The Armies of Europe

I

ARTICLE 8 of the Covenant of the League of Nations begins: —

‘The Members of the League recognize that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety.’ When that clause was drafted, in the spring of 1919, it was generally agreed by the Allied and Associated Powers that the competition in armaments, which had preceded the World War, had been one of the causes of that calamity. It was pointed out that the extent and efficiency of Germany’s military preparations had created in the German people a war mind and a sense of their own invincibility which not only proved fatal in the event, but, in the years before the war, caused the rival group of Entente Powers to answer armament with armament, until it was commonly said that Europe had been turned into an armed camp, and that its peoples were groaning under the burden.

One of the first cares, therefore, of the victors, in framing the Treaty of Versailles, was to impose upon the defeated a drastic reduction of armaments. Not only were the standing armies of Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria strictly limited in size, but the most elaborate precautions were devised to prevent the expansion of those armies on the outbreak of war, to regulate the stock of arms which they might maintain, and to destroy the accumulation of arms in excess of that stock. As the result of this procedure, the great navy of Germany has been reduced to six battleships of old type, which have very little fighting value, six light cruisers, the youngest of which is nineteen years old, and a few torpedo boats, while the navy of Austria has disappeared altogether. None of the four states in question is permitted to maintain any military airservice; and, after making all allowances for the territories and population which they have lost as a result of the treaties, and allotting to them only that proportion of the armies of 1913 which was raised within their present reduced boundaries, their standing armies have been brought down from 894,135 men in 1913 to 198,000 in 1922.

The framers of the Covenant of the League of Nations evidently expected that these drastic reductions would make it a comparatively simple matter to obtain at least corresponding reductions in the armaments of the other European states. That expectation has proved to have been woefully wrong.

The one effective step that has been taken in the past few years toward the reduction of armaments has been the Washington Conference, with which the League of Nations had no concern, and by which a material diminution in the standing navies of the principal naval powers was obtained and a limit was put to the costly process of competitive shipbuilding. During the same four years the problem of the reduction of the land armies has been almost continuously under discussion, both in the Assembly of the League and in its committees; but, so far from any practical result having been obtained, the armies of Europe have actually been increased since Article 8 of the Covenant was drafted. The strength of the standing armies of Europe in 1913 was 3,747,179 men. In 1922 the strength was 4,354,965, an increase of 607,786, despite the compulsory reduction of 696,135 men in the standing armies of Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria. This means that in the remaining states of Europe there has been in 1922 an increase of 1,303,921, as compared with 1913. In 1913, when the burden of taxation, due to the maintenance of armaments, was generally held to be oppressive, Europe had immense reserves of wealth, which have since been dissipated to the extent of thousands of millions of pounds. In 1922 comparatively few of the states of Europe were able to balance their budgets; the majority are adding annually to the already vast burden of their debts. These startling increases in armaments have therefore taken place despite any influence which the League of Nations has been able to exert, and despite every financial inducement to exercise the strictest economy in unproductive expenditure.

To what is this state of affairs due? It can no longer be ascribed to the inordinate ambitions of autocratic governments. Autocratic government has disappeared from Europe, and it is not to be supposed that its statesmen are so mad as to maintain extravagant forces for the sake of enjoying the splendors of military display, or so foolish as to divert money from their depleted treasuries for the purpose of military expenditure, unless they are in a position to justify their action to their people. In these days it is the people of the countries of Europe upon whom the responsibility for the maintenance of armaments ultimately rests; and, as these are the very people who have to pay the heaviest taxes, the very people in whose minds the horrors of war are freshest, it is obvious that there must be some very potent inducement to cause them to accept conditions which the majority of them agree are objectionable, unless they are truly necessary.

Nor can this increase of armaments be ascribed to the imperialistic aims of a few of the Great Powers, though it is very generally believed by the advocates of a reduction of armaments that this is so. Great Britain has accepted, under the Convention of Washington, a lower scale of naval armament than she has ever agreed to since she became a great naval power. It is not many years since she sought to maintain a two-power standard, that is, to have a fleet equal to those of the next two naval powers. Then she adopted a two-keels-to-one standard, that is to say, she built two battleships to every one built by the nation with the next greatest fleet. Now she has accepted a one-power standard, and has made very material reductions in her fleet. Her standing army in 1922 was stronger by about. 10,000 men than it was in 1913, but she is maintaining considerable forces in Constantinople, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and on the Rhine, as the result of obligations which she has incurred since the war, obligations which account for far more than 10,000 men.¹

The standing army of France in 1922 numbered 736,261 men,² against 760,439 in 1913, a reduction of 24,178, though France’s obligations in North and West Africa are enormously greater than they were before the war, and absorb now more than three times as many troops as they did in 1913.

Italy, with a greatly increased land frontier, had reduced her forces in 1922 by 80,390, as compared with 1913.

II

No, the increase in the standing armies of Europe as compared with 1913 is not due to any increase in the armed strength of the Great Powers. It is due, chiefly, to the creation of a whole crop of new armies by the new states brought into existence by the treaties of peace, and by increases in the forces of the smaller states. In the days before the war, Italy was regarded as a great military power. To-day the standing armies of Poland and of Rumania are larger than the standing army of Italy, while those of Czechoslovakia and of Jugoslavia are not much inferior. The burden of military service falls upon the peoples of the new states far more heavily to-day, when they have obtained their freedom, than it did when they were under the rule of the Tsar, the Kaiser, and the Austrian Emperor.

In the days when the territory which is now Czechoslovakia was governed from Vienna, it contributed to the standing army of Austria a quota of 73,000 men. To-day Czechoslovakia maintains an army of 160,000 men. The incidence of military service upon her people is, therefore, more than twice as heavy. The territory of the new Poland was, before the war, partly under German, partly under Austrian, and partly under Russian rule. It then found 190,000 men for the standing armies of those three great military powers. Today Poland has a standing army of 275,000 men. Finland before the war provided 30,000 men for the army of the Tsar; she now has an army of 120,000.

The scale of the armaments of the smaller states of Europe was described by Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in one of the last speeches that he made before his death as ‘terrifying’; and when one recalls the fact that the spark which lit the flame of the World War was a murder in the Balkans, that statement is more than justified. The increase in the armaments of Europe is due to the action of the smaller states, of whom many are still in the stage of political organization and development, and require all their resources for those purposes. The standing armies of the three great European Powers, Great Britain, France, and Italy, to-day number 1,099,047 men, those of the remaining states of Europe 3,255,918.

It is not to be supposed that this arming of the smaller states is due in the main to aggressive ideas. Neither Finland, Poland, nor Rumania can entertain any hope or desire of conquering Russia. Yet it is in the states bordering upon the western frontier of Russia that the most striking increases have taken place. These states together maintain standing armies numbering 650,000 men. In their case, and one may say in the great majority of cases, the motive is fear. That this is so is shown by the answers which one of the armaments commissions of the League of Nations has received to a questionnaire which it has addressed to the members of the League. Replies have been received from twenty-six European states, to request for information as to the size of the armies maintained and as to the reasons for maintaining them. In very many cases the answers are to the effect that no smaller force than that now in existence would suffice for the protection of the frontiers. Obviously, this protection of frontiers is required against possible attack from the forces on the other side of the frontiers. Most states have, therefore, armed themselves as a means of obtaining security against possible aggression by their neighbors. Such a state of affairs implies a reversion to the pre-war competition in armaments, and predicates a tendency to increase rather than to diminish armaments; for any increase in the armed forces on one side of the frontier will, unless there is a drastic change in the policy of Europe, result in determined efforts to make corresponding increases on the other side. It also implies that few, if any, states have confidence in the guaranties provided by the League of Nations, and that most consider it to be necessary for them to provide security from their own resources.

The problem of security lies at the root of the matter; and it is necessary to remember that Englishmen and Americans view the question of security from a very different angle from that of the nations of the Continent of Europe. The United States is not now in the most remote danger of attack from Europe, and the Pacific agreement has removed any danger of Japanese aggression. ³ Great Britain is to-day safer from invasion than she has been for generations. The greater part of the German fleet is at the bottom of the sea; and though she has accepted an agreement to reduce her fleet, that agreement leaves her with a proportion of battleships of 5: 3.25 as compared with the next two strongest naval powers of Europe — a preponderance which she has not enjoyed in European waters for a very long time. Only in respect of attack from the air is her home territory in any danger. But a great number of the nations of the Continent of Europe have within the last few years seen the invader cross their frontiers, and the problem of security is for them a very real and pressing problem, so real and so pressing that their peoples are willing to answer every call to compulsory service, and to put their hands deeper and deeper into their pockets to pay for their armies.

For France, in particular, the question of security is, I believe, the chief question to-day, and accounts for much of French policy. Every Frenchman remembers that his dear land has been invaded four times in little more than one hundred years. Every Frenchman sees before his eyes the devastation of the last war; and every Frenchman is determined that, somehow or other, this terror of invasion, under which he and his fathers before him have lived from infancy, shall be removed. It is not that responsible Frenchmen believe that their country is in very immediate danger from Germany. The stories of Germany’s secret armies and secret stores of arms are no longer credited. The report of the Army Commission of the French Chamber of June, 1921, which established the principles on which the organization of the French Army should be based, says: —

The disarmament of Germany is being carried out. It must be continued to the end, and at any moment we must be ready to exact the execution of the clauses of the Treaty. . . . However that may be, it is as well to admit for the present that the absolute and complete disarmament of Germany is not possible, if by that is meant that she is not to have a single gun, a single rifle, or a single machine gun; that it is not to be possible for her to manufacture arms and hide them away.

But we believe that the real inferiority in which Germany is at present placed lies in the fact that she has lost her strategic base of departure, beyond the Rhine, and her machinery for mobilization, in the destruction of her fleet, and in the loss of her Continental allies; and that, so long as we remain on the Rhine, the mobilization of German forces, provided that the Treaty is not openly violated, (and it is our business to prevent that) will be a slow and difficult operation. . . . Such is, in our opinion, the exact position to-day. It is at any rate that which your Commission has examined. We have given Germany credit for every favorable chance; and if the position of France as regards Germany is one that still requires attention, that position is very far, and as long as we remain on the Rhine it will continue to be far, from presenting the aspect of immediate danger in which we were placed in 1914.

On the contrary, the situation has been reversed, and it is Germany which would have every cause to be afraid, if France had the same warlike spirit which animated the Germany of Bismarck and of William II.

There is here no cry of immediate alarm; but Frenchmen are looking to the future. They see that they have a population of forty millions which, at best, remains stationary, and may decline; that Germany, even in her reduced frontiers, has a population of between sixty and seventy millions, which is increasing. They are seeking to make good this deficiency by recruiting large forces in North Africa, the Mohammedan population of which produced excellent soldiers during the war, soldiers who proved to be more capable of standing the strain of European warfare than many of the soldiers of Great Britain’s Indian Army.

It is because she desires to ensure that these native troops can, in case of need, be transported rapidly across the Mediterranean, that France was, at Washington, unwilling to agree to a limitation of her submarine programme. This policy of seeking to bring in the population of her North African territories to counterbalance the numerical superiority of the German population is the key to France’s recent policy in the Near East. To give effect to that policy, France must remain on friendly terms with the Mohammedan world; and with that object she sought out Kemal, backed him against the Greeks, and, since the overthrow of the Greek army, has repeatedly shown her unwillingness to oppose the demands of the Kemalists. It is not so much that she has sought peace at any price with the Turks, in order that she might be free to devote herself to the occupation of the Ruhr, as that she has feared the reaction of a quarrel with Kemal upon Morocco.

But what France regards as the most important and essential measure for her security, in present circumstances, is, as the report which I have quoted clearly states, the occupation of the Rhine. France has got Germany down and feels that for her own safety she must keep Germany down. She is in the position of a small boy who is sitting on a big boy’s chest, and knows that he is in for a bad pummeling if he lets the big boy up. It is neither a very dignified nor a very safe position. ' But,’ says France, ‘what else can I do? I must have security. The guaranties which the League of Nations provides are altogether inadequate, and the guaranty which I asked Great Britain and the United States to give me has been refused. I must continue to sit on the big boy’s chest, in the hope that he will cry “’Nuff.” If he doesn’t, I shall continue to sit there.’

That this is the present view of France is shown, not only in the report which I have quoted, but in a number of authoritative statements which have since been made in the French Chamber, notably on November 8 last. M. Poincaré and other French statesmen have repeatedly said that, in default of adequate guaranties from outside, France must provide her own guaranties, by maintaining a large army and by remaining on the Rhine, until Germany is helpless.

III

The problem of security is, then, the main problem for France and for most of the smaller nations of Europe. Until it has been solved, it is hopeless to expect that any general reduction of European armies can take place, or that Europe will cease to drift toward a position in which another world war will be inevitable. None of the nations to which I have referred consider that the guaranties of the League of Nations are at present adequate. All of them are seeking to provide the guaranties which they hold to be necessary from their own resources, a situation which must result in the recreation of the prewar system of the balance of military power, with the division of Europe into rival camps, and a renewed competition in armaments, which must retard financial reconstruction if it does not, as is highly probable, lead to bankruptcy.

The want of confidence shown in the guaranties of the League connotes a grave defect in the Covenant. Those guaranties are contained in Articles 10, 16, and 17. Articles 16 and 17 provide that any state, whether a member of the League or not, which commits an act of war or aggression, shall have been deemed to have committed an act of war against all members of the League, who shall sever all intercourse with it and subject it to a complete blockade. I believe that this sanction of the League is far more effective than it is generally supposed to be, and that the threat of the application of blockade would, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, prevent war. No nation in Europe could carry on war with any hope of success if it were cut off from all financial, commercial, and personal intercourse with other states.

But few of the nations of Europe have the ’sea sense,’ and they are not satisfied as to the effectiveness of this guaranty, though in the one case in which its application was threatened, that of the Serbian-Allbanian dispute, the result was immediate and satisfactory. They fear that it may be a long time before the blockade makes itself felt, and that, in the interval, war may be carried into their territory. They fear that a group of nations, strong enough to be economically selfsupporting, may be formed to defy the sanctions of the League. They do not consider that the guaranties provided by these articles are sufficient; and that fact must be accepted.

Still less are they satisfied with the guaranties of the famous Article 10, which recites that ‘The members of the League undertake to restrict and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League.’ As is well known, the vagueness and indefiniteness of the obligations which this article imposed on the signatories of the Covenant was one of the main causes of the unwillingness of the United States to enter the League; while the present strength of the armies of Europe is sufficient indication that the views held in the United States regarding this article are not peculiar. No general staff could draw up plans of defense in reliance upon so nebulous an engagement. It would require to know where, when, and in what strength, assistance would be forthcoming; and in default of such information would advise its Government to provide the troops considered to be necessary for the safety of the nation against possible aggression. It is absurd to suppose that an American nation would agree, at the behest of the Council of the League, to send troops to assist in the defense of the frontier of Serbia, or that a Central European nation would undertake to dispatch a force to the Northwest of India. It is, therefore, in no way surprising that the guaranties provided by Article 10 should be treated with skepticism.

France has long maintained that the sanctions of the League will not be adequate until it is provided with a force of its own, sufficient to enforce its orders. But it is not possible to avoid the suspicion that the French advocates of this proposal have it in mind that the greater part, at least, of the League army would be quartered in France, and under the command of a French General; and it is difficult to conceive that the other members of the League would, in these circumstances, readily agree to pay for the maintenance of such an army, while there are other and graver objections to such a scheme. The League possesses no permanent government, and to give it a standing army uncontrolled by a permanent government would be in the highest degree dangerous, while to give it a permanent government, superior to the governments of its members, would be to change its character fundamentally, and would imply a surrender of national liberties for which the world is far from being ready. If there is to be a limitation of land armaments, it can come only when and if the nations are satisfied that the limitation does not imperil their security; and that security cannot, at present, be provided by the creation of an international army under the control of the League. Can it be provided in any other way?

There is a proposal now being considered by the Temporary Mixed Commission of the League of Nations on the reduction of armaments which seems to me to answer the question in the affirmative. The plan, which is the result of some three years of consideration, was approved in outline at the last meeting of the Assembly of the League, and is now taking definite shape. It is intended to make the guaranties provided by Article 10 definite and precise by the addition of a treaty which limits the world-wide obligations of that article to continents. For example, the nations of Europe will be asked to guarantee each other against aggression, but will not be required to undertake to send troops to the continents of Asia, Africa, or America. It is further proposed that, within these continental agreements, regional agreements shall be concluded between nations in the same part of the world, to deal with specific problems, — such, for example, as the protection against aggression of the eastern frontiers of France and Belgium, — and that these regional agreements shall be in a form sufficiently precise to enable military plans to be prepared to meet certain eventualities.

The execution of these guaranties is to be in the control of the Council of the League, and any nation providing a force for the purposes of the League is to have, for the time being, representation on the Council. In return, and conditional upon the provision of these guaranties, there is to be a general reduction of armaments upon an agreed scale, while any member of the League is to be entitled to call the attention of the League to any suspected departure from the agreed scale.

This plan, of which I have here given the briefest summary, maintains the basic principle of the constitution of the League, that the old system of the balance of military power shall be replaced by the system of concentration of power in the hands of the League, for the preservation of peace and security. Once nations are satisfied that the League offers adequate guaranties of security, the question of limitation of armaments can be approached with some confidence. The results of the Washington Conference have shown that this is so. When that Conference was held, the three chief naval powers concerned, Great Britain, the United States, and Japan, were in no danger from external aggression; public opinion, released from fear, had free play, and definite results were achieved.

The difficulties of finding an agreed scale for the limitation of land armaments are admittedly far greater than they are in the case of naval armaments. The battleship is a convenient and obvious unit, the existence of which cannot be concealed; but there is no corresponding unit to be found in armies. On the other hand the inducement to find an agreed basis for the limitation of armies is, in Europe, at least, far greater than was the inducement at Washington. Great Britain, the United States, and Japan are in a position of comparative financial security, while to-day a great part of Europe is treading the road to bankruptcy. When the question of security is solved, the voice of the burdened taxpayer will become loud and potent; and as the technical difficulties are not insuperable, if expectations are moderate, this voice will, I believe, be heard readily by harassed ministers seeking to balance their budgets.

The problem is one of supreme urgency, and it will come formally before the Assembly of the League next September. If the foundation of a solution is then laid, there will be some hope for the moral, material, and financial reconstruction of Europe; if it is not, the outlook is indeed gloomy.