CHAPTER I
PACIFISM AND PEACE
Wherever the rival armies may be when this war ends, none of the great political problems which have produced the conflict will have been solved. The nations will not be in a position or in a frame of mind to dispense with armed force. They will be exhausted; they will be horror-stricken; they will begin to examine the tales and the opinions which braced them whilst the work of mutual destruction was proceeding, and they will correct the one and revise the other, but they will not have rid themselves of those fears and ambitions, those rivalries and interests, those enmities and injuries which call for military preparations and which ultimately use them.
This futile ending of the greatest and the most brutal and costly war which the world has ever known can be obviated only on one condition—that the people of Europe settle for ever the causes of war. If they content themselves with expressing sentiments of peace whilst they allow policies to be pursued and obligations to be incurred which make conflict inevitable, their neglect as citizens will render their piety as individuals of no avail. Indeed, this piety will only be an added danger. For how will it work out? In the intervals between the wars the piety of pacifism will tinge public opinion, and the danger of the international policy which is again leading the nations into war will be minimized by statesmen who are at one and the same time responsible for the fateful policy and yet dependent for their authority upon electors of pacific intentions.
This heart-breaking situation when good popular intention becomes a national weakness, and when it prevents the menacing truth from being told and the proper defence from being prepared, was that in which Europe found itself in 1914 . when the present war came upon it.
In Germany, where authority is stronger than in any other European State except Russia, this danger was not very great, though it was increasing. Bernhardi wrote in order to minimize it. He shared the view of the military class that a war was inevitable. He believed that Germany would have to fight to secure necessary outlets for her commerce and her people, and he believed that the encompassing Powers meant to challenge the growing influence of Germany in the world. Men brought up in a military atmosphere, whose actions and outlook are determined by military assumptions, who believe that force is the midwife of progress, would naturally take that view, and those men have more authority in Germany than elsewhere. But Bernhardi wrote because the German people threatened to become actively pacifist. They had been a military nation, he said, but "in striking contrast to this military aptitude, they have today become a peace-loving—an almost too peace-loving—nation. A rude shock is needed to awaken their warlike instincts and compel them to show their military strength."1 1Germany and the Next War, pp. 10, etc. Again: "Thus the political power of the nation, whilst fully alive beneath the surface, is fettered externally by this love of peace." And again: "From this standpoint I must first of all examine the aspirations of peace which seem to dominate our age and threaten to poison the soul of the German people." He told them of the danger they were in and, by explaining military plans and necessities, sought to enlighten them as to what he conceived to be their duty. His book fell flat, and its circulation was insignificant. But the war came before the Germans were in a frame of mind to distrust their military leaders. Their fear of Russia was known to everybody, 2 2Bebel once told me in private conversation that if Russia attacked Germany he himself would shoulder a rifle if he could. and by playing upon that the Government rallied the German nation into a military unit, and it fought.
But in Great Britain political sentiment was
enormously stronger than military authority, and
political sentiment was pacifist. It had, in consequence, to be mollified. Whilst every one who
was in touch with European movements became
increasingly unhappy about the outlook of affairs,
the masses had to be kept quiet by pacific assurances. A handful of men trained in military thought
tried to do in Great Britain what Bernhardi did
in Germany, but failed. The Navy League and
the National Service League saw the military
implications of the international policies in which
our country was mixed up, and conducted their
respective propaganda. The nation refused to listen,
not because it would not accept the responsibility of
self-defence, but because it had to be told, and
was told, by the politicians that it was not in
danger. It assumed that defence meant repelling
invasion, not fighting on the Continent. It was
wrong—fortunately, as I shall show—but it was
wrong all the same. Thus we neither got the
chance of removing the danger by insisting upon
a revision of international policy nor of providing
for it by adequate military preparations.1 1Whoever has written or spoken with knowledge and honesty
since this war has broken out has, irrespective of other opinions,
agreed that the Governments have hoodwinked the nation.
Cf . Oliver, Ordeal by Battle, p. 23 (abridged edition): "The
criticism against British foreign policy for upwards of a century
is that it has aimed at managing our international relations on a
system of hoodwinking the people." That on the one side; this,
from the Manchester Guardian, December 3, 1912, on the other:
"Too much blame is laid on the newspapers for the part they
play in provoking international misunderstandings, for no one
is more ready to use them for its own purposes than the Foreign
Office itself and its agents abroad, and if half-truths often do
mischief, the fault is with the methods of diplomacy for concealing the rest."
The proof of this lies in the records of the past dozen years. Nearly every increase in naval expenditure was accompanied by the pledge that Ministers hoped to produce reductions the next year. Mr. Lloyd George gave the country a New Year's message for 1914—the year when the war broke out—in which these sentences occurred: "I think it [this] the most favourable moment that has presented itself during the last twenty years. . . . Our relations with Germany are infinitely more friendly now than they have been for years." His misreading of the Agadir incident is plain, but his assurances regarding it were emphatic. It " served the useful purpose of bringing home to Germany and ourselves the perils involved in the atmosphere of suspicion which had been created and maintained by the politicians, the press, and certain interests." Finally, he gave the country this soothing explanation and defence of Germany's military preparations: "The German Army is vital, not merely to the existence of the German Empire but to the very life and independence of the nation itself, surrounded as Germany is by other nations each of which possesses armies almost as powerful as her own." The only effect, and surely the only intention, of these words was to lull the nation into a comfortable restfulness.
But the most conclusively apposite proof of my contention is found in two speeches delivered by Mr. Asquith. In 1912 Lord Haldane went to Berlin to try to come to some agreement with Germany after the very serious friction over Morocco. Mr. Asquith referred to Lord Haldane's mission and the subsequent negotiations, during a debate on Imperial defence in the House of Commons1 1July 25, 1912, Hansard, p. 1393. as follows:—
Our relations with the great German Empire are, I am glad to say, at this moment—and I feel sure are likely to remain—relations of amity and goodwill. My noble friend Lord Haldane, the present Lord Chancellor, paid a visit to Berlin early in the year. He entered upon conversations and an interchange of views there which have been continued since in a spirit of perfect frankness and friendship, both on one side and the other, and in which, I am glad to say, we now have the advantage of the participation of a very distinguished diplomatist in the person of the German Ambassador.
When the war broke out, Mr. Asquith, speaking in Cardiff, 2 2October 3, 1914. referred to the Haldane conversations and the interchange of views which followed in a diametrically opposite sense:—
They [the German Government] wanted us to pledge ourselves absolutely to neutrality in the event of Germany being engaged in war, and this, mind you, at a time when Germany was enormously increasing both her aggressive and defensive resources, and especially upon the sea. They asked us to put it quite plainly they asked us for a free hand so far as we were concerned, if, and when, they selected the opportunity to overbear, to dominate, the European world.
In peace, public opinion demanded some pledge that we were at peace, and the pledge was given through the House of Commons; at war, a justification for the war had to be given, and the very same circumstances which justified a pacific statement in 1912 were made to justify a belligerent statement in 1914. This proves that whilst the nation was drifting into war the nation itself was not only asleep but was being kept asleep. During these critical years we had the most specific assurances that we were in no entanglements, that we had no commitments, that we never signed secret treaties, and none of the assurances were reliable.
The unwillingness of a people to accept militarism will not enable them to avoid it. Certain political policies must be supported by force, and if these policies are under the control of Government departments inspired by the methods, the traditions and the staffs of the Foreign Offices of Europe—in the very nature of things the people who are to supply the force must be kept ignorant of the policy. This fact lies at the threshold of every profitable discussion of peace. The pieties of a peace movement which stops at sentiment delude the country during peace and are swept away during a war. They prevent honesty before a war and are no safeguard to reason and reflection when a war has come.
Therefore the people need knowledge, and they need power. If they do not get these, they will have to accept militarism, and they should not be under any delusion as to the kind of militarism which is to be their lot.