We have already hazarded the prophecy that after a long war of general
exhaustion Germany will be the first to realise defeat. This does not
mean that she will surrender unconditionally, but that she will be
reduced to bargaining to see how much she must surrender, and what she
may hold. It is my impression that she will be deserted by Bulgaria, and
that Turkey will be out of the fighting before the end. But these are
chancy matters. Against Germany there will certainly be the three great
allies, France, Russia and Britain, and almost certainly Japan will be
with them. The four will probably have got to a very complete and
detailed understanding among themselves. Italy--in, I fear, a slightly
detached spirit--will sit at the board. Hungary will be present,
sitting, so to speak, amidst the decayed remains of Austria. Roumania, a
little out of breath through hurrying at the last, may be present as the
latest ally of Italy. The European neutrals will be at least present in
spirit; their desires will be acutely felt; but it is doubtful if the
United States will count for all that they might in the decision. Such
weight as America chooses to exercise--would that she would choose to
exercise more!--will probably be on the side of the rational and natural
settlement of the world.
Now the most important thing of all at this settlement will be the
temper and nature of the Germany with which the Allies will be dealing.
Let us not be blinded by the passions of war into confusing a people
with its government and the artificial Kultur of a brief century. There
is a Germany, great and civilised, a decent and admirable people, masked
by Imperialism, blinded by the vanity of the easy victories of half a
century ago, wrapped in illusion. How far will she be chastened and
disillusioned by the end of this war?
The terms of peace depend enormously upon the answer to that question.
If we take the extremest possibility, and suppose a revolution in
Germany or in South Germany, and the replacement of the Hohenzollerns in
all or part of Germany by a Republic, then I am convinced that for
republican Germany there would be not simply forgiveness, but a warm
welcome back to the comity of nations. The French, British, Belgians and
Italians, and every civilised force in Russia would tumble over one
another in their eager greeting of this return to sanity.
If we suppose a less extreme but more possible revolution, taking the
form of an inquiry into the sanity of the Kaiser and his eldest son, and
the establishment of constitutional safeguards for the future, that also
would bring about an extraordinary modification of the resolution of the
Pledged Allies. But no ending to this war, no sort of settlement, will
destroy the antipathy of the civilised peoples for the violent,
pretentious, sentimental and cowardly imperialism that has so far
dominated Germany. All Europe outside Germany now hates and dreads the
Hohenzollerns. No treaty of peace can end that hate, and so long as
Germany sees fit to identify herself with Hohenzollern dreams of empire
and a warfare of massacre and assassination, there must be war
henceforth, open, or but thinly masked, against Germany. It will be but
the elementary common sense of the situation for all the Allies to plan
tariffs, exclusions, special laws against German shipping and
shareholders and immigrants for so long a period as every German remains
a potential servant of that system.
Whatever Germany may think of the Hohenzollerns, the world outside
Germany regards them as the embodiment of homicidal nationalism. And
the settlement of Europe after the war, if it is to be a settlement with
the Hohenzollerns and not with the German people, must include the
virtual disarming of those robber murderers against any renewal of their
attack. It would be the most obvious folly to stop anywhere short of
that. With Germany we would welcome peace to-morrow; we would welcome
her shipping on the seas and her flag about the world; against the
Hohenzollerns it must obviously be war to the bitter end.
But the ultimate of all sane European policy, as distinguished from
oligarchic and dynastic foolery, is the establishment of the natural map
of Europe. There exists no school of thought that can claim a moment's
consideration among the Allies which aims at the disintegration of the
essential Germany or the subjugation of any Germans to an alien rule.
Nor does anyone grudge Germany wealth, trade, shipping, or anything else
that goes with the politician's phrase of "legitimate expansion" for its
own sake. If we do now set our minds to deprive Germany of these things
in their fullness, it is in exactly the same spirit as that in which one
might remove that legitimate and peaceful implement, a bread knife,
from the hand of a homicidal maniac. Let but Germany cure herself of her
Hohenzollern taint, and the world will grudge her wealth and economic
pre-eminence as little as it grudges wealth and economic pre-eminence to
the United States.
Now the probabilities of a German revolution open questions too complex
and subtle for our present speculation. I would merely remark in passing
that in Great Britain at least those possibilities seem to me to be
enormously underrated. For our present purpose it will be most
convenient to indicate a sort of maximum and minimum, depending upon the
decision of Germany to be entirely Hohenzollern or wholly or in part
European. But in either case we are going to assume that it is Germany
which has been most exhausted by the war, and which is seeking peace
from the Allies, who have also, we will assume, excellent internal
reasons for desiring it.
With the Hohenzollerns it is mere nonsense to dream of any enduring
peace, but whether we are making a lasting and friendly peace with
Germany or merely a sort of truce of military operations that will be no
truce in the economic war against Hohenzollern resources, the same
essential idea will, I think, guide all the peace-desiring Powers. They
will try to draw the boundaries as near as they can to those of the
natural map of mankind.
Then, writing as an Englishman, my first thought of the European map is
naturally of Belgium. Only absolute smashing defeat could force either
Britain or France to consent to anything short of the complete
restoration of Belgium. Rather than give that consent they will both
carry the war to at present undreamt-of extremities. Belgium must be
restored; her neutrality must be replaced by a defensive alliance with
her two Western Allies; and if the world has still to reckon with
Hohenzollerns, then her frontier must be thrust forward into the
adjacent French-speaking country so as to minimise the chances of any
second surprise.
It is manifest that every frontier that gives upon the Hohenzollerns
must henceforth be entrenched line behind line, and held permanently by
a garrison ready for any treachery, and it becomes of primary importance
that the Franco-Belgian line should be as short and strong as possible.
Aix, which Germany has made a mere jumping-off place for aggressions,
should clearly be held by Belgium against a Hohenzollern Empire, and the
fortified and fiscal frontier would run from it southward to include the
Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, with its French sympathies and traditions,
in the permanent alliance. It is quite impossible to leave this
ambiguous territory as it was before the war, with its railway in German
hands and its postal and telegraphic service (since 1913) under
Hohenzollern control. It is quite impossible to hand over this strongly
anti-Prussian population to Hohenzollern masters.
But an Englishman must needs write with diffidence upon this question of
the Western boundary. It is clear that all the boundaries of 1914 from
Aix to Bale are a part of ancient history. No "as you were" is possible
there. And it is not the business of anyone in Great Britain to redraw
them. That task on our side lies between France and Belgium. The
business of Great Britain in the matter is as plain as daylight. It is
to support to her last man and her last ounce of gold those new
boundaries her allies consider essential to their comfort and security.
But I do not see how France, unless she is really convinced she is
beaten, can content herself with anything less than a strong
Franco-Belgian frontier from Aix, that will take in at least Metz and
Saarburg. She knows best the psychology of the lost provinces, and what
amount of annexation will spell weakness or strength. If she demands
all Alsace-Lorraine back from the Hohenzollerns, British opinion is
resolved to support her, and to go through with this struggle until she
gets it. To guess at the direction of the new line is not to express a
British opinion, but to speculate upon the opinion of France. After the
experience of Luxembourg and Belgium no one now dreams of a neutralised
buffer State. What does not become French or Belgian of the Rhineland
will remain German--for ever. That is perhaps conceivable, for example,
of Strassburg and the low-lying parts of Alsace. I do not know enough to
do more than guess.
It is conceivable, but I do not think that it is probable. I think the
probability lies in the other direction. This war of exhaustion may be
going on for a year or so more, but the end will be the thrusting in of
the too extended German lines. The longer and bloodier the job is, the
grimmer will be the determination of the Pledged Allies to exact a
recompense. If the Germans offer peace while they still hold some part
of Belgium, there will be dealings. If they wait until the French are in
the Palatinate, then I doubt if the French will consent to go again.
There will be no possible advantage to Germany in a war of resistance
once the scale of her fortunes begins to sink....
It is when we turn to the east of Germany that the map-drawing becomes
really animated. Here is the region of great decisions. The natural map
shows a line of obstinately non-German communities, stretching nearly
from the Baltic to the Adriatic. There are Poland, Bohemia (with her
kindred Slovaks), the Magyars, and the Jugo-Serbs. In a second line come
the Great and Little Russians, the Roumanians, and the Bulgarians. And
here both Great Britain and France must defer to the wishes of their two
allies, Russia and Italy. Neither of these countries has expressed
inflexible intentions, and the situation has none of the inevitable
quality of the Western line. Except for the Tsar's promise of autonomy
to Poland, nothing has been promised. On the Western line there are only
two possibilities that I can see: the Aix-Bale boundary, or the sickness
and death of France. On the Eastern line nothing is fated. There seems
to be enormous scope for bargaining over all this field, and here it is
that the chances of compensations and consolations for Germany are to be
found.
Let us first consider the case for Poland. The way to a reunited Poland
seems to me a particularly difficult one. The perplexity arises out of
the crime of the original partition; whichever side emerges with an
effect of victory must needs give up territory if an autonomous Poland
is to reappear. A victorious Germany would probably reconstitute the
Duchy of Warsaw under a German prince; an entirely victorious Russia
would probably rejoin Posen to Russian Poland and the Polish fragment of
Galicia, and create a dependent Polish kingdom under the Tsar. Neither
project would be received with unstinted delight by the Poles, but
either would probably be acceptable to a certain section of them.
Disregarding the dim feelings of the peasantry, Austrian Poland would
probably be the most willing to retain a connection with its old rulers.
The Habsburgs have least estranged the Poles. The Cracow district is the
only section of Poland which has been at all reconciled to foreign
control; it is the most autonomous and contented of the fragments.
It is doubtful how far national unanimity is any longer possible between
the three Polish fragments. Like most English writers, I receive a
considerable amount of printed matter from various schools of Polish
patriotism, and wide divergences of spirit and intention appear. A weak,
divided and politically isolated Poland of twelve or fifteen million
people, under some puppet adventurer king set up between the
Hohenzollerns and the Tsardom, does not promise much happiness for the
Poles or much security for the peace of the world. An entirely
independent Poland will be a feverish field of international
intrigue--intrigue to which the fatal Polish temperament lends itself
all too readily; it may be a battlefield again within five-and-twenty
years. I think, if I were a patriotic Pole, I should determine to be a
Slav at any cost, and make the best of Russia; ally myself with all her
liberal tendencies, and rise or fall with her. And I should do my utmost
in a field where at present too little has been done to establish
understandings and lay the foundations of a future alliance with the
Czech-Slovak community to the south. But, then, I am not a Pole, but a
Western European with a strong liking for the Russians. I am democratic
and scientific, and the Poles I have met are Catholic and aristocratic
and romantic, and all sorts of difficult things that must make
co-operation with them on the part of Russians, Ruthenian peasants,
Czechs, and, indeed, other Poles, slow and insecure. I doubt if either
Germany or Russia wants to incorporate more Poles--Russia more
particularly, which has all Siberia over which to breed Russians--and I
am inclined to think that there is a probability that the end of this
war may find Poland still divided, and with boundary lines running
across her not materially different from those of 1914. That is, I
think, an undesirable probability, but until the Polish mind qualifies
its desire for absolute independence with a determination to orient
itself definitely to some larger political mass, it remains one that has
to be considered.
But the future of Poland is not really separate from that of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, nor is that again to be dealt with apart from
that of the Balkans. From Danzig to the Morea there runs across Europe a
series of distinctive peoples, each too intensely different and national
to be absorbed and assimilated by either of their greater neighbours,
Germany or Russia, and each relatively too small to stand securely
alone. None have shaken themselves free from monarchical traditions;
each may become an easy prey to dynastic follies and the aggressive
obsessions of diplomacy. Centuries of bloody rearrangement may lie
before this East Central belt of Europe.
To the liberal idealist the thought of a possible Swiss system or group
of Swiss systems comes readily to mind. One thinks of a grouping of
groups of Republics, building up a United States of Eastern Europe. But
neither Hohenzollerns nor Tsar would welcome that. The arm of democratic
France is not long enough to reach to help forward such a development,
and Great Britain is never sure whether she is a "Crowned Republic" or a
Germanic monarchy. Hitherto in the Balkans she has lent her influence
chiefly to setting up those treacherous little German kings who have
rewarded her so ill. The national monarchs of Serbia and Montenegro have
alone kept faith with civilisation. I doubt, however, if Great Britain
will go on with that dynastic policy. She herself is upon the eve of
profound changes of spirit and internal organisation. But whenever one
thinks of the possibilities of Republican development in Europe as an
outcome of this war, it is to realise the disastrous indifference of
America to the essentials of the European situation. The United States
of America could exert an enormous influence at the close of the war in
the direction of a liberal settlement and of liberal institutions....
They will, I fear, do nothing of the sort.
It is here that the possibility of some internal change in Germany
becomes of such supreme importance. The Hohenzollern Imperialism towers
like the black threat of a new Caesarism over all the world. It may
tower for some centuries; it may vanish to-morrow. A German revolution
may destroy it; a small group of lunacy commissioners may fold it up and
put it away. But should it go, it would at least take with it nearly
every crown between Hamburg and Constantinople. The German kings would
vanish like a wisp of smoke. Suppose a German revolution and a
correlated step forward towards liberal institutions on the part of
Russia, then the whole stage of Eastern Europe would clear as fever goes
out of a man. This age of international elbowing and jostling, of
intrigue and diplomacy, of wars, massacres, deportations _en masse_, and
the continual fluctuation of irrational boundaries would come to an end
forthwith.
So sweeping a change is the extreme possibility. The probability is of
something less lucid and more prosaic; of a discussion of diplomatists;
of patched arrangements. But even under these circumstances the whole
Eastern European situation is so fluid and little controlled by any
plain necessity, that there will be enormous scope for any individual
statesman of imagination and force of will.
There have recently been revelations, more or less trustworthy, of
German schemes for a rearrangement of Eastern Europe. They implied a
German victory. Bohemia, Poland, Galicia and Ruthenia were to make a
Habsburg-ruled State from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Jugo-Slav and
the Magyar were to be linked (uneasy bedfellows) into a second kingdom,
also Habsburg ruled; Austria was to come into the German Empire as a
third Habsburg dukedom or kingdom; Roumania, Bulgaria and Greece were to
continue as independent Powers, German ruled. Recently German proposals
published in America have shown a disposition to admit the claims of
Roumania to the Wallachian districts of Transylvania.
Evidently the urgent need to create kingdoms or confederations larger
than any such single States as the natural map supplies, is manifest to
both sides. If Germany, Italy and Russia can come to any sort of general
agreement in these matters, their arrangements will be a matter of
secondary importance to the Western Allies--saving our duty to Serbia
and Montenegro and their rulers. Russia may not find the German idea of
a Polish _plus_ Bohemian border State so very distasteful, provided that
the ruler is not a German; Germany may find the idea still tolerable if
the ruler is not the Tsar.
The destiny of the Serbo-Croatian future lies largely in the hands of
Italy and Bulgaria. Bulgaria was not in this war at the beginning, and
she may not be in it at the end. Her King is neither immortal nor
irreplaceable. Her desire now must be largely to retain her winnings in
Macedonia, and keep the frontier posts of a too embracing Germany as far
off as possible. She has nothing to gain and much to fear from Roumania
and Greece. Her present relations with Turkey are unnatural. She has
everything to gain from a prompt recovery of the friendship of Italy and
the sea Powers. A friendly Serbo-Croatian buffer State against Germany
will probably be of equal comfort in the future to Italy and Bulgaria;
more especially if Italy has pushed down the Adriatic coast along the
line of the former Venetian possessions. Serbia has been overrun, but
never were the convergent forces of adjacent interests so clearly in
favour of her recuperation. The possibility of Italy and that strange
Latin outlier, Roumania, joining hands through an allied and friendly
Serbia must be very present in Italian thought. The allied conception of
the land route from the West and America to Bagdad and India is by Mont
Cenis, Trieste, Serbia and Constantinople, as their North European line
to India is through Russia by Baku.
And that brings us to Constantinople.
Constantinople is not a national city; it is now, and it has always
been, an artificial cosmopolis, and Constantinople and the Dardanelles
are essentially the gate of the Black Sea. It is to Russia that the
waterway is of supreme importance. Any other Power upon it can strangle
Russia; Russia, possessing it, is capable of very little harm to any
other country.
Roumania is the next most interested country. But Roumania can reach up
the Danube and through Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary to the outer world.
Her greatest trade will always be with Central Europe. For generations
the Turks held Thrace and Anatolia before they secured Constantinople.
The Turk can exist without Constantinople; he is at his best outside
Constantinople; the fall of Constantinople was the beginning of his
decay. He sat down there and corrupted. His career was at an end. I
confess that I find a bias in my mind for a Russian ownership of
Constantinople. I think that if she does not get it now her gravitation
towards it in the future will be so great as to cause fresh wars.
Somewhere she must get to open sea, and if it is not through
Constantinople then her line must lie either through a dependent Armenia
thrust down to the coast of the Levant or, least probable and least
desirable of all, through the Persian Gulf. The Constantinople route is
the most natural and least controversial of these. With the dwindling of
the Turkish power, the Turks at Constantinople become more and more like
robber knights levying toll at the pass. I can imagine Russia making
enormous concessions in Poland, for example, accepting retrocessions,
and conceding autonomy, rather than foregoing her ancient destiny upon
the Bosphorus. I believe she will fight on along the Black Sea coast
until she gets there.
This, I think, is Russia's fundamental end, without which no peace is
worth having, as the liberation of Belgium and the satisfaction of
France is the fundamental end of Great Britain, and Trieste-Fiume is the
fundamental end of Italy.
But for all the lands that lie between Constantinople and West Prussia
there are no absolutely fundamental ends; that is the land of _quid pro
quo_; that is where the dealing will be done. Serbia must be restored
and the Croats liberated; sooner or later the south Slav state will
insist upon itself; but, except for that, I see no impossibility in the
German dream of three kingdoms to take the place of Austro-Hungary, nor
even in a southward extension of the Hohenzollern Empire to embrace the
German one of the three. If the Austrians have a passion for Prussian
"kultur," it is not for us to restrain it. Austrian, Saxon, Bavarian,
Hanoverian and Prussian must adjust their own differences. Hungary would
be naturally Habsburg; is, in fact, now essentially Habsburg, more
Habsburg than Austria, and essentially anti-Slav. Her gravitation to the
Central Powers seems inevitable.
Whether the Polish-Czech combination would be a Habsburg kingdom at all
is another matter. Only if, after all, the Allies are far less
successful than they have now every reason to hope would that become
possible.
The gravitation of that west Slav state to the Central European system
or to Russia will, I think, be the only real measure of ultimate success
or failure in this war. I think it narrows down to that so far as Europe
is concerned. Most of the other things are inevitable. Such, it seems to
me, is the most open possibility in the European map in the years
immediately before us.
If by dying I could assure the end of the Hohenzollern Empire to-morrow
I would gladly do it. But I have, as a balancing prophet, to face the
high probability of its outliving me for some generations. It is to me
a deplorable probability. Far rather would I anticipate Germany quit of
her eagles and Hohenzollerns, and ready to take her place as the leading
Power of the United States of Europe.
X. THE UNITED STATES, FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA