By Hilaire Belloc.
[_Copyright, 1915, by The New York Times Company._]
_Hilaire Belloc has for years been among the most prominent of
English writers, his political and economic opinions being
widely quoted. As a historian he has given special attention
to the French Revolution, being the author of "Danton," "Marie
Antoinette," "The Girondins," and other studies which are
regarded by scholars as standard works. Mr. Belloc's military
knowledge and experience (he served in the Eighth Regiment of
French Artillery) and his understanding of history have made
him an acute and interesting chronicler of the present war.
The following article appeared in_ THE NEW YORK TIMES _of Jan.
17, 1915._
I shall attempt in what follows to answer the question "Why is England
at war with Germany?" It is perhaps the most important question upon
which neutral countries, and especially neutral English-speaking
countries, should have a true answer. Upon their just appreciation of
England's position in this war a great deal of the immediate future of
the world will depend.
But before proceeding to answer the question directly, we must get rid
of certain misconceptions.
The question must be, as the French say, not only "put," but "put in its
due proportion." It is not enough to answer the question "Why is England
at war with Germany?" unless we know to begin with what that event means
to this gigantic war as a whole.
Let us begin, then, by saying that this great war is not primarily a war
between England and Germany at all. England and Germany are not the two
chief combatants. The issue is not a victory to be achieved by Germany
on the one side, or England upon the other. The victory of one of the
parties in the great struggle would not produce a much stronger England,
though it certainly would produce a much stronger Germany.
The struggle is primarily and essentially a struggle between two
conflicting theories of life and government, which have the Continent of
Europe for their theatre, and of which the Prussians upon the one hand,
the French upon the other, are the protagonists and have been the
protagonists for now more than three generations.
All human conflicts have spiritual roots, and the underlying spiritual
forces which by their contrast have led to this war are the forces of
the old Latin and Christian civilization, with its doctrines of human
equality and the rest, and the North German reaction against that
tradition. Of the first the French are the guardians and have always
been. Of the second the North Germans of the Baltic plain, and
particularly the Prussians, have been the exponents; and one may survey
Europe as a whole and say that the conflict spreads through the minds of
all Europeans, dividing them between those who would prefer their
posterity to live, consciously or unconsciously, under the ancient and
continuous tradition of the civilization inherited from Rome or under
some reversal of that tradition.
That conflict is apparent in every department of life; in the arts, in
the customs of society, and, most important of all, in philosophy.
The direct, immediate, and perceptible issue of the struggle is again
something different. It is an issue between the German-speaking peoples
and the Slav. If you were to ask an acute, well-traveled observer, say a
European diplomat, what, at bottom, this war was, he would answer you
thus:
"This war is an armed conflict provoked by the German-speaking peoples
under the leadership of Prussia against the Slavs under the leadership
of the Russian Empire. It has been provoked by Prussia as leader of the
German peoples, not in a spirit of aggression but in a spirit of
self-defense. The German peoples have for centuries regarded themselves
as the bulwark of European civilization against Slav barbarism. They
believe that the Slav power is rapidly getting so great as to be an
immediate peril. They think it must be fought now or never. On this
account Austria was induced by Prussia to challenge the Russian
Government over the Servian question.
"Either that challenge would be accepted, with the result of war, or
Russia would give way, thereby obtaining for the German peoples a
victory without bloodshed. And Austria would proceed to administrate the
Servian Slavs and to control them--driving a wedge into the whole Slav
power and rendering it innocuous for the future.
"In this struggle between Teuton and Slav France comes in as an
accessory, having made an alliance with Russia long ago for her own
ends, and having nothing to do with the quarrel between Teuton and Slav.
The German-speaking peoples regret the interference of France, but are
prepared to take on the burden of a French war rather than abandon the
moment for restricting the growing power of the Slav.
"Now, in all this," (your experienced man with a wide view of Europe
would add,) "England was not concerned. Her position was quite
subsidiary in all this quarrel. She had far less to do with it even than
France had, and it was in every Cabinet of Europe doubted whether
England would come in at all. By the Prussian Government it was taken
for granted that England would have no reason to come in. By the French
it was feared in spite of the recent relations between the two countries
that England would remain neutral. And, in general, the fact that
England is at war at all is a fact on one side of the original quarrel
and its original motives, though it is a fact that will profoundly
affect the progress and the results of the war."
Such a statement would be no more than the plain truth as educated men
know and see it in Europe today. The entry of England into the field of
conflict was an entry from one side. It did not fall into line with the
general motives of the people. It was, among all English statesmen, a
matter of debate; it was decided by but a narrow majority of those
responsible for so enormous a decision.
When we have clearly grasped these two fundamental facts--first, that
the war is not on its mechanical side mainly a war between England and
Germany, but mainly a war between two contrasting European and
Continental ideals; secondly, the correlative fact that the entry of
England into the war was not certain until the last hour, and was, when
it was made, made only after doubtful consideration and after a division
among the politicians, responsible for the conduct of her affairs,
something almost accidental, as it were--we can proceed to consider the
three causes which converging were sufficiently strong in their
combination to produce that result, and when we know what those three
causes were, their strength and the accidents of their convergence, at
this moment we shall have answered the question, "Why is England at war
with Germany?"
These three causes are:
1. The fixed cardinal point for English policy upon which no English
patriot worthy of the name would hesitate for a moment, and which no
historian with any sense of justice can condemn, to wit, that no one, if
England can help it, shall have naval predominance over the British
fleet, particularly in the narrow seas.
2. The effect of certain undertakings, a whole network of diplomatic
actions, particularly in connection with France, engaged in by the
English Foreign Office during the last ten years.
3. A certain vague attachment to the Western, or Latin, tradition of
civilization with its routine of conventions in war and peace, and
particularly of treaties as between first-class powers. This tradition
was still sufficiently strong to act as a motive converging with the two
others mentioned above to produce a sufficient moral stream in favor of
war as, though sluggish, to help to turn the scale.
I say that these three things combined, upon the whole and doubtfully,
discovered a sufficient strength between them to make the English
politicians, after serious hesitation and close division, determine upon
war.
Let me take them in their order:
1. The cardinal point of statesmanship upon which all English foreign
policy has turned for two hundred years, that no one shall be more
powerful at sea than England, especially upon the shores of the narrow
seas, appears to foreigners unarguably arrogant.
It is, indeed, of its nature a challenge to the rest of the world, but
if the reader will consider a moment he will see that it is a challenge
to which modern England, at any rate, is inexorably condemned. However
much such a position may clash with the temperament of chivalrous and
peaceable men--and it does clash with the temperament of many an English
statesman of the past and of the present--no one with a respect for his
country, or paying the common duty of allegiance to it, can compromise
upon the matter. It is here with England precisely as it has been with
all her parallels, the great oligarchic commercial commonwealths of the
past; she lives by the sea, and the closing of the sea would be to her
not inconvenience, but death.
It is, I think, this very sentiment that England can live only on
condition that the English fleet is supreme which has led England to use
that supremacy so sparingly. It is true to say that there has been no
force of so much superiority to its rivals as the British Navy which in
all history has been used for such purely defensive purposes as the
British Navy has been used during the present generation, and this
moderation I conceive to be due to a clear recognition that morally the
claim to supremacy at sea is a challenge which the great rival nations
must feel acutely, and which they have a right to feel acutely, and
which, therefore, must be softened in every possible way.
But if it is necessary that Great Britain should brook no rival at sea
it is still more necessary that such a rival, should he arise, should
not have naval bases within striking distance of her coast. The great
exception has, of course, been France, and for two centuries at least
that fact has molded the whole of British policy. Had Germany remained a
Continental power and rejected maritime ambition that would still
continue to mold British policy.
The French have, and Europe being what it is, will always continue to
have the aptitude for the sea, the genius in mechanical invention and
the superabundant wealth which between them are the three factors of the
great modern fleet. A lengthy coast line training millions of her
workers to a seafaring life, a long tradition of naval families, and
pioneer in every form of modern naval war from the armor plate to the
submarine, is the proof of this, if proof were needed.
As against the presence of some part of the French naval power on an
opposing coast across a narrow armed water, the English Channel, Great
Britain proceeded, generation after generation, to keep her control an
essentially defensive naval force. She did it upon the position that her
military effort, and therefore expenditure, should be slight; that her
economic as her other energies should be chiefly devoted to her marine.
And though the French in the moments of their greatest prosperity were
able, for all their constant military effort, to produce navies that
rivaled those of Great Britain, yet Great Britain's effort was the more
constant. She never engaged large bodies of men in war; she could take
advantage of every French reverse during the two centuries when the
French were perpetually engaged in huge Continental conflicts.
Great Britain, in a word, by ceaseless vigilance and at a great expense
of energy, managed upon the whole to dominate one branch of the narrow
seas, the channel. Upon the other branch, the North Sea, she felt nearly
always secure. An exception to this security was found during the brief
Dutch period in the seventeenth century and again, much more acutely,
when the French were the masters of the Low Countries, and when Napoleon
took control of the shipbuilding yards not only from Brest to Dunkirk,
but from Dunkirk to the Bight of Heligoland.
This presence of the French power in Holland, Belgium, and Frisia, in
particular the French control of Antwerp, was the true cause of violent
anxiety, and the no less violent efforts in reply which Britain made
during the Napoleonic wars. For twenty-three years she fought, with but
two short intervals of repose, upon a dozen nominal pleas, but with one
plain piece of statesmanship at the back of her mind--that no one should
control the narrow seas against herself.
And especially that if she could not prevent the existence in normal
times of a very powerful, dangerous French fleet, rendering her anxious
for one-half of those seas, at least the other half should be free from
such anxiety.
In the midst of such a secular determination, successfully maintained,
Germany began to build her new great modern fleet.
The German Empire had a most unquestioned right thus to challenge the
power of Great Britain. It was indeed the most effective challenge which
a nation jealous of Britain's commerce could deliver, but it is none the
less true that the plain policy of self-preservation compelled Britain
to take up that challenge.
For the first time in three hundred years Britain found herself
beginning to support French trades, in the general policy of the world.
The French, for reasons which had nothing to do with England and with
which the mass of the English governing classes in no way sympathized,
had maintained for more than thirty years a determination to restore
their own power at the expense of Prussia. Because modern Germany was
building her fleet, modern Britain, in order to check that movement,
began thus in novel fashion and against all the old English traditions
to support the French.
The thing was done at the bottom with reluctance. All Englishmen felt
the common bond of religion which united their country with that which
governs modern Germany. Many Englishmen believed that there was some
vague bond of race between the two countries. Not a few worthy, ignorant
men, and even one or two men of great ability, attempted to direct
negotiations whereby a fixed ratio should exist between the two fleets;
in other words, whereby the German Empire should pledge itself to a
permanent inferiority at sea.
That empire would indeed have been more foolish even than cowardly had
it listened to any such proposals. The position, therefore, was one of
inevitable and increasing friction. It was a matter of life and death to
England that no other great Western fleet should exist besides the
French, and it was a matter of national existence to Germany once she
had undertaken a policy not to give up that policy at the dictation of
any other power--for, among other things, modern Germany lived on
prestige; her whole internal structure depended upon it, and for Prussia
to lose faith before Europe would be the end of the Germany that Prussia
had made.
There are those who say that a Germany conducted by some Richelieu, or
even by a surviving Bismarck, would never have attempted the building of
a great fleet until accounts had been finally settled with France. There
are those who say that the elements of statesmanship required the German
Empire first to settle herself politically upon the shores of the
Straits of Dover and the Netherlands, first to destroy the danger of a
great war in the west on land, then and then only to begin building that
fleet which must inevitably challenge Great Britain. It is no part of
this criticism to consider the statesmanship of another nation, but at
any rate once the policy of building the fleet was begun conflict with
England was in sight.
2. The second cause of England's joining in this war is the effect of a
number of internal arrangements, some of them of minor importance, but
all leading in one direction and ultimately placing the Government of
Great Britain in a position from which it was difficult to retire. In
general terms these arrangements were based upon the idea of joining the
group of powers, French and Russian, which formed the counterpoise to
the Germanic group in Europe, the German Empire and Austria. At the same
time there was running through these arrangements the idea of detaching
Italy, whose Government was firmly attached to Germany, but whose
population was very doubtful, from the Triple Alliance of Germany,
Austria, and Italy, which had been the cardinal point in European
affairs for a generation.
The various steps by which Great Britain approached this position are
well known. In the first place, she came to an arrangement with France
whereby she should have a free hand in Egypt and France should be
supported by England in the occupation of Morocco. This was done behind
the back of Germany to the manifest loss of Germany's colonial ambition
and, what is more noticeable, England was openly paying a very high
price for the new state of affairs she hoped to create, for she had
pretty well a free hand in Egypt, already, while France's opportunity of
going to Morocco and exploiting a very large area of valuable
territory--something quite new and additional to her--depended upon
England's withdrawing her opposition.
That opposition was withdrawn; and though the most violent effect was
produced in Germany, though there were threats of war, pitiable quarrels
within the French Cabinet and a moment of grave danger, the pact was
accomplished, and Morocco, all save the strip opposite Gibraltar, became
French, while all that Germany had to show for her share was an
irregularly shaped and not valuable couple of slices cut out of tropical
Africa in the Congo Basin from the vast French possessions there, and
added to her own still insufficient share.
Another group of arrangements was that with Russia, and here again
England willingly paid a heavy price, and again completely reversed her
traditional policy. She gave all that is vital in Persia to Russian
control. She forgot her old anxiety about the Indian frontier; she lost
her old and hitherto unbroken policy of supporting Turkey in Europe.
When the war came she was with the French in supporting the Balkan
powers, "The Little Nations."
Finally, in the matter of Italy, she supported or permitted the Italian
attack upon and annexation of Turkish territory in North Africa, and
consistently, before and after that event, worked for the strengthening
of Italy in the Triple Alliance and for securing the neutrality of that
country, at least in case of a European war.
There were many other arrangements besides these three principal and
typical ones, but all, small or great, were based upon the same idea,
and pointed in the same direction. England was leaning upon the Russian
side against Germany. The most important in the minor details in this
new policy, the one which has had most effect perhaps in producing the
war, was an understanding whereby the French fleet should virtually
evacuate the Northern Seas and undertake for England the policing of the
Mediterranean trade routes, and the guardianship of that source of food
supply to Great Britain, thus leaving the whole weight of the British
Navy free to guard the North Sea, and to face the new and growing German
naval force.
Now, it must always be borne in mind that these arrangements, large and
small, detailed and general, whereby Great Britain gradually involved
herself in a network of French and Russian supports and reciprocal
duties, never took the form of an alliance. The utmost pains were taken
by English diplomatists and permanent officials at the English Foreign
Office, experts and servants, to state that England remained free in
spite of all to act as her conscience or her interest might dictate,
whenever, or if, war should break out between the two groups of
Continental powers. No one can read the conflict of evidence between the
German Ambassador and Sir Edward Grey in the highly typical telephone
incident which took place immediately before the recent declaration of
war without seeing that liberty of action was maintained by the
Government of Great Britain until the very last moment.
But one cannot do a number of things, each weighted with a similar
tendency, without one's whole conduct and fate being determined in the
direction to which those actions tend. To preserve one's legal or
technical independence is not enough. In this specific case, for
instance, the naval arrangement proved an exceedingly weighty thing.
France could say:
"Relying on your explicit, though not expressed, support of myself and
Russia, I guarded your trade routes in the Mediterranean and left my
northern coasts undefended. Here is war about to break out with those
northern coasts of mine bare against the overwhelming attack from the
German fleet, and with nothing wherewith I can guard it; and that
nakedness is entirely due to having trusted you. You may not have a
legal obligation, but the moral one is not to be shirked."
At any rate, I insist upon the tendency of all these various diplomatic
acts, because it has been they that might have dragged the most
reluctant Government into this conflict, and it was they which, in
combination with the cardinal policy of preventing maritime rivalry in
the narrow seas, decided the present policy of this country.
3. But, as I have said, there was a third cause, much vaguer and, until
war actually broke out, of little effect. Though there had existed for
thirty years from 1880 until after the beginning of the new century such
strong bonds of sympathy between Great Britain and North Germany--bonds
riveted by Court influence and much more strengthened by the influence
of the universities and of religious leaders--though some contempt for
and alienation from the French had become of increasing note in English
public utterances and literature, yet Great Britain retained upon the
whole the Western doctrine of civilization and of its traditions.
The increasing German reaction against those traditions, particularly in
morals, was not wholly sympathetic to the temper of the gentry, at least
in England, and was sometimes exasperating.
All nations have cynically violated treaties at one time or another, but
there is about a solemnly undertaken treaty by the great European powers
and affecting the happiness of the smaller neutral States something
particularly sacred. And though it must not for one moment be regarded
as the principal cause of the war, it is true that the crudity of
Prussia's neglect of treaties, the too simple fashion in which Prussia
proposed a breach of international obligations in the matter of Belgium,
did affect the conscience of not a few powerful men in England, and,
what is perhaps more important, furnished a definite and concrete point
on which the doubtful issue of peace or war could repose.
It must be remembered in this connection that Prussia had a novel
tradition of her own in such matters. The phrase "The Frederickian
tradition" is an accurate phrase. Frederick the Great did start the open
and avowed doctrine that a breach of international convention and of
international morals is always tolerable in the aggrandizement of one's
country.
I think one is not telling the truth if one says that the proposed
violation of Belgian territory for the invasion of France was of a
nature to cause an explosion of anger in the very hardened minds of the
professional politicians in any modern country. There is not one group
of them that has not been guilty of something of the sort before. But I
think one is telling the truth if one says that the over-simple and cold
way in which Prussia took it for granted that the violation of a solemn
and most important treaty was nothing just shocked opinion, even of the
politicians, sufficiently to help to incline the balance against her.
There is much more. The Prussian estimate of Russian, of French, and
even of English psychology was very erroneous. The Prussian way of
getting France not to join is about as subtle as spitting in a man's
face, and the elephantine gambols of the German diplomats in London
during the fatal week preceding the war were a positive aid to the
catastrophe that was about to take place. They blundered as hard and as
heavily as it was possible to blunder; going to the wrong people;
despising the subtly powerful; paying court to the more advertised and
less controlling of the English public men, and in a word behaving
themselves after that fashion for which we have coined the adjective
"newspaper."
There was further the peculiar aggravation of the tone in which the
Austrian note had been addressed to Servia. There was further the
patent and almost puerile double dealing of Berlin in the attempted
negotiations for peace between Russia and Austria--in which negotiations
the British Cabinet was very prominent. But beyond all these other minor
points, these three causes I have mentioned, by their convergence, seem
to have determined England's participation in the war, with all the
enormous but as yet unguessed consequences that will follow therefrom.
I repeat, I do not say that any one of those three causes would in
itself have been sufficient. The three combining were just sufficient,
and this account, if I am not mistaken, justly presents the picture that
history should have of the manner in which Great Britain determined to
conclude the long process of her recent diplomatic revolution and to
engage with the Allies against the German Empire and the Hapsburg house,
which the German Empire tows in its wake.