WAR GUILT IN 1914
SIR,—It is refreshing to find Mr. Rene Elvin standing up so stoutly for the "War Guilt" clause in the Versailles Treaty. If there is one fact in history which is proved up to the hilt it is surely the almost exclusive guilt of Germany in bringing about the war of 1914.
The mere fact that the Germans have objected so strenu- ously to this clause alone goes to prove that they know quite well it is true. Let us suppose that the Allies had lost the war, and had been compelled to sign a treaty containing a clause stating that they, and they alone, were responsible for the war: would anyone in this country have been much upset by that clause? I think not. Knowing that it was untrue— knowing that our consciences were quite clear—we should probably have regarded it as a silly sort of joke.
It is, however, not in the least the sense of having incurred the war guilt of 1914-18 which oppresses the Germans; it is the fact that having incurred that guilt, they were nevertheless after all unsuccessful which they find so unbearable. I am not writing this without justification. Everybody knows that the Germans brought about the war of 1870 by a series of cunning manoeuvres (culminating in Bismarck's forging the celebrated Ems telegram), by means of which the French were made to appear the aggressors. These facts have never beer disguised by German historians. On the contrary, they have always gloated over them. In the same way, it can hardly be doubted that, had the Germans won the war of 1914-18, they would have gloated over the extreme cleverness and persistence with which they had steadily prepared for war for twenty year, at least, and then forced it upon Europe at what they thought was just the right moment.
A favourite argument of German apologists is that if the had known for certain that England was going into the war of 1914-18 they (the Germans) would not have had it. It is strange that they do not see how completely this argument "gives the game away." It in itself amounts to admission of war guilt. It is as if an accused burglar were to say : "I would not have attempted to burgle the house if I had known that three policemen were on duty instead of (as I thought) only ii Ambrose Place, Worthing.
Stn,—Mr. Elvin regrets that there was no clause in the Treaty of Versailles for "enforcing the publication to the German people in general, and to the school youth in particular, of the documentary evidence of German sources on which the war guilt clause rests." Is not this a monstrous suggestion? It amounts to a proposal that Great Britain and France should have made a selection of the documents and used the power in their possession as victors to force down German throats their view of the facts. It does not matter whether that view is right or wrong ; it is enough to observe that to unite in one person or group the offices of prosecutor, judge and executioner conflicts with the elements of justice. How in 1919 could such a selection of the "documentary evidence" have been made with any pretence of impartiality? And how could any German after 1919 have accepted it as the truth? Such a clause would have been neither just nor expedient.
The question now would hardly be worth considering—and less since Sunday than it was on Friday—if it had not an actual significance. In 1914 we entered the war in a just cause; today we are again at war and no cause has ever been more righteous. There is no doubt at all about that. But nothing so destroys the power of righteousness as its lapsing into self- righteousness. Mr. Elvin's observation is a very bad lapse and, unless in the days ahead of us we avoid similar things, we may live to regret it. Truth will prevail but it will receive a bad set-back if what one group of people thinks it to be is forced upon another group at the point of the bayonet. Is not that the essence of Hitlerism?—Yours faithfully,
9 Prebend Gardens, London, W.6. FELIX FRIES.
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