THE ENEMY OF PEACE
I believe England to be the enemy of European peace, and that until
her "mastery of the sea" is overmastered by Europe, there can be
no peace upon earth or goodwill among men. Her claim to rule the
seas, and the consequences, direct and indirect, that flow from its
assertion are the chief factors of international discord that now
threaten the peace of the world.
In order to maintain that indefensible claim she is driven to
aggression and intrigue in every quarter of the globe; to setting
otherwise friendly peoples by the ears; to forming "alliances" and
ententes, to dissolving friendships, the aim always being the old one,
_divide et impera_.
The fact that Europe to-day is divided into armed camps is mainly due
to English effort to retain that mastery of the sea. It is generally
assumed, and the idea is propagated by English agencies, that Europe
owes her burden of armaments to the antagonism between France and
Germany, to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine by France, and the spirit and
hope of a _revanche_ thereby engendered. But this antagonism has long
ceased to be the chief factor that moulds European armaments.
Were it not for British policy, and the unhealthy hope it proffers
France would ere this have resigned herself, as the two provinces
have done, to the solution imposed by the war of 1870. It is England
and English ambition that beget the state of mind responsible for
the enormous growth of armaments that now over-shadows continental
civilization. Humanity, hemmed in in Central Europe by a forest of
bayonets and debarred all egress to the light of a larger world by a
forbidding circle of dreadnoughts, is called to peace conferences and
arbitration treaties by the very power whose fundamental maxim of rule
ensures war as the normal outlook for every growing nation of the Old
World.
If Europe would not strangle herself with her own hands she must
strangle the sea serpent whose coils enfold her shores.
Inspect the foundation of European armaments where we will, and we
shall find that the master builder is he who fashioned the British
Empire. It is that empire, its claim to universal right of pre-emption
to every zone and region washed by the waves and useful and necessary
for the expansion of the white races, and its assertion of a right to
control at will all the seas of all the world that drives the peoples
of Europe into armed camps. The policy of the Boer War is being tried
on a vaster scale against Europe. Just as England beat the Boers by
concentration camps and not by arms, by money and not by men, so she
seeks to-day to erect an armourplate barrier around the one European
people she fears to meet in the field, and to turn all Central Europe
into a vast concentration camp. By use of the longest purse she has
already carried this barrier well towards completion. One gap remains,
and it is to make sure that this opening, too, shall be closed that
she now directs all the force of her efforts. Here the longest purse
is of less avail, so England draws upon another armoury. She appeals
to the longest tongue in history--the longest and something else.
In order to make sure the encompassing of Europe with a girdle of
steel it is necessary to circle the United States with a girdle of
lies. With America true to the great policy of her great founder,
an America, "the friend of all powers but the ally of none," English
designs against European civilization must in the end fail. Those
plans can succeed only by active American support, and to secure this
is now the supreme task and aim of British stealth and skill. Every
tool of her diplomacy, polished and unpolished, from the trained
envoy to the boy scout and the minor poet has been tried in turn. The
pulpit, the bar, the press; the society hostess, the Cabinet Minister
and the Cabinet Minister's wife, the ex-Cabinet Minister and the Royal
Family itself, and last, but not least, even "Irish nationality"--all
have been pilgrims to that shrine; and each has been carefully primed,
loaded, well aimed, and then turned full on the weak spots in the
armour of republican simplicity. To the success of these resources
of panic the falsification of history becomes essential and the
vilification of the most peace-loving people of Europe. The past
relations of England with the United States are to be blotted out,
and the American people who are by blood so largely Germanic, are to
be entrapped into an attitude of suspicion, hostility and resentment
against the country and race from whom they have received nothing
but good. Germany is represented as the enemy, not to England's
indefensible claim to own the seas, but to American ideals on the
American continent. Just as the Teuton has become the "enemy of
civilization" in the Old World because he alone has power, strength of
mind, and force of purpose to seriously dispute the British hegemony
of the seas, so he is assiduously represented as the only threat to
American hegemony of the New World.
This, the key note of the attack on Germany, is sounded from every
corner of the British Empire, wherever the Imperial editor, resting on
the labours of the lash he wields against the coloured toilers in mine
and camp, directs his eyes from the bent forms of these indentured
slaves of dividend to the erect and stalwart frames of the new Goths
who threaten the whole framework of Imperial dividend from across
the North Sea. From the _Times_ to the obscurest news-sheet of the
remotest corner of the British Dominions the word has gone forth.
The Monroe Doctrine, palladium of the Anglo-Saxon world empire, is
imperilled by German ambitions, and were it not for the British
fleet, America would be lost to the Americans. Wherever Englishmen are
gathered to-day their journals, appealing possibly to only a handful
of readers, assert that the function of the British fleet is to
exclude the European States, with Germany at their head, from
South America, not because in itself that is a right and worthy
end to pursue, but because that continent is earmarked for future
exploitation and control by their "kinsmen" of the United States,
and they need the support of those "kinsmen" in their battle against
Germany.
I need quote but a single utterance from the mass of seditious libels
of this character before me to show how widespread is the propaganda
of falsehood and how sustained is the effort being made to poison
the American mind against the only people in Europe England genuinely
fears, and therefore wholeheartedly hates.
The _Natal Mercury_ for instance, a paper written for the little town
of Durban and appealing to a population of only some 30,000 whites,
in a recent issue (March, 1913), devoted a leader to the approaching
"Peace Centennial" of 1914, to be held in commemoration of the signing
of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the second war between Great
Britain and the American people in 1814.
"After all, blood is thicker than water," quotes the Natal journal
with satisfaction, and after pointing out some latter day indications
of rapprochement between England and the United States, it goes on to
proclaim the chief function of the British navy and the claim thereby
established on the goodwill of America.
"We make mention of them because such incidents are likely to repeat
themselves more and more frequently in that competition for naval
supremacy in Europe which compels the United States to put her own
fleets into working order and to join in the work that England has
hitherto been obliged to perform _unaided_.
"It is England that polices the Seven Seas, and America has reaped no
small benefits from the _self-imposed task_, an aspect of the matter
to which every thoughtful American is alive. There is a real and
hearty recognition in the New World of the _silent barrier_ that Great
Britain has set up to what might become something more than a dream
of expansion into South America on the part of _one_ potent European
State. It is, indeed, hardly too much to say that the maintenance
of the Monroe Doctrine is at the present moment almost as fully
guaranteed by England as it is by the country that enunciated the
policy and is the chief gainer by it. It is a case in which a _silent
understanding_ is of far greater value than a formal compact that
'would serve as a target for casual discontent on this side or that'."
The article concludes by proclaiming "the precious permanence of an
unseen bond" and the lofty and enduring worth of "good faith mutually
acknowledged and the ultimate solidarity of mutual interests rightly
perceived." "The ultimate solidarity" aimed at by those who direct
these world-wide pronouncements is not one of mere sterile friendship
between the American and the British peoples. American friendship with
England is only worth having when it can be translated by world acts
into enmity against Germany.
It might truly be said of the British Empire to-day that where two or
three are gathered together, there hatred of Germany shall be in the
midst of them. Turn where he will, from the Colonies to England, from
England to her fleet, from the seas to the air, the Englishman lives
and moves and has his being in an atmosphere not of love but of
hatred. And this too, a hatred, fear, and jealousy of a people who
have never injured him, who have never warred upon him, and whose sole
crime is that they are highly efficient rivals in the peaceful rivalry
of commerce, navigation, and science.
We are told, for instance, in one of the popular London magazines
for January, 1913, in an article upon the financial grievances of
the British navy that were it not for Germany there would be to-day
another Spithead. "Across the North Sea is a nation that some fifty
years ago was so afraid of the British navy that it panicked itself
into building an iron-clad fleet.
"To-day, as the second naval power, its menace is too great for any
up-to-date Spithead mutiny to come off. But the pay question was
so acute that it is possibly only the Germans and their 'menace'
that saved us from the trouble." But while the "patriotism" of the
"lower-deck" may have been sufficiently stout to avert this peril,
the patriotism of the "quarter-deck" is giving us a specimen of its
quality that certainly could not be exhibited in any other country in
the world.
Even as I write I read in the "British Review" how Admiral Sir
Percy Scott attacks Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, dubs him the
"laughing-stock of the fleet," accuses him of publishing in his book
_The Betrayal_ a series of "deliberate falsehoods," and concludes by
saying that the gallant Admiral is "not a seaman."
And it is a fleet commanded by such Admirals as these that is to sweep
the German navy from the seas!
During the Crimean war the allied British and French navies
distinguished themselves by their signal failure to effect the
reduction of such minor fortresses as Sveaborg, Helsingfors, and
the fortified lighthouses upon the Gulf of Finland. Their respective
Admirals fired their severest broadsides into each other, and the
bombardment of the forts was silenced by the smart interchange of
nautical civilities between the two flagships. Napoleon III, who
sought an explanation of this failure of his fleet, was given a reply
that I cannot refrain from recommending to the British Admiralty
to-day. "Well, Sire," replied the French diplomatist, who knew the
circumstances, "both the Admirals were old women, but ours was at
least a lady." If British Admirals cannot put to sea without incurring
this risk, they might, at least, take the gunboat woman with them to
prescribe the courtesies of naval debate.
That England to-day loves America, no one who goes to the private
opinions of Englishmen, instead of to their public utterances, or the
interested eulogies of their press, can for a moment believe.
The old dislike is there, the old supercilious contempt for the
"Yankee" and all his ways. "God's Englishman" no more loves an
American citizen now than in 1846 when he seriously contemplated an
invasion of the United States, and the raising of the negro-slave
population against his "Anglo-Saxon kinsmen."
To-day, when we hear so much of the Anglo-Saxon Alliance it may be
well to revert to that page of history. For it will show us that if a
British premier to-day can speak as Mr. Asquith did on December 16th,
1912, in his reference to the late American Ambassador as "a great
American and a kinsman," one "sprung from a common race, speaking our
own language, sharing with us by birth as by inheritance not a few of
our most cherished traditions and participating when he comes here by
what I may describe as _his natural right in our domestic interests
and celebrations_," then this new-found kinship takes its birth not in
a sense of common race, indeed, but in a very common fear of Germany.
In the year 1846, the British army was engaged in robbing the Irish
people of their harvest in order that the work of the famine should
be complete and that the then too great population of Ireland should
be reduced within the limits "law and order" prescribed, either by
starvation or flight to America.
Fleeing in hundreds and thousands from the rule of one who claimed
to be their Sovereign, expelled in a multitude exceeding the Moors of
Spain, whom a Spanish king shipped across the seas with equal pious
intent, the fugitive Irish Nation found friendship, hope, and homes in
the great Celtic Republic of the West. All that was denied to them in
their own ancient land they found in a new Ireland growing up across
the Atlantic.
The hate of England pursued them here and those who dared to give help
and shelter. The United States were opening wide their arms to receive
the stream of Irish fugitives and were saying very harsh things of
England's infamous rule in Ireland. This could not be brooked. England
in those days had not invented the Anglo-Saxon theory of mankind, and
a united Germany had not then been born to vex the ineptitude of her
statesmen or to profit from the shortcomings of her tradesmen.
So the greatest Ministers of Queen Victoria seriously contemplated war
with America and naturally looked around for some one else to do the
fighting. The Duke of Wellington hoped that France might be played
on, just as in a later day a later Minister seeks to play France in a
similar rôle against a later adversary.[3]
[Footnote 3: Sir Edward Grey and the _Entente Cordiale_.]
The Mexicans, too, might be induced to invade the Texan frontier.
But a greater infamy than this was seriously planned. Again it is an
Irishman who tells the story and shows us how dearly the English loved
their trans-Atlantic "kinsmen" when there was no German menace to
threaten nearer home.
Writing from Carlsruhe, on January 26th, 1846, to his friend,
Alexander Spencer, in Dublin, Charles Lever said: "As to the war the
Duke[4] says he could smash the Yankees, and ought to do so while
France in her present humour and Mexico opens the road to invasion
from the South--not to speak of the terrible threat that Napier
uttered, that with two regiments of infantry and a field battery he'd
_raise the slave population in the United States_."
[Footnote 4: The Duke of Wellington: the report was brought to Lever
by the Marquis of Douro, the Duke's heir.]
The infamy of this suggestion cannot be surpassed. The brilliant
soldier who conceived it was the chivalrous Englishman who conquered
Scinde, one of the chief glories of the Britannic hierarchy of
soldier-saints.
The Government planning it was that of the late Queen Victoria with
the Duke of Wellington's advice, and the people against whom the
black-slave millions were to be loosed were the "kith and kin" of
those meditating this atrocious form of massacre. Truly, as an old
Irish proverb, old even in the days of Henry VIII. put it, "the pride
of France, the _treason of England_ and the warre of Ireland shall
never have end."
As a latter day witness of that treason, one who had suffered it from
birth to the prison cell, a dead Irishman speaks to us from the grave.
Michael Davitt in a letter to Morrison Davidson on August 2701, 1902,
thus summed up in final words what every Irishman feels in his heart:
"The idea of being ruled by Englishmen is to me the chief agony
of existence. They are a nation without faith, truth or conscience
enveloped in a panoplied pharisaism and an incurable hypocrisy. Their
moral appetite is fed on falsehood. They profess Christianity and
believe only in Mammon. They talk of liberty while ruling India and
Ireland against the principles of a constitution, professed as
a political faith, but prostituted to the interests of class and
landlord rule."
Have Englishmen in less than two generations substituted love for
the hate that Napier, Wellington, and the Queen's Ministers felt and
expressed in 1846 for the people of the United States? Is it love
to-day for America or fear of someone else that impels to the
"Arbitration Treaties" and the celebration of the "Hundred years of
Peace?"
The Anglo-American "Peace Movement" was to be but the first stage in
an "Anglo-Saxon Alliance," intended to limit and restrict all further
world changes, outside of certain prescribed continental limits, to
these two peoples alone on the basis of a new "Holy Alliance," whose
motto should be _Beati possidentes_.
Since England and America, either in fact or by reservation enjoy
almost all the desirable regions of the earth, why not bring about
a universal agreement to keep everyone in his right place, to stay
"just as we are," and to kindly refer all possible differences to an
"International Tribunal?"
Once again the British Bible was thrown into the scale, and the
unrighteousness of Germany, who did not see her way to join in the
psalm singing, was exposed in a spirit of bitter resignation and
castigated with an appropriate selection of texts. The Hague Tribunal
would be so much nicer than a war of armaments! With no reckless
rivalries and military expenditure there could be no question of the
future of mankind.
An idyllic peace would settle down upon the nations, contentedly
possessing each in its own share of the good things of life, and no
questionable ambitions would be allowed to disturb the buying and
selling of the smaller and weaker peoples. The sincerity of the wish
for universal arbitration can be best shown by England, when she,
or any of the Powers to whom she appeals, will consent to submit the
claim of one of the minor peoples she or they hold in subjection to
the Hague Tribunal. Let France submit Madagascar and Siam, or her
latest victim, Morocco, to the franchise of the Court. Let Russia
agree to Poland or Finland seeking the verdict of this bench of
appeal. Let England plead her case before the same high moral tribunal
and allow Ireland, Egypt, or India to have the law of her. Then, and
not until then, the world of little States and beaten peoples may
begin to believe that the Peace Crusade has some foundations in honour
and honesty--but not till then.
Germany has had the straightforwardness and manliness to protest that
she is still able to do her own shooting and that what she holds she
will keep, by force if need be, and what she wants she will, in her
own sure time, take, and by force too, if need be. Of the two cults
the latter is the simpler, sincerer, and certainly the less dishonest.
Irish-American linked with German-American keen-sighted hostility did
the rest. The rivalry of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft aided, and the
effort (for the time at any rate) has been wrecked, thereby plunging
England into a further paroxysm of religious despondency and grave
concern for German morals. This mood eventuated in Lord Haldane's
"week end" trip to Berlin. The voice was the voice of Jacob, in spite
of the hand of Esau. Mr. Churchill at Glasgow, showed the real hand
and the mess of pottage so amiably offered at Berlin bought no German
birthright. The Kreuz Zeitung rightly summed up the situation by
pointing out that "Mr. Churchill's testimony can now be advanced
as showing that the will of England alone comes in question as
the exponent of peace, and that England for many years past has
consciously assumed the rôle of an absolute and perfectly arbitrary
judge of war and peace. It seems to us all the more significant that
Mr. Churchill proposes also in the future to control, with the help of
the strong navies of the Dominions, the trade and naval movements of
all the Powers on the face of the earth--that is to say, his aim is to
secure a world monopoly for England." There has never been any other
thought in the English mind. As I said in Part I. of this paper,
"British interests are first the control of all the seas of all
the world in full military and commercial control. If this be not
challenged peace is permitted; to dispute it seriously means war."
Germany is driven by necessity to dispute it seriously and to overcome
it. She cannot get out to play her part in world life, _nay, she
cannot hope to ultimately maintain herself at home_ until that battle
has been fought and won.
Arrangements with England, detentes, understandings, call them what
you will, are merely parleys before the fight. The assault must be
delivered, the fortress carried, or else Germany, and with her
Europe, must resign the mission of the white races and hand over the
government and future of the world to one chosen people.
Europe reproduces herself yearly at the present time at the rate of
about five million souls. Some three-fifths of the number are to-day
absorbed into the life of the Continent, the balance go abroad and
principally to North America, to swell the English-speaking world.
Germany controls about one-fifth of Europe's natural annual increase,
and realising that emigration to-day means only to lose her people and
build up her antagonist's strength, she has for years now striven to
keep her people within German limits, and hitherto with successful
results far in excess of any achieved by other European States. But
the limit must be reached, and that before many years are past.
Where is Germany to find the suitable region, both on a scale and
under conditions of climate, health and soil that a people of say
90,000,000 hemmed in a territory little larger than France, will find
commensurate to their needs? No European people is in such plight.
Russia has the immense and healthy world of Siberia into which to
overflow. France, far from needing outlets, increases not at all, and
during 1911 showed an excess of close on 40,000 deaths over births.
For France the day of greatness is past. A French Empire, in any other
sense than the Roman one of commercial and military exploitation of
occupied territories and subjugated peoples is gone forever.
France has no blood to give except in war. French blood will not
colonize even the Mediterranean littoral. Italy is faced with
something of the same problem as Germany, but to a lesser extent. Her
surplus population already finds a considerable outlet in Argentina
and South Brazil, among peoples, institutions, and language largely
approximating to those left behind. While Italy has, indeed need of a
world policy as well as Germany, her ability to sustain a great part
abroad cannot be compared to that of the Teutonic people. Her claim is
not so urgent; her need not so insistent, her might inadequate.
The honesty and integrity of the German mind, the strength of the
German intellect, the skill of the German hand and brain, and justice
and vigour of German law, the intensity of German culture, science,
education and social development, these need a great and healthy field
for their beneficial display, and the world needs these things more
than it needs the British mastery of the seas. The world of European
life needs to-day, as it needed in the days of a decadent Roman
Empire, the coming of another Goth, the coming of the Teuton. The
interposing island in the North Sea alone intervenes. How to surmount
that obstacle, how to win the freedom of the "Seven Seas" for Europe
must be the supreme issue for Germany.
If she falls she is doomed to sterility. The supreme test of German
genius, of German daring, of German discipline and imagination lies
there.
Where Louis XIV., the Directory, and Napoleon failed, will the heirs
of Karl the Great see clearly?
And then, when that great hour has struck, will Germany, will Europe,
produce the statesman soldier who shall see that the key to ocean
freedom lies in that island beyond an island, whose very existence
Europe has forgotten?
Till that key is out from the Pirate's girdle, Germany may win a
hundred "Austerlitzes" on the Vistula, the Dnieper, the Loire, but
until she restores that key to Europe, to paraphrase Pitt, she may
"roll up that map of the world; it will not be wanted these fifty
years."