The armies and air fleets are preparing; in the arsenals and dockyards of Europe the great hammers descend with ceaseless clang. The heels of millions of soldiers crunch the gravel of the drill grounds. In the aerodromes new machines and new pilots take the air; squadrons form in rapid succession. Enormous stacks of bombs and shells pile up in the magazines. The dictators add the weekly outputs to their mounting tally. In Germany fats and cash run short; faces grow grimmer. In Spain, blood, fire, merciless destruction and the blotting out of defenceless men and women insult the light of day.
But it would indeed be a pity if one great and hopeful event should not be discerned in this sombre scene, should not be set on its pedestal and acclaimed by the British nation. On Friday last Monsieur Delbos, the Foreign Minister of France, rose in the French Parliament to reply to Mr. Anthony Eden.
The British Foreign Secretary had said a fortnight before that England was bound to fight in defence of France and Belgium. Although this obligation was made public at the time of the March agreement, this was the first time that it had been stated in so plain and decisive a form. It was for France to give the answer. 'If,' said Monsieur Delbos, 'England is the victim of unprovoked aggression, France will immediately and spontaneously proceed to her aid with all her forces by land, sea and air.' This statement is remarkable for two reasons. First, it is the declaration of a people who subject themselves to the grinding burden of two years universal compulsory military service, that they will make common cause with a people who spurn all idea of conscription, who cannot even maintain the numbers of their small voluntary armies, and whose Government, even in the sphere of belated munitions production, is not prepared to interfere with the normal course of trade and industry.
The second impressive feature was the absolute unanimity with which M. Delbos's declaration was received. From the Communists on the extreme left of the French semicircular chamber to the Royalists on the extreme right, its unanimous acceptance was at once apparent. It may fairly be said that no more striking gesture of comradeship and goodwill has ever been made by a well-armed and hard-strained nation to a more comfortable and far less well-defended neighbour. Nor could anything have been done more likely to maintain the peace of Europe in the precarious year 1937 which is about to dawn.
Of course the inherent power of Britain and her Empire is immense. We have no Army worth mentioning, but so far as Europe is concerned Britannia still rules the waves. Our Air Force, though as yet only a fraction of that of Germany, is respectable in quality, and expanding with speed. Our financial strength, credit and resources, carefully tended, are unequalled. The command of the seas carries with it enormous facilities for obtaining food and raw material, all realisable through the mercantile connections of Great Britain in all quarters of the globe. One has the feeling that the magnificent French Army with its innate, supple, flexible efficiency and profound knowledge of the art of war, shielded in part by its fortifications, will be a factor which, joined to the resources of Britain, should constitute a deterrent upon the aggressor. It does not seem a vain hope that the 85 millions of English and French people who desire only peace and seek no quarrel, will together present so solid and respectable a front that they will be let alone.
But then strikes in as a cold corrective the suddenness with which the strokes of modern war may be delivered, and we ask ourselves whether, under new conditions, time will be given to us to realise the vast latent resources of the British Empire. At any rate this dual insurance reduces the risk of war. It reduces also our own danger. It may conceivably give us time to place ourselves in a reasonable state of defence. But two spectral years lie ahead. These are the ghosts of the years 1934 and 1935 which, to quote Sir Thomas Inskip's revealing phrase, 'the locust hath eaten.' Here they are again, those years which passed so lightly, so agreeably away, amid loud cheers and large majorities; years when the people must not be disturbed from their contentment and complacency, nor aroused from idle dreams by ugly truths. These were the years when Ministers assured us that all was well, when all warnings were rejected, when those who uttered them were mocked at as jingoes and scaremongers, when the docile Parliamentary battalions trudged through the Lobbies in that faithful 'footwork' which Mr. Baldwin has eulogised as among the first of political virtues.
No one has attempted in Parliament to analyse the astounding apologia in which the Prime Minister indulged himself three weeks ago.[6] [When he explained that 'democracy must always be two years behind Dictators.'] When I first went into Parliament, now nearly forty years ago, it was inculcated upon me that the most insulting charge which could be made against a Minister of the Crown, short of actual malfeasance, was that he had endangered the safety of the country and neglected its defences for electioneering considerations. Yet such are the surprising qualities of Mr. Baldwin that what all had been taught to shun has now been elevated into a canon of political virtue.
If any mischance should result from a failure of duty or a concealment of facts, we are assured that this is the inherent fault of democracy, and that democracy must always be two years behind the Dictators.
These are the 'two years behind the Dictators' that we have now to live through.
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