commercial traveller flung down the back-stairs he has haunted for so
long—and flung so hard that he will be incapacitated for ever—it will
become possible to consider a scheme for the establishment of the peace
of the world. Until that is done any such scheme will remain an idle
dream. But him disposed of, the way is open for the association of armed
nations, determined to stamp out at once every recrudescence of
aggressive war. They will not be totally disarmed Powers. It is no good
to disarm while any one single Power is still in love with the dream of
military glory. It is no good to disarm while the possibility of war
fever is still in the human blood. The intelligence of the whole world
must watch for febrile symptoms and prepare to allay them. But after
this struggle one may count on the pacific intentions of at least the
following States: The British Empire, France, Italy, and all the minor
States of the north and west; the United States has always been a
pacific Power; Japan has had its lesson and is too impoverished for
serious hostilities; China has never been aggressive; Germany also,
unless this war leads to intolerable insults and humiliations for the
German spirit, will be war-sick. The Spanish and Portuguese-speaking
Republics of America are too busy developing materially to dream of war
on the modern scale, and the same may presently be true of the Greek,
Latin and Slav communities of south-east Europe if, as I hope and
believe, this war leads to the rational rearrangement of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. 1915 will indeed find this world a strangely
tamed and reasonable world.
There is only one doubtful country, Russia, and for my own part I do not
believe in the wickedness and I doubt the present power of that
stupendous barbaric State. Finland and a renascent Polish kingdom at
least will be weight on the side of peace. It will be indeed the phase
of supreme opportunity for peace. If there is courage and honesty enough
in men, I believe it will be possible to establish a world council for
the regulation of armaments as the natural outcome of this war. First,
the trade in armaments must be absolutely killed. And then the next
supremely important measure to secure the peace of the world is the
neutralisation of the sea.
It will lie in the power of England, France, Russia, Italy, Japan and
the United States, if Germany and Austria are shattered in this war, to
forbid the further building of any more ships of war at all; to
persuade, and if need be, to oblige the minor Powers to sell their
navies and to refuse the seas to armed ships not under the control of
the confederation. To launch an armed ship can be made an invasion of
the common territory of the world. This will be an open possibility in
1915. It will remain an open possibility until men recover from the
shock of this conflict. As that begins to be forgotten so this will
cease to be a possibility again—perhaps for hundreds of years. Already
human intelligence and honesty have contrived to keep the great American
lakes and the enormous Canadian frontier disarmed for a century. Warlike
folly has complained of that, but it has never been strong enough to
upset it. What is possible on that scale is possible universally, so
soon as the armament trader is put out of mischief. And with the
Confederated Peace Powers keeping the seas and guaranteeing the peaceful
freedom of the seas to all mankind, treating the transport of armed men
and war material, except between one detached part of a State and
another, as contraband, and impartially blockading all belligerents,
those who know best the significance of the sea power will realise best
the reduction in the danger of extensive wars on land.
This is no dream. This is the plain common sense of the present
opportunity.
It may be urged that this is a premature discussion, that this war is
still undecided. But, indeed, there can be no decision to this war for
France and England at any rate but the defeat of Germany, the
abandonment of German militarism, the destruction of the German fleet,
and the creation of this opportunity. Nothing short of that is
tolerable; we must fight on to extinction rather than submit to a
dishonouring peace in defeat or to any premature settlement. The fate of
the world under triumphant Prussianism and Kruppism for the next two
hundred years is not worth discussing. There is no conceivable
conclusion to this war but submission at Berlin. There is no reasonable
course before us now but to give all our strength for victory and the
establishment of victory. The end must be victory or our effacement.
What will happen after our effacement is for the Germans to consider.
A war that will merely beat Germany a little and restore the hateful
tensions of the last forty years is not worth waging. As an end to all
our effort it will be almost as intolerable as defeat. Yet unless a body
of definite ideas is formed and promulgated now things may happen so.
And so now, while there is yet time, the Liberalism of France and
England must speak plainly and make its appeal to the Liberalism of all
the world, not to share our war indeed, but to share the great ends for
which we are so gladly waging this war. For, indeed, sombrely enough
England and France and Belgium and Russia are glad of this day. The age
of armed anxiety is over. Whatever betide, it must be an end. And there
is no way of making it an end but through these two associated
decisions, the abolition of Kruppism and the neutralisation of the sea.
VI
THE NEED OF A NEW MAP OF EUROPE
At the moment of writing the war has not lasted many days, great battles
by land and sea alike impend, and yet I find my steadfast anticipation
that Prussianism, Bernhardi-ism, the whole theory and practice of the
Empire of the Germans, is a rotten and condemned thing, has already
strengthened to an absolute conviction. Unforeseen accidents may happen.
I say nothing of the sea, but the general and ultimate result seems to
me now as certain as the rising of to-morrow’s sun. I do not know how
much slaughter lies before Europe before Germany realises that she is
fool-led and fool-poisoned. I do not know how long the swaggering
Prussian officer will be able to drive his crowded men to massacre
before they revolt against him, nor do I know how far the inflated
vanity of Berlin has made provision for defeat. Germany on the defensive
for all we can tell may prove a very stubborn thing, and Russia’s
strength may be, and I think is, overestimated. All that may delay, but
it will not alter the final demonstration that Prussianism, as Mr.
Belloc foretold so amazingly, took its mortal wound at the first onset
before the trenches of Liège. We begin a new period of history.
It is not Germany that has been defeated; Germany is still an
unconquered country. Indeed, now it is a released country. It is a
country glorious in history and with a glorious future. But never more
after this war has ended will it march to the shout of the Prussian
drill sergeant and strive to play bully to the world. The legend of
Prussia is exploded. Its appeal was to one coarse criterion, success,
and it has failed. Nevermore will the harshness of Berlin overshadow the
great and friendly civilisation of Southern and Western Germany. The
work before a world in arms is to clean off the Prussian blue from the
life and spirit of mankind.
No European Power has any real quarrel with Germany. Our quarrel is with
the Empire of the Germans, not with a people but with an idea. Let us in
all that follows keep that clearly in our minds. It may be that the
German repulse at Liège was but the beginning of a German disaster as
great as that of France in 1871. It may be that Germany has no second
plan if her first plan fails; that she will go to pieces after her first
defeat. It seems to me that this is so—I risk the prophecy, and I would
have us prepare ourselves for the temptations of victory. And so to
begin with, let us of the liberal faith declare our fixed, unalterable
conviction that it will be a sin to dismember Germany or to allow any
German-speaking and German-feeling territory to fall under a foreign
yoke. Let us English make sure of ourselves in that matter. There may be
restorations of alien territory—Polish, French, Danish, Italian, but we
have seen enough of racial subjugation now to be sure that we will
tolerate no more of it. From the Rhine to East Prussia and from the
Baltic to the southern limits of German-speaking Austria, the Germans
are one people. Let us begin with the resolution to permit no new
bitterness of “conquered territories” to come into existence to disturb
the future peace of Europe. Let us see to it that at the ultimate
settlement the Germans, however great his overthrow may be, are all left
free men.
When the Prussians invaded Luxemburg they tore up the map of Europe. To
the redrawing of that map a thousand complex forces will come. There
will be much attempted over-reaching in the business and much greed. Few
will come to negotiations with simple intentions. In a wrangle all sorts
of ugly and stupid things may happen. It is for us English to get a head
in that matter, to take counsel with ourselves and determine what is
just; it is for us, who are in so many ways detached from and
independent of the national passions of the Continent, not to be cunning
or politic, but to contrive as unanimous a purpose as possible now, so
that we may carry this war to its end with a clear conception of its
end, and to use the whole of our strength to make an enduring peace in
Europe. That means that we have to re-draw the map so that there shall
be, for just as far as we can see ahead, as little cause for warfare
among us Western nations as possible. That means that we have to redraw
it justly. And very extensively.
Is that an impossible proposal? I think not. There are, indeed, such
things as non-irritating frontiers. Witness the frontiers of Canada.
Certain boundaries have served in Europe now for the better part of a
hundred years, and grow less amenable to disturbance every year. Nobody,
for example, wants to use force to readjust the mutual frontiers in
Europe of Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, and none
of these Powers desire now to acquire the foreign possessions of any
other of the group. They are Powers permanently at peace. Will it not be
possible now to make so drastic a readjustment as to secure the same
practical contentment between all the European Powers? Is not this war
that crowning opportunity? It seems to me that in this matter it behoves
us to form an opinion sane and definite enough to meet the sudden
impulses of belligerent triumph and override the secret counsels of
diplomacy. It is a thing to do forthwith. Let us decide what we are
going on fighting for, and let us secure it and settle it. It is not an
abstract interesting thing to do; it is the duty of every English
citizen now to study this problem of the map of Europe, so that we can
make an end for ever to that dark game of plots and secret treaties and
clap-trap synthetic schemes that has wasted the forces of civilisation
(and made the fortunes of the Krupp family) in the last forty years. We
are fighting now for a new map of Europe if we are fighting for anything
at all. I could imagine that new map of Europe as if it were the flag of
the allies who now prepare to press the Germans back towards their
proper territory.
In the first place, I suggest that France must recover Lorraine, and
that Luxemburg must be linked in closer union with Belgium. Alsace, it
seems to me, should be given a choice between France and an entry into
the Swiss Confederation. It would possibly choose France. Denmark should
have again the distinctly Danish part of her lost provinces restored to
her. Trieste and Trent, and perhaps also Pola, should be restored to
Italy. This will re-unite several severed fragments of peoples to their
more congenial associates. But these are minor changes compared with the
new developments that are now, in some form, inevitable in the East of
Europe, and for those we have to nerve our imaginations, if this vast
war and waste of men is to end in an enduring peace. The break-up of the
Austrian Empire has hung over Europe like a curse for forty years. Let
us break it up now and have done with it. What is to become of the
non-German regions of Austria-Hungary? And what is to happen upon the
Polish frontier of Russia?
First, then, I would suggest that the three fragments of Poland should
be reunited, and that the Tsar of Russia should be crowned King of
Poland. I propose then we define that as our national intention, that we
use all the liberalising influence this present war will give us in
Russia to that end. And secondly, I propose that we set before ourselves
as our policy the unification of that larger Rumania which includes
Transylvania, and the gathering together into a confederation of the
Swiss type of all the Servian and quasi-Servian provinces of the
Austrian Empire. Let us, as the price greater Servia will pay for its
unity, exact the restoration to Bulgaria of any Bulgarian-speaking
districts that are now under Servian rule; let us save Scutari from the
iniquity of a nose-slashing occupation by Montenegrins and try to effect
another Swiss confederation of the residual Bohemian, Slavic and
Hungarian fragments. I am convinced that the time has come for the
substitution of Swiss associations for the discredited Imperialisms and
kingdoms that have made Europe unstable for so long. Every emperor and
every king, we now perceive, means a national ambition more organic,
concentrated and dangerous than is possible under Republican conditions.
Our own peculiar monarchy is the one exception that proves this rule.
There is no reason why we should multiply these centres of aggression.
Probably neither Bulgaria nor Servia would miss their kings very keenly,
and anyhow, I do not see any need for more of these irritating
ambition-pimples upon the fair face of the world. Let us cease to give
indigestible princes to the new States that we Schweitzerize. Albania,
particularly, with its miscellaneous tribes has certainly no use for
monarchy, and the suggestion that has been made for its settlement, as a
confederation of small tribal cantons is the only one I have ever heard
that seemed to contain a ray of hope for that distracted patch of earth.
There is certainly no reason why these people should be exploited by
Italy, since Italy can claim a more legitimate gratification. There, in
a paragraph, is a sketch of the map of Europe that may emerge from the
present struggle. It is my personal idea of our purpose in this war.
Quite manifestly in all these matters I am a fairly ignorant person.
Quite manifestly this is crude stuff. And I admit a certain sense of
presumptuous absurdity as I sit here before the map of Europe like a
carver before a duck and take off a slice here and decide on a cut
there. None the less it is what everyone of us has to do. I intend to go
on redrawing the map of Europe with every intelligent person I meet. We
are all more or less ignorant; it is unfortunate but it does not alter
the fact that we cannot escape either decisions or passive acquiescences
in these matters. If we do not do our utmost to understand the new map,
if we make no decisions, then still cruder things will happen; Europe
will blunder into a new set of ugly complications and prepare a still
more colossal Armageddon than this that is now going on. No one, I hope,
will suggest after this war that we should still leave things to the
diplomatists. Yet the alternative to you and me is diplomacy. If you
want to see where diplomacy and Welt Politik have landed Europe after
forty years of anxiety and armament, you must go and look into the
ditches of Liège. These bloody heaps are the mere first samples of the
harvest. The only alternative to diplomacy is outspoken intelligence,
yours and mine and every articulate person’s. We have all of us to
undertake this redrawing of the map of Europe, in the measure of our
power and capacity. That our power and capacity are unhappily not very
considerable does not absolve us. It is for us to secure a lasting
settlement of all the European frontiers if we can. If we common
intelligent people at large do not secure that, nobody will.
If we have no intentions with regard to the map of Europe, we shall soon
be going on with the war for nothing in particular. The Prussian spirit
has broken itself beyond repair, and the north coast of France and the
integrity of Belgium are saved. All the fighting that is still to come
will only be the confirmation and development of that. If we have no
further plan before us our task is at an end. If that is all, we may
stand aside now with a good conscience and watch a slower war drag to an
evil end. Left to herself a victorious Russia is far more likely to help
herself to East Prussia and set to work to Russianise its inhabitants
than to risk an indigestion of more Poles; Italy may go into Albania and
a new conflict with Servia; it is even conceivable that France may be
ungenerous. She will have a good excuse for being ungenerous. Meanwhile,
German-speaking populations will find themselves under instead of upper
dogs in half the provinces of Austria-Hungary; mischievous little kings,
with chancellors and national policies and ambitions all complete, will
rise and fluctuate and fall upon that slippery soil, and a bloody and
embittered Germany, continually stung by the outcries of her subject
kindred, will sit down grimly to grow a new generation of soldiers and
prepare for her revenge....
That is why I think we liberal English should draw our new map of Europe
now, first of all on paper and then upon the face of the earth.
We ought to draw that map now, and propagate the idea of it, and make it
our national purpose, and call the intelligence and consciences of the
United States and France and Scandinavia to our help. Openly and plainly
we ought to discuss and decide and tell the world what we mean to do.
The reign of brutality, cynicism, and secretive treachery is shattered
in Europe. Over the ruins of the Prussian War-Lordship, reason, public
opinion, justice, international good faith and good intentions will be
free to come back and rule the destinies of man. But things will not
wait for reason and justice, if just and reasonable men have neither
energy nor unity.
VII
THE OPPORTUNITY OF LIBERALISM
The opportunity of Liberalism has come at last, an overwhelming
opportunity. The age of militarism has rushed to its inevitable and yet
surprising climax. The great soldier empire, made for war, which has
dominated Europe for forty years has pulled itself up by the roots and
flung itself into the struggle for which it was made. Whether it win or
lose, it will never put itself back again. All Europe, following that
lead, is a-field for war. The good harvests stand neglected, the
factories are idle, a thin, uncertain trickle of paper money replaces
the chinking flow of commerce; whichever betide, defeat or deadlock, the
capitalist military civilisation uproots itself and ends. The war may
burn itself out more quickly than those who regard its immensity think,
but the war itself is the mere smash of the thing. The reality is the
uprooting, the incurable dislocation.
Trying to map and measure that dislocation is rather like one’s first
effort to think in sun’s distances. It is to transfer one’s mind to a
new and overwhelming scale. Never did any time carry so swift a burthen
of change as this time. It is manifest that in a year or so the world of
men is going to alter more than it has altered in the last century and a
half, more indeed than it ever altered before these last centuries since
history began. Think of the mere geographical dislocation. There is
scarcely a country in Europe that will not emerge from this struggle
with entirely fresh frontiers, sovereign powers will vanish from the
map, new sovereign powers will come. In the disorders that are upon us
and of which this war itself is the mere preliminary phase in uniform,
inevitably there must be social reconstruction. Who can doubt it? Who
can doubt the break-up of confidence and usage that is in progress?
Plainly you can see famine coming—in France, in Germany, in Russia. Does
anyone suppose that those sham efficient Germans have fully worked out
the care and feeding of the madly distended hosts they have hurled at
France? Does anyone dream that they have reckoned for a check and halt?
Does anyone imagine their sanitary arrangements are perfect? There will
be pestilence. And can one believe that whatever feats of financial
fiction we contrive, _their_ financial crash can be staved off, and that
the bankers of Hamburg and Frankfort are likely to be shovelling gold
next January in a still methodical world? The German State machine has
probably already done all that it was ever made to do. It stands now
exhausted amidst the turmoil of its consequences. Its mobilization
arrangements are said to have been astonishingly complete. Ten million
men for and against have been got into the field—with ammunition.
Prussian Germany has carried out its arrangements and committed the
business to Gott. German foresight has exhausted itself. If Gott fail
Germany, I do not believe that Germany has the remotest idea what to do
next. For the most part those millions will never get home any more.
They will certainly never get back to their work again, because it will
have disappeared.
When I think of European statecraft presently trying to put all these
things back again I am reminded of a story of a friend whose neighbour
tried to cut his throat and then repented. He came round to her with a
towel about his neck making peculiar noises. It was a distressing but
illuminating experience for her. She was a plucky and resourceful woman,
and she did her best. “There was such a lot of it,” she said. “I hadn’t
an idea things were packed so tight in us.”