Essays and addresses in war time

Preface

This book contains three essays, written in the first two years of the war to explain to neutral nations the aims, and justify the action, of Great Britain. They are followed by three Addresses of a non-political character, treating of war in general, its causes and some of its phenomena, its social effects, its relation to human progress. The last two essays now appear in print for the first time. They have been written very recently, with a view to that close of the war which seems to be rapidly approaching. One of them examines the history and the meaning of what is called the principle of Nationality, and sets forth briefly the questions requiring the application of that principle which will arise when a treaty of peace has to be made, and the demands of peoples, or parts of peoples, dissatisfied with their present rulers, have to be met. The eighth and last chapter deals with the idea or plan of a League of Nations to enforce peace — a subject on which the author has had the advantage since the first months of the war of a constant correspondence with American friends. It is intended not so much to advocate the formation of such a League — for that seems now to be finding general acceptance — as to set out briefly what the functions of such a League might be, what organs it would need for the discharge of those functions, what objections have been taken to it, what are the answers to such objections, and what are the conditions of our time which may encourage hopes for its success.

There is, in the first three essays, some amount of vi ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES

repetition, which may, it is hoped, be to some extent excused on the ground that as these essays present what is practically the same subject from different points of view, it was sometimes necessary to state the same facts in different relations. The facts themselves are so strange and yet in the swift passage of events so apt to be imperfectly remembered, that they deserve to be re-stated.

The whole volume was in print before the startling events of October had brought the close of the war so much nearer. The earlier essays are left unchanged, because they were written to convey to foreign readers a concise and so far as possible unbiassed account of the motives and temper, the views and moral judgments with which Britain was prosecuting the war at a time when its issue, though certain to ourselves, appeared doubtful to many foreign observers. It seems better to leave them to speak from the days when Englishmen were bewildered by the doctrines as well as the conduct of their enemies, and were seeking explanations of what was so new to their experience. The clouds are now beginning to lift, already we understand some things better than we did three or four years ago, and we hope to learn much more. Happily that which we most desired has come to pass. This is a war of prinr ciples, and the course of events has vindicated the principles of morality and humanity that were at stake.

CHAPTER I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR Prefatory Note, written in October 191 8

This article, written and published in the autumn of 1 9 14, is now reprinted in its original form, in order that it may show what was the impression produced upon Englishmen by the events of the first two months of war. The audacious avowal by the German Government of the doctrine that military necessity warrants breaches of international good faith and common right, and the declarations which were then first brought to the notice of the British people, proceeding from eminent German authorities, that the State stands above all morality and all human feeling, and may adopt any war methods conducive to success, were accompanied by an unprovoked invasion of Belgium and by the savage treatment of its non-combatant inhabitants. That invasion and the attempts to justify it struck us with an amazement it is well to recall, for now, after four years of war, no action, however outrageous, on the part of the enemy Powers surprises us. It seems proper, therefore, to let what was written in 1914 stand unchanged as some evidence of what we then felt, and of our unwillingness to believe that the pernicious theory proclaimed by German writers, and the practice which went almost beyond the theory, could be approved by the German people, whom some of us had known in earlier years as a humane and kindly people, a people whose literature we had admired, and for whose services to learning and science we were grateful.

But if these pages were to be now rewritten, I should be bound to write them differently, and should have to recognize that the view such Englishmen then took was more indulgent than it could have been if we had known and understood the change which had passed upon the German mind since 1870. It is difficult now to cling to the hope expressed in 19 14 that the principles avowed by the German Government and put in practice by its High Command were held by only a small minority of the nation.

Allowance must doubtless be made in judging the attitude of the German people, not only for the excitement evoked by a tremendous crisis, which made any criticism of their rulers seem unpatriotic and for the fear of Russia which then possessed them, but also for the mendacity with which the Government, through its pliant tool the German press, have tricked and misled their credulous and submissive subjects. Public opinion is, and has long been, manufactured by the Government, partly through the newspapers, partly owing to the deference paid to declarations proceeding from it. A friend who lived in Germany till 19 13, and knows it thoroughly, writes to me : " German opinion is very ill-educated and very ill-informed politically. The pressure on public and private opinion is enormous; a German needs to be a superman if he would stand out boldly for his convictions; and supermen, if they exist, are rare."

Ever since the war began the people have been fed up with falsehoods. The aims and motives of Britain and the United States have been persistently misrepresented. Baseless calumnies have been propagated re-

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garding the conduct of British soldiers and sailors, while the offences committed on sea and land, by order of the German High Command, have been either concealed or covered up by a tissue of deceits. Concealed, also, were the massacres of the Eastern Christians perpetrated by those " trusty Turkish Allies," whom the German Government took to its bosom, and when German missionaries sought to publish the facts they were promptly silenced. A strict and stern censorship has repressed every attempt to make the truth known, has forbidden criticism, and stifled the voice of truth. Deeds at which the world grew pale are perhaps hardly more known to the German peasant or artizan than to the black soldiers of Germany in Africa.

Yet, after every allowance has been made, it remains a marvel that in a nation like Germany so few of the leaders, in learning, science, education, and, above all, in religion, should have been found bold enough to condemn, and so many ready to defend, crimes which some at least among them must have known, and which would have shocked the generations of Kant and Goethe and Schiller, of Savigny and Schleiermacher and Neander. What has become of the nation's conscience?

The explanation some have that the university teachers and the clergy of the Churches recognized by the State are in bondage to the Government does not suffice. There must have been some other cause at work to produce this callousness. Patriotism itself must have been perverted by false teachings and bad examples. I have tried in two later chapters (Essay III. and Essay VI.) to indicate some of the influences which may have engendered this extravagant nationalism and sown the seeds of this moral decline which make the new Germany unlike the old.

The present war has had some unexpected consequences. It has called the attention of the world outside Germany to certain amazing doctrines proclaimed there, which strike at the root of all international morality, as well as of all international law, and which threaten a return to the primitive savagery when every tribe was wont to plunder and massacre its neighbours.

These doctrines may be found set forth in the widely circulated book of General von Bernhardi, entitled Germany and the Next War, published in 191 1, and professing to be mainly based on the teachings of the famous professor of history, Heinrich von Treitschke.

To readers in other countries, and, I trust, to most readers in Germany also, these doctrines will appear to be an outburst of militarism run mad, the product of a brain intoxicated by the love of war and by superheated national self-consciousness.

They would have deserved little notice, much less refutation, but for one deplorable fact, viz. that action has recently been taken by the Government of a great nation (though, as we venture to hope, without the approval of that nation) which is consonant with them, and seems to imply a belief in their soundness.

This fact is the conduct of the German Imperial Government, in violating the neutrality of Belgium, which Prussia, as well as Great Britain and France, had solemnly guaranteed by a treaty (made in 1839 and renewed in 1870) ; in invading Belgium when she refused to allow her armies to pass through to attack France, although France, the other belligerent, had solemnly undertaken not to enter Belgium; and in treating the Belgian cities and people, against whom she had no cause of quarrel, with a harshness unprecedented in the history of modern European warfare.

What are these doctrines? I do not for a moment

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attribute them to the learned class in Germany, for whom I have profound respect, recognizing their immense services to science and learning; nor to the bulk of the civil administration, a body whose capacity and uprightness are known to all the world; and least of all to the German people generally. That the latter hold no such views appears from General Bernhardi's own words, for he repeatedly complains of, and deplores the pacific tendencies of, his fellow-countrymen. 1

Nevertheless, the fact that the action referred to, which these doctrines seem to have prompted, and which cannot be defended except by them, has been actually taken, and has thus brought into this war Great Britain, whose interests and feelings made her desire peace, renders it proper to call attention to them and to all that they involve.

I have certainly no prejudice in the matter, for I have been one of those who for many years laboured to promote good relations between Germans and Englishmen, peoples that ought to be friends, and that never before had been enemies, and I had hoped and believed till the beginning of August 19 14 that there would be no war, because Belgian neutrality would be respected.

Nor was it only for the Jake of Britain and Germany that the English friends of peace sought to maintain good feeling. We had hoped, as some leading German statesmen had hoped, that a friendliness with Germany might enable Britain, with the co-operation of the United States (our closest friends), to mitigate the long antagonism of Germany and of France, with whom we were already on good terms, and to so improve their relations as to secure the general peace of Europe.

1 See pp. 10-14 of English translation, and note the phrase, "Aspirations for peace seem to poison the soul of the German people."

Into the causes which frustrated these efforts and so suddenly brought on this war I will not enter. Many others have dealt with them. 1 Moreover, the facts, at least as we in England see and believe them, and as the documents seem to prove them to be, appear not to be known to the German people, and the motives of the chief actors have not yet been fully ascertained.

One thing, however, I can confidently declare. It was neither commercial rivalry nor jealousy of German power that brought Britain into the field. Nor was there any hatred in the British people for Germany, nor any wish to break German power. Even now, we have no enmity to the German people. The leading political thinkers and historians of England had given hearty sympathy to the efforts made by the German people (from 1815 to 1866 and 1870) to attain political unity, as they had sympathized with the parallel efforts of the Italians.

The two peoples, German and British, were of kindred race, and linked by many ties. In both countries there were doubtless some persons who desired war, and whose writings, apparently designed to provoke it, did much to misrepresent the general national sentiment. But these persons were, as I believe, a small minority in both countries.

So far as Britain was concerned, it was the invasion of Belgium that arrested all efforts to avert war, and made even the best friends of peace join in holding that the duty of fulfilling their treaty obligations to a weak State was paramount to every other consideration. I return to the doctrines set forth by General von

1 [A clear and strong light has recently been thrown upon the circumstances preceding the outbreak ol the war by the recently published memorandum of Prince Llchnowsky, who was then German Ambassador in London. They fully vindicate the motives and action in those critical days of Sir Edward Grey, who was then Foreign Secretary. — Oct. 1918.]

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Bernhardi, and apparently accepted by the military caste to which he belongs. Briefly summed up, they are as follows. His own words are used, except when it becomes necessary to abridge a lengthened argument:

War is in itself a good thing. " It is a biological necessity of the first importance " (p. 18).

" The inevitableness, the idealism, the blessings of war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of development must be repeatedly emphasized " (p. 37).

" War is the greatest factor in the furtherance of culture and power."

" Efforts to secure peace are extraordinarily detrimental as soon as they influence politics" (p. 28).

" Fortunately these efforts can never attain their ultimate objects in a world bristling with arms, where a healthy egotism still directs the policy of most countries. k God will see to it,' says Treitschke, ' that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race ' " (p. 36).

" Efforts directed towards the abolition of war are not only foolish, but absolutely immoral, and must be stigmatized as unworthy of the human race " (p.

Courts of arbitration are pernicious delusions.

" The whole idea represents a presumptuous encroachment on the natural laws of development which can only lead to the most disastrous consequences for humanity generally" (p. 34).

" The maintenance of peace never can be or may be the goal of a policy" (p. 25).

" Efforts for peace would, if they attained their goal, lead to general degeneration, as happens everywhere in Nature, where the struggle for existence is eliminated " (p. 35).

Huge armaments are in themselves desirable. " They are the most necessary precondition of our national health " (p. n).

" The end all and be all of a State is Power, and he who is not man enough to look this truth in the face should not meddle with politics " (quoted from Treitschke Politik) (p. 45).

" The State's highest moral duty is to increase its power " (pp. 45-6).

" The State is justified in making conquests whenever its own advantage seems to require additional territory " (p. 46).

" Self-preservation is the State's highest ideal," and justifies whatever action it may take, if that action be conducive to the end.

The State is the sole judge of the morality of its own action. It is, in fact, above morality, or, in other words, Whatever is necessary is moral.

" Recognized rights (i.e. treaty rights) are never absolute rights; they are of human origin, and therefore imperfect and variable. There are conditions in which they do not correspond to the actual truth of things ; in this case the infringement of the right appears morally justified " (p. 49) . In fact, the State is a law to itself.

" Every sovereign State has the undoubted right to declare war at its pleasure, and is consequently entitled to repudiate its treaties" (Treitschke).

" Weak nations have not the same right to live as the powerful and vigorous nation" (p. 34).

" Any action in favour of collective humanity outside the limits of the State and nationality is impossible " (p. 25).

These are startling propositions, though propounded as practically axiomatic. They are not new, for i NEUTRAL NATIONS 9

twenty-two centuries ago the sophist Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic argued (Socrates refuting him) that Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the Stronger, i.e. Might is Right. 1

The most startling among them is the denial that there are any duties owed by the State to Humanity, except that of imposing its own superior civilization upon as large a part of humanity as possible, and the denial of the duty of observing treaties. Treaties are only so much paper. 2

To modern German writers the State is a much more tremendous entity than it is to Englishmen or Americans. It is a supreme power with a sort of mystic sanctity, a power conceived of, as it were, self-created, a force altogether distinct from, and superior to, the persons who compose it.

But a State is 2 after all, only so many individuals organized undei a Government. It is no wiser, no more righteous than the human beings of whom it consists, and whom it sets up to govern it.

Has the State, then, no morality, no responsibility?

If it is right for persons united as citizens into a State to rob and murder for their collective advantage by their collective power, why should it be wicked for the citizens as individuals to do so? Does their moral responsibility cease when and because they act together? Most legal systems hold that there are acts which one man may lawfully do which become unlawful if done by a number of men conspiring together. But now it would seem that what would be a crime in persons as

1 Plato lays down that the end for which a State exists is Justice.

2 There are, of course, cases in which a treaty may become obsolete by a complete change in the conditions under which it was made, as the treaties of Vienna of 1815 had become obsolete sixty years afterwards. But the case of Belgium was not such a case, nor can so-called " military necessity " ever justify violation. The Hague Convention of 1907 expressly provides that belligerents must respect neutral territory.

io ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap.

individuals is high policy for those persons united in a State. 1

Is there no such thing as a common humanity? Are there no duties owed to it? Is there none of that " decent respect to the opinion of mankind " which the framers of the Declaration of Independence recognized; no sense that even the greatest States are amenable to the sentiment of the civilized world?

Let us see how these doctrines affect the smaller and weaker States which have hitherto lived in comparative security beside the Great Powers.

They will be absolutely at the mercy of the stronger. Even if protected by treaties guaranteeing their neutrality and independence they will not be safe, for treaty obligations are worthless " when they do not correspond to facts," i.e. when the strong Power finds that they stand in its way. Its interests are paramount.

If a State has valuable minerals, as Sweden has iron, and Belgium coal, and Rumania oil, or if it has abundance of water-power, like Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, or if it holds the mouth of a navigable river the upper course of which belongs to another nation, the great State may conquer and annex that small State as soon as it finds that it needs the minerals, or the water-power, or the river mouth.

It has the Power, and Power gives Right. The interests, the sentiments, the patriotism and love of independence of the small people go for nothing.

Civilization has turned back upon itself, culture is to expand its domain by barbaric force. Governments derive their authority, not from the consent of the

l General Bernhardi (following Treitschke) refers approvingly to Machiavelli as " the first who declared that the keynote of every policy was the advancement of power." The Florentine, however, was not the preacher of doctrines with which he sought, like the General, to edify his contemporaries. He merely took his Italian world as he saw it. He did not attempt to buttress his maxims by false philosophy, false history, and false science.

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governed, but from the weapons of the conqueror.

Law and morality between nations have vanished. Herodotus tells us that the Scythians worshipped as their God a naked sword. That is the deity to be installed in the place once held by the God of Christianity, the God of righteousness and mercy.

States, mostly despotic States, have sometimes applied parts of this system of doctrine, but none has proclaimed it. The Romans, conquerors of the world, were not a scrupulous people, but even they stopped short of these principles. Certainly they never set them up as an ideal. Neither did those magnificent Saxon and Swabian Emperors of the Middle Ages whose fame General von Bernhardi is fond of recalling. They did not enter Italy as conquerors, claiming her by the right of the strongest. They came on the faith of a legal title, which, however fantastic it may seem to us to-day, the Italians themselves — and, indeed, the whole of Latin Christendom — admitted. Dante, the greatest and most patriotic of Italians, welcomed the Germanic Emperor Henry the Seventh into Italy, and wrote a famous book to prove his claims, vindicating them on the ground that he, as the heir of Rome, stood for Law and Right and Peace. The noblest title which those Emperors chose to bear was that of Imperator Pacificus, bestowed upon the first of them when he was crowned in Rome in A.D. 800. In the Middle Ages, when men were always fighting, they appreciated the blessings of war much less than does General Bernhardi, and they valued peace, not war, as a means to civilization and culture. They had not learnt in the school of Treitschke that peace means decadence and war is the true civilizing influence.

The doctrines above stated are (as I have tried to point out) well calculated to alarm the small States which prize their liberty and their individuality, and have been thriving under the safeguard of treaties. But there are also other considerations affecting those States which ought to appeal to men in all countries, to strong nations as well as weak nations.

The small States, whose absorption is now threatened, have been potent and useful — perhaps the most potent and useful — factors in the advance of civilization. It is in them and by them that most of what is most precious in religion, in philosophy, in literature, in science, and in art has been produced.

The first great thoughts that brought man into a true relation with God came from a tiny people, inhabiting a country smaller than Denmark. The religions of mighty Babylon and populous Egypt have vanished: the religion of Israel remains in its earlier as well as in that later form which has overspread the world.

The Greeks were a small people, not united in one great State, but scattered over coasts and among hills irf petty city communities, each with its own life, slender in numbers, but eager, versatile, intense. They gave us the richest, the most varied, and the most stimulating of all literatures.

When poetry and art reappeared, after the long night of the Dark Ages, their most splendid blossoms flowered in the small republics of Italy.

In modern Europe what do we not owe to little Switzerland, lighting the torch of freedom 600 years ago, and keeping it alight through all the long centuries when despotic monarchies held the rest of the European Continent; and what to free Holland, with her great men of learning and her painters surpassing those of all other countries save Italy?

So the small Scandinavian nations have given to the world-famous men of science, from Linnaeus downx NEUTRAL NATIONS 13

wards, poets like Tegner and Bjornson, scholars like Madvig, dauntless explorers like Fridtjof Nansen. England had, in the age of Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton, a population little larger than that of Bulgaria to-day. The United States, in the days of Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Hamilton and Marshall, counted fewer inhabitants than Denmark or Greece.

In the two most brilliant generations of German literature and thought, the age of Kant and Lessing and Goethe, of Hegel and Beethoven and Schiller and Fichte, there was no real German State at all, but a congeries of principalities and free cities, independent centres of intellectual life, in which letters and science produced a richer crop than the two succeeding generations have raised, just as Britain, also, with eight times the population of the year 1600, has had no more Shakespeares or Miltons.

No notion is more palpably contradicted by history than that relied on by the school to which General Bernhardi belongs, that " culture " — literary, scientific, and artistic — flourishes best in great military States. The decay of art and literature in the Roman World began just when Rome's military power had made that world one great and ordered State. The opposite view would be much nearer the truth; though one must admit that no general theory regarding the relations of art and letters to Governments and political conditions has ever yet been proved to be sound. 1

The world is already too uniform, and is becoming more uniform every day. A few leading languages, a

1 General Bernliardi's knowledge of current history may be estimated by the fact that he assumes fi) that trade rivalry makes a war probable between Great Britain and the United States! (2) that be believes the Indian princes and peoples likely to revolt against Britain should she be involved in war!! and (3) that he expects her self-governing Colonies to take such an opportunity of severing their connection with her!!!

few forms of civilization, a few types of character, are spreading out from the seven or eight greatest States and extinguishing the weaker languages, forms, and types.

Although the great States are stronger and more populous, their peoples are not necessarily more gifted, and the extinction of the minor languages and types would be a misfortune for the world's future development.

We may not be able to arrest the forces which seem to be making for that extinction, but we certainly ought not to strengthen them. Rather we ought to maintain and defend the smaller States, and to favour the rise and growth of new peoples. Not merely because they were delivered from tyranny of Sultans like Abdul Hamid did the intellect of Europe welcome the successively won liberations of Greece, Servia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro; it was also in the hope that those countries would in time develop out of their present relatively crude conditions new types of culture, new centres of productive intellectual life.

General Bernhardi invokes History, the ultimate court of appeal. He appeals to Caesar. To Caesar let him go. As Schiller wrote: Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht?-

History declares that no nation, however great, is entitled to try to impose its type of civilization on others. No race, not even the Teutonic or the Anglo- Saxon, is entitled to claim the leadership of humanity. Each people has in its time contributed something that was distinctively its own, and the world is far richer thereby than if any one race, however gifted, had established a permanent ascendancy.

We of the English-speaking race do not claim for

1 World History is the World-tribunal.

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ourselves, any more than we admit in others, any right to dominate by force or to impose our own type of civilization on less powerful races. Perhaps we have not that assured conviction of its superiority which the school of General Bernhardi expresses for the Teutons of North Germany. We know how much we owe, even within our own islands, to the Celtic race. And though we must admit that peoples of Anglo-Saxon stock have, like others, made some mistakes and sometimes abused their strength, let it be remembered what have been the latest acts they have done abroad.

The United States have twice withdrawn their troops from Cuba, which they could easily have retained. They have resisted all temptations to annex any part of the territories of Mexico, in which the lives and property of their citizens were for three years in constant danger. So Britain also restored in 1906-7 the amplest self-government to the two South African Republics, which had been in arms against her thirteen years ago (having already agreed to the maintenance on equal terms of the Dutch language) , and the citizens of those Republics have now spontaneously come forward to support her by arms, under the gallant leader who then commanded the Boer forces. Nor should we forget that one reason why the princes of India have rallied so promptly and heartily to Britain in this war is because for many years past we have avoided annexing the territories of those princes, allowing them to adopt heirs when successors of their own families failed, and leaving to them as much as possible of the ordinary functions of government.