Part 7 (1/2)

There were three Monarchies in Europe, the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and the fact that they were divided into two groups necessarily led to war. It was inevitable sooner or later.

Russia was the greatest danger, the greatest threat to Europe; what happened had to happen under one form or another. The crazy giant was under the charge of one man without intelligence and a band of men, the men of the old regime, largely without scruples.

Each country of Europe has its share of responsibility, Italy not excluded. It is difficult to explain why Italy went to Tripoli in the way in which she did in 1911, bringing about the Italo-Turkish war, which brought about the two Balkan wars and the policy of adventure of Serbia, which was the incident though not the cause of the European War.

The Libyan adventure, considered now in the serene light of reason, cannot be looked on as anything but an aberration. Libya is an immense box of sand which never had any value, nor has it now. Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan cover more than one million one hundred thousand square kilometres and have less than nine hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom even now, after ten years, less than a third are under the effective control of Italy. With the war and expenses of occupation, Libya has cost Italy about seven milliard lire, and for a long time yet it will be on the debit side in the life of the nation.

With the same number of milliards, most of which were spent before the European War, Italy could have put in order and utilized her immense patrimony of water-power and to-day would be free from anxiety about the coal problem by which it is actually enslaved. The true policy of the nation was to gain economic independence, not a barren waste.

Ignorant people spoke of Libya in Italy as a promised land; in one official speech the King was even made to say that Libya could absorb part of Italian emigration. That was just a phenomenon of madness, for Libya has no value at all from the agricultural, commercial or military point of view. It may pay its way one day, but only if all expenses are cut down and the administrative system is completely changed. It may be that, if only from a feeling of duty towards the inhabitants, Italy cannot abandon Libya now that she has taken it, but the question will always be asked why she did take it, why she took it by violence when a series of concessions could have been obtained without difficulty from the Turkish Government.

The Libyan enterprise, undertaken on an impulse, against the opinion of Italy's allies, Austria and Germany, against the wish of England and France, is a very serious political responsibility for Italy.

The European War was the consequence of a long series of movements, aspirations, agitations. It cannot be denied, and it is recognized by clear-thinking men like Lloyd George, that France and England too have by their actions taken on themselves their part in the serious responsibility. To say that in the past they had never thought of war is to say a thing not true. And there is no doubt that all the diplomatic doc.u.ments published before and during the War show in Russia, above all, a situation which inevitably would soon lead to war. In the Balkans, especially in Serbia, Russia was pursuing a cynical and shameless policy of corruption, nouris.h.i.+ng and exciting every ferment of revolt against Austria-Hungary. Russian policy in Serbia was really criminal. Everyone in Germany was convinced that Russia was preparing for war. The Tsar's pacificist ideas were of no importance whatever. In absolute monarchies it is an illusion to think that the sovereign, though apparently an autocrat, acts in accordance with his own views. His views are almost invariably those of the people round him; he does not even receive news in its true form, but in the form given it by officials. Russia was an unwieldy giant who had shown signs of madness long before the actual revolution. It is impossible that a collective madness such as that which has had possession of Russia for three years could be produced on the spur of the moment; the regime of autocracy contained in itself the germs of Bolshevism and violence. Bolshevism cannot properly be judged by Western notions; it is not a revolutionary movement of the people; it is, as I have said before, the religious fanaticism of the Eastern Orthodox rising from the dead body of Tsarist despotism. Bolshevism, centralizing and bureaucratic, follows the same lines as the imperial policy of almost every Tsar.

Undoubtedly the greatest responsibility for the War lies on Germany.

If it has not to bear all the responsibility, as the treaties claim, it has to bear the largest share; and the responsibility lies, rather than on the shoulders of the Emperor and the quite ordinary men who surrounded him, on those of the military caste and some great industrial groups. The crazy writings of General von Bernhardi and other scandalous publications of the same sort expressed, more than just theoretical views, the real hopes and tendencies of the whole military caste. It is true enough that there existed in Germany a real democratic society under the control of the civil government, but there was the military caste too, with privileges in social life and a special position in the life of the State. This caste was educated in the conception of violence as the means of power and grandeur. When a country has allowed the military and social theories of General von Bernhardi and the senselessly criminal p.r.o.nouncements of the Emperor William II to prevail for so many years, it has put the most formidable weapons possible into the hands of its enemies. The people who governed Germany for so long have no right to complain now of the conditions in which their country is placed. But the great German people, hardworking and persevering, has full right to look on such conditions as the negation of justice. The head of a European State, a man of the clearest view and calmest judgment, speaking to me of the Emperor William, of whose character and intellect he thought very little, expressed the view that the Emperor did not want war, but that he would not avoid it when he had the chance.

The truth is that Germany troubled itself very little about France.

Kinderlen Wachter, the most intelligent of the German Foreign Ministers, and perhaps the one most opposed to the War, when he outlined to me the situation as it was ten years ago, showed no anxiety at all except in regard to Russia. Russia might make war, and it was necessary to be ready or to see that it came about at a moment when victory was certain if conditions did not change. Germany had no reason at all for making war on France from the time that it had got well ahead of that country in industry, commerce and navigation. It is true that there were a certain number of unbalanced people in the metal industry who talked complacently of French iron and stirred up the yellow press, just as in France to-day there are many industrials with their eyes fixed on German coal which they want to seize as far as possible. But the intellectuals, the politicians, even military circles, had no anxiety at all except with regard to Russia.

There were mistaken views in German policy, no doubt, but at the same time there was real anxiety about her national existence. With a huge population and limited resources, with few colonies, owing to her late arrival in the compet.i.tion for them, Germany looked on the never-ceasing desire of Russia for Constantinople as the ruin of her policy of expansion in the East.

And in actual fact there was but one way by which the three great Empires, which in population and extension of territory dominated the greater part of Europe, could avoid war, and that was to join in alliance among themselves or at least not to enter other alliances.

The three great Empires divided themselves into two allied groups.

From that moment, given the fact that in each of them the military caste held power, that the princ.i.p.al decisions lay in the hands of a few men not responsible to parliament; given the fact that Russia, faithful to her traditional policy, aimed to draw into her political orbit all the Slav peoples right down to the Adriatic and the Aegean and Austria, was leaning toward the creation of a third Slav monarchy in the dual kingdom, it was inevitable that sooner or later the violence, intrigue and corruption with which we are familiar should culminate in open conflict. Bismarck always saw that putting Russia and Germany up against each other meant war.

Peoples, like individuals, are far from representing with anything approaching completeness such social conceptions as we call violence and right, honesty and bad faith, justice and injustice; each people has its different characteristics, but no one people represents good, or another bad, no one represents brutality, or another civilization.

All these meaningless phrases were brought out during the War, according to which, as was said by one of the Prime Ministers of the Entente, the War was the decisive struggle between the forces of autocracy and liberty, between the dark powers of evil and violence and the radiant powers of good and right. To-day all this causes nothing but a smile. Such things are just speechifying, and ba.n.a.l at that. Perhaps they were a necessity of War-time which might well be made use of; when you are fighting for your very life you use every means you have; when you are in imminent danger you do not choose your weapons, you use everything to hand. All the War propaganda against the German Empires, recounting, sometimes exaggerating, all the crimes of the enemy, claiming that all the guilt was on the side of Germany, describing German atrocities as a habit, almost a characteristic of the German people, deriding German culture as a species of liquid in which were bred the microbes of moral madness--all this was legitimate, perhaps necessary, during the War. The reply to the asphyxiating gas of the enemy was not only the same gas, but a propaganda calculated to do more damage, and which, in fact, did do as much damage as tanks and blockade.

But, when war is over, nothing should be put into a peace treaty except such things as will lead to a lasting peace, or the most lasting peace compatible with our degree of civilization.

On January 22, 1917, President Wilson explained the reasons why he made the proposal to put an end to the War; he said in the American Senate that the greatest danger lay in a peace imposed by conquerors after victory. At that time it was said that there must be neither conquerors nor conquered. A peace imposed after victory would be the cause of so much humiliation and such intolerable sacrifices for the conquered side, it would be so severe, it would give rise to so much bitter feeling that it would not be a lasting peace, but one founded on s.h.i.+fting sand.

In the spring of 1919, just before the most serious decisions were to be taken, Lloyd George put before the conference a memorandum ent.i.tled ”_Some considerations for the Peace Conference before they finally draft their terms_.”

With his marvellously quick insight, after having listened to the speeches of which force was the leading motive (the tendency round him was not to establish a lasting peace but to vivisect Germany), Lloyd George saw that it was not a true peace that was being prepared.

On March 25, 1919, Lloyd George presented the following memorandum to the conference:

I

When nations are exhausted by wars in which they have put forth all their strength and which leave them tired, bleeding and broken, it is not difficult to patch up a peace that may last until the generation which experienced the horrors of the war has pa.s.sed away. Pictures of heroism and triumph only tempt those who know nothing of the sufferings and terrors of war. It is therefore comparatively easy to patch up a peace which will last for thirty years.

What is difficult, however, is to draw up a peace which will not provoke a fresh struggle when those who have had practical experience of what war means have pa.s.sed away. History has proved that a peace which has been hailed by a victorious nation as a triumph of diplomatic skill and statesmans.h.i.+p, even of moderation, in the long run has proved itself to be short-sighted and charged with danger to the victor. The peace of 1871 was believed by Germany to ensure not only her security but her permanent supremacy. The facts have shown exactly the contrary. France itself has demonstrated that those who say you can make Germany so feeble that she will never be able to hit back are utterly wrong. Year by year France became numerically weaker in comparison with her victorious neighbour, but in reality she became ever more powerful. She kept watch on Europe; she made alliance with those whom Germany had wronged or menaced; she never ceased to warn the world of its danger, and ultimately she was able to secure the overthrow of the far mightier power which had trampled so brutally upon her. You may strip Germany of her colonies, reduce her armaments to a mere police force and her navy to that of a fifth-rate power; all the same, in the end, if she feels that she has been unjustly treated in the peace of 1919, she will find means of exacting retribution from her conquerors. The impression, the deep impression, made upon the human heart by four years of unexampled slaughter will disappear with the hearts upon which it has been marked by the terrible sword of the Great War. The maintenance of peace will then depend upon there being no causes of exasperation constantly stirring up the spirit of patriotism, of justice or of fair play to achieve redress. Our terms may be severe, they may be stern and even ruthless, but at the same time they can be so just that the country on which they are imposed will feel in its heart that it has no right to complain. But injustice, arrogance, displayed in the hour of triumph, will never be forgotten nor forgiven.

For these reasons I am, therefore, strongly averse to transferring more Germans from German rule to the rule of some other nation than can possibly be helped. I cannot conceive any greater cause of future war than that the German people, who have certainly proved themselves one of the most vigorous and powerful races in the world, should be surrounded by a number of small states, many of them consisting of people who have never previously set up a stable government for themselves, but each of them containing large ma.s.ses of Germans clamouring for reunion with their native land. The proposal of the Polish Commission that we should place 2,100,000 Germans under the control of a people of a different religion and which has never proved its capacity for stable self-government throughout its history, must, in my judgment, lead sooner or later to a new war in the East of Europe. What I have said about the Germans is equally true about the Magyars. There will never be peace in South-Eastern Europe if every little state now coming into being is to have a large Magyar Irredenta within its borders.

I would therefore take as a guiding principle of the peace that as far as is humanly possible the different races should be allocated to their motherlands, and that this human criterion should have precedence over considerations of strategy or economics or communications, which can usually be adjusted by other means.

Secondly, I would say that the duration for the payments of reparation ought to disappear if possible with the generation which made the war.