The problems of the war--& the peace; a handbook for students

Front matter

D

Ms

Glass.

Part I. The Causes Of The Present War

The Superficial Causes.

THE surface causes of the war were these : The heir to the Austrian throne was murdered by a political assassin as the result of a long agitation against Austria in which the Servian Government was supposed to be implicated ; following the assassination came a severe Note from Austria to Servia in which the Servian Government was ordered to take various strong measures to stamp out the agitation against Austria and to allow Austrian officials to participate in the work ; Servia not complying immediately with these orders, Austria declared war on Servia ; Russia thereupon told Austria that the affairs of Servia were of vital interest to Russia, and that Austria must withdraw some of her demands ; Austria, supported by her ally Germany, would not give way ; Russia mobilised her armies ; Germany declared war on Russia ; France was bound by an alliance to help Russia, and Great Britain was considered bound by an understanding to join France, and still more bound by a treaty to defend the neutrality of Belgium, which had been violated by Germany for the purpose of her attack on France.

What Lay Behind.

It is certain that no mere question of the punishment of assassins could possibly involve Europe in a titanic conflict. Behind that ostensible cause lay the race divisions of the East and the confused struggle of opposing groups among the nations. The Germans wanted to fight for the domination of Europe or to resist the domination of Russia, and Russia wanted to assert her position as the natural leader and protector of the Slav peoples.

In the second part of this outline of study there is some examination of what is meant by this domination and subjugation, and of what either group could achieve by it — an enquiry which we must carry out thoroughly if we are to understand the real problems of war and peace. But in this section it is important to get rather at the material facts, and an honest examination of those facts seems to show that everyone was afraid of everyone else.

It may be perfectly true that the Prussian military caste were determined to impose their rule upon Europe ; conceivably it might be true to say the same thing of the Russian governing caste. But that is not what the rulers of either country told their peoples. Germans, as a whole, do not believe that they are fighting to make the Prussians masters of Europe (it so happens that the Prussians before the war were not particularly liked by anyone in the other States of Germany), but what the German people are told by the military caste and what they believe is that they are threatened by the Russians, and that their expansion is being checked by a network of alliances and understandings directed against them.

Why the Germans Feared Russia.

The influence exercised over the minds of Germans by fear of Russia is a factor which English students of the problem generally leave out of account. It cannot be left out of account if we are to get at the bottom of the material external facts of this war, and understand the motives that entered into it.

Why should the Germans fear Russia ? Well, we ourselves were very much afraid of the expansion of Russia until a year or two ago. It is a vast Empire covering over 8, 000, 000 square miles, and having under its despotic government a population of 170,000,000. Figures of this magnitude are meaningless unless one can compare them with those of another country ; so let us take the area and population of the German Empire as a measure. Germany covers 208,000 square miles, or one-fortieth of the area covered by Russia, while the German population amounts to 65,000,000, or about one-third that of Russia. The history of Russia during the nineteenth century is described by Seignobos, the French historian, as the history of the Russian Government's struggle against " several groups of peoples united by a series of conquests under the same rule, who preserved their own particular dress, language, and religion, and lived side by side without blending. . . . The Russian Empire was thus, like the Austrian Empire, a conglomeration of peoples ; a single tie bound them together, subjection to the power of the autocratic Tsar, their absolute, uncontrolled sovereign." The German Government is also to a large extent autocratic, and there is always a tendency on the part of autocratic and ambitious governments who believe in the advantages of military domination to be afraid of the growth of each other's power.

Russia and Great Britain.

The story of the jealous rivalry between the statesmen of Russia and the statesmen of Great Britain (the people of the two countries took little part in this), a rivalry which began in 1830 and has continued down almost to the present day, can be read in any history book. It arose chiefly out of Russia's expansion in Asia, which was believed by some British statesmen to menace our position in India, and partly out of Russia's natural desire to acquire an ice-free port as an outlet for her great inland empire.

Apart from the supposed Russian menace to India, the question at issue between us which is most likely to be revived is that of the Dardanelles, a narrow strait leading from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Marmora, which gives access to the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. The British support of Turkey against Russia was defended on the ground that Russian possession of the Dardanelles would have given her the connecting link between Europe and Asia, which in bygone days constituted Constantinople a seat of empire and the possession of which by Russia would have enabled her to threaten the route to India. The war (of the Crimea) which arose out of this rivalry, and which is now admitted to have been grossly unnecessary by men of all parties, is best studied, perhaps, in the biographies of the two men who stood almost alone in opposition to that war — The Life of Richard Cobden, by John Morley, and The Life of John Bright, by G. M. Trevelyan. At the present time the governments of both countries have come to recognise that there is no question of vital interest between them, and that the policy of " pinpricks " in Asia, which led to so much friction, was altogether a mistake. It may be hoped that at the end of the present war the question of the Dardanelles may be definitely settled, perhaps by their neutralisation.

The fact remains that we ourselves at one time went so much in fear of the growth of Russian power as to be led into a war to check it. But if we had any ground at all for such fear — any excuse for it — Germany had infinitely more excuse for her fear. Her eastern frontier is directly exposed to these vast hordes of only partially civilised people, under an autocratic government — a people who are as yet undeveloped industrially, and therefore largely unaffected by the difficulties which confront a highly organised industrial nation, like Germany, when war comes.

When we remember that the Emperor of Russia can call upon nearly two hundred millions of Slavs from Asia and from Eastern Europe, we may at least have more respect for the German fear of the Slavs than we have for the anti-Russian policy of British statesmen a generation ago. It must be said, however, that the ill-feeling between Russia and Germany, the governments of which used to be friendly, is largely due to German support of Austria in questions arising out of the Balkan problem and Russia's claim to exercise protection over the smaller Slav populations. The German landowners and merchants have also made themselves disliked in Russia, and many liberal Russians believe that German influence has been partly responsible for the reactionary tendencies of the Russian Government. German support of Austrian influence against Russian in the Balkans had probably more to do than anything else -with breaking up the traditional friendship between the Prussian and Russian Courts, and this was probably dictated by fear that if the Southern Slavs became independent they would be under the influence of Russia and would make her so powerful as to be dangerous to Germany.

Germany, France, and Alsace.

Another cause of fear on the part of Germany was the constant menace of the French, who never ceased to whisper of revenge — revenge for the defeat of 1870 and the recapture of Alsace-Lorraine.

The history of Alsace is a curious one, and makes an excellent illustration of the difficulty of finding the rightful owner of disputed territory. Alsace was a part of Roman Gaul ; it was conquered by the Franks, and became part of the dominions of the early French kings. In the tenth century it was acquired by the Emperor of Germany, and the inhabitants became more German than French. At the end of the Thirty Years' War, in 1648, Alsace became part of the dominions of Louis XIV. of France by right of conquest, and remained French until 1870, when it was ceded to Germany as part of the terms of peace. To whom, then, does Alsace belong ? The inhabitants are largely of German speech and origin. The conquest by Louis XIV. was as bitterly resented up to the time of the French Revolution as the German rule was resented immediately before the present war. Alsace is, in fact, one of the great problems of Europe. To give it back to France would not settle the dispute, since, owing to German immigration, there are perhaps more pro-Germans than pro-French in Alsace to-day. Simply to transfer the province from one government to the other would be merely to transfer the weight to the other scale. We must postpone a fuller discussion of the general problem of the " ownership " of territory to the second part of our study. Here we can only note that the one solution which gives any promise of finality would be to create another little self-governing community from the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. There would then be a belt of neutral States stretching from the Italian frontier to the North Sea — Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, Belgium, Holland.

German Fears.

To return to our consideration of the fear that made this war. It must be admitted that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the Alsatian question, the Germans might reasonably fear that their western neighbours would avail themselves of any menace from Russia to seek that revenge which they have nursed for over forty years ; and when we remember that there was an alliance between France and Russia, backed by a strong friendship with Great Britain, we can see that it was not difficult for German militarists to play upon the fears of the German people. It must be remembered that before the unification of the German Empire, the German States and people had frequently suffered greatly from the interference of their neighbours, and the Government were able to appeal to the memory of these injuries when they wanted to increase their military strength. It was indeed the memory of the troubles which weakness and disunion had brought upon them that induced the other German States to put themselves under the leadership of the great military power of Prussia, as the one safeguard against foreign aggression.

France and Her Colonies.

The fears of the French people were based mainly on the extravagant writings of the advocates of Pan- Germanism, which threatened war with France for the purpose of annexing not so much French territory in Europe as French colonial territory. Since the war of 1870 the French colonies have been greatly extended, and the Pan-Germanists have strongly resented this expansion, especially as the colonial trade policy of France has not favoured the " open door," and has been less generous to other Powers than that of Germany or Britain. The Morocco incidents of 1908 and 1911 had left a very bitter feeling behind, both in France and Germany. Moreover, the French believe that their rapid recovery from the war of 1870-71 has been a disappointment to Germany and that the latter Power cherished the dream of completing the work by another war. As the population of France is stationary and that of Germany is very rapidly increasing, the French were afraid of being outnumbered and sought to redress this disadvantage by their alliance with Russia and the entente with Great Britain.

The Expansion of German Power.

It must also be remembered that in the atmosphere of suspicion which has brooded over Europe during the last hundred years, the very fact that Germany has grown from a collection of feeble little States into a great, united Empire has given cause for uneasiness among her neighbours. In 1808, when Prussia was completely crushed by Napoleon, there was little or no trace of unity or organisation among the Germanspeaking peoples. The shock of defeat, however, appears to have put a fresh spirit into German life and thought. Within seven years of the battle of Jena Prussia was sufficiently powerful to lead a successful combination of forces against Napoleon himself, and since that time Germany has grown steadily and rapidly in unity and strength, until she has reached a point at which she ventures to issue a challenge to the world. Out of the attempt to destroy Prussia by force of arms has grown a German Empire based on military power. Militarism as the foundation of a State is insecure. In time of peace any State so built is in danger of collapsing; but militarism cannot be destroyed by force from without, and the German Empire, which has grown up out of the defeat of Jena, is now threatening civilisation because her rulers have always been able to convince their subjects that they were menaced by powerful enemies.

The Menace of Pan-Germanism.

Our own fears of Germany are a little more difficult to state simply. It was feared that a defeated France might leave the way open to German aggression against us, and that, if she were not checked, Germany, by annexing Holland and Belgium, could make herself such a great Power that she would threaten us at sea and one day seize our colonies and break up our Empire. There were many people who believed that the creation of the German navy was directed against this country ; and they considered that the domination of German foreign policy by Prussia, which has always been an aggressive power, and the traditions of Bismarckian diplomacy rendered the intentions of the German Government suspect. It was also believed that the German desire for colonies and spheres of influence oversea would lead her into conflict with Great Britain, and unhappily these possible causes of friction had not been removed by an agreement between the two Powers similar to that which put an end to the friction between France and Britain. The Germans have always told us that their great fleet was only intended to protect their own commerce, but many people in Britain, perhaps the majority, thought that Germany's desire to make herself a great Naval, as well as a great Military Power was inspired by a wish to challenge our naval position, which we held to be a vital interest on account of our insular position and great maritime trade.

Some idea of Pan-Germanism, the propaganda which is so largely responsible for the fear of Germany in France and Britain, can be obtained from General von Bernhardi's book, Germany and the Next War, though the influence of this book on German thought before the war has been greatly exaggerated. Germany and England, by the late Professor Cramb, also gives a sympathetic account of the worst type of Prussian philosophy.

What had Russia to fear ?

We have now seen to some extent why Austria and Germany feared Russia, France, and Britain, and why they were themselves feared by France and ourselves. We may now ask whether Russia, or the Russian people, was also influenced by fear. The cause for Russia's fear is not so plain. Her vast territory is truly impregnable to serious invasion, and beyond the actual and immediate evils of war itself she has little to lose even by defeat. Moreover, she is so little dependent on foreign trade, and so small a proportion of her population is engaged in industry, that the ordinary life of the country is not greatly affected even by a great war. Nevertheless Russia was to a large extent influenced by fear : the fear that Slav States like Servia would be dominated by non-Slavonic Powers — that is to say, by Austria or Germany. Although the Russian

Government is autocratic and many Russians are strongly opposed to its methods, there is a very strong national feeling — and it is probable that the nation is really behind the Government in the desire that Russia should act as leader and protector of the Slav peoples, whom they believe to have a great future — which has been retarded by the jealousy of the Western Powers.

The Artificial Austrian Empire.

The peculiar nature of the Austrian Empire justified to some extent the fear and suspicion with which it was regarded by neighbouring peoples. This Empire — two distinct Sovereign States, Austria and Hungarycomprises altogether five kingdoms and nine or ten smaller groups, duchies, principalities, etc., which have been gradually absorbed either by Austria itself or by Hungary. People of thirteen different nationalities, speaking five or six different languages, inhabit these territories, and practically the only link between them is that they are all under the rule of the Hapsburg family — the old reigning House of Austria. The Archduchy of Austria, which was the original Hapsburg possession, is almost purely German ; but the other parts of the Empire, which have been acquired either by marriage or by conquest, are inhabited by very mixed peoples. Hungary, for instance, which came under the Austrian rule by the marriage of a Hapsburg with the heir to the Hungarian throne, contains a population of which 51 per cent, are Magyars, 12 per cent. Germans, 12 per cent. Slovaks, 16 per cent. Rumanians and the rest Croats, Serbs, and other races. Similarly, in Galicia 53 per cent, of the population are Poles and 43 per cent. Ruthens, and these two peoples are in violent antagonism.

The problems connected with Austria are all due to these race antagonisms and the attempt to group these various peoples under a single sovereign. On the eastern frontier an attempt was made to strengthen the Empire in 1907 by annexing the States of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in violation of a solemn international treaty — an act which probably hastened the break-up of the Empire by infuriating the Serbs and increasing the hostility of Russia. Among the other Austrian problems which must be studied in connection with the war is the question of Trieste. This town is the principal port of Austria, but it is inhabited almost entirely by Italians, who would naturally prefer to be governed by their own countrymen. There are also a great number of Italians in the Trent district, and Italians consider that these districts should have been given to Italy at the same time as Venice, which was an Austrian possession till 1866, and very tyrannically ruled by them.

It is only fair to say that Austria has made great efforts to render her subject races in Austria proper contented, by giving them good government and home rule in local affairs ; but this policy has been hampered by the Hungarians, who have behaved very badly to the Slav peoples under their rule and have opposed every project of federal autonomy and equal treatment for all the nations of the Empire. It is the inclusion in the Austrian Empire of a great number of Slavs which has made her jealous of the growth in power of the Slav nations in the Balkans. Her policy has always been to weaken these peoples and to sow dissensions among them. This policy has brought her into conflict with Russia and has greatly embittered the Serbians, who are of the same race as the inhabitants of some of the provinces of Austria-Hungary. Hence the desire among many of these latter people for union with Serbia and the constant friction between the Austrian and Serbian Governments,

Poland.

Another difficult problem is presented by the old kingdom of Poland, which was broken up and divided between Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1795. Strong national feeling has been retained by the Poles during the hundred years which have passed, and high hopes have been raised that in the settlement after this war their kingdom will be recreated. Three generous manifestos were issued after the outbreak of war by the Emperors of Russia, Austria, and Germany, each promising a wide measure of self-government to the Poles. How far these promises will be fulfilled remains to be seen, but it is only fair to state that the Austrian section of Poland has hitherto proved the most contented and leniently governed. The Austrian Poles did in fact rally to the support of Austria ; while the Russian Poles, on the other hand, have asserted their belief in Russia's good faith in promising Polish reunion.

Other outstanding difficulties and disputes in the European situation can only be briefly indicated here, but should be carefully studied by those who seek to understand the meaning of the war and the questions which must be taken into account in the terms of peace.

The Neutrality of Belgium was guaranteed in 1831 and again in 1839 by Great Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia. In 1870, when France and Prussia were at war, Great Britain intimated that, if Belgian neutrality was violated, by either Power, she would join with the other to defend it. This guarantee was broken by Germany in 1914, and that act was the immediate cause of Great Britain's declaration of war on Germany. The reason why Germany acted in this way was that France had made her frontier against Germany so strong that German strategists considered their only chance of beating France, before the Russians could make themselves felt, to be an invasion through Belgium.

The mouth of the Scheldt, the river upon which Antwerp is situated, is in Dutch territory. Hence even the possession of Antwerp makes it useless as a naval base unless Dutch neutrality is violated. The alleged designs of Germany on Holland are accounted for by the fact that the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt are both Dutch ; their possession by Germany would give her good naval bases very near the British coast, and would also allow her to make any commercial restrictions on the rivers which she thought useful. Britain has always very much disliked the idea of Antwerp passing into the hands of a hostile Power, and it was largely this consideration whidh brought about the guarantee of Belgian neutrality.

The Schleswig-Holstein Grand Duchies were under the King of Denmark till 1863, when Prussia, under the direction of Bismarck, went to war, with the help of Austria, against Denmark. In 1866, after the war between Prussia and Austria, Schleswig-Holstein was annexed to Prussia. There was a great deal of diplomatic cheating connected with the annexation, and great ill-feeling was aroused. The outstanding fact for us, however, is that Holstein is almost entirely inhabited by Germans, while Schleswig contains 184,000 Danes, who are practically all collected in the northern part, near the Danish frontier.

A War of Fear.

With mutual fear working in the minds of the peoples of Europe, it is easy to see that this war has been in large part caused by the preparation which each country has made to protect itself against the others. France allied herself with Russia to protect herself against Germany, and by that alliance was dragged into a war in which she was not directly threatened. German statesmen persuaded the German people that they needed a fleet to protect their trade, and the building of that fleet roused our fear of German aggression, and made our policy somewhat definitely pro-French and anti-German. For mutual protection Germany and Austria formed an alliance the consequence of which was that a quarrel between Russia and Austria involved both allies in war against Britain, France, and Belgium as well as Russia.

The war is therefore, as writers have said, a war of fear — the fear of the aggression of the other party : French and British fear of Pan- Germanism, German fear of Pan-Slavism.

But, you may ask, why should either group want to be " top dog," predominant in Europe ? Would Germans, as a whole, be any better off if the Pan- German dreams were realised ?

We come here to a fundamental problem which can only be answered by a study of the general problem of war and its motives, which is the subject of the Second Part of our Study.

Books.

With regard to books on the subjects dealt with in Part I. of our Study, it is difficult to keep the list within reasonable limits.

A great many of the official documents issued by the various Governments concerned in the negotiations immediately preceding the war are collected together in The Diplomatic History of the War, by M. P. Price.

The British Government's penny Blue-Book is also valuable, and the French Yellow Book contains some documents which do not appear in either of the other collections.

The last two volumes of The Cambridge Modern History — The Growth of Nationalities and The Latest Age — contain many chapters of interest. A good historical atlas is most necessary to an understanding of the problems of race and nationality in Eastern Europe. Ramsay Muir's Atlas of Modern History may be suggested to students.

The following books are also recommended :

Austria-Hungary.

Russia.

Russia (2 vols.), D. M. Wallace.

Modern Russia, G. Alexinsky.

A Year in Russia, M. Baring.

The Balkans.

Turkey and the Balkans (People's Library).

Germany.

Bismarck (Heroes of the Nations), Headlam. Germany (Home University Library), C. Tower. Pan-Germanism, Usher.

Germany and the Next War, Bernhardi.

Poland.

Poland, the Knight among Nations, Van Norman.

General.

The Hague Peace Convention, Higgins. The National Principle and the War (Oxford Pamphlet), Ramsay Muir.

Modern Europe, Emil Reich.

QUESTIONS ON PART I.

1. Who are the Slavs ? Had Austria or Germany reason to fear them ?

2. What is Pan- Germanism ? What reason had (a) Russia, (b) France, (c) Britain, to fear the Pan-German movement ?

3. Could the war have been prevented by either Austria, Servia, Russia, Germany, France, or Britain ? If so, how ?

4. Give a brief sketch of the history of Alsace. To whom does the province rightly belong ?

Part II. The Root Causes Of War

Summary.

WHEN we come to examine the deep underlying causes of war it will be found — as I think I can show — that these are due not so much to any lack of good-will or good intentions on the part of mankind as a whole, as to a number of very widespread mistakes and mental confusions which are to be found to some extent among the people of every country of Europe, though in an especial degree among the ruling classes of modern Prussia. The study of these mental confusions can be dealt with most clearly by dividing them into three different sections, which will be dealt with in the following pages, and which may be briefly summarised as follows :

1. Those arising out of a crudely fatalistic view of politics : the assumption that it is no use trying to correct false ideas, because men are not responsible for their ideas and because their " fighting instincts " render war " inevitable " ; or that man's conduct is not influenced by his ideas since he is not guided by " logic " ; that war is not, like law or churches, or any other human institution, the result of human effort and opinion, good and bad, but is imposed by outside forces which men cannot control.

2. Those due to what has been called the One-sided Aberration — i.e., the failure to realise that in all matters connected with the relations between men the action of one party makes only half the operation, and that we must necessarily misunderstand the operation as a whole unless we think of the acts of the two parties together, as that defence necessarily implies attack, sale purchase, inferior superior ; that to annex a province and its inhabitants is

—AND THE PEACE 2X

not to annex wealth, since the inhabitants own the wealth ; the tendency to consider a problem of two parties — war — in terms of one, as when we are told that the way for a nation to be sure of peace is to be stronger than its enemy, an " axiom " which, stated in the terms of the two parties, amounts to saying that for two nations to keep the peace each must be stronger than the other.

3. Those arising out of misconceptions as to the nature of government and the place of political authority in the modern world, as that one country can " own " another — as when we talk of England owning Canada, or a country owning the source of its raw material, although Englishmen would no more own the cotton fields of Louisiana by annexing that State than they now own the wheat fields of Canada ; or when we assume nations to be trading corporations, or economic or intellectual units that can be controlled or " removed " by the military power of other similar units.