ENGLAND'S GREAT LESSON IN THE WORLD WAR

Frederick James Gregg

THE greatest lessons England ever paid for, England never learned. If she had learned them she would have departed from her traditional policy of muddling along, which seems to be inseparable from the Anglo-Saxon theory of individual liberty, never more beautifully exemplified than in the case of the American Colonies which, through no particular foresight on their part, established and then made a success of the biggest republican experiment that either the ancient or the modern world had seen. To learn nothing and yet to forget nothing is the British way. It has been at times the American way. We have never been ready for a war. Don't cross a bridge until you come to it, is a United States maxim. On the other hand, the government of a bureaucratically-organized State like Germany or Italy would know, long beforehand, all about the depth of the river and how to get over—if this particular bridge did not happen to be there. The pontoons would be in storage, the train ready to carry them and the men properly instructed in how to put them in place.

If you asked the average intelligent man what was the great lesson for England in the present war, as far as it has gone, he would say, undoubtedly, impressed by recent demonstrations of the value of efficiency, that the great thing was to be ready—ready with trained men, with great stores of the very latest and most deadly sort of munitions, with the best guns and all the rest of it, even if it was necessary to change the whole life of the country in normal times with a view to being prepared for a purely abnormal situation.

On the other hand, a great expert like our Admiral Mahan, if he were alive, would undoubtedly point out that England was ready, where she was expected to be—that is to say— at sea. If it were not for the British fleet Germany would now be astride of France as she is astride of Belgium; there would be no French government in Paris, and, while Rheims Cathedral might be more than a ruin, the political and social institutions of the French Republic would be piled in a heap undergoing a process of disinfection under the skilled direction of Teutonic chemists.

THE big lesson for England is, not that she ought to have conscription, or imperialistic socialism, or thousands of flying machines, or ten torpedo-boat destroyers for every one that she has now, but that she must change her attitude—when peace comes—towards her dominions beyond the sea. Those dominions have furnished the great surprise, for her, as well as for Germany. It is through and by the colonies that Great Britain has made more gains than all of the warring nations put together, and that, too, with a minimum of loss in men and treasure. Consistency may be a jewel, but it has never been a failing of British statesmen. They came near bungling out of Canada, after the peace which followed the capture of Quebec. They bungled out of the Colonies that are now the United States of America. They bungled into India and later on into Egypt. They bungled in South Africa. They bungled the Irish question, from the time of Strongbow to that of George V. They almost bungled—under the instigation of Gladstone—into a fight with this Union in the course of the Civil War. And, in each and every case it was a result of a failure on the part of the person responsible to see beyond the end of his own nose.

The least [picturesque British Prime Minister of our day was Sir Henry CampbellBannerman. Without any of the magnetism of Gladstone, or the subtlety of Balfour, or the hard logic of Asquith, he did something by which he lifted himself, as it were, by his own boot-straps, into the company of the immortals like Lincoln and the older Pitt. Fifty thousand Dutch farmers in South Africa had put the Empire standing on its head for three years. Roberts and Kitchener cleaned things up. Then came reconstruction. The advocates of firmness were not allowed to have their way, thanks largely to Joseph Chamberlain. But it was owing to Campbell-Bannerman that, when the Union of British South Africa was formed, the country was placed in the hands of the former assailants of British authority, in the face of violent protests from Lord Milner and others like him.

QENERAL LOUIS BOTHA got his title in the field fighting against England. He is Premier because he controls a majority in the South African Parliament. At the head of some three thousand troops, and in the course of six months, he has added to his Commonwealth, through the defeat of ten thousand picked Germans thoroughly equipped, the whole of German South West Africa, a territory larger than the German Empire.

Just as, when the war against the French in North America was going on, those who were preoccupied with the war in Europe paid little attention to events happening on this side of the Atlantic, so many who have had their eyes glued on the map of Poland, or the map of Flanders or the map of the Dardanelles, don't realize the vast significance of this event. As the capture of German East Africa is only a matter of time, the outcome means the end of the Kaiser's plans for over-seas power. The exploit of Botha will be remembered when the name of the captor of Warsaw, or of the victor at the Marne will have to be looked up in an encyclopedia by the curious. To find a parallel, it is necessary to imagine one. Suppose, hard as it is, that Washington had been defeated in our Revolutionary War; that he had become, later on, head of the colonies, organized, say on the advice of Burke, as a practically free Federation, and that he had annexed the vast territory known as Louisiana by arms without waiting for it to come' our way through diplomacy and purchase. There you would have a state of affairs corresponding, more or less, to the situation created by Louis Botha.

NOW it is important to note that in taking over German South West Africa, General Botha had an eye to the interests, first of the country of which he is head and, secondly, to the interests of the British Empire. In the same way the Australians, in picking up one German island colony after another, thought of themselves first and of the Empire afterwards. This is the new colonial state of mind. It can't be overlooked even if Australians and New Zealanders have been doing more than their share at the Dardanelles, just as the Canadians have been cheerfully paying a terrible toll on the Western front.

For suppose that the Kaiser cavorted as triumphantly over the European landscape as Napoleon did, until Leipsic put a stop to his more profitable activities, what a nice job Germany would have before her, if she started out to get back what Australia and British South Africa have taken from her? Even if Great Britian were beaten to her knees on land and had to put her name to a treaty which she didn't want, but couldn't help, her Dominions would promptly tear up the scrap of paper, so far as it applied to them and invite the enemy to come on. It is almost as easy as a simple sum in arithmetic. If it took the British Empire three years to beat fifty thousand Dutch farmers, how long would it take Germany to subdue the whole of United South Africa, under Botha, with Australia, New Zealand and Canada on the side? This is the least complicated form in which the problem may be stated.

THE young German professors and the old German professors, who have got out of the dressing gowns and carpet slippers—arrayed in which they had been patching the holes in the world's design—and having put their uniforms on, are now seeing visions and dreaming dreams. We were told, on such academic authority, a short time since, that it was the purpose of the all-regulating Fatherland to let America have Canada—of course without Canada's consent—in return for our consent to the ending, elimination and scrapping of the most inconvenient Monroe Doctrine. Furthermore any desirable part of South America was to be annexed for its own good, and without the acquiescence of the A. B. C. Powers which, by the way, have declared themselves in complete accord with Washington as to the desirability of discouraging, if necessary by force of arms, any attempt by European nations to extend their influence on this continent.

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For decades, in spite of imperial conferences, jubilees, and other devices, the theory had been growing in Berlin that the British Dominions were getting so ripe that they were about ready to drop. The German plan involved anarchy in India, revolution in Ireland, revolt in Dutch South Africa and a blaze in Egypt. It was a rude shock when the Indian Princes offered to pawn their family jewels to raise men for the war, when Ireland agreed to suspend the operation of the Home Rule law, when South Africa produced a conqueror in Botha, and when the Khedive decided that for the sake of his health he had better remove to Constantinople, with the result that the Egyptian legal and economic fiction has been brought to an end as a convenient working hypothesis.

So the lesson for England just amounts to this: The thinner the thread that holds the Dominions to the centre the stronger it will become when an attack is made on democratic ideas, or institutions. England lost the American colonies because she wouldn't trust them to rule themselves; she has made a huge success of South Africa because she trusted the Dutch. Will she realize when the Great War is over—next year, or the year after—that South Africa has supplied a rule of conduct, which if applied in the past might have spared the Empire some of the most humiliating experiences in her history?

The British Dominions will have a share in the Peace Conference, whenever it comes. Later on they will have to take a part such as they never took before in running the Empire in an imperial way. They will be represented in the Imperial Council of the future, which will be democratic, largely because of their presence. Colonial influences will help to democratize the army, the aristocratic military class having been largely wiped out in the field. Finally the sort of condescension once felt for the colonies in England will disappear forever.