Chapter IV: Part 4

And now, with all this in our minds, let us turn to consider the vexed question of the settlement after the war. There lies before the Western world the greatest of all choices, the choice between destruction and salvation. But that choice does not depend merely on the issue of the war. It depends upon what is done or left undone by the co-operation of all when the war does at last stop. Two conceptions of the future are contending in all nations. One is the old bad one, that which has presided hitherto at every peace and prepared every new war. It assumes that the object of war is solely to win victory, and the object of victory solely to acquire more power and territory. On this view, if the Germans win, they are to annex territory east and west: Belgium and half France, say the more violent; the Baltic provinces of Russia, strategic points of advantage, say the more moderate. On the other hand, if the Allies win, the Allies are to divide the German colonies, the French are to regain Alsace-Lorraine, and, as the jingoes add, they are to take the whole of the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, and even territory beyond it. The Italians are to have not only Italia Irredenta but hundreds of thousands of reluctant Slavs in Dalmatia; the Russians Constantinople, and perhaps Posen and Galicia. Further, such money indemnities are to be taken as it may prove possible to exact from an already ruined foe; trade and commerce with the enemy is to be discouraged or prohibited; and, above all, a bitter and unforgiving hatred is to reign for ever between the victor and the vanquished. This is the kind of view of the settlement of Europe that is constantly appearing in the articles and correspondence of the Press of all countries. Ministers are not as careful as they should be to repudiate it. The nationalist and imperialist cliques of all nations endorse it. It is, one could almost fear, for something like this that the peoples are being kept at war, and the very existence of civilization jeopardized.

Now, whether anything of this kind really can be achieved by the war, whether there is the least probability that either group of Powers can win such a victory as would make the programme on either side a reality, I will not here discuss. The reader will have his own opinion. What I am concerned with is the effect any such solution would have upon the future of Europe. Those who desire such a close may be divided into two classes. The one frankly believes in war, in domination, and in power. It accepts as inevitable, and welcomes as desirable, the perpetual armed conflict of nations for territory and trade. It does not believe in, and it does not want, a durable peace. It holds that all peace is, must be, and ought to be, a precarious and regrettable interval between wars. I do not discuss this view. Those who hold it are not accessible to argument, and can only be met by action. There are others, however, who do think war an evil, who do want a durable peace, but who genuinely believe that the way indicated is the best way to achieve it. With them it is permitted to discuss, and it should be possible to do so without bitterness or rage on either side. For as to the end, there is agreement; the difference of opinion is as to the means. The position taken is this: The enemy deliberately made this war of aggression against us, without provocation, in order to destroy us. If it had not been for this wickedness there would have been no war. The enemy, therefore, must be punished; and his punishment must make him permanently impotent to repeat the offence. That having been done, Europe will have durable peace, for there will be no one left able to break it who will also want to break it. Now, I believe all this to be demonstrably a miscalculation. It is contradicted both by our knowledge of the way human nature works and by the evidence of history. In the first place, wars do not arise because only one nation or group of nations is wicked, the others being good. For the actual outbreak of this war, I believe, as I have already said, that a few powerful individuals in Austria and in Germany were responsible. But the ultimate causes of war lie much deeper. In them all States are implicated. And the punishment, or even the annihilation, of any one nation would leave those causes still subsisting. Wipe out Germany from the map, and, if you do nothing else, the other nations will be at one another's throats in the old way, for the old causes. They would be quarrelling, if about nothing else, about the division of the spoil. While nations continue to contend for power, while they refuse to substitute law for force, there will continue to be wars. And while they devote the best of their brains and the chief of their resources to armaments and military and naval organization, each war will become more terrible, more destructive, and more ruthless than the last. This is irrefutable truth. I do not believe there is a man or woman able to understand the statement who will deny it.

In the second place, the enemy nation cannot, in fact, be annihilated, nor even so far weakened, relatively to the rest, as to be incapable of recovering and putting up another fight. The notions of dividing up Germany among the Allies, or of adding France and the British Empire to Germany, are sheerly fantastic. There will remain, when all is done, the defeated nations--if, indeed, any nation be defeated. Their territories cannot be permanently occupied by enemy troops; they themselves cannot be permanently prevented by physical force from building up new armaments. So long as they want their revenge, they will be able sooner or later to take it. If evidence of this were wanted, the often-quoted case of Prussia after Jena will suffice.

And, in the third place, the defeated nations, so treated, will, in fact, want their revenge. There seems to be a curious illusion abroad, among the English and their allies, that not only is Germany guilty of the war, but that all Germans know it in their hearts; that, being guilty, they will fully accept punishment, bow patiently beneath the yoke, and become in future good, harmonious members of the European family. The illusion is grotesque. There is hardly a German who does not believe that the war was made by Russia and by England; that Germany is the innocent victim; that all right is on her side, and all wrong on that of the Allies. If, indeed, she were beaten, and treated as her "punishers" desire, this belief would be strengthened, not weakened. In every German heart would abide, deep and strong, the sense of an iniquitous triumph of what they believe to be wrong over right, and of a duty to redress that iniquity. Outraged national pride would be reinforced by the sense of injustice; and the next war, the war of revenge, would be prepared for, not only by every consideration of interest and of passion, but by every cogency of righteousness. The fact that the Germans are mistaken in their view of the origin of the war has really nothing to do with the case. It is not the truth, it is what men believe to be the truth, that influences their action. And I do not think any study of dispatches is going to alter the German view of the facts.

But it is sometimes urged that the war was made by the German militarists, that it is unpopular with the mass of the people, and that if Germany is utterly defeated the people will rise and depose their rulers, become a true democracy, and join fraternal hands with the other nations of Europe. That Germany should become a true democracy might, indeed, be as great a guarantee of peace as it might be that other nations, called democratic, should really become so in their foreign policy as well as in their domestic affairs. But what proud nation will accept democracy as a gift from insolent conquerors? One thing that the war has done, and one of the worst, is to make of the Kaiser, to every German, a symbol of their national unity and national force. Just because we abuse their militarism, they affirm and acclaim it; just because we attack their governing class, they rally round it. Nothing could be better calculated than this war to strengthen the hold of militarism in Germany, unless it be the attempt of her enemies to destroy her militarism by force. For consider--! In the view we are examining it is proposed, first to kill the greater part of her combatants, next to invade her territory, destroy her towns and villages, and exact (for there are those who demand it) penalties in kind, actual tit for tat, for what Germans have done in Belgium. It is proposed to enter the capital in triumph. It is proposed to shear away huge pieces of German territory. And then, when all this has been done, the conquerors are to turn to the German nation and say: "Now, all this we have done for your good! Depose your wicked rulers! Become a democracy! Shake hands and be a good fellow!" Does it not sound grotesque? But, really, that is what is proposed.

I have spoken about British and French proposals for the treatment of Germany. But all that I have said applies, of course, equally to German proposals of the same kind for the treatment of the conquered Allies. That way is no way towards a durable peace. If it be replied that a durable peace is not intended or desired, I have no more to say. If it be replied that punishment for its own sake is more important than civilization, and must be performed at all costs--_fiat justitia, ruat coelum_--then, once more, I have nothing to say. I speak to those, and to those only, who do desire a durable peace, and who have the courage and the imagination to believe it to be possible, and the determination to work for it. And to them I urge that the course I have been discussing cannot lead to their goal. What can?

19. _The Change Needed_.

First, a change of outlook. We must give up, in all nations, this habit of dwelling on the unique and peculiar wickedness of the enemy. We must recognize that behind the acts that led up to the immediate outbreak of war, behind the crimes and atrocities to which the war has led, as wars always have led, and always will lead--behind all that lies a great complex of feeling, prejudice, tradition, false theory, in which all nations and all individuals of all nations are involved. Most men believe, feel, or passively accept that power and wealth are the objects States ought to pursue; that in pursuing these objects they are bound by no code of right in their relations to one another; that law between them is, and must be, as fragile as a cobweb stretched before the mouth of a cannon; that force is the only rule and the only determinant of their differences, and that the only real question is when and how the appeal to force may most advantageously be made. This philosophy has been expressed with peculiar frankness and brutality by Germans. But most honest and candid men, I believe, will agree that that is the way they, too, have been accustomed to think of international affairs. And if illustration were wanted, let them remember the kind of triumphant satisfaction with which the failure of the Hague conferences to achieve any radical results was generally greeted, and the contemptuous and almost abhorring pity meted out to the people called "pacifists." Well, the war has come! We see now, not only guess, what it means. If that experience has not made a deep impression on every man and woman, if something like a conversion is not being generally operated, then, indeed, nothing can save mankind from the hell of their own passions and imbecilities.

But if otherwise, if that change is going on, then the way to deliverance is neither difficult nor obscure. It does not lie in the direction of crushing anybody. It lies in the taking of certain determinations, and the embodying of them in certain institutions.

First, the nations must submit to law and to right in the settlement of their disputes.

Secondly, they must reserve force for the coercion of the law-breaker; and that implies that they should construct rules to determine who the law-breaker is. Let him be defined as the one who appeals to force, instead of appealing to law and right by machinery duly provided for that purpose, and the aggressor is immediately under the ban of the civilized world, and met by an overwhelming force to coerce him into order. In constructing machinery of this kind there is no intellectual difficulty greater than that which has confronted every attempt everywhere to substitute order for force. The difficulty is moral, and lies in the habits, passions, and wills of men. But it should not be concluded that, if such a moral change could be operated, there would be no need for the machinery. It would be as reasonable to say that Governments, law-courts, and police were superfluous, since, if men were good, they would not require them, and if they are bad they will not tolerate them. Whatever new need, desire, and conviction comes up in mankind, needs embodiment in forms before it can become operative. And, as the separate colonies of America could not effectively unite until they had formed a Constitution, so will the States of Europe and the world be unable to maintain the peace, even though all of them should wish to maintain it, unless they will construct some kind of machinery for settling their disputes and organizing their common purposes, and will back that machinery by force. If they will do that they may construct a real and effective counterpoise to aggression from any Power in the future. If they will not do it, their precautions against any one Power will be idle, for it will be from some other Power that the danger will come. I put it to the reader at the end of this study, which I have made with all the candour and all the honesty at my disposal, and which I believe to represent essentially the truth, whether or no he agrees that the European anarchy is the real cause of European wars, and if he does, whether he is ready for his part to support a serious effort to end it.

End of Project Gutenberg's The European Anarchy, by G. Lowes Dickinson