The Crime Against Europe Part 1

The Crime Against Europe.

by Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt.

INTRODUCTION.

The reader must remember that these articles were written before the war began. They are in a sense prophetic and show a remarkable understanding of the conditions which brought about the present great war in Europe.

The writer has made European history a life study and his training in the English consular service placed him in a position to secure the facts upon which he bases his arguments.

Sir Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt was born in Ireland in September, 1864. He was made consul to Lorenzo Marques in 1889, being transferred to a similar post in the Portuguese Possessions in West Africa, which included the consulate to the Gaboon and the Congo Free State. He held this post from 1898 to 1905, when he was given the consulate of Santos. The following year he was appointed consul to Hayti and San Domingo, but did not proceed, going instead to Para, where he served until 1909, when he became consul-general to Rio de Janeiro. He was created a knight in 1911.

He was one of the organizers of the Irish Volunteers at Dublin in November, 1913, being one of their provisional committee. At present he is a member of the governing body of that organization. He spent the summer of this year in the United States. Sir Roger is at present in Berlin, where, after a visit paid to the foreign office by him, the German Chancellor caused to be issued the statement that "should the German forces reach the sh.o.r.es of Ireland they would come not as conquerors but as friends."

Sir Roger is well known for his investigation into the Putomayo rubber district atrocities in 1912.

December, 1914.

Chapter I

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR AND THE FOUNDATION OF PEACE

Since the war, foreshadowed in these pages, has come and finds public opinion in America gravely shocked at a war it believes to be solely due to certain phases of European militarism, the writer is now persuaded to publish these articles, which at least have the merit of having been written well before the event, in the hope that they may furnish a more useful point of view. For if one thing is certain it is that European militarism is no more the cause of this war than of any previous war. Europe is not fighting to see who has the best army, or to test mere military efficiency, but because certain peoples wish certain things and are determined to get and keep them by an appeal to force. If the armies and fleets were small the war would have broken out just the same, the parties and their claims, intentions, and positions being what they are. To find the causes of the war we must seek the motives of the combatants, and if we would have a lasting peace the foundations upon which to build it must be laid bare by revealing those foundations on which the peace was broken. To find the causes of the war we should turn not to Blue Books or White Papers, giving carefully selected statements of those responsible for concealing from the public the true issues that move nations to attack each other, but should seek the unavowed aims of those nations themselves.

Once the motive is found it is not hard to say who it is that broke the peace, whatever the diplomats may put forward in lieu of the real reason.

The war was, in truth, inevitable, and was made inevitable years ago.

It was not brought about through the faults or temper of Sovereigns or their diplomats, not because there were great armies in Europe, but because certain Powers, and one Power in particular, nourished ambitions and a.s.serted claims that involved not only ever increasing armaments but insured ever increasing animosities. In these cases peace, if permitted, would have dissipated the ambitions and upset claims, so it was only a question of time and opportunity when those whose aims required war would find occasion to bring it about.

As Mr. Bernard Shaw put it, in a recent letter to the press: "After having done all in our power to render war inevitable it is no use now to beg people not to make a disturbance, but to come to London to be kindly but firmly spoken to by Sir Edward Grey."

To find the motive powerful enough to have plunged all Europe into war in the short s.p.a.ce of a few hours, we must seek it, not in the pages of a "white paper" covering a period of only fifteen days (July 20th to August 4th, 1914), but in the long anterior activities that led the great Powers of Europe into definite commitments to each other. For the purposes of this investigation we can eliminate at once three of the actual combatants, as being merely "accessories after the fact,"

viz.:--Servia, Belgium and j.a.pan, and confine our study of the causes of the conflict to the aims and motives of the five princ.i.p.al combatants. For it is clear that in the quarrel between Servia and Austria, Hungary is only a side issue of the larger question that divides Europe into armed camps. Were categoric proof sought of how small a part the quarrel between Vienna and Belgrade played in the larger tragedy, it can be found in the urgent insistence of the Russian Government itself in the very beginning of the diplomatic conversations that preceded the outbreak of hostilities.

As early as the 24th of July, the Russian Government sought to prevail upon Great Britain to proclaim its complete solidarity with Russia and France, and on the British Amba.s.sador in St. Petersburg pointing out that "direct British interests in Servia were nil, and a war on behalf of that country would never be sanctioned by British public opinion,"

the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs replied that "we must not forget that the _general European_ question was involved, the Servian question being but a part of the former, and that Great Britain could not afford to efface herself from the problem _now at issue_."

(Despatch of Sir G. Buchanan to Sir E. Grey, 24th July, 1914).

Those problems involved far mightier questions than the relations of Servia to Austria, the neutrality of Belgium or the wish of j.a.pan to keep the peace of the East by seizing Kiao-Chau.

The neutrality never became a war issue until long after war had been decided on and had actually broken out; while j.a.pan came into the contest solely because Europe had obligingly provided one, and because one European power preferred, for its own ends, to strengthen an Asiatic race to seeing a kindred white people it feared grow stronger in the sun.

Coming then to the five great combatants, we can quickly reduce them to four. Austria-Hungary and Germany in this war are indivisible.

While each may have varying aims on many points and ambitions that, perhaps, widely diverge both have one common bond, self-preservation, that binds them much more closely together than mere formal "allies."

In this war Austria fights of necessity as a Germanic Power, although the challenge to her has been on the ground of her Slav obligations and activities. Germany is compelled to support Austria by a law of necessity that a glance at the map of Europe explains. Hence, for the purpose of the argument, we may put the conflict as between the Germanic peoples of Central Europe and those who have quarreled with them.

We thus arrive at the question, "why should such strangely consorted allies as England, Russia and France be at war with the German people?"

The answer is not to be found in the White Book, or in any statement publicly put forward by Great Britain, Russia or France.

But the answer must be found, if we would find the causes of the war, and if we would hope to erect any lasting peace on the ruins of this world conflict.

To accept, as an explanation of the war the statement that Germany has a highly trained army she has not used for nearly half a century and that her people are so obsessed with admiration for it that they longed to test it on their neighbours, is to accept as an explanation a stultifying contradiction. It is of course much easier to put the blame on the Kaiser. This line of thought is highly popular: it accords, too, with a fine vulgar instinct.

The German people can be spared the odium of responsibility for a war they clearly did nothing to provoke, by representing them as the victims of an autocracy, cased in mail and beyond their control.

We thus arrive at "the real crime against Germany," which explains everything but the thing it set out to explain. It leaves unexplained the real crime against Europe.

To explain the causes of the war we must find the causes of the alliances of England, France and Russia against Germany.

For the cause of the war is that alliance--that and nothing else. The defence of the _Entente Cordiale_ is that it is an innocent pact of friendship, designed only to meet the threat of the Triple Alliance.

But the answer to that is that whereas the Triple Alliance was formed thirty years ago, it has never declared war on anyone, while the _Triple Entente_ before it is eight years old has involved Europe, America, Africa, and Asia in a world conflict. We must find the motive for England allying herself with France and Russia in an admittedly anti-German "understanding" if we would understand the causes of the present war and why it is that many besides Bernard Shaw hold that "after having done all in our power to render war inevitable" it was idle for the British Government to a.s.sume a death-bed solicitude for peace, having already dug its grave and cast aside the shovel for the gun. When that motive is apparent we shall realise who it was preferred war to peace and how impossible it is to hope for any certain peace ensuing from the victory of those who ensured an appeal to arms.

The _Entente Cordiale_, to begin with, is unnatural. There is nothing in common between the parties to it, save antagonism to someone else. It is wrongly named. It is founded not on predilections but on prejudices--not on affection but on animosity. To put it crudely it is a bond of hate not of love. None of the parties to it like or admire each other, or have consistent aims, save one.

That satisfied, they will surely fall out among themselves, and the greater the plunder derived from their victory the more certain their ensuing quarrel.

Great Britain, in her dealings with most white people (not with all) is a democracy.

Russia in her dealings with all, is an autocracy.

Great Britain is democratic in her government of herself and in her dealings with the great white communities of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. She is not democratic in her dealings with subject races within the Empire--the Indians, notably, or the Irish.

To the Indians her rule is that of an absentee autocracy, differing in speech, colour, religion and culture from those submitted to it by force; to the Irish that of a resident autocracy bent on eliminating the people governed from residence in their own country, and replacing them with cattle for British consumption.

In both instances Britain is notably false to her professions of devotion to democratic principles. Her affinity with Russia is found then, not in the cases where her inst.i.tutions are good, but in those where they are bad.

An alliance founded on such grounds of contact can only produce evil.

To such it gave birth in Persia, to such it must give birth in the present war.

In Persia we saw it betray the principles of democratic government, destroy an infant const.i.tution and disembowel the const.i.tutionalists, whilst it divided their country into "spheres of influence" and to-day we see it harvesting with hands yet red with the blood of Persian patriots the redder fruit of the seed then sown.

The alliance with France, while more natural than that with Russia if we regard Great Britain as a democracy (by eliminating India, Egypt, Ireland) had the same guilty end in view, and rests less on affinity of aims than on affinity of antipathies.

The _Entente Cordiale_, the more closely we inspect it, we find is based not on a cordial regard of the parties to it for each other, but on a cordial disregard all three partic.i.p.ants share for the party it is aimed against.

It will be said that Germany must have done something to justify the resentment that could bring about so strangely a.s.sorted a combination against herself. What has been the crime of Germany against the powers now a.s.sailing her? She has doubtless committed many crimes, as have all the great powers, but in what respect has she so grievously sinned against Europe that the Czar, the Emperor of India, the King of Great Britain and Ireland, the Mikado and the President of the French Republic--to say nothing of those minor potentates who like Voltaire's minor prophets seem _capable de tout_--should now be pledged, by irrevocable pact, to her destruction as a great power?

"German militarism," the reply that springs to the lips, is no more a threat to civilisation than French or Russian militarism. It was born, not of wars of aggression, but of wars of defence and unification.

Since it was welded by blood and iron into the great human organism of the last forty years it has not been employed beyond the frontiers of Germany until last year.

Can the same be said of Russian militarism or of French militarism or of British navalism?

We are told the things differ in quality. The answer is what about the intent and the uses made. German militarism has kept peace and has not emerged beyond its own frontier until threatened with universal attack. Russian militarism has waged wars abroad, far beyond the confines of Russian territory; French militarism, since it was overthrown at Sedan, has carried fire and sword across all Northern Africa, has penetrated from the Atlantic to the Nile, has raided Tonquin, Siam, Madagascar, Morocco, while English navalism in the last forty years has bombarded the coast lines, battered the ports, and landed raiding parties throughout Asia and Africa, to say nothing of the well nigh continuous campaigns of annexation of the British army in India, Burma, South Africa, Egypt, Tibet, or Afghanistan, within the same period.