Will There Be Another War In Europe?

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 350, 3 February 1937, Page 2

Will There Be Another War In Europe?

Great Britain And The Fate Of Peace

PRESENT CONDITIONS SHOW THE ELEMENTS OF 1914 AGAIN

ENGLAND MUST LEAD THE WAY TO PEACE

Need there be war? Millions in many lands are asking this, and none can answer. My cwn answer, a mere matter of personal opinion, is “No, not if certain conditions he fulfilled,” say* Mr. H. Wickham bteed, the well-known English journalist, in an article in “The. New York Times Magazine/’ Another question is: Will there b« war?. It means, will there be anothei war between great Powers, in Europe and elsewhere, comparable to or worse than the World War of 1914-1918? In this case the answer is less a matter of opinion than of prophecy. I am not now among the prophets. From the autumn of 1912 to the summer of 1914 I was among the prophets I knew there would be war and how it would come if certain things were not done. They were not done. The position was simply that Russia had baked down before* a German threat in March 1909, at the end of the Bosnian crisis, and was determined not to yield aga n. Austria-Hungary was hent on crushing Serbia, who enjoyed the religious and moral protection of Russia.

If Vienna should pick a quarrel with Belgrade and be backed by Berlin, Russia would fight. France ally, would fight, too. Germany, having thoroughly prepared her m litarj offensive against France through neu tral Belgium, would strike first on the West. England could not afford to see Belgium in German hands nor, indeed, France defeated. Would Great Britain warn Germany in time? From the spring of 1909 onward these were the true terms of the European problem. British neutrality was essen tial to Germany’s political strategy •Therefore Germany moved heaven and earth to make sure of it. By sedulous propaganda the bulk of the Brit sb Liberal Party, then in office, a con siderable section of the Cabinet, London “society,” and many magnates oi the City were- persuaded that British goodwill towards Germany would suffice to remove- the danger of war, and that Germany’s real or alleged grievances must be dealt with sympathetically. .. 1914: Anglo-German Amity. In this spirit -the Anglo-German Baghdad railroad settlement was con eluded in 1912 the unworkable AngloGerlntfn Treaty of 1898 for the even tual partition of the Portuguese colonies was’revised and initialed, and in. June 1914 a British squadron was sent on a friehdly : visit to the Kiel regatta. Ab the Austro-Hungarian diplomatic documents and ether trustwoi thy evi deuce show,, the conclusion was .ini mediately drawn in Berlin that Great Britain would hold albof from a European war. and that therefore Germany could safely back Austria-Hungary in settling accounts vit.h Sei bia and enfshing the Yugoslav unitary move tnent. This conclusion was urged by Germany upon Austria-Hungary eai Ty in July, 1914. So strong was German influence u* London in the summer of 1914 that the British Government feared lest the Cabinet, Parliament and. the country’, be spli| if a dear warning were given to Germany. Therefore, even after the Sgrpjevo assassinations, the Prime Minister (Mr. Asquith) and the Foreign Secretary (Sir Edward Grey) hoped against hope, sought to mediate ami to promote-peace b conference, and made up their minds to speak only when thf invasion of Belgium - was imminent Then it was tor late. To this extent a share of ‘war Euilt’ .fairly be. ascribed to the British Government ano to British public option in 1914.. They allowed themselves to be bamboozled. Are they being bamboozled ' now ? There is enough likeness between the position as it wa> then and the position to-day to warrant thia question. Yet it is only likeness, not identity. History does not repeat itself-in precisely the same way, though •it teaches lessons which, if learned, may be salutary. As early as the autumn of 1912 1 felt in my bones that war was coming, and foreshadowed in writing bow it would come unless British policy were clear-sighted and firm. It was neither clear-sighted nor firm, and war came To-day, perhaps because I am no’longer living in Central Europe, the terms oi the. problem seem to me less deii’mte I do not feel in my bones that war must come. I feel only that it mas come, that the chances are that it will come unless certain things aie done in time, but J am not fully persuaded either that those things will not be done or that some of the factors which .now make for war may not be changed before -a supreme crisis develops.

Casting Vote With London.

Now, as then. I feel that the casting vote lies with Great Britain, and 1 am not yet sure that this vote will be rightly used until it is again too late. There are gome heartening- signs. There are others les? reassuring. Broadly speaking, I. believe that 11 British policy be consistently directed against the war method of dealing with international difficulties’ and if Great Britain is known to be willing and able to’face the risks of leading the other war-hating or peace-loving nations in opposition to war, not only need there be no war; but war will not come. If, on the other hand. Great Britain be irfesdlute or -paralysed by divided sount’els, if she feels herself, or allows herself -to be thought, too weak to fare risks that may involve her very existence, the present drift towa»d wai viUhardly be checked.

The most obvious danger of war lies in the colossal rearmament oi a “totalitarian” Germany controlled by a faction that proclaims the irhborn superiority of Germanic “Aryan” blood and the inherent right of that blood to spread itself over wide European regions in which other races now dwell. Hitherto Hitler’s policy has been thoroughly consistent and, on the whole, very skilful. It has followed faithfullv the line® laid down in his book “Mein Kampf,” and can scarcely be grasped by those who have not studied that book in the German original. (There is no satisfactory version in any or,her language.)

Logically, therefore, a clash between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, to many of whose territories “Mein Kai»pf” lays claimJjpr Germany, would seem to ne inevitable. Logically, too, Hitler’s denunciation of “negroid” France as Germany’s deadly foe who must be crushed and rendered harmless points to another Franco-German struggle.

Yet there is still wisdom m two ancient Austrian proverbs. One says;

‘ Care has been taken that tiees shall not grow into hea.en.’ Another runs: “Nothing is eaten so hot as it is cooked.” Logic, especially the logic of ideas, is often a safe guide in international affairs; but unless it take account of all the implications as well as of . the terms of a problem, it can be very misleading And there are both terms and implications in the German problem that suggest the need for caution in drawing hard and fast conclusions from the main, while ignoring the minor,

German Military Mind.

Une ot tnese minor premises is that the re-creation of a formidable German army satisfies a German instinct which is not necessarily aggressive. The German people like to be disciplined, they feel happy when they can “march together” in orderly # mass formations, and they derive from these exercises a sense of strength that comforts their inmost souls.

Doubtless Hitler could, at any moment, work them up into a war fever by his propaganda. Still, his whole earner shows that he has rarely taken great risks unless he felt, fairly sure of the result. He makes sudden decisions after having weighed the chances well in, advance. If he drinks the chances unfavourable, he win not start a war, though he may talk war aS a means of getting what he wants without war.

What are, for instance, the chances of war between Germany and Soviet Russia? I am not yet convinced that cither Hitler or his followers or the German General Staff* want war with Russia. It is one thing for Hitler to descant upon what Germany could au tf she had the Ukraine and the Urals. It is another thing for her to try to take them.

Two years ago a German officer ot high rank returned from Russia and reported to Hitler that the great drawback to his schemes was Russia’s ‘relative invincibility.” Since then Russia in Europe has grown stronger; ind Russia in Asia has been made almost invulnerable to Japanese attacx. Moreover, Russian defences in the Ear East no longer depend upon Moscow tor men or war materials. They are self-supporting and self-sufficing. Russians—and, for that matter, well-in-formed German soldiers—feel no doubt.* an this score.

The “invincibility” of Russia in Europe is more relative. Her air force is strong and enterprising. Its spirit is good. Her array of tanks is impressive. But the?o are few roads for ordinary motor transport and the rapid soncentration of large bodies of infantry. Should German armies' get into Russia, this might cut both ways. Still it might not prevent a German attempi to overrun the Ukraine and other regions of European Russia which Nazi Germany is believed to covet. British officers who attended the re cent Russian manoeuvres were, 1 understand, deeply impressed by the vigour and the strength of the au force. The defiant retort of Voroshi lov, Minister of Defence, to Nazi threats from Nuremberg—that, shoulo Russia be attacked, the war would not be fought over her soil but over the country of the enemy —may not be altogether a vain boast. As I am not a soldier or skilled in modern military technique, I am interested chiefly in the spirit of the Red Army and of the Russian people, for I knew something of the old Russian Imperial Army and of the sullen confusion that prevailed in several of it* units.

The New Russia.

A statement maae to me last suiumei by a former officer of the old AustroHungarian army may be significant. He was taken prisoner by the Russians in 1916 > witnessed both the Constitutional Democratic and the Bolshevist revolutions, and recently revisited the country from Moscow to the Manchurian border and back to the Ukraine and the Crimea. He spoke emphatically of Russian strength in the Far East, and of the spirit and technical equipment ot the army in Europe. Then he said:

“One has to remember that almost every Russian below the age of, say, 30 years has come under the formative influence of Soviet education and propaganda, Russians to-day know

little of the outside world; but they have been persuaded, even when they were suffering privation, that they are living in a Communist paradise while the rest of mankind lives in a capitalist hell.

“Under Stalin, they no longer wish to go out and bring the whole world into their paradise. They believe that other peoples will one day clamour for admission to it. But should the demons from the ‘capitalist hell’ try to break m and disturb their heaven, we might see something like the period when the armies of revolutionary France swept over Europe, carrying with them the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity and sowing the seeds of national revival everywhere. “In the nineteenth century, and during the World War in the twentieth, the principle of nationality transformed Europe, beginning with Italy and Germany. It ended by destroying the Habsburg monarchy. Who can say what might happen if Germany were to invade or to assail Soviet Russia?”

Hitler, his advisers, and the German General Staff may have an inkling of these possibilities. They may rail against bolshevism yet think twice before attacking the Red Army. If they could disorganise or isolate Soviet Russia they would sooner do this than fight her. Their immediate object may be rather to isolate France by trying to force her to withdraw from the FrancoSoviet non-aggression pact. One oi the mysteries of the situation is the recent execution in Russia of the 15 or 16 alleged Trotskyites. This bloody deed shocked the Western world, with which Stalin seemed anxious to be on good terms. Since he is no fool he must have had strong reason to do what he did.

This reason may have lain in the charge against Trotsky and his sympathisers that they had been working, in collusion with the German secret police, to procure the “removal” ef Stalin and Voroshilov. If there were any truth in this charge —and it doea not lack inherent plausibility—the conclusion might be justified that Na«i Germany has been trying to bring about much the same chaos in Soviet Russia as Lenin and Trotsky caused in 1917 when Imperial Germany sent Lenin back to Russia so that he might wreck the democratic government.

Hitler and his agents mav perhaps have thought that, were Trotsky again top dog in Russia, he might prove no less amenable to German demands than ho proved in March, 1918, when, by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, he and Lenin handed over wide regions of European • Russia to Germany and Austria-Hungary.

If any intrigue of this sort lay behind the trial and execution of the Trotskyites, Stalin’s apparent ruthlessness in declining to reprieve them would be intelligible. Ndr would it be hard to, understand that ,Nazi Germany, foiled in an . attempt .to disprganise Soviet Russia, should have masked discomfiture by a frontal, albeit only a verbal, attack upon Bolshevism at the Nuremburg Nazi party congress. There are even signs that, in his , search for allies against bolshevism, Hitler has been making up to the Vatican. The Nazi campaign against Bolshevism. is the more curious because Russian Communism seems to be evolving in a semi-capitalist and “bourgeois” direction, and to be becoming ’ Russian National Socialism. There are strong rumours that this development, and its comparative success, have disquieted Hitler even more than the Russian military preparations.

A “Bolshevism” that respects some forms of private property, and only keeps State control over big industry and large State agriculture, might be indistinguishable from, and appear to the German masses more attractive than, National Socialism or “Nazism” of the Hitlerite brand. In any event, a Soviet Russia of this description could hardly be denounced as a revolutionary danger to the world and therefore a proper object for German ter ritorial conquest.

Blood and Soil” Doctrine.

Yet without the prospect of tern tonal expansion the whole “blood and soil” doctrine, which is the semimystical foundation of Nazism, falls to the ground. The cult of the Nordic

“Aryan” Germanic race, with its right Lu rule the world in virtue of the inborn superiority of its blood, would begin to iuke its appeal to German national vanity.

Thus Hiller and Hitlerism fear to find themselves upon the horns of a dilemma; and there may be grounds for tne assumption —which underlies the widespread belief that war is inevitable —that, if faced with a choice between internal collapse and foreign military adventure, Nazi . Germany would choose the latter alternative, as Mussolini chose it when he made war upon Ethiopia in the autumn of 1935.

Many cool-headed observers reason, as the British liberal economist, Francis W. Hirst., reasoned recently in a letter tc “The Times”:

flow much lunger can Russia, Italy, Germany, and France —to say nothing of Poland and various minor powers—stand the pace# Certainly they cannot all last very long at this rate. Rising prices, shortages of food and raw materials, embarrassing exchange quotas, high tariffs, artificial currencies, stupendous deficits and inability to borrow at reasonable rates of interest all point to a crash rn the not far distant future.

The rapid growth of expenditure on armies, navies and air forces is partly the cause, partly the product, of economic nationalism and revolutionary < discontent. We have joined in the game of Beggar-my-Neighbour. Is it. t.o go on until one or more of the players collapse, or until one of them goes to war rather than face revolution?

No man can answer this question International- tension is certainly growing, one of its causes being the de termination ot the leaders ot German

Vazisrn and Italian Fascism to run all risks rather than relax then bold upon

'heir own peoples. Hence the undisguised support given >y the German and Italian Gmein nents to the Spanish Fascist insurg ents Neither Hitler nor Musso.nn la red face the effect upon his own people of victorious Spanish resistance to the military Fascist pint I hr* sne■'ess ot this resistance would have nused million* of Germans and Habans to whisper to each other: “If only w« had fought as the Spaniards have fought we might still be free.” And from whispering to' emulation the step might have been short.

These things are so plain that only the blind, or the wilfully obtuse, fail to see them If the non-intervention policy of the British and French Governments is intelligible, it is not altogether easy to understand why Great Britain enforced the embargo upon supplies to the lawful Spanish Government before making sure that it would hold good in all quarters. Indeed, as the case of Ethiopia, doubt of British lar-sightedness is sometimes hard to dispel. And it is precisely this doubt that creeps in when one ponders the question whether or not war is inevitable. If it be admitted, tor the sake oi argument that the British Government did not ieel able or was not ready to stand up to Italian threats during the ttalo-Ethiopian War, and that, therefore, it led the League of Nations in humiliating' retreat from “sanctions’’ after having led ft forward in the name if “collective security,” the problem remains whether Great Britain means henceforth to play a lone hand or to join—this time resolutely and with iiminished military weakness —in formmg a common front of peace-loving peoples against the war method of dealng with international affairs. A British policy of rearmament in isolation would cause profound divisions throughout the country. A policy >f iniei uat.Juuai readiness to oppose "ar, either on Hie basis of the League Covenant or ol the Kellogg Pact, or ot

both, would be backed by liberal senti inent, would be sanctioned by the great trade* unions, would appeal to the Laboui and would receive the issent ol at least two-thirds of the ‘‘national” majority in the House of Commons.

Such doubt upon the inevitability of war as I and others still feel arises from un ertainty about the policy which "/he British Government will follow.

1914—And Now.

1 verily believe that- now, as m 1914, Great Brita.it holds the fate of Europe in tier hands Ihe conditions are not the same but the choice they offer British statesmen is analogous. It J am inclined to think that, this time, the right choice will be made it is because 1 know how deep is the concern of our people, for the cause of ordered freedom and of representative democratic government in Europe. * Under the impact of another war this cause might perish. Were our government to make the right choice and to proclaim it, while there is still time, 1 should be persuaded that war neither need be nor will be. “Before it is too late I” Time is the essence of this problem. In recent utterances conservative public men like Winston Churchill and Sir Austen Chamberlain- Have recognised the urgency, of prompt firmness in word and deed and have associated themselves .a substance with the standpoint I have set forth- Even- Sir John Simon uas echped their words. On the other hand,, the Foreign Secretary, Mr R. A. Eden, has outlined to the League Assembly at. Geneva a policy which may be subtle but is far from commanding general respect or approval. It savours too strongly of the notions which the versatile Lord Lothian advocated after bis interviews with Herr Hitler.

Into the process of the crystallisation .of British thought which is. gradually taking place the announcement that Great Britain and the United States had agreed to support the necessary' devaluation *1 the French franc came like a repealing and clarifying flash of lightning. By instinct rathe; t’haii by conscious reasoning most people felt that a shrewd and valiant blow bad been struck by three democratic States lor international stability ami Co-operation -ostensibly, and perflaps mainly, in the financial and economic schemes, yet by repercussion also m .the political domain. In the words >»• “The Spectator,’’ what has been achieved is “a kind oi pact of non-aggression and mutual assist'aneV’ between the three currencies ’» ■ And, ‘ The Spec tator” adds .- “'l’here are wider considerations than these Tne democracies have shown that thev .can take an initiative, that thev can prepare as secretly and act as quickly as the dictators. That is all to the good It is not mere Schadenfreude which reconciles us to the dictator’ discomfort. In the present stale of Eurum an occasional demonstration that they can be disregarded is no bad thing. ,?

Signs of Firmer Stand.

18 it too much to hope that the days are past in which representative systems of government seemed to be “on the run” before die onset of antiliberal, war-fosterihg systems? If they are past, war need not be.

Signs of growing firmness are multiplying. There is some reason to hope that when the crisis ot freedom and peace comes to its climax Great Britain will be neither faint-hearted nor unready Recent manifestations ot intimacy between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany have served as a warning which the action of those countries against the Spanish Government had foreshadowed Though unlike the trade unions and the Labour Party, the British Government has not changed its policy of non-intervention, it is no longer blind to the drawbacks of that policy or heedless of Mussolini’s threats of war for mastery ol the Mediterranean Those ‘hreats are taken calmly. Similarly Great Britain ha.- not left «ny doubt of its reaction, to. General loering’s untrut hI ul charges that the lerrnap people now suffer privation beause Great Bnta.n stole their colonies ‘lid ' their gold.'The “liiehdl.y” British Jrotest to Berlin Was very sharp inleed. . _

Should Germany argue that if her overseas colonies cannot be given back England ought to leave Germany a free hand to take whatever Hitler may want in Central Europe and Russia, this argument also is likely to fall ou deaf ears. England will not, I think, be guilty of bringing on war in Europe by such means or seek to purchase respite for herself by becoming a passive accomplice in the subjugation of other peoples. Doubtless a hard choice awaits her. The new Belgian policy wil| not make it easier. By appearing to safeguard Belgian and northern French ports against German attack, this policy may tempt some British politicians and writers to advocate aloofness from neutrality toward troubles on the European Continent. Germany hopes this view will prevail and that her new Ambassador (Herr Joachim von Ribbentrop) may succeed in insuring British neutrality. It was the German belief in the likelihood of British neutrality that brought on the World War in 1914. That mistake must not and I believe will not be repeated. While Great Britain was girding her loins lor the defence of freedom and peace, the outcome of the American President election heartened our people and our Government. It is taken as an assurance of stability and progress in the United States and a world that has been trembling on the brink of panic-stricken reaction. So, I repeat, war need not come if England does her duty. I believe she will do it, what* ever mav befall.