The War of Steel and Gold
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The War of Steel and Gold Henry N. Brailsford The War of Steel and Gold Table of Contents The War of Steel and Gold.......................................................................................................................................1 Henry N. Brailsford........................................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER I. THE BALANCE OF POWER................................................................................................1 CHAPTER II. "REAL POLITICS"..............................................................................................................12 CHAPTER III. THE EGYPTIAN MODEL................................................................................................27 CHAPTER IV. CLASS−DIPLOMACY......................................................................................................38 CHAPTER V. ON PACIFISM....................................................................................................................46 CHAPTER VI. SOCIALISM AND ANTI−MILITARISM........................................................................50 CHAPTER VII. THE CONTROL OF POLICY..........................................................................................58 CHAPTER VIII. THE CONTROL OF FINANCE.....................................................................................64 CHAPTER IX. ON ARMAMENTS............................................................................................................74 CHAPTER X. THE CONCERT OF EUROPE...........................................................................................82 CHAPTER XI. A POSTSCRIPT ON PEACE AND CHANGE.................................................................91 i The War of Steel and Gold Henry N. Brailsford This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online. http://www.blackmask.com • CHAPTER I. THE BALANCE OF POWER • CHAPTER II. "REAL POLITICS" • CHAPTER III. THE EGYPTIAN MODEL • CHAPTER IV. CLASS−DIPLOMACY • CHAPTER V. ON PACIFISM • CHAPTER VI. SOCIALISM AND ANTI−MILITARISM • CHAPTER VII. THE CONTROL OF POLICY • CHAPTER VIII. THE CONTROL OF FINANCE • CHAPTER IX. ON ARMAMENTS • CHAPTER X. THE CONCERT OF EUROPE • CHAPTER XI. A POSTSCRIPT ON PEACE AND CHANGE CHAPTER I. THE BALANCE OF POWER A TRAVELLER who journeyed from London to Constantinople would remark in the changing landscape an eloquent variety of expression. No face could pass more obviously from confidence to caution, and from caution to fear than the plains and valleys through which his train would carry him. In the straggling villages, the little groups of isolated cottages and the lonely farm−houses of England and France or the Low Countries, he would read the evidences of an ancient civilisation and a venerable peace. Here violence has departed from men's lives, and whatever wrongs and mischiefs scourge society, the dread of the marauder and the bandit has ceased to vex them. They build with the knowledge that the highways are safe, and even the lonely places secure. In Hungary, and still more in Servia, the change begins that marks the transition to the East. The villages are more compact, the scattered cottages less numerous, the remote farm−houses have a look of newness. Here in quite recent generations the Turk was master, and the confidence which made the populous countryside of Western Europe has been slower in coming. With the crossing of what was yesterday the Turkish frontier, the last phase declares itself. The broad landscapes lie open, tilled but untenanted. Outside the towns and the villages no one has dared to settle. Fear is the master−builder, and it is on the mountain tops or in sheltered glens that he has set villages where men herd together, gregarious and apprehensive. When the first Macedonian peasant builds himself a cottage out of sight of town or village, we shall know that the disappearance of Turkish rule has altered men's lives and changed the face of the country. Landscapes do not lie. It is by the readiness of a population to build in lonely places and to abandon the security of a village where neighbours form a garrison, that one best may judge the success of a government in preserving internal order and peace. A like test may be applied to the relations of peoples. Seven years ago, Great Britain for the second time in a generation, refused to allow the construction of a Channel Tunnel. Year by year King's speeches may declare in the conventional formula that our relations with other Powers are friendly. At intervals our representatives may attend Peace Conferences, and our King exchange hospitality with all the monarchs of Europe. That refusal to construct the Tunnel revealed a lurking fear stronger and more sincere than all the amiable professions of ententes and ceremonies. There spoke the fundamental instinct of the people of these islands, and it was an instinct as imperious as that which forbids the Turkish peasant to inhabit a lonely farm−house. It proclaimed the dangers of modern Europe; it pronounced war and invasion a possibility to be reckoned among The War of Steel and Gold 1 The War of Steel and Gold everyday perils, as clearly as the Turkish landscape spells brigandage and the nullity of law. In vain the experts showed how completely the French entrance of this tunnel would be commanded by the guns of our fleet, how easily its exit on our soil might be controlled, how perilous for an invader would be the attempt to use it, how readily it could be closed or flooded at the first approach of tension or danger. Public opinion, official and unofficial, unmistakably announced that it meant to run no risks. Yet a Liberal Government was in power. Sir Henry Campbell−Bannerman was attempting to lead Europe in a movement for the reduction of armaments. Nothing could have served his purpose so well as a gesture of confidence, a flinging open of our island gates. The fear which forbade the construction of the tunnel could be explained only on one of two grounds. Either public opinion dreaded that our intimate understanding with France, of all European countries the least aggressive, might in some measurable time give place to an enmity so harsh as to tempt the French to embark on some sudden and perfidious scheme of invasion. Or else it feared that within the same measurable period−the "our time" in which we pray for peace−France might be so utterly crushed by a German conqueror, that the tunnel might be used by him for a descent on our coasts. The wildness of these fears and the remoteness of these risks gave the measure of the insecurity in which this country believes itself to live. The project of the Channel Tunnel is once more under the consideration of the Government. The Liberal party is still in power, building Dreadnoughts and talking peace. Our friendship with France has stood the test of time. Our relations with Germany have become normal and even cordial. But it seems doubtful whether even now the project will be sanctioned, and if sanctioned it should be, the chief reason will be that a fresh terror, due to novel forms of warfare, has in the interval begun to prey upon our minds.(1) Fear vetoed the scheme then; it is just conceivable that a rival fear may advocate it now. A Europe in which such alarms may be seriously entertained by great masses of educated and civilised men is a continent dominated by the nightmare of war, a society in which nation no more trusts nation than man trusts man under a lawless oriental despotism. The refusal to construct a tunnel betrayed our knowledge that we live in an epoch of militarism, as clearly as the Japanese, when they refrain from building stone houses, betray their knowledge that they inhabit an earthquake zone. Here, too, on our frontiers and channels, fear is the master−builder. Fear is always apt to seem a ridiculous affection. Yet it would be a random judgment which would pronounce this caution merely irrational. Only by the gross stupidity or deliberate treachery of the defenders, or by some inconceivably diabolical cunning of the enemy, could the tunnel be seized and used to our hurt; but in war all these factors must be considered, more especially stupidity. It is only twelve years since France was the enemy, the butt for Mr. Chamberlain's threats, the foe whom the Daily Mail wished to "roll in mud and blood," while Germany was the "friend in need," whom Mr. Chamberlain invited to join us, with the United States, in a Pan−Teutonic alliance. In a world subject to such brusque changes, no friendship is eternal, and nothing permanent save the mutability of national rivalries. Since the century opened, five wars in thirteen years have reminded us how distant is still the dream of an enduring peace. In three of these wars Great Powers were engaged. Our own South African campaign was followed by the Russo−Japanese war, and Italy by making war on Turkey for the possession of Tripoli gave the signal for the two wars of the Balkan Allies against Turkey and each other. Nor is it only by the spectacle and experience of actual war that the sense of insecurity is stimulated. A war that has just been averted leaves behind it its legacies of alarm and revenge. Five times at least during these thirteen years has a war been on the verge of breaking out between European Powers, and in four of these five crises the war, if it had been declared, must have involved more than two Great Powers. Twice the Moroccan question gave occasion for such a crisis−once in 1905