Ten years ago! Who can remember the spirit of Europe then? Or his own
mind? That sense of horror, chilling the heart of unimaginable things,
that bewilderment because so monstrous a tragedy had come out of the
blue sky, without warning, as it seemed, for trivial causes, and then
... and then ... a call to the secret courage of the soul, a dedication
to service and sacrifice, a welling-up of old traditions, emotions,
passions, primitive instincts, which had seemed dead and useless
because of world peace and the security of civilisation.
In Great Britain it was as though the nation had been shaken by a great
wind in which the Voice of God was heard. In those first days—and
months—there was no degradation of the height to which the spirit
of the British people was uplifted. Even their enemies admit that.
The petty, squalid, rotten things of life fell from them. They put
away their own quarrels, self-interests, political and industrial
conflicts. This thing was too big for those trivialities. It was bigger
than individual lives, loves, hates, fortunes, homes or business.
The old barriers of class, strongly entrenched in the structure of
English life, were broken down with one careless and noble gesture.
The sons of the great old families joined up with the shop boys, the
peasants, the clerks, the slum-folk, and stood in the same ranks
with them as volunteers in the “war for civilisation.” The daughters
of the county gentry, of the clergy, and professional classes went
down on their knees with shop girls and servant girls, to scrub the
floors of hospitals or do any kind of work. Those wild women who had
fought the police for the Vote became ambulance drivers, nurses, farm
girls, ammunition workers, needlewomen—anything for service. The rich
poured out their money and the sons of the rich their blood. The poor
offered their bodies and all they had. It took some time for England to
understand this need of soldiers. It was not until after the Retreat
from Mons and terrible despatches, revealing dreadfully that the little
Regular Army was but a small outpost, half-destroyed after immortal
valour against overwhelming odds in France, that the recruiting
stations were stormed by the young manhood of the nation, from public
schools, factories, city offices, and the little villages of the
countryside. Husbands left their wives, lovers their sweethearts,
fathers their children, scholars their books, and enrolled themselves,
as they knew, for the chance of Death. And the women let them go, urged
them to go, and hid their tears. There was not a mother in England at
that time, or none that I knew or ever heard of, who, looking at the
strained face of her son, held him back by any passionate plea when he
raised his head and stared into her eyes and said: “I must go!”
The whole nation, apart from a few individuals, was inspired by a
common loyalty to ideals which seemed very clear and bright. They
believed, without any complications of thought and argument, without
any secret doubts, that this war had come upon the world solely because
of German brutality, unprovoked, against peaceful neighbours. Stories
of German atrocity, some true and many false, in the first invasion
of France and Belgium, deepened their horror for a nation which had
threatened civilisation itself with a return to barbarism, and under
whose rule there would be no liberty, no life worth living. The
chivalry of the British people, their love of fair play, their pity,
were outraged by the trampling of Belgium and the agony of France,
attacked by the greatest military power in the world. That was enough
for them. That was what inspired them in their first rush to the
rescue. It was only later that they understood the menace to their
own Island and Empire, whose existence was at stake. In those early
days there was no self-interest in the spiritual uprising of England
and her sister nations. There was a nobility of purpose, undimmed and
untarnished, crystal clear to simple minds, knowing nothing and caring
nothing for deeper causes of the war than German militarism and its
brutal assault. Only the newspaper press vulgarised and degraded the
splendour of this simple chivalry by its appeal to blood lust and its
call to hate and many frantic lies.