The Book of the Month. 



619 



once called it, the law of the coiJon sanitaire. Morier 

 writes to Lady Derby in 1870, saying that he has 

 been much struck in studying the history of Europe 

 from 1815 to 1848 to find how very often Europe was 

 in imminent peril of war from the ambition and the 

 vanity of France : — 



If »e inquire why it was that forty years went by without 

 France kicking over the traces, we find that she was prevented 

 iluing so by a general coalition of Kurope against her — partly 

 acknowleilged, partly tacit. Austria, I'russia and Russia are 

 really coalesced against her, the recollections of the first fifteen 

 years of the century having become a sort cf iiiii fixi on their 

 side, and leading them to act instinctively as one whenever any 

 danger threatened from Paris. It is the part of England in the 

 matter which is so important and so worth studying. .She does 

 not stand with the three Norlhern Powers, as they are called, on a 

 great many points she and France go together ; as long as France 

 restricts her action to legitimate objects (as in the creation of the 

 Belgian kingdom in 1831) we go heartily with her and stand 

 together as the representatives of Western Progress versus 

 Eastern reaction, bul the moment ski shmvs the cloven foot swX 

 attempts lo .->s.sert her claim to a privileged position we at once 

 throw our weight on the side of the Northern Powers, and make 

 her feel that (to use the language of Trafalgar Square, which, 1 

 presume, will soon be the recognised political phraseology of 

 England) " we wouldn't stand any of that humbug." It is 

 most interesting to watch the kmd of clock-work regularity 

 with which the process goes on. During the Belgian negotia- 

 tions we step in some five or six times this way, so that England 

 becomes the regulator by which the expansive force of France 

 i-i utilised beneficially and productively, but always kept in 

 check whenever it threatens to become destructive. Hence I 

 venture on what I believe to be a sound generalisation. The 

 peace of Europe was maintained for nearly forty years by a 

 corJon saiiitaire being traced round France, ihree-fourths of 

 which was of iron rigidity, the remaining fourth being elastic 

 and so fashioned that she could take all the air and exercise 

 required for the good of her health. The Northern Powers 

 treated France like an incurable and dangerous maniac ; we 

 treated her like a person on the whole sane, but subject to 

 dangerous hallucinations, and reserved lo ourselves the power 

 of falling back upon the hamlcuHs and strait waistcoats kept in 

 store by the Norlhern Powers. 



This satisfactory system was first broken into by the Crimean 

 War, the only perfectly useless modern war that has been 

 «aged. — Vol. 2, p. 214. 



THE TRUE THEORY OF FOREIGN fOLICY. 



If England had but whispered to the French 

 Emperor that she would ally herself with Germany 

 if France ventured to make war, Sir R. Morier 

 maintained it was a political a.xiom no war would 

 have broken out : — 



Intcrnaiional politics ought to be a game of chess, and not 

 one of broken pales and bloo<ly crowns. A king with two 

 castles cannot if op|>f<se<l by a king with two castles throw up 

 the game ; but let the pawn of one adversary make a queen, the 

 other can in all honour withdraw. By England's voluntary 

 withdrawal from the chessboard she deprived the party of inter- 

 national order of their best jiiece. For a neutral to exercise 

 any influence, his neulr.ilily nlu^t l>e of a kind which shall always 

 allow of the possible perspective of his becoming a belligerent. 

 He must be a piece on the chessloord, not off the chesst>oard. — 

 Vol. 2, p. 330. 



PRUSSUNISI-.n GEk.MANV. 



England, having flung away her chance of pre- 

 serving f)eace, had to face the conscriuenccs in the 

 shape of a Prussianised Hismarck-riddcn Germany. 

 Morier was quick to detect the chatige and all it 



meant. Discussing with Stockmar in December, 

 1876, reported German schemes for remodelling the 

 map of Europe, he burst out as follows : — 



... If these changes are to be octroycs upon Europe by the 

 mere will of .M. de Bismarck and in utter contempt of all law, 

 ju--tice, and international honesty, then I, for one, would wish 

 to see England spend her last man and her last cartridge in 

 opposing so damnable a restoration of the worst periods of 

 modern history. 



... I believe that the lust of gloire, kindled as it is \\ ithin 

 her (Germany), will burn with a much more terrible fierceness 

 than it ever did in the gramle nation, even as coal burns more 

 terribly, when once it is kindled, than straw. — Vol. 2, p. 239. 



Stockmar having expostulated, pointing out that the 

 Germans were much too sober to indulge in dreams of 

 gloiff. Sir Robert e.vplained and amplified his meaning. 

 Not lust oi gioire, he said, was likely to be developed 

 in Germans by the possession of absolute power in 

 Europe, but " arrogance and overbearingness are 

 more likely to be developed in a Teutonic race — not 

 boasting or vaingloriousness." 



THE THRE.^TENED W.AR OF 1875. 



He lived to see his fears realised when, in 1874, 

 the Bismarck-Moltke school evolved 

 the doctrine that prospective and hypothetical and abstract 

 danger, as distinct from any immediate, palpable, re^l, and 

 concrete danger, is a sufficient reason for the stronger neiglibour 

 attacking the weaker, and for establishing a casus Mii.—\o\. 2, 

 P- 348. 



This doctrine was on the point of being put into 

 practical application in 1875, when Sir Robert Morier, 

 with the help of Russia, checkmated Bismarck in his 

 scheme for attacking France. Bismarck tried to 

 cover up his tracks, pretending that the war scare 

 was only a Bourse manoeuvre : — 



"But," so Lord Odo warned Morier, "behind our backs 

 Bismarck raves like a maniac, and swears he will take his 

 revenge." • 



. . . No sooner .h.id, thirteen years later, the grave closed 

 over the Emperor Frederick than the bitter attacks upon 

 Morier, then Ambassador at St. Petersburg, who was accused 

 in a virulent Press campaign of having furnished Marshal 

 Bazaine with information as to the movements of the German 

 armies in 1S70, and tlie imprisonment and trial of Geffcken, on 

 the charge of high treason, for publishing the Emperor 

 Frederick's diary— a charge he was acquitted of by the Leipzig 

 Tribunal— proved how well aware the Iron Chancellor had 

 been all the while of the identity of those by whom his plans 

 had been foiled, and that he had neither forgiven not forgotten. 

 —Vol. 2, p. 355. 



THE GENESIS OF GERMANOPHOBIA. 



The whole of the trouble of Europe, ever since 

 1870, according to Morier, is — 



directly traceable to Germany's having learnt and exaggerated 

 the besetting vice of the people she h.id conquered. For there 

 is no denying that the malady under which Europe is at present 

 sutVering is caused by German Chauvinism, a new and, far more 

 formidable type of the disease .than the French, because 

 instead of being spasmodical and undisciplined, it is metho- 

 dical, calculating, cold-blooded and self-contained. — Vol. 2, 

 P- 346- 



Enough of this valuable contribution to the genesis 

 of the Germanophobia which makes Sir E. Grey as 

 wax in the hands of the Berties, the Cartwrights, the 

 smaller fry of under and private secretaries. 



