WATCHMAN--WHAT OF THE NIGHT?
It is probable that at no moment in the history of the world has a
spirit of disillusion been so widespread and so profound as at the
present time. Not only apparently have the high ideals which sustained
us during the war evaporated completely, but they have yielded place to
a sullen exasperation and ill-will dangerous in its temper and purpose.
Moral war-weariness has sapped mind and body to such an extent that no
powers of resilience remain. Suspicion as between class and class and
nation and nation corrodes the foundations of life. Surly ill-will and
a wholly anti-helpful attitude permeates the grudging performance of
essential social services. People and classes pursue their own ends
with complete disregard as to their reactions on other sections of
society. Self-interest reigns supreme. The joy as of comrades of the
open road faring together in a spirit of common service and brotherhood
appears to have vanished. In England unrest and discontent wholly
refuse to yield to the opportunist devices of a Government to whom all
principles are mere questions of expediency. But England, mercifully
for herself, whatever her spiritual sickness, knows nothing of the
stark levels of practical misery and starvation on to which millions
of continental people have been driven. We have no standard with which
to gauge misery and hunger on a scale so appalling as that which has
overtaken the dwellers of Eastern Europe. At times one wonders how
it is that England, so great, so generous, so magnanimous in her
traditional policy, has apparently neither eyes to see nor ears to hear
what is going on. The voice of Gladstone could once rouse the country
to a white flame of indignation over the sufferings of an oppressed
people. But with the tragedy of Europe before our eyes; with women and
children perishing by the thousand; with a volume of discontent growing
and surging among every nationality, England, always the world’s hope
in matters of practical justice, seems incapable of rousing herself
to action worthy of her own great tradition. Instead of some fine and
generous appreciation of the world’s woes, she looks on dully and from
afar.
America has for the moment withdrawn from the European chaos. Her
reasons for doing so are intelligible, but the result has been a
disaster for the rest of the world. It is not a question, as so many
Americans think, of a desire to exploit the better financial position
of the United States. It is because America with many faults and
crudities has a driving power of idealism behind her--the same motive
force which brought her into the war. Some American business men and
supporters of the great financial interests have sought--as is the
habit of their kind--to exploit the post-war situation to their own
profit. As against this must be set qualities of a very different
character among the mass of the people. America’s absence from the
European council-chamber involves the loss of a great influence
at once restraining and constructive. We cannot measure fully as
yet the infinite damage caused by her withdrawal from the task of
Reconstruction. We know, however, that no blow since the Peace has
been so severe. America was particularly fortunate in some of the
representatives sent to Europe during the war--men of the highest
capacity and honour. Through her absence every undesirable force or
principle has gathered weight. Conversely every force working for good
has been weakened.
The rest of the world looks on in an attitude as helpless as that
of the former combatants, as month by month the shattered fabric of
European life sags yet wider. The post-war chaos appears so complete
that men turn from it in despair. Moral disillusion and weariness have
their counterparts in recklessness and wild extravagance. There is a
sense of an approaching Twilight of the Gods; of a collapse of the
foundations of society. Therefore let us eat, drink, and be merry, on
the brink of the chasm though it be, before the darkness swallows us up.
How is it that a war fought for principles and ideals so clear and so
noble as those which animated us at the outset of the struggle can have
resulted in a condition of practical moral bankruptcy? Of that moral
bankruptcy the Treaty of Versailles is the sign and witness. On the
plane of practical politics it may be said that the world could have
survived the war, but it is doubtful whether it can survive the Peace.
Yet the Peace only registers the sickness which has invaded our souls.
Indeed, from one aspect it may be asserted that the present situation,
dark and threatening though it be, is not devoid of consolation of a
lofty and austere character. The moral bankruptcy which has overtaken
the world is in itself the most august testimony to the inexorable
truth of moral principle. Because the light in the spirit of man has
burned so low, we are able to estimate what darkness falls when the
lamp is untrimmed. The very chaos we deplore is the result of outraged
moral laws, neglect of which brings a sure Nemesis in its train. Just
in so far as the world has forsaken abiding standards of justice,
truth, and mercy, the world has been stricken down. We are perishing
to-day owing to failures in principle, and health can only return
when principle is no longer flouted but resumes its reign over men’s
souls. The tricks and turns of an opportunist policy cannot stem the
rising flood of restlessness and disgust. The world grows daily more
sick of men who have not sufficient character to make their cleverness
tolerable. Thus viewed, our present confusion is fraught with profound
spiritual significance.
In this, despite grave present peril, lies the chance of salvation.
History has never known so great and so terrible a testimony to the
inexorable character of moral law, and the reality of Divine Truth
which it is death to challenge. _Docet umbra_, and in the darkness
which has fallen, we who stand in the shadow may learn anew of the
vision which shines behind all earth-drawn clouds; and so, may be, lay
firmer hold on those forgotten truths which, alike to men and nations,
bring peace at the last. If even now the better side of human nature
will rally to the task of rescue, the future may yet be saved. The
terrible sufferings of those who have fallen by the way cannot be made
good. But if the nations will rouse themselves to make a determined
moral effort, any repetition of such sufferings may be checked.
The greatest and gravest charge which can be brought against Germany is
not so much that she killed men’s bodies and laid waste their houses
and lands, as that she has poisoned the soul of Europe. The evil spirit
let loose by the Prussian theory of life has reacted throughout the
world. It has darkened counsel and silenced the voice of charity and
moderation. Not to be dragged down to the level of the person who has
wronged you is the hardest of all moral tests. It was one which proved
too hard for the conquerors in this war. The Peace was bound to have
been very stern towards Germany and very exacting in its demands.
Severity was inherent in the situation. Wrongs had been committed which
called for judgment; balances had to be redressed. The more necessary
was it, in view of these stern measures, to adhere strictly to
principles of justice and honour in our treatment of Germany; to give
neither history nor a defeated foe any justification for the charge
that in the hour of victory we cast behind us principles for which we
fought.
The degree to which the Terms of Peace violated both the letter and
spirit of conditions laid down in the Armistice is a blot on the Treaty
which must be painful to all honourable men. The Allies would have been
within their rights in insisting on the unconditional surrender of
Germany. But conditions having been permitted, they should have been
adhered to. Mr. Lloyd George and President Wilson had indicated on
various occasions that peace made with a democratic Germany would be of
a different character from a peace made with the Hohenzollerns still in
power. But Germany, having rid herself of her Emperor and of her former
Government, found that the treatment meted out to the new Republic
differed in no particular from what would have been justifiable had the
Emperor remained on the throne. The conscience of the world has been
troubled by these things, and by an uneasy sense of undertakings given
but not fulfilled.
Those of us who see in the Peace a supreme failure in constructive
statesmanship do not take that view because we are pacifists or have
some sentimental wish “to be kind to Germany.” So long as the issue of
the war hung in doubt it was our duty to make war to the last man and
the last shilling. With the evil spirit dominating Imperial Germany,
neither truce nor parley was possible. The effort frequently made in
pacifist circles to represent the war as a general dog-fight, for which
all the nations involved have a common responsibility, is not only
bad history but bad morality. Victory creates, however, a wholly new
situation. War, in certain terrible cases, is the necessary prelude
to a settlement. But of itself it settles nothing, any more than an
operation essential to check the spread of disease is a natural or
healthy process. The surgeon’s knife is merely a means to an end--the
recovery of normal life by a normal and healthy body. The knife is
not kept flourished permanently over the patient’s head or turned
periodically in the wound.
The great charge against the Peace is its failure to envisage a normal
and healthy life for Europe. Our quarrel against its provisions is
that they are in many cases fully as short-sighted and as lacking
in imagination as what Prussians themselves might have evolved.
The precedents of Brest-Litovsk, at which we raised our hands in
justifiable horror, are not agreeable ones to follow. The fatal flaw
of the Peace is that it does not look beyond the period of punishment
and reparation to an ultimate pacification of Europe. It lays down no
principles for the establishment of good relations between nations. Its
economic provisions are a nightmare calculated to lay a strangle-hold
on any possible recovery of European trade and commerce. With a world
crying out for goods and that increased production which can alone
bring about a drop in prices, the Peace Treaty is directed to keeping
one of the greatest producers, namely Germany, in chains, while a
group of little states, erected as military buffers of the most futile
character, are allowed to distract themselves and their neighbours by
the erection of tariff walls behind which they carry on crazy forms of
economic guerilla warfare.
Let us admit that the difficulties of the Peace were quite enormous and
that mistakes and blunders were inevitable. Criticism is roused not
so much by the practical provisions of the Treaty as by the general
spirit animating it. It is, in effect, a peace of revenge uninspired
by one generous gesture as regards the future. It is a peace of tired
old men with their eyes fixed on the hatreds and animosities of the
past, and their minds obsessed by the territorial jealousies of the
old diplomacy. Consequently it has outraged and disgusted the young
generation just stepping from school and college into the political
arena. Youth is generous and impulsive; it is the age of chivalry and
high ideals. The younger men and women ask what this Treaty is doing
for the future, at what point it is binding up the wounds of Europe,
what contribution it makes towards creating that “new world” of which
politicians discoursed so eloquently. The rising generation has a right
to demand an answer to these questions. It is their future which is
at stake in the matter. The provisions of the Peace are burthens laid
upon their shoulders. Naturally they are concerned with the contents
of the load. But from no direction comes any satisfactory reply to
these inquiries, only the dull echo returned by barriers of hatred and
negation.
Yet another consequence results from this state of affairs, the
seriousness of which has not, I think, been fully grasped. The failures
of democratic statesmen, so called, in this matter of the Peace have
jeopardised the whole principle of democratic government. “If this is
the best that the statesmen of the three great democracies can produce,
then away with such a sham and failure as democracy has proved itself
to be. Let us try something else.” This spirit is stirring in many
quarters. It leads young minds, at once eager and disappointed, to
explore the alternatives of anarchism, direct action, Bolshevism, and
the rest. We may deplore the direction in which their ideas are moving.
Let politicians in power recognise, however, that this spirit of revolt
is rooted in the vast failures of the old diplomacy. Is there yet time
to recognise the hopeless dead end into which we have blundered and to
retrace our steps along a better way? The first condition is to purge
our minds from some of the illusions which run riot among the men who
control the machine. The peace of Europe cannot be secured by any
variation of the old tortuous adjustments concerned with the balance of
power. Strategical frontiers, military dispositions, the creation of
buffer states, leave the problem exactly where it stood. Neither will
the effort to reduce a feared and hated enemy to a condition perilously
akin to that of economic servitude dispel the menace of a future appeal
to arms. No nation can lay enduring shackles on the life of another, as
the history of Germany from Jena to Leipzig proves conclusively. But as
that suggestive period also shows, the effort to oppress and dominate,
so far from crushing the spirit of a people, rouses it to the highest
point of effort and endeavour. The German poets of the Liberation
period have sung in vain if they have not taught that lesson to an
unheeding world.
The peaceful relations of nations cannot be achieved through the
strategy of force and the tactics of hatred. A change of heart, a new
moral orientation are essential if the world is not once again to
become a shambles. Such a spirit can only permeate the existing welter
little by little. We cannot afford to take risks with the ruthless
and wicked people who in many instances control the destinies of
nations. But the touchstone of statesmanship at the present time is
the degree to which it is helping or it is hindering the forces which
make for sanity and reconciliation; the degree to which it clears away
barriers or helps to erect them. Nations, like individuals, can only
live and grow through what is highest and best in themselves. Further,
unless nations are prepared to treat each other with some measure of
confidence and goodwill, and to have some sort of faith in each other’s
good intentions, the moral chaos remains insoluble.
It is my earnest wish in this matter to write with complete
understanding and sympathy of the position of France. French fears
regarding the future are largely responsible for the tone and temper
of the Peace. The fact is so well known that I cannot feel any useful
purpose is served by a refusal frankly to face the issues involved.
The Entente, if it is to flourish, must draw its strength from truth
and candour. It cannot live on shams and make-believes. The better
mind of England is disturbed increasingly over the policy pursued
by the Entente, and feels that the influence of France is dragging
us along a path remote from the traditional views of the British
democracy. We must recognise this fact and face its implications, if
sooner or later a point of sharp collision is to be avoided between the
two countries. France and England are united by ties of a sacred and
abiding character. Side by side have they upheld the torch of liberty
while the foundations of the world rocked. The blood of their sons has
been poured out on hundreds of battlefields in a common defence of
liberty. The courage and the fortitude of France during the struggle
was an example and an inspiration to the whole Alliance. Why are we
conscious, therefore, to-day of so heavy a fall in all those values
which made France heroic during the war? Again we must bring patience
and understanding to a situation fraught with possibilities so grave of
future trouble.
France to-day is dominated by two sentiments, one is hatred, the other
is fear. Both are evil counsellors, both are destroyers of life. France
through fear is pursuing a policy the only result of which can be to
make the confirmation of her fears inevitable. Now, it is not for us
English while recognising these facts to pass any sort of censorious
judgment on them. Had we suffered like France, had we endured what she
has been called upon to endure, in all probability our own spirit would
have been even more black and more bitter. Such powers of detachment
as we may possess do not imply the least merit on our part. It is only
because relatively we have suffered less that we can afford possibly
to be more broad and more generous in our outlook. France for the
last fifty years has lived under the shadow of a nightmare. Enticed
into war in 1870 by the devilish skill of Bismarck, she was forced
to drink to the full of the German cup of humiliation. Marvellous
though her economic and political recovery after the war, she could
feel no security about her eastern frontier. The aggressive character
of German diplomacy cast a deepening shadow on her life. Periodically
she was threatened; periodically she was insulted. Finally came a
climax of horror--the invasion of her soil, the devastation of town and
country, the agony of four and a half years of a war unparalleled in
its ghastliness. Little wonder, therefore, that France sees red all the
time and that she demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
I often think that if in the course of the war it had so happened that
a strip of German soil near the Rhine had been laid waste, it might in
the long run have promoted the peace of Europe. I do not say this from
any desire to destroy German homes or cause suffering to German women
and children. But one of the difficulties in dealing with France to-day
is that she feels that her wounds gape wider than those of any other
nation. She is haunted by the horror of her own experience, to which no
enemy country affords a parallel. Her devastated areas do not, so to
speak, cancel out. Had they cancelled out, even in a limited measure,
she would have lost something of the sense of unique and peculiar
outrage which fills France to-day with a bitterness as of death. Let
me repeat it is not for us to pass any censorious judgment on this
attitude. Unlike France, we are not up against the fence of a land
frontier with an hereditary foe on the other side. But we fail in our
duty if in a spirit of entire friendliness and understanding we do not
urge her to consider where this policy is leading.
The quarrel between Germany and France is a very old story. It did not
start, as many people imagine carelessly, in 1870. Long before that
date a barrier of bitter memories had already been piled up between the
two countries. Germany too has had her grievances, heavy grievances,
in the past against France. Louis XIV. carried fire and sword through
the Rhineland and Palatinate during the wars of the Spanish Succession.
His generals left an imperishable memory of outrage. The Napoleonic
occupation laid a hand of iron subsequently on the German people.
Read the poets of the Liberation period, Arndt, Rückert, Körner,
Schenkendorf, and realise how deep that iron bit into the soul of the
nation. Travel among the Rhineland towns and study their history. It
is one long record of French occupation and destruction either in the
seventeenth or early nineteenth century--Mainz, the cathedral used as a
magazine and barracks; Cologne, horses stabled in the cathedral nave;
Speyer, town and cathedral ravaged with fire and sword by the generals
of Louis XIV., ruffians who exhumed and scattered to the winds the
bones of eight German emperors; Worms, reduced in 1689 to a smouldering
heap of ruins; Aachen, Bonn, Coblenz, Baden, all with bitter memories
of military conquest and occupation.
If I draw attention to these old unhappy far-off things it is not from
any desire to rake gratuitously among painful memories of the past.
But the German attitude towards France can never be understood unless
due weight is given to these black and bitter pages in their earlier
relations. France must face candidly the historical truth that Prussian
militarism came into being as a reply to the aggressions first of Louis
XIV., then of Napoleon. The sins of older generations of French rulers
have been visited on innocent heads, but the sins were there. The
memory of French tyranny in former years was the driving force which
welded the German states together. To the average German 1870 appeared
the vindication of his national honour, the signal proof that the
humiliations of the Napoleonic period were wiped out. Once again the
old coil of evil is seen unfolding itself in a monotonous succession of
wrongs done and revenge exacted, the revenge creating new wrongs which
in turn lead to further strife.
Are we prepared to weave yet further sequences of this disastrous
character? Or shall the spirit of man rise up and say the coil must be
broken?
It is this problem that has to be faced with both tact and candour
so far as the French are concerned. We sympathise to the full with
their sufferings and their wrongs. All that is best, however, in the
British democracy will neither sympathise with nor support policies
which if pursued to their logical ends can only work fresh havoc for
Europe. It is strange that the French, after their bitter experience
of 1870, seem unable to apply lessons wholly learnt by themselves as
to the strength of national feeling. It is impossible to stifle the
spirit of a people whatever it may be. Germany failed completely in
her effort to crush France. It is no less hopeless for France to think
that she can crush Germany. Yet at bottom the destruction of Germany
is the aim of the Chauvinists, who have considerable influence at the
moment in the direction of French policy. For people of this type
the European situation is the same to-day as it was in 1912. It is
as though the years 1914-1918 had not happened. The German nightmare
oppresses them as much as it has ever done. They still envisage Germany
as a great military power whose existence is one long menace to the
security of France. They want to see Germany crippled beyond the hope
of restoration, though with an entire lack of logic they also want
Germany to pay them large sums of money. Many French soldiers and
politicians feel it is a great mistake to miss the present golden
opportunity for making, as they think, a complete end of a formidable
enemy. Among them are men who would welcome any pretext which might
justify the further crushing of Germany. Theory reacts of course on
practice. The actual policy pursued in the Occupied Area is often
irritating and exasperating in the highest degree. Feeling between
the Germans and the French has to my knowledge grown more sore and
more bitter during the last year. But pinpricks will not produce the
indemnity, and an atmosphere of general exasperation does not promote
the best interests of France. Judged by rough-and-ready standards of
expediency, it ought to be clear that less than forty millions of
people cannot coerce indefinitely more than sixty millions of tough,
hard-working men and women. This blunt truth governs the present
situation. Such a policy if pursued is bound to fail. But before it
breaks down in the turmoil of another war it may extinguish the last
hope of saving European civilisation. Europe presents to-day common
needs and common problems. It will recover as a whole or collapse as a
whole. No illusion can be more fatal than the theory that the safety
and prosperity of one member of the European family can be secured by
the dismemberment and destruction of another. Statesmanship, while
securing for France necessary material guarantees of safety, should
have sought to win her round to a wiser appreciation of the principles
on which her future security must rest. Similarly as regards Germany;
while exacting adequate reparation and reducing her militarists to
impotence, statesmanship should no less seek to encourage the growth
of a new temper among her people which will, by making them decent and
responsible members of the European family, render any repetition of
past horrors impossible.
Lamentable indeed was the failure of the Peace Conference to make
any contribution to these fundamental principles. The Peace Treaty
registers accurately the violences and hatreds of the war. To the
creation of a better state of affairs in the future it makes no
contribution of any kind. Whatever the attitude of France, the
moral failure of England and America as regards the exercise of any
restraining influence is far more culpable. The collapse of President
Wilson, a man of high ideals but without the power of dealing with
facts needful to give them practical effect, is one of the most tragic
chapters in history. Mr. Lloyd George, gifted as he is with vision and
imagination, could have thrown the light of his indisputable qualities
had he so willed over the chaos of Europe. Unhappily he became involved
in a sordid chapter of domestic politics, the consequences of which
hung round his neck like a millstone. The present chaos of Europe is
in no small degree a consequence of the General Election of December
1918 and the temper and policies it inculcated. The British nation was
rushed on that occasion with fatal results to the cause of permanent
peace. The Peace Conference met at Paris in an atmosphere charged with
passion, and passion weighted the scales at every critical issue.
Meanwhile the democracies of the world, impotent to control peace
negotiations the spirit and policy of which became increasingly
unacceptable to all thinking people, looked on helplessly while the
unwieldy vessel of the Conference, buffeted first by one influence and
then by another, drifted on a stormy sea of opportunism towards the
rocks of strife. As for the result, it was well denounced as the Peace
of Dragon’s Teeth by Mr. J. L. Garvin, who throughout the tests of war
and peace devoted his eloquence and great powers of idealism to the
cause first of victory and then of European appeasement.
The Treaty as it stands has sown the world with fresh discord, and
ultimately can lead to nothing but repudiation and revenge. Still
further, the Treaty as it stands is unworkable. Already it shows
signs of breaking down under the weight of its own contradictions. By
demanding too much it bids fair to create a situation in which nothing
will be obtainable. It is not business to tell a bankrupt he must
pay thirty shillings in the pound, and at the same time sit on his
head so as to make it impossible for him to earn thirty pence. If a
bankrupt is to discharge his debts, he must be put into a position to
earn. If he is to be loaded with chains, that spectacle may have its
own satisfaction, but it will not produce money on the credit side.
A hungry bankrupt Germany cannot work to pay off the indemnity on
which France has just claim. If Europe crumbles further; if Bolshevism
finds a new recruiting ground in the anger and despair of a whole
people--where is France likely to stand in this matter of payment?
We must in common fairness recognise how serious are the difficulties
even of a well-intentioned German Government in carrying out the
demands it has to meet. The people as a whole are inexperienced
politically. The nation has had no training in self-government. It
has been run in the past by a highly efficient bureaucracy saturated
in autocratic and Bismarckian traditions. To-day the old machinery of
government is in ruins. We cannot expect that Germany with a wave of
the wand can suddenly produce public men and civil servants of the type
with which we are familiar. The cry that the government is in the hands
of men “steeped in militarism” is far from untrue. The real problem,
however, is to find men of any sort of training or experience in
government work outside the close ring of Prussianism. Inevitably the
public has to rely, anyway for the present, on officials trained in the
old theory that a lie was a virtue so long as it served the State.
From this grave disadvantage there is no immediate escape, and the
circumstance calls for special vigilance and care in our relations with
the German official classes. We can, however, help or hinder the growth
of another spirit. In so far as we support a democratically constituted
German Government and give it some encouragement and consideration, we
shall tend to produce men of a new type. But if these early steps in
democratic government are at each stage to be associated with rebuffs
and humiliations, we play straight, as I have pointed out in an earlier
chapter, into the hands of the military party. The old gang, though
they dare not raise their heads at the moment, are a compact body
among themselves, and desire nothing so ardently as the failure of
constitutional government in Germany. We cannot expect German mentality
to be changed in a night. The new forces must be given time and space
in which to develop.
Further, they must be given encouragement. The situation in Germany
to-day is in many respects dark and difficult. The reactionary forces
are entrenched strongly in more than one direction. We must not
ignore the evil influence of some tens of thousands of embittered and
irreconcilable soldiers and of certain officials of the old régime,
whose careers have been broken and who have nothing to hope from any
constitution acceptable to the democratic mind of Europe. Again, the
old fire-eating doctrines are still to the fore at many centres of
education and have an unfortunate influence on the student life--a
serious fact borne out by much evidence. Thirdly, there is the
danger of the irrecoverable rifle in the back garden--an impossible
administrative problem, as we have found to our cost in Ireland.
Undesirable factors of this character will have proportionate weight
in Germany just so far as the spirit of unrest and despair spreads
through the people. They can only be reduced to insignificance through
the establishment of an ordered and settled government which is in a
position to maintain a decent level of life for the nation, and a life
consistent with a fair measure of national self-respect.
The revision of the Peace Treaty on lines which will bring it into
harmony with enduring principles of justice and right is the crying
need of the hour. A practical point in connection with the present
situation should not be overlooked. The Germans know as well as we do
that modifications of the Treaty are inevitable. So long, however, as
the present unhappy instrument holds the field, the doubtful clauses
offer a most undesirable scope for duplicity and intrigue. The men
of the old tradition to whom I have just referred are experts in
fishing in troubled waters. They have sufficient skill to play off
Allied scruples and hesitations one against another. What we should
aim at is a Treaty just and reasonable in its demands, stripped of
provisions which involve exasperating administrative problems. Above
all, the Treaty should be revised to command the moral assent of the
Allied democracies, an assent wholly lacking in the case of the Treaty
of Versailles. Then the provisions should be enforced rigidly, and
the German Government made plainly to understand that there is to be
neither humbug nor shirking about their fulfilment. There cannot be two
opinions about Germany making the fullest material restitution in her
power for injuries done. Opinions may and do differ fundamentally as to
the manner and spirit in which these claims should be put forward.
If politicians and statesmen turn a deaf ear to the cry of a world
in distress and to a growing demand that the policies pursued should
be reasonable and constructive, the voice of the people themselves
swelling in volume bids fair to overwhelm all triflers with peace. For
despite the bluster of the fire-eaters and a Press which encourages
their empty violence, the world is sick of blood and strife. Germany
has suffered such a defeat as history has never known. Sixty millions
of people, however, virile, disciplined, hard-working, cannot be
obliterated from the map. Greatly though certain zealots may desire the
complete annihilation of the German tribes, vapourings of this kind are
remote from the realm of practical politics. The statesmanship which at
the moment haunts the Chancellories of Europe would not appear to be
of very high quality. But statesmanship of an order infinitely higher
might well recoil appalled from such problems as would result from any
general collapse of the German Government and people.
A far-sighted policy, which while never failing in fairness is withal
generous and reasonable, is as the poles removed from that of a weak
sentimentality which refuses to face the difficult facts of the present
situation. The withdrawal of any great nation from the urgent task of
work and production means loss and detriment to the world at large.
Hence the need to let Germany both eat and work; more, the need to
help her start afresh. She lies a beaten and prostrate nation to-day.
We may push her over the brink and so precipitate new catastrophes. Or
without sentiment and without illusion we may take a longer view; we
may direct our policy towards ultimate ends of appeasement, towards the
establishment of a saner and a better Europe unhaunted by the menace
of vast aggressive forces, towards the recovery by Germany herself of
her old birthright of music, poetry, and philosophy bartered by her
for evil dreams of world power and domination. That new order cannot
be founded on any basis of enduring hatred. We cannot offer the ideal
of the League of Nations with the one hand, and policies which resolve
themselves into starvation and oppression with the other. The policies
are incompatible, and we must choose between them.
The miserable suggestion frequently advanced, that as a victorious
Germany would have ground us to powder, we should do to her as she
would have done to us, cannot be sustained for a moment. Is our policy
to be directed by German standards and influenced by German principles?
All along we have proclaimed loudly that the war was fought so that the
spirit and the principles of Germany should no longer terrorise the
world. To adopt her principles, even in some modified form, is to give
her in defeat a victory lost by her in the field. Our moral pretensions
in this struggle have been very high ones, and moral pretensions are
intolerable unless some effort is made to live up to them.
Not all the dark and sordid happenings which wait inevitably on five
years of world conflagration, not all the dragging in the mire of many
a noble idea, should make us forget the great principles of liberty
and justice which drew us originally into the war. It was no idle
phrase that England staked everything for an ideal when the wrong done
to Belgium brought her into the field. At no moment in her history
has she risen to moral heights so great as when she stepped forth in
August 1914 to vindicate the cause of the oppressed. The principles to
which she consecrated herself in that supreme moment of testing demand
a service no less inexorable from us to-day, though to hold by them
steadily in the dark and stony ways of peace is proving, as we all know
to our cost, a test of endurance greater far than that of the actual
conflict. Yet surely failure at this point is to fail our dead most
miserably--the men who died with the light of a great vision in their
eyes: that vision of a world purged from evil through their sacrifice.
No miracles of leadership won the war. It was won by the grit and by
the endurance of the great mass of the British peoples. And where
statesmanship has failed, we look to the rank and file of the nation
to win the peace. It rests with our countrymen to see that there is no
further deepening of the ruts of hatred and mutual ignorance, for what
England wills in this matter is decisive as regards the future.
And France--France who was in such a special sense the soul of the
war? Is it too much to ask that France, despite her sufferings and
sacrifices, should brace herself for one supreme effort, nobler than
all which have gone before--the effort to make herself greater than the
wrong done to her? Then would her triumph over the dark and evil forces
which brought about the war be supreme indeed. France who means so much
to the mind of Europe, who has given to it eternal principles of truth
and liberty--will not France in this matter rise to the level of her
own heroic stature?
The established democracies of the world have in these troubled times
to hold up each others arms. So long as the great Republic of the West
stands aloof, the chain of brotherhood and common effort is broken
at a vital point. The darkness is greater, the task infinitely more
hard, because she has withdrawn her companionship from what should
have been a united purpose. The intervention of America led to the
complete overthrow of Germany. Without her great resources flung on
the Allied side the war must have had a very different end resulting
in compromise, not victory. We appreciate her difficulties; we do not
presume to dictate. We would, however, beg her to remember she too
has responsibilities as regards the burthen of Europe. But though
the action of the United States may have made the goal of European
appeasement more remote, more difficult to attain, the goal itself is
clear.
The Watch on the Rhine is of value just so far as it helps to clear our
minds as to the true objectives that we are seeking. The soldiers have
done their work well and truly in the war. Their task accomplished, its
results have now passed largely into other hands. Our unworthiness
and unfitness to carry so great a responsibility are but too painfully
apparent. Yet the responsibility is there. The dead have in special
measure left a sacrifice to be perfected. The torch fell lighted from
their hands. Supreme shame would it be if it suffers extinction through
the sordid ambitions and mean desires of men who live because other men
have died. The threat of moral bankruptcy, real as it is, can only be
averted through a steady devotion to ideal ends. Those ideal ends have
been sung by one of our younger poets in words which, to me at least,
sum up the faith I have endeavoured haltingly to express as regards the
future:
“This then is yours; to build exultingly
High and yet more high
The knowledgeable towers above base wars
And sinful surges, reaching up to lay
Dishonouring hands upon your work, and drag
From their uprightness your desires to lag
Among low places with a common gait.
That so Man’s mind not conquered by his clay,
May sit above his fate
Inhabiting the purpose of the stars,
And trade with his Eternity.”
THE END
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Section iv. Part iii.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber using
the original cover and is entered into the public domain.