THE NEW YORK TIMES
CURRENT HISTORY
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE
THE EUROPEAN WAR
VOLUME I.
From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index
[Illustration]
NEW YORK THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 1915
Copyright 1914, 1915, By The New York Times Company
CONTENTS
NUMBER I.
WHAT MEN OF LETTERS SAY
Page
COMMON SENSE ABOUT THE WAR 11
_By George Bernard Shaw_
SHAW'S NONSENSE ABOUT BELGIUM 60
_By Arnold Bennett_
BENNETT STATES THE GERMAN CASE 63
_By George Bernard Shaw_
FLAWS IN SHAW'S LOGIC 65
_By Cunninghame Graham_
EDITORIAL COMMENT ON SHAW 66
SHAW EMPTY OF GOOD SENSE 68
_By Christabel Pankhurst_
COMMENT BY READING OF SHAW 73
OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT WILSON 76
_By George Bernard Shaw_
A GERMAN LETTER TO G. BERNARD SHAW 80
_By Herbert Eulenberg_
BRITISH AUTHORS DEFEND ENGLAND'S WAR 82
_With Facsimile Signatures_
THE FOURTH OF AUGUST--EUROPE AT WAR 87
_By H.G. Wells_
IF THE GERMANS RAID ENGLAND 89
_By H.G. Wells_
SIR OLIVER LODGE'S COMMENT 92
WHAT THE GERMAN CONSCRIPT THINKS 93
_By Arnold Bennett_
FELIX ADLER'S COMMENT 95
WHEN PEACE IS SERIOUSLY DESIRED 97
_By Arnold Bennett_
BARRIE AT BAY: WHICH WAS BROWN? 100
_An Interview on the War_
A CREDO FOR KEEPING FAITH 102
_By John Galsworthy_
HARD BLOWS, NOT HARD WORDS 103
_By Jerome K. Jerome_
"AS THEY TESTED OUR FATHERS" 106
_By Rudyard Kipling_
KIPLING AND "THE TRUCE OF THE BEAR" 107
ON THE IMPENDING CRISIS 107
_By Norman Angell_
WHY ENGLAND CAME TO BE IN IT 108
_By Gilbert K. Chesterton_
SOUTH AFRICA'S BOERS AND BRITONS 125
_By H. Rider Haggard_
CAPT. MARK HAGGARD'S DEATH IN BATTLE 128
_By H. Rider Haggard_
AN ANTI-CHRISTIAN WAR 129
_By Robert Bridges_
ENGLISH ARTISTS' PROTEST 130
TO ARMS! 132
_By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle_
CONAN DOYLE ON BRITISH MILITARISM 140
THE NEED OF BEING MERCILESS 144
_By Maurice Maeterlinck_
LETTERS TO DR. NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 146
_By Baron d'Estournelles de Constant_
THE VITAL ENERGIES OF FRANCE 153
_By Henri Bergson_
FRANCE THROUGH ENGLISH EYES 153
_With Rene Bazin's Appreciation_
THE SOLDIER OF 1914 156
_By Rene Doumic_
GERMANY'S CIVILIZED BARBARISM 160
_By Emile Boutroux_
THE GERMAN RELIGION OF DUTY 170
_By Gabriele Reuter_
A LETTER TO GERHART HAUPTMANN 174
_By Romain Rolland_
A REPLY TO ROLLAND 175
_By Gerhart Hauptmann_
ANOTHER REPLY TO ROLLAND 176
_By Karl Wolfskehl_
ARE WE BARBARIANS? 178
_By Gerhart Hauptmann_
TO AMERICANS FROM A GERMAN FRIEND 180
_By Ludwig Fulda_
APPEAL TO THE CIVILIZED WORLD 185
_By Professors of Germany_
APPEAL OF THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES 187
REPLY TO THE GERMAN PROFESSORS 188
_By British Scholars_
CONCERNING THE GERMAN PROFESSORS 192
_By Frederic Harrison_
THE REPLY FROM FRANCE 194
_By M. Yves Guyot and Prof Bellet_
TO AMERICANS IN GERMANY 198
_By Prof. Adolf von Harnack_
A REPLY TO PROF. HARNACK 201
_By Some British Theologians_
PROF. HARNACK IN REBUTTAL 203
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 206
_By Theodore Niemeyer_
COMMENT BY DR. MAX WALTER 208
NUMBER II.
WHO BEGAN THE WAR AND WHY?
SPEECHES BY KAISER WILHELM II. 210
THE MIGHTY FATE OF EUROPE 219
_As Interpreted by Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg,
German Imperial Chancellor._
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY'S VERSION OF THE WAR 226
_By Kaiser Frawz Josef and Count Berchtold_
A GERMAN REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE 228
_Certified by Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, German ex-Colonial
Secretary_
"TRUTH ABOUT GERMANY" 244
_Attested by Thirty-four German Dignitaries_
SPECULATIONS ABOUT PEACE, SEPTEMBER, 1914 273
_Report by James W. Gerard, American Ambassador at Berlin, to
President Wilson._
FIRST WARNINGS OF EUROPE'S PERIL 277
_Speeches by British Ministers_
GREAT BRITAIN'S MOBILIZATION 294
_Measures Taken Throughout the Empire Upon the Outbreak of War_
SUMMONS OF THE NATION TO ARMS 308
_British People Roused by Their Leaders_
TEACHINGS OF GEN. VON BERNHARDI 343
_By Viscount Bryce_
ENTRANCE OF FRANCE INTO THE WAR 350
_By President Poincare and Premier Viviani_
RUSSIA TO HER ENEMY 358
"THE FACTS ABOUT BELGIUM" 365
_Statement Issued by the Belgian Legation at Washington_
BELGO-BRITISH PLOT ALLEGED BY GERMANY 369
_Statement Issued by German Embassy at Washington, Oct. 13._
ATROCITIES OF THE WAR 374
BOMBARDMENT OF RHEIMS CATHEDRAL 392
_Protest Issued to Neutral Powers from French Foreign Office,
Bordeaux, Sept. 21._
THE SOCIALISTS' PART 397
NUMBER III.
WHAT AMERICANS SAY TO EUROPE
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CIVILIZATION 413
_Argued by James M. Beck_
CRITICS DISPUTE MR. BECK 431
DEFENSE OF THE DUAL ALLIANCE--REPLY 438
_By Dr. Edmund von Mach_
WHAT GLADSTONE SAID ABOUT BELGIUM 448
_By George Louis Beer_
FIGHT TO THE BITTER END 451
_An Interview with Andrew Carnegie_
WOMAN AND WAR--"Shot, Tell His Mother" (Poem) 458
_By W.E.P. French, Captain, U.S. Army_
THE WAY TO PEACE 459
_An Interview with Jacob H. Schiff_
PROF. MATHER ON MR. SCHIFF 464
THE ELIOT-SCHIFF LETTERS 465
_By Jacob H. Schiff and Charles W. Eliot_
LA CATHEDRALE (Poem Translated by Frances C. Fay) 472
_By Edmond Rostand_
PROBABLE CAUSES AND OUTCOME OF THE WAR 473
_Series of Five Letters by Charles W. Eliot,
with Related Correspondence_
THE LORD OF HOSTS (Poem) 501
_By Joseph B. Gilder_
A WAR OF DISHONOR 502
_By David Starr Jordan_
MIGHT OR RIGHT 503
_By John Grier Hibben_
JEANNE D'ARC--1914 (Poem) 506
_By Alma Durant Nicholson_
THE KAISER AND BELGIUM (With controversial letters) 507
_By John W. Burgess_
AMERICA'S PERIL IN JUDGING GERMANY 515
_By William M. Sloane_
POSSIBLE PROFITS FROM WAR 526
_Interview with Franklin H. Giddings_
"TO AMERICANS LEAVING GERMANY" 533
_A German Circular_
GERMAN DECLARATIONS 534
_By Rudolf Eucken and Ernst Haeckel_
THE EUCKEN AND HAECKEL CHARGES 537
_By John Warbeke_
CONCERNING GERMAN CULTURE 541
_By Brander Matthews_
CULTURE VS. KULTUR 543
_By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr._
THE TRESPASS IN BELGIUM 545
_By John Grier Hibben_
APPORTIONING THE BLAME 548
_By Arthur v. Briesen_
PARTING (Poem) 553
_By Louise von Wetter_
FRENCH HATE AND ENGLISH JEALOUSY 554
_By Kuno Francke_
IN DEFENSE OF AUSTRIA 559
_By Baron L. Hengelmuller_
RUSSIAN ATROCITIES 563
_By George Haven Putnam_
"THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE" 565
_Interview with Nicholas Murray Butler_
A NEW WORLD MAP 571
_By Wilhelm Ostwald_
THE VERDICT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 573
_By Newell Dwight Hillis_
TIPPERARY (Poem) 581
_By John B. Kennedy_
AS AMERICA SEES THE WAR 582
_By Harold Begbie_
TO MELOS, POMEGRANATE ISLE (Poem) 587
_By Grace Harriet Macurdy_
WHAT AMERICA CAN DO 588
_By Lord Channing of Wellingborough_
TO A COUSIN GERMAN (Poem) 593
_By Adeline Adams_
WHAT THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS MAY BE 594
_By Irving Fisher_
EFFECTS OF WAR ON AMERICA 600
_By Roland G. Usher_
GERMANY OF THE FUTURE 605
_Interview with M. de Lapredelle_
GERMANY THE AGGRESSOR 609
_By Albert Sauveur_
MILITARISM AND CHRISTIANITY 610
_By Lyman Abbott_
VIGIL (Poem) 612
_By Hortense Flexner_
NIETZSCHE AND GERMAN CULTURE 613
_By Abraham Solomon_
BELGIUM'S BITTER NEED 614
_By Sir Gilbert Parker_
NUMBER IV.
THE WAR AT CLOSE QUARTERS
SIR JOHN FRENCH'S OWN STORY 619
_Famous Dispatches of the
British Commander in Chief to Lord Kitchener_
STORY OF THE "EYE WITNESS" 650
_By Col. E.D. Swinton of the Intelligence
Department of the British General Staff_
THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY (Poem) 678
_By Edward Neville Vose_
THE GERMAN ENTRY INTO BRUSSELS (With Map) 679
_By John Boon_
THE FALL OF ANTWERP 682
_By a Correspondent of The London
Daily Chronicle_
AS THE FRENCH FELL BACK ON PARIS 689
_By G.H. Perris_
THE RETREAT TO PARIS 691
_By Philip Gibbs_
A ZOUAVE'S STORY 704
_By Philip Gibbs_
WHEN WAR BURST ON ARRAS 707
_By a Special Correspondent_
THE BATTLES IN BELGIUM (With Map) 711
_By The Associated Press_
SEEKING WOUNDED ON BATTLE FRONT 714
_By Philip Gibbs_
AT THE KAISER'S HEADQUARTERS 718
_By Cyril Brown of The New York Times_
HOW THE BELGIANS FIGHT 725
_By a Correspondent of The London Daily News_
A VISIT TO THE FIRING LINE IN FRANCE 727
_By a Correspondent of The New York Times_
UNBURIED DEAD STREW LORRAINE (With Map) 729
_By Philip Gibbs_
ALONG THE GERMAN LINES NEAR METZ 731
_By The Associated Press_
THE SLAUGHTER IN ALSACE 736
_By John H. Cox_
RENNENKAMPF ON THE RUSSIAN BORDER 738
_By a Correspondent of The London
Daily Chronicle_
THE FIRST FIGHT AT LODZ (With Map) 740
_By Perceval Gibbon_
THE FIRST INVASION OF SERBIA (With Map) 742
_By a Correspondent of The London Standard_
THE ATTACK ON TSING-TAU 745
_By Jefferson Jones_
THE GERMAN ATTACK ON TAHITI 748
_As Told by Miss Geni La France, an Eyewitness_
THE BLOODLESS CAPTURE OF GERMAN SAMOA 749
_By Malcolm Ross, F.R.G.S._
HOW THE CRESSY SANK 752
_By Edgar Rowan_
GERMAN STORY OF THE HELIGOLAND FIGHT 754
_By a Special Correspondent of The New York Times_
THE SINKING OF THE CRESSY AND THE HOGUE 755
_By the Senior Surviving Officers,
Commander Bertram W.L. Nicholson and
Commander Reginald A. Norton_
THE SINKING OF THE HAWKE 757
_By a Correspondent of The London
Daily Chronicle_
THE EMDEN'S LAST FIGHT 758
_By the Cable Operator at Cocos Islands_
CROWDS SEE THE NIGER SINK 760
_By a Correspondent of The London
Daily Chronicle_
LIEUTENANT WEDDIGEN'S OWN STORY 762
_By Herbert B. Swope and Capt. Lieut. Otto
Weddigen_
THE SOLILOQUY OF AN OLD SOLDIER (Poem) 764
_By O.C.A. Child_
THE EFFECTS OF WAR IN FOUR COUNTRIES 765
_By Irvin S. Cobb_
HOW PARIS DROPPED GAYETY 767
_By Anne Rittenhouse_
PARIS IN OCTOBER 770
_From The London Times_
FRANCE AND ENGLAND AS SEEN IN WAR TIME 772
_Interview with F. Hopkinson Smith_
THE HELPLESS VICTIMS 776
_By Mrs. Nina Larrey Duryee_
A NEW RUSSIA MEETS GERMANY 777
_By Perceval Gibbon_
BELGIAN CITIES GERMANIZED 780
_By Cyril Brown of The New York Times_
THE BELGIAN RUIN 786
_By J.H. Whitehouse, M.P._
THE WOUNDED SERB 788
_From The London Times_
SPY ORGANIZATION IN ENGLAND 790
_British Home Office Communication_
CHRONOLOGY OF THE WAR 793
THE MEN OF THE EMDEN (Poem) 816
_By Thomas R. Ybarra_
NUMBER V.
THE NEW RUSSIA SPEAKS
AN APPEAL BY RUSSIAN AUTHORS, ARTISTS AND ACTORS 817
_With Their Signatures_
RUSSIA IN LITERATURE 819
_By British Men of Letters_
RUSSIA AND EUROPE'S WAR 821
_By Paul Vinogradoff_
RUSSIAN APPEAL FOR THE POLES 825
_By A. Konovalov of the Russian Duma_
I AM FOR PEACE (Poem) 826
_By Lurana Sheldon_
UNITED RUSSIA 827
_By Peter Struve_
PRINCE TRUBETSKOI'S APPEAL TO RUSSIANS 830
_To Help the Polish Victims of War_
HOW PROHIBITION CAME TO RUSSIA 831
_An Interview with the Reformer Tchelisheff_
INFLUENCE OF THE WAR UPON RUSSIAN INDUSTRY 834
_By the Russian Ministry of Commerce_
DECLARATION OF THE RUSSIAN INDUSTRIAL INTERESTS 835
A RUSSIAN FINANCIAL AUTHORITY ON THE WAR 836
_By Prof. Migoulin_
PROPOSED INTERNAL LOANS OF RUSSIA 837
(_Prof. Migoulin's Plan_)
HOW RUSSIAN MANUFACTURERS FEEL 838
_Digested from Russkia Vedomosti_
NEW SOURCES OF REVENUE NEEDED 839
_By A. Sokolov_
OUR RUSSIAN ALLY 840
_By Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace_
CONFISCATION OF GERMAN PATENTS 849
_By the Russian Ministry of Commerce_
A RUSSIAN INCOME TAX 850
_Proposed by the Ministry of Finance_
TOOLS OF THE RUSSIAN JUGGERNAUT 851
_By M.J. Bonn_
FATE OF THE JEWS IN POLAND 854
_By Georg Brandes_
COMMERCIAL TREATIES AFTER THE WAR 863
_By P. Maslov_
PHOTOGRAPHIC REVIEW OF THE WAR 865
_48 War Pictures Printed in Rotogravure_
PATRIOTISM AND ENDURANCE 913
_The Pastoral Letter of Cardinal D.J. Mercier,
Archbishop of Malines_
APPEAL TO AMERICA FOR BELGIUM (Poem) 924
_By Thomas Hardy_
WITH THE GERMAN ARMY 925
_By Cyril Brown_
STORY OF THE MAN WHO FIRED ON RHEIMS CATHEDRAL 928
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS'S COMMENT 931
THE GERMAN AIRMEN 932
GERMAN GENERALS TALK OF THE WAR 934
SWIFT REVERSAL TO BARBARISM 939
_By Vance Thompson_
CIVIL LIFE IN BERLIN 943
_From The London Times_
BELGIAN BOY TELLS STORY OF AERSCHOT 945
_From The New York Times_
THE NEUTRALS (Poem) 948
_By Beatrice Barry_
FIFTEEN MINUTES ON THE YSER 949
_From The New York Times_
SEEING NIEUPORT UNDER SHELL FIRE 951
_From The New York Times_
RAID ON SCARBOROUGH SEEN FROM A WINDOW 954
_By Ruth Kauffmann_
HOW THE BARONESS HID HER HUSBAND ON A VESSEL 956
_From The New York Times_
WARSAW SWAMPED WITH REFUGEES 957
_By H.W. Bodkinson_
AFTER THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE IN GALICIA 958
_From The London Times_
OFFICER IN BATTLE HAD LITTLE FEELING 959
_By The Associated Press_
THE BATTLE OF NEW YEAR'S DAY 961
_By Perceval Gibbon_
BASS'S STORY 963
_From The New York Times_
THE WASTE OF GERMAN LIVES 964
_By Perceval Gibbon_
THE FLIGHT INTO SWITZERLAND 966
_By Ethel Therese Hugh_
ONCE FAIR BELGRADE IS A SKELETON CITY 969
_From The New York Times_
LETTERS AND DIARIES 971
_A Group of Soldiers' Letters_
"CHANT OF HATE AGAINST ENGLAND" 984
_How Ernst Lissauer's Lines were
"Sung to Pieces" in Germany_
ANSWERING THE "CHANT OF HATE" 988
_By Beatrice M. Barry_
ENGLAND CAUSED THE WAR 989
_By T. von Bethmann-Hollweg, German
Imperial Chancellor_
A SONG OF THE SIEGE GUN (Poem) 992
_By Katharine Drayton Mayrant Simons, Jr._
WHY ENGLAND FIGHTS GERMANY 993
_By Hilaire Belloc_
AT THE VILLA ACHILLEION, CORFU (Poem) 999
_By H.T. Sudduth_
GERMANY'S STRATEGIC RAILWAYS (With Map) 1000
_By Walter Littlefield_
GLORY OF WAR (Poem) 1004
_By Adeline Adams_
CHRONOLOGY OF THE WAR 1007
NUMBER VI.
THE CALDRON OF THE BALKANS
HOW TURKEY WENT TO WAR 1025
SERBIA AND HER NEIGHBORS 1036
LITTLE MONTENEGRO SPEAKS 1043
BULGARIA'S ATTITUDE 1044
GREECE'S WATCHFUL WAITING 1050
WHERE RUMANIA STANDS IN THE CRISIS 1054
EXIT ALBANIA? 1062
THE WAR IN THE BALKANS 1068
_By A.T. Polyzoides_
THE EUROPEAN WAR AS SEEN BY CARTOONISTS 1073
GERMANY VS. BELGIUM 1101
_Case of the Secret Military Documents
Presented by Both Sides_
THE BIG AND THE GREAT (Poem) 1114
_By William Archer_
"FROM THE BODY OF THIS DEATH" (Poem) 1119
_By Sidney Low_
"A SCRAP OF PAPER" 1120
_By Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg
and Sir Edward Grey_
THE KAISER AT DONCHERY 1125
_By The Associated Press_
HAIL! A HYMN TO BELGIUM (Music by F.H. Cowen) 1126
_By John Galsworthy_
HOLLAND'S FUTURE (With Map) 1128
_By H.G. Wells_
FRENCH OFFICIAL REPORT ON GERMAN ATROCITIES 1133
A FRENCH MAYOR'S PUNISHMENT 1163
_By The Associated Press_
WE WILL FIGHT TO THE END 1164
_By Premier Viviani of France_
_NUITS BLANCHES_ 1166
_By H.S. Haskins_
UNCONQUERED FRANCE 1167
_From the Bulletin Francais_
FOUR MONTHS OF WAR (With Map) 1169
_From the Bulletin des Armees_
LONG LIVE THE ALLIES! 1174
_By Claude Monet_
UNITED STATES FAIR TO ALL 1175
_By William J. Bryan,
American Secretary of State_
THE HOUSE WITH SEALED DOORS (Poem) 1183
_By Edith M. Thomas_
SEIZURES OF AMERICAN CARGOES 1184
_By William J. Bryan,
American Secretary of State_
GERMAN CROWN PRINCE TO AMERICA 1187
_By The Associated Press_
THE OFFICIAL BRITISH EXPLANATION 1188
_By Sir Edward Grey_
ITALY AND THE WAR (With Map) 1192
_By William Roscoe Thayer_
HE HEARD THE BUGLES CALLING (Poem) 1198
_By Carey C.D. Briggs_
GERMAN SOLDIERS WRITE HOME 1199
WAR CORRESPONDENCE 1207
THE BROKEN ROSE (TO KING ALBERT) 1210
_By Annie Vivanti Chartres_
THE HEROIC LANGUAGE (Poem) 1216
_By Alice Meynell_
CHRONOLOGY OF THE WAR 1224
TO HIS MAJESTY KING ALBERT (Poem) 1228
_By William Watson_
[Illustration: GEORGE BERNARD SHAW]
[Illustration: ARNOLD BENNETT. _See Page_ 60]
"Common Sense About the War"
By George Bernard Shaw.
I.
"_Let a European war break out--the war, perhaps, between the
Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, which so many journalists
and politicians in England and Germany contemplate with criminal
levity. If the combatants prove to be equally balanced, it may,
after the first battles, smoulder on for thirty years. What will be
the population of London, or Manchester, or Chemnitz, or Bremen, or
Milan, at the end of it_?" ("The Great Society," by Graham Wallas.
June, 1914.)
(_Copyright, 1914, By The New York Times Company._)
The time has now come to pluck up courage and begin to talk and write
soberly about the war. At first the mere horror of it stunned the more
thoughtful of us; and even now only those who are not in actual contact
with or bereaved relation to its heartbreaking wreckage can think sanely
about it, or endure to hear others discuss it coolly. As to the
thoughtless, well, not for a moment dare I suggest that for the first
few weeks they were all scared out of their wits; for I know too well
that the British civilian does not allow his perfect courage to be
questioned; only experienced soldiers and foreigners are allowed the
infirmity of fear. But they certainly were--shall I say a little upset?
They felt in that solemn hour that England was lost if only one single
traitor in their midst let slip the truth about anything in the
universe. It was a perilous time for me. I do not hold my tongue easily;
and my inborn dramatic faculty and professional habit as a playwright
prevent me from taking a one-sided view even when the most probable
result of taking a many-sided one is prompt lynching. Besides, until
Home Rule emerges from its present suspended animation, I shall retain
my Irish capacity for criticising England with something of the
detachment of a foreigner, and perhaps with a certain slightly malicious
taste for taking the conceit out of her. Lord Kitchener made a mistake
the other day in rebuking the Irish volunteers for not rallying faster
to the defense of "their country." They do not regard it as their
country yet. He should have asked them to come forward as usual and help
poor old England through a stiff fight. Then it would have been all
right.
Having thus frankly confessed my bias, which you can allow for as a
rifleman allows for the wind, I give my views for what they are worth.
They will be of some use; because, however blinded I may be by prejudice
or perversity, my prejudices in this matter are not those which blind
the British patriot, and therefore I am fairly sure to see some things
that have not yet struck him.
And first, I do not see this war as one which has welded Governments and
peoples into complete and sympathetic solidarity as against the common
enemy. I see the people of England united in a fierce detestation and
defiance of the views and acts of Prussian Junkerism. And I see the
German people stirred to the depths by a similar antipathy to English
Junkerism, and anger at the apparent treachery and duplicity of the
attack made on them by us in their extremest peril from France and
Russia. I see both nations duped, but alas! not quite unwillingly duped,
by their Junkers and Militarists into wreaking on one another the wrath
they should have spent in destroying Junkerism and Militarism in their
own country. And I see the Junkers and Militarists of England and
Germany jumping at the chance they have longed for in vain for many
years of smashing one another and establishing their own oligarchy as
the dominant military power in the world. No doubt the heroic remedy for
this tragic misunderstanding is that both armies should shoot their
officers and go home to gather in their harvests in the villages and
make a revolution in the towns; and though this is not at present a
practicable solution, it must be frankly mentioned, because it or
something like it is always a possibility in a defeated conscript army
if its commanders push it beyond human endurance when its eyes are
opening to the fact that in murdering its neighbours it is biting off
its nose to vex its face, besides riveting the intolerable yoke of
Militarism and Junkerism more tightly than ever on its own neck. But
there is no chance--or, as our Junkers would put it, no danger--of our
soldiers yielding to such an ecstasy of common sense. They have enlisted
voluntarily; they are not defeated nor likely to be; their
communications are intact and their meals reasonably punctual; they are
as pugnacious as their officers; and in fighting Prussia they are
fighting a more deliberate, conscious, tyrannical, personally insolent,
and dangerous Militarism than their own. Still, even for a voluntary
professional army, that possibility exists, just as for the civilian
there is a limit beyond which taxation, bankruptcy, privation, terror,
and inconvenience cannot be pushed without revolution or a social
dissolution more ruinous than submission to conquest. I mention all
this, not to make myself wantonly disagreeable, but because military
persons, thinking naturally that there is nothing like leather, are now
talking of this war as likely to become a permanent institution like the
Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's, forgetting, I think, that the
rate of consumption maintained by modern military operations is much
greater relatively to the highest possible rate of production
maintainable under the restrictions of war time than it has ever been
before.
*The Day of Judgment.*
The European settlement at the end of the war will be effected, let us
hope, not by a regimental mess of fire-eaters sitting around an up-ended
drum in a vanquished Berlin or Vienna, but by some sort of Congress in
which all the Powers (including, very importantly, the United States of
America) will be represented. Now I foresee a certain danger of our
being taken by surprise at that Congress, and making ourselves
unnecessarily difficult and unreasonable, by presenting ourselves to it
in the character of Injured Innocence. We shall not be accepted in that
character. Such a Congress will most certainly regard us as being, next
to the Prussians (if it makes even that exception), the most quarrelsome
people in the universe. I am quite conscious of the surprise and scandal
this anticipation may cause among my more highminded (_hochnaesig_, the
Germans call it) readers. Let me therefore break it gently by
expatiating for a while on the subject of Junkerism and Militarism
generally, and on the history of the literary propaganda of war between
England and Potsdam which has been going on openly for the last forty
years on both sides. I beg the patience of my readers during this
painful operation. If it becomes unbearable, they can always put the
paper down and relieve themselves by calling the Kaiser Attila and Mr.
Keir Hardie a traitor twenty times or so. Then they will feel, I hope,
refreshed enough to resume. For, after all, abusing the Kaiser or Keir
Hardie or me will not hurt the Germans, whereas a clearer view of the
political situation will certainly help us. Besides, I do not believe
that the trueborn Englishman in his secret soul relishes the pose of
Injured Innocence any more than I do myself. He puts it on only because
he is told that it is respectable.
*Junkers All.*
What is a Junker? Is it a German officer of twenty-three, with offensive
manners, and a habit of cutting down innocent civilians with his sabre?
Sometimes; but not at all exclusively that or anything like that. Let us
resort to the dictionary. I turn to the _Encyclopaedisches Woerterbuch_
of Muret Sanders. Excuse its quaint German-English.
*Junker* = Young nobleman, younker, lording, country squire, country
gentleman, squirearch. *Junkerberrschaft* = squirearchy, landocracy.
*Junkerleben* = life of a country gentleman, (_figuratively_) a jolly
life. *Junkerpartei* = country party. *Junkerwirtschaft* = doings of the
country party.
Thus we see that the Junker is by no means peculiar to Prussia. We may
claim to produce the article in a perfection that may well make Germany
despair of ever surpassing us in that line. Sir Edward Grey is a Junker
from his topmost hair to the tips of his toes; and Sir Edward is a
charming man, incapable of cutting down even an Opposition front
bencher, or of telling a German he intends to have him shot. Lord Cromer
is a Junker. Mr. Winston Churchill is an odd and not disagreeable
compound of Junker and Yankee: his frank anti-German pugnacity is
enormously more popular than the moral babble (Milton's phrase) of his
sanctimonious colleagues. He is a bumptious and jolly Junker, just as
Lord Curzon is an uppish Junker. I need not string out the list. In
these islands the Junker is literally all over the shop.
It is very difficult for anyone who is not either a Junker or a
successful barrister to get into an English Cabinet, no matter which
party is in power, or to avoid resigning when we strike up the drum. The
Foreign Office is a Junker Club. Our governing classes are
overwhelmingly Junker: all who are not Junkers are riff-raff whose only
claim to their position is the possession of ability of some sort:
mostly ability to make money. And, of course, the Kaiser is a Junker,
though less true-blue than the Crown Prince, and much less autocratic
than Sir Edward Grey, who, without consulting us, sends us to war by a
word to an ambassador and pledges all our wealth to his foreign allies
by a stroke of his pen.
*What Is a Militarist?*
Now that we know what a Junker is, let us have a look at the
Militarists. A Militarist is a person who believes that all real power
is the power to kill, and that Providence is on the side of the big
battalions. The most famous Militarist at present, thanks to the zeal
with which we have bought and quoted his book, is General Friedrich von
Bernhardi. But we cannot allow the General to take precedence of our own
writers as a Militarist propagandist. I am old enough to remember the
beginning of the anti-German phase of that very ancient propaganda in
England. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 left Europe very much
taken aback. Up to that date nobody was afraid of Prussia, though
everybody was a little afraid of France; and we were keeping "buffer
States" between ourselves and Russia in the east. Germany had indeed
beaten Denmark; but then Denmark was a little State, and was abandoned
in her hour of need by those who should have helped her, to the great
indignation of Ibsen. Germany had also beaten Austria; but somehow
everybody seems able to beat Austria, though nobody seems able to draw
the moral that defeats do not matter as much as the Militarists think,
Austria being as important as ever. Suddenly Germany beat France right
down into the dust, by the exercise of an organized efficiency in war of
which nobody up to then had any conception. There was not a State in
Europe that did not say to itself: "Good Heavens! what would happen if
she attacked _us_?" We in England thought of our old-fashioned army and
our old-fashioned commander George Ranger (of Cambridge), and our War
Office with its Crimean tradition of imbecility; and we shook in our
shoes. But we were not such fools as to leave it at that. We soon
produced the first page of the Bernhardian literature: an anonymous
booklet entitled _The Battle of Dorking_. It was not the first page of
English Militarist literature: you have only to turn back to the burst
of glorification of war which heralded the silly Crimean campaign
(Tennyson's _Maud_ is a surviving sample) to find paeans to Mars which
would have made Treitschke blush (perhaps they did); but it was the
first page in which it was assumed as a matter of course that Germany
and not France or Russia was England's natural enemy. _The Battle of
Dorking_ had an enormous sale; and the wildest guesses were current as
to its authorship. And its moral was "To arms; or the Germans will
besiege London as they besieged Paris." From that time until the
present, the British propaganda of war with Germany has never ceased.
The lead given by _The Battle of Dorking_ was taken up by articles in
the daily press and the magazines. Later on came the Jingo fever
(anti-Russian, by the way; but let us not mention that just now),
Stead's _Truth About the Navy_, Mr. Spenser Wilkinson, the suppression
of the Channel Tunnel, Mr. Robert Blatchford, Mr. Garvin, Admiral Maxse,
Mr. Newbolt, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, _The National Review_, Lord Roberts,
the Navy League, the imposition of an Imperialist Foreign Secretary on
the Liberal Cabinet, Mr. Wells's _War in the Air_ (well worth re-reading
just now), and the Dreadnoughts. Throughout all these agitations the
enemy, the villain of the piece, the White Peril, was Prussia and her
millions of German conscripts. At first, in _The Battle of Dorking_
phase, the note was mainly defensive. But from the moment when the
Kaiser began to copy our Armada policy by building a big fleet, the
anti-German agitation became openly aggressive; and the cry that the
German fleet or ours must sink, and that a war between England and
Germany was bound to come some day, speedily ceased to be merely a cry
with our Militarists and became an axiom with them. And what our
Militarists said our Junkers echoed; and our Junker diplomatists played
for. The story of how they manoeuvred to hem Germany and Austria in with
an Anglo-Franco-Russian combination will be found told with soldierly
directness and with the proud candor of a man who can see things from
his own side only in the article by Lord Roberts in the current number
of _The Hibbert Journal_ (October, 1914). There you shall see also,
after the usual nonsense about Nietzsche, the vision of "British
administrators bearing the White Man's Burden," of "young men, fresh
from the public schools of Britain, coming eagerly forward to carry on
the high traditions of Imperial Britain in each new dependency which
comes under our care," of "our fitness as an Imperial race," of "a great
task committed to us by Providence," of "the will to conquer that has
never failed us," of our task of "assuming control of one-fifth of the
earth's surface and the care of one in five of all the inhabitants of
the world." Not a suggestion that the inhabitants of the world are
perhaps able to take care of themselves. Not even a passing recollection
when that White Man's Burden is in question that the men outside the
British Empire, and even inside the German Empire, are by no means
exclusively black. Only the _sancta simplicitas_ that glories in "the
proud position of England," the "sympathy, tolerance, prudence and
benevolence of our rule" in the east (as shown, the Kaiser is no doubt
sarcastically remarking, in the Delhi sedition trial), the chivalrous
feeling that it is our highest duty to save the world from the horrible
misfortune of being governed by anybody but those young men fresh from
the public schools of Britain. Change the words Britain and British to
Germany and German, and the Kaiser will sign the article with
enthusiasm. _His_ opinion, _his_ attitude (subject to that merely verbal
change) word for word.
*Six of One: Half-a-Dozen of The Other.*
Now, please observe that I do not say that the agitation was
unreasonable. I myself steadily advocated the formation of a formidable
armament, and ridiculed the notion that, we, who are wasting hundreds of
millions annually on idlers and wasters, could not easily afford double,
treble, quadruple our military and naval expenditure. I advocated the
compulsion of every man to serve his country, both in war and peace. The
idlers and wasters perceiving dimly that I meant the cost to come out of
their pockets and meant to use the admission that riches should not
exempt a man from military service as an illustration of how absurd it
is to allow them to exempt him from civil service, did not embrace my
advocacy with enthusiasm; so I must reaffirm it now lest it should be
supposed that I am condemning those whose proceedings I am describing.
Though often horribly wrong in principle, they were quite right in
practice as far as they went. But they must stand to their guns now that
the guns are going off. They must not pretend that they were harmless
Radical lovers of peace, and that the propaganda of Militarism and of
inevitable war between England and Germany is a Prussian infamy for
which the Kaiser must be severely punished. That is not fair, not true,
not gentlemanly. We began it; and if they met us half-way, as they
certainly did, it is not for us to reproach them. When the German
fire-eaters drank to The Day (of Armageddon) they were drinking to the
day of which our Navy League fire-eaters had first said "It's bound to
come." Therefore, let us have no more nonsense about the Prussian Wolf
and the British Lamb, the Prussian Machiavelli and the English
Evangelist. We cannot shout for years that we are boys of the bulldog
breed, and then suddenly pose as gazelles. No. When Europe and America
come to settle the treaty that will end this business (for America is
concerned in it as much as we are), they will not deal with us as the
lovable and innocent victims of a treacherous tyrant and a savage
soldiery. They will have to consider how these two incorrigibly
pugnacious and inveterately snobbish peoples, who have snarled at one
another for forty years with bristling hair and grinning fangs, and are
now rolling over with their teeth in one another's throats, are to be
tamed into trusty watch-dogs of the peace of the world. I am sorry to
spoil the saintly image with a halo which the British Jingo journalist
sees just now when he looks in the glass; but it must be done if we are
to behave reasonably in the imminent day of reckoning.
And now back to Friedrich von Bernhardi.
*General Von Bernhardi.*
Like many soldier-authors, Friedrich is very readable; and he maintains
the good and formidable part of the Bismarck tradition: that is, he is
not a humbug. He looks facts in the face; he deceives neither himself
nor his readers; and if he were to tell lies--as he would no doubt do as
stoutly as any British, French, or Russian officer if his country's
safety were at stake--he would know that he was telling them. Which last
we think very bad taste on his part, if not downright wickedness.
It is true that he cites Frederick the Great as an exemplary master of
war and of _Weltpolitik_. But his chief praise in this department is
reserved for England. It is from our foreign policy, he says, that he
has learnt what our journalists denounce as "the doctrine of the bully,
of the materialist, of the man with gross ideals: a doctrine of
diabolical evil." He frankly accepts that doctrine from us (as if our
poor, honest muddle-heads had ever formulated anything so intellectual
as a doctrine), and blames us for nothing but for allowing the United
States to achieve their solidarity and become formidable to us when we
might have divided them by backing up the South in the Civil War. He
shows in the clearest way that if Germany does not smash England,
England will smash Germany by springing at her the moment she can catch
her at a disadvantage. In a word he prophesies that we, his great
masters in _Realpolitik_, will do precisely what our Junkers have just
made us do, It is we who have carried out the Bernhardi programme: it is
Germany who has neglected it. He warned Germany to make an alliance with
Italy, Austria, Turkey, and America, before undertaking the subjugation,
first of France, then of England. But a prophet is not without honour
save in his own country; and Germany has allowed herself to be caught
with no ally but Austria between France and Russia, and thereby given
the English Junkers their opportunity. They have seized it with a
punctuality that must flatter Von Bernhardi, even though the compliment
be at the expense of his own country. The Kaiser did not give them
credit for being keener Junkers than his own. It was an unpleasant,
indeed an infuriating surprise. All that a Kaiser could do without
unbearable ignominy to induce them to keep their bulldogs off and give
him fair play with his two redoubtable foes, he did. But they laughed
Frederick the Great's laugh and hurled all our forces at him, as he
might have done to us, on Bernhardian principles, if he had caught us at
the same disadvantage. Officially, the war is Junker-cut-Junker,
militarist-cut-Militarist; and we must fight it out, not
_Heuchler_-cut-Hypocrite, but hammer and tongs.
*Militarist Myopia.*
Unofficially, it is quite another matter. Democracy, even
Social-Democracy, though as hostile to British Junkers as to German
ones, and under no illusion as to the obsolescence and colossal
stupidity of modern war, need not lack enthusiasm for the combat, which
may serve their own ends better than those of their political opponents.
For Bernhardi the Brilliant and our own very dull Militarists are alike
mad: the war will not do any of the things for which they rushed into
it. It is much more likely to do the things they most dread and
deprecate: in fact, it has already swept them into the very kind of
organization they founded an Anti-Socialist League to suppress. To shew
how mad they are, let us suppose the war carries out their western
program to the last item. Suppose France rises from the war victorious,
happy and glorious, with Alsace and Lorraine regained, Rheims cathedral
repaired in the best modern trade style, and a prodigious indemnity in
her pocket! Suppose we tow the German fleet into Portsmouth, and leave
Hohenzollern metaphorically under the heel of Romanoff and actually in a
comfortable villa in Chislehurst, the hero of all its tea parties and
the judge of all its gymkhanas! Well, cry the Militarists, suppose it by
all means: could we desire anything better? Now I happen to have a
somewhat active imagination; and it flatly refuses to stop at this
convenient point. I must go on supposing. Suppose France, with its
military prestige raised once more to the Napoleonic point, spends its
indemnity in building an invincible Armada, stronger and nearer to us
than the German one we are now out to destroy! Suppose Sir Edward Grey
remonstrates, and Monsieur Delcasse replies, "Russia and France have
humbled one Imperial Bully, and are prepared to humble another. I have
not forgotten Fashoda. Stop us if you can; or turn, if you like, for
help to the Germany we have smashed and disarmed!" Of what use will all
this bloodshed be then, with the old situation reproduced in an
aggravated form, the enemy closer to our shores, a raid far more
feasible, the tradition of "natural enmity" to steel the foe, and
Waterloo to be wiped out like Sedan? A child in arms should be able to
see that this idiotic notion of relaxing the military pressure on us by
smashing this or that particular Power is like trying to alter the
pressure of the ocean by dipping up a bucket of water from the North Sea
and pouring it into the Bay of Biscay.
I purposely omit more easterly supposings as to what victorious Russia
might do. But a noble emancipation of Poland and Finland at her own
expense, and of Bosnia and Harzegovina at Austria's, might easily
suggest to our nervous Militarists that a passion for the freedom of
Egypt and India might seize her, and remind her that we were Japan's
ally in the day of Russia's humiliation in Manchuria. So there at once
is your Balance of Power problem in Asia enormously aggravated by
throwing Germany out of the anti-Russian scale and grinding her to
powder. Even in North Africa--but enough is enough. You can _durchhauen_
your way out of the frying pan, but only into the fire. Better take
Nietzsche's brave advice, and make it your point of honour to "live
dangerously." History shews that it is often the way to live long.
*Learning Nothing: Forgetting Everything.*
But let me test the Militarist theory, not by a hypothetical future, but
by the accomplished and irrevocable past. Is it true that nations must
conquer or go under, and that military conquest means prosperity and
power for the victor and annihilation for the vanquished? I have already
alluded in passing to the fact that Austria has been beaten repeatedly:
by France, by Italy, by Germany, almost by everybody who has thought it
worth while to have a whack at her; and yet she is one of the Great
Powers; and her alliance has been sought by invincible Germany. France
was beaten by Germany in 1870 with a completeness that seemed
impossible; yet France has since enlarged her territory whilst Germany
is still pleading in vain for a place in the sun. Russia was beaten by
the Japanese in Manchuria on a scale that made an end forever of the old
notion that the West is the natural military superior of the East; yet
it is the terror of Russia that has driven Germany into her present
desperate onslaught on France; and it is the Russian alliance on which
France and England are depending for their assurance of ultimate
success. We ourselves confess that the military efficiency with which we
have so astonished the Germans is the effect, not of Waterloo and
Inkerman, but of the drubbing we got from the Boers, who we aid probably
have beaten us if we had been anything like their own size. Greece has
lately distinguished herself in war within a few years by a most
disgraceful beating of the Turks. It would be easy to multiply instances
from remoter history: for example, the effect on England's position of
the repeated defeats of our troops by the French under Luxembourg in the
Balance of Power War at the end of the seventeenth century differed
surprisingly little, if at all, from the effect of our subsequent
victories under Marlborough. And the inference from the Militarist
theory that the States which at present count for nothing as military
Powers necessarily count for nothing at all is absurd on the face of it.
Monaco seems to be, on the whole, the most prosperous and comfortable
State in Europe.
In short, Militarism must be classed as one of the most inconsiderately
foolish of the bogus "sciences" which the last half century has produced
in such profusion, and which have the common characteristic of revolting
all sane souls, and being stared out of countenance by the broad facts
of human experience. The only rule of thumb that can be hazarded on the
strength of actual practice is that wars to maintain or upset the
Balance of Power between States, called by inaccurate people Balance of
Power wars, and by accurate people Jealousy of Power wars, never
establish the desired peaceful and secure equilibrium. They may exercise
pugnacity, gratify spite, assuage a wound to national pride, or enhance
or dim a military reputation; but that is all. And the reason is, as I
shall shew very conclusively later on, that there is only one way in
which one nation can really disable another, and that is a way which no
civilized nation dare even discuss.
*Are We Hypocrites?*
And now I proceed from general considerations to the diplomatic history
of the present case, as I must in order to make our moral position
clear. But first, lest I should lose all credit by the startling
incompatibility between the familiar personal character of our statesmen
and the proceedings for which they are officially responsible, I must
say a word about the peculiar psychology of English statesmanship, not
only for the benefit of my English readers (who do not know that it is
peculiar just as they do not know that water has any taste because it is
always in their mouths), but as a plea for a more charitable
construction from the wider world.
We know by report, however unjust it may seem to us, that there is an
opinion abroad, even in the quarters most friendly to us, that our
excellent qualities are marred by an incorrigible hypocrisy. To France
we have always been Perfidious Albion. In Germany, at this moment, that
epithet would be scorned as far too flattering to us. Victor Hugo
explained the relative unpopularity of _Measure for Measure_ among
Shakespeare's plays on the ground that the character of the hypocrite
Angelo was a too faithful dramatization of our national character.
Pecksniff is not considered so exceptional an English gentleman in
America as he is in England.
Now we have not acquired this reputation for nothing. The world has no
greater interest in branding England with this particular vice of
hypocrisy than in branding France with it; yet the world does not cite
Tartuffe as a typical Frenchman as it cites Angelo and Pecksniff as
typical Englishmen. We may protest against it as indignantly as the
Prussian soldiers protest against their equally universal reputation for
ferocity in plunder and pillage, sack and rapine; but there is something
in it. If you judge an English statesman, by his conscious intentions,
his professions, and his personal charm, you will often find him an
amiable, upright, humane, anxiously truthful man. If you judge him, as a
foreigner must, solely on the official acts for which he is responsible,
and which he has to defend in the House of Commons for the sake of his
party, you will often be driven to conclude that this estimable
gentleman is, in point of being an unscrupulous superprig and fool,
worse than Caesar Borgia and General Von Bernhardi rolled into one, and
in foreign affairs a Bismarck in everything except commanding ability,
blunt common sense, and freedom from illusion as to the nature and
object of his own diplomacy. And the permanent officials in whose hands
he is will probably deserve all that and something to spare. Thus you
will get that amazing contrast that confronts us now between the
Machiavellian Sir Edward Grey of the Berlin newspapers and the amiable
and popular Sir Edward Grey we know in England. In England we are all
prepared to face any World Congress and say, "We know that Sir Edward
Grey is an honest English gentleman, who meant well as a true patriot
and friend of peace; we are quite sure that what he did was fair and
right; and we will not listen to any nonsense to the contrary." The
Congress will reply, "We know nothing about Sir Edward Grey except what
he did; and as there is no secret and no question as to what he did, the
whole story being recorded by himself, we must hold England responsible
for his conduct, whilst taking your word for the fact, which has no
importance for us, that his conduct has nothing to do with his
character."
*Our Intellectual Laziness.*
The general truth of the situation is, as I have spent so much of my
life in trying to make the English understand, that we are cursed with a
fatal intellectual laziness, an evil inheritance from the time when our
monopoly of coal and iron made it possible for us to become rich and
powerful without thinking or knowing how; a laziness which is becoming
highly dangerous to us now that our monopoly is gone or superseded by
new sources of mechanical energy. We got rich by pursuing our own
immediate advantage instinctively; that is, with a natural childish
selfishness; and when any question of our justification arose, we found
it easy to silence it with any sort of plausible twaddle (provided it
flattered us, and did not imply any trouble or sacrifice) provided by
our curates at £70 a year, or our journalists at a penny a line, or
commercial moralists with axes to grind. In the end we became fatheaded,
and not only lost all intellectual consciousness of what we were doing,
and with it all power of objective self-criticism, but stacked up a
lumber of pious praises for ourselves which not only satisfied our
corrupted and half atrophied consciences, but gave us a sense that there
is something extraordinarily ungentlemanly and politically dangerous in
bringing these pious phrases to the test of conduct. We carried Luther's
doctrine of Justification by Faith to the insane point of believing that
as long as a man says what we have agreed to accept as the right thing
it does not matter in the least what he actually does. In fact, we do
not clearly see why a man need introduce the subject of morals at all,
unless there is something questionable to be whitewashed. The
unprejudiced foreigner calls this hypocrisy: that is why we call him
prejudiced. But I, who have been a poor man in a poor country,
understand the foreigner better.