Part 9
The Conservative Government under Baldwin, which succeeded the breaking-up of the Coalition under Lloyd George, deliberately committed suicide by appealing to the country for a mandate on Protection. Great Britain would have nothing of it at a time of unemployment, heavy costs of living, and diminishing trade. But the results of the election were unforeseen. The Conservatives lost their great majority, the Liberals were reduced to a minority, and Labour became the strongest single party in the new Parliament and received its call to office.
It was the greatest social revolution that has happened in England in modern history. The highest offices of state and of the very Court itself were occupied by men who had begun life in factories, mines and workshops, or who had gained political notoriety by attack upon the privileges, traditions, social castes, and property rights of the most conservative country in Europe outside Spain. They were the leaders of that spirit of revolt which had surged below the surface of English life among ex-soldiers who had not received reward for service, unemployed men who were living on poor doles, and of all those inarticulate millions who rallied to the Labour cause because it stood solidly and squarely for anti-militarism and world peace, for democratic liberties, and for ideals of a world state in which the common folk should have security, more pay for less work, more joy in life, and social equality levelled up to high standards of education and home comfort. Those I am sure were the instincts and hopes—not yet to be fulfilled!—which brought Labour into office.
They were there only on sufferance, and with guarantees of good behaviour. A combined vote of the Liberals and Conservatives could turn them out at any moment. But they played their cards cleverly, for a time, not adventuring on any revolutionary policy, not trampling on any old traditions, wearing Court uniform as though to the manner born, pleased with their prestige and power, being very polite to everybody, and keeping their hot-heads quiet by promises of future reward when their majority would be substantial.
They were certainly lucky in having Ramsay MacDonald as their leader and Prime Minister. A man of high education, though humble birth, with a fine dignity and grace of manner, sincere in his ideals, believing in evolution and not revolution, and with an intimate knowledge of both foreign affairs and Parliamentary rules, he came as no shock to the House of Commons, and inspired admiration even among his political opponents. Unable to do much to remedy the state of economic life in Great Britain—even to fulfil his promises regarding a remedy for unemployment—he concentrated all his efforts, wisely as well as tactfully, on the endeavour to solve the European problem between France and Germany. He saw at once that it would never be solved as long as hostility and suspicion embittered the relations of France and England. The man whom all England had accused as Pro-German wrote the most charming and conciliatory letters to Poincaré, full of sympathy and understanding for France. Time worked on his side. Poincaré was defeated when he went to the country for re-election, and contrary to nearly all the prophets, his policy was rejected and Herriot, corresponding to Ramsay MacDonald as a leader of the Left, became Premier of France.
THE DEFEAT OF POINCARÉ
I was one of the few who had some inkling of the change of view in France and foretold the peril of Poincaré. In conversation with French people, and especially the ordinary working folk, I gathered that Poincaré no longer held their confidence. They had backed him when he ordered the occupation of the Ruhr, but only because they believed that he would “deliver the goods.” Now they saw that the “goods” were not forthcoming, and that, instead of receiving large reparations from Germany, the franc was dropping, abruptly and perilously. They believed that M. Poincaré was a little too “rigid,” too much of a lawyer, and too little of a business man. They were aware of all the hate that was being built up against them in Germany. They said—many of them—“We are afraid of the future.”
It was above all that fear of the future, the terrifying spectre of a new war, when not the great Black Army of Africa, nor all their submarines, nor all their aeroplanes, would save France from another struggle in which the last of her youth would perish, which overthrew Poincaré and his “rigid” methods. France, by a majority, desired peace, if that could be gained by some new policy, not surrendering security, not weak, but more in accord with the spirit of Liberalism.
There is no doubt in my mind that the result of the elections in Great Britain and the rise of Labour in that country had a powerful influence on the French election. It was a call back to democratic ideals in Europe, against the militarists and Imperialists.
Anyhow it gave Ramsay MacDonald a wonderful, an amazing chance. With Herriot, ex-Mayor of Lyons, advanced Liberal, leader of Labour in France, he could speak on equal terms. They understood each other’s ideas. They knew each other’s difficulties. Herriot, who speaks German well and has studied their system of civic organisation, had an honest desire to be fair and just to Germany while not betraying French interests. He did not call the German people “_Sales Boches_.” He did not want to kill their babies or starve them to death. He acknowledged that they had a right to live. He wanted to deal with them on business terms and, if possible—if possible!—get their good will and free consent to a plan by which French and Germans may live in the same world without periodical spasms of slaughter. With Herriot and Ramsay MacDonald in cordial agreement on the ideals of peace in the London Conference in August, ten years after the beginning of war, the peace of Europe had a greater chance than any other statesmen of England and France would have made conceivable. Luck, or Fate, was on the side of success.
THE LONDON AGREEMENT
Those meetings of the statesmen in No. 10 Downing Street will make a dramatic chapter in history when they come to be written. Behind the representatives of each nation stood the forces of reaction: sullen, menacing, obstructive. Herriot knew that if he yielded too much he would be destroyed by the Conservatives of France, by that formidable power still held by Poincaré and all he stands for in French opinion. Marx and Streseman knew that if they surrendered too much they would be overwhelmed by a Nationalist outburst in their own country. Ramsay MacDonald knew that if he asked either side to ignore their own public opinion the Conference would fail and calamity would follow. The American Ambassador, Kellogg, knew that his people would refuse to guarantee a loan to Germany unless France withdrew demands which deprived it of all security. Time and time again the Conference was on the point of breaking down. The international bankers sat behind the scenes refusing to sanction French plans for further penalties against Germany if she defaulted in future payments. There was anguish among the Germans when Herriot told them that his hands were tied regarding the evacuation of the Ruhr and that no withdrawal could be made until a year more had run. They saw his difficulty as he saw theirs. The French would unseat him if he conceded an earlier withdrawal. He pleaded with them to agree to this condition—utterly opposed to the spirit of the Dawes Report—for the sake of the loan of forty million pounds sterling, future liberty, world peace. The wires were hot with messages to and from Berlin and Paris, where the Governments insisted on national demands. The fate of Europe trembled in the balance, until at last the German representatives yielded to that year in the Ruhr, under protest, with misgivings and forebodings, but with a hope that the enormous disappointment to the German people would be outweighed by the saving of their economic life, the future liberation from hostile occupation, a postponement, at least, of ruin. So the Dawes Report was accepted and signed, and the London Agreement began a new chapter of history in which there is a promise—another chance—of peace at last, and a spirit of conciliation between the nations.
III.—THE PRESENT PERILS
There are still many danger zones through which our civilisation must pass before there is anything like security against calamities which might destroy it for a long chapter of history. There are still many points of peril which make one anxious even for the immediate future, and it seems to me that, without raising imaginary bogies or allowing pessimism to paint too dark a picture, it is necessary to look at these possible causes of trouble and to realise the very thin ground upon which we are all walking above smouldering fires.
The present dangers which must be eliminated somehow lest we all stagger on to catastrophe are of three kinds: racial, social, and economic. The last indeed is of such overwhelming influence upon racial rivalries and social upheavals, that many students of modern history are inclined to believe that it is the underlying meaning of all wars, revolutions, and human struggles. The pressure of population, the need of food, the desire to get raw material for industrial manufactures, national competition to capture trade markets, are, according to the modern school of thought, the main causes of international friction and explosive episodes.
I agree as to the terrific importance of economic facts, especially in this present time of history, when the world has been industrialised, but there are other instincts in the human heart beyond the need of food, other passions besides trade rivalry. The passion of race is one of them. The passion of liberty for the race or nation is intense. National pride, sentiment expressed in symbols, such as the Flag, religious fanaticism, such as that of Islam, set human hearts on fire and make them careless even of self interest or self preservation. Before looking at the economic struggle which is looming ahead, and in my opinion is going to be a possible cause of another world conflict, one may see signs of racial passion stirring in many parts of the world and threatening its future peace.
RACIAL PASSIONS
It is in the very heart of Europe. Certainly the majority of the German people refuse stubbornly to accept the consequences of the defeat inflicted upon them as more than a temporary check to their strength and supremacy among civilised people. They are so conscious of their own genius in organisation and industry, so confident in the future destiny of the German folk, so sure that their increasing population is bound to prevail over the weaker and dwindling stock of a nation like France, that they are only waiting for the time when, as they think, the inevitable laws of history will carry them in a tide over the present barriers that have been imposed upon them. Meanwhile, they rage at the humiliations they have to suffer, and brood over the injustice of their present condition. Their sense of being the victims of world injustice is a fixed idea or what, in the present jargon of psycho-analysis, is called a “complex.” It is not less dangerous for that, and to regain their liberty of action, freedom from foreign interference with foreign occupation, and release from immense burdens of foreign debt, there are large numbers of Germans who would willingly die with a racial patriotism and passion exalted above all self-interest. Many old women in Germany would like to march with sharpened scissors behind the German troops. Many young girls would gladly go with their hatpins to stab a Frenchman or two in revenge for the Ruhr. Europe will not be safe until that racial hatred between France and Germany has died down or has been killed by a new spirit and a community of interests. Herriot, the democratic Prime Minister of France, was the first to offer a truce to that hatred, and the new spirit has begun to work a little on both sides of the Rhine, though it is a delicate growth which will need great encouragement. In Hungary, and to a less extent in Austria, racial passion is also smouldering, and could be quickly fanned into flame. The Hungarians are a proud fighting race, who feel themselves superior to neighbours like the Serbs and Roumanians occupying some of their ancient territory. “It will not always be like this,” some of them told me. “Something will break, and we shall move. Not all the tears of women will put out the red flame of that future war of liberation when we shall join hands with our kinsfolk and smash these artificial boundaries imposed by a scandalous peace.”
The Balkans are still a stewpot of racial passions and rivalries—Serbs, Bulgars, Montenegrins, Albanians, Roumanians, Greeks and Turks all snarling at each other, all waiting until the Great Powers get to grips again, or are too busy to intervene between these smaller nations.
THE RACIAL AMBITIONS OF RUSSIA
Russia is becoming race-conscious again. Now that the revolutionary period seems to have ended, and internal peace has been established, the Soviet Government is thinking far more racially than communistically. Communism no longer exists in Russia as a strict system. It died before Lenin, who re-established the right of private trading and private property with certain reservations which do not affect the private citizens within the state to any appreciable extent.
The Communistic propaganda is reserved mainly for foreign consumption, in order to create trouble in other states and especially to weaken those countries which are most antagonistic to the Russian form of government. Men like Radek and Tchicherin, whom I interviewed in Moscow at the time of famine, were beginning to think again of Russia as a world power. All their talk was of that. They are Russians before they are Communists. They would be glad to see a world revolution, and their agents are doing what they can to provoke it, but mainly because they see the Slav race rising above that economic ruin and taking advantage of its weakness. Their eyes are turned to Riga, outside their present boundaries, as an open port when Petrograd is blocked by ice. They have no love for those new Baltic nations—Latvia, Esthonia, and Lithuania—which gained their independence at the expense of Russia. They hate the Poles, and the new war, if it happens in Europe, will begin when Germany and Russia try to join hands across the prostrate body of Poland.
The Germans are already in close commercial alliance with Russia. German ploughs, railway engines, manufactured goods, are being exchanged for Russian wheat, flax, furs, oil, and diamonds. The Russians do not love the Germans, but they will co-operate with them in self interest. A German revolution would please them mightily. But German Imperialism will not be spurned by Soviet Russia, certainly not by Tchicherin and his friends, if a military and trade alliance would result in the downfall of Poland, followed perhaps by the capture of Constantinople and the way through Serbia to the Adriatic.
The old dreams of Pan-Slavism are stirring again among those who control the destiny of Russia. Radek, the chief propagandist, sees red in the direction of India and Afghanistan. The downfall of the British “Raj” in India might be followed by a Russian Empire in the East.
THE DARK HORSE
Russia is the Dark Horse of Europe. It is impossible to foretell what road it will travel. Above the mass of ignorant and patient peasants desiring peace in their fields and praying God for good harvests, there is a crowd of nimble-minded men holding the machinery of power: ambitious, cynical, with some cause, of the high moralities preached by other powers, unscrupulous and adventurous. Some of them, in my opinion most of them, are not personally ambitious for gold or luxury or greed. They lead austere lives. Tchicherin spends most of his days and nights in two little rooms barely furnished. Radek has an untidy old den crammed with books along a whitewashed corridor in the Kremlin. Most of them, I believe, have a sincere desire to improve the conditions of their people, to eliminate disease, to give them a decent share of human happiness. They were relentless against their political enemies, like all leaders of revolution who live in terror of reaction, and by their terror are made cruel. They have an Oriental indifference for human life, and they believe that a life is forfeited by crime or political hostility to their way of rule. Many of these men were not personally responsible for the atrocities which happened in the fever and frightfulness of revolutionary madness. They are intellectual, highly educated, irreligious men, devoid of sentiment, suspicious of each other, with a cold passionate hatred for the old régime, and with a fanatical belief in their own form of tyranny, a contempt for the ignorance of the peasant mind, and a detestation of the Orthodox Church and all forms of Christian faith, as many of the recent Ministers of France, including Clemenceau, Millerand and Briand were in earlier days. They are amused by the fear of “Bolshevism” in other countries. It flatters their vanity and appeals to their sense of humour. Many are for the most part “realists” who believe in Force as the only argument, or, failing force, guile. They are not, as a class, pacifists or humanitarians, nor do they trouble to give any lip service to their ideals. In the Red Army, officered by many sons of the old _bourgeoisie_, they have a weapon which is not negligible in training or equipment. As ambassadors and agents they have men whose intellectual abilities are more than a match for the elder statesmen of Europe and not bound by the same code of honour because the foundations of their faith are different. Many of their officials and agents are honest and patriotic men, desiring to serve their people in a time of dreadful uncertainty, and all over Russia there are men and women—millions of them—who accept the Soviet Government as something better than Tsardom, however bad, and, while hostile or scornful secretly to the “eyewash” of Soviet propaganda, give their labour ungrudgingly for the sake of Russia and the reconstruction of its life after war and revolution. They believe in peace, but many would fight for Russian liberty against Royalist invaders. They even give the Soviet Government the credit of good intention towards the people, and believe in the “idealism” of Lenin and the “genius” of Trotsky, and the patriotism of other men who in the outside world are painted as devils incarnate.
THE RUSSIAN FOLK
It is false to think that the majority of the Russian people are living in a state of sullen subjection under a hated tyranny. There are many who think so and suffer the agony of despair. But as far as I could see and learn the ordinary mass of people, peasants, artisans, and the Soviet workers, do not trouble about politics, and dislike the Government and its petty laws and restrictions neither more nor less than most primitive peoples dislike the far off power that imposes taxes, issues disagreeable bye-laws and regulations, and makes a mess of things from their point of view. Far from Moscow and its Soviets the village folk in Russia carry on much as they did under Tsardom, with more land, less flogging, the same amount of lice and periodical famine. Moscow may say: “Religion is the opium of the people,” but the Russian peasants cross themselves before their ikons and pray God for daily bread. The “_Pravda_” may publish many lies about England or the United States, and prophesy world revolution once a week, but not many of the hundred million Russian peasants ever read the “_Pravda_.” They sow their seed, plough and reap, scrape a hard life out of the earth, love their children, beat their wives at times, die in great numbers with Oriental resignation to the Will of God in times of famine and disease.
Greater than the little ruthless men in Moscow, or the fanatics there, or the idealists, or the atheistic “intellectuals” is the life in the fields of Russia with its obedience to the laws of nature—very cruel sometimes—its family love, its faith, its superstition, its dignity, labour, courage, simplicity, and ordinary human passions. The danger to Europe and the world is the control of Russian manhood by a small group whose orders must be obeyed because they hold the power of life and death, and in any case are the leaders of the Russian race for weal or woe, in peace or war.
Ramsay MacDonald’s attempt to formulate a Treaty with the Soviet states of Russia was, I believe, inspired by the hope that the official recognition of that form of government would lead to its modification on more liberal lines and to trade relations by which a hundred million people might be brought back to the commonwealth of Europe. It was also no doubt a sop to the extremists behind his own party, who have a sentimental sympathy with the Russian revolution and believe that Communism, whatever its failure in Russia, is the ideal towards which humanity should strive.
I agree with Ramsay MacDonald and his followers that it is fantastic to expect repayment of the Russian war debt, amounting to £1,000,000,000 to Great Britain alone, and that instead of keeping these mythical figures in the national account book they may as well be wiped out as a bad debt belonging to a bad past. But Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, honest as he is in many ways, was deceiving himself and his followers, as well as the Russian people, when he promised them the possibility of a great loan. There is no possibility of any such loan, first, because England cannot spare that capital and, second, because Russia offers no security which would be accepted by business men. While the Russian leaders are still encouraging world revolution, fermenting social strife in many countries, and declaring war on capital outside their own frontiers, it is idle to think that English capitalists will entrust their money to the Russian Government. It would be like fond parents throwing their babes to the wolves at the amiable suggestion of the village idiot.
The hostility of the Liberals and Conservatives was so united against the proposal of a guaranteed loan to Russia that Ramsay MacDonald and his Labour Government were faced with certain defeat. This was only accelerated by a few days when the Labour Government fell, on October 8th of this year, on a vote of censure for withdrawing a prosecution against a Communist writer for a seditious article inspired by the Red propaganda of Moscow.
Although in my opinion the guarantee of a loan to Russia is not within the bounds of business common sense so long as the Soviet Government refuses to obey the usual moralities of international relations, I am convinced that England and other countries will be ill advised if they refuse to “recognise” the present rulers of Russia—“recognition” not meaning approval—or to encourage trade relations with them independent of national loans. As long as Russia is isolated and ostracised the Soviet tyranny will be maintained, a great potential market will be closed to the world, and Red propaganda will work in an underground way to promote revolution in Europe and Asia. But with recognition, which means diplomatic intercourse, the enterprise of foreign traders and the admission of Russia to the League of Nations, the Russian people would be brought back to the family of nations, and it is possible, even likely, that their present rulers would be influenced, modified and liberalised by the general pressure of world opinion. What Russia needs as a moral cure is the fresh air of international intercourse.
THE CLASH OF COLOUR