "the
gentleman wasn't looking."
 III

At no seat of war will you find it quite easy to live up to Flanigan's

standards of hatred towards an enemy. Reaching a front, you find
that all you want is just to win the war. Soon you are so taken up
with the pursuit of this aim that you are always forgetting to burn
with the gem-like flame of pure fury that fires the lion-hearted
publicist at home.
A soldier might have had the Athanasian ecstasy all right till he
reached the firing line. Every individual German had sunk the
Lusitania; there was none righteous, none. And yet at a front the
holy passion began to ooze out at the ends of his fingers. The
bottom trouble is that you cannot fight a man in the physical way
without somehow touching him. The relation of actual combatants is
a personal one—no doubt, a rude, primitive one, but still quite
advanced as compared with that between a learned man at Berlin
who keeps on saying Delenda est Britannia! at the top of his voice
and a learned man in London who keeps on saying that every
German must have a black heart because Cæsar did not conquer
Germany as he did Gaul and Britain. Just let the round head of a
German appear for a passing second, at long intervals, above a
hummock of clay in the middle distance. Before you had made half a
dozen sincere efforts to shoot him the fatal germ of human
relationship had begun to find a nidus again: he had acquired in
your mind the rudiments of a personal individuality. You would go on
trying to shoot him with zest—indeed, with a diminished likelihood of
missing, for mere hatred is a flustering emotion. And yet the hatred
business had started crumbling. There had begun the insidious
change that was to send you home, on your first leave, talking
unguardedly of "old Fritz" or of "the good old Boche" to the pain of
your friends, as if he were a stout dog fox or a real stag of a hare.
The deadliest solvent of your exalted hatreds is laughter. And you
can never wholly suppress laughter between two crowds of millions
of men standing within earshot of each other along a line of
hundreds of miles. There was, in the Loos salient in 1916, a German
who, after his meals, would halloo across to an English unit taunts
about certain accidents of its birth. None of his British hearers could
help laughing at his mistakes, his knowledge, and his English. Nor
could the least humorous priest of ill-will have kept his countenance
at a relief when the enemy shouted: "We know you are relieving,"
"No good hiding it," "Good-bye, Ox and Bucks," "Who's coming in?"
and some humorist in the obscure English battalion relieving shouted
back, with a terrific assumption of accent, "Furrst Black Watch!" or
"Th' Oirish Gyards!" and a hush fell at the sound of these great
names. Comedy, expelled with a fork by the dignified figure of
Quenchless Hate, had begun to steal back of herself.
At home that tragedy queen might do very well; she did not have
these tenpenny nails scattered about on her road to puncture the
nobly inflated tyres of her chariot. The heroes who spoke up for
shooing all the old German governesses into the barbed wire
compounds were not exposed to the moral danger of actually
hustling, propria persona, these formidable ancients. But while
Hamilcar at home was swearing Hannibal and all the other little
Hamilcars to undying hatred of the foe, an enemy dog might be
trotting across to the British front line to sample its rats, and its
owner be losing in some British company's eyes his proper quality as
an incarnation of all the Satanism of Potsdam and becoming simply
"him that lost the dog."
If you took his trench it might be no better; perhaps Incarnate Evil
had left its bit of food half-cooked, and the muddy straw, where it
lay last, was pressed into a hollow by Incarnate Evil's back as by a
cat's. Incarnate Evil should not do these things that other people in
trenches do. It ought to be more strange and beastly and keep on
making beaux gestes with its talons and tail, like the proper dragon
slain by St. George. Perhaps Incarnate Evil was extinct and you went
over its pockets. They never contained the right things—no poison to
put in our wells, no practical hints for crucifying Canadians; only the
usual stuffing of all soldiers' pockets—photographs and tobacco and
bits of string and the wife's letters, all about how tramps were
always stealing potatoes out of the garden, and how the baby was
worse, and was his leave never coming! No good to look at such
things.
 IV

With this guilty weakness gaining upon them our troops drove the
Germans from Albert to Mons. There were scandalous scenes on the
way. Imagine two hundred German prisoners grinning inside a wire
cage while a little Cockney corporal chaffs them in half the dialects
of Germany! His father, he says, was a slop tailor in Whitechapel;
most of his journeymen came from somewhere or other in Germany
—"Ah! and my dad sweated 'em proper," he says proudly; so the boy
learnt all their kinds of talk. He convulses Bavarians now with his
flow of Silesian. He fraternizes grossly and jubilantly. Other British
soldiers laugh when one of the Germans sings, in return for favours
received, the British ballad "Knocked 'em in the Ol' Kent Road." By
the time our men had marched to the Rhine there was little hatred
left in them. How can you hate the small boy who stands at the farm
door visibly torn between dread of the invader and deep delight in
all soldiers, as soldiers? How shall a man not offer a drink to the first
disbanded German soldier who sits next to him in a public house at
Cologne, and try to find out if he was ever in the line at the Brick-
stacks or near the Big Crater? Why, that might have been his dog!
The billeted soldier's immemorial claim on "a place by the fire"
carried on the fell work. It is hopelessly bad for your grand Byronic
hates if you sit through whole winter evenings in the abhorred foe's
kitchen and the abhorred foe grants you the uncovenanted mercy of
hot coffee and discusses without rancour the relative daily yields of
the British and the German milch cow. And then comes into play the
British soldier's incorrigible propensity, wherever he be, to form
virtuous attachments. "Love, unfoiled in the war," as Sophocles says.
The broad road has a terribly easy gradient. When all the great and
wise at Paris were making peace, as somebody said, with a
vengeance, our command on the Rhine had to send a wire to say
that unless something was done to feed the Germans starving in the
slums it could not answer for discipline in its army; the men were
giving their rations away, and no orders would stop them. Rank "Pro-
Germanism," you see—the heresy of Edith Cavell; "Patriotism is not
enough; I must have no hatred or bitterness in my heart." While
these men fought on, year after year, they had mostly been growing
more void of mere spite all the time, feeling always more and more
sure that the average German was just a decent poor devil like
everyone else. One trembles to think what the really first-class
haters at home would have said of our army if they had known at
the time.
 V

Even at places less distant than home the survival of old English
standards of fighting had given some scandal. In that autumn of the
war when our generalship seemed to have explored all its own
talents and found only the means to stage in an orderly way the
greatest possible number of combats of pure attrition, the crying up
of unknightliness became a kind of fashion among a good many
Staff Officers of the higher grades. "I fancy our fellows were not
taking many prisoners this morning," a Corps Commander would say
with a complacent grin, on the evening after a battle. Jocose stories
of comic things said by privates when getting rid of undesired
captives became current in messes far in the rear. The other day I
saw in a history of one of the most gallant of all British divisions an
illustration given by the officer who wrote it of what he believed to
be the true martial spirit. It was the case of a wounded Highlander
who had received with a bomb a German Red Cross orderly who was
coming to help him. A General of some consequence during part of
the war gave a lecture, towards its end, to a body of officers and
others on what he called "the fighting spirit." He told with
enthusiasm an anecdote of a captured trench in which some of our
men had been killing off German appellants for quarter. Another
German appearing and putting his hands up, one of our men—so the
story went—called out, "'Ere! Where's 'Arry? 'E ain't 'ad one yet."
Probably some one had pulled the good general's leg, and the thing
never happened. But he believed it, and deeply approved the
"blooding" of 'Arry. That, he explained, was the "fighting spirit." Men
more versed than he in the actual hand-to-hand business of fighting
this war knew that he was mistaken, and that the spirit of trial by
combat and that of pork-butchery are distinct. But that is of course.
The notable thing was that such things should be said by anyone
wearing our uniform. Twenty years before, if it had been rumoured,
you would, without waiting, have called the rumour a lie invented by
some detractor of England or of her army. Now it passed quite
unhissed. It was the latter-day wisdom. Scrofulous minds at home
had long been itching, publicly and in print, to bomb German women
and children from aeroplanes, and to "take it out of" German
prisoners of war. Now the disease had even affected some parts of
the non-combatant Staff of our army.
 VI

You know the most often quoted of all passages of Burke. Indeed, it
is only through quotations of it that most of us know Burke at all—
But the age of chivalry is gone ... the unbought grace of life, the cheap
defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is
gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt
a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which
ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by
losing all its grossness.

Burke would never say a thing by halves. And as truth goes by

halves, and declines to be sweeping like rhetoric, Burke made sure
of being wrong to the tune of some fifty per cent. The French
Revolution did not, as his beautiful language implies, confine
mankind for the rest of its days to the procreation of curs. And yet
his words do give you, in their own lush, Corinthian way, a notion of
something that probably did happen, a certain limited shifting of the
centre of gravity of West European morals or manners.
One would be talking like Burke—talking, perhaps you might say,
through Burke's hat—if one were to say that the war found chivalry
alive and left it dead. Chivalry is about as likely to perish as brown
eyes or the moon. Yet something did happen, during the war, to
which these wild words would have some sort of relation. We were
not all Bayards in 1914; even then a great part of our Press could
not tell indignation from spite, nor uphold the best cause in the
world without turpitude. Nor were we all, after the Armistice, rods of
the houses of Thersites and Cleon; Haig was still alive, and so were
Gough and Hamilton and thousands of Arthurian subalterns and
privates and of like-minded civilians, though it is harder for a civilian
not to lose generosity during a war. But something had happened;
the chivalrous temper had had a set-back; it was no longer the
mode; the latest wear was a fine robust shabbiness. All through the
war there had been a bear movement in Newbolts and Burkes, and,
corresponding to this, a bull movement in stocks of the Little
Flanigan group.
 CHAPTER XI
STARS IN THEIR COURSES
 I

"Doth any man doubt," the wise Bacon asks, "that if there were
taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false
valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would
leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of
melancholy and indisposition and unpleasing to themselves?" One of
the most sweetly flattering hopes that we had in the August of 1914
was that in view of the greatness of the occasion causes were not
going to have their effects.
Nothing new, you may truthfully answer, in that. The improvement is
one which man, in his cups and his dreams and other seasons of
maudlin vision, has always perceived to have just come at last. Now,
he exaltedly says to himself, for a clean break with my inadequately
wise and brilliant past. Away with that plaguey old list of my things
done which should not have been done, and of things left undone
which I ought to have done. At the end of popular plays the
sympathetic youth who had idled, philandered, or stolen till then
would book to the Rand or the Yukon, fully assured that "in that
free, outdoor life" one's character is not one's fate any longer;
blessed, "out there," are Europe's slackers and wasters, for they
shall inherit the earth, or its auriferous parts. Grasshoppers, too, if
they drank or resorted to sentimental novels and plays, might have
gallant little revolts in their hearts, and chirrup "Down with
causation!" and feel cock-sure that some good-natured god would
give them a chance of "redeeming their pasts" quite late in autumn,
and put in their way a winter provision far ampler than that which
crowns the coolie labours of those sorry daughters of Martha, the
bees. But, for working this benign miracle in the soul, no other
strong waters can equal the early days of a war. If, with unbecoming
sobriety, anyone hints, in such days, that causes may still retain
some sort of control, he is easily seen to have no drop of true blood
in him; base is the slave who fears we must reap as we sowed;
shame upon spiritless whispers about any connection between the
making of beds and the lying thereon; now they shall see what
excellent hothouse grapes will be borne by the fine healthy thistles
that we have been planting and watering.
Something in it too, perhaps—at least some centuries ago. When a
great nation's army was only a few thousands strong the freak and
the fluke had their chance. An Achilles or two, at the top of their
form on the day, might upset the odds. But when armies are millions
of men, and machinery counts for more than the men, the few
divine accidents of exceptional valour cannot go far. With eleven a-
side a Grace or an Armstrong may win a game off his own bat. He
will hardly do that in a game where the sides are eleven thousand
apiece. More and more, as the armies increase, must the law of
averages have it its own dreary way; glorious uncertainties wither;
statistical "curves" of relative national fitness to win, and to stand
the strain of winning or losing, overbear everything else. What are
the two armies' and the two nations' relative numbers? What is the
mean physique on each side? And the mean intelligence? How far
has each nation's history—social, political, religious, industrial—
tended to make its men rich in just pride, self-reliance, high spirit,
devotion, and hardihood? How many per cent on each side have
been sapped by venereal disease? How much of their work have its
officers troubled to learn? These are the questions. The more men
you have in a war, and the longer it lasts, the more completely has it
to lose the romance of a glorious gamble and sink—or, as some
would say, rise—to the plane of a circumstantial, matter-of-fact
liquidation of whatever relative messes the nations engaged have
made of the whole of their previous lives.
 II

Any soldier will tell you the bayonet does not win battles. It only
claims, in a way that a beaten side cannot ignore, a victory won
already by gunfire, rifles, gas, bombs, or some combination of these.
The bayonet's thrust is more of a gesture: a cogent appeal, like the
urgent "How's that?" from the whole of the field when a batsman is
almost certainly out. But you may go much further back. That
predominant fire itself is just such another appeal. Its greater
volume and better direction are only the terms of an army's or a
nation's claim to be registered as the winner of what it had really
won long ago when, compared with the other nation, it minded its
job and lived cleanly and sanely. All war on the new huge scale may
be seen as a process, very expensive, of registration or verification.
Whenever a war is declared you may say that now, in a sense, it is
over at last; all the votes have been cast; the examination papers
are written; the time has come for the counting of votes and
adjudging of marks. Of course, we may still "do our bit," but the
possible size of our bit had its limit fixed long ago by the acts of
ourselves and our fathers and rulers which made us the men that we
are and no more. No use now to try to cadge favour with any ad hoc
God of Battles. For this, of all gods, is the most dourly Protestant. No
squaring of him on the deathbeds of people who would not work
while it was yet light.
From many points in the field—some of the best were in the tops of
high trees on high ground—you could watch through your glass the
casting up of accounts. You might survey from beginning to end a
British attack up a bare opposite slope, perhaps with home troops on
the left and Canadian or Australasian troops on the right. You had
already seen them meet on roads in the rear: battalions of
colourless, stunted, half-toothless lads from hot, humid Lancashire
mills; battalions of slow, staring faces, gargoyles out of the tragical-
comical-historical-pastoral edifice of modern English rural life;
Dominion battalions of men startlingly taller, stronger, handsomer,
prouder, firmer in nerve, better schooled, more boldly interested in
life, quicker to take means to an end and to parry and counter any
new blow of circumstance, men who had learned already to look at
our men with the half-curious, half-pitying look of a higher, happier
caste at a lower. And now you saw them, all these kinds, arise in one
continuous line out of the earth and walk forward to bear in the
riddled flesh and wrung spirit the sins of their several fathers,
pastors, and masters.
Time after time there would come to the watching eye, to the mind
still desperately hugging the hope that known causes might not
bring their normal effects, the same crushing demonstration that
things are as we have made them. Sometimes the line of home
troops would break into gaps and bunches, lose touch and direction
and common purpose, some of the knots plunging on into the back
of our barrage or feasting some enemy machine-gunner on their
density, others straggling back to the place whence they had started,
while the Dominion troops still ambled steadily on, their line
delicately waving but always continuous, closing again, as living
flesh closes over a pinprick, wherever an enemy shell tore a hole.
Perhaps the undersized boys from our slums and the under-witted
boys from the "agricultural, residential, and sporting estates" of our
auctioneers' advertisements would get to their goal, the spirit
wrestling prodigies of valour out of the wronged flesh, hold on there
for an hour or two with the shells splashing the earth up about them
like puddle water when great rain-drops make its surface jump, and
then fall back under orders, without any need, the brain of our army
failing to know how to use what its muscle had won. Then, while
you saw the triumphant Australians throw back a protective flank
from the left of their newly-won front to the English right, far in their
rear, you knew bitterly what the Australians were saying once more:
"They've let us down again!" "Another Tommy officer who didn't
know he'd won!" As if it were the fault, that day, of anyone there!
Our men could only draw on such funds of nerve and physique,
knowledge and skill, as we had put into the bank for them. Not they,
but their rulers and "betters," had lost their heads in the joy of
making money fast out of steam, and so made half of our nation
slum-dwellers. It was not they who had moulded English rustic life to
keep up the complacency of sentimental modern imitators of feudal
barons. It was not they who had made our Regular Army neither
aristocratic, with the virtues of aristocracy, nor democratic, with the
different virtues of democracy, nor keenly professional with the
professional virtues of gusto and curiosity about the possibilities of
its work. Delicta majorum immeritus lues. Like the syphilitic children
of some jolly Victorian rake, they could only bring to this harsh
examination such health and sanity as all the pleasant vices of
Victorian and Edwardian England had left them.
 III

The winter after the battle of Loos a sentry on guard at one part of
our line could always see the frustrate skeletons of many English
dead. They lay outside our wire, picked clean by the rats, so that the
khaki fell in on them loosely—little heaps of bone and cloth half
hidden now by nettles and grass. If the sentry had been a year in
the army he knew well enough that they had gone foredoomed into
a battle lost before a shot was fired. After the Boer War, you
remember, England, under the first shock of its blunders, had tried
to find out why the Staff work was so bad. What it found, in the
words of a famous Report, was that the fashion in sentiment in our
Regular Army was to think hard work "bad form"; a subaltern was
felt to be a bit of a scrub if he worried too much about discovering
how to support an attack when he might be more spiritedly
employed in playing polo; "The nobleness of life," as Antony said,
when he kissed Cleopatra, was to go racing or hunting, not to sit
learning how to forecast the course of great battles and how to
provide for answering their calls. And so the swathes of little brown
bundles, with bones showing through, lay in the nettles and grass.
Consider the course of the life of the British Regular officer as you
had known him in youth—not the pick, the saving few, the
unconquerably sound and keen, but the average, staple article made
by a sleek, complacent, snobbish, safe, wealth-governed England
after her own image. Think of his school; of the mystic aureole of
quasi-moral beauty attached by authority there to absorption in the
easy thing—in play; the almost passionate adoration of all those
energies and dexterities which, in this world of evolution towards the
primacy of the acute, full brain, are of the least possible use as aids
to survival in men and to victory in armies. Before he first left home
for school he may have been a normal child who only craved to be
given some bit, any odd bit, of "real work," as an experience more
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