General Sketch of the European War： The First Phase， A
Part 1. The General Causes Of The War Part 1. The General Causes Of The War - (2) Conflict Produced By The Contrast Of This German Attitude Or Will With The Wills Of Other Nations
Hilaire Belloc
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_ PART I. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF THE WAR:
(2) CONFLICT PRODUCED BY THE CONTRAST OF THIS GERMAN ATTITUDE OR WILL WITH THE WILLS OF OTHER NATIONS
When we have clearly grasped the German attitude, as it may thus be not unfairly expressed, we shall not find it difficult to conceive why a conflict between such a will and other wills around it broke out.
We need waste no time in proving the absurdity of the German assumptions, the bad history they involve, and the perverse and twisted perspective so much vanity presupposes. War can never be prevented by discovering the moral errors of an opponent. It comes into being because that opponent does not believe them to be moral errors; and in the attempt to understand this war and its causes, we should only confuse ourselves if we lost time over argument upon pretensions even as crassly unreal as these.
It must be enough for the purposes of this to accept the German will so stated, and to see how it necessarily conflicts with the English will, the French will, the Russian will, and sooner or later, for that matter, with every other national will in Europe.
In the matter of sea-power England would answer: "Unless we are all-powerful at sea, our very existence is imperilled." In the matter of her colonies and dependencies England would answer: "We may be a Teutonic people or we may not. All that kind of thing is pleasant talk for the academies. But if you ask whether we will allow any part of our colonies to become German or any part of our great dependencies to fall under German rule, the answer is in the negative."
The French would answer: "We do not happen to think that we are either decadent or corrupt, nor do we plead guilty to any other of your vague and very pedantic charges; but quite apart from that, on the concrete point of whether we propose to be subjugated by a foreign Power, German or other, the answer is in the negative. Our will is here in conflict with yours. And before you can proceed to any act of mastery over us, you will have to fight. Moreover, we shall not put aside the duty of ultimately fighting you so long as a population of two millions, who feel themselves to be French (though most of them are German-speaking) and who detest your rule, are arbitrarily kept in subjection by you in Alsace-Lorraine."
The Russians would reply: "We cannot help being numerically stronger than you, and we do not propose to diminish our numbers even if we could. We do not think we are barbaric; and as to our leadership of the Slav people in the Balkans, that seems as right and natural to us, particularly on religious grounds, as any such bond could be. It may interfere with your ambitions; but if you propose that we should abandon so obvious an attitude of leadership among the Slavs, the answer is in the negative." There is here, therefore, again a conflict of wills.
In general, what the German peoples desired, based upon what they believed themselves to be, was sharply at issue with what the English people, what the French people, what the Russian people respectively desired. Their desires were also based upon what _they_ believed themselves to be, and they thought themselves to be very different from what Germany thought them to be. The English did not believe that they had sneaked their empire; the French did not believe that they were moribund; the Russians did not believe that they were savages.
It was impossible that the German will should impose itself without coming at once into conflict with these other national wills. It was impossible that the German ideal should seek to realize itself without coming into conflict with the mere desire to live, let alone the self-respect, of everybody else.
And the consequence of such a conflict in ideals and wills translated into practice was this war.
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But the war would not have come nor would it have taken the shape that it did, but for two other factors in the problem which we must next consider. These two other factors are, first, the position and tradition of Prussia among the German States; secondly, the peculiar authority exercised by the Imperial House of Hapsburg-Lorraine at Vienna over its singularly heterogeneous subjects. _