presentative German chamber,
instead of being taken in concealment and amid disgusting chicane, no
war would have occurred. It is absolutely certain that the triumph of
democracy, and nothing else, will end war as an institution. War will be
ended when the Foreign Offices are subjected to popular control. That
popular control is coming."--_Arnold Bennett in the "Daily News," October
15, 1914._
* * * * *
THE FUTURE SETTLEMENT.
Let us turn, then, from the past to the future and ask, first, what the
governmental mind, left to itself, is likely to make of Europe when the
war is finished; secondly, what we, on our part, want and mean to make
of it. What the diplomatists will make of it is written large on every
page of history. Again and again they have "settled" Europe, and always
in such a way as to leave roots for the growth of new wars. For always
they have settled it from the point of view of States, instead of from
the point of view of human life. How one "Power" may be aggrandized and
another curtailed, how the spoils may be divided among the victors, how
the "balance" may be arranged--these kinds of considerations and these
alone have influenced their minds. The desires of peoples, the
interests of peoples, that sense of nationality which is as real a thing
as the State is fictitious--to all that they have been indifferent....
What can be foreseen with certainty is, that if the peace is to be made
by the same men who made the war it will be so made that in another
quarter of a century there will be another war on as gigantic a
scale....
When this war is over Europe might be settled, then and there, if the
peoples so willed it and made their will effective, in such a way that
there would never again be a European War....
First, the whole idea of aggrandizing one nation and humiliating another
must be set aside.... Secondly, in rearranging the boundaries of States,
one point, and one only, must be kept in mind: to give to all peoples
suffering and protesting under alien rule the right to decide whether
they will become an autonomous unit, or will join the political system
of some other nation.... Let no community be coerced under British rule
that wants to be self-governing. We have had the courage, though late,
to apply this principle to South Africa and Ireland. There remains our
greatest act of courage and wisdom--to apply it to India.--_G. Lowes
Dickinson, "The War and
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