MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICO1SON ORD HALDANE, in his autobiography, contended that, had
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our statesmen been less " illiterate " about Germany, it might have been possible to avoid the division of Europe into two armed camps. In using this charmingly old-fashioned word "illiterate," Lord Haldane wished to indicate that our politicians from 1870 onwards lacked knowledge or understanding of the German character. We did not begin, he argued, to comprehend the Germans' passion for " abstract thinking " or their tendency to approach problems deductively rather than inductively. We identi- fied as provocations what were little more than the nervous movements of unquiet minds. The historian will reply, of course, that even a superficial estimate of Bismarck's policy and methods should convince us that the concrete rather than the abstract was the essence of his genius: that there was nothing in the least abstract about Sadowa, the seizure of the Danish duchies, or the Ems tele- gram. The student of the Billow era will also conclude that it was empiricism rather than system that led that virtuoso and his gifted master into such recurrent errors of diplomatic judgement. There was nothing either abstract or systematic about the Tangier visit, the dismissal of Delcassd, the despatch of the ' Panther' to Agadir, the Bjorki5 Treaty, the Potsdam Agreement or the blank cheque given to Austria in July, 1914. Those who argue that the Germans approach every problem in terms of some " system " can scarcely deny that German policy from 1888 onwards was marred by the absence of any constant directives ; or that the chain of circum- stance that led to Germany's encirclement was forged, little link by link, by her own intemperate inconsequence. The errors of German statesmanship during the reign of William II were due to the absence rather than to the presence of any logical plan, and were marked by a series of impulses, improvisations and emotional disturbances. They scarcely seem to make sense.
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Yet when a man of Lord Haldane's profound erudition and acute intelligence makes a considered remark that at first sight seems to us inapplicable, it is prudent to pause and to reflect whether we may not have misunderstood what he meant to say. When, moreover, we find experienced Germans, such as Herr von Kuhlmann, passing the mature verdict that all the misfortunes of German policy were due to the passion of his countrymen for " re- ducing everything to a system," we should again check our move- ments .of dissent and consider calmly what was in his mind. It may be true that the main fault of Realpolitik was that in the hands of Bismarck's successors it was never very real: and that the inconsequent gestures of the Imperial Government conveyed to the simple mind of Edward Grey, or to the orderly mind of Asquith, the impression that we were faced by insatiable restless- ness. Yet it may also have been true that these movements— interpreted by our statesmen ds gestures of calculated j rovocation- were no more than nervous twitches of irritation, due to the inability of William II and his advisers to discover the " system " for which they yearned. Thus the idiotic catch-words so frequently indulged in by William, Billow and Holstein may have proceeded from some inner uncertainty, some sense of spiritual abandonment, that could have been more intelligently perceived and more tactfully alleviated. The English are too often inclined to attribute cunning or malignity to those who feel and - think differently from themselves.
* * * * It is difficult to re-read the history of the ten years that led up to the First World War without suspecting that the statesmen of Western Europe were deficient in imaginative sympathy. The eyes of the French remained fixed upon the blue line of the Vosges ; our own statesmen were encased in the public-school spirit and to that extent " illiterate." The minds and memories of our own generation are so impregnated by the male aspects of the German character, by the strength and fury of the physical -force that the Germans are able to generate, that we fail to understand the feminine aspects of their nature and the nervous irritability and intemperance that they are apt to create. I suppose that most of those who have devoted any attention to the fascinating problem of how the Germans feel would agree with me that the fundamental misfortune of that neurotic race is their sense of uncertainty. Tho causes of this underlying lack of self-assurance are varied and obscure. It may well be, as some have suggested, that this is all due to the fact that historically, culturally and geographically Germany has not been endowed with a sharp outline. She was sundered when Augustus withdrew his legions to the Elbe ; sun- dered by 'the Reformation ; sundered by the cultural contrast between the latinised Rhinelanders and the harsher Teutons of the eastern marches. She never quite knew where the nation began or ended ; this uncertainty was emphasised geographically by her vague eastern frontier, stretching against the Slays in mile after mile of sand, conifer and birch. " Every German," wrote Friedrich Sieburg, " feels himself to be a grain of sand, blown here and there by the wind: but in every grain there is implanted a desire to unite with the other grains and form a rock."
• Whatever may have been the causes of German uncertainty, its effects were evident. There was the German reliance upon physical power as a constant, calculable in numbers and facts ; there was the relief afforded to personal uncertainty by mechanical or military groupings, by the belief that a legion on the march acquires a composite confidence greater than that of the individuals of whom it is composed ; there was the tendency to achieve solidarity by artificial means. It was their longing for self-assurance that ex- plained their addiction to verbal antitheses, such as " World power or collapse " or " Germany must be either the hammer or the anvil," in that these categorical alternatives diminished doubt. There were their curious, and to us almost unintelligible, conceptions of " per- sonal honour." Above all, perhaps, there was that most obdurate of all problems, the German preoccupation with status. It was difficult for us, possessed as we were of sufficient personal self- assurance to regard the nation as a natural organism, to under- stand to what degree the Germans conceived of their personal or national position in horizontal terms. To them it did, in fact, seem part of their destiny to be either the hammer or the anvil, either above or below. Few of our statesmen, between 1904 and 1914, understood this preoccupation with status ; if they realised it at all, they dismissed it as foolish or vulgar : their indolent indifference provoked the Germans to self-assertiveness. Again and again, as one reads the history of that decade, one is struck by the inability of our politicians and public to comprehend the German state of mind. I am not saying that, had they been more imaginative, the First World War could have been averted. I am saying only that, when Lord Haldane wrote of our " illiterate approach to the German problem, he was expressing an opinion that deserves to be studied and recalled.
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There are those who contend that events are determined not by states of mind but by interests, and that to introduce psychology into the conduct of international affairs is to lose oneself in vague and misleading generalisations. I fully agree with this criticism. Yet I cannot resist the impression that, had our states- men before 1914 thought a little less about German behaviour and a little more about the German temperament, they would not have earned Lord Haldane's reproach of illiteracy. I have a feeling that we might have committed fewer mistakes had we devoted less attention to the speeches of Hitler and Mussolini and more attention to their writings and dogmas. How many of our advisers today have benefited by any deep study of the Russian sacred books ? How many of them have any real conception of the feel- ings of doubt and elation, of bewilderment and certainty, that animate the shattered Germans or the confident Asiatics in tho angry world of today ?
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