The European Anarchy
Date: 2003-11-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: World War; 1914-1918 -- Causes; Europe -- Politics and government

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Title: The European Anarchy

Author: G. Lowes Dickinson

Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10333]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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

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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