Mr. Shaw begins by conceiving the possibility of his being blinded by prejudice or perversity, and admits his capacity for criticising England with a certain slight malicious taste for taking the conceit out of her. Seemingly he belongs to that numerous class who think that to admit a fault is to excuse it. As a highwayman might say before taking your purse, "Now, I admit, I have a certain slight taste for thieving," and expect you to smile forgiveness of his depredation, Shaw's bias is evident wherever he discusses the action and qualities of Great Britain. Thus he contrasts Bernhardi's brilliant with our own very dull militarists' facts, the result being that the intense mediocrity of Bernhardi leaps to the eye on every page, and that events have thoroughly discredited all his political and many of his military ideas, whereas we possess militarists of first-class quality.
Naturally, Shaw calls England muddle-headed. Yet of late nothing has been less apparent than muddle-headednes. Of British policy, Shaw says that since the Continent generally regards us as hypocritical, we must be hypocritical. He omits to say that the Continent generally, and Germany in particular, regards our policy and our diplomacy as extremely able and clear-sighted. The unscrupulous cleverness of Britain is one of Germany's main themes.
These are minor samples of Mr. Shaw's caprices. In discussing the origin of the war Mr. Shaw's aim is to prove that all the great powers are equally to blame. He goes far back and accuses Great Britain of producing the first page of Bernhardian literature in the anonymous pamphlet "The Battle of Dorking." He admits in another passage that the note of this pamphlet was mainly defensive. He is constantly thus making intrenchments for himself in case of forced retirement, and there is in his article almost nothing unjust against Great Britain that is not ingeniously contradicted or mitigated elsewhere.
Great Britain's War Literature.
Beginning with "The Battle of Dorking" and ending with H.G. Well's "War in the Air," one of the most disturbing and effective warnings against militarism ever written, he sees simply that Great Britain has produced threatening and provocative militarist literature comparable to Germany's. No grounds exist for such a contention. There are militarists in all countries, but there are infinitely more in Germany than in any other country. The fact is notorious. The fact is also notorious that the most powerful, not the most numerous, party in Germany wanted the war. It would be as futile to try to prove that Ireland did not want home rule as that Germany did not want war. As for a war literature, bibliographical statistics show, I believe, that in the last ten years Germany has published seven thousand books or pamphlets about war. No one but a German or a Shaw, in a particularly mischievous mood, would seek to show that Great Britain is responsible for the war fever. It simply is not so.
Mr. Shaw urges that we all armed together. Of course we did. When one nation publicly turns bellicose the rest must copy her preparations. If Great Britain could live this century over again she would do over again what she actually did, because common sense would not permit her to do otherwise. The admitted fact that some Britons are militarists does not in the slightest degree impair the rightness or sagacity of our policy. If one member of a family happens to go to the bad and turn burglar, therein is no reason why the family mansion should not be insured against burglary.
Mr. Shaw proceeds to what he calls the diplomatic history of the war. His notion of historical veracity may be judged from his description of the Austrian ultimatum to Servia as an escapade of a dotard. He puts the whole blame of it on Franz Josef, and yet he must know quite well that Germany has admitted even to her own subjects that Austria asked Germany's opinion about her policy and obtained Germany's approval before delivering the ultimatum. [Official German pamphlet "Reasons for the War with Russia," August, 1914.] There is no word in Mr. Shaw's diplomatic history of the repeated efforts toward peace made by Great Britain and scotched by Germany. On the contrary, with astounding audacity and disingenuousness, he tries to make it appear that suggestions for peace were offered by Germany and rejected by Great Britain. Once more it simply was not so.
Defense of Sir Edward Grey.
Mr. Shaw's paraphrase of Document 17 in the British diplomatic dispatches is a staggering travesty. So far as I can see it bears no relation to the original. Further, he not only deplores that a liberal government should have an imperialist Foreign Secretary, but he accuses Sir Edward Grey of sacrificing his country's welfare to the interests of his party and committing a political crime in order not to incur the wrath of The Daily News and The Manchester Guardian. This is totally inexcusable. Let me not be misunderstood. I am not a liberal. I am an out-and-out radical. I foresee a cleavage in the Liberal Party, and when that cleavage comes I shall be on the extreme left wing. I entirely agree with Mr. Shaw's denunciation of secret diplomacy and undemocratic control of foreign policy. By every social tradition I should be in opposition to Sir Edward Grey, but I think Grey was the best Foreign Secretary that the Liberal Party could have chosen and that he worked well on the only possible plane, the plane of practicality. I am quite sure he is an honest man, and I strongly resent, as Englishmen of all opinions will resent, any imputation to the contrary.
As for the undemocratic control of foreign policy, a strong point about our policy on the eve of the war is that it was dictated by public opinion. [See Grey's dispatch to the British Ambassador at Berlin, No. 123.] Germany could have preserved peace by a single gesture addressed to Franz Josef. She did not want peace. Mr. Shaw said Sir Edward Grey ought to have shouted out at the start that if Germany fought we should fight. Sir Edward Grey had no authority to do so, and it would have been foolish to do so. Mr. Shaw also says Germany ought to have turned her whole army against Russia and left the western frontier to the care of the world's public opinion in spite of the military alliance by which France was bound to Russia. We have here an example of his aptitude for practical politics.