The War and Democracy | Page 6

The political causes of the present war, then, and of the half century of
Armed Peace which preceded it are to be found, not in the particular
schemes and ambitions of any of the governments of Europe, nor in
their secret diplomacy, nor in the machinations of the great armament
interests allied to them, sinister though all these may have been, but in
the nature of some of those governments themselves, and in their
relation to the peoples over whom they rule.
"If it were possible," writes Prince Büllow, who directed German
policy as Imperial Chancellor from 1900 to 1909, "for members of
different nationalities, with different language and customs, and an
intellectual life of a different kind, to live side by side in one and the
same State, without succumbing to the temptation of each trying to
force his own nationality on the other, things on earth would look a
good deal more peaceful. But it is a law of life and development in
history that where two national civilisations meet they fight for
ascendancy. In the struggle between nationalities one nation is the
hammer and the other the anvil; one is the victor and the other the
vanquished."[1] No words could indicate more clearly the cause that is
at stake in the present war. They show us that there are still
governments in Europe so ignorant as to believe that the different
nationalities of mankind are necessarily hostile to one another, and so

foolish and brutal as to think that national civilisation, or, as the
German Professors call it, "culture," can and indeed must be
propagated by the sword. It is this extraordinary conception which is at
the back of protests like that of Professor Haeckel and Professor
Eucken (men whom, in the field of their own studies, all Europe is
proud to honour) against "England fighting with a half-Asiatic power
against Germanism."[2]
[Footnote 1: _Imperial Germany_, by Prince Bernhard von Bülow,
English translation, 1st ed. pp. 245-6 (London, 1914).]
[Footnote 2: Protest of Professors Ernst Haeckel and Rudolf Eucken of
Jena, quoted in The Times from the Vossische Zeitung of August 20,
1914.]
There are not only half-Asiatics, there are real Asiatics side by side
with England; and England is not ashamed of it. For she does not
reckon the culture of Europe as higher than the culture of Asia, or
regard herself as the hammer upon the anvil of India.
Prince Bülow's words, and the theory of policy underlying them, really
go to the root of the whole trouble in European politics. They explain
the Balance of Power, the competition in armaments, the belief in the
inevitability and the moral value of war, and all those common
European shibboleths which seem so inexplicable to citizens of the
more modern-minded States and communities of the world. Why
should Germany and Austria arm against France and Russia when
Canada does not arm against the United States? Why should a Balance
of Power be necessary to the maintenance of European Peace when we
do not consider the preponderance of a single Power, such as the
United States in North, Central and South America, or Great Britain in
the Pacific or Southern Asia dangerous to the peace of the whole world?
Why, finally, to press Prince Bülow's logic home, if members of
different nationalities cannot live side by side without playing the game
of Hammer and Anvil together, are not the English spending the whole
of their energy fighting the Welsh, the Scotch, and the Irish in the
United Kingdom, the Dutch in South Africa, and the French in Canada,
not to speak of the Jews in every part of the British Empire? The fact is

that the statesmen of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and of Russia also,
have missed the chief lesson of recent history and politics: that in the
growing complexity of world-relations power is falling more and more,
of necessity, into the hands of States which are not Nations but
Commonwealths of Nations, States composed, like the British Empire
and the United States, of a variety of nationalities and "cultures," living
peacefully, each with its own institutions, under a single law and a
single central government.
But the time is not ripe yet for a Commonwealth of Europe. The
peoples of Europe have yet to win their liberties before they can be free
to dream of a United States of Europe. So long as the Emperors and
statesmen of Central Europe believe, like the Mahomedans of old, that
propaganda can be imposed by the sword, they can only be met by the
sword, and controlled by the sword. Not till they have been conquered
and rendered harmless, or displaced by the better mind of the peoples
whom they have indoctrinated, can Europe proceed along the natural
course of her development.