Early in the war Sven Hedin, the Swedish explorer and
writer, visited the German front to see the world-war at
first hand. "A People in Arms," published in Leipzig and
dedicated to the German soldiers, is the result. A preface
proclaims the author's neutrality as a Swede and announces
that he "swears before God that I have written not a line
which is not the truth and have depicted nothing which I
have not witnessed with my own eyes." This article is one of
his concluding sketches.
I should like to have seen how the troops of India stood the raw
autumn in Artois and Flanders. But the Indian prisoners at Lille were
transferred to the East in order to make room for fresh contingents.
I, myself, have experienced the difficulty of transplanting Indians to
a colder climate. On my last journey to Tibet I had two Kadschputs
from Cashmere with me. When we got into the mountains they nearly
froze to death, and my caravan leader, Muhamed Isa, declared they
would be about as useful as puppies. I had to send them back. The same
thing happened to me with my Indian cook; outside India he was
absolutely useless. In Tibet they live on meat, in India on
vegetables. How could he stand so sudden a change of both climate and
diet!
Now the press has been claiming that the English have ordered a full
contingent from India to Europe. I found it hard to believe but at the
front I learned that it was true. "How do you treat the Indian
soldiers?" I once asked a couple of officers. "We just arrest them,"
answered one, and the other added: "We don't need to do even that;
they will soon die in the trenches."
When I admit that I myself made a stupid blunder in thinking that
Indians could do service in Tibet, I am justified in claiming that
Lord Charles Beresford made ten times as stupid a blunder when he
expressed the hope of seeing "Indian lances roaming the streets of
Berlin and the little brown Gurkas making themselves comfortable in
the park of Sans Souci."
But the import of Indian troops is more than a stupid blunder--it is a
crime!
For almost a century and a half Great Britain has performed the
shining mission of acting as India's guardian; no other people
probably could successfully carry through so gigantic a task. Indian
troops have fought with honor against their neighbors, and, moreover
have assisted in maintaining order among the 300 millions of their
people.
But never has it occurred to an English government as now to the
Liberal government, to oppose black infidels to Christian Europeans!
That is a crime against culture, against civilization and against
Christianity. And if the English missionaries approve it, then are
they hypocrites and false bearers of the Gospel.
India's English rulers despise--and rightfully--all marital relations
between whites and Hindoos; the children of such marriages are
regarded as mules, and are often called such; they are neither horse
nor ass, they are half caste. In Calcutta they have their own quarter
and are allowed to live in no other part of the city. But--when it
comes to the question of overthrowing the "German barbarians," then an
alliance with the bronze-skinned people is good enough for England!
Is it one of the twentieth century's worthy advances in culture and
civilization that the unsuspecting Indian is brought hundreds of miles
over land and sea that he may on the battlefields of Europe drive to
destruction the first soldiers of the world, the German army? Even
though some may answer this question in the affirmative, I hold
unshaken to my assertion that such a course of action is the very
height of frightfulness! Not frightful to the German soldiers, for I
know what sort of feeling the Indian fighters have for them--respect
and sympathy!
And we aren't much nearer that "roaming about in the streets of
Berlin," and the lindens of Sans Souci are not yet waving above the
warriors from the slopes of the Himalayas.
What must these Indian troops think of their white masters? That the
future will show. Whoever has seen something of the land of a thousand
legends, who has ridden over the crests of the Himalayas, who has
dreamed in the moonlight before the Taj Mahal, who has seen the holy
Ganges slip gray and soft past the wharves of Benares, who has been
entranced by the train of elephants under the mango trees of
Dekkan--in short, whoever has loved India and admired the order and
security which prevails there under the English rule, he will need no
very powerful imagination to understand with what thoughts the Indian
soldiers will go back, and with what feelings their families and their
fellow countrymen in the little narrow huts on the slopes of the
Himalayas will listen to their accounts. Only with a shudder can we
think of this, for it must be said that here a crime against
civilization and Christianity has been done in the name of
civilization.
The question cannot be suppressed: Will the Indian contingent really
be used? Will not the white millions of Great Britain, Canada and
Australia suffice, to say nothing of the French, Belgians, Russians,
Serbians, Montenegrins and Japanese? Apparently not. In _The Times_ of
September 5th appears in large letters: The need for more men. Already
they are in need of more people to overthrow the Kultur of the "German
barbarians"! The English people must be educated by a special method
in order to understand both the cause and the aim of this war.
Otherwise the Englishman will stay at home and play, football and
cricket.
And what is this education of the people? In regard to this the
English press informs us daily. It is a systematic lie! The fatal
reality, that England is slowly sliding to catastrophe, must be hidden
by a strict censorship. The English people has no suspicion of
Hindenburg's victories. The development of the German operations in
Poland is translated into a victorious move of the Russians on Berlin!
The most shameful slander concerning the Kaiser is spread abroad! The
Germans are barbarians who must be annihilated, and the civilized
peoples of Servia, Senegambia and Portugal must take part in this
praiseworthy undertaking!
England carries on this war with a perversion of the truth, and truth
is as rare in the English press as lies in the German.
But do the people really believe what they read in the English
newspapers? Yes, blindly! I have been convinced of this by letters
received from England. An appeal signed by many scholars--among them
several Nobel prize winners--and sent to me, closes with the words:
We regret deeply that under the unwholesome influence of a
military system and its unrestrained dreams of domination,
the country which we have once honored now has become
Europe's common enemy and the enemy of all people who
respect the rights of nations. We must carry to an end this
war which we have entered. For us as for the Belgians it is
a war of defense, which will be fought through for peace and
freedom.
The old story of the splinter and the beam! Is England's rule of the
sea no military system then? Can there be conceived a more
far-reaching militarism than that which stretches out its conquests
over five continents? Which even clutches at the straw which
republican Portugal holds out and announces "the need for more men" in
the newspapers?
What was the Boer War then? An expression perhaps of this same humane
solicitude for the small states which now causes England to break the
lance for Belgium's independence?
It would be useless at this late day to attempt to determine what
would have been the course of the great war had England stayed out of
it. But this much is certain, that Belgium's loss of independence
would have lasted only until the conclusion of peace. The war would
then not have grown as now to be a world-war--to be the greatest and
most tragic catastrophe which the human race has ever suffered. No
nation has ever incurred a greater, a more comprehensive
responsibility than England! And one can only regret most deeply that
these men will have to bear now and in the world to come the full and
oppressive burden of that responsibility.
Calais or Suez?
Which Should be Germany's Objective?
_By special cable to_ THE NEW YORK TIMES _from London on July 1, 1915,
came the following information:_
Count von Reventlow, in last Sunday's Deutsche Tageszeitung, explains
the importance and meaning of Calais as a German objective in the west
and as a key to the destruction of the British Empire. Dr. Ernst
Jaeckh, in an article called "Calais or Suez," maintained that if an
English statesman had to make a choice he would undoubtedly give up
Calais and cling to Suez rather than give up Suez and control Calais.
Reventlow maintains there is no reality about this alternative.
About the importance of Suez, Jaeckh and Reventlow are agreed.
Reventlow for his part declares England's main interest in the
Dardanelles operations is the desire to protect Egypt and that this is
the explanation of all her efforts to range the Balkan countries
against Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Turkey. As translated in THE
TIMES he proceeds:
"These efforts are not yet at an end, and they will be continued with
a desperate expenditure of strength and all possible means. It was
believed that the Russian armies and influence exercised upon the
Balkan peoples would make Egypt safe. These hopes are now tottering or
vanishing. All the greater must be the energy of our triple alliance
in order completely to clear the way and then at the proper moment to
take it with firm determination to see the thing through. Here also we
see the correctness of our old argument, that for Germany and her
allies success lies in a long war and that time works for them if they
employ the time in working. Our forces are increasing with time and,
as has been said, Germany has the assured possibility of gaining time.
To strike our chief enemy at a vital point is worth the greatest
efforts and sacrifice of time, quite apart from the fact that we owe
it to the Turkish Empire to assist with all our strength in restoring
Egypt, which was stolen by England."
Reventlow then says that a comparison of "the Calais idea" with Suez
is as idle as the comparison of a chair with a table. He says Jaeckh
is mistaken in supposing Calais does not concern more than the south
coast of England or that it merely threatens one of many ways to and
from England. Reventlow says:
"This by no means completes the Calais idea. From a military or
political or economic point of view one should look at the matter with
the eyes of Great Britain and define the Calais idea as a possibility
for a seafaring continental power to conduct a war against Great
Britain from the continental coast channel and with all military
resources while holding open communication between the Atlantic Ocean
and the North Sea."
[Illustration: GENERAL LOUIS BOTHA
The Boer Commander Who Added German Southwest Africa to the British
Crown
(_Photo from Medem Photo Service._)]
[Illustration: DR. ANTON MEYER-GERHARD
Sent by Count Bernstorff to inform the Kaiser upon the state of
American Opinion
(_Photo from American Press Association._)]