6o 



The Review of Reviews. 



"THE GREAT ILLUSION" IJV TO 

 DATE. 



Mr. Norman Angell contributes to the Nnrth 

 very cogent reply to Admiral 



American Review a 

 Mahan's criticism. 



HOW GERMANY DEPENDS ON FRANCE. 



Since his book was written the Morocco crisis has 

 occurred, and Mr. Angeli thus alludes to it :— 

 ^ After the war German policy was directed at crippling 

 France, not merely as a political, but as an economic factor in 

 international struggle. But the law of progression in these 

 matters is illustrated by this fact : Bismarck was nearer to being 

 able to apply the methods of Attila, nearly 1,500 years removed 

 from him, than was Bismarck's successor, Ilerr von Kiderlen 

 Waechter, to being able to apply the methods of Bismarck 

 from whom only forty years separated him. Where Bismarck 

 could have bled France white with a certain satisfaction 

 without any immediate (danger being involved to his own 

 country, Herr von Kiderlen Waechter learned that to bleed 

 white this relatively feeble France of igi't woidd be to plunge 

 this great and powerful Germany into dire economic distress. 

 What American cotton had been to Lancashire in 1865, 

 French money, and all that it directly and indirectly repre- 

 sents, was to German industry in 191 1. He learned that of the 

 twenty million souls added to the German population since 

 1870 nearly all of them were dependent upon foreign food, and 

 gained their livelihood from industries dependent to a large 

 extent upon foreign capital, most of it French and P^nglish 

 capital ; and that if by some magic the ultimate Bismarckian 

 dream of wiping France economically from the map of Europe 

 could be realised, he would have been prevented and, indeed, 

 was prevented from so doing, not by any consideration for 

 French welfare, but by the very pressing necessities of German 

 industry and by the direct influence of German financiers and 

 German business men. Not only has the work of the German 

 people unintentionally brought to nou;;ht the carefully laid 



plans of the statesman, hut modern Germany would have been 

 impossible unless those plans had miscarried. It was Bis- 

 marck's declared policy from first to last to check, by every 

 possible means, the economic development of France. She 

 was to be blotted out as an economic factor in Kurope. Well, 

 if she had been, the wonderful development of German com- 

 merce in the last twenty years would have been impossible. 

 HOW FRENCH CAPITAL VIA RUSSIA AIDED GEKM.\NY. 



Mr. Angeli shows that the efforts of French statesmen 

 were equally futile : — 



French policy was aimed at fortifying Russia to counter- 

 balance Germany, and with that purpose an alliance with 

 Russia was formed, an integral part of tlie understanding being 

 that a portion of the immense free capital of France should be 

 available for Russia. The capital was given, with the result 

 that German trade in Russia, thanks to development due in no 

 small measure to this French capital, has gone up from about 

 fifteen to forty-five per cent., and Germany may be said to-day 

 commercially to dominate Russia. It is one of the great out- 

 lets for German industrial and commercial activity — thanks to 

 the very policy which was aimed against Germany. 



HOW EUROPE .SUFFERED UNDER NAPOLEON. 



Mr. Angeli does not deny that where the great 

 illusion is allowed to dominate men's minds it leads 

 to an exhibition of force that must be met by a counter- 

 vailing force. His plea is that the great illusion should 

 be dissipated as quickly as possible, to avoid the 

 mutually ruinous exercise of force. He says of the 

 Napoleonic wars : — 



If the general tradition of Europe had been against the 

 employment of force, and such tradition had d.iminated its 

 policy, not only would the security of England and her freedom 

 in industrial and connnercial development have been greater 

 even than it w.is, and the like security of her neighbours greater, 

 but the whole European race, instead of being \yeakened by the 

 destruction of some three million of its best selected lives, leaving 

 the stock to be perpetuated by its worst elements, would have 

 been infinitely better than it is, with a greater capacity for 

 improvement ; and the incalculable amount of life and wealth 

 and energy that h.as gone into mutual destruction would have 

 ;;one into making good that improvement. The world would 

 have been a better pkacc, inh.abiled by a racially better people. 



Mr. Angeli, therefore, argues : — 



Vou cannot get communal sense enough even in the pirate 

 crew unless they surrender the use of force as between them- 

 selves, act by agreement, and co-operate against their victim, 

 their prey. 'I'he prey of civilisation is Nature, the Planet, and 

 unless the units which make up, or ought to make up, the com- 

 nninily of Europe give uj) preying the one ujicin the other, and 

 co-operate in the attack upon their prey, that alt.ack will by so 

 much sulVer. 



Wyt.l (Ucrlin. 



The Three Strong Men : " Now, this is a covering, and 

 Michael can sleep well." 



THE CRUEL RETORT. 



Sir Henry Lucy, continuing his " Sixty Years in 

 tlie Wilderness " in the Conihill for May, giv-es the 

 following extract from his diarv for December 15th, 

 1889:— 



December 15.— London Society, which does not love Mrs. 

 Gladstone— prob.ibly having no sympathy with her sterling 

 iiualities— is hugely delighted with a current story. At a 

 dinner-party where Lord Hramwell was present someone gave 

 an enthusiastic account of how Mrs. (Uadstonc, deeply moved 

 by one of her husband's oratorical successes, hail, upon con- 

 venient opportunity, thrown her arms round his neck and kissed 

 him twice. 



"Served him right," growled Bramwell from the other end of 

 the table. 



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