Sometimes I wonder whether history would have had to be much re-written if the King of England and the German Emperor had been personally more cordial from 1901 to 1910; whether, too, destiny could have been cheated if Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had lived another five years. "C.-B." laboured for peace, and his honesty was not called in question; there was always the certainty that democracy the world over would one day grow strong enough to forbid war; there was always the chance that this decisive strength would come before a military party could issue its mobilization orders.
I know I speak in a minority of one: a thousand pens have shown that war was pre-ordained: yet--I wonder if the writers guess how nearly it was avoided. When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman resigned, there was no one of equal authority to carry on his work. For a space the unconvinced preached disarmament to the unbelieving, then impatiently girded themselves for war. The Japanese Alliance, the French Entente, the Russian _rapprochement_ were good platform points for a German scaremonger. If we had continued working for peace and keeping free of continental engagements, I wonder whether our teaching would have had time to bear fruit. My uncle Bertrand thought so and, though my political beliefs are too unstable to matter, he converted me from a showy Liberal Imperialism to an old-fashioned peaceful insularity. The change came gradually. My allegiance to the party weakened when Bill after Bill was contemptuously rejected in the House of Lords, and our leaders fulminated and declined battle. Thereafter a certain uneasiness was occasioned by the vagaries of the Foreign Office. Ostensibly our French Entente was formed to facilitate the settlement of outstanding questions in North Africa; and, though we were told from the Treasury Bench that militarily we were still uncommitted, Lobby gossip had a dozen disquieting theories of new secret engagements. Bertrand used to get his knuckles rapped for indiscreet questions to the Foreign Secretary, but rebuffs from mandarins only increased his suspicion that the whole truth was being withheld from the House of Commons.
Growing distrust of a brilliant and exasperatingly Celestial Ministry determined the course of my later years in Parliament. O'Rane left England at the end of 1906, my constituents rejected me in the first election of 1910; in the intervening time I joined an advanced Radical group in advocating better international understandings and immediate war on the House of Lords. They were the three busiest years of my life, and, when my uncle set his peace organization to work, a day of sixteen hours was divided equally between Fleet Street, the House, and the Central Disarmament Committee in Princes Gardens.
