MR. BRIGHT ON WAR.
ItTR. BRIGHT is too practical a politician to set any store _LILL by the kind of agreement we feel with his speech of last Tuesday. For it is an agreement which is confined to general principles and does not extend to particulars, and, naturally enough, it is only about the particulars that Mr. Bright really cares. When he tells us that war is a very great evil, and that an unjust war is a very great crime, we can heartily go with him. What we object to is the assump- tion—the utterly baseless assumption, as we hold it to be— that there is no evil greater than war, and that all wars are unjust. War is not the greatest of evils when it is waged to re- press lawless ambition, or to save innocent people from wrongs they would otherwise suffer, or to defend ourselves against attacks which would become more daring and more dangerous in proportion as they encountered no adequate resistance. Excellent as are Mr. Bright's intentions, we are not at all sure that he has not himself been accidentally a great fosterer of war. Undiscriminating oppositionis the worst enemy of discriminating opposition, and however just Mr. Bright's denunciation of any particular war may be, the war party can always plead that he has denounced with equal fervour wars which he stands almost alone in disapproving. One of the wars referred to in his speech was a conspicuous example of this. The quarrel with the Chinese about the ' Arrow ' was all that Mr. Bright describes it. It "arose out of a lie of the most notorious character." But when Lord Palmerston appealed to the country, the country heartily supported him, and one reason why it supported him was the unfortunate character Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden had then obtained as partisans of peace at any price. Men who were known to be equally hostile to all wars were not listened to when they argued against a particular war. They were in the position of a homeopathic doctor denouncing a particular drag. He may be quite right in his condemnation of it, but as he might have con- demned any other drug with equal vehemence, his censure counts for nothing.
Again, by a strange inconsistency, Mr. Bright confounds preparation against possible war with expenditure upon actual war. He looks back with admiring regret to the days when, under Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington—" the greatest of our modem Ministers and the greatest of our modern soldiers "—our military and naval expenditure was only £11,000,000. But to the greatest soldier of modem times, these figures would have pointed a very different moral. He would have reminded us that this small expenditure had only been rendered possible by a large previous expenditure, that it was the overthrow of Napoleon's power, and the resettlement of Europe which followed upon that overthrow, that made war for the time so remote a contingency that it seemed needless to take precautions against it. Even under these circumstances, the small Estimates which Mr. Bright puts forward as the type to which all succeeding Estimates ought to have conformed, proved a doubtful economy. They left so much to be supplied whenever we were at war, that it is by no means clear that the taxpayer would not have
profited by spending a little more when we were at peace. Let us assume, however, that they were fully adequate for 1835, what shall we say to the inference that they would be equally adequate for 1887? We can understand the contention that we ought to maintain neither Army nor Navy. It is based on the wildest of dreams ; but, at all events, it hangs together. It is inconsistent with facts, but it is not inconsistent with itself. But the contention that the Army and Navy we had in 1835 are all that we need have in 1887, is absolutely unintelligible. The aspect of European politics has changed ; the character of European armaments has changed. Some members of the religious body to which Mr. Bright belongs would probably say that it is not lawful to offer any resistance to a burglar. That is a question of first principles about which it is useless to argue. But Mr. Bright is in the position of a man who holds that when a burglar is armed with a bludgeon or a life-preserver, it is lawful to use a bludgeon or a life-preserver in your turn ; but that if the burglar takes to a revolver, you must on no account employ a revolver yourself. Armaments, if they are to exist to any purpose, must bear some proportion to the armaments of other Powers. If Mr. Bright will compare the relative coat of the armies of the great Continental Powers in 1835 and in 1887, we suspect that even the great increase which our own military outlay has undergone will seem small by com- parison.
There is another aspect of war which Mr. Bright does not seem even to have considered. He will not, we are sure, say that, provided that England is at peace, he does not care what happens abroad. Would he, then, hold it unlawful to fight in the obvious interests of peace ? Supposing that a majority of the European Powers were willing, provided that England would make common cause with them, to form a league of peace —a league, that is, which should treat as the common enemy any Power who on any pretext took up arms against another —would he say that we were bound to keep out of it We are not arguing as to the possibility of such a league, or as to the possibility of our having that intimate knowledge of the motives with which it had been formed which could alone justify us in becoming a member of it. What we want to know is whether, on the hypothesis that such a league could be honestly and effectively created if only our co-operation was assured, Mr. Bright would think an English Minister right in joining it. If he would not think this, what becomes of his zeal for peace? A word from England would presumably save Europe from war ; yet this word is not to be spoken, because by speaking it England pledges herself to go to war under certain conditions. That is a conclusion which goes very near to identifying patriotism with selfishness. If, on the other hand, Mr. Bright would justify an English Minister who incurred this risk in view of the greatness of the end to be gained, he is not opposed to war as such, but simply to wars made without sufficient cause ; and then there is no difference between us. Indeed, if the advocates of inter- national arbitration—a plan which, we fancy, has counted Mr. Bright among its advocates—are really in earnest about their own scheme, they, too, must contemplate war under certain conditions. As in private life an arbitration would be of no value unless the award could, in case of need, be enforced by law, so between nations an arbitration would be of no value unless the award could, in case of need, be enforced by arms. Consequently, the adoption by the Great Powers of a system of international arbitration would be equivalent to an under- taking to go to war with any Power that might refuse to abide by the decision of the international tribunal. We are not at all sure that if international arbitration had been adopted into the public law of Europe twenty years ago England might not have had a war or two in Europe upon her hands, as well as those which Mr. Bright reckons up in Asia and Africa. This is what we had in mind when we said that war is not the greatest of evils. The unresisting acquiescence in evil and misery, lest to resist them should by chance impose upon us the necessity of making good our words, is to our minds a greater evil still,—greater in the amount of suffering it brings upon the world, greater in the injury it does to the character of the acquiescing nation. Certainly we are no advocates of rash intervention in Continental affairs. But we cannot see anything specially admirable or specially Christian in that kind of peace-making which consists in caring for no one but ourselves. Mr. Bright would admit, no doubt, that Bulgaria would be happier, and have a far better future before her, if a member of a free Balkan Confederation, than as a part of the Russian Empire. Would he hold that no considerations would
justify England in fighting to bring about that end ? No doubt the prima -facie argument would be all against her playing such a part. She would have to be very clear that the desired result would follow from her intervention,—that nothing short of this could bring it about, and that in all reasonable probability this would bring it about. But supposing these conditions fulfilled, we hold that to fight to keep Bulgaria free would be more un- selfish, and therefore more Christian, than to stand aside and see Bulgaria enslaved. Take another case. We express no opinion now on the question whether England ought to main- tain the neutrality of Belgium by force of arms. That depends on a variety of considerations which do not for the moment concern us. But supposing that it were in our power to keep the armies of Prance and Germany out of Belgium, if we were prepared to take up arms the moment the frontier was crossed by either belligerent, would not an enormous amount of per- fectly unprovoked human suffering be averted ? Here is a peaceful country, which only wishes to be left alone, which gives no offence to any other Power, which has nothing to gain by becoming a theatre of war, which can only be forced into that position by a total disregard of any interests except those of the gigantic combatants of whom it is, unhappily for itself, the neighbour. Would it be wrong, in Mr. Bright's judgment, for England to fight in such a cause as this, provided that she could do so with reasonable confidence of
success How does his theory of the wickedness of war apply to such a case as this?
We say nothing about Mr. Bright's charges against the English Army at Abu Klea, because they have already been either denied or explained. It is rather for him to show that hearsay derived from an unnamed informant is better evidence than the positive statements of two well-known special corre- spondents.
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