The Appetite of Tyranny

The Facts of the Case

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Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewildering

business a story: and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as madness.

If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may illuminate many other

people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be that the master of the

house was burned because he was drunk; it may be that the mistress of the

house was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about the

expense of the fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they

both were burned because I set fire to their house. That is the story of

the thing. The mere facts of the story about the present European

conflagration are quite as easy to tell.

Before we go on to the deeper things which make this war the most sincere

war of human history, it is easy to answer the question of why England came

to be in it at all, as one asks how a man fell down a coal-hole, or failed

to keep an appointment. Facts are not the whole truth. But facts are facts,

and in this case the facts are few and simple. Prussia, France, and

England had all promised not to invade Belgium. Prussia proposed to invade

Belgium, because it was the safest way of invading France. But Prussia

promised that if she might break in, through her own broken promise and

ours, she would break in and not steal. In other words, we were offered at

the same instant a promise of faith in the future and a proposal of perjury

in the present. Those interested in human origin may refer to an old

Victorian writer of English, who, in the last and most restrained of his

historical essays, wrote of Frederick the Great, the founder of this

unchanging Prussian policy. After describing how Frederick broke the

guarantee he had signed on behalf of Maria Theresa, he then describes how

Frederick sought to put things straight by a promise that was an insult.

"If she would but let him have Silesia, he would, he said, stand by her

against any power which should try to deprive her of her other dominions,

as if he was not already bound to stand by her, or as if his new promise

could be of more value than the old one." That passage was written by

Macaulay, but so far as the mere contemporary facts are concerned, it might

have been written by me.

Upon the immediate logical and legal origin of the English interest there

can be no rational debate. There are some things so simple that one can

almost prove them with plans and diagrams, as in Euclid. One could make a

kind of comic calendar of what would have happened to the English

diplomatist if he had been silenced every time by Prussian diplomacy.

Suppose we arrange it in the form of a kind of diary.

How long is anybody expected to go with that sort of game, or keep peace at

that illimitable price? How long must we pursue a road in which promises

are all fetishes in front of us and all fragments behind us? No: upon the

cold facts of the final negotiations, as told by any of the diplomatists in

any of the documents, there is no doubt about the story. And no doubt about

the villain of the story.

These are the last facts--the facts which involved England. It is equally

easy to state the first facts--the facts which involved Europe. The Prince

who practically ruled Austria was shot by certain persons whom the Austrian

Government believed to be conspirators from Servia. The Austrian Government

piled up arms and armies, but said not a word either to Servia their

suspect or Italy their ally. From the documents it would seem that Austria

kept everybody in the dark, except Prussia. It is probably nearer the truth

to say that Prussia kept everybody in the dark, including Austria. But all

that is what is called opinion, belief, conviction or common-sense, and we

are not dealing with it here. The objective fact is that Austria told

Servia to permit Servian officers to be suspended by the authority of

Austrian officers, and told Servia to submit to this within forty-eight

hours. In other words, the sovereign of Servia was practically told to take

off not only the laurels of two great campaigns but his own lawful and

national crown, and to do it in a time in which no respectable citizen is

expected to discharge an hotel bill. Servia asked for time, for

arbitration--in short, for peace. But Prussia had already begun to

mobilise; and Prussia, presuming that Servia might thus be rescued,

declared war.

Between these two ends of fact, the ultimatum to Servia, the ultimatum to

Belgium, any one so inclined can of course talk as if everything were

relative. If any one ask why the Czar should rush to the support of Servia,

it is as easy to ask why the Kaiser should rush to the support of Austria.

If any one say that the French would attack the Germans, it is sufficient

to answer that the Germans did attack the French. There remain, however,

two attitudes to consider, even perhaps two arguments to counter, which can

best be considered and countered under this general head of facts. First of

all, there is a curious, cloudy sort of argument, much affected by the

professional rhetoricians of Prussia, who are sent out to instruct and

correct the minds of Americans or Scandinavians. It consists of going into

convulsions of incredulity and scorn at the mention of Russia's

responsibility for Servia or England's responsibility for Belgium; and

suggesting that, treaty or no treaty, frontier or no frontier, Russia would

be out to slay Teutons or England to steal colonies. Here, as elsewhere, I

think the professors dotted all over the Baltic plain fail in lucidity, and

in the power of distinguishing ideas. Of course it is quite true that

England has material interests to defend, and will probably use the

opportunity to defend them: or, in other words, of course England, like

everybody else, would be more comfortable if Prussia were less predominant.

The fact remains that we did not do what the Germans did. We did not

invade Holland to seize a naval and commercial advantage: and whether they

say that we wished to do it in our greed, or feared to do it in our

cowardice, the fact remains that we did not do it. Unless this common-sense

principle be kept in view, I cannot conceive how any quarrel can possibly

be judged. A contract may be made between two persons solely for material

advantage on each side: but the moral advantage is still generally supposed

to lie with the person who keeps the contract. Surely it cannot be

dishonest to be honest--even if honesty is the best policy. Imagine the

most complex maze of indirect motives; and still the man who keeps faith

for money cannot possibly be worse than the man who breaks faith for money.

It will be noted that this ultimate test applies in the same way to Servia

as to Belgium and Britain. The Servians may not be a very peaceful people;

but, on the occasion under discussion, it was certainly they who wanted

peace. You may choose to think the Serb a sort of born robber: but on this

occasion it was certainly the Austrian who was trying to rob. Similarly,

you may call England perfidious as a sort of historical summary; and

declare your private belief that Mr. Asquith was vowed from infancy to the

ruin of the German Empire, a Hannibal and hater of the eagles. But, when

all is said, it is nonsense to call a man perfidious because he keeps his

promise. It is absurd to complain of the sudden treachery of a business man

in turning up punctually to his appointment: or the unfair shock given to a

creditor by the debtor paying his debts.

Lastly, there is an attitude not unknown in the crisis against which I

should particularly like to protest. I should address my protest especially

to those lovers and pursuers of Peace who, very short-sightedly, have

occasionally adopted it. I mean the attitude which is impatient of these

preliminary details about who did this or that, and whether it was right or

wrong. They are satisfied with saying that an enormous calamity, called

War, has been begun by some or all of us; and should be ended by some or

all of us. To these people this preliminary chapter about the precise

happenings must appear not only dry (and it must of necessity be the driest

part of the task) but essentially needless and barren. I wish to tell these

people that they are wrong; that they are wrong upon all principles of

human justice and historic continuity: but that they are specially and

supremely wrong upon their own principles of arbitration and international

peace.

These sincere and high-minded peace-lovers are always telling us that

citizens no longer settle their quarrels by private violence; and that

nations should no longer settle theirs by public violence. They are always

telling us that we no longer fight duels; and need no longer wage wars. In

short, they perpetually base their peace proposals on the fact that an

ordinary citizen no longer avenges himself with an axe. But how is he

prevented from revenging himself with an axe? If he hits his neighbour on

the head with the kitchen chopper, what do we do? Do we all join hands,

like children playing Mulberry Bush, and say "We are all responsible for

this; but let us hope it will not spread. Let us hope for the happy day

when he shall leave off chopping at the man's head; and when nobody shall

ever chop anything for ever and ever." Do we say "Let byegones be byegones;

why go back to all the dull details with which the business began; who can

tell with what sinister motives the man was standing there within reach of

the hatchet?" We do not. We keep the peace in private life by asking for

the facts of provocation, and the proper object of punishment. We do go

into the dull details; we do enquire into the origins; we do emphatically

enquire who it was that hit first. In short we do what I have done very

briefly in this place.

Given this, it is indeed true that behind these facts there are truths;

truths of a terrible, of a spiritual sort. In mere fact, the Germanic power

has been wrong about Servia, wrong about Russia, wrong about Belgium, wrong

about England, wrong about Italy. But there was a reason for its being

wrong everywhere; and of that root reason, which has moved half the world

against it, I shall speak later. For that is something too omnipresent to

be proved, too indisputable to be helped by detail. It is nothing less than

the locating, after more than a hundred years of recriminations and wrong

explanations, of the modern European evil: the finding of the fountain from

which poison has flowed upon all the nations of the earth.

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.