Title: The Myth of a Guilty Nation
Author: Nock, Albert Jay
Language: English
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THE MYTH OF A GUILTY NATION

BY

ALBERT JAY NOCK

("HISTORICUS")

[Illustration: Decoration]

NEW YORK B.W. HUEBSCH, INC. MCMXXII


COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
THE FREEMAN, INC.

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.

PRINTED IN U. S. A.



PREFACE


This book is made up of a series of articles originally published in the
_Freeman_. It was compiled to establish one point and only one, namely:
that the German Government was not solely guilty of bringing on the war.
I have not been at all concerned with measuring the German Government's
share of guilt, with trying to show that it was either great or small,
or that it was either less or more than that of any other Government or
association of Governments. All this is beside the point. I do not by
any means wish to escape the responsibility of saying that I think the
German Government's share of guilt in the matter is extremely small; so
small by comparison with that of the major Powers allied against
Germany, as to be inconsiderable. That is my belief, demonstrable as I
think by such evidence as has now become available to any candid person.
But this has nothing whatever to do with the subject-matter of this
volume. If the guilt of the German Government could be proved to be ten
times greater than it was represented to be by the publicity-bureaux of
the Allied Powers, the conclusion established in the following chapters
would still remain. Guilty as the German Government may have been;
multiply by ten any estimate that any person, interested or
disinterested, informed or uninformed, may put upon its guilt; the fact
remains that it was far, very far indeed, from being the only guilty
party concerned.

If there were no practical end to be gained by establishing this
conclusion, if one's purpose were only to give the German Government the
dubious vindication of a _tu quoque_, the effort would be hardly worth
making. But as I say at the outset, there is at stake an extremely
important matter, one that will unfavourably affect the peace of the
world for at least a generation--the treaty of Versailles. If the German
Government may not be assumed to be solely responsible for the war, this
treaty is indefensible; for it is constructed wholly upon that
assumption. It becomes, not a treaty, but a verdict pronounced after the
manner of Brennus, by a superior power which, without regard to justice,
arrogates to itself the functions of prosecutor, jury and judge.

It is probably superfluous to point out that this treaty, conceived in
the pure spirit of the victorious Apache, has, in practice, utterly
broken down. It has not worked and it will not work, because it sets at
defiance certain economic laws which are as inexorable as the law of
gravitation. The incidence of these laws was well understood and clearly
foretold, at the time of the peace-conference, by an informed minority
in Europe, notably by Mr. Maynard Keynes in his volume entitled "The
Economic Consequences of the Peace." In this country also, a minority,
sufficiently informed to know its right hand from its left in economic
affairs, stood aghast in contemplation of the ruinous consequences which
it perceived as inevitable under any serious attempt to put this vicious
instrument into operation. But both here and in Europe, this minority
was very small and uninfluential, and could accomplish nothing against
the ignorant and unreasoning bad temper which the politicians kept
aflame.

The treaty had therefore to go to the test of experiment; and of the
results of this, one need surely say nothing, for they are obvious. The
harder Germany tried to fulfill the conditions of the treaty, and the
nearer she came to doing so, the worse things went in all the countries
that were presumably to benefit by her sacrifice. The Central Empires
are, as the informed minority in all countries has been from the
beginning anxiously aware, the key-group in the whole of European
industry and commerce. If they must work and trade under unfavourable
conditions, they also thereby automatically impose correspondingly
unfavourable conditions upon the whole of Europe; and, correspondingly
unfavourable conditions are thereby in turn automatically set up
wherever the trade of Europe reaches--for example, in the United States.
There is now no possible doubt about this, for one has but to glance at
the enormous dislocations of international commerce, and the universal
and profound stagnation of industry, in order to prove it to one's
complete satisfaction. Germany wisely and far-sightedly made a sincere
and vigourous effort to comply with the conditions of the treaty; and by
so doing she has carried the rest of the world to the verge of economic
collapse. The damage wrought by the war was in general of a spectacular
and impressive type, and was indeed very great--no one would minimize
it--but the damage, present and prospective, wrought by the treaty of
peace is much greater and more far-reaching.

The political inheritors of those who made the peace are now extremely
uneasy about it. Their predecessors (including Mr. Lloyd George, who
still remains in office) had flogged up popular hatred against the
Central Empires at such a rate that when they took office they still
had, or thought they had, to court and indulge this hatred. Thus we
found Mr. Secretary Hughes, for example, in his first communication to
the German Government, laying it down that the basis of the Versailles
treaty was sound--that Germany was solely responsible for the war. He
spoke of it quite in the vein of Mr. Lloyd George, as a _chose jugée_.
After having promulgated the treaty with such immense ceremony, and
raised such preposterous and extravagant popular expectations on the
strength of it, the architects of the treaty bequeathed an exceedingly
difficult task to their successors; the task of letting the public down,
diverting their attention with this or that gesture, taking their mind
off their disappointments and scaling down their expectations, so that
in time it might be safe to let the Versailles treaty begin to sink out
of sight.

The task is being undertaken; the curious piece of mountebankery
recently staged in Washington, for example, was an ambitious effort to
keep the peoples, particularly those of Europe, hopeful, confiding and
diverted; and if economic conditions permit, if times do not become too
hard, it may succeed. The politicians can not say outright that the
theory of the Versailles treaty is dishonest and outrageous, and that
the only chance of peace and well-being is by tearing up the treaty and
starting anew on another basis entirely. They can not say this on
account of the exigencies of their detestable trade. The best that they
can do is what they are doing. They must wait until the state of public
feeling permits them to ease down from their uncompromising stand upon
the treaty. Gradually, they expect, the public will accustom itself to
the idea of relaxations and accommodations, as it sees, from day to day,
the patent impracticability of any other course; feelings will weaken,
asperities soften, hatreds die out, contacts and approaches of one kind
or another will take place; and finally, these public men or their
political inheritors will think themselves able to effect in an
unobtrusive way, such substantial modifications of the treaty of
Versailles as will amount to its annulment.

The process is worth accelerating by every means possible; and what I
have here done is meant to assist it. There are many persons in the
country who are not politicians, and who are capable and desirous of
approaching a matter of this kind with intellectual honesty. Quite
possibly they are not aware, many of them, that the Versailles treaty
postulates the sole responsibility of the German Government for bringing
on the war; undoubtedly they are not acquainted with such evidence as I
have here compiled to show that this assumption is unjust and erroneous.
Having read this evidence, they will be in a position to review the
terms of the Versailles treaty and reassess the justice of those terms.
They will also be able to understand the unwillingness, the inability,
of the German people to acquiesce in those terms; and they can
comprehend the slowness and difficulty wherewith peace and good feeling
are being re-established in Europe, and the extreme precariousness and
uncertainty of Europe's situation--and our own, in
consequence--throughout a future that seems longer than one cares to
contemplate.

The reader will perceive at once that this book is a mere compilation
and transcription of fact, containing not a shred of opinion or of any
original matter. On this account it was published anonymously in its
serial form, because it seemed to me that such work should be judged
strictly as it stands, without regard to the authority, or lack of
authority, which the compiler might happen to possess. Almost all of it
is lifted straight from the works of my friends Mr. Francis Neilson and
Mr. E. D. Morel. I earnestly hope--indeed, it is my chief motive in
publishing this book--that it may serve as an introduction to these
words. I can not place too high an estimate upon their importance to a
student of British and Continental diplomacy. They are, as far as I
know, alone in their field; nothing else can take their place. They are
so thorough, so exhaustive and so authoritative that I wonder at their
being so little known in the United States. Mr. Morel's works,[1] "Ten
Years of Secret Diplomacy," "Truth and the War," and "Diplomacy
Revealed," are simply indispensable. Mr. Neilson's book "How Diplomats
Make War,"[2] is not an easy book to read; no more are Mr. Morel's; but
without having read it no serious student can possibly do justice to the
subject.

ALBERT JAY NOCK

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy." $1.25. "Truth and the War." $1.25.
E. D. Morel. New York: B. W. Huebsch.

"Diplomacy Revealed." E. D. Morel. London, 8 & 9 Johnson's Court:
National Labour Press.

[2] "How Diplomats Make War." Francis Neilson. New York: B. W. Huebsch.
$2.00



THE MYTH OF A GUILTY NATION



I


The present course of events in Europe is impressing on us once more the
truth that military victory, if it is to stand, must also be
demonstrably a victory for justice. In the long run, victory must appeal
to the sense of justice in the conquered no less than in the conquerors,
if it is to be effective. There is no way of getting around this. Mr.
Gilbert K. Chesterton is right when he says that if the South had not
finally accepted the outcome of the Civil War as being on the whole
just, Lincoln would have been wrong in trying to preserve the Union;
which is only another way of expressing Lincoln's own homely saying that
nothing is ever really settled until it is settled right. The present
condition of Europe is largely due to the fact that the official
peacemakers have not taken into their reckoning the German people's
sense of justice. Their mistake--it was also Mr. Wilson's great
mistake--was in their disregard of what Bismarck called the
imponderabilia. The terms of the peace treaty plainly reflect this
mistake. That is largely the reason why the treaty is to-day inoperative
and worthless. That is largely why the Governments of Europe are
confronted with the inescapable alternative: they can either tear up the
treaty and replace it by an understanding based on justice, or they can
stick to the treaty and by so doing protract indefinitely the dismal
succession of wars, revolutions, bankruptcies and commercial
dislocations that the treaty inaugurated.

That is the situation; and it is a situation in which the people of the
United States have an interest to preserve--the primary interest of a
creditor, and also the interest of a trader who needs a large and stable
market. It is idle to suppose that American business can prosper so long
as Europe remains in a condition of instability and insolvency. Our
business is adjusted to the scale of a solvent Europe, and it can not be
readjusted without irreparable damage. Until certain matters connected
with the war are resolutely put under review, Europe can not be
reconstructed, and the United States can not be prosperous. The only
thing that can better our own situation is the resumption of normal
economic life in Europe; and this can be done only through a thorough
reconsideration of the injustices that have been put upon the German
people by the conditions of the armistice and the peace treaty.

Of these injustices, the greatest, because it is the foundation for all
the rest, is the imputation of Germany's sole responsibility for the
war. The German people will never endure that imputation; they should
never be expected to endure it. Nothing can really be settled until the
question of responsibility is openly and candidly re-examined, and an
understanding established that is based on facts instead of on official
misrepresentation. This question is by no means one of abstract justice
alone, or of chivalry and fair play towards a defeated enemy. It is a
question of self-interest, immediate and urgent. However it may be
regarded by the American sense of justice and fair play, it remains, to
the eye of American industry and commerce, a straight question of
dollars and cents. The prosperity of the United States, as we are
beginning to see, hangs upon the economic re-establishment of Europe.
Europe can not possibly be settled upon the present terms of peace; and
these terms can not be changed without first vacating the theory of
Germany's sole responsibility, because it is upon this theory that the
treaty of Versailles was built. This theory, therefore, must be
re-examined in the light of evidence that the Allied and Associated
Governments have done their best either to ignore or to suppress. Hence,
for the American people, the way to prosperity lies through a searching
and honest examination of this theory that has been so deeply implanted
in their mind--the theory of a brigand-nation, plotting in solitude to
achieve the mastery of the world by fire and sword.

Americans, however, come reluctantly to the task of this examination,
for two reasons. First, we are all tired of the war, we hate to think of
it or of anything connected with it, and as far as possible, we keep it
out of our minds. Second, nearly every reputation of any consequence in
this country, political, clerical, academic and journalistic, is already
committed, head over ears, to the validity of this theory. How many of
our politicians are there whose reputations are not bound up
inextricably with this legend of a German plot? How many of our
newspaper-editors managed to preserve detachment enough under the
pressure of war-propaganda to be able to come forward to-day and say
that the question of responsibility for the war should be re-opened? How
can the pro-war liberals and ex-pacifists ask for such an inquest when
they were all swept off their feet by the specious plea that _this_ war
was a different war from all other wars in the history of mankind? What
can our ministers of religion say after the unreserved endorsement that
they put upon the sanctity of the Allied cause? What can our educators
say, after having served so zealously the ends of the official
propagandists? From our journalists and men of letters what can we
expect--after all his rodomontade about Potsdam and the Potsdam gang,
how could we expect Dr. Henry Van Dyke, for instance, to face the fact
that the portentous Potsdam meeting of the Crown Council on 5 July,
1914, _never took place at all_? There is no use in trying to put a
breaking-strain upon human nature, or, on the other hand, in assuming a
pharisaic attitude towards its simplest and commonest frailties. It is
best, under the circumstances, merely to understand that on this
question every institutional voice in the United States is tongue-tied.
Press, pulpit, schools and universities, charities and foundations,
forums, all are silent; and to expect them to break their silence is to
expect more than should be expected from the pride of opinion in average
human nature.



II


In examining the evidence let us first take Mr. Lloyd George's own
statement of the theory. Except in one particular, it presents the case
against Germany quite as it has been rehearsed by nearly every
institutional voice in the United States. On 4 August, 1917--after
America's entry into the war--the British Premier said:


     What are we fighting for? To defeat the most dangerous conspiracy
     ever plotted against the liberty of nations; carefully, skilfully,
     insidiously, clandestinely planned in every detail, with ruthless,
     cynical determination.


Except for one point, this statement sums up what we have all heard to
be the essential doctrine of the war. The one missing point in Mr. Lloyd
George's indictment is that the great German conspiracy was launched
upon an _unprepared_ Europe. In Europe itself, the official
propagandists did not make much of this particular point, for far too
many people knew better; but in the United States it was promulgated
widely. Indeed, this romance of Allied unpreparedness was an essential
part of the whole story of German responsibility. Germany, so the
official story ran, not only plotted in secret, but she sprung her plot
upon a Europe that was wholly unprepared and unsuspecting. Her action
was like that of a highwayman leaping from ambush upon a defenceless
wayfarer. Belgium was unprepared, France unprepared, Russia unprepared,
England unprepared; and in face of an unprovoked attack, these nations
hurriedly drew together in an extemporized union, and held the "mad dog"
at bay with an extemporized defence until they could devise a plan of
common action and a pooling of military and naval resources.

Such, then, is a fair statement of the doctrine of the war as America
was taught it. Next, in order to show how fundamental this doctrine is
to the terms of the peace treaty, let us consider another statement of
Mr. Lloyd George made 3 March, 1921:


     For the allies, German responsibility for the war is fundamental.
     It is the basis upon which the structure of the treaty of
     Versailles has been erected, and if that acknowledgment is
     repudiated or abandoned, the treaty is destroyed.... We wish,
     therefore, once and for all, to make it quite clear that German
     responsibility for the war must be treated by the Allies as a
     _chose jugée_.


Thus the British Premier explicitly declares that the treaty of
Versailles is based upon the theory of Germany's sole responsibility.

Now, as against this theory, the main facts may be summarized as
follows: (1) The British and French General Staffs had been in active
collaboration for war with Germany ever since January 1906. (2) The
British and French Admiralty had been in similar collaboration. (3) The
late Lord Fisher [First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty], twice in the
course of these preparations, proposed an attack upon the German fleet
and a landing upon the coast of Pomerania, _without a declaration of
war_. (4) Russia had been preparing for war ever since 1909, and the
Russian and French General Staffs had come to a formal understanding
that Russian mobilization should be held equivalent to a declaration of
war. (5) Russian mobilization was begun in the spring of 1914, under the
guise of "tests," and these tests were carried on continuously to the
outbreak of the war. (6) In April, 1914, four months before the war,
the Russian and French naval authorities initiated joint plans for
maritime operations against Germany. (7) Up to the outbreak of the war,
Germany was selling grain in considerable quantities to both France and
Russia. (8) It can not be shown that the German Government ever in a
single instance, throughout all its dealings with foreign Governments,
demanded or intimated for Germany anything more than a position of
economic equality with other nations.

These facts, among others to which reference will hereafter be made,
have come to light only since the outbreak of the war. They effectively
dispose of the theory of an unprepared and unsuspecting Europe; and a
historical survey of them excludes absolutely, and stamps as utterly
untenable and preposterous, the theory of a deliberate German plot
against the peace of the world.



III


Let us now consider the idea so generally held in America, though not in
Europe, that in 1914, England and the Continental nations were not
expecting war and not prepared for war. The fact is that Europe was as
thoroughly organized for war as it could possibly be. The point to which
that organization was carried by England, France and Russia, as compared
with Germany and Austria, may to some extent be indicated by statistics.
In 1913, Russia carried a military establishment (on a peace footing) of
1,284,000 men; France, by an addition of 183,000 men, proposed to raise
her peace-establishment to a total of 741,572. Germany, by an addition
of 174,373 men, proposed to raise her total to 821,964; and Austria, by
additions of 58,505 already made, brought her total up to 473,643. These
are the figures of the British War Office, as furnished to the House of
Commons in 1913.

Here is a set of figures that is even more interesting and significant.
From 1909 to 1914, the amount spent on new naval construction by
England, France and Russia, as compared with Germany, was as follows:


              ENGLAND     FRANCE        RUSSIA      GERMANY

    1909   £11,076,551  £ 4,517,766  £ 1,758,487  £10,177,062

    1910   £14,755,289  £ 4,977,682  £ 1,424,013  £11,392,856

    1911   £15,148,171  £ 5,876,659  £ 3,216,396  £11,710,859

    1912   £16,132,558  £ 7,114,876  £ 6,897,580  £11,491,187

    1913   £16,883,875  £ 8,893,064  £12,082,516  £11,010,883

    1914   £18,676,080  £11,772,862  £13,098,613  £10,316,264


These figures can not be too carefully studied by those who have been
led to think that Germany pounced upon a defenceless and unsuspecting
Europe like a cat upon a mouse. If it be thought worth while to consider
also the period of a few years preceding 1909, one finds that England's
superiority in battleships alone was 112 per cent in 1901, and her
superiority rose to nearly 200 per cent in 1904; in which year England
spent £42,431,000 on her navy, and Germany £11,659,000. Taking the
comparative statistics of naval expenditure from 1900, in which year
England spent £32,055,000 on her navy, and Germany spent £7,472,000,
down to 1914 it is absolutely impossible to make the figures show that
Germany enforced upon the other nations of Europe an unwilling
competition in naval armament.

But the German army! According to all accounts of German militarism
which were suffered to reach these shores, it is here that we shall find
evidence of what Mr. Lloyd George, on 4 August, 1917, called "the most
dangerous conspiracy ever plotted against the liberty of nations;
carefully, skilfully, insidiously, clandestinely planned in every
detail, with ruthless, cynical determination." Well, if one chooses to
hold the current view of German militarism, it must be admitted that
Germany had at her disposal some miraculous means of getting something
for nothing, getting a great deal for nothing, in fact, for on any other
supposition, the figures are far from supporting that view. In 1914
(pre-war figures), Germany and Austria together carried an
army-expenditure of £92 million; England, France and Russia together
carried one of £142 million. England "had no army," it was said; all her
military strength lay in her navy. If that were true, then it must be
said that she had as miraculous a faculty as Germany's; only, whereas
Germany's was a faculty for getting more than her money's worth,
England's was for getting less than her money's worth. England's
army-expenditure for 1914 (pre-war figures) was £28 million; £4 million
more than Austria's. Nor was this a sudden emergency-outlay. Going back
as far as 1905, we find that she laid out in that year the same amount,
£28 million. In that year, Germany and Austria together spent £48
million on their armies; England, France and Russia together spent £94
million on theirs. If between 1905 and 1913, England, France and Russia
spent any such sums upon their armies as their statistics show, and
nothing came of it but an unprepared and unsuspecting Europe in 1914, it
seems clear that the taxpayers of those countries were swindled on an
inconceivably large scale.



IV


At this point, some questions may be raised. Why, in the decade
preceding 1914, did England, France and Russia arm themselves at the
rate indicated by the foregoing figures? Why did they accelerate their
naval development progressively from about £17 million in 1909 to about
£43 million in 1914? Why did Russia alone propose to raise her military
peace-establishment to an army of 1,700,000, more than double the size
of Germany's army? Against whom were these preparations directed, and
understood to be directed? Certainly not against one another. France and
Russia had been bound by a military convention ever since 17 August,
1892; England and France had been bound since January, 1906, by a
similar pact; and this was subsequently extended to include Belgium.
These agreements will be considered in detail hereafter; they are now
mentioned merely to show that the military activity in these countries
was not independent in purpose. France, England, Russia and Belgium
were not uneasy about one another and not arming against one another;
nor is there any evidence that anyone thought that they were. It was
against the Central Empires only that these preparations were addressed.
Nor can one who scans the table of relative expenditure easily believe
that the English-French-Russian combination was effected for purely
defensive purposes; and taking the diplomatic history of the period in
conjunction with the testimony of the budgets, such belief becomes
impossible.



V


The British Government is the one which was most often represented to us
as taken utterly by surprise by the German onslaught on Belgium. Let us
see. The Austrian Archduke was assassinated 28 June, 1914, by three men
who, according to wide report in Europe and absolute certainty in
America, were secret agents of the German Government, acting under
German official instruction. The findings of the court of inquiry showed
that they were Serbs, members of a pan-Slav organization; that the
assassination was plotted in Belgrade, and the weapons with which it was
committed were obtained there.[3] Serbia denied all connexion with the
assassins (the policy of Serbia being then controlled by the Russian
Foreign Office), and then the Russian Government stepped forward to
prevent the humiliation of Serbia by Austria. It is clear from the
published diplomatic documents that the British Foreign Office knew
everything that took place between the assassination and the burial of
the Archduke; all the facts, that is, connected with the murder. The
first dispatch in the British White Paper is dated 20 July, and it is
addressed to the British Ambassador at Berlin. One wonders why not to
the Ambassador at Vienna; also one wonders why the diplomats apparently
found nothing to write about for nearly three weeks between the
Archduke's funeral and 20 July. It is a strange silence. Sir Edward
Grey, however, made a statement in the House of Commons, 27 July, in
which he gave the impression that he got his first information about the
course of the quarrel between Austria and Serbia no earlier than 24
July, three days before. The Ambassador at Vienna, Sir M. de Bunsen,
had, notwithstanding, telegraphed him that the Austrian Premier had
given him no hint of "the impending storm" and that it was from a
private source "that I received, 15 July, the forecast of what was about
to happen, concerning which I _telegraphed to you the following day_."
Sir Maurice de Bunsen's telegram on this important subject thus
evidently was suppressed; and the only obvious reason for the
suppression is that it carried evidence that Sir E. Grey was thoroughly
well posted by 16 July on what was taking place in Vienna. Sir M. de
Bunsen's allusion to this telegram confirms this assumption; in fact, it
can be interpreted in no other way.

On 28 July, the House of Commons was informed that Austria had declared
war on Serbia. Two days later, 30 July, Sir E. Grey added the item of
information that Russia had ordered a partial mobilization "which has
not hitherto led to any corresponding steps by other Powers, so far as
our information goes." Sir E. Grey did not add, however, that he knew
quite well what "corresponding steps" other Powers were likely to take.
He knew the terms of the Russian-French military convention, under which
a mobilization by Russia was to be held equivalent to a declaration of
war; he also knew the terms of the English-French agreement which he
himself had authorized--although up to the eve of the war he denied, in
reply to questions in the House of Commons, that any such agreement
existed, and acknowledged it only on 3 August, 1914.[4] He had promised
Sazonov, the Russian Foreign Minister, in 1912, that in the event of
Germany's coming to Austria's aid, Russia could rely on Great Britain to
"stake everything in order to inflict the most serious blow to German
power." To say that Sir E. Grey, and _à fortiori_ Mr. Asquith, the Prime
Minister; Lord Haldane, the Minister for War, whose own book has been a
most tremendous let-down to the fictions of the propagandists; Mr.
Winston Churchill, head of the Admiralty, who at Dundee, 5 June, 1915,
declared that he had been sent to the Admiralty in 1911 with the express
duty laid upon him by the Prime Minister to put the fleet in a state of
instant and constant readiness for war; to say that these men were taken
by surprise and unprepared, is mere levity.

Austria was supposed to be, and still is by some believed to have been,
Germany's vassal State, and by menacing Serbia to have been doing
Germany's dirty work. No evidence of this has been adduced; and the
trouble with this idea of Austria's status is that it breaks down before
the report of Sir M. de Bunsen, 1 September, 1914, that Austria finally
yielded and agreed to accept all the proposals of the Powers for
mediation between herself and Serbia. She made every concession.
Russian mobilization, however, had begun on 25 July and become general
four days later; and it was not stopped. Germany then gave notice that
she would mobilize her army if Russian mobilization was not stopped in
twelve hours; and also, knowing the terms of the Russian-French
convention of 1892, she served notice on France, giving her eighteen
hours to declare her position. Russia made no reply; France answered
that she would do what she thought best in her own interest; and almost
at the moment, on 1 August, when Germany ordered a general mobilization,
Russian troops were over her border, the British fleet had been
mobilized for a week in the North Sea, and British merchant ships were
lying at Kronstadt, empty, to convey Russian troops from that port to
the Pomeranian coast, in pursuance of the plan indicated by Lord Fisher
in his autobiography, recently published.

These matters are well summed up by Lord Loreburn, as follows:


     Serbia gave offence to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, cause of just
     offence, as our Ambassador frankly admits in his published
     dispatches. We [England] had no concern in that quarrel, as Sir
     Edward Grey says in terms. But Russia, the protectress of Serbia,
     came forward to prevent her being utterly humiliated by Austria. We
     were not concerned in that quarrel either, as Sir Edward also says.
     And then Russia called upon France under their treaty to help in
     the fight. France was not concerned in that quarrel any more than
     ourselves, as Sir Edward informs us. But France was bound by a
     Russian treaty, of which he did not know the terms, and then France
     called on us for help. We were tied by the relations which our
     Foreign Office had created, without apparently realizing that they
     had created them.


In saying that Sir E. Grey did not know the terms of the Franco-Russian
agreement, Lord Loreburn is generous, probably more generous than he
should be; but that is no matter. The thing to be remarked is that Lord
Loreburn's summing-up comes to something wholly different from Mr. Lloyd
George's "most dangerous conspiracy ever plotted against the liberty of
nations." It comes to something wholly different from the notion
implanted in Americans, of Germany pouncing upon a peaceful, unprepared
and unsuspecting Europe. The German nation, we may be sure, is keenly
aware of this difference; and therefore, any peace which, like the peace
of Versailles, is bottomed on the _chose jugée_ of laying the sole
responsibility for the war at the door of the German nation, or even at
the door of the German Government, is simply impracticable and
impossible.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Six months after the armistice, the bodies of the three assassins
were dug up, according to a Central News dispatch from Prague, "with
great solemnity, in the presence of thousands of the inhabitants. The
remains of _these Serbian officers_ are to be sent to their native
country." This is a naïve statement. It remains to be explained why
these "German agents" should be honoured in this distinguished way by
the Serbs!

[4] See footnote to chapter XVIII.



VI


If the theory upon which the treaty of Versailles is based, the theory
of a single guilty nation, were true, there would be no trouble about
saying what the war was fought for. The Allied belligerents would have a
simple, straight story to tell; they could describe their aims and
intentions clearly in a few words that any one could understand, and
their story would be reasonably consistent and not vary greatly from
year to year. It would be practically the same story in 1918 as in 1915
or at any time between. In America, indeed, the story did not greatly
vary up to the spring of 1917, for the reason that this country was
pretty much in the dark about European international relations. Once our
indignation and sympathies were aroused, it was for the propagandists
mostly a matter of keeping them as hot as possible. Few had the
information necessary to discount the plain, easy, understandable story
of a robber nation leaping upon an unprepared and defenceless Europe for
no cause whatever except the lofty ambition, as Mr. Joseph Choate said,
"to establish a world-empire upon the ruins of the British Empire."
Those who had this information could not make themselves heard; and thus
it was that the propagandists had no need to vary the one story that was
most useful to their purpose of keeping us in a state of unreasoning
indignation, and accordingly they did not vary it.

In Europe and in England, however, the case was different. International
relations were better understood by those who were closer to them than
we were; more questions were raised and more demands made. Hence the
Allied politicians and propagandists were kept busy upon the defensive.
When from time to time the voice of popular discontent or of some
influential body of opinion insisted on a statement of the causes of the
war or of the war-aims of the Allies, they were confronted with the
politician's traditional difficulty. They had to say something plausible
and satisfactory, which yet must be something that effectively hid the
truth of the situation. As the war hung on, their difficulty became
desperate and they threw consistency to the winds, telling any sort of
story that would enable them for the moment to "get by." The publication
of the secret treaties which had been seined out of the quagmire of the
old Russian Foreign Office by the revolutionists made no end of trouble
for them. It is amusing now to remember how promptly these treaties were
branded by the British Foreign Office as forgeries; especially when it
turned out that the actual terms of the armistice--not the nominal
terms, which were those of Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points, but the actual
terms--were the terms of the secret treaties! The publication of the
secret treaties in this country did not contribute much towards a
disillusionment of the public; the press as a rule ignored or lied about
them, they were not widely read, and few who did read them had enough
understanding of European affairs to interpret them. But abroad they put
a good deal of fat into the fire; and this was a specimen of the kind of
thing that the Allied politicians had to contend with in their efforts
to keep their peoples in line.

The consequence was that the official and semi-official statements of
the causes of the war and of the war-aims of the Allies are a most
curious hotchpotch. In fact, if any one takes stock in the theory of the
one guilty nation and is therefore convinced that the treaty of
Versailles is just and proper and likely to enforce an enduring peace,
one could suggest nothing better than that he should go through the
literature of the war, pick out these statements, put them in parallel
columns, and see how they look. If the war originated in the unwarranted
conspiracy of a robber nation, if the aims of the Allies were to defeat
that conspiracy and render it impotent and to chastise and tie the hands
of the robber nation--and that is the theory of the treaty of
Versailles--can anyone in his right mind suppose that the Allied
politicians and propagandists would ever give out, or need to give out,
these ludicrously contradictory and inconsistent explanations and
statements? When one has a simple, straight story to tell, and a most
effective story, why complicate it and undermine it and throw all sorts
of doubts upon it, by venturing upon all sorts of public utterances that
will not square with it in any conceivable way? Politicians, of all men,
never lie for the fun of it; their available margin of truth is always
so narrow that they keep within it when they can. Mr. Lloyd George, for
example, is one of the cleverest of politicians. We have already
considered his two statements; first, that of 4 August, 1917:


     What are we fighting for? To defeat the most dangerous conspiracy
     ever plotted against the liberty of nations; carefully, skilfully,
     insidiously, clandestinely planned in every detail with ruthless,
     cynical determination.


--and then that of 3 March, 1921:


     For the Allies, German responsibility for the war is fundamental.
     It is the basis upon which the structure of the treaty of
     Versailles has been erected, and if that acknowledgment is
     repudiated or abandoned, the treaty is destroyed.... German
     responsibility for the war must be treated by the Allies as a
     _chose jugée_.


A little over two months before Mr. George made this latter utterance,
on 23 December, 1920, he said this:


     The more one reads memoirs and books written in the various
     countries of what happened before the first of August, 1914, the
     more one realizes that no one at the head of affairs quite meant
     war at that stage. It was something into which they glided, or
     rather staggered and stumbled, perhaps through folly; and a
     discussion, I have no doubt, would have averted it.


Well, it would strike an unprejudiced person that if this were true,
there is a great deal of doubt put upon Mr. Lloyd George's former
statements by Mr. Lloyd George himself. Persons who plot carefully,
skilfully, insidiously and clandestinely, do not glide; they do not
stagger or stumble, especially through folly. They keep going, as we in
America were assured that the German Government did keep going, right up
to The Day of their own choosing. Moreover, they are not likely to be
headed off by discussion; highwaymen are notoriously curt in their
speech and if one attempts discussion with them they become irritable
and peremptory. This is the invariable habit of highwaymen. Besides, if
discussion would have averted war in 1914, why was it not forthcoming?
Certainly not through any fault of the Austrian Government, which made
every concession, as the British Ambassador's report shows,
notwithstanding its grievance against Serbia was a just one. Certainly
not through any fault of the German Government, which never refused
discussion and held its hand with all the restraint possible under the
circumstances just described. Well, then, how is it so clear that German
responsibility for the war should be treated as a _chose jugée_?



VII


People who have a clear and simple case do not talk in this fashion.
Picking now at random among the utterances of politicians and
propagandists, we find an assorted job-lot of aims assigned and causes
alleged, and in all of them there is that curious, incomprehensible and
callous disregard of the power of conviction that a straight story
always exercises, if you have one to tell. In November, 1917, when the
Foreign Office was being pestered by demands for a statement of the
Allied war-aims, Lord Robert Cecil said in the House of Commons, that
the restitution of Alsace and Lorraine to France was a "well-understood
war-aim from the moment we entered the war." As things have turned out,
it is an odd coincidence how so many of these places that have iron or
coal or oil in them seem to represent a well-understood war-aim. Less
than a month before, in October, 1917, General Smuts said that to his
mind the one great dominating war-aim was "the end of militarism, the
end of standing armies." Well, the Allies won the war, but judging by
results, this dominating war-aim seems rather to have been lost sight
of. Mr. Lloyd George again on another occasion, said in the House of
Commons that "self-determination was one of the principles for which we
entered the war ... a principle from which we have never departed since
the beginning of the war." This, too, seems an aim that for some reason
the victorious nations have not quite realized; indeed in some cases, as
in Ireland, for example, there has been no great alacrity shown about
trying to realize it. Viscount Bryce said that the war sprang from the
strife of races and religions in the Balkan countries, and from the
violence done to the sentiment of nationality in Alsace-Lorraine which
made France the ally of Russia. But the fact is that France became the
ally of Russia on the basis of hard cash, and since the Russian
Revolution, she has been a bit out of luck by way of getting her money
back. Mr. Asquith in the House of Commons, 3 August, 1914 said:


     If I am asked what we are fighting for, I reply in two sentences.
     In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation....
     Secondly we are fighting ... to vindicate the principle that small
     nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international
     good faith.


Just so: and in the House of Commons, 20 December, 1917, he said:


     The League of Nations ... was the avowed purpose, the very purpose
     ... for which we entered the war and for which we are continuing
     the war.


You pays your money, you see, and takes your choice. The point to be
made, however, is that one who has a strong case, a real case, never
trifles with it in this way. Would the reader do it?



VIII


Mr. Asquith's citation of a "solemn international obligation" refers to
the so-called Belgian treaties. It will be remembered that the case of
Belgium was the great winning card played by the Allied Governments for
the stakes of American sympathies; and therefore we may here properly
make a survey, somewhat in detail, of the status of Belgium at the
outset of the war.

Belgium had learned forty years ago how she stood under the treaties of
1831 and 1839. When in the late 'eighties there was likelihood of a
Franco-German war, the question of England's participation under these
treaties was thoroughly discussed, and it was shown conclusively that
England was not obligated. Perhaps the best summary of the case was that
given by Mr. W. T. Stead in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in the issues of 4
and 5 February, 1887. After an examination of the treaties of 1831, 1839
and 1870--an examination unfortunately too long to be quoted here--Mr.
Stead briefly sums up the result of his investigation in the following
statement:


     There is therefore no English guarantee to Belgium. It is possible
     perhaps, to 'construct' such a guarantee; but the case may be
     summed up as follows: (1) England is under no guarantee whatever
     except such as is common to Austria, France, Russia and Germany;
     (2) that guarantee is not specifically of the neutrality of Belgium
     at all; and (3) is given, not to Belgium but to the Netherlands.


This was the official view of the British Government at the time, and it
is reflected in the celebrated letter signed "Diplomaticus" in the
_Standard_ of 4 February, to which Mr. Stead refers; which, indeed, he
makes the guiding text for his examination. The _Standard_ was then the
organ of Lord Salisbury's Government, and it is as nearly certain as
anything of the sort can be, that the letter signed "Diplomaticus" was
written by the hand of the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury
himself.

How Mr. Asquith's Government in August 1914 came suddenly to extemporize
a wholly different view of England's obligations to Belgium is
excellently told by that inveterate diarist and chronicler, Mr. Wilfred
Scawen Blunt:


     The obligation of fighting in alliance with France in case of a war
     with Germany concerned the honour of three members only of
     Asquith's Cabinet, who alone were aware of the exact promises that
     had been made. These, though given verbally and with reservations
     as to the consent of Parliament, bound the three as a matter of
     personal honour, and were understood at the Quai d'Orsay as binding
     the British nation. Neither Asquith nor his two companions[5] in
     this inner Cabinet could have retained office had they gone back
     from their word in spirit or in letter. It would also doubtless
     have entailed a serious quarrel with the French Government had they
     failed to make it good. So clearly was the promise understood at
     Paris to be binding that President Poincaré, when the crisis came,
     had written to King George reminding him of it as an engagement
     made between the two nations which he counted on His Majesty to
     keep.

     Thus faced, the case was laid before the Cabinet, but was found to
     fail as a convincing argument for war. It was then that Asquith,
     with his lawyer's instinct, at a second Cabinet meeting brought
     forward the neutrality of Belgium as a better plea than the other
     to lay before a British jury, and by representing the
     neutrality-treaties of 1831 and 1839 as entailing an obligation on
     England to fight (of which the text of the treaties contains no
     word) obtained the Cabinet's consent, and war was declared.


Belgium was not thought of by the British Cabinet before 2 August, 1914.
She was brought in then as a means of making the war go down with the
British people. The fact is that Belgium was thoroughly prepared for
war, thoroughly prepared for just what happened to her. Belgium was a
party to the military arrangements effected among France, England and
Russia; for this we have the testimony of Marshal Joffre before the
Metallurgic Committee in Paris, and also the record of the
"conversations" that were carried on in Brussels between the Belgian
chief of staff and Lt.-Col. Barnardiston. On 24 July, 1914, the day when
the Austrian note was presented to Serbia (the note of which Sir E. Grey
had gotten an intimation as early as 16 July by telegraph from the
British Ambassador at Vienna, Sir M. de Bunsen), the Belgian Foreign
Minister, M. Davignon, promptly dispatched to all the Belgian embassies
an identical communication containing the following statement, the
significance of which is made clear by a glance at a map:


     All necessary steps to ensure respect of Belgian neutrality have
     nevertheless been taken by the Government. The Belgian army has
     been mobilized and is taking up such strategic positions as have
     been chosen to secure the defence of the country and the respect of
     its neutrality. The forts of Antwerp and on the Meuse have been put
     in a state of defence.


It was on the eastern frontier, we perceive, therefore--not on the
western, where Belgium might have been invaded by France--that all the
available Belgian military force was concentrated. Hence, to pretend any
longer that the Belgian Government was surprised by the action of
Germany, or unprepared to meet it; to picture Germany and Belgium as cat
and mouse, to understand the position of Belgium otherwise than that she
was one of four solid allies under definite agreement worked out in
complete practical detail, is sheer absurdity.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] Sir E. Grey and Lord Haldane.



IX


If the official theory of German responsibility were correct, it would
be impossible to explain the German Government's choice of the year 1914
as a time to strike at "an unsuspecting and defenceless Europe." The
figures quoted in Chapter III show that the military strength of
Germany, relatively to that of the French-Russian-English combination,
had been decreasing since 1910. If Germany had wished to strike at
Europe, she had two first-rate chances, one in 1908 and another in 1912,
and not only let them both go by, but threw all her weight on the side
of peace. This is inexplicable upon the theory that animates the treaty
of Versailles. Germany was then in a position of advantage. The occasion
presented itself in 1908, in Serbia's quarrel with Austria over the
annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. Russia, which was backing
Serbia, was in no shape to fight; her military strength, used up in the
Russo-Japanese war, had not recovered. France would not at this time
have been willing to go to war with Germany over her weak ally's
commitments in the Danube States. Germany, however, contented herself
with serving notice on the Tsar of her unequivocal support of Austria;
and this was enough. The Tsar accepted the _fait accompli_ of the
annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina; Serbia retired and cooled off;
and Turkey, from whom the annexed province was ravished, was compensated
by Austria. It is not to the point to scrutinize the propriety of these
transactions; the point is that Germany held the peace of Europe in the
hollow of her hand, with immense advantages in her favour, and chose not
to close her hand. The comment of a neutral diplomat, the Belgian
Minister in Berlin, is interesting. In his report of 1 April, 1909, to
the Belgian Foreign Office, he says:


     The conference scheme elaborated by M. Isvolsky and Sir Edward
     Grey; the negotiations for collective representations in Vienna;
     and the whole exchange of ideas among London, Paris and Petersburg,
     were steadily aimed at forcing Austria-Hungary into a transaction
     which would strongly have resembled a humiliation. This humiliation
     would have affected Germany as directly and as sensibly as
     Austria-Hungary, and would have struck a heavy blow at the
     confidence which is inspired in Vienna by the alliance with
     Germany. These machinations were frustrated by Germany's
     absolutely unequivocal and decided attitude, from which she has
     never departed in spite of all the urgings with which she has been
     harassed. Germany alone has accomplished the preservation of peace.
     The new grouping of the Powers, organized by the King of England,
     has measured its forces with the alliance of the Central European
     Powers, and has shown itself incapable of impairing the same. Hence
     the vexation which is manifested.


The last two sentences of the foregoing seem to show--putting it
mildly--that the Belgian Minister did not suspect the German Government
of any aggressive spirit. In the same dispatch, moreover, he remarks:


     As always, when everything does not go as the French, English or
     Russian politicians want it to, the _Temps_ shows its bad temper.
     Germany is the scapegoat.


Again, at the time of the Balkan War in 1912, Germany had an excellent
opportunity to gratify her military ambition, if she had any, at the
expense of an "unsuspecting and unprepared Europe"; not as advantageous
as in 1908 but more advantageous than in 1914. Serbia's provocations
against Austria-Hungary had become so great that the Austrian Archduke
(assassinated in 1914 at Sarajevo) told the German Emperor personally
that they had reached the limit of endurance. On this occasion also,
however, William II put himself definitely on the side of peace, and in
so doing left the Austrian Government somewhat disappointed and
discontented. Another neutral diplomat reports of the German Foreign
Minister that


     whatever plans he may have in his head (and he has big ideas), for
     winning the sympathies of the young Balkan Powers over to Germany,
     one thing is absolutely certain, and that is that he is rigidly
     determined to avoid a European conflagration. On this point the
     policy of Germany is similar to that of England and France, both of
     which countries are determinedly pacifist.


This is a fair statement of the English and French position in 1912.
There was a great revulsion of feeling in England after her close shave
of being dragged into war over Morocco and her sentiment was all for
attending to certain pressing, domestic problems. Besides, it was only
in November, 1911, and only through the indiscretion of a French
newspaper, that the British public (and the British Parliament as well)
had learned that the Anglo-French agreement of 1904 had secret articles
attached to it, out of which had emanated the imbroglio over Morocco;
and there was a considerable feeling of distrust towards the Foreign
Office. In fact, Sir E. Grey, the Foreign Minister, was so unpopular
with his own party that quite probably he would have had to get out of
office if he had not been sustained by Tory influence. Mr. W. T. Stead
expressed a quite general sentiment in the _Review of Reviews_ for
December, 1911:


     The fact remains that in order to put France in possession of
     Morocco, we all but went to war with Germany. We have escaped war,
     but we have not escaped the national and abiding enmity of the
     German people. Is it possible to frame a heavier indictment of the
     foreign policy of any British Ministry? The secret, the open
     secret, of this almost incredible crime against treaty-faith,
     British interests and the peace of the world, is the unfortunate
     fact that Sir Edward Grey has been dominated by men in the Foreign
     Office who believe all considerations must be subordinated to the
     one supreme duty of thwarting Germany at every turn, even if in
     doing so British interests, treaty-faith and the peace of the world
     are trampled underfoot. I speak that of which I know.


This was strong language and it went without challenge, for too many
Englishmen felt that way. In France, the Poincaré-Millerand-Delcassé
combination was getting well into the saddle; but with English public
opinion in this notably undependable condition, English support of
France, in spite of the secret agreement binding the two governments,
was decidedly risky. Thereupon France also was "determinedly pacifist."
Now if Germany had been the prime mover in "the most dangerous
conspiracy ever plotted against the liberty of nations," why did she not
take advantage of that situation?

Russia, too, was "determinedly pacifist" in 1912, and with good reason.
There was a party of considerable influence in the Tsar's court that was
strongly for going to war in behalf of Serbia, but it was finally headed
off by the Foreign Minister, Sazonov, who knew the state of public
opinion in England and its effect on France, and knew therefore that the
French-Russian-English alliance was not yet in shape to take on large
orders. It is true that the Poincaré-Millerand-Delcassé war-party in
France had proof enough in 1912 that it could count on the British
Government's support; and what France knew, Russia knew. Undoubtedly,
too, the British Government would somehow, under some pretext or other,
possibly Belgian neutrality, have contrived to redeem its obligations as
it did in 1914. But the atmosphere of the country was not favourable and
the thing would have been difficult. Accordingly, Sazonov saw that it
was best for him to restrain Serbia's impetuosity and truculence for
the time being--Russia herself being none too ready--and accordingly he
did so.

But how? The Serbian Minister at Petersburg says that Sazonov told him
that in view of Serbia's successes "he had confidence in our strength
and believed that we would be able to deliver a blow at Austria. For
that reason we should feel satisfied with what we were to receive, and
consider it merely as a temporary halting-place on the road to further
gains." On another occasion "Sazonov told me that we must work for the
future because we would acquire a great deal of territory from Austria."
The Serbian Minister at Bucharest says that his Russian and French
colleagues counselled a policy of waiting "with as great a degree of
preparedness as possible the important events which must make their
appearance among the Great Powers." How, one may ask, was the Russian
Foreign Office able to look so far and so clearly into the future? If
German responsibility for the war is fundamental, a _chose jugée_, as
Mr. Lloyd George said it is, this seems a strange way for the Russian
Foreign Minister to be talking, as far back as 1912. But stranger still
is the fact that the German Government did not jump in at this juncture
instead of postponing its blow until 1914 when every one was apparently
quite ready to receive it. When the historian of the future considers
the theory of the Versailles treaty and considers the behaviour of the
German Government in the crisis of 1908 and in the crisis of 1912, he
will have to scratch his head a great deal to make them harmonize.



X


By the spring of 1913, the diplomatic representatives of the Allied
Danube States made no secret of the relations in which their Governments
stood to the Tsar's Foreign Office. The Balkan League was put through by
Russian influence and Russia controlled its diplomacy. Serbia was as
completely the instrument of Russia as Poland is now the instrument of
France. "If the Austrian troops invade Balkan territory," wrote Baron
Beyens on 4 April, 1913, "it would give cause for Russia to intervene,
and might let loose a universal war." Now, if Germany had been plotting
"with ruthless, cynical determination," as Mr. Lloyd George said,
against the peace of Europe, what inconceivable stupidity for her not to
push Austria along rather than do everything possible to hold her back!
Why give Russia the benefit of eighteen months of valuable time for the
feverish campaign of "preparedness" that she carried on? Those eighteen
months meant a great deal. In February, 1914, the Tsar arranged to
provide the Serbian army with rifles and artillery, Serbia agreeing to
put half a million soldiers in the field. In the same month Russia
negotiated a French loan of about $100 million for improvements on her
strategic railways and frontier-roads. During the spring, she made
"test" mobilizations of large bodies of troops which were never
demobilized, and these "test" mobilizations continued down to the
outbreak of the war; and in April Russian agents made technical
arrangements with agents of the British and French Admiralties for
possible combined naval action.

Yes, those eighteen months were very busy months for Russia. True, she
came out at the end of them an "unprepared and unsuspecting" nation,
presumably, for was not all Europe unprepared and unsuspecting? Is it
not so nominated in the Versailles treaty? One can not help wondering,
however, how it is that Germany, "carefully, skilfully, insidiously,
clandestinely planning in every detail" a murderous attack on the peace
of Europe, should have given Russia the inestimable advantage of those
eighteen months.



XI


Mr. E. D. Morel, editor of the British monthly, _Foreign Affairs_,
performed more than a distinguished service--it is a splendid, an
illustrious service--to the disparaged cause of justice, when recently
he translated and published in England through the National Labour
Press, a series of remarkable State documents.[6] This consists of
reports made by the Belgian diplomatic representatives at Paris, London
and Berlin, to the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, covering the
period from 7 February, 1905 to 2 July, 1914. Their authenticity has
never been questioned. They have received no notice in this country;
their content and import were carefully kept from the American people as
long as it was possible to do so, and consequently they remain unknown
except to a few who are students of international affairs or who have
some similar special interest.

It can hardly be pretended by anyone that Belgian officials had, during
that decade, any particular love or leaning towards Germany. The Belgian
Foreign Office has always been as free from sentimental attachments as
any other. It has always been governed by the same motives that govern
the British, French, German and Russian Foreign Offices. Its number,
like theirs, was number one; it was out, first and last, for the
interests of the Belgian Government, and it scrutinized every
international transaction from the viewpoint of those interests and
those only. It was fully aware of the position of Belgium as a mere
"strategic corridor" and battle-ground for alien armies in case of a
general European war, and aware that Belgium had simply to make the best
of its bad outlook, for nothing else could be done. If the Belgian
Foreign Office and its agents, moreover, had no special love for
Germany, neither had they any special fear of her. They were in no more
or deeper dread of a German invasion than of a British or French
invasion. In fact, in 1911, the Belgian Minister at Berlin set forth in
a most matter-of-fact way his belief that in the event of war, Belgian
neutrality would be first violated by Great Britain.[7] These
observers, in short, may on all accounts, as far as one can see, be
accepted as neutral and disinterested, with the peculiar
disinterestedness of one who has no choice between two evils.

Well, then, under the circumstances it is remarkable that if Germany
during the ten years preceding August, 1914, were plotting against the
peace of the world, these Belgian observers seem unaware of it. It is
equally noteworthy that if Germany's assault were unprovoked, they seem
unaware of that also. These documents relate in an extremely
matter-of-fact way a continuous series of extraordinary provocations put
upon the German Government, and moreover, they represent the behaviour
of the German Government, under these provocations, in a very favourable
light. On the other hand, they show from beginning to end a most
profound distrust of English diplomacy. If there is any uncertainty
about the causes of ill-feeling between England and Germany, these
Belgian officials certainly do not share it. They regularly speak of
England's jealousy of Germany's economic competition, and the
provocative attitude to which this jealousy gave rise. They speak of it,
moreover, as though it were something that the Belgian Government were
already well aware of; they speak of it in the tone of pure commonplace,
such as one might use in an incidental reference to the weather or to a
tariff-schedule or to any other matter that is well understood and about
which there is no difference of opinion and nothing new to be said. This
is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that it was nominally to
save Belgium and to defend the sanctity of Belgian neutrality that
England entered the war in August, 1914. These Belgian agents are
invariably suspicious of English diplomacy, as Mr. E. D. Morel points
out, "mainly because they feel that it is tending to make the war which
they dread for their country." They persistently and unanimously
"insinuate that if left to themselves, France and Germany would reach a
settlement of their differences, and that British diplomacy was being
continually exercised to envenom the controversy and to draw a circle of
hostile alliances round Germany." This, indeed, under a specious concern
for the "balance of power," has been the historic rôle of English
diplomacy. Every one remembers how in 1866, just before the
Franco-Prussian war, Mr. Matthew Arnold's imaginary Prussian, Arminius
von Thunder-ten-Tronckh, wrote to the editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
begging him to prevail upon his fellow-countrymen "for Heaven's sake not
to go on biting, first the French Emperor's tail, and then ours."

On 18 February, 1905, the Belgian Minister in Berlin reported thus:


     The real cause of the English hatred of Germany is the jealousy
     aroused by the astonishing development of Germany's merchant navy
     and of her commerce and manufactures. This hatred will last until
     the English have thoroughly learned to understand that the world's
     trade is not by rights an exclusively English monopoly. Moreover,
     it is studiously fostered by the _Times_ and a whole string of
     other daily papers and periodicals that do not stop short of
     calumny in order to pander to the tastes of their readers.


At that time the centre of the English navy had just been shifted to the
North Sea, to the accompaniment of a very disturbing and, as at first
reported, a very flamboyant speech from the Civil Lord of the Admiralty,
Mr. Lee. Of the sensation thereby created in Germany, the Belgian
Minister says:


     In informing the British public that Germany does not dream of any
     aggression against England, Count Bülow [the German Chancellor]
     said no more than what is recognized by every one who considers the
     matter dispassionately. Germany would have nothing to gain from a
     contest.... The German fleet has been created with a purely
     defensive object. The small capacity of the coal-bunkers in her
     High Seas Fleet, and the small number of her cruisers, prove
     besides that her fleet is not intended for use at any distance from
     the coast.


On the other hand, he remarks in the same report:


     It was obvious that the new disposition of the English navy was
     aimed at Germany ... it certainly is not because of Russia, whose
     material stock is to a great extent destroyed and whose navy has
     just given striking proof of incompetence [in the Russo-Japanese
     war].


Such is the tone uniformly adopted by these neutral observers throughout
their reports from 1905 to 1914. On 24 October, 1905, the Belgian
Minister in Paris wrote:


     England, in her efforts to maintain her supremacy and to hinder the
     development of her great German rival, is evidently inspired by the
     wish to avoid a conflict, but are not her selfish aims in
     themselves bringing it upon us?... She thought, when she concluded
     the Japanese alliance and gradually drew France into similar ties,
     that she had found the means to her end, by sufficiently
     paralysing Germany's powers as to make war impossible.


This view of the Anglo-Japanese alliance is interesting and significant,
especially now when that instrument is coming up for renewal, with the
United States standing towards England in the same relation of economic
competitorship that Germany occupied in 1905. True, Viscount Bryce
assured the Institute of Politics at Williams College last summer that
it was not Germany's economic rivalry that disturbed England; but on
this point it would be highly advantageous for the people of the United
States, while there is yet time, to read what the Belgian Minister in
Berlin had to say on 27 October, 1905:


     A very large number of Germans are convinced that England is either
     seeking allies for an attack upon Germany, or else, which would be
     more in accordance with British tradition, that she is labouring to
     provoke a Continental war in which she would not join, but of which
     she would reap the profit.

     I am told that many English people are troubled with similar fears
     and go in dread of German aggression.

     I am puzzled upon what foundations such an impression in London can
     be based. Germany is absolutely incapable of attacking England....
     Are these people in England really sincere who go about expressing
     fears of a German invasion which could not materialize? Are they
     not rather pretending to be afraid of it in order to bring on a war
     which would annihilate Germany's navy, her merchant-fleet and her
     foreign commerce? Germany is as vulnerable to attack as England is
     safe from it; and if England were to attack Germany merely for the
     sake of extinguishing a rival, it would only be in accordance with
     her old precedents.

     In turn she wiped out the Dutch fleet, with the assistance of Louis
     XIV; then the French fleet; and the Danish fleet she even destroyed
     in time of peace and without any provocation, simply because it
     constituted a naval force of some magnitude.

     There are no ostensible grounds for war between Germany and
     England. The English hatred for Germany arises solely from jealousy
     of Germany's progress in shipping, in commerce and in manufacture.


Baron Greindl here presents an opinion very different from that in which
the majority of Americans have been instructed; and before they accept
further instruction at the hands of Viscount Bryce, they had better look
into the matter somewhat for themselves.

Baron Greindl wrote the foregoing in October. In December, the head of
the British Admiralty, Sir John Fisher, assured Colonel Repington that
"Admiral Wilson's Channel fleet was alone strong enough to smash the
whole German fleet." _Two years_ later, Sir John Fisher wrote to King
Edward VII that "it is an absolute fact that Germany has not laid down
a single dreadnaught, nor has she commenced building a single battleship
or big cruiser for eighteen months.... England has ... ten dreadnaughts
built and building, while Germany in March last had not even begun one
dreadnaught ... we have 123 destroyers and forty submarines. The Germans
have forty-eight destroyers and one submarine." Hence, if Sir John
Fisher knew what he was talking about, and in such matters he usually
did, he furnishes a very considerable corroboration of Baron Greindl's
view of the German navy up to 1905. Looking back at the third chapter of
this book, which deals with the comparative strength of the two navies
and naval groups as developed from 1905 to 1914, the reader may well
raise again Baron Greindl's question, "Are those people in England
really sincere?"

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Under the title "Diplomacy Revealed." National Labour Press. 8 and 9
Johnson's Court, London, E.C., 4, England.

[7] This belief received some corroboration in the spring of 1912, when
in the course of military "conversations," the British Military Attaché,
Lieutenant-Colonel Bridges, told the Belgian Minister of War that if war
had broken out over the Agadir incident in 1911, the British Government
would have landed troops in Belgium with or without the Belgian
Government's consent. So much did the British Government think of the
"scrap of paper!"



XII


Such is the inveterate suspicion, the melancholy distrust, put upon
English diplomacy by these foreign and neutral observers who could see
so plainly what would befall their own country in the event of a
European war. Such too, was the responsibility which these observers
regularly imputed to the British Foreign Office--the British Foreign
Office which was so soon to fix upon the neutrality of Belgium as a
_casus belli_ and pour out streams of propaganda about the sanctity of
treaties and the rights of small nations! Every one of these observers
exhibits this suspicion and distrust. In March, 1906, when Edward VII
visited Paris and invited the discredited ex-Minister Delcassé to
breakfast, the Belgian Minister at Paris wrote:


     It looks as though the king wished to demonstrate that the policy
     which called forth Germany's active intervention [over Morocco] has
     nevertheless remained unchanged.... In French circles it is not
     over well received; Frenchmen feeling that they are being dragged
     against their will in the orbit of English policy, a policy whose
     consequences they dread, and which they generally condemned by
     throwing over M. Delcassé. In short, people fear that this is a
     sign that England wants so to envenom the situation that war will
     become inevitable.


On 10 February, 1907, when the English King and Queen visited Paris, he
says: "One can not conceal from oneself that these tactics, though their
ostensible object is to prevent war, are likely to arouse great
dissatisfaction in Berlin and to stir up a desire to risk anything that
may enable Germany to burst the ring which England's policy is
tightening around her." On 28 March, 1907, the Belgian _chargé
d'affaires_ in London speaks of "English diplomacy, whose whole effort
is directed to the isolation of Germany." On the same date, by a curious
coincidence, the Minister at Berlin, in the course of a blistering
arraignment of French policy in Morocco, says: "But at the bottom of
every settlement that has been made, or is going to be made, there lurks
always that hatred of Germany.... It is a sequence of the campaign very
cleverly conducted with the object of isolating Germany.... The English
press is carrying on its campaign of calumny more implacably than ever.
It sees the finger of Germany in everything that goes contrary to
English wishes." On 18 April, 1907, Baron Greindl says of the King of
England's visit to the King of Spain that, like the alliances with Japan
and France and the negotiations with Russia, it is "one of the moves in
the campaign to isolate Germany that is being personally directed with
as much perseverance as success by His Majesty King Edward VII." In the
same dispatch he remarks: "There is some right to regard with suspicion
this eagerness to unite, for a so-called defensive object, Powers who
are menaced by nobody. At Berlin they can not forget that offer of
100,000 men made by the King of England to M. Delcassé."

On 24 May, 1907, the Minister at London reported that "it is plain that
official England is pursuing a policy that is covertly hostile, and
tending to result in the isolation of Germany, and that King Edward has
not been above putting his personal influence at the service of this
cause." On 19 June, 1907, Count de Lalaing again writes from London of
the Anglo-Franco-Spanish agreement concerning the _status quo_ in the
Mediterranean region, that "it is, however, difficult to imagine that
Germany will not regard it as a further step in England's policy, which
is determined, by every sort of means, to isolate the German Empire."

Perusal of these documents from beginning to end will show nothing to
offset against the view of English diplomacy exhibited in the foregoing
quotations; nothing to modify or qualify that view in any way. Baron
Greindl, however, speaks highly of the British Ambassador at Berlin, Sir
F. Lascelles, and praises his personal and unsupported attempt to
establish friendly relations between England and Germany. Of this he
says: "I have been a witness for the last twelve years of the efforts he
has made to accomplish it. And yet, possessing as he justly does the
absolute confidence of the Emperor and the German Government, and
eminently gifted with the qualities of a statesman, he has nevertheless
not succeeded very well so far." The next year, 1908, when Sir F.
Lascelles was forced to resign his post, Baron Greindl does not hesitate
to say that "the zeal with which he has worked to dispel
misunderstandings that he thought absurd and highly mischievous for both
countries, does not fall in with the political views of his sovereign."



XIII


King Edward VII died 6 May, 1910. During the early part of 1911, the
Belgian Ministers in London, Paris and Berlin report some indications of
a less unfriendly policy towards Germany on the part of the British
Government. In March of that year, Sir Edward Grey delivered a
reassuring speech on British foreign policy, on the occasion of the
debate on the naval budget. The Belgian Minister in Berlin says of this
that it should have produced the most agreeable impression in Germany if
one could confidently believe that it really entirely reflected the
ideas of the British Government. It would imply, he says, that "England
no longer wishes to give to the Triple Entente the aggressive character
which was stamped upon it by its creator, King Edward VII." He remarks,
however, the slight effect produced in Berlin by Sir E. Grey's speech,
and infers that German public feeling may have "become dulled by the
innumerable meetings and mutual demonstrations of courtesy which have
never produced any positive result," and he adds significantly that
"this distrust is comprehensible."

It must be remembered that at the time this speech was delivered,
England was under a secret agreement dating from 1904 to secure France's
economic monopoly in Morocco. England was also under a secret obligation
to France, dating from 1906, to support her in case of war with Germany.
It must be above all remembered that this latter obligation carried with
it a contingent liability for the Franco-Russian military alliance that
had been in effect for many years. Thus if Russia went to war with
Germany, France was committed, and in turn England was committed. The
whole force of the Triple Entente lay in these agreements; and it can
not be too often pointed out that they were _secret_ agreements. No one
in England knew until November, 1911, that in 1904 the British
Government had bargained with the French Government, in return for a
free hand in Egypt, to permit France to squeeze German economic
interests out of Morocco--in violation of a published agreement, signed
by all the interested nations, concerning the status of Morocco. No one
in England knew until 3 August, 1914, that England had for several years
been under a military and naval agreement with France which carried the
enormous contingent liability of the Franco-Russian military alliance.
No matter what appeared on the surface of politics; no matter how many
pacific speeches were made by Sir E. Grey and Mr. Asquith, no matter
what the newspapers said, no matter how often and how impressively Lord
Haldane might visit Berlin in behalf of peace and good feeling; _those
secret agreements held_, they were the only things that did hold, and
everything worked out in strict accordance with them and with nothing
else, least of all with any public understanding or any statement of
policy put out for public consumption. It was just as in the subsequent
case of the armistice and the peace--and this is something that has been
far too little noticed in this country. The real terms of the armistice
and of the peace were not the terms of the Fourteen Points or of any of
the multitudinous published statements of Allied war aims. On the
contrary, they were the precise terms of the secret treaties made among
the Allied belligerents during the war, and made public on their
discovery by the Soviet Government in the archives of the Tsarist
Foreign Office.

It is no wonder then, that the German Government was not particularly
impressed by Sir E. Grey's speech, especially as Germany saw France
helping herself to Moroccan territory with both hands, and England
looking on in indifferent complacency. In May, 1911, on a most
transparent and preposterous pretext, a French army was ordered to march
on Fez, the capital of Morocco. The German Government then informed
France that as the Algeciras Act, which guaranteed the integrity and
independence of Morocco, had thereby gone by the board, Germany would no
longer consider herself bound by its provisions. In June, 30,000 French
troops "relieved" Fez, occupied it and stayed there, evincing no
intention whatever of getting out again, notwithstanding that the
ostensible purpose of the expedition was accomplished; in reality, there
was nothing to accomplish. Two months before this _coup d'état_, Baron
Greindl, the Belgian Minister at Berlin, wrote to the Belgian Foreign
Office as follows:


     Every illusion, if ever entertained on the value of the Algeciras
     Act, which France signed with the firm intention of never
     observing, must long since have vanished. She has not ceased for
     one moment to pursue her plans of annexation; either by seizing
     opportunities for provisional occupations destined to last for ever
     or by extorting concessions which have placed the Sultan in a
     position of dependence upon France, and which have gradually
     lowered him to the level of the Bey of Tunis.


A week later, 29 April, Baron Guillaume, who had succeeded M. Leghait as
Belgian Minister in Paris, reported that "there are, so far, no grounds
for fearing that the French expedition will bring about any disturbance
of international policy. Germany is a calm spectator of events." He
adds, significantly, "England, having thrust France into the Moroccan
bog, is contemplating her work with satisfaction."

France professed publicly that the object of this expedition was to
extricate certain foreigners who were imperilled at Fez; and having done
so, she would withdraw her forces. The precious crew of concessionaires,
profiteers, and dividend-hunters known as the _Comité du Maroc_ had
suddenly discovered a whole French colony living in Fez in a state of
terror and distress. There was, in fact, nothing of the sort. Fez was
never menaced, it was never short of provisions, and there were no
foreigners in trouble. When the expeditionary force arrived, it found no
one to shoot at. As M. Francis de Pressensé says:


     Those redoubtable rebels who were threatening Fez had disappeared
     like dew in the morning. Barely did a few ragged horsemen fire off
     a shot or two before turning around and riding away at a furious
     gallop. A too disingenuous, or too truthful, correspondent gave the
     show away. The expeditionary force complains, he gravely records,
     of the absence of the enemy; the approaching harvest season is
     keeping all the healthy males in the fields! Thus did the phantom
     so dexterously conjured by the _Comité du Maroc_ for the benefit of
     its aims, disappear in a night.


Nevertheless, the expeditionary force did not, in accordance with the
public professions of the French Government, march out of Fez as soon as
it discovered this ridiculous mare's nest. It remained there and held
possession of the Moorish capital. What was the attitude of the British
Government in the premises? On 2 May, in the House of Commons, Sir
Edward Grey said that "the action taken by France is not intended to
alter the political status of Morocco, and His Majesty's Government can
not see why any objection should be taken to it."

Germany had remained for eight years a tolerant observer of French
encroachments in Morocco, and quite clearly, as Baron Greindl observes
in his report of 21 April, 1911, could not "after eight years of
tolerance, change her attitude unless she were determined to go to war,
and war is immeasurably more than Morocco is worth." In July, 1911,
however, while the French force of 30,000 was still occupying Fez,
Germany dispatched a gunboat, the "Panther," which anchored off the
coast of Agadir.



XIV


This was the famous "Agadir incident," of which we have all heard. Did
it mean that the worm had turned, that Germany had changed her attitude
and was determined to go to war? It has been so represented; but there
are many difficult inconsistencies involved in that explanation of the
German Government's act, and there is also an alternative explanation
which fits the facts far better. In the first place the "Panther" was
hardly more than an ocean-going tug. She was of 1000 tons burden,
mounting two small naval guns, six machine-guns, and she carried a
complement of only 125 men. Second, she never landed a man upon the
coast of Morocco. She chose for her anchorage a point where the coast is
practically inaccessible; Agadir has no harbour, and there is nothing
near it that offers any possible temptation to the predatory instinct.
No more ostentatiously unimpressive and unmenacing demonstration could
have been devised. Germany, too, was quite well aware that Morocco was
not worth a European war; and as Baron Guillaume said in his report of
29 April, "possibly she [Germany] is congratulating herself on the
difficulties that weigh upon the shoulders of the French Government, and
asks nothing better than to keep out of the whole affair as long as she
is not forced into it by economic considerations." But the most
significant indication that Germany had not changed her attitude is in
the fact that if she were determined upon war, then, rather than two
years later, was her time to go about it. This aspect of Germany's
behaviour has been dealt with in a previous chapter. It can not be too
often reiterated that if Germany really wanted war and was determined
upon war, her failure to strike in 1908, when Russia was prostrate and
France unready, and again in 1912, a few months after the Agadir
incident, when the Balkan war was on, is inexplicable.[8]

The dispatch of the "Panther" gave the three Belgian observers a great
surprise, and they were much puzzled to account for it. Baron
Guillaume's thoughts at once turned to England. He writes 2 July:


     It was long regarded as an axiom that England would never allow the
     Germans to establish themselves at any point of Moroccan territory.
     Has this policy been abandoned; and if so, at what price were they
     bought off?


During the month of July, while waiting for a statement from the British
Foreign Office, the Belgian observers canvassed the possibility that
Germany's action was a hint that she would like some territorial
compensation for having been bilked out of her share in the Moroccan
market. But the interesting fact, and for the purpose of this book the
important fact, is that none of these diplomats shows the slightest
suspicion that Germany was bent on war or that she had any thought of
going to war. Baron Guillaume says, 28 July, "undoubtedly the present
situation wears a serious aspect.... Nobody, however, wants war, and
they will try to avoid it." He proceeds:


     The French Government knows that a war would be the death-knell of
     the Republic.... I have very great confidence in the Emperor
     William's love of peace, notwithstanding the not infrequent air of
     melodrama about what he says and does.... Germany can not go to war
     for the sake of Morocco, nor yet to exact payment of those
     compensations that she very reasonably demands for the French
     occupation of Fez, which has become more or less permanent. On the
     whole I feel less faith in Great Britain's desire for peace. She
     would not be sorry to see the others destroying one another; only,
     under those circumstances, it would be difficult for her to avoid
     armed intervention.... As I thought from the very first, the crux
     of the situation is in London.


By the end of July, a different conception of Germany's action seemed to
prevail. It began to be seen that the episode of the "Panther" had been
staged by way of calling for a show-down on the actual intentions and
purposes of the Triple Entente; and it got one. Mr. Lloyd George, "the
impulsive Chancellor of the Exchequer," as Count de Lalaing calls him,
made a typical jingo speech at the Mansion House; a speech which the
Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, and Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Minister,
had helped him to compose. The air was cleared at once--England stood by
France--and what better plan could have been devised for clearing the
air than the dispatch of the "Panther"? Germany stood for the policy of
economic equality, the policy of the open door to which all the Powers
interested had agreed in the case of Morocco. France, at the end of a
course of continuous aggression, had put 30,000 troops in occupation of
the capital of Morocco on an infamously unscrupulous pretext, and put
them there to stay, and the British Government "could not see why any
objection should be taken to it." Germany, on the other hand, anchored
an insignificant gunboat off an inaccessible coast, and without landing
a man or firing a shot, left her there as a silent reminder of the
Algeciras Act and the principle of the open door--carefully and even
ostentatiously going no further--and the British Government promptly,
through the mouth of Mr. Lloyd George, laid down a challenge and a
threat. Thereupon Germany and France understood their relative
positions; they understood, even without Sir E. Grey's explicit
reaffirmation of 27 November of the policy of the Triple Entente, that
England would stand by her arrangements with France. Baron Greindl
writes from Berlin 6 December, and puts the case explicitly:


     Was it not assuming the right of veto on German enterprise for
     England to start a hue and cry because a German cruiser cast anchor
     in the roads of Agadir, seeing that she had looked on without a
     murmur whilst France and Spain had proceeded step by step to
     conquer Morocco and to destroy the independence of its Sultan?

     England could not have acted otherwise. She was tied by her secret
     treaty with France. The explanation was extremely simple, but it
     was not of a sort to allay German irritation.


FOOTNOTE:

[8] Critics of German foreign policy are hard put to it to show that she
was ever guided by territorial ambitions; which is an extremely
troublesome thing when one wants to believe that she proposed in 1914 to
put the world under a military despotism. Can any one show where in a
single instance she ever demanded anything more than economic equality
with other nations, in a foreign market? Certainly she never demanded
more than this in Morocco. Ex-Premier Caillaux says that his predecessor
Rouvier offered Germany a good Moroccan port (Mogador) and some
adjoining territory, and Germany declined.



XV


Let us glance at British political chronology for a moment. King Edward
VII, the chief factor in the Entente, the moving spirit in England's
foreign alliances, had been dead a year. In December, 1905, the Liberal
party had come into power. In April, 1908, Mr. H. H. Asquith became
Prime Minister. In 1910, Anglo-German relations were apparently
improving; in July, 1910, Mr. Asquith spoke of them in the House of
Commons as "of the most cordial character. I look forward to increasing
warmth and fervour and intimacy in these relations year by year." The
great question was, then, in 1911, whether the Liberal Government would
actually, when it came down to the pinch, stick by its secret covenant
with France. Were the new Liberals, were Mr. Asquith, Lord Haldane, Sir
E. Grey, Mr. Lloyd George, true-blue Liberal imperialists, or were they
not? Could France and Russia safely trust them to continue the Foreign
Office policy that Lord Lansdowne had bequeathed to Sir E. Grey; or,
when the emergency came, would they stand from under? After all, there
_had_ been a Campbell-Bannerman; there was no doubt of that; and one, at
least, of the new Liberals, Mr. Lloyd George, had a bad anti-imperialist
record in the South African war.

The Agadir incident elicited a satisfactory answer to these questions.
The Liberal Government was dependable. However suspiciously the members
of the Liberal Cabinet might talk, they were good staunch imperialists
at heart. They were, as the theologians say, "sound on the essentials."
Baron Greindl wrote, 6 December, 1911:


     The Entente Cordiale was founded, not on the positive basis of
     defence of common interests, but on the negative one of hatred of
     the German Empire.... Sir Edward Grey adopts this tradition without
     reservation. He imagines that it is in conformity with English
     interests.... A revision of Great Britain's policy is all the less
     to be looked for, as ever since the Liberal Ministry took office,
     and more especially during the last few months, English foreign
     policy has been guided by the ideas with which King Edward VII
     inspired it.



XVI


Mr. Lloyd George's speech at the Mansion House in July, 1911, after the
German gunboat "Panther" had anchored off the Moroccan coast, gave an
immense impulse to the jingo spirit in France, because it was taken as
definite assurance of England's good faith in seeing her secret
agreements through to a finish. M. Caillaux, the French Premier, appears
to have had his doubts, nevertheless, inasmuch as the British Foreign
Office did not give a straight reply to the French Foreign Office's
inquiry concerning British action in case the Germans landed a force in
Morocco. He says:


     Are we to understand that our powerful neighbours will go right
     through to the end with the resolve which they suggest? Are they
     ready for all eventualities? The British Ambassador, Sir Francis
     Bertie, with whom I converse, does not give me formal assurances.
     It is said, of course, that he would see without displeasure the
     outbreak of a conflict between France and Germany; his mind works
     in the way attributed to a number of leading British officials at
     the Foreign Office.


M. Caillaux here suggests the same suspicion of British intentions
which the Belgian diplomats at London, Paris and Berlin intimate
continually throughout their correspondence since 1905.[9] He
accordingly favoured a less energetic policy towards Germany, and was
thrown out of office. Count de Lalaing reported from London, 15 January,
1912, that the revelations which provoked this political crisis were
disagreeable for the English Government. "They seem to prove," he says,
"that the French Premier had been trying to negotiate with Berlin
without the knowledge of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and his other
colleagues, and this is naturally disquieting to a Government whose
interests are bound up with those of France, and which accordingly can
ill tolerate any lapses of this kind." He adds:


     These revelations have also strengthened the impression that M.
     Caillaux had recently favoured an ultra-conciliatory policy towards
     Germany, and this impression was felt all the more painfully in
     English official circles, as the full extent of the tension between
     London and Berlin caused by the Cabinet of St. James's loyal
     behaviour towards the Cabinet at Paris had hardly been grasped.
     People in England are reluctant to face the fact that they have
     been 'more royalist than the King,' and have shown themselves even
     less accommodating than the friend they were backing....
     Accordingly the press unanimously hails with delight the departure
     of M. Caillaux, and trusts that sounder traditions may be reverted
     to without delay.


This comment on the position of M. Caillaux is one of the most
interesting observations to be found in these documents.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] This is worth noticing since M. Caillaux was the pioneer victim of
the charge of being "pro-German."



XVII


The Balkan war took place in 1912, and the whole history of the year
shows the most mighty efforts of European politicians--efforts which
seem ludicrous and laughable in spite of their tragic quality--to avert
with their left hand the war which they were bringing on with their
right. Mr. Lloyd George is right in saying that no one really wanted
war. What every one wanted, and what every one was trying with might and
main to do, was to cook the omelette of economic imperialism without
breaking any eggs. There was in all the countries, naturally, a jingo
nationalist party which wanted war. In Russia, which was then busily
reorganizing her military forces which had been used up and left
prostrate by the war with the Japanese, the pan-Slavists were
influential and vociferous, but they were not on top. In England there
was a great popular revulsion against the behaviour of the Government
which had so nearly involved the English in a war against Germany the
year before; and Mr. Asquith's Government, which was pacifist in
tendency, was meeting the popular sentiment in every way possible,
_short of the one point of revealing the secret engagements which bound
it to the French Government and contingently to the Russian Government_.
Lord Haldane undertook an official mission to Berlin, which was attended
with great publicity and was popularly supposed to be of a pacificatory
nature; and really, within the limits of the Franco-English diplomatic
agreement, it went as far as it could in the establishment of good
relations. In fact, of course, it came to nothing; as long as the
diplomatic agreement remained in force, it could come to nothing,
nothing of the sort could come to anything; and the diplomatic agreement
being guarded as a close secret, the reason why it must come to nothing
was not apparent. The German Government also made tremendous efforts in
behalf of peace; and it must be noted by those who accept the theory
upon which the treaty of Versailles is based, that if Germany had wished
or intended at any time to strike at the peace of Europe, now was the
moment for her to do so. Instead, the German Emperor in person, and the
German Government, through one of its best diplomatic agents, Baron von
Marschall, met every pacific overture more than half-way, and
themselves initiated all that could be thought of. "There is no doubt,"
wrote Baron Beyens from Berlin, "that the Emperor, the Chancellor and
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (von Kiderlen-Wächter) are
passionately pacifists." Baron Beyens again says, 28 June, 1912, "The
Emperor is persistent and has not given up hopes of winning back English
sympathies, just as he has succeeded up to a certain point in obtaining
the confidence of the Tsar, by the force of his personal attractions."
Those who believe in the extraordinary notion of an unprepared and
unsuspecting Europe, should read the diplomatic history of the year
1912, when all the chief office-holders in England and on the Continent
were struggling like men caught in a quicksand, or like flies on
fly-paper, to avert, or if they could not avert, to defer the inevitable
war.

In one country, however, the jingo nationalist and militarist party came
on top; and that country was France. M. Caillaux was succeeded by
Raymond Poincaré; and in January, 1913, Poincaré became President of the
Republic. Up to 1912, the people of France were increasingly indisposed
to war and were developing a considerable impatience with militarism,
and the French Government was responsive to this sentiment. It knew, as
Baron Guillaume remarked at the time of the Agadir incident, that "a war
would be the death-knell of the Republic." M. Caillaux seems to have
measured the feelings of his countrymen quite well. Baron Guillaume says
that after the dispatch of the "Panther," the British Cabinet's first
proposal was that the British and French Governments should each
immediately send two men-of-war to Agadir; and that the French Cabinet
strongly objected. Again, he says in his report of 8 July, 1911, "I am
persuaded that Messrs. Caillaux and de Selves regret the turn given to
the Moroccan affair by their predecessors in office. They were quite
ready to give way, provided they could do so without humiliation."

The speech of Mr. Lloyd George at the Mansion House, however, which was
taken by the French (and how correctly they took it became apparent on 3
August, 1914) as a definite assurance of British support against
Germany, gave the militarist-nationalist party the encouragement to go
ahead and dominate the domestic politics of France. It put the
Poincaré-Millerand-Delcassé element on its feet and stiffened its
resolution, besides clearing the way in large measure for its
predominance. On 14 February, 1913, Baron Guillaume reports from Paris
thus:


     The new President of the Republic enjoys a popularity in France
     to-day unknown to any of his predecessors.... Various factors
     contribute to explain his popularity. His election had been
     carefully prepared in advance; people are pleased at the skilful
     way in which, while a Minister, he manoeuvred to bring France to
     the fore in the concert of Europe; he has hit upon some happy
     phrases that stick in the popular mind.


The career of M. Poincaré, in fact, and his management of popular
sentiment, show many features which _mutatis mutandis_, find a parallel
in the career of Theodore Roosevelt. Baron Guillaume adds, however, this
extremely striking observation concerning the popularity of M. Poincaré:


     But above all, one must regard it as a manifestation of the old
     French chauvinistic spirit, which had for many years slumbered, but
     which had come to life again since the affair of Agadir.


In the same communication to the Belgian Foreign Office, Baron Guillaume
remarks:


     M. Poincaré is a native of Lorraine, and loses no opportunity of
     telling people so. He was M. Millerand's colleague, and the
     instigator of his militarist policy.

     Finally, the first word that he uttered at the very moment when he
     learned that he was elected President of the Republic, was a
     promise that he would watch over and maintain all the means of
     national defence.


M. Poincaré had not been in office two months when he recalled the
French Ambassador at Petersburg, M. Georges Louis, and appointed in his
stead M. Delcassé. Concerning this stupendous move, Baron Guillaume
reported 21 February, 1913, to the Belgian Foreign Office thus:


     The news that M. Delcassé is shortly to be appointed Ambassador at
     Petersburg burst like a bomb here yesterday afternoon.... He was
     one of the architects of the Franco-Russian alliance, and still
     more so of the Anglo-French _entente_.


Baron Guillaume goes on to say that he does not think that M. Delcassé's
appointment should be interpreted as a demonstration against Germany;
but he adds:


     I do think, however, that M. Poincaré, a Lorrainer, was not sorry
     to show, from the first day of entering on his high office, how
     anxious he is to stand firm and hold aloft the national flag. That
     is the danger involved in having M. Poincaré at the Elysée in these
     anxious days through which Europe is passing. It was under his
     Ministry that the militarist, slightly bellicose instincts of the
     French woke up again. He has been thought to have a measure of
     responsibility for this change of mood.


M. Georges Louis, who had represented the French Government at
Petersburg for three years, was a resolute opponent of the militarist
faction in France, and was therefore distinctly _persona non grata_ to
the corresponding faction in Russia. At the head of this faction stood
Isvolsky, who was a friend of M. Poincaré and a kindred spirit; hence
when M. Poincaré became Premier, an attempt was made to oust M. Louis,
but it was unsuccessful. M. Delcassé, on the other hand, is described by
Mr. Morel as "the man identified more than any other man in French
public life with the anti-German war-party." Mr. Morel, in commenting on
the appointment of M. Delcassé quotes the following from a report sent
by the Russian Ambassador in London to the Foreign Office in Petersburg.
It was written four days after the appointment of M. Delcassé, and quite
bears out the impression made upon the Belgian agents.[10]


     When I recall his [M. Cambon, the French Ambassador in London]
     conversations with me, and the attitude of Poincaré, the thought
     comes to me as a conviction, that of all the powers France is the
     only one which, not to say that it wishes war, would yet look upon
     it without great regret.... She [France] has, either rightly or
     wrongly, complete trust in her army; the old effervescing minority
     has again shown itself.


FOOTNOTE:

[10] But perhaps Count Beuckendorf was pro-German, too!



XVIII


The French war-party, represented by MM. Poincaré, Millerand and
Delcassé, came into political predominance in January, 1912, and
consolidated its ascendancy one year later, when M. Raymond Poincaré
became President of the French Republic. All through 1912 there was an
immense amount of correspondence and consultation between the French and
Russian Governments, and all through 1913 Russia showed extraordinary
activity in military preparation. In England, Mr. Asquith's Government
had to face a strong revulsion of popular feeling against the attitude
of its diplomacy, which had so nearly involved the country in war with
Germany at the time of the Agadir incident.

As always, the figures of expenditure tell the story; and the history of
1912-14 should be continually illustrated by reference to the financial
statistics of the period, which have been given in earlier chapters. For
instance, Russia, which spent (in round numbers) £3¼ million on new
naval construction in 1911, spent £7 million in 1912, £12 million in
1913, and £13 million in 1914. The fact that, as Professor Raymond
Beazley puts it, in the ten years before the war, and with increasing
insistence, Paris and St. Petersburg spent upon armaments £159 million
more than Berlin or Vienna, ought to suffice at least to reopen the
question of responsibility.

It must be carefully noted that by the spring of 1912, the Balkan
League, which was engineered by the Russian diplomat Hartwig, was fully
formed. This put the diplomacy of the Balkan States under the direct
control of the Russian Foreign Office. It now became necessary for the
Russian Foreign Office to ascertain, in case war between Serbia and
Austria broke out, and Germany should help Austria and Russia should
help Serbia, whether Russia could count on the support of France and
England. Russia received this assurance in secret, and the terms of it
were discovered by the Soviet Government in the archives of the Foreign
Office and published in 1919. This is a most important fact, and should
be continually borne in mind in connexion with the fact that the war was
precipitated by the murder of the Austrian Archduke by Serbian officers,
members of the pan-Slavist organization fostered and encouraged by MM.
Isvolsky and Hartwig.

On 9 August, 1912, M. Poincaré, then Premier of France, made a visit to
St. Petersburg, where he was joined by his kindred spirit, M. Isvolsky,
who was then the Russian Ambassador at Paris. It was the usual visit of
State, and Russia staged an imposing series of military manoeuvres in
M. Poincaré's honour. But the really important events that took place
were these. First, a naval agreement was made between France and Russia,
whereby France agreed to concentrate her naval forces in the Eastern
Mediterranean in order to support the Russian navy in the Black Sea.
This agreement was secret, and revealed by the Soviet Government in
1918. Then, in the same month, the Third French Naval Squadron was
transferred from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. M. Poincaré told M.
Isvolsky that "this decision has been made in agreement with England,
and forms the further development and completion of the arrangement
already made previously between the French and British
Staffs"--referring to the conference of Messrs. Asquith and Churchill
and Lord Kitchener at Malta, the month before, at which the new
disposition of the English and French fleets was decided. The third
matter of consequence that took place in the month of August was that
the Russian Government began to put pressure on the French Government to
re-establish the Three Years Military Service law.

So much for August. In the month of September, M. Poincaré gave the
Russian Foreign Minister, M. Sazonov, assurance that if Germany helped
Austria in a struggle in the Balkans, and if Russia were drawn in on the
other side, France "would not hesitate for a moment to fulfil its
obligations towards Russia." In the same month, M. Isvolsky had an
interview with the King of England and Sir Edward Grey, the British
Foreign Minister, in which both King George and Sir E. Grey assured him
of the fullest British co-operation in the same event. M. Isvolsky
reported to the Russian Foreign Office at St. Petersburg, that "Grey,
upon his own initiative, corroborated what I already knew from
Poincaré--the existence of an agreement between France and Great
Britain, according to which England undertook, in case of a war with
Germany, not only to come to the assistance of France on the sea, but
also on the Continent, by landing troops." These two understandings
between MM. Poincaré and Sazonov, and between M. Isvolsky and Sir E.
Grey, were secret, and nothing was known of them until 1919, when the
memoranda of them were published by the Soviet Government.[11]

A train of gunpowder, in other words, had been laid from Belgrade
through Paris and London to St. Petersburg; and at the beginning of that
train was the highly inflammable and inflammatory pan-Slavism, organized
by M. Hartwig with the connivance of M. Isvolsky. A spark struck in the
Balkans would cause the train to flash into flame throughout its entire
length.

FOOTNOTE:

[11] On 10 March of the following year, Mr. Asquith, replying to a
question in the Commons from Lord Hugh Cecil, denied that England was
under an "obligation arising owing to an assurance given by the Ministry
in the course of diplomatic negotiations, to send a very large armed
force out of this country to operate in Europe." On 24 March, he made
similar denials in reply to questions from Sir W. Byles and Mr. King. On
14 April, Mr. Runciman, in a speech at Birkenhead, denied "in the most
categorical way" the existence of a secret understanding with any
foreign Power! On 3 May, the Secretary for the Colonies, Mr. Harcourt,
declared publicly that he "could conceive no circumstances in which
Continental operations would not be a crime against the people of this
country." On 28 June, the under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mr.
Acland, declared publicly that "in no European question were we
concerned to interfere with a big army." On 1 July, Lord Loreburn, Lord
Chancellor from 1906 to 1912, said "that any British Government would be
so guilty towards our country as to take up arms in a foreign quarrel is
more than I can believe." On 28 April, 1914, and again on 11 June, Sir
E. Grey confirmed, in the House of Commons, Mr. Asquith's assertion,
made 10 and 24 March, 1913, of British freedom from engagements with
Continental Powers.

Yet, curiously the professions of politicians are still trusted, and
people still expect something from their machinations; they expected
something substantial from the recent conference in Washington, on the
limitation of armaments, for instance--a striking and pathetic example
of the strength of superstition.



XIX


On 25 April, 1912, the German Reichstag put through its first reading a
bill, with only perfunctory debate, for an increase in the German army
and navy. This measure has been regularly and officially interpreted as
a threat. Yet nearly a year after, on 19 February, 1913, Baron
Guillaume, writing from Paris about the prospects of the Three Years
Service bill, reports to the Belgian Foreign Office that the French
Minister of War "does not regard the measures taken by Germany as a
demonstration of hostility, but rather as an act of prudence for the
future. Germany fears that she may one day have to fight Russia and
France together, perhaps England too; and then any help that Austria
might give her would be seriously handicapped by the fact that the Dual
Monarchy [Austria-Hungary] would have to withstand a coalition of Balkan
States."

Naturally. The bill was presented to the Reichstag in April, and the
"coalition of Balkan States," M. Hartwig's Balkan League, had already
completed its organization in February. Not only so, but the very first
step taken by this exemplary organization provided for a division of
spoils in the event of a successful war with Turkey; and six months
after the organization of the League was concluded, it served an
ultimatum upon Turkey over Albania, and in October went to war. The
German Government could quite plainly see the future about to be
inaugurated through this consolidation of Balkan policy into the hands
of the Russian Foreign Office--any one even an attentive reader of
newspapers, could see it--and it could see the vastly increased
responsibility of its Austrian ally, in case of a quarrel, should it
have to take on a coalition of the Balkan States instead of a single
one.

Count de Lalaing reported from London, 24 February, 1918, that the
British Foreign Office took the same sensible view of the German
military increases as, according to Baron Guillaume, was taken by M.
Jonnart. "The English press," he says, "is of course anxious to saddle
Germany with the responsibility for the fresh tension caused by her
schemes--a tension which may give Europe fresh reasons for uneasiness."
But, he goes on--


     At the Foreign Office I found a more equitable and calmer estimate
     of the situation. They see in the reinforcement of the German
     armies not so much a provocation as an admission that circumstances
     have weakened Germany's military position, and that it must be
     strengthened. The Berlin Government is compelled to recognize that
     it can no longer count upon being supported by the whole force of
     its Austrian ally, now that a new Power, that of the Balkan
     Federation, has made its appearance in South-eastern Europe, right
     at the gates of the Dual Empire.... Under these circumstances, the
     Foreign Office sees nothing astonishing in Germany's finding it
     imperative to increase the number of her army corps. The Foreign
     Office also states that the Berlin Government had told the Paris
     Cabinet quite frankly that such were the motives for its action.


The same view was publicly expressed by Mr. Lloyd George himself as late
as 1 January, 1914, when he said:


     The German army was vital, not merely to the existence of the
     German Empire, but to the very life and independence of the nation
     itself, surrounded, as Germany is, by other nations, each of which
     possesses armies as powerful as her own. We forget that while we
     insist upon a sixty-per-cent superiority (as far as our naval
     strength is concerned) over Germany being essential to guarantee
     the integrity of our own shores, Germany herself has nothing like
     that superiority over France alone, and she has of course, in
     addition, to reckon with Russia on her eastern frontier. Germany
     has nothing which approximates to a two-Power standard. She has,
     therefore, become alarmed by recent issues, and is spending huge
     sums of money on the expansion of her military resources.


Those are the words, be it remembered, of the same person who says
to-day that German responsibility for the war which broke out six months
after he had made the foregoing statement, is a _chose jugée_! The
statement was made, furthermore, not only _after_ the German bill of 25
April, 1912, but _after_ the bill of 8 April, 1913, as well, which fixed
the peace-strength of the German army at 870,000.

The Three Years Service law passed the French Chamber in August, 1913,
after a passionate popular campaign. Of this measure Baron Guillaume
says that the French newspapers, _Le Temps_ in particular, "are wrong in
representing the French Government's plans as being in response to
measures adopted by Germany. Many of them are but the outcome of
measures which have long been prepared." The French Minister, M.
Jonnart, told him that "we know very well what an advantage our
neighbour [Germany] has in the continual growth of his population;
still, we must do all that lies in our power to compensate this
advantage by better military organization." Probably this view of the
Three Years Service law was the view held by all save the relatively
small and highly-integrated war-faction; and in so far as military
measures are ever reasonable, this, like the corresponding measures
taken in Germany, must be regarded as reasonable. As M. Pichon told
Baron Guillaume, "We are not arming for war, we are arming to avoid it,
to exorcise it.... We must go on arming more and more in order to
prevent war." There is no reason whatever to suppose that this view was
not sincerely entertained by M. Pichon and by many others, probably by a
majority of the persons most responsibly concerned.

But the consequences of the Three Years Service law were contemplated by
Baron Guillaume with great apprehension. He reports on 12 June, 1913,
that "the burden of the new law will fall so heavily upon the
population, and the expenditure which it will involve will be so
exorbitant, that there will soon be an outcry in the country, and France
will be faced with this dilemma: either renounce what she can not bear
to forgo, or else, war at short notice." Of the militarist party now in
the ascendancy, he says: "They are followed with a sort of infatuation,
a kind of frenzy which is interesting but deplorable. One is not now
allowed, under pain of being marked as a traitor, to express even a
doubt of the need for the Three Years Service."

Public opinion was evidently confiscated by the
Poincaré-Millerand-Delcassé group, much as it was in the United States
in 1917 by the war-party headed by Mr. Wilson. Baron Guillaume uses
words that must remind us of those days. "Every one knows," he says,
"that the mass of the nation is by no means in favour of the projected
reform, and they understand the danger that lies ahead. But they shut
their eyes and press on."



XX


The train of powder, however, had been laid by the diplomatic
engagements. Austria-Hungary and Serbia came into collision in the
spring of 1913 over the Scutari incident. In December, 1912, M. Sazonov
had urged Serbia to play a waiting game in order to "deliver a blow at
Austria." But on 4 April, 1913, Baron Beyens reports from Berlin that
the arrogance and contempt with which the Serbs receive the Vienna
Cabinet's protests over Scutari


     can only be explained by their belief that St. Petersburg will
     support them. The Serbian chargé d'affaires was quite openly saying
     here lately that his Government would not have persisted in its
     course for the last six months in the face of the Austrian
     opposition had they not received encouragement in their course from
     the Russian Minister, M. de Hartwig, who is a diplomatist of M.
     Isvolsky's school.... M. Sazonov's heart is with his colleagues who
     are directing the policy of the Great Powers, but he feels his
     influence with the Tsar being undermined by the court-party and the
     pan-Slavists. Hence his inconsequent behaviour.


The military activity which the Russian Government displayed in 1913
gives interest to this estimate of M. Sazonov's position. No doubt to
some extent the estimate was correct; M. Sazonov, like Sir E. Grey, was
probably, when it was too late, much disquieted by the events which
marshalled him the way that he was going. In 1914, this military
activity gained extraordinary intensity. The Russian army was put upon a
peace-footing of approximately 1,400,000, "an effective numerical
strength hitherto unprecedented," said the St. Petersburg correspondent
of the London _Times_. From January to June, the Russian Government made
immense purchases of war material. In February, it concluded a loan in
Paris for the improvement of its strategic roads and railways on the
German frontier. Russia, as was generally known at the time, had her eye
on the acquisition of Constantinople; and in the same month, February, a
council of war was held in St. Petersburg to work out "a general
programme of action in order to secure for us a favourable solution of
the historical question of the Straits." In March, the St. Petersburg
newspaper which served as the mouthpiece of the Minister of War,
published an article stating that Russia's strategy would no longer be
"defensive" but "active." Another paper spoke of the time coming when
"the crossing of the Austrian frontier by the Russian army would be an
unavoidable decision." In the same month, Russia raised a heavy tariff
against the importation of German grain and flour; thus bearing out the
evidence of German trade-reports that even at this time Germany was
still exporting grain to Russia--a most extraordinary proceeding for a
nation which contemplated a sudden declaration of war before the next
harvest. In the same month, the Russian Government brought in military
estimates of £97 million. It exercised heavy pressure on the French
Government in the protracted political turmoil over the maintenance of
the Three Years Service law. In April, "trial mobilizations" were begun,
and were continued up to the outbreak of the war. In May, M. Sazonov
informed the Tsar that the British Government "has decided to empower
the British Admiralty Staff to enter into negotiations with French and
Russian naval agents in London for the purpose of drawing technical
conditions for possible action by the naval forces of England, Russia
and France." In the same month, a complete mobilization of all the
reserves of the three annual contingents of 1907-1909 was ordered for
the whole Russian Empire, as a "test," to take place in the autumn. In
the same month the Russian Admiralty instructed its agent in London,
Captain Volkov, as follows:


     Our interests on the Northern scene of operations require that
     England keeps as large a part of the German fleet as possible in
     check in the North Sea.... The English Government could render us a
     substantial service if it would agree to send a sufficient number
     of boats to our Baltic ports to compensate for our lack of means of
     transport, before the beginning of war-operations.


This document, revealed by the Soviet Government in 1919, is pretty
damaging to the assumption of an "unprepared and unsuspecting Europe";
especially as Professor Conybeare has given publicity to the fact that
"before the beginning of war-operations" those English boats were there,
prompt to the minute, empty, ready and waiting.

In June, the Russian Ambassador warned the Russian naval staff in London
that they must exercise great caution in talking about a landing in
Pomerania or about the dispatch of English boats to the Russian Baltic
ports before the outbreak of war, "so that the rest may not be
jeopardized." On 13 June, the newspaper-organ of the Russian Minister
of War published an inspired article under the caption: "Russia is
Ready: France must be Ready."

Two weeks later, the Austrian heir-apparent, the Archduke Francis
Joseph, was murdered at Sarajevo, a town in Bosnia, by Serbian officers.
The murder was arranged by the Serbian Major Tankesitch, of the
pan-Slavist organization known as the Black Hand; and this organization
was fostered, if not actually subsidized, by the Russian Minister at
Belgrade, M. Hartwig, the pupil and _alter ego_ of M. Isvolsky, and the
architect and promoter of the Balkan League!





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