Page:The History of The Great European War Vol 1.pdf/72

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materially and may suffer to such an extent that it may mean absolute ruin to one or both. In fact, the argument has gone further and claimed that economic conditions in themselves actually render war now impossible. And generally the Peace Movement of modern times is, at its best, made up of a conglomeration of doctrine founded on each of the phases of thought in the progress of the Pacifist Movement, two certainties, however, being supposed to have been discovered: the economic certainty of general loss or impossibility, just referred to, and a similar humanitarian impossibility, founded upon the great certainty of wide destruction in modern warfare.

Elsewhere we have tried to show how Germany regarded the Peace Movement as an apotheosis of the status quo, and refused her adherence to it on the ground that such a movement was not a movement in the real sense at all, but rather a prevention of progress—a retrogression in fact. But when she regarded the question with Britain in her eye in particular, the scorn of the Pan-Germanist was beyond description. Germany saw, as the State most prominent and persistent in the Peace Movement, that State which of all others had arrived at a position which, on her own admission, was sufficient to her for all time. "We seek no territory" is an expression which had been in the mouths of British statesmen for nearly half a generation. Britain did not attempt to deny that she had had for a long time since, and for much time in the future she would have, as much as she could well manage to do in populating, developing, and binding together in the Imperial family the territories, dominions, and powers which went to make up the great British Empire. It was quite in the order of things, therefore, that Britain should support any international movement the object, or result, of which would be to leave Britain as she then was, Mistress of the Seas and the greatest land Power in the world.

Germany, however, having read history, remarked upon the manner in which Britain herself had acquired in the past these her territories—though in this connection there is no doubt that Teutonic virulence against Britain blinded Germany to the real historical truth. She stigmatised England as a "Great Robber State." She pointed to India, which, she alleged, had become a British possession entirely as a result of blood shed in aggressive wars of conquest initiated by England. But where such warlike measures were not necessary, or could be avoided, Britain had never hesitated to adopt the most cunning methods in order to obtain her ends. This was stated as proved in particular by the occupation of Egypt by Britain, which was