Britain regarded Germany as the Power whose ascendancy in trade—and therefore in world politics— as a consequence of her enormous industrialization, was becoming a very serious menace. The conquest of the world by “peaceful penetration”, which our statesmen thought to be the last word in wisdom, was selected by British politicians as their basis for organizing resist¬ ance. The fact that this resistance assumed the form of a fully organized attack was entirely consistent in character with statesmanship whose aim was not main¬ tenance of an already more than questionable world peace, but establishment of British world domination. The fact that England employed, as her allies, all States which could be of use in a military sense was equally consistent with her traditional foresight in estimating her opponents5 strength, as well as with her knowledge of her own weak points at any given moment. This is—from the British point of view—not termed “unscrupulousness”, since to organize a war so com¬ pletely is not to be judged by heroic standards, but by their suitableness to the occasion. It is the task of diplomacy to see to it that a nation does not go under heroically, but is maintained by practical means. Then every road which leads to that is the right one, and not to follow it is obviously a crime and flagrant neglect of duty.
When Germany turned revolutionary all fear of the threat of world domination by Germany was over, as far as it concerned British statesmanship. It was not to British interest that Germany should be entirely obliterated from the map of Europe. On the contrary, the fearful collapse of November, 1918, put British diplomacy face to face with a new situation, which was at once discovered to be possible : Germany destroyed, and France the strongest political Power on the Continent of Europe. The wiping out of Germany as a Power on the Continent would merely bring profit to England’s enemies. And yet between November, 1918, and the summer of 1919 British diplomacy was not in a position to alter its attitude, since it had exploited the forces of sentiment in the public during the long War more fully than ever before.