Life, Journalism and Politics/Volume 2/Chapter 34

by John Alfred Spender

THERE is one thought which must often recur to a man of my age. I was fifty-one years of age when the Great War broke out. Had I been twenty years younger, it is highly probable that instead of living to write this book I should have found a grave on one or other of the battle fronts before my thirty- fifth year. A man of my generation can never forget the monstrous stroke of fate which fell on those who chanced to be born between the years 1878 and 1898, or think of the scores of thousands who went to early graves in the Great War without feeling their fate to be a reflection on his title to be alive. Still more so if he took any part in public affairs and had any responsibility, even indirect, in the shaping of the policy which was a sentence of doom for so many of his juniors.

It is at all events our generation which will chiefly be held to account, and it is precisely this generation which finds it most difficult to give an intelligible account of itself. Speaking as an Englishman, I am not disposed, like some of my contemporaries , to stand in a white sheet. I have read practically the whole of the British documents between 1906 and 1914, a large number of the German, most of the Bolshevist publications, and many of the Memoirs and Reminiscences that have appeared in different countries since the war. It seems to me that our own country comes better out of this test than almost any other, and that its policy looks honest and straight- forward, if, according to European standards, a little naive. The general drift of opinion, even in ex- enemy countries, is to acquit us of aggressive inten- tions and to acknowledge that we were pursuing a defensive line imposed on us by the policy of the Central Powers, and especially by the German challenge to us at sea. This I believe to be the truth, and I believe also that if our successors should find themselves in like circumstances, they will be compelled to act as we did. The hope of the future is not, as I see it, that they will be more moral or more pacific than we were, but that they will not be placed in the circumstances in which we found our- selves at the outbreak of the Great War and in the preceding years.

There is one fact especially which seems to me to encourage this hope, and which is newer in the history of opinion than is generally realised. This is the acknowledgment by the victors as well as the vanquished that the Great War was a great catas- trophe in which the suffering far outweighed the gains. No one claims credit for having planned or forced this war j the victors are as much concerned as the vanquished to prove that the blame was on the other side. We now habitually speak of " war-guilt " as the greatest of public crimes, and have almost persuaded ourselves that we have always thought of war in this way.

This, it seems to me, is an illusion which we ought not to pass on to those who come after. The Great War arose out of a state of opinion which regarded war as a legitimate and normal method of promoting national interests ; and to prevent opinion slipping back into that atmosphere is perhaps the greatest task before the coming generation. It is a good thing, if only it lasts, that we should all be so im- pressed with the horrors of war as to speak of war- makers and militarists as criminals, but we did not speak or think in that way before the war. Let me take as an example the case which is commonly made against the Russians for having, as is alleged, pre- cipitated the war by mobilising in duly 1914. This may, in a sense, be true, but at the time, not one person in a hundred would have imputed " guilt " to Russia if it had been true. We might have called her precipitate or impolitic, but we should not have called her guilty. For, according to the ideas of the time, Russia was fully entitled to mobilise after Austria had done so, and if she had left Serbia to her fate without moving, she would afterwards have incurred much the same reproach as we should have, if at the later stage we had left Belgium to her fate.

I myself felt, as I feel still, that the rally of Russia to Serbia was one of the few spirited acts of the Czardom, and though (if I had known all the facts) I might have wished to restrain her from motives of prudence;

I should certainly not have held her morally to blame, when she persisted.

The truth is that in the world in which we were brought up, the crime was not to make war, but to make it unsuccessfully, and so it had been from the beginning of time. Up to 1914 all the Governments of Europe, our own included, regarded war as a risk which had to be run, a legitimate gamble, as Churchill said of the Dardanelles expedition, a " continuation of policy," as the Germans defined it. If any question of " guilt " arose it was only between the unsuccessful maker of war and his countrymen, who as a rule were extremely unforgiving about it. The rest were judged by results, and those who came back in triumph were almost invariably acclaimed as great statesmen and saviours of their country, regardless of whether they were aggressors or were resisting aggression. In my early days Bismarck stood on the highest pedestal among nation-makers and empire-builders , and he acknowledged that he had welded the German Empire in blood and iron in a series of carefully planned wars. Frenchmen deplored the balance of forces which made it seemingly impossible for them to recover the lost provinces, but very few of them would have thought it a crime to wage war for their recovery, if there had been a reasonable chance of its being waged successfully.

Nor can it honestly be said that we British held a different view. We considered ourselves to be pacific, but, as our neighbours pointed out, we had been more frequently at war than any of them, and the possi- bility of war entered into the calculations of both our political parties. Somewhere about the year 1900 I got myself into much trouble for saying, " There is no peace-at-any-price party ; there are only various parties which disapprove of each other's wars. . All the peace parties that I have known have ardently desired to make war on the Sultan of Turkey, but most of them appear to regard it as a humanitarian picnic, which is almost certainly a delusion." Massingham retorted sharply, not by denying the imputation, but by saying that they were under no such delusion. They thought war with all its horrors worth while for the redemption of the Armenian Christians from massacre and oppression. So far as I can remember, no one censured Rosebery because in 1 894 he was willing to resent to the point of war what had appeared for the moment to be a deliberate affront to the British flag in the far-away waters of the Mekong, nor four years later was there any serious dissent when Salisbury risked war with France to prevent Marchand from hoisting the French flag on the upper Nile. In the following year it was the serious opinion of most Englishmen, including a considerable number of Liberals., that war was the only solution of the British-Dutch problem in South Africa., and the issue was passionately declared to be one of the " inevitables " which can only be resolved by an appeal to the sword. I thought that it might and ought to have been avoided, but I could never bring myself to denounce it as a crime. It was, in fact, according to all the standards of this time, the only way out after the diplomatic boiling-up which had led to the Kruger ultimatum. " I date from the ultimatum as Mohammedans from the Hegira/' said Rosebery., and the vast majority agreed with him. Again, in 1904 there were several days when all parties contemplated war with Russia as the proper way of resenting what was thought to be the deliberate outrage of the Russian fleet on the fisher- men of the Dogger Bank. During these years we were all of us, Tories, Liberals., and Radicals, prepared to make war for what we deemed to be sufficient cause. We might debate angrily about the sufficiency of the cause., but we never denied that., if the cause was sufficient., war was the legitimate ultima ratio, and not merely for the defence of territory, but also for what were conceived to be the interests of the British Empire or the resentment of injuries to it.

II

This was the atmosphere in which we approached the European struggle. From the year 1906 my own thoughts were concentrated on the problem of sea- power., and I thought of almost everything else as subordinate to that. I had done whatever a journalist could in the previous years to keep the Anglo-French quarrel, which had been steadily rising, within bounds ; and in the subsequent years to make an end of it seemed to me essential, if the Germans were going to challenge us at sea. Germany might be strong enough to risk the enmity of France, Russia, and Great Britain at the same time ; but we certainly were not strong enough to be on bad terms with Russia, France, and Germany at the same time. The two-Power standard which had served us in the last years of the nineteenth century would evidently be insufficient if we could suppose either three Powers being joined against us, or the more likely event of Germany sub- duing her enemies and joining their fleets to those of the Triple Alliance in an attack on the British Empire. At first I believed and hoped that British friendship with France would check German ambitions, and enable us eventually to come to terms with Germany and even to act as mediator between her and France.

But as the years went by, and one Navy Law followed another, and the ex-Kaiser and his militarists talked in louder and louder tones about their intentions, these hopes waned, and it seemed more and more evident that the only way of safety lay in building ships and cultivating the entente with France and Russia. Looking back on it, I am inclined to say that the die was cast for this country from the moment when it became necessary under pressure of the German Fleet to transfer the British Mediterranean Squadron to the North Sea and arrange with France for the protection of the Mediterranean . From that moment, we were morally, if not technically, bound to act with France if her unprotected northern coasts were attacked by Germany. In the circumstances we were obliged to accept this obligation, for Germany herself by her fleet policy had thrust it on us.

For us at all events the problem, as I saw it, was a mechanical and not a moral one, and we seldom thought of it in terms of guilt or innocence. Russia and France were often very uneasy bedfellows for us, and as a journalist I felt perfectly free to criticise their action and to use any influence I possessed to stem the growing hostility between Germany and ourselves.

Precisely because the situation was dangerous, it seemed imperative to seize every opportunity of building bridges with Germany and urging modera- tion on France and Russia, provided it was under- stood that we were firm on the essentials of main- taining the entente and keeping our fleet supreme.

I see no reason why an Englishman should think it necessary to defend all the proceedings of France and Russia in these years. Personally I do not believe for a moment that the post-war German theory that Poincare and Isvolsky were in league to force war in the last two years is true, but I do think that the French were unnecessarily provocative on the Morocco question and especially in their march to Fez in 1911, and I do think that both Russia and Austria were playing a dangerously sharp game in the Balkans in the final eighteen months. But all this was in the atmosphere of those times. In the state in which we lived it seemed natural and commendable that each nation should use its power to defend or promote what it supposed to be its own interests, and the notion that any nation considered itself limited to repelling aggres- sion is either a post-war illusion or a figment of war propaganda .

III

We had, I think, abundant justification on any code of ethics whatever for taking up arms against Germany when she invaded Belgium. That action on her part, combined with the sinking of the Lusitania, the launching of poison gas, and the ruthless submarine incensed Anglo-Saxon opinion against her and made her, in the eyes of her enemies, the moral villain of the piece. Also we felt that the victory of Germany would be the end of liberal and democratic institutions in Europe. It is nevertheless true and perhaps the most important part of the truth about the old Europe that if Germany had been incontestably in the right and her conduct in the war irreproachable, the reasons compelling this country to take sides against her would have been just as strong, and its position just as perilous, if it had failed to do so, as on the contrary assumption. Whatever the issue on which she fought, a victorious Germany in possession of Belgium and the Channel ports and commanding all the fleets of Europe must have been a deadly menace to the British Empire, and, according to the accepted principles of powen-politics, she would have been entitled to assent hen supnemacy oven it in any way she chose. Unden the balance of powen-system, the balance had to be in youn favoun, whethen youn opponents wene angels on devils. It was good fontune if they put you monally in the night by acting as devils., but this was not the essence of the matten. The essential thing was that you wene caught up in a play offenees fnom which the common monality was nuled out. You might have all the vintues on youn side and yet be nuined j you might commit eveny wickedness and yet emenge tniumphant. In such a wonld it necessanily became vintue in a statesman to have the fonces on his side be thankful if he could plausibly maintain that his opponents wene monally in the wnong.

Men of my genenation gnew up with this system, became handened to it, accepted its assumptions., and acted acconding to its logic. We looked to oun states- men to play the diplomatic game with skill and not to leave us isolated in a hostile wonld. Fon the gneaten pant of oun lives we had no pnepossessions on pnefenences as between oun neighbouns in Eunope. Fnom the 'seventies night down to 1906 Russia was supposed to be oun pnincipal nival and potential enemy., and fon a gneat many yeans we leant on Genmany and the Tniple Alliance and had dangenous quannels with Fnance.

We came veny nean an alliance with Genmany in 1899, and, had the Genmans not dnawn back at the eleventh houn, the whole counse of histony might have been different. Then, when the Germans began to develop their sea-power, we found safety in the French and Russian ententes. Under the system there was no other way, and it was great good fortune for us to have had statesmen who held firmly to this line and resisted the attempt to drive wedges between us and our partners on subordinate issues. The judgement must be broadly on the management of forces, and the best thing we can do for those who come after is to make a clean breast of it and leave the moral verdict to history.

IV

So far as this fundamentally immoral or un-moral system had any one author, it was Bismarck, whose leading idea it was to obtain " security " for Germany after the Franco-German war by alliances which must have dominated Europe, if the field had been left clear to them. What Bismarck failed to see was that a German alliance would inevitably be countered by another alliance ; and that the armed competition of these two, and the mutual fears and jealousies attend- ing it, would lead to a far greater struggle than any that was contemplated in his time or in his scheme of statesmanship, which thought of war as a short, sharp, and successful assault upon opponents isolated and taken unawares. The responsibility for what followed was spread over fifty years and distributed between six principal Powers and innumerable Ministers, most of them creatures of the hour, who found themselves faced with an accumulation of established facts in which it was dangerous to make even a well-inten- tioned departure. Campbell - Bannerman in 1906 sincerely and honestly desired to make a new move towards disarmament., but he found to his enormous surprise that the article published in the Nation in which he threw out this idea was regarded in Germany as a threatening manifestation. I was solemnly called upon at the time to write articles which were tele- graphed to and published in German papers explain- ing that he had no bellicose intention. To the German it seemed as if the British Government had made up its mind to call a halt to German ship- building at the point most convenient to itself, and from that it was but a short step to assume that it would make war if its demand was refused.

Indeed, no adventure seemed less promising or more dangerous in these days than the endeavour to promote peace by disarmament, and, had there been a convinced pacifist Power, it would certainly have had to fight for its cause. The one hope for the world is that the coming generation will know w.hat war on the European scale is and must be. Our generation did not know it. It used the current phrases about the horrors of war, but the wars which it had in mind were the Crimean War, the Franco-German War, and the Boer War. All the militarist philosophers assumed that the victory would be on their side. When they spoke of blood and iron, it was their own iron and other people's blood that they were thinking j when they talked of the " terrible medicine," it was their enemy and not themselves who were to take it. It was thought unmanly in these circles to contemplate even the possibility of defeat. In August 1914 the German General Staff dreamt of swift and crushing blows compelling the enemy to surrender before he knew what had happened to him j and it was as little prepared as its opponents with either plans or munitions for the interminable war of exhaustion which followed when this dream faded. Still less did any Government or General Staff foresee the development of " frightful- ness " which all the authorities agree in thinking to be only a faint shadow of what the future may produce if the nations proceed again to the test of arms .

I think it is safe to say that if our generation had realised what the Great War was to be, whether for victors or vanquished, there would have been no Great War, but whether another generation will learn of our experience is beyond prophecy, and one must leave it at Grey's " learn or perish." We lived in pre-scientif ic times. We had enough science to make very deadly engines of war, but not enough to measure their effect. We worked on a mediaeval theory with weapons which blew our theory sky-high.

What our successors have to realise is that science turns war into a destructive anarchy in which the defeat of all the combatants is to be presumed. The philosophy of war has always been the philosophy of successful war, and there is no theory which can turn a defeat into a " continuation of policy." The one lesson which our generation can teach to those who come after is that war is the ruin of policy and the way of destruction for all the combatants. It remains for them, if they wish civilisation to survive, to build up a new opinion on this basis and to organise it for the keeping of the peace. We can only confess that " our " theory which was the theory of all the world then and the organisation built on it came in our time to what ought to be its final disaster.

A last thought to pass on is that all the efforts to humanise war and limit its frightfulness broke down in our time, when put to the test. We know now that war cannot be civilised. It goes backward as other institutions go forward, and causes the powers of destruction to outrun the powers of creation. The Great War leaves it an open question whether the scientific age which began in the nineteenth century has on balance been of benefit to mankind. Another generation will certainly not be able to leave that question unanswered.