England's Fault In The War

Review of the 2nd edition of Jakob Ruchti's work “On the History of the Outbreak of War” (1916) in: Münchner Neuste Nachrichten, Vol. 70, No. 216 of April 30,

Among the vast amount of war literature that has been written, Dr. Jacob Ruchti's “On the History of the Outbreak of War According to the Official Files of the Royal British Government”, which was awarded a prize by the History Department of the University of Bern, is of particular value. For it contains a consideration that is conducted according to the strict rules of historical research and conscientiousness that the historian seeks when he wants to form an opinion about factual connections.

The view that a discussion of the causes of the war has already become a fruitless exercise cannot be maintained in the face of the way in which the statesmen and the press of the Entente are trying to persuade the world that they are forced to continue the war despite the Central Powers' peace offer. Among the reasons they give, a very special role is played by the assertion that the beginning of the war proves that peaceful coexistence with the Central Powers can only be achieved by a devastating blow from the Entente against these powers. Now Ruchti shows that this claim is based on an untrue legend that the Entente forged to counter the statements of its own documents, in order to teach the world the view of the outcome and goal of the war that it deemed appropriate. The significance of Ruchti's work lies particularly in the scientific treatment of the facts and then in the fact that a member of a neutral state unreservedly communicates his results, and that a scientific seminar of this state finds the work to be so scientifically sound that it awards it a prize. Ruchti does not go beyond what the sources reveal. In fact, he points out where the factual material is uncertain and must be withheld with objective judgment. He relies almost exclusively on English documents and uses those of other countries only to supplement this or that account. With this method, he comes to a conclusion that can be summarized in the following words:

The assertions with which the statesmen of the Entente want to persuade the world are recognized by the English documents as the opposite of the truth. The whole fabric of the assertions of Grey and his supporters about the peace efforts of the Entente statesmen falls apart before Ruchti's scientific research and becomes one that only shows the appearance of peaceful efforts, but which in reality not only had to lead to war between Russia and France on the one hand and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other, but was also likely to place England on the side of the former powers. From these statements, it is clear how Sasonow makes the dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia the starting point of a European dispute, and how Grey takes this Russian starting point as his own from the outset and uses it to organize his so-called peace efforts. There is not the slightest evidence that it might have occurred to Grey to take such diplomatic steps that Russia would have been forced to let Austria fight out its dispute with Serbia alone. Since Austria-Hungary had given its assurance that it wanted to achieve nothing more with its military measures against Serbia than the complete recognition of its ultimatum, and this in turn demanded nothing more than Serbia's appropriate behavior against Austria-Hungary within its previous borders, there would have been no reason for another power to go to war if Grey had dissuaded Russia from interfering in the Austro-Serbian dispute. But England was Russia's ally and the Central Powers' enemy from the outset; and Grey had initiated a policy that would inevitably lead to war in the form it then took.

To claim, in view of what Grey did, that Grey failed to maintain the peace merely because Germany did not want it, is reprehensibly dishonest, precisely because it is as effective as possible at misleading the world by emphasizing a truth that is both self-evident and meaningless. For it is certainly clear that England, and probably France and even Russia, would have preferred peace to war if it could have been avoided through diplomatic channels, in order to push Germany and Austria-Hungary down to political insignificance in the face of the Entente and to bring about their submission to the Entente's will to power. What matters is not whether Grey wanted peace or war, but how he positioned himself in relation to the claims of those powers at the outbreak of war that are England's allies in the war. And Ruchti proves that Grey's actions were such that the war was inevitable. It is certainly permissible to add to Ruchti's evidence here that Grey himself did not want to push for war, but that he is a weakling who was pushed into his actions by others. But that does not change the historical assessment of his actions.

Ruchti succeeds in proving that Grey's diplomatic actions do not give him the slightest claim to claim that he did anything to prevent the war. But the Swiss historian also succeeds in showing that the English statesmen conducted themselves in the negotiations with Germany in such a way that the breach of neutrality with respect to Belgium was presented to them as a reason for war that they could have avoided if they had responded to certain German overtures. But they needed this reason for war in order to make it acceptable to their people, who could not be brought to war because of Serbia and because of Russia's European claims. This popular persuasion also required a forgery, which Ruchti proves in the English White Paper. By means of false dates in a correspondence that Grey had conducted, the English people were to be shown how peace-loving France had been invaded by Germany. The falsification of dates was intended to create the impression that Germany had attacked France much earlier than was actually the case. Furthermore, in his war speech of August 6, 1914, Asquith simply failed to mention the decisive negotiations with Germany, with the same success in deceiving the people.

After objectively weighing all these facts, Ruchti forms an opinion that justifies him in presenting the so-called peace efforts of the English statesmen as an untruthful legend and even in showing the forces driving them towards war. At the end, Ruchti utters the momentous words: “History cannot be falsified in the long run, the legend cannot stand up to scientific research, the dark fabric is brought to light and torn, no matter how artfully and finely it was spun.” But for the time being, the Entente is still trying to pass off this dark web as a means of justifying its dark warlike activities to the world as a necessity of civilization and the noblest humanity.