Britain's Deadly Peril: Are We Told the Truth?

by William Le Queux

Very well, let us accept, as we do accept, the situation. Are we going to neglect the plainest and most obvious warning ever given to a nation, and permit ourselves to muddle into a peace that would be no peace, but merely a truce in which Germany would bend her every energy to the preparation of another bitter war of revenge?

Here lies one of the gravest perils by which our country is to-day faced, and it is a peril immensely exaggerated by the foolish peace-talk in which a section of malevolent busybodies are already indulging. It is as certain as the rising of to-morrow's sun that, when this war is over, Germany would, if the power were left within her, embark at once on a new campaign of revenge. We have seen how, for forty-five long years, the French have cherished in their hearts the hope of recovering the fair provinces wrested from them in the war of 1870-1871. And the French, be it remembered, are not a nation capable of nourishing a long-continued national hatred. Generous, proud, and intensely patriotic they are; malicious and revengeful they emphatically are not. As patriotic in their own way as the French, the Germans have shown themselves capable of a paroxysm of national hatred to which history offers no parallel.

They have realised, with a sure instinct, that Britain, and Britain alone, has stood in the way of the realisation of their grandiose scheme of world-dominion, and it is certain that for long years to come, possibly for centuries, they will, if we give them the opportunity, plot our downfall and overthrow us. Are we to muddle the business of making peace as we muddled the preparations for war? If we do we shall, assuredly, deserve the worst fate that can be reserved for a nation which deliberately shuts its eyes to the logic of plain and demonstrable fact.

Germany can never be adequately punished for the crimes against God and man which she has committed in Belgium and France. The ancient law of "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is the only one under which adequate punishment could be meted out, and whatever happens we know that the soldiers of the Allies will never be guilty of the unspeakable calendar of pillage and arson and murder which has made the very name of "German" a byword throughout civilisation throughout all the ages that are to come. However thoroughly she is humbled to the dust, Germany will never taste the unspeakable horror that she has brought upon the helpless and unoffending victims of her fury and lust in Belgium and in parts of France. It may be that if they fall into our hands we should hang, as they deserve to be hanged, the official instigators of atrocities whose complicity could be clearly proved—though we, to-day, give valets to the Huns at Donington Hall. We cannot lay the cities of Germany in ruin, and massacre the civilian population on the approved German plan. What we can do, and ought to do, is to make sure that, at whatever cost of blood and treasure to us, Germany is deprived of any further capacity to menace the peace of the world. It is the plain and obvious duty of the Allies to see that the hateful and purely German doctrine that might is the only right shall, once and for all, be swept from the earth. It is for us to make good the noble words of Mr. Asquith—that Britain will prosecute the war to the finish. It is for us to see that there shall be no "muddling through" when the treaty of peace is finally signed in Berlin.

When the war was forced upon us, the best business brains of this country recognised that one of the surest and speediest means of securing an efficient guarantee that Germany should not be able to injure us in the future would be a strenuous effort to capture her enormous foreign trade. Modern wars, it must be remembered, are not merely a matter of the clash of arms on the stricken field. The enormous ramifications of commercial undertakings, immeasurably greater to-day than at any time in history, mean that, in the conduct of a great campaign, economic weapons may be even more powerful than the sword of the big battalions. This unquestionable fact has been fully realised by our leading thinkers. Thoughtless people have been heard to say that, if France and Russia wish to conclude peace, England must necessarily join with them because she cannot carry on the war alone. There could be no greater mistake.

Just so long as the British Fleet holds the command of the sea, Germany's foreign trade is in the paralysing grip of an incubus which cannot be shaken off. In the meantime, all the seas of all the world are free to our ships and our commerce, and, though the volume of world-trade is necessarily diminished by the war, there remains open to British manufacturers an enormous field which has been tilled hitherto mainly by German firms.

We may now ask ourselves whether our business men are taking full advantage of this priceless opportunity offered them for building up and consolidating a commercial position which in the future, when the war is ended, will be strong enough to defy even the substantial attacks of their German competitors. I sincerely wish I could see some evidence of it. I wish I could feel that our business men of England were looking ahead, studying methods and markets, and planning the campaigns which, in the days to come, shall reach their full fruition. But alas! they are not. We heard many empty words, when war broke out, of the war on Germany's trade, but I am very much afraid—and my view is shared by many business acquaintances—that the early enthusiasm of "what we will do" has vanished, and that when the time for decisive action comes we shall be found still relying upon the traditional but fatal policy of "muddling through" which has for so long been typical of British business as well as official methods.

We shall still, I fear, be found clinging to the antiquated and worn-out business principles and stiff conventionalities which, during the past few years, have enabled the German to oust us from markets which for centuries we have been in the habit of regarding as our own peculiar preserves. That, in view of the enormous importance of the commercial warfare of to-day, I believe to be a very real peril.

King George's famous "Wake up, England!" is a cry as necessary to-day as ever. I do not believe Germany will ever be able to pay adequate indemnity for the appalling monetary losses she has brought upon us, and if those losses are to be regained it can only be by the capture of her overseas markets, and the diversion of her overseas profits into British pockets. Shall we seize the opportunity or shall we "muddle through"?

This is not a political book, for I am no politician, and, further, to-day we have no politics—at least of the Radical and Conservative type. "Britain for the Briton" should be our battle-cry. There is one subject, however, which, even though it may appear to touch upon politics, cannot be omitted from our consideration. If the war has taught us many lessons, perhaps the greatest is its splendid demonstration of the essential solidarity of the British Empire. We all know that the German writers have preached the doctrine that the British Empire was as ramshackle a concern as that of Austria-Hungary; that it must fall to pieces at the first shock of war. To-day the British Empire stands before the world linked together, literally, by a bond of steel. From Canada, from Australia, from India, even—despite a jarring note struck by German money—from South Africa, "the well-forged link rings true." Germany to-day is very literally face to face with the British Empire in arms, with resources in men and money to which her own swaggering Empire are relatively puny, and with, I hope and believe, a stern determination no less strong and enduring than her own. The lesson assuredly will not be lost upon her: shall we make sure that it is not lost upon us?