A Short History of the Great War | Page 7

pacific second to her Austrian friend, and cut the web of
argument by an ultimatum to Russia on the 31st. Fear lest the
diplomatists should baulk them of their war had already led the German
militarists to publish in their press the unauthorized news of a complete
German mobilization, and on 1-2 August German armies crossed the
frontiers. It was not till some days later that war was declared between
Austria and any of the Allies; the war from first to last was made in
Germany.
Throughout that week-end the British Cabinet remained in anxious
conclave. The Unionist leaders early assured it of their support in any
measures they might think fit to take to vindicate Great Britain's honour
and obligations; but they could not relieve it of its own responsibility,
and the question did not seem as easy to answer as it has done since the
conduct of Germany and the nature of her ambitions have been
revealed. A purely Balkan conflict did not appear to be an issue on
which to stake the fortunes of the British Empire. We were not even
bound to intervene in a trial of strength between the Central Empires
and Russia and France, for on 1 August Italy decided that the action of
the Central Empires was aggressive and that therefore she was not
required by the Triple Alliance to participate. There had in the past
been a tendency on the part of France to use both the Russian alliance
and English friendship for purposes in Morocco and elsewhere which
had not been quite relished in England; and intervention in continental
wars between two balanced alliances would have found few friends but
for recent German chauvinism. It might well seem that in the absence
of definite obligations and after having exhausted all means of averting
war, Great Britain was entitled to maintain an attitude of benevolent
neutrality, reserving her efforts for a later period when better prepared
she might intervene with greater effect between the exhausted
belligerents.
Such arguments, if they were used, were swept aside by indignation at
Germany's conduct. Doubts might exist of the purely defensive
intentions of France and Russia; each State had its ultra-patriots who

had done their best to give away their country's case; and if Russia was
suspect of Panslavist ambition, France was accused of building up a
colonial empire in North Africa in order to throw millions of coloured
troops into the scale for the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine. But no such
charge could be brought against Belgium. She had no interest and no
intention but to live in peace with her neighbours, and that peace had
been guaranteed her by international contract. If such a title to peace
was insecure there could be no security for the world and nothing but
subservience for little nations. The public sense which for a century had
been accustomed to welcome national independence wherever it raised
its head--in Greece, the Balkans, Italy, Hungary, Poland, the South
American Republics--revolted at its denial to Belgium in the interest of
German military aggression; and censure of the breach of international
contract was converted to passion by the wrong wantonly done to a
weak and peaceful by a mighty and ambitious Power. Great Britain was
not literally bound to intervene; but if ever there was a moral obligation
on a country, it lay upon her now, and the instant meeting of that
obligation implied an instinctive recognition of the character of the war
that was to be fought. Mixed and confused though the national issues
might be in various quarters, the war, so far as concerned the two
Powers who were to be mainly instrumental in its winning, was a civil
war of mankind to determine the principle upon which international
relations should repose.
That issue was not for every one to see, and there were many to whom
the struggle was merely national rivalry in which the interests of
England happened to coincide with those of France and in which we
should have intervened just the same without any question of Belgium's
neutrality. Whether it might have been so can never be determined. But
it is certain that no such struggle would have enlisted the united
sympathies and whole-hearted devotion of the British realms, still less
those of the United States, and in it we might well have been defeated.
From that division and possible defeat we and the world were saved by
Germany's decision that military advantage outweighed moral
considerations. The invasion of Belgium and Luxemburg united the
British Empire on the question of intervention. Three ministers alone
out of more than forty--Lord Morley, Mr. John Burns, and Mr. C. P.

Trevelyan--dissented from the Cabinet's decision, and the minority in
the nation was of still more slender proportions. Parliament supported
the Ministry without a