THE LAST YEARS OF :PEACE ,
ALTHOUGH a volume containing a general index, chronological tables, and a few documents remains to be published, the appearance of the second part of the tenth volume of British Documents brings the series to a conclusion ; the volume dealing with the immediate outbreak of the War has already been issued. It is superfluous to praise the scholarship of the editors and their collaborators (notably Dr. Lilian Penson) in this long and difficult undertaking, though a reviewer who has had occasion to go over a small section of the ground covered by the British Documents may be allowed to give his independent testimony to the skill, impartiality, and com- pleteness of the editorial work. For obvious reasons, it is, in normal circumstances, undesirable that official papers con- taining the minutes of civil servants should be published during the lifetime of those whose opinions are thus made public. The circumstances of the publication of the British Documents are exceptional, and, in any case, the result is to show how well the country has been served. by the officials of the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic' Service. At the same time, readers of the documents should remember that the comments and opinions of the Foreign Secretary and of his staff must be studied in the light of the facts avail- able to the writers at the time when these comments were written.
It is also necessary to remember that as a rule diplomatic documents deal with the collection or distribution of informa- tion and the execution of policy. They do not always contain an explanation of the reasons why a particular policy was , adopted ; a student who wishes to grasp the main factors of British policy should take these documents as the basis of his enquiry, and then enlarge his field of work by a survey of public opinion, parliamentary debates, considerations of trade and commerce ; he must also take into account the material published in other countries. The editors of the ,
British Documents have avoided the claim implied in the title of the great German collection of documents, Die gross, Pollak der Europiiischen Kabinette ; they do not pretend that the policy of the Great Powers can be recounted merely from the documents of the British Foreign Office. This matter is of practical importance. Future historians of British opinion since '919 will be able to show that many people with pretensions to speak with authority have obtained their views ' of pre-War policy from a literal acceptance of the claim that German documents can explain the aims and motives of British statesmen. Much harm has been done to the good name of Great Britain by this naïf misapprehension. A study of the British Documents would go a long way to correct the error, but it is too much to hope that these volumes will be read by many of those who address the public about the origins of the War of 1914. For this reason a most useful purpose would be served by the publication of a summary of the most important material on the lines of Schwertfeger's excellent handbook to the German documents.
Meanwhile, for those who have time to collate this last volume of British documents with other authorities, the new material- is of the greatest interest. The book falls into three main sections : the negotiations dealing with the Baghdad railway from 1910 until the conclusion of the Anglo-German agreement in 1914; the discussions about the future of the Portuguese colonies ; the exchange of views about an Anglo- Italian agreement ; the effect of the growth of the German Navy, particularly in connexion with Anglo-German relations and to the disposition of the British and French fleets, and the relations between Great Britain and Russia. For the student the material about the Baghdad 'railway is of the greatest interest ; these long negotiations, ending in a reasonable settlement, show that the term "international anarchy," though true in some measure, is very far from the whole truth about the relations between sovereign States before 1914. Those who look for novelties will turn to the little-known correspondence about an Anglo-Italian pact, while the relations between England and Germany, and the changes in the dis- positions of the fleets of Great Britain and France, show the importance of considering secondary as well as primary effects of any particular line of policy. Admiral Tirpitz wanted a strong German navy because he thought that this navy would make England more ready to give way to German demands ; the left wing of the British Liberal Party agitated for a reduction of the shipbuilding programme because they believed that a reduction of this kind would contribute to the peace of the world. In fact, the left-wing opposition to the increase in the British naval estimates encouraged the German belief that England would give up the " race " in naval armaments, while Tirpitz's policy resulted in the concentration of the British Navy in home waters, and thereby increased the value of Anglo-French co-operation in the Mediterranean.
The new volume of documents illustrates another point of general importance. Grey remarked, in his Twenty-Five Years, that "it was impossible for British and German minds to have real contact. We were thinking of an agreement to restrain the increasing burden of naval competition ; Germany was thinking of some agreement to ensure that Great Britain should be neutral, if or when a European war came about." These documents show the distance between England and Germany in the last years of peace. On the English view, a détente with Germany seemed possible, if the two Powers could come to an agreement on a few outstanding questions, and, above all, on the question of naval competition. On the German view, a European war appeared inevitable owing to the internal condition of Austria-Hungary. For all the efforts of Grey and Bethmann-Hollweg—both of them honest men who hated the prospect of war—England and Germany were negotiating at cross-purposes. The reasons for this confusion are of the greatest interest. No one, as yet, has attempted a full analysis of the muddle ; but the British Documents take one a long way towards understanding the matter, and a student of modem history cannot avoid thinking, a little sadly, that much would be gained today if the leading statesmen of Europe—and not least of England— could find the time to read through the material put before them by the work of the editors of the British Documents.
E. L. WOODWARD.
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