The Crime Against Europe | Page 8

the Aisne."
(Sir Alfred Sharpe, to the Daily Chronicle from the Front, September
2nd, 1914.)
It is this immunity from the horror of war that makes all Englishmen
jingoes. They are never troubled by the consequences of belligerency.
Since it is only by "an actual experience that the full realization of the
horror comes." Until that horror strikes deep on English soil her
statesmen, her Ministers, her Members of Parliament, her editors, will
never sincerely love peace, but will plan always to ensure war abroad,
whenever British need or ambition demands it.
Were England herself so placed that responsibility for her acts could be
enforced on her own soil, among her own people, and on the head of
those who devise her policies, then we might talk of arbitration treaties
with hope, and sign compacts of goodwill sure that they were indeed
cordial understandings.
But as long as Great Britain retains undisputed ownership of the chief
factor that ensures at will peace or war on others, there can be only

armaments in Europe, ill-will among men and war fever in the blood of
mankind.
British democracy loves freedom of the sea in precisely the same spirit
as imperial Rome viewed the spectacle of Celtic freedom beyond the
outposts of the Roman legions; as Agricola phrased it, something "to
wear down and take possession of so that freedom may be put out of
sight."
The names change but the spirit of imperial exploitation, whether it call
itself an empire or a democracy, does not change.
Just as the Athenian Empire, in the name of a democracy, sought to
impose servitude at sea on the Greek world, so the British Empire, in
the name of a democracy, seeks to encompass mankind within the long
walls of London.
The modern Sparta may be vanquished by the imperial democrats
assailing her from East and West. But let the world be under no
illusions.
If Germany go down to-day, vanquished by a combination of Asiatic,
African, American, Canadian and European enemies, the gain will not
be to the world nor to the cause of peace.
The mistress of the seas will remain to ensure new combinations of
enmity to prohibit the one league of concord that alone can bring
freedom and peace to the world. The cause that begot this war will
remain to beget new wars.
The next victim of universal sea-power may not be on the ravaged
fields of mid-Europe, but mid the wasted coasts and bombarded
seaports of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
A permanent peace can only be laid on a sure foundation. A sure
foundation of peace among men can only be found when mastery of the
sea by one people has been merged in freedom of the seas for all.

Chapter II
THE KEEPER OF THE SEAS
As long ago as 1870 an Irishman pointed out that if the English press
did not abandon the campaign of prejudiced suspicion it was even then
conducting against Germany, the time for an understanding between
Great Britain and the German people would be gone for ever.
It was Charles Lever who delivered this shrewd appreciation of the
onlooker.
Writing from Trieste on August 29th, 1870, to John Blackwood, he
stated:
"Be assured the Standard is making a great blunder by its
anti-Germanism and English opinion has just now a value in Germany
which if the nation be once disgusted with us will be gone for ever."
Lever preserved enough of the Irishman through all his official
connection to see the two sides of a question and appreciate the point of
view of the other man.
What Lever pointed out during the early stages of the Franco-German
war has come to pass. The Standard of forty years ago is the British
press of to-day, with here and there the weak voice of an impotent
Liberalism crying in the wilderness. Germany has, indeed, become
thoroughly disgusted and the hour of reconciliation has long since gone
by. In Lever's time it was now or never; the chance not taken then
would be lost for ever, and the English publicist of to-day is not in
doubt that it is now too late. His heart-searchings need another formula
of expression--no longer a conditional assertion of doubt, but a positive
questioning of impending fact, "is it too soon." That the growing
German navy must be smashed he is convinced, but how or when to do
it he is not so clear.
The situation is not yet quite intolerable, and so, although many urge an
immediate attack before the enemy grows too strong, the old-time

British love of compromise and trust in luck still holds his hand. The
American "alliance" too, may yet come off. The Entente with France,
already of great value, can be developed into something more assuredly
anti-German, and