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Title: The European Anarchy

Author: G. Lowes Dickinson

Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10333]
                Most recently updated: December 19, 2020

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Tony Towers and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EUROPEAN ANARCHY ***




Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Tony Towers and PG Distributed Proofreaders




THE EUROPEAN ANARCHY

By G. Lowes Dickinson



1916


CONTENTS

 1. INTRODUCTION
      Europe since the Fifteenth Century--Machiavellianism--Empire and the
      Balance of Power

 2. THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE AND THE ENTENTE
      Belgian Dispatches of 1905-14.

 3. GREAT BRITAIN
      The Policy of Great Britain--Essentially an Overseas Power

 4. FRANCE
      The Policy of France since 1870--Peace and Imperialism--Conflicting
      Elements

 5. RUSSIA
      The Policy of Russia--Especially towards Austria

 6. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
      The Policy of Austria-Hungary--Especially towards the Balkans

 7. GERMANY
      The Policy of Germany--From 1866 to the Decade 1890-1900--A Change

 8. OPINION IN GERMANY
      German "Romanticism"--New Ambitions.

 9. OPINION ABOUT GERMANY
      Bourdon--Beyens--Cambon--Summary

10. GERMAN POLICY FROM THE DECADE 1890-1900
      Relation to Great Britain--The Navy.

11. VAIN ATTEMPTS AT HARMONY
      Great Britain's Efforts for Arbitration--Mutual Suspicion

12. EUROPE SINCE THE DECADE 1890-1900

13. GERMANY AND TURKEY
      The Bagdad Railway

14. AUSTRIA AND THE BALKANS

15. MOROCCO

16. THE LAST YEARS
      Before the War--The Outbreak of War

17. THE RESPONSIBILITY AND THE MORAL
      The Pursuit of Power and Wealth

18. THE SETTLEMENT

19. THE CHANGE NEEDED
      Change of Outlook and Change of System--An International
      League--International Law and Control




THE EUROPEAN ANARCHY



1. _Introduction_.


In the great and tragic history of Europe there is a turning-point that
marks the defeat of the ideal of a world-order and the definite acceptance
of international anarchy. That turning-point is the emergence of the
sovereign State at the end of the fifteenth century. And it is symbolical
of all that was to follow that at that point stands, looking down the
vista of the centuries, the brilliant and sinister figure of Machiavelli.
From that date onwards international policy has meant Machiavellianism.
Sometimes the masters of the craft, like Catherine de Medici or Napoleon,
have avowed it; sometimes, like Frederick the Great, they have disclaimed
it. But always they have practised it. They could not, indeed, practise
anything else. For it is as true of an aggregation of States as of an
aggregation of individuals that, whatever moral sentiments may prevail, if
there is no common law and no common force the best intentions will be
defeated by lack of confidence and security. Mutual fear and mutual
suspicion, aggression masquerading as defence and defence masquerading as
aggression, will be the protagonists in the bloody drama; and there will
be, what Hobbes truly asserted to be the essence of such a situation, a
chronic state of war, open or veiled. For peace itself will be a latent
war; and the more the States arm to prevent a conflict the more certainly
will it be provoked, since to one or another it will always seem a better
chance to have it now than to have it on worse conditions later. Some
one State at any moment may be the immediate offender; but the main and
permanent offence is common to all States. It is the anarchy which they
are all responsible for perpetuating.

While this anarchy continues the struggle between States will tend to
assume a certain stereotyped form. One will endeavour to acquire supremacy
over the others for motives at once of security and of domination, the
others will combine to defeat it, and history will turn upon the two poles
of empire and the balance of power. So it has been in Europe, and so it
will continue to be, until either empire is achieved, as once it was
achieved by Rome, or a common law and a common authority is established
by agreement. In the past empire over Europe has been sought by Spain,
by Austria, and by France; and soldiers, politicians, and professors in
Germany have sought, and seek, to secure it now for Germany. On the other
hand, Great Britain has long stood, as she stands now, for the balance of
power. As ambitious, as quarrelsome, and as aggressive as other States, her
geographical position has directed her aims overseas rather than toward
the Continent of Europe. Since the fifteenth century her power has never
menaced the Continent. On the contrary, her own interest has dictated that
she should resist there the enterprise of empire, and join in the defensive
efforts of the threatened States. To any State of Europe that has conceived
the ambition to dominate the Continent this policy of England has seemed
as contrary to the interests of civilization as the policy of the Papacy
appeared in Italy to an Italian patriot like Machiavelli. He wanted Italy
enslaved, in order that it might be united. And so do some Germans now want
Europe enslaved, that it may have peace under Germany. They accuse England
of perpetuating for egotistic ends the state of anarchy. But it was not
thus that Germans viewed British policy when the Power that was to give
peace to Europe was not Germany, but France. In this long and bloody game
the partners are always changing, and as partners change so do views.
One thing only does not change, the fundamental anarchy. International
relations, it is agreed, can only turn upon force. It is the disposition
and grouping of the forces alone that can or does vary.

But Europe is not the only scene of the conflict between empire and
the balance. Since the sixteenth century the European States have been
contending for mastery, not only over one another, but over the world.
Colonial empires have risen and fallen. Portugal, Spain, Holland, in turn
have won and lost. England and France have won, lost, and regained. In
the twentieth century Great Britain reaps the reward of her European
conflicts in the Empire (wrongly so-called) on which the sun never sets.
Next to her comes France, in Africa and the East; while Germany looks out
with discontented eyes on a world already occupied, and, cherishing the
same ambitions all great States have cherished before her, finds the
time too mature for their accomplishment by the methods that availed in
the past. Thus, not only in Europe but on the larger stage of the world
the international rivalry is pursued. But it is the same rivalry and it
proceeds from the same cause: the mutual aggression and defence of beings
living in a "state of nature."

Without this historical background no special study of the events that led
up to the present war can be either just or intelligible. The feeling of
every nation about itself and its neighbours is determined by the history
of the past and by the way in which that history is regarded. The picture
looks different from every point of view. Indeed, a comprehension of the
causes of the war could only be fully attained by one who should know, not
only the most secret thoughts of the few men who directly brought it about,
but also the prejudices and preconceptions of the public opinion in each
nation. There is nobody who possesses these qualifications. But in the
absence of such a historian these imperfect notes are set down in the hope
that they may offer a counterpoise to some of the wilder passions that
sweep over all peoples in time of war and threaten to prepare for Europe
a future even worse than its past has been.



2. _The Triple Alliance and the Entente_.


First, let us remind ourselves in general of the situation that prevailed
in Europe during the ten years preceding the war. It was in that period
that the Entente between France, Russia, and England was formed and
consolidated, over against the existing Triple Alliance between Germany,
Austria, and Italy. Neither of these combinations was in its origin and
purpose aggressive[1].

And, so far as Great Britain was concerned, the relations she entered into
with France and with Russia were directed in each case to the settlement
of long outstanding differences without special reference to the German
Powers. But it is impossible in the European anarchy that any arrangements
should be made between any States which do not arouse suspicion in others.
And the drawing together of the Powers of the Entente did in fact appear
to Germany as a menace. She believed that she was being threatened by an
aggressive combination, just as, on the other hand, she herself seemed to
the Powers of the Entente a danger to be guarded against. This apprehension
on the part of Germany, is sometimes thought to have been mere pretence,
but there is every reason to suppose it to have been genuine. The policy of
the Entente did in fact, on a number of occasions, come into collision with
that of Germany. The arming and counter-arming was continuous. And the very
fact that from the side of the Entente it seemed that Germany was always
the aggressor, should suggest to us that from the other side the opposite
impression would prevail. That, in fact, it did prevail is clear not only
from the constant assertions of German statesmen and of the German Press,
but from contemporary observations made by the representatives of a State
not itself involved in either of the opposing combinations. The dispatches
of the Belgian ambassadors at Berlin, Paris, and London during the years
1905 to 1914[2] show a constant impression that the Entente was a hostile
combination directed against Germany and engineered, in the earlier years,
for that purpose by King Edward VII. This impression of the Belgian
representatives is no proof, it is true, of the real intentions of the
Entente, but it is proof of how they did in fact appear to outsiders. And
it is irrelevant, whether or no it be true, to urge that the Belgians were
indoctrinated with the German view; since precisely the fact that they
could be so indoctrinated would show that the view was on the face of it
plausible. We see, then, in these dispatches the way in which the policy of
the Entente could appear to observers outside it. I give illustrations from
Berlin, Paris, and London.

On May 30, 1908, Baron Greindl, Belgian Ambassador at Berlin, writes as
follows:--

  Call it an alliance, _entente_, or what you will, the grouping of the
  Powers arranged by the personal intervention of the King of England
  exists, and if it is not a direct and immediate threat of war against
  Germany (it would be too much to say that it was that), it constitutes
  none the less a diminution of her security. The necessary pacifist
  declarations, which, no doubt, will be repeated at Reval, signify very
  little, emanating as they do from three Powers which, like Russia and
  England, have just carried through successfully, without any motive
  except the desire for aggrandizement, and without even a plausible
  pretext, wars of conquest in Manchuria and the Transvaal, or which,
  like France, is proceeding at this moment to the conquest of Morocco,
  in contempt of solemn promises, and without any title except the
  cession of British rights, which never existed.

On May 24, 1907, the Comte de Lalaing, Belgian Ambassador at London,
writes:--

  A certain section of the Press, called here the Yellow Press, bears to a
  great extent the responsibility for the hostile feeling between the two
  nations.... It is plain enough that official England is quietly pursuing
  a policy opposed to Germany and aimed at her isolation, and that King
  Edward has not hesitated to use his personal influence in the service of
  this scheme. But it is certainly exceedingly dangerous to poison public
  opinion in the open manner adopted by these irresponsible journals.

Again, on July 28, 1911, in the midst of the Morocco crisis, Baron
Guillaume, Belgian Ambassador at Paris, writes:--

  I have great confidence in the pacific sentiments of the Emperor William,
  in spite of the too frequent exaggeration of some of his gestures. He
  will not allow himself to be drawn on farther than he chooses by the
  exuberant temperament and clumsy manners of his very intelligent Minister
  of Foreign Affairs (Kiderlen-Waechter). I feel, in general, less faith in
  the desire of Great Britain for peace. She would not be sorry to see the
  others eat one another up.... As I thought from the beginning, it is in
  London that the key to the situation lies. It is there only that it can
  become grave. The French will yield on all the points for the sake of
  peace. It is not the same with the English, who will not compromise on
  certain principles and certain claims.

[Footnote 1: The alliance between Germany and Austria, which dates from
1879, was formed to guarantee the two States against an attack by Russia.
Its terms are:--

"1. If, contrary to what is to be expected and contrary to the sincere
desire of the two high contracting parties, one of the two Empires
should be attacked by Russia, the two high contracting parties are
bound reciprocally to assist one another with the whole military force
of their Empire, and further not to make peace except conjointly and
by common consent.

"2. If one of the high contracting Powers should be attacked by another
Power, the other high contracting party engages itself, by the present act,
not only not to support the aggressor against its ally, but at least to
observe a benevolent neutrality with regard to the other contracting party.
If, however, in the case supposed the attacking Power should be supported
by Russia, whether by active co-operation or by military measures which
should menace the Power attacked, then the obligation of mutual assistance
with all military forces, as stipulated in the preceding article, would
immediately come into force, and the military operations of the high
contracting parties would be in that case conducted jointly until the
conclusion of peace."

Italy acceded to the Alliance in 1882. The engagement is defensive. Each of
the three parties is to come to the assistance of the others if attacked by
a third party.

The treaty of Germany with Austria was supplemented in 1884 by a treaty
with Russia, known as the "Reinsurance Treaty," whereby Germany bound
herself not to join Austria in an attack upon Russia. This treaty lapsed
in the year 1890, and the lapse, it is presumed, prepared the way for the
_rapprochement_ between Russia and France.

The text of the treaty of 1894 between France and Russia has never been
published. It is supposed to be a treaty of mutual defence in case of an
aggressive attack. The Power from whom attack is expected is probably
named, as in the treaty between Germany and Austria. It is probably for
that reason that the treaty was not published. The accession of Great
Britain to what then became known as the "Triple Entente" is determined by
the treaty of 1904 with France, whereby France abandoned her opposition to
the British occupation of Egypt in return for a free hand in Morocco; and
by the treaty of 1907 with Russia, whereby the two Powers regulated their
relations in Persia, Afghanistan, and Thibet. There is no mention in either
case of an attack, or a defence against attack, by any other Power.]

[Footnote 2: These were published by the _Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung,_
and are reprinted under the title "Belgische Aktenstücke," 1905-14 (Ernst
Siegfried Mittler and Sons, Berlin). Their authenticity, as far as I know,
has not been disputed. On the other hand, it is to be assumed that they
have been very carefully "edited" by the German to make a particular
impression. My view of the policy of Germany or of the Entente is in no
sense based upon them. I adduce them as evidence of contemporary feeling
and opinion.]



3. _Great Britain_.


Having established this general fact that a state of mutual suspicion and
fear prevailed between Germany and the Powers of the Triple Entente, let us
next consider the positions and purposes of the various States involved.
First, let us take Great Britain, of which we ought to know most. Great
Britain is the head of an Empire, and of one, in point of territory and
population, the greatest the world has ever seen. This Empire has been
acquired by trade and settlement, backed or preceded by military force.
And to acquire and hold it, it has been necessary to wage war after war,
not only overseas but on the continent of Europe. It is, however, as we
have already noticed, a fact, and a cardinal fact, that since the fifteenth
century British ambitions have not been directed to extending empire over
the continent of Europe. On the contrary, we have resisted by arms every
attempt made by other Powers in that direction. That is what we have meant
by maintaining the "balance of power." We have acted, no doubt, in our own
interest, or in what we thought to be such; but in doing so we have made
ourselves the champions of those European nations that have been threatened
by the excessive power of their neighbours. British imperialism has thus,
for four centuries, not endangered but guaranteed the independence of the
European States. Further, our Empire is so large that we can hardly extend
it without danger of being unable to administer and protect it. We claim,
therefore, that we have neither the need nor the desire to wage wars of
conquest. But we ought not to be surprised if this attitude is not accepted
without reserve by other nations. For during the last half-century we
have, in fact, waged wars to annex Egypt, the Soudan, the South African
Republics, and Burmah, to say nothing of the succession of minor wars
which have given us Zululand, Rhodesia, Nigeria, and Uganda. Odd as it
does, I believe, genuinely seem to most Englishmen, we are regarded on
the Continent as the most aggressive Power in the world, although our
aggression is not upon Europe. We cannot expect, therefore, that our
professions of peaceableness should be taken very seriously by outsiders.
Nevertheless it is, I believe, true that, at any rate during the last
fifteen-years, those professions have been genuine. Our statesmen, of both
parties, have honestly desired and intended to keep the peace of the world.
And they have been assisted in this by a genuine and increasing desire for
peace in the nation. The Liberal Government in particular has encouraged
projects of arbitration and of disarmament; and Sir Edward Grey is probably
the most pacific Minister that ever held office in a great nation. But our
past inevitably discredits, in this respect, our future. And when we
profess peace it is not unnatural that other nations should suspect a
snare.

Moreover, this desire for peace on our part is conditional upon the
maintenance of the _status quo_ and of our naval supremacy. Our vast
interests in every part of the world make us a factor everywhere to be
reckoned with. East, west, north, and south, no other Power can take a step
without finding us in the path. Those States, therefore, which, unlike
ourselves, are desirous farther to extend their power and influence
beyond the seas, must always reckon with us, particularly if, with that
end in view, by increasing their naval strength they seem to threaten our
supremacy at sea. This attitude of ours is not to be blamed, but it must
always make difficult the maintenance of friendly relations with ambitious
Powers. In the past our difficulties have been mainly with Russia and
France. In recent years they have been with Germany. For Germany, since
1898, for the first time in her history, has been in a position, and has
made the choice, to become a World-Power. For that reason, as well as
to protect her commerce, she has built a navy. And for that reason we,
pursuing our traditional policy of opposing the strongest continental
Power, have drawn away from her and towards Russia and France. We did not,
indeed, enter upon our arrangements with these latter Powers because of
aggressive intentions towards Germany. But the growth of German sea-power
drove us more and more to rely upon the Entente in case it should be
necessary for us to defend ourselves. All this followed inevitably from
the logic of the position, given the European anarchy. I state it for the
sake of exposition, not of criticism, and I do not imagine any reader will
quarrel with my statement.



4. _France_.


Let us turn now to France. Since 1870 we find contending there, with
varying fortunes and strength, two opposite currents of sentiment and
policy. One was that of _revanche_ against Germany, inspired by the old
traditions of glory and hegemony, associated with hopes of a monarchist
or imperialistic revolution, and directed, in the first place, to a
recovery of Alsace-Lorraine. The other policy was that of peace abroad
and socialistic transformation at home, inspired by the modern ideals of
justice and fraternity, and supported by the best of the younger generation
of philosophers, poets, and artists, as well as by the bulk of the working
class. Nowhere have these two currents of contemporary aspiration met
and contended as fiercely as in France. The Dreyfus case was the most
striking act in the great drama. But it was not the concluding one. French
militarism, in that affair, was scotched but not killed, and the contest
was never fiercer than in the years immediately preceding the war. The
fighters for peace were the Socialists, under their leader, Jaurès, the one
great man in the public life of Europe. While recognizing the urgent need
for adequate national defence, Jaurès laboured so to organize it that it
could not be mistaken for nor converted into aggression. He laboured, at
the same time, to remove the cause of the danger. In the year 1913, under
Swiss auspices, a meeting of French and German pacifists was arranged at
Berne. To this meeting there proceeded 167 French deputies and 48 senators.
The Baron d'Estournelles de Constant was president of the French bureau,
and Jaurès one of the vice-presidents. The result was disappointing. The
German participation was small and less influential than the French, and
no agreement could be reached on the burning question of Alsace-Lorraine.
But the French Socialists continued, up to the eve of the war, to fight
for peace with an energy, an intelligence, and a determination shown
in no other country. The assassination of Jaurès was a symbol of the
assassination of peace; but the assassin was a Frenchman.

For if, in France, the current for peace ran strong in these latter
years, so did the current for war. French chauvinism had waxed and
waned, but it was never extinguished. After 1870 it centred not only
about Alsace-Lorraine, but also about the colonial expansion which took
from that date a new lease of life in France, as it had done in England
after the loss of the American colonies. Directly encouraged by Bismarck,
France annexed Tunis in 1881. The annexation of Tunis led up at last to
that of Morocco. Other territory had been seized in the Far East, and
France became, next to ourselves, the greatest colonial Power. This policy
could not be pursued without friction, and the principal friction at the
beginning was with ourselves. Once at least, in the Fashoda crisis, the two
countries were on the verge of war, and it was not till the Entente of 1904
that their relations were adjusted on a basis of give-and-take. But by that
time Germany had come into the colonial field, and the Entente with England
meant new friction with Germany, turning upon French designs in Morocco. In
this matter Great Britain supported her ally, and the incident of Agadir
in 1911 showed the solidity of the Entente. This demonstration no doubt
strengthened the hands of the aggressive elements in France, and later
on the influence of M. Delcassé and M. Poincaré was believed in certain
quarters to have given new energy to this direction of French policy. This
tendency to chauvinism was recognized as a menace to peace, and we find
reflections of that feeling in the Belgian dispatches. Thus, for instance,
Baron Guillaume, Belgian minister at Paris, writes on February, 21, 1913,
of M. Poincaré:--

  It is under his Ministry that the military and slightly chauvinistic
  instincts of the French people have awakened. His hand can be seen in
  this modification; it is to be hoped that his political intelligence,
  practical and cool, will save him from all exaggeration in this course.
  The notable increase of German armaments which supervenes at the moment
  of M. Poincaré's entrance at the Elysée will increase the danger of a
  too nationalistic orientation of the policy of France.

Again, on March 3, 1913:--

  The German Ambassador said to me on Saturday: "The political situation
  is much improved in the last forty-eight hours; the tension is generally
  relaxed; one may hope for a return to peace in the near future. But what
  does not improve is the state of public opinion in France and Germany
  with regard to the relations between the two countries. We are persuaded
  in Germany that a spirit of chauvinism having revived, we have to fear an
  attack by the Republic. In France they express the same fear with regard
  to us. The consequence of these misunderstandings is to ruin us both. I
  do not know where we are going on this perilous route. Will not a man
  appear of sufficient goodwill and prestige to recall every one to reason?
  All this is the more ridiculous because, during the crisis we are
  traversing, the two Governments have given proof of the most pacific
  sentiments, and have continually relied upon one another to avoid
  conflicts."

On this Baron Guillaume comments:--

  Baron Schoen is perfectly right, I am not in a position to examine German
  opinion, but I note every day how public opinion in France becomes more
  suspicious and chauvinistic. One meets people who assure one that a war
  with Germany in the near future is certain and inevitable. People regret
  it, but make up their minds to it.... They demand, almost by acclamation,
  an immediate vote for every means of increasing the defensive power of
  France. The most reasonable men assert that it is necessary to arm to the
  teeth to frighten the enemy and prevent war.

On April 16th he reports a conversation with M. Pichon, in which the latter
says:--

  Among us, too, there is a spirit of chauvinism which is increasing,
  which I deplore, and against which we ought to react. Half the theatres
  in Paris now play chauvinistic and nationalistic pieces.

The note of alarm becomes more urgent as the days go on. On January 16,
1914, the Baron writes:--

  I have already had the honour to tell you that it is MM. Poincaré,
  Delcassé, Millerand and their friends who have invented and pursued the
  nationalistic and chauvinistic policy which menaces to-day the peace of
  Europe, and of which we have noted the renaissance. It is a danger for
  Europe and for Belgium. I see in it the greatest peril, which menaces the
  peace of Europe to-day; not that I have the right to suppose that the
  Government of the Republic is disposed deliberately to trouble the peace,
  rather I believe the contrary; but the attitude that the Barthou Cabinet
  has taken up is, in my judgment, the determining cause of an excess of
  militaristic tendencies in Germany.

It is clear from these quotations, and it is for this reason alone that
I give them, that France, supported by the other members of the Triple
Entente, could appear, and did appear, as much a menace to Germany as
Germany appeared a menace to France; that in France, as in other countries,
there was jingoism as well as pacifism; and that the inability of French
public opinion to acquiesce in the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was an active
factor in the unrest of Europe. Once more I state these facts, I do
not criticize them. They are essential to the comprehension of the
international situation.



5. _Russia_.


We have spoken so far of the West. But the Entente between France and
Russia, dating from 1894, brought the latter into direct contact with
Eastern policy. The motives and even the terms of the Dual Alliance are
imperfectly known. Considerations of high finance are supposed to have
been an important factor in it. But the main intention, no doubt, was to
strengthen both Powers in the case of a possible conflict with Germany. The
chances of war between Germany and France were thus definitely increased,
for now there could hardly be an Eastern war without a Western one. Germany
must therefore regard herself as compelled to wage war, if war should come,
on both fronts; and in all her fears or her ambitions this consideration
must play a principal part. Friction in the East must involve friction in
the West, and vice versa. What were the causes of friction in the West we
have seen. Let us now consider the cause of friction in the East.

The relations of Russia to Germany have been and are of a confused and
complicated character, changing as circumstances and personalities change.
But one permanent factor has been the sympathy between the governing
elements in the two countries. The governing class in Russia, indeed, has
not only been inspired by German ideas, it has been largely recruited
from men of German stock; and it has manifested all the contempt and
hatred which is characteristic of the German bureaucracy for the ideals of
democracy, liberty, and free thought. The two Governments have always been
ready to combine against popular insurrections, and in particular against
every attempt of the Poles to recover their liberty. They have been drawn
and held together by a common interest in tyranny, and the renewal of that
co-operation is one of the dangers of the future. On the other hand, apart
from and in opposition to this common political interest, there exists
between the two nations a strong racial antagonism. The Russian temperament
is radically opposed to the German. The one expresses itself in Panslavism,
the other in Pangermanism. And this opposition of temperament is likely
to be deeper and more enduring than the sympathy of the one autocracy with
the other. But apart from this racial factor, there is in the south-east
an opposition of political ambition. Primarily, the Balkan question is
an Austro-Russian rather than a Russo-German one. Bismarck professed
himself indifferent to the fate of the Balkan peoples, and even avowed a
willingness to see Russia at Constantinople. But recent years have seen,
in this respect, a great change. The alliance between Germany and Austria,
dating from 1879, has become closer and closer as the Powers of the Entente
have drawn together in what appeared to be a menacing combination. It has
been, for some time past, a cardinal principle of German policy to support
her ally in the Balkans, and this determination has been increased by
German ambitions in the East. The ancient dream of Russia to possess
Constantinople has been countered by the new German dream of a hegemony
over the near East based upon the through route from Berlin via Vienna and
Constantinople to Bagdad; and this political opposition has been of late
years the determining factor in the relationship of the two Powers. The
danger of a Russo-German conflict has thus been very great, and since the
Russo-French Entente Germany, as we have already pointed out, has seen
herself menaced on either front by a war which would immediately endanger
both.

Turning once more to the Belgian dispatches, we find such hints as the
following. On October 24, 1912, the Comte de Lalaing, Belgian Ambassador
to London, writes as follows:--

  The French Ambassador, who must have special reasons for speaking
  thus, has repeated to me several times that the greatest danger for
  the maintenance of the peace of Europe consists in the indiscipline and
  the personal policy of the Russian agents. They are almost all ardent
  Panslavists, and it is to them that must be imputed the responsibility
  for the events that are occurring. Beyond a doubt they will make
  themselves the secret instigators for an intervention of their country
  in the Balkan conflict.

On November 30, 1912, Baron de Beyens writes from Berlin:--

  At the end of last week a report was spread in the chancelleries of
  Europe that M. Sazonov had abandoned the struggle against the Court
  party which wishes to drag Russia into war.

On June 9, 1914, Baron Guillaume writes from Paris:--

  Is it true that the Cabinet of St. Petersburg has imposed upon this
  country [France] the adoption of the law of three years, and would
  now bring to bear the whole weight of its influence to ensure its
  maintenance? I have not been able to obtain light upon this delicate
  point, but it would be all the more serious, inasmuch as the men who
  direct the Empire of the Tsars cannot be unaware that the effort thus
  demanded of the French nation is excessive, and cannot be long sustained.
  Is, then, the attitude of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg based upon the
  conviction that events are so imminent that it will be possible to use
  the tool it intends to put into the hands of its ally?

What a sinister vista is opened up by this passage! I have no wish to
insinuate that the suspicion here expressed was justified. It is the
suspicion itself that is the point. Dimly we see, as through a mist, the
figures of the architects of war. We see that the forces they wield are
ambition and pride, jealousy and fear; that these are all-pervasive; that
they affect all Governments and all nations, and are fostered by conditions
for which all alike are responsible.

It will be understood, of course, that in bringing out the fact that there
was national chauvinism in Russia and that this found its excuse in the
unstable equilibrium of Europe, I am making no attack on Russian policy.
I do not pretend to know whether these elements of opinion actually
influenced the policy of the Government. But they certainly influenced
German fears, and without a knowledge of them it is impossible to
understand German policy. The reader must bear in mind this source of
friction along with the others when we come to consider that policy in
detail.



6. _Austria-Hungary_.


Turning now to Austria-Hungary, we find in her the Power to whom the
immediate occasion of the war was due, the Power, moreover, who contributed
in large measure to its remoter causes. Austria-Hungary is a State, but not
a nation. It has no natural bond to hold its populations together, and it
continues its political existence by force and fraud, by the connivance and
the self-interest of other States, rather than by any inherent principle of
vitality. It is in relation to the Balkan States that this instability has
been most marked and most dangerous. Since the kingdom of Serbia acquired
its independent existence it has been a centre drawing to itself the
discontent and the ambitions of the Slav populations under the Dual
Monarchy. The realization of those ambitions implies the disruption of the
Austro-Hungarian State. But behind the Southern Slavs stands Russia, and
any attempt to change the political status in the Balkans has thus meant,
for years past, acute risk of war between the two Empires that border them.
This political rivalry has accentuated the racial antagonism between German
and Slav, and was the immediate origin of the war which presents itself to
Englishmen as one primarily between Germany and the Western Powers.

On the position of Italy it is not necessary to dwell. It had long been
suspected that she was a doubtful factor in the Triple Alliance, and the
event has proved that this suspicion was correct. But though Italy has
participated in the war, her action had no part in producing it. And we
need not here indicate the course and the motives of her policy.



7. _Germany_.


Having thus indicated briefly the position, the perils, and the ambitions
of the other Great Powers of Europe, let us turn to consider the proper
subject of this essay, the policy of Germany. And first let us dwell on the
all-important fact that Germany, as a Great Power, is a creation of the
last fifty years. Before 1866 there was a loose confederation of German
States, after 1870 there was an Empire of the Germans. The transformation
was the work of Bismarck, and it was accomplished by "blood and iron."
Whether it could have been accomplished otherwise is matter of speculation.
That it was accomplished so is a fact, and a fact of tragic significance.
For it established among Germans the prestige of force and fraud, and gave
them as their national hero the man whose most characteristic act was the
falsification of the Ems telegram. If the unification could have been
achieved in 1848 instead of in 1870, if the free and generous idealism of
that epoch could have triumphed, as it deserved to, if Germans had not
bartered away their souls for the sake of the kingdom of this world, we
might have been spared this last and most terrible act in the bloody drama
of European history. If even, after 1866, 1870 had not been provoked, the
catastrophe that is destroying Europe before our eyes might never have
overwhelmed us. In the crisis of 1870 the French minister who fought so
long and with such tenacity, for peace saw and expressed, with the lucidity
of his nation, what the real issue was for Germany and for Europe:--

  There exists, it is true, a barbarous Germany, greedy of battles and
  conquest, the Germany of the country squires; there exists a Germany
  pharisaic and iniquitous, the Germany of all the unintelligible pedants
  whose empty lucubrations and microscopic researches have been so unduly
  vaunted. But these two Germanies are not the great Germany, that of
  the artists, the poets, the thinkers, that of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven,
  Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Liebig. This latter
  Germany is good, generous, humane, pacific; it finds expression in the
  touching phrase of Goethe, who when asked to write against us replied
  that he could not find it in his heart to hate the French. If we do not
  oppose the natural movement of German unity, if we allow it to complete
  itself quietly by successive stages, it will not give supremacy to the
  barbarous and sophistical Germany, it will assure it to the Germany of
  intellect and culture. War, on the other hand, would establish, during
  a time impossible to calculate, the domination of the Germany of the
  squires and the pedants.[1]

The generous dream was not to be realized. French chauvinism fell into
the trap Bismarck had prepared for it. Yet even at the last moment his war
would have escaped him had he not recaptured it by fraud. The publication
of the Ems telegram made the conflict inevitable, and one of the most
hideous and sinister scenes in all history is that in which the three
conspirators, Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon, "suddenly recovered their
pleasure in eating and drinking," because, by publishing a lie, they
had secured the certain death in battle of hundreds and thousands of
young men. The spirit of Bismarck has infected the whole public life
of Germany and of Europe. It has given a new lease to the political
philosophy of Machiavelli; and made of every budding statesman and
historian a solemn or a cynical defender of the gospel of force. But,
though this be true, we have no right therefore to assume that there is
some peculiar wickedness which marks off German policy from that of all
other nations. Machiavellianism is the common heritage of Europe. It is
the translation into idea of the fact of international anarchy. Germans
have been more candid and brutal than others in their expression and
application of it, but statesmen, politicians, publicists, and historians
in every nation accept it, under a thicker or thinner veil of plausible
sophisms. It is everywhere the iron hand within the silken glove. It is
the great European tradition.

Although, moreover, it was by these methods that Bismarck accomplished
the unification of Germany, his later policy was, by common consent, a
policy of peace. War had done its part, and the new Germany required all
its energies to build up its internal prosperity and strength. In 1875,
it is true, Bismarck was credited with the intention to fall once more
upon France. The fact does not seem to be clearly established. At any
rate, if such was his intention, it was frustrated by the intervention of
Russia and of Great Britain. During the thirty-nine years that followed
Germany kept the peace.

While France, England, and Russia waged wars on a great scale, and while
the former Powers acquired enormous extensions of territory, the only
military operations undertaken by Germany were against African natives
in her dependencies and against China in 1900. The conduct of the German
troops appears, it is true, to have been distinguished, in this latter
expedition, by a brutality which stood out in relief even in that orgy of
slaughter and loot. But we must remember that they were specially ordered
by their Imperial master, in the name of Jesus Christ, to show no mercy
and give no quarter. Apart from this, it will not be disputed, by any one
who knows the facts, that during the first twenty years or so after 1875
Germany was the Power whose diplomacy was the least disturbing to Europe.
The chief friction during that period was between Russia and France and
Great Britain, and it was one or other of these Powers, according to the
angle of vision, which was regarded as offering the menace of aggression.
If there has been a German plot against the peace of the world, it does
not date from before the decade 1890-1900. The close of that decade
marks, in fact, a new epoch in German policy. The years of peace had
been distinguished by the development of industry and trade and internal
organization. The population increased from forty millions in 1870 to over
sixty-five millions at the present date. Foreign trade increased more than
ten-fold. National pride and ambition grew with the growth of prosperity
and force, and sentiment as well as need impelled German policy to claim
a share of influence outside Europe in that greater world for the control
of which the other nations were struggling. Already Bismarck, though with
reluctance and scepticism, had acquired for his country by negotiation
large areas in Africa. But that did not satisfy the ambitions of the
colonial party. The new Kaiser put himself at the head of the new movement,
and announced that henceforth nothing must be done in any part of the world
without the cognizance and acquiescence of Germany.

Thus there entered a new competitor upon the stage of the world, and
his advent of necessity was disconcerting and annoying to the earlier
comers. But is there reason to suppose that, from that moment, German
policy was definitely aiming at empire, and was prepared to provoke war
to achieve it? Strictly, no answer can be given to this question. The
remoter intentions of statesmen are rarely avowed to others, and, perhaps,
rarely to themselves. Their policy is, indeed, less continuous, less
definite, and more at the mercy of events than observers or critics are
apt to suppose. It is not probable that Germany, any more than any other
country in Europe, was pursuing during those years a definite plan,
thought out and predetermined in every point.

In Germany, as elsewhere, both in home and foreign affairs, there was an
intense and unceasing conflict of competing forces and ideas. In Germany,
as elsewhere, policy must have adapted itself to circumstances, different
personalities must have given it different directions at different times.
We have not the information at our disposal which would enable us to trace
in detail the devious course of diplomacy in any of the countries of
Europe. What we know something about is the general situation, and the
action, in fact, taken at certain moments. The rest must be, for the
present, mainly matter of conjecture. With this word of caution, let
us now proceed to examine the policy of Germany.

The general situation we have already indicated. We have shown how the
armed peace, which is the chronic malady of Europe, had assumed during the
ten years from 1904 to 1914 that specially dangerous form which grouped the
Great Powers in two opposite camps--the Triple Alliance and the Triple
Entente. We have seen, in the case of Great Britain, France, Russia, and
Austria-Hungary, how they came to take their places in that constellation.
We have now to put Germany in its setting in the picture.

Germany, then, in the first place, like the other Powers, had occasion
to anticipate war. It might be made from the West, on the question of
Alsace-Lorraine; it might be made from the East, on the question of the
Balkans. In either case, the system of alliances was likely to bring into
play other States than those immediately involved, and the German Powers
might find themselves attacked on all fronts, while they knew in the
latter years that they could not count upon the support of Italy.

A reasonable prudence, if nothing else, must keep Germany armed and
apprehensive. But besides the maintenance of what she had, Germany was
now ambitious to secure her share of "world-power." Let us examine in
what spirit and by what acts she endeavoured to make her claim good.

First, what was the tone of public opinion in Germany during these
critical years?

[Footnote 1: Emile Ollivier, "L'Empire Libéral."]



8. _Opinion in Germany_.


Since the outbreak of the war the pamphlet literature in the countries of
the Entente has been full of citations from German political writers. In
England, in particular, the names and works of Bernhardi and of Treitschke
have become more familiar than they appear to have been in Germany prior to
the war. This method of selecting for polemical purposes certain tendencies
of sentiment and theory, and ignoring all others, is one which could be
applied, with damaging results, to any country in the world. Mr. Angell has
shown in his "Prussianism in England" how it might be applied to ourselves;
and a German, no doubt, into whose hands that book might fall would draw
conclusions about public opinion here similar to those which we have drawn
about public opinion in Germany. There is jingoism in all countries, as
there is pacifism in all countries. Nevertheless, I think it is true to
say that the jingoism of Germany has been peculiar both in its intensity
and in its character. This special quality appears to be due both to the
temperament and to the recent history of the German nation. The Germans are
romantic, as the French are impulsive, the English sentimental, and the
Russians religious. There is some real meaning in these generalisations.
They are easily to be felt when one comes into contact with a nation,
though they may be hard to establish or define. When I say that the Germans
are romantic, I mean that they do not easily or willingly see things as
they are. Their temperament is like a medium of coloured glass. It
magnifies, distorts, conceals, transmutes. And this is as true when their
intellectual attitude is realistic as when it is idealistic. In the Germany
of the past, the Germany of small States, to which all non-Germans look
back with such sympathy and such regret, their thinkers and poets were
inspired by grandiose intellectual abstractions. They saw ideas, like gods,
moving the world, and actual men and women, actual events and things, were
but the passing symbols of these supernatural powers; 1866 and 1870 ended
all that. The unification of Germany, in the way we have discussed,
diverted all their interest from speculation about the universe, life, and
mankind, to the material interests of their new country. Germany became the
preoccupation of all Germans. From abstractions they turned with a new
intoxication to what they conceived to be the concrete. Entering thus late
upon the stage of national politics, they devoted themselves, with their
accustomed thoroughness, to learning and bettering what they conceived
to be the principles and the practice which had given success to other
nations. In this quest no scruples should deter them, no sentimentality
hamper, no universal ideals distract. Yet this, after all, was but German
romanticism assuming another form. The objects, it is true, were different.
"Actuality" had taken the place of ideals, Germany of Humanity. But by
the German vision the new objects were no less distorted than the old.
In dealing with "Real-politik" (which is the German translation of
Machiavellianism), with "expansion," with "survival of the fittest,"
and all the other shibboleths of world-policy, their outlook remained
as absolute and abstract as before, as contemptuous of temperament and
measure, as blind to those compromises and qualifications, those decencies,
so to speak, of nature, by which reality is constituted. The Germans now
saw men instead of gods, but they saw them as trees walking.

German imperialism, then, while it involves the same intellectual
presuppositions, the same confusions, the same erroneous arguments, the
same short-sighted ambitions, as the imperialism of other countries,
exhibits them all in an extreme degree. All peoples admire themselves. But
the self-adoration of Germans is so naive, so frank, so unqualified, as to
seem sheerly ridiculous to more experienced nations.[1] The English and the
French, too, believe their civilization to be the best in the world. But
English common-sense and French sanity would prevent them from announcing
to other peoples that they proposed to conquer them, morally or materially,
for their good. All Jingoes admire and desire war. But nowhere else in the
modern world is to be found such a debauch of "romantic" enthusiasm, such
a wilful blindness to all the realities of war, as Germany has manifested
both before and since the outbreak of this world-catastrophe. A reader
of German newspapers and tracts gets at last a feeling of nausea at the
very words _Wir Deutsche_, followed by the eternal _Helden, Heldenthum,
Heldenthat_, and is inclined to thank God if he indeed belong to a nation
sane enough to be composed of _Händler_.

The very antithesis between _Helden_ (heroes) and _Händler_ (hucksters),
with which all Germany is ringing, is an illustration of the romantic
quality that vitiates their intelligence. In spite of the fact that they
are one of the greatest trading and manufacturing nations of the world, and
that precisely the fear of losing their trade and markets has been, as they
constantly assert, a chief cause that has driven them to war, they speak
as though Germany were a kind of knight-errant, innocent of all material
ambitions, wandering through the world in the pure, disinterested service
of God and man. On the other hand, because England is a great commercial
Power, they suppose that no Englishman lives for anything but profit.
Because they themselves have conscription, and have to fight or be shot,
they infer that every German is a noble warrior. Because the English
volunteer, they assume that they only volunteer for their pay. Germany,
to them, is a hero clad in white armour, magnanimous, long-suffering, and
invincible. Other nations are little seedy figures in black coats, inspired
exclusively by hatred and jealousy of the noble German, incapable of a
generous emotion or an honourable act, and destined, by the judgment of
history, to be saved, if they can be saved at all, by the great soul and
dominating intellect of the Teuton.

It is in this intoxicating atmosphere of temperament and mood that
the ideas and ambitions of German imperialists work and move. They are
essentially the same as those of imperialists in other countries. Their
philosophy of history assumes an endless series of wars, due to the
inevitable expansion of rival States. Their ethics means a belief in force
and a disbelief in everything else. Their science is a crude misapplication
of Darwinism, combined with invincible ignorance of the true bearings of
science upon life, and especially of those facts and deductions about
biological heredity which, once they are understood, will make it plain
that war degrades the stock of all nations, victorious and vanquished
alike, and that the decline of civilizations is far more plausibly to be
attributed to this cause than to the moral decadence of which history
is always ready, after the event, to accuse the defeated Power. One
peculiarity, perhaps, there is in the outlook of German imperialism,
and that is its emphasis on an unintelligible and unreal abstraction of
"race." Germans, it is thought, are by biological quality the salt of
the earth. Every really great man in Europe, since the break-up of the
Roman Empire, has been a German, even though it might appear, at first
sight, to an uninstructed observer, that he was an Italian or a Frenchman
or a Spaniard. Not all Germans, however, are, they hold, as yet included
in the German Empire, or even in the German-Austrian combination. The
Flemish are Germans, the Dutch are Germans, the English even are Germans,
or were before the war had made them, in Germany's eyes, the offscouring
of mankind. Thus, a great task lies before the German Empire: on the one
hand, to bring within its fold the German stocks that have strayed from
it in the wanderings of history; on the other, to reduce under German
authority those other stocks that are not worthy to share directly in the
citizenship of the Fatherland. The dreams of conquest which are the real
essence of all imperialism are thus supported in Germany by arguments
peculiar to Germans. But the arguments put forward are not the real
determinants of the attitude. The attitude, in any country, whatever it
may be called, rests at bottom on sheer national vanity. It is the belief
in the inherent superiority of one's own civilization, and the desire to
extend it, by force if need be, throughout the world. It matters little
what arguments in its support this passion to dominate may garner from
that twilight region in which the advanced guard of science is labouring
patiently to comprehend Nature and mankind. Men take from the treasury of
truth what they are able to take. And what imperialists take is a mirror
to their own ambition and pride.

Now, as to the ambitions of this German jingoism there is no manner of
doubt. Germans are nothing if not frank. And this kind of German does
want to conquer and annex, not only outside Europe but within it. We must
not, however, infer that the whole of Germany has been infected with this
virus. The summary I have set down in the last few pages represents the
impression made on an unsympathetic mind by the literature of Pangermanism.
Emerging from such reading--and it is the principal reading of German
origin which has been offered to the British public since the war--there
is a momentary illusion, "That is Germany!" Of course it is not, any more
than the _Morning Post_ or the _National Review_ is England. Germans, in
fact, during recent years have taken a prominent place in pacifism as well
as in imperialism. Men like Schücking and Quidde and Fried are at least as
well known as men like Treitschke and Bernhardi. Opinion in Germany, as in
every other country, has been various and conflicting. And the pacific
tendencies have been better organized, if not more active, there than
elsewhere, for they have been associated with the huge and disciplined
forces of the Social-Democrats. Indeed, the mass of the people, left
alone, is everywhere pacific. I do not forget the very important fact
that German education, elementary and higher, has been deliberately
directed to inculcate patriotic feeling, that the doctrine of armed
force as the highest manifestation of the State has been industriously
propagated by the authorities, and that the unification of Germany by
force has given to the cult of force a meaning and a popularity probably
unknown in any other country. But in most men, for good or for evil, the
lessons of education can be quickly obliterated by the experience of life.
In particular, the mass of the people everywhere, face to face with the
necessities of existence, knowing what it is to work and to struggle, to
co-operate and to compete, to suffer and to relieve suffering, though they
may be less well-informed than the instructed classes, are also less liable
to obsession by abstractions. They see little, but they see it straight.
And though, being men, with the long animal inheritance of men behind them,
their passions may be roused by any cry of battle, though they are the
fore-ordained dupes of those who direct the policy of nations, yet it is
not their initiative that originates wars. They do not desire conquest,
they do not trouble about "race" or chatter about the "survival of the
fittest." It is their own needs, which are also the vital needs of society,
that preoccupy their thoughts; and it is real goods that direct and inspire
their genuine idealism.

We must, then, disabuse ourselves of the notion so naturally produced by
reading, and especially by reading in time of war, that the German Jingoes
are typical of Germany. They are there, they are a force, they have to be
reckoned with. But exactly how great a force? Exactly how influential on
policy? That is a question which I imagine can only be answered by guesses.
Would the reader, for instance, undertake to estimate the influence during
the last fifteen years on British policy and opinion of the imperialist
minority in this country? No two men, I think, would agree about it. And
few men would agree with themselves from one day or one week to another.
We are reduced to conjecture. But the conjectures of some people are of
more value than those of others, for they are based on a wider converse.
I think it therefore not without importance to recall to the reader the
accounts of the state of opinion in Germany given by well-qualified foreign
observers in the years immediately preceding the war.

[Footnote 1: As I write I come across the following, cited from a book of
songs composed for German combatants under the title "Der deutsche Zorn":--

  Wir sind die Meister aller Welt
  In allen ernsten Dingen,
       *       *       *       *       *
  Was Man als fremd euch höchlichst preist
  Um eurer Einfalt Willen,
  Ist deutschen Ursprungs allermeist,
  Und trägt nur fremde Hüllen.]



9. _Opinion about Germany_.


After the crisis of Agadir, M. Georges Bourdon visited Germany to make an
inquiry for the _Figaro_ newspaper into the state of opinion there. His
mission belongs to the period between Agadir and the outbreak of the first
Balkan war. He interviewed a large number of people, statesmen, publicists,
professors, politicians. He does not sum up his impressions, and such
summary as I can give here is no doubt affected by the emphasis of my
own mind. His book,[1] however, is now translated into English, and the
reader has the opportunity of correcting the impression I give him.

Let us begin with Pangermanism, on which M. Bourdon has a very interesting
chapter. He feels for the propaganda of that sect the repulsion that must
be felt by every sane and liberal-minded man:--

  Wretched, choleric Pangermans, exasperated and unbalanced, brothers
  of all the exasperated, wretched windbags whose tirades, in all
  countries, answer to yours, and whom you are wrong to count your
  enemies! Pangermans of the Spree and the Main, who, on the other side
  of the frontier, receive the fraternal effusions of Russian Pan-Slavism,
  Italian irredentism, English imperialism, French nationalism! What is it
  that you want?

They want, he replies, part of Austria, Switzerland, Flanders, Luxemburg,
Denmark, Holland, for all these are "Germanic" countries! They want
colonies. They want a bigger army and a bigger navy. "An execrable race,
these Pangermans!" "They have the yellow skin, the dry mouth, the green
complexion of the bilious. They do not live under the sky, they avoid the
light. Hidden in their cellars, they pore over treaties, cite newspaper
articles, grow pale over maps, measure angles, quibble over texts or traces
of frontiers." "The Pangerman is a propagandist and a revivalist." "But,"
M. Bourdon adds, "when he shouts we must not think we hear in his tones the
reverberations of the German soul." The organs of the party seemed few and
unimportant. The party itself was spoken of with contempt. "They talk
loud," M. Bourdon was told, "but have no real following; it is only in
France that people attend to them." Nevertheless, M. Bourdon concluded
they were not negligible. For, in the first place, they have power to
evoke the jingoism of the German public--a jingoism which the violent
patriotism of the people, their tradition of victorious force, their
education, their dogma of race, continually keep alive. And, secondly,
the Government, when it thinks it useful, turns to the Pangermans for
assistance, and lets loose their propaganda in the press. Their influence
thus waxes and wanes, as it is favoured, or not, by authority. "Like the
giant Antaeus," a correspondent wrote to M. Bourdon, "Pangermanism loses
its force when it quits the soil of government."

It is interesting to note, however, that the Pangerman propaganda purports
to be based upon fear. If they urge increased armaments, it is with a
view to defence. "I considered it a patriotic duty," wrote General Keim,
"in my quality of president of the German League for Defence, to demand
an increase of effectives such that France should find it out of the
question to dream of a victorious war against us, even with the help of
other nations." "To the awakening of the national sentiment in France
there is only one reply--the increase of the German forces." "I have the
impression," said Count Reventlow, "that a warlike spirit which is new is
developing in France. There is the danger." Thus in Germany, as elsewhere,
even jingoism took the mask of necessary precaution. And so it must be, and
will be everywhere, as long as the European anarchy continues. For what
nation has ever admitted an intention or desire to make aggressive war?
M. Bourdon, then, takes full account of Pangermanism. Nor does he neglect
the general militaristic tendencies of German opinion. He found pride
in the army, a determination to be strong, and that belief that it is in
war that the State expresses itself at the highest and the best, which is
part of the tradition of German education since the days of Treitschke.
Yet, in spite of all this, to which M. Bourdon does full justice, the
general impression made by the conversations he records is that the bulk
of opinion in Germany was strongly pacific. There was apprehension indeed,
apprehension of France and apprehension of England. "England certainly
preoccupies opinion more than France. People are alarmed by her movements
and her armaments." "The constant interventions of England have undoubtedly
irritated the public." Germany, therefore, must arm and arm again. "A great
war may be delayed, but not prevented, unless German armaments are such as
to put fear into the heart of every possible adversary."

Germany feared that war might come, but she did not want it--that, in sum,
was M. Bourdon's impression. From soldiers, statesmen, professors, business
men, again and again, the same assurance. "The sentiment you will find most
generally held is undoubtedly that of peace." "Few think about war. We need
peace too much." "War! War between us! What an idea! Why, it would mean a
European war, something monstrous, something which would surpass in horror
anything the world has ever seen! My dear sir, only madmen could desire or
conceive such a calamity! It must be avoided at all costs." "What counts
above all here is commercial interest. All who live by it are, here as
elsewhere, almost too pacific." "Under the economic conditions prevailing
in Germany, the most glorious victory she can aspire to--it is a soldier
who says it--is peace!"

The impression thus gathered from M. Bourdon's observations is confirmed
at every point by those of Baron Beyens, who went to Berlin as Belgian
minister after the crisis of Agadir.[2] Of the world of business he says:--

  All these gentlemen appeared to be convinced partisans of peace....
  According to them, the tranquillity of Europe had not been for a moment
  seriously menaced during the crisis of Agadir.... Industrial Germany
  required to live on good terms with France. Peace was necessary to
  business, and German finance in particular had every interest in the
  maintenance of its profitable relations with French finance.[3] At the
  end of a few months I had the impression that these pacifists personified
  then--in 1912--the most common, the most widely spread, though the least
  noisy, opinion, the opinion of the majority, understanding by the
  majority, not that of the governing classes but that of the nation
  as a whole (p. 172).

The mass of the people, Beyens held, loved peace, and dreaded war. That was
the case, not only with all the common people, but also with the managers
and owners of businesses and the wholesale and retail merchants. Even in
Berlin society and among the ancient German nobility there were to be found
sincere pacifists. On the other hand, there was certainly a bellicose
minority. It was composed largely of soldiers, both active and retired;
the latter especially looking with envy and disgust on the increasing
prosperity of the commercial classes, and holding that a "blood-letting
would be wholesome to purge and regenerate the social body"--a view not
confined to Germany, and one which has received classical expression in
Tennyson's "Maud." To this movement belonged also the high officials, the
Conservative parties, patriots and journalists, and of course the armament
firms, deliberate fomenters of war in Germany, as everywhere else, in order
to put money into their pockets. To these must be added the "intellectual
flower of the universities and the schools." "The professors at the
universities, taken _en bloc_, were one of the most violent elements in
the nation." "Almost all the young people from one end of the Empire to
the other have had brought before them in the course of their studies
the dilemma which Bernhardi summed up to his readers in the three words
'world-power or decadence.' Yet with all this, the resolute partisans of
war formed as I thought a very small minority in the nation. That is the
impression I obstinately retain of my sojourn in Berlin and my excursions
into the provinces of the Empire, rich or poor. When I recall the image
of this peaceful population, journeying to business every week-day with a
movement so regular, or seated at table on Sundays in the cafés in the open
air before a glass of beer, I can find in my memories nothing but placid
faces where there was no trace of violent passions, no thought hostile to
foreigners, not even that feverish concern with the struggle for existence
which the spectacle of the human crowd has sometimes shown me elsewhere."

A similar impression is given by the dispatch from M. Cambon, French
Ambassador to Berlin, written on July 30, 1913.[4] He, too, finds elements
working for war, and analyses them much as Baron Beyens does. There are
first the "junkers," or country squires, naturally military by all their
traditions, but also afraid of the death-duties "which are bound to come
if peace continues." Secondly, the "higher bourgeoisie"--that is, the
great manufacturers and financiers, and, of course, in particular the
armament firms. Both these social classes are influenced, not only by
direct pecuniary motives but by the fear of the rising democracy, which
is beginning to swamp their representatives in the Reichstag. Thirdly,
the officials, the "party of the pensioned." Fourthly, the universities,
the "historians, philosophers, political pamphleteers, and other apologists
of German Kultur." Fifthly, rancorous diplomatists, with a sense that they
had been duped. On the other hand, there were, as M. Cambon insists, other
forces in the country making for peace. What were these? In numbers the
great bulk, in Germany as in all countries. "The mass of the workmen,
artisans and peasants, who are peace-loving by instinct." Such of the great
nobles as were intelligent enough to recognize the "disastrous political
and social consequences of war." "Numerous manufacturers, merchants, and
financiers in a moderate way of business." The non-German elements of the
Empire. Finally, the Government and the governing classes in the large
southern States. A goodly array of peace forces! According to M. Cambon,
however, all these latter elements "are only a sort of make-weight in
political matters with limited influence on public opinion, or they are
silent social forces, passive and defenceless against the infection of
a wave of warlike feeling." This last sentence is pregnant. It describes
the state of affairs existing, more or less, in all countries; a few
individuals, a few groups or cliques, making for war more or less
deliberately; the mass of the people ignorant and unconcerned, but also
defenceless against suggestion, and ready to respond to the call to war,
with submission or with enthusiasm, as soon as the call is made by their
Government.

On the testimony, then, of these witnesses, all shrewd and competent
observers, it may be permitted to sum up somewhat as follows:--

In the years immediately preceding the war the mass of the people in
Germany, rich and poor, were attached to peace and dreaded war. But there
was there also a powerful minority either desiring war or expecting it,
and, in either case, preparing it by their agitation. And this minority
could appeal to the peculiarly aggressive form of patriotism inculcated by
the public schools and universities. The war party based its appeal for
ever fresh armaments on the hostile preparations of the Powers of the
Entente. Its aggressive ambition masqueraded, perhaps even to itself,
as a patriotism apprehensively concerned with defence. It was supported
by powerful moneyed interests; and the mass of the people, passive,
ill-informed, preoccupied, were defenceless against its agitation. The
German Government found the Pangermans embarrassing or convenient according
as the direction of its policy and the European situation changed from
crisis to crisis. They were thus at one moment negligible, at another
powerful. For long they agitated vainly, and they might long have continued
to do so. But if the moment should come at which the Government should make
the fatal plunge, their efforts would have contributed to the result, their
warnings would seem to have been justified, and they would triumph as
the party of patriots that had foretold in vain the coming crash to an
unbelieving nation.

[Footnote 1: "L'Enigme Allemande," 1914.]

[Footnote 2: See "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," pp. 97 seq. and 170 seq.
Bruxelles, 1915.]

[Footnote 3: A Frenchman, M. Maurice Ajam, who made an inquiry among
business men in 1913 came to the same conclusion. "Peace! I write that all
the Germans without exception, when they belong to the world of business,
are fanatical partisans of the maintenance of European peace." See Yves
Guyot, "Les causes et les conséquences de la guerre," p. 226.]

[Footnote 4: See French Yellow Book, No. 5.]



10. _German Policy, from 1890-1900_.


Having thus examined the atmosphere of opinion in which the German
Government moved, let us proceed to consider the actual course of their
policy during the critical years, fifteen or so, that preceded the war.
The policy admittedly and openly was one of "expansion." But "expansion"
where? It seems to be rather widely supposed that Germany was preparing war
in order to annex territory in Europe. The contempt of German imperialists,
from Treitschke onward, for the rights of small States, the racial theories
which included in "German" territory Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and the
Scandinavian countries, may seem to give colour to this idea. But it would
be hazardous to assume that German statesmen were seriously influenced
for years by the lucubrations of Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain and
his followers. Nor can a long-prepared policy of annexation in Europe
be inferred from the fact that Belgium and France were invaded after the
war broke out, or even from the present demand among German parties that
the territories occupied should be retained. If it could be maintained
that the seizure of territory during war, or even its retention after
it, is evidence that the territory was the object of the war, it would
be legitimate also to infer that the British Empire has gone to war
to annex German colonies, a conclusion which Englishmen would probably
reject with indignation. In truth, before the war, the view that it was
the object of German policy to annex European territory would have found,
I think, few, if any, supporters among well-informed and unprejudiced
observers. I note, for instance, that Mr. Dawson, whose opinion on such
a point is probably better worth having than that of any other Englishman,
in his book, "The Evolution of Modern Germany,"[1] when discussing the aims
of German policy does not even refer to the idea that annexations in Europe
are contemplated.

So far as the evidence at present goes, I do not think a case can be
made out for the view that German policy was aiming during these years
at securing the hegemony of Europe by annexing European territory. The
expansion Germany was seeking was that of trade and markets. And her
statesmen and people, like those of other countries, were under the
belief that, to secure this, it was necessary to acquire colonies. This
ambition, up to a point, she was able, in fact, to fulfil, not by force
but by agreement with the other Powers. The Berlin Act of 1885 was one
of the wisest and most far-seeing achievements of European policy. By it
the partition of a great part of the African continent between the Powers
was peaceably accomplished, and Germany emerged with possessions to the
extent of 377,000 square miles and an estimated population of 1,700,000.
By 1906 her colonial domain had been increased to over two and a half
million square miles, and its population to over twelve millions; and all
of this had been acquired without war with any civilized nation. In spite
of her late arrival on the scene as a colonial Power, Germany had thus
secured without war an empire overseas, not comparable, indeed, to that
of Great Britain or of France, but still considerable in extent and
(as Germans believed) in economic promise, and sufficient to give them
the opportunity they desired to show their capacity as pioneers of
civilization. How they have succeeded or failed in this we need not here
consider. But when Germans demand a "place in the sun," the considerable
place they have in fact acquired, with the acquiescence of the other
colonial Powers, should, in fairness to those Powers, be remembered.
But, notoriously, they were not satisfied, and the extent of their
dissatisfaction was shown by their determination to create a navy. This
new departure, dating from the close of the decade 1890-1900, marks the
beginning of that friction between Great Britain and Germany which was a
main cause of the war. It is therefore important to form some just idea
of the motives that inspired German policy to take this momentous step.
The reasons given by Prince Bülow, the founder of the policy, and often
repeated by German statesmen and publicists,[2] are, first, the need of a
strong navy, to protect German commerce; secondly, the need, as well as the
ambition, of Germany to play a part proportional to her real strength in
the determination of policy beyond the seas. These reasons, according to
the ideas that govern European statesmanship, are valid and sufficient.
They are the same that have influenced all great Powers; and if Germany
was influenced by them we need not infer any specially sinister intentions
on her part. The fact that during the present war German trade has been
swept from the seas, and that she is in the position of a blockaded Power,
will certainly convince any German patriot, not that she did not need a
navy, but that she needed a much stronger one; and the retort that there
need have been no war if Germany had not provoked it by building a fleet
is not one that can be expected to appeal to any nation so long as the
European anarchy endures. For, of course, every nation regards itself
as menaced perpetually by aggression from some other Power. Defence was
certainly a legitimate motive for the building of the fleet, even if
there had been no other. There was, however, in fact, another reason
avowed. Germany, as we have said, desired to have a voice in policy
beyond the seas. Here, too, the reason is good, as reasons go in a
world of competing States. A great manufacturing and trading Power
cannot be indifferent to the parcelling out of the world among its
rivals. Wherever, in countries economically undeveloped, there were
projects of protectorates or annexations, or of any kind of monopoly
to be established in the interest of any Power, there German interests
were directly affected. She had to speak, and to speak with a loud voice,
if she was to be attended to. And a loud voice meant a navy. So, at least,
the matter naturally presented itself to German imperialists, as, indeed,
it would to imperialists of any other country.

The reasons given by German statesmen for building their fleet were in
this sense valid. But were they the only reasons? In the beginning most
probably they were. But the formation and strengthening of the Entente,
and Germany's consequent fear that war might be made upon her jointly by
France and Great Britain, gave a new stimulus to her naval ambition. She
could not now be content with a navy only as big as that of France, for she
might have to meet those of France and England conjoined. This defensive
reason is good. But no doubt, as always, there must have lurked behind it
ideas of aggression. Ambition, in the philosophy of States, goes hand in
hand with fear. "The war may come," says one party. "Yes," says the other;
and secretly mutters, "May the war come!" To ask whether armaments are for
offence or for defence must always be an idle inquiry. They will be for
either, or both, according to circumstances, according to the personalities
that are in power, according to the mood that politicians and journalists,
and the interests that suborn them, have been able to infuse into a nation.
But what may be said with clear conviction is, that to attempt to account
for the clash of war by the ambition and armaments of a single Power is
to think far too simply of how these catastrophes originate. The truth,
in this case, is that German ambition developed in relation to the whole
European situation, and that, just as on land their policy was conditioned
by their relation to France and Russia, so at sea it was conditioned by
their relation to Great Britain. They knew that their determination to
become a great Power at sea would arouse the suspicion and alarm of the
English. Prince Bülow is perfectly frank about that. He says that the
difficulty was to get on with the shipbuilding programme without giving
Great Britain an opportunity to intervene by force and nip the enterprise
in the bud. He attributes here to the British Government a policy which
is all in the Bismarckian tradition. It was, in fact, a policy urged by
some voices here, voices which, as is always the case, were carried to
Germany and magnified by the mega-phone of the Press.[3] That no British
Government, in fact, contemplated picking a quarrel with Germany in order
to prevent her becoming a naval Power I am myself as much convinced as any
other Englishman, and I count the fact as righteousness to our statesmen.
On the other hand, I think it an unfounded conjecture that Prince Bülow was
deliberately building with a view to attacking the British Empire. I see
no reason to doubt his sincerity when he says that he looked forward to a
peaceful solution of the rivalry between Germany and ourselves, and that
France, in his view, not Great Britain, was the irreconcilable enemy.[4]
In building her navy, no doubt, Germany deliberately took the risk of
incurring a quarrel with England in the pursuit of a policy which she
regarded as essential to her development. It is quite another thing,
and would require much evidence to prove that she was working up to a
war with the object of destroying the British Empire.

What we have to bear in mind, in estimating the meaning of the German
naval policy, is a complex series of motives and conditions: the genuine
need of a navy, and a strong one, to protect trade in the event of war,
and to secure a voice in overseas policy; the genuine fear of an attack by
the Powers of the Entente, an attack to be provoked by British jealousy;
and also that indeterminate ambition of any great Power which may be
influencing the policy of statesmen even while they have not avowed it to
themselves, and which, expressed by men less responsible and less discreet,
becomes part of that "public opinion" of which policy takes account.

[Footnote 1: Published in 1908.]

[Footnote 2: See, e.g., Dawson, "Evolution of Modern Germany," p. 348.]

[Footnote 3: Some of these are cited in Bülow's "Imperial Germany," p. 36.]

[Footnote 4: See "Imperial Germany," pp. 48, 71, English translation.]



11. _Vain Attempts at Harmony_.


It may, however, be reasonably urged that unless the Germans had had
aggressive ambitions they would have agreed to some of the many proposals
made by Great Britain to arrest on both sides the constantly expanding
programmes of naval constructions. It is true that Germany has always
opposed the policy of limiting armaments, whether on land or sea. This is
consonant with that whole militarist view of international politics which,
as I have already indicated, is held in a more extreme and violent form
in Germany than in any other country, but which is the creed of jingoes
and imperialists everywhere. If the British Government had succeeded in
coming to an agreement with Germany on this question, they would have been
bitterly assailed by that party at home. Still, the Government did make the
attempt. It was comparatively easy for them, for any basis to which they
could have agreed must have left intact, legitimately and necessarily, as
we all agree, the British supremacy at sea. The Germans would not assent
to this. They did not choose to limit beforehand their efforts to rival
us at sea. Probably they did not think it possible to equal, still less
to outstrip us. But they wanted to do all they could. And that of course
could have only one meaning. They thought a war with England possible,
and they wanted to be as well prepared as they could be. It is part of
the irony that attaches to the whole system of the armed peace that the
preparations made against war are themselves the principal cause of war.
For if there had been no rival shipbuilding, there need have been no
friction between the two countries.

"But why did Germany fear war? It must have been because she meant to make
it." So the English argue. But imagine the Germans saying to us, "Why do
you fear war? There will be no war unless you provoke it. We are quite
pacific. You need not be alarmed about us." Would such a promise have
induced us to relax our preparations for a moment? No! Under the armed
peace there can be no confidence. And that alone is sufficient to account
for the breakdown of the Anglo-German negotiations, without supposing on
either side a wish or an intention to make war. Each suspected, and was
bound to suspect, the purpose of the other. Let us take, for example, the
negotiations of 1912, and put them back in their setting.

The Triple Alliance was confronting the Triple Entente. On both sides
were fear and suspicion. Each believed in the possibility of the others
springing a war upon them. Each suspected the others of wanting to lull
them into a false security, and then take them unprepared. In that
atmosphere, what hope was there of successful negotiations? The essential
condition--mutual confidence--was lacking. What, accordingly, do we find?
The Germans offer to reduce their naval programme, first, if England will
promise an unconditional neutrality; secondly, when that was rejected, if
England will promise neutrality in a war which should be "forced upon"
Germany. Thereupon the British Foreign Office scents a snare. Germany
will get Austria to provoke a war, while making it appear that the war
was provoked by Russia, and she will then come in under the terms of her
alliance with Austria, smash France, and claim that England must look
on passively under the neutrality agreement! "No, thank you!" Sir Edward
Grey, accordingly, makes a counter-proposal. England will neither make
nor participate in an "unprovoked" attack upon Germany. This time it is
the German Chancellor's turn to hang back. "Unprovoked! Hm! What does
that mean? Russia, let us suppose, makes war upon Austria, while making
it appear that Austria is the aggressor. France comes in on the side of
Russia. And England? Will she admit that the war was 'unprovoked' and
remain neutral? Hardly, we think!" The Chancellor thereupon proposes the
addition: "England, of course, will remain neutral if war is forced upon
Germany? That follows, I presume?" "No!" from the British Foreign Office.
Reason as before. And the negotiations fall through. How should they not
under the conditions? There could be no understanding, because there was
no confidence. There could be no confidence because there was mutual fear.
There was mutual fear because the Triple Alliance stood in arms against
the Triple Entente. What was wrong? Germany? England? No. The European
tradition and system.

The fact, then, that those negotiations broke down is no more evidence
of sinister intentions on the part of Germany than it is on the part of
Great Britain. Baron Beyens, to my mind the most competent and the most
impartial, as well as one of the best-informed, of those who have written
on the events leading up to the war, says explicitly of the policy of the
German Chancellor:--

  A practicable _rapprochement_ between his country and Great Britain
  was the dream with which M. de Bethmann-Hollweg most willingly soothed
  himself, without the treacherous _arrière-pensèe_ which the Prince von
  Bülow perhaps would have had of finishing later on, at an opportune
  moment, with the British Navy. Nothing authorizes us to believe that
  there was not a basis of sincerity in the language of M. de Jagow when he
  expressed to Sir E. Goschen in the course of their last painful interview
  his poignant regret at the crumbling of his entire policy and that of the
  Chancellor, which had been to make friends with Great Britain, and then
  through Great Britain to get closer to France.[1]

Meantime the considerations I have here laid before the reader, in relation
to this general question of Anglo-German rivalry, are, I submit, all
relevant, and must be taken into fair consideration in forming a judgment.
The facts show clearly that Germany was challenging as well as she could
the British supremacy at sea; that she was determined to become a naval
as well as a military Power; and that her policy was, on the face of it,
a menace to this country; just as the creation on our part of a great
conscript army would have been taken by Germany as a menace to her. The
British Government was bound to make counter-preparations. I, for my own
part, have never disputed it. I have never thought, and do not now think,
that while the European anarchy continues, a single Power can disarm in the
face of the others. All this is beyond dispute. What is disputable, and a
matter of speculative inference, is the further assumption that in pursuing
this policy Germany was making a bid to destroy the British Empire. The
facts can certainly be accounted for without that assumption. I myself
think the assumption highly improbable. So much I may say, but I cannot
say more. Possibly some day we may be able to check conjecture by facts.
Until then, argument must be inconclusive.

This question of the naval rivalry between Germany and Great Britain
is, however, part of the general question of militarism. And it may be
urged that while during the last fifteen years the British Government has
shown itself favourable to projects of arbitration and of limitation of
armaments, the German Government has consistently opposed them. There is
much truth in this; and it is a good illustration of what I hold to be
indisputable, that the militaristic view of international politics is
much more deeply rooted in Germany than in Great Britain. It is worth
while, however, to remind ourselves a little in detail what the facts
were since they are often misrepresented or exaggerated.

The question of international arbitration was brought forward at the first
Hague Conference in 1899.[2] From the beginning it was recognized on all
sides that it would be idle to propose general compulsory arbitration for
all subjects. No Power would have agreed to it, not Great Britain or
America any more than Germany. On the other hand, projects for creating
an arbitration tribunal, to which nations willing to use it should have
recourse, were brought forward by both the British and the American
representatives. From the beginning, however, it became clear that Count
Münster, the head of the German delegation, was opposed to any scheme
for encouraging arbitration. "He did not say that he would oppose a
moderate plan of voluntary arbitration, but he insisted that arbitration
must be injurious to Germany; that Germany is prepared for war as no
other country is, or can be; that she can mobilize her army in ten
days; and that neither France, Russia, nor any other Power can do this.
Arbitration, he said, would simply give rival Powers time to put themselves
in readiness, and would, therefore, be a great disadvantage to Germany."
Here is what I should call the militarist view in all its simplicity and
purity, the obstinate, unquestioning belief that war is inevitable, and
the determination to be ready for it at all costs, even at the cost of
rejecting machinery which if adopted might obviate war. The passage has
often been cited as evidence of the German determination to have war. But
I have not so often seen quoted the exactly parallel declaration made by
Sir John (now Lord) Fisher. "He said that the Navy of Great Britain was
and would remain in a state of complete preparation for war; that a vast
deal depended on prompt action by the Navy; and that the truce afforded by
arbitration proceedings would give other Powers time, which they would not
otherwise have, to put themselves into complete readiness."[3] So far the
"militarist" and the "marinist" adopt exactly the same view. And we may be
sure that if proposals are made after the war to strengthen the machinery
for international arbitration, there will be opposition in this country of
the same kind, and based on the same grounds, as the opposition in Germany.
We cannot on this point condemn Count Münster without also condemning Lord
Fisher.

Münster's opposition, however, was only the beginning. As the days went on
it became clear that the Kaiser himself had become actively opposed to the
whole idea of arbitration, and was influencing Austria and Italy and Turkey
in that sense. The delegates of all the other countries were in favour of
the very mild application of it which was under consideration. So, however,
be it noted, were all the delegates from Germany, except Count Münster.
And even he was, by now, so far converted that when orders were received
from Germany definitely to refuse co-operation, he postponed the critical
sitting of the committee, and dispatched Professor Zorn to Berlin to lay
the whole matter before the Chancellor. Professor Zorn was accompanied
by the American Dr. Holls, bearing an urgent private letter to Prince
Hohenlohe from Mr. White. The result was that the German attitude was
changed, and the arbitration tribunal was finally established with the
consent and co-operation of the German Government.

I have thought it worth while to dwell thus fully upon this episode because
it illustrates how misleading it really is to talk of "Germany" and the
"German" attitude. There is every kind of German attitude. The Kaiser is
an unstable and changeable character. His ministers do not necessarily
agree with him, and he does not always get his way. As a consequence of
discussion and persuasion the German opposition, on this occasion, was
overcome. There was nothing, in fact, fixed and final about it. It was
the militarist prejudice, and the prejudice this time yielded to humanity
and reason.

The subject was taken up again in the Conference of 1907, and once more
Germany was in opposition. The German delegate, Baron Marschall von
Bieberstein, while he was not against compulsory arbitration for certain
selected topics, was opposed to any general treaty. It seems clear that it
was this attitude of Germany that prevented any advance being made beyond
the Convention of 1899. Good reasons, of course, could be given for this
attitude; but they are the kind of reasons that goodwill could have
surmounted. It seems clear that there was goodwill in other Governments,
but not in that of Germany, and the latter lies legitimately under the
prejudice resulting from the position she then took. German critics have
recognized this as freely as critics of other countries. I myself feel no
desire to minimize the blame that attaches to Germany. But Englishmen who
criticize her policy must always ask themselves whether they would support
a British Government that should stand for a general treaty of compulsory
arbitration.

On the question of limitation of armaments the German Government has
been equally intransigeant. At the Conference of 1899, indeed, no serious
effort was made by any Power to achieve the avowed purpose of the meeting.
And, clearly, if anything was intended to be done, the wrong direction
was taken from the beginning. When the second Conference was to meet it
is understood that the German Government refused participation if the
question of armaments was to be discussed, and the subject did not appear
on the official programme. Nevertheless the British, French, and American
delegates took occasion to express a strong sense of the burden of
armaments, and the urgent need of lessening it.

The records of the Hague Conferences do, then, clearly show that the German
Government was more obstinately sceptical of any advance in the direction
of international arbitration or disarmament than that of any other Great
Power, and especially of Great Britain or the United States. Whether, in
fact, much could or would have been done, even in the absence of German
opposition, may be doubted. There would certainly have been, in every
country, very strong opposition to any effective measures, and it is only
those who would be willing to see their own Government make a radical
advance in the directions in question who can honestly attack the German
Government. As one of those who believe that peaceable procedure may and
can, and, if civilization is to be preserved, must be substituted for war,
I have a right to express my own condemnation of the German Government,
and I unhesitatingly do so. But I do not infer that therefore Germany was
all the time working up to an aggressive war. It is interesting, in this
connection, to note the testimony given by Sir Edwin Pears to the desire
for good relations between Great Britain and Germany felt and expressed
later by the same Baron Marschall von Bieberstein who was so unyielding
in 1907 on the question of arbitration. When he came to take up the post
of German Ambassador to Great Britain, Sir Edwin reports him as saying:--

  I have long wanted to be Ambassador to England, because, as you know,
  for years I have considered it a misfortune to the world that our two
  countries are not really in harmony. I consider that I am here as a man
  with a mission, my mission being to bring about a real understanding
  between our two nations.

On this Sir Edwin comments (1915):--

  I unhesitatingly add that I am convinced he was sincere in what he said.
  Of that I have no doubt.[4]

It must, in fact, be recognized that in the present state of international
relations, the general suspicion and the imminent danger, it requires more
imagination and faith than most public men possess, and more idealism than
most nations have shown themselves to be capable of, to take any radical
step towards reorganization. The armed peace, as we have so often had to
insist, perpetuates itself by the mistrust which it establishes.

Every move by one Power is taken to be a menace to another, and is
countered by a similar move, which in turn produces a reply. And it is
not easy to say "Who began it?" since the rivalry goes so far back into
the past. What, for instance, is the real truth about the German, French,
and Russian military laws of 1913? Were any or all of them aggressive? Or
were they all defensive? I do not believe it is possible to answer that
question. Looking back from the point of view of 1914, it is natural to
suppose that Germany was already intending war. But that did not seem
evident at the time to a neutral observer, nor even, it would seem, to
the British Foreign Office. Thus the Count de Lalaing, Belgian Minister
in London, writes as follows on February 24, 1913:--

  The English Press naturally wants to throw upon Germany the
  responsibility for the new tension which results from its proposals,
  and which may bring to Europe fresh occasions of unrest. Many journals
  consider that the French Government, in declaring itself ready to impose
  three years' service, and in nominating M. Delcassé to St. Petersburg,
  has adopted the only attitude worthy of the great Republic in presence
  of a German provocation. At the Foreign Office I found a more just and
  calm appreciation of the position. They see in the reinforcement of
  the German armies less a provocation than the admission of a military
  situation weakened by events and which it is necessary to strengthen.
  The Government of Berlin sees itself obliged to recognize that it cannot
  count, as before, on the support of all the forces of its Austrian ally,
  since the appearance in South-east Europe of a new Power, that of the
  Balkan allies, established on the very flank of the Dual Empire. Far
  from being able to count, in case of need, on the full support of the
  Government of Vienna, it is probable that Germany will have to support
  Vienna herself. In the case of a European war she would have to make
  head against her enemies on two frontiers, the Russian and the French,
  and diminish perhaps her own forces to aid the Austrian army. In these
  conditions they do not find it surprising that the German Empire should
  have felt it necessary to increase the number of its Army Corps. They add
  at the Foreign Office that the Government of Berlin had frankly explained
  to the Cabinet of Paris the precise motives of its action.

Whether this is a complete account of the motives of the German Government
in introducing the law of 1913 cannot be definitely established. But the
motives suggested are adequate by themselves to account for the facts.
On the other hand, a part of the cost of the new law was to be defrayed
by a tax on capital. And those who believe that by this year Germany was
definitely waiting an occasion to make war have a right to dwell upon that
fact. I find, myself, nothing conclusive in these speculations. But what
is certain, and to my mind much more important, is the fact that military
preparations evoke counter-preparations, until at last the strain becomes
unbearable. By 1913 it was already terrific. The Germans knew well that
by January 1917 the French and Russian preparations would have reached
their culminating point. But those preparations were themselves almost
unendurable to the French.

I may recall here the passage already cited from a dispatch of Baron
Guillaume, Belgian Ambassador at Paris, written in June 1914 (p. 34).
He suspected, as we saw, that the hand of Russia had imposed the three
years' service upon France.

What Baron Guillaume thought plausible must not the Germans have thought
plausible? Must it not have confirmed their belief in the "inevitability"
of a war--that belief which, by itself, has been enough to produce war
after war, and, in particular, the war of 1870? Must there not have been
strengthened in their minds that particular current among the many that
were making for war? And must not similar suspicions have been active,
with similar results, on the side of France and Russia? The armaments
engender fear, the fear in turn engenders armaments, and in that vicious
circle turns the policy of Europe, till this or that Power precipitates the
conflict, much as a man hanging in terror over the edge of a cliff ends by
losing his nerve and throwing himself over. That is the real lesson of the
rivalry in armaments. That is certain. The rest remains conjecture.

[Footnote 1: "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," p. 75, and British White Paper,
No. 160.]

[Footnote 2: The account that follows is taken from the "Autobiography" of
Andrew D. White, the chairman of the American delegation. See vol. ii.,
chap. xiv. and following.]

[Footnote 3: Mr. Arthur Lee, late Civil Lord of the Admiralty, at
Eastleigh:--

"If war should unhappily break out under existing conditions the British
Navy would get its blow in first, before the other nation had time even to
read in the papers that war had been declared" (_The Times_, February 4,
1905).

"The British fleet is now prepared strategically for every possible
emergency, for we must assume that all foreign naval Powers are possible
enemies" (_The Times_, February 7, 1905).]

[Footnote 4: Sir Edwin Pears, "Forty Years in Constantinople," p.330.]



12. _Europe since the Decade 1890-1900_.


Let us now, endeavouring to bear in our minds the whole situation we have
been analysing, consider a little more particularly the various episodes
and crises of international policy from the year 1890 onwards. I take that
date, the date of Bismarck's resignation, for the reason already given (p.
42). It was not until then that it would have occurred to any competent
observer to accuse Germany of an aggressive policy calculated to disturb
the peace of Europe. A closer _rapprochement_ with England was, indeed,
the first idea of the Kaiser when he took over the reins of power in 1888.
And during the ten years that followed British sympathies were actually
drawn towards Germany and alienated from France.[1] It is well known that
Mr. Chamberlain favoured an alliance with Germany,[2] and that when the
Anglo-Japanese treaty was being negotiated the inclusion of Germany was
seriously considered by Lord Lansdowne. The telegram of the Kaiser to
Kruger in 1895 no doubt left an unpleasant impression in England, and
German feeling, of course, at the time of the Boer War, ran strongly
against England, but so did feeling in France and America, and, indeed,
throughout the civilized world. It was certainly the determination
of Germany to build a great navy that led to the tension between her
and England, and finally to the formation of the Triple Entente, as
a counterpoise to the Triple Alliance. It is 1900, not 1888, still
less 1870, that marks the period at which German policy began to be
a disturbing element in Europe. During the years that followed, the
principal storm-centres in international policy were the Far and Near
East, the Balkans, and Morocco. Events in the Far East, important though
they were, need not detain us here, for their contribution to the present
war was remote and indirect, except so far as concerns the participation of
Japan. Of the situation in the other areas, the tension and its causes and
effects, we must try to form some clear general idea. This can be done even
in the absence of that detailed information of what was going on behind the
scenes for which a historian will have to wait.

[Footnote 1: The columns of _The Times_ for 1899 are full of attacks upon
France. Once more we may cite from the dispatch of the Comte de Lalaing,
Belgian Minister in London, dated May 24, 1907, commenting on current
or recalling earlier events: "A certain section of the Press, known here
under the name of the Yellow Press, is in great part responsible for the
hostility that exists between the two nations (England and Germany). What,
in fact, can one expect from a journalist like Mr. Harmsworth, now Lord
Northcliffe, proprietor of the _Daily Mail_, _Daily Mirror_, _Daily
Graphic_, _Daily Express_, _Evening News_, and _Weekly Dispatch_, who
in an interview given to the _Matin_ says, 'Yes, we detest the Germans
cordially. They make themselves odious to all Europe. I will never allow
the least thing to be printed in my journal which might wound France,
but I would not let anything be printed which might be agreeable to
Germany.' Yet, in 1899, this same man was attacking the French with the
same violence, wanted to boycott the Paris Exhibition, and wrote: 'The
French have succeeded in persuading John Bull that they are his deadly
enemies. England long hesitated between France and Germany, but she has
always respected the German character, while she has come to despise
France. A cordial understanding cannot exist between England and her
nearest neighbour. We have had enough of France, who has neither courage
nor political sense.'" Lalaing does not give his references, and I
cannot therefore verify his quotations. But they hardly require it.
The _volte-face_ of _The Times_ sufficiently well known. And only too
well known is the way in which the British nation allows its sentiments
for other nations to be dictated to it by a handful of cantankerous
journalists.]

[Footnote 2: "I may point out to you that, at bottom, the character, the
main character, of the Teuton race differs very slightly indeed from the
character of the Anglo-Saxon (_cheers_), and the same sentiments which
bring us into a close sympathy with the United States of America may be
invoked to bring us into closer sympathy with the Empire of Germany." He
goes on to advocate "a new Triple Alliance between the Teutonic race and
the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race" (see _The Times_, December
1, 1899). This was at the beginning of the Boer war. Two years later, in
October, 1901, Mr. Chamberlain was attacking Germany at Edinburgh. This
date is clearly about the turning-point in British sentiment and policy
towards Germany.]



13. _Germany, and Turkey_.


Let us begin with the Near East. The situation there, when Germany began
her enterprise, is thus summed up by a French writer[1]:--

  Astride across Europe and Asia, the Ottoman Empire represented, for
  all the nations of the old continent, the cosmopolitan centre where
  each had erected, by dint of patience and ingenuity, a fortress of
  interests, influences, and special rights. Each fortress watched
  jealously to maintain its particular advantages in face of the rival
  enemy. If one of them obtained a concession, or a new favour, immediately
  the commanders of the others were seen issuing from their walls to claim
  from the Grand Turk concessions or favours which should maintain the
  existing balance of power or prestige.... France acted as protector of
  the Christians; England, the vigilant guardian of the routes to India,
  maintained a privileged political and economic position; Austria-Hungary
  mounted guard over the route to Salonica; Russia, protecting the
  Armenians and Slavs of the South of Europe, watched over the fate of
  the Orthodox. There was a general understanding among them all, tacit
  or express, that none should better its situation at the expense of
  the others.

When into this precariously balanced system of conflicting interests
Germany began to throw her weight, the necessary result was a disturbance
of equilibrium. As early as 1839 German ambition had been directed towards
this region by Von Moltke; but it was not till 1873 that the process of
"penetration" began. In that year the enterprise of the Anatolian railway
was launched by German financiers. In the succeeding years it extended
itself as far as Konia; and in 1899 and 1902 concessions were obtained
for an extension to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. It was at this point that
the question became one of international politics. Nothing could better
illustrate the lamentable character of the European anarchy than the
treatment of this matter by the interests and the Powers affected. Here
had been launched on a grandiose scale a great enterprise of civilization.
The Mesopotamian plain, the cradle of civilization, and for centuries
the granary of the world, was to be redeemed by irrigation from the
encroachment of the desert, order and security were to be restored,
labour to be set at work, and science and power to be devoted on a
great scale to their only proper purpose, the increase of life. Here
was an idea fit to inspire the most generous imagination. Here, for all
the idealism of youth and the ambition of maturity, for diplomatists,
engineers, administrators, agriculturists, educationists, an opportunity
for the work of a lifetime, a task to appeal at once to the imagination,
the intellect, and the organizing capacity of practical men, a scheme in
which all nations might be proud to participate, and by which Europe might
show to the backward populations that the power she had won over Nature
was to be used for the benefit of man, and that the science and the arms
of the West were destined to recreate the life of the East. What happened,
in fact? No sooner did the Germans approach the other nations for financial
and political support to their scheme than there was an outcry of jealousy,
suspicion, and rage. All the vested interests of the other States were
up in arms. The proposed railway, it was said, would compete with the
Trans-Siberian, with the French railways, with the ocean route to India,
with the steamboats on the Tigris. Corn in Mesopotamia would bring down
the price of corn in Russia. German trade would oust British and French
and Russian trade. Nor was that all. Under cover of an economic enterprise,
Germany was nursing political ambitions. She was aiming at Egypt and the
Suez Canal, at the control of the Persian Gulf, at the domination of
Persia, at the route to India. Were these fears and suspicions justified?
In the European anarchy, who can say? Certainly the entry of a new economic
competitor, the exploitation of new areas, the opening out of new trade
routes, must interfere with interests already established. That must always
be so in a changing world. But no one would seriously maintain that that is
a reason for abandoning new enterprises. But, it was urged, in fact Germany
will take the opportunity to squeeze out the trade of other nations and
to constitute a German monopoly. Germany, it is true, was ready to give
guarantees of the "open door." But then, what was the value of these
guarantees? She asserted that her enterprise was economic, and had no
ulterior political gains. But who would believe her? Were not German
Jingoes already rejoicing at the near approach of German armies to the
Egyptian frontiers? In the European anarchy all these fears, suspicions,
and rivalries were inevitable. But the British Government at least was
not carried away by them. They were willing that British capital should
co-operate on condition that the enterprise should be under international
control. They negotiated for terms which would give equal control to
Germany, England, and France. They failed to get these terms, why has not
been made public. But Lord Cranborne, then Under-Secretary of State, said
in the House of Commons that "the outcry which was made in this matter--I
think it a very ill-informed outcry--made it exceedingly difficult for us
to get the terms we required."[2] And Sir Clinton Dawkins wrote in a letter
to Herr Gwinner, the chief of the Deutsche Bank: "The fact is that the
business has become involved in politics here, and has been sacrificed
to the very violent and bitter feeling against Germany exhibited by the
majority of newspapers and shared in by a large number of people."[3]
British co-operation, therefore, failed, as French and Russian had failed.
The Germans, however, persevered with their enterprise, now a purely
German one, and ultimately with success. Their differences with Russia
were arranged by an agreement about the Turko-Persian railways signed in
1911. An agreement with France, with regard to the railways of Asiatic
Turkey, was signed in February 1914, and one with England (securing our
interests on the Persian Gulf) in June of the same year. Thus just before
the war broke out this thorny question had, in fact, been settled to the
satisfaction of all the Powers concerned. And on this two comments may be
made. First, that the long friction, the press campaign, the rivalry of
economic and political interests, had contributed largely to the European
tension. Secondly, that in spite of that, the question did get settled,
and by diplomatic means. On this subject, at any rate, war was not
"inevitable." Further, it seems clear that the British Government,
so far from "hemming-in" Germany in this matter, were ready from the
first to accept, if not to welcome, her enterprise, subject to their
quite legitimate and necessary preoccupation with their position on
the Persian Gulf. It was the British Press and what lay behind it that
prevented the co-operation of British capital. Meantime the economic
penetration of Asia Minor by Germany had been accompanied by a political
penetration at Constantinople. Already, as early as 1898, the Kaiser had
announced at Damascus that the "three hundred millions of Mussulmans who
live scattered over the globe may be assured that the German Emperor will
be at all times their friend."

This speech, made immediately after the Armenian massacres, has been very
properly reprobated by all who are revolted at such atrocities. But the
indignation of Englishmen must be tempered by shame when they remember
that it was their own minister, still the idol of half the nation, who
reinstated Turkey after the earlier massacres in Bulgaria and put back
the inhabitants of Macedonia for another generation under the murderous
oppression of the Turks. The importance of the speech in the history of
Europe is that it signalled the advent of German influence in the Near
East. That influence was strengthened on the Bosphorus after the Turkish
revolution of 1908, in spite of the original Anglophil bias of the Young
Turks, and as some critics maintain, in consequence of the blundering
of the British representatives. The mission of Von der Goltz in 1908
and that of Liman von Sanders in 1914 put the Turkish army under German
command, and by the outbreak of the war German influence was predominant
in Constantinople. This political influence was, no doubt, used, and
intended to be used, to further German economic schemes. Germany, in
fact, had come in to play the same game as the other Powers, and had
played it with more skill and determination. She was, of course, here as
elsewhere, a new and disturbing force in a system of forces which already
had difficulty in maintaining a precarious equilibrium. But to be a new and
disturbing force is not to commit a crime. Once more the real culprit was
not Germany nor any other Power. The real culprit was the European anarchy.

[Footnote 1: Pierre Albin, "D'Agadir à Serajevo," p. 81.]

[Footnote 2: _Hansard_, 1903, vol. 126, p. 120.]

[Footnote 3: _Nineteenth Century_, June 1909, vol. 65, p. 1090.]



14. _Austria and the Balkans_.


I turn now to the Balkan question. This is too ancient and too complicated
to be even summarized here. But we must remind ourselves of the main
situation. Primarily, the Balkan question is, or rather was, one between
subject Christian populations and the Turks. But it has been complicated,
not only by the quarrels of the subject populations among themselves, but
by the rival ambitions and claims of Russia and Austria. The interest of
Russia in the Balkans is partly one of racial sympathy, partly one of
territorial ambition, for the road to Constantinople lies through Rumania
and Bulgaria. It is this territorial ambition of Russia that has given
occasion in the past to the intervention of the Western Powers, for until
recently it was a fixed principle, both of French and British policy, to
keep Russia out of the Mediterranean. Hence the Crimean War, and hence
the disastrous intervention of Disraeli after the treaty of San Stefano
in 1878--an intervention which perpetuated for years the Balkan hell.
The interest of Austria in the peninsula depends primarily on the fact
that the Austrian Empire contains a large Slav population desiring its
independence, and that this national ambition of the Austrian Slavs finds
in the independent kingdom of Serbia its natural centre of attraction. The
determination of Austria to retain her Slavs as unwilling citizens of her
Empire brings her also into conflict with Russia, so far as Russia is the
protector of the Slavs. The situation, and the danger with which it is
pregnant, may be realized by an Englishman if he will suppose St. George's
Channel and the Atlantic to be annihilated, and Ireland to touch, by a land
frontier, on the one side Great Britain, on the other the United States.
The friction and even the warfare which might have arisen between these two
great Powers from the plots of American Fenians may readily be imagined.
Something of that kind is the situation of Austria in relation to Serbia
and her protector, Russia. Further, Austria fears the occupation by any
Slav State of any port on the coast line of the Adriatic, and herself
desires a port on the Aegean. Add to this the recent German dream of the
route from Berlin to Bagdad, and the European importance of what would
otherwise be local disputes among the Balkan States becomes apparent.

During the period we are now considering the Balkan factor first came into
prominence with the annexation by Austria of Bosnia and Herzegovina in
1908. Those provinces, it will be remembered, were handed over to Austrian
protection at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Austria went in and policed
the country, much as England went in and policed Egypt, and, from the
material point of view, with similarly successful results. But, like
England in Egypt, Austria was not sovereign there. Formal sovereignty
still rested with the Turk. In 1909, during the Turkish revolution,
Austria took the opportunity to throw off that nominal suzerainty.
Russia protested, Austria mobilized against Serbia and Montenegro,
and war seemed imminent. But the dramatic intervention of Germany "in
shining armour" on the side of her ally resulted in a diplomatic victory
for the Central Powers. Austria gained her point, and war, for the moment,
was avoided. But such diplomatic victories are dangerous. Russia did not
forget, and the events of 1909 were an operative cause in the catastrophe
of 1914. In acting as she did in this matter Austria-Hungary defied the
public law of Europe, and Germany supported her in doing so.

The motives of Germany in taking this action are thus described, and
probably with truth, by Baron Beyens: "She could not allow the solidity
of the Triple Alliance to be shaken: she had a debt of gratitude to pay
to her ally, who had supported her at the Congress of Algeciras. Finally,
she believed herself to be the object of an attempt at encirclement by
France, England, and Russia, and was anxious to show that the gesture of
putting her hand to the sword was enough to dispel the illusions of her
adversaries."[1] These are the kind of reasons that all Powers consider
adequate where what they conceive to be their interests are involved. From
any higher, more international point of view, they are no reasons at all.
But in such a matter no Power is in a position to throw the first stone.
The whole episode is a classical example for the normal working of the
European anarchy. Austria-Hungary was primarily to blame, but Germany, who
supported her, must take her share. The other Powers of Europe acquiesced
for the sake of peace, and they could probably do no better. There will
never be any guarantee for the public law of Europe until there is a public
tribunal and a public force to see that its decisions are carried out.

The next events of importance in this region were the two Balkan wars.
We need not here go into the causes and results of these, except so far
as to note that, once more, the rivalry of Russia and Austria played a
disastrous part. It was the determination of Austria not to give Serbia
access to the Adriatic that led Serbia to retain territories assigned by
treaty to Bulgaria, and so precipitated the second Balkan war; for that war
was due to the indignation caused in Bulgaria by the breach of faith, and
is said to have been directly prompted by Austria. The bad part played by
Austria throughout this crisis is indisputable. But it must be observed
that, by general admission, Germany throughout worked hand in hand with
Sir Edward Grey to keep the peace of Europe, which, indeed, otherwise
could not have been kept. And nothing illustrates this better than that
episode of 1913 which is sometimes taken to throw discredit upon Germany.
The episode was thus described by the Italian minister, Giolitti: "On the
9th of August, 1913, about a year before the war broke out, I, being then
absent from Rome, received from my colleague, San Giuliano, the following
telegram: 'Austria has communicated to us and to Germany her intention to
act against Serbia, and defines such action as defensive, hoping to apply
the _casus foederis_ of the Triple Alliance, which I consider inapplicable.
I intend to join forces with Germany to prevent any such action by Austria,
but it will be necessary to say clearly that we do not consider such
eventual action as defensive, and therefore do not believe that the
_casus foederis_ exists. Please telegraph to Rome if you approve.'

"I replied that, 'if Austria intervenes against Serbia, it is evident that
the _casus foederis_ does not arise. It is an action that she undertakes on
her own account, since there is no question of defence, as no one thinks
of attacking her. It is necessary to make a declaration in this sense to
Austria in the most formal way, and it is to be wished that German action
may dissuade Austria from her most perilous adventure.'"[2]

Now this statement shows upon the face of it two things. One, that Austria
was prepared, by attacking Serbia, to unchain a European war; the other,
that the Italian ministers joined with Germany to dissuade her. They were
successful. Austria abandoned her project, and war was avoided. The episode
is as discreditable as you like to Austria. But, on the face of it, how
does it discredit Germany? More, of course, may lie behind; but no evidence
has been produced, so far as I am aware, to show that the Austrian project
was approved or supported by her ally.

The Treaty of Bucharest, which concluded the second Balkan War, left
all the parties concerned dissatisfied. But, in particular, it left the
situation between Austria and Serbia and between Austria and Russia more
strained than ever. It was this situation that was the proximate cause of
the present war. For, as we have seen, a quarrel between Austria and Russia
over the Balkans must, given the system of alliances, unchain a European
war. For producing that situation Austria-Hungary was mainly responsible.
The part played by Germany was secondary, and throughout the Balkan wars
German diplomacy was certainly working, with England, for peace. "The
diplomacy of the Wilhelmstrasse," says Baron Beyens, "applied itself,
above all, to calm the exasperation and the desire for intervention at
the Ballplatz." "The Cabinet of Berlin did not follow that of Vienna in
its tortuous policy of intrigues at Sofia and Bucharest. As M. Zimmermann
said to me at the time, the Imperial Government contented itself with
maintaining its neutrality in relation to the Balkans, abstaining from
any intervention, beyond advice, in the fury of their quarrels. There is
no reason to doubt the sincerity of this statement."[3]

[Footnote 1: "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," p. 240.]

[Footnote 2: It is characteristic of the way history is written in time of
war that M. Yves Guyot, citing Giolitti's statement, omits the references
to Germany. _See_ "Les causes et les consequences de la guerre," p. 101.]

[Footnote 3: "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," pp. 248, 262.]



15. _Morocco_.


Let us turn now to the other storm-centre, Morocco. The salient features
here were, first, the treaty of 1880, to which all the Great Powers,
including, of course, Germany, were parties, and which guaranteed to
the signatories most-favoured-nation treatment; secondly, the interest of
Great Britain to prevent a strong Power from establishing itself opposite
Gibraltar and threatening British control over the Straits; thirdly, the
interest of France to annex Morocco and knit it up with the North African
Empire; fourthly, the new colonial and trading interests of Germany, which,
as she had formally announced, could not leave her indifferent to any new
dispositions of influence or territory in undeveloped countries. For many
years French ambitions in Morocco had been held in check by the British
desire to maintain the _status quo_. But the Anglo-French Entente of 1904
gave France a free hand there in return for the abandonment of French
opposition to the British position in Egypt. The Anglo-French treaty of
1904 affirmed, in the clauses made public, the independence and integrity
of Morocco; but there were secret clauses looking to its partition. By
these the British interest in the Straits was guaranteed by an arrangement
which gave to Spain the reversion of the coast opposite Gibraltar and a
strip on the north-west coast, while leaving the rest of the country to
fall to France. Germany was not consulted while these arrangements were
being made, and the secret clauses of the treaty were, of course, not
communicated to her. But it seems reasonable to suppose that they became
known to, or at least were suspected by, the German Government shortly
after they were adopted.[1] And probably it was this that led to the
dramatic intervention of the Kaiser at Tangier,[2] when he announced
that the independence of Morocco was under German protection. The result
was the Conference of Algeciras, at which the independence and integrity of
Morocco was once more affirmed (the clauses looking to its partition being
still kept secret by the three Powers privy to them), and equal commercial
facilities were guaranteed to all the Powers. Germany thereby obtained what
she most wanted, what she had a right to by the treaty of 1880, and what
otherwise might have been threatened by French occupation--the maintenance
of the open door. But the French enterprise was not abandoned. Disputes
with the natives such as always occur, or are manufactured, in these cases,
led to fresh military intervention. At the same time, it was difficult to
secure the practical application of the principle of equal commercial
opportunity. An agreement of 1909 between France and Germany, whereby
both Powers were to share equally in contracts for public works, was
found in practice not to work. The Germans pressed for its application
to the new railways projected in Morocco. The French delayed, temporized,
and postponed decision.[3] Meantime they were strengthening their position
in Morocco. The matter was brought to a head by the expedition to Fez.
Initiated on the plea of danger to the European residents at the capital
(a plea which was disputed by the Germans and by many Frenchmen), it
clearly heralded a definite final occupation of the country. The patience
of the Germans was exhausted, and the Kaiser made the coup of Agadir.
There followed the Mansion House speech of Mr. Lloyd George and the
Franco-German agreement of November 1911, whereby Germany recognized a
French protectorate in Morocco in return for concessions of territory
in the French Congo. These are the bare facts of the Moroccan episode.
Much, of course, is still unrevealed, particularly as to the motives and
intentions of the Powers concerned. Did Germany, for instance, intend to
seize a share of Morocco when she sent the _Panther_ to Agadir? And was
that the reason of the vigour of the British intervention? Possibly, but
by no means certainly; the evidence accessible is conflicting. If Germany
had that intention, she was frustrated by the solidarity shown between
France and England, and the result was the final and definite absorption
of Morocco in the French Empire, with the approval and active support of
Great Britain, Germany being compensated by the cession of part of the
French Congo. Once more a difficult question had been settled by diplomacy,
but only after it had twice brought Europe to the verge of war, and in such
a way as to leave behind the bitterest feelings of anger and mistrust in
all the parties concerned.

The facts thus briefly summarized here may be studied more at length,
with the relevant documents, in Mr. Morel's book "Morocco in Diplomacy."
The reader will form his own opinion on the part played by the various
Powers. But I do not believe that any instructed and impartial student
will accept what appears to be the current English view, that the action
of Germany in this episode was a piece of sheer aggression without excuse,
and that the other Powers were acting throughout justly, honestly, and
straightforwardly.

The Morocco crisis, as we have already seen, produced in Germany a painful
impression, and strengthened there the elements making for war. Thus Baron
Beyens writes:--

  The Moroccan conflicts made many Germans hitherto pacific regard another
  war as a necessary evil.[4]

And again:--

  The pacific settlement of the conflict of 1911 gave a violent impulse to
  the war party in Germany, to the propaganda of the League of Defence and
  the Navy League, and a greater force to their demands. To their dreams
  of hegemony and domination the desire for revenge against France now
  mingled its bitterness. A diplomatic success secured in an underground
  struggle signified nothing. War, war in the open, that alone, in the eyes
  of this rancorous tribe, could settle definitely the Moroccan question by
  incorporating Morocco and all French Africa in the colonial empire they
  hoped to create on the shores of the Mediterranean and in the heart of
  the Black Continent.[5]

This we may take to be a correct description of the attitude of the
Pangermans. But there is no evidence that it was that of the nation.
We have seen also that Baron Beyens' impression of the attitude of the
German people, even after the Moroccan affair, was of a general desire
for peace.[6] The crisis had been severe, but it had been tided over, and
the Governments seem to have made renewed efforts to come into friendly
relations. In this connection the following dispatch of Baron Beyens (June
1912) is worth quoting:--

  After the death of Edward VII, the Kaiser, as well as the Crown Prince,
  when they returned from England, where they had been courteously
  received, were persuaded that the coldness in the relations of the
  preceding years was going to yield to a cordial intimacy between the
  two Courts and that the causes of the misunderstanding between the two
  peoples would vanish with the past. His disillusionment, therefore, was
  cruel when he saw the Cabinet of London range itself last year on the
  side of France. But the Kaiser is obstinate, and has not abandoned the
  hope of reconquering the confidence of the English.[7]

This dispatch is so far borne out by the facts that in the year succeeding
the Moroccan crisis a serious attempt was made to improve Anglo-German
relations, and there is no reason to doubt that on both sides there was
a genuine desire for an understanding. How that understanding failed has
already been indicated.[8] But even that failure did not ruin the relations
between the two Powers. In the Balkan crisis, as we have seen and as is
admitted on both sides, England and Germany worked together for peace. And
the fact that a European conflagration was then avoided, in spite of the
tension between Russia and Austria, is a strong proof that the efforts of
Sir Edward Grey were sincerely and effectively seconded by Germany.[9]

[Footnote 1: See "Morocco in Diplomacy," Chap. XVI. A dispatch written by
M. Leghait, the Belgian minister in Paris, on May 7, 1905, shows that
rumour was busy on the subject. The secret clauses of the Franco-Spanish
treaty were known to him, and these provided for an eventual partition of
Morocco between France and Spain. He doubted whether there were secret
clauses in the Anglo-French treaty--"but it is supposed that there is a
certain tacit understanding by which England would leave France sufficient
liberty of action in Morocco under the reserve of the secret clauses of the
Franco-Spanish arrangement, clauses if not imposed yet at least strongly
supported by the London Cabinet."

We know, of course, now, that the arrangement for the partition was
actually embodied in secret clauses in the Anglo-French treaty.]

[Footnote 2: According to M. Yves Guyot, when the Kaiser was actually on
his way to Tangier, he telegraphed from Lisbon to Prince Bülow abandoning
the project. Prince Bülow telegraphed back insisting, and the Kaiser
yielded.]

[Footnote 3: See Bourdon, "L'Enigme Allemande," Chap. II. This account, by
a Frenchman, will not be suspected of anti-French or pro-German bias, and
it is based on French official records.]

[Footnote 4: "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," p. 216.]

[Footnote 5: "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," p. 235.]

[Footnote 6: See above, p. 63.]

[Footnote 7: This view is reaffirmed by Baron Beyens in "L'Allemagne avant
la guerre," p. 29.]

[Footnote 8: See above, p. 79.]

[Footnote 9: Above, p. 111.]



16. _The Last Years_.


We have reached, then, the year 1913, and the end of the Balkan wars,
without discovering in German policy any clear signs of a determination
to produce a European war. We have found all the Powers, Germany included,
contending for territory and trade at the risk of the peace of Europe; we
have found Germany successfully developing her interests in Turkey; we have
found England annexing the South African republics, France Morocco, Italy
Tripoli; we have found all the Powers stealing in China, and in all these
transactions we have found them continually on the point of being at one
another's throats. Nevertheless, some last instinct of self-preservation
has enabled them, so far, to pull up in time. The crises had been overcome
without a war. Yet they had, of course, produced their effects. Some
statesmen probably, like Sir Edward Grey, had had their passion for
peace confirmed by the dangers encountered. In others, no doubt, an
opposite effect had been produced, and very likely by 1913 there were
prominent men in Europe convinced that war must come, and manoeuvring
only that it should come at the time and occasion most favourable to
their country. That, according to M. Cambon, was now the attitude of
the German Emperor. M. Cambon bases this view on an alleged conversation
between the Kaiser and the King of the Belgians.[1] The conversation has
been denied by the German official organ, but that, of course, is no
proof that it did not take place, and there is nothing improbable in
what M. Cambon narrates.

The conversation is supposed to have occurred in November 1913, at a
time when, as we have seen,[2] there was a distinct outburst in France
of anti-German chauvinism, and when the arming and counter-arming of that
year had exasperated opinion to an extreme degree. The Kaiser is reported
to have said that war between Germany and France was inevitable. If he did,
it is clear from the context that he said it in the belief that French
chauvinism would produce war. For the King of the Belgians, in replying,
is stated to have said that it was "a travesty, of the French Government
to interpret it in that sense, and to let oneself be misled as to the
sentiments of the French nation by the ebullitions of a few irresponsible
spirits or the intrigues of unscrupulous agitators." It should be observed
also that this supposed attitude on the part of the Kaiser is noted as a
change, and that he is credited with having previously stood for peace
against the designs of the German Jingoes. His personal influence, says
the dispatch, "had been exerted on many critical occasions in support of
peace." The fact of a change of mind in the Kaiser is accepted also by
Baron Beyens.

Whatever may be the truth in this matter, neither the German nor the French
nor our own Government can then have abandoned the effort at peaceable
settlement. For, in fact, by the summer of 1914, agreements had been made
between the Great Powers which settled for the time being the questions
immediately outstanding. It is understood that a new partition of African
territory had been arranged to meet the claims and interests of Germany,
France, and England alike. The question of the Bagdad railway had been
settled, and everything seemed to favour the maintenance of peace, when,
suddenly, the murder of the Archduke sprang upon a dismayed Europe the
crisis that was at last to prove fatal. The events that followed, so far
as they can be ascertained from published documents, have been so fully
discussed that it would be superfluous for me to go over the ground again
in all its detail. But I will indicate briefly what appear to me to be the
main points of importance in fixing the responsibility for what occurred.

First, the German view, that England is responsible for the war because she
did not prevent Russia from entering upon it, I regard as childish, if it
is not simply sophistical. The German Powers deliberately take an action
which the whole past history of Europe shows must almost certainly lead to
a European war, and they then turn round upon Sir Edward Grey and put the
blame on him because he did not succeed in preventing the consequences of
their own action. "He might have kept Russia out." Who knows whether he
might? What we do know is that it was Austria and Germany who brought her
in. The German view is really only intelligible upon the assumption that
Germany has a right to do what she pleases and that the Powers that stand
in her way are by definition peacebreakers. It is this extraordinary
attitude that has been one of the factors for making war in Europe.

Secondly, I am not, and have not been, one of the critics of Sir Edward
Grey. It is, indeed, possible, as it is always possible after the event, to
suggest that some other course might have been more successful in avoiding
war. But that is conjecture, I, at any rate, am convinced, as I believe
every one outside Germany is convinced, that Sir Edward Grey throughout the
negotiations had one object only--to avoid, if he could, the catastrophe of
war.

Thirdly, the part of Austria-Hungary is perfectly clear. She was determined
now, as in 1913, to have out her quarrel with Serbia, at the risk of a
European war. Her guilt is clear and definite, and it is only the fact that
we are not directly fighting her with British troops that has prevented
British opinion from fastening upon it as the main occasion of the war.

But this time, quite clearly, Austria was backed by Germany. Why this
change in German policy? So far as the Kaiser himself is concerned,
there can be little doubt that a main cause was the horror he felt
at the assassination of the Archduke. The absurd system of autocracy
gives to the emotional reactions of an individual a preposterous weight
in determining world-policy; and the almost insane feeling of the Kaiser
about the sanctity of crowned heads was no doubt a main reason why Germany
backed Austria in sending her ultimatum to Serbia. According to Baron
Beyens, on hearing the news of the murder of the Archduke the Kaiser
changed colour, and exclaimed: "All the effort of my life for twenty-five
years must be begun over again!"[3] A tragic cry which indicates, what I
personally believe to be the case, that it has been the constant effort of
the Kaiser to keep the peace in Europe, and that he foresaw now that he
would no longer be able to resist war.

So far, however, it would only be the war between Austria and Serbia
that the Kaiser would be prepared to sanction. He might hope to avoid
the European war. And, in fact, there is good reason to suppose that
both he and the German Foreign Office did cherish that hope or delusion.
They had bluffed Russia off in 1908. They had the dangerous idea that
they might bluff her off again. In this connection Baron Beyens records
a conversation with his colleague, M. Bollati, the Italian Ambassador
at Berlin, in which the latter took the view that

  at Vienna as at Berlin they were persuaded that Russia, in spite of
  the official assurances exchanged quite recently between the Tsar and
  M. Poincaré, as to the complete preparations of the armies of the two
  allies, was not in a position to sustain a European war and would not
  dare to plunge into so perilous an adventure.

Baron Beyens continues:--

  At Berlin the opinion that Russia was unable to face a European war
  prevailed not only in the official world and in society, but among
  all the manufacturers who specialized in the construction of armaments.
  M. Krupp, the best qualified among them to express an opinion, announced
  on the 28th July, at a table next mine at the Hotel Bristol, that the
  Russian artillery was neither good nor complete, while that of the German
  army had never been of such superior quality. It would be folly on the
  part of Russia, the great maker of guns concluded, to dare to make war
  on Germany and Austria in these conditions.[4]

But while the attitude of the German Foreign Office and (as I am inclined
to suppose) of the Kaiser may have been that which I have just suggested,
there were other and more important factors to be considered. It appears
almost certain that at some point in the crisis the control of the
situation was taken out of the hands of the civilians by the military.
The position of the military is not difficult to understand. They believed,
as professional soldiers usually do, in the "inevitability" of war, and
they had, of course, a professional interest in making war. Their attitude
may be illustrated from a statement attributed by M. Bourdon to Prince
Lichnowsky in 1912[5]: "The soldiers think about war. It is their business
and their duty. They tell us that the German army, is in good order, that
the Russian army has not completed its organization, that it would be a
good moment ... but for twenty years they have been saying the same thing,"
The passage is significant. It shows us exactly what it is we have to dread
in "militarism." The danger in a military State is always that when a
crisis comes the soldiers will get control, as they seem to have done on
this occasion. From their point of view there was good reason. They knew
that France and Russia, on a common understanding, were making enormous
military preparations; they knew that these preparations would mature by
the beginning of 1917; they knew that Germany would fight then at a less
advantage; they believed she would then have to fight, and they said,
"Better fight now." The following dispatch of Baron Beyens, dated July
26th, may probably be taken as fairly representing their attitude:--

  To justify these conclusions I must remind you of the opinion which
  prevails in the German General Staff, that war with France and Russia is
  unavoidable and near, an _opinion which the Emperor has been induced to
  share_. Such a war, ardently desired by the military and Pangerman party,
  might be undertaken to-day, as this party think, in circumstances which
  are extremely favourable to Germany, and which probably will not again
  present themselves for some time. Germany has finished the strengthening
  of her army which was decreed by the law of 1912, and, on the other hand,
  she feels that she cannot carry on indefinitely a race in armaments
  with Russia and France which would end by her ruin. The Wehrbeitrag
  has been a disappointment for the Imperial Government, to whom it has
  demonstrated the limits of the national wealth. Russia has made the
  mistake of making a display of her strength before having finished her
  military reorganization. That strength will not be formidable for several
  years: at the present moment it lacks the railway lines necessary for its
  deployment. As to France, M. Charles Humbert has revealed her deficiency
  in guns of large calibre, but apparently it is this arm that will decide
  the fate of battles. For the rest, England, which during the last two
  years Germany has been trying, not without some success, to detach from
  France and Russia, is paralysed by internal dissensions and her Irish
  quarrels.[6]

It will be noticed that Baron Beyens supposes the Kaiser to have been in
the hands of the soldiers as early as July 26th. On the other hand, as
late as August 5th Beyens believed that the German Foreign Office had
been working throughout for peace. Describing an interview he had had
on that day with Herr Zimmermann, he writes:--

  From this interview I brought away the impression that Herr Zimmermann
  spoke to me with his customary sincerity, and that the Department for
  Foreign Affairs since the opening of the Austro-Serbian conflict had been
  on the side of a peaceful solution, and that it was not due to it that
  its views and counsels had not prevailed... A superior power intervened
  to precipitate the march of events. It was the ultimatum from Germany to
  Russia, sent to St. Petersburg at the very moment when the Vienna Cabinet
  was showing itself more disposed to conciliation, which let loose the
  war.[7]

Why was that ultimatum sent? According to the German apologists, it
was sent because Russia had mobilized on the German frontier at the
critical moment, and so made war inevitable. There is, indeed, no doubt
that the tension was enormously increased throughout the critical days by
mobilization and rumours of mobilization. The danger was clearly pointed
out as early as July 26th in a dispatch of the Austrian Ambassador at
Petrograd to his Government:--

  As the result of reports about measures taken for mobilization of Russian
  troops, Count Pourtalès [German Ambassador at Petrograd] has called the
  Russian Minister's attention in the most serious manner to the fact that
  nowadays measures of mobilization would be a highly dangerous form of
  diplomatic pressure. For in that event the purely military consideration
  of the question by the General Staffs would find expression, and if that
  button were once touched in Germany the situation would get out of
  control.[8]

On the other hand, it must be remembered that in 1909 Austria had mobilized
against Serbia and Montenegro,[9] and in 1912-13 Russia and Austria had
mobilized against one another without war ensuing in either case. Moreover,
in view of the slowness of Russian mobilization, it is difficult to believe
that a day or two would make the difference between security and ruin to
Germany. However, it is possible that the Kaiser was so advised by his
soldiers, and genuinely believed the country to be in danger. We do not
definitely know. What we do know is, that it was the German ultimatum that
precipitated the war.

We are informed, however, by Baron Beyens that even at the last moment the
German Foreign Office made one more effort for peace:--

  As no reply had been received from St. Petersburg by noon the next day
  [after the dispatch of the German ultimatum], MM. de Jagow and Zimmermann
  (I have it from the latter) hurried to the Chancellor and the Kaiser to
  prevent the issue of the order for general mobilization, and to persuade
  his Majesty to wait till the following day. It was the last effort of
  their dying pacifism, or the last awakening of their conscience. Their
  efforts were broken against the irreducible obstinacy of the Minister of
  War and the army chiefs, who represented to the Kaiser the disastrous
  consequences of a delay of twenty-four hours.[10]

[Footnote 1: French Yellow Book, No. 6. In "L'Allemagne avant la guerre"
(p. 24) Baron Beyens states that this conversation was held at Potsdam on
November 5th or 6th; the Kaiser said that war between Germany and France
was "inevitable and near." Baron Beyens, presumably, is the authority from
whom M. Cambon derives his information.]

[Footnote 2: Above, p. 25.]

[Footnote 3: "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," p. 273.]

[Footnote 4: "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," p. 280 seq.]

[Footnote 5: See "L'Enigme Allemande," p. 96.]

[Footnote 6: Second Belgian Grey Book, No. 8.]

[Footnote 7: Second Belgian Grey Book, No. 52.]

[Footnote 8: Austrian Red Book, No. 28.]

[Footnote 9: See Chapter 14.]

[Footnote 10: "L'Allemagne avant la guerre," p. 301.]



17. _The Responsibility and the Moral_.


It will be seen from this brief account that so far as the published
evidence goes I agree with the general view outside Germany that the
responsibility for the war at the last moment rests with the Powers of
Central Europe. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, which there can be
no reasonable doubt was known to and approved by the German Government,
was the first crime. And it is hardly palliated by the hope, which no
well-informed men ought to have entertained, that Russia could be kept
out and the war limited to Austria and Serbia. The second crime was the
German ultimatum to Russia and to France. I have no desire whatever to
explain away or palliate these clear facts. But it was not my object in
writing this pamphlet to reiterate a judgment which must already be that
of all my readers. What I have wanted to do is to set the tragic events of
those few days of diplomacy in their proper place in the whole complex of
international politics. And what I do dispute with full conviction is the
view which seems to be almost universally held in England, that Germany
had been pursuing for years past a policy of war, while all the other
Powers had been pursuing a policy of peace. The war finally provoked by
Germany was, I am convinced, conceived as a "preventive war." And that
means that it was due to the belief that if Germany did not fight then
she would be compelled to fight at a great disadvantage later. I have
written in vain if I have not convinced the reader that the European
anarchy inevitably provokes that state of mind in the Powers, and that
they all live constantly under the threat of war. To understand the
action of those who had power in Germany during the critical days it
is necessary to bear in mind all that I have brought into relief in
the preceding pages: the general situation, which grouped the Powers
of the Entente against those of the Triple Alliance; the armaments and
counter-armaments; the colonial and economic rivalry; the racial and
national problems in South-East Europe; and the long series of previous
crises, in each case tided over, but leaving behind, every one of them,
a legacy of fresh mistrust and fear, which made every new crisis worse
than the one before. I do not palliate the responsibility of Germany for
the outbreak of war. But that responsibility is embedded in and conditioned
by a responsibility deeper and more general--the responsibility of all the
Powers alike for the European anarchy.

If I have convinced the reader of this he will, I think, feel no difficulty
in following me to a further conclusion. Since the causes of this war, and
of all wars, lie so deep in the whole international system, they cannot be
permanently removed by the "punishment" or the "crushing" or any other
drastic treatment of any Power, let that Power be as guilty as you please.
Whatever be the issue of this war, one thing is certain: it will bring no
lasting peace to Europe unless it brings a radical change both in the
spirit and in the organization of international politics.

What that change must be may be deduced from the foregoing discussion of
the causes of the war. The war arose from the rivalry of States in the
pursuit of power and wealth. This is universally admitted. Whatever be the
diversities of opinion that prevail in the different countries concerned,
nobody pretends that the war arose out of any need of civilization, out of
any generous impulse or noble ambition. It arose, according to the popular
view in England, solely and exclusively out of the ambition of Germany to
seize territory and power. It arose, according to the popular German view,
out of the ambition of England to attack and destroy the rising power and
wealth of Germany. Thus to each set of belligerents the war appears as one
forced upon them by sheer wickedness, and from neither point of view has
it any kind of moral justification. These views, it is true, are both
too simple for the facts. But the account given in the preceding pages,
imperfect as it is, shows clearly, what further knowledge will only make
more explicit, that the war proceeded out of rivalry for empire between all
the Great Powers in every part of the world. The contention between France
and Germany for the control of Morocco, the contention between Russia and
Austria for the control of the Balkans, the contention between Germany and
the other Powers for the control of Turkey--these were the causes of the
war. And this contention for control is prompted at once by the desire for
power and the desire for wealth. In practice the two motives are found
conjoined. But to different minds they appeal in different proportions.
There is such a thing as the love of power for its own sake. It is known in
individuals, and it is known in States, and it is the most disastrous, if
not the most evil, of the human passions. The modern German philosophy of
the State turns almost exclusively upon this idea; and here, as elsewhere,
by giving to a passion an intellectual form, the Germans have magnified
its force and enhanced its monstrosity. But the passion itself is not
peculiar to Germans, nor is it only they to whom it is and has been a
motive of State. Power has been the fetish of kings and emperors from the
beginning of political history, and it remains to be seen whether it will
not continue to inspire democracies. The passion for empire ruined the
Athenian democracy, no less than the Spartan or the Venetian oligarchy,
or the Spain of Philip II, or the France of the Monarchy and the Empire.
But it still makes its appeal to the romantic imagination. Its intoxication
has lain behind this war, and it will prompt many others if it survives,
when the war is over, either in the defeated or the conquering nations.
It is not only the jingoism of Germany that Europe has to fear. It is
the jingoism that success may make supreme in any country that may be
victorious.

But while power may be sought for its own sake, it is commonly sought
by modern States as a means to wealth. It is the pursuit of markets and
concessions and outlets for capital that lies behind the colonial policy
that leads to wars. States compete for the right to exploit the weak, and
in this competition Governments are prompted or controlled by financial
interests. The British went to Egypt for the sake of the bondholders, the
French to Morocco for the sake of its minerals and wealth. In the Near East
and the Far it is commerce, concessions, loans that have led to the rivalry
of the Powers, to war after war, to "punitive expeditions" and--irony of
ironies!--to "indemnities" exacted as a new and special form of robbery
from peoples who rose in the endeavour to defend themselves against
robbery. The Powers combine for a moment to suppress the common victim,
the next they are at one another's throats over the spoil. That really is
the simple fact about the quarrels of States over colonial and commercial
policy. So long as the exploitation of undeveloped countries is directed by
companies having no object in view except dividends, so long as financiers
prompt the policy of Governments, so long as military expeditions, leading
up to annexations, are undertaken behind the back of the public for reasons
that cannot be avowed, so long will the nations end with war, where they
have begun by theft, and so long will thousands and millions of innocent
and generous lives, the best of Europe, be thrown away to no purpose,
because, in the dark, sinister interests have been risking the peace
of the world for the sake of money in their pockets.

It is these tremendous underlying facts and tendencies that suggest the
true moral of this war. It is these that have to be altered if we are to
avoid future wars on a scale as great.



18. _The Settlement_.


And now, with all this in our minds, let us turn to consider the vexed
question of the settlement after the war. There lies before the Western
world the greatest of all choices, the choice between destruction and
salvation. But that choice does not depend merely on the issue of the
war. It depends upon what is done or left undone by the co-operation of
all when the war does at last stop. Two conceptions of the future are
contending in all nations. One is the old bad one, that which has presided
hitherto at every peace and prepared every new war. It assumes that the
object of war is solely to win victory, and the object of victory solely
to acquire more power and territory. On this view, if the Germans win, they
are to annex territory east and west: Belgium and half France, say the more
violent; the Baltic provinces of Russia, strategic points of advantage, say
the more moderate. On the other hand, if the Allies win, the Allies are to
divide the German colonies, the French are to regain Alsace-Lorraine, and,
as the jingoes add, they are to take the whole of the German provinces on
the left bank of the Rhine, and even territory beyond it. The Italians are
to have not only Italia Irredenta but hundreds of thousands of reluctant
Slavs in Dalmatia; the Russians Constantinople, and perhaps Posen and
Galicia. Further, such money indemnities are to be taken as it may prove
possible to exact from an already ruined foe; trade and commerce with
the enemy is to be discouraged or prohibited; and, above all, a bitter
and unforgiving hatred is to reign for ever between the victor and the
vanquished. This is the kind of view of the settlement of Europe that is
constantly appearing in the articles and correspondence of the Press of all
countries. Ministers are not as careful as they should be to repudiate it.
The nationalist and imperialist cliques of all nations endorse it. It is,
one could almost fear, for something like this that the peoples are being
kept at war, and the very existence of civilization jeopardized.

Now, whether anything of this kind really can be achieved by the war,
whether there is the least probability that either group of Powers can
win such a victory as would make the programme on either side a reality,
I will not here discuss. The reader will have his own opinion. What I am
concerned with is the effect any such solution would have upon the future
of Europe. Those who desire such a close may be divided into two classes.
The one frankly believes in war, in domination, and in power. It accepts
as inevitable, and welcomes as desirable, the perpetual armed conflict of
nations for territory and trade. It does not believe in, and it does not
want, a durable peace. It holds that all peace is, must be, and ought to
be, a precarious and regrettable interval between wars. I do not discuss
this view. Those who hold it are not accessible to argument, and can only
be met by action. There are others, however, who do think war an evil, who
do want a durable peace, but who genuinely believe that the way indicated
is the best way to achieve it. With them it is permitted to discuss, and it
should be possible to do so without bitterness or rage on either side. For
as to the end, there is agreement; the difference of opinion is as to the
means. The position taken is this: The enemy deliberately made this war of
aggression against us, without provocation, in order to destroy us. If it
had not been for this wickedness there would have been no war. The enemy,
therefore, must be punished; and his punishment must make him permanently
impotent to repeat the offence. That having been done, Europe will have
durable peace, for there will be no one left able to break it who will
also want to break it. Now, I believe all this to be demonstrably a
miscalculation. It is contradicted both by our knowledge of the way
human nature works and by the evidence of history. In the first place,
wars do not arise because only one nation or group of nations is wicked,
the others being good. For the actual outbreak of this war, I believe, as
I have already said, that a few powerful individuals in Austria and in
Germany were responsible. But the ultimate causes of war lie much deeper.
In them all States are implicated. And the punishment, or even the
annihilation, of any one nation would leave those causes still subsisting.
Wipe out Germany from the map, and, if you do nothing else, the other
nations will be at one another's throats in the old way, for the old
causes. They would be quarrelling, if about nothing else, about the
division of the spoil. While nations continue to contend for power,
while they refuse to substitute law for force, there will continue to
be wars. And while they devote the best of their brains and the chief
of their resources to armaments and military and naval organization,
each war will become more terrible, more destructive, and more ruthless
than the last. This is irrefutable truth. I do not believe there is a
man or woman able to understand the statement who will deny it.

In the second place, the enemy nation cannot, in fact, be annihilated,
nor even so far weakened, relatively to the rest, as to be incapable of
recovering and putting up another fight. The notions of dividing up Germany
among the Allies, or of adding France and the British Empire to Germany,
are sheerly fantastic. There will remain, when all is done, the defeated
nations--if, indeed, any nation be defeated. Their territories cannot be
permanently occupied by enemy troops; they themselves cannot be permanently
prevented by physical force from building up new armaments. So long as they
want their revenge, they will be able sooner or later to take it. If
evidence of this were wanted, the often-quoted case of Prussia after
Jena will suffice.

And, in the third place, the defeated nations, so treated, will, in fact,
want their revenge. There seems to be a curious illusion abroad, among the
English and their allies, that not only is Germany guilty of the war, but
that all Germans know it in their hearts; that, being guilty, they will
fully accept punishment, bow patiently beneath the yoke, and become in
future good, harmonious members of the European family. The illusion is
grotesque. There is hardly a German who does not believe that the war was
made by Russia and by England; that Germany is the innocent victim; that
all right is on her side, and all wrong on that of the Allies. If, indeed,
she were beaten, and treated as her "punishers" desire, this belief would
be strengthened, not weakened. In every German heart would abide, deep and
strong, the sense of an iniquitous triumph of what they believe to be wrong
over right, and of a duty to redress that iniquity. Outraged national pride
would be reinforced by the sense of injustice; and the next war, the war of
revenge, would be prepared for, not only by every consideration of interest
and of passion, but by every cogency of righteousness. The fact that the
Germans are mistaken in their view of the origin of the war has really
nothing to do with the case. It is not the truth, it is what men believe
to be the truth, that influences their action. And I do not think any
study of dispatches is going to alter the German view of the facts.

But it is sometimes urged that the war was made by the German militarists,
that it is unpopular with the mass of the people, and that if Germany is
utterly defeated the people will rise and depose their rulers, become a
true democracy, and join fraternal hands with the other nations of Europe.
That Germany should become a true democracy might, indeed, be as great a
guarantee of peace as it might be that other nations, called democratic,
should really become so in their foreign policy as well as in their
domestic affairs. But what proud nation will accept democracy as a
gift from insolent conquerors? One thing that the war has done, and
one of the worst, is to make of the Kaiser, to every German, a symbol
of their national unity and national force. Just because we abuse their
militarism, they affirm and acclaim it; just because we attack their
governing class, they rally round it. Nothing could be better calculated
than this war to strengthen the hold of militarism in Germany, unless it
be the attempt of her enemies to destroy her militarism by force. For
consider--! In the view we are examining it is proposed, first to kill
the greater part of her combatants, next to invade her territory, destroy
her towns and villages, and exact (for there are those who demand it)
penalties in kind, actual tit for tat, for what Germans have done in
Belgium. It is proposed to enter the capital in triumph. It is proposed
to shear away huge pieces of German territory. And then, when all this
has been done, the conquerors are to turn to the German nation and say:
"Now, all this we have done for your good! Depose your wicked rulers!
Become a democracy! Shake hands and be a good fellow!" Does it not
sound grotesque? But, really, that is what is proposed.

I have spoken about British and French proposals for the treatment of
Germany. But all that I have said applies, of course, equally to German
proposals of the same kind for the treatment of the conquered Allies. That
way is no way towards a durable peace. If it be replied that a durable
peace is not intended or desired, I have no more to say. If it be replied
that punishment for its own sake is more important than civilization, and
must be performed at all costs--_fiat justitia, ruat coelum_--then, once
more, I have nothing to say. I speak to those, and to those only, who do
desire a durable peace, and who have the courage and the imagination to
believe it to be possible, and the determination to work for it. And to
them I urge that the course I have been discussing cannot lead to their
goal. What can?



19. _The Change Needed_.


First, a change of outlook. We must give up, in all nations, this habit
of dwelling on the unique and peculiar wickedness of the enemy. We must
recognize that behind the acts that led up to the immediate outbreak of
war, behind the crimes and atrocities to which the war has led, as wars
always have led, and always will lead--behind all that lies a great complex
of feeling, prejudice, tradition, false theory, in which all nations and
all individuals of all nations are involved. Most men believe, feel, or
passively accept that power and wealth are the objects States ought
to pursue; that in pursuing these objects they are bound by no code of
right in their relations to one another; that law between them is, and
must be, as fragile as a cobweb stretched before the mouth of a cannon;
that force is the only rule and the only determinant of their differences,
and that the only real question is when and how the appeal to force may
most advantageously be made. This philosophy has been expressed with
peculiar frankness and brutality by Germans. But most honest and candid
men, I believe, will agree that that is the way they, too, have been
accustomed to think of international affairs. And if illustration were
wanted, let them remember the kind of triumphant satisfaction with which
the failure of the Hague conferences to achieve any radical results was
generally greeted, and the contemptuous and almost abhorring pity meted
out to the people called "pacifists." Well, the war has come! We see now,
not only guess, what it means. If that experience has not made a deep
impression on every man and woman, if something like a conversion is not
being generally operated, then, indeed, nothing can save mankind from the
hell of their own passions and imbecilities.

But if otherwise, if that change is going on, then the way to deliverance
is neither difficult nor obscure. It does not lie in the direction of
crushing anybody. It lies in the taking of certain determinations, and
the embodying of them in certain institutions.

First, the nations must submit to law and to right in the settlement of
their disputes.

Secondly, they must reserve force for the coercion of the law-breaker;
and that implies that they should construct rules to determine who the
law-breaker is. Let him be defined as the one who appeals to force, instead
of appealing to law and right by machinery duly provided for that purpose,
and the aggressor is immediately under the ban of the civilized world, and
met by an overwhelming force to coerce him into order. In constructing
machinery of this kind there is no intellectual difficulty greater than
that which has confronted every attempt everywhere to substitute order
for force. The difficulty is moral, and lies in the habits, passions,
and wills of men. But it should not be concluded that, if such a moral
change could be operated, there would be no need for the machinery. It
would be as reasonable to say that Governments, law-courts, and police
were superfluous, since, if men were good, they would not require them,
and if they are bad they will not tolerate them. Whatever new need, desire,
and conviction comes up in mankind, needs embodiment in forms before it
can become operative. And, as the separate colonies of America could not
effectively unite until they had formed a Constitution, so will the States
of Europe and the world be unable to maintain the peace, even though all
of them should wish to maintain it, unless they will construct some kind
of machinery for settling their disputes and organizing their common
purposes, and will back that machinery by force. If they will do that
they may construct a real and effective counterpoise to aggression from
any Power in the future. If they will not do it, their precautions against
any one Power will be idle, for it will be from some other Power that the
danger will come. I put it to the reader at the end of this study, which
I have made with all the candour and all the honesty at my disposal, and
which I believe to represent essentially the truth, whether or no he agrees
that the European anarchy is the real cause of European wars, and if he
does, whether he is ready for his part to support a serious effort to end
it.





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