‘It has been well said that the most straightforward and obvious conclusions on the largest lines of military policy are those of which it is most difficult to convince a general audience; and we find in this matter a singular miscalculation running through the attitude of many Western publicists. They speak as though, whatever might happen in the West, the Alliance, which is fighting for European civilisation, the Western Allies and the United States, could not now affect the destinies of Eastern Europe....
Such an attitude is, upon the simplest principles of military science, a grotesque error.... If we are victorious ... the destruction of the enemy’s military power gives us as full an opportunity for deciding the fate of Eastern Europe as it does for deciding the fate of Western Europe. Victory gained by the Allies will decide the fate of all Europe, and, for that matter, of the whole world. It will open the Baltic and the Black Sea. It will leave us masters with the power to dictate in what fashion the new boundaries shall be arranged, how the entries to the Eastern markets shall be kept open, garrisoned and guaranteed....
Wherever they are defeated, whether upon the line they now hold or upon other lines, their defeat and our victory will leave us with complete power. If that task be beyond our strength, then civilisation has suffered defeat, and there is the end of it.’
German power was to be destroyed as the condition of saving civilisation. Mr Belloc wrote:—
‘If by some negotiation (involving of course the evacuation of the occupied districts in the West) the enemy remains undefeated, civilised Europe has lost the war and Prussia has won it.’[46]
Such was the simple and popular thesis. Germany, criminal and barbarian, challenged Europe, civilised and law-abiding. Civilisation can only assert itself by the punishment of Germany and save itself by the destruction of German power. Once the German military power is destroyed, Europe can do with Germany what it will.
I suggest that the experience of the last two years, and our own present policy, constitute an admission or demonstration, first, that the moral assumption of this thesis—that the menace of German power was due to some special wickedness on the part of the German nation not shared by other peoples in any degree—is false; and, secondly, that the destruction of Germany’s military force gives to Europe no such power to control Germany.
Our power over Germany becomes every day less:
First, by the break-up of the Alliance. The ‘sacred egoisms’ which produced the War are now disrupting the Allies. The most potentially powerful European member of the Alliance or Association—Russia—has become an enemy; the most powerful member of all, America, has withdrawn from co-operation; Italy is in conflict with one Ally, Japan with another.
Secondly, by the more extended Balkanisation of Europe. The States utilised by (for instance) France as the instruments of Allied policy (Poland, Hungary, Ukrainia, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia) are liable to quarrel among themselves. The groups rendered hostile to Allied policy—Germany, Russia, China—are much larger, and might well once more become cohesive units. The Nationalism which is a factor of Allied disintegration may nevertheless work for the consolidation of the groups opposed to us.