SIR AND BROTHER,—Called to the throne of France by Providence, and the suffrages of the Senate, the people, and the Army, my first sentiment is a wish for peace. France and England abuse their prosperity. They may contend for ages, but do their Governments well fulfil the most sacred of their duties, and will not so much bloodshed uselessly, and without a view to any end, condemn them in their own consciences? I consider it no disgrace to adopt the first step. I have, I hope, sufficiently proved to the world that I fear none of the chances of war, which presents nothing I have need to fear; peace is the wish of my heart, but war has never been inconsistent with my glory. I conjure your Majesty not to deny yourself the happiness of giving peace to the world, or leave that sweet satisfaction to your children; for certainly there never was a more fortunate opportunity nor a moment more favourable than the present, to silence all the passions and listen only to the sentiments of humanity and reason. This moment once lost, what bounds can be ascribed to a war which all my efforts will not be able to terminate. Your Majesty has gained more in ten years, both in territory and riches, than the whole extent of Europe. Your nation is at the highest point of prosperity, what can it hope from war? To form a coalition with some Powers on the Continent? The Continent will remain tranquil; a coalition can only increase the preponderance and continental greatness of France. To renew intestine troubles? The times are no longer the same. To destroy our finances? Finances founded on a flourishing agriculture can never be destroyed. To wrest from France her colonies? The colonies are to France only a secondary object; and does not your Majesty already possess more than you know how to preserve? If your Majesty would but reflect, you must perceive that the war is without an object; or any presumable result to yourself. Alas! What a melancholy prospect; to fight merely for the sake of fighting. The world is sufficiently wide for our two nations to live in, and reason sufficiently powerful to discover the means of reconciling everything, when a wish for reconciliation exists on both sides. I have, however, fulfilled a sacred duty, and one which is precious to my heart.
I trust your Majesty will believe the sincerity of my sentiments, and my wish to give you every proof of the same, etc.
(Signed) NAPOLEON.
This letter indicates the mind and heart of a great statesman. The thinking people, and therefore the most reliable patriots, would receive a similar appeal to-day from the Kaiser in a different spirit than did the King and the Government of George III.
We believe that the war with Germany was forced upon us, and that Mr. Asquith's Government, and especially Sir Edward Grey (his Foreign Secretary) used every honourable means to avoid it, but the cause and origin of it sprang out of the defects of managing and settling the wars that raged at the beginning of the last century, and Pitt, aided by those colleagues of his who were swayed by his magnetic influence, are responsible to a large degree in laying the foundation of the present menace to European concord. Napoleon's plan of unification would have kept Prussian militarism in check. He looked, and saw into the future, while Pitt and his supporters had no vision at all. They played the Prussian game by combining to bring about the fall of the monarch who should have been regarded as this country's natural ally, and by undoing the many admirable safeguards which were designed to prevent Prussia from forcing other German States under her dominion. Napoleon predicted that which would happen, and has happened. He always kept in mind the cunning and unscrupulous tricks of Frederick and knew that if his power were destroyed, that would be Prussia's opportunity to renew the methods of the Hohenzollern scoundrel, the hero of Thomas Carlyle, and the intermittent friend of Voltaire, who made unprovoked war on Marie Theresa with that splendid Prussian disregard for treaty obligations, and who then, with amazing insolence, after the seven years' butchery was over, sat down at Sans Souci in the companionship of his numerous dogs to write his memoirs in which he states that "Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about him carried the day, and he decided for war;" he might have added to the majestic Hohenzollern creed, incurable treachery, falsehood, hypocrisy, and cowardice!
But the law of retribution comes to nations as well as to individuals, and after the disappearance of Frederick, Prussian ascendancy came to an end and sank to the lowest depths of hopelessness before the terrible power of Napoleon; after his fall, the old majestic arrogance natural to their race began to revive. It took many years for the military caste to carry their objectives to maturity, and had we stood sensibly and loyally by our French neighbours, the tragedy that gapes at us now could never have come to pass. Possibly the Franco-German war would never have occurred had our foreign policy been skilfully handled and our attitude wisely apprehensive of Germany's ultimate unification and her aggressive aims. The generations that are to come will assuredly be made to see the calamities wrought by the administrators of that period, whose faculties consisted in hoarding up prejudices, creating enmities, and making wars that drained the blood and treasure of our land. We do not find a single instance of Pitt or Castlereagh expressing an idea worthy of statesmanship. What did either of these men ever do to uplift the higher phases of humanity by grappling with the problem that had been brought into being by the French Revolution?
When we think of responsible ministers having no other vision or plan of coming to an understanding with the French nation except by their screams, groans, and odour of blood, it makes one shudder, and we wish to forget that the people allowed them to carry out their hideous methods of settling disputes. A galaxy of brilliant writers has sung their praises in profusion, but while the present writer admires the literary charm of the penmen's efforts, he does not find their conclusions so agreeable or so easy to understand. There was never a time, in our opinion, even during the most embarrassing and darkest phases of the Napoleonic struggle, in which our differences with France were insoluble. Napoleon, as I have said, never ceased to avow his willingness to make vital sacrifices in order that peace between the two peoples should be consummated. The stereotyped cant of maintaining the "Balance of Power" is no excuse for plunging a nation into gruesome, cruel, and horrible wars. It is when our liberties are threatened that circumstances may arise when it would be a crime not to defend them. But where and when were any of our interests threatened by Napoleon until we became the aggressors by interfering with the policy of what he called his "Continental system"? Even before Napoleon became Consul, First Consul, and subsequently Emperor of the French, it was deemed high policy on the part of our statesmen to take sides against the French Directorate in disputes that were caused and had arisen on the Continent out of the Revolution, and once involved in the entanglement which it is hard to believe concerned us in any degree, the nation was committed to a long and devastating debauch of crime which men who understood the real art of statesmanship would have avoided.
Many of the famous statesmen who have lived since their time would have acted differently. Fox, with a free hand, would have saved us, and but for the senseless attitude of the Pitt-Castlereagh party, the Grey, Romilly, Horner, Burdett and Tierny combination would have prevented the last of Napoleon's campaigns between his return from Elba and his defeat at Waterloo, which proved to be the bloodiest of all the Emperor's wars.
Amongst a certain section of the community the belief is that they who can steer the State along peaceful lines are mediocrities, and they who involve us in war are geniuses and earn the distinction of fame and Westminster Abbey, though it may be that they are totally void of all the essentials that are required to keep on good terms, not only with other Powers, but with our own masses. Take, first of all, the unostentatious old Scotsman, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who was regarded in the light of a mediocrity by the bellicose-minded people. Had he lived and been in power at the time of Pitt and Castlereagh, his finely constituted, shrewd brain and quiet determined personality would have guided the State in a way that would have brought it credit and kept it out of the shambles. Another personality who is possessed of attributes that have been scantily recognized is that of Lord Rosebery who, during his Foreign Secretaryship under Mr. Gladstone, and when he became Premier himself, saved this country more than once from war with Germany, leaving out of account the many other services rendered to his country. It is a tragedy to allow such merits to be wasted because of some slight difference of opinion in matters that do not count compared with the advantage of having at the head of affairs a man with an unerring tactful brain who can deal with international complexities with complete ease and assurance.
Although Mr. Gladstone must always be associated with those who were responsible for the guilt of dragging this country, and perhaps France, into the Crimean war in defence of a State and a people whom he declared in other days should be turned out of Europe "bag and baggage" because of her unwholesome Government and hideous crimes to her subject races, he had the courage and the honesty to declare in later life that the part he took in allowing himself to acquiesce in a policy he did not approve, would always be a bitter thought to him. Had he been at the head of the Government then, and had he lived at the time of the continental upheaval that followed the French Revolution, all the evidences of his humane spirit and prodigious capacity lead us to the belief that there were no circumstances affecting our vital national interests that would have led him to take up arms against France. Nor do we think that a statesman of Lord Salisbury's stamp would have failed to find a way out. Disraeli was a different type. He lived in a picturesque world, and thirsted for sensation. The enormity of war was meaningless to him. He was not a constitutional statesman, but merely a politician who liked to arouse emotions. Mr. Asquith, whose head is free from the wafting of feathers, would, with strong and loyal backers, have applied his inimitable powers of persuasion and tact in accomplishing his ends without a rupture; and Lord Morley would as soon have thought of dancing a hornpipe on his mother's tomb as have yielded to the clamour for war by any number of the people or any number of his colleagues, no matter how numerous or how powerful they might be; even though his opinion of the French Emperor were strongly adverse, he would have angled for peace or resigned. I would rather place the guidance of the country through intricate courses in this man's hands than in that of a man mentally constituted as was Pitt. The present Viscount Grey would have taken the line his namesake took in 1815 by strongly advocating a peaceful solution.