X
By the spring of 1913, the diplomatic representatives of the Allied Danube States made no secret of the relations in which their Governments stood to the Tsar's Foreign Office. The Balkan League was put through by Russian influence and Russia controlled its diplomacy. Serbia was as completely the instrument of Russia as Poland is now the instrument of France. "If the Austrian troops invade Balkan territory," wrote Baron Beyens on 4 April, 1913, "it would give cause for Russia to intervene, and might let loose a universal war." Now, if Germany had been plotting "with ruthless, cynical determination," as Mr. Lloyd George said, against the peace of Europe, what inconceivable stupidity for her not to push Austria along rather than do everything possible to hold her back! Why give Russia the benefit of eighteen months of valuable time for the feverish campaign of "preparedness" that she carried on? Those eighteen months meant a great deal. In February, 1914, the Tsar arranged to provide the Serbian army with rifles and artillery, Serbia agreeing to put half a million soldiers in the field. In the same month Russia negotiated a French loan of about $100 million for improvements on her strategic railways and frontier-roads. During the spring, she made "test" mobilizations of large bodies of troops which were never demobilized, and these "test" mobilizations continued down to the outbreak of the war; and in April Russian agents made technical arrangements with agents of the British and French Admiralties for possible combined naval action.
Yes, those eighteen months were very busy months for Russia. True, she came out at the end of them an "unprepared and unsuspecting" nation, presumably, for was not all Europe unprepared and unsuspecting? Is it not so nominated in the Versailles treaty? One can not help wondering, however, how it is that Germany, "carefully, skilfully, insidiously, clandestinely planning in every detail" a murderous attack on the peace of Europe, should have given Russia the inestimable advantage of those eighteen months.
XI
Mr. E. D. Morel, editor of the British monthly, Foreign Affairs, performed more than a distinguished service—it is a splendid, an illustrious service—to the disparaged cause of justice, when recently he translated and published in England through the National Labour Press, a series of remarkable State documents.[6] This consists of reports made by the Belgian diplomatic representatives at Paris, London and Berlin, to the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, covering the period from 7 February, 1905 to 2 July, 1914. Their authenticity has never been questioned. They have received no notice in this country; their content and import were carefully kept from the American people as long as it was possible to do so, and consequently they remain unknown except to a few who are students of international affairs or who have some similar special interest.
It can hardly be pretended by anyone that Belgian officials had, during that decade, any particular love or leaning towards Germany. The Belgian Foreign Office has always been as free from sentimental attachments as any other. It has always been governed by the same motives that govern the British, French, German and Russian Foreign Offices. Its number, like theirs, was number one; it was out, first and last, for the interests of the Belgian Government, and it scrutinized every international transaction from the viewpoint of those interests and those only. It was fully aware of the position of Belgium as a mere "strategic corridor" and battle-ground for alien armies in case of a general European war, and aware that Belgium had simply to make the best of its bad outlook, for nothing else could be done. If the Belgian Foreign Office and its agents, moreover, had no special love for Germany, neither had they any special fear of her. They were in no more or deeper dread of a German invasion than of a British or French invasion. In fact, in 1911, the Belgian Minister at Berlin set forth in a most matter-of-fact way his belief that in the event of war, Belgian neutrality would be first violated by Great Britain.[7] These observers, in short, may on all accounts, as far as one can see, be accepted as neutral and disinterested, with the peculiar disinterestedness of one who has no choice between two evils.
Well, then, under the circumstances it is remarkable that if Germany during the ten years preceding August, 1914, were plotting against the peace of the world, these Belgian observers seem unaware of it. It is equally noteworthy that if Germany's assault were unprovoked, they seem unaware of that also. These documents relate in an extremely matter-of-fact way a continuous series of extraordinary provocations put upon the German Government, and moreover, they represent the behaviour of the German Government, under these provocations, in a very favourable light. On the other hand, they show from beginning to end a most profound distrust of English diplomacy. If there is any uncertainty about the causes of ill-feeling between England and Germany, these Belgian officials certainly do not share it. They regularly speak of England's jealousy of Germany's economic competition, and the provocative attitude to which this jealousy gave rise. They speak of it, moreover, as though it were something that the Belgian Government were already well aware of; they speak of it in the tone of pure commonplace, such as one might use in an incidental reference to the weather or to a tariff-schedule or to any other matter that is well understood and about which there is no difference of opinion and nothing new to be said. This is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that it was nominally to save Belgium and to defend the sanctity of Belgian neutrality that England entered the war in August, 1914. These Belgian agents are invariably suspicious of English diplomacy, as Mr. E. D. Morel points out, "mainly because they feel that it is tending to make the war which they dread for their country." They persistently and unanimously "insinuate that if left to themselves, France and Germany would reach a settlement of their differences, and that British diplomacy was being continually exercised to envenom the controversy and to draw a circle of hostile alliances round Germany." This, indeed, under a specious concern for the "balance of power," has been the historic rôle of English diplomacy. Every one remembers how in 1866, just before the Franco-Prussian war, Mr. Matthew Arnold's imaginary Prussian, Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh, wrote to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, begging him to prevail upon his fellow-countrymen "for Heaven's sake not to go on biting, first the French Emperor's tail, and then ours."