FIFTY YEARS OF WARNING
(1864-1914)
In 1864 the Fathers of Confederation met at Quebec, while the Germans
took from the Danes the neck of land through which they cut the Kiel
Canal to give the German Navy a safe back way between the North Sea and
the Baltic. At first sight you cannot understand why Canadian
Confederation and the German attack on Denmark should ever be mentioned
together. But, just as the waters of two streams in the same river
system are bound to meet in the end, so Canada and Germany were bound
to meet on the same battlefield when once Canada had begun to grow into
a nation within the British Empire and Germany had begun to grow into
an empire for whose ambitions there was no room without a series of
victorious wars. After beating Austria in 1866, to win the leadership
of Central Europe, Germany beat France in 1870, took Alsace and
Lorraine, and made herself the strongest land-power in the world. Even
then two such very different Englishmen as Cardinal Newman and John
Stuart Mill foresaw the clash that was bound to come between the new
empire of the Germans and the old one of the British. But most people
never see far ahead, while many will not look at all if the prospect
seems to be unpleasant.
Thirty years before the war (1884) Germany began to get an empire
overseas. Taking every possible chance she went on till she had a
million square miles and fifteen million natives. But she neither had
nor could get without victorious war any land outside of Germany where
she could bring up German children under the German flag. Even
including the German parts of Austria there was barely one
quarter-million of square miles on which German-speaking people could
go on growing under their own flags; while the English-speaking people
of the British Empire and the United States had twenty times as much
land, fit for whites, on which to grow bigger and bigger populations of
their own blood under their own flags. This meant that the new,
strong, and most ambitious German Empire was doomed to an
ever-dwindling future as a world-power in comparison with the British
Empire. The Germans could not see why they should not have as good a
"place in the sun" of the white man's countries as the British, whom
they now looked on very much as our ancestors looked upon the oversea
Spaniards about the time of the Armada. "Why," they asked, "should the
British have so much white man's country while we have so little?"
There are only three answers, two that the Germans understand as well
as we do, and one that, being what they are, they could hardly be
expected to admit, though it is the only one that justifies our case.
The two answers which the Germans understand are of course these: that
we had the sea-power while they had not; and that, because we had it,
we had reaped the full benefit of "first come, first served." But the
third answer, which is much the most important, because it turns upon
the question of right and wrong, is that while the Germans, like the
Spaniards, have grossly abused their imperial powers, we, on the whole,
with all our faults, have not.
There are so many crimes for which the Germans have to answer that this
whole book could not contain the hundredth part of them. But one crime
in one of their oversea possessions will be enough to mention here,
because it was all of a piece with the rest. In German South-West
Africa the Herreros, a brave native people, were robbed if they worked
hard for the German slave-drivers, flogged till their backs were flayed
if they did not, and killed if they stood up for their rights. There
are plenty of German photographs to prove that the modern Germans are
very like the Spaniards of Philip II and utterly unlike the kindly
modern French, Italians, Americans, and British. The world itself is
witness now, and its conscience is the judge. So there we shall leave
our case and turn to follow the ever thickening plot of coming war.
In 1889 Britain spent an extra hundred million dollars on building new
men-of-war. Next year Germany got Heligoland from Britain in exchange
for Zanzibar. Heligoland is only a tiny inland off the North Sea coast
of Germany. But it was very useful to the Germans as one of the main
defences of the great naval base there.
In 1897 the Kaiser said, "I shall not rest till I have made my fleet as
strong as my army." A year later he said, "Our future is on the
water." And in 1900 the German Navy Bill passed by the German
Parliament began by saying, "The German Navy must be strong enough to
endanger the supremacy of even the mightiest foreign navy." What
"foreign navy" could that be if not the British? In 1908 the Kaiser
tried to steal a march on the too pacific British Government by writing
privately to Lord Tweedmouth, the feeble civilian First Lord of the
Admiralty. The First Lord represents the Navy in Parliament; and
Parliament represents the People, who elect its members. So when a
First Lord is a real statesman who knows what advice to take from the
First Sea Lord (who is always an admiral) everything goes well; for
then Parliament and the Navy work together as the trusted servants of
the whole People. But Tweedmouth, feeble and easily flattered, was
completely taken in by the sly Kaiser, who said Germany was only
building new ships in place of old ones, while she was really trying to
double her strength. It was therefore a very lucky thing that the
Kaiser also tried to fool that wonderful statesman, wise King Edward,
who at once saw through the whole German trick.
Meanwhile (1898) the Americans had driven the Spaniards out of their
last oversea possessions, much to the rage of the Germans, who had
hoped to get these themselves. The German admiral at Manilla in the
Philippines blustered against the American fleet under Admiral Dewey;
but was soon brought to book by Sir Edward Chichester, who told him he
would have to fight the British squadron as well if he gave any more
trouble about things that were none of his business.
The same year the Germans tried to set the French and British by the
ears over Fashoda. A French expedition came out of French Africa into
the Sudan, where Kitchener's army was in possession after having freed
Egypt from the power of the Madhi's wild Sudanese. French and British
both claimed the same place; and for some years Fashoda was like a red
rag to a bull when mentioned to Frenchmen; for Kitchener had got there
first. Luckily he had fought for France in 1870, spoke French like a
Frenchman, and soon made friends with the French on the spot. More
luckily still, King Edward the Wise went to Paris in 1903, despite the
fears of his Ministers, who did all they could to make him change his
mind, and then, when this failed, to go there as a private person.
They were afraid that memories of Fashoda and of all the anti-British
feeling stirred up by Germans in Europe and America over the Boer War
(1899-1902) would make the French unfriendly. But he went to pay his
respects to France on his accession to the British Throne, showed how
perfectly he understood the French people, said and did exactly the
right thing in the right way; and, before either friends or foes knew
what was happening, had so won the heart of France that French and
British, seeing what friends they might be, began that _Entente
Cordiale_ (good understanding of each other) which our glorious
Alliance in the Great War ought to make us keep forever. Paris named
one of her squares in his honour, _Place Edouard Sept_; and there the
wise king's statue stands to remind the world of what he did to save it
from the German fury.
Next year Lord Fisher went to London as First Sea Lord (1904-10) to get
the Navy ready for the coming war. He struck off the list of fighting
ships every single one that would not be fit for battle in the near
future. He put "nucleus crews" on board all ships fit for service that
were not in sea-going squadrons for the time being; so that when the
Reserves were called out for the war they would find these nucleus
crews ready to show them all the latest things aboard. He started a
new class of battleships by launching (1906) the world-famous
_Dreadnought_. This kind of ship was so much better than all others
that all foreign navies, both friends and foes, have copied it ever
since, trying to keep up with each new British improvement as it
appeared.
But the greatest thing of all was Fisher's new plan for bringing the
mighty British fleets closer together and so "handier" for battles with
the Germans. The old plan of posting British squadrons all over the
world takes us back to the Conquest of Canada; for it was the work of
St. Vincent, to whom Wolfe handed his will the night before the Battle
of the Plains (1759). St. Vincent's plan of 1803 was so good that it
worked well, with a few changes, down to Fisher's anti-German plan of
1904, about which time the French and British Navies began talking over
the best ways of acting together when the Germans made their spring.
In 1905--the centenary of Trafalgar--a British fleet visited France and
a French fleet visited England. It was a thrilling sight to see that
noble Frenchman, Admiral Caillard, whose example was followed by all
his officers, stand up in his carriage to salute the Nelson statue in
Trafalgar Square.
In 1908, when Canada was celebrating the Tercentenary of a life that
could never have begun without Drake or been saved without Nelson, the
French and British Prime Ministers (Clemenceau and Campbell-Bannerman)
were talking things over in Paris. The result was that the British
left the Mediterranean mainly in charge of the French Navy, while the
French left the Channel mostly and the North Sea entirely in charge of
the British. There was no treaty then or at any other time. Each
Government left its own Parliament, and therefore its own People, whose
servant it was, to decide freely when the time came. But the men at
the head of the French and British fleets and armies arranged, year by
year, what they would do when they got the word _GO_! At the same time
(six years before the war) that the Prime Ministers were in conference
in Paris Lord Haldane, then Secretary of State for War, was warning
Lord French in London that he would be expected to command the British
army against the Germans in France, and that he had better begin to
study the problem at once.
A great deal of sickening nonsense has been talked about our having
been so "righteous" because so "unprepared." We were not prepared to
_attack_ anybody; and quite rightly too; though we need not get
self-righteous over it. But our great Mother Country's Navy was most
certainly and most rightly prepared to _defend_ the Empire and its
allies against the attack that was bound to come. If France and Great
Britain had not been well enough prepared for self-defence, then the
Germans must have won; and wrong would have triumphed over right all
over the world. There is only one answer to all this "Pacifistic"
stuff-and-nonsense--if you will not fight on the side of right, then
you help those who fight on the side of wrong; and if you see your
enemy preparing to attack you wrongfully, and you do not prepare to
defend yourself, then you are a fool as well as a knave.
All the great experts in statesmanship and war saw the clash coming;
and saw that it was sure to come, because the German war party could
force it on the moment they were ready. Moreover, it was known that
the men of this war party would have forced it on at once if a peace
party had ever seemed likely to oust them. The real experts even
foresaw the chief ways in which the war would be fought. Lord Fisher
foresaw the danger of sea-going submarines long before submarines were
used for anything but the defence of harbours. More than this, ten
years before the war he named all the four senior men who led the first
British army into Flanders. In Lord Esher's diary for the 17th of
January, 1904, ten years before the war, is the following note about
Fisher's opinion on the best British generals: "French, because he
never failed in South Africa, and because he has the splendid gift of
choosing the right man (he means Douglas Haig). Then Smith-Dorrien and
Plumer." In the same way Joffre and Foch were known to be the great
commanders of the French. Again in the same way (that is, by the
foreknowledge of the real experts) Lord Jellicoe, though a junior
rear-admiral at the time, was pointed out at the Quebec Tercentenary
(1908) as the man who would command the Grand Fleet; while Sir David
Beatty and Sir Charles Madden were also known as "rising stars."
The following years were fuller than ever of the coming war. In 1910
the Kaiser went to Vienna and let the world know that he was ready to
stand by Austria in "shining armour." Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, and
Greece were all to be used for the grand German railway from Berlin to
Bagdad that was to cut Russia off from the rest of Europe, get all the
trade of the Near East into German hands, and, by pushing down to the
Persian Gulf, threaten the British oversea line between England and
Asia.
During the next three years the Italian conquest of Tripoli (next door
to Egypt) and the two wars in the Balkans hurt Germany's friends, the
Turks and Bulgarians, a great deal, and thus threatened the German
Berlin-to-Bagdad "line of penetration" through the Near East and into
the Asiatic sea flank of the hated British. With 1914 came the
completion of the enlarged Kiel Canal (exactly as foretold by Fisher
years before); and this, together with the state of the world for and
against the Germans, made the war an absolute certainty at once. The
murder of the heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, was only an
excuse to goad the gallant Serbians into war. Any other would have
done as well if it had only served the German turn.
HYMN BEFORE ACTION
The earth is full of anger,
The seas are dark with wrath,
The Nations in their harness
Go up against our path:
Ere yet we loose the legions--
Ere yet we draw the blade,
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, aid!
* * * *
E'en now their vanguard gathers,
E'en now we face the fray--
As Thou didst help our fathers,
Help Thou our host to-day!
Fulfilled of signs and wonders,
In life, in death made clear--
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, hear!
--_Rudyard Kipling_.