Page:Justice in war time by Russell, Bertrand.djvu/144



A REPLY TO PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY.

I. INTRODUCTION

There are some among us who hold that, if our foreign policy in recent years had been conducted with more courage, more openness, and more idealism, there is a likelihood that the present European War would never have occurred. In holding this view, we are in no way concerned to defend the German Government; it is clear, at least to me, that the German Government is much more to blame than our own, both for the outbreak of war and for the way in which the war has been conducted. But Germany's guilt is no proof of our innocence. And if we remain to the end wrapped in self-righteousness, impervious to facts which are not wholly creditable to us, we shall, in the years after the war, merely repeat the errors of the past, and find ourselves, in the end, involved in other wars as terrible and destructive as the one which we are now waging.

The criticism of British foreign policy which seems to us necessary is not a personal criticism of Sir Edward Grey: he has been merely the instrument, the man who carried on an ancient tradition. I cannot discover any matter, great or small, in which the policy of the Foreign Office was different under his administration and under Lord Lansdowne's. It is