Armageddon-And After

the Divine. There, too, with all the imagery usual in Apocalyptic literature, is to be found a description of vague and confused fighting, when most of the Kings of the earth come together to fight

dern assemblage of troops in which nearly all the kingdoms of the earth have to play their part, with few, and not very important, exceptions. It is almost absurd to speak of the events of the past three months as though they were merely incidents in a great and important campaign. There is nothing in history like them s

ssal U

and the world which of the ideas is eventually conqueror. Supposing the German invasion of France ends in failure; that, clearly, will not finish the war. Supposing even that Berlin is taken by the Russians, we cannot affirm that so great an event will necessarily complete the campaign. The whole of Germany will have to be invaded and subdued, and that is a process which will take a very long time even under the most favourable auspices. Or take the opposite hypothesis. Let us suppose that the Germans capture Paris, and manage by forced marches to defend their country against the Muscovite incursion. Even so, nothing is accomplished of a lasting character. France will go on fighting as she did after 1870, and we shall be found at her side. Or, assuming the worst hypothesis of all, that France lies prostrate under the heel of her German conqueror, does any one suppose that Great Britain will desist from fighting? We know perfectly well that, with the aid of ou

ently joine

r Ag

st we have war as the only solution of national differences. Never again must all the arts of peace be suspended while Europe rings to the tramp of armed millions. Never again must spiritual, moral, artistic culture be submerged under a wave of barbarism. Never again must the Ruler of this Universe be addressed as the "God of battles." Never again shall a new Wordsworth hail "carnage" as "God's daughter." The illogicality of it all is too patent. That everything which we respect and revere in the way of science or thought, or culture, or music, o

pect

dity. We were a little too hasty in our judgments. It is clear that a single determined man, if he is powerful enough, may embroil Europe. However destructive modern armaments may be, and however costly a campaign may prove, yet there are men who will face the cost and confront the wholesale destruction of life that modern warfare entails. How pitiful it is, how strange also, to look back upon the solemn asseveration of the Kaiser and the Tsar, not so many months ago (Port Baltic, July 1912), that the division of Europe into the two great confederations known as the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente provided a safeguard against hos

and Ulti

evalent in Germany. Ulterior antecedent conditions are to be found in the changing history of European States and their mutual relations in the last quarter of a century; the ambition of Germany to create an Imperial fleet; the ambition of Germany to have "a place in the sun" and become a large colonial power; the formation of a Triple Entente following on the formation of a Triple Alliance; the rivalry between Teuton and Slav; and the mutations of diplomacy and Real-politik. It is not always possible to keep the two sets of causes, the recent and the ulterior, separate, for they naturally tend either to overlap or to i

an Dic

on of leagues and confederations against him. The only thing, however, which seems to have any power of real resistance to the potential tyrant is not the man?uvring of diplomats, but the steady growth of democracy in Europe, which, in virtue of its character and principles, steadily objects to the despotism of any given individual, and the arbitrary designs of a personal will. We had hoped that the spread of democracies in all European nations would progressively render dynastic wars an impossibility. The peoples would cry out, we hoped, against being butchered

rsonal

ld flourish mainly because it developed its internal industries as well as paid attention to its agriculture, and secured its somewhat perilous position in the centre of Europe by skilful diplomatic means of sowing dissension amongst its neighbours. Thus Bismarck discouraged colonial extensions. He thought they might weaken Germany. On the other hand, he encouraged French colonial policy, because he thought it would divert the French from their preoccupation with the idea of revanche. He played, more or less successfully, with England, sometimes tempting her with plausible

er W

t the "drag" of Teutonic development is "towards the East." The reality and imminence of "a yellow peril" was another of his devices for stimulating the efforts of his countrymen. Thus the new policy was expansion, evolution as a world-power, colonisation; and each in turn brought him up against the older arrangement of European Powers. His colonial policy, especially in Africa, led to collisions with both France and Great Britain. The building of the fleet, the Kiel Canal, and other details of maritime policy naturally made England very suspicious, while the steady drag towards the East rendered wholly unavoidable the conflict between Teutonism and the Slav races.

has now joi

ressiv

é resigned in June 1905. The Conference of Alge?iras was held in January 1906, in which Austria proved herself "a brilliant second" to Germany. Two years afterwards, in 1908, came still further proofs of Germany's ambition. Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. Russia immediately protested; so did most of the other Great Powers. But Germany at once took up the Austrian cause, and stood "in shining armour" side by side with her ally. Inasmuch as Russia was, in 1908, only just recovering from the effects of her disastrous war with Japan, and was therefore in no condition to take the offensive, the Triple Alliance gained a distinct victory. Three years later occurred another striking event. In July 1911 the world was startled by the news that the German gunboat Panther, joined shortly afterwards by the cruiser Berlin, had been sent to Agadir. Clearly Berlin intended to reopen the whole Moroccan question, and the tension between the Powers was for some time acute. Nor did Mr. Lloyd George make it much better

ita

pursue preparations for war. Hence the best men in the State are the fighting men. Ethics and religion, so far as they deprecate fighting and plead for peace, are absolutely pernicious. Culture does not mean, as we hoped and thought, the best development of scientific and artistic enlightenment, but merely an all-absorbing will-power, an all-devouring ambition to be on the top and to crush every one else. The assumption throughout is that the German is the highest specimen of humanity. Germany is especially qualified to be the leader, and the only way in which it can become the leader is to have such overwhelming military power that no one has any chance of resisting. Moreover, all methods are justified in the sacred cause of German culture-duplicity, violence, the deliberate sowing of dissensions

ld-Power or Downfall." Other works which may be consulted are Professor J.A. Cr

ls of A

Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. "The great Eltchi," as he was called, was our Ambassador at Constantinople, a man of uncommon strength of will, which, as is often the case with these powerful natures, not infrequently degenerated into sheer obstinacy. He had made up his mind that England was to support Turkey and fight with Russia, and inasmuch as Louis Napoleon, for the sake of personal glory, had similar opinions, France as well as England was dragged into a costly and quite useless war. Napoleon III has already figured among those aspiring monarchs who wish "to sit in the chair of Europe." It was his personal will once more which sent the unhappy Maximilian to his death in Mexico, and his personal jealousy of Prussia which launched him in the fatal enterprise "à Berlin" in 1870. In the latter case we find another personal influence, still more sinister-that of the Empress Eugénie, whose capricious ambition and interference in military matters directly led to the ruinous disaster of Sedan. The French people, who had to suffer, discovered it too late. "Quicquid delirant reges

litary

thing from an oblique and perverted point of view. They regard nations, not as peaceful communities of citizens, but as material to be worked up into armies. Their assumption is that war, being an indelible feature in the history of our common humanity, must be ceaselessly prepared for by the piling up of huge armaments and weapons of destruction. Their invariable motto is that if you wish for peace you must prepare for war-"si vis pacem, para bellum"-a notoriously false apophthegm, because armaments are provocative, not soothing, and the man who is a swash-buckler invites attack. It is needless to say that thousands of military men do not belong to this category: no one dreads war so much as the man who knows what it means. I am not speaking of individuals, I am speaking of a particular caste, military officials in the abstract, if you like to put it so,

her to the disastrous second Balkan war, and the Military

lom

uals. But if we look back over the history of recent years, we shall discover that diplomacy has not fulfilled its especial mission. According to a well-known cynical dictum a diplomatist is a man who is paid to lie for his country. And, indeed, it is one of the least gracious aspects of the diplomatic career that it seems necessarily to involve the use of a certain amount of chicanery and falsehood, the object being to jockey opponents by means of skilful ruses into a position in which they find themselves at a disadvantage. Clearly, however, the

ce of

nt by a Balance of Power, we shall see that it presupposes certain conditions of animosity and attempts to neutralise them by the exhibition of superior or, at all events, equivalent forces. A Balance of Power in the continental system assumes, for all practical purposes, that the nations of Europe are ready to fly at each other's throats, and that the only way to deter them is to make them realise how extremely perilous to themselves would be any such military enterprise. Can any one doubt that this is the real meaning of the phrase? If we listen to the Delphic oracles of diplomacy on this subject of the Balance of Power, we shall understand that in nine cases out of ten a man invoking this phrase means that he wants the Balance of Power to be favourable to himself. It is not so much an exact equipoise that he desires, as a certain tendency of the scales to dip in his direction. If Germany feels herself weak she not

e of

seas; partly because we could not remain alien from those social and economic interests which necessarily link our career with continental nations. So we became part of the continental system, and it became necessary for us to choose friends and partners and mark off other peoples as our enemies. It might have been possible a certain number of years ago for us to join the Triple Alliance. At one time Prince Bülow seemed anxious that we should do so, and Mr. Chamberlain on our side was by no means unwilling. But gradually we discovered that Germany was intensely jealous of us as a colonial power and as a great sea-power, and for this reason, as well as for others, we preferred to compose our ancient differences with France and prom

by H.N. Brailsford (Bell)-opening

e or C

a process which, clearly, does not make for peace. I should imagine that the best of diplomatists are quite aware of this. Indeed, there seems reason to suppose that Sir Edward Grey, owing to definite experience in the last two years, not only discovered the uselessness of the principle of a Balance of Power, but did his best to substitute something entirely different-the Concert of Europe. All the negotiations he conducted during and after the two Balkan wars, his constant effort to summon London Conferences and other things, were

of Forei

th foreign concerns. In Great Britain there is nothing of the kind. Parliament has practically no control whatsoever over foreign affairs, it is not even consulted in the formation of treaties and arrangements with other nations. Nor yet has the Cabinet any real control, because it must act together as a whole, and a determined criticism of a foreign secretary means the resignation of the Government. Fortunately, our diplomacy has been left for the most part in very able hands. Nevertheless, it is surely a paradox that the English people should know so little about foreign