Part 3
Now it is to Germany you must not utter one word of toleration or even fair play. I am not counselling the abandonment of the just measure of our national rights as against either of these two countries, but they are both great nations. They are both nations that have contributed richly of the things that make for the elevation, for the happiness, for the splendour of mankind. If Germany is the land of Bismarck with its blood and iron, all Protestants will remember that she is also the land of Luther and the Reformation. If she fought in the late war for four years to establish a military domination in Europe, she fought for thirty years with enduring valour and much suffering to establish the freedom of conscience in Europe. She has given to the world great literature, great painters, great philosophers, great explorers in all the continents of thought. She is the land of unrivalled song. Even in the middle of the bloody conflict with Germany, every Sunday we praised God in our churches to the notes of German music. Let us give credit for these things in our efforts to reconstitute the reign of goodwill. And if we feel angry with France, let us remember her dazzling array of great writers, her gigantic struggles for liberty, the penetrating imagination devoted to scientific research, which has brought incalculable blessings to humanity. Let us not judge France by the fussy little men that give expression to her petulance in the fits of temper that overtake every nation, but by the great men who have given noble expression to her immortal soul. France is the land of Victor Hugo, of Pascal, of Renan, and many another teacher who has taken humanity by the hand along the upward road.
Everything depends on a consistent, determined, continuous inculcation of the principles and the ideal of goodfellowship, between nations. Goodwill on earth means to think well of and dwell on the best side of others, and goodwill on earth and peace have been linked together. Without the one you will not have the other. Let us, therefore, cultivate the spirit of brotherhood amongst men. The church must appeal to the noblest sentiments of the human heart. Mankind can only be redeemed by an appeal to those higher instincts. Not by an appeal to ignoble fear. War means terror, war means death, war means anguish. That will not prevent war, and never has. Man is the most fearless of God's creatures, and when his passions are roused there is no fear that will restrain him. The fire of his passion burns the restraints of self-preservation like bands of tow, so that fear will not restrain the nations and make peace among them. War destroys trade, it brings unemployment. Look at all the losses, reckoning them up in cash. That will not prevent war: it never has. Selfish interests have a means of deluding themselves. Greed has a blind side. Do not trust to selfishness and selfish interest to ensure peace. Selfishness will ensure nothing which is worth keeping in the world. Selfishness pays good dividends, but it wastes capital. The nation or the individual that makes self-love the managing-director of the soul will end in bankruptcy--bankruptcy of respect, bankruptcy of ideals--bankruptcy of honour--bankruptcy of friendships. What is it that Germany is suffering from now? Her great tragedy is not her indemnity, not even her gigantic casualties, not even the destruction of her trade. The one great tragedy of Germany is that she has lost the respect of mankind. It affects her trade, it affects her business, it makes it difficult for her to climb to the pitch whence she fell. The rope is gone. She has done things of which she herself is now ashamed. Her people--I can see it when I meet them--are ashamed. That is the tragedy. They are a gallant people, they are a brave people, they fought bravely, but they are broken-spirited. Why? They have lost their self-respect because they have done something that they know in their hearts was wrong. These are the things that have to be taught to nations.
A public opinion must be worked up that will be strong enough to sustain international right. No law is possible without an active public opinion for its enforcement, least of all international law. Without it the League of Nations is a farce. You might as well have a wooden cannon; however splendidly mounted it may be, however imposing its appearance, every one knows that the moment it is fired it will burst. Unless the world is taught to respect its authority, it will become a butt of derision. It is no use keeping up pretences. Pretences never delude events. The League of Nations may gather together representatives of all the great powers of the earth, and yet it may be a futile, barren, costly nothing unless it has behind it the spirit of the people who constitute those nations. The real danger of the moment is lest the League of Nations should become a mere make-believe, whilst the same old intrigues, the same old schemes, the same old international greed and hatred, should be working their will freely outside. The decision of the League of Nations has been, within the last two or three years, openly flouted by a member of that league, a member which owes its national independence to the treaty which founded that league. Another nation, one of the principal authors of the league, refuses to refer a question in which is it concerned, and in which Europe is concerned, to the arbitrament of the league. Both these nations prefer to resort to force. The rest of the world looks on feebly with indifference, accepting the rebuff to their league in each case. Why? Because there is no public opinion in the recalcitrant countries to bring pressure to bear on the respective governments, and there is no public opinion strong enough outside to exercise the necessary insistence.
The churches alone can remedy this. There ought to be an international movement of all the churches, Catholic and Protestant, Protestant and Catholic. I know it is difficult to compass. The divisions in Christendom are too often fatal to common action for the attainment of common aims. They ought to be overcome. They must be overcome. There was a time in the Middles Ages when religion exercised a direct as well as an indirect influence in the domain of government and social relations. It helped to win for Englishmen their great charter. It gradually emancipated the serfs. It preserved the peace of Europe many a time when it was gravely imperilled by the quarrels of kings. In the days of Puritanism, and the days of the Covenant, the partnership between religion and politics won for us the two great boons of parliamentary liberty and liberty of conscience. When Methodism spurred the conscience of England, its influence was felt in the political movement that emancipated the slaves throughout the British Empire.
That was one of the greatest feats of disinterested righteousness ever exhibited by a nation. The tasks awaiting religion to-day in the sphere of government are even greater--emancipation of the worker from the tyrannies of economic greed, the saving of the nation from the curse of alcohol, and the spreading of the angels' message heard on the hills of Bethlehem until the obdurate heart of man shall at last re-echo it: "Peace on earth and goodwill amongst men."
II
EUROPE STILL ARMING
Marshal Foch once told me that he considered the German army of 1914 the finest army the world ever saw, in numbers, organisation, training, and equipment.
What set that army in motion?
Much has been written and spoken as to the origin of the Great War, and as to who and what was responsible for so overwhelming a cataclysm. No one ever believed that it was the assassination of a royal archduke. Some said it was the working out of the pan-German scheme to rule the earth; some contended it was the German fear of the growing power of Russia, the nervous apprehension of what looked like an encircling movement by Russia, France and Britain.
The great French marshal's dictum is the real explanation. Unless due weight is given to this outstanding fact the diplomatic muddle of July, 1914, becomes unintelligible.
Were it not that the German army was more perfect and more potent than either the French or the Russian army--were it not that every German officer was convinced that the German military machine was superior to all its rivals--there would have been no war, whatever emperors, diplomatists, or statesmen said, thought, or intended.
All nations have their ambitions, but they are not tempted to impose them upon their neighbours if the hazard is too obviously great. But a sense of overpowering force behind national aims is a constant incitement to recklessness, to greed, and to ambitious patriotism.
The more one examines, in the growing calm, the events of July, 1914, the more one is impressed with the shrinking of the nominal rulers of the attacking empires as they approached the abyss, and with the relentless driving onward of the military organisation behind these terror-stricken dummies.
Navies are essentially defensive weapons. No capital in the world can be captured by navies alone, and no country can be annexed or invaded by a fleet. But armies are grabbing machines. A transcendent army has always led to aggression. No country can resist the lure of an easy military triumph paraded before its eyes for two successive generations.
The inference is an obvious one. To ensure peace on earth nations must disarm their striking forces. Without disarmament, pacts, treaties, and covenants are of no avail. They are the paper currency of diplomacy. That is the reason why all the friends of peace are filled with despair when they see nations still arming and competing in armies whilst trusting to mere words and signatures to restrain the irresistible impetus of organised force.
A statistical survey of European armies to-day is calculated to cause alarm. Europe has not learnt the lesson of the war. It has rather drawn a wrong inference from that calamity. There are more men under arms in Europe to-day than there were in 1913-14, with none of the justification or excuse which could be pleaded in those days.
In pre-war times the statesmen of each country could make a parliamentary case for their military budgets by calling attention to the menace of prodigious armies across their frontiers. Germany and Austria built up great armaments because their frontiers were open to the attack of two great military powers who had engaged to pool their resources in the event of war. France and Russia raised huge armies because Germany possessed the most redoubtable army in the world, and could rely in the case of war upon the assistance of the not inconsiderable forces of the Austrian empire. And both Austria and France had always the uncertain factor of Italy, with her army of 3,000,000, to reckon with.
But since the war these mutual excuses no longer exist. The two great military empires of Central Europe have disappeared. Germany, which before the war had a peace establishment of 800,000 men and reserves running into millions, has to-day a total army of 100,000 men--about one-third the size of the Polish army. The formidable German equipment which for four years pounded the cities and villages of northern France to dust is either destroyed or scattered for display amongst the towns and villages of the victors. The Austrian army, which had in 1913-14 a peace establishment of 420,000 men and a reserve of two or three millions of trained men, has to-day been reduced to a tiny force of 30,000 men.
In spite of these facts France has still an army of 736,000 men now under arms, with a trained reserve of two or three millions more. She is strengthening and developing her air force as if she feared--or contemplated--an immediate invasion. In 1914 France had an air force of 400 aëroplanes; to-day she has 1,152.[1] But numbers signify little. The size, the power, and the purpose of the machines signify much. Amongst the 1,152 air machines of to-day will be found bombers of a destructiveness such as was not dreamt of in 1914.
Should human folly drift once more into war these preparations are full of evil omen as to the character of that conflict. A single bomb dropped from one of the new bombers contains more explosive material than one hundred of those carried by the old type. And the size of the machine and of its bombs is growing year by year. Where is it to stop? And what is it all for? Where is the enemy? Where is the menace which demands such gigantic military developments? Not one of the neighbours of France has to-day a force which reaches one-fourth the figures of her formidable army. Germany no longer affords a decent pretext. The population of Germany is equal to the aggregate population of Poland, Rumania, Jugo-Slavia, and Czecho-Slovakia, but her army barely numbers one-seventh of the aggregate peace establishment of these four countries. Rumania alone, with a population of 15,000,000, has an army twice the size of that allowed by the Treaty of Versailles to Germany with her population of 60,000,000. These countries have in addition to their standing armies reserve forces of millions of trained men, whilst the young men of Germany are no longer permitted to train in the use of arms. Her military equipment is destroyed, and her arsenals and workshops are closely inspected by Allied officers lest a fresh equipment should be clandestinely produced. An army of 700,000 is, therefore, not necessary in order to keep Germany within bounds.
The only other powerful army in Europe is the Russian army. It is difficult to gather any reliable facts about Russia. The mists that arise from that unhealthy political and economic swamp obscure and distort all vision. The statistics concerning her army vary according to the point of view of the person who cites them. The latest figure given by the Russians themselves is 800,000. On paper that indicates as formidable a force as that possessed by the French. But the events of the past few years show clearly that the Russian army is powerful only for defence, and that it is valueless for purposes of invasion. It has neither the transport that gives mobility nor the artillery that makes an army redoubtable in attack. The Polish invasion of 1923 was a comedy, and as soon as the Poles offered the slightest resistance the Bolsheviks ran back to their fastnesses without striking a Parthian blow at their pursuers. The state of Russian arsenals and factories under Bolshevism is such that any attempt to re-equip these armies must fail. The Russian army, therefore, affords no justification for keeping up armaments in Europe on the present inflated scale. The fact is that Europe is thoroughly frightened by its recent experience, and, like all frightened things, does not readily listen to reason, and is apt to resort to expedients which aggravate the evils which have terrified it.
Militarism has reduced it to its present plight, and to save itself from a similar disaster in future it has become more militarist than ever. Every little state bristles with guns to scare off invaders. Meanwhile no country in Europe pays its way, except Britain, with her reduced army and navy. But by means of loans and inflated currencies they all, even the smallest of them, contrive to maintain larger armies than Frederick the Great or the Grand Monarque ever commanded in their most triumphant years. And the cost of armaments to-day has grown vastly out of proportion to the numbers of the units that compose them. France--in many ways the richest country in Europe--displays a gaping and a growing rent in her national finance which has to be patched up by paper. The deficit grows in spite of the fact that a large part of her army is quartered on Germany to the detriment of reparations, and that the German contribution conceals much of the cost of that large army.
A good deal of the borrowing is attributable to the cost of repairing her devastated area, but the burden of maintaining so huge an army is responsible for a considerable share of the deficiency. The economic recovery of Europe is seriously retarded by the cost of the new militarism. The old continent is throwing to the dogs of war with both hands the bread that should feed her children. One day those dogs will, in their arrogant savagery, turn upon the children and rend them.
_Algeciras, December 26th, 1922._
FOOTNOTE:
[1] 1,152 refers to when this chapter was written, _i. e._, January 6th, 1923. The figure has increased since then.
III
THE ERUPTION IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
The shores of the Mediterranean have from time immemorial been the scene of eruptions and earthquakes. They generally break out without warning. Sometimes they are devastating in their effects, destroying life and property over wide areas and on a vast scale. Sometimes they provide a brilliant spectacular display, terrifying in appearance, but not causing much destruction. To which of these two categories does the last eruption of Mussolini belong? To drop hot cinders in the Balkans is a dangerous experiment. The soil is everywhere soaked with naphtha and it floats about in uncharted pools and runlets which easily catch fire. A cinder flung from Vienna started a conflagration which spread over continents. That was only nine years ago. The ground is still hot--the smoke blinds and stifles. You cannot see clearly or breathe freely. Now and again there is a suspicious ruddiness in the banks of smoke which proves that the fire is not yet out. And yet there are statesmen flinging burning faggots about with reckless swagger.
The temper of Europe may be gauged from the reception accorded to these heedless pyrotechnics on the part of national leaders by their own countrymen. Every time it occurs, whether in France, Italy or Turkey, and whether it be Poincaré, Mussolini, or Mustapha Kemal who directs the show, applause greets the exhibition. I remember the first days of the Great War. There was not a belligerent capital where great and enthusiastic crowds did not parade the streets to cheer for war. In those days men did not know what war meant. Their conception of it was formed from the pictures of heroic--and always victorious--feats, hung in national galleries and reproduced in the form of the cheap chromos, engravings, and prints, which adorn the walls in every cottage throughout most lands. The triumphant warriors on horseback with the gleaming eye and the flourishing sabre are their own countrymen; the poor vanquished under the crashing hoofs are the foe. Hurrah for more pictures! The Crown Prince denies that he ever used the phrase "This jolly war." His denial ought to be accepted in the absence of better proof than is yet forthcoming as to the statement ever having been made. But the phrase represented the temper of millions in those fateful days. It used to be said that in wars one lot cheered and the other fought. But the cheering mobs who filled the streets in August were filling the trenches in September, and multitudes were filling graves ere the year was out. But when they cheered they had no realisation of the actualities of war. They idealised it. They only saw it in pictures.
But the cheerers of to-day know what war means. France lost well over a million lives in the last fight. Italy lost 600,000, and there are men in every workshop in both countries who know something of the miseries as well as the horrors of war and can tell those who do not. What, then, accounts for the readiness, at the slightest provocation, to rush into all the same wretchedness over again? The infinite capacity of mankind for deluding itself. Last time, it is true, it was a ghastly affair. This time it will be an easy victory. Then you had to fight a perfectly armed Germany, or Austria; now it is a very small affair indeed--in one case a disarmed Germany which cannot fight, or, in the other case, a miserable little country like Greece with no Army or Navy to talk of. So hurrah for the guns! A bloodless victory, except, of course, to the vanquished. More pictures for the walls to show our children what terrible people we are when provoked!
This episode may end peaceably, but it was a risk to take, and quite an unnecessary risk under the circumstances of the case. Italy was indignant, and naturally indignant, at the murder of her emissaries in cold blood on Greek territory and, although it took place in a well-known murder area--on the Albanian border where comitadjis and other forms of banditti reign--still, Greece was responsible for giving adequate protection to all the Boundary Commissioners who were operating within her frontiers. Italy is, therefore, entitled to demand stern reparation for this outrage. This Greece promptly concedes. Not merely has Greece shown her readiness to pay a full indemnity, but she has offered to salute the Italian flag by way of making amends for the offence involved to the Italian nation in this failure to protect Italian officers transacting legitimate business on Greek soil. Mussolini's answer to the Greek acknowledgment of liability is to bombard a defenceless town, kill a few unarmed citizens, and enter into occupation of a Greek island. Does any one imagine, if the incident had occurred on French soil, and the French Government had displayed the same willingness to express regret and offer reparation, that, without further parley, he would have bombarded Ajaccio? Or, had it been Britain, would he have shelled Cowes and occupied the Isle of Wight? But Greece has no Navy. That, I suppose, alters the merits of the case! Force is still the supreme arbiter of right and wrong in international affairs in Europe. It is worth noting how a new code of international law is coming into existence since the War. The French armies invade a neighbour's territory, occupy it, establish martial law, seize and run the railways, regulate its Press, deport tens of thousands of its inhabitants, imprison or shoot down all who resist, and then proclaim that this is not an act of war. It is only a peaceful occupation to enforce rights under a peace treaty. Signor Mussolini shells a town belonging to a country with whom he is at peace, and forcibly occupies part of its territory, and then solemnly declares that it is not an act of war, but just a reasonable measure of diplomatic precaution. Once force decides the issue it also settles the rules. There was a time when English and Spaniards fought each other in the West Indies whilst their Governments at home were ostensibly at peace. And French and English fought in India without any diplomatic rupture between Versailles and St. James's. But in those days these lands were very remote and the control of the centre over events at these distances was intermittent and occasionally feeble. And sometimes it suited Governments to ignore what was taking place on the fringe of Empire. But even in those days an attack on the homeland meant war, and it would mean war to-day were the attacked countries not powerless. I have heard it said that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. There is no doubt one international law for the strong and another for the weak.