BEFORE THE WAR.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20316, 15 August 1931, Page 17

BEFORE THE WAR.

LORD GREY'S SPEECHES. Speeches on Foreign Affairs, 1901-1914. By Sir Edward Grey (The Viscount Grey of Fallodon). Selected with in introduction by Paul Knaplund, Ph.D. Allen and Unwtn, Ltd. (10s 6d net.) (From the "Manchester Guardian.") Comparisons are often drawn between the Great War with France and the Great War with Germany, but there is one conspicuous difference between them. The war which began in 1793 and lasted for twenty years was in one sense no new experience for the people of the time. England had been at war with France from 1743 to 1748 and from 1778 to 1783. A man of fifty would recall one war from his childhood's memories, and he would remember the other as vividly as we to-day remember the war of 1914-18. When we went' to war in 1914 we had been at peace within Europe since the close of the Crimean War in 185 C. Yet the shadow of war overhung all the speeches of Ministers and diplomats for some years before 1914, whereas the war of 1793 took the British Government almost by surprise. The reason, of course, is that' war in 1793 followed from revolution, whereas the war of 1914 was the natural result of the system on which the life of Europe was arranged. Europe had become entangled in a system, and that system put the peace of Europe at the mercy of accidents, of chance or temper. No Minister in close touch with the system could be blind to its dangers. The revelation of the inner history of those years, made by the publication of Foreign Office documents and the memoirs of statesmen, has shown how difficult was the task of a Foreign Secretary working within this explosive system. No Foreign Secretary had a more difficult task than Lord Grey, and the volume of his pre-war speeches, just published by Messrs Allen and Unwin, gives the reader who has followed those revelations a keen sense of the discomforts and anxieties that he suffered. It is interesting to set out the tenor of his speeches, and then to consider .what he would have added if he had spoken just what was in his mind. The general argument running through his speeches was this: England 'can no longer afford to be alone in the world, without friends or sympathisers. Lord Lansdowne recognised this and did a great work in putting an end to our old quarrel with France. We should like to put an, end to all our quarrels. Thus we have an old quarrel with Russia. In order to get rid of this and of the dangers it involves we have concluded an arrangement about Persia. It has its disadvantages, but those critics who blame us for making it, whether on British grounds or on Persian grounds, must ask themselves how Persia would fare and how British interest would fare if we left things ,to take their course there. Russia is pushing on with railways, trade, and influence, and our diplomacy' lias to take account of the facts as they are. What we have done is to eliminate the Russian threat to India. Then there is Germany. We have no specific quarrel with Germany, but in this case there is tension because Germany, the greatest military Power in the world, seeks to become a great naval Power. We cannot afford, a weak Power in respect of our army, to lose our naval supremacy, and therefore >ve have to build against Germany. We should welcome an agreement to stop building, but it is difficult for German politicians to ask the German people to accept an arrangement which recognises our superiority on the sea. Still, we are doing all that we can to improve our relations with Germany; we are trying to meet her over the Bagdad Railway, and with great hope of success. But there is one condition that governs all our diplomacy. We cannot gratify Germany at the expense of our obligations to France. It is our ambition to be friends with both and to make them friends with each other. This was Lord Grey's argument and it represented his policy. But if he had spoken all that was in his mind what would he have added? He would have said that Russia was a blackmailer and that he had to make concessions that he disliked because he feared that she might rat to Germany, who was trying to isolate us ■, that our relations with Russia in Asia were in fact worse than our relations with Germany. We had no secret engagements, but we had felt it necessary v to make an arrangement with France to enable us to act together if war should come. This was not a secret engagement, because it bound us on paper to nothing. But it was secret ana it could not be disclosed, for the news would start the newspapers on Jingo stunts or scare stunts, and our effort gradually to improve our retentions with Germany would be ruined. We had been driven farther, for we had found it necessary to discuss and to conceal a similar arrangement with Russia. It was true that we wanted France and Germany to be friends, but we did not want France to take Germany's ■ friendship under compulsion from Germany because she thought wo were too weak to. sustain her. We had no selfish aims in Europe, but we were afraid of what would happen if Germany wias so strong as to dominate the continent of Europe and bring France and Russia within her orbit. Therefore we had to assert ourselves on occasion, even by such methods as Mr Lloyd George's speech after Agadir. In some such way as this would Lord Grey have amplified his speeches if he had been speaking not to the world but to a private meeting. Lord Grey's speeches were thus the speeches of a man on a tightrope. To what was he trusting for improvement . in this dangerous system, for relaxation of this wearing tension? It is here that we see the great contrast between pre-war and post-war Europe. By virtue of the League of Nations Mr Henderson is in constant association: with the Foreign Ministers of Europe. But Lord Grey lived apart. King Edward acted as a super-Ambassador, but the advantages of his tact and temper hardly compensated for the complications that were caused by his relations with his nephew. When other experiments were tried and Lord Haldane was sent to BerKn, France was thrown into a fever of suspicion. This was the plight of Europev Forces that were independent of the will of living men and, as it proved, beyond their control had created this system. Those Ministers who worked under it, who had to make public speeches, British, French, and German Ministers, all walked on a tightrope; they thought partly of public opinion in their own countries, partly of the effect they would make on opinion in the countries belonging to their own combination, partly of the effect on countries belonging to the rival combination. The influence that character qr sincerity or charm might exercise in soothing suspicions or creating confidence was allowed no play. The machine was all-powerful. In a world so little organised "for peace, so well organised for war, a fanatic with a sharp knife in his hand or a politician with a sharp phrase on his tongue could plunge the whole world into a catastrophe.