I was not mistaken. Such arguments as these were to his taste.
Mr. Gladstone freely recognised that the interview at Ferrières might be regarded as a considerable event. It had given another character to the continuation of the war, and to-day the rôles were changed. It was Prussia who was now pressing the purpose of conquest, and it was France who was now defending the sacred soil of her territory. Mr. Gladstone put much lucidity and eloquence into the task of expounding his views concerning wars of conquest, legitimate defence of one’s territory, and the “impious” continuation of war....
I will not write down the entire system of England’s learned Prime Minister, but will only state that he himself admitted what I had said at the beginning—namely, that a great nation had the right and even the duty to intervene in an impious war in order to finish it in the interests of morality.
But when I asked him what was the application of his theory to the existing war, and when I pointed out that this was a case in point and that his theories could never be put into practice with more reason than now, he shook his head....
“That is a tremendous responsibility,” he answered with conviction and in a grave and solemn voice. “To throw a nation into war is a responsibility that makes one shudder. The English people have suffered cruelly from the wars of past centuries. They need peace and they want peace. We have not the right to throw them into all the miseries of such a war. For it would be a European war, a general conflagration, and we have no right to throw ourselves voluntarily in, without being provoked or attacked.”
Invoking his own words against him, I insisted on my point and did my best to show him that his fears were exaggerated. Far from bringing about a general conflagration, the intervention of England would result in preventing the continuation of an impious and immoral war, and intervention would have the approval of the English people. It would be just and moral, and almost popular in the country.
Mr. Gladstone did not engage in the discussion of the principle which he had laid down and developed. He admitted it, but he added; “We are not as sure as you seem to be that war against Prussia would be popular in England.
“Far be it from me to think that a great nation can refuse to go to war when the war is for a moral purpose. I am equally far from denying that this war is completely changed in character since the fall of the Empire, inasmuch as its continuation on the part of Prussia has conquest, an immoral thing in itself, as its end. But I am by no means convinced that a war against Prussia would be really popular in England.
“Even if Austria joined us, you see it would still be we who had commenced and who had brought it about. Consequently it would always be we who had caused war, and that is a tremendous responsibility which neither I nor any of my colleagues would ever care to assume.”
As regards the surrender of Alsace and Lorraine which Prussia demanded as a sine qua non for conditions of peace, this is what Mr. Gladstone thought of it. “England will never agree to any territorial cession. The English people have a horror of wars of conquest and will never give their agreement to the dismemberment of France.”