The American Historical Review/Volume 23/Reviews of Books/L'Europe avant la Guerre
In this little volume are collected a number of magazine articles written, with the exception of the last, in the years immediately before the war. They deal with some of the crises, particularly the Morocco crisis and the various Balkan crises through which Europe passed between 1908 and 1913, and are informed, intelligent, but slight treatments of these grave situations. The article which is most carefully studied deals with the origin of the Balkan alliances of 1912 and, though clearly developed, suffers from a very imperfect documentation. Everything considered, these essays, written for the general public, would not be suitable for review in a scientific journal of history, if it were not for the fact that they are held together by the political philosophy which was dominant among enlightened Europeans before the war and which, because of possible transformations occasioned by the present catastrophe, it is worth while to seize and define.
How does the author envisage the crises which he sketches and, what is more important still, the whole European development? To begin with, as a Frenchman he has a French patriotism; but let us hurry to testify that it is generally moderate and never offensive. Far more significant is it that he persistently sees events from the angle of diplomacy. He is on the whole pleased with Europe: things are as they have to be. The nations are patriotic and armed to the teeth. They are divided into two groups, the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, which are in balance and which, in the main, successfully and happily neutralize each other. The diplomat-author has the air of perpetually studying the scales and cannot refrain from expressing a joyful professional satisfaction when he is enabled to constate their perfect equilibrium. This felicitous European stalemate has brought it about that the European nations in their irrepressible energy have thrown themselves upon the backward and undeveloped lands outside of Europe, thus producing the colonial movement. This amusingly diplomatic explanation of colonial origins is voiced on page 25. The colonial movement is in itself wholly admirable and has proceeded in accordance with the law of nature, for the rest of the world exists to be civilized by Europe. Of course it is going to be exploited too, but that is incidental to a healthy process which it would be foolish to decry. Now let there be no mistake: the author wants this, on the whole, satisfactory play of world forces to continue without the sword ever flying from the scabbard. He is for peace and he thinks peace is perfectly possible, with its excellent concomitants of a balance of armaments in Europe and an accelerated "civilizing" of the backward continents—on one condition. Nations must learn to use—they are passionately implored to use—what the author calls the manière douce instead of the manière forte. Here lies the hope of mankind, as he tries to bring home to his reader by many instances. Every new crisis in Europe, how does it come about otherwise than by the foreign offices, and the excitable newspapers and populations behind them, showing a regrettable preference for the manière forte? In the Moroccan crisis of 1911, for instance, the author distributes his blame almost equally between France and Germany: France was too precipitate to realize on her investment, Germany was incredibly rude (p. 50). In the same way Austria is taken to task for showing a lack of consideration for Turkey in 1908, and Italy was, if anything, even more offensive in her manner of seizing Tripoli three years later.
Such then was the wisdom of the intelligent diplomat-historian before 1914. Stirred by the war to the very depth of our nature, we are fairly appalled by the shallowness of the analysis and the quackery of the remedies. But even more appalling is this thought: if the gentlemen who will gather together to draw up the great Peace are diplomats or diplomatic historians of the old school, satisfied with things as they are (except for the lamentable inclination of governments to use the loud pedal), without the vision of a world-union on the basis of a new moral and spiritual orientation, what becomes of the New Europe of which our dreamers dream?
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
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