The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 Part 32

Commander in Chief of the Turkish Army.

(_Photo_ _by American Press a.s.sn._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEN. KAMIO,

Commander in Chief of the j.a.panese Tsing-Tau Expedition.

(_Photo from Paul Thompson._)]

Why England Fights Germany

By Hilaire Belloc.

[_Copyright, 1915, by The New York Times Company._]

_Hilaire Belloc has for years been among the most prominent of English writers, his political and economic opinions being widely quoted. As a historian he has given special attention to the French Revolution, being the author of "Danton," "Marie Antoinette," "The Girondins," and other studies which are regarded by scholars as standard works. Mr. Belloc's military knowledge and experience (he served in the Eighth Regiment of French Artillery) and his understanding of history have made him an acute and interesting chronicler of the present war.

The following article appeared in_ THE NEW YORK TIMES _of Jan.

17, 1915._

I shall attempt in what follows to answer the question "Why is England at war with Germany?" It is perhaps the most important question upon which neutral countries, and especially neutral English-speaking countries, should have a true answer. Upon their just appreciation of England's position in this war a great deal of the immediate future of the world will depend.

But before proceeding to answer the question directly, we must get rid of certain misconceptions.

The question must be, as the French say, not only "put," but "put in its due proportion." It is not enough to answer the question "Why is England at war with Germany?" unless we know to begin with what that event means to this gigantic war as a whole.

Let us begin, then, by saying that this great war is not primarily a war between England and Germany at all. England and Germany are not the two chief combatants. The issue is not a victory to be achieved by Germany on the one side, or England upon the other. The victory of one of the parties in the great struggle would not produce a much stronger England, though it certainly would produce a much stronger Germany.

The struggle is primarily and essentially a struggle between two conflicting theories of life and government, which have the Continent of Europe for their theatre, and of which the Prussians upon the one hand, the French upon the other, are the protagonists and have been the protagonists for now more than three generations.

All human conflicts have spiritual roots, and the underlying spiritual forces which by their contrast have led to this war are the forces of the old Latin and Christian civilization, with its doctrines of human equality and the rest, and the North German reaction against that tradition. Of the first the French are the guardians and have always been. Of the second the North Germans of the Baltic plain, and particularly the Prussians, have been the exponents; and one may survey Europe as a whole and say that the conflict spreads through the minds of all Europeans, dividing them between those who would prefer their posterity to live, consciously or unconsciously, under the ancient and continuous tradition of the civilization inherited from Rome or under some reversal of that tradition.

That conflict is apparent in every department of life; in the arts, in the customs of society, and, most important of all, in philosophy.

The direct, immediate, and perceptible issue of the struggle is again something different. It is an issue between the German-speaking peoples and the Slav. If you were to ask an acute, well-traveled observer, say a European diplomat, what, at bottom, this war was, he would answer you thus:

"This war is an armed conflict provoked by the German-speaking peoples under the leaders.h.i.+p of Prussia against the Slavs under the leaders.h.i.+p of the Russian Empire. It has been provoked by Prussia as leader of the German peoples, not in a spirit of aggression but in a spirit of self-defense. The German peoples have for centuries regarded themselves as the bulwark of European civilization against Slav barbarism. They believe that the Slav power is rapidly getting so great as to be an immediate peril. They think it must be fought now or never. On this account Austria was induced by Prussia to challenge the Russian Government over the Servian question.

"Either that challenge would be accepted, with the result of war, or Russia would give way, thereby obtaining for the German peoples a victory without bloodshed. And Austria would proceed to administrate the Servian Slavs and to control them--driving a wedge into the whole Slav power and rendering it innocuous for the future.

"In this struggle between Teuton and Slav France comes in as an accessory, having made an alliance with Russia long ago for her own ends, and having nothing to do with the quarrel between Teuton and Slav.

The German-speaking peoples regret the interference of France, but are prepared to take on the burden of a French war rather than abandon the moment for restricting the growing power of the Slav.

"Now, in all this," (your experienced man with a wide view of Europe would add,) "England was not concerned. Her position was quite subsidiary in all this quarrel. She had far less to do with it even than France had, and it was in every Cabinet of Europe doubted whether England would come in at all. By the Prussian Government it was taken for granted that England would have no reason to come in. By the French it was feared in spite of the recent relations between the two countries that England would remain neutral. And, in general, the fact that England is at war at all is a fact on one side of the original quarrel and its original motives, though it is a fact that will profoundly affect the progress and the results of the war."

Such a statement would be no more than the plain truth as educated men know and see it in Europe today. The entry of England into the field of conflict was an entry from one side. It did not fall into line with the general motives of the people. It was, among all English statesmen, a matter of debate; it was decided by but a narrow majority of those responsible for so enormous a decision.

When we have clearly grasped these two fundamental facts--first, that the war is not on its mechanical side mainly a war between England and Germany, but mainly a war between two contrasting European and Continental ideals; secondly, the correlative fact that the entry of England into the war was not certain until the last hour, and was, when it was made, made only after doubtful consideration and after a division among the politicians, responsible for the conduct of her affairs, something almost accidental, as it were--we can proceed to consider the three causes which converging were sufficiently strong in their combination to produce that result, and when we know what those three causes were, their strength and the accidents of their convergence, at this moment we shall have answered the question, "Why is England at war with Germany?"

These three causes are:

1. The fixed cardinal point for English policy upon which no English patriot worthy of the name would hesitate for a moment, and which no historian with any sense of justice can condemn, to wit, that no one, if England can help it, shall have naval predominance over the British fleet, particularly in the narrow seas.

2. The effect of certain undertakings, a whole network of diplomatic actions, particularly in connection with France, engaged in by the English Foreign Office during the last ten years.

3. A certain vague attachment to the Western, or Latin, tradition of civilization with its routine of conventions in war and peace, and particularly of treaties as between first-cla.s.s powers. This tradition was still sufficiently strong to act as a motive converging with the two others mentioned above to produce a sufficient moral stream in favor of war as, though sluggish, to help to turn the scale.

I say that these three things combined, upon the whole and doubtfully, discovered a sufficient strength between them to make the English politicians, after serious hesitation and close division, determine upon war.

Let me take them in their order:

1. The cardinal point of statesmans.h.i.+p upon which all English foreign policy has turned for two hundred years, that no one shall be more powerful at sea than England, especially upon the sh.o.r.es of the narrow seas, appears to foreigners unarguably arrogant.

It is, indeed, of its nature a challenge to the rest of the world, but if the reader will consider a moment he will see that it is a challenge to which modern England, at any rate, is inexorably condemned. However much such a position may clash with the temperament of chivalrous and peaceable men--and it does clash with the temperament of many an English statesman of the past and of the present--no one with a respect for his country, or paying the common duty of allegiance to it, can compromise upon the matter. It is here with England precisely as it has been with all her parallels, the great oligarchic commercial commonwealths of the past; she lives by the sea, and the closing of the sea would be to her not inconvenience, but death.

It is, I think, this very sentiment that England can live only on condition that the English fleet is supreme which has led England to use that supremacy so sparingly. It is true to say that there has been no force of so much superiority to its rivals as the British Navy which in all history has been used for such purely defensive purposes as the British Navy has been used during the present generation, and this moderation I conceive to be due to a clear recognition that morally the claim to supremacy at sea is a challenge which the great rival nations must feel acutely, and which they have a right to feel acutely, and which, therefore, must be softened in every possible way.

But if it is necessary that Great Britain should brook no rival at sea it is still more necessary that such a rival, should he arise, should not have naval bases within striking distance of her coast. The great exception has, of course, been France, and for two centuries at least that fact has molded the whole of British policy. Had Germany remained a Continental power and rejected maritime ambition that would still continue to mold British policy.

The French have, and Europe being what it is, will always continue to have the apt.i.tude for the sea, the genius in mechanical invention and the superabundant wealth which between them are the three factors of the great modern fleet. A lengthy coast line training millions of her workers to a seafaring life, a long tradition of naval families, and pioneer in every form of modern naval war from the armor plate to the submarine, is the proof of this, if proof were needed.

As against the presence of some part of the French naval power on an opposing coast across a narrow armed water, the English Channel, Great Britain proceeded, generation after generation, to keep her control an essentially defensive naval force. She did it upon the position that her military effort, and therefore expenditure, should be slight; that her economic as her other energies should be chiefly devoted to her marine.

And though the French in the moments of their greatest prosperity were able, for all their constant military effort, to produce navies that rivaled those of Great Britain, yet Great Britain's effort was the more constant. She never engaged large bodies of men in war; she could take advantage of every French reverse during the two centuries when the French were perpetually engaged in huge Continental conflicts.

Great Britain, in a word, by ceaseless vigilance and at a great expense of energy, managed upon the whole to dominate one branch of the narrow seas, the channel. Upon the other branch, the North Sea, she felt nearly always secure. An exception to this security was found during the brief Dutch period in the seventeenth century and again, much more acutely, when the French were the masters of the Low Countries, and when Napoleon took control of the s.h.i.+pbuilding yards not only from Brest to Dunkirk, but from Dunkirk to the Bight of Heligoland.

This presence of the French power in Holland, Belgium, and Frisia, in particular the French control of Antwerp, was the true cause of violent anxiety, and the no less violent efforts in reply which Britain made during the Napoleonic wars. For twenty-three years she fought, with but two short intervals of repose, upon a dozen nominal pleas, but with one plain piece of statesmans.h.i.+p at the back of her mind--that no one should control the narrow seas against herself.

And especially that if she could not prevent the existence in normal times of a very powerful, dangerous French fleet, rendering her anxious for one-half of those seas, at least the other half should be free from such anxiety.

In the midst of such a secular determination, successfully maintained, Germany began to build her new great modern fleet.

The German Empire had a most unquestioned right thus to challenge the power of Great Britain. It was indeed the most effective challenge which a nation jealous of Britain's commerce could deliver, but it is none the less true that the plain policy of self-preservation compelled Britain to take up that challenge.

For the first time in three hundred years Britain found herself beginning to support French trades, in the general policy of the world.

The French, for reasons which had nothing to do with England and with which the ma.s.s of the English governing cla.s.ses in no way sympathized, had maintained for more than thirty years a determination to restore their own power at the expense of Prussia. Because modern Germany was building her fleet, modern Britain, in order to check that movement, began thus in novel fas.h.i.+on and against all the old English traditions to support the French.

The thing was done at the bottom with reluctance. All Englishmen felt the common bond of religion which united their country with that which governs modern Germany. Many Englishmen believed that there was some vague bond of race between the two countries. Not a few worthy, ignorant men, and even one or two men of great ability, attempted to direct negotiations whereby a fixed ratio should exist between the two fleets; in other words, whereby the German Empire should pledge itself to a permanent inferiority at sea.

That empire would indeed have been more foolish even than cowardly had it listened to any such proposals. The position, therefore, was one of inevitable and increasing friction. It was a matter of life and death to England that no other great Western fleet should exist besides the French, and it was a matter of national existence to Germany once she had undertaken a policy not to give up that policy at the dictation of any other power--for, among other things, modern Germany lived on prestige; her whole internal structure depended upon it, and for Prussia to lose faith before Europe would be the end of the Germany that Prussia had made.

There are those who say that a Germany conducted by some Richelieu, or even by a surviving Bismarck, would never have attempted the building of a great fleet until accounts had been finally settled with France. There are those who say that the elements of statesmans.h.i.+p required the German Empire first to settle herself politically upon the sh.o.r.es of the Straits of Dover and the Netherlands, first to destroy the danger of a great war in the west on land, then and then only to begin building that fleet which must inevitably challenge Great Britain. It is no part of this criticism to consider the statesmans.h.i.+p of another nation, but at any rate once the policy of building the fleet was begun conflict with England was in sight.