Before the War

IL

I have given my own view of why they won in the tremendous struggle that now belongs

risk which in the end was to prove disastrous. No one here wanted to ruin her, no one who counted seriously in this country. And if we did not want to, no more in reality did France or Russia. She brought her fate on her head by the unwisdom of her methods. But her people hardly desired the dangers of unnecessary war, and her rulers dared not have ventured these dangers had they not first of all prea

It is more than unlikely that they will recur in our time. But it is none the less worth

will play a part in the great world effort for permanent peace and for reconstruction they will be welcomed to the brotherhood of nations. The individual German citizen is more like the individu

ur people over their dead, over the lives that were laid down for the nation from the highest kind of inspiration, will keep the public mind fixed on this conclusion. And so will the waste and misery to the whole world which an unnecessary war has brought in its train. But presently we shall ask ourselves, in moments of reflection, whether this ought to be our final word, and also, perhap

onditions of existence. At present despair is threatening them. Their estimate is that the crushing burden of the terms of peace, if carried out to their full possibilities, bars them from the prospect of a better future. Their o

atens the future safety of the world it is not wise to press it to its extreme consequences. We have to work toward a better state of things than that which is promised to-day. We have never hitherto kept up old animosities unduly long, and that has been one of the secrets of our strength in the world. The lessons of history point to the expediency of trying to heal instead of to keep open the wound which exists. Those

ease to dwell on the past in this case, just as we have ceased in the cases of the French, th

he story to which they relate should place on record what they saw. But the whole story in its fulness is beyond the knowledge of anyone of our time. The history of the world is, as has been said, the judgment of the world. It is therefore only after an interval that it can be sufficiently written. The ultimate and real origin of this war, the g

marck had brought it to unexampled success in things material. There are not wanting indications that he himself had the sense of the necessity of great caution in pursuing this policy farther, and felt that it could not

s world, a share of which they were more worthy and for which they were better organized than any other. But it is also true that we here thought that we ourselves were entitled to a great deal to which other people did not admit our moral title. It was not only Germany that was lacking in imagination. No doubt many Germans had the idea that we wished to hem them in and that we did not like them. Our failure to make ourselves understood left them not without reason for this belief. But dislike of Germany was not the attitude of the great mass of sober and God-fearing Englishmen, and I do not believe that the counter-attitude was that of the bulk of sober and God-fearing Germans. They and we alike mutually misjudged each ot

arn how we came to present, more than a hundred years later, difficulties to the Germans not wholly unlike those which they presented to us. No mere record of the dry facts will be enough to render this intelligible in its full significance. The historian who is to carry conviction must do more than present

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a history constructed by a single man on the methods of the physicist is a delusion. The best that the great historian can do is to present the details in the light of the spirit of the period of which he is writing, and in order that he may present his narrative aright, as his mind has reconstructed it, he must estimate his details in the order in importance that was actually theirs. Now for this the balance and the measuring rod do not suffice. Quality counts as much as does quantity in determining importance. What is merely inert and mechanical is the subject neither of the artist nor the historian. It is, of course, necessary that by close and exact research the materials should first of all be collected and

nd assemble facts and personal impressions with as great care as we can. The whole truth we can not bring out or estimate until the later period, alt

t was a violent uprising against, not Louis XVI., but a Louis XIV. What France really made her great Revolution to bring about was the establishment of a Constitution. Horrible deeds were perpetrated in the name of Liberty, but it was not due to any horrible national spirit that they were perpetrated. France was responsible no doubt for the deeds of the men who

in the end of the eighteenth century taken an exaggerated view of the French state of mind. We now realize that even so great a man as Burke mistook a fra

it was miscalculation about the likelihood of securing peace by a determined attitude that led to disaster. It is certain that the German Government was deeply responsible for the consequences. In the face of its traditional policy and of utterances that came from Berlin the members of that Government can not plead a mere blunder. None the less, a great deal may have been due to sheer ineptitude in estimating human nature. How much this was so, or how much an immoral tradition had its natural results, we can not as yet fully tell, for we have not the whole of the records before us. N

ussia and Great Britain was found to be required for safety if the tendency to dominate of the Triple Alliance was to be held in check. But in that case, and probably in every other case, reliance on the principle could only be admissible for self-protection and never for the mere exhibition of the power of the sword. If the principle is resorted to with the latter object the group that is suspected of aggressive intentions will by degrees find itself confronted with another group of nat

ich were ours for more than one generation, the history of the Channel fortifications, of the Volunteer force and of several other great and often costly institutions, bears witness. Let us therefore take thought while there is time to do so. We do not wish to see repeated anything analogous to our former experience. The one thing that can avert it is the spirit in which a League of Nations has been brought to birth. That spirit alone can preclude the gradual nascence of desire to call into existence a new balance of power. It is not enough to tell Germany and Austria that if they behave well they will be admitted to the League of Nations. What really matters is the feeling and manner in which the invitation is given, and an obvious sincerity in the desire that they should work with us as equals in a

is enough to repeat that the question is not one simply of the letter of a treaty but is one of the spirit in which it is made. Conditions change in this world with a rapidity that is often startling. The fashion

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