In examining the evidence let us first take Mr. Lloyd George's own
statement of the theory. Except in one particular, it presents the case
against Germany quite as it has been rehearsed by nearly every
institutional voice in the United States. On 4 August, 1917--after
America's entry into the war--the British Premier said:
What are we fighting for? To defeat the most dangerous conspiracy
ever plotted against the liberty of nations; carefully, skilfully,
insidiously, clandestinely planned in every detail, with ruthless,
cynical determination.
Except for one point, this statement sums up what we have all heard to
be the essential doctrine of the war. The one missing point in Mr. Lloyd
George's indictment is that the great German conspiracy was launched
upon an _unprepared_ Europe. In Europe itself, the official
propagandists did not make much of this particular point, for far too
many people knew better; but in the United States it was promulgated
widely. Indeed, this romance of Allied unpreparedness was an essential
part of the whole story of German responsibility. Germany, so the
official story ran, not only plotted in secret, but she sprung her plot
upon a Europe that was wholly unprepared and unsuspecting. Her action
was like that of a highwayman leaping from ambush upon a defenceless
wayfarer. Belgium was unprepared, France unprepared, Russia unprepared,
England unprepared; and in face of an unprovoked attack, these nations
hurriedly drew together in an extemporized union, and held the "mad dog"
at bay with an extemporized defence until they could devise a plan of
common action and a pooling of military and naval resources.
Such, then, is a fair statement of the doctrine of the war as America
was taught it. Next, in order to show how fundamental this doctrine is
to the terms of the peace treaty, let us consider another statement of
Mr. Lloyd George made 3 March, 1921:
For the allies, German responsibility for the war is fundamental.
It is the basis upon which the structure of the treaty of
Versailles has been erected, and if that acknowledgment is
repudiated or abandoned, the treaty is destroyed.... We wish,
therefore, once and for all, to make it quite clear that German
responsibility for the war must be treated by the Allies as a
_chose jugée_.
Thus the British Premier explicitly declares that the treaty of
Versailles is based upon the theory of Germany's sole responsibility.
Now, as against this theory, the main facts may be summarized as
follows: (1) The British and French General Staffs had been in active
collaboration for war with Germany ever since January 1906. (2) The
British and French Admiralty had been in similar collaboration. (3) The
late Lord Fisher [First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty], twice in the
course of these preparations, proposed an attack upon the German fleet
and a landing upon the coast of Pomerania, _without a declaration of
war_. (4) Russia had been preparing for war ever since 1909, and the
Russian and French General Staffs had come to a formal understanding
that Russian mobilization should be held equivalent to a declaration of
war. (5) Russian mobilization was begun in the spring of 1914, under the
guise of "tests," and these tests were carried on continuously to the
outbreak of the war. (6) In April, 1914, four months before the war,
the Russian and French naval authorities initiated joint plans for
maritime operations against Germany. (7) Up to the outbreak of the war,
Germany was selling grain in considerable quantities to both France and
Russia. (8) It can not be shown that the German Government ever in a
single instance, throughout all its dealings with foreign Governments,
demanded or intimated for Germany anything more than a position of
economic equality with other nations.
These facts, among others to which reference will hereafter be made,
have come to light only since the outbreak of the war. They effectively
dispose of the theory of an unprepared and unsuspecting Europe; and a
historical survey of them excludes absolutely, and stamps as utterly
untenable and preposterous, the theory of a deliberate German plot
against the peace of the world.