Gladstone hated war. He held, as most people hold, that there are
causes, such as Life and Home and Freedom, for which the gentlest
and most humane of men must be prepared to draw the sword. But he
was profoundly anxious that it should never be drawn except under
the absolute compulsion of national duty, and during the Crimean
War he made this memorable declaration:
"If, when you have attained the objects of the war, you continue
it for the sake of mere military glory, I say you tempt the justice
of Him in whose hands the fates of armies are as absolutely lodged
as the fate of the infant slumbering in its cradle."
This being his general view of war, it was inevitable that he should
regard with horror the prospect of intervention in the Franco-German
War, which broke out with startling suddenness, when he was Prime
Minister, in the summer of 1870. He strained every nerve to keep
England out of the struggle, and was profoundly thankful that Providence
enabled him to do so. Yet all through that terrible crisis he saw
quite clearly that either of the belligerent Powers might take
a step which would oblige England to intervene, and he made a
simultaneous agreement with Prussia and France that, if either
violated the neutrality of Belgium, England would co-operate with
the other to defend the little State. Should Belgium, he said, "go
plump down the maw of another country to satisfy dynastic greed,"
such a tragedy would "come near to an extinction of public right
in Europe, and I do not think we could look on while the sacrifice
of freedom and independence was in course of consummation."