The Crime Against Europe | Page 2

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 space 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 Japan, and confine our study of the causes
of the conflict to the aims and motives of the five principal 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 Ambassador 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 Japan 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 Japan 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