‘We were told that after this last war we were to have peace. We have not; there are something between twenty and thirty bloody wars going on at the present moment. We were told that the great war was to end war. It did not; it could not. We have a very difficult time ahead, whether on the sea, in the air, or on the land.’ He wanted them to take away the warning from a fellow soldier that their country and their Empire both wanted them to-day as much as ever they had, and if they were as proud of belonging to the British Empire as he was they would do their best, in whatever capacity they served, to qualify themselves for the times that were coming.
[48] July 31st, 1920.
[49] April 19th, 1919.
[50] A Reuter Despatch dated August 31st, 1920, says:—
‘Speaking to-day at Charleston (West Virginia) Mr Daniels, U. S. Naval Secretary, said: “We are building enormous docks and are constructing 18 dreadnoughts and battle cruisers, with a dozen other powerful ships which in effective fighting power will give our navy world primacy.”’
[51] We are once more back to the Carlylean ‘deep, patient ... virtuous ... Germany.’
[52] Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, in a memorandum dated December 1st, 1919, which appears in a Blue Book on ‘the Evacuation of North Russia, 1919,’ says:—‘There is one great lesson to be learned from the history of the campaign.... It is that once a military force is involved in operations on land it is almost impossible to limit the magnitude of its commitments.’
[53] And Russo-German co-operation is of course precisely what French policy must create. Says an American critic:—
‘France certainly carries a big stick, but she does not speak softly; she takes her own part, but she seems to fear neither God nor the revulsion of man. Yet she has reason to fear. Suppose she succeeds for a while in reducing Germany to servitude and Russia to a dictatorship of the Right, in securing her own dominion on the Continent as overlord by the petty States of Europe. What then? What can be the consequence of a common hostility of the Teutonic and Slavonic peoples, except in the end common action on their part to throw off an intolerable yoke? The nightmare of a militant Russo-German alliance becomes daily a more sinister prophecy, as France teaches the people of Europe that force alone is the solvent. France has only to convince all of Germany that the Treaty of Versailles will be enforced in all its rigour, which means occupation of the Ruhr and the loss of Silesia, to destroy the final resistance of those Germans who look to the West rather than to the East for salvation. Let it be known that the barrier of the Rhine is all bayonet and threat, and western-minded Germany must go down before the easterners, Communist or Junker. It will not matter greatly which.’ (New Republic, Sept. 15th, 1920).
[54] December 23rd, 1919.