[477] G. B. Stern’s Children of No Man’s Land is a novel of this topic of British nationality in relation to German Jews written with great insight.

[478] The doctrine of nationalities was in reality a legacy of French revolutionary theory. From the men of the First Republic, who found it a useful excuse for a forward foreign policy in the best Richelieu tradition, it passed into the possession of Napoleon, who gave more attention to it at St. Helena than he had ever done at the Tuileries. Thence it came naturally into the political inheritance of Napoleon III, who sacrificed France to his belief in it. Gladstone only got it by a side wind, the theory having drifted into the British tradition by reason of the accident of Canning’s anti-interventionist foreign policy during the Spanish-American War of Independence.—P. G.

[479] This is a paradox to which I cannot subscribe. Please put me down as convinced of the opposite.—E. B.

[480] Albert Thomas in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

[481] There were also hopes of an Italian alliance for France, and these, combined with the anti-Prussian direction of Austrian policy, and the Franco-Russian rapprochement which had followed the Crimean War, almost justified Napoleon in believing that he would not be left entirely alone.—P. G.

[482] Hence “Jingo” for any rabid patriot.

[483] See England’s Debt to India by Lajpat Rai for a good statement of India’s economic grievance.

[484] Now a French Protectorate.—P. G.

[485] See Putnam Weale’s Indiscreet Letters from Pekin, a partly fictitious book, but true and vivid in its effects.

[486] With the exception of one wretched Dutch factory on the minute island of Deshima in the harbour of Nagasaki. The Dutch were exposed to almost unendurable indignities. They had no intercourse with any Japanese except the special officials appointed to deal with them.

[487] A new and much more liberal Maltese constitution was promulgated in June, 1920, practically putting Malta on the footing of a self-governing colony.

[488] All intelligent Englishmen or Englishwomen with a vote owe it to the Empire and themselves to read at least one book dealing with India or Egypt from the native point of view. For India, Lajpat Rai’s Political Future of India is to be recommended. A compact book running counter to the views in this text, and giving the Church missionary point of view, is the Rev. W. E. S. Holland’s Goal of India. William Archer’s India and the Future is an interesting display of the temperamental clash of a Nordic writer with things Dravidian. It sustains the argument that even the most high-minded Nordic type cannot be trusted to govern other races sympathetically. (See also in that matter Archer’s In Afro-America.) The Aga Khan’s India in Transition gives very admirably the views of a liberal Indian gentleman. Sidney Low’s A Vision of India is still not yet superseded as a picture of India in 1905-6, when the present stir was only brewing.

[489] A very good book for the expansion of this chapter is Stearns Davis’ (with Anderson and Tyler) Armed Peace, a history of Europe from 1870 to 1914. Even more illuminating is G. P. Gooch’s History of Our Time (1885-1911). This is quite a tiny book, but very clear and thorough. It was revised in its present form in February, 1914, so that its title is misleading; it comes up to 1914. It contains an excellent student’s bibliography.

[490] See F. M. Hueffer’s able but badly named book, When Blood is their Argument. It gives an admirable account of just how the pressure was applied to the teaching organization.

[491] These quotations are from Sir Thomas Barclay’s article “Peace” in The Encyclopædia Britannica.

[492] St. John Ervine’s novel, Changing Winds, gives a good account of the mentality of this time.

[493] See the various publications of the Irish Dominion League, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. A good recent account of Irish ideas is to be found in Lynd’s Ireland a Nation (1919).

[494] Wilfred Scawen Blunt regards the English remaining in Egypt, when they had pledged themselves to go, as the greatest cause of the troubles that culminated in 1914. To pacify the French over Egypt, England connived at the French occupation of Morocco, which Germany had looked upon as her share of North Africa. Hence Germany’s bristling attitude to France, and the revival in France of the revanche idea, which had died down. See Blunt’s My Diaries, vol. i, September 30th, 1891.—A. C. W.

[495] It should not be forgotten that Italian action against Turkey was precipitated by the granting of a charter by the Sultan to an Austro-German company or syndicate for the “taking over” of the Tripolitaine: a process which could only have ended by the hoisting of the Imperial German flag on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, opposite Italy. Also, that through Morocco the Germans were attempting to undermine the French position in Algeria and Tunis by supplying the Moroccans with arms and money, and inducing them to attack French rule separately in Western Algeria, and even by way of Saharan oases in Southern Tunis. The writer of this note has actually witnessed this process going on between 1898 and 1911. He asserts that, whether from right or wrong motives, Germany forced France to tackle the thorny problem of Morocco. Either she had to do so or prepare for the evacuation of Algeria. France may have made a few mistakes, but she has conferred enormous benefits on North Africa. Under her control the indigenous population has increased remarkably.—H. H. J.

[496] The general reader who wants some picture in his mind of the recent state of Russia should read Ernest Poole’s The Village. Pre-revolutionary Russia is admirably sketched in Maurice Baring’s Mainsprings of Russia, The Russian People, and A Year in Russia. A small, very illuminating book on the Russian revolution is M. H. Barber’s A British Nurse in Bolshevik Russia.

[497] One very good reason for the provisional retention of the Philippines under American control is the certainty that the “Moros,” the Muhammadan peoples of Palawan, and the southern islands of the main groups would proceed to conquer the “Christian” Filipinos, and that after a welter of civil war and destruction, Japan or some other outside power would be appealed to to intervene.—H. H. J.

[498] An unfriendly critic might denounce the treaty-making power of the United States, and the machinery by which it operates, as complicated and cumbersome, ill adapted to the complex demands of international intercourse, slow in action and uncertain in outcome. The requirement of a two-thirds rather than a majority vote in the Senate he might criticize not unjustly as a dubious excess of caution.... Believe me, the American people are like for many years to accomplish through this means their compacts with mankind. The checks and balances by which it is surrounded, the free and full debate which it allows, are in their eyes virtues rather than defects. They rejoice in the fact that all engagements which affect their destinies must be spread upon the public records, and that there is not, and there never can be, a secret treaty binding them either in law or in morals. Looking back upon a diplomatic history which is not without its chapters of success, they feel that on the whole the scheme the fathers builded has served the children well. With a conservatism in matters of government as great perhaps as that of any people in the world, they will suffer much inconvenience and run the risk of occasional misunderstanding before they make a change.—J. W. Davis (U. S. A. Ambassador to Britain), The Treaty Making Power of the United States. (Oxf. Univ. Brit. Am. Club. Paper No. 1.)

[499] I think his policy was quite clear. He said to Germany, “If you bring on war, you must expect England to support France and Russia.” To France and Russia he said: “If you are unreasonable, do not expect England to support you.” He thus brought pressure to bear on both sides.—G. M.

An illuminating book on the causes of the war is Lord Loreburn’s How the War Came.—H. H. J.

[500] Kautsky’s report on the origin of the war.

[501] For the common soldier’s view of the war there is no better book than Le Feu by Barbusse. An illustrated book of great quaintness, beauty, and veracity is André Hellé’s Le Livre des Heures. No other book recalls so completely the feel and effect of the phases of the war. An admirably written and very wise book is Philip Gibbs’ Realities of War. Some light upon the peculiar difference of the fighting of the Great War from any previous warfare will be found in McCurdy’s War Neuroses and Eder’s book on the same subject.

[502] “What mainly was wrong with our generalship was the system which put the High Command into the hands of a group of men belonging to the old school of war, unable by reason of their age and traditions to get away from rigid methods, and to become elastic in face of new conditions. Our Staff College had been hopelessly inefficient in its system of training, if I am justified in forming such an opinion from specimens produced by it, who had the brains of canaries and the manners of Potsdam. There was also a close corporation among the officers of the Regular Army, so that they took the lion’s share of Staff appointments, thus keeping out brilliant young men of the New Armies, whose brain power, to say the least of it, was on a higher level than that of the Sandhurst standard.” Philip Gibbs, Realities of War.

[503] “The smart society of G.H.Q. was best seen at the Officers’ Club at dinnertime. It was as much like musical comedy as any stage setting of war at the Gaiety. The band played rag-time and light music while the warriors fed, and all these generals and staff officers, with their decorations and Army bands, and polished buttons and crossed swords, were waited upon by little W.A.A.C.s., with the G.H.Q. colours tied up in bows on their hair, and khaki stockings under their short skirts, and fancy aprons. Such a chatter! Such bursts of light-hearted laughter! Such whisperings of secrets, of intrigues, and scandals in high places! Such callous-hearted courage when British soldiers were being blown to bits, gassed, blinded, maimed, and shell-shocked in places that were far, so very far, from G.H.Q.”—Phillip Gibbs, The Realities of War.

[504] But see Roch, Mr. Lloyd George and the War, and Arthur’s Life of Lord Kitchener.

[505] “The want of an unlimited quantity of high explosives was a fatal bar to our success.”—The Times, May 14th, 1915.

[506] But compare the British bombardment of Japanese towns noted in Chap. xxxix, § 11. And aeroplane bombs and machine-gun fire have since been used by the British military authorities against Indian village crowds suspected of sedition.

[507] E.g. in hand grenades.

[508] For the flighty incapacity of the British military authorities in this adventure, see Sir Ian Hamilton’s Gallipoli Diary. It is only fair to the British commander to add that the incapacity was that of the home authorities to understand his demands for men and material.—P. G.

[509] See Stern, Tanks 1914-1918. See also Fuller, Tanks in the Great War.

[510] “I found a general opinion among officers and men under the command of the Fifth Army that they had been victims of atrocious staff work, tragic in its consequence. From what I saw of some of the Fifth Army staff officers, I was of the same opinion. Some of these young gentlemen, and some of the elderly officers, were arrogant and supercilious, without revealing any sign of intelligence. If they had wisdom, it was deeply camouflaged by an air of inefficiency. If they had knowledge, they hid it as a secret of their own. General Gough in Flanders, though personally responsible for many tragic happenings, was badly served by some of his subordinates, and battalion officers and divisional staffs raged against the whole of the Fifth Army organization, or lack of organization, with an extreme passion of speech.”—Philip Gibbs, Realities of War.

[511] A very good account of the state of mind of Paris during and after the war is in W. P. Adams’ Paris Sees it Through.

[512] The Times, December 8th, 1919.

[513] Authorities vary between 250,000 and a million houses.

[514] J. M. Keynes, op. cit.

[515] They debauched the currency, i.e. and wasted money recklessly.

[516] Mr. Keynes ignores the fortunes made by deliberately cornering and withholding commodities in a time of shortage.

[517] Among the books consulted here, for this and the two following sections, were Dr. Dillon’s Peace Conference; H. Wilson Harris’s The Peace in the Making and President Wilson, his Problems and his Policy; J. M. Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace; Weyl’s The End of the War; Stallybrass’s Society of States; Brailsford’s A League of Nations; F. C. Howe’s Why War? L. S. Woolf’s International Government; J. A. Hobson’s Towards International Government; Lowes Dickinson’s The Choice before Us; Sir Walter Phillimore’s Three Centuries of Treaties, and C. E. Fayle’s Great Settlement.

[518] “The Allied Governments,” the effective passage ran, “have given careful consideration to the correspondence which has passed between the President of the United States and the German Government. Subject to the qualifications which follow, they declare their readiness to make peace with the Government of Germany on the terms of peace laid down in the President’s Address to Congress of January 8th, 1918, and the principles of settlement enunciated in his subsequent Addresses.”

(Note transmitted to the German Government by the Allies through the Swiss Minister on November 5th, 1918.)

[519] In his book, The Peace Conference.

[520] Dillon.

[521] Dillon. And see his The Peace Conference, Chapter III, for instances of the amazing ignorance of various delegates.

[522] See Clemenceau, by C. Ducray.

[523] He wrote several novels. They are not very good novels; they incline to sentimental melodrama. Le Plus Fort is now available to English readers in a translation under the title of “The Stronger.” It is tawdry and dull. A cinematograph version has been shown.

[524] Keynes.

[525] Checked by subsequent comparison with the published article in the Jour. of the Roy. United Service Institution, vol. lxv., No. 457, February, 1920.

[526] Cp. Psalm cxxxvi.

[527] Here is another glimpse of the agreeable dreams that fill the contemporary military mind. It is from Fuller’s recently published Tanks in the Great War. Colonel Fuller does not share that hostility to tanks characteristic of the older type of soldier. In the next war, he tells us: “Fast-moving tanks, equipped with tons of liquid gas ... will cross the frontier and obliterate every living thing in the fields and farms, the villages, and cities of the enemy’s country. Whilst life is being swept away around the frontier, fleets of aeroplanes will attack the enemy’s great industrial and governing centres. All these attacks will be made, at first, not against the enemy’s army ... but against the civil population, in order to compel it to accept the will of the attacker.”

For a good, well-balanced account of what modern war really means, see Philip Gibbs, Realities of War, already cited in two footnotes to § 8.

[528] A suggestive book here containing a good account of the drift of modern religious thought is G. W. Cooke’s Social Evolution of Religion.

[529] Compare Basil Thompson, The Fijians, a Study of the Decay of Custom; Introduction and opening chapters. This is a fine study of an ancient “heliolithic” culture breaking up under modernization.