THE BALANCE OF POWER
A conflict between England and Germany exists already, a conflict of
aims.
England rich, prosperous, with all that she can possibly assimilate
already in her hands, desires peace on present conditions of world
power. These conditions are not merely that her actual possessions
should remain intact, but that no other Great Power shall, by
acquiring colonies and spreading its people and institutions into
neighbouring regions, thereby possibly affect the fuller development
of those pre-existing British States. For, with England equality
is an offence and the Power that arrives at a degree of success
approximating to her own and one capable of being expanded into
conditions of fair rivalry, has already committed the unpardonable
sin. As Curran put it in his defence of Hamilton Rowan in 1797,
"England is marked by a natural avarice of freedom which she is
studious to engross and accumulate, but most unwilling to impart;
whether from any necessity of her policy or from her weakness, or from
her pride, I will not presume to say."
Thus while England might even be the attacking party, and in all
probability will be the attacking party, she will embark on a war
with Germany at an initial disadvantage. She will be on her defence.
Although, probably, the military aggressor from reasons of strategy,
she will be acting in obedience to an economic policy of defence and
not of attack. Her chief concern will be not to advance and seize,
always in war the more inspiring task, but to retain and hold. At best
she could come out of the war with no new gain, with nothing added
worth having to what she held on entering it. Victory would mean for
her only that she had secured a further spell of quiet in which to
consolidate her strength and enjoy the good things already won.
Germany will fight with far other purpose and one that must inspire a
far more vigorous effort; she will fight, not merely to keep what she
already has, but to escape from an intolerable position of inferiority
she knows to be unmerited and forced not by the moral or intellectual
superiority of her adversary or due to her own short comings, but
maintained by reason of that adversary's geographical position and
early seizure of the various points of advantage.
Her effort will be not merely military, it will be an intellectual
assertion, a fight in very truth for that larger freedom, that
citizenship of the world England is studious to "engross and
accumulate" for herself alone and to deny to all others. Thus, while
English attack at the best will be actuated by no loftier feeling
than that of a man who, dwelling in a very comfortable house with an
agreeable prospect resists an encroachment on his outlook from the
building operations of his less well lodged neighbour, Germany will be
fighting not only to get out of doors into the open air and sunshine,
but to build a loftier and larger dwelling, fit tenement for a
numerous and growing offspring.
Whatever the structure Germany seeks to erect England objects to the
plan and hangs out her war sign "Ancient Lights."
Who can doubt that the greater patriotism and stronger purpose must
inspire the man who fights for light, air, and freedom, the right to
walk abroad, to learn, to teach, aye, and to inspire others, rather
than him whose chief concern it is to see that no one but himself
enjoys these opportunities. The means, moreover, that each combatant
will bring to the conflict are, in the end, on the side of Germany.
Much the same disproportion of resources exists as lay between Rome
and Carthage.
England relies on money. Germany on men. And just as Roman men beat
Carthaginian mercenaries, so must German manhood, in the end, triumph
over British finance. Just as Carthage in the hours of final shock,
placing her gold where Romans put their gods, and never with a soul
above her ships, fell before the people of United Italy, so shall
the mightier Carthage of the North Seas, in spite of trade, shipping,
colonies, the power of the purse and the hired valour of the foreign
(Irish, Indian, African), go down before the men of United Germany.
But if the military triumph of Germany seems thus likely, the ultimate
assurance, nay even the ultimate safety of German civilization can
only be secured by a statemanship which shall not repeat the mistake
of Louis XIV and Napoleon. The military defeat of England by Germany
is a wholly possible achievement of arms, _if the conflict be between
these two alone_, but to realize the economic and political fruits
of that victory, Ireland must be detached from the British Empire.
To leave a defeated England still in the full possession of Ireland
would be, not to settle the question of German rights at sea or in
world affairs, but merely to postpone the settlement to a second and
possibly far greater encounter. It would be somewhat as if Rome, after
the first Punic war had left Sicily to Carthage. But Ireland is far
more vital to England than Sicily was to Carthage, and is of far more
account to the future of Europe on the ocean than the possession of
Sicily was to the future of the Mediterranean.
If Germany is to permanently profit from a victory over England, she
must free the narrow seas, not only by the defeat of British fleets
in being, but by ensuring that those seas shall not again be closed
by British fleets yet to be. The German gateway to a free Atlantic
can only be kept open through a free Ireland. For just as the English
Channel under the existing arrangement, whereby Ireland lies hidden
from the rest of Europe, can be closed at will by England, so with
Ireland no longer tied to the girdle of England, that channel cannot
be locked. The key to the freedom of European navigation lies at
Berehaven and not at Dover. With Berehaven won from English hands,
England might close the Channel in truth, but Ireland could shut the
Atlantic. As Richard Dox put it in 1689, quaintly but truly, in his
dedication to King William III, and Queen Mary of his "History of
Ireland from the Earliest Times."
"But no cost can be too great where the prize is of such value, and
whoever considers the situation, ports, plenty and other advantages
of Ireland will confess that it must be retained at what rate soever;
because if it should come into an enemy's hands, England would find
it impossible to _flourish_ and perhaps difficult to _subsist_ without
it. To demonstrate this assertion it is enough to say that Ireland
lies in the Line of Trade and that all the English vessels that
sail to the East, West, and South must, as it were, run the gauntlet
between the harbours of Brest and Baltimore; and I might add that
the Irish Wool being transported would soon ruin the English Clothing
Manufacture. Hence it is that all Your Majesty's Predecessors have
kept close to this fundamental maxim of retaining Ireland inseparably
united to the Crown of England."
The sole and exclusive appropriation of Ireland and of all her
resources has indeed formed, since the Recorder of Kinsale wrote, the
mainstay and chief support of British greatness.
The natural position of Ireland lying "in the line of trade," was
possibly its chief value, but that "Irish Wool" which was by no means
to be allowed free access to world markets typifies much else that
Ireland has been relentlessly forced to contribute to her neighbour's
growth and sole profit.
I read but yesterday "Few people realise that the trade of Ireland
with Great Britain is equal to that of our trade with India, is
13,000,000 pounds greater than our trade with Germany, and 40,000,000
pounds greater than the whole of our trade with the United States."
How completely England has laid hands on all Irish resources is
made clear from a recent publication that Mr. Chamberlain's "Tariff
Commission" issued towards the end of 1912.
This document, entitled "The Economic Position of Ireland and its
relation to Tariff Reform," constitutes, in fact, a manifesto calling
for the release of Ireland from the exclusive grip of Great Britain.
Thus, for instance, in the section "External Trade of Ireland,"
we learn that Ireland exported in 1910, £63,400,000 worth of Irish
produce. Of this Great Britain took £52,600,000 worth, while some
£10,800,000 went either to foreign countries, or to British colonies,
over £4,000,000 going to the United States. Of these eleven million
pounds worth of Irish produce sent to distant countries, only £700,000
was shipped direct from Irish ports.
The remainder, more than £10,000,000, although the market it was
seeking lay chiefly to the West, had to be shipped East into and to
pay a heavy transit toll to that country for discharge, handling,
agency, commission, and reloading on British vessels in British ports
to steam back past the shores of Ireland it had just left. While
Ireland, indeed, lies in the "line of trade," between all Northern
Europe and the great world markets, she has been robbed of her trade
and artificially deprived of the very position assigned to her by
nature in the great tides of commercial intercourse. It is not only
the geographical situation and the trade and wealth of Ireland that
England has laid hands on for her own aggrandizement, but she has
also appropriated to her own ends the physical manhood of the island.
Just as the commerce has been forcibly annexed and diverted from
its natural trend, so the youth of Ireland has been fraudulently
appropriated and diverted from the defence of their own land to the
extension of the power and wealth of the realm that impoverished it
at home. The physical qualities of the Irish were no less valuable
than "Irish wool" to Empire building, provided always they were not
displayed in Ireland.
So long ago as 1613 we find a candid admission in the State papers
that the Irish were the better men in the field. "The next rebellion
whenever it shall happen, doth threaten more danger to the State than
any heretofore, when the cities and walled towns were always faithful;
(1) because they have the same bodies they ever had and therein they
had and have advantage of us; (2) from infancy they have been and
are exercised in the use of arms; (3) the realm by reason of the long
peace was never so full of youths; (4) that they are better soldiers
than heretofore, their continental employment in wars abroad assures
us, and they do conceive that their men are better than ours."
This testimony to Irish superiority, coming as it does from English
official sources just three hundred years ago, would be convincing
enough did it stand alone. But it is again and again reaffirmed by
English commanders themselves as the reason for their failure in some
particular enterprise. In all else they were superior to the Irish; in
arms, armaments, munitions, supplies of food and money, here the long
purse, settled organization and greater commerce of England, gave
her an overwhelming advantage. Moreover the English lacked the moral
restraints that imposed so severe a handicap on the Irish in their
resistance. They owned no scruple of conscience in committing any
crime that served their purpose. Beaten often in open fight by the
hardier bodies, stouter arms and greater courage of the Irishmen,
they nevertheless won the game by recourse to means that no Irishman,
save he who had joined them for purposes of revenge or in pursuit of
selfish personal aims, could possibly have adopted. The fight from
the first was an unequal one. Irish valour, chivalry, and personal
strength were matched against wealth, treachery and cunning. The Irish
better bodies were overcome by the worse hearts. As Curran put it in
1817--"The triumph of England over Ireland is the triumph of guilt
over innocence."
The Earl of Essex who came to Ireland in 1599 with one of the largest
forces of English troops that, up to then, had ever been dispatched
into Ireland (18,000 men), had ascribed his complete failure, in
writing to the Queen, to the physical superiority of the Irish:
"These rebels are more in number than your Majesty's army and have
(though I do unwillingly confess it), better bodies, and perfecter
use of their arms, than those men who your Majesty sends over."
The Queen, who followed the war in Ireland with a swelling wrath on
each defeat, and a growing fear that the Spaniards would keep their
promise to land aid to the Irish princes, O'Neill and O'Donnell,
issued "instructions" and a set of "ordinances" for the conduct of the
war in Ireland, which, while enjoining recourse to the usual methods
outside the field of battle--(i.e. starvation, "politic courses,"
assassination of leaders; and the sowing of dissension by means of
bribery and promises), required for the conflict, that her weaker
soldiers should be protected against the onslaught of the unarmoured
Irishmen by head pieces of steel. She ordered "every soldier to be
enforced to wear a murrion, because the enemy is encouraged by
the advantage of arms to _come to the sword_ wherein he commonly
prevaileth."
One of the generals of the Spanish King, Philip III, who came to
Ireland in the winter of 1601 with a handful of Spanish troops (200
men), to reinforce the small expedition of de Aguila in Kinsale, thus
reported on the physical qualities of the Irish in a document that
still lies in Salamanca in the archives of the old Irish College. it
was written by Don Pedro De Zubiarr on the 16th of January, 1602, on
his return to the Asturias. Speaking of the prospect of the campaign,
he wrote: "If we had brought arms for 10,000 men we could have had
them, for they are very eager to carry on the war against the English.
The Irish are very strong and well shaped, accustomed to endure hunger
and toil, and very courageous in fight."
Perhaps the most vivid testimony to the innate superiority of the
Irishman as a soldier is given in a typically Irish challenge issued
in the war of 1641. The document has a lasting interest for it
displays not only the "better body" of the Irishman of that day, but
something of his better heart as well, that still remains to us.
One Parsons, an English settler in Ireland, had written to a friend
to say that, among other things, the head of the Colonel of an Irish
regiment then in the field against the English, would not be allowed
to stick long on its shoulders. The letter was intercepted by the very
regiment itself, and a captain in it, Felim O'Molloy, wrote back to
Parsons:
"I will do this if you please: I will pick out sixty men and fight
against one hundred of your choice men if you do but pitch your camp
one mile out of your town, and then if you have the victory, you may
threaten my Colonel; otherwise, do not reckon your chickens before
they are hatched."
The Anglo-Saxon preferred "politic courses" to accepting the Irish
soldier's challenge, even where all the advantage was conceded by
the Irishman to his foe and all the risks, save that of treachery (a
very necessary precaution in dealing with the English in Ireland),
cheerfully accepted by the Celt.
This advantage of the "better bodies" the Irish retained beyond all
question up to the Famine. It was upon it alone that the Wexford
peasantry relied in 1798, and with and by it alone that they again and
again, armed with but pike and scythe swept disciplined regiments of
English mercenaries in headlong rout from the field.
This physical superiority of his countrymen was frequently referred to
by O'Connell as one of the forces he relied on. With the decay of all
things Irish that has followed the Famine, these physical attributes
have declined along with so much else that was typical of the nation
and the man.
It could not to-day be fearlessly affirmed that sixty Irishmen were
more than a match for one hundred Englishmen; yet depleted as it is
by the emigration of its strongest and healthiest children, by growing
sickness and a changed and deteriorated diet the Irish race still
presents a type, superior physically, intellectually and morally to
the English. It was on Irish soldiers that the English chiefly relied
in the Boer War, and it is no exaggeration to say that could all
the Irishmen in the ranks of the British army have been withdrawn, a
purely British force would have failed to end the war and the Dutch
would have remained masters of the field in South Africa.
It was the inglorious part of Ireland to be linked with those "methods
of barbarism" she herself knew only too well, in extinguishing the
independence of a people who were attacked by the same enemy and
sacrificed to the same greed that had destroyed her own freedom.
Unhappy, indeed, is it for mankind, as for her own fate and honour
that Ireland should be forced by dire stress of fortune to aid her
imperial wrecker in wrecking the fortune and freedom of brave men
elsewhere.
That these physical qualities of Irishmen, even with a population now
only one tenth that of Great Britain are still of value to the empire,
Mr. Churchill's speech on the Home Rule Bill made frankly clear
(February, 1913). We now learn that the First Lord of the Admiralty
has decided to establish a new training squadron, "with a base
at Queenstown," where it is hoped to induce with the bribe of
"self-government" the youth of Cork and Munster to again man the
British fleet as they did in the days of Nelson, and we are even told
that the prospects of brisk recruiting are "politically favourable."
Carthage got her soldiers from Spain, her seamen, her slingers from
the Balearic Islands and the coasts of Africa, her money from the
trade of the world. Rome beat her, but she did not leave a defeated
Carthage to still levy toll of men and mind on those external sources
of supply.
Germany must fight, not merely to defeat the British fleet of to-day,
but to neutralize the British fleet of to-morrow. Leave Ireland to
Great Britain and that can never be. Neutralize Ireland and it is
already accomplished.
One of the conditions of peace, and _for this reason_ the most
important condition of peace that a victorious Germany must impose
upon her defeated antagonist is that Ireland shall be separated
and erected into an independent European State under international
guarantees. England, obviously would resist such conditions to the
last, but then the last has already come before England would consent
to any peace save on terms she dictated.
A defeated England is a starved England. She would have to accept
whatever terms Germany imposed unless those terms provoked external
intervention on behalf of the defeated power.
The prize Germany seeks to win from victory is not immediate
territorial aggrandizement obtained from annexing British possessions,
not a heavy money indemnity wrung from British finance and trade
(although this she might have), but German freedom throughout the
world on equal terms with Britain. This is a prize worth fighting for,
for once gained the rest follows as a matter of course.
German civilization released from the restricted confines and unequal
position in which Britain had sought to pen it must, of itself win
its way to the front, and of necessity acquire those favoured spots
necessary to its wide development.
"This is the meaning of his (the German's) will for power; safety from
interference with his individual and national development. Only one
thing is left to the nations that do not want to be left behind in the
peaceful rivalry of human progress--that is to become the equals of
Germany in untiring industry, in scientific thoroughness, in sense of
duty, in patient persistence, in intelligent, voluntary submission
to organization." (History of German Civilization, by Ernst Richard,
Columbia University, New York.)
Once she had reduced Great Britain to an opposition based on _peaceful
rivalry_ in human progress, Germany would find the path of success
hers to tread on more than equal terms, and many fields of expansion
now closed would readily open to German enterprise without that
people incurring and inflicting the loss and injury that an attempted
invasion of the great self-governing dominions would so needlessly
involve. Most of the British self-governing colonies are to-day great
States, well able to defend themselves from overseas attack. The
defeat of the British navy would make scarcely at all easier the
landing of German troops in, say, Australia, South Africa or New
Zealand. A war of conquest of those far-distant regions would be,
for Germany, an impossible and a stupidly impossible task.
A defeated England could not cede any of these British possessions as
a price of peace, for they are inhabited by free men who, however
they might deplore a German occupation of London, could in no wise be
transferred by any pact or treaty made by others, to other rule than
that of themselves. Therefore, to obtain those British dominions,
Germany would have to defeat not only England, but after that to begin
a fresh war, or a series of fresh wars, at the ends of the earth, with
exhausted resources and probably a crippled fleet.
The thing does not bear inspection and may be dismissed from our
calculation.
The only territories that England could cede by her own act to
a victorious power are such as, in themselves, are not suited
to colonization by a white race. Doubtless, Germany would seek
compensation for the expense of the war in requiring the transfer
of some of these latter territories of the British Crown to herself.
There are points in tropical Africa, in the East, islands in the ocean
to-day flying the British flag that might, with profit to German
trade and influence, be acquired by a victorious Germany. But none of
these things in itself, not all of them put together, would meet the
requirements of the German case, or ensure to Germany that future
tranquil expansion and peaceful rivalry the war had been fought to
secure. England would be weakened, and to some extent impoverished by
a war ending with such results; but her great asset, her possession
beyond price would still be hers--her geographical position. Deprive
her to-day, say of the Gold Coast, the Niger, Gibraltar, even of
Egypt, impose a heavy indemnity, and while Germany would barely have
recouped herself for the out-of-pocket losses of the war, England in
fact would have lost nothing, and ten years hence the Teuton would
look out again upon the same prospect, a Europe still dominated beyond
the seas by the Western islanders.
The work would have to be done all over again. A second Punic war
would have to be fought with this disadvantage--that the Atlantic
Sicily would be held and used still against the Northern Rome, by the
Atlantic Carthage.
A victorious Germany, in addition to such terms as she may find
it well to impose in her own immediate financial or territorial
interests, must so draft her peace conditions as to preclude her great
antagonist from ever again seriously imperilling the freedom of the
seas. I know of no way save one to make sure the open seas. Ireland,
in the name of Europe, and in the exercise of European right to
free the seas from the over-lordship of one European island, must be
resolutely withdrawn from British custody. A second Berlin Conference,
an international Congress must debate, and clearly would debate, with
growing unanimity the German proposal to restore Ireland to Europe.
The arguments in favour of that proposal would soon become so clear
from the general European standpoint, that save England and her
defeated allies, no power would oppose it.
Considerations of expediency no less than naval, mercantile, and
moral claims would range themselves on the side of Germany and a free
Ireland. For a free Ireland, not owned and exploited by England, but
appertaining to Europe at large, its ports available in a sense they
never can be while under British control for purposes of general
navigation and overseas intercourse, would soon become of such
first-rank importance in continental affairs as to leave men stupified
by the thought that for five hundred years they had allowed one
sole member of their community the exclusive use and selfish
misappropriation of this, the most favoured of European islands.
Ireland would be freed, not because she deserved or asked for freedom,
not because English rule has been a tyranny, a moral failure, a
stupidity and sin against the light; not because Germany cared for
Ireland, but because her withdrawal from English control appeared to
be a very necessary step in international welfare and one very needful
to the progress of German and European expansion.
An Ireland released from the jail in which England had confined
her would soon become a populous State of possibly 10,000,000 to
12,000,000 people, a commercial asset of Europe in the Atlantic of the
utmost general value, one holding an unique position between the Old
and New Worlds, and possibly an intellectual and moral asset of no
mean importance. This, and more, a sovereign Ireland means to Europe.
Above all it means security of transit, equalizing of opportunity,
freedom of the seas--an assurance that the great waterways of the
ocean should no longer be at the absolute mercy of one member of the
European family, and that one the least interested in general European
welfare.
The stronger a free Ireland grew the surer would be the guarantee that
the rôle of England "consciously assumed for many years past, to be
an absolute and wholly arbitrary judge of war and peace" had gone for
ever, and that at last the "balance of power" was kept by fair weight
and fair measure and not with loaded scales.