OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR BALKAN WARS.
Mr. Winston Churchill on the "Responsibility" of Diplomacy--What does he
mean?--An easy (and popular) philosophy--Can we neglect past if we would
avoid future errors?--British temper and policy in the Crimean War--What
are its lessons?--Why we fought a war to sustain the "integrity and
independence of the Turkish dominion in Europe"--Supporting the Turk
against his Christian victims--From fear of Russian growth which we are
now aiding--The commentary of events--Shall we back the wrong horse
again?
Here was a war which had broken out in spite of all that rulers and
diplomatists could do to prevent it, a war in which the Press had
had no part, a war which the whole force of the money power had
been subtly and steadfastly directed to prevent, which had come
upon us not through the ignorance or credulity of the people; but,
on the contrary, through their knowledge of their history and their
destiny.... Who is the man who is vain enough to suppose that the
long antagonisms of history and of time can in all circumstances be
adjusted by the smooth and superficial conventions of politicians
and ambassadors?
Thus Mr. Churchill. It is a plea for the inevitability, not merely of
war, but of a people's "destiny."
What precisely does it mean? Does it mean that the European Powers have
in the past been entirely wise and honest, have never intrigued with
the Turk the one against the other, have always kept good faith, have
never been inspired by false political theories and tawdry and shoddy
ideals, have, in short, no responsibility for the abominations that have
gone on in the Balkan peninsula for a century? No one outside a lunatic
asylum would urge it. But, then, that means that diplomacy has _not_
done all it might to prevent this war. Why does Mr. Churchill say it
has?
And does the passage I have quoted mean that we--that English
diplomacy--has had no part in European diplomacy in the past? Have we
not, on the contrary, by universal admission played a predominant role
by backing the wrong horse?
But, then, that is not a popular thing to point out, and Mr. Churchill
is very careful not to point it out in any way that could give
justification to an unpopular view or discredit a popular one. He is,
however, far too able a Cabinet Minister to ignore obvious facts, and it
is interesting to note how he disposes of them. Observe the following
passage:
For the drama or tragedy which is moving to its climax in the
Balkans we all have our responsibilities, and none of us can escape
our share of them by blaming others or by blaming the Turk. If
there is any man here who, looking back over the last 35 years,
thinks he knows where to fix the sole responsibility for all the
procrastination and provocation, for all the jealousies and
rivalries, for all the religious and racial animosities, which have
worked together for this result, I do not envy him his
complacency.... Whether we blame the belligerents or criticise the
Powers or sit in sackcloth and ashes ourselves is absolutely of no
consequence at the present moment.
Now if for this tragedy we "all have our responsibility," then what
becomes of his first statement that the war is raging despite all that
rulers and diplomats could do to prevent it? If the war was
"inevitable," and rulers and diplomats have done all they could to
prevent it, neither they nor we have any responsibility for it. He
knows, of course, that it is impossible to deny that responsibility,
that our errors in the past _have_ been due not to any lack of readiness
to fight or quarrel with foreign nations, but precisely to the tendency
to do those things and our _in_disposition to set aside instinctive and
reasonless jealousies and rivalries in favour of a deeper sense of
responsibility and a somewhat longer vision.
But, again, this quite obvious moral, that if we have our
responsibility, if, in other words, we have _not_ done all that we might
and _have_ been led away by temper and passion, we should, in order to
avoid a repetition of such errors in the future, try and see where we
have erred in the past, is precisely the moral that Mr. Churchill does
_not_ draw. Again, it is not the popular line to show with any
definiteness that we have been wrong. An abstract proposition that "we
all have our responsibilities," is, while a formal admission of the
obvious fact also at the same time, an excuse, almost a justification.
You realise Mr. Churchill's method: Having made the necessary admission
of fact, you immediately prevent any unpleasant (or unpopular) practical
conclusion concerning our duty in the matter by talking of the
"complacency" of those who would fix any real and definite part of the
responsibility upon you. (Because, of course, no man, knows where lies,
and no one would ever attempt to fix, the "sole" responsibility).
Incidentally, one might point out to Mr. Churchill that the attempt to
see the errors of past conduct and to avoid them in the future is _not_
complacency, but that airily to dismiss our responsibility by saying
that it is of "no consequence whether we sit in sackcloth and ashes"
_is_ complacency.
Mr. Churchill's idea seems to be that men should forget their
errors--and commit them again. For that is what it amounts to. We
cannot, indeed, undo the past, that is true; but we can prevent it
being repeated. But we certainly shall not prevent such repetition if we
hug the easy doctrine that we have always been right--that it is not
worth while to see how our principles have worked out in practice, to
take stock of our experience, and to see what results the principles we
propose again to put into operation, have given.
The practical thing for us if we would avoid like errors in the future
is to see where _our_ responsibility lies--a thing which we shall never
do if we are governed by the net impression which disengages itself from
speeches like those of Mr. Churchill. For the net result of that speech,
the impression, despite a few shrewd qualifications which do not in
reality affect that net result but which may be useful later wherewith
to silence critics, is that war is inevitable, a matter of "destiny,"
that diplomacy--the policy pursued by the respective powers--can do
nothing to prevent it; that as brute force is the one and final appeal
the only practical policy is to have plenty of armaments and to show a
great readiness to fight; that it is futile to worry about past errors;
(especially as an examination of them would go a long way to discredit
the policy just indicated); that the troublesome and unpopular people
who in the past happen to have kept their heads during a prevailing
dementia--and whose policy happens to have been as right as that of the
popular side was wrong--can be dismissed with left-handed references to
"complacency," This sort of thing is popular enough, of course, but--
Well, I will take the risks of a tactic which is the exact contrary to
that adopted by Mr. Churchill and would urge upon those whose patriotism
is not of the order which is ready to see their country in the wrong and
who do feel some responsibility for its national policy, to ask
themselves these questions:
Is it true that the Powers could have prevented in large measure the
abominations which Turkey has practised in the Balkans for the last
half-century or so?
Has our own policy been a large factor in determining that of the
Powers?
Has our own policy directly prevented in the past the triumph of the
Christian populations which, despite that policy, has finally taken
place?
Was our own policy at fault when we were led into a war to ensure the
"integrity and independence of the Turkish dominions in Europe"?
Is the general conception of Statecraft on which that policy has been
based--the "Balance of Power" which presupposes the necessary rivalry of
nations and which in the past has led to oppose Russia as it is now
leading to oppose Germany--sound, and has it been justified in history?
Did we give due weight to the considerations urged by the public men of
the past who opposed such features of this policy as the Crimean War;
was the immense popularity of that war any test of its wisdom; were the
rancour, hatred and scorn poured upon those men just or deserved?
* * * * *
Now the first four of these questions have been answered by history and
are answered by every one to-day in an emphatic affirmative. This is not
the opinion of a Pacifist partisan. Even the _Times_ is constrained to
admit that "these futile conflicts might have ended years ago, if it had
not been for the quarrels of the Western nations."[6] And as to the
Crimean War, has not the greatest Conservative foreign minister of the
nineteenth century admitted that "we backed the wrong horse"--and, what
is far more to the point, have not events unmistakably demonstrated it?
Do we quite realise that if foreign policy had that continuity which
the political pundits pretend, we should now be fighting on the side of
the Turk against the Balkan States? That we have entered into solemn
treaty obligations, as part of our national policy, to guarantee for
ever the "integrity and independence of the Turkish dominions in
Europe," that we fought a great and popular war to prevent that triumph
of the Christian population which will arise as the result of the
present war? That but for this policy which caused us to maintain the
Turk in Europe the present war would certainly not be raging, and, what
is much more to the point, that but for our policy the abominations
which have provoked it and which it is its object to terminate, would so
far as human reason can judge at all have been brought to an end
generations since? Do we quite realise that _we_ are in large part
responsible, not merely for the war, but for the long agony of horror
which have provoked it and made it necessary; that when we talk of the
jealousies and rivalries of the Powers as playing so large a part in the
responsibility for these things, we represent, perhaps, the chief among
those jealousies and rivalries? That it is not mainly the Turk nor the
Russian nor the Austrian which has determined the course of history in
the Balkan peninsular since the middle of the 19th century, but we
Englishmen--the country gentleman obsessed by vague theories of the
Balance of Power and heaven knows what, reading his _Times_ and barking
out his preposterous politics over the dinner table? That this fatal
policy was dictated simply by fear of the growth of "Russian barbarism
and autocracy" and "the overshadowing of the Western nations by a
country whose institutions are inimical to our own"? That while we were
thus led into war by a phantom danger to our Indian possessions, we were
quite blind to the real danger which threatened them, which a year or
two later, in the Mutiny, nearly lost us them and which were not due to
the machinations of a rival power but to our own misgovernment; that
this very "barbaric growth" and expansion towards India which we fought
a war to check we are now actively promoting in Persia and elsewhere by
our (effective) alliance? That while as recently as fifteen years ago we
would have gone to war to prevent any move of Russia towards the Indian
frontier, we are to-day actually encouraging her to build a railway
there? And that it is now another nation which stands as the natural
barrier to Russian expansion to the West--Germany--whose power we are
challenging, and that all tendencies point to our backing again the
wrong horse, to our fighting _with_ the "semi-Asiatic barbarian" (as our
fathers used to call him) against the nation which has close racial and
cultural affinity to our own, just as half a century since the same
fatal obsession about the "Balance of Power" led us to fight with the
Mohammedan in order to bolster up for half a century his anti-Christian
rule.
The misreading of history in this matter is, unfortunately, not
possible. The point upon which in the Crimean war the negotiations with
Russia finally broke was the claim, based upon her reading of the Vienna
note, to stand as religious protector of the Greek Christians in the
Balkan peninsular. That was the pivot of the whole negotiations, and the
war was the outcome of our support of the Turkish view--or, rather, our
conduct of Turkish policy, for throughout the whole period England was
conducting the Turkish negotiations; indeed, as Bright said at the time,
she was carrying on the Turkish Government and ruling the Turkish Empire
through her ministers in Constantinople.
I will quote a speech of the period made in the House of Commons. It was
as follows:
Our opponents seem actuated by a frantic and bitter hostility to
Russia, and, without considering the calamities in which they might
involve this country, they have sought to urge it into a great war,
as they imagined, on behalf of European freedom, and in order to
cripple the resources of Russia....
The question is, whether the advantages both to Turkey and England
of avoiding war altogether, would have been less than those which
are likely to arise from the policy which the Government has
pursued? Now, if the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton is right in
saying that Turkey is a growing power, and that she has elements of
strength which unlearned persons like myself know nothing about;
surely no immediate, or sensible, or permanent mischief could have
arisen to her from the acceptance of the Vienna note, which all the
distinguished persons who agreed to it have declared to be
perfectly consistent with her honour and independence. If she had
been growing stronger and stronger of late years, surely she would
have grown still stronger in the future, and there might have been
a reasonable expectation that, whatever disadvantages she might
have suffered for a time from that note, her growing strength would
have enabled her to overcome them, while the peace of Europe might
have been preserved. But suppose that Turkey is not a growing
power, but that the Ottoman rule in Europe is tottering to its
fall, I come to the conclusion that, whatever advantages were
afforded to the Christian population of Turkey would have enabled
them to grow more rapidly in numbers, in industry, in wealth, in
intelligence, and in political power; and that, as they thus
increased in influence, they would have become more able, in case
any accident, which might not be far distant, occurred, to
supplant the Mahommedan rule, and to establish themselves in
Constantinople as a Christian State, which, I think, every man who
hears me will admit is infinitely more to be desired than that the
Mahommedan power should be permanently sustained by the bayonets of
France and the fleets of England. Europe would thus have been at
peace; for I do not think even the most bitter enemies of Russia
believe that the Emperor of Russia intended last year, if the
Vienna note or Prince Menchikoff's last and most moderate
proposition had been accepted, to have marched on Constantinople.
Indeed, he had pledged himself in the most distinct manner to
withdraw his troops at once from the Principalities, if the Vienna
note were accepted; and therefore in that case Turkey would have
been delivered from the presence of the foe; peace would for a time
have been secured for Europe; and the whole matter would have
drifted on to its natural solution--which is, that the Mahommedan
power in Europe should eventually succumb to the growing power of
the Christian population of the Turkish territories.
Now, looking back upon what has since happened, which view shows the
greater wisdom and prevision? That of the man who delivered this speech
(and he was John Bright) or those against whom he spoke? To which set of
principles has time given the greater justification?
Yet upon the men who resisted what we all admit, in this case at least,
to have been the false theories and who supported, what we equally admit
now, to have been the right principles, we poured the same sort of
ferocious contempt that we are apt now spasmodically to pour upon those
who, sixty years later, would prevent our drifting in the same blind
fashion into a war just as futile and bound to be infinitely more
disastrous--a war embodying the same "principles" supported by just the
same theories and just the same arguments which led us into this other
one.
I know full well the prejudice which the names I am about to cite is apt
to cause. We poured out upon the men who bore them a rancour, contempt
and hatred which few men in English public life have had to face.
Morley, in his life of Cobden, says of these two men--Cobden and Bright:
They had, as Lord Palmerston said, the whole world against them. It
was not merely the august personages of the Court, nor the
illustrious veterans in Government and diplomacy, nor the most
experienced politicians in Parliament, nor the powerful
journalists, nor the men versed in great affairs of business. It
was no light thing to confront even that solid mass of hostile
judgment. But besides all this, Cobden and Mr. Bright knew that the
country at large, even their trusty middle and industrial classes,
had turned their faces resolutely and angrily away from them. Their
own great instrument, the public meeting, was no longer theirs to
wield. The army of the Nonconformists, which has so seldom been
found fighting on the wrong side, was seriously divided.
Public opinion was bitterly and impatiently hostile and
intractable. Mr. Bright was burnt in effigy. Cobden, at a meeting
in his own constituency, after an energetic vindication of his
opinions, saw resolutions carried against him. Every morning they
were reviled in half the newspapers in the country as enemies of
the commonwealth. They were openly told that they were traitors,
and that it was a pity they could not be punished as traitors.
In the House, Lord Palmerston once began his reply by referring to
Mr. Bright as "the Honourable and Reverend gentleman," Cobden rose
to call him to order for this flippant and unbecoming phrase. Lord
Palmerston said he would not quarrel about words. Then went on to
say that he thought it right to tell Mr. Bright that his opinion
was a matter of entire difference, and that he treated his censure
with the most perfect indifference and contempt. On another
occasion he showed the same unmannerliness to Cobden himself.
Cobden had said that under certain circumstances he would fight, or
if he could not fight, he would work for the wounded in the
hospitals. "Well," said Lord Palmerston in reply, with the sarcasm
of a schoolboy's debating society, "there are many people in this
country who think that the party to which he belongs should go
immediately into a hospital of a different kind, and which I shall
not mention." This refined irony was a very gentle specimen of the
insult and contumely which was poured upon Cobden and Mr. Bright at
this time....
It is impossible not to regard the attitude of the two objects of
this vast unpopularity as one of the most truly honourable
spectacles in our political history. The moral fortitude, like the
political wisdom of these two strong men, begins to stand out with
a splendour that already recalls the great historic heights of
statesmanship and patriotism. Even now our heart-felt admiration
and gratitude goes out to them as it goes out to Burke for his
lofty and manful protests against the war with America and the
oppression of Ireland, and to Charles Fox for his bold and
strenuous resistance to the war with the French Republic.
Before indulging in the dementia which those names usually produce, will
the reader please note that it is not my business now to defend either
the general principles of Cobden and Bright or the political spirit
which they are supposed to represent. Let them be as sordid, mean,
unworthy, pusillanimous as you like--and as the best of us then said
they were ("a mean, vain, mischievous clique" even so good a man as Tom
Hughes could call them). We called them cowards--because practically
alone they faced a country which had become a howling mob; we called
their opponents "courageous" because with the whole country behind them
they habitually poured contempt upon the under dog.
And we thus hated these men because they did their best to dissuade us
from undertaking a certain war. Very good; we have had our war; we
carried our point, we prevented the break-up of the Turkish Empire;
those men were completely beaten. And they are dead. Cannot we afford
to set aside those old passions and see how far in one particular at
least they may have been right?
We admit, of course, if we are honest--happily everyone admits--that
these despised men were right and those who abused them were wrong. The
verdict of fact is there. Says Lord Morley:--
When we look back upon the affairs of that time, we see that there
were two policies open. Lord Palmerston's was one, Cobden and
Bright's the other. If we are to compare Lord Palmerston's
statesmanship and insight in the Eastern Question with that of his
two great adversaries, it is hard, in the light of all that has
happened since, to resist the conclusion that Cobden and Mr. Bright
were right, and Lord Palmerston was disastrously wrong. It is easy
to plead extenuating circumstances for the egregious mistakes in
Lord Palmerston's policy about the Eastern Question, the Suez Canal,
and some other important subjects; but the plea can only be allowed
after it has been frankly recognized that they really were mistakes,
and that these abused men exposed and avoided them. Lord Palmerston,
for instance, asked why the Czar could not be "satisfied, as we all
are, with the progressively liberal system of Turkey." Cobden, in
his pamphlet twenty years before, insisted that this progressively
liberal system of Turkey had no existence. Which of these two
propositions was true may be left to the decision of those who lent
to the Turk many millions of money on the strength of Lord
Palmerston's ignorant and delusive assurances. It was mainly owing
to Lord Palmerston, again, that the efforts of the war were
concentrated at Sebastopol. Sixty thousand English and French
troops, he said, with the co-operation of the fleets, would take
Sebastopol in six weeks. Cobden gave reasons for thinking very
differently, and urged that the destruction of Sebastopol, even when
it was achieved, would neither inflict a crushing blow to Russia,
nor prevent future attacks upon Turkey. Lord Palmerston's error may
have been intelligible and venial; nevertheless, as a fact, he was
in error and Cobden was not, and the error cost the nation one of
the most unfortunate, mortifying, and absolutely useless campaigns
in English history. Cobden held that if we were to defend Turkey
against Russia, the true policy was to use our navy, and not to send
a land force to the Crimea. Would any serious politician now be
found to deny it? We might prolong the list of propositions, general
and particular, which Lord Palmerston maintained and Cobden
traversed, from the beginning to the end of the Russian War. There
is not one of these propositions in which later events have not
shown that Cobden's knowledge was greater, his judgment cooler, his
insight more penetrating and comprehensive. The bankruptcy of the
Turkish Government, the further dismemberment of its Empire by the
Treaty of Berlin, the abrogation of the Black Sea Treaty, have
already done something to convince people that the two leaders saw
much further ahead in 1854 and 1855 than men who had passed all
their lives in foreign chanceries and the purlieus of Downing
Street.
It is startling to look back upon the bullying contempt which the
man who was blind permitted himself to show to the men who could
see. The truth is, that to Lord Palmerston it was still
incomprehensible and intolerable that a couple of manufacturers from
Lancashire should presume to teach him foreign policy. Still more
offensive to him was their introduction of morality into the
mysteries of the Foreign Office.[7]
What have peace theories to do with this war? asks the practical man,
who is the greatest mystic of all, contemptuously. Well, they have
everything to do with it. For if we had understood some peace theories a
little better a generation or two ago, if we had not allowed passion and
error and prejudice instead of reason to dominate our policy, the sum of
misery which these Balkan populations have known would have been
immeasurably less. It is quite true that we could not have prevented
this war by sending peace pamphlets to the Turk, or to the Balkanese,
for that matter, but we could have prevented it if we ourselves had read
them a generation or two since, just as our only means of preventing
future wars is by showing a little less prejudice and a little less
blindness.
And the practical question, despite Mr. Churchill, is whether we shall
allow a like passion and a like prejudice again to blind us; whether we
shall again back the wrong horse in the name of the same hollow theories
drifting to a similar but greater futility and catastrophe, or whether
we shall profit by our past to assure a better future.
[Footnote 6: 14/11/12]
[Footnote 7: _The Life of Richard Cobden._--UNWIN.]