The Crime Against Europe | Page 6

ready for the day when the matter could be brought to
issue. The murder of the Archduke Ferdinand furnished Russia with the
occasion, since she felt that her armies were ready, the sword sharpened,
and the Entente sure and binding.
The mobilization by Russia was all that France needed "to do that
which might be required of her by her interests." (Reply of the French
Government to the German Ambassador at Paris, August 1st, 1914.)
Had the neutrality of Belgium been respected as completely as the
neutrality of Holland, England would have joined her "friends" in the
assault on Germany, as Sir Edward Grey was forced to admit when the
German Ambassador in vain pressed him to state his own terms as the
price of English neutrality.
The hour had struck. Russia was sure of herself, and the rest followed
automatically since all had been provided for long before. The French
fleet was in the Mediterranean, as the result of the military compact
between France and England signed, sealed and delivered in November,
1912, and withheld from the cognizance of the British Parliament until
after war had been declared. The British fleet had been mobilized early
in July in anticipation of Russia's mobilization on land--and here again
it is Sir Edward Grey who incidentally supplies the proof.
In his anxiety, while there was still the fear that Russia might hold her
hand, he telegraphed to the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg on
27th of July, requiring him to assure the Russian Foreign Minister, that
the British Fleet, "which is concentrated, as it happens" would not
disperse from Portland.

That "as it happens" is quite the most illuminating slip in the British
White Paper, and is best comprehended by those who know what have
been the secret orders of the British fleet since 1909, and what was the
end in view when King George reviewed it earlier in the month, and
when His Majesty so hurriedly summoned the unconstitutional "Home
Rule" conference at Buckingham Palace on 18th of July. Nothing
remained for the "friends" but to so manoeuvre that Germany should be
driven to declare war, or see her frontiers crossed. If she did the first,
she became the "aggressor"; if she waited to be attacked she incurred
the peril of destruction.
Such, in outline, are the causes and steps that led to the outbreak of war.
The writer has seen those steps well and carefully laid, tested and tried
beforehand. Every rung of the scaling ladder being raised for the
storming of the German defences on land and sea was planed and
polished in the British Foreign Office.
As Sir Edward Grey confessed three years ago, he was "but the fly on
the wheel." That wheel was the ever faster driven purpose of Great
Britain to destroy the growing sea-power and commerce of Germany.
The strain had reached the breaking point.
During the first six months of 1914, German export trade almost
equalled that of Great Britain. Another year of peace, and it would
certainly have exceeded it, and for the first time in the history of world
trade Great Britain would have been put in the second place. German
exports from January to June had swelled to the enormous total of
$1,045,000,000 as against the $1,075,000,000 of Great Britain. A war
against such figures could not be maintained in the markets, it must be
transferred to the seas.
Day by day as the war proceeds, although it is now only six weeks old,
the pretences under which it was begun are being discarded. England
fights not to defend the neutrality of Belgium, not to destroy German
militarism, but to retain, if need be by involving the whole world in war,
her supreme and undisputed ownership of the seas.
This is the crime against Europe, the crime against the world that,

among other victims the United States are invited to approve, in order
that to-morrow their own growing navy may be put into a like posture
with that of a defeated Germany.
With the Kiel Canal "handed to Denmark," as one of the fruits of
British victory, as Lord Charles Beresford yesterday magnanimously
suggested, how long may it be before the Panama Canal shall be found
to be "a threat to peace" in the hands of those who constructed it?
A rival fleet in being, whether the gunners be Teuton or Anglo-Saxon
unless the Admiralty controlling it is seated at Whitehall, will always
be an eyesore to the Mistress of the seas, in other words, "a threat to the
peace of the world."
The war of armaments cannot be ended by the disarming of the German
people. To hand Europe over to a triumphal alliance of Russian and
French militarism, while England controls the highways and waterways
of mankind by a fleet