But, even on July 31st, the English Cabinet replied that it could make no definite engagement.  This answer, it is true, had been foreshadowed in earlier communications.  Sir Edward Grey had made it abundantly clear that there could be no prospect of common action unless France were exposed to ‘an unprovoked attack’, and no certainty of such action even in that case.  But France had staked everything upon the justice of her cause.  She had felt that her pacific intentions were clear to all the world; and that England could not, with any self-respect, refuse assistance.  The French mobilization had been delayed until July 31st, to convince the British Cabinet of French good faith; and the French fleet had been left in the Mediterranean to guard the interests of England no less than those of France.  We can imagine how bitter was the disappointment with which France received the English answer of July 31st.

But we were loyal to our obligations as we understood them.  If our answers to France were guarded, our answers to the German overtures of July 29th and August 1st show that we were fighting the battle of France with diplomatic weapons.  On August 2nd we went still further, by undertaking to defend the French coasts and shipping, if the German fleet should come into the Channel or through the North Sea.  To justify our position of reserve from July 31st to August 4th we may quote what Mr. Asquith said the other day (September 4th):—­

’No one who has not been in that position can realize the strength, the energy, and the persistence with which we laboured for peace.  We persevered by every expedient that diplomacy could suggest, straining almost to breaking-point our most cherished friendships and obligations.’

Those efforts failed.  We know to-day that mediation had never any prospects of success, because Germany had resolved that it should not succeed.  Ought we to have known this from the first?  It is easy to be wise after the event.  But in England we have Cabinet government and we have Parliamentary government.  Before an English minister can act, in a matter of national importance, no matter how positive his own convictions may be, he must convince his colleagues, and they must feel certain of convincing a democracy which is essentially pacific, cautious, slow to move.  Nothing short of the German attack on Belgium would have convinced the ordinary Englishman that German statesmanship had degenerated into piracy.  That proof was given us on August 4th; and on that day we sent our ultimatum to Berlin.

To-day all England is convinced; and we are fighting back to back with the French for their national existence and our own.  Our own, because England’s existence depends not only on her sea-power, but upon the maintenance of European state-law.  The military spirit which we have described above (Chap.  VI) tramples upon the rights of nations because it sees a foe in every equal; because it regards the prosperity of a neighbour as a national misfortune; because it holds that national greatness is only to be realized in the act of destroying or absorbing other nationalities.  To those who are not yet visibly assailed, and who possibly believe themselves secure, we can only give the warning:  Tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet.