Before the War | Page 4

ships, the question of sea power

adequate for security was one of life or death. We could not sit still and
allow Germany so to increase her navy in comparison with ours that
she could make other Powers believe that their safest course was to
throw in their lot and join their fleets with hers. We were bound to seek
to make and maintain friendships, and to this end not only to preserve
our margin of strength at sea, but to make ourselves able, if it became
essential, to help our friends in case of aggression, thereby securing
ourselves. That was the new situation which in the final result the old
military spirit in Germany had created.
The balance of power is a dangerous principle; a general friendship
between all Great Powers, or, better still, a League of the Nations, is by
far preferable. But that consideration does not touch the actual point,
which is that we did not seek to set up the principle of balancing that
has given rise to so many questions. It was forced on us and was a
sheer necessity of the situation. We did all we could to avoid it by
negotiations with Germany, which, had they succeeded in the end,
would have relieved France and Russia as much as ourselves and would
have prevented the war.
Our efforts to preserve the peace ended in failure. The cause of that
failure was nothing that we failed to do or that France did. It was
proximately Austrian recklessness and indirectly, but just as strongly,
German ambition. A real desire in July, 1914, on the part of the Central
Powers to avoid war would have averted it. That Serbia may have been
a provocative neighbor is no answer to the reproaches made to-day
against the old Governments in Vienna and Berlin. They failed to take
the steps requisite if peace were to be preserved.
People ask why the British Government between 1906 and 1914 did
not discuss in public a situation which it understood well, and appeal to
the nation. The answer is that to have done so would have been greatly
to increase the difficulty of averting war. Up to the middle of 1913 the
indications were that it was far from unlikely that war might in the
result be averted. That was the view of some, both here and on the
Continent, who were most competent to judge, men who had real
opportunities for close observation from day to day. It is a view which

is not in material conflict with anything we have since learned. The
question whether war is inevitable has always been, as Bismarck more
than once insisted, one for the statesmen of the countries concerned,
and not for the soldiers and sailors who have a restricted field to work
in, and for whom it is in consequence difficult to see things as a whole.
Nor does great importance attach to-day to the triumphant declarations
of those who, having chanced to guess aright, take pride in the cheap
title to wisdom which has become theirs after the event. Still less does
respect attach to the small but noisy minority in each of the countries
concerned who in the years before 1914 were continuously contributing
to bringing war on our heads by expressions of dislike to neighboring
nations, and by prophecies that war with them must come. In the main
Germany was worse in this feature than ourselves. But there were those
here whose language made them useful propagandists for the German
military party, to whom they were of much service.
Few wars are really inevitable. If we knew better how we should be
careful to comport ourselves it may be that none are so. But extremists,
whether chauvinist or pacifist, are not helpful in avoiding wars. That is
because human nature is what it is.
Those who had to make the effort to keep the peace failed. But that
neither shows that they ought not to have tried with all the strength they
possessed in the way they did, nor that they would have done better had
they discussed delicate details in public. There are topics and
conjunctures in the almost daily changing relations between
Governments as to which silence is golden. For however proper it may
be in point of broad principle that the people should be fully informed
of what concerns them vitally, the most important thing is those to
whom they have confided their concerns should be given the best
chance of success in averting danger to their interests. To have said
more in Parliament and on the platform in the years in question, or to
have said it otherwise, would have been to run grave risks of more than
one sort. It is my strong impression that Lord Grey