f:)rnia nal SAYS AND ADDRESSES IN WAR TIME MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES IN WAR TIME BY JAMES BRYCE (VISCOUNT BRYCE) MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1918 I ^. re I LK (VIAYtK j COPYRIGHT PREFACE Dok contains three essays, written in the first two f the war, to explain to neutral nations the aims, 3tify the action, of Great Britain. They are d by three Addresses of a non-political character, ^ of war in general, its causes and some of its lena, its social effects, its relation to human s. The last two essays now appear in print for t time. They have been written very recently, view to that close of the war which seems to be approaching. One of them examines the history meaning of what is called the Principle of Nation- nd sets forth briefly the questions requiring the 'ion of that principle which will arise when a f peace has to be made, and when the demands of , or parts of peoples, dissatisfied with their present lave to be met. The eighth and last chapter deals sideaorplanofaLeagueof Nations to enforce peace ject on which the author has had the advantage since t months of the war of a constant correspondence merican friends. It is intended not so much to :e the formation of such a League — for that seems now finding general acceptance — as to set out what the functions of such a League might be, rgans it would need for the discharge of those ns, what objections have been taken to it, what vi ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES are the answers to such objections, and what are the conditions of our time which encourage hopes for its success. There is, in the first three essays, a certain amount of 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 im- perfectly remembered, that they deserve to be re-stated. The whole volume was in print before the startling events of October had begun to bring the close of the war into sight. The earlier essays are left almost 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 as from the days when Englishmen were bewildered by the doctrines as well as the behaviour 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 features of the conduct and mental attitude of the enemy better than we did three or four years ago. Happily that which we most desired has come to pass. This is a War of Principles, and the course of events has vindicated the principles of morality and humanity that were at stake. October \z, 191 8. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE Neutral Nations and the War . . . . i CHAPTER II The Attitude of Great Britain in the Present War . 17 CHAPTER III The War State : its Mind and its Methods . . 39 CHAPTER IV War and Human Progress . . . . .65 CHAPTER V Presidential Address delivered to the British Academy, June 30, 191 5 . . . . . .92 CHAPTER VI Presidential Address delivered to the British Academy, July 14., 191 6 . . . . . .106 vii viii ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES CHAPTER VII PACK The Principle of Nationality and its Applications . 126 CHAPTER VIII A League of Nations to preserve Peace . . .158 INDEX . . . . . . .189 CHAPTER I / Prefatory Note ^ written in October 191 8 This article, written and published in the autumn of 1 9 14, is now (subject to a few merely verbal changes) 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 stand!s 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 in- vasion 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 19 14 stand un- changed 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. I B 2 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 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 with which the people receive every official declaration. A friend ^ who lived in Germany till 1913, and knows the country 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 regarding 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 ^ Mr. W. Harbutt Dawson, whose valuable books on Germany are well known. I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 3 its bosom, and when German missionaries sought to pubHsh the facts they were promptly silenced. A strict and stern censorship has repressed every attempt to bring out the facts, 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 artisan 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 sometimes given 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. Neutral Nations and the War The present war has had some unexpected conse- quences. 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 4 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. Germany and the Next War^ published in 1911, 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 treat- ing the Belgian cities and people, against whom she had no cause of quarrel, with a harshness unprecedented in modern European warfare. What are these doctrines } I do not for a moment attribute them to the learned class in Germany, whom I respect, recognizing their immense services to science and learning ; nor to the bulk of the civil administration, a body whose capacity and up- rightness 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.^ Nevertheless, the fact that the action referred to, which these doctrines seem to have prompted, and ^ See pp. 10-14 of English translation, and note the phrase, " Aspirations for peace seem to poison the soul of the German people." I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 5 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 English- men, 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 sake 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 antagon- ism 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. Into the causes which frustrated these efforts and so suddenly brought on this war I will not enter. Many others have dealt with them.^ 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 enmity in the British people for Germany, nor any wish to break German power. Even now that war has broken out, we do not hate the German people. The leading political thinkers and historians of England had ^ [A clear and strong light has recently been thrown upon the circumstances preceding the outbreak of the war by the recently published memorandum of Prince Lichnowsky, 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. See Chapter ii., note. — Oct. 19 1 8.] 6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES given hearty sympathy to the efforts made by the German people (from 1815 to 1866 and 1870) to attain poHtical 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 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 develop- ment must be repeatedly emphasized " (p. 37). " War is the greatest factor in the furtherance of culture and power." " Efforts to secure peace are extraordinarily detri- mental 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. ' God will see to it,' says Treitschke, ' that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race ' " (p. 2>^). " 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. 34). Courts of arbitration are pernicious delusions. ** The I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 7 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. 11). *' 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 when- ever 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). 8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES " 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 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.i 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. ^ 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, after all, only so many individuals organized under 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 ^ Plato lays down that the end for which a State exists is Justice. ^ 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 Con- vention of 1907 expressly provides that belligerents must respect neutral territory. I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 9 would seem that what would be a crime in persons as individuals is high policy for those persons united in a State.i 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 com- parative 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 obliga- tions 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 governed, but from the weapons of the conqueror. Law and morality between nations have vanished. ^ General Bernhardt (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. lo ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 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 Christi- anity, 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 Christen- dom — 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 NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR ii and useful — factors in the advance of civilization. It is in them and by them that most of what is 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, in- habiting a country smaller than Denmark. The re- ligions 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 in 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 downwards, poets like Tegner and Bjornson, scholars like Madvig, dauntless explorers like Fridtjof Nansen. England had, in the age of Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton, a popula- tion 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 12 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 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 genera- tions have raised, just as Britain, also, with eight times the population of the year 1 600, has had no more Shake- speares 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. ^ The world is already too uniform, and is becoming more uniform every day. A few leading languages, a 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 develop- ment. 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 the tyranny of Sultans like Abdul Hamid ^ General Bernhardi's knowledge of current history may be estimated by the fact that he assumes (i) that trade rivalry makes a war probable between Great Britain and the United States ! (2) that he 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 ! ! ! I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 13 did the intellect of Europe welcome the successively won liberations of Greece, Servia, Bulgaria, and Monte- negro ; 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 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 some- times 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 1907 the amplest self-govern- ment to the two South African Republics, which had been in arms against her thirteen years ago (having 1 World History is the World-tribunal. 14 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 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. It is only vulgar minds that mistake bigness for greatness, for greatness is of the Soul, not of the Body. In the judgment which history will hereafter pass upon the forty centuries of recorded progress that now lie behind us, what are the tests it will apply to determine the true greatness of a people ? Not population, not territory, not wealth, not military power. Rather will history ask : What examples of lofty character and unselfish devotion to honour and duty has a people given ? What has it done to increase the volume of knowledge ? What thoughts and what ideals of permanent value and unexhausted fertility has it bequeathed to mankind ? What works has it produced in poetry, music, and the other arts to be an unfailing source of enjoyment to posterity ? The smaller peoples need not fear the application of such tests. The world advances not, as the Bernhardi school suppose, only or even mainly by Fighting. It advances mainly by Thinking and by a process of reciprocal teach- ing and learning, by a continuous and unconscious co- operation of all its strongest and finest minds. Each race — Hellenic and Italic, Celtic and Teutonic, Iberian and Slavonic — has something to give, each something to learn ; and when their blood is blent the mixed stock may combine the gifts of both. The most progressive races have been those who combined willingness to learn with a strength which I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 15 enabled them to receive without loss to their own quality, retaining their primal vigour, but entering into the labours of others, as the Teutons who settled within the dominions of Rome profited by the lessons and examples of the old civilization. Let me disclaim once more before I close any inten- tion to attribute to the German people the principles set forth by the school of Treitschke and Bernhardi, their hatred of peace and arbitration, their disregard of treaty obligations, their scorn for the weaker peoples. We in England would feel an even deeper sadness than weighs upon us now if we could suppose that such principles had been embraced by a nation whose thinkers have done so much for human progress and who have produced so many shining examples of Christian saint- liness. But when those principles have been ostentatiously proclaimed, when a peaceful neutral country which the other belligerent had undertaken to respect has been invaded and treated as Belgium has been treated, and when attempts are made to justify these deeds as in- cidental to a campaign for civilization and culture, it becomes necessary to point out how untrue and how pernicious such principles are. What are the teachings of history, history to which General Bernhardi is fond of appealing ? That war has been the constant handmaid of tyranny and the source of more than half the miseries of man. That although some wars have been necessary, and have given occasion for the display of splendid heroism — wars of defence against aggression, or to succour the oppressed — most wars have been needless or unjust. That the mark of an advancing civilization has been the substitution of friendship for hatred and of peaceful for warlike ideals. That small peoples have done and can do as much for the common good of humanity as large peoples. That treaties must be observed, for what are they but records of national faith solemnly pledged, and what could bring mankind more surely and swiftly back to that reign of 1 6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap, i violence and terror from which it has been slowly rising for the last ten centuries than a destruction of trust in the plighted faith of nations ? No event has brought out that essential unity which now exists in the world so forcibly as this war has done, for no event has ever so affected every part of the earth. Four continents are involved — the whole of the Old World — and the New World suffers grievously in its trade, industry, and finance. Thus the whole world is interested in preventing the recurrence of such a calamity ; and there is a general feeling throughout the world that an effort must be made to remove the causes which have brought it upon us. We are told that armaments must be reduced, that the baleful spirit of militarism must be quenched, that the peoples must everywhere be admitted to a fuller share in the control of foreign policy, that efforts must be made to establish a sort of League of Concord — some system of international relations and reciprocal peace alliances by which the weaker nations may be protected, and under which differences between nations may be adjusted by courts of arbitration and conciliation of wider scope than those that now exist. All these things are desirable. All nations, and, most of all, the weaker nations, ought to desire them. But no scheme for preventing future wars will have any chance of success unless it rests upon the assurance that the States which enter into it will loyally and steadfastly abide by it, and that each and all of them will join in coercing by their overwhelming united strength any State which may disregard the obligations it has under- taken. The faith of treaties is the only solid foundation on which a Temple of Peace can be built up. CHAPTER II THE ATTITUDE OF GREAT BRITAIN IN THE PRESENT WAR ^ We in Britain who respect and value the opinion of the free neutral peoples of Europe and America cannot but desire that those peoples should be duly informed of the way in which we regard the circumstances and the possible results of the present conflict. The pages which follow have been written in compliance with a request from one of those free countries, Switzerland, but what has been set down to be read by its people may equally well be addressed to other neutrals. I speak here with no more authority than is possessed by any private citizen of my country who has had a long experience of public affairs, and my only wish is to express what I believe to be its general sentiments. Other writers would doubtless con- vey those sentiments in somewhat different language, but I think they would do so to much the same general effect, for the British Nation is at this crisis united in its views and purposes to an extent almost unprecedented in its history. I shall not enter into the circumstances which brought about the war, for these have been often stated officially and can be readily understood from documents already published. The evidence contained in those documents ought, it seems to me, to be quite convincing to any impartial mind.^ All that need be said here is that the ^ This article was written in 191 5. Some few changes, not affecting the general argument, have been made in it, and some passages omitted, because the same topic has been more fully dealt with in the following chapter, also addressed to neutral countries. 2 It was convincing from the first. But if any further proof be needed the spring of 19 18 brought an unexpected and most effective confirmation in the form 17 C 1 8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. British nation did most assuredly neither desire nor con- template war. There was no hostility to Germany except among a very few persons who thought she was already planning to attack us. The notion which has been assiduously propagated by the German Government, that England desired to bring about war because she feared the commercial competition of Germany and hoped to destroy German productive industry and mercantile prosperity, is absolutely untrue and without the slightest foundation. It is indeed an absurd suggestion, for every man of sense knew that German trade had brought more advantage to our trading classes than any damage German com- petition had been doing to them. England had far more to lose than to gain by war. Germany was her best foreign customer, taking more goods from her than did any other foreign country. It was plain to the meanest understanding that a war would involve England in pecuniary losses which must far exceed — they have within the first year of war far exceeded — any pecuniary gain her traders could possibly have made by the crippling of German trade for many a year to come. One of the reasons why many Englishmen thought that there was of a secret memorandum written by Prince Lichnowsky (German Ambassador in London in 1912—14), and published without his knowledge or consent. In it the ex- Ambassador, who had been conducting negotiations between his country and Britain over various questions affecting their relations, bears the clearest and strongest testimony to the friendly spirit in which the British Government met the wishes of Germany. Large concessions, so large that they seem now, with our fuller knowledge of German plans, too generous, were made regarding the assignment of regions in Africa as spheres of German influence, and as respects the Bagdad railway and Mesopotamia as far as El Basra. Sir Edward Grey, he declares, was sincerely anxious for friendship between the countries, and did his utmost, up to the last moments in July and August 19 14, to avert war. This account of Sir Edward's good-will is confirmed by Herr von Jagow, who was then Foreign Secretary in Germany. The Memorandum also explicitly contradicts the notion, propagated in Germany, that commercial jealousy had made British mercantile men disposed to war. " It was precisely in commercial circles," says Lichnowsky, " that I found the liveliest disposition to establish good relations [with Germany] and to promote common economic interests." Another revelation of high significance is contained in the account given by Mr. Morgenthau, lately American Ambassador at Constantinople (see his articles in The World's Work for May and June 1918), of the description given to him by Baron von Wangenheim (till his recent death, German Ambassador to Turkey) of the secret meeting at Potsdam on July 5, 19 14, at which the German Emperor as.ked the heads of the Army, of the Navy, and of the great financial establishments of Germany whether they were all prepared for the approaching war. This meeting is referred to in Prince Lichnowsky's Memorandum also, and there seems to be no doubt that war was then virtually decided upon. II GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 19 no likelihood of a war between the two countries was because they believed that both countries knew what frightful losses to each the war would bring. Unluckily they did not know the mind and temper of the class that was ruling Germany. Moreover, the fact that Britain had not prepared herself for a land war shows how little she expected it. She had an army very small in com- parison with those of the Continental Powers, and no store of guns or shell comparable to theirs ; so, when the war broke out — Belgium invaded, France threatened with destruction — she found herself suddenly obliged to raise a large force by voluntary enlistment at short notice. Few supposed that the response of the people would have been so general and so hearty. The response came because the nation was united as it had never been united before in support of any war. That which united it at the first moment was the invasion of Belgium ; and that which has done most to keep it united and to stimu- late it to exertions hitherto undreamt of has been popular indignation at the methods by which the German Govern- ment has conducted hostilities by land and by sea. The German Government has alleged that the British Fleet had been mobilized with a view to war. That is absolutely untrue. What happened was this. The Fleet had been going through its usual summer man- oeuvres. Just as these manoeuvres were coming to an end, a threatening war cloud unexpectedly arose out of a blue sky. Most naturally, the ships which would in the usual course have been dispersed to their accustomed peace stations were commanded not to disperse until further orders were received. There was in this no evidence of any purpose to embark in war, for to keep the Fleet together was in the circumstances the obvious and only prudent course. Now let me try to state what are the principles which animate the British people, making them believe they have a righteous cause, and inducing them, because they so believe, to prosecute the war with their utmost energy. There is a familiar expression which we use in England 20 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES to sum up the position and aims of a nation. It is, " What does the nation * stand for ' ? " What are the principles and the interests which prescribe its course ? What are the ends, over and above its own welfare, which it seeks to promote ? What is the nature of the mission with which it feels itself charged ? What are the ideals which it would like to see prevailing throughout the world ? There are five of these principles or aims or ideals which I will here set forth, because they stand out con- spicuously in the present crisis, though they have all been more or less parts of the settled policy of Britain. I. The first of these five is Liberty. England and Switzerland have been the two modern countries in which Liberty first took tangible form in equal laws and in the institutions of self-government. Every lover of poetry remembers the lines in which Wordsworth joins these lands as the ancient homes of freedom : Two Voices are there, one is of the Sea, One of the Mountains, each a mighty Voice. For a long time it was in these two countries alone that liberty maintained its life, while elsewhere feudal oli- garchies were being superseded by despotic monarchies. After a time Holland followed, and the three peoples of the Scandinavian North, kindred to us in blood, have followed likewise. In England Liberty appeared from early days in a recognition of the right of the citizen to be protected against arbitrary power and to bear his share in the work of governing his own community. It is from Great Britain that other European countries whose political condition had, from the end of the Middle Ages down to the end of the eighteenth century, been unfavourable to freedom, drew, in that and the following century, their examples of a Government which could be united and efficient and yet popular, strong to defend itself against attack, and yet respectful of the rights of its own subjects. The British Constitution has been the model whence GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 21 most of the countries that have within recent times adopted constitutional government have drawn their institutions. Britain has herself during the last eighty years made her constitution more and more truly popular. It is now as democratic as that of any other European State ; and in their dealings with other countries the British people have shown a constant sympathy with freedom. They showed it early in the nineteenth century to Spanish constitutional reformers and to Greek insurgents against Turkish tyranny. They showed it to Switzerland when they foiled (in 1847) the attempt of Metternich to interfere with her independence. They have shown it in other ways within recent years. Britain has given free Governments to all those of her colonies in which there is a population of European origin capable of using them, and this has confirmed the attachment to herself of those colonies. In Canada two insurrections broke out in 1837—38, insignificant, and easily suppressed. But the warning they gave in revealing local discontent with the existing system was not lost. A new system was set up, discontent quickly disappeared, and some of those who had been in arms against the British Crown were before long its loyal supporters, a few of them even among its Ministers. This became the beginning of that policy of Dominion Self-Government which has so powerfully cemented the different parts of what has been well called the Union of British Commonwealths. In 1907, only six years after a war with the two Dutch Republics of South Africa, which had ended by a treaty that brought them into the territories of Britain, she restored self-government to the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and they soon afterwards became members of the new autonomous Confederation called the Union of South Africa, side by side with the old British colonies of the Cape and Natal. The first Prime Minister of that Union was General Louis Botha, who had been Commander-in-Chief of the Boer forces in their war with Britain. What has been the result .'' When the present war broke out the German Govern- 22 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. ment, which had long been planning to induce the Transvaal and the Orange Free State to break away from Britain, found to their astonishment that the vast majority of the South African Boers stood heartily by her. General Botha took command of the Union armies, and overcame the German forces in the German colony of South- West Africa without any assistance from British troops. So in German East Africa General Smuts, who had been one of the most efficient leaders of the Boer forces in the South African War of 1 899-1 901, was placed in command of the army which drove the German native and white troops out of that region into Portuguese territory and relieved the inhabitants from the harshness of German rule. He has now been for some time a trusted and most valuable member of the British War Cabinet. So much for South African loyalty to the Empire. As regards the other self-governing Dominions, which the Germans expected to take the opportunity this war would have afforded of severing their connection with the Mother Country, every one knows with what ardour and promptitude they placed all their resources at the service of the common cause and with what valour their soldiers have fought for it. These are the fruits of those principles of liberty by which British policy has been guided since those great colonies grew up. The free citizens of neutral nations ought not to forget that the principles of freedom are involved in the present war. More and more as the struggle goes on has the conduct of the German statesmen and soldiers shown that a Government which spurns Right and rests upon Force is of necessity the enemy of every government that rests upon the will of the people, and will try to crush or fetter liberty wherever it has the chance. Both cannot live side by side. This is the meaning of President Wilson's dictum that " the world must be made safe for democracy." Britain, having stood for freedom through many centuries, naturally became its champion in this decisive hour. The United States, the eldest-born child of the liberty which Englishmen had won for II GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 23 themselves before the separation of 1776, has entered the war from like motives, and is waging it as a crusade. Political liberty, itself founded on a recognition of the worth of the individual man, has in England borne its appropriate fruit in creating a respect for the rights of every human being of whatever race. England led the way in the abolition of negro slavery. More than eighty years ago her Parliament voted sums, enormous for those days, to liberate slaves in the British colonies. The extinction of the slave trade was due to her mission- aries, among whom the honoured name of Livingstone stands first, to her philanthropists at home, to the energy of her naval officers on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. For the last three generations her Govern- ment has everywhere sought to secure the rights and promote the welfare of the native races under her control. Her career was not spotless, for there have now and then been errors, or lapses from the normal standard she prescribed for herself. But compare her long record in this respect with the short but scandalous record of oppression which the German administrators have made for themselves in South-West Africa, in East Africa, and in Togoland. These have been some of the fruits of Liberty as Britain has understood it and practised it, even before her own Government had taken a democratic form : and they have been profitable for the world. II. Britain stands for the principle of Nationality. She has often given her aid, material or moral, to a people rest- less under foreign dominion who sought to deliver them- selves from the stranger and to be ruled by a Government of their own. The efforts of Greece from 1820 till her liberation from the Turks, the efforts of Italy to shake off the hated yoke of Austria and attain national unity under an Italian King found their warmest support in England. English Liberals gave their sympathy to national move- ments in Hungary and Poland. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour, Kossuth, and Deak were heroes to the British people as Kosciuszko had been to an earlier genera- tion. They gave that sympathy also to the German 24 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES movement for national unity from 1848 to 1870, for in those days that movement was led by German Liberals of lofty aims who did not desire, like the recent rulers of Germany, to make their national strength a menace to the peace and security of their neighbours. In India, England has long ceased to absorb into her dominions the native States, and has been seeking only to guide the rulers of those States into the paths of just and humane administration, while leaving their internal affairs to their own Governments. It was not possible to extend a representative system resembling that of England herself to the numerous races that compose the Indian population, because those races were not yet fit to work such a system. A firm and impartial hand is indeed needed to keep the peace among them. But the British Government in India regards, and has long regarded, its power as a trust to be used for the benefit of the people, and in recent years efforts have been made to associate the people more and more with the work of the higher branches of administration and legislation. Hindu and Musulman judges sit beside European judges in the highest Courts, while the vast mass of local administration is conducted by native officials and native magistrates. Now (in 1 9 1 8) a scheme of far-reaching change has been framed, designed to create representative institutions over nearly the whole of British India, and under these the welfare of the country will be more and more in native hands. No tribute or revenue of any kind has for very many years past been drawn by England from India, and, as every one knows, neither has it been levied from any of those colonies which the Home Government controls. The good results of this policy have been seen in the steady increase of the confidence and good-will of the native rulers and aristocracy of India to the British Government, so that when the present war broke out all those rulers at once offered military aid. Large Indian forces gladly came to fight, and fought most gallantly, in Mesopotamia and in Palestine, where they II GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 25 were opposed to a Muslim enemy, as well as beside the British forces in France. I do not claim that these successes attained by British ideas and methods are due to any innate and peculiar merits of British character. They may be largely ascribed to the fact that the insular position and the political and social conditions of England enabled her, earlier than most other peoples, both to attain constitutional liberty and to learn to love it and trust it. She has had long experience, and has profited by experience. She has had cause to see how much better it is to govern by justice and in a fair and generous spirit than to rely on brute force. Once in her history, 140 years ago, she lost the North American Colonies because, in days when British freedom was less firmly established than it is now, a narrow-minded King induced his Government to treat those colonies with unwise harshness. She has never forgotten that lesson, and has more and more come to see that the principles of freedom and nationality are a surer basis for contentment and loyalty than is the application of military power. Compare with the happy results that have followed the instances I have mentioned of respect for liberty and national sentiment in the cases of South Africa and India, as well as in the self-governing Dominions, the results in North Slesvig, in Posen, in Alsace-Lorraine, of the opposite policy of force sternly applied by Prussian statesmen and soldiers. III. Britain stands for the maintenance of treaty obligations and of those rights of the smaller nations which rest upon such obligations. The circumstances of the present war, which saw a peaceful neutral country suddenly attacked by a Power that had itself solemnly guaranteed the neutrality of its territory, summoned England to stand up for the defence of those rights and obligations, for she felt that the good faith of treaties is the only foundation on which peace between nations can rest, and is, especially, the only guarantee for the security of those which do not maintain large armies. We recognize the value of the smaller States, knowing 26 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. what they have done for the progress of mankind, grateful for the examples set by many of them of national heroism and of achievements in science, litera- ture, and art. So far from desiring to see the smaller peoples absorbed into the larger, as German theorists appear to wish, we believe that the world would profit if there were in it a greater number of small peoples, each developing its own type of character and its own forms of thought and art. Both these principles — the observance of treaties and the rights of the smaller neutral States — were raised in the sharpest form by the unprovoked invasion of Belgium only two days after the German Minister at Brussels had lulled the uneasiness of the Belgian Govern- ment by his pacific assurances. Such conduct was a threat to every neutral nation. That which befell Bel- gium might have befallen Switzerland or Holland had Germany decided that it was to her interests to attack either of them for the sake of securing a passage for her armies. England was obliged to come to Belgium's support and fulfil the obligation she had herself contracted to defend the neutrality of the country unrighteously attacked. When the German armies suddenly crossed the Belgian frontier, carrying slaughter and destruction in their train, an issue of transcendent importance was raised. Can treaties be violated with impunity ? Is a nation which, trusting to the protection of international justice and treaty obligations, has not so armed itself as to be able to repel invasion, obliged helplessly to submit to see its territory overrun and its towns destroyed ? If such violence prevails, what sense of security can any small nation enjoy ? Will it not be the helpless prey of some stronger Power, whenever that Power finds an interest in pouncing upon it ? What becomes of the whole fabric of international law and international justice ? Britain, obliged by honour to succour Belgium, thus became the champion of international right and of the security of the smaller nations. There is nothing she more earnestly desires to obtain as a result of this war GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 27 than that the smaller States should be placed for the future in a position of safety, in which the guarantees for their independence and peace shall be stronger than before, because the sanction of the law of nations will have been made more effective. IV. Britain stands for the regulation of the methods of warfare in the interests of humanity, and especially for the exemption of non-combatants from the sufferings and horrors which war brings. Here is another issue raised by the present crisis, another conflict of opposing principles. In the ancient world, and among semi- civilized peoples in more recent times, non-combatant civilians as well as the fighting forces had to bear those sufferings. The men were killed, combatants and non- combatants alike, the women and children, if spared, were reduced to slavery. That is what the gang which now rules Turkey went on doing all through 19 15 in Asia Minor and Armenia, on a far larger scale than even the massacres perpetrated by Abdul Hamid in 1895-96. The snake has shed his old skin, but he is none the less venomous. This gang of ruffians slaughtered the men, enslaved some of the women by selling them in open market or seizing them for the harem, and drove the rest, with the children, out into deserts to perish from hunger. The Turkish Government is, of course, a thoroughly barbarous Government, and what surprises those who know its history is not the spirit it has again displayed, but the connivance or encouragement of the nominally Christian Government of Germany. But in civilized Europe Christian nations have, during the last few centuries, softened the conduct of war by agreeing to respect the lives and property of innocent non-combatants, and thus, although the scale of modern wars has been greater, less misery has been inflicted on inhabitants of invaded territories. Their sufferings were less in the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth, and less in the nineteenth than in the eighteenth. In the war of 1870—71 the German troops, though addicted to the plunder of houses and sometimes guilty of excesses, 28 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. seem on the whole to have behaved better in France than an invading force had usually behaved in similar circumstances. Now, however, in this present war, the German military and naval commanders have taken a long step backwards towards barbarism. Innocent non-combatants have been slaughtered by thousands in Belgium and in France, and the only excuse offered (for the facts of the slaughter are practically admiitted) is that German troops have sometimes been fired at by civilians. Now it is true that any civilian who takes up arms without observing the rules prescribed for civilian resistance, which custom has established and the Hague Convention has sanctioned, is liable to be shot. The rules of war permit that. But it is contrary to the rules of war, as well as to common justice and humanity, to kill a civilian who has not himself sought to harm an invading force. German air -war has been conducted with equal inhumanity. Bombs have during three years been dropped upon undefended towns and quiet country villages in Eastern and Central England, on places where there are no troops, no war factories, no stores of ammuni- tion. Very few combatants have suffered, and the women and children killed have been far more numerous than the male non-combatants. No military advantage has been gained by these crimes. They have not even frightened the people generally. The same retrogression towards barbarism is seen in the German conduct of war at sea. It had long been the rule and practice of civilized nations that when a merchant vessel is destroyed by a ship of war because it is impossible to carry the merchant vessel into the port of the captor, the crew and the passengers of the vessel should be taken off and their lives saved, before the vessel is sunk. Com- mon humanity prescribes this, but the German sub- marines have been sinking unarmed merchant vessels and drowning their passengers and crews without giving them even the opportunity to surrender. These facts raise an issue in which the interests of GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 29 all mankind are involved. The German Government claims the right to kill the innocent because it suits their military interests. We deny this right, as all countries ought to deny it. England is contending in this war for humanity against cruelty, and she appeals to the conscience of all the neutral peoples to give her their moral support in this contention. Peoples that are now neutral may suffer in future, just as those innocent persons I have referred to are suffering now by these acts of unprecedented barbarity. V. England stands for a Pacific as opposed to a Military type of civilization. Her regular army had always been small in proportion to her population, and very small in comparison with the armies of great Con- tinental nations. Although she recognizes that there are some countries in which universal service may be necessary, and times at which it may be necessary in any country, she has preferred to leave her people free to follow their civil pursuits, and had raised her army by voluntary enlistment. Every stranger who before 1 9 14 came to England from the European Continent was struck by the fact that in the streets of her cities there were hardly any soldiers to be seen. Military and naval officers have never, as in Germany, formed a class by themselves, have never been a political power, or exercised political influence. The Cabinet Ministers placed in charge of these two services have always been civilian statesmen — not Generals or Admirals — until the out- break of the present war, when, for the first time, under the stress of a new emergency, a professional soldier of long experience was placed at the head of the War Department. England has repeatedly sought at Euro- pean Conferences to bring about a reduction of war arma- ments, as well as to secure improved rules mitigating the usages of war ; but has found her efforts bafl^ed by the opposition of the German Government. In none of the larger countries, except, indeed, in the United States, are the people so generally and sincerely attached to peace. It may be asked why, if this is so, does England 30 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. maintain so large a navy. The question deserves an answer. Her navy is maintained for three reasons. The first is, that as her army has been very small she is obliged to protect herself by a strong home fleet from any risk of invasion. She has never forgotten the lesson of the Napoleonic wars, when it was the navy that saved her from the fate which befell so many European coun- tries at Napoleon's hands. Were she not to keep up this first line of defence at sea, a huge army and a huge military expenditure in time of peace would be inevitable. The second reason is that as England does not produce nearly enough food to support her population, she must draw supplies from other countries, and would be in danger of starvation if in war-time she lost the com- mand of the sea. It is therefore vital to her existence that she should be able to secure the unimpeded import of articles of food. And the third reason is that England is responsible for the defence of the coasts and the com- merce of her colonies and other foreign possessions, such as India. These do not maintain a naval force sufficient for their defence, and the Mother Country is therefore compelled to have a fleet sufficient to guarantee their safety and protect their shipping. No other great State has such far-reaching liabilities, and, therefore, no other needs a navy so large as Britain must maintain. In this policy there is no warlike or aggressive spirit, no menace to other countries. It is a measure purely of defence, costly and burdensome, but borne because her own safety and that of her colonies absolutely require it. Neither has Britain used her naval strength to inflict harm on any other countries. In time of peace she has not tried to use it to injure the commerce of her chief industrial competitors. No step was ever taken to retard the rapid growth of the mercantile marines of Germany and Norway, both of which have been im- mensely developed in recent years. The free and equal use of ocean highways has, in time of peace, never been infringed by her. In time of war she doubtless exercises those rights of maritime blockade, search, and capture II GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 31 which her naval strength enables her to exert. But rights of blockade and capture have always been exerted by every naval power in war time. They are a recognized method of war, and were exerted in the American Civil War fifty years ago, in the war of France with China, in the war of Chile with Peru, and in the more recent war between Japan and Russia. They are not rights newly claimed by Britain, and they have been exercised with a constant respect for the lives of non-combatants. Much has been said since the war began about " the freedom of the seas." What sense that phrase has, or ought to have, I will not venture to enquire. No two persons seem to use it in the same sense. In the German mouth it seems to mean that no State is to possess a navy larger than Germany's. The only rational mean- ing it can have in war time would seem to be a rule granting the immunity from capture by war-ships to vessels carrying merchandise or passengers only. It is an arguable question whether on a balance of considera- tions the right of capture ought or ought not to be recognized by international law. Hitherto it has been recognized, so the British fleet has put it in force against German ships, and always with due humanity. In peace time, Britain, as already observed, has never interfered with the free use of the sea by the ships, either armed or unarmed, of any other nation. So far from using her sea-power to the prejudice of other countries in peace time, and trying by its aid to promote her own commercial interests, Britain is the only great country which has opened her doors freely to the commerce of every other country. More than sixty years ago she adopted, and has ever since consistently practised, the policy of free trade. She imposes upon imports no duties intended to protect her own agriculture or her own manufactures. She gives no advantages to her own shipping in her own ports, she pays no bounties to her own shipping, she allows even coasting trade between her own ports to be open on equal terms to the ships of all nations. A Dutch or Swedish or Norwegian 32 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. vessel may trade from Newcastle to London as freely as a British vessel. And this free trade policy has been carried out consistently in all the British colonial posses- sions. Neither in India, nor in those British colonies whose tariffs are controlled by the Mother Country, are duties imposed upon foreign imports, except for the purpose of raising revenue. Such self-governing Dominions as Canada and Australia have control of their own tariffs and impose what duties they please — even against the Mother Country ; but that is a part of the self-government which these Dominions have long enjoyed. The policy of free trade has been supported, and is valued, in Britain not only on economic grounds, but also because it is deemed to promote international peace. [It is only of that aspect of the subject that I speak here, because its fiscal aspects raise controversies unsuited to these pages.] Richard Cobden, the first and most powerful champion in Parliament of that policy, saw in this tendency its highest value. He thought that it would so link the nations together, helping them to know one another, enriching them all, and making each interested in the prosperity of the other, each being both a producer and a consumer, each supplying the other's needs and profiting by the exchange, that each and all would be reluctant to break the general peace. He was unquestionably right in principle, although the commercial interests of Germany in main- taining her trade with England were not strong enough to overcome the war policy of the Junker party which expected to extend trade by conquest. The failure of their attempt will hereafter be a warning. Cobden's hopes have proved to be too sanguine, because he did not foresee — how could he — the selfishness and rapacity of the Junker party and its military chiefs. But this idea, that the more the peoples trade freely with one another, the more they will learn that their true interests are not opposed, is sound, and has always had great weight in British commercial policy, which has sought for no ir GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 22 exclusive advantages, but was content, confident in its resourceful energy, to leave the field open to all com- petitors. As an industrial people the English desire peace. They have not worshipped the State, and expected it to conquer markets or extort concessions for their benefit. They have never made military glory their ideal. They have regarded war, not like Treitschke and his school, as wholesome and necessary, but as an evil, an evil which, although it gives an opportunity (as Europe sees to-day) for splendid displays of patriotism and heroic valour, is the cause of infinite suffering and misery, and ought, if possible, to be expunged from the world. The killing of workers and the destruction of property appear to them to be a hideous waste of human effort. They have always been ready to fight when fighting became necessary. But they have not, like Prussia, loved war for its own sake, for they believe that it has done more than anything else to retard the progress of mankind. Our English ideal for the future is of a world in which every people shall have within its own borders a free national government resting on, and conforming to, the general will of its citizens, respecting the freedom of the individual, and not seeking to cramp or supersede his initiative, a government able to devote its efforts to improving the condition of the people without encroach- ing on its neighbours or putting unfair pressure upon them, or being disturbed by the fear of an attack from enemies abroad. Legislators and administrators have already tasks sufficiently difficult in reconciling the claims of different classes, in adjusting the interests of capital and labour, in promoting health and diffusing education and enlightenment, without the addition of those tasks and dangers which arise from the terror of foreign war. There is, of course, a certain chauvinistic element in England, as in all countries, which finds some expres- sion in newspapers and books. There are some persons with a deficient respect for the rights of other nations — D 34 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. persons who indulge the pleasures of hatred, persons who believe in force, persons who, in fact, have what is now known as the " Prussian view of the world," and the Prussian preference of Might to Right. But such persons are in Britain comparatively few ; they are a diminish- ing quantity and they command little influence. The great bulk of the nation does not cherish hatreds, is satisfied with what it possesses, does not intend to aggress on its neighbours, does not seek to impose its own type of civilization on the world. Our English phrase *' Live and let live " expresses this feeling. Though we prefer our own way of living for ourselves, we do not think it therefore the best for other peoples also, and no more wish to see the world all English than we wish to see it all Prussian. The British people did not enter the war for the sake of gaining anything for themselves. They have not now fixed their mind on gaining (so far as concerns objects specially dear to themselves ^) anything except a vindication of the sanctity of treaties, a completer security for the rights of neutral nations, the liberation of Belgium with full compensation to her for the injuries inflicted by the German armies, and adequate guarantees of future peace for themselves and their colonies. To this one must now add — since the Asiatic massacres of 1 9 1 5 — measures that will make impossible in the future cruelties and oppressions such as the Turks have practised upon the Eastern Christians. We have been horrified by those massacres ; and the disclosure of the plans of the German Government for obtaining control over Western Asia, including the Caucasian countries and Persia, have convinced us that neither Turks nor Germans can be suffered to retain any foothold east or south of the Taurus mountains. In the foregoing pages I have sought to describe what I believe to be the principles and feelings and aims ^ I speak, of course, only of what regards Britain's own aims, not of those which primarily concern her Allies. Besides these aims there are, of course, also to be regarded the questions which affect subject nationalities, now oppressed, and the questions which concern the welfare of native races, particularly in Africa. GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 35 of the British people as a whole. It will not, I hope, be supposed that the description is submitted in a spirit of pharisaic self-satisfaction or self-assertion. We must not claim for Britain either that she is virtuous above other peoples, or that she has steadily lived up to her ideals. She has — as represented by those who were from time to time her rulers — sometimes declined from those ideals ; and, even since her government became in 1832 more demo- cratic, may have seemed from time to time oblivious of them, whether through passion and pride or in ignorance of facts which she ought to have known. Nevertheless the principles above set forth have been, in the main, those which have long guided her course at home, and have, more recently, guided also her policy abroad. They are the principles to which the national mind has returned after temporary aberrations. They are certainly those which animate her now, and which are moving her to make sacrifices as great as a people has ever made in what it held to be a righteous cause. Let me now add a few words of a more personal kind to explain the sentiments of those Englishmen who have in time past known and admired the achievements of the German people in literature, learning, and science, who had desired peace with them, who had been the constant advocates of friendship between the two nations. Such Englishmen, who do not cease to be lovers of peace because this war, felt to be righteous, commands their hearty support, are now just as determined as any others to carry on the war to victory. Why ? Because to them this war presents itself as a conflict of principles. On the one side there is the doctrine that the end of the State is Power, that Might makes Right, that the State is above morality, that war is necessary and even desirable as a factor in progress, that the rights of small States must give way to the interests of great States, that the Statd may disregard all obligations whether undertaken by treaties or prescribed by the common sentiment of mankind, and that what is called military necessity justi- fies every kind of harshness and cruelty in war. This 1,6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES is an old doctrine — as old as the Sophists whom Socrates encountered in Athens. It has in every age been held by some ambitious and unscrupulous statesmen. Many a Greek tyrant of antiquity, many an Italian tyrant in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, put it in practice. Caesar Borgia is the most striking instance in the fifteenth century, Philip II. of Spain and his minions in the sixteenth, Frederick the Great in the eighteenth. Napoleon Bonaparte in the nineteenth. On the other side there is the doctrine that the end of the State is Justice, the doctrine that the State is, like the individual, subject to a moral law and bound in honour to observe its promises, that nations owe duties to one another and to mankind at large, that they have all more to gain by peace than by strife, that national hatreds are deadly things, condemned by philosophy and by Christianity. In the victory of one or the other of these two sets of principles the future of mankind seems to us to be at stake. I do not mean to attribute to the German people an adherence to the former set of doctrines, for I do not know how far these doctrines are held outside the military and naval caste which has now unhappily gained control of German policy, and it is hard to believe that the German people, as they were known to those of us who studied at German universities more than fifty years ago, could possibly approve of the action of their Govern- ment if their Government suffered them to become acquainted with the facts relating to the origin and conduct of the war as those facts are now patent to the rest of the world. As we English had no hatred of the German people, neither have we any wish to break up Germany, destroying her national unity, or to take from her any territory which is really German, or to interfere in any way with her internal politics. Our quarrel is with the German Government. We think it a danger to every peaceful country, and believe that in fighting against its doctrines, its ambitions, its methods of warfare, we and our Allies are virtually fighting the battle of all GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 37 peace-loving neutral nations as well as our own. We must fight on till victory is won, for a Government which scorns treaties and wages an inhuman warfare against innocent non-combatants cannot be suffered to prevail by such methods. A triumphant and aggressive Germany, mistress of the seas as well as of the land, would be a menace to every nation, even to those of the western hemisphere. Had she been able to retain Belgium, to ruin France, to dominate Turkey and Persia and Turkistan, and, having done all this, to proceed to create an overwhelming navy — aims which it now appears she has cherished — adding to these gains that of exploiting Russia through vassal States in Finland, Esthonia, Lithuania, Poland, the Ukraine and Trans- caucasia, no country would have been safe, not even Brazil and Argentina. Be this as it may, the facts show that the present rulers of Germany have acted upon the former set of doctrines (already described) as consistently as ever did Frederick or Napoleon. They seem to us to be smitten with a kind of mental disease which has sapped honour, ex- tinguished pity, and destroyed the sense of right and wrong. They invaded Belgium without provocation, and slaughtered thousands of innocent non-combatants. They persisted, against the protests of the United States, in drowning innocent non-combatants at sea. They looked calmly on while the Turkish allies whom they have dragged into the war, and whose action they could have restrained if they had cared to do so, were extermin- ating, with every cruelty Turkish ferocity can devise, a whole Christian nation. These things are a reversion to the ancient methods of savagery which marked the war- fare of bygone ages.^ They are a challenge to civilized mankind — to neutrals as well as to the now belligerent States. Neutral nations would do well to recognize ^ A German writer, Herr Mueller-Holm, says: "When this war broke out, wc were prepared for dreadful things — unprecedented squandering of human life, fearful misery, famine, disease. What we were not prepared for is this shocking reversion toward moral savagery." (Quoted by Professor Munroe Smith in Political Science Quarterly for September 19 17.) 38 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap, n this, for they are themselves concerned. The same methods may be hereafter used against them as are being used now. They also ought to desire the defeat of any and every Government which adopts such principles and practises such methods, for its victory would be a blow to morality and human progress which it would take centuries to retrieve. Those Englishmen whose views I am seeking to ex- press, recognizing the allegiance we all owe to humanity at large, and believing that progress is achieved more by co-operation than by strife, are hoping and striving for something more than the victory of their own country. They desire to see the world relieved from the burden of armaments and from that constant terror of war which has been darkening its sky for so many generations. They ask whether it may not be possible, after the war has come to an end, to form among the nations an effective League of Peace, embracing smaller as well as larger peoples, under whose aegis disputes might be amicably settled and the power of the League invoked to prevent any one State from disturbing the general tranquillity. The obstacles in the way of creating such a League are many and obvious, but whatever else may come out of the war, we in England hope that one result of it will be the creation of some machinery calculated to avert the recurrence of so awful a calamity as that from which mankind is now suffering. And this is one of the chief objects for which we are now contending, sacrificing every month thousands of the flower of our youth. CHAPTER III THE WAR STATE : ITS MIND AND ITS METHODS The present war difFers from all that have gone before it, not only in its vast scale and in the volume of misery it has brought upon the world, but also in the fact that it is a war of Principles, and a war in which the permanent interests, not merely of the belligerent Powers, but of all nations, are involved as such interests were never involved before. It concerns the world as a whole in both ways. The principles involved affect all mankind, but whichever way the issue of the war settles them, the settlement will be decisive for a long time to come. The good or evil fortune, materially and morally, of every nation, even of half-civilized tribes in Asia and Africa, will depend on the hands to whom power may fall when the war is over. These are facts which many persons in neutral coun- tries have not yet understood. In particular, they have not realized what are the doctrines and the ideals of the contending nations as these have appeared in the conduct of the war. Each side has proclaimed its doctrines and its ideals to some extent even in official documents, but far more fully through books and newspapers. Never before did belligerents make such efforts to put their respective cases before the world ; never was the behaviour of the fighting forces the subject of so much comment. Nevertheless, in many neutral countries men seem to think that, as has usually happened in previous wars, there is no great distinction between the combatants. They perceive that charges and counter- charges are 39 40 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. bandied to and fro, and they have not the patience to inquire which are true and which false. Being perhaps too lazy or indifferent to examine the motives and the conduct of the parties, they lapse into the easy assump- tion that both are equally to blame, and that if they them- selves have any duty at all as citizens of a neutral country, that duty is only to do their best to bring back peace at the earliest possible moment, with no thought for a more distant future. Some neutral writers have put this view crudely by saying it is only a quarrel over a bone of two dogs whom the bystander would like to separate. Each nation is, they assume, fighting for its own selfish interests, just as the monarchs of Europe used to fight in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to acquire territory or trade. Now this is not such a war. I do not deny that such a war of the older type might still occur. Nations might quarrel over their respective territorial claims and become angry enough to fight the matter out instead of going to arbitration. Such a war need not have raised any moral issue. For each of the contending claims there might have been good arguments, and it might well have been thought that faults on both sides had led to the outbreak of hostilities. Even if the balance of merits inclined one way or the other, dispassionate and well- informed observers in neutral countries might have been divided in opinion as to those merits, and have hesitated to express their sympathies, as happened when war broke out between Prussia and Austria in 1866 and again between Russia and Japan in 1901. But, let me repeat it, this is not a case in which neutrals can look on with an indifferent or merely curious eye. This is a war of Principles, moral and political, in which every man in neutral countries who has a sense of his personal duties to his own country, and to humanity, ought to try to find the truth and to form an honest and impartial judgment on the merits, so that the sentiment of his country may cast its weight on the side of what may appear to be that of Justice and of the general welfare. THE WAR STATE 41 Into the circumstances attending the outbreak of the war I will not here enter. That would lead me into too wide a field. Those circumstances may be studied in the documents published by the belligerent Powers. No fuller and fairer examinations of them have been published than are contained in two books written by American jurists, the book of Professor Ellery Stowell entitled The Diplomacy of the War of 1^14^ and the book of Mr. James M. Beck called The Evidence in the Case, books to which rather than to any English book I desire to refer because their authors, being neutrals, wrote with a complete freedom from national bias. Since they appeared in 1915 we have also had (19 18) the Memo- randum of Prince Lichnowsky.^ I shall here examine, not the origins of the war, but the Conduct of the war, and that with especial reference to the light it casts upon the mind and purposes of those who rule Germany. However men may dispute as to the purposes and motives of the rulers and statesmen of Austria, Germany, Russia, France, and Britain, trying to set them in a worse or in a better light, the actual facts regarding the behaviour of the armed forces of the several nations are not really in dispute. Now and then some controversy has arisen about particular cases. But the broad facts stand ; and these facts are enough, when carefully considered, to indicate the temper and spirit of the contending nations, to show by what principles they are guided, and what results the affirmation of those principles by success is likely to have on the future conduct of nations to one another and the well-being of mankind. Accordingly, without stopping to refute charges brought against Britain of having desired and planned this war, nor the supposed malicious scheme of " encirc- ling Germany " by a ring of enemies which has been falsely attributed to King Edward VII., I will go straight to the first act in the war, the invasion of Belgium. It is a long-settled rule of international law that no belligerent ^ See above, p. 17. 42 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. nation has any right to claim a passage for its army across the territory of a neutral state ; and the neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1839 to which France, Prussia, and Great Britain were parties. Nevertheless the position which Belgium held between the German Empire and France had obliged her to con- sider the possibility that in the event of a war between these two Powers her neutrality might not be respected. That neutrality she was bound to maintain. It was the condition of her creation and her existence. So, in July 1 9 14, when the danger of war between Germany and France seemed imminent, France and Germany were both asked by Belgium to renew their promises to abstain from violating her neutrality. France pro- mised. The German Minister in Brussels replied that he knew of the assurances given by the German Chancellor in 191 1 to respect Belgian neutrality, and that he "was certain that the sentiments expressed at that time had not changed." Nevertheless on August 2 the same Minister presented a note to the Belgian Government demanding a passage through Belgium for the German army on pain of an instant declaration of war. Startled as they were by the suddenness with which this terrific war-cloud had risen on the eastern horizon, the leaders of the nation rallied round the king in his resolution to refuse the demand and to prepare for resistance. They were aware of the danger which would confront the civilian population of the country if it were tempted to take part in the work of national defence. Orders were accordingly issued by the civil governors of provinces, and by the burgomasters of towns, that the civilian in- habitants were to take no part in hostilities and to offer no provocation to the invaders. That no excuse might be furnished for severities, the populations of many important towns were instructed to surrender all fire- arms into the hands of the local officials. On the evening of August 4 the German armies crossed the frontier into Belgium. They immediately began to shoot harmless civilians and to set fire to villages. This was the opening THE WAR STATE 43 of that campaign of slaughter and destruction which they carried on against the civiHan population of this neutral and practically defenceless country, men, women, and children, for several weeks, till all Belgium, except a district in the south-west, had been subjugated. All along the line of the German march innocent civilians, old men, women, and children, as well as other inhabitants, were murdered on the pretext that some persons in the towns and villages had shot at the invading force. The leading inhabitants — often priests — were constantly seized and called " hostages," who were to be put to death if any resistance was made by any civilian, though these persons were not responsible for such resistance and could not have prevented it. Such *' hostages " were frequently shot. Hundreds of innocent persons were seized, packed in baggage or cattle cars, and sent by railway to Germany, often without food or drink for many hours together. Villages and large parts of such a city as Louvain were destroyed by fire. Shocking outrages were committed upon women, and that by officers as well as soldiers, and little effort was made to restrain or punish such crimes, which were often committed under the influence of liquor. The accounts of these murders and other excesses which the refugees who escaped from Belgium reported found at first little credence in England, for it was hard to believe that the soldiers of a civilized nation could commit them. But when the Belgian, French, and British Governments caused the evidence of eye-witnesses among the refugees to be carefully taken and tested, it was proved beyond all question not only that such things had happened, but that they had happened by the orders of the German officers, who themselves were acting under orders from headquarters, and who some- times expressed regret at having to execute such orders. A full account of them, with many extracts from the evidence, will be found in the Reports issued by the Belgian Government and in the Report of the Committee appointed by the British Government, issued in May 1 9 1 5. 44 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES If there are any persons in neutral countries who still think such things too horrible to be true, let them weigh these two facts. Diaries (written in German) found upon German prisoners or on the bodies of dead German soldiers contain records of the same (or quite similar) crimes as the evidence of the refugees established. The genuineness of these diaries, many of which have been published by the Belgian, French, and British investiga- tors, is not disputed by the German Government. They alone are sufficient to prove how the troops behaved. The second fact is that the German Government has never attempted to disprove the evidence adduced against them. They did publish an official reply to the Belgian reports, but it consisted chiefly of allegations that Belgian civilians had given provocation by firing on German troops, thus " violating the well-established rules of international law." As the German armies had entered Belgium in violation of international law, this argument loses whatever force it might have had if these armies had been engaged in legitimate warfare. But the evidence adduced by the German White Book is often flimsy and untrustworthy, and the few cases in which it may deserve credit are conspicuously insufficient to justify, or even to palliate, the excesses committed by the troops. In reality, the vast majority of the persons executed, including the so-called " hostages," had no responsibility for the occasional firings, such as they may have been. The fact that some other civilian belonging to the same town may have fired on the invaders does not justify the killing of an innocent person. To seize innocent inhabitants, call them " hostages " for the good behaviour of their town, and shoot them if the invaders are molested by persons whose actions these so-called " hostages " cannot control, is murder and nothing else. Yet this is what the German com- manders have done upon a great scale. The executions took place to strike terror into the Belgian population, to make easier the passage of the German armies, to coerce the Belgian forces into despair of resistance. This Ill THE WAR STATE 45 attempt at a justification was a tacit admission that the massacres had actually been perpetrated. The facts soon became known in Holland, a few miles from some of the towns where the worst atrocities had been per- petrated, and no one, outside Germany, now entertains any doubts regarding them. These were the facts. What were the legal justifica- tions alleged by the German Government ? Two were put forward. One was that France had been planning to attack Germany through Belgium, and that French officers had, in pursuance of the plan, already entered Belgium to arrange for the execution of an offensive there. This was a pure invention. The story was improbable, for it was not in the military interests of France to adopt such a method, and no evidence was adduced to support it. It was soon dropped, having served its temporary purpose with the credulous German public. The other allegation was that the British Government had conspired with that of Belgium sometime before to send a British army into the country to attack Germany. This was equally baseless. A British military attache had conversed with some Belgian officials as to what ought to be done if Germany were to invade Belgium, since Britain was pledged by a public treaty to defend Belgium in the event of her being attacked by any foreign Power, a contingency which it was necessary to provide for, but no idea of making an offensive against Germany through her had ever been entertained in England ; and this has been conclusively shown by the texts which the British Government has published. England had saved Belgian territory from attack in 1870 by requiring both France and Germany to abstain from entering it, and she might have to do so again. Bismarck and Louis Napoleon had then given the promise required, but England could not be sure that Bismarck's successors would do so likewise. On this head, however, nothing more need be said, for the German Chancellor openly confessed in the 46 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. Reichstag a few days after the beginning of the war that his Government had " committed a wrong " and had violated international law by carrying war into a neutral country,^ the neutrality and independence of which they had guaranteed, and which, had there been no guarantee at all, was entitled by international law, and on the common principles of justice, to be exempt from invasion. His plea was military necessity, a necessity of which Germany herself was to be the judge. When the German armies entered France, they applied the same methods as in Belgium. Non-combatants were ruthlessly murdered. Villages were destroyed ; houses pillaged and burnt. Women were violated, and no attempt made to restrain either the lust or the ferocity of the soldiery. Full accounts of these horrors, con- firmed by the evidence of many soldiers' diaries, have been published by the French Government, and others may be found in the British Committee's Reports, as well as in many books, such as that of Professor Morgan. Next after the murders on land came those at sea. Submarines began to destroy, usually without any warn- ing, unarmed merchant vessels, drowning their crews, and also unarmed passenger vessels, drowning their passengers. The Lusitania^ in which nearly twelve hun- dred people perished, many of them citizens of neutral countries, was only one of many cases. Fishing-boats were constantly destroyed, and cases occurred in which, when a vessel had been destroyed, its crew, trying to escape, were shelled by the submarine, or the submarine placed them on its upper surface and then submerged, drowning them. These practices, gross violations of the rule of international law, which requires that the safety of those on board a merchant ship shall be provided for if she is sunk, have gone on till now. Even hospital ships, about whose character there could be no mistake, have been frequently torpedoed. Concurrently with these acts there were frequent ^ The German War Manual itself recognizes this principle. THE WAR STATE 47 attacks upon open undefended coast towns In England, often upon health resorts, such as Scarborough and Ramsgate, in which many civilians were killed. A little later than the murders on land and sea came the murders from the air. In the many air-raids over England no military damage has been done, and only a handful of soldiers, about fifty (so far as I know), have suffered. But many hundreds of innocent civilians, mostly women and children, have been maimed or killed ; and the murders still go on. The German Government must by this time know that these raids have no effect upon the British people except to rouse their anger and so to make them more determined than ever to prosecute the war. Such murders were blunders as well as crimes. Why, then, were the air-raids and the shelling of un- defended coast towns continued ? No military object was attained. Hardly any soldiers were killed. It was the civilians who suffered. The motive seems to have been to encourage the German people at home to believe that the English were being terrified, and to console them for the disappointments of military failure by the notion that in some way or other the German force was making itself effectively felt by the enemy they were being taught to hate. Many particular instances of cruelty may be passed over. That of Miss Edith Cavell, the lady who was, while nursing in a hospital at Brussels, executed for having aided a refugee to escape, is well remembered. But that of Captain Fryatt deserves mention, because he was vindictively put to death in cold blood, in flagrant violation of international law, for having, some months before a German vessel took him prisoner, gallantly defended the passenger vessel which he was commanding against the attack of a German submarine, such defence being entirely legitimate, and, as legitimate, part of his duty to his own country. In 1916 a new series of cruelties began to be practised upon civilians. At Lille and other towns in Northern France occupied by German troops many hundreds of 48 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. o^irls were torn from their homes and carried off to Germany to be set to forced labour there, some of them, no doubt, destined to experience an even worse fate. About the same time many thousands of Belgian working men were seized, and on the pretext that there was no employment for them in the towns where they lived, were carried off, amid the cries of their children and the shrieks of their wives, who flung themselves on the rails in front of the locomotives, to German towns, where they were forced to work for their enemy masters against their own fellow-countrymen. The motive, so the German Government announced, was a philanthropic one. It is not good for workmen to loiter unemployed. They will be happier if they have something to do. The unemployment, it need hardly be said, had been caused by the German Government itself, which had taken out of the country for its own use all the raw materials of industry and all the machinery. These workmen, though deprived of their former means of livelihood, were not starving. When the Germans refused to feed them, they were and had con- tinued to be fed by the charity of Americans and English- men, directed by the admirable skill and energy of an American, Mr. Hoover. In one Belgian province, where some private factories were still going, the German authorities stopped these in order to invent a ground for treating the workmen as unemployed and driving them off into Germany to labour there. This is slave-raiding, worthy of those Arab marauders whom Livingstone tried to root out of Africa.^ A similar violation of the best settled rules of inter- national law was carried out in Poland. Here the Polish inhabitants of the invaded districts which the German armies occupy were forced into the German Army on the pretext that as the country had been already conquered its people were virtually German subjects. They were 1 As to these slave-raidings, see the book of M. Passelecy entitled, Les Deportations beiges a la lumikre des documents allemands, published at Paris and Nancy in 19 17. in THE WAR STATE 49 roped in and driven to die in order to perpetuate the tyranny which the German Government had already been exercising over their brethren in a part of old Poland which she has held by force these many years. The facts here briefly enumerated are indisputable and undisputed facts. Whatever the excuses or pallia- tions which the German Government may put forward, all these acts are flagrant violations, not only of the rules laid down by writers on international law, but of the long-settled practice of civilized nations. They are even worse. They violate the fundamental principles of natural justice and of common humanity. Even Bonaparte, whose offences shocked his contem- poraries, did not in eighteen years of war so offend against helpless innocence or commit so many breaches of the much laxer international rules of his time, as the German Generals have committed since August 4, 1914. Last of all, I come to a case which surpasses all the others here mentioned or referred to, not only in the vastness of its scale, but in the hideous cruelties which were practised upon the victims, and in the fact that the victims did not belong to any of the countries with whom Germany was at war. They were the subjects, the innocent and helpless subjects, of one of Germany's trusted Allies. Among the peoples upon whom this war has brought calamity and suffering, the Armenian people have had the most to endure. Great as has been the misery inflicted upon Belgium and Northern France, upon Poland, upon Serbia, the misery of Armenia, though far less known to the outer world, has been far more terrible. When the European War broke out in 19 14, the government of the Turkish Empire had fallen into the hands of a small gang of unscrupulous ruffians calling themselves the Committee of Union and Progress, who were ruling through their command of the army, but in the name of the harmless and imbecile Sultan. By means which have not yet been fully disclosed, but the so ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. nature of which can be easily conjectured,^ this gang were won over to serve the interests of Germany ; and at Germany's bidding they declared war against the Western Allies, thus dragging all the subjects of Turkey, Muslim and Christian, into a conflict with which they had no concern. The Armenian Christians scattered through the Asiatic part of the Turkish dominions, having had melancholy experience in the Adana massacres some years previously of the cruelties which the Committee were capable of perpetrating, were careful to remain quiet, and to furnish no pretext to the Turkish authorities for an attack upon them. But the masters of Turkey showed that they did not need any pretext for the execution of the purposes they cherished. ^ They had formed a design for the extermination of the non-Mohammedan elements in the population of Asiatic Turkey, in order to make what they called a homogeneous nation, con- sisting of Mohammedans only. The wickedness of such a design was equalled only by its blind folly, for the Christian Armenians of Asia Minor and the north- eastern provinces constituted the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the best-educated part of the popu- lation. Most of the traders and merchants, nearly all the skilled artisans, were Armenians, and to destroy them was to destroy the best industrial asset which these regions possessed. However, this was the plan of the Com- mittee of Union and Progress, and as soon as they began to feel, in the spring of 19 15, that the Allied expedition against the Dardanelles was not likely to succeed, they proceeded to execute it. They first dis- armed all the Armenians in order to have them at their mercy, frequently compelling by tortures the surrender ^ An extremely interesting account of the process by which the German Government lured the Turks into the war has been given by Mr. Morgenthau, who was then United States Ambassador at Constantinople, and had the best opportunities of watching the course of events, in the numbers for June and July of a well-known American magazine, T/ie World's fFork. * The evidence for what is here stated will be found in the Blue Book (Miscellaneous, No. 31 of 19 1 6) entitled Tie Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, jgij—j6, published by the British Government. No attempt has been made to reply to it, though the Turkish authorities put forth some falsehoods alleging provocation by a few of the Christians. THE WAR STATE 51 of arms ; and in some cases, in order to make it appear that the Armenians were intending to take up arms, they actually sent weapons into the towns and then had them seized as evidence against the Christians. When such means of defence as the Christians possessed had been secured, orders for massacre were issued from Constan- tinople to the local governors. The whole Armenian population was seized. The grown men were slaugh- tered without mercy,^ The American Consul at Khar- put saw the ravines in the mountains full of skeletons. Others have described the lines of corpses that lay along the roads for miles. The younger women were sold in the market-place to the highest bidder, or appropriated by Turkish military officers and civil officials to become slaves in Turkish harems. The boys were handed over to dervishes to be carried off and brought up as Muslims. The rest of the hapless victims, all the older men and women, the mothers and their babes clinging to them, were torn from their homes and driven out along the tracks which led into the desert regions of northern Syria and Arabia. Most of them perished on the way from hardships, from disease, and from starvation. Some few have been rescued by the British officers in Mesopotamia. A few were still surviving in 19 17 near Aleppo and along the banks of the Euphrates. Many, probably many thousands, were drowned in that river and its tributaries, martyrs to their Christian faith, which they had refused to renounce ; for it was generally possible for women, and sometimes for men, to save themselves by accepting Mohammedanism. By these various methods hundreds of thousands — the number is variously estimated at from 600,000 to 800,000 — have perished. Germany claims to be a Christian country. Its Emperor and its ministers of religion are constantly representing themselves as the special objects of Divine favour and protection. Now the German Government knew what was going on. Their Consuls reported to them. Some ^ Some of the professors in the American colleges were murdered. So were several bishops : one was burnt alive. 52 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES of their missionaries besought them to stop the massacres, declaring that the name of Germany would be for ever disgraced if these horrors continued. But no step was taken to arrest the hand of the destroyer. Instead of arresting it, they have honoured the two chief criminals, Talaat and Enver, with many compliments, and have made the last named of these wretches a Colonel in the German army. All happened with the tacit acquiescence of the German Government, some of whose representa- tives on the spot were even said to have encouraged the Turks in their work of slaughter, while the Govern- ment confined its action to the propagation in Germany, so as to deceive its own people, of false stories which alleged that the Armenians had been punished for insurrection- ary movements, and to the exercise of a rigid censorship to prevent the truth from becoming known, through missionary accounts, to the German people. They made themselves accessories, whether before the crime or after the crime, to the most awful catastrophe that has ever befallen a Christian nation. Whether they desired to be rid of the most enterprising and vigorous race in Western Asia because it might be in the way of their plans for dominating those regions, or whether they merely desired to keep their friends of the Turkish gang in good humour by letting them kill to their hearts' content, we do not yet know. Whichever was the motive, the result is the most signal illustration yet given of the lengths to which the doctrine of a State interest, standing high above all morality and all compassion, can be pushed. All these facts, with many details too horrible to be repeated here, are set forth in the Blue Book recently published in England, based upon incontrovertible evi- dence, and to which no reply has been made, though some denials, palpably false, have emanated from the Turkish gang. The case of Armenia is peculiarly instructive as regards the principles which guide the German Govern- ment, because it shows the civil authorities just as un- scrupulous and just as ruthless as the chiefs of the army THE WAR STATE 53 and navy. Though the German Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary acquiesced in the invasion of Belgium, they doubtless saw the political objections. One can well believe them to have remonstrated with the Emperor, but to have been overborne by the pressure of the soldiers. The shifts to which the Chancellor was driven for excuses, and his too frank relief of his conscience by the admission of wrongdoing, suggest a reluctance. But the acquies- cence in and tacit approval of the Asiatic massacres was a matter which fell within the province of the civilians and the Ambassador at Constantinople, and they showed a want of conscience, of human feeling, of religious feeling, which the most hardened soldier could not have surpassed. These crimes were not committed against the Allies, so we can judge them impartially. And for such crimes what forgiveness can there be ? These, presented in the barest outline, are the essential facts regarding the conduct of this war by the German Government and its military chiefs. Be it noted that the acts done were not done at random. They were not due to the brutality of individual officers or the passion of excited soldiers. They were done on principle, in pursuance of a settled policy. Said a German officer at Brussels : "I have not done one-hundredth part of what I have been ordered to do by the High German military authorities." ^ The crimes perpetrated hap- pened — as the British Committee observe in their Report (p. 43) — " not froni mere military licence, for the discipline of the German army is proverbially stringent, and its obedience implicit. Not from any special ferocity of the troops, for whoever has travelled among the German peasantry knows that they are as kindly and good-natured as any people in Europe. The ex- cesses recently committed in Belgium were, moreover, too widespread and too uniform in their character to be mere sporadic outbursts of passion or rapacity. The ^ Report of the British Committee, p. 42. Other instances are given, in which officers regretted the acts which their orders compelled them to do. There are doubt- less plenty of naturally humane men in the German army, and that makes their subjection to the detestable system all the more regrettable. 54 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap.- explanation seems to be that these excesses were com- mitted — in some cases ordered, in others allowed — on a system and in pursuance of a set purpose. That purpose was to strike terror into the civil population and dis- hearten the Belgian troops, so as to crush down resistance and extinguish the very spirit of self-defence." These remarks are evidently applicable also to the acts of inhumanity perpetrated by the captains of the German submarines, when they killed, by shooting or by drown- ing, the crews of boats they captured. They wished to terrorize British sailors, and nothing in the war has reflected more credit on any class of men than the fact that British sailors and fishermen were not terrorized. The German manual of military practice (Kriegsbuch im Landkriege) goes a long way to justify these acts, for it recognizes as proper the taking and, if necessary, killing of hostages, the killing of a non-combatant who, being compelled to guide the troops of an enemy, leads them wrong. It declares that war must be directed against " the whole intellectual and moral resources of the enemy country " and not merely against the com- batant armies. It even goes so far as to hint that " the exploitation of the crimes of third parties (assassination, robbery, incendiarism, and the like) is not opposed to international law." It bids an officer *' to guard himself against excessive humanitarian notions." It advises him to study in military history the instances of stern severity. But, shocking as many of its propositions are, it condemns many particular offences of which the German officers were constantly guilty, and which were committed, as the evidence proves, by the orders of the High Command, as part of their regular system. Its doctrine that military necessity (^Kriegsnoi) is a general warrant for any sort of action was carried out by them even where their Manual seemed to recognize restrictions. These facts, considered and remembered, make a sad and terrible catalogue, which we would all gladly forget. But it needs to be presented for two reasons. One is that it furnishes materials from which neutral nations in THE WAR STATE ^^ may form a judgment as to the ideas and characters of the belHgerent Governments, apart altogether from those questions relating to the original merits of the quarrel round which controversy still rages. Whatever may have been the motives and intentions of the German Government, here are its acts, unrepented of, justified as a necessary part of war. Let neutrals judge from them, comparing them with the behaviour of the armies and fleets of the Entente Powers, what the triumph of one or other of the belligerent groups is likely to mean for the future peace and welfare of the world. The other reason is to enable the peoples of the Entente States and of America, as well as the neutral peoples, to understand the difficulties which surround the making of a treaty of peace with a Government which has such a record. For what is it that the facts here summarized prove ? They show, and the German War Manual shows : 1 . That the German Government, by its own avowal, does not respect treaties when State interests require them to be broken. 2. That it does not observe any engagements it has made regarding methods of conducting war. Most, perhaps all, of those it made at Hague Conferences have been violated. 3. That it draws little, if any, distinction in the conduct of war between combatants and non- combatants. 4. That it shows, not only no sense of what used to be called " chivalry " in war, but no sense of pity for the helpless and the suffering. 5. That it directs, or at least encourages, the infliction of the wanton destruction of property and objects of beauty or historic interest, where no military advantage, unless that of terrorization, is to be expected. 6. That its only rule of action is to follow every method, however inhuman, however illegal, that is calculated to attain success. 56 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. How are we to explain the proclamation of such doctrines and the carrying out of them in practice by the Government of a great nation which has attained, at various epochs of its long history, so much distinction in, and rendered such services to, philosophy and science, literature and art ? The explanation lies largely in the history of Prussia, the state which has, since 1870, dominated and moulded the mind of Germany. It is a history of success in and by War from the end of the seventeenth century. It was observed long ago that the trade of Prussia is War. Among them the Soldier is the Master. Professor Gilbert Murray has excellently said : — Germany has produced the specialized soldier, not the humane soldier, the Christian soldier, the chivalrous soldier, or the soldier with a sense of civil duties, but the soldier who is trained to be a soldier and nothing else, to disregard all the rest of human re- lations, to see all his country's neighbours merely as enemies to be duped and conquered, to see all life according to some system of perverted biology as a mere struggle of force and fraud. The Germans have created this type of soldier, alike concentrated, con- scienceless, and remorseless, and then — what no other people in the world has done — they have given the nation over to his guidance. This worship of War would not have spread from the military class throughout the nation had it not been accompanied by and blent with a worship of the State. It is the German conception of the State as an all-mastering power, to which every subject must consecrate all his talents and activities, that has created among the people a sort of war idolatry. Militarism, instead of being restrained or softened down by the thinkers, the men of learning and science, has been allowed to infuse its poison into the mind of the nation, the nation being, one must remember, a nation in arms, and the army the nation. The British Committee, expressing their amazement at the doctrines held and put in practice by the German High Command, observe (p. 44) : — In the minds of Prussian officers War seems to have become a sort of sacred mission, one of the highest functions of the omni- Ill THE WAR STATE 57 potent State, which is itself as much an Army as a State. Ordinary- morality and the ordinary sentiment of pity vanish in its presence, superseded by a new standard which justifies to the soldier every means that can conduce to success, however shocking to a natural sense of justice and humanity, however revolting to his own feelings. The Spirit of War is deified. Obedience to the State and its War Lord leaves no room for any other duty or feeling. Cruelty becomes legitimate when it promises victory. Pro- claimed by the heads of the army, this doctrine would seem to have permeated the officers and affected even the private soldiers, leading them to justify the killing of non-combatants as an act of war, and so accustoming them to slaughter that even women and children become at last the victims. It cannot be supposed to be a national doctrine, for it neither springs from nor reflects the mind and feelings of the German people as they have heretofore been known to other nations. It is a specifically military doctrine, the outcome of a theory held by a ruling caste who have brooded and thought, written and talked and dreamed about War until they have fallen under its obsession and been hypnotized by its spirit. It is a singular result of this kind of obsession that it may affect the normal working of the mind in matters outside the sphere with which the mind is chiefly and primarily occupied. In the case of the German military caste, it prevented them from seeing and comprehending the political facts with which, in the pursuit of their military aims, they had to deal. They did not perceive that the outer world would not recognize what had become to them fundamental axioms. They did not foresee that ruthlessness and faithlessness would rouse against them an anger and hatred which would do them a harm in the field of politics exceeding whatever gain ruthlessness and faithlessness could bring them in the field of war. Bishop Butler once asked whether a nation could go mad. This distortion of the military mind from the natural human view of things has so disturbed its balance as to produce something resembling monomania. This species of monomania revealed itself in their intellectual processes. They got hold of what they called a Principle and applied it with remorseless logic. But they blindly ignored other principles, or, let us say, other 58 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES facts than those on which they had chosen to build their system. Having drawn from Prussian experience the conclusion that it takes sixty years to create a supremely efficient army, having assumed the English to be a luxuri- ous and the Americans a money-worshipping nation, they were sure that no attempt by England, or, later on, by America, to produce an army fit to cope with theirs could succeed within the time they had fixed for the duration of the war. Holding the principle that War is Force and that Force operates by Terror, they applied Terror with a total unconcern as to the effect it might produce on enemy or neutral peoples outside the war theatre. Fortunate was it for France and Britain that this malady of the intellect led them so far astray. They had knowledge, they had industry and skill, they had Organization brought to a wonderful perfection. One thing was wanting. It was Wisdom, and especially that highest kind of wisdom which can understand human nature, with the gift of sympathy that can divine the feelings of others. Napoleon, with all his faults, had flashes of it. Bismarck sometimes showed it, harsh as he was. But in them it seems to have been totally lacking, and the lack of it was fatal. As it is hard to describe the German worship of the State, except in terms drawn from religion, so the nearest parallel to this obsession of a highly trained body of men by one dominant idea, which extinguishes ordinary morality and normal human feeling, is to be found in the fanaticism which occasionally seizes those who have come to live in one doctrine and for one purpose, which becomes their faith. The Spanish Inquisitors of the sixteenth century were possessed by a zeal for orthodoxy which narrowed their minds to a single conception of life and duty. The one thing that mattered was to bring and keep every human creature to the words and forms of the orthodox Roman creed and worship. Heresy was the deadliest thing in the world, for only by exact orthodoxy and implicit obedience to the Church could souls be saved. This belief covered their whole sky ;. THE WAR STATE 59 this extinguished all other feelings. They were not naturally worse than other men. But to them all methods were lawful for tracking down a heretic, all cruelties laudable that could extort a confession or the disclosure of an accomplice, or could give to punishment a more frightfully deterrent power. Strange are the aberrations of human nature. Fanaticism may manifest itself in one sphere of thought and action or another. But its familiar symptoms always recur ; and they may be as deadly in the soldier as in the priest. We may now revert to the practical issues which this study of German war methods raises for neutral nations. What help does it afford them for judging the questions involved in the conflict which the Entente Powers on the one hand, Germany and Austria on the other, are maintaining ? What light does it throw on the characters of the belligerent nations themselves ? We have seen what Germany's war doctrines are and how perfectly her practice follows and conforms to her doctrines. Can any charges similar to those which have been proved against her be advanced against the armies or the fleets of Britain, France, and Italy ? Have they broken faith or murdered non-combatants, or gone in any respect beyond what the settled rules for the conduct of war authorize ? It may be that here and there re- grettable acts have been done by individual soldiers. Such things cannot but happen in any war. But the military and naval authorities have, as everybody knows — except, indeed, the German people, who have been fed up by their Government with false stories against French soldiers and British sailors — conducted their operations with as much regard to justice and humanity as the process of fighting allows, and have abstained from severities which the doctrine of Retaliation upon an enemy who has himself violated international usage might have allowed. No maxims of cruelty, no justifi- cations of it as necessary, like those which the German Manual contains, stand in the books used by British oflicers for their guidance. If, therefore, a verdict is 6o ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. to be delivered by neutrals upon the merits of this war after a consideration of the way in which it has been actually waged, can they have any doubt as to the side that is entitled to their sympathy ? If they look into the future and ask themselves what will be the effect on the welfare of mankind which the victory of one or other party in such a conflict of principles, principles only too well illustrated by practice, must involve, have they not ample materials for their decision ? Let them ask themselves what difference will it make to the world if the War doctrines and State doctrines maintained by the German Government are approved by success, and if German war methods are found to have accomplished what the High Command expects from them ? Through many centuries the nations have been slowly climbing out of the savagery of primitive tribal warfare into the general acceptance and observance of rules for the conduct of war which, if they did not remove, did at least mitigate its horrors, and limited their range by assuring safety to non-combatants. The German Government has now gone back to savagery. All restrictions are removed. All pretence of good faith is tossed aside. If Germany should win the war the stamp of success will have been set upon her methods. She will reproduce them and other nations will imitate them in those future wars which her scientific thinkers pronounce to be necessary for the progress of mankind. The gains of these later centuries will have been lost, and the last state of the world will have become so much worse than the first, because the evil spirits that had seemed to have been exorcized will now have at their command the boundless resources of modern science. There is another feature of the war and of the part which the German Government has been playing in it which may give cause for thought to those neutral peoples that value liberty. Respect for the Rights of Man as Man is the foundation of every free self-governing community. If therefore any State shows itself in war disregardful of human rights in the person of civilian Ill THE WAR STATE 6i non-combatants, as, for instance, if it murders or enslaves them, it commits what may be called a political as well as a moral offence, indicating its scorn for those feelings, and trampling on the laws and customs which hold com- munities together. Whatever brings back the regime of brute force lowers human nature and destroys men's confidence in one another. Right and Duty are the cement which holds citizens together in a free common- wealth. A blow struck at them is a blow struck at democracy. Another question also is raised which affects not only neutrals, but also the peoples of the Entente coun- tries and now (191 8) of the United States. When the time arrives for negotiating a peace — and it must be a peace whose conditions are not left to the discretion of the Governments but are approved by the will of the peoples — what principles, what considerations are to prescribe their action in settling the terms to be given to a defeated Germany ? I pass by the preliminary difficulty on which many writers and speakers have dwelt — that of making a treaty with a Government which has declared that it does not respect treaties any further or longer than suits its own interests, but will break its promises when State necessity requires. It is not merely the form of govern- ment that matters. Kings have sometimes been honour- able men, faithful to their engagement, and democracies have sometimes been faithless. It is rather the fact that this particular set of rulers, the oligarchy which dominates Germany, has announced that treaties, however solemnly made, do not bind it. The difficulty is a real one. Treaties, however, must be made, though the experience of Belgium suggests that the performance of their obli- gations will need to be fortified by something stronger than a scrap of paper. A further feature of the situation is unfortunate. The behaviour of the German armies in France and Belgium, the murders of American and English non- combatants by the German submarines, the inhumanity 62 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. with which prisoners of war have been treated — all these things have evoked a cry for revenge. That was in- evitable. But revenge, however natural, is a bad guide in politics. The more it can be held in check, the better for the victors themselves. In the peace congresses heretofore held the questions discussed have usually turned upon material interests, such as cessions of territory or war indemnities, or future conditions of trade, or possibly upon the protection of subject populations, such as were the Christian subjects of Turkey or (in former days) the Protestant subjects of Roman Catholic Powers. But this war presents some different phenomena. It is a war of Principles, a war between two hostile systems of ideas. These systems are irreconcilable. One of them has challenged the other to a mortal combat. If it is not utterly defeated it may be expected to renew that combat so soon as it has recovered from that exhaustion which awaits all the combatants. The interests involved are not material merely. They are also moral. Victory will consist not merely in such territorial rearrangements as the principle of nationality, judiciously applied, may show to be needed for the fiiture peace of Europe and Western Asia (including, of course, the liberation of Belgium and Serbia and the deliverance of the Eastern Christians from the Turk), but also in assuring the triumph of the principles which are at stake, and which have drawn Britain and America into the war, the respect for the faith of treaties, and for the rights of small nations, the protection of non-combatants in war, the overthrow of what is called Prussian Militarism, that system whose unbridled ambition has threatened the liberties of the world. Every thoughtful man, every one who has any pity in his heart, must desire this war, which has been destroy- ing the flower of our youth and carrying sorrow into every home, to be brought to a speedy end. But we must also feel — and those of us who have been workers for peace through all our lives feel it as much as any m THE WAR STATE 63 others — that a peace made now, leaving the military system and military caste of Germany still unbroken in power, in credit, in self-confidence, in its prestige and ascendancy over its own people, would be only a truce, a brief respite in a conflict which that military caste would resume as soon as it had repaired its losses. To make the sort of treaty which the German Govern- ment desires, and which it from time to time hints it might accept, would not only leave that Government in possession of ill-gotten gains, with no adequate re- paration for the wrongs it has inflicted, but would be an acquiescence in, almost an encouragement to repeat, the methods by which its armies have carried on the war, and would leave the peace-loving peoples the victims to perpetually recurring fears and suspicions, obliged to maintain military and naval armaments even vaster and costlier than those which had become, before the war, an intolerable burden. The Allies feel, and they desire neutral nations to know, that if it becomes necessary to fight on till the ill-gotten gains have been disgorged and the reparation made, neither passion nor revenge, but a conviction of what is needed for future safety will be their motive. What, then, can be done to overthrow the so-called " Prussian Militarism " ? There is no more use in reasoning with the military caste that rules Germany than there would have been in reasoning with Spanish Inquisitors. Their premises, the settled convictions by which they are possessed and obsessed, are fundamentally different from those which the Western nations hold. Whatever Christianity may mean to them, it means something different from what it means to us in Britain and America. Who their God is we know not. He is not our God. Can we appeal to the German people ? Unfortunately a large part of the educated upper class would seem to have been either indoctrinated with militaristic doctrines or debarred by national patriotism from expressing open dissent. The masses of the people have been kept in ignorance of the causes of the war and 64 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap, m the real behaviour of their rulers. They have formed habits of obedience, and they have not the constitutional means that democracies possess for asserting their will and changing the policy of the Government. We have hoped and waited for an assertion of that will, but so far we have waited in vain. It is not for us to interfere with the internal affairs of Germany. " Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." These things being so, the only course left would seem to be to cut up by its roots the cause which has given to Prussian militarism the power over the German mind which it enjoys. That cause has been the long tradition of military victory, and of the extension and enrichment of the State by war. If this military prestige can be destroyed, the power of the ruling caste will wither and fall. The British and American peoples ought not to wish, and I believe that they do not wish, to dismember Germany or to inflict any permanent injury on her people. What they seek is a peace of safety, a peace the terms of which shall make it clear to the world, and especially to the German people, that the doctrine of Force as the only power, and the practice of those methods by which Force has been applied, have been decisively condemned by Failure, and that the most tremendous effort ever made to substitute Force for Right has been defeated, because it evoked the righteous indignation of the world. CHAPTER IV WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS An Address delivered on the Huxley Foundation to the University of Birmingham in 191 6 Those who have studied the general principles that guide human conduct, and the working out of these prin- ciples as recorded in history, have noted two main streams of tendency. One of these tendencies shows itself in the power of Reason and of those higher and gentler altruistic emotions, which the development of Reason or Philosophy as the guide of life tends to evoke and foster. The other tendency is associated with the less rational elements in man — with passion and those self-regarding impulses which attain their ends by physical violence. Thus two schools of philosophical thinkers or his- torians have been formed. One lays stress on the power of the former set of tendencies. It finds in them the chief sources of human progress in the past, and expects from them its further progress in the future. It regards man as capable of a continual advance through the increasing influence of reason and sympathy. It dwells on the ideas of Justice and Right as the chief factors in the amelioration of society, and therefore regards good-will and peace as the goal of human endeavour in the sphere both of national and of international life. Its faith in human nature — that is to say, in the possi- bility of improving human nature — fills it with hopes for the ordinary man, who may, in its view, be brought by 65 F 66 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. education, and under a regime of beneficence, to a higher level than he has yet anywhere attained. The other school is less sanguine. It insists on the power of selfishness and of passion, holding these to be elements in human action which can never be greatly refined or restrained, either by reason or by sympathy. Social order — so it holds — can be secured only by Force, as Right itself is created only by Force. It is the strength of the strong that has in the past made what men call Right and Law and Government ; it is still this strength that sustains the social structure. The average man needs discipline ; and the best thing he can do is to submit to the strong man — strength, of course, consisting not only in physical capacity, but in a superiority of will and intellect also. This school, which used to defend slavery as useful and, indeed, necessary — the older among us remember a time when that ancient, time-honoured institution was still so defended — prefers the rule of the superior One or Few, i.e. monarchy or oligarchy, to the rule of the Many. Quite consistently, it has regarded war as a necessary and valuable form of discipline, because war is the final embodiment and test of physical force. This opposition can be traced a long way back. It is already visible in the days of Plato, who combats the teaching of some of the Sophists that Justice is merely the advantage of the strong. From his time onward great philosophical schools followed his lead. So the poets, from Hesiod onward, gave an ideal expression to the joys of peace in their pictures of a Golden Age before the use of copper and iron had been discovered. Virgil describes the primeval Saturnia Regna^ the time before war trumpets were blown or the anvil sounded under the strokes of the swordsmith's hammer : Necdum etiam audierant inflari classica, necdum Impositos duris crepitare incudibus enses. This was the happy time of man, to which the Roman poet who acclaimed the restoration of peace by Augustus looked back, desiring a rest from the unending strife of the ancient world. Just after Virgil's day, Christianity WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 67 proclaimed peace as its message to all mankind. Twelve hundred years later, in an age full of strife, Dante, the most imaginative mind of the Middle Ages, hoped for peace from the universal sway of a pious and disinterested Emperor ; and, nearly six hundred years after him, in the days of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Immanuel Kant, the greatest metaphysician of the modern world, produced his plan for the establishment of an everlasting peace. These hopes and teachings of poets and philosophers, though they had little power in the world of fact (for few rulers or statesmen, even of those who rendered lip- service to pacific principles, ever tried to apply them to practice), continued to prevail in the world of theory, and seemed, especially after the final extinction of slavery half a century ago and the spread of democracy from America to Europe, to be passing into the category of generally accepted truths. Latterly, however, there has come a noteworthy reaction. A school of thinkers has arisen which, not content with maintaining war to be a necessary factor in the relations between states, as being the only ulti- mately available method of settling their disputes, declares it to be a method in itself wholesome and socially valuable. To these thinkers it is not an inevitable evil, but a positive good — a thing not merely to be expected and excused, but to be desired for the benefits it confers on mankind. This school challenges the assumptions of the lovers of peace and denounces their projects of disarmament and arbitration as pernicious. War, it seems, is a medicine which human society needs, and which must be administered at frequent intervals ; for it is the only tonic capable of bracing up the character of a nation. Such doctrines are a natural result of the system of thought which exalts the functions and proclaims the supremacy of the State. The State stands by Power. The State is Power. Its power rests upon force. By force it keeps order and executes the law within its limits. Outside its limits there is no law, but only force. Neither 68 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. is there any morality. The State is a law unto itself, and owes no duty to other states. Self-preservation is the principle of its being. Its Might is Right, the only possible Right. War, or the threat of war, is the sole means by which the State can make its will prevail against other states ; and where its interest requires war, to war it must resort, reckless of the so-called rights of others. This modern doctrine, or rather this modernized and developed form of an old doctrine, bases itself on two main arguments. One is drawn from the realm of animated nature, the other from history. Both lines of argument are meant to show that all progress is achieved by strife. Among animals and plants it is Natural Selection and the Struggle for Life that have evolved the higher forms from the lower, destroying the weaker species, and replacing them by the stronger. Among men it is the same process of unending conflict that has enabled the higher races and the more civilized states to overcome the lower and less advanced, either extinguish- ing them altogether, or absorbing them and imposing upon such of them as remain, the superior type of the victors. The theory I am describing has, in these latest years, acquired for us a more than theoretical interest. It has passed out of the world of thought into the world of action, becoming a potent factor in the relations of states. It has been used to justify, not merely war itself, but methods of warfare till recently unheard of — methods which, though recommended as promoting human pro- gress, threaten to carry us back into the ages of barbarism. It deserves to be carefully examined, so that we may see upon what foundations it rests. I propose to consider briefly the two lines of argument just referred to, which may be called the biological and the historical. II Never yet was a doctrine adopted for one set of reasons which its advocates could not somehow contrive to WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 69 support by other reasons. In the Middle Ages men generally resorted to the Bible, rarely failing to find a text which they could so interpret as to justify their views or their acts. Pope Gregory the Seventh, perhaps the most striking figure of the eleventh century, proved to the men of his time that his own spiritual power was superior to the secular power by citing that passage in the Book of Genesis which says that the sun was created to rule the day and the moon to rule the night. The modern reader may not see the connection, but Gregory's con- temporaries did. The sun was the Popedom and the moon was the Empire. In our own time — I am old enough to remember the fact, and the reader will find it referred to in Uncle Tom s Cabin^ a book which ought to be still read, for it told powerfully upon opinion here and in America — the apologists of Negro slavery justified that ** peculiar institution " by quoting the passage in Genesis where Noah prophesies that Ham, or rather Canaan the son of Ham, shall serve his elder brother Shem. In the then current biblical ethnology, Ham was the progenitor of the black races of Africa, and the fact that even that ethnography did not make Shem the progenitor of the Anglo-American race, which the children of Ham were destined to serve, was passed lightly over. This argu- ment had no great currency outside the Slave States. But another book l^esides the Bible was open, and to that also an appeal was made : the Book of Nature. It was frequently alleged by the defenders of slavery in Europe, as well as in America, that the Negro was not really a man, but one of the higher apes, and certain points from his bone-structure were adduced to prove . this thesis. I well remember listening to a lecture in which Huxley demolished it. Less use is made of Scripture now for political pur- poses than in the days of Gregory the Seventh or even in those of Jefferson Davis. But attempts to press science into the service of politics are not unknown in our genera- tion, so we must not be surprised that a nation which is nothing if not scientific should have sought and found 70 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. in what is called the Darwinian Doctrine of Natural Selection a proof of their view that the elimination of the weak by the strong is a principle of universal potency, the method by which progress is attained in the social and political, no less than in the natural sphere. Their argument has been stated thus : The geological record shows that more highly developed forms have been through countless ages evolved from forms simpler and more rudimentary. Cryptogamous plants — such as lichens, mosses, ferns — came first, and out of these the phanerogamous were developed. Animal life began with zoophytes and molluscs ; serpents and birds followed ; then came the mammalia, these culminating in Man. Some species disappeared, and were replaced in the perpetual struggle for existence by others that had proved themselves stronger. Every species fights to maintain itself against the others ; there is not room enough for all ; the weak disappear, the stronger prevail. So the earlier forms of man himself have succumbed to others superior in strength ; and among these latter some races have shown a greater capacity, physical and mental, and have either displaced or exterminated or con- quered the weaker, sometimes enslaving them, sometimes absorbing them. When the conquered survive, they receive the impress of the conqueror and are conformed to his more perfect type. Thus the white man has prevailed against the coloured man. Thus the Teuton is prevailing against the Slav and the Celt, and is indeed fitted by his higher gift for intellectual creation, as well as practical organization, to be the Lord of the World, as the lion is lord of the forest and the eagle lord of the air. As progress in the animal creation is effected by a strife in which the animal organisms possessing most force prevail and endure, so progress in the political world comes through conflicts in which the strongest social organisms, that is, the states best equipped for war, prove themselves able to overcome the weaker. Without war this victory of the best cannot come about. Hence, war is a main cause of progress. IV WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 71 Lest this summary should misrepresent the view I am endeavouring to state — and it is not easy to state it correctly, for there lurks in it some mental confusion — I will cite a few passages from one of its exponents, slightly abridging his words for convenience of quotation.^ Others have probably stated it better, but all that need be done here is to show how some, at least, of those who hold it have expressed themselves. " Wherever we look in Nature we find that war is a fundamental law of development. This great verity, which has been recognized in past ages, has been con- vincingly demonstrated in modern times by Charles Darwin. He proved that nature is ruled by an unceas- ing struggle for existence, by the right of the stronger, and that this struggle in its apparent cruelty brings about a selection eliminating the weak and the un- wholesome." ** The natural law to which all the laws of nature can be reduced is the law of struggle." " From the first beginning of life, war has been the basis of all healthy development. Struggle is not merely the destructive, but the life-giving principle. The law of the stronger holds good everywhere. Those forms survive which are able to secure for themselves the most favourable conditions of life. The weaker succumb." Now, let us examine this so-called argument from the biological world and see whether or how far it supports the thesis that the law of progress through strife is a universal law, applicable to human communities as well as to animals and plants. Several objections present themselves. First. This theory is an attempt to apply what are called Natural Laws to a sphere unlike that of external nature. The facts we study in the external world are wholly different from those we study in human society. There are in that society certain generally observable sequences of phenomena which we popularly call laws of social development : that is to say, individual men and com- ^ Gtrmany and the Next War, by General von Bcrnhardi, p. i8. 72 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. munities of men show certain recurrent tendencies which may be compared with the recurrent sequences in the behaviour of inanimate substances and in the animated creation. But the human or social sequences have not that uniformity, that generahty, that capacity for being counted or measured, and thereby expressed in precise and unvarying terms, which belong to things in the world of external nature. Oxygen and sulphur always and everywhere behave (so far as we know) in exactly the same way when the conditions are exactly the same. Every oak tree and every apple tree, however different the individuals of the species may be in size, grow in the same way, and the laws of their growth can be so stated as to be applicable to all members of the species. But we cannot do more than conjecture, with more or less confidence, but never with certainty of prediction, how any given man or any given community of men will behave under any given set of conditions. The human body no doubt consists of tissues, and the tissues of cells. But each individual in the species Homo Sapiens Europaeus has, when considered as a human being, something peculiar to himself which is not and cannot be completely known or measured. His action is due to so many complex and hidden causes, and is therefore so incalculable by any scientific apparatus, he is played upon by so many forces whose presence and strength no qualitative or quantitative analysis can determine, that both his thoughts and his conduct are practically unpredictable. That which we call a scientific law is therefore totally different in the social world from what it is in the world of external nature. Considerations drawn from the latter world are accordingly, when applied to man, not arguments but, at best, mere analogies, sometimes suggestive as indicating lines of inquiry, but never approaching the character of exact science. Secondly. That which is called the Darwinian principle of Natural Selection is a matter still in controversy among scientific men. A distinguished zoologist, for instance. Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, whose little book en- IV WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS , 73 titled Evolution and the War may be commended as full of interest and instruction, pronounces the principle to be only a highly probable hypothesis regarding the process by which the evolution of species has taken place, but still no more, as yet, than a hypothesis. The methods by which natural selection takes place are uncertain.^ Higher and more complex forms do certainly come out of lower and simpler forms ; and the adaptability to environment would seem to be an extremely important factor in their development. More than that — so one gathers from the biologists — we are not entitled to assert. Thirdly. The Struggle for Life in the Darwinian sense is not so much a combat between species as a combat between individuals of the same .species, which, like the seeds of plants, dispute the same bit of soil, or, like the carnivorous animals, feed on the same creatures and find there is not enough to go round. In the animal world we find nothing that really resembles the wars of human tribes or states. Tigers or other bellicose animals do not fight either with other tigers or with such other feline tribes as leopards. Individuals may fight in those occasional cases where the possession of the same female is disputed by two males ; but groups do not fight each other. Tigers kill antelopes for food ; they have no impulse to dominate or to extirpate, but only desire to support their own life. If zoology furnishes any analogy to the contests of nations, it is to be found, not in the clash of Teutonic and Slavonic armies, but where there is an appropriation, by individuals possessing superior industry and skill, of the means of livelihood and oppor- tunities for amassing wealth which trade and civilized finance offer to all alike who will address themselves to the task. Here we see not war, but a competition for means of livelihood. Fourthly. The supersession of one species by another is certainly not effected, in the external world, by fighting, but apparently by the adaptation to its environment of the species which ultimately survives. Where an oceanic island like Hawaii is overrun by new species 74 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES of plants whose seeds, or seedlings, are brought from another country, what happens is that some of the new species thus introduced find in the isle an environ- ment of soil and climate which suits them so well that they multiply and crowd out, by their natural growth in the soil, the weaker of the native species established there, till at last a mixed flora results, representing both the old natives and other species from elsewhere. In 1883, when I saw it, Hawaii had thrice been thus overrun. You may see a somewhat similar process where the turf has been cut off a piece of land, leaving it bare for seeds to settle on. Various species appear, some perhaps hardly known before in the neighbourhood ; but after some years a few will be found in exclusive possession. Here we have a phenomenon to which there are parallels in the rapid growth and increase of some trees in certain situations which favour them and the consequent dis- placement of others. But there is nothing like this in human war. And, on the other hand, there is in the animal world no parallel to the fundamental fact that in human warfare it is not the weaker but the stronger part of the population that is drawn away to perish on the battlefield. Fifthly. We must note in this connection two other important factors in the extension and decline of species. One of them is liability to disease. The other is fecundity. Here an analogy between plants and animals, on the one hand, and the races or sub-races of mankind may no doubt be traced. But there is here no conflict. The causes which make some species more susceptible to maladies than others, or make some more prolific than others, exist everywhere in animated nature. But they exist in the species, or race, being due to something in its peculiar constitution. They have nothing to do with conflict between one species, or one race, and another species or race. That these physical factors have more to do with the numerical strength of a species than has its capacity for fighting becomes so clear when we com- pare the diffusion of some non - predatory with some IV WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 75 predatory species, that it is not worth while to adduce instances. It may be noted, however, that in some of the most advanced races of man the birth-rate is so much lower than it is in the backward races as to threaten the ultimate supremacy of the former. These considerations, which I have been obliged to state only in outline, seem sufficient to show how hollow is the argument which recommends war as the general law of the universe and a main cause of progress in the human as well as the natural world. It is not an argu- ment at all, but an analogy, and an imperfect one at that. Let me add that the view which regards war as a useful factor in human development had no support from Darwin himself.^ So far from considering war a cause of progress in general, or of improvement in the popula- tion of a particular country, he wrote, in the Origin of Species : "In every country in which a large standing army is kept up, the finest young men are taken by conscription or enlisted. They are thus exposed to early death during war, are often tempted into vice, and are prevented from marrying during the prime of life. On the other hand, the shorter and feebler men, with poor constitutions, are left at home, and consequently have a much better chance of marrying." Ill So much for the first set of grounds on which the war theorists rely. Let us turn to the second, that is to say, the argument from history. It is alleged that the record of all that man has done and suffered is largely a record of constant strife — a fact undeniably true — and that thereby the races and nations and states which are now able to do most for the further advance of mankind have prevailed. They have prevailed by war ; war, there- fore, has been the means, and the necessary means, of ^ My friend, Major Leonard Darwin, in a letter which appeared in the Press in 1914, expressly denied that his illustrious father had ever countenanced this application of his theory of Natural Selection. He considered that war tended to the injury of the human apecies by killing off the best. 76 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. that predominance which has enabled them to civilize the best parts of the globe. Before entering this part of the enquiry, let us see what Progress means. It is a term which covers several quite different things. There is Material progress, by which I understand an increase in wealth, that is, in the commodities useful to man, which give him health, strength, and longer life, and make his life easier, providing more comfort and more leisure, and thus enabling him to be more physi- cally efficient, and to escape from that pressure of want which hampers the development of his whole nature. There is Intellectual progress — an increase in know- ledge, a greater abundance of ideas, the training to think, and think correctly, the growth in capacity for dealing with practical problems, the cultivation of the power to enjoy the exercise of thought and the pleasures of letters and art. There is Moral progress, a thing harder to define, but which includes the development of those emotions and habits which make for happiness — contentment and tranquillity of mind, the absence of the more purely animal and therefore degrading vices (such as intemper- ance and sensuality in its other forms), the control of the violent passions, good-will and kindliness toward others — in fact all the things which fall within the philo- sophical conception of a life guided by right reason. People have different ideas of what constitutes happiness and virtue, but these things are at any rate included in every such conception. A further preliminary question arises. Is human progress to be estimated as respects the point to which it raises the few who have high mental gifts and the opportunity of obtaining an education fitting them for intellectual enjoyment and intellectual vocations, or is it to be measured by the amount of its extension to and diffusion through each nation, meaning the nation as a whole — the average man as well as the superior spirits ? You may sacrifice either the many to the few — as was IV WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 77 done by slavery — or the few to the many, or the advance may be general and proportionate in all classes. Again, when we think of Progress, are we to think of the world as a whole, or only of the stronger and more capable races and states ? If the stronger rise upon the prostrate bodies of the weaker, is this clear gain to the world, because the stronger will ultimately do more for the world, or is the loss and suffering of the weaker to be brought into the account ? I do not attempt to discuss these questions. It is enough to note them as fit to be re- membered ; for perhaps all three kinds of progress ought to be differently judged if a few leading nations only are to be regarded, or if we are to think of all mankind. Now let us address ourselves to history. Does history show that progress has come more through and by war or through and by peace ? It would be tedious to pursue an examination of the question all down the annals of mankind from the days when authentic records begin ; but we may take a few of those salient instances to which the advocates of the war doctrine and those of the peace doctrine would appeal as sustaining their respective theses. Let us divide these instances into four classes, as follows : (i) Instances cited to show that War promotes Progress. (2) Instances cited to show that Peace has failed to promote Progress. (3) Instances cited to show that War has failed to promote Progress. (4) Instances cited to show that Peace promotes Progress. I begin with the cases in which war is alleged to have been the cause of progress. It is undeniable that war has often been accompanied by an advance in civilization. If we were to look for progress only in times of peace there would have been little progress to discover, for mankind has lived in a state of practically continuous warfare. The Egyptian and Assyrian monarchs were always fighting. The 78 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. Book of Samuel speaks of spring as the time when kings go forth to battle, much as we should speak of autumn as the time when men go forth to shoot deer. IToXe/io? ^vaei VTTtip'^et ttjOO? dirdaa'i Ta