The Lost Fruits of Waterloo. Bassett John Spencer

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ then living were filled with the same longing for permanent peace that many men feel today.2 The feeling was especially strong during the last stages of the Napoleonic wars and immediately after they ended. Singularly enough it was strongest in Russia, due, however to the accident that an enthusiastic and idealistic tsar was ruling in that country. He had received his ideals from a French tutor who was deeply imbued with the equality theories of the revolution that swept over his own country. The tsar accepted them with sincerity and spent several years of conscientious effort in his attempts to have them adopted. More singularly still, they found their only sincere indorsement, among the rulers who had the right to indorse or reject, with the king of Prussia, who at that time was a very religious man. Most peculiar of all they found very strong opposition in England, where practical statesmen were in power. As I read the history of that day and reflect on what has been the train of events from the battle of Waterloo to the invasion of Belgium in 1914, it is hard to keep from wishing that a better effort had been made in 1815 to carry out the suggestion which the tsar urged on his royal brothers in Europe.

      The defeat of Napoleon was purchased at immense sacrifices. To the people of the day the most desirable thing in the world seemed to be a prevention of his reappearance to trouble mankind. They took the greatest care to keep his body a prisoner until he was dead; but they did not seriously try to lay his ghost. Probably they did not think, being practical men, that his spirit would walk again in the earth. They were mistaken; for not only has the ghost come back, but it has come with increased power and subtlety. In fact, it was an old ghost, and having once inhabited the bodies of Louis XIV, Augustus Cæsar, and Alexander of Macedon, as well as that of Napoleon I, it knew much more than the grave gentlemen who undertook to arrange the future of Europe in practical ways in 1815.

      As we approach again the re-making of our relations after a world war, it is worth while to glance over the things that were done in 1815, to understand what choice of events was presented to the men of that day, and what results came from the course they deliberately decided to follow. Thus we may know whether or not the course proved a happy one, and whether or not it is the course that we, also, should follow. And if it is not such a course, we ought as thinking people to try to adopt a better.

      We should always remember that the conditions of today are more suitable to a wise decision than the conditions of 1815. We have, for one thing, the advantage of the experience of the past hundred years. There is no doubt in our minds as to how the old plan has worked and how it may be expected to work if again followed. It led to the Concert of Europe and the Balance of Power, both of which served in certain emergencies, but failed in the hour of supreme need. Indeed, it is probable that they promoted the crash that at last arrived.

      Another advantage is that we have today in the world a vastly greater amount of democracy than in 1815. The people who pay the bills of Mars today can say what shall be done about keeping Mars in chains; and that is something they could not do in 1815. It is for them to know all his capers, and his clever ways of getting out of prison, and to look under his shining armor to see the grizzly hairs that cover his capacious ribs; and having done this to decide what will be their attitude toward him.

      It is not the business of an author to offer his views to his reader ready made. Enough if he offers the material facts out of which the reader may form his own opinions. That is my object in this book. I do not disguise my conviction that some of the fruits of the war that ended at Waterloo were lost through the inexperience of the men who set the world on its course again. Whether or not the men were as wise as they should have been is now a profitless inquiry. My only object is to set before the reader as clearly as I can the idea of a permanent peace through federated action, to show how that idea came up in connection with the war against Napoleon, how it was rejected for a concerted and balanced international system, what came of the decision in the century that followed, and finally in what way the failure of the old system is responsible for the present war. If the reader will follow me through these considerations, he will be prepared to examine in a judicial spirit the arguments for and against President Wilson’s suggested union of nations to end war.

      As these introductory remarks are written, we seem to be girding up our loins again with the firm conviction that we cannot talk of peace until Germany knows she is beaten. The decision is eminently wise. But if it is worth while to fight two or ten years more to crush Germany’s confidence in her military policy, how much ought it not to be worth to make the nations realize that if they really wish to destroy war they can do it by taking two steps: first, end this struggle in a spirit of amity; and second, make an effective agreement to preserve that state of amity by preventing the occurrence of the things and feelings that disturb it. That is the task as well as the opportunity of wise men, who can govern themselves; and it is for their information that this volume is written which undertakes to point out “The Lost Fruits of Waterloo” and the conditions under which we may seek to recover them. It is not a book of propaganda, unless facts are propagandists. It is not a pacifist book, although its pages may make for peace, if God wills. It is only a plain statement of the lessons of history as they appear to one of the many thousands of puzzled persons now habitants of this globe who are trying to grope their ways out of this fog of folly.

      CHAPTER II

      EARLY ADVOCATES OF UNIVERSAL PEACE

      Those who have tried to point the world to universal peace may be divided into two schools: one advocating a form of coöperation in which the final reliance is to be reason, the other looking forward to some effective form of common action behind which shall be sufficient force to carry out the measures necessary to enforce the common will. It is convenient to describe the former group as advocating a league of peace, since we are generally agreed that a league is a form of concert from which the constituent members may withdraw at will, and in which does not reside power to force them to do what they do not find reasonable. The second group wish to have a federation, if by that term we understand a united group in which exists power sufficient to preserve the common cause against any possible disobedient member. To form a league is easier than to form a federation. States are tenacious of sovereignty. The Swiss cantons, the Dutch provinces, and the original thirteen states of North America are the most striking illustrations of states that were willing to submit themselves to the more strenuous process of union. They acted under stress of great common peril, and their first steps in federation were short and timid; but none of them have regretted that the steps were taken. It was the good fortune of these groups of states that they were able to unite at the proper time and that their actions were not overclouded by the counsel of “practical statesmen” to whom ideals were things to be distrusted.

      In other states in periods of great distress from war men lived who dreamed of coöperation to promote peace, but their voices were too weak for the times. The most notable early advocate of this scheme was the Duke of Sully, if we may accept the notion that he wrote the work known as the Grand Design of Henry IV. In that plan was contemplated a Christian Republic, composed of fifteen states in Europe, only three of which were to have a republican form of government. They were to give up warring among themselves and to refer to a common council, modeled on the Ionic League, all matters of interstate relation that were of importance to the “very Christian Republic.” The only war this republic was to wage was the common war to expel the Turks from Europe. It was after Henry’s death that Sully published the plan with the assertion that his former master had formed it just after the treaty of Vervins, 1598.

      Whether it was the work of king or duke, no attempt was made to put it into force. In 1598 Europe was in the throes of a long and hopeless struggle for religion. Cities were destroyed, men and women were butchered, and the safety of states was threatened. The Grand Design represents the reaction of either Henry’s or Sully’s mind against such a terror. It was a thing to be desired, if it could have been attained. One of the marks of peace that it displayed was the attitude it took towards the branches of the Christian faith. Complete tolerance was to exist for the three forms, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. This was a kind of idealism that was then unattainable; but in the course of time it has been achieved. I should СКАЧАТЬ