Truth and the war

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Introduction

By Philip Snowden, M.P.

<C/ B S RUTH," it has been said, "is the first casualty of A war." When hostilities break out the one object of each belligerent nation is victory. "All is fair in war," and to secure and maintain national unity in support of the war every means are taken by the respective Governments to suppress criticism which, however honest and true, may be thought by them to be calculated to create a doubt as to the wholly disinterested and blameless position of their own country. It becomes a most unpatriotic act to continue to hold and to express opinions about the foreign policy of the statesmen of one's own country, which have been held and proclaimed for years before the war by large bodies of men and women, and which were then regarded as perfectly reasonable and useful criticism. This suppression of the truth during a war is justified as being in the interests of one's own country. The test of a person's patriotism is willingness to subscribe to the declaration "My country, right or wrong." Patriotism within the limits of morality is a noble sentiment. But, as John Bright said in one of his finest passages, "the moral law was not written for individuals only, but for nations, and for nations as great as we are." When patriotism leads men and nations to ignore facts, and to refuse to hear or acknowledge the truth, it becomes a sin, for which the penalty will certainly sooner or later have to be paid. Lord Hugh Cecil recently wrote, "Mankind has suffered the prodigious evils the war has brought upon us mainly because human beings in general, and especially Germans, have come to love their countries more than they ought to do — more than they love God and His laws."

INTRODUCTION

There have been a few people in all the belligerent countries who have refused to forswear the principles they have held and proclaimed in times of peace, and who, when their prophecies have been fulfilled, have refused to deny that they ever made them. If there has been in the past foreign policy of this country, as well as in the foreign policies of other nations, something wrong, which has contributed to the present war, then it will be fatal for the future peace of Europe not to admit that truth. If another war is to be averted, there will have to be a thorough searching out of all the causes of this war, with the object of removing them. If a perverted patriotism is to be allowed to blind the people of any country to the mistakes or sins of their own Governments, then the likelihood of a permanent peace is very remote.

Among the men who have kept the impartial and judicial mind during these awful days since August, 1914, none has rendered greater service to the future of peace and internationalism than the writer of this volume. I do not expect that his attitude can be generally approved now, nor the value of his work appreciated. But Time will do justice to both. There is a certain type of very limited mental development which has not learnt that there are more numerals than two. If a word of criticism of the policy of one's own country is put forward, such persons immediately jump to the conclusion that the critic is the friend of every other nation, and that the object of his criticism is to condemn his own country and to defend all others. Criticism of the policy of statesmen is the highest patriotism, for it is aimed at removing those mistakes which detract from the reputation of our own country abroad and the well-being of our own people at home.

That is the spirit in which this book has been written. It has been written, not in the interests of the enemy, but in the interests of Great Britain. At a time when the public mind was calm and so free from passion as to be able to take an impartial view of international policy and

INTRODUCTION

problems, the writer's past work for oppressed peoples, and his great knowledge of and authority on international questions, would have secured for him a wide and respectful hearing. I write these few words of introduction to beseech for the book such a reception in these troublous times. The matters with which it deals are of tremendous, of the most vital importance. Without a popular knowledge of these facts it will be impossible for the people of this country to take an intelligent part in the settlement of the war.

We do not ask for the endorsement of all that is said in this volume. Let the statements stand upon their merits. Many parts of the book have already been before the public for some time. So far as I know, the facts have never been challenged. But where there are such tremendous issues involved, it is surely in the interests of truth that there should be full and free discussion, and that every side of the question should be stated and discussed. It is only by such full and frank discussion that we can hope to obtain a settlement after this war which will be permanent, because it is based upon Truth.

IX

During the past twelve months I have been one of the best-abused men in the British Isles. Not even my friend and colleague, Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, has had to endure such malignant misrepresentation. No dishonour too profound, no motive too base, but has been attributed to me.

My offence is a double one. It is that I have participated in a movement which seeks to influence public opinion in favour of the kind of settlement calculated to produce a lasting peace, and not a typical patched-up peace, solving none of the national problems peculiar to each belligerent State, in their relations with one another, such as diplomacy has given us in the past. It is that in my personal capacity I have sought, both before and since the war, to be fair to our present enemies, and, in the interest of my country, to point out that the sole responsibility for the war cannot, in justice, be wholly imputed to them. To both counts I plead guilty without any sort of reservation. I have deliberately so acted, and I shall continue deliberately to so act.

My critics have delved into my family history, and doubtless disappointed at finding no trace of German influence, either through consanguinity or associations of any sort, kind, or description whatsoever, they have discovered, to their own satisfaction, some stigma in the circumstance that I was born of a French father and of an English mother, and that twenty years ago I dropped the second portion of a double-barrelled family name, retaining the first — a circumstance of no earthly concern to anyone but myself and my relatives. Both these facts, neither of the least public importance, had been publicly accessible for many years. 1 I might add this. It is precisely because I am, in part, of French descent, 2 and have in consequence very deep natural sympathy with the

1 Vide "Who's Who."

2 My father died when I was an infant, and I was educated in England.

French people, that I have criticised for some years the tendency of the powerful influences at work in France, in Russia, and in Britain, to strengthen the bellicose and reactionary influences in French political life and proportionately to weaken the elements which, in the former country, were endeavouring- to establish friendly relations with Germany. For I believed implicitly in the truth enunciated seventeen years ago by the great Russian student Bloch, 1 that owing in part to her peculiar economic position, but especially to her stagnant population, France, above all Powers, should avoid entanglement in a great war. I believed with Bloch, that for France a great war under modern conditions, involving the loss of the flower of her youth, would mean " not merely national danger, but absolute ruin." And believing this, I thought that the party in France which was seeking to reach a per- 1 manent accommodation with Germany, was the party which had the truest interests of France at heart. 1 thought that the party in Russia which was palpably using France for its own ends, both financially and politically, constituted a real danger to the French people. I shared in that respect the views of the greatest Russian of his age, whose fears that the Franco-Russian Alliance would be "a great injury to France" 2 appeared to me only too likely to be realised. I thought that the influences in the British diplomatic and journalistic world, which were inimical to a permanent improvement in Franco-German relations lest France should fall into Germany's " orbit," were both cruelly unjust to France, and amazingly short-sighted from the point of view of British national interests. In short, my belief that British national interests lay in a thorough understanding with Germany on the principle of live and let live, and in assisting rather than hindering a Franco-German rapprochement, was accentuated by the conviction, to which I was personally susceptible, that, short of such an understanding, France, under the existing system of alliances, would be the chief victim of a general European war. I ministered to those convictions to the best of my ability and opportunity, from 191 1, when I was released from my Congo work, until the outbreak of war.

1 "Modern Weapons and Modern War." (Grant Richards.)

2 Letter to an Italian Press correspondent on the Franco-Russian Alliance. Sept. 22, 1901 ("What is Religion?" And other new Articles and Letters." By Leo Tolstoy. The Free Age Press, Christchurch.)

In their anxiety to cast discredit upon me my detractors have not even hesitated to attack the bona-fides of one of the most generous and at the same time one of the most powerful movements, supported by those who were most far-seeing and morally conscious among men eminent in British public life, which ever inspired the people of this country — the agitation against the misgovernment of the Congo. That in so doing my detractors were striking at their own Government, at their own Legislature, and at their own country, has not deterred them. Their attempts to belittle the deep moral and spiritual significance of that movement, and grotesquely to distort its aims, would be puerile, were it not so pathetic and, in the true sense of the word, unpatriotic.

When these particular insinuations were first mooted, in a paper which, under two successive editors, played an active and honourable part in the struggle, I dealt with them. The personal charges I have ignored. I am content to wait. But as my writings since the war broke out have been both misquoted and distorted, I have collected and presented them in this volume. I believe they embody a number of facts and inferences which sooner or later the public of this country will realise to have been the expression of the truth, and to have been submitted with honesty of purpose. The articles and speeches are here reproduced as they were written or uttered, with none but trifling verbal alterations, and they are reproduced in their sequence. A few new chapters have been added.

In this Personal Foreword I wish to indicate as clearly as I am able, the mental processes which have led me to view in a different light to that in which the majority of my countrymen at present regard them, alike the catastrophe which has overwhelmed civilisation, and the remedies which need to be applied if civilisation is to be spared the prolongation of the war until Europe crumbles into ruin, or a repetition of it at no distant date. I am not prompted to do so by egotism, but by the feeling that I owe something of the sort alike to old friends and acquaintances, some of whom condemn or misapprehend my present actions, and to new friends and acquaintances who honour me with their confidence.

From the year 1899 to the outbreak of the war, my life was almost wholly absorbed in journalistic, literary, and other work relating to the affairs of Africa. Of that work, records exist in my own published writings, and in the writings of others in this country and abroad. From early in 1912 until the outbreak of the war, I was partly engaged at the Colonial Office in connection with the West African Lands Commission, presided over by Sir Kenelm Digby, and of which I was appointed a member by Mr. Lewis Harcourt, then Colonial Secretary, together with Sir Walter Napier, Sir Frederick Hodgson, Sir William Taylor, Mr. Joshua Wedgwood, M.P., and others.

A considerable portion of the period referred to was devoted to the unravelling and the remedying of the greatest crime perpetrated upon the African race since the days of the oversea slave trade. I refer to the maladministration by the late Leopold II. of the "Congo Free State"; the exposure of that so-called State's misdeeds, and its final removal from the map of Africa. In the course of that task, which I did not initiate, 1 but with which I became prominently identified as Honorary Secretary of the Congo Reform Association, 2 I was brought into close contact with the methods of international diplomacy, and with the proceedings of diplomats. The full story of the liberation of the Congo — a region as large as Europe minus Russia — from the grip of one of the most atrocious systems of slavery the world has ever known, which reduced its population by some twelve millions in a quarter of a century, and converted vast areas into absolute desert, has yet to be written. I was engaged in writing it when the war broke out. If it is ever written, the struggle will be seen to have resolved itself into a kind of duel, not only with Leopold II. , himself the astutest of all contemporary diplomatists, but with the European diplomatic machine itself. For the true conditions of the Congo were known, or became in due course known, to every Chancellory in Europe. In diplomatic circles there was neither ignorance of nor dispute about the facts. The diplomatic machine itself, however, could not be induced

1 The late Sir Charles Dilke and the late Mr. R .H. Foxbourne, Secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society, ' were the originators.

2 The first President was Earl Beauchamp, the second Lord Monkswell. The Association was created in 1904 and dissolved in 1913. Among those who, in the course of the Association's nine years' existence, served upon its Executive Committee were the following : — Mr. Alfred Emmott (now Lord Emmott of Oldham), the Bishops of Winchester and Liverpool, Dr. Scott Lidgett and Dr. Clifford, Sir George White, Sir Gilbert Parker, Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, Mr. T. L. Gilmour, etc.

for many years to move. But for the constantly growing pressure of public opinion here, in Belgium, in the United States, and to some extent in Italy, which impelled certain definite steps involving certain definite results, these in turn producing other developments, the machine would never have moved at all. It is to the credit of British diplomacy that it did move — but it did so only as a result of public pressure. And public pressure alone kept it moving, slowly, with prolonged delays and frequent vacillations.

The experience of pursuing a specific aim and steering a single course in season and out of season for eleven years on end through the tortuosities of diplomatic shuffling, of removing one obstacle only to find another in its place, of personal intercourse with diplomatists here and elsewhere, with journalists in their councils and obedient to their will, with permanent officials, Ministers, and politicians, and with the flotsam and jetsam which crowd the diplomatic corridors — this experience gave me an insight into the workings of what is called "Diplomacy," granted, I think, to few men outside the ring, and not to all within it.

The experience taught me many things. I had supposed that once the facts officially established as the result of popular demand, the "scrap of paper" upon which the great Powers had inscribed their solemn vow to safeguard the rights and liberties of the Congo peoples, would be honoured in full by some at least of the signatories. But I was not long in discovering that the acknowledged truth was not to be the determining factor in the solution of the problem, which, I observed, did not depend upon the plighted troth of Governments or upon the proven martyrdom of millions of men, women, and children, but upon the ambitions, intrigues, jealousies, fears and suspicions of rival diplomatists. I found that the destruction of human life in Africa, even on a scale so unprecedented, was used merely as a counter upon the diplomatic chess-board of Europe, that the appeal to humanity „ justice, and common sense was regarded intrinsically as valueless, and that joint action to redeem Europe's honour was paralysed by considerations remote from the issue at staKe.

It was given me to see behind the veil, and to realise how utterly at the mercy of a Bureaucracy working in darkness and in secrecy, were the peoples, not of Africa only, but of Europe; a Bureaucracy rooted in obsolete traditions, badly informed, out of touch with and supremely indifferent to the human pulse, cynically and openly contemptuous of moral conduct, deeming the finest of arts the art successfully to lie, living in a world walled round by narrow prejudices, and absorbed in the prosecution of rivalries for the attainment of objects bearing not the remotest relation to the well-being or fundamental needs of the masses, whose destinies that Bureaucracy held in the hollow of its hands. ,

Such was my apprenticeship in the sphere of international diplomacy. I am fain to confess that when in September, 1914, I read, with the rest of the world, the famous phrase of the German Chancellor about the "scrap of paper," it struck me then, and it strikes me now, less on the score of its immorality than on the score of its honesty. It is the one statement, perhaps, in the whole official collection of despatches to which the word "honest" is completely applicable ; the professional diplomatist in the crisis of the hour and under the stress of poignant emotion, proclaiming the dishonesty of diplomacy, not of German diplomacy alone but of "Diplomacy" itself, which in no land, under no Government, at no period, has honoured its written word when its own arbitrary interpretation of what constitutes the "national interest" has seemed to counsel repudiation.

But this impression which I here record must not be misunderstood. German diplomacy has been as immoral, as short-sighted, as treacherous as any other. And it has added to those defects, habitual to Diplomacy itself, a brutality of manifestation peculiarly its own, combined with an almost phenomenal incapacity to understand, still less to appreciate, the psychology of the nations with whom it has had to deal. But to each people belongs the task of purging its own Augean stables. To denounce the mote in a neighbour's eye is cheap enough, but it is apt, not only to prevent your detecting the mote in your own, but to induce the belief that no mote exists. That is the malady from which every belligerent nation is now suffering, and paying for in blood and tears.

The Congo Reform Association, having accomplished its labours with the completion of the reforms promised by the Belgian Government after the substitution of Belgian national control over the Congo for the personal despotism of King Leopold, voluntarily dissolved in 1913. Shortly after my return, in the spring of 191 1, from visiting our great African protectorate of Nigeria ; Britain, France, and Germany were suddenly plunged into the second crisis over Morocco, 1 and for several weeks they stood on the brink of war. It was a case of another violated international treaty, another "scrap of paper," and, like the Congo one, dedicated by the signatory Governments to "Almighty God." But the circumstances differed. The Congo International Treaty was violated by the chief party to it at the expense of all the other parties, and at the expense of the natives. But as none of the other parties concerned had material interests to serve in the Congo, as the only real victims were the natives, the other parties had collectively abstained from dealing with the offender. In the Morocco International Treaty four European Powers were directly interested. Three of them — France, England, and Spain — had pushed cynicism to the length of concluding a secret pact providing for the political and economic partition of Morocco, which made their signatures at the foot of an international treaty proclaiming the independence and integrity of Morocco a more than usually dishonest farce. They had concealed this pact, not only from the fourth interested party — Germany — but from their own Parliaments and peoples. When, therefore, Germany intervened, public opinion in France and England, ignoring the true facts and cleverly played upon by the officially inspired Press, quite honestly regarded German action as wantonly provocative and designed to force a war, or at least to break up the "Entente" — so-called. 2

A painstaking investigation of the whole diplomatic history of Morocco revealed a record of treachery and deceit towards the British and French peoples, towards Morocco and the rest of the world, by the French and British Foreign Offices, with few parallels even in the annals of diplomacy. The individual diplomatists concerned were doubtless in their private lives the most estimable and upright of men. But, as Mr. Arthur Ponsonby somewhere puts it, the mischief is that the detestable system of intrigue and secrecy in which diplomatists live, move, and have their official being is such that it sets up wholly false ethical values, and imposes a standard of morals which

1 The first had occurred in 1905-06.

2 Public opinion in Spain was incensed against France and not against Germany, for reasons set forth in my book,

[?] xvii would not be tolerated for a moment among decent men in social life. It seems to be a case of the impeccable Dr. Jekyll becoming- the objectionable Mr. Hyde when he has breathed for a certain time the atmosphere prevailing 1 in the Foreign Offices of Europe. It is possible in that atmosphere for men honest in their social relations, to betray the honour of their country and the cause of international justice ; to draw up secret instruments, which if made public would be repudiated by the peoples, and to sacrifice the interests of the peoples by involving them in liabilities affecting their future and the future of their children in the most vital fashion, and to deny, when questioned, that they have done so.

The investigation also conveyed the certainty, at any rate to the investigator, that after the words that had been uttered and the facts that had transpired, a European war in the near future, a war which would involve the British people, was virtually inevitable unless certain things occurred. The only possible way to save the situation, so it seemed to me, was by making the true facts known to the British public, in the hope that the publication of them might lead to a revulsion of feeling, and to a clearer comprehension of the German case ; and thereby provoking a full and frank discussion in Parliament as to the real character of our official relations with France, and, therefore, contingently with Russia, to whose Government official France was bound in a military and political alliance.

To these ends I laboured entirely single-handed, and obeying no outside inspiration, and following a series of articles in British and French magazines and newspapers, I published, four months after France and Germany had reached an agreement on the matter immediately under dispute, my book, "Morocco and Diplomacy." 1 Its dedication 2 indicatedsthe purpose of the book, and in writing it I believed that I was performing a useful and patriotic, if somewhat painful task. My objects were not misjudged at

1 Smith, Elder & Co., 1912. Since re-issued as "Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy." (National Labour Press, is.)

2 "To those who believe the establishment of friendlier relations between Britain and Germany to be essential to the prosperity and welfare of the British and German peoples, and to the maintenance of the world's peace, and to those who are persuaded that the acceptance of national liabilities towards foreign Powers by secret commitments withheld from the British people, is both a menace to the security of the State and a betrayal of the national trust, this volume is respectfully dedicated."

the time, even by those who disagreed with the deductions I drew from the marshalling of facts, which to this day remain absolutely unchallenged. The bulk of the newspaper comment was wholly favourable — with the exception, of course, of the organs which had played the most prominent part in misleading the public. It is noteworthy that none of the latter attempted to dispute the accuracy of the facts presented.

Various intimations reached me that the book had not been without value in affecting influential opinion, and it may have contributed to the attempts to reach a modus vivendi, which afterwards took place. But Parliament did not respond. The matter was allowed to lapse. The original errors and falsities took root, and to this day are continually repeated. There was no public opinion sufficiently organised and in earnest outside Parliament, still less within it. The crisis had brought England as well as France and Germany, to the very edge of the precipice. In France a Yellow Book was issued, and an exhaustive debate, lasting several days, took place both in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate. In England a timid request for papers was curtly refused, and nothing in the nature of Parliamentary discussion was ever attempted. It is a satisfaction to me, albeit a somewhat melancholy one, that since the war broke out, a considerable demand for my book has arisen, and that every diligent searcher after truth has either recognised the accuracy of my analysis of the facts, or, at least, has admitted its value. In "The Policy of the Entente : 1904- 14, " ] the Hon. Bertrand Russell, when treating of Morocco, remarks of my book that : "Any new account not designed simply to whitewash the English and French Governments can only repeat what is to be found" in it, "even when, like what follows, it is derived entirely from other sources." Mr. Charles W. Hay ward endorses it unreservedly in his volume, "What is Diplomacy?" 2 His condemnation of Anglo-French diplomacy is couched in more vigorous language than my own. He concludes that the crisis of 191 1 was "infamously provoked," and that in the dispute "the honour is entirely Germany's." Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson does not believe that "any instructed and impartial student will accept what appears to be the current English view, that the attitude of Germany

1 The National Labour Press : is.

2 Grant Richards Ltd. : 2s. 6d.

xix in this episode was a piece of sheer aggression without excuse, and that the other Powers were acting throughout justly, honestly, and straightforwardly." 1 Mr. George Armstrong's 2 censure is more direct. Prefacing it by the statement that, "despite the elaborate investigations and expositions of Mr. E. D. Morel, knowledge of this extraordinary chapter in our diplomatic history is far from general," and adding that the "publications of the British, French, and Belgian Foreign Offices" have "completely confirmee the accuracy" of my statements, he scathingly denounces the action of our Foreign Office, and concludes by asking : —

"Could a more damning illustration be imagined of the possibilities of secret diplomacy as an agent for the embroilment of the nations in quarrels in which they have no interest?"

Mr. G. P. Gooch 3 permits me to quote as his considered opinion that my "critical examination of European diplomacy in Morocco deserves the most careful study ; it is not only one of the few cardinal works on our recent foreign policy,^ but it supplies several important links in the chain of events which led up to the war."

And although there are some intellectuals, posing as historians, who continue studiously to ignore, since they cannot refute, my contribution to this international tragedy, which was to become one of the chief combustibles in the great conflagration, I am satisfied that its endorsement in the works referred to is but the prelude to a wider recognition that what I wrote was true both in substance and in fact, and that in writing it I could have had no motive other than that of serving the interests of the British people, of the French people, and of international concord.

It has since transpired that at the very time I was engaged in making the investigation which resulted in the appearance of "Morocco in Diplomacy," the Belgian diplomatic representatives in Berlin, London, and Paris were expressing to their Government, 4 precisely the same

1 "The European Anarchy." (George Allen & Unwin : 2s. 6d.)

2 "Our Ultimate Aim in the War." (George Allen & Unwin: zs. 6d.)

3 Author of "History of Our Time," "History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century," and many other historical works.

4 First published in the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, and afterwards by E. S. Mittler & Sons, Berlin. An English edition, "Belgium and the European Crisis," has been published by the same firm. That a Spanish edition has been published is apparent views in regard to the character of Anglo-French diplomacy in this matter as I had been led to form ; that they were consumed by the same fears as I was in respect to the outcome, and that they had come to the same conclusions as I had, reluctantly, and by the sheer weight of evidence arrived at. And their despatches, be it noted, were written while the events examined and summarised by me were in process of accomplishment. I think it may be safely asserted that never have the statements of an author dealing with a complicated and intricate international problem, and without reference to any sources of information not publicly accessible, received, in that author's lifetime, such startling and unexpected corroboration from contemporary diplomatic documents.