PEACE AND " DRIFTING BACKWARDS " .sx FROM VERSAILLES TO GENEVA .sx TRUTHS TO BE FACED .sx THE FRENCH SYSTEM AND THE GERMAN RACE .sx TWO CAMPS AGAIN ?sx DANGER AND THE REMEDY .sx ( By J. L. Garvin .sx ) The Covenant was a project of perpetual peace and the Kellogg Pact an absolute prohibition of war .sx So much for paper .sx It is time to speak about the fact .sx The whole world , America included , must awaken to one fact .sx The cause of peace is drifting backwards .sx It is disastrous to denounce the League on that score , but almost worse for supporters of the League to fumble with the truth .sx The significant event at Versailles last week was not the choice of MONSIEUR PAUL DOUMER to be President of the Republic , but the defeat of MONSIEUR BRAND'S candidature .sx That result amounts to a vote for a hard-faced policy towards Germany ; it is especially a demonstration against the economic union of Germany and Austria ; and generally it means another demand for the " strict execution " of the sword-drawn Treaties .sx It emphasises that refusal of Revision which if continued must be fatal to peace .sx All this follows French naval claims including 80,000 tons of submarines - which it is impossible for Britain and Italy to accept or for any Western maritime power to approve .sx MONSIEUR BRAND goes to Geneva a weary veteran with weakened hands , and is likely to resign immediately afterwards his portfolio for foreign affairs .sx The blow he has suffered strikes , through him at the spirit of conciliation in Europe .sx I. REALITIES IN EUROPE .sx Many recent events have thrown a glaring light on realities and profoundly disquieted every responsible mind .sx The growth of danger is as evident in the East on the Russo-Rumanian side as in the West on the Franco-German .sx Despite the League , Europe is again divided into two camps , as before the War .sx This time they are not as yet so nearly equal in arms and resources .sx Inequality of armaments postpones hostilities by evil means - steadily tending to make an ultimate conflict more certain and terrible .sx Throughout the larger part of Europe the status quo is based upon force and preserved only by compulsion .sx There has been no moral appeasement .sx There is no intellectual reconciliation .sx For there is no common standard of justice , no accepted canon of security , no practical equality .sx We repeat it .sx Twelve years after the Peace Treaties and the signing of the Covenant , full equality between nations within the League is forbidden by a dominant section .sx The great German race in the heart of Europe is still treated as a conquered race denied full freedom by victors who themselves remain armed to the teeth .sx The ascendancy of the French system , including Poland and the Little Entente , is complete .sx It exerts strong diplomatic pressure and financial persuasion .sx The majority of our nearest neighbours are vehement and clenched in their conviction that all the right is on their side against Germany and Italy alike ; and against every nation unable to say " ditto ditto " like MR. BURKE'S colleague at Bristol .sx Now this sort of domination rouses against itself the strongest forces of human nature and the human mind amongst the subordinated peoples , and it is always broken in the end .sx Our own best information leads us to believe that if the supremacy of the French system is asserted at Geneva in the next few days , and it the new agreement for economic union between Germany and Austria is condemned , the German Republic will leave the League as the only peaceable means available of compelling the world to realise that the whole fate of the future is at stake .sx II .sx THE QUESTION OF GERMANY AND AUSTRIA .sx The economic union between Germany and Austria is in itself natural and sound .sx These members or the League are entitled to equal freedom .sx They live side by side .sx They speak the same mother-tongue .sx They have literature and music in common .sx They are parts of one great race .sx They are brethren .sx They were linked through many centuries by historic bonds .sx Common misfortunes and difficulties have restored and strengthened the old ties of heart and interest .sx They have decided to throw down the economic barriers between them .sx No one has the moral right to prevent them from promoting their mutual prosperity in their own way ; or from coming together as closely as they please .sx From the first this journal condemned the policy of shattering to pieces the old Austro-Hungarian Empire instead of transforming it into a great Danubian Federation with a common economic basis .sx That would have been a very great step towards the better and safer organisation of the world .sx But the mania of disruptive nationalism prevailed .sx Austria was reduced almost to the area of a province ; its magnificent capital , Vienna , remained like a giant's head on a dwarf's body .sx Czechs , Poles , Serbs and the rest promoted their own economic development with ruthless disregard of Austria's fate .sx In these circumstances , to forbid Austria to promote her own interests in the manner that seems good to her statesmen and her people would be an act of odious and intolerable tyranny in the spirit of the Holy Alliance a hundred years ago .sx Germany will not give way an inch if she is asked to renounce the special connection with Austria that blood , speech , history and neighbourhood dictate .sx How can Germany and Austria be forced to keep up tariff-schedules against each other in the supposed political interests of other countries ?sx It cannot be done .sx Their Customs officials cannot be compelled by foreign command to impede traffic .sx They have only to refrain .sx If they wish to exchange each other's goods freely , the whole armed ascendancy of France and their clients cannot prevent it .sx Let British statesmanship at least grasp that fact while there is time .sx III .sx " THE HEART OF A CONTINENT .sx " But it is said that economic union between Germany and Austria must lead to political union - the dreaded anschluss forbidden by the Versailles Treaty .sx This is undoubtedly true .sx The old German Zollverein , as it extended , prepared the ground step by step for the creation of the federated Reich .sx That in itself was a wise and great process .sx In 1919 - during this journal's campaign against various ill-omened features of the Paris Treaties - we denounced as iniquitous in itself , and as a peculiarly inimical to the future of peace , the article prohibiting the union of Germans and Austrians .sx That article was a decree of force .sx It violated self-determination , and had had not moral sanction .sx Anschluss must come to an end .sx Austria , like Bavaria formerly , is bound to enter the German Federation , because this is the great and true ideal in every way by comparison with the present miserably circumscribed conditions .sx Austria , now a petty and embarrassed State , is inspired by famous memories of association with wide historical systems .sx But Czecho-Slovakia as well as France threatens war , if necessary , to prevent German-Austrian federation .sx The principles involved here go to the very heart of the European problem .sx Amongst other claims to equality Germans evidently have every right to as much racial union as they can voluntarily achieve .sx Frenchmen regard as sacrosanct their own right to national unity including Alsace-Lorraine .sx Italians , Poles , Czechs , Serbs , Rumanians worked above all to bring together the formerly-divided members of their race , even though to achieve this purpose they had to sweep in large minorities of other bloods and tongues .sx Now the German race has just the same right to political union and never will renounce it .sx The more the ideal is repressed by foreign ascendancy the brighter it will glow .sx There are over 70,000,000 of them in the Reich and in Austria alone .sx A more vigorous breed physically and mentally never has been known .sx It is sheer insanity to suppose that foreign force can keep them down always or for many years .sx Their number and situation are not the result of original sin .sx That they exist and swarm in General Europe - that they are what they are and where they are - is not their fault .sx It is the Act of God .sx IV .sx POLICY VERSUS THE ACT OF GOD .sx To-day , once more , as often in the past centuries , French policy desires to neutralise this Act of God by force and artifice .sx It cannot be done .sx That policy has always failed in the long run ; it has always defeated itself ; it has always promoted a wider extent of Germanic union .sx But that policy nevertheless has probably caused more bloodshed in Europe during the last three centuries than all other war-motives put together .sx French hostility to German unification under BISMARCK was the real cause of conflict in 1870 .sx France , by the aid of her former great Allies , and only by that aid , recovered Alsace-Lorraine .sx Yet France , pursuing the old fatal fixed idea of centuries , threatens war rather than that Austria shall be allowed voluntarily to join the Reich and constitute a larger German Federation .sx The ultimate failure of the renewed attempt to veto the fuller union of the German race is certain , but before it fails again the French fixed idea , supported by Poland and the Little Entente , may drench Europe with blood .sx Meanwhile , we must face the fact that French imagination is terrified by the thought of German-Austrian progress from economic union to full political anschluss .sx To reflective judgement in this country the present French formula of " Security " seems a synonym for eventual " suicide" .sx But at this phase nothing can induce our quick but formidable neighbours to read history in the same way ; to accept the same view of political sagacity ; to abandon the hopeless plan of keeping the vast German race subject to foreign domination ; to seek reconciliation by concession .sx V. IF GERMANY LEAVES THE LEAGUE .sx Upon this profound opposition between France with her clients and the German race we have dwelt at some length because it is fundamental in European policies .sx Were that controversy settled peace would be impregnable .sx On the contrary , a situation bad enough as it is threatens to become in the next few years far more bitter and inflamed .sx While this psychological antagonism remains unassuaged renewed war in Europe will be more probable than lasting peace .sx On this great subject the League itself is a house divided .sx The elaborate politesse of its public ritual has only " papered the " .sx But this time the statesmen at Geneva are compelled to face part of the truth .sx If the League's Council instead of functioning as a Court of Equity shows once more marked deference to the armed ascendancy of the French system , who could blame Germany for giving notice of withdrawal from the League ?sx And if Germany , like the United States and Russia , stood apart from Geneva , while some other countries remaining nominally members ceased to attend , what then would remain of the moral and practical authority of the League ?sx We regard MR. ARTHUR HENDERSON personally as one of the soundest of Foreign Secretaries ; but we sometimes wonder whether the Foreign Office as an institution begins to realise the tremendous massiveness of British national resolution never again to fight Germany for the sake of other Continental interests .sx VI .sx WHAT BRITAIN WILL NOT DO .sx In the absolute sense of the Kellogg Pact , the British people are for Peace itself and for all the ways and methods of Peace .sx If they can help it , they will not be dragged into another hideous and ruinous carnival of mass-murder , which , in their opinion , might have been averted had their counsels been accepted , and had their own view of wisdom and conciliation prevailed in time .sx We shall venture to say something very strong , but we are convinced that it is true , and ought to be said .sx If any Government whatever requested the British people to plunge , without overwhelming necessity , into any kind of European War , that Government would be crushed by national wrath breaking out with the force of revolution .sx Unless this is thoroughly and finally understood in Paris and Brussels , in Warsaw , Prague , Belgrade , Bucharest , they are all lamentably misled .sx While we must all pray devoutly that the immediate dispute between France with her clients on one side and Germany with Austria on the other may be tolerably adjusted , we hope that the statesmen now assembled at Geneva will face the truth about the questions in the background , and speak more frankly to each other in their private talks that ever before .sx