John Spencer Bassett
The Lost Fruits of Waterloo

PREFACE

This book was begun under the influence of the enthusiasm aroused by President Wilson’s address to Congress on January 22, 1917. It was then that he first gave definite utterance of his plan for a league, or federation, of nations to establish a permanent peace. The idea had long been before the world, but it was generally dismissed as too impracticable for the support of serious minded men. By taking it up the President brought it into the realm of the possible. In the presence of the great world catastrophe that hung over us it seemed well to dare much in order that we might avoid a repetition of existing evils. And if the idea was worth trying, it was certainly worth a careful examination in the light of history. It was with the hope of making such a careful examination that I set to work on the line of thought that has led to this book.As my work has progressed the great drama has been unfolding itself with terrible realism. New characters have come upon the stage, characters not contemplated in the original cast of the play. At the same time some of the old parts have undergone such changes that they appear in new relations. I am not unmindful of the fact that events now unforeseen may make other and radical changes in the dramatis personæ before this book is placed in the hand of the reader. But always the great problem must be the same, the prevention of a return to the present state of world madness. That end we must ever keep in mind as we consider the arguments here advanced, and any inconsistency discovered between the argument and the actual state of events will, I hope, be treated with as much leniency as the transitions of the situation seem to warrant.

This book was begun under the influence of the enthusiasm aroused by President Wilson’s address to Congress on January 22, 1917. It was then that he first gave definite utterance of his plan for a league, or federation, of nations to establish a permanent peace. The idea had long been before the world, but it was generally dismissed as too impracticable for the support of serious minded men. By taking it up the President brought it into the realm of the possible. In the presence of the great world catastrophe that hung over us it seemed well to dare much in order that we might avoid a repetition of existing evils. And if the idea was worth trying, it was certainly worth a careful examination in the light of history. It was with the hope of making such a careful examination that I set to work on the line of thought that has led to this book.

As my work has progressed the great drama has been unfolding itself with terrible realism. New characters have come upon the stage, characters not contemplated in the original cast of the play. At the same time some of the old parts have undergone such changes that they appear in new relations. I am not unmindful of the fact that events now unforeseen may make other and radical changes in the dramatis personæ before this book is placed in the hand of the reader. But always the great problem must be the same, the prevention of a return to the present state of world madness. That end we must ever keep in mind as we consider the arguments here advanced, and any inconsistency discovered between the argument and the actual state of events will, I hope, be treated with as much leniency as the transitions of the situation seem to warrant.

As I write, many things indicate that the great conflict is approaching dissolution. The exhaustion of the nations, the awakening voices of the masses, the evident failure of militarism to lead Germany to world empire, the rising spectre of the international solidarity of the laborers, and many other portents seem to show that the world will soon have to say “yes” or “no” to the plain question: “Shall we, or shall we not, have a union of nations to promote permanent peace?”

The warning that they must answer the question is shouted to many classes. Bankers are threatened with the repudiation of the securities of the greatest nations, manufacturers may soon see their vast gains swallowed up in the destruction of the forms of credit which hitherto have seemed most substantial, churches and every form of intellectual life that should promote civilization may have their dearest ideals swept away in a rush toward radicalism, and even the German autocracy is fighting for its life against an infuriated and despairing proletariat. Are not these dangers enough to make us ask if the old menace shall continue?

It is not my purpose to answer all the questions I ask. It is sufficient to unfold the situation and show how it has arisen out of the past. If the reader finds that mistakes were once made, he will have to consider the means of correcting them. No pleader can compel the opinions of intelligent men and women. It is enough if he lays the case before clear and conscientious minds in an impersonal way. More than this he should not try to do: as much as this I have sought to do. If the world really lost the fruits of its victory over a world conqueror at Waterloo, it is for the citizen of today to say in what way the lost fruits can be recovered.

Many friends have aided me in my efforts to present my views to the public, and among them Dr. Frederick P. Keppel, Dean of Columbia University, deserves special acknowledgment. I am also under obligation to Dean Ada C. Comstock, of Smith College, for very careful proofreading. But for the opinions here expressed and the errors which may be discovered I alone am responsible.

John Spencer Bassett.

Northampton, Massachusetts,

February 5, 1918.

INTRODUCTION

The nations of Europe fought a great war to a finish a hundred and two years ago, defeating a master leader of men and ending the ambitions of a brilliantly organized nation. They were so well satisfied with their achievement that they imagined that peace, won after many years of suffering, was a sufficient reward for their sacrifices. To escape impending subjugation seemed enough good fortune for the moment. They forgot that it was a principle and not merely a man they had been contending against, and when they had made sure that Napoleon was beyond the possibility of a return to power, they thought the future was secure. But the principle lived and has come to life again. It was the inherent tendency to unification in government, a principle that appeals to the national pride of most peoples when they find themselves in a position to make it operate to the supposed advantage of their own country. It has been seized upon by the Germans in our own generation, to whom it has been as glittering a prize as it was to the Frenchmen of the early nineteenth century. To conquer the world and win a place in the sun is no mean ideal; and if the efforts of the Entente allies succeed in defeating it in its present form, it is reasonably certain that it will appear again to distress the future inhabitants of the earth, unless sufficient steps are taken to bind it down by bonds which cannot be broken.

The nations of Europe fought a great war to a finish a hundred and two years ago, defeating a master leader of men and ending the ambitions of a brilliantly organized nation. They were so well satisfied with their achievement that they imagined that peace, won after many years of suffering, was a sufficient reward for their sacrifices. To escape impending subjugation seemed enough good fortune for the moment. They forgot that it was a principle and not merely a man they had been contending against, and when they had made sure that Napoleon was beyond the possibility of a return to power, they thought the future was secure. But the principle lived and has come to life again. It was the inherent tendency to unification in government, a principle that appeals to the national pride of most peoples when they find themselves in a position to make it operate to the supposed advantage of their own country. It has been seized upon by the Germans in our own generation, to whom it has been as glittering a prize as it was to the Frenchmen of the early nineteenth century. To conquer the world and win a place in the sun is no mean ideal; and if the efforts of the Entente allies succeed in defeating it in its present form, it is reasonably certain that it will appear again to distress the future inhabitants of the earth, unless sufficient steps are taken to bind it down by bonds which cannot be broken.

This conviction has led to the suggestion that when Germany is beaten, as she must be beaten, steps should be taken, not only to insure that she shall not again disturb the earth, but that no other power coming after her shall lay the foundations and form the ambition which will again put the world to the necessity of fighting the present war over again. When the North broke the bonds of slavery in the South in 1865 it was filled with a firm determination that slavery should stay broken. In the same way, when the nations shall have put down the menace of world domination now rampant in Europe, they should make it their first concern to devise a means by which the menace shall stay broken.

To kill a principle demands a principle equally strong and inclusive. No one nation can keep down war and subjugation; for it must be so strong to carry out that purpose that it becomes itself a conqueror. It would be as intolerable to Germany, for example, to be ruled by the United States as it would be to the United States if they were ruled by Germany. The only restraint that will satisfy all the nations will be exercised by some organ of power in which all have fair representation and in which no nation is able to do things which stimulate jealousy and give grounds for the belief that some are being exploited by others. This suggestion does not demand a well integrated federal government for all the functions of the state but merely the adoption of a system of coöperation with authority over the outbreak of international war and strong enough to make its will obeyed. It is federation for only one purpose and such a purpose as will never be brought into vital action as long as the federated will is maintained at such a point of strength and exercised with such a degree of fairness that individual states will not question that will.

This principle of federated action for a specific purpose was adopted by the United States in 1789, and though hailed by the practical statesmen of Europe as an experiment, it has proved the happiest form of government that has yet been established over a vast territory in which are divergent economic and social interests. In it is much more integration than would exist in a federated system to prevent war, where the action of the central authority would be limited to one main object. If it could be formed and put into operation by the present generation, who know so well what it costs to beat back the spectre of world conquest it might pass through the preliminary critical stages of its existence successfully. At any rate, the world is full of the feeling that such things may be possible, and it would be unwise to dismiss the suggestion without giving it fair and full consideration.

The discussion brings up what seems to be a law of human activities, that as the ages run and as men develop their minds they combine in larger and larger units for carrying on the particular thing they are interested in. And they make these combinations by force or through mutual agreement. We have before us the consideration of the most important form of this unifying process, the unification of nations, which has generally come through force, but sometimes has come through agreement.

In recent industrial history is a parallel process so well illustrating the point at issue that I can not refrain from mentioning it. In his book, My Four Years in Germany, Mr. James W. Gerard contrasts great industrial combinations in the United States and Germany. In one country are trusts, in the other great companies known as cartels. The development of the trust we know well. It came out of a process of competitive war. Some large manufacturer who possessed ability for war, formed an initial group of manufacturers with the prospect of controlling a large part of the market. He was careful to see that his own group had the best possible organization, central control, and a loyal body of subordinates. Then he opened his attack on his smaller rivals, and in most cases they were driven into surrender or bankruptcy. It was a hard process, but it led to industrial unity with its many advantages.

The cartel began with co-operation. All the persons or companies manufacturing a given article were asked to unite in its creation. They pooled their resources, adopted common buying and selling agencies, and shared the returns amicably. They proved very profitable for the shareholders, and they strengthened the national industry in its competition against foreigners. In the United States the trust has been unpopular, despite its many economic advantages. The reason is the battle-like methods by which it destroyed its rivals. The result was the enactment of laws to restrain its development, laws so contrary to the trend of the times that they have been very tardily enforced. The cartel, established with the co-operation of the whole group of manufacturers, aroused no antagonism and obtained the approval of the laws. It is not necessary to say which is the better of these two methods of arriving at the same object.

Turning to the subject with which we are here chiefly concerned, it is interesting to note that Germany has undertaken in the last years to carry forward her world expansion by methods that are entirely different. While she has federated in industrial life she appears in her foreign relations as a true representative of the spirit that built up the trusts. She means to unify her competitor states, not as she has united her industries, but as the American trusts secured the whole field of operations. First she forms a small group with herself at the head. In the group are Germany, Austria, Turkey, and, later on, Bulgaria. At this stage of her progress she has gone as far as the Standard Oil Company had gone when Mr. Rockefeller had perfected the idea of the “trust” in 1882. Her next step was to attack her rivals. France she would crush at a blow, first lulling Great Britain to inactivity by feigned friendship and the promise of gains in the Near East. Then she would do what she would with Russia. With these two nations disposed of, Britain, the unready, could be easily brought to terms, and the United States would then be at her mercy. The mass of German people had not, perhaps, reasoned the process out in this way; but it was so easily seen that it could not have escaped the minds of the leaders of the German military party. No trust builder ever made fairer plans for the upbuilding of his enterprise than these gentlemen made for putting through their combination, before which they saw in their minds the states of the world toppling. So well were the plans made and so efficient were the strokes that the utmost efforts of the rest of the world have become necessary to defeat the German hopes.

The United States have approached the problem of world relations in another spirit. Rejecting the spirit of the trust magnate, which Germany accepted, we have turned to coöperation as the means of avoiding international competition and distrust. President Wilson’s repeated suggestions of a federated peace are couched in the exact spirit of the cartel. He asks that war may be replaced by coöperation, pointing out the tremendous advantage to all if the machinery of competition can be discarded.

Viewed in its largest aspects, therefore, the present struggle has resolved itself into a debate over the amount of unity that shall in the future exist between states. It does not seem possible that Austria will ever be a thoroughly sovereign state again, nor that Turkey will escape from the snare in which her feet are caught. What degree of unity this will engender between France and Great Britain, if the old system of international relations continues, it is not hard to guess. And as for the small states of Europe, their future is very perplexing.

This much rests on the assumption that Germany and her allied neighbours are going to make peace without defeat and without victory. If they should be able to carry off a triumph, which now seems impossible, it would not be hard to tell in what manner unification would come. However the result, the separateness of European states will probably be diminished, and their interdependence, either in two large groupings or in some more or less strong general grouping, will be increased.

No wise man will undertake to say which form of interdependence will be the result. But it seems certain that we stand today with two roads before us, each leading to the same end, a stronger degree of unity. One goes by way of German domination, the other by way of equal and mutual agreement. I do not need to say which will be pleasanter to those who travel. We cannot stand at the crossing forever: some day we shall pass down one of the roads. It is said that the world is not yet ready to choose the second road, and that it must go on in the old way, fighting off attempts at domination, until it learns the advantages of co-operation. It may be so; but meanwhile it is a glorious privilege to strike a blow, however weak, in behalf of reason.

CHAPTER I
THE QUESTION OF PERMANENT PEACE

When war broke over the world three years ago many ministers and other people declared that Armageddon had come. They had in mind a tradition founded on a part of the sixteenth chapter of Revelations, in which the prophet was supposed to describe a vision of the end of the world. In that awful day seven angels appeared with seven vials of wrath, and the contents of each when poured out wiped away something that was dear to the men of the earth. The sixth angel poured out on the waters of the river Euphrates, and they were dried up; and then unclean spirits issued from the mouths of the dragons and of other beasts and from the mouth of the false prophet, and they went into the kings of the earth, then the political rulers of mankind, and induced them to bring the people together “to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” And the armies met at Armageddon and fought there the last battle of time. This striking figure made a deep impression on the early Christians, and out of it arose the belief that some day would come a great and final war, in which the nations of the earth would unite for their mutual destruction, after which the spirit of righteousness would establish a millennial reign of peace. And so when most of the nations of the world came together in war in 1914, many persons pronounced the struggle the long expected Armageddon.

It was easy to say in those days of excitement that this war was going to be the last. Madness it certainly was, and surely a mad world would come back to reasonableness after a season of brutal destruction. Common sense, humanity, and the all powerful force of economic interest would bring the struggle to an end, and then by agreement steps would be taken to make a recurrence of the situation impossible.

It was in the days when we still had confidence in civilization. Humanity, we said, had developed to such an extent that it could not return to the chaos that an age of war would imply. International law was still considered a binding body of morality, if not of actual law. International public opinion was believed to have power to punish national wrong-doers. We who teach said as much to our classes many times in those days of innocence. In all sincerity we felt that a nation could not do this or that thing because public opinion would not tolerate it. How far distant seem now the days of early summer in 1914!

We had adopted many specific rules to restrain needless barbarity in war. For example, we would not use dum-dum bullets, nor drop bombs on non-combatants, nor shell the homes of innocent dwellers on the seashore. It was considered an achievement of the civilized spirit that an army occupying enemy territory would respect the rights of the non-combatant inhabitants, set guards over private property, protect women and children from injury, and permit civilians to go about their business as long as they did not intermeddle with military matters. In three and a half horrible years we have drifted a long way from these protestations. Those of us who once studied the elements of international law may well study them again when the war is over, if, indeed, international law is still thought worth studying.

In the vision the angel poured out his vial on the great river, to the early men of Mesapotamia the symbol of the great waters. In our own day we have seen strange engines of wrath placed in the great waters, foul spirits that destroy men and ships in disregard of the rules of fair fighting. And out of the mouths of dragons and other loathsome beasts, and of false prophets as well, evil spirits have issued in these sad days. They have taken their places in the hearts and minds of self-willed men and made beasts of them; so that the rest of humanity have had to fight against them and suffer themselves to be killed by them, in order that the wicked shall not triumph over the whole earth.

The war has been gruesome beyond the imagination of man. No other recorded experience has told us of so much killing, and of so many different ways of killing. Men have been slain with swords, cannon, great howitzers, rifles, machine guns, tanks, liquid fire, electrified wires, and finally with the germs of disease deliberately planted. Nothing that science could invent for destroying human life has been omitted, except, possibly, dum-dum bullets; and in view of the use of much more cruel means we may well ask, “Why not dum-dums also?”

We must admit that if the author of the Book of Revelations had prophetic insight and foresaw the world struggle that now is, he did not overpaint its terrors. And so, asks the man of faith, if the first part of the vision comes true, why may not the second part likewise come true? If the seer could foresee the war and its horrors, may he not also have spoken truly when he foretold that after Armageddon wars would be no more; for God would wipe away the desire for them from the hearts of men?

To this question I answer: If a man is left in the world when this conflict is ended who glories in deliberate war, he is too bad to live in civilized society. Certain it is that the vast majority of men and women are already convinced that the desire for war, henceforth and forever, is wiped out of their hearts. In the stress of actual battle or in the preparations to sustain those who fight they may forget the fundamental folly of the whole thing for the time; but it is always at the bottom of their hearts. What is the human power of reasoning worth, if it is not able to devise some way to escape from this obsession of self-slaughter?

Do not be deceived by the strut of Mars. His Day has come with a vengeance. He has shot up rapidly, like a jimson-weed, and blossomed like a cactus. We may have laughed at him in the days of peace, but we now look to him for protection. We cannot decry the men who are dying for us, dying in the best sportsmanslike manner. But we do not like their business as a business, and we wish at the bottom of our hearts that it were abolished as a peril to humanity. And we believe that of all who hate war, none hate it more than those who are actually fighting in this struggle. Let us give Mars his Day and all the glory that belongs to it, but let us not forget peace while we serve war.

Nor should we be deceived by the pallid pacifist. He has his counterpart in every struggle; and in general he serves some good purpose in a multitude of opinions. But the day of stress and world crisis is not his Day; and the practical world loses little time in putting him in his place. The pacifist does not represent the peace movement in its freest and most significant form. The advocates of peace today who are best serving its promotion are those who are out in the armies bent on putting down that nation who is the most dangerous enemy of peace.

These men are not mere pieces of machinery in a great driving process. They are thinking men with political power in their hands, either actually or potentially. War is a great schoolteacher. It has lasted in our own time nearly as long as a course in college. The soldiers who survive from the beginning of this conflict may now be considered as more than half through their senior year. They know what war is and what it means, and they know something about the necessary form of coöperation that must exist in any society before the will of the people can be carried into effect. They knew little about war four years ago: they now know all the professors know. Behind the lines and here in our homes one never sees man nor woman who does not admit that it would be a blessing to make war impossible; but few of us have any idea how to go about getting it made impossible. Many of us think we shall never get people to act together in such a cause. But it seems unreasonable to expect that men who have raided through “No Man’s Land,” captured trenches and defeated great armies through organization and initiative should quail before the inertia of opinion, perhaps the chief obstacle confronting those who labor for a coöperative peace.

The example of the Russians is a useful point in this connection. At the beginning of the war their armies were as machine-like as any armies could be. The privates were generally peasants who did not know why they fought, and who certainly had nothing to say about the origin of the war. They were typical “cannon-fodder,” and as unthinking as any modern soldier can be. They have learned much from less than three years of war. They slowly acquired purpose, a sense of organization, and leaders whom they follow. Having made this progress they overthrew the imperial government, drove away the great nobles, put an ensign in the place of a former grand duke and two exiles in the seats of the highest officials, and stripped the highest born army officers of their titles and insignia.

At the present writing they are holding out against all attempts to overthrow them, they are playing the diplomatic game with Germany without discredit,¹ and they are reported to be shaking the foundations of autocracy in Austria. At any rate, it must be confessed that a small group of the Russian “cannon-fodder” have made commendable progress in the process of education during the last ten months. The process seems to have been under the direction of the socialists, a small but well organized group of intelligent persons who do not lack initiative. It is they who are educating the Russian peasants into political self-expression.

The possible results of this incident are tremendous. Nowhere else in the world have the agricultural classes fallen into one party with vigorous and trained leaders. If Russia is now embarking on an era of representative government, as seems probable, she is passing through a stage in which political parties are being crystallized. So far, it does not appear that any considerable party is organized in the vast empire on what we should call a conservative basis. It will be an interesting experiment in political history if Russia has a great peasant party in control of the administration.

The party that now controls Russia is committed to the idea of a peace through the coöperation of the nations. It is true that internationalism goes further than mere federation of nations; for it also implies the socialization of industry, the equal distribution of property. In short, it is the internationalism and unification of the industrial classes in all nations for a combined opposition to capital. With these aims we shall, probably, not be pleased. But they imply the destruction of war; and it now seems possible that Russia will stand before the world, at least until the radical elements fall before conservatives, as the most prominent champion of coöperative peace.

As to the socialistic purpose of the internationalists, it stands apart logically from that feature of their doctrine that relates to the mere coöperation of nations. They would say, probably, that coöperation is but incidental to their main desire, the unification of the workers of the world. But it is right to expect that they would support coöperation among the nations to obtain the destruction of war, since it would make it easier for the world to accept their other ideals. On the other hand the man who opposes internationalism as such, could accept the aid of a radical Russia in obtaining federated peace, without feeling that in doing so he was necessarily contributing to the promotion of the socialistic features of internationalism.

This remarkable shifting of power in Russia has had its counterpart on a less impressive scale in other countries. Whether it comes to the point of explosion or not, there is in the minds of all – the thoughtful people, the working-men, and all intermediate classes – a growing belief that a new idea should rule the relations of nations among themselves. From an age of international competition they are turning to the hope of an era of international agreement; and it does not appear that their influence will be unheeded when men come to face steadily the problems the war is sure to leave behind it.

Most notable influence of all in behalf of a federated peace is the position taken by President Wilson. In the beginning of this conflict he had the scholar’s horror of warfare, and he has taken more than one opportunity to suggest the formation of a league of nations to prevent the outbreak of future wars. His address to Congress on January 22, 1917, was a notable presentation of the idea to the world. Enthusiastic hearers pronounced the occasion a turning-point in history. Whether a league of nations is established or not, according to the president’s desires, his support of the idea has given it a great push forward. He has taken it out of the realm of the ideal and made it a practical thing, to be discussed gravely in the cabinets of rulers.

A year after the question has been brought forward, it should be possible to form an opinion of the attitude of European nations in regard to the suggestion. From all of them, including Germany and Austria, have come courteous allusions to the idea of the president; and the pope has given it his support. But it is not clear that all are sincerely in favor of a logically constituted league that will have power to do what it is expected to do. That President Wilson will continue to urge steps in this direction is to be taken as certain. The measure of his success will be the amount of hearty and substantial support he has from that large class of people who still ask: “Can’t something be done to stop war forever?”

When this page is being written the newspapers are full of a discussion of the two speeches that came from the central powers on January 25, 1918, one from Chancellor von Hertling of Germany, and the other from Count Czernin, of Austria. In the former is the following utterance:

“I am sympathetically disposed, as my political activity shows, toward every idea which eliminates for the future a possibility or a probability of war, and will promote a peaceful and harmonious collaboration of nations. If the idea of a bond of nations, as suggested by President Wilson, proves on closer examination really to be conceived in a spirit of complete justice and complete impartiality toward all, then the imperial government is gladly ready, when all other pending questions have been settled, to begin the examination of the basis of such a bond of nations.”

This very guarded utterance means much or little, as the German rulers may hereafter determine. By offering impossible conditions of what they may pronounce “complete justice and complete impartiality to all” they may be able to nullify whatever promise may be incorporated in it. On the other hand, the sentiment, if accepted in a fair spirit and without exaggerated demands, may be a real step toward realizing President Wilson’s desires. If, for example, Germany should insist, as a condition for the formation of a “bond of nations,” that Great Britain give up her navy, or dismantle Gibraltar, while she herself retained her immense Krupp works and her power to assemble her army at a moment’s notice, it is hardly likely the demand would be granted. We can best know what Germany will do in this matter when we see to what extent she is willing to acknowledge that her war is a failure and that her military policy is a vast and expensive affair that profits nothing. Moreover, there is a slight sneer in the chancellor’s words, as though he does not consider the president’s idea entirely within the range of the diplomacy of experienced statesmen; and this is not very promising for the outcome – unless, indeed, the logic of future events opens his eyes to the meaning of the new spirit that the war has aroused.

Among our own allies the suggestion of our president has found a kinder reception. Mr. Lloyd George has announced his general support of the proposition, and Lord Bryce and others have given it cordial indorsement. It seems that if the United States urges the formation of a league of peace, she will have the coöperation of Great Britain. As to the position of France and Italy, the matter is not so clear. They probably are too deeply impressed by the danger they will ever face from powerful neighbors to feel warranted in dismissing their armies, unless the best assurance is given that Germany and Austria accept federated peace in all good faith.

As the contending nations approach that state of exhaustion which presages an end of the war, the question of such a peace becomes increasingly important. Everything points to the conclusion that the time has arrived to debate this subject. If the hopes of August, 1914, that Armageddon would be succeeded by an era of permanent peace are to be realized, they will not come without the serious thought of men who are willing to dare something for their ideals. And if they come out of the present cataclysm it is time to be up and doing. The sentiment that exists in this country, and in other countries, must be organized and made effective at the critical moment. There is nothing more dispiriting to the student of history than to observe as he reads how many favorable moments for turning some happy corner in the progress of humanity were allowed to pass without effort to utilize them. It has been a hundred years since the world had another opportunity like this that faces us, and if it is not now tried out to the utmost possibility, there is little hope that the next century will be as bloodless as the past has been, even with the present conflict included.

Every general war in Europe since the days of the Roman Empire has brought humanity there to a state of exhaustion similar to that which now exists. So it was with the Thirty Years’ War, with the wars inaugurated by Louis XIV to establish the predominance of France, and with the Napoleonic wars a century ago. Each of these struggles, it will be observed, extended to a larger portion of Europe than its predecessor; and it was because the common interests of nations were progressively stronger; for it was ever becoming so that what concerned one state concerned others. In the present war the interrelations of nations is such that Japan and the United States have been brought into the conflict, along with China and several of the smaller American states. If the conflict recurs in the future it may be expected to involve a still wider area.

There is evidence that in each of these struggles the humane men then living were filled with the same longing for permanent peace that many men feel today.² The feeling was especially strong during the last stages of the Napoleonic wars and immediately after they ended. Singularly enough it was strongest in Russia, due, however to the accident that an enthusiastic and idealistic tsar was ruling in that country. He had received his ideals from a French tutor who was deeply imbued with the equality theories of the revolution that swept over his own country. The tsar accepted them with sincerity and spent several years of conscientious effort in his attempts to have them adopted. More singularly still, they found their only sincere indorsement, among the rulers who had the right to indorse or reject, with the king of Prussia, who at that time was a very religious man. Most peculiar of all they found very strong opposition in England, where practical statesmen were in power. As I read the history of that day and reflect on what has been the train of events from the battle of Waterloo to the invasion of Belgium in 1914, it is hard to keep from wishing that a better effort had been made in 1815 to carry out the suggestion which the tsar urged on his royal brothers in Europe.

The defeat of Napoleon was purchased at immense sacrifices. To the people of the day the most desirable thing in the world seemed to be a prevention of his reappearance to trouble mankind. They took the greatest care to keep his body a prisoner until he was dead; but they did not seriously try to lay his ghost. Probably they did not think, being practical men, that his spirit would walk again in the earth. They were mistaken; for not only has the ghost come back, but it has come with increased power and subtlety. In fact, it was an old ghost, and having once inhabited the bodies of Louis XIV, Augustus Cæsar, and Alexander of Macedon, as well as that of Napoleon I, it knew much more than the grave gentlemen who undertook to arrange the future of Europe in practical ways in 1815.

As we approach again the re-making of our relations after a world war, it is worth while to glance over the things that were done in 1815, to understand what choice of events was presented to the men of that day, and what results came from the course they deliberately decided to follow. Thus we may know whether or not the course proved a happy one, and whether or not it is the course that we, also, should follow. And if it is not such a course, we ought as thinking people to try to adopt a better.

We should always remember that the conditions of today are more suitable to a wise decision than the conditions of 1815. We have, for one thing, the advantage of the experience of the past hundred years. There is no doubt in our minds as to how the old plan has worked and how it may be expected to work if again followed. It led to the Concert of Europe and the Balance of Power, both of which served in certain emergencies, but failed in the hour of supreme need. Indeed, it is probable that they promoted the crash that at last arrived.

Another advantage is that we have today in the world a vastly greater amount of democracy than in 1815. The people who pay the bills of Mars today can say what shall be done about keeping Mars in chains; and that is something they could not do in 1815. It is for them to know all his capers, and his clever ways of getting out of prison, and to look under his shining armor to see the grizzly hairs that cover his capacious ribs; and having done this to decide what will be their attitude toward him.

It is not the business of an author to offer his views to his reader ready made. Enough if he offers the material facts out of which the reader may form his own opinions. That is my object in this book. I do not disguise my conviction that some of the fruits of the war that ended at Waterloo were lost through the inexperience of the men who set the world on its course again. Whether or not the men were as wise as they should have been is now a profitless inquiry. My only object is to set before the reader as clearly as I can the idea of a permanent peace through federated action, to show how that idea came up in connection with the war against Napoleon, how it was rejected for a concerted and balanced international system, what came of the decision in the century that followed, and finally in what way the failure of the old system is responsible for the present war. If the reader will follow me through these considerations, he will be prepared to examine in a judicial spirit the arguments for and against President Wilson’s suggested union of nations to end war.

As these introductory remarks are written, we seem to be girding up our loins again with the firm conviction that we cannot talk of peace until Germany knows she is beaten. The decision is eminently wise. But if it is worth while to fight two or ten years more to crush Germany’s confidence in her military policy, how much ought it not to be worth to make the nations realize that if they really wish to destroy war they can do it by taking two steps: first, end this struggle in a spirit of amity; and second, make an effective agreement to preserve that state of amity by preventing the occurrence of the things and feelings that disturb it. That is the task as well as the opportunity of wise men, who can govern themselves; and it is for their information that this volume is written which undertakes to point out “The Lost Fruits of Waterloo” and the conditions under which we may seek to recover them. It is not a book of propaganda, unless facts are propagandists. It is not a pacifist book, although its pages may make for peace, if God wills. It is only a plain statement of the lessons of history as they appear to one of the many thousands of puzzled persons now habitants of this globe who are trying to grope their ways out of this fog of folly.

CHAPTER II
EARLY ADVOCATES OF UNIVERSAL PEACE

Those who have tried to point the world to universal peace may be divided into two schools: one advocating a form of coöperation in which the final reliance is to be reason, the other looking forward to some effective form of common action behind which shall be sufficient force to carry out the measures necessary to enforce the common will. It is convenient to describe the former group as advocating a league of peace, since we are generally agreed that a league is a form of concert from which the constituent members may withdraw at will, and in which does not reside power to force them to do what they do not find reasonable. The second group wish to have a federation, if by that term we understand a united group in which exists power sufficient to preserve the common cause against any possible disobedient member. To form a league is easier than to form a federation. States are tenacious of sovereignty. The Swiss cantons, the Dutch provinces, and the original thirteen states of North America are the most striking illustrations of states that were willing to submit themselves to the more strenuous process of union. They acted under stress of great common peril, and their first steps in federation were short and timid; but none of them have regretted that the steps were taken. It was the good fortune of these groups of states that they were able to unite at the proper time and that their actions were not overclouded by the counsel of “practical statesmen” to whom ideals were things to be distrusted.

In other states in periods of great distress from war men lived who dreamed of coöperation to promote peace, but their voices were too weak for the times. The most notable early advocate of this scheme was the Duke of Sully, if we may accept the notion that he wrote the work known as the Grand Design of Henry IV. In that plan was contemplated a Christian Republic, composed of fifteen states in Europe, only three of which were to have a republican form of government. They were to give up warring among themselves and to refer to a common council, modeled on the Ionic League, all matters of interstate relation that were of importance to the “very Christian Republic.” The only war this republic was to wage was the common war to expel the Turks from Europe. It was after Henry’s death that Sully published the plan with the assertion that his former master had formed it just after the treaty of Vervins, 1598.

Whether it was the work of king or duke, no attempt was made to put it into force. In 1598 Europe was in the throes of a long and hopeless struggle for religion. Cities were destroyed, men and women were butchered, and the safety of states was threatened. The Grand Design represents the reaction of either Henry’s or Sully’s mind against such a terror. It was a thing to be desired, if it could have been attained. One of the marks of peace that it displayed was the attitude it took towards the branches of the Christian faith. Complete tolerance was to exist for the three forms, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. This was a kind of idealism that was then unattainable; but in the course of time it has been achieved. I should not like to say the day will not come when the other side of the scheme, interstate peace, will also cease to be too ideal for realization.

The next important suggestion of union for peace was made by William Penn in 1693 in an Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe. At that time the Continent was racked with war – a result of the ambition of Louis XIV to raise France to a dominating position among the other nations – , the Palatinate had been devastated, and the will of the “Grand Monarch” was the dreaded fact in international politics. Penn realized that great sacrifices were ahead; for it was as true then as now that when a strong state rises to a position in which it can threaten universal rule, there is nothing for the other states but to combine and fight as long as they can.

Penn’s proposal was that the sovereigns of Europe should form a Great Diet in which all their disputes should be adjusted. If any state refused to submit to the judgment of the diet and appealed to arms, all the other states were to fall upon it with their armies and make it rue the course it had taken. Quaker though he was, he would have war to prevent war. His proposal made no impression on his “practical” contemporaries; but he was prepared for that. Men of his faith were used to “bearing testimony” in the expectation that “the world” would scoff. Although it was not included in the original folio edition of his works this essay remains to this day the best known thing he wrote. It is one of the most logical arguments for peace that we have.

From 1701 to 1714 was waged the War of the Spanish Succession, the last of the series of struggles in which Louis XIV wore out his kingdom in trying to make it supreme over its neighbors. It left France exhausted and miserable, and it had not realized the king’s ambition. In 1713, the year in which Louis was forced to accept the Treaty of Utrecht in token of his defeat, was published by the Abbé Castel de St. Pierre a book called Projet de Traité pour rendre la Paix Perpetuelle. Like the utterances of Sully and Penn, it was wrung out of the mind of the author by the ruin that lay around him. It differed from them in nothing but in its more abundant details. The abbé had taken many things into account, and the union of nations that he proposed was to do six important things.

1. There was to be a perpetual alliance of European rulers with a diet composed of plenipotentiary agents in which disputed points were to be settled amicably. 2. What sovereigns were to be admitted to the alliance was to be determined by the act of alliance, which was also to fix the proportion in which each should contribute to the common fund. 3. The union was to guarantee the sovereignty of the constituent states with existing boundaries, and future disputes of this nature were to be referred to the arbitration of the council. 4. States offending against the laws of the diet were to be put under the ban of Europe. 5. A state under the ban was to be coërced by the other states until it accepted the laws it had violated. 6. The council was to make such laws, on instruction from the sovereigns, as were thought necessary to the objects for which the perpetual alliance was created.

Like the two preceding plans the abbé’s scheme was too strong to be rated as a league. It does not allow us to think that a state could withdraw at pleasure from the alliance; and it gave to the council the authority to lay taxes, make laws that were binding, and punish defiant members. It is noteworthy for the large amount of power it gave to the sovereigns, since the members of the council were their agents and acted only on instructions. Under the prevalent notions of the divine right of kings no other method of selecting the members of the council would have been considered in France, Spain, or Germany. On the other hand, the abbé’s scheme was less liberal in this respect than Penn’s, which provided that the wisest and justest men in each nation should be sent to the council. It was also a part of Penn’s plan that the council should be a really deliberative body, a parliament of Europe as truly as there was in England a parliament of the realm.

We have no evidence that the arguments of the good abbé made a profound impression upon any of the sovereigns upon whose favor the scheme depended. The Treaty of Utrecht was followed by a season of peace. So deeply wounded was Europe by conflict that it had no stomach for war during a generation. It was a time of great industrial prosperity in England, France, and Prussia. Walpole, the wise guardian of peaceful society, dominated the first of these nations, Fleury, also a man of peace, was for a large part of the time the guiding hand in the second, and Frederic William I directed the development of the third with a sure sense of economy and the efficient use of resources. At the same time Austria was under the direction of Charles VI, a peaceful monarch who had too many anxieties at home to think of wars against the Christian sovereigns around him. The small struggles that occurred were without significance; and it was not until 1740, when a new generation was on the scene, that Europe again had a period of general war, precipitated by an imaginative young king who could not resist the temptation to use the excellent tool with which his father had provided him. Out of the twenty years’ struggle that now followed, no new plan arose for a system of coöperation to secure peace, but one of the great philosophers of the time made a new statement of the Abbé St. Pierre’s plan, which served as a new proposition.

It was during the last years of the Seven Years’ War that Rousseau received the papers of the good abbé, with the expectation that he would prepare them for publication in a more popular form than the twenty-one volumes in which the author’s thoughts were buried. He eventually gave up the task, but he produced two short summaries, one of which was entitled Extrait du Projet de Paix perpetuelle de M. L’Abbé de Saint-Pierre. The “extract” proper was followed by a “judgment” in which Rousseau voiced his own views. He advocated the creation of a confederacy mutually dependent, no state to be permitted to resist all the other states united nor to form an alliance with any other state in rivalry with the confederacy. The scope of the central authority was defined, and there was to be a legislature to make laws in amplification of that authority, such laws to be administered by a federal court. No state was to withdraw from the union. Thus, Rousseau made his proposed confederacy rest on force. In his mind it was to be vitally efficient government, capable of doing all it was created to do.

All the plans I have mentioned contemplated the creation of a central authority strong enough to make itself obeyed. They implied, therefore, that each constituent state should relinquish a part of its sovereignty in order to form the federation. Now this was, as at the present time, a strong objection to the scheme. No one has met it better than William Penn, who said:

“I am come now to the last Objection, That Sovereign Princes and States will hereby become not Sovereign: a Thing they will never endure. But this also, under Correction, is a Mistake, for they remain as Sovereign at Home as ever they were. Neither their Power over their People, nor the usual Revenue they pay them, is diminished: It may be the War Establishment may be reduced, which will indeed of Course follow, or be better employed to the Advantage of the Publick. So that the Soveraignties are as they were, for none of them have now any Soveraignty over one another: And if this be called a lessening of their Power, it must be only because the great Fish can no longer eat up the little ones, and that each Soveraignty is equally defended from Injuries, and disabled from committing them.”

A quarter of a century later, in the beginning of the French Revolution, Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher, advocated the union of states in behalf of common peace, but he rested his argument on morality, not on force. There was to be a league of states, with a legislature and courts of justice, but the decisions were to be executed by the states themselves. He held that after the court gave a decision in a specified case and published the evidence and arguments, public opinion would be strong enough to enforce the judgment. By discarding force Bentham had the advantage of preserving the sovereignty of the states, a thing that is particularly esteemed by an Englishman. He is to be considered the first of a series of eminent peace advocates who look no further than a league of states bound together by their plighted word and relying on the weight of public opinion to coërce the individual states.

He had given his life to the task of fixing the sway of law in the minds of humanity, and it was a part of his general idea that a high court of justice, investigating a controversy, and exposing all the sides of it before a world of fair minded observers, would lessen the asperity of opposing passions so that the verdict of the court would be received as saving credit and honor to the party who had to yield. It is out of this attitude that our whole doctrine of arbitration as an expedient for escaping war has its rise, a doctrine of such importance in our general subject that no peace advocate would dare reject it wholly.

Bentham’s opinion was expressed in a stray pamphlet that made little impression in his time and has nearly escaped the notice of posterity. A more conspicuous achievement, and nearly contemporary, was an essay by Immanuel Kant, philosopher at Königsberg, in Prussia. In 1795 he published Zum ewigen Frieden, an outline for a league of perpetual peace. There was a time, he argued, when men lived by force under the laws of nature, each regulating his own conduct toward his neighbors, the strongest man having his way through his ability to overawe his associates. Then came the state and the rule of law, and with their arrival one saw the exit of personal combat. Kant applied the same argument to the intercourse of the nations, saying they were in a state of nature toward one another. He proposed to organize a super-state over them, with authority to bring them under a law prohibiting wars among themselves. He would assign a definite field of action to the new power, with the function of making laws in enforcing that authority, and it would have the necessary administrative and judicial officers. The law made by the united government was to be as good law for its own purposes as the law made by the individual states for their purposes.

Kant’s suggestion was closely kin to Rousseau’s ideas of the state, but he wrote at a time when the world, stampeded by the excesses of the Jacobins, was turning away from all the political theories that underlay the French Revolution. It had no use for the idea that government was the outcome of a social contract; and if this idea was not accepted for the state itself, how much less would it be accepted as a means of organizing the international state! The world suffered too much at the hands of Napoleon to like ideas that were responsible for the very beginning of the letting out of the waters. And this was especially true in Prussia, where the foot of the French conqueror was extremely heavy.

At the moment when Kant’s ideas were at the height of unpopularity came the young philosopher, Hegel, who announced a philosophical view of war that pleased the governing class of Prussia, bent on establishing a system of military training that would be sufficient for a redeemed country. He taught that war through action burns away moral excrescences, purifies the health of society, and stimulates the growth of manly virtue. This idea became the basis of much German reasoning, and it is not improbable that its defenders in trying to discern the virtues they argued for, were led to develop them. But in their enthusiasm they came to exaggerate these virtues into habits that were often mere manifestations of an exalted egoism. As to the claim that war burns up the effete products of society, it may be met by the undeniable assertion that it also burns much that is best. One does not burn a city to destroy the vermin that are in it.

The next attempt to bring about a system of coöperation to secure peace among the nations was the formation of the Holy Alliance, a futile attempt to apply principles like those just described, made by Alexander I, of Russia, at the close of the Napoleonic wars. It is considered at length in the chapter following this, where it finds its proper setting. The extremely religious spirit in which it was conceived was a drawback to success, but it is not likely that it would have fared better than it did fare, even if stripped of all its pious fantasy, since the world was not educated to its acceptance as a purely political idea.

At this stage one must notice the development of peace societies. Organized at first as local bodies they were drawn together into national organizations in the early decades of the nineteenth century. It was in 1816 that such a society was created in Great Britain, and in 1828 that the American Peace Society was formed out of local societies in the United States. In the same year was established at Geneva the first peace society on the Continent, the second being organized at Paris in 1841. The influence of such societies was weak for a long time; but within the past twenty years it has been much stronger.

One of the most striking examples of the prevalence of the peace idea in recent times is the growing use of arbitration as a means of settling international disputes. Another is the meeting of the Hague conferences to promote peace. The first was called by the tsar, Nicholas II, in 1899 and laid a broad outline of the work that such conferences ought to do. A second assembled in the year 1907, and a third was about to convene when the Great War began in 1914. The conferences devoted their strongest efforts to the reduction of armaments and the checking of militarism; but in each case they found the German Empire planted boldly across their path, and in this respect their efforts were futile. It is not to be doubted that the attitude of Germany contributed much to develop the widespread suspicion of that country which has been one of her handicaps in the present war.

The “peace movement,” as the totality of these activities is called, has thus gained strength, and it would seem that it must eventually prevail in public opinion. It received an important momentum in 1910, when Mr. Andrew Carnegie gave $10,000,000 to establish the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an organization which has contributed powerfully to the promotion of peace ideas. It acts on scientific principles, seeking to gather and publish such facts bearing on international relations, the laws of economics and history, and the science of international law, as will show in what respect war is to be removed from its hold on society.

The careless enthusiasm with which a great many people hailed the outbreak of war in 1914 swept the peace advocates into the background and was the occasion of some sarcasm at their expense. But as the struggle grew in grimness and horrors the advocates of peace on principle returned to their old position in public esteem, and have steadily gained on it. It seems undeniable that the war has done more to convince the world of the madness of war than many decades of agitation could do.

One of the manifestations of the rebound here mentioned was the organization in June, 1915, of “The League to Enforce Peace.” This society was created in a meeting of representative men assembled in Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia, the place in which the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Its principles are embraced in the following proposals: 1. A judicial tribunal to which will be referred judiciable disputes between the signatory powers, subject to existing treaties, the tribunals to have power to pass on the merits of the disputes submitted as well as on its jurisdiction over them. 2. The reference of other disputes between the signatory states to a council of conciliation, which will hear the cases submitted and recommend settlements in accordance with its ideas of justice. 3. If any signatory state threatens war before its case is submitted to the judicial tribunal or the council of conciliation, the other states will jointly employ diplomatic pressure to prevent war; and if hostilities actually begin under such circumstances they will jointly use their military forces against the power in contempt of the league. 4. The signatory states will from time to time hold conferences to formulate rules of international law which are to be executed by the tribunal of arbitration unless within a stated time some state vetoes the proposal.

The system of coöperation embodied in these proposals is not a federation, within the meaning that I have given to that term. It is what it pretends to be, merely a league. It seems to concede the right of a state to secede from the league at will. As to what would happen under it if a signatory state refusing to abide the decision of the tribunal or council of conciliation should attempt to withdraw and make war at once, we can have little doubt. In such a case the attempt to secede would probably be considered defiance and steps be taken to reduce the state to submission. Nevertheless it might happen that a state within the league, finding its action restricted so that it could not adopt some policy which it considered essential to its welfare, might proceed to withdraw in view of a line of conduct it intended to take at a later time. In that case it is difficult to see how the league could resist unless it was willing to take the position that it had a kind of sovereignty over all interstate relations, a position that involves more concentration than the form of the league seems to imply.

At this point in our inquiry into the subject of coöperation to secure universal peace an inviting field of speculation opens before us, but we must turn aside for the time, in order to consider various phases of the process by which the world has arrived at the crisis now before it. This chapter will serve its purpose if it gives the reader a view of the earliest suggestions of systems of common action and if it makes clear the differences between the two general plans that have been formulated, the league and the federation.

CHAPTER III
PROBLEMS OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS

The career of Napoleon, which has long commanded the greatest interest, not to say enthusiasm, of students of history, aroused grave fears in the minds of most of the thoughtful men of his day who did not live in France. His design to conquer all his neighbors was most evident, and his apparent ability to carry it into execution caused him to be regarded as the embodiment of greed and insatiable ambition. Not since the days of Louis XIV had Europe felt such thrills of danger and horror. All its energy was called into play to withstand his attacks. Wars followed wars in a series of campaigns that ended after many years of extreme anxiety in his ruin, only when France had been worn out by his repeated victories. When he began his wars he was at the head of the best prepared nation in the world. He struck with sudden and vigorous blows against nations that were not united, defeating one after the other with startling effect. Their lack of preparation was most marked and was probably the most effective cause of his initial success. After years of conflict they learned how to oppose him. From his own example they learned the value of organization and method in fighting, and from their own disasters they at last acquired the sense of union that was necessary to give him the final blow that made him no longer a menace to their national integrity. It was not until 1815 that he was finally defeated and reduced to the state of ineffective personal power from which he had risen.

From the beginning of the struggle he was to his opponents the incarnation of all that was hateful in government. Few of the epithets now hurled at the kaiser were not as lavishly cast at Napoleon. He was tyrant, robber, brute, and murderer in turn, and it was pronounced a service to humanity to suppress him. In the beginning of the wars his pretensions were treated with disdain, but as his victories followed one another in bewildering rapidity, his power was treated with more respect, although there was no greater disposition to contemplate his triumph with complacency. As the struggle became fiercer, the other states than France began to think of some permanent form of coöperation for restraining him; and they even began to speculate on the possibility of some permanent arrangement by which the world might be saved from a recurrence of such a vast waste of life and treasure as was involved in the struggle. It was thus that suggestions were made during the Napoleonic era for abolishing war through international effort. For us, who are today burdened with the ruin of a similar but more stupendous struggle, these efforts have a special interest, and the space of a single chapter is none too much to give to their consideration.

It is singular that these plans should have found their most conspicuous supporters in the heads of the two governments most widely apart with reference to the popular character of their institutions. It was in autocratic Russia that one found the most advanced idea of dealing with the future, and in Great Britain, the most liberal of the great powers, that the most conservative design was held. Each plan was supported by the head of these two governments respectively, each ran through its own development while the armies were locked in deadly struggle, and each was debated with seriousness in the moment of victory when the statesmen of the winning powers met to arrange for the future relations of the states whose victories made them the arbiters of Europe.

The initiative was taken by Alexander I, of Russia. He was a man of the best intentions, and throughout the period with which we are now dealing he showed himself persistently favorable to views which, to say the least, were a hundred years ahead of his time. By temperament he was imaginative and sympathetic. In his personal life were irregularities, but not as many as in Napoleon’s, Louis XIV’s, or Talleyrand’s. He lacked the royal vice of despotism, and his escape from it was probably due to the influence of Fréderic César de La Harpe, an instructor of his youth, who arrived in Russia with his head full of the dynamic ideas of the French philosophers of the pre-revolutionary period.

While “liberty, equality, and fraternity” maddened France, long oppressed by the dull repression of the ancient régime, La Harpe was converting his royal pupil to the doctrine of the “Rights of Man.” So well was the lesson taught that a long series of encounters with the solid wall of Russian autocracy was necessary before the pupil ceased to try to do something to ameliorate the condition of his people. Historians have called Alexander a dreamer, but what is a man to do who is born a tsar and has the misfortune to believe in the doctrines for which we honor Lincoln and Jefferson? I am willing to call him impractical, but I cannot withhold sympathy from a man who tried, as he, to strike blows in behalf of the forms of government which makes my own country a home of liberty.

Alexander I came to the throne of Russia in 1801, anxious to carry out his liberal plans.³ In 1804, through his minister in London, he suggested to Pitt, the prime minister, a plan for settling the affairs of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. France, he said, must be made to realize that the allies did not war against her people but against Napoleon, from whose false power they proposed to set her free. Once liberated she was to be allowed to choose any government she desired. From La Harpe he had imbibed a deep repugnance to the government of the Bourbons, and in all his future discussions of the subject he showed no enthusiasm for restoring that line to their throne.

One of the charges often made by the allies was that Napoleon overthrew international law. It was a part of Alexander’s plan to reëstablish its potency and to have the nations see to it that no future violations of it could occur. He also suggested that the firm agreement then existing between Russia and Great Britain should continue after the establishment of peace and that other great powers should be brought into it so that there should be a means of securing common action in affairs of mutual significance. At this time he had not, it seems, fully determined just what form of coöperation ought to be adopted, but in the suggestion of 1804 can be found the germ of all his later designs for permanent peace.

At that moment Pitt was looking for the renewal of the European war and he expected the formation of the great coalition of 1805, in which Russia, Great Britain, Austria, and Sweden undertook to defeat France. He did not dare, therefore, reject the tsar’s proposals outright. He gave approval to the suggestion in regard to the restoration of international law, but he qualified his sanction of the scheme for a future league of nations. Napoleon crushed, he said, it would be for the states to guarantee such an adjustment of European affairs as they should agree upon in solemn treaty. Looking into these two statements it is seen that the tsar had in mind the formation of some kind of league of nations, with well defined powers and duties, while Pitt looked forward to that kind of international coöperation which was later described by the term “Concert of Europe.” In the subsequent dealing of Alexander with the British leaders over this matter there was always this difference between them.

In 1807 Napoleon won the battle of Friedland over Russia and occupied a large part of the tsar’s domain. Then came the Treaty of Tilsit in which Alexander and Napoleon standing face to face came to an unexpected agreement to divide the accessible part of the world between them, Alexander ruling one half and Napoleon ruling the other. It is certain, however, that the tsar had in his mind that both he and his new ally would rule their respective halves in the spirit of La Harpe’s teaching. Napoleon baited his trap with no less attractive a morsel than self-government under a wise monarch in order to catch Alexander I.

The Moscow campaign brought the tsar to his senses. He himself said that it was the burning of the ancient city, 1812, that illuminated his mind and enabled him to see the true character of the Corsican. For five years he had been lulled into inactivity by the belief that some form of permanent peace was coming to the world through Napoleon. He now realized that he had been duped, and after making due acknowledgment of his error turned to the task of destroying the deceiver. From that time he did not waver in his determination.

Russia and Great Britain were thus in close alliance, and immediately began consideration of a permanent alliance looking toward a regulation of affairs in Europe after the war was ended. The British cabinet took up the question and in 1813 passed a resolution in which occurs the following declaration: “The Treaty of Alliance [between the states which were united against Napoleon] is not to terminate with the war, but is to contain defensive engagements, with mutual obligations to support the Power attacked by France with a certain extent of stipulated succors. The casus foederis is to be an attack by France on the European dominions of any one of the contracting parties.”⁴ This provision was kept secret for the time, but it remained the basis of the British policy throughout the negotiations that followed. Castlereagh, in ability and character the greatest statesman of his day, was then at the head of the British cabinet, and it seems certain that he inspired its policy.

He was already suspicious of the position of the tsar in reference to France. That sovereign had in no way relaxed his friendship for the French people. Hating the Bourbons he would have prevented their restoration to the throne, and he had a project for allowing the French to determine whom they would have for king after Napoleon. If he could carry this plan through he would make himself very popular in France and would have a strong position with the ruler whose selection he should thus make possible. To Castlereagh this was nothing but a shrewd piece of policy for laying the foundation of a Franco-Russian alliance which would have overweening influence in Europe, and he set himself against its execution. He was forced to proceed cautiously, however, since Napoleon was not beaten and the aid of the tsar was essential. There is nothing to suggest that Alexander did not entertain his French views in all singleness of purpose. The worst his enemies said of him was that he was a dreamer; but he was not given to a policy of calculation.

To thwart Alexander and carry through his own views Castlereagh set himself to “group” the tsar, that is, to draw him into an agreement with other sovereigns in which such a policy was accepted as would serve to deflect the whole group of allies from the direct course which the tsar would have followed if left alone. Early in 1814 a treaty was signed at Chaumont by Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia in which all the problems then before the allies were taken up. The sixteenth article of the treaty dealt with the point which had caused Castlereagh so much anxiety. It ran:

“The present Treaty of Alliance having for its object the maintenance of the Balance of Europe, to secure the repose and independence of the Powers, and to prevent the invasions which for so many years have devastated the world, the High Contracting Parties have agreed among themselves to extend its duration for twenty years from the date of signature, and they reserve the right of agreeing, if circumstances demand it, three years before its expiration, on its further prolongation.”⁵

By this means Alexander was “grouped” with his three allies in the support of a kind of coöperation which was not what he had hitherto insisted upon. It is probable that he did not realize how completely he was outplayed, when he was forced by the logic of events to set his hand to a treaty that provided for the Concert of Europe, and not for the league to which he had long looked forward. At any rate, he did not give up his ideals and he seems to have thought that in the hour of victory he could do what he had not been able to do in the hour of necessity.

The Treaty of Chaumont was followed by the battle of Leipzig, and that was followed by several smaller battles in which the allies fought their way through French territory until they stood before the gates of Paris in the autumn of 1814. Napoleon fled the Nemesis that had overtaken him, the city was opened to his enemies, and Alexander I, at the head of his splendid guard, led the conquering army down the broad avenue of Champs Elysée, the inhabitants of the city cheering the radiant pageant. Men reflected that two years earlier a great French army had penetrated to the Russian city of Moscow and found it smoking ruins; and they could but observe the contrast. It was worthy of the greatness of the tsar of the Russias to show a generous face to a beaten foe; and the Frenchmen were gallant enough to receive the friendship of the tsar in the spirit in which it was given. A lenient treaty by which France was saved from humiliation and Napoleon was given Elba, was also due chiefly to the good will of Alexander. An Englishman on the spot, who did not see things with the broad vision of the prime minister, wrote that the tsar “by a series of firm and glorious conduct has richly deserved the appellation of the liberator of mankind.” But as Alexander continued to “play the part of Providence in France” the same writer became alarmed and five days later wrote to London urging that Castlereagh come to the French capital. The hint was taken, and soon the manly stride of the handsome tsar was intercepted by the deftly woven webs of the skilled diplomat. Erelong France was handed over to the Bourbons, who came back to show that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

The center of interest now shifted to the Congress of Vienna, whose sessions lasted from September 10, 1814, to June 9, 1815. Europe had looked forward to it for many years as the means of effecting a wise and just reform in all the evils that afflicted the continent. “Men had promised themselves,” said Gentz, “an all-embracing reform of the political system of Europe, guarantees for universal peace, in one word, the return of the golden age.” Thus Alexander was not entirely ahead of his time. There were enlightened men then, as now, who hoped for a spirit that would rise above mere diplomatic self-interest; and we may look upon the tsar as their exponent. But they were to be disappointed. Spoils were to be divided and in the disputes that the expected division engendered, the spirit of reform was dissipated. Alexander spent his energy in trying to reëstablish the kingdom of Poland with liberal institutions, but his desire that it should be under his protection aroused the keenest opposition from the neighboring nations. If a victorious Russia stood as protector of a reëstablished France and a renewed Poland, who could foretell her power in future dealings among nations? Considering the extent to which jealousy carried the contentions of the states at Vienna, it is enough that the congress did not break up in an appeal to arms.

Gentz, whom we recall as the secretary of the congress, was one of the men who had entertained hopes that it would give a new and better form to the political structure of Europe. He avowed his disappointment at the results in saying:

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

1

Since the above was written events have occurred in Russia which seem to discredit the diplomacy of the revolutionists; but the general situation is so unsettled that no conclusions can be drawn at this time, February 27, 1918.

Back

2

See below, pp. 46–62.

Back

3

For an excellent treatment of the events discussed in this chapter see W. A. Phillips, The Confederation of Europe, London, 1914.

Back

4

Phillips, loc. cit., 67.

Back

5

Phillips, loc. cit., 78.

Back