THE ORIGINS OF THE GREAT WAR.

For Englishmen this war is primarily a struggle between Germany and France. For the Germans it is emphatically a Russo-German war. It was our secret naval commitment to France, and our fatal entanglement through ten years in the struggle for a European balance of power, which sent our fleets to sea. It is our sympathy with France which makes the one human link that binds us to the Triple Entente. We have dramatised the struggle (and this clearly was for Sir Edward Grey the dominant consideration) as an attempt to crush France. German thinking followed other lines. Alike for the deputies in the Reichstag and for the mob in the streets of Berlin, the enemy is Russia. It is true, indeed, that if the war should end in the defeat of the Triple Entente, some part of the consequences of defeat would be borne by France. It is clear that German statesman hoped to acquire some part at least of her extensive and valuable colonial possessions, and on her no doubt would have fallen the financial brunt of the war. She would have paid in money and in colonies for her imprudence in allying herself to Russia. But in spite of this, her place in Germany's imagination was secondary. Her army must indeed be broken before Russia could be dealt with., That was a fatality, a detail in the mechanics of the problem which affected its central political purpose hardly more than the resistance of the Belgians. The politics which made the war, and the sentiment which supported it, had reference exclusively to Russia. Read the speech by which the Chancellor induced the Reichstag to vote the war-credit with­out a dissentient voice; the only mention of France in it is a reply to the French accusation that German troops had violated the French-frontier. The illuminating White Paper (Denkschrift) in which the history of the outbreak of the war is set out from the German official standpoint, contains hardly so much as an incidental reference to France. More significant still is the speech in which Dr. Haase, on behalf of the Social Democrats in the Reichstag, while repudiating the diplomacy which made the war, accepted on behalf of his comrades the duty of patriotic defence. He, too, made no reference to France. "For our people," he declared, "and for the future of its liberties, much, if not every­thing, depends on a victory over Russian despotism, stained, as it is, with the blood of its noblest subjects." It is for us in this country of the first importance to follow the direction of German thought. If we are to understand why the war was made at all, it we are to grasp the reasons which will make it on the German side an obstinate and determined struggle, if we are to think out with any hope of success the problem of shortening it, we must realise that it was the fear of Russia which drove German diplomacy into a preventive war, and in the end mobilised even the Social Democrats behind German diplomacy. To the diplomatists and the statesman the issue was from the first not merely whether Austria or Russia should exert a hegemony in the Balkans, but also whether Russia, using Servia as her vanguard, should succeed in breaking up the Austrian Empire. It is not merely a tie of sentiment or kinship which unites Germany to Aus­tria. Austria is the flying buttress of her own Imperial fabric. Cut the buttress and the fabric itself will fall. To the masses of the German people the fate of Servia and even of Bosnia was a matter of profound indifference. A month before the war broke out, three Germans in four would probably have said that not all the Serbs in Christendom were worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier. But the Russian mobilisation and the outbreak of war made even for the German masses a supreme and only too intelligible issue.^{* *}Read, for example, this typical declaration by the Volkstimme, one of the German Socialist Party organs: "All must set aside the aims and purposes of their party, and bear in mind one fact—Germany, and in a larger sense all Europe, is endangered by Russian despotism. At this moment we all feel the duty to fight chiefly and exclusively against Russian despotism. Germany's women and children must not become the prey of Russian bestiality; the German country must not be the spoil of Cossacks; because if the Allies should be victorious, not an English governor or a French republican would rule over Germany, but the Russian Tsar. Therefore we must defend at this moment everything that means German culture and German liberty against a merciless and barbaric enemy." There is rooted deep in the memory of the German people a recollection of the exploits of the Cossacks dur­ing the Seven Years' War. The simplest peasant of the Eastern marches has his traditions of devastated fields, and ruined villages. He knows, moreover, that the intervening generations which have transformed the West have left the Russian steppes still barbarous. Even for the Social Democrat the repugnant thought that he was marching out to shoot down his French and Belgian comrades was overborne by the imperious necessity of arming to defend his soil against the millions which the Russian Tsar had mobilised.

The Military Rivalry.

The broad fact about the general war of 1914 is that it is the postponed sequel of the Balkan war of 1912. We all congratulated each other that Sir Edward Grey's diplomacy and the Conference of London had enabled the Eastern peoples to settle the Eastern question without involving the Great Powers in war. The armaments of the Great Powers betrayed their belief that a war averted, is only a war postponed. For two years this chaotic struggle, which came in the end with such vertiginous speed, had cast its shadow before it. The first move in the last round of the war of armaments was the direct consequence of the creation of the Balkan League. In justifying the last increase of the peace-effectives of its army the German Government pointed to the new fact of the entry on the European scene of these young and victorious Balkan armies, and spoke bluntly of a possible struggle between the Slav and Teuton worlds. The Balkan League of 1912, formed under Russian guidance, was, in fact, an alliance directed as much against Austria as against Turkey. There followed the reply of France and Russia, the return it in the one to Three Years' Service and in the other the imprudently-advertised schemes of military reorganisation, with its vast naval expenditure, its new strategic railways near the German frontier, its rearmament of the artillery, and its gigantic increase in the standing "peace" army. Russia (so an official memorandum declared) would hence­forth be able to assume in case of need not merely a defensive, but an offensive strategy.^{* *}In an article entitled "Europe Under Arms"(June 3, 1914), the military corres­pondent of the Times explained how well founded were these German fears of Russian preparations. Russia, he explained, had raised her peace-effectives by 150,000 men, "making a total peace strength of about 1,700,000, or approximately double that of Germany." . . . "The Russian reply to Germany is next door to a mobilisation in time of peace, and it quite accounts for the embittered outburst of the Cologne Gazette, and for the German pot calling the Russian kettle black. . . . There are signs that Russia has done with defensive strategy. . . . The increased number of guns in the Russian Army Corps, the growing efficiency of the Army, and the improvements made for planned in strategic railways are, again, matters which cannot be-left out of account. These things are well calculated to make the Germans anxious." The early months of this year witnessed time outbreak of a military panic in the German press. The fear inspired by the growth of the Tsar's armies was beginning to tell on German nerves, and a pamphlet to which the German Crown Prince contributed an approving note, predicted that the Slav world would have completed its armaments by the year 1916, and would then attempt to deal the death-blow to the German peoples, If Germany has by her own act made the general war in 1914, it is chiefly because her military caste was convinced that it would all sooner or later have to meet a Russian challenge.

The Servian Menace.

The German White Paper explains the political issue which was the obverse of this military rivalry. For a generation we in this country have thought of the Eastern question as an issue between Turkey and the Christian races of the Balkans. With the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in Europe the Eastern question became primarily an Austrian question. Russia and Austria, up to the eve of the Young Turkish revolution had been content to divide the hegemony of the Near East. They worked in close association; they presided jointly over the Macedonian reforms; they even recognised a certain division of spheres of influence. Austria was allowed by Russia to exert a predominant pressure upon Servia, while Russia was the leading partner in all that concerned Bulgaria. It was never, at the best, an easy arrangement to maintain. Austria was always detested in Belgrade, and the dominant political party in Servia, the Radicals, were vehemently Russophile. With the murder of King Alexander, and the coming of King Peter, the moral influence of Russia in Servia became supreme, but the little kingdom remained none the less within the Austrian sphere, until the Bosnian crisis shattered the whole conception of an Austria-Russian condominium in the Balkans. From the autumn of long onwards, Servia became as absolutely and almost as openly the protegé of Russia, and the tool of Russian policy, as Montenegro had been for generations. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the dominant personality in Belgrade was not King Peter, nor yet M. Pachitch, but the brilliant, energetic, unscrupulous Russian Minister, the late M. de Hartwig. He formed the Balkan League, and he also, encouraged the Servians to tear up the Treaty of Partition, which the Tsar had guaranteed. There were several reasons why Russian policy regarded the Servians as its favoured foster-children, and willingly aggrandised them at the expense of the Bulgarians. The Servians, in the first place, have always been the more pliable, the less independent of the Balkan Slav peoples.

But while the Bulgarians were useful as a piece in an anti-Turkish policy, the Servians were doubly valuable, for they were indis­pensable to any more against Austria. The annexation of Bosnia, so far from being accepted by the Servians as a final and irrevocable fact, had actually been the starting point of an agitation more conscious, more open, and more reckless than any which had preceded it. The triumph of Servian arms in Macedonia, first over the Turks and then over the Bulgarians, was accepted by most Servians as the presage of a greater victory to come. There was evident a tremendous heightening of the national conscious­ness. Some of its effects worked uncompensated mischief. It showed itself as brutal intolerance towards the Albanians and the Bulgars in Macedonia. The Servians are an attractive race, imaginative, quick-witted, excitable, and richly endowed with the artistic temperament. But their morals and their politics belong to the Middle Ages. They were judged more harshly than they deserved for the murder of that neurotic despot, King Alexander. But the officers who at the same time murdered his queen, mutilated her corpse, and flung it naked into the streets of Bel­grade, gave the measure of their own social development. Their record in Macedonia reveals their political immaturity. By exile and imprisonment they forced the conquered Bulgarians to sign documents in which they declared themselves not merely loyal Servian subjects, but Servians by race and choice. They totally suppressed the Bulgarian Church, and exiled its bishops. They forbade the public use of the Bulgarian language. They denied the conquered population all political and some civil rights. They have ruled by the harshest form of martial law. This revival of patriotism created a militarism wholly alien to the democratic traditions of the Balkan races. But it also set the nation the work of organising itself for the future with a new seriousness and a new devotion. Under her two last Obrenovitch Kings, Servia had been nothing but a meaningless and isolated enclave in the Balkans, wedged between Austria and Bulgaria, without a future and without a mission. Her national life was stagnant and corrupt. The coming of the new dynasty, and still more the breach between Austria and Russia, opened a brilliant path before her. She believed at last that the re-union of all the Servian peoples was possible, and she resolved that it should come about under her leadership. She saw herself destined to do for the Serbs what Piedmont had done for the Italians. The adventure might seem to sober minds impossible. Servia in isolation could hardly dream of challenging Austria with success, even it she had the moral and material resources which enabled Piedmont to expand into the Kingdom of Italy. But the Servians remembered that Piedmont did not overcome Austria by her own resources She had Louis Napoleon behind her. If the Servians armed and plotted for the liberation of Bosnia and the other Serb lands under the Austrian yoke, it was with the firm conviction that when the hour of destiny struck, Russia would stand behind them.^{* *}My statement has since been confirmed by a distinguished historian, who writes as a friend and admirer of the Serbs. "Last year," writes Mr. G. M. Trevelyan in the, Times of September 18, "when I was among them, they looked forward to this [a war with Austria] as the grand national object, and they regarded the then impending war with Bulgaria as an unfortunate but necessary prelude to the war of liberation against Austria. . . . The young men in Servia, many of them, spoke of themselves as belong­ing to the 'Piedmontese Party,' and books about Piedmont's part in the Italian risor­gimento were the commonest 'serious literature' in the Belgrade shops, and lay on the table in the waiting-room of their Foreign Office." I may add that an influential daily newspaper was called Piemonte. Can we wonder that Austria first shuddered and then struck out?

Russia Behind Servia.

When historians come to deal with the real causes of this general war it is possible that exact documentary evidence may show how far Russian diplomacy stood behind the Greater Servian propaganda. The general presumption is strong. No one doubts that Russian influence was supreme in Belgrade. The Serbs owed much to their own arms, but on the whole they owed more to Russian diplomacy. But for Russia, the Austrians would have crushed them in 1909; but for Russia, Austria would certainly not have remained neutral during the two Balkan wars. To Russian pressure Servia owed such of her conquests in Albania as she was allowed to retain, and but for Russia, Austria would have torn up the iniquitous Treaty of Bucharest. There were more material bonds between the Great Power and her satellite. The Servian soldiers made the winter campaign of 1912-1913 in Russian great­coats, and the second Balkan War was financed by the French banks which do nothing in the Balkans that would run counter to Russian policy. When the full tide of Servian aspirations set towards Bosnia, and the National Union (Narodya Odbrana) began to turn against Austria all the criminal "comitadji" methods of agitation consecrated by long usage in Macedonia, Russia, had she chosen, might have set her veto on a development of Servian policy which threatened European peace. It is this absolute dependence of Servia upon Russian countenance and support, which makes it probable that when Servia openly launched and assisted the Great Servian propaganda, she did this with Russia's approval. This propaganda involved much more than a mental disturbance in the minds of the Servian population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who were organised in patriotic leagues and clubs with a view to an insurrection in the future. It had begun to smuggle arms, and it had been guilty of a series of assassinations of Austrian officials, to which the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his Consort came as the climax. The Archduke was singled out for vengeance, not at all because he was the enemy, or oppressor of the Slavs. He was feared by Servians because his aim was to reconcile the Slavs to Austria. The historical memorandum in the German White Paper declares bluntly that this reckless and provocative attitude was possible for Servia "only because she believed that she had Russian support in her activities." The memorandum goes on to make an even graver statement. After referring to the original creation of the Balkan League under Russian auspices, it continues:—

"Russian Statesmen planned the rise of a new Balkan League under Russian protection, a league which was aimed not at Turkey—now vanished from the Balkans—but against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The idea was that Servia should be compensated for the cession of its Macedonian acquisitions to Bulgaria by receiving Bosnia and Herzegovina at Austria-Hungary's expense."

There is no-thing improbable in this statement. The original Serbo-Bulgarian alliance of 1912, afterwards expanded into the Balkan League, was directed against Austria as well as Turkey. The treaty, as more than one Balkan diplomatist has told me, required Bulgaria to put all her forces at Servia's disposal in the event of a war against Austria. These preparations for a united Slav assault upon Austria explain the determination of the German Powers to challenge Russia. Nor should it be forgotten that Pan-Slavism was busy in Galicia as well as in the Servian lands. An active propaganda, disclosed in some famous State trials, was endeavouring, in Russian interests, to win the Ruthenians for the Orthodox Church. At its head stood the Russian reactionary politician, Count Bobrinsky, who, as Governor of Galicia, is now officially promoting the conversion of the Catholic Ruthenians to Orthodoxy.

It is not easy in the midst of the horrors and resentments of war to view such a situation as this in cold retrospect. The peril in front of Austria was grave, but it was not immediate. Russia had not at the first essay succeeded in restoring the Balkan League. Bulgaria could not forget her resentment, and had become a loosely attached associate of the Triple Alliance. is If the Slavs were to choose their own hour, they would wait presumably until the Balkan armies had somewhat recovered from the exhaustion of two campaigns, and until the Russian military re-organisation was completed. But there was good reason to infer that, sooner or later, the blow would be struck. A rising in Bosnia, organised by Servian comitadjis, would bring Servia herself into the field, and behind Servia would be the Balkan League and the Russian Empire. Such conspiracies as this are so remote from Western habits of life and thought, so inconceivable in our own experience, that we are apt to dismiss them as fantastic. They are the stuff of daily life in the Balkans, and we may do Austrian statesman the justice of supposing that their fears were sincere. "The country," wrote Sir Maurice de Bunsen in his final dispatch, "certainly believed that it had before it only the alternative of subduing Servia, or of submitting sooner or later to mutilation at her hands." An enlightened Power in Austria's place would not have acted as she did. The "Great Servian" idea is dangerous to Austria, because she lacks the courage to be liberal without reserves. Servia may compare herself to Piedmont, but the parallel is imperfect. Her culture is so backward, her politics so corrupt, her economic life so primitive, that she has little to commend her to the Austrian Serbs save the community of blood. Our fathers sympathised with Italian aspirations, because the Italians were a race with a great past and a living culture, subject to an Empire which was not their superior in civilisation, and which denied them any species of autonomy. Austria does not deny Home Rule to their Serbs, though she gives it grudgingly, and she represents an older and maturer civilisation. The Italians, moreover, were homogeneous people. Of the Austrian Serbs one third are Catholics, who have no reason to hope for equal treatment from an Orthodox State, whose,record in Macedonia is a defiance of toleration, and another third are Moslems, who will emigrate en masse if the Servians should conquer Bosnia. Even the remaining third, who are Orthodox Serbs, would not have been ready-made material for a Servian propaganda, if Austria had known how to treat them with generosity. Faced by this Great Servian danger, and forced to realise at last that it was serious, a big man in Count Berchtold's place would have resolved to make Austria a home so attractive even to Servian idealists, that the half-civilised kingdom over the border, with its backward culture and oriental morals, would have lured and beckoned them in vain. He would have made them feel, as the Poles have long felt, that they are Austrians with a share in the fortunes of the Empire. He would have made their autonomy a handsome reality. He would have banished the spies and the policemen, enemies of the Austrian idea more dangerous than all the Servian bomb-throwers and comitadjis. He would have released the Croatians from the Magyar yoke, and bidden Dalmatians, Croatians, and Bosnians realise their Great Servia to their heart's content within the Austrian Empire itself. That was the policy which the dead Archduke was supposed to favour. Against such a policy, conceived with some boldness of imagination and executed with good faith and tact, the incitements and conspiracies of Belgrade would have been powerless. Count Berchtold is neither a Liberal not a man of genius. He acted after the Sarajevo murder as the average Imperialist bureaucrat commonly does act in such cases. He tightened his police system. He made Austrian rule a little more than usually hateful to men of Servian race. He determined to crush and humiliate Servia, and realising that behind Servia stood Russia, he turned to his ally for aid.

A Preventive War.

The policy on which Austria and Germany determined is a matter of history, and the German White Paper describes it with an approach to frankness. This interesting document has not been fairly reproduced by our daily newspapers, and the main passage may be worth translating at length:—

"In these circumstances Austria was driven to the conclusion that the dignity and self-preservation of the Monarchy alike forbade her to watch this movement from across the frontier any longer in passivity. She communicated her view to us and asked our advice. We were able with all our hearts to inform our ally that we shared her opinion of the situation, and we assured her of our approval for any action which she might take to put an end to the movement in Servia directed against the integrity of the Monarchy. We were well aware that any military action by Austria against Servia might bring Russia on the scene, and involve us in war by reason of the obligations of our alliance. Realising, as we did, that the vital interests of Austria-Hungary were at stake, we could neither counsel our ally to a pliability inconsistent with her dignity, nor refuse her our aid in this difficult moment. Nor could we forget that our own interests were nearly threatened by this continual Servian agitation. Had the Servians been allowed, with the help of Russia and France, to endanger the integrity of the neighbouring Monarchy much longer, the consequence must have been the gradual disruption of Austria, and the subjection of the whole Slav world to the Russian sceptre, with the result that the position of the German race in central Europe would have become untenable."

There lies, in its naked simplicity, the German case for this war. The provocations followed in an alternating series. Russia encouraged the Great Servian movement, which aimed at the breakup of Austria, whereupon Austria struck at Servia, and thereby challenged Russia. The issue now was, in plain words, whether Servia should become an Austrian vassal or remain a Russian tool. While a diplomatic accommodation was still possible, Russia took the menacing step of proclaiming a general mobilisation, and Germany replied with an ultimatum, followed in a few hours by war. This war is a cooperative crime. To its making have gone Russian ambitions and German fears. It would be as just to say that the real aggressor was the Power which stood behind Servia, as it would be to say that it was the Power which first lit the conflagration by hurling its shells at Belgrade. On their own showing, the Germans had planned a bold challenging stroke, which might lead them into a preventive war. The last thing which they wanted was a universal war. They tried to buy our neutrality. They even appealed to us to keep France neutral. There is evidence enough in our own White Paper that they did not believe that Russia would fight. They thought that they had defied her in good time before her armaments were ready. They had bullied her with success in the similar crisis of 1909, and with the characteristic clumsiness of Bismarckian psychology, they did not realise that a public act of bullying can never be repeated. It was precisely because Russia had yielded in 1909, that she could not yield again. It is nonsense to say, as M. Sazonoff said, that the prestige of Russia as a Great Power would be gone if Servia became an Austrian vassal. Servia had been an Austrian vassal throughout the lifetime of King Milan, and for many a year after his abdication. But it may be true to say that Russia would have lost in prestige, if Servia had been torn from her orbit by Austrian arms and German threats. It is more to the point that such a humiliation would have ended the dream of a Great Servia for ever. That was the real issue. What Russia dreaded was not so was the humiliation of her little Slav brothers, the Serbs; she had watched the humiliation of her other little brothers in Bulgaria with equanimity, and even with satisfaction. The Servians, how­ever, were more than brothers; they were tools. They were an indispensable piece in the game of chess for the Empire of the East.

The Russian Mobilisation.

The historian of the future will be in one sense more biassed in his judgment of this moving,chapter of history than we are ourselves. He will give his verdict, as historians commonly do, to the side that wins. To us the issue is unknown, and we must divide our wonder and our censures. The Pan-Slavists have brought the whole of European civilisation to a test which may come near submerging it, in order to accomplish their dream of racial unity. The Germans, by rashly precipitating an issue which might never, in fact, have been forced upon them, may well have brought upon themselves the very catastrophe which they dreaded. A preventive war, if it is not a crime as inexcusable as a war of naked aggression, is always a folly. Nothing obliged Austria to fight now. From Servia she might have had ample reparation, with pledges for her future good behaviour. The crime of Sarajevo was far from raising Servia's prestige among the Austrian Slavs; it had, on the contrary, lowered and besmirched it. A policy of conciliation might have rendered any insurrection impossible. Nor was Russia's star in the ascendant in the counsels of Europe. Persian affairs had led to a marked cooling in Sir Edward Grey's hitherto uncritical regard for Russia. The Anglo-German friendship was deepening, and something like the "Utopian" proposal of our White Paper (Sir Edward Grey's conception of a collective guarantee by the Triple Entente that it would allow no aggression against the Triple Alliance) might have isolated Russia in the future, if, in fact, she meditated a war of Slav against Teuton. What is clear to-day is, that Germany, reasoning in cold blood amid profound peace, that Austria's future status was threatened this Pan-Servian danger, has made a war in which the chief issue may soon be whether Austria can continue to exist. The event will probably show that Germany, when she forced the quarrel to a trial of armed strength, acted with folly. Her violation of Belgian neutrality was certainly as imprudent as it was iniquitous. It cannot be honestly argued that the Russian mobilisation justified her declaration of war. The answer to mobilisation is not war, but a counter mobilisation. But when this overwhelming case against German policy is stated, the fact remains that Germany could fairly plead that Russian policy was provocative. Russia was backing Servia in manœuvres which threatened to break up Germany's ally, Austria. Russia was, moreover, the first of the Great Powers to order a general mobilisa­tion. This capital fact is ignored in nearly all the statements of the British case against Germany. It is slurred over in Sir Maurice do Bunsen's final despatch. It is omitted altogether in the historical preface to the cheap edition of the White Paper. That is not the way to write candid history. The dates are given in the White Paper. Russia, after a partial mobilisation in her Southern provinces against Austria, made her mobilisation general (i.e., called out the reserves in the Northern provinces for use against Germany) on July 31 (No. 113). Austria and Germany ordered their general mobilisations on August 1 (Nos. 127 and 142). Up to the first day of August Austria had only partially mobilised; Germany had not mobilised at all; Austria in this last phrase of the negotiations was showing moderation, and had conceded, as Sir Maurice de Bunsen has recognised, the main point at issue. The Kaiser was offering his personal services as mediator, and there can be no doubt that at the last moment, when she realised that the Austro-Servian War could not be localised, Germany did use her influence with success to induce Austria to be moderate. She now saw in the Russian mobilisation a threat to herself, and she replied to the threat with a defiance. The Tsar's order to mobilise compromised the hope of peace; the Kaiser's ultimatum ruined it. The moral responsibility for the universal war must be shared between Germany and Russia.

The Eastern Melting-Pot.

If the Triple Entente should be victorious, and if Russian policy is allowed to dominate the settlement, it is hard to draw a fortunate horoscope for Austria. A Russian proclamation has already snatched from Germany the Polish province of Posen, and from Austria the loyal and contented Poles of Galicia. We may be sure, if Servian arms should meet with any measure of success, that Russia will aim at creating a Greater Servia by amalgamating Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina with Servia and Montenegro. The tertius gaudens, as the Balkan struggle shows, is apt to exact a heavy price for his neutrality. Italy will not forget that Trent is peopled by Italians, and that the miserable Albanians will require some strong hand to restore their wretched country to order and peace. Roumania is a for­midable military power, and at the moment when the struggle becomes desperate, her weight might be decisive in one or other of the Eastern scales of power. She has no love for either Empire, though her king is a Hohenzollern. Russia took Bessarabia from her, and Hungary is the mistress of a large Roumanian population in Transylvania. She may elect to move her armies into one or the other of these provinces, but more probably she will sell her neutrality for an assurance that the victor will reward her. Bulgaria is in the same case. An armed neutrality will pay her best. If Russia wins, then Servia, rich in her new acquisitions, can well afford to give up a part at least of Macedonia. The whole of the Near East is in the melting-pot, but the central question of all is in what shape Austria will emerge from the tremendous test. A decisive victory would mean for her that Russian hegemony would be ended in Europe. She would have become herself the rival Slavonic Power. She anticipated Russia by promising the restoration of Polish unity. She would either annex Servia out­right, or reduce her to vassalage, while Roumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, each aggrandised somewhat by the pursuit of a profitable neutrality, would be attached to her as grateful satellites. She would dominate the Balkans, and in the act she would have solved triumphantly the problem of her own internal cohesion. A beaten Russia would no longer attract the Southern Slavs. The other alternative is, if possible, still more cataclysmic. If Russia wins and has her way, little will be left of Austria save her German provinces. and these might be incorporated at length in a German Empire which had lost Posen and Alsace-Lorraine. Roumania and Servia would emerge as big States, attached by interest to the Russian system. Bulgaria would be reconciled by the gift of Macedonia. The doubtful points would be the future of the Czechs and Magyars. But whatever their fate might be, the German Powers would have been cut off for ever from the East, and Russia with some millions of Poles and Ruthenians added to her territories, and the Southern Slavs enlisted as her allies and van­guard, would dominate the Eastern Mediterranean and over­shadow Turkey, as to-day she overshadows Persia.

Defense or Conquest?

We are taking a parochial view of Armageddon if we allow ourselves to imagine that it is primarily a struggle for the indepen­dence of Belgium and the future of France. The Germans are nearer the truth when they regard it as a Russo-German war. It began in a struggle for the hegemony of the Near East, with its pivotal point at Belgrade. It will end logically, if either side achieves a decisive success, in a melting of all the frontiers of the East, and the settlement by force of arms of the question whether its destinies shall be governed by Germany or by Russia. It is, to my mind, an issue so barbarous, so remote from any real interest or concern of our daily life in these islands, that I can only marvel at the illusions, and curse the fatality which have made us bel­ligerents in this struggle. We are neither Slavs nor Germans. How many of us, high or low, dare form a decided opinion as to whether Bosnia would in the end be happier under the native but intolerant and semi-civilised rule of the Serbs, or the alien but relatively civilised rule of Austria? How many of us would dare to answer one by one the questions whether Poles and Ruthenians and Slovaks would be the happier for passing from Austrian to Russian rule? We have not even debated these questions, yet our arms are helping to settle them. Our fleet in the North Sea, our army in France may he winning for the Tsar millions of fresh sub­jects, and for the familiar process of forcible Russification unnum­bered victims. They will pass from a higher to a lower civilisation, from a system usually tolerant and fitfully Liberal, to one which has not even begun to grasp the idea of toleration, and whose answer to Liberalism is the censorship, the prison, and the "truly Russian" pogrom. The Russian exiles who ask us to believe in the Liberal Russia of to-morrow can only repeat their pathetic, instinctive hopes. They admit, with a candour which enlists our respect, that nothing is changed as yet. One may hope for some slow evolution in Russian politics. One may dream of a future federal organisation of its many nationalities. But are we so secure in our anticipation of that brighter future that we will back it by our arms? On the lower level of self-interest and Imperial expediency have we reason. to desire a world in which the Balance of Power will lurch violently to the side of this unscrupulous and incalculable Empire? Within a year from the breaking of Germany's power (if that is the result of this war), as Russia forces her way through the Dardanelles, dominates Turkey, overruns Persia, and bestrides the road to India, our Imperialists will be calling out for a strong Germany to balance a threatening Russia. A mechanical fatality has forced France into this struggle, and a comradeship, translated by secret commitments into a defensive alliance, has brought us into the war in her wake. It is no real concern of hers or of ours. It is a war for the Empire of the East. If our statesmanship is clear-sighted, it will stop the war before it has passed from a struggle for the defence of France and Belgium, into a colossal wrangle for the dominion of the Balkans and the mastery of the Slavs. When the campaign in the West has ended, as we all hope that it soon will end, in the liberation of French and Belgian soil from a deplorable invasion, the moment will have come to pause. To back our Western friends in a war of defence is one thing, to fling ourselves into the further struggle for the Empire of the East quite another. No call of the blood, no imperious calculation of self-interest, no hope for the future of mankind requires us to side with Slav against Teuton. We cannot wish that either Austria or Russia should dominate the Balkans, but if we had to make the choice in cold blood, most of us would prefer the more tolerant and more civilised German influence. Our orators talk of the cause of nationality. Two months ago what man in his senses would have suggested that the best way to serve the cause of nationality was to bring fresh subject races under the Russian yoke? The Poles and Ruthenians are Slavs indeed, but they are not Russians. One might as well propose to further the cause of nationality by annexing Holland to the German Empire. If in the heat of battle, we allow ourselves to rush onward without reflection from a war of defence to a war of conquest, we shall had that all the old problems confront us anew. En­thusiasts for this hateful war may applaud it as an effort to "destroy German militarism." That is a meaningless phrase. The Allies may indeed destroy the German armies, but no one can destroy German militarism, save the German people itself. Militarism seizes a nation only when the prophets of the gospel of force can preach to ears prepared by fear. We are about to make new fears for the German people. Crush that people, load it with indemnities, lop it of its provinces, encircle it with triumphant allies, and so far from turning to depose its Prussian leaders, it will rally behind them in a national struggle to recover its stand­ing, its integrity, its power of free movement. Not France but Germany will arm to recover lost provinces, and weave new alliances to adjust the ever-shifting balance of power. If once the world begins to play at map-making, it will create unsatisfied appetites; there will be States enough to join with Germany in an effort to upset the settlement. The future will stretch before us, a new phase of the ruinous armed peace, destined to end, after further years of anger and waste, in another war of revenge. It lies with public opinion to limit the duration of this quarrel, and to impose on our diplomacy, when victory in the West is won, a return to its natural role of moderator in a quarrel no longer its own.