WHO MADE THE WAR ?
THE sermon which the Dean of St. Paul's preached before the members of the International Peace Conference a fortnight ago is still causing a good deal of controversy. Though we have great respect for the intellectual capacities of the Dean and sympathy with many of his spiritual views, we cannot help thinking that he has been led very far from the path of reason as well as of historic truth when he talks as .he does of the origins of the War. He is also apparently possessed by that hopeless and unnecessary delusion that men make war in order to get money, and that one of the ways to persuade them to be more sensible and not to fight is to show them that war does not pay. We venture to say that, though there has been plenty of talk about predatory wars, there have been few or no modern wars the promoters of which had any idea that they were going to make money out of the job. Nations fight either because they slavishly obey the injunctions of their rulers or, if they are free people, because their rulers have deluded them, or, again, simply because they are angry and want to fight. As Napoleon, with one of his flashes of evil genius, told his brother Joseph, " What a nation hates is another nation." In essence war is a conflict of wills—" I say I shall ! " ; " I say you shan't ! " ; " Then take the consequences ! "—and the blows begin. We treat below the sophism which is growing apace, and is favoured by the professional pacifists—the most ruthless, irascible and pugnacious political sect in exist- ence—that in the War it was " six of one and half a dozen of the other," that we attacked the Germans quite as much as they attacked us, and that they were in fact a poor, harmless people who only wanted to defend themselves and nothing more against fierce and aggressive people like us, the French and the Russians. We three pined to destroy Germany because we wanted the rulership of the world and did not intend to leave a crumb over for the unhappy and harmless Teutons ! All such talk is pure moonshine.
Let us take France first. Up till the time of the Agadir crisis France was the most pacific country in the world. The thrift of her people, the demand for all the things which France grew, made or organized— beginning with champagne and ending up with hotel keeping—was enormous, and also wholly depended upon Peace. This fact the French fully realized. Again, the French, being the most domestic of all nations, hated con- scription and other forms of preparation for war. They only endured them because of the menace on the frontier. France, in fact, with her dwindling population and her increasing comfort, was settling down as the world's great pleasure place—not in the bad sense but in a good and reasonable sense. The French people, in fact, were fulfilling their destiny as the happy intellectuals depicted by Goldsmith :- " They please, are pleased. They give to get esteem Till, seeming blessed, they grow to what they seem."
Then came the terrible shock of Agadir. The German Emperor was furious to see England and France getting together, though it was only a very mild rapprochement and obviously taken by both nations with a pacifist object and in order to keep the peace. But drawing near France automatically meant drawing nearer Russia, though, again, only on pacific grounds and without the slightest idea of aggression against Germany. However, Germany determined to call this " hemming in " or " encirclement," though, if she had been a peaceful Power, she would have welcomed such peaceful pacts. While we stood on the defensive, without thought of aggression, she was every day growing richer, stronger and more populous. Though she pretended that this growth was the cause of enmity between us, it was nothing of the kind. Nobody out of a lunatic asylum here or in France ever wanted to attack Germany because she was prosperous. But, though Germany was in no real fear of being hemmed in, she was very anxious to attack her neighbours one by one, and thus by a scientific plan obtain the empire of the world.
The result of her world policy was that Germany deter- mined at Agadir to test the strength of the Entente and find out whether we really meant to stand by France. We showed her that we did intend to stand by France. Mr. Lloyd George by his famous speech encouraged France to take the strong line and to insist on not being bullied. If we had continued in this firm mood, and had made it clear that we meant to stand permanently by every word we said during the Agadir incident, there would have been no war. Unfortunately, however, while Agadir terrified France and made her feel that it was necessary to arm every man and get ready every musket, we rested on our oars. We thought first what a mighty people we were, and then began to listen to the German pleas that they were at heart the most kindly people in the world. In a word, our politicians were inclined to take the line that Germany had had a lesson and that the thing to do now was not to aggravate her further but to encourage the alleged German Peace Party. This tendency to be genial to the Germans, and not to drive them to look upon us as essential enemies, flowered in the astonishing statement made by Mr. Lloyd George to the Daily Chronicle on the first day of January, 1914. That was the interview in which he said that things had so much improved on the Continent that we could safely cut down our military, and even our naval, expenditure. Probably that interview, though well meant, had more to do with bringing on the War than any other factor. The Germans believed that Mr. Lloyd George really was what he professed to be—the great democratic leader of England. His pronouncement at the same time encouraged their foolish view that democracies were weak and unstable in foreign affairs and would not protect their rights. In a word, they took it as an indication that we should not stand by France. If he had made a different sort of speech and had warned the Germans that, though we should never encourage aggressiveness in France, we would not tolerate any attack upon her, direct or indirect, the Germans would probably have reorientated their policy, or, at any rate, postponed violent action. Instead, they were betrayed, as so many Machiavellian statesmen before them, by the thought, Now or never ! "
All this—a very old story for the Spectator, since it was always its view—is brightly and clearly brought out in the first chapter of The Pomp of Power. Some of the French evidence quoted by the author of The Pomp of Power, reviewed by us this week, shows that the French generals, whatever might be the position of the statesmen, were exceedingly anxious and exceedingly doubtful as to whether the British Empire could be relied upon to stand by them in case they were attacked by Germany. This evidence is valuable to those who, like ourselves, always felt that instead of the situation being made worse, it would have been made very much better if our Government had rendered their position clear instead of woolly the instant war had become a possibility. If Lord Grey, as the spokesman of the Government on foreign affairs, had told the Germans throughout the period between Agadir and 1914 plainly and openly that, if they attacked France, we should stand by her, there would in all probability have been no war. To have made such a declaration would not in the least have increased our liabilities, for all wise people knew that, though we might shilly-shally a little, the instinct of self-preservation would in the end be sure to force us to say, as in effect it did : " We cannot afford to see France destroyed, as she will be if we don't assist her. The moment she is beaten the Germans, flushed with suixess, will say, as did Napoleon These land victories do not give us the thing we want. We want the empire of the world. But to get that we must reduce the power of Britain.' But then we should have had to fight single-handed, probably with the beaten France actively hostile because of what she would have considered our betrayal. If we knew, as we did, that we must be dragged into any war which was occasioned by Germany's desire to dominate Europe, whether it was called a war of defence against Russia and France, or an anti-hemming-in necessity, or by any other alias, the chance of preserving the peace was much greater through our making our position clear than by apparently leaving it undecided. To people so logical as the Germans the fact that we were obviously not willing to say that we should stand by France made their naval, military and political calculators argue : " There are nine chances to one against England in her present mood coming in. That may not last. Therefore, let us go ahead while we can. It may be to some extent a speculation, but it is one of those speculations in which you are practi- cally certain to win, and therefore the wise man will act at once. After all, it is always a certainty that the English will act a selfish part." The happy opportunity seemed framed and ready for the Germans. That, in the last resort, was the cause of the War.
It is in this sense, and only in this sense, that we are to be blamed. Our good intentions and our unwillingness to face disagreeable facts constituted the true danger. This contention is another facet of the argument, a sound one, that the more we prepare for war the less the danger: If the Germans had known what we knew in our hearts; namely, that we should spend our last man and our last shilling to prevent the dommation of the world by Germany ; further, if we had proved our seriousness by preparation instead of by weeping the tears of sentiment and talking nonsense about armed peace being worse than war, the War could never have come.
We began with Dean Inge and in fairness should end with him. Though we think he made a great mistake in fostering the notion that Germany was the lamb attacked by the Entente wolf, or at any rate that both sides were gamblers for high stakes, we are absolutely and entirely, with him when he preaches the virtue and also the wisdom of forgiveness. Not only do we think- that we ought to have offered the Germans terms which they would have thought unex- pectedly generous, and have pointed out to them that we gave them no excuse for plotting revenge, but we ought to have invited them—and by " them " we mean the people of Germany and not any governing clique—to help us in carrying out the policy of universal disarmament and the rebuilding of the world on a sounder basis. What would have made this easy would have been the automatic democratization of Germany produced by the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of militarism. We have always felt we ought to have told the Germans that the easy terms which we offered them were absolutely conditional on their maintaining a free and non-militaristic democracy. We should not force such a polity, of course, on them if they preferred to be slaves, but, as we considered political serfdom the world's greatest danger, we should have to make and maintain a series of peace terms far more severe to a monarchical Germany than those offered to a bona fide democracy.
A part of the Dean's peroration is full of the true spirit of Christianity :— " We say that the Germans showed no signs of repentance. Did we make it easy for them to repent ? The human heart is like water ; it freezes at a certain temperature, and melts under the influence of warmth. The Christian method is to overcome evil with good. It does not always succeed ; but the opposite method of driving out devils by Beelzebub invariably fails."
As Shakespeare saw so well, the policy of the pound of flesh never really pays. To put the thing on a pure common-sense and commercial basis, it never pays to treat any man, however much you may dislike him, as if this was going to be the last transaction between you and him. So much are we members of one another that, strive and do what we may, no nation can ever say that this is the last transaction between it and another nation. The very next day you find that you must have transactions with your enemy. But transactions in the commercial world mean a kind of partnership. You cannot ruin anybody else without ruining yourself, and that being an essential fact, it is one by which your policy must be governed.
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