I can assure you there is none of that insensate hatred that
one hears about out here. We are out to kill, and kill we do
at every opportunity. But when it is all over the splendid
universal soldier spirit comes over all the men. Just to
give you some idea of what I mean, the other night four
German snipers were shot on our wire. The next night our men
went out and brought one in who was near and getatable and
buried him. They did it with just the same reverence and
sadness as they do our own dear fellows. I went to look at
the grave next morning, and one of the most uncouth-looking
men in my company had placed a cross at the head of the
grave, and had written on it:
Here lies a German,
We don't know his name,
He died bravely fighting
For his Fatherland.
And under that "Got mitt uns," (sic,) that being the highest
effort of all the men at German.
"Got mitt uns." One has the idea that He is--when the game is played
in that spirit. God with us both, shaping brotherhood out of enmity.
Bernard Shaw in a moment of inspiration thinks that some way will have
to be found enabling England and Germany to live together peaceably
for the future. It is an idea that may possibly have occurred to
others. Well, perhaps this is the way. Shaw would not approve of it.
But then there is so much in human nature that Shaw does not approve
of. There are times when one is compelled to a great pity for Shaw. He
seems to have got into the wrong world. He is for ever thanking God
that he is not as we other men--we Englishmen and Germans, mere
publicans and sinners. It is a difficult world to understand, I admit,
my dear Shaw, full of inconsistencies and contradictions. Perhaps
there is a meaning in it somewhere that you have missed.
Perhaps we have got to fight one another before we understand one
another. In the old Norse mythology Love is the wife of Strife; when
we come to consider the nature of man, not such an odd union as it
appears.
So long as the law runs that in sorrow woman shall bring forth her
child; so long as the ground shall yield to the sons of Adam thorns
also and thistles, so long will there be strife between man and man.
So long, when the last word has been spoken and has failed, will there
be war between the nations. The only hope of civilization is to treat
it as a game. You cannot enforce a law without a policeman. You can
only appeal to a man's honor--to his sporting instincts.
The mistake Germany is making is in not treating war as a game. To do
so would be weakness and frivolity. War must be ruthless, must be
frightful. It is not to be bound down by laws human or Divine. And
even then she is not logical. Two German officers interned in Holland
are released on parole. Taking their country at her word, they hasten
back to rejoin their regiments. The German Staff is shocked, sends
them back to be imprisoned.
So there really are rules to the game. An officer and gentleman may
not lie. If a Sub-Lieutenant may not lie for the sake of his country,
then what argument gives the right to the German Government to tear up
its treaties, to the German Military Staff to disregard its
Ambassador's signature to The Hague Convention?
Come, shade of Bismarck, and your disciples in Germany and other
countries, (including a few in my own,) make up your mind. To be
ruthless and frightful in a half-hearted, nervous, vacillating fashion
is ridiculous. You have either got to go back to the beginning of
things, and make war a battle of wild beasts, or you have got to go
forward and make it a game--a grim game, I grant you, but one that the
nations can play at and shake hands afterward. We have tried the
ruthless and frightful method. We used to slaughter the entire
population. To shoot a selected few is to court a maximum of contempt
for a minimum of advantage. We used to lay waste the land. We did not
content ourselves with knocking down a church spire and burning a
library. We left not one stone upon another. We sowed salt where the
cities had been. We tortured our prisoners before the ramparts. We did
not "leave them their eyes to weep with"; we burned them out with hot
irons; surely a much swifter means of striking terror! Why not return
to these methods? They sound most effective.
They were not effective. God's chosen people--according to
themselves--did not annihilate the Philistines, not even with the help
of the Ark of the Covenant. The Philistines tightened their belts and
acquitted themselves like men. Today the heathen rules in Canaan.
Where Mohammed failed the shade of Bismarck is not likely to succeed.
Poland is still a sore in European politics. The whole force of the
Vatican could not suppress a handful of reformers. All the
bloodthirsty edicts of the Revolution could not annihilate a few
thousand aristocrats. These things cannot be done. War finishes
nothing, it only interrupts. A nation cannot be killed; it can only
die. This war is not going to be the end of all things either for
Germany or for us. Germany can be beaten to her knees, as she beat
France to her knees in 1870; as more than once before that France has
beaten her. Later on we have all got to live together in peace, for a
while.
Come, gentlemen, let us make an honorable contest of it, that shall
leave as little of bitterness behind it as may be. Let us see if we
cannot make a fine game of it that we shall be all the better for
having played out to the end. From which we shall all come back home
cleaner minded, clearer seeing, made kinder to one another by
suffering. Come, gentlemen, you believe that God has called upon you
to spread German culture through the lands. You are ready to die for
your faith. And we believe God has a use for the thing called England.
Well, let us fight it out. There seems no other way. You for St.
Michael and we for St. George; and God be with us both.
But do not let us lose our common humanity in the struggle. That were
the worst defeat of all--the only defeat that would really matter,
that would really be lasting.
Let us call it a game. After all, what else is it? We have been
playing it since the dawn of creation; and it has settled nothing--but
the names of things. Its victories, its defeats! Time wipes them off
the slate, with a smile.
I quote from a letter written by the officer who boarded the Emden. He
speaks of the German officers: "A thoroughly nice fellow"--"also a
good fellow." The order is given that there be no cheering from the
Sydney when entering the harbor with her prisoners. English sailormen
have fought with German sailormen; have killed a good many of them. It
is over. No crowing, gentlemen--over fellow-sailormen. Our writer
discusses the fight generally with Captain von Muller. "We agreed it
was our job to knock one another out. But there was no malice in it."
We shall do better to regard war as a game--a game to be played for
love, for honor, without hatred, without malice. So only shall we
profit by it.