theories, their application, and their consequences recently cost the world thirty million casualties and thousands of millions of pounds within a brief five years, and yet left the frontiers of Europe less secure than they were before. Three thousand miles of frontier in North America have in more than a hundred years cost us hardly a life, or a limb, or a penny. As we put those details side by side we realise quantula regitur mundus sapientia—with how little wisdom do men rule the world. Yet the truth was told us long ago that he that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city, and we might have learnt by our experience of the peace that the only conquest that really pays is the conquest of oneself.
The real peace of that North American frontier is due to no conquest of Americans by Canadians or of Canadians by Americans, but to their conquest of themselves and of that foolish pride of “heathen folk who put their trust in reeking tube and iron shard.” Let us face the facts, whatever the visionaries and the blind may say. So be it. The war is a fact, and so is the desolation it has wrought. But that Anglo-American frontier is also a fact, and so is that century of peace which happily followed upon the resolution to depend for the defence of that frontier on moral restraint instead of on military force. Verily, peace hath her victories not less renowned than those of war.
The Alternative
We have, indeed, to face the facts, and the facts about the Balance of Power must dominate our deliberations and determine the fate of our programmes. There may be no more war for a generation, but there can be no peace with a Balance of Power. There can be nothing better than an armed truce; and an armed truce, with super-dreadnoughts costing from four to eight times what they did before the war, is fatal to any programme of retrenchment and reform. We are weighted enough in all conscience with the debt of that war without the burden of preparation for another; and a Balance of Power involves a progressive increase in preparations for war.
Unless we can exorcise fear, we are doomed to repeat the sisyphean cycles of the past and painfully roll our programmes up the hill, only to see them dashed to the bottom, before we get to the top, by the catastrophe of war. Fear is fatal to freedom; it is fear which alone gives militarism its strength, compels nations to spend on armaments what they fain would devote to social reform, drives them into secret diplomacy and unnatural alliances, and leads them to deny their just liberties to subject populations. Fear is the root of reaction as faith is the parent of progress; and the incarnation of international fear is the Balance of Power.
INTERNATIONAL DISARMAMENT
By Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice, K.C.M.G., C.B
Director of Military Operations—Imperial General Staff, 1915-16.
Sir Frederick Maurice said:—This problem of the reduction of armaments is one of the most urgent of the international and national problems of the day. It is urgent in its economic aspect, urgent also as regards its relation to the future peace of the world. The urgency of its economic aspect was proclaimed two years ago at the Brussels conference of financiers assembled by the League of Nations. These experts said quite plainly and definitely that, so far as they could see, the salvation of Europe from bankruptcy depended upon the immediate diminution of the crushing burden of expenditure upon arms. That was two years ago. Linked up with this question is the whole question of the economic reconstruction of Europe. Linked up with it also is that deep and grave problem of reparations. It is no longer the case to-day, if it has ever been the case since the war, which I doubt, that sober opinion in France considers it necessary for France to have large military forces in order to protect her from German aggression in the near future. For the past two years, however, it has been the custom of those who live upon alarms to produce the German menace. There is a great body of opinion in France at this moment which feels that unless France is able to put the pistol to Germany’s head, it will never be able to get a penny out of Germany.
You have the further connection of the attitude of America to the problem. America said, officially through Mr. Hoover and unofficially through a number of her leading financiers, that she was not ready to come forward and take her share in the economic restoration of Europe so long as Europe is squandering its resources upon arms. The connection is quite definitely and explicitly recognised in the Covenant of the League of Nations. Article 8 begins: “The principles of the League recognise that the maintenance of peace requires reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety, and the enforcement by common action of international obligations.” These words were promulgated in 1919. Personally, I find myself in complete agreement with what Lord Robert Cecil said this morning, and what Lord Grey said a few days ago at Newcastle, that one of the prime causes of the war was Prussian militarism. By that I mean the influence of that tremendous military machine, which had been built up through years of labour in Germany, in moulding the public opinion of that country.
A Group of New Armies
Well, how do we stand in regard to that to-day? We stand to-day in the position that the armaments of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, have all been compulsorily drastically reduced, but in their place you have a whole group of new armies. You have armies to-day which did not exist before the war, in Finland, Esthonia, Poland, Lithuania, and Czecho-Slovakia, and the sum total is that at this moment there are more armed men in time of peace in Europe than in 1913. Is there no danger that this machine will mould the minds of some other peoples, just as the German machine moulded the minds of the Germans? This is the position as regards the peace establishments of Europe to-day in their relation to the future peace of the world. What about the economic position? I have mentioned that certain Powers have had their forces drastically reduced, and that has brought with it a drastic reduction of expenditure, but I have before me the naval, military, and air force estimates of the eight principal Powers in Europe, leaving out Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria, whose forces have been compulsorily reduced.
At the economic conference of financiers in Brussels in 1920 it was mentioned with horror that 20 per cent. of the income of Europe was then being devoted to arms. I find that to-day 25 per cent. of the total income of these eight Powers is devoted to arms. I find, further, that of these eight Powers who have budgeted for a smaller service, only one—Yugo-Slavia—has managed to balance her budget, and the others have large deficits which are many times covered by their expenditure on arms. And this is going on at a time when all these eight nations are taxed almost up to their limit, when the whole of their industries are suffering in consequence, and when the danger of bankruptcy, which horrified the financiers in 1920, is even more imminent.
That being the case, what has been done in the last few years to remedy this matter, and why is more not being done? As you all know, this question is in the forefront of the programme of the League of Nations. And the League began to deal with it at once. Lord Robert Cecil will agree with me that the framers of the Covenant, of which he is one of the chief, could not foresee everything, and they did not foresee at the time the Covenant was framed, that machinery would be required to deal with this extraordinarily complex question of armaments. They created an organisation then called a Permanent Military Command, still in existence, to advise the Council of the League on all military matters. But when these gentlemen got to work upon such questions as reduction of armaments, they at once found themselves dealing with matters entirely beyond their competence, because into this problem enter problems of high politics and finance, and a thousand other questions of which soldiers, sailors, and airmen know nothing whatever.
The League’s Commission
The first step was to remedy an oversight in the machinery, and that was done at the first meeting of the Assembly. The first meeting of the Assembly created a temporary mixed commission on armaments, which was composed of persons of recognised competence in political, social, and economic matters. It consisted of six members of the old Permanent Commission, and in addition a number of statesmen, employers, and representatives of labour. This body started to tackle this grave question. Before it began the first Assembly of the League had
