New York Times Current History The European War, February, 1915 Part 33

2. The second cause of England's joining in this war is the effect of a number of internal arrangements, some of them of minor importance, but all leading in one direction and ultimately placing the Government of Great Britain in a position from which it was difficult to retire. In general terms these arrangements were based upon the idea of joining the group of powers, French and Russian, which formed the counterpoise to the Germanic group in Europe, the German Empire and Austria. At the same time there was running through these arrangements the idea of detaching Italy, whose Government was firmly attached to Germany, but whose population was very doubtful, from the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, which had been the cardinal point in European affairs for a generation.

The various steps by which Great Britain approached this position are well known. In the first place, she came to an arrangement with France whereby she should have a free hand in Egypt and France should be supported by England in the occupation of Morocco. This was done behind the back of Germany to the manifest loss of Germany's colonial ambition and, what is more noticeable, England was openly paying a very high price for the new state of affairs she hoped to create, for she had pretty well a free hand in Egypt, already, while France's opportunity of going to Morocco and exploiting a very large area of valuable territory--something quite new and additional to her--depended upon England's withdrawing her opposition.

That opposition was withdrawn; and though the most violent effect was produced in Germany, though there were threats of war, pitiable quarrels within the French Cabinet and a moment of grave danger, the pact was accomplished, and Morocco, all save the strip opposite Gibraltar, became French, while all that Germany had to show for her share was an irregularly shaped and not valuable couple of slices cut out of tropical Africa in the Congo Basin from the vast French possessions there, and added to her own still insufficient share.

Another group of arrangements was that with Russia, and here again England willingly paid a heavy price, and again completely reversed her traditional policy. She gave all that is vital in Persia to Russian control. She forgot her old anxiety about the Indian frontier; she lost her old and hitherto unbroken policy of supporting Turkey in Europe.

When the war came she was with the French in supporting the Balkan powers, "The Little Nations."

Finally, in the matter of Italy, she supported or permitted the Italian attack upon and annexation of Turkish territory in North Africa, and consistently, before and after that event, worked for the strengthening of Italy in the Triple Alliance and for securing the neutrality of that country, at least in case of a European war.

There were many other arrangements besides these three princ.i.p.al and typical ones, but all, small or great, were based upon the same idea, and pointed in the same direction. England was leaning upon the Russian side against Germany. The most important in the minor details in this new policy, the one which has had most effect perhaps in producing the war, was an understanding whereby the French fleet should virtually evacuate the Northern Seas and undertake for England the policing of the Mediterranean trade routes, and the guardians.h.i.+p of that source of food supply to Great Britain, thus leaving the whole weight of the British Navy free to guard the North Sea, and to face the new and growing German naval force.

Now, it must always be borne in mind that these arrangements, large and small, detailed and general, whereby Great Britain gradually involved herself in a network of French and Russian supports and reciprocal duties, never took the form of an alliance. The utmost pains were taken by English diplomatists and permanent officials at the English Foreign Office, experts and servants, to state that England remained free in spite of all to act as her conscience or her interest might dictate, whenever, or if, war should break out between the two groups of Continental powers. No one can read the conflict of evidence between the German Amba.s.sador and Sir Edward Grey in the highly typical telephone incident which took place immediately before the recent declaration of war without seeing that liberty of action was maintained by the Government of Great Britain until the very last moment.

But one cannot do a number of things, each weighted with a similar tendency, without one's whole conduct and fate being determined in the direction to which those actions tend. To preserve one's legal or technical independence is not enough. In this specific case, for instance, the naval arrangement proved an exceedingly weighty thing.

France could say:

"Relying on your explicit, though not expressed, support of myself and Russia, I guarded your trade routes in the Mediterranean and left my northern coasts undefended. Here is war about to break out with those northern coasts of mine bare against the overwhelming attack from the German fleet, and with nothing wherewith I can guard it; and that nakedness is entirely due to having trusted you. You may not have a legal obligation, but the moral one is not to be s.h.i.+rked."

At any rate, I insist upon the tendency of all these various diplomatic acts, because it has been they that might have dragged the most reluctant Government into this conflict, and it was they which, in combination with the cardinal policy of preventing maritime rivalry in the narrow seas, decided the present policy of this country.

3. But, as I have said, there was a third cause, much vaguer and, until war actually broke out, of little effect. Though there had existed for thirty years from 1880 until after the beginning of the new century such strong bonds of sympathy between Great Britain and North Germany--bonds riveted by Court influence and much more strengthened by the influence of the universities and of religious leaders--though some contempt for and alienation from the French had become of increasing note in English public utterances and literature, yet Great Britain retained upon the whole the Western doctrine of civilization and of its traditions.

The increasing German reaction against those traditions, particularly in morals, was not wholly sympathetic to the temper of the gentry, at least in England, and was sometimes exasperating.

All nations have cynically violated treaties at one time or another, but there is about a solemnly undertaken treaty by the great European powers and affecting the happiness of the smaller neutral States something particularly sacred. And though it must not for one moment be regarded as the princ.i.p.al cause of the war, it is true that the crudity of Prussia's neglect of treaties, the too simple fas.h.i.+on in which Prussia proposed a breach of international obligations in the matter of Belgium, did affect the conscience of not a few powerful men in England, and, what is perhaps more important, furnished a definite and concrete point on which the doubtful issue of peace or war could repose.

It must be remembered in this connection that Prussia had a novel tradition of her own in such matters. The phrase "The Frederickian tradition" is an accurate phrase. Frederick the Great did start the open and avowed doctrine that a breach of international convention and of international morals is always tolerable in the aggrandizement of one's country.

I think one is not telling the truth if one says that the proposed violation of Belgian territory for the invasion of France was of a nature to cause an explosion of anger in the very hardened minds of the professional politicians in any modern country. There is not one group of them that has not been guilty of something of the sort before. But I think one is telling the truth if one says that the over-simple and cold way in which Prussia took it for granted that the violation of a solemn and most important treaty was nothing just shocked opinion, even of the politicians, sufficiently to help to incline the balance against her.

There is much more. The Prussian estimate of Russian, of French, and even of English psychology was very erroneous. The Prussian way of getting France not to join is about as subtle as spitting in a man's face, and the elephantine gambols of the German diplomats in London during the fatal week preceding the war were a positive aid to the catastrophe that was about to take place. They blundered as hard and as heavily as it was possible to blunder; going to the wrong people; despising the subtly powerful; paying court to the more advertised and less controlling of the English public men, and in a word behaving themselves after that fas.h.i.+on for which we have coined the adjective "newspaper."

There was further the peculiar aggravation of the tone in which the Austrian note had been addressed to Servia. There was further the patent and almost puerile double dealing of Berlin in the attempted negotiations for peace between Russia and Austria--in which negotiations the British Cabinet was very prominent. But beyond all these other minor points, these three causes I have mentioned, by their convergence, seem to have determined England's partic.i.p.ation in the war, with all the enormous but as yet unguessed consequences that will follow therefrom.

I repeat, I do not say that any one of those three causes would in itself have been sufficient. The three combining were just sufficient, and this account, if I am not mistaken, justly presents the picture that history should have of the manner in which Great Britain determined to conclude the long process of her recent diplomatic revolution and to engage with the Allies against the German Empire and the Hapsburg house, which the German Empire tows in its wake.

AT THE VILLA ACHILLEION CORFU.

By H.T. SUDDUTH.

A haunting presence seems to fill the air, A shade of grandeur gone and e'er to be One with the legends of the Ionian Sea-- One memory more linked with Corcyra fair, Disjoined, alas! from presence otherwhere-- A lost illusion of the years once free And glorious in the kindling memory Of grand Homeric Past still lingering there!

The olive orchards crown the hills; the vine And rose still flourish on the sunny slopes As in Alcinous' Gardens; Morning opes Her eyes irradiant with the dawn divine!

But now no longer at Achilleion The Kaiser wakes to see fair Eos dawn.

In Belgian or in Russian lands afar, Beneath the smoke-cloud cope of shrouded Heaven Where hissing shot and sh.e.l.l and War's red levin Spread far and wide the canopy of War!

Where Nature shudders and seems to abhor The awful scene; where myriad souls, unshriven, From life and all its joys at once are riven, Behold the Kaiser now 'neath Mars' red star!

A stern and sombre, gray-haired figure he, And standing midst the wreck of youthful dreams Sees he at times through battle smoke the gleams Of rippling waves on blue Ionian Sea?

Thinks he not sadly on the days now gone, And dreams he dreamed at fair Achilleion?

Germany's Strategic Railways

By Walter Littlefield.

Germany's explanation of her violation of Belgium's neutrality has thus far a.s.sumed two successive phases which have been placed on record by the Imperial Chancellor in as many speeches in the Reichstag. Before that body Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg said on Aug. 4, 1914:

Our troops have occupied Luxemburg, and perhaps have also found it necessary to enter Belgium territory. This is contrary to international law. The French Government has declared in Brussels that they will respect the neutrality of Belgium as long as she respects the opponent. We know, however, that France was ready to invade Belgium. France could wait; we, however, could not, because a French invasion in our lower Rhein flanks would have proved fatal. So we were forced to disregard the protests of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments. We shall try to make good the injustice we have committed as soon as our military goal has been reached. Who, like we, are fighting for the highest, must only consider how victory can be gained.

On Dec. 2 last Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg said:

When, on Aug. 4, I spoke of the wrong which we were committing with our march into Belgium, it was not yet established whether the Belgian Government at the last moment would not desire to spare the country and retire under protest to Antwerp.... Now, however, that it is demonstrated by doc.u.ments found in Brussels how the Belgians surrendered their neutrality to England the entire world knows two facts. One is that when our troops on the night of Aug. 3-4 entered Belgian territory they were on the ground of a State which had given up its neutrality long ago....

To both these charges the Belgium Government has made reply. To the first it said that, while the a.s.surance that France would not invade Belgium was sufficient, yet if France did take the initiative the Belgian Army stood ready to defend its territory from a French invasion.

To the second, it said that the doc.u.ments found in Brussels merely showed an exchange of ideas as to how England might aid Belgium in defending her neutrality against an attack by Germany, and that there was nothing binding on either England or Belgium as to the outcome of these "conversations" of military experts.

In reb.u.t.tal Germany has asked: But why were we also not taken into the confidence of Brussels and similar plans formulated by which we might aid Belgium in repelling an invasion from either France or England?

To this the answer is simple: It has always been one of the objects of British policy to preserve Belgian neutrality, and that, aside from moral considerations, it would not be good military science for France to seek Germany via Belgium.

But this answer is capable of an expansion it has not hitherto received.

Why did Belgium appear to fear an invasion from Germany and not one from England or France?

One has heard a great deal about Germany's supposed ambition to expand her North Sea coast at the expense of Denmark, Holland and Belgium, by coercing the Danish and the Dutch Governments to rebuild their coast fortifications toward England and to dismantle their forts on the German frontier. Much has also been said of Germany's contemplated invasion of the Low Countries at the time of the Agadir incident in 1911.

Doc.u.mentary proof of Germany's contemplated initiative has. .h.i.therto been missing. Certain facts have, however, recently come to hand which enable one to review the German explanation. One of these facts embraces a project for railway expansion engineered and carried out on the Belgian frontier, which can leave no doubt in any reasonable mind that Germany deliberately planned to violate Belgium's neutrality the moment it became a military expediency to invade France.[8]

[Footnote 8: Compare the railway maps of Northern France and Northern Germany in "Cook's Continental Time Tables" for the years 1908 and 1914.

A confidential agent of the British Government examined the ground in May, 1914. Part of the results of his work has been published from time to time by the military correspondents of The Times and The Morning Post of London and all is particularly designated in the British Foreign Office Memorandum secured by Prof. Hibben of Princeton on Nov. 9, 1914, and published in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Nov. 25. In this memorandum it is stated:

"The strategic dispositions of Germany, especially as regards railways, have for some years given rise to the apprehension that Germany would attack France through Belgium."

The disposition of the Third, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Germany Army Corps and the First, Fourth, and Fifth Cavalry Divisions, from Aug. 2 to 5, shown on French war maps, reveals that the attack was so made.]

If, according to jurisprudence, the planning to commit crime is legally on a par with its achievement, then Germany, for five years prior to the war, had been guilty of violating Belgium's neutrality--guilty in such a manner as to leave no doubt in the minds of Belgian, French, and English statesmen and military experts that the actual commission of the crime would some day take place.

It was Belgium's peculiar duty, as will be seen, to prepare for that day. To have taken Germany into her confidence on a point on which Germany was already fully informed would very likely have hastened the day and the tragedy thereof.