Post Mortems and Prophecies on War
The Cause of War
The International Anarchy, 1904 to 1914. By G. Lowes Dickin. son. (George Allen and Unwin. 17S. 6d.) TITS immediate antecedents of the Great War will continue to attract historians, even when the Ems telegram, that was the occasion, though not the cause, of the Franco-German War, is half-forgotten. A good deal of this post-mortem inquisition is either morbid or nationally egotistic ; but a few searchers after the truth are found whose first object is to isolate some essential cause to the end that its discovery may help the world to avoid repeating the old catastrophe. Mr. Lowes Dickinson is conspicuous among this little group. He has written several small books recording his conclusions and- emphasizing his point of view. The latest is the most complete and ambitious endeavour to found and buttress his belief that big armaments, Ihe evil paradox, " si via pacem, para helium," and the policy of the balance of pcnvei, combine to make wars inevitable:
The bulk of the work is a shreWd and highly documented record of the political history of Europe from 1904 to August, 1914. The necessary aridity of the analysis is relieved by paisages of • literary beauty,' issuing froni the beet sort of intellectual emotion. He thus concludes the account of the. 'three fatal " noes " uttered by M. Sazonoff to the German Anibassador at 7.10 p.m. on July 31st, 1914. " In Beethoven's 5tli Symphony three notes followed by one run all through the first movement,. and the master gives the indication, `. so Klopft das Schickeal an die Tiir.' Between those two connnonplace men, each convinced he was right, those three questions and answers decreed the death of millions of men, the' collapse of some States and the birth of others, the ruin of kurope• and perhaps of our civilization." - •
The essence of the work is its moral purpose, its evidence that war is a form of suicide, not an example, as some per- verted German historians maintain, of the survival -of the fittest. The more concrete point, which nation is judged particularly guilty of the War, is, nevertheless, a proper object of curiosity. Mr. Dickinson acquits Great Britain and under- lines the peace-loving passion of some of her statesmen. He speaks with generous and welcome admiration of the United States. • He sees the more immediate cause of the War in the determination of Austria to crush the Serbs, the determination of Russia not to permit this and the folly of Germany in expecting to- " localize " such a conflict. In spite of a brilliantly sarcastic account of M. Poincare's visit to Russia on the eve of war, his references to France
are 'not on the whole condemnatory. Throughout the language . _
and argument are admirably lucid—are indeed pellucid ; and it cannot be said that the a priori creed, which is frankly con- fessed, leads to perversion either of fact or interpretation. But when his work is done, his moral adduced, his analysis ' complete, Mr. Lowes Dickinson allows himself a few pages of Conclusion."
• It is a thousand pities they were added. They cannot but leave the impression that after all the zeal for humanity is at least a-little blurred by political bitterness and prejudice. Of the British he writes :
Everywhere in the world they are at loggerheads with their
• subjects.- They have just challenged Japan to a naval competition ; and- they have alienated that immense reserve of force, the Republic of China. Russia, for whom the agonies of the War were prolonged and intensified by the military and-economic depredations of her former Allies, has threatened a junction with China, and possibly with Japan."
Such crude and unsupported allegations square ill with the author's final dictum that " there is no solution except justice, temperance and benignity." In the same pages his cynical exposure of the secret treaties compounded during the War makes no allowance for the not unimportant fact that Great Britain and France were at the time fighting for their life. Logically the suggestion is that Great Britain entered the War for the sake of a mandate in Persia ! One can only hope that readers will begin the book at the beginning. It Would do all the world good to read the first 483 pages out of the 492. The essential argument is true and vital, that greed and fear—the root causes of most wars=are both magnified by competition in armaments and by the ideal of a balance of power between groups of nations. Preparation for war does not breed the will to peace, though in a greedy world it may prevent aggression.
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