People ask why the British Government between 1906 and 1914 did not
discuss in public a situation which it understood well, and appeal to
the nation. The answer is that to have done so would have been greatly
to increase the difficulty of averting war. Up to the middle of 1913 the
indications were that it was far from unlikely that war might in the
result be averted. That was the view of some, both here and on the
Continent, who were most competent to judge, men who had real
opportunities for close observation from day to day. It is a view which
is not in material conflict with anything we have since learned. The
question whether war is inevitable has always been, as Bismarck more
than once insisted, one for the statesmen of the countries concerned,
and not for the soldiers and sailors who have a restricted field to work
in, and for whom it is in consequence difficult to see things as a
whole. Nor does great importance attach to-day to the triumphant
declarations of those who, having chanced to guess aright, take pride in
the cheap title to wisdom which has become theirs after the event.
Still less does respect attach to the small but noisy minority in each
of the countries concerned who in the years before 1914 were
continuously contributing to bringing war on our heads by expressions of
dislike to neighboring nations, and by prophecies that war with them
must come. In the main Germany was worse in this feature than ourselves.
But there were those here whose language made them useful propagandists
for the German military party, to whom they were of much service.

Few wars are really inevitable. If we knew better how we should be
careful to comport ourselves it may be that none are so. But extremists,
whether chauvinist or pacifist, are not helpful in avoiding wars. That
is because human nature is what it is.