Washington and the Riddle of Peace

by H. G. Wells

It also will have thrown out world organizations in connection with health, with such world interests as the white slave traffic, and so forth. It will be conducting European arbitrations and it will be providing boundary commissions and the like. And somewhere there will also be a sort of World Supreme Court getting to work upon judicial international differences.

Now this, I submit, is the way that world unity is likely to arise out of our dreams into reality, and this partial, dispersed, experimenting way of growth is perhaps the only way in which it can come about. It is not so splendid and impressive a vision as that of some World Parliament, some perfected League, suddenly flashing into being and assuming the leadership of the world. It will not be set up like a pavilion but it will grow like a tree. But it is a reality and it comes. The Association of Nations grows before our eyes.

And meanwhile there is an immense task before teachers and writers, before parents and talkers and all who instruct and make and change opinion, and that is the task of building up a new spirit in the hearts of men and a new dream in their minds, the spirit of fellowship to all men, the dream of a great world released forever from the obsession of warfare and international struggle; a great world of steadily developing unity in which all races and all kinds of men will be free to make their distinctive contributions to the gathering achievements of the race.

XX
FRANCE AND ENGLAND—THE PLAIN FACTS OF THE CASE

If we are to have any fundamental improvements in the present relations of nations, if we are to achieve that change of heart which is needed as the fundamental thing for the establishment of a world peace, then we must look the facts of international friction squarely in the face. It is no good pretending there is no jar when there is a jar. This business of the world peace effort, of which the Washington Conference is now the centre, is not to smooth over international difficulties; it is to expose, examine, diagnose and cure them.

Now here is this Franco-British clash, a plain quarrel and one very disturbing to the American audience. The Americans generally don’t like this quarrel. They are torn between a very strong traditional affection for the French and a kind of liking for at least one or two congenial things about the British. They would like to hear no more of it, therefore. They just simply want peace. But there the quarrel is. Was it an avoidable quarrel? Or was it inevitable? Perhaps it is something very fundamental to the European situation. Perhaps if we analyze it and probe right down to the final causes of it we may learn something worth while for the aims and ends of the Washington Conference.

Now, let us get a firm hold upon one very important fact, indeed. This clash is a clash between the present French Government and the present British Government, but it is not a clash between all the French and all the British. It is not an outbreak of national antipathy or any horrible, irreconcilable thing of that sort. There are elements in France strongly opposed to the French Government upon the issues raised in this dispute. There is a section of the English press fantastically on the “French” side and bitterly opposed even to the public criticism of the public speeches of the French Premier in English. The party politics of both France and Britain and, what is worse, those bitter animosities that centre upon political personalities have got into this dispute.

It may help to clear the issue if we disregard the attitude of the two Governments in naming the sides to the dispute, and if instead of speaking of the “French” or the “British” sides we speak of the “Keep-Germany-down” and the “Give-Germany-a-chance” sides, or better, if we call them the “Insisters,” who insist upon the uttermost farthing of repayment and penitence from Germany, and the “Believers,” who don’t. For it is upon Germany that the whole dispute turns.

There is a very powerful “Insister” party in Great Britain; there is a growing “Believer” party in France. And while France has been steadily “Insister” since the armistice, Britain and the British Government have changed round from “Insister” to “Believer” in the last year or so. This change has produced extraordinary strains and recriminations between French and British political groups and individuals, as such changes of front must always do. Such disputes often make far more noise than deep and vital national misunderstandings, and it is well that the intelligent observer, and particularly the American observer, should distinguish the note of the disconcerted party man in a rage from the note of genuine patriotic anger.

The beginnings of the present trouble are to be found in the Versailles Conference. There the only “Relievers” seem to have been the American representatives. Those were the days of the British Khaki election, when “Hang the Kaiser” and “Make the Germans Pay!” were the slogans that carried Mr. Lloyd George to power. For about four months the dispute went on between moderation and overwhelming demands. America stood alone for moderation. The British insisted upon the uttermost farthing, at least as strenuously as the French, and it was Gen. Smuts, of all people, who added the last straw to the intolerable burden of indebtedness that was then piled upon vanquished and ruined Germany. And both America and Britain were parties to the arrangements that give France the power, the Shylock right, of carving into Germany and disintegrating her more and more if Germany fail to keep up with the impossible payments that were then fixed upon her.