5. Even on purely military grounds it was impossible for Great Britain to raise in time of peace a great army for use on the Continent. The necessity of recruiting and educating the necessary corps of professional officers required to train and command such an army would have occupied at least two generations if the task were to be taken in hand in peace time. But it was possible to organize and prepare a small but highly trained Expeditionary Force, provided we discarded some of our old military traditions, and studied modern requirements and objectives in consultation with those who were best able to throw light on them.

6. Altho more than modern and scientific military organization on a comparatively small scale was not in our power, we could in carrying out even this much lay foundations which would enable expansion in time of war to take place.

7. In the result, as was believed here, and as Admiral von Tirpitz himself seems to have anticipated, sea power and capacity for blockade would decide the issue of the war. In this respect Germany seemed less well prepared than Great Britain.

8. The last thing wished for was war, and if we had to enter upon it we should do so only in defense of our own vital interests, as well as those of the other Entente Powers. Our entry, if it was to come, must be immediate and unhesitating. For if we delayed Germany might succeed in occupying the northern coast of France, and in impairing our security by sea.

I will conclude this chapter by appending an estimate of the Emperor William II, which is worth comparing with that of his German Ministers already referred to.



In the chapter on William II in Count Czernin's book on "The World War" there is a passage which may, I think, turn out to be pretty near the truth about the late Emperor's mood: "Altho the Emperor was always very powerful in speech and gesture, still, during the war he was much less independent in his actions than is usually assumed, and, in my opinion, this is one of the principal reasons that gave rise to a mistaken understanding of all the Emperor's administrative activities. Far more than the public imagine, he was a driven rather than a driving factor, and if the Entente to-day claims the right of being prosecutor and judge in one person in order to bring the Emperor to his trial, it is unjust and an error, as, both preceding and during the war, the Emperor William never played the part attributed to him by the Entente:

"The unfortunate man has gone through much, and more is, perhaps, in store for him.

"He has been carried too high, and can not escape a terrible fall. Fate seems to have chosen him to expiate a sin which, if it exists at all, is not so much his as that of his country and his times. The Byzantine atmosphere in Germany was the ruin of Emperor William; it enveloped him and clung to him like a creeper to a tree; a vast crowd of flatterers and fortune-seekers who deserted him in the hour of trial. The Emperor William was merely a particularly distinctive representative of his class. All modern monarchs suffer from the disease; but it was more highly developed in the Emperor William, and therefore more obvious than in others. Accustomed from his youth to the subtle poison of flattery, at the head of one of the greatest and mightiest States in the world, possessing almost unlimited power, he succumbed to the fatal lot that awaits men who feel the earth recede from under their feet, and who begin to believe in their Divine semblance.

"He is expiating a crime which was not of his making. He can take with him in his solitude the consolation that his only desire was for the best.

"It has already been mentioned that all the warlike speeches flung into the world by the Emperor were due to a mistaken understanding of their effect. I allow that the Emperor wished to create a sensation, even to terrify people, but he also wished to act on the principle of si vis pacem, para bellum, and by emphasizing the military power of Germany he endeavored to prevent the many envious enemies of his Empire from declaring war on him.

"It can not be denied that this attitude was often both unfortunate and mistaken, and that it contributed to the outbreak of war; but it is asserted that the Emperor was devoid of the dolus of making war, that he said and did things by which he unintentionally stirred up war.

"Had there been men in Germany ready to point out to the Emperor the injurious effects of his behavior and to make him feel the growing mistrust of him throughout the world, had there been not one or two but dozens of such men, it would assuredly have made an impression on the Emperor. It is equally true that of all the inhabitants of the earth the German is the one least capable of adapting himself to the mentality of other people, and, as a matter of fact, there were perhaps but few in the immediate entourage of the Emperor who recognized the growing anxiety of the world. Perhaps many of them who so continuously extolled the Emperor were really honestly of opinion that his behavior was quite correct. It is, nevertheless, impossible not to believe that among the many clever politicians of the last decade there were some who had a clear grasp of the situation, and the fact remains that in order to spare the Emperor and themselves they had not the courage to be harsh with him and tell him the truth to his face. These are not reproaches, but reminiscences which should not be superfluous at a time when the Emperor is to be made the scapegoat of the whole world."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: "Betrachtungen zum Weltkriege," Th. von Bethmann Hollweg. "Erinnerungen," Alfred von Tirpitz. Both translated into English under the Titles: "Reflections on the World War," and "My Memoirs."]

[Footnote 5: In both cases I am writing with the books before me in the original.]



CHAPTER IV

THE MILITARY PREPARATIONS

When more time has passed and heads have become cooler the critics will have to decide whether Great Britain was as fully prepared as she ought to have been for the possibility of the great struggle into which she had to enter in August, 1914. Hundreds of speeches have been made, and still more articles have been written, to demonstrate that she was caught wholly unready. On the other hand authoritative writers in Germany have made the counter-assertion that she had prepared copiously, not merely to defend herself, but to join in encircling and crushing Germany.

I shall venture to submit some reasons for saying that neither of these views is the true one. During the whole of the period between the commencement of 1906 and the autumn of 1914 I sat on the Committee of Imperial Defense and took an active part in its deliberations. For over six of these eight years I was Minister for War, and I was in continuous co-operation with the colleagues who were, like myself, engaged in carrying into execution the methods which we had gradually worked out. Such as the plans were, the preparations which they required were completed before the war. As to the bulk of these preparations I speak from direct knowledge.

The Expeditionary Force, the Territorial Force, and the Special Reserve had been organized under my own eye, by soldiers who had studied modern war upon what was in this country a wholly new principle. Before they took matters in hand not only was there no divisional organization, but hardly a brigade could have been sent to the Continent without being recast. For there used to be a peace organization that was different from the organization that was required for war, and to convert the former into the latter meant a delay that would have been deadly. Swift mobilization, like that of the Germans even in 1870, was in these older days impracticable.

All this had been changed for the Regular Army at home by the end of 1908, and it was after that year easy to mobilize. Other changes, also of a sweeping character, had been made to complete the new structure. On August 4, 1914, Lord Kitchener took delivery of an army in being, small, but not inferior in quality to the best that the enemy possessed. With the creation of the new armies, for which the Expeditionary Force was the pattern—and, indeed, with the general management of the war—I had very little to do. But I saw a good deal of Lord Kitchener, enough to impress me from the day when he became War Minister with his extraordinary individuality and his remarkable courage and energy, and to make me feel what an invaluable asset his personality was for putting heart into the British nation.

I have referred to my own and earlier part in the matter only to make plain that I do not speak about it from mere hearsay. And to say this has been necessary, because I shall have to submit some observations which, if true, do not harmonize with assertions made by some of the critics of the successive Governments which were at work on the business of preparation for possible contingencies between 1906 and 1914. I will, however, begin by making these critics a present of a definite admission. We never intended to create an army capable of invading or encircling Germany, and we should, in our own view, have found ourselves unable to do so even had we desired any such thing.

Our purpose was quite a different one. It was purely defensive. We knew how high a level of military organization had been attained in France. She had a large army, an army not so large as that of Germany, but comparable with it in quality. Her ally, Russia, also had a large army on the other side of Germany, altho one not so perfectly organized as that of France. By adding to the French military defensive forces a comparatively small British Expeditionary Force of very high quality, organized as far as possible on the principle about which von der Goltz, in the introduction to his famous book, "The Nation in Arms," had written, we could provide what that eminent writer had suggested would be formidable, could it be properly organized, even against the German masses of troops. In the introduction to his "Nation in Arms" he had declared that, "Looking forward into the future we seem to feel the coming of a time when the armed millions of the present will have played out their part. A new Alexander will arise who, with a small body of well-equipped and skilled warriors, will drive the impotent hordes before him, when, in their eagerness to multiply, they shall have overstepped all proper bounds, have lost internal cohesion, and, like the green-banner army of China, have become transformed into a numberless but effete host of Philistines."

This, of course, did not mean that the little Expeditionary Force could by itself cope with the admirably organized and enormous German Army, but it did point to the growing importance in these times of high morale and quality, and to the value that even a small force, if sufficiently long and closely trained, might prove to have, if placed in a proper position alongside the excellent soldiers of France. A careful study had made us think that the addition of even a small force of such quality to those of France and Russia would provide the combined armies with a good chance of defeating any German attempt at the invasion and dismemberment of France.

But in addition to and apart from all this, the British Navy had been raised before 1914 to a strength unexampled in its history, and Mr. Churchill had for the first time introduced in the autumn of 1911 the valuable principle of a war staff, fashioned with a view to the systematic study of modern naval war in co-operation with the forces on land.

These naval reforms had helped to confer the fresh power which took shape in the blockade which was in the end to prove decisive in the struggle. The heads of the newly organized Military General Staff met the representatives of the Admiralty War Staff at systematically held meetings of the Committee of Imperial Defense, under the presidency of the successive Prime Ministers—first of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and then of Mr. Asquith. Not only were the Ministers at the head of the Admiralty and the War Office present to listen to what their experts had to say and to assist in arriving at conclusions on the questions discussed at these meetings, but other Ministers (including Lord Crewe, Sir Edward Grey, Lord Morley, Mr. Lloyd George, and Lord Harcourt) attended regularly. The function of this committee was to consider strategical difficulties with which the nation might conceivably find itself confronted, and to work out the solutions. It was a committee the members of which were selected and summoned by the Prime Minister, to whom it was advisory. He determined the subjects to be investigated. Secrecy was of course essential, excepting so far as the Cabinet was concerned. The presence of the non-military Ministers to whom I have referred was a proper guarantee that from the Cabinet there was no desire to withhold information. Possible operations on the Continent of our army occupied much of the time of the committee. About the propriety of the conversations which took place between members of the General Staffs of France and England questions have been raised. But these conversations were concerned with purely technical matters, and doubts as to their justification will hardly arise in the minds of people who are aware what modern war implies in the way of preliminary inquiries as to its conditions.

We were not engaging in any secret undertaking. We were merely providing what modern military requirements had rendered essential. Without study beforehand by a General Staff military operations in these days are bound to fail. If at any time we had, by any chance whatever, to operate in France it was essential that our generals should possess long in advance the knowledge that was requisite, and this could only be obtained with the assistance of the General Staff of France itself. We committed ourselves to no undertaking of any kind, and it was from the first put in writing that we could not do so. The conversations were just the natural and informal outcome of our close friendship with France.

The French had said that if it was to be regarded as even possible that we should come to their assistance in resisting an attack, which might, moreover, result if successful in great prejudice to our own security in the Channel, we should find this study vital. Our General Staff took the same view, and at the request of Sir Edward Grey, who had written to him, I saw Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at his house in London in January, 1906. He was a very cautious man, but he was also an old War Minister. He at once saw the point, and he gave me authority for directing the Staff at the War Office to take the necessary steps. He naturally laid down that the study proposed was to be carefully guarded, so far as any possible claim of commitment was concerned, that it was not to go beyond the limits of purely General Staff work, and further that it should not be talked about. The inquiry into conditions thus set on foot was conducted by the three successive generals who occupied the position of Director of Military Operations—the late General Grierson, General Ewart, and General Wilson. Each of these distinguished soldiers from time to time explained the progress made in working out conceivable plans for using the Expeditionary Force in France and in more distant regions, to the full Committee of Imperial Defense, and obtained its provisional approval.

I should like to say how much the Committee of Imperial Defense, which was originally a very valuable contribution made by Mr. Balfour, when Prime Minister, to the organization of our preparedness for war, owed to its secretaries. To such men as Admiral Sir Charles Ottley and, after his time, to Colonel Sir Maurice Hankey, the nation is under a great debt, and it was the least that could be done to include the latter in the thanks of Parliament to the sailors and soldiers to whom our actual success was due. It was he who, assisted by a brilliant staff on which the late Colonel Grant Duff was prominent, planned and prepared that remarkable War Book, which was completed in excellent time before the outbreak of hostilities, and which contained full instructions for every department of Government which could be called on to assist if war broke out. Not only the drafts of the necessary orders, but those of the necessary telegrams, were written out in advance under Sir Maurice Hankey's instructions. He and Sir Charles Ottley, themselves sailors, formed real links between the navy and the army, and did an enormous amount of work in co-ordinating war objectives.

Of the Navy I need say nothing, for its preparations are well understood. Nor need I say much of the details in the reorganization of the army. The general principle of this was to complete the Cardwell system by shaping the home battalions into six great divisions, and so providing them with transport, munitions, stores, and medical and other equipment, as to make them instantly ready for war. The characteristic of the old British Army, as it was up to 1907, was, as I have already observed, that it lived in peace formations only, in small and detached units which would have to be refashioned into quite different formations before they could be ready to be sent to fight.

This state of things involved much delay in mobilization. A careful inquiry made in 1906 disclosed that in order to put even 80,000 men on the Continent, a period which might be well over two months was the minimum required. Besides this great difficulty, the other items to which I have referred as required for the six divisions were not there in any shape even approaching sufficiency. The artillery too was deficient.

There is no more amusing myth than the one according to which the horse and field artillery were reduced. The batteries which could be made instantly effective for war were, in fact, raised from forty-two to eighty-one. The personnel of this artillery was increased by a third for mobilization. For the first time the horse and field artillery was given the modern organization which Cardwell had not been able to give it. The establishments had been merely peace establishments. There were ninety-nine batteries which could parade about on ceremonial occasions, but if war had broken out they would have had to be rolled up, and the personnel of fifty-seven of them taken to produce the mobilized forty-two which were all that could be put into the field. The difficulty was got over by the organization of eighteen of the ninety-nine into training brigades, and the additional men needed for the mobilization of eighty-one fighting batteries were thus obtained. No doubt some of the artillery officers did not like being set to training work, and complained that they were being reduced. But it was a reduction from unreal work of parade in order to double fighting efficiency. Not a man or a gun of the regular horse and field artillery was ever reduced in any shape or form, and not only were the effective batteries largely increased, but over 150 serviceable batteries were created and made part of the Second Line, or Territorial, Army. This was a force which could be used either for home defense or for expansion of an expeditionary force of Regulars. The Militia, which was not under obligation to serve abroad, was abolished, and its substance was converted into third regular battalions, organized for the purpose of training and providing drafts to meet the wastage of war in the first and second regular battalions of their regiments. Some of those third battalions are said to have trained and sent out as many as twelve thousand men apiece in the course of the war.

All these things were done under the direction of such young and modern soldiers as Sir Douglas Haig on the General Staff side, and as Sir John Cowans on the administrative side. Both of these officers were brought home from India for the purpose. Sir Herbert Miles, as Quartermaster-General, and Sir Stanley von Donop, as Master-General of the Ordnance also rendered much help. The newly organized General Staff thought the plans out under the direction, first of Sir Neville Lyttelton, and then of Sir William Nicholson, its successive chiefs. The latter and Sir Douglas Haig in addition worked out, in consultation with the representatives of the Dominions, the organization of their troops in units and with staffs and weapons corresponding as nearly as was practicable to our own. Systematic conferences between the British and Dominion War and other Ministers prepared the ground for this. Sir Wilfrid Laurier and General Botha and others of the Dominion Ministers came to London and co-operated.

It is sometimes said that all these things were very well, but that we should have at once raised a much larger army, as in the course of the war we ultimately had to do. The answer is that in a time of peace we could not possibly have raised a large army on the Continental scale. If we had tried to we should have made a miserable and possibly disastrous failure. The utmost we could do toward it was to provide the organization in which the comparatively small force which was all we could create might be expanded after a war broke out.

How this nucleus organization, on the basis of which the later expansions took place, was fashioned so as to afford a general pattern, anyone may see who chooses to expend a shilling on the purchase of the little volume called "Field Service Regulations, Part II." This piece of work took nearly three years to prepare. With the organization of which I have spoken, which was made in accordance with its principles, the whole of the task of recasting the British Army was performed by 1911.

What we had by that time attained was the power to send an army of, not 100,000 men, which was all that had originally been suggested, but of 160,000, to a place of concentration opposite the Belgian frontier, and to have it concentrated there within a time which was fifteen days in 1911, but was a little later reduced to twelve. No German army could mobilize and concentrate at such a distance more rapidly. So far as I know none of the necessary details were overlooked, and the timetables and arrangements for the concentration worked out, when the moment for their use came, without a hitch. What had been done was to take the old-fashioned British Army and to rid it of superfluous fat, to develop muscle in place of mere flesh, and to put the whole force into proper training. If the warrior looked slender he was at least as well prepared for the ring as science could make him.

It is said that this army ought to have been provided from the first with more heavy artillery. But the reason why its artillery, and that of the French armies also, were of a comparatively light pattern was not due to any notion of economy or to civilian interference. We had enough money, even in those difficult days, for every necessary purpose.

The real reason was that the General Staffs of both the French and the British Armies had advised that the campaign would probably be one in which swiftness in moving troops would prove the determining factor. Heavy artillery, and even any large number of the ponderous machine-guns of that period (the Lewis gun had not yet appeared), would have been a serious impediment to such mobility. What was anticipated was a series of great battles. "It was supposed by certain soldiers," says a well-informed military critic (Colonel A'Court Repington, at page 276 of his "Vestigia"), "that the war against Germany would be decided by the fighting of some seven great battles en rase campagne, where heavies would be a positive encumbrance."

So far the staffs proved to be right, for in the early period of the war mobility did count for a very great deal, and it was not until later that trench warfare became the dominant factor, a stage for which even the Germans themselves, as we now know, from the memoirs of Admiral Tirpitz and other books, were not adequately prepared in point of guns, or of shells and powder, either.

It is said that we in Great Britain ought, before entering on the Entente, to have provided an army, not of 160,000, but of 2,000,000 men. And it is remarked that this is what we had to do in the end. This suggestion does not, however, bear scrutiny. No doubt it would have been a great advantage if, in addition to our tremendous navy, we could have produced, at the outbreak of the war, 2,000,000 men, so trained as to be the equals in this respect of German troops, and properly fashioned into the great divisions that were necessary, with full equipment and auxiliary services. But to train the recruits, and to command such an army when fashioned, would have required a very great corps of professional officers of high military education, many times as large as we had actually raised. How were these to have been got?

I sometimes read speeches, made even by officers who have served with distinction at the head of their men in the field, which express regret that the British nation was so shortsighted as not to have provided such an army before the war. They point to the effort it made later on with such success during the war. But to raise armies under the stress of war, when the people submit cheerfully to compulsion, and when highly intelligent civilian men of business readily quit their occupations to be trained as rapidly as possible for the work of every kind of officer, is one thing. To do it in peace time is quite another. I doubt whether more was possible in this direction than, in the days prior to the war, to organize the Officers' Training Corps, which contained over twenty thousand partially prepared young men, and began at once to expand to yet larger dimensions from the day when war broke out. For the corps of matured officers, required to train recruits and to command them in war when organized in their units, would have had to consist of soldiers, themselves highly trained in military organization, who had devoted their lives to this work as a profession. It takes many years in peace time to train such officers. Because they must be professional, they can only be recruited under a voluntary system.

Now, before the war it was difficult enough to recruit even so many as the number we then had got, a number totally inadequate for any army larger than the small one we actually put into shape at home. Every source had been tried in my time by the able administrative generals who were working under me at the War Office. I say "administrative generals," for here comes in the source of the confusion which at times leads not a few—including some whose military training has been exclusively in the leading of troops and in strategy and tactics—to miss the point.

Under the modern military principle, which is the secret of rapidity and efficiency in mobilization, duties are carefully defined and divided. The General Staff does not administer, and is not trained in the business of administration. This kind of military business is entrusted to the administrative side of the army, the officers of which receive a different kind of training. The General Staff says what is necessary. The administrative side provides it as far as it can. And among the exclusive functions of the administrative side of the War Office is the recruiting of personnel by the Adjutant-General and the Military Secretary. It is true that the Director of Military Training, who supervises the training of the young officer when obtained, belongs to the General Staff. That is because his work is educational. With obtaining the young officer it is only accidentally that he is at all concerned.

When, therefore, even distinguished commanders in the field express regret at the want of foresight of the British nation in not having prepared a much larger army before 1914, I would respectfully ask them how they imagine it could have been done.

To raise a great corps of officers who have voluntarily selected the career of an officer as an exclusive and absorbing profession has been possible in Germany and in France. But it has only become possible there after generations of effort and under pressure of a long-standing tradition, extending from decade to decade, under which a nation, armed for the defense of its land frontiers, has expended its money and its spirit in creating such an officer caste.

Now, the British nation has put its money and its fighting spirit primarily into its Navy and its oversea forces. Why? Because, just as the Continental tradition had its genesis in the necessity for instant readiness to defend land frontiers, so our tradition has had its genesis in the vital necessity of always commanding the sea.

Possibly if, just after the war of 1870, we had endeavored to enter on a new tradition, and to develop a great army, we might have succeeded in doing so. With forty years' time devoted to the task and a very large expenditure we might conceivably have succeeded. But I think that had we done so we should have been very foolish. Our navy would inevitably have been diminished and deteriorated. You can not ride two horses at once, and no more can you possess in their integrity two great conflicting military traditions.

But what I am saying does not rest on my own conclusions alone. In the year 1912 the then Chief of the General Staff told me that he and the General Staff would like to investigate, as a purely military problem, the question whether we could or could not raise a great army. I thought this a reasonable inquiry and sanctioned and found money for it, only stipulating that they should consult with the Administrative Staffs when assembling the materials for the investigation. The outcome was embodied in a report made to me by Lord Nicholson, himself a soldier who had a strong desire for compulsory service and a large army. He reported, as the result of a prolonged and careful investigation, that, alike as regarded officers and as regarded buildings and equipment, the conclusion of the General Staff was that it would be in a high degree unwise to try, during a period of unrest on the Continent, to commence a new military system. It could not be built up excepting after much unavoidable delay. We might at once experience a falling off in voluntary recruiting, and so become seriously weaker before we had a chance of becoming stronger. And the temptation to a foreign General Staff to make an early end of what it might insist on interpreting as preparation for aggression on our part would be too strong to be risked. What we should get might prove to be a mob in place of an army. I quite agreed, and not the less because it was highly improbable that the country would have looked at anything of the sort.

What we actually could produce in the form of an army had to be estimated, not as if we were standing alone, but as being an adjunct to what was possessed by France and Russia. They had large armies and small navies. We had a large navy and a small army. When these were considered in conjunction, I do not think that the hope of some of our best military authorities, that an aggressive attempt by the Central Powers could be made abortive, was an over-sanguine one.

Much of what we did owe for the excellence of the Expeditionary Force, such as it was in point of size, and much of what we have since owed for the excellence of the great armies that we subsequently raised, was due to the unbroken work of the fine Administrative Staff, developed in those days, to which I have already referred. I often regret that when the nation gave its thanks through Parliament to the army, the splendid contribution made by those who prepared the administrative services was not adequately recognized. But this arose from the old British tradition under which fighting and administration were not distinguished as being quite separate and yet equally essential for fighting. The public had not got into its head the reality of the process of defining the two different functions with precision, and of confiding them to different sets of officers differently trained.

The principle was a novel one in the army itself, and why one set of officers should be trained at the Staff College and another at the London School of Economics was not a question the answer to which was quite familiar, even to all soldiers.

It is, I think, certain that for purely military reasons, even if, in view of political (including diplomatic) difficulties any party in the State had felt itself able to undertake the task of raising a great army under compulsory service, and to set itself to accomplish it, say, within the ten years before the war, the fulfilment of the undertaking could not have been accomplished, and failure in it would have made us much weaker than we were when the war broke out. The only course really open was to make use of the existing voluntary system, and bring its organization for war up to the modern requirements, of which they were in 1906 far short. It is true that the voluntary system could not give us a substantially larger army, or more than a better one in point of quality. The stream of voluntary recruits was limited. When the 156 battalions of the line which existed on paper in 1906 were in that year nominally reduced to 148, there was no real reduction, altho some money was saved which was required for some other essential military purposes. For the remaining battalions were short of their proper strength, and it took all the recruits set free by the so-called reductions to bring the 148—some of which were badly short of officers and men alike—to the proper establishment required for the six new divisions of the Expeditionary Force.

I remember well the then Adjutant-General, Sir Charles Douglas, one of the ablest men of business who ever filled that position in this country, informing me at that time that he could not raise a single further division to be added to the six at home.

But if the voluntary system had disadvantages, it also presented us with advantages. The professional and therefore voluntary nature of our army, which, because it was professional, was always ready for sending overseas on expeditions, was in reality made necessary by our position as the island center of a great and scattered Empire. We had increased that Empire enormously by the possession of a voluntarily serving army. Whether this vast increase of the Empire has been always defensible I am not discussing. What I am saying is that we owe the actual increases largely to this, that we were the only Power in the world that was ready to step in at short notice and occupy vacant territory. We always had a much larger Expeditionary Force available for this special purpose than Germany or any other country. That has been our tradition, as contrasted with the tradition of other nations who have been limited in this kind of capacity by the necessity of putting their military forces on a compulsory basis and keeping them at home for the protection of their land frontiers. Ours was the method in which we had been schooled by experience.

It is for such reasons as I have now submitted that I am wholly unable to assent to the suggestion that we did not look ahead, or considered within the years just before the war whether we were preparing to make the sort of contribution that our own interests and our friendships alike required. Sea power was for us then, as always before in our history, the dominant element in military policy. I have little doubt that we made mistakes over details. That is inherent in human and therefore finite effort. But I believe that we did in the main the best we could for the fulfilment of our only purpose, which was to preserve the peace of the world and avoid contributing to its disturbance, and also to prepare to defend ourselves and our friends against aggression. Talk to the public we could not, for it would have hindered and not helped us to do so. A "preventive war," which the Entente Powers would not have been so ready to meet as they became later on, might well have been the result. Rhetorical declarations on platforms would have been wholly out of place. But we could think, and to the best of such abilities as we and our expert advisers possessed, we did try to think.

A curious legend which had its origin in Berlin, in October, 1914, has obtained such currency that it is worth while to make an end of it. The legend is that the British Military Attache at Brussels, the late General Barnardiston, had informed the Chief of the Belgian General Staff of secret plans, prepared at the War Office in London, to invade Belgium, and if necessary to violate her neutrality, in order to make an expedition, the purpose of which was to attack Germany through that country. The story appears to have emanated from Baron Greindl, who was the Belgian Minister at Berlin in 1911. He had been completely misinformed, no doubt in that capital, and there is no truth whatever in what he had been told about what he called the "perfidious and naif revelations" of the British Military Attache at Brussels. Him the story represents as having said that his Minister (by whom I presume myself, as the then Secretary of State for War, to have been intended) and the British General Staff were the only persons in the secret. I have to observe, in the first place, that I never during my tenure of office, either suggested any such plan, or heard of anyone else suggesting it. When the story was brought to my knowledge, which was not until November, 1914, I inquired at once of General Barnardiston and of his successor, Colonel Bridges, whether there was any foundation for it. The reply from each of these distinguished officers was that there was none.

We were among the guarantors of Belgian neutrality, and it was of course conceivable that, if she called on us to do so, we might have had to defend her. It would be part of the duty of our Military Attache to remember this, and, if opportunity offered, to ascertain in informal conversation the view of the Belgian General Staff as to what form of help they would be likely to ask us for. This he doubtless did, and indeed it appears from what the Chief of the Belgian General Staff wrote to the Belgian War Minister that the former had discussed the contingency of Belgium desiring our help with General Barnardiston, and had done so gladly. But even so the conversation must have been very informal, for in the account of it by the Chief of the Belgian General Staff there are errors about the composition of the possible British Force which indicate that either he took no notes, or else that Colonel Barnardiston had not thought it an occasion which required him to obtain details from London. At all events, such talk as there was appears to have had relation only to what we ought to do, if requested by Belgium to help, in case of her being invaded by another Power.

The documents will be found in the volume of Collected Diplomatic Documents relating to the outbreak of the war, presented to Parliament in May, 1915 (Cd. 7860). This volume includes a vigorous denial by Sir Edward Grey of the insinuation.



CHAPTER V

EPILOG

The great war is over, and the Powers of the West have conquered. In the earlier pages I have given my own view of why they won in the tremendous struggle that now belongs to history. They had on their side moral forces which were lacking to their adversaries.

Germany went into the war with a conviction that had been carefully instilled into her people. It was that she was being ringed round with the intention that she should be crushed, and that presently it would be too late for her to deliver herself. The lesson so taught to her was not a true one. She might easily have obtained guarantees of peace which ought to have satisfied her, without undertaking a risk which in the end was to prove disastrous. No one here wanted to ruin her, no one who counted seriously in this country. And if we did not want to, no more in reality did France or Russia. She brought her fate on her head by the unwisdom of her methods. But her people hardly desired the dangers of unnecessary war, and her rulers dared not have ventured these dangers had they not first of all preached a wrong doctrine to those over whom they ruled. They had their way in the end, and disaster to sixty-eight millions of Germans was the consequence. The calculations of their chiefs were bad from the beginning. It is almost certain that the best and most eminent among even these really desired peace. They blundered in method. It was not by continually flashing the saber that peace was to be secured.

It is scarcely likely that the conditions under which this war became possible will recur. It is more than unlikely that they will recur in our time. But it is none the less worth while to consider how the unlikelihood can be made to approach most nearly to a certainty.

Not, I think, by causing the millions of German-speaking people to feel that they are in chains without possibility of freedom. More certainly, surely, by leading them to the faith that if they will play a part in the great world effort for permanent peace and for reconstruction they will be welcomed to the brotherhood of nations. The individual German citizen is more like the individual Anglo-Saxon than he is different from him. The same hopes and the same fears animate him, and he is sober and industrious quite as much as we are. He has similar problems and similar interests.

Time must pass before the angry feeling that a great struggle produces can die down. But there are already indications that this feeling is not as intense with us as it was even a short time ago. Germany made a colossal and unjustifiable blunder. She is responsible for the action of her late Government. We think so, and we are not likely to change our opinion on this point. The grief of our people over their dead, over the lives that were laid down for the nation from the highest kind of inspiration, will keep the public mind fixed on this conclusion. And so will the waste and misery to the whole world which an unnecessary war has brought in its train. But presently we shall ask ourselves, in moments of reflection, whether this ought to be our final word, and also, perhaps, whether some want of care on our own part, and certain deficiencies of which we are now more conscious than we used to be, may not have had something to do with the failure of other people to divine our real mood and intentions. I am not sure that in days that are to come we shall give ourselves the whole benefit of the doubt. However this may be, we are in no case a vindictive people.

But in any view something serious is at stake. It will be a bad thing for us, and it will be a bad thing for the world, if the people of the vanquished nations are left to feel that they have no hope of being restored to decent conditions of existence. At present despair is threatening them. Their estimate is that the crushing burden of the terms of peace, if carried out to their full possibilities, bars them from the prospect of a better future. Their only way of deliverance may well come to seem to them to lie in the grouping of the discontented nationalities, and the faith that by this means, at some time which may come hereafter, a new balance of power may begin to be set up.

Now this is not a good prospect, and the sooner we succeed in softening the sense of real hardship out of which it arises the better. Germany and Austria must pay the penalty they have incurred before the tribunal of international justice. But that penalty ought to be tempered by something that depends on even more than mercy. It is intended to be inflicted for the good of the world, and if it assumes a form which threatens the future safety of the world it is not wise to press it to its extreme consequences. We have to work toward a better state of things than that which is promised to-day. We have never hitherto kept up old animosities unduly long, and that has been one of the secrets of our strength in the world. The lessons of history point to the expediency of trying to heal instead of to keep open the wound which exists. Those who know the growth in the past of literature, of music, of science, of philosophy, of industry and of commerce, do not wish the German people to die out. It is only the ignorant that can desire this, and, hitherto in the course of our history, the ignorant have neither proved to be safe guides nor have they prevailed. To-day, as before, we must think of generations other than our own if we would preserve our strength.

I hope that a time is near in which we shall no longer proclaim old grievances, but instead cease to dwell on the past in this case, just as we have ceased in the cases of the French, the Spanish, the Russians, and the Boers. It is best in every way that it should come to be so.

It is not with any hope that these pages will satisfy the extremists of to-day that they have been written. They are intended for those who try to be dispassionate, and for them only, as a contribution to a vast heap of material that is being gathered together for consideration. It is well that those who were in any way directly connected with the story to which they relate should place on record what they saw. But the whole story in its fulness is beyond the knowledge of anyone of our time. The history of the world is, as has been said, the judgment of the world. It is therefore only after an interval that it can be sufficiently written. The ultimate and real origin of this war, the greatest humanity has ever had to endure, was a set of colossal suspicions of each other by the nations concerned. I do not mean that none of them were in the right or that some of them were not deeply in the wrong. What I do mean is that if there had been insight sufficient all round the nations concerned would not have misinterpreted each other.

To us it looks as tho Germany had been inspired throughout by a bad tradition, a spirit older than even the days of Frederick the Great. Had she been wise we think that she would have changed her national policy after Bismarck had brought it to unexampled success in things material. There are not wanting indications that he himself had the sense of the necessity of great caution in pursuing this policy farther, and felt that it could not be safely continued without modification. It was no policy that was safe for any but the strongest and sanest of minds, and even for those it had ceased to be safe. The potential resistance to it was becoming too serious.

But we do not need to doubt that there were many in Germany itself who saw this and did not desire to rely merely on blood and iron. The men and women in every country resemble those in other countries more than they differ from them. Germany was no exception to the rule. It is a great mistake to judge her as she was merely from a few newspapers and by the reports from Berlin of their special correspondents. Sixty-eight millions of people could not be estimated in their opinions by the attitude of a handful, however eminent and prominent, in the home of "Real politik." It is, of course, true that the Germans were taught to believe that they were a very great nation which had not got its full share of the good things of this world, a share of which they were more worthy and for which they were better organized than any other. But it is also true that we here thought that we ourselves were entitled to a great deal to which other people did not admit our moral title. It was not only Germany that was lacking in imagination. No doubt many Germans had the idea that we wished to hem them in and that we did not like them. Our failure to make ourselves understood left them not without reason for this belief. But dislike of Germany was not the attitude of the great mass of sober and God-fearing Englishmen, and I do not believe that the counter-attitude was that of the bulk of sober and God-fearing Germans. They and we alike mutually misjudged each other from what was written in newspapers and said in speeches by people who were not responsible exponents of opinion, and neither nation took sufficient trouble to make clear that what was thus written and said was not sufficient material on which to judge it. It is very difficult to diagnose general opinion in a foreign nation, and one of the reasons of the difficulty is that people at home do not pay sufficient attention to the fact that their unfriendly utterances about their neighbors are likely to receive more publicity and attention than the utterances that are friendly. It makes little difference that the latter may greatly preponderate in number. They are read in the main only in the country in which they are made.

Neither Germans nor Englishmen were careful before the war always to be pleasant to each other, and the same used to be true of Frenchmen and Englishmen. But just as we are coming to understand why and how France and England misinterpreted each other systematically a century and a half ago, so we may yet learn how we came to present, more than a hundred years later, difficulties to the Germans not wholly unlike those which they presented to us. No mere record of the dry facts will be enough to render this intelligible in its full significance. The historian who is to carry conviction must do more than present photographs. He must create a picture inspired by his own study and from the depth of his own mind, and presented in its real proportions with its proper lights and shadows, as a true artist alone can present it. Browning has told us something worth remembering. It is at the end of "The Ring and the Book":

Art may tell a truth Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought, Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word. So may you paint your picture, twice show truth, Beyond mere imagery on the wall,— So, note by note, bring music from your mind, Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived,— So write a book shall mean beyond the facts, Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.

The truth in its fulness and completeness can not be compassed in any single narrative of events. It is, of course, the case that history depends for its value on scientific accuracy, but that is not the only kind of truth on which it depends. No man, even the most careful and exacting, can rely on having the whole of the materials before his eye, and if he had them there they would not only be presented in tints depending on his outlook, but would be too vast to admit of his using more than isolated fragments to work into his picture of the whole. Selection is a necessity, and when to the fact that there must be selection there is added the other fact that every historian has his personal equation, the notion of a history constructed by a single man on the methods of the physicist is a delusion. The best that the great historian can do is to present the details in the light of the spirit of the period of which he is writing, and in order that he may present his narrative aright, as his mind has reconstructed it, he must estimate his details in the order in importance that was actually theirs. Now for this the balance and the measuring rod do not suffice. Quality counts as much as does quantity in determining importance. What is merely inert and mechanical is the subject neither of the artist nor the historian. It is, of course, necessary that by close and exact research the materials should first of all be collected and assembled. But that is only the first step, and it always has to be followed by a process of grouping and fashioning. The result may have to be the leaving out (or the leaving over for presentation by other artists) of aspects which are not dealt with. We see this when we compare even the best portraits. They do not wholly agree; it is enough if they correspond. For portraits may vary in expression, and yet each may be true. The characteristic of what is alive and is intelligent and spiritual is that it may have many expressions, every one of which really harmonizes with every other. It is because they can bring out expression in this fashion that we continue to set high store on the work of a Gibbon or a Mommsen.

The moral of this is twofold. We must, to begin with, be content for the present to remain in the stage at which all that can be done is to collect and assemble facts and personal impressions with as great care as we can. The whole truth we can not bring out or estimate until the later period, altho we may be sure enough of what we have before us to make us feel capable of doing justice of a rough kind, so far as necessary action is concerned.

And there is yet another deduction to be drawn. It is at all events possible that the wider view of a generation later than this may be one in which Germany will be judged more gently than the Allies can judge her to-day. We do not now look on the French Revolution as our forefathers looked on it. We see, because recent historians have impressed it on us, that it was a violent uprising against, not Louis XVI., but a Louis XIV. What France really made her great Revolution to bring about was the establishment of a Constitution. Horrible deeds were perpetrated in the name of Liberty, but it was not due to any horrible national spirit that they were perpetrated. France was responsible no doubt for the deeds of the men who acted in her name. But she could hardly have controlled them even had she passionately desired to do so. And she did not passionately desire to do so because, however little the mass of the people outside Paris may have wished to massacre the adherents of the old regime, the people as a whole welcomed deliverance from calamity, even at the price of violent action.

We judge the French nation wholly differently to-day from the way we judged it then, and it judges us differently. Yet it would have been well had we not in the end of the eighteenth century taken an exaggerated view of the French state of mind. We now realize that even so great a man as Burke mistook a fragment for the whole. Much blood and treasure might have been spared, and Napoleon might never have come into existence, had we and others been less hasty.

It is therefore a good thing to keep before us that it is at least possible that the verdict of mankind will be hereafter that when the victory was theirs the Allies judged the people of Germany in a hurry and reflected this judgment in the spirit in which certain of the terms of peace were declared. The war had its proximate origin in the Near East. It arose out of a supposed menace to Teuton by Slav. The Slavs were not easy people to deal with, and the Teutons were not easy people either. It was easy to drift into war. It may well prove true that no one really desired this, and that it was miscalculation about the likelihood of securing peace by a determined attitude that led to disaster. It is certain that the German Government was deeply responsible for the consequences. In the face of its traditional policy and of utterances that came from Berlin the members of that Government can not plead a mere blunder. None the less, a great deal may have been due to sheer ineptitude in estimating human nature. How much this was so, or how much an immoral tradition had its natural results, we can not as yet fully tell, for we have not the whole of the records before us. No one disputes that we were bound to impose heavy terms on the Central Powers. The Allies have won the war and they were entitled to reparation. This the Germans do not appear to controvert. They are a people with whom logic is held in high esteem. But we have to do something more than define the mere consequences of victory. We have also to make plain on what footing we shall be willing to live with the German nation in days that lie ahead. And here some enlargement of the spirit seems to be desirable in our own interests. We do not want to fall again into the mistake that Burke made.

The spirit is at least as important as the letter in the doctrine of a League of Nations. Such a League has for its main purpose the supersession of the old principle of balancing the Powers. In the absence of a League of Nations, or—what is the same thing in a less organized form—of an entente or concert of Powers so general that none are left shut out from it, the principle of balancing may have to be relied on. I believe this to have been unavoidable when the Entente between France, Russia and Great Britain was found to be required for safety if the tendency to dominate of the Triple Alliance was to be held in check. But in that case, and probably in every other case, reliance on the principle could only be admissible for self-protection and never for the mere exhibition of the power of the sword. If the principle is resorted to with the latter object the group that is suspected of aggressive intentions will by degrees find itself confronted with another group of nations that have huddled together for self-protection and may become very strong just because they have a moral justification for their action. It was this that happened before the war which broke out in 1914, and it was the state of tension which ensued that led up to that war. Had there been no counter-grouping to that of the Central Powers there would probably have been war all the same, but with this difference, that defeat and not victory would have been the lot of the Entente Powers.

Now the German-speaking peoples in the world amount to an enormous number, at least to a hundred millions if those outside Germany and Austria, and in the New World, as well as the Old, are taken into account. It may be difficult for them to organize themselves for war, but it will be less difficult for them to develop a common spirit which may penetrate all over the world. It is just this development that statesmen ought to watch carefully, for, given an interval long enough, it is impossible to predict what influence these hundred millions of people may not acquire and come to exercise. We do not want to have a prolonged period of growing anxiety and unrest, such as obtained in our relations with the French, notwithstanding the peace established by the Treaty of Vienna. Of the anxiety and unrest which were ours for more than one generation, the history of the Channel fortifications, of the Volunteer force and of several other great and often costly institutions, bears witness. Let us therefore take thought while there is time to do so. We do not wish to see repeated anything analogous to our former experience. The one thing that can avert it is the spirit in which a League of Nations has been brought to birth. That spirit alone can preclude the gradual nascence of desire to call into existence a new balance of power. It is not enough to tell Germany and Austria that if they behave well they will be admitted to the League of Nations. What really matters is the feeling and manner in which the invitation is given, and an obvious sincerity in the desire that they should work with us as equals in a common endeavor to make the best of a world which contains us both. One is quite conscious of the difficulties that must attend the attempt to approach the question in the frame of mind that is requisite. We may have to discipline ourselves considerably. But the people of this country are capable of reflection, and so are the people of the American Continent. The problem to be solved is one that presses on our great Allies in the United States, where the German-speaking population is very large, quite as much as it does on us. France and Belgium have more to forgive, and France has a hard past from which to avert her eyes. But she is a country of great intelligence, and it is for the sake of everybody, and not merely in the interest of our recent enemies, that enlargement of the spirit is requisite.

How the present situation is to be softened, how the people of the Central Powers are to be brought to feel that they are not to remain divided from us by an impassable gulf, this is not the occasion to suggest. It is enough to repeat that the question is not one simply of the letter of a treaty but is one of the spirit in which it is made. Conditions change in this world with a rapidity that is often startling. The fashion of the day passes before we know that what is novel and was unexpected has come upon us. The foundations of a peace that is to be enduring must therefore be sought in what is highest and most abiding in human nature.



INDEX

Agadir incident, the, 68

Algeciras Conference, the, 69, 114

Alsace-Lorraine, question of, 114 the Kaiser on, 52, 53

America, Tschirsky on, 60

Anglo-French Entente, Buelow on, 56 Tschirsky, 59 views of German Emperor on, 52

Armaments, difficulty of question of, 21 Germany's, 94, 161

Army, British, advantages of voluntary system in, 199 question of compulsory service, 198

Asquith, Mr., consulted by Sir Edward Grey, 45 Premier and War Secretary, 50 presides at Imperial Defense Committee, 182

Austria annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina, 70, 113 ultimatum to Serbia, 133

Bagdad Railway, the, William II. and, 63 et seq.

Balance of power, and the League of Nations, 222 principle of, 20, 22, 119

Balfour, A.J., and Imperial Defense, 184

Ballin, Herr, and Tirpitz, 144

Barnardiston, General, an unfounded charge against, 201

Berchtold, Count, and the ultimatum to Serbia, 153

Berlin, a curious legend originating in, 201 and the Bagdad Railway question, 66 author's visit to, 37

Bethmann-Hollweg, and the Agadir crisis, 69, 71 at Potsdam conference, 151 author's interview with, and the formula of neutrality, 71, 73, 78, 79, 124 desires preservation of peace, 161 his accusation against Entente Powers, 103 informed of Austrian ultimatum, 153 letter to author after the Montreal address, 93 loyalty to the Kaiser, 114 succeeds Prince Buelow as Chancellor, 112

Bismarck, Countess Wilhelm, 146

Bismarck, Prince, a dictum of, 56 and Britain's indefinite policy, 17 and the inevitability of war, 23 and the military party in Germany, 89 and Tirpitz, 145-48 denounces abrogation of Reinsurance Treaty, 146 his affection for Emperor Frederick, 148 his hatred of "prestige politics," 120 Reinsurance Treaty with Russia, 126

Boer War, the, attitude of the Kaiser during, 115

Bosnia, annexation of, 70, 113

Botha, General, co-operates in military preparations, 188

Bridges, Colonel, British Military Attache at Brussels, 202

Britain's command of the sea, 195

British Army, the reorganization of, 47

British Expeditionary Force, the, mobilization of, 50 organization of, 178 unrecognized work of, 197

British Government, the, paramount duty of, 18

British Navy, a War Staff introduced into, 139, 181 (See also Navy, British)

Buelow, Prince von, author's meeting with, 38 on the Anglo-French Entente, 56 opposes Bagdad Railway proposal, 67 succeeded by Bethmann-Hollweg as Chancellor, 112

Cambon, M. Jules, and relations between France and Germany, 113 informed of Berlin "conversations," 78

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, and Imperial Defense, 182, 184 at Marienbad, 38

Caprivi and the organization of German Navy, 138 and the Reinsurance Treaty, 126, 127

Cassel, Sir Ernest, visits Berlin, 70 (and note)

Central Powers, the, preparations for war, 20 their responsibility for the world war, 22

Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J., Tariff Reform policy of, 54

Churchill, Winston, naval policy of, 87, 181

Committee of Imperial Defense, the, and its functions, 158, 159, 177, 182

Compulsory service, author's views on, 198

Cowans, Sir John, and the military preparations, 188

Crewe, Lord, attends meetings of Committee of Imperial Defense, 182

Curzon, Lord, meets German Emperor, 68

Czernin, Count, on William II., 170

D'Aerenthal, Count, diplomatic victory of, 113

Dawson, Harbutt, "German Empire" of, 120

Democracy and war, 27 vindicated by the war, 108 (See also Social Democracy)

Diplomacy before the war, 35 et seq.

Disarmament, German objections to, 55, 60

Donop, Sir Stanley von, Master General of the Ordnance, 188

Douglas, Sir Charles, and the voluntary system, 199

Education, author's activities for, 39

Edward VII., King, at Marienbad, 38 "encirclement" policy of: Bethmann-Hollweg on, 112 entertains the German Emperor, 62

Einem, General von, at Windsor, 62 author's interview with, 38

Ellison, Colonel, at Berlin, 38

England, a War Staff for the Navy in, 139, 181 commercial rivalry with Germany, 114 conservation of sea power and what it implied, 20, 21 efforts to preserve peace end in failure, 22 her alleged plans to violate Belgian neutrality, 201 propagandists for German military party in, 24 reorganization of army in, 185 voluntary military system of, and its advantages, 199 (See also Great Britain)

England's precautions against Germany's war designs, 168-69

Englishmen, defects and failings of, 28 psychology of, 17

Entente, the, England's entry into—and the alternative, 118, 119, 162 policy of, 106

Ewart, General, and the Committee of Imperial Defense, 184

Expeditionary Force (see British Expeditionary Force)

Falkenhayn, von, commanded to Potsdam, 150, 151

France, apprehensive of Germany's intentions, 44 army of, 180

Frankfurter Zeitung opposes Tirpitz's war objectives, 143

Free Trade, Prince von Buelow's views on, 58 William II. on, 54

French Revolution, the, 217

French, Sir John, and reorganization of British Army, 48

George V., King, entertains German Emperor, 67

George, Lloyd, and the Agadir crisis, 70 at meetings of Committee of Imperial Defense, 182

German desire of commercial development, 55, 58, 60 foreign policy: divided control of, 85

Germans, psychology of, 40

Germany, and the Agadir incident, 68 and the Hague Conference, 60 attitude of, before the war, 101 et seq. cause of her downfall, 167 Chauvinist party in, 81 commercial rivalry with England, 114 decides upon war, 88 defect of Imperial system in, 109 desire for commercial expansion, 103 Fleet Laws passed in the Reichstag, 142 her responsibility for the world war, 90 increases her armaments, 21, 94, 161 influence of General Staff, 41, 107 militarist party of, 39, 89, 108 miscalculations at outbreak of war, 83, 159 naval program of, 142, 156 new Military Law passed, 136 organization of her Navy, 138 over-ambition of, 16 peaceful penetration policy of, 39, 41 politics in: an anecdote of, 85 (note) result of military spirit in, 15, 22 scaremongers in, 24 shipbuilding program of, 74 the new Fleet Law, 75, 79, 87, 128 the Press and Tirpitz, 143 two inconsistent policies in, 107 why she entered the war, 207

Goltz, von der, his "Nation in Arms," 180

Goschen, Sir Edward, demands his passports, 44

Gosse, Edmund, meets the Emperor, 68

Grant Duff, Colonel, 185

Great Britain and Belgian neutrality, 202 ante-war policy of, 13, 17 deficiencies in military organization of, 46 enters the war, 95 her sea power before the war, 19 indefinite policy of, 17, 28, 30 question of her preparedness for war, 18, 177 the educational problem in, 39

Great War, the, and Germany's responsibility, 15 causes of, 161

Greindl, Baron, and a curious legend, 201

Grey, Sir Edward (Lord Grey of Fallodon), an historical speech by, 44 and the Bagdad Railway question, 64 at meetings of Imperial Defense Committee, 182 Bethmann-Hollweg on, 113 denies an insinuation originating in Berlin, 203 his efforts for peace, 88, 154, 155 negotiates with Germany, 163 presses Serbia to accept ultimatum, 155 proposes a conference, 154

Grierson, General, and the Committee of Imperial Defense, 184

Hague Conference, the, 55 Germany's difficulty, 60

Haig, Sir Douglas, and military preparations for war, 188 and the reorganization of British Army, 48

Haldane, Lord, a luncheon to the German Emperor, 67 a visit to the United States and Canada, 37 addresses at Montreal and Oxford, 92, 145 advocates improved system of education, 39 and Expeditionary and Territorial Forces, 48, 50, 178 and the Bagdad Railway question, 63 et seq. becomes Lord Chancellor, 37, 87 "conversations" at Berlin, 72, 124 criticizes Bethmann-Hollweg's book, 101 et seq. dines with the Chancellor, 77 entertained by General Staff, 41 examines organization of German War Office, 38 frank conversation with William II., 52 et seq. lunches with Emperor and Empress, 74 on military preparations, 177 et seq. post-war problems and how they should be met, 208 et seq. rebuts a statement by Tirpitz, 164 Secretary of State for War, 36 studies in Germany, 36 visits German Emperor, 37 witnesses review of German troops, 51

Hankey, Sir Maurice, his work recognized by Parliament, 185

Harcourt, Lord, at Imperial Defense Committee meetings, 182

Harnack, Professor, author's meeting with, 77

Herzegovina, annexation of, 70, 113

Hindenburg, General von, author's meeting with, 77

Huguet, Colonel, interviewed by author, 45

Imperial Defense Committee, the, 158, 159, 177, 182

Isvolsky, M., 113, 162

Jagow, Herr von, and the ultimatum to Serbia, 133

Kiaochow (see Tsingtau)

Kiderlen-Waechter, Herr von, a talk with, 77 and the Agadir incident, 69

Kitchener, Lord, meets the Emperor, 68 personality of, 179

Kitchener's Army, 50, 178

Lansdowne, Lord, and the agreement with France, 21

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, co-operates in military preparations, 188

League of Nations, the, 220, 222

Lucanus, von, snubbed by Bismarck, 148

Lyncker, von, commanded to Potsdam, 150, 151

Lyttelton, Sir Neville, 188

MacDonald, Ramsay, lunches with German Emperor, 68

Mahan, Admiral, his works studied by Tirpitz, 141

McKenna, Mr., and the Navy, 87

Metternich, Count, and Bagdad Railway question, 66 at Windsor, 62 author's relations with, 57

Miles, Sir Herbert, assists in military preparations, 188

Military preparations, the, 177 et seq.

Moltke, Count von, his scheme for rapid mobilization, 38

Moltke, General von, a chat with, 42 present at meeting of Bismarck and Kaiser, 148

Morley, Lord, at luncheon to the Emperor, 68 attends meetings of Committee of Imperial Defense, 182

Morocco difficulty, the, 115 France's request to England, 44

Moulton, Lord, meets German Emperor, 68

National philosophy, German, 30

Navy, British, mobilization of, 50 sea power the dominant element in military policy, 200 why strengthened and increased, 87, 129, 181

Navy, German, Buelow on, 57 William II. and, 54

Nicholson, Lord, and a new military system, 196 chief of General Staff, 188

Officers' Training Corps, organization of, 192

Ottley, Admiral Sir Charles, secretary of Committee of Imperial Defense, 185

Panther sent to Agadir, 68

Peace terms, the, burden of, 210

Post-war problems, and how they should be met, 208

Potsdam, a reported Crown Council at, and Tirpitz's version of, 131, 149

Reinsurance Treaty of 1884, 126, 146

Repington, Col. A'Court, 191

Reventlow, Count, 38 (note)

Richter opposes Tirpitz on the naval program, 142

Russia, army of, 180 her hostility to Austria, 113 not wishful for war, 162

Russo-Japanese War, William II. and, 116

Sargent, J.S., lunches with the Emperor, 68

Schoen, Baron von, accompanies William II. to England, 62 and the Bagdad Railway question, 65

Serbia as "provocative neighbor," 23 ultimatum to, 133

Skiernevice (see Reinsurance Treaty)

Social Democracy, and militarism, 108 in Germany, 84, 144

Special Reserve, the, organization of, 178

Spender, J.A., meets the Emperor, 68

Stosch, and the German Navy, 138

Tangier, William II. at, 53, 115

Tariff Reform, the Kaiser on, 55

Teaching universities, author and, 39

Technical colleges in England, 40

Territorial Force, the, its part in the world war, 49 mobilization of, 50 organization of, 48, 178

Tirpitz, Admiral von, an admission by, 138 an interview with, 74 and Bethmann-Hollweg's policy, 141 criticizes author, 160 demands a definite policy for war, 143 his "Erinnerungen" discussed, 137 et seq. his influence in Germany, 82 informed of Austria's demands to Serbia, 153 mentality of, 137 outstanding thesis of his book, 141 tribute to British sea power, 161 visits Bismarck, 145, 148

Trench warfare, unpreparedness for, 191

Tschirsky, Herr von, and the ultimatum to Serbia, 153 author's interview with, 38 on Anglo-French Entente, 59 on the English Press, 61

Tsingtau as German naval base, 140

Two-Power standard, discussed with German Emperor and Prince Buelow, 54, 57 Tirpitz and, 76

United States (see America)

Voluntary system, the, advantages of, 199

William II., Emperor, an ominous admission by, 43 and the Agadir crisis, 69, 70 and the Anglo-French Entente, 52 Bismarck's message to, 148 consults Bethmann-Hollweg and Zimmermann, 132 Count Czernin on, 170 desires exchange of views between Berlin and London, 70, 71 Emperor of Austria's letter to, and memorandum on policy, 131 frank speech with author, 52 et seq. his proposal on Bagdad Railway question, 66 his reception in London, 68 incautious speeches of, 69, 117, 161 pays surprise visit to Bismarck, 148 promises support to Austria, 150 reads a poem to author, 165 reviews his troops, 51 Tirpitz and, 142 visits King Edward and King George, 62, 67

Wilson, Admiral Sir Arthur, meets the Emperor, 68

Wilson, General, and the Committee of Imperial Defense, 184

Windsor, the German Emperor's visit to, 62

Zimmermann, Herr, at Potsdam conference, 151 meets author, 77



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