Britain at Bay

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Spenser Wilkinson. Britain at Bay

I. THE NATION AND THE PARTIES

II. DEFEAT

III. FORCE AND RIGHT

IV. ARBITRATION AND DISARMAMENT

V. THE NATIONALISATION OF WAR

VI. THE BALANCE OF POWER

VII. THE RISE OF GERMANY

VIII. NATIONHOOD NEGLECTED

IX. NEW CONDITIONS

X. DYNAMICS—THE QUESTION OF MIGHT

XI. POLICY—THE QUESTION OF RIGHT

XII. THE NATION

XIII. THE EFFECT OF THE NATIONALISATION OF WAR UPON LEADERSHIP

XIV. THE NEEDS OF THE NAVY

XV. ENGLAND'S MILITARY PROBLEM

XVI. TWO SYSTEMS CONTRASTED

XVII. A NATIONAL ARMY

XVIII. THE COST

XIX. ONE ARMY NOT TWO

XX. THE TRANSITION

XXI. THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH ARMIES ARE RAISED

XXII. THE CHAIN OF DUTY

Отрывок из книги

Great Britain is drifting unintentionally and half unconsciously into a war with the German Empire, a State which has a population of sixty millions and is better organised for war than any State has ever been in modern times. For such a conflict, which may come about to-morrow, and unless a great change takes place must come about in the near future, Great Britain is not prepared.

The food of our people and the raw material of their industries come to this country by sea, and the articles here produced go by sea to their purchasers abroad. Every transaction carries with it a certain profit which makes it possible. If the exporter and the manufacturer who supplies him can make no profit they cannot continue their operations, and the men who work for them must lose their employment.

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These are some of the material consequences of defeat. But what of its spiritual consequences? We have brought up our children in the pride of a great nation, and taught them of an Empire on which the sun never sets. What shall we say to them in the hour of defeat and after the treaty of peace imposed by the victor? They will say: "Find us work and we will earn our bread and in due time win back the greatness that has been lost." But how are they to earn their bread? In this country half the employers will have been ruined by the war. The other half will have lost heavily, and much of the wealth even of the very rich will have gone to keep alive the innumerable multitude of starving unemployed. These will be advised after the war to emigrate. To what country? Englishmen, after defeat, will everywhere be at a discount. Words will not describe, and the imagination cannot realise, the suffering of a defeated nation living on an island which for fifty years has not produced food enough for its population.

The material and spiritual results of defeat can easily be recognised by any one who takes the trouble to think about the question, though only experience either at first hand or supplied by history can enable a man fully to grasp its terrible nature. But a word must be said on the social and political consequences inseparable from the wreck of a State whose Government has been unable to fulfil its prime function, that of providing security for the national life. All experience shows that in such cases men do not take their troubles calmly. They are filled with passion. Their feelings find vent in the actions to which their previous currents of thought tended. The working class, long accustomed by its leaders to regard the capitalists as a class with interests and aims opposed to its own, will hardly be able in the stress of unemployment and of famine to change its way of thinking. The mass of the workmen, following leaders whose judgment may not perhaps be of the soundest but who will undoubtedly sincerely believe that the doctrines with which they have grown up are true, may assail the existing social order and lay the blame of their misfortunes upon the class which has hitherto had the government of the country in its hands and has supplied the leaders of both political parties. The indignation which would inspire this movement would not be altogether without justification, for it cannot be denied that both political parties have for many years regarded preparation for war and all that belongs to it as a minor matter, subordinate to the really far less important questions relying upon which each side has sought to win sufficient votes to secure a party majority.

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