MILITARY PREDOMINANCE--AND INSECURITY
The War revealed this: However great the military power of a State, as
in the case of France; however great its territorial extent, as in the
case of the British Empire; or its economic resources and geographical
isolation as in the case of the United States, the conditions of the
present international order compel that State to resort to Alliance as
an indispensable part of its military defence. And the peace reveals
this: that no Alliance can long resist the disruptive forces of
nationalist psychology. So rapid indeed has been the disintegration of
the Alliance that fought this War, that, from this one cause, the power
indispensable for carrying out the Treaty imposed upon the enemy has on
the morrow of victory already disappeared.
So much became patent in the year that followed the signing of the
Treaty. The fact bears of course fundamentally upon the question of the
use of political power for those economic ends discussed in the
preceding pages. If the economic policy of the Treaty of Versailles is
to be carried out, it will in any case demand a preponderance of power
so immense and secure that the complete political solidarity of the
Alliance which fought the War must be assumed. It cannot be assumed.
That Alliance has in fact already gone to pieces; and with it the
unquestioned preponderance of power.
The fact bears not only upon the use of power for the purpose of
carrying an economic policy--or some moral end, like the defence of
Nationality--into effect. The disruptive influence of the Nationalisms
of which alliances are composed raises the question of how far a
military preponderance resting on a National foundation can even give us
political security.
If the moral factors of nationality are, as we have seen, an
indispensable part of the study of international economics, so must
those same factors be considered as an indispensable part of the problem
of the power to be exercised by an alliance.
During the War there was an extraordinary neglect of this simple truth.
It seemed to occur to no one that the intensification of the psychology
of nationalism--not only among the lesser States but in France and
America and England--ran the risk of rendering the Alliance powerless
after its victory. Yet that is what has happened.
The power of an Alliance (again we are dealing with things that are
obvious but neglected) does not depend upon the sum of its material
forces--navies, armies, artillery. It depends upon being able to
assemble those things to a common purpose; in other words, upon policy
fit to direct the instrument. If the policy, or certain moral elements
within it, are such that one member of the Alliance is likely to turn
his arms against the others, the extent of _his_ armament does not add
to the strength of the Alliance. It was with ammunition furnished by
Britain and France that Russia in 1919 and 1920 destroyed British and
French troops. The present building of an enormous navy by America is
not accepted in Britain as necessarily adding to the security of the
British Empire.
It is worth while to note how utterly fallacious are certain almost
universal assumptions concerning the relation of war psychology to the
problem of alliance solidarity. An English visitor to the United States
(or an American visitor to England) during the years 1917-1918 was apt
to be deluged by a flood of rhetoric to this effect: The blood shed on
the same battle-fields, the suffering shared in common in the same
common cause, would unite and cement as nothing had ever yet united the
two great branches of the English-speaking race, destined by
Providence....
But the same visitor moving in the same circle less than two years later
found that this eternal cement of friendship had already lost its
potency. Never, perhaps, for generations were Anglo-American relations
so bad as they had become within a score or so of months of the time
that Englishmen and Americans were dying side by side on the
battle-field. At the beginning of 1921, in the United States, it was
easier, on a public platform, to defend Germany than to present a
defence of English policy in Ireland or in India. And at that period one
might hear commonly enough in England, in trams and railway carriages, a
repetition of the catch phrase, 'America next.' If certain popular
assumptions as to war psychology were right, these things would be
impossible.
Yet, as a matter of fact, the psychological phenomenon is true to type.
It was not an accident that the internationalist America of 1915, of
'Peace without Victory,' should by 1918 have become more fiercely
insistent upon absolute victory and unconditional surrender than any
other of the belligerents, whose emotions had found some outlet during
three years of war before America had begun. The complete reversal of
the 'Peace without Victory' attitude was demanded--cultivated,
deliberately produced--as a necessary part of war morale. But these
emotions of coercion and domination cannot be intensively cultivated and
then turned off as by a tap. They made America fiercely nationalist,
with necessarily a temperamental distaste for the internationalism of Mr
Wilson. And when a mere year of war left the emotional hungers
unsatisfied, they turned unconsciously to other satisfactions. Twenty
million Americans of Irish descent or association, among others,
utilised the opportunity.
One feature--perhaps the very largest feature of all--of war morale, had
been the exploitation of the German atrocities. The burning of Louvain,
and other reprisals upon the Belgian civilian population, meant
necessarily a special wickedness on the part of a definite entity, known
as 'Germany,' that had to be crushed, punished, beaten, wiped out. There
were no distinctions. The plea that all were not equally guilty excited
the fierce anger reserved for all such 'pacifist' and pro-German pleas.
A German woman had laughed at a wounded American: all German women were
monsters. 'No good German but a dead German.' It was in the German blood
and grey matter. The elaborate stories--illustrated--of Germans sticking
bayonets into Belgian children produced a thesis which was beyond and
above reason or explanation: for that atrocity, 'Germany'--seventy
million people, ignorant peasants, driven workmen, the babies, the
invalids, the old women gathering sticks in the forest, the children
trooping to school--all were guilty. To state the thing in black and
white sounds like a monstrous travesty. But it is not a travesty. It is
the thesis we, too, maintained; but in America it had, in the American
way, an over simplification and an extra emphasis.
And then after the War an historical enemy of America's does precisely
the same thing. In the story of Amritsar and the Irish reprisals it is
the Indian and Sinn Fein version only which is told; just as during the
War we got nothing but the anti-German version of the burning of
Louvain, or reprisals upon civilians. Why should we expect that the
result should be greatly different upon American opinion? Four hundred
unarmed and hopeless people, women and children as well as men, are mown
down by machine-guns. Or, in the Irish reprisals, a farmer is shot in
the presence of his wife and children. The Government defends the
soldiers. 'Britain' has done this thing: forty-five millions of people,
of infinitely varying degrees of responsibility, many opposing it, many
ignorant of it, almost all entirely helpless. To represent them as
inhuman monsters because of these atrocities is an infinitely
mischievous falsehood. But it is made possible by a theory, which in the
case of Germany we maintained for years as essentially true. And now it
is doing as between Britain and America what a similar falsehood did as
between Germany and England, and will go on doing so long as Nationalism
includes conceptions of collective responsibility which fly in the face
of common sense and truth. If the resultant hostilities can operate as
between two national groups like the British and the American, what
groups can be free of them?
It is a little difficult now, two years after the end of the War, with
the world in its present turmoil, to realise that we really did expect
the defeat of Germany to inaugurate an era of peace and security, of
reduction of armaments, the virtual end of war; and believed that it was
German militarism, 'that trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of
Europe, that has arrested civilisation and darkened the hopes of mankind
for forty years,'[43] as Mr Wells wrote in _The War that will End War_,
which accounted for nearly all the other militarisms, and that after its
destruction we could anticipate 'the end of the armament phase of
European history.' For, explained Mr Wells, '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.'[44]
'When will peace come?' asked Professor Headlam, and answered that
'It will come when Germany has learnt the lesson of the War, when
it has learnt, as every other nation has had to learn, that the
voice of Europe cannot be defied with impunity.... Men talk about
the terms of peace. They matter little. With a Germany victorious
no terms could secure the future of Europe, with a Germany
defeated, no artificial securities will be wanted, for there will
be a stronger security in the consciousness of defeat.'[45]
There were to be no limits to the political or economic rearrangements
which victory would enable us to effect. Very authoritative military
critics like Mr Hilaire Belloc became quite angry and contemptuous at
the suggestion that the defeat of the enemy would not enable us to
rearrange Europe at our will. The doctrine that unlimited power was
inherent in victory was thus stated by Mr Belloc:--
'It has been well said that the most straightforward and obvious
conclusions on the largest lines of military policy are those of
which it is most difficult to convince a general audience; and we
find in this matter a singular miscalculation running through the
attitude of many Western publicists. They speak as though, whatever
might happen in the West, the Alliance, which is fighting for
European civilisation, the Western Allies and the United States,
could not now affect the destinies of Eastern Europe....
Such an attitude is, upon the simplest principles of military
science, a grotesque error.... If we are victorious ... the
destruction of the enemy's military power gives us as full an
opportunity for deciding the fate of Eastern Europe as it does for
deciding the fate of Western Europe. Victory gained by the Allies
will decide the fate of all Europe, and, for that matter, of the
whole world. It will open the Baltic and the Black Sea. It will
leave us masters with the power to dictate in what fashion the new
boundaries shall be arranged, how the entries to the Eastern
markets shall be kept open, garrisoned and guaranteed....
Wherever they are defeated, whether upon the line they now hold or
upon other lines, their defeat and our victory will leave us with
complete power. If that task be beyond our strength, then
civilisation has suffered defeat, and there is the end of it.'
German power was to be destroyed as the condition of saving
civilisation. Mr Belloc wrote:--
'If by some negotiation (involving of course the evacuation of the
occupied districts in the West) the enemy remains undefeated,
civilised Europe has lost the war and Prussia has won it.'[46]
Such was the simple and popular thesis. Germany, criminal and barbarian,
challenged Europe, civilised and law-abiding. Civilisation can only
assert itself by the punishment of Germany and save itself by the
destruction of German power. Once the German military power is
destroyed, Europe can do with Germany what it will.
I suggest that the experience of the last two years, and our own present
policy, constitute an admission or demonstration, first, that the moral
assumption of this thesis--that the menace of German power was due to
some special wickedness on the part of the German nation not shared by
other peoples in any degree--is false; and, secondly, that the
destruction of Germany's military force gives to Europe no such power to
control Germany.
Our power over Germany becomes every day less:
First, by the break-up of the Alliance. The 'sacred egoisms' which
produced the War are now disrupting the Allies. The most potentially
powerful European member of the Alliance or Association--Russia--has
become an enemy; the most powerful member of all, America, has withdrawn
from co-operation; Italy is in conflict with one Ally, Japan with
another.
Secondly, by the more extended Balkanisation of Europe. The States
utilised by (for instance) France as the instruments of Allied policy
(Poland, Hungary, Ukrainia, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia) are liable to
quarrel among themselves. The groups rendered hostile to Allied
policy--Germany, Russia, China--are much larger, and might well once
more become cohesive units. The Nationalism which is a factor of Allied
disintegration may nevertheless work for the consolidation of the groups
opposed to us.
Thirdly, by the economic disorganisation of Europe (resulting mainly
from the desire to weaken the enemy), which deprives the Alliance of
economic resources sufficient for a military task like that of the
conquest of Russia or the occupation of Germany.
Fourthly, by the social unrest within each country (itself due in part
to the economic disorganisation, in part to the introduction of the
psychology of jingoism into the domain of industrial strife):
Bolshevism. A long war of intervention in Russia by the Alliance would
have broken down under the strain of internal unrest in Allied
countries.
The Alliance thus succumbs to the clash of Nationalisms and the clash of
classes.
These moral factors render the purpose which will be given to
accumulated military force--'the direction in which the guns will
shoot'--so uncertain that the amount of material power available is no
indication of the degree of security attained.
If it were true, as we argued so universally before and during the War,
that German power was the final cause of the armament rivalry in Europe,
then the disappearance of that power should mark, as so many prophesied
it would mark, the end of the 'armament era.'[47] Has it done so? Or
does any one to-day seriously argue that the increase of armament
expenditure over the pre-war period is in some mystic way due to
Prussian militarism?
Let us turn to a _Times_ leader in the summer of 1920:--
'To-day the condition of Europe and of a large portion of the world
is scarcely less critical than it was six years ago. Within a few
days, or at most a few weeks, we may know whether the Peace Treaty
signed at Versailles will possess effective validity. The
independent existence of Poland, which is a keystone of the
reorganisation of Europe contemplated by the Treaty, is in grave
peril; and with it, though perhaps not in the manner currently
imagined in Germany, is jeopardised the present situation of
Germany herself.
... There is undoubtedly a widespread plot against Western
civilisation as we know it, and probably against British liberal
institutions as a principal mainstay of that civilisation. Yet if
our institutions, and Western civilisation with them, are to
withstand the present onslaught, they must be defended.... We never
doubted the staunchness and vigour of England six years ago, and we
doubt them as little to-day.'[48]
And so we must have even larger armaments than ever. Field-Marshal Earl
Haig and Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in England, Marshal Foch in
France, General Leonard Wood in America, all urge that it will be
indispensable to maintain our armaments at more than the pre-war scale.
The ink of the Armistice was barely dry before the _Daily Mail_
published a long interview with Marshal Foch[49] in the course of which
the Generalissimo enlarged on the 'inevitability' of war in the future
and the need of being 'prepared for it.' Lord Haig, in his Rectorial
Address at St Andrews (May 14th, 1919) followed with the plea that as
'the seeds of future conflict are to be found in every quarter, only
waiting the right condition, moral, economic, political, to burst once
more into activity,' every man in the country must immediately be
trained for war. The _Mail_, supporting his plea, said:--
'We all desire peace, but we cannot, even in the hour of complete
victory, disregard the injunction uttered by our first soldier,
that "only by adequate preparation for war can peace in every way
be guaranteed."
'"A strong citizen army on strong territorial lines," is the advice
Sir Douglas Haig urges on the country. A system providing twelve
months' military training for every man in the country should be
seriously thought of.... Morally and physically the War has shown
us that the effect of discipline upon the youths of the country is
an asset beyond calculation.'
So that the victory which was to end the 'trampling and drilling
foolery' is made a plea for the institution of permanent conscription in
England, where, before the victory, it did not exist.
The admission involved in this recommendation, the admission that
destruction of German power has failed to give us security, is as
complete as it well could be.
If this was merely the exuberant zeal of professional soldiers, we might
perhaps disregard these declarations. But the conviction of the soldiers
is reflected in the policy of the Government. At a time when the
financial difficulties of all the Allied countries are admittedly
enormous, when the bankruptcy of some is a contingency freely discussed,
and when the need of economy is the refrain everywhere, there is not an
Allied State which is not to-day spending more upon military and naval
preparations than it was spending before the destruction of the German
power began. America is preparing to build a bigger fleet than she has
ever had in her history[50]--a larger fleet than the German armada,
which was for most Englishmen perhaps the decisive demonstration of
Germany's hostile intent. Britain on her side has at present a larger
naval budget than that of the year which preceded the War; while for the
new war instrument of aviation she has a building programme more costly
than the shipbuilding programmes of pre-war time. France is to-day
spending more on her army than before the War; spending, indeed, upon it
now a sum larger than that which she spent upon the whole of her
Government when German militarism was undestroyed.
Despite all this power possessed by the members of the Alliance, the
predominant note in current political criticism is that Germany is
evading the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, that in the payment
of the indemnity, the punishment of military criminals, and disarmament,
the Treaty is a dead letter, and the Allies are powerless. As the
_Times_ reminds us, the very keystone of the Treaty, in the independence
of Poland, trembles.
It is not difficult to recall the fashion in which we thought and wrote
of the German menace before and during the War. The following from _The
New Europe_ (which had taken as its device 'La Victoire Intégrale') will
be recognised as typical:--
'It is of vital importance to us to understand, not only Germany's
aims, but the process by which she hopes to carry them through. If
Germany wins, she will not rest content with this victory. Her next
object will be to prepare for further victories both in Asia and in
Central and Western Europe.
'Those who still cherish the belief that Prussia is pacifist show a
profound misunderstanding of her psychology.... On this point the
Junkers have been frank: those who have not been frank are the
wiseacres who try to persuade us that we can moderate their
attitude by making peace with them. If they would only pay a
little more attention to the Junkers' avowed objects, and a little
less attention to their own theories about those objects, they
would be more useful guides to public opinion in this country,
which finds itself hopelessly at sea on the subject of Prussianism.
'What then are Germany's objects? What is likely to be her view of
the general situation in Europe at the present moment?... Whatever
modifications she may have introduced into her immediate programme,
she still clings to her desire to overthrow our present
civilisation in Europe, and to introduce her own on the ruins of
the old order....
'Buoyed up by recent successes ... her offers of peace will become
more insistent and more difficult to refuse. Influences will
clamour for the resumption of peace on economic and financial
grounds.... We venture to say that it will be very difficult for
any Government to resist this pressure, and, _unless the danger of
coming to terms with Germany is very clearly and strongly put
before the public, we may find ourselves caught in the snares that
Germany has for a long time past been laying for us_.
... 'We shall be told that once peace is concluded the Junkers will
become moderate, and all those who wish to believe this will
readily accept it without further question.
'But, while we in our innocence may be priding ourselves on the
conclusion of peace to Germany it will not be a peace, but a
"respite." ... This "respite" will be exceedingly useful to Germany
not only for propaganda purposes, but in order to replenish her
exhausted resources necessary for future aggression. Meanwhile
German activities in Asia and Ireland are likely to continue
unabated until the maximum inconvenience to England has been
produced.'
If the reader will carry his mind back a couple of years, he will recall
having read numberless articles similar to the above, concerning the
duty of annihilating the power of Germany.
Well, will the reader note that _the above does not refer to Germany at
all, but to Russia_? I have perpetrated a little forgery for his
enlightenment. In order to bring home the rapidity with which a change
of roles can be accomplished, an article warning us against any peace
with _Russia_, appearing in the _New Europe_ of January 8th, 1920, has
been reproduced word for word, except that 'Russia' or 'Lenin' has been
changed to 'Germany' or 'the Junkers,' as the case may be.
Now let us see what this writer has to say as to the German power
to-day?
Well, he says that the security of civilisation now depends upon the
restoration, in part at least, of that German power, for the destruction
of which the world gave twenty million lives. The danger to civilisation
now is mainly 'the breach between Germany and the West, and the
rivalries of nationalism.' Lenin, plotting our destruction, relies
mainly on that:--
'Above all we may be sure that his attention is concentrated on
England and Germany. So long as Germany remains aloof and feelings
of bitterness against the Allies are allowed to grow still more
acute, Lenin can rub his hands with glee; what he fears more than
anything is the first sign that the sores caused by five years of
war are being healed, and that England, France, and Germany are
preparing to treat one another as neighbours, who have each their
several parts to play in the restoration of normal economic
conditions in Europe.'
As to the policy of preventing Germany's economic restoration for fear
that she should once more possess the raw material of military power,
this writer declares that it is precisely that Carthaginian policy
(embodied in the Treaty of Versailles) which Lenin would most of all
desire:--
'As a trained economist we may be sure that he looks first and
foremost at the widespread economic chaos. We can imagine his
chuckle of satisfaction when he sees the European exchanges getting
steadily worse and national antagonisms growing more acute.
Disputes about territorial questions are to him so much grist to
the Bolshevik mill, as they all tend to obscure the fundamental
question of the economic reconstruction of Europe, without which no
country in Europe can consider itself safe from Bolshevism.
'He must realise to the full the lamentable condition of the
finances of the new States in Central and South-east Europe.'
In putting forward these views, The _New Europe_ is by no means alone.
Already in January, 1920, Mr J. L. Garvin had declared what indeed was
obvious, that it was out of the question to expect to build a new Europe
on the simultaneous hostility of Germany _and_ Russia.
'Let us face the main fact. If there is to be no peace with the
Bolshevists _there must be an altogether different understanding
with Germany.... For any sure and solid barrier against the
external consequences of Bolshevism Germany is essential._'
Barely six months later Mr Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War
in the British Cabinet, chooses the _Evening News_, probably the
arch-Hun-Hater of all the English Press, to open out the new policy of
Alliance with Germany against Russia. He says:--
'It will be open to the Germans ... by a supreme effort of
sobriety, of firmness, of self-restraint, and of
courage--undertaken, as most great exploits have to be, under
conditions of peculiar difficulty and discouragement--to build a
dyke of peaceful, lawful, patient strength and virtue against the
flood of red barbarism flowing from the East, and thus safeguard
their own interests and the interests of their principle
antagonists in the West.
'If the Germans were able to render such a service, not by
vainglorious military adventure or with ulterior motives, they
would unquestionably have taken a giant step upon that path of
self-redemption which would lead them surely and swiftly as the
years pass by to their own great place in the councils of
Christendom, and would have rendered easier the sincere
co-operation between Britain, France, and Germany, on which the
very salvation of Europe depends.'
So the salvation of Europe depends upon our co-operation with Germany,
upon a German dyke of 'patient strength.'[51]
* * * * *
One wonders why we devoted quite so many lives and so much agony to
knocking Germany out; and why we furnished quite so much treasure to the
military equipment of the very Muscovite 'barbarians' who now threaten
to overflow it.
One wonders also, why, if 'the very salvation of Europe' in July, 1920,
depends upon sincere co-operation of the Entente with Germany, those
Allies were a year earlier exacting by force her signature to a Treaty
which not even its authors pretended was compatible with German
reconciliation.
If the Germans are to fulfil the role Mr Churchill assigns to them, then
obviously the Treaty of Versailles must be torn up. If they are to be
the 'dyke' protecting Western civilisation against the Red military
flood, it must, according to the Churchillian philosophy, be a military
dyke: the disarmament clauses must be abolished, as must the other
clauses--particularly the economic ones--which would make of any people
suffering from them the bitter enemy of the people that imposed them.
Our Press is just now full of stories of secret Treaties between Germany
and Russia against France and England. Whether the stories are true or
not, it is certain that the effect of the Treaty of Versailles and the
Allied policy to Russia will be to create a Russo-German understanding.
And Mr Churchill (phase 1920) has undoubtedly indicated the
alternatives. If you are going to fight Russia to the death, then you
must make friends with Germany; if you are going to maintain the Treaty
of Versailles, then you must make friends with Russia. You must 'trust'
either the Boche or the Bolshevist.
Popular feeling at this moment (or rather the type of feeling envisaged
by the Northcliffe Press) won't do either. Boche and Bolshevist alike
are 'vermin' to be utterly crushed, and any policy implying co-operation
with either is ruled out. 'Force ... force to the uttermost' against
both is demanded by the _Times_, the _Daily Mail_, and the various
evening, weekly, or monthly editions thereof.
Very well. Let us examine the proposal to 'hold down' by force both
Russia and Germany. Beyond Russia there is Asia, particularly India. The
_New Europe_ writer reminds us:--
' ... If England cannot be subdued by a direct attack, she is, at
any rate, vulnerable in Asia, and it is here that Lenin is
preparing to deliver his real propaganda offensive. During the last
few months more and more attention has been paid to Asiatic
propaganda, and this will not be abandoned, no matter what
temporary arrangements the Soviet Government may attempt to make
with Western Europe. It is here, and here only, that England can be
wounded, so that she may be counted out of the forth-coming
revolutionary struggle in Europe that Lenin is preparing to engage
in at a later date....
'We should find ourselves so much occupied in maintaining order in
Asia that we should have little time or energy left for interfering
in Europe.'
As a matter of fact, we know how great are the forces that can be
absorbed[52] when the territory for subjection stretches from Archangel
to the Deccan--through Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia,
Afghanistan. Our experience in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, and
with Koltchak, Denikin, and Wrangel shows that the military method must
be thorough or it will fail. It is no good hoping that a supply of
surplus ammunition to a counter-revolutionary general will subdue a
country like Russia. The only safe and thorough-going plan is complete
occupation--or a very extended occupation--of both countries. M.
Clemenceau definitely favoured this course, as did nearly all the
military-minded groups in England and America, when the Russian policy
was discussed at the end of 1918 and early in 1919.
Why was that policy not carried out?
The history of the thing is clear enough. That policy would have called
upon the resources in men and material of the whole of the Alliance, not
merely those of the Big Four, but of Poland, Czecho-Slovakia,
Yugo-Slavia, Italy, Greece, and Japan as well. The 'March to Berlin and
Moscow' which so many, even in England and America, were demanding at
the time of the Armistice would not have been the march of British
Grenadiers; nor the succeeding occupation one like that of Egypt or
India. Operations on that scale would have brought in sooner or later
(indeed, much smaller operations have already brought in) the forces of
nations in bitter conflict the one with the other. We know what the
occupation of Ireland by British troops has meant. Imagine an Ireland
multiplied many times, occupied not only by British but by 'Allied'
troops--British side by side with Senegalese negroes, Italians with
Yugo-Slavs, Poles with Czecho-Slovaks and White Russians, Americans with
Japanese. Remember, moreover, how far the disintegration of the Alliance
had already advanced. The European member of the Alliance greatest in
its potential resources, human and material, was of course the very
country against which it was now proposed to act; the 'steamroller' had
now to be destroyed ... by the Allies. America, the member of the
Alliance, which, at the time of the Armistice, represented the greatest
unit of actual material force, had withdrawn into a nationalist
isolation from, and even hostility to, the European Allies. Japan was
pursuing a line of policy which rendered increasingly difficult the
active co-operation of certain of the Western democracies with her; her
policy had already involved her in declared and open hostility to the
other Asiatic element of the Alliance, China. Italy was in a state of
bitter hostility to the nationality--Greater Serbia--whose defence was
the immediate occasion of the War, and was soon to mark her feeling
towards the peace by returning to power the Minister who had opposed
Italy's entrance into the War; a situation which we shall best
understand if we imagine a 'pro-German' (say, for instance, Lord Morley,
or Mr Ramsay MacDonald, or Mr Philip Snowden) being made Prime Minister
of England. What may be termed the minor Allies, Yugo-Slavia,
Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, Greece, Poland, the lesser Border States, the
Arab kingdom that we erected, were drifting towards the entangling
conflicts which have since broken out. Already, at a time when the Quai
d'Orsay and Carmelite House were both clamouring for what must have
meant in practice the occupation of both Germany and Russia, the
Alliance had in fact disintegrated, and some of its main elements were
in bitter conflict. The picture of a solid alliance of pacific and
liberal democracies standing for the maintenance of an orderly European
freedom against German attacks had completely faded away. Of the Grand
Alliance of twenty-four States as a combination of power pledged to a
common purpose, there remained just France and England--and their
relations, too, were becoming daily worse; in fundamental disagreement
over Poland, Turkey, Syria, the Balkan States, Austria, and Germany
itself, its indemnities, and its economic treatment generally. Was this
the instrument for the conquest of half a world?
But the political disintegration of the Alliance was not the only
obstacle to a thorough-going application of military force to the
problem of Germany and Russia.
By the very terms of the theory of security by preponderant power,
Germany had to be weakened economically, for her subjugation could never
be secure if she were permitted to maintain an elaborate, nationally
organised economic machinery, which not only gives immense powers of
production, capable without great difficulty of being transformed to the
production of military material, but which, through the organisation of
foreign trade, gives influence in countries like Russia, the Balkans,
the Near and Far East.
So part of the policy of Versailles, reflected in the clauses of the
Treaty already dealt with, was to check the economic recovery of Germany
and more particularly to prevent economic co-operation between that
country and Russia. That Russia should become a 'German Colony' was a
nightmare that haunted the minds of the French peace-makers.[53]
But, as we have already seen, to prevent the economic co-operation of
Germany and Russia meant the perpetuation of the economic paralysis of
Europe. Combined with the maintenance of the blockade it would
certainly have meant utter and perhaps irretrievable collapse.
Perhaps the Allies at the beginning of 1919 were in no mood to be
greatly disturbed by the prospect. But they soon learned that it had a
very close bearing both on the aims which they had set before themselves
in the Treaty and, indeed, on the very problem of maintaining military
predominance.
In theory, of course, an army of occupation should live on the occupied
country. But it soon became evident that it was quite out of the
question to collect even the cost of the armies for the limited
occupation of the Rhine territories from a country whose industrial life
was paralysed by blockade. Moreover, the costs of the German occupation
were very sensibly increased by the fact of the Russian blockade.
Deprived of Russian wheat and other products, the cost of living in
Western Europe was steadily rising, the social unrest was in consequence
increasing, and it was vitally necessary, if something like the old
European life was to be restored, that production should be restarted as
rapidly as possible. We found that a blockade of Russia which cut off
Russian foodstuffs from Western Europe, was also a blockade of
ourselves. But the blockade, as we have seen, was not the only economic
device used as a part of military pressure: the old economic nerves
between Germany and her neighbours had been cut out and the creeping
paralysis of Europe was spreading in every direction. There was not a
belligerent State on the Continent of Europe that was solvent in the
strict sense of the term--able, that is, to discharge its obligations in
the gold money in which it had contracted them. All had resorted to the
shifts of paper--fictitious--money, and the debacle of the exchanges was
already setting in. Whence were to come the costs of the forces and
armies of occupation necessitated by the policy of complete conquest of
Russia and Germany at the same time?
When, therefore (according to a story current at the time), President
Wilson, following the announcement that France stood for the military
coercion of Russia, asked each Ally in turn how many troops and how much
of the cost it would provide, each replied: 'None.' It was patent,
indeed, that the resources of an economically paralysed Western Europe
were not adequate to this enterprise. A half-way course was adopted.
Britain supplied certain counter-revolutionary generals with a very
considerable quantity of surplus stores, and a few military missions;
France adopted the policy of using satellite States--Poland, Rumania,
and even Hungary--as her tools. The result we know.
Meantime, the economic and financial situation at home (in France and
Italy) was becoming desperate. France needed coal, building material,
money. None of these things could be obtained from a blockaded,
starving, and restless Germany. One day, doubtless, Germany will be able
to pay for the armies of occupation; but it will be a Germany whose
workers are fed and clothed and warmed, whose railways have adequate
rolling stock, whose fields are not destitute of machines, and factories
of coal and the raw materials of production. In other words, it will be
a strong and organised Germany, and, if occupied by alien troops, most
certainly a nationalist and hostile Germany, dangerous and difficult to
watch, however much disarmed.
But there was a further force which the Allied Governments found
themselves compelled to take into consideration in settling their
military policy at the time of the Armistice. In addition to the
economic and financial difficulties which compelled them to refrain from
large scale operations in Russia and perhaps in Germany; in addition to
the clash of rival nationalisms among the Allies, which was already
introducing such serious rifts into the Alliance, there was a further
element of weakness--revolutionary unrest, the 'Bolshevik' fever.
In December, 1918, the British Government was confronted by the refusal
of soldiers at Dover, who believed that they were being sent to Russia,
to embark. A month or two later the French Government was faced by a
naval mutiny at Odessa. American soldiers in Siberia refused to go into
action against the Russians. Still later, in Italy, the workers enforced
their decision not to handle munitions for Russia, by widespread
strikes. Whether the attempt to obtain troops in very large quantities
for a Russian war, involving casualties and sacrifices on a considerable
scale, would have meant at the beginning of 1919 military revolts, or
Communist, Spartacist, or Bolshevik revolutionary movements, or not, the
Governments were evidently not prepared to face the issue.
We have seen, therefore, that the blockade and the economic weakening of
our enemy are two-edged weapons, only of effective use within very
definite limits; that these limits in turn condition in some degree the
employment of more purely military instruments like the occupation of
hostile territory; and indeed condition the provision of the
instruments.
The power basis of the Alliance, such as it is, has been, since the
Armistice, the naval power of England, exercised through the blockades,
and the military force of France exercised mainly through the management
of satellite armies. The British method has involved the greater
immediate cruelty (perhaps a greater extent and degree of suffering
imposed upon the weak and helpless than any coercive device yet
discovered by man) though the French has involved a more direct negation
of the aims for which the War was fought. French policy aims quite
frankly at the re-imposition of France's military hegemony of the
Continent. That aim will not be readily surrendered.
Owing to the division in Socialist and Labour ranks, to the growing fear
and dislike of 'confiscatory' legislation, by a peasant population and a
large _petit rentier_ class, conservative elements are bound to be
predominant in France for a long time. Those elements are frankly
sceptical of any League of Nations device. A League of Nations would
rob them of what in the Chamber of Deputies a Nationalist called 'the
Right of Victory.' But the alternative to a League as a means of
security is military predominance, and France has bent her energies
since the Armistice to securing it. To-day, the military predominance of
France on the Continent is vastly greater than that of Germany ever was.
Her chief antagonist is not only disarmed--forbidden to manufacture
heavy artillery, tanks or fighting aircraft--but as we have seen, is
crippled in economic life by the loss of nearly all his iron and much of
his coal. France not only retains her armament, but is to-day spending
more upon it than before the War. The expenditure for the army in 1920
amounted to 5000 millions of francs, whereas in 1914 it was only 1200
millions. Translate this expenditure even with due regard to the changed
price level into terms of policy, and it means, _inter alia_, that the
Russo-Polish war and Feisal's deposition in Syria are burdens beyond her
capacity. And this is only the beginning. Within a few months France has
revived the full flower of the Napoleonic tradition so far as the use of
satellite military States is concerned. Poland is only one of many
instruments now being industriously fashioned by the artisans of the
French military renaissance. In the Ukraine, in Hungary, in
Czecho-Slovakia, in Rumania, in Yugo-Slavia; in Syria, Greece, Turkey,
and Africa, French military and financial organisers are at work.
M. Clemenceau, in one of his statements to the Chamber[54] on France's
future policy, outlined the method:--
'We have said that we would create a system of barbed wire. There
are places where it will have to be guarded to prevent Germany from
passing. There are peoples like the Poles, of whom I spoke just
now, who are fighting against the Soviets, who are resisting, who
are in the van of civilisation. Well, we have decided ... to be
the Allies of any people attacked by the Bolsheviks. I have spoken
of the Poles, of the help that we shall certainly get from them in
case of necessity. Well, they are fighting at this moment against
the Bolsheviks, and if they are not equal to the task--but they
will be equal to it--the help which we shall be able to give them
in different ways, and which we are actually giving them,
particularly in the form of military supplies and uniforms--that
help will be continued. There is a Polish army, of which the
greater part has been organised and instructed by French
officers.... The Polish army must now be composed of from 450,000
to 500,000 men. If you look on the map at the geographical
situation of this military force, you will think that it is
interesting from every point of view. There is a Czecho-Slovak
army, which already numbers nearly 150,000 men, well equipped, well
armed, and capable of sustaining all the tasks of war. Here is
another factor on which we can count. But I count on many other
elements. I count on Rumania.'
Since then Hungary has been added, part of the Hungarian plan being the
domination of Austria by Hungary, and, later, possibly the restoration
of an Austrian Monarchy, which might help to detach monarchical and
clerical Bavaria from Republican Germany.[55] This is the revival of the
old French policy of preventing the unification of the German
people.[56] It is that aspiration which largely explains recent French
sympathy for Clericalism and Monarchism and the reversal of the policy
heretofore pursued by the Third Republic towards the Vatican.
The systematic arming of African negroes reveals something of Napoleon's
leaning towards the military exploitation of servile races. We are
probably only at the beginning of the arming of Africa's black millions.
They are, of course, an extremely convenient military material. French
or British soldiers might have scruples against service in a war upon a
Workers' Republic. Cannibals from the African forest 'conscribed' for
service in Europe are not likely to have political or social scruples of
that kind. To bring some hundreds of thousands of these Africans to
Europe, to train them systematically to the use of European arms; to
teach them that the European is conquerable; to put them in the position
of victors over a vanquished European people--here indeed are
possibilities. With Senegalese negroes having their quarters in Goethe's
house, and placed, if not in authority, at least as the instruments of
authority over the population of a European university city; and with
the Japanese imposing their rule upon great stretches of what was
yesterday a European Empire (and our Ally) a new page may well have
opened for Europe.
But just consider the chances of stability for power based on the
assumption of continued co-operation of a number of 'intense'
nationalisms, each animated by its sacred egoisms. France has turned to
this policy as a substitute for the alliance of two or three great
States, which national feeling and conflicting interests have driven
apart. Is this collection of mushroom republics to possess a stability
to which the Entente could not attain?
One looks over the list. We have, it is true, after a century, the
re-birth of Poland, a great and impressive case of the vindication of
national right. But Poland, yesterday the victim of the imperialist
oppressor, has, herself, almost in a few hours, as it were, acquired an
imperialism of her own. The Pole assures us that his nationality can
only be secure if he is given dominion over territories with largely
non-Polish populations; if, that is, some fifteen millions of Ruthenes,
Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, are deprived of a separate national
existence. Italy, it is true, is now fully redeemed; but that redemption
involves the 'irredentism' of large numbers of German Tyrolese,
Yugo-Slavs, and Greeks. The new Austria is forbidden to federate with
the main branch of the race to which her people belong--though
federation alone can save them from physical extinction. The
Czecho-Slovak nation is now achieved, but only at the expense of a
German unredeemed population larger numerically than that of
Alsace-Lorraine. And Slovaks and Czechs already quarrel--many foresee
the day when the freed State will face its own rebels. The Slovenes and
Croats and the Serbs do not yet make a 'nationality,' and threaten to
fight one another as readily as they would fight the Bulgarians they
have annexed in Bulgarian Macedonia. Rumania has marked her redemption
by the inclusion of considerable Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Serbian
'irredentisms' within her new borders. Finland, which with Poland
typified for so long the undying struggle for national right, is to-day
determined to coerce the Swedes on the Aaland Islands and the Russians
on the Carelian Territory. Greek rule of Turks has already involved
retaliatory, punitive, or defensive measures which have needed Blue Book
explanation. Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaidjan have not yet acquired
their subject nationalities.
The prospect of peace and security for these nationalities may be
gathered in some measure by an enumeration of the wars which have
actually broken out since the Peace Conference met in Paris, for the
appeasement of Europe. The Poles have fought in turn, the
Czecho-Slovaks, the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, and the Russians. The
Ukrainians have fought the Russians and the Hungarians. The Finns have
fought the Russians, as have also the Esthonians and the Letts. The
Esthonians and Letts have also fought the Baltic Germans. The Rumanians
have fought Hungary. The Greeks have fought the Bulgarians and are at
present in 'full dress' war with the Turks. The Italians have fought the
Albanians, and the Turks in Asia Minor. The French have been fighting
the Arabs in Syria and the Turks in Cilicia. The various British
expeditions or missions, naval or military, in Archangel, Murmansk, the
Baltic, the Crimea, Persia, Siberia, Turkestan, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor,
the Soudan, or in aid of Koltchak, Denikin, Yudenitch, or Wrangel, are
not included in this list as not arising in a strict sense perhaps out
of nationality problems.
Let us face what all this means in the alignment of power in the world.
The Europe of the Grand Alliance is a Europe of many nationalities:
British, French, Italian, Rumanian, Polish, Czecho-Slovak, Yugo-Slav,
Greek, Belgian, Magyar, to say nothing of the others. None of these
States exceeds greatly forty millions of people, and the populations of
most are very much less. But the rival group of Germany and Russia,
making between them over two hundred millions, comprises just two great
States. And contiguous to them, united by the ties of common hatreds,
lie the Mahomedan world and China. Prusso-Slavdom (combining racial
elements having common qualities of amenity to autocratic discipline)
might conceivably give a lead to Chinese and other Asiatic millions,
brought to hate the West. The opposing group is a Balkanised Europe of
irreconcilable national rivalries, incapable, because of those
rivalries, of any prolonged common action, and taking a religious pride
in the fact of this incapacity to agree. Its moral leaders, or many of
them, certainly its powerful and popular instrument of education, the
Press, encourage this pugnacity, regarding any effort towards its
restraint or discipline as political atheism; deepening the tradition
which would make 'intense' nationalism a noble, virile, and inspiring
attitude, and internationalism something emasculate and despicable.
We talk of the need of 'protecting European civilisation' from hostile
domination, German or Russian. It is a danger. Other great civilisations
have found themselves dominated by alien power. Seeley has sketched for
us the process by which a vast country with two or three hundred million
souls, not savage or uncivilised but with a civilisation, though
descending along a different stream of tradition, as real and ancient as
our own, came to be utterly conquered and subdued by a people, numbering
less than twelve millions, living on the other side of the world. It
reversed the teaching of history which had shown again and again that it
was impossible really to conquer an intelligent people alien in
tradition from its invaders. The whole power of Spain could not in
eighty years conquer the Dutch provinces with their petty population.
The Swiss could not be conquered. At the very time when the conquest of
India's hundreds of millions was under way, the English showed
themselves wholly unable to reduce to obedience three millions of their
own race in America. What was the explanation? The Inherent Superiority
of the Anglo-Saxon Stock?
For long we were content to draw such a flattering conclusion and leave
it at that, until Seeley pointed out the uncomfortable fact that the
great bulk of the forces used in the conquest of India were not British
at all. They were Indian. India was conquered for Great Britain by the
natives of India.
'The nations of India (says Seeley) have been conquered by an army
of which, on the average, about a fifth part was English. India can
hardly be said to have been conquered at all by foreigners; she was
rather conquered by herself. If we were justified, which we are
not, in personifying India as we personify France or England, we
could not describe her as overwhelmed by a foreign enemy; we should
rather have to say that she elected to put an end to anarchy by
submitting to a single government, even though that government were
in the hands of foreigners.'[57]
In other words, India is an English possession because the peoples of
India were incapable of cohesion, the nations of India incapable of
internationalism.
The peoples of India include some of the best fighting stock in the
world. But they fought one another: the pugnacity and material power
they personified was the force used by their conquerors for their
subjection.
I will venture to quote what I wrote some years ago touching Seeley's
moral:--
'Our successful defeat of tyranny depends upon such a development
of the sense of patriotism among the democratic nations that it
will attach itself rather to the conception of the unity of all
free co-operative societies, than to the mere geographical and
racial divisions; a development that will enable it to organise
itself as a cohesive power for the defence of that ideal, by the
use of all the forces, moral and material, which it wields.
'That unity is impossible on the basis of the old policies, the European
statecraft of the past. For that assumes a condition of the world in
which each State must look for its national security to its own isolated
strength; and such assumption compels each member, as a measure of
national self-preservation, and so justifiably, to take precaution
against drifting into a position of inferior power, compels it, that is,
to enter into a competition for the sources of strength--territory and
strategic position. Such a condition will inevitably, in the case of any
considerable alliance, produce a situation in which some of its members
will be brought into conflict by claims for the same territory. In the
end, that will inevitably disrupt the Alliance.
'The price of the preservation of nationality is a workable
internationalism. If this latter is not possible then the smaller
nationalities are doomed. Thus, though internationalism may not be in
the case of every member of the Alliance the object of war, it is the
condition of its success.'