THE
Crime Against Europe
* * * * *
_A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914_
BY
SIR ROGER CASEMENT
* * * * *
COPYRIGHTED 1915
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INTRODUCTION.
* * * * *
The reader must remember that these articles were written before
the war began. They are in a sense prophetic and show a remarkable
understanding of the conditions which brought about the present great
war in Europe.
The writer has made European history a life study and his training in
the English consular service placed him in a position to secure the
facts upon which he bases his arguments.
Sir Roger Casement was born in Ireland in September, 1864. He was made
consul to Lorenzo Marques in 1889, being transferred to a similar
post in the Portuguese Possessions in West Africa, which included the
consulate to the Gaboon and the Congo Free State. He held this post
from 1898 to 1905, when he was given the consulate of Santos. The
following year he was appointed consul to Hayti and San Domingo, but
did not proceed, going instead to Para, where he served until 1909,
when he became consul-general to Rio de Janeiro. He was created a
knight in 1911.
He was one of the organizers of the Irish Volunteers at Dublin in
November, 1913, being one of their provisional committee. At present
he is a member of the governing body of that organization. He spent
the summer of this year in the United States. Sir Roger is at present
in Berlin, where, after a visit paid to the foreign office by him,
the German Chancellor caused to be issued the statement that "should
the German forces reach the shores of Ireland they would come not as
conquerors but as friends."
Sir Roger is well known for his investigation into the Putomayo rubber
district atrocities in 1912.
December, 1914.
Chapter I
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR AND THE FOUNDATION OF PEACE
Since the war, foreshadowed in these pages, has come and finds public
opinion in America gravely shocked at a war it believes to be solely
due to certain phases of European militarism, the writer is now
persuaded to publish these articles, which at least have the merit of
having been written well before the event, in the hope that they may
furnish a more useful point of view. For if one thing is certain it is
that European militarism is no more the cause of this war than of any
previous war. Europe is not fighting to see who has the best army,
or to test mere military efficiency, but because certain peoples wish
certain things and are determined to get and keep them by an appeal to
force. If the armies and fleets were small the war would have broken
out just the same, the parties and their claims, intentions, and
positions being what they are. To find the causes of the war we must
seek the motives of the combatants, and if we would have a lasting
peace the foundations upon which to build it must be laid bare by
revealing those foundations on which the peace was broken. To find
the causes of the war we should turn not to Blue Books or White
Papers, giving carefully selected statements of those responsible
for concealing from the public the true issues that move nations to
attack each other, but should seek the unavowed aims of those nations
themselves.
Once the motive is found it is not hard to say who it is that broke
the peace, whatever the diplomats may put forward in lieu of the real
reason.
The war was, in truth, inevitable, and was made inevitable years ago.
It was not brought about through the faults or temper of Sovereigns
or their diplomats, not because there were great armies in Europe,
but because certain Powers, and one Power in particular, nourished
ambitions and asserted claims that involved not only ever increasing
armaments but insured ever increasing animosities. In these cases
peace, if permitted, would have dissipated the ambitions and upset
claims, so it was only a question of time and opportunity when those
whose aims required war would find occasion to bring it about.
As Mr. Bernard Shaw put it, in a recent letter to the press: "After
having done all in our power to render war inevitable it is no use now
to beg people not to make a disturbance, but to come to London to be
kindly but firmly spoken to by Sir Edward Grey."
To find the motive powerful enough to have plunged all Europe into war
in the short space of a few hours, we must seek it, not in the pages
of a "white paper" covering a period of only fifteen days (July 20th
to August 4th, 1914), but in the long anterior activities that led the
great Powers of Europe into definite commitments to each other. For
the purposes of this investigation we can eliminate at once three of
the actual combatants, as being merely "accessories after the fact,"
viz.:--Servia, Belgium and Japan, and confine our study of the
causes of the conflict to the aims and motives of the five principal
combatants. For it is clear that in the quarrel between Servia and
Austria, Hungary is only a side issue of the larger question that
divides Europe into armed camps. Were categoric proof sought of how
small a part the quarrel between Vienna and Belgrade played in the
larger tragedy, it can be found in the urgent insistence of the
Russian Government itself in the very beginning of the diplomatic
conversations that preceded the outbreak of hostilities.
As early as the 24th of July, the Russian Government sought to prevail
upon Great Britain to proclaim its complete solidarity with Russia and
France, and on the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg pointing out
that "direct British interests in Servia were nil, and a war on behalf
of that country would never be sanctioned by British public opinion,"
the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs replied that "we must not
forget that the _general European_ question was involved, the Servian
question being but a part of the former, and that Great Britain
could not afford to efface herself from the problem _now at issue_."
(Despatch of Sir G. Buchanan to Sir E. Grey, 24th July, 1914).
Those problems involved far mightier questions than the relations of
Servia to Austria, the neutrality of Belgium or the wish of Japan to
keep the peace of the East by seizing Kiao-Chau.
The neutrality never became a war issue until long after war had been
decided on and had actually broken out; while Japan came into the
contest solely because Europe had obligingly provided one, and because
one European power preferred, for its own ends, to strengthen an
Asiatic race to seeing a kindred white people it feared grow stronger
in the sun.
Coming then to the five great combatants, we can quickly reduce them
to four. Austria-Hungary and Germany in this war are indivisible.
While each may have varying aims on many points and ambitions that,
perhaps, widely diverge both have one common bond, self-preservation,
that binds them much more closely together than mere formal "allies."
In this war Austria fights of necessity as a Germanic Power, although
the challenge to her has been on the ground of her Slav obligations
and activities. Germany is compelled to support Austria by a law of
necessity that a glance at the map of Europe explains. Hence, for
the purpose of the argument, we may put the conflict as between the
Germanic peoples of Central Europe and those who have quarreled with
them.
We thus arrive at the question, "why should such strangely consorted
allies as England, Russia and France be at war with the German
people?"
The answer is not to be found in the White Book, or in any statement
publicly put forward by Great Britain, Russia or France.
But the answer must be found, if we would find the causes of the war,
and if we would hope to erect any lasting peace on the ruins of this
world conflict.
To accept, as an explanation of the war the statement that Germany
has a highly trained army she has not used for nearly half a century
and that her people are so obsessed with admiration for it that they
longed to test it on their neighbours, is to accept as an explanation
a stultifying contradiction. It is of course much easier to put
the blame on the Kaiser. This line of thought is highly popular: it
accords, too, with a fine vulgar instinct.
The German people can be spared the odium of responsibility for a
war they clearly did nothing to provoke, by representing them as the
victims of an autocracy, cased in mail and beyond their control.
We thus arrive at "the real crime against Germany," which explains
everything but the thing it set out to explain. It leaves unexplained
the real crime against Europe.
To explain the causes of the war we must find the causes of the
alliances of England, France and Russia against Germany.
For the cause of the war is that alliance--that and nothing else. The
defence of the _Entente Cordiale_ is that it is an innocent pact of
friendship, designed only to meet the threat of the Triple Alliance.
But the answer to that is that whereas the Triple Alliance was formed
thirty years ago, it has never declared war on anyone, while the
_Triple Entente_ before it is eight years old has involved Europe,
America, Africa, and Asia in a world conflict. We must find the motive
for England allying herself with France and Russia in an admittedly
anti-German "understanding" if we would understand the causes of the
present war and why it is that many besides Bernard Shaw hold that
"after having done all in our power to render war inevitable" it was
idle for the British Government to assume a death-bed solicitude
for peace, having already dug its grave and cast aside the shovel
for the gun. When that motive is apparent we shall realise who it
was preferred war to peace and how impossible it is to hope for any
certain peace ensuing from the victory of those who ensured an appeal
to arms.
The _Entente Cordiale_, to begin with, is unnatural. There is nothing
in common between the parties to it, save antagonism to someone
else. It is wrongly named. It is founded not on predilections but on
prejudices--not on affection but on animosity. To put it crudely it is
a bond of hate not of love. None of the parties to it like or admire
each other, or have consistent aims, save one.
That satisfied, they will surely fall out among themselves, and the
greater the plunder derived from their victory the more certain their
ensuing quarrel.
Great Britain, in her dealings with most white people (not with all)
is a democracy.
Russia in her dealings with all, is an autocracy.
Great Britain is democratic in her government of herself and in her
dealings with the great white communities of Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa. She is not democratic in her dealings with
subject races within the Empire--the Indians, notably, or the Irish.
To the Indians her rule is that of an absentee autocracy, differing
in speech, colour, religion and culture from those submitted to it by
force; to the Irish that of a resident autocracy bent on eliminating
the people governed from residence in their own country, and replacing
them with cattle for British consumption.
In both instances Britain is notably false to her professions of
devotion to democratic principles. Her affinity with Russia is found
then, not in the cases where her institutions are good, but in those
where they are bad.
An alliance founded on such grounds of contact can only produce evil.
To such it gave birth in Persia, to such it must give birth in the
present war.
In Persia we saw it betray the principles of democratic government,
destroy an infant constitution and disembowel the constitutionalists,
whilst it divided their country into "spheres of influence" and to-day
we see it harvesting with hands yet red with the blood of Persian
patriots the redder fruit of the seed then sown.
The alliance with France, while more natural than that with Russia if
we regard Great Britain as a democracy (by eliminating India, Egypt,
Ireland) had the same guilty end in view, and rests less on affinity
of aims than on affinity of antipathies.
The _Entente Cordiale_, the more closely we inspect it, we find is
based not on a cordial regard of the parties to it for each other, but
on a cordial disregard all three participants share for the party it
is aimed against.
It will be said that Germany must have done something to justify the
resentment that could bring about so strangely assorted a combination
against herself. What has been the crime of Germany against the powers
now assailing her? She has doubtless committed many crimes, as have
all the great powers, but in what respect has she so grievously sinned
against Europe that the Czar, the Emperor of India, the King of
Great Britain and Ireland, the Mikado and the President of the French
Republic--to say nothing of those minor potentates who like Voltaire's
minor prophets seem _capable de tout_--should now be pledged, by
irrevocable pact, to her destruction as a great power?
"German militarism," the reply that springs to the lips, is no more a
threat to civilisation than French or Russian militarism. It was born,
not of wars of aggression, but of wars of defence and unification.
Since it was welded by blood and iron into the great human organism of
the last forty years it has not been employed beyond the frontiers of
Germany until last year.
Can the same be said of Russian militarism or of French militarism or
of British navalism?
We are told the things differ in quality. The answer is what about the
intent and the uses made. German militarism has kept peace and has
not emerged beyond its own frontier until threatened with universal
attack. Russian militarism has waged wars abroad, far beyond the
confines of Russian territory; French militarism, since it was
overthrown at Sedan, has carried fire and sword across all Northern
Africa, has penetrated from the Atlantic to the Nile, has raided
Tonquin, Siam, Madagascar, Morocco, while English navalism in the last
forty years has bombarded the coast lines, battered the ports, and
landed raiding parties throughout Asia and Africa, to say nothing of
the well nigh continuous campaigns of annexation of the British army
in India, Burma, South Africa, Egypt, Tibet, or Afghanistan, within
the same period.
As to the quality of the materialism of the great Continental Powers
there is nothing to prefer in the French and Russian systems to
the German system. Each involved enormous sacrifices on the people
sustaining it. We are asked, however, to believe that French
militarism is maintained by a "democracy" and German militarism by an
"autocracy." Without appealing to the captive Queen of Madagascar for
an opinion on the authenticity of French democracy we may confine the
question to the elected representatives of the two peoples.
In both cases the war credits are voted by the legislative bodies
responsible to French and German opinion. The elected representatives
of Germany are as much the spokesman of the nation as those of France,
and the German Reichstag has sanctioned every successive levy for
the support of German armaments. As to Russian militarism, it may be
presumed no one will go quite so far as to assert that the Russian
Duma is more truly representative of the Russian people than the
Parliament of the Federated peoples of Germany at Berlin.
The machines being then approximately the same machines, we must seek
the justification for them in the uses to which they have been put.
For what does France, for what does Russia maintain a great army? Why
does Germany call so many youthful Germans to the colours? On what
grounds of moral sanction does Great Britain maintain a navy, whose
cost far exceeds all the burdens of German militarism?
Russia stretches across the entire area of Central Asia and comprises
much of the greater part of Europe as well. In its own territory, it
is unassailable, and never has been invaded with success. No power
can plunder or weaken Russia as long as she remains within her own
borders. Of all the great powers in Europe she is the one that after
England has the least need of a great army.
She cannot be assailed with success at home, and she has no need
to leave her own territories in search of lands to colonize. Her
population, secure in its own vast numbers and vast resources has, for
all future needs of expansion the continent of Siberia into which to
overflow. Russia cannot be threatened within Russia and has no need
to go outside Russia. A Russian army of 4,000,000 is not necessary to
self-defence. Its inspiration can be due only to a policy of expansion
at the cost of others, and its aim to extend and to maintain existing
Russian frontiers. As I write it is engaged not in a war of defence
but in a war of invasion, and is the instrument of a policy of avowed
aggression.
Not the protection of the Slavs from Austria, herself so largely a
Slavic power and one that does not need to learn the principles of
good government from Russia, but the incorporation of the Slavs within
the mightiest empire upon earth--this is the main reason why Russia
maintains the mightiest army upon earth. Its threat to Germany, as the
protector of Austria-Hungary, has been clear, and if we would find
the reason for German militarism we shall find at least one half of it
across the Russian frontier.
The huge machine of the French army, its first line troops almost
equal to Germany's, is not a thing of yesterday.
It was not German aggression founded it--although Germany felt it once
at Jena. Founded by kings of France, French militarism has flourished
under republic, empire, constitutional monarchy, and empire again
until to-day we find its greatest bloom full blown under the mild
breath of the third republic. What is the purpose of this perfect
machine? Self-defence? From what attack? Germany has had it in her
power, again and again within the last thirty years to attack
France at a disadvantage, if not even with impunity. Why has she
refrained--whose hand restrained her? Not Russia's--not England's.
During the Russo-Japanese war or during the Boer war, France could
have been assailed with ease and her army broken to pieces. But German
militarism refrained from striking that blow. The object of the great
army France maintains is not to be found in reasons of self-defence,
but may be found, like that of Russia in hopes of armed expansion.
Since the aim in both cases was the same, to wage a war of aggression
to be termed of "recovery" in one case and "protection" in the other,
it was not surprising that Czar and President should come together,
and that the cause of the Slavs should become identified with the
cause of Strasburg.
To "protect" the Slavs meant assailing Austria-Hungary (another way of
attacking Germany), and to "recover" Strasburg meant a _mes-alliance_
between democrat of France and Cossack of the Don.
We come now to the third party to die Entente, and it is now we begin
to perceive how it was that a cordial understanding with England
rendered a Russo-French attack upon Germany only a question of time
and opportunity. Until England appeared upon the scene neither Russia
nor France, nor both combined, could summon up courage to strike the
blow. Willing to wound they were both afraid to strike. It needed a
third courage, a keener purpose and a greater immunity.
German militarism was too formidable a factor in the life of
65,000,000 of the most capable people in Europe to be lightly assailed
even by France and Russia combined. Russia needed money to perfect the
machinery of invasion, so sorely tried by the disastrous failure to
invade Korea and Manchuria. France had the money to advance, but she
still doubted the ability of her stagnant population of 40,000,000 to
face the growing magnitude of the great people across the Rhine. It
needed another guarantee--and England brought it.
From the day that Great Britain and her mighty fleet joined the
separated allies with their mighty armies, the bond between them and
the circle round Germany grew taut. From that day the counsels of
the allies and their new found "friend" thickened and quickened. The
immovable "menace across the Rhine" in one case had become the active
"menace across the North Sea" in the other case.
The sin of German militarism was at last out. It could take to the
water as kindly as to the land. As long as the war machine guaranteed
the inviolability of German territory it was no threat to European
peace, but when it assumed the task of safe-guarding German rights
at sea it became the enemy of civilization. These trading people not
content with an army that kept French "revanche" discreetly silent
and Slav "unity" a dream of the future presumed to have a sea-born
commerce that grew by leaps and bounds, and they dared to build a navy
to defend and even to extend it. _Delenda est Carthago!_ From that day
the doom of "German militarism" was sealed; and England, democratic
England, lay down with the Czar in the same bed to which the French
housewife had already transferred her republican counterpane.
The duration of peace became only a question of time, and the war of
to-day only a question of opportunity and pretext. Each of the parties
to the understanding had the same clear purpose to serve, and while
the aim to each was different the end was the same. Germany's power
of defence must be destroyed. That done each of the sleeping partners
to the unsigned compact would get the share of the spoils, guarded by
armed German manhood, he coveted.
To Russia, the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary and the incorporation
of the Slav elements in part into her own vast empire, in part into a
vassal and subordinate Balkan Confederacy.
To France the restoration of Lorraine, with Metz, and of Alsace with
Strasburg and their 1,500,000 of German speaking Teutons to the French
Empire.
To England, the destruction of German sea-power and along with it the
permanent crippling of German competition in the markets of the world.
Incidentally German colonies would disappear along with German
shipping, and with both gone a German navy would become a useless
burden for a nation of philosophers to maintain, so that the future
status of maritime efficiency in Europe could be left to the power
that polices the seas to equitably fix for all mankind, as well as for
the defeated rival.
Such an outline was the altruistic scope of the unsigned agreement
entered into by the three parties of the _Triple Entente_; and it only
remained to get ready for the day when the matter could be brought
to issue. The murder of the Archduke Ferdinand furnished Russia with
the occasion, since she felt that her armies were ready, the sword
sharpened, and the Entente sure and binding.
The mobilization by Russia was all that France needed "to do that
which might be required of her by her interests." (Reply of the French
Government to the German Ambassador at Paris, August 1st, 1914.)
Had the neutrality of Belgium been respected as completely as the
neutrality of Holland, England would have joined her "friends" in the
assault on Germany, as Sir Edward Grey was forced to admit when the
German Ambassador in vain pressed him to state his own terms as the
price of English neutrality.
The hour had struck. Russia was sure of herself, and the rest followed
automatically since all had been provided for long before. The French
fleet was in the Mediterranean, as the result of the military compact
between France and England signed, sealed and delivered in November,
1912, and _withheld from the cognizance of the British Parliament
until after war had been declared_. The British fleet had been
mobilized early in July in anticipation of Russia's mobilization on
land--and here again it is Sir Edward Grey who incidentally supplies
the proof.
In his anxiety, while there was still the fear that Russia might hold
her hand, he telegraphed to the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg
on 27th of July, requiring him to assure the Russian Foreign Minister,
that the British Fleet, "which is concentrated, _as it happens_" would
not disperse from Portland.
That "as it happens" is quite the most illuminating slip in the
British White Paper, and is best comprehended by those who know what
have been the secret orders of the British fleet since 1909, and what
was the end in view when King George reviewed it earlier in the month,
and when His Majesty so hurriedly summoned the unconstitutional
"Home Rule" conference at Buckingham Palace on 18th of July. Nothing
remained for the "friends" but to so manoeuvre that Germany should be
driven to declare war, or see her frontiers crossed. If she did the
first, she became the "aggressor"; if she waited to be attacked she
incurred the peril of destruction.
Such, in outline, are the causes and steps that led to the outbreak of
war. The writer has seen those steps well and carefully laid, tested
and tried beforehand. Every rung of the scaling ladder being raised
for the storming of the German defences on land and sea was planed and
polished in the British Foreign Office.
As Sir Edward Grey confessed three years ago, he was "but the fly on
the wheel." That wheel was the ever faster driven purpose of Great
Britain to destroy the growing sea-power and commerce of Germany. The
strain had reached the breaking point.
During the first six months of 1914, German export trade almost
equalled that of Great Britain. Another year of peace, and it would
certainly have exceeded it, and for the first time in the history of
world trade Great Britain would have been put in the second place.
German exports from January to June had swelled to the enormous total
of $1,045,000,000 as against the $1,075,000,000 of Great Britain. A
war against such figures could not be maintained in the markets, it
must be transferred to the seas.
Day by day as the war proceeds, although it is now only six weeks old,
the pretences under which it was begun are being discarded. England
fights not to defend the neutrality of Belgium, not to destroy German
militarism, but to retain, if need be by involving the whole world in
war, her supreme and undisputed ownership of the seas.
This is the crime against Europe, the crime against the world that,
among other victims the United States are invited to approve, in order
that to-morrow their own growing navy may be put into a like posture
with that of a defeated Germany.
With the Kiel Canal "handed to Denmark," as one of the fruits of
British victory, as Lord Charles Beresford yesterday magnanimously
suggested, how long may it be before the Panama Canal shall be found
to be "a threat to peace" in the hands of those who constructed it?
A rival fleet in being, whether the gunners be Teuton or Anglo-Saxon
unless the Admiralty controlling it is seated at Whitehall, will
always be an eyesore to the Mistress of the seas, in other words, "a
threat to the peace of the world."
The war of armaments cannot be ended by the disarming of the German
people. To hand Europe over to a triumphal alliance of Russian and
French militarism, while England controls the highways and waterways
of mankind by a fleet whose function is "to dictate the maritime
law of nations," will beget indeed a new Europe, but a Europe
whose acquiescence is due to fear and the continued pressure of
well-sustained force--a Europe submitted to the despotism of unnatural
alliances designed to arrest the laws of progress.
The laws of progress demand that efficiency shall prevail. The crime
of Germany has been superior efficiency, not so much in the arts
of war as in the products of peace. If she go down to-day before a
combination of brute force and unscrupulous intelligence her fall
cannot be permanent. Germany has within herself the forces that ensure
revival, and revival means recovery. Neither France nor Russia nor
both combined, can give to Europe what Britain now designs to take
from it by their help.
Whatever may be the result of this war on the field of battle, to
France indeed it can bring only one end. For her there is no future
save that of a military empire. Her life blood is dried up. This war
will sweep away all power of recuperation. She will remain impotent
to increase her race, sterile of new forces for good, her young men's
blood gone to win the barren fields of Alsace. Her one purpose in the
new Europe will be to hold a sword, not her own, over the struggling
form of a resurgent Germany in the interests of another people. Let
Germany lose 1,000,000 men in the fighting of to-day, she can recover
them in two years of peace. But to France the losses of this war,
whether she win or lose, cannot be made good in a quarter of a century
of child births. Whatever comes to Russia, to England, France as a
great free power is gone. Her future function will be to act in a
subordinate capacity alone; supported and encouraged by England she
will be forced to keep up a great army in order that the most capable
people of the continent, with a population no defeat can arrest,
shall not fill the place in Europe and in the world they are called
on surely to fill, and one that conflicts only with British aims and
appetites.
German expansion was no threat to France. It was directed to other
fields, chiefly those of commerce. In order to keep it from those
fields England fanned the dying fires of French resentment and strove
by every agency to kindle a natural sentiment into an active passion.
The historian of the future will record that whatever the immediate
fate of Germany may be, the permanent victim was France.
The day England won her to an active policy of vengeance against
the victor of 1870, she wooed her to abiding loss. Her true place in
Europe was one of friendship with Germany. But that meant, inevitably,
the discovery by Europe that the chief barrier to European concord
lay not in the armies of the powers, but in the ring of hostile
battleships that constrained her peoples into armed camps.
European militarism rests on English navalism. English navalism
requires for its continued existence a disunited Europe; and a Europe
kept apart is a Europe armed, anxious and watchful, bent on mutual
attack, its eyes fixed on the _earth_. Europe must lift its eyes
to the sea. There lies the highway of the nations, the only road to
freedom--the sole path to peace.
For the pent millions of Europe there can be no peace, no laying aside
of arms, no sincere development of trade or culture while one people,
_in Europe but not of Europe_, immune themselves from all attack,
and sure that whatever suffering they inflict on others can never be
visited on their own shores, have it in their power to foment strife
with impunity and to call up war from the ends of the earth while they
themselves enjoy the blessing of peace.
England, the soul and brain of this confederacy of war abroad remains
at peace at home. As I write these words a despatch from Sir Alfred
Sharpe, the correspondent of a London paper in France, comes to hand.
It should be placarded in every Foreign Office of the world, in every
temple of justice, in every house of prayer.
"It is difficult for the people in England to realize the condition of
Northern France at the present time. Although the papers are full of
accounts of desolation and destruction caused by the German invasion,
it is only by an actual experience that a full realization of the
horror comes. To return to England after visiting the French war zone
is to come back to a land of perfect peace, where everything is normal
and where it is not easy to believe we are almost within hearing
distance of the cannonade on the Aisne."
(Sir Alfred Sharpe, to the _Daily Chronicle_ from the Front, September
2nd, 1914.)
It is this immunity from the horror of war that makes all Englishmen
jingoes. They are never troubled by the consequences of belligerency.
Since it is only by "an actual experience that the full realization of
the horror comes." Until that horror strikes deep on English soil her
statesmen, her Ministers, her Members of Parliament, her editors, will
never sincerely love peace, but will plan always to ensure war abroad,
whenever British need or ambition demands it.
Were England herself so placed that responsibility for her acts could
be enforced on her own soil, among her own people, and on the head
of those who devise her policies, then we might talk of arbitration
treaties with hope, and sign compacts of goodwill sure that they were
indeed cordial understandings.
But as long as Great Britain retains undisputed ownership of the chief
factor that ensures at will peace or war on others, there can be only
armaments in Europe, ill-will among men and war fever in the blood of
mankind.
British democracy loves freedom of the sea in precisely the same
spirit as imperial Rome viewed the spectacle of Celtic freedom beyond
the outposts of the Roman legions; as Agricola phrased it, something
"to wear down and take possession of so that freedom may be put out of
sight."
The names change but the spirit of imperial exploitation, whether it
call itself an empire or a democracy, does not change.
Just as the Athenian Empire, in the name of a democracy, sought to
impose servitude at sea on the Greek world, so the British Empire, in
the name of a democracy, seeks to encompass mankind within the long
walls of London.
The modern Sparta may be vanquished by the imperial democrats
assailing her from East and West. But let the world be under no
illusions.
If Germany go down to-day, vanquished by a combination of Asiatic,
African, American, Canadian and European enemies, the gain will not be
to the world nor to the cause of peace.
The mistress of the seas will remain to ensure new combinations of
enmity to prohibit the one league of concord that alone can bring
freedom and peace to the world. The cause that begot this war will
remain to beget new wars.
The next victim of universal sea-power may not be on the ravaged
fields of mid-Europe, but mid the wasted coasts and bombarded seaports
of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
A permanent peace can only be laid on a sure foundation. A sure
foundation of peace among men can only be found when mastery of the
sea by one people has been merged in freedom of the seas for all.