THE Crime Against Europe
BY SIR ROGER CASEMENT



THE

Crime Against Europe

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_A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914_

BY

SIR ROGER CASEMENT


INTRODUCTION.

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The reader must remember that these articles were written before
the war began. They are in a sense prophetic and show a remarkable
understanding of the conditions which brought about the present great
war in Europe.

The writer has made European history a life study and his training in
the English consular service placed him in a position to secure the
facts upon which he bases his arguments.

Sir Roger Casement was born in Ireland in September, 1864. He was made
consul to Lorenzo Marques in 1889, being transferred to a similar
post in the Portuguese Possessions in West Africa, which included the
consulate to the Gaboon and the Congo Free State. He held this post
from 1898 to 1905, when he was given the consulate of Santos. The
following year he was appointed consul to Hayti and San Domingo, but
did not proceed, going instead to Para, where he served until 1909,
when he became consul-general to Rio de Janeiro. He was created a
knight in 1911.

He was one of the organizers of the Irish Volunteers at Dublin in
November, 1913, being one of their provisional committee. At present
he is a member of the governing body of that organization. He spent
the summer of this year in the United States. Sir Roger is at present
in Berlin, where, after a visit paid to the foreign office by him,
the German Chancellor caused to be issued the statement that "should
the German forces reach the shores of Ireland they would come not as
conquerors but as friends."

Sir Roger is well known for his investigation into the Putomayo rubber
district atrocities in 1912.

December, 1914.




Chapter I

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR AND THE FOUNDATION OF PEACE


Since the war, foreshadowed in these pages, has come and finds public
opinion in America gravely shocked at a war it believes to be solely
due to certain phases of European militarism, the writer is now
persuaded to publish these articles, which at least have the merit of
having been written well before the event, in the hope that they may
furnish a more useful point of view. For if one thing is certain it is
that European militarism is no more the cause of this war than of any
previous war. Europe is not fighting to see who has the best army,
or to test mere military efficiency, but because certain peoples wish
certain things and are determined to get and keep them by an appeal to
force. If the armies and fleets were small the war would have broken
out just the same, the parties and their claims, intentions, and
positions being what they are. To find the causes of the war we must
seek the motives of the combatants, and if we would have a lasting
peace the foundations upon which to build it must be laid bare by
revealing those foundations on which the peace was broken. To find
the causes of the war we should turn not to Blue Books or White
Papers, giving carefully selected statements of those responsible
for concealing from the public the true issues that move nations to
attack each other, but should seek the unavowed aims of those nations
themselves.

Once the motive is found it is not hard to say who it is that broke
the peace, whatever the diplomats may put forward in lieu of the real
reason.

The war was, in truth, inevitable, and was made inevitable years ago.
It was not brought about through the faults or temper of Sovereigns
or their diplomats, not because there were great armies in Europe,
but because certain Powers, and one Power in particular, nourished
ambitions and asserted claims that involved not only ever increasing
armaments but insured ever increasing animosities. In these cases
peace, if permitted, would have dissipated the ambitions and upset
claims, so it was only a question of time and opportunity when those
whose aims required war would find occasion to bring it about.

As Mr. Bernard Shaw put it, in a recent letter to the press: "After
having done all in our power to render war inevitable it is no use now
to beg people not to make a disturbance, but to come to London to be
kindly but firmly spoken to by Sir Edward Grey."

To find the motive powerful enough to have plunged all Europe into war
in the short space of a few hours, we must seek it, not in the pages
of a "white paper" covering a period of only fifteen days (July 20th
to August 4th, 1914), but in the long anterior activities that led the
great Powers of Europe into definite commitments to each other. For
the purposes of this investigation we can eliminate at once three of
the actual combatants, as being merely "accessories after the fact,"
viz.:--Servia, Belgium and Japan, and confine our study of the
causes of the conflict to the aims and motives of the five principal
combatants. For it is clear that in the quarrel between Servia and
Austria, Hungary is only a side issue of the larger question that
divides Europe into armed camps. Were categoric proof sought of how
small a part the quarrel between Vienna and Belgrade played in the
larger tragedy, it can be found in the urgent insistence of the
Russian Government itself in the very beginning of the diplomatic
conversations that preceded the outbreak of hostilities.

As early as the 24th of July, the Russian Government sought to prevail
upon Great Britain to proclaim its complete solidarity with Russia and
France, and on the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg pointing out
that "direct British interests in Servia were nil, and a war on behalf
of that country would never be sanctioned by British public opinion,"
the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs replied that "we must not
forget that the _general European_ question was involved, the Servian
question being but a part of the former, and that Great Britain
could not afford to efface herself from the problem _now at issue_."
(Despatch of Sir G. Buchanan to Sir E. Grey, 24th July, 1914).

Those problems involved far mightier questions than the relations of
Servia to Austria, the neutrality of Belgium or the wish of Japan to
keep the peace of the East by seizing Kiao-Chau.

The neutrality never became a war issue until long after war had been
decided on and had actually broken out; while Japan came into the
contest solely because Europe had obligingly provided one, and because
one European power preferred, for its own ends, to strengthen an
Asiatic race to seeing a kindred white people it feared grow stronger
in the sun.

Coming then to the five great combatants, we can quickly reduce them
to four. Austria-Hungary and Germany in this war are indivisible.
While each may have varying aims on many points and ambitions that,
perhaps, widely diverge both have one common bond, self-preservation,
that binds them much more closely together than mere formal "allies."
In this war Austria fights of necessity as a Germanic Power, although
the challenge to her has been on the ground of her Slav obligations
and activities. Germany is compelled to support Austria by a law of
necessity that a glance at the map of Europe explains. Hence, for
the purpose of the argument, we may put the conflict as between the
Germanic peoples of Central Europe and those who have quarreled with
them.

We thus arrive at the question, "why should such strangely consorted
allies as England, Russia and France be at war with the German
people?"

The answer is not to be found in the White Book, or in any statement
publicly put forward by Great Britain, Russia or France.

But the answer must be found, if we would find the causes of the war,
and if we would hope to erect any lasting peace on the ruins of this
world conflict.

To accept, as an explanation of the war the statement that Germany
has a highly trained army she has not used for nearly half a century
and that her people are so obsessed with admiration for it that they
longed to test it on their neighbours, is to accept as an explanation
a stultifying contradiction. It is of course much easier to put
the blame on the Kaiser. This line of thought is highly popular: it
accords, too, with a fine vulgar instinct.

The German people can be spared the odium of responsibility for a
war they clearly did nothing to provoke, by representing them as the
victims of an autocracy, cased in mail and beyond their control.
We thus arrive at "the real crime against Germany," which explains
everything but the thing it set out to explain. It leaves unexplained
the real crime against Europe.

To explain the causes of the war we must find the causes of the
alliances of England, France and Russia against Germany.

For the cause of the war is that alliance--that and nothing else. The
defence of the _Entente Cordiale_ is that it is an innocent pact of
friendship, designed only to meet the threat of the Triple Alliance.
But the answer to that is that whereas the Triple Alliance was formed
thirty years ago, it has never declared war on anyone, while the
_Triple Entente_ before it is eight years old has involved Europe,
America, Africa, and Asia in a world conflict. We must find the motive
for England allying herself with France and Russia in an admittedly
anti-German "understanding" if we would understand the causes of the
present war and why it is that many besides Bernard Shaw hold that
"after having done all in our power to render war inevitable" it was
idle for the British Government to assume a death-bed solicitude
for peace, having already dug its grave and cast aside the shovel
for the gun. When that motive is apparent we shall realise who it
was preferred war to peace and how impossible it is to hope for any
certain peace ensuing from the victory of those who ensured an appeal
to arms.

The _Entente Cordiale_, to begin with, is unnatural. There is nothing
in common between the parties to it, save antagonism to someone
else. It is wrongly named. It is founded not on predilections but on
prejudices--not on affection but on animosity. To put it crudely it is
a bond of hate not of love. None of the parties to it like or admire
each other, or have consistent aims, save one.

That satisfied, they will surely fall out among themselves, and the
greater the plunder derived from their victory the more certain their
ensuing quarrel.

Great Britain, in her dealings with most white people (not with all)
is a democracy.

Russia in her dealings with all, is an autocracy.

Great Britain is democratic in her government of herself and in her
dealings with the great white communities of Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa. She is not democratic in her dealings with
subject races within the Empire--the Indians, notably, or the Irish.
To the Indians her rule is that of an absentee autocracy, differing
in speech, colour, religion and culture from those submitted to it by
force; to the Irish that of a resident autocracy bent on eliminating
the people governed from residence in their own country, and replacing
them with cattle for British consumption.

In both instances Britain is notably false to her professions of
devotion to democratic principles. Her affinity with Russia is found
then, not in the cases where her institutions are good, but in those
where they are bad.

An alliance founded on such grounds of contact can only produce evil.

To such it gave birth in Persia, to such it must give birth in the
present war.

In Persia we saw it betray the principles of democratic government,
destroy an infant constitution and disembowel the constitutionalists,
whilst it divided their country into "spheres of influence" and to-day
we see it harvesting with hands yet red with the blood of Persian
patriots the redder fruit of the seed then sown.

The alliance with France, while more natural than that with Russia if
we regard Great Britain as a democracy (by eliminating India, Egypt,
Ireland) had the same guilty end in view, and rests less on affinity
of aims