Chapter II: Foreword

In issuing this, the fifth volume of my “Secret History” series, at the present moment, I feel that, with much that is only too trivial in the diary (a thing not written for publication) there are certain passages in it for which apology is due from me for their too plain speaking in what will be thought by some an unpatriotic sense. The fault is perhaps not wholly mine, rather the change which has been wrought in the public mind and heart of England by the heroic efforts made by her sons unselfishly in the war.

The period the volume travels over in English public life—1888 to 1900—was in truth anything but a noble one, and judged by the high standards now professed in Downing Street and echoed by the universal popular voice, proclaiming international right and a respect for the weak nations of the world, may deserve the worst that I have said of it, and yet my telling be resented as an untimely reminder of lapses the country would wish to forget. It includes the Matabele and Boer wars, and the wars on the Nile, where England led the way in the white scramble for Africa. There is a special danger for me of displeasure in regard to Egypt, which forms so large a topic in the text, as it becomes more clear that among the many contributory causes leading to the final catastrophe of the great World War of 1914, our obstinacy in retaining Egypt, notwithstanding all our promises, must be counted as one of the foremost. It will be reproached to me that I have sought to excuse Germany by showing that there were others primarily guilty and not only the Central Empires. I regret this the more because I know how many of the noblest there are amongst us who are consoling their sore hearts, wounded in the war, with the thought that at least the quarrel was thrust on England by no fault of hers, and who cannot but be disturbed by my reminder of the broader truth which teaches that our own Imperial ambitions were also a reason of the quarrel. Yet the truth of history needs to be told, and not only in Blue Books, where the essential facts are travestied, but by individual testimony such as mine, recording the words of statesmen in out of office hours, when they have spoken their naked thought to me in very different language. I cannot believe but that it is a service rendered to my fellow countrymen to do this at a moment when we are endeavouring to reconstruct our ruined world on a basis sounder than before, to disabuse them of an illusion, even a happy one, obscuring their clear vision.

Nor must it be imagined that, because the period treated here shows England the chief sinner among the white Empires in their dealings with the weak nations of the African world, my sympathy is more with the others. As masters of alien races both France and Italy, to say nothing of Portugal and Belgium, have shown themselves far worse and less scrupulous oppressors than we have been, or in Asia than Russia was under the Czars, while, as for Germany, it was less the will than the opportunity of evil that limited its lawless ventures. I have no love for the German race or its ideals, having an ancient bone to pick with Prussia dating from as long ago as the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when, young and enthusiastic, I made a vow of boycotting the whole Teutonic race (a vow which I have kept), but this does not blind me to the fact that as active aggressors in deed as well as word, it was not at Berlin that the first steps were taken in the direction of world-wide conquest. The will was there, theatrically displayed at intervals in Kaiser Wilhelm’s not quite sane pronouncements, and to my knowledge had been there before his day; but Germany’s plunder of the weak had been small in act compared to ours, or even to that of France, during the past half century, while in each and all of the great Empires there had been the same ominous growth of militarism and contempt for the old rules of international right where the defenceless peoples were concerned. The only difference between Berlin morality and ours in Downing Street had been that we had been careful to preserve our outward attitude of forbearance and respect for moral right, while Berlin had been shameless in its anti-human logic. Also that as an Empire we were already sated like a lion surrounded with the carcasses of its prey, while Germany was alert and hungry. Well might we want peace! Almost as well might Germany prepare for war!

These things, which need to be remembered, will be found more plainly indicated in Part II of the present issue, which will be published in the course of the summer, and complete my contribution of _Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de mon temps_, and, as I think, discharge my true patriotic duty as a nineteenth century Englishman.

W. S. B.

_Xmas_, 1918.

_P.S._—It has been suggested to me, as an appropriate addition to the value of the present volume, that I should place in the Appendix a transcript of a yet earlier diary kept by me during the first months of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. There is so much in these that stands in close relation with the war just over, that I have agreed, and so I print them here.

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