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^ 

'HE  WAR 

IATWILL 

ADWAR 


H.QWELLS 


London  : 
FranJ(&0cil  ^bhmr^Lion  (auri 


THE  WAR  THAT 
WILL  END  WAR 


THE  WAR  THAT 
WILL  END  WAR 


BY 


H.  G.  WELLS 

Author  of  "THE  WAR  OF  THE  WORLDS," 
"THE  WAR  IN  THE  AIR,"  ETC. 


LONDON 

FRANK  &  CECIL  PALMER 
RED  LION  COURT,  E.C. 


First  Published  October,  1914 
Second  Impression  October,  1914 
Third  Impression  October^  1914 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  WHY  BRITAIN  WENT  TO  WAR  7 

II.  THE  SWORD  OF  PEACE  14 

III.  HANDS  OFF  THE  PEOPLE'S  FOOD    -  20 

IV.  CONCERNING    MR.     MAXIMILIAN 

CRAFT    -  29 

V.  THE  MOST  NECESSARY  MEASURES 

IN  THE  WORLD  37 

VI.  THE  NEED   OF  A  NEW  MAP   OF 

EUROPE  46 

VII.  THE  OPPORTUNITY  OF  LIBERALISM  55 

VIII.  THE  LIBERAL  FEAR  OF  RUSSIA  63 

IX.  AN    APPEAL    TO    THE    AMERICAN 

PEOPLE  73 

X.  COMMON  SENSE  AND  THE  BALKAN 

STATES  82 

XL  THE  WAR  OF  THE  MIND      -  90 


I. 

WHY  BRITAIN  WENT 
TO  WAR 

A  CLEAR  EXPOSITION  OF  WHAT  WE  ARE  FIGHTING  FOR 

THE  cause  of  a  war  and  the  object  of  a  war 
are  not  necessarily  the  same.     The  cause  of  this 
war  was  the  invasion  of  Luxemburg  and  Belgium. 
We   declared   war  because  we  were    bound    by  | 
treaty  to  declare  war.     We  have   been   pledged  , 
to   protect   the   integrity   of   Belgium   since   the 
kingdom  of  Belgium  has  existed.     If  the  Germans  ' 
had    not    broken    the    guarantees    they    shared  j 
with    us    to    respect    the    neutrality    of    these  [ 
little  States  we  should  certainly  not  be  at  war  J 
at    the    present    time.     The    fortified    eastern 
frontier  of  France  could  have  been  held  against 
any  attack  without  any  help  from  us.     We  had 
no  obligations  and  no  interests  there.     We  were 
pledged  to  France  simply  to  protect  her  from   , 
a   naval   attack   by   sea,   but   the   Germans   had 
already  given   us   an   undertaking  not   to   make 
such  an  attack.     It  was  our  Belgian  treaty  and 
the   sudden   outrage   on    Luxemburg   that   pre- 
cipitated us  into"  this  conflict.     No  Power  in  the 
world  would  have  respected  our  Flag  or  accepted 
our  national  word  again  if  we  had  not  fought. 
So  much  for  the  immediate  cause  of  the  war. 

But  now  we  come  to  the  object  of  this  war.    \ 
We  began  to  fight  because  our  honour  and  our 


8     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

pledge  obliged  us ;  but  so  soon  as  we  are  embarked 
upon  the  fighting  we  have  to  ask  ourselves  what 
is  the  end  at  which  our  fighting  aims.  We  cannot 
simply  put  the  Germans  back  over  the  Belgian 
border  and  tell  them  not  to  do  it  again.  We 
find  ourselves  at  war  with  that  huge  military 
empire  with  which  we  have  been  doing  our  best 
to  keep  the  peace  since  first  it  rose  upon  the  ruins 
of  French  Imperialism  in  1871.  And  war  is 
mortal  conflict.  We  have  now  either  to  destroy 
or  be  destroyed.  We  have  not  sought  this 
reckoning,  we  have  done  our  utmost  to  avoid  it ; 
but  now  that  it  has  been  forced  upon  us  it  is 
imperative  that  it  should  be  a  thorough  reckoning. 
This  is  a  war  that  touches  every  man  and  every 
home  in  each  of  the  combatant  countries.  It  is 
a  war,  as  Mr.  Sidney  Low  has  said,  not  of  soldiers 
but  of  whole  peoples.  And  it  is  a  war  that  must 
be  fought  to  such  a  finish  that  every  man  in  each 
of  the  nations  engaged  understands  what  has 
happened.  There  can  be  no  diplomatic  settle- 
ment that  will  leave  German  Imperialism  free 
to  explain  away  its  failure  to  its  people  and  start 
new  preparations.  We  have  to  go  on  until  we 
are  absolutely  done  for,  or  until  the  Germans 
as  a  people  know  that  they  are  beaten,  and  are 
convinced  that  they  have  had  enough  of  war. 

We  are  fighting  Germany.  But  we  are  fighting 
without  any  hatred  of  the  German  people.  We 
do  not  intend  to  destroy  either  their  freedom  or 
their  unity.  But  we  have  to  destroy  an  evil 
system  of  government  and  the  mental  and  material 
corruption  that  has  got  hold  of  the  German 


WHY   BRITAIN   WENT   TO   WAR  n 

imagination  and  taken  possession  of  German  liism 
We  have  to  smash  the   Prussian    Imperialism  in- 
thoroughly   as   Germany   in    1871    smashed   the" 
rotten  Imperialism  of  Napoleon  III.     And  also 
we  have  to  learn  from  the  failure  of  that  victory 
to  avoid  a  vindictive  triumph. 

This  Prussian  Imperialism  has  been  for  forty 
years  an  intolerable  nuisance  in  the  earth.  Ever 
since  the  crushing  of  the  French  in  1871  the  evil 
thing  has  grown  and  cast  its  spreading  shadow 
over  Europe.  Germany  has  preached  a  pro- 
paganda of  ruthless  force  and  political  materialism 
to  the  whole  uneasy  world.  "  Blood  and  iron," 
she  boasted,  was  the  cement  of  her  unity,  and 
almost  as  openly  the  little,  mean,  aggressive 
statesmen  and  professors  who  have  guided  her 
destinies  to  this  present  conflict  have  professed 
cynicism  and  an  utter  disregard  of  any  ends  but 
nationally  selfish  ends,  as  though  it  were  religion. 
Evil  just  as  much  as  good  may  be  made  into  a 
Cant.  Physical  and  moral  brutality  has  indeed 
become  a  cant  in  the  German  mind,  and  spread 
from  Germany  throughout  the  world.  I  could 
wish  it  were  possible  to  say  that  English  and 
American  thought  had  altogether  escaped  its 
corruption.  But  now  at  last  we  shake  ourselves 
free  and  turn  upon  this  boasting  wickedness  to 
rid  the  world  of  it.  The  whole  world  is  tired 
of  it.  And  "  Gott  !  " — Gott  so  perpetually 
invoked — Gott  indeed  must  be  very  tired  of  it 

This  is  already  the  vastest  war  in  history.  It 
is  war  not  of  nations,  but  of  mankind.  It  is  a 
war  to  exorcise  a  world-madness  and  end  an  age. 


THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

8 

I  :  .id  note  how  this  Cant  of  public  rottenness 
%j  had  its  secret  side.  The  man  who  preaches 
cynicism  in  his  own  business  transactions  had 
better  keep  a  detective  and  a  cash  register  for 
his  clerks ;  and  it  is  the  most  natural  thing  in  the 
world  to  find  that  this  system,  which  is  outwardly 
vile,  is  also  inwardly  rotten.  Beside  the  Kaiser 
stands  the  firm  of  Krupp,  a  second  head  to  the 
State  ;  on  the  very  steps  of  the  throne  is  the 
armament  trust,  that  organised  scoundrelism 
which  has,  in  its  relentless  propaganda  for  profit, 
mined  all  the  security  of  civilisation,  brought 
up  and  dominated  a  Press,  ruled  a  national 
literature,  and  corrupted  universities. 

Consider  what  the  Germans  have  been,  and 
what  the  Germans  can  be.  Here  is  a  race  which 
has  for  its  chief  fault  docility  and  a  belief  in 
teachers  and  rulers.  For  the  rest,  as  all  who 
know  it  intimately  will  testify,  it  is  the  most 
amiable  of  peoples.  It  is  naturally  kindly,  com- 
fort-loving, child-loving,  musical,  artistic,  intelli- 
gent. In  countless  respects  German  homes  and 
towns  and  countrysides  are  the  most  civilised  in  the 
world.  But  these  people  did  a  little  lose  their  heads 
after  the  victories  of  the  sixties  and  seventies,  and 
there  began  a  propaganda  of  national  vanity  and 
national  ambition.  It  was  organised  by  a  stupidly 
forceful  statesman,  it  was  fostered  by  folly  upon  the 
throne.  It  was  guarded  from  wholesome  criticism 
by  an  intolerant  censorship.  It  never  gave 
sanity  a  chance.  A  certain  patriotic  sentiment- 
ality lent  itself  only  too  readily  to  the  suggestion 
of  the  flatterer,  and  so  there  grew  up  this 


WHY   BRITAIN   WENT   TO   WAR  11 

monstrous  trade  in  weapons.  German  patriotism 
became  an  "  interest,"  the  greatest  of  the  "  in- 
terests." It  developed  a  vast  advertisement 
propaganda.  It  subsidised  Navy  Leagues  and 
Aerial  Leagues,  threatening  the  world.  Man- 
kind, we  saw  too  late,  had  been  guilty  of  an 
incalculable  folly  in  permitting  private  men  to 
make  a  profit  out  of  the  dreadful  preparations 
for  war.  But  the  evil  was  started  ;  the  German 
imagination  was  captured  and  enslaved.  On 
every  other  European  country  that  valued  its 
integrity  there  was  thrust  the  overwhelming 
necessity  to  arm  and  drill — and  still  to  arm  and 
drill.  Money  was  withdrawn  from  education, 
from  social  progress,  from  business  enterprise, 
and  art  and  scientific  research,  and  from  every 
kind  of  happiness ;  life  was  drilled  and  darkened. 

So  that  the  harvest  of  this  darkness  comes  now 
almost  as  a  relief,  and  it  is  a  grim  satisfaction  in 
our  discomforts  that  we  can  at  last  look  across 
the  roar  and  torment  of  battlefields  to  the 
possibility  of  an  organised  peace. 

For  this  is  now  a  war  for  peace. 

It  aims  straight  at  disarmament.  It  aims  at  a 
settlement  that  shall  stop  this  sort  of  thing  for 
ever.  Every  soldier  who  fights  against  Germany 
now  is  a  crusader  against  war.  This,  the  greatest 
of  all  wars,  is  not  just  another  war — it  is  the  last 
war  !  England,  France,  Italy,  Belgium,  Spain, 
and  all  the  little  countries  of  Europe,  are  heartily 
sick  of  war  ;  the  Tsar  has  expressed  a  passionate 
hatred  of  war  ;  the  most  of  Asia  is  unwarlike  ; 
the  United  States  has  no  illusions  about  war. 


12    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

And  never  was  war  begun  so  joylessly,  and  never 
was  war  begun  with  so  grim  a  resolution.  In 
England,  France,  Belgium,  Russia,  there  is  no 
thought  of  glory. 

We  know  we  face  unprecedented  slaughter  and 
agonies ;  we  know  that  for  neither  side  will  there 
be  easy  triumphs  or  prancing  victories.  Already, 
in  that  warring  sea  of  men,  there  is  famine  as 
well  as  hideous  butchery,  and  soon  there  must 
come  disease. 

Can  it  be  otherwise  ? 

We  face,  perhaps,  the  most  awful  winter  that 
mankind  has  ever  faced. 

But  we  English  and  our  allies,  who  did  not 
seek  this  catastrophe,  face  it  with  anger  and 
determination  rather  than  despair. 

Through  this  war  we  have  to  march,  through 
pain,  through  agonies  of  the  spirit  worse  than 
pain,  through  seas  of  blood  and  filth.  We 
English  have  not  had  things  kept  from  us.  We 
know  what  war  is ;  we  have  no  delusions.  We  have 
read  books  that  tell  us  of  the  stench  of  battlefields, 
and  the  nature  of  wounds,  books  that  Germany 
suppressed  and  hid  from  her  people.  And  we 
face  these  horrors  to  make  an  end  of  them. 

There  shall  be  no  more  Kaisers,  there  shall  be 
no  more  Krupps,  we  are  resolved.  That  foolery 
shall  end  ! 

And  not  simply  the  present  belligerents  must 
come  into  the  settlement. 

All  America,  Italy,  China,  the  Scandinavian 
Powers,  must  have  a  voice  in  the  final  readjust- 
ment, and  set  their  hands  to  the  ultimate 


WHY    BRITAIN   WENT   TO   WAR  13 

guarantees.  I  do  not  mean  that  they  need  fire  a 
single  shot  or  load  a  single  gun.  But  they  must 
come  in.  And  in  particular  to  the  United  States 
do  we  look  to  play  a  part  in  that  pacification  of 
the  world  for  which  our  whole  nation  is  working, 
and  for  which,  by  the  thousand,  men  are  now 
laying  down  their  lives. 


II. 
THE  SWORD  OF  PEACE 

"  EVERY  SWORD  THAT  IS  DRAWN  AGAINST  GERMANY 
NOW   IS   A   SWORD   DRAWN   FOR   PEACE." 

Europe  is  at  war  ! 

The  monstrous  vanity  that  was  begotten  by 
the  easy  victories  of  '70  and  '71  has  challenged 
the  world,  and  Germany  prepares  to  reap  the 
harvest  Bismarck  sowed.  That  trampling,  drill- 
ing foolery  in  the  heart  of  Europe,  that  has 
arrested  civilisation  and  darkened  the  hopes  of 
mankind  for  forty  years.  German  Imperialism, 
German  militarism,  has  struck  its  inevitable  blow. 
The  victory  of  Germany  will  mean  the  permanent 
enthronement  of  the  War  God  over  all  human 
affairs.  The  defeat  of  Germany  may  open  the 
way  to  disarmament  and  peace  throughout  the 
earth. 

To  those  who  love  peace  there  can  be  no  other 
hope  in  the  present  conflict  than  the  defeat,  the 
utter  discrediting  of  the  German  legend,  the 
ending  for  good  and  all  of  the  blood  and  iron 
superstition,  of  Krupp,  flag-wagging  Teutonic 
Kiplingism,  and  all  that  criminal,  sham  efficiency 
that  centres  in  Berlin.  Never  was  war  so 
righteous  as  war  against  Germany  now.  Never 
has  any  State  in  the  world  so  clamoured  for 
punishment. 


THE   SWORD   OF   PEACE  15 

But  be  it  remembered  that  Europe's  quarrel 
is  with  the  German  State,  not  with  the  German 
people  ;  with  a  system,  and  not  with  a  race. 
The  older  tradition  of  Germany  is  a  pacific  and 
civilising  tradition.  The  temperament  of  the 
mass  of  German  people  is  kindly,  sane  and  amiable. 
Disaster  to  the  German  Army,  if  it  is  unaccom- 
panied by  any  such  memorable  wrong  as  dis- 
memberment or  intolerable  indignity,  will  mean 
the  restoration  of  the  greatest  people  in  Europe 
to  the  fellowship  of  Western  nations.  The  role 
of  England  in  this  huge  struggle  is  plain  as 
daylight.  We  have  to  fight.  If  only  on  account 
of  the  Luxemburg  outrage  we  have  to  fight. 
If  we  do  not  fight,  England  will  cease  to  be  a 
country  to  be  proud  of  ;  it  will  be  a  dirt-bath 
to  escape  from.  But  it  is  inconceivable  that  we 
should  not  fight.  And  having  fought,  then  in 
the  hour  of  victory  it  will  be  for  us  to  save  the 
liberated  Germans  from  vindictive  treatment, 
to  secure  for  this  great  people  their  right,  as  one 
united  German-speaking  State,  to  a  place  in  the 
sun. 

First  we  have  to  save  ourselves  and  Europe, 
and  then  we  have  to  stand  between  German  on 
the  one  hand  and  the  Cossack  and  revenge  on 
the  other. 

For  my  own  part,  I  do  not  doubt  that  Germany 
and  Austria  are  doomed  to  defeat  in  this  war. 
It  may  not  be  catastrophic  defeat,  though  even 
that  is  possible,  but  it  is  defeat.  There  is  no 
destiny  in  the  stars  and  every  sign  is  false  if  this 
is  not  so. 


16    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

They  have  provoked  an  overwhelming  com- 
bination of  enemies.  They  have  under-rated 
France.  They  are  hampered  by  a  bad  social 
and  military  tradition.  The  German  is  not 
naturally  a  good  soldier ;  he  is  orderly  and 
obedient,  but  he  is  not  nimble  nor  quick-witted  ; 
since  his  sole  considerable  military  achievement, 
his  not  very  lengthy  march  to  Paris  in  1870  and 
'71,  the  conditions  of  modern  warfare  have  been 
almost  completely  revolutionised  and  in  a  direc- 
tion that  subordinates  the  massed  fighting  of 
unintelligent  men  to  the  rapid  initiative  of 
individualised  soldiers.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
since  those  years  of  disaster,  the  Frenchman  has 
learnt  the  lesson  of  humility ;  he  is  prepared 
now  sombrely  for  a  sombre  struggle  ;  his  is  the 
gravity  that  precedes  astonishing  victories.  In 
the  air,  in  the  open  field,  with  guns  and  machines, 
it  is  doubtful  if  anyone  fully  realises  the  supe- 
riority of  his  quality  to  the  German.  This 
sudden  attack  may  take  him  aback  for  a  week  or 
so,  though  I  doubt  even  that,  but  in  the  end  I 
think  he  will  hold  his  own ;  even  without  us  he 
will  hold  his  own,  and  with  us  then  I  venture  to 
prophesy  that  within  three  months  from  now  his 
Tricolour  will  be  over  the  Rhine.  And  even 
suppose  his  line  gets  broken  by  the  first  rush. 
Even  then  I  do  not  see  how  the  Germans  are  to 
get  to  Paris  or  anywhere  near  Paris.  I  do  not 
see  how  against  the  strength  of  the  modern 
defensive  and  the  stinging  power  of  an  intelligent 
enemy  in  retreat,  of  whch  we  had  a  little  fore- 
taste in  South  Africa,  the  exploit  of  Sedan  can 


THE   SWORD   OF   PEACE  17 

be  repeated.  A  retiring  German  army,  on  the 
other  hand,  will  be  far  less  formidable  than  a 
retiring  French  army,  because  it  has  less  "  devil  " 
in  it,  because  it  is  made  up  of  men  taught  to 
obey  in  masses,  because  its  intelligence  is  con- 
centrated in  its  aristocratic  officers,  because  it  is 
dismayed  when  it  breaks  ranks.  The  German 
army  is  everything  the  Conscriptionists  dreamt 
of  making  our  people  ;  it  is,  in  fact,  an  army 
about  twenty  years  behind  the  requirements  of 
contemporary  conditions. 

On  the  Eastern  frontier  the  issue  is  more 
doubtful  because  of  the  uncertainty  of  Russian 
things.  The  peculiar  military  strength  of  Russia, 
a  strength  it  was  not  able  to  display  in  Manchuria, 
lies  in  its  vast  resources  of  mounted  men.  A  set 
invasion  of  Prussia  may  be  a  matter  of  many 
weeks,  but  the  raiding  possibilities  in  Eastern 
Germany  are  enormous.  It  is  difficult  to  guess 
how  far  the  Russian  attack  will  be  guided  by 
intelligence,  and  how  far  Russia  will  blunder, 
but  Russia  will  have  to  blunder  very  disastrously 
indeed  before  she  can  be  put  upon  the  defensive. 
A  Russian  raid  is  far  more  likely  to  threaten 
Berlin  than  a  German  to  reach  Paris. 

Meanwhile  there  is  the  struggle  on  the  sea.  In 
that  I  am  prepared  for  some  rude  shocks.  The 
Germans  have  devoted  an  amount  of  energy  to 
the  creation  of  an  aggressive  navy  that  would 
have  been  spent  more  wisely  in  consolidating 
their  European  position.  It  is  probably  a 
thoroughly  good  navy,  and  ship  for  ship  the 
equal  of  our  own.  But  the  same  lack  of 

B 


18     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

invention,  the  same  relative  uncreativeness  that 
has  kept  the  German  behind  the  Frenchman  in 
things  aerial  has  made  him,  regardless  of  his 
shallow  seas,  follow  our  lead  in  naval  matters, 
and  if  we  have  erred,  and  I  believe  we  have 
erred,  in  overrating  the  importance  of  the  big 
battleship,  the  German  has  at  least  very  obligingly 
fallen  in  with  our  error.  The  safest,  most  effec- 
tive, place  for  the  German  fleet  at  the  present 
time  is  the  Baltic  Sea.  On  this  side  of  the  Kiel 
Canal,  unless  I  overrate  the  powers  of  the  water- 
plane,  there  is  no  safe  harbour  for  it.  If  it  goes 
into  port  anywhere  that  port  can  be  ruined,  and 
the  bottled-up  ships  can  be  destroyed  at  leisure 
by  aerial  bombs.  So  that  if  they  are  on  this  side 
of  the  Kiel  Canal  they  must  keep  the  sea  and 
fight,  if  we  let  them,  before  their  coal  runs  short. 
Battle  in  the  open  sea  in  this  case  is  their  only 
chance.  They  will  fight  against  odds,  and  with 
every  prospect  of  a  smashing,  albeit  we  shall 
certainly  have  to  pay  for  that  victory  in  ships  and 
men.  In  the  Baltic  we  shall  not  be  able  to  get 
at  them  without  the  participation  of  Denmark, 
and  they  may  have  a  considerable  use  against 
Russia.  But  in  the  end  even  there  mine  and 
aeroplane  and  destroyer  should  do  their  work. 

So  I  reckon  that  Germany  will  be  held  east  and 
west,  and  that  she  will  get  her  fleet  practically 
destroyed.  We  ought  also  to  be  able  to  sweep 
her  shipping  off  the  seas,  and  lower  her  flag  for 
ever  in  Africa  and  Asia  and  the  Pacific.  All  the 
probabilities,  it  seems  to  me,  point  to  that. 
There  is  no  reason  whv  Italv  should  not  stick  to 


THE    SWORD   OF   PEACE  19 

her  present  neutrality,  and  there  is  considerable 
inducement  close  at  hand  for  both  Denmark  and 
Japan  to  join  in,  directly  they  are  convinced  of 
the  failure  of  the  first  big  rush  on  the  part  of 
Germany.  All  these  issues  will  be  more  or  less 
definitely  decided  within  the  next  two  or  three 
months.  By  that  time  I  believe  German  Impe- 
rialism will  be  shattered,  and  it  may  be  possible 
to  anticipate  the  end  of  the  armaments  phase  of 
European  history.  France,  Italy,  England,  and 
all  the  smaller  Powers  of  Europe  are  now  pacific 
countries ;  Russia,  after  this  huge  war,  will  be 
too  exhausted  for  further  adventure ;  a  shattered 
Germany  will  be  a  revolutionary  Germany,  as 
sick  of  uniforms  and  the  Imperialist  idea  as 
France  was  in  1871,  as  disillusioned  about  pre- 
dominance as  Bulgaria  is  to-day.  The  way  will 
be  open  at  last  for  all  these  Western  Powers  to 
organise  peace.  That  is  why  I,  with  my  declared 
horror  of  war,  have  not  signed  any  of  these 
"  stop-the-war "  appeals  and  declarations  that 
have  appeared  in  the  last  few  days.  Every  sword 
that  is  drawn  against  Germany  now  is  a  sword 
drawn  for  peace. 


III. 

HANDS  OFF  THE 
PEOPLE'S  FOOD 

This  is  a  war-torn  article,  a  convalescent 
article. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  cheerful  gallantry 
of  the  time  that  after  being  left  for  dead  on 
Saturday  evening  this  article  should  be  able,  in 
an  only  very  slightly  bandaged  condition,  to  take 
its  place  in  the  firing-line  again  on  Thursday 
morning. 

It  was  first  written  late  on  Friday  night ;  it 
was  written  in  a  mood  of  righteous  excitement, 
and  it  was  an  extremely  ineffective  article.  In 
the  night  I  could  not  sleep  because  of  its  badness, 
and  because  I  did  so  vehemently  want  it  to  hit 
hard  and  get  its  effect.  I  turned  out  about  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning  and  redrafted  it,  and  the 
next  day  I  wrote  it  all  over  again  differently  and 
carefully,  and  I  think  better.  In  the  afternoon 
it  was  blown  up  by  the  discovery  that  Mr. 
Runciman  had  anticipated  its  essential  idea.  He 
had  brought  in,  and  the  House  had  passed  through 
all  its  stages,  a  Bill  to  give  the  Board  of  Trade 
power  to  requisition  and  deal  with  hoarded  or 
reserved  food.  That  was  exactly  the  demand  of 
my  article.  My  article,  about  to  die,  saluted 
this  most  swift  and  decisive  Government  of 
ours 


HANDS   OFF   THE   PEOPLE'S    FOOD  21 

Then  I  perceived  that  there  were  still  many 
things  to  be  said  about  this  requisitioning  of 
food.  The  Board  of  Trade  has  got  its  powers,  but 
apparently  they  have  still  to  be  put  into  operation. 
It  is  extremely  desirable  that  there  should  be  a 
strong  public  opinion  supporting  and  watching 
the  exercise  of  these  powers,  and  that  they  should 
be  applied  at  the  proper  point  immediately.  The 
powers  Mr.  Runciman  has  secured  so  rapidly  for 
the  Board  of  Trade  have  to  be  put  into  operation 
there  must  be  an  equally  rapid  development  of 
local  committees  and  commandos  to  carry  out 
his  idea.  The  shortage  continues.  It  is  not 
over.  The  common  people,  who  are  sending 
their  boys  so  bravely  and  uncomplainingly  to 
the  front,  must  be  relieved  at  once  from  the 
intolerable  hardships  which  a  certain  section  of 
the  prosperous  classes,  a  small  section  but  an 
actively  mischievous  section,  is  causing  them.  It 
is  a  right  ;  not  a  demand  for  charity.  It  is 
ridiculous  to  treat  the  problem  in  any  other 
way. 

So  far  the  poorer  English  have  displayed  an 
amazing  and  exemplary  patience  in  this  crisis,  a 
humility  and  courage  that  make  one  the  prouder 
for  being  also  English.  Apart  from  any  failure 
of  employment  at  the  present  time,  it  must  be 
plain  to  anyone  who  has  watched  the  present 
rise  of  prices  and  who  knows  anything  either  at 
first  hand  of  poor  households  or  by  reading  such 
investigations  as  those  of  Mrs.  Pember  Reeves 
upon  the  family  budgets  of  the  poor,  that  the 
rank  and  file  of  our  population  cannot  now  be 


22  THE   WAR   THAT   WILL   END   WAR 

getting  enough  to  eat.  They  are  suffering  need- 
less deprivation  and  also  they  are  suffering  needless 
vexation.  And  there  is  no  atom  of  doubt  why 
they  are  suffering  these  distresses.  It  is  that 
pretentious  section  of  the  prosperous  classes,  the 
section  we  might  hit  off  with  the  phrase  "  auto- 
mobile-driving villadom,"  the  "  Tariff  Reform 
and  damn  Lloyd  George  and  Keir  Hardie  "  class, 
the  most  pampered  and  least  public-spirited  of 
any  stratum  in  the  community,  which  has  grabbed 
at  the  food  ;  it  has  given  way  to  an  inglorious 
panic ;  it  has  broken  ranks  and  stampeded  to  the 
stores  and  made  the  one  discreditable  exception 
in  the  splendid  spectacle  of  our  national  solidarity. 
While  the  attention  of  all  decent  English  folk 
has  been  concentrated  upon  the  preparations  for 
our  supreme  blow  at  Prussian  predominance  in 
Europe,  villadom  has  been  swarming  to  the  shops, 
buying  up  the  food  of  the  common  people, 
carrying  it  off  in  the  family  car  (adorned,  of  course, 
with  a  fluttering  little  Union  Jack) ;  father  has 
given  a  day  from  business,  mother  has  helped, 
even  those  shiny-headed  nuts,  the  sons,  have 
condescended  to  assist,  and  now  villadom,  feeling 
a  little  safer,  is  ready  with  the  dinner-bell,  its 
characteristic  instrument  of  music,  to  maffick  at 
the  victories  it  has  done  its  best  to  spoil.  And 
villadom  promoted  and  distended,  villadom  in 
luck,  turned  millionaire,  villadom  on  a  scale  that 
can  buy  a  peerage  and  write  you  its  thousands-of- 
pounds  cheque  for  a  showy  subscription  list,  has 
been  true  to  its  origins.  Lord  Maffick,  emulating 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Maffick,  swept  his  district  clean 


HANDS   OFF   THE   PEOPLE'S    FOOD  23 

of  flour  ;  let  the  thing  go  down  to  history.  Lord 
Maffick  now  explains  that  he  bought  it  to  dis- 
tribute among  his  poorer  neighbours — that  is 
going  to  be  the  stock  excuse  of  these  people — 
but  that  sort  of  buying  is  just  exactly  as  bad  for 
prices  as  buying  for  Lord  Maffick's  personal 
interior.  The  sooner  that  flour  gets  out  of  the 
houses  of  Lord  Maffick  and  Horatio  Maffick, 
Esquire,  and  young  Mr.  Maffick  and  the  rest  of 
them,  and  into  the  houses  of  their  poorer  neigh- 
bours, the  better  for  them  and  the  country. 
The  greatest  danger  to  England  at  the  present 
time  is  neither  the  German  army  nor  the  German 
fleet,  but  this  morally  rotten  section  of  our 
community. 

Now  it  is  no  use  scolding  these  people.  It  is 
no  use  appealing  to  their  honour  and  patriotism. 
Honour  they  have  none,  and  their  idea  of  pat- 
riotism is  to  "  tax  the  foreigner,"  wave  Union 
Jacks,  and  clamour  for  the  application  to  England 
of  just  that  universal  compulsory  service  which 
leads  straight  to  those  crowded,  ineffective 
massacres  of  common  soldiers  that  are  beginning 
upon  the  German  war-front.  Exhortation  may 
sway  the  ninety-and-nine,  but  the  one  mean  man 
in  the  hundred  will  spoil  the  lot.  The  thing  to 
do  now  is  to  get  to  work  at  once  in  every  locality, 
requisitioning  all  excessive  private  stores  of  food 
or  gold  coins — they  can  be  settled  for  after  the 
war — not  only  the  stores  of  the  private  food- 
grabbers,  but  also  the  stores  of  the  speculative 
wholesalers  who  are  holding  up  prices  to 
the  retail  shops.  Only  in  that  way  can  the 


24    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

operations  of  this  intolerable  little  minority  be 
completely  checked.  Under  every  county  council 
food  committees  should  be  formed  at  once  to 
report  on  the  necessities  of  the  general  mass  and 
conduct  inquiries  into  hoarding  and  the  seizure 
and  distribution  of  hoards,  small  and  great. 

Now  this  is  a  public  work  calling  for  the  most 
careful  and  open  methods.  Food  distribution 
in  England  is  partly  in  the  hands  of  great  systems 
of  syndicated  shops  and  partly  still  in  the  hands  of 
one-shop  local  tradesmen.  It  is  imperative  that 
the  brightest  light  should  be  kept  upon  the  opera- 
tions of  both  small  and  large  provision  dealers. 
The  big  firms  are  in  the  control  of  men  whose 
business  successes  have  received  in  many  instances 
marks  of  the  signal  favour  and  trust  of  our  rulers. 
Lord  Devonport,  for  example,  is  a  peer ;  Sir 
Thomas  Lipton  is  a  baronet ;  they  are  not  to 
be  regarded  as  mere  private  traders,  but  as  men 
honoured  by  association  with  the  hierarchy  of 
our  national  life  on  account  of  their  distinguished 
share  in  the  public  food  service.  It  will  help 
them  in  their  quasi-public  duties  to  give  them 
the  support  of  our  attention.  Are  they  devoting 
their  enormous  economic  advantages  to  keeping 
prices  at  a  reasonable  level,  or  are  these  various 
systems  of  syndicated  provision  shops  also  putting 
things  up  against  the  consumer  ?  With  con- 
certed action  on  the  part  of  these  stores  the  most 
perfect  control  of  prices  is  possible  everywhere, 
except  in  the  case  of  a  few  out-of-the-way  villages. 
Is  it  being  done  ?  Nobody  wants  to  see  the 
names  of  Lord  Devonport  or  Sir  Thomas  Lipton 


HANDS   OFF   THE   PEOPLE'S    FOOD  25 

or  the  various  other  rich  men  associated  with 
them  in  the  food  supply  flourishing  about  on 
royal  subscription  lists  at  the  present  time  ;  their 
work  lies  closer  at  hand.  What  we  all  want  is  to 
feel  that  they  are  devoting  their  utmost  resources 
to  the  public  food  service  of  which  they  constitute 
so  important  a  part.  Let  me  say  at  once  that  I 
have  every  reason  to  believe  they  are  doing  it, 
and  that  they  are  alive  to  the  responsibilities  of 
their  positions.  But  we  must  keep  the  limelight 
on  them  and  on  their  less  honoured  and  con- 
spicuous fellow-merchants.  They  are  playing  as 
important  and  vital  a  part — indeed,  they  are 
called  upon  to  play  as  brave  and  self-sacrificing  a 
part — as  any  general  at  the  front.  If  they  fail 
us  it  will  be  worse  than  the  loss  of  many  thousands 
of  men  in  battle.  Let  us  watch  them,  and  I 
believe  we  shall  watch  them  with  admiration. 
But  let  us  watch  them.  Let  us  report  their 
movements,  ask  them  to  reassure  us,  chronicle 
their  visits  to  the  Board  of  Trade. 

I  will  not  expatiate  upon  the  possible  heroisms 
of  the  wholesale  provision  trade.  I  do  but  glance 
at  the  possibility  of  Lord  Devonport  or  Sir 
Thomas  Lipton,  after  the  war,  living,  financially 
ruined,  but  glorious,  in  a  little  cottage.  "  I  gave 
back  to  the  people  in  their  hour  of  need  what 
I  made  from  them  in  their  hours  of  plenty,"  he 
would  say.  "  I  have  suffered  that  thousands 
might  not  suffer.  It  is  nothing.  Think  of  the 
lads  who  died  in  Belgium." 

By  all  accounts,  the  small  one-shop  provision 
dealers  are  behaving  extremely  well.  In  my  own 


26    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

town  of  Dunmow  I  know  of  two  little  shop- 
keepers who  have  dared  to  offend  important 
customers  rather  than  fulfil  panic  orders.  They 
deserve  medals.  In  poor  districts  many  such  men 
are  giving  credit,  eking  out,  tiding  over,  and  all 
the  time  running  tremendous  risks.  Not  all 
heroes  are  upon  the  battlefield,  and  some  of  the 
heroes  of  this  war  are  now  fighting  gallantly  for 
our  land  behind  grocers'  counters  and  in  village 
general  shops,  and  may  end,  if  not  in  the  burial 
trench,  in  the  bankruptcy  court.  Indeed,  many 
of  them  are  already  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy. 
The  wholesalers  have,  I  know,  in  many  cases 
betrayed  them,  not  simply  by  putting  up  prices, 
but  by  suddenly  stopping  customary  credits,  and 
this  last  week  has  seen  some  dismal  nights  of 
sleepless  worry  in  the  little  bedrooms  over  the 
isolated  grocery.  While  we  look  to  the  syndicated 
shops  to  do  their  duty,  it  is  of  the  utmost  import- 
ance also  that  we  should  not  permit  a  massacre 
of  the  small  tradespeople.  A  catastrophe  to  the 
small  shopkeeper  at  the  present  time  will  not  only 
throw  a  multitude  of  broken  men  upon  public 
resources,  but  leave  a  gap  in  the  homely  give- 
and-take  of  back-street  and  village  economies  that 
will  not  be  easily  repaired.  So  that  I  suggest 
that  the  requisitioned  stocks  of  forestalling  whole- 
salers— there  ought  to  be  a  great  bulk  of  such 
food-stuff  already  in  the  hands  of  the  authorities 
— shall  be  sold  in  the  first  instance  at  wholesale 
prices  to  the  isolated  shopkeepers,  and  not  directly 
to  the  public.  Only  in  the  event  of  a  local 
failure  of  duty  should  the  direct  course  be  taken. 


HANDS   OFF   THE   PEOPLE'S    FOOD  27 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  whole  of  the 
present  stress  for  food  is  an  artificial  stress  due 
to  the  vehement  selfishness  of  vulgar-minded 
prosperous  people  and  to  the  base  cunning  of 
quite  exceptional  merchants.  But  under  the 
strange  and  difficult  and  planless  conditions  of 
to-day  quite  a  few  people  can  start  a  rush  and 
produce  an  almost  irresistible  pressure.  The 
majority  of  people  who  have  hoarded  and  fore- 
stalled have  probably  done  so  very  unwillingly, 
because  "  others  will  do  it."  They  would 
welcome  any  authoritative  action  that  would 
enable  them  to  disgorge  without  feeling  that 
somebody  else  would  instantly  snatch  what  they 
had  surrendered  and  profit  by  it.  It  is  for  that 
reason  that  we  must  at  once  organise  the  com- 
mandeering and  requisitioning  of  hoards  and 
reserved  goods.  The  mere  threat  will  probably 
produce  a  great  relaxation  of  the  situation,  but 
the  threat  must  be  carried  out  to  the  point  of 
having  everything  ready  as  soon  as  possible  to  seize 
and  sell  and  distribute.  Until  that  is  done  this 
food  crisis  will  wax  and  wane,  but  it  will  not 
cease  ;  if  we  do  not  carry  out  Mr.  Runciman's 
initiatives  with  a  certain  harsh  promptness  food 
trouble  will  be  an  intermittent  wasting  fever  in 
the  body  politic  until  the  end  of  the  war. 

And  the  business  will  not  be  over  at  the  end 
of  the  war.  The  patience  of  the  common  people 
has  been  astonishing.  In  countless  homes  there 
must  have  been  the  extremest  worry  and  misery. 
But  except  for  a  few  trivial  rows,  such  as  the 
smashing  of  the  windows  of  Mr.  Moss,  at  Hitchin, 


28  THE   WAR   THAT   WILL   END   WAR 

who  was  probably  not  a  bit  to  blame,  an  attack 
on  a  bakery  somewhere,  and  some  not  very  bad 
behaviour  in  the  way  of  threats  and  demonstra- 
tions on  the  part  of  East  End  Jews,  there  has  been 
no  disorder  at  all.  That  is  because  the  people 
are  full  of  the  first  solemnity  of  war,  eagerly 
trustful,  and  still — well  nourished. 

At  the  end  unless  the  more  prosperous  people 
pull  themselves  together  it  will  not  be  like  that. 


IV. 

CONCERNING 
MR.  MAXIMILIAN  CRAFT 

I  find  myself  enthusiastic  for  this  war  against 
Prussian  militarism.  We  are,  I  believe,  assisting 
at  the  end  of  a  vast,  intolerable  oppression  upon 
civilisation.  We  are  fighting  to  release  Germany 
and  all  the  world  from  the  superstition  that 
brutality  and  cynicism  are  the  methods  of  success, 
that  Imperialism  is  better  than  free  citizenship 
and  conscripts  better  soldiers  than  free  men. 

And  I  find  another  writer  who  is  also  being,  he 
declares,  patriotically  British.  Indeed,  he  waves 
the  Union  Jack  about  to  an  extent  from  which 
my  natural  modesty  recoils.  Because  you  see 
I  am  English-cum-Irish,  and  save  for  the  cross 
of  St.  Andrew  that  flag  is  mine.  To  wave  it 
about  would,  I  feel,  be  just  vulgar  self-assertion. 
He,  however,  is  not  English.  He  assumes  a 
variety  of  names,  and  some  are  quite  lovely  old 
English  names.  But  his  favourite  name  is  Craft, 
Maximilian  Craft — and  I  understand  he  was  born 
a  Kraft.  He  shoves  himself  into  the  affairs  of 
this  country  with  an  extraordinary  energy  ;  he 
takes  possession  of  my  Union  Jack  as  if  St.  George 
was  his  father.  At  present  he  is  advising  me  very 
actively  how  to  conduct  this  war,  and  telling  me 
exactly  what  I  ought  to  think  about  it.  He  is, 


30    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

in  fact,  the  English  equivalent  of  those  professors 
of  Welt  Politik  who  have  guided  the  German 
mind  to  its  present  magnificent  display  of  shrewd, 
triumphant  statecraft.  I  suspect  him  of  a  distant 
cousinship  with  Professor  Delbruck.  And  he  is 
urging  upon  our  attention  now  a  magnificent 
coup,  with  which  I  will  shortly  deal. 

In  appearance  Kraft  is  by  no  means  completely 
anglicised  himself.  He  is  a  large-faced  creature 
with  enormous  long  features  and  a  woolly  head  ; 
he  is  heavy  in  build  and  with  a  back  slightly 
hunched  ;  he  lisps  slightly  and  his  manner  is 
either  insolently  contemptuous  or  aggressively 
familiar.  He  thinks  all  born  Englishmen,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  naturalised  Englishmen,  are 
also  born  fools.  Always  his  manner  is  pervaded 
by  a  faint  flavour  of  astonishment  at  the  born 
foolishness  of  the  born  Englishmen.  But  he 
thinks  their  Empire  a  marvellous  accident,  a 
wonderful  opportunity — for  cleverer  people. 

So,  with  a  kind  of  disinterested  energy,  he  has 
been  doing  his  best  to  educate  Englishmen  up 
to  their  Imperial  opportunities,  to  show  them  how 
to  change  luck  into  cunning,  take  the  wall  of 
every  other  breed  and  swagger  foremost  in  the 
world.  He  cannot  understand  that  English  blood 
does  not  warm  to  such  ambitions.  When  he 
has  wealth  it  is  his  nature  to  show  it  in  watch- 
chains  and  studs  and  signet-rings  ;  if  he  had  a 
wife  she  would  dazzle  in  diamonds ;  the  furniture 
of  his  flat  is  wonderfully  "  good,"  all  picked 
English  pieces  and  worth  no  end ;  he  thinks 
it  is  just  dulness  and  poorness  of  spirit  that 


CONCERNING   MR.    MAXIMILIAN   CRAFT      31 

disregards  these  things.  He  came  to  England  to 
instruct  us  in  the  arts  of  Empire,  when  he  found 
that  already  there  was  a  glut  of  his  kind  of  wisdom 
in  the  German  universities.  For  years  until  this 
present  outbreak  I  have  followed  his  career  with 
silent  interest  rather  than  affection.  And  the 
first  thing  he  undertook  to  teach  us  was,  I 
remember,  Tariff  Reform,  "  taxing  the  foreigner." 
Limitless  wealth  you  get,  and  you  pay  nothing. 
You  get  a  huge  national  income  in  imported 
goods,  and  also,  as  your  tariff  prevents  importa- 
tion, you  develop  a  tremendous  internal  trade. 
Two  birds  (in  quite  opposite  directions)  with  the 
same  stone.  It  seemed  just  plain  common  sense 
to  him.  Anyhow,  he  felt  sure  it  was  good  enough 
for  the  born  English.  .  .  . 

He  is  still  a  little  incredulous  of  our  refusal  to 
accept  that  delightful  idea.  Meanwhile  his  kind 
have  dominated  the  more  docile  German  intelli- 
gence altogether.  They  have  listened  to  the 
whisper  of  Welt  Politik,  or  at  least  their  rulers 
have  attended  ;  they  have  sown  exasperation  on 
every  frontier,  taken  the  wall,  done  all  the 
showily  aggresssive  and  successful  things.  They 
were  the  pupils  he  should  have  taught.  A  people 
at  once  teachable  and  spirited.  Almost  tearfully 
Kraft  has  asked  us  to  mark  that  glorious  progress 
of  a  once  philosophical,  civilised,  and  kindly 
people.  And  indeed  we  have  had  to  mark  it 
and  polish  our  weapons,  and  with  a  deepening 
resentment  get  more  and  more  weapons,  and 
keep  our  powder  dry,  when  we  would  have  been 
far  rather  occupied  with  other  things. 


32  THE   WAR   THAT   WILL   END   WAR 

But  amazingly  enough  we  would  not  listen  to 
his  suggestion  of  universal  service.  Kraft  and 
his  kind  believe  in  numbers.  Even  the  Boer 
War  could  not  shake  his  natural  aptitude  for 
political  arithmetic.  He  has  tried  to  bring  the 
situation  home  to  us  by  diagrams,  showing  us 
enormous  figures,  colossal  soldiers  to  represent 
the  German  forces  and  tiny  little  British  men, 
smaller  than  the  army  figures  for  Bulgaria  and 
for  Servia.  He  does  not  understand  that  there 
can  be  too  many  soldiers  on  a  field  of  battle  ;  he 
could  as  soon  believe  that  one  could  have  too 
much  money.  And  so  he  thinks  the  armies  of 
Russia  must  be  more  powerful  than  the  French. 
When  I  deny  that  superiority — as  I  do — he 
simply  notes  the  fact  that  I  am  unable  to 
count. 

And  when  it  comes  to  schemes  of  warfare  then 
a  kind  of  delirium  of  cunning  descends  upon 
Kraft.  He  is  full  of  devices  such  as  we  poor 
fools  cannot  invent ;  sudden  attacks  without  a 
declaration  of  war,  vast  schemes  for  spy  systems 
and  assassin-like  disguises,  the  cowing  of  a  country 
by  the  wholesale  shooting  of  uncivil  non-com- 
batants, breaches  of  neutrality,  national  treacheries, 
altered  dispatches,  forged  letters,  diplomatic  lies, 
a  perfect  world-organisation  of  Super-sneaks. 
Our  poor  cousin,  Michael,  the  German,  has 
listened  to  such  wisdom  only  too  meekly.  Poor 
Michael,  with  his  honest  blue  eyes  wonder-lit, 
has  tried  his  best  to  be  a  very  devil,  and  go  where 
Kraft's  cousin,  Bernhardi,  the  military  "  expert," 
has  led  him.  (So  far  it  has  led  him  into  the 


CONCERNING   MR.    MAXIMILIAN   CRAFT       33 

ditches  of  Liege  and  the  gorges  of  the  Ardennes 
and  much  hunger  and  dirt  and  blood.)  And 
Kraft  over  here  has  watched  with  an  intolerable 
envy  Berlin  lying  and  bullying  and  being  the 
very  Superman  of  Welt  Politik.  He  has  been 
talking,  writing,  praying  us  to  do  likewise,  to 
strike  suddenly  before  war  was  declared  at  the 
German  fleet,  to  outrage  the  neutrality  of 
Denmark,  to  seize  Holland,  to  do  something 
nationally  dishonest  and  disgraceful.  Daily  he 
has  raged  at  our  milk  and  water  methods.  At 
times  we  have  seemed  to  him  more  like  a  lot  of 
Woodrow  Wilsons  than  reasonable  sane  men. 

And  he  is  still  ~t  it. 

Only  a  few  da^s  ago  I  took  up  the  paper  that 
has  at  last  moved  me  to  the  very  plain  declarations 
of  this  article.  It  was  an  English  daily  paper, 
and  Kraft  was  telling  us,  as  usual,  and  with  his 
usual  despairful  sense  of  our  stupidity,  how  to 
conduct  this  war.  And  what  he  said  was  this 
— that  we  have  to  starve  Germany — not  realising 
that  with  her  choked  railways  and  her  wasted 
crops  Germany  may  be  trusted  very  rapidly  to 
starve  herself — and  that,  if  we  do  not  prevent 
them,  foodstuffs  will  go  into  Germany  by  way  of 
Holland  and  Italy.  So  he  wants  us  to  begin  at 
once  a  hostile  blockade  of  Holland  and  Italy,  c~ 
better,  perhaps,  to  send  each  of  these  innocent 
and  friendly  countries  an  ultimatum  forthwith. 
He  wants  it  done  at  once,  because  otherwise  the 
Berlin  Krafts,  some  Delbruck  or  Bernhardi,  or 
that  egregious  young  statesman,  the  Crown 
Prince,  may  persuade  the  Prussians  to  get  in  their 


34    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

ultimatum  first.  Then  we  should  have  no 
chance  of  doing  anything  internationally  idiotic 
at  all,  unless,  perhaps,  we  seized  a  port  in  Norway. 
It  might  be  rather  a  fine  thing,  he  thinks  upon 
reflection,  to  seize  a  port  in  Norway. 

Now  let  us  English  make  it  clear,  once  for  all, 
to  the  Krafts  and  other  kindred  patriotic  gentle- 
men from  abroad  who  are  showing  us  the  really 
artful  way  to  do  things,  that  this  is  not  our  way 
of  doing  things.  Into  this  war  we  have  gone 
with  clean  hands — to  end  the  reign  of  brutal  and 
artful  internationalism  for  ever.  Our  hearts  are 
heavy  at  the  task  before  us,  but  our  intention  is 
grim.  We  mean  to  conquer.  We  are  prepared 
for  every  disaster,  for  intolerable  stresses,  for 
bankruptcy,  for  hunger,  for  anything  but  defeat. 
Now  that  we  have  begun  to  fight  we  will  fight  if 
needful  until  the  children  die  of  famine  in  our 
homes,  we  will  fight  though  every  ship  we  have 
is  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  We  mean  to  fight 
this  war  to  its  very  finish,  and  that  finish  we  are 
absolutely  resolved  must  be  the  end  of  Kraftism 
in  the  world.  And  we  will  come  out  of  this  war 
with  hands  as  clean  as  they  are  now,  unstained 
by  any  dirty  tricks  in  field  or  council  chamber, 
neutralities  respected  and  treaties  kept.  Then 
we  will  reckon  once  for  all  with  Kraft  and  with 
his  friends  and  supporters,  the  private  dealers  in 
armaments,  and  with  all  this  monstrous,  stupid 
brood  of  villainy  that  has  brought  this  vast 
catastrophe  upon  the  world. 

I  say  this  plainly  now  for  myself  and  for 
thousands  of  silent  plain  men,  because  the  sooner 


CONCERNING   MR.    MAXIMILIAN   CRAFT      35 

Kraft  realises  how  we  feel  in  this  matter  the 
better  for  him.  He  betrays  at  times  a  remark- 
able persuasion  that  at  the  final  settling  up  of 
things  he  will  make  himself  invaluable  to  us.  At 
diplomacy  he  knows  he  shines.  Then  the  lisping 
whisper  has  its  use,  and  the  studied  insolence. 
Finish  the  fighting,  and  then  leave  it  to  him. 
He  really  believes  the  born  English  will.  He 
does  not  understand  in  the  slightest  degree  the 
still  passion  of  our  streets.  There  never  was 
less  shouting  and  less  demonstration  in  England, 
and  never  was  England  so  quietly  intent.  This 
war  is  not  going  to  end  in  diplomacy  ;  it  is  going 
to  end  diplomacy.  It  is  quite  a  different  sort 
of  war  from  any  that  have  gone  before  it.  At 
the  end  there  will  be  no  Conference  of  Europe 
on  the  old  lines  at  all,  but  a  Conference  of  the 
World.  It  will  be  a  Conference  for  Kraft  to 
laugh  at.  He  will  run  about  button-holing 
people  about  it ;  almost  spitting  in  their  faces 
with  the  eagerness  of  his  derisive  whispers.  It 
will  conduct  its  affairs  with  scandalous  publicity 
and  a  deliberate  simplicity.  It  will  be  worse 
than  Woodrow  Wilson.  And  it  will  make  a 
peace  that  will  put  an  end  to  Kraft  and  the  spirit 
of  Kraft  and  Kraftism  and  the  private  armament 
firms  behind  him  for  evermore. 

At  which  I  imagine  the  head  of  Kraft  going 
down  between  his  shoulders  and  his  large  hands 
going  out  like  the  wings  of  a  cherub.  "  English- 
men !  Liberals !  Fools  !  Incurable !  How 
can  such  things  be  ?  It  is  not  how  things 
are  done." 


36    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

It  is  how  they  are  going  to  be  done  if  this  world 
is  to  be  worth  living  in  at  all  after  this  war. 
When  we  fight  Berlin,  Kraft,  we  fight  you.  .  .  . 
An  absolute  end  to  you.  Yes, 


V. 

THE   MOST   NECESSARY 
MEASURES  IN  THE  WORLD 

In  this  smash-up  of  empires  and  diplomacy, 
this  utter  disaster  of  international  politics,  certain 
things  which  would  have  seemed  ridiculously 
Utopian  a  few  weeks  ago  have  suddenly  become 
reasonable  and  practicable.  One  of  these,  a 
thing  that  would  have  seemed  fantastic  until  the 
very  moment  when  we  joined  issue  with  Germany 
and  which  may  now  be  regarded  as  a  sober 
possibility,  is  the  absolute  abolition  throughout 
the  world  of  the  manufacture  of  weapons  for 
private  gain.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  the 
practicability  of  national  disarmament,  there  can 
be  no  dispute  not  merely  of  the  possibility  but 
of  the  supreme  necessity  of  ending  for  ever  the 
days  of  private  profit  in  the  instruments  of  death. 
That  is  the  real  enemy.  That  is  the  evil  thing  at 
the  very  centre  of  this  trouble. 

At  the  very  core  of  all  this  evil  that  has  burst 
at  last  in  world  disaster  lies  this  Kruppism,  this 
sordid  enormous  trade  in  the  instruments  of 
death.  It  is  the  closest,  most  gigantic  organisa- 
tion in  the  world.  Time  after  time  this  huge 
business,  with  its  bought  newspapers,  its  paid 
spies,  its  agents,  its  shareholders,  its  insane 
sympathisers,  its  vast  ramification  of  open  and 


w 

38     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

concealed  associates,  has  defeated  attempts  at 
pacification,  has  piled  the  heap  of  explosive 
material  higher  and  higher — the  heap  that  has 
toppled  at  last  into  this  bloody  welter  in  Belgium, 
in  which  the  lives  of  four  great  nations  are  now 
being  torn  and  tormented  and  slaughtered  and 
wasted  beyond  counting,  beyond  imagining.  I  dare 
not  picture  it — thinking  now  of  who  may  read. 

So  long  as  the  unstable  peace  endured,  so  long 
as  the  Emperor  of  the  Germans  and  the  Krupp 
concern  and  the  vanities  of  Prussia  hung  together, 
threatening  but  not  assailing  the  peace  of  the 
world,  so  long  as  one  could  dream  of  holding  off 
the  crash  and  saving  lives,  so  long  was  it  impossible 
to  bring  this  business  to  an  end  or  even  to  propose 
plainly  to  bring  this  business  to  an  end.  It  was 
still  possible  to  argue  that  to  be  prepared  for 
war  was  the  way  to  keep  the  peace;  But  now 
everyone  knows  better.  The  war  has  come. 
Preparation  has  exploded.  Outrageous  plunder 
has  passed  into  outrageous  bloodshed.  All  Europe 
is  in  revolt  against  this  evil  system.  There  is  no 
going  back  now  to  peace  ;  our  men  must  die,  in 
heaps,  in  thousands ;  we  cannot  delude  ourselves 
with  dreams  of  easy  victories ;  we  must  all  suffer 
endless  miseries  and  anxieties ;  scarcely  a  human 
affair  is  there  that  will  not  be  marred  and  darkened 
by  this  war.  Out  of  it  all  must  come  one  uni- 
versal resolve  :  that  this  iniquity  must  be  plucked 
out  by  the  roots.  Whatever  follies  still  lie  ahead 
for  mankind  this  folly  at  least  must  end.  There 
must  be  no  more  buying  and  selling  of  guns  and 
warships  and  war-machines.  There  must  be  no 


MOST  NECESSARY  MEASURES  IN  THE  WORLD     39 

more  gain  in  arms.  Kings  and  Kaisers  must 
cease  to  be  the  commercial  travellers  of  monstrous 
armament  concerns.  With  the  Goeben  the  Kaiser 
has  made  his  last  sale.  Whatever  arms  the 
nations  think  they  need  they  must  make  for  them- 
selves and  give  to  their  own  subjects.  Beyond 
that  there  must  be  no  making  of  weapons  in  the 
earth. 

This  is  the  clearest  common  sense.  I  do  not 
need  to  argue  what  is  manifest,  what  every 
German  knows,  what  every  intelligent  educated 
man  in  the  world  knows.  The  Krupp  concern 
and  the  tawdry  Imperialism  of  Berlin  are  linked 
like  thief  and  receiver  ;  the  hands  of  the  German 
princes  are  dirty  with  the  trade.  All  over  the 
world  statecraft  and  royalty  have  been  approached 
and  touched  and  tainted  by  these  vast  firms, 
but  it  is  in  Berlin  that  the  corruption  has  centred, 
it  is  from  Berlin  that  the  intolerable  pressure 
to  arm  and  still  to  arm  has  come,  it  is  at  Berlin 
alone  that  the  evil  can  be  grappled  and  killed. 
Before  this  there  was  no  reaching  it.  It  was 
useless  to  dream  even  of  disarmament  while  these 
people  could  still  go  on  making  their  material 
uncontrolled,  waiting  for  the  moment  of  national 
passion,  feeding  the  national  mind  with  fears  and 
suspicions  through  their  subsidised  Press.  But 
now  there  is  a  new  spirit  in  the  world.  There 
are  no  more  fears ;  the  worst  evil  has  come  to 
pass.  The  ugly  hatreds,  the  nourished  mis- 
conceptions of  an  armed  peace,  begin  already  to 
give  place  to  the  mutual  respect  and  pity  and 
disillusionment  of  a  universally  disastrous  war. 


40    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

We  can  at  last  deal  with  Krupps  and  the  kindred 
firms  throughout  the  world  as  one  general 
problem,  one  world-wide  accessible  evil. 

Outside  the  circle  of  belligerent  States,  and  the 
States  which,  like  Denmark,  Italy,  Rumania, 
Norway  and  Sweden,  must  necessarily  be  invited 
to  take  a  share  in  the  final  re-settlement  of  the 
world's  affairs,  there  are  only  three  systems  of 
Powers  which  need  be  considered  in  this  matter, 
namely,  the  English  and  Spanish-speaking  Repub- 
lics of  America  and  China.  None  of  these  States 
is  deeply  involved  in  the  armaments  trade, 
several  of  them  have  every  reason  to  hate  a 
system  that  has  linked  the  obligation  to  deal  in 
armaments  with  every  loan.  The  United  States 
of  America  is  now,  more  than  ever  it  was,  an 
anti-militarist  Power,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  the  Government  of  the  United  States  of 
America  holds  in  its  hand  the  power  to  sanction 
or  prevent  this  most  urgent  need  of  mankind. 
If  the  people  of  the  United  States  will  consider 
and  grasp  this  tremendous  question  now ;  if 
they  will  make  up  their  minds  now  that  there 
shall  be  no  more  profit  made  in  America  or 
anywhere  else  upon  the  face  of  the  earth  in  raw 
material ;  if  they  will  determine  to  put  the  vast 
moral,  financial  and  material  influence  the  States 
will  be  able  to  exercise  at  the  end  of  this  war  in 
the  scale  against  the  survival  of  Kruppism,  then 
it  will  be  possible  to  finish  that  vile  industry  for 
ever.  If,  through  a  failure  of  courage  or 
imagination,  they  will  not  come  into  this  thing, 
then  I  fear  if  it  may  be  done.  But  I  misjudge 


MOST  NECESSARY  MEASURES  IN  THE  WORLD     41 

the  United  States  if,  in  the  end,  they  abstain 
from  so  glorious  and  congenial  an  opportunity. 

Let  me  set  out  the  suggestion  very  plainly. 
All  the  plant  for  the  making  of  war  material 
throughout  the  world  must  be  taken  over  by  the 
Government  of  the  State  in  which  it  exists ; 
every  gun  factory,  every  rifle  factory,  every  dock- 
yard for  the  building  of  warships.  It  may  be 
necessary  to  compensate  the  shareholders  more  or 
less  completely  ;  there  may  have  to  be  a  war 
indemnity  to  provide  for  that,  but  that  is  a 
question  of  detail.  The  thing  is  the  conversion 
everywhere  of  arms-making  into  a  State  monopoly, 
so  that  nowhere  shall  there  be  a  ha'porth  of 
avoidable  private  gain  in  it.  Then,  and  then 
only,  will  it  become  possible  to  arrange  for  the 
gradual  dismantling  of  this  industry  which  is 
destroying  humanity,  and  the  reduction  of  the 
armed  forces  of  the  world  to  reasonable  dimen- 
sions. I  would  carry  this  suppression  down  even 
to  the  restriction  of  the  manufacture  and  sale  of 
every  sort  of  gun,  pistol,  and  explosive.  They 
should  be  made  only  in  Government  workshops 
and  sold  only  in  Government  shops  ;  there 
should  not  be  a  single  rifle,  not  a  Browning 
pistol,  unregistered,  unrecorded,  and  untraceable 
in  the  world.  But  that  may  be  a  counsel  of 
perfection.  The  essential  thing  is  the  world 
suppression  of  this  abominable  traffic  in  the  big 
gear  of  war,  in  warships  and  great  guns. 

With  this  corruption  cleared  out  of  the  way, 
with  the  armaments  commercial  traveller  flung 
down  the  back-stairs  he  has  haunted  for  so  long 


42     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

— and  flung  so  hard  that  he  will  be  incapacitated 
for  ever — it  will  become  possible  to  consider  a 
scheme  for  the  establishment  of  the  peace  of  the 
world.  Until  that  is  done  any  such  scheme  will 
remain  an  idle  dream.  But  him  disposed  of,  the 
way  is  open  for  the  association  of  armed  nations, 
determined  to  stamp  out  at  once  every  recru- 
descence of  aggressive  war.  They  will  not  be 
totally  disarmed  Powers.  It  is  no  good  to  disarm 
while  any  one  single  Power  is  still  in  love  with 
the  dream  of  military  glory.  It  is  no  good  to 
disarm  while  the  possibility  of  war  fever  is  still 
in  the  human  blood.  The  intelligence  of  the 
whole  world  must  watch  for  febrile  symptoms 
and  prepare  to  allay  them.  But  after  this  struggle 
one  may  count  on  the  pacific  intentions  of  at 
least  the  following  States  :  The  British  Empire, 
France,  Italy,  and  all  the  minor  States  of  the 
north  and  west  ;  the  United  States  has  always 
been  a  pacific  Power  ;  Japan  has  had  its  lesson 
and  is  too  impoverished  for  serious  hostilities  ; 
China  has  never  been  aggressive  ;  Germany  also, 
unless  this  war  leads  to  intolerable  insults  and 
humiliations  for  the  German  spirit,  will  be  war- 
sick.  The  Spanish  and  Portuguese-speaking  Re- 
publics of  America  are  too  busy  developing 
materially  to  dream  of  war  on  the  modern  scale, 
and  the  same  may  presently  be  true  of  the  Greek, 
Latin  and  Slav  communities  of  south-east  Europe 
if,  as  I  hope  and  believe,  this  war  leads  to  the 
rational  rearrangement  of  the  Austro-Hungarian 
empire.  1915  will  indeed  find  this  world  a 
strangely  tamed  and  reasonable  world. 


MOST  NECESSARY  MEASURES  IN  THE  WORLD    43 

There  is  only  one  doubtful  country,  Russia, 
and  for  my  own  part  I  do  not  believe  in  the 
wickedness  and  I  doubt  the  present  power  of  that 
stupendous  barbaric  State.  Finland  and  a 
renascent  Polish  kingdom  at  least  will  be  weight 
on  the  side  of  peace.  It  will  be  indeed  the  phase 
of  supreme  opportunity  for  peace.  If  there  is 
courage  and  honesty  enough  in  men,  I  believe  it 
will  be  possible  to  establish  a  world  council  for 
the  regulation  of  armaments  as  the  natural 
outcome  of  this  war.  First,  the  trade  in  arma- 
ments must  be  absolutely  killed.  And  then  the 
next  supremely  important  measure  to  secure  the 
peace  of  the  world  is  the  neutralisation  of  the 
sea. 

It  will  lie  in  the  power  of  England,  France, 
Russia,  Italy,  Japan  and  the  United  States,  if 
Germany  and  Austria  are  shattered  in  this  war, 
to  forbid  the  further  building  of  any  more  ships 
of  war  at  all ;  to  persuade,  and  if  need  be,  to 
oblige  the  minor  Powers  to  sell  their  navies  and  to 
refuse  the  seas  to  armed  ships  not  under  the 
control  of  the  confederation.  To  launch  an 
armed  ship  can  be  made  an  invasion  of  the  common 
territory  of  the  world.  This  will  be  an  open 
possibility  in  1915.  It  will  remain  an  open 
possibility  until  men  recover  from  the  shock  of 
this  conflict.  As  that  begins  to  be  forgotten  so 
this  will  cease  to  be  a  possibility  again — perhaps 
for  hundreds  of  years.  Already  human  intelli- 
gence and  honesty  have  contrived  to  keep  the 
great  American  lakes  and  the  enormous  Canadian 
frontier  disarmed  for  a  century.  Warlike  folly 


44    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

has  complained  of  that,  but  it  has  never  been 
strong  enough  to  upset  it.  What  is  possible  on 
that  scale  is  possible  universally,  so  soon  as  the 
armament  trader  is  put  out  of  mischief.  And 
with  the  Confederated  Peace  Powers  keeping 
the  seas  and  guaranteeing  the  peaceful  freedom 
of  the  seas  to  all  mankind,  treating  the  transport 
of  armed  men  and  war  material,  except  between 
one  detached  part  of  a  State  and  another,  as 
contraband,  and  impartially  blockading  all  bel- 
ligerents, those  who  know  best  the  significance 
of  the  sea  power  will  realise  best  the  reduction 
in  the  danger  of  extensive  wars  on  land. 

This  is  no  dream.  This  is  the  plain  common 
sense  of  the  present  opportunity. 

It  may  be  urged  that  this  is  a  premature 
discussion,  that  this  war  is  still  undecided.  But, 
indeed,  there  can  be  no  decision  to  this  war  for 
France  and  England  at  any  rate  but  the  defeat  of 
Germany,  the  abandonment  of  German  mili- 
tarism, the  destruction  of  the  German  fleet,  and 
the  creation  of  this  opportunity.  Nothing  short 
of  that  is  tolerable  ;  we  must  fight  on  to  extinc- 
tion rather  than  submit  to  a  dishonouring  peace 
in  defeat  or  to  any  premature  settlement.  The 
fate  of  the  world  under  triumphant  Prussianism 
and  Kruppism  for  the  next  two  hundred  years 
is  not  worth  discussing.  There  is  no  conceivable 
conclusion  to  this  war  but  submission  at  Berlin. 
There  is  no  reasonable  course  before  us  now  but 
to  give  all  our  strength  for  victory  and  the 
establishment  of  victory.  The  end  must  be 
victory  or  our  effacement.  What  will  happen 


MOST  NECESSARY  MEASURES  IN  THE  WORLD     45 

after    our    eifacement    is    for    the    Germans    to 
consider. 

A  war  that  will  merely  beat  Germany  a  little 
and  restore  the  hateful  tensions  of  the  last  forty 
years  is  not  worth  waging.  As  an  end  to  all  our 
effort  it  will  be  almost  as  intolerable  as  defeat. 
Yet  unless  a  body  of  definite  ideas  is  formed  and 
promulgated  now  things  may  happen  so.  And 
so  now,  while  there  is  yet  time,  the  Liberalism 
of  France  and  England  must  speak  plainly  and 
make  its  appeal  to  the  Liberalism  of  all  the  world, 
not  to  share  our  war  indeed,  but  to  share  the 
great  ends  for  which  we  are  so  gladly  waging 
this  war.  For,  indeed,  sombrely  enough  England 
and  France  and  Belgium  and  Russia  are  glad  of 
this  day.  The  age  of  armed  anxiety  is  over. 
Whatever  betide,  it  must  be  an  end.  And  there 
is  no  way  of  making  it  an  end  but  through  these 
two  associated  decisions,  the  abolition  of  Krupp- 
ism  and  the  neutralisation  of  the  sea. 


VI. 

THE  NEED  OF  A  NEW 
MAP  OF  EUROPE 

At  the  moment  of  writing  the  war  has  not 
lasted  many  days,  great  battles  by  land  and 
sea  alike  impend,  and  yet  I  find  my  steadfast 
anticipation  that  Prussianism,  Bernhardi-ism, 
the  whole  theory  and  practice  of  the  Empire 
of  the  Germans,  is  a  rotten  and  condemned 
thing,  has  already  strengthened  to  an  absolute 
conviction.  Unforeseen  accidents  may  happen. 
I  say  nothing  of  the  sea,  but  the  general  and 
ultimate  result  seems  to  me  now  as  certain  as 
the  rising  of  to-morrow's  sun.  I  do  not  know 
how  much  slaughter  lies  before  Europe  before 
Germany  realises  that  she  is  fool-led  and  fool- 
poisoned.  I  do  not  know  how  long  the 
swaggering  Prussian  officer  will  be  able  to 
drive  his  crowded  men  to  massacre  before 
they  revolt  against  him,  nor  do  I  know  how 
far  the  inflated  vanity  of  Berlin  has  made 
provision  for  defeat.  Germany  on  the  defen- 
sive for  all  we  can  tell  may  prove  a  very  stub- 
born thing,  and  Russia's  strength  may  be,  and 
I  think  is,  over-estimated.  All  that  may  delay, 
but  it  will  not  alter  the  final  demonstration 


THE   NEED   OF   A   NEW   MAP  OF  EUROPE     47 

that  Prussianism,  as  Mr.  Belloc  foretold  so  amaz- 
ingly, took  its  mortal  wound  at  the  first  onset 
before  the  trenches  of  Liege.  We  begin  a  new 
period  of  history. 

It  is  not  Germany  that  has  been  defeated  ; 
Germany  is  still  an  unconquered  country.  In- 
deed, now  it  is  a  released  country.  It  is  a  country 
glorious  in  history  and  with  a  glorious  future. 
But  never  more  after  this  war  has  ended  will  it 
march  to  the  shout  of  the  Prussian  drill  sergeant 
and  strive  to  play  bully  to  the  world.  The 
legend  of  Prussia  is  exploded.  Its  appeal  was  to 
one  coarse  criterion,  success,  and  it  has  failed. 
Nevermore  will  the  harshness  of  Berlin  over- 
shadow the  great  and  friendly  civilisation  of 
Southern  and  Western  Germany.  The  work 
before  a  world  in  arms  is  to  clean  off  the  Prussian 
blue  from  the  life  and  spirit  of  mankind. 

No  European  Power  has  any  real  quarrel  with 
Germany.  Our  quarrel  is  with  the  Empire  of 
the  Germans,  not  with  a  people  but  with  an  idea. 
Let  us  in  all  that  follows  keep  that  clearly  in  our 
minds.  It  may  be  that  the  German  repulse  at 
Liege  was  but  the  beginning  of  a  German  disaster 
as  great  as  that  of  France  in  1871.  It  may  be 
that  Germany  has  no  second  plan  if  her  first  plan 
fails  ;  that  she  will  go  to  pieces  after  her  first 
defeat.  It  seems  to  me  that  this  is  so — I  risk 
the  prophecy,  and  I  would  have  us  prepare  our- 
selves for  the  temptations  of  victory.  And  so 
to  begin  with,  let  us  of  the  liberal  faith  declare 
our  fixed,  unalterable  conviction  that  it  will  be 
a  sin  to  dismember  Germany  or  to  allow  any 


48     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

German-speaking  and  German-feeling  territory 
to  fall  under  a  foreign  yoke.  Let  us  English  make 
sure  of  ourselves  in  that  matter.  There  may  be 
restorations  of  alien  territory — Polish,  French, 
Danish,  Italian,  but  we  have  seen  enough  of 
racial  subjugation  now  to  be  sure  that  we  will 
tolerate  no  more  of  it.  From  the  Rhine  to  East 
Prussia  and  from  the  Baltic  to  the  southern  limits 
of  German-speaking  Austria,  the  Germans  are 
one  people.  Let  us  begin  with  the  resolution 
to  permit  no  new  bitterness  of  "conquered 
territories  "  to  come  into  existence  to  disturb  the 
future  peace  of  Europe.  Let  us  see  to  it  that  at 
the  ultimate  settlement  the  Germans,  however 
great  his  overthrow  may  be,  are  all  left  free  men. 
When  the  Prussians  invaded  Luxemburg  they 
tore  up  the  map  of  Europe.  To  the  redrawing 
of  that  map  a  thousand  complex  forces  will  come. 
There  will  be  much  attempted  over-reaching  in 
the  business  and  much  greed.  Few  will  come 
to  negotiations  with  simple  intentions.  In  a 
wrangle  all  sorts  of  ugly  and  stupid  things  may 
happen.  It  is  for  us  English  to  get  a  head  in 
that  matter,  to  take  counsel  with  ourselves  and 
determine  what  is  just  ;  it  is  for  us,  who  are 
in  so  many  ways  detached  from  and  independent 
of  the  national  passions  of  the  Continent,  not  to 
be  cunning  or  politic,  but  to  contrive  as  unanimous 
a  purpose  as  possible  now,  so  that  we  may  carry 
this  war  to  its  end  with  a  clear  conception  of 
its  end,  and  to  use  the  whole  of  our  strength  to 
make  an  enduring  peace  in  Europe.  That 
means  that  we  have  to  re-draw  the  map  so  that 


THE  NEED  OF  A  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE     49 

there  shall  be,  for  just  as  far  as  we  can  see  ahead, 
as  little  cause  for  warfare  among  us  Western 
nations  as  possible.  That  means  that  we  have 
to  re-draw  it  justly.  And  very  extensively. 

Is  that  an  impossible  proposal  ?  I  think  not. 
There  are,  indeed,  such  things  as  non-irritating 
frontiers.  Witness  the  frontiers  of  Canada. 
Certain  boundaries  have  served  in  Europe  now 
for  the  better  part  of  a  hundred  years,  and  grow 
less  amenable  to  disturbance  every  year.  Nobody, 
for  example,  wants  to  use  force  to  readjust  the 
mutual  frontiers  in  Europe  of  Holland,  Belgium, 
France,  Spain,  Portugal  and  Italy,  and  none  of 
these  Powers  desire  now  to  acquire  the  foreign 
possessions  of  any  other  of  the  group.  They 
are  Powers  permanently  at  peace.  Will  it  not  be 
possible  now  to  make  so  drastic  a  readjustment 
as  to  secure  the  same  practical  contentment 
between  all  the  European  Powers  ?  Is  not  this 
war  that  crowning  opportunity  ?  It  seems  to  me 
that  in  this  matter  it  behoves  us  to  form  an 
opinion  sane  and  definite  enough  to  meet  the 
sudden  impulses  of  belligerent  triumph  and  over- 
ride the  secret  counsels  of  diplomacy.  It  is  a 
thing  to  do  forthwith.  Let  us  decide  what  we 
are  going  on  fighting  for,  and  let  us  secure  it  and 
settle  it.  It  is  not  an  abstract  interesting  thing 
to  do  ;  it  is  the  duty  of  every  English  citizen  now 
to  study  this  problem  of  the  map  of  Europe,  so 
that  we  can  make  an  end  for  ever  to  that  dark 
game  of  plots  and  secret  treaties  and  clap-trap 
synthetic  schemes  that  has  wasted  the  forces  of 
civilisation  (and  made  the  fortunes  of  the  Krupp 


50    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

family)  in  the  last  forty  years.  We  are  fighting 
now  for  a  new  map  of  Europe  if  we  are  fighting  for 
anything  at  all.  I  could  imagine  that  new  map 
of  Europe  as  if  it  were  the  flag  of  the  allies  who 
now  prepare  to  press  the  Germans  back  towards 
their  proper  territory. 

In  the  first  place,  I  suggest  that  France  must 
recover  Lorraine,  and  that  Luxemburg  must 
be  linked  in  closer  union  with  Belgium.  Alsace, 
it  seems  to  me,  should  be  given  a  choice  between 
France  and  an  entry  into  the  Swiss  Confederation. 
It  would  possibly  choose  France.  Denmark 
should  have  again  the  distinctly  Danish  part  of 
her  lost  provinces  restored  to  her.  Trieste  and 
Trent,  and  perhaps  also  Pola,  should  be  restored 
to  Italy.  This  will  re-unite  several  severed 
fragments  of  peoples  to  their  more  congenial 
associates.  But  these  are  minor  changes  compared 
with  the  new  developments  that  are  now,  in  some 
form,  inevitable  in  the  East  of  Europe,  and  for 
those  we  have  to  nerve  our  imaginations,  if  this 
vast  war  and  waste  of  men  is  to  end  in  an  enduring 
peace.  The  break-up  of  the  Austrian  Empire 
has  hung  over  Europe  like  a  curse  for  forty  years. 
Let  us  break  it  up  now  and  have  done  with  it. 
What  is  to  become  of  the  non-German  regions 
of  Austria-Hungary  ?  And  what  is  to  happen 
upon  the  Polish  frontier  of  Russia  ? 

First,  then,  I  would  suggest  that  the  three 
fragments  of  Poland  should  be  reunited,  and  that 
the  Tsar  of  Russia  should  be  crowned  King  of 
Poland.  I  propose  then  we  define  that  as  our 
national  intention,  that  we  use  all  the  liberalising 


THE   NEED   OF  A  NEW   MAP  OF   EUROPE     51 

influence  this  present  war  will  give  us  in  Russia 
to  that  end.  And  secondly,  I  propose  that  we 
set  before  ourselves  as  our  policy  the  unification 
of  that  larger  Rumania  which  includes  Trans- 
sylvania,  and  the  gathering  together  into  a  con- 
federation of  the  Swiss  type  of  all  the  Servian 
and  quasi-Servian  provinces  of  the  Austrian 
Empire.  Let  us,  as  the  price  greater  Servia  will 
pay  for  its  unity,  exact  the  restoration  to  Bulgaria 
of  any  Bulgarian-speaking  districts  that  are  now 
under  Servian  rule ;  let  us  save  Scutari  from  the 
iniquity  of  a  nose-slashing  occupation  by  Mon- 
tenegrins and  try  to  effect  another  Swiss  confed- 
eration of  the  residual  Bohemian,  Slavic  and 
Hungarian  fragments.  I  am  convinced  that  the 
time  has  come  for  the  substitution  of  Swiss 
associations  for  the  discredited  Imperialisms  and 
kingdoms  that  have  made  Europe  unstable  for 
so  long.  Every  emperor  and  every  king,  we  now 
perceive,  means  a  national  ambition  more  organic, 
concentrated  and  dangerous  than  is  possible 
under  Republican  conditions.  Our  own  peculiar 
monarchy  is  the  one  exception  that  proves  this 
rule.  There  is  no  reason  why  we  should  multiply 
these  centres  of  aggression. 

Probably  neither  Bulgaria  nor  Servia  would 
miss  their  kings  very  keenly,  and  anyhow,  I  do 
not  see  any  need  for  more  of  these  irritating 
ambition-pimples  upon  the  fair  face  of  the  world. 
Let  us  cease  to  give  indigestible  princes  to  the 
new  States  that  we  Schweitzerize.  Albania,  par- 
ticularly, with  its  miscellaneous  tribes  has  cer- 
tainly no  use  for  monarchy,  and  the  suggestion 


52    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

that  has  been  made  for  its  settlement,  as  a  con- 
federation of  small  tribal  cantons  is  the  only 
one  I  have  ever  heard  that  seemed  to  contain  a 
ray  of  hope  for  that  distracted  patch  of  earth. 
There  is  certainly  no  reason  why  these  people 
should  be  exploited  by  Italy,  since  Italy  can 
claim  a  more  legitimate  gratification.  There,  in 
a  paragraph,  is  a  sketch  of  the  map  of  Europe 
that  may  emerge  from  the  present  struggle.  It 
is  my  personal  idea  of  our  purpose  in  this  war. 

Quite  manifestly  in  all  these  matters  I  am  a 
fairly  ignorant  person.  Quite  manifestly  this  is 
crude  stuff.  And  I  admit  a  certain  sense  of 
presumptuous  absurdity  as  I  sit  here  before  the 
map  of  Europe  like  a  carver  before  a  duck  and 
take  off  a  slice  here  and  decide  on  a  cut  there. 
None  the  less  it  is  what  everyone  of  us  has  to  do. 
I  intend  to  go  on  redrawing  the  map  of  Europe 
with  every  intelligent  person  I  meet.  We  are 
all  more  or  less  ignorant  ;  it  is  unfortunate  but 
it  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  we  cannot  escape 
either  decisions  or  passive  acquiescences  in  these 
matters.  If  we  do  not  do  our  utmost  to  under- 
stand the  new  map,  if  we  make  no  decisions, 
then  still  cruder  things  will  happen  ;  Europe 
will  blunder  into  a  new  set  of  ugly  complications 
and  prepare  a  still  more  colossal  Armageddon 
than  this  that  is  now  going  on.  No  one,  I  hope, 
will  suggest  after  this  war  that  we  should  still 
leave  things  to  the  diplomatists.  Yet  the  altern- 
ative to  you  and  me  is  diplomacy.  If  you  want 
to  see  where  diplomacy  and  Welt  Politik  have 
landed  Europe  after  forty  years  of  anxiety  and 


THE  NEED   OF  A  NEW   MAP  OF  EUROPE     53 

armament,  you  must  go  and  look  into  the  ditches 
of  Liege.  These  bloody  heaps  are  the  mere 
first  samples  of  the  harvest.  The  only  alternative 
to  diplomacy  is  outspoken  intelligence,  yours  and 
mine  and  every  articulate  person's.  We  have  all 
of  us  to  undertake  this  redrawing  of  the  map  of 
Europe,  in  the  measure  of  our  power  and  capacity. 
That  our  power  and  capacity  are  unhappily  not 
very  considerable  does  not  absolve  us.  It  is  for 
us  to  secure  a  lasting  settlement  of  all  the  European 
frontiers  if  we  can.  If  we  common  intelligent 
people  at  large  do  not  secure  that,  nobody  will. 
If  we  have  no  intentions  with  regard  to  the 
map  of  Europe,  we  shall  soon  be  going  on  with 
the  war  for  nothing  in  particular.  The  Prussian 
spirit  has  broken  itself  beyond  repair,  and  the 
north  coast  of  France  and  the  integrity  of  Belgium 
are  saved.  All  the  fighting  that  is  still  to  come 
will  only  be  the  confirmation  and  development 
of  that.  If  we  have  no  further  plan  before  us 
our  task  is  at  an  end.  If  that  is  all,  we  may  stand 
aside  now  with  a  good  conscience  and  watch  a 
slower  war  drag  to  an  evil  end.  Left  to  herself  a 
victorious  Russia  is  far  more  likely  to  help  herself 
to  East  Prussia  and  set  to  work  to  Russianise  its 
inhabitants  than  to  risk  an  indigestion  of  more 
Poles ;  Italy  may  go  into  Albania  and  a  new 
conflict  with  Servia  ;  it  is  even  conceivable  that 
France  may  be  ungenerous.  She  will  have  a 
good  excuse  for  being  ungenerous.  Meanwhile, 
German-speaking  populations  will  find  them- 
selves under  instead  of  upper  dogs  in  half  the 
provinces  of  Austria-Hungary  ;  mischievous  little 


54    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

kings,  with  chancellors  and  national  policies  and 
ambitions  all  complete,  will  rise  and  fluctuate  and 
fall  upon  that  slippery  soil,  and  a  bloody  and 
embittered  Germany,  continually  stung  by  the 
outcries  of  her  subject  kindred,  will  sit  down 
grimly  to  grow  a  new  generation  of  soldiers  and 
prepare  for  her  revenge.  .  .  . 

That  is  why  I  think  we  liberal  English  should 
draw  our  new  map  of  Europe  now,  first  of  all 
on  paper  and  then  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 

We  ought  to  draw  that  map  now,  and  propagate 
the  idea  of  it,  and  make  it  our  national  purpose, 
and  call  the  intelligence  and  consciences  of  the 
United  States  and  France  and  Scandinavia  to 
our  help.  Openly  and  plainly  we  ought  to  discuss 
and  decide  and  tell  the  world  what  we  mean  to 
do.  The  reign  of  brutality,  cynicism,  and  secretive 
treachery  is  shattered  in  Europe.  Over  the  ruins 
of  the  Prussian  War-Lordship,  reason,  public 
opinion,  justice,  international  good  faith  and 
good  intentions  will  be  free  to  come  back  and 
rule  the  destinies  of  man.  But  things  will  not 
wait  for  reason  and  justice,  if  just  and  reasonable 
men  have  neither  energy  nor  unity. 

;^  ta 
toi^lfe/  4&  ^ali  tcouir 

'I'Utftr  O3cfc 

.  vrt<&,. 

(J% 

A\at 


VII. 

THE   OPPORTUNITY   OF 
LIBERALISM 

The  opportunity  of  Liberalism  has  come  at 
last,  an  overwhelming  opportunity.  The  age 
of  militarism  has  rushed  to  its  inevitable  and  yet 
surprising  climax.  The  great  soldier  empire, 
made  for  war,  which  has  dominated  Europe  for 
forty  years  has  pulled  itself  up  by  the  roots  and 
flung  itself  into  the  struggle  for  which  it  was 
made.  Whether  it  win  or  lose,  it  will  never  put 
itself  back  again.  All  Europe,  following  that 
lead,  is  a-field  for  war.  The  good  harvests  stand 
neglected,  the  factories  are  idle,  a  thin,  uncertain 
trickle  of  paper  money  replaces  the  chinking  flow 
of  commerce ;  whichever  betide,  defeat  or 
deadlock,  the  capitalist  military  civilisation  up- 
roots itself  and  ends.  The  war  may  burn  itself 
out  more  quickly  than  those  who  regard  its 
immensity  think,  but  the  war  itself  is  the  mere 
smash  of  the  thing.  The  reality  is  the  uprooting, 
the  incurable  dislocation. 

Trying  to  map  and  measure  that  dislocation 
is  rather  like  one's  first  effort  to  think  in  sun's 
distances.  It  is  to  transfer  one's  mind  to  a  new 
and  overwhelming  scale.  Never  did  any  time 
carry  so  swift  a  burthen  of  change  as  this  time. 
It  is  manifest  that  in  a  year  or  so  the  world  of 


56    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

men  is  going  to  alter  more  than  it  has  altered  in 
the  last  century  and  a  half,  more  indeed  than  it 
ever  altered  before  these  last  centuries  since 
history  began.  Think  of  the  mere  geographical 
dislocation.  There  is  scarcely  a  country  in  Europe 
that  will  not  emerge  from  this  struggle  with 
entirely  fresh  frontiers,  sovereign  powers  will 
vanish  from  the  map,  new  sovereign  powers  will 
come.  In  the  disorders  that  are  upon  us  and  of 
which  this  war  itself  is  the  mere  preliminary 
phase  in  uniform,  inevitably  there  must  be  social 
reconstruction.  Who  can  doubt  it  ?  Who  can 
doubt  the  break-up  of  confidence  and  usage  that 
is  in  progress  ?  Plainly  you  can  see  famine 
coming — in  France,  in  Germany,  in  Russia.  Does 
anyone  suppose  that  those  sham  efficient  Germans 
have  fully  worked  out  the  care  and  feeding  of  the 
madly  distended  hosts  they  have  hurled  at 
France  ?  Does  anyone  dream  that  they  have 
reckoned  for  a  check  and  halt  ?  Does  anyone 
imagine  their  sanitary  arrangements  are  perfect  ? 
There  will  be  pestilence.  And  can  one  believe 
that  whatever  feats  of  financial  fiction  we  con- 
trive, their  financial  crash  can  be  staved  off,  and 
that  the  bankers  of  Hamburg  and  Frankfort  are 
likely  to  be  shovelling  gold  next  January  in  a  still 
methodical  world  ?  The  German  State  machine 
has  probably  already  done  all  that  it  was 
ever  made  to  do.  It  stands  now  exhausted 
amidst  the  turmoil  of  its  consequences.  Its 
mobilization  arrangements  are  said  to  have  been 
astonishingly  complete.  Ten  million  men  for 
and  against  have  been  got  into  the  field — with 


THE    OPPORTUNITY    OF    LIBERALISM         57 

ammunition.  Prussian  Germany  has  carried  out 
its  arrangements  and  committed  the  business  to 
Gott.  German  foresight  has  exhausted  itself.  If 
Gott  fail  Germany,  I  do  not  believe  that  Germany 
has  the  remotest  idea  what  to  do  next.  For 
the  most  part  those  millions  will  never  get 
home  any  more.  They  will  certainly  never  get 
back  to  their  work  again,  because  it  will  have 
disappeared. 

When  I  think  of  European  statecraft  presently 
trying  to  put  all  these  things  back  again  I  am 
reminded  of  a  story  of  a  friend  whose  neighbour 
tried  to  cut  his  throat  and  then  repented.  He 
came  round  to  her  with  a  towel  about  his  neck 
making  peculiar  noises.  It  was  a  distressing  but 
illuminating  experience  for  her.  She  was  a 
plucky  and  resourceful  woman,  and  she  did  her 
best.  "  There  was  such  a  lot  of  it,"  she  said. 
"  I  hadn't  an  idea  things  were  packed  so  tight 


in  us." 


It  is  characteristic  of  such  times  as  this — that 
much  in  the  world,  and,  more  particularly,  much 
in  the  minds  of  men,  much  that  has  seemed  as 
invincible  as  the  mountains  and  as  deeply  rooted 
as  the  sea,  magically  loses  its  solidity,  fades, 
changes,  vanishes.  When  one  looked  at  the  map 
of  Europe  a  month  ago  most  of  the  lines  of  its 
frontiers  seemed  almost  as  stable  as  the  coastlines. 
Now  they  waver  under  one's  eyes.  When  one 
thought  of  the  heritage  of  the  Crown  Prince  of 
Germany,  it  seemed  as  fixed  as  a  constellation, 
and  now  in  a  little  while  it  may  be  worth  as  little 
as  a  bloody  rag  in  the  trenches  of  Liege.  In 


58     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

little  things  as  in  great,  one  is  suddenly  confronted 
by  undreamt-of  instabilities.  The  Reform  Club, 
which  has  been  a  cheerful  and  refreshing  trickle 
of  gold  to  me  for  years,  now  yields  me  reluctantly 
for  my  cheque  two  inartistic  pound  notes.  My 
other  club  has  ceased  the  kindly  custom  of 
cashing  cheques  altogether.  One  is  glad  that 
poor  Bagehot  did  not  live  to  see  this  day.  Each 
day  now  I  marvel  to  wake  and  find  I  have  still 
a  banker.  .  .  .  And  I  perceive  too,  that  if 
presently  my  banker  dissolved  into  the  rest  of 
this  dissolving  world — a  thing  I  should  have 
thought  an  unendurable  calamity  a  month  ago 
— I  shall  laugh  and  go  on.  .  .  .  Ideas  that  have 
ruled  life  as  though  they  were  divine  truths  are 
being  chased  and  slaughtered  in  the  streets. 
The  rights  of  property,  for  example,  the  sturdy 
virtues  of  individualism,  all  toleration  for  the 
rewards  of  abstinence,  vanished  last  week  suddenly 
amidst  the  execrations  of  mankind  upon  a  hurrying 
motor-car  loaded  with  packages  of  sugar  and 
flour.  They  bolted,  leaving  Socialism  and  Col- 
lectivism in  possession.  The  State  takes  over 
flour  mills  and  the  food  supply,  not  merely  for 
military  purposes,  but  for  the  general  welfare 
of  the  community.  The  State  controls  the 
railways  with  a  sudden  complete  disregard  of 
shareholders.  There  is  not  even  a  letter  to  the 
'limes  to  object.  If  the  State  sees  fit  to  keep 
its  hold  upon  these  things  for  good,  or  loosens 
its  hold  only  to  improve  its  grip,  I  question  if 
there  is  very  much  left  in  the  minds  of  men, 
even  after  the  mere  preliminary  sweeping  of 


THE    OPPORTUNITY    OF    LIBERALISM         59 

the  last  two  weeks,  to  dispute  possession.  Society 
as  we  knew  it  a  year  ago  has  indeed  already 
broken  up  ;  it  has  lost  all  real  cohesion  ;  only 
the  absence  of  any  attraction  elsewhere  keeps  us 
bunched  together.  We  keep  our  relative  posi- 
tions because  there  is  nowhither  to  stampede. 
Dazed,  astonished  people  fill  the  streets ;  and  we 
talk  of  the  national  calm.  The  more  intelligent 
men  thrown  out  of  their  jobs  make  for  the  recruit- 
ing offices,  because  they  have  nothing  else  to 
do  ;  we  talk  of  the  magnificent  response  to  Lord 
Kitchener's  appeal.  Everybody  is  offering  ser- 
vices. Everybody  is  looking  for  someone  to  tell 
him  what  to  do.  It  is  not  organisation  ;  it  is 
the  first  phase  of  dissolution. 

I  am  not  writing  prophecies  now,  and  I  am 
not  "  displaying  imagination."  I  am  just  running 
as  hard  as  I  can  by  the  side  of  the  marching  facts, 
and  pointing  to  them.  Institutions  and  conven- 
tions crumble  about  us,  and  release  to  unprece- 
dented power  the  two  sorts  of  rebel  that  ordinary 
times  suppress,  will  and  ideas. 

The  character  of  the  new  age  that  must  come 
out  of  the  catastrophies  of  this  epoch  will  be  no 
mechanical  consequence  of  inanimate  forces. 
Will  and  ideas  will  take  a  larger  part  in  this  swirl- 
ahead  than  they  have  even  taken  in  any  previous 
collapse.  No  doubt  the  mass  of  mankind  will 
still  pour  along  the  channels  of  chance,  but  the 
desire  for  a  new  world  of  a  definite  character  will 
be  a  force,  and  if  it  is  multitudinously  unanimous 
enough,  it  may  even  be  a  guiding  force,  in  shaping 
the  new  time.  The  common  man  and  base  men 


60    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

are  scared  to  docility.  Rulers,  pomposities, 
obstructives  are  suddenly  apologetic,  helpful, 
asking  for  help.  This  is  a  time  of  incalculable 
plasticity.  For  the  men  who  know  what  they 
want,  the  moment  has  come.  It  is  the  supreme 
opportunity,  the  test  or  condemnation  of  con- 
structive liberal  thought  in  the  world. 

Now  what  does  Liberalism  mean  to  do  ?  It 
has  always  been  alleged  against  Liberalism  that 
it  is  carpingly  critical,  disorganised,  dispersed, 
impracticable,  fractious,  readier  to  "  resign  "  and 
"  rebel  "  than  help.  That  is  the  common  excuse 
of  all  modern  autocracies,  bureaucracies,  and 
dogmatisms.  Are  they  right  ?  Is  Liberal  thought 
in  this  world-crisis  going  to  present  the  spectacle 
of  a  swarm  of  little  wrangling  men  swept  before 
the  mindless  besom  of  brute  accident,  or  shall  we 
be  able  in  this  vast  collapse  or  re-birth  of  the 
world,  to  produce  and  express  ideas  that  will 
rule  ?  Has  it  all  been  talk  ?  Or  has  it  been 
planning  ?  Is  the  new  world,  in  fact,  to  be 
shaped  by  the  philosophers  or  by  the  Huns  ? 

First,  as  to  peace.  Do  Liberals  realise  that 
now  is  the  time  to  plan  the  confederation  and 
collective  disarmament  of  Europe,  now  is  the 
time  to  re-draw  the  map  of  Europe  so  that  there 
may  be  no  more  rankling  sores  or  unsatisfied 
national  ambitions  ?  Are  the  Liberals  as  a  body 
going  to  cry  "  Peace  !  Peace  !  "  and  leave  the 
questions  alone,  or  are  they  going  to  take  hold 
of  them  ?  If  Liberalism  throughout  the  world 
develops  no  plan  of  a  pacified  world  until  the 
diplomatists  get  to  work,  it  will  be  too  late. 


THE    OPPORTUNITY    OF    LIBERALISM         61 

Peace  may  come  to  Europe  this  winter  as  swiftly 
and  disastrously  as  the  war. 

And  next,  as  to  social  reconstruction.  Do 
Liberals  realise  that  the  individualist  capitalist 
system  is  helpless  now  ?  It  may  be  picked  up 
unresistingly.  It  is  stunned.  A  new  economic 
order  may  be  improvised  and  probably  will  in 
some  manner  be  improvised  in  the  next  two  or 
three  years.  What  are  the  intentions  of  Liberal- 
ism ?  What  will  be  the  contribution  of  Liberal- 
ism ?  One  poor  Liberal,  I  perceive,  is  possessed, 
to  the  exclusion  of  every  other  consideration, 
by  the  idea  that  we  were  not  legally  bound  to 
fight  for  Belgium.  A  pretty  point,  but  a  petty 
one.  Liberalism  is  something  greater  than  un- 
favourable comment  on  the  deeds  of  active  men. 
Let  us  set  about  defining  our  intentions.  Let 
us  borrow  a  little  from  the  rash  vigour  of  the 
types  that  have  contrived  this  disaster.  Let  us 
make  a  truce  of  our  finer  feelings  and  control  our 
dissentient  passions.  Let  us  re-draw  the  map 
of  Europe  boldly,  as  we  mean  it  to  be  re-drawn, 
an  let  us  re-plan  society  as  we  mean  it  to  be 
reconstructed.  Let  us  get  to  work  while  there 
is  still  a  little  time  left  to  us.  Or  while  our 
futile  fine  intelligences  are  busy,  each  with  its 
particular  exquisitely-felt  point,  the  Northclirfes 
and  the  diplomatists,  the  Welt-Politik  whisperers, 
and  the  financiers,  and  militarists,  the  armaments 
interests,  and  the  Cossack  Tsar,  terrified  by  the 
inevitable  red  dawn  of  leaderless  social  democracy, 
by  the  beginning  of  the  stupendous  stampede 
that  will  follow  this  great  jar  and  displacement, 


62     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

will  surely  contrive  some  monstrous  blundering 
settlement,  and  the  latter  state  of  this  world 
will  be  worse  than  the  former. 

Now  is  the  opportunity  to  do  fundamental 
things  that  will  otherwise  not  get  done  for 
hundreds  of  years.  If  Liberals  throughout  the 
world — and  in  this  matter  the  Liberalism  of 
America  is  a  stupendous  possibility — will  insist 
upon  a  World  conference  at  the  end  of  this 
conflict,  if  they  refuse  all  partial  settlements  and 
merely  European  solutions,  they  may  re-draw 
every  frontier  they  choose,  they  may  reduce 
a  thousand  chafing  conflicts  of  race  and  language 
and  government  to  a  minimum,  and  set  up  a 
Peace  League  that  will  control  the  globe.  The 
world  will  be  ripe  for  it.  And  the  world  will  be 
ripe,  too,  for  the  banishment  of  the  private 
industry  in  armaments  and  all  the  vast  corruption 
that  entails  from  the  earth  for  ever.  It  is  possible 
now  to  make  an  end  to  Kruppism.  It  may  never 
be  possible  again.  Henceforth  let  us  say  weapons 
must  be  made  by  the  State,  and  only  by  the 
State  ;  there  must  be  no  more  private  profit  in 
blood.  That  is  the  second  great  possibility  for 
Liberalism,  linked  to  the  first.  And,  thirdly, 
we  may  turn  our  present  social  necessities  to  the 
most  enduring  social  reorganization ;  with  an 
absolute  minimum  of  effort  now,  we  may  help 
to  set  going  methods  and  machinery  that  will 
put  the  feeding  and  housing  of  the  population 
and  the  administration  of  the  land  out  of  the 
reach  of  private  greed  and  selfishness  for  ever. 
^Wi  ^H&dM  ,, :<***> 

(1M  k  I 


VIII. 

THE    LIBERAL    FEAR 
OF    RUSSIA 

It  is  evident  that  there  is  a  very  considerable 
dread  of  the  power  and  intentions  of  Russia  in 
this  country.  It  is  well  that  the  justification  of 
this  dread  should  be  discussed  now,  for  it  is 
likely  to  affect  the  attitude  of  British  and  American 
Liberalism  very  profoundly,  both  towards  the 
continuation  of  the  war  and  towards  the  ultimate 
settlement. 

It  is,  I  believe,  an  exaggerated  dread  arising 
out  of  our  extreme  ignorance  of  Russian  realities. 
English  people  imagine  Russia  to  be  more  pur- 
poseful than  she  is.  more  concentrated,  more 
inimical  to  Western  civilisation.  They  think  of 
Russian  policy  as  if  it  were  a  diabolically  clever 
spider  in  a  dark  place.  They  imagine  that  the 
tremendous  unification  of  State  and  national 
pride  and  ambition  which  has  made  the  German 
Empire  at  last  insupportable,  may  presently  be 
repeated  upon  an  altogether  more  gigantic  scale, 
that  Pan-Slavism  will  take  the  place  of  Pan- 
Germanism,  as  the  ruling  aggression  of  the 
world. 

This  is  a  dread  due,  I  am  convinced,  to  funda- 
mental misconceptions  and  hasty  parallelisms. 
Russia  is  not  only  the  vastest  country  in  the 


64     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

world,  but  the  laxest  ;  she  is  incapable  of  that 
tremendous  unification.  Not  for  two  centuries 
yet,  if  ever,  will  it  be  necessary  for  a  reasonably 
united  Western  Europe  to  trouble  itself,  once 
Prussianism  has  been  disposed  of,  about  the  risk 
of  definite  aggression  from  the  East.  I  do  not 
think  it  will  ever  have  to  trouble  itself. 

Socially  and  politically,  Russia  is  an  entirely 
unique  structure.  It  is  the  fashion  to  talk  of 
Russia  as  being  "in  the  fourteenth  century,"  or 
"  in  the  sixteenth  century."  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  Russia,  like  everything  else,  is  in  the  twen- 
tieth century,  and  it  is  quite  impossible  to  find 
in  any  other  age  a  similar  social  organisation.  In 
bulk,  she  is  barbaric.  Between  eighty  and  ninety 
per  cent,  of  her  population  is  living  at  a  level 
very  little  above  the  level  of  those  agricultural 
Aryan  races  who  were  scattered  over  Europe 
before  the  beginning  of  written  history.  It  is 
an  illiterate  population.  It  is  superstitious  in  a 
primitive  way,  conservative  and  religious  in  a 
primitive  way,  it  is  incapable  of  protecting  itself 
in  the  ordinary  commerce  of  modern  life  ;  against 
the  business  enterprise  of  better  educated  races 
it  has  no  weapon  but  a  peasant's  poor  cunning. 
It  is,  indeed,  a  helpless,  unawakened  mass.  Above 
these  peasants  come  a  few  millions  of  fairly  well- 
educated  and  actively  intelligent  people.  They 
are  all  that  corresponds  in  any  way  to  a  Western 
community  such  as  ours.  Either  they  are  officials, 
clerical  or  lay,  in  the  great  government  machine 
that  was  consolidated  chiefly  by  Peter  the  Great 
to  control  the  souls  and  bodies  of  the  peasant 


THE   LIBERAL   FEAR   OF   RUSSIA  65 

mass,  or  they  are  private  persons  more  or  less 
resentfully  entangled  in  that  machine.  At  the 
head  of  this  structure,  with  powers  of  interference 
strictly  determined  by  his  individual  capacity, 
is  that  tragic  figure,  the  Tsar.  That,  briefly,  is 
the  composition  of  Russia,  and  it  is  unlike  any 
other  State  on  earth.  It  will  follow  laws  of  its 
own  and  have  a  destiny  of  its  own. 

Involved  with  the  affairs  of  Russia  are  certain 
less  barbaric  States.  There  is  Finland,  which  is 
by  comparison  highly  civilised,  and  Poland,  which 
is  not  nearly  so  far  in  advance  of  Russia.  Both 
these  countries  are  perpetually  uneasy  under  the 
blundering  pressure  of  foolish  attempts  to  "  Rus- 
sianize "  them.  In  addition,  in  the  South  and 
East  are  certain  provinces  thick  with  Jews,  whom 
Russia  can  neither  contrive  to  tolerate  nor 
assimilate,  who  have  no  comprehensible  projects 
for  the  help  or  reorganisation  of  the  country, 
and  who  deafen  all  the  rest  of  Europe  with  their 
bitter,  unhelpful  tale  of  grievances,  so  that  it  is 
difficult  to  realise  how  local  and  partial  are  their 
wrongs.  There  is  a  certain  "  Russian  idea," 
containing  within  itself  all  the  factors  of  failure, 
inspiring  the  general  policy  of  this  vast  amorphous 
State.  It  found  its  completest  expression  in  the 
works  of  the  now  defunct  Pobedonostsev,  and  it 
pervades  the  bureaucracy.  It  is  obscurantist, 
denying  the  common  people  education  ;  it  is 
orthodox,  forbidding  free  thought  and  preferring 
conformity  to  ability ;  it  is  bureaucratic  and 
autocratic  ;  it  is  Pan-Slavic,  Russianizing,  and 
aggressive.  It  is  this  "  Russian  idea  "  that 


66     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

Western  Liberalism  dreads,  and,  as  I  want  to 
point  out,  dreads  unreasonably.  I  do  not  want 
to  plead  that  it  is  not  a  bad  thing  ;  it  is  a  bad 
thing.  I  want  to  point  out  that,  unlike  Prussian- 
ism,  it  is  not  a  great  danger  to  the  world  at 
large. 

So  long  as  this  Russian  idea,  this  Russian 
Toryism,  dominates  Russian  affairs,  Russia  can 
never  be  really  formidable  either  to  India,  to 
China,  or  to  the  Liberal  nations  of  Western 
Europe.  And  whenever  she  abandons  this  Tory- 
ism and  becomes  modern  and  formidable,  she 
will  cease  to  be  aggressive.  That  is  my  case. 
While  Russia  has  the  will  to  oppress  the  world 
she  will  never  have  the  power  ;  when  she  has 
the  power  she  will  cease  to  have  the  will.  Let 
me  state  my  reasons  for  this  belief  as  compactly 
as  possible,  because  if  I  am  right  a  number  of 
Liberal-minded  people  in  Great  Britain  and 
America  and  Scandinavia,  who  may  collectively 
have  a  very  great  influence  upon  the  settlement 
of  Europe  that  will  follow  this  war,  are  wrong. 
They  may  want  to  bolster  up  a  really  dangerous 
and  evil  Austria-cum-Germany  at  the  expense 
of  France,  Belgium,  and  subject  Slav  populations, 
because  of  their  dread  of  this  Russia  which  can 
never  be  at  the  same  time  evil  and  dangerous. 

Now,  first  let  me  point  out  what  the  Boer 
War  showed,  and  what  this  tremendous  conflict 
in  Belgium  is  already  enforcing,  that  the  day  of  the 
unintelligent  common  soldier  is  past ;  that  men 
who  are  animated  and  individualised  can,  under 
modern  conditions,  fight  better  than  men  who 


THE   LIBERAL    FEAR   OF   RUSSIA  67 

are  unintelligent  and  obedient.  Soldiering  is 
becoming  more  specialised.  It  is  calling  for  the 
intelligent  handling  of  weapons  so  elaborate  and 
destructive  that  great  masses  of  men  in  the  field 
are  an  encumbrance  rather  than  a  power.  Battles 
must  spread  out,  and  leading  give  place  to 
individual  initiative.  Consequently  Russia  can 
only  become  powerful  enough  to  overcome  any 
highly  civilised  European  country  by  raising  its 
own  average  of  education  and  initiative,  and  this 
it  can  do  only  by  abandoning  its  obscurantist 
methods,  by  liberalising  upon  the  Western  Euro- 
pean model.  That  is  to  say,  it  will  have  to  teach 
its  population  to  read,  to  multiply  its  schools, 
and  increase  its  universities  ;  and  that  will  make 
an  entirely  different  Russia  from  this  one  we 
fear.  It  involves  a  relaxation  of  the  grip  of 
orthodoxy,  an  alteration  of  the  intellectual  out- 
look of  officialdom,  an  abandonment  of  quasi- 
religious  autocracy — in  short,  the  complete  aban- 
donment of  the  "  Russian  idea  "  as  we  know  it. 
And  it  means  also  a  great  development  of  local 
self-consciousness.  Russia  seems  homogeneous 
now,  because  in  the  mass  it  is  so  ignorant  as  to  be 
unaware  of  its  differences ;  but  an  educated 
Russia  means  a  Russia  in  which  Ruthenian  and 
Great  Russian,  Lett  and  Tartar  will  be  mutually 
critical  and  aware  of  one  another.  The  existing 
Russian  idea  will  need  to  give  place  to  an  entirely 
more  democratic,  tolerant,  and  cosmopolitan 
idea  of  Russia  as  a  whole,  if  Russia  is  to  merge 
from  its  barbarism  and  remain  united.  There  is 
no  cheap  "  Deutschland,  Deutschland  u'ber  alles  " 


68     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

sentiment  ready-made  to  hand.  National  quality 
is  against  it.  Patience  under  patriotism  is  a 
German  weakness.  Russians  could  no  more  go 
on  singing  and  singing,  "  Russia,  Russia  over  all," 
than  Englishmen  could  go  on  singing  "  Rule, 
Britannia."  It  would  bore  them.  The  tem- 
perament of  none  of  the  Russian  peoples  justifies 
the  belief  that  they  will  repeat  on  a  larger  scale 
even  as  much  docility  as  the  Germans  have 
shown  under  the  Prussians.  No  one  who  has 
seen  the  Russians,  who  has  had  opportunities  of 
comparing  Berlin  with  St.  Petersburg  or  Moscow, 
or  who  knows  anything  of  Russian  art  or  Russian 
literature,  will  imagine  this  naturally  wise, 
humourous,  and  impatient  people  reduplicating 
the  self-conscious,  drill-dulled,  soulless  culture 
of  Germany,  or  the  political  vulgarities  of  Pots- 
dam. This  is  a  terrible  world,  I  admit,  but 
Prussianism  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  does  not 
happen  twice. 

Russia  is  substantially  barbaric.  Who  can 
deny  it  ?  State-stuff  rather  than  a  State.  But 
people  in  Western  Europe  are  constantly  writing 
of  Russia  and  the  Russians  as  though  the  qualities 
natural  to  barbarism  were  qualities  inherent  in 
the  Russian  blood.  Russia  massacres,  sometimes 
even  with  official  connivance.  But  Russia  in  all 
its  history  has  no  massacres  so  abominable  as  we 
gentle  English  were  guilty  of  in  Ireland  in  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  Russia, 
too,  "  Russianizes,"  sometimes  clumsily,  some- 
times rather  successfully.  But  Germany  has 
sought  to  Germanise — in  Bohemia  and  Poland, 


THE   LIBERAL   FEAR   OF   RUSSIA  69 


for  instance,  with  conspicuous  violence  and 
failure.  We  "  Anglicised  "  Ireland.  These  for- 
cible efforts  to  create  uniformity  are  natural  to  a 
phase  of  social  and  political  development,  from 
which  no  people  on  earth  have  yet  fully  emerged. 
And  if  we  set  ourselves  now  to  create  a  reunited 
Poland  under  the  Russian  crown,  if  we  bring  all 
the  great  influence  of  the  Western  Powers  to 
bear  upon  the  side  of  the  liberalising  forces  in 
Finland,  if  we  do  not  try  to  thwart  and  stifle 
Russia  by  closing  her  legitimate  outlet  into  the 
Mediterranean,  we  shall  do  infinitely  more  for 
human  happiness  than  if  we  distrust  her,  check 
her,  and  force  her  back  upon  the  barbarism  from 
which,  with  a  sort  of  blind  pathetic  wisdom,  she 
seeks  to  emerge. 

It  is  unfortunate  for  Russia  that  she  has  come 
into  conspicuous  conflict  with  the  Jews.  She  has 
certainly  treated  them  no  worse  than  she  has 
treated  her  own  people,  and  she  has  treated  them 
less  atrociously  than  they  were  treated  in  England 
during  the  Middle  Ages.  The  Jews  by  their 
particularism  invite  the  resentment  of  all  uncul- 
tivated humanity.  Civilisation  and  not  revolt 
emancipates  them.  And  while  Russian  reverses 
will  throw  back  her  civilisation  and  intensify  the 
sufferings  of  all  her  subject  Jews,  Russian  success 
in  this  alliance  will  inevitably  spell  Westernisation, 
progress,  and  amelioration  for  them.  But  un- 
happily this  does  not  seem  to  be  patent  to  many 
Jewish  minds.  They  have  been  embittered  by 
their  wrongs,  and,  in  the  English  and  still  more 
in  the  American  Press,  a  heavy  weight  of  grievance 


yo    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

against  Russia  finds  voice,  and  distorts  the  issue 
of  this.  While  we  are  still  only  in  the  opening 
phase  of  this  struggle  for  life  against  the  Prussian- 
ised German  Empire,  this  struggle  to  escape 
from  the  militarism  that  has  been  slowly  strang- 
ling civilisation,  it  is  a  huge  misfortune  that  this 
racial  resentment,  which,  great  as  it  is,  is  still  a 
little  thing  beside  the  world  issues  involved, 
should  break  the  united  front  of  western  civilisa- 
tion, and  that  the  confidence  of  Russia  should  be 
threatened,  as  it  is  threatened  now  by  doubt  and 
disparagement  in  the  Press.  We  are  not  so  sure 
of  victory  that  we  can  estrange  an  ally.  We  have 
to  make  up  our  minds  to  see  all  Poland  reunited 
under  the  Russian  Crown,  and  if  the  Turks 
choose  to  play  a  foolish  part,  it  is  not  for  us  to 
quarrel  now  about  the  fate  of  Constantinople. 
The  Allies  are  not  to  be  tempted  into  a  quarrel 
about  Constantinople.  The  balance  of  power  in 
the  Balkans,  that  is  to  say,  incessant  intrigue 
between  Austria  and  Russia,  has  arrested  the 
civilisation  of  South-eastern  Europe  for  a  century. 
Let  it  topple.  An  unchallenged  Russia  will  be 
a  wholesome  check,  and  no  great  danger  for  the 
new  greater  Servia  and  the  new  greater  Rumania 
and  the  enlarged  and  restored  Bulgaria  this  war 
renders  possible. 

One  civilised  country  only  does  Russia  really 
"  threaten,"  and  that  country  is  Sweden.  Sweden 
has  a  vast  wealth  of  coal  and  iron  within  reach  of 
Russia's  hand.  And  I  confess  I  watch  Scandi- 
navia with  a  certain  terror  during  these  days. 
Sweden  is  the  only  European  country  in  which 


THE   LIBERAL    FEAR   OF   RUSSIA  71 

there  is  a  pro-German  militarist  party,  and  she 
may  be  tempted — I  do  not  know  how  strongly 
she  may  not  have  been  tempted  already — to 
drag  herself  and  Norway  into  this  struggle  on 
the  German  side.  If  she  does,  our  Government 
will  be  not  a  little  to  blame  for  not  having  given 
her,  and  induced  Russia  to  give  her,  the  strongest 
joint  assurances  and  guarantees  of  her  integrity 
for  ever.  But  if  the  Scandinavian  countries 
abstain  from  any  participation  in  this  present 
war,  then  I  do  not  see  what  is  to  prevent  us 
and  France  and  Russia  from  making  the  most 
public,  definite,  and  binding  declaration  of  our 
common  interest  in  Sweden's  integrity  and  our 
common  determination  to  preserve  it. 

Beyond  that,  I  see  no  danger  to  civilisation  in 
Russia  anywhere — at  least,  no  danger  so  con- 
siderable as  the  Kaiser-Krupp  power  we  fight  to 
finish.  This  war,  even  if  it  brings  us  the  utmost 
success,  will  still  leave  Russia  face  to  face  with  a 
united  and  chastened  Germany.  For  it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  downfall  of  Prussianism 
and  the  break-up  of  the  Austro-Hungarian 
Empire,  will  leave  German  Germany  not  smaller 
but  larger  than  she  is  now.  To  India,  decently 
governed  and  guarded,  with  an  educational  level 
higher  than  her  own,  and  three  times  her  gross 
population,  Russia  can  only  be  dangerous  through 
the  grossest  misgovernment  on  our  part,  and 
her  powers  of  intervention  in  China  will  be 
restricted  for  many  years.  But  all  our  powers 
of  intervention  in  China  will  be  restricted  for 
many  years.  A  breathing  space  for  Chinese 


72     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

reconstruction  is  one  of  the  most  immediate  and 
least  equivocal  blessings  of  this  war.  Unless  the 
Chinese  are  unteachable — and  only  stupid  people 
suppose  them  a  stupid  race — the  China  of  1934 
will  not  be  a  China  for  either  us  or  Russia  to 
meddle  with.  So  where  in  all  the  world  is  this 
danger  from  Russia  ? 

The  danger  of  a  Krupp-cum-Kaiser  dominance 
of  the  whole  world,  on  the  other  hand,  is  imme- 
diate. Defeat,  or  even  a  partial  victory  for  the 
Allies,  means  nothing  less  than  that. 

*n 

' 

• 

-  *fa- 

. 


IX. 

AN  APPEAL  TO  THE 
AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

This  appeal  comes  to  you  from  England  at 
war,  and  it  is  addressed  to  you  because  upon  your 
nation  rests  the  issue  of  this  conflict.  The 
influence  of  your  States  upon  its  nature  and 
duration  must  needs  be  enormous,  and  at  its 
ending  you  may  play  a  part  such  as  no  nation 
has  ever  played  since  the  world  began. 

For  it  rests  with  you  to  establish  and  secure 
or  to  refuse  to  establish  and  secure  the  permanent 
peace  of  the  world,  the  final  ending  of  war. 

This  appeal  comes  to  you  from  England,  but 
it  is  no  appeal  to  ancient  associations  or  racial 
affinities.  Your  common  language  is  indeed 
English,  but  your  nation  has  long  since  outgrown 
these  early  links,  the  blood  of  every  people  in 
Europe  mingles  in  the  unity  of  your  States,  and 
it  is  to  the  greatness  of  your  future  rather  than 
the  accidents  of  your  first  beginnings,  to  the 
humanity  in  you,  and  not  to  the  English  and 
Irish  and  Scotch  and  Welsh  in  you  that  this 
appeal  is  made.  Half  the  world  is  at  war,  or  on 
the  very  verge  of  war  ;  it  is  impossible  that  you 
should  disregard  or  turn  away  from  this  conflict. 
Unavoidably  you  have  to  judge  us.  Unavoidable 
is  your  participation  in  the  ultimate  settlement 


74    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

which  will  make  or  mar  the  welfare  of  mankind 
for  centuries  to  come.  We  appeal  to  you  to 
judge  us,  to  listen  patiently  to  our  case,  to  exert 
the  huge  decisive  power,  you  hold  in  the  balance 
not  hastily,  not  heedlessly.  For  we  do  not 
disguise  from  ourselves  that  you  can  shatter  all 
our  hopes  in  this  conflict.  You  are  a  people 
more  than  twice  as  numerous  as  we  are,  and  still 
you  are  only  the  beginning  of  what  you  are  to  be, 
with  a  clear  prospect  of  expansion  that  mocks  the 
limits  of  these  little  islands,  with  illimitable  and 
still  scarcely  tapped  sources  of  wealth  and  power. 
You  have  already  come  to  a  stage  when  a  certain 
magnanimity  becomes  you  in  your  relation  to 
European  affairs. 

Now,  while  you,  because  of  your  fortunate 
position,  and  because  of  the  sane  and  brotherly 
relations  that  have  become  a  fixed  tradition  along 
your  northern  boundary — we  English  had  a  share 
in  securing  that — while  you  live  free  of  the  sight 
and  burthen  of  military  preparations,  free  as  it 
seems  for  ever,  all  Europe  has  for  more  than  half 
a  century  bent  more  and  more  wearily  under  a 
perpetually  increasing  burthen  of  armaments. 
For  many  years  Europe  has  been  an  armed  camp, 
with  millions  of  men  continually  under  arms, 
with  the  fear  of  war  universally  poisoning  its  life, 
with  its  education  impoverished,  its  social  devel- 
opment retarded,  with  everything  pinched  but 
its  equipment  for  war.  It  would  be  foolish  to 
fix  the  blame  for  this  state  of  affairs  upon  any 
particular  nation ;  it  has  grown  up,  as  most 
great  evils  grow,  quietly,  unheeded.  One  may 


AN   APPEAL   TO   THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE     75 

cast  back  in  history  to  the  Thirty  Years'  War, 
to  such  names  as  Frederick  the  Great,  Napoleon 
the  First,  Napoleon  the  Third,  Bismarck  ;  what 
does  it  matter  now  who  began  the  thing,  and 
which  was  most  to  blame  ?  Here  it  is,  and  we 
have  to  deal  with  it. 

But  we  English  do  assert  that  it  is  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  German  Emperor  which  has  for  the 
last  40  years  taken  the  lead  and  forced  the  pace 
in  these  matters,  which  has  driven  us  English 
to  add  warship  to  warship  in  a  pitiless  competition 
to  retain  that  predominance  at  sea  upon  which 
our  existence  as  a  free  people  depends,  and  which 
has  strained  the  strength  of  France  almost  beyond 
the  pitch  of  human  endurance,  so  that  the 
education  and  the  welfare  of  her  people  have 
suffered  greatly,  so  that  Paris  to-day  is  visibly 
an  impoverished  and  over-taxed  city.  And  this 
perpetual  fear  of  the  armed  strength  of  Germany 
has  forced  upon  France  alliances  and  entangle- 
ments she  would  otherwise  have  avoided. 

Let  us  not  attempt  to  deny  the  greatness  of 
Germany  and  of  Germany's  contributions  to 
science  and  art  and  literature  and  all  that  is  good 
in  human  life.  But  evil  influences  may  over- 
shadow the  finest  peoples,  and  it  is  our  case  that 
since  the  victories  of  1871  Germany  has  been 
obsessed  by  the  worship  of  material  power  and 
glory  and  scornful  of  righteousness  ;  that  she 
has  been  threatening  and  overbearing  to  all  the 
world.  There  has  been  a  propaganda  of  cynicism 
and  national  roughness,  a  declared  contempt  for 
treaties  and  pledges,  so  that  all  Europe  has  been 


76    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

uneasy  and  in  fear.  And  since  none  of  us  are 
saints,  and  certainly  no  nations  are  saintly,  we  have 
been  resentful ;  there  is  not  a  country  in  Europe 
that  has  not  shown  itself  resentful  under  this 
perpetual  menace  of  Germany.  And  now  at 
last  and  suddenly  the  threatened  thing  has  come 
to  pass  and  Germany  is  at  war. 

Because  of  a  murder  committed  by  one  of  her 
own  subjects  Austria  made  war  upon  Servia, 
Russia  armed  to  protect  a  kindred  country,  and 
then  with  the  swiftness  of  years  of  premeditation 
Germany  declared  war  upon  Russia  and  struck 
at  France,  striking  through  the  peaceful  land 
of  Belgium,  a  little  country  we  English  had 
pledged  ourselves  to  protect,  a  little  country  that 
had  never  given  Germany  the  faintest  pretext 
for  hostility,  and  in  the  hope  of  finding  France 
unready.  Of  course,  we  went  to  war.  If  we 
had  not  done  so,  could  we  English  have  ever 
looked  the  world  in  the  face  again  ? 

And  it  is  with  scarcely  a  dissentient  voice  that 
England  is  at  war.  Never  were  the  British  people 
so  unanimous  ;  all  Ireland  is  with  us,  and  the 
conscience  of  all  the  world.  And,  now  this  war 
has  begun,  we  are  resolved  to  put  an  end  to 
militarism  in  the  world  for  evermore.  We  are 
not  fighting  to  destroy  Germany  ;  it  is  the  firm 
resolve  of  England  to  permit  no  fresh  "  conquered 
provinces "  to  darken  the  future  of  Europe. 
Whatever  betide,  all  German  Germany  will  come 
out  of  this  war  undivided  and  German  still. 
Her  own  "  conquests  "  she  may  have  to  relinquish, 
her  Poles  and  other  subject  peoples,  but  that  is  the 


AN   APPEAL   TO   THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE     77 

utmost  we  shall  exact  of  her.  With  the  accession 
of  Austria,  Germany  may  even  come  out  of  this 
war  a  larger  Germany  than  at  the  beginning. 
We  have  no  hatred  of  things  German  and  German 
people.  But  we  are  fighting  to  break  this  huge 
fighting  machine  for  ever — this  fighting  machine 
which  has  been  such  an  oppression  as  no  native- 
born  American  can  dream  of,  to  every  other 
nation  in  Europe.  We  are  fighting  to  end 
Kaiserism  and  Kruppism  for  ever  and  ever. 
There,  shortly  and  plainly,  is  our  case  and  our 
object.  Now  let  us  come  to  the  immediate 
substance  of  this  appeal. 

We  do  not  ask  you  for  military  help.  Keep 
the  peace  which  it  is  your  unparalleled  good 
fortune  to  enjoy  so  securely.  But  keep  it  fairly. 
Remember  that  we  fight  now  for  national 
existence,  and  that  in  the  night,  even  as  this  is 
written,  within  a  hundred  miles  or  so  of  this 
place,  the  dark  ships  feel  their  way  among  the 
floating  mines  with  which  the  Germans  have 
strewn  the  North  Sea,  and  our  sons  and  the  sons 
of  Belgium  and  France  go  side  by  side,  not  by  the 
hundred  nor  by  the  thousand,  but  by  the  hundred 
thousand,  rank  after  rank,  line  beyond  line — to 
death.  Even  as  this  is  written  the  harvest  of 
death  is  being  reaped.  Remember  our  tragic 
case.  Europe  is  full  of  a  joyless  determination 
to  end  this  evil  for  ever  ;  she  plunges  grimly 
and  sadly  into  the  cruel  monstrosities  of  war, 
and  assuredly  there  will  be  little  shouting  for 
the  victors  whichever  side  may  win.  At  the 
end  we  do  most  firmly  believe  there  will  be 


78     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

established  a  new  Europe,  a  Europe  riddened  of 
rankling  oppressions,  with  a  free  Poland,  a  free 
Finland,  a  free  Germany,  the  Balkans  settled, 
the  little  nations  safe,  and  peace  secure.  And 
it  is  of  supreme  importance  that  we  should  ask 
you  now — What  are  you  going  to  do  throughout 
the  struggle,  and  what  will  you  do  at  the  end  ? 

One  thing  we  are  told  in  England  that  you 
mean  to  do,  a  thing  that  has  moved  me  to  this 
appeal.  For  it  is  not  only  a  strange  thing  in 
itself,  but  it  may  presently  be  followed  by  other 
similar  ideas.  Come  what  may,  all  the  liberal 
forces  in  England  and  France  are  resolved  to 
respect  the  freedom  of  Holland.  But  the  position 
of  Holland  is,  as  you  may  see  in  any  atlas,  a  very 
peculiar  one  in  this  war.  The  Rhine  runs  along 
the  rear  of  the  long  German  line  as  if  it  were  a 
canal  to  serve  that  line  with  supplies,  and  then 
it  passes  into  Holland  and  so  by  Rotterdam  to 
the  sea.  So  that  it  is  possible  for  any  neutral 
power,  such  as  you  are,  to  pour  a  stream  of  food 
supplies  and  war  material  by  way  of  Holland 
almost  into  the  hands  of  the  German  combatant 
line.  Even  if  we  win  our  battles  in  the  field 
this  will  enormously  diminish  our  chance  of 
concluding  this  war.  But  we  shall  suffer  it  ; 
it  is  within  the  rights  of  Holland  to  victual  the 
Germans  in  this  way,  and  we  cannot  prevent  it 
without  committing  just  such  another  outrage 
upon  the  laws  of  nations  as  Germany  was  guilty 
of  in  invading  Belgium. 

And  here  is  where  your  country  comes  in.  In 
your  harbours  lie  a  great  number  of  big  German 


AN   APPEAL   TO   THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

ships  that  dare  not  venture  to  sea  because  of  our 
fleet.  It  is  proposed,  we  are  told,  to  arrange  a 
purchase  of  these  ships  by  American  citizens,  to 
facilitate  by  special  legislation  their  transfer  to 
your  flag,  and  then  to  load  them  with  food  and 
war  material  and  send  them  across  the  Atlantic 
and  through  the  narrow  seas,  seas  that  at  the 
price  of  a  cruiser  and  many  men  we  have  painfully 
cleared  of  German  contact  mines,  to  get  war 
prices  in  Rotterdam  and  supply  our  enemies. 
It  is,  we  confess,  a  smart  thing  to  do  ;  it  will  give 
your  people  not  only  huge  immediate  profits  but 
a  mercantile  marine  at  one  coup  ;  it  will  certainly 
prolong  the  war,  and  so  it  will  mean  the  killing 
and  wounding  of  scores  of  thousands  of  young 
Germans,  Englishmen,  Frenchmen,  and  Belgians, 
who  might  otherwise  have  escaped.  It  is  within 
your  legal  rights,  and  we  will  tell  you  plainly  now 
that  we  shall  refuse  to  quarrel  with  you  about  it, 
but  we  ask  you  not  to  be  too  easily  offended  if 
we  betray  a  certain  lack  of  enthusiasm  for  this 
idea. 

And  begun  such  enterprises  as  this,  what  are 
you  going  to  do  for  mankind  and  the  ultimate 
peace  of  the  world  ?  You  know  that  the  Tsar 
has  restored  the  freedom  of  Finland  and  promised 
to  re-unite  the  torn  fragments  of  Poland  into  a 
free  kingdom,  but  probably  you  do  not  know 
that  he  and  England  have  engaged  themselves 
to  respect  and  protect  from  each  other  and  all 
the  world  the  autonomy  of  Norway  and  Sweden, 
and  of  Sweden's  vast  and  tempting  stores  of 
mineral  wealth  close  to  the  Russian  boundary. 


So    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

We  ask  you  not  to  be  too  cynical  about  the  Tsar's 
promises,  and  to  be  prepared  to  help  us  and 
France  and  him  to  see  that  they  become  real. 
And  this  with  regard  to  Scandinavia,  is  not  only 
Russia's  promise  but  ours.  This  is  more  than  a 
war  of  armies  ;  it  is  a  great  moral  upheaval,  and 
ou  must  not  judge  of  the  spirit  of  Europe  to-day 
y  the  history  of  her  diplomacies.  When  this 
wTar  is  ended,  all  Europe  will  cry  for  disarmament. 
Are  you  going  to  help  then  or  are  you  going  to 
thwart  that  cry  ?  In  Europe  we  shall  attempt 
to  extinguish  that  huge  private  trade  in  war 
material,  that  "  Kruppism  "  which  lies  so  near 
the  roots  of  all  this  monstrous  calamity.  We 
cannot  do  that  unless  you  do  it  too.  Are  you 
prepared  to  do  that  ?  Are  you  prepared  to  come 
into  a  conference  at  the  end  of  this  war  to  ensure 
the  peace  of  the  world,  or  are  you  going  to  stand 
out,  make  difficulties  for  us  out  of  our  world 
perplexities,  snatch  advantages,  carp  from  your 
infinite  security  at  our  Allies,  and  perhaps  in  the 
crisis  of  our  struggle  pick  a  quarrel  with  us  upon 
some  secondary  score  ?  Are  you  indeed  going 
to  play  the  part  of  a  merely  numerous  little 
people,  a  cute  trading,  excitable  people,  or  are 
you  going  to  play  the  part  of  a  great  nation  in 
this  life  and  death  struggle  of  the  old  world 
civilisations  ?  Are  you  prepared  now  to  take 
that  lead  among  the  nations  to  which  your 
greatness  and  freedom  point  you  ?  It  is  not 
for  ourselves  we  make  this  appeal  to  you  ;  it 
is  for  the  whole  future  of  mankind.  And  we 
make  it  with  the  more  assurance  because 


AN   APPEAL   TO   THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE     81 

already  your  Government  has  stood  for  peace 
and  the  observation  of  treaties  against  base 
advantages. 

Already  the  wounds  of  our  dead  cry  out  to 
you. 


X. 

COMMON  SENSE  AND 
THE   BALKAN   STATES 

The  Balkan  States  never  have  been  a  problem, 
they  have  only  been  a  part  of  a  problem.  That 
is  why  no  human  being  has  ever  yet  produced 
even  a  paper  solution  acceptable  to  another 
human  being. 

The  attempt  to  settle  Balkan  affairs  with  the 
Austro-Hungarian  Empire  left  out  of  the  problem 
has  been  like  an  attempt  to  deal  with  a  number  of 
hospital  cases  in  which  the  head  and  shoulders 
of  one  patient,  the  legs  of  another,  the  abdomen 
of  a  third  had  to  be  disregarded.  The  bulk  of 
the  Servian  people  and  a  great  mass  of  the  Ru- 
manians were  in  the  Austro-Hungarian  system, 
and  it  was  the  Austrian  bar  to  any  development 
of  Servia  towards  the  Adriatic  that  forced  that 
country  back  into  its  unhappy  conflict  with 
Bulgaria.  Now  everything  has  altered.  English 
people  need  trouble  no  longer  about  Austrian 
susceptibilities,  and  not  merely  our  interests  but 
our  urgent  necessities  march  with  the  reasonable 
ambitions  of  the  four  Balkan  nations. 

Let  us  begin  by  clearing  away  a  certain  amount 
of  nonsense  that  is  said  and  believed  by  many 
good  people  about  two  of  these  States.  It  is  too 


COMMON  SENSE  AND  THE  BALKAN  STATES   83 

much  the  custom  to  speak  and  write  of  Servia 
and  Bulgaria  as  though  they  were  almost  hopelessly 
barbaric  and  criminal  communities,  incapable  of 
participation  in  the  fellowship  of  European 
nations.  The  murder  of  the  late  King  and  Queen 
of  Servia,  the  assassination  of  Serajevo,  the  foolish 
onslaught  of  Bulgaria  upon  Servia  that  led  to  the 
break-up  of  the  Balkan  League,  and  the  endless 
cruelties  and  barbarities  of  the  warfare  in  Mace- 
donia, are  allowed  to  weigh  too  much  against  the 
clear  need  of  a  reunited  Greater  Servia,  a  restored 
Bulgaria,  and  the  reasonable  prospect  of  a  re- 
habilitated Balkan  League. 

Now  there  is  no  getting  over  the  hard  facts  of 
these  crimes  and  cruelties.  But  they  have  to  be 
kept  in  their  proper  proportion  to  the  tremendous 
issues  now  before  the  world.  Let  us  call  in  a  few 
figures  that  will  fix  the  scale.  The  Servian  people 
number  altogether  over  ten  millions,  the  Ruma- 
nians as  many,  there  are  more  than  twenty  million 
Poles,  and  perhaps  seven  millions  Bulgarians.  The 
Czechs  and  Slovenes  total  six  or  seven  millions, 
the  Magyars  exceed  ten  millions,  and  the  Ruthe- 
nians  still  under  Austrian  control  four  millions. 
It  is  manifest  to  every  reasonable  Englishman  now 
that  very  few  of  these  sixty  or  seventy  million 
people  are  likely  to  be  socially  and  politically 
happy  until  they  have  got  themselves  disen- 
tangled from  intimate  subjection  to  alien  rulers 
speaking  unfamiliar  tongues,  and  it  is  equally 
manifest  that  until  they  are  reasonably  content, 
the  peace  of  the  rest  of  Europe  will  remain 
uncertain.  So  that  it  is  upon  these  regions  that 


84     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

the  peace  of  England,  France,  Germany,  Russia 
and  Italy  rests. 

The  lives,  therefore,  of  hundreds  of  millions  of 
people  must  be  affected,  for  good  or  evil,  by  the 
sane  re-mapping  and  pacification  of  south-eastern 
Europe.  In  that  sane  re-mapping  and  pacifica- 
tion we  are,  in  fact,  dealing  with  matters  so 
gigantic  that  the  mere  assassination  of  this  person 
or  the  murder  of  that  dwindles  almost  to  the 
vanishing  point.  It  is  surely  preposterous  that 
the  murder  of  an  unwise  young  King,  who  sub- 
ordinated his  nation's  destinies  to  a  romantic 
love  affair,  a  murder  done,  not  by  a  whole  nation, 
not  even  by  a  mob,  but  by  less  than  a  hundred 
officers,  who  were  at  least  as  patriotic  as  they  were 
cruel,  or  even  the  net  of  conspiracy  that  killed 
the  Archduke  Franz  Ferdinand,  should  stand  in 
the  way  of  the  liberation  and  unity  of  millions 
of  Serbs  who  were  as  innocent  of  these  things  as 
any  Wiltshire  farmer.  All  nations  have  had  their 
criminal  and  sanguinary  phase  ;  the  British  and 
American  people  who  profess  such  a  horror  of 
Servia's  murders  and  Bulgaria's  massacres  must 
be  blankly  ignorant  of  the  history  of  Scotland 
and  Ireland  and  the  darker  side  of  the  Red 
Indians'  destiny.  If  murder  conspiracy  was 
hatched  in  Servia,  were  there  no  Fenians  in  Ireland 
and  America  ?  We  English,  at  any  rate,  have  not 
let  the  highly-organised  Phoenix  Park  murders 
drown  the  freedom  of  Ireland  for  ever,  or  cause  a 
war  with  America.  The  sooner  we  English  and 
Americans  clear  our  minds  of  this  self-righteous 
cant  against  the  whole  Servian  race  because  of 


COMMON  SENSE  AND  THE  BALKAN  STATES  85 

a  few  horrors  inevitable  in  a  state  of  barbaric 
disturbance,  the  sooner  we  shall  be  able  to  help 
these  peoples  forward  to  the  freedom  and  security 
that  alone  can  make  such  barbarities  impossible. 
It  would  be  just  as  reasonable  to  vow  undying 
hatred  and  pitiless  vengeance  against  the  whole 
German-speaking  race  (of  seventy  millions  or 
so)  because  of  the  burning  and  killing  in  Liege. 
Stifled  nations,  outraged  races,  are  the  fortresses 
of  resentful  cruelty.  This  war  is  no  cinemato- 
graph melodrama.  The  deaths  of  Queen  Draga 
and  the  Archduke  Franz  Ferdinand  are  scarcely 
in  this  picture  at  all.  It  is  not  the  business  of 
statecraft  to  avenge  the  past,  but  to  deal  with  the 
possibilities  of  the  present  and  the  hope  of  the 
future. 

And  the  open  possibility  of  the  present  is  for 
us  to  bring  about  a  revival  of  the  Balkan  League, 
and  identify  ourselves  with  the  reasonable  hopes 
of  these  renascent  peoples.  In  that  revival 
England  may  play  an  active  and  directing  part. 
The  break-up  of  the  first  Balkan  League  was  a 
deep  disappointment  to  liberal  opinion  through- 
out the  wrorld ;  but  it  was  not  an  irrevocable 
disaster.  The  wonder  was,  indeed,  not  the  rupture 
but  the  union.  And  the  rupture  itself  wras  very 
largely  due  to  the  thwarting  of  Servia,  not  by  her 
associates,  but  by  Austria.  Now  Austria  is  out 
of  consideration.  For  Rumania  and  for  each  of 
the  three  Balkan  Powers,  there  is  a  plain,  honour- 
able and  reasonable  advantage  in  a  common 
agreement  and  concerted  action  with  us  now. 
There  are  manifest  compensations  for  Greece  in 


86     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 


Epirus  and  the  islands  and  —  we  can  spare  it  — 
Cyprus.  For  Bulgaria  there  is  a  generous  recti- 
fication of  Macedonia.  The  natural  expansion 
of  the  two  northern  States  has  been  already 
indicated.  And  should  Turkey  be  foolish  and 
blunder  at  this  crisis,  then  further  very  natural 
v,  and  quite  desirable  readjustments  become  possible. 
!What  holds  these  States  back  from  concerted 
'action  on  our  side  now,  is  merely  the  distrusts 
and  enmities  left  over  from  the  break-up  of  the 
first  Balkan  League.  They  will  not  readily  trust 
one  another  again.  But  they  would  trust  England. 
They  would  sit  down  now  at  a  conference  in 
which  England  and  Russia  and  Italy  were  repre- 
sented, and  to  which  England  and  Russia  and 
Italy  would  bring  assurances  of  a  permanent 
settlement  and  arrange  every  detail  of  their 
prospective  boundaries  in  a  day.  They  would 
arrange  a  peace  that  would  last  a  century. 
England  could  do  more  than  reconcile  ;  she  could 
finance.  And  the  attack  upon  Vienna  and  the 
German  rear  would  then  be  reinforced  immedi- 
ately by  six  or  seven  hundred  thousand  seasoned 
soldiers. 

Moreover,  it  is  scarcely  possible  that  Italy 
could  refuse  to  come  into  this  war  if  a  reunited 
Balkan  League  did  so.  With  the  Servians  in 
Dalmatia  it  would  be  scarcely  possible  to  keep 
the  Italians  out  of  Trieste  and  Fiume,  and  long 
before  that  earnestly  awaited  Russian  avalanche 
won  its  way  to  Berlin,  this  southern  attack  might 
be  in  Vienna.  The  time  when  the  scope  of  this 
war  could  be  restricted  is  past  long  ago,  and  every 


COMMON  SENSE  AND  THE  BALKAN  STATES   87 

fresh  soldier  who  goes  into  action  now  shortens 
the  agony  of  Europe. 

But  it  is  not  with  the  immediate  military 
advantages  of  a  Balkan  League  that  I  am  most 
concerned.  A  Balkan  League  of  Peace,  for 
mutual  protection,  will  be  an  absolute  necessity 
in  a  regenerated  Europe.  It  is  necessary  for  the 
tranquility  of  the  world.  It  is  necessary  if  the 
Wiltshire  farmer  is  to  herd  his  sheep  in  peace  ; 
it  is  necessary  if  people  are  to  be  prosperous  and 
happy  in  Chicago  and  Yokohama.  Perhaps 
"  Balkan  League  "  is  now  an  insufficiently  exten- 
sive word,  since  Rumania  is  not  in  the  Balkan 
Peninsula,  and  Italy  must  necessarily  be  involved 
in  any  enduring  settlement.  But  it  is  clear  that 
the  settlement  of  Europe  upon  liberal  lines 
involves  the  creation  of  these  various  ten-to- 
twenty-million-people  States,  none  of  them 
powerful  enough  to  be  secure  alone,  but  amount- 
ing in  the  aggregate  to  the  greatest  power  in 
Europe,  and  it  is  equally  clear  that  they  must 
be  linked  by  some  common  bond  and  under- 
standing. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  very  serious 
complication  of  all  these  possibilities  by  the 
jerry-built  dynastic  interests  that  have  been 
unhappily  run  up  in  these  new  States.  It  is 
unfortunate  that  we  have  to  reckon  not  only  with 
peoples  but  kings.  Such  a  monarchy  as  that  of 
Servia  or  Bulgaria  narrows,  personifies,  intensifies 
and  misrepresents  national  feeling.  National 
hatreds  and  national  ambitions  can  no  doubt  be 
at  times  very  malign  influences  in  the  world's 


88     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

affairs,  but  it  is  the  greed  and  vanities  of  excep- 
tional monarchs,  of  the  Napoleons  and  Fredericks 
the  Great,  and  so  forth,  that  bring  these  vague, 
vast  feelings  to  an  edge  and  a  crisis.  And  it  will 
be  these  same  concentrated  and  over  individualised 
purposes,  these  little  gods  of  the  coin  and  postage 
stamp  that  will  stand  most  in  the  way  of  a 
reasonable  Schweitzerisation  and  pacification  of 
south-eastern  Europe.  The  more  clearly  this 
is  recognised  in  Europe  now,  the  less  likely  are 
they,  the  less  able  will  they  be  to  obstruct  a  sane 
settlement.  On  our  side,  at  least,  this  is  a  war 
of  nations  and  not  of  princes. 

It  is  for  that  reason  that  we  have  to  make  the 
discussion  of  these  national  arrangements  as  open 
and  public  as  we  possibly  can.  This  is  not  a 
matter  for  the  quiet  little  deals  of  the  diplomatists. 
This  is  no  chance  for  kings.  All  the  civilised 
peoples  of  the  earth  have  to  form  an  idea  of  the 
general  lines  upon  which  a  pacific  Europe  can 
be  established,  an  idea  clear  and  powerful 
enough  to  prevent  and  override  the  manoeuvres 
of  the  chancelleries.  The  nations  themselves 
have  to  become  the  custodians  of  the  common 
peace.  In  Italy,  indeed,  this  is  already  the  case. 
The  Italian  monarchy  is  a  strong  and  Liberal 
monarchy,  secure  in  the  confidence  of  its  people  ; 
but  were  it  not  so,  it  is  a  fairly  evident  fact  that 
no  betrayal  by  its  rulers  would  induce  the  Italian 
people  to  make  war  upon  France  in  the  interests 
of  Austria  and  Prussia.  I  doubt,  too,  if  the 
present  King  of  Bulgaria  can  afford  to  blunder 
again.  The  world  moves  steadily  away  from  the 


COMMON  SENSE  AND  THE  BALKAN  STATES  89 

phase  of  Court-centred  nationalism  to  the  phase 
of  a  collective  national  purpose.  It  is  for  the 
whole  strength  of  western  liberalism  to  throw 
itself  upon  the  side  of  that  movement,  and  in  no 
direction  can  it  make  its  strength  so  effective  at 
the  present  time  as  in  the  open  and  energetic 
promotion  of  a  new  and  greater  Balkan  League. 

,  Ja  tffat  uwrfq 


Cf 


/. 

VfaM*«^( 

' 


XL 
THE  WAR  OF  THE  MIND 

All  the  realities  of  this  war  are  things  of  the 
mind.  This  is  a  conflict  of  cultures,  and  nothing 
else  in  the  world.  All  the  world-wide  pain  and 
weariness,  fear  and  anxieties,  the  bloodshed  and 
destruction,  the  innumerable  torn  bodies  of  men 
and  horses,  the  stench  of  putrefaction,  the  misery 
of  hundreds  of  millions  of  human  beings,  the 
waste  of  mankind,  are  but  the  material  conse- 
quences of  a  false  philosophy  and  foolish  thinking. 
We  fight  not  to  destroy  a  nation,  but  a  nest  of 
evil  ideas. 

We  fight  because  a  whole  nation  has  become 
obsessed  by  pride,  by  the  cant  of  cynicism  and 
the  vanity  of  violence,  by  the  evil  suggestion  of 
such  third-rate  writers  as  Gobineau  and  Stewart 
Chamberlain  that  they  were  a  people  of  peculiar 
excellence  destined  to  dominate  the  earth,  by 
the  base  offer  of  advantage  in  cunning  and 
treachery  held  out  by  such  men  as  Delbruck  and 
Bernhardi,  by  the  theatricalism  of  the  Kaiser, 
and  by  two  stirring  songs  about  Deutschland  and 
the  Rhine.  These  things,  interweaving  with  the 
tradesmen's  activities  of  the  armaments  trust  and 
the  common  vanity  and  weaknesses  of  unthinking 
men,  have  been  sufficient  to  release  disaster — 
we  do  not  begin  to  measure  the  magnitude  of 


THE  WAR   OF  THE  MIND  91 

(M#( 

the  disaster.  On  the  back  of  it  all,  spurring  it 
on,  are  the  idea-mongers,  the  base-spirited  writing 
men,  pretentious  little  professors  in  frock  coats 
scribbling  colonels.  They  are  the  idea.  They 
pointed  the  way  and  whispered  "  Go  !  "  They 
ride  the  world  now  to  catastrophe.  It  is  as  if 
God  in  a  moment  of  wild  humour  had  lent  his 
whirlwinds  for  an  outing  to  half-a-dozen  fleas. 

And  the  real  task  before  mankind  is  quite 
beyond  the  business  of  the  fighting  line,  the  simple 
awful  business  of  discrediting  and  discouraging 
these  stupidities  by  battleship,  artillery,  rifle  and 
the  blood  and  courage  of  seven  million  men. 
The  real  task  of  mankind  is  to  get  better  sense 
into  the  heads  of  these  Germans,  and  therewith 
and  thereby  into  the  heads  of  humanity  generally, 
and  to  end  not  simply  a  war,  but  the  idea  of  war. 
What  printing  and  writing  and  talking  have  done, 
printing  and  writing  and  talking  can  undo.  Let 
no  man  be  fooled  by  bulk  and  matter.  Rifles 
do  but  kill  men,  and  fresh  men  are  born  to  follow 
them.  Our  business  is  to  kill  ideas.  The  ultimate 
purpose  of  this  war  is  propaganda,  the  destruction 
of  certain  beliefs,  and  the  creation  of  others. 
It  is  to  this  propaganda  that  reasonable  men 
must  address  themselves. 

And  when  I  write  propaganda,  I  do  not  for  a 
moment  mean  the  propaganda  with  which  the 
name  of  Mr.  Norman  Angell  is  associated  ;  this 
great  modern  gospel  that  war  does  not  pay. 
That  is  indeed  the  only  decent  and  attractive 
thing  that  can  still  be  said  for  war.  Nothing  that 
is  really  worth  having  in  life  does  pay.  Men  live 


92     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

in  order  that  they  may  pay  for  the  unpaying 
things.  Love  does  not  pay,  art  does  not  pay, 
happiness  does  not  pay,  honesty  is  not  the  best 
policy,  generosity  invites  the  ingratitude  of  the 
mean  ;  what  is  the  good  of  this  huckster's  argu- 
ment ?  It  revolts  all  honourable  men.  But 
war,  whether  it  pay  or  not,  is  an  atrociously  ugly 
thing,  cruel,  destroying  countless  beauties.  Who 
cares  whether  war  pays  or  does  not  pay,  when 
one  thinks  of  some  obstinate  Belgian  peasant 
woman  being  interrogated  and  shot  by  a  hectoring 
German  officer,  or  of  the  weakly  whimpering 
mess  of  some  poor  hovel  with  little  children  in 
it,  struck  by  a  shell  ?  Even  if  war  paid  twelve- 
and-a-half  per  cent,  per  annum  for  ever  on  every 
pound  it  cost  to  wage,  would  it  be  any  the  less 
a  sickening  abomination  to  every  decent  soul  ? 
And,  moreover,  it  is  a  bore.  It  is  an  unendurable 
bore.  War  and  the  preparation  for  war,  the 
taxes,  the  drilling,  the  interference  with  every 
free  activity,  the  arrest  and  stiffening  up  of  life, 
the  obedience  to  third-rate  people  in  uniform, 
of  which  Berlin-struck  Germans  have  been  the 
implacable  exponents,  have  become  an  unbearable 
nuisance  to  all  humanity.  Neither  Belgium  nor 
France  nor  Britain  is  fighting  now  for  glory  or 
advantage.  I  do  not  believe  Russia  is  doing  so  ; 
we  are  all,  I  believe,  fighting  in  a  fury  of  resent- 
ment because  at  last  after  years  of  waste  and  worry 
to  prevent  it,  we  have  been  obliged  to  do  so. 
Our  grievance  is  the  grievance  of  every  decent 
life-loving  German,  of  every  German  mother 
and  sweetheart  who  watched  her  man  go  off 


THE   WAR   OF  THE   MIND  93 

under  his  incompetent  leaders  to  hardship  and 
mutilations  and  death.  And  our  propaganda 
against  the  Prussian  idea  has  to  be  no  vile  argu- 
ment to  the  pocket,  but  an  appeal  to  the  common 
sense  and  common  feeling  of  humanity.  We  have 
to  clear  the  heads  of  the  Germans,  and  keep  the 
heads  of  our  own  people  clear  about  this  war. 
Particularly  is  there  need  to  dissuade  our  people 
against  the  dream  of  profit-filching,  the  "  War 
against  German  Trade."  We  have  to  reiterate 
over  and  over  again  that  we  fight,  resolved  that 
at  the  end  no  nationality  shall  oppress  any 
nationality  or  language  again  in  Europe  for  ever, 
and  by  way  of  illustration,  we  want  not  those 
ingenious  arrangements  of  figures  that  touch  the 
Angell  imagination,  but  photographs  of  the 
Kaiser  in  his  glory  at  a  review,  and  photographs 
of  the  long,  unintelligent  side-long  face  of  the 
Crown  Prince,  his  son,  photographs  of  that  great 
original  Krupp  taking  his  pleasures  at  Capri  and, 
to  set  beside  these,  photographs  pitilessly  showing 
men  killed  and  horribly  torn  upon  the  battlefield, 
and  men  crippled  and  women  and  men  murdered, 
and  homes  burnt  and,  to  the  verge  of  indecency, 
all  the  peculiar  filthiness  of  war.  And  the  case 
that  has  thus  to  be  stated  has  to  be  brought  before 
the  minds  of  the  Germans,  of  Americans,  of 
French  people,  and  English  people,  of  Swedes 
and  Russians  and  Italians  as  our  common  evil, 
which,  though  it  be  at  the  expense  of  several 
Governments,  we  have  to  end. 

Now,    how   is    this   literature    to    be    spread  ? 
How  are  we  to  reach  the  common  people  of  the 


94     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

Western  European  countries  with  these  explan- 
ations, these  assurances,  these  suggestions  that  are 
necessary  for  the  proper  ending  of  this  war  ? 
I  could  wish  we  had  a  Government  capable  of 
something  more  articulate  than  "  Wait  and  see  !  " 
a  Government  that  dared  confess  a  national 
intention  to  all  the  world.  For  what  a  Govern- 
ment says  is  audible  to  all  the  world.  King 
George,  too,  has  the  ear  of  a  thousand  million 
people.  If  he  saw  fit  to  say  simply  and  clearly 
what  it  is  we  fight  for  and  what  we  seek,  his  voice 
would  be  heard  universally,  through  Germany, 
through  all  America.  No  other  voice  has  such 
penetration.  He  is,  he  has  told  us,  watching 
the  war  with  interest,  but  that  is  not  enough ; 
we  could  have  guessed  that,  knowing  his  spirit. 
As  a  nation,  we  need  expression  that  shall  reach 
the  other  side.  But  our  Government  is,  I  fear, 
one  of  those  that  obey  necessity  ;  it  is  only  very 
reluctantly  creative  ;  it  rests,  therefore,  with  us 
who,  outside  all  formal  government,  represent 
the  national  will  and  intention,  to  take  this 
work  into  our  hands.  By  means  of  a  propaganda 
of  books,  newspaper  articles,  leaflets,  tracts  in 
English,  French,  German,  Dutch,  Swedish, 
Norwegian,  Italian,  Chinese  and  Japanese  we 
have  to  spread  this  idea,  repeat  this  idea,  and 
impose  upon  this  war  the  idea  that  this  war  must 
end  war.  We  have  to  create  a  wide  common 
conception  of  a  re-mapped  and  pacified  Europe, 
released  from  the  abominable  dangers  of  a  private 
trade  in  armaments,  largely  disarmed  and  pledged 
to  mutual  protection.  This  conception  has 


THE  WAR  OF  THE   MIND  95 

sprung  up  in  a  number  of  minds,  and  there  have 
been  proposals  at  once  most  extraordinary  and 
feasible  for  its  realisation,  projects  of  aeroplanes 
scattering  leaflets  across  Germany,  of  armies 
distributing  tracts  as  they  advance,  of  prisoners 
of  war  much  afflicted  by  such  literature.  These 
ideas  have  the  absurdity  of  novelty,  but  otherwise 
they  are  by  no  means  absurd.  They  will  strike 
many  soldiers  as  being  indecent,  but  the  world 
is  in  revolt  against  the  standards  of  soldiering. 

Never  before  has  the  world  seen  clearly  as  it 
now  sees  clearly,  the  rdle  of  thought  in  the  making 
of  war.  This  new  conception  carries  with  it 
the  corollary  of  an  entirely  new  campaign. 

How  can  we  get  at  the  minds  of  our  enemies  ? 
How  can  we  make  explanation  more  powerful 
than  armies  and  fleets  ?  Failing  an  articulate 
voice  at  the  head  of  our  country,  we  must  needs 
look  for  the  resonating  appeal  we  need  in  other 
quarters.  We  look  to  the  Church  that  takes  for 
its  purposes  the  name  of  the  Prince  of  Peace. 
In  England,  except  for  the  smallest,  meekest 
protest  against  war,  any  sort  of  war,  on  the  part 
of  a  handful  of  Quakers,  Christianity  is  silent. 
Its  universally  present  organisation  speaks  ,  no 
coherent  counsels.  Its  workers  for  the  most 
part  are  buried  in  the  loyal  manufacture  of  flannel 
garments  and  an  inordinate  quantity  of  bed- 
socks  for  the  wounded.  It  is  an  extraordinary 
thing  to  go  now  and  look  at  one's  parish  church 
and  note  the  pulpit,  the  orderly  arrangements 
for  the  hearers,  the  proclamations  on  the  doors, 
to  sit  awhile  on  the  stone  wall  about  the  graves 


96    THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

and  survey  the  comfortable  vicarage,  and  to 
reflect  that  this  is  just  the  local  representation 
of  a  universally  present  organisation  for  the 
communication  of  ideas  ;  that  all  over  Europe 
there  are  such  pulpits,  such  possibilities  of  gather- 
ing and  saying,  and  that  it  gathers  nothing  and 
has  nothing  to  say.  Pacific,  patriotic  sentiment 
it  utters  perhaps,  but  nothing  that  anyone  can 
act  upon,  nothing  to  draw  together,  will,  and  make 
an  end.  It  is  strange  to  sit  alive  in  the  sunshine 
and  realise  that,  and  to  think  of  how  tragically 
that  same  realisation  came  to  another  mind  in 
Europe. 

Several  things  have  happened  during  the  past 
few  weeks  with  the  intensest  symbolical  quality ; 
the  murder  of  Jaures,  for  example  ;  but  surely 
nothing  has  occurred  so  wonderful  and  touching 
as  the  death  of  the  Pope,  that  faithful,  honest, 
simple  old  man.  The  war  and  the  perplexity 
of  the  war  darkened  his  last  hours.  "  Once  the 
Church  could  have  stopped  this  thing,"  he  said, 
with  a  sense  of  threads  missed  and  controls  that 
have  slipped  away — it  may  be  with  a  sense  of 
vivifying  help  discouraged  and  refused.  The 
Tribuna  tells  a  story  that,  if  not  true,  is  marvell- 
ously invented,  of  the  Austrian  representative 
coming  to  ask  him  for  a  blessing  on  the  Austrian 
arms.  He  feigned  not  to  hear,  or  perhaps  he 
did  not  hear.  The  Austrian  asked  again,  and 
again  there  was  silence.  Then,  at  the  third 
request,  when  he  could  be  silent  no  longer,  he 
broke  out :  "  No  !  Bless  peace !  "  As  the 
temperature  of  his  weary  body  rose,  his  last  clear 


THE  WAR   OF  THE  MIND  97 


moments  were  spent  in  attempts  to  word  tele- 
grams that  should  have  some  arresting  hold  upon 
the  gigantic  crash  that  was  coming,  and  in  his 
last  delirium  he  lamented  war  and  the  impotence 
of  the  Church.  .  .  . 

Intellect  without  faith  is  the  devil,  but  faith 
without  intellect  is  a  negligent  angel  with  rusty 
weapons.  This  European  catastrophe  is  the 
tragedy  of  the  weak  though  righteous  Christian 
will.  We  begin  to  see  that  to  be  right  and 
indolent,  or  right  and  scornfully  silent,  or  right 
and  abstinent  from  the  conflict  is  to  be  wrong. 
Righteousness  has  need  to  be  as  clear  and  efficient 
and  to  do  things  as  sedulously  in  the  right  way 
as  any  evil  doer.  There  is  no  meaning  in  the 
Christianity  of  a  Christian  who  is  not  now  a 
propagandist  for  peace — who  is  not  now  also 
a  politician.  There  is  no  faith  in  the  Liberalism 
that  merely  carps  at  the  manner  of  our  entangle- 
ment in  a  struggle  that  must  alter  all  the  world 
for  ever.  We  need  not  only  to  call  for  peace, 
but  to  seek  and  show  and  organise  the  way  of 
peace.  ... 

One  thinks  of  Governments  and  the  Church 
and  the  Press,  and  then,  turning  about  for  some 
other  source  of  mental  control,  we  recall  the 
organisations,  the  really  quite  opulent  organisa- 
tions, that  are  professedly  devoted  to  the 
promotion  of  peace.  There  is  no  voice  from 
The  Hague.  The  so-called  peace  movement 
in  our  world  has  consumed  money  enough  and 
service  enough  to  be  something  better  than  a  weak 
little  grumble  at  the  existence  of  war.  What  is 


98     THE  WAR  THAT  WILL  END  WAR 

this  movement  and  its  organisations  doing  now  ? 
Ninety-nine  people  in  Europe  out  of  every 
hundred  are  complaining  of  war  now.  It  needs 
no  specially  endowed  committees  to  do  that. 
They  preach  to  a  converted  world.  The  question 
is  how  to  end  it  and  prevent  its  recurrence.  But 
have  these  specially  peace-seeking  people  ever 
sought  for  the  secret  springs  of  war,  or  looked 
into  the  powers  that  war  for  war,  or  troubled  to 
learn  how  to  grasp  war  and  subdue  it  ?  All 
Germany  is  knit  by  the  fighting  spirit,  and  armed 
beyond  the  rest  of  the  world.  Until  the  mind  of 
Germany  is  changed,  there  can  be  no  safe  peace 
on  earth.  But  that,  it  seems,  does  not  trouble 
the  professional  peace  advocate  if  only  he  may 
cry  Peace,  and  live  somewhere  in  comfort,  and 
with  the  comfortable  sense  of  a  superior  dissent 
from  the  general  emotion. 

How  are  we  to  gather  together  the  wills  and 
understanding  of  men  for  the  tremendous  necessi- 
ties and  opportunities  of  this  time  ?  Thought, 
speech,  persuasion,  an  incessant  appeal  for  clear 
intentions,  clear  statements  for  the  dispelling  of 
suspicion  and  the  abandonment  of  secrecy  and 
trickery ;  there  is  work  for  every  man  who  writes 
or  talks  and  has  the  slightest  influence  upon 
another  creature.  This  monstrous  conflict  in 
Europe,  the  slaughtering,  the  famine,  the  con- 
fusion, the  panic  and  hatred  and  lying  pride,  it 
is  all  of  it  real  only  in  the  darkness  of  the  mind. 
At  the  coming  of  understanding  it  will  vanish 
as  dreams  vanish  at  awakening.  But  never  will 
it  vanish  until  understanding  has  come.  It  goes 


THE  WAR  OF  THE  MIND  99 

on  only  because  we,  who  are  voices,  who  suggest, 
who  might  elucidate  and  inspire,  are  ourselves 
such  little  scattered  creatures  that  though  we 
strain  to  the  breaking  point,  we  still  have  no 
strength  to  turn  on  the  light  that  would  save 
us.  There  have  been  moments  in  the  last  three 
weeks  when  life  has  been  a  waking  nightmare, 
one  of  those  frozen  nightmares  when,  with 
salvation  within  one's  reach,  one  cannot  move, 
and  the  voice  dies  in  one's  throat 


WA,  y\ 


tf..t#tfb 


&*d  (jttfifA 

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<4  M 

'iitiW' 


Brave  Belgium 

HER   HISTORY    AND    HER    PEOPLE 
BY  DR.  ANGELO  S.  RAPPOPORT 

Author  of  "  Leopold   II.,   King  of  the   Belgians,"   etc. 
Decorative  Cover,  6d.  net.  56  pp» 

WHO  is  there  with  soul  so  dead  that  will  not  respond  to  the 
deeds  of  valour,  and  the  unflinching  heroism  of  the  gallant 
defenders  of  Liege  ?  Go  where  you  will  in  this  England  of 
ours  and  Brave  Belgium  is  on  the  lips  of  all.  The  land  of  the 
Belgians  has  ever  been  the  "  cock-pit "  of  Europe,  for  on  its 
territory  some  of  the  world's  greatest  battles  have  been  fought. 
To-day,  the  greatest  of  all  is  being  waged  and  no  matter  what 
the  outcome  of  it  may  be,  brave  little  Belgium  has  assured  for 
her  nation  an  imperishable  record  of  great  deeds  of  daring  and 
heroism  of  her  soldiers  and  fortitude  and  self-sacrifice  of  her 
people.  The  hour  is  propitious,  then,  for  we  in  England  to 
know  something  of  the  history  of  the  Belgians  and  her  country  ; 
and  who  better  qualified  to  introduce  us  than  the  author  of 
the  life  of  the  late  Leopold  II.,  King  of  the  Belgians  and  uncle 
of  King  Albert,  the  reigning  monarch.  In  "  Brave  Belgium  " 
Dr.  Rappoport  has  written  a  book  teeming  full  of  interest. 
It  deals  in  turn  with  the  Soul  of  Belgium,  the  Country  and  the 
People,  Legislation,  Religion,  Public  Education,  Justice,  the 
Army,  Military  Education,  Science  and  Art.  A  chapter  on 
Belgian  History  is  perhaps  one  of  the  most  important  and 
interesting  in  the  volume  for  it  gives  the  reader  an  illuminating 
historical  sketch  from  the  time  of  Caesar  to  Charlemagne. 
"  Brave  Belgium  "  is  a  book  which  every  patriotic  Britisher 
must  read. 

FRANK   AND  CECIL  PALMER 

12-14    RED     LION    COURT,    LONDON,     E.C. 


Your  Navy  as  a  Fighting 
Machine 

BY   FRED   T.   JANE 

(Author  of  "  Fighting  Ships,"  etc.) 
Decorative  cover^  I/-  net.        With  explanatory  Diagrams. 

CONTENTS 

WHAT  is  A  CAPITAL  SHIP.  AIRSHIPS. 

THE  BATTLE  CRUISER.  MINES. 

CRUISERS.  PERSONNEL  :    OFFICERS. 

TORPEDO  CRAFT.  „  MEN. 

SUBMARINES.  etc.       THE  ROYAL  MARINES. 

THIS  little  book  is  an  attempt  to  produce  an  entirely  non- 
technical handbook  for  the  use  of  those  who,  till  this  war  came 
along,  did  not  interest  themselves  in  naval  matters.  Till  now 
a  vast  number  of  people  have  taken  the  Navy  for  granted.  It 
has  existed  to  them  much  as  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  exists.  To 
the  great  majority  there  has  been  no  occasion  to  trouble  about 
anything,  save  perhaps  one  or  two  of  the  more  picturesque 
features  of  the  Fleet.  Now,  however,  after  a  hundred  years  of 
peace  the  Navy  is  engaged  in  naval  warfare,  and  the  entire 
situation  is  changed  accordingly. 

It  is  true  that  during  this  past  century  the  Navy  has  been 
engaged  in  various  operations.  In  the  Crimean  War,  for 
instance,  two  considerable  fleets  were  employed.  Both  before 
and  since  our  ships  have  bombarded  forts  and  places,  like 
Algiers  and  Alexandria,  but  in  all  the  hundred  years  there  has 
been  no  war  between  British  fleets  and  the  fleets  of  a  foreign 
Power.  And  so  it  comes  about  that  all  eyes  are  now  upon  the 
Navy,  which  somewhere  on  the  seas  started  facing  the  unknown 
directly  Austria  sent  her  ultimatum  to  Servia. 

So  soon  as  that  incident  occurred  everything  which  has 
happened  since  became  a  vivid  possibility.  From  that  moment 
the  Fleet  had  to  be  on  watch  and  guard  lest  Germany  should 
fall  on  us  unawares.  That  she  intended  to  attempt  it  was 
perfectly  well-known — it  had  been  known  for  years  to  all  in 
authority. 

The  British  Navy,  for  which  the  public  has  paid,  is  now 
undergoing  the  supreme  test 


The  War  Lord 

A  CHARACTER  STUDY  OF  EMPEROR  WILLIAM  II.,  BY  MEANS  OF 
His  LETTERS,  SPEECHES  &  TELEGRAMS. 

COMPILED  BY  J.  M.  KENNEDY 

Wrapper  (with  portrait)  Jd.  net.      96  pp> 

THE  German  eagle  has  never  really  looked  like  the  dove  of  peace,  in  spite  of 
all  the  German  War  Lord's  whitewashing.  The  following  pages  will  testify 
how  assiduous  that  whitewashing  process  has  been.  For  twenty  year* 
William  II.  has  passionately  assured  the  world  that  the  whole  aim  of  the 
German  Empire  is  peace.  With  disgusting  religiosity  he  has  pleaded  that 
as  the  Divinely-appointed  representative  of  God  on  earth  he  dare  not 
encourage  the  "  criminal  folly  "  of  war.  Yet  to-day,  without  pretext,  he 
has  driven  all  Europe  to  arms,  and  is  drenching  the  earth  with  torrents  of 
innocent  blood. 

William  II.  showed  at  an  early  age  the  stuff  he  was  made  of.  When 
nineteen  he  wrote  in  the  Golden  Book  of  Alsace  that  the  Ruler  must  be 
supreme  even  over  his  own  relatives.  A  little  later  he  declared  that  for 
Prussian  nobles  to  oppose  the  king  was  "  a  monstrosity." 

The  Kaiser  has  never  learned  from  great  men  :  he  has  merely  aped  them. 
Of  old  Prince  Bismarck  he  merely  absorbed  brutality  5  of  young  Count 
Herbert,  boorishness.  Of  his  illustrious  grandfather,  whose  name  was 
always  on  his  lips,  he  saw  the  assiduity  rather  than  the  genius.  He  has 
prinked  himself  out  in  fragments  of  their  wardrobe,  the  stern  brutality  of 
this,  the  crude  religiosity  of  that,  a  bit  of  ruthless  world-ambition  here,  a 
scrap  of  monomania  there — and  so  he  presents  himself,  a  sort  of  music-hall 
impersonation  of  Greatness,  for  the  polite  wonder  of  the  world.  Under  it 
all  shows  forth  the  intellectual  weakling.  A  bigger  man  would  never  have 
"  dropped  the  pilot,"  a  wiser  man  would  have  kept  his  strutting  heroics  for 
his  own  bedchamber. 

To-day  he  stands  revealed  as  the  shameless  prophet  of  a  new  Teutonism. 
Treaties  are  broken,  territory  violated,  floating  mines  strewn  in  the  open 
sea,  women  and  children  violated  and  slaughtered,  non-combatants  shot  and 
their  houses  burned.  It  is  a  simple  creed,  one  very  fashionable  some  centuries 
ago  among  the  savage  cave-men  and  the  barbarian  pirates.  It  has  the 
drawback  of  commonly  leading  to  a  summary  end,  and  like  most  of  the 
Kaiser's  mental  equipment,  is  extravagantly  out  of  date. 

Perhaps  when  a  civilised  and  sane  world  has  disarmed  this  crazy  maniac 
and  herded  him  back  into  his  cell  we  shall  judge  him  less  harshly ;  but 
meantime  a  perusal  of  the  sanctimonious  pratings  collected  here  can  only 
increase  our  anger. 

ALL  BRITISHERS  SHOULD  READ  "  THE  WAR  LORD,"  AND  KNOW 
THE  KAISER  FOR  WHAT  HE  REALLY  is. 


Little  Wars 

BY   H.   G.  WELLS 

Pcap  4*0  cloth.  2/6  net.  115  pp. 

With  20  photographs  of  battle-fields,  and  80  marginal  drawings 

by  T.  R.  Sinclair. 

This  book  is  a  further  contribution  by  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  to 
the  difficult  art  of  teaching  children  to  amuse  themselves. 
In  Floor  Games  he  showed  what  could  be  done  on  the  nursery 
floor  in  the  peaceful  art  of  running  towns,  railways,  and  all 
kinds  of  municipal  and  commercial  enterprises  in  miniature. 
Tn  Little  Wars  he  shows  us  the  same  general  principles  applied 
to  warfare.  Here  you  will  find  no  meaningless  shifting  of 
groups  of  soldiers,  every  man  is  moved  some  definite  step  in 
a  carefully  planned  campaign.  Mistakes  quickly  bring  their 
own  punishment  in  loss  of  guns  or  soldiers,  bad  gunnery — 
for  the  guns  really  shoot  wooden  shot — may  lead  to  the  utter 
rout  of  one's  army  ;  in  a  word  every  essential  to  good  general- 
ship in  actual  warfare  is  also  required  here  before  a  victory 
can  be  won.  So  much  is  this  the  case  that  the  game  has  been 
taken  up  in  earnest  by  a  number  of  prominent  military  men, 
who  find  in  it  a  really  instructive  substitute  for  the  somewhat 
dull  and  complicated  Krieg-spiel  of  older  days.  In  Mr.  Wells's 
own  words  :— 

"  I  offer  my  game,  for  a  particular  as  well  as  a  general  end  ; 
let  us  put  this  prancing  monarch  and  that  silly  scaremonger, 
and  these  excitable  '  patriots '  into  one  vast  Temple  of  War, 
with  cork  carpets  everywhere,  and  plenty  of  little  trees  and 
little  houses  to  knock  down,  and  cities  and  fortresses,  and 
unlimited  soldiers — tons,  cellars-full — and  let  them  lead  their 
own  lives  there  away  from  us.  My  game  is  just  as  good  as 
their  game,  and  saner  by  reason  of  its  size." 


4130 


Wells 

523* 

The  war  that  will  end  war       .W38