being able to set them right, I shall, before I go any further with my
criticism of our official position, do the Government and the Foreign
Office the service of finding a correct official position for them; for
I admit that the popular position, though sound as far as it goes, is
too crude for official use. This correct official position can be found
only by considering what Germany should have done, and might have done
had she not been, like our own Junkers, so fascinated by the Militarist
craze, and obsessed by the chronic Militarist panic, that she was "in
too great hurry to bid the devil good morning." The matter is simple
enough: she should have entrusted the security of her western frontier
to the public opinion of the west of Europe and to America, and fought
Russia, if attacked, with her rear not otherwise defended. The
Militarist theory is that we, France and England, would have immediately
sprung at her from behind; but that is just how the Militarist theory
gets its votaries into trouble by assuming that Europe is a chess board.
Europe is not a chess board; but a populous continent in which only a
very few people are engaged in military chess; and even those few have
many other things to consider besides capturing their adversary's king.
Not only would it have been impossible for England to have attacked
Germany under such circumstances; but if France had done so England
could not have assisted her, and might even have been compelled by
public opinion to intervene by way of a joint protest from England and
America, or even by arms, on her behalf if she were murderously pressed
on both flanks. Even our Militarists and diplomatists would have had
reasons for such an intervention. An aggressive Franco-Russian hegemony,
if it crushed Germany, would be quite as disagreeable to us as a German
one. Thus Germany would at worst have been fighting Russia and France
with the sympathy of all the other Powers, and a chance of active
assistance from some of them, especially those who share her hostility
to the Russian Government. Had France not attacked her--and though I am
as ignorant of the terms of the Franco-Russian alliance as Sir Edward
Grey is strangely content to be, I cannot see how the French Government
could have justified to its own people a fearfully dangerous attack on
Germany had Russia been the aggressor--Germany would have secured fair
play for her fight with Russia. But even the fight with Russia was not
inevitable. The ultimatum to Servia was the escapade of a dotard: a
worse crime than the assassination that provoked it. There is no reason
to doubt the conclusion in Sir Maurice de Bunsen's despatch (No. 161)
that it could have been got over, and that Russia and Austria would have
thought better of fighting and come to terms. Peace was really on the
cards; and the sane game was to play for it.
*The Achilles Heel of Militarism.*
Instead, Germany flew at France's throat, and by incidentally invading
Belgium gave us the excuse our Militarists wanted to attack her with the
full sympathy of the nation. Why did she do this stupid thing? Not
because of the counsels of General von Bernhardi. On the contrary, he
had warned her expressly against allowing herself to be caught between
Russia and a Franco-British combination until she had formed a
counterbalancing alliance with America, Italy, and Turkey. And he had
most certainly not encouraged her to depend on England sparing her: on
the contrary, he could not sufficiently admire the wily ruthlessness
with which England watches her opportunity and springs at her foe when
the foe is down. (He little knew, poor man, how much he was flattering
our capacity for Realpolitik!) But he had reckoned without his creed's
fatal and fundamental weakness, which is, that as Junker-Militarism
promotes only stupid people and snobs, and suppresses genuine realists
as if they were snakes, it always turns out when a crisis arrives that
"the silly people don't know their own silly business." The Kaiser and
his ministers made an appalling mess of their job. They were inflamed by
Bernhardi; but they did not understand him. They swallowed his flattery,
but did not take in his strategy or his warnings. They knew that when
the moment came to face the Franco-Russian alliance, they were to make a
magnificient dash at France and sweep her pieces off the great chess
board before the Russians had time to mobilize; and then return and
crush Russia, leaving the conquest of England for another day. This was
honestly as much as their heads could hold at one time; and they were
helplessly unable to consider whether the other conditions postulated by
Bernhardi were present, or indeed, in the excitement of their
schoolboyish imaginations, to remember whether he had postulated any at
all. And so they made their dash and put themselves in the wrong at
every point morally, besides making victory humanly impossible for
themselves militarily. That is the nemesis of Militarism: the Militarist
is thrown into a big game which he is too stupid to be able to play
successfully. Philip of Spain tried it 300 years ago; and the ruin he
brought on his empire has lasted to this day. He was so stupid that
though he believed himself to be the chosen instrument of God (as sure a
sign of a hopeless fool in a man who cannot see that every other man is
equally an instrument of that Power as it is a guarantee of wisdom and
goodwill in the man who respects his neighbor as himself) he attempted
to fight Drake on the assumption that a cannon was a weapon that no real
gentleman and good Catholic would condescend to handle. Louis XIV. tried
again two centuries ago, and, being a more frivolous fool, got beaten by
Marlborough and sent his great-grandson from the throne to the
guillotine. Napoleon tried it 100 years ago. He was more dangerous,
because he had prodigious personal ability and technical military skill;
and he started with the magnificent credential of the French Revolution.
All that carried him farther than the Spanish bigot or the French fop;
but he, too, accreted fools and knaves, and ended defeated in St. Helena
after pandering for twenty years to the appetite of idiots for glory and
bloodshed; waging war as "a great game"; and finding in a field strewn
with corpses "un beau spectacle." In short, as strong a magnet to fools
as the others, though so much abler.
*Our Own True Position*.
Now comes the question, in what position did this result of a mad theory
and a hopelessly incompetent application of it on the part of Potsdam
place our own Government? It left us quite clearly in the position of
the responsible policeman of the west. There was nobody else in Europe
strong enough to chain "the mad dog." Belgium and Holland, Norway and
Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland could hardly have been expected to take
that duty on themselves, even if Norway and Sweden had not good reason
to be anti-Russian, and the Dutch capitalists were not half convinced
that their commercial prosperity would be greater under German than
under native rule. It will not be contended that Spain could have done
anything; and as to Italy, it was doubtful whether she did not consider
herself still a member of the Triple Alliance. It was evidently England
or nobody. For England to have refrained, from hurling herself into the
fray, horse, foot, and artillery, was impossible from every point of
view. From the democratic point of view it would have meant an
acceptance of the pretension of which Potsdam, by attacking the French
Republic, had made itself the champion: that is, the pretension of the
Junker class to dispose of the world on Militarist lines at the expense
of the lives and limbs of the masses. From the international Socialist
point of view, it would have been the acceptance of the extreme
nationalist view that the people of other countries are foreigners, and
that it does not concern us if they choose to cut one another's throats.
Our Militarist Junkers cried "If we let Germany conquer France it will
be our turn next." Our romantic Junkers added "and serve us right too:
what man will pity us when the hour strikes for us, if we skulk now?"
Even the wise, who loathe war, and regard it as such a dishonour and
disgrace in itself that all its laurels cannot hide its brand of Cain,
had to admit that police duty is necessary and that war must be made on
such war as the Germans had made by attacking France in an avowed
attempt to substitute a hegemony of cannon for the comity of nations.
There was no alternative. Had the Foreign Office been the International
Socialist Bureau, had Sir Edward Grey been Jaures, had Mr. Ramsay
MacDonald been Prime Minister, had Russia been Germany's ally instead of
ours, the result would still have been the same: we must have drawn the
sword to save France and smash Potsdam as we smashed and always must
smash Philip, Louis, Napoleon, _et hoc genus omne_.
The case for our action is thus as complete as any _casus belli_ is ever
likely to be. In fact its double character as both a democratic and
military (if not Militarist) case makes it too complete; for it enables
our Junkers to claim it entirely for themselves, and to fake it with
pseudo-legal justifications which destroy nine-tenths of our credit, the
military and legal cases being hardly a tenth of the whole: indeed, they
would not by themselves justify the slaughter of a single Pomeranian
grenadier. For instance, take the Militarist view that we must fight
Potsdam because if the Kaiser is victorious, it will be our turn next!
Well: are we not prepared to fight always when our turn comes? Why
should not we also depend on our navy, on the extreme improbability of
Germany, however triumphant, making two such terrible calls on her
people in the same generation as a war involves, on the sympathy of the
defeated, and on the support of American and European public opinion
when our turn comes, if there is nothing at stake now but the difference
between defeat and victory in an otherwise indifferent military
campaign? If the welfare of the world does not suffer any more by an
English than by a German defeat who cares whether we are defeated or
not? As mere competitors in a race of armaments and an Olympic game
conducted with ball cartridge, or as plaintiffs in a technical case of
international law (already decided against us in 1870, by the way, when
Gladstone had to resort to a new treaty made _ad hoc_ and lapsing at the
end of the war) we might as well be beaten as not, for all the harm that
will ensue to anyone but ourselves, or even to ourselves apart from our
national vanity. It is as the special constables of European life that
we are important, and can send our men to the trenches with the
assurance that they are fighting in a worthy cause. In short, the Junker
case is not worth twopence: the Democratic case, the Socialist case, the
International case is worth all it threatens to cost.
*The German Defence to Our Indictment.*
What is the German reply to this case? Or rather, how would the Germans
reply to it if their official Militarist and Kaiserist panjandrums had
the wit to find the effective reply? Undoubtedly they would say that our
Social-Democratic professions are all very fine, but that our conversion
to them is suspiciously sudden and recent. They would remark that it is
a little difficult for a nation in deadly peril to trust its existence
to a foreign public opinion which has not only never been expressed by
the people who really control England's foreign policy, but is flatly
opposed to all their known views and prejudices. They would ask why,
instead of making an _Entente_ with France and Russia and refusing to
give Germany any assurance concerning its object except that we would
not pledge ourselves to remain neutral if the Franco-Russian _Entente_
fell on Germany, we did not say straight out in 1912 (when they put the
question flatly to us), and again last July when Sazonoff urged us so
strongly to shew our hand, that if Germany attacked France we should
fight her, Russia or no Russia (a far less irritating and provocative
attitude), although we knew full well that an attack on France through
Belgium would be part of the German program if the Russian peril became
acute. They would point out that if our own Secretary for Foreign
Affairs openly disclaimed any knowledge of the terms of the
Franco-Russian alliance, it was hard for a German to believe that they
were wholly fit for publication. In short, they would say "If you were
so jolly wise and well intentioned before the event, why did not your
Foreign Minister and your ambassadors in Berlin and Vienna and St.
Petersburg--we beg pardon, Petrograd--invite us to keep the peace and
rely on western public opinion instead of refusing us every pledge
except the hostile one to co-operate with France against us in the North
Sea, and making it only too plain to us that your policy was a Junker
policy as much as ours, and that we had nothing to hope from your
goodwill? What evidence had we that you were playing any other game than
this Militarist chess of our own, which you now so piously renounce, but
which none of you except a handful of Socialists whom you despise and
Syndicalists whom you imprison on Militarist pretexts has opposed for
years past, though it has been all over your Militarist anti-German
platforms and papers and magazines? Are your Social-Democratic
principles sincere, or are they only a dagger you keep up your sleeve to
stab us in the back when our two most formidable foes are trying to
garotte us? If so, where does your moral superiority come in, hypocrites
that you are? If not, why, we repeat, did you not make them known to all
the world, instead of making an ambush for us by your senseless
silence?"
I see no reply to that except a frank confession that we did not know
our own minds; that we came to a knowledge of them only when Germany's
attack on France forced us to make them up at last; that though
doubtless a chronic state of perfect lucidity and long prevision on our
part would have been highly convenient, yet there is a good deal to be
said for the policy of not fording a stream until you come to it; and
that in any case we must entirely decline to admit that we are more
likely than other people to do the wrong thing when circumstances at
last oblige us to think and act. Also that the discussion is idle on the
shewing of the German case itself; for whether the Germans assumed us to
be unscrupulous Militarists or conscientious Democrats they were bound
to come to the same conclusion: namely, that we should attack them if
they attacked France; consequently their assumption that we would not
interfere must have been based on the belief that we are simply
"contemptible," which is the sort of mistake people have to pay for in
this wicked world.
On the whole, we can hector our way in the Prussian manner out of that
discussion well enough, provided we hold our own in the field. But the
Prussian manner hardly satisfies the conscience. True, the fact that our
diplomatists were not able to discover the right course for Germany does
not excuse Germany for being unable to find it for herself. Not that it
was more her business than ours: it was a European question, and should
have been solved by the united counsels of all the ambassadors and
Foreign Offices and chanceries. Indeed it could not have been stably
solved without certain assurances from them. But it was, to say the
least, as much Germany's business as anyone else's, and terribly urgent
for her: "a matter of life and death," the Imperial Chancellor thought.
Still, it is not for us to claim moral superiority to Germany. It was
for us a matter of the life and death of many Englishmen; and these
Englishmen are dead because our diplomatists were as blind as the
Prussians. The war is a failure for secret Junker diplomacy, ours no
less than the enemy's. Those of us who have still to die must be
inspired, not by devotion to the diplomatists, but, like the Socialist
hero of old on the barricade, by the vision of "human solidarity." And
if he purchases victory for that holy cause with his blood, I submit
that we cannot decently allow the Foreign Office to hang up his martyr's
palm over the War Office Mantelpiece.
*The First Penalty of Disingenuousness.*
The Foreign Office, however, can at lease shift its ground, and declare
for the good cause instead of belittling it with quibbling excuses. For
see what the first effect of the nonsense about Belgium has been! It
carried with it the inevitable conclusion that when the last German was
cleared off Belgian soil, peace-loving England, her reluctant work in
this shocking war done, would calmly retire from the conflict, and leave
her Allies to finish the deal with Potsdam. Accordingly, after Mr.
Asquith's oration at the Mansion House, the Allies very properly
insisted on our signing a solemn treaty between the parties that they
must all stand together to the very end. A pitifully thin attempt has
been made to represent that the mistrusted party was France, and that
the Kaiser was trying to buy her off. All one can say to that is that
the people who believe that any French Government dare face the French
people now with anything less than Alsace and Lorraine as the price of
peace, or that an undefeated and indeed masterfully advancing German
Kaiser (as he seemed then) dare offer France such a price, would believe
anything. Of course we had to sign; but if the Prime Minister had not
been prevented by his own past from taking the popular line, we should
not have been suspected of a possible backing-out when the demands of
our sanctimoniousness were satisfied. He would have known that we are
not vindicating a treaty which by accident remains among the fragments
of treaties of Paris, of Prague, of Berlin, of all sorts of places and
dates, as the only European treaty that has hitherto escaped flat
violation: we are supporting the war as a war on war, on military
coercion, on domineering, on bullying, on brute force, on military law,
on caste insolence, on what Mrs. Fawcett called insensable deviltry
(only to find the papers explaining apologetically that she, as a lady,
had of course been alluding to war made by foreigners, not by England).
Some of us, remembering the things we have ourselves said and done, may
doubt whether Satan can cast out Satan; but as the job is not exactly
one for an unfallen angel, we may as well let him have a try.
*The Blank Cheque.*
In the meantime behold us again hopelessly outwitted by Eastern
diplomacy as a direct consequence of this ill-starred outburst of
hypocrisy about treaties! Everybody has said over and over again that
this war is the most tremendous war ever waged. Nobody has said that
this new treaty is the most tremendous blank cheque we have ever been
forced to sign by our Parliamentary party trick of striking moral
attitudes. It is true that Mr. J.A. Hobson realised the situation at
once, and was allowed to utter a little croak in a corner; but where was
the trumpet note of warning that should have rung throughout the whole
Press? Just consider what the blank cheque means. France's draft on it
may stop at the cost of recovering Alsace and Lorraine. We shall have to
be content with a few scraps of German colony and the heavy-weight
championship. But Russia? When will she say "Hold! Enough!" Suppose she
wants not only Poland, but Baltic Prussia? Suppose she wants
Constantinople as her port of access to the unfrozen seas, in addition
to the dismemberment of Austria? Suppose she has the brilliant idea of
annexing all Prussia, for which there is really something to be said by
ethnographical map-makers, Militarist madmen, and Pan-Slavist
megalomaniacs? It may be a reasonable order; but it is a large one; and
the fact that we should have been committed to it without the knowledge
of Parliament, without discussion, without warning, without any sort of
appeal to public opinion or democratic sanction, by a stroke of Sir
Edward Grey's pen within five weeks of his having committed us in the
same fashion to an appalling European war, shews how completely the
Foreign Office has thrown away all pretence of being any less absolute
than the Kaiser himself. It simply offers _carte blanche_ to the armies
of the Allies without a word to the nation until the cheque is signed.
The only limit there is to the obligation is the certainty that the
cheque will be dishonoured the moment the draft on it becomes too heavy.
And that may furnish a virtuous pretext for another war between the
Allies themselves. In any case no treaty can save each Ally from the
brute necessity of surrendering and paying up if beaten, whether the
defeat is shared by the others or not. Did I not say that the sooner we
made up our minds to the terms of the treaty of peace, so that we might
know what we were fighting for, and how far we were bound to go, the
better? Instead of which we sign a ridiculous "scrap of paper" to save
ourselves the intolerable fatigue of thought.
*Belgium Crucified Between the European Powers.*
And now, before I leave the subject of Belgium, what have we done for
Belgium? Have we saved her soil from invasion? Were we at her side with
half a million men when the avalanche fell on her? Or were we safe in
our own country praising her heroism in paragraphs which all contrived
to convey an idea that the Belgian soldier is about four feet high, but
immensely plucky for his size? Alas, when the Belgian soldier cried:
"Where are the English?" the reply was "a mass of concrete as large as a
big room," blown into the air by a German siege gun, falling back and
crushing him into the earth we had not succeeded in saving from the
worst of the horrors of war. We have not protected Belgium: Belgium has
protected us at the cost of being conquered by Germany. It is now our
sacred duty to drive the Germans out of Belgium. Meanwhile we might at
least rescue her refugees by a generous grant of public money from the
caprices of private charity. We need not press our offer to lend her
money: German capitalists will do that for her with the greatest
pleasure when the war is over. I think the Government realizes that now;
for I note the after-thought that a loan from us need not bear interest.
Now that we begin to see where we really are, what practical morals can
we draw?
*Unpreparedness the Price of Secrecy.*
First, that our autocratic foreign policy, in which the Secretary for
Foreign Affairs is always a Junker, and makes war and concludes war
without consulting the nation, or confiding in it, or even refraining
from deceiving it as to his intentions, leads inevitably to a disastrous
combination of war and unpreparedness for war. Wars are planned which
require huge expeditionary armies trained and equipped for war. But as
such preparation could not be concealed from the public, it is simply
deferred until the war is actually declared and begun, at the most
frightful risk of such an annihilation of our little peace army as we
escaped by the skin of our teeth at Mons and Cambrai. The military
experts tell us that it takes four months to make an infantry and six to
make a cavalry soldier. And our way of getting an army able to fight the
German army is to declare war on Germany just as if we had such an army,
and then trust to the appalling resultant peril and disaster to drive us
into wholesale enlistment, voluntary or (better still from the Junker
point of view) compulsory. It seems to me that a nation which tolerates
such insensate methods and outrageous risks must shortly perish from
sheer lunacy. And it is all pure superstition: the retaining of the
methods of Edward the First in the reign of George the Fifth. I
therefore suggest that the first lesson of the war is that the Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs be reduced to the level of a simple Prime
Minister, or even of a constitutional monarch, powerless to fire a
single shot or sign a treaty without the authority of the House of
Commons, all diplomatic business being conducted in a blaze of
publicity, and the present regulation which exacts the qualification of
a private income of at least £400 a year for a position in the
Diplomatic Service replaced by a new regulation that at least half the
staff shall consist of persons who have never dined out at the houses of
hosts of higher rank than unfashionable solicitors or doctors.