sustain international right. No law is possible without an active
public opinion for its enforcement, least of all international law.
Without it the League of Nations is a farce. You might as well have a
wooden cannon; however splendidly mounted it may be, however imposing
its appearance, every one knows that the moment it is fired it will
burst. Unless the world is taught to respect its authority, it will
become a butt of derision. It is no use keeping up pretences. Pretences
never delude events. The League of Nations may gather together
representatives of all the great powers of the earth, and yet it may
be a futile, barren, costly nothing unless it has behind it the spirit
of the people who constitute those nations. The real danger of the
moment is lest the League of Nations should become a mere make-believe,
whilst the same old intrigues, the same old schemes, the same old
international greed and hatred, should be working their will freely
outside. The decision of the League of Nations has been, within the
last two or three years, openly flouted by a member of that league,
a member which owes its national independence to the treaty which
founded that league. Another nation, one of the principal authors of
the league, refuses to refer a question in which is it concerned, and
in which Europe is concerned, to the arbitrament of the league. Both
these nations prefer to resort to force. The rest of the world looks
on feebly with indifference, accepting the rebuff to their league in
each case. Why? Because there is no public opinion in the recalcitrant
countries to bring pressure to bear on the respective governments,
and there is no public opinion strong enough outside to exercise the
necessary insistence.
The churches alone can remedy this. There ought to be an international
movement of all the churches, Catholic and Protestant, Protestant
and Catholic. I know it is difficult to compass. The divisions in
Christendom are too often fatal to common action for the attainment of
common aims. They ought to be overcome. They must be overcome. There
was a time in the Middles Ages when religion exercised a direct as
well as an indirect influence in the domain of government and social
relations. It helped to win for Englishmen their great charter. It
gradually emancipated the serfs. It preserved the peace of Europe many
a time when it was gravely imperilled by the quarrels of kings. In
the days of Puritanism, and the days of the Covenant, the partnership
between religion and politics won for us the two great boons of
parliamentary liberty and liberty of conscience. When Methodism spurred
the conscience of England, its influence was felt in the political
movement that emancipated the slaves throughout the British Empire.
That was one of the greatest feats of disinterested righteousness ever
exhibited by a nation. The tasks awaiting religion to-day in the sphere
of government are even greater--emancipation of the worker from the
tyrannies of economic greed, the saving of the nation from the curse of
alcohol, and the spreading of the angels' message heard on the hills
of Bethlehem until the obdurate heart of man shall at last re-echo it:
"Peace on earth and goodwill amongst men."
II
EUROPE STILL ARMING
Marshal Foch once told me that he considered the German army of 1914
the finest army the world ever saw, in numbers, organisation, training,
and equipment.
What set that army in motion?
Much has been written and spoken as to the origin of the Great War, and
as to who and what was responsible for so overwhelming a cataclysm. No
one ever believed that it was the assassination of a royal archduke.
Some said it was the working out of the pan-German scheme to rule the
earth; some contended it was the German fear of the growing power of
Russia, the nervous apprehension of what looked like an encircling
movement by Russia, France and Britain.
The great French marshal's dictum is the real explanation. Unless due
weight is given to this outstanding fact the diplomatic muddle of July,
1914, becomes unintelligible.
Were it not that the German army was more perfect and more potent than
either the French or the Russian army--were it not that every German
officer was convinced that the German military machine was superior
to all its rivals--there would have been no war, whatever emperors,
diplomatists, or statesmen said, thought, or intended.
All nations have their ambitions, but they are not tempted to impose
them upon their neighbours if the hazard is too obviously great. But
a sense of overpowering force behind national aims is a constant
incitement to recklessness, to greed, and to ambitious patriotism.
The more one examines, in the growing calm, the events of July, 1914,
the more one is impressed with the shrinking of the nominal rulers
of the attacking empires as they approached the abyss, and with the
relentless driving onward of the military organisation behind these
terror-stricken dummies.
Navies are essentially defensive weapons. No capital in the world
can be captured by navies alone, and no country can be annexed or
invaded by a fleet. But armies are grabbing machines. A transcendent
army has always led to aggression. No country can resist the lure of
an easy military triumph paraded before its eyes for two successive
generations.
The inference is an obvious one. To ensure peace on earth nations must
disarm their striking forces. Without disarmament, pacts, treaties, and
covenants are of no avail. They are the paper currency of diplomacy.
That is the reason why all the friends of peace are filled with despair
when they see nations still arming and competing in armies whilst
trusting to mere words and signatures to restrain the irresistible
impetus of organised force.
A statistical survey of European armies to-day is calculated to cause
alarm. Europe has not learnt the lesson of the war. It has rather
drawn a wrong inference from that calamity. There are more men under
arms in Europe to-day than there were in 1913-14, with none of the
justification or excuse which could be pleaded in those days.
In pre-war times the statesmen of each country could make a
parliamentary case for their military budgets by calling attention to
the menace of prodigious armies across their frontiers. Germany and
Austria built up great armaments because their frontiers were open
to the attack of two great military powers who had engaged to pool
their resources in the event of war. France and Russia raised huge
armies because Germany possessed the most redoubtable army in the
world, and could rely in the case of war upon the assistance of the
not inconsiderable forces of the Austrian empire. And both Austria
and France had always the uncertain factor of Italy, with her army of
3,000,000, to reckon with.
But since the war these mutual excuses no longer exist. The two great
military empires of Central Europe have disappeared. Germany, which
before the war had a peace establishment of 800,000 men and reserves
running into millions, has to-day a total army of 100,000 men--about
one-third the size of the Polish army. The formidable German equipment
which for four years pounded the cities and villages of northern France
to dust is either destroyed or scattered for display amongst the towns
and villages of the victors. The Austrian army, which had in 1913-14
a peace establishment of 420,000 men and a reserve of two or three
millions of trained men, has to-day been reduced to a tiny force of
30,000 men.
In spite of these facts France has still an army of 736,000 men now
under arms, with a trained reserve of two or three millions more. She
is strengthening and developing her air force as if she feared--or
contemplated--an immediate invasion. In 1914 France had an air force of
400 aëroplanes; to-day she has 1,152.[1] But numbers signify little.
The size, the power, and the purpose of the machines signify much.
Amongst the 1,152 air machines of to-day will be found bombers of a
destructiveness such as was not dreamt of in 1914.
Should human folly drift once more into war these preparations are
full of evil omen as to the character of that conflict. A single bomb
dropped from one of the new bombers contains more explosive material
than one hundred of those carried by the old type. And the size of the
machine and of its bombs is growing year by year. Where is it to stop?
And what is it all for? Where is the enemy? Where is the menace which
demands such gigantic military developments? Not one of the neighbours
of France has to-day a force which reaches one-fourth the figures
of her formidable army. Germany no longer affords a decent pretext.
The population of Germany is equal to the aggregate population of
Poland, Rumania, Jugo-Slavia, and Czecho-Slovakia, but her army barely
numbers one-seventh of the aggregate peace establishment of these four
countries. Rumania alone, with a population of 15,000,000, has an army
twice the size of that allowed by the Treaty of Versailles to Germany
with her population of 60,000,000. These countries have in addition
to their standing armies reserve forces of millions of trained men,
whilst the young men of Germany are no longer permitted to train in
the use of arms. Her military equipment is destroyed, and her arsenals
and workshops are closely inspected by Allied officers lest a fresh
equipment should be clandestinely produced. An army of 700,000 is,
therefore, not necessary in order to keep Germany within bounds.
The only other powerful army in Europe is the Russian army. It is
difficult to gather any reliable facts about Russia. The mists that
arise from that unhealthy political and economic swamp obscure and
distort all vision. The statistics concerning her army vary according
to the point of view of the person who cites them. The latest figure
given by the Russians themselves is 800,000. On paper that indicates
as formidable a force as that possessed by the French. But the events
of the past few years show clearly that the Russian army is powerful
only for defence, and that it is valueless for purposes of invasion. It
has neither the transport that gives mobility nor the artillery that
makes an army redoubtable in attack. The Polish invasion of 1923 was a
comedy, and as soon as the Poles offered the slightest resistance the
Bolsheviks ran back to their fastnesses without striking a Parthian
blow at their pursuers. The state of Russian arsenals and factories
under Bolshevism is such that any attempt to re-equip these armies must
fail. The Russian army, therefore, affords no justification for keeping
up armaments in Europe on the present inflated scale. The fact is that
Europe is thoroughly frightened by its recent experience, and, like all
frightened things, does not readily listen to reason, and is apt to
resort to expedients which aggravate the evils which have terrified it.
Militarism has reduced it to its present plight, and to save itself
from a similar disaster in future it has become more militarist than
ever. Every little state bristles with guns to scare off invaders.
Meanwhile no country in Europe pays its way, except Britain, with her
reduced army and navy. But by means of loans and inflated currencies
they all, even the smallest of them, contrive to maintain larger armies
than Frederick the Great or the Grand Monarque ever commanded in their
most triumphant years. And the cost of armaments to-day has grown
vastly out of proportion to the numbers of the units that compose them.
France--in many ways the richest country in Europe--displays a gaping
and a growing rent in her national finance which has to be patched up
by paper. The deficit grows in spite of the fact that a large part of
her army is quartered on Germany to the detriment of reparations, and
that the German contribution conceals much of the cost of that large
army.
A good deal of the borrowing is attributable to the cost of repairing
her devastated area, but the burden of maintaining so huge an army is
responsible for a considerable share of the deficiency. The economic
recovery of Europe is seriously retarded by the cost of the new
militarism. The old continent is throwing to the dogs of war with both
hands the bread that should feed her children. One day those dogs will,
in their arrogant savagery, turn upon the children and rend them.
_Algeciras, December 26th, 1922._
FOOTNOTE:
[1] 1,152 refers to when this chapter was written, _i. e._, January
6th, 1923. The figure has increased since then.
III
THE ERUPTION IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
The shores of the Mediterranean have from time immemorial been the
scene of eruptions and earthquakes. They generally break out without
warning. Sometimes they are devastating in their effects, destroying
life and property over wide areas and on a vast scale. Sometimes they
provide a brilliant spectacular display, terrifying in appearance, but
not causing much destruction. To which of these two categories does the
last eruption of Mussolini belong? To drop hot cinders in the Balkans
is a dangerous experiment. The soil is everywhere soaked with naphtha
and it floats about in uncharted pools and runlets which easily catch
fire. A cinder flung from Vienna started a conflagration which spread
over continents. That was only nine years ago. The ground is still
hot--the smoke blinds and stifles. You cannot see clearly or breathe
freely. Now and again there is a suspicious ruddiness in the banks of
smoke which proves that the fire is not yet out. And yet there are
statesmen flinging burning faggots about with reckless swagger.
The temper of Europe may be gauged from the reception accorded to these
heedless pyrotechnics on the part of national leaders by their own
countrymen. Every time it occurs, whether in France, Italy or Turkey,
and whether it be Poincaré, Mussolini, or Mustapha Kemal who directs
the show, applause greets the exhibition. I remember the first days
of the Great War. There was not a belligerent capital where great and
enthusiastic crowds did not parade the streets to cheer for war. In
those days men did not know what war meant. Their conception of it
was formed from the pictures of heroic--and always victorious--feats,
hung in national galleries and reproduced in the form of the cheap
chromos, engravings, and prints, which adorn the walls in every cottage
throughout most lands. The triumphant warriors on horseback with the
gleaming eye and the flourishing sabre are their own countrymen; the
poor vanquished under the crashing hoofs are the foe. Hurrah for
more pictures! The Crown Prince denies that he ever used the phrase
"This jolly war." His denial ought to be accepted in the absence of
better proof than is yet forthcoming as to the statement ever having
been made. But the phrase represented the temper of millions in those
fateful days. It used to be said that in wars one lot cheered and
the other fought. But the cheering mobs who filled the streets in
August were filling the trenches in September, and multitudes were
filling graves ere the year was out. But when they cheered they had no
realisation of the actualities of war. They idealised it. They only saw
it in pictures.
But the cheerers of to-day know what war means. France lost well over a
million lives in the last fight. Italy lost 600,000, and there are men
in every workshop in both countries who know something of the miseries
as well as the horrors of war and can tell those who do not. What,
then, accounts for the readiness, at the slightest provocation, to rush
into all the same wretchedness over again? The infinite capacity of
mankind for deluding itself. Last time, it is true, it was a ghastly
affair. This time it will be an easy victory. Then you had to fight
a perfectly armed Germany, or Austria; now it is a very small affair
indeed--in one case a disarmed Germany which cannot fight, or, in the
other case, a miserable little country like Greece with no Army or
Navy to talk of. So hurrah for the guns! A bloodless victory, except,
of course, to the vanquished. More pictures for the walls to show our
children what terrible people we are when provoked!
This episode may end peaceably, but it was a risk to take, and quite
an unnecessary risk under the circumstances of the case. Italy was
indignant, and naturally indignant, at the murder of her emissaries
in cold blood on Greek territory and, although it took place in a
well-known murder area--on the Albanian border where comitadjis and
other forms of banditti reign--still, Greece was responsible for
giving adequate protection to all the Boundary Commissioners who were
operating within her frontiers. Italy is, therefore, entitled to demand
stern reparation for this outrage. This Greece promptly concedes. Not
merely has Greece shown her readiness to pay a full indemnity, but
she has offered to salute the Italian flag by way of making amends
for the offence involved to the Italian nation in this failure to
protect Italian officers transacting legitimate business on Greek
soil. Mussolini's answer to the Greek acknowledgment of liability
is to bombard a defenceless town, kill a few unarmed citizens, and
enter into occupation of a Greek island. Does any one imagine, if the
incident had occurred on French soil, and the French Government had
displayed the same willingness to express regret and offer reparation,
that, without further parley, he would have bombarded Ajaccio? Or,
had it been Britain, would he have shelled Cowes and occupied the
Isle of Wight? But Greece has no Navy. That, I suppose, alters the
merits of the case! Force is still the supreme arbiter of right and
wrong in international affairs in Europe. It is worth noting how a new
code of international law is coming into existence since the War. The
French armies invade a neighbour's territory, occupy it, establish
martial law, seize and run the railways, regulate its Press, deport
tens of thousands of its inhabitants, imprison or shoot down all who
resist, and then proclaim that this is not an act of war. It is only
a peaceful occupation to enforce rights under a peace treaty. Signor
Mussolini shells a town belonging to a country with whom he is at
peace, and forcibly occupies part of its territory, and then solemnly
declares that it is not an act of war, but just a reasonable measure
of diplomatic precaution. Once force decides the issue it also
settles the rules. There was a time when English and Spaniards fought
each other in the West Indies whilst their Governments at home were
ostensibly at peace. And French and English fought in India without any
diplomatic rupture between Versailles and St. James's. But in those
days these lands were very remote and the control of the centre over
events at these distances was intermittent and occasionally feeble.
And sometimes it suited Governments to ignore what was taking place on
the fringe of Empire. But even in those days an attack on the homeland
meant war, and it would mean war to-day were the attacked countries not
powerless. I have heard it said that there is one law for the rich and
another for the poor. There is no doubt one international law for the
strong and another for the weak.
What about the League of Nations? This is pre-eminently a case for
action under the Covenant. Italy and Greece are both parties. How
can they, consistently with the terms of the Treaty they so recently
signed, refuse to leave this dispute to be dealt with by the League?
Italy had a special part in drafting the Treaty and in imposing it
upon Germany and Austria. She cannot now in decency repudiate its
clauses. It is suggested in some quarters that, the dignity of Italy
being involved in the dispute, she cannot possibly consent to leave
it in the hands of the League. That surely is a fatal limitation on
the activities of the League of Nations. Every dispute involving right
implicates the national honour and as every nation is the judge of
its own honour, ultimately all differences would be ruled out of the
Covenant which it did not suit one country or the other to refer. The
League is not allowed to touch Reparations. If this quarrel also is
excluded from the consideration of the League, it is no exaggeration
to say that this valuable part of the Treaty of Versailles becomes a
dead letter. It is one of the gross ironies of the European situation
that the Treaty of Versailles is being gradually torn to pieces by the
countries which are not only the authors but have most to gain by its
provisions. France has already repudiated the first and most important
part of the Treaty by declaring that it will refer no question arising
between herself and her neighbours under the Treaty itself to the
League of Nations. She has further invaded and occupied her neighbour's
territory in defiance of the provisions of the Treaty. If Italy also
declines to respect the first part of that Treaty, then nothing is
left of it except what it suits nations to enforce or obey. And if the
framers do not owe allegiance to the Treaty they drafted, why should
those who only accepted it under duress bow to its behests? The victors
are busily engaged in discrediting their own charter. It would have
been a more honourable course for the nations to pursue if they had
followed the example of America by refusing to ratify the whole Treaty.
To sign a contract and then to pick and choose for execution the parts
of it that suit you is unworthy of the honour of great nations which
profess to lead the world towards a higher civilisation.
There are ugly rumours of possible complications arising out of this
unfortunate incident. It does not need a vivid imagination to foretell
one or two possible results of a disastrous character. In this country
they would be deplored, not only for their effect on European peace,
but for the damage they must inevitably inflict on the best interests
of Italy. She has had enough of victory. What she needs now--what we
all need--is peace. There is no country which has more genuine goodwill
for Italy's prosperity and greatness than Great Britain. It is an old
and tried friendship. The two nations have many common interests: they
have no rivalries. Hence, the deep anxiety of Britain that Italy should
not commit a mistake which will mortgage her future even if it does not
imperil her present.
There are no doubt strategic advantages for Italy in holding Corfu.
It enables them to "bottle up" the Adriatic. But it is Greek and it
menaces Slavonia, and this introduction of foreign elements into the
body of a State for strategic reasons always provokes inflammatory
symptoms injurious to the general health of a community. They tend
to become malignant and sooner or later they bring disaster. Bosnia
ultimately proved to be the death of the Austrian Empire. When the
Bosnian cancer became active the evil of Italia Irredenta broke out
once more, and between them they laid the Empire of the Hapsburgs in
the dust. Italy has played a great part in the work of civilisation,
and so has Greece. They have still greater tasks awaiting them--one on
a great and the other necessarily on a smaller scale. It would be a
misfortune to humanity if they spent their fine enthusiasm on hating
and thwarting each other.
_London, September 3rd, 1923._
IV
IS THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS A SUCCESS?
Is the League of Nations a success? It is impossible to answer the
question candidly without giving offence to rival partisans. If you
indicate successes already placed to the account of the League,
opponents deny or minimise these triumphs, and suggest that you are
blinded by attachment to a chimera. If you point to shortcomings, the
extreme zealots of the League get angry and hint that you are a secret
enemy.
I mean nevertheless to attempt an answer, for much depends on a
fearless examination of progress made or missed.