A General Sketch of the European War: The First Phase

by Hilaire Belloc

It was about this moment that Prussia committed what the future historian will regard, very probably, as the capital blunder in her long career of success. She began to build a great fleet. Here the reader should note two very important consequences of the great Prussian victories which had taken place a generation before. The first was the immense expansion of German industrialism. Germany, from an agricultural State, became a State largely occupied in mining, smelting, spinning, and shipbuilding; and there went with this revolution, as there always goes with modern industrialism, a large and unhealthy increase of population. The German Empire, after its war with France, was roughly equal to the population of the French; but the German Empire, after this successful industrial experiment, the result of its victories, was much more than half as large again in population as the French (68 to 39).

Secondly, the German Empire developed a new and very large maritime commerce. This second thing did not follow, as some have imagined it does, from the first. Germany might have exported largely without exporting in her own ships. The creation of Germany's new mercantile marine was a deliberate part of the general Prussian policy of expansion. It was heavily subsidized, especially directed into the form of great international passenger lines, and carefully co-ordinated with the rest of the Prussian scheme throughout the world.

At a date determined by the same general policy, and somewhat subsequent to the first creation of this mercantile marine, came the decision to build a great fleet. Now, it so happens that Great Britain alone among the Powers of Europe depends for her existence upon supremacy at sea, and particularly upon naval superiority in the Narrow Seas to the east and the south of the British islands.

Such a necessity is, of course, a challenge to the rest of the world, and it would be ridiculous to expect the rest of the world to accept that challenge without protest. But a necessity this naval policy of Great Britain remains none the less. The moment some rival or group of rivals can overcome her fleet, her mere physical livelihood is in peril. She cannot be certain of getting her food. She cannot be certain of getting those foreign materials the making up of which enables her to purchase her food. Further, her dominions are scattered oversea, and supremacy at sea is her only guarantee of retaining the various provinces of her dominion.

It is a case which has happened more than once before in the history of the world. Great commercial seafaring States have arisen; they have always had the same method of government by a small, wealthy class, the same ardent patriotism, the same scattered empire, and the same inexorable necessity of maintaining supremacy at sea. Only one Power had hitherto rendered this country anxious for the Narrow Seas: that Power was France, and it only controlled one-half of the two branches of the Narrow Seas, the North Sea and the Channel. It had been for generations a cardinal piece of English policy that the French Fleet should be watched, the English Fleet maintained overwhelmingly superior to it, and all opportunities for keeping France engaged with other rivals used to the advantage of this country. On this account English policy leant, on the whole, towards the German side, during all the generation of rivalry between France and Germany which followed the war of 1870.

But when the Germans began to build their fleet, things changed. The Germans had openly given Europe to understand that they regarded Holland and Belgium, and particularly the port of Antwerp, as ultimately destined to fall under their rule or into their system. Their fleet was specifically designed for meeting the British Fleet; it corresponded to no existing considerable colonial empire, and though the development of German maritime commerce was an excuse for it, it was only an excuse. Indeed, the object of obtaining supremacy at sea was put forward fairly clearly by the promoters of the whole scheme. Great Britain was therefore constrained to transfer the weight of her support to Russia and to France, and to count on the whole as a force opposed, for the first time in hundreds of years, to North Germany in the international politics of Europe. Similarity of religion (which is a great bond) and a supposed identity (and partly real similarity) of race were of no effect compared with this sentiment of necessity.

Here it is important to note that the transference of British support from one continental group to another neither produced aggression by Great Britain nor pointed to any intention of aggression. It is a plain matter of fact, which all future history will note, that the very necessity in English eyes of English supremacy at sea, and the knowledge that such a supremacy was inevitably a provocation to others, led to the greatest discretion in the use of British naval strength, and, in general, to a purely defensive and peaceful policy upon the part of the chief maritime power. It would, indeed, have been folly to have acted otherwise, for there was nothing to prevent the great nations, our rivals, if they had been directly menaced by the British superiority at sea, from beginning to build great fleets, equal or superior to our own. Germany alone pursued this policy, with no excuse save an obvious determination to undo the claim of the British Fleet.

I have called this a blunder, and, from the point of view of the German policy, it was a blunder. For if the Prussian dynasty set out, as it did, to make itself the chief power in the world, its obvious policy was to deal with its enemies in detail. It ought not, at any cost, to have quarrelled with Russia until it had finally disposed of France. If it was incapable, through lack of subtlety, to prevent the Franco-Russian group from forming, it should at least have made itself the master of that group before gratuitously provoking the rivalry of Great Britain. But "passion will have all now," and the supposedly cold and calculating nature of Prussian effort has about it something very crudely emotional, as the event has shown. From about ten years ago Prussian Germany had managed to array against itself not only the old Franco-Russian group but Great Britain as well.

This arrangement would not, however, have led to war. Equilibrium was still perfectly maintained, and the very strong feeling throughout all the great States of Europe that a disturbance of the peace would mean some terrible catastrophe, to be avoided at all costs, was as powerful as ever.

The true origin of disturbance, the first overt act upon which you can put your finger and say, "Here the chain of particular causes leading to the great war begins," was the revolution in Turkey. This revolution took place in the year 1908, and put more or less permanently into power at Constantinople a group of men based upon Masonic influence, largely Western in training, largely composed of Jewish elements, known as the "Young Turks."