CREDO

(From the Neutral Press, 1914.)

To love peace with all one’s heart. To feel that war is a black stain on the humanity and fame of man. To hate militarism. To go any length to avoid war for material interests, war that involves no great principle, distrusting profoundly the common meaning of the phrase “national honour”—all this is my belief.

But there is a national honour charged with the future happiness of man; loyalty is due from those living to those that will come after; civilization can only wax and flourish in a world where faith is kept; for nations, as for individuals, there are laws of duty, whose violation harms the whole human race; in sum, stars of conduct shine for peoples, as for private men.

And so I hold that without tarnishing true honour, endangering civilization present and to come, and ruining all hope of future tranquillity, my Country could not have refused to take up arms for the defence of her little neighbour Belgium’s outraged neutrality, which she had solemnly guaranteed.

I claim from the trend of events, and of national character, during the last century that in democracy alone lies any coherent hope of progressive civilization or any chance of lasting peace in Europe, or the world.

I believe that this democratic principle, however imperfectly developed, has so worked in France, in Britain, in the United States, that these countries are already nearly safe from inclination to aggress, or to subdue other nationalities that have reached approximately their stage of development.

And I believe that while there remain autocratic Governments basing themselves on militarism, hostile at heart to the democratic principle, Europe will never be free of the surcharge of swollen armaments, the nightmare menace of wars like this—the paralysis that creeps on civilizations which adore the god of force.

And so I hold that without betrayal of trusteeship, without shirking the elementary defence of beliefs coiled within its fibre, or beliefs vital to the future welfare of all men, my Country could not stand by and see the ruin of France, that very cradle of democracy.

I believe that democratic culture spreads from West to East, that only by maintenance of consolidate democracy in Western Europe can democracy ever hope to push on and prevail till the Eastern Powers have also that ideal under which alone humanity can flourish.

And so I hold that my Country is justified at this juncture in its alliance with the autocratic power of Russia, whose people will never know freedom till her borders are joined to the borders of a true democracy in Central Europe.

I do not believe that jealous, frightened jingoism has been more than the dirty fringe of Britain’s peace-loving temper, and I profess my sacred faith that my Country has gone to war, against her will, because she must—for honour, for democracy, and for the future of mankind.