The day England won her to an active policy of vengeance against the victor of 1870, she wooed her to abiding loss. Her true place in Europe was one of friendship with Germany. But that meant, inevitably, the discovery by Europe that the chief barrier to European concord lay not in the armies of the powers, but in the ring of hostile battleships that constrained her peoples into armed camps.
European militarism rests on English navalism. English navalism requires for its continued existence a disunited Europe; and a Europe kept apart is a Europe armed, anxious and watchful, bent on mutual attack, its eyes fixed on the earth. Europe must lift its eyes to the sea. There lies the highway of the nations, the only road to freedom—the sole path to peace.
For the pent millions of Europe there can be no peace, no laying aside of arms, no sincere development of trade or culture while one people, in Europe but not of Europe, immune themselves from all attack, and sure that whatever suffering they inflict on others can never be visited on their own shores, have it in their power to foment strife with impunity and to call up war from the ends of the earth while they themselves enjoy the blessing of peace.
England, the soul and brain of this confederacy of war abroad remains at peace at home. As I write these words a despatch from Sir Alfred Sharpe, the correspondent of a London paper in France, comes to hand. It should be placarded in every Foreign Office of the world, in every temple of justice, in every house of prayer.
"It is difficult for the people in England to realize the condition of Northern France at the present time. Although the papers are full of accounts of desolation and destruction caused by the German invasion, it is only by an actual experience that a full realization of the horror comes. To return to England after visiting the French war zone is to come back to a land of perfect peace, where everything is normal and where it is not easy to believe we are almost within hearing distance of the cannonade on the Aisne."
(Sir Alfred Sharpe, to the Daily Chronicle from the Front, September 2nd, 1914.)
It is this immunity from the horror of war that makes all Englishmen jingoes. They are never troubled by the consequences of belligerency. Since it is only by "an actual experience that the full realization of the horror comes." Until that horror strikes deep on English soil her statesmen, her Ministers, her Members of Parliament, her editors, will never sincerely love peace, but will plan always to ensure war abroad, whenever British need or ambition demands it.
Were England herself so placed that responsibility for her acts could be enforced on her own soil, among her own people, and on the head of those who devise her policies, then we might talk of arbitration treaties with hope, and sign compacts of goodwill sure that they were indeed cordial understandings.
But as long as Great Britain retains undisputed ownership of the chief factor that ensures at will peace or war on others, there can be only armaments in Europe, ill-will among men and war fever in the blood of mankind.