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 HE True and 
 IE False Pacifism 
 
 MSdMRLF 
 
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 $B 74q ^^^ 
 
 BY 
 
 lOUNT GOBLET D'ALVIELLA 
 
 Minister of State, 
 UcC" President of the Belgian Senate^ 
 professor of the University of Brussels 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 
 1, ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON. 
 
 1917. 
 
 PRICE SIXPENCE 
 
GIFT OF 
 
THE TRUE AND 
 THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
THE TRUE AND 
 THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 BY 
 
 COUNT GOBLET D'ALVIELLA 
 
 Minister of State^ 
 Vice-President of the Belgian Senate^ 
 Professor of the University of Brussels 
 
 \ 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD., 
 
 I, ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON. 
 
 1917 
 
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 J^'nnted in Great Britain by The Menpes Printing &- Engraving Co. Ltd 
 Craven House, Kmgsway. London, W.C~2. 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 THE PACIFISTS OF THE OLD WORLD 
 
 AND OF THE NEW 
 
 36382^ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TOWARDS the end of the Second 
 Empire, in Western Europe and par- 
 ticularly in France, a flood of generous 
 ideas was surging through the hearts of 
 men. Everywhere the new generation was 
 captured by the wish not only to introduce 
 into national institutions ''the necessary 
 liberties" (as they were called) which the 
 Declaration of the rights of man and of the 
 citizen had sanctified, but also to realise, 
 in international affairs, the dreams of 
 universal brotherhood and disarmament. 
 In 1869 the Ligue Internationale de la Paix, 
 founded in Paris two years earlier, had 
 resolved to award a prize of some value for 
 the best essay on — or, rather, against — the 
 crime of war, and, after having settled 
 the terms of this competition, had nomi- 
 nated a jury of three men for whom all 
 pacifists entertained the highest esteem. 
 These men were Frederic Passy, Edouard 
 Laboulaye, and Augustin Renouard. 
 
 vii 
 
vni PREFACE 
 
 A youug man, a student of law at the 
 University of Brussels, at once, with the 
 audacity of his age, became a competitor. 
 The jury, having received some sixty 
 essays — many of them rather considerable 
 affairs — was still far from the end of its 
 labours, when from a clear sky there fell 
 the thunderbolt of the war of 1870, followed 
 by the insurrection of the Commune. The 
 student of Brussels had almost dismissed 
 the thought of his manuscript from his 
 mind, when, in the spring of 1872, he 
 learnt that the jury, having faithfully 
 resumed its work, had awarded the prize 
 between three competitors, and that he 
 was one of those successful persons. The 
 members of the jury invited him, more- 
 over, to publish his work, the tone of which 
 its title, "Disarm or Perish," sufficiently 
 suggests. In it the author unreservedly 
 recommended disarmament, not neces- 
 sarily by the nations acting together and 
 in agreement, but through the birth of a 
 spontaneous, instant, and unrecompensed 
 movement among all those peoples 
 longing to rid themselves of that rivalry in 
 military preparedness which — already at 
 that time — appeared to be urging Europe, 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 without hope of escape, towards a speedy 
 economic and moral bankruptcy. 
 
 A very natural scruple made him hesir 
 tate to agree to this publication. By the 
 events of the two preceding years he had 
 been led to think very differently about 
 the expediency and even the feasibility of 
 the solution which he had recommended in 
 his essay. He found himself faced by the 
 dilemma, either, by altering his original 
 text, to act improperly towards the jury or 
 to be untrue to himself in publishing a 
 work to the conclusions of which he could 
 no longer subscribe. He caused it therefore 
 to be printed as it stood and under its 
 original title ; but added, with the per- 
 mission of the jury, an appendix in which 
 he frankly acknowledged the change which 
 the teaching of events had wrought in his 
 opinions. He admitted that he had 
 reckoned too confidently upon the imme- 
 diate appearance of a general movement in 
 favour of universal disarmament. But con- 
 sidering that there was no reason to 
 despair of the future, he added that "the 
 sole result of this disillusionment should be 
 to clothe henceforward with a greater 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 importance the study of practical methods 
 and even the search for remedies admittedly 
 incomplete, which may serve at least to 
 import into our international relationships 
 reforms which are necessary, if our modem 
 civilisation is to be saved from a long 
 period of decay and European society from 
 the ruin which directly threatens it." 
 
 Admitting, then, the impossibility of 
 bringing this to pass solely through the 
 advance of public opinion, he demanded, 
 as the one and final remedy, the introduc- 
 tion into international relationships of 
 those institutions upon which the harmony 
 of every society that is organised upon a 
 basis of law depends. ''How to put an end 
 to war,*' he wrote, ''is only the negative 
 side of the problem. To make the inter- 
 course of nations subject to the rule of 
 law, this is the essential object that we 
 must set before ourselves.'' *To-day the 
 writer has grown white in the service of 
 this cause ; but he holds to this conclusion 
 more strongly than ever ; and it is this 
 that has given him courage to discuss the 
 question here, after forty-five years, in the 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 light of the tragic occurrences which the 
 present hours is witnessing. 
 
 The moment may seem ill-chosen for 
 speaking of Pacifism. But it is necessary 
 to distinguish between those dreams or 
 projects which shelter themselves behind 
 this new word and those hopes which must 
 end by triumphing, if the progress of 
 human society is not a delusion. Mean- 
 while, I will try to show that the place of 
 the true pacifist is among those who are 
 resolved to continue the war up to the 
 decisive victory of the allied nations, in 
 order to maintain against the assaults of 
 Pan-Germanism the cause of the right and 
 of European liberty. 
 
 Every war has for its object not war 
 in itself — not even victory — but peace. 
 
 From the very beginning of hostilities it 
 has been clear that the drama in which the 
 destinies of Europe are to-day at stake is 
 susceptible alone of one of three solutions — 
 a German peace, an indecisive peace, a 
 lasting peace. 
 
 The first of these does not merit the 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 trouble of examination. The Germans 
 themselves have, as a matter of fact, 
 ceased to believe in it, as is shown by the 
 proposals of the Kaiser. If we are still 
 forced to think about it, it is that we mav 
 not lose sight of the dangers with which 
 such a peace must have threatened the 
 world or of the guarantees which we must 
 secure, if our future is to be free from these 
 dangers. 
 
 The second still menaces our immediate 
 future, in spite of the failure of those over- 
 tures to which I have referred. It would 
 be simply to restore the status quo ante 
 helium, and to annul the contest without 
 annexation or indemnity for either side, 
 according to the cherished formula of 
 certain people whose foresight is superficial 
 or whose sympathies are secretly pro- 
 German. With all my force I entreat the 
 real pacifists, of every land and of every 
 school, resolutely to dismiss this idea from 
 their minds, and definitely to exclude , it 
 from among the possibilities of our future. 
 
 The third, which shines before our eyes, 
 at the end of the struggle, as the reward of 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 our persistence and the warrant for our 
 sacrifices, is also the only peace which will 
 enable us to heal our wounds, to ensure the 
 triumph of right and perhaps to direct the 
 nations towards a new and higher stage of 
 development. 
 
 It is, of course, understood that the 
 opinions which I publish here are entirely 
 personal, and that for them the responsi- 
 bility is wholly my own. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. Who is Responsible for the Present War 
 
 AND What is at Stake? i 
 
 II. The Birth of Pan-Germanism i6 
 
 III. The Progress and Aims of German Militarism 27 
 
 IV. The Movement towards International 
 Reform 
 
 V. Some Illusions entertained by Germany 
 
 VI. Pacifism and an Indecisive Peace ... 
 
 VII. A Durable Peace 
 
 VII I. A Definitive Peace 
 
 35 
 50 
 60 
 
 71 
 78 
 
 XV 
 
THE TRUE AND 
 THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 I. 
 
 Who is Responsible for the Present War 
 AND What is at Stake ? 
 
 WHEN, about the end of the nineteenth 
 century, one of the last kings of Dahomey 
 died, the sacrifice of several thousand 
 negroes, in order to provide him with an escort 
 into the other world, evoked a cry of horror and 
 indignation from the whole of civilised society. 
 The murder of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria 
 and his wife has been made the pretext for bloody 
 sacrifices of a very different kind. Millions of men 
 have died — a holocaust to the demon of war — and 
 we are far from beholding the end of this dismal 
 slaughter. The victims who have fallen in battle, 
 even if we add to their number that of the civilians 
 who have been massacred or shot by the Germans, 
 are no more than one part, immense though it be, 
 of the losses which have been caused by the 
 revolver shots of Serajevo. We must also reckon 
 the destruction that the pillage and burning of 
 towns has wrought, the devastation of whole 
 countrysides, the torpedoing of ships, the closing 
 of factories, the interruption of business, and the 
 war expenses of every nature. At the present 
 moment there are in Europe more than twenty 
 million of men who, in order that they may kill 
 one another, must be equipped, carried here and 
 
2 tM fRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 there, and fed ; other millions of workers, more or 
 less under military discipline, whose only task is 
 to furnish the first with the means of mutual 
 destruction, though formerly these workmen 
 were producing things, useful to society, which 
 were capable of continually accelerating 
 humanity's welfare. Science, forgetting her 
 true mission, has now no object but to 
 multiply and perfect the agencies of massacre 
 and destruction. The odious practices of 
 general deportation and slavery have been 
 restored to honour by one group of belligerents. 
 What shall we say of all the mental sufferings, of 
 the sorrow that the dispersal of families has 
 occasioned, of the terror that never ends while 
 those we love are in danger, of the emptiness that 
 every irreparable loss must leave behind it ? Not 
 even the neutral nations are secure from the 
 effects of this upheaval, that is shaking the world, 
 and we cannot, without 'alarm, ask ourselves what 
 will remain for the victors, as well as for the 
 vanquished, and even for some of the spectators 
 of this tragedy,if it is only capable of being ended by 
 the mutual exhaustion of combatants whom their 
 madness shall have urged to the point of suicide. 
 Confronted by such an accumulation of dis- 
 asters, for which not the blind forces of nature 
 — vast epidemics or earthquakes — but the weak- 
 nesses and wickednesses of mankind are respon- 
 sible, what may these do, who have not lost all 
 feelings of humanity, but demand, cost what it 
 may, the instant extinction of a conflagration 
 which recalls the most horrifying visions of the 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 3 
 
 Apocalypse ? Is not the time at hand for hstening 
 to those counsels which, whether they be dis- 
 interested or no, have implored the belligerents, 
 in the name both of Christian brotherhood and a 
 threatened civilisation, to lay down their arms 
 and offer their hands to one another, even on a 
 half-hearted compromise between the unjustifiable 
 ambitions of the one party and the legitimate 
 complaints of its adversaries ? 
 
 In reply to these suggestions, which, skilfully 
 exploited in certain quarters, might become the 
 causes of an undesirable weakness, it is right to 
 observe that there are wars which can be defended 
 and sacrifices which may not be evaded ; in other 
 words, that there are times when the duty to take 
 up arms may not rightfully be neglected. So long 
 as men are not angels, and they are still a long 
 way from that — though, whatever we may say, 
 they are a little nearer to it than were their 
 ancestors in the remote periods of antiquity — the 
 employment of force will continue to be indis- 
 pensable if the rule of law is to be guaranteed. 
 This axiom is justified by civil society, where the 
 police and even the Army will always be required 
 if the Bonnots and Garniers are to be dealt with 
 successfully ; it is no less a foundation-stone of 
 international society, which also has its anarchists 
 and its bravoes. No doubt diplomatists and 
 journalists understand the art of juggling with 
 facts so well that it is not always easy to perceive 
 where the true aggressor is to be found ; and, 
 again, how often it happens that the blame must 
 be borne by more than one party ! History alone, 
 
4 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 mu 
 judging from a distance, is able to distinguish the 
 intention under the act, the aim under the excuse ; 
 she cannot, moreover, but be impartial. 
 
 But in the present war no mistake is possible, 
 since the aggressors have here revealed themselves 
 with a frankness which can only be called cynicism, 
 unless we regard it as the result of a positive 
 moral infection. 
 
 Anyone must be convinced who will read, 
 without prejudice, those collections of documents, 
 with their variously coloured covers, in which the 
 belligerents have made public their negotiations 
 previous to the outbreak of war.* 
 
 Here it is made absolutely clear that the war 
 was willed and predetermined by the Central 
 Empires, and that in this drama Austria was 
 simply an instrument of German policy ; while 
 England, France, and Russia spared neither their 
 advice, nor their proposals, nor their labour, in 
 order to secure a peaceful solution for the Austro- 
 Serbian quarrel. I will only remind my readers 
 that Serbia, at the earnest request of the Powers 
 of the Triple Entente, and to the general relief of 
 Europe, had instantly accepted, as early as the 
 
 * Nearly all the colours of the rainbow have been called 
 into service. There are the Blue Books of England and 
 Serbia, the Yellow Book of France, the Grey Book of Belgium, 
 the Orange Books of Russia and Holland, the Green Book of 
 Italy, the White Book of Germany, the Red Book of Austria- 
 Hungary. Several digests of these negotiations have been 
 published, among which we can particularly recommend : — 
 P. Saintyves, Les responsahilith de VAllemagne dans la 
 guerre de 1914. i vol. Paris : Nourry, 1915. — Waxweiler, 
 La Belgique neutre et loyale. Paris : Payot, 1915. — E. Denis 
 La Guerre, Causes immediates et lointaines. Paris : Delagrave 
 1915- 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 5 
 
 25th of July, eight of the ten conditions of the 
 Austrian ultimatum of the 23rd of July, 1914, 
 reserving her consent to two only, as being more 
 humiliating than her independence and dignity 
 could tolerate ; and even with regard to these 
 she offered to submit herself to the arbitration 
 and judgment of The Hague Tribunal. For sole 
 response Austria severed diplomatic relations with 
 her neighbour, and commenced hostilities against 
 her. Russia, who could not look on unmoved at 
 the destruction of a small Slav kingdom, asked 
 only that Austria should suspend hostilities, and 
 should recognise that her conflict with Serbia 
 must threaten the peace of Europe. 
 
 The British Government, upon its side, between 
 the 23rd of July and the 3rd of August gave 
 instructions to its Ministers at Vienna, Berlin, 
 Petrograd, Belgrade, Rome, Paris, to offer the 
 following solutions of the difficulty : — (i) A con- 
 ference of the four great Powers not directly 
 concerned (that is to say, Germany, Italy, France, 
 and England) ; (2) the mediation of England and 
 Italy ; (3) the opening of direct negotiations 
 between Austria and Russia ; lastly (4), even 
 when the Austrian guns were already bombarding 
 Belgrade, any plan which Germany might suggest 
 for procuring a suspension of hostilities. These 
 offers met with nothing but a refusal or silence 
 from Austria, while from Germany only evasive 
 replies were obtained. 
 
 But now, on the 29th of July (the very day 
 when the bombardment of Belgrade was begun), 
 the Vienna Cabinet, seized perhaps by hesitation 
 
6 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 upon the edge of the abyss — unless this was yet 
 another diplomatic comedy arranged with Berlin 
 — announced that it was ready to accept what it 
 had up till then rejected — namely, to enter into 
 negotiations with Russia upon the subject of the 
 Serbian question. It declared that its refusal was 
 the result of a misunderstanding, and authorised 
 its ambassador, Count Szapary, ''to discuss what 
 arrangements would be consistent with that 
 dignity and that prestige which the two empires 
 are equally bound to safeguard." At the same 
 time, it gave London to understand that its 
 Government had no intention of attacking the 
 sovereign rights of Serbia nor of seeking any 
 extension of territory. 
 
 This was peace. 
 
 At once Germany, throwing aside the mask, and 
 forcing the crisis, sent to Petrograd, on the evening 
 of the 31st of July, an ultimatum which called upon 
 the Russian Government to stop, within twenty- 
 four hours, the partial mobilisation which it had 
 begun in reply to the Austrian mobilisation. 
 
 And it was war. 
 
 Nor is it without importance to recall that, two 
 days earlier, the Tsar had sent to William II a 
 personal telegram in which, after having once 
 more proposed that the quarrel between Austria 
 and Serbia should be referred to The Hague 
 Tribunal, he added : "I have confidence in your 
 discretion and your friendship.'' The reply was 
 the ultimatum, followed by the declaration of 
 war, which Germany made against Russia on the 
 ist of August. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 7 
 
 At the same time, Germany called upon the 
 French Government to declare what would be its 
 attitude in case of a rupture between Russia and 
 Germany. France having replied that she must 
 be guided by her own interests, Germany, on the 
 3rd of August, sent her also a declaration of war. 
 
 On the other hand, the Cabinet at Berlin, 
 reckoning on the unwillingness of England to 
 take part in a continental war, had, on the 
 29th of July, caused the Chancellor to propose 
 to Sir E. Goschen, the EngHsh Ambassador, 
 that if Great Britain would agree to remain 
 neutral, Germany would promise to attempt no 
 territorial extension in Europe to the detriment of 
 France and would respect, on her part, the 
 neutrality of Holland. Asked if these promises 
 applied to the French colonies, the Chancellor 
 replied that he was ''unable to give a similar 
 undertaking in that respect ; it depended upon 
 the action of France what operations Germany 
 might be forced to enter upon in Belgium" ; 
 adding that ''after the war the integrity of 
 Belgium would be re-established if she had not 
 sided against Germany. *' This was nothing less 
 than to proclaim the intention of laying hands 
 upon the French colonies and of eventually 
 violating the neutrality of Belgium. Sir Edward 
 Grey replied that to accept that bargain would be 
 a disgrace ''from which the good name of his 
 country would never recover.'' He added, never- 
 theless, these words, which, since they clearly 
 indicate what was in his mind, deserve to be 
 remembered: "If the peace of Europe can be 
 
8 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 preserved and the present crisis safely passed, my 
 own endeavour will be to promote some arrange- 
 ment to which Germany could be a party, by 
 which could be assured that no aggressive or 
 hostile policy would be pursued against her or 
 her allies either by France, Russia, and ourselves, 
 jointly or separately/' 
 
 As has been said by the German author of 
 J' Accuse — written at the beginning of the war, 
 and one of the most tremendous indictments 
 issued against the policy of Germany — if the 
 Germans had consented to enter upon this path, 
 or even to negotiate upon this basis, a treaty 
 might have resulted which would have "assured 
 a condition of peace in Europe, would have 
 brought about an understanding between the 
 Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, and, in 
 place of the system of this balance of power, 
 would have established a general league of peace. 
 In one word, the prospect would have been opened 
 of a new and better Europe, had Germany but 
 accepted the hand which England stretched out 
 to her."* 
 
 But for this it was necessary that Germany 
 should not have been Germany. Herr Bethmann- 
 Hollweg abstained even from replying. 
 
 England, however, desiring at least to keep the 
 scope of the war within bounds, renewed the 
 attempt which she had successfully made in 1870, 
 when at the same time she requested both the 
 belligerents to undertake to respect the neutrality 
 of Belgium. This time France again, on the 
 
 * J' Accuse, by a German, 1915, p. 124. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM g 
 
 31st of July, answered affirmatively without 
 any equivocation or reservation. As for 
 Germany, who, in spite of her promises, 
 was at this very moment preparing to 
 invade the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, 
 she announced, on the ist of August, that she 
 could not give any reply, since this would be to 
 expose her plan of campaign to the French 
 Government ; and on the following day she sent 
 her shameful demand to Brussels. It is useless to 
 recall how the King and the Government of 
 Belgium, supported by the unanimous opinion of 
 both Parliament and public, gave to this viola- 
 tion of a solemn undertaking the reception which 
 it deserved, fully aware though they were of the 
 danger that lies in resistance to superior force. 
 Their reply, prepared during the night of the 
 2nd of August, was sent to Berlin on the 3rd. In 
 it they pointed out that the treaty of 1839, con- 
 firmed by the treaties of 1870, ensured the inde- 
 pendence and neutrality of Belgium under the 
 guarantees of the Great Powers, and particularly 
 of the Prussian Government. They declared that 
 Belgium had always been faithful to her inter- 
 national obligations, and that she had spared no 
 pains to preserve her neutrality. "The attack 
 upon her independence, with which the German 
 Government threatens her," it was added, "would 
 constitute a flagrant violation of international 
 law. No strategic interest justifies such a viola- 
 tion. The Belgian Government, should it accept 
 the proposals which have been made to it, 
 would sacrifice the honour of its country and 
 
10 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 would, at the same time, betray the trust which is 
 reposed in it by Europe/' 
 
 However, as early as the 3rd of August, France 
 had offered the support of her forces to Belgium. 
 But they had just learned at Brussels that 
 England had attempted to open a last negotiation 
 with Germany, to prevent her from acting upon 
 her ultimatum. It was only when, on the 4th of 
 August, the Belgian Government received the 
 news of the entry of the German troops into 
 Belgian territory that it issued an appeal to the 
 Powers who had guaranteed the neutrality of 
 Belgium, with the object of obtaining military 
 assistance from them. Germany had replied to 
 the English Cabinet that it was too late, and 
 .that the German forces had already entered 
 Belgium. And von Jagow, in one of his last 
 conversations with Sir E. Goschen, did not 
 hesitate to declare that this violation of Belgian 
 neutrality had been forced upon the Germans by 
 the necessity of taking the more direct and con- 
 venient road to France, in order to hasten the 
 operations and to strike a decisive blow before 
 Russia should be able to put her troops into the 
 field. It was during a conversation with the 
 Chancellor, later in the same day, that the 
 cynical words were spoken: "What! You are 
 going to fight for a scrap of paper ! '' And the 
 same day, also, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, in 
 the well-known speech to the Reichstag, in which 
 he admitted that the invasion of Belgium was a 
 violation of the principles of international law, 
 declared, with a frankness which he has since 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM ii 
 
 regretted: '* France was able to wait. We were 
 not. A French attack upon our flank in the region 
 of the Lower Rhine might have proved fatal. It 
 is for this reason that we have been forced to 
 ignore the just protestations of the Governments 
 of Luxemburg and Belgium." No one, then, has 
 been astonished that, in these circumstances, the 
 Powers of the Entente have on many occasions 
 declared that they will never conclude the war 
 until they shall first have ensured the restoration 
 and indemnification of Belgium.* 
 
 Is it necessary to add that the facts of 
 the case provide a wholly sufficient reply to all 
 the quibbles of Germany ? She had long been 
 ready ; not one of her adversaries was so ; they 
 were conscious of it, and it is not thus that 
 one embarks upon an aggression. France, whom, 
 for lack of better excuse, Germany has accused of 
 having taken the first step, was so anxious to 
 avoid the conflict that, even after the declaration 
 of war, she withheld her troops at a distance of 
 ten kilometres from German territory, in order 
 fhat thus she might prevent the occurrence of 
 these frontier incidents by which the interests of 
 Germany alone could be served. Moreover, the 
 French mobilisation was only wholly completed at 
 the end of August, and that of Russia at the end of 
 September. As for England, her first contingents 
 only landed on the Continent when the German 
 
 * See particularly the text of the declaration made collec- 
 tively to the Belgian Government at Sainte-Adresse, on the 
 14th of February, 1916, by the Ministers of France, Great 
 Britain, and Russia. 
 
12 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 invasion had already reached the heart of 
 Belgium ; at the opening of hostilities she had no 
 more forces to put in the field than the contingent 
 which Germany scornfully described as "the con- 
 temptible little Army of General French." The 
 German Government has formally admitted this, 
 when it declared so frankly, as I have recalled 
 above, its plan to crush France, surprised by the 
 rapidity of the invasion, in order thereafter to 
 swing round eastwards and invade Russia, in her 
 turn, before she should find time to collect her 
 strength. 
 
 It is to break down an open door to insist 
 further upon this question of responsibility, 
 and, in face of her repeated declarations that 
 force is above right and that necessity justifies all 
 crimes, it would be futile to argue any longer 
 upon this subject with the apologists of Germany. 
 If she persists in her attempts to throw upon her 
 adversaries the blame for having let loose the 
 dogs of war — as only lately she tried to do in her 
 Note of thei2th of December, 1916 — this is simply 
 the result of one of these forms of hypocrisy 
 which, according to Vauvenargues, are a compli- 
 ment paid to virtue by vice, but which can have 
 any effect only, at the outside, upon certain 
 neutral countries who wish to remain deaf and 
 blind. The cause is heard, and the judgment 
 pronounced by the opinion of the world. 
 
 Perhaps, however, it is not enough thus to fix 
 the responsibility for the war if we are to over- 
 come everywhere the faint-heartedness of those 
 who, from lassitude, impatience, pity, or even 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 13 
 
 selfishness, ma\' be prepared to forget what has 
 happened and to content themselves with a draw. 
 It must never be forgotten how vitally the general 
 interest of civilisation demands that this hideous 
 drama of massacre and ruin, if we mean that it 
 shall never recommence, should be ended 
 radically, rationally, and equitably. To this end 
 it is impossible too strongly to insist upon the 
 character and scope of that which is at stake. 
 
 To-day it is not, as in most of the wars of the 
 past, a simple question of seizing or holding 
 territory, of obtaining outlets for commerce or 
 thrusting competitors aside, of satisfying a stifling 
 national aspiration ; but rather of deciding if one 
 Power shall be able to reaHse, for its own advan- 
 tage, the dream of universal dominion, which has 
 so often been cherished, so often disappointed. 
 One may even say more : that what we have 
 here to do with is a new ideal of life and 
 humanity which Germany presumes to impose 
 upon the world by. force. The struggle is between 
 civilisation and culture, to give to the latter word 
 the sense with which the Germans have endowed 
 it. Civilisation is a synthesis of ideas, institutions, 
 and arts which unite to secure to the individual 
 the greatest possible measure of liberty, enlight- 
 enment, happiness, and morality. Kultur may 
 be defined as the scientific organisation of all the 
 national resources for the purpose of assuring the 
 greatness of the State. Civilisation is cosmo- 
 politan and peaceful, though it is not inconsistent 
 with the employment of force where justice 
 demands it. Kultur is national and narrow ; it 
 
14 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 rests upon force and imposes itself by war. The 
 first is the common heritage of mankind, and all 
 men, in so far as they are able, may freely enjoy 
 it. The second varies with each race and each 
 country, and its most powerful exponents claim 
 the right to absorb the others, in obedience to the 
 example which Nature offers us in the struggle 
 for life. 
 
 This contrast has been perceived by the 
 Germans themselves. 'Xivilisation," writes 
 Professor Lasson, in a pamphlet entitled Das 
 Kultur Ideal und der Krieg, ''makes for harmony. 
 But civilisation is not Kultur. Among different 
 kinds of Kultur there can only be conflict and 
 hate. ... To ask of them a peaceful develop- 
 ment is to ask the impossible, to reverse the order 
 of Nature, to set up a false idol in the place of 
 true morality." Another writer of the same school, 
 Thomas Mann, who defines Kultur as ''a spiritual 
 organisation of the world," after asserting that it 
 outstrips morality, reason, and science, adds that 
 ''it will destroy civilisation." This is not simply a 
 question of words. Those who defend civilisation 
 fight for law, which they proclaim, the superior of 
 force. The avowed partisans of Kultur fight for 
 their law, which they base upon their force. The 
 Allies have gone to war for the freedom of Europe, 
 for the rights of nations, great and small alike, to 
 work out their own destinies and to sun them- 
 selves in the rays of their common civilisation. 
 Germany fights for the enslavement or the 
 annihilation of all who place themselves in the 
 path of her Kultur, The Allies are doing battle for 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 15 
 
 peace — a lasting peace — founded upon respect for 
 treaties and the full development of international 
 law. Germany is at war for war, which she would 
 make the law of humanity and the mainspring 
 of progress. "You must love peace as the means 
 of war, and the short peace better than the long." 
 vSo speaks Zarathustra — or, rather, Nietzsche. 
 
 We see, then, that we have here two schools of 
 thought which are absolutely contradictory. It is 
 this struggle of two ideals which, far more than 
 the number of the combatants or the appearance 
 of new methods of warfare, gives to the present 
 war upon either side a special significance, an 
 exceptional character, a kind of epic splendour, 
 and even a quality of mysticism such as Europe 
 has not witnessed since the time of the Crusades 
 or perhaps the revolutionary wars of France, 
 when each combatant understood that he risked 
 his life for an object that was above individual 
 interests and even immediate national considera- 
 tions. 
 
 It is thus that we may explain the instant 
 disappearance, in each belligerent country, of 
 every sort of political, religious, and social dissen- 
 sion, as well as the stoical courage with which, 
 everywhere, the heaviest sacrifices and the most 
 grievous losses have been met. But at the same 
 time we thus perceive why any premature peace 
 is impossible, and why even a suggestion of 
 immediate peace sounds, if it comes from outside, 
 like an insult, and if from within, like a treachery. 
 
II. 
 
 The Birth of Pan-Germanism 
 
 WITH the clearer understanding which is 
 ours to-day of the tendencies of modern 
 Germany and of the methods which her 
 diplomacy pursued during the years precedent to 
 the war, we are forced to conclude not only that 
 the war was premeditated, but also that it was 
 inevitable. The international policy of the German 
 Empire could have no other result ; the Sarajevo 
 murders were no more than a pretext, the excuse 
 more and more impatiently awaited. Whatever 
 may have been said about it, and in spite of the 
 disastrous recurrence of primitive tendencies, 
 the German race, taken as a whole, was not a 
 century ago what it is to-day.' What has been able 
 to transform a people who were honest, peaceable, 
 even dreamy, into a nation of prey, the perfect 
 type of a military society ? We have looked for 
 the secret of this evolution in the influence of that 
 Prussian militarism, which has become the means 
 and the symbol of national unity ; in the outgrowth 
 of the idea of the State ; in the habit of passive 
 discipline ; in material greed, excited by the 
 outburst of prosperity, both industrial and com- 
 mercial, which followed upon the victory of 1870. 
 Each of these factors has had its share in the 
 result. But the primary cause is intellectual and 
 moral. Writers of the first ability, and of differing 
 schools of opinion — Messieurs Bergson, Boutroux, 
 
 16 
 
THE TRUE AXD THE FALSE PACIFISM 17 
 
 de Wulf, Lasserre, to mention no more — have 
 shown, in many carefully considered essays, how 
 the conception which Germany has formed of her 
 necessary role in the world, as well as the choice of 
 the means which she has put into operation in 
 order to realise it, are both bound up with the 
 development of her philosophy from Fichte to 
 Nietzsche by way of Hegel. 
 
 Through having identified the absolute with 
 the ego, the false disciples of Kant ended by 
 absorbing the ego in the absolute and, by logical 
 sequence, the individual in the State, considered 
 as the chief manifestation in this world of 
 divinity. The State has therefore all rights but 
 no duties, except to itself. It is required to 
 advance within itself the natural culture and to 
 spread it abroad indefinitely, by peaceful methods 
 if possible, by force if necessary ; everything in 
 the life of its citizens must be subordinated to 
 this object. Now, the German Kultur is superior 
 to all other forms ; it is the culture par excellence ; 
 hence its indisputable title to the conquest of the 
 earth. 
 
 No doubt the school of German metaphysics 
 lost a great deal of ground, during the last 
 century, before the advance of experimental 
 science. But the genius of Germany has 
 once again shown with what cleverness it can 
 assimilate everything, in the various develop- 
 ments of philosophy and of exact science, that 
 is capable of strengthening its pretensions to the 
 hegemony of the world. 
 
 From Darwinism it has taken the theory of 
 
i8 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 "the survival of the fittest," accepting as its 
 exclusive test of fitness the employment of 
 material force. From the theory of evolution 
 — which its chief exponent, Herbert Spencer, has 
 carried to the farthest point of political and 
 social individualism — it has borrowed the fatal 
 character of those natural laws which aim at 
 making of human society an organism more and 
 more perfectly organised. From agnosticism and 
 materialism it has retained the denial of duty, 
 with the exception of that respect which is to be 
 paid to such commands as the State has ordained 
 for its own preservation. Lastly, from Nietzsche it 
 has acquired the doctrine that the purpose of life 
 is not happiness, not morality, not even tran- 
 quillity, but dominance secured by conflict and 
 maintained b}^ force. 
 
 Thus has come into being the creed of Pan- 
 Germanism, which has soon taken a practical turn 
 by throwing itself into the conquest of the 
 world along the threefold road of commercial 
 penetration, diplomatic intrigue, and military 
 expansion. 
 
 Philology, ethnography, and history have each 
 contributed its stone to the edifice thus prepared, 
 the first two by propounding the theory that, in 
 the purity of its language and the structure of its 
 skull, the German people declares itself the fore- 
 most of human races ; the third, by founding 
 upon the vindication of force a whole philosophy 
 of the historical development of nations. Treit- 
 schke, who was a professor of history, and exer- 
 cised a vast influence throughout Germany, 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 19 
 
 teaches that war is the source of all the virile 
 virtues ; that war alone is the arbiter of legiti- 
 macy ; and that the weak nations must inevitably 
 be absorbed by those which are stronger than 
 themselves. This theory, which lays stress upon 
 the rapid development of Germany, and particu- 
 larly of the Prussian Monarchy, had already been 
 enunciated by Lasson, who, in 1868, maintained, 
 in the pamphlet which I have cited above, that 
 respect for treaties is not a question of right, but 
 of interest. "The weak," he adds, ''is, in spite of 
 treaties, the prey of the strongest from the 
 moment when the latter wills it and has the 
 necessary power.'* We see whose authority was 
 behind Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg when in the 
 Reichstag, on the 4th of August, 1914, he excused 
 himself, by the axiom "necessity makes law^" for 
 that which he admitted was a violation of inter- 
 national law. Lasson, who in his professional 
 capacity sets himself above political events, con- 
 cludes more frankly by this most Hegelian reflec- 
 tion : "This state of things may even be called 
 moral, since it is rational.'* 
 
 It is a matter of course that in all these authors — 
 historians as well as philosophers — modern Ger- 
 many is privileged to represent the perfection of 
 culture, Even Fichte announced that the other 
 peoples are not nations ; that they are to Ger- 
 many what the non-ego is to the ego. It would 
 be wrong to suppose that when they dream of 
 extending their dominion over the entire globe 
 the Germans are acting in obedience to purely 
 selfish motives. It is with the utmost good faith 
 
20 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 that they imagine themselves to have received a 
 mission from the hands of Providence. They 
 consider themselves to be a chosen people, 
 exactly as did the Israelites of former times, 
 peculiarly destined for the sacred work of 
 regenerating the world by forcing upon it their 
 culture. They have discovered no smallest 
 difficulty in identifying themselves with the 
 superman of Nietzsche. "We are not only men," 
 writes Schonerer, '' we are more than that, since 
 we are Germans." And so no one in Germany 
 thinks fit to smile when in his speech at Bremen, 
 on the 23rd of March, 1905, William II says to 
 his enthusiastic auditors : ' ' W^e are the salt of the 
 earth. God has called us to regenerate the world. 
 We are the apostles of progress."* 
 
 After what has been said, we can understand 
 that every attempt to thwart the demands of 
 German culture and, above all, to resist them by 
 armed force becomes an impious act, an act of 
 
 * This is a form of Messianism which, with more or less 
 success, has made its appearance periodically in the history 
 of many races for thousands of yea.TS. We may add that this 
 prevision of "supermen," being in advance of the humanity 
 of their time, has nothing in it which rationally contradicts 
 the teachings of science ; for science enables us to witness, in 
 retrospect, a progressive evolution which there is no reason to 
 suppose is finished so far as the gradual developments of 
 matter, life, and spirit are concerned. The future will see, 
 no doubt, men as superior to the homo sapiens as he is already 
 to the earliest prehistoric flint -chippers. Nietzsche's mistake 
 has been to look for his future supermen in the wrong direc- 
 tion and to make of them, above everything, an incarnation 
 of brutal strength. We must not feel too much surprise 
 if the Germans have seen their own portrait in this creation 
 of a diseased fancy. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 21 
 
 revolt, which merits chastisement. The Germans, 
 indeed, attribute a punitive character to their 
 mihtary expeditions, as does every nation which 
 has imagined for itself a similar providential role. 
 A professor of the University of Berlin, Herr 
 Kohler, wrote in a recent pamphlet, Noth kennt 
 kein Gehoth (Necessity Knows no Law) : "Every 
 sin has its punishment on earth ; the sins which 
 States commit are chastised in this world. A 
 heavy responsibility weighs upon the Belgian 
 Government. We can only offer one excuse in 
 their defence : they did not know German}', the 
 great, the noble, the unique." Better still — and 
 here the fanaticism of Kultur enters the region of 
 the grotesque — in a volume where Major Victor 
 von Strantz gives his personal impressions of the 
 conquest of Belgium, Die Eroberung Belgiens 
 (1914), we may read this apostrophe to the Belgian 
 people : "And so you come, presumptuous little 
 nation, to stop us ; you to whom we have pro- 
 mised peace and protection if you raise no 
 obstacle to our mighty work ! And so you make 
 common cause with our enemies ! It is as if you 
 were to attack a priest who carries the Holy of 
 Holies. We are made sacred by the greatness of 
 our destiny." 
 
 In Germany, literature and art recognise hence- 
 forth as their highest aim not co-operation for the 
 advancement and adornment of civilisation, but 
 solely the increase of Germany's splendour. And 
 so we need not be surprised that, constructed by 
 a narrow-minded nationalism, the intellectual 
 progress of the country has been greatly retarded, 
 
22 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 to judge at least, if not from the number, then 
 from the quaHty of recent original productions. 
 In aesthetics the cult of the colossal has replaced 
 the attempt to attain beauty, and even in music 
 we see that Wagner has had no successor. I have 
 just considered the present state of philosophy 
 and history. In all these realms of art and science 
 Germany is reduced to living on her past. 
 
 In order to judge of the degree to which this 
 madness can attain, it is enough to re-read the 
 distressing manifesto in which ninety- three intel- 
 lectuals, announcing themselves, and not without 
 reason, as the cream of German science and art, 
 endeavoured in November, 19 14, to justify the 
 invasion of Belgium and the conduct of the 
 German troops in the invaded territory. We 
 stand amazed to find, below assertions so opposed 
 to the evidence of fact, the signatures of men 
 whom we had learned to admire and to follow, 
 for the breadth of their knowledge, the force of 
 their method, and' the honesty of their criticism. 
 If this is not the bankruptcy of German science 
 it is assuredly that of her exponents. 
 
 The Kaiser has even discovered how to enrol 
 the religions upon his General Staff. In the course 
 of one of his mystical political lucubrations, which 
 is dated in August, 1907, he exclaims : ''I believe 
 that to unite all our citizens, all our classes, there 
 is but one means, and that is religion ; not 
 religion understood in a narrow, ecclesiastical, 
 and dogmatic sense, but in a sense that is larger, 
 more practical, more human.'' The thought is 
 fine, but one does not need to dig in it very 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 23 
 
 deepl}^ in order to discover that if the imperial 
 expositor favours the union of the most diverse 
 cults, Mohammedanism amongst them, and if he 
 finds room for them all in his heart, it is only in so 
 far as they show themselves ready to support his 
 policy. One of his official preachers, the pastor 
 Stocker, discovered this one day, when he 
 endeavoured to press the claims of Christian 
 socialism beyond the limits assigned by his 
 master. In reality, William II loves to invoke 
 the name of God ; but the divinity who is here in 
 question is the "old German god,'' as he himself 
 has named him ; Gott become von Gott, as 
 Monsieur Cochin has wittily said ; a "Germanised 
 Moloch," according to the no less happy expres- 
 sion of Monsignor Chapon ; in fact, nothing more 
 than a symbolical personification of German 
 Kultur. 
 
 After having reopened the era of national 
 religions which we had believed closed for ever, 
 as far as our civilisation was concerned, since the 
 appearance of universal cults, the imperial policy 
 has laid hands upon all the faiths of the empire, 
 not even flinching from the unnatural attempt to 
 transform the Gospel into an ally and servant of 
 Caesarism. Much might be written about this 
 decline of religion, for which the apologists of 
 culture do not hesitate openly to congratulate 
 themselves. We have Dr. Max Lenz, who, in a 
 lecture given in Berlin on the loth of March, 1915, 
 proclaims that "God Himself has become nation- 
 alised." We find, before the war, the historian 
 Karl Lamprecht exclaiming: "Who, then, shall 
 
24 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 dare to deny now that there is a Germanic 
 Christian God, and that he manifests himself to 
 the other nations as a God both strong and 
 jealous " ? And there is a theologian, Herr Adolf 
 Weissmann, who in a pamphlet, entitled Der 
 Krieg und der Religion (War and Religion), main- 
 tains that to regard natural religions as inferior is 
 "an error the extent of which is shown by the 
 present war." 
 
 Protestantism is an essentially individualistic 
 religion (as we may discover for ourselves among 
 the Anglo-Saxon peoples), and, since Bossuet, 
 rightly or wrongly, this character has been one 
 of its weak points in the eyes of its adver- 
 saries. Yet, having remained the State religion 
 of the country in which it arose, it has 
 there quickly become a weapon of tyranny 
 for the hands of the ruler. We need not 
 therefore feel very much surprise at the official 
 sanction which it has given to Pan-Germanism. 
 At the very beginning of the war there 
 happened an event which in this connection 
 is characteristic. On the 4th of August, 1914, a 
 clergyman of Nimes, Monsieur C. E. Babut, had 
 forwarded to Herr Dryander, chief preacher to 
 the Court of Berlin, a proposal to arrange the 
 terms of a declaration, which should receive the 
 signatures of Christians in Germany, Austria, 
 Belgium, France, Russia, and Serbia, without 
 distinction of church or sect. They were to under- 
 take to use their whole influence to ensure that 
 ''the war should be carried on with as much 
 humanity as possible ; that the victor should not 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 25 
 
 abuse his strength ; that the persons and the 
 rights of the weak should be respected." 
 
 Pastor Dryander took his time to consider this 
 proposal. On the 15th of September — that is to 
 say, three weeks after the atrocities of Vise, 
 Aerschot, Louvain, Dinant, Andenne, etc. — he 
 formally [repulsed the advances of his fellow- 
 clergyman at Nimes. The reasons which he gives 
 deserve mention : "We refuse because it must 
 not henceforward appear, even to the smallest 
 degree, that, in our opinion, the people of Ger- 
 many stand in need of any warning or of any 
 effort whatever on our part, which shall cause 
 them to conduct the war in accordance with 
 Christian principles and in obedience to the 
 demands of compassion and humanity. It is for 
 our entire people, as for our General Staff, a matter 
 of course that the war is to be conducted between 
 soldiers alone, while the defenceless and the weak 
 are scrupulously to be spared, and the wounded 
 and sick are to be cared for without distinction." 
 And in his unconscious pharisaism he adds : 
 ''We are convinced — and we know what we are 
 saying — that this rule is that of the entire army, 
 and that upon our side the war is being conducted 
 with a self-control, a conscientiousness, and a 
 kindness (!) which are perhaps unexampled in the 
 history of the world."* 
 
 Nor have the Kaiser's Catholics lingered in the 
 rear. They have uttered no word of censure when 
 
 * This correspondence is reproduced in an interesting 
 pamphlet by Monsieur Alfred Loisy. War and Religion. Paris : 
 Nourry, 191 5 
 
26 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 Monsignor Mercier courageously laid before them 
 an account of the cruelties which had been com- 
 mitted against the clergy of Belgium and their 
 flock ; nor did they make any more protest 
 against the destruction of Louvain University 
 and the Cathedral of Rheims. There has been 
 neither exaction nor atrocity over which the 
 German Centre, accustomed as they are to every 
 kind of political manoeuvre, have not spread the 
 self-sa-tisfied mantle of their loyalty to their 
 empire ; and when the Deputy of Luxemburg, 
 Priim, who had formerly been among their most 
 enthusiastic supporters, accused them of this^ 
 they found no answer for him but an audacious 
 action for libel. 
 
III. 
 
 The Progress and Aims of German 
 \ Militarism 
 
 THE force of the movement which thus 
 carried the pubhc opinion of Germany along 
 with it, made easy the work of her mihtary 
 writers, who proceeded energetically to draw their 
 practical conclusions. In this connection the book 
 of General Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, 
 which was written in 191 1, deserves because of 
 its insight into future events to be placed side by 
 side with a work of a very different character 
 which was published in London, in 191 2, by 
 Professor Sarolea, The Anglo-German Problem. It 
 is to be observed that the second writer was a 
 civilian, who had no guidance to his conclusions 
 but his profound knowledge of German mentality, 
 while the German general had the advantage of 
 being more or less in the secrets of the gods of 
 Valhalla. Bernhardi begins by asserting that if 
 the triumph of German culture is to be assured, 
 war is inevitable. "Once this is admitted, it is 
 proper to declare war at the favourable moment 
 and against no matter whom." First of all, it is 
 necessary "to settle our accounts with France," 
 so that we may thereafter have our hands free. 
 "France must be so completely put out of action 
 that she will never again be able to find herself in 
 our path.'* No doubt, should Russia intervene, 
 Germany might have two enemies to reckon with 
 instead of one. "This danger can only be avoided 
 
 27 
 
28 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 if it has been made possible for us to take the 
 offensive against and crush one adversary before 
 the other shall be able to attack us." 
 
 England, however, might also come in. In order 
 to provide for this, Germany must strengthen her 
 alliance with Italy, whose support is not absolutely 
 assured, and with Turkey, whose co-operation 
 would be valuable in order to stir up revolt among 
 the Mohammedan subjects of the two Western 
 Powers. Germans must not allow themselves to 
 be gulled by the attempts of England to come to 
 a better understanding with Germany. Of these 
 attempts, Germany must simbly take advantage 
 so that hostilities may be postponed until the 
 moment when she shall have all the trumps in her 
 hand, owing to internal dissensions in the countries 
 of her adversaries. It is also proper for us so to 
 manoeuvre that we are able to cast upon our 
 enemy the responsibility for aggression. "In 
 order to force our adversaries to begin we must 
 take some step which, without being positively 
 hostile to France, shall so closely threaten her 
 interests and those of England that these two 
 nations shall be obliged to attack us." He con- 
 gratulates himself, in this connection, upon the 
 then recent Algeciras Conference because in it he 
 perceives "many possibilities of friction" between 
 France and England. 
 
 The author gives us no hint concerning the 
 future invasion of Belgium. But in another work, 
 translated into English under the title How 
 Germany Makes War, he suggests a plan of 
 campaign very nearly identical with that which 
 
THE TRIE AM) THE FALSE PACIFISM 29 
 
 the German armies attempted to carry out upon 
 the outbreak of hostiUties. 
 
 The majority of miUtary writers, moreover, who 
 have pubHshed works of late give us to understand 
 that Belgium lies upon the route of invasion which 
 necessity indicates ; and a Note, more or less 
 confidential, of the German Government, drawn 
 up on the 19th of March, 1913, in order to justify 
 its demand for new military credits, contains the 
 following declaration, which has been recorded in 
 the Yellow Book of the French Government : 
 ''We must be strong in order to annihilate with a 
 powerful assault our enemies on the East and on 
 the West. But in the next European war the 
 small States will also have either to be compelled 
 to follow us or to be crushed." And to think that 
 Germany has rriade it a crime of the Belgian Govern- 
 ment that consultations were initiated by the 
 English military attaches for the purpose of con- 
 sidering with the Belgian General Staff what defen- 
 sive measures should be taken in case Germany 
 should actually violate the neutrality of Belgium ! * 
 
 * Bernhardi is a prolific writer. Besides his two classic 
 volumes on The War of To-day, he has published a work, also 
 translated into French, called Our Future. In it the author 
 examines both the domestic and foreign policies of Germany 
 in a style that is clear, methodical, and copious. Some of his 
 general opinions upon the mission of the State and the duties 
 of the citizen are not without point. Unfortunately, confound- 
 ing war with competition, he embarks upon an enthusiastic 
 eulogy of the former, which he represents in turn as a bio- 
 logical necessity, a moral obligation, and an indispensable 
 agent of civihsation. There is no lack of paradox in the 
 contrasts which he traces between Germany and other nations, 
 when he asserts, for example, that individualism is more 
 widespread among the Germans ; while among the English 
 the collective spirit is stronger and more general. 
 
30 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 During more than twenty-five years, without 
 ceasing, the pamphlets pubHshed by the powerful 
 Pan-German League have held before the eyes of 
 the German-speaking peoples the conception of a 
 German Empire which should have swallowed 
 Belgium and Holland, Luxemburg, the Pas de 
 Calais, and the Somme, Artois, Burgundy, German 
 Switzerland, Poland, the Balkan Peninsula as far 
 as Salonika ; that is to say, an empire of some 
 162 millions of inhabitants, with the addition of a 
 Customs Union which should yield 204 millions 
 of consumers, without taking count of the exten- 
 sion of the German colonies at the expense of 
 France and England. It is unnecessary to say 
 that the nations who by tongue and blood should 
 be foreign to the culture of Germany were to be 
 kept in a purely dependent condition, deprived of 
 all share in the government of the empire. One of 
 the most energetic of the League's presidents, 
 Herr Ernest Hasse, in his book Deutsche Politik 
 (German Pohcy), published more than sixteen 
 years ago, suggests the creation, along the 
 empire's new frontiers, of a "glacis," whence 
 the conquered population should be expelled 
 in order to make room, after a plan borrowed 
 from Ancient Rome, for German colonists, 
 recruited from among the veterans and non- 
 commissioned officers. Nothing could have been 
 wanting to this plagiarism of antiquity but the 
 sale as slaves of the former inhabitants ; and now 
 the brutal seizure of workmen and even of women 
 in the North of France, and the deportation en 
 masse of those Belgian workmen who have been 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 31 
 
 cast into the ergastula of Germany, to provide 
 forced labour for her factories and trenches, 
 remind us vividly enough of the fate of those 
 populations whom the conquerors of the Ancient 
 World were wont to carry off into servitude. 
 
 And here again is a last suggestion put forward 
 in a pamphlet, published by the League in 1900, 
 under the title Deutschland heim Beginn das 
 20" Jahrhunderts (Germany at the Beginning of 
 the 20th Century) : "In ancient times a con- 
 quered people were annihilated. No longer to-day 
 can this be done literally ; but it is possible to 
 imagine a condition of existence which would 
 amount to annihilation/' The Turks have 
 imported less hypocrisy into their dealings with 
 the Armenians. 
 
 Was there, then, no longer in the German 
 people any leaven of moderate, far-seeing, or 
 peaceful citizens capable of resisting this bellicose 
 frenzy ? No doubt the commercial and industrial 
 classes must have viewed with alarm the prospect 
 of a long and costly war. But the greater part of 
 those who were engaged in business allowed them- 
 selves to become convinced that the war would 
 be a short one, by the very fact of the immensity 
 of the military establishments ; that success had 
 been made certain by an intelligent preparation 
 during more than thirty years ; that, as in former 
 wars, this one would be followed by a magnificent 
 outburst of natural* prosperity ; finally, that the 
 conquered nations would provide the commerce 
 of their (conquerors with an almost unlimited 
 field of exploitation. It was not only the political 
 
32 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 domination of the German race which was to be 
 spread over the earth, but its economic supremacy. 
 The people of Germany beheved absolutely that 
 it was necessary to discover new territories where 
 it would be able to swarm, and where its imperial 
 banner should symbolise the physical extension 
 of the Fatherland. William II, who shared with 
 the former king of the Belgians the taste for 
 grandiose enterprises, had in no small degree 
 helped, to engage in the sphere of trusts, mono- 
 polies, and all kinds of financial combinations 
 such capital as was not involved in the produc- 
 tion of armaments or the development of the 
 fleet. The war was indicated as the sole means of 
 procuring for the empire colonies which should be 
 really profitable, and of crushing the rivalry of the 
 principal maritime nations. One may say that 
 the whole commercial population had swallowed 
 the bait. 
 
 Only the working classes were left. The mirage 
 of a greater Germany had gradually been imposed 
 upon their vision through the channel of the 
 compulsory schools, where nothing is taught that 
 is not initiated and approved by the State. The 
 peasantr}^ had long been accustomed to endure 
 the rule of the Junkers, who by tradition and 
 interest are dedicated to the profession of arms. 
 As for the working-men — so powerfully organised 
 by the Sozial Demokratie, where political and 
 economic affairs are concerned — they, too, had 
 allowed themselves to be carried awa}' by the 
 prospect of a great industrial revival which, born of 
 victory, must necessarily cause their wages to rise. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 33 
 
 Still echoes iit our ears that contest of oratory 
 which took place at the Socialist Conference held, 
 during the November of 1909, in the ancient 
 cathedral of Basle. The comrades from Germany 
 were not the least eager to acclaim "the complete 
 unanimity during war against war of the Socialists 
 of all countries." They vied with one another to 
 protest that if wa,r should be declared the workmen 
 would refuse to fire upon one another, and that 
 they would, moreover, assuredly succeed in pre- 
 venting their respective Governments from com- 
 mitting this stupidity. In fact, the German 
 workmen did nothing to prevent the war. Their 
 leaders — with the exception of Liebknecht, whom, 
 when the Government put him in prison, his party 
 had already disowned — were by no means the last, 
 when the time came, to vote credits for the 
 opening and continuation of hostilities, to join the 
 invading armies, to sanction by their tacit 
 approval, where they did not actually take part 
 in them, the excesses of which the victims were 
 the innocent inhabitants (among whom were the 
 workmen) of those parts of Belgium and France 
 that were invaded. 
 
 Four days after the meeting held at Brussels, 
 on the 30th of July, 1914, and arranged by 
 The International — at which the delegates of 
 all countries, including Germany, had sworn 
 to prevent the outbreak of hostilities, and 
 particularly to refuse all military credits — the 
 representatives in the Reichstag of the Sozial 
 Demokratie ratified both the declaration of war 
 against the Triple Entente and the invasion of 
 
34 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 Belgium by unanimously voting the subsidies 
 that had been demanded. Yet more, when after 
 the month of August the executive committee of 
 The International issued an appeal to the German 
 nation which denounced the injustice of the 
 aggression and the horrors of the German invasion, 
 the Parteivorstand and the Vorwarts contented 
 themselves with declaring that this was a 
 manoeuvre which was intended to influence the 
 neutral countries. The Vorwarts added pharisa- 
 ically : ''Soldiers who in their millions have 
 passed through the school of the Party are not 
 barbarians."* 
 
 * In order to understand to what a degree the Sozial 
 Demokratie has made itself the accompKce of Pan-Germanist 
 ImperiaHsm and has exploited the Socialist movement in 
 other countries, we may consult the works of certain Socialist 
 writers, and those which are more especially of a documentary 
 nature : — Edmond Laskine, Internationalism and Pan- 
 Germanism. Paris : Floury, 1916. — Jules Destree, The 
 Socialists and the European War. Paris : Van Oest, 1916. 
 We may add the revelations of other Socialist writers : — 
 Emile Royer, The Social Democrats v. The Belgian Socialists. 
 London, 1915. — La Chesnais, The Socialist Group 0/ the 
 Reichstag and the Declaration of War. Paris : Colin, 1915. — 
 Paul-Hj^acinthe Loyson, Are you Neutral towards Crime ? 
 Paris : Berger-Leveault, 1916. — See also the controversy 
 between Messieurs Vandervelde and vScheidemann in Invaded 
 Belgium and International Socialism, i vol. Paris : Berger- 
 Leveault, 1917. . • 
 
IV. 
 
 The Movement towards International 
 Reform 
 
 IF we examine the history of the last hundred 
 years — or, we may almost say, of the centuries 
 which have elapsed since the Peace of West- 
 phalia — we cannot fail to perceive a tendency 
 among the civilised nations gradually to grant to 
 the operation of law a wider influence upon inter- 
 national affairs ; and this development was arrested 
 — or, at least suspended — by the aggressive policy 
 of Germany. It may not be inopportune if we 
 shortly consider the history of a movement which 
 held out the prospect of a happier existence to 
 humanity and proposed to itself to put an end to 
 the possibility of conflagrations such as that 
 through which we are passing to-day. 
 
 The repudiation of war is no new thing. 
 Religion, first of all — or, rather, certain universal 
 religions, Christianity, and, earlier still, Judaism 
 and Buddhism — has expressed itself clearly upon 
 this question. Philosophy, in its turn, has made a 
 like attempt. Centuries ago, the stoics and the 
 prophets of Israel shared the vision of a future 
 era, when all the nations of the earth should form 
 one family. In the Middle Ages, the Church 
 claimed, without much success, to settle the 
 quarrels of sovereigns. She endeavoured also to 
 minimise the evils of war by arranging sundry 
 truces of restricted significance and recommending 
 
 35 
 
36 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 to belligerents the observation of certain humane 
 principles. So, in 1105, the Council of Clermont 
 resolved that women, husbandmen, merchants, 
 and shepherds should enjoy a perpetual peace. 
 The Hindoos, according to Diodorus, already 
 possessed a similar regulation, which it is probable 
 met with very little more observance. 
 
 During the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies the moralists and philosophers introduced 
 new arguments, but without achieving their 
 escape from Utopia, as is shown by the New 
 Atlantis of Bacon and the Neo-Salente of Fenelon. 
 Such, again, was the dream of the good abbe of 
 Saint Pierre, who, nevertheless, devised a scheme 
 of perpetual peace through which all international 
 disputes were to be settled by a permanent 
 congress of plenipotentiaries. 
 
 It is strange that a German — perhaps of Scotch 
 descent — Immanuel Kant, was among the first 
 who pronounced the suppression of war to be 
 dependent not upon sentiment, but upon the 
 essential idea of justice. He demonstrated the 
 necessity of applying to international affairs the 
 principles which govern the mutual relations of 
 individuals. He added that, in order to reahse this 
 conception, the nations must form an alliance or 
 confederacy, the members of which should agree 
 between themselves not to interfere in one 
 another's domestic difficulties and to protect one 
 another mutually against attacks from outside. 
 
 Presently the French Revolution proclaimed 
 the right of the nations to govern themselves ; 
 but it took little heed of any method of regulating 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 37 
 
 their disputes, and, forced to defend itself against 
 coalitions of royal personages, it allowed itself to 
 be led away into a policy of conquest which 
 endured to the end of the imperial adventure. 
 After the downfall of Napoleon, his conquerors 
 endeavoured to establish a lasting peace upon the 
 basis of their own territorial arrangements, and 
 even to endow this peace with a permanent 
 character by undertaking to defend one another 
 against all warlike aggression. 
 
 This was the Holy Alliance, which might 
 perhaps have deserved its glorious name had its 
 vision been less shallow and its purpose more 
 honest. Unfortunately, it took no account of 
 those national affinities which were to play so 
 important a part in European politics, while the 
 end which it sought to attain was not only the 
 security of the frontiers, but also that of 
 the rulers. Its only application was the 
 mandate which it gave to the French army 
 to stifle the revolution in Spain which had 
 dethroned Ferdinand VII. England, as a consti- 
 tutional and Liberal Power, stood aside at once. 
 The revolutions in Greece and Belgium gave the 
 finishing stroke to this addled confederation of 
 Europe, which was in reality nothing but' an 
 alliance of kings against their subjects. 
 
 Nevertheless, hostility to the employment of 
 armed force began to penetrate the consciousness 
 of the masses. It was in the United States of 
 America, about 1814, that, according to Frederic 
 Passy, the earliest peace societies were formed. 
 This example was followed in England, especially 
 
38 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 among those religious sects whose object was to 
 restore the traditions of primitive Christianity, 
 and notably among the Quakers, whose unyielding 
 hatred of bloodshed is well known. The move- 
 ment progressed slowly ; yet it was not long 
 before it had given birth to a growing number of 
 organisations, such as, in England, the Working- 
 men's Peace Association, the Women's Peace 
 Society, and the International Association of 
 Arbitration and Peace. The last, in order to 
 justify its name, began a search for adherents 
 upon the Continent, and between 1843 and 1848 
 the appearance of international congresses, 
 gathered successively in London, Brussels, and 
 Paris, gave evidence of the advance which the 
 pacifist propaganda was making. 
 
 In one of these gatherings, which was held in 
 Paris shortly after the revolution of February, 1848, 
 there sat side by side men as widely differing in 
 opinion as Cobden, Victor Hugo, the abbe 
 Deguerry, the pastor Athanase Coquerel, and the 
 Chief Rabbi of France. Victor Hugo opened the 
 session in these words : "You have come together 
 from every quarter of the horizon, in order to 
 turn the Gospel's most glorious page, where men 
 are commanded to love one another like the 
 children of the same Father, and to teach the 
 nations at last to permit Reason to say that which 
 until now has been said by Force alone." 
 
 The language of all these groups, however well- 
 intentioned it may have been, suffers a little from 
 their sentimental and mystical origins. These paci- 
 fists, however, were about to receive an ally who 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 39 
 
 should provide them with arguments of a more 
 positive nature — free trade, which, while recom- 
 mending the overthrow of all economic barriers, 
 proposed to establish on a true understanding of 
 self-interest the mutual assistance and even the 
 brotherhood of nations. For a time it seemed as 
 if the rulers of the world were prepared to accept 
 this idea. After the Crimean War, the Conference 
 of Paris, on the motion of Lord Clarendon, who it 
 appears was acting upon the suggestion of Henry 
 Richard, the general secretary of the Peace 
 Society, resolved that the high contracting 
 parties, and those who should afterwards sub- 
 scribe to their decisions, should forbid all recourse 
 to arms before the good offices of a friendly Power 
 should have been invited, ''in so far as the circum- 
 stances of the case should allow." In spite of this 
 reservation, we are entitled to regard as an 
 historical event, if not as the beginning of a new 
 era, this recognition of the principle of com- 
 pulsory arbitration, not only in a convention 
 between two Powers of minor importance, but in 
 a diplomatic document which was intended to 
 become the charter of European stability. The 
 English Government did not fail to claim the 
 authority of this clause in order to justify its 
 friendly intervention when, ten years later, the 
 question of the railways of Luxemburg almost 
 brought about a war between Germany and 
 France. The conflict was averted, and through 
 this success a new and a wider influence was 
 given to the pacifist agitation. 
 
 The Universal Exhibition, held in Paris in 1867, 
 
40 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 was a marvellous assertion of the solidarity of the 
 nations ; war came to be looked upon more and 
 more as a relic of barbarism. Everywhere men 
 were beginning to agitate against armaments, 
 which the least Utopian felt to be exaggerated, if 
 not useless, and to demand the abolition of the 
 obstacle to the economic progress of the world 
 which all this military emulation constituted. 
 Above all, the lesser nations, which had every- 
 thing to fear from war — Switzerland, Belgium, 
 Holland, and the Scandinavian countries — hailed 
 with enthusiasm a movement which could find 
 adherents even among the professors and politi- 
 cians of Prussia and Austria, who now, since 
 Sadowa, were reconciled. 
 
 From this time, however, dates the appearance 
 among the adversaries of militarism of two 
 divergent tendencies ; on the one hand there were 
 those who proposed to persist in their mission 
 regardless of all political and social differences. 
 Such was the programme of the Ligue permanente 
 et internationale de Paix (the Permanent and 
 International League of Peace), founded by 
 Frederic Passy. 
 
 "The League," he wrote in a manifesto dated 
 the 1st of October, 1867, ''has but one thought 
 — to compose the quarrels of the nations ; but 
 one banner — the banner of justice and mutual 
 respect. And neither politics nor religion — let 
 them have what influence they ma}^ upon the 
 belief and the conduct of each one of us — shall be 
 able to spoil this harmony. Whosoever loves 
 peace, whatever may be his reasons, is one of us."^ 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 41 
 
 On the other hand, there were those who, 
 anticipating the theory of the International 
 SociaHsts, could not be satisfied to separate 
 pacifism from certain political and social require- 
 ments. Shortly afterwards, a Belgian writer, 
 Charles Lemonnier, founded at Geneva the Ligue 
 de la Paix et de la Libert^ (the League of Peace 
 and Freedom), which proposed as its object 
 nothing less than the establishment upon a 
 republican basis of the United States of Europe. 
 
 This was the moment when the French Empire 
 seemed ready to proclaim its Liberalism by taking 
 the first step towards European disarmament. 
 Count Daru, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
 attempted to open negotiations for this purpose 
 with the neighbouring Powers ; and the French 
 Government, even at the beginning of that fatal 
 year, did not hesitate to give the example by 
 reducing by 10,000 men the contingent of recruits 
 for 1870. By the explosion of the war these 
 illusions were blasted. In vain, during the days 
 of agonised patriotism which preceded the opening 
 of hostilities, the most prominent leaders of the 
 pacifist associations addressed to Napoleon III 
 and William I appeals as eloquent as they were 
 despairing. One wonders with what kind of a 
 reception they met. The diplomatic intervention 
 of Great Britain, while it provided for Belgium's 
 safety, succeeded only in preventing the extension 
 of hostilities. 
 
 Once again the spirit of conquest was to triumph, 
 and for several years the spectacle of the Germans 
 in forcible possession of Alsace and Lorraine made 
 
42 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 it rather difficult to return to the discussion of a 
 perpetual peace. None the less, Frederic Passy 
 and his friends did not abandon their ambitions, 
 and after reorganising their League under the 
 name of the Societe franfaise des Amis de la 
 Paix (the French Society of the Friends of 
 Peace), they devoted themselves principalty to 
 the popularisation of the idea of international 
 arbitration, announcing, in a manifesto which 
 they issued in 1872 under the title Revanche 
 on Relevement (Revenge or Re-birth), that 
 they pardoned nothing and forgot nothing, but 
 that they left it to the progress of ideas and 
 morals to ensure that in the immediate future 
 Force should atone for the injuries which it had 
 done to the Right. 
 
 The partisans of international reform, more- 
 over, were showing themselves inclined to work 
 for the practical realisation of their ideal. Their 
 aspirations henceforth took a double direction : 
 on the one hand towards the mitigation of the 
 evils that arise from war, and on the other towards 
 the regularisation of the mutual relations of 
 States. In every age the belligerents who valued 
 themselves on their civilisation have admitted 
 their duty to avoid useless cruelty, and even to 
 obey certain principles which introduced a little 
 humanity into the customs of war. These restric- 
 tions of the rights of the strongest grew in 
 number, and it became possible to believe that 
 they had definitely taken their place in the 
 inheritance of mankind, even when it was at war. 
 For instance, the rule that military operations 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 43 
 
 should be conducted only against the armed 
 forces of the enemy, and not against his civil 
 population ; the rule that destruction ought to be 
 strictly confined to such damage as the conduct 
 of operations should make unavoidable ; the rule 
 that, at any rate on land, private property should 
 be respected ; the rule that, in war as in peace, 
 each person is required to answer solely for his 
 own acts, and that the imposition of collective 
 responsibility is opposed to the most elementary 
 requirements of distributive justice. 
 
 In order to clothe these rules with greater 
 authority, it was even thought advisable to place 
 them under the protection of treaties, which 
 should come into force upon the declaration of 
 hostilities. Hence, during the latter part of the 
 nineteenth century is to be remarked an ever- 
 swelling stream of international conventions for 
 ameliorating the lot of the wounded ; for ensuring 
 to the services of the Red Cross the benefits of 
 neutrality ; for guaranteeing that prisoners of war 
 should receive humane treatment ; that the use of 
 certain forms of bullet which were considered 
 treacherous or needlessly cruel should be for- 
 bidden ; that open towns should not be bombarded ; 
 that religious monuments and works of art should 
 be preserved from destruction ; that pillage should 
 be punished ; that requisitions should be confined 
 within the limits of that which is essential for the 
 maintenance of armies, that the inhabitants of 
 occupied territory should be spared the necessity 
 of undertaking work which would be repugnant to 
 their patriotism ; and, finally, that respect should 
 
44 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 be shown to the legislation of invaded countries 
 in all questions with which the civil authority is 
 concerned. For one kind of systematic brutality 
 no provision had been made, perhaps because it 
 was considered a baseness so outrageous that it 
 could never occur to civilised belligerents to put 
 it into practice. This was the employment of 
 hostages as living shields, in the hope of pre- 
 venting or hindering the fire of the enemy. These 
 provisions unite to form what we may call the 
 Modern Code of War. 
 
 At the same time, the parallel movement for 
 establishing the mutual relations of States upon a 
 legal basis was being developed. The year 1873 
 had witnessed the foundation at Brussels of the 
 Institut du Droit international (the Institute of 
 International Law), where legal experts from 
 every country lent their aid to the experimental 
 improvement and codification of international law. 
 It is here that, during the last forty years, the 
 chief of those measures have been concerted, 
 which have for their object the harmonisation of 
 the enactments of the various States with the 
 general principles of law, whether public or 
 private. In 1889 there was founded a Union 
 Inter - parlementaire (an Inter - Parliamentary 
 Union) which was formed of members of various 
 parliaments. Its original object was to promote 
 recourse to arbitration ; but it ended by in- 
 teresting itself, at its annual meetings, in every- 
 thing which could be of advantage to the cause of 
 peace. On the eve of the year 1914 this institution 
 numbered no less than 3,600 adherents, among 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 45 
 
 whom there were 156 members of the German 
 Parhament, 126 of the Austrian, and 229 of the 
 Hungarian, not to mention Turks and Bulgarians.* 
 
 At length, in 1899, ^^ ^^^ invitation of the 
 Tsar, the official representatives of all the civilised 
 nations met together at The Hague, in a "peace 
 conference," to endeavour to find some means of 
 extending the scope of arbitration and procuring 
 a limitation of armaments. This assembly held 
 two sessions, one in 1899, the other in 1907 ; 
 twenty-six States took part in the former, forty- 
 four in the latter. Certain points were established, 
 the importance of which is not to be under- 
 valued. Several of those measures, for lessening 
 the evils of international conflicts, which had 
 been most strongly recommended by the jurists 
 were codified. A considerable advance was also 
 made towards the organisation on a legal basis of 
 international society, by the institution of a 
 permanent court of arbitration, at which all the 
 Powers who had taken part in the conference 
 should be represented. 
 
 Thus encouraged, treaties for permanent 
 arbitration of a particular, and even of a general, 
 character increased in number in both the Old 
 and the New Worlds ; about 1913 a hundred and 
 twelve could be counted. It is true that the 
 greater part of them contained restrictions, 
 admitted by the conference itself, with regard to 
 disputes in which one of the parties might 
 consider its vital interests, its independence, or 
 
 * Annual of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Fourth year. 
 Brussels, 1914. 
 
46 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 its honour to be involved. Some Governments, 
 however, would have agreed to the excision of 
 these reservations. Four among them — Italy, 
 Denmark, Holland, and the Argentine Republic — 
 made among themselves treaties of general 
 arbitration which were quite unrestricted. The 
 Union Inter-parlementaire, in its session of 1908, 
 also declared that if any dispute should arise in 
 which matters not provided for in an arbitration 
 treaty should be concerned, the contracting 
 parties to it should be bound not to commit any 
 hostile act until, together or separately, they 
 should have invited the mediation of one or more 
 friendly Powers. This declaration first took prac- 
 tical shape when the United States of America, 
 during the administration of Mr. Taft, and after- 
 wards of Mr. Wilson, succeeded in introducing it 
 into the Treaties for the Advancement of Peace, 
 which, since 191 1, the great American Republic 
 has arranged with France and England, and sub- 
 sequently with a dozen other States, among them 
 Italy, Russia, Holland, Spain, the Scandinavian 
 countries, and several of the South American 
 Republics.* 
 
 Meanwhile, armaments had continued to swell 
 disquietingly, and the political horizon was dark 
 with threatening clouds. For the dispersal, how- 
 ever, of these the world relied upon the common 
 sense of the masses, the pacific utterances of 
 Governments, and especially upon the growing 
 interdependence of material interests which 
 
 * Chr. Lange : The American Peace Treaties. Christiania, 
 1915- 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 47 
 
 demanded that peace should be maintained. 
 Capital had become daily more cosmopolitan, and 
 financial operations — unless perhaps we except 
 those which Germany organised — were no longer 
 endowed with nationality. Moreover, every year 
 witnessed the birth of new associations 
 formed, without consideration of frontiers, for 
 the advancement of science, charity, public 
 health, education, and similar objects of universal 
 interest. The Governments themselves had recog- 
 nised the necessity of uniting for the organisation 
 of certain spheres of activity affecting the whole of 
 mankind, such as the postal services, the ex- 
 changes of money, the preservation of artistic, 
 literary, and industrial property, the regulation 
 of transport by land and sea, the treatment of 
 epidemics, the protection of workmen, the sup- 
 pression of the white slave traffic, etc., not to 
 mention the conventions, referred to above, whose 
 object was to minimise the evils of war. Just 
 before 1914 there were fifty-six organisations of 
 this kind which had been created and were 
 subsidised by the civilised nations collectively. 
 As the report of the eighteenth session of the 
 Union Inter -parlement aire observes: ''Nothing 
 seems more favourable to the spread of law and the 
 growth of good feeling among nations." There 
 had even been formed — thanks to the efforts of 
 private persons — a Union des Associations Inter- 
 nationales (Union of International Associations), 
 which held periodical congresses. That which met 
 in Brussels, in June, 1913, brought together 
 delegates from 169 associations and 22 Govern- 
 
48 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 merits. We must also notice, particularly, the 
 Bureau permanent de la Paix (the Permanent 
 Bureau of Peace), established at Berne, to pro- 
 vide the peace and arbitration propaganda with 
 a centre of information and activity. 
 
 There was, indeed, no lack of reassuring move- 
 ments, whose importance the world, apart from a 
 few pessimistic or far-sighted people, was always 
 prepared to exaggerate. A new session of the 
 Peace Conference was expected in 1915 ; already 
 the various Governments were busy with their 
 programmes, and it was hoped that this time 
 there would result some really decisive resolutions 
 concerning compulsory arbitration, if not actually 
 disarmament. England for fifteen years had never 
 ceased in her suggestions to Germany that she 
 should agree to a mutual limitation of armaments, 
 at any rate so far as naval construction was con- 
 cerned, and the official pourparlers that had been 
 exchanged between members of the two Govern- 
 ments gave rise to the hope that this question 
 might achieve a satisfactory solution. As for the 
 relations of France and Germany, there had been 
 formed, on the 30th of May, 1914, in the little 
 town of Basle — so obviously designed for a meeting 
 of this nature-^a committee of eighteen German 
 and thirteen French Members of Parliament, who, 
 in spite of a few unfortunate incidents, had not 
 separated without declaring themselves to be 
 ''determined to redouble their efforts to 
 demonstrate the wish for peace that inspired 
 the vast majority of the two peoples.'' This 
 promise was sincere, but only on one side. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 49 
 
 A few months earlier the Queen of Holland had 
 opened, at The Hague, that Palace of Peace for 
 which the world had to thank the munificence of 
 Mr. Carnegie ; and we cannot to-day suppress a 
 melancholy smile when we remember the enthu- 
 siasm which this ceremony evoked among those 
 who witnessed it, in whose number the members 
 of the Peace Congress and of the Inter-Parlia- 
 mentary Union were to be counted. Alas ! not a 
 year was to pass before the Palace of Peace should 
 close its doors, while, at the same moment, Berlin 
 was opening those of the Temple of Janus. 
 
V. 
 
 Some Illusions entertained by Germany 
 
 WITH our better knowledge of to-day, we 
 can easily understand why those who 
 guided the policy of Germany remained 
 steadily unfavourable to the advances of the 
 British Government, as well as to every proposal 
 which they could not have accepted without 
 fettering their hands in questions of peace and 
 war. The generous suggestion of the Tsar had 
 met from both the Press of Germany and her 
 politicians with nothing but covert sneers or open 
 hostility. In this connection there is a significant 
 passage in Bernhardi. We read in his book The 
 War of To-day : ''Formerly, with the exception 
 of Immanuel Kant, the men who spread these 
 ideas of universal brotherhood were nothing but 
 dreamers and idealists. To-day the Governments 
 of great and powerful States have laid hands upon 
 these conceptions and disguise their movements 
 under the cloak of an edifying humanitarianism. 
 We, who are Germans, must not allow ourselves 
 to be hoodwinked by advances of this kind. If we 
 propose to obtain for our nation the place in the 
 world which is her due, we must put our trust in 
 our sword." 
 
 At The Hague, during the two sessions of the 
 conference, Germany never ceased in her opposi- 
 tion, direct or indirect, to every measure which 
 might hamper her in her schemes of aggression or 
 
 50 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 51 
 
 lead to a limitation of her armaments. She 
 threatened to withdraw, if a proposal made by 
 Russia should be discussed, which called upon all 
 those countries who were represented not to 
 increase their expenditure upon their armies for 
 five years and upon their navies for three. Owing 
 to tha same opposition, nothing came of the 
 proposal to make compulsory — and not simply 
 optional — the intervention of the Court of Arbitra- 
 tion in all differences which do not affect national 
 existence or honour. And so it was, when an 
 attempt was made to give this proposal a more 
 definite character, by enumerating twenty-four 
 kinds of dispute which should always be sub- 
 mitted to arbitration. Since thirty-nine States 
 had voted for this solution of the difficulty, it was 
 suggested that it should, at any rate, bind the 
 majorit}^ which had favoured it ; but a German 
 delegate put this amendment aside as contrary to 
 the principle of unanimity which must sanction 
 all the resolutions of the conference. 
 
 Those measures which were directed solely to 
 the diminution of the horrors of war had generally 
 met from Germany with a better reception. They 
 were, indeed, of a nature to embarrass those of 
 her adversaries who should faithfully abide by 
 them, while she no doubt reserved to herself the 
 privilege of treating them as "scraps of paper," 
 like other and more important agreements. As a 
 matter of fact, there is not one of them which she 
 has not violated in the course of the present war. 
 When we recall the strange recommendation given 
 by William II to his troops on their departure for 
 
52 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 the Chinese expedition — ' 'Conduct yourself as did 
 the Huns'' — we can only lament that the effect of 
 this exhortation should have manifested itself not 
 in China alone. 
 
 After such a record — still far from complete— 
 of the German atrocities in Belgium, as has been 
 compiled by the Commissions of Inquiry convened 
 in Brussels, Antwerp, and London, I do not 
 propose to dwell upon this subject, about which it 
 is difficult to speak calmly or with moderation. 
 The reports of the French Commission which was 
 entrusted with the examination of the conduct of 
 the German troops in the invaded Departments 
 of France can only confirm our impression of 
 horror for the butchers and of pity for 
 their victims.* I will content myself with 
 insisting upon this — that it is not alone upon 
 a brutal and often drunken soldier that the 
 responsibility for these crimes must be laid, 
 but also upon the leaders who organised them, 
 on the writers who advised them, and on the 
 nation which has applauded them. They are, 
 indeed, no more than the practical application of 
 principles which the apologists of German mili- 
 tarism had logically deduced from their concep- 
 tion of war, and which they had successfully 
 instilled into every section of their people. 
 
 If a State, in time of peace, may admit no guide 
 and no check but its own interest, how much the 
 
 * See, besides the official reports of these Commissions : — 
 P. Nothomb, Les Barbares en Belgique. Paris : Perrin, IQ15. — 
 Joseph Bedier, Les crimes allemandes d'apres des temoignages 
 allemands. Paris : Cohn, 1916. — H. Davignon, La Belgique 
 et V Allemagne. London, 1915. Etc. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 53 
 
 less, when it goes to war, does it need to trouble 
 itself about the rules of international law, respect 
 for treaties, or the principles of humanity ? For 
 the officers and soldiers it would even be a wicked- 
 ness to think of these things if onh' the excesses 
 to which they abandon themselves may improve 
 their chances of victory. Such is the invariable 
 argument of Bismarck, Moltke, Clausewitz, von 
 der Goltz, von Hartmann, von Bernhardi, 
 Frobenius, and others. Von Hartmann propounds 
 as an axiom that "from the moment when a 
 national war breaks out, terrorism becomes a 
 principle of mihtary necessity." Clausewitz claims 
 that not without committing an absurdity may 
 the principle of moderation be introduced into the 
 philosophy of war. Von der Goltz teaches, in his 
 The Armed Nation, that since the aim of warfare 
 is the total defeat of the enemy, we are required 
 to "use to the very utmost all methods, both 
 material and moral, which will strike dismay into 
 his mind." An official manual. The Laws of Con- 
 tinental War (Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege), pub- 
 lished in 1902 by authority of the Great General 
 Staff, put officers on their guard against the 
 temptation "to administer the laws of war from a 
 standpoint which is entirely opposed to their 
 objects, and which has already met with moral 
 recognition from the Convention of Geneva, as 
 well as from the Conferences of Brussels and The 
 Hague." Yet more violence exercised against 
 civil populations is represented as a measure of — 
 humanity ; "for, by the terror which it inspires, 
 it tends to hasten the coming of peace." 
 
54 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 For the honour of the human race, we must 
 congratulate ourselves that such a theory should 
 have proved completely false, and if from the 
 application of it any lesson is to be derived, it is 
 that methods of terrorism in war end b}^ recoiling 
 upon the heads of those who practise them. 
 Germany flattered herself that by this means she 
 would compel the belligerents to accept her con- 
 ditions. The Allies have replied by reciprocally 
 engaging themselves to carr}- on the war to the 
 very end, to require complete reparation, and to 
 conclude no peace to which all of them should not 
 be parties. The pillage of open towns and all the 
 abominations that accompany it have hastened 
 the surrender of no fortress. The employment of 
 hostages as living shields has in no case prevented 
 attack or paralysed defence. And it is only of late 
 that we have witnessed the outburst of indignation 
 which, even among neutral nations, has been 
 caused by the carrying off of whole populations in 
 order to constrain them, by starvation and blows, 
 to undertake forced labour. The destruction of 
 Louvain University and the Cathedral of Rheims 
 has intimidated the Catholics neither of Belgium 
 nor of France, who have simply declined hence- 
 forward to regard the Germans as Christians. The 
 murderous raids of their Zeppelins into Great 
 Britain have only resulted in giving an impulse to 
 the recruitment of volunteers and in facilitating 
 the introduction of compulsory service. The 
 exploits of their submarine pirates finally brought 
 about war between Germany and the United 
 States of America, without having to an appre- 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM' 55 
 
 ciable degree embarrassed the ocean transport of 
 troops. Of late, again, the Belgian workmen, 
 whom the Germans have been conducting at full 
 speed, crowded without food into cattle trucks, 
 towards the infernos of their concentration camps, 
 and labour in their munition factories and 
 trenches, have passed through the railway 
 stations of Belgium undauntedly singing the 
 Brabanfonne and the Leeuw van V lander en. 
 
 In short, they have succeeded in nothing save 
 in arousing a hate which will not die with the pre- 
 sent generation ; they have made war more relent- 
 less and peace more hard to attain ; they have 
 closed to themselves for many years countries 
 which, when peace should have come, might have 
 been willing to renew neighbourly relations with 
 them ; they have alienated the sympathy which 
 a certain number of neutral countries still retained 
 for them ; and they have dishonoured themselves 
 in the sight of history. A shrewd statesman has 
 said that in politics mistakes are worse than 
 crimes. Here we perceive the two in constant 
 combination, and with the same negative result. 
 
 We observe an equal clumsiness in the reasoning 
 of the Germans whenever they have sought to 
 penetrate into the minds of other nations. 
 
 There is no doubt that the concentration of the 
 whole body of national activities upon a single 
 object engenders an incomparable force ; and it is 
 this which explains the strength of the moral 
 resistance which Germany offers, even to-day, in 
 spite of her increasing military and economic 
 embarrassments. But this unity of aim may 
 
56 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 become also a source- of weakness, where it pro- 
 ceeds from an infatuation which no longer takes 
 account of facts. Absorbed in the contemplation 
 of their own soul, the Germans have ended by no 
 longer understanding anything in the souls of 
 their neighbours, nor, indeed, in the soul of man. 
 And so they have opened the flood-gates of war 
 without having any conception of the moral and 
 material Resources of the nations with which they 
 now must deal. 
 
 They were on their way to the conquest of the 
 earth by means of an economic penetration with- 
 out precedent in history. In the course of the last 
 forty years their population had increased in 
 number from 40 millions to about 70 millions, a 
 growth which was owing, no doubt, to a remark- 
 able advance in their birth-rate, but also to their 
 transformation from an agricultural to an indus- 
 trial nation. Among commercial Powers, they 
 had raised themselves from a position of no 
 importance at all to the second place. Their 
 manufactures crowded all the markets of the 
 globe, and they were preparing to rob England 
 of the monopoly of ocean navigation. Their 
 engineers, their bankers, their men of business, 
 their clerks — each aiding the other — threatened 
 with actual dispossession the classes which in 
 every country were the representatives of its 
 commercial and industrial activity. In all impor- 
 tant towns they founded schools to which the 
 middle classes of those towns even sent their 
 children. What will remain to them out of all 
 these peaceful conquests ? Even had they been 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 57 
 
 victorious, and however enormous might have 
 been the contributions which they would have 
 exacted from the conquered, they must have been 
 too gravely affected in their private and public 
 fortunes not to feel, for very many years, the 
 handicap of their losses in men and material. 
 Conquered, or even simply disappointed of their 
 hopes, they will see their development arrested for 
 generations to come, if, indeed, they do not find 
 themselves confronted, without escape, by posi- 
 tive ruin. In any event, they will have opened the 
 eyes of the other nations, even of neutrals, who, 
 realising the extent of a danger the full gravity of 
 which they had never suspected, will take such 
 steps as may be necessary to prevent its recur- 
 rence. One may, without ceasing to be a Free 
 Trader, require that obstacles of an economic kind 
 shall be erected against the crafty and treacherous 
 inroads of German competition, even as one may, 
 without ceasing to be a pacifist, insist that the 
 war shall be carried on until German militarism 
 shall have been definitely defeated, if this be the 
 price of a lasting peace. 
 
 Their judgment was again at fault when they 
 imagined successively that the Russians would 
 suffer them to destroy Serbia ; that an attempt 
 to annihilate Russia would fail to rouse the 
 French to action ; that the Belgians would prefer 
 safety to honour ; that the Enghsh, for the sake 
 of peace at any price, would be willing to betray 
 their promises ; and that Italy, in return for a 
 respectable commission, paid in territory, would 
 give them her support. What could be more 
 
58 . THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 sincere and more characteristic than the astonish- 
 ment of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg when he 
 complained that for "a scrap of paper" Great 
 Britain should go to war '' with a nation of kindred 
 blood who asks nothing better than to be her 
 friend." 
 
 Another of their illusions was the belief that 
 beyond their own borders there was nothing — not 
 even public opinion — which was not for sale. We 
 shall never know how many millions they have 
 wasted among the neutrals in order to hire pens 
 and even consciences, nor must we overlook 
 either the vast number of their propaganda 
 publications, or the sagacious organisation of their 
 espionage, which they had raised to the dignity of 
 a patriotic institution. Here again they have 
 only reaped disappointment, unless perhaps in the 
 case of certain Oriental nations who are worthy to 
 come to an understanding with them. 
 
 Deceived by the reports of their agents, which 
 flattered their own illusions, they told themselves 
 that they would be met by adversaries weakened 
 by interior dissensions. In Russia it was the 
 democratic agitation, as well as the revolutionary 
 ambitions of Poland and Finland ; in France, 
 the conspiracies of the Confederation du Travail 
 (Confederation of Labour) ; in England, the 
 opposition of a pacifist radicalism, the selfishness 
 of the trade unions, and the prospect of civil war 
 in Ireland ; in Belgium, the confusion created by 
 the quarrels of parties, religions, classes, and 
 tongues ; finally, outside of Europe, the national 
 aspirations of the Hindoos, the Mohammedans, and 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 59 
 
 the Boers. They failed to see that while, among 
 themselves, every difference of opinion vanished 
 in the prosecution of an object which was greater 
 than all, precisely the same thing would take 
 place among their adversaries, when patriotism 
 should raise its voice and the magnitude of what 
 was at stake should be perceived. 
 
VI. 
 
 Pacifism and an Indecisive Peace 
 
 AT no time has the outbreak of hostiHties 
 between two nations, or two groups of 
 nations, so profoundly affected the spec- 
 tators of the conflict as has the present war. 
 Small and great, all the neutral countries have 
 felt themselves threatened by the theory that 
 strategic or political necessity suffices to justify 
 the violation of rules hitherto recognised, even in 
 time of war, on the foundation of international 
 order. Yet their fear of finding themselves 
 involved in the struggle was so great that, shelter- 
 ing themselves behind an over-meticulous anxiety 
 to preserve a neutral attitude, they have invari- 
 ably refused to pronounce upon the acts of the 
 belligerents, even when these have constituted 
 the most flagrant breaches of conventions to 
 which they themselves have subscribed, and 
 which they themselves have guaranteed. A 
 similar, though less excusable, lack of frankness 
 has been visible in the gatherings of those pacifists 
 who, after the first months of the war, initiated, 
 in the neutral countries, a campaign whose object 
 was to bring about peace upon a pretended basis 
 of mutual satisfaction. 
 
 In February, 1915, a number of Swiss associa- 
 tions proposed to the Federal Council that it 
 should summon a conference of the neutral States 
 in order to lay the foundations of a peace wherein 
 
 60 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 6i 
 
 guarantees of permanency should be discovered. 
 To this the answer of the Council was, naturally, 
 a polite refusal. In the month of April, 1916, the 
 Nederlandsche Anti-Oorlog Raad (the Dutch Anti- 
 War Council) itself summoned to a congress "the 
 representatives of the various national and inter- 
 national movements which were concerned with 
 the cause of pacifism before the war, and which 
 since its outbreak have been doing their utmost 
 to procure peace upon lasting conditions." The 
 result of this step was the foundation of a " Central 
 Organisation for a Permanent Peace," which 
 published a manifesto containing the terms of 
 such a peace. In this nothing is to be found which 
 is in advance of the earlier programme of pacifism, 
 apart from the development of reforms which the 
 conferences of The Hague had already set on foot. 
 As far as the present war was concerned the 
 society forbade to itself "all attempts to decide 
 where the responsibility for the war is to be laid 
 or to protest against violations of international 
 law." The "International Council," which was 
 founded upon this basis, comprised members 
 belonging to as many as twenty different States ; 
 but, although it has obtained a considerable 
 amount of support, particularly in Switzerland 
 and Holland, it has hardly made its existence 
 felt, except through a few local meetings. 
 
 Meanwhile, certain Socialist groups who 
 claimed to have remained faithful to the true 
 doctrine of the movement, as, before the war, it 
 had been settled by the general councils of The 
 International, arose in force against those of their 
 
62 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 fellows who, abandoning the theory of anti- 
 patriotism, had voted credits for the war in the 
 allied countries, lent their support to the organisa- 
 tion of national defence, and even accepted office 
 in the Cabinets of the new Holy Alliance. It was 
 this element which, upon the proposal of the 
 official leaders of Italian Socialism, endeavoured 
 to organise itself and to reconstitute The Inter- 
 national towards the end of 19 15. 
 
 After long preliminaries, a certain number of 
 delegates met together between the 5th and 8th 
 of December at Zimmefwald, in the picturesque 
 alpine valley of the Kienthal. The object of this 
 gathering was ''to unite the proletariat in a 
 common movement for peace, to create a centre 
 of activity, and to recall the workers of the world 
 to their historic mission" — that is to say, to the 
 war between the classes. Eleven countries were 
 represented. German and French delegates pre- 
 sented a joint declaration which cast the respon- 
 sibility for the war upon the intrigues of 
 capitalism, with the complicity of all the Govern- 
 ments, and called for energetic action which, 
 ''paying no regard to the military situation in the 
 various countries,'' should lead to a peace "with- 
 out annexations and without indemnities." 
 
 This conference set up at Berne, under the 
 name of the International Socialist Commission, 
 a permanent commission, acting in competition 
 with the permanent bureau founded by the 
 former International and transferred, after the 
 beginning of the war, from Brussels to The 
 Hague. This commission publishes a bulletin, at 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 63 
 
 rather irregular intervals, which distinguishes 
 itself principally by the violence of its attacks 
 upon those whom it has named "social patriots." 
 Connected with the same organisation there is in 
 France a " Committee for the Re-establishment of 
 International Relations " which carries on a fairly 
 active propaganda. Here is an example of the 
 arguments with which it endeavours to impress 
 the working classes : ''The self-government of 
 the nations is impossible in a society which is 
 founded upon distinction of class. Socialism alone 
 is able to assure to the people their autonomy 
 and independence. It is for this reason that the 
 struggle for the autonomy of the people can only 
 be the struggle for Socialism." And, elsewhere : 
 '' 'Civil War and no Holy Alliance' — such must 
 be our motto. Nothing but the social revolution 
 will be able to ensure a lasting peace and the 
 liberation of humanity."* 
 
 It was shortly afterward that the official 
 delegates of the German, Austrian, and Hun- 
 garian Socialist parties, gathered together at 
 Vienna on the 12th and 13th of August, 1915, 
 declared themselves strongly hostile to any peace 
 which should restore Alsace-Lorraine to France 
 or should in any way diminish the territory of 
 Germany and her allies. Since that time the 
 majority of the Sozial Demokratie has suffered no 
 change in its views upon this subject, for in the 
 course of its last General Conference, held in 
 Berlin between the 21st and 23rd of September, 
 
 * Bulletin of the International Socialist Commission of 
 
 Berne, No. 2. Pages 2 and 17. 
 
64 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 1916, it reaffirmed, by 251 votes to 5, its adhesion 
 to the ImperiaHst poHcy, though it is true that a 
 considerable number of delegates abstained from 
 either taking part in' the debate or voting. No 
 doubt the motion which was adopted condemns 
 all thought of annexation, which, at this time of 
 day, is not a particularly meritorious circum- 
 stance ; but it adds that any peace which the 
 party may demand must guarantee "the political 
 independence, the territorial integrity, and the 
 economic freedom of Germany/' We know the 
 import of such language, and we need not be 
 surprised to find it again upon the lips of von 
 Bethmann-Hollweg or his colleagues. The con- 
 ference also calls for the reconstitution of The 
 International, so that everywhere and in complete 
 harmony the struggle against capitalism may be 
 renewed. Nevertheless, a minority has made its 
 appearance among the parliamentary representa- 
 tives of the party which favours the refusal of 
 credits for the war, and this division of opinion 
 has become more pronounced of late. The 
 minority, which is led by Haese, has not been 
 satisfied with rejecting the credits for the con- 
 tinuation of the war, but has also formed itself 
 into a group, if not into a party, that has a 
 separate existence. Would it, however, be ready 
 to accept the only conditions under which Ger- 
 many rhay hope for peace, now that reparation 
 and guarantees are necessarily in question ? 
 
 As for the Zimmerwaldians, they have met with 
 no very warm response from the Socialists of the 
 various countries of the Entente, unless we 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 65 
 
 except the so-called official Italian Socialists. In 
 France they have again and again been disowned 
 in the General Council and the National Congress 
 of the Socialist Party ; on the last occasion, 
 during December, 1916. We remember that in 
 the Chamber of Deputies the Extreme Left 
 strongly repudiated them on the day when one 
 of the "pilgrims of Zimmerwald'' had the audacity 
 to declare from the tribune his hostility to the 
 continuation of the war. In England, the trade 
 unions, after rousing themselves to the support of 
 conscription in order to strengthen the national 
 participation in the military operations, declared 
 themselves, in their last congress at Birmingham, 
 in favour of the prosecution of the war until a 
 decisive victory should be gained, and even 
 refused to associate themselves with a proposal 
 of the American Confederation of Labour, which 
 advised the meeting of a general congress of 
 labour associations to discuss the terms of peace, 
 side by side with the Diplomatic Conference to 
 which this task should be officially entrusted. 
 
 This attitude gains significance from the fact 
 that some weeks earlier — about the end of July — 
 a conference of the Socialists of the Neutral 
 Countries had met at The Hague, and had 
 demanded from the bureau of the former Inter- 
 national the summoning of a General Assembly 
 of the Socialists of all schools and all countries, 
 pointing out that neither of the two opposing, 
 forces could hope for a decisive victory, and that, 
 furthermore, it was not desirable that either of 
 the adversaries should hold the other at its 
 
66 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 mercy. It is to be observed that Monsieur Emile 
 Vandervelde, the President of the International 
 Socialist Bureau, who is also a member of the 
 Belgian Cabinet, has never ceased to declare, in 
 both his letters and his speeches, that he refuses 
 to enter into any discussion of peace with the 
 Germans so long as Belgium shall not have 
 obtained full reparation and Pan - Germanist 
 militarism shall not have been made incapable of 
 doing further damage.* 
 
 Again, the leaders of Belgian Socialism, at a 
 gathering held in Brussels on the 3rd of May, 
 1916, did not hesitate, though the menace of the 
 Prussian hung over them, courageously to make 
 the following declaration, the signatories to which 
 I may not at the moment name, but the genuine- 
 ness of which I can guarantee: ''We have no 
 authority over the Reunion of Socialists of the 
 Neutral Countries, but we may ask those who are 
 so good as to take interest in what we do not to 
 allow themselves to be influenced by the belief 
 that we are anxious for peace. . . . No one must 
 suppose that it is his duty for our sake to hasten 
 matters. We do not ask for peace. The working 
 classes of Belgium are resolved to endure any 
 misery, to undergo an}^ suffering, if only they may 
 not be given a German peace which will not be a 
 lasting and a secure one." 
 
 The same note of admirable self-denial and 
 <:onfidence is heard in the manifesto which, on the 
 5th of December last, while the deportations were at 
 
 * Cf. Invaded Belgium and International Socialism, by 
 Emile Vandervelde. Paris, 1917. Pages 170 and 176. 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 67 
 
 their height, the delegates of the Belgian labour 
 associations, both Socialist, Catholic, and Liberal, 
 addressed to the working-men of the whole world. 
 This moving appeal ends by this proud assertion : 
 ''As for us, even if force succeeds for a time in 
 reducing our bodies to slavery, our souls will 
 never consent to it. We will add this : Let our 
 tortures be what they will, we will have no peace 
 that does not secure the independence of our 
 country and the triumph of justice." 
 
 The idea of compelling the workers of Belgium, 
 both those who were and those who were not out 
 of employment, to work for the enemy may 
 perhaps be traced to the German Socialists : 
 "There are in Belgium," said Vorwdrts, in the 
 early days of the occupation, "sixty to seventy 
 thousand employes of the railway, postal, and 
 telegraph services, whose places it is necessary to 
 fill by German workmen. If it were possible to 
 set Belgian labour once more to work, an entire 
 army corps would be placed at Germany's dis- 
 posal."* Already, a little time before, certain 
 deputies of the Sozial Demokratie — Wendel, Noske, 
 and Koster — had appeared at the Maison du Peuple 
 of Brussels in order to undertake a campaign for this 
 object. It is unnecessary to say that their proposal 
 met with no success. f This is not, by the way, the 
 only occasion on which the Socialists of the Kaiser 
 have sought to insinuate themselves into the 
 counsels of their fellows in the neutral and even 
 
 * See Humanitd of the ist of August, 191 5. 
 t Id., the numbers for the i6th, 17th, and i8th of December, 
 1914- . ^. 
 
68 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 in the belligerent countries, there to play the part 
 of those tame elephants which are trained to make 
 their way among the herds of their wild comrades, 
 in order to lead them into the stockade where 
 slavery awaits them. 
 
 Happily, we have many grounds for anticipating 
 the failure of these intrigues. The other nations 
 will easily perceive that under this sudden love 
 which Germany is now professing for peace is 
 hidden the knowledge of imminent defeat. The 
 sense of justice will be outraged in all decent 
 people if, after having violated every law of war 
 and of humanity, Germany should acquire the 
 means of escaping the punishment of her cruelties 
 and oppressions. On the other hand, it is certain 
 — and this consideration should be enough to 
 justify every further effort and sacrifice which 
 may be required of us — that if we do not secure 
 guarantees against future aggression the whole 
 tragedy must begin over again within a few years. 
 It would be in vain that Belgium should have 
 exposed herself, with open eyes and in spite of the 
 odds against her, to all the horrors of an invasion 
 which, by its massacres, its devastations, and its 
 deportations, recalls the worst excesses of bar- 
 barism in the days when the Roman Empire was 
 crumbling into ruin ; vain that France, through 
 her prodigies of valour, should have brought the 
 Teuton flood to a standstill upon the banks of the 
 Marne and beneath the walls of Verdun ; vain 
 that England, with a vigour and resolution with- 
 out precedents in her history, should have cast 
 nto the struggle the whole of her population that 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 69 
 
 was of age to serve ; vain that ten nations should 
 have drenched with their most precious blood a 
 battle-front that reaches from the North Sea to 
 the Caspian, and even to the Pacific. 
 
 Even the neutrals, however great may be their 
 eagerness to hasten the return of peace, cannot 
 wish that that peace should be only a clumsy 
 compromise. 
 
 What would happen should we be content to 
 restore the situation as it existed before the war ? 
 Germany — disappointed in her greed, but in no 
 way healed of her ambitions, her mind filled 
 beyond all else wdth thoughts of revenge, re- 
 maining in full possession of her resources and 
 her territories — will not fail to embark once more 
 upon her military preparations and with greater 
 determination than ever before. Her adversaries, 
 on their side, taught by experience — an experi- 
 ence which has cost them dear — will move 
 heaven and earth to follow her, if not to outstrip 
 her, in all those regions of activity in which, while 
 she was devoting herself exclusively to her pre- 
 paration for war, they had allowed themselves to 
 fall behind. Europe will thus witness the con- 
 tinuation, to an unimaginable extent, of that 
 ruinous rivalry of armaments, which will quickly 
 place the nations, still but a little recovered from 
 their losses, in the dilemma of either rushing on into 
 bankruptcy or of beginning the war again in order 
 to determine, once and for all, whether or not 
 Germany is to dominate the earth. Is there a 
 pacifist of any honesty, no matter to what country 
 he belongs, who does not perceive that such a 
 
70 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 peace must be utterly hostile to both his hopes 
 and his aspirations ? 
 
 It may be objected that if Germany does not 
 modify her character, the Allies will only have 
 postponed the day of repkoning, and that the 
 time must surely come when the conquered, 
 having healed their wounds, will find themselves 
 ready to renew their aggression. It is certain that 
 no one can dream of annihilating, nor even of 
 permanently suppressing or dismembering, a race 
 which numbers more than sixty-five million souls. 
 But, immense though the recuperative force of 
 Germany undoubtedly is, we may consider what 
 her situation will be during many long years, if 
 only the conditions which justice demands for her 
 be imposed upon her and her allies : complete 
 reparation for the damage they have caused and 
 the abandonment of territory wherein they have 
 oppressed populations of alien blood, without 
 mentioning the fate which is reserved for the 
 colonies by which the increase of their fleet is 
 justified and for the fleet which justifies the 
 extension of those colonies. When we consider 
 that Germany, though victorious, has required 
 forty years in order to place herself in a condition 
 to renew the war of 1870, we may well ask our- 
 selves how much time she will need, if she is 
 conquered, in order to embark once again upon 
 the path along which her bellicose tendencies urge 
 her. And thereupon the question arises whether, 
 by that more or less distant time, war will still 
 be possible. 
 
VII. 
 A Durable Peace 
 
 THE nineteenth century was characterised by 
 the parallel advance of two tendencies con- 
 tradictory in appearance, but really to be 
 regarded as the counterpoises and complements 
 of each other. These are Nationalism and Inter- 
 nationalism ; that is to say, on the one hand, the 
 aspirations of the people to group themselves 
 according to their affinities — national, ethical, 
 historical, or of choice ; on the other hand, the 
 development of institutions which form the com- 
 mon heritage of man, especially those which tend 
 to introduce into the Society of Nations the law 
 and order which already regulate the relations of 
 individuals within each separate State. I have 
 said enough about international reform, and have 
 shown how the chief obstacle which it encountered 
 was the resistance of Pan-Germanism. As for the 
 sentiment of nationality, Germany, who has made 
 use of it in order to ensure her own unity, has 
 become, in agreement with her two chief allies 
 — Austria and Turkey — the no less irreconcilable 
 adversary of this, too.* 
 
 Ever since the first months of the war I have 
 
 * Mr. Ramsay Muir, Professor of Modem History at 
 Manchester, has written upon this subject a book which can 
 be most confidently recommended for the conciseness and 
 logical character of its conclusions, Nationalism and Inter- 
 nationalism. London : Constable, 1916. 
 
 71 
 
72 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 nursed a dream which I have succeeded in trans- 
 lating into the terms of the accompanying map. 
 That with which I am here concerned is nothing 
 less than to procure the coincidence of the political 
 frontiers of the countries of Europe with the lines 
 which mark off her various nationalities from one 
 
 
 o too 200 300 4O0 km 
 ■■■■ Li m lies d etats. 
 
 another. To achieve this result it would be 
 enough to break the artificial chains which bind 
 to the Central Empires a dozen provinces which 
 would thereafter be free to follow the guidance 
 of their own national affinities and antipathies. 
 Is it necessary to cite them at length ? Alsace- 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 73 
 
 Lorraine, Trieste and the Trentino, Transylvania, 
 Bosnia and Herzegovina, Galicia and the Duchy 
 of Posen, the Banat and the Bukhovina, the 
 Duchy of Schleswig and the Walloon cantons 
 of the Rhenish provinces — to say nothing of the 
 other liberations which the collapse of Turkey 
 would make possible ; that, for instance, of the 
 unfortunate Armenia. It would perhaps mean, 
 within a longer or shorter period, the independence 
 of Hungary and Bohemia. 
 
 All these rearrangements would together form 
 a tribute to that principle of self-government 
 which, having penetrated everywhere throughout 
 the political organisation of civilised communities 
 logically points, in the International Order, to the 
 right of populations to dispose of their own 
 destinies. It would also mean the disappearance 
 of a source of trouble which, if it be allowed to 
 continue, must make precarious the future of every 
 kind of peace. It would, lastly, be to set about 
 the discovery of the best foundation for the 
 establishment of a final order in the equilibrium 
 of Europe.* 
 
 May I add that I have never dreamed of a 
 
 * In a speech, delivered on the 28th of May, 1916, at the 
 banquet of the League to enforce Peace, the President of the 
 United States of America declared his programme of inter- 
 national organisation in these terms : — (i) Every people has 
 the right to choose its own rulers. (2) Small States have the 
 same right to see their sovereignty and territorial integrity 
 respected as the great nations. (3) The world must be 
 preserved from every rupture of peace which originates in 
 aggression and contempt for the rights of peoples and nations. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that since then Mr. Wilson 
 has altered his opinion on these three points. 
 
74 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 dismemberment that should be carried any 
 further than this ? Let the conquerors seek 
 complementary guarantees in the transfer of 
 colonies, the confiscation of machinery, the res- 
 titution of merchant fleets and industrial machines, 
 without mentioning still other measures of a 
 military and economic character — I have nothing 
 to say against this if circumstances favour it. 
 That they should support the aspirations of 
 certain secondary States, who should propose to 
 themselves to throw off the Prussian yoke, would 
 manifestly be a wise policy. But I should pity the 
 nations who should think to increase their power 
 or prosperity by creating upon their borders, by 
 the annexation of German provinces, permanent 
 focuses of hate and trouble. May the precedent 
 of Alsace-Lorraine serve as a lesson !" 
 
 But is it possible that my dream should come 
 true, and to what extent ? 
 
 Two new factors have recently been added to 
 the situation. On the one hand, the vague Note of 
 Germany demanding that pourparlers for the dis- 
 cussion of the terms of peace should be initiated ; 
 on the other, the message of Mr. Wilson requesting 
 the belligerents to inform him of their aims. 
 We may ignore the first of these, which simply 
 exposes the growing weakness of Germany's 
 resistance, and has been rejected by the Allies 
 on good grounds. The case of the other is 
 different, since, owing to the favourable reception 
 which it has met from the nations who are not 
 directly engaged in the struggle, it marks perhaps 
 a first step towards the constitution of a League 
 
THE TRUE AXD THE FALSE PACIFISM 75 
 
 of Neutral Powers with which we might eventually 
 have to reckon. 
 
 We naturally regret that these nations who, 
 upon their own showing, are exclusively inspired 
 by the love of peace and an anxious care for the 
 welfare of humanity, should not have manifested 
 their sentiments when Germany let loose the 
 scourge of war and trampled International law 
 under foot ; and, similarly, that to-day they still 
 seem desirous, while calling upon the name of law, 
 of maintaining the balance of power between the 
 authors and the victims of these outrages. I 
 believe, however, in the sincerity of their pro- 
 testations, when they propose to themselves for 
 their ultimate aim, over and beyond the re-estab- 
 lishment of peace, the creation of an organisation 
 which will make impossible the return of similar 
 cataclysms ; and, even through the red fog which 
 envelops us to-day, I seem to catch a gleam of 
 consolation from this unanimous desire not only 
 to put an end to this war, but to all wars. What 
 we have to ask of these nations, above everything, 
 is that they should clearly understand that no 
 lasting peace is possible that is not founded upon 
 justice ; that is to say, upon adequate reparation 
 for the past and effective guarantees for the 
 future. * 
 
 I would add that the map shown above con- 
 tains yet another warning upon which the 
 
 * There is no need to point out that, since this was written, 
 the actual intervention of the United States in the war has 
 somewhat altered the aspect of things and strengthened the 
 hopes of those who look for a lasting and rightful peace. 
 
76 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 pacifists and neutral nations will do well to 
 reflect, if they feel in themselves any inclination 
 to believe that a peace which shall be concluded 
 or imposed upon the basis of the status quo ante 
 helium can lead to the firm establishment of 
 European society according to the principles of 
 law. The first condition of such an establishment 
 will be to guarantee to the contracting States the 
 integrity of the territories which they possessed 
 before the outbreak of war, and protection, at 
 the same time, against all foreign interference in 
 their domestic concerns ; the Courts of Arbitra- 
 tion being permitted to intervene only in inter- 
 national disputes. A glance at the distribution of 
 races in Europe will be enough to make evident 
 what important sections of the civilised world 
 would, lacking such condition, be handed over to 
 the uncontrolled and undiluted mercies of the 
 gaolers of Prussia, the hangmen of Austria, and 
 the butchers of Turkey. We must admit that this 
 would be a strange corollary to a movement that 
 had been begun in the names of justice and 
 humanity. 
 
 I am well aware that it is possible to draw up, 
 in the admirable language of diplomacy, clauses 
 which shall guarantee to all the subjects of the 
 confederated States the full enjoyment of their 
 civil and religious liberties by which the rights 
 of man are represented. It is this which the third 
 article of the Treaty of Berlin of the 13th of July, 
 1878, attempted to do for that kaleidoscopic 
 medley of races which inhabits the Balkan Penin- 
 sula. The year had not run out before the 
 
THE TRUE AXD THE FALSE PACIFISM 77 
 
 persecutions had recommenced more gaily than 
 ever. It would be the same with guarantees, of 
 whose observance the only custodians should be 
 the very Governments who would stand to gain 
 by their violation. 
 
 We may be certain that there will be no hope 
 of the birth of a new order, nor even of a lasting 
 pacification, in a peace that shall be founded upon 
 the status quo or upon anything resembling it. 
 
VIII. 
 A Definitive Peace 
 
 FROM the fact that the pacifists cherished, 
 up to the very eve of the war, illusions which 
 were cruelly dissipated by events ; from the 
 fact that Germany has torn up treaties which her 
 own signature had clothed with solemn authority, 
 violated every article of the code of international 
 law, and in the course of her invasions brought 
 back the excesses of barbarism to earth, must we 
 conclude— as we may too often be tempted to do — 
 that the cause of international law has received 
 a blow from which it will not recover ; that 
 the modifications which we had supposed the 
 ruthlessness of war had undergone are no 
 more than a farce ; and that the appeal 
 to arms must once more and for ever be- 
 come the final method of setthng international 
 differences ? 
 
 This conclusion might be a just one, had 
 Germany been victorious. In that case, it is true, 
 it is her conception of the right of the strongest 
 which would have had the upper hand in the 
 world, and the only lasting peace for which we 
 could have hoped would be a Pax Germanica, 
 founded, like the Pax Romana of former times, 
 upon the complete subjection of the other nations. 
 But the victory of the Decuple Alliance will have 
 the contrary effect of re-establishing in our public 
 
 78 
 
THE TRUE AXD THE FALSE PACIFISM 79 
 
 law the principles which have been misunder- 
 stood or violated by the barbarians of the twen- 
 tieth century. We ask for no other proof of this 
 than the refusal of the Allied Governments to 
 undertake reprisals beyond what strict military 
 necessity requires. Much more, it is alone out of 
 their victory that there can come any decisive 
 movement in the direction of more happily 
 organised international relations. 
 
 The efforts of juridical pacifism have already 
 secured to us, in spite of the obstacles raised by 
 the German Government, an international code — 
 which has never paused in its development — and 
 an international tribunal charged with the duty 
 of giving effect to the principles of that code ; 
 that is to say, two out of the three institu- 
 tions without which the mechanism of every 
 regularly organised society must come to a 
 halt. Unfortunately, the third is still to seek 
 — the authority ; that is to say, the provision 
 of the force necessary for the execution of 
 judicial decisions. 
 
 All those who are concerned to bring about the 
 abolition of war — jurists, politicians, diplomatists, 
 socialists, and sociologists ; above all, women, 
 wives and mothers, whose eternal attitude to this 
 question the Latin poet expressed when he 
 denounced bella matribus detestata — must fully 
 understand that this problem of problems will 
 never be solved by sentimental considerations or 
 by the simple pressure of public opinion, any more 
 than by the organisation through the fortune 
 of war of a single State keeping its neighbours 
 
8o THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 in order. The solution will only be found in the 
 growth of solidarity between peoples who, while 
 they respect one another's independence, will 
 agree to make such sacrifices as may be necessary 
 to replace force by justice in their mutual rela^ 
 tionships. 
 
 I have here no intention to use such sounding 
 words as Perpetual Peace or even the United 
 States of Europe. It is better to place our reliance 
 in practical reforms. And of these would it not 
 be one, and one of the utmost value, if the nations 
 who are allied against the ambitions of Germany, 
 after having brought her to reason, should bind 
 themselves by a formal treaty to take up arms 
 collectively against any State, though it be one 
 of the signatories themselves, who shall refuse 
 to refer an international difference to a Court of 
 Arbitration, or who, after having submitted 
 itself to such a tribunal, shall desire to escape the 
 execution of judgment ? It is probable that the 
 ''Holy Alliance" thus constituted would quickly 
 receive the support of neutral countries, who have 
 themselves too greatly suffered during the present 
 war not to hail with joy this specific against a 
 further outbreak. 
 
 Each contracting party would be able to main- 
 tain its military and naval forces — at least, in a 
 proportion which .should be agreed upon in 
 common. But these forces would be necessarily 
 reduced to the sim.ple status of an international 
 gendarmerie, as w^ould war itself to a form of 
 punitive expedition, justified by the casus 
 jcederis. The most ardent pacifist cannot reason- 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 8i 
 
 ably look for more, having regard to the present 
 state of the development of society.* 
 
 An eminent diplomatist who is at the same time 
 a writer of note, Monsieur Gabriel Hanotaux, has 
 lately pubUshed in the Revue des Deux Mondes 
 an article upon '*The Problem of Peace,'' in which, 
 while he recommends a solution of the same 
 nature, he reminds us that, already in the eigh- 
 teenth century, the Treaty of Westphalia had 
 attempted to establish a new balance of power in 
 Europe by means of a similar organisation : **A11 
 the contracting parties bind themselves to main- 
 lain each and all of the arrangements effected by 
 the treaty. And if it should happen that any of 
 these arrangements has been violated, the offended 
 party shall endeavour first of all to turn the 
 offending from his purpose, either by submitting 
 the difference to amiable settlement or by recourse 
 to law. But if the question shall be settled by 
 neither of these means, each of the contracting 
 parties shall be bound to join his advice and his 
 strength to those of the injured party and to take 
 up arms to repel the injustice.'' ''Thus," adds 
 Monsieur Hanotaux, ''a European force would be 
 constituted which would lend a permanent 
 sanction to the decisions of the law — a force 
 
 * In his recent volume, Magnissima Charta (Boston, 1916), 
 Monsieur La Fontaine, a Belgian Senator, and the President 
 of the International Bureau of Peace, outlines the organisa- 
 tion of an armed force, which should remain at the disposition 
 of the International Courts, and whose duty it should be to 
 undertake the execution of the federal judgments whenever 
 all methods of concihation and indirect coercion should 
 ihave failed. 
 
82 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 which has hitherto been wanting, and whose 
 support the platonic resolutions of The Hague 
 Conference have strikingly lacked/' 
 
 It is difficult to see in the future any more 
 favourable opportunity for initiating a reform 
 through which, in the words of Monsieur 
 Hanotaux, "an organised, a better Europe," will 
 emerge out of this dreadful crisis. 
 
 The armies of the Allies are fighting with equal 
 discipline and heroism, and the memory of their 
 deeds will live for ever in the hearts of generations 
 who shall be free from the nightmare with which 
 the adventure of Pan-Germanism has burdened 
 the world. But joined to this sentiment of admira- 
 tion and of gratitude there is another which we 
 shall feel in no less a lively fashion, more especially 
 when the first intoxication of triumph shall have 
 given way to a perception of the realities of life 
 and of what the future is to bring. This is 
 the earnest desire to prevent the return of 
 a catastrophe which represents a legacy be- 
 queathed by barbarism, and one by which 
 its hateful customs are given a new birth. On the 
 other hand, will the neutrals, who have all more 
 or less been affected by the repercussion of the 
 war, and who had already for the most part been 
 won over to the cause of compulsory and general 
 arbitration — will they be able to refuse their 
 adherence to an international union which will 
 guarantee to them security together with inde- 
 pendence and peace ? 
 
 The conquerors will emerge severely tested 
 from their fier}^ trial, like those legendary knights 
 
THE TRUE AND TIIK FALSE PACIFISM 83 
 
 who won their victory over the destroying dragon 
 only at the cost of innumerable wounds. What- 
 ever may be the amount of the indemnities to be 
 obtained from the vanquished, in whatever wa}" 
 they may be distributed, the fortunes of ever>^ 
 one, save of a few speculators, will have beer 
 seriously reduced ; taxation will increase every- 
 where so greatly that the very springs of wealth 
 will be affected ; there will be few homes that will 
 not mourn an empty place by their fireside ; 
 hundreds of thousands of cripples will for long 
 years recall to our streets the memory of the 
 struggle and its horrors. In exchange for this, 
 what are the Allied Governments to offer to their 
 peoples ? Never, perhaps, will they encounter 
 conditions more favourable to the foundation of 
 that reign of peace imagined by the prophet, 
 when, indeed, the wolf will not be seen living 
 harmoniously by the side of the lamb, since this is 
 against the laws of Nature, but when the sword 
 shall have been beaten into the plough-share, for 
 this depends upon liberty and human reason. 
 
 "You ask me what it is that Germany desires," 
 wrote Professor Oswald, during the first months 
 of the war, in a Swedish review. And he answered 
 himself thus : ''She desires to organise a Europe 
 who has never hitherto been organised." This 
 famous Pan-German chemist was right when he 
 pointed out what was wanting. His mistake lay 
 in his belief that, in order to supply her want, 
 Europe has any longer need of Germany. 
 
84 THE TRUE AND THE FALSE PACIFISM 
 
 Already, with regard to this matter, we possess 
 the promise of statesmen, leaders of nations, who 
 will not fail to keep their word. "Peace," said 
 Monsieur Briand, in Ma}^ 1916, "must be no 
 empty formula. It must be founded upon inter- 
 national law and guaranteed by an authority 
 which no country will be able to assail. Such a 
 peace will be like a sun to humanity, and will 
 give a security to the nations wherein they shall 
 be able to work and to develop each its own 
 jioblest qualities." 
 
 Coming still closer to the question. Lord Grey, 
 in his speech of the 24th of October, 1916, to the 
 foreign journalists in England, after having sup- 
 ported the idea of creating, when the war is over, 
 a union of nations with the object of assuring the 
 continuance of peace, added, for the benefit of the 
 neutral countries, that in order to make such a 
 union effective the nations who give it their 
 adherence must be prepared to employ force, if 
 necessary, to ensure the observance of treaties. 
 "There must be no end to this war, no peace 
 except a peace which is going to ensure that the 
 nations of Europe live in the future free from that 
 shadow (i.e. of Prussian militarism) in the open air 
 and in the light of freedom." Here speaks the 
 true pacifism. 
 
 It is the same spirit which breathes in the joint 
 reply of the Allies to the Note of Mr. Wilson which 
 requested them to make known to him the objects 
 for which they are fighting : "The Allied Govern- 
 ments declare their whole-hearted agreement with 
 the proposal to create a League of Nations which 
 
THE TRUE AND THE FALSE .PA' 1 1- 1^.11 85- 
 
 shall assure peace and justice throughout the 
 world. They recognise all the benefits which will 
 accrue to the cause of humanity and civilisation 
 from the institution of international agreements 
 designed to prevent violent conflicts between 
 nations, and so framed as to provide the sanctions 
 necessary to their enforcement, lest an illusory 
 security should serve merely to facilitate fresh 
 acts of aggression. But a discussion of future 
 arrangements for assuring a durable peace pre- 
 supposes a satisfactory settlement of the present 
 conflict." 
 
 Indeed, it is a condition precedent to any step 
 towards this goal that German militarism should be 
 removed out of the way, and hence it is that those 
 pacifists who, in the neutral as in the belligerent 
 countries, call for any other conclusion to the 
 war are blind to that which is possible or else are 
 traitors to their own flag and subverters of 
 their own cause. 
 
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