[55] The Times of September 4th, 1920 reproduces an article from the Matin, on M. Millerand’s policy with regard to small States. M. Millerand’s aim was that economic aid should go hand in hand with French military protection. With this policy in view, a number of large businesses recently passed under French control, including the Skoda factory in Czecho-Slovakia, big works at Kattowitz in Upper Silesia, the firm of Huta-Bankowa in Poland, railway factories in Rumania, and certain river systems and ports in Yugo-Slavia. In return for assistance to Admiral Horthy, an agreement was signed whereby France obtained control of the Hungarian State Railways, of the Credit Bank, the Hungarian river system and the port of Buda-pest. Other reports state that France has secured 85 per cent. of the oil-fields of Poland, in return for her help at the time of the threat to Warsaw. As the majority of shares in the Polish Oil Company ‘Galicia,’ which have been in British hands until recently, have been bought up by a French Company, the ‘Franco-Polonaise,’ France now holds an important weapon of international policy.
[56] The present writer would like to enter a warning here that nothing in this chapter implies that we should disregard France’s very legitimate fears of a revived militarist Germany. The implication is that she is going the right way about to create the very dangers that terrify her. If this were the place to discuss alternative policies, I should certainly go on to urge that England—and America—should make it plain to France that they are prepared to pledge their power to her defence. More than that, both countries should offer to forgo the debts owing to them by France on condition of French adhesion to more workable European arrangements. The last thing to be desired is a rupture, or a mere change of rôles: France to become once more the ‘enemy’ and Germany once more the ‘Ally.’ That outcome would merely duplicate the weary story of the past.
[57] The Expansion of England, p. 202.
[58] The assumption marks even post-war rhetoric. M. Millerand’s message to the Senate and Chamber upon his election as President of the Republic says: ‘True to the Alliances for ever cemented by blood shed in common,’ France will strictly enforce the Treaty of Versailles, ‘a new charter of Europe and the World.’ (Times, Sept. 27th, 1920). The passage is typical of the moral fact dealt with in this chapter. M. Millerand knows, his hearers know, that the war Alliance ‘for ever cemented by blood shed in common,’ has already ceased to exist. But the admission of this patent fact would be fatal to the ‘blood’ heroics.
[59] Dr L. P. Jacks, Editor of The Hibbert Journal, tells us that before the War the English nation, regarded from the moral point of view, was a scene of ‘indescribable confusion; a moral chaos.’ But there has come to it ‘the peace of mind that comes to every man who, after tossing about among uncertainties, finds at last a mission, a cause to which he can devote himself.’ For this reason, he says, the War has actually made the English people happier than they were before: ‘brighter, more cheerful. The Englishman worries less about himself.... The tone and substance of conversation are better.... There is more health in our souls and perhaps in our bodies.’ And he tells how the War cured a friend of insomnia. (The Peacefulness of Being at War, New Republic, September 11, 1915).
[60] The facts of both the Russian and the Italian bargains are dealt with in more detail in Chap. III.
[61] Quoted by Mr T. L. Stoddard in an article on Italian Nationalism, in the Forum, Sept. 1915. One may hope that the outcome of the War has modified the tendencies in Italy of which he treats. But the quotations he makes from Italian Nationalist writers put Treitschke and Bernhardi in the shade. Here are some. Corradini says: ‘Italy must become once more the first nation in the world.’ Rocco: ‘It is said that all the other territories are occupied. But strong nations, or nations on the path of progress, conquer.... territories occupied by nations in decadence.’ Luigi Villari rejoices that the cobwebs of mean-spirited Pacifism have been swept away. Italians are beginning to feel, in whatever part of the world they may happen to be, something of the pride of Roman citizens.’ Scipione Sighele writes: ‘War must be loved for itself.... To say “War is the most horrible of evils,” to talk of war as “an unhappy necessity,” to declare that we should “never attack but always know how to defend ourselves,” to say these things is as dangerous as to make out-and-out Pacifist and anti-militarist speeches. It is creating for the future a conflict of duties: duties towards humanity, duties towards the Fatherland.’ Corradini explains the programme of the Nationalists: ‘All our efforts will tend towards making the Italians a warlike race. We will give it a new will; we will instil into it the appetite for power, the need of mighty hopes. We will create a religion—the religion of the Fatherland victorious over the other nations.’
I am indebted to Mr Stoddard for the translations; but they read quite ‘true to type.’
[62] It is true that the Labour Party, alone of all the parties, did take action, happily effective, against the Russian adventure—after it had gone on in intermittent form for two years. But the above paragraphs refer particularly to the period which immediately succeeded the War, and to a general temper which was unfortunately a fact despite Labour action.
[63] Mr Hartley Manners, the playwright, who produced during the War a book entitled Hate with a Will to Victory, writes thus:—