His second chapter is thus summarised:—
‘Former international conditions transformed by the revolution in transport and telegraphic intelligence; great nations lose their former self-sufficient basis: growth of interdependence between peoples and continents.... Germany without sea power follows Britain’s economic example; interdependence without security: national necessities and cosmopolitan speculation: an Armageddon unavoidable.’
Lord Grey has said that if there had existed in 1914 a League of Nations as tentative even as that embodied in the Covenant, Armageddon could in any case have been delayed, and delay might well have meant prevention. We know now that if war had been delayed the mere march of events would have altered the situation. It is unlikely that a Russian revolution of one kind or another could have been prevented even if there had been no war; and a change in the character of the Russian government might well have terminated on the one side the Serbian agitation against Austria, and on the other the genuine fear of German democrats concerning Russia’s imperialist ambitions. The death of the old Austrian emperor was another factor that might have made for peace.[137]
Assume, in addition to such factors, that Britain had been prepared to recognise Germany’s economic needs and difficulties, as Mr Garvin now urges we should recognise them. Whether even this would have prevented war, no man can say. But we can say—and it is implicit in the economic case now so commonly urged as to the need of Germany for economic security—that since we did not give her that security we did not do all that we might have done to remove the causes of war. ‘Here in the struggle for primary raw materials’ says Mr Garvin in effect over the six hundred pages more or less of his book, ‘are causes of war that must be dealt with if we are to have peace.’ If then, in the years that preceded Armageddon, the world had wanted to avoid that orgy, and had had the necessary wisdom, these are things with which it would have occupied itself.
Yet when the attempt was made to draw the attention of the world to just those factors, publicists even as sincere and able as Mr Garvin disparaged it; and very many misrepresented it by silly distortion. It is easy now to see where that pre-war attempt to work towards some solution was most defective: if greater emphasis had been given to some definite scheme for assuring Germany’s necessary access to resources, the real issue might have been made plainer. A fair implication of The Great Illusion was that as Britain had no real interest in thwarting German expansion, the best hope for the future lay in an increasingly clear demonstration of the fact of community of interest. The more valid conclusion would have been that the absence of conflict in vital interests should have been seized upon as affording an opportunity for concluding definite conventions and obligations which would assuage fears on both sides. But criticism, instead of bringing out this defect, directed itself, for the most part, to an attempt to show that the economic fears or facts had nothing to do with the conflict. Had criticism consisted in taking up the problem where The Great Illusion left it, much more might have been done—perhaps sufficient—to make Armageddon unnecessary.[138]
The importance of the phenomenon we have just touched upon—the disparagement before war of truths we are compelled to face after war—lies in its revelation of subconscious or unconscious motive. There grows up after some years of peace in every nation possessing military and naval traditions and a habit of dominion, a real desire for domination, perhaps even for war itself; the opportunity that it affords for the assertion of collective power; the mysterious dramatic impulse to ‘stop the cackle with a blow; strike, and strike home.’
For the moment we are at the ebb of that feeling and another is beginning perhaps to flow. The results are showing in our policy. We find in what would have been ten years ago very strange places for such things, attacks upon the government for its policy of ‘reckless militarism’ in Mesopotamia or Persia. Although public opinion did not manage to impose a policy of peace with Russia, it did at least make open and declared war impossible, and all the efforts of the Northcliffe Press to inflame passion by stories of Bolshevist atrocities fell completely flat. For thirty years it has been a crime of lèse patrie to mention the fact that we have given solemn and repeated pledges for the evacuation of Egypt. And indeed to secure a free hand in Egypt we were ready to acquiesce in the French evasion of international obligations in Morocco, a policy which played no small part in widening the gulf between ourselves and Germany. Yet the political position on behalf of which ten years ago these risks were taken is to-day surrendered with barely a protest. A policy of almost unqualified ‘scuttle’ which no Cabinet could have faced a decade since, to-day causes scarcely a ripple. And as to the Treaty, certain clauses therein, around which centred less than two years ago a true dementia—the trial of the Kaiser in London, the trial of war prisoners—we have simply forgotten all about.
It is certain that sheer exhaustion of the emotions associated with war explains a good deal. But Turks, Poles, Arabs, Russians, who have suffered war much longer, still fight. The policy of the loan to Germany, the independence of Egypt, the evacuation of Mesopotamia, the refusal to attempt the removal of the Bolshevist ‘menace to freedom and civilisation’ by military means, are explained in part at least by a growing recognition of both the political and the economic futility of the military means, and the absolute need of replacing or supplementing the military method by an increasing measure of agreement and co-operation. The order of events has been such as to induce an interpretation, bring home a conviction, which has influenced policy. But the strength and permanence of the conviction will depend upon the degree of intelligence with which the interpretation is made. Discussion is indispensable and that justifies this re-examination of the suggestions made in The Great Illusion.
In so far as it is mere emotional exhaustion which we are now feeling, and not the beginning of a new tradition and new attitude in which intelligence, however dimly, has its part, it has in it little hope. For inertia has its dangers as grave as those of unseeing passion. In the one case the ship is driven helplessly by a gale on to the rocks, in the other it drifts just as helplessly into the whirlpool. A consciousness of direction, a desire at least to be master of our fate and to make the effort of thought to that end, is the indispensable condition of freedom, salvation. That is the first and last justification for the discussion we have just summarised.