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The War That Will End War
The War That Will End War
By
H. G. Wells
Author of “Tono-Bungay,” “The New
Machiavelli,” “Marriage,” etc.
New York
Duffield & Company
1914
COPYRIGHT 1914
BY H. G. WELLS
CONTENTS
I Why Britain went to War 9
II The Sword of Peace 16
III Hands off the People’s Food 23
IV Concerning Mr. Maximilian Craft 32
V The Most Necessary Measures in the
World 40
VI The Need of a New Map of Europe 50
VII The Opportunity of Liberalism 60
VIII The Liberal Fear of Russia 69
IX An Appeal to the American People 80
X Common Sense and the Balkan States 89
XI The War of the Mind 97
I
WHY BRITAIN WENT TO WAR
A CLEAR EXPOSITION OF WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR
The cause of a war and the object of a war are not necessarily the same.
The cause of this war was the invasion of Luxemburg and Belgium. We
declared war because we were bound by treaty to declare war. We have
been pledged to protect the integrity of Belgium since the kingdom of
Belgium has existed. If the Germans had not broken the guarantees they
shared with us to respect the neutrality of these little States we
should certainly not be at war at the present time. The fortified
eastern frontier of France could have been held against any attack
without any help from us. We had no obligations and no interests there.
We were pledged to France simply to protect her from a naval attack by
sea, but the Germans had already given us an undertaking not to make
such an attack. It was our Belgian treaty and the sudden outrage on
Luxemburg that precipitated us into this conflict. No Power in the world
would have respected our Flag or accepted our national word again if we
had not fought. So much for the immediate cause of the war.
But now we come to the object of this war. We began to fight because our
honour and our pledge obliged us; but so soon as we are embarked upon
the fighting we have to ask ourselves what is the end at which our
fighting aims. We cannot simply put the Germans back over the Belgian
border and tell them not to do it again. We find ourselves at war with
that huge military empire with which we have been doing our best to keep
the peace since first it rose upon the ruins of French Imperialism in
1871. And war is mortal conflict. We have now either to destroy or be
destroyed. We have not sought this reckoning, we have done our utmost to
avoid it; but now that it has been forced upon us it is imperative that
it should be a thorough reckoning. This is a war that touches every man
and every home in each of the combatant countries. It is a war, as Mr.
Sidney Low has said, not of soldiers but of whole peoples. And it is a
war that must be fought to such a finish that every man in each of the
nations engaged understands what has happened. There can be no
diplomatic settlement that will leave German Imperialism free to explain
away its failure to its people and start new preparations. We have to go
on until we are absolutely done for, or until the Germans as a people
know that they are beaten, and are convinced that they have had enough
of war.
We are fighting Germany. But we are fighting without any hatred of the
German people. We do not intend to destroy either their freedom or their
unity. But we have to destroy an evil system of government and the
mental and material corruption that has got hold of the German
imagination and taken possession of German life. We have to smash the
Prussian Imperialism as thoroughly as Germany in 1871 smashed the rotten
Imperialism of Napoleon III. And also we have to learn from the failure
of that victory to avoid a vindictive triumph.
This Prussian Imperialism has been for forty years an intolerable
nuisance in the earth. Ever since the crushing of the French in 1871 the
evil thing has grown and cast its spreading shadow over Europe. Germany
has preached a propaganda of ruthless force and political materialism to
the whole uneasy world. “Blood and iron,” she boasted, was the cement of
her unity, and almost as openly the little, mean, aggressive statesmen
and professors who have guided her destinies to this present conflict
have professed cynicism and an utter disregard of any ends but
nationally selfish ends, as though it were religion. Evil just as much
as good may be made into a Cant. Physical and moral brutality has indeed
become a cant in the German mind, and spread from Germany throughout the
world. I could wish it were possible to say that English and American
thought had altogether escaped its corruption. But now at last we shake
ourselves free and turn upon this boasting wickedness to rid the world
of it. The whole world is tired of it. And “Gott!”—Gott so perpetually
invoked—Gott indeed must be very tired of it.
This is already the vastest war in history. It is war not of nations,
but of mankind. It is a war to exorcise a world-madness and end an age.
And note how this Cant of public rottenness has had its secret side. The
man who preaches cynicism in his own business transactions had better
keep a detective and a cash register for his clerks; and it is the most
natural thing in the world to find that this system, which is outwardly
vile, is also inwardly rotten. Beside the Kaiser stands the firm of
Krupp, a second head to the State; on the very steps of the throne is
the armament trust, that organised scoundrelism which has, in its
relentless propaganda for profit, mined all the security of
civilisation, brought up and dominated a Press, ruled a national
literature, and corrupted universities.
Consider what the Germans have been, and what the Germans can be. Here
is a race which has for its chief fault docility and a belief in
teachers and rulers. For the rest, as all who know it intimately will
testify, it is the most amiable of peoples. It is naturally kindly,
comfort-loving, child-loving, musical, artistic, intelligent. In
countless respects German homes and towns and countrysides are the most
civilised in the world. But these people did a little lose their heads
after the victories of the sixties and seventies, and there began a
propaganda of national vanity and national ambition. It was organised by
a stupidly forceful statesman, it was fostered by folly upon the throne.
It was guarded from wholesome criticism by an intolerant censorship. It
never gave sanity a chance. A certain patriotic sentimentality lent
itself only too readily to the suggestion of the flatterer, and so there
grew up this monstrous trade in weapons. German patriotism became an
“interest,” the greatest of the “interests.” It developed a vast
advertisement propaganda. It subsidised Navy Leagues and Aerial Leagues,
threatening the world. Mankind, we saw too late, had been guilty of an
incalculable folly in permitting private men to make a profit out of the
dreadful preparations for war. But the evil was started; the German
imagination was captured and enslaved. On every other European country
that valued its integrity there was thrust the overwhelming necessity to
arm and drill—and still to arm and drill. Money was withdrawn from
education, from social progress, from business enterprise, and art and
scientific research, and from every kind of happiness; life was drilled
and darkened.
So that the harvest of this darkness comes now almost as a relief, and
it is a grim satisfaction in our discomforts that we can at last look
across the roar and torment of battlefields to the possibility of an
organised peace.
For this is now a war for peace.
It aims straight at disarmament. It aims at a settlement that shall stop
this sort of thing for ever. Every soldier who fights against Germany
now is a crusader against war. This, the greatest of all wars, is not
just another war—it is the last war! England, France, Italy, Belgium,
Spain, and all the little countries of Europe, are heartily sick of war;
the Tsar has expressed a passionate hatred of war; the most of Asia is
unwarlike; the United States has no illusions about war. And never was
war begun so joyously, and never was war begun with so grim a
resolution. In England, France, Belgium, Russia, there is no thought of
glory.
We know we face unprecedented slaughter and agonies; we know that for
neither side will there be easy triumphs or prancing victories. Already,
in that warring sea of men, there is famine as well as hideous butchery,
and soon there must come disease.
Can it be otherwise?
We face, perhaps, the most awful winter that mankind has ever faced.
But we English and our allies, who did not seek this catastrophe, face
it with anger and determination rather than despair.
Through this war we have to march, through pain, through agonies of the
spirit worse than pain, through seas of blood and filth. We English have
not had things kept from us. We know what war is; we have no delusions.
We have read books that tell us of the stench of battlefields, and the
nature of wounds, books that Germany suppressed and hid from her people.
And we face these horrors to make an end of them.
There shall be no more Kaisers, there shall be no more Krupps, we are
resolved. That foolery shall end!
And not simply the present belligerents must come into the settlement.
All America, Italy, China, the Scandinavian Powers, must have a voice in
the final readjustment, and set their hands to the ultimate guarantees.
I do not mean that they need fire a single shot or load a single gun.
But they must come in. And in particular to the United States do we look
to play a part in that pacification of the world for which our whole
nation is working, and for which, by the thousand, men are now laying
down their lives.
II
THE SWORD OF PEACE
“EVERY SWORD THAT IS DRAWN AGAINST GERMANY NOW IS A SWORD DRAWN FOR
PEACE”
Europe is at war!
The monstrous vanity that was begotten by the easy victories of '70 and
'71 has challenged the world, and Germany prepares to reap the harvest
Bismarck sowed. That trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of Europe,
that has arrested civilisation and darkened the hopes of mankind for
forty years. German Imperialism, German militarism, has struck its
inevitable blow. The victory of Germany will mean the permanent
enthronement of the War God over all human affairs. The defeat of
Germany may open the way to disarmament and peace throughout the earth.
To those who love peace there can be no other hope in the present
conflict than the defeat, the utter discrediting of the German legend,
the ending for good and all of the blood and iron superstition, of
Krupp, flag-wagging Teutonic Kiplingism, and all that criminal, sham
efficiency that centres in Berlin. Never was war so righteous as war
against Germany now. Never has any State in the world so clamoured for
punishment.
But be it remembered that Europe’s quarrel is with the German State, not
with the German people; with a system, and not with a race. The older
tradition of Germany is a pacific and civilising tradition. The
temperament of the mass of German people is kindly, sane and amiable.
Disaster to the German Army, if it is unaccompanied by any such
memorable wrong as dismemberment or intolerable indignity, will mean the
restoration of the greatest people in Europe to the fellowship of
Western nations. The _rôle_ of England in this huge struggle is plain as
daylight. We have to fight. If only on account of the Luxemburg outrage
we have to fight. If we do not fight, England will cease to be a country
to be proud of; it will be a dirt-bath to escape from. But it is
inconceivable that we should not fight. And having fought, then in the
hour of victory it will be for us to save the liberated Germans from
vindictive treatment, to secure for this great people their right, as
one united German-speaking State, to a place in the sun.
First we have to save ourselves and Europe, and then we have to stand
between German on the one hand and the Cossack and revenge on the other.
For my own part, I do not doubt that Germany and Austria are doomed to
defeat in this war. It may not be catastrophic defeat, though even that
is possible, but it is defeat. There is no destiny in the stars and
every sign is false if this is not so.
They have provoked an overwhelming combination of enemies. They have
under-rated France. They are hampered by a bad social and military
tradition. The German is not naturally a good soldier; he is orderly and
obedient, but he is not nimble nor quick-witted; since his sole
considerable military achievement, his not very lengthy march to Paris
in 1870 and '71, the conditions of modern warfare have been almost
completely revolutionised and in a direction that subordinates the
massed fighting of unintelligent men to the rapid initiative of
individualised soldiers. And, on the other hand, since those years of
disaster, the Frenchman has learnt the lesson of humility; he is
prepared now sombrely for a sombre struggle; his is the gravity that
precedes astonishing victories. In the air, in the open field, with guns
and machines, it is doubtful if anyone fully realises the superiority of
his quality to the German. This sudden attack may take him aback for a
week or so, though I doubt even that, but in the end I think he will
hold his own; even without us he will hold his own, and with us then I
venture to prophesy that within three months from now his Tricolour will
be over the Rhine. And even suppose his line gets broken by the first
rush. Even then I do not see how the Germans are to get to Paris or
anywhere near Paris. I do not see how against the strength of the modern
defensive and the stinging power of an intelligent enemy in retreat, of
which we had a little foretaste in South Africa, the exploit of Sedan
can be repeated. A retiring German army, on the other hand, will be far
less formidable than a retiring French army, because it has less “devil”
in it, because it is made up of men taught to obey in masses, because
its intelligence is concentrated in its aristocratic officers, because
it is dismayed when it breaks ranks. The German army is everything the
Conscriptionists dreamt of making our people; it is, in fact, an army
about twenty years behind the requirements of contemporary conditions.
On the Eastern frontier the issue is more doubtful because of the
uncertainty of Russian things. The peculiar military strength of Russia,
a strength it was not able to display in Manchuria, lies in its vast
resources of mounted men. A set invasion of Prussia may be a matter of
many weeks, but the raiding possibilities in Eastern Germany are
enormous. It is difficult to guess how far the Russian attack will be
guided by intelligence, and how far Russia will blunder, but Russia will
have to blunder very disastrously indeed before she can be put upon the
defensive. A Russian raid is far more likely to threaten Berlin than a
German to reach Paris.
Meanwhile there is the struggle on the sea. In that I am prepared for
some rude shocks. The Germans have devoted an amount of energy to the
creation of an aggressive navy that would have been spent more wisely in
consolidating their European position. It is probably a thoroughly good
navy, and ship for ship the equal of our own. But the same lack of
invention, the same relative uncreativeness that has kept the German
behind the Frenchman in things aerial has made him, regardless of his
shallow seas, follow our lead in naval matters, and if we have erred,
and I believe we have erred, in overrating the importance of the big
battleship, the German has at least very obligingly fallen in with our
error. The safest, most effective, place for the German fleet at the
present time is the Baltic Sea. On this side of the Kiel Canal, unless I
overrate the powers of the water-plane, there is no safe harbour for it.
If it goes into port anywhere that port can be ruined, and the
bottled-up ships can be destroyed at leisure by aerial bombs. So that if
they are on this side of the Kiel Canal they must keep the sea and
fight, if we let them, before their coal runs short. Battle in the open
sea in this case is their only chance. They will fight against odds, and
with every prospect of a smashing, albeit we shall certainly have to pay
for that victory in ships and men. In the Baltic we shall not be able to
get at them without the participation of Denmark, and they may have a
considerable use against Russia. But in the end even there mine and
aeroplane and destroyer should do their work.
So I reckon that Germany will be held east and west, and that she will
get her fleet practically destroyed. We ought also to be able to sweep
her shipping off the seas, and lower her flag for ever in Africa and
Asia and the Pacific. All the probabilities, it seems to me, point to
that. There is no reason why Italy should not stick to her present
neutrality, and there is considerable inducement close at hand for both
Denmark and Japan to join in, directly they are convinced of the failure
of the first big rush on the part of Germany. All these issues will be
more or less definitely decided within the next two or three months. By
that time I believe German Imperialism will be shattered, and it may be
possible to anticipate the end of the armaments phase of European
history. France, Italy, England, and all the smaller Powers of Europe
are now pacific countries; Russia, after this huge war, will be too
exhausted for further adventure; a shattered Germany will be a
revolutionary Germany, as sick of uniforms and the Imperialist idea as
France was in 1871, as disillusioned about predominance as Bulgaria is
to-day. The way will be open at last for all these Western Powers to
organise peace. That is why I, with my declared horror of war, have not
signed any of these “stop-the-war” appeals and declarations that have
appeared in the last few days. Every sword that is drawn against Germany
now is a sword drawn for peace.
III
HANDS OFF THE PEOPLE’S FOOD
This is a war-torn article, a convalescent article.
It is characteristic of the cheerful gallantry of the time that after
being left for dead on Saturday evening this article should be able, in
an only very slightly bandaged condition, to take its place in the
firing-line again on Thursday morning.
It was first written late on Friday night; it was written in a mood of
righteous excitement, and it was an extremely ineffective article. In
the night I could not sleep because of its badness, and because I did so
vehemently want it to hit hard and get its effect. I turned out about
two o’clock in the morning and redrafted it, and the next day I wrote it
all over again differently and carefully, and I think better. In the
afternoon it was blown up by the discovery that Mr. Runciman had
anticipated its essential idea. He had brought in, and the House had
passed through all its stages, a Bill to give the Board of Trade power
to requisition and deal with hoarded or reserved food. That was exactly
the demand of my article. My article, about to die, saluted this most
swift and decisive Government of ours....
Then I perceived that there were still many things to be said about this
requisitioning of food. The Board of Trade has got its powers, but
apparently they have still to be put into operation. It is extremely
desirable that there should be a strong public opinion supporting and
watching the exercise of these powers, and that they should be applied
at the proper point immediately. The powers Mr. Runciman has secured so
rapidly for the Board of Trade have to be put into operation; there must
be an equally rapid development of local committees and commandos to
carry out his idea. The shortage continues. It is not over. The common
people, who are sending their boys so bravely and uncomplainingly to the
front, must be relieved at once from the intolerable hardships which a
certain section of the prosperous classes, a small section but an
actively mischievous section, is causing them. It is a right; not a
demand for charity. It is ridiculous to treat the problem in any other
way.
So far the poorer English have displayed an amazing and exemplary
patience in this crisis, a humility and courage that make one the
prouder for being also English. Apart from any failure of employment at
the present time, it must be plain to anyone who has watched the present
rise of prices and who knows anything either at first hand of poor
households or by reading such investigations as those of Mrs. Pember
Reeves upon the family budgets of the poor, that the rank and file of
our population cannot now be getting enough to eat. They are suffering
needless deprivation and also they are suffering needless vexation. And
there is no atom of doubt why they are suffering these distresses. It is
that pretentious section of the prosperous classes, the section we might
hit off with the phrase “automobile-driving villadom,” the “Tariff
Reform and damn Lloyd George and Keir Hardie” class, the most pampered
and least public-spirited of any stratum in the community, which has
grabbed at the food; it has given way to an inglorious panic; it has
broken ranks and stampeded to the stores and made the one discreditable
exception in the splendid spectacle of our national solidarity.
While the attention of all decent English folk has been concentrated
upon the preparations for our supreme blow at Prussian predominance in
Europe, villadom has been swarming to the shops, buying up the food of
the common people, carrying it off in the family car (adorned, of
course, with a fluttering little Union Jack); father has given a day
from business, mother has helped, even those shiny-headed nuts, the
sons, have condescended to assist, and now villadom, feeling a little
safer, is ready with the dinner-bell, its characteristic instrument of
music, to maffick at the victories it has done its best to spoil. And
villadom promoted and distended, villadom in luck, turned millionaire,
villadom on a scale that can buy a peerage and write you its
thousands-of-pounds cheque for a showy subscription list, has been true
to its origins. Lord Maffick, emulating Mr. and Mrs. Maffick, swept his
district clean of flour; let the thing go down to history. Lord Maffick
now explains that he bought it to distribute among his poorer
neighbours—that is going to be the stock excuse of these people—but that
sort of buying is just exactly as bad for prices as buying for Lord
Maffick’s personal interior. The sooner that flour gets out of the
houses of Lord Maffick and Horatio Maffick, Esquire, and young Mr.
Maffick and the rest of them, and into the houses of their poorer
neighbours, the better for them and the country. The greatest danger to
England at the present time is neither the German army nor the German
fleet, but this morally rotten section of our community.
Now it is no use scolding these people. It is no use appealing to their
honour and patriotism. Honour they have none, and their idea of
patriotism is to “tax the foreigner,” wave Union Jacks, and clamour for
the application to England of just that universal compulsory service
which leads straight to those crowded, ineffective massacres of common
soldiers that are beginning upon the German war-front. Exhortation may
sway the ninety-and-nine, but the one mean man in the hundred will spoil
the lot. The thing to do now is to get to work at once in every
locality, requisitioning all excessive private stores of food or gold
coins—they can be settled for after the war—not only the stores of the
private food-grabbers, but also the stores of the speculative
wholesalers who are holding up prices to the retail shops. Only in that
way can the operations of this intolerable little minority be completely
checked. Under every county council food committees should be formed at
once to report on the necessities of the general mass and conduct
inquiries into hoarding and the seizure and distribution of hoards,
small and great.
Now this is a public work calling for the most careful and open methods.
Food distribution in England is partly in the hands of great systems of
syndicated shops and partly still in the hands of one-shop local
tradesmen. It is imperative that the brightest light should be kept upon
the operations of both small and large provision dealers. The big firms
are in the control of men whose business successes have received in many
instances marks of the signal favour and trust of our rulers. Lord
Devonport, for example, is a peer; Sir Thomas Lipton is a baronet; they
are not to be regarded as mere private traders, but as men honoured by
association with the hierarchy of our national life on account of their
distinguished share in the public food service. It will help them in
their quasi-public duties to give them the support of our attention. Are
they devoting their enormous economic advantages to keeping prices at a
reasonable level, or are these various systems of syndicated provision
shops also putting things up against the consumer? With concerted action
on the part of these stores the most perfect control of prices is
possible everywhere, except in the case of a few out-of-the-way
villages. Is it being done? Nobody wants to see the names of Lord
Devonport or Sir Thomas Lipton or the various other rich men associated
with them in the food supply flourishing about on royal subscription
lists at the present time; their work lies closer at hand. What we all
want is to feel that they are devoting their utmost resources to the
public food service of which they constitute so important a part. Let me
say at once that I have every reason to believe they are doing it, and
that they are alive to the responsibilities of their positions. But we
must keep the limelight on them and on their less honoured and
conspicuous fellow-merchants. They are playing as important and vital a
part—indeed, they are called upon to play as brave and self-sacrificing
a part—as any general at the front. If they fail us it will be worse
than the loss of many thousands of men in battle. Let us watch them, and
I believe we shall watch them with admiration. But let us watch them.
Let us report their movements, ask them to reassure us, chronicle their
visits to the Board of Trade.
I will not expatiate upon the possible heroisms of the wholesale
provision trade. I do but glance at the possibility of Lord Devonport or
Sir Thomas Lipton, after the war, living, financially ruined, but
glorious, in a little cottage. “I gave back to the people in their hour
of need what I made from them in their hours of plenty,” he would say.
“I have suffered that thousands might not suffer. It is nothing. Think
of the lads who died in Belgium.”
By all accounts, the small one-shop provision dealers are behaving
extremely well. In my own town of Dunmow I know of two little
shopkeepers who have dared to offend important customers rather than
fulfil panic orders. They deserve medals. In poor districts many such
men are giving credit, eking out, tiding over, and all the time running
tremendous risks. Not all heroes are upon the battlefield, and some of
the heroes of this war are now fighting gallantly for our land behind
grocers’ counters and in village general shops, and may end, if not in
the burial trench, in the bankruptcy court. Indeed, many of them are
already on the verge of bankruptcy. The wholesalers have, I know, in
many cases betrayed them, not simply by putting up prices, but by
suddenly stopping customary credits, and this last week has seen some
dismal nights of sleepless worry in the little bedrooms over the
isolated grocery. While we look to the syndicated shops to do their
duty, it is of the utmost importance also that we should not permit a
massacre of the small tradespeople. A catastrophe to the small
shopkeeper at the present time will not only throw a multitude of broken
men upon public resources, but leave a gap in the homely give-and-take
of back-street and village economies that will not be easily repaired.
So that I suggest that the requisitioned stocks of forestalling
wholesalers—there ought to be a great bulk of such food-stuff already in
the hands of the authorities—shall be sold in the first instance at
wholesale prices to the isolated shopkeepers, and not directly to the
public. Only in the event of a local failure of duty should the direct
course be taken.
It must be remembered that the whole of the present stress for food is
an artificial stress due to the vehement selfishness of vulgar-minded
prosperous people and to the base cunning of quite exceptional
merchants. But under the strange and difficult and planless conditions
of to-day quite a few people can start a rush and produce an almost
irresistible pressure. The majority of people who have hoarded and
forestalled have probably done so very unwillingly, because “others will
do it.” They would welcome any authoritative action that would enable
them to disgorge without feeling that somebody else would instantly
snatch what they had surrendered and profit by it. It is for that reason
that we must at once organise the commandeering and requisitioning of
hoards and reserved goods. The mere threat will probably produce a great
relaxation of the situation, but the threat must be carried out to the
point of having everything ready as soon as possible to seize and sell
and distribute. Until that is done this food crisis will wax and wane,
but it will not cease; if we do not carry out Mr. Runciman’s initiatives
with a certain harsh promptness food trouble will be an intermittent
wasting fever in the body politic until the end of the war.
And the business will not be over at the end of the war. The patience of
the common people has been astonishing. In countless homes there must
have been the extremest worry and misery. But except for a few trivial
rows, such as the smashing of the windows of Mr. Moss, at Hitchin, who
was probably not a bit to blame, an attack on a bakery somewhere, and
some not very bad behaviour in the way of threats and demonstrations on
the part of East End Jews, there has been no disorder at all. That is
because the people are full of the first solemnity of war, eagerly
trustful, and still—well nourished.
At the end unless the more prosperous people pull themselves together it
will not be like that.
IV
CONCERNING MR. MAXIMILIAN CRAFT
I find myself enthusiastic for this war against Prussian militarism. We
are, I believe, assisting at the end of a vast, intolerable oppression
upon civilisation. We are fighting to release Germany and all the world
from the superstition that brutality and cynicism are the methods of
success, that Imperialism is better than free citizenship and conscripts
better soldiers than free men.
And I find another writer who is also being, he declares, patriotically
British. Indeed, he waves the Union Jack about to an extent from which
my natural modesty recoils. Because you see I am English-cum-Irish, and
save for the cross of St. Andrew that flag is mine. To wave it about
would, I feel, be just vulgar self-assertion. He, however, is not
English. He assumes a variety of names, and some are quite lovely old
English names. But his favourite name is Craft, Maximilian Craft—and I
understand he was born a Kraft. He shoves himself into the affairs of
this country with an extraordinary energy; he takes possession of my
Union Jack as if St. George was his father. At present he is advising me
very actively how to conduct this war, and telling me exactly what I
ought to think about it. He is, in fact, the English equivalent of those
professors of Welt Politik who have guided the German mind to its
present magnificent display of shrewd, triumphant statecraft. I suspect
him of a distant cousinship with Professor Delbruck. And he is urging
upon our attention now a magnificent _coup_, with which I will shortly
deal.
In appearance Kraft is by no means completely anglicised himself. He is
a large-faced creature with enormous long features and a woolly head; he
is heavy in build and with a back slightly hunched; he lisps slightly
and his manner is either insolently contemptuous or aggressively
familiar. He thinks all born Englishmen, as distinguished from the
naturalised Englishmen, are also born fools. Always his manner is
pervaded by a faint flavour of astonishment at the born foolishness of
the born Englishmen. But he thinks their Empire a marvellous accident, a
wonderful opportunity—for cleverer people.
So, with a kind of disinterested energy, he has been doing his best to
educate Englishmen up to their Imperial opportunities, to show them how
to change luck into cunning, take the wall of every other breed and
swagger foremost in the world. He cannot understand that English blood
does not warm to such ambitions. When he has wealth it is his nature to
show it in watch-chains and studs and signet-rings; if he had a wife she
would dazzle in diamonds; the furniture of his flat is wonderfully
“good,” all picked English pieces and worth no end; he thinks it is just
dulness and poorness of spirit that disregards these things. He came to
England to instruct us in the arts of Empire, when he found that already
there was a glut of his kind of wisdom in the German universities. For
years until this present outbreak I have followed his career with silent
interest rather than affection. And the first thing he undertook to
teach us was, I remember, Tariff Reform, “taxing the foreigner.”
Limitless wealth you get, and you pay nothing. You get a huge national
income in imported goods, and also, as your tariff prevents importation,
you develop a tremendous internal trade. Two birds (in quite opposite
directions) with the same stone. It seemed just plain common sense to
him. Anyhow, he felt sure it was good enough for the born English....
He is still a little incredulous of our refusal to accept that
delightful idea. Meanwhile his kind have dominated the more docile
German intelligence altogether. They have listened to the whisper of
Welt Politik, or at least their rulers have attended; they have sown
exasperation on every frontier, taken the wall, done all the showily
aggressive and successful things. They were the pupils he should have
taught. A people at once teachable and spirited. Almost tearfully Kraft
has asked us to mark that glorious progress of a once philosophical,
civilised, and kindly people. And indeed we have had to mark it and
polish our weapons, and with a deepening resentment get more and more
weapons, and keep our powder dry, when we would have been far rather
occupied with other things.
But amazingly enough we would not listen to his suggestion of universal
service. Kraft and his kind believe in numbers. Even the Boer War could
not shake his natural aptitude for political arithmetic. He has tried to
bring the situation home to us by diagrams, showing us enormous figures,
colossal soldiers to represent the German forces and tiny little British
men, smaller than the army figures for Bulgaria and for Servia. He does
not understand that there can be too many soldiers on a field of battle;
he could as soon believe that one could have too much money. And so he
thinks the armies of Russia _must_ be more powerful than the French.
When I deny that superiority—as I do—he simply notes the fact that I am
unable to count.
And when it comes to schemes of warfare then a kind of delirium of
cunning descends upon Kraft. He is full of devices such as we poor fools
cannot invent; sudden attacks without a declaration of war, vast schemes
for spy systems and assassin-like disguises, the cowing of a country by
the wholesale shooting of uncivil non-combatants, breaches of
neutrality, national treacheries, altered dispatches, forged letters,
diplomatic lies, a perfect world-organisation of Super-sneaks. Our poor
cousin, Michael, the German, has listened to such wisdom only too
meekly. Poor Michael, with his honest blue eyes wonder-lit, has tried
his best to be a very devil, and go where Kraft’s cousin, Bernhardi, the
military “expert,” has led him. (So far it has led him into the ditches
of Liège and the gorges of the Ardennes and much hunger and dirt and
blood.) And Kraft over here has watched with an intolerable envy Berlin
lying and bullying and being the very Superman of Welt Politik. He has
been talking, writing, praying us to do likewise, to strike suddenly
before war was declared at the German fleet, to outrage the neutrality
of Denmark, to seize Holland, to do something nationally dishonest and
disgraceful. Daily he has raged at our milk and water methods. At times
we have seemed to him more like a lot of Woodrow Wilsons than reasonable
sane men.
And he is still at it.
Only a few days ago I took up the paper that has at last moved me to the
very plain declarations of this article. It was an English daily paper,
and Kraft was telling us, as usual, and with his usual despairful sense
of our stupidity, how to conduct this war. And what he said was
this—that we have to starve Germany—not realising that with her choked
railways and her wasted crops Germany may be trusted very rapidly to
starve herself—and that, if we do not prevent them, foodstuffs will go
into Germany by way of Holland and Italy. So he wants us to begin at
once a hostile blockade of Holland and Italy, or better, perhaps, to
send each of these innocent and friendly countries an ultimatum
forthwith. He wants it done at once, because otherwise the Berlin
Krafts, some Delbruck or Bernhardi, or that egregious young statesman,
the Crown Prince, may persuade the Prussians to get in their ultimatum
first. Then we should have no chance of doing anything internationally
idiotic at all, unless, perhaps, we seized a port in Norway. It might be
rather a fine thing, he thinks upon reflection, to seize a port in
Norway.
Now let us English make it clear, once for all, to the Krafts and other
kindred patriotic gentlemen from abroad who are showing us the really
artful way to do things, that this is not our way of doing things. Into
this war we have gone with clean hands—to end the reign of brutal and
artful internationalism for ever. Our hearts are heavy at the task
before us, but our intention is grim. We mean to conquer. We are
prepared for every disaster, for intolerable stresses, for bankruptcy,
for hunger, for anything but defeat. Now that we have begun to fight we
will fight if needful until the children die of famine in our homes, we
will fight though every ship we have is at the bottom of the sea. We
mean to fight this war to its very finish, and that finish we are
absolutely resolved must be the end of Kraftism in the world. And we
will come out of this war with hands as clean as they are now, unstained
by any dirty tricks in field or council chamber, neutralities respected
and treaties kept. Then we will reckon once for all with Kraft and with
his friends and supporters, the private dealers in armaments, and with
all this monstrous, stupid brood of villainy that has brought this vast
catastrophe upon the world.
I say this plainly now for myself and for thousands of silent plain men,
because the sooner Kraft realises how we feel in this matter the better
for him. He betrays at times a remarkable persuasion that at the final
settling up of things he will make himself invaluable to us. At
diplomacy he knows he shines. Then the lisping whisper has its use, and
the studied insolence. Finish the fighting, and then leave it to him. He
really believes the born English will. He does not understand in the
slightest degree the still passion of our streets. There never was less
shouting and less demonstration in England, and never was England so
quietly intent. This war is not going to end in diplomacy; it is going
to end diplomacy. It is quite a different sort of war from any that have
gone before it. At the end there will be no Conference of Europe on the
old lines at all, but a Conference of the World. It will be a Conference
for Kraft to laugh at. He will run about button-holing people about it;
almost spitting in their faces with the eagerness of his derisive
whispers. It will conduct its affairs with scandalous publicity and a
deliberate simplicity. It will be worse than Woodrow Wilson. And it will
make a peace that will put an end to Kraft and the spirit of Kraft and
Kraftism and the private armament firms behind him for evermore.
At which I imagine the head of Kraft going down between his shoulders
and his large hands going out like the wings of a cherub. “Englishmen!
Liberals! Fools! Incurable! How can such things be? It is not how things
are done.”
It is how they are going to be done if this world is to be worth living
in at all after this war. When we fight Berlin, Kraft, we fight
_you_.... An absolute end to you. Yes.
V
THE MOST NECESSARY MEASURES IN THE WORLD
In this smash-up of empires and diplomacy, this utter disaster of
international politics, certain things which would have seemed
ridiculously Utopian a few weeks ago have suddenly become reasonable and
practicable. One of these, a thing that would have seemed fantastic
until the very moment when we joined issue with Germany and which may
now be regarded as a sober possibility, is the absolute abolition
throughout the world of the manufacture of weapons for private gain.
Whatever may be said of the practicability of national disarmament,
there can be no dispute not merely of the possibility but of the supreme
necessity of ending for ever the days of private profit in the
instruments of death. That is the real enemy. That is the evil thing at
the very centre of this trouble.
At the very core of all this evil that has burst at last in world
disaster lies this Kruppism, this sordid enormous trade in the
instruments of death. It is the closest, most gigantic organisation in
the world. Time after time this huge business, with its bought
newspapers, its paid spies, its agents, its shareholders, its insane
sympathisers, its vast ramification of open and concealed associates,
has defeated attempts at pacification, has piled the heap of explosive
material higher and higher—the heap that has toppled at last into this
bloody welter in Belgium, in which the lives of four great nations are
now being torn and tormented and slaughtered and wasted beyond counting,
beyond imagining. I dare not picture it—thinking now of who may read.
So long as the unstable peace endured, so long as the Emperor of the
Germans and the Krupp concern and the vanities of Prussia hung together,
threatening but not assailing the peace of the world, so long as one
could dream of holding off the crash and saving lives, so long was it
impossible to bring this business to an end or even to propose plainly
to bring this business to an end. It was still possible to argue that to
be prepared for war was the way to keep the peace. But now everyone
knows better. The war has come. Preparation has exploded. Outrageous
plunder has passed into outrageous bloodshed. All Europe is in revolt
against this evil system. There is no going back now to peace; our men
must die, in heaps, in thousands; we cannot delude ourselves with dreams
of easy victories; we must all suffer endless miseries and anxieties;
scarcely a human affair is there that will not be marred and darkened by
this war. Out of it all must come one universal resolve: that this
iniquity must be plucked out by the roots. Whatever follies still lie
ahead for mankind this folly at least must end. There must be no more
buying and selling of guns and warships and war-machines. There must be
no more gain in arms. Kings and Kaisers must cease to be the commercial
travellers of monstrous armament concerns. With the _Goeben_ the Kaiser
has made his last sale. Whatever arms the nations think they need they
must make for themselves and give to their own subjects. Beyond that
there must be no making of weapons in the earth.
This is the clearest common sense. I do not need to argue what is
manifest, what every German knows, what every intelligent educated man
in the world knows. The Krupp concern and the tawdry Imperialism of
Berlin are linked like thief and receiver; the hands of the German
princes are dirty with the trade. All over the world statecraft and
royalty have been approached and touched and tainted by these vast
firms, but it is in Berlin that the corruption has centred, it is from
Berlin that the intolerable pressure to arm and still to arm has come,
it is at Berlin alone that the evil can be grappled and killed. Before
this there was no reaching it. It was useless to dream even of
disarmament while these people could still go on making their material
uncontrolled, waiting for the moment of national passion, feeding the
national mind with fears and suspicions through their subsidised Press.
But now there is a new spirit in the world. There are no more fears; the
worst evil has come to pass. The ugly hatreds, the nourished
misconceptions of an armed peace, begin already to give place to the
mutual respect and pity and disillusionment of a universally disastrous
war. We can at last deal with Krupps and the kindred firms throughout
the world as one general problem, one worldwide accessible evil.
Outside the circle of belligerent States, and the States which, like
Denmark, Italy, Rumania, Norway and Sweden, must necessarily be invited
to take a share in the final re-settlement of the world’s affairs, there
are only three systems of Powers which need be considered in this
matter, namely, the English and Spanish-speaking Republics of America
and China. None of these States is deeply involved in the armaments
trade, several of them have every reason to hate a system that has
linked the obligation to deal in armaments with every loan. The United
States of America is now, more than ever it was, an anti-militarist
Power, and it is not too much to say that the Government of the United
States of America holds in its hand the power to sanction or prevent
this most urgent need of mankind. If the people of the United States
will consider and grasp this tremendous question now; if they will make
up their minds now that there shall be no more profit made in America or
anywhere else upon the face of the earth in raw material; if they will
determine to put the vast moral, financial and material influence the
States will be able to exercise at the end of this war in the scale
against the survival of Kruppism, then it will be possible to finish
that vile industry for ever. If, through a failure of courage or
imagination, they will not come into this thing, then I fear if it may
be done. But I misjudge the United States if, in the end, they abstain
from so glorious and congenial an opportunity.
Let me set out the suggestion very plainly. All the plant for the making
of war material throughout the world must be taken over by the
Government of the State in which it exists; every gun factory, every
rifle factory, every dockyard for the building of warships. It may be
necessary to compensate the shareholders more or less completely; there
may have to be a war indemnity to provide for that, but that is a
question of detail. The thing is the conversion everywhere of
arms-making into a State monopoly, so that nowhere shall there be a
ha’porth of avoidable private gain in it. Then, and then only, will it
become possible to arrange for the gradual dismantling of this industry
which is destroying humanity, and the reduction of the armed forces of
the world to reasonable dimensions. I would carry this suppression down
even to the restriction of the manufacture and sale of every sort of
gun, pistol, and explosive. They should be made only in Government
workshops and sold only in Government shops; there should not be a
single rifle, not a Browning pistol, unregistered, unrecorded, and
untraceable in the world. But that may be a counsel of perfection. The
essential thing is the world suppression of this abominable traffic in
the big gear of war, in warships and great guns.