PROBLEMS OF LEADERSHIP
It is worth noting in this connection how heavily the lack of genial
leaders at this critical conjuncture in European history told upon the
allied peoples and affected their chances of success. The statesmen in
power were mostly straightforward, conscientious servants of their
respective Governments, whose ideal had been the prevention of
hostilities, and whose exertions in war time were directed to the
restoration of peace on a stable basis. By none of them was the stir,
the spirit, the governing instincts of the new era or the actual
crisis perceived. They all failed of audacity. Hence they were
solicitous to leave as far as possible intact all the rights,
privileges and institutions of the past which would be serviceable in
the re-established peace regime of the future. In Great Britain the
voluntary system of recruiting the army and navy was to be respected,
the right of workmen to strike was recognized, and the maintenance of
party government was looked upon as a matter of course. The writer of
these pages made several ineffectual attempts to propagate the view
that a War Cabinet presided over by a real chief was a corollary of
the situation, military and industrial compulsion for all was
indispensable, that a discriminating tariff on our imports and a
restriction of certain exports would materially contribute to our
progress, and that a special department for the manufacture of
munitions ought to be organized without delay.[70] One measure
indicative, people said, of undisputed wisdom which was resorted to
was the appointment of Lord Kitchener as Secretary for War.[71] If
this step deserved the fervent approval it met with, its efficacy was
considerably impaired by imposing on the new Secretary the task of
purveying munitions and other supplies, in addition to the
multifarious duties of his office. And with this solitary exception
everything was allowed to go on "as usual," with consequences which
every one has since had an opportunity of meditating. Internal
whole-hearted co-operation between the Government and all the social
layers of the population was neither known nor systematically
attempted, and still less were the respective forces of the Allies
co-ordinated and hurled against the enemy. The struggle was confined
to the army and the navy, and these instruments of national defence
were inadequately provided with the first necessaries for action.
[70] Cf. _Contemporary Review_, November 1914. I was
requested to suppress an article on the subject of "Coalition
Government" and another on the subject of "Tariff Reform
during and after the War."
[71] August 5, 1914.
Each of the Allies was isolated, cooped within its own narrow circle
of ideas, buoyed up by its own hopes, bent on the attainment of its
own special aims. The first step towards amalgamation was negative in
character, but superlatively politic. It took the form of a covenant
by which it was stipulated that none of the Allies should conclude a
separate peace with the enemy. But beyond that nothing was done, nor
was anything more considered necessary.
In Britain the consciousness that the country was at war spread very
slowly, while the conviction that this was a life-and-death struggle
which would seriously affect the lives and rights and habits of every
individual made no headway. Only a few grasped the fact that a
tremendous upheaval was going forward which marked the rise of a new
era and a complete break with the old. By the bulk of the population
it was treated as a game calling for no extraordinary efforts, no
special methods, no new departures. It was construed as a hateful
parenthesis in a cheerful history of human progress, and the object of
the nation was to have it swiftly and decently closed. Hence the
machinery of the old system was not discarded. Voluntary enlistment
was belauded and agitation against joining the army magnanimously
tolerated. Attacks on the Government were permitted. The manufacture
of munitions was confided to private firms and to the whims of
dissatisfied workmen, and co-operation among the various sections of
the population was left to private initiative.
Most of us are prone to consider this war as a fortuitous event, which
might, indeed, have been staved off, but which, having disturbed for a
time the easy movement of our insular life, will die away and leave us
free to continue our progress on the same lines as before. But this
faith is hardly more than the confluence of hopes and strivings,
habits, traditions, and aspirations untempered by accurate knowledge
of the facts. And the facts, were we cognizant of them, would show us
that the agencies which brought about this tremendous shock of peoples
without blasting our hopes or exploding our pet theories, will not
spend their force in this generation or the next, and that already the
entire fabric--social, political, and economical--of our national life
is undergoing disruption.
The shifting of landmarks, political and social, is going steadily if
stealthily forward; and the nation waking up one day will note with
amazement the vast distance it has imperceptibly traversed. If only we
could realize at present how rapidly and irrevocably we are drifting
away from our old-world moorings, we should feel in a more congenial
mood for adjusting ourselves to the new and unpopular requirements of
the era now dawning. Already we are becoming a militarist and a
protective State, but we do not yet know it. We have broken with the
traditions of our own peculiar and insular form of civilization, of
which poets like Tennyson were the high priests, yet we hesitate to
bid them farewell. We still base our forecasts of the future political
life on the past and calculate the outcome of the next elections, the
fate of Disestablishment and Home Rule, the relative positions of the
chief Parliamentary parties on the old bases, and draw up our plans
accordingly. In short, we still bear about with us the fragrant
atmosphere of our previous existence which will never be renewed. And
it is owing to the effects of that disturbing medium that our
observations have been so defective and our mistakes so sinister. We
still fail to perceive that decay has overtaken the organs of our
Party Government and the groundwork of our State fabric is rotten.
Yet everything about and around us is in flux. We are in the midst of
a new environment.
When this war is over we shall search in vain for what was peculiarly
British in our cherished civilization. Of that civilization which
reached its acme during the reign of the late King Edward, we have
seen the last, little though most of us realize its passing. It was an
age of sturdy good sense, healthy animalism, and dignity withal, and
not devoid of a strong flavour of humanity and home-reared virtue. But
in every branch of politics and some departments of science it was an
age of amateurism. Respect for right, for liberty, for law and
tradition, for relative truth and gradual progress, was widely
diffused. Well-controlled energy, responsiveness to calls on one's
fellow-feeling, and the everyday honesty that tapers into policy were
among its familiar features. But if one were asked to sum it all up in
a single word it would be hard to utter one more comprehensive or
characteristic than the essentially English term, comfort. Comfort was
the apex of the pyramid which is now crumbling away. And it is that
Laodicean civilization, and not the fierce spirit of the new time,
which is incarnate in the present official leaders of the British
nation.
The French, too, approached the general problem from their own
particular standpoint. Provided with a serviceable military
organization, the same unconsciousness of the need of mobilizing all
the other national resources pierced through their policy. Parties and
factions subsisted as before, and half-way men who would have been
satisfied with driving the enemy out of France and Belgium lifted up
their voices against those who insisted on prosecuting the war until
Prussianism was worsted. The French Socialists met in London[72] and
passed resolutions in which the usual claptrap of the war of classes,
the boons of pacifism and the wickedness of the Tsardom occupied a
prominent place. And the Congress was honoured by the presence of two
Cabinet Ministers, MM. Guesde and Sembat.
[72] February 1915.
Russia, true to her old self, carried the narrow spirit of the
bureaucracy into the fiercest struggle recorded by history, seemingly
satisfied that the clash of armies and navies would leave antiquated
theories and moulding traditions intact. When the revolutionist
Burtzeff published his patriotic letter to the French papers approving
Russia's energetic defence of civilization, he was applauded by all
Europe. "Even we," he wrote, "adherents of the parties of the Extreme
Left and hitherto ardent anti-militarists and pacifists, even we
believe in the necessity of _this_ war. The German peril, the curse
which has hung over the world for so many decades, will be crushed."
Yet when he returned to his country resolved to support the Tsar's
Government and lend a hand in the good work, he was sent to Siberia,
in commemoration of the old order of things.
Germany alone took her stand on the new plane and accommodated herself
to the new conditions. Thoroughness was her watchword because victory
was her aim, its alternative being coma or death. With her gaze fixed
on the end, she rejected nothing that could serve as means.
In congruity with these divergent views and sentiments was the reading
of the war's vicissitudes in the various belligerent countries. The
allied Press was over-hopeful, right being certain to triumph over
might wedded to wrong. Publicists pitied the Teutons in anticipation
of the fate that was fast overtaking them. Paeans of victory resounded,
allaying the apprehensions and numbing the energies of the leagued
nations. The German, it was asseverated, had shot his bolt and was at
bay. Russia had laid siege to Cracow, and would shortly occupy that
city as she had occupied Lemberg. The Tsar's troops might then be
expected to push on to Berlin, and to reach it in a few months. And,
painfully aware of the certainty of this consummation, Austria was
dejected and Hungary secretly making ready to secede from the Habsburg
Monarchy. To this soothing gossip even serious statesmen lent a
willing ear. The writer of these remarks was several times asked by
leading personages of the allied Governments whether internal
upheavals were not impending in Germany and Austria, and his assurance
that no such diversion could be looked for then or in the near future
was traversed on the ground that all trustworthy accounts from Berlin,
Vienna and Budapest pointed to a process of fermentation which would
shortly interpose an impassable barrier to the further military
advance of the Central empires. But he continued to express himself in
the same strain of warning, which subsequent events have unhappily
justified.
In October 1914, for instance, he wrote--
"Germany has already shot her bolt, people tell us.
Already? The people who for forty years have been preparing
to establish their rule from Ostend to the Persian Gulf have
expended their energies after three months of warfare? And
the concrete foundations built at such pains and expense in
the German factory that dominates Edinburgh? Was the Teuton
simple-minded enough to fancy that he would be in a position
to utilize this and the other emplacements for his giant
guns within three months after the outbreak of hostilities?
Let us be fair to our enemy and just to ourselves. The
German has not shot his bolt. If time is on our side, it
will also remain on his up to a point which we have not yet
reached. Those who urge that the German must make haste
imply that his resources are gradually drying up, and that
neither his food supplies, nor his chemicals, nor his metals
can be imported so long as we hold command of the seas. His
armies will therefore die of inanition, or their operations
will be thwarted for lack of munitions. This would indeed be
joyful tidings were it true. If false, it is a mischievous
delusion.
"We are told that the German time-table has been upset.
Unquestionably it has. But is the time-table identical with
the programme for which it was drawn up? If it is, then the
march on Paris has been definitely abandoned. Now is this
conclusion borne out by what we behold? What, then, is the
meaning of the plan to capture Belfort and Calais? What is
the object of the vast reinforcements now on their way from
the east to Von Kluck's army? Personally, I have not a doubt
that Paris is the objective, or that the Germans are still
striving to carry out their programme in its entirety,
which is the extension of their empire over Europe and Asia
Minor. The immediate object of the Allies is to foil this
design, and only after we have accomplished that can we
think of assuming the offensive and crushing Prussian
militarism. We have not compassed that end; the battlefields
are still in the Allies' countries, and the initiative rests
with the enemy. Now to whatever causes we may attribute this
undesirable state of things--and it certainly cannot be
ascribed to lack of energy on the part of the British
Government or our military authorities--it is right that
those who are acting for the nation should ask themselves
whether those causes are still operative. If they are--and
on this score there is hardly room for doubt--it behoves the
Allies, and the British people in particular, to rise to a
just sense of the _unparalleled sacrifices_ they must be
prepared to make during the ordeal which they are about to
undergo."
The German way of looking at the relative strength and positions of
the belligerents as modified by the vicissitudes of the campaign was
realistic and statesmanlike. Starting from the principle that a people
of about a hundred millions, animated by a lively faith in its own
vitality and mental equipment, can neither be destroyed nor
permanently crippled, they argued that the worst that Fate could have
in store for them would be a draw. But before that end could be
achieved the Teutonic armies must have been pulverized and Germany and
Austria occupied by the allied troops. And of this there were no
signs. "We never fancied," they said, "that what happened in 1870
would be repeated in 1914. How could we make such a stupid mistake?
Then we had only France against us. To-day we encounter the combined
forces of Russia, France, Belgium and England. This difference had to
have its counterpart in the campaign. Thus we have not yet captured
Paris. But then to-day we are wrestling with the greatest empires in
the world, and we hold them in our grip. We are fighting not for a few
milliard francs and a disaffected province, but for priceless spoils
and European hegemony. Moreover, Belgium, which we possess and mean to
keep, is a greater prize than the temporary occupation of Paris.
Besides, postponement is not abandonment. Whether we take the French
capital one month or another is but a detail.
"And, over and above all this, we have reached the sea and are within
a few miles of England's shores. Furthermore, Russia's army, which we
lured into East Prussia until it fancied it was about to invest
Koenigsberg, has been driven back beyond Wirballen far into Tsardom,
with appalling losses of men and material. Her other forces, which
several weeks ago boasted that they were about to capture Cracow, will
soon be driven out of Przemysl and Lemberg. Libau will fall into our
hands. Riga is sure to be ours, and Warsaw itself will finally admit
our victorious troops. Does this look like defeat at the hands of our
enemies? And German soil is still as immune from invasion as though it
were girded by the sea."
In all our forecasts one important element of calculation was
invariably left out of account: the consequences of our blunders,
past, present and future. And these have added enormously to our
difficulties and dangers. Not the least made was the mistake in
allowing the two German warships _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ to enter the
Dardanelles. To have pursued them into Ottoman waters would, it was
pleaded in justification, have constituted a violation of Turkish
neutrality. Undoubtedly it would, but the infringement would not have
been more serious than many flagrant breaches of neutrality which the
Sublime Porte had committed a short time before and was known to be
about to perpetrate again.[73] But a scrupulous regard for the rights
of neutrals has been, and still is, the groundstone of the Allies'
policy, irrespective of its effects on the outcome of the war. The
rules of the game, it is contended, must be observed by us, however
much they may be disregarded by the enemy. This considerateness and
scrupulosity may be chivalrous, but they form an irksome drag on a
nation at war with Teutons. The two ships were at once transferred by
Germany to the Turks.[74] Some two months later, deeming their war
preparations completed, the latter suddenly bombarded the open Russian
town of Theodosia in the Black Sea, and sank several small craft, thus
realizing Germany's hopes and justifying her politico-economic policy.
It was now too late to lament the chivalrous attitude which had
permitted the _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_ to steam into the
Dardanelles, or to regret the indifference we had persistently
displayed to Near Eastern affairs for well-nigh twenty years. The best
that could be done at that late hour was to face the consequences of
those errors with dignity and to strive to repair them with alacrity.
But all the efforts made were partial and successive. There was no
attempt at co-ordination.
[73] Turkey had already violated her neutrality to our
detriment many times. For instance, on September 25 she had
erected military works against us on the Sinai frontier; as
far back as August 25 Turkish officers had seized Egyptian
camels laden with foodstuffs. Moslem fidahis in Ottoman
service endeavoured to incite the Egyptian Mohammedans
against the British Government during the first half of
October.
[74] August 13, 1914.
Turkey's defection was a serious blow to the allied cause, not only in
view of the positive, but also of the negative, advantages it was
calculated to confer upon Germany. The Ottoman army, consisting of
first-class raw materials, had had its latent qualities unfolded and
matured by German organization, discipline and training. Its supplies
were replenished. Ammunition factories were established. Barracks were
built and fortifications equipped in congruity with latter-day needs.
Three million pounds of German bar gold reached Constantinople, and
were deposited in the branch offices of the Deutsche Bank there for
the requirements of the army. In all this the Kaiser's Government ran
no risks. The return was guaranteed by the politico-economic measures
which had been continuously applied during the years of our
"disinterestedness."
Enver had meanwhile risen to the zenith of his career. He was now War
Minister and had surrounded himself with officers who would follow him
whithersoever he might lead them. A low-sized, wiry man, seemingly of
no account, Enver is pale of complexion, shuffling in gait. His eyes
are piercing, and his gaze furtive. A soul-monger who should buy him
at his specific value and sell him at his own estimate would earn
untold millions. For, to use a picturesque Russian phrase, the ocean
is only up to his knees. He is physically dauntless and buoyant. In
the war against Italy he had fought well and organized the Arab and
other native troops under conditions of great difficulty, winning
laurels which have not yet withered. A Pole by extraction, Enver Pasha
is a Prussian by training and sympathies, and a Turk by language and
religion and by his marriage with a daughter of the Sultan. Political
sense he has none. His one ideal was to earn the appreciation of the
Prussian military authorities, to whom he looks up as a fervid
disciple to peerless masters. German military praise melts his manhood
and turns his brain. He possesses a dictatorial temper with none of
the essential qualities of a dictator, and in the field he is
distinguished, I am told, by splendid valour without an inkling of
scientific strategy.
It was that Polish Turk and his German masters who formally made war
upon Russia, France and Britain.[75] And the Turkish nation had no
opportunity to sanction or veto their resolve. Nay, even the majority
of the Cabinet, including the Grand Vizier, had had no say on the
issue, were not even informed of what was being done until overt acts
of hostility had actually clinched the matter. Indeed, there was a
majority of Cabinet Ministers in favour of neutrality, but it was
ignored. In this way Turkey threw in her lot with the Teutons,[76] to
the astonishment of the Allies, who had hoped that a policy of
forbearance and meekness would elicit a friendly response and
frustrate the effect of the master strokes by which Germany, during a
long series of years, had consolidated her ascendancy over Turkey and
obtained the command of the Ottoman army. The childish notion that a
sudden exhibition of pacific intentions and goodwill is enough to foil
the carefully laid schemes of a clever enemy which have been maturing
for decades, is the refrain that runs through the history of our
foreign policy for the last thirty or forty years. And not only
through the history of our foreign policy. Faith in the sacramental
efficacy of an improvisation is a trait common to all the Allies, but
in the British nation it is the faith that is expected to move
mountains.
[75] November 3, 1914.
[76] On October 25, 1908, after having studied the origins of
the Turkish Revolution and the antecedents of its authors,
and while all Europe was still warmly congratulating the
Young Turks on their bloodless victory and moderation, I
dispatched the following telegraphic message to the _Daily
Telegraph_--
"Most unwillingly do I give utterance to facts and
impressions calculated to introduce a jarring note into the
harmonious optimism of Western peoples, who confidently augur
great things of the young Ottoman nation, and discern no
difficulties likely to become formidable dangers to the
new-born State. But a knowledge of all the essential data is
indispensable to correct the diagnosis without which the
malady cannot be successfully treated. Emancipation, then,
has produced a beneficent enthusiasm for the political ideals
of Europe in minds hitherto impermeable to Western notions,
but has neither transformed the national character nor
supplied the revolutionary movement with the requisite
constructive forces. _Neither can it break the fateful
continuity of Turkish history nor avert the defects of the
destructive causes that have been operative here for
generations._"
The negative aspect of Turkey's belligerency proved to be quite as
irksome as the positive. For it involved the closing of the
Dardanelles to Russia's corn export and the disappearance of the
principal route for communications between the Tsardom and its Western
allies. Archangel is blocked in winter and inadequately connected by
rail with the two capitals in summer. This additional embarrassment
and its financial sequel compelled the attention of the Allies to the
need of some kind of co-operation--just to satisfy actual needs. For
neither then nor at any subsequent period was there any pretence of
laying open the whole ground and building a complete structure upon
that. A temporary expedient is all that was contemplated, and nothing
more lasting was evoked. None the less, the Conference of the three
Finance Ministers in Paris[77] marked a step in advance, and was
subsequently followed up by a closer and more continuous contact.
[77] February 6, 1915, and the following three days.