When Peace Is Seriously Desired
By Arnold Bennett.
From The Daily News of London.
When peace is seriously desired in any quarter, the questions to be discussed by the plenipotentaries will fall into three groups:
1. Those which affect all Europe.
2. Those which chiefly affect Western Europe.
3. Those which chiefly affect Eastern Europe.
The first group is, of course, the most important, both practically and sentimentally. And the main question in it is the question of Belgium. The original cause of the war was Germany's deliberate and advertised bellicosity, and it might be thought that the first aim of peace would be by some means to extinguish that bellicosity. But relative values may change during the progress of a war, and the question of Belgium—which means the question of the sanction of international pledges—now stands higher in the general view than the question of disarmament. Germany has outraged the public law of Europe, and she has followed up her outrage with a series of the most cowardly and wanton crimes. She ought to pay, and she ought to apologize. Only by German payment and German apology can international law be vindicated. Germany should pay a sum large enough to do everything that money can do toward the re-establishment of Belgium's well-being. I have no competence to suggest the amount of the indemnity. A hundred million pounds does not appear to me too large.
Then the apology. It may be asked: Why an apology? Would not an apology be implied in the payment of an indemnity?
It is undeniable that Germany is now directed by hysteric stupidity wielding a bludgeon. Granted, if you will, that half the nation is at heart against the stupidity and the bludgeon. So much the worse for the half. Citizens who have not had the wit to get rid of the Prussian franchise law must accept all the consequences of their political ineffectiveness. The peacemakers will not be able to divide Germany into two halves.
For Potsdam a first-rate spectacular effect is needed, and that effect would best be produced by a German national apology carried by a diplomatic mission with ceremony to Brussels and published in all German official papers, and emphasized by a procession of Belgian troops down Unter den Linden. This visible abasement of German arms in front of the Socialists of Berlin would be an invaluable aid to the breaking of military tyranny in Prussia.
So much for the Belgium question and the sanction of international pledges. The other question affecting the whole of Europe is the hope of a universal limitation of armaments. But there is a particular question, touching France, which in practice would come before that. I mean Alsace-Lorraine. Unless Germany conquers Europe, Alsace-Lorraine should be restored to France. A profound national sentiment, to which all conceivable considerations of expediency or ultimate advantage are unimportant, demands imperatively the return of the plunder. And in the councils of the Allies, either alone or with German representatives, the attitude of French diplomacy would be: "Is it clear about Alsace-Lorraine? If so, we may proceed. If not, it's no use going any further."
Question of Armaments.
We now come to armaments. I have seen it suggested that the destruction of Essen, Wilhelmshaven, and Heligoland ought to be a condition of peace with Germany. Certainly the disappearance of these phenomena would be a gain {98}to the world. So would the disappearance of Rosyth and Toulon. It seems to me, however, very improbable that their destruction or dismantling by international command would occur after hostilities have ceased, or could usefully so occur. If the French Army on its way to Berlin can treat the Krupp factory as the German Army on its way to Paris treated Rheims Cathedral, well and good! In fact, most excellent! And if the British Navy can somehow emasculate Wilhelmshaven and Heligoland I shall not complain that its behavior has been purely doctrinaire. But otherwise I see nothing practical in the Essen-Wilhelmshaven-Heligoland suggestion. Nor in the project for dethroning the Kaiser and sending him and his eldest son to settle their differences in St. Helena! The Kaiser—happily—is not a Napoleon, nor has he yet himself accomplished anything big enough or base enough to merit Napoleon's fate. Any dethroning that may enliven the gray monotony of the post-bellum era at Potsdam should and will be done by the German soldiers themselves. Even in international politics it is futile to try to meddle in other people's private affairs.
Disarmament in Germany can be achieved by the exercise of one principle, and one principle only. That principle is the principle of mutuality. A scheme in which every nation will proportionately share should be presented to Germany, and she should be respectfully but quite firmly asked to participate in it. There would be no sense in saying to Germany: "You must disarm." The magic words would be: "We are going to disarm, and so are you, whether you want to or not." As to the procedure of disarmament—whether it shall be slow or fast, whether it shall include destruction or be content with mere omission to renew, how the proportions shall be decided, who shall give the signal to begin—here are matters which I am without skill or desire to discuss. All I know about them is that they are horribly complicated, unprecedentedly difficult, and bursting with danger; and that they will strain the wisdom, patience, and ingenuity of the negotiators to the very utmost.
Three Vital Points.
Compared to disarmament, all remaining questions whatsoever affecting peace are simple and secondary. Indemnities for France or Russia, or both, a Polish Kingdom, a Balkan United States, the precise number of nations into which Austria-Hungary is to be shattered, the ownership of the east coast of the Adriatic, even the reparation of the infamy by which Denmark was robbed of Schleswig-Holstein—what are these but favorable ground for the art of compromise? The vital points, at any rate for us Westerners, are only three: Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and disarmament. * * * Stay, there is another. It is vital to Great Britain's reputation that she should accept nothing—neither indemnity, nor colonies; not a single pound, not a single square mile.
Many persons, I gather, find it hard to believe that Prussia will ever admit that she is beaten or consent to her own humiliation. Naturally her conduct will depend upon the degree to which she is beaten. She has admitted defeat and swallowed the leek before, though it is a long time ago. Meanwhile she has forgotten, and her opponents seem to have forgotten also, that though her name is Prussia she is subject to the limitations of the human race. Out of her prodigious score off little Denmark, her thrashing of Austria—a country which never wins a war—and her victory over France, there grew a legend that Prussia, and therefore Germany, was not as other nations. This legend is contrary to fact. Every nation must yield to force—here, indeed, is Germany's contribution to our common knowledge.
If in July, 1870, it had been prophesied that France would give up Alsace-Lorraine and pay two hundred millions to get rid of a foreign army of occupation, France would have protested that she would fight to the last man and to the last franc first. But nations don't do these things. If Germany won {99}the present war and fulfilled her dream of establishing an army in this island, we should yield, and we should submit to her terms, we who have never been beaten save by our own colonies—that is a scientific certainty. And Germany's terms would not be amusing; in their terribleness they would outrun our poor Anglo-Saxon imagination. Similarly, if Germany is beaten, she will bow the head, and to precisely the extent to which she is walloped. We need not worry about that. Were she recalcitrant we need not even murmur in her ear: "What would you have extorted if you'd won?" A gesture of the still uplifted sword would suffice to convince her that facts are facts.
Assuming that the tide turns not again, the chances of a thorough, workmanlike common sense peace can only be imperiled by one thing—the deep desire of France and of Belgium for repose and recuperation. We in England do not know what war is. We have not lived in hell. Our plains have not been devastated, nor our women and children shot, nor our ears deafened by the boom of cannon, nor our cathedrals shelled, nor our land turned into a vast and bloody hospital; and we have not experienced the appalling terror and shame of the foe's absolute dominion in our streets and lanes. We have suffered; we shall suffer; but our suffering is nought and less than nought weighed against the suffering on the Continent. Why, in the midst of a war of unparalleled horror, we grumble if a train is late! We can talk calmly of fighting Germany to a stand-still, even if the job takes two years, and it behooves us to talk so, and to prepare for the task; and for myself I am convinced that we could make good the word. But France and Belgium will not use that tone, if Russia does. Once the German armies are across the frontiers, the instinctive pressure in favor of peace would be enormous, and considerations of the distant future, of the welfare of our descendants and the progress of mankind, would count little in the scale. In that moment, if it happily comes, our part and Russia's would be to sustain and encourage and salve the supreme victims of fate. A tremendous factor in our favor would be the exhaustion of Germany; and the measure of our power and of the fear we inspire is the furious intensity of Germany's anger against our inconvenient selves. Without us the war could not last beyond the end of this year, and the peace would be unsatisfactory.
And even with us, insisting on our own terms of reconciliation, I do not see how it can last over six months more on anything like the present scale, for the Kaiser, despite his kinship with Deity, can neither create men nor extract gold coins out of an empty hat. Military arguments, in Germany as elsewhere, hold good only for a certain period.
17.3. Save this (saved only for) for notes for Project on WWI. Louis Sheehan.
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