the myth of a guilty nation myth of a... · the myth of a guilty nation v having documentation of a...

T M G N

T M G N

A J N(“”)

Ludwigvon MieIntituteA U B U R N , A L A B A M A

Originally published in 1922 by B. W. Huebsch, Inc.

Published in 2011 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Published under the Creative Commons Aribution License 3.0.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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Introductionby Anders Mikkelsen

Albert Jay Nock wrote one of the first Ameri-can books of WWI Revisionism—revising the re-ceived story of why WWI began. As a lover ofhistory, what is particularly fascinating about hisbook e Myth of a Guilty Nation is not whetherthis is the best explanation for WWI. What isfascinating is the great contrast Nock makes be-tween two wholly different views of the originof the war. What “everyone knew” about theorigins of e Great War at the time are quitedifferent from what “everyone knows” now.e common American notion was that Ger-

many was responsible for the war. No less apersonage than David Lloyd George declared“What are we fighting for? To defeat the mostdangerous conspiracy ever ploed against theliberty of nations; carefully, skilfully, insidiously,clandestinely planned in every detail, with ruth-less, cynical determination.”By reading the book we start to see just how

differently people viewed the origin of the warat the time, especially in the U.S. Since WWI

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the revisionists wonmany of the bales,WWI isusually viewed today more as a tragedy, a point-less disaster, the effect of secret diplomacy, gen-eral militarism, etc. e reader today is there-fore unaware of how many Americans under-stood the war as the sole outcome of a Germanconspiracy for plunder. While today we knowEurope was an armed camp, the pro-allied pro-paganda claimed that Europe was unpreparedfor war. Nock makes the reader aware of thegreat extent to which the allied politicians con-tinually lied to blame Germany and justify thewar, or at least told stories with no regard forthe truth. No wonder Hitler found British pro-paganda so inspiring. In fact the story at thetime made it sound like Germany was trying toover-run Europe the way Hitler temporarily dida few decades later.What Nock brings to the fore is the extent to

which WWI may be viewed as the opposite ofa conspiracy by Germany. If there was a con-spiracy it would have been by the allied Ententepowers. To a large degree it was blundered intoby state officials, whose desire for peace was fa-tally undermined by their imperialist ambitions.We should first note that he also touches on

howmany powerful parties simplywanted peace.However, small powerful parties in France,

TH E MY TH OF A GU I L T Y NAT ION iii

Britain, and Russia all pushed for war and cre-ated secret treaties amongst each other. AsRalph Raico pointed out, English foreign policywas dominated by a small, secret clique no moreanswerable to Parliament and the people thana dictatorship like Nazi Germany. ose whoknew of England’s secret obligations lied toParliament and denied their existence.As Nock shows, English, French and Russian

foreign policy was directed against Germanyand Austria-Hungary, and military spending wasquite large, and much greater than Germanyand Austria-Hungary’s. All three had power-ful cliques who were aggressive towards theCentral Powers. ey were bound by secrettreaties, though this alliance was not publiclyacknowledged.In Nock’s book, this is roughlywhat happened

to start WWI: Serbia and the Balkans had aforeign policy dominated by Russia. e as-sassins of Archduke Ferdinand were linked tothe Russian pro-war clique. Russia had been“test” mobilizing since the spring of 1914, and itsarmy alone was equal to Germany and Austria-Hungary combined. Russia had a secret treatywith France calling for France to support Russiaif Russia mobilized and went to war. e UKhad a secret treaty with France calling for it to

iv ALBERT J AY NOCK

support France during war, and to a much lesserbut important degree, Russia. Bound by se-cret treaties all three powers found themselvesthrust into war. Germany saw itself encircledby superior numbers. (erefore it had to defeatFrance and Russia in decisive bales before itsuccumbed in a war of arition. Similar toIsrael’s situation when faced with a land waragainst three neighbors.)e assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand,

conveniently for the Pro-War Entente cliques,set off the train of powder to the powder keg of ageneral Europeanwar of France, Russia and Eng-land against Germany and Austria-Hungary.For sources Nock makes great use of Belgian

diplomatic correspondence, which noted lileevidence of German aggression. e Soviet Unionalso released many embarrassing secret docu-ments from the Tsarist archives. Nock highlyrecommends English Liberals Francis Neilson’sand E. D. Morel’s works of WWI revisionism.(Neilson’s How Diplomats Make War is hard toread, while Nock’s is a breeze. Neilson focusesmore on how English and other nations’ diplo-mats created uncertainty.) It should be notedtoo that Nock shows evidence that Belgian neu-trality was a fig leaf to justify unpopular UKinvolvement.

TH E MY TH OF A GU I L T Y NAT ION v

Having documentation of a push for war bycliques in Russia, France, and England, Nockshows how German war guilt is a myth and, ifanything, pro-war cliques in Russia, France, andEngland were successful in conspiring for war.What makes this book worth reading is not

whether this is the best explanation for WWI.It is worth seeing how small groups of stateofficials engaged in secret actions that led to acatastrophic war, and continually lied through-out the whole process to provide themselvesideological cover. What is fascinating is thegreat contrast Nock makes between two whollydifferent views of the origin of the war. Whilehistory and reality seem seled and known,people at different times have radically differentunderstandings of the exact same events.

July 2011New York City

Preface

T book is made up of a series of articlesoriginally published in the Freeman. It wascompiled to establish one point and only one,namely: that the German Government was notsolely guilty of bringing on the war. I have notbeen at all concerned with measuring the Ger-man Government’s share of guilt, with tryingto show that it was either great or small, or thatit was either less or more than that of any otherGovernment or association of Governments. Allthis is beside the point. I do not by any meanswish to escape the responsibility of saying thatI think the German Government’s share of guiltin the maer is extremely small; so small bycomparison with that of the major Powers alliedagainst Germany, as to be inconsiderable. atis my belief, demonstrable as I think by suchevidence as has now become available to anycandid person. But this has nothing whateverto do with the subject-maer of this volume.If the guilt of the German Government couldbe proved to be ten times greater than it wasrepresented to be by the publicity-bureaux of

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the Allied Powers, the conclusion establishedin the following chapters would still remain.Guilty as the German Government may havebeen; multiply by ten any estimate that anyperson, interested or disinterested, informed oruninformed, may put upon its guilt; the factremains that it was far, very far indeed, frombeing the only guilty party concerned.If there were no practical end to be gained

by establishing this conclusion, if one’s purposewere only to give the German Government thedubious vindication of a tu quoque, the effortwould be hardly worth making. But as I sayat the outset, there is at stake an extremely im-portant maer, one that will unfavourably af-fect the peace of the world for at least a gener-ation—the treaty of Versailles. If the GermanGovernment may not be assumed to be solelyresponsible for the war, this treaty is indefen-sible; for it is constructed wholly upon that as-sumption. It becomes, not a treaty, but a verdictpronounced aer the manner of Brennus, by asuperior power which, without regard to justice,arrogates to itself the functions of prosecutor,jury and judge.It is probably superfluous to point out that this

treaty, conceived in the pure spirit of the vic-torious Apache, has, in practice, uerly broken

TH E MY TH OF A GU I L T Y NAT ION ix

down. It has not worked and it will not work,because it sets at defiance certain economic lawswhich are as inexorable as the law of gravitation.e incidence of these lawswaswell understoodand clearly foretold, at the time of the peace-conference, by an informed minority in Europe,notably by Mr. Maynard Keynes in his volumeentitled e Economic Consequences of the Peace.In this country also, a minority, sufficiently in-formed to know its right hand from its le ineconomic affairs, stood aghast in contemplationof the ruinous consequences which it perceivedas inevitable under any serious aempt to putthis vicious instrument into operation. But bothhere and in Europe, thisminoritywas very smalland uninfluential, and could accomplish nothingagainst the ignorant and unreasoning bad tem-per which the politicians kept aflame.e treaty had therefore to go to the test of

experiment; and of the results of this, one needsurely say nothing, for they are obvious. eharder Germany tried to fulfill the conditionsof the treaty, and the nearer she came to doingso, the worse things went in all the countriesthat were presumably to benefit by her sacri-fice. e Central Empires are, as the informedminority in all countries has been from thebeginning anxiously aware, the key-group in

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the whole of European industry and commerce.If they must work and trade under unfavourableconditions, they also thereby automatically im-pose correspondingly unfavourable conditionsupon the whole of Europe; and, correspond-ingly unfavourable conditions are thereby inturn automatically set up wherever the tradeof Europe reaches—for example, in the UnitedStates. ere is now no possible doubt aboutthis, for one has but to glance at the enormousdislocations of international commerce, and theuniversal and profound stagnation of industry,in order to prove it to one’s complete satisfac-tion. Germany wisely and far-sightedly made asincere and vigourous effort to comply with theconditions of the treaty; and by so doing shehas carried the rest of the world to the vergeof economic collapse. e damage wrought bythe war was in general of a spectacular andimpressive type, and was indeed very great—no one would minimize it—but the damage,present and prospective, wrought by the treatyof peace is much greater and more far-reaching.e political inheritors of those who made the

peace are now extremely uneasy about it. eirpredecessors (including Mr. Lloyd George, whostill remains in office) had flogged up popularhatred against the Central Empires at such a

TH E MY TH OF A GU I L T Y NAT ION xi

rate that when they took office they still had,or thought they had, to court and indulge thishatred. us we found Mr. Secretary Hughes,for example, in his first communication to theGerman Government, laying it down that thebasis of the Versailles treaty was sound thatGermany was solely responsible for the war. Hespoke of it quite in the vein of Mr. Lloyd George,as a ose jugée. Aer having promulgated thetreaty with such immense ceremony, and raisedsuch preposterous and extravagant popular ex-pectations on the strength of it, the architectsof the treaty bequeathed an exceedingly diffi-cult task to their successors; the task of leingthe public down, diverting their aention withthis or that gesture, taking their mind off theirdisappointments and scaling down their expec-tations, so that in time it might be safe to let theVersailles treaty begin to sink out of sight.

e task is being undertaken; the curious pieceof mountebankery recently staged in Washing-ton, for example, was an ambitious effort tokeep the peoples, particularly those of Europe,hopeful, confiding and diverted; and if economicconditions permit, if times do not become toohard, it may succeed. e politicians can not sayoutright that the theory of the Versailles treatyis dishonest and outrageous, and that the only

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chance of peace and well-being is by tearing upthe treaty and starting anew on another basisentirely. ey can not say this on account ofthe exigencies of their detestable trade. ebest that they can do is what they are doing.ey must wait until the state of public feelingpermits them to ease down from their uncom-promising stand upon the treaty. Gradually,they expect, the public will accustom itself tothe idea of relaxations and accommodations, asit sees, from day to day, the patent impractica-bility of any other course; feelings will weaken,asperities soen, hatreds die out, contacts andapproaches of one kind or another will takeplace; and finally, these public men or theirpolitical inheritors will think themselves able toeffect in an unobtrusive way, such substantialmodifications of the treaty of Versailles as willamount to its annulment.e process is worth accelerating by every

means possible; and what I have here done ismeant to assist it. ere are many persons in thecountry who are not politicians, and who arecapable and desirous of approaching a maerof this kind with intellectual honesty. itepossibly they are not aware, many of them,that the Versailles treaty postulates the soleresponsibility of the German Government for

TH E MY TH OF A GU I L T Y NAT ION xiii

bringing on the war; undoubtedly they are notacquainted with such evidence as I have herecompiled to show that this assumption is unjustand erroneous. Having read this evidence, theywill be in a position to review the terms of theVersailles treaty and reassess the justice of thoseterms. ey will also be able to understandthe unwillingness, the inability, of the Germanpeople to acquiesce in those terms; and theycan comprehend the slowness and difficultywherewith peace and good feeling are being re-established in Europe, and the extreme precari-ousness and uncertainty of Europe’s situation—and our own, in consequence—throughouta future that seems longer than one cares tocontemplate.e reader will perceive at once that this book

is a mere compilation and transcription of fact,containing not a shred of opinion or of anyoriginal maer. On this account it was pub-lished anonymously in its serial form, because itseemed to me that such work should be judgedstrictly as it stands, without regard to the au-thority, or lack of authority, which the compilermight happen to possess. Almost all of it islied straight from the works of my friendsMr. Francis Neilson and Mr. E. D. Morel. Iearnestly hope—indeed, it is my chief motive

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in publishing this book—that it may serve asan introduction to these words. I can not placetoo high an estimate upon their importance toa student of British and Continental diplomacy.ey are, as far as I know, alone in their field;nothing else can take their place. ey are sothorough, so exhaustive and so authoritativethat I wonder at their being so lile known inthe United States. Mr. Morel’s works, Ten Yearsof Secret Diplomacy, Truth and the War, andDiplomacy Revealed, are simply indispensable.Mr. Neilson’s book How Diplomats Make War,is not an easy book to read; no more are Mr.Morel’s; but without having read it no seriousstudent can possibly do justice to the subject.

A J N

THE MYTH OFA GUILTY NATION

IT present course of events in Europe is im-pressing on us once more the truth that militaryvictory, if it is to stand, must also be demonstra-bly a victory for justice. In the long run, victorymust appeal to the sense of justice in the con-quered no less than in the conquerors, if it is tobe effective. ere is no way of geing aroundthis. Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton is right when hesays that if the South had not finally acceptedthe outcome of the Civil War as being on thewhole just, Lincoln would have been wrong intrying to preserve the Union; which is only an-other way of expressing Lincoln’s own homelysaying that nothing is ever really seled until itis seled right. e present condition of Europeis largely due to the fact that the official peace-makers have not taken into their reckoning the

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German people’s sense of justice. eir mistake—it was also Mr. Wilson’s great mistake—wasin their disregard of what Bismarck called theimponderabilia. e terms of the peace treatyplainly reflect this mistake. at is largely thereason why the treaty is to-day inoperative andworthless. at is largely why the Governmentsof Europe are confronted with the inescapablealternative: they can either tear up the treatyand replace it by an understanding based on jus-tice, or they can stick to the treaty and by so do-ing protract indefinitely the dismal successionof wars, revolutions, bankruptcies and commer-cial dislocations that the treaty inaugurated.at is the situation; and it is a situation in

which the people of the United States have aninterest to preserve—the primary interest of acreditor, and also the interest of a trader whoneeds a large and stable market. It is idle tosuppose that American business can prosper solong as Europe remains in a condition of insta-bility and insolvency. Our business is adjustedto the scale of a solvent Europe, and it can notbe readjusted without irreparable damage. Un-til certain maers connected with the war areresolutely put under review, Europe can not bereconstructed, and the United States can not beprosperous. e only thing that can beer our

TH E MY TH OF A GU I L T Y NAT ION 3

own situation is the resumption of normal eco-nomic life in Europe; and this can be done onlythrough a thorough reconsideration of the in-justices that have been put upon the Germanpeople by the conditions of the armistice and thepeace treaty.Of these injustices, the greatest, because it

is the foundation for all the rest, is the impu-tation of Germany’s sole responsibility for thewar. e German people will never endure thatimputation; they should never be expected toendure it. Nothing can really be seled untilthe question of responsibility is openly andcandidly re-examined, and an understandingestablished that is based on facts instead of onofficial misrepresentation. is question is byno means one of abstract justice alone, or ofchivalry and fair play towards a defeated en-emy. It is a question of self-interest, immediateand urgent. However it may be regarded bythe American sense of justice and fair play, itremains, to the eye of American industry andcommerce, a straight question of dollars andcents. e prosperity of the United States, aswe are beginning to see, hangs upon the eco-nomic re-establishment of Europe. Europe cannot possibly be seled upon the present termsof peace; and these terms can not be changed

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without first vacating the theory of Germany’ssole responsibility, because it is upon this theorythat the treaty of Versailles was built. istheory, therefore, must be re-examined in thelight of evidence that the Allied and AssociatedGovernments have done their best either toignore or to suppress. Hence, for the Americanpeople, the way to prosperity lies through asearching and honest examination of this theorythat has been so deeply implanted in their mind—the theory of a brigand-nation, ploing insolitude to achieve the mastery of the worldby fire and sword.Americans, however, come reluctantly to the

task of this examination, for two reasons. First,we are all tired of the war, we hate to thinkof it or of anything connected with it, and asfar as possible, we keep it out of our minds.Second, nearly every reputation of any conse-quence in this country, political, clerical, aca-demic and journalistic, is already commied,head over ears, to the validity of this theory.How many of our politicians are there whosereputations are not bound up inextricably withthis legend of a German plot? How many ofour newspaper-editors managed to preservedetachment enough under the pressure of war-propaganda to be able to come forward to-dayand say that the question of responsibility for


the war should be re-opened? How can thepro-war liberals and ex-pacifists ask for suchan inquest when they were all swept off theirfeet by the specious plea that this war was adifferent war from all other wars in the historyof mankind? What can our ministers of religionsay aer the unreserved endorsement that theyput upon the sanctity of the Allied cause? Whatcan our educators say, aer having served sozealously the ends of the official propagandists?From our journalists and men of leers whatcan we expect—aer all his rodomontade aboutPotsdam and the Potsdam gang, how could weexpect Dr. Henry Van Dyke, for instance, to facethe fact that the portentous Potsdam meeting ofthe Crown Council on July, , never tookplace at all? ere is no use in trying to puta breaking-strain upon human nature, or, onthe other hand, in assuming a pharisaic aitudetowards its simplest and commonest frailties.It is best, under the circumstances, merely tounderstand that on this question every institu-tional voice in the United States is tongue-tied.Press, pulpit, schools and universities, charitiesand foundations, forums, all are silent; and toexpect them to break their silence is to expectmore than should be expected from the pride ofopinion in average human nature.

III examining the evidence let us first take Mr.Lloyd George’s own statement of the theory.Except in one particular, it presents the caseagainst Germany quite as it has been rehearsedby nearly every institutional voice in the UnitedStates. On August, —aer America’sentry into the war—the British Premier said:

What are we fighting for? To defeat themost dangerous conspiracy ever ploed againstthe liberty of nations; carefully, skilfully, insid-iously, clandestinely planned in every detail,with ruthless, cynical determination.

Except for one point, this statement sumsup what we have all heard to be the essentialdoctrine of the war. e one missing pointin Mr. Lloyd George’s indictment is that thegreat German conspiracy was launched upon anunprepared Europe. In Europe itself, the officialpropagandists did not make much of this partic-ular point, for far too many people knew beer;but in the United States it was promulgatedwidely. Indeed, this romance of Allied unpre-paredness was an essential part of the wholestory of German responsibility. Germany, so

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the official story ran, not only ploed in se-cret, but she sprung her plot upon a Europethat was wholly unprepared and unsuspecting.Her action was like that of a highwayman leap-ing from ambush upon a defenceless wayfarer.Belgium was unprepared, France unprepared,Russia unprepared, England unprepared; andin face of an unprovoked aack, these nationshurriedly drew together in an extemporizedunion, and held the “mad dog” at bay with anextemporized defence until they could devise aplan of common action and a pooling of militaryand naval resources.Such, then, is a fair statement of the doctrine

of the war as America was taught it. Next, inorder to show how fundamental this doctrine isto the terms of the peace treaty, let us consideranother statement of Mr. Lloyd George made March, :

For the allies, German responsibility for thewar is fundamental. It is the basis upon whichthe structure of the treaty of Versailles has beenerected, and if that acknowledgment is repu-diated or abandoned, the treaty is destroyed.. . .We wish, therefore, once and for all, to makeit quite clear that German responsibility for thewar must be treated by the Allies as a osejugée.


us the British Premier explicitly declaresthat the treaty of Versailles is based upon thetheory of Germany’s sole responsibility.Now, as against this theory, the main facts

may be summarized as follows: () e Britishand French General Staffs had been in activecollaboration for war with Germany ever sinceJanuary . () e British and French Admi-ralty had been in similar collaboration. () elate Lord Fisher [First Sea Lord of the BritishAdmiralty], twice in the course of these prepa-rations, proposed an aack upon the Germanfleet and a landing upon the coast of Pomerania,without a declaration of war. () Russia hadbeen preparing for war ever since , and theRussian and French General Staffs had come to aformal understanding that Russian mobilizationshould be held equivalent to a declaration ofwar. () Russian mobilization was begun in thespring of , under the guise of “tests,” andthese tests were carried on continuously to theoutbreak of the war. () In April, , fourmonths before the war, the Russian and Frenchnaval authorities initiated joint plans for mar-itime operations against Germany. () Up to theoutbreak of the war, Germany was selling grainin considerable quantities to both France andRussia. () It can not be shown that the German

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Government ever in a single instance, through-out all its dealings with foreign Governments,demanded or intimated for Germany anythingmore than a position of economic equality withother nations.ese facts, among others to which reference

will hereaer be made, have come to light onlysince the outbreak of the war. ey effectivelydispose of the theory of an unprepared and un-suspecting Europe; and a historical survey ofthem excludes absolutely, and stamps as uerlyuntenable and preposterous, the theory of a de-liberate German plot against the peace of theworld.

IIIL us now consider the idea so generally heldin America, though not in Europe, that in ,England and the Continental nations were notexpecting war and not prepared for war. efact is that Europe was as thoroughly organizedfor war as it could possibly be. e point towhich that organization was carried by England,France and Russia, as compared with Germanyand Austria, may to some extent be indicatedby statistics. In , Russia carried a militaryestablishment (on a peace footing) of ,,men; France, by an addition of , men, pro-posed to raise her peace-establishment to a totalof ,. Germany, by an addition of ,men, proposed to raise her total to ,; andAustria, by additions of , already made,brought her total up to ,. ese are thefigures of the British War Office, as furnished tothe House of Commons in .Here is a set of figures that is even more in-

teresting and significant. From to , theamount spent on newnaval construction by Eng-land, France and Russia, as compared with Ger-many, was as follows:

12 ALBERT J AY NOCK

E F R G £,, £ ,, £ ,, £,, £,, £ ,, £ ,, £,, £,, £ ,, £ ,, £,, £,, £ ,, £ ,, £,, £,, £ ,, £,, £,, £,, £,, £,, £,,

ese figures can not be too carefully stud-ied by those who have been led to think thatGermany pounced upon a defenceless and un-suspecting Europe like a cat upon a mouse. Ifit be thought worth while to consider also theperiod of a few years preceding , one findsthat England’s superiority in baleships alonewas per cent in , and her superiorityrose to nearly per cent in ; in whichyear England spent £,, on her navy, andGermany £,,. Taking the comparativestatistics of naval expenditure from , inwhich year England spent £,, on hernavy, and Germany spent £,,, down to it is absolutely impossible to make thefigures show that Germany enforced upon theother nations of Europe an unwilling competi-tion in naval armament.But the German army! According to all ac-

counts of German militarism which were suf-fered to reach these shores, it is here that weshall find evidence of what Mr. Lloyd George,


on August, , called “the most dangerousconspiracy ever ploed against the liberty ofnations; carefully, skilfully, insidiously, clan-destinely planned in every detail, with ruthless,cynical determination.” Well, if one chooses tohold the current view of German militarism, itmust be admied that Germany had at her dis-posal some miraculous means of geing some-thing for nothing, geing a great deal for noth-ing, in fact, for on any other supposition, thefigures are far from supporting that view. In (pre-war figures), Germany and Austriatogether carried an army-expenditure of £ mil-lion; England, France and Russia together car-ried one of £ million. England “had no army,”it was said; all her military strength lay in hernavy. If that were true, then it must be saidthat she had as miraculous a faculty as Ger-many’s; only, whereas Germany’s was a facultyfor geing more than her money’s worth, Eng-land’s was for geing less than her money’sworth. England’s army-expenditure for (pre-war figures) was £ million; £ millionmore than Austria’s. Nor was this a suddenemergency-outlay. Going back as far as ,we find that she laid out in that year the sameamount, £ million. In that year, Germanyand Austria together spent £ million on their

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armies; England, France and Russia togetherspent £ million on theirs. If between and, England, France and Russia spent any suchsums upon their armies as their statistics show,and nothing came of it but an unprepared andunsuspecting Europe in , it seems clear thatthe taxpayers of those countries were swindledon an inconceivably large scale.

IV

A this point, some questions may be raised.Why, in the decade preceding , did England,France and Russia arm themselves at the rateindicated by the foregoing figures? Why didthey accelerate their naval development progres-sively from about £ million in to about£ million in ? Why did Russia alone pro-pose to raise her military peace-establishmentto an army of ,,, more than double thesize of Germany’s army? Against whom werethese preparations directed, and understood tobe directed? Certainly not against one another.France and Russia had been bound by a militaryconvention ever since August, ; Englandand France had been bound since January, ,by a similar pact; and this was subsequentlyextended to include Belgium. ese agreementswill be considered in detail hereaer; they arenowmentionedmerely to show that themilitaryactivity in these countries was not independentin purpose. France, England, Russia and Bel-gium were not uneasy about one another andnot arming against one another; nor is thereany evidence that anyone thought that they

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were. It was against the Central Empires onlythat these preparationswere addressed. Nor canone who scans the table of relative expenditureeasily believe that the English–French–Russiancombination was effected for purely defensivepurposes; and taking the diplomatic history ofthe period in conjunction with the testimony ofthe budgets, such belief becomes impossible.

VT British Government is the one which wasmost oen represented to us as taken uerlyby surprise by the German onslaught on Bel-gium. Let us see. e Austrian Archduke wasassassinated June, , by three men who,according to wide report in Europe and absolutecertainty in America, were secret agents of theGerman Government, acting under German of-ficial instruction. e findings of the court of in-quiry showed that they were Serbs, members ofa pan-Slav organization; that the assassinationwas ploed in Belgrade, and the weapons withwhich it was commied were obtained there.1

Serbia denied all connexion with the assassins(the policy of Serbia being then controlled by theRussian Foreign Office), and then the RussianGovernment stepped forward to prevent the

1Six months aer the armistice, the bodies of thethree assassins were dug up, according to a CentralNews dispatch from Prague, “with great solemnity, in thepresence of thousands of the inhabitants. e remains ofthese Serbian officers are to be sent to their native country.”is is a naïve statement. It remains to be explainedwhy these “German agents” should be honoured in thisdistinguished way by the Serbs!

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humiliation of Serbia by Austria. It is clearfrom the published diplomatic documents thatthe British Foreign Office knew everything thattook place between the assassination and theburial of the Archduke; all the facts, that is,connected with the murder. e first dispatch inthe British White Paper is dated July, and it isaddressed to the British Ambassador at Berlin.One wonders why not to the Ambassador atVienna; also one wonders why the diplomats ap-parently found nothing towrite about for nearlythree weeks between the Archduke’s funeraland July. It is a strange silence. Sir EdwardGrey, however, made a statement in the Houseof Commons, July, in which he gave the im-pression that he got his first information aboutthe course of the quarrel between Austria andSerbia no earlier than July, three days before.e Ambassador at Vienna, Sir M. de Bunsen,had, notwithstanding, telegraphed him that theAustrian Premier had given him no hint of “theimpending storm” and that it was from a privatesource “that I received, July, the forecast ofwhat was about to happen, concerning which Itelegraphed to you the following day.” Sir Mau-rice de Bunsen’s telegram on this importantsubject thus evidently was suppressed; and theonly obvious reason for the suppression is that itcarried evidence that Sir E. Greywas thoroughly


well posted by July on what was taking placein Vienna. Sir M. de Bunsen’s allusion to thistelegram confirms this assumption; in fact, itcan be interpreted in no other way.On July, the House of Commons was in-

formed that Austria had declared war on Ser-bia. Two days later, July, Sir E. Grey addedthe item of information that Russia had ordereda partial mobilization “which has not hithertoled to any corresponding steps by other Pow-ers, so far as our information goes.” Sir E. Greydid not add, however, that he knew quite wellwhat “corresponding steps” other Powers werelikely to take. He knew the terms of the Rus-sian–Frenchmilitary convention, under which amobilization by Russia was to be held equivalentto a declaration of war; he also knew the termsof the English–French agreement which he him-self had authorized—although up to the eve ofthe war he denied, in reply to questions in theHouse of Commons, that any such agreementexisted, and acknowledged it only on August,.2 He had promised Sazonov, the RussianForeign Minister, in , that in the event ofGermany’s coming to Austria’s aid, Russia couldrely on Great Britain to “stake everything in or-der to inflict the most serious blow to German

2See footnote to chapter XVIII

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power.” To say that Sir E. Grey, and à fortioriMr. Asquith, the Prime Minister; Lord Haldane,the Minister for War, whose own book has beena most tremendous let-down to the fictions ofthe propagandists; Mr. Winston Churchill, headof the Admiralty, who at Dundee, June, ,declared that he had been sent to the Admiraltyin with the express duty laid upon him bythe Prime Minister to put the fleet in a state ofinstant and constant readiness for war; to saythat these men were taken by surprise and un-prepared, is mere levity.Austria was supposed to be, and still is by

some believed to have been, Germany’s vassalState, and by menacing Serbia to have been do-ing Germany’s dirty work. No evidence of thishas been adduced; and the trouble with this ideaof Austria’s status is that it breaks down beforethe report of Sir M. de Bunsen, September,, that Austria finally yielded and agreed toaccept all the proposals of the Powers for medi-ation between herself and Serbia. She made ev-ery concession. Russian mobilization, however,had begun on July and become general fourdays later; and it was not stopped. Germanythen gave notice that she would mobilize herarmy if Russian mobilization was not stoppedin twelve hours; and also, knowing the termsof the Russian–French convention of , she


served notice on France, giving her eighteenhours to declare her position. Russia made noreply; France answered that she would do whatshe thought best in her own interest; and almostat the moment, on August, when Germanyordered a general mobilization, Russian troopswere over her border, the British fleet had beenmobilized for a week in the North Sea, andBritish merchant ships were lying at Kronstadt,empty, to convey Russian troops from that portto the Pomeranian coast, in pursuance of theplan indicated by Lord Fisher in his autobiogra-phy, recently published. ese maers are wellsummed up by Lord Loreburn, as follows:

Serbia gave offence to the Austro-HungarianEmpire, cause of just offence, as our Ambas-sador frankly admits in his published dispatches.We [England] had no concern in that quarrel, asSir Edward Grey says in terms. But Russia, theprotectress of Serbia, came forward to preventher being uerly humiliated by Austria. Wewere not concerned in that quarrel either, asSir Edward also says. And then Russia calledupon France under their treaty to help in thefight. France was not concerned in that quarrelany more than ourselves, as Sir Edward informsus. But France was bound by a Russian treaty,of which he did not know the terms, and thenFrance called on us for help. We were tied

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by the relations which our Foreign Office hadcreated, without apparently realizing that theyhad created them.

In saying that Sir E. Grey did not know theterms of the Franco-Russian agreement, LordLoreburn is generous, probably more generousthan he should be; but that is no maer. ething to be remarked is that Lord Loreburn’ssumming-up comes to something wholly differ-ent from Mr. Lloyd George’s “most dangerousconspiracy ever ploed against the liberty ofnations.” It comes to something wholly differ-ent from the notion implanted in Americans,of Germany pouncing upon a peaceful, unpre-pared and unsuspecting Europe. e Germannation, we may be sure, is keenly aware of thisdifference; and therefore, any peace which, likethe peace of Versailles, is boomed on the osejugée of laying the sole responsibility for thewar at the door of the German nation, or even atthe door of the German Government, is simplyimpracticable and impossible.

VI

I the theory upon which the treaty of Ver-sailles is based, the theory of a single guiltynation, were true, there would be no troubleabout saying what the war was fought for. eAllied belligerents would have a simple, straightstory to tell; they could describe their aimsand intentions clearly in a few words that anyone could understand, and their story would bereasonably consistent and not vary greatly fromyear to year. It would be practically the samestory in as in or at any time between.In America, indeed, the story did not greatlyvary up to the spring of , for the reasonthat this country was prey much in the darkabout European international relations. Onceour indignation and sympathies were aroused,it was for the propagandists mostly a maerof keeping them as hot as possible. Few hadthe information necessary to discount the plain,easy, understandable story of a robber nationleaping upon an unprepared and defencelessEurope for no cause whatever except the loyambition, as Mr. Joseph Choate said, “to estab-lish a world-empire upon the ruins of the BritishEmpire.” ose who had this information could

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not make themselves heard; and thus it was thatthe propagandists had no need to vary the onestory that was most useful to their purpose ofkeeping us in a state of unreasoning indignation,and accordingly they did not vary it.In Europe and in England, however, the case

was different. International relations were bet-ter understood by those who were closer tothem than we were; more questions were raisedand more demands made. Hence the Alliedpoliticians and propagandists were kept busyupon the defensive. When from time to timethe voice of popular discontent or of some influ-ential body of opinion insisted on a statementof the causes of the war or of the war-aimsof the Allies, they were confronted with thepolitician’s traditional difficulty. ey had tosay something plausible and satisfactory, whichyet must be something that effectively hid thetruth of the situation. As the war hung on, theirdifficulty became desperate and they threw con-sistency to the winds, telling any sort of storythat would enable them for the moment to “getby.” e publication of the secret treaties whichhad been seined out of the quagmire of theold Russian Foreign Office by the revolutionistsmade no end of trouble for them. It is amusingnow to remember how promptly these treaties


were branded by the British Foreign Office asforgeries; especially when it turned out that theactual terms of the armistice not the nominalterms, which were those of Mr. Wilson’s Four-teen Points, but the actual terms were the termsof the secret treaties! e publication of thesecret treaties in this country did not contributemuch towards a disillusionment of the public;the press as a rule ignored or lied about them,theywere notwidely read, and fewwho did readthem had enough understanding of Europeanaffairs to interpret them. But abroad they puta good deal of fat into the fire; and this was aspecimen of the kind of thing that the Alliedpoliticians had to contend with in their effortsto keep their peoples in line.e consequence was that the official and

semi-official statements of the causes of the warand of the war-aims of the Allies are a mostcurious hotchpotch. In fact, if any one takesstock in the theory of the one guilty nationand is therefore convinced that the treaty ofVersailles is just and proper and likely to enforcean enduring peace, one could suggest nothingbeer than that he should go through the lit-erature of the war, pick out these statements,put them in parallel columns, and see how theylook. If the war originated in the unwarrantedconspiracy of a robber nation, if the aims of the

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Allies were to defeat that conspiracy and renderit impotent and to chastise and tie the handsof the robber nation—and that is the theory ofthe treaty of Versailles—can anyone in his rightmind suppose that the Allied politicians andpropagandists would ever give out, or need togive out, these ludicrously contradictory and in-consistent explanations and statements? Whenone has a simple, straight story to tell, and amost effective story, why complicate it and un-dermine it and throw all sorts of doubts upon it,by venturing upon all sorts of public uerancesthat will not square with it in any conceivableway? Politicians, of all men, never lie for the funof it; their available margin of truth is alwaysso narrow that they keep within it when theycan. Mr. Lloyd George, for example, is one ofthe cleverest of politicians. We have alreadyconsidered his two statements; first, that of August, :

What are we fighting for? To defeat themost dangerous conspiracy ever ploed againstthe liberty of nations; carefully, skilfully, in-sidiously, clandestinely planned in every detailwith ruthless, cynical determination.

—and then that of March, :

For the Allies, German responsibility for thewar is fundamental. It is the basis upon which


the structure of the treaty of Versailles has beenerected, and if that acknowledgment is repu-diated or abandoned, the treaty is destroyed.. . .German responsibility for the war must betreated by the Allies as a ose jugée.

A lile over two months before Mr. Georgemade this laer uerance, on December, ,he said this:

e more one reads memoirs and books writ-ten in the various countries of what happenedbefore the first of August, , the more onerealizes that no one at the head of affairs quitemeant war at that stage. It was something intowhich they glided, or rather staggered and stum-bled, perhaps through folly; and a discussion, Ihave no doubt, would have averted it.

Well, it would strike an unprejudiced personthat if this were true, there is a great deal ofdoubt put uponMr. Lloyd George’s former state-ments by Mr. Lloyd George himself. Personswho plot carefully, skilfully, insidiously andclandestinely, do not glide; they do not staggeror stumble, especially through folly. ey keepgoing, as we in America were assured that theGerman Government did keep going, right upto e Day of their own choosing. Moreover,they are not likely to be headed off by discus-sion; highwaymen are notoriously curt in their

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speech and if one aempts discussion with themthey become irritable and peremptory. is isthe invariable habit of highwaymen. Besides,if discussion would have averted war in ,why was it not forthcoming? Certainly notthrough any fault of the Austrian Government,which made every concession, as the BritishAmbassador’s report shows, notwithstandingits grievance against Serbia was a just one. Cer-tainly not through any fault of the GermanGovernment, which never refused discussionand held its hand with all the restraint possibleunder the circumstances just described. Well,then, how is it so clear that German responsi-bility for the war should be treated as a osejugée?

VII

P who have a clear and simple case donot talk in this fashion. Picking now at ran-dom among the uerances of politicians andpropagandists, we find an assorted job-lot ofaims assigned and causes alleged, and in all ofthem there is that curious, incomprehensibleand callous disregard of the power of convictionthat a straight story always exercises, if youhave one to tell. In November, , when theForeign Office was being pestered by demandsfor a statement of the Allied war-aims, LordRobert Cecil said in the House of Commons,that the restitution of Alsace and Lorraine toFrance was a “well-understood war-aim fromthe moment we entered the war.” As thingshave turned out, it is an odd coincidence howso many of these places that have iron or coal oroil in them seem to represent a well-understoodwar-aim. Less than a month before, in Octo-ber, , General Smuts said that to his mindthe one great dominating war-aim was “theend of militarism, the end of standing armies.”Well, the Allies won the war, but judging byresults, this dominating war-aim seems ratherto have been lost sight of. Mr. Lloyd Georgeagain on another occasion, said in the House of

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Commons that “self-determination was one ofthe principles for which we entered the war . . .a principle from which we have never departedsince the beginning of the war.” is, too, seemsan aim that for some reason the victorious na-tions have not quite realized; indeed in somecases, as in Ireland, for example, there has beenno great alacrity shown about trying to realizeit. Viscount Bryce said that the war sprangfrom the strife of races and religions in theBalkan countries, and from the violence done tothe sentiment of nationality in Alsace-Lorrainewhich made France the ally of Russia. But thefact is that France became the ally of Russia onthe basis of hard cash, and since the RussianRevolution, she has been a bit out of luck byway of geing her money back. Mr. Asquith inthe House of Commons, August, said:

If I am asked what we are fighting for, I replyin two sentences. In the first place, to fulfil asolemn international obligation. . . . Secondly weare fighting . . . to vindicate the principle thatsmall nationalities are not to be crushed in de-fiance of international good faith.

Just so: and in the House of Commons, De-cember, , he said:

eLeague of Nations . . . was the avowed pur-pose, the very purpose . . . for which we entered


the war and for which we are continuing thewar.

You pays your money, you see, and takes yourchoice. e point to be made, however, is thatone who has a strong case, a real case, nevertrifles with it in this way. Would the reader doit?

VIIIM. A’ citation of a “solemn interna-tional obligation” refers to the so-called Belgiantreaties. It will be remembered that the case ofBelgium was the great winning card played bythe Allied Governments for the stakes of Amer-ican sympathies; and therefore we may hereproperly make a survey, somewhat in detail, ofthe status of Belgium at the outset of the war.Belgium had learned forty years ago how

she stood under the treaties of and .When in the late ’eighties there was likelihoodof a Franco-German war, the question of Eng-land’s participation under these treaties wasthoroughly discussed, and it was shown conclu-sively that England was not obligated. Perhapsthe best summary of the case was that givenby Mr. W. T. Stead in the Pall Mall Gazee inthe issues of and February, . Aer anexamination of the treaties of , and—an examination unfortunately too longto be quoted here—Mr. Stead briefly sums upthe result of his investigation in the followingstatement:

ere is therefore no English guarantee to Bel-gium. It is possible perhaps, to ‘construct’ such

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a guarantee; but the case may be summed upas follows: () England is under no guaranteewhatever except such as is common to Austria,France, Russia and Germany; () that guaranteeis not specifically of the neutrality of Belgiumat all; and () is given, not to Belgium but to theNetherlands.

is was the official view of the British Gov-ernment at the time, and it is reflected in thecelebrated leer signed “Diplomaticus” in theStandard of February, to which Mr. Steadrefers; which, indeed, he makes the guiding textfor his examination. e Standard was thenthe organ of Lord Salisbury’s Government, andit is as nearly certain as anything of the sortcan be, that the leer signed “Diplomaticus”was wrien by the hand of the British PrimeMinister, Lord Salisbury himself.How Mr. Asquith’s Government in August

came suddenly to extemporize a wholly dif-ferent view of England’s obligations to Belgiumis excellently told by that inveterate diarist andchronicler, Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt:

e obligation of fighting in alliance withFrance in case of a war with Germany con-cerned the honour of three members only ofAsquith’s Cabinet, who alone were aware of


the exact promises that had been made. ese,though given verbally and with reservations asto the consent of Parliament, bound the threeas a maer of personal honour, and were under-stood at the ai d’Orsay as binding the Britishnation. Neither Asquith nor his two compan-ions1 in this inner Cabinet could have retainedoffice had they gone back from their word inspirit or in leer. It would also doubtless haveentailed a serious quarrel with the French Gov-ernment had they failed to make it good. Soclearly was the promise understood at Paristo be binding that President Poincaré, whenthe crisis came, had wrien to King Georgereminding him of it as an engagement madebetween the two nations which he counted onHis Majesty to keep.

us faced, the case was laid before the Cabi-net, but was found to fail as a convincing argu-ment for war. It was then that Asquith, with hislawyer’s instinct, at a second Cabinet meetingbrought forward the neutrality of Belgium as abeer plea than the other to lay before a Britishjury, and by representing the neutrality-treatiesof and as entailing an obligation onEngland to fight (of which the text of the treatiescontains no word) obtained the Cabinet’s con-sent, and war was declared.

1Sir E. Grey and Lord Haldane.

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Belgium was not thought of by the BritishCabinet before August, . She was broughtin then as a means of making the war go downwith the British people. e fact is that Belgiumwas thoroughly prepared for war, thoroughlyprepared for just what happened to her. Bel-gium was a party to the military arrangementseffected among France, England and Russia; forthis we have the testimony of Marshal Joffrebefore the Metallurgic Commiee in Paris, andalso the record of the “conversations” that werecarried on in Brussels between the Belgian chiefof staff and Lt.-Col. Barnardiston. On July,, the day when the Austrian note was pre-sented to Serbia (the note of which Sir E. Greyhad goen an intimation as early as Julyby telegraph from the British Ambassador atVienna, Sir M. de Bunsen), the Belgian ForeignMinister, M. Davignon, promptly dispatched toall the Belgian embassies an identical communi-cation containing the following statement, thesignificance of which is made clear by a glanceat a map:

All necessary steps to ensure respect of Bel-gian neutrality have nevertheless been taken bythe Government. e Belgian army has beenmobilized and is taking up such strategic posi-tions as have been chosen to secure the defenceof the country and the respect of its neutrality.


e forts of Antwerp and on the Meuse havebeen put in a state of defence.

It was on the eastern frontier, we perceive,therefore—not on the western, where Belgiummight have been invaded by France—that allthe available Belgian military force was con-centrated. Hence, to pretend any longer thatthe Belgian Government was surprised by theaction of Germany, or unprepared to meet it;to picture Germany and Belgium as cat andmouse, to understand the position of Belgiumotherwise than that she was one of four solidallies under definite agreement worked out incomplete practical detail, is sheer absurdity.

IX

I the official theory of German responsibilitywere correct, it would be impossible to explainthe German Government’s choice of the year as a time to strike at “an unsuspecting anddefenceless Europe.” e figures quoted in Chap-ter III show that the military strength of Ger-many, relatively to that of the French–Russian–English combination, had been decreasing since. If Germany had wished to strike at Europe,she had two first-rate chances, one in andanother in , and not only let them bothgo by, but threw all her weight on the sideof peace. is is inexplicable upon the theorythat animates the treaty of Versailles. Germanywas then in a position of advantage. e occa-sion presented itself in , in Serbia’s quarrelwith Austria over the annexation of Bosnia andthe Herzegovina. Russia, which was backingSerbia, was in no shape to fight; her militarystrength, used up in the Russo-Japanese war,had not recovered. France would not at thistime have been willing to go to war with Ger-many over her weak ally’s commitments in theDanube States. Germany, however, contentedherself with serving notice on the Tsar of herunequivocal support of Austria; and this was

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enough. e Tsar accepted the fait accompli ofthe annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina;Serbia retired and cooled off; and Turkey, fromwhom the annexed province was ravished, wascompensated by Austria. It is not to the pointto scrutinize the propriety of these transactions;the point is that Germany held the peace ofEurope in the hollow of her hand, with immenseadvantages in her favour, and chose not to closeher hand. e comment of a neutral diplomat,the Belgian Minister in Berlin, is interesting. Inhis report of April, , to the Belgian ForeignOffice, he says:

econference scheme elaborated byM. Isvol-sky and Sir Edward Grey; the negotiations forcollective representations in Vienna; and thewhole exchange of ideas among London, Parisand Petersburg, were steadily aimed at forc-ing Austria-Hungary into a transaction whichwould strongly have resembled a humiliation.is humiliation would have affected Germanyas directly and as sensibly as Austria-Hungary,and would have struck a heavy blow at theconfidence which is inspired in Vienna by the al-liance with Germany. ese machinations werefrustrated by Germany’s absolutely unequivo-cal and decided aitude, from which she hasnever departed in spite of all the urgings withwhich she has been harassed. Germany alone


has accomplished the preservation of peace. enew grouping of the Powers, organized by theKing of England, has measured its forces withthe alliance of the Central European Powers,and has shown itself incapable of impairing thesame. Hence the vexation which is manifested.

e last two sentences of the foregoing seemto show—puing it mildly—that the BelgianMinister did not suspect the German Govern-ment of any aggressive spirit. In the same dis-patch, moreover, he remarks:

As always, when everything does not go asthe French, English or Russian politicians wantit to, the Temps shows its bad temper. Germanyis the scapegoat.

Again, at the time of the Balkan War in ,Germany had an excellent opportunity to grat-ify her military ambition, if she had any, at theexpense of an “unsuspecting and unpreparedEurope”; not as advantageous as in butmore advantageous than in . Serbia’s provo-cations against Austria-Hungary had become sogreat that the Austrian Archduke (assassinatedin at Sarajevo) told the German Emperorpersonally that they had reached the limit ofendurance. On this occasion also, however,William II put himself definitely on the side of

42 ALBERT J AY NOCK

peace, and in so doing le the Austrian Govern-ment somewhat disappointed and discontented.Another neutral diplomat reports of the GermanForeign Minister that

whatever plans he may have in his head (andhe has big ideas), for winning the sympathies ofthe young Balkan Powers over to Germany, onething is absolutely certain, and that is that he isrigidly determined to avoid a European confla-gration. On this point the policy of Germany issimilar to that of England and France, both ofwhich countries are determinedly pacifist.

is is a fair statement of the English andFrench position in . ere was a great revul-sion of feeling in England aer her close shaveof being dragged into war over Morocco andher sentiment was all for aending to certainpressing, domestic problems. Besides, it wasonly in November, , and only through theindiscretion of a French newspaper, that theBritish public (and the British Parliament aswell) had learned that the Anglo-French agree-ment of had secret articles aached to it,out of which had emanated the imbroglio overMorocco; and there was a considerable feelingof distrust towards the Foreign Office. In fact,Sir E. Grey, the Foreign Minister, was so unpop-ular with his own party that quite probably hewould have had to get out of office if he had


not been sustained by Tory influence. Mr. W. T.Stead expressed a quite general sentiment in theReview of Reviews for December, :

e fact remains that in order to put Francein possession of Morocco, we all but went towar with Germany. We have escaped war, butwe have not escaped the national and abidingenmity of the German people. Is it possible toframe a heavier indictment of the foreign policyof any British Ministry? e secret, the opensecret, of this almost incredible crime againsttreaty-faith, British interests and the peace ofthe world, is the unfortunate fact that Sir Ed-ward Grey has been dominated by men in theForeign Office who believe all considerationsmust be subordinated to the one supreme dutyof thwarting Germany at every turn, even if indoing so British interests, treaty-faith and thepeace of the world are trampled underfoot. Ispeak that of which I know.

is was strong language and it went with-out challenge, for too many Englishmen feltthat way. In France, the Poincaré–Millerand–Delcassé combination was geing well into thesaddle; but with English public opinion in thisnotably undependable condition, English sup-port of France, in spite of the secret agreementbinding the two governments, was decidedly

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risky. ereupon France also was “determinedlypacifist.” Now if Germany had been the primemover in “the most dangerous conspiracy everploed against the liberty of nations,” why didshe not take advantage of that situation?Russia, too, was “determinedly pacifist” in

, and with good reason. ere was a partyof considerable influence in the Tsar’s courtthat was strongly for going to war in behalfof Serbia, but it was finally headed off by theForeign Minister, Sazonov, who knew the stateof public opinion in England and its effect onFrance, and knew therefore that the French–Russian–English alliancewas not yet in shape totake on large orders. It is true that the Poincaré–Millerand–Delcassé war-party in France hadproof enough in that it could count onthe British Government’s support; and whatFrance knew, Russia knew. Undoubtedly, too,the British Government would somehow, undersome pretext or other, possibly Belgian neutral-ity, have contrived to redeem its obligations as itdid in . But the atmosphere of the countrywas not favourable and the thing would havebeen difficult. Accordingly, Sazonov saw thatit was best for him to restrain Serbia’s impetu-osity and truculence for the time being—Russiaherself being none too ready—and accordinglyhe did so.


But how? e Serbian Minister at Peters-burg says that Sazonov told him that in viewof Serbia’s successes “he had confidence in ourstrength and believed that we would be ableto deliver a blow at Austria. For that reasonwe should feel satisfied with what we were toreceive, and consider it merely as a temporaryhalting-place on the road to further gains.” Onanother occasion “Sazonov toldme that wemustwork for the future because we would acquire agreat deal of territory fromAustria.” e SerbianMinister at Bucharest says that his Russian andFrench colleagues counselled a policy of waiting“with as great a degree of preparedness as possi-ble the important events which must make theirappearance among the Great Powers.” How,one may ask, was the Russian Foreign Officeable to look so far and so clearly into the future?If German responsibility for the war is funda-mental, aose jugée, as Mr. Lloyd George said itis, this seems a strange way for the Russian For-eign Minister to be talking, as far back as .But stranger still is the fact that the GermanGovernment did not jump in at this junctureinstead of postponing its blow until whenevery one was apparently quite ready to receiveit. When the historian of the future considersthe theory of the Versailles treaty and considersthe behaviour of the German Government in

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the crisis of and in the crisis of , hewill have to scratch his head a great deal tomake them harmonize.

X

B the spring of , the diplomatic representa-tives of the Allied Danube States made no secretof the relations in which their Governmentsstood to the Tsar’s Foreign Office. e BalkanLeague was put through by Russian influenceand Russia controlled its diplomacy. Serbiawas as completely the instrument of Russia asPoland is now the instrument of France. “If theAustrian troops invade Balkan territory,” wroteBaron Beyens on April, , “it would givecause for Russia to intervene, and might letloose a universal war.” Now, if Germany hadbeen ploing “with ruthless, cynical determi-nation,” as Mr. Lloyd George said, against thepeace of Europe, what inconceivable stupidityfor her not to push Austria along rather thando everything possible to hold her back! Whygive Russia the benefit of eighteen months ofvaluable time for the feverish campaign of “pre-paredness” that she carried on? ose eighteenmonths meant a great deal. In February, ,the Tsar arranged to provide the Serbian armywith rifles and artillery, Serbia agreeing to puthalf a million soldiers in the field. In the same

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month Russia negotiated a French loan of about$ million for improvements on her strategicrailways and frontier-roads. During the spring,she made “test” mobilizations of large bodies oftroops which were never demobilized, and these“test” mobilizations continued down to the out-break of the war; and in April Russian agentsmade technical arrangements with agents ofthe British and French Admiralties for possiblecombined naval action.Yes, those eighteen months were very busy

months for Russia. True, she came out at theend of them an “unprepared and unsuspecting”nation, presumably, for was not all Europe un-prepared and unsuspecting? Is it not so nomi-nated in the Versailles treaty? One can not helpwondering, however, how it is that Germany,“carefully, skilfully, insidiously, clandestinelyplanning in every detail” a murderous aack onthe peace of Europe, should have given Russiathe inestimable advantage of those eighteenmonths.

XIM. E. D. M, editor of the British monthlyForeign Affairs, performed more than a distin-guished service—it is a splendid, an illustriousservice—to the disparaged cause of justice, whenrecently he translated and published in Englandthrough the National Labour Press, a series ofremarkable State documents.1 is consists ofreports made by the Belgian diplomatic repre-sentatives at Paris, London and Berlin, to the Bel-gianMinister of Foreign Affairs, covering the pe-riod from February, to July, . eirauthenticity has never been questioned. eyhave received no notice in this country; theircontent and import were carefully kept from theAmerican people as long as it was possible todo so, and consequently they remain unknownexcept to a few who are students of internationalaffairs or who have some similar special interest.It can hardly be pretended by anyone that

Belgian officials had, during that decade, anyparticular love or leaning towards Germany.e Belgian Foreign Office has always beenas free from sentimental aachments as anyother. It has always been governed by the same

1Under the title Diplomacy Revealed.

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motives that govern the British, French, Germanand Russian Foreign Offices. Its number, liketheirs, was number one; it was out, first andlast, for the interests of the Belgian Government,and it scrutinized every international transac-tion from the viewpoint of those interests andthose only. It was fully aware of the positionof Belgium as a mere “strategic corridor” andbale-ground for alien armies in case of a gen-eral European war, and aware that Belgiumhad simply to make the best of its bad outlook,for nothing else could be done. If the BelgianForeign Office and its agents, moreover, had nospecial love for Germany, neither had they anyspecial fear of her. ey were in no more ordeeper dread of a German invasion than of aBritish or French invasion. In fact, in , theBelgian Minister at Berlin set forth in a mostmaer-of-fact way his belief that in the event ofwar, Belgian neutrality would be first violatedby Great Britain.2 ese observers, in short,

2is belief received some corroboration in the springof 1912, when in the course of military “conversations,”the British Military Aaché, Lieutenant-Colonel Bridges,told the Belgian Minister of War that if war had broken outover the Agadir incident in 1911, the British Governmentwould have landed troops in Belgium with or without theBelgian Government’s consent. So much did the BritishGovernment think of the “scrap of paper!”


may on all accounts, as far as one can see, beaccepted as neutral and disinterested, with thepeculiar disinterestedness of one who has nochoice between two evils.

Well, then, under the circumstances it is re-markable that if Germany during the ten yearspreceding August, , were ploing againstthe peace of the world, these Belgian observersseem unaware of it. It is equally noteworthythat if Germany’s assault were unprovoked, theyseem unaware of that also. ese documentsrelate in an extremely maer-of-fact way a con-tinuous series of extraordinary provocations putupon the German Government, and moreover,they represent the behaviour of the GermanGovernment, under these provocations, in avery favourable light. On the other hand, theyshow from beginning to end a most profounddistrust of English diplomacy. If there is anyuncertainty about the causes of ill-feeling be-tween England and Germany, these Belgianofficials certainly do not share it. ey regularlyspeak of England’s jealousy of Germany’s eco-nomic competition, and the provocative aitudetowhich this jealousy gave rise. ey speak of it,moreover, as though it were something that theBelgian Government were already well awareof; they speak of it in the tone of pure common-

52 ALBERT J AY NOCK

place, such as one might use in an incidentalreference to the weather or to a tariff-scheduleor to any other maer that is well understoodand about which there is no difference of opin-ion and nothing new to be said. is is allthe more remarkable in view of the fact thatit was nominally to save Belgium and to defendthe sanctity of Belgian neutrality that Englandentered the war in August, . ese Belgianagents are invariably suspicious of English diplo-macy, as Mr. E. D. Morel points out, “mainlybecause they feel that it is tending to make thewar which they dread for their country.” eypersistently and unanimously “insinuate that ifle to themselves, France and Germany wouldreach a selement of their differences, and thatBritish diplomacy was being continually exer-cised to envenom the controversy and to drawa circle of hostile alliances round Germany.”is, indeed, under a specious concern for the“balance of power,” has been the historic rôle ofEnglish diplomacy. Every one remembers howin , just before the Franco-Prussian war, Mr.Mahew Arnold’s imaginary Prussian, Arminiusvon under-ten-Tronckh, wrote to the editorof the Pall Mall Gazee, begging him to prevailupon his fellow-countrymen “for Heaven’s sakenot to go on biting, first the French Emperor’stail, and then ours.”


On February, , the Belgian Minister inBerlin reported thus:

e real cause of the English hatred of Ger-many is the jealousy aroused by the astonish-ing development of Germany’s merchant navyand of her commerce andmanufactures. is ha-tred will last until the English have thoroughlylearned to understand that the world’s trade isnot by rights an exclusively English monopoly.Moreover, it is studiously fostered by the Timesand a whole string of other daily papers andperiodicals that do not stop short of calumny inorder to pander to the tastes of their readers.

At that time the centre of the English navyhad just been shied to the North Sea, to theaccompaniment of a very disturbing and, as atfirst reported, a very flamboyant speech fromthe Civil Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Lee. Ofthe sensation thereby created in Germany, theBelgian Minister says:

In informing the British public that Germanydoes not dream of any aggression against Eng-land, Count Bülow [the German Chancellor]said no more than what is recognized by everyone who considers the maer dispassionately.Germany would have nothing to gain from acontest. . . .e German fleet has been createdwith a purely defensive object: e small capac-ity of the coal-bunkers in her High Seas Fleet,

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and the small number of her cruisers, provebesides that her fleet is not intended for use atany distance from the coast.

On the other hand, he remarks in the samereport:

It was obvious that the new disposition of theEnglish navy was aimed at Germany . . . it cer-tainly is not because of Russia, whose materialstock is to a great extent destroyed and whosenavy has just given striking proof of incompe-tence [in the Russo-Japanese war].

Such is the tone uniformly adopted by theseneutral observers throughout their reports from to . On October, , the BelgianMinister in Paris wrote:

England, in her efforts to maintain her su-premacy and to hinder the development of hergreat German rival, is evidently inspired bythe wish to avoid a conflict, but are not herselfish aims in themselves bringing it upon us?. . .She thought, when she concluded the Japanesealliance and gradually drew France into similarties, that she had found the means to her end,by sufficiently paralysing Germany’s powers asto make war impossible.

is view of the Anglo-Japanese alliance is in-teresting and significant, especially now when


that instrument is coming up for renewal, withthe United States standing towards England inthe same relation of economic competitorshipthat Germany occupied in . True, ViscountBryce assured the Institute of Politics atWilliamsCollege last summer that it was not Germany’seconomic rivalry that disturbed England; but onthis point it would be highly advantageous forthe people of the United States, while there isyet time, to read what the Belgian Minister inBerlin had to say on October, :

A very large number of Germans are con-vinced that England is either seeking allies foran aack upon Germany, or else, which wouldbe more in accordance with British tradition,that she is labouring to provoke a Continentalwar in which she would not join, but of whichshe would reap the profit.

I am told that many English people are trou-bled with similar fears and go in dread of Ger-man aggression.

I am puzzled upon what foundations such animpression in London can be based. Germanyis absolutely incapable of aacking England.. . .Are these people in England really sincerewho go about expressing fears of a Germaninvasion which could not materialize? Are theynot rather pretending to be afraid of it in or-der to bring on a war which would annihilate

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Germany’s navy, her merchant-fleet and herforeign commerce? Germany is as vulnerable toaack as England is safe from it; and if Englandwere to aack Germany merely for the sakeof extinguishing a rival, it would only be inaccordance with her old precedents.

In turn shewiped out the Dutch fleet, with theassistance of Louis XIV; then the French fleet;and the Danish fleet she even destroyed in timeof peace and without any provocation, simplybecause it constituted a naval force of somemag-nitude.

ere are no ostensible grounds for war be-tween Germany and England. e English ha-tred for Germany arises solely from jealousy ofGermany’s progress in shipping, in commerceand in manufacture.

Baron Greindl here presents an opinion verydifferent from that in which the majority ofAmericans have been instructed; and beforethey accept further instruction at the hands ofViscount Bryce, they had beer look into themaer somewhat for themselves.Baron Greindl wrote the foregoing in Octo-

ber. In December, the head of the British Ad-miralty, Sir John Fisher, assured Colonel Re-pington that “Admiral Wilson’s Channel fleetwas alone strong enough to smash the whole


German fleet.” Two years later, Sir John Fisherwrote to King Edward VII that “it is an absolutefact that Germany has not laid down a singledreadnaught, nor has she commenced buildinga single baleship or big cruiser for eighteenmonths. . . . England has . . . ten dreadnaughtsbuilt and building, while Germany in Marchlast had not even begun one dreadnaught . . .we have destroyers and forty submarines.e Germans have forty-eight destroyers andone submarine.” Hence, if Sir John Fisher knewwhat he was talking about, and in such maershe usually did, he furnishes a very considerablecorroboration of Baron Greindl’s view of theGerman navy up to . Looking back at thethird chapter of this book, which deals withthe comparative strength of the two navies andnaval groups as developed from to ,the reader may well raise again Baron Greindl’squestion, “Are those people in England reallysincere?”

XIIS is the inveterate suspicion, themelancholydistrust, put upon English diplomacy by theseforeign and neutral observers who could see soplainly what would befall their own country inthe event of a European war. Such too, wasthe responsibility which these observers regu-larly imputed to the British Foreign Office—theBritish Foreign Office which was so soon to fixupon the neutrality of Belgium as a casus belliand pour out streams of propaganda about thesanctity of treaties and the rights of small na-tions! Every one of these observers exhibits thissuspicion and distrust. In March, , when Ed-ward VII visited Paris and invited the discred-ited ex-Minister Delcassé to breakfast, the Bel-gian Minister at Paris wrote:

It looks as though the king wished to demon-strate that the policy which called forth Ger-many’s active intervention [over Morocco] hasnevertheless remained unchanged. . . . In Frenchcircles it is not over well received; Frenchmenfeeling that they are being dragged against theirwill in the orbit of English policy, a policywhoseconsequences they dread, and which they gener-ally condemned by throwing over M. Delcassé.In short, people fear that this is a sign that

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England wants so to envenom the situation thatwar will become inevitable.

On February, , when the English Kingand een visited Paris, he says: “One can notconceal from oneself that these tactics, thoughtheir ostensible object is to prevent war, arelikely to arouse great dissatisfaction in Berlinand to stir up a desire to risk anything thatmay enable Germany to burst the ring whichEngland’s policy is tightening around her.” On March, , the Belgian argé d’affaires inLondon speaks of “English diplomacy, whosewhole effort is directed to the isolation of Ger-many.” On the same date, by a curious coin-cidence, the Minister at Berlin, in the courseof a blistering arraignment of French policy inMorocco, says: “But at the boom of everyselement that has been made, or is going tobe made, there lurks always that hatred of Ger-many. . . . It is a sequence of the campaign verycleverly conducted with the object of isolatingGermany. . . .e English press is carrying onits campaign of calumny more implacably thanever. It sees the finger of Germany in every-thing that goes contrary to English wishes.” On April, , Baron Greindl says of the King ofEngland’s visit to the King of Spain that, like


the alliances with Japan and France and thenegotiations with Russia, it is “one of the movesin the campaign to isolate Germany that is beingpersonally directed with as much perseveranceas success by His Majesty King Edward VII.” Inthe same dispatch he remarks: “ere is someright to regard with suspicion this eagerness tounite, for a so-called defensive object, Powerswho are menaced by nobody. At Berlin theycan not forget that offer of , men made bythe King of England to M. Delcassé.”On May, , the Minister at London re-

ported that “it is plain that official England ispursuing a policy that is covertly hostile, andtending to result in the isolation of Germany,and that King Edward has not been above puinghis personal influence at the service of this cause.”On June, , Count de Lalaing again writesfrom London of the Anglo-Franco-Spanish agree-ment concerning the status quo in the Mediter-ranean region, that “it is, however, difficult toimagine that Germany will not regard it as afurther step in England’s policy, which is deter-mined, by every sort of means, to isolate theGerman Empire.”Perusal of these documents from beginning to

end will show nothing to offset against the viewof English diplomacy exhibited in the foregoing

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quotations; nothing to modify or qualify thatview in anyway. BaronGreindl, however, speakshighly of the British Ambassador at Berlin, SirF. Lascelles, and praises his personal and unsup-ported aempt to establish friendly relationsbetween England and Germany. Of this hesays: “I have been a witness for the last twelveyears of the efforts he has made to accomplishit. And yet, possessing as he justly does theabsolute confidence of the Emperor and the Ger-manGovernment, and eminently giedwith thequalities of a statesman, he has nevertheless notsucceeded very well so far.” e next year, ,when Sir F. Lascelles was forced to resign hispost, Baron Greindl does not hesitate to say that“the zeal with which he has worked to dispelmisunderstandings that he thought absurd andhighly mischievous for both countries, does notfall in with the political views of his sovereign.”

XIII

K E VII died May, . During theearly part of , the Belgian Ministers in Lon-don, Paris and Berlin report some indicationsof a less unfriendly policy towards Germany onthe part of the British Government. In Marchof that year, Sir Edward Grey delivered a re-assuring speech on British foreign policy, onthe occasion of the debate on the naval budget.e Belgian Minister in Berlin says of this thatit should have produced the most agreeableimpression in Germany if one could confidentlybelieve that it really entirely reflected the ideasof the British Government. It would imply, hesays, that “England no longer wishes to giveto the Triple Entente the aggressive characterwhich was stamped upon it by its creator, KingEdward VII.” He remarks, however, the slighteffect produced in Berlin by Sir E. Grey’s speech,and infers that German public feeling may have“become dulled by the innumerable meetingsand mutual demonstrations of courtesy whichhave never produced any positive result,” andhe adds significantly that “this distrust is com-prehensible.”

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It must be remembered that at the time thisspeech was delivered, England was under asecret agreement dating from to secureFrance’s economic monopoly in Morocco. Eng-landwas also under a secret obligation to France,dating from , to support her in case of warwith Germany. It must be above all remem-bered that this laer obligation carried with it acontingent liability for the Franco-Russian mil-itary alliance that had been in effect for manyyears. us if Russia went to war with Germany,France was commied, and in turn Englandwas commied. e whole force of the TripleEntente lay in these agreements; and it cannot be too oen pointed out that they weresecret agreements. No one in England knewuntil November, , that in the BritishGovernment had bargained with the French Gov-ernment, in return for a free hand in Egypt,to permit France to squeeze German economicinterests out of Morocco—in violation of a pub-lished agreement, signed by all the interested na-tions, concerning the status of Morocco. No onein England knew until August, , that Eng-land had for several years been under a militaryand naval agreement with France which carriedthe enormous contingent liability of the Franco-Russian military alliance. No maer what ap-peared on the surface of politics; no maer


how many pacific speeches were made by SirE. Grey and Mr. Asquith, no maer what thenewspapers said, no maer how oen and howimpressively Lord Haldane might visit Berlinin behalf of peace and good feeling; those se-cret agreements held, they were the only thingsthat did hold, and everything worked out instrict accordance with them and with nothingelse, least of all with any public understandingor any statement of policy put out for publicconsumption. It was just as in the subsequentcase of the armistice and the peace—and this issomething that has been far too lile noticed inthis country. e real terms of the armistice andof the peace were not the terms of the FourteenPoints or of any of the multitudinous publishedstatements of Allied war aims. On the contrary,they were the precise terms of the secret treatiesmade among the Allied belligerents during thewar, and made public on their discovery by theSoviet Government in the archives of the TsaristForeign Office.

It is no wonder then, that the German Gov-ernment was not particularly impressed by SirE. Grey’s speech, especially as Germany sawFrance helping herself to Moroccan territorywith both hands, and England looking on inindifferent complacency. In May, , on amost transparent and preposterous pretext, a

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French army was ordered to march on Fez, thecapital of Morocco. e German Governmentthen informed France that as the Algeciras Act,which guaranteed the integrity and indepen-dence of Morocco, had thereby gone by theboard, Germany would no longer consider her-self bound by its provisions. In June, ,French troops “relieved” Fez, occupied it andstayed there, evincing no intention whateverof geing out again, notwithstanding that theostensible purpose of the expedition was ac-complished; in reality, there was nothing toaccomplish. Two months before this coup d’état,Baron Greindl, the Belgian Minister at Berlin,wrote to the Belgian Foreign Office as follows:

Every illusion, if ever entertained on the valueof the Algeciras Act, which France signed withthe firm intention of never observing, must longsince have vanished. She has not ceased for onemoment to pursue her plans of annexation; ei-ther by seizing opportunities for provisional oc-cupations destined to last for ever or by extort-ing concessions which have placed the Sultanin a position of dependence upon France, andwhich have gradually lowered him to the levelof the Bey of Tunis.

A week later, April, Baron Guillaume, whohad succeeded M. Leghait as Belgian Minister


in Paris, reported that “there are, so far, nogrounds for fearing that the French expeditionwill bring about any disturbance of internationalpolicy. Germany is a calm spectator of events.”He adds, significantly, “England, having thrustFrance into the Moroccan bog, is contemplatingher work with satisfaction.”France professed publicly that the object of

this expedition was to extricate certain foreign-ers whowere imperilled at Fez; and having doneso, she would withdraw her forces. e pre-cious crew of concessionaires, profiteers, anddividend-hunters known as theComité duMarochad suddenly discovered a whole French colonyliving in Fez in a state of terror and distress.ere was, in fact, nothing of the sort. Fez wasnever menaced, it was never short of provisions,and there were no foreigners in trouble. Whenthe expeditionary force arrived, it found no oneto shoot at. As M. Francis de Pressensé says:

ose redoubtable rebels who were threaten-ing Fez had disappeared like dew in themorning.Barely did a few ragged horsemen fire off ashot or two before turning around and ridingaway at a furious gallop. A too disingenuous,or too truthful, correspondent gave the showaway. e expeditionary force complains, hegravely records, of the absence of the enemy;the approaching harvest season is keeping all

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the healthy males in the fields! us did thephantom so dexterously conjured by the Comitédu Maroc for the benefit of its aims, disappearin a night.

Nevertheless, the expeditionary force did not,in accordance with the public professions of theFrench Government, march out of Fez as soonas it discovered this ridiculous mare’s nest. Itremained there and held possession of the Moor-ish capital. What was the aitude of the BritishGovernment in the premises? On May, in theHouse of Commons, Sir Edward Grey said that“the action taken by France is not intended toalter the political status of Morocco, and HisMajesty’s Government can not see why anyobjection should be taken to it.”Germany had remained for eight years a tol-

erant observer of French encroachments in Mo-rocco, and quite clearly, as Baron Greindl ob-serves in his report of April, , could not“aer eight years of tolerance, change her ai-tude unless she were determined to go to war,and war is immeasurably more than Moroccois worth.” In July, , however, while theFrench force of , was still occupying Fez,Germany dispatched a gunboat, the Panther,which anchored off the coast of Agadir.

XIV

T was the famous “Agadir incident,” of whichwe have all heard. Did it mean that the wormhad turned, that Germany had changed heraitude and was determined to go to war? Ithas been so represented; but there are manydifficult inconsistencies involved in that expla-nation of the German Government’s act, andthere is also an alternative explanation whichfits the facts far beer. In the first place thePanther was hardly more than an ocean-goingtug. She was of tons burden, mountingtwo small naval guns, six machine-guns, andshe carried a complement of only men. Sec-ond, she never landed a man upon the coastof Morocco. She chose for her anchorage apoint where the coast is practically inaccessi-ble; Agadir has no harbour, and there is noth-ing near it that offers any possible temptationto the predatory instinct. No more ostenta-tiously unimpressive and unmenacing demon-stration could have been devised. Germany,too, was quite well aware that Morocco wasnot worth a European war; and as Baron Guil-laume said in his report of April, “possibly

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she [Germany] is congratulating herself on thedifficulties that weigh upon the shoulders of theFrench Government, and asks nothing beerthan to keep out of the whole affair as long asshe is not forced into it by economic consid-erations.” But the most significant indicationthat Germany had not changed her aitude isin the fact that if she were determined uponwar, then, rather than two years later, was hertime to go about it. is aspect of Germany’sbehaviour has been dealt with in a previouschapter. It can not be too oen reiterated thatif Germany really wanted war and was deter-mined upon war, her failure to strike in ,when Russia was prostrate and France unready,and again in , a fewmonths aer the Agadirincident, when the Balkan war was on, is inex-plicable.1

1Critics of German foreign policy are hard put to it toshow that she was ever guided by territorial ambitions;which is an extremely troublesome thing when one wantsto believe that she proposed in 1914 to put the worldunder a military despotism. Can any one show wherein a single instance she ever demanded anything morethan economic equality with other nations, in a foreignmarket? Certainly she never demanded more than this inMorocco. Ex-Premier Caillaux says that his predecessorRouvier offered Germany a goodMoroccan port (Mogador)and some adjoining territory, and Germany declined.


e dispatch of the Panther gave the threeBelgian observers a great surprise, and theywere much puzzled to account for it. BaronGuillaume’s thoughts at once turned to England.He writes July:

It was long regarded as an axiom that Eng-land would never allow the Germans to estab-lish themselves at any point of Moroccan terri-tory. Has this policy been abandoned; and if so,at what price were they bought o?

During the month of July, while waiting fora statement from the British Foreign Office, theBelgian observers canvassed the possibility thatGermany’s action was a hint that she would likesome territorial compensation for having beenbilked out of her share in the Moroccan market.But the interesting fact, and for the purposeof this book the important fact, is that none ofthese diplomats shows the slightest suspicionthat Germany was bent on war or that she hadany thought of going to war. Baron Guillaumesays, July, “undoubtedly the present situa-tion wears a serious aspect. . . .Nobody, however,wants war, and they will try to avoid it.” Heproceeds:

e French Government knows that a warwould be the death-knell of the Republic. . . . Ihave very great confidence in the Emperor

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William’s love of peace, notwithstanding thenot infrequent air of melodrama about what hesays and does. . . .Germany can not go to war forthe sake of Morocco, nor yet to exact paymentof those compensations that she very reason-ably demands for the French occupation of Fez,which has become more or less permanent. Onthe whole I feel less faith in Great Britain’sdesire for peace. She would not be sorry to seethe others destroying one another; only, underthose circumstances, it would be difficult forher to avoid armed intervention. . . .As I thoughtfrom the very first, the crux of the situation isin London.

By the end of July, a different conception ofGermany’s action seemed to prevail. It beganto be seen that the episode of the Panther hadbeen staged by way of calling for a show-downon the actual intentions and purposes of theTriple Entente; and it got one. Mr. Lloyd George,“the impulsive Chancellor of the Exchequer,”as Count de Lalaing calls him, made a typicaljingo speech at the Mansion House; a speechwhich the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, and SirEdward Grey, the Foreign Minister, had helpedhim to compose. e air was cleared at once—England stood by France—and what beer plancould have been devised for clearing the airthan the dispatch of the Panther? Germany


stood for the policy of economic equality, thepolicy of the open door to which all the Powersinterested had agreed in the case of Morocco.France, at the end of a course of continuousaggression, had put , troops in occupationof the capital of Morocco on an infamously un-scrupulous pretext, and put them there to stay,and the British Government “could not see whyany objection should be taken to it.” Germany,on the other hand, anchored an insignificantgunboat off an inaccessible coast, and withoutlanding a man or firing a shot, le her there asa silent reminder of the Algeciras Act and theprinciple of the open door—carefully and evenostentatiously going no further—and the BritishGovernment promptly, through the mouth ofMr. Lloyd George, laid down a challenge and athreat. ereupon Germany and France under-stood their relative positions; they understood,even without Sir E. Grey’s explicit reaffirmationof November of the policy of the Triple En-tente, that England would stand by her arrange-ments with France. Baron Greindl writes fromBerlin December, and puts the case explicitly:

Was it not assuming the right of veto on Ger-man enterprise for England to start a hue andcry because a German cruiser cast anchor in theroads of Agadir, seeing that she had looked onwithout a murmur whilst France and Spain had

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proceeded step by step to conquer Morocco andto destroy the independence of its Sultan?

England could not have acted otherwise. Shewas tied by her secret treaty with France. eexplanation was extremely simple, but it wasnot of a sort to allay German irritation.

XV

L us glance at British political chronology fora moment. King Edward VII, the chief factorin the Entente, the moving spirit in England’sforeign alliances, had been dead a year. InDecember, , the Liberal party had comeinto power. In April, , Mr. H. H. Asquithbecame Prime Minister. In , Anglo-Germanrelations were apparently improving; in July,, Mr. Asquith spoke of them in the Houseof Commons as “of the most cordial character. Ilook forward to increasing warmth and fervourand intimacy in these relations year by year.”e great question was, then, in , whetherthe Liberal Government would actually, whenit came down to the pinch, stick by its secretcovenant with France. Were the new Liberals,were Mr. Asquith, Lord Haldane, Sir E. Grey, Mr.Lloyd George, true-blue Liberal imperialists, orwere they not? Could France and Russia safelytrust them to continue the Foreign Office policythat Lord Lansdowne had bequeathed to Sir E.Grey; or, when the emergency came, would theystand from under? Aer all, there had been aCampbell-Bannerman; there was no doubt of

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that; and one, at least, of the new Liberals, Mr.Lloyd George, had a bad anti-imperialist recordin the South African war.e Agadir incident elicited a satisfactory

answer to these questions. e Liberal Govern-ment was dependable. However suspiciouslythe members of the Liberal Cabinet might talk,they were good staunch imperialists at heart.eywere, as the theologians say, “sound on theessentials.” Baron Greindl wrote, December,:

e Entente Cordiale was founded, not on thepositive basis of defence of common interests,but on the negative one of hatred of the Ger-man Empire. . . . Sir Edward Grey adopts this tra-dition without reservation. He imagines thatit is in conformity with English interests. . . .Arevision of Great Britain’s policy is all the lessto be looked for, as ever since the Liberal Min-istry took office, and more especially during thelast fewmonths, English foreign policy has beenguided by the ideaswithwhich King Edward VIIinspired it.

XVIM. L G’ speech at the MansionHouse in July, , aer the German gunboatPanther had anchored off the Moroccan coast,gave an immense impulse to the jingo spirit inFrance, because it was taken as definite assur-ance of England’s good faith in seeing her secretagreements through to a finish. M. Caillaux,the French Premier, appears to have had hisdoubts, nevertheless, inasmuch as the BritishForeign Office did not give a straight reply tothe French Foreign Office’s inquiry concerningBritish action in case the Germans landed aforce in Morocco. He says:

Are we to understand that our powerful neigh-bours will go right through to the end with theresolve which they suggest? Are they readyfor all eventualities? e British Ambassador,Sir Francis Bertie, with whom I converse, doesnot give me formal assurances. It is said, ofcourse, that he would see without displeasurethe outbreak of a conflict between France andGermany; his mind works in the way aributedto a number of leading British officials at theForeign Office.

M. Caillaux here suggests the same suspicionof British intentions which the Belgian diplomats

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at London, Paris and Berlin intimate continuallythroughout their correspondence since .1

He accordingly favoured a less energetic policytowards Germany, and was thrown out of office.Count de Lalaing reported from London, Jan-uary, , that the revelations which provokedthis political crisis were disagreeable for theEnglish Government. “ey seem to prove,” hesays, “that the French Premier had been tryingto negotiate with Berlin without the knowledgeof the Minister for Foreign Affairs and his othercolleagues, and this is naturally disquieting to aGovernment whose interests are bound up withthose of France, and which accordingly can illtolerate any lapses of this kind.” He adds:

ese revelations have also strengthened theimpression that M. Caillaux had recently fav-oured an ultra-conciliatory policy towards Ger-many, and this impression was felt all the morepainfully in English official circles, as the full ex-tent of the tension between London and Berlincaused by the Cabinet of St. James’s loyal be-haviour towards the Cabinet at Paris had hardlybeen grasped. People in England are reluctantto face the fact that they have been ‘more royal-ist than the King,’ and have shown themselves

1is is worth noticing since M. Caillaux was thepioneer victim of the charge of being “pro-German.”


even less accommodating than the friend theywere backing. . . .Accordingly the press unani-mously hails with delight the departure of M.Caillaux, and trusts that sounder traditions maybe reverted to without delay.

is comment on the position of M. Caillauxis one of the most interesting observations to befound in these documents.

XVII

T Balkan war took place in , and thewhole history of the year shows the most mightyefforts of European politicians—efforts whichseem ludicrous and laughable in spite of theirtragic quality—to avert with their le hand thewar which they were bringing on with theirright. Mr. Lloyd George is right in saying thatno one really wanted war. What every onewanted, and what every one was trying withmight and main to do, was to cook the omeleeof economic imperialism without breaking anyeggs. ere was in all the countries, naturally,a jingo nationalist party which wanted war. InRussia, which was then busily reorganizing hermilitary forces which had been used up and leprostrate by the war with the Japanese, the pan-Slavists were influential and vociferous, but theywere not on top. In England there was a greatpopular revulsion against the behaviour of theGovernment which had so nearly involved theEnglish in a war against Germany the year be-fore; andMr. Asquith’s Government, which waspacifist in tendency, was meeting the popularsentiment in every way possible, short of theone point of revealing the secret engagements

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whi bound it to the Fren Government andcontingently to the Russian Government. LordHaldane undertook an official mission to Berlin,which was aended with great publicity andwas popularly supposed to be of a pacificatorynature; and really, within the limits of the Franco-English diplomatic agreement, it went as far asit could in the establishment of good relations.In fact, of course, it came to nothing; as longas the diplomatic agreement remained in force,it could come to nothing, nothing of the sortcould come to anything; and the diplomaticagreement being guarded as a close secret, thereason why it must come to nothing was notapparent. e German Government also madetremendous efforts in behalf of peace; and itmust be noted by those who accept the theoryuponwhich the treaty of Versailles is based, thatif Germany had wished or intended at any timeto strike at the peace of Europe, now was themoment for her to do so. Instead, the GermanEmperor in person, and the German Govern-ment, through one of its best diplomatic agents,Baron vonMarschall, met every pacific overturemore than half-way, and themselves initiatedall that could be thought of. “ere is no doubt,”wrote Baron Beyens from Berlin, “that the Em-peror, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State


for Foreign Affairs (von Kiderlen-Wächter) arepassionately pacifists.” Baron Beyens again says, June, , “e Emperor is persistent and hasnot given up hopes ofwinning back English sym-pathies, just as he has succeeded up to a certainpoint in obtaining the confidence of the Tsar, bythe force of his personal aractions.” ose whobelieve in the extraordinary notion of an unpre-pared and unsuspecting Europe, should read thediplomatic history of the year , when all thechief officeholders in England and on the Conti-nent were struggling like men caught in a quick-sand, or like flies on fly-paper, to avert, or if theycould not avert, to defer the inevitable war.In one country, however, the jingo national-

ist and militarist party came on top; and thatcountry was France. M. Caillaux was succeededby Raymond Poincaré; and in January, ,Poincaré became President of the Republic. Upto , the people of France were increasinglyindisposed to war and were developing a con-siderable impatience with militarism, and theFrench Government was responsive to this sen-timent. It knew, as Baron Guillaume remarkedat the time of the Agadir incident, that “a warwould be the death-knell of the Republic.” M.Caillaux seems to have measured the feelingsof his countrymen quite well. Baron Guillaume

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says that aer the dispatch of the Panther, theBritish Cabinet’s first proposal was that theBritish and French Governments should eachimmediately send two men-of-war to Agadir;and that the French Cabinet strongly objected.Again, he says in his report of July, , “I ampersuaded that Messrs. Caillaux and de Selvesregret the turn given to the Moroccan affair bytheir predecessors in office. ey were quiteready to give way, provided they could do sowithout humiliation.”e speech of Mr. Lloyd George at the Man-

sion House, however, which was taken by theFrench (and how correctly they took it becameapparent on August, ) as a definite assur-ance of British support against Germany, gavethe militarist-nationalist party the encourage-ment to go ahead and dominate the domestic pol-itics of France. It put the Poincaré–Millerand–Delcassé element on its feet and stiffened itsresolution, besides clearing the way in largemeasure for its predominance. On February,, Baron Guillaume reports from Paris thus:

e new President of the Republic enjoys apopularity in France to-day unknown to any ofhis predecessors. . . .Various factors contributeto explain his popularity. His election had beencarefully prepared in advance; people are pleasedat the skilful way in which, while a Minister, he


manœuvred to bring France to the fore in theconcert of Europe; he has hit upon some happyphrases that stick in the popular mind.

e career of M. Poincaré, in fact, and hismanagement of popular sentiment, show manyfeatures which mutatis mutandis, find a parallelin the career of eodore Roosevelt. BaronGuillaume adds, however, this extremely strik-ing observation concerning the popularity of M.Poincaré:

But above all, one must regard it as a man-ifestation of the old French chauvinistic spirit,which had for many years slumbered, but whichhad come to life again since the affair of Agadir.

In the same communication to the Belgian For-eign Office, Baron Guillaume remarks:

M. Poincaré is a native of Lorraine, and losesno opportunity of telling people so. He was M.Millerand’s colleague, and the instigator of hismilitarist policy.

Finally, the first word that he uered at thevery moment when he learned that he waselected President of the Republic, was a promisethat he would watch over and maintain all themeans of national defence.

M. Poincaré had not been in office twomonthswhen he recalled the French Ambassador at Pe-tersburg, M. Georges Louis, and appointed in his

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stead M. Delcassé. Concerning this stupendousmove, Baron Guillaume reported February,, to the Belgian Foreign Office thus:

e news that M. Delcassé is shortly to beappointed Ambassador at Petersburg burst likea bomb here yesterday aernoon. . . .He was oneof the architects of the Franco-Russian alliance,and still more so of the Anglo-French entente.

Baron Guillaume goes on to say that he doesnot think thatM. Delcassé’s appointment shouldbe interpreted as a demonstration against Ger-many; but he adds:

I do think, however, that M. Poincaré, a Lor-rainer, was not sorry to show, from the firstday of entering on his high office, how anxioushe is to stand firm and hold alo the nationalflag. at is the danger involved in having M.Poincaré at the Elysée in these anxious daysthrough which Europe is passing. It was underhis Ministry that the militarist, slightly bellicoseinstincts of the French woke up again. He hasbeen thought to have a measure of responsibil-ity for this change of mood.

M. Georges Louis, who had represented theFrenchGovernment at Petersburg for three years,was a resolute opponent of the militarist factionin France, and was therefore distinctly persona


non grata to the corresponding faction in Rus-sia. At the head of this faction stood Isvolsky,who was a friend of M. Poincaré and a kindredspirit; hence when M. Poincaré became Premier,an aempt wasmade to oustM. Louis, but it wasunsuccessful. M. Delcassé, on the other hand, isdescribed by Mr. Morel as “the man identifiedmore than any other man in French public lifewith the anti-German war-party.” Mr. Morel, incommenting on the appointment of M. Delcasséquotes the following from a report sent by theRussian Ambassador in London to the ForeignOffice in Petersburg. It was wrien four daysaer the appointment of M. Delcassé, and quitebears out the impression made upon the Belgianagents.1

When I recall his [M. Cambon, the FrenchAmbassador in London] conversations with me,and the aitude of Poincaré, the thought comesto me as a conviction, that of all the powersFrance is the only one which, not to say thatit wishes war, would yet look upon it withoutgreat regret. . . . She [France] has, either rightlyor wrongly, complete trust in her army; the oldeffervescing minority has again shown itself.

1But perhaps Count Beuckendorf was pro-German,too!

XVIII

T French war-party, represented byMM. Poin-caré, Millerand and Delcassé, came into polit-ical predominance in January, , and con-solidated its ascendancy one year later, whenM. Raymond Poincaré became President of theFrench Republic. All through there was animmense amount of correspondence and consul-tation between the French and Russian Govern-ments, and all through Russia showed ex-traordinary activity in military preparation. InEngland, Mr. Asquith’s Government had to facea strong revulsion of popular feeling against theaitude of its diplomacy, which had so nearlyinvolved the country in war with Germany atthe time of the Agadir incident.As always, the figures of expenditure tell the

story; and the history of – should be con-tinually illustrated by reference to the financialstatistics of the period, which have been givenin earlier chapters. For instance, Russia, whichspent (in round numbers) £¼ million on newnaval construction in , spent £ million in, £ million in , and £ million in .e fact that, as Professor Raymond Beazley

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puts it, in the ten years before the war, and withincreasing insistence, Paris and St. Petersburgspent upon armaments £ million more thanBerlin or Vienna, ought to suffice at least toreopen the question of responsibility.It must be carefully noted that by the spring of

, the Balkan League, which was engineeredby the Russian diplomat Hartwig, was fullyformed. is put the diplomacy of the BalkanStates under the direct control of the RussianForeign Office. It now became necessary forthe Russian Foreign Office to ascertain, in casewar between Serbia and Austria broke out, andGermany should help Austria and Russia shouldhelp Serbia, whether Russia could count on thesupport of France and England. Russia receivedthis assurance in secret, and the terms of it werediscovered by the Soviet Government in thearchives of the Foreign Office and published in. is is a most important fact, and shouldbe continually borne in mind in connexion withthe fact that the war was precipitated by themurder of the Austrian Archduke by Serbian of-ficers, members of the pan-Slavist organizationfostered and encouraged by MM. Isvolsky andHartwig.On August, , M. Poincaré, then Premier

of France, made a visit to St. Petersburg, where


he was joined by his kindred spirit, M. Isvolsky,who was then the Russian Ambassador at Paris.It was the usual visit of State, and Russia stagedan imposing series of military manœuvres inM. Poincaré’s honour. But the really impor-tant events that took place were these. First, anaval agreement was made between France andRussia, whereby France agreed to concentrateher naval forces in the Eastern Mediterraneanin order to support the Russian navy in theBlack Sea. is agreement was secret, and re-vealed by the Soviet Government in . en,in the same month, the ird French NavalSquadron was transferred from the Atlantic totheMediterranean. M. Poincaré toldM. Isvolskythat “this decision has been made in agreementwith England, and forms the further develop-ment and completion of the arrangement al-ready made previously between the French andBritish Staffs”—referring to the conference ofMessrs. Asquith and Churchill and Lord Kitch-ener at Malta, the month before, at which thenew disposition of the English and French fleetswas decided. e third maer of consequencethat took place in the month of August was thatthe Russian Government began to put pressureon the French Government to re-establish theree Years Military Service law.

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So much for August. In the month of Septem-ber, M. Poincaré gave the Russian Foreign Min-ister, M. Sazonov, assurance that if Germanyhelped Austria in a struggle in the Balkans, andif Russia were drawn in on the other side, France“would not hesitate for a moment to fulfil itsobligations towards Russia.” In the same month,M. Isvolsky had an interview with the Kingof England and Sir Edward Grey, the BritishForeign Minister, in which both King Georgeand Sir E. Grey assured him of the fullest Britishco-operation in the same event. M. Isvolsky re-ported to the Russian Foreign Office at St. Peters-burg, that “Grey, upon his own initiative, cor-roborated what I already knew from Poincaré—the existence of an agreement between Franceand Great Britain, according to which Englandundertook, in case of a war with Germany, notonly to come to the assistance of France onthe sea, but also on the Continent, by landingtroops.” ese two understandings betweenMM. Poincaré and Sazonov, and between M.Isvolsky and Sir E. Grey, were secret, and noth-ing was known of them until , when thememoranda of them were published by the So-viet Government.1

1On 10 March of the following year, Mr. Asquith,


A train of gunpowder, in other words, hadbeen laid from Belgrade through Paris and Lon-

replying to a question in the Commons from Lord HughCecil, denied that England was under an “obligationarising owing to an assurance given by the Ministry inthe course of diplomatic negotiations, to send a very largearmed force out of this country to operate in Europe.” On24 March, he made similar denials in reply to questionsfrom Sir W. Byles and Mr. King. On 14 April, Mr.Runciman, in a speech at Birkenhead, denied “in the mostcategorical way” the existence of a secret understandingwith any foreign Power! On 3 May, the Secretary forthe Colonies, Mr. Harcourt, declared publicly that he“could conceive no circumstances in which Continentaloperations would not be a crime against the peopleof this country.” On 28 June, the under-Secretary forForeign Affairs, Mr. Acland, declared publicly that “in noEuropean question were we concerned to interfere witha big army.” On 1 July, Lord Loreburn, Lord Chancellorfrom 1906 to 1912, said “that any British Governmentwould be so guilty towards our country as to take uparms in a foreign quarrel is more than I can believe.”On 28 April, 1914, and again on 11 June, Sir E. Greyconfirmed, in the House of Commons, Mr. Asquith’sassertion, made 10 and 24 March, 1913, of British freedomfrom engagements with Continental Powers.

Yet, curiously the professions of politicians are stilltrusted, and people still expect something from theirmachinations; they expected something substantial fromthe recent conference in Washington, on the limitation ofarmaments, for instance—a striking and pathetic exampleof the strength of superstition.

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don to St. Petersburg; and at the beginning ofthat train was the highly inflammable and inflam-matory pan-Slavism, organized by M. Hartwigwith the connivance of M. Isvolsky. A sparkstruck in the Balkans would cause the train toflash into flame throughout its entire length.

XIX

O April, , the German Reichstag putthrough its first reading a bill, with only per-functory debate, for an increase in the Germanarmy and navy. ismeasure has been regularlyand officially interpreted as a threat. Yet nearlya year aer, on February, , Baron Guil-laume, writing from Paris about the prospectsof the ree Years Service bill, reports to theBelgian Foreign Office that the French Ministerof War “does not regard the measures takenby Germany as a demonstration of hostility,but rather as an act of prudence for the future.Germany fears that she may one day have tofight Russia and France together, perhaps Eng-land too; and then any help that Austria mightgive her would be seriously handicapped by thefact that the Dual Monarchy [Austria-Hungary]would have to withstand a coalition of BalkanStates.”Naturally. e bill was presented to the Re-

ichstag in April, and the “coalition of BalkanStates,” M. Hartwig’s Balkan League, had al-ready completed its organization in February.Not only so, but the very first step taken by this

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exemplary organization provided for a divisionof spoils in the event of a successful war withTurkey; and six months aer the organization ofthe League was concluded, it served an ultima-tum upon Turkey over Albania, and in Octoberwent to war. e German Government couldquite plainly see the future about to be inau-gurated through this consolidation of Balkanpolicy into the hands of the Russian ForeignOffice—any one even an aentive reader ofnewspapers, could see it—and it could see thevastly increased responsibility of its Austrianally, in case of a quarrel, should it have to takeon a coalition of the Balkan States instead of asingle one.Count de Lalaing reported from London,

February, , that the British Foreign Officetook the same sensible view of the German mili-tary increases as, according to Baron Guillaume,was taken by M. Jonnart. “e English press,” hesays, “is of course anxious to saddle Germanywith the responsibility for the fresh tensioncaused by her schemes—a tension which maygive Europe fresh reasons for uneasiness.” But,he goes on—

At the Foreign Office I found a more equi-table and calmer estimate of the situation. eysee in the reinforcement of the German armiesnot so much a provocation as an admission


that circumstances have weakened Germany’smilitary position, and that it must be strength-ened. e Berlin Government is compelledto recognize that it can no longer count uponbeing supported by the whole force of its Aus-trian ally, now that a new Power, that of theBalkan Federation, has made its appearance inSouth-eastern Europe, right at the gates of theDual Empire. . . .Under these circumstances, theForeign Office sees nothing astonishing in Ger-many’s finding it imperative to increase thenumber of her army corps. e Foreign Officealso states that the Berlin Government had toldthe Paris Cabinet quite frankly that such werethe motives for its action.

e same view was publicly expressed by Mr.Lloyd George himself as late as January, ,when he said:

e German army was vital, not merely tothe existence of the German Empire, but to thevery life and independence of the nation itself,surrounded, as Germany is, by other nations,each of which possesses armies as powerful asher own. We forget that while we insist upona sixty-per-cent superiority (as far as our navalstrength is concerned) over Germany being es-sential to guarantee the integrity of our ownshores, Germany herself has nothing like thatsuperiority over France alone, and she has of

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course, in addition, to reckon with Russia on hereastern frontier. Germany has nothing whichapproximates to a two-Power standard. Shehas, therefore, become alarmed by recent issues,and is spending huge sums of money on theexpansion of her military resources.

ose are the words, be it remembered, ofthe same person who says to-day that Germanresponsibility for the war which broke out sixmonths aer he had made the foregoing state-ment, is a ose jugée! e statement was made,furthermore, not only aer the German bill of April, , but aer the bill of April, ,as well, which fixed the peace-strength of theGerman army at ,.eree Years Service law passed the French

Chamber in August, , aer a passionatepopular campaign. Of this measure Baron Guil-laume says that the French newspapers, Le Tempsin particular, “are wrong in representing theFrenchGovernment’s plans as being in responseto measures adopted by Germany. Many ofthem are but the outcome of measures whichhave long been prepared.” e French Minister,M. Jonnart, told him that “we know very wellwhat an advantage our neighbour [Germany]has in the continual growth of his population;still, we must do all that lies in our power to


compensate this advantage by beer militaryorganization.” Probably this view of the reeYears Service law was the view held by all savethe relatively small and highly-integrated war-faction; and in so far as military measures areever reasonable, this, like the correspondingmeasures taken in Germany, must be regardedas reasonable. As M. Pichon told Baron Guil-laume, “We are not arming for war, we arearming to avoid it, to exorcise it. . . .We must goon arming more and more in order to preventwar.” ere is no reason whatever to supposethat this view was not sincerely entertainedby M. Pichon and by many others, probablyby a majority of the persons most responsiblyconcerned.But the consequences of the ree Years Ser-

vice law were contemplated by Baron Guillaumewith great apprehension. He reports on June,, that “the burden of the new law will fallso heavily upon the population, and the expen-diture which it will involve will be so exorbitant,that there will soon be an outcry in the country,and France will be faced with this dilemma: ei-ther renounce what she can not bear to forgo,or else, war at short notice.” Of the militaristparty now in the ascendancy, he says: “eyare followed with a sort of infatuation, a kind of

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frenzy which is interesting but deplorable. Oneis not now allowed, under pain of being markedas a traitor, to express even a doubt of the needfor the ree Years Service.”Public opinion was evidently confiscated by

the Poincaré–Millerand–Delcassé group, muchas it was in the United States in by the war-party headed by Mr. Wilson. Baron Guillaumeuses words that must remind us of those days.“Every one knows,” he says, “that themass of thenation is by no means in favour of the projectedreform, and they understand the danger that liesahead. But they shut their eyes and press on.”

XXT train of powder, however, had been laid bythe diplomatic engagements. Austria-Hungaryand Serbia came into collision in the spring of over the Scutari incident. In December,, M. Sazonov had urged Serbia to play await-ing game in order to “deliver a blow at Austria.”But on April, , Baron Beyens reports fromBerlin that the arrogance and contempt withwhich the Serbs receive the Vienna Cabinet’sprotests over Scutari

can only be explained by their belief that St. Pe-tersburg will support them. e Serbian chargéd’affaires was quite openly saying here latelythat his Government would not have persistedin its course for the last six months in the faceof the Austrian opposition had they not receivedencouragement in their course from the RussianMinister, M. de Hartwig, who is a diplomatistof M. Isvolsky’s school. . . .M. Sazonov’s heart iswith his colleagues who are directing the policyof the Great Powers, but he feels his influencewith the Tsar being undermined by the court-party and the pan-Slavists. Hence his inconse-quent behaviour.

e military activity which the Russian Gov-ernment displayed in gives interest to this


estimate of M. Sazonov’s position. No doubtto some extent the estimate was correct; M.Sazonov, like Sir E. Grey, was probably, whenit was too late, much disquieted by the eventswhich marshalled him the way that he was go-ing. In , thismilitary activity gained extraor-dinary intensity. e Russian army was putupon a peace-footing of approximately ,,,“an effective numerical strength hitherto unprece-dented,” said the St. Petersburg correspondentof the London Times. From January to June, theRussian Government made immense purchasesof war material. In February, it concluded aloan in Paris for the improvement of its strategicroads and railways on the German frontier. Rus-sia, as was generally known at the time, had hereye on the acquisition of Constantinople; and inthe same month, February, a council of war washeld in St. Petersburg to work out “a generalprogramme of action in order to secure for us afavourable solution of the historical question ofthe Straits.” In March, the St. Petersburg news-paper which served as the mouthpiece of theMinister ofWar, published an article stating thatRussia’s strategy would no longer be “defensive”but “active.” Another paper spoke of the timecoming when “the crossing of the Austrian fron-tier by the Russian army would be an unavoid-able decision.” In the same month, Russia raiseda heavy tariff against the importation of German


grain and flour; thus bearing out the evidenceof German trade-reports that even at this timeGermany was still exporting grain to Russia—a most extraordinary proceeding for a nationwhich contemplated a sudden declaration ofwar before the next harvest. In the same month,the Russian Government brought in militaryestimates of £ million. It exercised heavypressure on the French Government in the pro-tracted political turmoil over the maintenanceof the ree Years Service law. In April, “trialmobilizations” were begun, and were continuedup to the outbreak of the war. In May, M.Sazonov informed the Tsar that the British Gov-ernment “has decided to empower the BritishAdmiralty Staff to enter into negotiations withFrench and Russian naval agents in London forthe purpose of drawing technical conditions forpossible action by the naval forces of England,Russia and France.” In the same month, a com-plete mobilization of all the reserves of the threeannual contingents of – was orderedfor the whole Russian Empire, as a “test,” totake place in the autumn. In the same monththe Russian Admiralty instructed its agent inLondon, Captain Volkov, as follows:

Our interests on the Northern scene of op-erations require that England keeps as large apart of the German fleet as possible in check


in the North Sea. . . .e English Governmentcould render us a substantial service if it wouldagree to send a sufficient number of boats toour Baltic ports to compensate for our lack ofmeans of transport, before the beginning of war-operations.

is document, revealed by the Soviet Gov-ernment in , is prey damaging to the as-sumption of an “unprepared and unsuspectingEurope”; especially as Professor Conybeare hasgiven publicity to the fact that “before the be-ginning of war-operations” those English boatswere there, prompt to the minute, empty, readyand waiting.In June, the Russian Ambassador warned the

Russian naval staff in London that they mustexercise great caution in talking about a landingin Pomerania or about the dispatch of Englishboats to the Russian Baltic ports before theoutbreak of war, “so that the rest may not bejeopardized.” On June, the newspaper-organof the Russian Minister of War published aninspired article under the caption: “Russia isReady: France must be Ready.”Two weeks later, the Austrian heir-apparent,

the Archduke Francis Joseph, was murderedat Sarajevo, a town in Bosnia, by Serbian offi-cers. e murder was arranged by the Serbian


Major Tankesitch, of the pan-Slavist organiza-tion known as the Black Hand; and this orga-nization was fostered, if not actually subsidized,by the RussianMinister at Belgrade, M. Hartwig,the pupil and alter ego of M. Isvolsky, and thearchitect and promoter of the Balkan League!

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