The War and Democracy

CHAPTER VII. The Issues of the War by R.w. Seton-Watson

THE ISSUES OF THE WAR By R.W. SETON-WATSON

1. IS THERE AN IDEA BEHIND THE WAR? 2. THE AIMS OF BRITISH STATESMANSHIP 3. BRITAIN AND GERMANY 4. NATIONALITY AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE (1) ALSACE-LORRAINE, (2) SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN, (3) POLAND 5. THE FUTURE OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY--MINIMUM AND MAXIMUM LOSSES 6. THE SOUTHERN SLAV QUESTION 7. THE ROUMANIAN QUESTION 8. CAN THE DUAL MONARCHY BE REPLACED? 9. BOHEMIA AND HUNGARY 10. GERMANY AND AUSTRIA 11. ITALIAN ASPIRATIONS 12. THE BALKAN SITUATION: BULGARIA AND GREECE 13. THE FUTURE OF TURKEY 14. RUSSIA AND CONSTANTINOPLE 15. ASIATIC TURKEY 16. RUSSIA AND POLAND 17. GENERAL AIMS

CHAPTER VIII

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE WAR By ARTHUR GREENWOOD, B.Sc., Lecturer in Economics at the University of Leeds

INTRODUCTION

A. STATE ACTION IN INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE

B. IMMEDIATE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE WAR

1. FOREIGN TRADE 2. UNEMPLOYMENT AND SHORT TIME 3. TRADE UNIONS, CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES, AND DISTRESS 4. THE NEW SPIRIT

C. AFTER THE WAR

1. GENERAL EFFECTS 2. POSSIBLE INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENTS 3. SOCIAL EFFECTS AND THE NEW OUTLOOK

CHAPTER IX. German Culture and the British Commonwealth by Alfred E. Zimmern

GERMAN CULTURE AND THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH By ALFRED E. ZIMMERN

1. THE TWO ISSUES 2. CULTURE 3. CULTURE AS A STATE PRODUCT 4. GERMAN AND BRITISH IDEALS OF EDUCATION 5. GERMAN AND BRITISH IDEALS OF CIVILISATION 6. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE COMMONWEALTH 7. THE FUTURE OF CIVILISATION 8. THE TWO ROADS OF ADVANCE: INTER-STATE ACTION AND COMMON CITIZENSHIP

INDEX

MAPS

THE PARTITION OF POLAND EUROPE IN 1815 GERMANY IN 1815 PRUSSIA SINCE THE ACCESSION OF FREDERICK THE GREAT AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: PHYSICAL THE FRANCO-GERMAN FRONTIER AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: POLITICAL DIVISIONS RACIAL AND NATIONAL BOUNDARIES IN CENTRAL EUROPE

CHAPTER I. Introductory

INTRODUCTORY

"It seems to me that the amount of lawlessness and crime, the amount of waste and futility, the amount of war and war possibility and war danger in the world are just the measure of the present inadequacy of the world's system of collective organisations to the purpose before them. It follows from this very directly that only one thing can end war on the earth, and that is a subtle mental development, an idea, the development of the idea of the world commonweal in the collective mind."--H.G. WELLS in 1908.

THIS is a testing time for Democracy. The people of Great Britain and the Dominions, to whom all the world looks as the trustees, together with France and America, of the great democratic tradition, are brought face to face, for the first time, with their full ultimate responsibility as British citizens. Upon the way in which that responsibility is realised and discharged depends the future of the democratic principle, not only in these islands, but throughout the world.

Democracy is not a mere form of government. It does not depend on ballot boxes or franchise laws or any constitutional machinery. These are but its trappings. Democracy is a spirit and an atmosphere, and its essence is trust in the moral instincts of the people. A tyrant is not a democrat, for he believes in government by force; neither is a demagogue a democrat, for he believes in government by flattery. A democratic country is a country where the government has confidence in the people and the people in the government and in itself, and where all are united in the faith that the cause of their country is not a mere matter of individual or national self-interest, but is in harmony with the great moral forces which rule the destinies of mankind. No form of government is so feeble as a democracy without faith. But a democracy armed with faith is not merely strong: it is invincible; for its cause will live on, in defeat and disaster, in the breast of every one of its citizens. Belgium is a living testimony to that great truth.

British Democracy has carried this principle of confidence to the furthest possible point. Alone among the States of Europe, Great Britain relies for her existence and for the maintenance of her world-wide responsibilities upon the free choice of her citizens. Her privileges are extended to all: her active obligations are forced upon none. Trusting in the principle of individual freedom, and upon the sound instinct and understanding of her people, she leaves it to each citizen to make his choice whether, and in what manner, he shall serve his country. Never have responsibilities so arduous and so urgent been laid upon the citizens of any community: and never have the citizens been so free to choose or to decline the burden. The world will judge Great Britain, and judge Democracy, according to the measure of our free response.

What is the nature of the responsibility cast upon us at this crisis?

It is threefold. It concerns the present, the past, and the future. There are three questions which every citizen must needs ask, and try to answer, for himself. The first and most urgent is a matter of present decision: What is my duty here and now? The second involves a judgment of past events: Why is it that we are at war? Are we fighting in a just cause? The third involves an estimate of the future and of the part which British public opinion can and should play in shaping it: What are the issues involved in the various belligerent countries? What should be the principles of a just settlement? How can Great Britain best use her influence in the cause of human progress and for the welfare of the peoples involved in the war?

It is with the second and especially with the third of these responsibilities that this volume is concerned.

"What is the war about?" "Are we fighting in a just cause?" Every one by now has asked himself this question, and most people have studied some at least of the evidence, and tried to satisfy themselves as to the answer. The Foreign Office White Paper and numberless books and pamphlets have enlightened the public on many of the questions at issue. Yet the fact remains that the necessity of this educative campaign involves a confession of failure--or at least of grave neglect--on the part of British democracy. Under our democratic constitution the people of Great Britain have assumed the responsibility for the management of their own affairs. One great department of those affairs, the most vital of all, they and their representatives have systematically neglected. Deeply engaged and interested in domestic problems, they have left the control of their foreign relations in the hands of expert advisers. And so it was with something like stupefaction that they discovered, one day in August, that they were called upon to honour the obligations contracted in their name.

There has been no desire to evade those obligations. But there has been a very real desire to understand them, and also a fixed determination never again to allow such a lack of contact, on vital issues, between the mind of the people and the activities of their ministers.

But no mere changes in the machinery of democratic control can avail to save the people from the consequences of their own ignorance and neglect. There is only one way in which we can achieve full Democracy in this country, and that is through Education.

In the sphere of domestic affairs, particularly in connection with social and industrial questions, the people have slowly realised this hard truth. After a generation or more of attempts and failures and disillusionments many thousands of workpeople have learnt the lesson that power without knowledge is not power at all, and that knowledge, whether for public affairs or for any other purpose, cannot be gained without effort and discipline. They have come to realise that Democracy needs, for its full working, not only schools in which to train its young, but also--what no Democracy save those of the ancient world has ever possessed--such facilities for the education for its adult citizens, engaged in the active work of the community, as will enable them to maintain unimpaired their intellectual freshness and vigour, and to face with wisdom and courage the problems for which, as citizens, they have assumed responsibility. They have come to think of Education, not as a time of tutelage or training, but as a part of active life itself, woven of the same texture and concerned with the same issues, as being, in fact, the effort to understand the world in which they live. But they have naturally tended to confine those issues within the limits of their own domestic interests and experience. They are called upon now to widen their horizon, and to apply the democratic conception of education to the new problems which have arisen owing to the part which Great Britain is now playing in the affairs of Europe.

It is never easy to think things out clearly and coldly. But it is hardest of all in the crisis of a great war, when men's minds are blurred by passionate emotions of sorrow, anxiety, and indignation. Hence a time of war is the heyday of fallacies and delusions, of misleading hopes and premature disillusionments: men tend to live in an unreal world of phrases and catchwords. Yet never is it more necessary than at such a period, in the old Greek phrase, "to follow the argument whithersoe'er it leads," to look facts squarely in the face, and, particularly, the great ugly outstanding fact of war itself, the survival of which democrats, especially in Great Britain and the United States, have of recent years been so greatly tempted to ignore.

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