Chapter I (2)

So much cannot be said for the conduct of Germany. Her grievance was remote and indirect, her public sentiment relatively calm and tractable. A word from her would have checked Austria at any time. Accordingly upon Germany falls the heaviest responsibility for the war. From her power and detachment she was doubly in a position to play the peacemaker. There are those who think that the Kaiser and his counsellors foresaw the whole outcome and deliberately hastened it. I am unwilling to think such baseness of any human being, and find the evidence for such a suspicion as yet lacking; the whole transaction seems to show a blundering from step to step, making each decision not on principles of common sense, but under some esoteric code of military honor, honor soon being forgotten in the pursuit of military success. Germany’s official attitude, as voiced by her Chancellor, is that she was forced to mobilize under menace at her Russian and French borders. This is the best construction that can be put on her case. Whether one accepts this plea or not, will depend on his view of the motives that prompted the Russian and French mobilization. Would France and Russia have waited quietly during long negotiations, or were they awaiting the favorable moment for an invasion? Did they want peace or war? Considering the little advantage and the certain sacrifice that each nation finds in this war, the answer can hardly be in doubt. There is not the slightest indication that either had any intention of invading Germany, or anything to gain by it. But the militaristic mind is trained to see in every movement of foreign troops a direct threat, and it is credible enough that the Kaiser’s counsellors were intellectually incapable of grasping the idea of a mobilization in the interest of peace. For years they have propounded the axiom that to negotiate without show of force, is fruitless waste of time, and now they add the paradoxical corollary, “But Germany will not treat with any nation that makes a show of force.” Obviously Germany could have mobilized while continuing to treat. There were evidences that Austria, had her face been saved, would have reconsidered her rash move. From the British “White Paper” it is plain that, had Germany effected any slight modification of the Austrian demands, England would have stood out of the war. The fact that three weeks after the declaration of war Russia was hardly ready for an advance shows that Germany was not immediately menaced by the Russian mobilization. The German ultimatum which cut short both the direct negotiations between Vienna and St. Petersburg and Lord Grey’s promising plan of mediation was a crime against civilization--and stupid military policy as well.

The German attitude may again and most simply be construed as blindly loyal support of an ally right or wrong. It is a purely technical duty that Italy very sensibly repudiated. In the sense that Germany had unquestionably countenanced the ultimatum to Servia, she would seem committed. But such committals are subject, after all, to humanity and common sense, and to the conduct of the ally to whom support has been engaged. No nation is bound to risk its very existence for a rash ally. Yet on the theory of _pundonor_, that is where Germany finds herself today. The stern unreasoning maxims of a military caste must have counted for much in Germany’s obduracy. No motive of interest, immediate or remote, would at all justify or account for the assumption of a hazard involving the continuance and integrity of the Empire itself.

It is certain that Germany underestimated the hazard. A dynastic war with Russia she was willing to accept and almost courted. The contingent hostility of France she apparently did not fear. For securing the neutrality of England she had a most plausible programme. The explicit warnings from London she believed to be bluff. She probably counted on a servile Belgium. How badly she had misconceived her world, the event promptly proved. England and France were as ready to make the last sacrifice for ideals of international moderation and good faith as Germany for mediæval punctilio; industrial Belgium was capable of heroic resistance.

All the official statements of Germany abound in technicalities which to common sense are negligible. The precise amount and chronology of French and Russian provocation at the border, the amount of infraction of Belgian neutrality implied in the secret presence of French officers--all these matters are weighed with the solemnity and exactness of the seven degrees of the lie. The very language is that of the tiltyard or fencing floor. Such a move implies another; to the thrusts of Russia and France, Germany always parries in the forms. This was throughout the temper of the Wilhelmstrasse and of the German ambassadors at the danger points, Vienna and St. Petersburg. Had the Germans wanted the war, they could not have acted a whit otherwise. It is entirely possible that the secret memoirs of the future, will show that the whole clumsy transaction was merely the Kaiser’s parody of the astute machinations of Bismarck in 1870.

The position of France was in all main regards a defensive one, although she was bound as well by treaty to support Russia. Against unavowed German military movements, France openly reinforced her frontier, meanwhile seeking a diplomatic solution. Germany once more took the ground that she would not negotiate with a foe in process of mobilization, and precipitated the rupture by an ultimatum. In a larger sense France is defending her own civilization and her own influence among nations against the pretension of Teutonic preponderancy in Europe.

England’s participation in the war was required, first, by her naval agreement with France; next, by her determination to maintain the neutrality of the small nations Luxembourg and Belgium. For several years the English in the North Sea and Channel and the French in the Mediterranean, have mutually engaged to defend each other’s interests in those respective waters. This meant that imminent war found the French fleet in southern waters, and her northern and western coast open to Germany’s attack. Sir Edward Grey in his first statement before Parliament promised that England would live up to her bargain, and if necessary undertake the naval defense of the French coast. This was the frank acknowledgment of a minimum obligation, to break which, Mr. Asquith later justly remarked, would have utterly discredited a private individual. England’s next move was determined by the appeal for aid of neutralized Belgium. England demanded a statement of Germany’s intentions as regards Belgium and the other neutralized powers, and when the note was answered by the hastening of the invasion of Belgium, declared war.

Sound national policy as well as honor forced the decision. England could not take the risk of Germany at Antwerp. And German assurances to respect the sovereignty of Belgium had been proved worthless in advance by Germany’s violating the neutrality she was pledged to maintain. It is significant that the bullying sophisms with which Germany had confronted her Continental neighbors were not even hinted at in the case of England. There was no longer any disinclination to confer with a power in a state of martial preparation. There were numerous suggestions by which England might defend France passively, there was even a hint that the violated neutralities would be respected, for a consideration. In any case the evident preparedness of the British fleet was not regarded as disqualifying England as a negotiatory power, though as a matter of fact the bounds of Germany were never more effectively attacked than when sealed orders were issued to Admiral Jellicoe. Germany could, when she wished, deal with a potential foe in arms,--deal patiently and at length. The point of honor raised against France and Russia should be interpreted in the light of the repeated offers to buy off England.

England had the good fortune to take the clearest and most disinterested stand of all the embroiled powers. She was bound by a special obligation, which she could not dishonor, but which, had the Germans engaged not to attack France or her colonies by sea, might have left England a neutral. She was driven to arms by the ruthless molestation of neutral Belgium. It was the cause of civilization. In no particular have international law and world peace been more developed than in the neutralization of states. To attack this is to attack in perhaps its most vital spot the progress of the world. It is at best the act of a barbarian and an outlaw, and when committed upon a people who have offended in nothing but in asserting the right that the aggressor himself has guaranteed, it is the act of a savage. That there is a penalty for violating a neutralized state, the presence of England in this war is most exemplary evidence. She has truly taken up arms in the cause of peace.

Reviewing the motives of the combatants, Austria and Germany are fighting for the prerogatives and ideals of a politico-military hierarchy; Russia is fighting for a little nation of kindred blood and identical faith which had been outrageously attacked; France is fighting in self defense and for her treaty obligations; England is explicitly fighting for the principle of neutralization. In a larger sense the various motives of the powers embattled against Austria and Germany merge in the need of a gigantic police enterprise. We have on a tremendous scale the attempt to chastise two criminally aggressive powers, which Mr. Norman Angell proposed, on a smaller and less ruinous scale, as a means towards securing peace. The spirit that animates the European coalition against the two central Empires is that a small nation should not be brutally entreated by a stronger by reason of its greater strength, nor a neutralized nation be molested by violation of its soil and slaying of its citizens. If we hold clearly in mind this police aspect of the war, we are in a position to weigh some of the possibilities.

The success of Austria and Germany would mean the extinction of what little international law and morality has been painfully built up through the centuries, the impact of the mailed fist throughout Europe, the rigid rule of a pedantic and tyrannical bureaucracy, the diminution of the variety and vitality of western civilization, the clamping upon the world for an indefinite future the most unendurable bonds of militarism. Fortunately there is small reason to dread so dire a disaster for humanity. The stars fight in their courses against those who would undo the work of time.

The success of the _Triple Entente_, may, as it is directed, take us far towards permanent peace, or once more establish a military tension that in its turn must produce new wars. What is all important is that the police character of this war should not be lost sight of. It is always easy for the most generous causes to sink to a level of immediate small interests--the Crusaders forgetting the Holy Sepulchre while Constantinople is being looted. Such temptations will beset the _Triple Entente_ in the event of a triumph. Meanwhile, it may be the part of France and England to restrain the bitterness of Russia, who is engaged in a war essentially racial. It is necessary that the lesson administered to Germany and Austria be complete and convincing. Their best wishers can only desire for them a prompt and sharp chastisement. The peace of the world requires either the reduction of Germany to military impotence or a change in the arrogant temper of her ruling class.

Since the war has been occasioned by the stubborn folly of a military and diplomatic caste, the minimum of reform, is that that caste should be deposed in Austria and Germany. France set an example over forty years ago. Such deposition to be effective would apparently involve such constitutional changes that it is difficult to see how either the Hapsburg or Hohenzollern dynasty could logically survive the revolution. In the light of history neither would be missed.

Historically, the notion of a central European Empire has meant nothing but harm. Through the Middle Ages the cheap parodists of the Cæsars trafficked when they might, and fought when they must, claiming territory at large, setting race against race, and pontiff against king, raiding and looting rich neighboring lands rather than waging war, fomenting religious persecution, opposing by trickery and force the development of the new races and nationalities. Such was for centuries the record of the Holy Roman Empire. For Europe its legend has ever been baleful. Everybody knows that the House of Hapsburg inherits by direct descent this tradition, and Austria with its loose hold over many races is today a simulacrum of the Mediæval Empire, owing her new lease of life, after the Imperial idea had discredited itself, to the suppression of Hungary with the aid of Imperial Russia. In the Emperor Franz Josef we have an individual superior to his origins, but he inevitably inherited the diplomatic and military caste of advisors and administrators who have brought Austria to the present pass. The mentality of this hierarchy was fixed after the Napoleonic wars, at the moment when reaction was exaggerated, and has not changed with changing times.

At least the Austrian Empire and its ruling caste had the warrant of tradition. In Germany the tradition was recently made to order by the genius of Bismarck. The mediæval caste which Austria inherited, Germany deliberately created for herself. The Empire rose out of no instinctive need of the race, from no demand of the numerous small states and free cities, but as the clever utilization of a brilliant military triumph. What war gave, war could take away. The Empire that was proclaimed at Versailles might be terminated at Potsdam. The offence of the Empire is not its title and form but in the changing for the worse of the German character. Governments are worth just what they produce in national character. The German temper is naturally genial, thrifty, deliberate, patient, scholarly and musical. Official Germany has developed an intolerable arrogance that threatens the whole world. The Kaiser has mediævalized Germany’s ruling caste, and is the symbol of that process.

Personally I do not believe that the _Triple Entente_ will be called upon to dispose of the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern dynasties, any more than in 1871, Germany was burdened with the disposition of Napoleon III. Like causes produce like effects, and when Austria and Germany shall have awakened from red dreams of conquest, to the gray reality of defeat, they may be trusted to call to account these responsible for their humiliation.

With an Imperial Austria and Germany, the _Triple Entente_ could only deal most sternly, always along those modern lines of penology which do not avenge the offence, but see to it that the offender be not allowed to repeat it. On the theory that the present administration of Germany and Austria is to be perpetuated, nothing less than the crippling of those powers could guarantee even a few years of peace. With a reorganized Germany and Austria, the allies could and should deal far more generously than Germany did with the bantling French Republic. Belgium, for violated neutrality should obviously be made Germany’s preferred creditor.

Into more speculative matters I will only briefly inquire. There will naturally be some readjustment of the central European map to make political and racial lines more nearly coincident. Many of the historic states which have been whipped or cajoled into the two Empires may reëmerge. A number of small neutralized states in central Europe is among the possibilities. How much of such a process the loosely articulated Austrian Empire can stand is problematical. Some kind of a coherent Germany should emerge from the disaster, and all that is most certainly and valuably German will be preserved. German victory would overwhelm it under militarism. The intellectual primacy of Germany has never depended on the legend of the Empire. It was acknowledged before the Empire was dreamed of, and would survive if the Empire were only an unblest memory. The real Germany has today only friends in the world. To many of us she is an intellectual foster mother and very dear. We hope to see her relieved of disguising mediæval frippery, and once more her radiant and edifying self. In the Kaiser’s proclamation he protests against world wide jealousy and hatred of Germany. Without mincing words, it may be admitted that the world is justly hostile to him and what he represents. He identifies himself and what he represents with Germany. When she shall have set that misunderstanding straight, she will find in the world only friends and sympathizers.

Looking to the future, and especially to the cause of peace, the war suggests certain reflections. If the war results only in a consciously suppressed Germany and Austria kept in order by the armies of the _Triple Entente_, nothing much will have been done. If the ruffian temper of German officialdom persists, Europe will merely have lavished once more her treasure, tears and blood in the old inconclusive way. The hope lies in a solution so just that the defeated nations may accept it, so wise that it may safely include a general reduction of armaments. The cause of peace is already the gainer by a sensational demonstration of the fallacy of the stock sophism that the only guarantee of peace is competitive arming. The way in which the little spark struck on the Danube overran Europe proves that competitive arming is not merely the ready occasion of war, but of war on the most costly and disastrous terms.

But pacificists should not press their momentary advantage beyond the bounds of common sense. There is already a fanatical tendency to denounce war as such, instead of seeking out and denouncing those who have made war without just cause. Of course war abstractly is just as much and just as little moral or immoral as a cyclone. It would be quite as logical to meet and pass resolutions against the earthquake that filled peaceful Messina with human carrion, as to denounce wholesale this or any war. The case of Belgium suggests that it is not the moment for any sensible person to waste his time in working for complete disarmament. Had she trusted solely to the treaties that protected her, how complete would have been her humiliation! Belgium also shows most instructively that the maintenance of an effective military _morale_ does not imply militarism. None of the Belgian officers who held the cordon of Liege had been taught that his honor as a soldier might at any moment require him to sabre an unarmed civilian. Yet the Belgian officers gave a sufficiently good account of themselves against those who had been trained in the bullying tradition. With Belgium still in view, and recalling what would have been her fate had she trusted solely in the treaties that protected her, no sensible person could now advise any nation to disarm below the reasonable requirements of defense. It is possible however that these limits may be greatly reduced by right thinking among nations. Already the individual is measurably free to criticise his own country when engaged in a war that he deems unjust. How great a liberty that is few of us realize. The next step is freedom for large bodies of individuals to refuse to serve their country in a war waged without popular consent and palpably unjust. A people thus minded would be the greatest check on that interested bureaucracy that any military establishment, however, moderate, involves. How far we still are from that, the rallying of the socialists to all the colors shows plainly.

Perhaps the most fertile notion arising from the situation is that of an international police function to be exercised by the most enlightened nations. Something of this there was, though motives were badly mixed, in the Spanish-American war; the notion has plainly governed President Wilson’s Mexican policy. Indeed this police right has at all times been pretty freely claimed by strong powers against weak. It is a tremendous moral gain to see the principle asserted against strong powers who are imperilling the good order of the world,--and this irrespective of the outcome of the war.

A most valuable demonstration has been made of the validity of the principle of neutralization. Since small neutralized states are not for the future to be abandoned to any strong aggressor, they may safely be multiplied. Here may be a solution of the problem of racially varied central Europe. Everything depends upon England and France holding their representative function loyally to the end, and avoiding the national egotism that war in the past has usually aroused. If they are faithful to the charge they have explicitly undertaken, a new era may open for humanity.

The part of pacificists is to avoid phrases, and deal with facts. In the long run there can be no peace so long as individuals put their lives at the disposal of any kind of leader who waves the flag in any kind of cause. So long as nations are unreasoning mobs the moment the trumpet sounds, it will be idle to depose military castes; others will promptly form, and in their turn prevail. Accordingly the educational campaign of the pacificists must continue,--continue, however, with the frank admission that the sword has often in the past been drawn for ulterior righteousness and peace, and that if the time ever comes when from mere horror of war men decline to draw the sword in a clearly righteous cause, so exanimate a world will enjoy precisely the peace it deserves. We must beware of considering peace and war as respectively _bonum_ and _malum in se_. In the present case, to have yielded to Germany would, in the lowering of the moral tone of Europe, have been more disastrous than the unhappy war that has resulted from a single outrageous move: for submission would have meant that the world was content to continue in the twentieth century the ethics of Metternich and Bismarck, while the fact of the war means that the twentieth century world is prepared, at whatever cost, to repudiate the neo-mediævalism that paradoxically imposed itself upon the international politics of the nineteenth century--prepared to work out a better ethics and politics, looking to a more peaceful future. Meanwhile the present task of civilization is to avert an imminent Prussian Peril, and to humble the new Tamerlane who has thrust a continent into war. Should he win, no nation is safe.

THE WAR BY AN ECONOMIST

It is early to hold inquest upon European civilization. But to attempt to forecast the findings of the historian-crowners of the next period of peace, is neither presumptuous nor premature. Experience has taught us much of the evolution of the written record of a war. After our Civil War we had two distinct historical traditions, Northern and Southern. Nearest the event, personalities, deified and damned, loomed portentously. “If Lincoln’s character had been different--if Jeff Davis had been more forceful”--why, perhaps there might have been no war, or its issue might have been other than it was. In a later stage, Civil War history, though still sectional, accepted the obligation to set forth and make plausible the motives animating either side. Finally, sectionalism is fading from Civil War history, at least in so far as the work of the trained writer is concerned. Whether we are Northerners or Southerners, we see in the great war the natural outcome of the irreconcilable conflict between two economic and social systems, each seeking expansion to the detriment of the other. A particular personality may have worked to bring some of the contending forces to a focus; a particular political movement may have hastened, another may have retarded, the final appeal to arms. Given, however, the underlying social economic situation, given, too the existing limitations upon the political intelligence, North and South, and the appeal to arms was inevitable. Neither party, to be sure, can be absolved from the charge of wrong-doing, or even of crime. But it is not now so important to strike a balance of guilt as it is to determine the conditions that made wrong seem right in the eyes of otherwise moral men.

When the present war is over there will be a flood of nationalistic histories. The literary representatives of each party will endeavor to roll the whole blame upon the enemy. Vast significance will be attached to personalities; emperors and kings, statesmen, prelates, journalists, will stand forth in light supernal or infernal, according to the point of view. Were the Servian authorities in league with the assassins of the Archduke? Did the German emperor dictate the terms of the Austrian ultimatum? Was the Czar preparing war while pretending peace? Was Sir Edward Grey watching for an opportunity to crush the German fleet? In a later stage impersonal political forces will assert their claim to the foreground of history: the expansive tendencies of Russia; the fatal pride of armed Germany; the pretensions of England to the empire of the seas. Ancient antagonisms of race and nationality, of culture and religion, will aid in explaining what would otherwise remain inexplicable.

No one will dispute the fact that certain individuals in positions of power worked actively to bring on the present crisis, nor that acts were committed that deserve the execration of mankind. It will not be denied that ancient political and cultural antagonisms essentially conditioned the present war; but for such antagonisms the peace would have remained unbroken. Still, these forces are, in a sense, static, and hence not adequate to explain change. The Russian is not more aggressive, the German is not more arrogant, nor the Englishman more intent upon naval dominance, than they were twenty years ago. Pride of race and intolerance of religion have been with us always, and there is no evidence of their recent intensification. What chiefly needs explanation is that for a generation the consciousness of Europe has been filling up with fighting concepts. The fact has been noted by all serious students of European international relations. It is forcibly demonstrated by the enthusiasm with which the several nations, each with a reason of its own, has entered the present conflict. Desperate efforts have been making, for years, to prepare for the struggle that was regarded as inevitable.

Accordingly we can impute to the acts of particular persons little more than the choice of time and occasion for the outbreak of hostilities. The time may have been inauspicious; the occasion may have been one that will not look well in history. For the underlying forces working cumulatively toward an issue, we must, however, look elsewhere than to personal volition.

The greed of the armament industries and the incessant playing upon popular opinion by their subsidized organs have often been assigned to a chief rôle in the drama of international discord. Competitive military preparations, drawing to themselves an increasing share of the intellectual energies of a nation, have long been regarded as a menace to the peace of the world. Every organ seeks to exercise a function. The Crown Prince of Germany, in his panegyric of militarism, expresses poignant regret that all the splendid military forces of the Empire should be expended futilely, in peaceful show. Professional warriors want war, and will work to bring it about.

The future historian will doubtless give weight to the above mentioned forces, as well as to many others that can not here be touched upon. But he will assign vastly more importance than we of today, to the national antipathies engendered by the scramble for colonial possessions, and to the motives giving rise to it. It may be worth our while, even now, to fix our attention upon this aspect of the question. Not only for the light that may be thrown upon the fundamental causes of the present conflict, but also for the grounds we may discern for conjectures as to the international relations of the future.