Mr. E. D. Morel, editor of the British monthly, _Foreign Affairs_,
performed more than a distinguished service--it is a splendid, an
illustrious service--to the disparaged cause of justice, when recently
he translated and published in England through the National Labour
Press, a series of remarkable State documents.[6] This consists of
reports made by the Belgian diplomatic representatives at Paris, London
and Berlin, to the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, covering the
period from 7 February, 1905 to 2 July, 1914. Their authenticity has
never been questioned. They have received no notice in this country;
their content and import were carefully kept from the American people as
long as it was possible to do so, and consequently they remain unknown
except to a few who are students of international affairs or who have
some similar special interest.
It can hardly be pretended by anyone that Belgian officials had, during
that decade, any particular love or leaning towards Germany. The Belgian
Foreign Office has always been as free from sentimental attachments as
any other. It has always been governed by the same motives that govern
the British, French, German and Russian Foreign Offices. Its number,
like theirs, was number one; it was out, first and last, for the
interests of the Belgian Government, and it scrutinized every
international transaction from the viewpoint of those interests and
those only. It was fully aware of the position of Belgium as a mere
"strategic corridor" and battle-ground for alien armies in case of a
general European war, and aware that Belgium had simply to make the best
of its bad outlook, for nothing else could be done. If the Belgian
Foreign Office and its agents, moreover, had no special love for
Germany, neither had they any special fear of her. They were in no more
or deeper dread of a German invasion than of a British or French
invasion. In fact, in 1911, the Belgian Minister at Berlin set forth in
a most matter-of-fact way his belief that in the event of war, Belgian
neutrality would be first violated by Great Britain.[7] These
observers, in short, may on all accounts, as far as one can see, be
accepted as neutral and disinterested, with the peculiar
disinterestedness of one who has no choice between two evils.
Well, then, under the circumstances it is remarkable that if Germany
during the ten years preceding August, 1914, were plotting against the
peace of the world, these Belgian observers seem unaware of it. It is
equally noteworthy that if Germany's assault were unprovoked, they seem
unaware of that also. These documents relate in an extremely
matter-of-fact way a continuous series of extraordinary provocations put
upon the German Government, and moreover, they represent the behaviour
of the German Government, under these provocations, in a very favourable
light. On the other hand, they show from beginning to end a most
profound distrust of English diplomacy. If there is any uncertainty
about the causes of ill-feeling between England and Germany, these
Belgian officials certainly do not share it. They regularly speak of
England's jealousy of Germany's economic competition, and the
provocative attitude to which this jealousy gave rise. They speak of it,
moreover, as though it were something that the Belgian Government were
already well aware of; they speak of it in the tone of pure commonplace,
such as one might use in an incidental reference to the weather or to a
tariff-schedule or to any other matter that is well understood and about
which there is no difference of opinion and nothing new to be said. This
is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that it was nominally to
save Belgium and to defend the sanctity of Belgian neutrality that
England entered the war in August, 1914. These Belgian agents are
invariably suspicious of English diplomacy, as Mr. E. D. Morel points
out, "mainly because they feel that it is tending to make the war which
they dread for their country." They persistently and unanimously
"insinuate that if left to themselves, France and Germany would reach a
settlement of their differences, and that British diplomacy was being
continually exercised to envenom the controversy and to draw a circle of
hostile alliances round Germany." This, indeed, under a specious concern
for the "balance of power," has been the historic rôle of English
diplomacy. Every one remembers how in 1866, just before the
Franco-Prussian war, Mr. Matthew Arnold's imaginary Prussian, Arminius
von Thunder-ten-Tronckh, wrote to the editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
begging him to prevail upon his fellow-countrymen "for Heaven's sake not
to go on biting, first the French Emperor's tail, and then ours."
On 18 February, 1905, the Belgian Minister in Berlin reported thus:
The real cause of the English hatred of Germany is the jealousy
aroused by the astonishing development of Germany's merchant navy
and of her commerce and manufactures. This hatred will last until
the English have thoroughly learned to understand that the world's
trade is not by rights an exclusively English monopoly. Moreover,
it is studiously fostered by the _Times_ and a whole string of
other daily papers and periodicals that do not stop short of
calumny in order to pander to the tastes of their readers.
At that time the centre of the English navy had just been shifted to the
North Sea, to the accompaniment of a very disturbing and, as at first
reported, a very flamboyant speech from the Civil Lord of the Admiralty,
Mr. Lee. Of the sensation thereby created in Germany, the Belgian
Minister says:
In informing the British public that Germany does not dream of any
aggression against England, Count Bülow [the German Chancellor]
said no more than what is recognized by every one who considers the
matter dispassionately. Germany would have nothing to gain from a
contest.... The German fleet has been created with a purely
defensive object. The small capacity of the coal-bunkers in her
High Seas Fleet, and the small number of her cruisers, prove
besides that her fleet is not intended for use at any distance from
the coast.
On the other hand, he remarks in the same report:
It was obvious that the new disposition of the English navy was
aimed at Germany ... it certainly is not because of Russia, whose
material stock is to a great extent destroyed and whose navy has
just given striking proof of incompetence [in the Russo-Japanese
war].
Such is the tone uniformly adopted by these neutral observers throughout
their reports from 1905 to 1914. On 24 October, 1905, the Belgian
Minister in Paris wrote:
England, in her efforts to maintain her supremacy and to hinder the
development of her great German rival, is evidently inspired by the
wish to avoid a conflict, but are not her selfish aims in
themselves bringing it upon us?... She thought, when she concluded
the Japanese alliance and gradually drew France into similar ties,
that she had found the means to her end, by sufficiently
paralysing Germany's powers as to make war impossible.
This view of the Anglo-Japanese alliance is interesting and significant,
especially now when that instrument is coming up for renewal, with the
United States standing towards England in the same relation of economic
competitorship that Germany occupied in 1905. True, Viscount Bryce
assured the Institute of Politics at Williams College last summer that
it was not Germany's economic rivalry that disturbed England; but on
this point it would be highly advantageous for the people of the United
States, while there is yet time, to read what the Belgian Minister in
Berlin had to say on 27 October, 1905:
A very large number of Germans are convinced that England is either
seeking allies for an attack upon Germany, or else, which would be
more in accordance with British tradition, that she is labouring to
provoke a Continental war in which she would not join, but of which
she would reap the profit.
I am told that many English people are troubled with similar fears
and go in dread of German aggression.
I am puzzled upon what foundations such an impression in London can
be based. Germany is absolutely incapable of attacking England....
Are these people in England really sincere who go about expressing
fears of a German invasion which could not materialize? Are they
not rather pretending to be afraid of it in order to bring on a war
which would annihilate Germany's navy, her merchant-fleet and her
foreign commerce? Germany is as vulnerable to attack as England is
safe from it; and if England were to attack Germany merely for the
sake of extinguishing a rival, it would only be in accordance with
her old precedents.
In turn she wiped out the Dutch fleet, with the assistance of Louis
XIV; then the French fleet; and the Danish fleet she even destroyed
in time of peace and without any provocation, simply because it
constituted a naval force of some magnitude.
There are no ostensible grounds for war between Germany and
England. The English hatred for Germany arises solely from jealousy
of Germany's progress in shipping, in commerce and in manufacture.
Baron Greindl here presents an opinion very different from that in which
the majority of Americans have been instructed; and before they accept
further instruction at the hands of Viscount Bryce, they had better look
into the matter somewhat for themselves.
Baron Greindl wrote the foregoing in October. In December, the head of
the British Admiralty, Sir John Fisher, assured Colonel Repington that
"Admiral Wilson's Channel fleet was alone strong enough to smash the
whole German fleet." _Two years_ later, Sir John Fisher wrote to King
Edward VII that "it is an absolute fact that Germany has not laid down
a single dreadnaught, nor has she commenced building a single battleship
or big cruiser for eighteen months.... England has ... ten dreadnaughts
built and building, while Germany in March last had not even begun one
dreadnaught ... we have 123 destroyers and forty submarines. The Germans
have forty-eight destroyers and one submarine." Hence, if Sir John
Fisher knew what he was talking about, and in such matters he usually
did, he furnishes a very considerable corroboration of Baron Greindl's
view of the German navy up to 1905. Looking back at the third chapter of
this book, which deals with the comparative strength of the two navies
and naval groups as developed from 1905 to 1914, the reader may well
raise again Baron Greindl's question, "Are those people in England
really sincere?"