If Mr. Maeterlinck’s theory is sound, that this war is the visible
reflection of a vast, invisible conflict, what a gigantic battle of
the unseen forces of good and evil must have been raging throughout the
universe when Europe rose on the morning of August 5, 1914! Think what
had happened. While the light was dawning, the sun was rising, and the
birds were singing over Europe, the greater nations were preparing to
turn a thousand square miles of it into a gigantic slaughter-house.
After forty years of unbroken peace, in which civilization, as
represented by law, science, surgery, medicine, art, music, literature,
and above all religion, in their ancient and central home, had been
striving to lift up man to the place he is entitled to in the scheme of
creation, war had suddenly stepped in to drag him back to the condition
of the barbarian. From this day onward he was to live in holes in the
ground, to be necessarily unclean, inevitably verminous, and liable
to loathsome diseases. Although hitherto law-abiding, and perhaps even
pious, with an ever-developing sense of the value and sanctity of human
life, he was henceforward to take joy in the destruction of thousands
of his fellow-creatures by devilish machines of death, and not to shrink
from an opportunity of thrusting his bayonet down the throat of his
enemy. He was to set fire to churches, to throw images of Christ into
the road, and, showing no mercy to old men and women and children,
to destroy all and spare none. And why? Ostensibly because one quite
commonplace Austrian gentleman had been foully murdered, but really
because a vain and ambitious and rapidly increasing nation, living on
an arid and insufficient soil, had come to consider themselves the
master-spirits of humanity, and therefore entitled to possess the earth,
or at least give law to all other nations.
“We are doing wrong, but it is necessary to do wrong, and we shall make
amends as soon as our military necessities have been served.”
“YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU”
What a mockery! What a waste! What a hideous reversion! What a
confession of blank failure on the part of civilization, including
morality and religion! But, happily, the invisible powers of evil had
not got it all their own way, even on that morning of August 5. Out of
the very shadow of battle great things were already being born among the
children of men, and chief among them were the spirits of sacrifice and
brotherhood. Even the cruel loss of nearly all that makes human
life worth living--cleanliness and purity and exemption from foul
disease--could be borne for the defence of truth and freedom. And then
it was worth a world of suffering to realize the first-fruits of that
golden age of brotherhood among all the nations of the earth (except
those of our enemy) which has been the peace-dream of humanity for
countless centuries.
We in Great Britain have no reason to be ashamed of how our country
answered the call. A few years before the outbreak of war I talked
about conscription with a British admiral in the cabin of his flagship.
“There’s not the slightest necessity for it in this country,” said the
admiral. The moment war was declared the whole nation would rise to it.
A great thrill would pass over our people from end to end of the land,
and we should have millions flocking to the colours.
The old sailor proved to be a true prophet. None of us can ever forget
the spontaneous response in August 1914 to the cry, “Your King and
country need you.” To such as, like myself, are on the shadowed side of
the hill of life, and therefore too old for service, it was a profoundly
moving thing to see how swiftly our immense voluntary army sprang (as by
a miracle) out of the earth, to look at the long lines of young soldiers
passing with their regular step through the streets of London, to think
of the situations given up, of the young wives and little children
living at home on shortened means, and of the risk taken of life being
lost just when it is most precious and most sweet.
What was the motive power that impelled the young manhood of Great
Britain to this tremendous sacrifice? The thought of our country’s
danger? The danger to France? The danger to Belgium? The fact that a man
named Palmerston had pledged his solemn word for them long years before
they were born, or even the mothers who bore them were born, that they
would go to their deaths rather than allow a great crime to be committed
or England’s oath be broken? I don’t know. I do not believe anybody
knows. But I am not ashamed of my tears when I remember it all, and sure
I am that in those first critical days of the war the invisible powers
of justice must have been fighting on our side.