John Alfred Spender

“ THERE is one thought which must often recur to a man of my age. I was fifty-one years of age when the Great War broke out. Had I been twenty years younger, it is highly probable that instead of living to write this book I should have found a grave on one or other of the battle fronts before my thirty- fifth year. ”

“ To the German it seemed as if the British Government had made up its mind to call a halt to German ship- building at the point most convenient to itself, and from that it was but a short step to assume that it would make war if its demand was refused.
Indeed, no adventure seemed less promising or more dangerous in these days than the endeavour to promote peace by disarmament, and, had there been a convinced pacifist Power, it would certainly have had to fight for its cause. The one hope for the world is that the coming generation will know w.hat war on the European scale is and must be. ”

“ Germany might be strong enough to risk the enmity of France, Russia, and Great Britain at the same time ; but we certainly were not strong enough to be on bad terms with Russia, France, and Germany at the same time. The two-Power standard which had served us in the last years of the nineteenth century would evidently be insufficient if we could suppose either three Powers being joined against us, or the more likely event of Germany sub- duing her enemies and joining their fleets to those of the Triple Alliance in an attack on the British Empire. ”

“ During these years we were all of us, Tories, Liberals., and Radicals, prepared to make war for what we deemed to be sufficient cause. We might debate angrily about the sufficiency of the cause., but we never denied that., if the cause was sufficient., war was the legitimate ultima ratio, and not merely for the defence of territory, but also for what were conceived to be the interests of the British Empire or the resentment of injuries to it. ”

“ It is at all events our generation which will chiefly be held to account, and it is precisely this generation which finds it most difficult to give an intelligible account of itself. Speaking as an Englishman, I am not disposed, like some of my contemporaries , to stand in a white sheet. I have read practically the whole of the British documents between 1906 and 1914, a large number of the German, most of the Bolshevist publications, and many of the Memoirs and Reminiscences that have appeared in different countries since the war. ”

“ The hope of the future is not, as I see it, that they will be more moral or more pacific than we were, but that they will not be placed in the circumstances in which we found our- selves at the outbreak of the Great War and in the preceding years. ”

“ I think it is safe to say that if our generation had realised what the Great War was to be, whether for victors or vanquished, there would have been no Great War, but whether another generation will learn of our experience is beyond prophecy, and one must leave it at Grey's " learn or perish." We lived in pre-scientif ic times. We had enough science to make very deadly engines of war, but not enough to measure their effect. We worked on a mediaeval theory with weapons which blew our theory sky-high. ”

“ Again, in 1904 there were several days when all parties contemplated war with Russia as the proper way of resenting what was thought to be the deliberate outrage of the Russian fleet on the fisher- men of the Dogger Bank. ”

“ Frenchmen deplored the balance of forces which made it seemingly impossible for them to recover the lost provinces, but very few of them would have thought it a crime to wage war for their recovery, if there had been a reasonable chance of its being waged successfully. ”

“ It seems to me that our own country comes better out of this test than almost any other, and that its policy looks honest and straight- forward, if, according to European standards, a little naive. The general drift of opinion, even in ex- enemy countries, is to acquit us of aggressive inten- tions and to acknowledge that we were pursuing a defensive line imposed on us by the policy of the Central Powers, and especially by the German challenge to us at sea. ”

“ Precisely because the situation was dangerous, it seemed imperative to seize every opportunity of building bridges with Germany and urging modera- tion on France and Russia, provided it was under- stood that we were firm on the essentials of main- taining the entente and keeping our fleet supreme.
I see no reason why an Englishman should think it necessary to defend all the proceedings of France and Russia in these years. ”

“ You might have all the vintues on youn side and yet be nuined j you might commit eveny wickedness and yet emenge tniumphant. In such a wonld it necessanily became vintue in a statesman to have the fonces on his side be thankful if he could plausibly maintain that his opponents wene monally in the wnong. ”