ABSTRACT

A cost analysis of British policy over the two decades considered in this book would obviously show an enormous deficit. There was very little in the way of profits to set against the immense losses of the war, in both human and material terms. 1 The acquisition of German East Africa and a strip of the Cameroons; Palestine—soon to become a hornet's nest—and paramountcy in Iraq; a distant prospect of some reparations; these were very poor returns against the rate of expenditure. The Seven Years War and even the Napoleonic Wars had been much more profitable operations. In Europe the principal benefit was the breaking—temporarily—of the German military spirit and the destruction of the German fleet, admittedly no small achievements. But against this had to be set the fact that relations with France were worse in 1922 than at any time in the preceding twenty years, and France was now the dominant military and air power in Europe. Moreover Russia, if a weak military power for the moment, was potentially more of a menace than ever before. It is ironic, in retrospect, that one of the major reasons for going to war in 1914 was to secure Russian friendship for the future.