GETTING READY FOR THE NEXT WAR

Maoriland Worker, Volume 12, Issue 303, 20 December 1922, Page 7

GETTING READY FOR THE NEXT WAR

By -m If* EWER.

A hundred and thirty years ago William Pitt was—-with much dispatching Of ultimata and mobilising- of fleets — trying to ..force Great Britain into a War on the question of Oezakoff•;■ • for it was declared to be a vital matter for the future of the Empire whether that Black Sea port was under the yule of the Tsar or of the Sultan.

The country and even Parliament refused to be interested or involved, and Pitt, seeing that he must relinquish Oczakoff or office, stuck to. office, withdrew his ultimata, and declared, "even with tears in his eyes, that it was the greatest mortification be had ever experienced." So Oczakoff became Russian. The Empire did not fall. And Fox jeered mercilessly at the Ministry in a speech which is still remembered, though Oczakoff is well-night forgotten.

Now, in the middle; of ,that crisis, Joseph Ewart, ambassador in Berlin, who was the chief inspirer of Pitt's war policy, wrote to his colleague at The Hague, Auckland, (who was trying to persuade Pitt that Oczakoff was of no importance whatsoever and certainly not worth a war): — I am sure that your Lordship will agree with mc . . . that Oczakoff and its district are very secondary considerations in comparison with the great influence which the decision of the present question must have on the. strength and permanency of the system o£ the allies: on which the preservation of peace likewise depends.

"Preservation of peace is, of course, a mere decency or diplomatic correspondence. What Ewart meant was tliat his plan of including Poland and Turkey in the existing Triple Alliance (England, Holland and Prussia) necessitated supporting the Saltan's claim to Oczakoff.

Oczakoff, in fact, was nothing in itself. It gained importance because oil its bearing on the "system .of the allies." Pitt was willing to risk an. Eastern war., not for the sake of an unimportant Black Sea port, but for the sake of his alliance" with Prussia, And his alliance with Prussia was directed against France —was. in fact. a preparation for the next Western war. . ■■

Oczakoff, Agadir, Chanak. The ; succession is a direct one, and the explanation of the..quarrel, almost to •war, over an obscure seaport town is in each case the same. Preparation for the next big war gives the key to diplomatic intrigues and conflicts over apparently insignificant points.

Agadir was important because Ensland and France oil the one hand, Germany on the other, were preparhi-e, to fight each other. Chanak is important because —and only because— England and France are preparing to fight each other. It is a u incident in the diplomatic struggle which —unless other forces intervene —will bring an Anglo-French war in 1925 or 1926Chanak is a passage in the prelude to 1926, just as Casabianca and Agadir were passages in the prelude to 1914.

This Anglo-French rivalry, which is the chief moulding force of the European diplomatic system to-day, became Inevitable when;the collapse of Germany (the -withdrawal of America) and the immobilisation of Russia left the t>o strongest allies face to face in Europe./* That has always been so, and .must always be so, while Europe remains a collection "of predatory militant States. The two leaders jostle one another in the struggle for power. They are mutually jealous. Their interests clash, and round them, natuiv ally., other clashing political and economic—group themselves. ,

- The chief characters change, and the grouping of the ; others around them. But whether it be Austria and Prance, or France and Germany, or Germany and England,, the game is always the same; and its minor incidents, Oczakoff, • Agadir, Chanak, Cleves-Julich succession, Pragmatic Sanction, Hohenzollern candidature, reproduce each other with almost comic fidelity.

Anglo-French hostility—"two nations warring in the bosom as a single entente"-—is the key to European history since 1918. . ,

Actually, the '.quarrel began to develop even before America- became too proud to ratifsr. The notes exchanged by 3,1. Clenienceau and-Mr. Lloyd George in the spring of. 1910 have already the. sharp tone of latent hostility. . England is already jealous of Franco' s military predominance. Already, though scarcely, consciously, Mr. Lloyd George is toying .with the idea of restoring Germany as a balance to the French power. And already, on the other hand,- M. Clemenceau is spitefully mindful Of England's, great war plunder overseas and In the East.

' Cleinenceau's eyes were fixed too Bteadily on the Rhine. But with his all the Near East became at- once the fecene of. conflict. England was buildti»Jß JJpj onj>aper,j* wonderful EiaßirA.

Palestine and Mesopotamia were h.eld under Mandate. Arabia, trans-Jor-dania, and Syria (except for the sea coast) 1 were under the dependent Shereefian kings. The establishment. of an "independent" Armenia would extend: British influence from the Euphrates to the .Caucasus, and link t.he oilfields of Mosul.and Baku. The Greeks; at Constantinople, at Smyrna, and at Trebixond ...

France began, with Clemencoau's going,'to sap the foundations of that

unbuilt structure. Easily she flung poor King Feisul from Damascus —so that we had to give him another throne in Mesopotamia. But her-main weapon has been Mustapha Keniai. He has cleared England's Greeks ._ from Anatolia. He has shattered the vision of a chain of client States from the Persian Gulf to the Caucasus. France gave him Cilieia, and :.n return he-has destroyed Mr. Churchill's empire.- It was a good bargain. And-jiiow- that Turkey is nearly herself again, French statesmanship is working on a plan not unlike that German Berlin-Bagdad one which did so much to bring the war. She thinks of an extended Little Entente, of a Francophile combination that will ! run from Danzig to Mosul. j Poland Czechoslovakia. Rumania, j Jugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey—that is the projected group of French client states^ Now, that grouping, if it came into being,:-would have, for France, two advantages. It would give, for her ciient armies, a direct route to England's' weak spots in the Bast. An» fit would cut the Anglo-Germa.n com- ! bination off from Russia. Riissia, in all these diplomatic calculations, counts as a heavy weight which may be tlung into one or other scale. She J is, though for very different reasons, as doubtful as Italy. Thrace and the Straits in the presence of such a scheme become of prime ■importance. If Greece is in Thrace and the British are. on the Straits the' chain is broken and use- | less. ; It will serve neither as link j nor as barrier. Britain is free of the j Black Sea, and Turkey is cut off from : the little Entente. (I assume, wiHi ■i the French diplomatists, that Bulgaria ! can he brought in to the system.} J But if, on the other hand, Turkey ! has Thrace and the Straits are under j some . shadowy regime impotent for their; effective guarding, then the land highway from north-west to south - i east (which France needs clear) is j open; the sea highway from southwest: io north-east (which England needs clear) is shut. That is the strategic meaning of the whole struggle. Whether Turks cut. the throats of Thacian Greeks or whether Greeks cut the throats of Thra-c----ian Turks, neither Downing Street nor the Quai d'Orsay care two raps. They w-'ll both talk —raid with equal glibness—about the "freedom of the ' Straits." But they (or at any rate j their proteges) are fighting, not. for freedom, but for control; England because she wants' to keep open for her friends the passage THROUGH them I and to bar her enemies the passage I ACROSS them; France for precisely the opposite reason. Therefore, we suail strain every nerve to remain both in Chanaic find in Constantinople—or somewhere on the .Bosphorus. France will strain every nervo to get us out. It will not come u> war. for. neither 'Side: is ready as yet. ' But it is quite • surely the prelude to war. One word on oil. It is, I think, an over-hasty diagnosis that finds the root of the whole '.;•( üble in oil. Certainly there are two powerful oil groups (Standard nnd Shell) competing 'for them. But to-say that this is the origin of the An£lo-Fren.ch rivalry in the East is quite an unjustifiable deduction. It is a common fallacy among Socialists that State quarrels spring out of these commercial group ; quarrels. A far truer statement of the position

is that "warring- commercial groups tend to associate themselves with.war-

ring States. Anglo-French rivalry would exist were there no oil at all in Mosul. But because there is oil there, and because the victor in the Anglo-. French conflict will have the disposal of the oil, ,the big companies associate : themselves with one or other of the combatants. They put their money, as 'it were, on England or on France. England and France are not rivals in thejßasf: because of tho rivalry of Shell and Standard Oil; they were rivals there long before either Shell or; Standard, was born. France is not fighting England because Standard is closely linked with the Quai d'Orsay. STANDARD IS LINKED WITH THE QTJAI D'ORSAY BECAUSE FRANCE IS FIGHTING ENGLAND. The big trusts exploit the warring States as white invaders exploit warring, savage tribes. They utilise, but do not create, their quarrels. . Therefore, at bottom, it is not the oil of Mosul that Is of tke