Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/englandrussiaineOOrawlrich PROBLEMS OP^ POWER PROBLEMS OF POWER By W. MORTON FULLERTON The late Mr. Theodore Roosevelt re- viewed the Second Edition of this book as follows in the Outlook of May 31, 1913 : " Mr. Fullerton knows international poli- tics, and especially the international politics of Europe, as few other Americans, save two or three men of exceptional diplomatic experience, know it. . . . It would be a good thing for all our people to read Mr. FuUerton's book, but especially good for worthy persons who have not thought deeply on international subjects." 1 PROBLEMS OF POWER BY W. MORTON FULLERTON " Peut-etre, et je me sens un violent penchant a le croire, les hommes ne sont-ils que des aveugles qui voyagent au milieu des t^nebres, et dont quelques-uns ouvrent inutile- ment les yeux pour distinguer les ombres qui les environment et au sein desquelles ils sont forces de cheminer a tatons." FoscoLO : Jacopo Ortis (French Translation. Paris, 1829, p. 115), NEW AND DEFINITIVE EDITION NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1920 ^^^ > PritttBd in Great Britain " Cum igitur animum ad Politicam applicuerim, nihil quod novum, vel inauditum est ; sed tantum ea, quae cum praxi optima conveniunt, certd, et induhitatd ratione demonstrare, aut ex ipsa humanae naturae conditione deducere, intendi ; et ut ea, quae ad hanc scientiam spectant, eddem animi libertate, qud res Mathe- maticas solemus, inquirerem, sedtUo curavi, humanas actiones n^n rider e, non lug ere, neque detestari ; sed inteUigere : atque adeo humanos affectum, ut sunt amor, odium, ira, invidia, gloria, miseri- cordia, et reliquae animi commotiones, non ut humanae naturae vitia ; sed ut proprietates contemplatus sum, quae ad ipsam ita pertinent, ut ad naturam aeris aestus, frigusy tempestas, tonitru, et alia hujusmodi, quae, tametsi incommoda sunt, necessaria tamen sunt certasque habent causas, per quas eorum naturam inteUigere conamur, et Mens eorum verd contemplatione aeque gavdet, ac earum rerum cognitione, quae sensihus gratae sunt." Spinoza: Tractatus Politicus, caput, 1. §4. \ NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION THE first edition of " Problems of Power " was pub- lished in the springtime of 1913. A few weeks later Bulgaria, treacherously abandoning her allies of the Balkan Confederation, precipitated a second war, with the object of depriving Servia and Greece of the fruits of their victories. An opportune intervention of Rumania, and the valour of the Greeks and the Servians, thwarted the plan of the Bulgarian Tsar. Austria-Hungary and Germany had counted on the success of Bulgaria. When they scanned the South- Eastern horizon, after the Inter-Balkan War, they found the road to Salonica definitively closed; they perceived that the problem of the future of the Southern Slavs had suddenly become almost an urgent present problem; and they beheld with dismay that a whole series of perplexing new factors, unfavourable to some of their most essential policies, had suddenly risen to trouble the nights of their statesmen. When the new conditions of Balkan stability were finally fixed, and when the fate of the Triple Alliance was sealed by the Treaty of Bucharest, Europe, which during this period had been more than once on the verge of war, breathed more easily. At the summons of Germany it again turned its attention to " international business." It tackled and solved a long list of Middle-Eastern ques- tions; in France and England, the while, the politicians and the Parliaments pursued their partisan and often corrosive anti-national ends, indifferent to the state of Europe. These events of 1913 to 1914 were great events, and viii NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION some of them submitted " Problems of Power " to an unexpected test. The author's object has been to synthesize the social, political, and economic facts of world-history from Sadowa to Kirk-Kilisse. His aim was primarily to put these fact's in their proper perspec- tive, and thereby to formulate the logic of their drift. Indirectly he hoped slightly to serve a less disinterested end. He dreamed — without cherishing, however, any excessive illusions — of preparing public opinion in the apathetic British and American worlds for that European War which, as almost every page of " Problems of Power" indicates, he descried on the horizon; and the breaking out, in August 1914, of just such a war as he had anticipated was not in any sense, therefore, another " test " of " Problems of Power," but, as every reader of the first edition of that book is aware, the melancholy confirmation of an Essay which had been the solemn precursor of that inevitable cataclysm. [* ^ This new edition represents the author's vision of the state of Europe and the World on the eve of the Great War of 1914. " Problems of Power," as it is now again presented to the public, makes the claim of being as convenient a prolegomenon as can now be had to the history of a vanished epoch, the troubled half -century just preceding the era inaugurated in September 1914 by the victories of the Franco -British troops in the battlefields of the Marne. In a subsequent book the author proposes to enter more minutely into the origins of the war of 1914, and to discuss, with some detail, the larger, more impressive consequences of the war. Mean- while, the present volume^ — which may, perhaps, have the good fortune to be reprinted, but which can no longer be revised — must stand or fall essentially in its present form. Since the gates of the Temple of Janus are once again thrown wide, this book — which is the record of a past that is " closed," and which was the messenger of a future of which we are already the heirs — the author piously lays on the altar of the double- NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION ix faced divinity who presides over the parting of the ways, glad to have been able to bear witness, at so interesting a moment of history, to the truth that Present, Past, and Future are only three moods of one and the same active Verb. Owing to the state of war in France, the author was prevented from himself supervising the printing of this new edition. The tedious and delicate task of reading the proofs and of passing them for the press has been undertaken by Mr. Edward Hutton. The author hereby expresses to Mr. Hutton his sincere thanks. Paris, September 18, 1914. NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION IN spite of a certain haughtiness in the tone, Burke has never been accused of insolence because of his remark : " I speak with the freedom of History and I hope without offence." Yet it is a characteristic, and particu- larly irritating, form of indelicacy, that complacent self- satisfaction of the historian who manifests his misplaced pride by a vulgar " I told you so," striking thereby a kind of Narcissus-pose before the beauty of his right previsions. The author of " Problems of Power " perhaps skirted the boundaries of such indelicacy when, just after the Battle of the Marne, in September 1914, he wrote in the ''Note to the Revised Edition" of that work: "The present volume — which may perhaps have the good fortune to be reprinted, but which can no longer be re- vised — must stand or fall essentially in its present form." Yet once again to-day, in this springtime of 1919, after a precipitate Armistice, which called untimely, and almost criminal, halt in the efforts of a half-dozen Powers to throttle Prussianism, the author, advised by his publishers of the necessity of a reimpression of his book, and asked by them for a new Introduction which should bring that book " up to date," can meet this request only in the same words. In 1919, at the close of hostilities, as in 1914 at the beginning of the war, "Problems of Power " must stand or fall essentially in its present form. Any other attitude would be disloyal. Not to yield to the temptation to revise his work, in the convenient light of the multiple tragic confirmations that the World-War has accumulated round it, is, as zi xii NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION certain readers will surely descry, a personal sacrifice to the superior principle of intellectual probity. On the other hand, so to yield would, in the author's opinion, be greatly to diminish, if not to compromise, whatever utility and authority his book possesses. Let the reader of this new edition, therefore, rest assured that not a word in it was written later than the late summer of 1914 ; that even its errors have not been corrected; that it has not been revised or perfected. He may possibly conclude, at the last, that if " Problems of Power " has not " fallen " because of the war, it was because the book was bound to *' stand " in spite of the war. The principles that inform it, and that have kept it alive during the war, are, moreover, the very principles which, had they been applied, during the months of October and November, 1918, to the problem of Germany's sudden appeal to the President of the United States to mediate with a view to ending the war, would have saved the world from the confusion in which it is submerged at this hour. Mr. Wilson had held himself aloof, as an " Associate Power," for just such ambiguous contin- gencies as this. The little knowledge in statecraft of certain leaders of the " Democracj''," who have wantonly pandered, and, in the author's opinion, criminally pandered, to its prejudices, is responsible for the choice of a system for ending the war and for preparing a halcyon future which has been exactly the opposite of a sane method. The author means to try to justify this verdict in a subsequent book, the volume that he promised in 1914 in the " Note to the Revised Edition." But, meanwhile, he desires to put on record the fact that, on September 22, 1914, he wrote the following pages, which were published in Scribner's Magazine in December of the same year, and which are now reproduced without the slightest alteration. The thesis therein formulated remains, in the author's opinion, the only rational solution of the problem of peace in Europe. The world has too long been impaled on the two horns of the absurd dilemma : NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION xiii " Wilson or Lenin." There is still time — but there is not too much time — to revert to a right method, and firmly to re-establish the foundations of a solid social structure among the several self-respecting nations. April 15, 1919. 4 LMOST one hundred years ago to-day the French r\ army commanded by Napoleon was being undone at Waterloo. And it is just a century since, at the Congress of Vienna, the representatives of almost all the European States, great and small, signed a score of treaties for the reconstruction and readjustment of the national barriers that had been overthrown by Bonaparte. It was obvious at the time, and it is even more obvious to-day, that the dominant aian of the majority of the pleni- potentiaries at this congress was to repress, in the interests of the monarchs by Divine Right, the expansive tendencies of France. Three and a half generations have passed, and Europe is face to face with » situation of an importance even more stupendous than that confronting it in 1814-15. The little Prussian State, shattered at Jena, resuscitated at Vienna, made an empire at Versailles on the ruins of a dismembered France, set forth, in the autumn of 1914, on a gigantic raid of pillage, over the neutral lowlands of Flanders and .across the glens of Luxemburg, to com- plete in the Gallo-Roman fields and vineyards the cycle of its fortune. After having achieved his dream of becoming the taskmaster of the Germans, and after having humiliated the haughty Hapsburg at Sadowa, the HohenzoUern turned his chief attention to France. Humiliation of France, going at times up to what Henri Houssaye called its " crucifixion," has been for a century the constant aim XIV NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION of Prussia. By the Treaty of Frankfort Prussian policy became German policy. That policy, save for a brief tentative period, when Germany fancied to enslave France by boorish caress and corruption, has been brutal and brow-beating. From the entrance of the Allies into Paris in 1814 down to the mad and futile demonstrations of Teutonic aggressiveness with reference to Moroccan affairs in 1905 and 1906, with a view to breaking up the Anglo-French entente, Germany has never for a moment abandoned her policy of crushing France: 1870 did not satisfy her. The " French scare " of 1875, exploded by de Blowitz and Decazes, was but the forerunner of the scare of 1905 ending in Monsieur Delcasse's fall, of the crisis of 1911, and of the assault of 1914. During more than forty years, indeed, Prussia has been preparing to add to her dominions the western Vosges and the Jura, Champagne, and the two Burgundies, Rotterdam and Antwerp, Dunkirk and Boulogne, Trieste and the Middle East. To pretexts for action she has been indifferent ; for fine occasions she has lain maliciously in wait. Two terrible wars in the Balkans, lifting athwart one of the great routes of German expansion an impassable barrier of strong Slav powers, offered her, at last, the occa- sion she desired. Methodically she prepared for war. Suddenly, notwithstanding the efforts of her neighbours to arrest the irreparable — efforts that more than once all but skirted the abyss of national dishonour — Prussianized Germany (with no pretext decent for the ears of God or man, but impelled solely by that aggressive gluttony, that land-hunger and that thirst for wassail that have always characterized this race from Attila to the incendi- aries of Louvain and Rheims) launched more than two million men amid an innocent and neutral folk into the historic road that leads to Paris. While the German armed aeroplanes were hovering over the head of Napoleon in the Place Vendome, the French and the English, luring these hordes on to the coign of vantage that they them- selves had chosen, waited for their shock. In the battles NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION xv of the Marne the HohenzoUerns met their doom. The sealing of that doom will be the epoch-making task of 1915. Whether it be at Brussels, or in another European capital, the congress which will be convened in 1915 to establish a new map of Europe and the world, will be an adjourned sitting of the Congress of Vienna. Happily the century that has intervened since Talleyrand, Metter- nich, and Wellington wrangled amid the Vienna carnival of the springtime of 1815 has been a century full of ad- mirable object-lessons. They who have fancied that because we are living in an era of great material civiliza- tion — under the domination of a " law of acceleration" which has tended altogether to differentiate the modern man from his fellows of the preceding centuries — the lessons of history are no longer applicable, will learn in 1915 the magnitude of their blunder. II The historians have passed round the countersign : the Treaty of Vienna is a dead letter. They have repeatedly noted the caducity of the majority of the separate stipu- lations signed in 1815. They have remarked that, after all, only a certain number of the dispositions of the treaties of Vienna are still in vigour. Because the texts relative to the partition of Poland and to the formation of the North German Confederation " have at present only a theoretic and retrospective interest"-^ and because there still remain intact of this great instrument, after the up- heavals of the nineteenth century, only a few notable declarations — -that with regard to the neutrality of Switzer- land, that with reference to the free navigation of rivers separating or traversing different States, or that determin- ing the relative rank of diplomatic agents — it has been too hastily accepted that the curious works of diplomatic art accomplished at Vienna have only an " historic " or ^ See Les Grands Traites Politiques, by P. Albiii. (Alcan, 1912, second edition, p. 4.) XVI NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION even merely an aesthetic import. Instead, however, of being a dead letter, it has been a living word for a tor- mented century. Although the hegemony of Prussia was not publicly consecrated until, by the Treaty of Prague, Austrian power collapsed, it still remains that the Ger- man Confederation, established by the Congress of Vienna, was the broad foundation on which the Prussian monarchy began to plan the outworks of the future imperial struc- ture. What the Prussian plenipotentiaries, Hardenberg and Humboldt, in their note to Metternich of February 10, 1816, on their proposed scheme for a German confedera- tion, called " the beautiful variety of the German tribes,"^ was soon to be converted into a pudding-stone of peoples, compactly united in the solid Prussian matrix. Later on a Bismarck who had spent his days and nights in a study of the labours of the Congress of Vienna had only to ally himself with a Moltke in order to sweep away such flimsy obstacles as Napoleon III — who had broken the great tradition of French diplomacy — to complete provisionally that unity of Germany under Prussian hegemony which it had been all along the high resolve of the Branden- burgers to secure. Napoleon III would better have studied the Obiter Dicta of his great homonym. Hypnotized by the idea of laying the ghosts of the Grande Armee, of annulling the fiats of Napoleon, and of humiliating France, the coalition of Powers of the old regime, the plenipotentiaries of Divine Right, failed to take one essential precaution. Yet Napoleon — of whom Mary Caroline of Naples had magnificently said, " If he were to die, his body should be pulverized, and a dose of it should be given to each sovereign, two doses of it to each of their ministers, and then matters would go better "^ — had more ^ See Le Congrdsde Vienne et les Traiiea de 1815, by Comte d'Angeberg. (Amyob, 1864, vol. i, p. 744.) 2 Correspondance in6dite de Marie Caroline. Reine de Naples et de Sicilo avec le Marquis de Gallo. Publi6e et annotee par le Commandant M. H. Weil ct le Marquis C. di Sdmma Circello. (Paris: Emile Paul, 1911, tome U p. 490.) NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION xvii sagacity than all the Metternichs, the Talleyrands, and the Castlereaghs ; and whatever the exasperation of these diplomats, and of the people and sovereigns they repre- sented, against the ogre, the plenipotentiaries of the Con- gress of Vienna, if they had been perspicacious statesmen, would have taken to heart the utterance of Napoleon at Tilsit: "It is part of my system to weaken Prussia. I mean that she shall no longer be a power in the political balance of Europe." By failing to heed this warning they laid the foundations of the grandeur of Prussia. Bismarck and Moltke, it should constantly be repeated, were in being in the Vienna treaties that extended the frontier of the little Mark of Brandenburg across the provinces of the Rhine, leaving just outside the elastic ring a set of small, easily confederated German States that were destined to be the prey of intrigue and to become, owing to alien racial pressure, inevitably coagu- lated under Prussian hegemony. " We receive on the Rhine some picturesque and splendid provinces," writes the Princess Radziwill on February 18, 1815, to her hus- band. Prince Antoine, " provinces which are, no doubt, a fine acquisition ; and if the kingdom which we are getting on the Rhine touches the old one, I don't think that we would really chuck for it any other empire (je crois que nous ne pourrions plus desirer de troquer avec tout autre empire).''^ Ill Even before the close of the Congress of Vienna an observer in Paris fully abreast of the time could have had no doubt as to the forces that were at work for the con- struction of some such European future as has been marked by the dates 1866, 1870, 1914. And, in view of this fact, it is to be hoped that the Allies who are to dictate ^ This hitherto unpublished document, which I owe to the extreme courtesy of my friend, Commandant Weil, emanates from the archives of the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, where it is classed with the Reports of the Secret Political Police during the Congress of Vienna. It will be pubhshed soon after the war with some 3,000 documents of the same epooh in a book to be entitled Autour du Congr^s de Vienne. B xviii NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION peace to the HohenzoUerns after the present war, or the plenipotentiaries of the coming congress, will arm them- selves for their great duties with a cautious irony. A hundred years ago an ancestor of the present Tsar, the Emperor Alexander, was feted in Paris to the cry of ** Vive Alexandre, notre liberateur.^' Napoleon had just signed his abdication and retired from the great stage of the world to his islet of Elba. The Allies who had com- passed his downfall, assembled under the roof of Prince de Talleyrand, meditated the Treaty of Paris. To France was accorded, not only her former frontier of 1792 but portions even of the departments that are now Belgian or German, the towns of Beaumont and Chimay, Sarre- bruck and Landau, rich regions of the Lower Rhine, another million of subjects. Navigation on the Rhine was declared free. And amid the fervour of generous emulation that surrounded the plenipotentiaries, finally released from the nightmare of the twenty years' war, the Emperor Alexander — anticipating the act of his mystical descendant, Nicholas II, at the outset of the war of 1914 — announced his intention of restoring the former kingdom of Poland, the fusion of all the Polish provinces detached by the partition of 1 772. Officers and courtesans, bankers and diplomats, supping in the Palais Royal, drank the health of the handsome Tsar, " the peacemaker, VAnge de la Paix'' Meanwhile, the Prussian armies were still in Saxony. The Saxon King was a captive at Breslau, trembling at the possible loss of his hereditary States, which Prussia already regarded as her own. The Congress of Vienna, convened to elaborate the details of the stipulations fixed by the Treaty of Paris, was about to open, and Louis XVIII, faithful to the principle that had inspired for centuries the diplomacy of France prior to Napoleon, insisted in his instructions to his ambassador to that con- gress, Prince de Talleyrand, on the necessity that not only the great but the small Powers should be represented at the congress. Considerations of justice, as he put it, I 1 NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION xix • required that none should be excluded, but, above all, the interests of France demanded it. * ' The interest of the small States is likewise its interest," said the perspicacious monarch. " All will wish to preserve their existence. France must want them to preserve it. Some may wish for an extension of their frontier, and it behoves France to let such extension take place, in so far as that may diminish the aggrandizements of the big States." And, with his eye intently fixed on Prussia, Louis XVIII specifies at length in these memorable instructions the list of small German States whose nationality must be maintained against the " innate ambition " of that Power. It is good in 1914, just after the decisive battles of the Marne and the Aisne, to recall the following passage, written just one hundred years ago for the guidance of the plenipotentiaries of France about to participate in the reconstruction of the map of Europe : " For the Prussian Monarchy any pretext is good. It is altogether devoid of scruples. Mere convenience is its conception of right. Thus, within sixty-three years, its population, originally less than four millions, has become ten millions, and it has succeeded in creating a vast dominion by the acquisition of divers separate territories, which it is tending to unify by incorporating with them the territories that divide them. The terrible discomfiture that has befallen its ambition has taught it nothing. Even at this moment its agents and partisans are agitating Germany, depicting France as being again ready to invade it, pretending that Prussia alone is capable of defending it, and asking it to hand itself over to her for its very pre- servation. She would have liked to have Belgium. She wants everything between the present frontiers of France, the Meuse and the Rhine. She wants Luxemburg. All is up if Mayence is not given her. Security is impossible for her if she does not possess Saxony. The Allies, it is said, have agreed to restore to her the power she possessed before her fall, to give her ten millions of subjects. If this XX NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION claim were admitted, she would soon have twenty, and the whole of Germany would call her master. It is necessary, therefore, to set a limit to her ambition, first, by restraining, as far as possible, her expansion in Ger- many, secondly, by restraining her influence by means of a federal constitution. Her expansion will be restrained by preservation of all the small States, and by the aggran- dizement of those that are her nearer rivals."^ This prophetic document illuminates a whole century of European history. Above all, it lights up the second half of that century from the wars of the duchies and Sadowa to the violation of Belgian neutrality by Prussia in August 1914. It may be confidently affirmed that its radiance will not be spent when the successors of the Talley rands, the Castlereaghs, and the Metternichs meet in the Congress of 1915. Under the menace of the brow- beating methods of international business inaugurated by William II — the method of Real-politik and haute- finance — the world has been too long divorced from the serener tradition of the old diplomacy. The voice of the great Napoleon, as its echo reaches us from Tilsit, should dominate the counsels of the future Congress of Brussels. The well-meaning dreamer of the Second Empire, in his passion for nationalities, sought mainly to aggrandize every nationality but his own. Catspaw of Bismarck, he half -consciously , half -unwittingly aided Prussia to achieve German unity. He beheld vanishing amid the smoke of the battlefield of Sedan the pathetic cohort of his generous dreams. If France, Eng- land, and Russia have not learned the lesson of this past, let them suffer the consequences ! The war of 1 9 1 4 means many things; it means, above all, the defence of the great idea of national freedom, the respect of nationalities ; but no French generosity and idealism, no British notion of justice, no Slav mysticism should be suffered to suggest, in the coming congress of the nations, such respect for 1 See Le Congr^s de Vienne et les Traitis de 1816, by Comte d'Angeberg. (Amyot, 1864, vol. i, pp. 215-238.) NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION xxi freedom and for nationalities as will bring into being another European system liable, at all events before a generation to come, to lose its balance. One may even say that the great danger of the coming hour will be, not the establishment of injustice, but the creation of too much " justice." The meaning of this paradox is clear. Were the Austrian Germans, for instance, to be united to the German Germans, to the destruction of Austria, under a mistaken conviction of the " justice " of protecting the German nationality, Brussels would repeat the blunder of Vienna and prepare another war. Were France, again, to confine her claims to the recovery of Alsace and Lor- raine, thus magnificently repudiating from sheer idealism the taking of legitimate precautions against future aggres- sion on the Rhine and in the Rhine provinces, she would j belie her most characteristic traditions^^Even at Vienna the Rhenish provinces demurred to becoming Prussian. The mystical pact signed in Paris on September 26, 1815, between the Tsar Alexander, the Emperor of Austria, and the King of Prussia, and known as the " Holy Alliance," was, in reality, a declaration of war on the part of arbitrary power against national aspirations. On September 5, 1914, all but a century later, the nations took their revenge. France, Russia, and England, en- gaged in a great war in order to establish the freedom of peoples and to maintain the balance of power in Europe, signed, without canting emphasis or appeal to Divine Right, a declaration to hold together to the bitter end. This declaration was, in a new and very real sense, a holy alliance. The task before the Allies after the present war will be, in spite of its apparent complexity, a task of an astonishing simplicity. Its guiding lines are few and neatly defined. xxii NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION IV The idea of freedom, of nationality, has dominated the whole war. There is not an army in Europe to-day that has not its eyes uplifted toward the labarum, the symbolic banner, bearing the words Freedom, Nationality. To all the hosts of all the Allies the time-spirit has seemed to say :''In hoc signo vinces.*^ Moreover, miracle of miracles, even the Germans — " that beautiful variety of German tribes " — will shortly descry the same liberating symbol. The German chancellor, Herr von Bethmann-HoUweg, sought in a famous speech in the Reichstag in 1912 to distract the attention of the great liberal Powers by creating a Russian scare. But at the very first occasion given her Russia pricked this bubble and raised the standard of national freedom for the Slavs, for the Poles, and for the Armenians. Why did Austria go to war ? Because the rise of Servia had blocked her way to Salonica. Why did Russia champion the Servian cause ? To prevent Hungarian vindictiveness and Pan- German ambition from stifling the self-conscious Serbs just on the point of entering into their own. Why has England intervened ? To save the Belgian nationality, brutally violated by a Power that had sworn to safeguard Belgian neutrality; to assure, by the maintenance of an integral, and even aggrandized France, the equiUbrium of Europe, a balance of power synonymous with the free- dom of peoples; and, above all perhaps, because of its belated perception of the clear verity which her idealism and her self-engrossment had so long prevented her from seeing: namely, that when Germans spoke of *' claiming their place in the sun " they really dreamed of looming so largely there as verily to eclipse that luminary and to fling the planet behind them into their shadow. Europe is full of Alsace-Lorraines. This is an anomaly which it will be the destiny of the early twentieth century to abolish. Wherever there be a national soul, it must be allowed to breathe at ease. Nationality is the self-conscious struggle NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION xxiii of a people to maintain its integrity when it is exposed to the gravitative attraction of a powerful neighbour. The present war is a war of nationalities. It is a war of nationalities even for the Germans. Yet a world-re- nowned sophist, the juggler of " The Great Illusion " — when was a book ever so happily named ? — duped himself, as well as many of his readers, by the argument that the State was not a person. This sciolistic visionary's gaze, ranging over the peoples of the planet, was attracted only by the more obvious signs of the time. What he and his fellow economists called the " stratification of inter- ests," the many apparent indications that the claims of class interest were overriding boundaries and shattering frontiers, was a truth too evident really to be ignored. But, contemplated too singly, it was a truth bound to ruin the judgment of any intelligence. The interesting facts were of another order. At no epoch of history, indeed, had there been so many instances to show, not merely that the State is a person, but that it is the sub- limest of all persons. It is the sovereign conscience synthesizing all the reactions of the human soul. And if, contrary to appearances, the fact and the idea of nation- ality are more splendidly evinced than ever to-day, it is just because of the extent and number of the causes apparently making to their destruction. It was hardly necessary to have waited for such proof of this as has been offered by the Great War of 1914, the key-note of which was struck in the proclamation which the French Government addressed to the country when it said: *' Gloire aux vivants etaux morts! Les hommes tombent. La Nation continue.^' Germany and Austria were almost alone among the nations that had not succeeded in creating a national soul. The latter case is self-evident; and although, in presence of the enthusiasm with which Berlin sang the " Wacht am Rhein " in the nights of early August, 1914, the casual listener may have gathered that a real union {Einigung) had sprung from the artificial soil of German unity xxiv NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION I (Einheit) created by the Prussian navvies, competent observers had known full well that the weeds of the parti- cularism of the Confederated States still grew rank in the parterres of the German Empire. This fact was, at all events, very patent to the rulers of Germany. Prince von Billow himself confesses that it was the fortuitous amalgamation, in the fire of Koeniggraetz and Sedan, of the " German spirit " and the " Prussian Monarchy " that welded the German Empire, and created the con- ditions of a lasting German political unity. " Ten cen- turies of German history," he said — and his testimony is grave ! — " had not availed to bring forth a single result in politics."^ The intellectual life of Germany, he re- minds us, is the work of western and southern Germany. There alone resides the " German spirit." The German State was born in Prussia, which prepared the political culture of the German people. And he concludes that *' reciprocal penetration of the Prussian genius and the German genius should be for Germany the task of the immediate future." The Prussians manoeuvred at the outbreak of the war of 1914 to convince the singularly ill-informed, the utterly " unpolitical " German people, that Germanism, the " German spirit," had been attacked by Russia and Pan- Slavism. Pan-Germanism would never have indulged in such frantic excesses if what Prince von Biilow says of the German spirit and the Prussian Monarchy were not true. The conclusion is obvious. It is a corollary of the chan- cellor's testimony, as it is the profound suggestion of the present Great War, that decapitation and destruction of the German Empire will be instantly secured by paralysis of the Prussian Monarchy. For the freedom of the Ger- mans, for the security of the French, the British, the Belgians, and the Dutch, above all for the peace of the world, imperial Germany must go. Thb HohenzoUerns ^ See the final chapter of Prince von Billow's book, Imperial Germany. NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION xxv must retire within their Brandenburg Mark. Prussia must henceforth content herself with her frontiers of 1806. An emancipated south Germany will be the first to thank the armies of the Allies for this deliverance. Vienna — or, at all events, the function that Vienna has so long repre- sented in the balance of power on the Continent of Europe — must be augmented to the diminution of Berlin. The Tsar must be held to his promise by satisfying the national- istic dreams of the Poles, to establish in the centre of Europe, between his millions of Slavs and the hordes of Germany, a buffer State, artificially relieving the west- ward pressure of the formidable Russias. The Congress of Brussels, in a word, must learn and apply all the lessons of the Congress of Vienna. It must temper and control the inveterate idealism of its parti- cipants by a fearlessly pragmatic criticism based on a complete knowledge of the past. There is a multiplicity of minor matters which it will be called upon to solve : the balance of power in the Mediterranean (the islands of the ^gean, the Dardanelles, the coast of Syria, the Adriatic) ; the exploitation of the Middle East from Syria round by way of Persia to Bagdad (matters, most of them, happily solved just before the war); the problem of Turkey, the definitive sanctions of the renaissance of the Balkan peoples (Rumania in Transylvania, Servia and the southern Slavs); and even the new frontiers of the spheres of in- fluence in Africa and among the islands of the Pacific. But this host of warring interests need not in reality bewilder nor darken counsel. Europe's prime duty is clear. That duty is to establish Gallo -Roman discipline and order and English liberty and fair play in a world — beginning with the German world — longing to continue to cultivate the arts of peace. Throughout all the lands that the Prussian, by his menace, had converted as it were into a sinister concentration camp, one vast entrenchment of tax-ridden nations in arms, mankind, finally relieved of the hated blood-tax that the foes of the human race had for more than one hundred years imposed upon it, must xxvi NOTE TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION be suffered at last to sow in peace and to reap in joy. For the accomplishment of this dream, there is only one sure way. Listen again to the words of Napoleon at Tilsit: *' It is part of my system to weaken Prussia, I mean that she shall no longer be a power in the political balance of Europe.** TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PACE History an Art xxxvii Napoleon and Bismarck, the Creators of Modem Europe — Their inability to foresee the future — " Prevision of the past " — No philo- sophy of history possible — An art of history possible — History as an art, the representation of actions in their right perspective. FIRST BOOK World History from Sedan to the Coup d' Anadir. CHAPTER I The Two Forces determining the Destiny of the World . 3 CHAPTER II Economic Interests and the Development of States . 3 lUustrations of the fact that money is the key of history. CHAPTER III Public Opinion and the Evolution of Society ... 6 CHAPTER IV Economic Conditions and Modern Political Evolution . 6 Internationalization of the human consciousness and of social problems — Political aspect of the World — Situation described by Count Berchtold — Significance of " insurance " treaties — Subordin- ation of national, to general, interests, shown by the results of the temporary closing of the Dardanelles — The duel between national patriotism and European, or world, patriotism — Real nature of the modem outburst of nationalism — National spirit manifested only when nationality is menaced. xxvii xxviii CONTENTS CHAPTER V The Survival of Modern States in Spite of the Corrosive Action op Economic Facts 12 CHAPTER VI The Case of the United States 13 EflEect of the expansion of American trade on American curiosity as to international conditions — Tlie two cardinal American policies : the " Monroe Doctrine " and the " Open Door " — The America of twenty years ago and the America of to-day — The " sky-scraper " : and American idealism — Steady advance in political and social unification — Awakening of a national spirit — American individual- ; ism doom.ed — A new sense of joint responsibility — Comparison between the passion for sport in America and that of the ancient Greeks — New conception of play — An American eleventh command- ' ment — Effect of sport on the himaan type in America — Survival of the old religious ideals as "forms of thought" accounting for American idealism and optimism — General ignorance of the United ! States in Europe — European recognition of America as a world- ' Power due to career of Mr. Roosevelt — Mr. Roosevelt's visit to Europe in 1909 — His visit to France especially significant — Justifi- cation of this statement by analysis of French state of mind as regards the Franco-Russian Alliance — The appeal of the Tsar in 1898, in favour of disarmament — French disappointment when the nation realized that the Franco -Russian forces were the " Army of The Hague " — Ambiguous consequences of Franco -Russian Alli- ance : pacifism or war 1 — Apparent solution offered by rough-rider of Cfuba, who had also been the laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize — Anxious curiosity in France as to Mr. Roosevelt's " Message " — Impressiveness for Frenchmen of a President of the American type — The Consular character of Republican Government in the United States illustrated by Mr. Roosevelt's policy in San Domingo and at Panama — Possible risks of Presidential independence for popular liberty — Comparison of the constitutional rdle of the German Em- peror — No analogy between "republican" government in France and in the United States — Analysis of the French Constitution of 1875 as regards the part played by the head of the state — Signs of prevailing desire in France for reform of the Constitution. CHAPTER Vn The Case of Europe: The Sequence op European Events since the Franco-German War . .... 45 The plans of Bismarck, and the struggle in Europe tor the bal- ance of power — The Treaty of Berlin — Colonial expansion of France and its European consequences — Fall of Bismarck — Attitiide of WUliam II — The German Emperor and the Tsar — Proposed Franco - Germane -Russian Alliance — German overtures to France — Ruesion aspirations in the Far East — Results of German policy from 1890 to 1898, Adowa, Port Arthur, Manchuria, Fashoda — Importance of the date of 1898 — The Balkans and Europe — The Dreyfus affair — Germany triumphant, Italy, England, and France imhappy Powers — Italian meditations: a Franco -Italian entente — The Medi- terranean policy of M. Delcassfr— Effects of Transvaal War — The Anglo -French agreement of 1904. CONTENTS xxix CHAPTER VIII The Case of Europe : Consequences of European Events since THE Franco -German War 60 The dove-tailing ol the nations — National interests matters of international concern — Sense of the word " Nationalities " for Louis Napoleon — Results of his pathetic blunder — Mystical states- men — " The International Mind " — The commonsense view of Spinoza: human passions "properties" of human nature — Resist- ance of England to the influences making for the dove-tailing of the nations — Detailed examination of the doctrine of " splendid isolation " — The rise of German naval power and its efEect on England's policy — Sir Edward Grey on the Liberal policy of indis- criminate interference in world affairs — Necessity for England of a military convention with France. CHAPTER IX The Case of Europe: Summary op the Consequences of European Events since the Franco-German War . 70 A new era opened in Europe by the Anglo -French Entente — William II at Tangiers — German aims to destroy the friendship between France and England — The fall of M. Delca8s6 — Unex- pected consequences : revival of French national spirit. SECOND BOOK The Domestic Crises of the European States and the Foreign Policy of the Powers. French Domestic Politics and British Domestic Politics and German Foreign Policy. CHAPTER I The Stability op the French Republic .... 75 Influence of French home politics on French policy — Necessity of examining French domestic politics to understand European history — Pretensions of the foreigner to meddle in French affairs — France, the most stable and conservative State in Europe. CHAPTER II Church and State in France 77 The expulsion of religious orders, the abolition of the Concordat and disestablishment of the Churches, a logical incident in develop- ment of French society — History of France, steady effort of secu- x?K CONTENTS PAOE larization — Foundation of the Republic, a " necessary accident " — DiflSculties that beset its founders — The Constitution of 1875 — Attitude of the Catholic Church towards the Republican r6gime — The French clergy functionaries of the State — Condition of servility of the bishops owing to the Concordat — Political utility of mainten- ance of Concordat during early period of the Republic — Advantages of the pact slowly transferred to the Catholics owing to new social legislation — R61e of the French clergy during period of Republican combat against reactionary parties — The Syllabus of Pius IX — Collusion between Anti-Republican parties and the French Catholics — " Le cl6ricalisme, voil^ I'ennemi " — Catholic perseciition of the Republic — Counter-persecution of the Catholics by fanatical Repub- licans — A national school system — Hostile attitude of the clergy to the State schools — Catholic political organizations — Episcopal breaches of the Concordat — The accession of Leo XIII — Bou- langism — Leo XIII's encyclical recommending submission to the Government — Conciliatory temper of French Government — Ideal of an open and tolerated Republic — Attitude of the irreconcilable reactionaries, revival of hostilities — The Meline Ministry, the Drey- fus case, the Croix, the " Nationalists " — Republican defence under Waldeck-Rousseau — The Associations Law of 1901 — Excessive abuse of this law by M. Combes: State persecution of religious orders — Impolitic attitude of the Vatican — M. Loubet's visit to Italy — The " Temporal Power " — Rupture of the Concordat — Consequent embarrassment of France as regards its foreign rela- tions. ' CHAPTER III The Deeyfus Case 99 Its politico-religious character — Conflict between two French Ideals: la raison d'itat and les droits de I'homme — Almost universal ignorance of real significance of this ten years' civil war — Foreign Incapacity to understand real character of French form of civiliza- tion — Construction of a strongly-centralized Power, the real evolu- tion of France — Revocation of the Edict of Nantes — Logical fitness of sacrifice of individual in French State — Antisemitism, anti- Protestantism — French characteristics explained by nature of French political and social evolution — The " genius " of France contrasted with the " genius " of other countries — Natural division of Frenchmen into Dreyfusists and Anti-Dreyfusists — Two legiti- mate forms of French patriotism — Pressure by the foreigner a necessary condition of French national unity. CHAPTER IV The Social and Economic Evolution of France. . .103 " The only absolute fact in the world is that all things are rela- tive " — The Postman's Strilce, 1909, and the Jacquerie in the Cham- pagme district, 1911, indications of the crisis of the State in France — Necessity of studying in detail the political and administrative organization of France — Purely relative character of socio-political phenomena — General cause of the crisis of the State in France, clash between Napoleonic administration and Parliament — Pecu- liarity of French parliamentary government: antinomy between representative government and the French civil service system — Eight million voters and nine hundred thousand functionaries — CONTENTS xxxi PAGE Omnipotence of the deputy — Effect of the syndical movement on the centralized French administration — Proposed solution: a bill determining the status of civil servants — Malady of France, a con- fusion of powers — Social unrest in France, legitimate ground for optimism — Craving for reform — Question of " Pretenders " — Government in France, the tyrannical monopoly of a minority — Absence of a constitutional opposition in France — No real parlia- mentary government — The Constitution of 1875 a concoction of the Orleanists, intended to facilitate restoration of the monarchy — Irreconcilability of the Royalist Constitution of 1875 and the Re- publico -Napoleonic Administration — French civic and social irre- sponsibility — Disappearance of spirit of authority — Tyranny of the deputy in France — The idealistic Republican period — Scrutin de liste and Scrviin d'arrondissement — Necessity of re-establishment of the principle of separation of powers — Need, to this end, of creation of a party system, based on reform of the electoral law which has produced in France a tyrannical boss-system — Need of decentralization and of an independent magistracy (study of the rOle of the Conseil d'Etat) — Need of organizing the status of fimc- tionaries — Reasons for optimism as to Frenchmen's capacity to effect the necessary reforms. ( CHAPTER V The Balkan Question, and the Relations between the Members of the Triple Entente prior to the "Coup d'Agadir" 133 Before dealing with the British internal crisis advisability of summarizing previous chapters in connexion with the Balkan Ques- tion — Germany and the Eastern Question — Plausible explanation of German policy after 1904 — The Young Turks and Macedonia — The Committee of Union and Progress — Presumption of its Mem- bers — Possibility of Balkan Federation including Turkey — The Turkish Revolution — Inevitable Growth of the Balkan League — The Berlin Treaty and the Treaty of San Stefano — Anti-German policy of Bismarck — Temporary success of German policy, however, during the period from 1904 to the formation of the Balkan League and to the Coup d'Agadir — Anglo -Franco -Russian ataxy — England's indifference and irresolution, prior to Agadir, owing to her grave domestic situation — Russia's parallel absorption in her home affairs — Summary of French feeling with regard to the significance of the Alliance with Russia — Germany's attempts to utilize the Alli- ance in her own interests — Birth of the Entente Cordiale — Discom- flttu'e and embarrassment of Germany — Causes of the growth in France of a European sense — Reasons for her keen concern as to England's domestic affairs — Surprise in France at the persistence in England in 1910 and 1911 of ignorance as to the strategic conditions governing European politics — France has learned the lessons of ex- perience — Practical interpretation by the French of the meaning of the words " Triple Entente " — Inability of England and Russia to realize the real conditions of European equilibrium — Doubts in France as to the utility of the Entente — England about to be roused from her lethargy by the Coup d'Agadir — The havoc wrought, meanwhile, by Mr, Taft's proposals relative to the settlement of " matters of national honour " by Courts of Arbitration — Optical illusion of the foreigner as to the " real France " — The real France, a France aware of its responsibilities as an integral part of conti- nental European soil — The question of Alsace-Lorraine — Text of the declaration of French deputies protesting against the alienation of Alsace-Lorraine — European armaments, the result of seiztu*e by Germany of the two French provinces — French feeling as to Mr. Taft's proposals relative to arbitration — Impossibility of disarma- ment for France — Self-respect requires France never to forget Alsace-Lorraine — Criticism of The Great IllvMon by Mr. Norman xxxU CONTENTS Angell — Feeling In Alsace-Lorraine as regards France and Germany — The New Constitution for the Reichsland — The buffer-States between France and Germany — Worthlessness of international treaties not based on common interests — The spoils-policy of the cave-dweller identical with the modem " principle of neighbourhood rights " — Meaning for Frenchmen of the word " national-honour " — " Neighbourhood rights " and Holland — The fortification of Flushing — Necessity of converting the Entente Cordiale into a close Dual Alliance — The beatific apathy of England in 1910 and 1911 contrasted with France's sceptical vigilance. CHAPTER VI The "Coup d'Agadib" and British Domestic Politics . 178 Despatch, July 1911, of a German armed vessel to Agadir — Motives of this surprising act — The Franco-German Agreement of 1909 — German misconception of the internal condition of France and England — British constitutional crisis — General considera- tions as to parliamentary government — Modern social legislation — Lord Morley on danger of entrusting public affairs to doctrinaire ^ politicians — The British Parliament Bill — Party government and the " rights of the majority " — The " Royal Prerogative " — Lack of checks to hasty legislation: Single-Chamber government — ^Was the British parliamentary crisis a constitutional crisis ? — Effects of crisis in England on England's position abroad — Reciprocity between the United States and Canada — Tendency of British Em- pire to disintegration — Opinion in Canada, opinion in the United States, opinion in England — Contagion of American ideas in Canada; Canadian forms of the Monroe Doctrine — Sir Wilfrid Laurier's attitude at the Imperial Conference — Sudden effect of Germany's action in Morocco — Reciprocity buried, the Anglo- American arbitration treaty paralysed, Mr. Borden the new Prime Minister of an awakened Canada — Real identity of the ends sought by Sir W. Laurier and Mr. Borden — England saved. THIRD BOOK Economic Factors affecting the Political Attitude of Modern States. CHAPTER I >/ Contempobary Monby-Gettinq and Modern Idealism . 201 Statement of the problem of this " Book " — Modem peoples want Reform as much as they want Money — Are these cravings different aspects of the same state of mind ? i CHAPTER n WORKING-CLASS MIGRATION, LABOUR PROTECTIOinSM, AND In- ^ dustrial Internationalism ' 202 The " Internationale " — The world-wide emigration of the work- ing-man — Demand for protection on the part of labour-syndicates against competition of transient foreign labour — Detailed analysis of this phenomenon — Signer Giuseppe Prate's book — Typical illustrations of the movement: the Case of Luxembourg and of the Valley of the Mouse — International frontiers scaled by the nomad labourer — The German metallurgists and Luxembourg inde- pendence — The interest of France in this question. CONTENTS xxxiii PAOR CHAPTER in German Commercial Expansion 212 Tho flag follows trade — Industrial development of Germany — Plausible reasons for growth of German naval estimates — Ger- many's ambiguous action as regards England's proposals for dis- armament — The peace of the world depends on Germany, likewise her own prosperity — By abandoning an aggressive policy Germany could outstrip all the Powers — Her genius for the only kind of colonial expansion that tells — German colonizers are of the cuckoo - race — Germany, a parvenu Power, and a legitimate object of sym- pathy owing to the nature of her national problems — In inter- national relations Germany reduced to a day-by-day policy of op- portunism — Optimism of the plutocratic Germany oligarchy — Ger- man Commercial Imperialism in South America — Pan-Germanism and the Monroe Doctrine — Germans ceasing to emigrate — Neces- sity of an open market for purchase of essential products — The various stages of Germany's fiscal policy — Her flexible, but pre- carious, banking system — The lesson of September and October, 1911 — The legend of the " encirclement " of Germany — Germany has no legitimate grievance — Peculiar German view that the world owes her something: "theory of compensations" — Germany treats other world-tribes as primitive peoples: the match-striking trick — The imperious call of iron — Curious interdependence of French iron- masters and German mining proprietors — German efforts to bribe France into dangerous financial and commercial arrangements — An economic forecast — The German Emperor and Comeille. CHAPTER IV General Conclusions from the Foregoing Economic Facts 233 The facts adduced in preceding chapter may be used indiscrimi- nately by the apostles of peace and the prophets of war — Fresh proofs of importance of part played by public opinion and inter- tr national finance — Public opinion to-day, often more bellicose than Governments. CHAPTER V The Industrial and Financial Organization of France . 236 Criticism of the admirable French credit system — Necessity of reform of French banking-system — Question of credit for small shop- keepers and business men — The question of the exodus of French capital — Lack of private initiative and individual responsibility in France — The French testamentary law — The depopulation of France — Complex causes of the enfeeblement of the spirit of enter- prise, consequent on French thrift — Political and social advantages of French economic and industrial backwardness — France, the most conservative, least revolutionary, of nations — Potential useful rOle of syndicalism. CHAPTER VI The Politico -Economic Relations between France and Germany 246 Radical difference of temperament between tho two peoples: impossibility of understanding each other's points of view — Diplo- matic methods of France: diplomatic methods of Germany — " Busi- ness " the solo principle of German diplomatic action — These ideas xxxiv CONTENTS illustrated by the history of the diplomatic relations between France and Germany since 1909 — The Agreement of 1909 — A method of solving the Moroccan problem that would have de- stroyed the Entente Cordiale — Franco-German Economic Co- operation: the Ngoko-Sangha; Scheme for a railway through the French Congo and the German Cameroons — The Caillaux Ministry; the rdle of M. Andr6 Tardieu — The Franco-German Treaty ol November 4, 1911. CHAPTER VII I I Predominance of Social, Economic and Financial, ovee Political, Questions 255 The first obligation of the modem diplomatists, acquaintance with economic facts — Necessity of scrutinizing diplomatic instru- ments to the letter, illustrated by Franco-German Treaty and \y' numerous instances — Two remarkable and typical illustrations of the increasing force of financial considerations in determining the policy of States: the Turco-Italian War and Servia's struggle for economic emancipation — Final answer to the question formulated in first chapter of this " Book." FOURTH BOOK The Present Outlook. CHAPTER I Germany after the Settlement of her Moroccan Diffi- culties WITH France 263 Failure of German efforts to sunder England, France and Russia — The Moroccan Question settled, yet the Great Misunderstanding persists — World-wide consequences of Germany's foreign policy — Germany temporarily leams the lesson of her discomfiture — The meeting of the German Emperor and the Tsar at Port-Baltic — Ger- many's confession on that occasion — Baron Marschall von Bieber- stein and his successor — Necessity for the members of the Triple Entente to keep ever before them the precariousness of European peace, owing to peculiar condition of Germany. CHAPTER II The Present Grouping of the Powers: How the Relations between the Groups can be Maintained . . . 269 The real conditions of international peace — Germany remains Germany in spite of the Balkan League — Field of common action of the members of the Triple Entente — The necessary preliminary of such action — The " European Concert " no longer possible^The kind of international business that can be carried on with Germany — Views of the ex-Preajdent of the Iron and Steel Institute— The limits of England's " business-relations " with Gcmiany. CONTENTS XXXV CHAPTER III The Domestic Pboblems of the Members of the Triple Entente 275 The internal problems confronting France, England, and Russia — Rapid improvement in the domestic situation in France — Prob- lems now being solved — The case of England — The admirable con- sequences of the incident of Agadir — Formation of a Common- wealth of British nations — Growth of a sense of unity — The Im- perial symbol of unity : sudden aggrandizement of the constitutional significance of the sovereign — King George — Construction of a brand new Imperial Constitution now imperative. CHAPTER IV Spheres of Common Action of the Triple Entente: The North Sea 283 CHAPTER V Spheres of Common Action of the Triple Entente: The Mediterranean. 284 The lapsing of the Triple Alliance — Utility of its renewal — Ch*- cumstances in which Italy decided to renew the AUiance — Real nature of the Triple Alliance: a self-denying ordinance between three mortal enemies — Chronic and latent hostility between Italy and Austria: the Tripolitan expedition and Albania — Italian nationalism — The Triple Entente has need of the Triple Alliance to simplify its own problems — Common aims of France and England in the Mediterranean — Effects of the Italo-Turkish War and of the victories of the Balkan States — Kark-Kiliss6, the beginning of a new era — Turkey no longer a European Power — Consequences of this fact: effect on Russia; effect on Germany; effect on Austria-Hun- gary — Detailed analysis of the new situation of Austria-Hungary — Kjrk-Kiliss6, a blessing in disguise for Austria — Crispi's interview with Bismarck in 1877 — The re-birth of German Austria — Effect of this new situation on Italy — Italy humiliated by Austria and Ger- many at the Berlin Congress — Steady encroachments of Austria in the Eastern Adriatic — Forms assumed by Italian vengeance — Italy's "insurance" treaties with England and France concerning the Mediterranean — Remarkable results of Italian diplomacy — Italy's probable futm*e policy — The New Year's day speech of M. Barrdre — Settlement of the questions raised by Italo-Turkish War and by the success of the Balkan League, will be the supreme test of the solidity of the Triple Enteate. CHAPTER VI Spheres of Common Action of the Triple Entente: The Ear East 309 The three special arrangements fixing the conditions of action in the Far East — The Russo-Japanese Agreement, and the duties thereby imposed on England and France — Mr. Taft's Manchurian policy and the Open Door — The Russo -Mongolian Agreement — The Anglo -Japanese treaties of alliance and the Taft project of unre- stricted arbitration — The bugaboo of the Yellow PerU — Advantages for Great Britain, France and the United States of Russo-Japanese co-operation in China — Japan, pacific: her policy of retrenchment — Projects for the opening of the hinterland of Asia to the play of economic and financial forces — The Trans -Persian Railway. xxxvi CONTENTS CHAPTER VII Spheres of Common Action of the Triple Entente: The Caribbean 316 Close of the era of " narrow views " — The opening of the Panama Canal — The Powers are rushing into the Caribbean — Franco and England confronted in the American Mediterranean with a new Power — Is the United States yet aware of the changes in store for her Owing to the Panama revolution and the construction of the Canal ? — Summary of growth of American Imperialism after the Spanish-American War — Difficulty of readjustment of Monroe Doctrine to modern conditions — Immediate necessity for the United States to adopt a consistent world-policy — American coast- wise trade and fortification of the Panama Canal — The Canal and the Dardanelles — Suggestion of Italian confiscation of foreign life- ins\irance companies established in Italy — Opinion of international jurists on limits set to the rights of a State to legislate in sovereign independence — Need of the United States to construct a powerful battle fleet — The fate of the United States sealed by her decision to build the Panama Canal — The United States has come forth definitively from her magnificent isolation — the Canadian frontier, a frontier of the British Empire — The question no longer is: "Is an Anglo-American alliance useful ?" but "Is an Anglo-American Alliance imperative ?" — The warring interests of the Powers in the Pacific — Asiatic immigration — Shifting of geographical centre of gravity from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean — Practical conse- quences for the United States — Necessity of an understanding with the British Empire — The dream of JeflEerson — Preparations <»f the Powers to establish themselves in the Pacific — The French " all -blue " route — A Franco -Anglo -American pact for the peace of the world. Index ...... 5 .... 334 INTRODUCTION " ^li7H^^ ^0^ wipes out," says Bossuet, *' He is YV getting ready to write." " Quand Dieu efface c'est qu'il se prepare cb ecrire" During the last ten years the Eternal would seem to have been preparing what one of His vicegerents, the Ger- man Chancellor, recently called " the policy of the clean slate." Not even Bossuet would venture to divine the sense of the still-hidden writing on the wall. Modern Europe is working out its destiny in blind obedience to the will of its two demiurgic creators. Napoleon and Bis- marck. But neither the one nor the other saw ten years ahead. When Napoleon, at Tilsit, in conversation with the Tsar Alexander and the King of Prussia, said to the latter, on his complaining of the humiliating conditions of peace imposed by the great Emperor, "It is part of my system to weaken Prussia; I mean that she shall no longer be a power in the political balance of Europe,"^ he magnificently formulated a policy which might have become the principle of action of successive French states- men ; but he could not guess that within seven years Stein and Hardenberg, Fichte, Schiller and Schleiermacher would have inflamed the soul of a regenerated Prussia, and that that Prussia would be at the head of the coalition to which he himself was to succumb at Waterloo. Nor could the same Napoleon who prophesied, " Within a hundred years Europe will be Republican or Cossack," 1 "II est dans mon systeme d'affaiblir la Prusse; je veux qu'elle ne soit plus une puissance dans la balance politique de 1' Europe." Quoted from the " Report of the Princess Louise on the interview of Tilsit," addressed to her husband when he was on a mission to Vienna. See Quarante-Cinq Annees de Ma Vie : 1770-1815, by Princess Radziwill. xxxvii xxxviii INTRODUCTION foresee Bismarck, Sadowa and Sedan. Bismarck, who presided at Versailles over the conferences that resulted in the dismemberment of France, failed to perceive the logical consequence of his own vast designs, a Franco- Russian Alliance and a Triple Entente resolutely directed towards giving a more reasonable modern form to the perspicacious provisions embodied by Napoleon in the Treaty of Tilsit. Nor did the same Bismarck, who said to Lord Salisbury in 1876 that the Eastern question was ** not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier," reflect that, by driving Austria-Hungary eastward down the Danube and towards the Balkans, in order to bring her face to face with the Cossack, he prepared the movement of Pan-Slavism which was soon to result in the Russo- Turkish war of 1877; rendered inevitable in 1878 the Congress of Berlin, whence Russia was to come forth humiliated, and the potential friend of Germany's mortal enemy; and created those new nationalities, the alliance of which a generation later was to stultify the efforts of the Powers to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and to establish on the ruins of European Turkey a United States of Balkany.-^ " Prevision of the past," to use an ingenious phrase of M. Clemenceau, is not altogether beyond the powers of the human intelligence. Plotting the curve of the future is quite another matter. It is certain, moreover, that neither any approximately accurate forecast of the future, however immediate, nor yet any satisfactory compre- hension of the present, is possible without careful scrutiny of the past. Present, Past, and Future are merely three 1 On March 28, 1903, one of the leaders of the Bulgarian revolutionary committees for the organization of Macedonian autonomy, the orator and poet Mikhailowsky, told M. Maurice Kahn (vide Courriers de MacSdoine, Cahiers de la Quinzaine, August, 1903) that the only way for the Balkan States to avoid falling under German protection was to form a Balkan federation. The Servians, Bulgarians, Rumanians, and Greeks, he said, were less different than Bretons, Burgundians and Gascons. i)read of the foreigner had forced union on the Galhc tribes. The German peril would impose union on tlie Slav peoples. Six years later the Bulgarian poet's dream came true. INTRODUCTION xxxix moods of one and the same active Verb. Their reciprocal relations are organic. The observer who surveys the latest forty years of history from the quaking vantage point of his own moment of time inevitably discovers that, although what are called " events " seem to hang so neatly together that they might be strung, like beads, on chains of general laws, this impression is an illusion, and that no philosophy of history is possible. But he per- ceives, at the same time, that there is an art of history, and that this art consists in representing, in any given field. Actions in their right perspective. History treated as an art becomes less a record of the vicissitudes of arti- ficially isolated States, less a eulogy of heroes, less a matter of edification, than a kind of telescopic penetration and foreshortening of the human nebulae, those agglomerations composed of bustling molecules, whose infinitely complex movements are determined by the size, the weight, and the individual drift of their myriad fellows. BOOK I 1 1 BOOK I BEHIND the f a9ade of Governments two occult powers are now determining the destinies of the world. One of these is the disseminated Wealth of the Democ- racy, canalized both by the plutocratic oligarchy of the Bankers (la Haute Finance), whose olients, the Modern States, great and small, are constrained to apply to them for immense loans, and by the great manufacturers and mining proprietors, who tend to be actuated solely by economic interest, and who often combine in international trusts, the operations of which are merely hampered by patriotic questions of national policy and national honour. The other power is the mysterious pervasive force known as Public Opinion, which is becoming more and more conscious of its efficacy, and, as its curiosity concerning the public weal and concerning international facts and correlations grows more alert, is manifesting a propor- tionately livelier jealousy of its prerogatives. II It is a commonplace to say that the entire social edifice is reared on a substructure of economic interests. From the colonizing activity of the Greeks, in the Dark Ages before Solon, seeking in Sicily and on the north shores of the Pontus the foreign corn which their own land could not produce,-^ to the period of Caesar's colonial expeditions in Gaul; from the Spanish voyages into the West in 1 See Thucydides and the History of His Age, by G. B. Grundy, pp. 58-96. (Murray, 1911.) 3 PROBLEMS OF POWER ^ search of the wealth of the Indies, and from the declar- ation of American Independence, consequent upon the violation of the principle of no taxation without represen- tation, to the most recent consortium of Franco-German capitalists in the Congo, or to the episodes connected with the efforts of the Chinese Republic to negotiate loans with the Western Powers, money has been the key that generally unlocks the problems of history. For instance, the development of the transport system in America is part not only of the social and political, and even Constitutional, evolution of the United States, but also of the economic and social development of Europe.^ The detailed history of the European State loans to the Turkish Government, from the Crimean War to 1912, and of the development of the Administration of the Public Debt, in consequence of the activity of the bankers of Galata, is a tale of usury at which even the imagina- tion of a Prince of Golconda would marvel, but it is likewise one of the salient chapters of world-history, and it concerns not merely the Anatolian peasant, but the British publican, the New England farmer and the Breton sailor. In one great modern State in particular, the French Republic, eight or nine gigantic establishments of credit have formed a veritable trust which has tended to kill the minor banks, and, by whetting the French middle-class distrust of modern democratic social legisla- tion, have cultivated the prejudice that French securities are unsafe, and thereby so monopolized the employment of the public wealth that France may be said without exaggeration to be virtually a financial monarchy. The apathy of the French parliament as regards the construc- tion of great public works, such as modern ports and canals, is often cited as one of the main causes of the 1 " The stake of Europe in the United States is now considerably over $5,000,000,000, and at a moderate estimate its stake in the railways is upwards of $4,000,000,000. Consequently, everything that concerns the welfare of the American people in general, and of the American railway industry in particular, is of direct practical interest to European investors. . . ."—The Statist, July 2Gy 19U. A STUDY OF INTEENATIONAL POLITICS 5 relative industrial backwardness of France, and of the increasing invasion of French territory by enterprising German, Belgian or Swiss capitalists. A more potent cause assuredly is the fact that a large proportion of French savings are systematically exported abroad, on the pre- text of assisting needy foreign States while affording safe investments to the French rentier, but, in reality, with the object of securing monstrous profits which benefit only the banks in question, a few intermediaries and a certain section of the press,, and with the result of developing the wealth and the defensive force of rival peoples, favouring the depopulation of France, and preparing the gravest complications for that country in case of a European war.-^ Ill The other power, the power of Public Opinion, has not been a steady factor in the evolution of society. Though preponderant in Greece after the Medic wars, and not less 1 During the Balkan Scare of October 1912 no country, not even Austria-Hungary, was so immediately interested in the maintenance of peace as France. More than one thousand million francs of French capital have been lent to Rumania, Bulgaria and Servia. M. Alfred Neymarck, the Vice-President of the French " Society of Political Economy," states (vide V Information, January 10, 1913) that France possesses at present, in foreign State bonds and foreign securities, forty milliards of francs, paying an annual interest of about two milUards. He argues that " a great country which has at its disposal a consider- able stock of annual savings, and which, after having satisfied its own needs, employs a part of its savings in carefully chosen investments in foreign State bonds and foreign securities — without hampering its national foreign poHcy, and after having taken all necessary guarantees — ^far from impoverishing itself, puts money by." This is incontestable. But M. Neymarck, in this carefully worded sentence, begs the whole question. The question is whether France is now " satisfying its own needs," before lending money abroad, and whether " all necessary guarantees " are being taken before sending a part of its money out of the country. Financial protection and financial nationalism are absurd. It is a policy which even the socialist leader, M. Jaures, has called etroit et sterilisant ; and, as M. Briand recently said in the French Chamber of Deputies, c'est une force pour le pays qu'on ait h, I'exterieur le desir de son or ; but a country should always have the control of its money market, and the present fiscal regime in France, whatever its advantages, is in certain respects open to adverse criticism. (See p. 265 etseq.) 6 PROBLEMS OF POWER obviously potent at many another moment of history — in the Europe of the Crusades, in the France of 1789, in the American Colonies prior to the Revolution, in the Italy of Garibaldi, or in that of 1911 and 1912, and in the Balkans of the autumn and winter of 1912 — it has not been one of the constant determinants of historical events. There have been vast periods when societies have apathetically allowed themselves to be governed by rulers whom they had not chosen or even sanctioned: whole epochs when, owing to the inorganic character of the community, no national self-consciousness could thrive, and when the destinies of a people seemed committed to the accidental charge of a mere handful of men. A different state of things characterizes the present! period. The varied facilities for the dissemination of' ideas have resuscitated the authority of Public Opinion, stimulated its energy, and increased it a thousand-fold. No sociological phenomenon has greater importance to- day than the reappearance of Demos in discussions of problems which, at certain moments of the past, have been debated between a responsible few in the ivory towers of diplomacy. An Aehrenthal and a Prince of Bulgaria may still effectively conspire to tear up a " Treaty of Berlin," and a half-dozen Indian specialists may, of their own initiative, secure the consent of the British India Office and of the Emperor of India to a measure revolutionizing the administration of Hindustan ; but the consequences of these acts are not spent; Public Opinion alone is to determine their direction — and how pretend even that such acts have been " accomplished " until, some years hence, it shall be possible to pronounce a verdict as to some of their international bearings ? IV The political evolution of modern Europe, which has been the fatal consequence of the method mistakenly adopted by Prussian statesmen for the formation of a A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 7 united Germany — namely, the seizure of Alsace, and a part of Lorraine, in order to convert those French provinces into German soil intended to be the keystone of the Empire — this evolution, which has been characterized by the incapacity of the Great Powers to settle the Eastern Question, and which has resulted to-day in the creation of two reciprocally hostile groups of virtually allied nations, the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, has been continually affected, frequently hampered, and partially compromised, by the action of a set of general causes which, while not peculiar to the present time, have never been manifested so unremittingly, or on so vast a scale. These general causes are the whole series of economic conditions so exceptionally characteristic of our industrial and financial period. The moment is one in which the exchange of products, the marvellous develop- ment in the organization of credit, and the intercommuni- cation of discoveries and ideas, are altering the whole content of the human consciousness and the moral aspira- tions of the masses of mankind, and are giving an inter- national aspect to many a social problem that had hitherto been solely national. Count Berchtold, the successor of Count Aehrenthal in the post of Austro -Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, addressing the Hungarian Delegations on April 30, 1912, thus summed up suggestively the political aspect of the world-situation : — "Until the close of the nineteenth century the grouping of the Powers inaugurated by the Triplice appeared to be merely a clearly defined pattern. Since then, in consequence of England's abandon- ment of the principle of splendid isolation, in consequence of Japan's entrance into a European alUance, in consequence of the working arrangement between Japan and Russia, and, what is no less important, in consequence of the determination, by agreement among the Great European Powers, of the advantages that they could draw from Asia and Africa, a closely woven network of agreements and entevUs has been formed between the Powers belonging to the same groups or to different groups, a fact which necessarily profoundly complicates the international situation. We must not forget that yuch new combina- 8 PROBLEMS OF POWER tions may help to temper the contrasted differences and to serve the! cause of peace. But, on the other hand, we must remember that the ' spheres of interest recently created under the shelter of these special » agreements have brought into existence other points of contact and other zones of friction, a fact that has introduced into foreign politics an element of trouble, of which it is prudent for us to take note in time." The counter " insurance " treaties referred to by the Austro -Hungarian Foreign Minister are indeed among the most characteristic marks of the present situation. But they are superficial phenomena, the sole interest of which lies in the fact that they are the signs of essential changes below the surface. They are the evidence, not of a peaceful world-condition, but of a latent state-of-war. They are the indication of the risks involved in the ex- pansive tendency of modern communities under the pressure of economic motives; they are the necessary political formulas of compromise intended to conjure away possibilities of international collision due to other than political causes. They bear witness, thus, to the most salient reality of modern civilization, namely, the increasing predominance of economic laws, with the consequent interpenetration of peoples, a state of things that has multiplied zones of friction; the blind but ineluctable evolution towards a condition of ''socialistic " reciprocity, coterminous with the circumference of the planet, and tending to annihilate national barriers. In April and May, 1912, the Turks temporarily closed the Dardanelles. One of the largest markets in the world was thus shut off from the activities of the British ship- owner. The grain of Russia was left to rot in the bins of the wharves of the Black Sea, and her loss amounted to millions of pounds. England lost £15,000 to £20,000 per day; Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece as much. British steamers, headed for the Black Sea, had to be diverted through the Suez Canal towards Indian markets, with the result of depressing freights from the East, and with a A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 9 consequent further loss to the shipowner. The world was thus provided with a singularly clear and instructive object-lesson in International Political Economy. The Turk had sealed the straits and he awaited the result, while the nations looked helplessly on. It was merely a laboratory experiment in Physics on a scale sujfficiently vast to permit of the demonstration being visible in every quarter of the Mediterranean amphitheatre. Lord Lans- downe, as one of the trained observers who witnessed the plight of the 185 vessels anchored east and west of Con- stantinople on May 2, 1912, lost no time in deploring the financial losses involved. He remarked quietly to his colleagues in the House of Lords that " sooner or later " the nations would have to decide to what extent a belliger- ent Power, controlling narrow waters which form a great trade avenue for the commerce of the world, was justified in entirely closing such an avenue in order to facilitate the hostile operations in which that Power might find itself involved. And, enlarging the inquiry to all its philo- sophic bearings, he observed: " Just as public opinion in any country would be slow to tolerate arrangements under which a local trade dispute might have the effect of para- lysing the whole industrial life of the country, so public opinion amongst the Great Nations would be slow to tolerate a state of things under which a local conflict in- volving only two Powers would be allowed to create such serious detriment and disturbance to the whole trading community of the world." Thus in Lord Lansdowne's view, the lesson taught by the Dardanelles experiment was that perhaps, after all, the life and death interests even of two nations must, in certain circumstances, be sacrificed to the interests of " the trading community of the world."^ 1 The first Powers practically to draw the lesson of the Dardanelles incident were Russia and Rumania. On June 19, 1914, they made a joint representation to the Porte, to the effect that they would not allow a war between Turkey and Greece to hamper freedom of naviga- tion between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The significance of this demonstration in affirmation of a principle on which Rumania 10 PROBLEMS OF POWER Whatever the verdict on this question, no man can have any doubt that the question has arisen, and that the reason is to be found in the fact, the stupendous modern fact, of the predominance to-day of economic over political conditions. The problem of the maintenance of national traditions, national characteristics, national integrity implies a constant compromise between world-interests, human interests in general, on the one hand, irrespective of national classifications, and, on the other hand, those sentimental, hereditary, beautifully persistent impulses and prejudices that shape a nation's soul, as such a soul has been created by the interplay of historical accidents and geographical determinism. It is a mark of the time that the same duel which formerly took place in France between la raison d'etat and les droits de Vhomme is now taking place between national patriotism and European, or world, patriotism. Every natural impulse of conser- vative feeling peculiar to the citizens of whatever country is now aggravated by the necessity of self-preservation against the assaults of the corrosive influences, economic and financial, set to work by modern scientific inventions. The modern outburst of nationalism is general . A quarter of a century ago the ideal of the federation of the world and the parliament of man, a " passion for the planet," fired many a heart. To-day, throughout the world, the steady encroachment of the wave of imperialism would make Alexander the Great or Genghiz Khan feel at home in both hemispheres. Nationalistic concentration and Russia are at one was enhanced by the fact that the step thus taken was the first public sign of the sohdarity of the interests of these two Powers after the Inter-Balkan War. It may be added that the lesson of the Dardanelles incident is an ominous one for the United States, when that incident is reviewed in connexion with certain potential aspects of the problem of the control of the Panama Canal (see p. 358 et passim). The lesson, moreover, will have eventually to be learned in other parts of the world. There is a " Question of Flushing " which wiU one day have to be settled. The Scheldt is an iaternational highway. It is not only the natural access to Antwerp; it is one of the historic roads between the two French interior ports, Cond6 and Valenciennes, and the sea, A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 11 is general. Italy, France, England, even the United States, Austria, China, Turkey, Canada, the Balkan ^ States,^ above all Germany, impressively illustrate the strange, apparently reactionary recoil. At Count Aehren- thal's death, his compatriots — who, as Mr. Wickham Steed wrote in The Times, are not given to critical analysis, but are usually guided by large undijfferential impressions — mourned the loss of the statesman who had taken Bosnia- Herzegovina, but chiefly of the statesman who had affirmed Austro-Hungarian independence of Germany, and who had caused the name of his country to be once again respected and feared in the world. " He appealed to their pride, which, for all its being timidly hidden or masked by self -depreciation, is still their strongest sentiment." Thus, the twentieth century tendency will almost uni- formly be found to be towards a greater ** national " activity. This activity is real, but the question is what is its origin, what is likely to be its duration. The chances are that the present phenomena of national expansion and of nationalistic concentration fall under the general ** law " that " nationalism,'* national spirit, is manifested only when nationality is menaced. The long agony of the several States — which are being gradually throttled by the bonds of international finance and of the labour conditions that have everywhere engendered class -war, and which are being crushed into a monotonous uniformity by the combined pressure of all the forces that make for the creation of a standard " minimum man,"^ the product of a virtually identical set of educative influences in the several countries — this agony might be, and probably will 1 The Slav ingredients in the crucible of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are tending, by natural affinity, to amalgamate. A conspicuous instance of this phenomenon is the nationalistic agitation among the Rumanians of Transylvania. Reaction against Magyar domination is creating a national self-consciousness among the population of Rumanian race on both sides of the Carpathians. The consequences on the balance of power in Europe are important. (Cf . The Hapsburg Monarchy, by Wickham Steed, pp. 287, 288.) 2 See The Future of England, by the Hon. George Peel. Macmillan, 1911. 12 PROBLEMS OF POWER be, prolonged by a series of wars which will aggravate the present temporary tendency of each State to seek to pre- serve its national traditions, and its national integrity; but, from any comprehensive point of view, this revival of nationalism the world over is only the death-throe of the principle of nationality . It is a magnificent reaction , a pathetic convulsion of the principle of life, in each of these separate organisms, calculated, biologically speaking, to retard the disintegration with which they are menaced in a hostile environment. It is no doubt the drift of the time, but the drift of only a very brief instant of time ; and it signifies, in reality, a general tendency of just the opposite character : national spirit is manifested only when nation- ality is menaced} V This is an appreciation, the accuracy of which it is obvi- ously impossible to prove. That some such conclusion may be rendered plausible will, however, probably be suggested by the considerations, based on concrete facts, to be developed later on. But the new economic facts that are becoming — that, indeed, have already become — such a predominant element in determining the nature of world civilization, are not, after all, exercising their infiuence in a void. They are acting on governments, com- munities, administrations that possess definite political and social characteristics. They are altering the whole conception of the State, and they are making breaches in frontiers; but these frontiers are boundaries fixed by treaty, and maintained superficially intact by military force, or by the still powerful prestige of international convention. Before displaying one's little collection of economic facts, all belonging to a class calculated to cosmopoli- 1 The sentiment of a German Vaterland, reborn during the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, is kept ahve to-day by the fear of the French revanche and of Russian predomination. The principle here formulated, and typically illustrated by the case of Grermany, can be easily verified, negatively as well as positively, throughout the world. ^ A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 13 tanize the still very appreciably differentiated rival nations and peoples,-^ it will be well to review the present political and social condition of such States as are most exposed to these economic ravages. The social state of the Europe and the United States of to-day constitutes a kind of definite pattern woven in political looms. But the pattern is being rapidly overlaid by fresh designs, and no time should be lost if the spectator would con- template it approximately as it first came from the hands of its famous artisans. Before illustrating by typical instances, and with some detail, the working of the occult forces that, relentlessly destroying the society in which we were born, are now making over the world anew, it will be useful to cast a rapid glance at the last few years of the political history of certain of the Powers. It is important to note the present political and social aspects of the picture on which the new economic influences are now wreaking their indelible and curious work. VI The United States may properly, perhaps, be dealt with before any of the European Powers, as being apparently a more isolated case ; though this isolation, as the merest scrutiny shows, is only a " mirage of the map," and the next few years following upon the opening of the Panama Canal will reveal the immense increase, during less than the last quarter of a century, of the number of purely North American factors in the total data now determin- ing, not only the policy of the conscious nations, but the well-being, or the adversity, of the inhabitants of the earth as a whole. Rear-Admiral Mahan, who, with Mr. Chamberlain, has been one of the seminal minds of the last generation, relates in his brilliantly suggestive essay, " The Interest of America in International Con- ditions," that not so very long ago a shrewd old Member of Congress advised a newly elected colleague ** to avoid 1 See Book III. U PROBLEMS OF POWER service on a fancy Committee like that of Foreign Affairs if he wished to retain his hold upon his constituents, because they cared nothing about international ques- tions." It is no longer witty even for the average voter in America to express such an opinion as this. Every American citizen is vaguely aware that the expansion of world trade has slowly altered the bearings of the famous Doctrine of Monroe, making of this rapidly rusting weapon, forged solely for defensive purposes, an inter- mittently flashing effective instrument of imperialism. The chain of logical sequence in the rise of American national power has been clearly defined by the philosopher of Anglo-Saxon Sea-Power: the birth of industry, the need for markets, the demand for control of the highways leading to them by means of a navy, and the consequent necessity of establishing naval bases. Thus a certain American spread-eagleism had the same cause as the British political egoism that gave rise in France to the legend of per fide Albion, and as the present aggressiveness of a Germany bent on establishing her preponderance in all the continents and on every sea. It is by the force of things that the United States has evolved two cardinal policies: a hitherto practically effective "Monroe Doc- trine," and also a less successful principle, that of " The Open Door." Non-interference with European inter- national relations has ceased to be possible for that Power, owing to its own imperial initiatives, to the birth of a real British Empire, and to the parallel rise of German and Japanese aspirations in the Pacific. And the force of things, the force of economic things, may ultimately cause the United States to be brought to bay by rival Powers summoning her, if not to repudiate the first of her cardinal policies, the Monroe Doctrine, at least so to readjust it as to bring it into harmony with the new interests of those Powers.^ If the United States Senate had sanctioned such a treaty of Arbitration as was pro- posed in 1911 by President Taft to the British and French 1 See pp. 354-374. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 15 ambassadors at Washington, their Governments, as well as those of Germany and Japan and the South American States, might easily one day raise " justiciable " ques- tionsj with regard to which American *' national honour '* could not temporize. The points to be insisted on for the moment are that the United States has become a World-Power, and that in becoming members of a World- Power the Americans have been so astonishingly trans- formed that even one who has been absent from their shores for a period of only twenty years must inevitably, upon his return, j&nd his compatriots almost unrecog- nizable. An Englishman returning to London after so long a period, from a sojourn in Montreal, New York, or Seattle; a Frenchman coming back to Paris after the same length of time passed in Canada or in the United States, would not find the familiar aspects of his home essentially altered. There is still in London " the same old crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street'' as when Matthew Arnold wrote the Preface to his Essays in Criticism. And the Boulevards are still the axis round whose polished surface spins the bright Parisian world. The English ancestral domains, and the French national parks, are still, in spite of Mr. Lloyd George and of the French Radicals — in spite of the economic conditions that are altering the whole content of the human consciousness — inhabited and frequented by men and women who are thinking and feeling in the same British or Gallic fashion in which they felt and thought a quarter of a century ago. In the United States, on the contrary, so numerous have been the changes within the period reaching from 1890 to 1910 that they have cumulatively resulted in differentiating the America of to-day from the America of the earlier date by a real and impressive alteration in quality and in kind. Not merely the surfaces of things have changed: the mental and the moral traits of the American people have seemed to alter. It is obvious, however, that this latter change is partially an illusion. 16 PROBLEMS OF POWER The American of to-day, who was " in being " in the America of twenty years ago, is only developing, with astounding rapidity, and in an unexpected variety of ways, the traditional American characteristics. But when the foreigner, fresh come to the New World, or the exile who returns to it after a long lapse of time, is suddenly confronted with the bewildering bulk of these transformations, both superficial and moral, he cannot but contemplate the spectacle with wonder. This impression of astonishment is due not merely to the feeling of being dwarfed by the " sky-scraper." The " sky-scraper " is as natural and as inevitable a product of the human effort to adapt itself to the pro- visional environment, it is as logical a consequence of the interplay of the social, geographic and economic condi- tions of civilization on Manhattan Island — and even now in other characteristic centres of American life — as was its early model at Lyons, where the houses, constructed on a tongue of land hemmed in between the Saone and the Rhone, reach heights for the most part unknown in Paris ; as was the Roman amphitheatre, rising from the broad expanse of flat meadow-lands, or the Greco-Roman theatre, imbedded in a hillside, with the convex of its tiers of seats backed against the afternoon sun. No other form of architectural expression was so beautifully suited at once to the topography of the spot and to the social purposes of the structure. And one of the happier consequences of the combination of the steel framework and of the " elevator," is that New York of to-day among the great cities is virtually the only one where you can see the stars. The insolence of its Shinar towers is a constant affront to the gods. But the idealism of American life — for idealism is the most characteristic note of the American character — is expressed in these structures as completely as is the practical energy of this people, whose preoccupa- tion with a certain class of fact, whose inevitable interest in the tangible or visible thing, has so often led the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 17 foreigner to describe them as " material." It is a spec- tacle as disconcerting as it is exhilarating to behold a whole nation rushing in where angels fear to tread. The ignoring of obstacles, the shattering of conventions, the faith in individual action, the callous neglect of all those inhibitions which arrest wild impulse, these are traits of character which no one but an Athenian of the fourth century, an Italian of the Renaissance — or a man of their temperament — would have understood. The electoral period of 1910 brought to the surface, even for the detached observer, cumulative illustration, and in fact definitive proof, of the disconcerting mixture of idealism and practical sense in the American people ; and the Presidential campaign of 1912 gave added confi,rmation of the impressions that were to be gathered two years previously. The founders of American society were ideal- istic even unto mysticism, but they were practical and hard-headed even to sharpness, " cuteness " and canni- ness. Dr. Henry van Dyke, in his excellent lectures on The Spirit of America, affirms that the blended strains of blood which made the American people in the beginning " are still the dominant factors in the American people of to-day." And this intellectual and spiritual heredity has been communicated to millions of immigrants from all parts of the world. Throughout the electoral period of October and November, 1910, and again of 1912, the spectacle was one which resembled nothing which has ever taken place elsewhere. It revealed the existence, after all, of a national spirit, capable of ultimately com- pleting the worh of unification,^ which even the Civil War, ^ The work of uniJGlcatioii will be a long effort in '* constructive nationalism." It is not merely " the problem of the preservation of the national resources " of the United States, which has been sketched out by Mr. Roosevelt in his article on " The Pioneer Spirit and American Problems " {The Outlook, September 10, 1910), and which Mr. Frank Buffington Vrooman analyzed brilHantly in his lecture delivered to the Oxford School of Geography on March 8, 1909 (cf. " Theodore Roose- velt : D3mamic Geographer." Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press). [On April 5, 1913, Mr. Roosevelt pubHshed in The OuUook an article on " The Ohio Floods," in which he said: " The treating of the Mississippi 18 PROBLEMS OF POWER supplemented by the vast material co-ordinating forces of our time — railways, electricity, the printing-press — had not yet sufficed to achieve. A genuine passion for reform; a desire — oh, sometimes a very exorbitant and fanatical desire — to make social relations and civic ideals square with a crude notion of justice and fair play; a recognition of the fact that the old confidence in the inevitable success and the obvious superiority of the American democracy was stupid and watershed as a unit from the mouths of streams to their sources will mean the co-ordination of the work of the Federal Engineers, of the Reclamation Service, of the Forestry Bureau of the Division of Soils, of the Geodetic Survey, of the Mississippi River Commission, and of the national effort to turn floods into power, and regions into gardens, and marshes into farms. All this might be done by one Act of the Federal Congress."] It is the achievement of a national policy, and a national responsibility, based on a national unity. It is such adjustment of State " rights " to National interests as will transfer full responsibility to Washington in the treatment of such grave matters as CaUfomian legislation concerning Japanese immigration. Agaia, many of the *' rights " of the several States must be amalgamated in a general " law of the land " rendering impossible, for instance, such scandalous anoma- lies as the fact of the continued existence of defaulting American States over which the central Administration has only inadequate control. In the autumn of 1912 North Carolina, which has defaulted obhgations amounting to over $12,000,000, appealed for a loan of $550,000 based on the credit of the State. Mssissippi also, notwithstanding her repudiated debt of $7,000,000, is trying to borrow. A memorandum of the British Council of Foreign Bondholders recently recalled that the official Controller of Savings Banks in the United States had taken steps to compel certain of the banks to sell their holdings of bonds of some of the Southern States, as, although such bonds were being regu- larly paid, the Savings Bank Law prohibits investments by the banks in securities of States which are in default on previously contracted obhgations. The British Council of Foreign Bondholders expresses its surprise that prosperous and wealthy communities should persist in sheer refusal to enter into a reasonable arrangement with the holders of their defaulted obhgations. They recommend an uncompromising opposition to the attempts of these States to obtain new money. At present the only two countries in the world in default, outside of the Southern States of the American Union, are Guatemala and Honduras. Constructive statesmanship in the United States would find some way to render it no longer possible for a paper like the London Times to com- ment as follows on the present situation: " Unless the American States take prompt steps to remedy the present regrettable state of affairs it would appear probable that they will incur the unenviable distinction of being the only communities barred from the money markets of the world." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 19 childish, and must give way before a systematic endeavour to work out a social ideal on a rational basis ; the rejection of the former insolent attitude of laissez-aller, of devil- we-care fatuousness, for the adoption of strenuous and methodical tactics aiming at the organization of a really democratic existence, in which the useful impetus of characteristic American individualism, or the sacrosanct principle of State rights, would be curbed only in so far as individualism and State Autonomy injured the in- terests of the vast community at large — all these signs of an awakened national spirit, these preoccupations of practical reform which had moralized politics, and which were peculiar to no political paVty, but which were as much the key-note in 1910 of the speeches of the Demo- cratic candidate for governor of New Jersey (destined to be President of the United States) as they were the war- cry of 1912 of the Nimrod of the Progressist party, be- spoke a transformation in American conditions which marked only a newer and more potent phase of the earlier high-minded sense of obligation to subordinate life to a moral idea. The period of what the Canadians of the West call " making good" is ended, and the American population is now developing a critical spirit as to the quality of the results of their civilization. It is taking to politics with a " strenuousness " that has an ethical fervour. The legitimacy or the illegitimacy of the triumphs of a rampant individualism — the literally im- perial achievements of the unmolested money-getters who have built the railways and founded the corpora- tions of the United States; the problems of national economic conservation; the present position and the future of American women; the moral aspects of tariff bills or of banking legislation: such subjects as these are the recurrent themes of the great popular magazines and reviews which are read by hundreds of thousands of American citizens and gibbering candidates for American citizenship. This last fact is in itself extraordinarily impressive. 20 PROBLEMS OF POWER The sense of a moral purpose, constantly revealed by the articles in the American magazines, is a fact classing itself immediately with the general impression left by the whole spectacle of American life. It is one with the cases of advertised philanthropy on the part of the plutocrats ; one with the titles of the books published by the presidents of the colleges ; one with the inspiration of the sermons iaf the churches, and one with the texture of the variouslj planks in the political platforms. Save for the cult off^ sport — and, after all, why exclude this Hellenic passion from the category of moral impulses ? — no activity is any longer conceivable in America except in relation to the whole problem of the national interest and of national improvement. Heedless individualism, inspired by the merely selfish instinct of getting rich, or of being a success without thought of one's neighbour, is no longer American. The theory of " equal rights " has been tried and found wanting. The tradition of that persistent Jeffersonian principle is being hopelessly demolished by the lessons which Americans of the last generation have drawn fromJ their political and economic experience. Everything now" to be seen, everything to be read, everything heard in America, leads the observer to believe that American society is already becoming what Mr. Croly, in his remark- able book. The Promise of American Life, declares that it must become, short of utter failure. It is becoming a democracy of selected individuals, who are obliged constantly to justify their selection. It is no longer, as Matthew Arnold called it, the home of das Gemeine. Its members are becoming united in a sense of joint responsibility for the success of their political and social ideal. A Bossuet, rhetorically falsifying history in conformity with an a priori principle of pre-established harmony, might be tempted grandiloquently to recall that the north and south axis of the planet is that of the five great commercial and ethnic highways of world-civilization: the Canal of Panama, the Suez Canal, the Nile Valley, the valley of the Rhone, and Manhattan Island, and to A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 21 find a " providential " fitness in the fact that a self-con- scious people, with a common political and social ideal, should be developed round each of these highways. But he would roll out anathema at one of the most character- istic aspects of American life, the universal interest in sport, the passion for play. Autumn in America to-day is, indeed, a season in which not merely the youth, who are donning the toga virilis, and their beautiful partners, but men and women of all ages, abandon themselves to strenuous amusements. Join the wonderful crowds who assemble in their several amphitheatres, round the foot- ball field, from Andover Hill, by way of New Haven and Cambridge, to West Point. It is an imperial spectacle, and the spectator will have the sensations of a patrician. A quarter of a century ago the great American public cared little for the fate of a university team pitted against its rival. In America to-day the entire community par- ticipates in the tense curiosity with which the college graduates hasten, with their womenkind, to the tourna- ment fields to see the youth — who are more like gladiators than like knights — do battle, and the newspapers of the continent, in the small f.s in the great towns, devote as much space to the games as they do to home politics, and infinitely more than they do to foreign affairs. That thirty thousand or forty thousand people, among those who are doing all the serious things in the society of their time, should scramble for the privilege of watching a football game, that the fifty thousand others who are excluded from the privilege, more or less by chance, should envy them their good fortune, and that hundreds of thousands of others should be waiting at nightfall, at the ends of the telegraph wires and in front of the bulletins posted up by the newspapers, to learn the result of a battle lasting ninety minutes — this is a fact which Europe could not understand, but of which it has perhaps gained an inkling, since the American victories in the Olympic Games of 1912 at Stockholm. It is a fact of a Pindaric quality, and one which throws a beautiful light on thQ 22 PROBLEMS OF POWER growth of the hero-cult in the civilization of Greece. America has not yet a national poet like Pindar, capable of celebrating the glory of a Boston, or a Duluth, or a New York, or a Richmond, or a Chicago boy, in verses to the glory of these several cities, but it already has the pretext and the incentive for a Pindar; and when such a writer is born he will say in English, as his predecessor said in Greek: " Best of physicians for a man's accom- plished toil is festive joy." At Lenox, where the rich families of New York have created vast domains around their country houses, exactly as the rich Roman and Gallo-Roman colonists of the Bur- gundian highlands, by natural capillary advance up the Rhone valley, built in a wilderness villas crammed with the art treasures of Greece or of the home-country — on Long Island, on the Connecticut slopes, in the hinterland of the Boston suburbs, or at Morristown, in New Jersey, where, in an atmosphere of admirable history, and in a region of beautiful hills and poetic waters, still other favourites of American fortune have organized a life warm with a rich comfort which only England's aristocracy had anticipated, the impression left upon the visitor is of another kind. It is distinctly that which Signor Ferrero, the historian of Rome, has chronicled in his notes on American society. The immense extension of the class which possesses the money to buy leisure, and enough money to buy the leisure to be wise — even if all of them be not yet wise enough to buy that kind of leisure — is a new fact which illustrates once more how useful the economic key may be to open the problems set by history. And these citizens, who can now afford to play, are being imitated by the entire people, all of whom are " making money," or who are somehow enjoying the mysterious privilege of economic credit. A quarter of a century ago most Americans doubted whether they had a right to play. None thought it ** moral " to play long. This feeling was part and parcel of the emotion with which they clung to the validity of A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 23 the universally disseminated eleventh commandment: Thou shall not like. Of that commandment not a shred remains. The Americans have issued forth from the dank Puritanism of their old-time places of worship and of study. They have come out into the open. They have treated their moral rheumatism by a bath of sun- light. They are marching to the step of an imperial movement, and they are rapidly substituting for the old precepts a moral philosophy as realistic, as *' pragmatic," as that which was born in the Greek palaestra, and which a little effort of mysticism might easily enhance — and no doubt will — with all the virtues of the famous haloha- gathos} At present America has only reached the stage of calisthenics. With their emancipation from the book, the Americans are, alas ! recklessly shattering the lan- guage, inventing new idioms, sharpening certain words or destroying others; but they are, meanwhile, evolving in the open a physical type of man and woman which has already considerably altered the appearance of the race. Dr. van Dyko, in the book already cited, denies the truth of the contention that any general and fundamental change has taken place in the human type in America. But that very trait of Americans, the expressions of which he analyzes so suggestively, their spirit of self-reliance — the characteristic which Professor Miinsterberg calls the '* spirit of self -direction " — has unquestionably given to the male and female face a look which distinguishes it from the expression of the British, French, or German face, and which climatic or other external causes would not have sufficed to induce. The British, Dutch, or Irish animal, homo, transplanted to America, might, perhaps, have become what Quatrefages declared he was becoming, 1 The Catholic University of America has conferred on Mr. J. Pier- pont Morgan a unique degree: "Patron of Fine Arts and Letters.'* {N.Y, Herald, January 3 ,19] 3.) " Un des meilleurs esprits du sidcle raisonnable, I'aimable Bemier, ecrivit un jour i Saint-Evremont: * C'est un grand peche que de se priver d'un plaisir.' Et ce seul propos suffirait h. decouvrir les progr^s des intelligences en Europe." {La E6volte des AngeSy by Anatole France. Calmann-L6vy, p. 243.) 24 PROBLEMS OF POWER a species of man resembling the North American Indian, if it had not been for the play of moral and economic factors which have saved him from that degeneracy. At all events, it is just because these handsomer and healthier Americans of the present generation are the descendants of men and women who had a peculiar en- dowment of energy, and a special training that was pro- ductive of real will-power; it is, in a word, just because they have been able to preserve their '^ forms of thought,''^ that they have been able to expand with such abounding elasticity, and such a steady, and often insolent, optimism, within the vast limits of their continent, and that, further- more, now those limits have been reached, they have been able to develop the sanely sceptical attitude as regards the quality of their achievements, and the unflinching resolve to justify their belief in themselves, which are bound to strike any observer as characteristic of American society to-day. The horizon of a religious mind is not confined within the meridians traced on the surface of the earth. For many generations the Americans were profoundly re- ligious, and their perspectives reached outward into spaces the reality of which was as characteristic as their remote- ness. The Americans of to-day are less religious, not- withstanding the evidence afforded by the statistics of church-membership. But the habit that they have acquired, of taking the idealistic, mystical, religious, far- view of human actions, their utter failure to comprehend the narrow terre-d-terre point of view, remains with them as a " form " of thought, which has been singularly and happily adjusted to the purely geographical conditions of their national expansion. An energy and a will to organize American society on a national basis, is now being manifested in a spirit hostile to some of the most sacred political and social traditions of the people of the independent States. This is the impressive implication of the whole wondrous spectacle of modern America. Now, this pervasive domestic unrest, the internal trans- formations, have uniformly escaped the notice of the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 25 foreign observer, or, when he has obtained some inkling of them, he has usually misinterpreted them. The great fact, however, which has impressed itself upon him with extraordinary lucidity is that the United States has become a World-Power, and he is taking this fact into his calculations to a degree that is unsuspected by the average American, and is sufficiently appreciated only by certain nembers of the Senatorial Committee for Foreign Affairs. When, in 1909, ex-President Roosevelt, coming up out of Africa, made his tour of the European continent, the gravest exponent of British public opinion welcomed him in language which it is pertinent to recall. The spectacle of the unfailing enthusiasm excited by Theodore Roosevelt, as he passed from country to country, was compared to the fervour aroused by Garibaldi, when his romantic exploits were still fresh in men's minds, and his red shirt was the symbol of struggling causes. '' There has been nothing like it in Europe since the days of Peter the Hermit," said The Times ; and this great organ of British feeling undertook to account for the mystery of a phenomenon which the mere psychology of crowds is admittedly inadequate to explain. The reason why Mr. Roosevelt's progress in Europe was such as the greatest monarchs have not always enjoyed, was taken to be the fact that the substance of all his speeches was one needful and welcome. Mr. Roosevelt came to a Europe which was sick and very weary of talk, perpetual talk, about rights ; and it listened with avidity and hope to a man who spoke of duties, and spoke of them plainly and emphatically. The opportuneness of Mr. Roosevelt's message is the explanation which was given of the astonishing success of his odyssey. There is no reason for rejecting this version of the matter; but it should be borne in mind that Mr. Roosevelt's message was an " American " message, and that the importance ascribed to his utterances and, in fact, his very presence in Europe, was due to the significance attributed to-day by the rest of the world to any characteristic American demonstra- 26 PROBLEMS OF POWER tion. In order to illustrate this truth one single episode of Mr. Roosevelt's journey suffices — his visit to France. The great impression left by Mr. Roosevelt in France could not have been made if he had not arrived there with a singular prestige. To Europe he was a convenient symbol of American world-power ; and France, in particu- lar, had just had excellent reasons for congratulating her- self on having greeted Franklin with sympathy a century and a half ago, and for having aided the British colonies beyond the Atlantic to achieve their independence. At Algeciras she reaped the reward for her attitude during the Anglo-American difficulties of the eighteenth century. At Algeciras the conciliatory intervention of President Roosevelt, by thwarting the German Emperor's efforts to destroy the diplomatic block which gave France a firm stand in the defence of her Moroccan interests, did more than save that country from a humiliation which might have led to a European war. It confirmed again a fact which Continental Europe had learned during the Spanish- American War, but which, if it had not been for Mr. Roosevelt's conspicuous personality, it might easily have forgotten — the fact that the United States existed, and that the Monroe Doctrine did not necessarily imply that the American Government ignored the presence of other Powers on this planet. Mr. Roosevelt, who had been a soldier in Cuba, and an official of the Navy Depart- ment, had also been the foremost promoter of arbitration among the nations. At The Hague, at Algeciras, and at Portsmouth, he proved to Europe that America was no mere cartographic figment. For France, as for the rest of the European Continent, Mr. Roosevelt meant the United States. His coming was the arrival of the magician who had made America to loom over the top of the sea, and finally to become visible from Madrid, Paris, Berlin and London, and even from China and from the islands of the Pacific. Such was the European point of view. Its correctness or its superficiality need not here be discussed. The fact A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 27 remains : for France, as for Europe, Mr. Roosevelt personi- fied, and still personifies, an epoch of American history. The curiosity which the ex-President evoked in Paris sprang from a feeling of genuine and disinterested ad- miration for the man who had made the Republic of the United States more than merely visible to the naked eye, who seemed to have introduced it into the concert of the Powers ; and the sympathy with which he was greeted in France was but the natural payment of a debt of gratitude to a man who had done that country signal service at a moment of grave crisis. Moreover, as chance would have it, he came to France " in the nick of time." He was the representative, it is true, of ideals which are not new, some of which, indeed, had been uttered by a foreigner more than twelve years before, but which had then fallen on stony soil. The time was ripe for his visit. During the period in which the United States was materializing for European observers out of the mirage which had seemed for so long a time a mere cloud-bank in the Western Atlantic, the relations of the European States were evolving in accordance with the laws of equi- librium, which, in the language of politics, means that those States were engaged in a struggle for the balance of power. Bismarck did more than create an approximately united Germany; he destroyed Europe. He pitted the continental nations against one another in a reciprocal enmity which seemed likely to endure. The history of Europe during the last twenty years has been, in its broadest aspect, merely the often blind but consecutive effort to shatter German hegemony, and to establish equilibrium among the Great Powers. A necessary con- dition of the restoration of equilibrium in Europe was the renascence of France . England was long in coming to this point of view, but Russia clearly perceived the fact only a few years after the conclusion of the Treaty of Frank- fort, and the result of her perspicacity was the Franco- Russian Alliance, and ultimately the Triple Entente 28 PROBLEMS OF POWER between France, Russia, and England^ which was a device for counterbalancing the prestige of the Triple Alliance. No fact is more characteristic of our time than the Franco-Russian Alliance. But no fact was for a long period more misunderstood, even in France. The French Foreign Office left French public opinion in such complete ignorance of the real diplomatic bearings, and of the practical significance of that alliance — which was inter- preted by the nation as an earnest of ultimate recovery of Alsace-Lorraine — that when, in August, 1898, the Tsar appealed to Europe in arms to meet for discussion of the problem of disbanding the standing armies, there was a spontaneous protest, a wail of disenchantment, throughout the whole French nation. When the young Tsar visited Versailles, in the autumn of 1896, he was led through the famous Galerie des Glaces, where the German Princes had proclaimed the birth of an empire won by the partial dis- memberment of France. The presence, in that accursed spot, of a more arbitrary potentate than even a Hohen- zollern drunk with victory, was given almost a lustral importance by certain observers, who had no difficulty in convincing the quick French imagination of their per- spicacity.^ Nicholas II was conceived by them as a great 1 I was one of the few unofficial guests of the French Government, in the Palace of Versailles, on the occasion of the Tsar's visit October 8, 1896. That night I telegraphed to the London Times a long dispatch describing the scene in the Palace. That dispatch contained the fol- lowing paragraph: " We were in the historic hall where the old Em- peror William, all the German Sovereigns, and the Iron Chancellor proclaimed the German Empire. We were awaiting the coming of the great Imperial friend of France, who, by his presence, was, in the eyes of Frenchmen, to purify this hall of the associations that for twenty-five years have made Versailles a name not of glory, but of humiUation. We had been convened to witness an act almost religious in its seriousness. High over our heads, at the base of the central painting of the ceiling, was the legend ' Le Roi Gouveme Par Lui- meme.' Beneath this haughty assumption of the old Monarchy, William I had proclaimed the birth of an Empire won by the partial dismemberment of France. He had chosen this proud vantage-point with a bitter irony, the sting of which could be mitigated only by the passage across this spot of a monarch still more autocratic than he. The palace had waited a quarter of a century for the grand purification which was soon to restore it unsullied to the admiration of Frenchmen." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 29 and friendly monarch who had hunted the Grerman spectre from that historic hall, and had purified it for French ends. If the French nation, as a whole, welcomed the Russian Alliance, it was because it felt that France could now hold up her head in Europe, and that one day, perhaps, she could tear up the Treaty of Frankfort. The burst of enthusiasm which greeted the Russian sovereigns on their several visits to France had no other meaning than this: " You are our friends, and some day you and we together will put Prussia in her place." Thus, two great people, utilizing all the democratic forces of publicity at their disposal, so transformed the arts of diplomacy that the union which they had formed could no longer be defined in the old idioms, and by such oft-used words as " treaty " and " alliance." But there was to be a rude awakening. In August 1898 the Imperial Russian Gazette published the appeal of the Tsar in favour of disarmament. In France this publication was an unexpected peal of thunder shattering all the hopes of the nation. •'' Public opinion in France, dumbfounded at the blow, accused her Kulers of having been duped by the Russian Foreign OflS.ce, which was represented as having acted in the interests of the two autocratic conspirators, the German Emperor and the Tsar. An eminent historian, M. Lavisse Academician and professor at the Sorbonne, expressed on this occasion the feeling not only of the masses but of the nation as a whole when he said: " Never has our Government taken care to explain to us the exact meaning of the alliance. It has thus far spoken and acted as if there were an under- standing warranting vast hopes. It has encouraged the very natural illusions of a country given to enthusiasms. It has not perceived that we needed the real truths, naked and dry — harsh if necessary." The " real truth " was that the French statesmen who had extolled an alliance with Russia had done so in the interests of peace, but that they were of the school of See note, p. 50. 30 PROBLEMS OF POWER Gambetta, whose maxim was that if France would come to an understanding with Russia, she could do more than recover her position in Europe: she would be able to destroy German hegemony. In a period when the carking desire for the revanche still dominated French society, it would have been impossible, in a democratic community like that of France, to undertake to dispel or even to temper " the natural illusions of a country given to enthu- siasms," and to substitute for the misconstructions of French opinion as to the Russian Alliance truer concep- tions of the European situation, and an exact notion of the scope of the defensive alliance with the Tsar. The essential thing for those who were responsible for the destinies of France was to effect the alliance at all costs. Its bearing and significance could be explained later on. The disillusionment caused throughoutFrance, as French- men gradually grew to understand that the alliance im- plied no active policy of aggression culminating in the revanche, but meant the melancholy maintenance of the status quo as determined by the Treaty of Frankfort,-"^ and that all that subsisted of the " long hopes and the vast thoughts " of the early epoch of enthusiasm was the some- what mystical faith of Gambetta in an " immanent jus- tice " — this disillusionment was one of the most tragic experiences that ever befel a generous nation. The ex- perience tended to cultivate in it as a whole that spirit of positivism and resignation which had previously been characteristic of only a part of the nation. It cultivated * The situation was, I believe, described with absolute accuracy by the Socialist leader, M. Jaures, in a speech in the Chamber of Deputies on March 22, 1912. He said: " Vous savez bien que I'alliance russe n'a pas eu explicitement pour base le maintien du statu quo, mais si vous voulez scruter a fond les evenements, si vous voulez recueillir le temoignage, le jugement que portait M. Albert Vandal et que notre collogue M. Denys Cochin commentait I'autre jour eloquemment k I'Academie Fran9aise, vous verrez qu'en fait la Russie, toujours tentee, malgr6 tout, de menager la dynastie allemande ne vous a donn6 la main que pour une oeuvre de paix continu6e; et vous savez bien que si la revanche, si la reparation devrait d^pendre d'entreprises belli - queuses, vous savez bien que tout le jeu de votre poUtique, depuis quarante-deux ana, aurait et6 de I'ajoumer." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 31 also the stoic courage to see and to take things as they are, which is the primary condition of practical statesmanship ; and France, in seeking to readjust herself to the conditions revealed by her belated perspicacity, fell back upon the resolve to " make the best " of the best bargain which her rulers had been able to arrange in their ejfforts to restore her to her place in the world. The Tsar's appeal to Europe was examined in this fresh light. On reflection it was seen to be, after all, an utter- ance and an act inspired by some of the soundest of French traditions. What it really amounted to was the convocation of the Etats-Generaux of the nineteenth cen- tury ; and it was not that by a figure of speech, but actu- ally that. Only the conditions of our " laic "^ time, the multiple material conditions, had made such an appeal possible. Europe as a whole, to-day, is smaller than the France whose woes and reclamations were considered in 1789 by Necker and the King; but to-day, as then, " orders " corresponding with those of the ancien regime are interested in preventing the possibility of the reform proposed by the Tsar. The National Assembly had de- clared " fraternity," had cried urbi et orhi : " there shall be no more war." The time was not yet ripe. It was not ripe when the reform was extolled by Napoleon III in 1863.^ But it was all but ripe in 1898, and it is still riper to-day because of the march of the factors, or rather the multiplication of the peculiar material con- ditions, which are transforming the very mentality of the race. Bismarck retarded the work of the French Revolution, gagging France and flinging Europe back into the old regime. Louis Napoleon had begun in the revolutionary spirit, but Germany blocked the way. 1 See note, p. 83. 2 My old chief, M. de Blowitz, writing in The Times of August 30, 1898, on the subject of the Tsar's proposal, compared that monarch to Napoleon III, and said: "Napoleon III once dreamed of some- thing of the sort, and in a solemn speech published his dream to an astonished world. The dream melted away, before common sense and reality, without bringing about a catastrophe." 32 PROBLEMS OF POWER At last France resumed her onward march, and — irony of ironies ! — the Tsar, arriving with his historic appeal to the nations, showed himself the real heir of the Revolution, the continuator of the work of the National Assembly. There are two French ideals : that of les droits de Vhomme, and that of la raison d^etat, and the struggle between them makes French history the most fascinating and human of all histories .•'• The Tsar, personifying the first of these ideals, pointed the way to France, and gave voice to her revolutionary spirit, her concern for right and human liberty, her scorn for privilege and la raison d'etat, her sublime Utopian logic. Three years after his famous appeal in favour of disarmament the Tsar paid a second visit to France. At Compiegne, on Friday, September 19, 1901, he gave audience to M. Bourgeois, the French plenipotentiary at the Hague Conference. This was the morrow of the day spent by the Tsar on the field of manoeuvres at Betheny, where at luncheon, in the case- mates of the Fort of Vitry, he proposed a toast in the following words: " I drink to the brave French army, to its glory and to its prosperity, and I like to look upon it as a powerful support for tho^e principles of equity on which repose the general order, the peace, and the well- being of the nations." It was impossible to affirm more explicitly that the army of the Franco -Russian Alliance was the army of The Hague. " Equity " on the lips of a Russian emperor was synonymous with " Justice " in the mouth of a Roose- velt. France no longer had any excuse for not under- standing. She did understand: not merely her rulers, but her people. And yet, how many of their sentimental instincts were wounded, how many of their natural impulses arrested, by the certainty that *' the principles of equity on which repose the general order, the peace, and the well-being of the nations " must henceforth be their only 1 See pp. 99-103. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 33 resource ! The Tsar had sown, in the teeth of a driving Gallic wind, the germs of pacifism in France. But the seeds had pushed to the light amid a rank undergrowth of aspirations towards " revenge." Was there no way of making a harmonious garden-plot of these blades of corn and of these scarlet poppies ? Pacifism and War ! Here were two reciprocal contradictory ideals. Could nothing be done to reconcile them ? The problem seemed to the French to have been solved by the ex-President of a friendly nation and a '' sister re- public." The rough-rider of Cuba had been the laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize. Frenchmen awaited Mr. Roosevelt's arrival with anxious expectations, hoping to learn from his lips the formula which the United States had found useful, and which might serve as a remedy for their own malaise. They were not disappointed. Here is what the ex-President said to them at the University of Paris, in a lecture which was disseminated by the Temps among some fifty thousand school-teachers throughout the country : *' The good man should be strong and brave — that is to say, capable of fighting, of serving his country as a soldier, should the occasion arise. There are well-intentioned philosophers who declaim against the iniquity of war. They are right, provided they insist merely on the iniquity. War is a horrible thing; and an unjust war is a crime against humanity. But it is a crime of this sort because it is unjust, not because it is war. The choice should always be in favour of right, whether the alternative is peace or war. The question should not be simply: ' Is there going to be peace or war ?' The question should be: * Shall the cause of right prevail ? Are the great laws of justice once more to be observed ?' And the reply of a strong and virile people will be: ' Yes, whatever the risk may be.' No honourable effort should ever be neglected in order to avoid war, just as no honourable effort should be neglected by an individual, in private life, to avoid a quarrel; but no seK-respecting individual, and no self-respecting nation, should submit to injustice."^ And dotting the I's with a vigorous stroke, in a hand- writing which all could read, the speaker concluded with 1 See note, p. 173. 34 PROBLEMS OF POWER an inspiriting and illuminating definition of patriotism, and of its bearing on international relations. He seemed to be giving a voice to the finer idealism of French foreign policy under the Third Republic. The truly patriotic nation, he said, made the best member of the family of nations. It should stand up for its rights, but it should respect the rights of others. " International law," however, was not private law, and it lacked as yet a recognized sanction. For the present, every nation must be the final judge of its own vital interests, and in the last resort must have the will and the strength to withstand the wrong which another would inflict upon it. The nations were all for peace and justice, but " if peace and justice were at loggerheads, they would de- spise the man who did not take the side of justice, even though the whole world were to rise up in arms against him." No lips since Gambetta's had addressed Frenchmen with this lucidity and this authority. And the lips were those of the one distinguished foreigner whose sincerity was beyond suspicion. Mr. Roosevelt justified Frenchmen to themselves .-"^ He capped the work of the Tsar, reconciling the two great principles which had presided over the evolution of French history: the spirit that had in- formed the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the spirit that, from the defeat of Ariovistus to the Treaty of Nimegue, had animated the soul of the nation in its long struggle towards unity and la raison d'etat. The man who had thus eloquently expressed the aspira- tions of the French soul and its anxious reflections on problems which concern the very existence of France as a nation, could be permitted to utter certain home truths which would have been tolerated from no one else; and 1 The author of Le Patriotisme en France et V Stranger, 1912, M. Paul Pilant, publishes in his excellent book an article written by him in June 1910, and " dedicated to the French pacifists," in which he cites Mr. Roosevelt as an admirable professor of energy for the French people. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 35 Mr. Roosevelt made the most of his advantage. It was not merely a matter of his reminding a people who had inscribed the word *' Egalite " on all their public monu- ments (not excepting the portals of their cemeteries — perhaps the only place where it deserves to figure) that *' Equality '* is an absurdity; that there are degrees of worth, and thus degrees of legitimate superiority, and con- sequently of desert and social rank ; and that only men who are equal are equal. It was not merely a matter of his paean in honour of the man of action and character, which contained passages of withering scorn for the cynic who watches the fray from afar, regarding it as vulgar to take part in the battle and " distinguished " to criticize, and to count the blows dealt by others — utterances as stinging as those in which the Abbe Coyer castigated the aris- tocracy of his time for their indifference to the great civic, political, and commercial interests of the community, and utterances, moreover, that were singularly audacious in a society where so small a proportion of the electorate care to indulge in their right of suffrage. It was not even Mr. Roosevelt's haughty assumption to be speaking to the doctors of the Sorbonne as the Paul of a New Dis- pensation, and his venturing to assure these Gamaliels that all the science of the schools is as nothing in com- parison with common sense and those qualities which, while giving a man self-confidence, give him at the same time a sentiment of his responsibility as a member of society. It was not the fact of Mr. Roosevelt's fulminating as a kind of Protestant Savonarola, in the downright Anglo-Saxon way, that moved the heart of France. It was the mere fact of his existence as a type ; the fact that a man who had been President of a Republic should pos- sess ideas of his own, and take himself seriously as a leader of men and a teacher, whereas in their own country the head of the State was a vague personage without known views of any kind, without initiative or authoritj^ and a man who, if he were to venture to enunciate any ideas or to play a role, would expose himself, in spite of the 36 PROBLEMS OF POWER Constitution/ to the French form of impeachment, and perhaps eventually be brought up for trial before Par- liament sitting as a High Court of Justice. As an illustration of what one may, what, indeed, one must, call the Consular character of Republican govern- ment in the United States, one need only quote the words of Mr. Roosevelt in his address delivered at Christiania, May 5, 1910, on "The Colonial Policy of the United States." He warned his hearers on that occasion that his remarks on peace as incumbent of the Nobel Prize should be taken in the light of what he " actually did " as President. The United States kept her promise to the letter as to the evacuation of Cuba, and her intervention in San Domingo was solely to " prevent the need of taking possession of the island." But what was the President's role, his " manner," as a responsible exponent of American policy ? In a period of anarchy and revolution Mr. Roosevelt negotiated a treaty with the Government of the island in virtue of which an American was placed at the head of the Customs Houses and the United States agreed to turn over to the San Domingo Government 45 per cent, of the revenue, keeping 55 per cent, as a fund to be applied to a settlement with the creditors. The creditors acquiesced. The United States Senate alone held out. But, says Mr. Roosevelt, " / went ahead any- how and executed the treaty until it was ratified . ' ' By his 1 " In spite of the Constitution.''' The French Constitution unques- tionably grants the President the rights of message and suspension, the rights of prorogation and dissolution of Parliament. And no doubt, as M. Henry Leyret says in his briUiant book: Le President de la Repuhlique (Colin, 1913), p. ix, "not to use these rights c'est trahir les citoyens.'" The whole question, however, is whether the President is free to apply the Constitution. Elected by the members of the two Houses, can he be expected to take initiatives which may create friction between the Chamber and himself ? M. Leyret argues that he can, provided he keeps ever in mind the principle of the Separation of Powers. But that principle has become painfully blurred in France. At all events, whatever may be the letter of the Constitution, its prac- tical application has more and more tended to limit the role of the President, and the real problem at present, as will be seen later on, is how to restore the Separation of Powers, so as to prevent usurpation of the executive by the legislative authority. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 37 ' going ahead anyhow," without Constitutional sanction, the San Domingo Government has received nearly double the amount of the revenues they got when they collected it all themselves, and the United States gave the world the impression that it was acting in good faith. Mr. Roose- velt's policy in San Domingo was attacked by those whom he calls " the hysterical sentimentalists for peace," but " he weiit straight ahead and did the job," in spite of the charge that he had " declared war " against San Domingo. In the same way, referring to the Isthmus of Panama, where the responsible Government was in- capable of crushing out lawlessness, he says : " As nobody else was able to deal with the matter, I dealt with it myself, on behalf of the United States Government, and now the Canal is being dug, and the people of Panama have their independence and a prosperity hitherto un- known in that country."^ One need not for the moment concern oneself with the result of these policies, but merely with their Constitutional character; and the obvious fact is that the Constitution of the United States, alone among the Constitutions of the civilized Powers, is sufficiently elastic to permit the Head of the State to act thus irresponsibly for responsible ends; to "deal with the matter himself on behalf of the Government "; to " go ahead anyhow," provisionally indifferent as to the Constitutional sanction of his actions. This is a form of real-politik which is Bismarckian in its processes, but which no modern Bismarck, even in Germany, could successfully imitate. No British sovereign, or French President, or Turkish Sultan, hardly any Russian Tsar, could act in a manner so arbitrary. The fact that the scope of the powers of the Head of the United States is potentially of this almost unlimited, positively Montene- grin, character is one of the most interesting and singular features in the whole history of Constitutional govern- ment. This fact, to be sure, can be viewed under another light ; 1 Cf., however, p. 172 ^ 38 PROBLEMS OF POWER it is not merely "interesting and singular": it may conceivably constitute a danger for what is called popular liberty. In connexion with the Presidential campaign of 1912, above all with reference to the discussion of the question of the third term for Mr. Roosevelt himself, there was proposed to Congress a scheme extending the American President's term of office from four to six years, and rendering him ineligible for a second term. The framers of this measure were fully aware of the immense range of powers conferred in the United States upon the Executive Authority. Commander-in-Chief of the army and the navy, the President, as the appointing officer, has also beneath him a great army of civilian officials who look to him for their continuance in office. As the organ of Mr. Roosevelt, the Outlook, acknowledged (May 25, 1912, p. 152), '' There are other powers inherent in the Executive Authority that help to render the President of the United States powerful beyond the dreams of many a king." The high-minded but doctrinaire, and therefore unsound, thinkers who (notwithstanding their recognition of the fact that " there is undoubtedly an evil in the misuse of patronage," and that " there is a danger in the possibility of a President's continuing himself in power longer than the people wish ") objected to the proposal to limit the President's authority, ventured upon the following: ''Any President who is continued in office through the mandate of the people furnishes no danger of dictatorship.'' It is a beautiful case of deductive reason- ing, of a scholastic perfection, the rotten root of which is the petitio principii that the people can do no wrong ; that the people have a right to rule; and that right in this last phrase has a clear, axiomatic, religiously binding, sense, requiring no commentary or justification. Worse still, the assumption that a President who is not ousted by 92 million Americans, to whom he owes his election by *' direct primaries," is necessarily the best exponent of the people's wishes, is a kind of d priori major premiss which the most superficial knowledge of history, from A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 39 Caesar to Napoleon III, tends to discredit. The truth is that " any President who is continued in office through the mandate of the people furnishes " many a " danger of dictatorship." There is at the same time even more abundant evidence in historic precedent, as well as in psychology, to show that the whole idea of mandate^ of representative government, of plebiscitary elections, or referendum legislation, are relatively primitive conceptions for the attainment of that social justice for which demo- cratic communities are all clamouring, but which their leaders seem less and less likely to be able to offer them. The case of Germany throws on these problems only a dim light, for the Prussian King who, by the Constitution, has become the " German Emperor," that is to say a life- president, is the visible and central keystone that holds together the arch of the confederated German States. Therein lies his chief utility as an essential part of the Constitutional mechanism. A stable head-of-the-State is a logical corollary of the idea of German unity. Less organically bound up with that idea is, perhaps, the Bis- marckian notion that the Emperor, through his Chan- cellor, is the necessary counterpart of universal suffrage, and that there should exist a " Federal Council " inde- pendent of the Reichstag. When, in the last German elections, 110 socialists were returned to the Reichstag, Herr von Bethmann-HoUweg, the Chancellor, took occasion to remind his compatriots that Germany is not a land of parliamentary government, and to proclaim that he was independent of any parliamentary mani- festation of the people's will as expressed in the elections. These brave words, however, cannot drown the murmurs of unrest that are more and more loudly heard in Germany, as the signs of a Constitutional crisis accumulate. Mr. Roosevelt's visit to France coincided with the period of the general elections for the Chamber of Deputies. The ex-Minister of Finance, M. Jules Roche, a leading Paris editor, stood in those elections, as he had stood for 40 PROBLEMS OF POWER many years, for a constituency in the Department of the Arddche, and was elected. In his address to his con- stituents in which he thanked them for their confidence, he said : — " At the very moment when the ex-President of the United States was so magnificently expounding in Paris the conditions of a true tepublic and the role of a citizen, you were offering the example of an entire population of free citizens in a false repubUc, which is at the mercy of arbitrary action and the prey of anarchy. It was in vain that certain so-called repubUcan electors trampled under foot the essential principles of a repubUc, and acted in a spirit of hostihty toward Uberty and right. You proclaimed in loud utterances, you as well as Mr. Roosevelt, that there is no republic without citizens, and no citizens without the love and exercise of Uberty, and no hberty without institutions which are its consecration and its guarantee." M. Roche's electoral rhetoric should be taken cum grano salis ; but the passage cited is significant in connexion with what followed it. This was nothing less than the announcement of M. Roche's intention to propose a radical revision of the Constitution of 1875, in addition to the indispensable electoral reform; a revision which would embody two of the essential principles of the American Constitution — and yet the United States is a Republic 1 — to wit : the guarantee of the necessary rights and liberties of the citizen, and a responsible President who would choose his ministers outside of Parliament. M. Jules Roche revived here ideas analogous to those of M. Derou- lede. The latter is one of the most honourable and sympathetic of contemporary Frenchmen, and if ever the irony of fortune had lifted him to the Elysee, it seems not improbable to many close observers that he would have been a president of the stamp of Mr. Roosevelt : instead of which, France ostracized him as a danger to the State ! But France, as it happens, is not yet convinced that she wants a president of that stamp. Neither a Deroulede nor a Roche is ever likely to rule her, and their cases have been cited merely because it is interesting to observe that their ideas, which in the present state of the Republic A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 41 in France are bound to class them among the reactionaries and almost to appear subversive, are the commonplaces of Republicanism in the great democratic community of the West. The fact would really seem to imply a curious anomaly. It would suggest, at all events, that there are more forms and kinds of republics than are usually supposed to exist, and that there is no obvious reason for using the same word to describe two communities governed in ways so radically disparate as are the United States and France. Of course M. Jules Roche, for his own political pur- poses, put his finger on one of the essential differences be- tween France and the United States. As he has observed with admiration, in the United States a responsible man is placed at the head of the State, whereas in France the fear of a " man " has for forty years been the beginning of political wisdom. The fear of a " man " has been an inevitable state of mind of the French Republicans, since the Republic in its development has had to fight for its life amid a world of enemies surviving from the old regimes. The Constitution of 1875, under which France is now vegetating, was adopted by a majority of but one vote,"'' and that Constitution was only a step — a moment of repose when the nation seemed to be marking time — in the century-long effort, which has by no means yet been realized, to organize the sovereignty of the people in a free country, with a responsible government that should be controlled by the nation. The spirit of unity, inoculated in the French soul by the monarchy, has above all been imposed by the geographical position of France. In the United States, on the contrary, the political ten- dencies were all centrifugal, and the natural principle was that of federalism until the unity of the nation was achieved — perhaps provisionally — by the enormous sacri- ^ The Wallon amendment: " Le President de la Republique est elu pour sept ans . . , ," was passed by 353 votes to 352. " By the irony of things the most convinced monarchists had said some time before: nous ferons la monarchic, fut-ce d une voix de major ibe'' {Souvenirs 1848-1878, by C. de Freycinet, p. 317.) F 42 PROBLEMS OF POWER fice of blood during the Civil War. In France the fear of a " man " was the form assumed by dread memories: the two experiments of the monarchy and of the empire, two foreign invasions (1814-1815 and 1870-1871), and three revolutions (1789, 1830 and 1848). As the his- torian of the Third Republic, M. Hanotaux, puts it : " Les esprits eclaires qui dirigeaient VAssemhUe Nationale avient la honte, la haine, Vhorreur du pouvoir personnel, du des- potisme et de la dictature. Done la volonte nationale etait unitaire tandis que la prudence nationale etait libertaire.'' The Constitution of 1875, therefore, maintained national unity, and preserved the admirable scaffolding of govern- ment known as the administration, but did everything in its power to discourage personal ambition and to en- feeble such ideas of citizenship as were bound to be extolled by Theodore Roosevelt, the most authoritative exponent of the traditionally American political philo- sophy to whom France was ever likely to listen. ' ' Rarely," says M. Hanotaux, speaking of the Constitution of 1875, " has a more complicated pagoda been constructed to shelter a more diminutive god." And he is right. All that Republican France desired was a visible figure-head at the summit of the monument. The type of chef d'etat represented by a President of the United States is a monster from the point of view of the Constitution of the Parliamentary Republic of France. "Every act of the president of the Republic/' says Clause 3 of that Constitu- tion, " must be countersigned by a minister," and these ministers are responsible not to the head of the State, but to the Chamber of Deputies, upon whom they depend. In the France of the Third Republic superiority of every kind has been damned in the name of equality, and sup- pressed in the name of la raison d'etat. Nothing resem- bling an organized democracy has ever existed in France, where the ship of state is still sailed by a small crew — the " Government of the ten thousand," to use Bismarck's phrase — who have seized and manned the Napoleonic administration and the political machinery. The role A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 43 of the head of the State, as it has worked out in practice under the Third Republic, has shrunk to an even narrower compass than the delimitation fixed by the Constitution of 1875. Discipline, inter-subordination, beginning with the president, are the marks of French citizenship. There is no recognized place for individual initiative. French youths have uniformly aspired to become " function- aries," civil servants, a part, however subordinate, of the vast machine ; few have dreamed of becoming leaders of men, and of " serving " the body-politic in the American way. All this has produced an automatic civic life in which the Chambers and the Administration have directed the acts of committees known as Governments. It is a state of things radically the opposite of that resulting from the American Constitution. A career like that of Mr. Roosevelt would be impossible for a public man in France, and were a Frenchman to try to test the elasticity of the French Constitution, and seek to secure the personal authority and prestige of a Roosevelt, he would quickly become the incarnation of all the reactionary aspirations in the country, and might, ultimately, as has been said, be impeached before the Haute-Cour. France, even Republican France, suffers, as will be seen later on,^ from the monotony of the bureaucratic auto- matism of its civic life, in which the form of ballot known as le scrutin d'arrondissement prevents the education of the elector on any question of general policy and renders the deputy the creature of the State official. Yet the nation longs for a franker party organization, for the opportunity to discuss great national questions, for the thrill of a really democratic existence. There is no doubt that its citizens are eager to escape from the individual veulerie which tends to be the political fate of men who have not even, as under the Second Empire, the compensation of being able to satisfy their liking for a glorious faqade and of cherishing the sentiment of respect. Now Mr. Roosevelt, in his categorical way, gave utterance, with clarion-toned I ISee Book 11, Ch. 4. 44 PROBLEMS OF POWER efficiency, to the unexpressed longings of the Repubhcans, while still seeming to speak the language of the liberal, even of the reactionary, opposition. The Republicans, who one and all agreed with him, but dared not openly confess it, since such confession would have classed them with the reactionaries, tolerated Mr. Roosevelt's home truths, solely because they came from American and "Republican" lips; but from any other personality of his eminence — crowned head or other — many of the ideas to which he gave expression would have been held to verge on impertinence. The conservatives and the re- actionaries, on the other hand, are always chiding the Republic, and they welcomed Mr. Roosevelt as a timely visitor loaded with unexpected grist for their mills . ' ' We told you so !" they cried to their republican compatriots. " What a lesson !" But the Republicans were, in reality, no less delighted, since they, too, recognize the urgent necessity of reform ; and the reform has already begun to come in the spirit of Mr. Roosevelt's counsel. France has entered upon a period of unrest, of adminis- trative and electoral reform, which is bound ultimately to transform the very foundations of her Constitution. It was not in vain that in the hour of crisis an ex-President of the " Republic " of the United States fearlessly lectured the " sister Republic " on the duties of citizenship, and that he said to modern France such things as these : " A good citizen will insist on liberty for himself, and make it his pride that others should have it as weU as he. Perhaps the best test of the point reached in any country by the love of Hberty is the way in which minorities are treated there. Not only should there be com- plete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but there should be complete liberty for each individual to lead the life that suits him, provided that in so dohig he does no harm to his neighbour. ... In a republic it is necessary, in order to avoid failure, to learn how tq combine intensity of conviction with a large tolerance for differences of conviction. Vast divergencies of opinion relative to reUgious, political, and social beliefs will exist necessarily, if the inteUigence and the conscience are not to be stifled, but to develop sanely. The bitter fratricidal hatreds based on such divergencies are not a sign of ardent A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 45 belief, but of that fanaticism which, whether it be reKgious or anti- religious, democratic or anti-democratic, is itself merely the manifesta- tion of sinister bigotry, which is in turn the primaiy cause of the down- fall of so many nations." Since Mr. Roosevelt's departure, France has been saying to herself, in the words of Dante when Virgil chided: " The self -same tongue first wounded and then healed me." VII " Bismarck," as has been seen, ** did more than cre- ate an approximately united Germany; he destroyed Europe. . . . Bismarck retarded the work of the French Revolution, gagging France and flinging Europe back into the old regime." After the defeat of France, the first steps towards the reconstruction of Europe, by the restoration of the balance of power, were taken by the French Republic and the Tsar. That, however, is only a brief portion of the story. The normal evolution of every nation in Europe has been disturbed, if not utterly deranged, by the action of Germany in annexing Schleswig- Holstein and in seizing the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. The trend of European history during the last forty years has been determined by these titanic blunders; and the word determined should be taken in its scientific sense. Few intellectual exercises are more amusing than the examination of the internal interplay of European events since the Franco-German war. It is a constant spectacle of resultants of force revealing in those events a logical, apparently fatal, sequence. To enjoy this spectacle it is sufficient to group the salient, essential facts round certain crucial dates. The date of the fall of Bismarck, in 1 890, which cuts this period almost exactly in two, is more than a convenient rallying point for perplexed observers of the European movement. Bismarck gone, responsibility for Germany's destinies was assumed by a young sovereign of exception- 46 PROBLEMS OF POWER ally alert intelligence, fully abreast of his time, and per- fectly aware of the deficiencies, as well as of the greatness, of the work of the Founder of the Empire. Bismarck had relied mainly on his political intuition to insure — yet he took the precaution to re-insure by treaty — ^German prestige.-^ He presided over the beginnings of German economic enterprise without completely compre- hending the drift of the time. An astute, daring and unscrupulous diplomacy, varied, when necessary, by a policy of intimidation based on an invincible military force, seemed to him sufficient to maintain his country at the point provisionally guaranteed to her by the Treaty of Frankfort. Too practical, too realistic entirely to ignore the existence of those subtle factors determining human action, which he called " the imponderables," he was nevertheless constantly led by his superstitious self- confidence to leave too many of them out of account. When he had successfully managed the Berlin Congress which he had organized, and during which his chief care was the preparation of the Alliance between Austria and Germany, he fancied he had forced Europe to guarantee a status quo based on the stipulations of the Treaty of Frankfort, on the concrete reality of a crushed and dis- membered France. He proceeded to take the obviously necessary precautions. He came to an arrangement with Austria in 1879, and simultaneously — with a show of magnanimity that imperfectly concealed his real plan to keep France busy outside of Europe — he favoured French expansion in Tunis. This was a quick way of alienating 1 " A visitor of Bismarck's once reminded him that Schopenhauer used to sit with him at dinner every day in the hotel at Frankfort. * I had no business with him; I had neither time nor incHnation for philosophy,' said Bismarck, ' and I know nothing of Schopenhauer's system.' It was summarily explained to him as vesting the primacy of the will in seK-consciousness. ' I dare say that may be all right,' he said, 'for myself, at least, I have often noticed that my will had decided before my thinking was finished.' Improvisation has more to do in poUtics than people jthink." (Anecdote quoted by Lord Morley, in his speech'as'Chancellor^of Manchester University, June 28, 1912.) - -^ - A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 47 Italian sympathy from the Power that not so long before had helped Italy to achieve her independence.-^ 1881 is the date of the Treaty of Bardo, whereby Tunis was given to France; and in 1882 Italy joined Germany and Austria in an alliance which was thus made Triple. This Treaty, although ostensibly concluded " for the consolidation of European peace," was avowedly anti* Russian ; Bismarck was aiming solely at European hege- mony ; the necessity of the world-policy that William II was to inaugurate was almost unsuspected by him; the Eastern Question seemed to him " not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier "; what more dread potential enemy had Germany than the Empire of the Tsars, one of whom, Alexander II, had cried: " Hands off !" when, only five years after Sedan (the " French Scare," 1875), Bis- marck threatened to give a resilient France her definitive quietus ? Moreover, had not Russia come forth from the Berlin Congress even more humiliated than France ? That Russia was suspicious of her great western neigh- bour, that Alexander II, arbitrary potentate as he was, still perceived that a blighted France, even though that France was the France of the Marseillaise, deprived him of a potentially useful friend in Europe, was shown by a succession of little unmistakable indications,^ all culminating in the interesting fact of the decision of France to lend Russia 500,000,000 of francs. This was in 1888. Almost twenty years had passed since the Franco- German war; ten since the Treaty of Berlin. That Treaty, which had confirmed German hegemony, had established in South-Eastern Europe a series of small 1 " Prince Bismarck, twelve years after Sadowa, had actually given territory to Austria, and ... he asked for an alliance in order to cover him against Russia." (M. de Blowitz: "Prince Bismarck and German Unification," The TimeSy August 3, 1898.) If, ten years after Sedan, Bismarck had given European territory to France, instead of hoardiQg the lands he had stolen from her in 1870, the history of Europe would have been utterly changed. 3 See Amhassade d Paris du Baron de Mohrenheim (1884-1898), par Jules Hansen. Flammariou. 48 PROBLEMS OF POWER States, left by Germany to shift for themselves under the vigilant guardianship of Russia and Austria-Hungary, and calculated, in the German Chancellor's eyes, to absorb the entire attention of those Powers. Bismarck believed that he had crushed and completely isolated France, and that the Eastern Question had been settled for a genera- tion. What he had really done was to render an alliance between the Tsar and the Republic inevitable, and to alienate Russia from Austria-Hungary, while making her the friend of Italy ; and it was no longer Bismarck, but the spire of Strasbourg Cathedral and the Balkans, that dominated European politics. "Xc5 convenances de V Europe sont le droit,'* said the Tsar Alexander to Talleyrand in 1814 at Vienna. Bismarck had sought to substitute for this famous formula another : My will is the law of Europe. In reality he had prepared Agadir and Kirk-Kilisse. Meanwhile, France, which had gone to Tunis in 1881, was in Tongking in 1885. England was watching her with jealous eyes. At the same time her domestic difficulties, notably the anti-Republican coalition conspiracy known as Boulangism, paralysed her energy, and compromised her authority in Europe. Bismarck saw no reason to complain of the situation. Now and then — as in the Schnoebele affair of April 1887, when he imprisoned the police-commissioner of Pagny, releasing him only after eight days — he invented a frontier incident calculated to remind France that Germany was on her guard. Simul- taneously, the same Bismarck who had signed an anti- Russian alliance with Austria and Italy arranged a re- insurance pact with Russia. The tendency of Russia to draw nearer to France doubtless interfered with the com- plete realization of the Bismarckian plan. But Bismarck never considered it beyond his capacity to solve a problem of that kind. He was engaged upon it when his new master, William II, abruptly requested him to resign, and with his resignation a new period in European history begins. All that was before 1890. The Zeitgeist was to grant A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 49 William II less than ten years in which to justify his drop- ping his pilot. The year 1898 is the third critical date since the close of the Franco-German War. The German Emperor had broken the career of Bismarck, but he had inherited the Bismarckian policy. That he might pursue that policy in his own way, it was necessary that the Tsar Alexander should disappear. Alexander died only in 1894, after having signed a defensive military alliance with France in 1892. That is to say, the fall of Bismarck had unquestionably hastened the completion of the nego- tiations that had been proceeding for some five years between France and Russia. But the young Emperor, on taking office, was too buoyantly optimistic, and too keen-sighted, to concern himself over the conclusion of an alliance, as to the pacific character of which he had re- ceived the most reassuring information. While France was interpreting that pact as an earnest of the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine, William II well knew that it confirmed once again the European status quo. Relieved of all anxiety on that score, the new Master looked out upon a new Germany : a Germany increasing in wealth, industry and foreign trade, a Germany which, under the Protec- tionist system applied from 1880 to 1891, had grown so rapidly, so miraculously even, that Bismarck had hardly understood the first syllable of the new economic gospel which he had himself inspired. Surveying this exhilara- ting spectacle, and beholding the German acquisitions in the Cameroons and at Samoa, William II inaugurated a new era for which he was to find the formula a few years later in his famous appeal delivered from the steps of the Bismarck monument at Hamburg: " Our future is on the water. The more the Germans go upon the water the better will it be for us." This was in 1901, but the date of the first German naval programme is 1893. In the following year it happened that a mystical youth became Tsar of all the Russias, and in 1895, at the opening of the Kiel Canal, a ceremony symbolizing the aspirations of the new Germany, French ironclads were anchored by 50 PROBLEMS OF POWER the side of Russian men-of-war in German waters. The significance of this demonstration was clear. With the accession of the new Tsar, Nicholas II, the pacific charac- ter of the Franco -Russian Alliance was so emphasized that its political raison d'etre, from the point of view of European balance of power, was stultified. Nicholas II, not less pacific, humanitarian even, than his father, quickly fell under the commanding personality of his plausible and fascinating German cousin. The Tsar became the creature of the German Emperor . William II , adroitly using the Franco-Russian Alliance for his own imperial German ends, was for a time the silent prirtner in a combination including the French Foreign Minister, M. Hanotaux,^ who was daily multiplying difficulties with England in Africa and in Asia. The French Colonial Office had been created in 1894. Vast schemes were broached in favour of a Franco-Germano-Russian entente calculated to isolate England. In the Far East, after the Chino-Japanese War, the strange alliance was, for the moment, successful. Under the pressure of the three Powers, Japan was constrained to tear up the Treaty of Shimonoseke; she began to perceive the advantages of flinging herself into the arms of England. After the Jameson Raid (New Year's Day, 1896) William II despatched to President Kruger the famous telegram which was as much intended to lead to an understanding with France as to satisfy the imperialistic instincts of nascent Pan-Germanism. Strasburg and Metz seemed to have been utterly forgotten. Thus, with the resignation of Bismarck and the death of Alexander III, a new movement began in Europe. That movement was to culminate in the removal of Russia from her European spheres of influence, and her exile during a 1 The reader will recall the consternation caused in France by Count Muravieff's Circular to the Powers inviting them to meet in a Congress for the study of the means of securing to the world the benefits of a lasting peace. In August 1898 La Gazette de France, in an article entitled " From Kiel to Disarmament," remarked that the RepubHc had become " the miserable maidservant of the European Monarchies." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 51 protracted period in Manchuria, where her military power was eventually to be shattered at Mukden (February to March, 1905). Italy, continually instigated to enter upon colonial enterprises wherever she might risk colliding with England or with France, found herself in 1896 deploring the slaughter of her legions at Adowa. France, left un- molested to pursue her African adventure, was being driven daily, almost hourly, along the fatal path leading to war with England. She awoke in July 1898 to the tragic moment of Fashoda, when Kitchener and Marchand stood suddenly at bay in the desert. Great Britain had just beheld Manchuria and Port Arthur in the hands of her secular enemy. Thus, by 1898, Germany, Bismarck and William II had manoeuvred so admirably that, while maintaining intact the alliance with Austria and Italy, they had all but paralysed the Franco-Russian Alliance, infuriated Italy against France, and nearly brought on a war between France and England. These results had been symbolized in three events of world-wide signifi- cance, which, though they had taken place in succession, may be regarded, from the point of view of historic psy- chology, as simultaneous. The results of German policy from 1890 to 1898 were Adowa y Port Arthur-Manchuria and Fashoda. But, meanwhile, beyond the boundaries of Europe, events had been taking place that did not escape the notice of the German Emperor. 1898 was also the year of the close of that Spanish-American war which first reminded William II that Pan-Germanism had other rivals in the world than the " Yellow Peril " ; the year of the annexation of Hawaii by the United States and the year of the May Day of Manila. That is why 1898 is a critical year. Finally, 1898, the year of the Austro -Russian Agree- ment concerning the Balkans (when the Powers recognized the " superior interest " of Austria and Russia in the provinces of European Turkey), marks the moment when Russia first began to realize the inconvenience of her Far- Eastern policy, and to doubt the disinterestedness of her 52 PROBLEMS OF POWER German friends. Dreaming of victories in Manchuria, she was forced to neglect the pursuit of her traditional Panslavist policy in the Balkans. She was obliged to adopt the policy of the pan- Germans . Partially paralysed in Europe, Russia could neither actively favour, nor effectually arrest, the ambitions of the Balkan States to fling the Turks across the Sea of Marmora, and to extend their boundaries in Macedonia and Thrace. She was con- strained to a policy of marking time. Meanwhile Ger- many, impelled by the ever-increasing momentum of her drang nach Osten, was assuring, through her Austro- Hungarian allies, her economic preponderance in the Balkan States ; while, benefiting by the persistent antago- nism of Russia and England, she became the protector of the Turkish Empire, and the concessionaire of that Bagh- dad Railway which was intended to be the instrument of the establishment of her protectorate over Asiatic Turkey. Thus, owing to Russia's policy in the Far East, and owing to the reciprocal jealousies and apprehensions of the Powers, all hope of settling the Eastern Question was in- definitely postponed. Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro were left to work out their national salvation alone, and the Macedonians were exposed to periodic massacre. Just as Alsace-Lorraine appeared to have been forgotten by France, so the small Slav States seemed to have been abandoned by the Tsar. Germany had apparently con- trived to stifle the Eastern Question, and to suppress every influence, direct or indirect, likely to thwart her main objects : the maintenance of her political preponderance in Western Europe, and absorption of the markets of the Middle East. But throughout this period the Balkan nationalities were slowly awakening to self-knowledge. Liberty, national rancour, and a sense of responsibility were transforming them into self-reliant Powers. The evolution did not escape the notice of good observers;^ 1 The most remarkable of these observers was the author of a book published in 1905: Une Confederation Orientale comme Solution de la Question d'Orient (Plon). This writer, signing himself " A Latin," ^ A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 53 but who could foresee that within a period of only four- teen years the sovereigns of Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, and Montenegro were to cross their several frontiers at the head of their allied armies, " imploring the benediction of the Almighty on their New Crusade "^ against the Turk ? But it is not easy to have done with 1898. 1898 meant more even than this, more even than all this. Already the period of civil war known as the " Dreyfus AfEair " had begun in France. " We recall an evening in January 1898, at the Aurore. Suddenly towards eleven o'clock some anarchists rushed in with an improbable piece of news. They had just invaded a pubUc meeting held by the nationalists and had captured the platform, tearing down the decora- tions of the tricolour flags. They were young men, who laughed as they told the story of the assault, and we laughed too, little dreaming that one day, twelve years later, partially because of this exploit regarded by us as a triumph, and because of our laughter, a French began by laying down the principle that the policy of imposing re- forms upon the Turkish Government was, at its best, merely a pallia- tive, capable of prolonging for only a brief period the agony of the Ottoman regime. At a moment when the Servians, the Greeks and the Bulgarians were insidiously intriguing, or savagely fighting, for the mastery in Macedonia, when, moreover, the attitude of the Great Powers, assembled round the bed of the Homme Malade^ was that of rival heirs waiting to rifle the treasures of a dying relative, this astonishing observer argued that a Balkan League (to include Rumania and Greece), in which the several States should sink their differences to achieve their higher hopes, was feasible. He proposed that the new Federation should be placed under the Presidency of Italy, and he pubhshed a map indicating the necessary territorial changes. Read in November, 1912, when the Servians had already entered Uskub, when Greece and Bulgaria were at Salonica, and when the Bulgarians were all but in sight of St. Sophia — after a war which was, to be sure, a Russian revenge for Austria's seizure of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but which was, at the same time, part of the Italian combinazione of the TripoUtan Expedition — this book stood forth, among the studies of the last twenty years on the Eastern Question, as the work of a veritable prophet and seer. 1 Telegram of the King of Greece, October 20, 1912, to the Allied Sovereigns of the Balkan League. It should immediately be noted by the reader that when the four Balkan Sovereigns started out on what they were pleased to call their " New Crusade," they declared it to be their intention not to undertake any territorial conquest, yet Bulgaria and Servia had already signed, seven months previously, a secret treaty fixing the ultimate partition of Macedonia. 64 PROBLEMS OF POWER soldier would fling the flag of his regiment into the latrines. What were our thoughts ? Merely this: So the nationalist mob oppressing us can be beaten into shape; it can be hustled and dispersed. Action was then the great thing ! Clemenceau, who had been sent for; Clemenceau, perfect leader of the band and always gay, laughed with the rest of us, and his laughter was even more wonderful than ours."i Confronting thus a triumphant and optimistic Germany were three Powers which, in 1898, had just publicly urider- gone national humihation. Russia and Germany alone seemed to be happy nations ; but Russia, lured eastward out of Europe, partially by German wiles, was already doomed, and Germany alone seemed likely to reap the fruit of her intelligent diplomatic action. In reality she had overstepped the mark. Italy, England and France, colonial rivals, almost bitter foes, had nevertheless one thing in common : all three had been unfortunate ; all three were in need of friends. With the departure from the Quai d'Orsay of M. Hanotaux, who had practically paralysed the Dual Alliance by his compliance with the schemes suggested by the German Emperor to the Tsar, the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Pyrenean M. Delcasse, was free to adopt a new policy. M. Cambon, who had been appointed ambassador in London in September 1898, was to treat with Lord Salis- bury in the name of M. Delcasse for the settlement of the Fashoda crisis. M. Barrere, meanwhile, in December 1897, had arrived as French ambassador in Rome. In November 1898, he succeeded in arranging a treaty of commerce, which indicated that the two " Latin sisters " were awakening to the fact that the Bismarckian policy of the galliphobe Italian statesman Crispi was not neces- sarily in the interests of either Power ; and this treaty was 1 " Apologie pour notre pass6 " in Luttes et Problemes, by Daniel Halevy, pp. 59-60. M. Haldvy suggests plausibly that even the Affaire was ingeniously created by Germany in order to compromise the French general-staff. (See pp. 32-35 of his book.) The reasons he gives are not conclusive, but they are impressive. They are impressive, above all, to one who, like the present writer, was an eye and ear witness of every episode of the affair from the trial of Zola to the tragic August at Renues. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 65 the first step in that magnificent Mediterranean policy- pursued by M. Delcasse, out of which was to come the Anglo-French Entente, England's definitive establishment in Egypt, the French Protectorate over Morocco, the Italian seizure of Tripoli (which France had acquiesced in in 1901), and the Europe of 1910, 1911 and 1912. '' I should be sorry to leave office," said M. Delcasse to M. Victor Berard, early in November 1898, " before I had established a good understanding with England."^ M. Cambon, moreover, went to London resolved to negotiate.^ Just before the departure of M. Hanotaux from oj0&ce, Germany had made a last desperate effort to come to terms with France for a kind of defensive colonial and commercial alliance, implying reciprocal ex- change of territory, the whole arrangement being directed against England. This plot had failed owing to the double crisis of Fashoda and the Dreyfus Affair.^ The Wilhelmstrasse, M. Hanotaux gone, perceived, with its usual celerity, the signs of the change in the European situation. Lord Salisbury still remained pro-German, anti-French. England was one of the Powers in need of friends. There was public proof of it. Mr. Chamber- lain was acclaiming the idea of an Anglo-Saxon Alliance (Birmingham Speech, May 13, 1898). Italy might, for the moment, be left on one side, to be dealt with later ^ Eevue de Paris » July 1, 1905. 2 M. de Blowitz, Times Correspondence, November 16, 1898: "I consider him ... a man who is desirous of putting an end to the tension now existing between the two nations which border on the Channel. . . . He will go to his post with his eyes open, and ... he will begin in a Uberal spirit the pourparlers intended to bring about satisfactory solutions." 3 On this critical episode of Germany's propssal to M. Hanotaux to enter on negotiations with regard to Africa directed against England, see Fachoda, by M. G. Hanotaux (Flammarion); France et Allemagne, by M. Rene Pinon (Perrin); De la Paix de Francfort d la Conference d'Alg4siraSy by M. Andre M^vil (Plon); Le Coup d'Agadir, by M. Pierre Albin (Alcan), and Kiel et Tanger, by M. Charles Maurras (Nouvelle Librairie Nationale). As a matter of fact, Count Miinster's diplomacy in Paris was thwarted by the revelations of M. de Blowitz, who rendered England and France in 1898 hardly less effective service than during the famous *' French scare " of 1875. 56 PROBLEMS OF POWER ^ on, and Russia could be counted on blindly to continue her fatal march towards the abysmal Orient. " Seizing the event," Germany induced England, at this juncture, to renounce secretly and tentatively her policy of " splen- did isolation," and to sign that mysterious arrangement with regard to the future of the Portuguese possessions in Africa, which subsequent and equally secret treaties, signed in Lisbon in 1904, were to nullify.-^ Thus, while Russia was dragging France towards the disaster of Mukden, February 24 to March 10, 1905, Germany turned with a candid face to the people whose sea-power her own growing navy was already beginning to menace, and sought to convince them of her unalloyed sincerity. So long as Lord Salisbury remained at the head of the Foreign Office, France would strive in vain to thwart Germany's action. For that statesman, even for his august Queen, France and Russia were the heredi- tary enemies. German policy, in driving Russia into the East, had enhanced England's suspicion of Russia. England regarded opting for Germany as a less dangerous choice than making up with Russia; moreover, she was the deadly foe of Russia's ally. And thus it was that Germany could still continue to develop to their logical limits all the ramifications of the Bismarokian policy ; she could still play to her heart's content the part of the honest broker, while, under another disguise, she was actively planting her flag throughout the world. ^ But in 1 Already in December, 1900, King Charles of Portugal had been formally received on board Admiral Rawson's flagship, and had drunk the health of the " friendly and alHed nation." This was one of the first events that revealed to Europe the new spirit animating the British Foreign Office. 2 Prince Radziwill, who represented the German Emperor at the funeral of M. FeUx Faure, was interviewed on February 20, 1899, by the Paris Liberie, and made the following amusing, but suggestive, statement on the Anglo -German arrangement just concluded : " Nothing in this arrangement is in opposition to a rapprochement between my country and yours, a rapprochement desired by all minds free from passion. As for England, it does not seem to me that, now that Germany has become one of her greatest commercial rivals, a com- plete agreement can ever be secured between two countries whose A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 57 October 1899 the Transvaal War broke out, and for two and a half years England's sinews were wrung in the heroic duel. Now at last she opened her eyes to those perils of isolation as to which Mr. Chamberlain had warned her in 1898 ; for her enemies might, for argument's sake, almost class her among the ** dying nations "on whose territory, in the words of her ironic Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury (May 4, 1898), the living nations were bound to encroach. To China, Turkey, Spain, and France of the Panama Scandals, the Dreyfus Case and Fashoda, was now added the England of Ladysmith. Lord Salis- bury disappeared from the Foreign Office, being suc- ceeded by Lord Lansdowne, in October 1900. A few days later Queen Victoria died and was succeeded by King Edward,^ who was immediately greeted by French public opinion as a sovereign " capable of doing much to better the relations between the two countries,"^ At all interests are so different. But there is another country against which the Continental Powers should indeed come to an understanding for the organization of their economic defence. There is the United States, whose pretensions and riches are becoming a danger for us all." ^ " King Edward," said Mr. Balfour in the House of Commons on May 11, 1910, " was a great monarch. He did that which no Minister, no Cabinet, no Ambassadors, neither treaties, nor protocols, nor under- standings, which no debates, no banquets, no speeches were able to perform. He, by his personaUty alone, brought home to the minds of millions on the Continent, as nothing that we could have done could have brought it home to them, the friendly feelings of the country over which King Edward ruled." 3 Let the reader recall (p. 55) M. Delcasse's words in 1898. Here is what he said a few weeks later publicly (January 23, 1899), in the course of a debate on Foreign Affairs: " My reason, my patriotism, tells me that if in the last few months I have been able to render any service . . . the service which I consider the greatest is the prevention of a conflict which would be a calamity for the world. . . . Now as ever, calm and dignified, governed by her essential interests, France is ready to consider and discuss everything with the resolution to claim nothing but her rights, and the hope that those rights will be recognized, but with the conviction that she is under nobody's orders. ... I am no pessimist. It is impossible to be so, when one knows what France is, and that, under the scum which certain persons find an abominable pleasure in agitating (the Dreyfus Affair), there lives and labours a / people pre-eminently honest and sane, as thrifty as it is hard-working, j which is aUve to the fact that its destiny is not fulfilled, which is amen- f able to noble sentiments, and of which you can expect anything if you Q I 68 PROBLEMS OF POWER events the tension between France and England could last no longer without a war. Something had to be done. For both England and France the hour was ripe for meditation over their individual national problems. They stood, for an instant, silent and face to faco, blinking in the glare of the new light that illuminated the dread cross-roads of Fashoda and Ladysmith.-^ Simultaneously they saw the sardonic grin, and heard the triumphal chuckle, of Germany. France and England were face to face like birds in a cockpit, while Europe, under German leadership, was fastening their spurs, and im- patient to see them fight to the death. Then suddenly they both raised their heads and moved back to the fence. They had decided not to fight, and the face of European things was transformed. On February 2, 1903, The Times published from the pen of the present writer (who was then one of its European correspondents) the following telegram, dated Madrid, February 1. This message, printed a year before the conclusion of the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904, was the first public mention in Europe of negotiations which. take care to keep its vision lifted towards an ideal of justice and high civilization. It is, nevertheless, true that profound transformations are in preparation from one end of the world to the other, and France must not be weakened. Hence, the need of a vigilant and thoughtful poUcy which distinguishes between our interests and classifies them according to their importance, which leaves nothing to chance, and does not squander its efforts. To this poHcy I ask for the reflecting adhesion of the country." These grave words, luminous with prophetic fire, read to-day, after the cowp d'Agadir, assume a singular significance. ^ England's situation at the beginning of 1900 was analyzed in a telegram to The Times by M. de Blowitz, who reminded his readers that " pourparlers were then going on between at least three of the Continental Powers to force England to enter into negotiations for the settlement of the questions still pending by taking advantage of her present embarrassments.^* In that prophetic article M. de Blowitz forestalled the necessity of just such a general liquidation of Franco- British differences as was destined to be achieved four years later, but which seemed at the time to be beyond the Hmits of the wildest divination. The article passed unnoticed by the great public. It remains, however, one of the most astonishing instances which the columns of The Times can show of this great journalist's per- spicacity. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 69 when thus revealed, were regarded as utterly incredible and ridiculed for several months by the whole European press : " The prudent reserve of the Spanish Government during the present crisis in Morocco has been noted by attentive observers, to whom it has caused some surprise. . . . When Senor Abarzuza became Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Silvela Cabinet, he lost no time in seeking to obtain assurances from France and England to the effect that for the present no intervention was contemplated. He was given to under- stand that an agreement had been come to between these two Powers for the maintenance, at all events for the present, of the status quo in Morocco. This tranquiUizing assurance, strictly warranted, so far as it went, by what had taken place between the two Powers, told, how- ever, only half the truth. The real facts are such that the Spanish Government can hardly look upon them with unalloyed satisfaction. " What the Spanish Government had not entirely understood is that, in spite of the assurances given to Spain as regards her North African possessions and the neutralization of Tangiers, France and England had thought of solving the whole question of Morocco with- out necessarily waiting for her good offices. Towards the end of last summer M. Ddcasse, through his ambassador in London, made overtures to Lord.Lansdowne for the complete and detailed settlement of the whde Moroccan question. At that time M. DelcassS presented to Lord Lans- downe, with a loyalty which would appear to have been appreciated by the British Government, certain complete, decisive and business-like pro- posals {'^des propositions fermes^^) which if accepted at the time would have had, if I may say so, not merely North African, but European consequences. The essential characteristic of these proposals was that France and England should settle the Moroccan question in connexion with the question of Egypt. In compensation for French official recog- nition of the British occupation of Egypt, France was to be allowed a free hand in dealing with Moroccan territory save on the North African coast- line. If I am correctly informed this highly interesting bargain was not unfavourably received by Lord Lansdowne. But, occupied at the time by South African affairs and (when reminded later on) by Venezuela, the British Government requested to be allowed to postpone serious and consecutive pourparlers on Morocco until after the definitive arrangement of these two affairs. ... M. Delcass&s scheme, which still remains virtually unanswered, was nothing more nor less than a proposal to England to leave France alone to secure the suzerainty of Morocco when and how she cared to do so by pacific penetra- tion. It was part and pared of the whole Mediterranean policy of France* the corollary of the Franco-Italian arrangement concerning Tripoli, And the most ardent partisans of French hegemony in the ' Latin * sea really need not have complained.'''' 60 PROBLEMS OF POWER VIII This grouping of the salient and essential facts of the period between the Franco-German War and the Anglo- French Entente of 1904 " round the critical dates " of that period will have justified the statement that " the examination of the international play of European events," during those thirty odd years, " reveals, in those events, a logical, apparently fatal sequence." It gives, moreover, new significance to the utterances of Count Berchtold when he so suggestively summed up the present political aspect of the world-situation : — " Until the close of the nineteenth century [the critical date of 1898] the grouping of the Powers inaugurated by the Triplice merely ap- peared to be a clearly defined pattern. Since then ... a closely woven network of agreements and ententes has been formed between the Powers belonging to the same groups or to different groups, a fact which profoundly compHcates the international situation." This is a truth which the foregoing pages have amply illustrated. The demonstration will be indirectly, and less systematically, enforced by the detailed considera- tion of the events that have taken place since the opening of the new era marked by the Entente between France and England, the veritable significance of which was speedily defined by the organization of the Triple Entente. Meanwhile, it is evident that one can no longer chronicle the doings of any individual nation without writing, at the same time, the history of all the other peoples. Such is the modern dovetailing of the nations that national interests have become matters of international concern: national facts and events have become international facts and events; " nationalities " have been transformed into " internationalities." Obviously the word " nationalities " is here used in a special arbitrary sense. It means something very different from what it meant fifty years ago on the lips of a Louis Napoleon, and from what it means to-day to the Mace- A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 61 donians. It seemed, indeed, to Napoleon III that '* national interests " had become " matters of inter- national concern," but he gave to his own formula a dangerous philosophic sense; and Louis Napoleon's case is typical. It should never be forgotten that the defeat of France in 1 870 was less the consequence of the inefficiency of her military power than the logical conclusion of the perilous foreign policy of Napoleon III. The Emperor was a generous ideologue, and his foreign policy was in sublime and absurd opposition to the best French national pre- cedents and traditions. His passionate longing to sub- stitute for the modus vivendi of the treaties of 1813 a more scientific and more logical state of international relations, to revise, in a word, the map of Europe by grouping peoples according to racial or linguistic affinities, was one of the most characteristically doctrinaire notions that ever clouded a clear French brain. It was at the same time an absurdly pedantic and impracticable principle of diplomatic action, which put its author in the light of an international meddler, who, even when most disin- terested, laid himself open to the charge of double-dealing. It was also un-French, in the sense of being, from the point of view of French interests, an anti-national policy. It was lacking in realism. The substance of Napo- leon Ill's policy was metaphysic fiction, not the tangible stuff of contemporary European fact and circumstance. And thus, fanatically devoted as he was to the principle of nationalities, the upshot of his policy was the ironic reductio ad absurdum that the one " nationality " whose interests he left unsafeguarded was France itself. He was too keenly alive to the woes of the Poles, the Italians, the Hungarians, to have time to consider the positive interests of the French. The result was Sedan ! It was left to the Third Republic to restore the French tradition, to re-establish French authority in Europe, and to re- affirm a national policy which could be linked with the national policy of the Old Regime, from Henri IV and 62 PROBLEMS OF POWER RicheKeu to the Republican armies of Napoleon I.^ Difficult as the task was bound to be, it did not dismay those to whose lot it first fell ; and the restoration under the Third Republic of the authority of France in the counsels of Europe — notwithstanding the dangerous lapses of certain of its leaders acting in the humanitarian spirit of Napoleon III — is one of the most impressive accidents that history can show. Napoleon Ill's pathetic blunder sprang, no doubt, from an ideal no less magnanimous than that of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who dreamed of " a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to the equal rights and equal freedom of a people." But Napoleon III, Marcus Aurelius, Mr. Gladstone, even Mr. Hay, who declared that American diplomacy had but two controlling maxims, the Golden Rule and the Open Door, were rather mystics and philosophers in office than practical statesmen. They had what Presi- dent Butler of Columbia University has recently called *' the international mind": "that habit of thinking of ^ " The Third RepubHc, after the war of 1870 and the Commune of 1871, found the 3 per cent, rente between 50 and 51. It had to repair disasters such as had never befallen any nation. It had to pay a ransom, the enormous amount of which astounded even those who had imposed it. It had to contract colossal loans to defray the costs of the war, and to re-establish the country, for, after 1870, France, la noble hlessSe, as she was called by M. Thiers (whose memory should be imperishable, for he was literally the ' Hberator of the territory '), was altogether ruined. It had to borrow both for war and for peace, for public works and for the colonies. It had to establish heavy taxes, and in spite of all these burdens it raised the credit of the State to a point that had been unknown under the Restoration, under the July Monarchy, or under the Second Empire. The present quotations of the 3 per cent, rentes, 92 fr. 50, may be contrasted with the highest points, 86-10, quoted under the Restoration, the highest, 86-65, quoted under the July Monarchy, the highest, 86, quoted under the Second Empire. The Third Republic can say and show that our 3 per cent. rente, in spite of the disasters of 1870, is now negotiated at from 12 to 13 francs higher than German and Russian rente, and that the credit of the conquered country is superior to that of its victorious foe. ... La rente Frangaise, c'est la signature de la France qui circvle." Alfred Neymarck: " Les 119 Ans de la Rente Fran^aise " {L' Informa- tion, August 21, 1913). A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 63 foreign relations and business, and that habit of dealing with them, which regard the several nations of the civilized world as friendly and co-operating equals in aiding the progress of civilization, in developing commerce and in dustry, and in spreading enlightenment and culture through the world. "^ Such a habit as this may look desirable on paper, but it is pernicious in practice. It seems to be an idiosyncrasy of the ** international mind " to take an altruistic pleasure in sacrificing its own patriotic impulses to the prejudices of its neighbours. Its prin ciple of action is that of the Golden Rule, and its notion of duty may be summed up in the famous exclamation of Professor Freeman: "Perish the interests of England, perish our dominion in India, rather than that we should strike one blow or speak one word on behalf of the wrong against the right." The folly of the man who would apply an " international mind " to the problems of diplomacy has been indicated by Spinoza. He too was a philosopher, but he was well aware that to the his- torian human passions, love, hate, anger, envy, vanity, pity, and all the other " movements of the soul,'* are not virtues or vices, but merely " properties," as heat and cold are properties of the air. " Little stable {minime stabile)," says the author of the Etliics, " will be that State whose safety depends on individual honesty, and whose business can be carried on solely on condition of its being entrusted to honest hands. For a State to last, public business must be so arranged that those who are responsible, whether they be actuated by reason or by passion, cannot be tempted to act from bad motives or to do wrong. For it matters little, as regards the security of the State, what the motives of rulers may be in the successful administration of affairs. Liberty or strength of soul is the virtue of private persons; the virtue of the State is security. Finally, inasmuch as men, whether barbarian or civiHzed, unite everywhere in some form of civil society, it follows that we must not seek for the principles and natural founda- ^ Address of Nicholas Murray Butler, as President of the Lake Mohonk Conference on Litemational Arbitration, May 15, 1912. President Butler has outdone Cardinal Newman, who invented the phrase " the European mind." 64 PROBLEMS OF POWER tions of the State in the maxims of reason, but that we must deduce them from the common characteristics and condition of human nature as a whole {ex hominum communi naiura seu conditione)."^ The successful reappearance of France in the counsels of Europe was partially due to the fact that, after Sedan, she ceased for a time to cultivate an " international mind," and that her reappearance coincided with the opening of the modern era of " international dovetailing " to which allusion has been made. England, one of the greatest of the Powers, sought for a long period to ignore the beginnings of this epoch, but was finally forced to recognize the altered conditions of the times. Up to the Franco-German War, up to forty years ago,^ England possessed the monopoly of trade and commerce throughout the world. She could ajBford to indulge her- self spasmodically in unrealistic, even in sentimental and humanitarian policies. She was free to bide her time for action, to conform her foreign policy to " Liberal " ideas, even to the Golden Rule df she liked, while she was filling the coffers of Lombard Street. She could intervene or not in Contihental affairs, as a disinterested idealism, or an interested Protestant propagandism, might impel her,^ and, having eased her conscience, she could retire in splendid isolation into her island fastness, with the proud sense of accumulated and accumulating wealth, and of duty done. Premonitory rumblings from the nether world which had been formed of the new social and economic layers deposited by her own unmolested 1 Tractatus Politicus. Cap. I, 6, 7. Spinoza, Ofera Posthuma, 1667, pp. 269, 270. CJ. note 1, p. 306. The angel Nectaire in M. Anatole Stance's Revolte des Anges (Calmann L6vy, p. 246) was of the opinion of Spinoza: " De cour les vices qui peuvent perdre un homme d'6tat, la vertu est la plus funeste: elle pousse au crime. Pour travailler utihment au bonheur des hommes, il faut dtre sup^rieur k toute morale." 2 It may, however, be admitted with Gen. Homer Lea that Prussia's seizure of Schleswig-Holstein " ended the period when En land gave down the law to Europe." The Day of the Saxon, p. 160. 3 John Stuart Mill would have said, " A concern for her own security." See his essay, 1857, A Few Words on Non-Iniervention. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 65 unrivalled industrial activity had not yet reached her ears. For British statesmen the problem of foreign policy was still comparatively simple: while her world-wide hegemony went unchallenged, England had solely to con- cern herself with the maintenance of the European balance of power. This had uniformly been her object, and it is an ideal that had hitherto implied meddling, or non- meddling, as the case might be. Henri IV had backed her against Philip II ; the German States and Spain were her allies against Louis XIV; all Europe aided, abetted and applauded her at Waterloo. If Napoleon III had accepted her assistance, Prussia would never have con- structed a Kiel Canal on Danish soil ; Germany would not have fatally discovered that her future was on the water, and the dream of Bismarck to render German unity (Einheit) as real as German union {Einigung) would not now be approximately realized. Finally, it should not be forgotten that in 1875 an opportune hint from Queen Victoria and the Tsar had sent Bismarck back growling to his kennel. The two apparently opposed policies which commanded the allegiance of England in the nineteenth century — that of Sir Robert Peel's last speech in 1850 arguing in favour of complete indifference to Continental complica- tions, and that of Mr. Gladstone in his speech of 1877, when the great ideologue exclaimed: "Sir, there were other days when England was the hope of freedom "^ — these policies were not, after all, as reciprocally hostile as they might seem ; for, as long as the sea-girt imperial island, master of the trade-routes, remained unassailable, as long as England continued to be without a rival among the world-carriers, so long could she ojffer herself the luxury of choosing between action or spectatorship, be- tween intervention or non-intervention, according to her mood of the moment. If this aristocratic privilege is now lost to her, probably for ever; if, as Lord Rose- bery said, in his speech at the University of Glasgow 1 See The Future of England, by Hon. George Peel, p. 114. 66 PROBLEMS OF POWER (January 12, 1912), " for good or for evil, we are now embraced in the midst of the Continental system, and that I regard as perhaps the gravest fact in the later portion of my life " ; if , in a word, England, the champion of freedom, is no longer herself free to choose, if she is deprived of the faculty of will, the right of decision; if she is so entangled in the network of European forces that she is living deterministically under a regime of vague liabilities, she must, of course, draw the necessary conclusions, and stoically bear the consequences. But she must first, and above all, face the fact — the facts ! — and not hypocritically ignore it — or them. Fourteen years before Lord Rosebery, on May 13, 1898, Mr. Chamberlain had stated with frankness, in a remark- able speech extolling an Anglo-Saxon Alliance, the exact situation of England. " Since the Crimean War," he said, " nearly fifty years ago, the policy of this country has been a poUcy of strict isolation. We have had no aUies — I am afraid we have had no friends. ... A new situa- tion has arisen. All the powerful States of Europe have made alhances and ... we are liable to be confronted at any moment with a combina- tion of Great Powers so powerful that not even the most extreme politician would be able to contemplate it without a certain sense of uneasiness. We stand alone." In 1898, however, the British Government was think- ing, not of Germany — with whom she was signing secret agreements — nor yet of France, but of Russia, who had already seized Port Arthur. It seems like the most ancient of '' ancient history " to read the terms in which Mr. Goschen, speaking on July 22, 1898, on the Navy Estimates, justified his remarks for supplemental credits. " It is impossible," he said, " to conceal the fact that it is the action of Russia, and the programme on which she has entered, which is the cause of our strengthening our fleet and taking parallel action with her." It is not unimportant to note that France was sceptical as to the pretext put forward by Mr. Goschen for increasing the strength of the British Navy. The United States had 1 A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 67 recently become an oceanic power by the annexation of Hawaii, and the Spanish-American War had been fertile in lessons for the admiralties of all countries. The Journal des Dehats raised the question whether Mr. Goschen's haste was not to be explained by his prudent desire to forestall a morrow of international complications in which the United States might feel called on to take an aggres- sive part. At all events, Mr. Goschen's initiative marks a date in the British policy of steady progression in naval outlay. It was not long before the menace of German naval expansion rendered the movement chronic, and sooner still the destruction of the Russian Navy was to leave Great Britain to face but one hostile fleet in the North Sea. On March 18, 1912, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Churchill, made to Germany a perfectly frank though irritatingly ingenious proposal for arresting the keen and costly naval rivalry between the two countries. He showed Germany how she might co- operate with England in a plan involving more than a merely platonic demonstration in favour of disarmament. " If you will slow down in 1913," he said to Germany, " we will slow down too; if you decide not to build the three ships now contemplated you will automatically wipe out no fewer than five British potential super- Dreadnoughts !" Germany retorted by passing a Navy Bill increasing the naval force cruising in the North Sea from seventeen fully-manned battleships to twenty-five, with sixteen in reserve. Consequently Mr. Churchill took the immediate action expected of him. Speaking on May 15, at a dinner of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, he said, amid loud cheers: " It will be my duty to come again to Parliament this year for men, money and material." And the First Lord thereupon expounded the consequences of the policy of the *' concentration of the British fleet in decisive theatres " (necessitated by the stubborn efforts of Germany to shatter British sea- power), namely, the growth, in the great Dominions over sea, of an effective naval force capable of guarding and 68 PROBLEMS OF POWER patrolling the British Empire while England herself main- tains a sea-supremacy against all comers at the decisive point. These developments shed a new light on the inconveni- ences of that policy of altruistically indiscriminate inter- ference in world affairs which doctrinaire liberalism has always inspired. These inconveniences were clearly stated in January 1912, in a speech by Sir Edward Grey at the village of North Sunderland. He said : — " Let me put you on your guard against people who, as I think, are very bad advisers with regard to foreign policy. There is a certain section, I have no doubt, in the Liberal Party which think we do not interfere nearly enough, especially in certain parts of the world, in Asia* MongoHa, I think, was the last selected as a part in which we should take an active interest. Believe me, if you are going to pursue a foreign pohcy of that kind, and this country is going to interfere actively in Central Asian questions far beyond our own Lidian frontier, you are going to incur, not only the very heavy naval expenditure which we have already, but a vastly increased miHtary expenditure as well; and the people who press upon me a different foreign poUcy to that which is now being pursued are, it seems to me, people who are really advocating as a foreign poUcy the maximum of interference in the affairs of the world at large and the minimum of friendship; because the poUcy, if it were carried out, would soon leave us without a friend in Europe. (Cheers.) Now, believe me, that is the most futile and expensive poUcy that this country could adopt, and I consider it from every point of view, whether it be the view of point of the party or the point of view of national interest — I consider it the duty, I would say, of any Govern- ment, whether Liberal or Conservative, to resist a pohcy of that kind." On the other hand, both the Secretary for War and the Marquis of Crewe acknowledged, in a debate on Foreign and Military Policy in the House of Lords on May 15, 1912, that " the policy of splendid isolation was over "; but they demurred to the idea of a " close alliance with great European Powers," they repudiated the principle of " entangling military alliances." British ministers have still, perhaps, a few months ahead of them in which to continue to affirm their scepticism as to the utility of a military convention with France. But the time is not far distant when, in spite of the aid given by the Dominions, A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 69 they will have to eat their words, and when the English people — realizing, at last, that the Territorial Force is merely a make-believe army^ — will bring them to book on the charge of neglect of duty. ^ " The Territorial Force is a failure in discipline, a failure in numbers, a failure in equipment, and a failure in energy." Speech of Lord Roberts, November 27, 1912, at the annual dinner of the Association of Men of Kent and Kentish Men. Admiral Tirpitz's alleged declaration on* February 7, 1913, that Germany could safely accept the relative proportion (16 to 10) between British and German Dreadnoughts proposed by Mr. Churchill in March, 1912, was made simultaneously with the proposal for the increase of the German aerial fleet, and just before the announcement of the plan for the augmentation of the German army until it numbers 865,000 men ! The reply of France was immediate — restoration of the Three Years' MiUtary Service system so recklessly abandoned in 1905 — ^yet England still hesitates to look facts in the face. The most plausible form as yet given to her reasons is the excellent httle book by Mr. J. A. Spender, The Foundations of British Policy. The feverish naval and mihtary activity throughout Europe at the present hour is almost unprecedented. After Germany's lead, so quickly followed by France, Russia has taken measures which were required to meet the formidable increase of the forces of the Triple Alliance^ and which will bring the permanent peace effectives up to 1,760,000 men. More important still is the Russian naval programme, in virtue of which by 1915 she will have four Dread- noughts, in active service in the Baltic, to be followed in 1916 or 1917 by four others, while in the Black Sea she will possess a marked superi- ority over all the other Powers. The significance of these facts in con- nexion with the problem of the balance of power in the Mediterranean and the North Sea, and with the general question of peace, cannot be ignored. They are the more important as, by 1920, the Austro-Itahan fleet (provided Austria and Italy shall not already have come to blows !) will number twenty or twenty-one Dreadnoughts to France's seventeen. It is, indeed, highly desirable that France should add four or five units to the quota fixed in its naval programme of 1912. It is certain, as M. de Thomasson has pointed out (see his article in the Journal des Dibats of July 4, 1914: " Les Grandes Echeances MiHtaires de 1918- 1920 "), that during the next five or six years Time will work for the Triple Entente, in so far as purely material, as distinguished from moral, considerations are concerned. England, however, must not too long defer taking to heart the words of Lord Rosebery, which are far truer to-day than they were even only three years ago: " For good or for evil, we are now embraced in the midst of the Continental system '* (p. 64). In order to revert to " isolation " and caU it " splendid,'* England would have to possess twice as large a navy as she possesses now, and an army like that of France. In default of this system of defence she must look facts in the face, and, as the military corre- spondent of The Times puts it (" The Doctrine of Defence," The Times, July 21, 1914), take her share of alliances and friendships, by becoming a good European, and by maintaining the balance of power. England has to be " prepared, at one average moment, for the enemy at his 70 PROBLEMS OF POWER IX " 1870," " 1878/' " 1890," " 1898," " 1904," " 1911," •* 1912." The Dismemberment of France ; the Berlin Congress ; the Fall of Bismarck; Adowa, Port Arthur, Fashoda; the Dreyfus Affair; the Anglo-French Entente; Agadir; Kirk-Kilisse : these are the dates and names on the links of the fatal chain which Bismarck forged and which, at the present hour, has been stretched almost to the breaking point. Eight years after Bismarck's resignation, his successor, William II, could legitimately believe that he was about to found an Imperial Germany greater than the Empire of the First Napoleon. Less than five years later all his hopes were dashed. By the Anglo-French Entente a new period was opened in Europe. Without losing a minute Germany began the assault of that Entente. The Agreement had been signed on the eighth of April, 1904. On the eve of April Fool's Day, just a year later, and ten days after the adoption in France of the Two Years' Military Service Bill, the German Em- peror landed at Tangiers. Yet in May 1902, when the possibility of an Anglo-French Entente appeared to be the dream of a madman, the Chancellor of the German Empire, Count von Biilow, had said to M. Andre Tardieu in Berlin : — " Peace is assured; we have the benefit of it, and we shall always be with those who defend it, against those who trouble it. . . . As regards Morocco, where our interests are less than in China, I do not consider that question as one likely so very soon to interest our diplomacy. We have no bay-window frontage on the Mediterranean. . . . We pursue no personal poUcy there."^ From 1905 to the present hour Germany has had but one dream, one aim. Prince Bulow, indeed, stated publicly in selected moment." This is a problem to the solution of which she will shortly let herself be assisted by acceptance of the practical overtures of the friends of the Triple Entente. 1 Le Figaro, May 30, 1902. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 71 1906, with a Bismarckian frankness, that the sole object of German policy was to supplement the Entente Cordiale by an equally cordial understanding between Germany and England. The Deutsche Revue published, in September of that year, just after the German Emperor and King Edward had met at Friedrichshof , an article unquestion- ably inspired by the Imperial Chancellor, in which, after resuscitating the legend that '' the traditions of the Del- casse policy are still at work with undiminished force in French diplomacy — a policy of which the object is to hem in Germany diplomatically, with the help of England, Russia and other States," the writer gave the following menacing description of England's alternatives: "To- wards Germany England has only the choice between the policy which might easily become disastrous, of an Anglo-French counterpoise, and that of including Ger- many within the circle of her friendship." When Sir Edward Grey failed to take the hint, when England re- fused to modify its relations with France, " whether by addition or subtraction," as The Times put it,^ Prince Billow drew the logical conclusion: he stuck to the pro- gramme that he had published in the Deutsche Revue, and strove more fanatically than ever to destroy the Entente Cordiale by a policy of alternating intimidation and bland- ishment. Germany, ever since, has been butting about the European corrida like a maddened bull, seeking in vain to reach and to toss the French toreador who waves before her the Union Jack. It is superfluous to recall the vicissi- tudes of a sport marked by such " events " as the fall of M. Delcasse, the Conference of Algeciras, Casablanca. The consequences of Germany's action are alone important. What has become patent to everyone to-day was obvious to professional observers in 1906: the fall of M. Delcasse, the sacrifice of the French Foreign Minister by his colleagues to the German Moloch, was an event bound to bring home to the most indifferent of French- men certain realities of their international situation ; and 1 Leading article, September 5, 1906. 72 PROBLEMS OF POWER consequent prolonged reflection on those realities, coupled with the growing dissatisfaction aroused by the tyranny of the radical regime, could not fail to determine a revival of the French national spirit. In 1906 it was clear that however mobile the French temperament was, however pusillanimously reluctant the Republican Government might be to allow diplomatic incidents to degenerate into war^ however profoundly the French people seemed to have forgotten Alsace-Lorraine, however scandalously the quarrels of the agora, the squabbles of the political sects, the backbiting and vituperation of the press, were pre- occupying Frenchmen to the neglect of so many of their great national interests, there were certain things that French national pride could not be expected to tolerate. A period of what the French call recueillement, of silent meditation that quickly became articulate, assuming the sanest forms of self-criticism, marked the inevitable con- version of the French soul. While foreign observers beheld only a France torn by domestic factions, quarrel- ling over the expulsion of monks and nuns, and over the separation of the Church and the State, a Republic in which the rebellion of 5,000 civil servants (the Postmen's Strike) seemed to be menacing the very existence of the Republican regime ; a society in which whole communities of peaceful wine-growers seemed to have gone suddenly as mad as Dionysiac revellers, France was recovering the sense of her national integrity. She was beginning to float on the high tide of one of those miraculous moral ** resurgences " peculiar to the soil that has given birth to Vercingetorix, St. Louis, Joan of Arc and Gambetta. BOOK II BOOK II THE French domestic crises, the ensuing National Reaction/ and the more recent British crisis, the solution of which the world is now witnessing, have been the necessary condition of Germany's agitation — of her peculiar aggressive policy, and now of her provisionally more prudent but not less dangerous manifestations — during the period extending from Boulangism to the fall of M. Delcasse and the arrival of the " Panther " at Agadir; and from the Franco-German Convention of November 4, 1911, to the present ambiguous hour. During more than a quarter of a century after the Franco-German War it was taken for granted by Euro- pean statesmen, whether British, German, Russian or Italian, that the French Repubhc was an unstable Govern- ment. The conviction that anarchy was a parasite of French Republicanism became what the mathematicians call a function of the foreign policy of all the Great Powers.^ 1 The idea expressed in the phrase, " The moral resurgence of con- temporary France," has been formulated by M. Etienne Rey perhaps even more accurately in the title of his book: La Renaissance de VOrgueil Fran^ais — " The Revival of French Self -Respect." 2 The study of the Memoirs of Prince von Hohenlohe, of M. de Gontaut- Biron's Ma Mission d Berlin, and of the Memoirs of Bismarck, reveals the vigilant activity of Bismarck in furthering the establishment of the Repubhc in France, the form of government which he regarded as the least dangerous for Imperial Germany. M. Henri GaUi has ex- cellently summarized in his Oamhetta et Alsace Lorraine (Plon, 1911) this long tale of relentless intrigue, bluff, and blackmail of which the German Chancellor was the author, with the complicity of a large 76 76 PROBLEMS OF POWER The influence of French home politics on French policy from Jules Ferry to M. Caillaux has been frequently noted, and often contested. The proofs of that influence are, however, innumerable. These proofs are so genuine that it is impossible to interpret the last forty years of Euro- pean history without a preliminary effort to understand the nature of the more important questions which, during that period, have occupied the attention of French poli- ticians and the French public. Even Lord Salisbury might have come to terms [with|France^ and Russia in 1887-1888 — and England would thereby have chosen of her own free will, and for purely political, diplomatic motives, a path into which vital necessity drove her fiif teen years later — if it had not been for the perils and uncer- tainty of the moment in Paris. In October 1887 (the date of the first Russian entente being August 1891) Baron de Mohrenheim, Russian ambassador in Paris, wrote to his friend M. Jules Hansen: " I have reminded you a thousand times that without greater governmental stability all the present plans would be compromised. Take it definitely to heart, once for all : il y a France et France. I have never ceased saying this everywhere, so that my conscience, at all events, is clear. "■"• The fall of Jules Ferry, the fall of M. Delcasse, the fall of M. Pichon, are examples of events the sole interest of which is that they illustrate the singular incapacity of the French politician to subordinate party passions to the general interests of his country. That France of the Third Re- public, in spite of the pretension of the foreigner to meddle in French affairs, and in spite of the complaisance with which certain Frenchmen have now and then abetted him number of Frenchmen always ready, by party-spirit, to weaken the authority of their country when it is governed by their poUtical foes. In working so assiduously for the consoHdation of the Republic, how- ever. Prince Bismarck wrecked Germany's interests. He fancied the Republic synonymous with Anarchy. He helped it to become the most stable State in Europe. See, in this connexion, p. 141, and note 1. ^ Amhassade a Paris du Baron de Mohrenheim (1884-1898). By Jules Hansen, p. 68. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 77 in his incredible machinations, should not only have sur- vived longer than any of the regimes immediately pre- ceding it, but should have become perhaps the most stable and conservative State in Europe, is one of the happiest accidents of history. From Boulangism through the Panama Scandal to the Dreyfus Case, the Republic has repeatedly appeared to outsiders to be doomed to a speedy end. The Real France}- has almost invariably escaped the notice of the average well-informed German, Englishman, or American. The world-wide misconcep- tion with regard to the significance of French domestic policy, and the singular influence of French home policy upon French foreign policy, make it necessary to study in some detail the political development of the Third Republic ; to survey the ground as it was before the con- tinual blows of the Nibelungen picks finally released the subterranean current of French patrioti^ln. II Among the domestic problems that dominated French political life for almost an entire generation, and often diverted the attention of French politicians from foreign questions, that of the relations between the State and the Catholic Church was, perhaps, the most inveterately ab- sorbing. During the crisis of the Dreyfus Case this problem became for the Republic a matter of vital interest. The events that occurred in France from 1903 to 1907 in connexion with the dissolution of the religious orders, the expulsion of monks and nuns, the abolition of the Concordat established in 1801, and the readjustment of the relations between Catholicism and the State were a matter of astonishment to the rest of the world. Yet these events, culminating in the separation of the Churches and the State, were produced by no sudden outburst of anti-clerical passion: they were a logical incident in the 1 Title of a remarkable book by Mr. Laurence Jerrold (John Lane , 1911). 78 PROBLEMS OP POWER development of French society. Instead of being a sign of moral decadence and social ruin, they were a proof not only of the stability of Republican institutions, but also of the Republic's right to claim legitimate heirship to the great regimes preceding it : the whole history of France has been a steady effort of secularization. The Republic was, in a sense, an accident, but it was a necessary and inevitable one. After the fall of the Em- pire a Republican governmental form was alone possible. But its durability was problematic. The survivors of the older regimes thronged political life; pretenders and *' saviours of society " abounded. The old political parties were all eager for office, and each had its special nostrum for the cure of the alleged maladies of the body- politic. Their agents still held high and responsible positions in the French Administration. The bench, for instance, was hopiey combed with them. The Army was crowded with officers who had served another regime too loyally to feel themselves at home in a Republic. After the debacle the responsibility for the re-organization of French society fell upon a handful of disinterested patriots- convinced that a Republican form was the least dis- tasteful to the nation, and the only one practical, given the mutually warring interests of the rival political parties. Thiers was a Republican President not from conviction, but by the force of things and of his political sense. Round him, in spite of their suspicion of him, rallied the Republicans by conviction. Politically, no other coalition was possible. But the Republic, which had thus managed to escape strangling in its cradle, was beset throughout its infancy by the same quarrelsome foes whose reciprocal envy and ambitions had been the sole reason of its surviving. To the Republican body- guard that watched over the child fell the duty of re- organizing the whole of French society. The political part of their task was achieved — inadequately — in the Constitution of 1875, under which Frenchmen are still living, and which preserved the old Napoleonic social A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 79 scaffolding, although it added fresh beams to fortify and unite the political and administrative functions.-^ So admirable was the new machine that a mere handful of officials could run it. But this task accomplished, it remained first to choose the handful; secondly, to organize national nurseries of functionaries knowing their Re- publican business. The real history of France, and the line of its growth during the last thirty-five years of Republican government, has been that of the squabble between the Republican crew in office and the Royalist, Imperialist, or other gangs out of office. Now, the effort to man the French administrative machine with trusty Republicans could not go on with- out friction. It meant both cashiering of upright old officials, as in the operation known as " the purification of the magistracy," and the creating, by school legisla- tion, of a Republican youth and electorate, free from the bias of the loyalties of the former generations. The Catholic Church could either immensely facilitate or seriously hamper this process. What part did it choose to play ? By the Concordat, and by the Organic Articles which the First Consul regarded as merely the application of his convention with the Pope, the Central Administration held the French clergy in leash. They were functionaries of the State. The high officials (the Bishops) could vir- tually be chosen by the State, the Pope merely conferring canonical authority on the elect of the Civil Power ; and although the Bishops chose the parish priests, the choice 1 The " origins of contemporary France " are really buried in the Old Regime. The historian of the Political and Administrative Insti- tutions of France, M. Paul VioUet, says admirably: " Notre notion de r^tat omnipotent, est, h, bien prendre, I'instinct dirigeant de I'ancien regime erigl en systeme. L'etat modeme n'est autre chose que le roi des demiers siecles qui continue triomphalement son labeur acham6, 6touffant toutes libertes locales, nivelant sans relaches." And again: "La noblesse et la royaute ont ronge, sans se lasser jamais, le droit primitif. Et, sous nos yeux, I'Etat modeme continue ce lent travail des sidcles." (See Les Communes Francises au Moyen Age. Klinck- sieck. Paris, 1900, p. 12.) 80 PROBLEMS OF POWER had to be confirmed by the State. The Bishops were obliged to swear obedience and fidelity to the Govern- ment, and to promise " to have no intelligence, to assist at no council, to have nothing to do with any league, either in France or abroad, contrary to the public peace." Furthermore, they were pledged to inform the central authority if they learned of any scheme concocted to its prejudice. This oath, imposed upon the minor clergy, absorbed them also into the magnificent system of official- dom with which the First Consul thought effectively to police French society. In return for the extraordinary services thus conceded by the Vatican, France agreed to ensure her ecclesiastical agents " a proper stipend." The Organic Articles tightened the Church's bonds, inter- dicting all publication of Papal brief or encyclical in France without Government authority; forbidding the Bishops to meet in general assembly; forcing them to obtain Government permission if they desired to leave their dioceses. On the slightest pretext of rebellion the State could bring the Bishops to book and punish them. In a word, it was a state of servility that was in reality an humiliation for the Church though not honestly regretted by it, since it was a step on the way leading to complete absorption of the civil authority. On the other hand, the Concordat, at the outset, put the French Administration on a solid basis. In fact, when the Third Republic was founded the Concordat was the chief trump it held, if not an absolutely necessary condition of success. Republican statesmen knew this, and one after another the Opportunist leaders, from Ferry and Gambetta to Freycinet and Rouvier, rejected the im- politic proposals of the radicals for abrogation of the Con- cordat, and the suppression of the Embassy at the Vatican. They were well aware that such a policy would deprive the Government of all police authority over an army of Churchmen to a large extent hostile to RepubHcanism by definition, and taking their cue from a foreign Power which was always claiming the right to govern. These I A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 81 Republican statesmen felt that to break all ties between the State and the Catholic forces would leave the latter free to follow their natural anti-Republican allegiances, and to continue in the open certain manoeuvres they had all along been secretly conducting behind the scenes. Political prudence seemed to the Opportunists, from Ferry to Waldeck-Rousseau, and even to M. Combes, to require the maintenance of the Concordat. In proportion, however, as the work of laying the foundations of the Republic approached completion, the utility of the Concordat for the State became less and less evident. There came a time when the advantages of the pact were largely on the side of the Catholics. It should not be forgotten that, owing to the changed con- ditions of modern life, most of the guarantees demanded by Napoleon were rapidly ceasing to have any real applicability under the Republic. They were counter- balanced by the new laws of liberty enacted by the Re- public, laws benefiting the clergy and the Church as much as the other citizens — the liberty to teach, liberty of the Press, liberty of association — so that, as a matter of fact, in spite of the Concordat, the Church had recovered her territorial power and her political power, and the State was actually in a position of inferiority with regard to her. The State assured the Church a privilege and paid its ministers a living stipend which made it possible for them to use their other resources for political ends. Nothing is more characteristic of the way the Concordat was finally ceasing to be of any positive political utility to the State, than the argument used in a letter written by Mgr. Fuzet, the Archbishop of Rouen, to the senatorial reporter of the Separation Bill, with the purpose of prov- ing that Separation would be a blunder. " Do not Republican politicians understand," said the Archbishop, " that it is to their advantage to keep the religious question always under discussion ? For the advanced parties clericalism is not only the enemy, it is their daily bread. It is the big drum used to unite the victorious majorities when division seems impending. Are you going 82 PROBLEMS OF POWER to burst that magic drum ? . . . Every good Republican is bound to be in favour of tbe Concordat. To be in favour of the Concordat is not to be clerical, it is to be far-sighted." To the disinterested critic this naive appeal to the sentiment of middle-class Republican camaraderie is of an incomparable humour. Yet it was not wanting in perspicacity. The important thing is that the Concordat had come to this : it had the value of a tom-tom ! And yet . . . reflecting Republican statesmen, while fully aware of the fact, still hesitated; and who can wonder ? Even M. Combes did not wish to hear of Separation. He recalled, perhaps, the wise warning of Jules Ferry to his electors of the Vosges in 1881 : " This formula of separation, just because it is a simple formula, is a deceptive one. . . . The first fact that completely enhghtened me was . . . the rehgious revolution introduced by the Vatican into the doctrines and the general affairs of the Catholic Church. . . . That is for me a decisive reason for preserving the Concordat, inasmuch as the more ecclesiastical authority is concentrated, centralized, the more it takes on the semblance of a veritable Cesarism. . . . The more the Government of the Catholic world resembles absolute authority, the more the national churches are disciplined in a common obedience — and the more important it is for a Government like our own to have with it a good contract." There can be little doubt that, even now, Separation would not be the accomplished, though bastard, fact it is but for the diplomatic inexperience of the present Pope, whose blundering policy forced upon the State — and, against their will, upon the majority of the French clergy — the events leading up to Separation. But what part did the French clergy play throughout the entire period when the Republic was literally fighting for its life — the period extending from the Government of National Defence down almost to 1905 ? In the first place, the Syllabus of Pius IX, which was known to define the attitude of the reigning Pope up to the accession of Leo XIII in 1878, had more than awakened the distrust of the Republican statesmen: it was a piUar of cloud by day and of fire by night to the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 83 members of the Republican Masonic Lodges. By the blast of the Syllabus, as from an archangel's trumpet, society was informed, urbi et orhi, that the forces of Vaticanism were out to all the points of the compass, feeling for their prey, namely, for every manifestation of '' the modern spirit " and of laic^ society. The Vatican thereby declared its hostility, not merely against the scientific method of thought, but against the right of the individual to choose his own religion. It declared the supremacy of the Church over the civil authority, the infallibility of the Pope, the natural right of the Church to acquire and possess property, and to ignore the civil tribunals, and the right of ecclesiastics to claim exemption from military service. It affirmed, notably, the criminal character of all legislation placing public schools under State supervision, making them neutral as regards re- ligious instruction, and freeing them from the authority of the Church. It reproved the doctrine of the separa- tion of Church and State. It anathematized the " error " according to which " it was permissible to refuse obedi- ence to legitimate princes, and even to revolt against them," thus lending the support of the Church to pre- tenders like the Comte de Chambord. It condemned divorce laws, and, in fact, the whole of the French legisla- tion on marriage. In a word, while this famous document (it matters little whether or no it be taken as ex cathedra) 1 " Laic ? The word is French rather than EngHsh; and, as yet, in communities of people who speak EngUsh, the term has no force, because no vogue. On the continent of Europe, however, laic has for a long time now been growing in familiarity as a name for all the impulses that mark the temper of persons resentful of authority; it is less exact to say, but briefer and more intelligible, a name for all the impulses of the ' people.' Science has not to approve or condemn the thing thus named. Its sole business is to draw attention to the fact. . . . A fresh spirit is growing on our planet ... a spirit which, having at first its origin in a feeling of reaction against ecclesiastical authority alone, is rapidly broadening, so as to include the entire series of feelings of suspicion of all authority whatsoever, of dislike of whatsoever institu- tions, and compact monopoHzing organisms; and it is this feeling, binding together the ' people ' in every country east and west, which deserves a name, and which, in want of a better, I have called laic. . . ." Patriotism and Science^ by the Author, p. 149, Boston, 1893. 84 PROBLEMS OF POWER constituted a challenge to many of the ideals of modern civilizations, and ignored the seemingly inveterate ten- dency to an increasing separation of the spiritual and temporal powers, the State and the country which Pius IX appeared to be singling out for special reprobation was the France of the Revolution and of the '' rights of man " : Republican France, whose ideas of liberty of conscience he condemned as iniquitous, and whose efforts for the emancipation of the State from religious authority he described as impious. Wherever French Republican statesmen looked, they saw the standard of reactionary conservatism, which the Vatican had raised, intertwined with the flags of the forces enlisted against the Republic. On the morrow of the con- spiracy of May 16, and of the elections of 1877, the hands of the clergy were everywhere visible in the coups de theatre of those episodes. The historian Rambaud points out that the " clerical party had been the cement that had held together the various political parties " during that assault; and he recalls the fact that, in 1877, the counsels given by the Vatican under Pius IX 's pontificate were by no means those that arrived from Rome later on under the pontificate of Leo XIII. Jules Ferry was not exaggerating when, addressing his Vosgian con- stituents in 1879, he said: *' Ten years of such laissez- aller as the present, of such blindness, and you will see all this fine system of free schools, independent of State control, . . . crowned by a final liberty, that of civil war." Not that all Catholics were reactionary and anti- republican; but all anti-Republicans and Reactionaries were Catholic. The Syllabus of Pius IX was a warning. It suggested the necessity of a programme of Republican, therefore national, defence. In the minds of the Re publican leaders it justified distrust of the Church. It speedily inspired an energetic response to her declarations and acts of war/ Gambetta's le clericalisme, voild Ven- nemi was the plastic form assumed by this pervasive senti- ment of fear. The Republicans congratulated themselves A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 85 that, after all, they had the instrument of the Concordat by which to maintain a certain discipline in at least one of the potential armies of its enemies. But, after all, the French Catholics could not be held responsible for the Syllabus, as long as they kept their oath of allegiance to the State and obeyed its laws. How did they undertake to dissipate the distrust which their dependency upon Rome excited ? Above all, what was the positive role of the French bishops and clergy, and of the French Catholics, placed, as they were, in a position so immensely to facilitate, or so seriously to hamper, the establishment of Republican government in France ? It may be summed up in a single word : persecution of the Republic . And when they were refused the right to perse- cute, they themselves cried out that they were being persecuted. Those who accuse the '' eldest daughter of the Church *' of occasionally unfilial sentiment towards her spiritual parent forget that that parent has often acted the part of a stepmother. The Church seemed often to be attacking all that the Republic held dear. It appeared to be a vast syndicate opposed to every ideal and conquest of Republican legislation. It is impossible, within the limits of the present book, to give any but an inadequate account of the dangerous and systematic war waged against the Republic by the occult Catholic Party in France ; but a few instances will suffice to account for the attitude of Republican statesmen and Republican citizens in their resistance to the unpatriotic work of the clerical power. The cases and the methods here cited will show how inevitable it was that such persecution should give birth, in certain fanatical portions of the Republican party, to a spirit of counter-persecution : witness the out- rageous delation scandals of the War Office under General Andre. A. la guerre comme a la guerre. But these facts, by contrast, will render all the more surprising the self- possession of the French Parliament when it was finally called upon to solve the problem of Separation, and when, instead of passing a Bill inspired by anti-clerical animosity, 86 PROBLEMS OF POWER it prepared and enacted, under the guidance of M. Briand, and in a spirit of judicial calm, a measure of adequate liberty for the Church, consonant, not only with the French, but even with the Anglo-Saxon, ideal of justice, and in harmony with the other conquests of French idealism during the nineteenth century. The supreme " error " of France, that which, in the opinion of the Vatican, required the mobilization of all its agents to combat it, was the effort of French statesmen to establish a national school system free from clerical domination. The task is not yet accomplished, but the Republic has little by little substituted the principle of independent and methodical research for that of authority and tradition, the scientific impulse for the religious ; and this achievement the Catholics still find it dififipult to forgive. The freedom of thought and the spirit of toler- ance manifested during the debate on the Separation Bill of 1905, were the social fruits of an intellectual educa- tion of this sort. The Republic has aimed at reaping a harvest of those civic virtues which characterize a self- respecting democracy. A State School was regarded as the most efficient method of Republican action. The Church protested. It described as persecution the limita- tion of one of its monopolies. The conscious effort of Republican and Democratic France to organize society according to the dominant principles of our laic time, was a movement which was bound to meet with resist- ance from theocratic vested interests. By means of the primary schools founded by the Republic, which were the greatest work of Ferry, the Republican statesmen wit- tingly sought to wrest the boys and girls of France from exclusive clerical training, and to educate them for their duty as responsible Republican citizens. This steady, inevitable and characteristic work of the Republic to assure the existence of a neutral laic school seemed, to the Church, a work of irreligion, of impiety. And when the French State is accused of persecution, one of the motives of the charge may be confidently ascribed to the poignant A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 87 regret with which the Catholics have seen the Republic rooting itself steadily in the hearts of the people by the device of a national school system. Nothing would be easier than to cite passages from the pastoral letters and the minutes of Church Congresses, or to adduce typical instances of active ecclesiastical pres- sure, condemning and combating the school laws of suc- cessive Republican Governments. When Mgr. Freppel, Bishop of Angers, was not addressing circulars to his flock characterizing the French National Fete of July 14 as the *' anniversary of one of the most odious massacres of which French history preserves the memory," he was con- testing inch by inch in the Chamber the ground on which the Republic was seeking to rear the national free school. Referring to the law on primary instruction, another prelate, this time an Archbishop, Mgr. de Cambrai, de- scribed that measure as having been " more dangerous for France than the war of 1870 and than the loss of her two provinces," adding that if the system lasted ten years France would be " rotten to the core, struck from the rank of civilized nations." Mgr. de Cambrai's prophecy has not yet been fulfilled. He went on to " preach a new crusade against the barbarians who had made a pedestal of the word liberty, and who were now confiscating every liberty. Let the Catholics hold themselves in readiness, let all Conservatives band themselves together to the cry of * Dieu le veutJ " Still another prelate in his pastoral letter said: "In all the districts where the pernicious scheme of removing the schools from the influence of the Church may be formed and carried out, it will be rigor- ously incumbent upon the Church to inform the faithful that they cannot conscientiously allow their children to frequent those schools." In 1885 the International Catholic Congress of Lyons declared: "It would be in vain to seek in the State the right, the competence, or the mission without which no one should be allowed to teach. Hence the practical impossibility of admitting the organization of a corps of teachers deriving its mission, 88 PROBLEMS OF POWER its competence and its right from the State, which does not possess these qualifications." These are typical utterances of the monotonous diapa- son that rang in the ears of the Republican rulers for more than a quarter of a century, and amid which they calmly went on forging that admirable instrument, the public- school system of France. Nor are these utterances mere outbursts of petulance. The Church suited the action to the word. It organized all over France political associa- tions under episcopal authority, the consequence of a mot d'ordre of the sovereign pontiff, admirable machines of political warfare against which the Republican Govern- ment had to fight, with rare moments of truce, from May 16 down to the time of the Dreyfus case. Evidently the advantages of the Concordat for the State, in spite of Ferry's striking argument, were no longer what they were when that instrument was signed by the First Consul. As M. Jules Roche said in a speech in the French Chamber, the French prelates and priests were organized in a " per- manent and multiple conspiracy against the Republic, against modern society, and against universal suffrage, in order to alter it, corrupt it, and oppress it." In this rapid survey no mention has been made of the constant breaches of the Concordat on the part of French Bishops, their reckless readiness to create compromising incidents, the irreconcilable attitude of the Freppels and the Gouthe-Soulards.-^ The persecution of the State by the Church during the period previous to the accession of Pope Leo XIII is a fact of history, and a fact of which the Church is proud. When Leo XIII took ofl&ce in 1878, France was entering upon the throes of the war on behalf of laic instruction. The Pope, cautious diplomatist, seemed to be studying the map of Europe. France, under the leadership of Ferry, appeared to be forgetting the dangers at home in the effort which Bismarck seconded, for his own ends, to re-establish in Europe the prestige jeopardized by the Treaty of Frankfort. She began and ^ See the present writer's Patriotism and Science, pp. 24-38. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 89 continued the policy of colonial expansion, which has finally resulted in her recovering her place among the Great Powers. But the old parties remained inveterately hostile. They continued their systematic opposition. It is noteworthy that Mgr. Freppel, no doubt acting in obedience to the Pope, sought to deter them from their anti-French tactics of abdication in the Colonies. There was a lull in the war between Church and State, for although Leo XIII 's first encyclical had declared that the policy of Pius IX was to be continued, the new Pope's manner was obviously conciliatory, and the counsels that emanated from the Vatican were no longer those of Pius IX. But if the Vatican seemed quiet, the French Pretenders were still on the alert. The famous affair of Boulangism was a fresh and desperate assault. Let one of the leading Republican Catholics in France enlighten the reader as to the way the Church was once more com- promised by that affair. In Les Gatholiques Republicains ; Histoire et Souvenirs, 1890-1903, the Abbe Pierre Dabry says: " Just as the Conservatives did not mean to let the country have peace, so likewise they were equally averse to giving peace to the Church. The Catholics had com- mitted the blunder of enlisting in the monarchical army, and of fighting at the side of the Conservatives in every battle. They were their prisoners." The ** Conserva- tives " had but one object, namely, to upset the Republic ; and in the " shameless " Boulangist episode, as this priest does not hesitate to call it, they obliged the honest Catholics, whom they duped with effrontery, to accept once again an alliance which would have compromised them irremediably if it had not been for the political sense of the Pope. This *' shameless " episode of Boulangism opened the eyes of Leo XIII. After it the Republic seemed defini- tively established. " Ne trouvez-vous pas qu^en voila assez f said the Pope one day to the Archbishop of Algiers, with reference to the way the affairs of the Church were being conducted in France. His meaning was clear. I 90 PROBLEMS OF POWER A few weeks later the famous toast of Cardinal Lavigerie at Algiers, calling upon the Catholics to defend the Re- public and to adhere to it sans arriere pensee^ heralded the encyclical of 1892, urging on all French Catholics submis- sion to the Government ; an instrument shortly followed up by a brief enforcing obedience. This pronouncement opened a new era. It seemed a harbinger of peace and of reconciliation. It was welcomed by the Republican rulers in a spirit of genuine deference for the Pope and of confidence in his sincerity. Who can pierce the mystery of a man's real motives ? They are as secret as the move- ments of the Pleiades. At all events Leo XIII 's act was not only one of supreme political perspicacity, but also one of genuine loyalty. That, moreover, was the impres- sion of the Gambettists, who had never forgotten the terms in which their chief had greeted the accession of Cardinal Pecci. It was the opinion of M. de Blowitz, to whom Leo XIII, speaking of the Royalist and Conserva- tive parties, said, " Ueglise du Christ ne s* attache qu'a un seul cadavre, a celui qui est lui-meme attache sur la croix " — a stupendous utterance, which takes its place among the finest that history preserves. It is the testimony, more- over, of a score of eminent Catholic authorities, among whom the latest is Mr. Wilfrid Ward: " I well remember Cardinal RampoUa's unquenchable hopefulness, in conversation, that if only the conciliatory policy were continued long enough it would bear fruit at last." The Republican statesmen took the Pope at his word. They believed in his sincerity and rejoiced in the oppor- tunity of sheathing the swords they had had to use for twenty years to defend themselves against the Catholic assault. No eye-witness can ever forget the strange in- spiration, as by a sort of Pentecostal influence, that filled the Chamber of Deputies in that famous sitting of March 3, 1894, when M. SpuUer, Minister of Public Worship, the confidant and inspirer of Gambetta, delivered the great speech which marks an epoch in the history of the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 91 Third Republic. Developing the religious policy of the Government, M. Spuller explained the new spirit of toler- ance and charity which the Republican State henceforth intended to apply. A wave of genuine enthusiasm over- swept the country. Leo XIII, who had put himself at the head of the Democracy, and abandoned the *' corpse " of the Conservative party, was regarded as the benefactor of the State. The Republican Government, eager to lay down their arms, responded loyally to the papal overtures. All along it had been their dream to open wide the doors of the Republic. Never for a quarter of a century had it been possible, for outside had pressed a howling mob, led by nondescript pretenders, the immense Catholic army at their back, ready to invade and sack the entire house. At last a Pope of keen political intelligence had made it pos- sible to realize the ideal of an open and tolerant Republic. This state of national union was of short duration. There was gnashing of teeth among the irreconcilable sur- vivors of the old regimes. After a show of submission they hardened their hearts like Pharaoh. In this way they played into the hands of the Radical Republicans, whose anti-clericalism they revived. Little by little the old battle began afresh, but, as before, the first blows were dealt by the clerico-conservative coalition, and it became obvious that, whatever the sincerity of the Pope's motives, the consequences of his policy were likely to be the oppo- site of his intentions. The order to the Catholics to rally to the Republic was without ulterior motive. Its results went to justify the scepticism of the Brissons and the Clemenceaus who, from the very first, regarded it as a deep-laid scheme for laying hold of the Republic, in a word as the classic policy of the Trojan horse. French- men rapidly lost their illusions as to the sincerity of the Conservative Catholic parties, and the Republicans found themselves compelled to attack the Catholics on the same old battlefield. The history is familiar to all observers of France during the period from 1895 to 1905. As an im- mediate result, however, of the encyclical of 1892, and of 92 PROBLEMS OF POWER the " new spirit " in the Republican Government, France for five years had a series of moderate ministries. Down to 1898 anti-clerical legislation was banished from Parlia- ment, no words of hostility to religious liberty were uttered at the tribune. But what was the consequence ? Let a Catholic writer reply, although when he wrote he was hardly aware that he was giving a response to that question : " Between 1894 and 1900 the Catholics were free to extend and to develop their osuvres. Their schools and their colleges were filled. The religious orders, victims of the expulsion of 1880, completed the reconstitution of their establishments, the reopening of their chapels, and openly resumed direction of educational institutions. Religious activity, in a word, assumed a development to which we were too much in a hurry, perhaps, to draw attention." This statement of the advantages of the golden age of the Meline and other administrations is taken from a re- markable anonymous study due, it is believed, to a well- known Jesuit: La Grande Faute des Catholiques (Perrin). The author might have added that the bureaux of the War Office had been sedulously packed by reactionary youth educated in Church schools, and that the invasion of laic society by the Church had been all but completed, so far, at all events, as the Army and Navy were concerned. The justification of this statement is unnecessary for those who recall the Dreyfus Case. The Catholic witness forgets to note, furthermore, among the consequences of what he calls the souffle liberal, the extension of the " good press," and the marvellous and pernicious politico -religious part played by the newspaper La Croix during the Dreyfus Affair. Boulangism had opened the eyes of the Pope to the perils of the Church's policy of persecution of the Re- public. The Dreyfus Affair showed the entire country that even the sovereign pontiff had not succeeded in con- vincing all French Catholics that the Republic was the only possible form of government for the French de- mocracy ; and that after the first loyal impulses to obey him, they had allowed themselves to be drawn with the I A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 93 enemies of the regime (the " Nationalists *') into a fresh campaign of assault against the State. In 1901, after the Dreyfus Case, France was on the morrow of an ardent battle, in which the very existence of the Republic had been at stake. The campaign of the " Nationalists '* and of the *' Patrie Fran9aise " had been more terrible than that of Boulangism. Republican discipline under M. Waldeck-Rousseau saved the State. But it had not been the fault of the religious orders — the Jesuits and Assump- tionists — nor of the religious newspapers, if the Republic did not go to the wall. Politically there was no time to be lost. The danger had been conjured, but it had been immense. No Government could defer taking legitimate precautions. M. Waldeck-Rousseau took them. The form that those precautions assumed was inevitable. It is known as the Associations Law of July 1901, and it re- sulted in the expulsion from France, pell-mell with some of the worst ecclesiastical conspirators that have ever troubled the public peace in any country, of a large number of innocent persons whom reactionary political wire-pullers had duped into complicity with the anti- Republican monks and bishops. The esprit nouveau had failed owing to the disloyalty and the lack of political sense of certain of the French Catholic leaders. The Republican State once more unsheathed its sword and assumed its former attitude of defence. Leo XIII died in 1903 broken-hearted. What Gallicanism and Catholicism thereby lost, Vati- canism — and, it should be said, the Triple Alliance — was to win. Three years before his death Leo XIII had written a firm and eloquent letter to the Archbishop of Bourges, renewing in accents of bitter, although re- strained, indignation his protests against the indiscipline of certain French Catholics in their incorrigible resistance to the Republic, and their refusal to accept the principle of Democracy. An immense Catholic organization known as the Action Liberale resolutely set its face against the counsels of the Vatican, and its Catholic Republican atti- 94 PROBLEMS OF POWER tude towards the Christian democracy once more com- promised Catholicism in the eyes of the Republicans. M. Combes, who succeeded M. Waldeck-Rousseau, largely actuated by the manoeuvres of the clergy and of the re- ligious orders in the elections, applied the Associations Law in a spirit which, if not that of the promoters of the law, was generally recognized by Parliament as necessi- tated by the renewed rebellious activity of the anti- Republican prelates in resisting the law. M. Waldeck- Rousseau, however, protested violently against the dis- tortion, not only of his intentions as promoter of the law, but also of the spirit of that measure, a distortion which resulted in the closing of at least 15,000 Catholic schools and the illegal persecution of many thousands of in- offensive monks and nuns. The last speech he delivered was an eloquent appeal in favour of the right of " author- ized " religious orders to teach. He reaffirmed the obliga- tion of Parliament to consider on their merits all requests for authorization. He was not heeded. The result was that the Associations Law, which was meant to be a measure of State control, became one of virtually whole- sale exclusion. This was a breach of faith as well as a grave political blunder. It resulted in '* persecution," recalling the most characteristic acts of hostility of the Church towards the State. But, what was worse, it gave the Vatican legitimate ground for protest, and created that atmosphere of mistrust which later on was to warp the Papal judgment in connexion with the acceptance of the Separation Law. The Republic was bound to suffer for this misconstruction of the Associations Law,^ through 1 An excellent sample of the mentality induced by the misconstruc- tion of the Law may be seen in a letter written to The Times of Febru- ary 9, 1907, by Abbot (now Cardinal) Gasquet, President of the English Benedictines. This letter is as follows: " Sir, " I fear from his letter to-day that your * own correspondent ' in Paris must have been quite misled in more ways than one. He seems to imagine that he has got to the bottom of the difficulties which have hitherto stood in the way of a peaceful settlement of the reUgious ques- A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 95 the effect which the inevitable manoeuvrea of resentful monks produced upon the new Pope. It is noteworthy, however, that Leo XIII did not retaliate, and it is certain tion in France. Now that peace is perhaps within sight, he takes the British public into his confidence and tells them that it is all the doing of the wicked ' monks.' These terrible people, to revenge themselves on the secular clergy of France for their spoliation a few years back, have plotted to deceive the Pope, and have coerced him into acting as he has done of late. Now, happily, Pius X has found them out, and this is why he has now permitted what he the other day condemned. * It is supposed,' writes your correspondent, ' that their (the monks') cause might be furthered by acute religious strife in France.' " Can any charge be more odious and unjust than this indefinite and unsubstantiated accusation of a large class of men, vaguely classed as * the monks '? I believe, nay, I am absolutely certain, that this serious and sweeping charge has no firmer basis than the irresponsible gossip of Parisian cafes and such -like places of information. I have some right to speak, because I am one of these monks whose property has been confiscated. Owing to our desire to keep the law, we endeav- oured, by the express advice of M. Waldeck -Rousseau himself, to regularize our position. Had we taken the warning of friends who saw better than we what was coming, we should have packed up some years before the end came, and have saved many thousands of pounds of English money belonging to English subjects whose interests we had vainly thought our English Government would protect. As I am one of the sufferers, and as I still smart under what I hold to have been the legalized robbery of the Combes Ministry, I have some right to speak, and I reject the insinuations made by your correspondent in your issue of to-day entirely and absolutely. Even to deny that the Pope has been misled by the ' monks ' I look upon as an impertinence to him. But I assert, without any hesitation, that not one of those thousands of despoiled religious would not be willing to suffer ten times as much as he has done, rather than that one parish church should be closed for pubHc worship. " Why does not your correspondent tell his English readers what is the fact ? He must know that if there is peace — as we all so much hope — ^it is because now there is a proposal in regard to the churches which the Catholic Church can accept, sinceit practically acknowledges the Bishops, and through them the Pope, 'as the divinely appointed heads of the Church. No doubt there has been, is, and will be, much suffering among the despoiled French clergy. But what the world at large cannot fail to see is that marvellous spectacle, in a sordid age, of the entire episcopate and clergy of the French Church surrendering everything they possessed for the sake of principle. " I am, sir, your obedient servant, "Feancis a. Gasquet, " Abbot President of the Eiiglish Benedictines. " The AthensBum Club, " February 7." 96 PROBLEMS OF POWER that the so-called " expulsion " of the monks was an event that had no relation whatever with the subsequent measure of Separation, which was largely due to the diffi- culties raised by Pius X in connexion with the Concordat and M. Loubet's visit to Rome. With the accession of the new Pope the partisans of the old regime recovered their liberty and their audacity. Pius X, the dupe of the insinuations of exiled monks, and the victim of anti-French influences in the Triple Alliance, and of his own doctrinaire piety, abandoned the prudent temporizations of his predecessor, and indulged in act after act (such as sending his benediction to the League of French Women, a dangerous engine of war against the Republic) which renewed the old and dangerous policy of the Pope of the Syllabus. When M. Loubet visited the King of Italy Pius X addressed to the European Powers a protest against that visit, couched in terms offensive to France. The insult to France was aggravated by the fact that certain phrases relating to an eventual recall of the papal nuncio did not figure in the copy sent to the French Government. For the Vatican the visit of the President of the Republic to the King of Italy was that of a Catholic sovereign to the heir of the State that had despoiled the head of the Church of his temporal authority. That temporal power is regarded by the Vatican as the keystone of law and justice throughout the planet. By the destruction of that keystone in 1870 all the stones of the arch, one after another, necessarily fell.^ 1 The identical words of a curious and characteristic expression of clerical politics, Cte. de la Barre de Nanteuil's La PapautS ei la Future Guerre Europeenne (Paris, 1896). The author calls upon C5athohcs to " entrer en lutte avec le royaume d'ltalie en crdant un couravi d' opinion puhlique au faveur de la restauration de VautoriU temporeUe du Saint Siege J' Yet it was just the inability of Republican France to convince Italy that she cherished against her no hostile designs, and was in reaUty a powerful Power, that largely contributed to fling Italy into the arms of Germany. Cf. VHistoire de V^glise sous la Troisi^me R6puhlique, by M. Lecanuet (Paris, Poussielgue, 1907). This work by a Catholic historian is the detailed justification, and the admission, of my remark that the " policy of the Vatican has been to pit France against Italy," etc. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 97 From the point of view of the Vatican the visit of M. Lou- bet was an affront. The policy of the Vatican has been to pit France against Italy, compromising the " Eldest Daughter of the Church," by the affirmation of a persis- tent and naive confidence in her intention to intervene sooner or later for the restoration of the temporal power. Were the Vatican to abandon the dream of recovering its territorial sovereignty it would be more than the loss of a hope, it would be positive abdication. As the French Deputy, the late Abbe Gayraud, has said: " It was of pro- found political wisdom and of far-reaching social signifi- cance that the Pope should appear before the whole world, not as the citizen of any nation, nor as the subject of any State, but amid the complete radiance of his apostolic independence!"^ The French Government held that it was not its busi- ness to contribute to the consolidation of the papal " royalty." Its retort to the protest of the Vatican was immediate and logical. It recalled its ambassador lest his further presence at the Vatican be interpreted by the Holy See in a sense favourable to its pretensions to the temporal power, and also as a protest against the Vati- can's claim to meddle in French foreign affairs. Four hundred and twenty-seven deputies against ninety-five approved this act of the Government. Until then M. Combes had been opposed to the separation of Church and State. The Pope, by his ill-advised but obviously responsible policy, and by his anti-concordatory acts, rendered that separation logical. The cup of Republican indignation ran over when, contrary to the terms of the Concordat, the Pope refused canonical investiture to priests whom the Government promoted to the episcopate. Later on, without co-operation with the State, the Vatican deprived two French Bishops of their rights ; and this also was a breach of the Concordat. Wantonly, one would say — and later events, in fact, showed that it was the ^ La Loi de Seyaraiion et la Pape Pie X. (Blond et Cie., 1906), p. 19. 98 PROBLEMS OF POWER application of a deep-laid plot of hostility to France — the Vatican was seeking a quarrel with the French State. There had not yet, however, been complete rupture be- tween the two, since, after all, it depended on the French Parliament to decide whether the Concordat should be abrogated. But finally, when one of the Bishops ap- pointed by the State had been suspended from his func- tions by the Pope, this new affront was so excessive that M. Combes no longer hesitated. The honour of France was at stake. He gave the Pope twenty-four hours to withdraw the letters written to the Bishops, under penalty of the immediate rupture of diplomatic relations. Not having obtained satisfaction, he recalled from Rome what remained of the Embassy. The door was wide open for the great reform of a free Church in a free State. But meanwhile French foreign policy was bound to suffer by the rupture of relations between the Quai d'Orsay and the Vatican. In Syria, in the islands of the Pacific, and finally in Morocco, France learned the inconvenience of not possessing normal facili- ties for diplomatic conversation with a Power which, after the Powers of Money and Democracy, is still the greatest in the world. Whenever a French Government begins negotiations with the Pope for the re-establishment of an Embassy at the Vatican the measure will not only con- solidate the authority of France and the effective in- fluence of the Triple Entente, but will meet with the approval of the immense majority of French citizens. To use the words of M. Poincare, the French Prime Minister, on his return from Russia (August 1912), it will " preserve and enhance cette conscience collective et cette unite de sentiment national qui font la grandeur j la gloire et V immortalite des peuples.'' A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 99 III The adjustment of the relations between the Churches and the State has been only one of the problems absorbing the attention of political parties in France. The politico- religious character of the Dreyfus Case was unmistakable. The Dreyfus Case was in reality a revival of the Wars of the League during the reign of Henri IV. What Dr. Gustave Lebon calls the " psychology of revolutions " will cl^ss these two episodes as events of the same general order. The Dreyfus Case was a ten years' period of civil war which seemed to be interrupting the steady advance of French society, but which, when all was over, was seen to have precipitated that advance, and to have trans- formed the nation and the State. The political and social consequences of the Dreyfus Case were immense and are not yet spent .^ In that great religious war two conflicting French ideals fought almost to the death ; the ideal of the raison d'etat and the ideal of les droits de lliomme ; the ideal of a sovereign centralized State, repressive of individual privilege, and the ideal of individual right chafing against laws and con- ^ The virus secreted by the Dreyfus Affair still remains singularly potent whenever it touches certain vulnerable organs of the body- poUtic. On January 11, 1913, M. Millerand, the ablest Minister of War that France has had for many years, was led, under pressure of the Extreme Radical deputies, to resign, because he had reintegrated in the territorial force Lt.-Col. du Paty de Clam, one of the staff -officers who had played a predominant part in the incrimination of Captain Dreyfus for high treason. The Minister's resignation took place at the critical moment when Rumanian blackmail of the Balkan League, synchroniz- ing with a deadlock in London between the Balkan and Turkish peace- plenipotentiaries, appeared to be placing Europe within grave danger of a general war. It would not be easy to find in the annals of French domestic policy a fijier instance of the tyranny and caprice of the Legis- lative Authority, nor a more sinister proof of the crying need in France of a reinforcement of the principle of the Separation of Powers. The occasion was one to recall the remark of Dr. Woodrow Wilson {The States p. 232): " Almost every public man of experience and abiUty in France has now been in one way or another discredited by the action of the Chamber of Deputies; and France is staggering under that most burden- some, that most intolerable, of all forms of government, government by mass-meeting — by an inorganic popular assembly." 100 PROBLEMS OF POWER ventions that subordinate the individual to the interests of the community ; the ideal of a justice based on national expediency, and of a justice rooted in the conviction peculiar to every human consciousness, that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is no illusion. The significance of this ten years' civil war in France rarely appealed to the foreigner. When, in 1898, the late M. Brunetiere harped, in articles in the Revue dea deux Mondes, and in a series of vigorous pamphlets, on the single string that " individualism " was the great danger for his countrymen; when the State Attorney, in the trial of Emile Zola, at Versailles, accused that novelist of ** not understanding the genius of France," public opinion throughout the Anglo-Saxon world failed completely to seize the drift of these sayings. No Englishman, no Ger- man, no American, seemed to be aware, or t^hey had all forgotten, that the age-long endeavour of France had been, wittingly or unwittingly, the construction of a strongly centralized power, a machine in which all the separate parts, all the members of the body-politic, should be mute accessories, simple functionaries — anonymous f ulfiUers of a function — without individual rights or privi- leges. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had ejected certain elements that clogged the machine and were a cause of friction. Their absence rendered the problem of the construction of a really national unity much easier to solve. No such State as the French was ever before formed on so vast a scale. The maintenance of such a State implies the sacrifice of the individual citizen to the glory and beauty of the whole. It creates an excellent soil for the cultivation of such weeds as Antisemitism, and it demands the enactment of excessive repressive legislation, like that of 1894 against the anarchists, measures that were rushed through the Chamber of Deputies without debate, and that were of easy applica- tion to " crimes of opinion," to differences of view on social problems and social duties. But, at the same time, in such a State, the faults of the individuals composing A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 101 it will almost all belong to the category of amiable defects, in contradistinction to the odious merits produced among a people that have evolved according to an opposite ideal of justice and national duty. The faults will be the defects of children scheming for place and advancement, for ribbons and for honours, in a word for recognition by the community, for some form of national sanction of their conduct. In such a State the word " honour " will have a double sense. The qualities, therefore, which in France are to shine in the individual, are not those that make the glory of the citizen in the lands where Protestantism has triumphed^ and where the notions of social and civic justice have not grown out of a tendency to centralization : self -assertive- ness, self-reliance, moral and civic courage — but, on the contrary, the qualities that are most effective in an organic community: all the social qualities, in a word, ranging from an ideal of discipline like that of the Japanese Bushido, with its reflection in the Japanese smile, to the most agreeable forms of French urbanity, and to the French gift for festal demonstrations. Society in such a State becomes organized politeness. Literature and art are pre-eminently expected to show symptoms of gout ; that is to say, of codified taste. Thought must, at all costs, be made intelligible; and if possible its expression must be rendered average. Renan's confession, in the Preface of his L'Avenir de la Science, as to his intentional effort to alter his literary style in order to please his compatriots, is only the echo of the principles of a Vauge- las. In such a State we shall find the clear, correct, straightforward style of prose recognized as useful. And as a consequence of the genius of France, patriotism in France is arguably another thing than in England, or Holland, or the United States, where the genius of the inhabitants makes for the aggrandizement of the indivi- dual rather than for the development of man in society, or for the completer perfecting of the social organism. Frenchmen have always preferred the latter form of 102 PROBLEMS OF POWER civilization, and in spite of Democracy they prefer it still. Napoleon came and, completing the work of Richelieu and Louis XIV, constructed the scaffolding — patented over and over again by successive Governments, even by the Third Republic — with which the French are still building their great sample nation. It ought not to have caused any surprise, therefore, in 1898, during the Dreyfus Case — at that critical moment when the idea of abstract justice seemed likely to throw the whole machine out of gear — that many a Frenchman, keenly alive to, or at least sub -consciously divining, what is unquestionably the genius of French history, should have rallied to the side of the Anti-Dreyfusists with Brunetiere and M. Jules Lemaitre, with M. Bourget, M. Barres and M. Charles Maurras and with ninety-nine per cent, of the French army. Moreover, all that has just been said not only explains the feeling of persistent hostility to aggressive minorities, to the Protestants, for instance, and the Free- Masons, but even partially justifies that feeling. Patriotic duty in France from 1895 to 1905 was conceivably quite another thing than what it is to-day, or than it ever has been, for instance, in England. And this touches the essential point. If French history is so absorbingly interesting, in a philosophic sense, it is because of the age- long struggle in France between two opposite theories of human development, the Protestant and the Catholic, between Individualism and Solidarity, between Free Thought and Authority. The ideal of the Michelets and the Quinets was that of the founders of New England: " A Church without a Bishop and a State without a King." The Dreyfus Affair was the revenge of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But even this patent fact escaped the perspicacity of foreign observers, who regarded the glorious " Affair " as a monstrous scandal rendering France a by- word among the nations. They did not know that in France there are two forms of patriotism, that of the men who either protest as idealists, or who sulk as envious outsiders ; and that of the men who either A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 103 acquiesce as conservatives, or sell their birthright for a place at the budgetary board. French history is the record of the duel between these two patriotisms. When- ever Frenchmen have forgotten that they belong to a national community that forms part of Europe, the clash between their two patriotisms has resulted in civil war, and the enemies of France have rubbed their hands in glee. Whenever France has been hard-pressed by the foreigner, these two patriotisms have sunk their differences, and France, recovering her national self-consciousness, has presented to the world an impregnable battle-front. IV The foregoing pages show the obvious absurdity of using for the interpretation of French events the same general ideals which serve to explain events occurring among peoples who live according to another social system, and are therefore the product of quite another historic evolu- tion. The struggle in France between the Catholic Church and the Republican State, as well as the Dreyfus Affair, are excellent illustrations of this truth. The record of the purely political and constitutional develop- ment of France, as affected by its social and economic evolution, is no less conclusive proof that the only abso- lute fact in the world is that all things are relative. During an entire week in March 1909 some five or six thousand Parisian postmen and telegraph clerks, assisted by their comrades in the provinces, remained absent from their posts and imposed their will on nearly forty millions of their fellow-citizens. Startled spectators in other countries immediately concluded that France was in revo- lution. The event in question was called a " strike," but it was a strike of a new kind, in reality an interesting symptom of the evolution of French society under the in- fluence of Democratic principles. It was the revolt of a considerable group of one privileged class of the French nation against the national Parliament ; and the executive 104 PROBLEMS OF POWER authority in the nation was, for a time, so paralysed that none of the numerous acts of insubordination connected with the event were punished, while, in order to restore the normal life of the community, the Prime Minister was obliged to parley directly with the representatives of the group of State officials, as Roman Emperors negotiated with the pretorians. Small wonder if an incident of so peculiar a character imposed attention. The enemies of the Republic were sure to seize upon it as reinforcing their theory of the essential anarchy inherent in a Republican State. They interpreted the strike as the beginning of the end of the present political system in France. The authority of the French Parliament, they said, had become inferior even to that of the Russian Duma. " Pronunciamiento Syndical," ** Fin de Regime," " La Trahison des Em- ployes de I'Etat " — such were some of the formulas in which public opinion, in France and abroad, crystallized its astonishment and its apprehensions. A French his- torian and professor, M. Aulard, described the strike as " nothing more or less than the most considerable event which has occurred since the French Revolution." No apology is required for the attempt to analyse curiously, and somewhat more scientifically than would hitherto appear to have been done, the nature of an event which aroused such exceptional comment. One preliminary observation, moreover, must be made in definition of the event taken in and by itself, without reference to its origin or consequences. That observation is this: the biologic law of specialization of function seems to have its analogy in the departments of political and social science, the number of vital points in any given society becoming more and more numerous as the community becomes more organic, more highly developed — what we call more " civihzed." In most modern States a minority can overrule the will of the vast majority, and easily effect the provisional disruption of the social organism. In March 1909, in France the syndical energy of some A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 105 eight thousand individuals, grouped for common action, annihilated for a considerable period the united force of the national sovereignty. The interests of a single syndi- cate outweighed those of the syndicate of consumers, of the whole mass of tax-payers — the syndicate of the nation. Two years later, in the summer of 1911 , another series of incidents in another part of France, gave rise to similar apprehensions. Again startled spectators, both at home and in other countries, exclaimed that France was in revolution. Fortunately, the student of political science has an advantage which not all scientists enjoy. His experiments are prepared for him by other people; he has only to sit quietly, like the astronomer, and watch the changing phenomena. In France, owing to the Frenchman's repugnance for blurred edges, his logical, systematizing intelligence, political facts uniformly assume an exceptional neatness of outline which tends to enhance their apparent importance. They loom larger than life. Events there isolate themselves automatically, as if for the more convenient investigation of the observer. Thus in 1911 in France certain of the Eastern provinces became the scene of what can only be described as a revival of the Dionysiac orgies. It was an impressive spectacle. As the bands of Bacchic and Maenad revellers reeled, burning and pillaging, through the vineyards of Champagne, the torch-lit terror of the Thracian nights seemed no longer a poet's dream. But the scene was, not merely an interesting occasion for aesthetic pleasure, not merely even a happy opportunity for the kine- matographer. It was also a fresh symptom, after so many others, of a certain state of the French body- politic, and it was no doubt what is called a prodrome of a possible change in the French political and social organism. The terrifying events in Champagne occurred under the eye of a Government apparently powerless to arrest them, and of a Parliament incompetent to suggest a solution. The Prime Minister of France sat like Bel- shazzar at the feast, gazing with dismay at the awful 1^ 106 PROBLEMS OF POWER 1 lettering on the midnight sky, while the Deputies wrung their hands like a Greek chorus. The lettering on the wall was Greek to the Prime Minister. What may have been the reflections of the President of the Republic, who had chosen the stalwart Radical Senator, Monsieur Monis, to govern France, is not known: the Head of the State in France is, by the real, if not by the legal. Con- stitution, a mute idol in a pagoda, without responsibility or initiative. The reflections of the public were not so inarticulate. These two startling manifestations of an unrest which the superficial foreign observer may be excused for having regarded as revolutionary, in the legendary French sense of the word, may be studied from various points of view ; but it would be a mistake not to class them together as typical instances illustrating what may, without exag- geration, be called the crisis of the State in France. An effort has been made, in the earlier pages of this book, to compare certain aspects of the French and American Con- stitutions. It is useful to continue the investigation thus begun by a somewhat more detailed scrutiny of the political and administrative organization of France. The situation in that country is not entirely without its sug- gestion for other countries ; yet, at this juncture, it is more important than ever to insist on the absurdity of hoping to determine the effects of socio-political phenomena in a given society by comparing those effects with the conse- quences of apparently similar phenomena in communities differently organized, or hardly organized at all. Michelet remarked, for instance, that the whole of English history could be summed up in the single sen- tence: "England is an island." When, in her char- acteristically brutal fashion, Germany sought, by the despatch of a gunboat to the ideally strategic point of Agadir, on one of the world-routes of the Atlantic, to separate England and France, and to imperil the efficacy of their entente, while tearing up two diplomatic con- ventions, the Algeciras agreement and her own agreement A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 107 with France concerning Morocco, the^ immediate conse- quences of her action merely illustrated once again the profound truth of Michelet's axiom. But if the formula of Michelet, intelligently interpreted, is the sum and substance of British history, it is no less easy, no less pertinent and suggestive to sum up French history by a parallel formula, based on considerations drawn from the geographical position of France in rela- tion to other continental European Powers. Continental Europe is in reality the western promontory of Asia, and France is merely an isthmus, all but converting that prom- ontory into a peninsula, an isthmus linking the Mediter- ranean to the Atlantic and the North Sea. French soil is the central historic road of civilization during at least the last three thousand years. All the Pisgah heights look down upon her.-*^ A great nation has been evolved in so exposed and coveted a corner of the Continent solely by the adoption of relentlessly centrahzing methods which have determined the manners, the temperament, the char- acter — and the lack, of character — of its members. It is because Frenchmen have had to live and move and have their secular being at this particular spot of the globe that their ideals and their problems, their history, in a word, has differed from that of any other national com- munity. The attempt to account for events of the originality and magnitude of the Postmen's Strike and of the Jacquerie in the vineyards of Champagne impHes an effort to unravel, in the tangle of causes, those that are general and those that are specific and immediate; to distinguish between what Taine called the " great acting and permanent 1 In a map of the world of about 1050, known as the map of Saint Severin (Gascony), in which Rome is figured as the virtual centre of the oval universe, and in which the lacustrine sources of the Nile are lavishly affirmed, Gallia occupies almost a full quarter of the space, and she is crowded with great cities; while Germany, the vague Regia Oermaniaf is but a meagre cone-shaped area crushed between a distorted Danube and an extravagant Rhine, and seemingly in danger of being utterly squeezed out into the German Ocean. France preserves much the same proportions in the Hereford map of about 1280. 108 PROBLEMS OF POWER forces " and " the donnees that are more or less accidental and determinant of change."^ The general cause of the crisis of the State in France is the inabihty to co-ordinate, in the machinery of govern- ment in that country, two parts of the machine which ought to have remained reciprocally independent: the administrative and bureaucratic, which is an inheritance of the Napoleonic regime, and the Parliamentary, to which, in conditions that must be explained, an excessive importance has been given. In France two go\rernmental systems have become entangled, creating a state of friction which, if it were to continue, would ruin the entire machine. The antimony between the Napoleonic regime maintained by the Third Republic and the system of Parliamentarism established by the Constitution of 1875 would of itself in the course of time have entailed a revision of the Constitution. But the need for reform has been precipitated by the introduction of a new factor in the problem, the Syndical Movement. It has been seen, in connexion with the problem of the separation of Church and State in France, that the founders of the Third Republic, in their effort to re- organize French society, achieved the political part of their task but inadequately, by framing a Constitution which preserved the old Napoleonic social scaffolding, and even by adding fresh beams that rendered the political and administrative functions more organic and more centralized. A mere handful of officials sufficed to run the machine. But it was necessary not only to choose a select and trusty personnel whose business it should be to tend the machine, but also to organize national nurseries of civil servants knowing their Republican business. If the Government of France had consisted merely of the bureaux and the Cabinet, this operation of manning the French Administration with trusty Republicans might have proceeded without excessive friction. But the Con- ^ See letter of January 2, 1882, to M. A. Leroy-Beaulieu : Revue dea deux MondeSy April 15, 1907. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 109 stitution had concentrated the national sovereignty in a Chamber of Deputies, and made the Cabinet dependent on that all but autocratic assembly. The real work of France was done by the bureaux, and the Chamber held the Cabinet responsible for its being well done. But to get that work well done, from the point of view of the " representatives of the people " it was imperative that it should be done by persons on whom they themselves could count. Moreover, no deputy in any country in the world but is convinced that the interests of the community require his election and re-election. In a country of universal suffrage, where the power of Number is pre- dominant, the sheer numerical value of the mass- vote of vast groups of civil servants is an essential factor of the problem of election. The phenomenon has been excel- lently illustrated on a vast scale in the L^nited States under the name of the " spoils system " ; and the Pension system of the United States, where nearly 200,000,000 dollars^ are paid out annually, is an equally pretty instance of the same phenomenon. Hence the tendency both to ingra- tiate oneself with the functionaries and to increase their number. The processes of seduction are varied, ranging from the classical method of the sop to Cerberus — the Income Tax Bill in France is a misplaced effort of the kind — -to outright intimidation, or even blackmail, as was seen in the delation scandals under M. Combes' Ministry. With Bills of demagogic appeal the French democracy has been drawn steadily on to the point of liberty it has reached to-day; it has been given the right of free speech, the right of public meeting, the right of combination. 1 The Outlook, May 25, 1912. The case of England is worth citing in comparison. In the last 25 years the Civil Service Estimates have risen from £15,700,000 to £46,787,873 (exclusive of the Revenue Depart- ments). No fewer than 2,700 new offices for the service of the State have been created since 1906. Under the Insurance Act large numbers of similar appointments have been madfe, most of them without public competition. A Royal Commission on the CivU Service was appointed in March 1912, but it remains to be seen how far it will succeed in clearing the steady growth of official appointments from all suspicion of jobbery or party preference. Cf. leading article in The Times, March 15, 1912. no PROBLEMS OF POWER But at the same time the Cabinets responsible for order and discipline have striven strenuously to reconcile these liberties with the principle of authority of which they are constitutionally the guardian. Some 900,000 servants of the State, employes of the nation, many of whom owe their appointments — that is to say, their privileged exist- once — to the favour of a Minister or the intervention of a politician, are expected to repay their benefactors by ensuring the election or the re-election of the individuals designated by the Republican leaders. That is, in France, an essential part of the mechanism of government, and until within the last few years it had never occurred to any French politician that another system was con- ceivable. In a letter written in 1881 to M. Georges Saint-Ren6 Taillandier, Taine said: " Under the name of sovereignty of the people we possess an excessive centralization, the intervention of the State in private life, a system of uni- versal bureaucracy, with all its consequences. Centraliza- tion and universal suffrage, these are the two main characteristics of contemporary France, and they have given it an organization which is both apoplectic and anaemic . ' ' What Taine meant , and what no close observer could fail to note, was indeed the whole set of '* conse- quences " involved in the simple fact that there are some eight millions of voters in France, and that at least 900,000 of them are civil servants, employes of the State. The French expression Vassiette au beurre, which refers simply to the desire of all French citizens to be given a place at^the Budgetary buffet, and to be allowed to " put their fingers in the pie " as often and as conveniently as they like, sums up picturesquely the Gargantuan spectacle organized by the Republican caterers since the downfall of the Empire. In the earlier period, as has been seen, the primary-school teachers were enlisted as a disciplined Republican army throughout the French communes, and were made electoral agents. The letter-carriers were con» verted into emissaries of the Republican general staff. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 111 The mayors, sub-prefects, and prefects were the officers of this immense army of functionaries, dependent on the Minister of the Interior, and enabling him to " make the elections." That operation consisted in the exclusion from all participation in the banquet, and from the dis- tribution of plums, of citizens who sulked or openly sought to seize the whole cake for themselves. The process of government which it implied was in principle of an extreme simplicity, but in practice it was astonishingly and amusingly complicated. The main occupation of the rulers of France was, and still is, to procure for their clients as many posts and advantages of every kind as possible. This has resulted in the multiplication of sinecures, until to-day, as has been pointed out, an eighth at least of the electorate owe their social consideration, and the majority their economic well-being, to the successive Governments of the last thirty-five years. Favours of the most varied description — the offer of tobacco shops, newspaper Mosques, red, yellow and blue ribbons, and exemptions from military service — are extended to Frenchmen who promise to vote for the orthodox candi- date. And to this magnificent system of national bribery has been added, in the interests of Republican adminis- trative discipline, the power of intimidaii3n. If the mayor of a village shows signs of reactionary independence — and all independence tends to be classed as reactionary — the interests of his commune are systematically ignored by his chiefs. The inhabitants of the township or hamlet are made to realize that the installation of a telegraph line or the construction of a road are matters not essentially of social or economic importance, but of political interest."^ The habit has become deep-rooted of appealing to the authorities for all those improvements which in less centralized communities are left to private enterprise. Individual enthusiasms, private initiative, are at a dis- count. France, in fact, has advanced steadily towards that *' apoplectic " state to which Taine alluded; and the ^ See La RepuUique et Us PolUiciens, by M. Hemy Leyret, 112 PROBLEMS OF POWER role of Parliament has been to facilitate rather than to retard the dangerous moment of utter congestion. The deputy has become perforce the ambulant intermediary between the central Government and the electorate. It is through his intervention that the office-seekers, tuft- hunters, or the mere snobs, ambitious to inscribe their official dignities on their visiting cards, are able to get at the paid organisers of the banquet, the Ministers in office. The deputy is tempted to become a travelling salesman of political or social favours and gimcracks, in return for votes or local influence. The illusion of his omnipotence has grown apace, until the clients to whom he had prom- ised the moon have become disillusioned as to his ability to procure it for them. The Government has thus little by little been reduced to the undignified role of catering to the clients of its majority, and replying to the sarcasms and repelling the assaults of the party not invited to the banquet. Their entire time is occupied in this double task. Happily the real government of France is in the bureaux, the great State administrations.-^ For a number of years all seemed to be going as well as possible behind the scenes. Conservative by tradition, addicted to the bour- geois virtues, animated by a real spirit of strenuous and continuous labour, the great administrations would have remained disciplined had it not been for the interplay of the reciprocally antagonistic factors of French social and political evolution: the extension to the democracy of the various liberties that seem inseparable from our time, and the effort to maintain a centralized monarchical ^ When I first gave utterance to these ideas in the National Reimw of May, 1909, I was taxed with exaggeration. Two years later, even the Republican press was ringing with them; they formed the staple of one of the most brilliant books of political criticism — Les Tyrans Ridicules, by M. Henry Leyret — that has investigated the state of the French body-poUtic since Prevost Paradol. And still a year later, on June 25, 1912, the Prime Minister of France, M. Poincare, in a speech in the Chamber of Deputies on the reform of the electoral law, used language no less vigorous than my own to describe the plight of the representative of the people, who is merely the creature of a local ** boss " indifferent to all the general interests of France, so long as the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 113 administration. There is an immanent logic as there is an immanent justice. The radical inconsistency of the two conceptions was bound one day to result in that state of general unrest which has characterized the French body-politic and French society during the last seven or eight years, and which finally, by the happy accident of the postmen's " strike," was so localized that the real nature of the disorder could be diagnosed as an acute attack of articular rheumatism in one of the great arms of the French administration, the result of long-protracted and silent secretions of a gouty or arthritic character, which must be ruthlessly combated at whatever cost. Now, in a nation as completely organic as that of France, an organism so compact, so highly developed as regards specialization of function, where everyone is either a part of the machinery of administration or of govern- ment, or a candidate for participation in administrative responsibilities, a nation which topological causes have made more homogeneous than any other modern people — in such a nation, where almost all the quarrels are only family feuds, the introduction of the right to combine was the introduction of a subtle poison bound to transform the whole internal economy; and Parliament, instead of petty inter its de docher are zealously protected. M. Poincare said: " La reforme electorale n'est pas seulement la representation sincere et juste des partis politiques, c'est surtout la renovation de certaines moeurs electorales et administratives et le changement d'habitudes dont nous avons ete et sommes tous les jours, tous plus ou moins victimes. . . . L'etroitesse des circonscriptions electorales met forcement les elus a la merci des influences locales. Vous le savez aussi bien que moi. M. Andrieux annon9ait hier que les senateurs auraient tot ou tard le sort des deputes; mais j'ai ete assez longtemps depute pour connaitre les conditions dans lesquelles, le plus souvent, nous sommes amenes a exercer ce mandat. Nous sommes obliges d'employer la flus grande partie de notre activity a des hesognes fastidieuses, d, des demarches ingrates, et nous en arrivons, sous la pression des influences locales, a considerer comme une nScessite vitale pour conserver notre mandat, notre ingei'ence quotidienne dans toutes les questions administratives. Et toutes les responsabilites se trouvent ainsi deplacees : les chefs des administrations, debordes par les sollicitations, ont toutes les peines du monde a defendre leur propre impartialite. C'est ainsi que les mecontentements se multi- plient. Je ne fais, en ce moment, que repeter tout haut ce que tout le monde dit tout bas." 114 PROBLEMS OF POWER finding the necessary antidotes for the secret ravages produced, seemed to be blindly, perversely perfecting an ideal bouillon de culture. How did it set about the concoction of this dangerous mixture ? How did it manage to create so favourable a milieu for the rapid evolution of the malady ? The answers to these questions will give the efficient cause of the present crisis. In the first place, the deputies representing the Republic were obliged by the attitude of the Catholics, and of the parties loyal to successive Pretenders, to defend their interests and those of the new regime against the Church and against Reaction. This contest absorbed the atten- tion of the Republic so long and so completely that rela- tively little time was left for the consideration of that prudent policy of social reform which figures seductively on Radical programmes down even to that of M. Clemen- ceau in November 1906. Hypnotized by these grave questions of self-preservation — and the organization of secular education was an integral part of the struggle against influences hostile to the Republic — ^the Republican Cabinets were too strongly tempted to ignore the funda- mental changes which were taking place in what Gam- betta called the nouvelles couches sociales, and in the economic relations between the bourgeoisie and the people, as a result of the new liberties which the Republican party had bestowed on the democracy. There had not been wanting prophets, however. Republican leaders of great distinction and political sense, like Waldeck-Rousseau, who foresaw the vast development to which the Syndical Movement was predestined. These men, who perceived that the law of 1884 on professional trade unions created an alien influence, destructive of almost all the traditional notions on which French society and the French adminis- tration had subsisted for a century, nevertheless recog- nized that thus, and thus only, could that society evolve amid the new economic conditions. And the greatest of them, the statesman responsible for the law of 1884, A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 115 Waldeck-Rousseau himself, sought untiringly to convince his countrymen that, to prevent the syndicates from becoming a State within a State, supplementary legislation was required. In a speech delivered at Roubaix in 1 898, before six thousand working men, Waldeck-Rousseau referred to the law of 1884 (of which more recent legisla- tion tolerating associations and combination in the Government offices is but the dangerous logical develop- ment) as " un des meilleurs chapitres de mavie." And he remarked, in a note of philosophy echoed over and over again in La Melee Sociale of M. Clemenceau : — " If it be believed, as I believe, that it is with society as with indi- viduals, in that they obey a positive law of growth, that they inevitably advance in the path of progress, then it will be seen that we were well inspired in sweeping away the obstacles in the path of the labouring classes and in releasing them from the dilemma of resignation or revolt." But he went on to point out that the professional syndi- cates must be allowed to acquire property, that, within the immediate future, " il faudrait que le capital travaille et, par une reciprocite certaine, que le travail possede," in order that the new trade unions might bring about what he regarded as the necessary solution, namely, " the par- ticipation of the wage-earning class in industrial and commercial property." How was this great Republican leader heeded ? The French Parliament frivolously shut its eyes to the danger, and refused to look the facts in the face. Yet these facts were numerous and startHng enough to arouse the most indifferent. The details of the rapid progress of the trade union movement in France since 1884, a progress leading up to the federation in 1895 of the various unions in a vast Confederation Generate du Travail, with the " general strike " and " direct action " (in distinction from parlia- mentary action) as their tactics of battle — these details have no place in a study dealing with the general aspects of a crisis which, as has already been seen, is pohtical 116 PROBLEMS OF POWER and social rather than economic. The facts so unwisely neglected by the French Parliament were the signs of revolt in the great army of civil servants of whom the deputies were themselves the creatures — indications which a prudent statesmanship would have scrutinized with the utmost concern. First there was the congress of school teachers, opened to the strains of the Internationale, and conducted in a spirit of menacing independence. Then the personnel in the naval arsenals began to agitate. At Lyons there was a strike of policemen. In Bordeaux and Paris the hospital assistants demanded less work and higher wages. A kind of epidemic of " syndicomania '* began to rage in France among the civil servants, who, by a law voted in 1901, were granted the right to com- bine without being expressly given the right to strike. At present there are in France at least 488 " Professional Associations of State Employes " in the big central Government offices, and 202 unions representing the State employes in the match factories, the tobacco factories, the Mint, the State railways, etc., etc. These various unions are united in a general federation, and it is this colossal new force, which has been encouraged by the State, that was suddenly brought to the notice of the public by the Postmen's Strike of March, 1909, and finally revealed in all its virulence by the outburst of anti-mili- tarism, and even by mutiny, in the Eastern garrison towns in May 1913, when certain syndicalists under the colours obeyed the orders of the Paris junta, protesting against the prolongation of military service from two to three years. This grouping of State employes took place so rapidly that the vigilance of even the professional politicians was surprised. When M. Clemenceau took office his pro- gramme contained the following passage : — *' As regards professional trade unions, the Government will propose to you to introduce into the law of March 21, 1884, the improvements which past experience has shown to be necessary. The time appears to the Government to have arrived for increasing the civil capacity of the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 117 trade unions. ... At the same time the Government will submit to you a Bill determining the status of civil servants. This Bill, while granting them liberty of combination, and guaranteeing them against arbitrary action, will ensure the steady accomplishment of their duty to the State, which is responsible for the public administrative services." That is to say, M. Clemenceau showed himself alive to the disquieting character of the movement among the State employes : he announced his intention of legislating in the spirit of the warning of his predecessor Waldeck-Rousseau, and he promised the servants of the State that their long- ignored demand to possess a definite charter " guarantee- ing them against arbitrary action " should at last be granted. That was eight years ago. Since then nothing has been done to realize this promise. The familiar methods of favouritism, due to the necessity of satisfying the claims of some eight hundred deputies and senators, still continue. In more than one speech M. Clemenceau fulminated against the shameless intervention of the politicians and their outrageous demands; his protests and those of his successors were necessarily vain. In order to live they had to do as their predecessors had done — to satisfy the "majority"; while that majority, to be re-elected, has to distribute ribbons and crosses, baubles and places. The Cabinet is the dispenser of these things, and it has no choice but to turn, with the other wheels and cogwheels, in the same set of vicious circles, until the whole machine breaks down. The machine, however, has now become clogged and sadly requires cleaning. One of the abuses that has most irritated the State employes of all ranks is the scandalous way in which each new Minister has introduced into the service, under the guise of attaches to his Cabinet, a little band of parasites who block the path of normal promotion to all the functionaries of that branch of the administration. Fifteen years ago a Minister's Cabinet included at most but two or three functionaries. Nowadays a Minister is supposed to be protected against the importunate by a directeur de Cabinet, a chef de Cabinet, two or three chefs- 118 PROBLEMS OF POWER adjoints, a few sous-chef s, a chef du secretariat particulier, a certain number of chefs-adjoints au secretariat particulier, one or more private secretaries, and a score of attaches. This phalanx of officials, who are mere political parasites, usually destitute of technical knowledge and training, are rightly regarded by the trained servants of the ad- ministration as interlopers standing in the way of their automatic promotion. Instead of protecting the Minister against the machinations of the deputies they provide fresh channels of access to the powers that be. There results from this state of things a scandalous injustice, which can be redressed by appeal to the Conseil d'Etat^ — if the civil servant chooses to risk calling down upon himself the indignation of his superiors. But such audacity is rare, and the world of functionaries has finally invented a more effective way of abolishing these iniquities by uniting for common action in the syndicates, or pro- fessional unions, some of which are claiming the right to strike, but the majority of which are agitating solely with a view to thrusting the politicians back into their own domain, and to obtaining some form of charter which will protect civil servants against arbitrary authority, nepot- ism and favouritism. Such are the general causes that have brought about the grave crisis in the French State. The malady from which it suffers is a confusion of powers leading to in- coherency in the function of government. Representa- tive government in France has become unworthy of the name, owing to its having developed in conjunction with a bureaucratic Napoleonic administration. The key- stone of the system is a Cabinet chosen from the little oligarchy of Parliamentarians, who themselves depend for their existence on the very functionaries they originally created. The executive authority has tended slowly but steadily to lose all prestige. The remedy for this situation has not yet been found. But not for twenty years have problems of statecraft and politics aroused such curiosity 1 See p. 130. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 119 in France as they are arousing to-day. The entire nation is alive to the real nature of the crisis, and resolved to find a solution for it. The solutions proposed are being dis- cussed not merely at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques and in the Press, but by all French citizens. France has already entered on an era of active political and economic reform. They who interpreted the pronunciamiento of the Post OiBfice employes as the forerunner of revolution betrayed their ignorance of the real factors which have gone to the making of contemporary France and are to determine the trend of that country's evolution. That strike was a phenomenon of reorganization, or, as Proud- hon would say, of recomposition, not of decomposition. The same is true of the scenes of civil war in Cham- pagne, although those events, again, flattered the in- eradicable conviction of foreigners-'- that France was going to the legendary dogs ; that the tricolour was already flying from the stern of Charon's bark, and the RepubHc shortly to be judged and found wanting. The civil war in the Eastern departments was but one of a rapidly "accumulating series of untoward events, signs of an apparent national disintegration which again led the Royalist and Imperialist pretenders — those saviours of society always ready to start up in their absurd Jack-in- the-box fashion on any and every pretext — to sign mani- festos and galvanize their apathetic followers into active opposition. Even certain leaders of the RepubHc caught 1 The foreigner most prone to such illusions is the German. Dr. Gustave Lebon cites, in the Revue Bleue of May 26, 1906, a significant utterance of a German professor: " We shall perhaps think of making war on you when your pacifists, your internationalists, your anti-mili- tarists, and other imbeciles of that sort, will have suJBficiently weakened you, and destroyed in your souls the idea of patrie which makes us so strong. . . . We shaU merely wait — and we shall not have to wait long — until your divisions and your anarchy have made you incapable of self-defence." When, in May 1913, scandalous acts of insubordina- tion occurred in some of the French regiments the jubilation of the Chauvinist German press admirably enhghtened even the French radicals as to the danger of allowing the General Confederation of Labour to continue, uncontrolled, its anti-patriotic campaign against the vital interests of the French community. 120 PROBLEMS OF POWER the contagion and talked openly of the possibility of a real revolution, while more than one French journal raised the question: "Whither are we going ? To the King ? To the Emperor ? Or towards the Fourth Re- pubHc ?" The unrest now pervading French society, the out- spoken dissatisfaction with the present poHtical and social regime, is a new phase of French life ; a new phase, that is, under the Third Republic, for nothing like it has been witnessed in France during the last forty years. Not Boulangism, nor the Panama and Dreyfus scandals, can be cited to the contrary. The pessimism and unrest of France have, however, contemporary parallels.-^ As a social and political phenomenon it is, for instance, if not exactly of the same nature as the unrest and pessimism of the United States, yet potentially to be compared with it. In both countries at this hour the same moral hypo- chondria is engendering the same malarial visions. When a senator from Iowa, an ex-Governor of his State, says in an address to the students of the Washington College of Law, "We are living in a period of revolution; our institutions at this day are in the balance," his voice is 1 Unrest, social disorder, is, of course, a general phenomenon. It is becoming manifest throughout the world in proportion as that social order which it is the business of the State to preserve, and which is the necessary condition of the normal working of the laws that have hitherto determined the economic organism of our modern civihzation, is being imperilled both by the weakness of Governments (sentimentalism, humanitarianism, indiscipline, revolutionary idealism) and by the tyranny of Governments (State intervention and State socialism, demagogic legislation, inspired by mystical notions of soUdarity, privi- leges accorded to syndicalism). A French conseiller d'Elat and member of the Institute, M. Colson, has admirably developed in a recent book, Organisme £jconomique et D^sordre Social (Flammarion, 1912), the ideas and principles to which the present writer gave expression, nineteen years ago, in the chapter entitled " Democracy " in his book Patriotism and Science. In presence of the forms assumed by social disorder during the last ten years in England, France, Germany and the United States, it may be claimed that this book was in many respects a forecast. Such is the complexity of the social and economic movements of the present moment, that one must ride upon a cherub to secure any real perspective of the Present; but twenty years ago a seed could serve the seer — and the seeds of the future unrest were visible enough to any one who took the trouble merely to light a candle. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 121 pitched in the same key as those of a MiUevoye, a Dm- mont, a Henri Beranger, a Poincare, a Maurras and a Jaures. Yet all these utterances (since they are not isolated, nor confined to any political party, but characteristic of the feeling of the several audiences to which they appeal) are the most fertile ground for optimism. In France, at this moment, there is a widespread craving for positive reform ; a growing insistence that something must be done to purify French political and administra- tive life ; a resolve to effect certain radical changes, how- ever drastic, and at whatever sacrifice of persons, in the relations of the several parts of the great political and administrative machine, a repudiation of French ideology and a revival of idealism in the English sense of the word; a spirit of relentless and vigilant criticism, and a moral purpose which may be described as the forerunner of a French Renaissance. But in seeking to comprehend this new state of things, foreign observers easily go wrong. They should always begin by understanding that the " pretenders " who would fain profit by the dissatisfac- tion of France with many of her existing institutions to substitute for the Republic a Monarchy or an Empire, are following, in their familiar way, evanescent will-o'- the-wisps. The reforms which are destined to come will be of the nature of a readjustment of the Republican Constitution to modern conditions, not of the upsetting of the Republic. The dried fruit of the Old Regime is no longer succulent to the French palate. In spite of its occasional mephitic iridescence, it is the deadest of the dead fruits of a Dead Sea. No one has any real hope of restoring what Andre Chenier was wont to call " Gothic institutions." It is impossible, however, to exaggerate the admirable and useful role of certain leaders of the anti-Republican opposition in helping to create discontent in France and to transmute that discontent into a force capable of de- stroying grave abuses. The services rendered to French 122 PROBLEMS OF POWER society, and even to the Republic, by M. Charles Maurras, the Royalist leader, are invaluable. It has been seen that government in France is the tyrannical monopoly of a minority. For a great many years one of the classical methods of the Republican system of government was to maintain a state of war in France. The Republicans found ready to their hands an incomparably compact and centralized Administration, and their main object was to hold the citadel of that Administration, and to man all its bastions and out- works by sworn members of their party. They treated the rank and file of the nation as enemies who could not be trusted. To consolidate their troops the Republican leaders invented the useful bug-a-boo of an anti-Re- publican and anti-Constitutional opposition. Not that the nucleus of such an opposition did not reaUy exist, but the utility of preserving it, the advisability of exasper- ating it by methods of persecution, in order to cultivate the illusion in the country that Republican order was being chronically menaced, was the accepted device for the preservation of Republican power. The disinterested sporadic efforts of this or that leader — Gambetta, SpuUer, M61ine, Briand — to dismantle the Republican donjon, to substitute RepubHcan for Feudal rule, to make the Republic a real Republic, in which all France should have the same rights as the compact little garrison in the citadel to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, have been systematically misunderstood, not to say regarded as treason, by the professional politicians; and mean- while, behind the scenes, the privileged troops manning the battlements have battened off the assiette au heurre, corrupted French character by the distribution of "places " to idle functionaries, bought, thus indirectly, the votes of their clients, and made the Republic no longer worthy of the name. Fear of the foreigner is the great force that instantly assured to the Poincar^ Ministry a national popularity and authority which none of its predecessors, not even the Clemenceau Ministry, had possessed since A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 123 the early days of the Republic. It was, moreover, be- cause M. Poincar6, by his insistence on a policy of electoral reform, and by his prudent and firm defence of French interests during the Balkan war, had come to personify French national aspirations, that, on the eve of the anniversary (January 18, 1871) of the foundation of the German Empire in the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles, he was chosen President of the Republic by an Assembly finally respectful of the national will. There is no such thing in France as a constitutional opposition, because French " parliamentarism " is in no particular such a method of democratic government as is connoted by the words " parliamentary government." In view of the fact that France is not a Monarchy, it may be technically correct, as it is certainly convenient, to call it a Republic ; but its government is obviously not that of a democratic Republic. Its government is not, as in England, a parliamentary government by the device of well-defined parties appealing directly to the Democracy, nor yet, as in the United States, is it the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, of the Consular Republican form. Yet it was undoubtedly the object of the Constitution of 1875 to establish parlia- mentary government. How happens it that that object has never been attained ? The Constitution of 1875 was a concoction of the Orleanist party. That party hoped by easy stages to re- store the Monarchy, and it counted on election by the Con- gress of a Comte de Paris or a Due d'Aumale as President of the " Republic," in succession to Marshal McMahon. As an independent critic of singular perspicacity. Monsieur Georges Thiebaud, has pointed out in his instructive book, Les Secrets du Regne, there were precedents for this method, notably the expedient used in 1 830 for the choice of Louis Philippe, after Lafayette, on the balcony of the Hotel de ville, had baptized him La Meilleure des Bepuh- liques. Once the majority in the two Chambers were rendered unmistakably monarchical, it was held that it 124 PROBLEMS OF POWER would not be difficult to utilize the clause of the Constitu- tion which permits revision/ in order to restore the Old Regime in favour of the younger branch of the French Bourbons. The Orleanist project failed. But the Royal- ist Constitution remained; and most of the woes from which France is suffering to-day are due to two facts: first, the fact that she is still living under a Constitution which, while it is admirably adapted to thwarting the possible rise of a dictator of the Napoleonic type, is utterly inadequate for the realization of the democratic dream of representative government, according to an ideal of liberty and of social and economic progress by free discussion under the party system ; secondly, the fact that while her pohtical Constitution is Royalist her administra- tive machinery is centralized and Napoleonic. It is a psychological impossibility to reconcile for purposes of human government systems so disparate as this Royalist Constitution of 1875 and the Republico-Napoleonic Ad- ministration. The friction caused by the effort to make the Constitution and that Administration work in har- mony has now assumed the dimensions of a scandal. It accounts for the present unrest throughout French society. It has, in fact, brought about a Constitutional crisis. French official historians hesitate frankly to acknow- ledge the fact — which is as little familiar to the average Frenchman as to the foreigner — that the Constitution of the Third Republic was never intended to serve any other end than the re-establishment of the Monarchy. Yet such is the case, and it would be difficult to devise a system of government less well adapted to the organization of a modern democracy The civic and social irresponsibility which their administrative regime has been creating among Frenchmen ever since the First Empire {vide, among a score of testimonies, the recent books of Monsieur Faguet : Le Culte de V Incompetence and . . . et VHorreur ^ This point has been clearly brought out by Dr. Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, in his remarkable study in comparative pohtics, The State (D. C. Heath & Co.), pp. 216-218. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 125 des Besponsahilites) has been enhanced by the political Constitution under which they have been living. During the last thirty years public opinion in civilized communities has demanded, at all events, two things of a government : Stability and Authority ; and, of the two, Authority is the more necessary and the more useful. For some time now in France — save during the briefest of intervals — there has existed neither the one nor the other. During what one of the most original of modern French writers, M. Charles Peguy, has called the *' mys- tical period " of the Republic (by which is meant the period of disinterested RepubKcan idealism preceding the modern political period of caucus bickerings), the solid conservatism and ingrained loyalty of the French nation engendered respect for the Republican rulers and sur- rounded them with a halo of Authority. Gradually, how- ever, the inadequacy of the governmental machinery in France, its incapacity to provide the taxpayer with the kinds of product which any political and administrative machinery worthy of the name is reasonably expected to turn out, has been revealed to the entire reflecting nation. In the United States, Authority is to a certain extent secured by the very terms of the Constitution, since the Head of the State, who is the elect of the nation, and who represents the nation as a whole, is held responsible for the management of affairs. In France, on the other hand, the subtle aim of the Constitution of 1875 was, as has been seen, to provide a means of transition from the Re- publican form of government to a regime of Constitutional Monarchy with parliamentary government. But the device by which this evolution was to take place, the election of the Head of the State by a Congress com- posed of Senators and Deputies, has become the regular method of the election of the President of the Republic. The consequence, as has already been pointed out, is that the French President, instead of representing the nation, is the creature of parliamentary groups. He is irre- sponsible, and he plays no known active or essential role 126 PROBLEMS OF POWER in the government of his country. There is in France, therefore, no supreme arbiter of parties. Nor are there any parties, for the simple and curious reason that the opposi- tion is anti-constitutional — that is, unconstitutional. The Republican politicians have managed, little by little, to oust their Orleanist accomplices and to assume the direction, which they undertake by relays, of the French Administration. A party in office which regards as un- constitutional any organized legal resistance to its party programme necessarily becomes tyrannical. A regime in 'Which there is no constitutional opposition is anything that one may like to call it, but is, at all events, just the opposite of a regime of party government, and bears no resemblance to " parHamentary government." The old Republicans of the idealistic Republican period, a period when Republicanism was a religious ideal and not merely a cant catchword of politics,-^ cherished a faith in Universal Suffrage which may almost be described as sublime ; and it was they, and not the reactionaries, who extolled an electoral system based on the Scrutin de Liste. " If you are living under a Republic," says Gambetta in 1881, "you owe the fact to the system of Scrutin de Liste/' and he went on to say, " the Scrutin d'arrondisse- ment is a weapon forged by your enemies, a weapon which was used to destroy you together with the Republic." Thus when, in connexion with the reform of French insti- tutions inscribed in the Constitution of 1875, the electoral law was discussed, and when 357 members of the National Assembly voted against the maintenance of the Scrutin de Liste, and 326 voted in favour of that system, an analysis of the division showed that the majority was composed of Bonapartists and Royalists and that the Republicans were in the minority. Why did the reaictionary political forces wish to re-establish the Scrutin d'arrondissermnt ? ^ '* La Republique, en tant qu'id6e politique, en tant qu'idee * force ' est finie " (Charles Maurras, L' Action Fran^aise, May 17, 1912). This is a royalist verdict, justifiable, I behove, if taken in the sense which M. Peguy and the present writer have given to the idea. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 127 Solely because it seemed to them the only way to maintain the supremacy of individual influence and of personal prestige in the constituencies. The Scrutin d'arrondisse- ment left the door open to all the classical forms of political, social and financial corruption. It was the only method enabhng the central authority to act directly upon the electorate by means of the local functionaries. It would be easy to prove — ^and M. Henry Leyret has already drawn attention to this f act^ — that although the Republi- cans were victorious at the Seize Mai and during the Boulangist episode, their victory was achieved not because, but in spite of, the Scrutin d'arrondissement. The famous phalanx of the 363, who were opposed by the Elysee, the Government, the Administration, the upper middle class and the leading business interests, had the country behind them. In 1877 the very existence of the Republic was at stake, and what happened was that its existence was made the object of a national plebiscite. In fact, for Napoleon III, as for the Orleanist party of 1875, the Scrutin d'arrondissement was in favour because it was an excellent system of corruption and a perfect device for oppression. It is for this reason, and not for any other — - it is because, owing to the predominance thereby given to parochial over national interests, all French deputies tend to be the delegates of local wire-pullers and are expected to obey the orders of their party leaders and their party caucuses^ — that the Radical Republicans, who have been governing France for the last ten years, and have little by little made the constituencies into " rotten boroughs " that are poisoning France (mares stagnantes, to quote M. Briand), have fought so strenuously the project of electoral reform for the re-establishment of the Scrutin de Liste with the representation of minorities. The so-called "Republican majority" in the French Chamber is probably the most " unrepresentative " Par- liamentary " majority " in the world this side of Con- 1 Le Temps, June 7, 1911. See his book, Les Tyrans Ridicules, 2 Cf . the period of the Jacksonian Democracy in America. 128 PROBLEMS OF POWER stantinople. Owing to the existing electoral system the entire Chamber, in fact, " represents " only forty-six per cent, of the electoral body, so that the " majority " speaks and acts in the name of only three million electors in a country where there are perhaps nearer a million than nine hundred thousand State functionaries. And if that majority, deep-rooted in the electoral districts by means of the ingenious mechanism of the local committees (which M. Faguet is no doubt right in regarding as the institution essentielle of the Third Republic), presumes to govern the Government, as it does to-day; if, forgetting its sole raison d'etre, that of sober legislative action in co-opera- tion with the Senate, that "majority" presumes to meddle, as it meddles to-day, in matters that concern only the Executive; if, worse still, that "majority" unhesitatingly dictates to the Judicial Authority, to such an extent that the Magistracy is no longer as free as it was under the pre-revolutionary regime, and that no French citizen can feel sure of justice being done in any affair wherein poHtics can possibly play a part — if this be the case, it is obvious that the words : ' ' Government in France is the tyrannical monopoly of a minority," serve but inadequately to paint the real consequences of the effort to " work " the Constitution of 1875 in connexion with the Administration of 1913. Nor is it surprising that in proportion as facts of this nature become known, French public opinion should display a steady evolution towards a more realistic attitude as regards public affairs. As a particularly keen observer of French facts, Mr. Laurence Jerrold, has recently put it, " the Third Republic is per- haps at the beginning of a great revolution; it may be making up its mind to inoculate the idealism of its politics with the realism of its life."^ At present in France the Deputies are more omnipotent than was any sovereign ^ The Real France^ p. 38. In this connexion it is pertinent to note that the title of a paradoxical book of a German critic of France, Herr Oskar A. H. Schmitz, is Das Land der Wirklichkeit (Munich, George MuUer, 1914). A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 129 of the Old Regime,^ and may say of themselves more truly than Louis XIV ever said : " Uetat c'est moi'' The central power having set the example of the abdication of Authority, the prefects and the sub-prefects also have bent the knee before the local Deputy. There was a time during the early days of the Republic when the average citizen was enchanted at the idea of humiliating the agents of the Central Authority. Those were the mystical days to which allusion has been made, the days of faith in the virtues of Universal Suffrage, the days when the dilatory methods, the tyrannously vexatious red-tapeism, the insolence, even, of the Administration had irritated the country beyond endurance. When the Republicans obtained office France counted on them to help her to thrust this unsympathetic guardian of their liberties back into her place. The intervention of the Deputies was everywhere sought against the arbitrary action of the agents of the Central Government. The Representa- tives of the People posed as the avengers of wrong, the defenders of liberty and justice. Those were the halcyon Republican days when the Deputy was popular and respected. But the " Representatives of the People " contracted a dangerous habit. They fancied themselves, almost by virtue of the Constitution, to be the indis- pensable intermediaries between the Administration and the Public. They had attacked Administrative oppres- sion. They have now merely substituted themselves for the Administration, and they have become in turn the oppressor. Authority, Constitutional Order, can therefore be re- stored in France solely by the re-establishment of the principle of Separation of Powers. This implies, first and above all, emancipation of the Government from the despotism of the Chamber of Depu- ties. But that ideal is to be achieved only through the creation of real parliamentary government by means of ^ They themselves, however, are the slaves of the local committees in the constituencies. See the passage cited from M. Poincare, p. 112. 130 PROBLEMS OF POWER the party system, a condition itself unattainable without a reform of that Electoral Law which has produced in France a tyrannical boss-system.-^ The re-establishment of the principle of the Separation of Powers, and consequently the restoration of Authority, implies, furthermore, certain forms of decentralization, at all events of deconcentration, among which perhaps the most urgent is the establishment of an independent Magis- tracy, a judicial authority unshackled by the Executive power, and beyond the reach of legislative influence. As things now are in France, there i^ no power on French soil capable of thwarting the arbitrary action of the Government; 2 and inasmuch as the Executive has little ^ " The Chamber treats the ministers as if they were still the agents and the appointees of a monarch, instead of its own representatives, and is jealous and suspicious of them at every turn. The system no doubt waits for its successful operation the formation of two coherent national parties, capable of organizing for government, instead of merely for rivalry." Dr. Woodi'ow Wilson, The State, p. 230. 2 There are signs, however, that the Conseil d'Etat may gradually assume a position rendering it, as a Constitutional organ, extraordin- arily like the famous Supreme Court of the United States; a Court, that is, of almost Olympian appeal, judging in entire independence, and entrusted even with the grave obligation of " interpreting " the very Constitution, as if it were a kind of executive emanation of the sage ruminations of the National Conscience. It is, at all events, significant that on various contemporary occasions of national crisis, when neither Chamber nor Government, nor yet even the President, dared take a decision which would engage their responsibility, the only possible solution to the crises which either Cabinet or Chamber could suggest, was appeal to the Conseil d'Etat. One need only recall the attitude of that " High Assembly " in annulling pohtical appointments made by the Executive contrary to good administrative regulations, and in overthrowing the bungling work of Parliament with regard to the dehmitations of the wine-growing regions. The Conseil d'Etat, in fact, is an aristocratic body, absolutely independent of the Democracy. The impartial analysis of its function will justify the conclusions of the briUiant critic Francis Delaisi in his La DSmocratie et les Financiers. (Editions de la Guerre Sociale, pp. 115, 116.) He points out that its members possess, in reality, the legislative, executive, and judicial authority in France : " C'est le haut et inaccessible donjon od le grand capitalisme conservateur a enferme ses suprdmes ressources." In this connexion, it is pertinent to note that, while the system of government by " checks and balances " almost peculiar to the Con- stitution of the United States appears to be meeting with growing favour in France, the evolution is almost universally the other way in other countries. During the last few years in England there has A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 131 by little allowed its normal authority to be transferred to, and disseminated among, the members of the Chamber, Frenchmen are in reality the prey of a despotic regime. Thirdly, the re-establishment of the principle of the Separation of Powers, and consequently the restoration of Authority, implies the definitive organization of the status of the three-quarters of a million of functionaries, in such a manner as to protect them against favouritism; to protect, as well, the legislative power against the tempta- tion to utilize the functionary system for base demagogic ends ; to complete the isolation of the Government within the sphere of its normal Executive role ; and (finally) to render rebellion impossible. One of the main elements of this reform ought to be — but never will be — the abo- lition of the privilege of State pensions to functionaries, a habit which costs France one hundred millions of francs annually, and which has done more to emasculate French character, to destroy French initiative, and to arrest the normal evolution ot French individualism, than any of the been a rapid advance in the realization of the pure democratic ideal of " government of the people, by the people, and for the people," by- recognition of the legitimacy of the rule of the majority. Likewise in the United States most of the reform proposals made by the " Pro- gressives," and notably by Mr. Roosevelt, are inspired by a faith in the divine right of sheer Number, and tend to shatter the devices invented by the framers of the Constitution in order to check hasty legislation, or what Prof. J. Allen Smith calls, in his Spirit of American Government, " Democratic Innovation." Thus Mr. Roosevelt's bitterly criticized proposal known as " the recall of decisions " — ^in virtue of which the people in any State should be allowed to give their opinion by referendum on the action of a Court in declaring to be unconstitu- tional this or that law duly passed by a State Legislature and signed by a Governor — is, no doubt, revolutionary from the point of view of American Hamiltonian traditions, but, as compared with British, and most European methods, it is an anodyne and almost conserva- tive proposal. That important attribute of sovereignty, known as the right of Parliaments to interpret the Constitution, belongs, in the United States, to the Federal judiciary, an unheard-of state of things from the point of view of most other civiHzed States. Government in the United States may really be said, as Mr. S. S. McClure has put it, to be government by Courts. {McClure' s Magazine, May 1912.) The proposal of Mr. Roosevelt may, or may not, be prudent. That pro- posal, at all events, is one which does not justify the anathema of the convinced partisans of democratic government. 132 PROBLEMS OF POWER causes growing out of the Napoleonic scheme for the government of Frenchmen. The resurrection of Authority, the restoration of Con- stitutional order, are thus the crying needs of France at the present hour. Chronic German aggression,-*- and the existence at home of a Democracy as yet not whoUy nationaHzed — -'' Herveism," Anti-Militarism, Revolution- ary Syndicalism — must be regarded, no doubt, as indis- pensable factors in the maintenance of sane, stable and efficient Government in France.^ But something else, and something more legitimate, is needed, and that some- thing has been clearly seen by the author of one of the remarkable books of recent years The Promise of American Life. The author, Mr. Croly, says with discernment: " The French have not yet come to realize that the success of their whole democratic experiment depends upon their ability to reach a good understanding with their feUow-countrymen, and that just in so far as their Democracy fails to be nationally constructive, it is ignoring the most essential conditions of its own vitality and per- petuity." The organization of Democracy in France implies a policy of constructive nationalism. At the same time, France must learn, in the words of Nietzsche, to " live dangerously " ; and that ideal is impossible until she wakes from her petit-bourgeois dreams, and develops, for internal national constructive ends, an alert and active national self-consciousness. Frenchmen must learn not to be afraid to assume responsibility. They must take to heart the patriotic and pregnant political philosophy of the most suggestive, and one of the most intelligent, of their contemporary thinkers : La vitalite des democraties se mesure a la force genitrice d'aristocraties qu^elles portent en elles.^ 1 Prince Bismarck once said of the French : " Leave them alone. If you leave them alone, they will devour each other. If you attack them from abroad, they -will gather together to face the foreigner." See Paris correspondence of The Times, December 20, 1898. 2 Cf. note, p. 119. ^ . . . et VHorreur des ReaponsahiliUs. By Emile Faguet, p. 200. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 133 But no friend of France need feel discouraged as to the capacity of Frenchmen eventually to learn these truths, or as to their ability to put their house in order. It is noticeable, as one of the most hopeful of the signs of the undiminished vitality of France, that, in proportion as, under the action of the wind and rain, the three mystical words, Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, fade from the fagades of her public buildings, no one thinks of restoring them to their pristine glitter ; and that, though there are still Frenchmen who believe in Fraternity, and others who long for Liberty, none, from Normandy to Aquitaine, and from the two Burgundies to Poitou, but knows that Equality is an absurd and a dangerous lie. Before submitting the question of the British internal crisis to the careful scrutiny that has been applied to the problem of unrest in France, it seems useful, at this stage, first briefly to summarize — in connexion with a rapid survey of the question of the Balkans — the foregoing detailed narrative of the political development of Europe as determined by the peculiar method chosen by Prussian statesmen for the formation of a united Germany; and secondly, to analyse the relations existing between the members of the Triple Entente during the three or four years that preceded the revival by Germany in July 1911 of an aggressively imperialist policy. If Germany once again ventured, at that date, to risk disturbing the peace of Europe by the dispatch of a gun- boat to Agadir, it was largely because the absorption of each of the partners of the Triple Entente in its own domestic concerns had distracted the attention of those Powers from matters affecting their common interests, and had suggested to Germany that the time was'favour- able for furthering her own interests at the expense of her rivals. Germany had, meanwhile, taken all the neces- sary precautions to prevent her projects in Africa and in 134 PROBLEMS OF POWER Western Europe from being disturbed by any untoward event elsewhere. She had frankly decided to help the Sultan to keep the peace in an intangible Ottoman Empire. The Eastern Question remained in abeyance. Europe, still shirking its responsibilities, continued to find it convenient hypocritically to confide the question of Macedonian Reform to the two Powers " more par- ticularly interested" (Agreement of Muertzsteg, 1903). How could France and England keep a vigilant eye on Yildiz Kiosque and the Balkans while Germany absorbed every moment of their attention which was not given to their own domestic difiiculties ? The Macedonian sore was accordingly allowed to fester, for at all costs the " integrity of the Ottoman Empire " had to be main- tained. The Balkan States were told to watch and pray, but to keep the peace. They obeyed; but meanwhile they borrowed money in Paris and London and Berlin; they bought Creusot guns ; they kept the peace, but kept, at the same time, their powder dry. The time was at hand when they were to flout the cynical and craven nations to which they owed their very existence. But for the moment the leading signatories of the Treaty of Berlin were free to ignore the Eastern Question, and Germany could continue to carry out the Bismarckian dream: " Russia in the Far-East, Austria in the East, France nHmporte ow."^ The motives of the Wilhelmstrasse after 1904 may be divined. German policy in regard to Morocco was a pro- longed bluff, but it was not that alone. It was above all, no doubt, a rationally conceived experiment to test the solidity of the Anglo-French Entente; but it was also a feint, enabling Germany to make a series of embarrassing surprise attacks at another point of the diplomatic ring. The Moroccan Question tended to absorb the entire atten- tion of France and even of England, and to leave Germany free to pursue, more or less secretly, her policy of pacific ^ Speech on Foreign Policy ,'J|by M. Paul Deschanel, November 19, 1903, in the Chamber of Deputies. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 135 penetration in the Middle East, from Macedonia to Con- stantinople and from Smyrna to the Persian Gulf. Viewed in this light, German policy becomes a rational effort to further German Imperial end3. In order to keep an open market in the Middle East for her expanding trade, Germany acquiesced in the tjrran- nical and arbitrary methods of Abdul Hamid. She com- bated British and French influence by exciting that monarch's dread of " liberal ideas." The Young Turks were, to a large degree, the product of French " philosophy " from Condorcet to Comte, or of French culture disseminated in the numerous schools founded by French monks. Modern ideas in the Ottoman Empire were, at all events, expressed in French, and Marshal von der Goltz often complained of this. Nowhere were the mystic watchwords of the French Revolution, " Liberty," " Equality," " Fraternity," taken more touchingly to the letter than among the young Ottoman reformists. Exiled in Paris, London or Geneva, they propagated, from those safe vantage-points, in their caustic little newspapers and pamphlets, the principles of Western civilization.^ The Sultan was master on the Golden Horn, but in Macedonia, where the " honour " of the Christian Powers occasionally required Europe to intervene with a programme of reforms, Abdul Hamid found it less easy to " make a solitude and call it peace." It was at Salonica and Monastir, on Ottoman soil, in contact with the Greek, the Bulgarian, and the Servian, that the Young Turks first managed to co-ordinate their ^ During more than ten years the present writer remained in con- tact, in Paris, with many of the conspirators who were destined to play a leading part in the Revolution of 1908. The genuineness of the ideaUsm of the great majority recalled the doctrinaire rigour of a Calvin, ready to sacrifice Servetus on an altar raised to the Moloch of Exegesis, or of a Robespierre sending to the knife poHtical enemies condemned in the name of Liberty. He had no illusions as to the folly of the Foreign Offices of Europe in welcoming so effusively these sinister logicians, and on more than one occasion, in pubUshed utter- ances, expressed the opinion that they would wreck their country. He gave them three years in which to prove their incompetence. The prophecy was fulfilled in four. 136 PROBLEMS OF POWER efforts, and to form the famous secret committee known as the Committee of Union and Progress. Ottoman pride, even Tm'kish patriotism, was humiliated by the arrival in 1904 of the foreign oJOScers imposed on Turkey by Europe to reorganize the Macedonian gendarmerie. The number of these officers was doubled in 1905, and in 1906 Europe obliged the Sultan to accept financial control in Macedonia and a further increase of the gendarmerie. As one of the foreign officers has testified,^ the Mace- donian Turks and the Young Turk officers held the Sultan responsible for the humiliation which they felt as Ottomans, but, far from bearing any grudge against the European officers, they did their best to help these officers in their task. At all events Macedonia became the only part of the Ottoman Empire where the Turks developed sufficient national self-respect to perceive that reform alone could save their country; but they could not tolerate the thought that Islamism was to owe its salva- tion to the foreigner. In intimate contact with Eiuropean ideas, the Turkish civilian officials and officers in Macedonia resolved to dethrone the sovereign who was selling the Ottoman birthright to the Infidel Powers. The revolutionary Committee of Union and Progress was thus formed and developed, not merely against the Hamidian regime but against a meddlesome Em-ope. Turkey, it was held, must have a Constitution providing guarantees of liberty and establishing her as an independent Power. Good government must begin in Macedonia. Only thus could the foreigner be evicted. When, in July 1908, the con- stitution of Midhat Pasha was revived, the "hero of the Revolution," Enver Bey, exclaimed, before ten thousand people assembled in Liberty Square at Salonica : " To-day Arbitrary Government has disappeared. We are all brothers. There are no longer in Turkey Bulgarians, Greeks, Servians, Rumanians, Mussulmans, Jews. Under the same blue sky we are all proud to be Ottomans." ^ Major Sarrou, in La Jeune Turquie et la B^voliUion, p. 11. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 137 The European Consuls at Salonica were duped by this ^ eloquence and their enthusiasm duped their Govern- ments. On July 30 the Journal de Salonique referred as follows to the scheme of a Balkan Confederation: "I have every confidence that the Turkish army . . . will bring about fraternity among the Balkan Peoples. Thus will finally be realized, for the happiness of all the nations of the Peninsula, that Oriental Confederation which has so long been the object of our hopes and dreams." Never, indeed, had there been such an opportunity. The Bul- garian, Servian, Rumanian and Greek Press applauded. It is pro cable that if, just at this moment, the Foreign Ministers of the Great Powers had not publicly acclaimed, in their several Parliaments, the work of the Committee, the Young Turks might have been checked on the head- long path of presumptuous nationalism which, four years later, was to precipitate them, together with the Empire for which they had become responsible, into one of the greatest disasters of history. Yet, for the time being, the Balkan States were ready to unite with the Young Turks in common hatred of the Tyrant. Unfortunately, the Young Turks were vain-glorious and inexperienced. Although fed on the crude pastry of revolutionary formulas, the leaders repudiated, at their very first suc- cess, the idealism which had conciliated the sympathy of the Balkan nationalities. On Monday, October 5, 1908, Austria-Hungary, backed by Germany, annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Bulgaria, proclaiming its inde- pendence, annexed Eastern Rumelia. The Committee might have seized this opportunity to place itself at the head of a Balkan League.^ It preferred, instead, to take 1 Dr. Kleanthes Nicolaides, who played an interesting part in the negotiations resulting in the conclusion of the Balkan League, con- tributed in November 1912 three valuable articles to the Echo de Paris on " La Gen^se de I'Union Balkanique." He showed notably that, throughout the preliminary discussions for the estabhshment of their Union, the Balkan States always expressed the wish that Turkey should form part of it. " It remained possible for Turkey to enter the League, in fact, up to the beginning of August 1912. If Turkey bad H 138 PROBLEMS OF POWER a futile revenge by boycotting Austrian and Bulgarian trade. A Young Turk Mission, sent to Western Europe, to arouse the sympathy and to secure the diplomatic and financial support of France and England, returned to Salonica crestfallen, and convinced that Europe was jealous of the Committee's success. In their exaspera- tion, the Revolution leaders decided to adopt a policy of militarism, while the Committee simultaneously pre- pared a scheme for submerging the Christian peoples of Macedonia under a flood of Mussulman immigrants. The chiefs of the Bulgarian, Greek, Servian and Albanian Committees and Bands had hitherto honestly believed in the protestations as to Ottoman fraternity. Even in March 1909, at the moment of the reactionary cowp d'etat at Constantinople, the Macedonian Christians remained loyal to the Revolution. Race quarrels, do- mestic rivalries, disappeared, says Mr. Sam Levy^ (per- haps the most competent authority on the spot), in presence of the danger incurred by the new regime. Even the Governments of the Balkan States still manifested their readiness to co-operate in the work of Macedonian reform. Thus seconded, the Committee of Union and Progress recovered its power, and deposed the Sultan. But its point of view had now completely changed. It had become the counterpart of the sinister Committee of Public Safety of the French Revolution. Forgetting its promises of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Justice, it pursued now a purely Islamic policy. Its aim hence- forth was to crush out all the Christian Nationalities in the Empire, and notably in Macedonia. Yet, long- suffering still, the Balkan States remained almost quix- otically friendly. Official declarations in Sofia and Belgrade left no doubt as to the sincerity of the desire of these two Balkan Powers to settle the problems of seized the opportunity thus offered her, she might be to-day at the head of the Union. . . . She owes the present disaster solely to the lack of judgment and goodwill of her rulers." ^ Les Mijaits du Comiti Union ei Progr^ ; Sam L6vy: Mecherou- tiette, October 1912. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 139 Macedonia in co-operation with the New Turkey, and without a war. The Tsar Ferdinand went to Constanti- nople on an official visit, and Pierre Karageorgewitch was welcomed officially at Salonica. What was the result of these advances to Turkey ? Turkish psychology is not as that of the Western nations. The attitude of the Christian peoples of the Balkans was interpreted as an indication of their inferiority. Bulgaria and Servia were believed to be afraid of the neo- Ottoman Power. The Committee of Union and Progress accordingly pro- ceeded to persecute the Bulgarian clubs in Macedonia, and to promulgate the Associations Law (August 1909)^ interdicting all nationalist or religious meetings. By 1910, in fact, Macedonia had once again become a pande- monium of fratricidal passions. Anarchy was more rampant there than under the reign of Abdul Hamid. On January 23, 1910, the Salonica newspaper already quoted printed in large type the following note : — " We learn that serious 'pourparlers are now going on between the most influential members of the Greek and Bulgarian communities to arrive at a rapprochement. It would even appear that an under- standing is already under way." The Crown Prince of Servia arrived at Sofia on the same day. The Balkan League was in being. Young Turk presumption and incapacity had worked this miracle. The Committee of Union and Progress had opened, be- tween the Balkan Nationalities and the Turkish Empire, the gulf, deeper than the Sea of Marmora, into which they were to be hurled headlong only two years later. ^ 1 Clause four of this law was as follows: "The establishment of Political Associations on the basis, or under the denomination of nationaUty, is prohibited." This was a fatal blunder. It entailed the immediate dissolution of the various nationaHst clubs in Mace- donia, which were, nevertheless, loyally devoted to the Young Turk Movement and to the Constitution. The immediate consequence was a revival of the old-time suspicion of the Turk throughout Macedonia, and a rapidly growing distrust of the Committee of Union and Progress. 2 The first official step with a view to common action for the defence of the privileges of the Christians in Macedonian Turkey was taken by 140 PROBLEMS OF POWER The connexion of the episode of the Turkish Revolu- tion and of the Balkan war with the immediate theme is sufficiently obvious. The Berlin Treaty was a bungling artifice for stifling the cries of the youthful Balkan nations created by the Treaty of San Stefano. San Stefano had given the Balkan peoples the hope that they were about to enjoy a national existence. Three cynical surgeons, Bismarck, Beaconsfield and Andrassy, sud- denly seized the infant Powers, gagged them, and — with- out even bandaging their wounds — handed them over to the Turkish task-master. During nearly thirty years the Turk was suffered to brutalize his wards, with only occasional inspection or reproach on the part of the "interested" and "disinterested" Powers. Finally, in 1908, came the Revolution. After 1908 for a wonderful period of eighteen months the Turkish taskmaster seemed to have been transformed into a comrade. In this new role, however, the Turk made but a fleeting appearance. He vanished into the wings and came forth in the garb of an executioner But, in spite of the implication of the Treaty of Frankfort and of the Treaty of Berlin, the sub- stance of human nature is not quite of the same malleable and senseless stuff as that of the elements composing a chemical compound. The vile Slav worm had become a chrysalis and was destined to break the cocoon so in- geniously and artificially elaborated at the Berlin Con- gress. If the Treaty of San Stefano had been suffered to remain the law of Europe, the world would have been spared the horrors of October and November 1912, but, at the same time, it would have been deprived of a singularly interesting object-lesson. It would not have had this fresh illustration of the short-sightedness of the the Greek Prime Minister, M. Venizelos, who, in April 1911, proposed to Bulgaria to conclude a defensive alhance to meet the contingency of a Turkish attack on either of the two States. (Cf. the article in The Times, June 5, 1913, by the correspondent in the Balkan Peninsula: "History of the First Overtures.") These Greek pro- posals preceded the first Serbo -Bulgarian conversations by at least five months. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 141 Founder of the German Empire. Indeed, what were to become, after Bismarck's death, the vital Imperial in- terests of the New Germany, have all along been ham- pered in their evolution by the very influences that Germany herself set in motion when she forced upon the world the two arbitrary solutions of the Treaties of 1870 and 1878.^ The relations between the members of the Triple Entente during the period just analysed, from 1 904 to the formation of the Balkan League and to the famous coup d'Agadir, seem, however, to mark a partial and temporary success of German policy. Nothing is more curious than the way the harmonious working of the Triple Entente was for a long time endangered by the friction which the domestic problems of its several members generated. What M. Andre Tardieu accurately described in 1910 and 1911 as "Anglo-Franco-Russian ataxy" found therein one of its main causes. Of the three partners to this pact, France, in spite of the crises of rebellion among her civil servants, has perhaps of late suffered the least embarrass- ment. More than either England or Russia she has been at liberty to seek to adjust her own private interests to the vital common interests of the Triple Entente. Her friends were for some years less free than she to play their part according to the rules of the game. After the death of King Edward the very foundations of British Society and of England's Imperial greatness were 1 It is not only in matters of Foreign Policy that Germany has had to pay dear for the blunders of the deified Bismarck. M. W. Martin says excellently in La Crise Politique de VAlhmagne Contemporaine, p. 8. : " L'on peut faire remonter h. Bismarck tous les embarras de I'Allemagne actuelle. II a forge de ses mains presque toutes les diffi- cult^s dont la solution reste h, trouver. Sa politique anti-socialiste, anti-cathoUque, anti-polonaise, p^se encore sur la vie du pays. On dit, pour la louer, que ce fut une politique realiste. II semble que son realisme a consiste surtout h, sacrifier I'avenir au present, et I'avenir, devenu le present, se venge." To prove the " short-sightedness " of the Bismarckian vision was in no wise the wiUing intent of the author of Problems of Power. The paradoxical ephemeralness of Bismarck's action is, however, one of the lessons of the facts set forth in the present volume. Of. p. 75, note 2. 142 PROBLEMS OF POWER jeopardized, and they remained in peril, as will be seen,^ until the defeat of Canadian reciprocity with the United States. England's absorption in her own grave private matters resulted in the dangerous indifference and ir- resolution (as if she had eaten curare and atU her motor nerves were paralysed) which, for many months prior to Agadir, caused her to withhold from France all but the most spasmodic assistance. And what the Temps said of the Entente Cordiale, that its members had " pratique parallelement, dans la solidarite des sentiments, et I'incoherence des actes, la politique du laisser faire,'* might, with even greater force, have been applied to the relations between France and Russia, until M. Poincar6 at the head of a really " national " Ministry, decided to substitute for the policy of laissezr-aller a policy of strenu- ous and concerted action.^ Ever since the Russo-Japanese War, Russia had, in fact, been trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. The new Russia, the Russia of the Duma, under the guidance of M. Stolypin, under- took to reconcile the dangerous ideas that have invaded it from the West and its own native traditions ; to create a Parliament on Russian soil without infringing the prerogatives of the Autocrat of AU-the-Russias ; but, above all, as M. Victor Berard has put it, to honour its signature as partner in the Triple Entente without break- ^ See p. 181 et seq. 2 The first executive act of M. Poincar6, as President of the Re- public, was the appointment (February 20, 1913) of M. Delcasse as Am- bassador at St. Petersburg. No diplomatic service in the world could then boast of such unity of views as was thus ensured in the Quai d'Orsay by the simultaneous presence of the two Cambons in London and Berlin respectively, of M. Barrere in Rome, and of M. Delcass6 in St. Petersburg. Let the reader meditate on this remark in the light of p. 54 et seq. At St. Petersburg, during the critical moment of the Inter-Balkan War, M. Delcasse was the prime mover in the poUcy that aimed at the re-establishment of equilibrium in the Balkans and of peace in Europe by convincing Rumania of the necessity of following an independent and neutral policy, free from all entangle- ments with the Triple AUiance. When he had achieved this great object, he considered his mission accomplished, and he returned to Paris. His successor, M. Paleologue, pro-Balkan by atavism and by education, may legitimately be named in the same breath with the Ambassadors just mentioned. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 143 ing with its old friends and allies, the HohenzoUerns and the Hapsburgs. In this duel between Constitutionalism and Nationalism, the wonder was that the Triple Entente should have survived even up to Potsdam. Frenchmen cherished for ten years and more the illusion that the alliance with Russia was an earnest of the ulti- mate recovery of Alsace-Lorraine. As has been seen, it took that length of time for them to comprehend that the armies of the Dual Alliance were the armies of The Hague, that neither the Tsar nor their own rulers had contem- plated by the Alliance any other aim than that of defence ; that the sole positive good which the alliance was in- tended to secure was the maintenance of European equi- librium, and that they who had looked to it as a potential instrument of speedy revanche had been tragically duped. When France realized that the Russian Alliance meant that things must be as they had been, the plight of the nation was one that might have given rise to a certain sullen resentment. Such resentment did, in fact, exist to a certain degree among the generations that remem- bered the war of 1870. Upon the younger generation, on the contrary, the consequence of their slow perception of the real significance, in its European bearings, of the pact with Russia was strangely different. Little by little the notion of revanche faded from the foreground of the French consciousness and gave way to a kind of supine satisfaction with the idea of security implied in the exist- ence of the Alliance. If the Alliance was to be no longer interpreted as a means of realizing French dreams, it meant, at all events, the inexpressible boon of peace. The French soul tended to become relaxed. Humani- tarianism, " pacifism," anti - militarism, began to flourish. France had been cocardier up to 1890. It was the aftermath of the influence of Gambetta, who died on January 4, 1883. The Russian Alliance gradually calmed her nerves, dissipated her fears, lulled her to sleep. A Dreyfus Case became possible. Strong in 144 . PROBLEMS OF POWER their faith in the loyalty of Russia to keep strict watch over the German dogs of war, in case they seemed to be preparing to leap across her eastern frontier, the Repub- licans fancied themselves at liberty to indulge in idealistic experiment, and free to respond, for instance, without loss of dignity, or dread of the consequences, to the cajoleries and flatteries of the German Kaiser. If he had con- tinued to cajole instead of beginning to menace, humani- tarianism might have gangrened the whole of France. One public man of eminence in France, and one public man alone. President Grevy, had a foreign policy which might have saved his country from some of the psycho- logical consequences, and from the positive sequence, of the events that ensued. President Grevy never tired of preaching the gospel of isolation, the danger of entangling alliances, of supine acceptance of the status quo} But he was overruled, and successive Ministers in France who extolled the Russian Alliance hoped not merely to assure European equilibrium, but to maintain European peace by holding Germany in check. They were also aiming in- directly at the great century-old rival of their country, Great Britain. Notwithstanding Bismarck's efforts to thwart the inception of the Franco-Russian Alliance, the heirs of his policy found in the Franco-Russian Alliance one of their most magnificent opportunities. What the Germans rapidly perceived was that in the Dual AUiance, by the nature of things, German hegemony was in being. By that Alliance a possible bellicose France was para- lysed. With a splendid and almost diabolic ingenuity Germany evolved a scheme for utilizing the Alliance in her own interest. She did all in her power to fan the 1 The reader will find in M. Henri Galli's admirable Oambetta et r Alsace-Lorraine a sober indictment of the r61e of President Grevy in thwarting, from terre-d-terre pusillanimity, the patriotic campaign of Oambetta. M. Galli's book is the work of a critical historian. The documents it contains should be scrutinized in connexion with the recent writings of Mme. Adam and the Neo-Royahsts of the Action FrauQaise, who seek in vain to prove that the " Repubhc of Gambetta was the Republic of Bismarck," and that Gambetta merely " played the comedy of la Revanche.^* A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 145 embers of Anglo - French discord by favouring French colonial expansion. She was aware that the first result would be to pit France against England under every clime and on every sea ; the second that young ambitious Italy would become the deadly foe of France; and the third, that she herself would ultimately be able to dictate to a divided Europe the direction of European policy. For long years German foresight was confirmed to the letter. The daring plan for keeping down French re- siliency was for a time completely successful. France and England came into dangerous collision everywhere. " Where did you refrain from us, or we refrain from you ? Ash the wave that has not watched war between us two"'^ Italy and France glared at each other in Tunis and over the Dauphine passes, while the Triple Alliance was being slowly consolidated. Successive German Chancellors rubbed their hands in glee, and German hegemony assumed the aspect of a pillar of cloud by day and almost of fire by night. But the German plan succeeded too admirably. The Greeks, who were practical psychologists, noted that a Nemesis dogs the steps of a man or nation addicted to the unpardonable sin of pride. There came a time, amid the multiple shocks which harassed the nerves of British and French Foreign Ministers, as the lines of British and French colonial expansion dovetailed throughout the world, when the chances of peace or war between France and England seemed to hang by a thread. Both Powers, after Fashoda, awoke to the idea that they had been playing the German game; that while they had been irritating one another by constant pin-pricks, Germany had been looming more and more menacingly on the horizon. The scales seemed to drop simultaneously from their eyes. They saw — ^with the clearness presented by one of those superb comic situations staged by Fate — 1 Rudyard Kipling: "France." The Morning Post, June 24, 1913. 146 PROBLEMS OF POWER that either they must go to war for the benefit of Ger- many or must come to an understanding with her, in their common interest, to the discomfiture of a common rival. Fashoda was the fork on their Damascus road. The revelation they received there flung into dazzling light the whole maliciousness of the German scheme, of which they had been for years the dupes. Such was the beautifully logical birth of that Entente Cordiale which shattered as by a thunderbolt a German policy that had lasted, and succeeded, for nearly twenty years. For some months Germany lay stunned and prone. The incredible had happened. There had been long years in the nineties when the Wilhelmstrasse must have known as well as the Quai d'Orsay, or any Parisian, that England was even more hated in France than the Power which had dismembered that country in the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles. The possibility that England and France could ever come to terms was not taken in Germany as even a remote contingency. It was regarded as a political absurdity. Yet the incredible thing had happened. And, irony of ironies, it had occurred simply as a conse- quence of the overweening success of the Bismarckian plan. After the first discountenancing blow it was not sur- prising that the German Chancery was a long time pulling itself together. Germany's uncouth movements and ges- tures in seeking to wreck the new combination of the Entente Cordiale; her futile efforts in Spain, before the accession of the young Sovereign, to balk the Mediter- ranean policy of M. Delcasse, and to sweep that Power into the orbit of the Triple Alliance; her invention of a Moroccan Question as a means of cleaving in two the Franco-British block which had only just been welded; her nervous, violently aggressive manner, so cousue de fll blanc, as the French say — all these are facts fresh in the memory not only of the professional politican but of the ordinary observer. And the more Germany wriggled, contrived, meddled and stormed, the more rooted became the Entente Cordiale in the hearts of Frenchmen and of A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 147 Englishmen, the more natural seemed the miracle, the more real the joy of the two Chanceries and of the two peoples. Only a few keen-sighted observers in either country appeared to perceive, amid the strains of opti- mistic jubilation in which England and France welcomed the reconciliation and the now " definitive " establish- ment of European equilibrium, that Germany, by the Titanic blunder of her old Bismarckian non-colonial policy, had closed to herself — politically — almost every habitable corner of the globe; yet that she had de- veloped a great material civilization, with instincts of economic and commercial expansion which must find an outlet or burst. Only a few appeared to perceive that she was not likely to accept the new status quo created by the Triple Entente, and that every practical device which an astute Real Politik, unshackled by scruple, unpoisoned by the sophistications of a fanatical idealism, and inspired by patriotism, could suggest or invent, would be utilized for the destruction of that pact which seemed to have established the balance of power and Europe. If it had not been for the issue of the Russo-Japanese War — a result utterly unforeseen by the Quai d'Orsay, and the perilous consequences of which, from the point of view of French interests, had never been taken into account in France — the French nation might have con- tinued, like the English, to remain, as a whole, blandly ignorant of strategic conditions and of international re- lations on the Continent of Europe. To be sure, the Algeciras Conference and the Casablanca incident were yet to intervene as object-lessons for the most indifferent; but the defeat of the Russian ally, Russian paralysis as a military power for some years to come, was an event which, at the time, opened the eyes of even the least dis- cerning of French observers. While it enabled them to divine, perhaps better than they otherwise might have done, the causes of the audacity of Germany in her Moroccan policy, it also enhanced for them the value of 148 PROBLEMS OF POWER the Entente with England, and made them all the more vigilant as to the preservation of that Entente, according to the conception of its promoters. British politics, both domestic and foreign, were bound to be watched by Frenchmen as jealously as they watched their own, and even more carefully and jealously than they watched those of Russia. England had partially taken the place of Russia in French affections. In the same breath in which Frenchmen repudiated, and sincerely repudiated, the notion that the Entente was dear to them because it meant a possible revanche, and insisted, and sincerely in- sisted, that they longed above all for European peace, they acknowledged that the Entente was possible only because it satisfied the common interest of France and England in thwarting the manoeuvres of a common foe. That foe was Germany, who was imperilling British sea- power after having torn great strips of flesh from the side of France. France has never desired war, but she has never wished for a peace which is a " peace at any price. "^ During the past few years, for the first time, perhaps, in history since the Dukes of Normandy ceased to govern both at Caen and London, Frenchmen have honestly, even cordially, de- sired the well-being of England. Every event which can contribute to England's greatness has been a sincere joy to them. Every incident tending to diminish England's standing, alter her traditions, weaken her as a world- Power, has been regarded in France with surprise and with something like dismay. These words apply to the rank 1 " Aucun gouverneraent et aucun peuple ne sont plus attaches h. la paix que la France. II n'est pas un pays qui ait donne des preuvea plus fr^quentes et plus d^cisives de sangfroid, de sa moderation et de sa mesure. II n'en est pas un seul qui, plus soucieux de ses propres int^rets, ait mieux respecte les droits d'autrui. Notre sentiment national salt, m§me aux heures diflficiles, conserve! une dignite qui s'interdit les provocations et les menaces, que ne peuvent compromettre les exhibitions, d'ailleur regrettables, d'un patriotisme de parade. Ce grand pays vent la paix, mais seulement la paix, qui s'accorde avec sa fierte et sa dignite, non la paix n6e de la peur." Speech of M. Barthou, Prime Minister of France, at Caen, May 4, 1913. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 149 and file of the French nation. The pervasive genuine goodwill of Frenchmen towards England after 1906 has been, and is, a fact which stands for aU it is worth, all it is possible to make out of it for diplomatic ends, even in face of minor differences between the two Governments. But the one thing that Frenchmen saw in 1910 and 1911, with an almost supernatural clearness, after the ominous events in Central Europe and the Middle East, was that for France to remain France, England must not cease to be England. When even a Lord Curzon expressed the hope of settling such a question as that of Muscat by an appeal to sentiment, the French wondered if the busi- nessHke and level-headed England against which they had fought on a hundred battle-fields, the England with which they fancied they had come to terms, had suddenly vanished from the map. They saw in such a fact as this, as they saw in the rhjrthm of the humanitarian Sahbat to which in 1911 all England seemed to be dancing, the evidence of British insularity, the sign of England's ignorance as to the strategic conditions governing Euro- pean politics, the apparently hopeless confirmation of the phrase which George Meredith often used to the present writer : " England's political intelligence runs to horns." And when the Secretary for War sought to drive Field-Marshal Lord Roberts into a corner, by his witty but futile assertion that Lord Roberts was in- sisting upon preparing for the " logically possible " instead of for the " reasonably probable," Frenchmen asked themselves in what Teutonic world of mediaeval scholasticism that Minister had acquired his dialects.^ 1 Some months later, in November 1912, Viscount Haldane, then Lord Chancellor, rebuked Lord Roberts for being ignorant of strategy, accusing him of overlooking the fact that England's safety depended on command of the sea. This rebuke fell from the hps of the man who, some years before, had spoken of a " whole nation springing to arms on war being declared and nobly preparing to submit itseK to six months' training in order to meet the invading foe." The date chosen by Lord Haldane for his rebuke was the eve of the day when Turkey agreed to begin negotiations for peace after a war tJiat had lasted only six weeks, and had driven her troops under the walls of Constantinople. 150 PROBLEMS OF POWER Adversity, in a word, has made the French of the Third Republic a more suspicious people than the nation which fell into the snare of the mendacious telegram of Ems. France has been bruised and buffeted by England, humili- ated and flouted by Germany. Even a race less eminently intelligent could not fail to learn something from so harsh an experience. When one has been the dupe of one's generous sentiments and of one's doctrinaire notions of right, only two refuges are left, sainthood or common sense. French foreign politics have begun to become practical, after having been as sublimely and as dan- gerously disinterested as were those of the ideologue Gladstone. Europe still seems to find it difficult to understand that business methods and prudent self- interest can ever prevail at the Quai d'Orsay: it still thinks France amenable to blandishment and ready to follow the marsh-lights of idealism. Her friends and allies have at last learned that she realizes as keenly as Herr von Bethmann HoUweg that Europe is Europe, that Continental politics are not politics in a Ley den jar, and that the old saying still holds good: " The weak will be the prey of the strong"; but in 1909, 1910 and 1911 they were still unaware of the change, and the sterility of the Triple Entente was then the main characteristic of that pact. The feeling in France in 1910 and 1911 was that the Triple Entente might not be an Alliance in the technical sense of the word, but that if it were not an Alliance, for all practical purposes, it were better broken. No Frenchman was inclined to quarrel over the choice of a word to describe the relations between France and England : modern politics are not a branch of semantics, and French experience of the connotation of the word " Alliance," as employed in description of the Franco- Russian pact, had not been calculated to arrest the growth of a salutary scepticism as to the utility of " alliances." But if the relations between England and France, if the words " Entente Cordiale " and " Triple Entente " mean A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 161 anything, they mean at all events a common sense of the common interests uniting the three Powers, England, France and Russia; and it was obvious even before Agadir that they ought to mean, above all (as even The Times and the Temps agreed in acknowledging), that these three Powers had one vital interest: the mainte- nance of the European equilibrium. What every French- man wanted to know was whether Englishmen had as keen a sense as they of the reality of this vital interest. In France, gratitude for the inestimable services which England had rendered her whenever the Moroccan diffi- culty menaced the peace of Europe, was still, in June 1911, just before Agadir, a living sentiment. But if the French Parliament, if the French public, had drawn any lesson from that long-protracted and anxious period, it was that humanitarian aspirations were a dangerous luxury; and the Moroccan difficulty was not the only question that might lead to war. Of the two great blunders committed by the otherwise irreproachable statesman M. Delcasse — his blindness to the fact that, in allowing Russia to go to war with Japan, France suffered her ally to paralyse her efficiency in Europe, and his neglect to secure for France the army and the navy of his policy — the French perceived that the latter mistake was incomparably the more unpardonable and the more heinous.^ M. Clemenceau, when Prime Min- ister, left the British Foreign Office no peace in his con- stant iteration of the fact that England seemed bent on repeating the blunder of M. Delcasse. One of M. Clemenceau' s main objects was to convert the Entente ^ The Two Years' Military Service Bill was promulgated on March 21, 1905, and on March 31 William II went ashore at Tangier, where he saluted the Sultan as an " independent Sovereign." A few weeks later M. Delcasse fell (see p. 70 et seq.). A "speculative diplomacy" (to borrow the phrase of M. Charles Maurrgis), developed independently of the naval and military forces that it represents, inevitably leads to em- barrassment, if not to disaster. This is a lesson that France has par- tially learned. The elections of 1914 sanctioned the prudent return of the French ParUament to the three years' military service system. Cf. France et Allemagne, by Rene Pmon (Perrin, 1913, pp. 161-163). 162 PROBLEMS OF POWER into a military treaty of defensive alliance. No one saw more clearly than he that in the Em*ope of to-day " splen- did isolation " was an impossible ideal for England. His views became those of his reflecting compatriots, as they observed that in proportion as German energy became more rampant, and the Balkan Problem more acute, England seemed to be cm-ling her antennae inward, to be losing her European sense and becoming more and more deeply self-absorbed. No o-^^ in France, in 1910 and 1911, was ashamed to own that France had need of England. But every one in France was astounded that Englishmen did not perceive that they had an even greater need of France. French respect for England's judgment received a blow when Englishmen were seen to be allowing domestic insular cares, and even the grave and beautiful interests inspired by the noble hieratic ceremony of the Coronation, to exclude from their thought all sense of their relative position in the world, and of their own Imperial contracts. The French won- dered whether all England had not fallen a victim to the sleeping sickness. Above a supine people the all-but- isolated figure of Lord Roberts loomed gigantically for their vision. They had counted on England because England had taught them to dread and to admire her. Yet at certain moments England seemed to be selling her birthright of practical sense and world-wide dominion for futile and destructive domestic measures, and hu- manitarian dreams that were the negation of an intelli- gent foreign policy. Even before Agadir the one con- dition of efficiency for the Entente, as well as of European peace, was seen in France to be that England should have not only the Navy but also the Army of her traditional policy. Lord Curzon was applauded when he said that in England the Foreign Secretary was exactly in the position of Moses in the battle with the Amalekites : his two hands had to be held up by the Ministers for the Army and the Navy. From 1910 to 1911 France could not — even at Constantinople — fight the battles of the English A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 153 alone. Yet Lord Haldane rejected the warnings of Lord Roberts and of the Military Correspondent of The Times^ ; Sir Edward Grey called down on his head the crushing retort of the German Chancellor; and when Mr. Jowett asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs " if, during his term of office, any under- taking, promise or understanding had been given to France, that in certain eventualities British troops would be sent to assist the operations of the French Army," the answer was " in the negative." The pretty little German pocket atlas for 1910, published by the great house of Justus Perthes, described the North Sea as the " Deutsche Meer," so that (as the French weekly news- paper U Opinion recalled before Agadir) Great Britain se trouve done haignee par la mer allemande I Yet there were Little Englanders still. The abolition of the me- ridian of Paris, with the substitution for it of that of Greenwich, had its compensations. But in France, at all events, such events were not regarded as being in them- selves a sufficient justification of the raison d'etre of the Entente Cordiale during the eighteen months in which Ger- many — after having, in collusion with Count Aehrenthal, shuffled all the Balkan cards and rearranged the map of Emrope — had been negotiating so effectively with Russia that a man like M. Hanotaux could write, however ex- travagantly : Les entretiens de Potsdam ont cree, de Vaveu de tous, une situation telle qu'on est Men oblige de se de- mander, maintenxint, si la Eussie a rompu le pacte de la Triple Entente. M. Pichon, before he fell from office, eloquently explained that Russia had done nothing of the kind, and that all was for the best in the best of all possible Triple Ententes. Sir Edward Grey echoed him in the same key of optimism, forgetting, like his col- league of the Quai d'Orsay, that although, from 190 9 to 1911, Constantinople was the diplomatic centre where the ^ " The preservation of France from an attack [by Germany before the weight of Russia begins to tell] is absolutely vital for our [England's] subsequent security.'' — Times, April 7, 1911. 154 PKOBLEMS OF POWER new European equilibrium must be delicately evolved, it was the place above all others where France and England seemed incapable of a common action. M. Pichon backed The Times, or The Times backed M. Pichon, on the question of Flushing; but The Times was not the British Government, and as little was heard of M. Pichon' s protests in defence of Belgian neutrality as of the fate of the British ultimatum presented to the Persian Govern- ment and ridiculously backed out of, to the astonishment of the Quai d'Orsay. But German Welt-politik was following then, as it follows to-day, the line linking the two horns of a crescent which might well pass for the great type-dilemma: that of Koweit-Flushing. Every one beheld in 1911 how Russia had solved that dilemma, what Russia thought of the problem of the Bagdad Railway. She had gone to Potsdam and had virtually seemed to be leaving France and England to settle matters together — or apart — as best they could. Pending the settlement, moreover, England was arming an ex- pedition in the Persian Gulf to undo the anti-British work of anarchy and piracy complacently favoured by France at Muscat.^ When the French public noted facts of this nature, as they did note them; when they beheld, as M. Tardieu, the foreign editor of the Temps, soberly enough put it at the time, that il semhle admis que chacun doit aller de son c6t6 sans concert, sans communica- tion prealable, au petit honheur, they concluded that chancellerie was an excellent name for the rocking-chairs in which, with discordant rhythm, the Foreign Ministers ^ The settlement of February 4, 1914, in virtue of which the French Government waived the privileges accorded their nationals by the Franco-Muscat treaty of 1844 and the Anglo-French treaty of 1862 to carry on a contraband trade in arms between Djibuti and the North - West Frontier of India, is only a lame provisional solution of the difficulty. The efficacy of this " settlement " will, no doubt, be enhanced and prolonged if England manifests reciprocal goodwill towards France in doing all in her power to repress the gun-running trade between Morocco and Gibraltar. A hint to this effect was given by M. Paul Cambon in the note addressed by him to Sir Edward Grey in regard to the Muscat question. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 155 of the Triple Entente had been agitating, ever since the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the graver questions of European policy. They did not know that Ruscian initiative at Potsdam was ultimately, indeed, to have the happiest consequences for the Triple Entente. How could they divine that at Potsdam, Russia, with her keen sense and liking for Oriental problems, had assumed responsibility for the beginnings of that rapid liquida- tion of Middle Eastern questions which the secret nego- tiations of 1913-1914 between Turkey and the Powers were shortly to achieve (vide p. 273, note), and that, al- though, to the scandal of certain observers (vide the brilliant and remarkable articles, *' Finance et Diplo- matic " by M. Victor Berard in the Grande Revue of June and July 1914), this liquidation was to do away for all time with the great principle of the *' integrity of the Ottoman Empire," the range of the action of the Triple Entente was to be enlarged, and the common interests of its members were to be consolidated ? (See p. 309.) In 1911, in fact, after four years of discordant action, in the summer months just preceding Agadir, Frenchmen were beginning to conclude, from their perception of the hollowness of certain optimistic official assurances as to the integrity and efficiency of the Triple Entente, that they would perhaps do well to withdraw from a pact which had served its time. Second thoughts reminded them, however, that it would be unfortunate for them, and unfortunate for England, if they should take to medi- tating too deeply on the idea that had recently been put to them by an ex-Foreign Minister, M. Hanotaux, in his sensational article, " II Faut Choisir.'' It was, after all, too late then to return to the principle of President Grevy. Germany was not Germany when that statesman recom- mended to France a policy of absolute isolation; but Ger- many was Germany in 1911. And, by the same token, England was England then, but England was not, in 1910 and 1911, the same England. That England should once more become England was felt on the Continent, every- 156 PROBLEMS OF POWER where save in Germany, to be the crying European need; and it was the most genuine longing of France. In the summer of 1911, more than one disinterested observer felt like saying, " England would be more than short- sighted, she would be ignoring her own interests, and the interests of European peace, if, draping herself in her Coronation robes, she were to allow France to cry over the Channel, into her indifferent ears, the words of Henry IV to Crillon : ' We have conquered at Arques, but you were not there, my Crillon ! ' " Happily for the restoration of the old-time efficiency of the Triple Entente, Germany was at that very hour meditating the action which was to rouse England from her political lethargy, to make her contemplate from an- other angle the naive proposal of the American President for the signing of a treaty of unrestricted arbitration, and to cause her to rush, in her own interests, to the rescue of France, that the two Powers might stand shoulder to shoulder at Arques. Certain proposals of President Taft, relative to the settlement of *' matters of national honour " by Courts of Arbitration, had already begun to work havoc in Eng- land. They had been welcomed on March 13, 1911, by Sir Edward Grey as " bold and courageous words." England and the United Stated seemed to be wondering why the President of the French Republic and the Tsar of Russia were so long in tendering their congratulations. " It would seem as if France would be the next nation to come into line," exclaimed one of the makers of opinion in the United States. Foreigners, however, overlooked, as usual, the positive conditions which, whether they liked it or not, were bound to determine the attitude of present-day Frenchmen towards such demonstrations as those of the English-speaking communities with regard to treaties for the abolition of war. The foreigner easily falls a victim to optical illusions when he tries to penetrate the reaches of French idealism. What the English-speaking world chiefly knows of France A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 167 is her ideologic bent : the date of 1 789, the Contrat Social of Rousseau and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Revolution and the Walkyrie dash of the Republican armies over the toppling thrones of Europe, and the mystic words which were the deeper undertone of the Marseillaise : Liberie, Egalite, Fraternite. With that knowledge it couples the recollection of the doctrinaire policies of the Reveur Couronne of the Second Empire, the Emperor who was ever ready to rush to the succour of fallen nationalities and who professed to prolong thereby the democratic war-cry of the volunteers of the Revolution. And finally, the English-speaking world, face to face with forty years of the Third Republic, ad- mires the altruism of her political philosophy of " soli- darity " — in reality, a dream of the Masonic inspirers of that Republic — the magnificent ten years' battle between Individualism and the Raison d'J^tat in the great drama of the Dreyfus Case, the constant urbanity of her attitude (" L'Adaptation des Alliances "), her diplomatic inter- vention at moments of tension between the Powers (the " Dogger Bank "), and her undeviating loyalty to the ideal that maintains the Tribunal of The Hague. -^ ^ At the very moment when Louis Napoleon, warned over and over again by his military attache in Berlin, Colonel Stoffel, and by the officer in command of the place of Strassbourg, General Ducrot, of the intentions of Prussia to attack France, undertook to reform the French army (1867), the Republican party proceeded to organize " pacifist " associations and leagues in favour of disarmament. The Imperial bill was attacked before the Corps LSgislatif by Jules Simon, Magnier, Pelletan, and Jules Favre. In the sitting of January 2, 1868, Marshal Niel, who defended the bill, was apostrophized as follows by Jules Favre: " Vous voulez done faire de la France une caserne ?" and he replied in words that MM. d'Estournelles de Constant, Jaur^ and Bourgeois would appear to have forgotten: " Et vous, prenez garde d'en faire un cimetidre." Two years later came Sedan. (Cf. Chuquet: La Guerre, 1870-71.) M. Goyau cites in his admirable book, Vldie de Patrie ei Humanitarisme, p. 285, the pathetic words of Jules Ferry after the war. " Do you remember," said Ferry, " that under the Empire we had Httle good to say of militarism ? Do you recall those vague aspirations towards general disarmament . . . that characterized the democracy of the time ? A number of us professed those ideas then. . . . But is there a single one, I ask you, who has not been converted by events ? This country has seen the war of 1870; it has turned its back for ever on these dangerous and deceptive chimeras." Few books of con- 168 PROBLEMS OF POWER This France — which is only one, and not the whole France — is the France visible from over the sea and from over the Channel ; but it is a France of mirage, a mirage that has often duped and lured the " Anglo-Saxon " or the Levantine vision, but has never deluded for long the sceptical scrutiny of the Powers of the Continent. There is quite another France, a much more real France, the France that has evolved not on some distant Atlantis, nor yet upon an island separated by an estranging sea from intimate Continental contacts. There is the France that has all along formed an integral part of Continental European soil. That France, in order to keep up with the fashion of the hour, has more than once voted purely academic resolutions in favour of disarmament, calling on the Government " to exert every effort to place on the programme of work at the next Hague Conference, i'n agreement with the friendly and allied Powers, the question of the simultaneous limitation of armaments " (February 23, 1911). But the same France noted with singular satisfaction on April 30, 1911, the cautious and lukewarm terms in which the British Sovereign, address- ing the Lord Mayor after the Guildhall Meeting held to consider the proposals of the President of the United States of America, perfunctorily affirmed his " gratifica- tion " at receiving " these records of opinions, unani- mously expressed, upon a question of such supreme and far-reaching importance, by an assemblage so representa- tive of the various lines of thought in our religious, political and social life." temporary history are more illuminating than the volume by M. Georges Goyau from which the preceding passage is cited. It is, in a word, the record of the brave and naive efforts of the Sociabihty and Generosity of the French — certain Frenchmen ! — to inoculate Europe with the love of peace; a history that never could have been written if the idealistic Republicans, who had coagulated into a fixed idea the revolutionary imaginations of the Jacobins, had not remained (until about ten years ago) criminally ignorant of geography and of European affairs. Even they, however, have finally learned that " I'humanit^ a besoin, pour garder la France comme lumi^re, comme verbe et meme comme parure, que la France ne cesse point d'etre la patrie franjaise." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 159 Late in the evening of May 9, 1911, the news reached Paris and Berlin that the Provincial Committee of the Reichsland, the Delegation of Alsace-Lorraine, had that afternoon been prorogued. The Imperial Cabinet order dissolving this Assembly was dated May 6, the first day of the Emperor's visit to Alsace, and was issued from Strasbourg. Forty-eight hours later the Alsace-Lorraine Constitution and Finance Bills were rejected by the Com- mittee of the Reichstag. Commenting on the con- fusion that reigned in the Committee previous to the rejection of these measures, the Berlin corre- spondent of The Times observed: "Now, as so often, one is tempted to believe that most people in Berlin and throughout the greater part of the German Empire know no more about Alsace-Lorraine than about the German colonies, if they indeed know as much." Paris, France in general, was fortunately better informed. There is a certain historical document which may have been forgotten in Berlin, which, no doubt, is little known in London and in Washington, but which, if it does not yet figure, as it ought to figure, on the walls of every French school, is still fresh in the memories of most French men. It is the unanimous Declaration of the Deputies of the French Departments of the Bas-Rhin, the Haut-Rhin, the Moselle, the Meurthe, and the Vosges, protesting against the alienation of Alsace-Lorraine, and affirming the immutable determination of the population of these two Provinces to remain Frenchmen. One hundred and seven members of the National Assembly — among whom were M. Brisson, the late President of the French Chamber of Deputies, and M. Clemenceau, who avenged M. Delcass6 at Casablanca — voted against the preliminaries of peace ceding Alsace and a portion of Lorraine to Germany. They had assumed this sublime responsibility after perusal of such passages as follow — and it would be a crime not to preserve the original language of the Declaration: — 160 PROBLEMS OF POWER " L'Europe ne peut permettre ni ratifier I'abandon d'Akace et de la Lorraine. Gardiennes des regies de la justice et du droit des gens, lea nations civilis^es ne sauraient rester plus longtemps insensibles au sort de leur voisine, sous peine d'etre h leur tour victimes des attentats qu'elles auraient toleres. L'Europe modeme ne peut laisser saisir un peuple comme un vil troupeau; elle ne peut rester sourde aux protesta- tions rep^tees des populations menacees; elle doit a sa propre conserva- tion d'interdire de pareils abus de force. Elle sait d'ailleurs que I'unit^ de la France est aujourd'hui, comme dans le passe, une garantie de I'ordre general du monde, une barriere, contre I'esprit de conqu^te et d'invasion. La paix faite au prix d'une cession de territoire ne serait qu'une trhve ruineuse et non une paix definitive. Elle serait pour tous une cause d'agitations intestines, une provocation legitime et per- manente k la guerre. " En resume, I'Alsace et la Lorraine protestent hautement contre toute cession; la France ne peut la consentir, 1' Europe ne peut la sanctionner. '* En foi de quoi nous prenons nos concitoyens de France, les gou- vemements et les peuples du monde entier, k temoins que nous tenons d'avance pour nuls et non avenus tous actes et trait^s, vote ou plebiscite, qui consentiraient abandon, en faveur de I'etranger, de toute ou partie de nos provinces de I'Alsace et de la Lorraine." This protest was drawn up by Gambetta at Bordeaux. That great patriot, who was to become the Tyrtseus of la revanche, had shown himself a seer : " La paix au prix d'une cession de territoire ne sera qu'une treve ruineuse et non une paix definitive. Elle serait pour tous une cause d* agitations intestines, une provocation legitime et per- manente." Napoleon III was no less prophetic. In a letter, written to the Countess de Mercy- Argenteau just after the treaty of peace closing the Franco-German War, he said: — '* How can one not be discouraged in presence of the conditions of peace imposed upon France ? I admit we were the aggressors; I admit we have been beaten, and that we were obhged therefore to pay the costs of the war or abandon a part of our territory. But to condemn us to both at once is very hard. ... In such conditions it is not a peace that the German Emperor is concluding, it is tantamount to killing us, and instead of re-establishing peace, it sows for the future hatred and distrust. Is this good pohcy, even for Germany ? I do not think so. The present state of European civilization causes the nations to be bound up one with another by a host of common interests so that the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 161 ruin of one reacts on all the rest. ... If the German Emperor and Bismarck had profoundly reflected on the state of Europe, they would have declared that while France remained deprived of a stable and con- sequently legitimate Government they regarded suspension of hostihties merely as a truce, giving them an opportunity to take measures to secure a military position more favourable if the struggle began again, but that once there was a Government based on right, and accepted by the nation, they would be more concerned as to peace for the future than as to the possession of certain discontented departments detached from a nation in distress. That would have been la grande politique. The hatred of Germany would have disappeared as by enchantment, peace would have been assured for many years, confidence would have been restored, trade relations immediately resumed, and the German Emperor would have obtained greater glory than he will acquire by the possession of Metz and Strasbourg." Forty years of growing armaments are but the con- firmation of this melancholy prophecy. In a proud and noble letter on " The Role of Bismarck " which Monsieur Emile Ollivier, author of U Empire Liberal and Minister of Napoleon III, addressed to Professor Hans Delbriick, and which was published in the Figaro of May 14, 1908, the following passage occurs: — " No one contests Bismarck's glorious place among the dominators of the world. But political facts are not to be judged by their immediate consequences. There are distant consequences which convert into calamities what had seemed to be good fortune, and which turn into bitterness victories that had been received with rejoicing. The reflecting observer already perceives the sombre morrows of the policy which led you Germans to success. Have you gained anything in conquering popula- tions whom you torment, who hate you, curse you, and are merely waiting for a favourable circumstance to rise up against you ? Was not the fact that you have made it impossible to come to an understanding, without arri re pensSe, with us, a heavy price to pay for the accession of territory which was not needed for your Unity ? Has your security been augmented by the fact of your having afflicted and buffeted a nation whose humiUations never last for more than a time, and who suddenly on the morrow of a Soubise or a Bazaine may behold the advent of a Turenne or a Pehssier ? A state of reciprocal distrust between France and Germany is a permanent cause of tumult in Europe.'''' Frenchmen well knew why the dream of unrestricted Anglo-American arbitration must always plausibly appeal to Englishmen, and in 1911, above all, they understood 162 PROBLEMS OF POWER why a dangerous proposal like that of Mr. Taft was so seductive to the eyes both of worried and tired states- men and of a people familiar with Isaiah. Frenchmen are little given to reading the Bible, but they have their own poHtical sacred document, a Gallic Table of the Law, known as Les Droits de V Homme ; and the imaginations of many of them, fed therein on an ideal of abstract Justice, have assimilated the phraseology of aU the har- bingers of the Millennium, from a Quinet and a Michelet to a Jaures and a d'Estournelles de Constant. All French- men, furthermore, clearly enough perceive how special are the cases of England and the United States, and they saw in 1911 how ripe was the hour in England for the success of a meeting like that at Guildhall, where Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour (described by the Primate of England as " the Great Twin Brethren ") joined with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and with all the prelates of all the Churches of Christian, and even of Rabbinical, England in organizing a Crusade of Peace, to the cry of Dieu le vent — the same cry, by the way, to which the Prussians marched down the Champs Elysees. Equally apparent to Frenchmen at the time was the utility of such a Crusade as a diversion — and a possible solution — at a moment of Imperial crisis, when the Colonies were breaking away as " Dominions " from their island moor- ings. The positive advantages, for England, of an ar- rangement with the United States, which might do even more than diminish the possibilities of war, which might conceivably, in some distant future, lead up to a kind of " Anglo-Saxon " Amphictyonic Council, were carefully analysed in Paris. But what France also understood, and what America and England herself seemed less clearly to see, was that for her to follow in the wake of Mr. Taft, of Sir Edward Grey, of the Twin Parliamentary Brethren, and of the Prelates of the Guildhall meeting, would be to succumb to the form of folly known in the idiom of the Primate of England as " tempting Provi- dence." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 163 Never has France been less suitably placed than to-day for signing a treaty automatically submitting to The Hague, or to any other tribunal, differences affecting her vital interests, independence, or honour. Nor can Ger- many adopt such a peace policy. Neither France nor Germany can. The reason why disarmament — or any measure favouring it — is impossible for France, is not that Germany would make war upon her. It is said that Germany requires twenty years of peace, and it is certain that the excessive production in modern industrial Ger- many would cause any serious interruption of her com- mercial activity to provoke a formidable krach ; but France would go morally to pieces, she would be gangrened by humanitarianism, if, ignoring political conditions through- out the world, political things-as-they-are, she were to listen, as President Taft listened in 1910 and 1911, to the appeal of the eloquent members of the Committee of the Association of International Conciliation. It has already been seen that one of the consequences of the Russian Alliance was to engender " pacifism " in France.-^ The more cocardier the spirit of France, the more remote becomes her hope of recovering Alsace-Lorraine save by war; the more she is doomed to play into the hands of 1 This ia also the view of a remarkable diagnostician, M. Andre Ch6radame. Cf. La Crise FrauQaise, pp. 203, 204. Note as well a striking passage by M. Faguet, in his Introduction to the Memoirs of M. Arthur Meyer, Ce que mes yeux ont vu : — " The Russian Alliance was certainly a good thing in itself (says M. Faguet), although we have all along rendered Russia a good many more services than she has rendered us. Still, it was a good thing in itself. But, nevertheless, we must not overlook the facts that from a certain point of view it did us considerable harm; I mean, moral harm. Until the AlUance, hope of reparation for the disasters of 1870 was a living sentiment in French hearts. After the Alhance, the terms of which were unknown, but which every one was aware to be merely defensive, it was more or less distinctly understood that the Alliance imphed our acceptance of the diminution of France, not merely in presence of the Conqueror, but in the presence of a third party, and that that diminution was consecrated by a diplomatic act of European importance, so that, in a way, the signature of Russia was affixed to the Treaty of Frankfort. ... I date from the Russian Alliance le flichisse- ment, momentan6, je Vesp^re, du 'patriGtisme en France. ^^ 1 164 PROBLEMS OF POWER Germany, the more she retards the ideal of disarmament, and the more she prolongs the evil consequences of the crime of the framers of the Treaty of Frankfort. Yet, if she be not cocardier, if her rulers do not do all in their power to preserve the mainsprings of her national pride, if they do not seek to arrest the progress of humani- tarianism, France loses her self-respect, sells her birth- right, signs her death-warrant. No more tragic dilemma was ever presented to a nation. As long as the Alsace- Lorraine wound remains open, Europe, the world, cannot expect France to accept the idea of disarmament, or of arbitration on points of national honour.-^ These are facts which the author of The Great Illusion does not seem to have adequately taken into account. Mr. Norman Angell has written in the interests of peace a volume of over three hundred pages, entitled The Great Illusion. He has blinded his eyes, like the legendary ostrich, to a whole series of facts, the existence of which ^ The attitude of Germany, at successive Peace Congresses, con- sistently opposing all " peaceful " proposals, has been a more effective lesson to France than perhaps to the rest of the world. The late Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, who was sent to I^ondon to make a final assault on the Entente Cordicde, manoeuvred at the second Hague Con- ference against the policy of the British delegates favouring the prin- ciple of obligatory arbitration, in a way that France, at least, has not forgotten. As the Paris correspondent of The Times has written (Times, May 11 1912, — ^he was then the special representative of that paper at The Hague):— " The most amazing thing was to witness the way in which Baron von Marschall, up till almost the very end of the Conference, retamed the confidence of those, including the French delegates, who were striving to draw up a list of obligatory subjects of arbitration, while he himself was skilfully helping to reduce their list ad ahsurdum. As was remarked by an eminent delegate shortly before the final sitting of the Conference, all that we have now agreed upon as the subject of obHgatory arbitra- tion reduces itself to the effects of deceased seamen. Among those who were at first, and indeed for a long time, most sanguine as to Baron von Marschall's co-operation in the policy of obligatory arbitration was the late Mr. W. T. Stead, who, at The Hague, issued a daily journal in French giving an account of the proceedings of the Conference and estimates of the activities of the different delegates. His disappoint- ment at the close of the Conference was so great that he published a very humorous cartoon representing the ' total eclipse ' of the chief German delegate, whom he had previously represented as the ' leading star ' in the galaxy of diplomatists assembled at The Hague." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 166 radically disturbs the entire perspective, and compro- mises the practical value of his argument. It is quite true, as he says,^ that there is a greater difference between the man of to-day and the man of only two or three generations ago than between the man of the last three centuries and the man of three thousand years before. But the normal consequences of that curious evolution, which Mr. Norman Angell neatly calls the " law of accel- eration," have been retarded during our own time by the results of the short-sighted action which Germany, with the complicity of Europe, committed in the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine. That a thinker of Mr. Norman Angell's probity should discuss the possibility of the abolition of modern arma- ments without dealing with the question of Alsace- Lorraine, is a curious oversight. Mr. Angell undertakes to prove that " the necessity of adopting defensive measures implies, on some one's part, grounds for aggres- sion, and that this motive is due ^o the present universal belief in the economic advantages to be derived from a victorious war." Now this theory, which has a show of axiomatic clearness, is all too clear. It would seem so to have dazzled its inventor's eyes as to blind him to the immediate realities of contemporary history. It is true that no one will ever wish to fight his neighbour unless he has some good reason for doing so. But among all the English-speaking peoples economic motives have, perhaps, been the least persuasive motives that have driven great nations to war. The present condition of modern Europe, under the crushing system of armaments, is in itself the miserable consequence of a war waged for any and every other motive but that of economic advantage, a war which was at the time a mere incident in the vast national movement or the formation of a United Ger- many. Likewise, most of the military activity of France within the last hundred years has been prompted by an 1 The present writer said it himself, some twenty years ago, in a book entitled Patriotism and Science. 166 PROBLEMS OF POWER idealism untinctured by economics. This, and other similar illustrations — such as the Mobilization of the Balkan States, in October 1912^ — might, it would be imagined, be merely supererogatory in replying to Mr. Norman Angell, who, in his less doctrinaire moments, is quite ready to acknowledge the potential share of other than merely economic factors among the causes of war. All that need be pointed out is the hopelessness of expecting to settle the problem of European arma- ments without first removing one of the primary causes of those armaments, that obstacle in the path of " pacifism " known as Alsace-Lorraine. That question is an integral part of the whole question of European peace. And as Mr. Norman Angell's book has been translated into many languages, and has attracted wide attention, it is necessary to insist on the fact that it is the work of a clear and logical intelligence, somewhat surprisingly indifferent to certain of the more important among the positive factors with which a statesman has to deal. If Mr. Norman Angell had said: " If human nature were logical, and if nations were governed by reason, war would be almost impossible, because war is usually absurd; and war is absurd because it rarely brings any lasting good, and because it is ridicu- lous to act on absurd motives," everybody would un- doubtedly agree with him. But, unfortunately, nations are more frequently actuated by motives that are " absurd " than by motives that are rational; and it is ^ No one contests that economic motives help to explain the Balkan War, but such motives are insignificant in comparison with the ideahstic "national" aspirations that have found their sanction at Kirk-EaUsse. A more detailed analysis would, no doubt, point out, however, as M. Francis Delaisi has shown (vide " Une Guerre pour un Chemin de Fer," La Grande Revue, July 10, 1913), that, although the Balkan War was undertaken in the name of the principle of nationahties, the secret treaty that defined the conditions of the war (cf . note, p. 291 ) was an utter negation of this principle. In fact, while Governments uniformly fight for interests, the motives of peoples are ideahstic. " Rehgion, patrie, foi, honneur, ce sont les leviers puissants 4 I'aide desquels les hommes d'Etat meuvent les masses . . . mais ces leviers sont aux mains d'hommes d'affaires, qui exaltent ou apaisent ces sentiments, et les utilisent au gr6 de leurs combinaisons de chemins de fer et de leurs calculs d'exportation." (Delaisi: article cited.) A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 167 as irrational to expect to rationalize politics as it is to wish to rationalize religion. It was to lack foresight, and hence to be irrational, for Germany to take Alsace-Lorraine ; but it would be no less imprudent, and therefore irrational, for French leaders of opinion to cultivate in the mass of the nation the belief that, because what Mr. Norman Angell says is practically true, they ought to subordinate to that more remote ideal truth a certain set of French verities which are of the essence of their integrity as a nation. There are French truths and there are British truths, and there are truths that obtain on the slopes of the Atlas — ^and there are abstract truths. Mr. Norman Angell' s truth, in spite of its specious inductive stability, is an abstract truth. And, just because it ignores one whole set of facts — those growing out of the terms of the Treaty of Frankfort, and as yet unmodified by the new conditions of modern progress — it is a truth which, if it were accepted by the French, would reduce them to the state of the Greeks after the sack of Corinth. It would be necessary to insist on this fact — since the French, as every one knows, are a people peculiarly amenable to the seduction of clear think- ing, pecuHarly given to generous ideas and to generous impulses, and peculiarly exposed to the ravages which such clear and generous ideas, when they are too clear, are bound to cause, — if one could not confidently count on the action of an aggressive Germany to maintain a sane tonicity in the French character. It ought to be for the French a point of " national honour," in the interests of their peculiar form of civilization, to raise relentlessly — and even barbarically — every form of dyke against the inroads of that tide of modern progress so magnificently symbolized by the industrial activity and the pervasive financial expansion of Germany. It ought to be a point of " national honour " with them to refuse to allow German stocks to be quoted on the Paris Bourse, and to maintain their credit by methods which, as far as possible, will prevent them from feeling the impact of commercial 168 PKOBLEMS OF POWER crises — in a word, to go back to the soil.-^ And finally, it ought to be a point of " national honour " with them to gaze steadily into the East, following the precept of Gambetta in his St.' Quentin speech: " II faut constam- ment que la France soit penchee sur cette oeuvre de reparation. . . . Soyons tres reserves, ne pronon9ons jamais une parole temeraire. . . . Soyons gardiens de notre dignite du vaincu, et ne parlons jamais de I'etranger; mais que Ton comprenne que nous y pensons toujours.'* II faut constamment que la France soit penchee sur cette oeuvre de reparation. There have been long periods during the last twenty-five years when France seemed to have forgotten ; when, in heeding too literally the recommenda- tion of Gambetta, " Ne parlons jamais de I'etranger," she appeared positively to have ceased to follow the great tribune's other behest, " que Ton comprenne que nous y pensons toujours." In the making of her North African Empire, for instance, and indeed in the working out of her entire destiny as a colonial Power, she allowed to come into being an influential band of politicians, some of whom might perhaps have been induced in 1910 and 1911 to come to terms with Germany, even to sacrifice the Entente Cordiale, and to abandon the lost provinces to their fate, if they could thereby have made sure of obtain- ing from Germany the promise that, so far as that Power was concerned, Morocco should henceforth be terre franqaise.^ But at that very moment the mass of reflect- ing Frenchmen had their gaze riveted on the Vosges. In the spring of 1911, only a few weeks before Agadir, M. Lavisse, the Academician, Professor of History at the Sorbonne, addressed the Alsace-Lorraine students as follows : — 1 Moral, political, sociological reasons ought to suflBce as an incentive to the French legislator for favouring agricultural interests and for arresting the exodus from the country into the towns. Reinforced by the economic motives arising from the pecuUar conditions of the French corn-market, these reasons become irrefutable. 2 Cf. p. 250 et seq. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 169 " Mes amis, je ne veux pas dire autre chose que ce que je dis. Je n'ai pas d'arriere-pensee. Je ne suis pas venu apporter ici des paroles do haine; il y a longtemps que j'ai ecrit: ' Puisque la haine est aveugle, ne la prenons pas pour guide.' Encore moins je me donnerai le ridicule de vous annoncer une guerre lib6ratrice. La France est pacifique; elle ne fera la guerre que si elle y est contrainte. Mais considerez I'etat de la politique europeenne et mondiale, les ligues, les contre-ligues ; la France est surveillee en tous ses mouvements par I'Allemagne; Allemagne et France sont deux armees en presence, et les trompettes et clairons des avant-gardes sont tenus k la hauteur des l^vres. Pour retrouver la liberte de ses mouvements, la France n'aurait qu'a dire un tovi petit mot : * Xovhlie r Ce tout petit mot, elle ne le dira pas J* The Paris Review Les Marches de VEst, which is the organ of French writers " eager to protect the lucid genius of their race against the invasion of Germanism," has become in four years one of the indispensable reviews pub- lished in France. Alsace-Lorraine is now the theme of scores of volumes which go rapidly into numerous editions. Events in the lost provinces are followed by the Paris Press with an assiduity which would surprise the readers of that Press of ten years ago. Germany, moreover, seems to be exhausting her resources in furnishing French journalists with the most attractive matter for comment. When the Metz Courts are not engaged in prosecuting the members of a sporting club suspected of French sympa- thies — and prosecuting them so blunderingly that the Deputy for Colmar, M. Blumenthal, in his interpellation to the Government at the Provincial Committee was able to say, '* You need not feel surprise if the Germanization of this region has been retarded by ten years " — an artist like Zislin is cast into prison for harmless if ruthless caricature, and the prosecuting magistrate, in his speech for the indictment, is obliged to acknowledge : — " We are living in a frontier region where sympathies for France, after forty years of annexation, are still a Hving reality; we are passing through a period more agitated even than that of Boulangism; an ardent nationalism is arising, and I do not refer to that nationalism summed up in the formula * Alsace-Lorraine aux Alsaciens-Lorrains.' No, I refer to that blue, white and red nationalism, which not only harks 170 PROBLEMS OF POWER back to the past, but is cultivating among the people of Alsace-Lorraine the hope of a better future, to such a degree, in fact, that some of our Alsace-Lorraine youths regard the tricolour as their own flag."^ Prussia, in a word, as was clearly perceived in France even in 1910, can no longer, save by the most drastic measures, defend the German cause in the annexed territory. The claim of many excellent French observers, from M. Maurice Barres to M. Georges Ducrocq, would not seem to have been exaggerated : although separated from France, Alsace and Lorraine are more really united to her in feeling to-day than they were before the war. The Beichsland has become what M. Barres has called it. La Terre de la Resurrection. The new hypocritical solution offered by Germany for the terrible problem put by the Treaty of Frankfort, and kept open by German incompe- tency and bungling, will be found to be utterly inadequate. The Constitution wlQ solve nothing,^ and the action of the ^ The case of the artist Hansi is even more significant. Incarcerated for two weeks in May and June, 1914, on the charge of high-treason, as the author of a somewhat sentimental but charming book, Mon Village, which the detached observer would have supposed far less irritating to Prussian nerves than the terrible asperities of the Munich draughtsmen of the Lustige Blaetter and the Simflicissimus, he was released on a 30,000 francs bail, pending his trial before the Leipzig Superior Court. That court finally condemned him, in July, 1914, to a year's imprison- ment. Hansi passed by the Schlucht into France, where he was welcomed with open arms. 2 This prophecy was almost instantly fulfilled. Li March 1914, Baron de Gamp, Deputy at the Reichstag, spoke as follows before the Congress of Independent Conservatives: " Je desire vous rappeler quel service I'empereur vient de rendre au pays dans la question d' Alsace-Lorraine. Ce fut une lourde faute poUtique que d'accorder k 1' Alsace -Lorraine une Constitution. Si on desirait k toute force le faire, il fallait du moins augmenter en m^me temps les pouvoirs du gouvemement alsacien-lorrain, pour lui permettre de lutter contre la presse frangaise (la presse fran9aise, c'est pour M. de Gamp, comme pour tous les AUemands, la presse d' Alsace -Lorraine qui reste attachee au Souvenir fran5ais). " II fallait aussi faire dependre, continue M de Gamp, la Constitution, des lois sur la presse. Le 4 d^cembre, le Reichstag et le gouvemement ignoraient quel triste 6tat d'esprit r^gnait dans les pays annexes. C'est le proces du colonel von Reutter qui a ^claire la nation. Nous avons appris alors les nombreuses attaques que la population civile avait entreprises contre les soldats, le manque de protection de la part de la police, les exces de la ' presse fran9aise.' L'Allemagne tout enti^re doit une grande reconnaissance au colonel von Reutter. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 171 Emperor in dissolving the Provincial Committee will not have facilitated the task of altering the mystical status of Alsace-Lorraine as the Reichslandi " Imperial soil," which is the keystone of German Unity. The tension, in fact, has reached such a pitch that it is doubtful if a scheme of frank autonomy could now settle the question of Alsace-Lorraine. In his admirable pamphlet, Le Cauchemar de V Europe, M. Albert Gobat, a Swiss Con- seiller d'Etat, returning from a prolonged visit to Alsace in the autumn of 1910, argues eloquently that if the Imperial Government would only decide to place Alsace- Lorraine on the same footing as the Grand Duchy of Baden, or as the free towns of Hamburg and Lubeck (that is to say, grant them autonomy), such action, by lifting the annexed Provinces to the dignity of a nation, well above international complications, would guarantee the peace of Europe. The Constitution, at all events, will simply maintain the annexed Provinces in the relation of a fief to a sovereign lord. M. Gobat's proposal is the most obvious justice, but it is doubtful if those who know what the word Eeichsland really implies, or if those who are best acquainted with the present state of Europe, will be as optimistic as he, in believing that even the incon- ceivable granting of autonomy to Alsace-Lorraine would usher in the era of European peace. An autonomous Alsace-Lorraine would add one more to the series of buffer States situated between France and Germany; but the buffer quality of all these States, from Switzerland to " Plus tard, nous avons su que les plus hauts fonctionnaires violaient, dans le pays annexe, leurs devoirs envers TAllemagne. Je ne veux pas entrer ici dans tous les details. Alors, la nation allemande tout entiero fut prise d'indignation et ce cri monta unanime: ' Qu'on nous debarrasse d'un pareil gouvemement alsacien-lorrain !' (Applaudissements fre- n^tiques. ) " Vempereur partagea de tds sentiments. ArmS d'un balai de fer, il neUoya Strasbourg et il mit d, la tete de Vadministraiion, dans les pays annexes, des honimes qui ont la fer me volonte de gouverner dans le sens de la tradition prussienne, avec justice, avec le souci des irU4rets materiels et moraux des pays d' empire, aveclaferme vdonU d'enfaire ce quHls doivent itre, une partie de notre patrie allemande." 172 PROBLEMS OF POWER Luxembourg and Belgium, ie a mere diplomatic fiction which would vanish like a wisp of straw in the event of a European conflagration. At the present moment no international Treaty, no diplomatic instrument or convention is worth the paper on which it is written. They might as well have been formulated on paper made of wood-pulp. Three or four lunar cycles, as every one knows, suffice to destroy most of the modern paper used for newspapers and books. But all the treaties in the world will be a dead-letter even before most of the modern productions of art and letters have turned to dust. The only treaties that stand a chance of a long life are those unwritten Agreements which are based on common interests.-"- When, in order to prevent the construction of the Nicaragua Canal, and to save the honour of France, a great Frenchman, M. Bunau-Varilla, fomented a Revolution at Panama, and thus made it possible for Mr. Roosevelt to seize a zone in Columbian territory;^ when Count d'Aehrenthal tore up the Treaty of Berlin on Bosnian soil, and the pieces were finally burned to ashes in bonfires lit by the Balkan League ; when the Germans, indifferent to the stipulations of the Act of Algeciras, and their agreement of desinteres- sement with France in 1909, sent a gun-boat to Agadir, the world beheld certain characteristic instances of that prehistoric principle, the spoils-policy, which the medita- tions of the international jurists have as yet done nothing to render obsolete. The principle dates from the Stone Age. It seems new only because, owing to the changed social conditions, its application in the twentieth century, A.D., is an altogether different problem from the applica- tion in B.C. 20000, when there were few railways, tele- graphs, steamboats, newspapers or crossed cheques. The prehistoric spoils-policy of the Cave-Dweller was realized by woodland craft, by bludgeon, or by a swift-speeding 1 See note 1, p. 322. 2 See Panama : The Creation^ Destruction and Eesurreciion, by Phillippe Bunau-Varilla. (Constable and Co., 1913.) A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 173 flint. The same object, the same principle, governs col- lective human nature to-day;^ but, because in certain 1 A common -sense statement of the facts as they are at the beginning of the twentieth century may be found in the folloAving passage by Mr. Roosevelt, from his article " In Chih," pubhshed in The Outlook of April 25, 1914 : " I very earnestly believe in peace. I abhor unjust war; I abhor and despise aU men who hghtly or wantonly do deeds that jeopardize peace. I beHeve that ways can be found which gradually, as nations grow more civilized, more on an equality of good conduct and right Hving, will permit of the substitution of other methods than those of war for the settlement of international disputes. But in the international body politic, as in every other body, natural or artificial, it is as foohsh to attempt to draw into existence a function before there is an organ through which it can act as to create an organ before the function itself can be exercised. The belief that signing names to a bit of paper, and calling it a treaty, in itself abolishes the facts of life is so foohsh as hardly to be even pathetic. By treaty Korea is now an independent Power, and North Schleswig part of Denmark. Are they such in fact ? Does any body of peace people hope to make them such ? If arbitral courts had existed in the days of our grandfathers, with the powers which the less wise among their grandsons fondly imagine ought to be given them, Cahfornia and Colorado would now be parts of Mexico enjojang whatever blessings complete absence from foreign war has secured that country during the last three years. As for how much a concert of the Powers to enforce neutrahty or right amounts to let Adrianople bear witness. At this moment Adrianople is Turkish simply because the solemn declarations of all the Great Powers of Europe combined mean hterally nothing in the face of even a feeble antagonist who is resolute. Probably of all ingenious ways for securing the certainty of mischief, the most unerringly efficient is that of inter- national agreement for the neutralization of a land under circumstances like those which well-meaning but weak-minded enthusiasts have thought would warrant the apphcation of the doctrine to the Philip- pines. As yet the great free nations of the world, which, however stumblingly, do really strive for justice, would inevitably suffer the fate of China if they imitated the attitude of mihtary impotence which China is herself at last realizing that it is vital for her to abandon. In particular we should face the fact that America would unquestion- ably be the ground for the expansion of the overcrowded Powers of Europe and Asia if it were not for the potential military strength of the United States, and — I believe and hope T may add — were it not also for the potential mihtary strength of such South American nations as Brazil, the Argentine, and Chile. I also hope that in the end we shall be able to include in this hst many other American nations as rapidly as they acquire the material prosperity and the moral solidity and self-restraint without which well-being cannot exist. The peace of righteousness is a noble ideal, and as yet it can be obtained in the world at large only if the righteous are able to defend their rights. The peace that might come temporarily as the result of impotence and weakness, of the soft shirking of effort and the foohsh behef that danger can be avoided by saying that it does not exist, would last for but a moment 174 PROBLEMS OF POWER other respects to-day is different from yesterday, the old principle seems to be tending to make diplomacy a branch of physico-chemistry. It has been neatly defined, by M. Victor Bernard, as Le Droit de Voisinage, which is French for *' geographic gravitation." It is the human, the sociological, form of one of these aspects of the physical law of capillary attraction. The principle of " neighbourhood rights " — the right which a Power as- sumes to annex or administer the States and Dependencies of a neighbour unable to defend itself, or to establish justice within its borders — accounts for the shif tings in international relations, for the kaleidoscopic combinations that have taken place during the last ten years, from Morocco by way of Persia to Manchuria, and — who knows ? — perhaps round the world again to Mexico and Central America ; and if in the Far East Mr. Knox and President Taft met in 1910 with a comic rebuff, it was because they had not taken into adequate consideration the working of this positive and scientific basis of modern international politics. The successive treaties signed by the Powers have been merely a provisional record up-to- date of the stage reached in these chemico-political com- binations. One of the prettiest cases under this law is, of course, the process of " pacific penetration " of Morocco by France. But an even more elegant demonstra- tion was the Anglo-Russian Agreement as to Persia, with its corollary — that portion of the mysterious negotiations of Potsdam bearing on the Baghdad con- cession.^ Now the French, in their quick clear way, have been intelligent enough to apply this principle to the im- mediate future. This fact need surprise only those who and would then be paid for by world-wide bloodshed and disaster. To divorce might from right is an uncommonly foolish procedure from the standpoint of right. The free and peace-loving nations, in the present state of the world's progress, can preserve the blessings of peace and righteousness only as long as they are both able and' wilhng, if necessity should demand it, to use their potential strength against wrong-doers." 1 See p. 272, note 2. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 175 still forget that France has had to evolve a national in- tegrity in mid-Europe by slow and secular processes, which consisted in constructing for herself on every side a carapace impervious to outside influences. The French have had to fight their way to national unity against the inroads on their frontiers of the Anglo-Norman and the German. At no stage of their national history have they been without an Alsace-Lorraine problem in one form or another — now in the South- West, now in the North, or now doubly, triply, in the East, where the line of the Vosges, of the Jura, and of the Savoy Alps has always marked the central axis of a border region never wholly theirs, nor yet ever wholly that of the " barbarians." " National honour," in these conditions, is merely the name for a set of unconscious reactions of self-preserva- tion. It is not at all, in its essence, the hollow, but clarion-tongued, cocardier screech in praise of La Gloire which Englishmen and Germans fancy it to be, and which no doubt at times, for aesthetic ends, it can easily and provisionally become. From the point of view of the making of the nation, the evolution of French history has been an effort to moderate the action of the natural law of " neighbourhood rights " applied successfully and doggedly by England, and clumsily, though with a show of scientific, even philosophic, method by Germany. And the phrase " moderate the action" seems exact, because the natural and justifiable limits of French European expansion have never suffered any change in the Gallic mind since they were fixed by the Romans, who had worked with the geography of Strabo under their eyes. It has thus, as it were, become a second nature for France to possess a European sense; and this European sense has never suffered her, for any protracted period, to be the dupe of even her most civilized aspiration, the dream of one day inhabiting a Europe based on Justice and Right. An almost singular respect for the written word in treaties has been, no doubt, part of the French- 176 PROBLEMS OF POWER man's noble Latin inheritance, but his eyes have never been dimmed to the presence, just over his buffer-State border, of a Holland which — whatever the terms of the Treaty of London of 1839, guaranteeing Belgian inde- pendence and neutrality, and of the clauses of the Treaty of Vienna proclaiming the free navigation of the Escaut — is destined one day to fall into the hands of Germany, unless its integrity be maintained by the common action of France and England. It did not need the Butch pro- posal to fortify Flushing to justify, in the eyes of French statesmen, the vigilance with which they had been ob- serving, since the advent of the Prince Consort, the ex- tension of German influence in the Low Countries. They were well aware in 1911 that the Belgian and British appeals to International Law to refute the parallel juridical arguments of Holland, were of merely academic interest save in so far as public discussion arrested Hol- land in her German policy, and gave her time to reflect on the international bearings of her proposed action. In 1910 and 1911 nothing more clearly showed the inter- national authority of France than the facts that, un- assisted by England, her Foreign Minister should have declared openly in the Chamber of Deputies his readiness to causer with the signatories of the Treaty of 1839, and that, although Germany retorted with tit-for-tat haste that she had no intention of entering into any conversa- tion on the subject, the Dutch Government ^after all prudently took the French hint, and began to tack away diplomatically from the shallows on which her heavy galleons seemed about to run aground. Yet the Flushing Fortification Bill came up again in 1912 before the Dutch Chamber, and this time neither France nor England made the slightest sign that they had evolved a common policy for the defence of Belgian neutrality.^ France, it should ^ The Belgian Army Bill laid before the Chamber on December 5, 1912, proposing to raise the mobilizable total of that country's armed strength to 340,000 men, marked the determination of Belgium to guarantee, unaided, respect for her neutraUty, in case of a war between A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 177 be repeated, cannot act alone. The Entente Cordiale must be converted into a close Dual Alliance, based on common interests, in order to forestall before the close of the next decade — when Germany wiU have her full quota of " Dreadnoughts " in the North Sea — the possi- bility of the principle of geographical gravitation being applied to Holland as Bismarck applied it to Denmark.-' Where are the " neighbourhood rights " of Germany more neatly applicable than to the regions about The Hague and Rotterdam ? Notwithstanding the immediate re- sults of the victories of the Balkan League in 1912, every one who knows the state of Europe still recalls the per- tinent question put by the author of Le Choix de Londres {Revue de Paris, April 15, 1911): "When the Russians lay hands on, or take control of, Stamboul, when the Austrians follow suit at Salonica, and the Italians at Valona, why should not the German Customs Officer or Admiral enter Rotterdam ?" At all events, reasons of this kind, vividly held before the French intelligence, kept France, in 1910 and 1911, from falling into the state of beatific apathy which at that period characterized England's attitude towards the problems of world-politics. The French felt, no doubt, as Bishop Butler said in his Sermons at the Rolls, thai things will he as they will he ; but it never occurred to France and Germany, or a war in which France and Germany are arrayed in opposite camps. These precautions do not, however, pre- clude the necessity for France and England to evolve a common policy for the maintenance of the validity of the treaties of 1839. In Feb- ruary, 1913, Baron de Broqueville, the Belgian Prime Minister and Minister of War, stated to a Committee of the Belgian Chamber that the Minister for Foreign Affairs and he himself were "on a volcano." The Bill, passed by the Chamber on May 30, became law on June 19. Every Belgian will be called to the colours in his twentieth year. * Schleswig is not yet an integral part of the German Empire, any more than are Alsace and Lorraine. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, speaking in the Reichstag of Dano -German relations recently, referred to the " increasing agitation against Germanism in Northern Schleswig, and the aggravation of national antagonism." He added: "The reversion of Southern Jutland to Denmark remains a dream, and will never be a reaUty." 178 PROBLEMS OF POWER them that this fact was a reason for not maintaining con- stant vigilance, or for not making a strenuous effort to avoid becoming the dupe of " things."^ VI On the first of July 1911 the First Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris called on M. de Selves, the French Foreign Minister, to inform him of Germany's decision to send an armed vessel to the Moroccan port of Agadir. This mysterious coup d' Agadir, information of which was vouchsafed at the same moment to all the other European Governments, surprised and startled the world. A special and plausible justification of Germany's con- duct, her not unnatural irritation at France's procrastina- tion and apparent ill-will in the application of the Franco- German Agreement of 1909, was utterly unsuspected at the time, not only by the general public on the Continent and in England, but even by well-informed members of the French Parliament. The Agreement of 1909 had rejoiced Europe. It seemed to be an earnest of Ger- many's honest intention to cease using the Moroccan question as an instrument of political and diplomatic pressure on France. All that the public opinion of the world appeared clearly to perceive in this Agreement was that Germany had at last recognized the predominance in Morocco of French political rights. The fact that France, in another clause of the Agreement, had solemnly promised to share with Germany the golden apples of the Hesperides was generally overlooked. Europe was ill prepared, therefore, to divine that when Germany sud- * *' No people can maintain an effective peace policy without being always ready for war. A diminished France, a France exposed, by its own fault, to taunts or humiUations, would no longer be France. . . . Our words of peace and humanity will be all the more hkely to be heeded if we are known to be more determined and better armed." — President Poincar6's Message to the French Parhament, Februaiy 20, 1913. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 179 denly dispatched a gun-boat to an Atlantic port within reach of the Hesperidean Gardens it was because France for two years had been submitting her partner in the Agreement of 1909 to the tortures of Tantalus, by alternately offering, and juggling out of 'sight, that and other coveted fruit. These operations had gone on behind the scenes, and not a dozen men in Europe, outside of the official world of the Quai d'Orsay and the Wilhelmstrasse, were aware that the apparent bolt from the blue was an act for which a rational pretext could be adduced. In deciding on so sensational a method for the solution of a strained diplomatic situation, Germany had miscal- culated the nature of the political forces, and of the inter- national factors, then existing in Europe. Relentlessly bent on the realization of her fixed idea, destruction of the Entente between France and England, she had counted on achieving that object surreptitiously during the working out of the ingenious partnership concluded between herself and France by the Agreement of 1909. When that dream was blasted she revived her other, more familiar, policy, the policy of intimidation. With the hammer of Thor she brought down a prodigious whack on the table at which she and her new French friends had been talking business for some eighteen months. Convinced that Great Britain was incurably pacific, and that France was hurtling to the dogs; mistaking the obvious predicament of England, and the unrest in France, for positive signs of a disintegration that was bound to paralyse the common action of those two Powers, Germany concluded that the moment for aggres- sive action was at hand. Ignorant of the profound transformations of the French soul during the months following the fall of M. Delcasse and the Casablanca incident, and deceived by the " humanitarianism " of England's rulers, and the laissez-aller of her people, Ger- many took a hasty resultant of the international forces visible to the naked eye, and neglected all those subtler 180 PROBLEMS OF POWER elements of her problem which less official, less responsible observers had detected and publicly noted. Moreover, she had not only to consider her relations with the powers of the Triple Entente, but to maintain her hegemony within the narrower limits of her own political system, the Triple Alliance. For the last three or four years it had seemed as if German leadership were being contested by Austria-Hungary. When Count d'Aehrenthal made up his mind to regularize the status of BosniarHerzegovina, the Austro-Hungarian Minister had been less dazzled by the apparition at his side of his German ally in shining armour than William II might have hoped. The " briUiant second " had shown him- self a possible first if the allies should be called upon to run many more races together. It was true that the authority of the Triple Alliance had been enhanced in Europe by the failure of the Triple Entente to force Austria-Hungary to a Conference intended virtually as a High Court to the bar of which Count d'Aehrenthal was to be summoned. But the watchful knew that Germany knew that Austria-Hungary knew that if the scheme of a High Court had failed it was owing less to Germany's support of her ally than to the lack of a common policy between France, England, and Russia, and most of all to the Quai d'Orsay's natural hesitation to take any step that might alienate the sympathy of Austria-Hungary. That Power had beautifully backed France at Algeciras, and the growth of her authority, within reasonable limits, coidd not but be to the advantage of the French policy for the maintenance of a perfectly balanced Europe. In short, while — -what with Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Pots- dam, and Anglo-Franco-Russian ataxy — ^the Triple Alli- ance seemed to be steadily humiliating the Triple Entente, Germany's special diplomatic position, relatively to that of Austria-Hungary, was far less satisfactory than it appeared superficially to be. Some magnificent stroke of policy was really, as the French say, " indicated." Hot from the secret disappointment of her discussions A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 181 with France for the elaboration of a Moroccan condo- minium, Germany devised the Coup d'Agadir ; and in sending the Panther to an Atlantic port of Morocco, she counted on France's being frightened out of her wits and on England's refusal even to notice what she had done. She counted, perhaps, above all on England's blindness, and even on her incapacity to intervene. That Germany should have blundered so prodigiously implies, after all, that British things were in a perilous condition. And that was indeed the case ! England had reached a crisis due to a partial and startling breakdown in that very machinery of repre- sentative parliamentary government which she herself had patented. •'■ It is a radical defect of parliamentary government that such government is committed to stop-gap initiatives, a process which is the negation of positive governmental efficiency. The foresight that is an essential charac- teristic of a national policy — ^the foresight which a Mon- archy like that of Germany, where the Emperor and Chancellor are independent of the Reichstag, or a Consular Republic like that of the United States, where the Presi- dent is largely responsible, can readily exercise — such a foresight tends to become impossible in parliamentary regimes like those of France and England, where virtually single Chambers, dependent on the masses, readily sacrifice national to local interests, and intimidate the Government or Cabinet by the constant menace of with- drawing their support. Yet without prevision a State is doomed. Under a parliamentary regime national in- terests wait on the good pleasure of the average man (or on gelatinous coagulations of the average man), whose ^ " Well ! but where is the British Constitution to-day ? What has it become ? It is as battered and unserviceable as a wooden battle- ship. The Constitution is a venerable relic that might be put in the British Museum, or into the new Stafford House. . . . We are to-day in a revolutionary atmosphere, and we must not shrink from revolu- tionary expedients — ^if they will save us as a great nation." — Frederic Harrison, letter to The Times y March 27, 1914. 182 PROBLEMS OF POWER sole ambition to-day, as in the Roman epoch of " bread and circuses," is to satisfy immediate demagogic claims, and the limit of whose vision is, at the most, the horizon of his parish. Thus, England finds herself to-day con- fronted with a life-and-death problem of maintenance, not merely of her " prestige," but of her national security (though her prestige has been for several genera- tions the chief guarantee of her security), owing largely to the fact that when the German Emperor declared that *' Germany's future was on the water," the British Minis- try were prevented by the parliamentary system of government from assuming certain responsibilities which, had they been untrammelled by humanitarian " little Englanders," they would have looked unhesitatingly in the face. Again, France has lost a vast portion of the Congo because a meddlesome Socialist Opposition regu- larly scared her wisest statesmen into inactivity. Be- lated action is an inevitable characteristic of public policy under a parliamentary regime ; and it is rare that, given the nature and the speed of world-evolution in our time, belated action is not futile action. The coup d'epee dans Veau of the French proverb is the most accurate symbol of the eloquent, but aimless, gestures of Govern- ments that have to give chronic account of their deeds to parliamentary assemblies. The tide that Shakespeare noted in the affairs of men cannot be taken at the flood when five hundred " citizens " are squabbling as to the boats to be selected for the voyage; as to whether the crew is to be syndicalist or jaune, native-born or " sarra- sin " ; or as to the reading of the sextant at the moment when the watch is taking an observation. What the five hundred will eventually do is to force their ofiicers to embark on a cranky craft without a sail, exposed to the mercy of the most accessible current of the moment, in the puerile hope that all the winds will be favourable and that the current will after all set in the nick of time in the right direction. It is obvious that when, as to-day, States are busy with A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 183 problems of social betterment, occupied, that is, in the practical realization of the modern idea] of social solid- arity by the framing of demagogic measures partially inspired by the desire to secure votes,^ a considerable proportion of the public fortune is sure to be diverted from the channels through which it might be made to fill a moat of defence about the entire nation and dis- tributed into an inner network of canals for the alleged irrigation of the national soil. The budgets of modern States, in spite of the colossal expenditure for national defence, tend constantly to swell their items of social legislation, and such provisions as old-age pensions, working men's insurance, subsidies to labour organiza- tions, the nationalization of railways, are becoming char- acteristic methods for the spending of public money, while at the same time they are inevitable obstacles to the construction of Dreadnoughts, the equipping of air- fleets, and the formation of army corps. In other words the clamour of the populace, or the tumult of the mob, armed by the humanitarianism of our special form of Christian civilization, possesses, in the devices of universal suffrage and parliamentary government, sure instruments for the immediate and frequently selfish utilization of the wealth of the community, and for the satisfaction of party interests and class appetites in injudicious and often anti-national ways. England has been, for the last few years, a very beauti- ful instance of these truths.^ The accession to power of * The device is classic, for the surenchdre of the French deputy is only the modem form of the Roman panem et circenses. 2 France as well. M. Messimy, the Minister of War in the Viviani Cabinet of 1914, was in 1906 reporter of the War Estimates at the French Chamber. In his report he said: *' Comme les nations hberales, ses voisines et amies, la France a vu combien I'accroissement indefini des depenses militaires rendait difficile le noble ideal de civilisation et de progr^s qu'elle poursuit. ... Si Ton ne pent trouver d'autres ressources pour r6medier k la mis^re, h la pauvrete et h, I'ignorance qui sont la cause de la perte de tant de nulhers de vies, il faut sans crainte et sans hesiter, prelever quelques dizaines de millions par an sur les budgets de guerre pour les oonsacrer aux oeuvres de preservation contre la maladie] et la mort, sur les budgets de 184 PROBLEMS OF POWER a humanitarian doctrinaire liberalism, with radicalistic roots and demagogic leanings, the surrender of England's destinies to a Cabinet dominated by public men mystic- ally inflamed with a " holy " passion for the improvement of the masses, and either ignorant or unmindful both of the principles of statecraft and of the conditions of British prestige, provided an excellent object-lesson of the unadaptability to a self-respecting democratic so- ciety of the purely representative form of government. One of the colleagues of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith, Lord Morley, has perfectly described the faults of ardent spirits who take to politics in a stirring age:— " Pierced by thoughts of the ills in the world around them, they are overwhelmed by a noble impatience to remove, to lessen, to abate. Before they have set sail they insist that they already see some new planet swimming into their ken, and touch the promised land. The abstract, d priori notion, formed independently of experience, inde- pendently of evidence, is straightway clothed with all the sanctity of absolute principle. Generous aspiration, exalted enthusiasm, is made to do duty for reasoned scrutiny. They seize every fact or circum- mort pour les donner aux budgets de vie." How systematically — " injudiciously and often anti-nationally " — the French Chamber has applied these demagogic maxims is shown by the following facts: When General Andre was Minister of War from 1902 to 1905, M. Combes being Prime Minister, the War Office Administration demanded 262,000,000 francs. The Minister proposed 166,000,000. The Cham- ber voted only 134,000,000 ! When General Picquart was at the War Office, from 1908 to 1910, M. Clemenceau being Prime Minister, and M. Caillaux Minister of Finance, the War Office Administration de- manded 267,000,000, the Minister proposed 216, and the Chamber voted 214 ! What was the result ? Agadir. After 1912, the succes- sive Ministers of War, MM. Messimy, MiUerand and Etienne, co-operat- ing with Ministers of Finance less professional and of a less demagogic temper than M. Caillaux, diminished by only four miUions the sum demanded by the War Office Administration, 389,000,000, for the defence of France. In 1913, the Briand Cabinet was obHged to demand of the Chambers extra war-credits amounting to 420,000,000, in order to continue the task of remedying the evil effects of the principle so complacently appUed by the doctrinaire Socialist-Radicals in office. Germany is spared as yet these absurd consequences of representative parliamentary government of which France and England are so proud. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 185 stance that makes their way, they are bUnd to every other. Inflexible preconceptions hold the helm. They exaggerate, their sense of pro- portion is bad."i British policy, under the direction of Mr. Lloyd George, tended to lack proportion ; it became a policy of parochial- ism. 'The Imperial Idea seemed to have vanished from the brains of British politicians. Englishmen had had forced upon them a prolonged constitutional crisis, which would have been worse than futile if it had not happily served the purpose of arousing the bewilderment and the dismay of the Dominions, and thereby contributing (to- gether with the episode summed up by the words Canadian Reciprocity, the meeting of the Imperial Conference, and later on, the Gowp of Agadir) to save England from an insular grave. The debate on the Parliament Bill, which for months absorbed the entire attention of political parties, at a time when the Triple Alliance was strengthening its position in the Middle East from the Balkans to Baghdad, showed many things, and showed especially the weakness, the absurdity of party government based on the " rights of the majority," but above all showed that England's primordial interests were being neglected. That a system of party government based on the " rights of the majority " is by no means a satisfactory way of organizing democracy, is being proved with re- ductio ad absurdum clearness by the experiments now making all over the world. It was abeady sufficiently indicated during the British crisis, which resulted in the Parliament Act — the measure abolishing the right of veto of the Upper House while giving it a " suspensive veto " — by the facility with which the Prime Minister became a " tyrant " in the provisional interests of his party. That crisis emphasized the necessity of an electoral reform ensuring the representation of minorities — and it may be said, without insisting further, that it illustrated the truth that the French pre-Revolutionary conception of popular 1 Address, June 28, 1912, ss Chancellor of Manchester University. P 186 PROBLEMS OF POWER rights, the socio-political organization of the Old Regime, on which popular liberties had been organized in syndi- cates of interests known as " Etats*^ was a more practical and more really democratic system than the English in- vention of representative government. But it must be granted that no one who accepts the traditional British view of " party government " had a right to criticize Mr. Asquith's action on the ground of its illogical char- acter. Evidently the King, broad basing his policy on the English democratic theory of the sovereignty of the people, and accepting the British notion of party govern- ment founded on the majority system, regarded the General Elections that renewed the Liberal " Mandate " as possessing all the virtue of a referendum. By tem- porarily — and constitutionally — becoming a Radical, and resisting the appeal of the irresponsible Conservative statesmen to cease to be a Constitutional Sovereign, the King showed himself more conservative than the Con- servatives. He probably saved his country from Revo- lution. It was plausibly argued that the upshot of the long debate over the Parliament Bill — namely, Mr. Asquith's letter (his " coup d^etat "), menacing the House of Lords with an arbitrary increase of the Liberal majority (by means of the device known as the " Prerogative of the Crown " for the creation of new peers), so that the existing dominant majority of Conservatives might be outvoted and the Upper House coerced into a line of action parallel with that of the House of Commons — showed that govern- ment in England to-day is Single-Chamber government based on the party system. It was pointed out that, for the menace to have any reality, its efficacy should not be beyond doubt ; and that its efficacy would be doubted if there existed any known constitutional recourse against its realization. The fact that the Prime Minister used the menace for his party ends was everywhere interpreted as a proof that he was the master of the King's Pre- rogative. But the conclusion was not, in logic, con- A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 187 elusive. The fact that the head of a disciplined majority in the Lower House should be in a position, by using the *' Prerogative of the Crown," to carry out his will as to legislation in the Upper House implies, not one thing, but two things : that either the King is a coerced, or that he is a willing, accomplice of the Prime Minister's action. In the former case the King " rules " but does not " govern," which is, indeed, the British constitutional boast, and, for England, the definition of a " Constitu- tional Sovereign " ; in the latter case, the King's own re- sponsibility is engaged, but the theory of the " Constitu- tional Sovereign " annihilated. It was of the highest importance, therefore, to ascertain (and Mr. Balfour was intelligent enough to put the question) when, and in what conditions, the King was ready to use his Royal Prerogative; for, if he promised the Prime Minister to create peers, provided the Prime Minister should one day want them — the method of the " blank cheque " ; that is to say, if he let the Prime Minister understand that he held himself to be constitutionally at the beck and call of the Prime Minister, irrespective of his own feelings or views — ^he thereby acquiesced*.in the traditional British view of the Constitutional Sovereign, and illustrated, at the same time, the vast difference between the British Constitution and, say, the American, as regards the role of the head of the State. His action showed, once again, that in the English system there is no check, as far as the sovereign's role is concerned, to hasty or ill-considered legislation; such action, in a word, tended to enhance the despotism of the representative assembly. If, on the other hand, the King agreed to use his Prerogative only in response to the Prime Minister's specific appeal at a specific crisis, he was thereby acting not as a " Consti- tutional Sovereign " of the alleged British constitutional form, but as an independent organ of the machine of government, as, indeed, a Head-of-the-State, like the President of the United States, who possesses the power of veto and uses it in virtue of his normal constitutional role. 188 PROBLEMS OF POWER The question put by Mr. Balfour as to the date of the guarantees given the Prime Minister by the Crown was therefore not merely a matter of historical interest, or of curious inquiry. A clear answer to that question was re- quired in order to comprehend the real nature of the political crisis in England, or indeed whether that crisis was in reality a constitutional crisis. It was imperative to know how and why the King's Prerogative was trans- ferred to the Prime Minister, for use in connexion with the Parliament Bill, before it was possible positively to conclude that government to-day in England is Single- Chamber government ; that is to say, a reversion to the dangerous form of Assembly which g^?ew up during the French Revolution, and is at the antipodes of the forms evolved, under the inspiration of more rational ideas, to surround the expression of the people's will with steadying checks. Even, however, if the King acted in the spirit of an independent chef dJetat — lending his Pre- rogative for temporary application to a special situation, as an American President in the interests of the nation exercises his veto for particular ends — such combined action on the part of Commons and King against the Lords could not but diminish the prestige of the Upper House, and show the need of a readjustment of its " con- stitutional " role — while at the same time it exposed the institution of the Monarchy, qua institution, to legiti- mate discussion as regards its role in the British Con- stitution. What was obvious was that Mr. Asquith's action did not at any moment clear up the confusion reigning in men's minds as to the reciprocal relations of the several parts of the British constitutional machine. It is more difficult to-day than ever to feel sure what is the role of the King; what that of the Commons, what that of the Lords ; and these ambiguities show clearly for the first time what confusion exists in the British Constitution. They hint at the advisability of defining the diverse functions of the parts of the State by a paper Constitu- A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 189 tion which shaU both embalm old precedents and prepare the nation for new situations. In any case the creation of fresh peers — that is, the sudden circumstantial packing of an Upper House with members friendly to the Govern- ment, in order to pass Government measures — would always have to be regarded as a bungling method of representative government, even if it were not an arbi- trary or possibly a revolutionary measure. A Prime Minister, and, indeed, any statesman, will invariably be excused for adopting revolutionary methods if he can prove that a Constitution is unworkable. But he will not be approved for upsetting a Constitution if all he can say is, " It doesn't work as I should like it to." Mr, Asquith argued that his action was justifiable because the country was behind him, with two General Elections to the good for the proof of his argument. But that was not proved, since only a precise referendum on a definite question can ever prove such a point as that. At all events, the episode served merely as an object- lesson showing the flimsiness and not-up-to-dateness of the so-called British Constitution. Mr. Asquith's action, revolutionary in its manner, was not so clearly un- Constitutional as to be really Revolutionary ; and it will have served the end of hastening the necessary movement making for a reform that shall provide England with a real Constitution, in harmony not only with the social and economic evolution of the Three Kingdoms, but, above all, with the new requirements of an Empire composed of five self-governing nations of equal status and common interests. Throughout the disastrous period of England's absorp- tion in her constitutional crisis, Germany was engaged in difficult and secret negotiations with France, in pursu- ance of the common efforts of the two Powers to apply their Agreement of 1909. As her newspapers showed, Germany was fully aware of the germs making for the disintegration of England. The signs of national, as well as of constitutional, crises in England were indeed 190 PROBLEMS OF POWER becoming so ominous and so abundant that they were attracting the attention of the entire world. One of the most startling of these signs was the negotia- tion between Canada and the United States over the question of Reciprocity. Owing to the failure of the British Government and Parliament to put into efEect in good time the Imperial policy defended by Mr. Cham- berlain, the British Colonies had been rapidly moving towards a state of all but complete independence. For several years they had been insisting on the right to be called " Dominions," and Canada, notably, had concluded commercial treaties with other States, indifferent as to the possible consequences for British trade. The so-called British Empire was falling asunder. And when in the latter half of 1910, the President of the United States proposed to the Prime Minister of Canada a reciprocity treaty " that," as he himself put it in a private letter to Mr. Roosevelt (January 10, 1911), "would make Canada only an adjunct of the United States," the British Government had so completely lost the reins of sovereignty that all they could devise to save Canada for the " Empire " was, in Lord Haldane's words, " sym- pathetically to watch " the astounding colloquy between Mr. Taft and Sir W. Laurier. With deliberate un- concern, the noble Viscount said: " We are going to leave the British merchant to flourish in the future as he has done in the past under Free Trade, and to leave the British Empire to hold together by bonds of sympathy " (House of Lords, May 18, 1911). The policy of the Cunctators and the Pilates, the policy of washing one's hands of all responsibility, is often con- venient, but is not always followed without risk. Canadian loyalty was later on to save Imperial honour, but the British Government did nothing to put themselves into a state of grace making England meet for such salvation; they did nothing to prevent the sudden snapping of the ties linking Canada to the Empire. In general, at this juncture, the reticence of British island- opinion was a A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 191 spectacle that seemed, in itself, to be less a proof of tactful and dignified discretion than a kind of stoic morituri salu- tamus addressed to Britain's offspring. Shakespeare seemed to have foreseen this horn* when he made Lear say:— " Meantime we shall express our darker purpose, Give me the map there. — Know that we have divided In three (five) our Kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age; Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburthened crawl towards death. . . .'* To be sure, when Lear was quite spent with an intolerable despair, Kent saw where succour lay, and Cordelia came from France to bring her father's spirit peace : — " But, true it is, from France there comes a power Into this scattered Kingdom. . . ." France was not Canada; France could do nothing to arrest the fateful gravitation of the great North- American Dominion towards the pull of its mighty neighbour ; and France, moreover, was even at that very hour unwittingly indulging in a dangerous experiment. She was fishing in the troubled waters of the negotiations consequent upon the 1909 Agreement with Germany, an Agreement which, if it had been really applicable, would have rendered the Entente Cordiale no more than a matter of past history. The statues which surround the memorial monument to the Great Queen in front of Buckingham Palace assumed in 1911 the aspect of Gonerils and Regans personifying the Daughter States; and when the noble Coronation Procession disappeared through the Arch down the perspective of the Mall, it required no blending of fantasy with the imagination to perceive the Venerable Mother, as she looked on her wilful daughters in the dusk of evening, take on the semblance of a weeping Niobe. The tragic spectacle was the finest comedy for Eng- land's enemies, but it caused bewilderment in France. 1^2 PROBLEMS OF POWER "It is her own soul that Canada risks to-day," tele- graphed^ England's Imperial poet, the man who had done most to render the soul of the average Englishman articulate. " Once that soul is pawned for any con- sideration, Canada must inevitably conform to the com- mercial, legal, financial, social, and ethical standards which will be imposed upon her by the sheer admitted weight of the United States." "Not so," had said President Taft publicly, " all talk of annexation is bosh " — the same President who had privately solicited for his policy the approval of the founder of American Im- perialism, his predecessor Mr. Roosevelt, with the assur- ance that Reciprocity would " make Canada only an adjunct of the United States." A candidate for the Presidency, with jubilant indiscretion, had publicly de- clared that such was indeed the case And England's best friends did not doubt it, nor did they doubt that Canada was irrevocably lost to the Crown. Even so per- spicacious an observer as Rear- Admiral Mahan did not doubt it. Writing in the Century Magazine on " The Panama Canal and Sea Power in the Pacific," he pointed out that the military effect upon Sea Power of the Panama Canal would be the facility with which the navy of the United States and " that of the Government controlling Canada " could pass from one side to the other, in sup- port of either coast, as needed; and he added that he had advisedly used the words " the Government controlling Canada," for, while Canada was a part of the British Empire, it was " difficult, in view of current political discussions in Canada, especially those touching the ques- tion of support to the Empire, not to feel that the pre- ponderant tone there did not in that respect reflect that of Australia, New Zealand, or even of South Africa." Rear-Admiral Mahan concluded — with all the world, before the fall of Sir W. Laurier, in the year of Agadir, and while the United States and England were signing ^ From Bateman's, Burwash, Sussex, on September 6, to the Mon- treal Star. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 193 an Arbitration Treaty for the settlement even of ques- tions of National Honour ! — that there " did not appear to be between Canada and Great Britain that strong dependence of mutual interests of defence of which the British Navy is the symbol and the instrument." He deeply regretted the fact, but the fact seemed incon- testable ; there was no gainsaying it. Indeed, viewed from the United States, in the late summer of 1911, England's plight seemed even more terrible than when it was contemplated from Paris in 1910 and before July 1 (Agadir), 1911. It was obvious that the effect of Agadir on European politics would be all to the good, that the stupid coup would finally and definitively weld the Entente Cordiale, galvanize Eng- land, re-temper the French national soul, and establish for yet a few sure years the European balance of power. But " Reciprocity," and the doubtful issue of the Im- perial Conference of British Premiers, had bared to the nations the misery and nakedness of England. Her old- time Imperial optimism appeared to have migrated to the North-American Atlantic States. From Montreal to Boston, from Boston to New York, from New York to Charleston and Atlanta, the magic word " Reciprocity " seemed to be a kind of mystic password ushering in the new era, the century of the Panama Canal, and giving an opportunity for all the admittedly belated readjust- ments of the Monroe Doctrine. In general, and always, on the American Continent, the air of individual liberty, of reciprocal trust, of tolerant and untrammelled thought, that men breathe is lighter, more invigorating, than in Europe; and, as the breasts of the self-reliant citizens of the Western communities expand, the well-being that pervades their organisms is one that the long-disciplined inhabitants of an older society have never known and find it difficult to under- stand. In 1911 the Americans, those to the north of the Great Lakes as well as those of the United States, seemed to be more than ever keenly aware of the differ- 194 PROBLEMS OF POWER ence between themselves and the Europeans. " Reci- procity " appeared to them quite the most natural thing in the world. The fighting on the American Continent during the past three centuries, as ex-President Eliot of Harvard has pointed out, has not been of the sort which most imperils liberty. The French and English wars furnished a school of martial qualities at small cost to liberty; and the War of Independence was, like the war of 1 861, a " Civil War " ; the one was as much a Rebellion as the other. Both were waged in defence of the British tradition of Free Institutions, and both resulted in a reinforcement of the ideal of individual freedom. Nothing is more characteristic of the temper of human nature on the North American Continent than the fact that in 1817 the same President who was to give his name to that proud American doubled-edged policy known as the Monroe Doctrine signed a Convention with Great Britain by which England and the United States should maintain on the Great Lakes only a few insignificant vessels for the policing of those shores. No buffer State or bristling armament impeded the natural advance into England's Canadian territory of the spirit of individual American self-reliance; and the new Reciprocity Treaty of 1910 and 1911 seemed to be but the natural, the inevitable, consequence of this pacific penetration of Americanism. It was the contagion of " American " ideas that engen- dered that peculiar Canadian form of the Monroe Doc- trine to which Sir W. Laurier gave expression when he reiterated at the Imperial Conference the intention of Canada never to become embroiled in a British quarrel unless it suited her to do so; and the anti-Imperialistic Anglo-Canadian Convention as to the relations between the British and Canadian navies was but the formal con- firmation of this resolve, and the definite expression of the feeling behind such utterances. Sir Wilfred Laurier, returning from the Imperial Con- ference of May 23 to June 20, had sailed triumphantly up the river from Quebec amid cheering crowds on the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 195 wharves, and shipping decked with bunting. He was welcomed in Montreal as the champion of Canadian autonomy. He himself acquiesced, declaring that he had fought at the Conference " for the equality of the two races and the vindication of Canada's rights as an au- tonomous country." He added: "We were asked to endorse a proposal for the creation of an Imperial Council, which would decide miHtary and naval policies and the taxation of the people. I opposed this, because it would have been an abrogation of our rights and opposed to the doctrine of responsible government. ' ' This proud affirma- tion of a policy avowedly in opposition to the " imperial Jingoes," this appeal to Canadian national sentiment, was made by the statesman who had hurried home " to renew the fight for Reciprocity," an idea which he cherished, not because he loved the United States, but because he believed that by its realization he would all but definitively secure Canadian independence. He had neither Mr. Rudyard Kipling's nor Rear- Admiral Mahan's sense of the risks. His speech was made on July 12. Just twelve days before, the European Governments had been informed by the German Chancellor that the Panther was to be sent to Agadir. Nine days later, at the Lord Mayor's banquet in London, Mr. Lloyd George made the speech which, rattling round the world, showed that at last England had awakened. The Chancellor of the Ex- chequer reminded Germany — and he reminded the Do- minions — -that the British Empire was still in existence; and that national honour and the security of England's great international trade were not party questions . . . " Reciprocity " was doomed ! Sir Wilfrid Laurier had opposed a proposal for the creation of an Imperial Council which should decide military and naval policy and the taxation of the people. He had virtually repudiated the Empire^ and affirmed the detachment of Canada; and ^ After having (and this should never be forgotten) " long and earnestly striven for that Britannic trade policy which alone could justify the conception of Britannic alhance -in -perpetuity." Between 196 PROBLEMS OF POWER Mr. Fisher, at the same Imperial Conference, had seriously suggested that the Conference should be extended to include Foreign Powers — fatuities that seemed to echo the incredible British ignorance of world-conditions, and be one with the sublimely stupid efforts to avert the risks of war by signing unrestricted Arbitration Treaties. Less than three weeks before Agadir, the Committee of the International Arbitration and Peace Association had voted the following resolution : — "This Committee expresses its satisfaction that the Colonial Con- ference has rejected a scheme for a Central Imperial Council which would have seriously hampered the freedom both of the United King- dom and of the Colonial Governments, would have put India at an even greater disadvantage than at present as compared with the rest of the Empire, and hy emphasizing unnaturally the question of Imperial Defence would have been liable to increase the tendency to military and naval panics.'* Indeed, when the Imperial Conference rose, so unsatis- factory was the outlook — notwithstanding the fact that the representatives of the Dominions had been " admitted into the interior of the Imperial household," had been shown the very " arcanae imperii, without any reserva- tion or qualification "^ — that it really seemed as if Eng- land must make up her mind to the loss of her Dominions, to the loss of the Empire, and as if the only attitude left her, in face of the German hordes, was that of the Roman senators when the barbarians appeared on their thresh- olds. A doctor in political science, investigating Eng- land's plight at this hour, would have prescribed as fol- lows : She must learn to look facts in the face ; abandon her dilatory tactics; cultivate the habit of intellectual probity^ — tear the scales from her eyes; recognize that 1897 and 1907 the Canadian Government did ever3rthing in their power to obtain Britannic reciprocity without appearing to dictate. Cf. The Britannic Question, by Richard Jebb, pp. 113, 145. (Longmans, 1913.) ^ Speech of Mr. Asquith, final sitting. 2 People who do not want to believe what they beUeve are pre- destined to the habit of believing what they want to beUeve. This means that the people who have a tendency to beUeve what they want A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 197 the old game is up; that the Colonies are not Depen- dencies, but full-fledged Dominions; that no cut-and- dried scheme of Union can ever bind these Daughters to the Mother-Country ; and, concentrating all her energy on the conservation of Union within the Island Kingdom, and on the preservation of India, Egypt, and the Islands of the Pacific, awake to the truth that Europe is Europe, and that as long as Germany is Germany the Britons and the Gauls have a common interest and must hold together. The British Imperial Conference ended its deliberations on June 20. The date of Agadir is July 1. Almost exactly one year later, July 10, 1912 — Reciprocity having been buried, the Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty paralysed — Mr. Borden, the new Prime Minister of an awakened Canada, stated in London, whither he had come to confer on the lessons which Agadir had finally revealed even to the Anglo-Saxon world, that the sea defence of the Empire could best be secured by one navy; and he added: " The Canadian ideal is one king, one flag, one Empire, one navy — one navy powerful enough to vindicate the flag, and maintain the integrity of the Empire." The crisis was over ! England was to be saved by the Dominions !^ As regards Canada herself, what had taken place was quite simple. The Canadians, who are firmly resolved at all costs to maintain their autonomy, fancied in 1910 and 1911 that Commercial Reciprocity with the United States was the shortest cut to national independence; to believe are they who hesitate to look facts in the face. Humanity as a whole is not so stupid as it appears to be. Denial of evidence is due more often to intellectual cowardice — lack of intellectual probity — than to positive ignorance. Cf. the apathy of British opinion with regard to the problem of Ulster and Irish Home Rule. ^ " It is scarcely a paradox to say that in the world as we know it to-day, the German fleet alone is worth a hundred times as much as Imperial Preference or even an Imperial Council, as a cement of the British Empire." — The Foundations of British Policy , by J. A. Spender, p. 40. 198 PROBLEMS OF POWER and the same people rejected Reciprocity because they suddenly became convinced that the only way, after all, to save their national soul was to lose it, not to the United States, but to the Empire. The ends sought by Sir Wilfred Laurier and Mr. Borden were identical. Their methods alone differed. In the Canadian case it has happened that second thoughts were best. Under the Stars and Stripes Canada would inevitably have been absorbed. Under the Union Jack she will perhaps be- come what her late Governor- General, Earl Grey, pro- phesied of her on July 10, 1912, " the controlling part of the Empire." Among the results of the Coup d'Agadir none was more unexpected, and none obviously of more far-reaching consequence. England, moreover, was no longer " to shake all cares and business from her age," and, " unburthened, crawl towards death." To-day the lines addressed by Walt Whitman to " America " seem to have been meant for the older country : — " Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, All, all alike, endear'd, grown, ungrown, young and old. Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich. Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love. A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother Chair' d in the adamant of Time." BOOK III BOOK III THE foregoing attempt to analyse the political history and domestic crises of the European Powers, and of the two rival nations in North America, will have served, however imperfect it is, to justify certain remarks made in the earlier pages of this Essay. Not only will it have shown that " to chronicle the doings of any individual nation without writing at the same time the history of all other peoples is no longer possible," it will also have illustrated the more general truths formulated in the statements that " behind the fa9ade of Governments two occult powers — Money and Public Opinion — are now de- termining the destinies of the world," and that " national spirit is manifested only when nationality is menaced." It is not infrequently held that the time is approaching when the coaHtion of political passion and of social hatred and envy will completely dominate what still remains of national feeling or prejudice. It is, at all events, a fact that, as M. Rene Pinon says,^ " A travers les frontieres tend a s'etabUr F inter nationalisme des partis." He goes so far afield as to recall that Philip of Macedon, Alexander, and later on the Romans — when they undertook to sub- jugate Greece, where a refined civilization veiled the mortal vice of class war, and the inexorable antagonism of rich and poor^ — were always able to count on the com- plicity, either of the plutocracy careful of its interests, or of the demagogue whose tyranny was menaced. Certain modern parallels, notably Germany's choice of methods ^ La lutie pour le PacifiquCy p. 185. 201 9 202 PROBLEMS OF POWER in her efforts to subjugate France, might be more perti- nent. In modern Europe, continues M. Rene Pinon, " money has been an element of universal corruption, it has upset the normal play of the governmental and ad- ministrative machinery, it has destroyed all ideaUsm." The facts, as they have already been presented in these pages, hardly seem to warrant so sweeping an indictment : ideaKsm, at all events, seems still to hold its own in spite of the " corrupting " power of wealth. In agreement with the diagnosis herein attempted of the nature of contemporary unrest, Signor Guglielmo Ferrero notes^ that the European peoples are beginning again to care for other things than their economic organization and questions concerning the balance of trade. The interest- ing fact is that modern peoples seem to crave both ideal moral satisfactions and economic well-being: they want Reform as much as they want Money. It is probable that this apparently curious inconsistency is no incon- sistency whatever. It is likely that the growing love of order, the general desire for reform, and the outburst of nationalism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the recognition of the fact that money is to-day the chief instrument of rapid and successful action, are different aspects of the same state of mind. In any case, it is absurd to prejudice a question of this kind. No answer to it can be reasonably attempted before considering a characteristic collection of those concrete economic factors that are so fast tending to cosmopolitanize the still distinctly differentiated rival nations and peoples. II When, in 1847, at the Congress of the Communist Union held in London, Karl Marx and Engels launched the cry: "Proletarians of all countries, unite your forces ! "; when in 1866, at Geneva, working-class dele- 1 " L'ld^al et la Richesse " : Le Figaro, September 10, 1912. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 203 gates from all over Europe drew up the statutes of the "International Association of Working Men"; when, finally, the revolutionary aj-my organized by the General Confederations of Labour of the world, abandoned the Marseillaise for the sinister battle-song of the Inter- nationale,^ these battalions of the proletariat overlooked the fact that the growth of the very causes which had produced the illusion of a similarity of interests uniting the working classes in all countries against the employer and the capitalist, was soon to shatter that illusion, through the action of a new factor. That new factor was the world-wide emigration of the working man in search of better labour conditions and a higher wage. The socialists or the anarchists of the Internationale, who repudiated so fiercely every form of patriotic or national feeling, who condemned gods, Governments and armies in their humanitarian anti-mihtarist frenzy, found themselves face to face with a set of facts which gave a surprisingly foolish look to their internationalism. Thus the Italian labourer is overrunning the globe, and 1 II n'est pas de sauveur supreme, , Ni Dieu, ni Cesar, ni tribun. Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-memes ! Decretons le salut commun ! t * * * * Les rois nous soiilaient de fum^es, Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans ! Appliquons la greve aux armees, Crosse en I'air et rompons les rangs ! S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales, A faire de nous des heros, lis sauront bientot que nos balles Sont pour nos propres generaux ! Refrain. Debout! les damnes de la terre ! Debout ! les for9ats de la faim ! La raison tonne en son crat^re, C'est I'eruption de la fin. Du passe faisons table rase, Foule esclave, debout, debout ! Le monde va changer de base: Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout ! 204 PROBLEMS OF POWER becoming the rival of the American in New York, and of the Frenchman in Provence, in Lorraine and in the lie de France. The German and the Swiss are colonizing Paris, the East of France, South America, London. The Pole is pullulating on both slopes of the Vosges. The Scandinavian, the Russian Jew, the Hungarian, and now the Kabyle, are elbowing the native-born of every country. So overwhelming is the mounting tide of immigration in the United States and certain of the British Dominions that almost annually now for a quarter of a century those countries have felt called upon to raise higher and higher dykes against the influx of undesirables} In fact, to use the words of an excellent observer, M. Henri Joly, of the French Academy of Moral and PoUtical Sciences, " working men, when they gaze from afar across the boundaries of their several countries, look upon one another as allies, and even as brothers; but when they are brought face to face they become rivals, and they then alter their policy'' In every country to-day the labour syndicates — the very organ- izations that had invented the notion of revolutionary " direct action," and the device of the general strike in ^ On May 23, 1914, the London Times contained the following article: "The arrival of the Komagata Maru with 375 Indians on board at Victoria, British Columbia, brings to a head a crisis which has been slowly approaching for a long while past. Behind the Imperial aspects of the case, whether all subjects of the British Empire should be allowed freely to move about from one portion of the Empire to another, lies the wider question of the mixing of East and West. The problem recently assumed acute proportions in South Africa, where thousands of Indians under Mr. Gandhi endeavoured to enter the Transvaal from Natal, and struck work as a protest against the levying of the yearly residence tax. More recently we have had General Sir Ian Hamilton in New Zealand sounding a warning against the Oriental, ' who lives on rice ' and monopohzes business. For a long time the labour market in British Columbia has been swamped. Hundreds have been endeavouring in vain to procure work. This state of things is partially due to the immigration of unfit white people, but also to the numbers of Orientals who have secured entry into the country — according to the census returns of 1911 there were 19,568 Chinese alone in British Columbia. The Japanese threaten to absorb the fisheries; every small shop is held by a Chinese. As our correspondent at Victoria says, it is felt that Asia is knocking, and knocking persistently, at the door of Western America." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 205 order to manifest their impatience with the policy of legality followed by the socialist leaders and classic trade unionists — these syndicates are calling on Governments and Parliaments to protect them against the alleged dis- loyal competition of transient foreign labour. Who has forgotten the action of the local carpenters' union after the destruction of San Francisco ? The annals of in- dustry in every country in Europe are filled with the records of strikes, labour riots, murders even, consequent solely upon the international competition of the working classes. In fact, the whole theory of class war, with its corollary of the Internationale, would thus seem to have been a very hasty generalization. At all events for the moment internationalism in the labour world appears, in ^ its curve of evolution, to have taken a direction parallel with that of internationalism in the political world. This is another example of the fact that nationalism is mani- fested only when national integrity is menaced. The growing claim of organized labour in the several nations to deal with the majestic phenomenon of migra- tion, to demand, that is, state intervention, in the form of legislative measures, against the possibility of foreign competition, calls for even closer analysis. This pecu- liarly picturesque socio-economic movement has been brilliantly studied by the Italian writer Signer Giu- seppe Prato in his book II Protezionismo Operaio (Turin, 1910).^ The legislative measures in question assume the double form, first of protection against the invasion, the real presence, of the foreign labour, and secondly of customs protection against the cheap pro- ducts of the foreign workman. Under the pretext of the " protection of national industries," the demand for " tariff reform " and the interdiction of " undesirables " occur everywhere simultaneously. Mr. Chamberlain, as far back as August 1904, declared that along this path lay England's safety. " Where would be the 1 Translated into French by M. Georges Bourgin : Le Protection- nisme Ouvrier. 206 PROBLEMS OF POWER logic," he asked in the House of Commons, " if the foreigners to whom we wish to close British territory could, by remaining in Hamburg or in Poland, manu- facture products with which they could inundate our markets ? " And even the very peoples who, as ex- porters of labour, ought to foster every form of economic laissez-faire, the Italians and the Japanese for instance, keep step with the other rival nations and heed the demand of their proletariat for a " barbaric " exclusive- ness. Quite recently the European Governments had to protest against a project of the Italian Government to interdict in Italy the presence of foreign insurance companies,^ and Italian labour organizations have more than once demanded arbitrary measures of expulsion against foreign employers established in Italy; while the same Japanese workmen who protest against Ameri- can restrictions on immigration have called on their Government to exclude Chinese labourers from Japan ! The spectacle has an ironic, even a fine comic quality ; but irony and absurdity seem to characterize most manifestations of the human mob. At all events, the tendency to act absurdly is general; and while such action is unjustifiable from the point of view of pure economics, it is natural and inevitable in the light of what we know of human motives and of the psychology of crowds, above all those of the organic communities, welded together by common traditions and common hopes, known as nations. The orthodox economist, the doctrinaire, " scientific " ideologues, may protest that the protectionist "nationalistic" movement in question is all wrong. Their anguish does not alter the fact of its existence. Even so impartial an inquirer as Signor Prato, the first to co-ordinate the immense mass of facte illustrating what he calls " working-class protectionism," refuses to dwell on any but the purely economic aspects of this world-wide phenomenon, and writes with the same imperturbable logic untempered by common sense 1 See p. 360 et seq. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 207 that Mr. Norman Angell applies to the problem of international disarmament. " The truth is," he says, " that it really matters little to humanity to know what area is to be reserved in the future to the expansion of the various races. What greatly interests it, on the contrary, is to have the assurance that none of the natural sources of wealth, the rational exploitation of which may bring about the greatest general well-being, is to be diverted from human uses by the monopolizing selfishness of little organized groups."^ The " monopolizing selfishness of little organized groups " is " scientific " tautology for " national in- terest"; and until Political Economy has done its worst and " Humanity " becomes a reality — -so long, that is, as the word Humanity remains only a metaphy- sic fiction — 'it will matter much to the several " little organized groups " — -to the Italian nation, to the French nation, to the British nation, to the Servian nation, or even to the Chinese nation, as the Boxer riots showed — whether they are suffered to expand or simply to exist in their own way, without the friction of alien elements tending to alter their national character and to destroy their cherished parochial prejudices.^ Signor Prato admits that influences of climate, traditions, language, the milieu, family affections and patriotism,^ may on occasion be obstacles in the way of that ideal mobility of human merchandise, that normal flow of immigration, which rejoices the hearts of the economists. But these sentiments he regards as baneful fictions with which science not only should, but can, do away; for him they are barbaric prejudices, retarding the progress of civilization. Yet it does not seem that the problems raised, for instance, by contemplation of the socio-economic, polit- ^ Le Protectionnisme Ouvrier, p. 119. 2 How resist recommending to Signor Prato's attention in this con- nexion the typical case of the closing down of the great steel mills at Gary, Indiana, in October 1912 o\ving to the sudden departure of soma 2,750 workmen of the Slav races in order to rejoin the colours in the crusade of the Balkan States against the Turk ? /3 P. 250, work quoted. 208 PROBLEMS OF POWER ical conditions in the mining regions of the frontiers between Prussia, Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg can be completely illuminated by the application of so sim- plified a generalization. Thus, for it matters little where the observer takes his stand, more than eighty per cent, of the houses in the French portion of the valley of the Meuse are owned by their occupants. These proprietors are shrewd peasant farmers who do all that can reason- ably be expected of any man to keep the birth-rate within decorous limits. In 1904 the excess of births over deaths was 143. The motives of the Meusian peasant are Malthusian; they are the logical conse- quence of his desire not to Continue dividing up an inheritance of fields which has already suffered painful partition. He adapts himself as best he can to the pro- visions of the Napoleonic code, and what is the result ? It is noted by Captain Vidal de la Blache in his monograph on The Lorraine Valley of the Meuse (Armand Colin, p. 139): *' les bras manqueraient a la terre sans I'emploi dee machines agricoles et sans la main d'ceuvre etrangere (allemande, luxembourgeoise, beige)." The polyglot speech of the international nomad, is, in fact, beginning to offend the traveller's ear all down the gentle vaUey of the Meuse, and it becomes tolerable — although even then solely for aesthetic reasons — only when heard be- neath the shadow of the gloomy, almost feudal, for- tresses, veritable towers of Babel, the foundries and blast furnaces of the valley of the Chiers, at Longwy, or Mont-Saint Martin. But more prolonged immersion in this cacophony, here, even here, above all here, evokes thoughts of which the poUtical economists have wisely washed their hands. And these thoughts are multiplied a thousandfold by more intimate acquaintance with the serfs who swarm in and out of still other feudal for- tresses, the monster iron foundries and the gigantic steel works, of which the gleam reddens the night sky of Luxembourg and Lorraine. The observer will learn there, to be sure, if he has never learned before, the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 209 impossibility, the futility, the absurdity even, of erecting Chinese walls between the nations, with the object of preventing the reciprocal exchange of products or of human merchandise. Unquestionably such walls are bound to be scaled by the nomad labourer.-"^ They are doomed to be undermined by the burrowing forces — ■ " pacific penetration " — of international trade. The " patriotic " ideal of converting the several nations into water-tight compartments, within which each people may work out its salvation in sacred separation from its neighbours, obviously ignores the most characteristic material, and many of the moral, forces of the modern world. Yet there is still left the main question as to what is really becoming of nationality under the action of these forces. In this connexion it is interesting to examine with some detail the single case of Luxembourg. Within the last twenty-five years, in that picturesque little Duchy — which seemed predestined to remain one of the tranquil backwaters of civilization — ^the discovery of a rich subsoil has internationalized industry and cosmopolitanized a rural population. All the economic and social conditions have been transformed. But what is the real nature of the transformation ? As one of the members of the Luxembourg Chamber said, during the debate of December 1911 on the proposed mining concessions : — • " When so many foreigners and so much capital come to our country they must inevitably form a State within the State, and this situation will certainly become more serious. We, the people of Luxembourg, must take our precautions, lest we be treated as foreigners in our own country. The danger lies in the fact that we are being dispossessed of our country, and, so to speak, losing our nationality, owing to the intervention of a foreign industry." ^ Annually, for the past fifteen years, the population of Briey has increased by 5,000 souls. On January 1, 1914, the inhabitants numbered 128,000, 71,957 of whom were foreigners; 46,237 of these foreigners were Italians, 11,389 were Belgians, 6,151 were Germans (not counting the immigration from Alsace-Lorraine, amounting to 2,500), and 3,684 were from Luxembourg — in a word, 60 per cent, of the population are foreigners. 210 PROBLEMS OF POWER Any observer on the spot will understand these appre- hensions, and his briefest inquiry will show how firmly they are rooted in fact. He will discover that the members of the Luxembourg Chamber are besieged with applications from the youth of Luxembourg for places in the great metallurgic industries of the country, places which it is impossible to obtain because they are occupied by foreigners. At Differdange, out of a popu- lation of 15,000, there are 6,000 Germans; yet, owing to the German mining law, many Luxembourgeois have been obliged to leave Alsace-Lorraine, where they had been employed as overseers by local mining com- panies. The obligation which the Luxembourg Govern- ment has imposed on the concessionaires of mines to consume the products of their mines in Luxembourg itself, by the building of forges and of iron and steel works, is not an effective remedy to this " evil." The Minister of the Interior, M. Braun, calculates that 60 per cent, of the men employed in the metallurgic industry of Luxembourg are foreigners.-^ The popula- tion of the Grand Duchy has increased in five years by 13,436 persons, but out of the total number of in- habitants in 1910— 259,891— nearly 40,000, or 15-28 per cent., were foreigners. Each has grown with the mush- room speed of an American town. In one entire quarter the visitor hears only Italian spoken. And with the growth of industry the cost of living has immensely increased, while wages have risen 50 per cent, since 1894. From this startling movement of " prosperity '* the inhabitants have no doubt reaped a certain benefit, but the chief beneficiaries have been the German iron- masters, and at this very hour the whole economic, not to say political, future of Luxembourg is in the balance, owing to the efforts of the famous German metallurgist, Herr Thyssen^whose activity, by the way, has at the same time been successfully manifested in Normandy — * See Luxembourg Memorial, Debate, December 20, 1911. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 211 to obtain the concession of all the mines still at the disposal of the Luxembourg State. The European aspects and bearings of industrial energy of this admir- able German kind are, one would suppose, too obvious to be overlooked. The Luxembourgeois themselves are becoming alarmed. They dread their eventual absorp- tion by German capital. The above quoted words of a member of the Grand Ducal Chamber were subsequently echoed, in the same debate, by a colleague who ex- claimed: " What would happen if our national interests were to find themselves in conflict with those of one of the immense German establishments ? Would there not be reason to fear that Berlin would exercise pressure on the country ? " It is likely that the Government of Luxembourg has not failed to learn the lesson of Tangiers and of Agadir. But it would be incredible if, in face of the local anxiety aroused by the progress of Germany in Luxembourg, the Quai d'Orsay did not see that a rapprochement with the Grand Duchy is now possible. England, whose interests are less immediate, has had the courage to favour her capitalists in their efforts to thwart the Germans in their systematic efforts to convert Luxembourg into a Prussian fief: the whole of the Grand Duchy is soon to be lighted by electricity produced by turbines working in water captured from the Sure by the science and capital of Englishmen. It is a first blow dealt to the rapidly growing German domination of a neutral and independent State. France, on the other hand, notwithstanding the over- tures of the Luxembourg Government, still delays to take the only step which can effectually restore her prestige in a region that she should prevent at all costs from becoming Germanized: the construction in the valley of the Chiers of a canal which shall open Dunkirk, Antwerp and Rotterdam to the metallurgic industry of the Grand Duchy. France, which purchases annually from Germany some fifteen millions of tons of coke for use in the metallurgic works of Longwy and of Briey 212 PROBLEMS OF POWER — ^and which, for this reason, hesitates to exclude foreigners from participation in French mining con- cessions, lest the interdiction should be followed by reprisals — France would manifestly recover more than the disbursement represented by her dependence on German coal should her Minister of Commerce revive a measure which would be as welcome to his own Eastern compatriots as to the Luxembourg Government. The present moment, moreover, is a critical one. It is inter- esting to recall that the successor of Kiderlen-Waechter, as Secretary of State for foreign affairs, is Herr Gottlieb von Jagow, who in 1908 was German Minister in Luxembourg. His four years subsequently passed in Rome will not have obliterated the impressions he gathered in his quiet post overlooking the French Eastern frontier. If France does not bestir herself she will awake within a few years to the fact that the Treaty of Vienna has been automatically revised, and that the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is no longer an independent Power. The German flag, now flying from the donjon of Hoh Koenigsburg, will then be hoisted on the ruined heights of Vianden, in full view of the windows of the house where Victor Hugo wrote UAnnee Terrible. Ill If ever the Powers, if ever France, were forced to tolerate such a fact as this, it would be because they had failed to fashion in their arsenals the only kind of weapon which, in the twentieth century, is a really effective instrument of combat. Trade, no doubt, follows the flag; but more often the flag follows trade, and if the nations are awakening to the fact that their autonomy is being menaced by German financial initia- tive and by German industrial enterprise — and it is not only the smaller Powers, Holland, Belgium, Luxem- bourg, Switzerland, but even France and England and Brazil which are face to face with the problem of A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 213 stemming the German commercial tide — the fault is their own ; they have hitherto neglected to employ suitable arms against their now insinuating, now brow- beating rival. There is thus a point of view, the detached scientific point of view, from which it is impossible not to acknowledge that Germany deserves all she has got, or all that she is ever likely to get. The old agrarian Germany has become a vast work- shop, dependent on the foreigner for its food supplies. It imports cereals and other food-products for one- seventh of its population, nine millions of its in- habitants. So true is this that Herr von G winner, the Manager of the Deutscher Bank, has, perhaps not extravagantly, said: ^' If Germany were to lose her commercial clientele, she would be obliged to become aggressive." At all events the Germans are ceasing to emigrate. Germany annually summons from abroad some 750,000 agricultural labourers.-^ She is bound, in her struggle for life, to insist on an open market in order to make money enough to purchase the foodstuffs which she is unable to produce at home. This, no doubt, is the secret of the growth of her naval budget; and there is no logical obligation for the other nations to regard her fleet as a predestined instrument of aggres- sion. It is the great manufacturers, the " business interests," in Germany, who are most convinced of the need of a powerful fleet. ^ In reply to the British First Lord of the Admiralty, they insist that such a fleet is not a " luxury," but a vital necessity.^ It exists for 1 The latest statistics of the German Labour Exchanges show that Russia provided Germany in 1913 with 317,000 labourers, Austria 281,000, Italy 69,000, Holland and Belgium 64,000, and Hungary 20,000. If Russia were to close its western frontier, Prussia would be deprived of 300,000 labourers absolutely necessary as farm-hands. This is the trump-card held by Russia in view of the negotiations for the renewal of her Treaty of Commerce with Germany. 2 Cf. the " Inquiry " opened by the Nord und Sud, July 1912 and note 2, p. 278. 3 " The British navy is to us a necessity, and, from some points of view, the German navy is to them more in the nature of a luxury." — Speech by Mr. Churchill before the Clyde Shipbuilders. 214 PROBLEMS OF POWER the protection of German trade as the British fleet exists for the protection of England's trade. Whatever the added chances of international collision created by its growth, the original motives of this expansion may fairly be ascribed to economic causes unmixed by belli- cose intent. One can admit all this impartially, and yet find it the more difiicult to account, on the basis of this so-called natural hypothesis, for Germany's refusal loyallj^ to accept England's recent practical proposal for diminish- ing the naval rivalry between the two Powers. And the difficulty grows when the observer notes that, simul- taneously with this refusal to adopt the British scheme for parallel and proportionate diminution of naval power, Germany votes, immediately after the conclusion of the Moroccan arrangement with France, a sum of nearly £50,000,000 for the creation of two new army corps, one of which is to be stationed at Sarrebourg, linking the forces at Metz and Strasbourg, exactly as though she meant to put in speedy practice the well-known plan of her general staff, which General von Bernhardi has thus bluntly justified: "Germany's object is to crush one of her foes before the other has dreamed of intervention. In such tactics as these lies Germany's salvation." At the same time Germany is increasing the strategic railways which lead to the frontier States^ ; she is widening the Kiel Canal,^ and is zealously seek- ing to reform the financial system which is, perhaps, the Achilles tendon of her power. All these acts, mani- festations, tendencies may be merely coincidental, and, ^ The new Malmedy-Stavelot line is connected with the German miUtary camp at Elsenbom, and with Cologne, Coblence and Treves. Another line parallel to the Belgian frontier runs south from Aix-la- Chapelle. ^ The extension works were begun in 1907. The canal has already been made two metres deeper, and has been doubled in breadth, so that at certain points Dreadnoughts can be turned. The distance between Kiel and Wilhelmshaven for battleship purposes is reduced from more than 500 to only 80 nautical miles. Tne new locks at Brunsbriittel and Holtenau are the largest in the world. Work on the canal still continues. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 215 in so far as they are the sign of a reflecting policy, the mere indication of a wish to render Germany impreg- nable against attack. But in presence of facts so numerous, so easily admitting of a contrary interpreta- tion, it is logical for even other than British observers to conclude that Germany constitutes a danger to peace and that the danger lies, as Mr. Balfour said in the Nord und Sud in June 1912 — " in the co -existence of that marvellous instrument of warfare which is the German army and navy, with the assiduous, I had almost said the organized, advocacy of a policy which it seems impossible to reconcile with the peace of the world or the rights of nations. For those who accept this policy, German development means German territorial expansion. All countries which hinder, though it be only in self-defence, the realization of this ideal are regarded as hostile, and war or the threat of war is deemed the natural and j&tting method by which the ideal itself is to be accompUshed.''^ The impression, in a word, is inevitable that not only does the peace of Europe depend on Germany but that the prosperity of Germany lies in her own hands. If she possessed the force of character to abandon the aggressive policy of the last ten years ; if she could con- vince herself, and then convince the Powers, that the motives of her political action are peaceful, that she is not trying to dominate the universe; if she were to repudiate the majestic dreams of Pan- Germanism, the 1 The origins of Anglo-German misunderstanding are more remote, however, than Mr. Balfour has felt called upon to indicate. Edward Bernstein, the German Socialist, summarizes them in his pamphlet on " The English Danger and the German People." They started, he thinks, in 1879, when Germany maugurated a protectionist tariff system, which injured British trade. England's distrust of Germany was increased when the latter began to develop a colonial policy. Some years later the situation was aggravated by the famous Kruger telegram, followed by German Anglophobia during the Boer war. Thereupon Germany hastened the construction of her fleet. Why feel surprise, asks Herr Bernstein, if Edward VII immediately undertook what has been called the encerdement of Germany ? By proclaiming herself the Protector of Islam, Germany continued to alarm the Mus- sulman Powers, and the whole Moroccan business was calculated, says this German authority, with extraordinary impartiahty, to pit the Powers agahist Germany. 216 PROBLEMS OF POWER theories of the General Bernhardis, she could quietly take the most brilliant and practical revenge for all the humiliating rebuffs of Tangiers and Agadir. By the employment of a method diametrically the opposite of the disquieting, aggressive attitude she has chosen, she could, if she liked, outstrip all the Powers in the accu- mulation of wealth and in world expansion. As long as Germany remains a menace to America, and to France and England, by showing that she fancies herself obliged to oust France and England from the points of the globe in which they have taken root, she imperils her economic and industrial interests, and, what is more important still, she makes it impossible for such Powers as England and France to follow their natural bent, the organization of a pacific world society. It is doubtful whether France has gained any added military strength by her declaration of a Protectorate in Morocco. She is probably weakened in her Conti- nental military power by taking possession of a region which for a generation will require at least one whole army corps to poHce it.-^ The Colonial Powers that have won so much territory during the last twenty years at the apparent expense of German prestige might easily be undone by Germany, whose genius for a certain kind of Colonial expansion — a very practical kind, and perhaps the only kind that tells — is superior ^ In March 1911 France had 12,132 men engaged in Morocco. At the end of May this figure was almost exactly tripled. Since then the rise has been steady. On December 1 , 1 912, the French troops operating in Morocco were 61,609, of whom 1,503 were oflScers. On February 1, 1913, France had immobihzed south of Tangier 63,804 men, and the item of Moroccan expenses in the estimates for 1913 amounted to nearly £6,500,000. In May 1914, at the moment of the occupation of Taza, French effectives in Morocco numbered 75,000 men. It should, however, be instantly noted that not 6,000 of this corfs d^occtcpation were metropoUtan troops. In these circumstances the Temps is, perhaps, warranted in affirming (May 21, 1914); " C'est une mauvaise plaisanterie de parler tou jours d'un des corps d'armee dont la France d'Europe est privee au profit du Maroc." Any diminution of the effectives in Morocco will be for the benefit of Algeria and Tunis. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 217 to theirs. It is perfectly true, as Mr. Norman Angell says/ that there are to-day more Germans in France than there are Frenchmen in all the Colonies that France has acquired in the last half-century; and German trade with France outweighs enormously the trade of France with all the French Colonies. The late Prime Minister, M. Caillaux, argued, in his speech defending the Franco-German Agreement with regard to Morocco and the Congo, that the possession of Colonies was pure vain-glory in comparison with the advantages to be secured from the probable international commercial arrangements of the future. France is to-day a better Colony for the Germans than they could make of any exotic Colony which France owns. The distinguished German Socialist, Edward Bernstein, points out in his pamphlet, " The English Danger and the German People," that German imports into South Africa amount to £38,000,000, whereas British imports hardly reach £4,000,000. In a word, German expansion is the wonder of the world. Germany's real Colonies are countries she has never owned. German colonizers are of the cuckoo-race. They prefer nests built by others. The pity of it is Germany does not know this, or that she is making up her mind that others suspect her of knowing it, and are taking their precautions accord- ingly. Germany is a parvenu Power, and full of Pan- Germans who want to " make history," and not merely to " make money." Germany deserves our sympathy. She lies in the centre of Europe, an enemy — one of them mortal — ^on each hand, the two Powers of the Dual Alliance; and when she lifts her eyes from her eyry of Heligoland she beholds in the distance an island fortress manned by men whose one principle of inter- national action has been to prevent any single Power from dominating Europe, and who are closing their 1 The Mirage of the Map. Bulletin of the American Association for International Conciliation, No. 53. 218 PROBLEMS OF POWER Dominion markets to her trade. She possesses — for futile ends that have nothing to do with the vital problems of economy — ^two jealous "allies": restive, megalomaniac Italy, whose King is biding his time to declare himself the latest of the Roman Emperors, and an Aehrenthalized Austria which has ceased to be satis- fied with her role of a " brilliant second," and is in patriotic duty bound to avenge the humiliations entailed by the recent Balkan War. In international relations Germany is reduced to a day-by-day, almost a minute- by-minute, policy of opportunism. Forced to defend, in Europe, a status quo based on the intolerable crime and egregious blunder of the Annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, when Italy makes war on Turkey, and upsets German prestige at Constantinople, Germany's one hope is to revive Crispianism, to pit France against Italy, and in general to evoke an Italian nationalism which will render her more necessary to her Austrian ally. Besides this, there are all the domestic ills, the simmering unrest, the doubtful social future overshadowed by the fundamental contradiction between the democratic Con- stitution of the German Empire and the feudal character of the Prussian State.-^ Moreover, the leaders of Ger- many's foreign policy have for ten years raised rash 1 See UEs'prit Public en Allemagne, by Henri Moysset (Felix Alcan); Lea Embarras de V Allemagne, by Georges Blondel (Plon); and, above all, La Crise Politique de V Allemagne Contemporaine, by William Martin (Felix Alcan j. A significant event occurred on January 30, 1913, in the debate in the Reichstag on the expropriation of Polish proprietors. That assembly passed a vote of censure on the Chancellor. He came forth, no doubt, constitutionally intact, because he depends not on the Reichstag, but on the Emperor, but the incident was a sign of the times. This is the first time the German Democracy has made use of its new liberty of voting, after an interpellation, on a Govern- ment measure. It will not be the last. " On a dit jadis: La France s'ennuie. L' Allemagne d'aujourd'hui commence a s'ennuyer, car elle n'entend jamais parler ni d'une initiative, ni d'une volonte, ni d'une decision de son gouvernement. II n'y a plus a Berlin qu'un seul maitre, le prefet de poUce. Un semblable regime peut durer long- temps, pousse par la force d'inertie. Mais il ne repose plus sur rien, car la confiance du peuple s'en est allee. Tout est en transformation dans ce pays, ... la fid^Ut^ aussi bien que I'economie nationale " {Crise Politique de VAUemugne Contemporaine, pp. 69, 70). A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 219 hopes in the German people, and yet steadily showed themselves incapable of coping with the complex prob- lems confronting them. Meanwhile, the youthful opti- mism of the plutocratic German oligarchy, nourishing, like the American, colossal fancies, dreams of improvising, with the aid of a golden wand, a Titanic civilization superior to any that has preceded it. The Pan-German centaurs, in the spirit of the Valkyrie out-riders, are ready to plunge rough-shod, singing their mystic battle songs of Commercial Imperialism, over the Gallo-Roman fields on which they gaze from the summits of the Vosges. Thence, traversing the Atlantic, they are braving the Monroism of the North Americans in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and in three great States of Southern Brazil. In the provinces of Santa Catalina, Parana and Rio Grande do Sul 350,000 Germans dominate a population .that contains not more than ten per cent, of native-born Brazilians. The Germans occupy there some 8,000 square miles. They are at last realizing the dreams of the rich bankers of Augcburg, the Velzers, who, three centuries ago, purchased from Charles the Fifth a vast Venezuelan province.-^ And it is one of the ironies of history that, at the University of Harvard, on the sacred soil of old Massachusetts, one of the most mettlesome of these German centaurs, dis- guised as a professor of philosophy, should profit by the hospitality accorded to him to battle openly against the Monroe Doctrine, urging the citizens of the United States to cease their vigilance as regards the invasion of the South American Continent by the European. The excellent German who is so diligently and patriotically engaged in spying out the American Canaan for the glory of the Deutschtum, has found perhaps unexpected allies among the more innocent compatriots of Wendell Phillips and Emerson. The Atlantic Monthly contained recently a brilliant but specious article opposing the ^ See Les DemocrcUies Latinea de V Amerique, by F. Garcia- Calderon, pp. 267-274. 220 PROBLEMS OF POWER fundamental policy of the United States on the question of the Monroe Doctrine, and inspired by a fanatical hostility against the " present inhabitants of Latin America." " Let us have a new Pan-Germanism," ex- claimed the anonymous author of this article, preten- tiously entitled " A Letter to Uncle Sam." " Let our race {sic) get together. ... If you, who owe so much to the German in this your own fair land, in the civilization they have brought here. ... If you still want to fight these splendid people — who want to find expanding room as you once sought and found expanding room — in order to bolster and uphold the wretched travesty of a tyrannous dictatorship masquerading as a paper republic, sir, you have forfeited the world's respect; you have not adjusted yourself to the new day; you are an inadequate steward; you are a reUc of the nineteenth century, and you will richly deserve the thrashing you will Burely receive." Because Germany complains that the British Empire and the Monroe Doctrine are blocking her expansion, does England, then, and do the United States, owe her the same kind of " compensations " which she claimed from France in the dark days of 1911 ? This eloquent pro-Teuton — masquerading as a kind of German- American midwife for an AUemania groaning in birth- pangs, officina et vagina gentium — proposes that the United States should say to Germany: "Welcome to South Brazil "; that, at the same time Germany should say to Great Britain: "Sleep in peace. We have no further need of your possessions"; that Germany and Great Britain should both say finally to the United States: " We guarantee your status quo and your para- mount and indisputable interests on the American hemisphere from Canada to the Equator"; that all should say to Brazil, and Brazil should say to all: — but that he does not tell us ! It is obvious that this writer has not yet got at the root of the matter. He knows that the economic neces- sities of a nation determine its policy ; but it is no longer, as has already been made clear, because Germany needs, A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 221 or even wants, to possess new territory, as an outlet for a surplus population, that she constitutes a danger. On the contrary, statistics show that her sons are ceasing to emigrate, that her birth-rate is steadily falling, and that she has even to import labourers from abroad. Count Posadowsky, Herr von Bethmann- HoUweg's predecessor in the office of Imperial Minister of the Interior, insisted on these facts, in November 1 91 1, in an electioneering speech at Bielefeld. Germany, he argued, " had already an enormous territory to open up which would cost a lot of money just when they had made the imperial finances more or less balance." Antagonism on the part of the Great Powers to terri- torial expansion by Germany in tolerable climates was as dangerous as blocking up the safety valve of a steam- engine. " It was, however, absolutely untrue that Germany was at present over-populated and needed room for her surplus people. The truth, on the con- trary, was that Germany had to import hundreds of thousands of foreigners to till German soil and work German mines." She wants an open market, and that is an ideal, no doubt, which British Imperial Preference would endanger. But more even than an open market in which to sell her goods, she wants an open market from which to buy other essential products, the posses- sion of which is to-day a matter of life and death for her. She is scouring the world for iron. During the first ten years after the Franco-German War German industry advanced with magnificent strides, under the fostering influence of the ZoUverein.-^ The French milliards of the war indemnity helped to swell the mounting tide of industrial and commercial expan- sion. When, in the period from 1880 to 1891, Bismarck introduced a protectionist system, and at the same time neglected to create a colonial empire capable of becoming 1 See Blondel: UEssor Industrid et Commercial du Peuple AUe- mand (Paris, Larose) and UAllemugne aux Ahois, by Henry Gaston. Preface by General Bonnal. 222 PROBLEMS OF POWER the national receptacle of the over-production at home, he seemed wantonly to be trying to arrest the steady advance of the previous ten years. The neighbouring nations exercised reprisals. The number of foreign markets diminished. Yet the German population was rapidly increasing. An industrial crisis ensued. Then it was that the German began to emigrate in droves. A fresh war might have helped to solve the situation. Instead, Germany decided to alter her economic policy. Between 1891 and 1907, accordingly, she followed the system of signing commercial treaties with the different Powers. Prosperity seemed to return. German manu- facturers once again launched forth on what appeared to be the route of a magnificent future. Now, instead of exporting her citizens — many of whom even returned from abroad — she lavishly dumped her products " Made in Germany " upon all the world-markets. Nothing comparable with this moment of her national life had ever before been seen, save in the United States, where the phenomenon of the daring commercial *' boom " took place in the same conditions. France, following a policy of recueillement and caution, both corresponding to her needs and characteristic of her prudent tempera- ment, allowed herself to fall steadily behind in the race for the capture of the world-markets, while Germany, plunging recklessly on, evolved a system of financial and industrial credit which it is necessary to analyse in order to comprehend the existing facts affecting inter- national relations. The magnificent development of German industry has been rendered possible by a flexible — but precarious — banking system. In Germany the banks, even the savings banks — which, in France, employ their deposits in the purchase of State bonds or in stable and well-guaranteed securities — scatter their money broad- cast, lending to manufacturers, discounting bills, or buying speculatively uncertain shares. In case of a " run " on a bank caused by a panic it is not always easy for the German savings A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 223 bank to reimburse its clients. The Pan-Germanists dis- covered this in 1911, when they disseminated a war- scare.-^ At the same time the great industrial banks felt the pinch, and their case illustrated the inconveniences of the German system. Germany is " rich," but it lives on borrowed money. The German Michael is kept in a semblance of health by chronic subcutaneous injec- tions. French or American capital is the galvanizing drug. German home capital does not suffice to fill the coffers of the banks that are constantly being emptied by the German manufacturers' and traders' demands for advances. The banks consequently have to procure money from abroad and they borrow where they can. Nowhere in the world is there a larger stock of available funds than in France. The French banks, therefore, are able to play a highly advantageous game with the German bankers. They lend their money at a good price; and if, when the loan has expired, the German banker finds it inconvenient to pay, and wants to renew the loan, the French bank acquiesces and receives a fresh commission. This is normal and remunerative banking butsiness, and it is in the common interest that nothing should ever occur to hamper it. But at a period of stress and strain, of economic or social unrest, and above all of war-rumour, France can no longer afford to lend. Ordinary prudence obliges the banks to hoard rather than disburse; when the German asks for money, the Parisian banker retorts by claiming the settlement of his loan; and the German banker is forced to pay his debts with real money instead of with promissory notes. The first and immediate consequence is that German industry is handicapped. If the tightening is prolonged, the great manufacturing and business enterprises totter and fall like packs of cards. To prevent such a krach the German banker, the great French credit establish- ^ Cf. Mermeix: Chronique de VAn 1911, pp. 289-308, 6; also Lea Orands MarcMs Financiers (Alcan, 1912). 224 PROBLEMS OF POWER ments being closed to him, makes a desperate appeal for funds to the money-kings of the United States. In September and October, 1911, Germany required 300,000,000 francs immediately. The American bankers saw their opportunity, and lent, at a rate of 6 per cent, and 7 per cent., money which in normal times Berlin could have got from Paris for 3 per cent, and 4 per cent. That was the price Germany had to pay for the luxury of flying her flag off Agadir. The object-lesson was one that any but Pan-German eyes could read. That the nation as a whole has prob- ably learned it was proved by the speech of William II. at the Kiel regattas in June 1912, when he reminded the people of the old Hanseatic principality that it is one thing to hoist your ensign at the mast and another to haul it down with honour. Unfortunately, however, no experienced observer will have regarded as an amende honorable this diplomatic liquidation of the humiliating episode of Agadir. It was, no doubt, an adroit effort on the part of the Emperor to make what the Americans call *' the best of a bad job," but it certainly marks on the part of the Prussian masters of Germany no diminu- tion in the passion for world- dominion, no change in policy; and it should be taken merely in connexion with recent warnings of Herr von Lumm, one of the members of the Board of Directors of the Reichsbank. He, at least, has drawn the inevitable and patriotic conclusion from the events of 1911 and 1912. In a series of articles in the Bank Archiv he reminded the German banks that, in scattering so recklessly the money deposited with them, and in failing to keep a stable stock in hand, they are doing their best to produce an explo- sion of financial and industrial panics. The figures cited by Herr von Lumm in respect of the speculations on shifting securities made at the Stock Exchange through the intermediary of the great banks, have so alarmed this competent observer that he counsels greater prudence and less precipitation, if Germany A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 225 does not wish to find her economic evolution hopelessly paralysed.-^ German industry, German trade, therefore, are con- stantly checked through a stoppage of fiduciary circula- tion, a kind of financial thrombosis, the temporary damming up of the canals of liquid money. Such are the possible disadvantages of the German credit system. But German industry is exposed to even greater risks from outside. ^Vhenever a world-market is closed to it, when tariff walls are raised against it, Germany exclaims : " We are being ' encircled,' hemmed in." It never seems to occur to her that other countries have the same " right " to favour their own industries as she has to develop hers. " We claim our place in the sun," she continues, as if any of the Powers had the slightest wish to deprive her of any unoccupied region with a southern aspect which she has the capital and the initiative to colonize. When- ever England, the United States, France even, have re- covered in the world-markets ground of which they had been temporarily deprived through the splendid campaign of the German travelling salesmen ; whenever these Powers establish trading stations in regions hitherto monopolized by the German manufacturer; when Spain slowly wakes to the possibility of creating her own public works instead of appealing to German capitalists and German engineers; when any other country that had formerly looked to Germany for aid learns to get on without her, the Germans begin to wonder if the whole world is not conspiring to throttle their national life. Such is the legend that has grown up in Germany, and England is uniformly regarded, and most unfairly re- garded, as the instigator of this alleged conspiracy. Lord Lansdowne, who, with M. Delcasse and the late King Edward, has been one of the chief agents of the " Time Spirit " in giving diplomatic shape to the present scheme of international relations, said in the House of ^ Cf. the articles by M. Andr6 Sayous in the Information, notably one published on June 5, 1912. 226 PROBLEMS OF POWER Lords on February 14, 1912, that when England came to terms with France, in 1903 and 1904, the two countries had " ample materials for an all-round understanding," but that " there was no such array of acute and out- standing difficulties between England and Germany,'.' for the excellent reason that during the twenty preceding years one British Government after another had been settling these questions as they arose. That is to say, Germany has no legitimate grievance of any kind. As a Times leading article had pointed out two and a half months before Lord Lansdowne, the Anglo-German Agreement of 1890, defining the British and German spheres of influence, not only in East Africa but in West and in South- West Africa, and ceding Heligoland to Germany in return for the British protectorate over Zanzibar, was the very first of the series of agreements afterwards concluded on similar lines with other Powers. This treaty was a public British acknowledgment of Germany's status as a Colonial Power. It was followed up in 1898 by an understanding which rendered Anglo- German competition impossible in the event of the Portuguese colonies coming into the market. A year later England allowed Germany to hoist her flag on the two most important islands of the Samoan group. In China in 1897 and 1900 England continued to manifest her sense of Germany's Colonial needs and " rights." In short, up to the moment when England decided to com- pose her differences with France, as well as with the other Powers, by bartering her Moroccan "rights" off against the " rights " of France in Egypt, Germany had never dreamed of propagating the legend of a world- cabal organized by England to thwart her progress. This legend is a fiction, but it is a fiction that has, in the German brain, to use the expressive word of a French philosopher, M. Fouille, all the characteristics of an idee- force. This legendary belief has resulted in the German notion that the rest of the world owes her something, that she must be bribed to lie down peaceably in her A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 227 kennel; and to-day no ordinary bone will satisfy her appetite for " compensations." Herr Hans Delbriick, a professor of history and one of the German mastiff's keepers, announced recently^ that the latest arrangement with France was only tem- porary, and that Germany now feels justified in claiming the Congo Free State, the Portuguese Colonies in East Africa (she would like England to steal them for her), Zanzibar, and what remains of French territory between the Cameroons and the mouth of the Congo. If Eng- land's arrangement with Russia with regard to Persia should result in a virtual partition of that country, Germany must put in further claims for " compensa- tions." " The world," says Herr Belbriick, " will have to get used to our applying throughout the world, wherever there is a change of frontiers, exactly the same policy that we employed in Morocco." This authority does not say whether he looks forward to this policy being employed with exactly the same result.^ If so, perhaps the Powers will not complain. The conduct, the attitude, the manner, and the manners of the Pan- German are reminiscent of an ingenuous confession of one Mr. Goodfellow, a traveller in New Guinea, who, writing to The Times on " Modern Men of the Stone Age," said: "The people we met in the unknown in- terior seemed to be extremely stupid. We used to strike matches in front of them, and do other things which we 1 Preussische Jahrhucher, March 1912. 2 On May 2, 1914, the Cologne Gazette pubUshed a Berlin letter which was an excellent sample of the German point of view. "All serious statesmen," said this semi-official organ, " are aware that we shall not let ourselves be eliminated from the economic competition in the various commercial regions of the world without doing the utmost to prevent this result. This lesson was clearly taught by our action in Morocco." The Cologne Gazette went on to define the " guiding principles " of " Neo-German policy " — namely, the " delimitation of certain territories in order to apply there German action in world - rivalry." In a word, Germany claims an indemnity from all the nations that have outstripped her in securing a footing as Colonial Powers in this or that corner of the planet. Such pretensions, as comic as they are pathetic, are to-day the shibboleth of German policy. 228 PROBLEMS OF POWER thought might interest them, but they would not look; they turned their heads away." Germany of late years has been behaving like these artless explorers. She thinks it clever to treat other world-tribes as primitive peoples, and is constantly trying to frighten them with Tartarin roarings or childish boos ! She keeps on stupidly striking matches ir; front of them, but they are ceasing even to look. Though the world's increasing armaments suggest a return to savagery, some one may yet say to Germany what a North Queensland native said to the British Commissioner, Walter Roth, who had been trying the match-striking trick. " Having," Mr. Roth says, " struck match after match before a crowd of natives who showed not the slightest signs of surprise, notwithstanding that a lucifer-box was an absolute novelty to them, I asked the interpreter to discover what those primitive children of nature thought of the performance. He informed me truly and tersely : ' He say, " What for no gib (give) it he (him) ? " He say, " You d fool, throw it away ! " ' " Meanwhile the legend of Germany's encerclement by England has been skilfully used by the German Govern- ment as a pretext for increasing its naval and military power, and whatever may be the pacific intentions of the Emperor, there is hardly a speech of his during the last ten years but has sedulously watered the soil in which such rank legends grow. In July 1900, at the launching of the ironclad Wittelshach, William II eloquently de- clared that the " ocean was indispensable to German greatness," and he defined his thought as follows : — " The ocean teaches us that on its waves and on its most distant shores no great decision can any longer be taken without Germany and without the German Emperor. I do not think that it was in order to allow themselves to be excluded from big foreign affairs that thirty years ago our people, led by their princes, conquered and shed their blood. Were the German people to let themselves be treated thus, it would be, and forever, the end of their world-power; and I do not mean that that shall ever be the case. To employ, in order to prevent it, the suitable means, if need be extreme means, is my duty and my highest privilege." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 229 Suiting the acting to the word, William II landed at Tangiers and began, in Morocco, a policy which has not only signally failed of its object, but has aroused against Germany the hostile distrust, the suspicious vigilance, of the entire world. Such a policy of meddlesome aggressive- ness — a policy marked, as has previously been said, by inevitable contradictions — trembles like a paric-struck compass when the needle is beset in turn by influences from all parts of the horizon. What is the most important of these influences ? Allusion has already been made to it. It is the im- perious call of iron. The foregoing analysis of the in- ternational situation in Luxembourg will have given some idea of the nature of German unrest. It has been calculated that oy the middle of the present century the German iron-mines will be exhausted. Within thirty years the same fate wiU have befallen those of Luxem- bourg. When the iron-famine comes, the vast foundries and steel industries of Westphalia, Silesia, the Rhenish Provinces and the valley of the Sarre will have to put out their fires. Twenty millions of Germany's popula- tion will be driven to look elsewhere for a livelihood. Now, the iron-ore deposits which, in the twentieth century, are as indispensable an asset as corn-fields for a civilized community, abound just over the Franco- German border, in the department of the Meurthe and Moselle. In the basin of Briey there is iron enough to last for 250 years; and Briey is nearer than China, where there are still unplundered stores of coal. Ger- many thought she had included in the provisions of the Treaty of Frankfort all the iron-mines of Eastern France. The invention, in 1880, of the so-caUed Thomas process, which revolutionized the metallurgic industry, and the discovery shortly afterwards of the mines of Briey, re- vealed on French soil undreamed-of sources of wealth which became (as the author of UAllemagne aux Ahois puts it) a " veritable torture of Tantalus " to the Ger- mans over the border. But wiiile the iron in France is 230 PROBLEMS OF POWER practically inexhaustible, coal is by no means as abundant. Most of the coal required for the iron-works of the Meurthe and Moselle is imported from Germany. When- ever the Essen Syndicate in Westphalia chooses to do so, it can starve out all the iron-masters of French Lorraine. The situation is singularly simple. Germany says to France: " Give us iron, and I will continue to give you coal." What more tempting and reasonable basis for a commercial Entente, leading up to a political under- standing which would shatter the agreement between France and England, and, as Germany urges, surrender to France and herself the domination of the world ? Franco-German commercial, industrial and financial co- operation would settle all Germany's problems for a century. But, alas for German ambition ! the question of Alsace-Lorraine still remains unsolved. The history of France makes it difficult for her sons to regard as glorious the fate which befell Greece when she was con- quered by Rome. The German mentality, however, appears to be lacking in the delicacy to appreciate such susceptibilities as these. Their Government untiringly, even insolently, goes on seeking to bribe France into financial and commercial arrangements which, if accepted, would place France in virtually the same position towards her as this or that Central American State occupies to- wards the great Northern Republic. It is easy to show in detail the curious results of the Agreement of 1909, followed by a succession of necessarily unsuccessful efforts to form unobjectionable Franco-German Com- panies for the exploitation of Morocco, the Congo and the Cameroons. Fortunately, France is not altogether dependent on Germany for coal. She may buy it in England, and if worse comes to the worst, she can dig it out of the hitherto unworked mines in immediate reach of her own furnaces. A more enlightened and energetic policy on the part of her Ministry of Public Works would already have forced upon the Chamber of A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 231 Deputies the construction not only of a Canal through the valley of the Chiers, opening up Dunkirk, Antwerp and Rotterdam, but of the Canal du Nord-Est which is to link the Northern and Belgian coal-fields to the iron regions of Meurthe and Moselle. When France has done this, she will become for the first time commercially in- dependent of Germany, but she may have increased intolerably her neighbour's exasperation. The old formula that " a nation requires the army and the fleet of its foreign policy " will meanwhile have to be altered to read: " A country requires the army and the navy of its economic policy " [see p. 283]. Germany requires not only French and American gold to keep her credit system in working order; she requires also an army of foreign clients willing to buy her products, and she will shortly require French minerals to feed her hundreds of furnaces. '* France seems destined, if all goes well, to become the most powerful nation of metallurgists in the world. "^ The invasion of Normandy by Herr Thyssen, who is even now building three Tiauts fourneaux adjoining the mines of which he has obtained the concession, and the establishment in Meurthe and Moselle of two or three other German mining magnates, show what might happen if Germany's foreign policy were not so blunderingly conducted. Unable to induce France to forget, ex- asperated by her inability to induce France to sign an alliance with her, she shows her teeth. She goes to Agadir. As Mr. George Saunders, the Paris corre- spondent of The Times, has put it, she agrees to a friendly conversation, but on sitting down she lays a revolver on the table. Meanwhile, pending the moment when her armies may win for her the mines of Meurthe et Moselle, she is hunting for iron throughout the world. Writing on July 18, 1911, in the Daily Mail, Mr. Frederic William Wile, the Berlin correspondent of that paper, said : — I UAllemagne aux Ahois, p. 35. 232 PROBLEMS OF POWER " The Mannesmanns' mining activities in Morocco are said to be inspired by the necessity of assuring the German steel and iron industry new sources of ore supply. There is alleged to be genuine concern over the diminishing supply in German mines. Great firms like the Krupps, of Essen, " King " August Thyssen and Matthias Stinnes, the uncrowned potentates of Rhineland-Westphaha, are associated with the Mannesmanns in the Moroccan ventures, and between them make up the 25 per cent, of German interest in the Union des Mines Maro- caines which figures so conspicuously in the Moorish turmoil. The Krupps, Thyssens and Stinneses are also heavily interested in steel mills, iron mines, and transportation projects affecting their industry in Scandinavia and Russia, and have even estabhshed themselves in French Normandy."^ There are, no doubt, many indications that the Ger- man rulers may eventually come to regard a war as the sole solution for the life and death economic problems with which they are confronted. France, England and the United States appear to Germany to be blocking her way. The nature of the sole solution that can maintain the peace of Europe has already been stated. Germany must find some means of convincing the Powers of the purity of her intentions. She must cease her bluff and her bluster; she must become convinced that no nation in the world is capable of contemplating ^ For the details of the German metallurgists' dreams in Morocco see M. Andre Tardieu's " Le Mystere d'Agadir.'" A succinct statement of German operations in Normandy was given in The Times in October 1912 ; " Negotiations between the French concerning the EtabUssements Gail, and the Gewerschaft Deutscher Kaiser in Bochum have resulted in the formation of the Societe des Hauts Fourneaux et Acieries de Caen, with 30,000,0001, for the purpose of erecting and working a large plant, to include two blast furnaces having a yearly output of 200,000 tons of pig iron, and to be fitted with a complete gas-purifying plant. The scheme contemplates also the provision of rolUng mills for the manu- facture of sheets, sections, and merchant bars, and of coke ovens with apparatus for the recovery of by-products. The company have acquired a site extending over an area of 350 hectares situated in Herouville and Colonbelles (near Caen). The ore is to be obtained from the mines of Soumont and Perridres, worked by the Soci6t6 des Mines de Soumont, and an electric railway 35 km. long will be constructed to convey it to the works. The works are to be connected with a site on the sea coast where important developments are contemplated, and it is expected that they will thus be situated favourably in regard to the exportation of the finished products and the importation of fuel." There is as yet no mention of the establishment of a German coaling station. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 233 an attack on her; she must seek some outlet for that furor teutonicus invoked by a former Minister of War, General von Einen, in his Detmold speech, and she must cease to propagate at home the Nietzschean forms of mystical and metaphysical imperialism, that faith in the divine right of brute force which, inherited from Bismarck, inspires the oratory of her pan-German depu- ties, her press, and her capricious diplomatic action. Sir Edward Grey excellently described the present situation when he aeclared that if German policy really aimed solely at rendering Germany powerful, and not aggressive, " within two or three years every chance of war would have disappeared."-^ The German Emperor, who has in his veins a goodly proportion of French blood, should take to heart the lines of Corneille: Ne veuillez point vous perdre^ et vous serez sauves /2 IV The foregoing analysis of the plight growing out of 'Germany's industrial situation and of her perilous bank- ing system, is one which suggests as many arguments to the apostles of peace as to the most pessimistic of the prophets of war. The facts adduced might be used to ^ " Briefly, the object for Germany, if she desires to make an end of the Anglo-German contention, is to convince us that she is not aiming at a European hegemony in which we shall be the next victim after France is disposed of." The Foundations of British Policy, by J. A. Spender, p. 34. 2 The German Emperor counts, perhaps, on the economic " salva- tion " of his country through the medium of the Diesel engine, destined to render the steam-engine archaic. The invention of the Augsburg engineer consumes not only crude oil but coal tar. It is claimed, therefore, that it will prove to be a means for the utiUzation of coal much more economical than in the past; when coal is entirely con- verted into coke and coal-tar, the resulting economic progress will relegate the steam-engine to the Museums of AppUed Arts. Thus Germany, abundantly provided with coal, need no longer dread the future. But, by the same token, England, whose coal-supplies are even richer than those of Germany, will be able to maintain a steady economic advance. 3 234 PROBLEMS OF POWER illustrate the remarks of Mr. Norman Angell in his brilliant lecture read before the Institute of Bankers on January 17, 1912: "With the freedom of communica- tion in every sense that now exists in the world, it has become a material impossibihty to prevent French money aiding German trade in one form or another " ; just as they could be made to point the moral of the utterance of M. Jaures, in the French Chamber of Deputies, on December 20, 1911 : — '* The international action of the capital in the hands of the great bankers constitutes a formidable new power, which, if it is not con- trolled by opinion, if it is not controlled by Governments independent of it, if it is not controlled by enhghtened and autonomous Democracies, may prostitute pretexts of peace to miserable combinations, but which, if it is enlightened, controlled, supervised by great nations, independent and proud, may, at certain moments in the unstable equilibrium of the world, add to the chances of peace." Yet the same set of facts might, perhaps, with even greater force, be employed to controvert the whole main contention of these two seers. It is owing to the devices of banking, they argue, that two countries like France and Germany are able to divide their labour according to their characteristics, one country being a maker, and the other a user, of capital: "The very stagnation of France, which set free this capital, is precisely the factor which makes it impossible for Germany to crush her.** But the stagnation of France does not necessarily pre- vent Germany from trying to crush her. Such stagna- tion is no guarantee against the possibility that a peace- ful German Government, however profoundly convinced of the economic soundness of a thesis like that of Mr. Norman Angell, may, at some moment of international friction, be driven to make war in response to the clamours of a population grossly misinformed as to the hostile intentions of this or that foreign Power or set of Powers, or mortified beyond endurance by such a series of diplomatic rebuffs as the German people have had to endure of late, notably during the summer and A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 235 autumn of 1911.^ For ten years, moreover, German amour-propre has been in a constant state of irritation. The dramatic resignation of the German Colonial Minister, Herr von Lindequist, after refusing to sign a treaty exchanging Germany's magnificent hopes of Moroccan mines and an Atlantic port for what he called " the marshy anH rnalaria-haunted regions of the Congo," was almost a reflex action symbolizing the disgust of the German people with their rulers. At the signal an immense wave of foaming Chauvinism swept over the country. This patriotic movement, which forced the Government to increase the naval and mili- tary estimates, immensely reinforced the authority of the Pan-Germanist Association, of the Naval League and of the German Colonial Society. In other words, the German Government is pacific, but German opinion bellicose — because the Government has been blundering for ten years. For a century and a half Europe has been endeavouring to deprive Kings and Governments of the right to make war and peace. Philosophers and historians have argued that it was owing to the ambi- tions of Kings and the intrigues of courtiers that peace- loving nations had had to go to war against their will. This is the burden of the battle-song of the Interna- tionale ; and it has been thought that with the coming of an era in which war should depend on the people's will, peace would prevail throughout the world. But what answer is given by events ? If Turkey has lost Tripoli it is because the warlike enthusiasm of a new nationalistic Italy has forced the hand of her Govern- ment. It was the warlike temper of Bulgarian, Servian, Greek and Montenegrin public opinion, not the bellicose spirit of the Balkan Governments, that mobilized the Balkan peoples against Turkey in the autumn of 1912. In Germany, not merely the Opposition, but the Press 1 Compare, moreover, the risks of war during November and December, 1912, owing to the excited state of Austrian pubHc opinion in connexion with Servian pretensions to annexing a strip of the Adriatic coast-line. 236 PROBLEMS OF POWER have constantly reproached the Government for its pusillanimity. That public opinion upon which M. Jaures counts to " control," to temper, the action of the international bankers, cannot even " control " itself. The steadying influence of la haute finance, of finance in general, is certainly all that it is represented to be; but such peaceful influence as it exerts is exercised, in our time, almost solely upon Governments. In presence of the rise of a sudden gust of chauvinistic passion, Governments will be forced into line at the head of the self-maddened mob, and the philosophers in the van will have to advance with the rest.-^ It is not only by the scrutiny of the mechanism of German industrial and financial organization that the hidden springs of European peace and war are laid bare. It has been pointed out that France, following a policy of recueillement and caution, both characteristic of her needs and characteristic of her prudent temperament, has allowed herself to fall steadily behind in the race for the capture of the world-markets. It is necessary to develop this remark in detail. A writer signing himself " Lysis," who has published 1 No crescendo of conventional votes, leading up to an ultimatum in accordance with the rules of the game of war, as prepared by the Professors of International Law, warned the world that Japan intended to open hostilities against Russia, or that Italy intended to take Tripoli. None will temper the force of the shock when Grermany decides to fall upon France. As M. Rene Pinon says {Revue des Deux Mondes, June 1, 1912, pp. 619, 620): " The only premonitory indication of war, in our Democratic epoch, is the temper of public opinion. When a nation's pulse beats at the fever cadence, when its blood is boiling and the whole organism shivers and trembles, the danger is near. At such psycho- logical moments in the life of a people, arguments based on Constitu- tional Law have no longer any hold, and Governments become powerless to arrest the impulses of the nation. The epoch of the old politique des Cabinets has gone by, and the best diplomatist to-day is he who is able to penetrate the deep -lying intentions of the peoples and to divine their spontaneous impulses." If M. Pinon had written these words after the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 he would have been tempted to print them in itaUcs. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 237 two books, Contre VOligarchie Financier e en France and Les Capitalistes Frangais contre la France, has, for the last few years, conducted "« courageous campaign with the object of enlightening Frenchmen as to the risks of their own admirable credit-system. He aims at a reform of the existing financial organization of France, and his undertaking has already borne fruit. It is significant that an ex-Minister of Finance of the experience and authority of M. Caillaux — who, whatever his occasionally misguided activity during the negotiations of 1910 with Germany, has proved his practical know- ledge of the mechanism of French society to be that of a competent specialist — should have ventured, how- ever guardedly, to corroborate certain of the views of -Lysis"!:— " Gentlemen," he said, " tell your representatives to consider the question of the organization of industrial and commercial credit. I mean of that credit which ought to be at the disposal of the small shopkeepers and the small manufacturers, and which is at present doled out to them so parsimoniously. A good deal has been written of late on the economic and financial organization of France. There has been violent criticism of the system of exportation of French capital, without reflecting that a large portion of our economic and political force abroad is due to the fact that we are perhaps the biggest money-lenders in the whole world.^ . . . These criticisms were dictated 1 In a speech delivered on January 9, 1911, at Lille. 2 M. Caillaux forgets, or neglects to mention, that while readiness and capacity to lend money to Foreign Powers increases the " poUtical force" and the diplomatic prestige of a State during the period prior to the conclusion of a loan, the lending State, once the operation is concluded, becomes, to a large degree, the slave of the borrowing nation, and is placed in a position of dependency that hampers its future diplomatic action. Moreover, as Lysis says: "Foreign loans are not productive; they do not serve to develop the wealth of the borrowing peoples, but to cover the costs of military preparations. . . . Bad for the borrowers, the operation is full of risks for the lenders. Two thousand millions of francs of Rumanian, Bulgarian and Servian securities are quoted on the Paris Bourse, the greater portion of which is in French hands. We have thus an immense amount of capital engaged in the most dangerous corner of Europe, exposed to the chances of war, of domestic strife, of political revolutions and of bad crops." This is a kind of fact that might no doubt be utihzed by the Norman Angells and the Jaureses to support their argument as to the pacific influence of cosmopolitan capital, but it is, at the same time, obviously 238 PROBLEMS OF POWER by the sentiment that in France the small shopkeepers and business men have inadequate facilities for obtaining long credit. In our country, if a manufacturer, who is at the head of a moderate business representing, for instance, 200,000 or 300,000 francs, wishes to develop it, while giving full guarantees as to business capacity, the only way of procuring the requisite capital is to appeal to private individuals. Save in exceptional cases no banking organization exists to provide him with capital, and the situation is worse still in the case of the small shopkeeper or the small manufacturer whose business represents a sum of 10,000, 20,000 or 50,000 francs. The conclusion to be draAvn from these incontestable facts is not the necessity of altering existing conditions, but the necessity of creating some new supplementary institution. Besides the existing estabUshments of credit, which should continue their present activity, there ought to exist organisms the sole object of which should be to assist small business men, small manu- facturers. . . . Various types oflocal banks should be created, bolster- ing up a central bank." as legitimate ground for anxiety to those Frenchmen who, realizing that the counter-influences making for war are immensely preponderant, reflect with dismay what is to become of their exported savings when war breaks out, suddenly involving States, great or small, in which their capital is engaged. In the first week of the Balkan Scare of October, 1912, an unwarrantable panic fell upon the Paris Bourse, whereas, in 1911, when France was on the eve of war with Germany, the French money market remained calm. The depreciation of the securities quoted on the Paris Bourse ranged from five to twenty per cent., yet French and German financial interests as regards Balkan questions were identical in kind. Writing in June 1907 in the Revue des Deux Mondes, M. Jacques Siegfried described the exodus of French capital as " a veritable new revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the domain of Economics," and called upon the Government to remedy *' this distressing fact." The question is discussed in all its bearings by M. Andre Ch6radame, in his remarkable book La Crise FratiQaise. In the Correspondant (January 25, 1912) this writer, with reference to the futile efforts made by the Austro -Hungarian Government to negotiate in Paris a loan of 100,000,000 francs, to be quoted on the Paris Bourse, shows that if the attempt failed, it was because of the sound intuitions of French public opinion, as manifested in the Press, and not at all because of the prudent policy of the Government. M. Cheradame concludes that collusion between French finance and French diplomacy is indispensable. He suggests that before French financiers agree to lend money to a foreign State they should first advise the Quai d'Orsay, in order to learn whether the principle of the contemplated operation is in harmony with French foreign policy. After a favour- able reply, but only after such a reply, they may come to terms with the foreign State. The necessity of some such permanent mechanism as this has now become generally recognized in France. The echo of this altered public opinion was heard in the last words of the minis- terial declaration of the late French Government. M. Poincare said A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 239 And M. Caillaux went on to extol the utility of the Japanese Industrial Bank, and to urge the adoption of a similar institution in France " in order to arouse the spirit of private initiative."-^ The question of private initiative and of individual responsibility is, indeed, one of the most urgent of all questions for the Frenchmen of to-day. The authori- tative character of the Napoleonic political, legal and social traditions, which have been codified by the French Constitution, French laws and French customs, is utterly unlike the undisciplined individualism char- acterizing Anglo-Saxon institutions. Furthermore, the problems with which French civilization has to deal are almost exactly the opposite of those confronting civilization in the United States, or even in England that the policy of his Government was to " reconcile, as twin and con- vergent forces, the financial power which was of such great assistance to France, with her military and naval power." In October 1912 he applied this principle in virtually prohibiting French bankers from lending money to Bulgaria, but later on, when Bulgaria was successful, it would appear that this prohibition was withdrawn. One of the ablest journals in Europe, L' Information — the very existence of which, by the way, is a sign of the rapidly increasing interest taken by the French people in financial, economic and political questions — has of late pubHshed many remarkable studies by such authorities as MM. Andre Sayous, Alfred Neymarck, Alexis Rostand, on themes which, ten years ago even, would have attracted no general attention: *' French Savings and Financial Education," " The Reform of the Banking System with reference to the organization of credit for small industries and small shopkeepers," " The Admission of Foreign Securities to the Stock Exchange," etc. The commercial expansion of France is a fact with which, more and more, Germany and England will have to reckon. It is shown later on (pp. 243-246) that this revival will not, perhaps, turn out to be an unmixed good for the country. 1 Less than a year later (December 1912) M. Klotz, the Minister of Finance in the Poincare Cabinet, brought in a bill embodying all of M. Caillaux's proposals. In the Preamble M. Klotz pointed out that, notwithstanding certain advantages that had accrued to trade and industry from the exceptional banking concentration in France — notably the maintenance of the rate of discount at a low level — this concentration had unfortunately resulted in the disappearance of numerous local banks, and small merchants and manufacturers had thus been deprived of the financial support on which they had formerly been able to count. The Klotz Bill, which is open to serious criticism (see the article by M. Andr6 Sayous in L' Information of February 11 1913), is before the French Parliament. 240 PROBLEMS OF POWER and the Dominions. Individualism, which has made America, and is still running riot there, has little action in French affairs. But what, for the moment, is sig- nificant is that just as American financial institutions are the reflection of American individualism, so French financial institutions are the product — and the incentive — of French conservatism, French bourgeois spirit, French dislike of responsibility. It is worth while considering the point somewhat curiously. It may safely be affirmed that the establish- ments of credit have immensely increased that tendency to thrift which characterizes the average Frenchman and which is partially due to the provisions of the French testamentary law. The Depopulation Com- mission of the Ministry of the Interior has, indeed, passed more than one resolution for a reform of the French Civil Code permitting French citizens to make wills which shall reconcile the two natural human ambi- tions, the desire to survive in one's property and the desire to survive in one's posterity. In France, for more than a century, the law has forced French fathers to choose; and, as Dr. Jacques Bertillon points out, they have uniformly made the choice which, from the purely economic standpoint, was most injurious to their country's interests. To preserve the property they have sacrificed the race.^ M. Arsene Dumont, the author of Natalite et Civilisation^ insists on the direct relation between the French system of not having more than two children and French love of economy. " Economy," he says, " is the cause of the limitation of the French population. . . . The wealth of France is merely economized money. But is a nation really rich if it hoards its pennies in colTers or in woollen stockings ? Isn't it richer if it disposes of its money, if it uses it for 1 The statistics are conclusive. The birth-rate has decreased in France since the beginning of the nineteenth century. During the last ten years the decrease has been accelerated. (It is during this period that the financial regime of France has become oligarchic.) It should be said, however, that the German birth-rate is almost as un- A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 241 some business or industrial enterprise ? The Frenchman is, of all peoples known to me, not excepting the Spaniard, the one possessing the least spirit of enterprise. The French milKonaire, as well as the French peasant and working man, has but one desire: to economize, and above all not to risk his money." Dr. Jacques Bertillon, who is of the same opinion, cites his authorities to show that the ideal of thrift and economy of the French bourgeoisie has become that formulated by one of its teachers, the Bible of the French school, La Fontaine: Un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu V auras. " The ideal of France was formerly incarnated by the knight, it is to-day personified by the functionary and the pensioner." Dr. Bertillon suggests that this evolution may be due to the fact that the wars of the First Empire cut off the bravest and most adven • turesome Frenchmen without leaving them the time to found a family, and thus left to the infirm the task of carrying on the race — hence the relative rarity of ener- getic characters and the predominance, as a national characteristic, of an excessive prudence. But, apart from the fact that an observer like Balzac had excellent reasons for holding the view summed up in the phrase les coeurs furent alors (during the Napoleonic epopee) nomades comme les regiments,^ France can adduce im- pressive facts — the energy and initiative of her explorers, the enthusiasm and courage of her aviators, the moral and physical health of the present younger generation, the incomparable spectacle afforded by the Dreyfus Case and the resiliency of the nation in 1905, 1910, and 1913, under the pricking of the German goads^ — to show that the chivalrous, magnanimous, daring, favourable. In 1911 the falling off in the growth of the population in Prussia and Bavaria together was more than 100,000. The Prussian Government has organized an inquiry. Voluntary restrictions, arti- ficial infecundity, are the real causes of the decline of the birth-rate in all countries. But the question is, what are the causes that favour the adoption of certain practices ? Is the ground particularly favour- able in France ? ^ La Paix du Menage. 2 Cf . La Renaissance de rOrgueU Frangais, by Etienne Rey. 242 PROBLEMS OF POWER adventurous France of the Crusaders, of the seventeenth- century colonizers and of the soldiers of the Revolution and the Empire, is still more even than in being. It is to that France that allusion has already been made in the earlier pages of this book. If for a long period there has been an enfeeblement of the spirit of enter- prise, consequent on habits of excessive thrift, it is mainly, no doubt, to be accounted for by the fact that, after her defeat, France for a long period necessarily remained a stunned and bewildered nation, and that when she woke out of this condition of apathy it was to find herself called upon to lay the foundations of a new society before she could indulge in the luxury of cherish- ing her old dreams; but it is also to be accounted for by the slow but fatal action of the French Civil Code in its stipulations concerning the disposition of property and regulation of marriage, and the enervating parallel influence of the great institutions of credit, which, after having canalized French savings into their vast central reservoir, have used those savings for the sole ends of cosmopolitan finance, instead of employing them to irrigate French soil and to encourage French industrial and economic initiative. After having succeeded in altering the French law of inheritance, the French Society known as L'Alliance Nationale pour TAccroisse- ment de la Population — ^which is only one of the admirable associations now endeavouring to solve the problem of French race-suicide — would do well to turn its attention not so much to the revision of the fiscal laws of France (the principle, for instance, of propor- tioning taxation to the size of families) as to the further- ing of the natural French expansiveness and spirit of initiative. Every extraneous influence tending to stifle that expansiveness and that initiative should be ruth- lessly destroyed. Such an influence of repression would seem to be the peculiar activity of the French financial oligarchy, and Parliamentary intervention is required to determine the limits of that activity and to supple- A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 243 ment the existing credit establishments by a financial system which will tend to develop, and not throttle, the spirit of energy and of responsibility. In pleading, however, for the direction of French activity towards the development of economic and industrial interests; in counselling a systematic effort to use French initiative for the cultivation of the natural resources of France, and for the fructification on French soil of the prodigious savings of the French people, the student of French institutions should not be blind to the curiously interesting, almost paradoxical, fact that it is largely because France is so backward in economical and industrial development that she enjoys to-day a relative social and political tranquillity, where- as England, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Japan and the United States are racked by a spirit of revolutionary unrest. France is sadly behind the times ; her industry, her public works, her business and her commercial habits are not "up to date"; and this backwardness, no doubt, marks a serious economic inferiority com- pared with the industrial activity of her neighbours and rivals. Yet it is just this inferiority which, perhaps, accounts in a measure for her relatively greater social stability; which explains why her people are to-day the most " conservative " and the least revolutionary under the sun; which finally — ^and this chiefly concerns the subject in hand — ^enables her, owing to her ready money, her immediately accessible reserves, to contemplate with comparative equanimity the possibility of having to wage war. This point is so important that it should be put more explicitly. The present critical condition of the modern State is so universal that more than one writer^ has certainly been justified in comparing it with the no less universal unrest of 1848. Republics, Constitutional Monarchies, ^ See Alexander D. Noyes, article " Politics and Prosperity," Fublished in the Atlantic Monthly ; and Paul Louis, " La Crise de Etafc moderne," Mercure de France^ April 1, 1912. 244 PROBLEMS OF POWER Empires, Despotisms, Parliamentary Regimes are one and all suffering from a kind of locomotor ataxy, and so deep-seated is the disorder that the political writers and the juris-consults who still discuss the questions once so beautifully dealt with by Montesquieu, are like a band of Sagrados who should undertake to cure a victim of St. Vitus' dance by painting his face. This crisis of the modern State is, in its essence, an economic, not a political crisis. Questions of changing the form of government may arise in connexion with it and, characterize its evolution, but such questions are of slight importance in comparison with the essential point, that of the organic economy of the community. The present crisis is of the nature of a struggle between the upper middle class, la bourgeoisie who possess, the heati possidentes, the aristocratic and privileged few in power and the " people," the proletariat, who, to a large degree without property, are yet the producers of wealth, and who consequently regard themselves as les desherites. The democratic laic masses have ceased to " clamour in the desert " for equality of privilege, and are rapidly inventing the most ingenious engines of savage warfare against Established 'Things: humani- tarian idealism, liberty, irreligion; or instruments of assault from without: syjjdicalism, "direct action," sabotage. It is a duel to the death between the con- servative Social Forms based on property and the Revolutionary Coalitions (syndicats) that are gradually disciplining the mass of producers. And behold the result in France ! France is the country which contains the largest number of property-owners; it is the classic realm of thrift; it is the corner of the globe where the land is most equally divided, where the bas-de-laine is always darned, where the pitcher of the Danaides is a constantly replenished jar of wine. Such industrialism as has taken root on French soil has of course produced the same kind of friction as the clash between capital and labour has brought about in other parts of the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 245 world. But industrialism, business initiative, have been less characteristic of modern France than of the German Empire, of England and of the United States. The comparatively greater diffusion of property in France, and the simpler economic and industrial organ- izationy have kept her people "backward"; but these very causes have, at the same time, determined her conservatism, for they have counterbalanced the revo- lutionary spirit engendered, in France as elsewhere, by the tyranny of the privileged class in possession of authority and property. France, indeed, has invented, and become the propagator of. Syndicalism (as she always invents, because she thinks quickly, and because she has a gift for large clear ideas); but Syndicalism is less applicable, one might almost say less needed, in her case than in that of the other modern States. Yet, true as this is, it may be argued that Syndicalism is more needed in France than elsewhere, since at a time of social disintegration (when religious scepticism, political and financial scandals, parliamentary frivolity and general irresponsibility are corroding the sentiment of respect) the tyrannical discipline of Syndicalism may be the one element capable of transforming French individualism into an instrument of altruistic action, pending the economic adjustments of the society of the future. The dictatorial demagogues who founded Syndicalism may all unwittingly have been rendering a singular service to the ideal of social order. ■'■ 1 A similar suggestion has been made by an astute realist, the late Minister of War in the Poincare Cabinet, M. Millerand. Interviewed by the Paris correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse on the question of the abolition of standing armies in consequence of modem social evolution, M. Millerand expressed the view that any such result would be disastrous for the Republic. " Compulsory education in neutral schools, the unbridled liberty now rife, freedom of speech and of the press," he said, " have made us a people in constant intellectual ferment, who run the risk of having all the elementary rules of any established social order utterly obliterated in our souls. Amid this atmosphere of complete liberty, in this chaos of confused ideas, the army intervenes, giving our children the sense of discipline and sacrifice without which man is an incomplete being. . . . The slow work of 246 PROBLEMS OF POWER VI The reader who has made his vray through the some- what obscure tangle of the foregoing exposition of two contrasted financial and economic organizations will perceive that he has now reached a clearing in the heart of the subject. It has been shown that, given the utterly dissimilar " states of mind " of Germany and of France, the diplomatic methods and machinery of the two Powers are bound to be correspondingly different. Cherishing different ideals, wanting different results, the two countries have a different mentality. It is not merely that mutual comprehension is necessarily hindered by the reciprocal distrust due to the dismemberment of France. Quite apart from their skeleton in the closet organization now proceeding will be greatly furthered by the development of Syndicalism" It is to be regretted that the French Minister of War did not develop this idea. If he had done so, it is likely that he would have explained himself in language resembling that used recently by Mr. Norman Angell in a series of suggestive articles on " The Labour Unrest," published in the Daily Mail (May 30, 1912). He said: " The expression of these new tendencies is not likely to be revolutionary. . . . The revolutionary who has ' arrived ' is compelled to realize that society is an organism — a thing which is alive and grows; and even if his view is more mechanical than this and he regards its organization as a machine, it is a machine which has to be perpetually in motion. Now, a machine which has to be kept in motion cannot be altered radically by a rough blow here and there, and the alteration of one wheel alters others which there was no intention to touch. More and more, for instance, is it the case in any great strike that it is the working classes which pay the piper. In the British coal strike it was not the capitalist who suffered most. In the French railroad strike it was not the bourgeoisie who was most distressed, but the working men in other trades deprived of their work in a quarrel which did not directly concern them. A ' class war ' in which your own side in every battle suffers more than the enemy is one doomed to failure from the start. As has been said, the general strike is a very powerful weapon — with which to commit suicide. " And the same forces which doomed the general strike to failure doom to failure also the predatory schemes of forcible confiscation and dispossession of which we used to hear in connexion with plans of social reorganization a good deal more than we do now. Wealth in the modem world cannot be seized and transferred in this simple A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 247 there exists, between modern Germany and France, a lack of imaginative sympathy due to radical differences of temperament. Any successful diplomatic conversa- tion between them presumes, on the part of both, a long preliminary effort to place themselves temporarily at a point of view for which no past experience has pre- pared them. While France is still, in the conventional civilized way, loyal to the appeal of great principles, respectful of accepted ideals of international law, and of recognized notions of justice, and correspondingly indifferent to the purely material aspects of any prob- lem, to the concrete value of the elements in a diplo- matic bargain, Germany, the great modern parvenu Power, bereft of all deep-rooted historical traditions, unrestrained by precedent — save that of the original sin of Alsace-Lorraine — has been able to put herself abreast of the time, and adopt the methods best fitted to a period dominated by economic interests. " What fashion; it is not in the nature of a fixed or tangible quantity at all; it is dependent upon the maintenance of certain functions; stop them and the wealth disappears — there is none to seize. And all these con- fiscatory schemes involve the stoppage of some vital function. Those who have some knowledge of the work of the world — its processes and necessary conditions — know such schemes to be childishly impractic- able. And every day makes them more so. . . . The permanent element of Syndicalism, which means the drift of real power from a large general body possessing no special competences, like Parliament, to bodies like trade unions organized for special industrial functions, will not necessarily be — will almost certainly not be marked by revolu- tionary processes." Cf. p. 128 et seq. Mr. ^Norman Angell may be right. The fact remains that in July, 1914, 10,000 workmen at the arsenal at Woolwich went out on strike in order to force the Director of the Arsenal to reinstate a workman who had been dismissed because he had refused, as a trade-unionist, and at the order of his union, to co-operate with certain non-unionists engaged temporarily by the Director. A member of the Labour Party in Parliament championed the cause of the strikers and blackmailed the Prime Minister, Mr Asquith, into reinstating the mutinous workman, and thus capitulating to the tyranny of the SyndicaHsts. The incident is typical of the time. It is the more interesting as on June 18, at Swansea, the " National Union of Rail way men " proclaimed the " Triple AUiance " concluded between that body, the "Mines Federation," and the "Transport Workers' Federation." The members of these unions number some 1,500,000 men, who claim to represent a class apart in the nation, and to dictate their decisions to ParUament. 248 PROBLEMS OF POWER has a policy of partial understanding and of business profit to do with the Treaty of Frankfort ?" said Herr von Kiderlen-Waechter, the German Foreign Minister, to a French journaUst, M. Georges Bourdon.-^ " Cannot France cherish her hopes in her heart, without refusing to participate in the general life of the time ; and, above all, when economic problems are paramount, are his- torical quarrels (sic) to dominate the necessary develop- ment of nations ?" Many Germans lack a sympathetic imagination, and it is owing to this lack that German diplomacy has become almost exclusively a diplomacy of mercantile bargaining.^ Emperor, Chancellor, Reich- stag, have one and all been forced, no doubt in spite of themselves, to become the spokesmen of German 1 {Le Figaro, August 6, 1912. * There are occasional exceptions. Cf. the utterances of Prince Lichnowsky cited on p. 267. Even a Prince Lichnowsky, however, will not disdain to profit by the results of an enterprise so interesting as that to which the Berlin correspondent of The Times alluded as follows in a telegram dated February 23, 1914: "A new ' Weltwirt- schaftliche Gesellschaft ' was founded here yesterday which will study the history and conditions of the world's commerce and the advance of Germany's commercial interests abroad. At first sight its aims seem much the same as those of the ' Association for World Trade,' which is to be founded next Thursday under the auspices of Herr Ballin; but, at present at any rate, it is stated to be quite distinct from that society. Its committee was, however, recommended to maintain contact both with the association and with a new ' Institute for Sea Traffic and World Commerce ' which was founded last Friday at Kiel in the presence of Prince Henry of Prussia and a large number of naval officers. The organization of all these societies in still rather obscure, but they are all undoubtedly the outcome of a fresh movement towards commercial and possibly even naval expansion. An important feature of the movement is the attempt to secure greater influence over the foreign Press. The society founded yesterday starts only with a capital of £1,000, but German trade and industry are to be asked for further subscriptions. Its acting President said that the society was not ' political ' and that its aim was theoretic, while that of the association will be practical. It appears, however, from the Press and last night's speeches that the society's aims are eminently practical. It is to work with other societies ' to arouse the nation's understanding for world economics, and to make it ripe for world politics.' Both the Colonial Office and the Admiralty sent representa- tives. The Admiralty representative said that the Admiralty, as the administrator of a Far Eastern Protectorate, was particularly interested in the society, which must make it its chief task to enlighten the public as to the future of the Chinese market." A STUPY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 249 industrial and commercial interests. At the centenary of the firm of Krupp, at Essen, the Emperor William delivered one of his characteristic speeches. " The history of the firm," he said, " is a piece of Prussian and German history. . . . Krupp guns have been with the Prussian lines and have thundered on the battlefields which made ready the way to German unity, and won it at last. . . . Services rendered to the Fatherland in war and peace have won for this firm an especial posi- tion in my State, and for three generations brought its proprietors and their families into a relation of friendship and confidence with my ancestors and myself." « Again, when in a disaster at the Bodium mines scores of men are swept away by choke damp, the Emperor adds his tribute of mourning to the expression of German sympathy, and describes the miners as the German " coal army corps." The protection of in- dustrial and commercial interests is the main motive of Germany's agitated activity, her capricious oppor- tunism, her frequently unaccountable aggressiveness, her Shylockian insistence on the pound-of -flesh " com- pensation." England, for a time, notably in the strenuous days of the colonization of the Niger, seemed to be providing Germany with an excellent precedent for the employment of certain forms of national in- solence. But the British principle that " business is business " has never, even in England, been allowed to become the sole principle of diplomatic action; whereas competence in international business has become for Germany the unique qualification of her foreign agents. Nothing is more characteristic of modern Germany than the career at Constantinople of a Marschall von Bieberstein, and the sole object of that ambassador's transfer to London was to "do business " with a people whose business education, excellent as it is — and superior as it has been to that of the French — has never been systematically enough applied to diplomacy to justify the hope of success — for British interests — ^in any Anglo-German negotiation. France, 250 PROBLEMS OF POWER at last, has learned the lesson of the spectacle of Ger- n^any's agitation: she has "found Germany out,** although she has had to pay dear for the finding. When the French senator M. Pierre Baudin was called on to draw up the report of the Senatorial Committee on the Franco -German Agreement of November 4, 1911, he pointed the moral of the long tension between the two countries as follows: — " The Germans," he said, " are accustomed to seeing their diplomacy act the part of permanent agent of the national industry. This is the kind of aid they expect of their diplomacy. They look to it not only for the discovery of business opportunities, not only to begin negotia- tions, but also for such unflinching protection as shall exercise pressure on all rivals, and feel no hesitation at the idea of conferring a privilege. French traditions and moeurs are altogether different. They have, unfortunately, removed us for too long a period from the great economic struggles that are now going on throughout the world." French traditions and moeurs are, no doubt, under- going a change. They are harmonizing to-day with the general current of things. But M. Pierre Baudin would like to see French diplomatists less timid, less discreet, and, in a word, better informed, smarter business-men. The history of the relations between France and Germany during the last three years perfectly illustrates the truth so clearly enunciated by M. Pierre Baudin, and should be studied in detail by the public men of every country. That history, moreover, is an admir- able instance of the fact that behind the fa9ade of Governments financial considerations are determining, with increasing frequency and power, the poUtics of States. In January 1912 a Prime Minister of France, M. Caillaux, was hunted out of office and exposed to obloquy, for more reasons than one; but one of these reasons was that he had ventured to interpret to the letter the Agreement which a preceding minister, M. Pichon, had made in 1909 with Germany. By that A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 251 Agreement, Germany for the first time acknowledged the preponderance of French political rights in Morocco; but in the spirit of the do ut des — the dormant, dormant, " business is business," principle of modern diplomatic bargaining — she demanded an equivalent. France promised to co-operate with her in Morocco, frankly and consecutively, in purely economic matters.^ Unfortu- nately, however, there are no such things in the modern world as " purely economic " matters. Economic pre- ponderance, when long assured, inevitably takes the shape of political domination, and the French negotia- tors of the Franco-German Agreement of 1909 ignored this fact, and forged, thereby, the first link of a chain of consequences which was sure to bind them in the end to the car of German hegemony. The former Prime Minister of France, M. Raymond Poincare, who, as first reporter of the Senate Committee on the Franco - German Agreement of 1911, had had access before taking office to all the documents concerning the efforts of successive French Ministers to apply the Agreement of 1909, declared frankly in the Chamber of Deputies, on March 15, 1912, that "France in 1909, in 1910, and in 1911 honestly endeavoured to carry out the Agree- ment of 1909"; but, he went on, '' elle s*esi heurtee a des obstacles multiples , . . et lorsqu'on a tente d'elargir Vapplication de cette entente economique et de Vetendre au reste de VAfriqiie, . . . on a rencontre tantot des com- plications financieres imprevues, tantot des oppositions parlementaires inevitables.'' If the Agreement of 1909 had been loyally observed during a period of five years the Triple Entente would have been shattered, and shattered against the will of three nations. England would have been betrayed — unintentionally — by France, and isolated in Europe, while Germany would finally have realized her dream ^ Textually, the two Governments declared " qu'ils chercheraient a associer leurs nationaux dans les affaires dont ceux-ci pourraient obtenir I'enterprise." 252 PROBLEMS OF POWER of achieving a predominance that should neutralize the results of French and English policy during the last ten years : the restoration of the balance of power in Europe. The method of solving the Moroccan difficulty adopted, in 1909, by the French Foreign Office, was a method involving political consequences which neither France nor England perceived at the time (see Speech of M. Pichon, February 8, 1912). The Agreement of 1909 had seemed an effective device for neutralizing German political hostility, and only a few perspicacious observers saw in it a first successful move on the part of Germany to fulfil, by a roundabout, but effective, method, her fixed purpose of destroying the Entente between France and England, and the economic subjection of both peoples. England acquiesced with- out apparent apprehension in an Agreement which seemed to make solely for the peace of Europe, and France proceeded loyally to carry out that Agreement, to the letter, as well as in the spirit. The consequences of France's loyal action are full of suggestion. Franco-German economic co-operation became the chief preoccupation of the Quai d'Orsay, not merely in Morocco, but also in Central Africa and the Middle East. International trusts for the working of Moroccan mines, and for the building of public works in Morocco, were negotiated in conditions conforming with the spirit of the Agreement of 1909, but singularly disad- vantageous to the interests of the Powers who were not partners to that Agreement. In the same bfind spirit of good faith, successive French Ministers for Foreign Affairs proposed to extend the appUcation of the new entente policy with Germany to regions beyond the limits of Morocco. In July 1909 M. Pichon, acting, as he beUeved, in the interests of European peace, yet supposing himself to be still following the main Lines of French foreign policy, suggested to the great French colonial company of Ngoko-Sangha the advisabifity of a consortium with the German Company of the A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 253 Southern Cameroons for the common development of the frontier region. The French Company accepted, and negotiations were begun. They were formally concluded some eighteen months later in M. Pichon's private room at the Quai d'Orsay, in presence of the German Ambassador and of high oJSicials of the French Colonial OiB&ce. About two months afterwards the Briand-Pichon Government feU without having sub- mitted this project to Parliamentary ratification. The Government that succeeded, that of M. Monis, refused to adopt the plan of a consortium of French and German Companies; and in response to the natural protests of the German Government, the French Prime Minister sought to tranquillize German susceptibilities by casting about for a fresh scheme of Franco-German co-operation. The " fresh scheme " was soon found. Early in the summer of 1910, French and German financiers, acting on behalf of French and German ministers, began the friendly discussion of a project for the construction of a railway traversing the territories of the German Cameroons and of the French Congo, and having its ter- minus on German soil. The scheme, as presented to the French Foreign Minister, M. Cruppi, by the French Minister of Finance and the French Minister of the Colonies, MM. Caillaux and Messimy, would inevitably have laid open to the political influence, and no doubt to the political preponderance, of Germany the basins of the Sangha, the Ubangui and the Chari. M. Cruppi rejected the project, and, at the same time, without asking the permission of Germany — who, it must be borne in mind, had repudiated, by the Agreement of 1909, all claim to political rights on Moroccan territory — he had induced the Government of which he was a member to send an expedition to Fez. A new Government, that of M. Caillaux, succeeded, and M. de Selves became Minister for Foreign Affairs. The German Government, which had thus witnessed the failure of each successive project for economic and commercial co-operation with 254 PROBLEMS OF POWER France, concluded that such co-operation could be best secured by more active measures, and sent to Agadir the gun-boat Panther. When France finally asked her what she meant by this act, she repUed : Compensations ; and thereupon began the international tension of the summer of 1911, the tragic weeks when the dogs of war were heard baying in all the kennels of Europe. Out of this period of tension was to come the Franco-Ger- man Treaty of November 4, 1911. France, by that diplomatic instrument, in return for a virtual protec- torate of Morocco, ceded to Germany vast regions of the Congo, regions which, hut for the consequences of the misguided arrangement of 1909, she need never have given up. In other words, M. Caillaux was hounded from office partially for reasons which those who ap- proved of the agreement of 1909 were logically bound to repudiate.^ The incident shows that the qualifications ^ See Le Mystere d' Agadir, by M. Andre Tardieu, pp. 72-73, et passim. Every page of this remarkable book, by one of the sanest and most perspicacious students of politics and diplomacy of the present day, confirms the author's view that the Agreement of 1909 — in facilitating the reaUzation of German economic Imperialism to the detriment of the legitimate ambitions of the otlier signatories of the Act of Algeciras, and to the virtual nullification of the French claims to positive pre- dominance in Morocco — Avas an incredible blunder on the part of the Quai d'Orsay. When M. Jules Cambon and Baron de Schoen signed that Agreement, they signed at the same time the potential death- warrant of the Triple Entente; they dug a mine and filled it with explosives under the sole diplomatic instrument — the Act of Algeciras — guaranteeing, at the time, French political supremacy in North- West Africa; and not a day passed between 1909 and the arrival of the Panther at Agadir without aggravating the consequences of the mistake of the French Foreign Ofiice. In this connexion it is note- worthy that M. Andre Tardieu, whose influence, as Foreign Editor of the Temps, was not foreign to the fall of M. Pichon, was one of the most efficient coadjutors of the policy explicitly formulated in the Agreement of 1909; but that to attack him, as he has been attacked, for loyally undertaking to facilitate the application of that Agreement, is an absurd injustice. He does not appear to have understood, in 1909, nor yet in 1910 — any more than Downing Street or the Quai d'Orsay understood — that Germany, in inducing France to sign the Agreement of 1909, had laid a trap for the Dual Entente, and that the logical consequences of the economic co-operation, reciprocally accepted by France and Germany, would be to thwart that very ideal of *' European Equihbrium " which he himself has done more than any other French journalist to foster. It should be added that the services A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 255 required of the modem diplomatist are no longer what they were even at the time of the Congress of Berlin. It shows that economic problems are coming to be the dominant themes in diplomatic conversations, and that the modern successors of Richelieu and Bismarck will probably learn more by studying the career of a Colbert and a Pierpont Morgan than from perusal of Le Testa- ment Politique, or even of the Busch Memoirs. VII There can be no doubt that social questions, economic questions, financial questions, are henceforth to occupy the attention of States to the gradual exclusion of political preoccupations. It is not merely German diplomacy which is becoming more and more what the French senator M. Pierre Baudin has called une dip- lom^tie de negoce, and what Washington designates as " dollar diplomacy." It is not only in Germany that behind the Government, hemming it in, besieging it, there is an army of business men, of metallurgists, of mine owners, and that there are vast populations of working-men or farmers whose claims determine, to a large degree, the world-policy of this or that Power. The same evolution is taking place throughout the world, and a people which fails to recognize the growing importance of financial, commercial and industrial interests in international relations is fated to be left behind in the international race. The first obUgation of the modern diplomatist is to acquaint himself with the economic facts, determining the political aspirations and the social organizations of the country to which he rendered to European peace during the last ten years by the untiring energy, the remarkable lucidity and the argumentative resource, with which this great journalist has daily forced his compatriots to face the realities of the European situation, are of incomparable value. During the period in question, not even any French statesman, with the single exceptions of M. Delcass^ and M. Poincar6, has played so interesting, so intelligent, and so original a part. 266 PROBLEMS OF POWER is accredited. For the eloquent idioms and generalizing formulas of the old diplomacy is substituted to-day the precise language of the counting-room. A diplomatic instrument is no longer read in its spirit, it is scrutinized to the letter. Woe to the partner to an agreement who has forgotten to define, with legal defi,niteness, the pos- sible points which the shifting course of events may raise in the interpretation of the Treaty ! Thus the numerous germs of conflict latent in the Franco-German Treaty of 1911 are due to the fact that French Foreign Office negotiators have not yet completely assimilated the business methods that prevail at the Wilhelmstrasse.-^ They continue to follow the French habit of securing the recognition by their opponents of the general principles that are regarded as essential, and in neglecting the material and concrete appHcation of those principles. In the Treaty just mentioned, it would be possible to point out half a dozen instances of ambiguities or omis- sions calculated to endanger the peace of Europe. But this Treaty has been cited solely as a typical modem case. From the point of view of the science of inter- national relations, the Franco-German negotiations of 1911 are one with the Trans-Iranian projects of the Triple Entente, one with the negotiations respecting the construction of the Baghdad Railway, one with the Italian expedition to Tripoli, and one with the problem of a Servian outlet to the sea; behind the fa9ade of Government, financial considerations, with increasing fre- quency and force, are determining the policies of States. Signor Guglielmo Ferrero has pointed out that "if Turkey has lost Tripoli, it is because the bellicose enthu- siasm of a new nationalistic Italy has forced the hand of the Government." The rapid rise and the effective activity of the young Italian nationalists is one of the most interesting socio-political phenomena of our time. But, behind this remarkable movement, a curious series of invisible financial causes prepared Italian public I See p. 263, note 1. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 257 opinion for the conquest of the ancient Roman province of Libya. The story, as told by an excellent authority, M. Pinon,^ shows how readily the flexible Italian soul, delighting in combinazioni, succeeds in reconciling the most reciprocally contrary sentiments when " interest " is paramount. " At the beginning of the reign of Leo XIII, the Banco di Roma was a financial house of relatively slight importance, established by- private individuals. Its manager, Ernesto Pacelli, succeeded in winning the confidence of the Pope's entourage, and Leo XIII entrusted to him the funds of the Holy See. The addition of this new capital made it possible for the Banco di Roma to develop its business. But its rela- tions with the Vatican prevented it from penetrating into the business world connected with the Quirinal, and notably to get its bills dis- counted by the Bank of Italy. Eager to force that door, the Banco di Roma sought advice in Government circles. The President of its Board of Directors was the President of the Chamber of Commerce, brother of the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Signor Tittoni. It was the period when the Italian Government was signing with M. Delcasse the Agreements declaring that France repudiated her interests in the Tripolitaine and that Italy repudiated hers in Morocco (1902). The Italian Government wished to secure in the Tripolitaine economic interests, which would permit it to develop Itahan industry and com- merce there, which would virtually amount to securing a mortgage on the province, and might, were the case ever to arise, provide an opportunity for armed intervention. The Banco di Roma secured the coveted business connexion with the Bank of Italy, promising in return to participate in Italian enterprises in the Tripolitaine and in Cyrenaica. A whole series of undertakings and ventures were then founded in Tripoli and along the coast, with the capital and under the direction of an agent of the Banco di Roma, Signor Bresciani, an ex-official in Erythrea: oil industries, soap manufactures, grain elevators, fisheries* the sponge trade, the purchase of land, electric works at Benghazi, a shipping line subventioned by the Government, and possessing at present four steamers. Missions were sent inland to enter into rela- tions with the influential chiefs and marabouts. The Banco di Roma increased its capital to 80,000,000 francs, and recently augmented it still further. Notwithstanding these efforts trade remained stagnant; business did not develop ; the capital expended remained unproductive ; the financial obligations became more and more serious. The Ottoman officials put all kinds of obstacles in the way of the economic develop- ^ See " L'Europe et la Guerre Italo-Turque," by Ren6 Pinon, the Revue des deux Mondes, June 1, 1912. 268 PROBLEMS OP POWER ment of the province, seeking particularly to thwart the Italian ven- tures; at Benghazi, . for instance, the electric power works, for the lighting of the town, were not authorized. The Banco di Roma, having engaged a considerable capital in Africa, in the interest and almost at the suggestion of the Government, with the assurance that one day the Tripolitaine and Cj'-renaica would pass under Italian domination, and that the expectations of the shareholders would eventually be recompensed, found itself, it is said, in difficulties. Last year, its manager informed the Government that he was on the point of being driven to a liquidation of his interests in the Tripolitaine, and that he was preparing to enter upon pourparlers with an English group and a .German group. It would appear that this prospect greatly contributed to the determination of the Government to intervene, if necessary, by arms. Once hostilities began, the Banco di Roma obtained the contract for the commissariat operations and the clothing of the troops of the expeditionary corps. It remains associated with the Government for the development of Italian interests in the Tripolitaine. Thus, the Bank which has the confidence of the Vatican happens, at the same time, to be the first and foremost promoter of Italian enterprises in the Tripolitaine: an elegant combinazioney uniting, for a work of Itahan expansion and Christian propaganda, the two historic forces in Rome which officially ignore each other and mutually combat one another." An elegant combinazione, indeed ! And what more conclusive illustration of the modern craving for a happy mixture of idealism and of economic well-being ? Perhaps if any could be had it would be found in the case of Servia's long struggle for economic emancipa- tion. Up to 1905 this little nation of farmers and stock-breeders (in 1912, Servian exports amounted to about one hundred million francs, out of which 62 per cent, was represented by the products of the soil, and 20 per cent, by cattle and pork) remained in economic subjection to Austria. Austria's dream was to annex Servia to her great composite Empire. Whenever Servia displayed signs of political independence, Austria, who all but monopolized Servian exports, began the economic blackmailing of her imprisoned neighbour by closing her markets to Servian pork and beef. A Servian statesman, M. Paschitch, resolved to put an end to these humiliations. In 1906 he proposed a customs union between the three Slav states of the Balkans; he thus A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 259 took the first step for the formation of that Balkan Confederation which six years later was to astonish the world. Servian live-stock was partially diverted from the old Austrian routes, and transported by the Danube, the Ludwigs-Canal and the Main to German markets. A second outlet for Servian products was procured at Varna by means of concessions accorded on the Bulgarian rail- ways. A favourable treaty of commerce was arranged with France. Little by little the old trade-current through Bosnia and to the Dalmatian coast was diminished and Servia was now selling her pork and cereals, without the Austrian middleman, through the channel of the Black Sea ports and Salonica, in all the Mediterranean ports, from Syria by way of Egypt to Italy. The need of direct communication between the Danube and the Adriatic became steadily more obvious, and Servian claims to economic autonomy, the only form of independence which in the modern world is the sign of political autonomy, became more and more legiti- mate. Austrian imports fell from 60 per cent, to 35 per cent. Then came the war of 1912. Within only a few days after the opening of hostilities, Austria beheld the Servian troops in possession of Uskub, of old Servia, of a large portion of the Sandjak of Novi-Bazar, and rapidly making for the Adriatic coast-line. A national policy of more than thirty years was thereby suddenly stultified. Servia had burst her bounds, and was no longer the ward of the Dual Monarchy. In an adroit appeal addressed to English sympathy, through The Times (November 24, 1912), the Servian Prime Minister, M. Paschitch, explained that independence of trade and economic liberty were not only necessary for Servians development, and even for her existence, but also advan- tageous to the world; an Adriatic outlet, he argued, would give Servia new neighbours, *' since every mari- time nation would then be Servians neighbour as much as Austria is to-day.'* Servia was particularly happy at the thought that she was thus to secure direct contact 260 PROBLEMS OF POWER with England, and to live henceforth in close relations with the nations of the West. It is obvious at last that the general desire for reform, and the outburst of nationalism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the positive recognition of the fact that money is to-day the chief instrument of rapid and successful action, are merely different aspects of the same state of mind. BOOK IV BOOK IV THE precarious settlement of the seven years* Moroccan quarrel between France and Germany was a humiliation for the latter Power, and not merely because she failed to secure a naval basis on the Atlantic coast of Morocco and a free hand to delve in the mineral riches of that region. The episode, above all, revealed to the world Germany's inability to sunder England, France and Russia, and also the unstable equilibrium of her own financial and economic resources. The existing lame solution of the Moroccan difficulty provi- sionally^ settled only one of the differences between France and Germany. The Great Misunderstanding remained more acute than ever. In a brilliant book, characterized by a specious candour, Prince von Biilow has sought in vain to convince his countrymen that the German combinazione concerning Morocco, for the responsibihty of which he claims the honour, was merely a logical part of the inevitable development of the Bismarckian policy. (See p. 285.) The German people at last clearly perceive the inconvenient consequences of the ill-advised foreign policy of their rulers : a resusci- tated France, throbbing with optimism and potentially 1 Already, in a spirit of chicane, the German Government has announced its intention of taking to The Hague the question of her claipi (contrary to the clear interpretation of the Franco -Grerman Treaty of 1911) to submit to public adjudication, not merely Moroccan State enterprise, but also public works undertaken for the municipali- ties. In his " Imperial Germany " (English edition, p. 84) Prince von Biilow says: "The decision of the Algeciras Conference . . . pro- vided a bell we could ring at any time should France show any similar tendencies again." The incident just mentioned means that Germany is *' ringing the bell." 263 264 PROBLEMS OF POWER I belligerent;^ a British Empire, which — after a period in which the Colonies seemed to be breaking away from England, like so much Imperial star-dust bent on para- bolic careers of their own — ^is now reforming, in centri- petal spiral movements, under the astonished eyes of the world ;^ an Entente Cordiale between the new British Imperial System and the Dual Alliance; a Dual Alliance between France and Russia, closer knit than ever by definite engagements that are bound to upset the whole balance of power in the Baltic, the North Sea, and eventually in the Mediterranean; a Russia, rapidly arming, and consolidating its military situation in Europe, in anticipa- tion of the bursting of the dykes of Germanism either in the region of the Danube or in the Middle East, a Russia, moreover — and this is even more important — relentlessly preparing, by abrogation of the tariff regime concluded between her and Germany in 1904, to secure, in 1917, an economic liberty which will upset the commer- cial balance of power throughout the world; and, finally, a Far East which, owing to the Russo-Japanese pre- cautions for the monopoly of vast tracts of China, is be- coming more rapidly closed to German political expan- sion than ever Africa was closed to such expansion by the shortsightedness of Bismarck. 1 " II n'a pas d^pendu de nous de conserver la paix aux autres. Pour nous la conserver toujours k nous-memes, il faut garder en nous toute la patience, toute I'energie, toute la fiert6, d'un peuple qui ne veiU pas la guerre et qui pourtant ne la craint pas.'' — Speech of the French Prime Minister, M. Poincare, at Nantes, October 27, 1912. 2 Even the native rulers of the Dependencies are feeling the thrill of Imperialism. In November, 1912, the Federated Malay States presented to the British Government a firet-class armoured ship. On December 5, 1912, Canada offered three Dreadnoughts to the British Navy, and at one o'clock in the morning of February 14, 1913, amid scenes of great enthusiasm, the Borden Naval Bill, providing for the application of a sum of $35,000,000, " for the purpose of immediately increasing the effective naval forces of the Empire," was passed by 115 votes to 83. South Africa will shortly come into line with Canada, New Zealand and AustraUa, and contribute its quota of ships to the strength of the British Navy. The Defence Conference, which it was planned to convene at Vancouver for 1913 in order to register results Undreamed of before Agadir, has not yet been held. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 265 These events and tendencies — of which the list might have been much enlarged — are the evident logical con- sequence of Germany's anti-German foreign policy during the last seven years, and some are the direct result of the latest of her blunders, the despatch of the Panther to Agadir. It was inconceivable that she should not have learned the lesson temporarily ; yet the German Emperor, sceptical as to the perspicacity of his people, recently reminded them that pan-Germanism is not a panacea for the revival of German prestige. The confession was a courageous act of poHtical wisdom. But calculated, as it would have seemed, to point the full moral of a sequence of German blunders, William II evidently regarded it as utterly inadequate. Early in July 1912, a few days only after the Russian Duma had voted grants for the construction of four " Dreadnoughts " of 30,000 tons, four ironclad cruisers, eighteen torpedo boats, and twelve submarines, as " the necessary guar- antee of the national dignity and security " (words of Mr. Kokovtzof, June 19) which had been endangered at Tsushima, the German Emperor met the Tsar at Port-Baltic, and when the two sovereigns parted the following authorized statement was given out: — • The political conversations, which extended to all questions of the day, strengthened on both sides the conviction that it still remains of the highest importance for the interests of the two neighbour Empires and of the general peace to maintain the mutual contact, based upon reciprocal confidence. There could be no question either of new agree- ments, because there was no particular occasion for them, or of pro- ducing alterations of any kind in the grouping of the European Powers, the value of which for the maintenance of equilibrium and of peace has already been proved. Nicholas II thus became answerable before the world for the sincerity of William II 's pacific intentions, but for this service he demanded a compensation. He forced William II to declare to the world, and to his own people, that the policy of the Triple Entente, which 266 PROBLEMS OF POWER Germany had untiringly attacked, was a policy that had restored the balance of power in Europe, and that made for peace. And, having secured William II's acqui- escence in this verity, Nicholas II and M. Poincare seized the first solemn opportunity offered them — that of their second meeting at Peterhof on July 21, 1914 — to emphasize the same word: equilibrium, which figured so conspicuously in the statement published at Port- Baltic.^ Germany's attitude at Port-Baltic was either the mea culpa of a prodigiously disinterested European patriotism or an ingenious device for gaining time, in order to begin again, at a more favourable moment, the old German poUcy of intimidation. In either case it was the direct result of forces actively at work during the previous years, of which Agadir may be taken as the supreme symbol. Port-Baltic was the reverse of the medal of Agadir. Germany's decision to be prudent, or, at all events, to play a mystifying prudent game and to adopt a franker idiom — to speak English and French instead of German^ — had been foreshadowed by the despatch to London of one of her ablest statesmen, J.1 The Tsar said in his toast: " Unies de longue date par la sympathie mutuelle des peuples, et par les interets communs, la France et la Russie sont depuis bientot un quart de siecle 6troitement liees pour mieux poursuivre le meme but, qui consiste a sauvegarder leurs interets, en collaborant d I'equilibre, et d la paix en Europe." The reply of the President of the Republic was: " Pres de vingt-cinq ans ont pass6 depuis que, dans une claire vision de leur destin, nos pays ont uni les efforts de leur diplomatic, et les heureux resultat de cette association permanente se font tous les jours sentir dans Vequilibre du monde." 2 " Odo gave some curious details of the interview between Bismarck and Thiers. The eventful one which terminated in the signature of the treaty lasted nearly eight hours. The old Frenchman's volubihty began to wear the Chancellor's patience, and, after many hours, he said: ' You talk a language I cannot follow, and reply to, as you do. I will answer you in my own ' — well knowing that Thiers did not understand German. Thereupon ensued a Babylonia of jabber, Bismarck using very strong language in his vernacular, which, in reply to Thiers' frantic inquiries : ' Qu'est ce qu'il dit ?'' was not translated literally by the bystanders." — ^Anecdote from the private and un- published papers of Hamilton Aide, in the possession of the author: *' Notes of Evenings at Lady W. Russell's. Sunday, April 18, 1871.'" A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 267 Baron Marschall von Bieberstein. The business method of that distinguished negotiator had immensely ad- vanced his country's interest at Constantinople. The issue of the Franco-German colloquy of 1911, and the events which Agadir precipitated in Europe, appreciably limited the potential range of his activity. What took place in Europe during 1912, and notably the declarations of his intelligent master at Hamburg and Port-Baltic, rendered the role of this German Ambassador in London one which was bound to be rather that of a consular than of a diplomatic agent. While he was biding his time and laying his plans. Baron Marschall suddenly died (September 24, 1912). Less than a month later, simultaneously with the conclusion of peace between Turkey and Italy, and with the outbreak of war between Turkey and the Balkan States, Prince Charles Max Lichnowsky was appointed his successor. In the Deutsche Revue, three months before, when the Balkan Day of Judgment still seemed remote, Prince Lich- nowsky had frankly declared his conviction that " no diplomatic artifice could possibly destroy the friendship between France and England." He added: "We Germans must accept the new conditions of existence created in Europe by the alliances and ententes, alli- ances and ententes in which we have not participated, and which have constantly been formed, if not against us, at all events independently of us." The confession of Port-Baltic would seem to have been the echo of the prudent and reasonable declarations of the future German Ambassador in London. But, in spite of these declarations — and even if the two wars in the Balkans, with all their consequences, had not exposed the stabiUty of the Triple Entente to grave and unexpected risks — the members of that group should keep well in mind that the anomalous and unstable character of the German Imperial Constitution — the particularism of the States composing an Empire provisionally welded into a kind of puzzle-nation solely by economic interest and by the 268 PROBLEMS OF POWER ingenious creation of a Reichsland regarded as a sort of national Pan-German park — constitutes a danger for Europe and for peace. A Confederation like the German Empire can hold together only as long as it is in the interest of the majority of its members to co- ope Ate harmoniously. When such co-operation ceases to " pay " economically, or is not needed in order to repulse foreign aggression, dissolution inevitably sets in. It follows that a prolonged economic crisis or a lasting condition of European peace would tend to disintegrate the German Empire; whereas steady economic well- being and a chronic state of military panic belong to the class of causes that favour the maintenance of German unity and the development of a German national spirit. Thus Imperial Germany longs with the same passion for both peace and war. In the case of such a Power a consistent foreign poHcy is impossible. The Bis- marckian impetus still governs the trend of German action. But just as a spent bullet ricochets from the protuberances of the soil as it skims the ground, so the dying Bismarckian diplomacy moves no longer in that steady curve, describing the inevitable resultant of forces, which that realist of genius, aUve to the essential con- ditions of the problem he set himself to solve, had the insight and the will to give to the foreign pohcy of his country. That pohcy is now bumping and josthng to- wards its ends. The tactics of Germany's rulers, respons- ible for the defence of the essential Imperial interests that the Bismarckian pohcy bequeathed to them, are bound to gyrate between patient, methodical, and ap- parently peaceful activity and hysterical and brutal intimidation and bluff; and both attitudes are, from the German point of view, equally advisable and equally sincere."^ The corresponding attitude incumbent on 1 See Chapter II, " The Weakness of the Government," and Chapter IV, " The Parliamentary Disorder," in the remarkable analysis of con- temporary unrest in Germany in M. WiUiam Martin's book. La Crise Folifique de VAUemayne Coniemporaine. In March 101-. a violent press A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 269 Germany's neighbours is evident. When Germany is calm they should prepare for war ; when Germany blusters they should be calm. They should neither be the dupe of her friendly overtures nor the panic-struck victim of her facile bluff. And if ever the time comes when she oversteps the mark, her own Teutonic mark or any other ; if ever the necessity of preserving German national unity suggests to her princes the wisdom of preaching to the German people a new crusade for the salvation of the German soul, the French and the English and the Russians need only heed the words of the Damoysel de la Mer in Amadis de Gaule : *' S'ils voyent seulement vos visages asseurez, je suis sur qu'ils ne les pourront souffrir: donnons dedans : car Dieu nous ayde.'' II The utility of the present grouping of the Powers is now generally acknowledged. No fears engendered by the Balkan Scare should obliterate from the conscious- ness of the Powers of the Triple Entente the knowledge, so laboriously acquired, of the real conditions of inter- national peace. Germany remains Germany in spite of the Balkan League. The fact of war in the Balkans has made it all the more necessary for the Powers of the Triple Entente to entrench themselves in their positions and to prepare for contingencies. It was, indeed, characteristic of German methods that at the very outset of the first Balkan war, when it was natural to anticipate the probable assembling of a European campaign was suddenly begun against Russia in the German press. Inspired organs extolled the project dear to the Pan-Germanists of a " pre- ventive war " against Russia. The only consequence of this characteristic outburst of the German temperament was to confirm Russian opinion in the suspicion that postponement of military precautions against Germany must not be allowed to continue. Once again German bluff was to weld into a compacter association the three members of the Triple Entente. 270 PROBLEMS OF POWER conference, for the purpose of vamping up the worn-out clauses of the Treaty of Berlin, Germany revived its old policy of blandishment of France. An inspired German press defended the thesis that in the Balkan Crisis the position of France and Germany was almost identical. The suggestion was that, since both desired European peace, they enjoyed the singular privilege of being able to co-operate for maintaining it. But such co-operation would have implied another experiment in rapprochement of the kind which proved so disastrous in 1909 and ended at Agadir. Henceforth partners to the Triple Entente must work together throughout the world, and not merely at this or that danger-spot, such as the North Sea, the Medi- terranean, and the Middle East, or the Caribbean. Common action, however, is impossible if the three Powers are distracted by their several domestic prob- lems. A necessary preliminary of effective common action on the part of the pacific Triple Entente is that its members shall severally put their houses in order. When they shall have completed that urgent task, and when, furthermore, they shall have secured all the necessary subterranean — or other ! — channels of com- munication between each other's domains, then, but only then, will they have the leisure to work out a common and elastic line of action, embracing all possible contingencies and aiming at and assuring the main- tenance of peace in the world. Then, but only then, moreover, can they safely do business (negotiations: neg-otium), collectively or individually, with Germany. The *' European Concert," in the old sense of the word, is possible only at the price of war. The only form of *' Concert " now possible is one organized for provisional ends between the two distinct groups of Powers; each group of three acting as a single integral Power, after independently concerted arrangements between the several members of each group. This was the character of diplomatic action during the two Balkan A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 271 wars. Throughout both of those episodes the Triple Entente sought '* to bring about a general understand- ing of all the Powers," and distinctly avoided " seeking to settle the difficulties of the moment by dwelling on any systematic opposition of the international groups."^ But the diplomatic action of the Powers of the Triple Entente was common action, the nature of which was determined by protracted preliminary negotiations between them, negotiations in which the members of the Triple Alliance had played no part. The method thus practised — and the efficacy of which was proved notably after Enver Bey's and Shevket Pasha's coup d'etat of January 24, 1913 — bore no analogy with the classic method employed in the period prior to Bismarck's death, the method recalled with regret by the Wilhelm- strasse, and still apparently extolled by certain irre- sponsible French statesmen, among whom the most eminent is the ex-Foreign Minister, M. Hanotaux. To revert to this old method to-day would not be to re- construct Europe; it would be to shatter Europe. Destruction of either one of the present groups would instantly be followed by a general war. This is why ^ Speech of the French Prime Minister, M. Poincare, in the Chamber of Deputies, December 21, 1912. The results of this system made it possible for the Tsar, in June 1913, just before the outbreak of the second Balkan War, to congratulate his Minister for Foreign Affairs in the following terms: " L'accueil cordial que j'ai re9U de la part de I'empereur d'AUemagne et de la population berlinoise et mon entrevne amicale avec le roi d'Angleterre [in Berlin, on the occasion of the mar- riage of the daughter of WiUiam II], m'ont rejoui d'autant plus que j'ai pu y voir, independamment des traditions de vieille amitie, une manifestation de solidarite sur les principales questions de politique europeenne dans le moment present et comme un gage solide assurant les bienfaits de la paix si necessaire au bonheur de toutes les nations. Rsconnaissant que dans le labeur penible qui vous a incombe, en raison des evenements balkaniques, vous avez non seulement execute completement toutes les indications que je vous ai donnees, inspir6 des interets de la Russie bien aimee, mais que vous avez su, par la penetration de votre esprit, votre fermete dans la defense de vos opinions et le traitement consciencieux de chaque question, vous assurer I'estime et la confiance de ceux qui participent h, la solution internationale des problemes compliques et difficiles en jeu, je con- sid^re de mon devoir de vous exprimer ma sincere gratitude et de vous dire que je vous demeure constamment favorable." 272 PROBLEMS OF POWER the '' European Concert," in the old sense of the word, is possible only at the price of war. The Triple Entente, if it has learned anything from the events of the last ten years, will certainly have learned to say: "United we stand, divided we fall." It must henceforth act in one spirit and as one agent. When, having solved their own several domestic problems, its partners proceed to draw up a plan of common action, they can give Germany every assurance that Power may require of their willingness to see her obtain any reason- able place in the sun on which she may have set her heart. International business may be allowed to pro- ceed unhampered by any other restrictions than those established by each self-respecting nation in the defence of its own national integrity. Russia and Germany and England may work out, in Europe as well as in the Middle East, and with no risk to the Entente, all the legitimate consequences of the arrangements of Potsdam. France and Germany may, to their common advantage, conclude the consortium of Ouenza, an ar- rangement of immense advantage to the great French colony of Algeria, and to the more than ever indispen- sable naval station of Bizerta.-^ And England may say to the successor of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein: " Since you and your Government at last know where we stand, there is no longer any reason why we should not come to terms over certain little matters that still await solution."^ 1 The appointment of M. Jonnart, ex-Govemor-General of Algeria, to the post of Foreign Minister in the Briand Cabinet of January 1913 was taken as an earnest of the rapid realization of the long-deferred Franco-German arrangement for the exploitation of the Ouenza mines, and of the construction of a railway system which will further the development of an extensive region of North Africa. Unfortunately, however, the Briand Government fell before M. Jonnart was able to realize his dream. It was not until February 6, 1914, that the French Chamber finally ratified the Convention enabling France to exchange her iron for German coal, and to establish, for the first time, on a large scale, a principle and method of Franco-German reciprocity in in- dustrial internationalism, which, if persisted in, will undoubtedly have important political consequences. ^ While the second English edition of this book was being exhausted, during 1913-1914, the programme of "international business" here A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 273 Fresh from inspection of the Krupp works at Essen, Sir Robert Hadfield, F.R.S., former President of the Iron and Steel Institute, was recently interviewed by the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Mail, to whom indicated was being carried out on a grand scale. Parallel negotiations were conducted between England and Turkey, France and Turkey, Germany and Turkey, Russia and Turkey, France and Germany, England and Germany, and France and England, resulting in a series of Agreements, the characteristic common note of which was that Germany, at last, obtained the acquiescence of the Powers in her claims to be the sole concessionnaire of the Baghdad Railway. In com- pensation England secured the confirmation of her secular pretensions to a protectorate in the region of the Persian Gulf, and, keeping Koweit in her sphere of influence, forced Germany and Turkey to fix the terminus of the Baghdad Line well inland at Bassorah. At the same time France secured in Syria concessions for the construction of 900 kilometres of railway, and in Armenia similar concessions amounting to 2,000 kilometres. She likewise obtained the ports of Heraclea and Inebali in the Black Sea, and of Jaffa, Caiffa and Tripoli (Syria) in the Mediterranean. These remarkable results — liquidating without serious international friction some of the thorniest problems that have divided the Powers, and constituting the beginning of a new era in the Middle East — were all achieved without in any way affecting the balance of power in Europe, and without disturbing the internal mechanism of the two great groups of nations: the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. In this connexion it is logical to record that Russia, too, spent some months in 1913 in negotiating with Turkey relative to Armenia. The tragic problem of " Armenian Reforms " was thus provisionally solved by a Russo -Turkish Agreement of February 8, 1914, providing for the appointment of European inspectors possessing control of the administration, the police, and the administration of justice in Armenia, and for certain desirable measures of local govern- ment which will safeguard the lives, property, and language of this long- suffering population. When the nations " take account of stock " as to their business dealings with Turkey it will probably be recognized that England is the Power that has reaped the most benefit from these negotiations. Her arrangement with Turkey, and, indeed, the Bagh- dad arrangement in general (in virtue of which the Powers abandon their pretensions to the internationaHzation of that line) is but a corollary of the Potsdam Agreement of 1911, which some interpreted at the time as a blow to the Triple Entente (cf. p. 155 et seq.). Russia took the lead in a policy which her partners have imitated without weakening the ties that bind them in an Entente of common defence against the Triple Alliance. The logical and practical consequence of Russia's initiative is to create intangible spheres of influence in the Middle East, hemming in on either hand the great trunk railway line now left to the sole exploitation of Germany. England has virtually annexed another sea, one of the world's highways. She recognizes the suzerainty of the Porte over Koweit, but the Porte engages not to interfere in Koweit's internal affairs, and recognizes the validity of the Convention concluded between the Sheikh and the British Government. The Porte likewise 1 274 PROBLEMS OF POWER he revealed-^ the fact that Germany, the Doubting Thomas of the nations, had now reached a frame of mind in which mere protestations of goodwill towards her were waste of breath; that what she now wanted from England was a sign, a " tangible act like the cession of Walfisch Bay." Sir Robert Hadfield, convinced that the destiny and future progress of the world are largely in the hands of England, Germany and the United States, proposed a triple entente of those three Powers in China, with the object of exploiting *Hhe greatest stores of coal and iron in the world." He urged the appointment of an Anglo-German board of twenty members, all business men, " ten great Englishmen and ten great Germans, clothed with plenipotentiary powers by their respective Governments, to discuss and seal what might be called a ' Treaty of Toleration.' " Diplo- matists, soldiers and sailors, added Sir Robert Hadfield, are too " professionally myopic " to be of any use on such a committee. What is certain is that France and Germany might indeed come rapidly to terms if their national affairs could but be treated as mere *' business propositions " ; if , in a word, there were no such complica- tions of their problem as have been set forth in this attempt to survey the world's history from the Treaty of Frankfort to the eve of the Great War of 1914, and if theoretical economists might only be free to settle the question of international relations by leaving out all the factors that make their solution difi&cult. It would abandons its pretensions to suzerainty over the Peninsula of El Katr, the Bahrein Islands, and Muscat, and, finally, the Porte recognizes England's right to light, buoy, and police the Gulf. The Young Turks have thus sold their birthright to the Powers in return for the latter's acquiescence in the proposed scheme for an increase of the Turkish Custom dues. As far as England is concerned, once the Persian Gulf question was liquidated, the Baghdad dispute evaporated. Germany awoke to find that her hopes of political expansion in the Middle East had once more been thwarted: it looked like another case of " encircle- ment !" Whereupon she again cried:. "Compensations!" Were, then, the new Alexandretta concessions nothing ? 1 " What Germany Wants," Daily Mail, February 20, 1912. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 275 be possible to adopt the principle of Sir Robert Had- field's plan, provided the conditions just indicated have previously been laid down; and, indeed, this principle is sure to be applied before long in a rational way; but if ever England were complacently to favour the diver- sion of German expansion from Asia towards Africa, not only would she undo the work of twenty years, and weaken the French ally, but she would be preparing for herself a future complicated by fresh problems. She would be furthering German combinations for the estab- lishment of Atlantic coaling stations just at the critical moment of the opening of the Panama Canal. England should afford Germany certain opportunities for working off her surplus energy, her surplus production in Asia, but should avoid any arrangement permitting her to become a greater rival than she already is along the Atlantic trade routes. Thus, instead of confirming the treaty of 1898 relative to the eventual dismemberment of the Portuguese Colonies, she should seek for a fresh arrangement undoing that dangerous and incomprehen- sible pact. Within the last fourteen years the conditions determining the balance of power in the world have been altogether altered: so that there are obviously some things that England can do, and some things she cannot do, whenever the time may come for " talking business." But she can do nothing, nor can either of her friends do anything, with safety, until they have one and all put their house in order. The question that presses is: In what does that operation consist ? Ill Both France and England are now facing the delicate and urgent obligation of an electoral and constitutional reform which shall either suppress or discipline those elements of anarchy already analysed. In Russia, not- withstanding the criticism evoked by the first experi- mental efforts to reconcile the absolutism of the Tsars 276 PROBLEMS OF POWER with the interest and the claims of an awakened middle class and an awakening fourth estate, the national assembly of the Duma has continued to justify its exist- ence. The constitutional regime has already taken root. The agrarian and educational policy of the Government and the Duma, the industrial and financial progress of the community, the reorganization of the mihtary and naval power, in general the immense social and economic improvement which the United States alone can parallel, are results attesting Russia's steady advance in her efforts to recover in Europe the place lost at Tsushima and at Mukden. Her domestic outlook is darkened by the grave problem of assimilating certain nationahties now constrained to call her master; but in spite of the risks in a too rapid and rigorous Russification of certain subject peoples, her future has never been brighter. While Prussia is still persecuting the Poles ,^ Russia would be well advised — and more than ever since the rise of the Balkan Powers — to evolve a Pan-Slav pohcy characterized at last by a more generous and prudent treatment of the Polish nation.^ As for France, in the summer of 1911 her crying needs were the revival of Authority, and the restoration of Constitutional order; and it was quite clear at that date that these ends could be attained only by re-estab- lishing the principle of the Separation of Powers. The ^ See note, p. 244. 2 " Bismarck always made the oppression of the Poles an asset in his policy towards Russia, and succeeded unfortunately in hypnotizing Russia into a beUef that oppression of the Poles is likewise a pre-eminent Russian interest. The joint oppression of Poland thus became, and has remained, a bond of union between Germany and Russia. The present German Emperor departed for a moment from this smister principle, but subsequently reverted to it, and sanctioned Prince Biilow's poUcy of expropriating the Prussian Poles. Grermany thus placed in the hands of Russia a trump card which the Russian Govern- ment has hitherto failed to use. The position of Russia in Europe might be immensely strengthened, and her poUtical preponderance over Germany and Austria-Hungary assured at one stroke, were she to grant her Polish subjects a measure of autonomy and to treat them as fully quaUfied Russian citizens " {The Hapsburg Monarchy, by Henry Wickham Steed, p. 218. Constable). A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 277 policy of constructive nationalism, systematically applied by ministries containing statesmen like M. Poincare, M. Delcasse, M. Briand, and M. Bourgeois, has already made such progress that France, at this hour, in spite of the revival of Socialist-Radical Cabinets, is the most compactly self-conscious community in Europe. The project for the reform of the electoral law, a project consisting in the substitution of proportional representation and of the scrutin de liste for the former scrutin d'arrondissement, will, when it is adopted by the French Parliament, necessitate the formation of discipUned parties and reinforce the function of the head-of-the-State. It will give the President of the RepubHc the courage, and sanction his right, to make use of the prerogative of Dissolution, already accorded him by the Constitution (in agreement with the Senate), but hitherto practically inoperative to the great detriment of French public life.""" With the reinforcement of the Executive, and the re- vival of ministerial responsibility, as a consequence of the reaffirmation of the principle of the Separation of Powers, France will be free to complete the task of re- organizing the national defence and of preparing her ports, her railways and her canals for the economic battles of the future. Foremost among her preoccupa- tions should be the construction on her eastern frontier of a canal permitting Dunkirk to become a rival of Antwerp', the iron-masters of the Meurthe and Moselle to buy their coal in England instead of in Germany, and the whole French industrial world to break loose from the bonds now linking them to their German rivals. The industrial, financial, economic organization of France has, indeed, now taken a sportsmanlike start, and this movement synchronizes with the revival among the younger generation of a taste for adventure, a craving 1 Before M, Raymond Poincare became President of the Republic he formally stated, in an admirable little manual entitled Ce que demande la Cite (p. 54, Hachette), that dissolution was the natural guarantee of the Separation of Powers. " Elle ne merite pas," he said, " T'impopu- larit^ dont les evenements I'ont envelopp6e." 278 PROBLEMS OF POV/ER for responsible action, the reawakening of a patriotic, genuinely national spirit, the growth of religious toler- ance, and an increasing recognition of the need of re- establishing the secular relations of France with the Vatican. The inconvenience, the absurdity even, of the suppression of the French Embassy at the Vatican, are rapidly becoming patent even to the most poUtically inexperienced of French Jacobin fanatics. Even they are now deploring the decay of the French protectorate of Eastern Christians, the ecclesiastico-political prob- lems presented by the declaration of a French protec- torate over Morocco, and in general the advantage enjoyed by the rivals of France who possess an official representative through whom they may negotiate with the Vatican in defence of their national interests."^ There remains the case of England. Her Constitu- tional problem, which a year ago seemed almost in- soluble, but the solution of which has now been rendered relatively easy owing to the consequences of the incident of Agadir, is, after all, no new question. It is twenty- five years since one of the most suggestive of Engh'sh writers, the author of Oceana, while pointing out the impossibility of there ever being a *' British Empire," argued in the same breath that nothing was more feasible, if only politicians would cease to meddle, than a " Com- monwealth " of the British nations, held together by common blood, common interest and a common pride in the great position which unity can secure. The ** Commonwealth " dreamed of by Froude is on the point of hoisting on all the seas the flag of the five self- governing nations finally welded together not only by common blood and a common pride, but by the sense of a common danger. Under the dissolvent of Free Trade the " British Empire " has been steadily dis- integrating for more than a generation. The divergency of fiscal policies engendered a divergency of foreign policies. At one moment the Imperial Government 1 See p. 204, note. A STUDY or INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 279 would conclude a commercial treaty with Japan for the sole benefit of the United Kingdom, at another Canada signed similar treaties with France and Germany with- out regard to their effect upon British trade. Then Canada and AustraUa passed Naval Defence Acts, with the warning to the British Admiralty that the Imperial Government should be allowed to use their battleships only if they so decided. Five separate systems of com- mercial treaties, five separate systems of defence, and one-fifth of a foreign poHcy ! Such has been the agglo- meration that for many years has been passed o£f as the British Empire, to a world astounded at the apathy and blindness, the procrastination and the parochial short- sightedness of England's statesmen and England's Par- liament. The Mother Island had taken it for granted that her Colonies were lost to her, and had not even gone into mourning. Interest alone holds nations together, yet Mr. Chamberlain proposed Imperial Pref- erence to unheeding ears. Empires as well as nations must have a sense of unity in order to maintain their integrity, yet the dominant forces among the disjointed portions of the British Empire were centrifugal. But nations and empires must have not only a sense of unity; they must have also a symbol of unity. Viewed from the outposts of Empire in the seven seas, England would have been utterly invisible if it had not been for a certain shimmer on the far horizon which was identified as that of the splendour of the British Crown. Amid the ruins of her aristocratic traditions and Parliament, the institution of the Crown, the King, the growing part played by the sovereign, the increasing utility of his role, rapidly became apparent. It was seen that the King was the keystone in the Imperial dome, the foundations of which rested in the four quarters of the earth. It was discovered that it was the sovereign alone who had been holding the Empire together; that to the Dominions the British Parliament, British statesmen, British liberties were nothing; the Queen and the King all. The West 1 280 PROBLEMS OF POWER has found it diflficult to comprehend the feeling of the Japanese for the Mikado. The divinity of a Mikado, as the divinity of an Augustus, is a notion that no longer fits into the idioms and frames of thought of our radical democracies. But the positive reaUty and utility, the practical constitutional value of the conception, began to dawn upon the mind of the most unreflecting citizen of England, as he watched the far-away Colonies moving out on their orbits, without need or thought of the island home, save when they beheld a chance gleam of sunlight on the British imperial crown. From having been a mere survival, from having dwindled to a fairly futile part of the constitutional machinery, a political fiction, a mere figure-head that " ruled " but did not govern, the sove- reign turned out to be the sole really necessary portion of the constitutional edifice, the one hope of lasting union, the only interesting and essential British symbol visible over the top of the sea. Thus there has survived from the old Constitution a symbol, the King, which will help to create the sense of unity; and, happily for the idea that he represents, happily for England, happily for the incipient Commonwealth of British Nations dreamed of by Froude, the sense of the importance of thi^ symbol has been enhanced, and, it is to be hoped, definitively affirmed, by the sense of common danger created by German imperialism and American commercial rivalry. King Edward died as King of England, Emperor of India. His son will reign as all that, but as more. Shortly, in a fresh and unexpected sense, he will be the British Imperial Sovereign. He alone, during the dark period of 1910 and 1911, when British institutions seemed crumbling, with the Dover Cliffs, into the sea, he alone, with a conscious and conscientious activity, was working for the preservation of the best of England's past, and for the adjustment of her present to her future. Grandson of the Queen who had maintained intact the traditions of the people that first gave practical efficiency to the idea of Freedom, son of the King whose sound A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 281 sense and direct action were the most powerful factors in the restoration of the balance of power in Europe, King George, sailor, traveller, practical man-of -business, makes the tour of his island kingdom and of his imperial domains, gets himself crowned at Delhi, crowns his boy in Wales, holds his Court in turn in the principal British possessions, and at the same time, keenly aUve to practical things, seeks to inoculate in a people " infected with a kind of restlessness exemplified in the week-end habit "^ the antidote of an example based on his knowledge that the prosperity of the oversea dominions, as well as of Germany and of the United States, is due to the enter- prise and the dogged industry of their sons. He took over the direction of the destinies of the new British ^ Fortnightly Review, August 1, 1911: '"A Business-like King.' Germany would seem to be aware of the disadvantages of the ' week- end habit ' in England. When she made up her mind to startle Europe by the ' Coup d'Agadir ' she chose the date of July 10, 1911, which was a Saturday. In consequence of the deliberations of the French Govern- ment on Saturday afternoon it was decided to telegraph to London to the French Ambassador, M. Cambon, directing him to find out from the English Government whether they would send a war-ship to Agadir in case Prance decided to do so. M. Cambon replied late in the after- noon that Sir Edward Grey was out of town, and would not be back until Monday. He had had a talk, however, with the permanent Under-Secretary of State, Sir A. Nicholson, who, without engaging the responsibility of his chief, declared that England wouid certainly adopt the policy of France. The French Cabinet thereupon deliberated on the question of the proper reply to be made to Germany, but were unable to make up their minds. On the morrow, Monday, the French Foreign Minister left, with the President of the RepubHc, for Holland on a visit that could not be deferred. On Monday evening M. Cambon telegraphed to Paris that he had at last been able to find Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, and that the minister, while assuring France of England's intention to support her in her Moroccan policy, seemed to doubt the advisabihty of making a naval demonstration, unless France insisted on doing so. At all events the matter could only be settled in Cabinet Council on Tuesday, the 4th. Meanwhile M. Caillaux, the Prime Minister of France, had decided not to send a ship to Agadir, and on Tuesday morning he telegraphed to M. Cambon bidding him inform the British Government of his decision. The telegram reached M. Cambon after the British Cabinet Council had come to the same decision as M. Caillaux — not to reply to the German challenge ! This Aesopian fable teaches that, while times and places often make timid men bold, on other occasions the same causes often make responsible men timid; and it likewise teaches the risks of the British — and now the American — * week-end habit.' " 282 PEOBLEMS OF POWER Empire (knit together at present solely^ by the post and the telegraph) just at the moment when the problem of their union is taking the form of a magnificent joint- stock enterprise which must be managed in the interests of the common shareholders. No sovereign ever had a greater opportunity. *' The earnest object of my life," said George V on his accession, " will be to uphold the Constitutional government of these realms." How could he know at the time that this great ideal would so speedily have to be superseded by another, for the realization of which he, the author of the cry, " Wake up, England !" seems to have been predestined ? How could he divine that by the force of things, the force of German and American things, there would be added to the sense of a common blood and a common pride, cherished by Englishmen all over the world, the sense of a common danger, and that this new situation would transform his task from that of " upholding the con- stitutional government of his realms " into that of assisting in the construction of a brand-new Imperial Constitution, and of determining the common functions of the United Kingdom, the autonomous Dominions and the Crown Colonies, all of them owing allegiance to but one King, one flag, one Empire ?^ 1 On March 17, 1914, however, the House of Lords agreed to the second reading of the " British NationaUty and Status of AUens Bill,'* which represented, as Lord Emmott, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, pointed out, the final product of ten years' negotiations between the Imperial and the Dominion Governments. This Bill estabHshes a system of Imperial naturalization on a uniform basis throughout the Empire. ^ " The local autonomy, which all communities of the British race cherish, and justly cherish, so much — the right to manage or mis- manage their own affairs, free from external interference— depends ultimately upon their capacity to stand together and present a united front to any possible aggressor. But for that end we require an Imperial Constitution, providing for the separation of those branches of public business which, like foreign affairs, defence, and ocean com- munications, are essentially Imperial, from those which are mainly or wholly local, and for the management of the former by a new authority, representative of all parts of the Empire, but undistracted by the work and the controversies which are peculiar to any single part."— 27^e Nation and the Emyire, by Lord Milner, G.C.B. (Constable, A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 283 IV The members of the Triple Entente must henceforth work together throughout the world, and the speedy settlement of their domestic problems is the necessary condition of effective common action. It remains to survey the wide sphere of their common action in the various seas and regions where their fleets are to fraternize. The Northern question may be dismissed with a brief allusion. Of the active discussion relative to the foreign poHcy of the Scandinavian States that has been going on in the three Northern countries ever since the separation of Norway and Sweden in 1905, only rare rumours reach the ears of Londoners and Parisians. But what is known shows that the poHcy of neutrality, strict and unalloyed neutraUty, developed in the more recent speeches of both the Danish and the Swedish Foreign Ministers, is one warranting the belief that the pact — signed by Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden in April, 1908 — for the maintenance of the status 1913). The " complete nationhood " of the Dommions, as Mr. Sidney Low has called it [Daili/ Mail, July 17, 1914], received striking official recognition in a despatch which the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr. Harcourt, sent in July 1914 to the Governor of Tasmania relative to the Governor's right to grant or withhold a dissolution of Parliament. Until recently the Governor of a Colony has been supposed to exercise his discretion on this and other matters; this " right," it was claimed, was part of his royal prerogative as representative of the Sovereign. Downing Street ruled in 1914 to support the Tasmanian Premier and Legislature in a dispute between them and the Governor, and thereby laid it down that it is the Ministers of the Dominion, not the representa- tive of the Crown and the Imperial Cabinet, who are responsible for the government of the Colony. The ancient conception of the role of the Governor in an autonomous Colony is thus altogether altered. " The citizens of the Dominions claim for their Governments and Parlia- ments a status of equality, under the Crown, with those of the United Kingdom." Downing Street has thus formally acknowledged the real character of the evolution that has taken place in the Constitution of the British Empire. Unless a brand-new Imperial Constitution, based on some form of Britannic Federation, be quickly evolved, the British Empire must fall asunder. 284 PROBLEMS OF POWER quo in the countries around the North Sea and the Baltic is perhaps more likely to be respected than any other in- ternational declaration or treaty now under the sceptical scrutiny of the Powers. The exchange of views in August and September, 1912, between the Foreign Ministers of the Powers of the Triple Entente in St. Petersburg, London and Paris, and the visits of Russian and British vessels to Scandinavian ports in September, have con- solidated the pact of 1898. The hardy voyages of the German " Zeppehns " above the North Sea merely serve to remind the Dutch, the Scandinavians, the Enghsh, and the French that in an alert Triple Entente Hes the one hope of peaceful existence in the waters bathing the side of the triangle marked by Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Christiania.-^ The more immediate scenes of the action of the Triple Entente are mainly in other waters and in other countries. They may be classed under the general heads of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, the Far East and the American Mediterranean, and the Caribbean Sea. In the Mediterranean and on its shores the policies of England and of France are for the first time in history easily assimilable. The lapsing of the Triple Alliance happily synchronized with a momentary lull in the Mace- donian question, and it was in the interest of the peace of the world that that Alliance should be renewed with- out delay. Its fourth renewal early in December 1912 has in nowise imperilled the naval position of the partners of the Entente Cordiale in the Mediterranean; it has, on 1 On Friday, November 29, 1912, it became known that an Aerial Navy Bill was about to be proposed by the German War Office and Admiralty " for the creation of a fleet of twenty Zeppelin airships of about 920,000 cubic feet capacity, capable of travelling at fifty-one mUes an hour, and remaining aloft for four days and four nights without an intermediate landing." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 285 the contrary, rendered more stable than ever the balance of power in the Middle Sea. Italy, which has secured Tripoli through the collusion of England and France and to the regret, no doubt, of Austria, as well as to the certain embarrassment of Germany,-^ seems to be aware that by remaining in the Triple Alliance she can not only best harmonize her own antagonistic ends, but also pre- serve the balance of power in the Mediterranean and establish peace in Europe. This seems a paradox. The reason, however, is clear. When Italy adhered, in May 1882, to the Austro- German treaty of 1879, and concluded the five years' pact which became known as the Triple Alliance, she assumed merely Continental responsibilities: nothing in the Alliance offered her any guarantee as to the invio- lability of her coast-line. It suited Bismarck to foster Italian jealousy of French and British sea power, and, notwithstanding Italy's insistent request, he refused to extend the Alliance to the Mediterranean. This refusal placed the subtle Italian partner in one of those am- biguous positions he loves. The Italian is never happier than when a situation makes it natural to try to invent a combinazione. Before the first lapsing of the Alliance — ^in consequence of meditations which have already been analysed — Italy arranged a complementary Mediter- ranean Agreement with France. When France and England concluded the Entente CorcMale in 1904, the Mediterranean clauses of their Arrangement were integrally bound up with the Anglo - Italian and Franco-Italian understandings with regard to the same waters. Once again, all the diplomatic roads led to Rome; all save one, the Russian road, and even that highway was finally opened at Racconigi in 1909 (p. 289). 1 In the late summer of 1911 it was well known in Constantinople that if Italy did not go immediately to Tripoli, she would be fore- stalled by Germany, seeking, in the concession of a North African coaling station, a Mediterranean compensation for the loss of the Atlantic port of Agadir. 286 • PnOBLEMS OF POWER Thus, during the period when German naval power was steadily growing, Germany's ally, Italy, was help- ing to close the great Middle Sea to German expansion. For the moment, however, Germany paid no heed. Even so recently as ten years ago Prince Biilow pro- claimed in the Reichstag that this state of things did not matter: such is Germany's veneration for the Iron Chancellor that even the most deplorable consequences of his greatest blunders are patriotically ignored by the Levites entrusted with the security of the ark of the Teutonic covenant. Bismarck had refused to extend the Triple Alliance to the Mediterranean; Germany reaped the consequences. Those consequences were too patent for her not to try to remedy the mischief done. When, in the winter of 1912, after Kirk-Kilisse, Germany beheld the sudden shattering of many of her plans for hegemony in the territory between Buda-Pest and Constantinople; when she perceived that matters were moving so fast in the Balkans that if she did not intervene between her two allies, Austria-Hungary and Italy, those Powers would probably come to blows even before the stipulated date of June 28, 1913, fixed as the limit within which the Alliance could be renewed, Germany acted in the interests of European peace in urging the instant removal of that pact on whatever possible terms. For some months before the Balkan War the German newspapers had been insinuating that Italy would act wisely in confiding to the Triple AUiance the direction of her Mediterranean interests ! No Italian fish were caught by the tinsel of this fly-bait made in Berlin. Bismarck had failed to take the chance that Crispi offered him. It was too late, in 1912, for the Italians to agree to extend the Triple Alliance to the Mediterranean. To renew the Alliance in the old form, however, was an immediate guarantee of peace. So to revise it as wantonly to introduce German Dreadnoughts into the Mediterranean, in consequence of an inter A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 287 national pact, would have been to upset the whole balance of power in that sea, and multiply the chances of war. The Wilhelmstrasse, therefore, did not insist, and the Alliance was happily renewed on the old terms. This event, which could not, and did not, prevent Germany from introducing a small naval division into the Mediterranean, was a positive victory for peace and a negative victory for the Triple Entente. And it should be said in this connexion that if, throughout all the negotiations connected with the peace settlement consequent on the first Balkan war, Russia displayed so exemplary a prudence — ^not even seeking the natural opportunity to take her revenge for the humiliations of 1909 and to realize her dream of opening the Dardanelles — her motives were, in general, a firm resolution to work sincerely in the interests of peace and, in particular, to avoid any initiative which would warrant Germany's raising the question of the partition of the Greek islands in a form permitting that Power, for instance, to estab- lish a naval base at Alexandretta, the terminus of one of the embranchments of the Baghdad Railway (c/. p. 272, note 2). Thus, unUke the Triple Entente, which is a pact between Powers united by a common interest and by a genuine reciprocal regard, the Triple AUiance is an arrangement, a self-denying ordinance, between three mortal enemies who have decided to grip each other as tightly as they can, lest if any one of them be given elbow-room he should fly at the others' throats. Again, when at Sinaia Count and Countess Berchtold and King Charles and Queen Elizabeth drank one another's health in honour of the secret consoHdation of the pact between the Emperor Francis Joseph and the " hero of Plevna," for the maintenance of a Balkan status quo, whatever the issue of the war between Turkey and the Balkan League, these precautions were only demonstrations on a smaller scale of the same artful jiu-jitsu diplomacy of which the secondary Powers had an excellent model 288 PROBLEMS OF POWER in the Triple Alliance.'^ Count d'Aehrenthal revealed to the world what Austria-Hungary thinks of Germany, and the retirement of the germanophile Archduke Eugene from the commandment of the Tyrol and Vorarlberg in 1 It was clear that in 1913, in the then state of Europe, the only prudent jiu-jitsu precautions for Rumania were those that would link her destinies with those of Bulgaria, Greece and Servia against the encroachments of the Triple Alhance. After having haughtily claimed for many years — and with reason — not to be one of the Balkan States, she sought in January 1913, during the armistice negotiations after the Turco-Balkan War, and even after the rupture of the negotiations on January 29, to exact territorial " compensations " of Bulgaria, for not having made war on the Allies while they were engaged in driving the Turk out of Macedonia ! She put forward the plea that the balance of power in the Balkans had been upset by the victory of the AUies ! King Charles's efforts to parody Pan-German policy would hardly have been possible but for the Austro-Rumanian understanding. The author stated unhesitatingly in the spring of 1913, in the original edition of this book, that the Austro-Rumanian arrangement must either be abolished or be limited by a frank convention with the Balkan Powers; that indeed a native " Latin " combinazione would be more effective in the long run than Hohenzollem bluff. Only a few weeks later, on July 11, 1913, Rumania, breaking her pact with Austria, invaded Bulgarian territory. She continued to put forward as a pretext the necessity of assuring the balance of power in the Balkans, but this time she ran no danger of being misunderstood: Bulgaria had just wantonly attacked her former comrades in arms, the Servians and the Greeks, of the Balkan anti-Turk Crusade ! Rumania, by this action — the initiation of which was due to M. Delcass6, M. Blondel, the French Minister at Bucharest, and Russian diplomacy — instantly arrested a war that threatened the peace of the world, and, by the same token, secured for herself a prestige and an independence which made her the arbiter of the Balkans. Nationalism is the self-conscious struggle of a people to maintain its integrity when it is exposed to the gravitative attraction of a powerful neighbour. By breaking her pact with Austria and by co-operating with Russia in a peace-policy of equilibrium, Rumania displayed the finest form of nationalism. When, on June 1, 1914, the two royal families of Russia and Rumania met at Constantza, Nicholas II congratulated King Charles on the excellent results of his policy of peace, " which had won for him the gratitude of the nations,'* and King Charles, in turn, who had just become a Russian Field- Marshal, stated it to be " the constant and invariable object " of his policy " to help to maintain by a stable equilibrium and by cordial relations between all the States of this part of Europe, that beneficent peace which alone can permit the reahzation of the prosperitv to which they aspire." Rumania's action in invading Bulgaria in the nick of time no doubt tended to fling Bulgaria into a state of dependency on the Triple Alliance — a condition marked, indeed, by the £20,000,000 loan concluded in July 1914 with German banks, which reintroduces German influence into the Balkans, the German syndicate having acquired rights for the construction of a railway line from Haskovo to Porto Lagos, ajid oj a iuirbour ai Porto Lagos — but her action made A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 289 favour of Baron Konrad von Hotzendorf, former head of the Austro -Hungarian General Staff, and the subse- quent recall of General Konrad von Hotzendorf to his old post in the place of General von Schemua, showed how Austria-Hungary feels about Italy. The Tyrol, in spite of the Triple Alliance, has become an arsenal of the national defence, a fortified camp dominating Italy. The latest Italian enterprise, the Tripolitan Expedition, has produced, among its most certain consequences, an aggravation of the Austro-Italian tension concerning the ultimate destination of the Albanian port of Valona, the hinterland of which is slowly being won over to Austrian sympathies by the steady propaganda of Fran- ciscan monks taking their orders from the Ball-Platz. In 1904 Signor Tittoni, ItaUan Foreign Minister, declared in the Chamber that Albania was not in itself of much importance, but that its shores and ports would ensure to their possessors '* the uncontested military and naval supremacy of the Adriatic."-^ It is this statesman, now Italian Ambassador in Paris, who has been notoriously the most assiduous companion of that Russian Ambas- sador, M. Isvolski, whose dreams of offering an open Dardanelles to his sovereign were wrecked by the pre- mature action of the members of the Triple Alliance in tearing up the Treaty of Berlin before Russia was ready. When the Tsar and Victor Emmanuel met at Racconigi, accompanied by their Ministers, the Sovereigns laid the foundations of an entente cordiale the principle of which her, at the same time, persona grata to Servia and Greece and Monte- negro, the new frontiers of which were fixed under her auspices by the Treaty of Bucharest that ended the Inter-Balkan War. The statu quo thus created has entailed savage racial enmities, and will maintain the Balkan States on a war-footing for an indefinite period. But it was Rumania's action alone that put a temporary end to hostiUties in the troubled Balkans. The future is on the lap of the gods ! ^ The Italians have never forgotten that the " Latin Sea," the Adriatic, was known, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as il golfo di Venezia. They dream of a railway from the Adriatic to the Danube (Scutari-Cladova) counterbalancing the line Vienna- Salonica, and placing Italy in direct communioation with Servia, Rumania and Russia. 290 PROBLEMS OF POWER was their common hostility to the realization of German and Austro-Hungarian interests in the Balkans, and a direct consequence of which was Montenegro's declara- tion of war in October 1912 against Turkey. Italy has ceased to be the Cinderella of the Triple Alliance. Of the three members of that Alliance it is Germany, after all, that has reaped the least benejfit from the pact during the last ten years. William II has done his best to keep his two partners in the humiliating posture of a " bril- liant second " and a Sancho Panza third. But Count d'Aehrenthal's initiative in taking Bosnia-Herzegovina was followed by that of Signor Giolitti in seizing Tripoli — and the Teuton leading-strings were snapped. The consequences of the Tripolitan expedition on the irri- dentist spirit were immediate. Europe too readily forgets that it is not France alone which has an Alsace-Lorraine problem to solve. When, on November 12, 1911, the ItaUan journalists at Tripoli offered a banquet to the correspondent of the Temps, M. Jean Carrere, the entire company greeted the intervention of Signor Scipio Sighele, one of the Nationalist leaders, with the cry: Vivent Trente et Trieste ! Italy has not yet achieved her ideal unity, and the " long hopes and the vast thoughts ** which she has stifled for so many years are once again becoming articulate, now that her enthusiasm has been re-kindled by the Roman prowess of her troops in the antique Libya. The nationahst spirit which has of late inflamed Italy is no new thing; it is only the resurgence of an old passion. In May 1891 one of the most eminent political economists in Italy remarked^ : — " The idea that Italy supported Signor Crispi entirely against her will still prevails abroad, and it is entirely erroneous. The truth is Signor Crispi personified, in a perhaps exaggerated form, the megalo- maniac propensities of the majority of the governmental classes. He fell, not because the country had had too much of his ' grand policy,' but solely because he had hurt certain local interests . . . and the same megalomania persists to-day, and his successor will have to heed those tendencies if he wishes to continue in office." ^ Letter to the author by Signor Vilfredo Pareto. I A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 291 This was in 189L In 1912, after the bombardment of Tripoli and the occupation of the .^gean, the Nationalist movement, born in Florence, was justified by its works ; irridentism took on a fresh vigour, it was fired by a new hope. But while the Turco-Italian War did not make for the peace of Europe, it made even less for the stabiUty of the Triple Alliance. These considerations suggest once more how immensely it was in the interest of the peace of the world that that pact should be renewed — above all, in anticipation of the fatal day when the Emperor Francis Joseph is to hand over the great com- posite world of Austria-Hungary to Heaven alone knows what destinies.^ The Triple Entente has need of the ^ Notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, it seemed prob- able, up to the fatal ultimatum to Serv^ia in July 1914, after the murder of the Austrian Heir-Apparent at Serajevo, that while the Emperor- King lived Austria-Hungary would do its best to keep the peace. What is known as the " Berchtold Proposition " was an ambiguous appeal made to Europe in August 1912 (by the Power that in 1908 took from Turkey Bosnia-Herzegovina) to assist the Ottoman Govern- ment in applying a policy of progressive decentralization in favour of the Macedonian nationalities, and to urge upon the Balkan States a peace-policy. This proposal, made while the French Prime Minister, M. Poincar6, was in Russia conferring with the Tsar's Government, aroused suspicion in . Europe. It was generally regarded as an attempt to steal a march on Russia and to checkmate the policy of the Triple Entente. Yet the good faith of the Austro-Himgarian Govern- ment would seem to have been demonstrated by the subsequent course of events. Count Bercntold's initiative was perhaps one of the efl&cient causes, it was not necessarily the final cause, of the Balkan Crusade. The Balkan Stxtes, crushed between the Young Turks and Austria- Hungary, fearing both the growth of Ottoman Imperialism and the descent of Austria to Salonica, had — by 1911 (see note 2, p. 139) — achieved their miraculous union under the hegemony of the Bulgarian tsar. Meanwhile the prolongation of the Turco-Italian war aroused their dormant ambition. The Ball Platz is nearer Belgrade and Sofia than are the Quai d'Orsay or Downing Street. Austria-Hungary was even more concerned for the maintenance of peace in the Balkans than France, England or Russia; and Count Berchtold was no doubt better informed than the foreign ministers of some of the other Powers as to the danger of immediate war. The secret Serbo-Bulgarian treaty of defensive alliance was signed on March 13, 1912, and was probably no secret for the Ball Platz. Count Berchtold formulated his famous proposal calculated to forestall and avert just such irreparable action on the part of the Balkan League as took place in October 1912, when the four Balkan States declared war. At the same time he went to Sinaia to come to terms with Rumania in case his efforts to mobilize European diplomacy at the eleventh hour in favour of peace should 292 PROBLEMS OF POWER Triple Alliance ; it needs the Alliance in order to simplify its own problems. As long as the Alliance holds together, so long are the prospects of peace between the Great Powers of Central Europe approximately certain. And the existence of the Triple Alliance is no obstacle to the friendly ententes between two of its members and this or that member of the rival group. Thus in Mediterranean waters the interests of France and England (even — with certain reservations — of Russia) are now identical. Their common aim is main- tenance of an open sea: the one for the security of her Carthaginian naval base at Bizerta, and because of the need of an unencumbered highway for the transport of her army corps or even of her black troops in case of an European war; the other because the Mediterranean, which is one of the great central portions of the maritime world, is also the highroad of the chief purveyors of England's food-supplies, and will shortly be one of the prove unavailing (see note, p. 288). When Count Berchtold's fears were finally realized and war broke out, the Austro -Hungarian Minister for War took the natural precautions; he asked for supplementary grants amounting to 250,000,000 crowns. To conclude, as certain Hungarian and French journalists (see article by M. Jacques Bardoux in the Opinion, October 19, 1912) concluded, that " the Ball Platz must have worked to precipitate the Balkan War " is a gratuitous interpretation. Even throughout the subsequent period of the Inter- Balkan War, after the temporary break-up of the Balkan League and the invasion of Bulgaria b}^ Rumania, Austria prudently refrained from military or other irrevocable action. Not even the assassination at Serajevo, on June 28, 1914, of the Heir-Apparent, the Arch-Duke Francis Ferdinand, by the Bosniak schoolboy troubled the serenity of the Emperor-King. Here is his comment on that event: " Le vertige d'un petit nombre d'hommes induits en erreur ne saurait 6branler les liens sacr6s qui nous unisscnt, moi et mes peuples. . . . Pendant 65 ans j'ai partag6 aveo eux la trittssse et la joie. ... La nouvelle et douloureuse 6preuve qu'il a plu a la decision insondable de Dieu de ra'in- fliger, a moi et aux miens, affirm era en moi la resolution de persister jusqu'a mon dernier soupir dans la voie reconnue comme la meilleure pour le bien de mes peuples, et si je puis un jour transmcttre k mon successeur le gage de leur affection comme un legs pr6cieux, ce sera la plus belle recompense de ma sollicitude patemelle a leur 6gard." A few days later the Emperor Francis Joseph seemed to go mad. He authorized the ultimatum to Servia which vindictive Magyar animosity and Pan-German ambition dictated to his Government, and which precipitated a great European War. A STUDY OF INTEENATIONAL POLITICS 293 two trade-routes linking Portsmouth to the pipe-line of the Anglo -Persian Oil Company.-^ The military corre- spondent of The Times has put a part of the case very neatly : — " It is not in our interest that the trade of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles should suffer considerable interruption. It is not in our interest, nor in that of Russia, Rumania, or Turkey, that the islands of the ^gean, which have good harbours, and which can enable ships based upon them to control the trade issuing from the Dardanelles, should rest in the hands of a strong and unfriendly naval Power. Our interests, and those of Russia in particular, are identical in this respect, and if hereafter the Black Sea fleet of Russia were to be per- mitted by international agreement to steam into the Mediterranean, we should probably nowadays make no opposition." In a word, the situations that have already arisen, that are arising, or that are bound to arise in conse- quence of the Turco-Italian War, of the Herculean efforts of the Balkan League to clean up the Augean stables of Macedonia, and of the Second Balkan, or Inter-Balkan War, form an interesting illustration of the general drift .of the • time, the present phenomenon of nationalistic concentration in resistance to the disinte- grating action of cosmopolitan economic forces; while, viewed in the hght of poHtics and diplomacy, they show that the present grouping of the Powers, in the interests of world peace and equilibrium, is rational, and that it is likely, for yet a considerable period, to remain what it is to-day. At all events, it is clear, since that is the immediate question in hand, that the members of the Triple Entente must hold together in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Even the eventual opening of the Straits need not, and will not, be regarded as a matter 1 England has laid down or is adapting 250 warships of different classes for the Fleet that are partly or wholly dependent on oil. On June 18, 1914, the House of Commons adopted by 254 votes to 18 a motion authorizing the purchase of share or loan capital of the Anglo- Persian Oil Company to the amount of £2,200,000, thereby rendering maintenance of a safe trade route in the Mediterranean a more vital national intarest than ever, and greatly increasing England's responsi- bilities in the Middle East. As already remarked (p. 231), " a country requires the army and the navy of its eoonomio policy." 294 PROBLEMS OF POWER that in any way concerns the principle of the main- tenance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. But it is impossible to treat it merely as a question of poUtical economy, a problem with which national honour and national prestige have nothing to do, an operation that can be accompHshed solely by international finance and by commercial treaty. If it could be thus isolated, the Time Spirit would never have solved an historic problem more neatly nor offered an object-lesson more charac- teristic of the time. But it cannot thus be isolated. It has to be considered in connexion with the whole question of the balance of power in the Mediterranean, a question that includes, as has been seen, the ultimate partition of the " Greek " islands, and such immediate reahties as the French protection of all the Eastern Christians.-^ Italy's ^ In 1905, after M. Loubet's visit to Rome, when the relations between France and the Vatican were particularly strained, the Rouvier Ministry heedlessly displayed its friendship for Italy by granting the religious orders in the East the privilege of renouncing French protection for that of Italy. A few days later at the Congress of the " French Alliance " in Lyons two eminent " Radical Republican '* Senators fell into line behind the Ambassador and the Academician, blaming French diplomacy for having so heedlessly blundered in ceding to Italy the secular rights of France as protectress of the Eastern Christians. From 1905 to 1911 thirty-three Italian monastic establish- ments in the East substituted the Italian for the French flag. When the Turco -Italian war broke out, and the Italians were expelled from Turkey, the Italian monks who had remained under French protection, as well as other Italian monks who had accepted the pro- tection of Italy, appealed for protection to the French Consuls. After the war the Italians wondered whether France would try to keep under her protection the Italian monks who during the war rushed to the shelter of the tricolour. The Vatican still remains anti -French and pro-Italian. But French patriotism is no longer what it was in the days of M. Combes. M. Poincar6 is as well aware as was Gambetta that anti -clericalism ought not to figure on the list of French exports. On November 21, 1912, while the Turks and Bulgarians were still facing each other in the Tchataldja lines, he informed the Ottoman Government that France, " acting as the Protectress of the Eastern Christians, would be obliged to hold the Ottoman Government respons- ible for any violence exercised against them." It was clear that the resolute courage of the French Prime Minister would have far-reaching consequences. In the early spring of 1914 M. Maurice Barr^ (who is as characteristic a spokesman of the reflex intuitions of the French temperament as Mr. Rudyard Kipling is of British sentiment), acting partially, perhaps, at the suggestion of his friend M. Poincar6, then President of the Republic, set out on a tour of inspection amid the tradi- A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 295 cravings for possession of Rhodes, if satisfied by the Powers, in consequence of a European Conference, would imply compensations to those Powers commensurate with the importance of the concession.^ Rhodes commands the route of the Dardanelles, Asia Minor, and the Suez Canal. It counterbalances Cyprus and menaces Malta and Bizerta. Even the presence of the future Russian Black Sea fleet in the Mediterranean could not suffice, in itself, to compensate the Triple Entente for the sudden tional sites of French influence in the East. His report of the decadence of these establishments, and his proposals for remedying the evil, attracted wide attention. At the reception given at the French Embassy in Constantinople on July 14, 1914, the Ambassador, M. Bompard, acknowledged that the future of French prestige was " menaced " in the East in consequence of the expulsion of certain religious orders from France, and praised M. Barrds for his patriotic campaign. ^ In the Preliminaries of Peace signed between Turkey and Italy at Ouchy (October 16, 1912), Italy agreed to restore to Turkey the iEgean Islands already occupied by her. But for the realization of her promise she imposed certain conditions which necessitated the maintenance of her garrisons in the ^Egean not only during the war between Turkey and the Balkan League and the Inter-Balkan War, but until the Powers should take in hand — either by a Conference or by war — the whole question of the revision of the Treaty of Berlin. Such a Conference did, indeed, take place in London after the war between Turkey and the Balkan League. By the Treaty of London the question of the ultimate disposition of the ^Egean Islands was left to be decided by the Powers. They agreed to leave to Greece the islands conquered by her, and this clause was accepted by Turkey. The practical application of the Treaty of London, however, was complicated by certain effects of the Treaty of Bucharest, which put an end to the Inter-Balkan War, and fixed the conditions of the existing balance of power in the Balkans (see p. 288, note). Owing to the transfer of territories from one Power to another, tribal, almost racial, migrations ensued. The Turkish and the Greek populations were the chief sufferers during this process of readjustment attendant on the application of the Treaty of Bucharest, and at one moment (in May and June, 1914) the tension was such between Athens and Constanti- nople that Europe feared the outbreak of war. Just at this juncture, June 13, Greece formally annexed Chios and Mitylene. This action, as has been seen, was in entire consonance with the Treaty of London, but that Treaty had as yet received no positive sanction on the part of the Porte. Meanwhile both Greece and Turkey are feverishly increasing their naval force. The Italian promises made at Ouchy remain still unfulfilled, although, by the settlement arrived at in London, the Powers agreed that none of the iEgean Islands should be permanently occupied and maintained by any one of them. 296 PROBLEMS OF POWER shock given to the present relations of the fleets of the Entente Cordiale by the estabhshment of the House of Savoy in the citadel where the Knights of St. John re- pulsed the troops of Mahomet II. The settlement of the questions suddenly forced upon the attention of the members of the Triple Entente by the turn taken by the Turco -Italian War, by the success of the Balkan League, and by the Inter-Balkan War, wiU be the supreme test of the solidity of that pact and of the intelligence of French, British, and Russian statesmen. Even before the outbreak of the Turco-Balkan War, after six months of the Italo-Turkish War, when Italy had seized more than one-third of the islands of the iEgean, and Germany, her ally, had announced the intention of placing in the North Sea a fleet the equal of that of England, then at last there was belated talk in England of an alliance with France. Even Lord Haldane, whom a German foreign office communique in 1906 had described as "a very germanophile minister,"^ warned his compatriots that they were '^ getting slack " over questions of national defence, and he added: ** In no distant time we ought to be the most powerful mili- tary and naval nation combined that the world has ever seen." The disinterested outsider who overhears such words as these can only reply: " There is no time to be lost." Kirk-KiUsse marks the end of an epoch, the Bis- marckian, and the beginning of a new era, not merely of European, but of world history. Thirty-nine years before the discovery of America the Turks took Con- stantinople. Four hundred and fifty -nine years later Turkey virtually ceased to be a European Power. Although, in consequence of Bulgarian treason to the cause of Balkan Unity, Turkey ultimately recovered Adrianople from which she had been driven, she has, in reality, been thrust back into Asia by a mihtary coaUtion ^ Deutsche Revue, September 1906, article on " Germany and Foreign PoUcy." A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 297 of the small Slav States. This is the first result of the Balkan War of 1912. What are the consequences of that result ? They are numerous and remarkable. The War has put an end to the dream of Catherine II : the road to Byzantium is closed to Russia. At the same time the enforced concentration of the Turks in Asia will oblige Russia to exercise special vigilance in the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and particularly in her sphere of influence in Armenia [see note 2, p. 272], But while Russia has been arrested in her overland march to the Middle Sea, Austria has been arrested as well, and Germany also: a new Slav empire, a potential United States of Balkany, is taking the place left vacant by the Ottomans, closing the road to Salonica, and the Pan- German hopes of eventually making Trieste an integral part of the national patrimony of Greater Germany have thus been dissipated. ■"• In other words, the rise of the Balkan States, provided they succeed in maintaining their union — ^if they devise a workable Federation, which will lift them, as allied Powers, to the dignity of a Quadruple, or even a Balkan Triple Entente capable of assuring their political and economic independence in face of the Triple Entente and the Triple AUiance^ — will have effectually altered some of the most important factors of world- ^ Mr. H. Wickham Steed says justly (p. 275 of The Hapsburg Monarchy) that Germany's Drang nach Triest " has always been, and remains, a much more positive and practical factor of European politics than the Austro-Hungarian Drang nach Osten, or the dream of a ' March to Salonica.' " ^ It is as true to-day (1914) as it was in the springtime of 1913, before the creation of an " independent " Albania, that a quick and ingenious way for them to cement their union would be to insist on making Albania a kind of Balkan Reichsland, the keystone of their Federal Constitution — a territory belonging to all the Balkan States but monopolized by none, and nominally governed by rotatory dele- gates of the several members of the Balkan League. Austria alone would object to this solution for the Albanian Question; Italy would not complain. The author prophesied, in the early editions of Problems of Power, that the creation of a vaguely -defined Albania, overlapping the region of the Servian conquests, in order to appease Austria, would keep the Eastern Question still open. The history of South- Eastem Europe during 1913 to 1914 was the comic but melancholy confirmation of his vain warning. 298 PROBLEMS OF POWER politics. Certain constant quantities hitherto figuring in one entire series of problems have suddenly been eHminated. The statesmen most embarrassed by this alteration of the accustomed poUtical formulas are those of the Triple AUiance . The perplexity of France , England and Russia is comparatively shght. These three countries have been able to settle down to the solution of the modified problems, without undue anxiety as to their abihty to integrate the new factors. Germany and Austria, on the contrary, suddenly confronted by Kirk- KiHsse, were called on to deal with an unknown set of variables of uncertain bearing and value. All they really know to-day is that Bismarck blundered; and that the Balkan factors in the problems of the modern world are, after all, turning out to be worth more than the pre- historic and legendary bones of the Pomeranian grenadier. As a result of the Balkan Wars, the German drang nach Osten was summarily checked, and Austria called back westward. It has already been shown that the Balkan ambitions of Austria were the result of her dis- asters. Napoleon drove her out of Italy and Germany and ofTered her Istria and Dalmatia. Bismarck, con- tinuing the work of Napoleon, took from her Venice, promised her Bosnia and Herzegovina, and, constructing a soHd German bulwark at her back, launched her on her perilous voyage down the Danube. He gave her a free pass across Macedonia, and thereby lured her forth on her ambiguous destiny. Although Austria is a Power essentially German, Bismarck sought to make her Slav; and she went on assimilating the territories of the Slavs until she became positively " saturated " with them. ** Saturated *' is, indeed, the very word employed by Comte d'Aehrenthal, the first of her pubhc men to recoil before the consequences of pursuing a German, rather than a purely Austrian, policy. When Uskub and Ipek were captured by the Servians six million men of their blood in Austria-Hungary applauded. Eleven million Germans and eight million Hungarians govern to-day in A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 299 Austria-Hungary some twenty -five million Slavs. But for the War of the Balkan League and the Inter-Balkan War, Austria would have gone on thus absorbing, or try- ing to absorb, the Balkan Slavs, and she would soon have awakened to the fact that she had become a sort of pudding stone of peoples, a Plural Monarchy ripe for dis- integration. To have played much longer the role of Prussian vassal would have been to substitute for the Eastern Question a much more complicated Austrian Question. The victories of the Balkan League and the Second Balkan War came at the " psychological moment." Austria must perforce alter her national policy. She is thrust back upon herself. She is given, for the first time since 1878 — for the first time since Sadowa ! — the oppor- tunity to meditate on her real interests, and evolve a self-respecting national policy, while ehminating the germs of anarchy, fast propagating in her loosely -knit composite empire.-^ Kirk-Kilisse, which has stopped the German offensive in the Balkans, and the rise of Rumania, which has established Balkan equilibrium, ought to have been a blessing in disguise to Austria. On September 17, 1877, Crispi, who was then Presi- dent of the ItaHan Chamber of Deputies, and who had been sent by the Italian Government on a confidential mission to Berlin, was received by Bismarck, with whom he had a long and remarkable conversation, carefully reported in his Memoirs. During this conversation Bismarck said to the Italian statesman: "I cannot conceive of a case in which Austria would be our enemy." Crispi repHed that Austria at the time evidently stood in need of German support, since she had to restore her financial situation and reconstruct her army; but "Austria," he added, "cannot look favourably on the new German Empire." " You say," continued Crispi, " that Germany has no interest in the Eastern Question. Yet you cannot forget that the Danube is to a 1 See note 1, p. 12, and the chapter " Foreign Policy " in Mr. Henry Wickham Steed's The Hapsburg Monarchy (Constable, 1913j. 300 PROBLEMS OF POWER large degree a German river; it flows, through Ratisbonne, and is the channel of German trade to the Black Sea. At all events, we Italians cannot, like you, ignore the Eastern Question. ... If the Great Powers were to agree to abstain from all conquest in the Balkan provinces, and decide that the territory taken from the Turks should be left to the native populations, we should have nothing to say. But it is said that Russia, in order to conciliate Austria, has offered the latter Bosnia and Herzegovina. Now, Italy could not permit Austria to occupy those territories. In 1866, as you know, the kingdom of Italy was left without frontiers in the Eastern Alps. If Austria were to obtain new provinces, strengthening her position in the Adriatic, our country would be caught in a vice, and exposed to invasion at the pleasure of the neighbouring empire. You ought to help us. We are loyal to treaties and demand nothing of anybody. You ought to dissuade Count Andrassy to-morrow from any wish to take over Ottoman territory." " Austria," replied Prince Bismarck, " is pursuing an excellent policy at present. Only one case could arise that would cause a rupture between Austria and Germany, namely a difference between the policies of the two Governments in Poland. . . . We cannot allow the establishment of a Catholic kingdom on our frontiers. It would be a France in the North. We already have one France. We should then have two, which would naturally be allied, and we should be between two enemies. . . . Austria knows we are loyal friends. She is following a good course, and has no reason to change. If she did change, and became the protectress of Catholicism, we should change too, and then we should be with Italy. . . . Don't try, by exciting her suspicions, to provide Austria with a pretext to change her policy. The Danube does not concern us. It is navigable only from Belgrade. At Ratisbonne there are only a few rafts. Bosnia, the whole Eastern Question, is of no interest to Germany. If it became a cause of quarrel between Austria and Italy, it would distress us to see two friends fighting whom we wish to see living in peace. Moreover, if Austria took Bosnia, Italy could take Albania, or some other territory on the Adriatic." It is more than thirty- five years since this conver- sation took place. Read in the light of the argument of the present book, there is not a sentence, there is scarcely a word, in it that is not rich in suggestion. " I cannot conceive of a case in which Austria would be our enemy," said Bismarck to Crispi, and in the same breath the same Bismarck remarked: " We cannot allow the establishment of a Catholic kingdom " on our frontiers. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 301 Yet, by the Balkan Wars, Austria was turned back west- ward well up under the German bastions, and it was the Austria of the grandiose, politico-religious Eachar- istic Congress of 1912. She had struggled for more than a generation, against her German birthright, to become Slav and Balkan ; she was constrained at last to renew her devotion to her ancestral German gods or to break the peace. The Hapsburgs are an older race than the HohenzoUerns ; they wore an Imperial crown 350 years before William of Prussia passed under the arch of the Place de I'Etoile in Paris. " I cannot conceive of a case in which Austria would be our enemy !" When a victorious Balkan League drove the Turks out of Europe the potential " case " arrived. If Austria had learned the whole lesson of the winter of 1912, her rulers — who were dumbfounded (and who can wonder ?) by the sudden shattering of the dreams of a generation — would with statesmanlike calm have readjusted their policy to the new exigencies of the situation. They would have understood that the victory of the Balkan States had at last made it possible for their country to assert, shoulder to shoulder with Germany, her equal moral rights and her national dignity; they would frankly and loyally have accepted the new status quo. Austria, as the nearest neighbour of the new Slav federation, would have learned to live in good inter- national comity with States whose economic future was bound up with her own.^ No consequence of the Balkan War was more interesting than this: the Austria that ^ The economic consequences of the Balkan Wars are for Austria- Hungary far more serious than the political. Before the war its trade with Turkey exceeded its entire trade with all the Balkan States. Turkey was satisfied with a 11 per cent, ad valorem tariff, whereas the duties imposed by Bulgaria and Servia on such articles as sugar, timber, leather, men's underwear, beer, etc., are most onerous for Austrian industry. The United States of Balkany may seek, by a Balkan zollverein, to close their markets to Austrian and German trade. Thus economic, quite as much as political, apprehensions accounted for Austria's attitude during the Balkan Wars, and deter- mined its subsequent policy. 302 PROBLEMS OF POWER Germany seemed to have bewitched into pursuing the unending task of following out the Bismarckian plan; the blind, blonde, pathetic giant, doomed to " toil at the mill with slaves " for the Wilhelmstrasse, was finally liberated. The Philistines had decided to do their work themselves. Austria had so long been used to taking orders from Berlin that when the task Berlin had set her was suddenly interrupted her very destiny seemed ended. She made a magnificent effort to survive ; in December 1912 she converted the loosely-knit agglo- meration of peoples ruled by Francis Joseph into a com- pact bristling camp, with the object of showing the world she was a nation. It is certain that the spec- tators most impressed were the Germans. KIirk-Kiliss6 should have emancipated not merely the Balkans. It might have marked the rebirth of German Austria. But the mobilization of Austria, and its causes, did not merely constitute a lesson for Germany. They were also a warning for Italy. Italy, indeed, as has already been seen, had no need of such a warning. She has always had a perfectly clear idea of the peculiar nature of the armed neutrality and reciprocal distrust which are the very basis of the pact uniting her, in a defensive- aUiance, to her partners in the Triplice. " Italy could not permit Austria to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina," said Crispi to Bismarck in 1879, and Bismarck retorted jauntily: "Do what you like about the Eastern Ques- tion; we have no interest in the Balkans; if Austria takes Bosnia, Italy could take Albania or some other territory on the Adriatic." Crispi left Bismarck with- out having obtained satisfaction. A year later at the Congress of Berlin, moreover, Italy beheld closed against her all the Adriatic doors of the Balkans: the port of Antivari was given to Montenegro, and all the Mon- tenegrin waters were shut to the war-vessels of the nations, yet the maritime police of the Montenegrin coast- line was handed over to Austria, and Austria, not Italy, was permitted to " accord her consular protection to A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 303 the Montenegrin merchant flag." Italy, still preserring the memory of the old trade route, the Via di Zenta, and of the still more ancient Roman way, the Via Egnatia — ^the very one followed in the winter snows towards Durazzo by the Servians on their glorious march to the sea — Italy came forth from the Berlin Congress with the sense that her interests had been sacrificed to those of Austria. Bismarck had in fact made it possible for Austria to organize the pacific penetration of a region that ought really to have been opened to Italy: ** Monte- negro must come to terms with Austria-Hungary as to the right of constructing and maintaining a route and a railway across the new Montenegrin territory " (Clause 29 of the Treaty of Berlin). Count Corti, the Italian Plenipotentiary, took an amusing and futile revenge, during the very deliberations of the Congress, in daily allowing the more important results of the proceedings to leak out into the columns of The Times, through the intermediary of M. de Blowitz. But Crispi was already meditating a vengeance of a finer ItaUan quality. In spite of his appeal to Bismarck, Bosnia had been given to Austria for eventual occupation, and Albania had not been given to Italy, nor had she been offered any other territory on the Adriatic. Pending some satisfactory revenge Italy took provisionally the only measure that could "give the time time." II tempo e galantuomo. As the best practical device for checking Austrian expansion in the Adriatic, she became a partner to the Alliance between Germany and Austria, and slowly laid her plans to extricate herself from the Germano-Austrian web. In 1890 Crispi wrote privately to Lord Salisbury: " If we had Tripoli, Bizerta would no longer be a menace for Italy nor for Great Britain." The British Prime Minister's reply was not unfavourable, but he conjured his Italian colleague to wait. Crispi, as a true Italian, could not ask for more; but a year later (January 1, 1891) he fell from office, and the occupation of Tripoli 304 PEOBLEMS OF POWER was adjourned for twenty years. This letter, however, was the origin of the Mediterranean arrangement with England — soon to be followed up by the Franco -Italian arrangements of 1892, which were to result in a Mediter- ranean Triple AlHance between England, France and Italy, an alliance which was to form an obstacle in the future to many a belated German scheme. Algeciras was the Nemesis of Germany. The Germans had fancied that the impetus given to their foreign pohcy by Bismarck required no watching. They had counted without the subtle diplomacy of the Consulta. The general result of that diplomacy had been to assure to Italy — not in spite, but because, of her appar- ently conflicting engagements to the members of the two reciprocally hostile European groups — a position of independence superior to that of any of the European Powers, not excepting England. She seemed to have allowed herself to be bound fast. Seen from afar she looked like a Laocoon in the coils of the two monstrous serpents. Yet she felt herself free in all her movements, She was less free than she fancied, as she discovered when, early in the Italo- Turkish War, she proceeded to bombard the Albanian coast, in order to bring Turkey to terms, and suddenly found herself warned off the precincts of Valona by her excellent neighbour and ally, Austria-Hungary. This veto rankled. Obviously the effects of the Bismarckian envoutement of Europe were not yet wholly spent. Italy decided to fight out her destiny in Africa, and meanwhile subtly contrived a still more effective vengeance for the Treaty of Berlin. When the King of Montenegro, father to the Queen of Italy, and himself a pensioner of that Tsar who at Racconigi signed with Victor Emmanuel a treaty con- cerning the Balkans, declared war against Turkey, Signer GioHtti must have poured libations to the mianes of the great Crispi. Italy had managed to obtain a long-coveted strip of the North African coast-hne, and s^lie- iiud liiuituvcM purlialiy uuiitiibutcd to liiu ciua-tiou of A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 305 a situation in the neighbouring Balkans which would permit her, at last, to challenge her relentless rival, and " ally," Austria, in regions from which both Germany and Austria had for thirty years done their best to exclude her. Face to face with a potential United States of Balkany, Italy, in her diplomatic disputes with Austria, now has a tangible object for which to fight. Austria, by the same token — driven back westward, and con- fronted with a problem of constructive nationalism which can be solved only to the diminution of the prestige of Germany — becomes a greater menace than ever to Italy. Never did a responsible sovereign give a more certain proof of pacific intention than WilHam II when he induced his alHes of Rome and Vienna to renew, while the first Balkan War was still in progress, and before the fate of the Eastern Adriatic was settled, the pact of the Triple Alliance. By what device Italy managed to maintain her independence, while still renewing this pact, and thus rendered a service not only to peace, but also to the Powers of the Triple Entente, has already been explained. Thus, among the numerous consequences of the Balkan wars that have now been examined, one of the most significant is that Italy will be more than ever inclined to use to the utmost her Mediterranean Agreements with France and England, and less than ever ready to further the growth of the sea-power of her Triple Alliance partners in the Mediterranean. Speaking at the Farnese Palace on New Year's Day, 1913, the French Ambassador, M. Barrere, said: — " Nothing that has taken place in Africa has been able to alter the sentiments of mutual understanding and common interest that inspired the negotiation of the Franco -Italian Agreements of 1900 and 1902. These Agreements subsist with undiminished vigour; their object remains intact. They have given France and Italy twelve years of friendly relations, based on mutual recognition of their interests, and so firmly established that we can take it as certain that they will con- tinue to develop for the prosperity and grandeur of both countries. i^iually these Agreements have been a precious guarantee of European 306 PROBLEMS OF POWER equilibrium. . . . During the past year France and Italy became, by a magnificent effori; of national energy, neighbours in the Dark Continent, as they are in the Alps and in the Mediterranean. This fresh contract imposes upon the two Latin nations an increase of con- fidence, friendly intercourse and mutual aid. For they are defending together the same ideal of civilization, and their moral interest in this great and noble task is identical." These are the words of one of the half-dozen makers of contemporary Europe. They were uttered after the renewal of the Triple Alliance. Italy's decision to acquiesce in the renewal of that Alliance — on condition that its purely defensive character be not altered, and that it should not be extended to the Mediterranean- is clear evidence of her conviction that her Mediter- ranean Agreements with France and England have been among the most effective guarantees of European peace. Her decision suggests also that now, face to face as she is with Islamism, and with a concentrating Austria, she will seek to supplement these Agreements by further arrangements with England and France, tending to establish peace for a generation in the "Latin Sea," and on the North African coast-line.^ "If we had ^ In a remarkable speech (February 23, 1913) before the Italian Chamber, the Marquis di San Giuliano, Italian minister for Foreign Affairs, drew an elegant distinction between balance of power in the Adriatic and balance of power in the Mediterranean. The former problem, he said, was " going to be " solved by " the intimate collabora- tion of Italy and Austria-Hungary, the co-operation of Germany, and the broad and pacific spirit of equity of the other Great Powers." Some critics concluded that the phrase " co-operation of Germany " implied Italian acquiescence in Germany's proposal to extend the Triple Alliance to the Mediterranean. The reference was obviously to Albania. As to the general balance of power in the Mediterranean the Italian minister insisted on the fact that that sea must be an open highway to all the nations, but he declared that the Mediterranean Agreements with France and England were still in existence, and he avoided any fresh reference to " German co-operation." In April 1914 the German Foreign Minister, Herr von Jagow, formally denied the alleged conclusion of an Agreement between the Powers of the Triple Alliance concerning the Mediterranean. In the same month Count Berchtold had an interview at Abbazia with the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and on the results of that meeting he reported as follows to the Austrian Delegations: " The pourparlers that took place on this occasion confirmed my opinion that the changes that have taken place in the East will serve as a basis for a fresh com- A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 307 Tripoli, Bizerta would no longer be a menace for Italy nor for Great Britain," said Crispi to Salisbury. But when Crispi wrote these words France and England were deadly enemies. In 1913 the problem of British sea-power has become a function of an even larger problem, that of the maintenance of the British Empire. This is a situation which Italy's ambiguous position, as member of two reciprocally hostile groups of Powers, renders particularly acute. Kirk-Kilisse has tended to turn Italy more than ever towards the Powers of the Mediterranean; but it has not detached her from the Triple Alliance. At present she is so placed as to be able to pay a preponderant role in the counsels of Europe. It is significant that when, on the death of Kiderlen Waechter, William II had to choose a Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, his choice fell on the German Ambassa- dor in Rome. And it should now at last be clear why the settlement of the questions suddenly forced upon the attention of the members of the Triple Entente, by the turn taken by the Turco-Italian War, by the success of the Balkan League, and by the consequences of the Inter-Balkan War, is to be the supreme test of the solidity of that pact. munity of interests between the two allied Powers. . . . The results of this tendency, both as regards the maintenance of European peace and as to securing an open Adriatic and the balance of power in that sea, have been taken at their full value by the entire population of Hungary and Italy." These declarations of the Austro-Hungarian and the Italian Foreign Ministers justify the above interpretation of the speech of the Marquis di San Giuliano. In this connexion it is interesting to note that on May 29, 1914, M. Barrere and the Marquis di San Giuliano signed an Agreement determining the status of Tripoli- tans in Tunis and of Tunisians in Tripoli, thus settling to the satis- faction of France and Italy a series of delicate and thorny questions which threatened to sunder the two Powers. This Agreement was the corollary of that of 1902, the significance of which was excellently defined by M. Barrere in the New Year's Day speech above cited. Finally, it should not be overlooked that when, in June 1914, just before the murder of the Austrian Heir-Apparent, the German Emperor, accompanied by Admiral von Tirpitz, met the Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Konopischt, the latter, in turn, being accompanied by the head of the Austrian Navy, Admiral Haus, no representative of the Italian Navy was present. 308 PROBLEMS OF POWER The destruction of Turkey, the disintegration of Islamism, is the downfall of a moss-grown, but singu- larly venerable and solid, portion of the rampart of world-peace. For England and for France it seemed to be the disappearance of a necessary barrier to the ex- pansion of the rival Powers, first Austria, then Ger- many, into the rich regions of the Middle East. During centuries the "integrity of the Ottoman Empire" was for the old-time diplomacy one of the cardinal points of its compass, a categorical imperative, as it were, of diplomatic dogma. It was held that the prestige and the security of France and England demanded the maintenance of an intact Islamism. The liquidation of Islamism, begun by the French in Algiers, Tunis and Morocco, pursued by the British in Egypt, and now by the Italians in Tripoli, is rapidly being consummated by the financial and industrial expropriation of the Otto- man Empire in Asia. Over the giant blocks of the fallen rampart the Pan-German, the Pan-Slav, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Latin tide is now streaming in a relentless flood. The only resource of France and England — as partners of the one dread and mysterious Power that has always desired the destruction of Turkey — ^is to favour the consolidation of the Slav States of the Balkans, and to further, against Pan-Germanism, the steady development of Russia. An impregnable Pan-Slav world alone can now act as a counterpoise to the growing might of the German Empire in regions remote from the zones of attraction of England and France. An impregnable Pan-Slav world alone can, in the Middle East, by its very existence, and by its potential momentum, permit the two Powers of Western Europe to work out their common, as well as their individual, destiny in peace. Such stable equilibrium as the interests of civilization demand seems attainable to-day only by the preservation of the group of World-Powers known as the Triple Entente. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 309 VI Meanwhile, the three Powers must act together in the Far East. This is the second theatre of the concerted activity of the Triple Entente. Three special arrange- ments already fix the conditions in which that Entente is to work out its programme in that vast region. There is the Anglo-Russian Entente, there is the Anglo- Japanese AlUance, and there is the latest Russo-Japanese Agree- ment. These three pacts were formed, have been occasionally modified, and will continue to be respected, with the object of maintaining peace in Persia, China, and Far Eastern waters. Eight years after the battles of Manchuria, Russia and Japan, with a practical sense that should make a Bismarck turn in his grave, are coming to terms for the common economic domination of China, and it is within England's power to share this hegemony and eventually convert it into poHtical pre- dominance. France, the ally of Russia, and England, the ally of Japan, have their parts cut out for them: it is nothing less than vigilantly to prevent the Russo- Japanese understanding from becoming an instrument for the destruction of China. Gen. Homer Lea has pointed out (ch. vii. The Day of the Saxon) the vital necessity for England both to thwart the naval expansion of Japan in the Pacific, and to defend the integrity of China. The maintenance of the political and military equilibrium of the Pacific is, indeed, one of England's first Imperial duties: hence the predominant part played by India in British Imperial strategy. The natural alliance was between England and China, not between England and Japan. But from the point of view of the balance of power in the Pacific, France, sovereign in Indo- China, has the same interests as England. The partner to the Dual Entente ought to co-operate, therefore, in the establishment of good government in China, and prevent any Russo-Japanese arrangement from hamper- ing their common action. It should not, however, be 310 PROBLEMS OF POWER a cause of regret to either Power if Russo-Japanese co- operation in Northern China diverts Japanese ambi- tion from the Pacific towards the Continent, and Russian expansion from India to North-Eastem China. As Gen. Lea has said: "Should Japan, to extend her sovereignty on the Asian continent, neglect to first gain control of the Pacific, then the duration of her national greatness will draw to an end." Russia and Japan, it will be remembered, celebrated the fourth of July (American Independence Day), 1910, by declaring that if the Manchurian status quo were menaced, *' they would come to terms as to the measures they might deem necessary to take for the maintenance of the said status quoJ^ This was an apt and timely retort to the sensational and ill-advised proposals of Mr. Taft's Government for the internationalizing, of the Man- churian railways. It was an amusing instance of Monro- ism in Asiatic waters. Since then the sphere of Chinese territory over which the Russians and the Japanese have publicly extended their prohibitive sway has been made to include Mongolia,^ and the two Powers are already prospecting these new spheres for the con- struction of railways. England, who helped Japan to secure her foothold in Corea, cannot be surprised at what has happened, and the United States has even less cause to wonder, even though Russo-Japanese co-opera- tion in Asia probably implies the shattering of the Germane -American principle of the " open door.'** * By the Russo-Mongolian Agreement of October 21, 1912, Russia is to " lend Mongolia support in the maintenance of the autonomous regime established by the latter." In return the Regent of Mongolia concedes to Russian subjects and to Russian trade the enjoyment of special rights and privileges. The Mongolian Government is not to conclude any agreement with China or any other Power " traversing or modifying the Treaty with Russia " without the assent of the Imperial Russian Government. We shall shortly, no doubt, leam the Japanese counterpart of this Treaty. 2 Yet both the Treaty of Portsmouth (September 6, 1906) and the second and tliird Anglo- Japanese Treaties of Alliance (August 12, 1905, and July 13. 1911) admitted the principle of the Open Door in Manchuria. Clause 4 of the Russo-Japanese Treaty agreed " not to A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 311 Great Britain, in revising, in July 1911, her treaty of Alliance with Japan, took the first step towards the reahzation of what should be her chief aim, the fusing of the British Empire; but, in so doing, she virtually left Japan in the lurch. To please the President of the United States, to appease the Prime Ministers of the Dominions, and to avoid entanglements in connexion with the opening of the Panama Canal, she insisted on emasculating her agreement with Japan, and partially left her old ally to shift for herself in her home waters.^ oppose the general measures common to all the Powers which China might take for the development of the trade and industry of Man- churia"; and the Anglo- Japanese treaties, going further, stated it to be the object of those agreements " to preserve the common interests of all Powers in China by ensuring the independence and integrity of the Chinese Empire, and the principle of equal opportunities for the commerce and industry of all nations in China." It is in consequence of the action of just such protestations as these in favour of the *' integrity of the Ottoman Empire," that Turkey has been crumbling and will continue to crumble. ^ That was the upshot — on paper ! — and probably the intention, of the revised treaty of July 13, 1911. England accepted the clause obliging both Powers to come to each other's rescue should they be the object of an unprovoked attack — under the Alliance with Japan England, as Mr. Churchill pointed out on March 17, 1914, in a speech in the House of Commons, is " bound to maintain in the China Sea a force superior to any other European Power," and this arrangement will subsist, at all events, until 1921 — but it inserted in the new treaty a fresh clause providing that if " either Contracting Party concluded a treaty of general arbitration with a third Power, nothing in the Agreement should entail upon such Contracting Party an obligation to go to war with the Power with whom such treaty of arbitration was in force." This fresh clause was a concession to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. But it is one of the ironies of history that the Taft project of unrestricted arbitration, signed by England and the United States, was not ratified by the American Senate. England, like the dog in the fable, sacrificed the bone for the shadow; and the result was that Japan, herself on the point of being partly left in the lurch, turned towards Russia for moral and material support against the Powers aiming at the hegemony of the Pacific. By the failure of the Arbitration scheme, moreover, England slipped, as it were, between two stools. She lost Japanese goodwill, and she did not obtain that of the United States. England is now, in spite of the revision of the Japanese treaty, exactly where she was before its revision, as regards her obligations towards Japan in case of war. In a word, Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, by their violent hostility to Mr. Taft's Arbitration Treaty, knocked the bottom out of the British plan to render a friendly service to the United States, while 312 Problems of power Happily, the Russo-Japanese War was concluded without leaving behind it an Asiatic Alsace-Lorraine. One Treaty of Frankfort is enough for one century. The former enemies rushed into each other's arms. The consequence is simple but prodigious. The bugaboo of the Yellow Peril will be definitely laid by Russo- Japanese co-operation. No result could be either more desirable or more logical ; none could be more convenient for Great Britain and for France, nor, it should be added, for the United States, whose attention for some time to come must be steadily concentrated north and south of Colon and Panama. The apprehensions of the Powers, lest with the " break-up " of China the whole race should be submerged by a muddy and mounting tide of yellow men, are being conjured away. China is not breaking up; China is being organized. The trade, the industry, and the finance of the world, American and German and British business enterprise, and American, French and British money, are shortly to render Chinamen so busy at home, under the surveill- ance of Japan and the Triple Entente, that many of the now urgent problems of immigration which are dis- turbing the nights of American, Canadian, Mexican, Chilian, and Australian statesmen will, temporarily at all events, be shelved.-^ And for the United States, above all, it is an event of the happiest omen that, just on the eve of the opening of the Panama Canal, Japan should seem to be turning her main attention to the problem of co-operation with Russia to do the world's work in those regions of the Pacific where her share of the white man's burden is and where her responsibilities satisfying the insistent claims of the Dominion. As things are now, therefore, England would have to defend Japan by arms if Japan were attacked, say, by the United States. The predicament of the Dominions would then be a peculiar one. Happily, the new Japanese arrange- ments with Russia are likely to render less probable an eventual shock between Japan and the United States in the Pacific. ^ The Japanization of China has been remarkably treated by M. Ren6 Pinon in La lutte pour le Pacifique, pp, 97*152. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 313 seem to lie. She needs no naval base on the other side of the Pacific, at Magdalena Bay or elsewhere, to complete the marvellous epic of her rise to the rank of a Great Power by achievements as glorious as those that marked even the miraculous reign of Mitsu-Hito. For the moment she has enough to do at home. The new era of Taisho is to test her national character as it was never tested even in the era of Meiji. Japan has had to pay dear for the luxury and honour of becoming a World-Power. Six months after the close of the war her public debt amounted to 1,850,000,000 yen, and her taxes were 5*27 yen per inhabitant. Five years later, March 31, 1911, the debt was 2,650,000,000, while the taxes were 6*2 yen per inhabitant. Thus the taxes, the majority of which are still the taxes imposed because of a great war, remain virtually unaltered and must be revised. The burden of taxation borne by the Japanese citizen is twice that weighing on the shoulders of Frenchmen or Englishmen. A policy of retrenchment and reform is absolutely necessary. Al- ready a Japanese Minister of Finance, Mr. Yamamoto, introducing into the State administration the principle of festina lente, has succeeded in curtailing the ambi- tions of his colleagues of the departments of public works, of the army and of the navy, while promising the Japanese people to lighten their burdens in the next budget. The circumstances attending the resignation of the Japanese Cabinet early in December 1912, owing to the deadlock between the civil and the military elements, and the Tokyo riots of February 1913, as well as the subsequent faU of the Katsura and the Yamamoto Ministries, showed the immense change that has come over Japan in the last ten years as regards the growth of a public opinion hostile to Imperialism and in favour of retrenchment. This is a state of things that should not be overlooked in attempting to plot the curve of Japanese-American relations in the Pacific. Japan must remain busy at home or within the immediate 314 PROBLEMS OF POWER precincts of her own home- waters. Five years at least of peace and a rigorously prudent financial and fiscal policy, while she is engaged in the experiment of establishing party government, will be required to place her in a position permitting her to contemplate the future without dismay. Already she has had to borrow money abroad to pay the interest on loans previously contracted. An immense specie reserve of Japan's money is thus immobilized in England » Additional foreign loans will still be necessary. In general, it may be said that the first quarter of the twentieth century will probably be marked in world chronicles as that in which the hinterland of the eastern shores of Asia was rapidly laid open to the play of economic and financial forces. In order that this evolu- tion may proceed in peace, Russia and Japan must be suffered to police those waters with the military and financial co-operation of their friends and allies. This operation, AVhich will be made immeasurably easier by the opening of the Panama Canal, will take place far more rapidly than is generally suspected, and before, from the Caspian across Siberia to the sea of Okhotsk, and from Teheran to the Yellow Sea, the colossal interior of the Asiatic triangle, the apex of which is notched by the in- dentations of Cadiz, Brest, London and Marseilles, will be criss-crossed with railways, built by Western capital, that will discipline in civilizing ways a population ready to take its part in the task of world organization. It seems hard to believe that certain Englishmen, deaf to the appeal of observers like Sir Valentine Chirol, are still hesitating to take into friendly consideration the pro- posal for the construction of a Trans-Persian railway: a railway that is certain to be built; that, if built by Russia, France and England, wiU solidify the Triple Entente; that wiU "help to restore the economic pros- perity of Persia," " strengthen the central authority and pacify the turbulent regions through which it will pass "; and, finally, will render India an accessibly tangible A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 315 portion of the British Empire and insert a prosperous buffer-State between Russia and England. While these hesitations are being prolonged, the Russian Govern- ment has launched out on a vast scheme of public works that are to transform its Asiatic possessions. Russia is building, or is about to build, feelers to its great rail- way across Siberia; another railway from the shores of the Caspian by way of Merv and Bokhara, along the frontier of Afghanistan to Samarkand; still another b'nking the Volga to the Sea of Aral ; and another open- ing up Turkestan as far as Tashkent. These projects are but a few items in the vast programme which the solid co-operation of the Triple Entente with Japan may carry out in the interests of the economic improvement of Asia, and of the peace of the world during the next twenty years. The detached critic of world-movements may apply to this whole series of schemes the words applied by The Times to the project of the Trans-Iranian : *' We only hope that when the moment comes for sifting them they will be judged with greater foresight than was shown by British Governments in the case of the Suez Canal; for fortune may not again enable us to redeem the folly of narrow views.'' VII But the era of " narrow views " is past. Mankind is living amid a contagion of adventure. The moment is at hand when the dream of Columbus, of ultimately reaching India if he sailed steadily into the West, is on the point of fulfilment. The nations are already rushing into the vortex of the Caribbean. The Panama Canal will be open in 1914. On the other side of the world, the Japanese, two years ahead of time, bave already completed the trans- Cor ean railway linking the Russian station of Kharbine to the landing-stage at Fousan, and have signed a contract with the "French Sleeping Car Company " for the organization of a direct bi-weekly 316 PROBLEMS OF POWER service between Paris and Tokyo. Even a "little Englander " will reflect before really trjring to wreck the Trans- Iranian. The Powers are rushing into the Caribbean, and only Poseidon, the Earth-Shaker, who in August 1912 altered the shore-Hne of the Dardanelles., and who has a revenge to take for Nicaragua, can now stem the tide. The Caribbean, it has been noted, is the third field of activity for the Triple Entente. In reality, in considering the Triple Entente, the common interests of France and England alone need be dealt with, with regard to the opening of the Panama Canal. Russia may be left out of account until she has realized her project of bridging Behring's Sea. But in the American Mediterranean, between Venezuela and the Gulf of Mexico, France and England are confronted with quite another set of con- ditions; they are face to face with a new Power. Here they have to deal no longer with the members of the Triple Entente alone, but with a great State which had hitherto made it a point of honour to be able to get on alone independently of an "effete Europe," and has ridiculed almost as roundly as England herself (it is in the blood) the possible advantages of "entangling alliances." There is evidence that the United States is not even yet aware of the changes in store for it in con- sequence of the unconcerted, but common and glorious, achievement of M. Philippe Bunau-Varilla and Mr. Roosevelt: the Revolution of Panama and the comple- tion of the Canal. It is probable that the Americans, absorbed, as Rear- Admiral Mahan puts it, in their *' national ignorant self-sufi&ciency," preoccupied by the pressing problem of organizing democracy on the vastest scale on which that operation has ever been attempted, engaged in the gigantic task of constructive nationalism, to which they have been impelled by the energy and intelligence of Mr. Roosevelt, may not yet be alive to all the consequences of their Martian enterprise. But their national self-defence is a matter of constructive A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 317 nationalism, and in view of the rapid march of time it is perhaps the main matter with which they have now to deal. During the ten years following on the Spanish - American War, the American Government pursued but half -consciously the poHcy of introducing her voice into the counsels of Europe and the world. The imperialism of her drift, though it escaped the notice of the average American citizen, was clearly perceived by the outside world, and it has already been shown that this fact, and this alone, gave Mr. Roosevelt his prestige in Europe. While holding — somewhat arrogantly — to a vague and intangible principle known as the Monroe Doctrine, the United States meddled in matters which it might have been thought logical, but which it was practically impos- sible, for it to ignore. The United States had not inter- vened in the Chino- Japanese war of 1894-1895. In 1897, as is recalled by M. Rene Pinon in his Lutte pour le Pacifique, Mr. Sherman, the Secretary of State, declared to a French diplomatist that the United States " had not a cent's worth of trade with China, and would never send a soldier there.'' Yet in 1900 the United States took part in the Peking Expedition. What had happened was that a protective tariff had made the exportation of cotton goods from Massachusetts into Manchuria a desirable object of American activity, and a sufficient pretext for the American claim to the maintenance of an " Open Door " in Eastern Asia, at the very moment that the United States was establishing itself in the Philippines. Every day, in fact, revealed the funda- mental antinomy between the principle of the Monroe Doctrine, and not merely certain of the moral and intel- lectual and economic forces of the modern world, but the consensus of opinion, philosophic and juristic, which the pressure of those forces was causing to be codified in international law. At the same time, there was revealed to the United States the necessity of possessing the fleet of its policy, the arm that could permit it the luxury of 318 PROBLEMS OF POWER a Monroe Doctrine. It made frantic, characteristic, even sincere efforts, to stick to the logic of its Doctrine without a fleet. Whatever happened it would hold to its inexperienced American ideahsm. In 1902 it handed over the administration of Cuba to its own people. In 1909, after having governed the island for three years in order to stave off civil war, it shirked a second time the duty of facing plain political facts. A lack of intel- lectual probity is often characteristic of Anglo-Saxon statesmanship, and of late years, in America, Mr. Roosevelt alone would seem to have had an inkling of the profound practical truth of Spinoza's remark: "It matters little, as regards the security of the State, what the motives of rulers may be in the successful adminis- tration of affairs. Liberty or strength of soul is the virtue of private persons; the virtue of the State is security." Yet the United States continued to hold the Philippines and Hawaii, and to insist on an Open Door in China. In spite of itself, it became a positive factor in the manoeuvres by which the Powers sought to parcel out the whole of Eastern Asia, until they were reminded that that region was a sphere of influence of Russia and Japan. At Algeciras, meanwhile, the United States— again owing to the quick resolution and the diplomatic sense and knowledge of Mr. Roosevelt — had shown that it was on occasion one of the essential factors of inter- national peace. But all these instances of American co-operation in the international political work of the world have some- what lacked continuity. At all events they have not possessed an adequate sanction. Their unco-ordinated, often illogical character, will be revealed to the most indifferent once the Panama Canal is opened. The United States must henceforth have a consistent world- policy supported on a fleet adequate to protect its inter- ests in the Atlantic and the Pacific. It has summoned the world to its doors. It must henceforth not only defend the precincts of its house, but be able to justify A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 319 its action with pretexts acceptable to its competitors and enemies. The preliminary efforts of the United States to attain this end have thus far neither been adequate nor suffi- ciently intelligible and explicit. This point requires explanation. American coast- wise trade is an American monopoly. Now, as, practically speaking, the Canal has become — in Rear-Admiral Mahan's view, and as was held by President Hayes — a part of the coast-line of the United States, it is argued that such trade may be allowed by the United States to use the Panama Canal under any terms that the Government may see fit to propose. Being a part of the American coast-hne the Canal should be fortified, and for like reasons should be connected with the Cuban naval base of Guanta- namo. The defence of the United States is what the mathematicians call " a function " of the problem of control of the Canal, and no parallel case exists in the world. Lord Lansdowne's queries with regard to the Dar- danelles have, however, raised certain points or sugges- tions that may be cited as mihtating against this view."' Every one can see the peculiar advantage, for the United States, in case of war, of possessing, between the Atlantic and the Pacific, a safe open highway which it is at liberty to fortify as part of its coast-Hne. But once the currents of traffic have begun to flow through the Canal, it is possible, it is indeed probable, that the South American States of the Pacific, and even AustraHa, will be even more benefited than the United States by the use of the Canal; and at such a moment, which will not be long deferred, the great States that are international carriers, England, Germany, France, even Japan, would find their interests seriously affected by the closing of the Canal. The question of the neutralization of the Canal might then conceivably be made the object of a ^ Sea p. 9. 320 PROBLEMS OF POWER common protest, and if the United States refused to heed such a protest, the Powers would have only the redress of the Hague Arbitration Tribunal (should the United States consent to bring the matter before such a Tribunal) or war. If a case of this kind were brought to-day before any Court of International Law, there can be little doubt as to the verdict of such a Court. In a " Consultation " made in the name of the protest- ing Powers, whose " nationals " (certain foreign life-in- surance companies established in Italy) are threatened with confiscation by the Italian Government,^ which desires to estabUsh a state monopoly of life-insurance, Maitre Edward Clunet has marshalled the arguments ^ In May 1914 Senor Guglielmo Ferrero confirmed this point of view in an article in the Secolo of Milan. The more important passage of this article was translated as follows by the Temps : " Quelle surprise, dit-il, quand chacun lut, a t^te reposee et avec calme, le texte de ce projet de loi ! II faut avoir la franchise de dire a haute voix, puisque nous faisons notre examen de conscience, ce que bien des gens dirent alors a voix basse, a savoir que cette loi, telle qu'elle fut propos^e a I'origine, etait une loi violente de confiscation. Je ne veux pas discuter ici les raisons de haut int6ret public par les- quelles on tenta de justifier une aussi grave perturbation de I'ordre juridique que les lois garantissent a toutes les industries et a tons les commerces. Je ne rechercherai done pas s'il est vrai, comme on I'affirmait, que le moyen propose 6tait le seul propre a rendre I'Etat moins tributaire des grands potentats de la finance. Alors meme que I'avenir devrait d^montrer la v6rit6 de cette assertion, I'historien ne peut pas negliger d'observer qu'au moment oti le projet de loi fut d6pos6, cet int6ret sup6rieur qu'il devait soutenir apparaissait bien 61oign6, tandis que la pertubration qu'il allait entrainer 6tait profonde et imminente. D'un trait de plume, cette loi allait d^truire une Industrie florissante et qui s'6tait d6velopp6e par ses propres moyens a I'ombre du droit commun; cette loi refusait toute indemnity a ceux qui vivaient de cette Industrie; elle ne tenait compte di des capitaux ni du travail depens^s pour la faire prosp6rer; elle jetait dans I'inqui^tude un nombre infini de gens peu fortunes qu'elle amenait a redouter (a tort ou a raison) de voir disparaitre avant la fin de leurs contrats les com- pagnies d'assurances auxquelles ils avaient confi6 une si grande partie de leurs Economies, seule precaution qu'ils eussent prise contre les coups si redout^s du destin; cette loi ruinait enfin le credit de I'ltalie pres de la haute finance europ6enne, largement int6ress6e dans de nombreuses compagnies d'assurances op6rant dans la p6ninsule, et qui ne pouvait tol^rer avec resignation une confiscation aussi inopin^e. Je ne peux vraiment pas m'expliquer comment un homme dou^ d'une aussi longue experience politique que M. Giolitti ait pu conserver aussi longtemps I'illusion qu'une loi con9ue de la sorte pAt ^tre approuv6e.'* A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 321 now universally adduced by international jurists to prove that the right of a State to legislate in sovereign inde- pendence is limited by the right of other States to see that the interests of their own " nationals " are not injured by such legislation. *' By the very fact of their co -existence in multiple, homogeneous and independent groups, modem nations have become alive not only to their rights but to their obligations," writes Maitre Clunet; and his views are corroborated by Professor von Bar for Germany, Professor Holland for Great Britain, Professor Lamsnarch for Austria, Professor Alb6ric Rolin for Belgium, Professor Lyon-Caen for France, Professors Anzelotti and Gabba for Italy, Councillor of State Asser for Holland, and Professor Roguin for Switzerland. " To avoid anarchy, or sterile, endless, sanguinary strife, modem nations have followed, in time of war as well as in time of peace, certain customs and traditions. The continued conformity to these rules of conduct has resulted in the creation of a kind of common law, which presents the greater resist- ance to negative criticism because it is purely empiric. From the interpenetration of peoples by the communication of ideas, by the contact of individuals, by the dove-tailing of moral and material factors, there has resulted a formidable mingling of interests, sentiments and needs. From this common law of civilized nations, as now fixed by the experience and the common consent of the most enlightened among them, it is possible to deduce the following principles : — " States, in virtue of the right of sovereignty, are independent. This fact confers on them the faculty of legislating on their territory, according to their own views and needs. " States, however, by definition, find solitary existence repugnant; they are unable to live in isolation, even though that isolation be splendid. Whatever their condition, they form part of the civilized Community, of the Magna Civitas, of the maxima respublica gentium. This necessity is inherent in the nature of things; it is impossible for States to avoid it, and the necessity engenders, and imposes on them, certain rights and duties. " The fact of their co-existence imposes on States certain limits, not to the enjoyment, but to the exercise, of their right of sovereignty. " This limit is fixed at the point where the right of the other States to a reasonable and equitable treatment, for themselves or their dependents, in international relations, begins to make itself felt. " Collective right, of which sovereignty is the expression, comports, like individual right, a jus utendi et abutendi ; but the jus abutendi stops normally when grave damage, damnum latum, is knowingly done to third parties in the exclusively personal interest and advantage of the State which is the author of the injury. 322 PROBLEMS OF POWER " If, from political or economic considerations of a domestic order, a State feels called on to infringe these principles, such an act gives rise to a demand for material reparation or a compensatory indemnity, according to the forms accepted by international custom. " Thus, a State which, notably with regard to its trade, should adopt a system of complete isolation, would thereby renounce the enjoyment of the common law of nations." This clear and logical statement is not merely the verdict of a certain number of specialists in international law; it represents as well the point of view of reflecting public opinion; and there is no doubt that the ideal of international relationship which it expresses tends more and more, notwithstanding such manifestations as the Coup d'Agadir, to become the aim of practical states- men in the present day. It is because statesmen like Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, and special- ists like Rear- Admiral Mahan, were so keenly alive not merely to the paramount importance of the Panama Canal for the National Defence of the United States, but also to the consensus of international juristic opinion as to the general principle of the subordination of the sovereign right of a State to the other ideal of human and international solidarity, that they so stubbornly contested in advance the wisdom of Mr. Taft's proposed unrestricted arbitration treaties, which would have rendered " justiciable " just such questions as the closing of the Canal in time of war to an enemy's war-ships, or as the right of the United States to eject from the coast- line adjoining the Canal corporations purposing to ac- quire territory for transfer to a Foreign Power, even under the apparently inoffensive forms of joint stock companies. The opening of the Canal will not diminish, but aggravate that distrust of the United States which marks the rapidly growing nationalism of the South American States."^ Pan- Americanism will become more ^ President Wilson, in a speech at Mobile before the Southern Commercial Congress, commented as follows on the opening of the Panama Canal: "The future is going to be very different for this hemisphere from the past. These States lying to the south of us . . . A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 323 than ever a Utopia. And while the opening of the Canal may make it possible to apply the Monroe Doc- trine, and in a more pronounced form, in Central America, in the Caribbean, and in the Pacific Coasts of Mexico, it will be a less and less appHcable principle of South American action.-^ These and other pretensions put forward by the United States Government may, therefore, conceivably, sooner or later, find themselves in opposition with the national interests of rival Governments plausibly justified by a more up-to-date interpretation of international law; and in such a case the question could be decided only by the nation or nations possessing the greatest naval or miHtary power. " International law is something with will now be drawn closer to us by innumerable ties, and, I hope, chief of all by the tie of a common understanding of each other. Interest does not tie nations together. It sometimes separates them; but sym- pathy and understanding does unite them. It is a spiritual union which we seek." The hasty and confused thought of this eloquent and noble language is the sort of utterance which Spinoza has stig- matized. Cf. p. 172 et seq. ^ The "Drago Doctrine," formulated in 1902 by the Argentine Minister for Foreign Affairs, with reference to the measures of coercion taken against Venezuela by Germany, England, and Italy, laid down the principle that, as the inviolability of States is a fundamental principle of International Law, national indebtedness shall not be allowed to warrant armed intervention on the part of the creditor, and still less justify the occupation of American soil by any European Power. The Monroe Doctrine was thereby unexpectedly reinforced. But at the same time the national self-consciousness of one of the most powerful of the South American States was for the first time formally affirmed, and while Europe was duly impressed, Washington had no illusions as to the potential import of the Declaration of the Argentine Foreign Minister. A still further affirmation of South American self-sufficiency was made when the so-called A. B.C. Powers (Argentine, Brazil, and Chili) proffered their good offices as mediators in 1914 in the absurd difficulty, created by President Wilson, between Washington and Mexico. Whatever the ultimate consequences of A.B.C. mediation in the Wilson-Huerta dispute, one thing is certain: President Wilson's policy has furnished the South American States the pretext they have long desired for reminding the United States that, while, perhaps, they may be ready to co-operate in the appli- ction of an enlarged Monroe Doctrine, they are masters in their own house, and that North American Imperialism must disport itself north of Yucatan. 324 PROBLEMS OF POWER no sanction behind it."^ Hence the need for the United States, as a corollary to the fortifying of the Panama Canal, to build a powerful battle fleet rendering it pre- dominant in the Caribbean, and perhaps in the Pacific. If the Mahans, the Roosevelts, the Lodges are wrong; if the Canal be not, as President Hayes argued that it was, part of the coast-line of the United States, but merely an international highway of as little direct inter- est to the Atlantic and Pacific States of the Union as the Suez Canal, then the United States can spare itself the expense of a fleet, and of naval bases at Guantanamo and in the Canal Zone. But if that view were to be taken in Washington, naval bases would quickly be built by World-Powers that have learned by hard ex- perience never to defer the taking of defensive precau- tions. Fortunately — or unfortunately, as it may be regarded — the United States has no choice. By the mere fact of deciding to construct a Canal at Panama it crossed the Rubicon, took the step from which there is no going back, and definitively sealed the destiny opeAed for it in 1898, when it drove Spain out of Cuba. At any moment during the years succeeding the Spanish-Ameri- can War, even after its grave decision virtually to annex the Philippines, at any moment previous to the glorious and fatal resolution to build the Panama Canal, it might have undone the consequences of its past, thwarted its destiny, and remained isolated from the European and Asiatic worlds, a self-sufficient mistress of half the North-American Continent, and Protector and Over- lord of Latin- America. The Panama Canal has changed all that. The United States is now out in the open. It is shortly to be swept into the centre of the world's currents and counter-currents, and it must learn to trim its sails to the winds against which the other Powers 1 Remark of Sir Edward Grey in the debate (June 17, 1914) on the Bill for the acquisition of shares of loan-capital of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company {The Times, June 18, 1914, p. 12). A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 325 are tacking, and to look out for the pirate fleets of its rivals. The Panama Canal, which is the gateway to the Eastern Pacific, will be the only highway between the three coasts of the United States, and, as Rear- Admiral Mahan has pointed out, it will impose upon America a great national obligation, that of securing her influence (not her supremacy) in the Pacific. A strong American Navy has become a vital necessity for the security of the United States. America has courted a great responsibility, and she must rise to it, or pay the consequences by dismemberment. It is, furthermore, of grave significance that the United States is assuming these new responsibihties, that it is coming forth definitively from its magnificent isolation, just after the failure of its endeavours to bring about the Reciprocity Treaty with its Northern neighbour, England's great Dominion. The success of this scheme would have contributed to the downfall of England. Its failure has saved the British Empire; but at the same time it has flung the United States back on its own resources, and it now finds itself face to face with a Foreign Power, as morally self-sufiicient as itself, no less rich and enterprising than it, and as suddenly awakened to a sense of the practical reahties of world- politics. The new situation thus presented (mainly as one of the most significant corollaries of Germany's per- sistent aggressiveness) raises again for the United States a question it fancied it had settled seventy years ago by the Webster- Ashburton Treaty of 1842.-^ Some fifteen years ago Mr. Chamberlain put it to her afresh: "Do the Great Lakes divide two enemies ? Is an Anglo- American Alliance useful ?" But the scope of the ques- tion is shortly to become wider. As the fatal day of the opening of the Canal approaches, Washington will begin to ask itself another question: "Is an Anglo- American Entente imperative ?'* Sir Edward Grey ^ See " One Hundred Years of Peace," by Henry Cabot Lodge, The Outlook, January 4, 1913. 326 PROBLEMS OF POWER aimed at securing an American Alliance by means of an unlimited Arbitration Treaty, and failed. There are perils and special contingencies in the new responsibili- ties imposed on the United States as it finds itself at last in the thick of the warring interests of the World- Powers — England and her Dominions, Germany and Italy, South American Pan-Latinism, Japan and Russia; and these perils may make it more than a mere matter of convenience to come to an explicit political under- standing with the British Empire. It is not merely that England, the United States, and France have com- mon commercial interests all along the Eastern Pacific, interests which they cannot share with Germany, who is already at so many points a triumphant competitor. It is, as Rear- Admiral Mahan has so conclusively shown, that the great ejffect of the Panama Canal will be the indefinite strengthening of Anglo-Saxon institutions along the North -East shores of the Pacific, from Alaska to Mexico, by multiplying the inhabitants of those re- gions and by a consequent augmentation of shipping and commerce. Moreover, the identity of feeling be- tween the North- American Pacific and Australia, both inheritors of the same political tradition, as to the ques- tion of Asiatic immigration, is certain to create political sympathies, and may draw into a common action the nations of which each forms a part. The question of Asiatic immigration is, indeed, one on which Canada, the Western United States, Western South- America, AustraHa, and the rulers of the Islands of the Pacific, are all at one. It is a question in which the Triple Entente agrees with the United States. It is a question on which the four countries will continue to agree for many years to come. It is a question on which the members of the Triple Entente disagree with Japan and China, and India ,"^ and to a certain degree even with Germany. The Panama Canal will thus undoubtedly tend to Europeanize the North-Eastern and South- ^ See the case of the Komagata Mam, p. 204. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 327 Western Pacific, while it leaves the Western Pacific Asiatic. But the important fact is that, just at the moment when the opening of the Panama Canal is linking the general interests of the new British Empire and of the United States in the Pacific, America's need of English sympathy and friendliness is increased by the fact that the Canadian border will soon cease to be a colonial boundary and become really a British Imperial Frontier ; that a new Canadian fleet, which is a British fleet, is constructing North of Colon, while an Australian fleet, and perhaps a New Zealand fleet, will shortly be sailing up out of the South-West and meeting the Canadian ships in the roadstead at Kingston. Just as for many years the fleets of the world have entered the Mediter- ranean under England's guns at Gibraltar, so henceforth the ironclads and merchant vessels of the Powers will pass from the Caribbean to the Pacific between the forti- fications of the United States. But, magnificent vantage point as that of the Americans will be, let them cherish no illusions as to its meaning. The geographical centre of gravity will have been shifted from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, and national isolation, freedom from " entangling alliances," will no longer be possible for the United States. Established finally in the seat of customs the Americans will henceforth have to reason and act as political animals, in conformity with the prejudices and customs of the world. Nothing is more obvious than that now at last the United States, having issued from its isolation, having become, sooner than it expected, perhaps sooner than it wished, a responsible and no mere dilettante member of the concert of nations, will be called on by those nations, driven, that is, by the force of things, to conform its favourite principle of the Monroe Doctrine to the Law of Nations. No spasmodic, provisional, merely empirically opportunist readjustment of that doctrine to this or that new need or situation, as it may arise, will any longer be tolerated. The attempt to defer the com- 328 PROBLEMS OF POWER plete solution of this grave problem by arousing waves of enthusiasm in favour of Hague Conferences, unre- stricted Arbitration Treaties, or any other desirable and elevated form of the humanitarian and Christian ideal of Pacifism, will be regarded as hypocritical, and may even suggest the cuttle-fish policy of spurting forth an inky channel to cover its escape from its pursuers. Mean- while the most elementary attempt to preserve the essence of its great national " Doctrine," while introducing it into the recognized corpus of International Law, will prove to the United States the wisdom of becoming as speedily as possible a strong naval and military Power. The same self-interest will suggest the parallel prudence of not doing anything to alienate the vast Imperial Community of men of its own flesh and blood, who, previously sepa- rated from it by an estranging sea, have now become its close neighbours, and even a possible menace to its in- sufficiently protected borders. If, from failure to divine the inevitable drift of the time, to distinguish clearly the character of the forces to which it must conform, the United States, repudiating its idealistic past, were to suffer serious friction to be set up along the new frontiers now uniting it to, instead of dividing it from, the British Empire; if it were to let the problems created by the Panama Canal engender between it and England, Canada and Australia, such ill- feeling as would prepare the diplomatic ground at Wash- ington for the signing of an entente between Berlin and Washington for their common defence against British and Russo-Japanese competition, both military and com- mercial — should it drift into such a situation, it would have to bear the responsibihty of an act which would upset the entire balance of power in Europe, and result in a war involving the interests of the entire population of our planet. The United States, alone among the strong nations, lived, up to the last ten years of the nineteenth century, under self-imposed limitations of two sorts — one that had to do with geography, and another that had to A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 329 do with public morality. As ex-President Harrison put it, only ten years ago, " We do not want, in any event, territorial possessions that have no direct relation to the body of our national domain, and we do not want any territory anywhere that is acquired by criminal aggres- sion."^ But now America has become a World-Power. She is a new-comer among the World-Powers, and she is an innocent^ member of the international band of land- ^ North American Review y "Musings upon Current Topics," February 15, 1901. ^ Her " innocence " is really what the Germans would call " colossal.'* In November 1911 the President of the United States published, in the WoTnarCs Home Companion, an article on " The Dawn of World Peace," which was speedily reproduced in a special bulletin of the American Association for International Conciliation, In that article President Taft said: " If the United States has a mission, besides developing the principles of the brotherhood of man into a living, palpable force, it seems to me that it is to blaze the way to universai arbitration among the nations. ... It is known to the world that we do not covet the territory of our neighbours, or seek the acquisition of lands on other continents. We are free of such foreign entanglements as frequently conduce to embarrassing complications. . . . The spirit of justice governs our relations with other countries, and therefore we are specially qualified to set a pace for the rest of the world." Not nine months later — at a moment, moreover, when American marines were guarding the railway lines in Nicaragua — a friendly European Government was making repeated representations to the American Government against the alleged disloyalty of the United States in passing, relative to the Panama Canal, a law — the Panama Tolls Act of August 24, 1912 — which the friendly Power in question holds to be an infringement of treaty obligations. It is evident that since, as President Taft says, the United States is " known to the world as a Power that does not covet the territory of its neighbours," and since " the spirit of justice governs the relations of the United States with other countries," he himself beautifully " blazed the way " — as he put it — to arbitration on the question raised by the protest of the British Government. Mr. Taft belatedly admitted tliis in an address on January 4, 1913, before the International Peace Forum. He promised, " if necessary,'' to submit the Panama Canal Tolls Dispute to arbitra- tion. This promise was not made, however, until after American public opinion had forced the hand, as it were, of his Administration; and in the same breath he defended the treaties he had concluded with England and France for the settlement even of questions of national honour by arbitration, declaring that the nations of the world look to the United States, and " properly look to the United States," as a leader in the matter of establishing peace, " because we are so fortunately placed between oceans and without troublesome neighbours [sic] thai ive can go on without fear of consequences [sic] to establish a condition in which we shcdl settle every question [sic] by reference to an arbiirai AA 330 PROBLEMS OF POWER grabbers whose principle of action is reciprocal vigilance during their freebooting raids, lest any one obtain a little more soil than his neighbour. The only influences in the world capable of putting an end to these predatory methods are the combined forces of the new British Empire, and a self-denying United States and France. Were the Americans of the United States, in the present state of the world, to succumb to the blandishments of Germany, and accept any exclusive arrangement with that Power, they would be selling their birthright, sacrificing the essentials of what has made their history worth any- thing in the world's annals, and losing their " lives, their fortunes and their sacred honour."^ It was a dream of Jefferson, at the end of his life, that Cuba and Canada should one day be incorporated in the United States. A part of this dream has been ful- filled: the United States now possesses its " South Coast Line," extending from Cuba to Colon and Panama, and it chances that that line is to be one of the new axes, perhaps the one new axis, of world-policy. The other part of the dream seems less likely to be realized; the disintegration of the British Empire, which M. Garcia- tribunal." It remained for President Taft's successor, Mr. Wilson, in the face of great opposition, to save the honour of American diplomacy, by forcing on the Senate and the House of Representatives a " Panama Tolls Revision Act," repealing the law of August 1912, against which England had protested. This measure, signed June 15, 1914, had been defended by M. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, Senators Root and Lodge, Mr. Roosevelt, Dr. Murray Butler, and the more responsible organs of public opinion in the United States. The regime of navigation in the Panama Canal is thus assimilated to that of the Suez Canal. The United States, which is free to fortify the Canal, may offset any possible disadvantages accruing to its Merchant Marine from its recognition of the principle of equality of treatment as regards tolls, by establishing a system of bounties for its Merchant Marine, or by subsidizing its coastwise trade. But, by the Hay-Bunau Varilla treaty and the Hay- Pauncefote treaty, now solemnly sanctioned by the Panama Tolls Revision Act, the United States is forbidden to make such subsidies under the form of exemption from tolls. 1 " England, and not the United States," says the author of The Day of the Saxon, " guarantees the independence of American nations; and in the preservation of the British Empire rather than in the doc- trine of Monroe is to be found the basis of their security." A feTUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 331 Calderon in his Latin Democracies of America (p. 367) prophesied " would be the work of the Yankees," seems a contingency more remote than ever. Mexico, which Japan has already been trying to colonize, may before long become dependent on the United States, as the dummy State of Panama virtually is already, and as Central America will unquestionably be within a rela- tively brief time . But these embarrassingly advantageous strategic additions to its territory will not give the United States a fleet or any army; they will not help it to compete with the commercial enterprise of the rival Powers in the ports of the Eastern Pacific; they will not arrest the magnificent movement of the nations in their preparation for the economic (and perhaps mihtary) struggle of which the Pacific Ocean is soon to be the scene. The Americans have been dredging their harbour at San- Juan in Porto Rico since 1908, and have already given it an average depth of twenty- eight feet. Galveston, where they are still hard at work, is rapidly becoming the third Atlantic Port of the United States. Key West has been bridged to the Continent, over 100 miles at sea, by a railway that is one of the marvels of modern engineering. At Santiago, in Cuba, and at Colon, the Americans are constructing feverishly and well. But meanwhile the Germans are prospecting the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico for coaling stations or ports of call, and after having tried to secure a coaling station at Haiti, have already settled on a point in the Danish West Indies, the island of Saint Thomas, which the United States tried to buy in 1902, yet which Danish nationalism seems now incom- petent to hold. Out in the Pacific, west and south of Panama, Germany is linking up her possessions by wireless telegraphy, while, by her world-wide schemes for the development of her shipping, Germany, which has already deprived the Port of London of an entrepot trade with New Zealand of about 100,000 tons per annum, is making a magnificent fight for supremacy am PROBLEMS OF POWER as a carrier in that ocean. When the Canal is opened, France will have, a little to the south of the British Imperial " All-Red Route," an All-Blue Route belting the globe. The belt of French Colonies or Possessions reaches from Tahiti through the Canal, by Guadeloupe and Martinique to Dakar, thence to Bordeaux and Brest and, by the Rhone Valley, to Marseilles, where, once again taking to the sea, and skiriiing the North African Coast from Algiers to Bizerta, it proceeds through the Suez Canal to Jibutil in the Gulf of Aden, and to the Grand Comores, Madagascar and La Reunion in the Indian Ocean. It then turns northward, touching Asia at Saigon; and, passing thence just to the north of Australia, finds in the New Hebrides^ and in New Caledonia (where Australia may one day procure the iron of which she stands in need) its last station before it is riveted again at Tahiti, in mid-Pacific. There an official mission is already investigating the problem of preserving for France commercial predominance in the Poljmesian Seas. It is unnecessary to await official confirmation to affirm that Tahiti, half-way between New Zealand and Panama, on one of the direct Australasian routes, is destined to a great commercial future provided France constructs in that island a modern port and coaling station.^ If the French sup- plement their maritime route through the Panama and Suez Canals by an overland route; if the Old World 1 The status of the New Hebrides is still (in 1914) only provisional. Since 1906 the Archipelago has been governed by an Anglo-French condominium to the irritation of Australia and the English missionaries. The consequence has been constant quarrelling and dispute between the English, or rather the Australians, and the French. Partition of the Archipelago would seem to be the only rational solution. An Anglo-French Commission sat in London in the spring of 1914 to arrive at a definitive settlement of the New Hebrides question. The Australian Government was represented on this Commission by the Governor-General's chef de cabinet. * For a more detailed treatment of the future of the relations of the United States and France in connexion with the Panama Canal see the author's lecture, delivered at the Th6&tre Michel, Paris, on February 12, 1913, and reproduced in a volume published by Alcan. A STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 333 prolongs, from Brest to Vladivostok or Fousan, the great trunk railway lines of the United States and Canada, now linking San Francisco and Vancouver to New York and Halifax, the world will wonder how a trifling matter like that of the Baghdad railway cauld ever have fired the imagination, and divided the diplo- macy of serious Powers/ Evidently no nation has ever had a more glorious opportunity than has France, at this hour, of co-operating with the drift of the time and with the nature of things for the aggrandizement of her prestige as well as for the good of humanity. Franco- Latin co-operation in South America, Anglo-American collaboration in the islands, and on the High Seas, of the Pacific; a solemn Franco- Anglo -American pact for the peace of the world; such are the potential realities which may already be descried from the heights above Culebra. 1 See " La France et le Monde de Demain," by M. Victor Berard, and the series of articles on " Les Ports Am^ricains et le Canal," by M. Casimir Perier, in t\^. Figaro, April and May 1912. INDEX Abarzuza, Senor, 69 Abbazia, 306 n. Abdul Hamid, 135, 139 Adam, Madame, 144 n. Aden, Gulf of, 332 Adowa, 51, 70 Adrianople, 173 w., 296 Adriatic, the. Introduction xxv, 235 71., 259, 289, 300, 302-3, 306 n., 307 w. ^gean Islands, Introduction xxv, 295 TO. ggr^ 29 293 Aehrenthal, Count, 6, 7, 11, 153, 172, 180, 288, 290, 298 Afghanistan, 315 Africa, Introduction, xxv, 7, 25, 50, 55 n., 56, 133, 264, 275, 304-5 — Central, 252 — East, 226-7 — North, 272 n., 306 — North- West, 254 — South, 226, 264 n. — West, 226 Agadir, 48, 58, 70, 75, 106, 133, 141-2, 151-3, 155, 168, 172, 178, 181, 184 n., 185, 1^2-3, 195-8, 211, 216, 224, 231, 254, 264 n., 266-7, 270, 278, 281 w., 285 w., 322 Aide, Hamilton, 266 n. Aisne, Introduction, xix Aix-la-Chapelle, 214 w. Alaska, 326 Albania, 289, 297 «., 300, 302-3, 306 w. Albin, P., Les Grands Traites Pdi- tiques, Introduction, xv n. Le Coup d' Agadir, 59 n. Alexander the Great, 10, 201 — L, 48 — II., Introduction, xviii, xxi, xxxvii, 47, 49 — III., 49, 50 Alexandretta, 274 n., 287 Algeciras, 26, 106, 180, 304, 318 — Act of, 172, 254 n. — Conference of, 71, 147, 263 n. Algeria, 216 n., 272 Algiers, 90, 308, 332 — Archbishop of, 89 Alps, the, 306 Alsace, Introduction, xxi, xxii, 7, 46 Alsace-Lorraine, 28, 49, 52, 72, 143, 159-60, 163-71, 175, 177 w., 208, 209 w., 210, 218, 230, 247, 290, 312 America, United States of, 4, 10 n., 11, 13-25, 33, 36-8, 40-1, 44, 51, 57 n., 66-7, 101, 109, 120, 123-6, 127 n., 130-1, 142, 156, 158, 162, 173 n., 181, 187, 189-90, 192-5, 197-8, 201, 204, 216, 220, 222, 224-5, 232, 239-40, 243, 245, 274, 276, 281, 296, 310-12, 316-20, 323-33 — Central, 323 — Colonies, 6 — South, 15, 204, 323, 326 Andover Hill, 21 Andrassy, Count, 140, 300 Andre, General, 85, 184 Andrieux, M., 113 Angeberg, Coimt d', Le Congres de Vienne et les Traitis de 1815, Introduction, xvi n., xx n. Angell, Norman, The Great Illusion, 164-7, 207 The Mirage of the Map, 217, 234, 237 w., 246 n., 247 n. Angers, 87 Antivari, 302 Antwerp, Introduction, xiv, 10 n., 211, 231, 277 Anzelotti, Professor, 321 Aquitaine, 133 Aral, Sea of, 315 Ardeche, 40 Argentine, the, 173 n., 323 ?i. Ariovistus, 34 Armenia, 273 n., 297 Arnold, Matthew, Essays in Criti- cism, 15, 20 Arques, 156 Asia, 7, 50, 68, 107, 173 w., 204 n., 275, 296-7, 308, 314-16, 317-18, 332 — Minor, 295 Asquith, H., 162, 184-5, 188-9, 196 n., 247 n. Asser, Councillor of State, 321 Athens, 295 n. Atlanta, 193 Atlantic, the, 27, 106-7, 219, 275, 318-19, 324 I Augsburg, 219 Aulard, M., 104 Aumale, Due d', 123 I Australia, 192, 264 n., 279, 311 n., I 319,326-8,332 Austria, Introduction, xxi, xxii, i xxiii, 11, 46-8, 51, 53 n., 69 n., I 134, 137, 213 n., 218, 268-9, 285, I 292 n., 298-303, 305-6, 308, 321 334 i INDEX 335 Austria- Hungary, Introduction, vii, xxxviii, 5 w., 11 n., 48, 180, 243, 276 n., 286, 288-91, 292 n., 298-9, 304, 306 n., 307 n. Baden, Grand Duchy of, 171 Baghdad, Introduction, xxv, 174, 186 — Railway, 52, 154, 256, 273 n., 287, 333 Bahrein Islands, 274 n. Balfour, A. J., 57 n., 162, 187, 188, 215 Balkan States, Introduction, xiv, xxxviii, 6, 11, 48, 51-2, 133-4, 137-9, 142 n., 166, 185, 207 n., 218, 235, 258, 267, 286, 288 w.-92 n., 297, 301-2, 305 — Confederation, Introduction, vii, 137, 258 — League, 53, 99, 137, 141, 172, 269, 287, 291 n., 293, 295 n., 296, 299, 300, 307 Ballin, Herr, 248 n. Baltic Sea, 69 n., 264, 284 Balzac, La Paix du Menage, 241 Bar, Professor von, 321 Bardo, Treaty of, 47 Bardoux, Jacques, 292 n. Barrere, M., 54, 142 n., 305, 307 n. Barres, Maurice, 102, 170, 294-5 n. Barthou, M., 148 Bas-Khin, 159 Bassorah, 273 n. Baudin, Pierre, 250, 255 Bavaria, 241 n. Bazaine, 161 Beaconsfield, Lord, 140 Beaumont, Introduction, xviii Behring's Sea, 316 Belgium, Introduction, xix, xx, 172, 176-7, 212-13 71., 321 Belgrade, 291 n., 300 Benghazi, 257, 258 Beranger, Henri, 121 Berard, Victor, 55, 142, 155 La France et le Monde de Demain, 333 n. Le Droit de Voisinage, 174 Berchtold, Count, 7, 60, 287, 291-2 n., 306 n. — Countess, 287 Berlin, Introduction, xxiii, xxv, 26, 70, 134, 157 n., 158-9, 211, 224, 231, 248 n., 271 n., 286, 299, 302, 328 — Congress of. Introduction, xxxviii, 46, 47, 73, 140, 255, 302, 303 — Treaty of, 6, 47, 134, 140, 172, 270, 289, 295 n., 303, 304 Bemhardi, General von, 214, 216 Bernstein, Edward, 215 w., 217 Ber<-illon, Dr. Jacques, 240, 241 Betheny, 32 Bethmann-HoUweg, Herr von. In- troduction, xxii, 39, 160, 177 n., 221 Bieberstein, Marschall von, 164, 249, 267, 272 Bielefield, 221 Bismarck, Introduction, xvi, xvii, XX, xxxvii, xxxviii, 27, 31, 37, 42, 45-51, 65, 70, 75, 76 n., 88, 132, 140-1, 144, 161, 177, 233, 255, 264, 266, 271, 276 w., 285, 286, 298, 300, 302-4, 309 — Memoirs, 75 w., 299 Bizerta, 272, 292, 295, 303, 307, 332 Blache, Captain Vidal de la. The Lorraine Valley of the Meuse, 208 Black Sea, 8, 9 n., 69 w., 273 n., 293, 295, 297, 299 Blondel, Georges, Les Embarras de VAUemagne, 218 n. L'Essor, Industriel et Com- mercial du Peuple Allemand, 221 n. 288 n. Blowitz, M. de, xiv, 31 w., 47 to., 55 w., 58 n., 90, 303 Blumenthal, M., 169 Bodium, 249 Bokhara, 315 Bompard, M., 295 n. Bonnal, General, 221 Bordeaux, 116, 160, 332 Borden, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Robert, 197, 198 Bosnia, 259 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 11, 63 n., 137, 155, 180, 290, 291 w., 298, 300, ^302, 303 Bosphorus, 293 Bossuet, Litroduction, xxxvii, 20, 239 n. Boston, 22, 193 Boulogne, Introduction, xiv Bourdon, Georges, 248 Bourgeois, M., 32, 157 n., 277 Bourges, Archbishop of, 93 Bourget, M., 102 Bourgin, Georges, Le Protectionisme Ouvrier, 205 n., 207 n. Brandenburg Mark, Introduction, xvii, xxv Braun, M., 210 Brazil, 173 n., 212, 220, 323 n. — South, 219 Bresciani, Signor, 257 Breslau, Introduction, xviii Brest, 314, 332-3 Briand, M., 6 «., 86, 122, 127, 184 w. 253, 272 n., 277 336 PROBLEMS OF POWER Briey, 209 «., 211, 229 Brisson, M., 91, 159 British Columbia, 204 n. Broqueville, Baron de, 177 Bruneticre, M., 100, 102 Brunsbriittel, 214 n. Brussels, Introduction, xv, xx, xxi, XXV Bucharest, Treaty of. Introduction, vii, 288 71., 289 w., 295 n. Buda Pest, 286 Bulgaria, Introduction, vii, 5 n., 8, 52, 53, 137, 139, 140 n., 288 n., 291 n., 292 n., 301 n. Billow, Prince von, Imperial Ger- many, Introduction, xxiv, and n., 263 n. 70, 71, 263, 286 Bunau-Varella, Phillippe, Panama^ The Creaiion, Destruction and Resurrection, 172 316, 330 n. Burgundy, Introduction, xiv, 133 Burke, Introduction, xi Busch, Memoirs, 255 Butler, Bishop, 177 — President, Nicholas Murray, 62, 63 n., 330 n. Byzantium, 297 Cadiz, 314 Caen, 148, 232 w. Csesar, Julius, 3, 39 Caiffa, 273 n. CaiUaux, M., 76, 184 w., 217, 237, 239 and n., 250, 253, 254, 281 n. California, 173 n. Calvin, 135 n. Cambon, Jules, 64, 56, 142, 264 n., 281 n. — Paul, 142, 154 n. Cambrai, Mgr. de, 87 Cambridge, 21 Cameroons, the, 49, 227, 230, 263 Canada, 11, 16, 190-5, 197-8, 264 n., 279, 311-12 n., 326-8, 330, 333 Canterbury, Archbishop of, 162 Caribbean Sea, 270, 284, 315-6, 323-4, 327, 331 Carolina, North, 18 Carpathians, the, 11 n. Carrere, Jean, 290 Casablanca, 71, 147, 159, 179 Caspian Sea, 297, 314, 315 Castlereagh, Lord, Introduction, xvii, XX Catherine II., 297 Chamberlain, Joseph, 13, 55, 57, 66, 190, 205, 279, 325 j Chambord, Comte de, 83 | Champagne, Litroduction, xiv, 165, 107, 119 Chari, Basin of, 253 Charles V., 219 — King of Portugal, 56 n., 287, 288 w. Charleston, 193 Chenier Andre, 121 Cheradame, Andre, La Crise Fran- gaise, 163 %., 238 n. Chicago, 22 Chiers, 208 Chili, 173 n., 323 n. Chimay, Introduction, xviii China, 4, 11, 26, 57, 70, 226, 229, 264, 274, 309-12, 317-18, 326 Chios, 295 n. Chirol, Sir Valentine, 314 Christiania, 36, 284 Churchill, Winston, 67, 69 w., 213 n., 311 n. Circillo, Marquis C. di Somma, Introduction, xvi n. Clam, Lt.-Col. du Paty de, 99 n. Clemenceau, Georges, Introduction, xxxviii, 54, 91, 114, 116, 117, 122, 151, 159, 184 n. — La Melee Sociale, 115 Clunet, Maitre Edward, 320, 321 Coblence, 214 n. Cochin, Denys, 30 n. Colbert, 255 Colmar, 169 Cologne, 214 n. Colon, 312, 327, 330, 331 Colonbelles, 232 n. Colson, M., Organisme Economique et Desordre Social, 120 n, Columbia University, 62 Columbus, 315 Combes, M., 81-2, 94-6, 97-8, 109, 184 n., 294 n. Compiegne, 32 Comte, 135 Conde, 10 n. Condorcet, 135 Confederation Gen6rale du Travail, 115, 119 n. Congo, 4, 182, 217, 230, 235, 253-4 — Free State, 227 Connecticut, 22 Constant, M. d'Estoumolles de, 157 n., 162 Constantinople, 9, 128, 135, 138-9, 149 n., 152-3, 218, 249, 267, 285-6 n., 295 n., 296 Constantza, 288 n. Copenhagen, 284 Corea, 310 Corinth, 167 ComeiUe, 233 INDEX 837 Coi-ti, Count, 303 Costa Rica, 219 Coyer, Abbe, 36 Crewe, Marquis of, 68 Crillon, 156 Crispi, 54, 286, 290,299,300, 302-4, 307 Croly, Mr., The Promise of American Life, 20, 132 Cruppi, M., 253 Cuba, 26, 33, 36, 318, 324, 330-1 Culebra, 333 Curzon, Lord, 149, 152 Cyprus, 295 Cyrenaica, 257-8 Dabry, Abbe Pierre, Lea Caiholiques Bepublicains : Histoire et Sou- venirs, 1890-1903, 89 Daily Mail, 246 n., 273 Dakar, 332 Dalmatia, 298 Dalmatian coast, 259 Dante, 45 Danube, Introduction, xxxviii. 107 n., 259, 264, 289 n., 298-300 Dardanelles, Introduction, xxv, 8, 9 n., 10 n., 287, 289, 293, 295, 316, 319 Dauphine, 145 Decazes, Introduction, xiv Delaisi, Francis, 166 n. La Democratie et les FinancierSf 130 n. Delbriick, Hans, 161, 227 Delcasse, M., Introduction, xiv, 54-5, 57 n., 59, 71, 75-6, 142, 146, 151, 159, 179. 225, 255 n„ 267, 277, 288 n. Delhi, 281 Denmark, 173 w., 177, 283 Deroulede, M., 40 Deschanel, Paul, 134 n. Detmold, 233 Djibuti, 154 n. Dover, 280 Drago Doctrine, 323 n. " Dreyfus Affair," 53, 55, 57, 70, 77, 88, 92, 93, 99, 102-3, 120, 143, 157, 241 — Captain, 99 n. Ducrocq, Georges, 170 Ducrot, General, 157 n. Duluth, 22 Dumont, Arsene, Natalifi et Civilisa- tion, 240 Dunkirk, Introduction, xiv, 211, 231, 277 Durazzo, 303 Edward VII., King of England, 57, 71, 141, 215 n., 225, 280 E,gypt, 65, 59, 197, 226, 250 I EineQ, General voa« 233 ElKata,274w. Elba, Introduction, xviii I Eliot, Ex-President, 194 I Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal, 287 I Elsenbom, 214 n. Emerson, R. W., 219 ' Emmott, Lord, 282 ». I Ems, 160 j Engels, 202 England, Introductiwi, vii, xx, xxi, I xxii, 7, 8, 11, 22, 27-8, 48, 60-2, I 64-60, 63-9 n., 71, 76, 101-2, 106, 109, 120, 123, 130 n., 134, 138, I 141-2, 144-5, 147-56, 162, 175-97, i 205, 211-12, 214-16, 220, 225-8, 230, 232-3 n., 239, 243, 245, 249, 251-2, 259-60, 263-4, 267, 271-6, 277-85, 291 n., 292-3, 296, 298, 304-12, 314-16, 319, 321, 323 w., 325-30. Enver Bey, 136, 271 Erythrea, 257 Escaut, 176 Esch, 210 Essen, 232, 249 Etienne, M., 184 n. Euoharistic Congress (1912), 301 Eugene, Archduke, 288 Europe, 1-333 Faguet, M., Le Cvlte de V Incom- petence . . . et VHorrewr des Re- sponsahilites, 124-5, 132 128, 163 n. Fashoda, 51, 64-5, 57-8, 70, 145-6 Faure, Felix, 56 Favre Jules, 167 n. Ferdinand, Tsar of Bulgaria, 139 Ferrero, Guglielmo, 22, 256, 320 rideal et la Richesse, 202 Ferry, Jules, 76, 80-2, 84, sa, 88, 167 w. ! Fez, 253 Fichte, Introduction, xxxvii Fisher, Mr., 196 Flanders, Introduction, xiii Florence, 291 Flushing, 10 w., 154, 176 Fouille, M., 226 Fousan, 315, 333 France, Introduction, vii, ix, xiii, xiv, xvi, xviii, xix, xx,:xxi, xxii, xxxviii, 4-6, 11, 26-36, 39-62, 64, 66, 68-72, 75-93, 96-135, 142-56, 158-66, 168-72, 174-84, 191, 202, 204, 211-12, 214, 216-18, 220, 222-3, 225-6, 229-32, 234, 236-54, 259, 263-4, 266-7, 270-9, 281, 283- 5, 290-92, 294-6, 298, 304-8, 312, 314, 316, 319, 321, 326, 329 n., 332 338 PROBLEMS OF POWER France, Anatole, La Revdte des Anges, 23 n., 64 n. Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, 287, 291, 292 n., 302 Francis Ferdinand, Archduke, 292 n., 307 n. Frankfort, Introduction, xiv — Treaty of, 27, 29, 30, 46, 88, 140, 164, 167, 170, 229, 248, 274, 312 Franklin, 26 Freeman, Professor, 63 French Revolution, The, 31, 32, 135, 138, 188 Freppel, Mgr., 87-9 Freycinet, 0. de. Souvenirs 1848- 1878, 41 80 Friedrichshof, 71 Froude, 278, 280 Fullerton, Morton, Patriotism and Science, 83 n., 88 n., 120 n., 165 n. Probleins of Power y 1st edition, 297 w. Fuzet, Mgr., 81 Gabba, Professor, 321 Galata, 4 Galli, Henri, Gamhetta et Alsace- Lorraine, 75 n., 144 Galveston, 331 Gambetta, 30, 34, 72, 80, 84, 90, 114, 122, 126, 143-4 n., 160, 168, 294 n. Gamp, Baron de, 170 n. Gandhi, Mr., 204 n. | Garcia-Calderon, F., Les Demo- craties Latines de V Amerique, 219 n., 331 Garibaldi, 6, 25 Gary (Indiana), 207 n. Gascony, 107 n, Gasquet, Francis A., Abbot, after- wards Cardinal, 94-5 n. Gaston, Henri, UEssor ^conomique du Peuple Allemand and U Alle- magne aux Ahois, 221 Gaul, 3 Gayraud, Abbe, La Lot de Separa- tion et le Pape Pie X., 97 Geneva, 135, 202 Genghiz Khan, 10 George V., King of England, 281-2 George, D. Lloyd, 15, 184-5, 195 Germany, Introduction, vii, xu, xiv, xix, XX, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxxviii, 7, 11-12 n., 15, 27, 31, 37, 39, 45-9, 51-2, 54-6, 58, 65-7, 69 w., 70-1, 75-6 n., 96, 106-7 n., 120, 133-5, 137, 141, 144-8, 150, 153-6, 159-60, 163-5, 167-71, 175-82, 184 n., 189, 191, 195, 197, 201, 211-18, 220-36, 238-9 w., 243, 245-55, 263-75, 277, 279, 281, 283, 285-8, 290, 296-306 n., 308, 310, 312, 319, 321, 323 n., 325, 326, 330-1 Gibraltar, 154 n., 327 Giolitti, Signor, 290, 304, 320 Giuliano, Marquis di San, 306 n., 307 w. Gladstone, W. E., 62, 65, 150 Glasgow, 65 Gobat, Albert, Le Cauchemar de V Europe, 171 Goltz, Field-Marshal Von der, 135 Gontaut-Biron, M. de. Ma Mission a Berlin, 75 n. Goodfellow, Mr., 227 Goschen, Mr., 66, 67 Gouthe-Soulard, M^r., 88 Goyau, Georges, Uldee de Patrie et liumanitarisme, 157-8 n. Grand Comores, 332 Grande Faute des Cathdiques, La, Anonymous, 92 Greece, Introduction, vii, 5, 8, 9 n., 22, 53, 201, 230, 288 w., 289 n., 295 w. Greenwich, 153 Grevy, President, 144, 155 Grey, Earl, 198 Grey, Sir Edward, 68, 70, 153, 154 n., 156, 162, 233, 281 n., 324 n., 325 Grundy, G. B., Thucydides and the History of His Age, 3 n. Guadeloupe, 332 Guantanamo, 319, 324 Guatemala, 18 n., 219 Gwinner, Herr von, 213 Hadfield, Sir Robert, F.R.S., 273-5 Hague Conference, 32, 158, 164 n, — The, 26, 143, 157, 163, 177, 263, 320, 328 Haiti, 331 Haldane, Viscount, 149 w., 153, 190, 296 Halevy, Daniel, Luttes et Problemes, 54 n. Halifax, 333 Hamburg, 17, 49, 206, 267 Hamilton, General Sir Ian, 204 n. Hanotaux, Gabriel, 42, 50, 54-5, 153, 155, 271 Fachoda, 33 n. Hans, Admiral, 307 n. Hansen, Jules, Amhassade d Paris du Baron de Mohrenheim, 47, 76 and n. Hansi, Mon Vill'tge, 170 n. Harcourt, Mr., 283 n. Hardenberg, Introduction, xvi, xxxvii INDEX 339 Harrison, Ex-President, 329 Harrison, Frederic, 181 n. Harvard, Universitiy of, 219 Haskovo, 288 n. Haut-Rhin, 159 Hawaii, 51, 67, 318 Hay, Mr., 62, 330 Hayes, President, 319, 324 Heligoland, 217, 226 Henry IV., King of France, 61, 65, 99, 156 Henry, Prince of Prussia, 248 n. Heraclia, 273 n. Herouville, 232 n. Hohenlohe, von, Memoirs of Prince, 15 11. Holland, 101, 176-7, 212-13 n., 283, 321 Holland, Professor, 321 Holtenau, 214 n. Holy Alliance, The, Introduction, xxi Honduras, IS n. Hotzendorf , Baron Konrad von, 289 Houssaye, Henri, Introduction, xiii Huerta, 323 n. Hugo, Victor, L' Annie Terrible, 212 Humboldt, Introduction, xvi Hungary, 213 w. Hutton, Edward, Introduction, ix lie de France, 204 India, 6, 63, 196-7, 280, 310, 315, 326 Indian Ocean, 332 Inebali, 273 n. Information, l\ 5 n. Iowa, 120 Ipek, 298 Istria, 298 Isvolski, M., 289 Italy, 6, 11, 47-8, 51, 53 n., 54-5, 69 n., 96-7, 145, 206, 213 n., 235-6 n., 256, 259, 267, 286-7, 289-90, 294-8, 300, 302-7, 320-1, 323 n., 326 Jaffa, 273 w. Jagow, Gottlieb von, 212, 306 n. Jameson Raid, The, 50 Japan, 7, 15, 50, 151, 206, 236 n., 243, 279, 309-15, 318-9, 326, 331 Jaures, M., 5 n., 30 n., 121, 157 n., 162, 234, 236-7 n. Jebb, Richard, The Britannic Ques- tion, 196 n. Jefierson, 330 Jena, Introduction, xiii Jerrold, Laurence, The Real France, 77, 128 Jibutil, 332 Joan of Arc, 72 Joly, Henri, 204 Jonnart, M., 272 n. Jowett, Mr., 153 Jura, Introduction, xiv, 175 Jutland, Southern, 177 n. Kahn, Maurice, Courriers de Mace- doine, Introduction, xxxviii n. Karageorgewitch, Pierre, 139 Katsura, Mr., 313 Key West, 331 Kharbine, 315 Kiderlen-Waechter, 212, 248, 307 Kiel, 214 n.. 224, 248 n. — Canal, 49, 65, 214 Kingston, 327 Kipling, Rudyard, France, 146 192, 195, 294 n. Kirk Kilisse, Litroduction, viii, 48, 70, 166, 286, 296, 298-9, 302, 307 Kitchener, Earl, 51 Klotz, M., 239 n. Knox, Mr., 174 Koeniggraetz, Introduction, xxiv Koenigsburg, 212 Kokovtzof, Mr., 265 Komagata Maru, 326 Konopischt, 307 n. Korea, 173 n. Koweit, 154, 273 n. Kruger, President, 50 Krupp's Company, The, 232, 249, 273 Ladysmith, 57, 58 Lafayette, General, 123 La Fontaine, 241 Lamsnarch, Professor, 321 Landau, Introduction, xviii Lansdowne, Lord, 9, 57, 59, 225-6, 319 " Latin A," TJne Confederation Orientale Comme Sdution de la Question d'' Orient, 52 n. Laurier, Sir W., 190, 192, 194-5, 198 Lavigerie, Cardinal, 90 Lavisse, M., 29, 168 Lea, General Homer, The Day of the Saxon, 64 n., 309, 310 Lebon, Dr. Gustave, 99 and n., 199 w. Lecanuet, M., VHistoire de V&glise sous la Troisieme Republique, 96 Leipzig, 170 n. Lemaitre, Jules, 102 Lenin, Introduction, xiii Lenox, 22 Leo XIIL, 82, 84, 88-91, 93, 95, 257 Leroy-Beaulieu, A., 108 n. L^vy, Sam, Les Mefaits du Comiti Union et Pr ogres, 138 Leyret, Henry, Le President de la Bepublique, 36 w. La Republique et Les Politi- dens. 111 w. Les Tyrans Ridicules, 112 w., 127 340 PROBLEMS OP POWER Libya, 290 Lichnowsky, Prince- Ckarles, 248 w., 267 Lille, 237 n. Lindequist, Herr von, 235 Lisbon, 56 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 311 n., 322, 324-5 n., 330 n. London, 15, 26, 59. 134-5, 142 n., 148, 159, 164 n., 202, 204, 266-7, 231, 284, 314, 331 — Treaty of, 176, 295 n. Long Island, 22 Longwy, 208, 211 Lorraine, Introduction, xxi, 7, 45, 204, 208, 230 Loubet, M., 96, 97, 294 n. Louis XIV., King of France, 65, 102, 129 — XVIII., King of France, Intro- duction, xviii, xix Louis Paul, 243 n. Louis Philippe, 123 Louise, The Princess, Introduction, xxxvii Lou vain. Introduction, xiv Low, Sidney, 283 n. Lubeck, 171 Ludwigs Canal, 259 Lunm, Herr von, 224 Luxembourg, xiii, xix, 172, 208-12, 229 Lyon-Caen, Professor, 321 Lyons, 16, 116, 294 n. — Congress of, 87 " Lysis," Gontre V Oligarchie Finan- ciere en France and Les Capitalistes Fran/^is Gontre la France, 236-7 Macedonia, 52-3 w., 135-6, 138-9, 288 n., 293, 298 McClure, S. S., 131 n. McMahon, Marshal, 123 Madagascar, 332 Madrid, 26, 58 Magdalena Bay, 313 Magnier, M., 157 n. Mahan, Rear- Admiral, 13, 192, 195, 316, 318, 322, 324-6 Mahomet II., 296 Main, 259 Malay States, Federated, 264 n. Malmedy, 214 n. Malta, 295 Manchester University, 186 n. Manchuria, 51, 62, 174, 309-11 n., 317 Manhattan Island, 16, 20 Manila, 51 Mannesmann Company, The, 232 Marchand, 51 ' Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, 62 Marmora, Sea of, 52, 130 Marne, Introduction, viii, xi, xv, xix Marseilles, 314, 332 Martin, William, La Grise Politique ■ de VAUemagne Gontemporainet 141 n., 218 w., 268 n, Martinique, 332 ; Marx, Kari, 202 ; Mary Caroline, Queen of Naples, Introduction, xvi i Massachusetts, 219, 317 1 Maurras, Charles, Kid et Tanger, 1 55 ^_ i — 102," 121-2, 126 n. ! Mayence, Introduction, xix ! Mediterranean Sea, xxv, 9, 69 »., 70, 107, 264, 270, 273 n., 284-7, 293-5, 304-7, 327 \ Meiji,313 ; Meline, 122 I Mercy- Argenteau, Countess de, 160 ' Meredith, George, 149 i Mermeix, Ghronique de V An and I Les Grands Marches Financiers, I 223 n. i Merv, 315 ! Messimy, M., 183 w., 184 w., 253 I Metternich, Introduction, xv, xvi, i xvii, XX ' Metz, 50, 161, 169, 214 I Meurthe, 159, 229-31, 277 j Mouse, Introduction, xix, 208 I Mevil, Andre, De la Paix de Franc- \ fort a la Gonference d'Algeciras, I 55 n. ! Mexico, 173 «., 174, 323, 326, 331 — Gulf of, 316, 331 Meyer, Arthur, Memoirs of, 163 n. Michelet, 102, 106-7, 162 Midhat, Pasha, 136 Mikhailowsky, Introduction, xxxviii n. Milan, 320 n. Mill, John Stuart, A Few Words on N on- Intervention, 64 Millerand, M., 99 n., 184 n., 246 n. Millevoye, M., 121 Milner, Lord, G. C. B., The Nation and the Empire, 282 «. Mississippi, 17 n., 18 n. Mitsu-Hito, 313 Mitylene, 295 n. Mohonk, Lake, Conference, 63 n. Mohrenheim, Baron de, 76 Moltke, Introduction, xvi, xvii Monastir, 135 Mongolia, 68, 310 Monis, M., 106, 253 Monroe Doctrine, 14, 26, 193-4, 219-20, 310, 317-18. 323. 327 INDEX S4t Mont St. Martin, 208 Montenegro, 52-3, 289 w., 290, 302-4 Montesquieu, 244 Montreal, 15, 193, 195 Morgan, J. Pierpont, 23 n., 255 Morley, Viscount, 46 n., 184 Morocco, 55, 59, 70, 98, 107, 134, 154 n., 168, 174, 216-17, 227, 229-30, 232, 251-2, 254, 257, 263, 308 Morristown, 22 Moselle, 159, 229-31, 277 Moysset, Henri, L'Esprit Public en AUemagne, 218 n. Muertzsteg, Agreement of, 134 Mukden, 51, 56, 276 Munich, 170 Mvinster, Count, 55 n., Miinsterberg, Professor, 23 MuraviefE, Count, 50 n. Muscat, 149, 154, 274 n. Nantes, Edict of, 100, 102, 233 n. — 264 1 Nanteuil, Cte. do la Barre de. La I PapauU et la Future Guerre Europeenne, 96 n. Napoleon Bonaparte, Introduction, xiii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xx, xxvi, xxxvii, xxxviii, 70, 81, 102, 298 Napoleon III., Introduction, xvi, 31, 39, 61-2, 65, 127, 160-1 Napoleon, Louis, 31, 60, 61,, 167 n. Natal, 204 w. Necker, 31 New Caledonia, 332 — Guinea, 227 — Haven, 21 -- Hebrides, 332 — Jersey, 22 — York, 15, 16,22, 193, 204, 333 — Zealand, 192, 204 n., 264 w., 311 n., 327, 331-2 Newman, Cardinal, 63 n. Neymarck, Alfred, 5 n., 62 n., 239 n. Nicaragua, 219, 316, 329 n. — Canal, 172 Nicholas II., Ex-Tsar of Russia, Introduction, xviii, 28 and n., 29-34, 45, 50, 52, 265, 266, 288 n., 289, 304 I Nicholson, Sir A., 281 n. Nicolaides, Dr. Kleanthes, 137 n. Niel, Marshal, 157 n. Nietzsche, 132 Niger, 249 Nile River, 107 n, — Valley, The, 20 Nimegue, 34 Nobel Peace Prize, 33, 36 Normandy, 133, 210, 231, 232 — Dukes of, 148 North Sea, 67, 69 n., 107, 153, 177, 264, 270, 284, 296 — Sunderland, 68 Norway, 283 Novi-Bazar, Sandjak of, 259 Noyes, Alexander D., 243 tu Odo, 266 n. Ohio River, 17 w. Okhotsk, Sea of, 314 OUivier, Emile, L^ Empire Lib^al, 161 Ouchy, 295 n. Ouenza, 272 Pacelli, Ernesto, 257 Pacific Islands, Introduction, xxv, 26, 98, 197 —14, 192, 309-13, 318-9, 323-7, 331-3 Pagny, 48 Paleologue, M., 142 n. Panama Canal, 10 n., 13, 20, 57, 77, 120, 172, 192-3, 275, 311, 314-16, 318-19, 322-30, 332 — Isthmus, 37, 312 — State, 331 Paradoe Provost, 112 Parana, 219 Pareto, Signor Vilfredo, 290 n. Paris, Introduction, xiv, xvii, xviii, 15, 16, 26, 27, 40, 76, 116, 134-5, 153, 159, 162, 167, 169, 178, 193, 204, 224, 231, 237-8 »., 284, 301, 316 — Treaty, Introduction, xviii, xxi — Comte de, 123 Paschitch, M., 258-9 Pauncefote, 330 n. Pecci, Cardinal, 90 Peel, Hon. Gleorge, The Future of England, 11 n., 65 n. — Sir Robert, 65 Peking, 317 Pelissier, 161 Pelletan, M., 157 n. Perier Casimir, Les Ports Amiri* Cains et le Canal, 333 n. Perrieres, 232 n. Persia, Introduction, xxv, 174, 227, 309 314 Persian Gulf, The, 136, 154, 273-4 w., Perthes, Justus, 163 Peterhof , 266 Philip II., 65 Philip of Macedon, 201 Philippines, The, 173 w., 317, 318, 324 Phillips, Wendell, 219 Piohon, M., 76, 153-4, 250, 262^ lu, Picquart, Genei*^, 184 PROBLEMS OF POWER Pilant, Paul, Le Patriotisme en France et V Mrang^re, 34 n. Pindar, 22 Pinon, Rene, 236 w., 257 France etAllemagne, 55 w., 151 n. La Luttepcmr la Pacifique, 201, 202, 312 n., 317 Pisgah, 107 Pius IX., 82, 84, 89 — X., 95 n., 96 Plevna, 287 Poincare, Raymond, 98, 112-13 n., 121-3, 129 n., 142 n., 178 n., 238-9 n., 245 n., 251, 255 n., 264 n., 266, 271, 277, 291, 294 n. Ce que Demande la Cite, 277 n. Poitou, 133 Poland, Introduction, xv, xviii, 206, 276 n., 300 Polynesian Seas, 332 Pontus, 3 Port Arthur, 51, 66, 70 Port, Baltic, 265-7 Porto Lagos, 288 n. Porto Rico, 331 Portsmouth, 26, 293 — Treaty of, 310 Posadowsky, Count, 221 Poseidon, 316 Potsdam, 143, 153-5, 174, 180, 272 — Agreement, 273 n. Prague, Treaty of, Introduction, xvi Prato, Guiseppe, II Protezionismo Operaio, 205-7 Proudhon, 119 Provence, 204 Prussia, Introduction, xiv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, xx, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxxvii, 29, 65, 157 n., 170, 208, 213 n., 241 n., 276 — King of, Introduction, xxxvii Quatrefages, 23 Quebec, 194 Queensland, North, 228 Quinet, 102, 162 Racconigi, 285, 289, 304 Radziwill, Princess, Introduction, xvii Quarante Annies de ma Vie, 1770-1815, xxxvii n. — Prince Antoine, Introduction, xvii, 56 n. Rambaud, 84 Rampolla, Cardinal, 90 Ratisbonne, 300 Rawson, Admiral, 56 n. Renan, U Avenir de la Science, 101 Rennes, 54 n. Reunion, La, 332 Reutter, Col. von, 170 Rey, Etienne, La Renaissance de Vorgueil Frangais, 75 n., 241 n. Rheims, Introduction, xiv. Rhine, River, Introduction, xvii, xviii, xix, xxi, 107 Rhodes, 295 Rhone, River, 16 — Valley, 20, 22, 332 Richelieu, 62, 162, 255 Richmond, 22 Rio Grande do Sul, 219 Roberts, Field-Marshal Earl, 69 n., 149, 152-3 Robespierre, 135 n. Roche, Jules, 39-41, 88 Roguin, Professor, 321 Rolin, Professor Alberic, 321 Rome, 22, 54, 85, 107, 142 n., 212, 230, 258, 294 n., 305, 307 Roosevelt, Ex-President Theodore, 17 n., 25-7, 32-40, 42-5, 131 w., 172-3 n., 190, 192, 311 w., 316-18, 322, 324, 330 n.. Root, Senator, 330 n. Rosebery, Lord, 65-6, 69 n. Rostand, Alexis, 239 Roth, Walter, 228 Rotterdam, Introduction, xiv, 177, 211, 231 Roubaix, 115 Rouen, 81 Rousseau, J. J., Contrat Social, 167 Rouvier, M., 80, 294 n. Rumania, Introduction, vii, xxv, 5 w., 8, 9 n., 53 n., 142 w., 288-9 n., 291 n., 292-3 Rumelia, Eastern, 137 Russell, Lady W., 286 n. Russia, Introduction, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxv, xxxviii, 7-10 n., 27-30, 48-50, 52, 54, 56, 66, 69 w., 71, 76, 98, 134, 141-4, 148, 151, 153-5, 163 n., 180, 213 n., 227, 232, 236 n. 263-4, 266, 269 n., 271-3 n., 275-6, 283, 287-9, 291-3, 297-9, 309-12, 314-16, 318, 326 Sadowa, Introduction, viii, xiii, xx. xxxviii, 47 n., 299 Saigon, 332 St. Louis, 72 — Petersburg, 142 «., 284 — Quentin, 168 — S6verin, 107 n. — Sophia, 53 — Thomas, Island of, 331 Salisbury, Lord, Introduction, xxxviii, 54-7, 76, 303, 307 Salonica, Introduction, vii, xxii, 53 n., 135-9, 177, 259, 289 n., 297 Samarkand, 315 INDEX 343 Samoa, 49 San Domingo, 36, 37 San Francisco, 205, 333 San- Juan, 331 San Stefano, Treaty of, 140 Sangha, Basin of, 253 Santa Catalina, 219 Santiago, 331 Saone, River, 16 Sarre, Valley of, 229 Sarrebourg, 214 Sarre bruck, Introduction, xviii Sarrou, Major, La jeune Turquie el la Revolution, 136 n. Saunders, George, 231 Savonarola, 35 Savoy Alps, 175 Saxony, Introduction, xviii, xix Sayous, Andre, Informationf 225, 239 n. Scandinavia, 232 Scheldt, 10 n. Schemua, General von, 289 Schiller, Introduction, xxxvii Schleiermacher, Introduction, xxxvii Schleswig, North, 173 n., 177 n. Schleswig-Holstein, 45, 64 Schlucht, 170 n. Schmitz, Oskar, A. H., Das Land der Worklichkeit, 128 n. Schnoebel^ Affair, 48 Schoen, Baron de, 254 Schopenhauer, 46 n. Scrihner's Magazine, Introduction, xii Seattle, 15 Sedan, Introduction, xx, xxiv, xxxviii, 47, 61, 64, 157 n. Selves, M. de, 178, 253 Serajevo, 291, 292 n. Servia, Introduction, vii, xxii, xxv, 6 n., 52-3, 139, 258-9, 288 n., 289 n., 291-2 n., 301 ». Shakespeare, 182, — King Lear, 191 Sherman, Mr., 317 Shevket Pasha, 271 Shimonoseke, Treaty of, 50 Siberia, 314, 315 Sicily, 3 Siegfried, Jacques, 238 n. Sighele, Scipio, 290 Silesia, 229 Silvela, Senor, 59 Simon, Jules, 157 n. Sinaia, 287, 291 n. Smith, Professor J. Allen, Spirit of American Oovernment, 131 n. Smyrna, 135 Sofia, 139, 291 n. Solon, 1 Soubise, 161 ' Soumont, 232 n. Spain, 57, 59, 65, 146, 225, 324 Spender, J. A., The Foundations of British Pdicy, 69 n.,l91 n., 233 n. Spinoza, 63, 64 w., 318, 323 n. SpuUer, M., 90, 91, 122 Stamboul, 177 Statist, The, 4 n. Stavelot, 214 w. Stead, W. T., 164 n. Steed, H. Wickham, The Times, 11 The Hapsburg Monarchy, 11 n., 276 n., 297 n., 299 n. Stein, Introduction, xxxvii Stinnes, Matthias, 232 Stockholm, 21, 284 Stoffel, Colonel, 157 Stolypin, M., 142 Strabo, 175 Strasbourg, 48, 50, 157 n., 159, 171 n., 214 Suez Canal, 8, 20, 295, 315, 324, 330 n., 332 Sweden, 283 Switzerland, Introduction, xv, 171, 212, 321 Syria, Introduction, xxv, 98, 259, 273 w. Taft, President, 14, 156, 162-3, 174, 190, 192, 310-11 n., 322, 329-30 n. Tahiti, 332 Taillandier, Georges Saint Ren6, 110 Taine, 107, 110, 111 Taisho, 313 Talleyrand, Introduction, xv, xvii, XX, 48 Tangiers, 59, 70, 151 n., 211, 216, 229 Tardieu, Andr6, 70, 141, 164 Le Mystere d'Agadir, 232 n., 254 w. Tashkent, 315 Tasmania, 283 n. Taza, 216 w. Tchataldja, 294 n. Teheran, 314 Thiebaud, Georges, Les Secrets du Regne, 123 Thiers, M., 62 n., 266 n. Thomasson, M. de, 69 n. Thrace, 52 Thyssen, Herr, 210, 231 — August, 232 Tilsitt, Introduction, xvii, xx, xxvi, xxxvii, xxxviii Times, The, 11, 18 n., 25, 28 n., 47 n., 65 n., 68, 69 n., 94 n., 109 n., 132 n., 140 n., 153, 154,159, 164 n., 181 n., 204 n., 226, 227, 231, 232 n., 248 n., 259, 293, 303, 315 Tirpitz, Admiral von, 69 n., 307 n. 344 PROBLEMS OF POWER Tittoni, Signor, 257, 289 Tokyo, 313, 316 Tongking, 48 Trans-Iranian, The, 315, 316 Transvaal, 204 n. — War, 57 Transylvania, Introduction, xxv, II w. Treves, 214 n. Trieste, Introduction, xiv., 297 Triple Alliance, Introduction, 7, 28, 47, 69 TO., 93, 96, 142 n., 145-6, 180, 185, 271, 273 w., 284-92, 297, 305-7 — Entente, Introduction, xxxviii, 7, 27, 60, 69 n., 70 n., 98, 133, 141-3, 147, 150, 153, 155-6, 180, 251, 254 w., 256, 265, 267, 269-73 n., 283-4, 287, 291, 293, 295-8, 305, 307-9, 312, 314-16, a26 Tripoli, 55, 59, 235-6 w., 256-8, 273 n., 285, 289-91, 303, 307-8 Tripolitan Expedition, 63 n. Tsushima, 265 Tunis, 46-8, 145, 216 ru, 307 w., 308 Turenne, 161 Turkestan, 315 Turkey, Introduction, xxv, 9 w., 11, 51-2,57, 136-7, 139, 149 w., 155,218, 235, 256, 267, 273 n., 287, 290-1 n., 293-6, 301 n., 304, 308. 311 n, Tyrol, 288, 289 Ubangui, 253 Ulster, 197 n. Uskub, 53, 259, 298 Valenciennes, 10 n. Valona, 177, 289, 304 Van Dyke, Dr. Henry, The Spiaii of America, 17, 23 Vancouver, 264 n., 333 Vandal, Albert, 30 n. Varna, 259 Vaugelas, 101 Velzers, 219 Venezuela, 59, 316, 323 n. Venice, 298 Venizelos, M., 140 n. Vercingetorix, 72 Versailles, Introduction, xiii, xxxviii, 28 and n., 123, 146 Vianden, 212 Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, 289, 304 Victoria, Queen of Englaad, 56, 67, 65, 280 British Columbia, 204 w. Vienna, xxv, 48, 305 Congress of. Introduction, xui, XV, xvi, xvii, xviii, xxi, xxv, 289 n. Vienna, Treaty of, 176, 212 VioUet, Paul, Les Communes Fran- daises du Moyen Age, 79 n. Virgil, 45 Vitry, Fort of, 32 Viviani, 183 n. Vladivostok, 333 Volga, River, 315 Vorarlberg, 288 Vosges, Introduction, xiv, 82, 159, 168, 175, 204, 219 Vrooman, Frank Buffington, 17 ««. Waldeck-Rousseau, 81, 93-5 n^ 114-15, 117 Wales, 281 Walfisch Bay, 274 Ward, Wilfred, 90 Washington, 15, 18 n., 120, 159, 255, 323 n., 324-5, 328 Waterloo, Introduction, xiii, xxxvii, 65 Webster- Ashbuxton Treaty (1842), 325 Weil, Commandant M. H., Corre- spondance inedite de Marie Caro- line, Seine de Naples et de Sicile avec le Marquis de Gallo, Intro- duction, xvi n. Autour de Congr^s de Vienne, Introduction, xvii n. Wellington, Introduction, xv West Indies (Danish), 331 West Point, 21 Westphalia, 229-30, 232 Whitman, Walt, 198 Wile, Frederic WilUam, 231 Wilhelmshaven, 214 n. jm. William I., Emperor of Germanj|B] 28 n^ 301 ^^ William II., Ex-Kaiser, Introduction, XV, 26, 47-51, 70-1, 151 n., 180, 224, 228-9, 249, 265-6, 271 w., 290, 305, 307 Wilson, Woodrow, xii, xiii, 322 n., 323 TO., 330 TO. The State, 99, 124 to., 130 to. Woolwich Arsenal, 247 to. Yamamoto, Mr., 313 Yellow Sea, 314 Yildiz Kiosque, 134 Yucatan, 323 w. Zanzibar, 226, 227 Zislin, 169 Zola, Emile, 54 to., 100 I BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTKKS, GUILDFORD, KNGLAND ^ t ■ RETURN TO: CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 198 Main Stacks LOAN PERIOD 1 Home Use ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS. Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date Books may be renewed by calling 642-3405. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW. FEB 1 9 2002 FORM NO. DD6 50M 6-00 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Berkeley, California 94720-6000