there to prove it. That is one advantage we possess formerly forbidden
to public opinion. The Press and popular education have done much
harm, but this solid good stands to their credit: they have made it
impossible, as in old times, to order war in secret councils for
motives undisclosed, or not disclosed till long after the events. Every
belligerent Government has found itself under the necessity of issuing
to the world diplomatic correspondence relating to the outbreak of the
war. All the publications of the Powers engaged will be found in a
single volume, _Collected Diplomatic Documents relating to the Outbreak
of the European War_ (E. Ponsonby, 1_s._ net). To that volume frequent
reference will be made in these pages. One omission must be noted, a
hiatus more significant and sinister than any printed evidence. The
influence exercised by Berlin on Vienna must be, for the historian, the
central pivot of all _ante-bellum_ negotiations. But in neither of the
books published by the Germanic Powers is there any real disclosure
of what passed between Berlin and Vienna during that fateful period.
Allegations of atrocities, too, no longer rest merely on the evidence
of private persons. Formal Commissions, composed of lawyers and
statesmen of international reputation, have sifted the whole mass of
charges, eliminated hearsay, and committed themselves to a verdict that
nothing can shake. That great prince of the Church, Cardinal Mercier,
and his Bishops, have issued documents with every solemnity of form and
occasion which in the early days of the struggle were not available.
A whole library of comment, in which the ablest minds not only of the
United Kingdom and France but also of the United States and Germany
itself have collaborated in a reasoned examination of the issues at
stake, is at our disposal.
The evidence in the whole case is indeed at once so clear and so
voluminous that one might well have supposed any further survey of it
to be superfluous. That is not so. It is a far from frequent experience
to find a man in Ireland, even among those who assume to themselves a
new leadership of opinion, who has made an honest study of documents
within reach of all the world. You will still hear “intellectuals”
explaining at length that they “don’t believe the Germans committed
any atrocities in Belgium.” You will hear facile sneers at the notion
that attacks of Great Powers on small nationalities had anything to do
with the war. The sooner the unworthiness of this familiar attitude is
recognised by everybody in Ireland the better.
No man has the right to offer an opinion on any subject that is a
matter of evidence until he has read the evidence. Upon anyone who has
read it in this instance the twin _niaiseries_ just cited make the
impression merely of blank unreason. What would one make of a man, and
a writer to boot, who began modern French history by dismissing the
alleged existence of Napoleon with a shrug and a gibe? Or who “didn’t
believe” that there ever were evictions in Ireland? The parallel is
exact. The evidence in proof of the first pair of propositions differs
from that in proof of the second pair only in being fresher and more
abundant. Going upon that evidence, any branch of which can be pursued
in detail by any enquirer, I propose to establish this following
argument.
This war originated in an attempt by Austria-Hungary, a large Empire,
to destroy the independence of Serbia, a small nation.
It grew to its present dimensions because Germany, and under German
pressure Austria-Hungary, rejected every proposal making for peace
suggested by the present Allied Powers but especially by the United
Kingdom through Sir Edward Grey.
Germany offered bribes to the United Kingdom, and to Belgium herself,
to induce them to consent to a violation of the European treaty which
protected Belgian independence and enforced Belgian neutrality.
Having broken like an armed burglar into Belgium, Germany was there
guilty of a systematic campaign of murder, pillage, outrage, and
destruction, justified, planned and ordered by her military and
intellectual leaders. Such a campaign was inherent in her philosophy
of politics, and of war. She stood for the gospel of force; and the
sacrament of cruelty. To link with her in any wise a nation like
Ireland that has always stood for spiritual freedom is an act of
treason and blasphemy against our whole past.
The Allied Powers did not come into the war, and will not come before
history, sinless. The past of both Great Britain and France was deeply
stained with domination, that is to say, with Prussianism. Much of it
was still apparent in some of their politics. But they had begun to
cleanse themselves. The working out of the democratic formula would
have in due course completed that process, and will complete it.
Prussia, on the contrary, had adopted her vice as the highest virtue.
Her philosophy did not correct her appetites, it canonised them.
Therefore, speaking of main ideas, the triumph of Prussia must mean the
triumph of force: the triumph of the Allies must mean the triumph of
law.
In such a conflict to counsel Ireland to stand neutral in judgment, is
as if one were to counsel a Christian to stand neutral in judgment
between Nero and St. Peter. To counsel her to stand neutral in action
would have been to abandon all her old valour and decision, and to
establish in their places the new cardinal virtues of comfort and
cowardice. In such matters you cannot compromise. Neutrality is already
a decision, a decision of adherence to the evil side. To trim is to
betray. It will be an ill end of all our “idealistic” movements when
their success so transforms the young men of this nation that in this
world they shall be content to be neutral, and that nothing will offer
them in the next save to be blown about by the winds.
Used with the wisdom which is sown in tears and blood, this tragedy
of Europe may be and must be the prologue to the two reconciliations
of which all statesmen have dreamed, the reconciliation of Protestant
Ulster with Ireland, and the reconciliation of Ireland with Great
Britain.
In this book--pieced together amid preoccupations of a very different
kind--I have reprinted certain articles on various aspects of the war
published in its earlier stages. I have done so not out of vanity,
the reader may rest assured, but to repel an imputation. It has been
charged against us who have taken our stand with the Allies that we
were merely dancing to the tune of Imperialism, that our ideas came to
us from London, that we hated Prussia and Prussianism not honestly but
simply to order. Our recruiting appeals have been twisted from their
plain utterance and obvious meaning. Wordy young men, with no very
notable public services to their record, have “stigmatised” (a word in
which they delight) us all from Mr. Redmond down as renegades to Irish
Nationalism. What we have said and done is to be remembered and is to
rise up in judgment against us in the new Ireland that is coming. I
do not know whether anybody else is pained or alarmed, but my withers
are unwrung. Since I knew Prussian “culture” at close quarters I have
loathed it, and written my loathing. The outbreak of war caught me in
Belgium, where I was running arms for the National Volunteers, and on
the 6th of August, 1914, I wrote from Brussels in the _Daily News_
that it was a war of “civilisation against barbarians.” I assisted for
many overwhelming weeks at the agony of the valiant Belgian nation. I
have written no word and spoken none that was not the word of an Irish
Nationalist, who had been at the trouble of thinking for himself.
Ireland was my centre of reference as it was that of Mr. Redmond, Mr.
T. P. O’Connor, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. Devlin in their speeches, and of
Mr. Hugh A. Law in his clear and noble pamphlet, _Why is Ireland at
War?_
It is true that we have all made two assumptions. We assumed that
Ireland had a duty not only to herself but to the world; we assumed
further that, whatever befell, the path taken by her must be the path
of honour and justice. If these postulates are rejected there is no
more to be said: the future must in that case undoubtedly belong to the
friends of the burners of Louvain.
II.--THE BULLYING OF SERBIA
The first declaration of war in this world-conflict was that of
Austria-Hungary against Serbia on the 27th of July, 1914. The first
shots fired in the war were those fired by Austrian monitors on the
Danube into Belgrade on the 29th of July, 1914. Austria-Hungary is or
was then a great Empire with a population of 50,000,000 and an army of
2,500,000; Serbia is or was then a peasant State with a population of
5,000,000 and an army of 230,000.
How these shots--heard alas! farther and more disastrously than that
of Emerson’s embattled farmers!--came to be fired is a plain story
often told, and never disputed or disputable. It will be sufficient
to recall the main features of it. On the 28th of June the Archduke
Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Emperor Francis Joseph, and his wife
were assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of the province of Bosnia,
annexed to Austria-Hungary in 1909. Any reader of the English or French
papers of that time will remember the sincere and universal sympathy
expressed for the old unhappy Emperor, and his ill-starred realm
and family. It was a crime that awakened horror throughout Europe.
The annexation had been cynical, but crime is no cure for crime. In
general character and consequences there is an historic act which
presents remarkable resemblances to the Sarajevo outrage, I mean the
Phœnix Park murders. In each case irresponsible men stained a good
cause, and in each case an attempt was made to indict a nation. The
assassins were arrested, Prinzip who had fired the fatal pistol-shots,
and Cabinovitch who had thrown bombs. They were in the hands of the
law, and exemplary justice might reasonably be expected. The seething
pot of Balkan politics, said the average man in these countries, had
boiled up once more in noxious scum. It was another tragic episode. And
so people in the Entente countries turned back to their own troubles.
How acute these troubles were we are now in danger of forgetting, but
we have learned enough since then of the German political psychologist
and his ways to conclude that they were a prime factor in subsequent
decisions. The threat of civil war in “Ulster,” an unprecedented crisis
in the Army, gun-running, arming and drilling public and secret, a
woman suffrage and a labour movement, both so far gone in violence as
to be on the immediate edge of anarchy, left the Government of these
countries little leisure for the politics of the Near East. France
was in serious difficulties as regards her public finance, violent
fiscal controversies were impending, the Caillaux trial threatened
to rival that of Dreyfus in releasing savage passions, the military
unpreparedness of the country was notorious. Russia naturally stood
far closer to Serbia, but labour riots in Petrograd, a revival of
revolutionary activity, and widespread menace of internal disturbance
seemed hopelessly to cripple her. Nothing could have been more remote
from the desire of any of the Entente nations than a European war
springing out of Sarajevo.
But there were other forces at work in the sinister drama. On the very
morrow of the assassinations the Austro-Hungarian Press opened what
Professor Denis well calls a systematic “expectoration of hatred”
against Serbia--Prinzip and Cabinovitch were both Austrian, not Serbian
subjects. The Serbian Government pressed the formal courtesy of grief
so far as to postpone the national fêtes arranged in celebration of the
battle of Kosovo. They had already warned the Austrian police of the
Anarchist Associations of Cabinovitch, and now offered their help in
bringing to justice any accomplices who might be traced within their
jurisdiction. All this was of no avail. The Austro-Hungarian Red Book
is not always discreet in its selections. Thus an incriminating passage
from the _Pravda_ runs (3rd July, 1914)--
“The Policy of Vienna is a cynical one. It exploits the death of the
unfortunate couple for its abominable aims against the Serbian people.”
The _Militärische Rundschau_ demanded war (15th July)--
“At this moment the initiative rests with us: Russia is not ready,
moral factors and right are on our side as well as might.”
The _Neue Freie Presse_ demands “war to the knife, and in the name of
humanity the extermination of the cursed Serbian race.”
The furious indictment of the whole Serbian nation continued in the
Press of Vienna and Budapest, and found echoes even in that of these
countries. The task was easy, for the ill repute, clinging to Serbian
politicians since the murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga, had not
been wholly banished by her later heroic deeds.
These journalistic outbursts and the protests of the Serbian Press,
although unnoticed by the outside world, attracted, as was natural,
the attention of diplomatists. But an interchange of barbed epithets
across the Danube was no new thing, and the Austrian Foreign Office
assumed an attitude of reassurance which deceived even Russia, and
lulled the other Entente Powers into complete security (Serbian Book,
No. 6, No. 12, No. 17). We now know that there were other observers
less misled, such as M. D’Apchier le Mangin, who noted the massing of
guns and munitions on the Serbian frontier as early as the 11th of
July, and M. Jules Cambon, who had convinced himself by the 21st of
July that Germany had set in train the preliminaries to mobilisation.
But nothing open or public (for the police proceedings against the
assassins had been held _in camera_) had prepared the way for the
Austrian _coup_. It was an amazed Europe that learned the terms of the
Note presented at Belgrade by the Austrian Ambassador on the 23rd of
July. There were no illusions as to its meaning and implications, for
none were possible. Newspapers so little akin as the _Morning Post_ and
M. Clemenceau’s _L’Homme Libre_ characterised it in the same phrase: it
was a summons to Serbia to abdicate her sovereignty and independence,
and to exist henceforth as a vassal-state of the Dual Empire. This
document is the Devil’s Cauldron from which have sprung all the horrors
of the present war. As to its extravagant character and probable
consequences, opinion is unanimous, even unofficial German opinion. The
Berlin _Vorwärts_ writes (25th July)--
“From whatever point of view one considers the situation, a European
War is at our gates. And why? Because the Austrian Government and the
Austrian War Party are determined to clear, by a _coup de main_, a
place in which they can fill their lungs.”
In the Foreign Offices the same language was used. Sir Edward Grey
said to the Austrian Ambassador that he “had never before seen one
State address to another independent State a document of so formidable
a character.” The reader can very easily verify for himself this
impression by reference to the _Diplomatic Correspondence_. To such
a document Serbia was given forty-eight hours to reply. As M. Denis
points out, Prinzip, the assassin, taken in the act, was allowed three
months to prepare his defence, for he was not brought to trial until
October: the Serbian nation, exhausted by two wars, was allowed two
days in which to decide between a surrender of its independence and
an immediate invasion. Almost “to the scandal of Europe,” a reply was
delivered within the time. The Austrian representative received it
at Belgrade, and in half-an-hour had demanded his passports; fifteen
minutes later he was on board the train. The _will to war_ of the
Germanic Powers find many cynical and dramatic expressions in the
interchanges between the Chancelleries, but none so nude of all decency
as this.
In these two days M. Pashich, in his passionate anxiety for peace, had
agreed to terms more humiliating than have often been dictated after
a victorious war. The Austrian Note had opened with a long indictment
of the Serbian nation. Complicity in the crime of Sarajevo was assumed
without any tittle of evidence, however vague or feeble, then or since
produced. Nevertheless the Serbian Prime Minister bowed to the storm.
His surrender was so complete that it deserves to be read textually.
These are, in skeleton, the main features (British Blue Book, No. 39).
The Serbian Government, having protested their entire loyalty past and
present to their engagements, both of treaty and of neighbourliness
towards Austria-Hungary, nevertheless “undertake to cause to be
published on the first page of the _Journal Officiel_, on the date of
the 13th (26th) of July, the following declaration--
‘The Royal Government of Serbia condemn all propaganda which may be
directed against Austria-Hungary, that is to say, all such tendencies
as aim at ultimately detaching from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
territories which form part thereof, and they sincerely deplore the
baneful consequences of these criminal movements. The Royal Government
regret that, according to the communication from the Imperial and
Royal Government, certain Serbian officers and officials should have
taken part in the above-mentioned propaganda, and thus compromised
the good neighbourly relations to which the Royal Serbian Government
was solemnly engaged by the declaration of the 31st of March, 1909,
which declaration disapproves and repudiates all idea or attempt at
interference with the destiny of the inhabitants of any part whatsoever
of Austria-Hungary, and they consider it their duty formally to warn
the officers, officials and entire population of the kingdom that
henceforth they will take the most rigorous steps against all such
persons as are guilty of such acts, to prevent and to repress Which
they Will use their utmost endeavour.’
“This declaration will be brought to the knowledge of the Royal Army in
an order of the day, in the name of His Majesty the King, by His Royal
Highness the Crown Prince Alexander, and will be published in the next
official army bulletin.”
The Serbian Government further undertakes--
1. To introduce severe Press laws against any anti-Austrian propaganda,
and to amend the constitution so as to give more vigorous effect to
these laws.
2. To dissolve the “Narodna Odbrana,” although none of its members have
been proved to have committed criminal acts, and “every other society
which may be directing its efforts against Austria-Hungary.”
3. To _remove without delay from their public educational
establishments in Serbia all that serves or could serve to foment
propaganda against Austria-Hungary_. (I print this in italics that
the shades of the sins of the National Board may find comfort and be
appeased.)
4. To remove from the Army all persons proved guilty of acts directed
against Austria-Hungary.
5. “The Royal Government must confess that they do not clearly grasp
the meaning or the scope of the demand made by the Imperial and Royal
Government that Serbia shall undertake to accept the collaboration of
the organs of the Imperial and Royal Government upon their territory,
but they declare that they will admit such collaboration as agrees with
the principle of international law, With criminal procedure, and with
good neighbourly relations.
6. “It goes without saying that the Royal Government consider it their
duty to open an enquiry against all such persons as are, or eventually
may be, implicated in the plot of the 15th of June, and who happen to
be within the territory of the kingdom. As regards the participation in
this enquiry of Austro-Hungarian agents or authorities appointed for
this purpose by the Imperial and Royal Government, the Royal Government
cannot accept such an arrangement, as it would be a violation of the
Constitution and of the law of criminal procedure; nevertheless, in
concrete cases communications as to the results of the investigation in
question might be given to the Austro-Hungarian agents.”
7. To arrest any incriminated persons.
8. To reinforce and extend the measures against illicit traffic of arms
and explosives across the frontier, and to punish severely any official
who has failed in his duty.
9. To deal with any anti-Austrian utterances of Serbian officials.
10. To keep the Austro-Hungarian Government informed of the carrying
out of these engagements.
Then follows the offer which confirms the good faith of Serbia, and
which damns the Central Empires before the Judgment of History.
“If the Imperial and Royal Government are not satisfied with this
reply, the Serbian Government, considering that it is not to the common
interest to precipitate the solution of this question, are ready, as
always to accept a pacific understanding, either by referring this
question to the decision of the International Tribunal of The Hague,
or to the Great Powers which took part in the drawing up of the
declaration made by the Serbian Government on the 18th (31st) of March,
1909.”
Of the ten points of the Austrian Note eight are conceded under
conditions of unparalleled humiliation. No diplomatic triumph could
be more complete. Serbia yields, well knowing that her immediate
past is a good deal fly-blown and that nobody in Western Europe has
the least intention of dying for her _beaux yeux_. But paragraphs 5
and 6, demanding the association of Austrian officials in judicial
enquiries to be held within the territory and under the jurisdiction
of the Serbian Government, aim at more than humiliation; they demand
that Serbia shall abdicate her own independent sovereignty. M. Pashich
rejects them, but in a mode that will remain as the final condemnation
before history of the Germanic Powers.
M. Sazonof went to the root of the matter at once in a conversation
with the Austrian representative in Petrograd. This is the Austrian
version (24th July)--
“The participation of Imperial and Royal (Austrian) officials in the
suppression of the revolutionary movements elicited further protest on
the part of the minister. Serbia then will no longer be master in her
own house. You will always be wanting to interfere again, and what a
life you will lead Europe.”
“_Serbia would no longer be master in her own house._” There was
the key to Austrian ambitions. The independence of Serbia was to be
violated, her territory was to admit foreign officials, and gradually a
small nation was to disappear into the patchwork-quilt possessions of
the _Dual Monarchy_. There you have the sinister House of the Hapsburgs
exposed in the very act of pressing the button, and releasing the
current which has shattered the fabric of Europe.
Swaddle and disguise it as you will in words, there is the seed of
origin of the European War. There is no plainer transaction in history:
the clock has a crystal face that allow us to see all the works. You
may, if you will, call up a mist of eloquence and people it with
ghosts, the ghosts of wicked things done by English in Ireland and
India, Russians in Finland, French in Morocco, Italians in Tripoli,
Belgians in the Congo, and Serbians all the way back to Kosovo. You may
write at length of the inherent perils of the “European system,” the
expansion of races, the discharge of long accumulating thunder-clouds,
of _Hauptströmungen_, of iron laws of destiny, and all the rest of
the lurid, deterministic farrago of sham omniscience which forms the
stock-in-trade of the German savant. You may point out that there is a
sense in which all previous history is behind even the least important
event in history, and that the Austrian ultimatum did but set a match
to a long-laid train. Much of what you say will be true, and much
will also be horrible. But nothing can alter the fact that this war
originated in the attempt of a great Empire to exploit legitimate
anger against crime in order to destroy the independence of a small
State; that the small State, having accepted every other humiliation,
offered to submit in this to the judgment of either of the recognised
international tribunals, and that the great Empire refused.