I saw then in my dream that he went on thus, even until he came at a bottom, where he saw, a little out of the way, three Men fast asleep with Fetters upon their heels.
The name of the one was Simple, another Sloth, and the third Presumption.
Christian then seeing them lie in this case, went to them, if Peradventure he might awake them. And cried, you are like them that sleep on the top of a Mast, for the dead Sea is under you, a Gulf that hath no bottom. Awake therefore and come away; be willing also, and I will help you off with your Irons. He also told them, If he that goeth about like a roaring Lion comes by, you will certainly become a prey to his teeth.
With that they lookt upon him, and began to reply in this sort: Simple said, I see no danger; Sloth said, Yet a little more sleep; and Presumption said, Every Vat must stand upon his own bottom. And so they lay down to sleep again, and Christian went on his way.
The Pilgrim's Progress.
CHAPTER I
A REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
(January 1901-July 1914)
It is not true to say that this is a war between the rival principles of democracy and autocracy. A too great absorption in our own particular sector of the situation has led certain writers to put forward, as a general explanation, this formula which is not only inadequate, but misleading. The real issue is something wider and deeper than a struggle between forms of government. It is concerned with the groundwork of human beliefs.
And yet it is unquestionably true to say, that by reason of Germany's procedure, this war is being waged against democracy—not perhaps by intention, but certainly in effect. For if the Allies should be defeated, or even if they should fail to conquer their present enemies, the result must necessarily be wounding to the credit of popular institutions all the world over, fatal to their existence in Europe at any rate, fatal conceivably at no long distance of time to their existence elsewhere than in Europe. For mankind, we may be sure, is not going to put up with any kind of government merely because it is ideally beautiful. No system will be tolerated indefinitely which does not enable the people who live under it to protect themselves from their enemies. The instinct of self-preservation will drive them to seek for some other political arrangement which is competent, in the present imperfect condition of the world, to provide the first essential of a state, which is Security.
But although the whole fabric of democracy is threatened by this war, the principle of autocracy is not challenged by it either directly or indirectly. France and England are not fighting against personal monarchy any more than Russia is fighting against popular government. So far as the forms of constitutions are concerned each of the Allies would be well content to live and let live. They are none of them spurred on by propagandist illusions like the armies of the First Republic. Among Russians, devotion to their own institutions, and attachment to the person of their Emperor are inspired not merely by dictates of political expediency and patriotism, but also by their sense of religious duty.[1] It is inconceivable that the national spirit of Russia could ever have been roused to universal enthusiasm merely in order to fight the battles of democracy. And yet Russia is now ranged side by side with the French Republic and the British Commonwealth in perfect unison. What has induced her to submit to sacrifices—less indeed than those of Belgium, but equal to those of France, and much greater so far than our own—unless some issue was at stake wider and deeper even than the future of popular government?
The instincts of a people are vague and obscure. The reasons which are put forward, the motives which appear upon the surface, the provocations which lead to action, the immediate ends which are sought after and pursued, rarely explain the true causes or proportions of any great national struggle. But for all that, the main issue, as a rule, is realised by the masses who are engaged, although it is not realised through the medium of coherent argument or articulate speech.
The present war is a fight, not between democracy and autocracy, but between the modern spirit of Germany and the unchanging spirit of civilisation. And it is well to bear in mind that the second of these is not invincible. It has suffered defeat before now, at various epochs in the world's history, when attacked by the same forces which assail it to-day. Barbarism is not any the less barbarism because it employs weapons of precision, because it avails itself of the discoveries of science and the mechanism of finance, or because it thinks it worth while to hire bands of learned men to shriek pÆans in its praise and invectives against its victims. Barbarism is not any the less barbarism because its methods are up to date. It is known for what it is by the ends which it pursues and the spirit in which it pursues them.
GERMAN MATERIALISM
The modern spirit of Germany is materialism in its crudest form—the undistracted pursuit of wealth, and of power as a means to wealth. It is materialism, rampant and self-confident, fostered by the state—subsidised, regulated, and, where thought advisable, controlled by the state—supported everywhere by the diplomatic resources of the state—backed in the last resort by the fleets and armies of the state. It is the most highly organised machine, the most deliberate and thorough-going system, for arriving at material ends which has ever yet been devised by man. It is far more efficient, but not a whit less material, than 'Manchesterism' of the Victorian era, which placed its hopes in 'free' competition, and also than that later development of trusts and syndicates—hailing from America—which aims at levying tribute on society by means of 'voluntary' co-operation. And just as the English professors, who fell prostrate in adoration before the prosperity of cotton-spinners, found no difficulty in placing self-interest upon the loftiest pedestal of morality, so German professors have succeeded in erecting for the joint worship of the Golden Calf and the War-god Wotun, high twin altars which look down with pity and contempt upon the humbler shrines of the Christian faith.
The morality made in Manchester has long ago lost its reputation. That which has been made in Germany more recently must in the end follow suit; for, like its predecessor, it is founded upon a false conception of human nature and cannot endure. But in the interval, if it be allowed to triumph, it may work evil, in comparison with which that done by our own devil-take-the-hindmost philosophers sinks into insignificance.
WANT OF A NATIONAL POLICY
Looking at the present war from the standpoint of the Allies, the object of it is to repel the encroachments of materialism, working its way through the ruin of ideas, which have been cherished always, save in the dark ages when civilisation was overwhelmed by barbarism. Looking at the matter from our own particular standpoint, it is also incidentally a struggle for the existence of democracy. The chief question we have to ask ourselves is whether our people will fight for their faith and traditions with the same skill and courage as the Germans for their material ends? Will they endure sacrifices with the same fortitude as France and Russia? Will they face the inevitable eagerly and promptly, or will they play the laggard and by delay ruin all—themselves most of all? ... This war is not going to be won for us by other people, or by some miraculous intervention of Providence, or by the Germans running short of copper, or by revolutions in Berlin, nor even by the break-up of the Austrian Empire. In order to win it we shall have to put out our full strength, to organise our resources in men and material as we have never done before during the whole of our history. We have not accomplished these things as yet, although we have expressed our determination, and are indeed willing to attempt them. We were taken by surprise, and the immediate result has been a great confusion, very hard to disentangle.
Considering how little, before war began, our people had been taken into the confidence of successive governments, as to the relations of the British Empire with the outside world; how little education of opinion there had been, as to risks, and dangers, and means of defence; how little leading and clear guidance, both before and since, as to duties—considering all these omissions one can only marvel that the popular response has been what it is, and that the confusion was not many times worse.
What was the mood of the British race when this war broke upon them so unexpectedly? To what extent were they provided against it in a material sense? And still more important, how far were their minds and hearts prepared to encounter it? It is important to understand those things, but in order to do this it is necessary to look back over a few years.
By a coincidence which may prove convenient to historians, the end of the nineteenth century marked the beginning of a new epoch[2]—an interlude, of brief duration as it proved—upon which the curtain was rung down shortly before midnight on the 4th of August 1914.
Between these two dates, in a space of something over thirteen years, events had happened in a quick succession, both within the empire and abroad, which disturbed or dissolved many ancient understandings. The spirit of change had been busy with mankind, and needs unknown to a former generation had grown clamorous. Objects of hope had presented themselves, driving old ideas to the wall, and unforeseen dangers had produced fresh groupings, compacts, and associations between states, and parties, and individual men.
In Europe during this period the manifest determination of Germany to challenge the naval supremacy of Britain, by the creation of a fleet designed and projected as the counterpart of her overwhelming army, had threatened the security of the whole continent, and had put France, Russia, and England upon terms not far removed from those of an alliance. The gravity of this emergency had induced our politicians to exclude, for the time being, this department of public affairs from the bitterness of their party struggles; and it had also drawn the governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions into relations closer than ever before, for the purpose of mutual defence.[3]
DEVELOPMENTS IN THE EAST
In the meanwhile there had been developments even more startling in the hitherto unchanging East. Japan, as the result of a great war,[4] had become a first-class power, redoubtable both by sea and land. China, the most populous, the most ancient, and the most conservative of despotisms, had suddenly sought her salvation under the milder institutions of a republic.[5]
The South African war, ended by the Peace of Pretoria, had paved the way for South African Union.[6] The achievement of this endeavour had been applauded by men of all parties; some finding in it a welcome confirmation of their theories with regard to liberty and self-government; others again drawing from it encouragement to a still bolder undertaking. For if South Africa had made a precedent, the existing state of the world had supplied a motive, for the closer union of the empire.
Within the narrower limits of the United Kingdom changes had also occurred within this period which, from another point of view, were equally momentous. In 1903 Mr. Chamberlain had poured new wine into old bottles, and in so doing had hastened the inevitable end of Unionist predominance by changing on a sudden the direction of party policy. In the unparalleled defeat which ensued two and a half years later the Labour party appeared for the first time, formidable both in numbers and ideas.
A revolution had likewise been proceeding in our institutions as well as in the minds of our people. The balance of the state had been shifted by a curtailment of the powers of the House of Lords[7]—the first change which had been made by statute in the fundamental principle of the Constitution since the passing of the Act of Settlement.[8] In July 1914 further changes of a similar character, hardly less important under a practical aspect, were upon the point of receiving the Royal Assent.[9]
Both these sets of changes—that which had been already accomplished and the other which was about to pass into law—had this in common, that even upon the admissions of their own authors they were incomplete. Neither in the Parliament Act nor in the Home Rule Act was there finality. The composition of the Second Chamber had been set down for early consideration, whilst a revision of the constitutional relations between England, Scotland, and Wales was promised so soon as the case of Ireland had been dealt with.
It seemed as if the modern spirit had at last, in earnest, opened an inquisition upon the adequacy of our ancient unwritten compact, which upon the whole, had served its purpose well for upwards of two hundred years. It seemed as if that compact were in the near future to be tested thoroughly, and examined in respect of its fitness for dealing with the needs of the time—with the complexities and the vastness of the British Empire—with the evils which prey upon us from within, and with the dangers which threaten us from without.
Questioners were not drawn from one party alone. They were pressing forwards from all sides. It was not merely the case of Ireland, or the powers of the Second Chamber, or its composition, or the general congestion of business, or the efficiency of the House of Commons: it was the whole machinery of government which seemed to need overhauling and reconsideration in the light of new conditions. Most important of all these constitutional issues was that which concerned the closer union of the Empire.
CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES
It was little more than eighty years since the Iron Duke had described the British Constitution as an incomparably devised perfection which none but a madman would seek to change. That was not now the creed of any political party or indeed of any thinking man. No one was satisfied with things as they were. Many of the most respectable old phrases had become known for empty husks, out of which long since had dropped whatever seed they may originally have contained. Many of the old traditions were dead or sickly, and their former adherents were now wandering at large, like soldiers in the middle ages, when armies were disbanded in foreign parts, seeking a new allegiance, and constituting in the meanwhile a danger to security and the public peace.
And also, within this brief period, the highest offices had become vacant, and many great figures had passed from the scene. Two sovereigns had died full of honour. Two Prime Ministers had also died, having first put off the burden of office, each at the zenith of his popularity. Of the two famous men upon the Unionist side who remained when Lord Salisbury tendered his resignation, the one since 1906 had been wholly withdrawn from public life, while the other, four years later, had passed the leadership into younger hands.[10]
There is room for an almost infinite variety of estimate as to the influence which is exercised by pre-eminent characters upon public affairs and national ideals. The verdict of the day after is always different from that of a year after. The verdict of the next generation, while differing from both, is apt to be markedly different from that of the generation which follows it. The admiration or censure of the moment is followed by a reaction no less surely than the reaction itself is followed by a counter-reaction. Gradually the oscillations become shorter, as matters pass out of the hands of journalists and politicians into those of the historian. Possibly later judgments are more true. We have more knowledge, of a kind. Seals are broken one by one, and we learn how this man really thought and how the other acted, in both cases differently from what had been supposed. We have new facts submitted to us, and possibly come nearer the truth. But while we gain so much, we also lose in other directions. We lose the sharp savour of the air. The keen glance and alert curiosity of contemporary vigilance are lacking. Conditions and circumstances are no longer clear, and as generation after generation passes away they become more dim. The narratives of the great historians and novelists are to a large extent either faded or false. We do not trust the most vivid presentments written by the man of genius in his study a century after the event, while we know well that even the shrewdest of contemporaneous observers is certain to omit many of the essentials. If Macaulay is inadequate in one direction, Pepys is equally inadequate in another. And if the chronicler at the moment, and the historian in the future are not to be wholly believed, the writer who comments after a decade or less upon things which are fresh in his memory is liable to another form of error; for either he is swept away by the full current of the reaction, or else his judgments are embittered by a sense of the hopelessness of swimming against it.
DEATH OF QUEEN VICTORIA
This much, however, may be said safely—that the withdrawal of any pre-eminent character from the scene, whether it be Queen Victoria or King Edward, Lord Salisbury or Mr. Chamberlain, produces in a greater or less degree that same loosening of allegiance and disturbance of ideas, which are so much dreaded by the conservative temperament from the removal of an ancient institution. For a pre-eminent character is of the same nature as an institution. The beliefs, loyalties, and ideals of millions were attached to the personality of the Queen. The whole of that prestige which Queen Victoria drew from the awe, reverence, affection, and prayers of her people could not be passed along with the crown to King Edward. The office of sovereign was for the moment stripped and impoverished of some part of its strength, and was only gradually replenished as the new monarch created a new, and to some extent a different, loyalty of his own. So much is a truism. But, when there is already a ferment in men's minds, the disappearance in rapid succession of the pre-eminent characters of the age helps on revolution by putting an end to a multitude of customary attachments, and by setting sentiments adrift to wander in search of new heroes.
A change of some importance had also come over the character of the House of Commons. The old idea that it was a kind of grand jury of plain men, capable in times of crisis of breaking with their parties, had at last finally disappeared. In politics there was no longer any place for plain men. The need was for professionals, and professionals of this sort, like experts in other walks of life, were worthy of their hire.
The decision to pay members of Parliament came as no surprise. The marvel was rather that it had not been taken at an earlier date, seeing that for considerably more than a century this item had figured in the programmes of all advanced reformers. The change, nevertheless, when it came, was no trivial occurrence, but one which was bound fundamentally to affect the character of the popular assembly; whether for better or worse was a matter of dispute.
Immense, however, as were the possibilities contained in the conversion of unpaid amateurs into professional and stipendiary politicians, what excited even more notice at the time than the thing itself, were the means by which it was accomplished. No attempt was made to place this great constitutional reform definitely and securely upon the statute book. To have followed this course would have meant submitting a bill, and a bill would have invited discussion at all its various stages. Moreover, the measure might have been challenged by the House of Lords, in which case delay would have ensued; and a subject, peculiarly susceptible to malicious misrepresentation, would have been kept—possibly for so long as three years—under the critical eyes of public opinion. Apparently this beneficent proposal was one of those instances, so rare in modern political life, where neither publicity nor advertisement was sought. On the contrary, the object seemed to be to do good by stealth; and for this purpose a simple financial resolution was all that the law required. The Lords had recently been warned off and forbidden to interfere with money matters, their judgment being under suspicion, owing to its supposed liability to be affected by motives of self-interest. The House of Commons was therefore sole custodian of the public purse; and in this capacity its members were invited to vote themselves four hundred pounds a year all round, as the shortest and least ostentatious way of raising the character and improving the quality of the people's representatives.
CHANGE IN HOUSE OF COMMONS
Even by July 1914 the effect of this constitutional amendment upon our old political traditions had become noticeable in various directions. But the means by which it was accomplished are no less worthy of note than the reform itself, when we are endeavouring to estimate the changes which have come over Parliament during this short but revolutionary epoch. The method adopted seemed to indicate a novel attitude on the part of members of the House of Commons towards the Imperial Exchequer, on the part of the Government towards members of the House of Commons, and on the part of both towards the people whom they trusted. It was adroit, expeditious, and businesslike; and to this extent seemed to promise well for years to come, when the professionals should have finally got rid of the amateurs, and taken things wholly into their own hands. Hostile critics, it is true, denounced the reform bluntly as corruption, and the method of its achievement as furtive and cynical; but for this class of persons no slander is ever too gross—They have said. Quhat say they? Let them be saying.
The party leaders were probably neither worse men nor better than they had been in the past; but they were certainly smaller; while on the other hand the issues with which they found themselves confronted were bigger.
Great characters are like tent-pegs. One of their uses is to prevent the political camp from being blown to ribbons. Where they are too short or too frail, we may look for such disorders as have repeated themselves at intervals during the past few years. A blast of anger or ill-temper has blown, or a gust of sentiment, or even a gentle zephyr of sentimentality, and the whole scene has at once become a confusion of flapping canvas, tangled cordage, and shouting, struggling humanity. Such unstable conditions are fatal to equanimity; they disturb the fortitude of the most stalwart follower, and cause doubt and distrust on every hand.
Since the Liberal Government came into power in the autumn of 1905, neither of the great parties had succeeded in earning the respect of the other; and as the nature of man is not subject to violent fluctuations, it may safely be concluded that this misfortune had been due either to some defect or inadequacy of leadership, or else to conditions of an altogether extraordinary character.
During these ten sessions the bulk of the statute book had greatly increased, and much of this increase was no doubt healthy tissue. This period, notwithstanding, will ever dwell in the memory as a squalid episode. Especially is this the case when we contrast the high hopes and promises, not of one party alone, with the results which were actually achieved.
DEMOCRACY AND LEADERSHIP
Democracy, if the best, is also the most delicate form of human government. None suffers so swiftly or so sorely from any shortage in the crop of character. None is so dependent upon men, and so little capable of being supported by the machine alone. When the leading of parties is in the hands of those who lack vision and firmness, the first effect which manifests itself is that parties begin to slip their principles. Some secondary object calls for and obtains the sacrifice of an ideal. So the Unionists in 1909 threw over the order and tradition of the state, the very ark of their political covenant, when they procured the rejection of the Budget by the House of Lords. So the Liberal Government in 1910, having solemnly undertaken to reform the constitution—a work not unworthy of the most earnest endeavour—went back upon their word, and abandoned their original purpose. For one thing they grew afraid of the clamour of their partisans. For another they were tempted by the opportunity of advantages which—as they fondly imagined—could be easily and safely secured during the interval while all legislative powers were temporarily vested in the Commons. Nor were these the only instances where traditional policy had been diverted, and where ideals had been bargained away, in the hope that thereby objects of a more material sort might be had at once in exchange.
The business of leadership is to prevent the abandonment of the long aim for the sake of the short. The rank and file of every army is at all times most dangerously inclined to this fatal temptation, not necessarily dishonestly, but from a lack of foresight and sense of proportion.
Some dim perception of cause and effect had begun to dawn during the years 1912 and 1913 upon the country, and even upon the more sober section of the politicians. An apprehension had been growing rapidly, and defied concealment, that the country was faced by a very formidable something, to which men hesitated to give a name, but which was clearly not to be got rid of by the customary methods of holding high debates about it, and thereafter marching into division lobbies. While in public, each party was concerned to attribute the appearance of this unwelcome monster solely to the misdeeds of their opponents, each party knew well enough in their hearts that the danger was due at least in some measure to their own abandonment of pledges, principles, and traditions.
At Midsummer 1914 most people would probably have said that the immediate peril was Ireland and civil war. A few months earlier many imagined that trouble of a more general character was brewing between the civil and military powers, and that an issue which they described as that of 'the Army versus the People' would have to be faced. A few years earlier there was a widespread fear that the country might be confronted by some organised stoppage of industry, and that this would lead to revolution. Throughout the whole of this period of fourteen years the menace of war with Germany had been appearing, and disappearing, and reappearing, very much as a whale shows his back, dives, rises at some different spot, and dives again. For the moment, however, this particular anxiety did not weigh heavily on the public mind. The man in the street had been assured of late by the greater part of the press and politicians—even by ministers themselves—that our relations with this formidable neighbour were friendlier and more satisfactory than they had been for some considerable time.
MR. ASQUITH'S PRE-EMINENCE
At Midsummer 1914, that is to say about six weeks before war broke out, the pre-eminent character in British politics was the Prime Minister. No other on either side of the House approached him in prestige, and so much was freely admitted by foes as well as friends.
When we are able to arrive at a fair estimate of the man who is regarded as the chief figure of his age, we have an important clue to the aspirations and modes of thought of the period in which he lived. A people may be known to some extent by the leaders whom it has chosen to follow.
Mr. Asquith entered Parliament in 1886, and before many months had passed his reputation was secure. Mr. Gladstone, ever watchful for youthful talent, promoted him at a bound to be Home Secretary, when the Cabinet of 1892 came into precarious existence. No member of this government justified his selection more admirably. But the period of office was brief. Three years later, the Liberal party found itself once again in the wilderness, where it continued to wander, rent by dissensions both as to persons and principles, for rather more than a decade.
When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman returned to office in the autumn of 1905, Mr. Asquith became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was speedily accepted as the minister next in succession to his chief. He was then just turned fifty, so that, despite the delays which had occurred, it could not be said that fortune had behaved altogether unkindly. Two and a half years later, in April 1908, he succeeded to the premiership without a rival, and without a dissentient voice.
The ambition, however, which brought him so successfully to the highest post appeared to have exhausted a great part of its force in attainment, and to have left its possessor without sufficient energy for exercising those functions which the post itself required. The career of Mr. Asquith in the highest office reminds one a little of the fable of the Hare and the Tortoise. In the race which we all run with slow-footed fate, he had a signal advantage in the speed of his intellect, in his capacity for overtaking arrears of work which would have appalled any other minister, and for finding, on the spur of the moment, means for extricating his administration from the most threatening positions. But of late, like the Hare, he had come to believe himself invincible, and had yielded more and more to a drowsy inclination. He had seemed to fall asleep for long periods, apparently in serene confidence that, before the Tortoise could pass the winning-post, somebody or something—in all probability the Unionist party with the clamour of a premature jubilation—would awaken him in time to save the race.
So far as Parliament was concerned, his confidence in his own qualities was not misplaced. Again and again, the unleadered energies or ungoaded indolence of his colleagues landed the Government in a mess. But as often as this happened Mr. Asquith always advanced upon the scene and rescued his party, by putting the worst blunder in the best light. He obligingly picked his stumbling lieutenants out of the bogs into which—largely, it must be admitted, for want of proper guidance from their chief—they had had the misfortune to fall. Having done this in the most chivalrous manner imaginable, he earned their gratitude and devotion. In this way he maintained a firm hold upon the leadership; if indeed it can properly be termed leadership to be the best acrobat of the troupe, and to step forward and do the feats after your companions have failed, and the audience has begun to 'boo.'
WAIT AND SEE
Some years ago Mr. Asquith propounded a maxim—wait-and-see—which greatly scandalised and annoyed the other side. This formula was the perfectly natural expression of his character and policy. In the peculiar circumstances of the case it proved itself to be a successful parliamentary expedient. Again and again it wrought confusion among his simple-minded opponents, who—not being held together by any firm authority—followed their own noses, now in one direction, now in another, upon the impulse of the moment. It is probable that against a powerful leader, who had his party well in hand, this policy of makeshift and delay would have brought its author to grief. But Unionists were neither disciplined nor united, and they had lacked leadership ever since they entered upon opposition.
For all its excellency, Mr. Asquith's oratory never touched the heart. And very rarely indeed did it succeed in convincing the cool judgment of people who had experience at first hand of the matters under discussion. There was lacking anything in the nature of a personal note, which might have related the ego of the speaker to the sentiments which he announced so admirably. Also there was something which suggested that his knowledge had not been gained by looking at the facts face to face; but rather by the rapid digestion of minutes and memoranda, which had been prepared for him by clerks and secretaries, and which purported to provide, in convenient tabloids, all that it was necessary for a parliamentarian to know.
The style of speaking which is popular nowadays, and of which Mr. Asquith is by far the greatest master, would not have been listened to with an equal favour in the days of our grandfathers. In the Parliaments which assembled at Westminster in the period between the passing of the Reform Bill and the founding of the Eighty Club,[11] the country-gentlemen and the men-of-business—two classes of humanity who are constantly in touch with, and drawing strength from, our mother earth of hard fact[12]—met and fought out their differences during two generations. In that golden age it was all but unthinkable that a practising barrister should ever have become Prime Minister. The legal profession at this time had but little influence in counsel; still less in Parliament and on the platform. The middle classes were every whit as jealous and distrustful of the intervention of the lawyer-advocate in public affairs as the landed gentry themselves. But in the stage of democratic evolution, which we entered on the morrow of the Mid-Lothian campaigns, and in which we still remain, the popular, and even the parliamentary, audience has gradually ceased to consist mainly of country-gentlemen interested in the land, and of the middle-classes who are engaged in trade. It has grown to be at once less discriminating as to the substance of speeches, and more exacting as to their form.
POLITICAL LAWYERS
A representative assembly which entirely lacked lawyers would be impoverished; but one in which they are the predominant, or even a very important element, is usually in its decline. It is strange that an order of men, who in their private and professional capacities are so admirable, should nevertheless produce baleful effects when they come to play too great a part in public affairs. Trusty friends, delightful companions, stricter perhaps than any other civil profession in all rules of honour, they are none the less, without seeking to be so, the worst enemies of representative institutions. The peculiar danger of personal monarchy is that it so easily submits to draw its inspiration from an adulatory priesthood, and the peculiar danger of that modern form of constitutional government which we call democracy, is that lawyers, with the most patriotic intentions, are so apt to undo it.
Lawyers see too much of life in one way, too little in another, to make them safe guides in practical matters. Their experience of human affairs is made up of an infinite number of scraps cut out of other people's lives. They learn and do hardly anything except through intermediaries. Their clients are introduced, not in person, but in the first instance, on paper—through the medium of solicitors' 'instructions.' Litigants appear at consultations in their counsel's chambers under the chaperonage of their attorneys; their case is considered; they receive advice. Then perhaps, if the issue comes into court, they appear once again, in the witness-box, and are there examined, cross-examined, and re-examined under that admirable system for the discovery of truth which is ordained in Anglo-Saxon countries, and which consists in turning, for the time being, nine people in every ten out of their true natures into hypnotised rabbits. Then the whole thing is ended, and the client disappears into the void from whence he came. What happens to him afterwards seldom reaches the ears of his former counsel. Whether the advice given to him in consultation has proved right or wrong in practice, rarely becomes known to the great man who gave it.
Plausibility, an alert eye for the technical trip or fall—the great qualities of an advocate—do not necessarily imply judgment of the most valuable sort outside courts of law. The farmer who manures, ploughs, harrows, sows, and rolls in his crop is punished in his income, if he has done any one of these things wrongly, or at the wrong season. The shopkeeper who blunders in his buying or his selling, or the manufacturer who makes things as they should not be made, suffers painful consequences to a certainty. His error pounds him relentlessly on the head. Not so the lawyer. His errors for the most part are visited on others. His own success or non-success is largely a matter of words and pose. If he is confident and adroit, the dulness of the jury or the senility of the bench can be made to appear, in the eyes of the worsted client, as the true causes of his defeat. And the misfortune is that in politics, which under its modern aspect is a trade very much akin to advocacy, there is a temptation, with all but the most patriotic lawyers, to turn to account at Westminster the skill which they have so laboriously acquired in the Temple.
Of course there have been, and will ever be, exceptions. Alexander Hamilton was a lawyer, though he was a soldier in the first instance. Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. But we should have to go back to the 'glorious revolution' of 1688 before we could find a parallel to either of these two in our own history. Until the last two decades England has never looked favourably on lawyer leaders. This was regarded by some as a national peculiarity; by others as a safeguard of our institutions. But by the beginning of the twentieth century it was clear that lawyers had succeeded in establishing their predominance in the higher walks of English politics, as thoroughly as they had already done wherever parliamentary government exists throughout the world.
MR. ASQUITH'S ORATORY
During this epoch, when everything was sacrificed to perspicuity and the avoidance of boredom, Mr. Asquith's utterances led the fashion. His ministry was composed to a large extent of politicians bred in the same profession and proficient in the same arts as himself; but he towered above them all, the supreme type of the lawyer-statesman.
His method was supremely skilful. In its own way it had the charm of perfect artistry, even though the product of the art was hardly more permanent than that of the cordon bleu who confections ices in fancy patterns. And not only was the method well suited to the taste of popular audiences, but equally so to the modern House of Commons. That body, also, was now much better educated in matters which can be learned out of newspapers and books; far more capable of expressing its meanings in well-chosen phrases arranged in a logical sequence; far more critical of words—if somewhat less observant of things—than it was during the greater part of the reign of Queen Victoria.
To a large extent the House of Commons consisted of persons with whom public utterance was a trade. There were lawyers in vast numbers, journalists, political organisers, and professional lecturers on a large variety of subjects. And even among the labour party, where we might have expected to find a corrective, the same tendency was at work, perhaps as strongly as in any other quarter. For although few types of mankind have a shrewder judgment between reality and dialectic than a thoroughly competent 'workman,' labour leaders were not chosen because they were first-class workmen, but because they happened to be effective speakers on the platform or at the committee table.
To a critic, looking on at the play from outside, Mr. Asquith's oratory appeared to lack heart and the instinct for reality; his leadership, the qualities of vigilance, steadfastness, and authority. He did not prevail by personal force, but by adroit confutation. His debating, as distinguished from his political, courage would have been admitted with few reservations even by an opponent. Few were so ready to meet their enemies in the gate of discussion. Few, if any, were so capable of retrieving the fortunes of their party—even when things looked blackest—if it were at all possible to accomplish this by the weapons of debate. But the medium must be debate—not action or counsel—if Mr. Asquith's pre-eminence was to assert itself. In debate he had all the confidence and valour of the maÎtre d'armes, who knows himself to be the superior in skill of any fencer in his own school.
HIS CHARACTER
Next to Lord Rosebery he was the figure of most authority among the Liberal Imperialists, and yet this did not sustain his resolution when the Cabinet of 1905 proceeded to pare down the naval estimates. He was the champion of equal justice, as regards the status of Trades Unions, repelling the idea of exceptional and favouring legislation with an eloquent scorn. Yet he continued to hold his place when his principles were thrown overboard by his colleagues in 1906. Again when he met Parliament in February 1910 he announced his programme with an air of heroic firmness.[13] It is unnecessary to recall the particulars of this episode, and how he was upheld in his command only upon condition that he would alter his course to suit the wishes of mutineers. And in regard to the question of Home Rule, his treatment of it from first to last had been characterised by the virtues of patience and humility, rather than by those of prescience or courage.
A 'stellar and undiminishable' something, around which the qualities and capacities of a man revolve obediently, and under harmonious restraint—like the planetary bodies—is perhaps as near as we can get to a definition of human greatness. But in the case of Mr. Asquith, for some years prior to July 1914, the central force of his nature had seemed inadequate for imposing the law of its will upon those brilliant satellites his talents. As a result, the solar system of his character had fallen into confusion, and especially since the opening of that year had appeared to be swinging lop-sided across the political firmament hastening to inevitable disaster.
CHAPTER II
THREE GOVERNING IDEAS
At the death of Queen Victoria the development of the British Commonwealth entered upon a new phase. The epoch which followed has no precedent in our own previous experience as a nation, nor can we discover in the records of other empires anything which offers more than a superficial and misleading resemblance to it. The issues of this period presented themselves to different minds in a variety of different lights; but to all it was clear that we had reached one of the great turning-points in our history.
The passengers on a great ocean liner are apt to imagine, because their stomachs are now so little troubled by the perturbation of the waves, that it no longer profits them to offer up the familiar prayer 'for those in peril on the sea.' It is difficult for them to believe in danger where everything appears so steady and well-ordered, and where they can enjoy most of the distractions of urban life, from a cinematograph theatre to a skittle-alley, merely by descending a gilded staircase or crossing a brightly panelled corridor. But this agreeable sense of safety is perhaps due in a greater degree to fancy, than to the changes which have taken place in the essential facts. As dangers have been diminished in one direction risks have been incurred in another. A blunder to-day is more irreparable than formerly, and the havoc which ensues upon a blunder is vastly more appalling. An error of observation or of judgment—the wrong lever pulled or the wrong button pressed—an order which miscarries or is overlooked—and twenty thousand tons travelling at twenty knots an hour goes to the bottom, with its freight of humanity, merchandise, and treasure, more easily, and with greater speed and certainty, than in the days of the old galleons—than in the days when Drake, in the Golden Hind of a hundred tons burden, beat up against head winds in the Straits of Magellan, and ran before the following gale off the Cape of Storms.
Comfort, whether in ships of travel or of state, is not the same thing as security. It never has been, and it never will be.
The position after Queen Victoria's death also differed from all previous times in another way. After more than three centuries of turmoil and expansion, the British race had entered into possession of an estate so vast, so rich in all natural resources, that a sane mind could not hope for, or even dream of, any further aggrandisement. Whatever may be the diseases from which the British race suffered during the short epoch between January 1901 and July 1914, megalomania was certainly not one of them.
The period of acquisition being now acknowledged at an end, popular imagination became much occupied with other things. It assumed, too lightly and readily perhaps, that nothing was likely to interfere with our continuing to hold what we had got. If there was not precisely a law of nature, which precluded the possessions of the British Empire from ever being taken away, at any rate there was the law of nations. The public opinion of the world would surely revolt against so heinous a form of sacrilege. Having assumed so much, placidly and contentedly, and without even a tremor either as to the good-will or the potency of the famous Concert of Europe, the larger part of public opinion tended to become more and more engrossed in other problems. It began to concern itself earnestly with the improvement of the condition of the people, and with the reform and consolidation of institutions. Incidentally, and as a part of each of these endeavours, the development of an estate which had come, mainly by inheritance, into the trusteeship of the British people, began seriously to occupy their thoughts.
SOCIAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
These were problems of great worth and dignity, but nevertheless there was one condition of their successful solution, which ought to have been kept in mind, but which possibly was somewhat overlooked. If we allowed ourselves to be so much absorbed by these two problems that we gave insufficient heed to our defences, it was as certain as any human forecast could be, that the solution of a great deal, which was perplexing us in the management of our internal affairs, would be summarily taken out of the hands of Britain and her Dominions and solved according to the ideas of strangers.
If we were to bring our policy of social and constitutional improvement and the development of our estate to a successful issue, we must be safe from interruption from outside. We must secure ourselves against foreign aggression; for we needed time. Our various problems could not be solved in a day or even in a generation. The most urgent of all matters was security, for it was the prime condition of all the rest.
We desired, not merely to hold what we had got, but to enjoy it, and make it fructify and prosper, in our own way, and under our own institutions. For this we needed peace within our own sphere; and therefore it was necessary that we should be strong enough to enforce peace.
During the post-Victorian period—this short epoch of transition—there were therefore three separate sets of problems which between them absorbed the energies of public men and occupied the thoughts of all private persons, at home and in the Dominions, to whom the present and future well-being of their country was a matter of concern.
The first of these problems was Defence: How might the British Commonwealth, which held so vast a portion of the habitable globe, and which was responsible for the government of a full quarter of all the people who dwelt thereon—how might it best secure itself against the dangers which threatened it from without?
The second was the problem of the Constitution: How could we best develop, to what extent must we remake or remould, our ancient institutions, so as to fit them for those duties and responsibilities which new conditions required that they should be able to perform? Under this head we were faced with projects, not merely of local self-government, of 'Home Rule,' and of 'Federalism'; not merely with the working of the Parliament Act, with the composition, functions, and powers of the Second Chamber, with the Referendum, the Franchise, and such like; but also with that vast and even more perplexing question—what were to be the future relations between the Mother Country and the self-governing Dominions on the one hand, and between these five democratic nations and the Indian Empire and the Dependencies upon the other?
For the third set of problems no concise title has yet been found. Social Reform does not cover it, though perhaps it comes nearer doing so than any other. The matters involved here were so multifarious and, apparently at least, so detached one from another—they presented themselves to different minds at so many different angles and under such different aspects—that no single word or phrase was altogether satisfactory. But briefly, what all men were engaged in searching after—the Labour party, no more and no less than the Radicals and the Tories—was how we could raise the character and material conditions of our people; how by better organisation we could root out needless misery of mind and body; how we could improve the health and the intelligence, stimulate the sense of duty and fellowship, the efficiency and the patriotism of the whole community.
Of these three sets of problems with which the British race has recently been occupying itself, this, the third, is intrinsically by far the most important.
IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL REFORM
It is the most important because it is an end in itself whereas the other two are only the means for achieving this end. Security against foreign attack is a desirable and worthy object only in order to enable us to approach this goal. A strong and flexible constitution is an advantage only because we believe it will enable us to achieve our objects, better and more quickly, than if we are compelled to go on working under a system which has become at once rigid and rickety. But while we were bound to realise the superior nature of the third set of problems, we should have been careful at the same time to distinguish between two things which are very apt to be confused in political discussions—ultimate importance and immediate urgency.
We ought to have taken into our reckoning both the present state of the world and the permanent nature of man—all the stuff that dreams and wars are made on. We desired peace. We needed peace. Peace was a matter of life and death to all our hopes. If defeat should once break into the ring of our commonwealth—scattered as it is all over the world, kept together only by the finest and most delicate attachments—it must be broken irreparably. Our most immediate interest was therefore to keep defeat, and if possible, war, from bursting into our sphere—as Dutchmen by centuries of laborious vigilance have kept back the sea with dikes.
The numbers of our people in themselves were no security; nor our riches; nor even the fact that we entertained no aggressive designs. For as it was said long ago, 'it never troubles a wolf how many the sheep be.' They find no salvation in their heavy fleeces and their fat haunches; nor even in the meekness of their hearts, and in their innocence of all evil intentions.
The characteristic of this period may be summed up in one short sentence; the vast majority of the British people were bent and determined—as they had never been bent and determined before—upon leaving their country better than they had found it.
To some this statement will seem a paradox. "Was there ever a time," they may ask, "when there had been so many evidences of popular unrest, discontent, bitterness and anger; or when there had ever appeared to be so great an inclination, on the one hand to apathy and cynicism, on the other hand to despair?"
THE RESULTS OF CONFUSION
Were all this true, it would still be no paradox; but only a natural consequence. Things are very liable to slip into this state, when men who are in earnest—knowing the facts as they exist in their respective spheres; knowing the evils at first hand; believing (very often with reason) that they understand the true remedies—find themselves baulked, and foiled, and headed off at every turn, their objects misconceived and their motives misconstrued, and the current of their wasted efforts burying itself hopelessly in the sand. Under such conditions as these, public bodies and political parties alike—confused by the multitude and congestion of issues—are apt to bestow their dangerous attentions, now on one matter which happens to dart into the limelight, now upon another; but in the general hubbub and perplexity they lose all sense, both of true proportion and natural priority. Everything is talked about; much is attempted in a piecemeal, slap-dash, impulsive fashion; inconsiderably little is brought to any conclusion whatsoever; while nothing, or next to nothing, is considered on its merits, and carried through thoughtfully to a clean and abiding settlement.... The word 'thorough' seemed to have dropped out of the political vocabulary. In an age of specialism politics alone was abandoned to the Jack-of-all-trades.
This phenomenon—the depreciated currency of public character—was not peculiar to one party more than another. It was not even peculiar to this particular time. It has shown itself at various epochs—much in the same way as the small-pox and the plague—when favoured by insanitary conditions. The sedate Scots philosopher, Adam Smith, writing during the gloomy period which fell upon England after the glory of the great Chatham had departed, could not repress his bitterness against "that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs." It would seem as if the body politic is not unlike the human, and becomes more readily a prey to vermin, when it has sunk into a morbid condition.
Popular judgment may be trusted as a rule, and in the long run, to decide a clear issue between truth and falsehood, and to decide it in favour of the former. But it becomes perplexed, when it is called upon to discriminate between the assurances of two rival sets of showmen, whose eagerness to outbid each other in the public favour leaves truthfulness out of account. In the absence of gold, one brazen counterfeit rings very much like another. People may be suspicious of both coins; but on the whole their fancy is more readily caught by the optimist effigy than the pessimist. They may not place entire trust in the 'ever-cheerful man of sin,' with his flattery, his abounding sympathy, his flowery promises, and his undefeated hopefulness; but they prefer him at any rate to 'the melancholy Jaques,' booming maledictions with a mournful constancy, like some bittern in the desolation of the marshes.
So far as principles were concerned most of the trouble was unnecessary. Among the would-be reformers—among those who sincerely desired to bring about efficiency within their own spheres—there was surprisingly little that can truly be called antagonism. But competition of an important kind—competition for public attention and priority of treatment—had produced many of the unfortunate results of antagonism. It was inevitable that this lamentable state of things must continue, until it had been realised that one small body of men, elected upon a variety of cross issues, could not safely be left in charge of the defence of the Empire, the domestic welfare of the United Kingdom, and the local government of its several units.
ARTIFICIAL ANTAGONISMS
It was not merely that the various aims were not opposed to one another; they were actually helpful to one another. Often, indeed, they were essential to the permanent success of one another. The man who desired to improve the conditions of the poor was not, therefore, the natural enemy of him who wanted to place the national defences on a secure footing. And neither of these was the natural enemy of others who wished to bring about a settlement of the Irish question, or of the Constitutional question, or of the Imperial question. But owing partly to the inadequacy of the machinery for giving a free course to these various aspirations—partly to the fact that the machinery itself was antiquated, in bad repair, and had become clogged with a variety of obstructions—there was an unfortunate tendency on the part of every one who had any particular object very much at heart, to regard every one else who was equally concerned about any other object as an impediment in his path.
The need of the time, of course, was leadership—a great man—or better still two great men, one on each side—like the blades of a pair of scissors—to cut a way out of the confusion by bringing their keen edges into contact. But obviously, the greater the confusion the harder it is for leadership to assert itself. We may be sure enough that there were men of character and capacity equal to the task if only they could have been discovered. But they were not discovered.
There were other things besides the confusion of aims and ideas which made it hard for leaders to emerge. The loose coherency of parties which prevailed during the greater part of the nineteenth century had given place to a set of highly organised machines, which employed without remorse the oriental method of strangulation, against everything in the nature of independent effort and judgment. The politician class had increased greatly in numbers and influence. The eminent and ornamental people who were returned to Westminster filled the public eye, but they were only a small proportion of the whole; nor is it certain that they exercised the largest share of authority. When in the autumn of 1913 Sir John Brunner determined to prevent Mr. Churchill from obtaining the provisions for the Navy which were judged necessary for the safety of the Empire, the method adopted was to raise the National Liberal Federation against the First Lord of the Admiralty, and through the agency of that powerful organisation to bring pressure to bear upon the country, members of Parliament, and the Cabinet itself.
BAD MONEY DRIVES OUT GOOD
It is unpopular to say that the House of Commons has deteriorated in character, but it is true. An assembly, the members of which cannot call their souls their own, will never tend in an upward direction. The machines which are managed with so much energy and skill by the external parasites of politics, have long ago taken over full responsibility for the souls of their nominees. According to 'Gresham's law,' bad money, if admitted into currency, will always end by driving out good. A similar principle has been at work for some time past in British public life, by virtue of which the baser kind of politicians, having got a footing, are driving out their betters at a rapid pace. Few members of Parliament will admit this fact; but they are not impartial judges, for every one is naturally averse from disparaging an institution to which he belongs.
During the nineteenth century, except at the very beginning, and again at the very end of it, very few people ever thought of going into Parliament, or even into politics, in order that they might thrive thereby, or find a field for improving their private fortunes. This cannot be said with truth of the epoch which has just ended. There has been a change both in tone and outlook during the last thirty years. Things have been done and approved by the House of Commons, elected in December 1910, which it is quite inconceivable that the House of Commons, returned in 1880, would ever have entertained. The Gladstonian era had its faults, but among them laxity in matters of finance did not figure. Indeed private members, as well as statesmen, not infrequently crossed the border-line which separates purism from pedantry; occasionally they carried strictness to the verge of absurdity; but this was a fault in the right direction—a great safeguard to the public interest, a peculiarly valuable tendency from the standpoint of democracy.
A twelvemonth ago a number of very foolish persons were anxious to persuade us that the predominant issue was the Army versus the People. But even the crispness of the phrase was powerless to convince public opinion of so staggering an untruth. The predominant issue at that particular moment was only what it had been for a good many years before—the People versus the Party System.
NEED OF RICH MEN
What is apt to be ignored is, that with the increase of wealth on the one hand, and the extension of the franchise on the other, the Party System has gradually become a vested interest upon an enormous scale,—like the liquor trade of which we hear so much, or the haute finance of which perhaps we hear too little. Rich men are required in politics, for the reason that it is necessary to feed and clothe the steadily increasing swarms of mechanics who drive, and keep in repair, and add to, that elaborate machinery by means of which the Sovereign People is cajoled into the belief that its Will prevails. From the point of view of the orthodox political economist these workers are as unproductive as actors, bookmakers, or golf professionals; but they have to be paid, otherwise they would starve, and the machines would stop. So long as there are plenty of rich men who desire to become even richer, or to decorate their names with titles, or to move in shining circles, this is not at all likely to occur, unless the Party System suddenly collapsed, in which case there would be acute distress.
There are various grades of these artisans or mechanicians of politics, from the professional organiser or agent who, upon the whole, is no more open to criticism than any other class of mankind which works honestly for its living—down to the committee-man who has no use for a candidate unless he keeps a table from which large crumbs fall in profusion. The man who supplements his income by means of politics is a greater danger than the other who openly makes politics his vocation. The jobbing printer, enthusiastically pacifist or protectionist, well paid for his hand-bills, and aspiring to more substantial contracts; the smart, ingratiating organiser, or hustling, bustling journalist, who receives a complimentary cheque, or a bundle of scrip, or a seat on a board of directors from the patron whom he has helped to win an election—very much as at ill-regulated shooting parties the head-keeper receives exorbitant tips from wealthy sportsmen whom he has placed to their satisfaction—all these are deeply interested in the preservation of the Party System. Innocent folk are often heard wondering why candidates with such strange names—even stranger appearance—accents and manner of speech which are strangest of all—are brought forward so frequently to woo the suffrages of urban constituencies. Clearly they are not chosen on account of their political knowledge; for they have none. There are other aspirants to political honours who, in comeliness and charm of manner, greatly excel them; whose speech is more eloquent, or at any rate less unintelligible. Yet London caucuses in particular have a great tenderness for these bejewelled patriots, and presumably there must be reasons for the preference which they receive. One imagines that in some inscrutable way they are essential props of the Party System in its modern phase.
The drawing together of the world by steam and electricity has brought conspicuous benefits to the British Empire. The five self-governing nations of which it is composed come closer together year by year. Statesmen and politicians broaden the horizons of their minds by swift and easy travel. But there are drawbacks as well as the reverse under these new conditions. To some extent the personnel of democracy has tended to become interchangeable, like the parts of a bicycle; and public characters are able to transfer their activities from one state to another, and even from one hemisphere to another, without a great deal of difficulty. This has certain advantages, but possibly more from the point of view of the individual than from that of the Commonwealth. After failure in one sphere there is still hope in another. Mr. Micawber, or even Jeremy Diddler, may go the round, using up public confidence at one resting-place after another. For the Party System is a ready employer, and providing a man has a glib tongue, a forehead of brass, or an open purse, a position will be found for him without too much enquiry made into his previous references.
LAWYERISM AND LEADERSHIP
In a world filled with confusion and illusion the Party System has fought at great advantage. Indeed it is generally believed to be so firmly entrenched that nothing can ever dislodge it. There are dangers, however, in arguing too confidently from use and wont. Conspicuous failure or disaster might bring ruin on this revered institution, as it has often done in history upon others no less venerable. The Party System has its weak side. Its wares are mainly make-believes, and if a hurricane happens to burst suddenly, the caucus may be left in no better plight than Alnaschar with his overturned basket. The Party System is not invulnerable against a great man or a great idea. But of recent years it has been left at peace to go its own way, for the reason that no such man or idea has emerged, around which the English people have felt that they could cluster confidently. There has been no core on which human crystals could precipitate and attach themselves, following the bent of their nature towards a firm and clear belief—or towards the prowess of a man—or towards a Man possessed by a Belief. The typical party leader during this epoch has neither been a man in the heroic sense, nor has he had any belief that could be called firm or clear. For the most part he has been merely a Whig or Tory tradesman, dealing in opportunism; and for the predominance of the Party System this set of conditions was almost ideal. It was inconceivable that a policy of wait-and-see could ever resolve a situation of this sort. To fall back on lawyerism was perhaps inevitable in the circumstances; but to think that it was possible to substitute lawyerism for leadership was absurd.
And yet amid this confusion we were aware—even at the time—and can see much more clearly now the interlude is ended—that there were three great ideas running through it all, struggling to emerge, to make themselves understood, and to get themselves realised. But unfortunately what were realities to ordinary men were only counters according to the reckoning of the party mechanicians. The first aim and the second—the improvement of the organisation of society and the conditions of the poor—the freeing of local aspirations and the knitting together of the empire—were held in common by the great mass of the British people, although they were viewed by one section and another from different angles of vision. The third aim, however—the adequate defence of the empire—was not regarded warmly, or even with much active interest, by any organised section. The people who considered it most earnestly were not engaged in party politics. The manipulators of the machines looked upon the first and the second as means whereby power might be gained or retained, but they looked askance upon the third as a perilous problem which it was wiser and safer to leave alone. The great principles with which the names—among others—of Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Roberts, and Mr. Lloyd George are associated, were at no point opposed one to another. Each indeed was dependent upon the other two for its full realisation. And yet, under the artificial entanglements of the Party System, the vigorous pursuit of any one of the three seemed to imperil the success of both its competitors.
CHAPTER III
POLICY AND ARMAMENTS
In the post-Victorian epoch, which we have been engaged in considering, the aim of British foreign policy may be summed up in one word—Security. It was not aggression; it was not revenge; it was not conquest, or even expansion of territories; it was simply Security.
It would be absurd, of course, to imagine that security is wholly, or even mainly, a question of military preparations. "All this is but a sheep in a lion's skin, where the people are of weak courage;" or where for any reason, the people are divided among themselves or disaffected towards their government.
The defences of every nation are of two kinds, the organised and the unorganised; the disciplined strength of the Navy and the Army on the one hand, the vigour and spirit of the people upon the other.
The vigour of the people will depend largely upon the conditions under which they live, upon sufficiency of food, the healthiness or otherwise of their employments and homes, the proper nourishment and upbringing of their children. It is not enough that rates of wages should be good, if those who earn them have not the knowledge how to use them to the best advantage. It is not always where incomes are lowest that the conditions of life are worst. Measured by infant mortality, and by the health and general happiness of the community, the crofters of Scotland, who are very poor, seem to have learned the lesson how to live better than the highly paid workers in many of our great manufacturing towns.
Education—by which is meant not merely board-school instruction, but the influence of the home and the surrounding society—is not a less necessary condition of vigour than wages, sanitary regulations, and such like. The spiritual as well as the physical training of children, the nature of their amusements, the bent of their interests, the character of their aims and ideals, at that critical period when the boy or girl is growing into manhood or womanhood—all these are things which conduce directly, as well as indirectly, to the vigour of the race. They are every bit as much a part of our system of national defence as the manoeuvring of army corps and the gun-practice of dreadnoughts.
The spirit of the people, on the other hand, will depend for its strength upon their attachment to their own country; upon their affection for its customs, laws, and institutions; upon a belief in the general fairness and justice of its social arrangements; upon the good relations of the various classes of which society is composed. The spirit of national unity is indispensable even in the case of the most powerful autocracy. It is the very foundation of democracy. Lacking it, popular government is but a house of cards, which the first serious challenge from without, or the first strong outburst of discontent from within will bring tumbling to the ground. Such a feeling of unity can only spring from the prevalence of an opinion among every class of the community, that their own system, with all its faults, is better suited to their needs, habits, and traditions than any other, and that it is worth preserving, even at the cost of the greatest sacrifices, from foreign conquest and interference.
A TWO-HEADED PRINCIPLE
While a people sapped by starvation and disease will be wanting in the vigour necessary for offering a prolonged and strenuous resistance, so will a people, seething with class hatred and a sense of tyranny and injustice, be wanting in the spirit. The problem, however, of these unorganised defences, fundamental though it is, stands outside the scope of the present chapter, which is concerned solely with those defences which are organised.
The beginning of wisdom with respect to all problems of defence is the recognition of the two-headed principle that Policy depends on Armaments just as certainly as Armaments depend on Policy.
The duty of the Admiralty and the War Office is to keep their armaments abreast of the national endeavour. It is folly to do more: it is madness to do less. The duty of the Foreign Minister is to restrain and hold back his policy, and to prevent it from ambitiously outrunning the capacity of the armaments which are at his disposal. If he does otherwise the end is likely to be humiliation and disaster.
When any nation is unable or unwilling to provide the armaments necessary for supporting the policy which it has been accustomed to pursue and would like to maintain, it should have the sense to abandon that policy for something of a humbler sort before the bluff is discovered by the world.[1]
It may possibly appear absurd to dwell with so much insistence upon a pair of propositions which, when they are set down in black and white, will at once be accepted as self-evident by ninety-nine men out of a hundred. But plain and obvious as they are, none in the whole region of politics have been more frequently ignored. These two principles have been constantly presenting themselves to the eyes of statesmen in a variety of different shapes ever since history began.
It may very easily happen that the particular policy which the desire for security requires, is one which the strength of the national armaments at a given moment will not warrant the country in pursuing. Faced with this unpleasant quandary, what is Government to do, if it be convinced of the futility of trying to persuade the people to incur the sacrifices necessary for realising the national aspirations? Is it to give up the traditional policy, and face the various consequences which it is reasonable to anticipate? Or is it to persevere in the policy, and continue acting as if the forces at its disposal were sufficient for its purpose, when in fact they are nothing of the kind? To follow the former course calls for a surrender which the spirit of the people will not easily endure, and which may even be fatal to the independent existence of the state. But to enter upon the latter is conduct worthy of a fraudulent bankrupt, since it trades upon an imposture, which, when it is found out by rival nations, will probably be visited by still severer penalties.
But surely Government has only to make it clear to the people that, unless they are willing to bring their armaments abreast of their policy, national aspirations must be baulked and even national safety itself may be endangered. When men are made to understand these things, will they not certainly agree to do what is necessary, though they may give their consent with reluctance?[2]
POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES
It is very certain, however, that this outside view of the case enormously underrates the difficulties which stare the politician out of countenance. In matters of this sort it is not so easy a thing to arrive at the truth; much less to state it with such force and clearness that mankind will at once recognise it for truth, and what is said to the contrary for falsehood. The intentions of foreign governments, and the dangers arising out of that quarter, are subjects which it is singularly difficult to discuss frankly, without incurring the very evils which every government seeks to avoid. And if these things are not easy to discuss, it is exceedingly easy for faction or fanatics to misrepresent them.[3] Moreover, the lamentations of the Hebrew prophets bear witness to the deafness and blindness of generations into whom actual experience of the evils foretold had not already burnt the lesson which it was desired to teach. Evils which have never been suffered are hard things to clothe with reality until it is too late, and words, even the most eloquent and persuasive, are but a poor implement for the task.
The policy of a nation is determined upon, so as to accord with what it conceives to be its honour, safety, and material interests. In the natural course of events this policy may check, or be checked by, the policy of some other nation. The efforts of diplomacy may be successful in clearing away these obstructions. If so, well and good; but if not, there is nothing left to decide the issue between the two nations but the stern arbitrament of war.
Moreover, diplomacy itself is dependent upon armaments in somewhat the same sense as the prosperity of a merchant is dependent upon his credit with his bankers. The news system of the world has undergone a revolution since the days before steam and telegraphs. It is not merely more rapid, but much ampler. The various governments are kept far more fully informed of one another's affairs, and as a consequence the great issues between nations have become clear and sharp. The most crafty and smooth-tongued ambassador can rarely wheedle his opponents into concessions which are contrary to their interests, unless he has something more to rely upon than his own guile and plausibility. Army corps and battle fleets looming in the distance are better persuaders than the subtlest arguments and the deftest flattery.
What, then, is the position of a statesman who finds himself confronted by a clash of policies, if, when the diplomatic deadlock occurs, he realises that his armaments are insufficient to support his aim? In such an event he is faced with the alternative of letting judgment go by default, or of adding almost certain military disaster to the loss of those political stakes for which his nation is contending with its rival. Such a position must be ignominious in the extreme; it might even be ruinous; and yet it would be the inevitable fate of any country whose ministers had neglected the maxim that policy in the last resort is dependent upon armaments.
EXAMPLE OF CHINA
If we are in search of an example we shall find it ready to our hand. The Empire of China is comparable to our own at least in numbers; for each of them contains, as nearly as may be, one quarter of the whole human race. And as China has hitherto failed utterly to make her armaments sufficient, under the stress of modern conditions, to support even that meek and passive policy of possession which she has endeavoured to pursue, so she has been compelled to watch in helplessness while her policy has been disregarded by every adventurer. She has been pressed by all the nations of the world and obliged to yield to their demands. Humiliating concessions have been wrung from her; favours even more onerous, in the shape of loans, have been forced upon her. The resources with which nature has endowed her have been exploited by foreigners against her will. Her lands have been shorn from her and parcelled out among those who were strong, and who hungered after them. This conquest and robbery has proceeded both by wholesale and retail. Because she yielded this to one claimant, another, to keep the balance even, has insisted upon that. Safe and convenient harbours, fortified places, islands, vast stretches of territory, have been demanded and taken from her almost without a struggle; and all this time she has abstained with a timid caution from anything which can justly be termed provocation. For more than half a century, none the less, China has not been mistress in her own house.
The reason of this is plain enough—China had possessions which other nations coveted, and she failed to provide herself with the armaments which were necessary to maintain them.
The British people likewise had possessions which other nations coveted—lands to take their settlers, markets to buy their goods, plantations to yield them raw materials. If it were our set determination to hold what our forefathers won, two things were necessary: the first, that our policy should conform to this aim; the second, that our armaments should be sufficient to support our policy.
A nation which desired to extend its possessions, to round off its territories, to obtain access to the sea, would probably regard conquest, or at all events absorption, as its highest immediate interest. This would be the constant aim of its policy, and if its armaments did not conform to this policy, the aim would not be realised. Examples both of failure and success are to be found in the history of Russia from the time of Peter the Great, and in that of Prussia from the days of the Great Elector.
A nation—like England or Holland in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries—which was seeking to secure against its commercial rivals, if necessary by force of arms, new markets among civilised but unmilitary races, would require a policy and armaments to correspond.
BRITISH CONTENTMENT
The British Empire in the stage of development which it had reached at the end of the Victorian era did not aim at acquisition of fresh territories or new markets, save such as might be won peacefully by the skill and enterprise of its merchants. It sought only to hold what it already possessed, to develop its internal resources, and to retain equal rights with its commercial rivals in neutral spheres. But in order that those unaggressive objects might be realised, there was need of a policy, different indeed from that of Elizabeth, of Cromwell, or of Chatham, but none the less clear and definite with regard to its own ends. And to support this policy there was need of armaments, suitable in scale and character.
It was frequently pointed out between the years 1901 and 1914 (and it lay at the very root of the matter), that while we were perfectly satisfied with things as they stood, and should have been more than content—regarding the subject from the standpoint of our own interests—to have left the map of the world for ever, as it then was drawn, another nation was by no means so well pleased with existing arrangements. To this envious rival it appeared that we had taken more than our fair share—as people are apt to do who come early. We had wider territories than we could yet fill with our own people; while our neighbour foresaw an early date at which his race would be overflowing its boundaries. We had limitless resources in the Dominions and Dependencies overseas, which when developed would provide a united empire with markets of inestimable value. In these respects Germany was in a less favourable position. Indeed, with the exceptions of Russia and the United States, no other great Power was so fortunately placed as ourselves; and even these two nations, although they had an advantage over the British Empire by reason of their huge compact and coterminous territories, still did not equal it in the vastness and variety of their undeveloped resources.
Clearly, therefore, the policy which the needs of our Commonwealth required at this great turning-point in its history, was not only something different from that of any other great Power, but also something different from that which had served our own purposes in times gone by. Like China, our aim was peaceful possession. Unlike China, we ought to have kept in mind the conditions under which alone this aim was likely to be achieved. It might be irksome and contrary to our peaceful inclinations to maintain great armaments when we no longer dreamed of making conquests; but in the existing state of the world, armaments were unfortunately quite as necessary for the purpose of enabling us to hold what we possessed, as they ever were when our forefathers set out to win the Empire.
COMMITTEE OF IMPERIAL DEFENCE
In 1904, with the object of promoting harmony between the policy and armaments of the British Empire, Mr. Balfour created the Committee of Imperial Defence. This was undoubtedly a step of great importance. His purpose was to introduce a system, by means of which ministers and high officials responsible for the Navy and Army would be kept in close touch with the trend of national policy, in so far as it might affect the relations of the Commonwealth with foreign Powers. In like manner those other ministers and high officials, whose business it was to conduct our diplomacy, maintain an understanding with the Dominions, administer our Dependencies, and govern India, would be made thoroughly conversant with the limitations to our naval and military strength. Having this knowledge, they would not severally embark on irreconcilable or impracticable projects or drift unknowingly into dangerous complications. The conception of the Committee of Imperial Defence, therefore, was due to a somewhat tardy recognition of the two-headed principle, that armaments are mere waste of money unless they conform to policy, and that policy in the last resort must depend on armaments.
The Committee was maintained by Mr. Balfour's successors, and was not allowed (as too often happens when there is a change of government) to fall into discredit and disuse.[4] But in order that this body of statesmen and experts might achieve the ends in view, it was essential for them to have realised clearly, not only the general object of British policy—which indeed was contained in the single word 'Security'—but also the special dangers which loomed in the near future. They had then to consider what reciprocal obligations had already been contracted with other nations, whose interests were to some extent the same as our own, and what further undertakings of a similar character it might be desirable to enter into. Finally, there were the consequences which these obligations and undertakings would entail in certain contingencies. It was not enough merely to mumble the word 'Security' and leave it at that. What security implied in the then existing state of the world was a matter which required to be investigated in a concrete, practical, and business-like way.
Unfortunately, the greater part of these essential preliminaries was omitted, and as a consequence, the original idea of the Committee of Imperial Defence was never realised. Harmonious, flexible, and of considerable utility in certain directions, it did not work satisfactorily as a whole. The trend of policy was, no doubt, grasped in a general way; but, as subsequent events have proved, the conditions on which alone that line could be maintained, and the consequences which it involved, were not at any time clearly understood and boldly faced by this august body in its corporate capacity.
The general direction may have been settled; but certainly the course was not marked out; the rocks and shoals remained for the most part uncharted. The committee, no doubt, had agreed upon a certain number of vague propositions, as, for example, that France must not be crushed by Germany, or the neutrality of Belgium violated by any one. They knew that we were committed to certain obligations—or, as some people called them, 'entanglements'—and that these again, in certain circumstances, might commit us to others. But what the whole amounted to was not realised in barest outline, by the country, or by Parliament, or by the Government, or even, we may safely conjecture, by the Committee itself. We have the right to say this, because, if British policy had been realised as a whole by the Committee of Imperial Defence, it would obviously have been communicated to the Cabinet, and in its broader aspects to the people; and this was never done. It is inconceivable that any Prime Minister, who believed, as Mr. Asquith does, in democratic principles, would have left the country uneducated, and his own colleagues unenlightened, on a matter of so great importance, had his own mind been clearly made up.
CONFUSION WHEN WAR OCCURRED
When the crisis occurred in July 1914, when Germany proceeded to action, when events took place which for years past had been foretold and discussed very fully on both sides of the North Sea, it was as if a bolt had fallen from the blue. Uncertainty was apparent in all quarters. The very thing which had been so often talked of had happened. Germany was collecting her armies and preparing to crush France. The neutrality of Belgium was threatened. Yet up to, and on, Sunday, August 2, there was doubt and hesitation in the Cabinet, and until some days later, also in Parliament and the country.[5]
When, finally, it was decided to declare war, the course of action which that step required still appears to have remained obscure to our rulers. Until the Thursday following it was not decided to send the Expeditionary Force abroad. Then, out of timidity, only two-thirds of it were sent.[6] Transport arrangements which were all ready for moving the whole force had to be hastily readjusted. The delay was not less injurious than the parsimony; and the combination of the two nearly proved fatal.
If the minds of the people and their leaders were not prepared for what happened, if in the moral sense there was unreadiness; still more inadequate were all preparations of the material kind—not only the actual numbers of our Army, but also the whole system for providing expansion, training, equipment, and munitions. It is asking too much of us to believe that events could have happened as they did in England during the fortnight which followed the presentation of the Austrian Ultimatum to Servia, had the Committee of Imperial Defence and its distinguished president taken pains beforehand to envisage clearly the conditions and consequences involved in their policy of 'Security.'
As regards naval preparations, things were better indeed than might have been expected, considering the vagueness of ideas in the matter of policy. We were safeguarded here by tradition, and the general idea of direction had been nearly sufficient. There was always trouble, but not as a rule serious trouble, in establishing the case for increases necessary to keep ahead of German efforts. There had been pinchings and parings—especially in the matter of fast cruisers, for lack of which, when war broke out, we suffered heavy losses—but except in one instance—the abandonment of the Cawdor programme—these had not touched our security at any vital point.
Thanks largely to Mr. Stead, but also to statesmen of both parties, and to a succession of Naval Lords who did not hesitate, when occasion required it, to risk their careers (as faithful servants ever will) rather than certify safety where they saw danger—thanks, perhaps, most of all to a popular instinct, deeply implanted in the British mind, which had grasped the need for supremacy at sea—our naval preparations, upon the whole, had kept abreast of our policy for nearly thirty years.
As regards the Army, however, it was entirely different. There had been no intelligent effort to keep our military strength abreast of our policy; and as, in many instances, it would have been too bitter a humiliation to keep our policy within the limits of our military strength, the course actually pursued can only be described fitly as a game of bluff.
There had never been anything approaching agreement with regard to the functions which the Army was expected to perform. Not only did political parties differ one from another upon this primary and fundamental question, but hardly two succeeding War Ministers had viewed it in the same light. There had been schemes of a bewildering variety; but as the final purpose for which soldiers existed had never yet been frankly laid down and accepted, each of these plans in turn had been discredited by attacks, which called in question the very basis of the proposed reformation.
THE NAVAL POSITION
While naval policy had been framed and carried out in accordance with certain acknowledged necessities of national existence, military policy had been alternately expanded and deflated in order to assuage the anxieties, while conforming to the prejudices—real or supposed—of the British public. In the case of the fleet, we had very fortunately arrived, more than a generation ago, at the point where it was a question of what the country needed; as regards the Army, it was still a question of what the country would stand. But how could even a politician know what the country would stand until the full case had been laid before the country? How was it that while Ministers of both parties had the courage to put the issue more or less nakedly in the matter of ships, they grew timid as soon as the discussion turned on army corps? If the needs of the Commonwealth were to be the touchstone in the one case, why not also in the other? The country will stand a great deal more than the politicians think; and it will stand almost anything better than vacillation, evasion, and untruth. In army matters, unfortunately, it has had experience of little else since the battle of Waterloo.
Mathematicians, metaphysicians, and economists have a fondness for what is termed 'an assumption.' They take for granted something which it would be inconvenient or impossible to prove, and thereupon proceed to build upon it a fabric which compels admiration in a less or greater degree, by reason of its logical consistency. There is no great harm in this method so long as the conclusions, which are drawn from the airy calculations of the study, are confined to the peaceful region of their birth; but so soon as they begin to sally forth into the harsh world of men and affairs, they are apt to break at once into shivers. When the statesman makes an assumption he does so at his peril; or, perhaps, to speak more correctly, at the peril of his country. For if it be a false assumption the facts will speedily find it out, and disasters will inevitably ensue.
TWO INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS
Our Governments, Tory and Radical alike, have acted in recent times as if the British Army were what their policy required it to be—something, that is, entirely different from what it really was. Judging by its procedure, the Foreign Office would appear to have made the singularly bold assumption that, in a military comparison with other nations, Britain was still in much the same relative position as in the days of Napoleon. Sustained by this tenacious but fantastic tradition, Ministers have not infrequently engaged in policies which wiser men would have avoided. They have uttered protests, warnings, threats which have gone unheeded. They have presumed to say what would and would not be tolerated in certain spheres; but having nothing better behind their despatches than a mere assumption which did not correspond with the facts, they have been compelled to endure rebuffs and humiliations. As they had not the prudence to cut their coat according to their cloth, it was only natural that occasionally they should have had to appear before the world in a somewhat ridiculous guise.
British statesmen for nearly half a century had persisted in acting upon two most dangerous assumptions. They had assumed that one branch of the national armaments conformed to their policy, when in fact it did not. And they had assumed also, which is equally fatal, that policy, if only it be virtuous and unaggressive, is in some mysterious way self-supporting, and does not need to depend on armaments at all.
The military preparations of Britain were inadequate to maintain the policy of Security, which British Governments had nevertheless been engaged in pursuing for many years prior to the outbreak of the present war.[7] On the other hand, the abandonment of this policy was incompatible with the continuance of the Empire. We could not hope to hold our scattered Dependencies and to keep our Dominions safe against encroachments unless we were prepared to incur the necessary sacrifices.
CHAPTER IV
THE BALANCE OF POWER
During the whole period of rather more than thirteen years—which has been referred to in previous pages as the post-Victorian epoch, and which extended roughly from January 1901, when Queen Victoria died, to July 1914, when war was declared—the British Army remained inadequate for the purpose of upholding that policy which British statesmen of both parties, and the British people, both at home and in the Dominions, were engaged in pursuing—whether they knew it or not—and were bound to pursue, unless they were prepared to sacrifice their independence.
The aim of that policy was the security of the whole empire. This much at any rate was readily conceded on all hands. It was not enough, however, that we approved the general aim of British policy. A broad but clear conception of the means by which our Government hoped to maintain this policy, and the sacrifices which the country would have to make in order to support this policy, was no less necessary. So soon, however, as we began to ask for further particulars, we found ourselves in the region of acute controversy. 'Security' was a convenient political formula, which could be accepted as readily by the man who placed his trust in international law, as by his neighbour who believed in battle fleets and army corps.
In considering this question of security we could not disregard Europe, for Europe was still the storm-centre of the world. We could not afford to turn a blind eye towards the ambitions and anxieties of the great continental Powers. We were bound to take into account not only their visions but their nightmares. We could not remain indifferent to their groupings and alliances, or to the strength and dispositions of their armaments.
That the United Kingdom was a pair of islands lying on the western edge of Europe, and that the rest of the British Empire was remote, and unwilling to be interested in the rivalries of the Teuton, Slav, and Latin races, did not affect the matter in the least. Nowadays no habitable corner of the earth is really remote; and as for willingness or unwillingness to be interested, that had nothing at all to do with the question. For it was clear that any Power, which succeeded in possessing itself of the suzerainty of Europe, could redraw the map of the world at its pleasure, and blow the Monroe Doctrine, no less than the British Empire, sky-high.
Looking across thousands of leagues of ocean, it was difficult for the Dominions and the United States to understand how their fortunes, and the ultimate fate of their cherished institutions, could possibly be affected by the turmoil and jealousies of—what appeared in their eyes to be—a number of reactionary despotisms and chauvinistic democracies. Even the hundred and twenty leagues which separate Hull from Emden, or the seven which divide Dover from Calais, were enough to convince many people in the United Kingdom that we could safely allow Europe to 'stew in her own juice.' But unfortunately for this theory, unless a great continental struggle ended like the battle of the Kilkenny cats, the outside world was likely to find itself in an awkward predicament, when the conqueror chose to speak with it in the gates, at a time of his own choosing.
British policy since 1901 had tended, with ever increasing self-consciousness, towards the definite aim of preventing Germany from acquiring the suzerainty of Western Europe. It was obvious that German predominance, if secured, must ultimately force the other continental nations, either into a German alliance, or into a neutrality favourable to German interests. German policy would then inevitably be directed towards encroachments upon British possessions. Germany had already boldly proclaimed her ambitions overseas. Moreover, she would find it pleasanter to compensate, and soothe the susceptibilities of those nations whom she had overcome in diplomacy or war, and to reward their subsequent services as allies and friendly neutrals, by paying them out of our property rather than out of her own. For this reason, if for no other, we were deeply concerned that Germany should not dominate Europe if we could help it.
GERMAN AIMS
During this period, on the other hand, Germany appeared to be setting herself more and more seriously to acquire this domination. Each succeeding year her writers expressed themselves in terms of greater candour and confidence. Her armaments were following her policy. The rapid creation of a fleet—the counterpart of the greatest army in Europe—and the recent additions to the striking power of her already enormous army could have no other object. Certainly from 1909 onwards, it was impossible to regard German preparations as anything else than a challenge, direct or indirect, to the security of the British Empire.
Consequently the direction of British policy returned, gradually, unavowedly, but with certainty, to its old lines, and became once more concerned with the maintenance of the Balance of Power as the prime necessity. The means adopted were the Triple Entente between Britain, France, and Russia. The object of this understanding was to resist the anticipated aggressions of the Triple Alliance, wherein Germany was the predominant partner.
DERELICT MAXIMS
The tendency of phrases, as they grow old, is to turn into totems, for and against which political parties, and even great nations, fight unreasoningly. But before we either yield our allegiance to any of these venerable formulas, or decide to throw it out on the scrap-heap, there are advantages in looking to see whether or not there is some underlying meaning which may be worth attending to. It occasionally happens that circumstances have changed so much since the original idea was first crystallised in words, that the old saying contains no value or reality whatsoever for the present generation. More often, however, there is something of permanent importance behind, if only we can succeed in tearing off the husk of prejudice in which it has become encased. So, according to Disraeli, "the divine right of Kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants, but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress." For many years the phrase British interests, which used to figure so largely in speeches and leading articles, has dropped out of use, because it had come to be associated unfavourably with bond-holders' dividends. The fact that it also implied national honour and prestige, the performance of duties and the burden of responsibilities was forgotten. Even the doctrine of laissez faire, which politicians of all parties have lately agreed to abjure and contemn, has, as regards industrial affairs, a large kernel of practical wisdom and sound policy hidden away in it. But of all these derelict maxims, that which until quite recently, appeared to be suffering from the greatest neglect, was the need for maintaining the Balance of Power in Europe. For close on two generations it had played no overt part in public controversy, except when some Tory matador produced it defiantly as a red rag to infuriate the Radical bull.
If this policy of the maintenance of the Balance of Power has been little heard of since Waterloo, the reason is that since then, until quite recently, the Balance of Power has never appeared to be seriously threatened.[1] And because the policy of maintaining this balance was in abeyance, many people have come to believe that it was discredited. Because it was not visibly and actively in use it was supposed to have become entirely useless.
This policy can never become useless. It must inevitably come into play, so soon as any Power appears to be aiming at the mastery of the continent. It will ever remain a matter of life or death, to the United Kingdom and to the British Empire, that no continental state shall be allowed to obtain command, directly or indirectly, of the resources, diplomacy, and armaments of Europe.
In the sixteenth century we fought Philip of of Spain to prevent him from acquiring European predominance. In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries we fought Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Napoleon for the same reason. In order to preserve the balance of power, and with it our own security, it was our interest under Elizabeth to prevent the Netherlands from being crushed by Spain. Under later monarchs it was our interest to prevent the Netherlands, the lesser German States, Prussia, Austria, and finally the whole of Europe from being crushed by France. And we can as ill afford to-day to allow France to be crushed by Germany, or Holland and Belgium to fall into her power. The wheel has come round full circle, but the essential British interest remains constant.
The wheel is always turning, sometimes slowly, sometimes with startling swiftness. Years hence the present alliances will probably be discarded. It may be that some day the danger of a European predominance will appear from a different quarter—from one of our present allies, or from some upstart state which may rise to power with an even greater rapidity than the Electorate of Brandenburg. Or it may be that before long the New World, in fact as well as phrase, may have come in to redress the balance of the Old. We cannot say, because we cannot foresee what the future holds in store. But from the opening of the present century, the immediate danger came from Germany, who hardly troubled to conceal the fact that she was aiming at predominance by mastery of the Low Countries and by crushing France.
CONDITIONS OF BRITISH FREEDOM
That this danger was from time to time regarded seriously by a section of the British Cabinet, we know from their own statements both before war broke out and subsequently. It was no chimera confined to the imaginations of irresponsible and panic-stricken writers. In sober truth the balance of power in Europe was in as much danger, and the maintenance of it had become as supreme a British interest, under a Liberal government at the beginning of the twentieth century, as it ever was under a Whig government at the close of the seventeenth and opening of the eighteenth.
The stealthy return of this doctrine into the region of practical politics was not due to the prejudices of the party which happened to be in power. Quite the contrary. Most Liberals distrusted the phrase. The whole mass of the Radicals abhorred it. The idea which lay under and behind the phrase was nevertheless irresistible, because it arose out of the facts. Had a Socialist Government held office, this policy must equally have imposed itself and been accepted with a good or ill grace, for the simple reason that, unless the balance of power is maintained in Europe, there can be no security for British freedom, under which we mean, with God's help, to work out our own problems in our own way.
English statesmen had adopted this policy in fact, if unavowedly—perhaps even to some extent unconsciously—when they first entered into, and afterwards confirmed, the Triple Entente. And having once entered into the Triple Entente it was obvious that, without risking still graver consequences, we could never resume the detached position which we occupied before we took that step. It is difficult to believe—seeing how the danger of German predominance threatened France and Russia as well as ourselves—that we should not have excited the ill-will of those two countries had we refused to make common cause by joining the Triple Entente. It was obvious, however, to every one that we could not afterwards retire from this association without incurring their hostility. If we had withdrawn we should have been left, not merely without a friend in Europe, but with all the chief Powers in Europe our enemies—ready upon the first favourable occasion to combine against us.
There is only one precedent in our history for so perilous a situation—when Napoleon forced Europe into a combination against us in 1806. And this precedent, though it then threatened our Empire with grave dangers, did not threaten it with dangers comparable in gravity with those which menaced us a century later.
The consequences of breaking away from the Triple Entente were sufficiently plain. "We may build ships against one nation, or even against a combination of nations. But we cannot build ships against half Europe. If Western Europe, with all its ports, its harbours, its arsenals, and its resources, was to fall under the domination of a single will, no effort of ours would be sufficient to retain the command of the sea. It is a balance of power on the continent, which alone makes it possible for us to retain it. Thus the maintenance of the balance of power is vital to our superiority at sea, which again is vital to the security of the British Empire."[2]
Security in the widest sense was the ultimate end of our policy—security of mind, security from periodic panic, as well as actual military security. Looked at more closely, the immediate end was defence—the defence of the British Empire and of the United Kingdom.
DEFENCE AND INVASION
In the existing condition of the world a policy of 'splendid isolation' was no longer possible. Conditions with which we are familiar in commercial affairs, had presented themselves in the political sphere, and co-operation on a large scale had become necessary in order to avoid bankruptcy. England had entered into the Triple Entente because her statesmen realised, clearly or vaguely, that by doing so we should be better able to defend our existence, and for no other reason.
After 1911 it must have been obvious to most people who considered the matter carefully that in certain events the Triple Entente would become an alliance. It is the interest as well as the duty of allies to stand by one another from first to last, and act together in the manner most likely to result in victory for the alliance. What then was the manner of co-operation most likely to result in victory for that alliance which lay dormant under the Triple Entente?
But first of all, to clear away one obscurity—Invasion was not our problem; Defence was our problem; for the greater included the less.
The word 'defence' is apt to carry different meanings to different minds. The best defence of England and British interests, at any given time, may or may not consist in keeping our main army in the United Kingdom and waiting to be attacked here. It all depends upon the special circumstances of each case. The final decision must be governed by one consideration, and one only—how to strike the speediest, heaviest, and most disabling blow at the aggressor. If by keeping our army in England and endeavouring to lure the enemy into our toils, that end is most likely to be accomplished, then it is obviously best to keep our army here. If by sending it into the north of France to combine with the French the supreme military object has a superior chance of being achieved, then it is best to send it into the north of France.
A defensive war cannot be defined and circumscribed as a war to drive out invaders, or even to prevent the landing of invaders. The best way to defend your castle may be to man the walls, to fall upon the enemy at the ford, to harry his lands, or even to attack him in his castle. There is no fixed rule. The circumstances in each case make the rule.
CO-OPERATION WITH FRANCE
A war is not less a defensive war if you strike at your enemy in his own territory, or if you come to the aid of your ally, whose territory has been invaded or is threatened. In the circumstances which prevailed for a considerable number of years prior to the outbreak of the present war, it gradually became more and more obvious, that our soundest defence would be joint action with France upon her north-eastern frontier. For there, beyond any doubt, would Germany's supreme effort be made against the Triple Entente. If the attack failed at that point, it would be the heaviest and most disabling blow which our enemy could suffer. If, on the other hand, it succeeded, France and England would have to continue the struggle on terms immensely less favourable.
This opinion was not by any means unanimously or clearly held; but during the summer of 1911 and subsequently, it was undoubtedly the hypothesis upon which those members of our Government relied, who were chiefly responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs. Unfortunately Parliament and the country had never accepted either the policy or its consequences; they had never been asked to accept either the one or the other; nor had they been educated with a view to their acceptance.
At that time the error was exceedingly prevalent, that it is a more comfortable business fighting in your own country than in somebody else's. From this it followed that it would be folly to engage in what were termed disapprovingly 'foreign adventures,' and that we should be wise to await attack behind our own shores. Recent events have wrought such a complete and rapid conversion from this heresy, that it is no longer worth while wasting words in exposing it. It is necessary, however, to recall how influential this view of the matter was, not only up to the declaration of war, but even for some time afterwards.
As to the precise form of co-operation between the members of the Triple Entente in case of war, there could be no great mystery. It was obvious to any one who paid attention to what happened during the summer and autumn of 1911, that in the event of Germany attacking France over the Agadir dispute, we had let it be understood and expected, that we should send our Expeditionary Force across the Channel to co-operate with the French army on the north-eastern frontier.
CHAPTER V
THE MILITARY SITUATION
(August 1911)
The full gravity of the Agadir incident, though apparent to other nations, was never realised by the people of this country. The crisis arose suddenly in July 1911. Six weeks later it had subsided; but it was not until well on in the autumn that its meanings were grasped, even by that comparatively small section of the public who interest themselves in problems of defence and foreign affairs. From October onwards, however, an increasing number began to awake to the fact, that war had only been avoided by inches, and to consider seriously—many of them for the first time in their lives—what would have happened if England had become involved in a European conflict.
THE EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
From various official statements, and from discussions which from time to time had taken place in Parliament, it was understood that our 'Expeditionary Force' consisted of six infantry divisions, a cavalry division, and army troops;[1] also that the national resources permitted of this force being kept up to full strength for a period of at least six months, after making all reasonable deductions for the wastage of war. Was this enough? Enough for what? ... To uphold British policy; to preserve Imperial security; to enable the Triple Entente to maintain the balance of power in Europe. These were vague phrases; what did they actually amount to? ... The adequacy or inadequacy of such an army as this for doing what was required of it—for securing speedy victory in event of war—or still better for preserving peace by the menace which it opposed to German schemes of aggression—can only be tested by considering the broad facts with regard to numbers, efficiency, and readiness of all the armies which would be engaged directly, or indirectly, in a European struggle.
War, however, had been avoided in 1911, and not a few people were therefore convinced that the menace of the available British army, together with the other consequences to be apprehended from the participation of this country, had been sufficient to deter Germany from pursuing her schemes of aggression, if indeed she had actually harboured any notions of the kind. But others, not altogether satisfied with this explanation and conclusion, were inclined to press their enquiries somewhat further. Supposing war had actually been declared, would the British force have been sufficient—acting in conjunction with the French army—to repel a German invasion of France and Belgium, to hurl back the aggressors and overwhelm them in defeat? Would it have been sufficient to accomplish the more modest aim of holding the enemy at his own frontiers, or even—supposing that by a swift surprise he had been able to overrun Belgium—at any rate to keep him out of France?
When people proceeded to seek for answers to these questions, as many did during the year 1912, they speedily discovered that, in considerations of this sort, the governing factor is numbers—the numbers of the opposing forces available at the outbreak of war and in the period immediately following. The tremendous power of national spirit must needs be left out of such calculations as a thing immeasurable, imponderable, and uncertain. It was also unsafe to assume that the courage, intelligence, efficiency, armament, transport, equipment, supplies, and leadership of the German and Austrian armies would be in any degree inferior to those of the Triple Entente. Certain things had to be allowed for in a rough and ready way;[2] but the main enquiry was forced to concern itself with numerical strength.
There was not room for much disagreement upon the broad facts of the military situation, among soldiers and civilians who, from 1911 onwards, gave themselves to the study of this subject at the available sources of information; and their estimates have been confirmed, in the main, by what has happened since war began. The Intelligence departments of London, Paris, and Petrograd—with much ampler means of knowledge at their disposal—can have arrived at no other conclusions. What the English War Office knew, the Committee of Imperial Defence likewise knew; and the leading members of the Cabinet, if not the whole Government, must be presumed to have been equally well informed.
It was assumed in these calculations, that in case of tension between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance, the latter would not be able—in the first instance at all events—to bring its full strength into the struggle. For unless Germany and Austria managed their diplomacy before the outbreak of hostilities with incomparable skill, it seemed improbable that the Italian people would consent to engage in a costly, and perhaps ruinous, war—a war against France, with whom they had no quarrel; against England, towards whom they had long cherished feelings of friendship; on behalf of the Habsburg Empire, which they still regarded—and not altogether unreasonably—with suspicion and enmity.
NEUTRALITY OF ITALY
But although the neutrality of Italy might be regarded as a likelihood at the opening of the war, it could not be reckoned on with any certainty as a permanent condition. For as no one can forecast the course of a campaign, so no one can feel secure that the unexpected may not happen at any moment. The consequences of a defeat in this quarter or in that, may offer too great temptations to the cupidity of onlookers; while diplomacy, though it may have bungled in the beginning, is sure to have many opportunities of recovering its influence as the situation develops. Consequently, unless and until Italy actually joined in the struggle on the side of the Triple Entente, a considerable section of the French army would, in common prudence, have to be left on guard upon the Savoy frontier.
In a war brought on by the aggressive designs of Germany, the only nations whose participation could be reckoned on with certainty—and this only supposing that Britain stood firmly by the policy upon which her Government had embarked—were Russia, France, and ourselves on the one side, Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other.
It would certainly be necessary for Germany, as well as Austria, to provide troops for coast defences, and also for the frontiers of neutral countries, which might have the temptation, in certain circumstances, to deneutralise themselves at an inconvenient moment, if they were left unwatched. On the north and west were Denmark, Holland, and Belgium, each of which had a small field army, besides garrison and fortress troops which might be turned to more active account upon an emergency. On the south and east were Montenegro, Servia, and Roumania, whose military resources were on a considerable scale, and whose neutrality was not a thing altogether to be counted on, even before the Balkan war[3] had lowered the prestige of Turkey. In addition there was Italy, who although a pledged ally in a defensive war was not likely, for that reason, to consider herself bound to neutrality, benevolent or otherwise, if in her judgment, the particular contingencies which called for her support had not arisen at the outset.
SUPERIORITY OF GERMAN NUMBERS
After taking such precautions as seemed prudent under these heads, Germany would then be obliged to detach for service, in co-operation with the Austrians in Poland, and along the whole eastern border, a sufficient number of army corps to secure substantial superiority over the maximum forces which Russia, hampered by an inadequate railway system and various military considerations,[4] could be expected to bring into the field and maintain there during the first few months of the war.
It was reckoned[5] after taking all these things into account, that Germany would have available, for the invasion of France, an army consisting of some ninety divisions—roughly, rather more than a million and three-quarters of men—and that she could maintain this force at its full strength—repairing the wastage of war out of her ample reserves—for a period of at least six months. It was assumed that the Kaiser, relying upon the much slower mobilisation of Russia, would undoubtedly decide to use the whole of this huge force in the west, in the hope that before pressure could begin to make itself felt in the east, France would either have been crushed, as she was in 1870, or so much mangled that it would be possible to send reinforcements of an overwhelming character to make victory secure in Poland.
Against this German force of 1,800,000, France, according to the best information available, could put into the field and maintain at full strength for a similar period of six months about 1,300,000 men. But this was the utmost that could be expected of the French, and the initial discrepancy of 500,000 men was very serious. It precluded all reasonable hope on their part of being able to take the offensive, to which form of warfare the genius of the people was most adapted. It would compel them to remain on the defensive, for which it was believed at that time—though wrongly, as events have proved—that they were ill suited by temperament as well as tradition.
If England joined in the war by land as well as sea the numerical deficiency would be reduced to 340,000 on the arrival of our Expeditionary Force. In this connection, as well as for other reasons, the attitude of Holland and Belgium, and that of Germany with respect to these two countries, were clearly matters of high importance.
Holland had a field army of four divisions, and her interests could be summed up in the words, 'preservation of independence.' She would naturally wish to avoid being actively embroiled in the war on one side or the other; and, fortunately for her, she had every reason to believe that her neutrality would not be disturbed or questioned. Her territories lay to one side of the probable campaign area, and moreover, whatever might be the ulterior designs of Germany with regard to western expansion, it was obvious that her immediate interests must necessarily lie in Dutch neutrality, which would be infinitely more useful to her than a Dutch alliance. For Holland holds the mouths of the Scheldt and Rhine, and so long as she remained neutral, it was anticipated that imports and exports would readily find their way into and out of Germany. This advantage would cease were Britain to establish a blockade of these inlets, as she would certainly do if they belonged to a hostile Power.
POSITION OF BELGIUM
In certain respects Belgium was in the same case as Holland. She likewise had a field army of four divisions, and her interests could be summed up in the words, 'preservation of independence.' But here all resemblance between the two countries ended.
Belgium was not merely the southern portion (Holland being the northern) of that Naboth's vineyard, the possession of which German visionaries had proclaimed to be essential to Teutonic world-power. Belgium was more even than this. If the permanent possession of Belgian territory was a political object in the future, temporary occupation was no less a military necessity of the present. For in order that Germany might benefit in full measure by her numerical superiority, Belgian roads and railways were required, along which to transport her troops, and Belgian hills and plains on which to deploy them. If Germany were confined to the use of her own frontiers she would not only lose in swiftness of attack, but her legions would be piled up, one behind another, like a crowd coming out of a theatre. She needed space on which to spread out her superior numbers in order that her superior numbers might make certain of victory.
There was an idea at this time (1911-12) that Germany would be satisfied to keep to the south-east of the fortified line of the Meuse—moving through Luxemburg and the mountains of the Ardennes—and that if Belgium saw fit to yield, under protest, to force majeure, the northern region, containing the great plain of Flanders and all cities of importance, would be left inviolate. This theory was probably erroneous, for the reason that—as the event has shown—Germany required a greater space and more favourable ground, than would have been provided under this arrangement, in order to bring her great superiority to bear.
With the French on the other hand there was no similar advantage to be gained by the violation of Belgian neutrality. From their point of view the shorter the battle front could be kept the better. If Belgium chose to range herself by the side of France as a willing ally it would undoubtedly be a great gain; but if she chose to remain neutral the French could have no object in invading or occupying her territories.
It was assumed, and no doubt rightly, that, like Holland, Belgium would prefer to remain neutral—leaving the question of future absorption to take care of itself—provided she could do this without enduring the humiliation of allowing foreign armies to violate her soil. For she knew that, in the event of a French victory, her independence would remain assured; whereas, if the Germans were successful, she would have avoided awakening their hostility and giving them an excuse for annexation. But even if Belgium, under gross provocation, were forced to take sides against Germany, the deficit in numbers on the side of the Triple Entente would only be reduced by some eighty or a hundred thousand men. The deficit would still stand, roughly, at a quarter of a million men.
INADEQUACY OF BRITISH ARMY
In view of the foregoing considerations it was clearly absurd to think that our own small force was at all adequate, in a military sense, to deter Germany from engaging in a war of aggression. Had we been able, during the years 1912 to 1914, to see into the minds of the German General Staff we should probably have realised that this inadequacy was even greater than it appeared. We should then have known that the numbers of the Kaiser's striking force had been carefully understated; and that the amount of preparations in the way of material had been hidden away with an equal industry. We should also have learned, that the sending of our army abroad was viewed with scepticism in German military circles, as an event hardly likely to occur. But even if our Expeditionary Force did go, it was altogether inadequate to redress the adverse balance; still more inadequate to bring an immediate victory within the range of practical possibility. It was inadequate to hold back the premeditated invasion, either at the German frontier, or even at the French frontier. It was inadequate to make Belgian resistance effective, even if that nation should determine to throw in its lot with the Triple Entente.
As a matter of the very simplest arithmetic our land forces were inadequate for any of these purposes. They were unequal to the task of maintaining the balance of power by giving a numerical superiority to the armies of the Triple Entente. Our armaments therefore did not correspond with our policy. It was clear that they would not be able to uphold that policy if it were put to the supreme test of war. It was impossible to abandon our policy. It was not impossible, and it was not even in 1912 too late, to have set about strengthening our armaments. Nothing of the kind, however, was undertaken by the Government, whose spokesmen, official and unofficial, employed themselves more congenially in deriding and rebuking Lord Roberts for calling attention to the danger.
Of course if it had been possible to place reliance upon the statement of the English War Minister, made little more than a year before war broke out,[6] that every soldier under the voluntary system is worth ten conscripts, we and our Allies would have been in a position of complete security. In that case our force of 160,000 would have been the equivalent of 1,600,000 Germans, and we should from the first have been in a superiority of more than a million over our enemies.
Even if we could have credited the more modest assumption of the Attorney-General—made nearly four months after war broke out—that one volunteer was worth three 'pressed' men, the opposing forces would have been somewhere about an equality.[7]
Unfortunately both these methods of ready-reckoning were at fault, except for their immediate purpose of soothing, or deluding the particular audiences to which they were addressed. The words were meaningless and absurd in a military sense; though conceivably they possessed some occult political virtue, and might help, for a time at least, to avert the retribution which is due to unfaithful stewards.
Both these distinguished statesmen, as well as many of their colleagues and followers, were beset by the error of false opposites. A soldier who has enlisted voluntarily, and another who is a conscript or 'pressed' man, have equally to fight their country's enemies when they are ordered to do so. In both cases the particular war may be against their consciences and judgments; and their participation in it may therefore be involuntary.
Of two men—equal in age, strength, training, and courage—one of whom believes his cause to be just, while the other does not, there can be no doubt that the former will fight better than the latter—even though the latter was enlisted under the voluntary system while the former was a conscript or 'pressed' man. In this sense the superiority of the 'voluntary' principle is incontestable. But is there any evidence to show, that either the original soldiers, or the new levies, of the German army are risking their lives in this war any less willingly than our own countrymen, who went out with the Expeditionary Force, or those others who have since responded to Lord Kitchener's appeal? Is there any reason to suppose that they are fighting any less bravely and intelligently?[8]
Another matter of importance in these calculations with regard to the military strength of the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance was the time limit.
THE THREE PERIODS OF WAR
There are three periods in war. There is the onset of war, where swiftness of action is what tells most; there is the grip of war, where numbers of trained men are what tell most; and there is the drag of war, when what tells most is the purse.
Speaking by the book, it is of course numbers which tell all the way through. At the beginning—in the onset—the aim is to hurl superior numbers at a vital point—taking the enemy by surprise, and thereby disordering his whole plan of campaign—very much as you knock a limpet off a rock, with a sharp unexpected blow.
If this effort fails to settle matters, then we are in the grip. Here it is a case of sheer heavy slogging of all the available trained troops. The weaker side is driven to the defensive. It is found making use of every artificial and natural advantage to counteract the superiority which threatens it, and which must speedily prevail, if only it be superior enough.
Finally, after a longer or shorter period of indecisive deadlock, the time comes when trained troops and material of war accumulated in advance begin to run short—when new levies, raised since the war broke out, begin to take the field, well or ill equipped, well or ill armed, as the case may be. When this stage is reached we are in the drag of war; and the side which can best afford to feed, clothe, and arm its fresh reinforcements stands at an enormous advantage.
In 1870 war was announced on July 15th, and formally declared on the 19th. Three weeks later, on August 6th, the important battles of Woerth and Spicheren were won by the Germans. On September 2nd, the issue of the war was decided, when the Emperor of the French, with his main army, surrendered at Sedan. Metz fell in the last days of October, and Paris on the first day of March in the following year. In that war the onset settled everything. There was no real grip of the opposing forces. The German attack had been so swift, vigorous, and successful that France was knocked out in the first round.
RESULTS OF SUCCESS IN ONSET
The speed with which great armies can be mobilised and hurled against one another has not diminished in the forty odd years which have elapsed since the dÉbÂcle. On the contrary, the art of war has been largely concerned in the interval with the vital question, how to get in the first deadly blow.
The military view was, that probably not earlier than the fifteenth day—certainly not later than the twenty-first—a battle would take place which must be of the highest importance, and which might quite well be decisive. It might make ultimate German victory only a matter of time; or it might only determine whether the ensuing campaign was to be waged on French or German soil—whether there was to be a German invasion of France or a Franco-British invasion of Germany. Consequently, if our Expeditionary Force was to render assistance at the critical time, it must reach its position on the frontier within a fortnight of the outbreak of war.
As to the drag of war, the Triple Entente had the advantage, if that stage were ever reached. For the purses of England, France, and Russia were much longer than those of Germany and Austria. It was important, however, to remember that there would be no hope for us in the drag of war, if Germany could deliver a heavy enough blow at the beginning, as she did in 1870.
These were the considerations as to time, which presented themselves to students of the military situation during the breathing space which followed upon the Agadir crisis. The substantial accuracy of this forecast was confirmed by what happened during August and September of last year. In 1914 war was declared by Germany on August 1st. For several days before she had been engaged actively in mobilisation. Three weeks later three important battles—on the road to Metz, at Charleroi, and at Mons[9]—were won by the Germans. If it had not been for the unexpected obstacle of LiÈge the last two engagements would in all probability have been fought at an even earlier date, and in circumstances much more unfavourable to the Franco-British forces. But in the early days of September, instead of the crushing defeat of Sedan, there was the victory of the Marne, and the Germans were forced to retreat to entrenched positions north of the Aisne.[10]
The onset period was ended; but the issue had not been settled as in 1870. France and England had not been knocked out in the first round. To this extent the supreme German endeavour had miscarried. Nevertheless a great advantage had been secured by our enemies, inasmuch as it was now apparent that the ensuing campaign—the grip of war—would be contested, not on German soil, but in France and Belgium.
LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER
The value of the assistance which the British Navy would be able to render to the cause of the Triple Entente was a consideration of the highest importance. But while the fleet, if the national confidence in it were justified, would render invaluable assistance to military operations, it was necessary to bear in mind—what Englishmen in recent times have been very apt to forget—that no success at sea, whether it consisted in the wholesale destruction of hostile ships, or in an absolute blockade of the enemy's coast, could by itself determine the main issue of a European contest of this character. Disaster in a land battle could not be compensated for, nor could the balance of power be maintained, by any naval victory. War would not be brought to an end favourable to the Triple Entente, even by a victory as complete as that of Trafalgar. It is also well to remember that peace came, not after Trafalgar, but after Waterloo, nearly ten years later.
The strange idea that the security of the British Empire can be maintained by the Navy alone, seems to be derived by a false process of reasoning, from the undeniable truth, that the supremacy of our Navy is essential to our security. But though it is essential—and the first essential—it is not the only essential of security.
An insular Power, largely dependent on sea-borne food supplies and raw materials for its industries—a Power which governs an empire in the East, which has dependencies scattered in every sea, which is politically united with immense but sparsely peopled dominions in the four quarters of the globe—must keep command of the sea. If that supremacy were once lost the British Empire, as an empire, would come to an end. Its early dissolution would be inevitable. Therefore it is true enough to say that if the German Alliance—or any other alliance—were to win a decisive naval victory against Britain, it would end the war completely and effectively so far as we were concerned.
But the converse is not the case, and for obvious reasons. In a contest with a continental enemy who conquers on land, while we win victory after victory at sea, the result will not be a settlement in our favour, but a drawn issue. And the draw will be to his advantage, not our own. For having overthrown the balance of power by reason of his successful campaign and invasions, he will then be free to concentrate his whole energies upon wresting away naval supremacy from the British Empire. In time the Sea Power which is only a Sea Power will be overborne with numbers, and finally worsted by the victorious Land Power. For how is it possible to fight with one hand against an enemy with two hands? The fleets of Europe which at last must be combined against us, if we allow any rival to obtain a European predominance, are too heavy odds. German preparations alone were already causing us grave anxiety nearly three years before the Agadir crisis occurred. How then could we hope to build against the whole of Europe? Or even against half of Europe, if the other half remained coldly neutral?
CHAPTER VI
THE MILITARY SITUATION
(August 1914)
Such was the position of affairs at July 1911, as it appeared to the eyes of people who—during the ensuing period—endeavoured to arrive at an understanding of the problem without regard to the exigencies of party politics. Between that date and July 1914, when war broke out, various changes took place in the situation. The general effect of these changes was adverse to Britain and her allies.
In 1911 the German estimates provided for considerable increases, especially in artillery and machine-guns. The peace strength of the Army was raised.
In the following year, 1912, further additions were made to the peace strength, and two new army corps were formed out of existing units—one for the Polish, the other for the French frontier. Artillery and machine-guns were very greatly increased in the ordinary estimates of that year, and again in those of 1913. In addition, Germany at the same time added a squadron to her fleet in the North Sea, by arranging to keep more ships permanently in commission.
MILITARY INCREASES
But early in 1913 it became known, that the German Government was about to introduce an Army Bill, providing for immense and sensational additions. The sum of £50,000,000 was to be raised by loan for initial expenditure. The increased cost of upkeep on the proposed new establishment would amount to £9,500,000 per annum. Sixty-three thousand more recruits were to be taken each year. The total peace strength of the Army was to be raised by approximately 200,000 men. Nearly four millions sterling was to be spent on aircraft, and ten and a half on fortifications; while the war-chest was to be raised from six to eighteen millions. Twenty-seven thousand additional horses were to be purchased.
These proposals were timed to take effect the same autumn; so that by the following Midsummer (1914), the military strength of Germany would have reaped the main benefit which was anticipated from the enormous additions.
It was not in the power of France to increase the actual total of her numbers, because for many years past she had already taken every man who was physically fit for military service. About eighty per cent of the young Frenchmen who came each year before the revision boards had been enlisted; whereas in Germany—up to the passing of the new Army Law—considerably less than fifty per cent had been required to serve. The German Army as a consequence was composed of picked men, while the French Army contained a considerable proportion who were inferior both in character and physique.
But in the face of the new German menace France had to do the best she could. She had to do it alone, for the reason that the British Government entertained conscientious and insuperable objections to bearing its due share of the burden.
Already, prior to the sensational expansion of Germany in 1913, France had endeavoured to counteract the current yearly increases in the military estimates of her neighbour, by various reorganisations and regroupings of active units, and by improvements calculated to improve the efficiency of the reserves. But when information was forthcoming[1] as to the nature and extent of the developments proposed under the German Army Bill of 1913, it was at once realised that more drastic measures were essential to national safety.
Before the German projects were officially announced, the French Government took the bold step of asking the legislature to sanction a lengthening of the period of active military service from two years to three, and an extension of the age limit of the reserves from forty-seven to forty-nine. Power was also taken to summon, in case of emergency, the annual contingent of recruits a year before their due time. Increases in artillery, engineers, railways, barrack accommodation, and subsidiary services were asked for and obtained. The cost of these, when the whole sum came to be calculated, was found to amount to £32,000,000.
Apart, therefore, from material preparations of one kind and another, Germany was taking steps to add 200,000 men to her striking force, and the intentions of France were approximately the same. In the case of Germany, however, the increases of strength would be operative by Midsummer 1914, while with France they would not take effect until two years later.[2]
Germany, moreover, was arranging to take 63,000 more recruits annually. France was unable to obtain any more recruits, as she already took all that were fit to bear arms. The increase in her striking force was made mainly at the expense of her reserves. Year by year, therefore, the numerical inferiority of France must become more marked.
Russia meanwhile was proceeding with her programme of military extension and reorganisation which had been decided on after the Japanese war. A great part of her expenditure was being devoted to the improvement of her exceedingly defective system of railways and communications, and to the fortification of the Gulf of Finland.
Austria did not remain stationary in military preparations any more than her neighbours. Her intake of recruits was 181,000 in 1912. It was decided to raise it to 206,000 in 1913, and again to 216,000 in 1914.
In the British Army, during this critical period, there had of course been no increases, but the reverse.
The Regular Forces, which had been, reduced in 1906 by nine battalions,[3] were in 1914 some eight thousand men under their nominal strength. The Territorials, which had never yet reached the figure postulated by their originator, were at this date about 47,000 short. The Army Reserve was doomed in the near future to an automatic shrinkage on a considerable scale, owing to the reductions which had been effected in the Regular Forces, from which the reservists were drawn at the expiry of their terms of service.
Actually, therefore, the weakness of our own military position had become more marked since 1911. Relatively it had undergone an even greater change for the worse, owing to the stupendous German programme, to the fact that we had lagged behind in the matter of aircraft, and that our naval preponderance was not so great as it had been three years earlier.
EFFECT OF BALKAN WARS
The events which occurred in the Turkish peninsula between October 1912, when the first Balkan war broke out, and August 1913, when the second was ended by the Treaty of Bucharest, were not without their bearing upon the general balance of power in Europe. Turkey had collapsed before the onset of the allied states of Montenegro, Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece, and this was a serious injury to German interests. The Ottoman Empire had been warmly suitored, over a long period of years, by the diplomacy of Berlin, with a view to co-operation in certain contingencies. On the other hand, the result of the second war—fomented by the intrigues of Vienna—in which Bulgaria was finally overpowered by the other three states, destroyed for the time being Slav solidarity, and thereby considerably relieved the apprehensions of Austria with regard to her southern frontier and recently annexed provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina.... Profit-and-loss accounts of this sort are impossible to work out upon an arithmetical basis, and perhaps the chief importance of such occurrences as these lies in the effect which they produce upon the nerves of the onlookers. On the whole—judging by the tone of diplomacy at the time—the Balkan series of events appeared to have raised greater anxieties in the Chancelleries of Germany and Austria than in any other quarter; though why this should have been so, it is difficult to understand.
Looking back at the Balkan struggle in the light of subsequent events, it appears to us now a great deal less remarkable for what it actually produced than for what it failed to produce. It failed to set Europe in a blaze, and yet it afforded far better opportunities for doing this than the Serajevo murders in June 1914.
The full inner history of the negotiations between the Great Powers, for six months prior to the Treaty of Bucharest, will be interesting reading, if it ever sees the light. If even one of them had chosen to work for war during this period, nothing could have kept the peace. If one or two of them had been apathetic, war must inevitably have come of itself. But even France—who at that time was showing signs of superficial excitement, and on that account was credited, not only in the German press, but in a section of our own, with chauvinistic designs—worked hard for peace. It is certain that Germany desired peace; many well-informed people indeed believed that at this time she desired peace more ardently than any other state. It is true that a few days before the Treaty of Bucharest was signed, Italy had been secretly sounded by Austria as to whether she would join with her two allies in making an attack on Servia; but the Italian reply being of a kind that took away all hope of securing the military assistance of that country in the proposed adventure, the Concert of Europe continued to perform the pacific symphony apparently in perfect accord.
GERMANY'S TWO DATES
The policy of Germany, in 1912 and 1913, to preserve peace, and her efforts—equally successful—in the following year to provoke war, were probably due to one and the same cause. Two dates from Germany's point of view were of supreme importance—the summer of 1914, when her new military preparations would be complete, and when the Kiel Canal—having been widened and deepened[4]—would be available for the passage of Dreadnoughts; the summer of 1916, by which date the French Army increases were due to take effect, and the Russian scheme of military reorganisation would have been carried through. From the point of view of Berlin and Vienna war could be waged to greatest advantage so soon as the first of these two dates had been reached. If, however, Italy, always a doubtful participator, could have been tempted by self-interest to make common cause with her allies in the summer of 1913, the certainty of her adherence would have turned the scales in favour of the earlier date. For Italy could put an army of 700,000 men into the field; and this no doubt would have more than compensated for the benefits which might have been lost by anticipating the ideal moment by a year.
CHAPTER VII
A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS
It may be said—up to the very outbreak of war it was said very frequently—that the mere power and opportunity to make an outrageous attack are nothing without the will to do so. And this is true enough. Every barber who holds his client by the nose could cut his throat as easily as shave his chin. Every horse could kick the groom, who rubs him down, into the next world if he chose to do so. What sense, then, could there be in allowing our minds to be disturbed by base suspicions of our enterprising and cultured neighbour? What iota of proof was there that Germany nourished evil thoughts, or was brooding on visions of conquest and rapine?
So ran the argument of almost the whole Liberal press; and a considerable portion of the Unionist press echoed it. Warnings were not heeded. They came only from unofficial quarters, and therefore lacked authority. Only the Government could have spoken with authority; and the main concern of members of the Government, when addressing parliamentary or popular audiences, appeared to be to prove that there was no need for anxiety. They went further in many instances, and denounced those persons who ventured to express a different opinion from this, as either madmen or malefactors. Nevertheless a good deal of proof had already been published to the world—a good deal more was known privately to the British Government—all of which went to show that Germany had both the will and intention to provoke war, if a favourable opportunity for doing so should present itself.
For many years past—in a multitude of books, pamphlets, leading articles, speeches, and university lectures—the Germans had been scolding us, and threatening us with attack at their own chosen moment. When Mr. Churchill stated bluntly, in 1912, that the German fleet was intended as a challenge to the British Empire, he was only repeating, in shorter form and more sober language, the boasts which had been uttered with yearly increasing emphasis and fury, by hundreds of German patriots and professors.
With an engaging candour and in every fount of type, unofficial Germany had made it abundantly clear how she intended to carry her designs into execution—how, first of all, France was to be crushed by a swift and overwhelming attack—how Russia was then to be punished at leisure—how after that, some of the nations of Europe were to be forced into an alliance against the British Empire, and the rest into a neutrality favourable to Germany—how finally the great war, which aimed at making an end of our existence, was to begin. And though, from time to time, there were bland official utterances which disavowed or ignored these outpourings, the outpourings continued all the same. And each year they became more copious, and achieved a readier sale.
Those, however, who were responsible for British policy appear to have given more credit to the assurances of German diplomacy than to this mass of popular incitement. The British nation has always chosen to plume itself upon the fact that the hearts of British statesmen are stronger than their heads; and possibly their amiable credulity, in the present instance, might have been forgiven, had their means of ascertaining truth been confined to the statements of incontinent publicists and responsible statesmen. But there were other proofs available besides words of either sort.
THE FIRST WARNING
The Liberal Government came into office in the autumn of 1905. Ministers can hardly have had time to master the contents of their various portfolios, before German aggression burst rudely in upon them. Conceivably the too carefully calculating diplomatists of Berlin had concluded, that the principles of the new Cabinet would tend to keep England neutral under any provocation, and that a heaven-sent opportunity had therefore arrived for proceeding with the first item in their programme by crushing France. It is a highly significant fact that early in 1906, only a few months after Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's advent to power, he found himself faced with the prospect of a European war, which was only averted when our Foreign Minister made it clear to Germany, that in such an event this country would range herself upon the side of France.[1]
This was the first warning.
THE SECOND WARNING
The British answer to it was to utter renewed protestations Of friendly confidence. As an earnest of our good intentions, the shipbuilding programme[2] of the previous Government was immediately reduced. The burden of armaments became the burden of innumerable speeches. In well-chosen words Germany was coaxed and cajoled to acquiesce in our continued command of the sea; but finding in our action or inaction an opportunity for challenging it, she turned a polite ear—but a deaf one—and pushed forward her preparations with redoubled speed. In vain did we on our part slow down work at our new naval base in the Firth of Forth. In vain did we reduce our slender army to even smaller dimensions.[3] In vain did we plead disinterestedly with Germany, for a reduction in the pace of competition in naval armaments, on the terms that we should be allowed to possess a fleet nearly twice as strong as her own. For the most part, during this period, official Germany remained discreetly silent, for the reason that silence served her purpose best; but when the persistency of our entreaties made some sort of answer necessary, we were given to understand by unofficial Germany—rather roughly and gruffly—that a certain class of requests was inadmissible as between gentlemen.
Then suddenly, having up to that time lulled ourselves into the belief that our fine words had actually succeeded in buttering parsnips, we awoke—in the late autumn of 1908—to the truth, and fell immediately into a fit of panic. Panic increased during the winter and following spring, and culminated during the summer, in an Imperial Defence Conference with the Dominions.
We had curtailed our shipbuilding programme and slowed down our preparations. Thereby we had hoped to induce Germany to follow suit. But the effect had been precisely the opposite: she had increased her programme and speeded up her preparations. At last our Government became alive to what was going on, and in tones of reverberant anxiety informed an astonished nation that the naval estimates called for large additions.
Ministers, indeed, were between the devil and the deep sea. The supremacy of the British Fleet was menaced; the conscience of the Radical party was shocked—shocked not so much at the existence of the menace as at official recognition of it, and at the cost of insuring against it. It was so much shocked, indeed, that it took refuge in incredulity; and—upon the strength of assurances which were of course abundantly forthcoming from the German Admiralty, who averred upon their honour that there had been neither addition nor acceleration—roundly accused its own anointed ministers of bearing false witness against an innocent neighbour.
None the less, large sums were voted, and the Dominions came forward with generous contributions.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier, indeed, who had been nourished and brought up on a diet of dried phrases, was sceptical. To this far-sighted statesman there appeared to be no German menace either then or subsequently. The whole thing was a mere nightmare, disturbing the innocent sleep of Liberalism and democracy.[4]
This was the second warning.
THE THIRD WARNING
The third warning came in the form of subterranean rumblings, inaudible to the general public, but clearly heard by ministerial ears.
In July 1909, while the Imperial Conference on Defence was in session, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg succeeded Prince BÜlow as German Chancellor. Up to that time there had been the menace of the mailed fist, the rattling sabre, and the shining armour. Henceforward there was the additional menace of a diplomacy playing for time, with a careless and unconcealed contempt for the intelligence, the courage, and the honour of the British people and their statesmen.[5] The German Government had clearly formed the opinion that our ministers were growing more and more afraid of asking their party to support increased naval estimates, and that it was only necessary to go on, alternately dangling and withdrawing illusory proposals for a naval understanding and a general agreement, in order to steal ahead of us in the race. Here, as in many other instances, the Germans had observed not altogether incorrectly; but they had drawn the wrong inference from the facts.
During the summer and autumn of 1910 was held the famous but futile Constitutional Conference, the primary object of which was to settle the quarrel between the two Houses of Parliament. With steadily increasing clumsiness, German diplomacy, through all this anxious time, was engaged in holding out its hand and withdrawing it again; until even men whose minds were worried with more immediate cares, could no longer ignore the gravity of the situation.
The Conference adjourned for the holiday season, but resumed its sessions in October. The public assurances of those who took part in it on both sides agree in this, that nothing except the special subject for which it had been called into existence was ever discussed at its meetings. But many other things were certainly discussed outside its meetings—on the doorstep and the staircase, and in the anterooms. Among these topics the dangers of the international situation, and the peril of imperial security were the chief.
In October and November 1910 there was a great secret of Polichinelle. Conceivably we may learn from some future historian even more about it than we knew at the time. All that need be said here with reference to the matter is, that many persons on both sides found themselves faced with a position of affairs, where the security of the country plainly required measures for its defence, of a character and upon a scale, which neither political party could hope to carry through Parliament and commend to the country, unless it were supported by the more responsible section of its opponents.
Neither party, however, was willing to pay the price necessary for the support of the other, and as a consequence imperial interests suffered. It is not necessary, however, to conclude from this lamentable failure that a sordid spirit of faction was the explanation. In the constitutional sphere certain principles were in conflict, which the parties concerned had the honesty to hold by, but lacked the sympathy, and possibly the intelligence, to adjust. The acrimony of an immediate controversy distorted the vision of those engaged in it; so that the proportions of domestic and foreign dangers were misjudged.
The failure of this constitutional conference was welcomed at the time by exultant shoutings among many, perhaps the majority, of the rank and file of politicians upon both sides. It was not so regarded, however, by the country, which in a remarkable degree refused to respond to the incitements of violence and hatred with which it was plied during the ensuing election. There was at this time, for no very definite reason, a widespread popular uneasiness, and something approaching a general disgust with politicians.
Among more considerate men on both sides, the breakdown was frankly spoken of as one of the great calamities in our political history. It was more than that. It was in reality one of the greatest which have ever befallen Europe.
THE FOURTH WARNING
During the following July (1911), while in this country we were deeply engaged in the bitter climax of the constitutional struggle, there sounded a fourth strident warning from the gong of the German Chancellery.
The Agadir incident is one of the strangest which have occurred in British history during recent years. Its full gravity was not realised outside a very narrow circle at the time of its occurrence; and when subsequently it became more widely understood there was a curious conspiracy to hush it up—or, perhaps, not so much a conspiracy, as a general instinct of concealment—a spontaneous gesture of modesty—as if the British nation had been surprised bathing.
At the beginning of July the German cruiser Panther appeared at Agadir in Morocco. This visit was intended and understood as a direct challenge to France. Diplomacy was immediately in a stir.
Three weeks later Mr. Lloyd George spoke at the Mansion House, making it clear that England would not tolerate this encroachment. Even amid the anger and excitement which attended the last stages of the Parliament Bill, this statement created a deep impression throughout the country, and a still deeper impression in other countries.
Then the crisis appeared to fade away. Germany was supposed to have become amenable. We returned to our internecine avocations. The holiday season claimed its votaries, and a great railway strike upset many of their best-laid plans. The inhabitants of the United Kingdom are accustomed to think only on certain topics during August and September, and it is hard to break them of their habits. To reconsider a crisis which had arisen and passed away some two and a half months earlier, was more than could be expected of us when we returned to work in the autumn.
But Mr. Lloyd George's speech was capable of only one interpretation,—if Germany had persisted in her encroachment, this country would have gone to war in August or September 1911 in support of France. His words had no other meaning, and every highly placed soldier and sailor was fully aware of this fact, and made such preparations in his own sphere as the case required. But from what has transpired subsequently, it does not seem at all clear that more than two or three of the Cabinet in the least realised what was happening. Parliament did not understand the situation any more than the country did.
Later on, when people had time to concentrate their minds on such matters, there was a thrill of post-dated anxiety—a perturbation and disapproval; criticism upon various points; a transference of Mr. McKenna from the Admiralty to the Home Office, and of Mr. Churchill from the Home Office to the Admiralty. Indignant anti-militarists, supporters for the most part of the Government, allowed themselves to be mysteriously reduced to silence. Business men, who had been shocked when they learned the truth, suffered themselves to be persuaded that even the truth must be taken with a pinch of salt. There was, in fact, a sort of general agreement that it was better to leave the summer embers undisturbed, lest a greater conflagration might ensue. The attitude of the orthodox politician was that of a nervous person who, hearing, as he imagines, a burglar in his bedroom, feels happier and safer when he shuts his eyes and pulls the blankets over his head.
THE FIFTH WARNING
A few months later, at the beginning of the following year (1912), the fifth warning of the series was delivered.
It differed from its predecessors inasmuch as it was addressed to the ears of the British Government alone. Neither the Opposition nor the country heard anything of it until more than two years later—until the battles of Alsace, of Charleroi, and of Mons had been lost—until the battle of the Marne had been won—until the British Army was moving north to take up a position in Flanders. Then we learned that, when Lord Haldane had visited Berlin in the month of February 1912, he had done so at the special request of the Kaiser, in order to consider how Anglo-German misunderstandings might be removed.
Lord Haldane would have acted more wisely had he stopped his journey en route, and never entered Berlin at all. For, two days before the date appointed for his visit, proposals for large increases of the German Army and Navy were laid before the Reichstag. His mission was to abate competition in armaments, and here was an encouraging beginning! Was it contempt, or insolence, or a design to overawe the supposed timidity of the emissary; or was it merely a blundering effort to steal a march in the negotiations by facing the ambassador on his arrival with a fait accompli? Possibly it was a combination of all these; but at any rate it was exceedingly clumsy, and no less significant than clumsy.
As to the mission—Germany was willing in a vague way to 'retard'—whatever that may mean—though not to abandon, or reduce, her naval programme, providing the British Government would agree to remain neutral in any war which Germany might choose to wage. France might be crushed and Belgium annexed; but in either event England must stand aside and wait her turn. On no other terms would the Kaiser consent to a rapprochement with this country, or allow the blessed words 'retardation of the naval programme' to be uttered by official lips.
An undertaking of this tenor went beyond those assurances of non-aggressive intent which Lord Haldane, on behalf of his own Government, was fully prepared to give. We would not be a party to any unprovoked attack on Germany—was not that sufficient? It was plainly insufficient. It was made clear that Germany desired a free hand to establish herself in a position of supremacy astride of Europe. So Lord Haldane returned profitless from his wayfaring, and the British Government was at its wits' end how to placate the implacable.
The way they chose was well-doing, in which they wearied themselves perhaps overmuch, especially during the Balkan negotiations. For Germany did not want war at that time, for the reasons which have been given already. And so, rather surlily, and with the air of one who was humouring a crank—a pusillanimous people whose fixed idea was pacifism—she consented that we should put ourselves to vast trouble to keep the peace for her benefit. If war had to come in the end, it had much better have come then—so far as we were concerned—seeing that the combined balance of naval and military power was less unfavourable to the Triple Entente at the beginning of 1913 than it was some fifteen months later.... This was all the notice we took of the fifth warning. We earned no gratitude by our activities, nor added in any way thereby to our own safety.
THE HALDANE MISSION
The Haldane mission is a puzzle from first to last. The Kaiser had asked that he should be sent.... For what purpose? ... Apparently in order to discuss the foreign policy of England and Germany. But surely the Kaiser should have been told that we kept an Ambassador at Berlin for this very purpose; an able man, habituated to stand in the strong sunlight of the imperial presence without losing his head; but, above all, qualified to converse on such matters (seeing that they lay within his own province) far better than the most profound jurist in Christendom. Or if our Ambassador at Berlin could not say what was required, the German Ambassador in London might easily have paid a visit to Downing Street; or the Foreign Ministers of the two countries might have arranged a meeting; or even the British Premier and the German Chancellor might have contrived to come together. Any of these ways would have been more natural, more proper, more likely (one would think) to lead to business, than the way which was followed.
One guesses that the desire of the Kaiser that Lord Haldane should be sent, was met half-way by the desire of Lord Haldane to go forth; that there was some temperamental affinity between these two pre-eminent characters—some attraction of opposites, like that of the python and the rabbit.
Whatever the reasons may have been for this visit, the results of it were bad, and indeed disastrous. To have accepted the invitation was to fall into a German trap; a trap which had been so often set that one might have supposed it was familiar to every Foreign Office in Europe! Berlin has long delighted in these extra-official enterprises, undertaken behind the backs of accredited representatives. Confidences are exchanged; explanations are offered 'in the frankest spirit'; sometimes understandings of a kind are arrived at. But so far as Germany is concerned, nothing of all this is binding, unless her subsequent interests make it desirable that it should be. The names of the irregular emissaries, German, British, and cosmopolitan, whom the Kaiser has sent to London and received at Berlin—unbeknown to his own Foreign Office—since the beginning of his reign, would fill a large and very interesting visitors' book. One would have imagined that even so early as February 1912 this favourite device had been found out and discredited even in Downing Street.
Lord Haldane was perhaps even less well fitted for such an embassy by temperament and habit of mind, than he was by position and experience. Lawyer-statesmanship, of the modern democratic sort, is of all forms of human agency the one least likely to achieve anything at Potsdam. The British emissary was tireless, industrious, and equable. His colleagues, on the other hand, were overworked, indolent, or flustered. Ready on the shortest notice to mind everybody else's business, he was allowed to mind far too much of it; and he appears to have minded most of it rather ill than well. He was no more suited to act for the Foreign Office than King Alfred was to watch the housewife's cakes.
THE HALDANE MISSION
The man whose heart swells with pride in his own ingenuity usually walks all his life in blinkers. It is not surprising that Lord Haldane's visit to the Kaiser was a failure, that it awoke distrust at the time, or that it opened the way to endless misrepresentation in the future. What surprises is his stoicism; that he should subsequently have shown so few signs of disappointment, distress, or mortification; that he should have continued up to the present moment to hold himself out as an expert on German psychology;[6] that he should be still upheld by his journalistic admirers, to such an extent that they even write pamphlets setting out to his credit 'what he did to thwart Germany.'[7]
We have been told by Mr. Asquith,[8] what was thought by the British Government of the outcome of Lord Haldane's embassy. We have also been informed by Germany, what was thought of it by high officials at Berlin; what inferences they drew from these conversations; what hopes they founded upon them. We do not know, however, what was thought of the incident by the other two members of the Entente; how it impressed the statesmen of Paris and Petrograd; for they must have known of the occurrence—the English representative not being one whose comings and goings would easily escape notice. The British people were told nothing; they knew nothing; and therefore, naturally enough, they thought nothing about the matter.
The British Cabinet—if Mr. Asquith's memory is to be relied on—saw through the devilish designs of Germany so soon as Lord Haldane, upon his return, unbosomed himself to the conclave in quaking whispers. We know from the Prime Minister, that when he heard how the Kaiser demanded a free hand for European conquests, as the price of a friendly understanding with England, the scales dropped from his eyes, and he realised at once that this merely meant the eating of us up later. But one cannot help wondering, since Mr. Asquith was apparently so clear-sighted about the whole matter, that he made no preparations whatsoever—military, financial, industrial, or even naval (beyond the ordinary routine)—against an explosion which—the mood and intentions of Germany being what they were now recognised to be—might occur at any moment.
COST OF AMATEUR DIPLOMACY
As to what Germany thought of the incident we know of course only what the high personages at Berlin have been pleased to tell the world about their 'sincere impressions.' They have been very busy doing this—hand upon heart as their wont is—in America and elsewhere. According to their own account they gathered from Lord Haldane's mission that the British Government and people were very much averse from being drawn into European conflicts; that we now regretted having gone quite so far as we had done in the past, in the way of entanglements and understandings; that while we could not stand by, if any other country was being threatened directly on account of arrangements it had come to with England, England certainly was by no means disposed to seek officiously for opportunities of knight-errantry. In simple words the cases of Tangier and Agadir were coloured by a special obligation, and were to be distinguished clearly from anything in the nature of a general obligation or alliance with France and Russia.
It is quite incredible that Lord Haldane ever said anything of this kind; for he would have been four times over a traitor if he had—to France; to Belgium; to his own country; also to Germany whom he would thus have misled. It is also all but incredible that a single high official at Berlin ever understood him to have spoken in this sense. But this is what the high officials have assured their own countrymen and the whole of the neutral world that they did understand; and they have called piteously on mankind to witness, how false the British Government was to an honourable understanding, so soon as trouble arose in July last with regard to Servia. Such are some of the penalties we have paid for the luxury of indulging in amateur diplomacy.
The German bureaucracy, however, always presses things too far. It is not a little like Fag in The Rivals—"whenever it draws on its invention for a good current lie, it always forges the endorsements as well as the bill." As a proof that the relations of the two countries from this time forward were of the best, inferences have been drawn industriously by the high officials at Berlin as to the meaning and extent of Anglo-German co-operation during the Balkan wars; as to agreements with regard to Africa already signed, but not published, in which Downing Street had shown itself 'surprisingly accommodating'; as to other agreements with regard to the Baghdad Railway, the Mesopotamian oil-fields, the navigation of the Tigris, and access through Basra to the Persian Gulf. These agreements, the earnest of a new entente between the Teuton nations—the United States subsequently to be welcomed in—are alleged to have been already concluded, signed and awaiting publication when war broke out.[9] Then trouble arises in Servia; a mere police business—nothing more—which might have been settled in a few days or at any rate weeks, if perfidious Albion had not seized the opportunity to work upon Muscovite suspicions, in order to provoke a world-war for which she had been scheming all the time!
THE SIXTH WARNING
The sixth warning was the enormous German Army Bill and the accompanying war loan of 1913. By comparison, the five previous warnings were but ambiguous whispers. And yet this last reverberation had apparently no more effect upon the British Government than any of the rest.
With all these numerous premonitions the puzzle is, how any government could have remained in doubt as to the will of Germany to wage war whenever her power seemed adequate and the opportunity favourable for winning it. The favourite plea that the hearts of Mr. Asquith and his colleagues were stronger than their heads does not earn much respect. Knowing what we do of them in domestic politics, this excuse would seem to put the quality of their heads unduly low. The true explanation of their omissions must be sought elsewhere than in their intellects and affections.
It is important to remember that none of the considerations which have been set out in this chapter can possibly have been hidden from the Foreign Office, the War Office, the Admiralty, the Prime Minister, the Committee of Imperial Defence, or the inner or outer circles of the Cabinet. Important papers upon matters of this kind go the round of the chief ministers. Unless British public offices have lately fallen into a state of more than Turkish indolence, of more than German miscalculation, it is inconceivable that the true features of the situation were not laid before ministers, dinned into ministers, proved and expounded to ministers, by faithful officials, alive to the dangers which were growing steadily but rapidly with each succeeding year. And although we may only surmise the vigilant activity of these subordinates, we do actually know, that Mr. Asquith's Government was warned of them, time and again, by other persons unconcerned in party politics and well qualified to speak.
But supposing that no one had told them, they had their own wits and senses, and these were surely enough. A body of men whose first duty is the preservation of national security—who are trusted to attend to that task, paid for performing it, honoured under the belief that they do attend to it and perform it—cannot plead, in excuse for their failure, that no one had jogged their elbows, roused them from their slumbers or their diversions, and reminded them of their duty.
INACTION OF THE GOVERNMENT
Mr. Asquith and his chief colleagues must have realised the interdependence of policy and armaments; and they must have known, from the year 1906 onwards, that on the military side our armaments were utterly inadequate to maintain our policy. They must have known that each year, force of circumstances was tending more and more to consolidate the Triple Entente into an alliance, as the only means of maintaining the balance of power, which was a condition both of the freedom of Europe and of British security. They knew—there can be no doubt on this point—what an immense numerical superiority of armed forces Germany and Austria together could bring, first against France at the onset of war, and subsequently, at their leisure, against Russia during the grip of war. They knew that a British Expeditionary Army of 160,000 men would not make good the difference—would come nowhere near making good the difference. They must have known that from the point of view of France and Belgium, the special danger of modern warfare was the crushing rapidity of its opening phase. They must have been kept fully informed of all the changes which were taking place in the military situation upon the continent to the detriment of the Triple Entente. They had watched the Balkan war and measured its effects. They knew the meanings of the critical dates—1914-1916—better, we may be sure, than any section of their fellow-countrymen. And even although they might choose to disregard, as mere jingoism, all the boasts and denunciations of German journalists and professors, they must surely have remembered the events which preceded the conference at Algeciras, and those others which led up to the Defence Conference of 1909. They can hardly have forgotten the anxieties which had burdened their hearts during the autumn of 1910. Agadir cannot have been forgotten; the memory of Lord Haldane's rebuff was still green; and the spectre of the latest German Army Bill must have haunted them in their dreams.
There is here no question of being wise after the event. The meaning of each of these things in turn was brought home to the Prime Minister and his chief colleagues as it occurred—firstly, we may be sure, by their own intelligence—secondly, we may be equally sure, by the reports of their responsible subordinates—thirdly, by persons of knowledge and experience, who had no axe to grind or interest to serve.
It is therefore absurd to suppose that ministers could have failed to realise the extent of the danger, or of our unpreparedness to meet it, unless they had purposely buried their heads in the sand. They knew that they had not a big enough army, and that this fact might ruin their whole policy. Why did they never say so? Why, when Lord Roberts said so, did they treat him with contumely, and make every effort to discredit him? Why was nothing done by them during their whole period of office to increase the Army and thereby diminish the numerical superiority of their adversaries. On the contrary, they actually reduced the Army, assuring the country that they had no use for so many trained soldiers. Moreover, the timidity or secretiveness of the Government prevented England from having, what is worth several army corps, and what proved the salvation of France—a National Policy, fully agreed and appealing to the hearts and consciences of the whole people.
The answers to these questions must be sought in another sphere. The political situation was one of great perplexity at home as well as abroad, and its inherent difficulties were immeasurably increased by the character and temperament of Mr. Asquith, by the nature no less of his talents than of his defects. The policy of wait-and-see is not necessarily despicable. There are periods in which it has been the surest wisdom and the truest courage; but this was not one of those periods, nor was there safety in dealing either with Ireland or with Germany upon this principle. When a country is fully prepared it can afford to wait and see if there will be a war; but not otherwise.
Sir Edward Grey is a statesman whose integrity and disinterestedness have never been impugned by friend or foe; but from the very beginning of his tenure of office he has appeared to lack that supreme quality of belief in himself which stamps the greatest foreign ministers. He has seemed at times to hesitate, as if in doubt whether the dangers which he foresaw with his mind's eye were realities, or only nightmares produced by his own over-anxiety. We have a feeling also that in the conduct of his office he had played too lonely a part, and that such advice and sympathy as he had received were for the most part of the wrong sort. What he needed in the way of counsel and companionship was simplicity and resolution. What he had to rely on was the very reverse of this.
Lord Haldane, as we have learned recently, shared largely in the work of the Foreign Office; a man of prodigious industry, but over-ingenious, and of a self-complacency which too readily beguiled him into the belief that there was no opponent who could not be satisfied, no obstacle which could not be made to vanish—by argument.
SIR EDWARD GREY'S DIFFICULTIES
Moreover, Sir Edward Grey had to contend against enemies within his own household. In the Liberal party there was a tradition, which has never been entirely shaken off, that all increase of armaments is provocative, and that all foreign engagements are contrary to the public interest. After the Agadir crisis he was made the object of a special attack by a large and influential section of his own party and press, and was roundly declared to be no longer possible as Foreign Minister.[10] There can be no doubt that the attempt to force Sir Edward Grey's resignation in the winter 1911-1912 was fomented by German misrepresentation and intrigue, skilfully acting upon the peculiar susceptibilities of radical fanaticism. Nor is there any doubt that the attacks which were made upon the policy of Mr. Churchill, from the autumn of 1912 onwards, were fostered by the same agency, using the same tools, and aiming at the same objects.
The orthodoxy of Mr. Churchill was suspect on account of his Tory ancestry and recent conversion; that of Sir Edward Grey on the ground that he was a country gentleman, bred in aristocratic traditions, trained in Foreign Affairs under the dangerous influences of Lord Rosebery, and therefore incapable of understanding the democratic dogma that loving-kindness will conquer everything, including Prussian ambitions.
Surely no very vivid imagination is needed to penetrate the mystery of Cabinet discussions on defence for several years before war broke out. Behind the Cabinet, as the Cabinet well knew, was a party, one half of which was honestly oblivious of all danger, while the other half feared the danger much less than it hated the only remedy. Clearly the bulk of the Cabinet was in cordial sympathy either with one or other of these two sections of their party. Sir Edward Grey accordingly had to defend his policy against an immense preponderance of settled convictions, political prejudices, and personal interests. And at the same time he seems to have been haunted by the doubt lest, after all, his fears were only nightmares. Mr. Churchill, there is no difficulty in seeing, must have fought very gallantly; but always, for the reason already given, with one hand tied behind his back. He had all his work cut out to maintain the Navy, which was under his charge, in a state of efficiency; and this upon the whole he succeeded in doing pretty efficiently.[11]
If we may argue back from public utterances to Cabinet discussions, it would appear that the only assistance—if indeed it deserved such a name—which was forthcoming to these two, proceeded from Mr. Asquith and Lord Haldane. The former was by temperament opposed to clear decisions and vigorous action. The latter—to whom the mind of Germany was as an open book—bemused himself, and seems to have succeeded in bemusing his colleagues to almost as great an extent.
In fancy, we can conjure up a scene which must have been enacted, and re-enacted, very often at Number 10 Downing Street in recent years. We can hear the warnings of the Foreign Minister, the urgent pleas of the First Lord of the Admiralty, the scepticism, indifference, or hostility expressed by the preponderant, though leaderless, majority in the Cabinet. Simple said, I see no danger; Sloth said, Yet a little more sleep; and Presumption said, Every Vat must stand upon his own bottom.... We can almost distinguish the tones of their Right Honourable voices.
EXCESSIVE TIMIDITY
The situation was governed by an excessive timidity—by fear of colleagues, of the caucus, of the party, and of public opinion—by fear also of Germany. Mr. Asquith, and the Cabinet of which he was the head, refused to look their policy between the eyes, and realise what it was, and what were its inevitable consequences. They would not admit that the Balance of Power was an English interest, or that they were in any way concerned in maintaining it. They would not admit that our Entente with France and Russia was in fact an alliance. They thought they could send British officers to arrange plans of campaign with the French General Staff—could learn from this source all the secret hopes and anxieties of France—could also withdraw the greater part of their fleet from the Mediterranean, under arrangement for naval co-operation with our present ally[12]—all without committing this country to any form of understanding! They boasted that they had no engagements with France, which puzzled the French and the Russians, and convinced nobody; save possibly themselves, and a section of their own followers. They had in fact bound the country to a course of action—in certain events which were not at all improbable—just as surely by drifting into a committal, as if they had signed and sealed a parchment. Yet they would not face the imperative condition. They would not place their armaments on a footing to correspond with their policy.
Much of this is now admitted more or less frankly, but justification is pleaded, in that it was essential to lead the country cautiously, and that the Government could do nothing unless it had the people behind it. In these sayings there is a measure of truth. But as a matter of fact the country was not led at all. It was trapped. Never was there the slightest effort made by any member of the Government to educate the people with regard to the national dangers, responsibilities, and duties. When the crisis occurred the hand of the whole British Empire was forced. There was no other way; but it was a bad way. And what was infinitely worse, was the fact that, when war was declared—that war which had been discussed at so many Cabinet meetings since 1906—military preparations were found to be utterly inadequate in numbers; and in many things other than numbers. The politician is right in thinking that, as a rule, it is to his advantage if the people are behind him; but there are times when we can imagine him praying that they may not be too close.
We have been given to understand that it was impossible for the Government to acknowledge their policy frankly, to face the consequences, and to insist upon the necessary preparations in men and material being granted. It was impossible, because to have done so would have broken the Liberal party—that great instrument for good—in twain. The Cabinet would have fallen in ruin. The careers of its most distinguished members would have been cut short. Consider what sacrifices would have been contained in this catalogue of disasters.
That is really what we are now beginning to consider, and are likely to consider more and more as time goes on.
VALUE OF SELF-SACRIFICE
A great act of self-sacrifice—a man's, or a party's—may sometimes make heedless people realise the presence of danger when nothing else will. Suppose Mr. Asquith had said, "I will only continue to hold office on one condition," and had named the condition—'that armaments should correspond to policy'—the only means of safety. He might thereupon have disappeared into the chasm; but like Curtius he might have saved the City. It would have made a great impression, Mr. Asquith falling from office for his principles. Those passages of Periclean spoken after war broke out, about the crime of Germany against humanity—about sacrificing our own ease—about duty, honour, freedom, and the like—were wonderfully moving. Would there, however, have been occasion for them, if in the orator's own case, the sacrifice had been made before the event instead of after it, or if he had faithfully performed the simplest and chief of all the duties attaching to his great position?
The present war, as many of us thought, and still think, was not inevitable. None have maintained this opinion in the past with greater vehemence than the Liberal party. But the conditions on which it could have been avoided were, that England should have been prepared, which she was not; and that she should have spoken her intentions clearly, which she did not.
THE PRICE PAID
When the war is ended, or when the tide of it has turned and begun to sweep eastward, there will be much coming and going of the older people, and of women, both young and old, between England and France. They have waited, and what is it that they will then be setting forth to see? ... From Mons to the Marne, and back again to Ypres, heaps of earth, big and little, shapeless, nameless, numberless—the graves of men who did not hesitate to sacrifice either their careers or their lives when duty called them. Desolation is the heaviest sacrifice of all; and those who will, by and by, go on this pilgrimage have suffered it, ungrudgingly and with pride, because their country needed it. If this war was indeed inevitable there is no more to be said. But what if it was not inevitable? What if there would have been no war at all—or a less lingering and murderous war—supposing that those, who from the trust reposed in them by their fellow-countrymen should have been the first to sacrifice their careers to duty, had not chosen instead to sacrifice duty to their careers? It was no doubt a service to humanity to save the careers of politicians from extinction, to keep ministers in office from year to year, to preserve the Liberal party—that great instrument for good—unfractured. These benefits were worth a great price; but were they worth quite so great a price as has been paid?
