19143 Safeguards against War 



but maintained that in Great Britain it was different 

 because at any time Parliament may refuse to sup- 

 port the Cabinet and thus force its immediate resig- 

 nation. Consequently, even though a Foreign Min- 

 ister should declare for war, as Sir Edward Grey had 

 lately done, the nation, represented by Parliament, 

 really had the veto power. 



Such provision, I contended, gives scant protec- WarUs 

 tion in a critical time. For wholly apart from the "/''* 

 merits of the case in point, no legislative body will 

 unseat a ministry after a strong and moving address 

 like that of Grey's, whether convincing or not, though 

 at the time, of course, British sentiment was undoubt- 

 edly with the minister. Jones then agreed that the 

 British system was, after all, wholly inadequate as a 

 safeguard, and said that the American method of 

 giving Congress sole power to declare war must cer- 

 tainly be better. I doubted, however, whether Con- 

 gress would ever prove a trustworthy barrier against 

 an emotional appeal by a President. The two argu- 

 ments, not without validity, "We must present an 

 unbroken front" and "What else can we do?" are 

 always potent at an hour of crisis. 



England had meanwhile come to realize that the 

 "immoralists meant what they said." A cheap edi- 

 tion of " Germany's Next War" by Bernhardi was now 

 displayed in every bookstore, and the writings of that 

 heavy-witted but consistent imperialist ^ were read in 

 England as they had never been at home. 



Yet Bernhardi was after all not the whole story, sieper 

 In October (1914) Dr. Sieper ^ said to a group of 

 Americans in Berlin: 



• See Chapter XL, pages 414-418. 



2 See Chapter xuv, page 514. In 1916 Sieper, though a strong man in 



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