A scrap of paper

by Emile Joseph Dillon

The second time I recalled that conversation on reading the newspaper accounts of the fall of Namur. The Namur forts were to have held out for weeks or months, we had been told, because they were the most powerful in Europe, and also because the triangle between the Sambre and the Meuse was held by French army corps in great force. But it turned out that the French troops which were believed to be there had not yet arrived, owing to difficulties that had been encountered in the mobilization. These were the difficulties that had been foretold me, that were confidently counted upon by the German War Ministry, and of which I warned the French Government over two years ago.

Those statements were volunteered to me in order that I should make them known in Great Britain as arguments to be taken into account when the attitude of our own Government came up for discussion. As a matter of course, I never brought them forward, my own conviction having been uttered in season and out of season for twenty years—that all Germany’s energies, military, naval, financial, commercial, diplomatic, and journalistic, had been focussed upon exhaustive preparations for a tremendous struggle to establish Teutonic supremacy in Europe, that that struggle was unavoidable, and that the German war-machine was in all respects worthy of the money, time, and energies that had been spent on creating and perfecting it, and that no European army could compete with it. Over and over again I expressed my regret at finding the people of Great Britain irrationally hopeful and unsuspecting, utterly ignorant of Germany’s systematic strivings and subversive machinations, yet unwilling to learn from those who were conversant with these matters. A considerable section of the French people was equally trustful and supine. They were the blind of the class that will not see. They pointed to the honest Chancellor, to the peace-loving Kaiser, to the fair-minded professors and journalists who had assured the British people that it had nothing to fear, and to the treaties which they considered binding. They laughed to scorn the notion that these instruments would be treated as scraps of paper.

In October, 1911, I wrote:

The truth is, in this country we fail utterly to fathom the German psyche, just as in the Fatherland they misunderstand the workings of the national British soul. What is meanwhile clear enough is that the peace of Europe is at the mercy of well-armed, restless, ill-balanced Germany; that no section of that gifted and enterprising people differs sufficiently in its mode of thought and feeling from any other section to warrant our regarding it as a check upon rash impulse, vengeful aggression, or predatory designs; that treaties possess no binding or deterrent force, and that friendly conduct on the part of Great Britain or France has no propitiatory effect. Brute force is the only thing that counts; and henceforth the Peace Powers must store it up at all costs.[9]

Three months later I wrote:

Germany would fain get wealthy colonies without the sacrifice of money and blood, but she is bent on getting them, cost what they may. And that is one of the main factors which it behoves us to bear in mind. Another is that in the pursuit of her aims she deems all means good. Success is the unique test. “You can expect forgiveness for a breach of faith only from a foe worsted on the battlefield,” says a latter-day German aphorism.[10]

Those statements, forecasts, and warnings were clear and emphatic. I had been urging them on the attention of the British nation for twenty years. But the bulk of the British nation refused to think evil of their German cousins, whom I was believed to be calumniating.

But I continued to set the facts as I knew them before the public, and the line of action which our rivals would, and we should, follow under those difficult conditions I sketched briefly in the following words:

The spirit in which German statesmen deem it meet and advantageous to hold intercourse with foreign nations is apparently as far removed from ours as the moon from the earth. Not only sentimentality, but more solid motives which can be much less easily missed, are lacking.... The practical outcome of this would seem to be that British relations towards Germany should be marked by cordiality, frankness, and a desire to let live, bounded by the vital necessity of abstaining from everything calculated to give umbrage to our intimate friends. And in the second place, from this line of conduct we should look for no abiding results, because it cannot touch the heart of the rival nation.[11]

But the faith of the easy-going British people and Government in Germany’s honour and in the sincerity of her peace professions was unshaken. They seemed possessed by the demons of credulity and pacificism. Like the Russian Tsar who on the eve of the Manchurian campaign exclaimed, “There cannot be war because I am in favour of peace,” they fancied that because Great Britain was satiated with territory and only demanded to be left in the undisturbed enjoyment of what she possessed, therefore Germany, who yearned for territorial expansion, would suppress her longings, relinquish her costly plans, and likewise work for peace. That, too, was the belief of our own Government, with the exception of a few permanent officials who, having travelled, heard, and seen what was going on, yielded to the evidence of their senses and bore witness to what they knew.