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BY THE HON. JOSEPH H. CHOATE, FORMER AMERICAN

AMBASSADOR TO GREAT BRITAIN[1]

For five months now all people who read at all have been reading about the horrible war that is devastating Europe and shedding the best blood of the people of five great nations. In fact, they have had no time to read anything else, and everything that is published about it is seized upon with great avidity. No wonder, then, that Mr. James M. Beck’s book, The Evidence in the Case, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, which has grown out of the article by him contributed to the New York Times Sunday Magazine, has been warmly welcomed both here and in England as a valuable addition to the literature of the day.

An able and clear-headed lawyer and advocate, he presents the matter in the unique form of a legal argument, based upon an analysis of the diplomatic records submitted by England, Germany, Russia, France, and Belgium, as “A Case in the Supreme Court of Civilization,” and the conclusions to be deduced as to the moral responsibility for the war.

The whole argument is founded upon the idea that there is such a thing as a public conscience of the world, which must and will necessarily pass final judgment upon the conduct of the parties concerned in this infernal struggle. Many times in the course of the book he refers emphatically to that “decent respect to the opinions of mankind” to which Jefferson appealed in our Declaration of Independence as the final arbiter upon our conduct in throwing off the British yoke and declaring our right to be an independent nation. That this “public opinion of the world” is the final tribunal upon all great international contests is illustrated by the fact that all mankind, including Great Britain herself, has long ago adjudged that our great Declaration was not only just, but necessary for the progress of mankind.

It is evident from his brief preface that Mr. Beck is a sincere admirer of historic Germany, and on the eve of the war he was at Weimar, after a brief visit to a little village near Erfurt, where one of his ancestors was born, who had migrated at an early date to Pennsylvania, a Commonwealth whose founder had made a treaty with the Indians which, so far from being treated as a “mere scrap of paper,” was never broken. Like many Americans, Mr. Beck is of mixed ancestry, being in part English and in part Swiss-German. He has therefore viewed the great question objectively, and without any racial prejudice.

A careful study of the diplomatic correspondence that preceded the outbreak of the war had convinced Mr. Beck that Germany was chiefly responsible for it, and he proceeds con amore to demonstrate the truth of this conviction by the most earnest and forceful presentation of the case.

Forensic lawyers in the cases they present are about half the time on the wrong side, or what proves by the final judgment to have been the wrong side, but it is always easy to tell from the manner of presentation whether they themselves are thoroughly convinced of the justice of the side which they advocate. It is evident that Mr. Beck did not undertake to convince “the Supreme Court of Civilization” until he was himself thoroughly persuaded of the justice of his cause, that the invasion of Belgium by Germany was not only a gross breach of existing treaties, but was in violation of settled international law, and a crime against humanity never to be forgotten, a crime which converted that peaceful and prosperous country into a human slaughterhouse, reeking with the blood of four great nations. How any intelligent lawyer could have come to any other conclusion it is not easy to imagine, since Germany confessed its crime while in the very act of committing it, for on the very day that the German troops crossed the Belgian frontier and hostilities began, the Imperial Chancellor at the great session of the Reichstag on August 4th declared, to use his own words:

Necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg, and have possibly already entered on Belgian soil. That is a breach of international law.... We were forced to ignore the rightful protests of the Governments of Luxemburg and Belgium, and the injustice—I speak openly—the injustice we thereby commit, we will try to make good as soon as our military aims have been attained. Anybody who is threatened as we are threatened and is fighting for his highest possessions can have only one thought—how he is to hack his way through.

Thank God, their military aims have not yet been attained, and from present appearances are not likely to be, but, as Mr. Beck believes, Germany will still be held by the judgment of mankind to make good the damage done.

In reviewing the diplomatic correspondence published by Germany that preceded the outbreak of the war, Mr. Beck lays great stress, and we think justly, upon the obvious suppression of evidence by Germany, in omitting substantially all the important correspondence on vital points that passed between Germany and Austria, and the suppression of important evidence in judicial proceedings always carries irresistible weight against the party guilty of it. While England and France and Russia were pressing Germany to influence and control Austria in the interests of peace, not a word is disclosed of what, if anything, the German Foreign Office said to Austria toward that end. To quote Mr. Beck’s own words:

Among the twenty-seven communications appended to the German White Paper, it is most significant that not a single communication is given of the many which passed from the Foreign Office of Berlin to that of Vienna, and only two which passed from the German Ambassador in Vienna to the German Chancellor, and the purpose of this suppression is even more clearly indicated by the complete failure of Austria to submit any of its diplomatic records to the scrutiny of a candid world.

Notwithstanding the disavowal given by the German Ambassador at Petrograd to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, that the German Government had no knowledge of the text of the Austrian note before it was handed in, and did not exercise any influence on its contents, Mr. Beck establishes clearly by the admissions of the German Foreign Office itself that it was consulted by Austria previous to the ultimatum, and that it not only approved of its course, but literally gave to Austria carte blanche to proceed. And the German Ambassador to the United States formally admitted in an article in The Independent of September 7, 1914, that “Germany had approved in advance the Austrian ultimatum to Servia.”

This brutal ultimatum by a great nation of fifty millions of people, making impossible demands against a little one of four millions which had itself just emerged from two conflicts and was still suffering from exhaustion—an ultimatum which set all the nations of Europe in agitation—is proved to have been jointly concocted by the two members of the Triple Alliance, Germany and Austria. But the third member of that Alliance, Italy, found it to be an act of aggression on their part which brought on the war, and that the terms of the Triple Alliance, therefore, did not bind her to take any part.

The peace parleys which passed between the several nations involved are carefully reviewed by Mr. Beck, who concludes, as we think justly, that up to the 28th of July, when the German Imperial Chancellor sent for the English Ambassador and announced the refusal of his Government to accept the conference of the Powers proposed by Sir Edward Grey, every proposal to preserve peace had come from the Triple Entente, and that every such proposal had met with an uncompromising negative from Austria, and either that or obstructive quibbles from Germany.

At this point, the sudden return of the Kaiser to Berlin from his annual holiday in Norway, which his own Foreign Office regretted as a step taken on his Majesty’s own initiative and which they feared might cause speculation and excitement, and his personal intervention from that time until his troops invaded Luxemburg and he made his abrupt demand upon the Belgian Government for permission to cross its territory are reviewed with great force and effect by Mr. Beck, with the conclusion on his part that the Kaiser, who by a timely word to Austria might have prevented all the terrible trouble that followed, was the supremely guilty party, and that such will be the verdict of history.

Mr. Beck’s review of the case of Belgium is extremely interesting, and his conclusion that England, France, Russia, and Belgium can await with confidence the world’s final verdict that their quarrel was just, rests safely upon the plea of “Guilty” by Germany, a conclusion which seems to have been already plainly declared by most of the civilized nations of the world.

We think that Mr. Beck’s opinion that England and France were taken unawares and were wholly unprepared for war is a little too strongly expressed. France, certainly, had been making ready for war with Germany ever since the great conflict of 1870 had resulted in her loss of Alsace and Lorraine, and had had a fixed and unalterable determination to get them back when she could, although it is evident that she did not expect her opportunity to come just when and as it did. That Great Britain had no present expectation of immediate war with Germany is clearly obvious. That she had long been apprehending the danger of it in the indefinite future is very clear, but that Sir Edward Grey and the Government and the people that he represented did all that they possibly could to prevent the war seems to be clearly established.

Mr. Beck’s book is so extremely interesting from beginning to end that it is difficult when once begun to lay it down and break off the reading, and we shall not be surprised to hear, not only that it has had an immense sale in England and America, but that its translation into the languages of the other nations of Europe has been demanded.

Joseph H. Choate.

New York, January 10, 1915.