All nations have their ambitions, but they are not tempted to impose them upon their neighbours if the hazard is too obviously great. But a sense of overpowering force behind national aims is a constant incitement to recklessness, to greed, and to ambitious patriotism.
The more one examines, in the growing calm, the events of July, 1914, the more one is impressed with the shrinking of the nominal rulers of the attacking empires as they approached the abyss, and with the relentless driving onward of the military organisation behind these terror-stricken dummies.
Navies are essentially defensive weapons. No capital in the world can be captured by navies alone, and no country can be annexed or invaded by a fleet. But armies are grabbing machines. A transcendent army has always led to aggression. No country can resist the lure of an easy military triumph paraded before its eyes for two successive generations.
The inference is an obvious one. To ensure peace on earth nations must disarm their striking forces. Without disarmament, pacts, treaties, and covenants are of no avail. They are the paper currency of diplomacy. That is the reason why all the friends of peace are filled with despair when they see nations still arming and competing in armies whilst trusting to mere words and signatures to restrain the irresistible impetus of organised force.
A statistical survey of European armies to-day is calculated to cause alarm. Europe has not learnt the lesson of the war. It has rather drawn a wrong inference from that calamity. There are more men under arms in Europe to-day than there were in 1913-14, with none of the justification or excuse which could be pleaded in those days.
In pre-war times the statesmen of each country could make a parliamentary case for their military budgets by calling attention to the menace of prodigious armies across their frontiers. Germany and Austria built up great armaments because their frontiers were open to the attack of two great military powers who had engaged to pool their resources in the event of war. France and Russia raised huge armies because Germany possessed the most redoubtable army in the world, and could rely in the case of war upon the assistance of the not inconsiderable forces of the Austrian empire. And both Austria and France had always the uncertain factor of Italy, with her army of 3,000,000, to reckon with.
But since the war these mutual excuses no longer exist. The two great military empires of Central Europe have disappeared. Germany, which before the war had a peace establishment of 800,000 men and reserves running into millions, has to-day a total army of 100,000 men—about one-third the size of the Polish army. The formidable German equipment which for four years pounded the cities and villages of northern France to dust is either destroyed or scattered for display amongst the towns and villages of the victors. The Austrian army, which had in 1913-14 a peace establishment of 420,000 men and a reserve of two or three millions of trained men, has to-day been reduced to a tiny force of 30,000 men.
In spite of these facts France has still an army of 736,000 men now under arms, with a trained reserve of two or three millions more. She is strengthening and developing her air force as if she feared—or contemplated—an immediate invasion. In 1914 France had an air force of 400 aëroplanes; to-day she has 1,152.[1] But numbers signify little. The size, the power, and the purpose of the machines signify much. Amongst the 1,152 air machines of to-day will be found bombers of a destructiveness such as was not dreamt of in 1914.
Should human folly drift once more into war these preparations are full of evil omen as to the character of that conflict. A single bomb dropped from one of the new bombers contains more explosive material than one hundred of those carried by the old type. And the size of the machine and of its bombs is growing year by year. Where is it to stop? And what is it all for? Where is the enemy? Where is the menace which demands such gigantic military developments? Not one of the neighbours of France has to-day a force which reaches one-fourth the figures of her formidable army. Germany no longer affords a decent pretext. The population of Germany is equal to the aggregate population of Poland, Rumania, Jugo-Slavia, and Czecho-Slovakia, but her army barely numbers one-seventh of the aggregate peace establishment of these four countries. Rumania alone, with a population of 15,000,000, has an army twice the size of that allowed by the Treaty of Versailles to Germany with her population of 60,000,000. These countries have in addition to their standing armies reserve forces of millions of trained men, whilst the young men of Germany are no longer permitted to train in the use of arms. Her military equipment is destroyed, and her arsenals and workshops are closely inspected by Allied officers lest a fresh equipment should be clandestinely produced. An army of 700,000 is, therefore, not necessary in order to keep Germany within bounds.
The only other powerful army in Europe is the Russian army. It is difficult to gather any reliable facts about Russia. The mists that arise from that unhealthy political and economic swamp obscure and distort all vision. The statistics concerning her army vary according to the point of view of the person who cites them. The latest figure given by the Russians themselves is 800,000. On paper that indicates as formidable a force as that possessed by the French. But the events of the past few years show clearly that the Russian army is powerful only for defence, and that it is valueless for purposes of invasion. It has neither the transport that gives mobility nor the artillery that makes an army redoubtable in attack. The Polish invasion of 1923 was a comedy, and as soon as the Poles offered the slightest resistance the Bolsheviks ran back to their fastnesses without striking a Parthian blow at their pursuers. The state of Russian arsenals and factories under Bolshevism is such that any attempt to re-equip these armies must fail. The Russian army, therefore, affords no justification for keeping up armaments in Europe on the present inflated scale. The fact is that Europe is thoroughly frightened by its recent experience, and, like all frightened things, does not readily listen to reason, and is apt to resort to expedients which aggravate the evils which have terrified it.