'independent.' The agreement of Algecras was dead. Therefore she
resumed her right to put forward what claims she pleased in Morocco.
Suddenly her gunboat, the Panther, appeared off Agadir. It was meant as
an assertion that Germany had as much right to intervene in Morocco as
France. And it was accompanied by a demand that if France wanted to be
left free in Morocco, she must buy the approval of Germany. The
settlement of Morocco was to be a question solely between France and
Germany. The Entente of 1904, the agreement of 1906, the Moroccan
interests of Britain (much more important than those of Germany), and
the interests of the other powers of the Algeciras Conference, were to
count for nothing. Germany's voice must be the determining factor. But
Germany announced that she was willing to be bought off by large
concessions of French territory elsewhere--provided that Britain was
not allowed to have anything to say: provided, that is, that the
agreement of 1904 was scrapped. This was a not too subtle way of trying
to drive a wedge between two friendly powers. It did not succeed.
Britain insisted upon being consulted. There was for a time a real
danger of war. In the end peace was maintained by the cession by France
of considerable areas in the Congo as the price of German abstention
from intervening in a sphere where she had no right to intervene. But
Morocco was left under a definite French protectorate.
We have dwelt upon the Morocco question at some length, partly because
it attracted a vast amount of interest during the years of preparation
for the war; partly because it affords an extraordinarily good
illustration of the difficulty of maintaining peaceable relations with
Germany, and of the spirit in which Germany approached the delicate
questions of inter-imperial relationships--a spirit far removed indeed
from that friendly willingness for compromise and co-operation by which
alone the peace of the world could be maintained; and partly because it
illustrates the crudity and brutality of the methods by which Germany
endeavoured to separate her intended victims. It is improbable that she
ever meant to go to war on the Moroccan question. She meant to go to
war on whatever pretext might present itself when all her preparations
were ready; but in the meanwhile she would avoid war on all questions
but one: and that one was the great Berlin-Bagdad project, the keystone
of her soaring arch of Empire. She would fight to prevent the ruin of
that scheme. Otherwise she would preserve the peace, she would even
make concessions to preserve the peace, until the right moment had
come. In that sense Germany was a peace-loving power: in that sense
alone.
On the agreement between Russia and Britain in 1907 it is unnecessary
to dwell with such fulness. The agreement turned mainly upon the
removal of causes of friction in the Middle East--in Persia and the
Persian Gulf, and in Tibet. These were in themselves interesting and
thorny questions, especially the question of Persia, where the two
powers established distinct spheres of interest and a sort of joint
protectorate. But they need not detain us, because they had no direct
bearing upon the events leading up to the war, except in so far as, by
removing friction between two rivals of long standing, they made it
possible for them to co-operate for their common defence against a
menace that became more and more apparent.
From 1907 onwards Germany found herself confronted by united defensive
action on the part of the three empires whose downfall she intended to
compass. It was not (except as regarded France and Russia) a formal
alliance which bound these powers. There was no fixed agreement between
them as to military co-operation. France and Britain had indeed, in
1906 and in 1911, consulted as to the military steps they should take
if they were drawn into war, as seemed likely in those years, but
neither was in any way bound to help the other under all circumstances.
France and Britain had also agreed that the French fleet should be
concentrated in the Mediterranean, the main British fleet in the North
Sea. This arrangement (which was universally known, and, indeed, could
not be concealed) put Britain under a moral obligation to defend France
against naval attack, but only if France were the object of aggression.
It was, therefore, actually a safeguard of peace, since it ensured that
neither France nor, consequently, her ally, Russia, would begin a war
without being sure of the concurrence of Britain, the most pacific of
powers. As the diplomatic records show, at the opening of the Great War
they were not sure of this concurrence, even for naval purposes, until
August 1, when the die was already cast. The Triple Entente, therefore,
was not an alliance; it was only an agreement for common diplomatic
action in the hope of averting a terrible menace.
Until 1911 Germany, or some elements in Germany, seem to have hoped
that she could get her own way by bullying and rattling her sabre, and
that by these means she could frighten her rivals, make them mutually
distrustful, and so break up their combination and deal with them in
detail. Those who held this view were the peace-party (so-called), and
they included the Kaiser and his Chancellor. They would probably not
themselves have accepted this description of their policy, but in
practice this is what it meant. But there was always a formidable and
influential party in Germany which had no patience with these
hesitations, and was eager to draw the sabre. It included the men of
the General Staff, backed by the numerous Pan-German societies and
newspapers. The issue of the Morocco question in 1911, which showed
that the policy of bullying had failed, played into the hands of the
men of violence; and from this moment began the last strenuous burst of
military preparation which preceded the war. In 1911 was passed the
first of a series of Army Acts for the increase of the already immense
German army, and still more for the provision of vast equipment and the
scientific apparatus of destruction; two further Acts for the same
purpose followed in 1912 and in 1913. In 1911 also was published
General Bernhardi's famous book, which defined and described the course
of future action, and the aim which Germany was henceforth to pursue
with all her strength: Weltmacht oder Niedergang, world-power or
downfall.
The events in the Balkans in 1912 and 1913 completed the conversion of
those who still clung to the policy of peaceful bullying. The formation
and triumph of the Balkan League in 1912 formed a grave set-back for
the Berlin-Bagdad project, which would be ruined if these little states
became strong enough, or united enough, to be independent. The break-up
of the Balkan League and the second Balkan War of 1913 improved the
situation from the German point of view. But they left Serbia
unsatisfactorily strong, and Serbia distrusted Austria, and controlled
the communications with Constantinople. Serbia must be destroyed;
otherwise the Berlin-Bagdad project, and with it the world-power of
which it was to be the main pillar, would be always insecure. Austria
was for attacking Serbia at once in 1913. Germany held her back: the
widening of the Kiel Canal was not completed, and the fruits of the
latest Army Acts were not yet fully reaped. But all was ready in 1914;
and the Great Challenge was launched. It would have been launched at or
about that time even if an unpopular Austrian archduke, significantly
unguarded by the Austrian police, had NOT been most opportunely
murdered by an Austrian subject on Austrian territory. The murder was
only a pretext. The real cause of the war was the resolution of Germany
to strike for world-supremacy, and her belief that the time was
favourable for the great adventure.
Meanwhile, what had the threatened empires been doing during the years
of strenuous German preparation which began in 1911? Their governments
could not but be aware of the enormous activity which was taking place
in that country--which was unthreatened on any side--though they
probably did not know how thorough and how elaborate it was. What steps
did they take to guard against the danger? Russia was busy constructing
strategic railways, to make the movement of troops easier; she was
erecting new munition factories. But neither could be quickly got
ready. France imposed upon the whole of her manhood the obligation of
serving for three instead of for two years in the army. Britain
reorganised her small professional army, created the Territorial Force,
and began the training of a large officer class in all the universities
and public schools. But she did not attempt to create a national army.
If she had done so, this would have been a signal for the precipitation
of the war. Besides, Britain obstinately clung to the belief that so
monstrous a crime as Germany seemed to be contemplating could never be
committed by a civilised nation; and she trusted mainly to her fleet
for her own security.
But Britain unquestionably laboured with all her might to conjure away
the nightmare. From 1906 onwards she had made, in vain, repeated
attempts to persuade Germany to accept a mutual disarmament or
retardation of naval construction. In 1912 she resolved upon a more
definite step. The German newspapers were full of talk about the
British policy of 'encircling' Germany in order to attack and destroy
her, which they attributed mainly to Sir Edward Grey. It was a manifest
absurdity, since the Franco-Russian alliance was formed in 1894, at a
time when Britain was on bad terms with both France and Russia, and the
agreements later made with these two countries were wholly devoted to
removing old causes of dispute between them. But the German people
obviously believed it. Perhaps the German government also believed it?
Britain resolved to remove this apprehension. Accordingly in 1912 Lord
Haldane was sent to Germany with a formal and definite statement,
authorised by the Cabinet, to the effect that Britain had made no
alliance or understanding which was aimed against Germany, and had no
intention of doing so. That being so, since Germany need have no fear
of an attack from Britain, why should not the two powers agree to
reduce their naval expenditure? The German reply was that to stop the
naval programme was impossible, but that construction might be DELAYED,
on one condition--that both powers should sign a formal agreement drawn
up by Germany. Each power was to pledge itself to absolute neutrality
in any European war in which the other was engaged. Each power was to
undertake to make no new alliances. But this agreement was not to
affect existing alliances or the duties arising under them. This
proposal was an obvious trap, and the German ministers who proposed it
must have had the poorest opinion of the intelligence of English
statesmen if they thought it was likely to be accepted. For observe
that it left Germany, in conjunction with Austria, free to attack
France and Russia. It left the formidable Triple Alliance unimpaired.
But it tied the hands of Britain, who had no existing European
alliances, enforced neutrality upon her in such a war, and compelled
her to look on idly and wait her turn. In the present war, Germany
could have pleaded that she was bound to take part by the terms of her
alliance with Austria, who began it; but Britain would have been
compelled to stand aloof. A very convenient arrangement for Germany,
but not an arrangement that promised well for the peace of the world!
Even this rebuff did not dishearten Britain. Feeling that Germany might
have some reasonable ground of complaint in the fact that her share of
the extra-European world was so much less than that of France or of
Britain herself, Britain attempted to come to an agreement on this
head, such as would show that she had no desire to prevent the imperial
expansion of Germany. A treaty was proposed and discussed, and was
ready to be submitted to the proper authorities for confirmation in
June 1914. It has never been made public, because the war cancelled it
before it came into effect, and we do not know its terms. But we do
know that the German colonial enthusiast, Paul Rohrbach, who has seen
the draft treaty, has said that the concessions made by Britain were
astonishingly extensive, and met every reasonable German demand. This
sounds as if the proposals of the treaty, whatever they were, had been
recklessly generous. But this much is clear, that the government which
had this treaty in its possession when it forced on the war was not to
be easily satisfied. It did not want merely external possessions. It
wanted supremacy; it wanted world-dominion.
One last attempt the British government made in the frenzied days of
negotiation which preceded the war. Sir Edward Grey had begged the
German government to make ANY proposal which would make for peace, and
promised his support beforehand; he had received no reply. He had
undertaken that if Germany made any reasonable proposal, and France or
Russia objected, he would have nothing further to do with France or
Russia. Still there was no reply. Imagining that Germany might still be
haunted by what Bismarck called 'the nightmare of coalition,' and might
be rushing into war now because she feared a war in the future under
more unfavourable conditions, he had pledged himself, if Germany would
only say the word which would secure the peace, to use every effort to
bring about a general understanding among the great powers which would
banish all fears of an anti-German combination. It was of no use. The
reply was the suggestion that Britain should bind herself to neutrality
in this war on the following conditions: (a) that Germany should be
given a free hand to violate the neutrality of Belgium (which Britain
was bound by treaty to defend), on the understanding that Belgium
should be reinstated after she had served her purpose, if she had
offered no resistance; Belgium, be it noted, being bound in honour to
offer resistance by the very treaty which Germany proposed to violate;
and (b) that after France had been humiliated and beaten to the earth
for the crime of possessing territories which Germany coveted, she
should be restored to independence, and Germany should be content to
annex her 5,000,000 square miles of colonies. In return for this
undertaking Britain was to be--allowed to hold aloof from the war, and
await her turn.
There is no getting over these facts. The aim of Germany had come to be
nothing less than world-supremacy. The destiny of the whole globe was
to be put to the test. Surely this was the very insanity of megalomania.
X
WHAT OF THE NIGHT?
The gigantic conflict into which the ambitions of Germany have plunged
the world is the most tremendous event in human history, not merely
because of the vast forces engaged, and the appalling volume of
suffering which has resulted from it, but still more because of the
magnitude of the principles for which it is being fought. It is a war
to secure the right of communities which are linked together by the
national spirit to determine their own destinies; it is a war to
maintain the principles of humanity, the sanctity of formal
undertakings between states, and the possibility of the co-operation of
free peoples in the creation of a new and better world-order; it is a
war between two principles of government, the principle of military
autocracy and the principle of self-government. With all these aspects
of the mighty struggle we are not here immediately concerned, though
they have an intimate bearing upon our main theme: some of them have
been analysed elsewhere.[10] But what does concern us most directly,
and what makes this war the culmination of the long story which we have
endeavoured to survey, is that this is a war in which, as in no earlier
war, the whole fate and future of the now unified world is at stake.
For just because the world is now, as never before, an indissoluble
economic and political unity, the challenge of Germany, whatever view
we may take of the immediate aims of the German state, inevitably
raises the whole question of the principles upon which this unified
world, unified by the victory of European civilisation, is to be in
future directed. And the whole world knows, if vaguely, that these vast
issues are at stake, and that this is no merely European conflict. That
is why we see arrayed upon the fields of battle not only French,
British, Russian, Italian, Serbian, Belgian, Rumanian, Greek and
Portuguese soldiers, but Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South
Africans, Indians, Algerians, Senegalese, Cambodians; and now,
alongside of all these, the citizens of the American Republic. That is
why Brazil and other states are hovering on the edge of the fray; why
Japanese ships are helping to patrol the Mediterranean, why Arab armies
are driving the Turk from the holy places of Mahomedanism, why African
tribesmen are enrolled in new levies to clear the enemy out of his
footholds in that continent. Almost the whole world is arrayed against
the outlaw-power and her vassals. And the ultimate reason for this is
that the whole world is concerned to see this terrible debate rightly
determined.
[10] In Nationalism and Internationalism and in National
Self-Government.
For the issue is as simple as this. Now that the world has been made
one by the victory of Western civilisation, in what spirit is that
supremacy to be used? Is it to be in the spirit expressed in the German
Doctrine of Power, the spirit of mere dominion, ruthlessly imposed and
ruthlessly exploited for the sole advantage of the master-power? That
way ruin lies. Or is it to be in the spirit which has on the whole, and
in spite of lapses, guided the progress of Western civilisation in the
past, the spirit of respect for law and for the rights of the weak, the
spirit of liberty which rejoices in variety of type and method, and
which believes that the destiny towards which all peoples should be
guided is that of self-government in freedom, and the co-operation of
free peoples in the maintenance of common interests? Britain, France,
and America have been the great advocates and exponents of these
principles in the government of their own states: they are all ranged
on one side to-day. Britain, also, as we have tried to show, has been
led by Fate to take a chief part in the extension of these principles
of Western civilisation to the non-European regions of the world; and,
after many mistakes and failures, has in the direction of her own wide
dominions found her way to a system which reconciles freedom with
unity, and learned to regard herself as being only the trustee of
civilisation in the government of the backward peoples whom she rules.
For the just and final determination of such gigantic issues not even
the terrible price we are paying is too high.
The issue of the great conflict lies still upon the lap of the gods.
Yet one thing is, we may hope, already assured. Although at the
beginning of the war they came near to winning it, the Germans are not
now likely to win that complete victory upon which they had calculated,
and which would have brought as its prize the mastery of the world. We
can now form some judgment of the extent of the calamity which this
would have meant for humanity. There would have remained in the world
no power capable of resisting this grim and ugly tyrant-state, with its
brute strength and bestial cruelty as of a gorilla in the primaeval
forest, reinforced by the cold and pitiless calculus of the man of
science in his laboratory; unless, perhaps, Russia had in time
recovered her strength, or unless America had not merely thrown over
her tradition of aloofness and made up her mind to intervene, but had
been allowed the time to organise her forces for resistance. Of the
great empires which the modern age has brought into being, the Russian
would have survived as a helpless and blinded mammoth; the French
Empire would have vanished, and the proud and noble land of France
would have sunk into vassalage and despair; the British Empire would
assuredly have dissolved into its component parts, for its strength is
still too much concentrated in the motherland for it to be able to hold
together once her power was broken. After a few generations, that will
no longer be the case; but to-day it is so, and the dream of a
partnership of free nations which had begun to dawn upon us would have
been shattered for ever by a complete German victory. Some of the atoms
of what once was an empire might have been left in freedom, but they
would have been powerless to resist the decrees of the Master-state.
There would have been one supreme world-power; and that a power whose
attitude towards backward races has been illustrated by the ruthless
massacre of the Hereros; whose attitude towards ancient but
disorganised civilisations has been illustrated by the history of
Kiao-chau and by the celebrated allocution of the Kaiser to his
soldiers on the eve of the Boxer expedition, when he bade them outdo
the ferocity of Attila and his Huns; whose attitude towards kindred
civilisations on the same level as their own has been illustrated
before the war in the treatment of Danes, Poles, and Alsatians, and
during the war in the treatment of Belgium, of the occupied districts
in France, of Poland and of Serbia. The world would have lain at the
mercy of an insolent and ruthless tyranny, the tyranny of a Kultur
whose ideal is the uniformity of a perfect mechanism, not the variety
of life. Such a fate humanity could not long have tolerated; yet before
the iron mechanism could have been shattered, if once it had been
established, there must have been inconceivable suffering, and
civilisation must have fallen back many stages towards barbarism. From
this fate, we may perhaps claim, the world was saved from the moment
when not Britain only, but the British Empire, refused to await its
turn according to the German plan, threw its whole weight into the
scale, and showed that, though not organised for war, it was not the
effete and decadent power, not the fortuitous combination of discordant
and incoherent elements, which German theory had supposed; but that
Freedom can create a unity and a virile strength capable of
withstanding even the most rigid discipline, capable of enduring defeat
and disappointment undismayed; but incapable of yielding to the
insolence of brute force.
It is still possible that the war may end in what is called an
inconclusive peace; and as it is certain that of all her unrighteous
gains that to which Germany will most desperately cling will be her
domination over the Austrian and Turkish Empires, with the prospect
which it affords of a later and more fortunate attempt at world-power,
an inconclusive peace would mean that the whole world would live in
constant dread of a renewal of these agonies and horrors in a still
more awful form. What the effect of this would be upon the
extra-European dominions of powers which would be drained of their
manhood and loaded with the burden of the past war and the burden of
preparation for the coming war, it is beyond our power to imagine. But
it seems likely that the outer world would very swiftly begin to revise
its judgment as to the value of that civilisation which it has, upon
the whole, been ready to welcome; and chaos would soon come again.