Edward Grey

“ There is more at stake in this war than the existence of individual States or Empires, or the fate of a Continent; the whole of modern civilization is at stake, and whether it will perish and be submerged, as has happened to previous civilizations of older types, or whether it will live and progress, depends upon whether the nations engaged in this war, and even those that are onlookers, learn the lessons that the experience of the war may teach them. It must be, with nations as with individuals; in the great trials of life they must become better or worse— they cannot stand still. ”

“ All must learn the lesson of this war. The United States and the Allies cannot save the world from militarism unless Germany learns the lesson thoroughly and completely: and they will not save the world, or even themselves, by complete victory over Germany until they too have learnt and can apply the lesson that militarism has become the deadly enemy of mankind. ”

“ We have all of us seen individuals becoming more and more a misery to themselves and others, because they cannot understand or will not accept this rule. Is it not applicable to Nations as well? And if so, have not Nations come to a great crisis in which for them the rule "Learn or perish" will prove inexorable? ”

“ They must learn and profit by experience and rise to greater heights, or else sink lower and drop eventually into the abyss. And this war is the greatest trial of which there is any record in history. ”

“ We cannot utter all that we feel, and if it were not that our feelings are in a way stunned by the very violence of the catastrophe, as physical nerves are to some extent numbed by great blows, the human heart could not bear up and live under the trial of this war. Great must be the effect of all this: greater after even than during the war on the working of men's minds, and on human nature itself ”

“ On the other hand, the Military party in Germany are, and must remain, opposed to it; they resent any limitation upon the use of force by Germany as fatal to German interests, for they can conceive no development, and even no security, except one based solely upon force. Any other conception is fatal, and this exclusive conception is essential to the maintenance of the power of the military party in Germany. As long, therefore, as this rule in Germany continues, Germany will oppose a League of Nations. ”

“ It must not be supposed from this that the Governments of the Allies are less ready to draw, or have not already drawn, the same conclusion from the experience of the war; but their countries have been at war all the time. They have been fighting, it is true, for the same ideal of national and human liberty as the United States, but fighting also for the immediate preservation of national existence in Europe, and all their thought and energy have been concentrated upon resistance to imminent peril. ”

“ All small States, belligerent or neutral, must naturally desire in their own interest everything that will safeguard small States as well as great from aggression and war.
There remains the opposition of Germany, where recent military success and the ascendancy of Prussian militarism have reduced the advocates of anything but force to silence. Germany has to be convinced that force does not pay, that the aims and policy of her military rulers inflict intolerable and also unnecessary suffering upon her ”

“ They have shown the world that now and henceforth war means this and nothing less than this. If there is to be another war in twenty or thirty years' time, what will it be like? If there is to be concentrated preparation for more war, the researches of science will be devoted henceforth to discovering methods by which the human race can be destroyed. These discoveries cannot be confined to one nation and their object of wholesale destruction will be much more completely achieved hereafter even than in this war. ”

“ The economic pressure that such a League could use would in itself be very powerful, and the action of some of the smaller States composing the League could perhaps not go beyond economic pressure, but those States that have power must be ready to use all the force, economic, military, or naval, that they possess. It must be clearly understood and accepted that defection from or violation of the agreement by one or more States does not absolve all or any of the others from the obligation to enforce the agreement. ”

“ The smaller and weaker nations will have rights that must be respected and upheld by the League. The stronger nations must forgo the right to make their interests prevail against the weaker by force: and all the States must forgo the right in any dispute to resort to force before other methods of settlement by conference, conciliation, or, if need be, arbitration, have been tried. This is the limitation.
The obligation is that if any nation will not observe this limitation upon its national action ”

“ Is it possible that the experience of this war will produce a settled opinion of the same sort to regulate the relations of States with each other and safeguard the world from war, which is in fact anarchy?
What does the experience of this war amount to? Our minds cannot grasp it all. Thought is crushed by the accumulated suffering that the war has caused and is still causing. ”

“ Are the Nations of the world prepared now, or will they be ready after this war, to look steadily and clearly at this aspect of the League of Nations, at the limitations and obligations that it will impose, and to say whole-hearted and convinced as they have never been before, "We will accept and undertake them"? ”

“ And we not only accept this arrangement, but uphold it as essential to prevent oppression of one by another, to secure each person in a quiet life, and to guarantee to each the greatest liberty that is consistent with the equal liberty of neighbours. ”

“ One of the conclusions has been that, if the world of which they form an important part is to be saved from what they consider disaster, they must enter the war against Germany; another has been that, if national liberty and peace are to be secure in future, there must be a League of Nations to secure them. ”

“ Individuals in civilized States have long ago accepted an analogous limitation and obligation as regards disputes between individuals; these are settled by law r, and any individual who, instead of. appealing to law, resorts to force to give effect to what he considers his rights, finds himself at once opposed and restrained by the force of the State—that is, in democratic countries, by the combined force of the other individuals. ”

“ It is then discovered that what appeared as an ideal to be wholly desirable and amiable cannot be of practical use, unless we are ready to subject ourselves to some limitations or discipline that may be inconvenient, and unless we are prepared to overcome some difficulties that were not at first sight apparent. The ideal is found to have in fact a stern and disagreeable as well as an easy and amiable side to it. ”

“ THERE are projects that exist in a shadowy form in an atmosphere of tepid idealism, admired by those who see that if possible they would be desirable. From time to time an attempt is made to embody them in material form and make them of practical use in national or international politics. ”

“ In opposition to this idea of Germany, the Allies should set forth, as President Wilson has already set forth, the idea of a peace secured by mutual regard between States for the rights of each and a determination to stamp out any attempt at war. as they would a plague that threatened the destruction of all. ”

“ That at any rate is part of the theory and object of democratic government, and if it is not perfectly attained most of the proposals for improving it look rather to increased than to diminished State control. ”

“ The British official explained, no doubt in the best modern manner, that these taxes were used to keep order in the country, with the result that men and women and the flocks and herds and possessions of every tribe were safe, and each could live in its own territory without fear or disturbance, and that the payment of taxes was for the good of all. ”

“ The Nations have also carefully abstained from undertaking any obligation to use force to uphold the benevolent rules and agreements of general application that have been recorded at Hague Conferences ”

“ But in less civilized parts of the world individuals have not reached the point of view from which this order of things seems desirable. There is a story of a native chief in Africa, who protested to a British official against having to pay any taxes. ”