Where Are We Going?

by David Lloyd George

I have talked to many young soldiers who were fortunate enough to have passed unscathed through some of the worst experiences of the war, to many who suffered mutilation in some of these experiences; they have given me one common impression that the memory of fear is evanescent, and that they cannot now re-create in their own minds the sensations of terror through which they passed. If that is true of those who went through the furnace, what of the multitudes who simply looked on?—the multitudes of those who were too young to take part, and can only recall the excitement produced by the conflict and the glory of victory? The recollection of the headaches of an orgy never lasts as long as that of its pleasures. It is useless to recall memories of the terror and torture of the war, and expect them to crusade for peace. Memory is a treacherous crusader. It starts with a right purpose fresh and hot on its path, but its zeal gets fainter as the days roll past, and it ends by handing over its banner to the foe.

You can only redeem mankind by appealing to its nobler instincts. Fear is base, and you cannot lift mankind by using it as a lever. The churches alone can effectively rouse the higher impulses of our nature. That is where their task comes in.

There is another reason why we cannot regard the danger as having passed away. You have all the elements which made for the Great War of 1914 more potent than ever to-day. The atmosphere of Europe is charged with them.

What made the last war? Armed international dislikes, rivalries, and suspicions. The dislikes were based on age-long racial feuds stimulated by memories of recent wrongs. Celt and Teuton disliking each other; Slav and Teuton suspicious of each other; the hatred of the Slav for the Teuton intensified by the arrogance with which Germany humiliated Russia at the moment of her weakness immediately after the Japanese War, when she was peculiarly sensitive to insult. You will recollect the peremptoriness and the insolence of her gesture over the Bosnian annexation, and insolences are always more painful than wrongs and rankle longer. They corrode the flesh, and burn into the soul of a nation, keeping its anger aflame. I wish nations always remembered that. There was the hatred of the Celt for the Teuton deepened by the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and by the incidents inseparable from the invasion of a foreign soil. There was Germany suspecting that every railway constructed by Russia was aimed at her heart. There was France convinced that Germany was only waiting her opportunity to pick a quarrel which would enable her to deprive France of her much-coveted colonies. There was England watching with vigilant insight and increasing anger the growth of Germany's great fleet, which she was convinced was aimed at her shores. There were great armies in every continental country ready to march at a moment's notice, fully equipped, each commander firmly persuaded that his own legions were irresistible. You had there all the conditions that made for war. Had it come of set purpose? I have read most of the literature concerning the events that led up to that war, and it is full of warning as to how wars happen. They do not come because the majority of those who are concerned are bent upon bloodshed, not even the majority who have the decisive voice if they exercised it in time. Had a plebiscite been taken in every country in Europe a week before war was declared as to whether they wished to engage in a European conflict, the proposal would have been turned down by a majority so overwhelming as to show that the proposition was one that no nation had the slightest idea of entertaining. That is not the reason why it came. But you have always in control of the affairs of nations some men who hesitate; many who are apathetic, many who are merely inefficient and stupid; and then most men, even in a government, have their minds concentrated on their own immediate tasks.

I will give you an illustration of how war is begun, once you have the predisposition to quarrel, without anybody wanting it and with the vast majority of the people who are to be engaged in it opposed to it. Austria issued an ultimatum to Serbia. There is nothing a big bully likes better than to hector a little man who is near the point of his toe. Serbia was so near the boot that Austria was constantly tempted to give it a kick, and it did. It issued an ultimatum, which was a very insolent one. The Serbian reply was a practical acceptance of the Austrian demands. This is the note the kaiser wrote on it: "A brilliant performance this. But with it disappears"—listen to this written by the Kaiser of Germany just a few days before war was declared—"but with it disappears every reason for war, and the Austrian minister ought to have remained quietly in Belgrade. After that I would never have given orders for mobilisation." In three days there was war.

Let me give another illustration. Admiral Tirpitz said he saw Von Jagow two days after the Austrian reply. Von Jagow, the German foreign minister, was so little interested in the Austro-Serbian conflict that he confessed to the German ambassador to Austria on July 27th, two days after the reply had been received, that he had not yet found time to read the Serbian reply to Austria. Here is the document on which ten million young men who had no responsibility for it have been slain, homes have been desolated, and a debt of taxation, confusion and sorrow incurred which will not be wiped out as long as this generation lasts.

It is inconceivable, if one had not some knowledge of the carelessness and the procrastination which are bred in official circles by long practice. That was only three days before war was declared. This high official in the Wilhelmstrasse, who subsequently agreed to the fateful decision to declare war against Russia, had not even read the critical document which ought to have averted the struggle. But there are always the vigilant few, the very few resolute men whose whole mind and energy and skill is engaged ceaselessly in driving forward the chariots of war. Whilst others are asleep, they are craftily dodging the traffic, and stealing along unawares, slowly getting their chariots into position for the next push forward. Whilst others are asleep, they lash the fiery steeds along their destructive course. In the press, on the platform, in the council chambers, in the chancelleries, in society of all kinds, high and low, they are always pressing along. When the precipice is reached, they dash through the feeble resistance of the panic-stricken mob of counsellors and officials, and nations are plunged into the abyss before they know it.

This is the way most wars come.

Read the history of the war of 1870. It came about in the same confused, clumsy, purposeless way. In all these cases there is always in the background the sinister figure of that force for mischief which used to be known by our Puritan fathers as the devil. Have these hatreds and suspicions abated? Are there no rivalries to-day? Are there no men whose one joy is in war? Was the devil numbered amongst the slain in the last war? I have never seen his name in any casualty list. Look around. His agents are more numerous, more active, more pressing and efficient than ever. Europe to-day is a cauldron of suspicions and hatreds. It is well to speak frankly. Celt and Teuton are now interlocked in a conflict which is none the less desperate because one of the parties is disarmed. There is a suppressed savagery which is but ill concealed, and there are new hatreds which, if they have not been brought into existence during the war, have at any rate come to the surface. Mankind has learnt no lesson from the four or five years of war, although it has been scourged with scorpions. There was nothing that contributed more to the last catastrophe than the annexation by Germany of Alsace-Lorraine. As long as that act of folly remained uncorrected there was no real peace possible in Europe. The nations concerned were just abiding their opportunity, and the opportunity came. Now you have two Alsace-Lorraines at least. There is the annexation of Vilna by force; there is the annexation of Galicia by force, by violence, by the use of arms against the will of the population. Elsewhere you have the German and the Pole quarrelling over Silesia; the Russian and the Pole over doubtful boundaries; the Czech and the Magyar; the Serbian and the Bulgarian; the Russian and the Rumanian; the Rumanian and the Magyar. There is the age-long feud between Greek and Turk. All have an air of biding opportunity, all are armed ready for slaughter. Europe is a seething cauldron of international hates, with powerful men in command of the fuel stores feeding the flames and stoking the fires. It is no use blaming the treaty of Versailles. This state of things has nothing to do with treaties. Here it is the spirit that killeth and not the letter. Sometimes wrongs are imaginary. Where the wrongs are imaginary time will heal the sense of hurt, but sometimes they are real, and time will fester the wound, but everywhere and always the hatreds are real enough. Can nothing be done? If it can, let it be done in time. Let it be done at once. Yet, once more I remind you that if the gun is loaded—and it is loaded in every land—when the quarrel begins it is apt to go off, not because the trigger is deliberately pulled, but because some clumsy fellow in his excitement stumbles against it.