Produced by James Wright and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
GREAT BRITAIN'S
SEA POLICY
A REPLY TO AN AMERICAN CRITIC,
REPRINTED FROM "THE ATLANTIC
MONTHLY"
BY
PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY
T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd.,
1, ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON.
1917.
Great Britain's Sea Policy.
I.
An article in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for October by Mr. Arthur Bullard
has set me thinking. It was hard to classify. It was not exactly
pro-German. Most of its general sentiments were unexceptionable. It did
not seem to be written in bad faith. Yet it was full of sneers and
accusations against Great Britain which almost any candid reader, who
knew the facts, must see to be unfair. I did not know what to make of
Mr. Bullard till at last there came across my mind an old description of
a certain type, the second-best type, of legendary Scotch minister: "In
doctrine not vara ootstanding, but a Deevil on the moralities!"
Mr. Bullard's general doctrine is fair enough. There have been two types
of foreign policy in Great Britain, one typified, if you like, by Lord
North or Castlereagh or Disraeli, a type which concentrated on its
country's interests and accepted the ordinary diplomatic traditions of
old-world Europe; the other typified by Fox, Gladstone,
Campbell-Bannerman, Bryce, which set before itself an ideal of
righteousness and even of unselfishness in international politics. Both
parties made their mistakes; but on the whole the Liberal movement in
British foreign policy is generally felt to point in the right
direction, and its record forms certainly a glorious page in the general
history of civilization. Mr. Bullard, speaking as an enlightened
American, is prepared to befriend, or at least to praise, Great Britain
if she walks in Liberal paths, but intends to denounce her if she
follows after Lord North. For example: he denounces the policy of the
Boer War, but he praises warmly the settlement which followed it in 1906
under the guidance of Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, and Sir Edward Grey.
"The granting of self-government to the defeated Boers will always rank
as one of the finest achievements in political history." This is all
sound Liberalism, and I accept every word of it.
There is nothing peculiar, then, about Mr. Bullard's doctrine; it is
only when he applies it that one discovers his true "deevilishness on
the moralities." His method is to ask at once more than human nature can
be expected to give, and then pour out a whole commination service of
anathemas when his demands are not complied with. He begins, as it were,
by saying that all he expects of Mr. X---- in order to love him is
common honesty and truthfulness: we all agree and are edified. Then it
appears that Mr. X---- once said he was out when he was really at home
and busy. The scoundrel! A convicted liar, a man who has used the
God-given privilege of speech for the darkening of knowledge! How can
Mr. Bullard possibly be friends with such a man?
To take one small but significant point first. Mr. Bullard, like most
people, sees the need of continuity in foreign policy, and the great
objections to a system in which a new government, or even a new
influence at court, may upset a nation's course. But he does not see
that such continuity implies some sort of compromise. A continuous
foreign policy in a country governed alternately by Foxites and
Northites is possible only if both parties abate their extreme
pretensions. And Mr. Bullard, if I read him aright, expects it to be
continuous Fox. As a matter of fact, we have had lately a continuous
foreign policy in Great Britain, because Grey, while moving always as
best he could toward arbitration, equity, and a "cordial understanding"
with all powers who would agree to it, was felt also to be keenly alive
to his duties as the steward of a great inheritance.
But let me begin, as an Englishman, by seeing what Mr. Bullard thinks of
us. We have apparently started "a wholesale repudiation of legal
restraints." We have "decided that there is to be no sea law."
Consequently we "alienated neutral sympathy more gradually, but more
surely than the Germans." And this alienation, we are led to suppose, is
not mainly because of any selfish annoyance on the part of neutrals
whose interests are crossed; it is just their high-minded disapproval
of wickedness. They are all just as deevilish on the moralities as Mr.
Bullard is. Naturally, however, they dislike our "brusque denial that
nations with smaller navies have any voice in defining the law." "The
Sea-Lords have decided what they would like to do, and His Majesty's
Privy Council has announced that that is the law." In English opinion
and action "Might makes Right"--this phrase is constantly repeated. We
are always "hitting below the belt." And lastly and most explicitly,
"The scrap of paper on which Great Britain had promised fair play at sea
is torn up!"
I leave out certain passing accusations of hypocrisy and proceed to
examine the grounds for this invective.