British Empire was thus admittedly being drawn int the Franco-Russian orbit and the German fear of a encirclement acquiring thereby a certain plausibilit There was no longer a Great Power in Europe free 1pursue Justice simply for itself.

It is arguable that it might have been better for ou selves and for others if we had recognised that fa more fully and frankly. It is a thesis of Dr Gooch that, by our support of France in the Agadir crisis, ar by the military conversations with her in which v engaged, we had, in spite of the Foreign Secretary contention in August 1914 that our hands were fre contracted 'an obligation of honour,' as indeed Mr Lloy George subsequently described our project of assistanc We were thus, in reality, bound to the French and t Russians in case of war, but we had no assured place their counsels in time of peace. In the attempt still preserve our old detachment from inconvenient militar alliances, whilst redressing the balance of power by affording continuous diplomatic assistance to one pa ticular Power, we became a factor in the situation no less inequitable than incalculable. Russia might hop to draw us into her quarrels by virtue of our understan ing with France, and Germany might hope to keep 1 out of them by reason of our freedom from any definit alliance. The very essence of our position was that w were potentially everybody's friend, technically nobody ally, actually somebody's confidant. An independer member, says the old witticism, is a member upon who nobody can depend, and the same thing, mutatis mutandi is true of an independent country.

The train of circumstance was now laid for a giganti explosion; and there followed in July and August 191 that series of successive ignitions which justifies D Gooch's remark that every country behaved in th manner that might have been expected of it. Austria Hungary was in no mood to pass over the considere continuous effort of the Serbians to filch her Jugo-Slav provinces which culminated in the murder of the Trialist

* A Trialist was one who wished to put the Slav element in the Dus Monarchy on an equality with the German and the Magyar elements Trialism, had it succeeded, would, therefore, have been prejudicial t Jugo-Slavism.

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Archduke, assassinated, as Dr Gooch concludes, by 'Austrian Serbs' on June 28; and her determination lity to settle conclusions with her adversaries once and for all whiles she was in the way with them, though it will always be rightly condemned by the peace-makers among mankind, is not at all out of keeping with the common theory and practice of the advocates of force without stint or limit. Germany, left, thanks to her arrogance and ambition, without a real friend in Europe, was in no position to allow her only useful ally to be torn asunder by the Slavonic hordes whose swords might probably, in course of time, be pointed at herself, possessed as she was of one of the torn members of Poland. Russia, rebuffed in 1909 when Austria had annexed the occupied provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was more than ever bound in 1914 to afford the Serbs assistance or else for ever to hold her peace. France was strictly tied to the tail of Russia, and England loosely to the tail of France. Apart from the violation of Belgium, which, however, as Mr Cruttwell shows in an interesting argument, did not legally compel our intervention, for the obligation was joint not several, there was nothing abnormally inhuman or unnatural in the inception of the War; and even that crime was one which, as our military conversations with Belgium clearly showed, had been clearly foreseen.

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'It is a mistake,' observes Dr. Gooch, 'to attribute exceptional wickedness to the Governments who, in the words of Lloyd George, stumbled and staggered into war. Blind to danger and deaf to advice as were the civilian leaders of the three despotic empires, not one of them, when it came to the point, desired to set the world alight. But, though they may be acquitted of the supreme offence of deliberately starting the avalanche, they must bear the reproach of having chosen paths which led straight to the abyss.'

Two courses lay open when once the War had begunto treat it as a blunder or to treat it as a crime, for indeed, it was in some sense both. The exigencies of sustaining the war-spirit in democratically governed countries caused all the stress in Western Europe to be

laid upon the latter aspect; in America, for a long while the President and great part of the nation regarded it

* 'Camb. Hist. of Brit. For. Policy,' vol. I, p. 18.

in the former. The hardening of the struggle, howeve and the continuous growth of German brutality, graduall caused the memory of the origins of the War to be lo in its effects. Force came to seem the only remedy, an at the reckoning there was no effective appreciationsuch as was shown by Castlereagh and Wellington i 1814 and 1815—of the fact that the enemy, when all hɛ been said, remains a vital member of the Europea system. Lord Lansdowne, who among the leadir Englishmen of his time had the international sense mo fully developed, and whose much-abused letters durir the War constituted, in fact, a high tribute to his larg familiarity with foreign affairs, had no voice in framir the Peace; Lord Balfour, though present in Paris, w mainly engaged with the Austrian Treaty; 'and M George, in whose unaccustomed hands the future Europe was placed, was fettered by the violence of h election speeches and the depth of his historical igno ance. Thus it happened that the Treaty of Versaille which did lip-service to the idea of a League of Nation reflected in its more telling, more operative features the French conception of tranquillity. History has show all too plainly that our neighbours across the Channe love to have the pre-eminence, and the Peace and all thɛ has followed upon it has shown that that love of pre eminence is in no way dead. Europe-to repeat the ep gram already quoted-exchanged in 1870 a mistress fo a master; and now the rôle has been once more reversed and we labour as our forefathers did so often, under th old fear of French domination-of the domination of people who in the very hour of making Germany pay fo her aggression can find time to celebrate the centenary o Napoleon, the embodiment of their own complementar disgrace. France-there's the pity of it-has entered & new epoch of world-history with her heart unchanged and the prospect of the everlasting duel clouding ever still her vision.

For ourselves, upon whom all the ends of the world are come, the lesson of History is plain. No balance of power, however perfect, is more than a makeshift wher we have to do with people without understanding and who delight in war. We can throw our weight now on the side of Germany, and now on that of France in the

eternal strife for the mastery of Europe; but with neither have we any real part or lot, for our ways are not their ways, nor our thoughts the thoughts that govern them. Only across the Atlantic, or perhaps sometimes among the smaller, less protected nations of the globe, do we find that real kinship of pacific ideas upon which all true co-operation must be based. It is not the least important contribution of the 'Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy' to our knowledge that it traces from point to point the embarrassed but irresistible growth of an Anglo-American understanding. We, as well as our kinsmen, had at the beginning much to forget, yet from the beginning there was a vein of affection running through our dislike. 'The feeling had not yet died away,' observes Prof. Newton of the period of the Treaty of Ghent (1815), 'that in seceding from the British Empire the Americans were renegades, but,' he adds significantly, still entitled to an exceptional consideration which Great Britain would not concede to other trespassers on her rights.' And he goes on to point out that though the Treaty mentioned had failed to decide the very questions that had provoked the Anglo-American War of 1812, the inconclusiveness of the settlement did not lead to war (as Alison had supposed it safe to predict it would do), but rather gave opportunity to that mutual reluctance to drive matters to extremes,' which England and America share in common. Even whilst Castlereagh was Foreign Secretaryso early as 1818-an immense progress in amity was made by the conclusion of the Rush-Bagot Agreement in favour of a practically complete naval disarmament upon the great lakes that separate Canada from the States; and this wise arrangement engendered a temper which has enabled the two countries to leave three thousand miles of frontier undefended unto this day. Thus, not disagreeing except in opinion, the two nations have managed to pass, without actually coming to blows, through the not inconsiderable differences of a century through the disputes arising out of the Slave Trade, the annexation of Texas and the Oregon Boundary, out of the arrogance of Palmerston, whose attitude towards the States stood as usual in unhappy contrast to that of Aberdeen, and finally, out of the uncertain frontier

Vol. 241.-No. 478.

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between Venezuela and British Guiana-until at last. after one abortive attempt in 1897, a general Arbitration Treaty was arranged between the two countries in 1908 The recent War and still more what we call the Peac ought to have brought to the sister peoples a deepe understanding and a fuller sympathy, and would, per haps, have done so, if it had not been for Mr George'. reversion to a type of statesmanship reminiscent, with vagaries, of the old nationalist standpoint of Cannin and Palmerston, and bound to issue, with modifications in a revival of the worn-out policy of Balance of Power

By such insufficiency in high places was lost the con fidence of America in the advent of a world of jus weights and equal measures. The League of Nation initiated by the American President, remained as a sign t be spoken against and an aspiration for which mankin was too evidently not prepared. But if the lessons of our diplomatic history have not been here misread, if its our great peace ministers we possess the true inter preters of our minds, if we have with our kinsfolk, a we have not unluckily with the French, a community o hope and purpose, if in the political detachment-th splendid isolation-that we share with them there i latent a search for and yearning after peace and goodwill, then on the foundation of an Anglo-America understanding light may yet arise in obscurity and the darkness of warring nations pass into the sunshine of brighter day. Dreams, perhaps, and nothing more tha dreams! Yet not wholly forbidden to a generation which has seen a British Sovereign and an Americar President drive in high procession along the streets o London and past the effigy of George III.

ALGERNON CECIL