March 29. 1917 LAND & WATER 
Welding Two Democracies 
By Henry D. Davray 
13 
IF wc consider the nations that are in conflict to-day, 
it will be at once apparent that there is a striking 
difference between them. From the very first, 
even before the breaking out of hostilities, it was 
plain that on the one side there was a firm determination 
to maintain peace by every means and every sacrifice 
consistent with honour ; while on the other was a highly- 
organised and overwhelmingly conceited nation, per- 
petually boasting of its strength, proclaiming its obvious 
need of ejfpansion, and asserting its right — based on its 
might— to take from its neighbours everything it 
deemed indispensable to its development and prosperity. 
Here we have two moral conceptions that are totally 
opposed to one another. On the one side we see the 
admission that there is a place in the sun for everyone ; 
on the other, a self-styled race bragging of its superiority 
on all occasions and to all comers, and declaring, with the 
vulgarity common to all parvenus, that the time has 
come for it to conquer and take possession of the whole 
earth. An entire nation nourishes this mystical mad- 
ness by solemnly repeating : " Deutschland iiber Alles." 
^ After two-and-a-half years of war, there has been 
talk of peace, and the President of the United States has 
asked the two groups of nations at war to state their 
desires. For reasons which it is not for us to discuss 
he said in one of his Notes that the belligerents were 
pursuing, on both sides equally, the same ends ; namely, 
respect for justice, the defence of the right, and the 
liberty of nations. Now, he knows on which side these 
claims are sincere. 
The Central Empires 
The Central Empires, which must undoubtedly be 
held directly responsible for the cataclysm that is turning 
Europe into a desolate and ruined shambles, are, from 
the nature of their political constitutions, anachronistic 
remnants of the feudal system and of , monarchy by 
divine right. In these Empires there are representati\ e 
assemblies, elected by certain classes of society, but 
these deliberative, and indeed legislative, assemblies 
exercise only an apparent control over the Government 
of the country. The Ministers are officials chosen by the 
monarch, and are responsible to him alone. The most 
serious decisions, which may lead to events of the utmost 
danger, are entirely dependent on the will of the sovereign. 
^Confronting these Empires, whose peoples have no 
power over their own fate, we see the nations of Western 
Europe, which for several centuries past have under- 
stood the danger of leaving absolute power in the hands 
of a single individual. It is in the history of England 
that we find the first example of a people struggling 
against the abuses of feudal and royal power. With 
a determination that nothing could overcome, the Com- 
mons maintained their right of controlling the decisions 
of the Government, and, a hundred and forty years 
before the French, the English beheaded a King who 
supported his own privileges by means inimical to the 
independence of the nation. The example set by Eng- 
land had a profound influence upon France, and all 
through the eighteenth century, under the disastrous 
reign of Louis XV., English ideas ripened and were 
spread abroad by Montesquieu, Voltaire, and the 
Encyclopaedists. At last came the outbreak of the 
Revolution, which put an end to those royal privileges 
still retained by the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs, 
and to all those privileges of the nobles and clergy that 
are used by petty Prussian squires and ecclesiastical 
dignitaries for the maintenance of dynastic authority. 
The British are proud of saying they are a free people 
in a free country, and there is nothing they hold so dear 
as this liberty. The French are no less attached to the 
republican institutions they have freely won for them- 
selves, "^nd, whether the nation be represented by a 
President of the Republic or by a constitutional King, 
it is certain that France and England are the two great 
organised European democracies. 
How was it brought about, then, that these two 
democracies embarked upon so terrible an adventure as 
the present war ? Their governments had no prevision 
of war. Their ideals were pacific. They had no am- 
bitions for conquest. Indeed, they were so entirely 
absorbed by questions of internal prosperity and social 
welfare that they were blind to the danger that threatened 
them, or at least they had too high a regard for the rights 
of others to believe in the ainbitions that their turbulent 
neighbour designed to fulfil by a crime against civilisa- 
tion and humanity. 
France and England 
The French Democracy had no choice : it was suddenly 
attacked. The soil of France was invaded, and in a 
moment the entire nation, without distinction of party, 
creed, or social position, rose to defend its independence. 
But England was not invaded. No open attack was 
made upon her. Far from it ; the aggressors counted on 
her neutrality. They made sure that, should things go 
wrong. Great Britain would be paralysed by the diffi- 
culties that their own intrigues had fomented in various 
parts of her Empire, in scattered and remote regions. 
But at the first growl from the British Lion all the young 
lion-cubs came hurrying to the rescue. Armies of volun- 
teers were enrolled in Canada and Australia, in South 
Africa and New Zealand : India furnished troops, some 
of whom have lately done glorious work in helping to 
capture Bagdad, while the native chiefs gave generously 
of their treasure. 
Herein lies the whole difference : the Central Empires 
engaged in a war of conquest and rapine in order to 
realize an insensate dream of supremacy, to subdue their 
neighbours and seize their colonial possessions : the 
Western Democracies are fighting to resist these 
ambitions. They are fighting to preserve their 
independence and to keep their possessions. French and 
English aUke have proved that Uberty is dearer to them 
than life. 
Britain — to her undying honour — stood shoulder to 
shoulder with France when Germany trampled treaties 
under foot, turned her back upon justice, and attacked 
the liberty of the heroic Belgian nation. If the Dominions 
were willing to take part in this struggle it was because 
they understood, much earlier even than the mother- 
country, that the German dream of conquest was a direct 
attack on the ancient liberty of Britain, and indeed on 
the very existence of the Empire. It was because every- 
where, in Canada as in the Commonwealth, in South 
Africa and in New Zealand, England had applied those 
principles of Uberty that are the very foundation of her 
constitution. She had granted autonomy to these 
immense countries, and allowed them to direct as they 
chose their own political and economic development. 
The present war, then, presents the spectacle of a 
gigantic struggle between nations who have won their 
liberty and are resolved to keep it against all-comers 
and nations who have been either unable or unwilliiig 
to win their liberty, and submit in a sort of mystic mania 
to the conduct of dynasties and military castes, while 
these, the better to impose and strengthen their authority, 
feed the people on dreams of impossible conquests, and 
dangle before their eyes the hope of despoiling their 
neighbours. The struggle that we are watching to-day 
is, in short, the struggle of responsible and free demo- 
cracy against conquering tyranny, and upon the issue 
of that struggle depends the fate of civilisation and of 
human freedom. 
The authorities in Germany are ready enough to 
proclaim that they, too, are fighting in the defence of 
liberty ; but we know what that means ! When they 
demand, for instance, the freedom of the sea, it is simply 
that they may profit by it themselves to the exclusion of 
other nations, for Britain's naval predominance, against 
which they protest so ferociously, can do them no harm 
except in case of war. The British and French nations 
are quite clear in their minds on this subject. Thev 
know now why they are fighting. It is on their chivalrous 
