Francis Neilson - How Diplomats Make War

BY FRANCIS NEILSON

COMMENTS ON THE FIRST EDITION

NEW YORK TIMES:

The volume is written with much facility of expression and a large fund of materials. In diplomatic matters it attacks the faults of the ruling class in Great Britain in much the same way as I Accuse! attacked those of the corresponding class in Germany.

THE BOSTON HERALD:

The real emphasis of the book is on the direful effects of war on the common peopleon the men who go forth from their Drum-drudge villages to slay and be slain at command, and on the kind of society that survives after every war to see its civilization thrust back for a century and the solution of its urgent economic problems thrust far forward into the future.

THE DIAL (Chicago):

A book which many of its readers will feel has appeared at the moment when it was most required. Amidst the high pressure of emotionalism in which sane judgments are at a premium, and strong opinions on one side or another are regarded as inevitable, it is well to be reminded that quarrels between nations, as between individuals, are usually due to faults on both sides.

THE NATION:

He writes with a bitter pen but has a large historical sweep and much knowledge.... As to one of the chief positions of the volume, no American will have any quarrel with the writer of this book. It is that no treaties, forms of international alliance, or agreements with other nations ought to be entered into until they have been submitted to the representatives of the people in Parliament.

REVIEW OF REVIEWS:

It is a terrific indictment of the diplomatic game as played by all the great European governments. It shows how dangerous is the survival of a diplomacy that is not only removed from contact with public opinion, but is even beyond the knowledge and reach of the peoples representatives in Parliament.

THE PUBLIC (Chicago):

It is a stirring story of the rotten result of a sinister, lying, bluffing diplomacy that despoiled the Continent. And the final chapter, that makes a tremendous appeal for frankness and true democracy, is a notable one.

PUBLISHED BY B. W. HUEBSCH, NEW YORK

HOW DIPLOMATS MAKE WAR

BY

FRANCIS NEILSON

Member of Parliament, January, 1910-December, 1915.

The whole theory of the universe is directed to one single individualnamely, to You.

WALT WHITMAN.

NEW YORK
B. W. HUEBSCH
MCMXV

Copyright, 1915, by
B. W. HUEBSCH

First edition, November, 1915

Second edition, May, 1916

Third printing, January, 1918

Fourth printing, November, 1921

Fifth printing, October, 1940

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

Francis Neilsons How Diplomats Make War is one of the classic books of World War literature. Published anonymously a quarter of a century ago, in 1915, it still holds its place as a standard work. Innumerable later writers have plowed deep in the soil first broken by this volume. Whole libraries have been reared on the foundation structure of its original and creative thought. But How Diplomats Make War stands memorable for its courage, vision, rigorous scholarship, and proud proclamation, in an age of fear and falsehood, of the truth.

Mr. Neilsons masterpiece is remarkable, first of all, as a pioneer work in that field of inquiry which has to do with the causes of the World War. By the early dawn of 1915, in all the Allied countries, and in America, the Satanic theory of the War was firmly established in the minds not only of the common people, but also of statesmen, scholars, and public-leaders. This theory was in essence the doctrine that the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Chancellor Von Bethmann-Hollweg, and Admiral Von Tirpitz was exclusively responsible for the vast catastrophe of arms. The Triple Entente and allied nations, desirous of nothing but peace, had been bulldozed, threatened, brow-beaten, and at last openly attacked, by a power which had long conspired against the settled order of mankind, and long prepared for its conquest and subjection! Germany was a guilty power which had assailed the innocence of the great democracies (strangely including Tsarist Russia)! The Kaiser was Satan making war against God and His angels in the heaven of modern civilization! This idea was of course a part of the propaganda necessary for the proper conduct of the great conflict. It was in part an honest deception induced on the one hand by the propaganda itself and on the other hand by the rationalization incident to any life-and-death struggle. At bottom it was an expression of the ancient human habit of thinking ourselves to be right and of course our enemies, and even friends, to be wrong in altercation between us. In any case it was a settled impression, as firmly inbedded in mens minds as cement in a foundation-wall.

Francis Neilson was the first man to break with this impression in a work of sound scholarship and popular appeal. There were others who saw the ridiculousness of the Satanic theoryG. Lowes Dickinson was one, and E. D. Morel was another. But How Diplomats Make War was a work at once so solid in fact and so fertile in suggestion, that it became the root from which sprang that vast growth of literature which has at last established in the annals of mankind the unassailable truth that all the warring nations of 1914 had responsibility for the War, with Germany by no means the most culpable of the lot. What Mr. Neilson did was to produce for the first time a comprehensive reading of the historical events preceding and producing the World War, which straightway became, and has since remained, the standard interpretation of the period, as witness such later works as those of Barnes, Fay, Gooch, and many others. He showed, on the basis of indubitable fact, (1) that all the imperialistic nations of Europe, the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance alike, had played the diplomatic game of power to their own advantage, and to the final result of war, and (2) that this game of the diplomats was played in defiance of the real wishes of the people of all lands, and thus in betrayal of their interests. Nothing was more important, in Mr. Neilsons analysis of the situation, than his shocking revelation of the gulf which lies, even in the most democratic states, between the purposes of the people and the policies of their governments.

But Francis Neilsons work is remarkable not only for its understanding of the past, but also for its forecast of the future. Just as he saw that the tragic phenomenon of the War sprang not from the conspiratorial wickedness of the Potsdam gang, but from the operation of economic and political forces of empire woven like so many threads into the devious pattern of diplomacy, so he saw that similar forces were at work in the War itself which made impossible any righteous or happy outcome of the struggle. Because he knew his history, Mr. Neilson was never fooled by any of the conventional notions, later transformed into veritable articles of faith, which had to do with a war to end war, a war to make the world safe for democracy, a war to protect and preserve civilization. He knew perfectly well that the same men were in control of the War itself as had been in control of the policies preceding the War, that these men represented interests essentially selfish and violent and thus hostile to international order and to the general welfare of the world, and that these interests themselves embodied forces certain to lead the nations, after the war, straight back into the old paths of rivalry, enmity, military preparedness, and war again. The very fact of war, the fine flower of imperialistic diplomacy, doomed the ideals which sincere but sadly befooled men had introduced into the War, and for which millions of innocents were being slaughtered.