The commonwealth at war

Front matter

Book ."Pc.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THE WAR: ITS HISTORY AND MORALS. 8vo, paper covers, 6d, net.

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 " Westminster Gazette," and " History " ; and I am indebted to the proprietors of these various periodicals for permission to reprint these papers. Their republication may serve to illustrate, among other things, that deceitfulness 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 attention to actions, and ignores the public and private opinion which impeded or inspired them. Conventional 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 together 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 communion 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 indicated so that it may be borne in mind in the criticisms they may suggest. There is inevitably some repetition, 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 dishonest 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

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 possibility 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.

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 correspondence that Austria, if left to herself, would have found a means of escape from the dilemma ; and, indeed, 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 compromise 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 paltry propositions from first principles, and members of the Reichstag habitually base amendments to legislation 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 profundity 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 relations 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 "unnatural," 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 predatory instincts, to which Bernhardi would give the freest scope in international relations ; and it is a contradiction 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 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 apparently 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 presumptuous encroachment on the natural laws of development." ^ 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

6 THE COMMONWEALTH AT WAU

army of little Belgium. The advocates of schreckUchkeit 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 detrimental 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 provides 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 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 international hospitality and acquiring as guests a knowledge 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 rapprochement,'' 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 unwelcome presence.

The German, indeed, denies the foundations of

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 concerned, " 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 explanation lies in the Gerinan conception of the State. To the Englishman the State is the community organized 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 community, 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.

benefit of the State. To all alike the State is something 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 community as a whole ; and nothing surprises an Englishman 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 irresponsibility, and there is a close psychological comiexion 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.

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 refrain,^ " 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 philosophers, 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 reservations.

After sucli frank admissions, it may seem superfluous 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 philosophy would naturally commend itself to a politically stupid people. Nevertlieless, the future will probably show that the Prussian Junker and his chosen ministers

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 Parliamentary 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 statesmansliip, in consummating the work of uniting Germany, Bismarck left out of play the political capabilities 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 phraseology, 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 wherewith 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 whenever the bugle sounds ?

Blood and iron became the cement of the German Empire ; but Bismarck, to do him justice, never regarded 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 aggressive, and contends that the value to Prussia and

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 judicial 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 posterity's." ^ Less likely to last ! Doubts of Bernhardi'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 aspiration, and the experience which will enable the Germans to acquire a political talent will be the destruction 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 disruption 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 Bernhardi'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 antithesis turns not on socialistic or individualistic principle, 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.

government or not. To Prussian soldiers and ministers, 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 Reichstag.'^ 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 before the outbreak of war, it was the common anticipation that at the revision of the Tariff, due in 1915, the Prussian Junkers would fail to secure that protection 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.

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 statesman 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 protection 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