The third volume to be published in this series deals with the origins of a war very different in scope and scale from that of 1914-18 with which Professor James Joll's volume dealt, and very different in character from the Arab-Israeli conflicts with which Dr Ritchie Ovendale's volume deals. The search for common factors in the origins of the three conflicts is perhaps a vain and unrewarding task, yet certain general points of interpretation emerge.
James Joll noted the inadequacies of intelligence and imagination of individual men in positions of supreme authority in 1914, and how those inadequacies helped to lead to the catastrophe. In the present volume Professor Nish shows how Tsar Nicholas II, essentially a man of peace, and sometimes a shrewd observer of what was happening, was for a large part of the time of the crisis on holiday or unobtainable, and was anyhow a weak man who could not halt the impending disaster. There is an irony in the fact that essentially pacific men have often been in authority at the outbreak of wars — Lord Aberdeen in 1854 (a war with which Dr Agatha Ramm will be dealing in the series), Asquith in 1914, Neville Chamberlain in 1939 (a war with which Mr Philip Bell will be dealing in the series). The limitations of Nicholas II contributed in 1904 and 1914 to tragedy on a scale which he certainly did not intend or envisage.
Another question which must be asked about the origins of wars is that of the role of simple miscalculation — the miscalculation regarding the ease with which the war can be won. Ian Nish shows that Russian ministers could not believe that their vast and powerful empire could possibly be defeated by a small upstart Asian nation. The Japanese, ironically in view of their overwhelming victory in the war, were far more cautious. But they were, in Professor Nish's words, 'cool and calculating'. Russian confidence in victory was a proud but somewhat nebulous one; Japanese confidence was less extravagant, but more firmly based on military and naval facts.
That the Arab-Israeli wars with which Ritchie Ovendale dealt in his volume in this series did not lead to a direct Russo-American confrontation was partly due to the very complexity of the situation in the Middle East. Fortunately the Russians and the Americans have never been quite sure whom to back there. Even the basic sympathy which Washington has felt for Israel has sometimes wavered. But the problems dividing Russia and Japan in 1904 were also complex, and the complexity on that occasion did not permit successful bargaining, and so did not prevent war. Yet there was certainly more room for bargaining and negotiating than some of the politicians and diplomats on both sides had the wit to realize. But Professor Nish finds the statement that the war was 'unnecessary' too simplistic. 'If the two sides could not find an agreeable basis for compromise,' he writes, 'it is hard to see how the war can be described as "preventible".' It came to be regarded as necessary in the eyes of both governments, but perhaps not equally necessary in the eyes of all politicians and diplomats concerned. Ian Nish shows very clearly that the holding of a significant post by a certain individual at a particular moment in a crisis may well affect the way the negotiations develop. The foolish belief that the will of individual diplomats or officials can have no influence on developments - that they are all in some mystical way caught up in an inevitable process - is belied by Professor Nish's account. In a classic statement in the early eighteenth century Giambattista Vico pointed out that while it may be true that God made nature, it is certainly true that Man made history: humanity cannot escape that responsibility. Someone — some people - were responsible for wars, and more often than not those people were not all on the same side.
Another general question which can be asked about most wars is whether public opinion was more eager for war than the government, or vice versa. Ian Nish suggests that in 1904 the Japanese people were more eager for war than their government, while the Russian public was less interested in the Far East than were some of their ministers. But Japan was a constitutional state while Russia was still a monolithic autocracy, so that 'public opinion' means something rather different in the two countries. Before a war there is usually a peace party and a war party —doves and hawks. As soon as the war starts the doves appear discredited, but in a defeated nation the hawks in their turn are discredited. Professor Nish tells us, in one of his brilliantly lucid concluding points, that in 1904 'there was in both countries an expansionist group tussling with a more moderate one which was equally determined to pursue national interests but in ways which would avoid confrontation or offense to other powers. The attainment of rational solutions was often lost because of the factional infighting.'
One general point of interest mentioned in this volume relates to the diplomatic paraphernalia of going to war in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A government 'declared' war before waging it, although usually not before mobilizing its armies. Thus Japan was condemned for making war in 1904 without formally declaring it. Again, half a century later, she was to be condemned for the same reason after her attack at Pearl Harbor, a point which will probably be considered by Professor Akira Iriye in the volume he is writing for this series. In 1914 the Powers went through the formalities of issuing ultimatums and declaring war, as did the British in 1939. Such niceties seem now to have been forgotten. The British and French governments made war on Egypt without declaring it in 1956, and more recently Argentina and Britain have made war on each other in the Falklands without declarations of war.
One final general point is worth noting from Professor Nish's book. When it looked extremely likely that Japan and Russia were going to war the other Powers felt that there was an obligation for them to 'appease' the conflicting parties. Their interests in keeping peace in the Far East were not, however, sufficiently strong for them to take any firm action. Still, 'appeasement' was not yet a dirty word. It became a dirty word only when a gross aberration appeared in world history, the aberration of Nazi Germany. Even then the problem of 'appeasement' was perhaps less simple than the Winston Churchills and the Anthony Edens would have had us believe. The time has surely come for the world to realize that appeasement is better than war, and that crude analogies between the present and 1938 are desperately dangerous. The sense of a duty to 'appease' felt by Western diplomats in 1904 — even though they did not carry out that duty — is not entirely without a message for the present.
HARRY HEARDER