THE NEED OF MODERATION IN ALLIED POLICY. T HERE is every
prospect that within the next few days Germany will sign the Protocol of the Peace Treaty, and there should then be no delay in depositing the ratifications. Within a few days, that is to say, we ought to pass from a state of theoretical peace to actual peace. As the British Government have already announced their intention of bringing the League of Nations into being without the immediate help of America, we need not return to a subject which caused us some anxiety. The right course is being taken. We have very little doubt that sooner or later America will come in, perhaps as a cautious but nevertheless as a real and wise coadjutor. There is no need, however, to blink the fact that the present default of America puts us in a considerable difficulty. When Mr. Lloyd George goes to Paris, as he means to do shortly, he will find himself no longer backed by an American plenipotentiary when he tries to insist upon the tradi- tional British policy of moderation. Ameripa may indeed be represented by some one holding a kind of watching brief, but the only potent voices will be those of Great Britain, France, and Italy. It is in these circumstances that we desire to offer a few remarks about our relations with France and Italy, which will be candid, as becomes conversations among friends, but which we hope will not be misunderstood.
No one in this country ever forgets that we are " set in the silver sea," which serves us " in the office of a wall," or as " a moat defensive." We are in a very different position from France and Italy, who arc separated from suspicious and watchful rivals only by a geographical line studded with a few forts and blockhouses. For us the Navy has always meant safety. For Continental Powers safety has been sought iu the maintenance of great armies, in the manipulation of Alliances, and in the creation of buffer-States. There is no possibility of comparing the two methods which Nature has imposed. When the British people have been able in the past to pursue a policy of moderation towards their enemies, they have been in a position to afford it. The same thing cannot be said of Continental nations. To them the nearness of the enemy is a haunting dream. It need not be wondered at, there- fore, that when the world sees the Angel of Peace faltering in her advent, the thoughts of Continental statesmen turn to the old safeguards. To many intransigeants in both France and Italy—though of course neither nation is dominated by these intransigeants—there seems to be no way of safety but that of entirely suppressing the enemy. " Never again " they seem continually to be saying ; " we have suffered too much from being overrun by foreign hordes to let the serpent raise its head again now that we have got it under our feet. If there is any doubtful territory to which we can possibly lay claim, that might be used as a jumping-off ground for attacks on us if it were held by our enemies, we must have it." Expressed as a foreign policy, this argument means an almost in- satiable land-hunger and, further, desire to cripple the enemy financially. A writer in the Manchester Guardian of Wednesday reminded his readers of a story which was going round Paris last spring about a dialogue between Lord Robert Cecil and one of the most intransigeant of his French colleagues. " You want to destroy Germany," said Lord Robert Cecil, " and you want at the same time to enrich France. Unfortunately, revenge and avarice are in this case incompatible." Perhaps the story is untrue, but it contains words of wisdom. Indeed, it contains the whole truth about our proper relations to the conquered Powers. Unless Germany and Austria recover their Industrial prosperity they cannot enrich their, conquerors either by trade exchanges or by the payment of debts. Worse than that, they will be a contaminating influence, spreading social unrest and political disease far and wide ; for just as men are never so disinclined to revolution as when they are contented, so are they never so inclined to it as when they are miserable and hungry.
The last thing we want to do is to say that the crimes of Germany should be forgotten. But in every progressive country it is recognized that „punishment is worse than useless when it is revengeful instead of being reformative. We ought to reform Germany and Austria, or rather we ought to help them to reform themselves, and insist upon their doing so. To follow a policy of " never, giving them a chance " is of all policies the most futile because it will react upon everybody else. The fact - that the authors of the Peace Treaty were inspired by a real desire to settle the affairs of the world is unfortunately no guarantee of success. No one could have been actuated by more solemn motives, er have used more devout language in launching his scheme, than the prime author of the Holy Alliance, and yet the Holy Affiance became such an engine of tyranny that Canning had to leave it in disgust and to call in the New • World to redress- the balance of the Old. Our par- ticular misfortune now, is that Great Britain calls to the New World, but the New World refuses to come over and help us. Often in the past Great Britain has tried to play the part of moderator when co-operating with her Allies. Every reader of the history of the nineteenth century knows what happened after the battle of Waterloo ; how Blucher insisted that Paris must be treated as a conquered city, although that meant treating her in the Prussian manner, which had already disgusted Wellington and had been denounced by him. It was entirely due to Wellington that Paris was after all allowed to capitulate not unconditionally but on condition that the French Army was marched beyond the Loire. Thanks to Wel- lington again, the Allies promised that no penalties should be imposed on Frenchmen who had helped Napoleon during the Hundred Days. How wise Wellington was ! In the things which really mattered—when it was a question of allowing the French to set themselves on their feet again and of saving them from the exhausting strain of gnashing their teeth against useless insults—he was always considerate. When, however, the remnants of Napoleon's army made insolent demands, the granting of which could have been of no use to them or to anybody else but quite the reverse, he could be as adamantine as Blucher himself. He was particularly curt, for example, when the Napoleonic factions demanded that they should still be allowed to fly the Tricolour. When Louis XVIII. was restored to Paris after his brief exile, it was to Wellington and Castle- reagh that he naturally turned for protection against Bliieher. " The Prussians," he wrote to the Due d'Otrante (Fouche), " have mined the Una bridge and will probably blow it up. Do everything you possibly can through the Duke and Lord Castlereagh. If necessary I will go to the bridge myself. They can blow me up if they like."
That of course is an extreme instance. Both the Prussians and the Bavarians behaved abominably after 'Waterloo, and here we are writing only of a fortunate situation in which we are preaching restraint not to barbarians but to our Allies, who are the foremost leaders of liberal thought in Europe. What we fear is, of course, something very different from the immoderate acts which were committed early in the nineteenth century. To be precise, we are afraid partly that. Germany and Austria may be pressed by France hard enough to prevent their recovery, and partly that both France and Italy in their most natural desire for security may bite off more than they can chew in South-Eastern Europe. The development of their existing resources is the secret of life for both France and Italy. Land-hunger without capital has brought as many statesmen to disaster as it has brought farmers. We know very little about what is happening in South-Eastern Europe, for the newspapers are curiously unforthcoming in supplying us with information. Nor is that the only disadvantage under which we labour in trying to under- stand the situation. It seems to us that a great deal of the published information is biassed. It is written in support of some prearranged opinion. We do not know whether our readers' impressions will correspond -with our own, and we certainly have no idea of bringing a charge against individual newspapers on insufficient evidence, but our general impression is that there are fewer foreign correspondents of British newspapers than formerly who try to tell the truth exactly as they see it without troubling themselves too much whether it fits in or not with the views of their editor. Whenever we detect bias in messages from abroad, however, we are much more inclined to, blame the editor than the correspondent. For-our part, we cannot understand how any editor in his senses can reqiiire a correspondent abroad to send what is- thought to be con- venient instead of what the correspondent thinks to be true. Surely every editor worth his salt should say to his correspondents : " Your business is to discover the facts and to report them to me. , My business is to, form my judgment on the facts. If you send use information by so,me selective method, merely because you think it will fit in with what you fancy is, going on in my mind, you are not only a dishonest correspondent, you are also a useless one. On those lines we shall never get any further forward, and we shall lead every one ,astray." So far as we can gather from French newspapers, there is a tendency. for France to behave in Greece, in Bulgaria, in Serbia, in Rumania, and elsewhere as though. all these places were her natural spheres of influence. Of course we have no word to say against French influence. It is always on the side of progress, of ideas, and of the arts of life. Nevertheless there are people who would rather be left alone, left to their own benightedness. And if there should be trouble, can France, afford it ? That is the, real question. One might think after reading many of her newspapers that she has only to butt in wherever she has a fancy to do so in order to enrich herself and be welcomed. But the reality is very different. This week we have seen accounts of fighting in Syria, and we are greatly afraid that in that excitable land what has begun in the form of measures to preserve order may become a considerable and expensive campaign. It is often thought here that in France and Italy there are so many Socialists and Liberals that both nations are secure against Chauvinism. But the truth is that political labels, well understood though they may be in this country, are not transferable. It would be much easier to obtain the support of French Socialists for a Syrian escapade, or of Italian Socialists for a Dalmatian raid, than it would be to obtain the support of any Socialist in this country for any conceivable cam- paign. It is only too easy for those who are devoured by land-hunger to carry a forward policy in South-Eastern Europe up to a certain point with every apparent promise of success. You can trade on the exclusiveness of Rumania towards her neighbours ; you can make a Serb think that he dislikes a Croat even more than he does ; you can convince a Slovak that there is after all nothing in common between him and a Czech. But when you have traded on all the rivalries, dislikes, and jealousies, and have got all the pieces in lively motion on the board, you will find that you have committed yourself to irreparable expense.
We sincerely trust that when Mr. Lloyd George goes to Paris he will remember that he will have the whole of the British people behind him in a restraining policy. We want to cultivate our garden, and we devoutly want to see France and Italy also cultivating theirs rather than trying to take on new gardens for which they have not the labour or the spades or the seed. As for 'the, payments due from Germany, we hope that it will be at last possible to fix a definite sum. The electors were misled when they were encouraged to believe that the " cost of the war " could be recovered from Germany. From the common- sense business point of view the best thing to do is to restore to our enemies the ability to recoup us as much as they can by international trade.
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