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A
GENERAL SKETCH
OF THE
EUROPEAN WAR
BY
HILAIRE BELLOC
THE FIRST PHASE
THOMAS NELSON & COMPANY
LONDON, EDINBURGH, PARIS, AND NEW YORK
_First published June 1, 1915_
_Reprinted June 1915_
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION 7
PART I.
THE GENERAL CAUSES OF THE WAR.
(1) THE GERMAN OBJECT 17
(2) CONFLICT PRODUCED BY THE CONTRAST OF THIS GERMAN
ATTITUDE OR WILL WITH THE WILLS OF OTHER NATIONS 23
(3) PRUSSIA 27
(4) AUSTRIA 39
(5) THE PARTICULAR CAUSES OF THE WAR 50
(6) THE IMMEDIATE OCCASION OF THE WAR 64
PART II.
THE FORCES OPPOSED.
(1) THE GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF THE BELLIGERENTS 80
The Geographical Advantages and Disadvantages of
the Germanic Body 86
The Geographical Advantages and Disadvantages of
the Allies 121
(2) THE OPPOSING STRENGTHS 136
The Figures of the First Period, say to
October 1-31, 1914 145
The Figures of the Second Period, say to
April 15-June 1, 1915 151
(3) THE CONFLICTING THEORIES OF WAR 164
PART III.
THE FIRST OPERATIONS.
(1) THE BATTLE OF METZ 316
(2) LEMBERG 322
(3) TANNENBERG 345
(4) THE SPIRITS IN CONFLICT 365
INTRODUCTION.
It is the object of this book, and those which will succeed it in the
same series, to put before the reader the main lines of the European
War as it proceeds. Each such part must necessarily be completed and
issued some little time after the events to which it relates have
passed into history. The present first, or introductory volume, which
is a preface to the whole, covers no more than the outbreak of
hostilities, and is chiefly concerned with an examination of the
historical causes which produced the conflict, an estimate of the
comparative strength of the various combatants, and a description of
the first few days during which these combatants took up their
positions and suffered the first great shocks of the campaigns in East
and West.
But in order to serve as an introduction to the remainder of the
series, it is necessary that the plan upon which these books are to
be constructed should be clearly explained.
There is no intention of giving in detail and with numerous exact maps
the progress of the campaigns. Still less does the writer propose to
examine disputed points of detail, or to enumerate the units employed
over that vast field. His object is to make clear, as far as he is
able, those great outlines of the business which too commonly escape
the general reader.
This war is the largest and the weightiest historical incident which
Europe has known for many centuries. It will surely determine the
future of Europe, and in particular the future of this country. Yet
the comprehension of its movements is difficult to any one not
acquainted with the technical language and the special study of
military history; and the reading of the telegrams day by day, even
though it be accompanied by the criticisms of the military experts in
the newspapers, leaves the mass of men with a most confused conception
of what happened and why it happened.
Now, it is possible, by greatly simplifying maps, by further
simplifying these into clear diagrams, still more by emphasizing what
is essential and by deliberately omitting a crowd of details--by
showing first the framework, as it were, of any principal movement,
and then completing that framework with the necessary furniture of
analysed record--to give any one a conception both of what happened
and of how it happened.
It is even possible, where the writer has seen the ground over which
the battles have been fought (and much of it is familiar to the author
of this), so to describe such ground to the reader that he will in
some sort be able to see for himself the air and the view in which the
things were done: thus more than through any other method will the
things be made real to him. The aim, therefore, of these pages, and of
those that will succeed them, is to give such a general idea of the
campaigns as a whole as will permit whoever has grasped it a secure
comprehension of the forces at work, and of the results of those
forces. It is desired, for example, that the reader of these pages
shall be able to say to himself: "The Germanic body expected to
win--and no wonder, for it had such and such advantages in number and
in equipment.... The first two battles before Warsaw failed, and I can
see why. It was because the difficulties in Russian supply were met by
a contraction of the Russian line.... The 1st German Army was
compelled to retreat before Paris, and I can now see why that was so:
as it turned to envelop the Allied line, a great reserve within the
fortified zone of Paris threatened it, and forced it back."
These main lines, and these only, are attempted in the present book,
and in those that are to follow it in this series.
The disadvantage of such a method is, of course, that the reader must
look elsewhere for details, for the notices of a particular action,
and the records of particular regiments. He must look for these to the
large histories of the war, which will amply supply his curiosity in
good time. But the advantage of the method consists in that it
provides, as I hope, a foundation upon which all this bewildering
multitude of detailed reading can repose.
I set out, then, to give, as it were, the alphabet of the campaign,
and I begin in this volume with the preliminaries to it--that is, its
great political causes, deep rooted in the past; the particular and
immediate causes which led to the outbreak of war; an estimate of the
forces engaged; and the inception of hostilities.
PLAN OF THIS BOOK.
This first volume will cover three parts. In Part I. I shall write of
The Causes of the War. In Part II. I shall Contrast the Forces
Opposed. In Part III. (the briefest) I shall describe the First Shock.
In Part I., where I deal first with the general or historical causes
of the war, later with the particulars, I shall:--
1. Define the German object which led up to it.
2. Show how this object conflicted with the wills of other nations.
3. Briefly sketch the rise of Prussia and of her domination over North
Germany.
4. Define the position of Austria-Hungary in the matter, and thus
close the general clauses.
5. The particular causes of the war will next be dealt with; the
curious challenge thrown down to Great Britain by the German Fleet
_before_ the German Empire had made secure its position on the
Continent; the French advance upon Morocco; the coalition of the
Balkan States against the remainder of the Turkish Empire in Europe.
6. Lastly, in this First Part, I shall describe the immediate occasion
of the war and its surroundings: the ultimatum issued by the
Austro-Hungarian Government to the little kingdom of Servia.
In Part II. I will attempt to present the forces opposed at the
outbreak of war.
First, the contrast in the geographical position of the Germanic
Allies with their enemies, the French, the English, and the Russians.
Secondly, the numbers of trained men prepared and the numbers of
reserves available in at least the first year to the various numbers
in conflict. Thirdly, the way in which the various enemies had thought
of the coming war (which was largely a matter of theory in the lack of
experience); in what either party has been right, and in what wrong,
as events proved; and with what measure of foresight the various
combatants entered the field.
In Part III, I will very briefly describe the original armed
dispositions for combat at the outbreak of war, the German aim upon
the West, and the German orders to the Austrians upon the East; the
overrunning of Belgium, and the German success upon the Sambre; then
the pursuit of the Franco-British forces to the line Paris-Verdun, up
to the eve of the successful counter-offensive undertaken by them in
the first week of September. I will end by describing what were the
contemporary events in the Eastern field: in its northern part the
overrunning of East Prussia by the Russians, and the heavy blow which
the Germans there administered to the invader; in its southern the
Austrian opposition to the Russians on the Galician borders, and the
breakdown of that opposition at Lemberg.
My terminal date for this sketch will be the 5th of September.
A GENERAL SKETCH OF THE EUROPEAN WAR.
PART I.
THE GENERAL CAUSES OF THE WAR.
War is the attempt of two human groups each to impose its will upon
the other by force of arms. This definition holds of the most
righteous war fought in self-defence as much as it does of the most
iniquitous war of mere aggression. The aggressor, for instance,
proposes to take the goods of his victim without the pretence of a
claim. He is attempting to impose his will upon that victim. The
victim, in resisting by force of arms, is no less attempting to impose
his will upon the aggressor; and if he is victorious does effectually
impose that will: for it is his will to prevent the robbery.
Every war, then, arises from some conflict of wills between two human
groups, each intent upon some political or civic purpose, conflicting
with that of his opponent.
War and all military action is but a means to a non-military end, to
be achieved and realized in peace.
Although arguable differences invariably exist as to the right or
wrong of either party in any war, yet the conflicting wills of the two
parties, the irreconcilable political objects which each has put
before itself and the opposition between which has led to conflict,
can easily be defined.
They fall into two classes:--
1. The general objects at which the combatants have long been aiming.
2. The particular objects apparent just before, and actually
provoking, the conflict.
In the case of the present enormous series of campaigns, which occupy
the energies of nearly all Europe, the general causes can be easily
defined, and that without serious fear of contradiction by the
partisans of either side.
On the one hand, the Germanic peoples, especially that great majority
of them now organized as the German Empire under the hegemony of
Prussia, had for fully a lifetime and more been possessed of a certain
conception of themselves which may be not unjustly put into the form
of the following declaration. It is a declaration consonant with most
that has been written from the German standpoint during more than a
generation, and many of its phrases are taken directly from the
principal exponents of the German idea.
(I) THE GERMAN OBJECT.
"We the Germans are in spirit one nation. But we are a nation the
unity of which has been constantly forbidden for centuries by a number
of accidents. None the less that unity has always been an ideal
underlying our lives. Once or twice in the remote past it has been
nearly achieved, especially under the great German emperors of the
Middle Ages. Whenever it has thus been nearly achieved, we Germans
have easily proved ourselves the masters of other societies around us.
Most unfortunately our very strength has proved our ruin time and
again by leading us into adventures, particularly adventures in
Italy, which took the place of our national ideal for unity and
disturbed and swamped it. The reason we have been thus supreme
whenever we were united or even nearly united lay in the fact, which
must be patent to every observer, that our mental, moral, and
physical characteristics render us superior to all rivals. The German
or Teutonic race can everywhere achieve, other things being equal,
more than can any other race. Witness the conquest of the Roman Empire
by German tribes; the political genius, commercial success, and final
colonial expansion of the English, a Teutonic people; and the peculiar
strength of the German races resident within their old homes on the
Rhine, the Danube, the Weser, and the Elbe, whenever they were not
fatally disunited by domestic quarrel or unwise foreign ideals. It was
we who revivified the declining society of Roman Gaul, and made it
into the vigorous mediaeval France that was ruled from the North. It
was we who made and conquered the heathen Slavs threatening Europe
from the East, and who civilized them so far as they could be
civilized. We are, in a word, and that patently not only to ourselves
but to all others, the superior and leading race of mankind; and you
have but to contrast us with the unstable Celt--who has never produced
a State--the corrupt and now hopelessly mongrel Mediterranean or
'Latin' stock, the barbarous and disorderly Slav, to perceive at once
the truth of all we say.
[Illustration: Sketch 1.]
"It so happens that the various accidents which interrupted our
strivings for unity permitted other national groups, inferior morally
and physically to our own, to play a greater part than such an
inferiority warranted; and the same accidents permitted men of
Teutonic stock, not inhabiting the ancient homes of the Teutons, but
emigrated therefrom and politically separated from the German Empire,
to obtain advantages in which we ourselves should have had a share,
but which we missed. Thus England, a Teutonic country, obtained her
vast colonial empire while we had not a ship upon the sea.
"France, a nation then healthier than it is now, but still of much
baser stock than our own, played for centuries the leading part in
Western Europe; she is even to-day 'over-capitalized,' as it were,
possessing a far greater hold over the modern world than her real
strength warrants. Even the savage Slavs have profited by our former
disunion, and the Russian autocracy not only rules millions of
German-speaking subjects, but threatens our frontiers with its great
numbers of barbarians, and exercises over the Balkan Peninsula, and
therefore over the all-important position of Constantinople, a power
very dangerous to European culture as a whole, and particularly to our
own culture--which is, of course, by far the highest culture of all.
"Some fifty years ago, acting upon the impulse of a group of great
writers and thinkers, our statesmen at last achieved that German unity
which had been the unrealized ideal of so many centuries. In a series
of wars we accomplished that unity, and we amply manifested our
superiority when we were once united by defeating with the greatest
ease and in the most fundamental fashion the French, whom the rest of
Europe then conceived to be the chief military power.
"From that moment we have incontestably stood in the sight of all as
the strongest people in the world, and yet because other and lesser
nations had the start of us, our actual international position, our
foreign possessions, the security that should be due to so supreme an
achievement, did not correspond to our real strength and abilities.
England had vast dependencies, and had staked out the unoccupied world
as her colonies. We had no colonies and no dependencies. France,
though decadent, was a menace to our peace upon the West. We could
have achieved the thorough conquest and dismemberment of France at any
time in the last forty years, and yet during the whole of that time
France was adding to her foreign possessions in Tunis, Madagascar, and
Tonkin, latterly in Morocco, while we were obtaining nothing. The
barbarous Russians were increasing constantly in numbers, and somewhat
perfecting their insufficient military machine without any
interference from us, grave as was the menace from them upon our
Eastern frontier.
"It was evident that such a state of things could not endure. A nation
so united and so immensely strong could not remain in a position of
artificial inferiority while lesser nations possessed advantages in no
way corresponding to their real strength. The whole equilibrium of
Europe was unstable through this contrast between what Germany might
be and what she was, and a struggle to make her what she might be
from what she was could not be avoided.
"Germany must, in fulfilment of a duty to herself, obtain colonial
possessions at the expense of France, obtain both colonial possessions
and sea-power at the expense of England, and put an end, by campaigns
perhaps defensive, but at any rate vigorous, to the menace of Slav
barbarism upon the East. She was potentially, by her strength and her
culture, the mistress of the modern world, the chief influence in it,
and the rightful determinant of its destinies. She must by war pass
from a potential position of this kind to an actual position of
domination."
Such was the German mood, such was the fatuous illusion which produced
this war. It had at its service, as we shall see later, _numbers_,
and, backed by this superiority of numbers, it counted on victory.
(2) CONFLICT PRODUCED BY THE CONTRAST OF THIS GERMAN ATTITUDE OR
WILL WITH THE WILLS OF OTHER NATIONS.
When we have clearly grasped the German attitude, as it may thus be
not unfairly expressed, we shall not find it difficult to conceive
why a conflict between such a will and other wills around it broke
out.
We need waste no time in proving the absurdity of the German
assumptions, the bad history they involve, and the perverse and
twisted perspective so much vanity presupposes. War can never be
prevented by discovering the moral errors of an opponent. It comes
into being because that opponent does not believe them to be moral
errors; and in the attempt to understand this war and its causes, we
should only confuse ourselves if we lost time over argument upon
pretensions even as crassly unreal as these.
It must be enough for the purposes of this to accept the German will
so stated, and to see how it necessarily conflicts with the English
will, the French will, the Russian will, and sooner or later, for that
matter, with every other national will in Europe.
In the matter of sea-power England would answer: "Unless we are
all-powerful at sea, our very existence is imperilled." In the matter
of her colonies and dependencies England would answer: "We may be a
Teutonic people or we may not. All that kind of thing is pleasant talk
for the academies. But if you ask whether we will allow any part of
our colonies to become German or any part of our great dependencies to
fall under German rule, the answer is in the negative."
The French would answer: "We do not happen to think that we are either
decadent or corrupt, nor do we plead guilty to any other of your vague
and very pedantic charges; but quite apart from that, on the concrete
point of whether we propose to be subjugated by a foreign Power,
German or other, the answer is in the negative. Our will is here in
conflict with yours. And before you can proceed to any act of mastery
over us, you will have to fight. Moreover, we shall not put aside the
duty of ultimately fighting you so long as a population of two
millions, who feel themselves to be French (though most of them are
German-speaking) and who detest your rule, are arbitrarily kept in
subjection by you in Alsace-Lorraine."
The Russians would reply: "We cannot help being numerically stronger
than you, and we do not propose to diminish our numbers even if we
could. We do not think we are barbaric; and as to our leadership of
the Slav people in the Balkans, that seems as right and natural to us,
particularly on religious grounds, as any such bond could be. It may
interfere with your ambitions; but if you propose that we should
abandon so obvious an attitude of leadership among the Slavs, the
answer is in the negative." There is here, therefore, again a conflict
of wills.
In general, what the German peoples desired, based upon what they
believed themselves to be, was sharply at issue with what the English
people, what the French people, what the Russian people respectively
desired. Their desires were also based upon what _they_ believed
themselves to be, and they thought themselves to be very different
from what Germany thought them to be. The English did not believe that
they had sneaked their empire; the French did not believe that they
were moribund; the Russians did not believe that they were savages.
It was impossible that the German will should impose itself without
coming at once into conflict with these other national wills. It was
impossible that the German ideal should seek to realize itself without
coming into conflict with the mere desire to live, let alone the
self-respect, of everybody else.
And the consequence of such a conflict in ideals and wills translated
into practice was this war.
* * * * *
But the war would not have come nor would it have taken the shape that
it did, but for two other factors in the problem which we must next
consider. These two other factors are, first, the position and
tradition of Prussia among the German States; secondly, the peculiar
authority exercised by the Imperial House of Hapsburg-Lorraine at
Vienna over its singularly heterogeneous subjects.
(3) PRUSSIA.
The Germans have always been, during their long history, a race
inclined to perpetual division and sub-division, accompanied by war
and lesser forms of disagreement between the various sections. Their
friends have called this a love of freedom, their enemies political
incompetence; but, without giving it a good or a bad name, the plain
fact has been, century after century, that the various German tribes
would not coalesce. Any one of them was always willing to take service
with the Roman Empire, in the early Roman days, against any one of the
others, and though there have been for short periods more or less
successful attempts to form one nation of them all in imitation of the
more civilized States to the west and south, these attempts have never
succeeded for very long.
But it so happens that about two hundred years ago, or a little more,
there appeared one body of German-speaking men rather different from
the rest, and capable ultimately of leading the rest, or at least a
majority of the rest.
[Illustration: Sketch 2.]
I use the words "German-speaking" and "rather different" because this
particular group of men, though speaking German, were of less pure
German blood than almost any other of the peoples that spoke that
tongue. They were the product of a conquest undertaken late in the
Middle Ages by German knights over a mixed Pagan population,
Lithuanian and Slavonic, which inhabited the heaths and forests along
the Baltic Sea. These German knights succeeded in their task, and
compelled the subject population to accept Christianity, just as the
Germans themselves had been compelled to accept it by their more
powerful and civilized neighbours the French hundreds of years before.
The two populations of this East Baltic district, the large majority
which was Slavonic and Lithuanian, and the minority which was really
German, mixed and produced a third thing, which we now know as the
_Prussian_. The cradle of this Prussian race was, then, all that flat
country of which Koenigsberg and Danzig are the capitals, but
especially Koenigsberg--"King's Town"--where the monarchs of this
remote people were crowned. By an historical accident, which we need
not consider, the same dynasty was, after it had lost all claim to
separate kingship, merged in the rulers of the Mark of Brandenburg, a
somewhat more German but still mixed district lying also in the Baltic
plain, but more towards the west, and the official title of the
Prussian ruler somewhat more than two hundred years ago was the
Elector of Brandenburg. These rulers of the Mark of Brandenburg were a
family bearing the title of Hohenzollern, a castle in South Germany,
by which name they are still distinguished. The palace of these
Hohenzollerns was henceforward at Berlin.
Now, much at the same time that the civil wars were being fought in
England--that is, not quite three hundred years ago--the Reformation
had produced in Germany also very violent quarrels. Vienna, which was
the seat of the Imperial House, stood for the Catholic or traditional
cause, and most Germans adhered to that cause. But certain of the
Northern German principalities and counties took up the side of the
Reformation. A terrible war, known as the Thirty Years' War, was
fought between the two factions. It enormously reduced the total
population of Germany. In the absence of exact figures we only have
wild guesses, such as a loss of half or three-quarters. At any rate,
both from losses from the adherence of many princes to the Protestant
cause and from the support lent to that cause for political reasons by
Catholic France, this great civil war in Germany left the Protestant
part more nearly equal in numbers to the Catholic part, and, among
other things, it began to make the Elector of Brandenburg with his
Prussians particularly prominent as the champion of the Protestant
cause. For, of all the warring towns, counties, principalities, and
the rest, Prussia had in particular shown military aptitude.
From that day to this the advance of Prussia as, first, the champion,
then the leader, and at last the master of Northern Germany as a whole
(including many Catholic parts in the centre and the south), has been
consistent and almost uninterrupted. The "Great Elector" (as he was
called) formed an admirable army some two hundred years ago. His
grandson Frederick formed a still better one, and by his great
capacities as a general, as well as by the excellence of his troops,
gave Prussia a military reputation in the middle of the eighteenth
century which has occasionally been eclipsed, but has never been
extinguished.
Frederick the Great did more than this. He codified and gave
expression, as it were, to the Prussian spirit, and the manifestation
of that spirit in international affairs is generally called the
"Frederician Tradition."
This "Frederician Tradition" must be closely noted by the reader,
because it is the principal moral cause of the present war. It may be
briefly and honestly put in the following terms:--
"The King of Prussia shall do all that may seem to advantage the
kingdom of Prussia among the nations, notwithstanding any European
conventions or any traditions of Christendom, or even any of those
wider and more general conventions which govern the international
conduct of other Christian peoples."
For instance, if a convention of international morals has arisen--as
it did arise very strongly, and was kept until recent times--that
hostilities should not begin without a formal declaration of war, the
"Frederician Tradition" would go counter to this, and would say: "If
ultimately it would be to the advantage of Prussia to attack without
declaration of war, then this convention may be neglected."
Or, again, treaties solemnly ratified between two Governments are
generally regarded as binding. And certainly a nation that never kept
such a treaty for more than a week would find itself in a position
where it was impossible to make any treaties at all. Still, if upon a
vague calculation of men's memories, the acuteness of the
circumstance, the advantage ultimately to follow, and so on, it be to
the advantage of Prussia to break such solemn treaty, then such a
treaty should be broken.
It will be apparent that what is called the "Frederician Tradition,"
which is the soul of Prussia in her international relations, is not an
unprincipled thing. It has a principle, and that principle is a
patriotic desire to strengthen Prussia, which particular appetite
overweighs all general human morals and far outweighs all special
Christian or European morals.
This doctrine of the "Frederician Tradition" does not mean that the
Prussian statesmen wantonly do wrong, whether in acts of cruelty or in
acts of treason and bad faith. What it means is that, wherever they
are met by the dilemma, "Shall I do _this_, which is to the advantage
of my country but opposed to European and common morals, or _that_,
which is consonant with those morals but to the disadvantage of my
country?" they choose the former and not the latter course.
Prussia, endowed with this doctrine and possessed of a most excellent
military organization and tradition, stood out as the first military
power in Europe until the French Revolution. The wars of the French
Revolution and of Napoleon upset this prestige, and in the battle of
Jena (1806) seemed to have destroyed it. But it was too strong to be
destroyed. The Prussian Government was the first of Napoleon's allies
to betray Napoleon _after_ the Russians had broken his power (1812).
They took part with the other Allies in finishing off Napoleon after
the Russian campaign (1813-14); they were present with decisive effect
upon the final field of Waterloo (1815), and remained for fifty years
afterwards the great military power they had always been. They had
further added to their dominions such great areas in Northern
Germany, beyond the original areas inhabited by the true Prussian
stock, that they were something like half of the whole Northern German
people when, in 1864, they entered into the last phase of their
dominion. They began by asking Austria to help them in taking from
Denmark, a small and weak country, not only those provinces of hers
which spoke German, but certain districts which were Danish as well.
France and England were inclined to interfere, but they did not yet
understand the menace Prussia might be in the future, and they
neglected to act. Two years later Prussia suddenly turned upon
Austria, her ally, defeated her in a very short campaign, and insisted
upon Austria's relinquishing for the future all claims over any part
of the German-speaking peoples, save some ten millions in the valley
of the Middle Danube and of the Upper Elbe. Four years later again, in
1870, Prussia having arranged, after various political experiments
which need not be here detailed, for the support of all the German
States except Austria, fought a war with France, in which she was
immediately and entirely successful, and in the course of which the
rulers of the other German States consented (1) to give the
Hohenzollern-Prussian dynasty supreme military power for the future
over them, under the hereditary title of German Emperors; (2) to form
a united nation under the more or less despotic power of these
emperors.
This latter point, the national unity, though really highly
centralized at Berlin, especially on the military side, was softened
in its rigour by a number of very wise provisions. A great measure of
autonomy was left to the more important of the lesser States,
particularly Catholic Bavaria; local customs were respected; and,
above all, local dynasties were flattered, and maintained in all the
trappings of sovereign rank.
From that date--that is, for the last forty-four years--there has been
a complete _Northern_ Germany, one strong, centralized, and thoroughly
co-ordinated nation, in which the original Prussian domination is not
only numerically far the greatest element, but morally overshadows all
the rest. The spiritual influence ruling this state issues from Berlin
and from the Prussian soul, although a large minority consist of
contented but respectful Catholics, who, in all national matters,
wholly sympathize with and take their cue from the Protestant North.
So far one may clearly see what kind of power it is that has initiated
the German theory of supremacy which we have described above, is
prepared to lead it to battle, and is quite certain of leading it to
victory.
But we note--the fatal mark in all German history--that the unity is
not complete. The ten millions of Austrian Germans were, when Prussia
achieved this her highest ambition, deliberately left outside the new
German Empire. And this was done because, in Prussian eyes, a
so-called "German unity" was but a means to an end, and that end the
aggrandizement of the Hohenzollern dynasty. To include so many
southern and Catholic Germans would have endangered the mastery of
Berlin. The fact that Austria ruled a number of non-German subjects
far larger than her Austrian population would further have endangered
the Hohenzollern position had Austria been admitted to the new German
Empire, and had the consolidation of all Germans into one true state
been really and loyally attempted. Lastly, it would have been
impossible to destroy the historic claims to leadership of the
Imperial Hapsburgs, and that, more than anything else, was the rivalry
the Hohenzollerns dreaded. Once more had the Germans proved themselves
incapable of, and unwilling to submit to, the discipline of unity.
What part, then, was Austria, thus left out, to play in the
international activity of Prussia in the future? What part especially
was she to play when Prussia, at the head of Northern Germany, should
go out to impose the will of that Germany and of herself upon the rest
of the world? That is the next question we must answer before we can
hope to understand the causes of the present war in their entirety.
(4) AUSTRIA.
Austria, or, more strictly speaking, the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
means no more than the congeries of States governed each separately
and all in combination by the head of the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine.
Of these various States only one is German-speaking as a whole, and
that is the Austrian State proper, the "Eastern States" (for that is
what the word "Austria" originally meant) which Christendom erected
round the Roman and Christian frontier town of Vienna to withstand the
pressure of the heathen Slavs and Mongol Magyars surging against it
upon this frontier.
The complexity of the various sections which make up the realm of the
present Emperor Francis Joseph, the present head of the House of
Hapsburg-Lorraine, would be only confusing if it were detailed in so
general a description as this. We must be content with the broad lines
of the thing, which are as follows:--
[Illustration: Sketch 3.]
From the Upper Danube and its valley--all the basin of it, one may
say, down to a point about twenty miles below Vienna--is the original
Austrian State; German-speaking as a whole, and the historic centre of
the entire agglomeration. East of this is the far larger state of
Hungary, and Hungary is the valley of the river Danube, from where the
German-speaking boundary cuts it, just below Vienna down to the Iron
Gates, up to the crest of the Carpathians. These two great units of
Austria proper and of Hungary have round them certain frills or edges.
On the north are two great bodies, Slav in origin, Bohemia and
Galicia; on the south another Slav body, separated from the rest for
centuries by the eruption of the Magyars from Asia in the Dark Ages,
and these Slav bodies are represented by Croatia, by much of Dalmatia,
and latterly by Bosnia and Herzegovina, which have been governed by
Austria for a generation, and formally annexed by her with the consent
of Europe seven years ago. Finally, there is a strip, or, to be more
accurate, there are patches of Italian-speaking people, all along the
coasts of the Adriatic, and occupying the ports governed by Austria
along the eastern and northern coast of that sea. There is also a belt
of Alpine territory of Italian speech--the Trentino--still in Austrian
hands.
This very general description gives, however, far too rough an idea of
the extraordinarily complicated territories of the House of Hapsburg.
Thus, there are considerable German-speaking colonies in Hungary, and
these, oddly enough, are more frequent in the east than in the west
of that State. Again, the whole western slope of the Carpathians is,
so far as the mass of the population is concerned, Roumanian in
tongue, custom, and race. Bohemia, though Slavonic in origin, is
regularly enframed along its four sides by belts of German-speaking
people, and was mainly German-speaking until a comparatively recent
revival of its native Slavonic tongue, the Czech. Again, though the
Magyar language is Mongolian, like the Turkish, centuries of Christian
and European admixture have left very little trace of the original
race. Lastly, in all the north-eastern corner of this vast and
heterogeneous territory, something like a quarter of the population is
Jewish.
The Western student, faced with so extraordinary a puzzle of race and
language, may well wonder what principle of unity there is lying
behind it, and, indeed, this principle of unity is not easy to find.
Some have sought it in religion, pointing out that the overwhelming
majority of these various populations are Catholic, in communion with
Rome; and, indeed, this Catholic tincture or colour has a great deal
to do with the Austro-Hungarian unity; and of late years the chief
directing policy of the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine has been to pose as
the leader of the Catholic Slavs against the Slavs belonging to the
Greek Church.
But this principle of unity is not the true one, for two reasons:
first, that the motive leading the House of Hapsburg to the difficult
task of so complicated a government is not a religious motive; and,
secondly, because this religious unity is subject to profound
modification. Hungary, though Catholic in its majority, contains, and
is largely governed by, powerful Protestant families, who are
supported by considerable bodies of Protestant population. The Greek
Church is the religious profession of great numbers along the Lower
Danube valley and to the south of the river Save. There are in Bosnia
a considerable number of Mahomedans even, and I have already mentioned
the numerous Jewish population of the north-east, particularly in
Galicia.
The true principle of unity in what has hitherto been the
Austro-Hungarian Empire is twofold. It consists, first, in the
reigning family, considerable personal attachment to which is felt in
every section of its dominions, utterly different as these are one
from another; and, secondly (a more important point), in the
historical development of the State.
It is this last matter which explains all, and which can make us
understand why a realm so astonishingly ill constructed was brought
into the present struggle as one force, and that force a force allied
to, and in a military sense identical with, modern Prussian Germany.
For the historical root of Austria-Hungary is German. Of its
population (some fifty-one millions) you may say that only about a
quarter are German-speaking (less than another quarter are
Magyar-speaking, most of the rest Slavonic in speech, together with
some proportion of Roumanian and Italian).
But it is from this German _quarter_ and from the emperor at their
head that the historical growth of the State depends, because this
German _quarter_ was the original Christian nucleus and the civilized
centre, which had for its mission the reduction of Slavonic and Magyar
barbarism. The Slavs of the Bohemian quadrilateral were subjected,
not indeed by conquest, but by a process of culture, to Vienna. The
crown of Hungary, when it fell by marriage to the Hapsburgs, continued
that tradition; and when the Empress Maria-Theresa, in the last
century, participated in the abominable crime of Frederick the Great
of Prussia, and took her share of the dismembered body of Poland (now
called the Austrian province of Galicia), that enormous blunder was,
in its turn, a German blunder undertaken under the example of Northern
Germany, and as part of a movement German in spirit and origin. The
same is true even of the very latest of the Austrian developments, the
annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The act was that of Vienna, but
the spirit behind it, perhaps the suggestion of it, and the support
that made it possible came from Berlin.
In a word, if you could interrogate the Genius of the Hapsburgs and
ask it for what their dominion stood, it would tell you that for
uninterrupted centuries they had stood for the German effort to
repress or to overcome pressure upon the German peoples from the
East. And that is still their role. They have come into this war, for
instance, as the servants of Prussia, not because Prussia threatened
or overawed them, but because they felt they had, in common with
Prussia, the mission of withstanding the Slav, or of tolerating the
Slav only as a subject; because, that is, they feared, and were
determined to resist, Russia, and the smaller Slavonic States, notably
Servia to the south, which are in the retinue of Russia.
* * * * *
We may sum up, then, and say that the fundamental conflict of wills in
Europe, which has produced this general war, is a conflict between the
German will, organized by Prussia to overthrow the ancient Christian
tradition of Europe (to _her_ advantage directly; and indirectly, as
she proposes, to the advantage of a supposedly necessary German
governance of the world under Prussian organization), and the will of
the more ancient and better founded Western and Latin tradition to
which the sanctity of separate national units profoundly appeals, and
a great deal more which is, in their eyes, civilization. In this
conflict, Prussia has called upon and received the support of not only
the German Empire, which she controls, but also the Hapsburg monarchy,
controlling the organized forces of Austria-Hungary; while there has
appeared against this strange Prussian claim all that values the
Christian tradition of Europe, and in particular the doctrine of
national freedom, with very much else--which very much else are the
things by which we of the civilized West and South, who have hitherto
proved the creators of the European world, live and have our being.
Allied with us, by the accident that this same German claim threatens
them also, is the young new world of the Slavs.
It is at this final point of our examination that we may see the
immensity of the issues upon which the war turns. The two parties are
really fighting for their lives; that in Europe which is arrayed
against the Germanic alliance would not care to live if it should fail
to maintain itself against the threat of that alliance. It is for them
life and death. On the other side, the Germans having propounded this
theory of theirs, or rather the Prussians having propounded it for
them, there is no rest possible until they shall either have "made
good" to our destruction, or shall have been so crushed that a
recurrence of the menace from them will for the future be impossible.
There is here no possibility of such a "draw" or "stalemate" as was
the result, for instance, of the reduction of Louis XIV.'s ambition,
or of the great revolutionary effort throughout Europe which ended
with the fall of Napoleon. Louis XIV.'s ambition cast over Europe,
which received it favourably, the colour of French culture. The
Revolutionary Wars were fought for a principle which, if it did not
appeal universally to men, appealed at least to all those millions
whose instincts were democratic in every country. But in this war
there is no such common term. No one outside the districts led by
Prussia desires a Prussian life, and perhaps most, certainly many, of
those whom Prussia now leads are in different degrees unwilling to
continue a Prussian life. The fight, in a word, is not like a fight
with a man who, if he beats you, may make you sign away some property,
or make you acknowledge some principle to which you are already half
inclined; it is like a fight with a man who says, "So long as I have
life left in me, I will make it my business to kill you." And fights
of that kind can never reach a term less absolute than the destruction
of offensive power in one side or the other. A peace not affirming
complete victory in this great struggle could, of its nature, be no
more than a truce.
* * * * *
So much for the really important and the chief thing which we have to
understand--the general causes of the war.
Now let us turn to the particular causes. We shall find these to be,
not like the general causes, great spiritual attitudes, but, as they
always are, a sequence of restricted and recent _events_.
(5) THE PARTICULAR CAUSES OF THE WAR.
After the great victories of Prussia a generation ago (the spoliation
of Denmark in 1864, the supremacy established over Austria in 1866,
the crushing defeat of France and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine,
with two millions of people in 1870-1), Europe gradually drifted into
being an armed camp, the great forces of which were more or less in
equilibrium. Prussia had, for the moment at least, achieved all that
she desired. The French were for quite twenty years ardently desirous
of recovering what they had lost; but Europe would not allow the war
to be renewed, and Prussia, now at the head of a newly constituted
German Empire, made an arrangement with Austria and with Italy to curb
the French desire for recovery. The French, obviously inferior before
this triple alliance, gradually persuaded the Russians to support
them; but the Russians would not support the French in provoking
another great war, and with the French themselves the old feeling
gradually deadened. It did not disappear--any incident might have
revived it--but the anxious desire for immediate war when the
opportunity should come got less and less, and at the end of the
process, say towards 1904, when a new generation had grown up in all
the countries concerned, there was a sort of deadlock, every one very
heavily armed, the principal antagonists, France and Germany, armed
to their utmost, but the European States, as a whole, unwilling to
allow any one of them to break the peace.
It was about this moment that Prussia committed what the future
historian will regard, very probably, as the capital blunder in her
long career of success. She began to build a great fleet. Here the
reader should note two very important consequences of the great
Prussian victories which had taken place a generation before. The
first was the immense expansion of German industrialism. Germany, from
an agricultural State, became a State largely occupied in mining,
smelting, spinning, and shipbuilding; and there went with this
revolution, as there always goes with modern industrialism, a large
and unhealthy increase of population. The German Empire, after its war
with France, was roughly equal to the population of the French; but
the German Empire, after this successful industrial experiment, the
result of its victories, was much more than half as large again in
population as the French (68 to 39).
Secondly, the German Empire developed a new and very large maritime
commerce. This second thing did not follow, as some have imagined it
does, from the first. Germany might have exported largely without
exporting in her own ships. The creation of Germany's new mercantile
marine was a deliberate part of the general Prussian policy of
expansion. It was heavily subsidized, especially directed into the
form of great international passenger lines, and carefully
co-ordinated with the rest of the Prussian scheme throughout the
world.
At a date determined by the same general policy, and somewhat
subsequent to the first creation of this mercantile marine, came the
decision to build a great fleet. Now, it so happens that Great Britain
alone among the Powers of Europe depends for her existence upon
supremacy at sea, and particularly upon naval superiority in the
Narrow Seas to the east and the south of the British islands.
Such a necessity is, of course, a challenge to the rest of the world,
and it would be ridiculous to expect the rest of the world to accept
that challenge without protest. But a necessity this naval policy of
Great Britain remains none the less. The moment some rival or group
of rivals can overcome her fleet, her mere physical livelihood is in
peril. She cannot be certain of getting her food. She cannot be
certain of getting those foreign materials the making up of which
enables her to purchase her food. Further, her dominions are scattered
oversea, and supremacy at sea is her only guarantee of retaining the
various provinces of her dominion.
It is a case which has happened more than once before in the history
of the world. Great commercial seafaring States have arisen; they have
always had the same method of government by a small, wealthy class,
the same ardent patriotism, the same scattered empire, and the same
inexorable necessity of maintaining supremacy at sea. Only one Power
had hitherto rendered this country anxious for the Narrow Seas: that
Power was France, and it only controlled one-half of the two branches
of the Narrow Seas, the North Sea and the Channel. It had been for
generations a cardinal piece of English policy that the French Fleet
should be watched, the English Fleet maintained overwhelmingly
superior to it, and all opportunities for keeping France engaged with
other rivals used to the advantage of this country. On this account
English policy leant, on the whole, towards the German side, during
all the generation of rivalry between France and Germany which
followed the war of 1870.
But when the Germans began to build their fleet, things changed. The
Germans had openly given Europe to understand that they regarded
Holland and Belgium, and particularly the port of Antwerp, as
ultimately destined to fall under their rule or into their system.
Their fleet was specifically designed for meeting the British Fleet;
it corresponded to no existing considerable colonial empire, and
though the development of German maritime commerce was an excuse for
it, it was only an excuse. Indeed, the object of obtaining supremacy
at sea was put forward fairly clearly by the promoters of the whole
scheme. Great Britain was therefore constrained to transfer the weight
of her support to Russia and to France, and to count on the whole as a
force opposed, for the first time in hundreds of years, to North
Germany in the international politics of Europe. Similarity of
religion (which is a great bond) and a supposed identity (and partly
real similarity) of race were of no effect compared with this
sentiment of necessity.
Here it is important to note that the transference of British support
from one continental group to another neither produced aggression by
Great Britain nor pointed to any intention of aggression. It is a
plain matter of fact, which all future history will note, that the
very necessity in English eyes of English supremacy at sea, and the
knowledge that such a supremacy was inevitably a provocation to
others, led to the greatest discretion in the use of British naval
strength, and, in general, to a purely defensive and peaceful policy
upon the part of the chief maritime power. It would, indeed, have been
folly to have acted otherwise, for there was nothing to prevent the
great nations, our rivals, if they had been directly menaced by the
British superiority at sea, from beginning to build great fleets,
equal or superior to our own. Germany alone pursued this policy, with
no excuse save an obvious determination to undo the claim of the
British Fleet.
I have called this a blunder, and, from the point of view of the
German policy, it was a blunder. For if the Prussian dynasty set out,
as it did, to make itself the chief power in the world, its obvious
policy was to deal with its enemies in detail. It ought not, at any
cost, to have quarrelled with Russia until it had finally disposed of
France. If it was incapable, through lack of subtlety, to prevent the
Franco-Russian group from forming, it should at least have made itself
the master of that group before gratuitously provoking the rivalry of
Great Britain. But "passion will have all now," and the supposedly
cold and calculating nature of Prussian effort has about it something
very crudely emotional, as the event has shown. From about ten years
ago Prussian Germany had managed to array against itself not only the
old Franco-Russian group but Great Britain as well.
This arrangement would not, however, have led to war. Equilibrium was
still perfectly maintained, and the very strong feeling throughout all
the great States of Europe that a disturbance of the peace would mean
some terrible catastrophe, to be avoided at all costs, was as
powerful as ever.
The true origin of disturbance, the first overt act upon which you can
put your finger and say, "Here the chain of particular causes leading
to the great war begins," was the revolution in Turkey. This
revolution took place in the year 1908, and put more or less
permanently into power at Constantinople a group of men based upon
Masonic influence, largely Western in training, largely composed of
Jewish elements, known as the "Young Turks."
The first result of this revolution, followed as it inevitably was by
the temporary weakening in international power which accompanies all
civil war at its outset, was the declaration by Austria that she would
regard the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina--hitherto only
administrated by her and nominally still Turkish--as her own
territory.
It was but a formal act, but it proved of vast consequence. It was an
open declaration by a Germanic Power that the hopes of the Servians,
the main population of the district and a Slav nation closely bound
to Russia in feeling, were at an end; that Servia must content herself
with such free territory as she had, and give up all hope of a
completely independent State uniting all Servians within its borders.
It was as though Austria had said, "I intend in future to be the great
European Power in the Balkans, Slav though the Balkans are, and I
challenge Russia to prevent me." The Russian Government, thus
challenged, would perhaps have taken the occasion to make war had not
the French given it to be understood that they would not imperil
European peace for such an object. The Prussian Government of the
German Empire had, in all this crisis, acted perhaps as the leader,
certainly as the protector and supporter of Austria; and when France
thus refused to fight, and Russia in turn gave way, the whole thing
was regarded, not only in Germany but throughout the world, as
equivalent to an armed victory. Observers whose judgment and criticism
are of weight, even in the eyes of trained international agents,
proclaimed what had happened to be as much a Prussian success as
though the Prussian and Austrian armies had met in the field and had
defeated the Russian and the French forces.
The next step in this series was a challenge advanced by Germany
against that arrangement whereby Morocco, joining as it did to French
North Africa, should be abandoned to French influence, so far as
England was concerned, in exchange for the French giving up certain
rights of interference they had in the English administration of
Egypt, and one or two other minor points. Germany, advancing from a
victorious position acquired over the Bosnian business, affirmed (in
the year 1911) her right to be consulted over the Moroccan settlement.
Nor were the French permitted to occupy Morocco until they had ceded
to Germany a portion of their African colony of the Congo. This
transaction was confused by many side issues. German patriots did not
regard it as a sufficient success, though French patriots certainly
regarded it as a grave humiliation. But perhaps the chief consequence
of the whole affair was the recrudescence in the French people as a
whole of a temper, half forgotten, which provoked them to withstand
the now greatly increased power of the German Empire and of its ally,
and to determine that if such challenges were to continue unchecked
during the coming years, the national position of France would be
forfeited.
Following upon this crisis came, in the next year--still a consequence
of the Turkish Revolution--the sudden determination of the Balkan
States, including Greece, to attack Turkey. It was the King of
Montenegro (a small Slav State which had always maintained its
independence) who fired the first shot upon the 8th of October, 1912,
with his own hand. In the course of that autumn the Balkan Allies were
universally successful, failed only in taking Constantinople itself,
reduced Turkey in Europe to an insignificant strip of territory near
the capital itself, and proceeded to settle the conquered territory
according to an agreement made by them before the outbreak of
hostilities.
But here the Germanic Powers again intervened. The defeated Turkish
Army had been trained by German officers upon a German system; the
expansion of German and Austrian political military influence
throughout the Near East was a cardinal part of the German creed and
policy. Through Austria the Balkans were to be dominated at last, and
Austria, at this critical moment, vetoed the rational settlement which
the allied Balkan States had agreed to among themselves. She would not
allow the Servians to annex those territories inhabited by men of
their race, and to reach their natural outlet to the sea upon the
shores of the Adriatic. She proposed the creation of a novel State of
Albania under a German prince, to block Servia's way to the sea. She
further proposed to Servia compensation by way of Servia's annexing
the territory round Monastir, which had a Bulgarian population, and to
Bulgaria the insufficient compensation of taking over, farther to the
east, territory that was not Bulgarian at all, but mixed Greek and
Turkish.
The whole thing was characteristically German in type, ignoring and
despising national feeling and national right, creating artificial
boundaries, and flagrantly sinning against the European sense of
patriotism. A furious conflict between the various members of the
former Balkan Alliance followed; but the settlement which Austria had
virtually imposed remained firm, and the third of the great Germanic
steps affirming the growing Germanic scheme in Europe had been taken.
But it had been taken at the expense of further and very gravely
shaking the already unstable armed equilibrium of Europe.
The German Empire foresaw the coming strain; a law was passed
immediately increasing the numbers of men to be trained to arms within
its boundaries, and ultimately increasing that number so largely as to
give to Germany alone a very heavy preponderance--a preponderance of
something like thirty per cent.--over the corresponding number trained
in France.
To this move France could not reply by increasing her armed forces,
because she already took every available man. She did the only
possible thing under the circumstances. She increased by fifty per
cent. the term during which her young men must serve in the army,
changing that term from two years to three.
The heavy burden thus suddenly imposed upon the French led to very
considerable political disputes in that country, especially as the
parliamentary form of government there established is exceedingly
unpopular, and the politicians who live by it generally despised.
When, therefore, the elections of last year were at hand, it seemed as
though this French increase of military power would be in jeopardy.
Luckily it was maintained, in spite of the opposition of fairly honest
but uncritical men like Jaures, and of far less reputable professional
politicians.
Whether this novel strain upon the French people could have been long
continued we shall never know, for, in the heat of the debates
provoked by this measure and its maintenance, came the last events
which determined the great catastrophe.
(6) THE IMMEDIATE OCCASION OF THE WAR.
We have seen how constantly and successfully Austria had supported the
general Prussian thesis in Europe, and, in particular, the
predominance of the German Powers over the Slav.
We have seen how, in pursuit of this policy, the sharpest friction was
always suffered at the danger-point of _Servia_. Servia was the Slav
State millions of whose native population were governed against their
will by Austro-Hungarian officials. Servia was the Slav State mortally
wounded by the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And Servia was
the Slav State which Austria had in particular mortified by forbidding
her access to the Adriatic, and by imposing upon her an unnatural
boundary, even after her great victories of the Balkan War.
The heir to the Hapsburgs--the man who, seeing the great age of his
uncle, might at any moment ascend the throne--was the Archduke
Francis. He had for years pursued one consistent policy for the
aggrandizement of his House, which policy was the pitting of the
Catholic Slavs against the Orthodox Slavs, thereby rendering himself
in person particularly odious to the Orthodox Serbs, so many of whose
compatriots and co-religionists were autocratically governed against
their will in the newly annexed provinces.
To the capital of these provinces, Sarajevo, he proceeded in state in
the latter part of last June, and there, through the emissaries of
certain secret societies (themselves Austrian subjects, but certainly
connected with the population of independent Servia, and, as some
claimed, not unconnected with the Servian Government itself), he was
assassinated upon Saturday, the 28th of June, 1914.
For exactly a month, the consequences of this event--the provocation
which it implied to Austria, the opportunity which it gave the
Hapsburgs for a new and more formidable expression of Germanic power
against the Slavs--were kept wholly underground. _That is the most
remarkable of all the preliminaries to the war._ There was a month of
silence after so enormous a moment. Why? In order to give Germany and
Austria a start in the conflict already long designed. Military
measures were being taken secretly, stores of ammunition overhauled,
and all done that should be necessary for a war which was premeditated
in Berlin, half-feared, half-desired in Vienna, and dated for the end
of July--after the harvest.
The Government of Berlin was, during the whole of this period,
actively engaged in forcing Austria forward in a path to which she was
not unwilling; and, at last, upon the 23rd of July, Europe was amazed
to read a note sent by the Imperial Governor at Vienna to the Royal
Government in the Servian capital of Belgrade, which note was of a
kind altogether unknown hitherto in the relations between Christian
States. This note demanded not only the suppression of patriotic, and
therefore anti-Austrian, societies in Servia (the assassins of the
Crown Prince had been, as I have said, not Servian but Austrian
subjects), but the public humiliation of the Servian Government by an
apology, and even an issue of the order of the day to the Servian
Army, so recently victorious, abasing that army to the worst
humiliation. The note insisted upon a specific pledge that the Servian
Government should renounce all hope of freeing the Servian nation as a
whole from foreign government, and in many another clause subjected
this small nation to the most thorough degradation ever suggested by a
powerful European people towards a lesser neighbour.
So far, though an extreme hitherto unknown in European history had
been reached, the matter was one of degree. Things of the same sort,
less drastic, had been known in the past.
But what was novel in the note, and what undoubtedly proceeded from
the suggestion of the Prussian Government (which was in all this the
real agent behind Austria), _was the claim of the Austrian Government
to impose its own magistrates upon the Servian courts, and to condemn
at will those subjects of the Servian king and those officers holding
his commission whom Austria might select so to condemn, and that to
penalties at the goodwill and pleasure of Austria alone_. In other
words, Austria claimed full rights of sovereignty within the territory
of her small neighbour and enemy, and the acceptation of the note by
Servia meant not only the preponderance of Austria for the future over
the Slavs of the Balkans, but her continued and direct power over that
region in the teeth of national and religious sentiment, and in clean
despite of Russia.
So strong was the feeling still throughout Europe in favour of
maintaining peace and of avoiding the awful crash of our whole
international system that Russia advised Servia to give way, and the
Germanic Powers were on the eve of yet another great success, far more
important and enduring than anything they had yet achieved. The only
reservation which Servia was permitted by the peaceful Powers of
Europe, and in particular by Russia, to make was that, upon three
points which directly concerned her sovereignty, Austria should admit
the decision of a Court of Arbitration at the Hague. But the
time-limit imposed--which was the extraordinarily short one of
forty-eight hours--was maintained by Austria, and upon the advice, as
we now know, of Berlin, no modification whatever in the demands was
tolerated. Upon the 25th, therefore, the Austrian Minister left
Belgrade. There followed ten days, the exact sequence of events in
which must be carefully noted if we are to obtain a clear view of the
origin of the war.
Upon that same day, Saturday, July 25th, the English Foreign Office,
through Sir Edward Grey, suggested a scheme whereby the approaching
cataclysm (for Russia was apparently determined to support Servia)
might be averted. He proposed that all operations should be suspended
while the Ambassadors of Germany, Italy, and France consulted with him
in London.
What happened upon the next day, Sunday, is exceedingly important.
The German Government refused to accept the idea of such a conference,
but at the same time the German Ambassador in London, Prince
Lichnowski, was instructed to say that the principle of such a
conference, or at least of mediation by the four Powers, was agreeable
to Berlin. _The meaning of this double move was that the German
Government would do everything it could to retard the entry into the
business of the Western Powers, but would do nothing to prevent
Russia, Servia, and the Slav civilization as a whole from suffering
final humiliation or war._
That game was played by Germany clumsily enough for nearly a full
week. Austria declared war upon Servia upon Monday the 27th; but we
now know that her intention of meeting Russia halfway, when she saw
that Russia would not retire, was stopped by the direct intervention
of the Prussian Government. In public the German Foreign Office still
pretended that it was seeking some way out of the crisis. In private
it prevented Austria from giving way an inch from her extraordinary
demands. And all the while Germany was secretly making her first
preparations for war.
It might conceivably be argued by a special pleader that war was not
the only intention of Berlin, as most undoubtedly it had not been the
only intention of Vienna. Such a plea would be false, but one can
imagine its being advanced. What is not capable even of discussion is
the fact that both the Germanic Powers, under the unquestioned
supremacy of Prussia, _were_ determined to push Russia into the
dilemma between an impossible humiliation and defeat in the field.
They allowed for the possibility that she would prefer humiliation,
because they believed it barely possible (though all was ready for the
invasion of France at a moment already fixed) that the French would
again fail to support their ally. But war was fixed, and its date was
fixed, with Russia, or even with Russia and France, and the Germanic
Powers arranged to be ready before their enemies. In order to effect
this it was necessary to deceive the West at least into believing that
war could after all be avoided.
One last incident betrays in the clearest manner how thoroughly
Prussia had determined on war, and on a war to break out at her own
chosen moment. It was as follows:
As late as Thursday, the 30th of July, Austria was still willing to
continue a discussion with Russia. The Austrian Government on that day
expressed itself as willing to reopen negotiations with Russia. The
German Ambassador at Vienna got wind of this. He communicated it at
once to Berlin. _Germany immediately stopped any compromise, by
framing that very night and presenting upon the next day, Friday the
31st, an ultimatum to Russia and to France._
Now, the form of these two ultimata and the events connected with them
are again to be carefully noted, for they further illuminate us upon
the German plan. That to Russia, presented by the German Ambassador
Portales, had been prepared presupposing the just possible humiliation
and giving way of Russia; and all those who observed this man's
attitude and manner upon discovering that Russia would indeed fight
rather than suffer the proposed humiliation, agreed that it was the
attitude and manner of an anxious man. The ultimatum to France had,
upon the contrary, not the marks of coercion, but of unexpected and
violent haste. If Russia was really going to fight, what could Prussia
be sure of in the West? It was the second great and crude blunder of
Prussian diplomacy that, instead of making any efforts to detach
France from Russia, it first took the abandonment of Russia by France
for granted, and then, with extreme precipitancy, asked within the
least possible delay whether France would fight. That precipitancy
alone lent to the demand a form which ensured the exact opposite of
what Prussia desired.
This double misconception of the effect of her diplomatic action
dates, I say, from Friday, the 31st of July, and that day is the true
opening day of the great war. Upon Sunday, the 2nd of August, the
German army violated the neutrality of Luxembourg, seizing the railway
passing through that State into France, and pouring into its neutral
territory her covering troops. On the same day, the French general
mobilization was ordered; the French military authorities having lost,
through the double action of Germany, about five days out of, say,
eleven--nearly half the mobilization margin--by which space of time
German preparations were now ahead of theirs.
There followed, before the action state of general European conflict,
the third German blunder, perhaps the most momentous, and certainly
the most extraordinary: that by which Germany secured the hitherto
exceedingly uncertain intervention of England against herself.
Of all the great Powers involved, Great Britain had most doubtfully to
consider whether she should or should not enter the field.
On the one hand, she was in moral agreement with Russia and France; on
the other hand, she was bound to them by no direct alliance, and
successive British Governments had, for ten years past, repeatedly
emphasized the fact that England was free to act or not to act with
France according as circumstances might decide her.
Many have criticized the hesitation, or long weighing of circumstance,
which astonished us all in the politicians during these few days, but
no one, whether friendly to or critical of a policy of neutrality, can
doubt that such a policy was not only a possible but a probable one.
The Parliamentarians were not unanimous, the opposition to the great
responsibility of war was weighty, numerous, and strong. The
financiers, who are in many things the real masters of our
politicians, were all for standing out. In the face of such a
position, in the crisis of so tremendous an issue, Germany, instead of
acting as best she could to secure the neutrality of Great Britain,
simply took that neutrality for granted!
Upon one specific point a specific question was asked of her
Government. To Great Britain, as we have seen in these pages, the
keeping from the North Sea coast of all great hostile Powers is a
vital thing. The navigable Scheldt, Antwerp, the approaches to the
Straits of Dover, are, and have been since the rise of British
sea-power, either in the hands of a small State or innocuous to us
through treaty. Today they are the possession of Belgium, an
independent State erected by treaty after the great war, and
neutralized by a further guarantee in 1839. This neutrality of Belgium
had been guaranteed in a solemn treaty not only by France and England,
but by Prussia herself; and the British Government put to the French
and to the Germans alike the question whether (now they were at war)
that neutrality would be respected. The French replied in the
affirmative; the Germans, virtually, in the negative. But it must not
be said that this violation of international law and of her own word
by Germany automatically caused war with England.
_The German Ambassador was not told that if Belgian territory was
violated England would fight_; he was only told that if that territory
were violated England _might_ fight.
The Sunday passed without a decision. On Monday the point was, as a
matter of form, laid before Parliament, though the House of Commons
has no longer any real control over great national issues. In a speech
which certainly inclined towards English participation in the war
should Germany invade Belgium, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs
summed up the situation before a very full House.
In the debate that followed many, and even passionate, speeches were
delivered opposing the presence of England in the field and claiming
neutrality. Some of these speeches insisted upon the admiration felt
by the speaker for modern Germany and Prussia; others the ill judgment
of running the enormous risk involved in such a campaign. These
protests will be of interest to history, but the House of Commons as a
whole had, of course, no power in the matter, and sat only to register
the decisions of its superiors. There was in the Cabinet resignation
of two members, in the Ministry the resignation of a third, the
threatened resignation of many more.
Meanwhile, upon that same day, August 3rd, following with
superstitious exactitude the very hour upon which, on the very same
day, the French frontier had been crossed in 1870, the Germans entered
Belgian territory.
The Foreign Office's thesis underlying the declaration of its
spokesman, Sir Edward Grey, carried the day with the politicians in
power, and upon Tuesday, August 4th, Great Britain joined Russia and
France, at war with the Prussian Power. There followed later the
formal declaration of war by France as by England against Austria, and
with the first week in August the general European struggle had
opened.