My urchins play with it.”
When in 1911 President Taft’s “message” was hailed as a prophecy of peace, Germany’s reply was spoken by Bethmann-Hollweg: “The vital strength of a nation is the only measure of a nation’s armaments.”
And now the good people who for years have been saying that war is archaic, are reproaching Christianity for not making it impossible. Did not the “American Association for International Conciliation” issue comforting pamphlets, entitled “The Irrationality of War,” and “War Practically Preventable”? That ought to have settled the matter forever. Did we not appoint a “Peace Day” for our schools, and a “Peace Sunday” for churches and Sunday schools? Did not Mr. Carnegie pay ten millions down for international peace,—and get a very poor article for his money? There were some beautiful papers read to the Peace Congress at The Hague, just twelve months before Europe was in flames; and there is the report of a commission of inquiry which the “World Peace Foundation,” formerly the “International School of Peace,” informed us three years ago was “a great advance toward assured peaceful relations between nations.”
With this sea of sentiment billowing about us, and with Nobel prizes dropping like gentle rain from Heaven upon thirsty peace-lovers, how should we read the signs of war, written in the language of artillery? It is true that President Nicholas Murray Butler, speaking in behalf of the Carnegie Peace Foundation, observed musingly in November, 1913, that there was no visible interest displayed by any foreign government, or by any responsible foreign statesman, in the preparations for the Third Hague Conference, scheduled for 1915; but this was not a matter for concern. It was more interesting to read about the photographs of “educated and humane men and women,” which the “World Conference for Promoting Concord between all Divisions of Mankind” (a title that leaves nothing, save grammar, to be desired) proposed collecting in a vast and honoured album for the edification of the peaceful earth.
And all this time England—England, with her life at stake—shared our serene composure. Lord Salisbury, indeed, and Lord Roberts cherished no illusions concerning Germany’s growing power and ultimate intentions. But then Lord Roberts was a soldier; and Lord Salisbury, though outwitted in the matter of Heligoland, had that quality of mistrust which is always so painful in a statesman. The English press preferred, on the whole, to reflect the opinions of Lord Haldane. They were amiable and soothing. Lord Haldane knew the Kaiser, and deemed him a friendly man. Had he not cried harder than anybody else at Queen Victoria’s funeral? Lord Haldane had translated Schopenhauer, and could afford to ignore Treitschke. None of the German professors with whom he was on familiar terms were of the Treitschke mind. They were all friendly men. It is true that Germany, far from talking platitudes about peace, has for years past defined with amazing lucidity and candour her doctrine that might is right. She is strong, brave, covetous, she has what is called in urbane language “the instinct for empire,” and she follows implicitly
“The good old rule, ... the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”
It was forlornly amusing to see, three months after the declaration of war, our book-shops filled with cheap copies of General von Bernhardi’s bellicose volume; to open our newspapers, and find column after column of quotation from it; to pick up our magazines, and discover that all the critics were busy discussing it. That book was published in 1911, and the world (outside of Germany which took its text to heart) remained “more than usual calm.” Its forcible and closely knit argument is defined and condensed in one pregnant sentence: “The notion that a weak nation has the same right to live as a powerful nation is a presumptuous encroachment on the natural law of development.”
This is something different from the suavities of peace-day orators. It is also vastly different from the sentiments so gently expressed by General von Bernhardi in his more recent volume, dictated by German diplomacy, and designed as a tract for the United States and other neutral nations. Soothing syrup is not sweeter than this second book; but its laboured explanations, its amiable denials, even the pretty compliment paid us by a quotation from “A Psalm of Life” (why ignore “Mary had a little lamb”?), have failed to obliterate the sharp, clear outlines of his pitiless policy. Being now on the safe side of prophecy, we wag our heads over the amazing exactitude with which Bernhardi forecast Germany’s impending war. But there was at least one English student and observer, Professor J. A. Cramb of Queen’s College, London, who gave plain and unheeded warning of the fast-deepening peril, and of the life-or-death struggle which England would be compelled to face. Step by step he traced the expansion of German nationalism, which since 1870 has never swerved from its stern military ideals. A reading people, the Germans. Yes, and in a single year they published seven hundred books dealing with war as a science,—not one of them written for a prize! If the weakness of Germany lies in her assumption that there is no such thing as honour or integrity in international relations, her strength lies in her reliance on her own carefully measured efficiency. Her contempt for other nations has kept pace with the distrust she inspires.