Such alliances have not in the past caused any organic union. The nations have met like partners at a ball and danced to the tune of the dynastic or religious quarrel which
happened to be paramount at the time. The grouping of nations in alliances has simply been a means of more effective prosecution of military campaigns, a temporary convenience to be discarded when no longer needed. If the example of the past is to be followed, then Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and America, though holding hands now, will separate when the war is over, and may find it necessary to use the same hands for chastizing each other. Alliances have been political games and devices, useful or useless according to the shrewdness of their instigators, but of no value in promoting love between nations. Old-time enemies become friends, and old-time friends become enemies at the command of the political drill-sergeant. England was the hereditary enemy of France. Prussia was the ally of England. In the war of the Austrian succession, France in alliance with Prussia fought England and Austria. During the Seven Years War Prussia, allied to England, fought Austria allied to France. England, allied to France and Turkey, fought Russia in the Crimea. Turn the kaleidoscope of history and you see the English driven out of Normandy, Napoleon defiling Moscow, the Russians attacking
Montmartre. Any schoolboy, can trace the changing partners in the grand alliances of the past, or refuse to commit them to memory on account of the bewildering fluctuations in international friendship.
A fiery common hate, though acting as a powerful cement for a time, is no guarantee of durability. Napoleon and the French were hated by the nations, as Wilhelm and the Germans are hated to-day. Rapacious designs for hegemony have always brought about a corresponding amount of defensive unity on the part of those whose independence was threatened. Whether it is Spain or France or Germany that dreams of world-supremacy, the result is international combination. Richelieu and Bismarck rouse the same resentment. A great hatred cannot by itself create a lasting unity, for hatred is apt to grow out of bonds, and, having settled its legitimate prey outside the circle, generally ends by turning on its neighbours within it.
Who can deny that nations have been made by conquest? Heroic self-defence, anger, bitter opposition to the violation of liberty, are of little avail if the psychological factors are favourable to amalgamation. A few decades,
a few centuries, and there is fusion between oppressor and oppressed. Hence the loyalty of conquered nations to their foreign masters, at times, when rivals vainly hope for trouble. Hence the indisputable fact that many a nation which but a short time ago fought valiantly for liberty now manifests not only passive resignation, but positive contentment. If, on the other hand, the psychological factors do not favour amalgamation, the legacy of resentment and opposition is handed on from generation to generation and the injury is never forgiven. Cases of contented acceptance are quoted as evidence of the ultimate blessings of war by the adherents of the theory that efficient military measures constitute right. To me they are rather evidence of the strength and endurance of the pacifying forces in human life, and of the sovereignty of the greater unities which draw nations together. If, in spite of the injuries and devastations of war, it is possible for men to forgive and to labour for the same social ends, that is surely proof that the peoples erect no barrier to brotherhood. The truth is, war sometimes achieves that which pacific settlement and free intercourse always achieve.
History has a cavalier way of recording the benefits of conquest. The feelings of the great conquered receive scant consideration. It is enough that after the passage of some centuries we contemplate the matter and declare the conquest to have been beneficial. Was not France invigorated by the wild Northmen who overran her territories and settled wherever they found settlement advantageous? The Normans, originally pirates and plunderers, intermingled with the gentler inhabitants of France. When they turned their eyes to England they were already guardians of civilization. And we blandly record the Norman conquest of England as an unqualified benefit, as an impetus to social amenity, art, learning, architecture, and religion. Protests are useless. The earth abounds in instances of the spread of knowledge, inventions, culture, through war and subjugation. The “rude” peoples who cried out at the outrage, and who fain would have kept their rudeness, receive no sympathy from posterity.
This, I repeat, is no argument for the perpetuation of the old ways of aggression. We have reached a new consciousness and a new responsibility. We see better ways of spreading
the fruits of civilization. In the past ambition and brute force, hatred and suspicion, fear and deceit, have had full play. In spite of barbaric warfare and Machiavellian politics the human desire for unity and co-operation has not been uprooted.