A scrap of paper

by Emile Joseph Dillon

In engineering this war of wanton aggression Germany committed one capital mistake—a result of the atrophy of her moral sense: she failed to gauge the ethical soul of the British people. She neither anticipated nor adequately prepared for the adhesion of Great Britain to France and Russia. And to ward off this peril when it became visible she was ready to make heavy sacrifices—for the moment. One of these was embodied in the promise not to annex any portion of French territory. But here, again, this undertaking would not have hindered her from encouraging Italy to incorporate Nice and Savoy, as an inducement to lend a hand in the campaign. Her assumption that England would not budge was based largely on the impending civil war in Ireland, the trouble caused by the suffragettes, the spread of disaffection in India and Egypt, and above all on the paramountcy of a Radical peace party in Great Britain which was firmly opposed to war, loathed Russian autocracy, and contemplated with dismay the prospect of Russian victories. These favourable influences were then reinforced by the vague promise to conclude a convention of neutrality with Great Britain at some future time on lines to be worked out later, by the undertaking to abstain from annexing French territory in Europe, and at last by the German Ambassador’s suggestion that the British Government should itself name the price at which Britain’s neutrality during the present war and her connivance at a deliberate breach of treaty could be purchased.

That all these promises and promises of promises should have proved abortive, and that Austria and Germany should have to take on France, Russia, and Great Britain when they hoped to be able to confine their attentions to little Servia, was gall and wormwood to the Kaiser’s shifty advisers. For it constituted a superlatively bad start for the vaster campaign, of which the Servian Expedition was meant to be but the early overture. A new start already seems desirable, and overtures for the purpose of obtaining it were made by the German Ambassador at Washington, who suggested that the war should be called a draw and terms of peace suggested by Great Britain. But the allies had already bound themselves to make no separate peace, and their own interests oblige them to continue the campaign until Prussian militarism and all that it stands for have been annihilated. None the less, it is nowise improbable that as soon as the allies have scored such successes as may seem to bar Germany’s way to final and decisive victory, she may endeavour, through the good offices of the United States, to obtain peace on such terms as would allow her to recommence her preparations on a vaster scale than ever before, amend her schemes, correct her mistakes, and make a fresh start when her resources become adequate to the magnitude of her undertaking. And if the allies were ill-advised or sluggish enough to close with any such offers, they would be endeavouring to overtake their Fate and to deserve it. What would a peace treaty be worth, one may ask, as an instrument of moral obligation if the nation which is expected to abide by it treats it on principle as a scrap of paper? There can be no peace except a permanent peace, and that can be bought only by demolishing the organization which compelled all Europe to live in a state of latent warfare. As Mr. Lloyd George tersely put it: “If there are nations that say they will only respect treaties when it is to their interests to do so, we must make it to their interests to do so.” And until we have accomplished this there can be no thought of slackening our military and naval activity.

One word more about German methods. Intelligent co-ordination of all endeavours and their concentration on one and the same object is the essence of their method and the secret of their success. German diplomacy is cleverly and continuously aided by German journalism, finance, industry, commerce, literature, art, and—religion. Thus, when the Government think it necessary, and therefore right, to break an international convention, violate the laws of war, or declare a treaty a mere scrap of paper, they charge the State on whose rights they are preparing to trespass with some offence which would explain and palliate, if not justify, their illegality. It was thus that the German Secretary of State, when asked by our Ambassador whether the neutrality of Belgium would be respected, said evasively that certain hostile acts had already been committed by Belgium—i.e. before the end of July! In the same way, tales of Belgian cruelty towards German soldiers and German women—as though these, too, had invaded King Albert’s dominions—were disseminated to palliate the crimes against Louvain, Malines, and Termonde. And now Great Britain is accused of employing dum-dum bullets by the Kaiser, whose soldiers take hostages and execute them, put Belgian women and children in the first firing line, whose sailors are laying mines in the high seas, and whose most honest statesmen are industriously disseminating deliberate forgeries among neutral peoples. Prince Bülow, the ex-Chancellor, in an appeal to civilized peoples for their sympathy with Germany in this iniquitous war, operates with the forged speech mendaciously attributed to Mr. John Burns, in which England is accused of having assailed Germany from behind out of brutal jealousy and perpetrated the crime of high treason against the white races!

The present Imperial Chancellor, von Bethmann Hollweg, reputed to be the most veracious public man in Germany, has quite recently issued a memorial for the purpose of substantiating the charges of atrocity levelled against Belgians as a set-off to German savagery in Louvain, Malines, and elsewhere. The Chancellor relies upon the evidence of one Hermann Consten, a Swiss subject and a member of the Swiss Red Cross Society, a gentleman, therefore, whose political disinterestedness entitles him to be heard, and whose presence at Liége during the siege is an adequate voucher for his excellent source of information.

But inquiry has elicited the facts that the description of this witness given by the honest Chancellor is wholly untrue. The Chief of Police at Basle, in Switzerland, has since testified that Consten is a German, that he conducted a German agency in Basle which is believed to have been an espionage concern, that he was charged with fraud, and after a judicial inquiry expelled from Switzerland on September 10th, that he was under police surveillance for two years, that he is not a Swiss subject, nor a member of the Red Cross Society, and that, as he resided in Switzerland during all the time that the siege of Liége was going on, he could not have seen any of the atrocities he alleges.[39]

When the Chief of a Government descends to slippery expedients like these to find extenuating circumstances for acts of fiendish savagery that have staggered the world, he is unwittingly endorsing the judgment against which he would fain appeal. And if Germany’s most veracious statesman has no scruple to palm off barefaced lies on American and European neutrals, what is one to think of the less truth-loving apostles of Prussian culture?

What we in Great Britain have to expect from Germany, if now or at any future time the anti-Christian cultural religion and inhuman maxims on which her military creed rests get the upper hand, has been depicted in vivid colours by Germans of all professions and political parties. Delenda est Carthago. But the very mildest and fairest of all these writers may be quoted to put us on our guard. Professor Ostwald, the well-known German chemist, is a pacifist, a man opposed on principle to war. In a document addressed to American pacifists for their enlightenment as to the aims and scope of the present contest, this bitter adversary of all militarism makes an exception in favour of that of his own country. An enthusiast for civilization, he would gladly see that of the British Empire destroyed. He writes:

According to the course of the war up to the present time, European peace seems to me nearer than ever before. We pacifists must only understand that, unhappily, the time was not yet sufficiently developed to establish peace by the peaceful way. If Germany, as everything now seems to make probable, is victorious in the struggle not only with Russia and France, but attains the further end of destroying the source from which for two or three centuries all European strifes have been nourished and intensified, namely, the English policy of World Dominion, then will Germany, fortified on one side by its military superiority, on the other side by the eminently peaceful sentiment of the greatest part of its people, and especially of the German Emperor, dictate peace to the rest of Europe. I hope especially that the future treaty of peace will in the first place provide effectually that a European war such as the present can never again break out.

I hope, moreover, that the Russian people, after the conquest of their armies, will free themselves from Tsarism through an internal movement by which the present political Russia will be resolved into its natural units, namely, Great Russia, the Caucasus, Little Russia, Poland, Siberia, and Finland, to which probably the Baltic Provinces would join themselves. These, I trust, would unite themselves with Finland and Sweden, and perhaps with Norway and Denmark, into a Baltic Federation, which in close connection with Germany would ensure European peace and especially form a bulwark against any disposition to war which might remain in Great Russia.

For the other side of the earth I predict a similar development under the leadership of the United States. I assume that the English Dominion will suffer a downfall similar to that which I have predicted for Russia, and that under these circumstances Canada would join the United States, the expanded republic assuming a certain leadership with reference to the South American Republics.