The Blank Cheque.

In the meantime behold us again hopelessly outwitted by Eastern diplomacy as a direct consequence of this ill-starred outburst of hypocrisy about treaties!  Everybody has said over and over again that this war is the most tremendous war ever waged.  Nobody has said that this new treaty is the most tremendous blank cheque we have ever been forced to sign by our Parliamentary party trick of striking moral attitudes.  It is true that Mr. J.A.  Hobson realised the situation at once, and was allowed to utter a little croak in a corner; but where was the trumpet note of warning that should have rung throughout the whole Press?  Just consider what the blank cheque means.  France’s draft on it may stop at the cost of recovering Alsace and Lorraine.  We shall have to be content with a few scraps of German colony and the heavy-weight championship.  But Russia?  When will she say “Hold!  Enough!” Suppose she wants not only Poland, but Baltic Prussia?  Suppose she wants Constantinople as her port of access to the unfrozen seas, in addition to the dismemberment of Austria?  Suppose she has the brilliant idea of annexing all Prussia, for which there is really something to be said by ethnographical map-makers, Militarist madmen, and Pan-Slavist megalomaniacs?  It may be a reasonable order; but it is a large one; and the fact that we should have been committed to it without the knowledge of Parliament, without discussion, without warning, without any sort of appeal to public opinion or democratic sanction, by a stroke of Sir Edward Grey’s pen within five weeks of his having committed us in the same fashion to an appalling European war, shews how completely the Foreign Office has thrown away all pretence of being any less absolute than the Kaiser himself.  It simply offers carte blanche to the armies of the Allies without a word to the nation until the cheque is signed.  The only limit there is to the obligation is the certainty that the cheque will be dishonoured the moment the draft on it becomes too heavy.  And that may furnish a virtuous pretext for another war between the Allies themselves.  In any case no treaty can save each Ally from the brute necessity of surrendering and paying up if beaten, whether the defeat is shared by the others or not.  Did I not say that the sooner we made up our minds to the terms of the treaty of peace, so that we might know what we were fighting for, and how far we were bound to go, the better?  Instead of which we sign a ridiculous “scrap of paper” to save ourselves the intolerable fatigue of thought.

Belgium Crucified Between the European Powers.