Book ."Pc. THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND MORALS. 8vo, paper covers, 6d, net. HENRY VIII. Crown 8vo, 53. net, THE REIGN OF HENRY VII. FROM CONTEM- PORARY SOURCES. Selected and Arranged with an Introduction. Crown 8vo, los. 6d. net each. Vol. I. Narrative Extracts. Vol, II. Constitutional, Social, and Economic History. Vol. III. Diplomacy, Ecclesiastical Affairs, and Ireland. FROM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD VI. TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH (1547-1603). 8s. net. (The Political History of England, Vol. VI.) LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS. THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR A. F. POLLARD, M.A., Litt.D. FELLOW OF ALL SOULS AND PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS I917 In PREFACE. Half of the following essays have been published as leading articles in " The Times " Literary Supplement, and of the remainder most have appeared in the " Yale Review," the " Contemporary Ile\dew," the " West- minster Gazette," and " History " ; and I am indebted to the proprietors of these various periodicals for per- mission to reprint these papers. Their republication may serve to illustrate, among other things, that de- ceitfulness of human wishes and fallibility of human judgment which a great crisis inevitably enhances. But the history of erroneous opinion is an integral part of history ; and the future historian of the great war will make little of its history if he confines his at- tention to actions, and ignores the public and private opinion which impeded or inspired them. Conven- tional history limits itself too much to what men and nations have done, and takes too little account of what they hoped to do and thought they were doing. For deeds and thoughts react upon one another and to- gether make up the human factor in human affairs. It is in the hope of assisting the study of history that these essays are reproduced in a more permanent and accessible form than those in which they first appeared ; and the value of contemporary history is vi PREFACE by no means confined to the age with which it deals. It is the essence of the historian's faith that past and present help to explain one another ; and the Hght of history in the making around us illumines the making of histoiy in the past. That is largely because we feel the present more than we can ever feel the past, and insight into human affairs is as much a matter of sense as it is of science. Moreover, it is the process of production rather than the finished product which interests the real historian, and history is a living subject because mankind is always producing and never knowing— apart from the mechanical sciences — what the finished product will be. Historical students will understand the Napoleonic wars all the better for having felt a similar tension, and com- munion with the past, although a very imperfect communion of saints, is essential to the continuous life of humanity. The date of each of these essays is precisely indi- cated so that it may be borne in mind in the criticisms they may suggest. There is inevitably some repeti- tion, and most of them contain expressions which they would not have contained, had they been wiitten earlier or later ; but to modify the record of expressed opinion in the light of later events indicates a dis- honest ambition for consistency or prescience, and is one of the most insidious forms of historical forgery. A. F. POLLARD. CONTENTS. PAaE Preface , V CHAPTER I. The War : its History and its Morals ... 1 II. Rumour and Historical Science in Time of War . 36 III. The Length of Wars 52 IV. The Freedom op the Seas 63 V. The War and the British Realms . . . .75 VI. British Idealism and its Cost in Wab .... 90 VII. History and Science 102 VIII. The Recant of Patriotism 126 IX. Has Great Britain ceased to be an Island ? . . 134 X. The Death-Grapple with Prussian Militarism . . 140 XI. The Growth of an Imperial Parliament . . . 149 XII. The Temptation of Peace 178 XIII. Is it Peace ? 187 XIV. The Peace of the President 198 XV. Twilight in the East 211 XVI. The Paradox of the British Empire .... 221 XVII. The Prevention of War 229 XVIII. The Ways of Revolution 238 XIX. A Parable of the War 250 I. THE WAR : ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS.^ It has often been remarked, from the time of Aristotle downwards, that, while the occasions of great events may be trivial, the causes are always profound. This distinction between occasions and causes must ever be borne in mind when we attempt to trace the origin of the Great War of 1914. Occasions for war we have always with us ; they are as plentiful as the microbes infesting the air we breathe ; and, just as our individual health depends, not upon the possi- bility of avoiding microbes, but upon the general state of our body, so the preservation of the world's peace depends, not upon the absence of occasions for war, but upon the condition of mind in which the peoples and governments of the earth confront them. We are not at war because an archduke was murdered, but because that occasion for war burst upon one or two powers not disinclined to break the peace. If we can account for the bellicose attitude of Germany and Austria in July, 1914, we can understand the outbreak of war ; for, if it is true that it takes two to make a quarrel, it is truer that it takes two to keep the peace. 1 A lecture delivered from notes at University College on 5 October, 1914 ; written out and published in January, 1915. 2 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR The main problem, therefore, resolves itself into the question, Why was Germany not anxious to avoid a war ? Austria may almost be eliminated from this discussion, because it is clear from the official corre- spondence that Austria, if left to herself, would have found a means of escape from the dilemma ; and, in- deed, war between her and Russia did not begin until five days after its declaration by Germany, while six days more elapsed before war began between Austria and France and Great Britain. The ultimate cause of the war must be sought in Germany's frame of mind, and that frame of mmd I propose to illustrate chiefly by means of two books. Prince von Bidow's " Imperial Germany " and Bernhardi's " Germany and the Next War". The ex- Chancellor's volume is a moderate exposition of German policy which probably represents the mind — perhaps the better mind — of the German Foreign Office before the outbreak of war. Bernhardi's book represents that of the military party whose aggressiveness may have had something to do with Billow's resignation, and certainly got the better of the Kaiser's less truculent inclinations. It is a book which many of us have been reading with what patience we could command, and perhaps also with this amount of comfort — that nothmg done by Germany since the war began has done more to com- promise her moral position than this revelation of Prussian mentality written in time of peace, before the first Balkan war or even the Agadir crisis had ruffled the surface of affairs. As Prince von Biilow points out ^ with some humour, it is a German foible to deduce the most iPp. 128-9. THE WAR : ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 3 paltry propositions from first principles, and members of the Reichstag habitually base amendments to legis- lation on their " Conception of the Universe ". So General von Bernhardi's politics are deduced from what he believes to be " Nature ". It is a crass and crude philosophy, and I confess to being bewildered by the praise lavished upon the cleverness and pro- fundity of his book. According to it the German's " nature " is simply the nature of the brute, " red in tooth and claw ". The moral part of man is no part of his nature, and the natural state is that state of war, depicted by Hobbes, in which the two cardinal virtues are force and fraud. Bernhardi is thinking, of course, only of the relations between State and State, and not of those between man and man ; but between States there can be no law and no morality ; their re- lations are simply those of one brute to another. This is a conception not confined to German minds, and it may be worth while pointing to some of the confusions on which it rests. In the first place there is nothing more "un- natural," in this sense of the word, than the State itself. It depends for its very existence upon the repression and control of those "natural" and pre- datory instincts, to which Bernhardi would give the freest scope in international relations ; and it is a con- tradiction in terms to apply " natural " psychology to the relations of " unnatural " associations. Moreover, when brute fights with brute, it is a small matter ; the force employed and the damage done are on a limited scale. No brute could mobilize four million fellows. It would, indeed, be a horrible comment on civilization if, now that Governments can control millions of men 4 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR and the forces of nature, they could exert no more control over their " natural " instincts than the beasts of the field. As a matter of fact, this vast control over others and over physical force has only been made possible by man's control of himself, that is to say, by his moral development. But while Bernhardi appar- ently regards man's control over physical forces as a " natural " evolution, he rules out from man's " nature " his moral growth. His State is a super-brute, ever growing in strength, but never developing even the rudiments of a conscience in its dealings with other States. " It is proposed," he writes with scorn, " to obviate the great quarrels between nations and States by Courts of Arbitration — that is, by arrangements. A one-sided, restricted, formal law is to be established in place of the decisions of history. The weak nation is to have the same right to live as the poAverful and vigorous nation. The whole idea represents a pre- sumptuous encroachment on the natural laws of de- velopment." ^ He admits that " Christian morality is based on the law of love," but contends that " this law can claim no significance for the relations of one country to another, since its application to politics would lead to a conflict of duties "."^ The logic of this is apparently that Christian morality may bind you to love a personal enemy, but not a friend who belongs to an enemy country. But men's assumptions are more eloquent than their assertions, and the assumption underlying the last phrase I have quoted is truly enlightening. Duty to the State is clearly to be paramount ; any other loyalty, such as respect for religion, truth, or ' Bernhardi, p. 34. - ^ Ibid. p. 29. The WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS B morality, if it involves conflict with the State, is so small a matter that it can have " no significance ". It would disparage the great Florentine to call the German general with an Italian name "the new Machiavelli " ; but he will not have lived in vain, if he has unwittingly revealed the pitfalls of the gospel of efficiency and of the worship of the State. The profound immorality of his political philosophy is more than idiosyncrasy. It is characteristic, I do not say of the German people, but of the Prussian aristocracy which controls the German Government. It is perhaps far-fetched to trace, as a German Catholic has done,^ the moral insensibility of Prussia back to the union of a renegade Grand Master of the Teutonic Order and his fellow-celibates with the lowest of the Wendish women they were supposed to protect from the infidel ; but the Hohenzollerns are the collateral descendants of the man who perverted his religious trust into a secular duchy, and the Junker class in Prussia is sprung from those who followed his example. Courage and military capacity they have shown throughout their history, but of moral scruple or enlightenment there has not been a vestige ; and their blunders in this war have all been due to inability to realize moral values — failure to comprehend the moral strength of the British Empire, the moral eflPect of the subordination of international law to military advantage, the difference which moral change has wi'ought between .the Russia of the Manchurian adventure and the Russia of to-day, and even the courage which the infliction of wrong would give the ^ See "Der Untergaiig des Ordenstaates Preussen," von Dr. J. Vota. Mainz: Kirchheim & Co., 1911. 6 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAU army of little Belgium. The advocates of schreckUch- keit camiot comprehend the proverb that in war he wins who feels the pity of it, and their defeat will be due to their moral infidelity. War is, mdeed, to Bernhardi not a cruel necessity but the glorious crown of human achievement. " Efforts to secure peace are extraordinarily detri- mental to the national health so soon as they influence politics. . . . The efforts directed towards the abolition of war must not only be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral, and must be stigmatized as unworthy of the human race. . . . War is not merely a necessary element in the life of nations, but an indispensable factor of culture, in which a truly civilized nation finds the highest expression of strength and vitality." ^ To abolish war would, he thinks, be to abolish heroism. This again is one of those simple but fatal fallacies which deceive other than German minds. War pro- vides opportunities for heroism ; therefore it is a noble thing. The heroism, it may be remarked, is commonly shown, not by those who order the wars, but by those who obey : " theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die ". The heroism is good, the opportunity may be evil. If war provides opportunities, so does the loss of a " Birkenhead," a mine-disaster, or a fire. Bernhardi is in the logical and moral position of those who would wreck a ship, explode a mine, or commit arson in order to provide opportunities for other people to prove their heroism ; and the proper place for such criminals is the jail or the lunatic asylum. Evil is none the less evil because it requires heroic remedies. The German conception of war is, however, less 1 Bernhardi, pp. 14, 28, 29, 34. THE WAR : ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 7 detestable than the German conception of peace. Peace is to them merely preparation for war ; it is war underhand, with its armies of spies, abusing inter- national hospitality and acquiring as guests a know- ledge to be used as foes, and with its hostility veiled only until der Tag shall come. The idea of goodwill among men — at least among States — has escaped their moral ken. " The English attempts at a rapproche- ment,'' wi'ote Bernhardi in 1911,^ " must not blind us to the real situation. We may at most use them to delay the necessary and inevitable war until we may fairly imagine we have some prospect of success." Even the sober Biilow declares that " there is no third course. In the struggle between nationalities one nation is the hammer and the other the anvil." ^ That is in peace, and to the " peaceful " rivalry of States the German would extend the immoral licence that all is fair in war. " You will always be fools," wrote a candid German officer to an English friend, " and we shall never be gentlemen." It is more significant that the German would rather be no gentleman than a fool, while the Englishman would rather be a fool than not a gentleman. The one would rather break the rules than lose the game ; the other would rather lose the game than break the rules. " Law," says von Biilow,^ " must certainly not be considered sup erior to the needs of the State" ; and the problem before the civilized world, during and after this war, is how to deal with a parvenu, who declines to observe any rules in the society into which he has thrust his un- welcome presence. The German, indeed, denies the foundations of 1 Bernhardi, p. 287. ^ Billow, p. 240. ^ [jjid, p. 178. 8 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR international comity ; the weak State has no claim to respect nor right of existence. " The whole discussion turns," says Bernliardi, " not on an international right, but simply and solely on power and expediency " ; ^ and the expediency is not the interest of mankind, but that of a single over-mighty State. Germany must obey the " natural laws of development," and any attempt to restrain it by efforts to abolish war would be " immoral ". So far as the State is con- cerned, " moraUty " is thus identical with " nature," and " nature " with the absence of a moral code. If the State can seize its neighbour's vineyard, it would be immoral because unnatural to refrain. But what is the " State," in the interests of which Christianity is to be abrogated, morality abolished, and all these vast assumptions made ? The question is of some importance, because the Prussian conception of the State is totally different from the English, and also because it appears at first sight psychologically inexplicable that a nation like the German, moral in its private relations, should so emphatically repudiate moral restraint on international conduct. The ex- planation lies in the Gerinan conception of the State. To the Englishman the State is the community or- ganized for political purposes, and he feels, dimly perhaps, that he can apply to himself the aphorism attributed to Louis XIV and say tEtat, cest moi. To the German, on the other hand, the State is a thing apart fi*om the community ; it is not the com- munity, and though German Social Democrats hold that the State exists for the community, the governing classes believe tliat the community exists for the ^ Bernhardi, p. 112. THE WAR : ITS HISTORY AND iTS MORALS 9 benefit of the State. To all alike the State is some- thing abstract, so abstract indeed that German political philosophers have gi-avely discussed the question whether it is male or female. To their captains and their kings the abstraction is more concrete. The Kaiser's view of the State is that of Louis XIV, and von Btilow avows that " Prussia is in all essentials a State of soldiers and officials ".^ It is not the com- munity as a whole ; and nothing surprises an English- man more than the violent contrast between the overweening claims, which Bernhardi and his fellows make for the State, and their contempt for the political capacity of the German people. It is not in the interests of the German people that the State is to be liberated from moral restraints, but in the interests of those who control the Government. With that the people have nothing to do : Germany has reached the stage of constitutional development that England had reached under the first two Stuarts, and German mmisters hold with Charles I that the " true liberty " of German subjects " consists not in the power of Government ".^ There is thus nothing illogical in the incongruity between the morality of the German people and the immorality of the German State ; for the people have nothing to do with the State. Their political incompetence is, indeed, the dogma upon which the Government founds its claim to irre- sponsibility, and there is a close psychological comiex- ion between the irresponsibility to the German people, which the Government has always enjoyed, and the irresponsibility to moral considerations which it claims. 1 Billow, p. 187. 2 Gardiner, " Select Documents," ed. 1889, p. 285.. 10 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAB " No people," says Beriiliardi,^ " is so little qualified as the German to direct its own destinies." " Despite the abundance of merits," is von Billow's minor re- frain,^ " and gi'eat qualities, with which the German nation is endowed, political talent has been denied it. . . . We are not a poUtical people. ... I once had a conversation on this subject with the late Ministerial Director AlthofF. ' Well, what can you expect,' replied that distinguished man in his humorous way, ' AVe Germans are the most learned nation in the world and the best soldiers. We have achieved great things in all the sciences and arts ; the greatest philoso- phers, the greatest poets and musicians are Germans. Of late we have occupied the foremost place in the natural sciences and in almost all technical spheres, and in addition to that we have accomplished an enormous industrial development. How can you wonder that we are political asses ? There must be a weak point somewhere.' " No doubt these eminent men, in confessing the political incompetence of the German people, made mental exceptions in favour of themselves ; but students of recent German policy and diplomacy may feel some doubt about the reserva- tions. After sucli frank admissions, it may seem super- fluous to inquire into the reasons which led the German people to accept or acquiesce in so fatuous and immoral a political philosophy as that expounded by the organs of the German militaiy staff. A stupid political phil- osophy would naturally commend itself to a politically stupid people. Nevertlieless, the future will probably show that the Prussian Junker and his chosen ministers 1 Bernhardi, p. 113. -' Billow, p. lOt). THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 11 have counted too much upon the political incapacity of the German nation. This philosophy is a Prussian and not a German product ; the Prussians are German in little save language, and German subservience to Prussian ideas is a temporary lapse to which the result of the war will almost certainly set a term. It none the less requires an explanation ; for there are always two factors in the production of every crop. There is the seed, and there is the soil. The most pernicious, as well as the most beneficent, ideas have no effect unless they fall on fruitful ground ; and we have to examine the conditions which rendered the German mind receptive soil for the teaching of Treitschke, to whom the predominant school of political philosophy owes its inspiration. The inquiry involves a brief excursion into history. Before the French Revolution there were some 300 practically independent States in Germany ; and even the vast reduction and simplification effected during the Napoleonic era still left thirty-nine in existence after the battle of \A^aterloo and the Congi-ess of Vienna. The problem for Germany in the nineteenth century was to combine these separate and often hostile States into a single political entity. Political methods of union were tried, and failed. " The union of Germany," writes von Blilow,^ " that the patriotic democrats of the forties conceived in tlie nineteenth century was ... to vest the unifying power in the paramount influence of an imperial Parliament. . . . It was a mistake in a thoroughly monarchical country like Germany to expect unifying power from Parlia- mentary life which had no existence." Bismarck then 1 Biilow, p. 274. 12 The commonwealth at wah appeared on the scene with his methods of blood and iron, and Btilow thus sums up his achievement : ^ " With incomparable audacity and constructive states- mansliip, in consummating the work of uniting Ger- many, Bismarck left out of play the political capa- bilities of the Germans, in which they have never excelled, while he called into action their fighting powers, which have always been their strongest point." This sounds plausible enough ; stripped of the phrase- ology, with which Biilow has gilded Bismarck's policy, it comes to this : he made aggressive war on other people because he could not trust the political capacity of his own. Denmark, Austria, and France were the successive whetstones on which Bismarck sharpened the sword of Prussian militarism, the weapon where- with he wrought that German unification which had defied the political efforts of the German people. What wonder that Germany puts its trust in the God of Battles, believes in the methods of blood and iron, and drops all pretence to popular government when- ever the bugle sounds ? Blood and iron became the cement of the German Empire ; but Bismarck, to do him justice, never re- garded his methods as ideal. He adopted them only because there were none other available. His pigmy successors have out-Bismarcked and caricatured his methods. They advocate war, not as a legitimate means when otiiers have failed, but as a method in itself almost ideal, or at least preferable to all others. Bernhardi, for instance,^ glories in his belief that all the wars of his hero, Frederick the Great, were ag- gressive, and contends that the value to Prussia and 1 Bulow, p. 8. • ^ P. 34. THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS IS Germany of Silesia consisted mainly in the method of its acquisition, in the fact that it was won by war and not awarded by a Court of Arbitration. In other words, if you come by your own as the result of ju- dicial process, your triumph leaves no moral impress ; but if you successfully rob your neighbour by war, the moral effect is portentous. What a gulf between the Prussian of the twentieth, and the great English soldier of the seventeenth century I " Things obtained by force," said Oliver Cromwell in 1647, " though never so good in themselves, would be both less to their honour, and less likely to last. . . . What we gain in a free way, it is better than twice as much in a forced, and will be more truly ours and our pos- terity's." ^ Less likely to last ! Doubts of Bern- hardi's gospel seem to have haunted von Btilow. " In the meantime," he writes,^ " Fate, who, as we all know, is an excellent but expensive teacher, might undertake to educate us politically, and that by means of the injuries which our innate political failings must inflict on us again and again. Failings, even political ones, are seldom cured by knowledge, mostly only by experience. Let us hope that the experience, which shall enable us to acquire a political talent in addition to so many other fine gifts, will not be too painful a one." An enemy may concur in von Billow's as- piration, and the experience which will enable the Germans to acquire a political talent will be the de- struction of Prussian militarism at the hands of the Allies. As yet, nothing has succeeded in Germany like success, and the system of force became the bond of 1 Morley's " Cromwell," p. 224. 2 p. io5. U THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR German unity. In the Hohenzollerns and the Army the German has seen his only bulwarks against dis- ruption and his only claim to the respect and fear of the world. Tliat is why his civic soul cringes under the jackboot, and he seeks to solace his self-esteem by humbling little nations. The root of his militarism is his disbelief in his own political aptitude ; he vaunts the War Lord, with his " mailed fist " and " shining armour," because he is conscious of the truth in Bern- hardi's insolent gibe that no people is less quahfied to determine its own political destinies. After all it is Imman nature to exalt the art in which one excels and to vilify that in which one has failed. Militarism is not merely the price which Germany pays for its political incapacity ; it is also the unction with which it flatters its materialistic soul. Nevertheless, no nation — not even the German — tolerates militarism for its own sake, but only for what it derives therefi'om in prestige or tangible profit ; and doubts have been growing in the minds of millions of Germans whether militarism was worth the price they had to pay. These doubts are expressed in the growth of the Social Democratic movement, the essence of which is not its socialism at all. " The Social Democratic movement," says von Bulow,^ " is tlie antithesis of the Prussian State." But the Prussian State is the most socialistic in Europe, so far as its methods of government are concerned ; and the anti- thesis turns not on socialistic or individualistic prin- ciple, but on the question whetlier the people are to control the State or the State the people, or, in otlier words, whether Germany is to have a responsible iP. 18fi. THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 15 government or not. To Prussian soldiers and min- isters, as to the Stuarts, the demand for responsible government portends the destruction of their State ; and in its defence they are prepared to wage a civil or any other war. " From first to last during my term of office," says that mildest of Prussian ministers, von Billow,^ " I recognized that the Social Democratic movement constituted a great and serious danger. It is the duty of every German ministry to combat this movement until it is defeated or materially changed. . . . This danger must be faced and met with a great and comprehensive national policy under the strong guidance of clear-sighted and courageous governments, which whether amicably or by fighting can make the parties bow to the might of the national idea." The " national idea " is the Prussian conception of the State, and the growth of the German revolt against it can be illustrated by a few figures. In 1884 the Social Democrats polled 550,000 votes and secured 24 seats in the Reichstag. In 1912 they polled 4,250,000 votes, secured 110 seats, and emerged from the general election the strongest party in the Reich- stag.'^ In 1913, for the first time in its history, the elected representatives of the great German people summoned up courage, over the Zabern incident, to pass a vote of censure on the Government ; and be- fore the outbreak of war, it was the common antici- pation that at the revision of the Tariff, due in 1915, the Prussian Junkers would fail to secure that protec- tion which represents the perquisites most of them get out of the Prussian State. The call was urgent for von Billow's " great and comprehensive national iPp. 171, 204, 2 Pp. ]67.8. 16 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR policy ". Probably he was not thinking of war ; but Bernhardi has a significant sentence : ^ " We must not think merely of external foes who compel us to fight. A war may seem to be forced upon a states- man by the condition of home affairs." Here we have at least one explanation of the ever- increasing truculence of German foreign policy. To seek in aggression abroad a remedy for discontent at home is an expedient as old as the State itself, and German aggression has been due to the German Government's fear of the German people. Blood and iron must justify itself to the German nation by its fruits ; and German Governments have been forced to seek abroad the means to bribe the German people into acquiescence in the insolence of military rule. Bernhardi speaks of the " obligation " w^hich lies upon the German Government to acquire colonies ; " if necessary, they must be obtained as the result of a successful European war," and " the principle of the balance of power must be entirely disregarded ".^ The megalomania of Germany's ruler made him a suitable exponent of the exigencies of German policy. As far back as 1898 he declared at Damascus : ^ " The 300,000,000 Mohammedans who live scattered over the globe may be assured of this, that the German Emperor will be their friend at all times ". ISlost of these Mohammedans were French or British subjects, and it is not usual for sovereigns to offer tlieir protec- tion to the subjects of other States. It was not because they were German subjects, but because they were not that, as Bernhardi says,* "prestige in the 1 Bernhardi, p. .38. "^ Ibid. pp. 107, lOp. 3 Biilow, p. 8;J. * Bernhardi, p. 285. THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 17 Mohammedan world is of the first importance to Germany ". Germany was already seeking means to fish in its neighbours' troubled waters, but 100,000 Mohammedans are giving to-day in France an unex- pected answer to the Kaiser's invitation. France has, however, been the nearest victim of Germany's restless provocation. " In one way or another," declares Bernhardi,^ "we must square our account with France if we wish for a free hand in our international policy. This is the first and foremost condition of a sound German policy, and since the hostility of France once for all cannot be removed by peaceful overtures, the matter must be settled by force of arms. France must be so completely crushed that she can never again come across our path." If France did not oblige by taking the offensive, she must be jockeyed into war. " We must initiate an active policy which, without attacking France, will so prejudice her interests or those of England, that both these States would feel themselves compelled to attack us."^ And then, too, of course it would be easy to persuade the United States and other neutrals that Germany was the victim of an envious and re- vengeful coalition,^ and that Bernhardi was not serious when he declared in italics that " the mainten- ance of peace never can or may be the goal of a policy ".* Let us think for a moment over the significance of this declaration, made four years ago, that "we must square our account with France," which " must be so completely crushed that she can never again 1 Bernhardi, p. 105. "^ Ihid. p. 105. 3 Ibid. p. 280. 4 Ihid. p. 37. 18 THE\COMMONWEALTH AT WAR come across our path ". That is the German concep- tion of a " square " account ; it squares, at least, with German notions of international guarantees and scraps of paper in general. The demand for a square account might seem more natural coming from the other side. In 1870-1 Germany occupied the French capital, marched her armies across to the shores of the ocean, tore away two French provinces, and exacted a vast indemnity. And yet she must be crushed again ; Moloch is still insatiate. What a vista, what a com- ment on the gospel of war ! The most crushing victory of modern times is, even so, powerless to effect the bloody purpose of the prophets of the sword. Their chosen weapon has broken in their hands, and war, even triumphant war, is bankrupt in a generation. No victory is of any use unless the vanquished falls never to rise again ; and then the victor, for lack of a foe, is reduced to ignominious peace! It is not, after all, war in which Bernhardi revels ; the lust of battle is purity itself compared with the black passions of his heart. If he really beheved in war as the sovereign tonic for civilized peoples, he would not clamour for his foes' annihila- tion ; he would rejoice in their recovery and hope to meet again in equal combat a foeman worthy of his steel. No, it is not fair fight and no favour for which the Prussian thirsts ; the consuming fire within him is oriental lust for absolute dominion. It is the recovery of France, which would have been welcomed by a chivalrous enemy, that constitutes her offence in German eyes. She has dared to revive, and, turning her saddened gaze from Alsace and Lorraine, to devote her energies to the building up THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 19 of a colonial empire second to that of Britain alone. " Our old vice, envy," as von Blilow frankly calls it,^ is the root of German malice tov^ards France, and perhaps towards Belgium also. " When," writes Bernhardi,^ " Belgium was proclaimed neutral, no one contemplated that she would lay claim to a large and valuable region of Africa. It may well be asked whether the acquisition of such territory is not ipso facto a breach of neutrality ; for a State from which — theoretically at least — all danger of war has been removed, has no right to enter into political competi- tion with the other States." This passage almost reduces German politics to a branch of criminology. Belgium was to leave the Congo free for a German scramble because Belgium was " theoretically at least " free from the menace of German invasion ! But would the surrender of the Congo State have made it any easier for the German army to advance on Paris across the Vosges instead of through Belgian territory, or have fortified Germany's respect for " scraps of paper " ? With Germany led by such philosophers and guides, the way to war must ever be facilis descensus Ave7iio. The point of view of the man in the street was put by a German on the eve of the outbreak : " Germany always wins in war, and always gets something out of it ". He knew no more about the rights, or wrongs of the dispute, but his knowledge was quite enough. " I beseech you," wrote Cromwell to the Presbyterians who rushed to defeat at Dunbar, "to think it possible that you may be mistaken." When a State like Germany disclaims responsibility 1 Biilow, p. 184. 2 Bernhardi, p. 110. 20 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR to law and ethics, the only guarantee for peace is its fear of defeat in war. Germany had no such fear in a contest with France and Russia, in which she was backed by Austria ; and she had no suspicion that Britain would intervene. Hence, when the occasion for war arose, the cause was present in Germany's fi-ame of mind. She beheved in war as the sovereign means of national development ; she had little doubt of her success, and what risks there were her Govern- ment was impelled to take from fear of .the Social Democratic menace to the Prussian State. The causes of the war indicate the only sound bases of peace : Germany's faith in the supreme efficacy of war must be undermined, her overweening confidence must be destroyed, and her people must realize the impossibility of satisfactory government under a State which can be driven into war by fear of its own subjects. It was a similar distrust of its owti subjects on the part of Austria that provoked the occasion of the war. There would have been no need to treat the Archduke's assassination as a casus belli, had the Austro-Hungarian State enjoyed the confidence of its Bosnian subjects. For, after all, that murder was a crime committed by Austrian subjects. Therein, indeed, lay its terrifying significance for the Austrian Government ; and, paradoxical though it may seem, there would have been less likelihood of war between Austria and Serbia, had the assassins been Serbian subjects. It was Slav discontent within the Austrian Empire that drove the Austrian Government to a settlement of accounts with Serbia ; and there is evidence that that determination had been formed be- THE WAR : ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 21 fore the crime of Serajevo. The root of the evil goes back to Bismarck's MachiaveUian encouragement of Austrian expansion at the expense of the Slavs in the Balkans, given with a double intent, firstly to set up a permanent rivalry between Russia and Austria and thus to provide Germany with a firm ally in her own disputes with Russia, and secondly to make Austro- Hungary less and less a Germanic State and thus leave Germany the sole exponent of Teutonic am- bitions. The five Austrian duchies, which are almost purely Germanic, with a possible outlet on the Mediterranean, would be Germany's reward for the conversion of the Habsburg monarchy into a non- Germanic state. Hence the Austrian administration and, in 1908, annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. That annexation, carried out in defiance of a European settlement and only made feasible by the weakness of Russia, consequent upon the Manchurian war and domestic revolution, was a blow at the heart of Slav aspirations. It was prepared by a bogus con- spiracy, the supposed proofs of which were forged in the Austrian Legation at Belgrade ; and the facts re- vealed at the famous Friedjung trial make it impos- sible to accept at its face value the Austrian version of the subsequent murder at Serajevo. The effect of the annexation was to deepen Bosnian discontent, and the success of their Serbian kinsmen in the Balkan wars revived the confidence of Slav aspirations. Ser- bian prosperity became a menace to the Austrian Empire because Austria had not known how to con- cihate Bosnian sentiment ; and every symptom of discontent with Austrian repression was ascribed, not to the defects of Austrian rule, but to the instigation 22 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR of Serbian intrigue. The Nemesis of the Bosnian annexation was that Austria could not feel secure so long as a Serbian State remained independent on its borders to act as a magnet for Slav attraction. It led to increased coercion within the Empire, and pointed towards an ultimate Austrian advance to Salonica. This Austrian threat might have been parried by the maintenance of a Balkan League strong enough to secure the Balkan Peninsula against outside aggres- sion. Unfortunately, in their anxiety to avoid a European conflict, the Powers of the Triple Entente connived at German and Austrian interference to pre- vent a Balkan settlement which would have satisfied the various members of the Balkan League. Austria was thus provided with the opportunity to break up Balkan unity, and get Serbia, as she thought, at her mercy. But for the refusal of Italy to support her, Austria's ultimatum to Serbia would have been de- livered in 1913. Its terms in 1914 were not intended for acceptance, and the object of military operations was to secure Austria's predominance in the Balkans.^ Bernhardi's dictum that " in no case may a sovereign State re- nounce the right of interfering in the affairs of other States " ^ — which might have justified Serbian intrigues in Bosnia — was invoked to justify Austria's interven- 1 There is ;in unfortunate misprint in Document No. 90 of the cheap reprint of the British " White Paper," where Sir Edward Grey is made to say : " I observed that, hy taking territory, while leaving nominal Servian independence, Austria might turn Servia practically into a vassal State ". " By " should be " without," and it is coi-rectly so printed in the original issue of the " White Paper ". ^ Bernhardi, p. 111. THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 23 tion in Serbia, and then repudiated to condemn the intervention of Russia. Germany insisted that the quarrel was purely a matter for Austria and Serbia to decide, but denied that it was one for Russia and Austria to fight out between them, and suddenly de- clared war on Russia in order to frustrate the pour- parlers to which Austria had consented. Protesta- tions that Germany did not take the offensive have flooded neutral countries, and they will be redoubled as the war spreads over German territory. But the ver- dict of Germany's ally is decisive ; on 1 August, Italy's Foreign Minister, the Marquis di San Giuliano, de- clared : ^ " The war undertaken by Austria, and the consequences which might result had, in the words of the German Ambassador himself, an aggressive ob- ject. Both were, therefore, in conflict with the purely defensive character of the Triple Alliance, and in such circumstances Italy would remain neutral." Germany herself has never ventured to contend that Italian neutrality was any breach of the Triple AUiance, which it would have been, had not Germany been the aggressor. In this Balkan quarrel, and even in the wider struggle between Teuton and Slav, Britain had no immediate concern, and would certainly not have intervened. There might even have been some sym- pathy with Germany's apprehension at the growth of Slavonic power. But Germany had already done much to ruin her own contention, and was prompt to complete the work. If the great issue was between Teuton and Slav, what was the point of the Agadir 1" White Paper," No. 152. 24 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR incident and of the menace to Britain's naval supre- macy ? If self-defence against Russia was her mo- tive, why ^dolate Belgium's neutrality and prepare a " smashing blow " against France ? The Russian menace was clearly no more than a pretext for hurry- ing on der Tag, If Germany feared a French attack in the rear, while her face was turned towards Russia, she could have relied on the strength of the Rhine frontier and awaited a French aggression. In that case there need have been no violation of Bel- gian neutrality or casting of " scraps of paper " to the winds, and there would have been no Britisli inter- vention. Germany knew well enough that France was unprepared ; indeed, that knowledge helped to precipitate war, and the strategy of the " smashing blow " was based on the assumption that it would have to deal with nearer 500,000 than 4,000,000 French troops with proper equipment. One does not expect in modern war to smash 4,000,000 vnth. 1,000,000. Germany's knowledge was not at fault ; her colossal blunder arose from her blindness to moral forces. She prostituted her honour at the shrine of military advantage, and learned too late that moral forces heavily weight even the scales of war. The final price the Germans will pay for their militarism will be due to the fact that they sold their conscience to their General Staff. The legend of a French plan to attack Germany through Belgium was merely an ex post facto excuse for Germany's conduct, for which, even though the legend were true, there would have been no justifica- tion, unless Belgium had connived at the breach of her neutrality ; and Germany need only have waited THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 25 for the imputed invasion by France to secure the invaluable assets of Belgian assistance and British neutrahty. Germany thinks that preparations, which were not in fact made, on the part of Britain and France to resist a German breach of Belgium's neu- trahty were in themselves a breach of neutrahty, and that defence against Germany is oflFence to Germany. Her Government was quite aware that France had no possible motive for infringing Belgian neutrality and thus opening a route to Paris, which for more than two years the German General Staff had been convinced was the best. It is incredible that the German Government would not have delayed its attack on France a few days, if it really beUeved in a French attack upon Belgium ; and its belief in its own assertions can only be accepted at the expense of its sanity. But there is no need to labour the pomt ; the German Government has flatly contradicted itself. On the very day (4 August) on which the German Foreign Office informed its Ambassador in England that it had " absolutely unimpeachable evidence " for the French attack on Belgium, the German Foreign Secretary told the British Ambassador in Berhn that German armies had crossed the Belgian frontier be- cause " they had to advance into France by the quickest and easiest way, so as to be able to get well ahead with their operations and endeavour to strike some decisive blow as early as possible. It was a matter of life and death for them, as if they had gone by the more southern route they could not have hoped, in view of the paucity of roads and the strength of the fortresses, to have got through without formidable 26 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR opposition, entailing great loss of time."^ The mili- tarism of the German Government is profound and fundamental : it thinks truth, honour, and mterna- tional law can be manipulated and mobilized as though they were armies. Belgium had been the cockpit of Europe for centuries : in 1839 the Powers, including Prussia, guaranteed Belgium's neutrality, hoping thus to preclude the worst danger of European conflict. Relying upon this guarantee, the French concentrated their efforts upon the defence of the Alsace-Lorraine frontier. Germany was thus offered a choice of obstacles, one presented by military science, the other by Germany's honour and international law. She did not hesitate ; she cast honour and scraps of paper to the winds, and then pretended that France had done the like. The Imperial Chancellor admitted in the Reichstag the wrong the Germans had done. We agree with him about the wi'ong ; we disagree when he thinks it is for the criminal to fix the amount of his penalty. It was then, and only then, that Great Britain intervened. Among the endless contradictory legends as to the origin of the war, which Germany has evolved since it became evident that she would be reduced to the defensive, there is the fable of a British conspiracy in which Russia and France were our facile tools. German promptitude is remarkable, but some- times it is a little too previous. In the German " White Book," prepared after the breach with Russia, but before the breach with England, and translated by Germans into what purports to be English for American consumption, the object is to secure Ameri- 1 British "White Paper," Nos. 157, l60. THE WAR : ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 27 can sympathy for the Germans against the Slav, and the world is told that "shoulder to shoulder with England " Germany " labored incessantly " for the preservation of peace. ^ But war with England fol- lowed on the heels of this narrative ; truth had to be tuned to the " Hymn of Hate," and England's co-operation with Germany in the cause of peace was transfigured into a conspiracy with Russia and France for the purpose of war. A'^erily, truth, like kultm% is to the German the handmaid of the German State. The continental war was made in Germany ; Great Britain's intervention was our own affair. We might have stood aloof, and Germany tried to pur- chase our connivance in her crime. We were not, in the strict letter of international law, bound to inter- vene. AVhat the Treaty of 1839 does is to bind its signatories not to idolate Belgian neutrality, and to give each one of them the right to intervene in case of violation by another. Great Britain, by standing aloof, would have countenanced but not committed a violation of international law ; intervention was a moral and not a legal obligation. It was, therefore, a debt of honour, and its repudiation would have de- stroyed her credit ; her treaties would have become, indeed, mere scraps of paper, and her name a byword and reproach. It is true that no nation has been without reproach in the past ; but if one is to wait to do right until one can do right with a conscience void of offence in the past, one will never do right at all ; and criminal precedents are no justification for crime. We should have suffered ignominy, even if Russia ^ " Germany's Reasons for War with Russia '' (Oxford Reprint), p. 137. 28 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR and France had succeeded without our assistance. If they had failed, we should have lost our honour with- out the miserable compensation of ignoble security. An enormous indemnity would have been extorted from France and devoted to building German super- Dreadnoughts. Dutch integrity would have followed Belgian into Germany's ravenous maw^ ; for, as their statesmen have obligingly pointed out, they " could not profitably amiex Belgian territory without making at the same time territorial acquisitions at the expense of Holland ".^ Sooner or later der Tag would have come for us as well as for France and Russia, and we should have had to fight for existence wdth a foe of doubled power but without our Allies' help. From that at least we are saved ; and it is more to the pomt to consider our attitude in the event of victory. It is ill counting one's chickens before they are hatched, but at least one may venture a protest against some popular forms of enumeration ; and nothing could be more unwise than the disposition to make the Kaiser a scapegoat for Germany's sins. His responsibility is heavy, and no one need fear that retribution will be light. But we are dealing with States ; our contention is that the German people, misled and deceived as they doubtless have been, have yet lent themselves to and supported this crime agamst civilization ; and some of them have been far more eager than the Kaiser himself to commit it. It is none of our business or that of our Allies to fix the redistribution of the responsibility between the various elements in the German State ; that is a matter of internal politics, and must be left to the German 1 British " White Paper," No. 157. THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 29 people themselves. It will be no concern of ours if after the war they think they have had enough of the HohenzoUerns, and deal with the Kaiser as their friends, the young Turks, dealt with their Sultan Abdul. The penalty must be imposed on Germany as a whole, and the German people must be left to share it among themselves. The different course adopted, perhaps inevitably, with Napoleon in 1815 had deplorable results. His exile at St. Helena turned French sympathy in his favour, and led to the growth of the Napoleonic legend. On that legend the Second Empire was largely based, and the Second Empire was partly responsible for the Franco-Prussian war, from which this greater war has flowed. Any attempt on the part of the Allies to mete out similar treatment to the Kaiser would have like results. His punishment must be left to German hands ; if the German people choose to absolve him and shoulder the burden themselves, they must be allowed to do so. It is, however, unlikely that they will be in a forgiving mood, and the lightest penalty that will result from a German defeat will be the loss by the HohenzoUerns of their irresponsible power. Our second caution refers to Alsace-Lorraine. The guiding principle of any settlement must be popular consent, and it is probable that a plebiscite taken after a French victory would restore those provinces to France. It does not follow that that would be the wisest course. Alsace and Lorraine were German before they were French, and re-annexation would leave a large and discontented minority. The borders of France and Germany would still march together, and fear of a German revanche would continue to 30 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR haunt the peace of Europe and speed the race for armaments. These provinces are a real borderland with a divided allegiance which cannot be wholly satisfied in one or the other scale. It might be better to recognize the fact, and not attempt to impose either nationality. If Alsace-Lorraine were neutralized, and connected by some federal bond for purposes of de- fence with Luxemburg, Belgium, and Holland on the one hand, and with Switzerland on the other, there would be a complete and continuous barrier between the rival claimants, and Western Europe would enjoy a secure prospect of permanent peace. The objection will at once be made that the fate of Belgium proves the worthlessness of guaranteed neutrahty. But this objection ignores two funda- mental points. In the first place, we are considering arrangements contingent upon a victory for the Allies ; and if they win, the penalty inflicted for the breach of Belgium's neutrahty will be enough to deter any power fi'om following German examples for se^^eral generations. Secondly, Germany was only tempted to violate Belgian neutrality by the fact that she could violate it without violating the neutrality of any other State. Belgium would not have suffered that vio- lation had she retained her union witli Holland, established at the Congress of Vienna ; and neither Germany nor any other power would have dreamt, or would dream, of violatuig a neutrality which compre- hended within its scope Holland, Belgium, Luxem- burg, Alsace-I^orraine, and Switzerland. None of these States entertains any military design save that of defence, or cherishes any ambition save that of peaceful development ; they might be well content to THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 31 pool their arrangements for defence and thus promote their peaceful development. The application of the principles of nationality and government by consent to the problems of Eastern Europe is too complex a matter to be discussed in a lecture ; and the soundness of the general principle is too obvious to require elaboration. Its denial has been the poison of the European system, and the bond of iniquity between Germany and her Allies. Turkey, says Bernhardi, is the "natural" ally of Germany ; and the similarity of their proceedings in Armenia and Belgium illustrates that natural affinity. Each of the partners is a militarist State, repudiating the principle of responsible government, and ruling by coercion heterogeneous nationalities. They are bound together by a common interest, and that interest is fatal to the peace and comfort of European peoples. These governments are forced to apply the methods of military coercion to large sections of their own subjects ; and from the dragooning of theii* own subjects it is but a step to dragooning those of other States. From plaguing Germany, militarism has spread like a plague over Europe, and its noxious effects have been felt to the uttermost ends of the earth. Indeed, while nationality lies deep in the problems of this war, it is something far more profound than a war of nation against nation. It is the great civil war of the human race, and upon its issue depend the principles of the government of men. No nation can live to itself in selfish isolation. All are members of the great society, and each one stands for something in that social intercourse. Germany stands, by her 32 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR owii presumptuous boast, for the mailed fist and shining armour, for the law of nature, " red in tooth and claw," for the limitless rights of might. For what do we stand ? We are told that we are fighting German culture. The word is a somewhat ambiguous term, and the charge is one we can bear with some equanimity. But we are not fighting the culture of Goethe and Schiller, of Lessing and Kant. That was destroyed long since by the Prussians themselves ; and, to quote words I wrote twelve years ago,^ " in the Germany of the nineteenth, as in that of the sixteenth, century an era of liberal thought closed in a fever of war ; the persuasions of sweetness and light were drowned by the beat of the drum and the blare of the trumpet ; and methods of blood and iron supplanted the forces of reason ". We are not seeking the destruction of German culture ; we hope to be the means of its re- surrection when its destroyer is vanquished. We stand " for scraps of paper," for tlie sanctity of international honour, for the security of the little nations. No one pretends or desires to make the nations of the world equal in strength or political weight, any more than anyone dreams of making equal the physical strength of individual men and women. But we all know that the greatest achievement of civilization is this : that physical strength is not used to terrorize physical weakness. It is excellent to have a giant's strength, it is tyi-amious to use it like a giant : and under the shield of civilization the weakest as well as the strongest, man or woman, goes about his duty with equal security. So we take our stand by the integrity and independence of the least of those little 1 " Cambridge Modern History," II, 278-9. THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 33 nations to whom we owe so much in rehgion, hterature, science, and art ; and we contend that they, trusting to scraps of paper with our superscription, should not fear the power of mailed fists and shining armour, but continue in peace to serve their day and generation. It is a war of principles and of ideals. We believe in poHtical, no less than in religious, toleration. Ger- man pontics stand for eternal intolerance. Hammer and anvil, anvil and hammer — such, it appears, must ever be the relation of State to State. It is an old German antithesis : " either he or I," said Luther of his fellow-Protestant, Zwingli, " must be the devil's minister ". Either France or Germany, say his modern disciples, must go to the wall. Until one Church had learnt to put up with the existence of other Churches, there could be no religious peace ; and until Germany has learnt or been taught to tolerate, not merely the existence but also the wealth and strength of its neighbours, there can be no peace upon earth and goodwill towards men. The gospel according to Germany involves a denial of every international principle and every idea save that of force ; it opens a vista of ceaseless war, or of war that can only cease with the destruction of Prussian militarism or the subjection of every State to Prussian dictation. Against this whole system of Prussian politics we have taken our stand. We have done so with delib- eration, and it is we who declared war in defence of our honour and civilization against the invaders of Belgium. It is no service to England's reputation to dissemble that fact or deny that she did her duty by choice and not by compulsion. We did our duty, not because we had no option, but because it was our 34 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR duty ; and we refused the German bribes to keep the peace. We are most of us lovers of peace, but not at Germany's price. That is the pacifism of the poUce- man who turns his back while Naboth is stoned to death and his vineyard robbed ; and the supreme value of our action does not consist in the fact that this particular Naboth will be recompensed and restored. It consists in the fact that the peoples of the world will have the assurance of deeds, which speak louder than words, that we will do the like again whenever another Ahab covets his neighbour's vmeyard. " But have you counted the cost ? " asked the German Imperial Chancellor ; " has the British Gov- ernment thought of that ? " Yes, we ha^ e counted the cost, and we pay the price on many a stricken field, in many a desolate home. But we also thovight of the paffgs of conscience involved in the great be- trayal. While Reims was being ruined and Louvain levelled with the dust, and pitiful, penniless, fugitives flocked to our shores with their records of deeds of shame, the doers thereof would, if we had stood aloof, have overwhelmed us with felicitations upon our wis- dom, our prudence, and our discretion ; and we should have been racked with the doubt that, but for our inaction, these things might not have been. We have not, indeed, prevented the spoiler, but for every deed we shall help to exact the last farthing of retribution ; and our honour remains intact. Yes, we have counted the cost ; and the heart of England goes out to those who suffer and those who sorrow. And yet our mother country looks upon the travail of her soul and is content. For in the fullness and depth of her com- passion, she can say to each one of her afflicted children, THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND ITS MORALS 35 in the words of the old cavaher poet, which also express the profoundest of the truths upon which this empire is based, and for which this war is now fought : — I could not love thee, dear, so much Loved I not honour more. II. RUMOUR AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE IN TIME OF AVAR/ Two years ago the Annual Address to the Historical Association was given by Professor Spenser Wilkin- son, and he concluded with the following words : — " Apparently the statesmen of Vienna were afraid that a well-governed and a prosperous Servia would exercise too great an attraction upon the Serbs of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia. Two courses were open to them. One would be to counterbalance the outside attraction by specially good administration and specially liberal institutions for the Serbs of Austria. The other was to limit by CA^ery means the possibilities of the two Serb Kingdoms. Austrian statesmen had hitherto seemed to prefer the second alternative. . . . But Russian national senti- ment was deeply attached to the prosperity of Bul- garia and Servia, and an Austrian attack upon Servia, unless it were provoked by some improbable criminal folly on the part of the Serbs, Avould render it almost impossible for any Russian Government not to take action to assist Servia. In that case, according to the German Chancellor, Germany would feel called upon ^ The substance of the Annual Address delivered before the Historical Association on 8 January, 1915 ; reprinted from the "Contemporary Review," March, 19"! 5. 36 HUMOUR At^n HISTORICAL SCIENCE IN WAR 37 to come to Austria's assistance, and it was evident that France could not decline to co-operate with her Russian Ally. The problem for British statesmen was whether, in the eventuality thus seen to be pos- sible, Great Britain could remain neutral consistently with her own self-respect and with the position she had hitherto held as a European Power. That was the issue which made it desirable that Englishmen should make up their minds while there was time re- garding the country's duty in Europe, and concerning the necessity of national organization for war." ^ These words are a sufficiently striking illustration of the foresight which historical training may induce ; but my object is to illustrate another aspect of the advantages of historical education, and show how some acquaintance with historical technique should help us to deal with rumour in time of war. It must be admitted that the reading of text-books or histories is of little value for this purpose, except in so far as a general knowledge of history provides a background for present events, and thus makes possible a sense of perspective, which should act as a prophylactic against extravagant hopes or fears. But the historical science to which I refer consists of those methods of investi- gation and principles of evidence, by means of which we determine or' seek to determine the truth about past events. For, if there is any substance in our claim by historical methods to establish historical truth, the application of those methods should enable us, to some extent at any rate, to sift the grain from the chaiF in the masses of rumour with which we have been overwhelmed during the last few months. ^ " Historical Association Leaflets," No. 31, pp. 6-7. 38 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR An initial difficulty consists in the elusive character of rumour. The most positive and brazen-faced rumour retires into the background and shrinks to modest dimensions when approached by the spirit of scientific examination ; and the cross-questionmg hardly begins before the lying jade takes to her heels and seeks the cover of truth. Rumour accordingly takes the form of flying words, and shuns expression in the letter that remains ; and it is well, if we can, to begin with a rumour that has got committed to print and cannot escape. A good example will be found, not in a halfpenny newspaper, but set out in the dig- nity and circumstance of a monthly re^dew for De- cember, over a familiar but pseudonymous signa- ture : — ^ " In the early hours of August 2nd," Ave are told, " Prince Louis issued to our Grand Fleet, assembled off Spithead, the order enjoining them not to disperse, but to proceed in full strength to the North Sea." That memorable order Avas deliberately published the next morning in the Sunday papers, Avhen Admiral A^on Ingenohl, duly apprised by Avireless of the British move, returned hurriedly Avith the High Seas Fleet from the Norwegian Fiords to \A^ilhelmshaven. But for the inglorious hesitancy of our Cabinet at this critical juncture, this timely action by our First Sea Lord might have led to a general engagement Avith the intercepted German Fleet in circumstances most favourable to our OAvn. Which engagement, need I remark, Avould have spared not only Sir John Jellicoe iThe " Fortnightly Review," Dec, l9l4, p. 1028. 2 The two orders were quite distinct and were given at different dates, the first on 2C July, and the second on 29 July. HUMOUR AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE IN WAR 39 and his valiant Tars, but the British people, their present anxious and unceasing vigil ! But no ; Teu- tonic Sittlichkeit was to prevail for yet another, and, from our Navy's standpoint, irretrievable sixty hours. For, by delaying by just this period the inevitable declaration of war, the shirkers in our Cabinet robbed the British Admiralty of its one chance of clinching matters without vexatious delay. Still, Prince Louis, on his own initiative, had destroyed the major portion of the hopes built by the German Admiralty upon securing the naval predominance of the Triple Alliance in the Middle Sea." Now, there are various ways of approaching a rumour of this description. It might be denied on the grounds of moral, political, or constitutional im- probability. It might be argued that, if Prince Louis of Battenberg was in the habit of giving orders on his own initiative designed to lead to an act of war, he fully deserved relegation to that limbo to which he was consigned by another and equally veracious rumour. It might be contended that to attack the German fleet before Germany had violated the neu- trality of Belgium, or even declared war on France and Russia, would have been more consonant with Teutonic Sittlichkeit than to refrain ; and it might be shown that such an act of aggression would have bound Italy, under the terms of the Triple Alliance, to side with her allies, would have deprived Great Britain of her moral justification based on German violation of Belgian neutrality, and would assuredly have divided the British mind with regard to the war. My point is that these methods are all more or less inconclusive, and end in argumentation, while the method of historical science is final in its results. 40 THt^ COMMONWEALTH AT WAU The first requisite in historical investigation is, as Michelet says, dater finement, and the first aid for historical students is some proper guide to chronology like Nicolas's " Handbook ". But for our present purpose Whitaker's " Almanack," or even a pocket diary for 1914, is sufficient. A reference to it will show that 2 August, the date of the alleged order, was not a Saturday at all, although the writer's corrobora- tive detail about publication " next morning in the Sunday papers " indicates that he attached some im- portance to the circumstance. If the writer meant the 2nd, his story about the Sunday papers is moon- shine ; if he meant the 1st, he thinks Great Britain should have attacked Germany before Germany de- clared war on Russia, and at the very moment when Austria showed signs of coming to terms. As a matter of fact there was no Grand Fleet at Spithead, or anywhere near it, on either the 1st or the 2nd of August. I happened to be in full view of Spithead from 31 July for a fortnight onwards, and there was no Grand Fleet in sight whatever. The writer has not merely neglected to look at a calendar ; he has also failed to consult the official news in the news- papers. The King held a review at Spithead on Saturday, 18 July ; the following week the Fleet re- moved to Portland. Early on Friday, the 24th, the terms of Austria's ultimatum to Serbia were com- municated to the Cabinet. On that day Mr. Winston Churchill, on his own initiative, as we learn from the " French Yellow Book," ^ ordered the Fleet at Port- 1 "The Times " edition, p. Q5. This is not correct. The order was not given until 26 July after a conversation over the telephone between Mr. Churchill and Prince Louis ; and the French attach^ RVMOUn AND msTOmCAL SCIENCE tK WaU 41 land not to disperse for manoeuvre leave ; on Monday, the 27th, the Cabinet confirmed his action and deter- mined to publish the news, while Sir Edward Grey, also on Monday, pointed out its significance in dis- patches to Petrograd and Vienna.^ Finally, it may be added, the German Fleet had already been ordered to return from the Norwegian fiords on 26 July.^ When, after four or five months for reflection and examination, a canard hke this can find its way into a high-class monthly review, we can hardly affect surprise at the monstrous legends which passed from mouth to mouth in August and September. It is, of course, easy to laugh to-day at the myth of the Russian troops ; but it will always remain a fact of serious historical import that probably nine out of every ten persons who heard it, believed it, though such a belief must have been impossible to anyone who had received a sound training in historical method, and had troubled to apply that method to the rumour. But here we encounter the difficulty of dealing with the word that is only spoken. The rumour, as I heard it, spoke of four Russian army corps, or even a quarter of a million troops, being conveyed through England ; and nothing I could say would convince my listeners of the utter impossibility of the story. But since then the believers have modified their transports, and reduced the numbers in which they believed to a modest few thousand. derived from Mr, Churchill's words an exaggei'ated impression of his share in the order. See letter from Prince Louis, 19 August^ 1915. 1 "British White Paper," Nos. 47, 48. 2 "French Yellow Book/' pp. 6O-61. 42 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR That, I may remark, was not the legend wliich gave such comfort in secret in August : then the force was to be one which should stop the terrific rush of the Germans through Belgium, or turn the tide of in- vasion from Paris, for which purpose a few thousand Russians would have been quite ineffective. It was the hope of salvation thereby that gave the Russian rumour its enormous vogue, which would never have been achieved by the news of the transport of mere details. There was nothing, of course, impossible in the transport via Archangel of a few Russian regiments, and no amount of historical science would have en- abled anyone to disprove a rumour to that effect. But the rumour, as it was current during the last week of August and the first week of September, was one which the barest familiarity with the elements of historical method should have enabled the student to confute. Again, there are various ways of approach- ing its intrinsic improbability on general grounds. Stress might be laid on the futility of landing troops in England on their way fi'om Archangel to Belgium or France, and thus incurring the delay and expense of disembarkation, transport by rail, and re-embarka- tion. The ubiquity of their presence might also have been urged ; rumours of their having been seen in the most impossible places were just as positive as rumours that they had been landed at Leith and re-embarked at Southampton. Or, it might have been asked how Russia could have succeeded in mobilizing army corps more rapidly at Archangel, with its single rail, than upon the frontiers of Poland and Galicia, and how she could have been persuaded to dispatch across the sea RUMOUR AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE IN Vl^AR 43 troops urgently needed to meet the Austrian offensive on Lublin and the German menace to Warsaw. But the allegation of probabilities only leads to argument, and has no effect upon minds untrained to balance them ; and again, it is more effective to rely on positive facts. The two fundamental conditions in historical achievement are, of course, time and space ; and it is essential to examine these with care. The falsity of the Russian rumour was obvious from the time of its appearance. Given as many months as it allowed weeks, the rumour might have been true. But it was current within little more than three weeks after the outbreak of war ; and by no existing means could four Russian army corps — let alone a quarter of a million men — have been transported from Archangel to Eng- land within that period. We have to consider the speed of the transports, and the distance to be traversed. People who glibly talk about transport commonly think of ocean greyhounds doing their twenty knots or more an hour. But these are few and the speed of a convoy is the speed of its slowest vessel, which is nearer ten than twenty knots. The Canadian contingent took nineteen days from Montreal to Plymouth, a distance of about 3000 miles. From Archangel to Leith is half as much, and ten days is the very shortest period within which troops could have been seen in England after em- barkation at Archangel. But there was the voyage to, as well as from. Archangel. No one imagines that a fleet of transports was conveniently waiting at Archangel when the war broke out, and the time required must thus be doubled. But even that is U THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR not enough. The transports would have had to be collected in England before they could sail for Arch- angel, and the collection of such a fleet from widely distant ports would itself have been a matter of weeks. Moreover, we wanted every transport we could collect for more immediate purposes, for the transport of our own Expeditionary Force across the Channel, to fetch our contingents from India, Au- straha, Canada, and New Zealand. As it was, the embarkation of the Indian troops was delayed a few days for lack of transport, and the Canadians did not arrive till ten weeks after the war had com- menced. The unlimited faith in the carrying capacity of the British mercantile navy, which the rumour assumed, was almost touching in its childlike simplicity. Of course, given time, the task was feasible. We trans- ported a quarter of a million men to South Africa during the Boer war ; but it was a matter of many months, and every transport was used again and again. The Russian rumour left no time for more than a single voyage per ship, and thus implied an almost infinite number of available transports, or an infinitely elastic capacity on the part of each. But it is well, before one talks about the possibilities of transport or the chances of invasion, to know something about the means available ; and most people discuss these matters in an airy way, as though army corps could fly with their guns, ammunition, food, and equipment on their backs, or as though a single transport were sufficient for a whole division. Now, an ocean liner of 20,000 tons carries as a rule a complement of about 3000 souls, including passengers and crew. In time RUMOUR AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE IN WAR 45 of war, troops are no doubt more tightly packed ; but on the other hand, their impedimenta, comprising guns, gun-carriages, horses, tents, etc., average out at more per head than the trunks that even an American lady carries across the Atlantic ; and I believe that each man requires about ten tons in shipping. The manager of the L.S.W.R. spoke of one huge liner taking 3000 troops at once across the channel ; but that was clearly an exception, and perhaps it did not include artillery. To transport five army corps would thus require a hundred vessels of 20,000 tons apiece. But there are only eight vessels of that ton- nage in the British mercantile marine, and the average tonnage of a transport is nearer 5,000 than 20,000. It may comfort some minds to learn from a table published by the Board of Trade, that the total amount of German mercantile shipping not accounted for as captured, detained, or held up in British or neutral ports, camiot much exceed a million and a half tons, and that this would not suffice for the transport of four German army corps to English shores. It was, in fact, properly regarded as a remarkable and, indeed, unparalleled achievement for Great Britain to have mobilized and transported to the front an Expedition- ary Force within the period during which Russia is supposed, according to the rumour, to have mobilized at Archangel, and we are supposed to have embarked there, transported to Leith, disembarked, transported to Southampton, re-embarked, and landed in France an army tv*dce or three times the size. Yet South- ampton possesses almost unrivalled facilities as a port, and is fed by a whole network of railways, while Archangel has but a single line, and its wharves can- 46 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR not be approached by ocean-going vessels.^ There should have been no need for the Press Bureau to pubHsh a denial of the story, even after the Russians had been " seen " in Belgium by a special correspond- ent. Now, these facts, or most of them, were easily ascertainable from the most ordinary sources ; a good atlas and Whitaker's "Almanack," coupled with average intelligence and a scientific habit of mind, were quite sufficient equipment wherewdth to resist these onslaughts of rumour. And yet one was pes- tered for weeks with all sorts of stories, told with a solemnity tempered with anger at the least symptom of doubt, and affirmed by all sorts and conditions of men and women. Some had seen trains' pass in the night, and knew they were packed with Russians be- cause the blinds were down and the travellers could not be seen. Others had seen them by day, and knew the troops were Russian, " because they had their cossacks on ". One retired Colonel told me he knew tlie rumour was true, because this use of Russian troops was a stroke of strategical genius of which none but Lord Kitchener was capable. A lady alleged a letter from Russia which threw some light on the matter : tlie letter had not been written in answer to any suggestion or inquiry, but merely in the ordinary course of correspondence, and it told how a party of English friends had been down to Archangel to see off the Russian troops for Scotland ! The rumour seems ridiculous now, but it was not quite an innocuous matter, and if true would have made, on my mind at least, a very uncomfortable ^ See "The Times," Russian Supplement for January, p. 10. RUMOUR AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE IN WAR 47 impression. One kind of harm it did was indicated by a passage referring to it in the " Frankfurter Zeitung ". The " Zeitung " did not, indeed, beheve the report ; but it remarked that if it was true, it proved up to the hilt what Germans beheved all along, namely, that England and Russia had been concerting measures for war long before war broke out ; for it was obvious that an operation of that magnitude could not have been carried out without long preparation. Another kind of harm is suggested by the theory that the rumour was started by the Germans themselves, with a view to blunting the stimulus to recruiting. In any case, it would be a disastrous condition of things if the Western Allies had, over and above the splendid service Russia is rendering to the common cause in the East, to rely also on Russian troops for success in France and Belgium. In such an event there would be little chance of hearing any voice but that of Russia in the ultimate settlement of Europe. The real cause, not of the rumour itself, but of its portentous vogue, I take to have been psychological. The first hint I heard myself about Russians in the West was from a newsvendor who, when selling me an evening paper containing news of the German occupation of Namur, remarked, "That's where we want some of those Russians ". Russian troops had been overrunning East Prussia and Gahcia ; in the West nothing seemed able to resist the Germans. The wish was father to the thought ; and the intensity of our desire for some means to stop the Germans set thousands of brains to unconscious work on sugges- tion. There may have been some slight foundation of fact for some of the details, such as Russian reser- 4.8 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR vists from America or the British Isles returning to join the colours. But the surprising phenomena were the spread of the rumour like wildfire, the passion with which it was held to be true, and the mfinity of corroborative detail with which it was substantiated ; and these were the outcome of desire, which is the enemy of truth. They recall to one's mmd Prof. Bury's dictum to the effect that, in so far as we desire our investigation to lead to a particular conclusion, we are not good historians ; for the desire to see cer- tain things will lead us to see them, and to ignore the facts which stand in the way. What, under these circumstances, is the value to be attached to the word of men and women ? The question often cropped up during the prevalence of the Russian rumour in a somewhat offensive form ; and on occasion one could hardly venture to suggest a doubt without being met vn\h the irate query : " Do you think I am a liar ? " or " Do you think that , who told me he had seen the Russians, is a liar ? " and the softest of answers was insufficient to turn away wrath, unless one perjured oneself and professed a belief in what one knew to be false. There was one redeeming point about the matter : no one had seen the Russians himself ; it was always a friend or a friend's friend, and one could escape without any re- flection upon one's interlocutor except in so far as his intelligence was concerned. The fact is that, while truthfulness is commonly treated as a moral quality which all may possess, it is also a matter of intellect. The desire to tell the truth is a moral quality ; the capacity to discern the truth is quite a different thing, which no amount of good intention can produce. RUMOUR AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE IN WAR 49 The retailers of the Russian rumour were not in the least dishonest ; but their capacity to discern the truth was limited, and their desire to tell it was overborne by their desire for comforting news and their wish to share it with others. Less amiable motives have led to the propagation of rumour. A proHfic source is the sense of superior- ity which some people derive from the possession of real or imaginary information, to which less favoured individuals have no access ^, and most of us have suf- fered, I imagine, from persons with cousins at the front, or in the Admiralty or War Office, whence they derive an inexhaustible supply of priceless secret information, about which their certainty is in inverse ratio to the inherent probability of the news, or of its having been communicated to them. My own advice would be to disbelieve it all ; for, so far as my ex- perience goes, English gentlemen, who are in a posi- tion to possess confidential information, are in the habit of treating it as confidential ; and the more com- municative I find an informant, the less I trust the sources of his information. In any case, such con- fidences are more likely to be the source than the corrective of rumour, and it is far safer to rely upon the scientific use of knowledge, which is public pro- perty, than upon the credulous repetition of private tittle-tattle. The November rumours about emplacements at Willesden and elsewhere for heavy German siege artillery, provide another illustration of the value of a little definite knowledge properly applied. Those tales were an echo of the famous story about concrete platforms at Maubeuge, a story which was told and 50 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR conclusively exploded three years before the war broke oiit.^ Now, we m England might be excused for ignorance of the exposure of that specific story ; and my point is to illustrate the value of public in- formation which enables us to appreciate the futility, not of one specific legend, but of all the brood. The simple criterion of all these concrete platform legends is the fact that the German 11 •2-inch gun, which made havoc of the French and Belgian forts, is not fired from a concrete platform at all, but from its own carriage, which has its wheels fitted with steel plates for the purpose, and can be discharged on any maca- damized road.^ Nor is there any fortification in Lon- don that would require the attention of an 11 •2-inch gun, and there was not the least necessity for nervous citizens to discover six feet of concrete for German guns in the three inches beneath the asphalt of scores of tennis courts. If our tremulous and indignant neighbours could divert some of their imagination from their parochial surroundings, and devote it to the task of realizing the unseen effect of British naval power, there would be less rumour, less inclination to panic, and a truer insight into the realities of the war. I am not sure that I have been preaching com- fortable doctrine, or pointing out a broad and easy way for the teachers and students of history and his- torical methods. But I hope I may have said some- thing to indicate the value and necessity of historical education. The war has produced some sudden con- versions ; and educational authorities have developed 1 See "The New Statesman," 14 Nov., 1914, 2 See Major-General O'Callaghan's letters in "The Times," 13 and 19 Nov., 1914. RUMOUR AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE IN WAR 51 an extemporary sense of the importance of historical study as a means of understanding current events. But it is easier to improvise armies than it is to im- provise an historical sense ; and that sense, indispens- able to the understanding of the issues of the war, will be even more essential to the settlement of peace. History is no mean subject, and no mere antiquarian study to satisfy the curiosity of a few self- chosen votaries. It provides the opportunity for, and re- quires, severe scientific training ; and it has a moral value as well. If we allow our desires to dictate our beliefs, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 111. THE LENGTH OF WARS/ We are most of us deeply interested in the probable duration of the war, but there is no Delphic oracle to respond to our inquiries. More than twelve months ago Lord Kitchener ventured to express in the House of Lords his conviction that the war would be long ; and subsequent events have tended to establish his reputation as a military prophet. But, if Pilate was jesting when he asked what is truth and stayed not for an answer, we need not jest when we ask what is length in war, and we should willingly wait for a response. It is a defect in adjectives that they mean little except in comparison ; and Lord Kitchener did not explain his standard of reference when he said that the war would be long. Some wars have been very long and some very short ; with which category was Lord Kitchener mentally comparing the present war, when he expressed his opinion as to its length — with the six weeks' war between Prussia and Austria in 18G6, or with the Hundred Years' War between England and France ? If the former was in his mind, the truth of his statement was self-evident, for when it was made the war had already lasted more than six weeks. If he was thinking of the Hundred Years' War, he was clearly indulging in paradox. 1 "The Times " Literary Supplement, 14 October, 1915, 52 THE LENGTH OF WARS 53 That comparison may be dismissed from^ our minds ; but there is no standard duration for wars, and no rule by which to measure their length. Everything that distinguishes man from the physical world belongs to the realm of art and not to that of science, and war, as we know it, is a human invention. There is nothing normal about the duration of war, how^ever much in- ternational law and ethics may have sought to reduce its practice to a common measure of humanity ; and history provides no generalization on the subject. It is impossible to deduce from recorded facts any defini- tion of length or brevity in war ; and when we say that the war will be long or short, we express very little unless we explain the standard we have in our mind. One man may, indeed, mean exactly the same thing when he says the war will be long as another means when he says it will be short ; we have to guess at the meaning of each by inference from the standard we think that he has in his mind. Lord Kitchener, no doubt, had in his mind the length of recent wars ; and of recent times wars have tended to be shorter than they were. The Austro- Prussian War of 1866 was an extreme case ; but each of the two Balkan wars of 1912-13 was a matter of weeks. So were the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885 and the Turco-Greek War of 1897. These Balkan conflicts were the wars of the little peoples, but the giants were almost as expeditious. The Crimean War, in which three great (and one gi'owing) European Powers were involved, was a matter of little more than a year ; ten weeks sufficed for the War of Italian Liberation in 1859 ; and the Franco-Prussian War was practically decided in the month between Saar- 54 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR bruck on 2 August and Sedan on 2 September, although Paris stood out till the end of January. Other wars of the last half- century were hardly less brief ; the world seemed bent on showing that there was, after all, a norm for the duration of wars, and that it was about a year or eighteen months. These were the limits of the multitudinous wars of 1848-9, of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8, of the Chino- Japanese War of 1894, of the Spanish- American War of 1898, of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, and of the Turco-Italian AVar of 1911-12. The Boer War of 1899-1902 ran for two years and a half, but there was some justification for the Lord Chancellor who described its later phases as " a sort of war ". Of that sort was inuch of the fighting in the Greek AVar of Liberation, which nominally lasted from 1821 to 1827, and can be easily explained as an exception to the normal brevity of nineteenth-century wars. The greatest of all the wars between 1815 and 1914 does not, however, conform to the nineteenth-century rule of brevity. The American Civil AVar lasted for four years ; and we should guess that between it and the others Lord Kitchener would draw his Une of distinction between a war that is long and a war that is short. If we had to interpret his meaning in terms more precise than the bare statement that the war would be long, we should infer his opinion to be that the war would be long, because its duration will ap- proach nearer to that of the American Civil AA^ar than to that of the dozen other wars of the century of which soldiers have some recollection or knowledge. The war, in his opinion, is likely to come nearer to four years than to one in duration ; and we might hazard THE LENGTH OF WARS 55 the guess that the three years' term fixed for enlistment expressed his interpretation of a " long war ". His prophecy would still hold good if the war were brought to an end in the autumn of 1916, for by that time it will have been longer than any great war in Europe since the fall of Napoleon. Such a duration would not make it long in the eyes of the student of history ; to him, if it lasted four years, it would still be short, for the brevity of war is but a modern phenomenon. Even the nineteenth century began with nearly fourteen years of a war which had already lasted for eight. The preceding century, which closed with the year of Marengo and Hohenlinden and the capture of Malta, had opened with the twelve years' war of the Spanish Succession, and during its course had witnessed the eight years' war of the Austrian Succession, the seven years' war for the existence of Prussia and of the British Empire, and the seven years' war for American Independence. In both the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries there were more years of war than of peace, and some of the wars were of portentous duration. There was the Thirty Years' War of Religion in Germany, and the French Wars of Religion were intermittent for a similar period, while the Dutch War of Independence lasted, save for the Twelve Years' Truce, from 1568 to 1648. Back in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there was fought the Hundred Years' War between England and France ; and one need not be an optimist to think that the present war will be short compared with that century of conflict. Wars have grown shorter because of their sharp- 56 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR ness. They might still last for generations if they were still, as they were in the JNliddle Ages, little more than the summer outings of the landed gentry and their retainers. They continued to be lengthy so long as armies were small and consisted of profes- sional soldiers. It was conscription, introduced during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, that abridged the earlier wars of generations into the nineteenth century wars of weeks and months. For armies must be fed and clothed and equipped with muni- tions, even when they are unpaid ; and the greater the proportion of citizens a nation sends to fight the shorter the time it can maintain them in the field. France under Napoleon appears to be an exception, but it is so only on the surface. By herself France would soon have succumbed ; Napoleon's later armies, like those of Imperial Rome, were largely composed of drafts from subject peoples and subservient allies, and he made others provide his equipment. Indeed, it was this necessity which compelled him to be always extending the frontiers of France until he had trebled its size. If England had adopted conscription in 1793, she might conceivably have ended the war in a couple of years ; assuredly she would not have held out for twenty-two. No other Power was able to offer more than an intermittent resistance to France. Even Russia was only at war with Napoleon in 1799, 1805-7, and 1812-15. Conscription is the method by wliich nations have raised the stakes in the gamble of war ; the play is higher, but the game is sooner won or lost. Continental Powers have, however, no option in the matter ; if one adopts conscription the others must also, otherwise they will be knocked out without THE LENGTH OF WARS 57 the chance of playing a cautious and longer game. An island State supreme at sea is in a happier case ; it can, if it likes, put all its men into the field. But if it does, it must win in a Umited time ; an effort that costs £4,000,000 a day cannot last for tAventy-two years. So far England has, as a rule, been in the long wars of history and out of the short ones. There are, of course, exceptions ; some of our naval wars have been short like those with the Dutch ; and our in- terventions in the religious wars of France and Ger- many were brief, ineffective, and inglorious. But we endured a hundred years' war with France, and we fought throughout the twelve years' war of the Spanish Succession, nine years of war between 1739 and 1748, five years from 1756 to 1761, seven years from 1775 to 1782, and twenty-two years from 1793 to 1815. The length of our wars may be attributed to our national habits of being unprepared when they start, sticking to them when we have begun, and economiz- ing our effort during their progress, all of which habits depend upon our command of the sea. For, as Bacon remarks, " thus mucli is certain, that he that com- mands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as Httle of the war as he wiU. Whereas those that be strongest by land are many times, never- theless, in great straits." Prussia, on the other hand, has always preferred a policy of short wars and quick returns ; and, for a nation which believes in the virtue of war, the periods of her indulgence have been remarkably brief. Her main anxiety during the Thirty Years' War was to keep aloof; and, although the Great Elector fought 58 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR more than one war, none of them lasted thi-ee years. The father of Frederick the Great fought but one in- glorious campaign during a reign of twenty-seven years ; and his more famous son, who provoked the War of the Austrian Succession by seizing Silesia in 1740, was the first to escape its toils. He made a treaty with Austria in October, 1741, broke it in November, made peace again in 1742, re-entered the war in 1744, and abandoned it in 1745. He fought, it is true, for seven years between 1756 and 1763, but it was through no choice of his that Prussia then waged the longest war in which she was ever in^^olved ; it was only England and some fortunate Russian ac- cidents that saved her from total destruction. For the rest of his long reign Frederick remained at al- most unbroken peace. The same features character- ized Prussian action during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period ; one of the first to challenge France by force of arms, Prussia was also the first to make peace three years later, in 1795 ; and for ten years she watched, as a careless spectator, the growth of Napoleon's power. She even stood aside, bribed by the offer of Hanover, while Austerhtz was fought, and met with a richly-deserved retribution at Jena and Auerstadt in 1806. For six years she groaned under Napoleon's heel, and she sent her troops to assist in the ruin of Russia. The disaster of JVIoscow hardly gave her courage to rise against her master, and her Government was jockeyed into independent action by Colonel Yorck at Tauroggen. The A¥ar of Liberation was over in fifteen months, but even that brief period was longer than any other war which Prussia fought in the nineteenth century. THE LENGTH OF WARS 59 It was in consonance with her past that Prussia laid her plans in 1914 for a war that should be brief. It is in consonance with ours that we should be sur- prised by the advent of war, and only by slow degi'ees work up to the requisite standard of effort for success. We do not as a nation prepare for aggressive war, because, unlike the Prussians, we do not regard war as legitimate means for pushing our national business ; and it never entered our heads that defence might de- mand the dispatch of two million troops across the sea. But the lack of precise calculation is not altogether a bad thing. He is a foolish optimist who thinks that a war can be won by a definite number of troops or in any given time ; for, in the words which Thucy- dides puts in the mouth of the Corinthian envoys to Sparta, " war, least of all things, proceeds according to programme ". He is a sane optimist who deduces from English history the conviction that, being per- suaded of the justice of our cause, we shall make the effort required for success, however great it may be and however long it may last. Meanwhile, however brief the war may be, com- pared with our wars in the past, the present will seem to be intolerably tedious, partly because we are accus- tomed to live at a faster pace than our slower forbears, and partly because we forget. Distance is foreshort- ened in time as well as in space : and, as we look back on the victorious peaks in our history, we lose sight of the intervening valleys of despond. y\^e remember Horace Walpole's merry quip in 1759: "We are forced to ask every morning what victory there is, for fear of missing one " ; and Wellington's Peninsular War looks to our backward gaze like a glorious 60 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR pageant leading on from Talavera to Salamanca, from Salamanca to A^ittoria, and thence to the cro^Miing mercy at Waterloo. But we fail to realize the years over which the victories were spread, or the disap- pointments and defeats which interrupted processional glory. Wellington had to retreat almost as often as he advanced ; in the wintei of 1812 the French must have seemed as firmly established in Spain as the Ger- mans appear to be in Belgium, and in August, 1759, to be as impregnably based on Quebec as the Turks to-day on GaUipoli. Eleven days before the storming of the Heights of Abraham, Wolfe wrote to Pitt : " The obstacles we have met \at\\ in the operations of the campaign are much greater than we had reason to expect or could foresee ; not so much from the number of the enemy (though superior to us) as fi'om the natural strength of the country ". To Pitt's col- league he wrote that his health was " entirely ruined without the consolation of doing any considerable ser- vice to the State, and without any prospect of it " ; while the French Governor in his dispatches would hardly give the British a week longer to maintain the siege. There were those in 1759 as well as in 1915 who said we were beaten because we had not yet succeeded. Yet Wolfe was not an incapable soldier, nor Pitt an incompetent Minister of War. We were surprised when the war began ; we are surprised that it lasts so long ; and we shall be sur- prised wlien it ends. A few of the wise (and more of the wicked) had an inkling that the war was at hand ; they were not surprised by its advent, and some may not be surprised when it ceases. But if they know the hour of peace, like wise men they will not tell. There is on record a bet made in April, 1815, after THE LENGTH OF WARS 6l Napoleon's return from Elba ; it was to the effect that by New Year's Day, 1816, the allies would have lost to Napoleon more territory than they had won. Within two months of the bet, Napoleon's only footing was on board H.M.S. Bellerophon. It would be easy to make much more foolish forecasts to-day. The knowledge of subsequent events, said Froude, has spoilt the writing of history ; and ignor- ance of the future is the very stuff of which daily (and weekly) journalism is made. Some day, however, a fortuitous forecast of peace will prove correct, and the author will plume himself on his prophetic soul, with as much justification as those who are provmg their prevision of war with Germany in 1914 by their pro- phecies of war with Russia in 1904, and with France at the time of Fashoda. One prophesies not accord- ing to knowledge, but according to temperament. History, however, suggests some limits for the guesswork of vaticination, though they are somewhat elastic. One historian has committed himself to the view that the war will last ten years ; another wrote last spring that it was more Ukely to last eight years than eight months ; while a thu-d thought a year ago that it would end in the winter of 1915-16. The first was a mediasvalist, the second was almost a profes- sional pessimist, and the third, impressed by the causes which shortened war in the nineteenth cen- tury, paid too little heed to the "progress," which tends to neutralize their effect. The end of the war would be well in sight but for the growth of medical science and the example of Florence Nightingale ; for between them our doctors and nurses enable some sixty per cent of the wounded to return to the firing line. The war would also have ended ere now but 62 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR for the increased efficiency of human production, which enables one man to create enough sustenance for two, and thus makes it possible for half mankind to concentrate on war. Unless man's control of his natural instincts keeps better pace with his growing command of material forces, there might come a time when the majority would be permanently engaged in war while the minority provided the means. The war will be further prolonged by the difficulty of making peace. It cannot be ended, like normal wars between nation and nation, by a mere trans- fer of territory or payment of an indemnity. For this is Europe's civil war, and civil wars are long. The American Civil War was the longest great war since 1815, and the causes which made it an excep- tion to the rule of brevity operate in the present con- flict. It is not merely a doctrine in arms, as Burke described the French Revolution, that we are fight- ing, but the doctrine of arms, the creed of Treitschke and Bernhardi that the arbitrament of war is not bar- barous but the climax of political science ; and that is not a cause with which peace can be made. It has to be crushed, or its adherents converted ; and the alternatives are convertible terms, for argument fails to persuade the believer in force. But belief in force is a feeble creed, if a creed at all ; it evokes no loyalty and crumbles to dust in time of trouble. Even a German does not believe in war for the sake of war, but only because he thinks war pays ; and his zeal for tlie war will speedily cool when once he is convinced tliat he cannot make others pay his colossal and rapidly mounting bill. It is safer to say that the war will end with a crash in Germany tlian to predict the date. IV. THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS/ No cry has been more popular in Germany, since the retreat of her High Seas Fleet to its harbours and the failure of her submarine campaign, than that for the freedom of the seas ; and recently Sir Edward Grey has, amid some protest, admitted that the question is one that might receive attention after the war, and in connexion with other proposals for limiting the scope of military and naval operations. The phrase is puzz- ling on account of its ambiguity ; and we may assume that when Sir Edward Grey used it he meant some- thing different from what the Germans have claimed. They have regarded the cry as one of their trump cards in their efforts to secure American sympathy, or rather to provoke American antipathy to Great Britain ; and the recent American Note ^ on the subject has been hailed in Germany as proof of fundamental identity between German and American interests in, and notions of, the freedom of the seas. It wiU, however, require a good deal of inflation to distend the molehiU of American discontent into the mountain of German pretension. The American ^ " The Times " Literary Supplement, 18 November, 1915. 2 On British contraband and blockade policy, published on 7 November. 63 64 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR case is a civil action to abate such inconveniences asa state of war imposes upon a remarkably flourishing commerce between the United States on the one hand and Germany and neutrals, from whom Germany de- rives much of her supplies, on the other. It takes the form of process at common law, and assumes that the letter should be respected without reference to any change in military circumstance. Thus, agreements and precedents dating from pre-submarine periods are cited to debar British warships from conveying mer- chant vessels into port for the purposes of search. The rule that a blockade must be " impartially " ap- plied is interpreted as meaning that it must be applied to all neutrals with equal effectiveness ; and the stop- page of American vessels to Germany is considered harsh because Swedish vessels camiot be stopped in the Baltic. On such a plea, if Great Britain were at war with Turkey, and Russia and the United States were neutral, Britain would be precluded from deahng with American trade to Turkey in the Medi- terranean because it could not deal with Russian trade to Turkey in the Black Sea. Complaint is also made of the time taken in searching American ships, a delay largely due to the ingenuity of American shippers in concealing contraband ; and generally it is assumed that the impossibility of making a blockade completely effective should preclude the attempt to make it as effective as possible. These are, compared with the issues of this war, trivial matters, capable of amicable argument and accommodation. Their only connexion with the " freedom of the seas " which Germany wants is that in them Germany hopes to find the grit with which THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 65 to impede the machinery of British naval power ; and Herr Dernburg, during his residence in the United States, devoted not a httle of his powers of persuasion to the task of showing that British " navahsm " is a greater menace to the world's liberties than German miUtarism. It may be worth while inquiring what he meant by British navalism and its antithesis, the free- dom of the seas. Herr Dernburg has helped us to define that issue by a speech he made in New York last January ; ^ and speaking in that classic land of pacifism, where they convert their eagles into harbingers of peace, he con- trived to represent British navalism as the one great obstacle to the world's peace, and the " freedom of the seas " as its one desideratum. " The whole fight and all the fight [he said] is on one side for the absolute dominion of the seven seas ; on the other for a free sea — the traditional mare liherum. A free sea will mean the cessation of the danger of war and the stopping of world wars. The sea should be free to all. It belongs to no one nation in particular — neither to the British, nor to the Ger- mans, nor to the Americans. The rights of nations cease with the territorial line of three miles from low tide. Any dominion exercised beyond that fine is a breach and an infringement of the rights of others." So far we have a statement of fact, which is true in a sense Herr Dernburg did not intend, foUowed by a flight of pacific optimism and a string of platitudes. The fight is reaUy for " the traditional mare liberum^'' a phrase given vogue by Grotius in 1609 and made applicable during his lifetime by the defeat of the 1 9 January, 1915. 5 66 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR Spanish Armada, which, as Queen EHzabeth said, made the sea free to all men. The " traditional uiare liberum'' dates, in fact, from the establishment of British naval power ; would it survive the transference of that power to Germany ? The fate of Belgium and of Luxemburg illustrates German ideas of other people's freedom ; and the incidents of the " Lusitania," the " Ai'abic," and the '* Ancona " do not suggest that, if she had the opportunity, she would apply a different definition to the sea. We may thus agree with Herr Dernburg's opening sentence ; but we camiot agree ^\^th liis optimistic mference that freedom of the seas means the cessation of war. What had the freedom of the seas to do with Germany's war on Denmark in 1864, on Austria in 1866, and on France in 1870, or with Austria's ultimatum to Serbia and the Kaiser's to Russia m 1914 ? Can Herr Dernburg's meaning be that, but for British naval power, no State would venture to challenge the liberties which Germany takes on land ? / His following platitudes are, however, unimpeach- able. The sea should be free to all, and it is so in V times of peace. It belongs to no nation in particular, and Britain's sovereignty, like that of every other Power, is limited to her territorial waters. On the high seas she enjoys no right and exercises no juris- diction that is not exercised by every other State. Where, then, is the dominion to which the Germans demur ? What is their grievance, and how would they liberate the sea if they won the victory ? Of all the peoples that go down to the sea in ships the Ger- mans have the least cause to complain ; for upon the freedom of the sea, enjoyed during British supremacy. THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 67 they built up a vast fabric of oceanic trade and domestic prosperity. Their great liners plied the ocean without let or hindrance ; they freely used British ports and territorial waters, and drew not a little profit from British traffic and passengers. Germany has, indeed, enjoyed a freedom of trade which she has herself denied to Great Britain. And she has never paid the price of admiralty. Long before she set sail on the ocean, other peoples — Portuguese, Spaniards, Genoese, Dutch, French- men, and Danes — had explored the waters of the globe and charted its hidden shoals and rocks, discovering passages liere and passages there, and revealing the dangers of the deep. In the days of the Merchant Adventurers and chartered companies, mariners sailed with their lives in their hands, and the risks that the trader ran made heavy demands on his profits. They cleared the waters of pirates, and made the high seas a safe and famiHar highway. Germany contributed nothmg to the science of navigation, to the art of naval construction, to the discovery of new worlds, or to the pacification of the ocean. She has entered into the mheritance of other men's labour and sacrifice without paying toll or fee. No German Sir Hum- phrey Gilbert and no German Sir John J'ranklin braved the Atlantic in 60-ton barques or left his bones to bleach amid Arctic snow. The German has ever been the pedlar and not the pioneer of civilization, the follower of the camp and not the leader of the xaiv. He has bred neither conquistadores nor Pilgrim Fathers ; and in these latter days, while the eagles of enterprise — Peary, Amundsen, Scott — winged their flight to the poles, the vultures swooped down upon 68 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR Belgium. Does Hen* Dernburg desire the sea to be free for similar German liberties ? He wants it, like Belgium, to be neutralized. " To prevent wars in the future [he continued] we must establish that the free seas shall be plied ex- clusively by the merchant marine of all nations. Within their territory people have tlie right to take such measures as they deem necessary for their defence, but the sending of troops and war machines into the territory of others or into neutralized parts of the world must be declared a casits belli. ... If that be done, the world as it is divided now would come to permanent peace." Surely there is no optimism like that of a militarist converted by a voyage across the Atlantic into an apostle of permanent peace. In 1839 Belgium was declared by all the Great Powers of Europe — including Prussia — to be a " neutralized part of the world," and the violation of its neutrality was made a casus belli. But where is the permanent peace, and with what assurance can those who broke that pact of neutrality appeal for the neutralization of the sea as a guarantee ? We get, however, a notion of what Germany means and wants by a " neutral " sea. She has explained that Luxemburg, as distinct from Belgium, observed a true neutrality towards Germany by yielding access to German armies in their attack on France. Clearly a " neutral " land is one which facilitates a German offensive, and a *' neutral " sea is one which protects German armies during their progress ! For the point of this proposed prohibition of the transport of troops and war machines across the sea is obviously to preclude the intervention of Britain in THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 69 Europe. German armies may ride roughshod over Belgium or France, but the freedom of the seas dis- appears if British troops are sent to the rescue. The real ??iare liberum is one which secures to German armies complete Uberty of action on land ; and the real German grievance against British dominion is that it protects other continents from the interpretation of neutrality which Germany has dictated to Belgium and Luxemburg. There is much to be said for the limitation of armaments, and pacifism is no doubt an attractive dream ; but surely no one but a German would set out to commend to the world a pacifism confined to the seas, and seriously propose to limit British fleets to territorial waters while leaving Ger- man armies to roam at liberty over the land. We should, most of us, like to abolish war ; but German simplicity reaches its climax in the grave suggestion that war should be excluded from the sphere of Ger- many's weakness, and left uncontrolled in the sphere of her strength. Hen* Dernburg does, indeed, admit that the sending of troops " into the territory of others must be declared a casus belli,'' and he thereby justifies Serbia, Belgium, France, and Russia ; but how is that' declaration to bring the world to permanent peace ? Post-prandial oratory, indeed, seldom reached a sublimer height of absurdity than in Herr Dernburg's plan for the neutralization of the seas ; and we should not have expected a proposal which would destroy America's hold over the PhiHppines and the Panama Canal to commend itself to an American audience. Suppose, too, that war broke out between Great Britain and Russia, Russia could invade India over- land, while Britain would be forbidden to defend it 10 TtiE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR by forces sent over sea. Or, in case of war between Great Britain and the United States, Canada would be left at the mercy of an American invasion without the possibility of assistance from the Mother Country. The invasions would, no doubt, be casus belli, accord- ing to Herr Dernburg's ingenious scheme ; but what is the use of a legal casus belli if you are debarred by a neutral sea from waging the war to which you are en- titled by law ? So far as Anglo- German relations are concerned, the proposal would have its points, if only we could put more trust in German respect for a neutral sea than in her respect for a neutral Belgium ; for Great Britain and all her Dominions would be safe from German attack. But do we gather that Herr Dernburg forswears Germany's right to recover Tsing- tau or German South- West Africa ? And for what has Germany built a High Seas Fleet if Herr Dern- burg is going to confine it to territorial waters ? He surely does not want an international law to confirm the accomplished deeds of the British Navy ? His proposal is rather, we fear, the periphrasis of a plan to abolish sea-power because Germany does not possess it, and to exclude Great Britain from a voice in the world's affairs — a simple device, in fact, to get rid of two inconvenient islands. Great Britain and Japan ! But, if we are out for fi-eedom, and if Herr Dern- burg will not begin by fi-eeing the land, we might well begin at the other end of the scale, which is not the sea, but the air. For if the sea should be free, surely the air should be freer still ; and we are surprised that this neophyte of peace did not suggest the neutrality of the air, or at least of the air which lies over the open sea. Why not propose the prohibition of the THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 71 transit of war machines through the air, which belongs to no particular nation, neither to the British, nor to the Germans, nor to the Americans ? The air is not yet the link of anyone's empire, and we might be pre- pared to meet in a friendly spmt any such effort to limit the horrors of war. Is it that Herr Dernburg sets more store by Zeppelins than by Dreadnoughts, and again cannot bring himself to suggest the neutrali- zation of any sphere in which Germany hopes to triumph ? Naval power is, however, immoral in Ger- man eyes, because in time of war it acts in restraint of trade, and in particular enables Great Britain to inter- fere with Germany's food supplies. The notion that a belligerent has a moral right to receive all the food he requires did not occur to the Germans during the siege of Paris ; and in the present war the Central Empires have prevented the West of Europe fi'om importing Russian harvests more effectively than Great Britain has stopped Germany's supplies. Again, it is only on sea that control is an infringement of the rights of others ; on land it is quite legitimate. Ger- many's moral code is a very simple one : whatever she can do is right, whatever she cannot is wrong. Ger- many's power on land is her natural liberty, but the freedom of the seas consists in the restraint of her foes. The German proposal is also a thinly- veiled scheme to dispose of the British Empire by international law. Germany knows well enough that the sea is the spinal cord of the British realms, and that without control of their means of communication these realms would be- come the disjecta membra of an Empire. Each colony and dominion would be thrown back on its own re- sources, and left at the mercy of any powerful neigh-. 72 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR bour, or of any oversea enemy with inadequate respect for scraps of paper. Sea-power was an indispensable preliminary to the growth of the British Empire, and the Spanish Armada had to be defeated before England could found a single permanent colony. The German Empire rests on a different basis ; it was created by Bismarck and maintained for twenty years mthout a fleet at all ; and Herr Dernburg's proposal itself is a proof that sea-power is not a German necessity ; other- wise he would not suggest its elimination. The Ger- man High Seas Fleet is a whim of the Kaiser's, an ostentatious luxury — unless it is designed to estabhsh a German dominion which Herr Dernburg pronounces incompatible wdth the freedom of the seas. To neutraUze the ocean would have the same effect upon the British Empire that a neutralization of the frontiers of Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria, and the prohibition of the transport of troops and war machines across them, would have upon Germany. Herr Dernburg's project of freedom is a virtual invitation to inter- national lawyers to accomplisli that extinction of the British Empire which the German Navy has failed to achieve. But the Kaiser, we are told, only demands " a place in the sun ". It is an ingenious phrase which vividly illustrates the Prussian mind. We are apt to regard the British Isles as a very considerable place in the sun, but Germany, with a much greater area and population, is not, it appears, a place in the sun. Its people sit in darkness and only see sunshine in realms that belong to others. A place in the sun is not the object of their aspirations, for that they already pos- sess. Their object is control of. the sunshine, and tiiat THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS IS is their meaning of empire. They fail to comprehend the British Empire, and think that Great Britain dominates its dominions. . . .^ The British realms are free nationahties, and their freedom depends upon the freedom of the seas, which would disappear with a German victory. Nor are the British realms alone concerned ; the century which has elapsed since Tra- falgar has been marked by the climax of British naval supremacy. It has also been marked by the greatest growth of nationality all the world over : behind British navalism has sheltered the Monroe Doctrine, and the peoples whom that doctrine nursed into independence ; and but for British sea-power there might have been no independent Greece or Italy. Sea-power has been a trust on behalf of liberty vested in Great Britain, and the trustees will not permit the Kaiser to pervert it to German purposes. Germany herself is one of its greatest beneficiaries in time of peace, and her complaint is that she cannot do on sea what she does on land in time of war. But the nation that makes war debars itself by its own act from the freedom which it enjoys in peace. There is no freedom without law, and the freedom of the seas in time of war depends upon the extent of inter- national law and the respect that is paid to its behests. No one has done more than the German, by the mouth of his prophets and the deeds of his warriors on sea and on land, to limit the scope, hamper the operation, and impugn the validity of international law. Ger- many would almost seem to regard it as valid only so far as it is convenient to herself or inconvenient to her ^ I have omitted here a few sentences which are expanded on pp. 81-8. U THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR enemies ; and she will plead with more chance of suc- cess at the bar of public opinion for a legal freedom of the seas when she has put off her shining armour and her belief in her mailed fist and puts her trust in the forces of reason and hght. If she believes in the reign of law and the rule of freedom on the seas, let her show her faith by good works in establishing law and Hberty over the land she has won by the sword. V. THE WAR AND THE BRITISH REALMS.^ Towards the end of June there appeared in the " Kolnische Zeitung " an article by Prof. Schroer, an erudite student of EngUsh philology, on the eiFect of the war upon the relations between Great Britain and her colonies. It was an extended comment, some- what on the hnes of a lament that was published in " Der Tag " in April. " We expected," said " Der Tag," " that British India would rise when the first shot was fired in Europe, but in reality thousands of Indians came to fight with the British against us. We anticipated that the whole British Empire would be torn in pieces, but the colonies appear to be closer than ever united with the Mother Country. We ex- pected a triumphant rebellion in South Africa, yet it turned out nothing but a failure. We expected trouble in Ireland, but instead she sent her best soldiers against us. Those who led us into all these mistakes and miscalculations have laid upon them- selves a heavy responsibility." From the point of view of the genesis of the war, it would be interesting to discover by whom and with what object the German people were thus mis- led and deceived ; but Prof. Schroer's purpose is to ^ Written in July, 1915 ; reprinted from *' The Yale Review," January, 1916. 75 ?6 TitE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR explain the behaviour of Great Britain's allies and colonies. So irrational and paradoxical does their attitude appear to the German political theorists that Herr Schroer is driven back on a supernatural inter- pretation, and he discovers the secret in English witchcraft ! So bewitching are our beaux yeiioc, or rather our " evil eye," that our rebels fall on our neck, and our rivals, forgetting the crimes of perfidious Albion, rush to its assistance. In this war it was a case of Great Britain rushing to the assistance of Bel- gium, France, and Russia rather than the reverse ; but we may pass over that trifle in our search for a more rational account of the phenomena than that which commends itself to the professor. We are not in England quite so convinced of our powers of fascination, whether for good or evil, and we suspect that our allies, and perhaps even our colonies, are fighting by our side, not so much because they love us the more as because they like Germany less. In this paper I am not so much concerned with Great Britain's allies as with her colonies — their rela- tions to the causes of the war and their probable rela- tion to its settlement. I use the term " colonies " without prejudice : it is unpopular in the great domi- nions of the British Crown because it fails to express their undoubted national status ; and a far better term would be " realms ". The United States has set the example of a plurality in unity, and the " British Realms " might be singular in number without being singular in the sphere of political terminology. It represents a better tradition and a truer conception of facts than " British Empire ". Nor is it without reluctance that I write even of probabilities in con- THE WAR AND THE BRITISH REALMS 77 nexion with the settlement after the war. In a British university, which attaches great importance to poUtical science, I recently ventured to propound the question, " Of what value is political science to politi- cal prophecy ? " The question was regarded as some- thing of a slur upon the scientific character of the study of politics, but the answers were pitched in a modestly minor key. It is clear that anyone, who forms or commits to print a forecast of the effects of this war upon the correlation of British realms, runs risks which angels avoid. So far as the causes of the war are concerned the problem is more simple, though this simpHfication does not help to dispel the bewilderment of our German critics. For this war had no colonial causes. Unlike the Seven Years' War of the eighteenth century and the Boer War of 1899, it had no roots in a great rivalry in other contments than Europe ; and Cana- dians, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders, and Indians have not trooped to the colours because they were menaced within their borders. Great Britain has during the last half century had colonial difficulties with France, Russia, and the United States, and some of them have threatened to bring war within measurable distance. But she has had none such with Germany. The partition of Africa in 1890 was effected without any serious friction, and the friction that arose at Algeciras and Agadir had no reference to British colonies. When war broke out in August, 1914, there was hardly a cloud on the horizon of British dominions across the sea. The war broke out over questions that were purely European, and Great Britain intervened because she could not afford to 78 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR remain neutral while Germany swept away Belgian neutrality and proceeded to conquer France. What, it may be asked, was there here to stir Indian princes, Boer statesmen, or the miners and farmers of Canada and Australia ? There were, no doubt, particular causes of offence which tended to provide a common bond of antipathy to the ubiquitous German. Indian princes, with a lineage older than that of the Hohenzollerns, and with a culture more humane, had during the Boxer expedi- tion been termed and treated as " niggers " ; and more recently the German Crown Prince had, on a visit to India, behaved in such a way to his fellow-guests and hosts that only his character as a guest saved him from public resentment. Australians, too, looked with no friendly eye on their neighbours in Kaiser AVilhelm's Land and the Bismarck Archipelago. But there was nothing in this to make war. Neither Canadians nor Australians were fond of the Japanese, and it needed a good deal of provocation to range Australians and Japanese, Canadians and Hindus in a common cause against the Kaiser. It has often been remarked that our primitive ancestors felt no need to state and define their customs in written codes until they were brought uito contact with the habits and thoughts of strange nations. That contact revealed to their minds the contrast between them and the strangers, and also made them appreciate their own common inheritance. In some such way the pushing emissaries of Kultiir brought home to the British realms the fact that behind all their idiosyncrasies of constitution, policy, and circumstance there was a com- munity of spirit which only grew conscious by contrast, THE WAR AND THE BRITISH REALMS 79 and can best be described in terms of contradiction. It would be vainglorious to say that the British realms are everything which the German Empire is not, but it is a sufficient source of satisfaction that they are little what that Empire is. The violation of Belgium's neutrality and the wanton attack upon France lit up by a flash the gulf between British and German politics, and in the inevitable clash the British realms were united. None but a few extremists in Canada and South Africa protested that those dominions should observe a " national " neutrality while the Empire was at war. Herzog, Delarey, Beyers, and De Wet cherished a blind but not incomprehensible passion for revenge in South Africa ; but the handful of French nationalists in Canada, who wanted to seize the particular occasion, when the British Empire and France were at one, to estabhsh their nationality by standing aloof, present a more complex psychological problem. This community of spirit was fortified by a com- munity of interest. There were no particular colonial interests in the war, or causes for colonial interven- tion ; but there was a common colonial cause which is best described as naval. It left the Dominions no choice. They might or they might not approve Great Britain's scruples about scraps of paper or her refusal to regard with idle indifference the German spoliation of France. In point of fact they felt less hesitation than some of the slow-witted folk at home. But whether or no they approved of British inter- vention, there could be no doubt of their action when once the die was cast. For the event must decide between British and German naval supremacy, and 80 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR upon that issue depended the liberty and the exist- ence of each and all of the British realms.^ That fact helps us to understand the whole-hearted co-operation of the British realms in this European war. Mahan's words have not fallen on deaf ears in British dominions. No compulsion, no suggestion even, was required from Downing Street to evoke lavish offers of service from every quarter. Had Great Britain been compelled to rely on compulsion, she would have been powerless. She could not have extracted by force a man or a dollar from Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, or India. Help was forthcoming because every dominion and colony knew that upon the supremacy of the British Na^y and the maintenance of its communications by sea depended the very existence of the British Empire, and the freedom of each of its realms to develop its o^v\\ unfettered future. That is why the old vaticinations about the disruption of the Empire have proved so signally false ; that is why, even amid the horrors and venom of war, we can feel indebted to Germany. The greater the threat to British naval power, the stronger the bond of unity between British dominions. To the Kaiser and von Tirpitz we owe not a little of the modern growth of British imperial sentiment ; and the disappearance of every danger would test the unity of the British realms more severely than any German aggi'ession. They are pro- tected, but not held together by force ; and nothing binds closer the bonds of consent than the threat of forcible dissolution. 1 I have omitted here some paragraphs on the freedom of the seas covermg the came ground as the preceding article. THE WAR AND THE BRITISH REALMS 81 That is the secret of British witchcraft and Ger- man bewilderment. The votaries of the gospel of might are bhnd to the strength of affection, and German publicists and philosophers have frankly con- fessed their complete inability to understand the British Empire. How we could afford, within five years of the conclusion of a bitter war, to allow the Boers far more liberty than Germany could after forty grant to Alsace-Lorraine, how we could govern 300,000,000 in India with smaller forces than Ger- many could govern 4,000,000 across the Rhine, were problems beyond the scope of their philosophy. Some even saw in that contrast a proof of British impotence, thinking no doubt that force is the only foundation of power, and ignoring the fact that military strength is a common symptom of moral weakness. The misunderstanding was naturally most comprehensive in the militarist mind ; but it is not confined to militarists or even to Germany. It is not, indeed, easy to explain the British Empire to Britons themselves ; and the difficulty arises from a conserva- tive cUnging to obsolete \dews and a failure to grasp the significance of modern developments. Some people still think of the British Empire as unchanged since the days of George the Third ; and as late as 1840, the Duke of Wellington affirmed that its two fundamental principles — the responsibility of colonial executives to colonial parliaments, and imperial unity — were incompatible. The term " empire " is itself unhappy and incorrect, for nothing less Uke an empire than the British realms could well be conceived. Empire impHes absolute rule and militarist methods ; it is a scientific description of the Kaiser's Germany, 82 TtlE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR but it has no relevance to the realms of George the Fifth. As " emperor " he possesses no legal or con- stitutional powers whatever, and " empu-e " defines neither his nor any other Briton's authority. In the British Isles and colonies he is simply king, and the Act which made Queen Victoria Empress of India conferred but a high-sounding title. The singular word obscures a vital diversity. In a popular but shallow book, which attempted be- fore the war to transplant the teachings of Treitschke to British soil, it was laid down that the purpose of the British Empire is to give every one of its citizens an English mind. Nothing could be more fatuous or more false. If it were true, there might be a differ- ence in degree, but there would be none in essence, between the British and the German Empires, and British might stand in the dock with German Kultur. For the fundamental objection to German Kultur is not its barbarity, but its uniformity and its insol- ence, its belief in a single superior type, and its claim to force that type upon others ; while the essence of the British Empire is its heterogeneity, its lack of system, and the mutual forbearance of its component parts. Possibly that is why it angers as well as puzzles the German mind. To Potsdam, if not to Vienna, the British Empire must seem a loose and ramshackle affair, with no logical claim to existence in a world of scientific bureaucracy. Its function is not to impose an English mind on Irishmen, Scots, and Welshmen, Boers, Moslems, and Hindus ; and we no more expect to turn Australians into Englishmen than to convert them into French-Canadians. Its function is to en- able them all to develop a mind of their own. AVe THE WAR AND THE BRITISH REALMS 83 believed, indeed, in uniformity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, just as v^^e tried an irresponsible Government — like the Kaiser's — under the Stuarts, and sought to colonize Ireland with the same methods and results as Germany is seeking to-day to settle her Polish provinces. But we — or most of us — learnt better in time ; and Germany, too, will learn better when she is rid of her twentieth-century despots with their seventeenth-century notions of government. It is the German ex-Chancellor himself who quotes with approval another German statesman to the effect that the Germans are " political asses " ; and Bern- hardi expresses the mind of the General Staff when he says that no people are less fitted to govern them- selves than the Germans. Here lies another reason for colonial co-operation in the war. All self-governing communities are vitally interested in resistance to this German political atavism, just as English Liberalism was concerned in the successful resistance of the American colonies to coercion by George the Third. Had he succeeded in that attempt, he would without doubt have also succeeded in riveting personal rule on England ; and if the Kaiser wins this war, junkerdom will be supreme in Germany and in Europe for at least a generation, and countries outside Europe will either have to fight or submit to a dictation to which they have not been accustomed, and from which the British Navy has so far afforded protection. For, after all, the Moni'oe Doctrine is not even a scrap of paper, and its value depends to-day and to-morrow either upon the British Navy or upon an American Navy which is willing to fight and able to conquer the German fleet. British 84 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR colonies cannot, of course, rely upon the United States Navy ; they have no option but to rely on the British Empire if they wish to avoid the Procrustean bed of German Kultur. "Every state," writes Treitschke, " must have the right to merge into one the nation- alities contained within itself" That is the funda- mental distinction between the two Empires. British naval supremacy does not mean the merging of any nationality. It does not subject British colonies or anyone else to dominion. It is their guarantee of freedom, and it is by no chance collocation of events that the century of complete British naval supremacy has witnessed the greatest growth of nationalities that the world has ever seen. Dominion, in fact, is not the characteristic of the British Empire, but rather the absence of it. The German foible is to see dominion everywhere and to want to grasp it. Great Britain does not own Canada or Australia or South Africa ; they are owned by the people who live there. Even the waste lands in British colonies were long ago recognized as the pro- perty of the colony and not of the Mother Country ; and there is not an acre of land outside the British Isles from which the British Government derives a farthing of revenue. The colonies do, indeed, help to support the British Navy, and they have sent large contingents to its armies in this war ; but all is done by fi-ee gift and not by imposition. The colonies are free to govern themselves and even to tax British im- ports and exclude British subjects from their borders. Only thus could the British Empire exist, because it is based on freedom. The denial of responsible self- government to the British realms, as the Hohenzol- THE WAR AND THE BRITISH REALMS 85 lerns have denied it to the German people, would have broken up the Empire long ago. The Kaiser envies and wishes to emulate the British realms ; but he de- clines to make that self-sacrifice of will, without which there cannot be political salvation ; and he does not see that it has only been through that sacrifice, through the recognition of the right of each British realm to govern itself by means of its own responsible minis- ters, that the British Empire maintains its unity and strength. He wills the end but not the means ; he craves for British world-power, but repudiates the con- ditions of its existence. Germans attribute British success to scandalous good luck. Had they possessed all Great Britain's initial advantages, they would have thrown them all away through their will-to-power and their lust for absolute dominion. We believe in no power that is not based on service and guarded by responsibility ; they base power on prerogative and guard it by lese-mc0este. Government by consent is the secret of empire which Germany will be taught by the present war. It is a simple matter of recognizing the hberties of others, and purging one's soul of the poison that any man, dynasty, or nation has the right to govern another against its will. There is no particular British witchcraft in this lore of statesmanship, though we cannot forbear admira- tion of its working when we behold Boer generals, who were fighting us in the field fifteen years ago, turning Germans out of South Africa, and then volunteering to serve with British armies in Europe. They had their choice and they made it, because they had had experience of German and British government ; and not for their lives would they substitute one for the 86 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR other. For one is dominion and the other is hberty. Even on the high seas British " dominion " has made and maintained a mare liberum. In peace, there is no discrimination, and ships of all nations frequent the ocean with equal security. In war, Great Britain does not sink neutral vessels or take toll of neutral lives. She merely exercises the belligerent rights which all powers have used in turn and are expressly sanctioned by international consent. Britannia rules the waves only in patriotic poems, and in the sense that she is stronger than any other naval power ; her " dominion " consists in the free course of international law and in the exercise of rights which are common to all. In peace she claims no rights and does no acts of sovereignty ; but when the peace is broken she cannot defend herself and others if she waives the rights, and reframs from the acts, of war. The cause she conceives herself to be defending is the liberty of little nations and the freedom of British realms. The liberty of Belgium and Serbia is an issue which few can mistake ; but the freedom of the British realms is a stumbling-block to other than German in- tellects. An American, who has lived much among us, proclaims that he has great respect for the English people but none for the British Empire ; and another writer in a work on " Alexander Hamilton " avers that " a democracy pretending to a sovereignty over other democracies is either a phantom or the most in- tolerable of all oppressions ". The general truth of this aphorism we do not dispute, but it has no relev- ance to the British realms, which do not consist of democracy pretending to a sovereignty over other democracies. Canada is no more ruled by Mr. Asquith than England is by Sir Robert Borden, and THE WAR AND THE BRITISH REALMS 87 Britons never by any chance speak of colonists as their subjects. They are our fellow-subjects, or rather, our partners in the sovereignty we exercise and enjoy. That sovereignty is not the dominion of one over other British realms any more than the sovereignty of the United States is the dominion of Connecticut over Texas. The concern is a joint-stock enterprise, and the Crown is the capital of the firm, John Bull & Co. John Bull is, indeed, the senior partner, but the other realms are partners too. Each has a call on the resources of the company, and each has behind it the reserves of the British Empire. The partnership is none the less real because it is un- defined and because the partners have not written out and proclaimed to the world their articles of agree- ment. A written, inflexible constitution is only re- quired when the tradition and habit of co-operation are weak ; and the unity of the British realms is one of the spirit and not of the letter, a bond of blood and sympathy and not a parchment deed. Its terms are nowhere stated, but they are everywhere understood. The war may provoke in impatient minds attempts at further definition. Some, who fail to discern the spirit except through material manifestations, are ever pressing for the crystallization of British unity in paper Acts of Union or Federation. But while the British realms are eager for co-operation, they will not tolerate uniformity, and nothing would tend more surely towards disintegration than efforts to impose a con- stitution. The essential features in their government have grown and not been made ; and our cabinet systems and prime ministers were never created by Acts of Parhament. Even responsible government itself was not conferred by statute ; it is a mere 88 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR practice adopted step by step for convenience, and adapted to the changing mood of circumstance ; and the fundamentals of our constitutions are riot their laws, but their customs. It is not by formal federation that the British realms will gather the fi'uits of their common sacrifice, or express the common aims to which the war has added impulse. The " councils " of the Empire will continue to resemble those mediccval English " counsels " rather than the formal bodies into which they have been converted in imagination by mistranslation of the ambiguous Latin concilia of the chroniclers. The imperial conference may develop into the imperial cabinet ; but it will not become a federal council, and like its prototypes throughout the Empire it will remain unknown to the statute law of the British realms. It will become a custom of the constitution long before it becomes an Act of Parlia- ment. The material, and still more the moral, value of the assistance rendered by his junior partners to John Bull constitutes, however, an increase of their stake in the joint concern, and involves a corresponding in- crease of weight in the counsels of the Empire and the world. This consideration will affect some of the details in the settlement. Australia will certainly not be content to relinquish the German colonies in the Pacific conquered by the arms of the Commonwealth, nor South Africa tliose subdued by the Union. From her own particular point of view Great Britain might have preferred an indemnity to any extension of territory ; but regard for the peace of her partners will probably compel her to shoulder the financial burden of the war without relief from the compensa- tion which Germany will have to pay for her sins THE WAR AND THE BRITISH REALMS 89 against Belgium and civilization. But these gains in the Pacific and in Africa will be trifling compared with the fi'uits of earlier victories and the colossal sacrifice of men and treasure in this war. Australia and New Zealand will have nothing material to show for the thousands of gallant Hves they have lost at the Dardanelles, and Canada will have no territorial recompense for her splendid sacrifice in Flanders. If there are to be material gains in the reduction of arma- ments, the destruction of militarism, and the promised reign of peace, the British realms will share them on no more than equal terms with the rest of the world. War might have paid a victorious Germany ; it will not pay a triumphant British Empire, and we are content that it should not. It was not for profit that the British realms interposed. In a sense we had, in a sense we had not counted the cost which Herr Beth- mann HoUweg thought would deter us. In either case the cost was not the material point. The British realms stood in August, 1914, where Luther stood at the Diet of Worms — they could do no other than they did. They could not afford to fall short of the standard set by Belgium and her heroic King, and ignobly ignore his appeal against might. Nor, in the face of that example, are they anxious to boast of their virtue ; compared with Belgium's temptation to peace and her sacrifice for the sake of her honour, theu' own temptations and sufferings have been slight. " Above all the nations stands humanity " is a famous legend in a great American university ; and the merit of the British realms consists merely in this : they set enough store on humanity to strike a blow in its de- fence, and in its cause they were not too proud to fight. VI. BRITISH IDEALISM AND ITS COST IN WAR.^ There are British disciples of Prussian Realpolitik who are only happy in the conviction that their country has been actuated by no motive higher than that of mere self-interest ; and some have worked themselves into what seems to them a state of virtuous indignation over the hypocrisy of pretending that we entered the war to vindicate Belgian neutrality or the liberties of little nations, or indeed for any other purpose than that of self-defence. If we make war, it is for strictly practical reasons, and if we keep at peace, it is because peace is the first of British interests. To make war for the sake of an idea or an abstract principle would be treason to British common sense, and a betrayal of that aptitude for business upon which the British people likes to pride itself. We were not really annoyed when Napoleon called us a nation of shop- keepers ; we should have been much more annoyed if he had called us a nation of idealists and if we had thought there was any truth in the charge. There is nothing, in fact, about which John Bull is more shame- faced than his idealism. He will confess to dogged- ness, courage, good-humoured tolerance, and even ^ " The Times " Literary Supplement, 13 Januaiy, 1916. 90 BRITISH IDEALISM AND ITS COST IN WAR 91 generosity ; but he would rather write himself down an ass than admit that he has ideals. He feels that idealism would turn his bluff red countenance into a grimace. So we tell one another that in fighting this war we are merely practising the noble art of self-defence, and our nearest approach to rhapsody is to talk of hearth and home. Yet the defence of self and home is a totally inadequate explanation of the part which the British realms are playing in this war, or of the motives which lead them to play it. The Briton, for one thing, has assumed that his self includes every subject of the King and that his home extends to the uttermost bounds of the British Empire, an expansion of home and self that required a certain amount of idealism and imagination. John Wesley took the whole world for his parish, John Bull has taken the whole Empire for his home. In the early days of the national service movement it was based on the need of a citizen army to protect these shores from invasion in case the first naval line of defence broke down ; and the Territorial Force was sharply differentiated from the Regular Army with the same idea. The course of the war so far has justified all that was said by the Blue Water school, and yet we are raising our fourth million men, while the original distinction between the Territorial and Expeditionary Forces has practi- cally been obliterated. Commissions in the Territorial Force are being restricted to officers volunteering for foreign service, and Territorial regiments have covered themselves with glory in France and Flanders, and are guarding Egypt and India. The British idea of home has infected the Dominions as well. Canadians 92 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR have fought with heroism on the Western Front, and Austrahans and New Zealanders have stamped their initials so indehbly on the GallipoU Peninsula that most people imagme Anzac to be a Turkish name for a place in the Dardanelles. Yet Canadian and Aus- tralian homes were amply protected without this self- defence in Flanders and the iEgean ; both the British Na\y and the Mom'oe Doctrine barred the path of German invasion across the Atlantic, and a German conquest of AustraUa was not among the Kaiser's dreams. He would have been glad enough to recog- nize — and respect — the neutrality of any British realm that cared to proclaim it. Not one took advantage of the opportunity, for " home " and " self " had been expanded and exalted beyond and above the literal confines of egotism and locality ; and m the expansion of the " ego " there lies the making of the ideal, whether it be an empire or the world. For even the British Empire has not afforded a scope wide enough for the practical idealism of the British realms. We talk less of humanity than do the Americans ; but American humanity confines itself, so far as effective State action is concerned, to the American Continent, and a writer in the cun-ent number of the " Yale Review " asserts that " the United States will never be justified in going to war with another well-organized and civilized nation except for defence ". British humanity is not limited to a single continent, but embraces all ; and Britons would not care to restrict their championship of little peoples to defending them against attack from foes who were not " well organized ". It has been the excellent organization of the aggressor that produced the dis- BRITISH IDEALISM AND ITS COST IN WAR 93 tress of the victim and the need for intervention. But this assistance of the weak against the strong is not, Hke the trade in munitions, a profitable business, and British intervention cannot be explained on the prin- ciples of the counting-house. Nor can it be explained on wider gi'ounds of self-interest and self-defence. We seem to have blundered into an idealism of which, so far as it is conscious, we are half-ashamed ; we have not written out our Constitution and prefaced it with a Declaration of the Rights of Man, and we shall not blazon on our banners the principles for which we fight. Yet we have not really blundered into our ideals any more than we blundered into our Empire. We talk of blundering simply because the evolution of the Empire and its principles was not mapped out in Government programmes and effected by a General Staff. Not the less on that account, but the more, it was a matter of cause and effect. The Empire grew when and where it did, because the expansive energy of British nationality applied a pressure over most of the globe from the sixteenth century onwards, and where resistance was weak it was penetrated by British influence. There was not much idealism in the pro- cess, and the East India Company was out for gain. But in the wake of the Companies followed responsible British government ; responsibility to subjects at home fostered the idea of responsibility to subjects abroad ; and the comprehensiveness of that respon- sibility for the welfare of all sorts of people in all quarters of the globe has given a wider sweep and greater depth to British notions of humanity. The Empire cannot exclude all continents but one from 94 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR its outlook, nor, in view of its position in India, re- strict its ideas of moi^ale to the impressions made by mailed fists. Germany's faults are those of the pai^- venu untrained in the responsibilities which attach to wealth and power. She is not at home in the society of the world, and her international manners betray the crudeness of her ideals. Great Britain has to be a " man of the world " in the better sense of that ambiguous term. No pro- vincial attitude is possible, and a national outlook is already out of date. It is a matter of ideals as well as of interests ; and an organism which has nerves in every continent camiot be indifferent to the political ideas which prevail in any one of them. Diplomati- cally we turn a blind eye to the domestic politics of every foreign State ; we do not intervene in them or go to war about them. But they are not matters of indifference. For one thing, a Government cannot in the long run maintain the distinction between a domestic Dr. Jekyll and a foreign Mr. Hyde. If it rules by coercion at home it will lean to coercion abroad ; if it repudiates responsibility to its own people, it will not admit responsibility to a Hague tribunal ; and the violation of Belgian neutrality, the sinking of the " Lusitania," and the execution of Edith Cavell spring from the same roots as the Zabern in- cident. A German triumph in Europe woidd be a blow to responsible government all the world over, and temporary German successes have practically sus- pended Parliamentary rule in the Balkan Peninsula ; the unconstitutional victories of the Greek and Bul- garian monarchs were won by German battles in Poland and Galicia. Germany stands, in fact, for BRITISH IDEALISM AND ITS COST IN WAR 95 most of the ideals which the British Empire has re- jected, and the war is to test their endurance. We can agree with Bernhardi for once when he says that the Turk is Germany's natural ally. A good deal more than home and self-defence is involved in the war, and our shjniess about our ideals should not blind us to their existence. It is true that there are patriots who began the war proclaiming their intention of carrying on " business as usual," prolonged it by preventing employees from enlisting, and look to the capture of Germany's trade as its glorious end. But the war was not made for the sake of war-profits, and business is not the lure which takes men to the trenches. A spirit moved the dry bones of which England seemed full two years ago ; " and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army ". Neither was it the dread of invasion that brought England into the war or recruits to her standard ; and it is not fear, but indignation, which steels her will to fight the war to a finish. The deeds that have stirred the English people in this war have not been German victories or German threats to Enghsh security. No one complained of them when they sank the " Good Hope " and the " Monmouth " at Coronel, nor even when they torpedoed the "Cressy," the " Hogue," the " Aboukir," and the " Formidable ". It is the warfare they wage on civihans, women, and children by Zeppelins and sub- marines, their indifference to suffering, if by its in- fliction they can win, and their use of torture as a means to victory, that converted peaceful Britons to the cause of retribution. The violation of Belgian neutrality convinced us that there was abroad in 96 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR Europe a spirit which would violate all the rules rather than lose the international game ; and without rules international comity is impossible. Ablata jus- titia^ quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia ? The German disciples of Machiavelli have denied St. Augustine's assumption of justice among nations, and the task of the AlUes is to show that the State is not a corporation of pirates, however boldly the Kaiser's Hussars may flaunt their skull and cross-bones. The cost of this idealism to the British Empire is considerably greater than that of self-defence, and we could have secured immunity for hearth and home without loss of life and at a lower pecuniary sacrifice than a year of this war involves. We are spending at an annual rate of something like eighteen hundred millions. For that sum we could have built 200 super-Dreadnoughts and some thousands of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines ; and even a victorious Germany would have few terrors for an Empire guarded by such a force. We could have done almost as much by confining our participation in the war to the element on which we are supreme, as we did for the most part during earlier English conflicts. Three- quarters at least of the world-power we exert is due to the Navy; three-quarters at least of what we are spending now goes to the Army. The novel feature of this war, so far as we are concerned, has been the raising of two or three million men for service on the Continent. It is that decision which involves our novel expenditure ; and, next to the declaration of war, it was by far the most momentous decision in it. Yet it was taken without a word of public discussion. It was, in fact, hardly a decision at all, but an uncon- BRITISH IDEALISM AND ITS COST IN WAR 97 scious process of- assumption, so deep — and buried — are the foundations of our idealism. For, assuredly, it was not a business proposition, and the ground for our action was the tacit conviction that it would be intolerable to the British people to look on a Belgium and France under the German heel, even though our feehngs might be solaced by the conquest of German colonies and the cessation of German overseas trade. That being so, we have to pay the price for our sentiments, and wage war on the principle of a lia- bihty that is unhmited, or Umited only by Germany's capacity for offence and our AUies' for resistance. We cannot restrict our efforts to an equality of sacri- fice, allege the inestimable services of our Navy to the common cause, or plead in response to demands for further assistance that we are already putting into the field a greater proportion of our population than Russia. We listen in silence while Americans tell us that it is their duty to remain neutral but ours to do more in the way of intervention, and when even an Ally, which is playing a limited part in the war, expresses uneasiness at our reluctance to take to con- scription. Before the war it was thought by our AUies as well as ourselves that an expeditionary force of 150,000 men would be ample to redress the balance between the rival European groups, even if Italy joined the Central Empires. That expeditionary force has been multipHed by ten, and it may have to be increased by another 50 per cent. We shall send our troops quite irrespective of the fact that, if the parts were reversed, we should have to repel our in- vaders without assistance ; for a Germany that could land a conquering army on our shores could assuredly 7 98 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR prevent the transport of troops to our rescue. It is idle to pretend that all this is for home defence. We only repeat that shibboleth because we lack the moral courage to avow our idealism and the intellectual energy to formulate our principles. We are fighting on no principle of nicely-calculated less or more, be- cause to the England which thinks and feels, and therefore counts in the balance, a German triumph would be a veritable abomination of desolation, a prevailing of the gates of Hell ; and faith would be impossible. We fight in order that we may believe. The heaviest price we pay is not in treasure or in blood, but in the loss of lesser ideals. La petite 7)iorale, cest Vennemi de la grande ; national freedom was only won by the sacrifice of local and sectional liberties ; and we are confronted with the dilemma that the liberty of Europe and the world can only be gained by jettisoning some of our ancient privileges. Some of us seek solace in the persuasion that we never possessed them, and that a universal obligation to fight anywhere and everywhere has always been inherent in English common law, even before there was a common law at all. However that may be, the idealism which makes us the champion of Euro- pean liberties constrains us to abandon the idealism consecrated in the liberty of voluntary service.^ But it is not without a pang that one thinks of the closing of those Rolls of Honour which have been the pride of every school and college and university, and almost every parish in the kingdom. There will, of course, be the same scope as of old for Victoria Crosses and ^ The Compulsory Military Service Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 5 January." BRITISH IDEALISM AND ITS COST IN WAR 99 medals and mentions in dispatches ; and we are not likely to be reduced to the Spartan modesty of Crom- well's Ironsides, which was illustrated in his laconic account of Dunbar — "both your chief commanders and others in their several places, and soldiers also, were actuated with as much courage as ever hath been seen in any action since this war. I know they look not to be named, and therefore I forbear particulars." But the honour which clung to every volunteer, whether he was killed by a stray bullet or died in hospital at the base, will not attach to the man who has no option and owes not his death to his own voli- tion. The brave and the others will merge in a common confusion, and the glory of individual self- sacrifice will have departed from England. Its place will be taken by a national sacrifice made at the will of the community, and imposed by the votes and voices of many who will neither pay the price nor run the risk. It is the consummation of the sacrifice of the individual to the State. We have trodden that path timorously and not far in the field of taxation ; and individualists like the late Auberon Herbert, who believed that the State should subsist on voluntary contributions, have been long ago brushed aside. But when men have been forced by the State to give their lives for the State, the capitalist will have no moral protection for his property against the State, not merely when the State demands a fraction of t]ie interest he derives therefr'om, but when it demands the whole interest and even the capital itself; for a man's life is a greater and more sacred thing than capital, and the dead have not paid in vulgar fractions. We can hardly afford to contend 100 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR that the conscription of shirkers has been made legiti- mate and possible because the majority of young men have offered their lives, whereas the conscription of capital is not because there have been few correspond- ing volunteers. Perhaps it is well that the war inter- fered with the celebration of the seventh centenary of Magna Carta, for Magna Carta was the apotheosis of the individual's rights against the State, and we are witnessing the apotheosis of the rights of the State against the individual. Like most profound political problems, it is a conflict of liberties. Does the right of the individual to his own life entitle him to make of none effect the sacrifice of their lives by other people ? Shall the honoured dead have died in vain, and the liberty of the world be held of less account than that of those who have not volunteered ? A people camiot solve its problems by logic, but only by inspiration, and in the crisis we turn instinctively to the most inspiring speech of modern times, Lincoln's oration at Gettys- burg. He spoke in the throes of a civil war affecting one nation only ; we are in the throes of the civil war of the human race. The issue is the same, though it is being fought on a mightier scale. His occasion was the dedication of the field of Gettysburg to those who had fallen there, and he continued : — " But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add to or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, BRITISH IDEALISM AND ITS COST IN WAR 101 to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation [we should say this Empire and this world] under God shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." VII. HISTORY AND SCIENCE.^ A PAGAN professor has remarked that the Greeks were happy in having no Bible ; but a votary of the Muses might find better excuse for thmking them blest in having no science worth mention. At any rate, poison-gases, Zeppelin bombs, floating mines, and submarine torpedoes discount our modern debt to science, and its victims outweigh its martjTS. But destructive efficiency tends to truculence and aggres- sion ; and the vehement claims recently made to an educational predominance, if not a monopoly, for science compel the humanist to take up arms in self- defence. Many a student of the humanities must in the last few months have muttered Juvenal's Hues : — Semper ego auditor tantum ? nunquamne reponam Vexatus toties rauci Theseide Codri ? Are we ever to listen, and never to reply, to the raucous clamour for a more technical, a more ma- teriahst, and a less hberal education ? The success of the German with his magnificent technique, his Charlottenburg, his " reeking tube and iron shard," appears to have put fi'esh courage into other assailants of the humanities ; and a doughty champion " of science has proclaimed that " the future prosperity, ^ Eeprinted from " History," April, 1916. 2 Sir E. Ray Lankester in "The Times/' 11 January, 19i6. 102 HISTORY AND SCIENCE lOS and even the continued existence, of the British Empire is absolutely dependent upon a complete change in the attitude of its citizens to natural science or the knowledge of nature ". " The one and only way," we are told, " of saving the country from utter inefficiency and consequent ruin is for the legislature to entirely remodel the competitions for the valuable posts of the Home and Indian Civil Services. The elements of chemistry, physics, and biology should be made a compulsory subject for all candidates, and as much as half the total marks in the competitions should be assigned to the great branches of these sub- jects ; one quarter to mathematics, and one quarter to the whole group described as classics, history, and proficiency in the use of the English language ; " and as a final threat we are warned that " a terrible re- sponsibility rests upon those who, owing to sheer ignorance and misapprehension, or to fatal tenderness for vested interests, may endeavour to prevent alto- gether, or to delay, the drastic reform which alone can save the nation's life ". If menacing language could frighten reasonable men, the historian would throw up the sponge in the face of such a verbal onslaught. But encouraged per- haps by the reflection that he does not stand alone, and fortified, it may be, by some little knowledge of the means by which the British Empire has been built up, he will not at once abandon his faith and surrender to the contention that the continued exist- ence of the British Empire depends upon a complete repudiation of the means and the methods by which it was constructed and has hitherto been maintained. He may even be enough of an optimist to think that 104 THE COMMONWEALfit AT WAR the British Empire will come successfully out of this war, and to cherish the prospect of putting to his critic the question, " If Germany's transient success was due to her scientific specialization, may we not also say that her ultimate failure was due to her cor- responding neglect of moral forces, contempt of political wisdom, and defiance of the humanities ? " The student of social history will, no doubt, be im- pressed by the implicit confidence placed by the scientist in the power of the Legislature to reform our national defects, and he may be amused at the idea that, while our future bureaucrats must be chemists, physicists, and biologists, they need know nothing of the law, language, literature, philosophy, religion, economics, history or geography of the countries they hope to govern. It would surely have never occurred to anyone but an over-specialized man of science that the way to promote efficiency in the government of men was to exclude from our system of education and examination everything that differ- entiates man from the world of matter. Objections to classics and history are sometimes based on more intellectual grounds. Science, we are told, is progi'cssive, ever reaping something new ; classics and history deal with the dead that are gone and with deeds that are done and finished. Let the dead bury their dead, and the living get on with the work and the war of the world ! Yet there is no fact in history so ancient or so buried in oblivion as the origin of life. Is, then, that origin without interest for us now and without bearing upon the problems we have to face ? And is the origin of man's physical existence alone a subject worthy of human attention, HISTORY AND SCIENCE 105 and not the growth of his mind and soul ? Are we to be interested merely in man as an individual, and not in the origins of human societies, nations, and empires, states and institutions, laws and customs ? Is it only matter that matters to man ? Such ques- tions would be ridiculous were it not that proposals are being seriously urged for the concentration of juvenile minds at the earliest possible age upon the materialistic subjects of education and for the restric- tion of the compulsory subjects in examinations for the public services to chemistry, physics, and biology. Apparently there are philosophers who would exclude from their philosophy the study of man, except in so far as he shares nature with lower animals, and is related to physical forces. His relations with fellow- men, his responsibilities, his moral and social welfare, are almost boastfully banished from this category of educational needs. We are to be made efficient without any consideration of the ends towards which the efficiency is to be directed, to be made capable of doing whatever we wish without respect to the good or the evil of our ambitions. To say that this out- look is characteristically German would be almost an insult to German Kultur ; but it is significant that an efficiency of this non-moral character is only con- sistent with a bureaucratic system under which all guidance and all inspiration, and whatever wisdom there may be, comes from an autocratic and irrespons- ible Government. It would only suit a State whose people had abandoned all pretence to be themselves judges of policy, and had sunk to the level of mere capable instruments in the hands of others. The truth is that this controversial turmoil is 106 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR mainly due to manifold confusions of thought and language. Means are mistaken for ends, and words for things, and Babel results because its builders do not understand one another's speech. When the pro- testing Fellows of the Royal Society ^ insist upon the need of scientific education, of what are they thmking, of a method or of a subject ? or are they confusing the two ? They do, indeed, say that they mean " the ascertained facts and principles of mechanics, chem- istry, physics, biology, geography, and geology," and the inclusion of geography may at least be taken as a sign of grace, inasmuch as one University Faculty of Science recently refused to recognize it as such, or to permit candidates to take a master's or doctor's degree in it. But for the most part this list is simply a cata- logue of the subjects which the memorialists collec- tively know ; what they do not know is not science. A more reasonable man of science ^ defines the scien- tific mind as one wliich " makes sure of its facts before arriving at its conclusions ". Precisely so, but in that case it is ignorant as well as insolent to affirm that not one Oxford college and only one great public ^ See " The Times/' 2 February, and '* Educational Supple- ment," 7 March, 1916. I need hardly remark that in this paper I am dealing only with such conceptions of science as are expressed by some Fellows of the Royal Society in their memorandum. The names of those who have not signed that memorandum are as sig- nificant as those of the Fellows who have ; and possibly soiiie signed it without entirely concurring in its contents. I have the good fortune to know Fellows of the Royal Society, with the sanity of whose views on education it would be difficult for any reasonable historian to quarrel. - Principal Griffiths in " The Times" Educational Supplement, 7 March, 1916. HISTORY AND SCIENCE 107 school is presided over by " a man of scientific train- ing ". Moreover, do all students of mechanics, chemistry, physics, biology, geography, and geology make sure of their facts before arriving at their con- clusions ? And is the stupidity of stupid boys who try to learn classics due to Latin and Greek ? There is just as much scope for the unscientific mind in the study of science as there is for the scientific mind in the study of history, law, languages, economics, and politics ; and to make sure of one's facts before arriv- ing at one's conclusions is as much the business of the historian, the lawyer, or the politician, as it is of the chemist or the physicist. Science would seem to be but another name for accurate reasoning, and no intelligent person disputes the value of that, or the popular neglect of it at all times and by all nations. Men of science are well aware of the natural tendency towards the atrophy of faculties which are not exercised ; but they sometimes ignore the liability to that process to which specialization exposes them, and consequently mistake a common characteristic for a distinctive feature. The neglect of which they complain is not distinctive of science, but is a neglect common to all aspects of education, and is less marked in relation to physical sciences than to other subjects. It is the kind of national characteristic illustrated by the fact that in 1915, while educational equipment was being ruthlessly cut down on all hands, and children's school life was being shortened at both ends, the nation spent £181,000,000 on alcoholic liquor, which was nearly £4 per head of the whole population, and over 10 per cent more than it had spent in 1914. But this indifference to education is 108 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR due to no preference for the humanities over science. The nation may neglect science ; it neglects the humanities with greater unconcern, for they " pay " in a less obvious and materialistic way than physical science. It would be quite safe to assert that nearly every one of the signatories to this memorandum, if he occupies a university chair, receives a much higher salary than his humanistic colleagues, and that for every pound given in recent years for the endowment of the humanities, a hundred have been given for the endowment of science. The plaintiffs lament that only one eminent man of science has ever sat in a British Cabinet. Do they sit in German Cabinets ? Bismarck, who made the German Empire, was not a man of science, though Edward II and Louis XVI, who lost their thrones, were excellent mechanics. But how many eminent classical scholars or his- torians have sat in British Cabinets ? The scientists contend that great scientific discoverers and inventors should as a matter of course be included in the Privy Council, apparently under the impression that that would give them the coveted political influence. Yet what student of history would ever have made it a grievance that Gibbon, Hallam, Grote, Froude, Free- man, Stubbs, Gardiner, Green, Maine, and JNlaitland were not sworn of the Privy Council ? And why should Fellows of the Royal Society nowadays claim a position to which Newton, Priestley, and Darwin never aspired ? The explanation would seem to lie in that con- fusion of the part with the whole, to which excessive specialization leads, and in the assumption that the science of physical nature comprehends the science HISTORY AND SCIENCE 109 of human government. Of the thirty-six scientific memoriahsts, a third have themselves received at the hands of the Crown marks of distinction which are never conferred on historians for their services to his- tory. Historians have to be content with a less osten- tatious reward in influence, and the " neglect of science " appears to consist in the failure of men of science to attain to pohtical weight. One might as well complain that the gas-officers now at the front are not promoted to regimental commands. There is, in fact, no reason why men of science, classical scholars, or historians should sit in Cabinets at all, because a Cabinet has to deal with poMtics, and politics are not the busmess of the savant. Science is, indeed, a necessity, and Governments have to employ men of science to an ever-increasing extent, but they also employ engineers, surveyors, architects, pohcemen, and spies. Are we to have surgeons and doctors in the Cabinet because surgery and medicine are matters of vital importance ? Must we have cooks in the House of Commons because we cannot get on with- out them in the kitchen ? We are often told how important it is that we should understand what we are doing when we smtch on an electric light, drive a motor, digest a dinner, and so forth ; and it is piti- able that children should be brought up with no eye for nature, for the flowers at their feet and the stars above their heads. But we do not mend matters by encouraging them to ignore the highest work of nature, man ; and in a democratic State it is more important that men should reahze what they are doing when they cast a vote, upset a Government, and make or mar an emiDire. No doubt a greater addiction to no THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR physical science might have enabled us to kill Germans in greater numbers and with greater speed, and thus to have saved lives of our fellow-countrymen. But if our " people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," what of the Germans ? and what of Germany ? Has their superior technique saved them from destruction ? and will it save their country or their souls ? Neglect of the physical sciences is assuredly injudicious, but neglect of wisdom carries with it not less fatal conse- quences ; and folly could hardly go further than to confine the injunction to get understanding to getting a knowledge of physical forces. It is not without reason that logic does not appear in the list of sciences urged upon our attention. The memorialists condescend to exempt the British Navy and the Army Medical Corps from their censure, and they imply that the success of both is due to their scientific training. It will be news that training of naval officers necessarily implies devotion to chemistry, biology, or geology ; and naval tactics and strategy, the arts of navigation and seamanship, are not among the physical sciences. But it is not news that the success of the Navy is largely due to its traditions, and that naval history is an integral part of naval education. What, however, is the relevance of the reference to the Army Medical Corps ? The general argument is that science should be the avenue to in- fluence or command in the widest national spheres, a key to unlock tlie door of Cabinets, and a path to the summits of the Civil Service. The mention of the scientific training of the Army Medical Corps would therefore seem to suggest that army doctors should be made generals in command, and navy surgeons HISTORY AND SCIENCE 111 admirals of the fleet. The fallacy springs from quite a simple confusion of the whole circle of intellect with one of its segments. The physical sciences are not co-extensive with human knowledge, and even the scientific method is not the only means of mental training. Each department of human activity has both its science and its art ; the training, methods, and temper which make a master of one art do not necessarily even apprentice him to the others ; and nothing but ignorance of the others can lead the speciaUst in physical science to think his method a panacea for inefficiency in politics, diplomacy, and war. The point that excessive specialization induces mental limitations might be pressed a little further. The Fellows of the Royal Society brandish a number of scientific mistakes committed by the Government as proof of the need of scientific training and of the use- lessness of the humanities. But unless we are misin- formed by men of science, some of these blunders at least were due to Fellows of the Royal Society who undertook to advise the Government in branches of science with the details of which they were not familiar ; and the scientific errors of the Foreign Office arose from its failure to grasp, not the virtues, but the limi- tations of a specialized scientific training. The history of the Royal Society itself is not with- out a similar moral. We do not dispute its wisdom in seeking to restrict its scope and its fellows to physi- cal science, and in thus driving their whilom colleagues into a schismatic British Academy. But having by their own act cut themselves loose from law, politics, and the humanities, it is surely illogical to complain of the consequent circumscription of their influence 112 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR with the pubhc. It may have been well to concen- trate, but we can only concentrate at the cost of com- prehension ; and eminence in physical science is often a positive bar to the comprehension of the human mind. Men cannot be treated as matter ; we cannot analyse popular feeling in a test-tube, or dispose of public opinion by means of a retort. We cannot vivi- sect our voters, or control political motions by means of mechanical cranks. Vast problems of Imperial unity are looming on the Cabinet's horizon, but it mil be wiser to listen to Sir Robert Borden and Mr. Hughes than to recruit its numbers from the ranks of British chemists and biologists. Nor would a student of politics, unless he were a German, have gravely proposed to enhance the repute of science by suggest- ing an Act of Parliament for the redistribution of marks in the Civil Service examination. Even in that minor detail the men of science are not very scientific. They complain that " in Latin and Greek alone {including ancient history) " candi- dates can obtain 3200 marks, " while for science the maximum is 2400 " — as if ancient history were merely another name for Latin and Greek, and not a separate subject as much as the "four distinct branches of science," which the scientific candidate must take to secure his maximum of 2400 marks. They exclude from " science " logic and psychology, economics, and political science, which would bring the " scientist's " maximum up to 4100 marks ; and they ignore mathe- matics, to wliich another 2400 marks are assigned, altogether ! They imply that the physicist, for in- stance, would get no marks for mathematics. Nor would it seem quite discreet, while urging the claims HISTORY AND SCIENCE 113 of science to weight iii political training, to assume that a knowledge of modern languages has no natural part in scientific equipment. Valour, too, gets the better of discretion in the bold assertion that the late Lord Playfair was the only Cabinet Minister with a scientific training " in the whole history of British Governments ". For, after all, British Governments have managed to foster and maintain a respectable British Empire, and is it prudent to proclaim that they have so far succeeded with only Lord Play fair's scientific assistance ? Moreover, Lord Playfair, while Postmaster-General for a few months, and Vice-Pre- sident of the Council for a few more, was never a Cabinet Minister. Is it not characteristic of the scien- tific mind that " it makes sure of its facts before arriv- ing at its conclusions " ? In reahty the antithesis between Science and Art is pernicious and false. It is a purely arbitrary dis- tinction which terms some subjects sciences and others arts ; and one may speak of political science, economic science, legal science, mihtary science, historical science, quite as legitimately as one does of physical science. The distinction is not of substance, but of methods : the scientific method is primarily analytical, the artistic is synthetic. But there is science in every art, and art in every science ; in other words, both methods are essential to every subject. The artist cannot dispense with analysis, nor the scientist with synthesis. The artist must analyse his material before he can use it with effect, and the scientist must articu- late his results if they are to be fruitful and inteUigible. The relative value of the two methods will vary in different subjects, but a civil war between them is 8 114 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR educational suicide in face of the common danger of popular neglect. The attention the public pays to the humanities is not worth diverting to science, and Fellows of the Royal Society can serve their country in better ways than by claiming the endowments of the humanities, setting their affections on seats in the Cabinet and Privy Council, and bidding for marks in examinations for clerkships for which neither science nor scholarship is the essential qualification. It is a German ambition to annex the domains of others in the hope of making their own a place in the sun ; and the predominance claimed for science in education suggests that the aim of the scientists, hke that of the Germans, is not a place in the sun but control of the sunshine. In other words, their ideal is not educa- tional freedom, but a monopoly or at least a Hon's share of influence, secured and guaranteed by legis- lation rather than by the persuasive effects of their teaching. Suspicion of such a tendency is fostered by a singu- lar omission in the memorandum of the Fellows of the Royal Society. Two universities only are mentioned, Oxford and Cambridge ; yet there are half a dozen others in England alone. \Vhy this concentrated attack on the two universities where the humanities still withstand, with partial success, the pretensions of science to predominance, if predominance in all is not the summit of scientific ambition ? Why, if scientific subjects and scientific methods are so superior, has not their predominance in the great majority of English universities given science the national influence which its champions deem its due ? It is true that in several of those universities, notably Leeds, Sheffield, and HISTORY AND SCIENCE 115 Armstrong College, students of the humanities rather than of science have been preferred to the seat of authority, but assuredly not because classical scholars or historians outnumbered the scientific voters. The inference is that, when it comes to questions of govern- ment, scientists themselves have recognized the fact that a training in the humanities is a first-class quali- fication. For this reluctant or unconscious admission there are two sound reasons. The first is that students of physical science tend to specialize at an early age, and early specialization is a doubtful aid to ultimate success, even in the particular branch of knowledge in which it is practised, and it is a positive disqualification for success in a wider sphere. The greatest theologians have not been those who specialized earliest in a theo- logical course ; the most eminent physicians are not those who have started practice without a degree ; and the greatest lawyers have not been graduates in our law schools. Literce Hujiianiores at Oxford and the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge have both pro- vided surer guarantees of success at the bar and on the bench than the specialized law schools of the two universities. The same criterion holds good for the episcopal bench and theological studies ; while emin- ence is barred to the historian who has not equipped himself with a general education in other subjects than history. The second reason for the failure of physical science to guarantee to its students and professors the political weight, to which they consider themselves entitled, is equally fundamental. It is undoubtedly true that the physical sciences and the methods em- ployed in their study do permit Df greater exactitude 116 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR than the humanities. But it is a mere illusion to suppose that the same methods applied to the study of man will produce a corresponding exactitude in political deduction or precision in human conduct. Politics may not be scientific, but they will not be made so by the apphcation to them of generahzations and ideas derived from the study of earth-worms and bacteria. Mind is more complex than matter, and human action cannot be expressed in formulae. The very fact that formulae play so large a part in the methods employed in the study of physical science renders those methods less applicable to humaner studies. Yet this is what the student of physical science finds it so difficult to understand ; his absorp- tion in his own subject and its methods limits his com- prehension of other methods. An eminent Fellow of the Royal Society was induced to read a notable book on mediasval literature : his puzzled comment at the end was, " What does it prove ? " Another once gibed at theology that it was not " an exact science," as if the relations of God and man were unimportant for not being matters of three dimensions. The arts prove nothing ; theii* function is to create. Govern- ment is an art, and the statesman must rely upon intuition and inspiration as well as upon accurate knowledge and reasoning. There is intuition in science as well, but it plays a smaller part because its path is more narrowly defined by ascertained and ascertainable fact. The difference is also one between experiment and experience : the scientist can experi- ment with comparative impunity ; the statesman does so at greater risk, and he works with subtler forces. He has, so to speak, to gamble in unknown futures ; HISTORY AND SCIENCE 117 his stakes are the hves of men and the welfare of nations, and for them he is held responsible. A ruler or a general, who by a mistake sends his fellow-men to their death, has to render an account, but no one expects anything but a bill from the man of science who invents a torpedo or poison gas. He invents them in complete indifference to the causes they may be made to serve, because he is a man of science and not a statesman ; and the irresponsibility, which pro- tects the chemist in his laboratory, often characterizes his intrusions into politics. Politics are not as moral as they should be, but no one denies the connexion between them and ethics. There are, however, no ethics in physical science ; its aim is simple efficiency, which promotes evil as well as good. We need moral and pohtical responsibility to save science from the service of the devil ; and science itself is no proof of that wisdom or understanding which is born of a sense of responsibility. It is, unfortunately, much easier to get knowledge than understanding, and the glamour of science con- sists to no small extent in its novelty. But it is an odd reproach to bring against history that it is a completed and finished subject at a moment when the world is engaged in making new history with an energy and an intensity never before equalled in the annals of mankind. So far as the raw material for study is concerned, it is physical science rather than history which is the completed and finished subject ; for no science can add to or diminish the physical content of the universe. That is fixed and immutable by any human agency, and the truths and " laws " of nature remain to-day precisely what they were a 118 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR million years ago. On the other hand, the achieve- ments of mankind, which form the historian's subject- matter, are growing from day to day and hour to hour, and the whole human race is busied in the process. History deals with conscious creators and not with un- reasoning matter, with the architects of nations and of churches, vA\h the growth of human societies, and the reasons why empires rise and fall. It is conceiv- able that physical nature might yield up all her secrets to scientific research ; but history ^dll have fi'esh material so long as the human race shall last, and when science has finished its labours they will remain for history to record. It may be objected that, while the subject-matter of history multiplies and that of physical science does not, science is nevertheless the more important study because the scientist makes science, but the historian only writes history. The objection in any case needs qualification ; Treitschke is reckoned by Germans themselves as one of the makers of modern Germany, and Thiers' Napoleonic histories contributed to the establishment of the second French Empire. But scientists only make science in the sense of revealing scientific truth, and historians make history in a similar way. The scientist seeks to explain the mechanism of the physical world ; he does not pretend to make the Nature he studies, and his influence over the course of Nature is assuredly no greater than the historian's over the course of history. For history deals with what man has done and how he has done it ; and that knowledge is at least some guide to what he can do in the future and how he should seek to do it. It is from the study of physical science rather than HISTORY AND SCIENCE II9 from that of history that men have deduced the paralysing dogma of the helplessness of mankind. We have not, indeed, far to look for proofs of the need of historical education. Si monumentum quceris, drcumspice. The memorandum of the Fellows of the Royal Society itself provides an illustration, for a study of the his'tory of their own Society might have furnished them with solutions of some of their own problems. Among its earlier presidents are to be found First Lords of the Treasury, Lord High Admirals, Lord Chancellors, Chancellors of the Ex- chequer, Secretaries of State, and diplomatists. It is due to the men of science that such is no longer the case ; had it been, they would have had no cause to complain of their lack of political influence and of re- presentation in the Cabinet or Privy Council. The newspaper press, again, daily supplies evidence of a still more pernicious absence of historical knowledge, perspective, and judgment. JournaUsts and poHticians praise or condemn the conduct of their own Govern- ment in diplomacy and war with obviously no con- ception of the conditions which determine diplomatic and military action, and therefore no standard by which to judge them. The standard seems to be an entirely imaginary and impossible set of circumstances, in which British generals never lose a campaign or a battle, in which British officers never make a mistake, and British armies never retreat or fail in attack. That there never was any such war does not trouble them in the least ; if they have ever heard of wars in the past, they have for- gotten the delays and reverses which have accompanied the triumphs of the greatest commanders. They have some vague idea that the Seven Years' War and the 120 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR Napoleonic Wars secured the Empire for Great Britain and frustrated the tyranny of Napoleon ; but they look on those wars through a mist as a grand triumphal progi'css from one success to another ; and, if the pre- sent war does not correspond with their imagination, they attribute the failure, not to their own ignorance, but to the incompetence of their Government or their generals. They may have heard of the execution of Admiral Byng, but they conveniently ignore its in- justice and forget that it was due to a popular clamour as ill-informed as their own ; and few remember that in 1809 the Common Council of the City of London petitioned the Crown against the conferment of any distinction on Wellington after Talavera. " That calamity," declared the petitioners, whose protest was gleefully reproduced by Napoleon in the *' Moniteur," *' like the others, had passed without any inquiry, and as if their long experienced impunity had put tlie servants of the Crown above the reach of justice. Ministers have actually gone the length of advising your Majesty to confer honourable distmction on a general who has thus exhibited, mth equal rasliness and ostentation, nothing but a useless valour." Current imitations of this attitude might be re- strained by a little knowledge of British history, and by a recollection of the facts that no long war has been won without reverses, and that in long wars the Power which begins with success commonly ends with failure. The Seven Years' War and the wars of the revolutionary and Napoleonic period are useful cases in point. The first began in May, 1756, and two years elapsed before any real success attended British arms. Meanwhile the nation had to endure Brad- \ HISTORY AND SCIENCE 121 dock's defeat at Fort Duquesne, Montcalm's seizure of Oswego and most of the keys of the British Colonies in North America, the failure before Louisbourg, the tragedy of the Black Hole of Calcutta, the loss of Minorca, the Convention of Klosterseven, and the fruitless attacks on Rochefort and St. Malo. The later war with France began as inauspiciously, and mis- fortunes continued longer. The British armies were soon driven out of Flanders, and our efforts to sup- port the Royalists at Toulon and in La Vendee were equally unsuccessful. Even our naval victories did not save us from having to evacuate the Mediterranean in 1796 and to suffer an invasion in Ireland in 1798. Ten years later Whitelocke's expedition to Buenos Aires was a total failure, and Duckworth's forcing of the Dardanelles a fiasco. Walcheren was hardly a success, and five years' campaigning in the Peninsula preluded WelUngton's triumph. Without some knowledge of such reverses it is impossible to have any vaUd standard whereby to judge our failures and achievements in the present war. The absence of it produces the impatience and lack of perspective, of which is born the revolutionary temperament, and for similar reasons. The dangerous revolutionist is commonly a person with little know- ledge of history or practical experience in politics. Out of his inner consciousness and liberal imagination he evolves an ideal repubUc, a new heaven and a new earth ; and a comparison of this ideal state with the defects of existing society stirs his indignation and his desire for some short cut to his mirage. He attributes the evils he sees to incompetent or malignant minds, and he demands a revolution, a change of Government, 122 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR or at least a scapegoat, fondly imagining that a change of persons will remove the obstacles to the realization of his dreams. A similar ignorance of international law and obligations provokes impatient criticism of our so-called blockade ; and critics, forgetful of the Armed Neutrahty of 1780, see no reason why we should not blockade the ports of neutral States, not pausing to think that a blockade is a naval siege, and a siege is an act of war. The same objection hes against the popular, or unpopular, cry for democratic control of diplomacy. In a sense democratic control is secured by the British Constitution ; for foreign policy is in the hands of Ministers responsible to a popularly elected House of Commons, and the foreign policy pursued must com- mend itself in general terms to the representatives of the constituencies. But the further claim that nego- tiations and treaties must be made public, and sanc- tioned by popular vote, before they are initiated or concluded, is simply a proposition that expert know- ledge should be controlled by general ignorance. There is as good a case for leaving diplomacy to the diplomatists as there is for leaving science to the scientists. Democratic control is not an impossibility, but it depends upon democratic education ; and when the education of democracy comprises an adequate study of history, foreign politics, and law, democracy may exercise a control over diplomacy similar to that which it might exercise over scientific research if public elementary education provided the requisite training. The cry for democratic control is illogical without a precedent demand for democratic educa- tion ; and the exclusion of history from our curricula HISTORY AND SCIENCE 123 would simply postpone the era of sound democratic politics. War and diplomacy are the aspects of politics, for the right understanding of which some historical education seems most obviously needed at the mo- ment ; but the war will be followed by problems for the solution of which a constant reference to history will be no less essential. How are statesmen to de- termine, and peoples to judge, the principles of the rearrangement of Europe without some knowledge of the origins and development of European States, and of their claims to the territory they occupy and to the allegiance of their subjects ? What help will physical science give us in our attempt to do justice to the aspirations of Russians and Poles, Germans and Danes, Czechs and Magyars, Serbs and Italians, Bulgars and Greeks ? Or how will it help us to solve our own more immediate problems of Empire ? Mere enthusiasm, bred of the war, will not give us wisdom to reconcile the manifold cross-currents of civilization and ideas which are the life-blood of the British realms, nor to construct a really Imperial Government out of the infinite variety of constitu- tional, social, and economic organization evolved in response to their different needs. The outbreak of the war led education authorities into hasty attempts to improvise a historical sense in schools in order that its issues might be intelligible. The approach of peace will produce a number of similar improvisa- tions to make up for time and opportunities lost in the neglect to provide education in the elements of Imperial understanding. We are most of us like the unskilful boxer, de- 124 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR scribed by Demosthenes, who is always thinking of where he was last hit and never of where he is hkely to receive the next blow ; and we are busily contri\dng to do after the peace what we think we should have done, had we known, to prepare for the war. So the problem of the American colonies in 1765 came upon a people unprepared, because their minds were ab- sorbed in the recollections of the Seven Years' War, and our grandfathers nearly brought England to civil strife over CathoHc Emancipation and the Reform BiU of 1832, because they were engi'ossed in the memory of the French Revolution and Napoleon. It will not be by preparation for war that the problems of the commg age will be solved ; and the next gen- eration will have to rely on its own intuition rather than on imitation of its predecessor. The chief educational lesson of the war bids fair to be lost in vain repetition. This war has been the passing of a generation, the Dead JNIarch of the men of blood and iron, the epitaph upon the latest age of scientific progress. That age was one of vast material prosper- ity, an age in which the growth of man's control over physical forces outran his control over human passions, an age in which he gave more thought to the destruc- tion of human bodies than to the saving of human souls, and made more haste to get wealth and power than to get understanding in their use. The clamour for a more materialistic education is simply a reflex, and not a corrective, of this secular evil ; and it finds its counterpart in the impatience of legality in our methods of war and of restraint in our diplomacy. We run the risk of infection by German I'calpoUtik, and we shall do well to remember the modern applica- HISTORY AND SCIENCE 125 tion of the sixteenth-century jiiigle, " An EngUshman Italianate is a devil incarnate ". What we need for the future is not less, but greater, respect for law, not a more materiahstic, but a more humane, education. Our ideal frontier Avill not be the frontiers of European States, which millions of men and hundreds of forts have failed to render secure, but that peaceful border between the United States and Canada, which remains the strongest frontier in the world because it reposes on moral and not on military strength, and embodies the triumph, not of nation over nation, but of nations over themselves. If we compare the cost of that moral security with the cost, in treasure and blood, of the martial insecurity of Europe, we may measure the comparative values of materialistic and moral development. In olden times G-rcecia capta Jerum victorem cepit ; it is for us to see that the conquered Hun does not in fatal revenge expel humanity from our education. VIII. THE RECANT OF PATRIOTISM.^ " The honourable member," replied Lord John RusseU once to Sir Francis Burdett, " talks of the cant of patriotism ; but there is something worse than the cant of patriotism, and that is the recant of patriotism." Mr. Gladstone was of the opinion that no cleverer retort was ever made than Lord John's ; and while we hope, for the repute of human Avit, that this appre- ciation is exaggerated, the repartee gives point to some thoughts on the cause of our present discontents. It is not that we are suffering from that academic recant of patriotism of which Lord John Russell com- plained in Sir Francis Burdett, for A steady patriot of the world alone, The friend of every country but his own, is rare enough at the present moment on this side of the Atlantic. But we see signs of a more practical and dangerous relapse from the vision of Pisgah, which enables us to see life steady and to see it whole, and of a reversion to original types of narrow outlook which make patriotism purblind. Patriotism is, of course, a compound and a com- promise. Dr. Johnson had a special perversion of it in mind when he described it as the last refuge of a ^ Reprinted from the " Westminster Gazette," May, I916. 126 THE RECANT OF PATRIOTISM 127 scoundrel, and we could most of us point in private to several modern examples. To the citizen of the world all patriotism confined to one nation seems little better than an expanded selfishness. The patriot wants his country to be great because its greatness swells his vanity and puffs up his feeling of importance. Pal- merston's speech on the text " Civis Romanus sum " was an example of this waving of the red rag of national pride ; and there are great causes in which it is impos- sible to be a patriot. One cannot be patriotic over reUgion ; in so far as a Pope is a patriot, he is false to that for which he stands. Patriotic truth is generally — like Protestant truth or Catholic truth — a periphrasis for such falsehood as consists in the suppression of truth which is not convenient ; and patriotic law, patriotic surgery, patriotic science, patriotic scholar- ship, are incompatible terms. The frontiers which mark off" one nationaUty from another have no relev- ance to the realms of science, and the more closely education observes national limitations the less it is education. National patriotism is in a sense a con- fession of human weakness, just as in a similar sense political parties are a confession of national weakness. They are, albeit themselves vociferous, a tacit admis- sion of the fact that it is impossible to get the maxi- mum effort out of men except by appeals to more or less primitive instincts ; and the combative instinct is the lever by which we secure the co-operation and self-sacrifice needed for collective enterprise. When the nations are at peace the combative instinct finds expression in party warfare ; but even party warfare serves a unifying purpose and marks a stage in national fusion. The significance of our Wars of the Roses 128 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR was not theii' disruptive aspect, but the fusion of end- less local feuds into two great parties, which prepared the way for national unity under the Tudors ; and the common bonds which keep the United States together to-day are not so much their federal constitution or national organization as the party systems which over- ride the distinction of States, and provide popular links between East and West, and North and South. Just as party feeling represents a fusion of local parties, so national patriotism, however far it may fall short of the cathoUc and cosmopohtan ideals of religion and humanity, represents an expansion of early mediaeval locaHsm ; and it was a matter of slow and painful growth. It was only by degrees that parochialism expanded into provincialism, and provincialism into nationalism, that guilds merged their independence in municipal organization, that boroughs and cities sur- rendered their fiscal autonomy and their market- exclusiveness, and that provincial Estates grew mto Estates-General, and the various Estates into one national Estate or State. The process is not complete in any country, and personal selfishness still competes with local patriotism, and local patriotism with devo- tion to the national State. Patriotism is not, therefore, a natural instinct, but an acquired characteristic. It is the polish which makes man a political animal, just as manners and the inward grace, of which they are the outward mani- festation, make him a unit of society. But, hke all acquired characteristics, patriotism tends to fall away under stress and friction. Manners sometimes break down under provocation, and our patriotism at the moment looks more threadbare than it did a year or THE RECANT OF PATRIOTISM 129 eighteen months ago. It is not that the war has made us more cosmopoHtan or humane, but the trial of patience strains the bonds of patriotism, and weakens our power to resist reaction and reversion to original types of selfishness and parochialism. The individual, the class, the locality come once more into prominence and dwarf our acquired sense of national proportion. A Zeppelin drops a bomb in our garden, and we straightway forget the Western or any other front except our own, and vote, if we get the chance, for an all-air or all-gas Parliamentary candidate, pledged to make the defence of our particular person or cab- bage-patch the first concern of national policy. A German airship is brought down at the mouth of the Thames, and we rejoice more greatly over that one sinner brought to account than over the capture of Erzerum or the successful defence of Verdun. We read without turning a hair of fifty thousand British casualties at the battle of Loos ; but a hundred casualties in the Midlands precipitate a meeting of indignation in the City and a cabal to overturn the Government. Having by long experience been brought to realize that successful war can only be waged by co-operation between the two great services, we are told by the novi homines of the air that it can only be won by the independence of the parvenu. Instead of seeing the war steadily and seeing it whole, we can only see it in our own compartment, whether that compartment is a service, a class, a locality, or even a self. Our soldiers are divided into groups and classes, and civil strife is engendered between bachelors, married men who have attested, those who have not, munition-workers, starred and unstarred industries ; 9 130 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR and we are reduced to volunteers who volunteer on the understanding that others are forced to serve with the same risks but without the same armlets or honour. Truly those who went at the call of duty a year and a half ago and have stood ever since between the allies and defeat have left us a poorer breed in England ; and our present performances in politics are due to the fact that the real England has gone to the front, leaving only the domestics at home — to spend more on drink than the whole nation did before the war, and then to fight by-elections in the sacred cause of unrestricted liquor. The domestics are not, however, devoid of martial instincts, and smce cu'cumstances prohibit the satisfac- tion of those instincts at the enemy's expense, they seek nearer means of gratification. In the INIiddle Ages, while the Crusaders made for the misbeliever in the East, the less adventurous strove to do their bit by massacring and plundering the Jews at home. So some of us try to prove our patriotism by smelling out crypto -Germans in the Foreign Office, and scenting German proclivities in the purlieus of Whitehall. We long to get at somebody ; and, real Germans being out of reach, we fall back on some familiar ob- ject of our animosity. The Government is a godsend for this purpose, for the Government is the traditional object of attack with half the EngHsh people. The Coalition disconcerted for the time the inveterate habit of abuse ; but custom is recovering its ascendency and beginning to accommodate itself to fresh surroundings. Its adaptation to circumstances is occasionally some- what violent, and the curves it executes a trifle sharp. In the old days before the war Liberals and Unionists THE RECANT OF PATRIOTISM 131 were convinced that their respective leaders were the ablest statesmen of their age ; and if any private doubts were harboured they were rigorously repressed to avoid betrayal of the cause. That was when our party leaders were engaged on party business ; now that they have combined to do the nation's work they have suddenly lost the brains they had and degenerated into a gang of incompetent and unprincipled politicians, and it becomes the patriot's duty to parade their shortcomings before the eager gaze of the national foe. One able editor delivers himself of the following bril- liant apophthegm : " These military blunders are never the fault of our soldiers, they are sometimes the fault of our generals, they are always the fault of the Government " ; and mob panic at Zeppelin raids has produced some wonderful conversions to belief in popular wisdom, for clamour against the Government is proof of democratic discrimination. Hobbes's old- fashioned view was that the State must be absolute because it is the plenipotentiary of every individual citizen ; our modern version is that Government is the universal scapegoat. We commonly think those sermons the best which point most obviously at our neighbour : the Government is our universal neigh- bour, and we prove our patriotism to ourselves by exhibiting its delinquencies, and salve our conscience by confessing the sins of our leaders. What able editor ever said " we " have erred and strayed, or demanded a pillory for the Press and a penitentiary for the critic ? These public confessions of Government misdeeds are, however, less painful than the private resentment which is encouraged by the loss of patriotic proportion 132 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR and concentration on individual woes. Government is charged \\dth " murdering " British airmen because there are defects in British aircraft, and the poisoned arrow leaves a festering wound in the sorrowing heart. ]\Ien are slain at the front through lack of munitions, and we assume that an efficient Government would contrive to wage war without any casualties at all, or at least with casualties which only befell other people's kindred. The private grief is made a grievance against a national Government, and used to disintegrate national confidence. We bid fair to succumb to the weakness of which we used to accuse the French, while they have proved their possession of virtues we thought were British — stubbornness in defence, pati- ence under misfortune, and long-suffering under losses compared with which our own are small. It is not from French lips that we have heard during this war that fatal cry Nous sommes trahis ; but it has be- come the regular greeting of one of our martial publicists, who escaped the JNIihtary Service Act by the skin of his teeth and stayed at home to wage wordy warfare on his Government. It is the blight of inaction and impatience Avhich causes us thus to recant our national faith. Fortun- ately it makes no impression on our fi*ont, where men do deeds instead of cavilling at them ; and there are some pungent remarks by that excellent writer " The Junior Sub. " on the " holy show " which part of the British Press is making of itself It may also be some consolation that these gentry are only doing what their kind have always done before them. There has liardly been a great public servant who has not suffered from public and private obloquy, and national crises have THE RECANT OF PATRIOTISM 13g never sufficed to silence the tongue of slander. Wel- lington was attacked by the Common Council of London during the Peninsular war ; the victor of St. Vincent was charged with dereliction of duty ; and in England's darkest days of 1797, when the King and Queen went to St. Paul's to render thanks for three great naval victories, the mob hooted in the streets " the pilot who weathered the storm ". IX. HAS GREAT BRITAIN CEASED TO BE AN ISLAND?^ In a recent speech Lord NorthclifFe remarked that the flying machine " has entirely changed the position of our (sic) kingdom from being an island to being part of the Continent ". The observation, or some- thing like it, has been made by others less interested in aircraft than Lord Northcliffe, and bids fair to be- come one of those commonplaces, the constant repeti- tion of which does duty with most of us for original ideas of our own and for the critical examination of other people's. Before, however, we suffer the para- dox to pass into the common stock of truisms, it may be worth while examining its passports and inquiring what it means. Literally, of course, it is nonsense ; an island is a tract of land completely surrounded by water, but not big enough to be called a continent. No one proposes to call Great Britain a continent, or to drain the Narrow Seas ; and Great Britain will therefore con- tinue to be an island in the literal sense, whatever Lord Northcliffe may say or Zeppelins may do. But the statement is meant to be metaphorical, and there's the rub ; for it is impossible to define with any ex- 1 " Westminster Gazette," 11 July, 1916. 134 HAS GREAT BRITAIN CEASED TO BE AN ISLAND? 135 actitude a metaphorical meaning, and in this meta- phorical sense " an island " is clearly becoming one of those terms hke " command of the sea " and " a fleet in being," of which it has been said that when used at random they cover a perfect morass of loose thinking. We are painfully aware of the fact that Zeppelins and aeroplanes can drop bombs on English soil, and we put ourselves to considerable inconvenience and ex- pense to disconcert these enemy attacks. But to de- duce from them the sweeping generahzation that Britain is ceasing to be an island is a logical process which requires sifting. We have never in any great war, a category from which the Crimean and Colonial wars must be ex- cluded, been entirely immune from naval bombard- ment or from raids. But if that liability has robbed us of insular security, that is an advantage we have never enjoyed. It is true that the risk was confined to our coasts, but its extension by Zeppelins to inland districts is not in itself sufficient to make Great Britain part of the Continent. What then has been the military meaning of our insular security ? Surely, that Great Britain could not be conquered or invaded so long as she retained command of the seas, and was thus free from the fears that haunted Continental nations. If there is any meaning in the contention that Britain has ceased to be an island and become part of the Continent of Europe, it cannot be merely that we are liable to Zeppelin raids, but that lack of command of the air exposes us to those risks of con- quest and invasion to which we should be liable if we lost command of the sea or were joined to the Con- tinent by land. The alarm arises from an implied 136 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR analogy between the sea and the air, and from a con- fusion between the military possibilities of two distinct elements. It is really a question of physics, and the confusion is profound, because so long as the specific gravity of water remains eight hundred times as great as that of air, there can be no analogy between sea- power and air-power, and no comparison between the risks involved in the loss of command of the sea and those incurred by lack of command of the air. The point requires some amplification. Conquest is largely a matter of weight. Apart from the doubt- ful possibility of starving a great Continental country into submission, you cannot hope to conquer it nowa- days unless you can transport on to its territory a million tons of human and other material. Transport on such a scale is easier over land than over sea, and that is one of the causes of insular security. It is im- possible in the air, and the absence of air-power must remain a trifling disadvantage compared with absence of sea-power. Sea-power depends upon the specific gravity of water ; ironclads can only float because air is lighter than water. But, air being lighter than water, an ironclad can, barring accidents, float for an indefinite period. INIerely to float costs it no effort and requires no artificial aid ; and the enormous dis- proportion between the weight of air and the weight of water enables a ship to carry tens of thousands of tons. Aircraft, on the other hand, require artificial inspiration or propulsion to keep them up at all, and their lifting capacity is confined to narrow limits by the lightness of the element in which they move. A super-Dreadnought can carry ten 15-in. guns and a crew of 1000 men, in addition to armour-plate weigh- BAS GREAT BRITAIN CEASED TO BE AN ISlANt)? U1 ing thousands of tons, while a Hner can transport thou- sands of troops at a time. A ZeppeUn the same size as a Hner would require a hundred voyages to transport the troops a liner carries on one ; it is practically un- protected, and no conceivable airship could lift a really heavy gun. What hfting power a Zeppelm possesses is only purchased by an expanse of unprotected sur- face which condemns its crew to nocturnal raids and to altitudes in which accurate aim is not a possibility. Aeroplanes are more precise ; but wars cannot be won by an arm which cannot stand fire, transport troops, artillery, and equipment, or mamtain communications. It is hardly more rational to contend that the dropping of bombs from Zeppelins and aeroplanes has made England part of the Continent than it would be to deny our insularity on the ground that we are visited by thunderstorms from France. The sea does not, of course, protect us from air- attacks ; and inasmuch as liability to air-attack is a risk we run in common with Continental countries, it might be said that we are to that extent a partner with the Continent. But it is not Germany's aircraft which have occupied French territory and conquered most of Belgium ; it is German troops and heavy guns, and France and Belgium would pay a heavy price to gain our insular security which we say is non- existent. Moreover, the sea is no protection in itself ; if it shields us from field howitzers, it exposes our coasts to the fire of naval guns. Switzerland is pro- tected, but we are not, from naval attack. In spite of German whimpers,* the sea is perfectly neutral, and the German fleet need violate no neutrality in order to launch an attack on British shores. It is not the 138 THE COMMON tVEALTH AT WAR sea, but our command of the sea, that bars the way and makes us an island in the metaphorical sense. Great Britain is saved from invasion by her Navy, and not by Nature ; but it is Nature which saves all countries from conquest by Zeppelins. It is true that Nature has made self-defence an easier task for islanders girt by the encircling sea. But the properties of the circumambient air afford still greater security against aerial conquest. The simple truth is that man is a mundane animal ; he is tied to the earth by specific gravity, and his command over land, sea, and air is conditioned by that fact. Command of the sea is not on the same plane as com- mand of the land, and command of the air is a still more rarefied form of authority. We cannot avoid confusion if we conceive them as being analogous. We may sing " Britannia rules the waves," but we know that she rules them in a very different sense from her rule over British territory ; and no one can rule the air even in the limited sense in which Bri- tannia rules the waves. No one denies that aircraft have a value as scouts and as engines of destruction ; but that value is not comparable with the value of army corps or Dreadnoughts ; and our fear that air- craft have abolished our island protection is more pre- posterous than the German pretence that submarines have destroyed our command of the sea. In a very different sense it might be said ^\ith greater truth that Britain has ceased to be an island and has become a part of Europe ; and we might point to our 5,000,000 army and our conscription as proof of absorption into the Continental system. But that has not been the work of German aircraft ; it has HAS GREAT BRITAIN CEASED TO BE AN ISLAND? 159 been due to deliberate surrender of our '• splendid isolation," to the expansion of our insular ideas of our duty to our neighbour and of our responsibility for the liberties of Httle nations and the humanity of man. It is Germany's grievance that we would not leave the Continent alone. We have all of us accepted Mr. Asquith's definition of our objects in this war, but there is not a word in it about self-defence or in- sular security, and the distribution of forces on the Western Front suggests an invasion of the Continent by the British Empire rather than an invasion of the British Empire by the Continent. We have become part of the Continent because we have made common cause with the Continent. If the Narrow Seas have been abohshed, it is we and not the Germans who have abolished them. They have been abohshed by British ships and not by German aircraft ; and they have been abolished, not because our island defence was insufficient, but because we have cast away the self-sufficiency of our insular notions of hberty, and in a conflict of nations are seeking to lay the founda- tions of international right. X. THE DEATH-GRAPPLE WITH PRUSSIAN MILITARISM.^ The speech which Mr. Asquith recently addressed to a gathering of French visitors in London provides a suitable text for a re^dew of British aims and ideals in the war on the completion of its second year. In it he reminded his hearers of that definition of British policy to which he gave utterance in the first month of the war ; but on this occasion he confined his remarks to emphasizing the point that all the other objects of the war were comprehended in the single aim of destroying " the overmastering dictation of a Government controlled by a military caste ". It would obviously be irrational to father on this German issue between popular self-government and military dictation the whole burden of European problems which are involved in this war. Neverthe- less, it is true that the method of their solution, the arming of Europe during the last half-centiuy, and the final cataclysm of Armageddon have been the outcome of German domestic politics, and trace their pedigree to the events of 1863-1866.'^ Not one of 1 Written in April, 1916 ; reprinted from " The Yale Review," October, 1916. The title and the I'eference to the completion of tlie second year of the war were supplied by the Editor. 2 The first part of this article, as written, had summarized an attempt I made in a course of lectui'es in Lent Term, 1916, to show that in German domestic politics lay the ultimate causes of the war. 140 DEATH-GRAPPLE WITH PRUSSIAN MILITARISM 141 those problems is new, but they had not before led to a world war because no State before modern Germany had adopted the gospel that war is the sole and sove- reign method of settling thorny questions. It is that doctrine of arms which has made this war, and a peace that is to last can only be made by the defeat of that doctrine and the conversion of its adherents to a more rational frame of mind. The European and the German problems are not distmct, but identical ; and this war is as much the outcome of German politics as the wars of a century ago were the out- come of the French Revolution. Then war arose from the claim of a people to govern itself ; now it has sprung from the claim of a dynasty and a caste to rule by the sword. But a Germanic system that has lasted less than fifty years is not yet in possession of a title to perpetuity ; and the continuance of Prussian militarism vdth its philosophical appanages depends upon whether this war will have cost the German people more than the value they set on its services in the past. So long as the war promised to end in a German victory, this question of cost hardly arose in the German mind. The Germans were well imbued with the doctrine that their idol the State required human sacrifice, and they were always prepared to offer their Hves in great numbers for the sake of power and glory ; they were willing to make a million martyrs to the cause of German supremacy. As for the money, their humbled foes would pay in full measure. But what if the power and glory eluded their grasp, if the indemnities came from German pockets, and the millions of lives were offered for naught ? Most 142 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR races have had their barbarian Molochs and dethroned them at length ; and since Verdun miUions of Ger- mans have begun at last to think of counting the cost of a gigantic and unsuccessful war. To whom will they seek to present the bill they will have to pay, and to what cause will they ascribe its colossal pro- portions and the fact that they have to pay it ? Hardly to lack of preparation, self-sacrifice, organiza- tion, and effort, assuredly to some original sin in their Weltanschauung ; and we may see such a conversion from faith in material to belief in moral values as the world has rarely witnessed. Pending that alluring consummation, we have to consider alternative issues to the war, and contem- plate the evils we are fighting to avoid. The worst eventuality that has faced us since August, 1914, may perhaps without undue optimism be ruled out of the account ; and before the attack on Verdmi German officers themselves admitted in conversation that a triumph, such as that of which they had dreamt at the opening of the war, was no longer within the sphere of rational aspiration. In those early days Hans Delbrlick ventured to remark that the era of world empires had passed away ; he was promptly reminded by the militarists that the terms of peace would be settled by the German General Staff and not by professors of history. By this time even his critics would probably admit that history was justified of its professors, and that the dream of a Germany surrounded by client European States and bestriding the world like a colossus has vanished like the unsubstantial fabric of a vision. The Balkans dropped out of a recent survey the German Chan- DEATH-GRAPPLE WITH PRUSSIAN MILITARISM 143 cellor made of the field of stricken foes ; nothing was said about the disruption of France or the freedom of the seas : Belgium was to be created anew mth guarantees for the protection of Belgians against French and British tyi-anny and of the Flemings against the tyranny of Belgium ; and German com- pensation was to be found in Poland and in Russia's Baltic provinces. This was a public confession of the secret conviction that Germany might have to be content with something hke the status quo ante helium, with a rectification of her Eastern frontier to be paid for by the Turkish surrender of Armenia to Russia. Germans have tried to prepare their Turkish ally for that sacrifice by making little secret of the extent of the Armenian massacres. Moderate though such a settlement might seem compared with German ambitions and Allied appre- hensions, it would yet involve consequences wliich would be intolerable to humanity at large. This is not a war for the re-distribution of territory or the compromise of national aspirations ; it is a war to end war for generations or to make it more horrible and insistent. Lord Rosebery once remarked of the liquor traffic that either the State must control the trade, or the trade would control the State ; and the lesson of this war is that either humanity must master war or war will master humanity. The broad- est issue in human affairs is whether they are to stand on a basis of force and fraud or on one of ethical principle ; and this war will decide whether the world as a whole will have for the future to put its trust in the sword or in justice and humanity, whether man- kind will rely on military or on moral strength. A 144 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR stalemate would be a drawn battle between the two principles, and each would be left to develop along its own lines. With their usual forethought, the Ger- mans began to prepare for this contingency as soon as the battle of the Marne made a complete triumph unlikely ; and by instilling the conviction into Ger- man minds that the war which they made was purely one of defence, they will be able to claim that the status quo ante helium is a triumph over aggression which only the strong right arm of Prussian militarism could have achieved. The moral will be to strengthen and lengthen that arm, to give yet more weight to the councils of war, and pile to a still greater height the mountain of munitions and armaments, to pay less regard than ever to scraps of paper, and strain every nerve to prepare for the final triumph which eluded the grasp of militarism in this war.^ In that interval the science and horror of war will not stand still, and its capacious maw will open yet wider to swallow the safeguards and guarantees with which international law and morality have painfully striven to limit its ravages. The descent we have witnessed since 1870 will be but a step compared with the abyss into which we shall plunge before war is renewed ; and he would be a purblind optimist who could discern any sure check or bounds to its opera- tions. Before 1914 we imagined that there were certain considerable restraints on hostilities hallowed by custom and sanctioned by international agreements. ^ The argument here anticipated has since been developed at some length in the German militarist press ; see, for instance, an article by Professor Eltzbacher in Das grossere Deutschland for X Sept., 1917. DEATH-GRAPPLE WITH PRUSSIAN MILITARISM 145 It was supposed that war was a business confined to one sex, to belligerents, and to armed forces ; it was assumed that States might remain neutral if they chose, and that if they remained neutral their nationals would be immune from loss of life and destruction of property. It was further taken for granted that the number of actual combatants would be a smaU proportion of the peoples involved in the war, and that loss of Hfe and destruction of property would be confined to more or less definite and limited military areas. There is not one of these limitations which the intruding sweep of this war has not broken down, and not one which does not threaten to disap- pear altogether in the wars of the future. They will not be restricted by sex. The physical strength, which was once the combatant's main quahfication, has been superseded by machinery ; and the hundred of thou- sands of women who have made munitions for this war and helped to construct aeroplanes, guns, and torpedoes, will be succeeded by a generation of women who will switch on the currents to set them in action. They may be kept out of the trenches, but there are few other functions in war which women might not discharge. No doubt their proximity to the fi'ont would divert them from industrial production ; but science has multiplied the human capacity for pro- duction to such an extent that the time may not be far distant when a third of the human race could produce for the whole and leave the remaining two- thirds free to devote their whole time to war. The progress towards universal conscription in every State is merely a stage in the tendency to involve the whole human race in war. 10 146 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR There will be no territorial limits to the war of the future, and distance will provide no prophylactic against the anniliilation of space. The war area is a definition of the past, and the Germans who com- plained that Freiburg — when it was bombed by the French — was outside the sphere of military operations, have already dropped bombs on London ; and women and cliildren Hving almost on the borders of Wales have been killed by Zeppehn raiders coming from central Europe. Ten years ago Count Zeppelin was laboriously seeking to construct a lighter-than-air ship which would travel a few dozen miles at eighteen miles an hour : ten years hence it will be as easy for airships from Europe to drop bombs on the Mississippi V alley. Submarines can now cross the Atlantic ; ^ ten years hence they will circumnavigate the globe, and if England were beaten in this war, the terms of peace would include the cession of the Bermudas, at least one West Indian Island withm easy reach of the Panama Canal, and a chain of stations across the Pacific. Science, which is depriving Great Britain of her insular security, wiU not long leave America in its paradise of isolation. As the distinction between military and ci\dl areas, between combatants and non-combatants, is breaking down, so also the line which protected neutrals is tending to disappear, and in the future it will become more and more difficult for neutrals to maintain neu- trality. Scraps of paper will clearly be nothing more, but that is not the point. If two years ago a seer had ^This sentence was written as a prophecy in April, 1916; its fulfilment by the " Deutschland " in July necessitated an editorial emendation in an article not published till October. DEATH-GRAPPLE WITH PRUSSIAN MILITARISM 147 produced a prophetic list of the outrages inflicted on neutrals during this war by the deliberate sinking of unarmed ships, slaughter of non-belligerent nationals, plotting the destruction of property in friendly States, and had foretold that one and all of these neutral nations would stomach these affronts and clutch at every straw to save them from the risk of exacting reparation, he would not merely have been disbelieved, but condemned as a base detractor of national honour and self-respect. If neutraUty has been maintained, it is only by means of the hoiTor with which the Germans have invested the practice of war, and be- cause their calculated Schrecklichkeit has raised the price which neutrals are wiUing to pay for peace. We Englishmen in our innocence thought that such conduct would antagonize humanity and provoke a revolt of the world's conscience that would crush the offenders. The Germans gauged poor human nature with greater precision and cynicism ; and their careful barbarity has cunningly debased the currency of inter- national relations in war as well as in peace. Between one nation and another, said ^^on Billow before the war, the relation must always be that of hammer and anvil ; there is no room for comity in a world with Germans let loose. We are fighting against that blood-red future. In a sense it is a question of self-defence, but that seK is a self which has been expanded until it embraces not merely the British Empire and its AlUes, be they great or little nations, but the whole of humanity, including the Germans themselves ; for they, too, mil be saved by their own defeat from a repetition of the ills they endure and others to come from this war. We 10* 148 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR talk of crushing Prussian militarism, and some of us look to that as a penalty for Germany's crimes. It is not a penalty but a boon of great price. For fifty years the German people have toiled to maintain an invincible army, diverted time and energy from produc- tion to conscript service, paid hundreds of millions in taxes, and surrendered their claims to self-government, only in the end to be brought to this war. Defeat will release them as well as the rest of Europe from the greatest incubus man has ever imposed on the backs of his fellow-men. No sane Briton in his saner moments thinks of crushing the German people. Pains they will have to suffer, because of the pains they in- flicted on imiocent people ; but apart from the re- dress of French grievances in Alsace-Lorraine, Danish grievances in Schleswig, and Polish grievances in Posen, German lands will be left to the German people, and, we may hope, on a better security than they have ever possessed before. Human interests and human justice and moral necessity require that heathen trust " in reeking tube and iron shard " should be broken, and that contempt for plighted troth and sacred treaties should be punished. But the same high duty requires the Allies to endow German territory and German nationality with a stronger safeguard than the sword ; and the fitting consummation of this war and of the principles for which it was fought would be for the Allies, after beating the German swords into ploughshares and their spears into priming-hooks, to guarantee German territory by an international treaty, at the head of which should stand the name of Albert, King of the Belgians. To depend on a scrap of paper is an adequate penance for those who have drawn the sword. XL THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT/ In an address to his constituents some four months ago the Prime Minister respectfully commended to the consideration of his fellow-countrymen the problem of the future constitutional relations between the Mother Country and the Oversea Dominions of the Crown. The discussion of a mere problem of politics would not become an academic occasion like this, but there can be no impropriety in turning the attention of a university audience to the purely historical question, upon the answer to which must depend our efforts to solve and our success in solving the practical problem. To what extent have peoples been able consciously to mould their own institutions and to fashion their future ? How far have those institutions been the outcome of unconscious or unwilling adapta- tion to an environment over which we have had a very imperfect control ? " Human institutions," we have been told on what should be good authority,^ " do not grow ; they are made by human will for the realization of human purposes." On that faith in man as the ^The Creighton Lecture delivered before the University of London on 19 October, 1916; reprinted from "History," October, 1916. A few verbal alterations made in delivery, after the lecture was in type, have been incorporated here. 2 "The Times Lit. Suppl.," 25 May, 1916, p. 242. 149 150 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR conscious creator of his own political universe is based the confidence with which we are planning to build an Imperial Parliament after the war ; and the bear- ing of that antithesis between growth and manufac- ture upon the past and future of our Parhamentary institutions is the subject of my discourse. We need not, perhaps, delay over the terminologi- cal objection that institutions do not grow because they do not grow like a tree ; and in dealing with human affairs we may assume the propriety of speak- ing of the growth of a Parliament in power and au- thority or of an individual in wisdom and grace, even though that growth is invisible to the eye and cannot be measured in metres or described in terms of the three dimensions. Nor can we avoid the antithesis between human growth and manufacture by recourse to a theory of divine institution. An ex-President of the United States of America has, indeed, described the constitution of his country as " the greatest God has ever made " ; but he was speaking with a con- servative bias in the heat of a Presidential election, and if he had paused to reflect on the amendments which the American people have been constrained to make in this work of the Almighty, he might have been more cautious in claiming divine responsibility for the original. There is also a story of a hill tribe in India being discovered in the act of sacrificing to a deity which it called the Privy Council ; but what- ever faith we may have had in the divine right of kings, we are not, and we never have been, impressed with the divinity of Parliament. It is a very human institution, and it has either been consciously designed by! succeeding generations of English statesmen, or it THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 151 has grown through a prolonged and complex process of natural selection and adaptation to changing cir- cumstance. The issue is one between human design and human evolution. If our forefathers consciously created, first an English, and then a British, Parlia- ment to meet the needs of the people of these islands, we can hope by conscious effort to create a new Im- perial Parliament to satisfy the wider claims of a British Empire. If, on the other hand, Parliament as it exists to-day was never designed or created by any conscious volition, then the argument in favour of the possibihty of a new and special creation loses some of its force. That does not affect our apprecia- tion of the need for a closer constitutional union be- tween the realms of the British Crown. Upon that there is httle difference of opinion ; but it does affect our view of the methods and means whereby that end may be achieved. Incidentally, the argument involves our whole con- ception of history and of the rise and decline of human societies. Institutions are the outcome of a people's growth, and they cannot be treated apart from the political, social, religious, intellectual, and economic development of nations. No pastoral community, and no community that was purely agricultural, ever pos- sessed a Parliament ; Parliaments have only been de- veloped by peoples which have attained to an advanced stage of social and economic growth. Yet it is diffi- cult ,to ascribe these indispensable social conditions to conscious human design or volition. Free will is a qualified attribute of the individual ; it is a far more doubtful factor m a people. An Imperial Parliament may be the outcome of this war ; but the / 152 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR war was none of our making, and the British Empire might thus owe its unification to the German Emperor. That assuredly was not his intention ; and it does not follow that because an institution has been the result of human action it is therefore the result of human design. Neither as an individual, nor as a society, nor as a race is man a free agent. No human slate was ever clean, and doubts of the competence of con- scious human will to manufacture political organisms are inseparable from any sense of the profound influ- ence of past inheritance and present environment upon the course of human affairs. The character, the in- tellect, and the will-power we possess as individuals are not the result of our o^ii voUtion, and the person who thinks that our national heritage of Liberty and Empire is the simple product of national wdll camiot have thought to much purpose. Nor would that violent assumption carry us very far in our investiga- tion ; it would merely land us in another historical puzzle. Granted that our national will created our national Parliament, how did we come by that national vfiM ? We do not believe nowadays that Britain arose from the waves with Magna Carta in its bosom, and that the Englishman was endowed by a special dis- pensation with a natural thirst for a Parliamentary vote. Racially, the Englishman is something of a cross between the Teuton and the Celt, and neither of these races has shown in history any particular genius for Parliamentary institutions. We cannot account for the British Parliament by tracing it back to an aboriginal mstinct. Precluded from that explanation, we turned to a faith in a founder, and we ascribed our constitution to THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 153 the beneficent foresight of an Alfred the Great, a Simon de Montfort, or an Edward I. Parhament be- came, in that view, the sum total of the constitutional achievements of a succession of Parliamentary states- men ; it was made, not by the national will, but by a line of supermen so superior to the common infirmities of that genus that they deliberately planned the super- session of the superman by the rule of law and the dominance of majorities. This theory represents the heroic age of historiography : it is easier for the adol- escent mind to visualize a hero than a society, a creative act than a process of evolution ; and pictures of Parliament-making belong to the cinematograph view of history. These brilliant achievements of heroes and statesmen fade into a soberer picture of growth, and we no longer believe that Alfred the Great founded our greatness, from universities down to the shire system and trial by jury. We have learnt, for instance, that trial by jury was not Anglo-Saxon at all, that it took many centuries to grow, that in its original form of the inquest on oath it was not a popu- lar institution designed to protect the liberty of the subject, but a royal expedient introduced from abroad in the interests of the Treasury. It was first imposed on England by William the Conqueror for the pur- poses of his Doomsday Survey, and it was about as popular as a more modern inquisition known as Form IV. So, too, Henry II developed our judicial system, not for the sake of justice, but for the rewards or fines which justice brought into the royal exchequer. Jus- titia magnum emolumentum. If he could have looked into the future and seen the uses to which his expe- dients would be put in later ages, he would have 154 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR regarded the results as a monument of the irony of history and the perversity of fate. What is true of our courts of law is also true of Parhament and the Crow^i. Where there has been design it has been changed almost beyond recognition by subsequent growth and use ; and specific acts of creation have become wellnigh as obsolete in the science of history as in that of geology. None of the great elements in our Constitution were deliberately made. The sovereignty of Parliament is itself a growth ; that is why it exists, for a sovereignty that is created is a contradiction m terms. The power that gives can also take away. No one established the Monarchy or endowed the Crown mth the preroga- tives it enjoys and jurisdiction it exerts. No one created the British Parliament or designed either the House of Lords or the House of Commons. No legislator drafted our common law or enacted the cus- tom of the Constitution. No Act of Parhament or of the Crown set up the Cabinet system or made the office of Prime Minister. Responsible self-govern- ment is itself a matter of gro^vth, and you may search the laws of the Empire in vain for a statute to the effect that any British realm shall be governed by Ministers responsible to an elected legislature. Here under the British Constitution we live and move and have our political being, just as we have our social being, not because any king or Parliament has con- ferred upon us liberty or empire, but because those things have emanated from the conflicting interests, ideals, and action of the community, operating through centuries of political intercourse and strife, and adapt- ing its constitutional forms by tentative and experi- THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 155 mental stages to the changing conditions of its existence. Other constitutions have been made and imposed by a conscious effort of will : ours does not represent the design or volition of any sovereign, any statesman, any party, or any Parliament past or present. Monarchs and Ministers, Lords and Com- mons, Whigs and Tories, have all contributed to the result ; but it is a fact, for which we may all be im- partially grateful, that no party ever realized more than a fragment of its programme. We have fed in the course of our history on varied poUtical fare, and our gro^vth has been due to remarkable powers of as- similation ; but the political physiology which shall teach us the principles of political 'digestion is still a sealed book. When it is opened it may be found to contain but few of the prescriptions of our constitu- tional practitioners. Nature is the first of humanity's doctors ; men and women were born before there was medical science to usher them into the world, and human institutions grew before political science set out to teach us how to make them. I would not deny the value of political any more than that of medical science ; but the physician does not ignore nature, and the student of human institutions must needs take account of the human nature in politics, and restrain his creative ambitions within the limits imposed by historical growth. The history of our Parliament is a record of human action in which human design has played an almost insignificant part. Its founders, if it can be said to have had any founders at all, were uncon- scious of their foundations. If we had to select one individual to whom Parliamentary institutions owe 156 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR more than to any other, it would not be Simon de Montfort or Edward I, but a monarch to whom both the name of ParUament and the idea of representative government were unknown ; and our choice might fall on that Henry II, who, through his organization of the royal system of justice, provided the means for the growth of English common law and encouraged all sorts and conditions of men to seek at Westmin- ster a redress for grievances which they could not get remedied in their local or feudal courts. For we shall never understand our Parliament or our Consti- tution unless we grasp the fact that Parliament was primarily a court of law, and remains to this day the highest court in the British Isles. It is still called the High Court of ParHament, and we can trace sub- stance behind the shadow of the name in the circum- stances that the highest judge in the land also presides in Parliament ; that the judges sitting as a Supreme Court of Appeal in the House of Lords are but a section of Parliament fulfilling a part of its functions ; and that an Act of Parliament is, ipso facto, due pro- cess of law, which may be interpreted but cannot be challenged in any lower court. We sometimes com- plain of our lawyer-politicians ; but the connexion is coeval with Parliament and essential to its existence, for politics are inchoate law, and law is crystallized politics. Parliament grew out of our common law ; and if we are to have a common Parliament and common politics for our imperial community, we shall ^ need for it a broader basis of common Imperial law. It may be that, just as the judges of Henry II's Curia Regis worked out their law in practical administration and then by their judicial circuits and assizes spread THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 157 that practice throughout the kingdom and made it the common law of England, so the Judicial Com- mittee of the Privy Council may hammer out a com- mon law of the Empire and spread it by means of Imperial circuits to the uttermost parts of the King's dominions. In any case, it was the making of common law and the provision of a common resort for plaintiffs at Westminster that led to the growth of Parliament. In ParHaments, says the earliest description of them, which dates from the reign of Edward I, "judicial doubts are determined, new remedies are established for new wrongs, and justice is done to every one according to his deserts " ; and the necessary pre- liminary to a mediaeval Parliament was a pubhc pro- clamation in Westminster Hall inviting all who had grievances to be redressed to present their petitions by a certain date. For a century between the days of Henry II and those of Edward I, this judicial machinery had been growing ; and there are other facts which discount Edward's claim to be the founder of our Parliamentary system. There is no evidence that he ever dreamt of creating an elected legislative assembly. He was a great legislator ; but his legisla- tion was enacted in Council, and it does not appear that his so-called Model Parliament legislated at all. His services to the cause of Parhamentary develop- ment were for the most part undesigned. He did, indeed, Hke other monarchs of his time, summon elected representatives from the counties and boroughs to give the assent of their constituents to the taxes he wanted to levy. The difference between his expedient and those of his foreign contemporaries 158 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR was that Edward I amalgamated the elected tax- granting body of representatives with the High Court of Parliament ; whereas in France, for instance, the Estates-General, or representative assembly, remained distinct from the pmdement or court of law. When we remember that in England alone did medieeval representative government survive to modern times, it is hard to overestimate the importance of this English amalgamation of representative estates with the High Court of Parliament. But it may have been accidental, and its impor- tance depended upon the use that was made of the circumstance by later generations. The folk who came to Westminster at Edward's summons or in- vitation came to gi-ant taxes or to seek judicial redress for their personal grievances. They did not come to legislate for the community, and their petitions were of a purely local or indi^ddual character ; among the thousands that survive for Edward's reign there has not been found one for what we should call a general public act. Members were locally minded, with httle national consciousness ; and so long as their petitions reflected this characteristic, Parliament remained a court of law. For an individual grievance is a matter for judicial redress ; a general grievance becomes a question of politics. The evolution of law into politics and of Parliament into a legislature was brought about by the transformation of the local and private petitions of individual members into the com- mon petitions of Parliament. Summoned reluctantly to the court at Westminster to vote taxation, mem- bers began by degrees to compare the petitions for redress with which they had been entrusted by their THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 159 respective constituencies ; and they discovered that there was much in common between them, that king's Ministers and local magnates used and abused their authority in much the same way all over the kingdom. It then occurred to some unknown political genius, who almost deserves the title of founder of the House of Commons, that a speedier and more expeditious means of redress would be to pool their common grievances, embody them in a common petition, and back that petition with their united powers of taxa- tion, instead of leaving each petitioner and each con- stituency to struggle as it might with the law's delays and the king's perversity. And so we find beginning, in the reign of Edward II, those common petitions which grew into the public Bills of the House of Commons, made it in time the predominant organ of legislation, and gave it still later control over the whole executive government. These are powers which grew with exercise, but were not made or conferred. Strictly speaking, the House of Com- mons to-day possesses no right of legislation ; its Bills are still in the form of petitions, and the Crown alone enacts. The House possesses a right of peti- tion and the power of making government impossible if those petitions are disregarded. Our point is that its powers were the outcome of growth, and not of design or manufacture. The same is true of the composition of both the Houses of Parliament. No one designed either the House of Lords or the House of Commons ; and both of them grew into what they are in spite of con- scious efforts to make them something else. When Edward I held a Parliament, the whole assembly met l6o THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR in a single chamber. The kernel of the assembly was the king's council in Parliament, consisting largely of judges, who sat on three or four woolsacks facing one another. Outside that charmed square, on the king's right sat the spiritual, and on his left the temporal peers, while various other " estates," lower clergy, knights, citizens, burgesses, stood or knelt at the bar opposite the throne. There in open Parliament — now concealed behind the modern name of the House of Lords — was transacted, as it is to-day, its solemn business, its formal opening, the reading of the king's speech, the trial of State offenders, the enactment of legislation, the prorogumg of a session, or the dissolu- tion of a Parliament. But after the declaration of the purposes for which they had been summoned, the various " estates " — the number three is a historical fiction so far as England is concerned — separated to discuss the king's demands and their own petitions in greater privacy. The lower clergy resorted to Con- vocation, and gradually ceased to attend the Parlia- ments at all ; the knights of the shire and the town representatives continued for some time to deliberate apart from one another. That they should ever have coalesced is one of the astonishing features in English constitutional history. For the knights of the shire were lesser barons, and the lesser barons continued in other countries to form part of a single estate, the noblesse; while the third estate was restricted to townsfolk. In England, however, owing to causes which are partly obscure and wholly complex, tlie lesser barons failed to assert their nobility, made common cause with the townsfolk, and with them grew into the House of Commons. This amalgama- THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT l6l tion and the withdrawal from Parliament of the lesser clergy left the king's council and the spiritual and temporal peers alone to form what is called the House of Lords, though historically that House is the King's Great Council in Parliament, and to it are still sum- moned such councillors as the Attorney- and Solicitor- General, who never think of obeying their writs. It is the growth of custom, and not design or specific enactment, which has determined alike the form and the powers of Parliament. Parliament, however, is supreme in our Constitu- tion, because it embodies the Executive as well as the Legislature ; and we turn for a moment to see whether the same preference of growth to manufac- ture has marked the development of our administra- tion. Once more we seek in vain for any deliberate act of creation : no statute established the Cabinet system, created the office of Prime Minister, or gave Ministers control over the House of Commons or the House of Commons control over them. The whole idea of connexion between Legislature and Executive was anathema to public opinion in the late seven- teenth and early eighteenth centuries ; and if we had had to wait for specific creation, we should never have had responsible self-government at all. Ministers of the Crown were then regarded as prime agents of Parliamentary corruption : and place-bill after place- bill was passed to preserve the purity of the Legisla- ture from contact with the Court. No Parliament in the eighteenth century could ever have been per- suaded to create a Cabinet system by statute : still less could it have been induced to make a Prime Minister. The term was almost one of abuse ; the 11 162 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR Premiership was regarded as an obnoxious importa- tion from France, and no accusation was more warmly repudiated by those who developed the office than the charge that they were seeking pre-eminence over their colleagues. George Grenville declared that Prime Minister was an odious title ; Lord North forbade its use in his household ; and a minority in the House of Lords, which on this occasion reflected public opinion, protested that " a sole, or even a First, Minister is an officer unknown to the law of Britain, inconsistent with the Constitution of this country, and destructive of liberty in any Government what- soever ". The English ideal was Ministerial equality and that " separation of powers " to which INIontes- quieu attributed English liberty ; and any constitu- tional theorist or Convention would then have rejected what have since become the corner-stones of our Constitution. We were saved then, as we may be again, by our history and by the difficulty of re-mak- ing according to plan a growth with its roots in the past. Every generation is wise in its own conceit ; but the collective wisdom of the ages proves greater than that of the wisest, and it is the climax of pre- sumption when a generation thinks itself wise enough to bind its successors by fundamental laws and written constitutions and to lay upon the future the dead hand of the past. That sublime confidence in the wisdom of their own generation inspired the labours of the fathers of the Constitution of the United States, which Americans have claimed as the work of the Almighty and English- men have held up in these latter days for our imitation. But when we are told that our disputes about the in- THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT l63 terpretation of our own elastic and unwritten Consti- tution warn us to learn from the wisdom of our revolted colonies, we may also take leave to remember that their written Constitution did not save them from the bloodiest civil war in history, and that, in spite of all amendments, the American Constitution still involves the American people in difficulties we should do well to avoid. Abraham Lincoln experienced some of them ; in the midst of that civil war the term came round for a Presidential election. That term was irrevocably fixed by the Constitution, and there were no means by which it could be extended ; unless there were a Presidential election in 1864 there would cease to be a President, and Lincoln, if he continued to ex- ercise his functions, would become the merest usurper. And so, with one half of the nation fighting the other, the American people had to endure the added turmoil of a disputed Presidential election. Nor are the perils of obsolete prescription by any means exhausted. The Presidential election takes place in the first week of November, but the new President does not enter office until March. It is not impossible that President Wilson may be defeated ; it is also not impossible that a renewal of Germany's submarine campaign may between November and March force upon the President the choice of peace or war ; and the decision of that momentous question might have, by the written American Constitution, to be taken by a President in whom the American people had passed a vote of no confidence. He could not escape the dilemma by resignation ; and even if he committed suicide he would be succeeded, not by the successful candidate, but by the Vice-President nominated four 11* 164 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR years before by the discredited party. It may also be added that, strictly speaking, the election in November is not the election of a President at all ; it is the elec- tion of a College of Electors, who in their turn elect the President. The design of the American Constitu- tion was that this College of Electors should consist not merely of the elected, but of the elect of the American people, and that their sublimated wisdom should result in the calm and dispassionate choice of the fittest man for the post. Practice has perverted the elect into a body of cyphers with none but a mathematical value : so vain it is by the best-laid scheme and the wisest design to prescribe wisdom for future ages. There is one other provision in the American Con- stitution which so forcibly illustrates the point under discussion that it calls for a brief notice. The Ameri- can Federal Constitution, and nearly all the written constitutions which the individual States enjoy, lay dowTi the maxim that " no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law ". It sounds indisputable, and the design was excellent. But the American Constitution also makes the most rigid distinction and separation between the Legislature and the Judiciary. Congress is not a court : its acts are not, like acts of the High Court of Parliament, " due process of law ". Only the courts in America can deprive a man of Hfe, liberty, or property ; and they, of course, cannot legislate. Hence for more than a century, until the American Constitution was amended, the American people could not impose an income-tax on themselves, because an income-tax, imposed by the Legislature, deprived a man of property ■ THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT l65 without due process of law. Similarly, the courts have declared invalid legislative acts prohibiting the use of the Stars and Stripes for commercial purposes, forbidding the payment of wages in kind, compelling mine-owners to provide washhouses, defining danger- ous trades, and so forth, on the ground that they de- prived men of their natural liberty without due process of law. Strange, indeed, are the unrehearsed effects of constitutional design. Even from our own Constitution, where we have avoided as far as possible attempts to manufacture fundamental law, we can illustrate the havoc which written law creates in conflict with historical growth. Far back in the reign of Edward I the competence of the old county courts was limited to cases involving 40s. or less. In those days 40s. was equivalent perhaps to £100 in modern currency, and the county courts had a fairly extensive jurisdiction. But while the written law remained, the value of money fell, until in the eighteenth century a man, in order to recover any but the most trifling debt, had to bring a colossal and expensive action before the courts at Westminster, and the county courts dwindled from being the active centres of local government into the pettiest of institutions. Another illustration comes home more vividly to-day : in 1662 Parlia- ment fixed the pay of a cavalryman at 2s. and that of an infantryman at Is. a day. The corresponding values at present would be something like 10s. and 5s. — the sum, we may note with interest, which it was found necessary to pay Colonial troops in the Boer War. Again the written law remained while the real value fell, and with that fall decUned the social 166 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR status from which the British Army was recruited ; instead of the British private soldier receiving the wages of a skilled artisan, he was reduced below the level of unskilled labour. It needs no elaboration to suggest the difficulties and the humiliations into which in modern times we have been led by this domination of the dead hand of a written law. An Act of Parlia- ment, and still more a wTitten constitution, the better adapted it is to one generation, the less it will suit another. Bigidity in human affairs and human institu- tions tends to become the ligor moi^tis. That which is fixed is dead ; it is only by growth and by change tliat we live. There have, indeed, been occasions on which men have apparently succeeded in forestalling the process of growth and in consciously making a durable con- stitution ; and the union between England and Scot- land in 1707 and that between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800 have been taken as proving the ease with which two or more independent constitutions can be fused into a single organic whole. No one will dispute the immense importance of the Anglo- Scottish union, at any rate ; and to exclude human volition from all influence on the development of human institutions would reduce man to a blind automaton. But it is a legal rather than a historical view which regards that Union as the product of a single creative Act passed in 1707 ; and we must not ignore the conscious efforts that failed. Edward I had tried to unite the two realms ; Protector Somerset had seen a vision of a united " Great Britain having the sea for a wall, mutual love for a garrison, and God for defence, whicli in peace should not be ashamed THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 167 nor in war afraid of any worldly or foreign power ". James I had attempted to convert the personal union of the two Crowns into a Parliamentary union of the two kingdoms ; and Oliver Cromwell had brought it to pass at the point of the sword. But these conscious efforts at manufacture impeded the natural growth of British union ; and even in 1707 the union was incomplete. Scotland expressed its national voice through its kirk rather than through its Parliament, to which it was never greatly attached ; and it refused to unite its kirk with that of England. It also clung to its legal system, and hankered after its native dynasty ; and the union of the two Parlia- ments was followed by two rebellions. The real union between the two realms grew after the Act through the decline of theological animus, the unify- ing effects of the Industrial Revolution, of the common inheritance of dominions and oversea trade, and of the common development of responsible self-government which Scotland had never enjoyed before 1707. The Irish Union, indeed, was made and did not grow ; but it would be a strange act of policy to hang round the necks of British realms another such union, and con- demn them to another century of history such as that which elapsed between the rebellion of Robert Emmet and the rising of Sinn Fein. But nowhere is the contrast between the growth and the manufacture of institutions better illustrated than in the history of Britain's first self-governing Dominion. In 1837, when Queen Victoria ascended the throne, there were raging in Canada two rebellions, one under Mackenzie in British Ontario, and the other under Papineau in French Quebec, and after their f68 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR failure Lord Durham was sent out to report on the whole situation. He made two principal recommenda- tions : (1) That the separate Legislatures for the two provinces of Ontario and Quebec should be united in a single Canadian Parliament ; and (2) that this united province should be governed by Ministers responsible, not to Downing Street, but to the Canadian Parha- ment. The first of these changes was " made " by statute in 1840 ; it proved a failure, and in 1867 Ontario and Quebec recovered their separate Legis- latures. Durham's second change was not " made " ; it was left to grow under the hands of successive Governors, and it proved a signal success in Canada and a model for the government of other British Colonies and Dominions. All this, it may be urged, is an argument against creation by a superior Imperial Parliament for the people of the Dominions ; it does not apply to the creations of those peoples themselves. The deliberate federation of the six Austrahan States and the union of the four South African Colonies would, no doubt, have been failures had they been simply imposed by the British Parhament. But their success proves that separate States can federate or unite and make a con- stitution for themselves \\dthout waiting for the slow and haphazard process of growth. That is un- doubtedly true, and if all the Dominions and De- pendencies of the British Cro^vn had grown so like one another in social development, economic needs, and political circumstance as the six Australian States or the four South African Colonies, and if they were equally anxious to amalgamate, the problem of Im- perial Union or Federation would be comparatively THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 1^9 simple. In each of those two precedents there was also contiguity of territory, and, what was more im- portant, no great disproportion in size or population. It is comparatively easy to unite when union means equality ; but men do not like predommant partners. That has been the real difficulty in the Irish Act of Union ; union meant legislation by Britain for Ire- land, and not a joint production. It was the rock on which earlier Anglo-Scottish projects of union split. " What would you say," asked a Scot of an English statesman in discussing the proposal to marry Edward VI to Mary, Queen of Scots, " if your lad were a lass, and our lass were a lad ? " Husband and wife were, according to Roman and also to old English law, one person, and that person was the husband. England and Scotland would become one kingdom, and that kingdom would be English. States will sacrifice some of their individuality to a higher and common unity ; they will not welcome absorption by a predominant partner. ^ Apart from the enormous complexities involved with regard to India, Egypt, the West Indies, and the many Dependencies of the Crown, which enthu- siasts would ignore by confining the scope of Imperial Union to the self-governing Dominions, the inherent difficulty consists in the fact that the total white population of all the other Dominions put together is less than a third of that of the United Kingdom, and that in any Imperial Council or Parliament, based on popular representation, the oversea members would be outvoted by three to, one. This inconvenience meets with a somewhat drastic remedy in a suggestion I have seen from an overseas source : it is there pro- 170 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR posed that out of an Imperial Council of twenty-five members, two should come from Newfoundland, three from New Zealand, three from South Africa, four from Australia, five from Canada, and eight from Great Britain. Ireland, with sixteen times the popula- tion of Newfoundland and four times that of New Zealand, is ignored ; each fortunate Newfoundlander is equated with forty-five inhabitants of Great Britain, and on an average each oversea Briton is to have the voting strength of five mere Englishmen or Scots. We need not be wedded to the principle of " one vote, one value " to feel some compunction about transferring the control of the British Na\'y and Army and the issues of peace and war to a council in which the representatives of the British Isles would be out- voted by more than two to one. The control of the issues of peace and war is the kernel of the problem, and it carries us to the heart of its complexities. The Council or tlie Parliament that wages a war must control the supply of men, and our existing Government has found it necessary to apply conscription to Great Britain. New Zealand has followed suit, and Australia is next week to have a referendum on Mr. Hughes's Bill ; but his proposal falls far short of the British measure. It does not in- clude married men, nor only sons, nor bachelors under twenty-one, nor those who are supporting dependents ; and so far, there has been no suggestion of conscrip- tion in South Africa, Canada, or Newfoundland. Such anomalies are tolerable in our anomalous Em- pire ; they would be impossible under a single Imperial Parliament. Dominion representatives could hardly impose compulsion on us while exempting their own THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 171 constituents ; and, on the other hand, no one could contemplate with equanimity the prospect of an Im- perial Legislature or an Imperial Executive attempt- ing to enforce conscription on a Dominion whose representatives had voted against it, or trying to levy taxation which they had not granted. It is of the essence of our Empire as it exists, and of the national status claimed by the British realms, that they should be free to give or to refuse. They have given lavishly of their best ; they could not have given if they had no choice. A free community can impose conscrip- tion on itself ; it ceases to be a free community or to enjoy a national status when conscription or taxation can be imposed by others. No doubt the case would be altered if we were convinced that the Dominions desired to merge their individuality in a single Empire-community, and we need not assume the impossibility of such a communal growth. But it is not a thing we can make, and it is well to fix our attention on the actual needs of the Empire and the demands of the Dominions. The specific demand brought out by the war is clear and simple enough, and it has been convincingly put by the spokesmen of various British realms. They find themselves and those they represent committed to a war in the making of which they had no voice ; and they suggest with reason and justice that the perpetua- tion of such a condition of things might involve a slur upon their citizenship of the Empu'e and a strain upon their loyalty. But there is no desire, I take it, on the part of the Dominions to submit their domestic politics, their right of taxing themselves, of fixing their own economic and social, educational and ecclesiastical 1?2 fHE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR policy to the arbitrament of a centralized Parliament in which they would all be outvoted. The question is purely one of foreign policy ; towards the outside world the Empire wishes to stand as a unit ; within its bounds its Dominions desire to manage their own affairs. That point can be met without recourse to a constitutional revolution or summoning a Convention of the Empire to abolish all its Parliaments and con- struct a new one out of the debris. But it cannot be discussed without reference to another issue which agitates some of our minds — the question of the democratic control of foreign policy. If by Imperial control of foreign policy and of the issues of war and peace we mean that diplomatic agreements are not to be made nor military measures to be concerted with foreign Powers until those measures have been sub- mitted to half a dozen Parliaments, and possibly to general elections or the referendum, that Imperial control would seem a distant and impracticable pro- ject. Our foreign policy was hampered enough in August, 1914, by the necessity of consulting the House of Commons, and one could hardly regard with enthusiasm the prospect of submitting to half a dozen British electorates our relations with Greece or its decomponent parts, the future of Poland, of the Balkan Peninsula, or of the Turkish Empire, or the precise attitude we should adopt towards the varying views of our Allies upon those delicate problems. We have, indeed, to be content with such indirect control of foreign policy as arises from the fact that it is determined by men who are responsible to the Parliament we elect ; and there is no reason why the men wlio determine our foreign policy should not THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 173 include representatives responsible to the Dominions. It required no constitutional revolution, and not even an Act of Parliament, to gather Imperial Conferences or invite Sir Robert Borden and Mr. Hughes to at- tend at Cabinet meetings ; and no Imperial Conven- tion is needed to expand those spasmodic occasions into the custom of an Imperial Constitution. Nor would it need an auto-da-fe of British Parliaments for the Crown to summon any number of oversea states- men by special writ to the House of Lords, and thus convert that ancient assembly once more into the King's Great and Imperial Council in Parliament. Without any Act of Parliament that House has been changed, for judicial purposes, from an unwieldy body of peers into an expert body of judges. The Crown can summon by special writ whomsoever it chooses ; it has even of late reasserted its right of neglecting to summon those whose presence was not desired ; and with a little courage and discretion the Upper House might be made a proper Chamber for the discussion and control of Imperial foreign policy. The advantage would be that these steps could be taken experimen- tally and by degrees. There need be no constitutional burning of boats or leaps in the dark ; an unsuccessful experiment need not be repeated ; a successful ex- pedient might be developed. It was by feeling their way that our forefathers led Great Britain along the path of constitutional progress and saved their country from the precipice of revolution. So, too, we might thus recover something of that elasticity in our Constitution which the process of formulation has tended to impair. Originally Parlia- ment meant no more than a " parley " ; and Parlia- 174 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR merit ary government implied no more than government by discussion and consent. In course of time the conditions of the parleys and the persons to take part were more and more closely defined by custom, law, and statute, until Parliament has become a more or less rigid body, reacting with ponderous lack of pre- cision to the ever-changing conditions of political and social life. Of late years the stereotyping of procedure in the House of Commons has driven really effective discussion, which influences votes and determines the fate of measures and men, into the lobbies and smok- ing-room ; and Bills have been remodelled in Com- mittee not on account of what was said in the House, but as the result of parleys beyond its doors. Parlia- ment has had to accommodate itself to these exten- sions of debate beyond its walls for domestic concerns, jand it might well widen its parleys so as to compre- hend Imperial deliberations. But the remedy for increasing rigidity is not the homoeopathic dose of a written constitution ; the spirit of liberty which in- forms the British Empire cannot be confined to the letter of a law, and the bond of blood and sympathy which unites its various realms will not be strengthened by conversion into parchment. For half a century or more there has been a healthy reaction against the doctrine of laissezfaire, and we are not in much danger to-day of falling into the heresy that the less a Government or a community does by corporate action, the better. We should rather beware of carrying that reaction to the other extreme of believing that our competence to create and remodel has left no scope for growth and for the play of forces which we cannot control, devise, or fore- THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 175 see. Men have lived and suffered and died in this war to little purpose if we have not learnt from our foes to shun the idolatry of the State and the dogma, on which that worship is based, that the earth and its fullness are man's to make therewithal whatsoever he wills. Man has not made himself after a likeness he conceived ; no Government planned the British Em- pire, and no Convention of peoples drafted its Con- stitution. It does not follow that things must needs go wrong unless we set them right ; and we have not yet established a league for maintaining the law of gravitation or a society for promoting regularity in the rotation of the earth. Nor need we impale our- selves on the dilemma that, unless we make an Im- perial Constitution, our Empire will dissolve. It was not reft in twain in the eighteenth century because we let things grow, but because George III and his Ministers, under the impetus of a great and suc- cessful war, which had exhibited and increased the strength of the Empire, did not leave it to grow, but dreamed of reducing to logical form its heterogeneous substance. It is good to have our occasional visions from Pisgah, but even the mountain-tops of Scripture were not without their temptations ; and if from one there was caught a glimpse of the Promised Land, from another there was unrolled a more seductive and delusive prospect. To leave our Imperial future to growth and to pregnant experience is not to leave it to chance. There is no blinder historian than he who maintains that we blundered into Empire and became what we are through fortuitous circumstance. We need not pre- sume that what we do not know is not knowledge ; 176 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR that effect has not followed from cause because we cannot trace the connexion ; that what we have not planned is pure accident. It is one of the wisest of our constitutional maxims that no Parliament can bind its successors ; and the liberty we inherit is free- dom from the mortmain of the past. I do not know by what title we claim to impose on posterity con- stitutional bonds which our forefathers have not im- posed upon us, nor why we should think that a system, made to our measure, will compass the girth of the Empire to be. We see few signs of stagnation, and there never has been a political growth less suited by nature and circumstance for the deadly finality of a code than the British Empire with its infinite grades of development and variety of conditions. We might learn, moreover, from the Habsburg dominions to-day, if we have not learnt it from history, that we cannot fuse States into one by statute, convention, or conquest. Political unity, like personal happiness, comes not to those who seek it, though it may be met on the high- way of duty or endeavour. Associations are not made for the mere sake of association ; they grow out of a common desire to promote a common purpose. Union for the sake of union. Empire for the sake of Empire, the State for the sake of the State, art for the sake of art, life for the sake of life — all are conceptions bred of the same confusion of means with the end, of the path with the purpose. Essential unity has come in bounti- ful measure to British realms in this war, not because they sought that unity for itself, but because they found it in the pursuit of a common ideal, in tlie defence of a common principle ; formal unity may come in the course of time, but not because we strive. THE GROWTH OF AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT 177 to create it. It will grow as the outward sign of an inward grace achieved through a communion of ser- vice and self-sacrifice for the commonwealth of nations and the common weal of man.^ ^ Replies to this lecture by Prof. Ramsay Muir and Mr, D. O. Malcolm were printed in " History " for January, 1917, and a re- joinder to them by the author in April, 1917. 12 XII. THE TEMPTATION OF PEACE.^ The trials of war inevitably beget a desire for peace, and peace is so fair a thing in herself, and so seductive in her moral garb, that it seems almost blasphemy to suggest that peace hath her temptations no less insidi- ous than war. A tale of sacrifice ever growing in length, a hope of victory deferred again and again, the delusion that the objects for which we entered upon war are already \\dthin our grasp, and the contention that the furtlier prosecution of hostilities is merely for revenge make an appeal to public sentiment which can hardly be ignored ; and Cabinet Ministers are being diverted from urgent tasks of administration to an oratorical campaign which should be a work of supererogation, at least so far as they are concerned. It is for them to strengthen the arm which wields the sword ; and if the pen be mightier than the sword, it is pen that must parry pen. The morality of peace is the strongest weapon of the pacifist, and there is no assumption more common or more confident in that school of thought than that the conscientious objector is the superman of pure 1 "The Times " Literary Supplement, 7 December, 1916 ; Ger- many's peace proposals were announced five days later, on 12 December, and President Wilson's . peace note was published on 20 December. 178 THE TEMPTATION OF PEACE 179 reason and a paragon of virtue ; if all men reasoned as they do there would be no war, and the prevalence of war is due to animal instinct and low rationality. That, no doubt, is true as an abstract proposition, and it is not a mere coincidence that the intellectual pro- tagonist of pacifism in England is an expert in the field of mathematical abstraction. The more human and practical problems of peace and war arise from the absence of that universal reason and from the active presence of potentates, philosophers, and people who beheve in the gospel of war and deny, by precept and practice, the premises of the pacifist. Shrewd men, even lawyers when divested of wig and gown, have maintained that it is wise to suffer almost any wrong rather than go to law for right. But the most ethical pacifist is constrained. to plead when an action is brought against him ; even he cannot let his char- acter and his belongings go by default before a litigious attack ; and it appears to be illogical and no more moral to refuse to defend a suit in the arbitrament of war. The doctrine of the absolute sanctity of human life might perhaps be pressed into the service of a distinc- tion between litigation and war, and the commandment to do no murder has been interpreted as an injunction not to save others if our own lives are endangered in the effort. But most advocates of peace at any price shrink from these moral conclusions, and one of them has admitted that we were right in resisting the Spanish Armada. In point of fact that Armada was only dispatched because we had been attacking Philip's dominions and assisting his rebelHous subjects in the Netherlands ; and the modern pacifist position appears to be that the Belgians were justified in opposing 12 * 180 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR a hopeless resistance to Germany but we were not justified in attempting to make that resistance suc- cessful. The admission of any justification for war is, how- ever, a weak-kneed concession from the point of view of the logical pacifist — that is to say, if he is really the superman he pretends to be. Many artists, we are told, have remained wholly untouched by the passion of the war because their creative instinct renders them immune from the impulses which make for war and death, " and the few men in whom the scientific im- pulse is dominant have noticed the rival myths of warring groups, and have been led through under- standing to neutrality ". It is with the morals of pacifism that we are concerned ; and it has often been remarked that art is neither moral nor immoral ; it is non-moral. The self-concentration of the artist is a poor guide for the community of man ; and it was to degenerate Cynics that opposition is said to have been provoked by their overweening display of superiority. Neutrality may also be reached by easier paths than by following scientific impulse. There is the broad highway of moral cowardice and intellectual indolence. If we want to shirk a decision between right and wrong and to avoid the sacrifice involved in assisthig the one and repressing the other, the readiest and the meanest expedient is to proclaim that it is a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other, and that the war is a conflict of rival myths. Neutrality is for the most part a threadbare cloak for individual or national selfishness ; and the assertion of the immorality of the war is often but a plea to be excused the moral ob- ligation of participating in the strife of good and evil. THE TEMPTATION OF PEACE 181 More colourable is the appeal to the sacrifice in- volved in the prosecution of the suit, and no one can be indifferent to that claim. Nevertheless, it is not an appeal to morality. The moral and spiritual pro- gress of mankind has only been bought by sacrifice, and he is more blessed who gives than he who receives. To dilate on the sacrifice with the object of showing or suggesting that moral gain is not worth pain is the work of the Tempter and not a sign of moral superi- ority. A nation's capacity for sacrifice in moral causes is the test of its morality. The pacifist, to do him justice, is less sceptical of the morality of our motives than many fervent advocates of war ; but he thinks they might have been attained by other methods, and as a variation on this theme he now urges that they have been brought within our reach by our success upon the Somme. It is here that political ineptitude comes to the aid of moral obtuseness. We could make, we are told, this winter " a peace which would secure the objects for which the British people entered the war ; which would secure the complete evacuation of Belgium, France, and Serbia ; which would go a long way towards establishing the principle of nation- ality ; which would defeat all the plans of aggression and domination put forward by the Prussian mihtar- ists ; which would lay the foundations of a permanent partnership for the settlement of international dis- putes ". The least fanciful of these exercises of the imagination is perhaps the assumption that the Ger- mans would purchase peace by the evacuation of Belgium, France, and Serbia ; but could there be a greater illusion than that this evacuation would secure the objects for which the British people entered the 182 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR war ? Before the war broke out the German Ambas- sador in London assured Viscount Grey that Austria would take no Serbian territory, to which Viscount Grey very naturally repHed that it was easy to reduce a State to vassalage without absorbing its territory ; and the moderate Germans, who profess to be willing, for the sake of peace, to evacuate Belgium, stipulate for " material guarantees " that Belgium shall not be used as a means for invading Germany. Inasmuch as Germany used the guaranteed neutrality of Bel- gium as a means of invading France, it is not difficult to foresee the interpretation she would put upon the material guarantees for her own protection in Belgium. But the objects for which the British people entered the war have been defined, once and for all, by Mr. Asquith. He said we should never sheath the sword — not until Belgium was evacuated but — " until Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than all that she has sacrificed ". Literally, that pledge is not capable of fulfilment. Belgium can never recover the precious Uves of which the German invader de- spoiled her, and Louvain and Ypres can never be what they were before the war. But there is still left a world of difference between evacuation and the atone- ment the Kaiser will have to make with a heart that will bleed for other things than Louvain. How would mere evacuation repay the hundreds of millions of which Belgium has been robbed during German occu- pation, the military executions and atrocities, and the slavery inflicted on the people ? Nor is justice satis- fied by the restitution of stolen property or the resus- citation of the victim of a murderous attack. It was a rudimentary advance in our primitive jurisprudence THE TEMPTATION OF PEACE 183 when the murderer was required to pay not merely the " wer " or price of the man he killed, but the " wite " or fine for his offence against the conscience of the community. Our ethical pacifists have not yet reached that primitive stage of moral development. They talk of peace and reconciliation without a thought of atonement ; in the name of ethics they de- nounce all justice as revenge, and in that of progress plead for the status quo ante helium which would leave open the door for a repetition of the crime. The people that hailed with delight the sinking of the " Lusitania," and hate Belgium because of the wrong they have done her, must not have to endure the humiliation of restraint from future crime. The object of justice is not mere retribution, but prevention ; and the criminal is sentenced not that he may suffer, but that others may be saved. We entered this war not merely for German retribution, still less to secure the evacuation of Belgium, but for an ensample to posterity, for the protection of future Naboths and a warning to the Ahabs yet to be. That warning and that protection would be rendered of none effect by compounding the felony and crying quits with the felon ; and we are not impressed by the pacifism of the schoolboy who makes an attack on his fellow and then, finding himself in difficulties, be- gins to cxj pace. The greater the effort required to vindicate humanity, the more determined are we that it shall not need repetition ; and the more who fall in the fight, the stronger their claim that they shaU not have died in vain. The only victory commensurate with the cost of this war will be a victory over war itself; and unless humanity masters war, war will 184 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR master humanity. But death was not conquered by " the impulses which make for hfe," and war will not be exorcised by the pacifist's plea. The fight for right would be an easy matter if the righteous had the choice of weapons ; but in war the aggressor selects both the time and the means of attack. The victim has, however, only himself to thank if, when he can, he fails to disarm his enemy and agrees to a truce be- cause his opponent has had enough. The aggressor has always had enough when he is reduced to the de- fensive ; it is then that he thinks of liberty and begins to talk of the claims of humanity. He wdll also en- deavour to prove that he only struck first to parry a blow, but his motive will be a desire to retain his weapons for future action. The German Government has been preparing this line of defence ever since the failure of its original offensive on the Marne, and the implications of its argument have escaped those who look for a Prussian repentance. If the Entente was the aggressor, and if peace is procured by the mere evacuation of conquered territory, then these conquests will have been defensive in character, and Germany will have been saved from disaster by the strong right arm of Prussian militarism. The moral that will be impressed on the German people will be to lengthen and strengthen that arm. ... If the war was a German defensive, a peace that protects German territory from invasion will be a positive triumph for Prussia. Not by such means will Europe be rid of the menace of blood and iron. Nor is there better foundation for that evidence, " derived from a careful study of German opinion," upon which are based the hopes of a pacifist German THE TEMPTATION OF PEACE 185 Government ; and those who are disposed to rely upon such manifestations would do well to ponder some remarks made by Dr. Walther Rathenau, who has just been appealing to American public opinion, to a French interviewer in 1913 : — " Many of the elements in your social and moral life [he said] escape us. For instance, we are not, as you are, in the habit of reckoning with public opinion. With us it does not count for anything. Opinion has never had any effect on pohcy. It resembles rather the chorus of antiquity which looks on and comments on an action unfolding around it. I should compare it to a crowd which follows, but is not admitted to the game." Expressions of German opinion are therefore worthless as guarantees for the conduct of German Governments, and we have Herr von Bethmann Holl- weg's admission that treaties are not more binding. Prussia's repentance for the evil she has done will be- gin only when her power to do more has ceased ; and Mr. Asquith's definition of our objects in the war is really redundant, for the restitution to Belgium, the securing of France from the menace of aggression, and the placing of the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe upon an unassailable foundation are all de- pendent upon the complete and final destruction of the military domination of Prussia. To represent the evacuation of Belgium, France, and Serbia as equiva- lent to these objects is as pitiful a perversion of the truth as the pretence that the censorship and the De- fence of the Realm Acts are suppressing public opinion. Neither has any control of the ballot-box, and yet it is pacifist prudence rather than pacifist principle that 186 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR has prevented the pacifists from fighting by-elections since the war began, and only the prolongation of Parliament enables the members of the party to pose as popular representatives. The pacifist is not, indeed, the most dangerous enemy to the peace which should end this war, and some ground for his and neutral apprehension of a crushing Entente triumph is provided by those who would compromise our cause by converting the fruits of the nation's sacrifice to money-making ends. If we refuse to make peace with Miss Cavell's murderers, with the slave-drivers of Belgium, and with the per- petrators and accomplices of the Armenian massacres, it is not to make peace for the profit of British mono- polists. Even the Pharisees held it unlawful to pay into the treasury the price of blood, and the money- changers in our temple will not persuade us to defile British tombstones in France with epitaphs couched in terms of high finance. Whatever the impulse of those who hallow that ground, they have not died to line our pockets with pelf ; and the terms of the peace we make will be the epitaph we shall write on the graves of the martyi's of war. Nor, when the fighting is over, shall we think it possible to construct a per- manent peace out of the passions of war. The profit- eer who seeks for tribute in retribution and the paci- fist who sees nothing in justice but revenge are our rival tempters from the paths that make for peace and judgment. It is for us to beware that in that judg- ment we do not condemn ourselves and that by that peace we do not sentence our children to war. XIII. IS IT PEACE ? ' A YEAR ago the fragile hopes of peace embarked with the not very happy band of pilgrims who sailed across the Atlantic with Mr. Ford. The Christmas that is past found peace on the Hps, if not in the hearts, of the great rulers of the world, and how to make peace will be the absorbing problem of mankind throughout the coming year. It cannot be said that the opening moves were auspicious. Germany posed as the victor, and assumed as the basis of agreement the brilliant but unsubstantial mihtary map with which she fed the confidence, but could not feed the stomachs, of her people. She wanted a conference which should ad- vertise the divergent motives of the Entente Powers while she enjoyed the fruits of conquered kingdoms. The coincidence, if it was a coincidence, of Presi- dent Wilson's Note with Germany's proposal aroused suspicions of co-operation, and created some unfortun- ate and unfounded feeling. The coincidence in time between the Kaiser's and the President's action did not necessarily imply a coincidence of method and of object ; but the conditions under which diplomacy works in our modern days of democracy naturally led to an assumption of identity or at least connexion. 1 Written in January, 1917, for the "Yale Review," but not published owing to the ensuing change in the American situation. 187 188 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR Publicity gives the first word in criticism or reply- to the newspapers, and journalists have to think so rapidly that they are almost forced to jump to con- clusions, while the conclusion to which one jumps is always that which comes first to mind. The convic- tion that the President's Note was connected with the Kaiser's action was a conclusion that could be reached without reading, much less pondering, either ; and within a few hours millions were persuaded that Mr. Wilson was playing the German game.^ Yet it is at least a reasonable interpretation that he wished to know how Germany proposed to give effect to her professions of concern for the liberty of little peoples such as Belgium and Serbia, and thus make possible American co-operation in that future league of nations and peace of the world which Germany is beginning to appreciate. After all. Great Britain's intervention in the war was determined by the answers she received to a corresponding inquiry respecting Belgian neu- trality ; and a legitimate factor in determining Presi- dent Wilson's future policy would be the reply he received about Germany's " guarantees " for the future of Antwerp, for instance, or Belgrade, or Warsaw, and possibly of Armenia. To such an inquiry there can be no objection on the part of the Allies. Nor is there any validity in another objection which has been raised and is based on a false analogy between the present struggle and the American Civil War. It is assumed that the ^ I ventured to protest against this interpretation in a letter published in " The Times " on 26 December. The Allies' reply to the President was published on 1 1 January, after this article was written. IS IT PEACE? 189 Allies are entitled to adopt towards President Wilson's intervention the attitude which President Lincoln adopted towards Napoleon Ill's offer of mediation, and indicated that he would adopt if similar steps were taken by Britain. There is, of course, an essential difference : Lincoln could not accept mediation with- out admitting the independent status of the South, and thus giving away the whole constitutional prin- ciple on which the war was fought. There is no such fatal objection in the present case : no one disputes the independent status of the belligerents ; even Ger- many has not denied the sovereignty of Belgium, nor Austria that of Serbia, and no Entente Power is con- cerned to deny that of Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, or Turkey. Nor are they prepared to deny the right of neutrals to offer their services by way of mediation. But, while there is no parallel in international law between the two sets of circumstances, there are other parallels which it would be unwise, in the interests of peace and goodwill, to ignore. This war has been waged for two years and a half ; it may seem as far from an end as ever. But it is no farther from its conclusion than the American Civil War seemed to neutrals and to many Americans themselves, on the eve of Gettysburg or after Chickamauga, when the North was still eighteen months from the fall of Rich- mond and Lee's surrender. What would history have said of Lincoln, if during that interval he had listened, not to neutral mediation, but to neutral opinion, and made peace by negotiation ? Would the cause of humanity have been served by compromise then ? We no more expect the Central Empires to take our view of the issues now than the Northern States could 190 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR expect the South to take theu-s in 1863 ; and neutrals are just as much at Hberty to-day to balance and dis- count the rival professions of virtue as they were fifty years ago. But we on our part are as much entitled as Lincoln was to believe that the cause of right is no less bound up in a fight to a finish than it was in the Civil War, and to resist, not on the technical ground of international law, but on the broader gi'ounds of the future of peace and the welfare of man, any attempt to bring this war to an inconclusive end by compromise or negotiation. The lawfulness of President Wilson's action was not, of course, his motive for acting. Apart from an addiction to peace on principle and a praiseworthy ambition to restore prestige to the United States by restoring peace to the world, he naturally desired a speedy end to a war which breeds bitterness between sections of his own people, involves them, their trade, and their communications in manifold inconvenience and risk, and might conceivably drag him into the vortex of hostilities. At times it almost seems as though the President regarded the American people as the chief sufferers from the war, or at least as being the most ardent and single-minded champions of peace ; and this is an attitude lie appears to share with millions of supporters in the Middle AVest and West. It appeals with special force to those who desire peace because they are indifferent to the issues of the war ; and ignorance is, of course, the commonest cause of impartiality. It is not merely foolish but impossible to be a partisan in things in which one feels no interest ; and to millions of people this war seems as vulgar and undignified as a street brawl from which respectable IS IT PEACE ? 191 citizens of the world will stand aloof. If its origins were worth investigation, it would probably be found to be a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other, and they think that the real cause of the war was the common imperfection of all the chief belligerents. The Chinese are said to regard the European conflict as daroning proof of the defects of barbarian civilization, and I have read in an American quarterly journal an allocution by an American Roman Cathohc prelate in which he pointedly asks what else could be expected from an infidel Europe addicted to its Voltaires, Hux- leys, Tyndalls, Spencers, and the hke. Possibly that is a moral not intended for consumption on one side of the Atlantic alone ; but it is clear that the war pro- vides neutrals with a cause, or at least an occasion, for self-satisfaction and a sense of moral superiority, which by irritating the inferior but still sensitive belligerent obstructs the path of mediation. In particular, the neutral who attributes his neu- trality to moral elevation should be prepared with an answer to the question why this war differs from a street brawl. Respectable citizens are justified in their reluctance to intervene in personal quarrels because there are poUce forces for the disorderly, courts of justice for the righting of private wrongs, and legisla- tures for the remedy of public grievances. There are no such peaceful means for protecting little nations and penahzing the breach of international morality ; and when Belgium was invaded, the only alternative to letting her suffer wrong was intervention by way of war. The moral foundations of indifference to a street brawl do not exist for international neutrahty ; the conscience of the private citizen is satisfied by the 192 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR vicarious virtue of the policeman and the law-courts. But if the conscience of the neutral nation is content to be satisfied by the vicarious efforts of others, its neutrahty is at least no proof of moral superiority ; and an intervention, which proceeds on the assumption that, if the parties had only been reasonable and re- spectable persons, they need never have fallen out at all, and that the war is merely a public nuisance to be stopped by the indifferent pressure of pacifists, is not calculated to bring peace to present or future genera- tions. We did not begin, and we do not endure, the war because we were not enamoured of peace, or be- cause war costs us little. Whatever neutrals may suffer, we suffer a thousandfold more in treasure and blood, in heart and pocket, in material loss and mental anguish ; and if we are willing to pay that price it is . not because we stand convicted of barbarism and in- fidelity, but because we know that moral gain is only bought by pain, and that to secure a lasting peace for ourselves and for others we have to hold cheap our material comfort and our transitory lives. Nor on the ground of distress have neutrals to-day much cause to complain compared with the neutrals of 1864 ; and hundreds of thousands of cotton operatives in Lanca- shire bore hardship and faced the chance of starvation with resignation and almost with gladness when they realized that their privations were part of the price which the world was paying to redeem it from the stain of slavery. It is no doubt hard for men to realize the vital importance of other men's struggles ; and the onlooker makes the most of his privilege of seeing two sides to the question at issue. Many a high-minded and IS IT PEACE? 193 thoughtful Englishman held in the Civil War that there was much to be said for the South ; and many an American is to-day convinced that there is much to be said for Germany. We shall admit it ourselves in time, just as some Republicans admit to-day that there was force in Southern arguments. No sane student of politics thinks that Democrats or Repub- licans have a monopoly of political principle or ad- ministrative wisdom ; but Americans have to choose between a Republican or Democratic President, and war is a far more brutal form of antithesis. When once the sword has been drawn, the day of persuasion is passed. Lincoln could no longer argue the cause of Union and Abolition on the platform, and we can no longer plead merely with voice and pen the causes for which we fight. It was with him and it is with us a question of victory or defeat ; and nothing else matters in comparison. That again is a hard saying for neutrals at all times ; a bargain seems so much more normal and natural. Indeed, when wars are for spheres of influence or con- trol of trade, a bargain is the obvious and the proper conclusion, and it must be admitted that many people in Entente countries have done their best to compro- mise their cause by representing the war as a mere competition for national wealth and dominion. But it is not that which gives the war its critical and de- cisive character and puts peace by compromise out of the question. There is no more room for compromise between the clashing ideals of this war than there was between freedom and slavery, secession and union. The peace of Europe must be based in the future either on right or on might ; and the victor must be 13 194 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR either he who beUeves or he who does not beheve in the right of the strong to annex and control the weak. But a people inured to the habits and methods of peace finds it hard to debit others with a militarist mentality. The root of American pacifism is the impossibility of an American Government deliberately planning war against others. The American people cannot conceive of themselves in a militarist frame of mind, and they find it well-nigh incredible in others. That was also the cause of British pre-war pacifism, and our diminu- tive army proved our rooted disbelief in German aggression. We had, indeed, some of us read our Treitschke and our Bernhardi ; but the latter we re- garded as the mad mullah of militarism and the former as the exponent of a creed outworn in its achievements of a bye-gone age. The German belief in Entente aggression was due to a similar metempsychosis. Just as the pacifist thinks he is immune from attack be- cause he credits others with his own pacifist psychology, so the militarist is always convinced of the aggressive designs of other people. Before the war every step towards friendship among other nations appeared in German eyes as a hostile encircling of the Fatherland ; and to counter it Germany had to build a vast fleet, double her army, proclaim herself protector of three hundred millions of Mohammedans living in other States, appear in shining armour at Petrograd, and build strategic railways to the Belgian frontier. There is no peace for the militarist : in war he suffers from his adversaries' blows and in peace from nightmares due to the fare on which lie feeds his mind. There can therefore be no conclusive peace which does not exorcise the militarist mentality and rest IS IT PEACE f 195 upon better foundations than force. Germany talks much about future security and guarantees : but the only security of which she thinks is her own, and the only guarantees are military and economic domina- tion. For the sake of security, she must, she says, control the " natural fortifications " of — France, and exclude all others from — Belgium ! Her only security consists, in fact, in the insecurity of others. The future peace of Europe is to be one in which Germany will be, through her military preponderance, immune from the risks of war, and will thus in peace dictate her will to other peoples who can easily be crushed if they resist ; it is to be a pax Germanica like the pace Roviana of the Empire of the Csesars. The security we want is one for the community with no German or other immunities, and that security can never de- pend on military force. How can Belgium, or Hol- land, or Denmark secure themselves by force of arms ? Their peace must rest on scraps of paper, and it must be as sacrosanct as that of the mightiest of their neighbours. When Germany seeks peace not for herself alone, but an equal peace for all and a security that shall be the common property of man, we shall be ready to arrange it. But the Hohenzol- lerns cannot seek it ; they are bound in the chains of their past. By war their Empire was made ; on war, its industry, and its psychology, they have fed their people : and by war they will fall. Incidentally, permanent peace will solve the only problem of freedom with which the Germans con- cern themselves, the freedom of the seas. For theii* alleged grievance in that connexion, on which Herr Dernburg dwelt in a famous speech two years ago, 13* 196 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR ^ only arises in time of war ; and between the wars of Napoleon the Great and William II, the seas re- mained free to all. If Germany wants to put an end to the advantage which Britain enjoys from her naval supremacy, she has only to co-operate in the efforts to abolish war. But war is that " political science par excellence " in which Germany has excelled ; and her notion of peace is a peace which will give her all the advantage in wars to come. Till she is converted from her philosophy of war there can be no hope of peace ; and she wiU not be converted until she has lost faith in her ancient idolatry. In that process there is no half-w^ay house for hucksters or salvation in a return to the status quo. For it was the conditions before the war that pro- duced the war, and we are determmed to avoid them in the future. There is no halting m that resolve, and our British pacifists, who would persuade neutrals that, but for the Defence of the Realm Acts, pubUc opinion would take a different colour, are easily de- ceived. . . . The fact is that, while territorial claims and cash indemnities are matters for compromise, we do not see how we can haggle over the moral issues of the war ; and we are somewhat puzzled to know how President Wilson would extract from a bargain for peace satis- faction for tliose principles of international conduct on which he has laid such stress. He cannot desire the continuance of Armenian massacres, and perhaps he assumes that Germany would agree to Turkey's loss of her misgoverned provinces. But Syria has suffered only less than Armenia, and nothing short of defeat will induce the Kaiser to abandon Turkish control of the land through which runs the Berlin-Baghdad route* is IT PEACE 9 ipt Peace, with the German armies unbeaten, means the permanent oppression of Serbia and of the subject peoples of the Hapsburg Empire ; it means the frustra- tion for ever of the hopes of the Danes in Schleswig, the Poles in Posen, and the majority in Alsace-Lor- raine. Further, it means condoning the " Lusitania " and " Sussex " crimes and a host of high-seas murders, the infraction of Belgian neutrahty, and the scrapping of international law. There can be no guarantee against the repetition of such deeds in the future unless there is punishment for their perpetrators in the past ; and there can be no punishment without a German defeat, for the criminals control the German Government and pre- vent the administration of justice. How can we ex- pect a Government, ^vith which we treat on equal terms, to condemn itself or punish the agents it directs and decorates ? Even restitution and repara- tion do not exhaust the demands of peace ; there must be renunciation as well, renunciation of the whole gospel of war, which may have paid Germany but has cost Europe its peace, milUons of men their lives and limbs, their hopes and homes, and has bid fair to cost mankind its faith. XIV. THE PEACE OF THE PRESIDENT.^ It is generally worth while to discuss an ideal, how- ever unattainable it may appear ; for a world without ideals is a world without a future, and it is by the selection of our ideal that we determine the direction of our progress. If our aim is in the right direction we can put up with the lengtli of the journey, and we do not complain of a guide-post because it points to a distant goal. An end that is easily reached is of little value as an ideal ; and the homely analogue of the bunch of carrots at the end of a stick derives its lesson from the fact that the carrots advanced as fast as the donkey. Even if it be true that President AVilson's recent speech to the Senate held out an unattainable object to mankind, it need not be devoid of stimulus and guidance ; and a Europe that is riven in twain by war will do wisely to ponder as best it can in the storm and stress of the conflict, the peace that appeals to the responsible ruler of far the most powerful neutral State. It is the atmosphere of quiet calm deliberation that is so difficult to create and maintain. Presi- dent Wilson is thinking and speaking in terms of the future : we feel so acutely the ills we bear that ^ "The Times " Literary Supplement, 1 February, 1917 ; the re- ference is to the President's speech in the Senate on 22 January. 198 THE PEACE OF THE PRESIDENT 199 we can think only in terms of the present ; and it needs an effort to reach the plane of the President's thought and to grasp his reason. He is not compassed about with the hosts of Midian or cumbered with the needs of defence and the means of victory. He serenely assumes the event and is only concerned with its effects. We must grasp that point clearly first of all, or we shall entirely fail to understand the President's propositions. " The present war," he says, " must first be ended," and further he declares that the United States will " have no voice in determining " the treaties and agreements which wall bring it to an end. He has, and he wiH have, nothing to do with the war ; neutral the States have been from the first, and neutral they will remain to the last ; and quite logically and fairly the President disclaims any am- bition to act as umpire between the belligerent Powers. He will not play the part of President Roosevelt at the Portsmouth negotiations between Russia and Japan. For that we are grateful, beheving as we do in our victory ; ^ we shall only regret it if we are beaten. But that is our affair ; the President's pohcy is more original and more ambitious than that of Mr. Roose- velt. While he wWl have nothmg to do with brmging peace to pass, Mr. Wilson hopes to assist in makmg it permanent. He is a political architect of the future, and it is with the permanence of peace after the war that he is concerned. There must, he says, be "a definite concert of the Powers which will make it 1 The Russian Revolution of course destroyed for the time the basis of the confidence that became general after the fall of Bapaume and Baghdad. 200 THE COMMOmVEALTH AT fVAtl virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again". But a mere European concert mil be unequal to maintaming the peace of the world ; it would not, we may interject, preclude a war between the United States and Japan. Hence the interest of America in the future peace of man- kind. The United States must join the League of Nations. But it can only come in on terms consistent with its liberal principles. James Mom'oe could not join the Holy Alliance projected by Alexander I and perverted by jNIetternich ; indeed, he set up against it that famous doctrine of his own, which Canning and his successors and the British Navy turned into practical politics and President Wilson now seeks to apply to Europe. We need not grudge this victory of the doctrinal offspring we fathered over the legitimism we abandoned. Nor need we feel hurt if the President leaves it to the belligerents to garner the harvest which he will only help to guard if he considers it worth protecting. Neutrality is im- posed upon him by the public opinion to which he is responsible, and our business is to see what can be made out of his contingent co-operation in the future. He cannot assist in the harvesting ; he Avill not hinder, but he will not help us further than by saying that, unless we reap a satisfactory crop, it mil not be worth America's while to partake in preserving the fruits of our labour. Our difficulty lies in appearances, and the Presi- dent seems to pose as our taskmaster. We are to win the war and he is to keep the peace that is won. But if the task is not of his doing, it is also not of his setting ; it is one we have set ourselves and shall be proud of THE PEACE OF THE PRESIDENT 20 1 achieving without assistance. It is well that Europe should redeem herself; but we need not doubt the President's sympathy merely because he has expressed our ideals in the catchwords of our enemies. Catch- words, unfortunately, have a much larger and more rapid circulation than reasoned arguments ; and the President's references to a "peace without victory" and " freedom of the seas "■ — designed, no doubt, to sugar the pill for German and some American readers — have rendered the substance of his policy unpalatable to superficial tastes in Entente countries. But if we probe a Httle deeper than the surface we shall find that the President's peace is almost as far as our own from a German peace, and that his conditions imply the triumph of our principles. He contends that the statesmen of both belUgerent groups " have said in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists ". But there are pitfalls in oratio obliqua, and what statesmen on both sides aver is that the crushing of peoples is no part of the purpose they have in mind. Germans themselves have disavowed objects they avowed two years ago ; and " peace with- out victory" means a peace without the victory of those who set out to crush Serbia and France. This becomes clear as we pursue the President's definition of the peace he has in mind. It is to rest on certain fundamental principles. The first is the absolute equaUty of nations, great and small — not, of course, an equality of territory or resources, but an equal right to peace, security, and independence in the development of their own moral and material activities. The second, " a deeper thing involved 202 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR than even equality of right among organized nations," is the recognition of '* the principle that Governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed ". These indeed are the principles for which we fight and President Wilson argues ; but before we attempt to elucidate and apply them we stumble across another catchword, the " freedom of the seas ". The trouble again is ambiguity. The President opens his paragraph vdth what looks like a plea for Russian freedom of access to the sea thi'ough the Bosphorus and Dardanelles ; and the Germans, not owning both shores of these narrows Hke the Turks, admit that there is something in the argument, desiring only its extension to the Suez, but not to the Kiel, Canal, and discreetly refraining from reference to Panama. But Mr. Wilson goes on to claim that " the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free ... in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind ". Now, this is a crucial ambiguity. Does the President mean freedom in times of peace or freedom in times of war ? If in times of peace, there is nothing to discuss : the seas, thanks mainly to the British Navy, are always free in times of peace alike in law and in fact, and the Germans do not dispute it. But what they, and some of the President's supporters, mean is freedom in times of war ; and by the freedom of the seas they mean the restriction of a belligerent's naval power. This, the President admits, *' opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all progi'ammes of military prepara- tion ". Even that does not meet the point. This is not a question of limiting armaments, naval or military, THE PEACE OF THE PRESIDENT 20S but of restricting belligerent rights ; and it is neither an equitable nor a practicable policy to impose on ships at sea restraints from which armies on land are free. If there is to be war at all, we cannot prevent a belligerent from blockading a port unless we can also prevent him from besieging a city. Such an in- terpretation of the " freedom of the seas " is, however, in fundamental contradiction to the whole spirit of the President's speech. He is only concerned with war in order to make it impossible ; and if he can make peace permanent he establishes automatically the permanent freedom of the seas. But war will not be prevented by limiting its risks, and the peace of Europe will not be made secure by guaranteeing Germany against the penalties of breaking it. It is not by naval power that the peace of Europe or of America has been broken these last hundred years ; and if hope of permanent peace is now dawning in the West, it comes from the New World which a naval Power called into existence to redress the balance of the Old. From this aberration in the interests of war and war-profiteering neutrality we return to the President's bases of permanent peace. His doctrine of equality among nations is the proper and effective antidote to that philosophy of the superman upon which Nietzsche, Treitschke, Bernhardi, and their disciples have fed the mind and built the State of Germany. The equality cannot be a physical equahty any more than we can secure equality of physical strength, intellectual ca- pacity or material resources among individual men and women. Their security, the absence of fear with which the poor and weak pursue their common 204 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR rounds and trivial tasks, depends upon a legal equality guaranteed by the supremacy of the State and the conscience of the community. So the peace of the little nations must be secured by international power and the conscience of mankind ; the sanction which guards the freedom and equality of individual men must be expanded into one to guard the freedom and equality of individual nations, and the Serbias and the Belgiums of the future must be secured against the threats of over-mighty neighbours. The principle is plain enough, but the expansion of its application from individuals to nations is beset with practical difficulties. We know what an indi- vidual is, but what is a nation ? The President selects as typical the simplest case at issue, and pronounces emphatically in favour of " a united, independent, and autonomous Poland ". Presumably " united " implies the union of Poles in Germany and Austria with those in Russia ; but the Kaiser might ask, why is a Pole in Posen any more part of a united Polish nation than a Pole in New York State ? The truth is that, in spite of hyphenated Americans, the President can regard the problem of nationality from a more de- tached point of view than European statesmen. The millions of hyphenated Americans have detached themselves from Irish, German, or Polish soil and from much of the subtle influence of its history ; they are half American, and they have suffered or gained as much by their dispersion as the Jews. It is one of the services which Tammany renders to the United States that it gi*ips the Irish immigrant and converts him into a pawn of the Democratic Party instead of leav^ing him to form an Irish party of his own. But THE PEACE OF THE PRESIDENT 205 supposing the millions of Germans or Poles or Irish in the United States had concentrated on the Pacific coast, in the Middle West, or in the South, and had formed predominantly German, Polish, or Irish States, the President might have been more shy of the doctrine of nationality. Abraham Lincoln at least denied that the South was a separate nation, or that there could be any nation but one within the United States. Is it Lincoln's doctrine or his own that Mr. Wilson will apply to the Hapsburg Empire before he will recognize in the settlement that equality of nations without which he will withhold the sanction of the United States ? And if Poles are to be united, why not Jugo- slavs, Schleswig-Danes, Rumanians, and Italians ? President Wilson seems, however, to imply a distinction between " organized nations " and mere " peoples ". Equality of national rights is to be the privilege of the nations, and government by consent that of the peoples. But the distinction is rather between international relations and domestic politics. We take it that the President would apply the principle of government by consent to organized nations as well as to subordinate nationalities, in which case his approval of the settlement appears to be contingent on a revolution in Germany and perhaps another in Russia ; for we can hardly imagine a HohenzoUern accepting " the principle that Govern- ments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed ". But if the Poles, who are not an organized nation, are to be formed into "a united, independent, and autonomous Poland," that Poland will become entitled to an equality of national rights, and the difficulty remains of distinguishing between 206 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR the peoples thus to be organized and those to be treated otherwise. Mr. Wilson lights upon one de- tail in the problem when he speaks of the cession of territory to provide *' great peoples " with access to the sea. Territory is generally occupied by peoples, yet " no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from potentate to potentate as if they were property ". The word " potentate " again sugars the pill for American taste, but what if the potentate is a " great people " and the little peoples dwell in Hawaii or the Philippines ? This is not intended as a gibe, but as a reminder of complexities in the problem of nationality which we have ever with us. Is Ireland a nation, and does it include Ulster ? We know that the chief obstacle to Home Rule is the fear lest its grant to Ireland as a whole should prejudice freedom in Ulster. That is precisely one of the problems in the Hapsburg Empire. Half a century ago Ave hailed as a liberal triumph the autonomy of Hungary. Yet that au- tonomy set the Magyars free to inflict upon Jugo- slavs and Rumanians within their borders greater hardships than those they bore in a united Empire. If the Magyars are a nation within the Hapsburg Empire, are not also the Rumanians in Transylvania a nation inside Hungary ? The mere recognition of the principles of nation- ality and government by consent will not solve the problems of the settlement ; and the bare mention of Czechs and Slovaks, Armenians and Syrians, Italians in the Trentino and Trieste, French in Alsace-Lor- raine, suffices to indicate the difficulty of securing tlie President's conditions by means of that " peace with- out victory " which he enjoins. Nor do we quite THE PEACE OF THE PRESIDENT 207 understand how Mr. Wilson would enforce his principles upon those who reject them without that humihation, duress, and sacrifice which he deplores. The only means of reconciling the achievement of his aims with an avoidance of these evils would be a voluntary renunciation on the part of the Central Empires and their AUies, and that voluntary renuncia- tion would involve a revolution of their peoples against their Governments and the principles on which they govern. How that is to be effected by the AUies without a victory Mr. Wilson does not explain. He is not indeed concerned with the war ; hke Euclid, he assumes the hypotheses upon which he proposes to work and without which his edifice falls to the ground. There is only a verbal contradiction between his " peace without victory " and Mr. Head- lam's dictum that it is only victory which matters. To belUgerents strivmg to lay those foundations it may seem that, when once we have secured this re- nunciation of the things for which the Central Empires have fought, the task for which the President has reserved the energies of the United States will be comparatively easy. Even so, it is doubtful whether his people will partake in these futurist labours, and we may have to rest content with the President as a preceptor of international conduct. That, as he says, must be based upon rights ; but he has travelled far enough on the path of MachiaveUi and Austin to reach the conclusion that right abstracted from might is an inadequate safeguard of peace. " It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement." There must not, however, be " a balance of power. 208 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR but a community of power ". This is sound doctrine. Nothing is more unstable than a balance, and the temptation to upset it and efforts to preserve it in- volved Europe in the race for armaments. Personal security, moreover, is not maintained by a balance of power, but by that " community of power " which we call the State, with its agents, the police and the law courts. But this community of power depends upon a community of will and mind ; and law and order were in an evil case so long as there was anything like a balance of strength between the orderly and the disorderly, between the will-to-power and the will- to-peace. The national State was the outcome of a slowly dawning conviction in the mind of the com- munity that it loses by disorder. The United States of Europe may develop from a universal European war begetting a universal will-to-peace. There is not much doubt about the will-to-peace. Even the Germans are losing their appetite for war, ceasing to read the war-philosophy on which they fed, and developing a taste for President Wilson's post- prandial eirenics. Similar symptoms manifested themselves towards the end of Louis XIV's and Napoleon's wars, and congresses busied themselves with projects of permanent peace in the early eigh- teenth and nineteenth centuries. But the loss of appetite which follows a hearty meal, while recurrent, does not last. It will be easier to make peace than to make it permanent ; and President Wilson might have no sinecure as its trustee had he not protected himself by stipulating that peace shall be so made by others as to be permanent in its own virtue. The analogy between the State, which saves its nationals THE PEACE OF THE PRESIDENT 209 from disorder, and a federation of the world, which is to save nations from war, is imperfect because the permanence of disorder sustains a permanent appetite for law, while the intermittence of war stimulates only a spasmodic passion for peace. Disorder, moreover, pervades the whole State when anarchy supervenes, but war is no more universal than it is perennial. Most countries in Europe had had enough of war by 1815, but there was fighting in the Balkans and in Spain within a few years of the Peace of Vienna ; and the war- weariness of Europe will not guarantee peace in the Pacific, though doubtless it would be an excel- lent thing if it could be used for that purpose. Man, however, is growing up ; each generation of adults will not need, like each generation of children, to be chastised afresh for the same ignorances and offences. If the sins of the fathers are to be visited on the children, so will the children inherit the lessons their parents have taken to heart. If this and succeeding generations have the wisdom to learn of history, they will strengthen and lengthen the communal memory of man ; and the race wiU look before and after, and rejoice in the war that is not. But peace is no panacea. It may become intoler- able. Germans speak the truth when they say they did not want war. They wanted peace, but they were bent on a peace that was intolerable to the greater part of Europe. It was their conception of peace that made this war inevitable ; and President Wilson is right in holding that the future avoidance of war depends upon the nature of peace. His " com- munity of power " is but a means to an end, and the success of a method depends on the purpose to which 14 210 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR it is put. The so-called Holy Alliance did not break down because it was a concert of Europe, but because it was used for repression. The President thinks that a new concert of Powers may succeed if it represents a community of peoples making for free- dom of life. But freedom means scope for develop- ment ; for a static world is impossible, and a stereo- typed settlement would only be fruitful in friction. All we can hope from permanent peace is the elimina- tion of war as a means of settling human differences. That is not an idle dream. War has been ehminated as a method of concluding religious disputes, and great progress was made in the nineteenth century by diplomacy as the means of compromising rival ambi- tions in the colonial sphere. Are the economic disputes of mankind less tractable than their religious faiths or their love of political power ? It may be so, and that economic wars will succeed wars of national- ity just as wars of nationality succeeded those of religion. But wars of religion were not national, and it is possible that those who assume that the economic wars of the future will be national are making a mis- calculation. If those wars are not national, President Wilson's concert of nations may fall between the stools of a Holy Alliance of capital and a revolution- ary league of labour. His end is peace, but there is no peace without a community of power based on a community of mind and spirit which transcends the estranging influences of creed, nationality, and class. These are all built on the differentia of mankind ; he who would establish a perfect peace must found it on the common needs and aspirations of humanity. XV. TWILIGHT m THE EAST.^ Two months ago we were most of us acclaiming the dawn of a new era in Russia with almost as much enthusiasm as Charles James Fox showed over the fall of the BastiUe. " How much the greatest event is this that has ever happened," he cried, " and how much the best ! " Seventeen years later Fox died at the head of a Coalition Ministry formed to combat the forces born of the revolution he had welcomed ; and doubts have already dimmed our faith in Russian redemption. Is it, indeed, a dawn that we see in the twilight, or the gathering gloom of a wasted war? The answer partly depends on our test of light. For most of us there is only one test to-day for all our human affairs, and that is the test of war. Whatso- ever tends to our victory is good, and everything else is bad. That concentration is inevitable, and without it we could not win the war against an enemy who has carried it further than we have. But it involves an enormous distortion of human values, and demands a uniformity of dogma which is both strained and transient. The Russian revolution has a value quite independent of the war, and probably more permanent than any other outcome of the conflict. To us the i"The Times" Literary Supplement, 24 May, 1917. 211 14 * 212 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR revolution is merely an incident in the war ; to the Russian people the war is only of interest as it affects the revolution. Fundamental agreement is possible only in the conviction that on the defeat of Germany depends the success of the revolution, and on the suc- cess of the rev^olution depends the defeat of Germany. Neither here nor in Russia is that conviction universal ; nor is either proposition absolutely true. Success is a relative term, and no German success that is now in sight would restore the Romanovs in Russia, though a Romanov restoration might re-estabhsh the declin- ing fortunes of the HohenzoUerns. Russia, however, remains in the twihght for Western eyes from lack of vision as well as from lack of light. The Petrograd correspondent of a leading French journal, who had hved in Russia for ten years, remarked the other day that no Westerner could ever understand Russia. We may do our best with the help of Russian interpreters, some of them highly skilled in observation and literary expression, and well versed in Eastern and Western tongues. But it is not given to every Englishman or Frenchman to understand his own country, and the understanding of Russia by Russians themselves is beset with far gi'eater difficulties. The gulfs between race and race, class and class, in all the Russias outmatch tliose in England and France as much as the spaces within their respective fi'ontiers ; and for centuries Russian autocracy, by its neglect of education and restraint upon all forms of popular self-expression, set itself to prevent the Russians from understanding themselves. It was an instinctive and a natural policy ; for when a people really understands itself tliere is no longer need TWILIGHT IN THE EAST 213 nor room for autocracy. The fate of the Russian revolution depends upon whether the Russian people has found itself as the French did in 1789. Sudden conversions are not impossible, and they come easier to emotional peoples. The signs seem to point in that direction, and it will be wise to discount the im- pression which the past history of Russia has made upon the West. For that impression has been made by the Russian Government ; and the apparently complete collapse of the old Russian Government is due to the fact that, more than in any other European country, Russian government was an article of foreign manufacture. The old gibe about scratching a Russian and finding a Tartar indicates the alien influence which created Russian autocracy. Peter the Great, it has been said, clothed the barbarian ruler in evening dress, gave a Western fa9ade to an Oriental structure, and opened a window on to the Baltic by building Petro- grad. In the century which followed, Russian govern- ment was German or French — mainly German — and all the authors of Poland's partition were Germans by birth. When Lord Acton twenty years ago referred to " that tremendous power, supported by millions of bayonets," which grew up at Petrograd and Berlin, as " the greatest danger that remains to be encountered by the Anglo-Saxon race," he was describing a power which had two habitats, but a single home ; and its expulsion from Petrogi'ad Hnks the Russian revolution with the European war. In the nineteenth century it assumed a more native hue, but its heart was far from the Russian people. Bismarck, while Ambas- sador at Petrograd, developed the common interest 214 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR which Prussian and Russian autocracy had in Polish oppression, and the poison which made Russia despotic made Germany Prussian. Under that C^esarism Russia expanded with a rapidity that retarded its constitutional development, and Imperialism became the antidote to domestic re- form. It was through the failures of autocracy that the people made what progress it did ; the Crimean rebuff precipitated the emancipation of the serfs and the creation of Zemstvos, and the Korean misadven- ture provoked the by no means abortive revolution of 1905. We must not expect the Russian to look at Imperial expansion with our eyes, for with us empire has gone hand in hand with liberty, with them it has worn the vizor of repression ; and M. MiliukofTs desire for Constantinople has condemned him as a reactionary. There may come a Russia which will regret opportunities lost in this revulsion against all that savours of Tsardom, .and Constantinople was compromised by being called Tsargrad ; but the infant Hercules of Russian democracy is young and only remembers the foes who delayed its birth and threatened to strangle it in its cradle. For forty years, said Prof Vinogradoff in 1902, " we have been living in Russia in a kind of civil war ". To our dis- tant Western eyes Alexander II's emancipation of the serfs seemed to settle that problem ; but a Rus- sian magistrate has remarked : " There is no indignity which in the beginning of the twentieth century may not be inflicted on a Russian peasant ". The war is a thing apart to the peasant, whose whole existence is affected by the revolution. Some alleviation was, of course, procured by the TWILIGHT IN THE EAST 215 first and second Dumas, but they were too advanced for the bureaucracy, and by an Imperial ukase in 1907 over a hundred constituencies were disfranchised, millions of Russians lost their votes, and the electoral system was made more fanciful than that of the Prussian Diet. That the fourth Duma, begotten by such means, should nevertheless have been driven into almost unanimous opposition to the Court and the bureaucracy bears eloquent testimony to the char- acter of Russian government ; but it is equally clear that such a Duma could not reflect the opinion of an emancipated people, and the Soldiers' and Workmen's Delegates were called into existence by more legiti- mate causes than irresponsible anarchy. The Provi- sional Government was a Duma Committee ; but the Duma neither made the revolution nor represented those who made it. Its services consisted in provid- ing the means for transferrmg authority from the Tsardom to popular representatives without any absolute hiatus ; its function was transitional, and it may be that the coalition, by which six of the dele- gates are admitted to Prince LvofF's Cabinet, is tran- sitional also. The process may seem a rapid advance to extremes ; but extreme is itself a relative term. A sound conservative Enghshman might well be an extremist in Prussia ; the extremist ceases to be ex- treme when his fellow-countrymen agree ; and in any case a social democracy can only be governed by social democrats. The dualism, under which office was held by a Duma Committee and power was wielded by Soldiers' and Workmen's Delegates, could only produce anarchy as its offspring. It is not, however, clear that the Soldiers' and 216 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR Workmen's Delegates represent the Russian people. Eighty-five per cent of the population is rural, and though some of the soldiers' delegates come from the peasant class, the Peasants' Congress now sitting in Petrograd may moderate the views of the Russian Government. But numbers count for less in politics than in war ; for in politics men can think and act for themselves, while in war they cannot ; and a minority which thinks outweighs a majority which is incapable of thought or common action. If the individual Rus- sian peasant could be equated with tlie individual craftsman, the 85 per cent would make a peasant state of Russia. Here we reach the heart of obscurity. What is in the Russian peasant's mind ? He is a strange peasant if his heart is not in the land, and his attitude towards the war will be largely determined by his in- terest in the land. His emancipation fi*om serfdom was merely a change from legal to economic duress ; the land allotted to him was the refuse of the land- lords, and it was burdened with fiscal obligations based on the value of the peasant's labour on the richer soil of his lords. The result was grinding poverty decked out as legal freedom. It is on those richer lands that the peasant's eyes are fixed, and it is not easy to divert them to more distant and less tangible objects. Even the German invasion has affected him little, for it is the Poles and the Lithuanians who have suffered, and not the Russian peasant. Nor has he the motive which made enthusiastic soldiers out of French peas- ants during the first French Revolution ; for their landlords fled to Coblentz and sought to return in the train of Brunswick's army. If Russian landlords had TWILIGHT IN THE EAST 217 escaped to Hindenburg's headquarters and had been welcomed by the Kaiser, there would be less ambiguity in the Russian peasant's attitude towards the war. As it is, the Russian landlord stayed at home and distracts the peasant's attention. We have to remember this fact if we are to under- stand the Russian attitude towards aimexations and indemnities. We are busy explaining away the con- tradiction between the Russian revolutionary and our Western definition of the objects of the war ; and, indeed, there is common ground in the interpretation that " no annexation " refers to the past as well as to the future and imphes the restoration of nationalities which have not been reconciled to annexation. But " no indemnities " is a hard saying in the ears of Bel- gian and Serbian and even French peasants who have seen their land wantonly ruined beyond the wicked needs of war. They cannot recoup themselves out of the richer estates of neighbouring landlords saved by distance from the waste of fire and sword. It is the defect of the genuine revolutionist to deduce the broadest general propositions from his own personal needs and experience ; and the narrower his practical experience, the more dogmatic will be his generahza- tion. The Russian peasant is not indifferent to in- demnities, but he sees them nearer home than on the field of battle ; and with his eyes fixed on the domestic means of relieving his economic distress, foreign wars may well appear unwelcome interruptions, diplomacy an irrelevance, and national ambition a superfluity. Nor is the industrialist, in Russia and elsewhere, im- mune from the influence of similar ideas. There are some who are pacifists not for the sake of peace but 218 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR for the sake of their own special brand of war ; inter- national peace appeals to them as an overture to social war, and they oppose the present war because it divides the forces of social revolution and postpones the war of classes. Wars did not cease when they ceased to be fought for religion ; and the ehmination of nationality, for which the logical Catholic longs, would not make peace between labour and capital. Perhaps it is as well that the old legal maxim Nemo potest exuere patriam applies in a general sense, and that patriotism is a bond of unity as well as a source of discord. Patriotism, or a rarer zest for mercy, has certainly tempered the Russian Revolu- tion ; and stress should be laid on the remarkable rapidity and success with which Russia appears to have overcome the tendencies inherent in every re- volution. Faith indeed was required to believe that any basis of national unity could be speedily fomid as an alternative to that provided by the Tsardom and the Orthodox Church ; and it is clear that the West has under-estimated the spread of political education among the Russian people, and the growth of a common sense in all the diverse parts of Russia's vast dominions. But when we read of social democracy in regions which we thought Oriental in civilization, and see Deputies from east and west, north and south, representing various parties but joining to form a coalition, we have obviously to discount the sharp contrasts commonly drawn between new Petrograd and old Moscow, Great Russians and Little Russians, peasants and craftsmen, and to admit that a fusion which took the West centuries to achieve is apparently being accomplished in Russia in as many months. TWILIGHT IN THE EAST 219 Nor should we blind ourselves to the possibility of error in our now fashionable habit of seeing an economic cause in all political movements and dis- covering everywhere an economic bar to national unity. It is a German jest that der Mensch ist was er isst ; but a Russian national State may be made out of sounder stuff than German economic theories. A nation that went to war for a scrap of paper should be able to discern an uneconomic spirit in other nationalities. It would be idle to pretend that Russia's military organization has not been shaken in the convulsion, or that the war may not be prolonged in consequence. But it is a far cry to the German assumption that Russia has ceased to be a serious factor in the situa- tion. The Younger Pitt made a similar miscalcula- tion about the French Revolution, and as late as 1792 was budgeting for years of peace based on the founder- ing of French military power. The Kaiser has re- frained from his ancestor's blunder in championing autocracy against revolution, but his armies are on Russian soil, and his Junkers will see to it that they do not withdraw empty-handed. His Chancellor may talk of the peace which Russia may have at a price, but he knows that Russia will not and cannot pay the price ; and the peace for which he hopes is merely a truce on the Eastern Front procured by Rus- sian dissension. Even that he will not get, and the Russian Army is by no means in the parlous plight of the French in 1791-2. There has been a similar shock to discipline, but Russian officers are not the aristocratic caste that the French were under the ancien regime, and they have not emigrated in a body. 220 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR lea\dng the Army to find its leaders iii the ranks. Nor is it reduced, hke the French, to scraping the walls of houses for saltpetre to make munitions. The military aspect of the problem is the one which impresses us most, because in this all-absorbing war we can hardly think in any other than military terms. But we may be sure that other aspects of the Russian Revolution are not without weight in Ger- many. Even in Germany public opinion is an element in success, and public opinion has been profoundly moved by the Russian Revolution. AVe sometimes forget the efforts the Kaiser 4nade in July, 1914, to represent the war as war on the Russian bugbear. As a war on Tsardom it appealed to the German Socialist, and he was right enough in regardmg the Tsardom as a principal bulwark of the HohenzoUerns. But the war has been perverted from a war against Tsardom into a war against a Socialistic RepubHc, and it is at least as hkely that German Socialists may object to fighting a Russian RepubHc as that Russian SociaHsts will object to fighting the Kaiser. The spring has seen a simplification of the war and its issues by converting American democracy to belliger- ency and the Russian belligerent to democracy ; and the Ides of March may prove in the end to have been as fatal to the German as to the Russian heu' of Caesar's name and mantle. XVI. THE PARADOX OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE.^ It was a jest of Voltaire's that the Holy Roman Em- pu*e was so called because it was neither holy nor Roman, nor an empire. The British Empire is not quite so paradoxical, because it is at least partially British ; but it is only an Empire in a sense which makes nonsense of the word, for it is like no other Empii'e that ever existed, and it would certainly smell as sweet if called by any other name. General Smuts recently remarked that the man who found a proper name for it would be doing real service to the Empii*e. Perhaps now that there is to be an EngUsh Tripos at Cambridge, the combined intelligence of our university schools of English may succeed in finding English names for that and other EngUsh things. At present the hand of classical language lies heavy on political science, and we have never escaped from the juvenile habit of trying to turn Enghsh thought into Greek and Latin prose and to describe English institutions in incongruous classical terms. Some of our peda- gogues even cudgel their own and their pupils' brains to think what words an ancient Greek would have used to describe a " Q " boat or a " tank," and it may 1 "The Times" Literary Supplement 7 June, 1917. 221 222 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR be long before they realize that ideas which no Greek could understand cannot be turned into real Greek prose. While that obsession lasts we shall have to look to America for the gi'owth of the English lan- guage, and continue to give our latest inventions irrelevant classical names ; a chemist finds it easier to discover a new gas than to invent an English name for his discovery, and it will require a greater effort to substitute Commonwealth for Empire than to organize its government. General Smuts has not merely exposed that par- ticular terminological inexactitude in a speech ; he is a living refutation of the falsehood of the word and a monument to the virtue of the thing. The Empire which has won the minds of Louis Botha and Jan Smuts has acquired something of which it stood in greater need than of gold or territory, and it has won those minds by a quality in the British Empire which belies its name. It is the spirit of adoption which leads General Smuts to acclaim Great Britain as the senior partner in a common concern. The German can annex, but he cannot attract ; for Kultiir is an acid rather than a base, a solvent rather than a foun- dation of empire. Hence the German reliance on force ; nothing less than a militarist mould of iron could counteract the disruptive effect of Kitltur. No such constraint was needed for the British Common- wealth, and no such congeries of peoples has ever been held together by so slight a material bond. It is not, in fact, the British Army or the British Navy which holds. the Empire together. They are needed to pro- tect it from external foes, but not from internal dis- ruption ; and the Empire is a reign of the spirit and THE PARADOX OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 223 not a reign of the sword. It is the spirit that matters, and, as General Smuts remarked, too much stress may- be laid on the instruments of government : " Where they built up a common patriotism and a common ideal, the instrument of government would not be a thing that mattered so much as the spirit which actu- ated the whole spirit of government ". We have never, indeed, been adepts at expressing in our laws the secrets of our successful administration, and a sur- vey of the Statute-book would give Httle idea of the British Constitution or of how it has groAvn. The fundamentals of our system are not its statutes, but its customs and its conventions, and the student of constitutional history will find more of the spiiit of British government in the records of our Law Courts than in our Acts of Parliament. We may never make a united Empire by an act of legislation, but we have gone far towards making one by our administration of justice, and the proceedings of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council would, if the public ever read the reports, do more to enlighten it about the British Empire than all the debates in Parliament. Indeed, if those who most desire a united Empire informed theu' minds with a study of the means by which a united England came into existence, they would lay less stress upon Parliamentary legislation and more upon judicial administration and mterpreta- tion. For assuredly England was not made one by Act of Parliament, so much as by the hammering out in the Courts of a common EngUsh law : and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is in much the same way evoMng a common basis of Imperial 224 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR law. That basis is, perhaps, moral rather than legal in the strict sense of the word ; some might even call it spiritual, but whatever we choose to call the work, its authors are laying the very foundations of that confidence, contentment, and consent which hold together the British realms without the constraint of military force. If it would be a public service to find a native name for the British Empire, it would help us still more if some one found the means to popular- ize a knowledge of the principal factor in its archi- tecture. As it is, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council labours under a cumbrous title, amid undig- nified and almost shabby surroundings ; and the only section of the public which is not indifferent to its proceedings consists of High Churchmen, who regard it as anathema because it embodies the principle of temporal jurisdiction in ecclesiastical affairs. We have to travel far afield to find appreciation of its work ; it is on the confines of the Empire that men value most the links that bind them to its centre, and it is humble folk most liable to oppression who set the greatest store on the justice administered by the Privy Council. One of the tales that illumine the quality of the British Empire tells how a hill tribe in India was discovered offering sacrifice to a deity it called the Privy Council in gratitude for a wrong it had redressed. A less known and more recent inci- dent illustrates the spirit in which it interprets the white man's burden. The custodian of an Indian temple, before his death, stated that the god he wor- shipped had appeared to him and directed him to nominate a particular successor. The succession led to litigation, in which the local Court upheld the story THE PARADOX OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 225 of the god's appearance and the vahdity of the nomination. On appeal, the higher Court in India, superior to local faiths, reversed the decision, and it was ultimately brought before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. We can well imagine how ab- stract dogma and uncompromising adherence to our own Kultur would deal with it. True religion would scout the superstitious story, and demand the applica- tion of Western enhghtenment to the local custom and tribal ideas of an Indian village ; and the humbled petitioners would be sent back to nurse a sense of grievance at the lack of sympathy and understand- ing displayed by a superior civilization. The Judicial Committee thought otherwise, and, straining perhaps the orthodoxy of some of its members, it sided with the local Court, presumably on the theory that facts are what they appear to be to those whom they most concern, and on the principle that, while the inter- pretation which German Kultur places on the maxim " put yourself in his place " is " oust him," the inter- pretation of the British Empire is " understand him ". It is by thus divesting itself of its own particular brand of Kultur that the Privy Council successfully interprets the multifarious varieties of law — Hindu, Mahomedan, Canadian-French, Roman-Dutch, and English common law transmuted by the statutes of scores of local legislatures — with which it has to deal ; and its practice is an education in the elements of empire. Its practice is liberal because its hands are free. It is not a court of common law bound by a mass of rules and precedents. It interprets customs, but it is not bound by them ; no code fetters its dis- cretion, and Parliament discreetly leaves it alone. It 15 226 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR is, in fact, in almost precisely the position of the curia regis under Henry II and his successors, which, bor- rowing from various sources of jurisprudence, welded those elements together, and, applying them injudicial eyres to the local customs of Enghsh shires, created a common law, and prepared the way for common pohtics and a common English Parliament. If there is ever to be a common Parliament of the Empire, its path will have to be made straight by a common Im- perial law evolved in the Privy Council and grafted on to the national Courts of the Empire by judicial visitations. We have brought judges to Westminster from all the Dominions ; the process needs supple- menting by the periodical appearance of the Court itself in the various quarters of the Empire by means of Imperial circuits. That common Imperial law may be a distant pro- spect and must be a slow and gradual growth. The point of immediate value is the spirit of detachment in which the Privy Council is la5dng the foundations, and the hand-to-mouth method in which it works. Its fixed principle consists in the absence of fixed prin- ciples, and no legal dogma hampers its steps ; each case is considered on its merits and witli reference to the legal atmosphere in which it arises. Unity, let alone uniformity, is not the object of its acti\'ity, and it is logical only in its devotion to a liberty in which it believes but does not define. This is the very anti- thesis of self-conscious Kiiltiir claiming and seeking to impose itself on inferior civilizations ; and in that abdication consist its prospects of permanent sway. That, too, is the secret of empire. Metternich said that no Sovereign could afford to give away a particle of his sovereignty. We may not give it away, but we lease THE PARADOX OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 227 it to the Dominions and get a handsome return. The British Empire does not hoard for itself ; it grants full powers of taxation and legislation ; it authorizes self- governing Dominions, and even India, to place tariffs on British goods and to exclude British subjects from their franchise and their borders. Thus half a century and more ago we cast our bread of liberty upon the waters, and after many days it has returned to us at Anzac, at Ypres, at Vimy, and in the presence at our councils of those who have fed upon it. Truly that franchise which is called the British Empire is justified in its children. The Empire, mdeed, is great not because of its size, but because of its diversity and of the spirit which enables that diversity to exist in harmony. Music is not made by monotony ; and the professors of their own Kultur are babes in the school of empire. We are, as General Smuts says, " not a State, but a com- munity of States and nations ... a whole world by ourselves consisting of many nations, of many States, and all sorts of communities under one flag ". That is not a novel conception in English history ; histori- cally our House of Commons is a communifas com- munitatum, a community of lesser communities ; and that historical diversity in unity may have saved us from the revolutionary State in wjhich a parvenu Ger- many has sought to fuse the distinctions of nature and nationahty. Every State, declares Treitschke, must have the right to merge into one the nationalities con- tained within itself, and he refers contemptuously to the " barren talk about a right of nationality ". Pro- ceedings in the Austrian Beichsrath suggest that the talk may not be so barren as Treitschke's disciples 15* 228 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR would wish ; and General Smuts's speech emphasizes once more the fundamental antagonism between Ger- man and British conceptions of empire. It is also a distinction between the British and all Empires of the past ; " all the Empires we have known in the past and that exist to-day are founded on the idea of assimila- tion, of trying to force human material into one mould. Your whole idea and basis is entirely different. You do not want to standardize the nations of the British Empire ; you want to develop them towards a greater nationahty." It is not, in fact, as has been stupidly said, the object of the British Empire to give every one of its subjects an English mind, but to give every one of them the fullest fi-eedom and scope to develop a mhid of his own. That diversity also brings the British Empire into line with the common aspiration of a war-sick world. It is the only permanent league of nations in existence, and its nations comprise all sorts and conditions of peoples. It is too large to be called a microcosm, but within its borders are represented every kind and every stage of ci\'ihzation. British statesmen have to deal with the whole world in samples, and their methods of dealing may well form an example to the rest. The root of their success has not been their material or their military but their moral strength ; and it is the moral quality in the British Empire which has confounded its domestic critics and its foreign foes. Unity is a form of selfishness unless it is spontaneous, and British Empire means a sacrifice of self. It is a communion of service which makes the British Empire one, and will make a commonwealth of nations ; and we achieve at-one-ment by bearing one another's bur- dens and understanding one another's mmd. XVII. THE PREVENTION OF WAR.^ A FEW weeks before this war broke out a careful student of political psychology pubhshed a book entitled " The Great Society," and the great society promptly plunged into well-nigh universal war. That ironical comment of history on philosophy seemed to negative the soHdarity of the world ; but the appear- ance was deceptive. Strife is often not merely a means to greater unity, but a symptom of its sub- conscious existence ; and the earhest signs that men are conscious of a unity are the battles they wage over its interpretation. Our civil wars of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries were the gi'owing pains of na- tional unity. England was nearer to national soli- darity when it was divided into two national parties, Yorkist and Lancastrian, Cavaher and Roundhead, than when its factions were parochial or provincial ; and France was growing together when its people were merging from Normans, Bretons, Gascons, Pro- ven9als, and Burgundians into Huguenots or Catholics. The American Civil War was due to a growth of the conviction that the United States could not continue to speak with two voices on the subject of slavery or exist under the multitudinous sovereignty of its 1 "The Times " Literary Supplement, 5 July, 1917. 229 230 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR various States. Perhaps even the vigour of faction in Ireland turns on the particular shade between orange and green which is to colour the whole of the Emerald Isle. That, too, is the secret of this war ; it is to deter- mine the complexion of the world, and the war is the civil war of the human race. It has become a world war, because the world has become a unity. Friction arises from proximity and not from isolation ; and the United States has been swept into the vortex because there are no longer two worlds, the New and the Old, but one. The first thing a society does when it be- comes self-conscious is to debate the articles of its association, and to determine the principles on which it shall be governed ; and the philosophy of Weltmacht ode?' Niedergang was a gauntlet thrown down on behalf of the contention that the State was Power, and that the mailed fist and shining armour were the arbiters of human fate. That was a challenge to the world, and the world could not remain indifferent, because it had become a great society of nations. " The world," says President Wilson, " no longer consists of neighbourhoods. The whole is linked together in a common life and interest such as hu- manity never saw^ before, and the starting of wars can never again be a private and individual matter for nations." Neutrality in this war has become an anti- social idiosyncrasy. Internationalism has thus, so fiir from being a dream, been made practical politics of the most insist- ent character by the war ; and there can be no settle- ment which is not a world-settlement. Even the no-settlement which a stalemate would iiuolve would TUB PREVENTION OF WAR 231 be an unsettlement of the whole world, and every nation would have to arm for a conflict more hideous than this war, after a truce more restless than the armed peace since 1870. Apart from that militarist nightmare, which so-called pacifists would plan, the war must result either in a cosmopolitanism some- thing like the Roman Empire, with Prussia playing the part of Rome, or in a reign of law based upon consent. There is, therefore, nothing visionary or unreal in the discussion of proposals for an inter- national organization which is the only alternative to the ills we feel or fear. Nor is there likely to be any lack of the will-to-peace, which even in Germany is tending under the stress of circumstances to supplant the will-to-power ; and it was Germany that put the sand in the international machinery which before the war had worked with some success. Arbitration had made considerable strides, and most of the Great Powers had accommodated dangerous disputes during the preceding generation without recourse even to arbitration. It was only from German action or in- stigation that the peace of the world had much to fear ; and the penalties of war are leading even the Germans themselves along the path of penance to repentance. We can therefore agree with Lord Bryce ^ not merely that " every one seems to feel the approach of a supremely important moment," but also that 1 " Proposals for the Prevention of Future Wars," by Viscount Bryce and others. (George Allen & Unwin. Is. net.) Speeches delivered by Viscount Bryce, O.M., General Smuts, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Buckmaster, Lord Hugh Cecil, M.P., and others on 14 May, 1917. (League of Nations Society Publication No. 11.) 232 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR the moment will be exceptionally favourable for the adoption of specific proposals for the prevention of future wars. It is the proposals themselves that are under consideration. They are reasonably modest and admittedly deal only with a part of the problem. In the first place, they are concerned only with inter- national disputes and with the means of preventing international wars. But there was war in the world before there were national wars, and when national wars are brought to an end it does not follow that wars v/ill cease. The century after the Reformation was an era of wars of religion, and when it closed at the Peace of Westphalia men may well have hoped that, with the elimination of religion as a cause of war, the reign of peace would ensue. But the ink was hardly dry on the treaties of peace when England and Holland, both of them Protestant States and both of them then republics, plunged into a war of tariffs and commerce, while France indulged in the civil wars of the Fronde. The destruction of Crom- well's militarism made no difference to EngHsh belligerency ; Stuart monarchy waged Dutch wars just like the Puritan Commonwealth, and a progres- sive Lord Chancellor opened Parliament in 1673 with a speech on the text Delenda est Carthago. Germany is the latest but not the last Carthage in the history of war, and nationalism is no more than religion the fundamental reason why men fight. " You must," as General Smuts remarked, " begin with the hearts of men ; " and no tribunal will save a world tliat wants to fight from figliting. Wars of religion, nationalism, and tariffs are often merely means of expressing the acquisitive and combative THE PREVENTION OF WAR 235 instincts which humanity shares with the lower creation. Men have always fought, and have only changed the methods and objectives of their fighting. Universal and permanent peace can only come with the conviction that war, so far from being " poHtical science par excellence^' is an intolerable method of dealing with politics, economics, or religion. It has been eliminated as a method of sohdng religious problems, but there is food for varied thought in the facts that religion was eliminated as a cause of war before politics or economics, and that international pacifists in Russia have already begun to shed one another's blood in disputes over local autonomy, as though pacifist Russia were no more perfect than a belligerent Ireland. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Governments in congress after this war will have more ado in keeping peace within their respective borders than in making peace between themselves ; and for the prevention of those wars the proposals before us provide no sort of remedy. They are confined to wars between nation and nation, and before the suggested tribunal for arbitra- tion and council for conciliation of national disputes can be established, it will have to be determined what a nation is, who are the nations with the right of appeal, and what are the national disputes they will be entitled or required to submit to international judgment. If, for instance, the protectorate which the Italians have just proclaimed over Albania should develop after the fashion of other protectorates, which will be the " nation " with the locus standi in the court of international conscience, Italy or Albania ? Will the future Albanian insurgents (and it is incon- 234 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR ceivable that there should not be insurgents in Al- bania against an alien Government) be rebels in the eyes of international Europe or a comrade nation rightly struggling to be free ? Incidentally, too, the scheme commits us by implication to a somewhat drastic treatment of the Central Empu'es. It requires no exuberant imagination to envisage an independent Poland after the war not quite satisfied with the posi- tion of Poles left under German jurisdiction, or a Germany discontented with that of German subjects transferred with Polish lands to Polish rule. Their kindred would presumably be precluded from assisting the " helots " in other lands except after arbitration, if arbitration were admitted ; and the arbiters would have to take cognizance of the grievances alleged — that is to say, of the internal government of nations. They might be in a delicate situation ; for, however clearly the rights of nationalities are asserted, and however carefully and independently of military con- siderations the frontiers of new Europe are drawn, they will leave millions of men and women under more or less alien Governments, and the Slav-Teu- tonic imbroglio might be repeated in any quarter of the globe. The truth is that international politics cannot be divorced entirely from domestic politics ; Bismarck taught the Germans at home the principles his suc- cessors have applied abroad ; and international peace will not be secure until the hearts of men are tuned to concord with the strangers within their gates as well as with their fellows under other Governments. As President Wilson has pointed out, proposals to prevent wars in the future depend for their success THE PREVENTION OF WAR 235 Upon the nature of the peace they are designed to preserve. There is no need to fear a Holy Alhance of Sovereigns against their subjects, but it will not be so easy to avoid an international council of majorities riding somewhat roughshod over dissentient minorities. It is comparatively easy to understand how such a council, if it had existed before the war, could have dealt with the Austro-Serbian dispute, but how would it have dealt with Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, or the Trentino ? Would not its very success as a guardian of international peace have condemned to permanent subjection the minority peoples under the Governments by which the guar- dians would be chosen ? It is indeed easier, even in the climax of this war, to see how peace could be preserved by such an inter- national arrangement than to see how that peace could be made perfect. There are many kinds of peace, and it wears a different aspect according to the point of view. There was the peace that reigned in War- saw after a Polish insurrection, and the peace that broods over the land when men have made it a desert. We now repudiate all desire to restore the status quo, because the status quo produced the war. But if we had organized our international machinery for pre- venting future wars before this war broke out, should we not have been committed to the perpetuation of the status quo ? Stillness may be peace, but what we want is peace and progress, a peace that is based on movement, and not a stereotyped repose. There is something in the German talk of biological decisions, and we cannot regard the future as nothing but a prolongation of the present. The impossibility of a QS6 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR static world is indeed the problem which confronts all proposals for mere prevention. When we say that prevention is better than cure, we are thinking of diseases and their causes. But war is a symptom rather than the disease itself, and there is little use in preventing symptoms. The methods of preventive medicine are the promotion of health ; they are posi- tive rather than restrictive, and the best preventive of war is the removal of its causes and the promotion of peaceful conditions. The war itself is promoting those peaceful condi- tions which could never exist so long as the people of powerful States desired war and regarded it as the only means of obtaining the " biological decisions " they considered their natural right. The peace of Europe hung by a thread because of the German conviction, based on recent German liistory, that nothing paid Germany so well as war. The fallacy of INIr. Norman Angell's theory consisted not in his assumption that war does not pay, but in his assump- tion that men would recognize the fact. It is not the truth, but their view of the truth, that influences men's minds ; and the fact, if it be a fact, that war does not pay is no deterrent to those who believe that it does. No nation will come out of this war under that delusion ; and the causes of national wars will thereby be reduced. Nor is the danger of other than national wars really so serious. For under modern conditions the State alone can make war with any prospect of success for itself or of danger to the world at large. The history of Austria during the war shows how helpless are mere populations -without the material and the organization which the State alone THE PREVENTION OF WAR 237 can provide. We may not accept Lord Hugh Cecil's dictum that nationalism is incompatible with Chris- tianity, but assuredly the irresponsible State, with its vast command of men and munitions and control of truth and communications, has proved an enemy to the peace of the world ; and if we can eliminate wars waged by the State we can regard with comparative equanimity the lesser evils of riots, rebellions, and international strikes. The problems of the State and of international relations are really one, and no plan for preventing national wars can succeed so long as the State re- mains omnicompetent and irresponsible. It is a German dogma and the ground on which Germans rejected arbitration, and again we are brought back to one of President Wilson's principles, that peace depends upon democracy — that is to say, upon the responsibility of all power. It will be a step in advance when every Government is responsible to its own people ; but internationahsm goes farther and requires that every Government shall also be responsible to the common arbitrament of an inter- national Court. It is not nationalism that is un- christian, but irresponsibility. The crime of which we have all been more or less guilty for generations is that we have been bent, as individuals and as States, on getting power rather than understanding and wisdom to direct it. Lord Bryce's proposals are sound enough so far as they go, but the motor will not move without its petrol ; and it is the spirit which is difficult to obtain. Fortunately, the spirit of peace does not grow scarcer with the prolongation of the war. XVIII. THE WAYS OF REVOLUTION.^ Nothing is new under the sun, and the oldest master of the science concluded his " Politics " with a dis- sertation on revolutions. But the waters of Lethe and the fountains of ignorance can turn the veriest truism mto paradox ; and the capacity of being sur- prised at the course of human affairs is not likely to disappear in a world of physical science which regards historical fact as irrelevant to present experience, and expects to probe the secrets of men's souls by means of the lens and of Rontgen rays. The historian, on the other hand, finds it difficult to determine which throws the greater light on the other, the past on the present, or the present on the past ; and he is content to leave the dispute with the conviction that neither can be understood without the other. Revolutions before his eyes help him to realize the forces and passions which produced revolutions in the past, and charts of earlier disturbances provide him with some indications of the probable course of present emotions. The value of the comparison is thus two-fold, academic and practical ; but the academic value is the less problematic. The careful study of a revolution in progi'ess will give the observer a much more certain ' "The Times " Literary Supplement, 23 August, 1917. 238 THE WAYS OF REVOLUTION 239 light on the past than a knowledge of the past will throw on the present ; and the reason is that, how- ever assiduously we may cultivate and train the faculty of projecting our minds into other surroundings, we can never feel the past with the same vivid reality that we feel the present. George Washington once remarked with an approach to impatience that people can never see what they do not feel, and the same idea underlies the saying that the best political teacher is the tax collector. But the gibe is true of us all in different degrees according to the extent of our intelli- gence and imagination. Historians writing in a stable and pacific world are scornful of drum and trumpet his- tories and intolerant of all extenuations of the means by which less fortunate generations have made revolutions or preserved law and order. We read Taine on the French Revolution with less patience now that we have the problems of the Russian Revolution before our eyes, and are less enthusiastic about the sacred rights of the subject than we were when danger to the State appeared an unsubstantial bogey. We should be less horrified at a Committee of Public Safety, the guillotine, or a military dictatorship in Russia to-day than we were wont to be at similar phenomena when we encountered them in our histories of the French Revolution ; and our toleration would not be entirely due to the fact that the Russians are our Allies while the French Revolutionists were our foes. No doubt that change of circumstance facilitates bur sympathy with any methods that may restore efficiency to the Russian Government, discipline to its armies, and strength to the common cause ; and we should be much more critical of similar methods em- 240 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR ployed at Berlin or Vienna. But it is our natural want of sympathy with our enemies that makes it so difficult for us to interpret and forecast the course of German politics ; indeed, no history of Germany written by a patriotic Englishman during this war is likely to be of more value or more read by posterity than the his- tories of France which our ancestors wrote during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. For similar reasons a CathoHc cannot write a decent history of Puritanism, nor an Evangelical of the Oxford Move- ment ; and there is a bias of the age, as well as a bias of Church and of Party. The fact that it is his duty to resist this bias will always make the historian un- popular except with those to whose bias he panders. He is driven, by the necessity of trying to understand the people and the movements he is describing, to cultivate sympathy ; and sympathy with a variety of standards appears to the moralist as moral indifference and to the mathematician as scientific inexactitude. Most of us can only understand those historical phen- omena with which we sympathize. That is why history is so much a matter of partisanship, and weak- kneed historians often contend that it can never be anything else. However that may be, our present outlook enables us to sympathize with, and therefore to understand, revolutions better than we did, and particularly the French Revolution of 1789. With our apprehension fixed upon the proceedings of the Finnish Diet and the Ukraine Rada, we can under- stand the unpopularity in which the Girondins were involved by their federalist propensities ; and the ex- Tsaritsa has made more intelligible the French fury against IVIarie Antoinette. THE WAYS OF REVOLUTION 241 But appreciation I of the Russian Revolution as throwing light on the French will be caviare to the general, and it is less academic to look to the French Revolution for Hght on the probable course of events in Russia. Not that there were no revolutions before 1789 or that there is nothing to be learnt from them of value for the present. Aristotle, as we have said, has a good deal about revolutions and their diagnosis. He regards them as an endemic disease requiring almost clinical treatment ; and revolution was never far from the doors of the Greek city State. But the o-Tctcrets of which he writes were revolutions after the manner of those which characterized medieeval city States, and, more recently, States in the Balkans or South American Repubhcs. They were mostly fac- tion-fights fought under conditions which have little in common with the circumstances and the ideas of the modern world ; and the natural history of revolu- tions can hardly be said to have begun until the abolition of slavery and serfdom brought politics within the reach of the mass of men. Hence we trace the germs of modern revolutionary doctrine to the Jacquerie of fourteenth-century France, to the preach- ing of John Ball at the time of our Peasants' Revolt, to the Twelve Articles of the German Peasants' War in 1524-5, and to the Levellers of the Commonwealth. It is they or their descendants who make the real revolutions, and the nativitas or naivete which char- acterized the nativus, or serf, is essential to the genuine revolutionist ; only half a century separates the Russian Revolution from Alexander II 's edict of emancipation. It is his simplicity which makes the revolutionist so attractive and so unpractical ; and when he loses it he 16 242 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR becomes a politician, a man about town, instead of a native son of the soil. Revolutions are not made, though they may be manipulated, by the sophisticated. The man of the world does not see visions and dream dreams ; the mirage only appears to those who are athirst ; and no statesman thinks of abandoning " the meagre, stale, forbidding ways of custom, law, and statute " for short cuts to a new heaven and a new earth. Those ways only appeal to inexperienced travellers, and revolutions occur for the most part among people not accustomed to govern themselves. There have been other revolutions, like our own in 1688-9, so respectable as hardly to deserve the name ; the expulsion of James II resembled the recent ex- pulsion of Constantine, and it is a sound instmct which gives the name of " revolution " to the Russian crisis but denies it to the Greek. The technical definition of a revolution is a con- stitutional change which has to be carried out by unconstitutional means. An ampler description would be, " evolution telescoped," or *' fusion while you wait ". The revolutionist attempts to do what Nature never does and to accomplish things by leaps ; the work of ages is packed into one concentrated moment of delirious enthusiasm. It is a question of political chemistry against poHtical biology, and the dynamite of social dogma is invoked to remedy the tardiness of growth. The revolutionist wants to explode the earth on the chance of being blown to heaven, and no re- ligious zealot is more bent on " other- worldliness ". Faith that is not accordhig to knowledge and action that ignores experience are the essence of revolutions ; they begin with an idealism which sobers under the THE WAYS OF REVOLUTION 243 blows of practical^ realization. The revolutionist is conscious of his innocence ; he finds a scapegoat in the old autocracy for all existing social sins ; he heaps them on its head, and drives it out into the wilderness. For the blissful moment the people are without sin ; what need of penal codes, or at least of capital punish- ment ? A Russian convicted of forty crimes asked for liberty that he might use his great influence with the people, not as an awful example or as a brand saved from the burning, but as a hero in the fight for the faith against law and order. For order was the old order, and law was the Tsar's ukase ; forty crimes against law and order were so many blows at the police and so many titles to revolutionary virtue. It is, however, easier to drive our scapegoat into the wilder- ness than to exorcise inherited instincts ; and the per- sistence of crime after the abolition of its penalties constrains the revolutionist in time to distinguish between the virtuous properties of law and order and the vicious accidents of Tsardom. Orgies of robbery and violence, generally followed by lynching on a comprehensive scale, convince the libertarian that strong government, so far from being the imposition of tyrants and the perquisite of Tories, is the first of communal needs and the only guarantee of freedom. The disorder of revolutions is a temporary consequence of the divorce which autocracy makes between govern- ment and communal feeling. There is nothing new in the Russian phenomena of anarchy, and every incident in it might be paralleled from the history of France in 1790-2. So, too, might that pacifism which has so disturbed our calculations of the war. It is another aspect of the clouds of 16* 244. THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR idealism which revolutions trail with them at their birth. Meanwhile prophetic harps In every grove were ringing " War shall cease ; Did ye not hear that conquest is abjured ? " So sang Wordsworth, and Burke referred in 1790 to " the once- warlike Gauls ". The pacifism of France in that year helped us to a pacific settlement with Spain over the Nootka Sound affair, which ultimately gave to English-speaking peoples control of the eastern shores of the North Pacific. The pacifist boot is on an ally's and not on an enemy's foot to-day ; but revolutionary Russia may outgrow that measure as fast as revolutionary France, and despite themselves the Germans will help in the development. They will not, indeed, repeat the folly of Brunswick's pro- clamation and wage war on the Russian people to restore a Russian autocracy ; but the easier and the greater their advance into Russia the more difficult will peace become between Prussian junkers and Russian democracy, and the German invasion of Russia may have results not unlike the Prussian advance to Valmy. The idealism of the Russian Revolution is indeed compounded of the same mixture of egotism and altruism as was the French. Each people imagined itself to have lit upon a sovereign cure for human ills, and in their concentration on that specific they became indifferent to the views and interests of other peoples. One regarded political revolution and the other regards social revolution as a panacea ; just as the Jacobins would have driven all Europe into republican freedom, so the Leninists would constrain us all to adopt tlie THE WAYS OF REVOLUTION 24-5 communist faith. Peace for the cottage and war on the castle is at the bottom of both their international missions, and Anacharsis Clootz was the prototype of many a member of the Soviet of Petrograd. The rights of little nations sink into insignificance com- pared with the Rights of Man. The greater in- cludes the less, and international Maximahsts are Httle concerned with national minutiae. Revolution, they think, should begin Hke charity at home : after Russia, her Allies must be converted ; and then will be time to deal with the foe. The Germans naturally agree ; and in the forefront of the International programme for Stockholm appeared a series of questions relating to national rights of self-government in Persia, Mor- occo, TripoH, Egypt, Malta, and so forth ; it would be excellent if the restoration of Belgium and Poland could be postponed until such problems were settled, and their discussion might relieve the Prussians of aU anxieties about the war, and incidentally settle the fate of international ideahsm. Revolutionists might be statesmen if Junkers were equally naif; but the dove with all its innocence cannot afford to leave all the wisdom to the serpent. Experience is, however, an excellent if an exacting teacher, and the simpHcity of revolutionists is due to their past exclusion from public affairs. Events move more quickly, with railways, newspapers and the tele- graph, than they did a century and a quarter ago ; and the Russians are learning the lessons of practical pohtics faster than did the French. MiHtary discipline will probably be restored in less time than the two years and more it took in the French Revolution ; and if the Russians have hampered their generals by 246 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR sending civil commissioners to control them and by making civic virtue an avenue to military rank, the French Convention did the same. When the first French Revolutionary offensive was planned against the Austrians in Belgium, two of the armies did noth- ing and the third considerably less ; it threw down its arms in face of the foe, ran for its base at Lille, and revenged itself by murdermg its general ; and the future soldiers of Napoleon set precedents as dangerous as those of BrusilofF's troops. Seven Marshals of the Empire owed their initial promotion to election by the rank and file. Davoust first signalized himself by heading a mutiny against his commanding officer ; and Napoleon owed his rise to his success against Toulon and then against the mob in Paris. Kronstadt has not yet gone so far as Toulon, and the " whiff* of grapeshot " has not yet sent sprawling the hons of Petrograd. It is to be hoped that neither episode will need repetition ; for a militarist Russian demo- cracy, while it would make short work of the Central Empires, would greatly disturb its Allies, and post- pone to a very distant future the pacification of the world. The parallelism between the French and Russian Revolutions goes far because they are two of the most elemental movements of mankind, and the repetitions of history arise from the fundamental unity of human nature. But the fact that water always consists of two parts of hydrogen to one of oxygen will not give us the direction of any particular tide or the strength of any particular wave ; and the forces which play upon human nature are so infinite in their variety that the result transcends the possibility of accurate cal- THE WAYS OF REVOLUTION 247 dilation. But just as the absence of uniformity in the weather is no reflection upon the science of mete- orology, so the perennial paradoxes of human affairs cast no stigma upon the science of history, though it is so new a science that few are aware of its existence, and still fewer understand it. All new sciences, moreover, have to struggle with tares, and in its early days chemistry was alchemy to the general public, and astronomy was astrology. The science of history, like that of meteorology, has to eschew the meretrici- ous popularity of Zadkiel and Old Moore, and to warn its students against the falseness of the analogies which underlie the notion that historical repetitions are as simple as recurring decimals. We can, however, point to certain phenomena, the comparative regularity of which constitutes a presumption, though it never amounts to more than a probability ; and it must be remembered that success in the arts of statesmanship and war depends absolutely upon the capacity of those who practise them to measure these human proba- bihties. Revolutions are obviously less calculable than more normal developments, but even revolutions are subject to certain conditions which a physical scientist might call " laws ". Anarchy, for instance, is an inevitable accompani- ment of those sudden subversions of government which we term revolutions ; and there is nothing to surprise us in the disorder of Russia except perhaps the comparative rapidity and skill which her states- men have shown in coping with it. But anarchy, while inevitable for a period, is always temporary ; it is so intolerable an evil that the least competent communities sooner or later find a remedy, and even 248 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR Mexico, left to itself, is returning to law and order. Neither the Germans nor the war will be fatal to Russia's domestic salvation. Revolutions, indeed, have little to fear from external foes, and it is astonish- ing how seldom autocracy has been able to beat demo- cracy at war. The contrary impression seems to come from that hazy recollection of the Peloponnesian War which does duty for a knowledge of history with so many educated people ; but a historical scholarsliip limited to ancient Greece might remind us that the Persian Empire did not win the battles of Marathon and Salamis. In modern times democracy has almost invariably had the best of the fighting. France herself was never led to defeat by a Republican Government ; Waterloo and Sedan were lost by her Emperors. Swiss history is one long tale of democratic success in defence ; two Dutch provinces defied the arms of Philip II, and thirteen American colonies the might of the British Empire. Democracy is more prone to suicide than liable to conquest. Some Russians have represented the war as an intolerable burden for the Revolution to bear ; but it may be doubted whether peace would cut the roots of faction. The war imposes some restraint on domestic animosities ; and war to-day is a trivial danger to Russia compared with its menace to the French Re- volution in 1793. France had not an ally and hardly a friend in Europe ; more than half the world to-day is Russia's ally and friendly to the Revolution ; she has no La Vendue on her hands, no emig7TS, and no outraged Church. If the war were brought home to the Russians as it was to the French in 1792-3, there would be less fear of Russian disunion ; and external THE WAYS OF REVOLUTION 249 peace bought by surrender and compromise, and con- cluded before Russia has found domestic unity, would endanger the Revolution far more than the German invasion. Our own civil wars would have ended sooner, had we not been left at liberty to fight them without external constraint. The peril to Russia is not the war, but social disintegration, and it is a peril which no one else can avert ; if she is true to her Allies she cannot be false to herself. XIX. A PARABLE OF THE WAR.^ In commenting on what it conceived to be the parlous prospects of Germany after the taking of Vimy Ridge, an Itahan newspaper put the following pleasant conundrum to its readers : If such triumphs can be achieved by British arms alone, what will be the Ger- man situation when the real military Powers of the Entente begin their spring campaigns ? The question was ingenuous enough ; but the distinction drawn be- tween military and non-military Powers serves to remind us of the fact, the significance of which is con- siderable, that if the Entente wins this war, the issue will have been determined by the intervention of two Powers whose expeditionary forces when it began did not between them equal the army of a single Balkan State. If militarism is defeated, it will be because pacifist peoples went to war and civilian communities were converted into crusaders ; and the keynote of the fourth year of the war, on which we are now enter- ing, will be the mobilization for the common cause of a commonwealth pre-eminent in its passion for peace and more remote than any other from the occasion and cause of the conflict. The Russian Revolution, stupendous though it is, pales as a portent in human affairs before the appearance of the United States as 1 "The Times" Literary Supplement, 2 August, 1917. 250 A PARABLE OF THE WAR 251 a formidable military Power bent on the battle for peace in the heart of Europe. It is the military effect of this conversion from peace to war that absorbs our attention at the moment, and if we think of its cost at all, we think of its cost in terms of men and of money. Later we may think of its cost in the sacrifice of ancient ideals and be troubled about the permanence or transience of our conversion. If the sacrifice of British Kultur is the secret of British empire, a similar sacrifice of the cherished Anglo-Saxon inlieritance of individual hberty and preference of the force of argument to the argument of force is, so far as the two great English- speaking communities are concerned, the outstanding moral of the war. But British empire is, we hope, permanent ; war is transitory. Will the effects of the conversion be transitory too ? Or will the conquered Hun triumph in his defeat, and point to a pacifism beaten by the force of arms and the philosophy of war ? Shall we emerge a conscript people, converted in spite of ourselves to the precept and practice of our foes, and regard peace itself as dependent on weapons of war and science as an agent for human destruc- tion ? Have we indeed sacrificed the things in which we beUeved because they were bad, and adopted our enemies' methods and creeds because they are better ? Is war the chmax of pohtics, or is militarism the real as well as the philological antithesis of civilization ? Whose creed is to triumph in and after the conflict, the Germans' or our own ? Are we to be changed, or are they ? Upon the answer to that question depend ahke the value of our sacrifice and the future of the world. 252 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR The Prussian at least has no doubt, whatever may- be the searchings of other German minds. " You see," he says in effect, " we were right after all, and in practice you admit it by manifold imitation. You have adopted conscription, gagged your Press, sus- pended your constitutional guarantees and your sacred rights of liberty. You have had to treat conscience, unless it agreed with your own, as an offence against the law, and to penalize with imprisonment and hard labour a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the IVIount. Some of your public bodies have even been trying, so far as they could, to reduce to beggary and starvation the wives and children of their employees who thought that your ' glorious revolution of 1688 ' had guaranteed them civil and rehgious liberty, for- getting, poor fools, tliat it guaranteed them against everything except the only thing they really had to fear — an Act of Parliament. In the name of that liberty you have forced your countrymen to do what they thought was sin and to kill their fellow-men in a cause they believed was wi'ong. Your latter-day State has wrought more persecution than ever did the Church of the Middle Ages. We also have done these things, but we have done them fi-ankly. We proclaim that necessity knows no law, that reason of State is the supreme criterion ; and Bernhardi lias taught us that the Christian code has no relevance to the conduct of nations towards their neighbours. But you have reviled him as a blasphemer, and tlien, still reviling, have practised his precepts. Are you still shocked at the byword of British hypocrisy ? Your horror of poison gas was as primitive as the Matabele horror of your machine-guns ; but you soon overcame A PARABLE OF THE WAR 253 it, when you realized that poison paid, and you made yourselves adepts in its use. You are rapidly over- coming your pious objections to what you were pleased to call the murder of women and children ; and you would bring yourselves up to the scratch of torpedo- ing hospital ships, if there were any German hospital ships for you to torpedo and you had no other means of preventing their use and abuse. Your moral in- dignation appears to have been mere petulant anger at being unprepared to do the things for which you hold us up to reprobation. War after all is science, and only your stupidity led you to deny that to pure science morality is an impertinence. " You prate of your wisdom in judgment, but what is the use of judgment against reekmg tube and iron shard ? You may keep your judgment, and we will keep our powers of execution. Do not talk to us about the verdict of history ; the history that pos- terity reads is wi'itten by those who conquer. Do you read Persian accounts of Marathon and Salamis ? Did the scribes of Hannibal and Mithradates write the history of Rome you teach in your schools and col- leges ? and would you beheve them if they had ? Victrix causa deis placuit, and you yourselves beheve that the will of God is expressed on the field of battle whenever you gain the victory. Enjoying the pace Ge7v?ianica, the world will hold as cheap your queru- lous tales of Belgian atrocities and " Lusitania " crimes as you do the pages in which Gildas laments the Schrecklichkeit of those Teutonic invaders from whom you inherit what vigour you possess, or the Irish tirades against the methods of blood and iron by which you reduced to law and order that distressful country ; and 254 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR it will trouble itself as little about ' scraps of paper ' as you do about your broken Treaty of Limerick or the Sand River Convention. Even if we fail in this war, we shall have achieved the moral triumph of converting you to our philosophy and teaching you the methods of success. Your brutal majority of three to one against us and your superior weight of armament will merely demonstrate the truth of what we have said ; and at least we shall be the heroes of this war, as much as Satan is of * Paradise Lost,' though the paradise you have lost was a greater fools' paradise than Adam's." So Satan might have boasted at the Incarnation that he had converted Heaven and dragged Divinity down to a human level ; and orthodoxy has it that the Devil would have been right. There was no other way ; he had so corrupted the world that only God could redeem it. There must be a descent ii*om heaven before there could be an ascent from hell, a humiliation of the Divine for the sake of human sal- vation. The Prussian has so polluted the earth that the rest and the best of mankind had to descend into the mire to cleanse the defilement away. The descent, the humiliation, and the suffering are not good things in themselves, but only as sacrifice. It is the spirit that matters, and the purpose that sanctifies the squalor of the via dolorosa. We have not trodden the narrow way because it was narrow, but because it alone led to our goal ; and we need not be ashamed of our present decision because we are sore let and hindered by sins of the past. We have not gagged our Press because we disliked our freedom, nor penal- ized conscience because we believed in persecution and A PARABLE OF THE WAR ^55 felt no shame in oppression, but because to this extent the Prussian has triumphed. There was no other way ; we had to stoop to conquer, and to borrow his weapons in order to beat him. We did not invent them and we do not use them with any pleasure to ourselves ; the Prussian may glory in his original sin. It was not to make the world more Prussian that we, and still less the United States, descended into the arena. They stepped down from their peaceful Olympus because it was clear that militarism could not be defeated by military peoples, and because the flood threatened to submerge even the Pisgahs of human progress. America has not cast its pacifism into the common cauldron of the war in order to make the whole world militarist, but to redeem it all from the sword ; and humanity has become one in its efforts to exorcise the Devil. The temptation was severe to preserve the purity of the Pharisee, to protect the hems of pacifist robes from the contamination of blood, and to stand aloof hke Sinn Fein — that apotheosis of national selfishness which remains indifferent to the martyrdom of other little nations in order to save itself in a world nicely balanced between ruin and re- demption, and hopes to appeal to a future congress of peoples on the ground that it helped to impede the common cause which that congress will represent. America has not so loved itself that it had no bowels of compassion for the world. It has taken upon it the form of conscription, and made itself bond that others may be free ; and in this plunge into humanity, this incarnation of the spirit. He our hope of peace after war and our refutation of Prussian blasphemers. For the means are not the end. Faith may suffer 256 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAR an eclipse in this crucifixion of mankind ; the whole race may partake in the agony of redemption, and may repeat on a wider scale in the present the throes of past liberations. It is less a vicarious sacrifice than it was, and the commonwealth of man has to redeem itself in the footsteps of its leader. The example pointed the way, but alone it is not enouglx The old Europe, the old world, the old peace had to die in order that a new Europe, a new world, and a new peace might arise from the hecatombs of war. The end was not in the darkness when the veil of the Temple was rent and men scoffed at the light which failed in the eyes of the flesh. There was Easter to follow ; and an Easter will follow the blackness and desolation of this war, to the confusion of those who dragged men into its depths. Protestant and Catholic Churches may deplore a decline in the orthodoxy of the letter and the rite ; but the world has never seen an age with a larger faith or a nobler portion of the spirit of self-sacrifice. It was no forlorn hope or counsel of despair that led Belgium to defend her right and the right of other peoples ; it was not doubt and disbelief that drew millions of Enghsh volunteers or the gi'cat American Kepublic into the conflict. Their fight is an act of faith, and their faith will make whole the community of man. 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