p ■ 
 
 aporncU Hnioeraitg ffiihrarg 
 
 JIttraca, S^etn Qattt 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 JACOB H. SCHIFF 
 
 ENDOWMENT FOR THE PROMOTION 
 
 OF STUDIES IN 
 
 HUMAN CIVILIZATION 
 
 1918 
 
_ Cornell University Library 
 
 D 511.A23 1918 
 
 His orical backgrounds of the great war. 
 
 3 1924 027 807 845 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027807845 
 
HISTOEICAL BACKGEOUNDS OP 
 THE GREAT WAR 
 
Historical Backgrounds 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Great War 
 
 BY 
 
 FEANK J. ADKINS 
 
 M^. Si. John's Coixeqe, Cambbidgi: 
 
 F(U est et ab hoste doceri 
 
 New Yobk 
 
 EOBEKT M, McBEIDE & COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 5 
 
Third printing, July. 1918 
 Second printing, March, 191S 
 
 tM 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In writing these pages I have aimed rather at 
 provoking thought than at imparting exact in- 
 formation; and if a critical reader undertakes to 
 check my statements he will doubtless find the 
 book afifords much valuable exercise. Neverthe- 
 less, I hope that my effort will have achieved its 
 object, which is to rouse sufficient interest to 
 make readers of it think and inquire for them- 
 selves about the war and its effects. Thought 
 based upon historical fad; is the best cure for our 
 national vice of muddling through. 
 
 The differences in point of view which exist 
 among the combatants, though less tangible to 
 deal with than the historic facts which have led 
 to the war, are nevertheless too important to be 
 ignored; and in endeavoring to sketch them I 
 have drawn as far as I have been able on my 
 personal experiences in travel in the lands of all 
 the combatants except the Balkan States and 
 Japan. 
 
 Since these essays were written the Board of 
 Education has issued its Circular 869 on the 
 Teaching of Modern European History, and I 
 was comforted, on reading it, to find that I had 
 already anticipated in detail its suggestions in 
 
 5 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Oreat War 
 
 the historical framework of my book. I therefore 
 ventm-e to hope that the essays I have written 
 will prove useful to such of my fellow-teachers 
 of history as adopt the Board's suggestion "to 
 arrange for special lectures or courses of reading 
 suitable even for the younger pupils, dealing 
 with the causes and progress of the present war." 
 The Board itself admits that "there is not avail- 
 able so good a supply of suitable books — either 
 books suitable as textbooks for pupils or books 
 of reference for use of the masters and to be in- 
 cluded in the school library — for the latter as 
 there is for the earlier period," i.e. from 1871 
 onwards. I hope accordingly that my essays may 
 help fill the void. That they follow the lines of 
 the Circular the following extract from the Cir- 
 cular will, I think, make clear to those who read 
 the various essays. "It will be possible to point 
 dut how the remote past still lives in the present : 
 as, for instance, in the existence of a debatable 
 territory between France and Germany which 
 is ultimately due to the division of the Empire of 
 Charles the Great; the reasons why the Low 
 Countries have so often been the seat of war be- 
 tween the greater Powers, and the continuity of 
 English policy with regard to the independence 
 of this district of Europe from the time of Ed- 
 ward I; the reasons for the late organization of 
 Italy and Germany as National States; the fall 
 of Poland ; tjhe rise of Russia ; and the historical 
 position of the Austrian Monarchy, especially in 
 
 6 
 
Preface 
 
 connection with the Mohammedan conquests and 
 the gradual recovery of territory from the Turks." 
 It may be too much to say, in the words of the 
 Circular, "matters such as these naturally arise in 
 the course of any well-directed study of English 
 history," but I certainly claim that they form 
 the backbone of my essays — and particularly of 
 the first, on Germany, and the fourth, on Eng- 
 land and Sea Power. 
 
 F.J. A. 
 
 Sheffibij), 
 
 'Sovemiber, 1914, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAOI 
 
 Prbpacb 5 
 
 Introduction 13 
 
 PAET ONE 
 
 Gebmany: Its Growth^ Character, and 
 
 Culture 31 
 
 PAET TWO 
 France : The Pioneer of Civilization . 133 
 
 PAET THEEE 
 The Slavs and their Problems . . 185 
 
 PAET FOUE 
 
 England and Sea Power .... 240 
 
 9 
 
ENGLAND 
 
 Abise up, England, from the smoky cloud 
 That covers thee, the din of whirling wheels : 
 Not the pale spinner, prematurely bowed 
 By his hot toil, alone the influence feels 
 Of all this deep necessity for gain — 
 Gain still : but deem not only by the strain 
 Of engines on the sea and on the shore, 
 Glory, that was thy birthright to retain. 
 O thou that knowest not a conqueror. 
 Unchecked desires have multiplied in thee, 
 Till with their bat wings they shut out the sun : 
 So in the dusk thou goest moodily, 
 With a bent head, as one who gropes for ore. 
 Heedless of living streams that round him run. 
 
 LoBD Hanmer. 
 
 11 
 
INTEODUCTION 
 
 Never has England experienced so sadden and 
 so tremendous a change as that which came over 
 her in the summer of 1914. The schools broke up 
 and families went off to the seaside in the fine 
 weather at the end of July. By the August Bank 
 Holiday the State had hold of the railways, all 
 excursions were cancelled, a food panic and a 
 money panic with a Bank rate of 19 per cent, had 
 swept over the land, flustering though not really 
 shaking our nerves, and in short everybody was 
 brought up suddenly by the fact that the State — 
 the Government which in happier days we had 
 delighted to abuse — was possessed of powers 
 over us and our belongings about which we had 
 quite forgotten, if indeed we had ever known. 
 
 Our party politics vanished in a night; the 
 Opposition became His Majesty's Opposition 
 indeed ; organizations both masculine and femin- 
 ine which had adopted violence for the advance- 
 ment of their respective causes found themselves 
 suddenly changed, as if by some niagic agency, 
 into armed defenders of their common country 
 and resourceful ministrants to those who were 
 suffering or about to suffer ; and soldiering leaped 
 at once from being an amiable weakness of one's 
 
 13 
 
Historical Backgrounds^ of the Great War 
 
 neighbor in the Territorials to becoming the 
 supreme test of one's manhood. 
 
 Meanwhile a whole series of experiments which 
 a month earlier would have caused interminable 
 talk were established by the machinery which 
 some people had already looked upon as no 
 longer capable of effective action — namely Par- 
 liament — in a few minutes each. Not only did 
 the State take over the railways — so that one 
 could travel on the North Western with a Great 
 Central ticket — ^but it started a scheme of Ship- 
 ping Insurance; it re-established a Press Censor- 
 ship which had lapsed morQ than a couple of 
 centuries before; it told people that for the time 
 being they need not pay their debts if they were 
 of certain kinds; it turned' postal orders into 
 currency; it issued Treasury notes in shoals; and 
 — incredible though it may seem — it actually 
 fixed the prices of foodstuffs, thus incidentally 
 revealing the smart business man who waits for 
 a rise in price as a public enemy and a pest, if 
 not an actual traitor — even the Sheffield cutlers 
 and gun-makers reflected for a moment on the 
 real significance of their work and wondered as 
 to its destination. And yet, in spite of the mag- 
 nitude of these measures, in spite of their drastic 
 and far-reaching effect, their enactment raised 
 hardly a murmur and certainly no opposition. 
 There were no cries that the State was going be* 
 yond its proper bounds; there were no com- 
 plaints of Socialism rearing its head in our 
 
 14 
 
Introduction 
 
 midst (indeed, the President of the Anti-Social- 
 ist League was among the first, I believe, to urge 
 the State to do more than it proposed to do for 
 those who were dependent on our soldiers). No: 
 we looked on Parliament less as the guardian of 
 our liberties than as the rapid registrar of expert 
 decrees; we took these breathless revolutions in 
 our accustomed experience as a matter of course ; 
 and in so doing we realized, many of us for the 
 first time, the true nature of the State's powers 
 and therefore also of the liberty we had hitherto 
 enjoyed — namely, that it was, as it were, merely 
 what is left over : the residuum of independence 
 which the State could afford with safety to leave 
 with us under the existing circumstances. It 
 was suddenly borne in upon us that the individ- 
 ual has no rights as against the State, since apart 
 from the State's protection he would have nothing 
 of his own — not even his liberty. 
 
 But we were all too excited or anxious to re- 
 flect and philosophize in this way. Only at a 
 later date shall we have the leisure and inplina- 
 tion to return in memory to thoise close-packed 
 days and try to extract from them the lessons 
 they contain — unless we are too inflated with self- 
 righteousness after the war to learn anything at 
 all from it. Those days were indeed full of 
 matter for thought — a veritable quarry for the 
 student of social and political questions; and I 
 hope that ultimately we shall be able to make 
 use of all the experience we have been gaining 
 
 15 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 so rapidly since August, 1914, before the memory 
 of these critical weeks has slipped — ^like the 
 golden sand with which our children were play- 
 ing at the time — through our fingers. 
 
 Now what was it that had caused all this dis- 
 turbance and spoiled our holidays? Of course, it 
 was the war. The war had swept our interests 
 rudely aside, it had pulled the whole of our pub- 
 lic life into a fresh perspective; it had made us 
 hesitate about our favorite amusements — even 
 football trembled just as it was about to re-ascend 
 its throne — ^it had drawn our young men into the 
 Army and threatened a dislocation in our in- 
 dustries which dwarfed the effect of the biggest 
 strikes of recent years ; it had also — per contra — 
 brought suddenly to an end all industrial dis- 
 putes. And yet, although we accepted all this 
 without a murmur, how many of us knew what it 
 was all about? 
 
 We pride ourselves on being a self-governing 
 people; yet the whole course of our Government 
 has been deflected, our most-discussed measures 
 shelved, the whole of the machinery by which we 
 imagine that we direct our own affairs arrested 
 and turned to unaccustomed uses — simply be- 
 cause an Austrian Archduke had been killed in a 
 Balkan town. 
 
 Now, troubles of one sort or another in the 
 Balkans are by no means new. Indeed, we had 
 grown quite accustomed to them — so accustomed, 
 in fact, that many of us doubtless were in the 
 
 16 
 
Introduction 
 
 habit of saying when we saw in our morning's 
 paper that fighting was renewed in that unhappy 
 peninsula : "They're at it again, I see," and then 
 of turning to discover where our favorite football 
 team was in the League or what was the price 
 of our favorite investment. 
 
 On this last occasion, however, the matter 
 seemed different: it seemed more obstinate, less 
 inclined to resolve itself; and then suddenly, 
 gaining momentum with tremendous rapidity, it 
 crashed upon us as the awful avalanche of a 
 European war : the great war that had been hang- 
 ing over us for decades, the war that some of us 
 had almost ceased to believe in, since it had been 
 so often threatened, yet so often averted, and 
 above all, since it was so terrible to think about. 
 
 Fortunately, thanks to the Boer War and its 
 bitter lessons, our fighting forces, though small, 
 were well prepared; but if as regards military 
 readiness we were not, within our limits, found 
 wanting, nevertheless on the intellectual side our 
 unpreparedness was appalling. As one talked to 
 people about the war, or caught fragments of 
 what they were saying to each other, one found 
 that practically nobody had an adequate idea of 
 what it was all about. After the first shock of 
 astonishment had passed, the general feeling 
 seemed to be one of resentment that so little a 
 State as Servia could set all Europe by the ears. 
 Later, it is true, the question of Belgian neutral- 
 ity arose like a rock in the ocean to which we 
 
 17 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 could cling; but even with tliis basis of reason 
 for the war — ^as far as we English were con- 
 cerned — there still seemed to be a lurking idea in 
 men's minds that there must be some large ex- 
 planation of the war as a whole than had hitherto 
 become apparent to them. The rock of Belgian 
 neutrality upon which our peace had been ship- 
 wrecked was, in short, felt to be but the project- 
 ing summit of a vast mass, the sides of which 
 sloped down to depths unknown to the man in the 
 street. For the first time, perhaps, in his experi- 
 ence he realized that there were more things in 
 heaven and earth than were dreamed of in his 
 philosophy and he was seized with a sudden de- 
 sire to know. The domestic questions about which 
 he had been so excited but a few short weeks be- 
 fore had suddenly been eclipsed by foreign ques- 
 tions about which he knew nothing and, as a rule, 
 cared less; and suddenly he realized that the 
 relative importance of these two sets of questions 
 had been reversed, that he was not master in his 
 own house because he knew too little of the forces 
 at work outside his house to gauge, still less to 
 direct, them. As a self-governing Englishman, if 
 not as "a good European," it behooved him then to 
 get to know as soon as might be what he could 
 about this alien question which was so rudely 
 upsetting his island menage. And so he began to 
 demand enlightenment — and enlightenment at 
 express speed and with a minimum of the think- 
 ing which hurts him so and which he regards, with 
 
 18 
 
Introduction 
 
 Hamlet, as a malady. Unfortunately, however, the 
 iriormation he was seeking was not easily pepto- 
 nized or even done up in pilulse, for it was nothing 
 less than the history of Europe for several cen- 
 turies past, and any attempt to bolt that dish 
 is nearly certain to lead to a mental indigestion 
 which will lower, not increase, his fighting 
 strength. 
 
 His immediate needs can be supplied only in 
 part; but let us hope that now he has realized 
 the necessity for an adequate teaching of history 
 he will see to it that this most vital of all sub- 
 jects is taught henceforth in such a way as to 
 make it a real source of strength and guidance 
 to the democracy in their task of ruling both 
 themselves and the Empire. The "right little, 
 tight little island," Alfred-and-the-cakes concep- 
 tion of the subject, so favored by the comfortably 
 padded arm-chair historians who rule our Uni- 
 versity Local Examinations, will have to go and 
 a more vital, more universal, treatment of the 
 subject must take its place. In France, I. believe, 
 they begin with general history in simple sweep- 
 ing outline and gradually focus on their own. In 
 England we begin by isolating our own history 
 so completely that it becomes almost meaning- 
 less, and then make matters worse by never going 
 beyond the limits of our national history text- 
 books. The ratio as between home and foreign 
 affairs must be redetermined. History per se and 
 apart from our own island story must be taught 
 
 19 
 
Uistorlcal Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 in future, and the subject made dynamic by the 
 acknowledgment of those great forces of race 
 and economy and religion which mould the 
 destinies of men just as rainfall and latitude de- 
 termine the vegetation of any given area of the 
 earth's surface. Like the Army, history is neg- 
 lected and ignored in time of peace, and then 
 suddenly rediscovered and abused for being inad- 
 equate in time of war. Were it not for the ex- 
 perts in both fields, who work unrecognized for 
 years, the nation would have to pay a heavy price 
 indeed for its neglect of these connected factors 
 in national life. 
 
 But teaching alone, however excellent, will 
 never give the Englishman that sense of other 
 presences which land frontiers and their corollary 
 — conscription — give to every foreigner. The 
 silver streak to which we owe so much is account- 
 able also, of course, for our insularity: not only 
 is Great Britain an island, but every Briton who 
 lives in it is an island as well — self-contained and 
 difilcult to approach ; and in this double insular- 
 ity lurks the danger we are now facing — ^the 
 danger of a faulty and imperfect realization of 
 the temper and spirit of foreign peoples, of their 
 ideals and aims, of a lack of interest in foreign 
 affairs and foreign movements generally — the 
 danger of the sea change, in short. And, to my 
 mind, there is but one effective escape from that 
 danger, and that is, foreign travel sensibly under- 
 taken. A friend and I went from Sheffield 
 
 20 
 
Introduction 
 
 through London and Dover to Belgium. We 
 visited Ostend, Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Li6ge, 
 Diuant, and Namur; we crossed the border and 
 reached Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle — the run 
 into Germany cost us sixpence each — and the 
 whole tour of a week's duration cost us less than 
 five pounds each, right back to Sheffield ag9,in. 
 With this record before him and these figures — 
 and we did it quite comfortably; I understand 
 that we spent more than ten shillings each in tips 
 — let no comfortably placed clerk or artisan say 
 that a foreign tour is beyond his reach ; while as 
 to the language, an Englishman gets along some- 
 how under all conditions; and a traveler never 
 can know the language of every land he happens 
 to be in — sooner or later he is bound to be re- 
 duced to speechlessness. We may, then, hope for 
 great results from improved teaching and in- 
 creased travel (every teacher should be made to 
 travel as part of his training) ; but for the mo- 
 ment our ignorance is a serious handicap, how 
 serious appears with clearness only when we re- 
 member the effect of our hesitation after Ger- 
 many had declared war on France and Kussia. 
 For some days before that declaration there had 
 been a strong movement all over England in favor 
 of neutrality. That movement collapsed suddenly, 
 it is true, as soon as the Germans crossed the Bel- 
 gian frontier; but the existence of the spirit 
 which animated that movement was the chief 
 factor in Germany's decision. Germany declared 
 
 21 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 war because our neutrality was virtually assured 
 — to German eyes. How great therefore was 
 German surprise and anger at the sudden re- 
 versal of our national attitude ! Can we wonder 
 that the Germans thought it was deliberate on 
 our part, that, like some of the German troops 
 who throw up their hands and so lure our men 
 to their death, we had feigned neutrality just to 
 induce the Germans to declare war and then 
 turned treacherously upon them and joined our 
 Navy to the gigantic forces of France and Russia ? 
 We did nothing of the kind — our hesitation was 
 genuine, not feigned, as the Germans, anxious to 
 , blame us for their misjudgment, believe; it was 
 the hesitation of ignorance, not of design. Yet 
 its effects were the same ; and it is at least argu- 
 able that our national hesitation, born as it was 
 of our national ignorance of the matters at issue 
 and of our own past foreign policy, was the real 
 cause of the war. If it be suggested that, since 
 the war was bound to come sooner or later, the 
 sooner the better, and the greater the forces op- 
 posed to Germany the greater the chance of ulti- 
 mate peace, I am bound to say that such a line of 
 argument is Machiavellian and of a sort we 
 should expect from Germany rather than from 
 ourselves. If good comes out of the evil results 
 of our ignorance we can claim no credit for it. 
 Drift is always dangerous and undignified, and 
 especially so when it is due to ignorance. Quite 
 a modest Jimount of knowledge of German his- 
 
 22 
 
Introduction 
 
 tory and ideas would have convinced Englishmen 
 of all that lay behind the Kaiser's words and 
 deeds. Nobody who knew anything of the Napo- 
 leonic struggle of the previous century could 
 have doubted England's part in the war which 
 burst so suddenly over Europe practically on the 
 centenary of Napoleon's defeat at the hands of 
 Wellington — and Blticher; while the connection 
 between England and Belgium is so ancient and 
 of such a nature that our intervention can be de- 
 scribed, as all students of history will acknowl- 
 edge, only in the words of Mr. Bonar Law — words 
 endorsed by Mr. Balfour — ^at the great Guildhall 
 meeting in August, 1914, when he said that in 
 the matter of Belgium England's honor and Eng- 
 land's interest went together. These were the 
 most honest words on the intervention of England 
 in the land-fighting that I have yet heard from a 
 public man; they convey the teaching of history, 
 and we need not be ashamed to confess that our 
 interest as much as our honor is involved in our 
 action. As I heard Professor Vinogradoff say 
 lately, "Infatuation and insincerity are bound to 
 bring retribution." 
 
 My next reason for believing that an increase 
 in our knowledge would be an element of 
 strength in our great national effort is this: a 
 short war may be fought and won in a burst of 
 sheer enthusiasm ; but for a long war other qual- 
 ities are required. The determination that will 
 per^vere to the end of a long aP<J dragging war, 
 
 23 
 
Bistorical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 with its cruel and inevitable losses, is the deter- 
 mfnation which arises out of the conviction that 
 nothing but stern necessity and the consequences 
 of failure determine our action; you beat your 
 enemy by studying him and understanding him, 
 as any boxer will tell you. "It's dogged that 
 does it" in a long war; and doggedness, if it is 
 not founded on mere stupidity, must be founded 
 on a clear vision of the end in view. There 
 seems to me something prophetic in the popu- 
 larity of "It's a long way to Tipperary" among 
 our men; and I imagine that the last marches 
 are likely to be made in silence. Do we realize 
 yet the significance of the single fact, for in- 
 stance, that the women of South Germany have 
 forced reluctant officials to accept their golden 
 ornaments? "Gold is always wanted in war- 
 time," they say; and they would feel ashamed 
 to flaunt it in time of national extremity for 
 mere ostentation. 
 
 Of all the lines in our patriotic minstrelsy 
 the one we shall need most in the long run will 
 not be "Britons never shall be slaves," but a line 
 from another nautical song, "Hearts of Oak," 
 and that line is, "Steady, boys, steady!" and, to 
 me at any rate, the steadiness, the' ballast we 
 need to keep us on an even keel amid the gales 
 and billows of this tempest of war, is as much 
 history as we can intelligently take on board. 
 Hence my reasons for the mainly historical line 
 I shall take in this series of essays. The thrills 
 
 24 
 
Introduction 
 
 we get from the detailed fighting, the heroism 
 of our soldiers and sailors, are, after all, only 
 the last moves in the long game of chess that 
 has been played for years previous between the 
 various Chancelleries of Europe. Just as artil- 
 lery and rifle fire itself only prepares the way 
 for the bayonet charge, so do diplomatic notes 
 and telegrams in their turn prepare the way for 
 the artillery. ^ All focuses on the bayonet ; but 
 behind the soldier is the diplomatist. 
 
 Another reason for spreading knowledge in 
 time of war — especially historical knowledge — 
 is its hardening effect, its killing out of the 
 sentimentality in which we usually soak our- 
 selves. We are so unused to the horrors of war 
 that they make us sick; we try to escape the 
 very thought of them. But nausea has to be 
 overcome, for it is akin to panic. The young 
 surgeon cannot afford to have his nerve shaken 
 by the blood and the reek when he is in the mid- 
 dle of his first operation ; and so must it be with 
 us who are an unblooded generation. The Eng- 
 lish fox-hunter wipes the bleeding stump of the 
 fox's tail across the face of the boy or girl he 
 has taken to hounds for the first time; and thus 
 they are "blooded." Now some such blooding 
 seems to be a national necessity for us, and 
 history provides it, as, for instance, in the details 
 of Agincourt. Nelson was always seasick for 
 the first few days of a voyage; but he had over- 
 come his weakness by the day of battle. As with 
 
 25 
 
Historical Backgroundi of the Great War 
 
 Nelson, so with his fellow-countrymen. Given 
 time, they recover ; but there is always an anxious 
 period of readjustment which a people with a 
 better mental preparation for war escapes. We 
 find it harder than they to face the harsh neces- 
 sities for war: to think, for instance, of a bay- 
 onet being used for killing men during the day- 
 time and for toasting a steak cut from a horse 
 killed in action after the fight is over ! We shrink 
 from the dilemma produced by the use of non- 
 combatants as a shield for the enemy's advance, 
 even though the women so used call on the 
 Allied troops to shoot; we do not rise at once to 
 the height of the old Scotch couplet: — 
 
 He who fights and runs away 
 Lives to fight another day, 
 
 when the fate of cruisers is in the balance; and 
 the Admiralty has had to remind its captains of 
 the principle contained in Stevenson's pirate 
 song, "Time for us to go," even when a consort 
 is sinking. We are apt to think seriousness and 
 a sense of responsibility, especially in the young, 
 a sign of priggishness, and are unable to realize 
 that Nelson's midshipmen at the age of thirteen 
 or so could not only bring a prize across the 
 Atlantic and beat off Spanish attacks on her, but 
 could also write home in this strain on the death 
 of Nelson : "But, Britons, still be joyful. Cease 
 to weep. Do not give way to unmanly pleasures. 
 I do not mean to say. Care not for his death, but 
 
 26 
 
Introduction 
 
 regret it in a manly manner." We like our boys 
 to be boyish and believe — quite rightly — in slow 
 development; but we are also apt to forget that 
 development may be so slow as to be inappre- 
 ciable; and we have too many adults among us 
 who are merely old boys and not men at all in 
 any real sense — people who make the mock-virtue 
 of mock-modesty an ejxcuse for shirking respon- 
 sibility; people whose chief aim is to be lost in 
 the crowd and exactly like everybody else; peo- 
 ple who solace themselves with the dangerous 
 half-truth that they will learn to command mere- 
 ly by learning to obey. We are, in short, apt 
 to be soft in the first stages of war, and it is 
 largely by envisaging the facts which history 
 reveals that we grow hardened to its horrors; 
 and can at last accept the great words of Crom- 
 well when he said: "Being denied just things, 
 we thought it our duty to get that by the sword 
 which was not to be got otherwise — and this hath 
 ever been the spirit of Englishmen." 
 
 Let us now try to imagine ourselves at the 
 point when victory has been achieved, peace 
 signed, and normal life resumed. With a sigh 
 of relief the Englishman will relapse into his 
 earlier rut; he will forget all about the war as 
 speedily as ever he can; he will shut out from 
 his mind and memory the picture of a ravaged 
 continent; the details and actualities he was 
 forced to face during the war will soon become 
 faint and blurred; he will forget the geography 
 
 27 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 the war has taught him; he will gratefully look 
 on life once more from his cosy little island 
 standpoint, and thank Heaven it is no longer 
 necessary to pretend to understand the French 
 or the Russians, Bernhardi, Nietzsche, or Treit- 
 schke. He can sweep all such harsh names, all 
 such nebulous ideas from his mind at the same 
 time that he finally abandons the attempt to 
 pronounce the names of Polish fortresses; and 
 he can once more revel with a good conscience 
 in the blessings of peace, which mean to him a 
 resumption of the daily service along the well- 
 worn tram-lines of his accustomed life with 
 nothing in particular to think about. Happy 
 in his escape from the unaccustomed regions 
 into which the war has led him, he soon sinks — 
 if he is true to his own past — ^into the dangerous 
 state in which earlier realities have ceased to 
 be real, earlier dangers have become merely the 
 bogies of the alarmist or else of the professional 
 man with an axe to grind, earlier precautions 
 simply the wasteful extravagance of a more bar- 
 barous and brutal age. Intent once more on his 
 business — ^the true end of man — ^he will tend 
 only too quickly to forget all that the war has 
 taught him; and if such be the case even with 
 the generation which lived through the actual 
 period of the fighting, how much more will it 
 be true of the next and succeeding generations ! 
 How, then, are we to protect posterity from this 
 gradual descent into unreality, which is the 
 
 28 
 
Introduction 
 
 greatest peril of our insular position — a peril 
 from which continental peoples are preserved by 
 the continual presence of armed forces across 
 their frontiers? Surely, by a real study of our 
 past wars and the effects of them. Even the far- 
 distant story of Ethelred the Unready, of the 
 decay of the Navy, of the massacre of the Danes 
 in 1002 — an Anglo-Saxon alternative to our 
 present-day spy-removing — the subsequent con- 
 quest of England by the Danes, have a direct 
 message to us to-day. Ignorant contempt, again, 
 for the Normans was largely responsible for the 
 Conquest of 1066 ; and so we could go on. Each 
 conquest, each shock, produces a more or less 
 transitory change in England, by breaking into 
 the charmed circle in which she lives and remind- 
 ing her of the existence of the foreigner. We 
 remember for a moment that national existence 
 may be a struggle even for us; and then we for- 
 get. But unless we learn to" remember, unless 
 we open our minds to the invasion of facts and 
 ideas from our own past and from abroad, we 
 may even yet have, once again, some day, un- 
 willingly to open our land to the invader in 
 arms. 
 
 Lastly, when this war is brought to a close 
 the question of settlement will arise, and the 
 settlement reached will represent the equilibrium, 
 not only of the forces at present contending 
 against each other, but also of the different fac- 
 tors on the winning side. The terms of the 
 
 29 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Qreat War 
 
 victors, that is to say, will represent the views 
 that the victors hold. Now I do not expect any 
 gieat diversity among these views; indeed, it is 
 quite clear there will be considerable agreement. 
 Nevertheless it will be well for the voice of 
 Britain to be as strong and as clear as possible 
 in the enunciation of her views, and if our voice 
 is to be strong and clear our thinking must be 
 strong and clear before we can express ourselves. 
 Now we cannot possibly think out effectively 
 what sort of a settlement we wish our Ministers 
 to insist upon unless we are acquainted with the 
 main facts at least of the European position. 
 Our weight in the counsels of the Allies depends, 
 that is to say, not only on the size of our Expedi- 
 tionary Force and the strength of our Navy, but 
 also on the clearness and vigor of our views. 
 Therefore hard thinking based on knowledge 
 of the historical facts is as real an element of 
 strength to us as are howitzers and machine- 
 guns. A patient study of the roots of the war 
 will in the fullness of time enable us to gather the 
 ripe fruits of the war. 
 
 30 
 
PART ONE 
 
 GERMANY: ITS GROWTH, CHARACTER, 
 AND CULTURE 
 
 GROWTH 
 
 A Radical is a man who professes to get to the 
 roots of things; he claims that action can ba 
 effective only when it is based upon thorough 
 knowledge; and, whether we call ourselves Rad- 
 icals or not, we must all acknowledge that, in 
 the matter of this war at least, an effective 
 understanding, so necessary to effective action — 
 and effective settlement at the end — is to be 
 obtained only by getting back to the beginning — 
 to the root of the whole matter. 
 
 Let us plunge, then, boldly into the past: let 
 us press back in thought till we come to a satis- 
 factory starting-point. If we do so, where shall 
 we find it? At nothing more recent than the 
 year 410 a.d. And why there? Because it was 
 in that year that Rome fell — or rather silted 
 up — ^and the Dark Ages began to cloud over 
 
 31 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 Europe, and enfolded it for the next four cen- 
 turies. Let us say rather, Western Europe, 
 since the Eastern section of the old Eoman 
 Empire, the Balkan Peninsula, with its capital, 
 Constantinople, did not fall. Indeed, the great 
 city on the Bosphorus remained "the Bulwark 
 of the West" in even a truer sense than Venice 
 for over a thousand years — till 1453 indeed; 
 and her fall in that year before the Turks, so far 
 from being followed by a darkening and dimming 
 of civilization such as had followed the decay of 
 Bome a thousand years earlier, set the torch to 
 that great flame we call the Eenaissance. 
 
 Here, then, we have two centres : Eome falling 
 in 410; Constantinople resisting till 1453; and 
 we have the Dark Ages hiding everything from 
 view in the West for a matter of four hundred 
 years from 410. Yet not quite everything. There 
 are at least two movements we ought to mention. 
 The Kaiser told his troops going to China to 
 emulate the deeds of the Huns under Attila. Now 
 Attite, and the Huns belong to these very Dark 
 Ages we are thinking about. Attila called him- 
 self Flagellum Dei ("the Scourge of God") ; he 
 led his followers in about the year 450 from 
 the south of Russia — they say their god showed 
 them the ford over the Don by taking the form 
 of a stag they were hunting — across Europe till 
 he nearly reached the North Sea. His soldiers 
 struck terror into the peoples they encountered. 
 Contemporaries describe them as dwarfish war-^ 
 
 32 
 
Germany 
 
 riors of Eastern type whose legs were bowed 
 with constant sitting on horseback. They were 
 mere destroyers, and having been defeated at 
 Chalons (so near the centre of much of the fight- 
 ing of the present war ) , their menace faded, and 
 they became but a memory in E^rope. Yet two 
 races we shall have to refer to later have appar- 
 ently some kinship with these nomadic maraud- 
 ers of the Dark Ages, and these are the partners 
 of the Austrians in the Dual Monarchy, the 
 Hungarians and the Finns, a people once subject 
 to Sweden, now subject to Russia, who, in their 
 land immediately to the east of St. Petersburg — 
 I should have said Petrograd — ^have developed 
 very considerably. They even have lady Mem- 
 bers of Parliament! 
 
 The other people we must mention in these 
 four centuries are much more important to our 
 story. So far from fading away as the Huns 
 did, they remain a permanent factor in world 
 history. About the year 600 A.D. Mohammed 
 arose and set in motion for the spread of his 
 warlike faith all the energy and enthusiasm of 
 the most energetic people in the world,, the Arabs. 
 His teachings were simple. They remind us of 
 the Old Testament; they inculcate the same 
 belief in One God who actively leads His chosen 
 people by "Vicegerents or Judges into a promised 
 land and breaks the heathen to their service. 
 Mohammed's marching orders to his religious 
 fanatics are simple. They are to take no wine, 
 
 33 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 and if possible they are to get killed in battle — 
 for death in the cause of their faith assures their 
 entry into heaven. To-day this desire for a 
 fighting martyr's death is as strong as ever, and 
 even the constant wars in which the Mohammed- 
 ans are engaged do not provide all the oppor- 
 tunities devout Mussulmans require, so once a 
 year, in a bloodstained procession through the 
 streets of Stamboul, they cut thenjselves with 
 knives like the priests of Baal in the days of 
 Elijah and hope to die from their wounds. 
 
 The fighting force of these fanatics is a mo- 
 mentous factor in world politics, as we shall see 
 presently. We rely on it very largely in India; 
 we felt its force in the Khyber, and again in 
 Egypt and the Soudan. At Omdurman, for 
 instance, where Kitchener was in command, the 
 Khalifa's men came on and on till the last was 
 shot down by our machine-guns a few yards 
 from our lines. There was no retreating when a 
 certain percentage of the men had fallen as 
 there is among civilized troops. The sword, 
 then, spread Islam with the greatest rapidity, 
 and spread it in two directions: one North- 
 eastward till it had penetrated the heart of 
 Asia and converted the wandering Turks, cousins 
 of the Huns ; the other Westward through, Egypt 
 and North Africa, then across the Straits of 
 Gibraltar into Spain, where a State was planted 
 which continued practically till the days of 
 Christopher Columbus to uphold the Crescent 
 
 34 
 
Germany 
 
 in the West. This, then,' is the position. In the 
 midst of the Dark Ages Europe is threatened 
 by Islam from two directions. Like an immense 
 pair of pincers, the Mohammedans were closing 
 in from East and West. In the East they were 
 held at bay for eight centuries by Constanti- 
 nople; in the West they were cutting deeper and 
 deeper into the Continent, for in the West there 
 was at first nothing to stop them. 
 
 But at last they found a resistance. Among 
 the people who had drifted into the decaying 
 Empire of Rome were the Franks. They had 
 crossed the Rhine and conquered the old Roman 
 province of Gaul, which henceforth became 
 Frankland or France. The Franks were thus a 
 German race, and they stretched eastward to the 
 Elbe — the river that empties itself into the North 
 Sea just by Hamburg at the base of Schleswig- 
 Holstein, the isthmus which leads up to Den- 
 mark — and westward as far as the Mohammedan 
 Moors, who had already crossed the Pyrenees 
 from Spain, would allow them to extend. On 
 this western frontier, then, the critical struggle 
 must take place, and it occurred when the Moors 
 tried to capture the shrine of St. Martin at Tours 
 on the Loire — one of the richest shrines in 
 Europe — but were broken by the Frankish king, 
 Charles the Hammer, who defeated ,them in one 
 of the decisive battles in the world's history, 
 namely, at Poictiers, in 732. This is the Great 
 Poictiers; there is a Little Poictiers: a local 
 
 35 
 
.Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 struggle between English and French of which 
 we make a good deal; but this occurs several 
 centuries later, during our first Hundred Years' 
 War with France. 
 
 The Moslem pincers had then been stopped — 
 Eastward by Constantinople, Westward by 
 Charles Martel. His son, Pepin the Short, and 
 his grandson, Charles the Great or Charlemagne, 
 pushed their conquests farther and farther 
 South till in the days of Charlemagne the Franks 
 ruled from the Ebro — or at least from the Pyre- 
 nees — to the Elbe — a vast Empire indeed for 
 those days. And now we come to the most strik- 
 ing part of the story. During the whole of this 
 Dark period the old capital city, Eome, had been 
 in decay. Threatened again and again by bar- 
 barians, she had more than once found safety 
 and protection in the courage of th^ head of the 
 Christian Church in Eome — the Pope. But the 
 Pope, continually harassed as he was, felt that 
 if only he could gain a champion to fight his 
 battles he could devote himself all the more 
 whole-heartedly to his real work of spreading 
 the kingdom of God. Particularly was he in need 
 of protection from the Lombards, a German tribe 
 who had -settled in Italy. And it was to gain 
 safety from these that he made Charlemagne a 
 most fiattering offer: if he would come to the 
 rescue of the Holy See and subdue the Lombards, 
 he should be crowned Emperor in gt. Peter's. 
 
 Charlemagne did not hesitate an instant. Add- 
 36 
 
Germany 
 
 ing at Milan the- iron crown of Lombardy to the 
 Frankish crown he already wore at Aachen, he 
 marched on to Rome, and there, on Christmas 
 Day in the year 800, he received at the Pope's 
 hands an Imperial crown. 
 
 Here, then, is a transformation. Out of the 
 murk and confusion of the Dark Ages a new 
 Empire emerges four centuries after the fall of 
 the old. When the old Empire fell, its spirit, 
 the Church, lived di«emhodied and in constant 
 danger of extinction through a perilous four 
 centuries. Now, however, it had taken to itself 
 another body ; and thus the defender of Christen- 
 dom in the West, the Frank King of Aachen, 
 becomes first King of Lombardy, and then head, 
 with the Pope — for it was a double sovereignty — 
 of the Holy Roman Empire. 
 
 Let us now look for a moment at this new 
 Empire and compare it with the old. In the 
 first place it is much smaller. It includes only 
 Gaul, a strip of Spain, and part of Italy. The 
 whole of the East, the region of Constantinople, 
 is beyond its control, and, indeed, rather con- 
 temptuous of it. But, on the other hand, it con- 
 tains areas never ruled at all by Rome. All 
 beyond the Rhine to the Elbe — at the mouth of 
 which Charlemagne founded Hamburg to keep 
 off the Danes — was land which had never ac- 
 knowledged the rule of Rome. 
 
 Then let us see how the two differed in civili- 
 zation. Although much of the learning and 
 
 37 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 culture of Rome had been kept alive by the 
 Eoman Church — ^whose language even to-day is 
 the Latin of Old Eome— yet the work of spread- 
 ing enlightenment among the newly planted 
 barbarians, Goths, Vandals, and others, was 
 necessarily slow ; and Charlemagne himself was 
 practically illiterate. It is said that he kept 
 writing materials beside his bed, so that if he 
 were sleepless at night .he could sit up and prac- 
 tice his letters. What a contrast to an Emperor- 
 scholar like Marcus Aurelius ! Yet it must not 
 be thought that Charlemagne disdained learning. 
 He was, indeed, fully alive to its value, and 
 brought learned Englishmen like Alcuin from 
 the Northumbrian monasteries of Tyne, Tees, 
 and Wear to teach his subjects. English in- 
 fluence is thus very ancient in Germany. Alcuin 
 may be regarded perhaps as the forerunner of 
 Shakespeare in this respect. Nor was his reign 
 a secluded one. He was in touch with Haroun 
 al-Easchid, Caliph of Bagdad (we shall come 
 across Bagdad in a very different connection 
 presently), the hero of the Arabian Nights, and 
 his cathedral at Aachen is built on Byzantine or 
 Constantinople lines. Such, then, was the first 
 Holy Eoman Emperor. The history of the Em- 
 pire as a whole is best read in Bryce's great book. 
 All I can do is to pick out such points in its 
 history — it was destroyed by Napoleon — ^as affect 
 my immediate purpose. 
 
 Theoretically the position of Emperor was 
 38 
 
Germany 
 
 elective. The various princes of tlie Empire 
 were supposed to meet on the death of the 
 Emperor and choose one of their number in his 
 place (hence their title of Elector), just as the 
 Cardinals meet in conclave on the death of a 
 Pope to choose a Cardinal to succeed him. (I 
 was present in Rome during the eight days of 
 the election of Pius X in 1903. But in practice 
 the tendency was to elect the son of the former 
 Emperor; and thus we get the great ruling 
 houses which kept the Imperial office in their 
 grasp for generations, as, for instance, the 
 Hohenstaufen, and later the Hapsburgs — a name 
 which brings us up, indeed, to the present day, 
 for the Hapsburgs are still ruling in their ancient 
 Archduchy of Austria. We might, indeed, say 
 that the old Emperor of Austria is the real Em- 
 peror; some people would, in fact, be inclined 
 to call him the Emperor, and leave out the words 
 "of Austria" altogether, since he is the heir to 
 the Empire of the days when there was but one 
 Imperial throne — that of the Hapsburgs, when 
 the Emperor of Russia was still buried in the 
 interior of his va^ territories at Kieff or Mos- 
 cow, and when the Emperor of Germany was 
 simply Elector of Brandenburg or King of Prus- 
 sia. But we are running ahead too fast. 
 
 The Empire of Charlemagne soon broke up. 
 His grandsons divided it among them at Verdun 
 in 843 (Verdun is one of the great frontier for- 
 tresses of France to-day), and the way in which 
 
 39 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 they divided it is interesting and important. 
 Charles took West Frankland or old Gaul, and 
 from this grew slowly modern France. Ludwig 
 took East Frankland or Germany, which re- 
 mained a patchwork of electorates, duchies, 
 prince-bishoprics, and so on — some so small as 
 to have an army of no more than half a dozen 
 privates and four oflficers — right up into the 
 nineteenth century. But most interesting of all 
 is the portion of Charlemagne's eldest grandson. 
 It included, as one might expect, the two capitals 
 Aachen and Rome, and all the land in between, 
 the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Alsace-Lorraine, 
 Switzerland, Lombardy, and, since his name was 
 Lothar, it was called Lothar's Kingdom, or Loth- 
 ringen, or — ^in French — Lorraine. Now here at 
 last is a word to fire our interest ! It is the key 
 to more European history, to mppe of the present 
 war, than can easily be told. Suffice it, then, to 
 say tbat Lothar's portion, lying as tt did between 
 France and Germany, and belonging to neither, 
 became a bone of contention,-^ a source of trouble 
 from the day of its foundation to the present 
 moment. At one point in its history it nearly 
 rises to the dignity of a separate kingdom — as 
 all who have read Sir Walter Scott's "Quentin 
 Durward" and remember the long struggle be- 
 tween Louis XI and Charles the Bold (who 
 ruled in Brussels) will remember. But Charles 
 was too bold (he ought properly to be called "the 
 Eash") ; he attempted to conquer the unconquer- 
 
 40 
 
Germany 
 
 able Swiss. He was killed in battle, and his 
 dreams of sovereignty passed, while the foxy 
 Lduis — son of the King whom Joan of Arc had 
 crowned in the Cathedral of Reims (long before 
 Prussian shells were thought of) -^profited by 
 his death to secure.' for ever the supremacy of 
 the French Crown/ Henceforth Lorraine belongs 
 sometimes to Germany, sometimes to France; it 
 was French up to 1870, and then the Germans 
 took ij^-^ut to-day, in Paris, may be seen in the 
 Place de la Concorde, among the statues of the 
 cities of France, the statue of Strasburg, the 
 capital of Lorraine. It was covered with mourn- 
 ing wreaths till the war began; but still on its 
 pedestal there is, I believe, a vacant space — a 
 space whereon shall be cut at a future date the 
 year of its recovery: — 
 
 Lost 1870. / 
 
 Kegained . / 
 
 Thus we see the continuity of history. To 
 understand the question of Lorraine we haVe to 
 enter into the counsels of Charlemagne's grand- 
 son; we have to go back a thousand years; and 
 we may also allow ourselves to look forward 
 into the future to fill in a vacant space on a 
 statue in Paris. 
 
 We are now gradually concentrating on our 
 subject. The Frank Empire has gone; France 
 has broken from it and is living her own life; 
 Lorraine pursues her uneasy and undetermined 
 
 4X 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 course immediately to her eastern flank, and to 
 the east again — to the east of Lorraine, that is 
 to say — ^we at last see Germany. 
 
 And it is with Germany that we are most 
 immediately concerned. I have already referred 
 to the patchwork character of this area, but I 
 wish now to emphasize this fact : the patches are 
 of varying size and importance. Some are almost 
 microscopically small: Weimar in the days of 
 Goethe raised a few hundred men as its army; 
 others — ^Austria, for instance — are powerful 
 enough to claim a more or less continuous leader- 
 ship ajad to monopolize the Imperial throne; 
 others again, though still called electorates, will 
 one day become kingdoms — e.g. Hanover, Saxony, 
 Bavaria, Wurtemberg. There is, however; one 
 electorate in particular to which I wish to draw 
 attention, and that is the electorate of Branden- 
 burg. 
 
 Now recently I had the curiosity to visit 
 Brandenburg. It lies about thirty miles to the 
 west of Berlin, but beyond a great stone Eoland 
 that stands up, some thirty feet high, from the 
 middle of the pavement in front of the Town 
 Hall, there is practically nothing of interest; I 
 believe, however, that it is noted for its hams. 
 Yet this little town, quiet and empty as it now' 
 appears on the Havel, with its vast barges mov- 
 ing continually to and fro, is a seat and centre 
 of world importance, for it is nothing less than 
 the empty shell of the egg from which was 
 
 42 
 
Germany 
 
 hatched that ferocious eagle whose beak and 
 claws are at the present moment tearing Europe. 
 
 The ruler of Brandenburg was also head of 
 an order of crusading knights, the knights of the 
 Teutonic order. But these crusaders did not 
 waste their energies on the Turks and infidels 
 of the Holy Land; they were more interested in 
 the heathen to the east of them — ^the Prussians. 
 These Prussians were subdued — whether they 
 used Prussian blue as our own ancient Britons 
 used woad I cannot say, but they were an equally 
 primitive people — and they gradually disap- 
 peared under the rule of the Brandenburg 
 knights. Indeed, according to the French his- 
 torian Lavisse in his wonderful little "Vue 
 g6n6rale de I'histoire de PEurope," there are no 
 such people as the Prussians, they are really all 
 Brandenburgers, just as the Britons who "never 
 shall be slaves" are, as a matter of fact, mainly 
 Anglo-Saxons — that is, low Germans. The ex- 
 tension of Brandenburg eastwards over Prussia 
 m^ant a great increase in its importance and 
 influence among its German neighbors, and that 
 importance and 'influence was still further in- 
 creased by events which, occurring farther south 
 — ^in the Mediterranean region, in fact — com- 
 pletely altered the history and destinies of 
 Europe. We must therefore break off our story 
 of Brandenburg for -a. while — but not for long — 
 to see what those fateful events were. 
 
 The thousand years of Constantinople's re- 
 43 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 sistance were at an end. Whereas Rome fell 
 before the Barbarians in 410, Constantinople fell 
 before the Turks in the middle of the fifteenth 
 century. Into the full effects of that great catas- 
 trophe we cannot pretend to enter; they will be 
 dealt with again in the third essay. All I have 
 time to say now is that the great revival of learn- 
 ing which resulted from the fall of Constanti- 
 nople led to yet another revival of the utmost 
 importance — a. revival in. religion : the Reforma- 
 tion. Now the leader of this movement was, of 
 course, the German Luther, and the effect of his 
 work was not only to split Christendom into 
 warring sections and thus destroy the mediasval 
 unity of Europe, but to split the Empire also 
 into Protestant and Catholic Powers, which, like 
 the soldiers of the dragon's teeth, fought each 
 other till they could fight no longer. The war 
 was known as the Thirty Years War and ravaged 
 Germany during the days of our James I, who 
 did all he could to stop it, and his son, Charles I. 
 At its close the population of Germany was half 
 what it had been at its beginning, and whole 
 tracts that had been fruitful farmland before the 
 war had reverted to their original forest con- 
 dition when the Treaty of Westphalia brought 
 the war to a close in 1648. Yet the war had done 
 one thing. Luther had been forced to look for 
 support against Pope and Emperor among the 
 princes of northern Germany and the Baltic re- 
 gion, who were strengthened in consequence in 
 
Germany 
 
 their idea of Divine Right : thus it came about 
 that the Eeformation gave Brandenburg still 
 further opportunities of development on lines 
 more or less independent of the Empire. At 
 any rate, it is just about 1650 that we come upon 
 the n,ame of the real founder of Brandenburg's 
 greatness, the Great Elector as he is called, who 
 ruled from 1640 to 1688. He it was — his name 
 was Frederick William — who brought Branden- 
 burg nearer Prussia by capturing the province 
 which lay between the two, Pomerania, and thus 
 at a stroke multiplied the significance of his 
 electorate. Indeed, the word Brandenburg is 
 already becoming too small for such an ambitious 
 and enterprising State, and it is not long, only 
 a few years, indeed, after the death of the Great 
 Elector — ^in 1701, to be quite correct — that the 
 change comes, and the simple Electorate of 
 Brandenburg blossoms forth as the Kingdom of 
 Prussia. Curiously enough, thirteen years after- 
 ward's its western neighbor, the Elector of Han- 
 over, also became a king, for in 1713 he ascended 
 the throne of England as George I. 
 
 When we find ourselves free to talk of the 
 King of Prussia we feel that we are beginning 
 to make headway; and, indeed, Prussia herself 
 helps us by forging ahead more rapidly during 
 the next half-century than she had ever done 
 before. The second King of Prussia had a mania 
 for soldiering; he increased his forces from 
 38,000 to 83,000 men, and his chief delight was 
 
 45 
 
Eittorical Backgrounds of the Great Wcmt 
 
 to drill and parade them. To provide the money 
 they required, he fed his Court on boiled mutton 
 and the plainest of food generally, while his 
 Giant Guards ("The Eomance of a Eegiment," 
 by J. E, Hutchinson, gives their complete his- 
 tory) were the talk of Europe. I am not certain, 
 but I can quite imagine that it was this King 
 who introduced the goose-step into the Prussian 
 Army — that parade march which so astonishes 
 those who see it for the first time; its stiffness 
 and perfect uselessness exactly fit his character. A 
 good deal about him is to be found in Macaulay's 
 lively Essay on Frederick the Great; he it was 
 who exalted the military nature of the Prussian 
 kingship, who sacrificed everything for military 
 power and who seemed to think only in terms of 
 soldiers. Voltaire was indeed right when he 
 said : "War is the industry of Prussia." Yet he 
 made no real use of his forces. Thai was the 
 destiny of his son, Frederick the Great, the most 
 important name we have hitherto come across. 
 As a young man he quarrelled violently with his 
 father, who once tried to strangle him with the 
 window cords; more than once he went into 
 banishment, bwt usually managed to soften his 
 father's heart by picking up some alien giant 
 and packing him off as a peace-offering to. Berlin. 
 At this period Frederick was, in short, not in 
 ^sympathy with the Prussian Court; its life 
 seemed narrow and cramped ta him, and he pre- 
 ferred the more brilliant life of the French. 
 
 46 
 
Germa/ny 
 
 When, however, he succeeded to the throne, he 
 became the real upbuilder of Prussia, and his 
 method of establishing the greatness of his own 
 realm is best expressed in his own words, "He is 
 a fool," he says, "and that nation is a fool, who, 
 having the power to strike his enemy unawares, 
 does not strike and strike his deadliest." Such 
 was his amiable policy; and he was not long in 
 acting on it, for he was possessed of real military 
 genius. The throne of Austria was occupied by 
 a woman, Maria Theresa. So, without the 
 shadow, of an excuse, Frederick invaded the ter- 
 ritories of his neighbor and tore Silesia from her 
 — ^this in the War of the Austrian Succession, 
 which kept, with its sequels, Frederick, Prussia, 
 Europe, and, indeed, even distant India and 
 North America, in a turmoil for a quarter of a 
 century from 1740. Silesia is that part of Ger- 
 many which is in between Poland and Bohemia, 
 the valley of the Upi)er Oder, with Breslau as its 
 capital, and stretching to the southeast of Berlin. 
 He also began to carve up the defenceless and 
 divided kingdom of Poland and share it with his 
 neighbors, Eussia and Austria ; though his taking 
 of West Prussia from Poland is perhaps less 
 blameworthy than his attack on Silesia, since it 
 was already largely German and lay between his 
 eastern and western dominions. 
 
 The lead Prussia thus established in Germany 
 was emphasized by the smallness of many of the 
 other independent States. A kingdom whose 
 
 47 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 ruler lived — one might say even slept — in uni- 
 form, and which could place nearly a hundred 
 thousand men in the field was bound to dominate 
 States whose armies reached only a few hundreds, 
 as was the case of Weimar, even a few scores or 
 merely a dozen or so, as was the case with still 
 smaller States. The shoulder-to-shoulder style 
 of fighting, the solid column which, in its forward 
 march, reminded onlookers of the Roman Legion 
 or the Greek Phalanx, the order to reserve fire 
 until ithe whites of the enemy's eyes were visible, 
 the straight line which the "dashing white ser- 
 geant" produced by passing his pike horizontally 
 along the backs of his privates — all these are 
 characteristic features of the Prussian Army of 
 the period, and of much later periods, even, to 
 some extent, down to the present day, when the 
 German, regiments carry their colors into battle. 
 But the Prussian soldier, the Pomeranian Gren- 
 adier, has not always tramped solidly to victory 
 through the enemy'13 lines, and before long 
 Prussia, fine fighting Power though she had 
 proved herself to be when led by the genius of 
 Frederick the Great, was tasting the bitterness of 
 defeat. 
 
 I must leave, my chief reference to the French 
 Revolution, which broke out only a few years 
 after the death of Frederick the Great, till my 
 essay on France. All I can say about it here is as 
 regards its effect on Prussia. The Prussian King 
 wished to help restore the Bourbons to the throne, 
 
 48 
 
Germany 
 
 and to that end he marched his dense columns 
 against the new Republic. But his serried ranks 
 were powerless against the frantic artillery fire 
 of those ill-equipped sans-culottes of Dumouflez, 
 who blew the supporters of the exiled Bourbons 
 to pieces from the tableland of Valmy on Sep- 
 tember 20, 1792, a tableland that has been prom- 
 inent also in the fighting of September, 1*914 — 
 the plateau of Argonne: the chopping-block 
 whereon the French dismember the Barbarians. 
 The Prussians have learned nothing — ^at least in 
 the way of open-order fighting. The Argonne 
 has seen a second Valmy, with British rifles doing 
 the work of Dumouriez' cannon, and Chalons, 
 where Attila was defeated, is near by. 
 
 Nor was Valmy the extent of the damage which 
 Prussia suffered at the hands of the Revolution. 
 When Napoleon, with the military genius which 
 has always appealed to the French spirit, organ- 
 ized the Revolution and drove French armies over 
 the Continent like ploughs to break up the crusted 
 monarchies of his day and give an opening for 
 the seeds of freedom, Prussia suffered more than 
 any other German State. At Weimar, Napoleon 
 gave a theatrical performance to "a pitful of 
 kings"; one of the sentries outside the theatre 
 was reprimanded by his sergeant for giving the 
 Imperial salute to a German royalty. "He is 
 only a king," said the sergeant. During these 
 days at Weimar, Napoleon tried to urge Goethe 
 to write a play on the greatness of Caesar as an 
 
 49 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 offset to Sliakespeare's tragedy, which turns 
 merely on Caesar's death. In short, Napoleon was 
 lording it pretty imperially over the Germans he 
 had just beaten at Jena. But all this was mild 
 as compared with the treatment he meted out to 
 Prussia (the ex-champion fighter of Europe). 
 As we go through the Sans-Souci Palace at Pots- 
 dam to-day the guide calls our attention to the 
 writing-desk of Frederick the Great, and as we 
 look at it we notice that the leather covering has 
 been partly ripped off. When we ask how this 
 piece of destruction occurred, we are told that it 
 is the work of Napoleon himself, who carried off 
 the leather he had thus torn away as a memento 
 of the soldier he so much admired. His treat- 
 ment of Prussia generally is on a par with this 
 piece of high-handedness; and, indeed. Queen 
 Louisa went so far as to wait on him and beg him 
 to show some consideration for her stricken 
 people. Hardy, in his "Dynasts," has a vivid, pic- 
 ture of the meeting, and, indeed, of many another 
 incident of these stirring days. 
 
 But there is a tide in the affairs of men, and 
 Napoleon in his turn was forced back. He had 
 been obliged to attempt an impossible task — the 
 task of conquering. Eussia, the impenetrable. 
 Why he was compelled to undertake this impos- 
 sibility we shall learn later. Suffice it for the 
 present, then, to say that the capture of Moscow, 
 so far from ending the Eussian war with a 
 French victory, led only to Napoleon's own un- 
 
 50 ' 
 
Germany 
 
 doing, since no capital is worth entering so long 
 as an army unbeaten is in the field. Rolled back 
 across the Eussian frontiers, he found himself in 
 hostile Germany, and was again defeated in the 
 Battle of the Nations at Leipsic, in October, 1813, 
 where Russians and Germans fought side by side 
 against the French (the Germans were glad of 
 the Slavs then, they said nothing in disparage- 
 ment of Russian civilization in 1813). Leipsic, 
 coming as it did at the end of the disastrous re- 
 treat from Russia, completed the downfall of 
 Napoleon, for Waterloo, of which we think so 
 much was only the knock-out blow which we gave 
 our great antagonist as he struggled up bravely 
 after the count-out had been nearly reached at 
 Leipsic. 
 
 The Battle of the Nations has been commemor- 
 ated by a monstrous monument which I have 
 seen only under its covering of scaffold-poles, but 
 if- one can judge by the photographs, it is the 
 most brutal and yet the most child's-box-of- 
 bricks-like of any of the modern German attempts 
 to make one's flesh creep in monumental masonry. 
 Great, lowering, frozen faces glare at the be- 
 holder, rough, heavy, and dull, while, if I remem- 
 ber aright, here and there the projecting eyebrows 
 and nose-ridges have been used in true Prussian 
 fashion, as a sort of sentry-box for other gaunt 
 and stony figures; quite an unworthy — and un- 
 shapely — monument (from a distance it looks 
 as though it had been turned out of a mould like 
 
 51 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 a blancmange) of a very great event, an event, 
 moreover, which ushered in a remarkable period, 
 the period of Prussia's great progress, when she 
 succeeded in adding intelligence and education to 
 her traditional iron discipline in war. 
 
 Now we have all been told how wise it is to 
 learn from the enemy, and Prussia, during these 
 , early years of the nineteenth century, was more 
 profitably engaged, both for herself and for 
 humanity, than she had ever been before. 
 Throughout this period after liberation from 
 France, she kept steadily in view, of course, the 
 attainment of military strength ; but she had the 
 wisdom to realize that arms are more than armies, 
 and that the real might of a people rests on its 
 general strength of body, mind, and soul, even 
 more than on its massed battalions. And it is in 
 the means she took, the far-sighted measures she 
 adopted, to build up the all-round strength of her 
 people that Germany is most worthy of study, 
 not necessarily of imitation, since one nation's 
 meat may well be another nation's poison, but 
 yet of close and careful study. The great names 
 in her service are very numerous during this 
 period — though we in England know all too little 
 of either the men or their work. I well remember 
 how flat Sir John Seeley's biography of one of 
 them — ^perhaps the greatest, Stein — fell, although 
 it was the chief work of one of our greatest his- 
 torians. Nobody seemed interested in Stein or 
 to care to be told what he had accomplished. 
 
 52 
 
Germany 
 
 Yet he and his felloty^-workers^ men like Scharn- 
 horst and Humboldt, gave to Prussia not only an 
 improved military system, on the lines of univer- 
 sal military service, but also an educational sys- 
 tem which has put Germany in the forefront of 
 Europe. New universities were founded, a system 
 of public secondary education on a large scale 
 was started a century before we thought of any- 
 thing of the kind, and public interest in the arts 
 and sciences was fostered as a State duty for 
 which the State largely paid. But chief of all 
 in importance perhaps, was the way in which 
 Prussia handled that change which, spreading 
 from England, where it had just originated, was 
 bound to reach the continental States sooner or 
 later, the change we refer to as the industrial 
 revolution, the change which had turned England 
 from an agricultural into a manufacturing 
 country. 
 
 This change had Been allowed to go on un- 
 checked, unguided, and unregulated in England 
 because England was so busy fighting, first the 
 French Revolution and afterwards Napoleon, 
 that she seemed to have no time or energy left for 
 putting her own house in order. The result was 
 that our manufacturing cities grew up anyhow, 
 and Goldsmith's lines — 
 
 Woe to the land, to hastening ills a prey. 
 Where wealth aecumnlates and men decay — 
 
 were becoming more terribly true every month. 
 
 53 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 So great indeed was the deterioration and so long 
 unchecked that even to-day we are only just be- 
 ginning to tackle the problem. We are now en- 
 gaged in making a sort of Doomsday survey of our 
 school-children; and the army of doctors and 
 nurses who probe the teeth and ears and noses 
 and mouths and examine the eyes of the children 
 in our schools to-day, together with the vast array 
 of cooks who provide and serve up free halfpenny 
 and penny dinners to multitudes of these same 
 children daily, are engaged only in a belated at- 
 tempt to put right what ought never to have been 
 allowed to go wrong — the physique of our popu- 
 lation. Oobbett was not, indeed, exaggerating 
 when early in the nineteenth century he de- 
 scribed the Birmingham of his day — and infer- 
 entially therefore every like town — as a Hell-hole, 
 a place of torment in which an Imperial race was 
 wasting away (through the short-sighted greed of 
 gain of the manufacturers and the Government) 
 to the point of being physically unfit to bear 
 their world-wide burdens — in proof whereof wit- 
 ness the number of rejections, and the reasons 
 for them, in the recruiting of Lord Kitchener's 
 successive armies, rejections which show that 
 though the spirit is willing the flesh is weak in- 
 deed — "sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans 
 everything," as Shakespeare says. Our utilitarian 
 money-grubbers, who had turned England into a 
 Tom Tiddler's Ground where everybody was ex- 
 clusively employed in picking up gold and silver. 
 
 54 
 
Oermany 
 
 had forgotten that even the gains they were 
 making out of the nation's physical health were 
 safe so long only as the nation as a whole was 
 physically fit to keep the enemy from — ^we won't 
 say the sacred soil of England, because greed had 
 hoofed it into mud and stamped down all the fair 
 flowers of the England of Shakespeare's and Mil- 
 ton's day; let us say instead the vaults in the 
 Bank of England, real heart of the Empire. Army 
 service meant to them only an annoying disloca- 
 tion of the labor market ; they did not encourage 
 even volunteering. Thus in the end even wealth 
 cannot accumulate if men decay and the martial 
 spirit is discouraged. The Germans learned from 
 our misfortunes, and, looking ahead with a fore- 
 sightedness which to us seems quite unattainable, 
 they made provision for the orderly and healthy 
 growth of their towns; their martial spirit 
 needed no reorganizing. They ushered in the 
 industrial system, without which they would 
 never have gained the wealth necessary to their 
 fighting forces, in such fashion that it left largely 
 undisturbed the ancient agricultural life which 
 is the backbone of a nation's real strength — "a 
 stout peasantry, a country's pride," as Gold- 
 smith calls it — and, indeed, much also of that 
 picturesque town and rural life which has come 
 down from the Middle Ages more compleely in 
 Germany perhaps than anywhere else in Europe. 
 They accomplished this change so sensibly by a 
 precaution which seems simple enough to us now 
 
 55 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great Wwr 
 
 that we are too far gone to adopt it. Each grow- 
 ing town acquired the land round its outskirts, 
 and thus, as the town grew, its growth was regu- 
 lated in the public interests : its streets were laid 
 out broadly and well, public spaces were ade- 
 quately provided, and lastly — and perhaps chiefly 
 all the increment in value, all the increased 
 ground-rents which resulted from turning fields 
 and woods into building land, came in the form 
 of public income to the municipal chest. Thus 
 German towns have as a rule no rates to speak 
 of, and yet they have plenty of money for munici- 
 pal purposes. I have lost myself more than once 
 in the State-wood or town-wood of Coblentz; 
 again, once when I was speaking admiringly of 
 the new Frankfort Town Hall to a Frankfert 
 wine-merchant he said : "Yes ; and it would have 
 cost only another hundred thousand pounds to 
 bring it down to the river and give it a river- 
 front." But it is perhaps at Nuremberg that we 
 see the results of this care and forethought — so 
 different from the "one step enough for me" 
 attitude which masquerades among us in Eng- 
 land under the name of practicality — ^at its best. 
 That ancient city is as completely surrounded 
 by its old walls as Chester, and. there seems to 
 be hardly a single modern house within their 
 precincts. In the Castle the Iron Maiden and 
 other relics remind us of medieval cruelty and 
 superstition. Within its shadow stand the houses 
 of Hans Sachs and Albert Diirer, filled with treas- 
 
 56 
 
Germany 
 
 ures. But as one rests at the foot or on the ram- 
 part of the great tower one looks in vain for the 
 manufacturing districts — and yet one knows that 
 it is an industrial centre of importance. All 
 round the walls one sees fields and open spaces, 
 and in the middle distance one of the most beauti- 
 fully planned museums I know — a museum which 
 is arranged like a series of furnished chambers 
 and fitted shops, studies, and workrooms of the 
 different periods of German history. But still 
 there is no sign of smoke or pollution in the scene 
 before you. If, however, the day be clear, then 
 right in the distance, beyond the hills and so 
 placed that the smoke is carried away from the 
 city of which the inhabitants are so proud, one 
 may make out the chimneys of the Nuremberg 
 trades. ^ 
 
 The excellent financial system which underlies 
 all this town-planning gives the cities of Ger- 
 many, moreover, an independence of which our 
 English corporations have no idea. Whereas the 
 City Council of every great English town is con- 
 tinually obliged to beg permission from Govern- 
 ment Departments to raise loans for public 
 v works, or to waste the rate-payers' money and 
 send up the rates in the costly business of getting 
 private Bills through Parliament, the German 
 city goes uninterruptedly on its own way, laying 
 out its parks, preserving its ancient buildings, 
 planning its own extensions, and rearing its 
 splendid State or municipal theatres, opera- 
 
 57 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 houses, galleries, and libraries for the continued 
 and recreative education of its adult citizens, as 
 well as its schools,- colleges, and technical in- 
 stitutes for its children and youths : and all paid 
 for, be it remembered, out of the increment value, 
 the ground-rents, of the suburban lands it had 
 the foresight to buy up during the very period in 
 which so many of our own town councillors were 
 making their fortunes by speculative building on 
 the outskirts of our English towns — by preying, 
 one might almost say, on our common necessities. 
 While the Mayor (a paid official) of a German 
 town was a public servant, working hard in the 
 interests of the community, the rulers of our own 
 towns were only too often making money in ways 
 which were little short of treason to the interests 
 which they had been chosen to guard. It must 
 also be borne in mind that Prussia has always 
 aimed at feeding herself in wartime, and there- 
 fore encouraged agriculture strongly all through 
 the period of her industrial revolution; whereas 
 we let agriculture decay in the interest — as we 
 supposed — of industry. The fostering of agricul- 
 ture was as great a counterpoise to the evils of 
 the German industrial revolution as any. 
 
 I have been describing the most fruitful con- 
 structive period in Prussian history. The work 
 accomplished during those years was so appar- 
 ently pacific that it is small wonder that many 
 who followed its course were deceived as to its 
 true object. Thus Cobden, in 1838, said: "The 
 
 ns 
 
Germany 
 
 Government of Prussia is the mildest phase in 
 which absolutism ever presented itself. The 
 King, a good, just man, has, by pursuing a sys- 
 tematic course of popular education, shattered 
 the sceptre of despotism even in his own hand 
 and has for ever prevented his successors from 
 gathering up the fragments" — a statement which 
 only shows how deceptive appearances may be 
 and how ready we are to read our own wishes 
 into whatever we see. For Cobden was a pacific- 
 ist, and he was evidently unable to realize that 
 the parent of all this progress was really War 
 and its manifold necessities., 
 
 ■Europe had not long to wait, however, before 
 the underlying militarism of Prussia began again 
 to reveal itself. Elsewhere in Germany, doubt- 
 less, the war spirit was in abeyance, Thus, for 
 instance, Thackeray, writing in 1855 from Wei- 
 mar, -says : "I think I shall never see a society 
 more simple, charitable, courteous, gentleman- 
 like than that of the dear little Saxon city where 
 the good Schiller and the great Goethe lived and 
 were buried'." But Weimar is not Berlin, and 
 the little city on the Ilm which stands for iso 
 much in real German culture was no match for 
 her Grenadier neighbor, who had for the time 
 being disguised himself in the robe of a school- 
 master ; sooner or later Weimar would assuredly 
 be drawn also into the vortex of militarism, 
 whether she liked it or no. 
 
 Prussia was, then, preparing for fresh mili- 
 59 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 tary efforts by education and by establishing in- 
 dustries as well as by equipment and drill. She 
 had mobilized not only her soldiers but also her 
 schoolmasters and philosophers, her merchants 
 and traders, even — if possible — ^her artists and 
 poets, the least disciplinable of mankind. But 
 she valued all these resources and aspects of her 
 national life in terms of soldiers. Like most other 
 States, she had spasms of revolution in that year 
 of revolutions, 1848; but she came through this 
 crisis not greatly altered, and in 1864 she began 
 her next series of aggressive wars. She had then 
 at her head three men whose names have been as 
 deeply graven in European history as any — 
 King William I, Bismarck, and Moltke whose 
 nephew was prominent early in the present war, 
 and under their guidance she went forth to con- 
 quer. 
 
 The revolution year 1848 had seen a rebellion 
 in Schleswig-Holstein — the isthmus which con- 
 nects Denmark with Germany — ^against the 
 Danes. This rebellion had been helped by 
 Prussia, and in less than twenty years after it 
 Prussia, helped by Austria, was' in possession of 
 the isthmus, which added so greatly to the scanty 
 Prussian coast-line. This, then, was the first 
 blow — and a very successful one it was; but in 
 '1866 the partners who had brought it off quar- 
 relled about it, and so we come to the second of 
 the three wars to which Prussia owes so much. ' 
 This was the Six Weeks War of 1866 against 
 
 60 
 
Germomy 
 
 Austria, with Sadowa as its chief battle — a six 
 weeks war because Prussia had the first breech- 
 loading weapon, the needle gun, and" also the 
 field-telegraph for the first time; while Austria 
 — unlucky in war throughout hier history — was 
 hampered, as she still is, by the stiffness and 
 formality which she inherited from the Spaniards 
 of our own Henry VIlI's day, and which showed 
 itself even at the funeral of the murdered Arch- 
 duke Ferdinand — whose death was the excuse 
 for the present 1914 war. 
 
 By this war Austria lo^t all hope of the leader- 
 ship of Germany. We might, indeed, say that the 
 Hapsburgs, like thejr relatives the Bourbons, un- 
 able to learn or forget anything, were no match 
 for the ambitious HohenzoUerns, and thus in 
 18^6 Austria was turned into the wilderness, 
 there to befriend ( upon the advice of Bismarck, 
 who always made suggestions to help those he 
 had conquered) the Eastern people she had 
 hitherto tried to treat as a subject race — the 
 Hungarians whom we have already mentioned 
 in connection with Attila, Henchforth, there- 
 fore, we must speak of Austria as Austria-Hun- 
 gary or the Dual Empire; and Hungarian prob- 
 lems and interests will play their part hence- 
 forth in moulding Austrian policy. Austria in 
 marrying Hungary as it were, had taken on her 
 debts to the Slavs. Her eagle is a two-headed 
 one, facing, like Janus, east and west. 
 
 Meanwhile Prussia, as we should expect of the 
 61 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 yictor, was going on from strength to strength. 
 She too came to an arrangement with her im- 
 mediate neighbor, but on very different lines 
 from that between Austria and Hungary. She 
 rounded on her little neighbor Hanover — then 
 ruled by Queen Victoria's cousin — drove the King 
 off the throne, and annexed the kingdom without 
 any fighting worth talking about. Thus the Han- 
 overians became involuntary Prussians just as 
 the Holsteiners had become a few years earlier. 
 But the wrath of the exiled house, the house of 
 Cumberland, was not easily appeased; and it was 
 not, indeed, till about a year ago that the Hano- 
 verian house of Guelph — or Cumberland — ^was 
 united to the HohenzoUerns by the marriage of 
 the Kaiser's daughter to Prince Ernest and the 
 Duchy of Brunswick reconstituted. 
 
 When Prussia had digested Hanover she was 
 ready for her next meal, and this proved indeed 
 a dish to set before a king. It was no less than 
 France herself. 
 
 Thus we come to the great struggle of 1870. 
 
 Now, in one way the Franco-German War was 
 not an aggressive war on the part of Prussia. For 
 reasons I shall explain in my next essay, France 
 under Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon I, was 
 at this time launched on a policy of military ad- 
 venture in some respects like that of Napoleon I 
 himself. The HohenzoUerns had been claiming 
 the succession to the Spanish Crown — it is 
 curious that a Spanish succession difficulty 
 
 62 
 
Oermany 
 
 should have cropped up again almost exactly 
 two hundred years after that of Louis XIV — but 
 withdrew their claim when the French insisted. 
 This withdrawal did not, however, go far enough, 
 and the French demanded that the claim itself 
 should never be renewed. Such a demand was 
 altogether excessive. This is the account of the 
 Prussian reply to it as given in the famous Ems 
 telegram of July 13, 1870^-a telegram which, 
 however, is usually accepted merely as Bis- 
 marck's account of the incident, with which he 
 intended to sting the French to a declaration of 
 war when they seemed at the last moment to 
 hesitate about fighting: "His Majesty writes to 
 me : 'Count Benedetti spoke to me on the promen- 
 ade, in order to demand from me, finally in a 
 very importunate manner, that I should authorize 
 him to telegraph at once that I bound myself for 
 all future time never again to give my consent if 
 the Hohenzollerns should renew their candida- 
 ture. I refused at last somewhat sternly, as it 
 is neither right nor possible to undertake engage- 
 ments of this kind a tout jamais.' " 
 
 Yet although in form France was the ag- 
 gressor, in reality Prussia was glad of the war, 
 because Bismarck saw in this great struggle a 
 final stage in the building up of a solid Germany 
 with Prussia as the keystone. His ambition was 
 to turn the existing Customs Union of the numer- 
 ous German States into a unified Empire, and 
 he hoped to use France as the anvil on which the 
 
 63 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 States of Germany should be welded by the shock 
 of war into a single political unit. Thus, al- 
 though the French were expecting to repeat the 
 easy triumphs of Napoleon I's day, although all 
 l*aris was crying "To Berlin !" and the Empress 
 Eug6nie — who is still alive at Ohislehurst help- 
 ing the wounded, and whose recent visit to the 
 seat of her former glory at Fontaineblefau was 
 so pathetic and ominous an event of the earlier 
 part of 1914 — said, "This is my war," although, 
 in short, France thought that all the cards were 
 in her own hands, yet Prussia knew differently. 
 And the event proved Prussia right. That same 
 winter King William of Prussia was crowned 
 first Emperor of Germany in Versailles — that 
 embodiment of French glory and of earlier Ger- 
 man defeat which stands some few, miles outside 
 Paris. 
 
 Not content with this triumph, Germany in- 
 sisted on a two hundred million pound indem- 
 nity from France and the cession of the two 
 French provinces that bordered the Upper and 
 Middle Ehine, Alsace and our old friend Lor- 
 raine. The Rhine thus became a German river 
 except for its two ends ; and with these territorial 
 additions, taken for strategic rather than polit- 
 ical reasons, the newly made German Empire 
 came into existence. 
 
 But the triumph of Germany, though complete, 
 brought the Empire no ease. Rapid recdvery 
 has been the outstanding feature of France, and 
 
 64 
 
Germany 
 
 after 1870 France beat even her own splendid 
 record. In two years the immense indemnity 
 had been paid, even though to raise the money 
 France had been obliged to scrape herself bare 
 of coin, and exist for a time on an unredeemable 
 paper currency. ' And beyond that France was 
 always nursing the thought of revenge. So ter- 
 rible, indeed, was her temper that by 1876 Bis- 
 marck grew fearful and was on the point of 
 reopening the war on the question of the Alsace 
 bishoprics in order that he might have the op- 
 portunity of crushing France again before she 
 grew too powerful. 
 
 But his ruthless project never took shape, 
 because Queen Victoria and the Czar intervened. 
 In its place, therefore, he steadily and success- 
 fully proceeded to build France in and isolate 
 her behind . an impenetrable wall of alliances 
 which curved like an arch through Central 
 Europe and represented the high-water mark 
 of Bismarck's achievements. Thus we arrive at 
 the celebrated Triple Alliance. Of the two 
 Powers which Germany called to her aid, one, 
 Austria, though a recently defeated enemy of 
 Prussia, came naturally into the agreement, 
 since Bismarck had prevented his King from 
 taking any of her land in 1866, and since her 
 ruling race and House are of German extraction 
 — albeit cumbered by a heavy fringe of non- 
 German subject races and linked on terms of 
 equality with a people of Tartar origin. But 
 
 65 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 as regards the third member of the Triple Alli- 
 ance, Italy, a less pronounced attachment was 
 only to be expected. Indeed, Bismarck managed 
 to bring her in only by pitting her interests and 
 those of France in North Africa, Tunis more 
 particularly, against each other; and even when 
 she was thus hooked, as it were, by the foment- 
 ing of an almost artificial hostility between her 
 and her neighbor of the same Latin race and 
 Roman Catholic faith, whom Dismarck had en- 
 couraged to seek in North Africa compensation 
 for Alsace-Lorraine, her position in the Triple 
 Alliance was by no means comfortable. 
 
 I was in Trieste on the eve of the funeral of 
 Humbert, the second King of Italy — the present 
 King is only the third occupant of the Italian 
 throne — who was murdered in 1900. On the day 
 of the funeral itself I was in both Venice and 
 Bologna, and what struck me most was the dif- 
 ference between the Austrian seaport and the 
 two Italian cities. Trieste had a great altar in 
 her central square, and all her churches were 
 draped in black, whereas Venice and Bologna 
 were merely shut up. In Trieste it was clear 
 that the people had seized on Humbert's death 
 as an opportunity for reminding their Austrian 
 masters that they were still Italian in sympathy. 
 Again, in August, 1914, I was present at a great 
 meeting of Italians in London, called together 
 to express sympathy with England in the war; 
 and it was quite clear from the temper of that 
 
 66 
 
Oermany 
 
 meeting that Italian feeling, so far from being 
 on the side of Austria, was strongly opposed to 
 this nominal ally of hers, for the simple reason 
 that Austria still holds two Italian provinces, 
 Italian Tyrol and Trieste, and furthermore, be- 
 cause Italy herself as a united kingdom began 
 to arise only when Austi*ia was pushed by France 
 out of Lombardy; how relatively a short time 
 back was indicated by the presence at the London 
 meeting of the Garibaldi veterans in their red 
 shirts, the Balaclava heroes of Italy, men who, 
 in their day, had helped to weld Italy as Bis- 
 marck helped to weld Germany a few years after- 
 wards, in the furnace of war. It is also signifi- 
 cant that the Queen of Italy is a Montenegrin 
 princess ; and indeed the Balkan position is sim- 
 plified by the neutrality of Italy. Were she to 
 join in on either side, the difficulties in the Bal- 
 kans would be increased indefinitely. 
 
 Later on we shall see, indeed, that Italy ceased 
 to be an effective member of the Triple Alliance 
 some years before the present war broke out. 
 Her present neutrality need not, therefore, sur- 
 prise anybody, especially as the Triple Alliance 
 is a defensive and not an offensive alliance. 
 
 During these years Germany was prospering 
 greatly, because she was reaping the reward, not 
 only of success in the field but also of all that 
 careful and intelligent foresight, which we have 
 already described. She was, in fact, rapidly be- 
 coming one of the largest industrial States in 
 
 67 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 the world, and was, as a consequence, increasing- 
 ly anxious for fresh markets- wherein to find 
 buyers for her ever-growing surpluses, 
 
 Now, hitherto, all her energies had been taken 
 up in establishing and maintainiittg her Euro- 
 pean position. Bismarck had aimed at nothing 
 much beyond this, but the rapid growth of Ger- 
 man trade, requiring as it did a more extended 
 command of world markets, was already forcing 
 Germany to look beyond Europe in the interests 
 of her traders, without whose profits the military 
 burdens of the Empire could not be sustained. 
 
 It was, however, just in this matter of foreign 
 markets that Germany was most severely handi- 
 capped. The best markets are a nation's colonies, 
 but Germany, as a military power, fully occupied 
 with European politics, and coming late into 
 world politics, found herself anticipated in all 
 the best regions by her more fortunate rivals — 
 nations like England (and even Holland), who 
 had been obliged to develop sea-power and whose 
 reward was colonies with their ever-growing 
 markets. France was even better off than her 
 conqueror, for she had still the memory, and 
 indeed some remains, of the overseas Empire 
 she had lost in the eighteenth century, largely 
 to England. 
 
 Her hard fate, the handicap of her late arrival, 
 became henceforth the chief obstacle Germany 
 struggled against. Treitschke, the Berlin pro- 
 fessor of history, whose teaching to the soldiers 
 
 68 
 
Germany 
 
 and administrators as well as to the students 
 who thronged his lecture-room has done so much 
 to mould German policy in recent years, says: 
 "Colonization which retains a uniformity of 
 nationality has become a factor of immense 
 importance for the future of the world. It will 
 determine the degree to which each nation shares 
 in the government of the world by the white race. 
 It is quite possible that a country which owns 
 no colonies will no longer count among the Euro- 
 pean Great Powers, however powerful it may 
 otherwise be." And elsewhere he has this telling 
 phrase: "Those who go to North America are 
 entirely lost to Germany." 
 
 These views are more than the views of a 
 historian and a philosopher: they are the ex- 
 pression of a real German need. "A place in 
 the sun" was no mere arrogant demand of a 
 Junker caste; and if only the moon could have 
 been brought near enough to the earth to be 
 within the German sphere of influence, German 
 land-hunger might conceivably have been satis- 
 fied. Since, however, this was impossible, Ger- 
 many's only means of getting colonies was 
 
 The good old rule . . - the simple plan, 
 That those should take who have the power, 
 And those should keep who can. 
 
 If Germany was so powerful in Europe, how 
 was it, she wondered, that she was so powerless 
 outside Europe? Her world position by no 
 
 69 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 means corresponded with her European position ; 
 and that was not only inconvenient to her 
 traders, but humilitating to the Imperial pride 
 of a people who believed themselves to be not 
 only the best drilled and armed, but also the best 
 schooled people on the Continent, and who had 
 developed the habit during the past two cen- 
 turies of taking whatever they wanted by force 
 of arms — as is, indeed, to be expected of a people 
 whose whole career has been built up on a series 
 of aggressive wars. Yet the fact was patent, 
 even in the matter of language. German is a 
 small tongue for a world language, learned only 
 by such foreigners as wish to reap the rewards 
 of German research without going through the 
 spade-work in all those arts and sciences which 
 German scholarship has probed, whereas French 
 is not only the language of diplomacy — even 
 German treaties have to be in the language of 
 the people Germany defeated in 1870 — ^but also 
 the pattois of Europe; while as for English — ^if 
 the English had only the pluck to reform their 
 spelling instead of writing "Manchester" and 
 pronouncing it "Liverpool," as a Eussian friend 
 of mine once put it — English would soon be the 
 world language, with Spanish perhaps — ^yes, even 
 Spanish, because of Spain's early mastery of the 
 Spanish Main in Elizabeth's day, and hence of 
 South America — a tolerable second among Euro- 
 pean world tongues. 
 
 All these things galled the pride of our German 
 70 
 
Germany 
 
 cousins, and they began to study the map of the 
 world with renewed earnestness. But it was not 
 till 1888 that any very definite change came over 
 the spirit of German policy* In that year the 
 present — and third — Kaiser, William II, came 
 to the throne on the deeply lamented death of his 
 noble father, Frederick, the second German Em- 
 peror, and son-in-law of Queen Victoria, and with 
 him the story of Germany's development begins 
 afresh. In two years he had dismissed Bismarck, 
 who, with the genius of a born statesman, had not 
 only guided Germany to the leadership of Europe, 
 but had also — Junker though he was — ^brought 
 her a very considerable distance along the path 
 of constitutional progress. The old pilot who 
 had welded the Empire into an irrevocable whole 
 and steered it through the dangers which threat- 
 ened its early career was, however, dropped — to 
 use the figure in which Punch recorded this 
 daring act of the young Emperor — and having 
 freed himself from the great Chancellor, William 
 freed himself at the same time from Bismarck's 
 purely European policy. "The future of Ger- 
 many is on the water" — "The trident must be in 
 our list" — such was the burden of the new policy 
 — a world policy which was to give Germany her 
 place in the sun. Germany must expand or ex- 
 plode: her surplus products, if not her surplus 
 population, must find an outlet overseas. 
 
 But an overseas market can be reached only 
 under certain conditions. Quite apart from the 
 
 71 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 risk of storms and shipwreck, there is the risk 
 which arises from the watchful and overwhelm- 
 ing Navy of a Power which already possesses all 
 that Germany regards as necessary to her own 
 greatness — colonies and sea power. It accord- 
 ingly becomes necessary for Germany to develop 
 her sea forces, not only for the protection of her 
 coasts as hitherto, but also for the protection of 
 her sea-borne trade. And she proposed to ensure 
 this protection by building up a fleet so strong 
 that even the Mistress of the Seas herself should 
 hesitate before attacking it, lest she should be so 
 crippled in the fight that she might succumb to 
 any other Power which chose to take advantage 
 of her weakness. Germany's naval policy is, in 
 short, based on Wellington's maxim, that there 
 is only one thing more terrible than a victory, 
 and that is a defeat, and on Napoleon's, that you 
 cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. 
 But though the Kaiser and his Prussian ad- 
 visers saw quite clearly the need for a Navy, 
 inland Germany was not quite so quick to grasp 
 its necessity. Bavaria, Saxony, Wiirtemburg, 
 and so forth, have no seaports, and possibly some 
 of the jealousy which marked the old Holy Eoman 
 Empire lingered still in the Empire of 1870 — and 
 the fall of Berlin would probably be a more 
 serious affair for the German Empire than the 
 fall of Paris would be for France, since the find- 
 ing of a second capital for Germany might 
 awaken jealousies which would seriously strain 
 
 72 
 
Germany 
 
 German unity. One reason why the Kaiser keeps 
 so many castles in actual use is, I believe, that he 
 dare not offend erstwhile sovereign States by 
 closing their royal palaces and thus reducing 
 them to dependencies. They are willing to have 
 the Kaiser as their King or lord, but not to be 
 mere subjects of Prussia. 
 
 Therefore, to secure the Navy which meant so 
 much to them, the Prussians entered upon a great 
 educational campaign throughout the whole of 
 the federated German Empire. The German 
 Navy League was founded in 1900; its postage 
 was all paid by the Government, it organized ex- 
 cursions to naval bases, and in a short time it 
 numbered a million and a half members. 
 
 But it was the seizing of the German ship 
 Bundesrath by our English fleet during the Boer 
 War that brought home, with real effectiveness to 
 the Germans as a whole, a truth which Admiral 
 Jellicoe was to drive home still more forcibly, in 
 1914 — namely, the extent to which the overseas 
 trade which was so vital to them as a growing 
 industrial nation was dependent on our English 
 goodwill and favor — a state of affairs which 
 galled the high-spirited German authorities ex- 
 cessively, and even touched the pride at last of 
 the masses in Germany. Hence the Navy Law 
 was passed, the Kiel Canal^through which I 
 passed in 1912 — cut, and the German Navy rose 
 steadily till it occupied its present position of 
 being second only to our own. "Germany needs 
 
 73 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 a Navy," said the Kaiser, "of such strength that 
 a war even against the mightest naval Power 
 would involve risks threatening the supremacy 
 of that Power." 
 
 The value of her Navy was still further in- 
 creased by the astute deal which enabled her, by 
 yielding up Zanzibar to us, to gain Heligoland — 
 which we had seized in 1807 — for herself. When 
 Lord Salisbury made the exchange nobody 
 thought of Germany as a possible rival at sea; 
 the island was, moreover, rapidly disappearing 
 into the water. But since they took it over the 
 Germans have changed all that; its coast hollows 
 have been filled in, guns have been mounted, and 
 Heligoland now forms an excellent front and 
 screen in the North Sea for the German Fleet. 
 
 While Germany's Fleet was growing she was 
 also looking around the world for a colonial foot- 
 hold. At one time she seemed to fix her gaze on 
 South America, where the various republics 
 were temptingly unstable and where the Germans 
 were actually settled in large numbers; but if 
 Germany had ever turned her thoughts seriously 
 in that direction, the Monroe Doctrine of the big 
 brother republic in the North — ^the "Hands off, 
 Europe !" policy of the United States — ^had to be 
 reckoned with, and Germany turned elsewhere. 
 
 South Africa seemed a hopeful area also. 
 Treitschke had seen in the sturdy resistance of 
 the Boers the one failure — as he thought — in 
 English colonial policy. Majuba seemed to him 
 
 74 
 
Oermany 
 
 the Achilles' heel of our Empire, and German 
 thought, stimulated by his teaching, worked in 
 the following direction: South Africa is now 
 relatively unimportant to England, since the 
 English hold on Egypt, consequent upon the 
 French agreement (of which more anon), secures 
 them the Suez Canal route to India. On the other 
 hand, the Dutch both in Holland and at the Cape 
 are a Teuton people in blood, language, and cul- 
 ture. The Dutch colonies are moreover still con- 
 siderable, despite the weakness of Holland in 
 Euroi)e; even the memory of sea-power seems 
 more fruitful than the undisputed possession of 
 land-power. Why should not Holland — ^which 
 moreover holds the mouth of the Bhine and 
 whose port, Rotterdam, rivals London by reason 
 of its German trade — strike a bargain with Ger- 
 many to the benefit of both, and the Boers receive 
 German help? 
 
 Now, this was not merely an academic and 
 speculative policy. It touched the happenings 
 of actual politics when, in 1895, Kruger said: 
 "I know that I may count on the Germans in 
 future. I feel certain that when the time comes 
 for the Transvaal to wear larger clothes Germany 
 will have done much to bring this about. The 
 time is coming for friendship to be more firmly 
 established than ever." After this the Kaiser's 
 wire to Oom Paul seems less irresponsible, and 
 it is noteworthy that the year of the Boer War 
 (1900) is also the year of the forming of the 
 
 75 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 German Navy League. But German hopes in 
 South Africa were also doomed to disappoint- 
 ment. The Germans could not go to the help 
 of the Boers because we held the seas between, 
 and the bitterness produced among the Boers 
 themselves by the war of 1899-1902 died down, 
 although attempted risings in the autumn of 
 1914 showed that some embers still glowed in 
 response to the fanning of Germany. It is thus 
 not difficult to trace the connection between our 
 own Boer War and the great war of 1914. 
 
 Another area in which Germany tried her luck 
 was in the Far East. In the days when people 
 talked of the partition of China among France 
 in the south, England in the centre, and Kussia 
 in the north, Germany wondered where she came 
 in; and after the Japanese had defeated China, 
 Germany actually joined with France and Rus- 
 sia to rob Japan of the fruits of her victory. It 
 was thus that Russia obtained Port Arthur and 
 held it for a few years. Germany also obtained 
 Kiao-Chou from China. It is thus easy to see 
 why Japan was so quick to turn Germany out 
 of Tsing Tau or Kiao-Chou. A German general 
 also commanded the European troops of all na- 
 tions which dealt — none too squeamishly — with 
 the Boxer rebels in China. 
 
 Two colonies Germany did indeed manage to 
 secure, besides various outposts — German East 
 Africa and German Southwest Africa, when 
 the Dark Continent was divided up with a ruler 
 
 76 
 
Germany 
 
 on a round table; but, as the Crown Prince is 
 reported to have said recently, "Neither of these 
 colonies is worth twopence, for if they had been 
 England would have had them long ago." If, 
 however, the two were joined, as some Germans 
 would like, the Cape to Cairo idea of Great 
 Britain would be thwarted. 
 
 But it must be borne in mind that however 
 strong her desire and need for a Colonial Em- 
 pire may have been, Germany could not give 
 her whole energy to these overseas adventures, 
 for the simple reason that throughout her his- 
 tory Germany has ever been first and foremost 
 a European Power — a Power, that is to say, 
 which must give first thought to the way things 
 are going in Europe. And during the years of 
 the present Kaiser's reign the position of the 
 German Empire as continental cock-of-the-walk 
 has not been getting any easier ; on the contrary, 
 it has been growing more and more difficult every 
 year. It therefore behooves us to turn for the 
 moment back from overseas Germany — such as 
 it is— to the Germany which lies between France 
 and Eussia. 
 
 Between France and Eussia — there's the rub ! 
 For the prostrate France of 1870 had not only 
 recovered — we have seen that already — she had 
 done more: she had eluded the isolation of the 
 Triple Alliance which Bismarck had so cunningly 
 and laboriously built round her, and was at last 
 befriended and partnered again in Europe — and 
 
 77 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 by Bussia, of all States ! That is why Germany 
 has to-day to perform the miracle of wildly 
 flinging army corps across and across from one 
 frontier to another, as they are most wanted, 
 like living shuttles in a gigantic loom.' 
 
 How this alliance came about must be left till 
 the next essay. I must content myself at this 
 point with saying simply that France not only 
 had a friend in Europe, but that she had also 
 the dependencies which Germany had been denied 
 by her late arrival among the great Powers — 
 colonies and possessions of an extent and value 
 second only to those of England. By giving 
 England a free hand in Egypt, France had ob- 
 tained a free hand in Morocco, and from Algiers, 
 which touches Morocco, and her other African 
 possessions she could draw troops — ^Moslem fight- 
 ing fanatics — ^who would go far towards redress- 
 ing the numerical deficiency of the white French 
 Army as compared with that of Germany. Thus 
 the Germans found themselves between inex- 
 haustible Bussia on the one hand and a France 
 on the other which, so far from being outstripped 
 as regards forces by the higher birth-rate of Ger- 
 many, was able to draw ever-increasing numbers 
 of first-class fighters from her African provinces. 
 
 The problem which Germany had to face was 
 a grave one. The pressure of these two power- 
 ful States on her eastern and western frontiers 
 was tremendous; at the same time she was 
 building a Navy to resist the menacing pressure, 
 
 78 
 
Germany 
 
 as she thought it, of the British fleets on her 
 North Sea coasts; and to brace herself against 
 these gigantic forces which were thus weighing 
 upon her from three sides, Germany had to 
 emphasize more than ever her military aspect, 
 not only in actual men and material but also in 
 the character and outlook which give the real 
 thrust to material preparation. Just as the shells 
 of the deep-sea shell-fish increase with the in- 
 tensity of the water-pressure to which they are 
 subjected, so did the militarism of Germany 
 increase under the conjoint pressure of England, 
 France, and Russia, and for the same reason — 
 self-defense. 
 
 And again, like the mollusc, she was all the 
 while strengthening her internal resistance by 
 drawing— or scheming to draw — the material 
 she required to build up her defensive forces from 
 outside her own borders. 
 
 She was faced on the west by a foe who had 
 already tapped one such source of supply — the 
 Moslems of North Africa, the Algerians who 
 figure in the French Army as Turcos. Where 
 could Germany tap a similar source of strength? 
 
 Now, an Islamic people lay quite close at hand, 
 as a matter of fact — indeed, in Europe itself. 
 Later we shall have to see how these Moslems, 
 the Turks, came into Europe and what effect 
 they produced on the lands they conquered; but 
 that is another story, as Kipling says. All that 
 I can say here is that the Turks are still estab- 
 
 79 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 lished, though with woefully lessened prestige, 
 in the Balkans. 
 
 The thousand years of Christianity at Con- 
 stantinople had been succeeded by nearly five 
 centuries of Moslem rule, and the Turks still 
 stretched across the Bosphorus to the Adriatic: 
 It was these Turks whom Germany befriended. 
 She found Turkey "the Sick Man of Europe"; 
 she tended him and nursed him, and when he 
 was strong enough she armed him and drilled 
 him till he had become her ally in all but name, 
 her prot6g6 in all that threatened his well-being. 
 Nor did the Germans stop there. They were 
 anxious to develop his resources for him in Asia 
 Minor and financed his Bagdad Railway for him ; 
 not that there was much trade to be done in the 
 desolate lands of Mesopotamia through which 
 the railway runs, but because the rail, like an 
 artesian well, would drive deep into a people 
 whose natural fighting qualities were heightened 
 by the fact that their ruler was Vicegerent of 
 Allah on earth — and the Germans were his best 
 friends. There may be commercial possibilities 
 in this region later, and possibly commercial 
 rivalry with Eussia for its exploitation may be 
 one cause of this war, but primarily I think the 
 line is strategic. 
 
 Still further to strengthen his hold over these 
 fanatics and thus to rival the influence of Eng- 
 land in the Moslem world — for George V has 
 millions of Moslem subjects in India — and to 
 
 80 
 
Germany 
 
 show France that Germany too had her influence 
 in the world of Islam and could match French 
 Turcos with genuine Turks, the Kaiser toured 
 through Palestine — as his father Frederick had 
 done also, I believe — ^visiting such German col- 
 onies as he could find there and himself preach- 
 ing in a church at Jerusalem. 
 
 Nor did German enterprise stop at this twen- 
 tieth-century pilgrimage. No sooner had France 
 obtained, by agreement with England, a free 
 hand in Morocco, which is next Algiers and car- 
 ries French North Africa to the Atlantic, than 
 Germany suddenly remembered her commercial 
 interests in that sun-baked corner of Africa and 
 posed once again as the champion of Islam, the 
 Kaiser visiting the country in 1905. It is true 
 that as regards Morocco she was unfortunate, for 
 although at Algeciras she seemed to put a check 
 on French projects, yet when a little later she 
 tried to intervene more effectively by sending the 
 gunboat Panther to Agadir she had to withdraw 
 both her claims and her gunboat before the re- 
 viving vigor of the French and the support the 
 French received from England, I well remember 
 the caricature in, I think, Jugend, which repre- 
 sented a forlorn panther crawling shamefully 
 out of the mud of Agadir Bay ; it was a terrible 
 humiliation for Germany to be forced in this way 
 to acknowledge the special interests of France 
 in Morocco. 
 
 But Turkey still remained for her to protect — 
 81 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 and was not Turkey the best of all the Moslem 
 States, not only as a military Power drilled on 
 German lines, but also as the recognized head 
 of Islam? 
 
 It was the conviction that Turkey was sound 
 that encouraged Germany to continue in her 
 character of champion of Islam, but even as 
 regards Turkey herself Germany was unfor- 
 tunate. The German plan of writing "Father- 
 land" from Hamburg by way of Berlin and 
 Vienna to Constantinople (only negligible little 
 Serbia stood in the way) and then on to Bagdad 
 became as visionary as an "Arabian Nights" tale 
 of the Bagdad of Haroun al-Raschid, when Abdul 
 Hamid was driven from his throne in 1909 by 
 a revolution that was headed by Turkish officers 
 educated in Switzerland and elsewhere in West 
 Europe, who called themselves the Young Turk 
 party — and who, by the way, were less strict 
 Mohammedans than they should have been if 
 they were to continue to inspire the Turkish 
 soldiers with enthusiasm. But although not 
 violent Moslems, the new rulers of Turkey were 
 violent Turks, and the excesses of their policy 
 of Ottomanization — ^which was the Balkan equiv- 
 alent of the Germanization practiced by their 
 Prussian protectors — ^increased the troubles they 
 were bound to meet. Later we shall see the full 
 effect of this revolution. For the present it will 
 be sufficient to say that the new Government 
 began very badly; it lost two provinces and a 
 
 82 
 
Germany 
 
 suzerainty at once; but worse than that, it soon 
 — in 1911 — found itself at war with Italy for 
 the possession of Tripoli. 
 
 We have already seen how Bismarck was able 
 to use North Africa for getting Italy into the 
 Triplice or Triple Alliance ; now we see this same 
 region playing a decisive part in the break-up of 
 this same Central European organization. "Out 
 of Africa, always something to disturb," says 
 the old classic phrase, and certainly the effect 
 of the war in Tripoli was sufficiently startling. 
 I cannot resist, indeed, the pun which seems to 
 summarize the whole position: "The Triplice 
 tripped up over Tripoli." For what was the 
 situation? Nothing less than this: a war be- 
 tween Germany's ally, Italy, and Germany's 
 prot6g6, Turkey. We can well understand why 
 Bernhardi regards Italy as having left the Triple 
 Alliance in 1911 — an alliance about which she 
 had never been really keen, and which has never 
 been an aggressive alliance. Italy's North 
 African interest first drove her into the Triple 
 Alliance and then drove her out again. 
 
 Well, Italy won, and took Tripoli, while Tur- 
 key was greatly weakened as a result of the war. 
 Now this weakening of Turkey is the critical 
 matter for us, since it enabled the little States 
 which had formerly been under Turkey — Greece, 
 Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro — to form 
 themselves into a federation for the purpose of 
 attacking Turkey and taking from her the prov- 
 
 83 
 
Historical Background's of the Great War 
 
 inces — ^largely Christian as regards their inhab- 
 itants — she still held in Europe. These little 
 States fell on Turkey exactly a year and a day 
 after the declaration of the Tripoli War, and 
 by their united efforts — so much more successful 
 than the isolated attack of Greece in 1897 — ^wore 
 down their opponent, already weakened by the 
 Tripoli War. They say it was very curious to 
 see the Austrian barges going down the Danube 
 with war material for Turkey and the Eussian 
 coming up with material for Serbia. The French 
 training of the Bulgarian artillery proved better 
 than the German training of the Turkish Army, 
 and before long Turkey was reduced to the tract 
 of land stretching about fifty miles round Con- 
 stantinople — ^somewhat to the annoyance of most 
 of the diplomatists of Europe, I fancy, who had 
 been secretly hoping that Turkey would win and 
 tlius preserve the then existing balance of forces 
 in the Balkans, and therefore also in Europe. 
 Such, however, was not to be; and the struggle 
 among the victors for the spoils — ^inevitable 
 when we consider, as we shall presently, the 
 character of these various Balkan States— -does 
 not affect our story. The great fact that arises 
 out of the war change in the Balkans is that 
 Germany's friend and prot6g6, Turkey, had been 
 beaten and broken and various obscure little 
 States had suddenly become important, and had 
 learned the art of acting in concert. 
 All we can pause to say about these States 
 84 
 
Oermomy 
 
 at this point is that they were Slav — of the same 
 race, that is to say, as Eussia. The fact, then, 
 that States of Slav or Russian blood had ap- 
 peared to the southeast of Austro-Germany, that 
 a branch of the hostile Slav race of the east had 
 displaced the friendly Turks of the Balkans, sud- 
 denly awoke Germany to the realities of her 
 European position, and drove away for the time 
 being all thoughts of colonial expansion and 
 world politics. For not only had Germany vir- 
 tually lost Italian help by the troubles of Turkey, 
 she found herself also outflanked in the south- 
 east by her eastern enemy, Russia. Thus Ger- 
 many, which had walled in France by the Triple 
 Alliance, now in her turn found herself walled 
 in by the Slavs. Nor is this the full extent of 
 the trouble. Austro-Hungary, the eastern mem- 
 ber of the German Alliance, has, as we have 
 already seen, a heavy fringe of Slav and non- 
 German peoples, and these were only too likely 
 to feel the attraction of a new Slav Power in 
 the Balkans — a Power which had surprised 
 Europe, not only by its share in the victory over 
 Turkey but subsequently by its victory over the 
 real conqueror of Turkey, Bulgaria herself. The 
 Slav Power which could claim this record was, 
 of course, Serbia — ^the insignificant obstacle of 
 a few years previously which had stood in the 
 way of German flow to the east by way of Con- 
 stantinople. 
 By 1912, however, this insignificant obstacle 
 85 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 had grown to be a grave menace. Its three wars 
 — Turkish, Bulgarian, Austrian — ^have built it 
 up as the three Prussian wars of the sixties built 
 Prussia up; its prestige was attracting the Slav 
 subjects of Austria into its orbit, and it was 
 already in close touch with its big brother, 
 Russia. (So much for the German contempt for 
 small States and small armies, like the Serbian — 
 and the British. The Germans seem to see only 
 what they wish to see.) Thus with the seven 
 million Austrian Slavs drawn towards the four 
 millions of Serbia and Montenegro, the Anstrian- 
 Italians drawn, as we have already seen, towards 
 Italy, and the Austrian-Roumanians of Tran- 
 sylvania drawn to their Roumanian fellow-kins- 
 men to the east — not a Slav race — ^the German 
 Alliance felt that its eastern member, Austria, 
 was imperilled, and therefore the whole German 
 position threatened, not only by the general out- 
 flanking movement of the Slav development in 
 the southeast, but also by the counter-attraction, 
 the strain on the loyalty of all Austrian subjects 
 who were neither German nor Magyar — ^i.e. 
 Hungarian — which this outflanking movement 
 of the Balkan Slavs set up within the borders 
 of the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself by the 
 mere fact of its presence. 
 
 The situation was grave, and Germany met 
 it with characteristic thoroughness. Sooner or 
 later Germany would have to "hack her way 
 through"; war was inevitable before long, es- 
 
 86 
 
' Germany 
 
 pecially with a ruler as unstable as William II 
 on the throne. She therefore began to put the 
 final touches to her preparations the while she 
 was seeking for the best opportunity of striking 
 at the foes which threatened to encircle her. 
 Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism — helped by 
 France — were approaching their final struggle. 
 If we need evidence of the fact that Germany 
 was preparing herself to fight first and foremost 
 for her European leadership, we may find it in 
 two significant acts of this period: first, in the 
 acceptance of a 60 per cent, superiority of the 
 English Navy over the German; second, in the 
 tax on capital which gave I know not how many 
 millions for war purposes — largely, I believe, in 
 the nature of fortifications and capital expendi- 
 ture. 
 
 This second effort called forth the French 
 reply : the three years' law in the Army. When 
 each side was forcing the pace thus, war was 
 but a matter of time and opportunity. And 
 indeed the introduction of such large new factors 
 on either side so distured the calculations of 
 relative strength that this very uncertainty of 
 itself brought war nearer. In particular, the 
 disorganization resulting from the three years' 
 law in France tempted Germany to strike. 
 
 Already had the German Powers brought 
 Europe to the brink of war in the matter of the 
 Balkans. No sooner was Abdul Hamid deposed, 
 and the Young Turk party established, than, as 
 
 87 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 we have seen already, Turkey lost two provinces. 
 These were the provinces of Bosnia and Herze- 
 govina, which Austria now turned from a protec- 
 torate — the position they had been accorded by 
 the Treaty of Berlin in 1877 — ^into integral parts 
 of the Austrian Empire in 1909. Immediately 
 ' Serbia was up in arms, since the two provinces 
 were part of Old Serbia, and the little Slav king- 
 dom expected to annex them on the break-up of 
 Turkey. Eussia, too, lent an ear to the complaint 
 of the Serbians, which was brought to St. Peters- 
 burg by their Crown Prince, and it looked already 
 as though fighting might take place. To keep 
 the peace. Sir Edward Grey proposed a con- 
 ference to determine the ownership of the two 
 provinces; but suddenly Germany appeared "in 
 shining armor" behind her friend Austria, and 
 the conference was never held. Austria kept the 
 provinces and Germany had scored heavily, be- 
 cause Russia was still weak from the Japanese 
 War, and France had not yet experienced that re- 
 awakening of her natural fighting spirit which 
 has been so marked a feature of the last three 
 or four years. Thus was the encircling movement 
 checked for a while, and Turkey on the outer 
 side of the circle — ^the friend who calls from be- 
 yond the Slav ring, much as Russia had called 
 to France from beyond the ring of the Triplice 
 some years earlier — ^plucked up fresh courage. 
 But the movement was not stopped, it was only 
 checked, and before long the Germans had to seek 
 
 88 
 
Germany 
 
 another opportunity. This occurred when the 
 heir to the Austrian throne, the Archduke Ferdi-| 
 nand, and his wife were assassinated in the streets 
 of Serajevo, the capital of the newly annexed 
 province. This murder is full of dark aspects. 
 Ferdinand favored a federal instead of a dual 
 Empire, and on his accession would have granted 
 fuller rights to the Austrian Slavs. There is a 
 strong suspicion, therefore, that his death was 
 welcomed by the Austrians who supported the 
 Dual Monarchy arrangement. And suspicion 
 goes even deeper. Ferdinand remonstrated after 
 the failure of the first attempt on his life against 
 the total lack of protection afforded him. But 
 whether his death was engineered or not, Austria 
 demanded such humiliating terms from Serbia, 
 whose papers and hotheads were accused of 
 having brought about the crime, that Serbia, 
 relying on the support of her co-religionist and 
 blood-brother, Russia, refused. Eussia seconded 
 her refusal, and the crisis had arrived. Austria 
 was on the point of coming to terms, however, 
 with her Slav neighbors, since Serbia was pre- 
 pared for almost any arrangement that would 
 save her from a third war, but Germany, coming 
 forth a second time suddenly, as she had done 
 before in the matter of the annexed provinces in 
 1909, rattling her sword in her scabbard, with the 
 mailed flst and all the rest of it, demanded^ — 
 evidently for her own ends since Austria was 
 almost agreed with Serbia — that the Eussians 
 
 89 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 should proceed no further in massing troops : that 
 Russia should stand aside while once more 
 
 An Austrian army, awfully arrayed. 
 Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade, 
 
 and disband her army while Slavs were still 
 liable to slaughter by Germans. When Eussia 
 refused, Germany declared war, and invaded Bel- 
 gium to get at France without a frontal attack on 
 the line of French forts between Luxemburg and 
 Switzerland. 
 
 The pressure Germany thus felt herself to be 
 resisting was, however, of her own making. 
 Every State has neighbors across its borders; but 
 Germany's tradition has been to remind her 
 neighbors of her presence by sabre-rattling. That 
 is why she complains of pressure on both east 
 and west, a very different pressure from that 
 which results when a State is content merely to 
 guard her integrity and protect her frontiers. 
 But that has never satisfied Germany, for with- 
 out aggressive war Germany thinks she would 
 still be the patchwork of the Middle Ages or else 
 divided between France and Russia. 
 
 Germany thought in July, 1914, that at last 
 the favorable moment for war had come, for 
 although Germany speaks of herself as "hacking 
 her way through," she does not mean by that 
 that she is merely hacking at the encircling folds 
 of Pan-Slavism. She means, further, that she is 
 hacking her way through not only her European 
 
 90 
 
Germany 
 
 difficulties, but her world difficulties as well, and 
 that when the war is ended not only will she be 
 freed from the tremendous continental pressure 
 of recent years, but also and by the same war 
 she will be rid of the maritime and colonial handi- 
 caps under which she has hitherto run her race. 
 The intensity and destructiveness of an explosion 
 depend upon the confinement of the charge; and 
 the fact that Germany finds herself practically 
 inside a Slav pocket with the French to put the 
 lid on gives to the German military movement an 
 intensity and a violence which, the Germans be- 
 lieve, will not only shatter the enclosing masses, 
 but also supply in addition the energy that will 
 carry the Germans to the colonial Empire and 
 .world dominion they believe to be rightly theirs. 
 The German Chancellor tacitly admitted to our 
 Ambassador at Berlin that it was the French 
 colonies — with their Turcos — that the Germans 
 were after. 
 
 For Germany this is, then, a second war of 
 liberation, a striking off of shackles, European 
 and oceanic. She means to do what England did 
 under Chatham's leadership: win an Empire on 
 the battlefields of Europe. The hour seemed 
 favorable to Germany — as favorable, that is to 
 say, as any could be in a situation which was in 
 reality a desperate one, and from the very desper- 
 ation of which the Germans proposed to draw 
 their strength in the war their fate had rendered 
 inevitable. It seemed favorable because Russia 
 
 91 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 was still supposed to be suffering from the effects 
 of the Japanese War, and to be behindhand with 
 her frontier troop railways, while also there was 
 always the possibility of disaffection among the 
 Revolutionaries and the Jews, Poles and others. 
 France was plunged in the midst of the Gaillaux 
 trial, which bore some resemblance to earlier 
 scandals like the Panama and Dreyfus affairs, 
 which had shaken France to her foundations. 
 There had also been ministerial confessions that 
 the Army was not so well equipped as it might be, 
 and was suffering from the reorganization neces- 
 sitated by the Three Years' Law. England was 
 on the verge of civil war over the Home Eule 
 question; the Army was split into political fac- 
 tions, and rebel armies were being formed in 
 Ireland (had not Treitschke said, "England's 
 mishandling of Ireland shrieks to Heaven"?). 
 India was full of Hindu sedition; and we had 
 alienated the fighting Indian Moslems by leaving 
 Turkey to her fate in the Tripoli War with Italy. 
 We know how Germany miscalculated, as indeed 
 she had already miscalculated in the similar case 
 of the Boers; but at the time of the Home Eule 
 split, when even the King was calling fruitless 
 conferences, to the German mind, which can 
 judge of events — as we all can — simply in the 
 light of its own ideas and experience, these signs, 
 in England especially, were propitious. Finally, 
 it seemed impossible to the Germans that Eng- 
 land, under a Liberal Government, could ever 
 
 92 
 
Germany 
 
 bring herself to fight on the side of the Czar and 
 his Cossacks. Therefore the alarm was given, war 
 was declared, and the Germans set out on that 
 perilous road which more gifted races have es- 
 sayed to traverse without success — th^ road to 
 world supremacy. 
 
 England's attitude in the crisis must be left 
 to a later essay, but nobody who wishes really to 
 understand the march of these events, especially 
 as they affected England, can afford to neglect 
 the admirable Blue Book which the Government 
 has issued for a penny. 
 
 93 
 
II 
 
 CHABACTEB 
 
 Like Oarpentier, the White Hope (how distant 
 that phrase sounds!), who is now, I believe, in 
 the French Army air service, Germany relied 
 entirely on a rapid attack in her first encounter 
 with her old foe, France, to free herself for her 
 fight with Hussia. 
 
 Now fighting of this description is a matter of 
 intensified energy; and intense energy has, as a 
 rule in the history of warfare, come from one 
 source and one source only, and that is basically 
 religion, though working out in forms which to us 
 appear of course hardly religious. 
 
 We have already seen how great fighters the 
 Mohammedans are, how eager both France and 
 Germany have shown themselves to be in tapping 
 these sources of religious fanaticism each to her 
 own advantage. But Germany has aimed at de- 
 veloping the same religious intensity of belief in 
 war among her own people. From the very be- 
 ginning this has been a characteristic note of 
 German fighting. Frederick the Great in his 
 younger days expressed — always in French — the 
 noblest sentiments; and doubtless believed that 
 
 94 
 
Germany 
 
 all his aggressions — e.g, in Silesia — ^were for the 
 furtherance of the exalted ideals to be found in 
 his "Anti-Machiavel." In 1870 it appears again. 
 I remember seeing in an old number of Punch the 
 following parody of the Prussian King's pious 
 letters to his wife : — 
 
 This comes to say, my dear Augusta, 
 We've had another awful buster. 
 Ten thousand Frenchmen sent below — 
 Praise God, from whom all blessings flow! 
 
 It is not therefore altogether an innovation for 
 the present Kaiser to bring God into the battle- 
 field as the sons of Eli attempted to do when they 
 shouldered the Ark of the Covenant. The Ger- 
 man sword-arm is to be strengthened by the same 
 spirit as that which strengthened the sword-arm 
 of Israel : "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon." 
 The Germans are the new Chosen People, the 
 Kaiser is a new Joshua who shall lead his fellow- 
 tribesmen into the Promised Land after forty 
 years of following the pillar of fire and cloud in 
 the wilderness, a new David '*who hath slain his 
 ten thousands" and the Lord's anointed. He 
 speaks by Divine Eight as one who has been ad- 
 mitted to the counsels of the Most High and been 
 permitted to share with Him the leadership of 
 the world's appointed conquerors — and saviors. 
 It seemed, indeed, quite fitting that the Kaiser 
 himself should preach in the German mission 
 church when he made his pilgrimage to Jeru- 
 
 95 
 
Historical Backgrounds of iKe 'Great War 
 
 salem, the home of Theocracy. This is how he 
 speaks to his troops going to the war — 
 
 "Eemember that the German people are the 
 chosen of God. On me, on me as German Em- 
 peror, the Spirit of God has descended. I am 
 His weapon. His sword, and His visard. Woe to 
 the disobedient! Death to cowards and unbe- 
 lievers !" 
 
 It reminds us of the frenzied ravings of a 
 Mahdi. Beside it the words of our own Cromwell 
 — a Theocrat if ever there was one — seen quite 
 drab : as at Dunbar : "It was a crowning mercy. 
 We never charged but we scattered the enemy; 
 the Lord made them as stubble to our swords!" 
 The old Hebrew religion and its offshoot Islam 
 are the dynamos from which much fighting energy 
 has been drawn. Among the Japanese the same 
 spirit is, of course, predominant, but with them 
 it is so much a matter of course that they do not 
 trouble to elaborate it in declamations. Here is 
 another extract from a less exalted person than 
 the Heaven-sent HohenzoUern which nevertheless 
 breathes the same spirit. A Field-Marshal (Bron- 
 sart von Schellendorf) writes: — 
 
 "Do not let us forget the civilizing task which 
 the decrees of Providence have assigned to us. 
 Just as Prussia was detsined to be the nucleus of 
 Germany, so the regenerated Germany shall be 
 the nucleus of a future Empire of the West. And 
 in order that no one shall be left in doubt, we 
 proclaim from henceforth that our continental 
 
 96 
 
Oermany 
 
 nation has a right to the sea, not only to the 
 North Sea, but to the Mediterranean and At- 
 lantic. Hence we intend to absorb one after 
 another all the provinces which neighbor on 
 Prussia. We will successfully annex Denmark, 
 Holland, Belgium, Northern Switzerland, and 
 then Trieste and Venice; finally Northern France 
 from the Sambre to the Loire. This programme 
 we fearlessly pronounce. It is not the work of a 
 madman. The Empire we intend to found will be 
 no Utopia. We have already to our hands the 
 means of founding it and no coalition in the 
 world can stop us." 
 
 Talk of Predestination ! 
 
 But the religious fervor of the Germans differs 
 from that of the Turks in this, that whereas the 
 Moslems are inspired by the idea of a One God 
 who is their actual leader, thougk heavenly, the 
 Germans are inspired, if they can be inspired by 
 any such idea, by the idea they have gathered 
 from Darwin's "Origin of Species" and Herbert 
 Spencer's "Natural Selection," the idea summed 
 up in Tennyson's line — 
 
 Nature red in tooth and claw, 
 
 which merely identifies man with the brutes. 
 
 The Germans claim to be inspired by the frigid 
 forces of evolution; they regard themselves as the 
 chosen people through whose virile destructive- 
 ness the higher ranges of civilization will be con- 
 quered for mankind. I should imagine that none 
 
 97 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 of their present-day philosophers would allow 
 that evolution could be in the direction indicated 
 by Shakespeare's line— 
 
 The quality of mercy is not strained. 
 
 They are quite blind to the fact that the English 
 pioneers of evolution had been alive to the dan- 
 gers of this false analogy, and that Huxley had 
 said most emphatically that "any one who used 
 the argument of Nature against the ideal of jus- 
 tice and of equal law was as senseless as a gar- 
 dener who should fight on the side of ill weeds 
 merely because they grew apace," to quote from 
 Mr. G. K. Chesterton's "Victorian Literature." 
 But to this wise warning against unscientific 
 argument by analogy the Prussian leaders were 
 blind. To Prussia mercy was a weakness, justice 
 an ideal for the feeble. Sparta, she remembered, 
 kept her standard of manhood and through that 
 — behind her living walls of human muscle — she 
 preserved her national existence only by a merci- 
 less exposure and killing out of her own weak- 
 lings; and Prussia, the modern Sparta, sur- 
 rounded, in her own opinion, with an equally 
 menacing mass of hostile peoples, can afford 
 mercy and the other degenerate virtues of the 
 religion of Love as little as could Sparta herself. 
 Circumstances produce character, and if we do 
 not like the way Germany is developing we 
 should not blame the Germans but blame rather 
 the forces which are moulding them. That is the 
 
 98 
 
Qermany 
 
 German attitude as I understand it. The Ger- 
 mans are the chosen people of the ruthless deity 
 they call Evolution, Just as the Jews are the 
 Chosen People of Jehovah, the jealous God, the 
 Turks of Allah, the bloodthirsty. And they fight 
 with the same blind indifference to the useless 
 and avoidable damage they do as the Turks 
 showed when they burnt the library at Alex- 
 andria. This is the real test of barbarism : the 
 lack of proportion of means to end, the wanton 
 and stupid doing of damage for its own sake. 
 
 We must not be any more surprised at the 
 German laudation of war and its virtues than we 
 are at the Spartan. Modern Evolution may have 
 given the Germans another vocabulary, but the 
 ideas are the same among both races. To both 
 war is the father of all, and by war they both 
 mean fighting to win by any means, simply be- 
 cause they cannot afford to lose, since defeat 
 means annihilation at the hands of outraged 
 enemies. Virtues which are not useful in war 
 are not virtues^ and thus in both cases we get a 
 stronger or weaker tendency (for no merely 
 human being has the dreadful courage of all his 
 convictions) toward theft, callous slaughter, and 
 brutality as an asset of the gladiator or profes- 
 sional bruiser; and lack of chivalry. Sons of the 
 dragon's teeth that they are (or persuade them- 
 selves into being), the fight is the thing in itself 
 and quite apart from the result. "We'll win first 
 and then make up our mind what use we shall 
 
 99 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 make of our victory," is their attitude. Alike, 
 too, in tlie baleful effects of a brutalizing special- 
 ization both Germans and Spartans showed a 
 lack of intelligence and inability to grasp the 
 point of view of others or to allow for motives 
 different from their own, a wrong estimate of the 
 effect of their terror-striking methods, an intel- 
 lectual activity which seldom rises above the level 
 of cunning where even the largest and gravest 
 questions of war are concerned and not merely its 
 field-fighting details — all of which go far to neu- 
 tralize the effectiveness of their actual fighting. 
 It is no less astonishing to read of the Spartans 
 refusing to fight because the day was unlucky or 
 their path had been crossed than it is to discover 
 how Germany guessed wrong again and again in 
 her preliminary moves, and even during the prog- 
 ress of the war itself. For instance, England was 
 bound to be neutral. Because Germany knows no 
 method of rule beside that of terror — making 
 Polish children say their prayers in German, put- 
 ting Brussels on to -German time, forcing German 
 names on to Belgian babies, making the people 
 of Amiens salute common German soldiers — 
 therefore England also can only terrorize her 
 subjects (the Germans could not imagine a con- 
 queror befriending and assimilating the con- 
 quered in the great old Boman way) ; and, there- 
 fore, in consequence of her terrorism, once Eng- 
 land is engaged in war she will be faced with 
 rebellion in Ireland, India, the Cape, everywhere, 
 
 100 
 
Germany 
 
 while her colonies will be glad of the chance to 
 cut the painter and slip away from the tyranny 
 of the Mother Country ! Therefore England dare 
 not risk war. 
 
 The mailed fist has also spoiled Germany's 
 touch for the delicate strings of diplomacy, and 
 thus her barbarous coarseness .has bungled her 
 business so badly that it has brought all her 
 enemies about her head at once instead of in 
 single file, to be killed like geese one at a time 
 as they should have been. 
 
 Again, she thought that terror and wanton 
 slaughter, the firing of libraries, the shelling of 
 cathedrals and the dropping of bombs on open 
 towns, would frighten the civil populations, and 
 they in their turn would frighten their Govern- 
 ments into submission — as bad a guess as that 
 the British soldiers would be scared out of their 
 wits by monstrous stink-pot shells, to which our 
 men merely gave contemptuous nicknames, or 
 that the British Army could be safely ignored 
 after two weeks of rearguard fighting in which 
 they had already estabKshed a "personal as- 
 cendency" over the enemy. No; their simple 
 hypothesis of evolution towards brutality has 
 not worked. It is not broad-based enough to 
 take in the whole of the facts of human nature. 
 It is a following out of a single idea with a pedan- 
 try which would be almost pathetic if it were not 
 so atrocious, and so the Government are reduced 
 tb continual lying and concealment to keep their 
 
 101 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great Wa/r 
 
 own people in good heart about the war, appar- 
 ently. Their belief in might has raised even 
 mightier forces in defense of right and therefore 
 stands condemned on its own showing. In short, 
 the calculated brutality of German warfare is 
 defeating its own ends since it is strengthening 
 opposition. The Germans, in fact, know too 
 little of human nature in general to be an Im- 
 perial people. Yet this philosophy, preached in 
 universities and taught in schools, where chil- 
 dren are encouraged, for instance, to compare 
 war with a thunderstorm, however lacking it 
 must ultimately prove itself to be even as a per- 
 manent basis for fighting, still less for statecraft, 
 has, nevertheless, sunk deeply into the German 
 mind. 
 
 The Kaiser can say to his men, when going 
 against the Boxers in China: "Whosoever falls 
 into your hands is forfeit to you, just as a thou- 
 sand years ago the Huns under King Attila made 
 a name for themselves which is still mighty in 
 tradition" — and in nothing else, for on the death 
 of our old friend of the Dark Ages, the well- 
 known scourge of God, the Huns vanished with- 
 out leaving any trace except a wake of destruc- 
 tion. And Busch says that in 1870 Bismarck 
 said to a general who reported a large capture 
 of French soldiers: "That does not please me. 
 What are we to come to at last with them all? 
 Why do they take so many prisoners?" From 
 utterances such as these the transition to Nietz- 
 
 102 
 
Germany 
 
 sche's '^Beyond Good and Evil" is not difftcult. 
 It is a creed which, terrible though it may seem, 
 is really responsible for the present "Oermania 
 contra m,undum" This war is a people's war; 
 the German Socialists support it as we expected 
 they would. It is no one-man-made war; al- 
 though in events of this magnitude the man — 
 especially wh^n he has the personal traits of 
 Kaiser Wilhelm II — ^is as important a factor as 
 the hour. 
 
 It is easy to say that Nietzsche, Treitschke, 
 Bernhardi, and the rest made the war, but it is 
 at least arguable that these are only the ipouth- 
 pieces of a still deepen but otherwise inarticulate 
 race feeling, and that the thwarted desires and 
 aspirations of a great people have expressed 
 themselves in the half-insane writings of those 
 thinkers who were most responsive to the na- 
 tional current. Be that as it may, the madness 
 which actually showed itself in Nietzsche has 
 reinforced the German people, and we are now 
 in the presence of a very 'difficult problem — ^how 
 to deal with a war-maddened race, a race which 
 believes that war is not only the rough shield 
 of the gentler civic virtues, but that these vir- 
 tues themselves should be as hard as their war- 
 like sheath. All I can suggest is that no amount 
 of sympathy, no amount of understanding would 
 prevent the owner of a favorite dog which had 
 suddenly gone mad from destroying it, or, if a 
 cure short of destruction were possible, from 
 
 103 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 taking the necessary steps, however drastic. The 
 only difference that sympathy and a knowledge 
 of the cause of the disease would make to the 
 owner would be to fill him with pity for his 
 former companion; they would not weaken his 
 determination or unnerve his arm. The more 
 he loved his dog, the more he remembered of his 
 earlier steadfastness, the steadier would be his 
 aim when he shot him. Half-measures are im- 
 possible, excitement or flurry might cause bung- 
 ling, infection with the sufferer's madness would 
 mean ruin for all. As" Mr. Hilaire Belloc said 
 in a lecture at Sheffield, "The only possible solu- 
 tion is the entire destruction of the German 
 military machine and ideal of. government." 
 
 It is useless to argue with madmen, I know, 
 yet nevertheless I cannot resist the temptation 
 to make one point. If war is all that the Ger- 
 mans claim that it is, we and our Allies are do- 
 ing Germany -a good turn in giving her the oppor- 
 tunity of develorping her warlike qualities at our 
 expense. It takes two to make a quarrel; and 
 instead of trying to prove that England and 
 Russia are really responsible for the war, as the 
 Germans are trying to do in the United States 
 and elsewhere, the Germans should have the 
 courage of their convictions and boldly claim 
 the war as their own, as it undoubtedly is. They 
 have been very bold in proclaiming their plans 
 for aggression before the war; let them keep 
 it up now that the actual fighting has begun. 
 
 104 
 
Germany 
 
 Let the Kaiser say now what the Empress 
 Eugenie did not fear to say in 1870, "This is 
 my war." They are welcome to the glory. All 
 this preliminary shouting of theirs about what 
 they mean to do seems to me a proof of their 
 madness — ^their method of letting their neigh- 
 bors know they were "not right"; but simply 
 because their shouts were largely unintelligible 
 and incredible to us, as madmen's shouts are 
 apt to be, we ignored them until it was too late ; 
 and now we are engaged in a supreme effort to 
 put our neighbor in a strait-jacket, for this is 
 a better metaphor than the pistolling of a mad 
 dog. The Germans loudly and honestly pro- 
 claimed their intentions and their ideals. It is 
 not their fault if we are shocked and grieved 
 when they proceed to act upon them. It is, on 
 the contrary largely our own for having always 
 assumed that men and -nations never act on their 
 theories and seldom mean what they say. We 
 know as little of the real Germany as Germany 
 knows of the real England. Yet the story of 
 Zabem was well known in England, only Eng- 
 land, with the levity which comes from safety, 
 closed her eyes to its significance. 
 
 The strength of the stimulus which Germany 
 administers to her soldiers is to be explained in 
 another way, I think, besides the fanatical fury 
 of the war spirit. The German has always seem- 
 ed to me to be soft metal, easily moulded, easily 
 led. The Germans easily lose their sense of na- 
 
 105 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 tionality, especially when they emigrate; the 
 English, on the other hand, tend to impress 
 others with their own characteristics. The Ger- 
 mans are digestible, the English are digesters, 
 like the Eomans. Despite the width of their 
 knowledge and the extent of their education, the 
 Germans seem lacking in self-reliance; and thus 
 we find that Bernhardi is always preaching the 
 need of individuality and initiative in both the 
 Army and the school. A works manager told me 
 that he once had a group of workmen over from 
 Germany for a particular piece of work, and' all 
 these men maintained that they understood no 
 English till their foreman came up and told 
 them exactly what they had to do. Then they 
 all felt free to talk — ^in English for the most part 
 — ^without running any risk of making mistakes. 
 An Englishman, on the other hand, sent abroad 
 Ip'robably has a look at his job and is in at it 
 without a word to or from anybody before the 
 foreigners have satisfied their curiosity concern- 
 ing him. 
 
 Now I believe that in magnetism soft iron can 
 be made into a very powerful magnet so long as 
 the current of electricity continues to pass 
 round it; as soon as the current is cut off the 
 magnetic condition also disappears, whereas 
 harder iron and steel retain their magnetic con- 
 dition permanently under ordinary circum- 
 stances. I often wonder whether the iron crosses 
 which the Kaiser sends out by the barrow-load 
 
 106 
 
Qermany 
 
 to stimulate his troops are made of hard or soft 
 iron — at any rate, they are not steel. So it seems 
 to me it is with the Germans. Their soft, gentle, 
 malleable natures are a real danger to Europe, 
 since they render the Germans admirable ma- 
 terial for the drill-sergeant to mould into shape, 
 and then for the officer caste — the dynamo of 
 the German Government as well as of the Army 
 — to stimulate to hectic and practically to auto- 
 matic and subconscious activity, but hardly the 
 resistless rush of a really martial people. "Ex- 
 pand or explode" is a motto only for an explosive 
 people, not of a people in "iron-bound ranks from 
 which all that was individual was sternly ex- 
 cluded in favor of a massed effect," as Walter 
 Bloem says in his story, "The Iron Year." They 
 have already contrasted their stiffness with the 
 disciplined freedom and individuality of the 
 British infantry, whose use of the rifle — the free- 
 man's weapon — seems to them to resemble the 
 firing of a machine-gun, and whose taking of 
 cover seems a sort of miracle. A maddened, i 
 brutalized, and repressed soldiery, bullied during 
 drill and driven into action by methods the Ger- 
 man officers know best, are only too likely, when 
 left to themselves, to practice on others the bru- 
 talities they have suffered at the hands of their 
 officers; their own frayed and jagged nerves 
 react and produce atrocities as it were by reflex 
 action. The sugar of their nature has been fer- 
 mented into alcohol. Nor do the rulers object 
 
 107 
 
Historical Backgrounds of tJie Great "War 
 
 to this brutality on occasion. In principle they 
 approve it; and in ordinary life they practice it, 
 as witness the fierce stodginess of the students' 
 mensurs or duels, and the number of duelling 
 officers one sees shut up in a place like Ehren- 
 breitstein. War is no prize-fight, we all know, 
 as all who have watched French or German sol- 
 diers drilling or marching realize. There are no 
 rounds in the supreme international contest, no 
 umpires to call "time," and if you are out for 
 victory, which shall be so complete as to make 
 criticism of your methods by outsiders futile, or 
 else for defeat, which means annihilation, after 
 which, being dead, you care nothing for any- 
 body's opinion, you may be strongly tempted to 
 adopt any measures that seem to serve your pur- 
 pose for the moment. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are certain conventions 
 which have grown up as regards the carrying on 
 of the struggle — ^the public law of Europe — and 
 although any combatant is at liberty to repudiate 
 these conventions if he so wishes, he repudiates 
 them under this risk : that he himself is liable to 
 reprisals, and should he be worsted his fate may 
 be rendered hard in proportion to the conventions 
 he has ignored — n better phase perhaps than "the 
 laws he has broken" — for there are, strictly 
 speaking, no such things as international laws 
 because there is no international body to enforce 
 them. 
 
 Of course we have heard that "necessity knows 
 108 
 
Germany 
 
 no law," and also that "nothing succeeds like 
 success." Then, too, there is that pithy old coup- 
 let which runs thus: — 
 
 Treason ne'er thriTes, and that for just this reason: 
 When it succeeds then none dare call it treason. 
 
 Germany may argue that the necessity she was 
 under to finish off France at lightning speed in 
 order that she might then get round and tackle 
 Russia is her justification for her attempt to buy 
 English neutrality at the price of her shame, for 
 her invasion of neutral Belgium, for her cruel- 
 ties, atrocities, and vandalisms in both the coun- 
 tries she has invaded. She may argue that Brus- 
 sels yielded because of the awful example of 
 Louvain, just as Cromwell might have argued 
 that Drogheda and Wexford shortened the hor- 
 rors of the Irish War and left him free to deal 
 with the Scots, and that it is all very well for 
 England, who, having all she needs and sitting 
 comfortably behind her "mitigated sea" — 'as 
 William Watson calls it — and the navies it car- 
 ries, can afford to wage war generously, to hold 
 up her hands in horror at what Germany has 
 done; but is England absolutely certain that, 
 faced with similar necessities, she would refrain 
 from similar courses? Did she not carry off the 
 fleet of neutral Denmark in 1807 — ^Bernhardi 
 points out — ^to prevent it from falling into the 
 hands of Napoleon? Does England really pre- 
 fer the dragging methods of Mountjoy to the 
 
 109 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 I 
 sharp methods of the Protector? Are Drogheda 
 and Wexford really worse than the dead in the 
 Irish ditches, their mouths green with the nettles 
 that had been their only food after Mountjoy had 
 passed? 
 
 Now such arguments are not easy to contro- 
 vert. There is but one effective reply to them, 
 and it is this : Since Germany appeals to force, 
 she must abide by the arbitrament of force; if 
 she points to success as justifying all that she 
 has done, we must obviously see to it that she 
 does not succeed ultimately and finally. For 
 German success means the throwing down of all 
 the conventions or universal agreements which 
 we call civilization and the reversion of human 
 society to the ethics of the tiger and the ape. 
 Thus it appears to me that a resistance to Ger- 
 man aggression based on knowledge of German 
 history and ideals is so much sounder and more 
 reliable and will go so much further than a resist- 
 ance based merely on the excitement of recruit- 
 ing meetings and atrocity stories in the news- 
 papers — an excitement which is by no means 
 identical with the real passion that leads to 
 victory. Treitschke wrote thus of Frederick the 
 Great: "Frederick the Great was all his life 
 charged with treachery because no treaty or 
 alliance could ever induce him to renounce the 
 right of self-determination." To Frederick, that 
 is to say, treaties were like piecrust — made to be 
 broken. We must force ourselves to realize that 
 
 110 
 
Oermany 
 
 terror and brutality are the weapons of a stupid 
 people, too unintelligent or too panic-stricken — 
 or too hectoring — to adopt the methods which 
 built up the Roman and the British Empires. 
 Whereas Edward I asked the Welsh to accept 
 a prince who could not speak a word of Eng- 
 lish, the German asks the foreign traveler to 
 write his name and address on the hotel police- 
 form in German characters — ^in its way as bar- 
 barous, because as senseless and unnecessary, as 
 the shelling of Reims Cathedral or the burning 
 of the Louvain Library. 
 
 All the excessive emphasis of which Germany 
 has been guilty of late may, it is true, be only 
 a sort of loud whistling to keep her courage up ; 
 but the whistling has grown so loud and so dis- 
 tracting of late — ^it has drowned so many still, 
 small voices and prevented Germany herself from 
 hearing so many truths that she could not afford 
 to miss — that it is high time we called "Silence !" 
 in a voice that even tlie desperate whistler her- 
 self shall hear. For a victorious Germany means 
 the rule of stupidity, the rule of people who can 
 think only of snatching what they want and liv- 
 ing by word of command, the rule of ^ people 
 who know no other method but that of force and 
 terror. The French Reign of Terror was a thun- 
 dercloud charged with blessings for mankind. 
 The German rdign of terror with which we are 
 threatened would be a desert which the jack- 
 booted tyrant of Brandenburg would call Peace. 
 
 Ill 
 
Ill 
 
 CUI/rUEB 
 
 Having seen how Germany grew and the sources 
 from which she draws her war spirit, we have 
 now to consider briefly whether the German 
 claim that the world conquest she is after will 
 result in the spread of a superior civilization of 
 German origin will bear examination. If it will, 
 then perhaps Germany has justified her aggres- 
 sion, after all; if it will not, then nothing is left 
 of the German case. 
 
 Now nobody can travel through Germany and 
 remain blind to the importance which the Ger- 
 mans attach to many matters about which we 
 in England are neglectful and indifferent; not 
 matters like National Insurance, in which we 
 have been apt to copy the German too slavishly 
 — one good result of the war will be that it will 
 put a stop, I hope, to this uncritical borrowing 
 from Germany^ — ^but matters to which I have al- 
 ready alluded incidentally when I was speaking 
 of the admirable way in which Germany avoided 
 the evils of our own industrial system and pre- 
 served the mediaeval character of so many of her 
 ancient cities. In Germany continuity with the 
 
 112 
 
Oermany 
 
 past has been jealously preserved. In England 
 it has been ignorantly destroyed by shortsighted, 
 practical men in a hurry to get rich — even at the 
 expense of national well-being. In Germany 
 individual enterprise has been regulated in the 
 interests of the State. In England it has been 
 let loose to work its own will regardless of exist- 
 ing institutions; our nineteenth-century utilitar- 
 ianism was far more destructive than even the 
 German guns at Reims. 
 
 All that tomes from keeping in touch with 
 one's own past line of development, all that 
 comes from living in a city with the unbroken 
 traditions of Ntiremburg or Frankfort — cities 
 which were in earlier days self-governing and 
 self-contained city republics embedded in the 
 heart of Germany — ^is the daily lot of the mod- 
 ern German. 
 
 And his education enables him to appreciate 
 it. Even the technical training is glorified and 
 enriched with history. Thus the barber appren- 
 tices of Munich are taught in the continuation 
 schools not only how to strop and lather, how to 
 keep the brushes and bowls clean, how to tell 
 good material from bad — and we realize how 
 important all this is when we think of the evils 
 which an ill-kept barber's shop may so easily 
 spread throughout the community — but they are 
 also told the meaning of the bleeding-dish which 
 hangs as a sign before their doors ; how it proves 
 that in the days when bleeding was regarded as 
 
 113 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 a cure-all method they were in reality one 
 branch of the profession which in its other 
 branch has developed into the surgeons, that 
 barbers are really barber-surgeons and that shav- 
 ing is really a surgical operation. Then, again, 
 the older apprentice is taught the various styles 
 of .historic hairdressing and the various wigs of 
 different periods. Thus he becomes an artist and 
 a man of science as well as a tradesman, and 
 his talk with his customers is not necessarily con- 
 fined to prize-fights and horse-races. 
 
 As another instance of dignifying the present 
 by linking it with the traditions and customs of 
 the past I will describe a scene I once witnessed 
 in Heidelberg. Along its main street came a pro- 
 cession of open carriages, each with three men 
 in it. All were dressed in the semi-military cos- 
 tume of the German Student Corps : white buck- 
 skin breeches, topboots, and laced coats. Two 
 bore the dueling-swords of the Corps and the 
 third its banner. Following the procession, I 
 found that it was making for the cemetery, and 
 when I got there I came upon a most imposing 
 sight. A professor was about to be buried, and 
 the whole of the avenue was lined with these 
 Corps officers, with the student members behind 
 them. After the coffin had been lowered each 
 trio advanced to the graveside, the two sword- 
 bearers crossed their swords over the hollow 
 while the flagbearer dipped his fiag thrice over 
 the crossed swords into the grave. Then all 
 
 114 
 
Qermany 
 
 three saluted the mourners and gave place to 
 the officers of the next Corps. Thus once again 
 was forced upon me a revision of my ideas on 
 German institutions; for although the faces of 
 the Corps officers bore many a duelling scar and 
 those of others bore traces of the drinking side 
 of Corps life — a side which the Kaiser recently 
 discountenanced in characteristic manner by 
 giving selected topers a good talking-to himself 
 — ^yet the Corps on this occasion presented as 
 effective a ceremony as I have ever seen. 
 
 ~I have suggested that education plays a very 
 much greater part in Germany than it does with 
 us. The Germans believe in education ; we don't ; 
 and education brings rewards in Germany which 
 it never brings in England. For instance, a boy 
 who has reached a certain standard escapes half 
 his military service, and consequently school 
 progress is a matter of almost painful interest 
 not only to the boy himself but also to his whole 
 family. Indeed, the pressure proves every year 
 too much for hundreds of German schoolboys; 
 and year by year the number of schoolboy suicides 
 is rising in consequence. The girls are given an 
 equally thorough domestic training. English girls 
 brought face to face with the continuous hard 
 work of a German household have, as a rule, the 
 shock of their lives. The carrying of heavy 
 market-baskets, the bringing home of fir-cones in 
 bags, pockets, and even umbrellas from country 
 walks to feed the stove and save the fuel, the 
 
 115 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Q-reat War 
 
 economy and industry of it all are almost appal- 
 ling to them. The success also of technical edu- 
 cation in Germany is unquestiooed, of course; but 
 it is on another aspect of education — an aspect 
 unthought of in England — ^that I wish to dwell. 
 We in England think of education as an affair of 
 little children — ^with perhaps continued training 
 for a small number of favored adolescents. But 
 by the time that people reach their twenties we 
 concern ourselves no more with their education — 
 although, I am glad to say, they are showing 
 every year through Adult Schools, the Workers 
 Educational Association, and some sides of the 
 Evening Schools an ever-increasing determina- 
 tion to educate themselves. 
 
 Now what does Germany do for the adults? 
 She does not make the mistake we might expect 
 her to make: order them off to the schoolroom 
 after work in the evening, whether they wish it or 
 no. She does not do that; but she does this: she 
 educates them through their recreations. Now 
 with us in England amusement is a matter of 
 business; public entertainments are run for 
 profit: the public is given what the managers 
 think it wants; in Germany, and all over the 
 Continent as a matter of fact, the theatre is a 
 public institution: not every theatre, but one 
 theatre at least in each big town. The Cor- 
 poration loses hundreds, probably thousands, 
 of pounds a year upon the State theatre, and is 
 content to lose — as also upon State opera and 
 
 116 
 
Oermany 
 
 music — for the same reason that we are willing 
 to lose upon our schools and libraries, to support 
 which we levy local rates : because the theatre is 
 as truly educational as the school and the library 
 — and perhaps even more eflEective since it pre- 
 sents education in the guise of recreation.' The 
 State makes it its business to supply ideas — or 
 rather to open up the great sources of ideas — 
 for the benefit of the adults; and much of the 
 alertness of the German manufacturer and the 
 open-mindedness of the German workman is due 
 doubtless to the fact that they have kept their 
 minds in training by exercising them on the ideas 
 rendered available by the public support of 
 drama, literature, and art; whereas the English 
 manufacturer has only his golf and his motor-car 
 to occupy his leisure — ^with perhaps an occasional 
 musical comedy or third-rate novel; while the 
 British workman has to find what mental susten- 
 ance he can in football, fishing, boxing, and racing 
 as conveyed to him chiefly in the columns of the 
 half-penny Press, with perhaps "The Will of 
 Kaiser Bill" by way of comic relief. The conse- 
 quence is that both masters and men tend to 
 "wither at the top" and to lose the brain-power 
 required for remoulding their methods in face of 
 intelligent German competition. 
 
 The State fostering of thought and intelligence 
 under the form of recreation thus probably pays 
 for itself many times over in the increased eco- 
 nomic efaciency of the workers. But in another 
 
 117 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 respect also the State is the gainer from the State 
 theatre. We have heard a great deal of late about ■ 
 caste in Germany — and the military caste is of 
 course a great fact, perhaps the greatest fact, in 
 Grermany today. But the German theatre is far 
 less caste-ridden than is our own. The most 
 striking part of the German theatre is the foyer 
 or large entrance-hall, with its staircases, buffets, 
 and corridors. Now during the entr'actes at a 
 German theatre the whole house leaves its seats 
 and troops down or out, as the case may be, to 
 the foyer and its bars. Thus is secured a real 
 mingling of the classes, a real fusion of social 
 grades in the common interest In art, which we 
 in England have never yet been able to achieve. 
 In contrast with a corresponding German audi- 
 ence the audience in a provincial Ejiglish theatre 
 is often lamentably deficient in deportment. Not 
 only do people in pit and gallery often explain to 
 each other what is going on behind the footlights 
 — somewhat after th(3 manner of a Greek choruS, 
 to the distraction of those within earshot — but 
 if a play contains any daring situations or local 
 touches, as, e.g., in "Hindle Wakes," th& audi- 
 ence shrieks so loudly with delight that the 
 "packers-up" in the pit have to shout "Order, 
 order !" at frequent intervals. 
 
 The German thea,tre is also free from those 
 twin nuisances and hindrances to British drama, 
 the actor-ma,nager and the long run. Each Ger- 
 man theatre has its company and its repertoire 
 
 118 
 
P^ermany 
 
 of plays, which is continually increased by ad- 
 ditions from among the best modern productions. 
 Thus the German theatre-goer has the chance of 
 getting to know a far larger number of great 
 plays and poems than has the English theatre- 
 goer, even though he live in London. The same 
 is true of German music. 
 
 But perhaps the most remarkable fact about 
 the German theatre is the attention it pays to 
 foreign drama, and English in patticular. The 
 Germans claim that Shakespeare. is really a Ger- 
 man, born by accident on the wrong side of the 
 North Sea; and if we are to judge by the relative 
 treatment he has received in Germany and in his 
 native land, till recently at any rate, the Germans 
 have a good case. 
 
 It is difficult to go into a German town without 
 seeing a Shakespeare play advertised: more 
 Shakespeare plays are performed in Germany 
 than in England, where Mr. William Poel — 
 whose work has received but scanty public recog- 
 nition — holds the record; the number of actual 
 performances is many times greater. In Septem- 
 ber, 1914, "Henry V" was actually played as a 
 patriotic drama at Berlin. Can we imagine 
 Schiller's "Wallenstein" at His Majesty's in the 
 same autumn? And they are performed more 
 seriously — ^with a greater regard, I mean, to the 
 words and spirit of Shakespeare himself. When, 
 for instance, a popular London actor-manager 
 produced "King John" he actually included a 
 
 119 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 tableau of King John signing the Magna Charta 
 simply because the fact is mentioned in Little 
 Arthur's History of England and others. The 
 fact that Shakespeare would have regarded 
 Magna Charta as a piece of presumption on the 
 part of the barons had no deterrent effect on 
 him. We are fortunate, indeed, that he did not 
 set out to put his Magna Charta scene in words 
 and thus add to Shakespeare to satisfy a British 
 weakness. In "The Tempest" he played with a 
 fire-hose on a solidly built ship swung on rockers. 
 But it was only when he took six plays to Berlin 
 at the invitation of the Kaiser that the real con- 
 trast between the German and the English view 
 of Shakespeare became evident. This particular 
 actor-manager likes his plays sumptuous. I re- 
 member a review of his "Henry VIII" which was 
 written simply in the form of a catalogue — ^item, 
 one palace; item, one Cardinal's robe; a!nd so 
 forth — ^and that in an English critical weekly. 
 Well, when he took his plays to Berlin the elabor- 
 ation of his mountings quite overcame the Berlin 
 Bcene-shifters, and it is said that during the 
 entr'actes, while the audience were criticising his 
 performance in the foyer, he himself was frantic- 
 ally struggling with the next set of scenery. The 
 views of the German critics were at first strongly 
 expressed; doubtless they were disappointed at 
 not seeing him at his real work behind the cur- 
 tain; but later they became more tolerant — ^pos- 
 sibly at a hint from some august person who was 
 
 120 
 
Germany 
 
 at that time anxious for a good understanding 
 with England. 
 
 I think that the Germans may claim, then, that 
 they have given much thought to the drama and 
 have reaped their reward. The same is equally 
 true of music, in which the German genius ex- 
 presses itself most happily and naturally. But 
 German music is so great that it needs no more 
 than a passing mention. All that I will say is 
 that I was delighted when the Queen's Hall Or- 
 chestra restored Wagner to its programme after 
 the war had been in progress a week or two and 
 when the proprietors had realized that no riot 
 would result. 
 
 In the plastic arts, so far as I who know little 
 of them can judge, the same careful, conscien- 
 tious, and critical attitude — of a marshalled and 
 disciplined kind — on the part of the general 
 public is observable. 
 
 When first I knew the Basilica of Aachen ( Aix- 
 la-Chapelle) it was in the rough, just as Charle- 
 magne had left it. When I saw it last time I was 
 surprised to see that the work had been finished 
 — after an interval of eleven hundred years. The 
 whole of the interior was covered with mosaics, 
 as they are gradually covering the interior of the 
 new Eoman Catholic Cathedral at Westminster. 
 When I reached home I spoke of what I had seen 
 to a friend. He was much interested and showed 
 me several booklets, costing one or two marks 
 each, illustrated with photographs. These books 
 
 121 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 were the pamphlets that the two parties, for and 
 against the mosaics, had been firing into each 
 other; and they had scoured Egypt, Syria, and 
 the Balkans for their ammunition: their photos 
 of mosaics and decorations from churches 
 throughout the Near East. 
 
 A similar work of decoration was recently 
 undertaken in London. Sir W. B. Richmond 
 covered several hundred square yards of St. 
 Paul's Cathedral with mosaics and nobody 
 troubled to criticise him — ^perhaps his work is 
 above criticism; but when the decorators began 
 to stencil patterns in red paint on the stonework 
 public opinion was at last moved to protest and 
 the paint had to be scrubbed off again, but if one 
 knows where to look one may still see its faint 
 traces. 
 
 In other restorations — for instance, at Heidel- 
 berg, at the Eoman camp near Homburg, the 
 Saalburg, and at the Rhine Castle, the Marksburg 
 — the same anxiety to be correct is observable; 
 but frequently the effect, though the result of 
 absolutely sound and honest and painstaking 
 work, is unfortunate. The restored portion of the 
 Heidelberg Castle in particular seems to me to 
 spoil the general effect completely. It looks as 
 though a hotel had been built in the midst of the 
 ruins and decorated throughout with gaudy fres- 
 coes. Among the Germans themselves, however, 
 I must admit that the most popular sight at 
 Heidelberg seems to be the Great Tun, together 
 
 122 
 
Germany 
 
 with the fox's brush that bobs out at you -vmex- 
 pectedly in the same room — the trick of some 
 jester of the Elector-Palatine's Court. In the 
 Saalburg, similarly, I went up to what I took 
 from a distance to be a row of machine-guns. So 
 they were; they were working models of ancient 
 Koman catapults of one sort and another. I re^ 
 member also the smooth working of the Marks- 
 burg drawbridge. 
 
 This same careful, reverent spirit has in the 
 world of science and criticism given German 
 scholars the lead in all that can be accomplished 
 by diligence and thoroughness; while the fine 
 effectiveness of the German educational system 
 has provided the leaders in every branch of sci- 
 ence, art, literature, industry, and commerce with 
 a supply of trained subordinates such as no other 
 country — least of all England — can show. I have 
 known a German girl steadily prepare herself for 
 a concert by playing through the compositions 
 to be performed, practically making her own 
 analytical programme for herself. The whole 
 land is, moreover, freer than we are from the re- 
 strictions and checks on private conduct which 
 we inherit from Puritanism but which we at- 
 tribute to Mrs. Grundy. 
 
 All this is to the good, and it goes a very long 
 way, but not all the way. The machinery, the 
 trained intelligence, the disciplined appreciation 
 are there in admirable order. Culture, like all 
 else German, has been organized. But has the 
 
 123 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 body been inspired — made to live? In music and 
 in philosophy? Yes. But in other directions? 
 The answer must be found in this fact, that ever 
 since a national life began to stir in Germany 
 and the old local arts and crafts, like those 
 practised so exquisitely in Niiremburg and other 
 cities throughout the Middle Ages, were super- 
 seded by efforts on a larger scale, Germany has 
 been a borrower rather than an originator. Her 
 genius to-day lies rather in arranging the great 
 works of the past in excellent order — as we may 
 see in the National Museums in Nuremberg and 
 Munich — than in producing the great works 
 themselves for future ages to arrange and admire. 
 At the beginning of her career as a kingdom in 
 the early seventeen hundreds, Prussia — and with 
 Prussia most of Germany as well — was bound to 
 the chariot-wheels of French convention in the 
 Arts; and when Lessing in his great work on 
 behalf of the Hamburg Theatre later in the same 
 century cut these bonds he freed German art and 
 literature from France — to what end? To deliver 
 them over to the tyranny of England. When he 
 said that if Shakespeare did not conform to the 
 rules of Louis XIV's Court poets, so much the 
 worse for the rules ; when he gave one of his plays 
 the very English title of "Miss Sarah Simpson" 
 (it reminded one slightly of "Clarissa Harlow") 
 he was simply revealing the nakedness of ihis 
 native land. The Sturm und Drang period which 
 succeeded him— and disgusted him — ^was merely 
 
 124 
 
Germomy 
 
 Shakespeare caricatured; and Schiller turned to 
 France for his exquisitely sympathetic Maid of 
 Orleans, to Scotland for his Marie Stuart, to 
 Switzerland for his William Tell. "Wallenstein" 
 is of course German enough in theme, as it also 
 Goethe's early "Gotz von Berlichingen," but both 
 these are dramas of a divided Germany — of a 
 Germany plunged into religious and agrarian 
 civil war. Goethe's "Faust" is also quite Ger- 
 man, but really because its interests and specula- 
 tions, though German in form and setting, are 
 world-wide in their appeal, and universality was 
 the character of German thought in the eigh- 
 teenth century, Goethe was a "good European" 
 first — the phrase is Nietzsche's — a German only 
 in the second place, and the German character of 
 his writingsadds only to its attractiveness ; it in 
 nowiseQeseras^ the universality of its appeal. 
 When the^eimar folk wished to do him peculiar 
 honor on the jubilee of his coming among them, 
 they performed his classic "Iphigenia" at the 
 theatre of which he was director and for which 
 he had d6ne so much work that will live. 
 
 This p|)wer of appreciating and adapting the 
 work of others is seen in other spheres as well. 
 I remember seeing in Manchester some of the 
 plays which Gordon Craig designed for his 
 mother, Ellen Terry, and I well remember the 
 comments of the pittites round about me. They 
 were pitjing Ellen Terry, pitying her because 
 she had, as they said, "come to this" after all 
 y 125 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 the glorious upholstery of her partnership with 
 Irving. To the British playgoers Craig's severity 
 seemed thin and cheap; they had no conception 
 of the beauty of sheer simplicity and absolute 
 necessity — the beauty, for instance, of a purely 
 utilitarian objed; like the human body; so he 
 went abroad and found a welcome in — Moscow ! 
 where his "Hamlet" was rehearsed for a whole 
 year bfefore it was offered to the public by the 
 Art Theatre Company. From Moscow his in- 
 fluence spread to Germany, where it woke a 
 sympathetic chord in the work of Max Eeinhardt, 
 the director of the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin. 
 Gradually Reinhardt began to feel his way into 
 England, or to be more exact, London (the two 
 are not synonymous), and at last he burst upon 
 us and captivated us with "The Miracle" at 
 Olympia. , Thus we were allowed to come in at 
 the tail of a movement which we could have led, 
 since we had the first offer, but lacked the wide- 
 spread general taste which enabled even the 
 Muscovites to see the value and importance of 
 Craig's work. 
 
 This power of development and adaptation is 
 to be seen also in the capture of the dye trade. 
 The English, indeed, originated the processes, 
 but the Germans made them commercial suc- 
 cesses; and our punishment is that to-day, I 
 understand, the supply of khaki has given out 
 through the exhaustion of the stock of German 
 dyes of the right color. On the unworthy side 
 
 126 
 
Germany 
 
 these same powers are devoted to the production 
 of cheap imitations of sound English goods and 
 the forging of English trade-marks to deceive 
 customers as to theit real origin and nature. But 
 this is only the corruption of the best which be- 
 comes the worst. 
 
 We can then, I think, freely acknowledge that 
 there is a German culture, and that it reached its 
 height in little places like Weimar, about which 
 Thackeray wrote so appreciatively. But the 
 gentleness and peace which so attracted him are 
 hardly the source of such creative energy as shall 
 overwhelm the world with a new Eenaissance. 
 The same qualities in short, which make the 
 German a docile soldier make him also a steady 
 believer in culture: the receptivity and submis- 
 sion to authority which we have already noted 
 in other connections. It is only when this 
 amiable simplicity is galvanized by the crude 
 energy of a newly fledged national enthusiasm 
 that it commits atrocities on the artistic side 
 comparable only to the atrocities of the invading 
 armies which burn Louvain and bombard Eeims. 
 I have already referred to the Leipsic monument. 
 That grotesque mass is not to be mentioned 
 beside the serene beauty of Goethe's house in 
 the Place at Weimar as I saw it a few years 
 back, with all the poet's engravings and statues, 
 his books and apparatus, even the bed on which 
 he died, crying for "more light," just as he had 
 left them. And yet the two are within a short 
 
 127 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 hour's run of each other. A little place like 
 Weimar is in many ways far more truly the 
 capital of Germany than the noigy and feverish 
 Berlin, which seems so to intoxicate the Kaiser ; 
 and it is the art which emanates from the Imi 
 perialism of the capital which is so bad — the 
 Sieges AUee statues and so on. Even music 
 seems to have caught the infection, and we 
 recognize once more the familiar note of brutal 
 realism in the scratching music of Electra's 
 unearthing of the Axe in Strauss' opera — 
 originality overstraining itself and becoming 
 mere ugliness. And again. South Germany — 
 sunny and art-loving Munich even — tolerates a 
 flat-footed ferocity in some of the Jugend cartoons 
 to say nothing of its famous Hate Song against 
 England — which is the very reverse of the 
 Bavarian character. 
 
 Now it is this Grenadier become artist — ^we 
 have already seen him disguised as a school- 
 master — that the real lovers of German culture 
 detest and fear. Even Nietzsche, whose influence 
 is usually regarded as all on the side of hardness 
 and brutality, condemned the newer growth 
 which miscalled itself culture. He objected to 
 the sort of stuff which Treitschke gave forth on 
 the death of the Emperor Frederick : — 
 
 "The time must one day come when the peoples 
 shall feel that the battles of the Emperor 
 William I not only created a Fatherland for the 
 Germans but also bestowed upon the community 
 
 128 
 
(Germany 
 
 of the nations a juster and more reasonable 
 order. Then will be fulfilled what once Em- 
 manuel Geibel sang to the grey-haired victor: 
 'And the world will one day find healing at the 
 touch of the German character.' " 
 
 Of Treitschke himself Nietzsche said that he 
 had "completely lost sight of the notion of cul- 
 ture," while of German culture — ^new style — ^he 
 said : "I look down on German culture with un- 
 disguised contempt. Without either sense or 
 substance or goal, it is simply public opinion. 
 There could be no more dangerous misunder- 
 standing than to suppose that Germany's success 
 at arms proved anything in favor of German 
 culture — and still less the triumph of that cul- 
 ture over France." After all, then, Versailles 
 was greater than the Emperor who was crowned 
 there in 1870. Heine — whose house in Craven 
 Street, London, may still ba seen — had even 
 stronger feeKngs about the Junkerism which was 
 masquerading as German culture even in his day. 
 In "Deutschland" he gives an account of his 
 return to Germany after thirteen years' ab- 
 sence : — 
 
 At Aachen on the posthonse shield 
 
 I saw the bird again 
 That I so hate ! It glared on me 
 
 With poisonous disdain. 
 
 Thou loathly fowl ! if ever thou 
 
 Into my hands shouldst fall, 
 I'll pluck thy feathers and hack oft 
 
 Thy talons, one and all. 
 
 129 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 I'll nail thee to a lofty pole, 
 
 Xhou'lt make a target fine; 
 And to a, shooting match I'll call 
 
 The bowmen oi the Bhine. 
 
 Still more terrible, because so much more pro- 
 phetic, is the passage in which Heine says that 
 GermaK culture would inevitably draw to an end 
 by the bombardment of Christian cathedrals. 
 And last of all I would call attention to a passage 
 from Schiller — the writer of the "Maid of Or- 
 leans" who crowned Charles VII in Eeims — ^in 
 which he says : "The fall of the Empire does not 
 mean the fall of German greatness." Of course 
 not. The rise of the present Empire marked the 
 decline of German greatness in the Arts ; its fall 
 may be the first step towards a happier and more 
 rational development of German culture. A 
 certain strain of military sternness is strengthen- 
 ing to a civilization, but a State which is all 
 backbone is, by hypothesis, without either heart 
 or head. 
 
 Throughout this subject of German culture I 
 have been careful to distinguish between the real 
 and the spurious, between the culture which 
 appealed to Carlyle and Thackeray and that 
 which appealed to Treitschke, who seemed to 
 think, with so many other Germans, that genius 
 could be organized and regimented and forced 
 by machinery into existence — thereby suggesting 
 that he and they have no real conception of its 
 nature, and have therefore no real message to 
 the world either in the arts or in government. 
 
 130 
 
Germany 
 
 Leaving German State art, then, as merely a 
 manifestation of German materialism and Im- 
 perialism, it yet seems to me that the enemy has 
 a good deal to teach us in the matter of fostering 
 our national art and literature. And we should 
 do well to pondet what he has to teach, because 
 when the time for settlement comes the forcea 
 which will tell will be, not only the armed forces 
 of the various States but also the force of ideas 
 and enlightenment which each of the victors can 
 put into the field. Have we begun to mobilize 
 these forces yet? Have we begun to think 
 seriously and effectively about the problems the 
 war is opening up both at home and abroad — 
 or, indeed, about any problems? Have we real- 
 ized that after the war we shall need brains 
 similar to those which reorganized Prussia in 
 the early nineteenth century, and that the one- 
 step wtich is enough for the ordinary English- 
 man must soon become a two-step, if not a regu- 
 lar hop, skip, and jump, however disturbing it 
 may be to our liver and our dignity? Have we 
 begun to toughen our mental fibre by hard think- 
 ing and hard reading, as Kitchener's Armies are 
 toughening their muscles by Swedish — not Brit- 
 ish — gymnastics? Are we sure that our security 
 behind an invincible Navy has not produced a 
 slackness and a frivolity of mind, an unwilling- 
 ness to tackle problems which need concentrated 
 thinking or which raise terrible imaginings; or 
 to read, not skim, books which — like Bernhardi's 
 
 131 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 "Germany and the Next War," with its motto 
 from Nietzsche, "War and courage have done 
 more great things than love of the neighbor" — 
 are not only a bit stiff but also more than a little 
 shocking to our pet ethics and favorite prepos- 
 sessions ; or to combat conclusions such as these : 
 "What is more harmful than any vice? Practical 
 sympathy with the botched and weak — Chris- 
 tianity," "Christian altruism is the mob egoism 
 of the weak"? 
 
 If we have learned to criticise ourselves on 
 these lines and to check the faults which our 
 self-criticism reveals, then this war will not have 
 been fought in vain. We must oppose the all- 
 round self-discipline of a free people to the all- 
 round organization of regimental Germany. 
 
 132 
 
PART TWO 
 
 FRANCE: THE PIONEER OF CIVILIZA- 
 TION 
 
 At the end of my last essay I quoted a passage 
 from Nietzsfche, in which he said that the success 
 of Gtennan arms proved nothing in favor of 
 German culture, and still less the triumph of 
 that culture over France. 
 
 I propose now to take this as the text of the 
 present section of my subject. 
 
 In going as fully into German history as we 
 have done, we have cleared most of the historical 
 facts we need for our purpose out of the way. 
 All these facts have other facets, of course, each 
 facet turned towards a different State and form- 
 ing part of that State's history ; but, for the most 
 part, these facets are only the converse of the 
 facets we have already seen from the point of 
 view of German history, and therefore require 
 nothing more than an incidental notice from us. 
 
 I shall not, then, concern myself so fully with 
 French history as I did with German history, 
 because to do so would be simply waste of time 
 
 133 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 in repetition. There is, moreover, a more vital 
 point of view from which to tell the French story. 
 But before I begin it, I do not wish to suggest 
 that because I propose to touch but lightly on 
 French history the history of France is of less 
 importance than that of Germany. Far other- 
 wise. The history of Europe is, indeed, best 
 treated as pivoting on that of France. Again 
 and again France has been the outstanding fact 
 in European history; again and again has she 
 emerged from a period of internal difficulty to 
 compel once more the attention and admiration 
 of Europe and direct her destinies. But is so 
 happens that the real cause of the present war 
 is the growth and situation of Germany, and 
 therefore the history we require had to be treated 
 mainly from the point of view of German 
 growth. I only wish it were unavoidable for me 
 to tell the story of the growth of France ; of her 
 inheritance through Gaul of all that Rome had 
 left to the world ; of her central position ; of her 
 work in reviving, north of the Alps, all that the 
 Mediterranean had contributed to the well-being 
 of mankind, and in adding still further to the 
 glorious total. 
 
 It is all far more brilliant and varied than the 
 steady tramp of the Prussians through the last 
 two centuries, but, as I have already said, we 
 must be content with such glances at it as- we 
 can obtain by reflection from the history of Ger- 
 many and the other States — ^including our own 
 
 134 
 
France 
 
 — with which France came into contact from 
 time to time. 
 
 If France has had her ups and downs during 
 the nine centuries she has been a kingdom ; if 
 she has been trampled down by Moors and Eng- 
 lish and Germans; if, like Israel of old, she has 
 repelled her foes under leaders who have ap- 
 peared as providentially as the Hebrew Judges 
 (leaders like Charles the Hammer, Joan of Arc, 
 Henry of Navarre, Napoleon) — ^nevertheless, 
 from another point of view her influence on 
 Europe has been steady and continuous through- 
 out her history. She has been the ever-flowing 
 source of ideas and movements in Europe. 
 
 We have seen that the German Empire was 
 formed in 1870 at the expense of France. Simil- 
 arly we might say that the French kingdom was 
 effectually established at the expense of England. 
 Throughout the Hundred Years War France was 
 a prey to the English, whose archers at Cr6cy 
 and Poictiers — the English have always excelled 
 in shooting — ^gave our island forces a superiority 
 and English rule in France a continuity neither 
 had done enough to deserve. France was held 
 under easily by England because she was divided, 
 whereas England had been united centuries 
 earlier by the wonderful work of our Norman- 
 French and French kings — William I, Henry I, 
 and Henry II. French provinces were in reality 
 almost rival States under the nominal rule of 
 the French King, even as the States of Germany 
 
 135 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 were practically independent units under the 
 Emperor. 
 
 But this period of division and consequent sub-, 
 jugation to the more united power of England 
 passed away when Joan of Arc drove the Eng- 
 lish from Orleans and so broke their prestige. 
 When in the fated cathedral of Reims, and clad 
 in white, she stood by the side of the ungrateful 
 Dauphin she had raised to the throne, we may 
 well imagine her the fairy godmother whose 
 magic had created a united and living France 
 from the remnants of the warring provinces that 
 had been snatched back from England. It was 
 the son (Louis XI) of the King she had crowned 
 who first ruled a really united France. He was a 
 contemporary of our Henry VII, and we have 
 already referred to him in connection with 
 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, "Quentin 
 Durward," Villon, and Justin Huntley Mc- 
 Carthy's play "If I were King." 
 
 But French influence begins long before the 
 consolidation of the French throne. Throughout 
 the Middle Ages French ideas kept Europe busy 
 and broke into the local particularism which was 
 the great drawback of mediaeval society. More 
 than one monastic order of importance arose in 
 France; the Carthusians, the Cluniacs, the Cis- 
 tercians, all had their headquarters in some 
 French monastery or other. St. Bernard, whose 
 hymn^ — 
 
 136 
 
France 
 
 Jefsns, the very thought of Thee 
 With sweetness fills my breast, 
 
 is still sung in our churches, was the greatest 
 force of his time; he ordered kings and rulers 
 about as if they were nothing more than school- 
 boys; he intervened with effect among the rival 
 Popes of his day ; and his struggles with Ab61ard 
 have not even yet been forgotten. His life, by 
 Morrison, published by Macmillan, is one of the 
 very best boots for those to read who wish to 
 see what the Middle Ages were like and what 
 influence this Frenchman wielded even in the 
 days of our Norman kings. 
 
 One of St. Bernard's biggest efforts was the 
 preaching of the Second Crusade. The first 
 Crusade had also been preached, first of all at 
 Clermont, on French soil, by Peter the Hermit, 
 and, indeed, the whole of the crusading idea may 
 be said with truth to be of French origin. I 
 cannot of course dwell here on the results of 
 these wonderful wars — the first and most effec- 
 tive Concert of Europe. Their influence in bring- 
 ing European peoples together, breaking down 
 barriers, opening up trade routes and establish- 
 ing international highways, planting ideas and 
 spreading knowledge, leading off barons to a 
 consecrated death against the M'oslems — this was 
 St. Bernard's frank argument — and thus giving 
 the subjects they left behind a chance of pros- 
 pering and developing their own local self-gov- 
 ernment by the purchase of charters from needj; 
 
 137 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War / 
 
 crnsaders; the founding of the militant orders 
 of the Templars and the Knights of St. John of 
 Malta, the Hospitallers, who became our Bed 
 Cross Societies — all this and much more Europe 
 owes to the French idea of the Crusade. Nor is 
 that all. Not every Crusade went eastward into 
 the Holy Land. We have already seen crusading 
 knights conquering Prussia for Brandenburg; 
 now we have to notice that Portugal takes its 
 rise from the attacks of French Crusaders who 
 established themselves on the Tagus mouth, and 
 using this as a base, drove back the Moors of 
 Spain far enough to found a Christian kingdom 
 on the coast. 
 
 Another institution of vast importance to 
 Europe which France can claim as her own is 
 the University. Like the Crusaders, the Univer- 
 sity was a unifying movement, a net spread all 
 over Christendom to hold it together in the bonds 
 of learning. 
 
 The Church had already bound Europe to- 
 gether in the bonds of religion, and the mediaeval 
 Universities, with their scholastic philosophers 
 and theologians, their Latin — the language of 
 learning which old Borne had bequeathed alike 
 to her spiritual successor the Boman Church 
 and to her intellectual heir the University- 
 helped also to strengthen this bond. Whatever 
 difEerences of speech and custom might sever 
 one mediaeval kingdom or duchy from another, 
 the Churchman and the scholar were free to go 
 
 138 
 
France 
 
 wherever they wished, for everywhere they found 
 a language and an organization to which they 
 were accustomed. Europe was thus knit together 
 by the scholars and Churchmen of the time. 
 We find Alcuin from the Tyne teaching Charle- 
 magne's Germans in the ninth century; we find 
 Theodore of St. Paul's city of Tarsus, in Asia 
 Minor, settling a dispute between rival churches 
 at Northumbrian Whitby as early as the seventh 
 century ; we find French monks carrying the fiery 
 cross throughout Europe and leading the cosmo- 
 politan armies of the Crusades towards the tomb 
 of Christ from the eleventh century onwards 
 
 Now Paris was the tarliest and most important 
 University to the north of the Alps. From it 
 many other Universities were founded, while 
 within its limits students of all races, grouped in 
 "nations," were to be found. Oxford, I believe, 
 claims a separate foundation, and perhaps an 
 even earlier one; while Cambridge says, some- 
 what shamefacedly, that she believes she was 
 founded a few hundreds of years B.C. by one Can- 
 taber. King of Spain! But, for all that, Paris 
 may be regarded as the chief centre of European 
 Universities. Ab61ard and Hfiloise, with St. 
 Bernard, are certainly the chief names in the 
 University world of the mediaeval period, and I 
 think we may fairly claim to add the benefits 
 which the Universities have conferred on Europe 
 to those which the Crusades have conferred and 
 put the total down to the credit of France. 
 
 139 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 For yet one more glory Europe is indebted to 
 France, and that glory is perhaps the greatest of 
 all, since it is the triumph of the Middle Ages, 
 the highest expression of our Christian civiliza- 
 tion. It is nothing less than the Gothic cathedral. 
 Now, when we come across the term Goth first it 
 has associations similar to that of Vandal — Goths 
 and Vandals alike were barbarians of the Dark 
 Ages, yet nowadays the terms have very different 
 connotations. Vandalism is still the term we 
 apply to acts of wanton destruction, whereas 
 Gothic has become a word to denote the highest 
 achievement of Christian art. Perhaps a few 
 words in explanation, then, of the word Gothic 
 will not be out of place. I have nothing to !say 
 about vandalism; the ruins of Louvain, the (lam- 
 age at Eeims are eloquent without any words of 
 mine. I referred in an earlier essay to Aachen 
 Cathedral as being built in Byzantine style and 
 as being finished, after a thousand years' delay, 
 in gilding and mosaics such as one can see also 
 being put up in Westminster Cathedral. That 
 style of decoration is associated in our minds 
 rather with expensive restaurants and ballrooms 
 than with churches, it is true; but during the 
 Dark Ages it was the prevalent ecclesiastical style 
 in the Mediterranean area — an area accustomed 
 to the marble and color of Greece and Rome. 
 Wheli, therefore, another style of church building 
 appeared among the barbarians, the enlightened 
 Europeans of the Eastern Empire and of Italy 
 
 140 
 
France 
 
 spoke of it contemptuously as merely barbarous, 
 the work of Goths — Gothic, in fact. 
 
 Nevertheless, this despised style showed con- 
 siderable vitality, and the buildings which rose 
 under its influence became year by year more 
 elaborate and magnificent. I cannot here stop 
 to tell the wonderful story of the building of 
 these cathedrals, of the traveling guilds of Free- 
 Masons, with the secret signs by which they knew 
 each other, of the carvers in wood and stone, of 
 the metalworkers, of the stained-glass window- 
 makers, of the organ-builders; but it is all 
 specially interesting, in view of modern attempts, 
 of associated workmen in the building and other 
 trades to take on big works direct without the 
 intervention of a contractor. 
 
 All I can say here — Shaving just hinted at the 
 interest of the subject of the cathedral-building 
 guilds to the Syndicalist — ^is that, of all cathe- 
 drals in Europe, none surpassed and few ap- 
 proached in loveliness and majesty, in delicacy 
 and in glory, in perfection of finish and variety 
 of detail, the cathedrals of Central France. 
 Reims, Ndtre Dame at Paris, and a dozen more 
 should be mentioned. But all I can do here is 
 to suggest the reason for their artistic import- 
 ance. For they are not merely noble and stately 
 piles, with — 
 
 storied windows richly digbt, 
 Casting a dim religious light, 
 
 141 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 as our own Milton — Puritan though he was — so 
 finely described them; they were also the embodi- 
 ment in stone of all that the Middle Ages held to 
 be most important. They have been called frozen 
 music. Yet they were used also for the most 
 prosaic of purposes on occasion. Cattle were 
 stalled in them, and wounded soldiers. / Their 
 towers were watch-towers against the enemy. Yet 
 their chief significance was in the thought they 
 symbolized. 
 
 The first impression one gets of a Gothic church 
 or cathedral is its wastefulness. Such big pillars, 
 such awkward seating arrangements, such poor 
 lighting, often such draughts! Many an iron- 
 girdered public-hall or big central mission is far 
 better suited for the purposes of great religious 
 gatherings than a Gothic cathedral. And yet if 
 the architects of the cathedrals had only used 
 their materials economically, one is tempted to 
 murmur, how much more convenient a meeting- 
 place they could have built. The towers and the 
 spires, the flying buttresses — how much stone 
 they take up, and yet without increasing the ac- 
 commodation. Think of filling the spire of Salis- 
 bury with layer above layer of worshippers, their 
 feet all dangling above the heads of the row 
 beneath ! But however long one continued in that 
 strain of argument, one would make no impres- 
 sion whatever on the architect — a man as a rule 
 unknown to fame — of a mediaeval cathedral. And 
 Vhy? Simply because he was not concerned 
 
 142 
 
France 
 
 about the convenience and the comfort of con- 
 gregations, ventilators and draughts, good light 
 and acoustics. He had something else to remem- 
 ber. He had to remember that he was building a 
 house of God. "My house shall be a house of 
 prayer" had to be the ground-plan and elevation, 
 the inspiring note, of his whole work. Man had 
 to rise from earth to heaven, another Jacob's 
 ladder had to be reared for the soul of man to 
 climb; hence the waste of material, the narrow 
 floor-space but the soaring arch, the pinched-in 
 aisle but the flying buttresses, the darkened 
 spaces but the "cloud-capped pinnacle" of the 
 central spire. It is in this respect that so many 
 German churches, with their bulbous additions, 
 are so lacking. The highest point about these 
 churches, the point one has to throw one's head 
 back to see, reminds one of the turnip, honest and 
 sound enough but uninspiring; whereas even a 
 modern Gothic spire dominates its area in a won- 
 derful way. I well remember the discussion 
 caused in Sheffield when St. Marie's, the Eoman 
 Catholic church, illuminated the cross at the top 
 of its spire with green lights during George V's 
 Coronation festivities. Fortunately, however, a 
 still higher light was hoisted into position: the 
 situation was saved by the red lamp which Vulcan 
 held in his hand on the top of the town Hall 
 clock-tower. And this in a city which is proud 
 of its connection with Buskin! 
 This, then, is the supreme gift of mediaeval 
 143 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Qreat War 
 
 France — the Gothic cathedral, a new creation, 
 not merely the transference of Mediterranean 
 ideas to Northern Europe. Nor were the French 
 overwhelmed with the neatness of the achieve- 
 ment, as a lesser people might have been. Having 
 produced their miracle of stone, they proceeded 
 to show that they were greater than the triumph 
 they had created ; and so, to prevent the cathedral 
 they had called into being from becoming too 
 overpowering in its majesty, they trimmed it here 
 and there with the quaintest touches of comic 
 relief — gargoyles and, above all, grotesques, such 
 as one sees high up on Notre Dame. The true 
 spirit of France — ^the spirit of Irony — ^resides in 
 the grinning yet meditative hobgoblin who looks 
 from the parapet of Notre Dame, his chin in his 
 hand, right across Paris. With this triple tri- 
 umph, then — ^monasteries, crusades, universities, 
 cathedrals (no, it is quadruple) — to her credit, 
 we must turn from mediaeval France. 
 
 During the troublous period of the Renaissance 
 and the Reformation we must leave France to 
 work her own way unattended. She had her re- 
 ligious factions and a bloody massacre on the eve 
 of St. Bartholomew; she had her Protestant King 
 — Henry of Navarre — ^who nevertheless thought 
 that Paris was worth a Mass; and she had her 
 dynastic troubles and her Royal Family squab- 
 bles, in some of which our own Mary Queen of 
 Scots was involved. During this age of transition 
 also her architepture underwent a change, but 
 
 144 
 
France 
 
 emerged triumphant once more in the glorious 
 chateau of Touraine and the Loire — almost as 
 perfect an expression of the ideas of the Benais- 
 sance as are the cathedrals those of an earlier age. 
 As in England so in France the confusions and 
 struggles of the Eenaissance and the Eeformation 
 strengthened the central power, and henceforth 
 the inonarch became more and more absolute. 
 Just as in "Quentin Durward" we may see the 
 beginnings of French autocracy, so also in that 
 remarkable series of Dumas, "The Three Mus- 
 keteers" and its many sequels— a series dealing, 
 I believe, with the same body of soldiers as 
 "Quentin Durward," the King's bodyguard — we 
 catch glimpses of its later growth. In the works 
 of Richelieu and Mazarin we see the steady build- 
 ing up of the royal power by the professional poli- 
 ticians, who disguised themselves under the robes 
 of cardinals; we see the King's Ministers bully- 
 ing or bribing or cajoling or compelling noble 
 after noble to relinquish his voice in the Govern- 
 ment and to be content with the untaxed ease and 
 pleasure of his Renaissance chateau. We see the 
 process going on from the day when the French 
 Princess Henrietta Maria goaded her unlucky 
 husband, Charles I of England, into the desperate 
 action which led him to the block by her constant 
 taunt, "Be a King" (like my father in France), 
 to the day when Louis XIV, le Grande Monarque, 
 le Roi Soleil, looking over Paris, "la Ville Lu- 
 mi6re," from Versailles, could say with perfect 
 
 145 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 truth: I/4tat c'est moi ("I am the State"), and 
 the work of strengthening the throne stood com- 
 plete. Paris focused France, Versailles — which 
 had cost twenty millions — focused Paris, and 
 Louis focused Versailles. We cannot understand 
 France at its height until we have been through 
 Versailles — and the Trianons, its adjuncts; and 
 therefore we see once again the value of foreign 
 travel. Let me, however, give a few descriptive 
 points. 
 
 The chief characteristic of Versailles and its 
 life was, perhaps, its formality : stiffness, even, is 
 not too strong a term. The great garden front 
 of the palace, with its columns and rows of win- 
 dows; the broad terrace flanked with a stone, 
 balustrade supporting great vases and statues 
 at regular intervals ; the sweeping flights of steps 
 which lead to the gardens spread symmetrically 
 about the great basins with their elaborate foun- 
 tains; and beyond these the long, long avenues 
 of trees, straight and serried, leading to the lodge 
 gates arid so to the outer world. The smaller 
 gardens, with their clipped yew hedges, backing 
 statues, and miniature temples, iwere equally 
 stiff and formal. Within the palace the same 
 order, the same simplicity is to be noticed, mag- 
 nificent indeed in detail, but almost bare in its 
 spaces and absence of gimcrackery, cosy corners, 
 golliwogs, china dogs, framed photographs, and 
 all we are used to in English homes. The 
 straight, rectangular dignity of the Mirror Hall, 
 
 146 
 
France 
 
 with its occasional gilt chairs and stools, where 
 the King of Prussia was declared Emperor of 
 Germany in 1870, is the embodiment of the 
 French genius for definition and severe simplic- 
 ity, combined with just proportions and fine 
 finish in detail. The people who moved through 
 these halls and grounds were as clear-cut and 
 precise as the scenes among which they lived. 
 The fashions of the day — ^we may perhaps sum- 
 marize them as the style of Cinderella and the 
 glass slipper — are well known to us still; for 
 long after they ceased to be the costume of the 
 great world they remained the costume of serv- 
 ants, and the Lord Mayor's coach and coachmen 
 are to-day the direct descendants of the style of 
 le Grand Monarque. 
 
 Nor were their thoughts and' speech, their art 
 and literature any less regulated than their 
 architecture, their gardens, or their fashions. 
 The large, empty areas of their rooms and ter- 
 races were intended as the assembly-places of 
 courtly crowds who were not afraid to walk and 
 bow, and, above all, talk. In a company which 
 amuses itself thus, pictures, music, entertain- 
 ments play but a secondary part, though such as 
 are offered to the guiests must necessarily be of 
 the same rigorous form and finish as everything 
 else in this remarkable period. 
 
 The rules of art were tightly drawn as the 
 rules of behavior and Court etiquette. The poets 
 and dramatists of the period were restricted in 
 
 147 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 every way. Each line had to be complete in it- 
 self; rhymes had to follow in a rigid sequence; no 
 change of scene was permitted in a play, and the 
 acts had to follow each other as nearly as possible 
 without any lengthy break of time — like the three 
 days, or three months, or three years to which 
 we are accustomed. And lastly their vocabu- 
 laries, were restricted to a ridiculous extent: 
 such a word as "dog" was forbidden them, be- 
 cause it was a base word, a workaday word. If, 
 therefore, a poet wished to refer to a dog he had 
 to call it "the respectable supporter of fidelity," 
 or something equally roundabout and pompous. 
 The breaking of these rules by Hugo in his play 
 "Hernani" produced a free fight in the theatre in 
 the days when political energy, denied a right- 
 ful outlet in government, gave rise to the Eo- 
 mantic movement — ^i.e. just after Napoleon and 
 Waterloo. 
 
 And so we could go on ; but I have said enough 
 to convey the impression I aim at, an impression 
 of classic clearness, definiteness, almost coldness. 
 And yet, in spite of its rigidity, perhaps even in 
 a sense because of it, this age of Louis XIV is a 
 very great age. It sees the rise of the classic 
 French drama to its highest point. It is the age 
 of Corneille, of Eacine, of MoliSre. Eichelieu, 
 who had done so much towards building up the 
 power of the King, also aided literature by help- 
 ing to found the Academy ; while Molifere's thea- 
 tre, the Com6die Fran§aise, became a State in- 
 
 148 
 
France 
 
 stitution, and has remained so to the present day. 
 And French drama still penetrates freely to other 
 lands — especially to England. 
 
 It was the clearness and definiteness of the 
 French genius which gave French institutions 
 of all sorts so great an advantage, so good a start, 
 during this period. The writers, dramatists, 
 artists, builders, tailors of the age of Louis XIV 
 knew exactly the effect they aimed at producing, 
 and thus frequently succeeded in their aim. 
 And not only was their clearness of vision and 
 expression an advantage to France in her in- 
 ternal development; it gave her also a lead 
 among other nations of Europe which she has 
 never lost. France had a vision and a purpose: 
 therefore she led in all things; her clear voice 
 compelled the obedience of her unformed neigh- 
 bors. Milton had been Latin Secretary to Oliver 
 Cromwell, or, as we should now call him. For- 
 eign Secretary. In his day, therefore, the 
 foreign correspondence of oxir country — and, in- 
 deed, of all countries — ^was carried on in the 
 ancient universal language of the Roman Empire 
 and Church: But very shortly after Milton's day 
 Latin gave place to French as the language of 
 diplomacy, as, indeed, we have already seen, and 
 they say that to-day a French Ambassador may 
 always be known by his ignorance of every lan- 
 guage except his own, which is the only one he 
 needs, as all Foreign Offices and ambassadors use 
 Ms language: — for from the moment when the 
 
 149 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 Academy had overhauled the French language, 
 and given it an authoritative grammar, spell- 
 ing, and so forth, and thus rendered clearer still 
 its natural clearness, no language in Europe 
 could compare with it for general utility. 
 
 The spread of French as the polite and diplo- 
 matic language of Europe was helped by the 
 spread of French fashions and ideas all over 
 the Continent. Indeed, one French success paved 
 the way for another. And not only is French 
 to-day the patois of Europe, which we all have 
 to learn as early as possible, but every European 
 capital has its Versailles, modelled largely on 
 the lines of the great French palace, near at 
 hand. Our own Hampton Court has fountains 
 by the designer of Versailles; there is Herren- 
 hausen outside Hanover, Nymphenburg outside 
 Munich, Schonbrum outside Vienna, and, above 
 all, Potsdam, that splendid series of palaces 
 stretching mile after mile to the west of Berlin. 
 All these bear stronger or fainter traces of 
 French influence, but Potsdam is the most in- 
 teresting of them all. 
 
 We have already walked in imagination 
 through the Sans-Souci palace and seen Fred- 
 erick the Great's writing-table; but I wish to 
 mention another room in this palace, the room 
 in which Voltaire, the great and bitter French 
 philosopher, lived under Frederick's protection 
 when driven for his opinions out of France. In 
 this room one realizes the strength of French 
 
 150 
 
France 
 
 influence in the eighteenth century; one remem- 
 bers that Frederick, founder of Prussia though 
 he was, talked and wrote and read French, and 
 corresponded with French friends with appar- 
 ently no thought for the native language he was 
 neglecting. We see his manuscripts and his 
 music and his library; and we have to remind 
 ourselves that we are not in the study of a 
 French noble, but of the great Warrior King 
 of the Prussians himself. 
 
 I have already in an earlier essay shown how 
 strong French influence was upon German litera- 
 ture, and in particular on the German drama. 
 We have only to look through the furniture 
 makers' and decorators' catalogues, the millin- 
 ers' styles, the cooks' recipes, the potters' work- 
 rooms, the weavers' sheds to realize how great 
 French influence was not only in Germany, 
 but throughout Europe. Louis Quinze, Louis 
 Seize, Pompadour, Du Barry, Gobelins, S6vres, 
 even the "Soles Colbert" of the menu card — all 
 have a dominant place in the world of decora- 
 tion, design, and good living. 
 
 Nor have we even yet exhausted the influence 
 of France at the height of her glory. Not only 
 was she the arbiter of fashion and the dictator 
 of literature, she was also the leader in war. 
 Versailles alone cost Louis XIV twenty million 
 pounds, and Versailles was by no means his only 
 palace. Well, for the interest on that sum, about 
 half a million a year, he could keep our own King 
 
 151 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 Charles II in his pocket, and get Mm to direct 
 England's foreign policy on lines which suited 
 France. He pushed his boundaries to the Ehine, 
 taking in Alsace-Loiraine, and pressed so hard 
 on Holland that the Stadtholder, William of 
 Orange, talked about dying in the last ditch 
 (that is where the phrase comes from), and ac- 
 cepted the Crown of England really for the sake 
 of turning England's forces, such as they were, 
 against France on Holland's behalf. But not 
 only to the east and north-east was Louis vic- 
 torious; he also established his influence over 
 Spain, which he secured for his grandson, Philip 
 V, in the teeth of the opposition of Austria and 
 England, led by Marlborough. The struggle for 
 Spain was the famous War of the Spanish Suc- 
 cession, in which we scored the Flemish victories 
 of Oudernarde, Eamillies, and Malplaquet, and 
 the South German victory of Blenheim — all 
 against the French or their allies the Bavarians. 
 It was also for help rendered to Austria in this 
 war, we should remember, that the Elector of 
 Brandenburg was allowed by the Emperor to call 
 himself King of Prussia. 
 
 After this war, although, as a result of it, 
 Louis' grandson sat on the Spanish throne, 
 France was not the same country as she had been 
 before it. The capture of Namur from Louis in 
 1695 by our own Dutch William was the first 
 qheck that French arms had received for thirty 
 years; and henceforth the military glory of le 
 
 152 
 
France 
 
 Grand Monarque began to dim. But the Power 
 that begins to lose its hold on the supremacy 
 it has once established cannot expect any in- 
 tervals for recovery. Her rivals and victims are 
 too watchful and resentful for that, and thus we 
 find France plunged still farther into wars which 
 she was less and less economically fitted to bear. 
 While, indeed, the French coffers — despite the 
 wise efforts of Colbert — were being drained, the 
 coffers of England, her chief rival, were being 
 heaped up with the profits of the South Sea and 
 Eastern trade, largely the result of the treaty 
 which ended the last great war — the Treaty of 
 Utrecht in 1713 (just a couple of centuries back, 
 be it observed) ; and France had to plod wearily 
 on and on through the greater part of the eight- 
 eenth century, fighting in Europe and doing her 
 best to protect her Indian and American pos- 
 sessions against England; all of which is, how- 
 ever, better left till we consider the story from 
 England's point of view. 
 
 The pressure of war soon began to tell upon 
 France, and the changes which occurred in that 
 fair land are grievous to record. The nobles, 
 who had been ousted from the Government by 
 Eichelieu, were living a life entirely separated 
 from that of their tenants, the peasants. Still 
 more remote from reality was the great society 
 which continued to fill the palace and domain at 
 Versailles — a crowd of exquisites who still man- 
 aged to amuse themselves in the midst of defeat 
 
 153 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 and poverty as light-heartedly as they had done 
 in the days when Louis XIV's generals were 
 sending in trophies from all the battlefields of 
 Europe. In the grounds of Versailles there were 
 still the Trianons: the Grand Trianon which 
 Louis XIV himself had built, and beyond that 
 the Petit Trianon, built for Louis XVI's lively 
 Queen, Marie Antoinette, an Austrian by birth, 
 and where she played at dairy-farming with her 
 ladies. 
 
 We all know Watteau's pictures, and those 
 little Dresden figures of shepherds and shepherd- 
 esses in buckled shoes, lace ruflBes, and pink bows 
 on their crooks and round the necks of their 
 frisky lambs. Well, that represented the Court's 
 conception of work on the land. If we compare 
 one of these dainty figures which the stern, sombre 
 statues of Meunier or the solemn paintings of 
 Millet, we learn at once how far the Court was 
 removed from the realities of the peasants' lot. 
 Once a courtier is said to have told the Queen 
 that the people had no bread. The Queen was 
 surprised for a moment, but only for a moment. 
 "But can't they eat cake?" she is reported to 
 have asked. Some years later a more truculent 
 aristocrat said, "Then let them eat grass!" So, 
 when his head was struck off in the Revolution 
 and hoisted on a pike, its mouth was filled with 
 grass before it went 'round the streets of Paris. 
 
 Revolution ! I have uttered the word perhaps 
 before its time, for it was not yet, although its 
 
 154 
 
France 
 
 shadow was already darkening. Already the 
 thinkers and writers of France were growing 
 uneasy. The conventions of an aristocratic age, 
 framed simply to please an aristocratic Court, 
 were already growing hollow and unreal, and 
 the bravest and boldest of writers were already 
 saying things which brought down on their heads 
 the wrath of the Court and drove them into exile. 
 
 We have already seen Voltaire made welcome 
 at Potsdam by Frederick the Great, although the 
 two soon quarrelled, and Voltaire went to Eng- 
 land, where he became quite an Anglomaniac, 
 and actually discovered Shakespeare! Then, 
 rather later, there was Rousseau, who had some- 
 how arrived at the idea that all men, and not 
 only the dandies of Versailles and their women- 
 folk, had rights. Again, there was the vigorous 
 Diderot, who with his friends under|;ook the 
 gigantic business of setting forth all existing 
 knowledge in an Encyclopaedia, so that all the 
 world, and not only a select mutual admiration 
 society, might drink deep of the Pierian Spring, 
 as our own poet Pope was calling the well of 
 knowledge at about the same time. All these 
 men had to meet persecution, and a group of 
 prisoners in the Bastille often formed the finest 
 literary and philosophic salon in Europe during 
 these years of stress in France. 
 
 Thus the age, though decaying in one way, 
 was germinating in another, just as the autumn 
 sows the seeds of the ensuing spring. The idea^ 
 
 155 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 of this age, the age of Louis XV and of Louis 
 XVI, are indeed seedpots of immense potency, 
 such potency that they have not yet ceased^ to 
 germinate, nor ever will. When Burns sang, "A 
 man's a man for a' that," he was simply setting 
 Eousseau to a tune; and as we go farther we 
 shall see that the triumphs of this new period 
 of French influence are greater by far than the 
 triumphs of that period which rejected its most 
 characteristic ideas, the age of Louis XIV; for 
 the classic period of le Grand Monarque was 
 great by reason of its form; it was the era of 
 style; whereas the age of Voltaire, Eousseau, 
 and the Encyclopaedists was the age of ideas — 
 form-shattering and explosive, liberating, fructi- 
 fying, even when most violent and destructive, 
 like lightning in the soil. 
 
 Perhaps the most characteristic feature of the 
 thinkers of this period was their firm, I had 
 almost said their touching, belief in the eflScacy 
 of Reason. History, tradition, things as they 
 were, with their roots in the past, were hope- 
 lessly bad; all one could work for was to— 
 
 Shatter it to bits. 
 And mould it nearer to the heart's desire, 
 
 and to discover the heart's desire by the light of 
 Pure Reason — a light which appealed to the 
 French, with their love of the clear-cut, definite, 
 logical, and formal. , 
 
 I can give here only one instance of the work- 
 156 
 
France 
 
 ing out of this application of Pure Reason by 
 the philosophers pf eighteenth-century France — 
 but it is a very important one. 
 
 Bousseau started his train of thought on the 
 assulnption that, just as a man has arms and 
 legs, so has he certain inherent and inalienable 
 rights: of existence, of liberty, and so forth. 
 In my introduction I pointed out that the war 
 has reminded us what our rights really are — 
 simply such privileges and freedoms as the State 
 can afford to leave with us under the circum- 
 stances of the moment : that no man has rights 
 against the State, but must be content with his 
 State allowance of liberty. Well, Rousseau, pur- 
 suing his imaginary and quite unhistorical — ^but 
 nevertheless very useful — conception of man and 
 his rights into its deeper recesses, arrived at the 
 conclusion that the State was a sort of club or 
 co-operative society made up by men joining to- 
 gether for their mutual benefit: protection, for 
 example. To gain this benefit the individual gave 
 up some portion of his inherent liberty, just as 
 we give up some portion of our cash when we join 
 a cricket or football club. By joining the State, 
 as by joining a club of any sort, we allow our- 
 selves to be ordered about, we lose liberty to a 
 certain extent; but we keep all we have not given 
 up, just as we still have our evenings to ourselves 
 even if on Saturday afternoons we are put in goal 
 when we know we are born centre-forwards. So 
 having most of our liberty left us, the little draw- 
 
 157 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Qreat War 
 
 backs of our associated relationships do not 
 worry us much, and we get along quite comfort- 
 ably and everybody is satisfied. 
 
 But suppose that our club takes our subscrip- 
 tion and never gives us a game, or puts us just 
 once or twice into the second team merely to keep 
 us quiet, what do we do then? Why, we resign, 
 and not only save the amount of our subscription, 
 but also regain our full freedom. Instead of 
 freezing in goal, we are again at liberty to freeze 
 in the company of twenty thousand enthusiasts 
 at a League match on Saturday afternoon. We 
 have resumed our liberty. 
 
 We can, and dt), withdraw from a club which 
 is not treating us as we think we should be treat- 
 ed. Now, can we withdraw from the State in a 
 similar way, and can a State which is working 
 badly call, as it were, a meeting, like a club 
 meeting, discharge the committee, dismiss the 
 secretary, distrain on the treasurer and make a 
 fresh start? Kousseau thought all that was pos- 
 sible, since it was a reasonable and logical de- 
 duction from his premises that man has this 
 inalienable right or quality called liberty which 
 he can pool or loan or reassume as it suits his 
 purpose; and that since Reason is supreme and 
 all-compelling, the conclusions to which Eeason 
 leads us are not only valid but practicable. 
 
 Eousseau was thus a thinker who placed the 
 individual first, and accorded the State only 
 Buch functions and such powers as the individual 
 
 158 
 
Frwnce 
 
 allowed it to exercise; that is to say, he was an 
 Individualist. He also regarded the State as a 
 society or organization resting on the consent 
 or voluntary submission of all its members; he 
 could not conceive of the State as possessing 
 any powers of compulsion that were not, as it 
 were, in the Articles of Association, in the rules 
 which had been drawn up by the members and 
 which new members voluntarily accepted. Since 
 he refused to acknowledge the State's power of 
 compulsion, since he regarded the State as rest- 
 ing entirely on consent and co-operation, he was 
 essentially, though perhaps not formally, an 
 Anarchist— that is, one who disbelieves in the 
 use of compulsion in the matter of government, 
 one who thinks that voluntary combination, such 
 as one finds in a co-operative society, a dissent- 
 ing chapel, a club of any sort (all essentially 
 anarchic in their fundamental conception), will 
 produce all the government and regulation that 
 human society needs. 
 
 In any corporate body, to take the next step, 
 the most basic thing is the meeting of members 
 or shareholders who have the ultimate power of 
 deciding the destinies of the concern. Similarly 
 the real basis of the State is the meeting of its 
 members — in other words the machinery — ^votes, 
 elections, parliaments, assemblies, or whatsoever 
 they may happen to be called — by which the in- 
 dividual expresses his views on matters of State. 
 
 Thus to Rousseau, with his enthusiasm for in- 
 159 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 dividual liberty (of which in his own affairs he 
 availed himself to the full, by the waj^), the State 
 became a ballot-box restricted to the smallest 
 possible range of common interests and activities. 
 The province of the State must be restricted in 
 order that individual liberty may be as great as 
 possible, and the vote — as widespread as possible 
 — is the means whereby the State is directed (in 
 its own small sphere) in accordance with the 
 wishes of the members. 
 
 Thus Eousseau appears as the father of various 
 other schools of thought besides the Individualists 
 and Anarchists, His theories underlie the policy 
 of that school of statesmen (if such they can be 
 called) who in the nineteenth century wrought 
 such damage in England-Damage which we, 
 with our education committees, doctors, nurses, 
 clinics, free meals, and so on, are still vainly 
 trying to combat — ^the school of laissez-faire, the 
 Manchester School, the school of "a,narchy plus 
 the policeman" as the ideal of the State, the 
 school that believed that what benefited the in- 
 ' dividual benefited also the community, the school 
 of individualism and the Tom-Tiddler's-Ground 
 view of England that I have already dwelt upon. 
 
 Then, again, Eousseau's simple faith in the 
 ballot-box makes him the father of those political 
 philosophers who regard the putting right of our 
 electoral machinery as the one and only vital 
 reform, since, the voting machine once made in- 
 fallible, all other reforms will evolve of them- 
 
 160 
 
France 
 
 selves by the counting of noses — or crosses. And 
 thus Eousseau may claim among his spiritual 
 descendants the Jacobins, the Chartists, with 
 their parliamentary star of the five — or six — 
 points (my great-grandfather was a special con- 
 stable at the "Horns," Kennington, when Welling- 
 ton had to deal with the Chartists' demonstra- 
 tion), the Radicals, and last, though not least, 
 the Suffragettes, for do not they also believe that, 
 the vote once won, the millennium will spring 
 like a Jack-out-of-the-ballot-box? 
 
 I have said that Rousseau's theories were im- 
 portant, and that is why I have tried to make 
 them clear. They are important when we remem- 
 ber who can be numbered among his descendants, 
 even though his theories were based on false and 
 fanciful descriptions of human origins, and al- 
 though in some of their applications they have 
 come perilously near -to one good custom corrupt- 
 ing the world. Further, we are faced with this 
 difficulty : a faulty basis has given rise to a most 
 useful theory — the theory, nay more, the burning 
 conviction that "a man's a man for a' that," and 
 that his claim to be treated as such is inalienable. 
 Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in "What's Wrong with the 
 World?" shows himself in this respect a real 
 follower of Rousseau. He takes the case of a 
 slum girl whose hair is beautiful but unclean. 
 The authorities say it must therefore be cut off. 
 Not so, says Mr. Chesterton. The glory of a 
 woman is her hair. Therefore, so far from her 
 
 161 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 crowning glory being shorn away, conditions of 
 life, of cleanliness, of housing, of the mother's 
 leisure, must be so altered that the girl's hair 
 may be kept clean and she may wear an untar- 
 nished aureole around her head. With that girl's 
 red-gold hair, indeed, he undertakes to set fire to 
 the thing which calls itself our twentieth-century 
 commercial civilization. As a matter of historical 
 fact, however, it has always been the other way* 
 The State has always forced the individual into 
 the paths it wills. There have been no contracts. 
 The State exists before the individual; and no 
 baby has ever been known to address with its first 
 breath its parents as representative of the Slate 
 to the effect that it is prepared to love, honor, and 
 obey them in their public capacity in return for 
 such board, lodging, and washing as its frail con- 
 dition demands. Human beings are gregarious, 
 like sheep, oxen, and wolves ; they live in crowds, 
 and out of these crowds of human creatures the 
 State somehow has emerged. Perhaps the near- 
 est approach to a contract is the christening of a 
 child and the promises made in his name by his 
 godparents; but that does not take us very far, 
 nowadays at any rate. 
 
 Yet, for the adjusting of the balance, for the 
 maintenance of the essential humanity of man 
 which is ever being threatened by the Juggernaut 
 wheels of the State, it is just as well that the in- 
 dividual shall be encouraged to kick, even against 
 the pricks; it, at least develops his muscles. And 
 
 162 
 
France 
 
 so long as he is so encouraged it is not of vital 
 importance whether the teaching which encour- 
 ages him is sound historically or only one of those 
 Vital Lies which Ibsen speaks of now and again. 
 The Pragmatist judges of theories by their fruits, 
 not by their rootg, and thus he approves the 
 theory of Rousseau. We see now quite clearly 
 why Eousseau's themes were so important: they 
 were inspired by an ideal, even though the fact 
 foundations he based them on were more than 
 questionable. 
 
 The curious thing about "the writings of these 
 philosophers is that they found a large and ap- 
 preciative circle among the noblesse, whose 
 severance from the mass of the people was a chief 
 cause of the trouble that was already brewing. 
 The clearness of thought and ease of expression of 
 the philosophic writers won the praise of the 
 great little world of Versailles, and the discussion 
 of political theories became quite a fashionable 
 pastime among the courtiers, who never dreamt 
 that one day these same theories would be put 
 into practice with crude ferocity on their own 
 delicate necks. The French noblesse of the 
 eighteenth century were as blind to the real 
 significance of the philosophic literature they 
 dabbled in as were the twentieth-century English 
 reading public before the war to the real signifi- 
 cance of -the writings of the Superman, Master- 
 morality, war-worshipping school of present-day 
 German writers. 
 
 163 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 But I do not wish to suggest that Rousseau's 
 theories were the real cause of the Eevolution. 
 Revolutions are not produced by epigrams or 
 philosophic treatises: they are the outcome of 
 gross and palpable ills of the body politic, and 
 the chief cause of the French Revolution was the 
 bankruptcy of France which resulted from the 
 dragging wars of the previous half-century. 
 
 The last of these had been the help given by 
 France to the American colonies of England in 
 their revolt from the Mother Country, in a sense 
 a war of revenge for the defeats of the Seven 
 Years War which lost France Canada and India. 
 But as it turned out, revenge of this sort proved 
 a veritable boomerang, for it was largely the re- 
 turn of the French troops from this war which 
 started the French Revolution. In the Louvre in 
 Paris, standing in the gardens between its two 
 great wings, may be seen a statue of Lafayette, 
 Carlyle's "Hero of two Worlds," given by the 
 American Republic to the French Republic as a 
 recognition of the help which France had always 
 given America, while outside New York stands 
 the great statue of Liberty given by France to 
 the United States. Now Lafayette was not only 
 a French general helping the Americans to rebel, 
 he was also a leader of the early and moderate 
 revolutionary party in France, the Girondins, and 
 the ideas of liberty which his French soldiers had 
 brought back from their contact with the liberty- 
 loving colonists of the New England States 
 
 164 
 
France 
 
 greatly helped the spread of the revolutionary 
 movement in France. Thus the Eevolution 
 started, but its course can be read in Carlyle's 
 graphic volumes. 
 
 All we need concern ourselves with was the 
 effect which the great upheaval produced on 
 Europe. 
 
 Now the chief characteristic of a Eevolution is 
 its destructiveness, and the French Eevolution 
 was destructive beyond all others, not only by 
 reason of its long-pent-up energy, but also be- 
 cause the ideas of the time "favored destructive- 
 ness as a preliminary to reconstruction. Thus 
 we see going on in France a breaking up of in- 
 stitutions which was bound to affect most pro- 
 foundly the surrounding States. The throne and 
 the nobility perished, as everybody knows; can 
 we not gather as much from "The Only Way" and 
 "The Scarlet Pimpernel," our great popular au- 
 thorities on the period? But perhaps the thorough- 
 ness of the destruction and its logicality are not 
 so widely realized. Not only were the women 
 knitters in the law-courts voting nobles and aris- 
 tocrats to the guillotine, but the active-minded 
 Eevolutionists were prepared also to remodel 
 every institution of political or public signific- 
 ance. 
 
 The old Provinces which had kept France 
 divided for so long were cut up into Departments 
 as we now see them on the map, and named, most 
 reasonably, for the most part according to the 
 
 165 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 rivers which flow through them ; the ancient, com- 
 plicated, and absurd system of weights and meas- 
 ures was scrapped, and a brand-new system was 
 founded on the perfectly reasonable metre, which 
 the scientific men of the period made as nearly 
 one ten-millionth of the distance between the Pole 
 and the Equator as they could. The Eevolution- 
 ists also objected to the antiquated and ridiculous 
 system of days, months, and years they found in 
 the calendar, the days and the months named for 
 the most part after heathen deities and in some 
 cases so wrongly named as to be most misleading. 
 Why, for instance, should the ninth, tenth, 
 eleventh, and twelfth months have names which 
 in themselves mean that the months are the 
 seventh (Septem-ber), eighth (Octo-ber), ninth 
 (November), and tenth (Decem-ber), inerely be- 
 cause Julius Caesar chose to fit in a month of his 
 own (July), and his successor, Augustus, not to 
 be outdone, added August in the spirit (reversed) 
 of Tommy, make room for your uncle"? Those 
 logical-minded believers in the supremacy of 
 Eeason, the French Eevolutionists, could not 
 stand such wanton absurdity, so they tore tip 
 their calendar and renamed the months accord- 
 ing to their natural characteristics: BrumiSre, 
 the foggy month ; Fructidor, the f ruithf ul month ; 
 Thermidor, the hot month, and so on. 
 
 Then as to the year. Why should they begin to 
 count from the birth of Christ — purely guess- 
 work for one thing, and for another (and more 
 
 166 
 
France 
 
 important) a recognition of the supremacy of the 
 Church: a supremacy which the Eevolutionists, 
 whose memories of the higher clergy, if not of the 
 lower, were very bitter, totally denied. So they 
 scrapped Anno Domini, and with it the creed of 
 Christ, and they put in the place of a,d. Year One 
 (or Two, as the case might be), of the Republic 
 and in the place of Christianity th« Goddess of 
 Eeason, whose statue they erected in the Champ 
 de Mars and honored by breaking up before it 
 the plaster-cast images of all the other gods they 
 thought were worthy to be put up, like so many 
 old Aunt Sallys, for the purpose of being knocked 
 down again. 
 
 Now all this was reason run mad; we might, 
 indeed, say that the fury of the French Revolu- 
 tion was a riot of reason; or rather, that the 
 French Revolutionists, acting in reality on their 
 deep but inarticulate emotions, on their anger, 
 their despair, their hope for a brighter future, 
 thought they were simply carrying out the dic- 
 tates of their supreme reason. For we all' know 
 that reason is not supreme. We smile to-day 
 when we hear a French nrother tell her toddling 
 child to "be reasonable," for we know that its 
 reason is not developed; nor does the develop- 
 ment of reason come inevitably with advancing 
 years; while we are quite safe in saying that at 
 no period of even the most reasonable and Intel- > 
 lectual man's career is reason the supreme and 
 unchallenged guide of his life. It is and can be 
 
 167 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 never more than the rein and the bit; but emotion, . 
 imagination, enthusiasm, prejudice even, are only 
 too ready to take the bit between their teeth and 
 bolt. This is how mankind is made; and the 
 French are the most human of mankind, in spite 
 of their belief in Eeason. Nevertheless this belief 
 undoubtedly strengthened them in the task of 
 making a clean sweep of existing institutions ; it 
 was to them another Vital Lie; they felt they 
 were quite right to apply the criticism of the 
 hammer to everything they found, and to destroy 
 whatever seemed to them unreasonable. We in 
 England, on the other hand are so deficient in 
 boldness that alone among the people of Western 
 Europe we cling to our antique weights and 
 measures, our preposterous spelling, and our dear 
 old unwieldy shire of Yorks — ^with its three 
 Ridings, pretending that which is not. 
 
 However much the Revolution may have ac- 
 complished in the way of change, it had not, how- 
 ever, altered the real nature of the French. No 
 revolution could do that; and before long the 
 chaos which worked itself through the succesdve 
 stages of the Reign of Terror was resolved into a 
 Government of the sort under which France has 
 always been greatest — a military autocracy (for 
 France, like Germany, believes in war; but I 
 think with this difference: that the French are 
 born fighters, whereas the Germans buy their 
 fighting power only at a great price). 
 
 At any rate, France emerges from the Revolu- 
 X68 
 
France 
 
 tion as a first-class fighting State once more. 
 Even in her earli-est days revolutionary France 
 had shown herself a fighter, and the joyous frenzy 
 of the Valmy cannonade had blown the swried 
 ranks of Prussia to pieces as we have already 
 seen. But soon Dumouriez and his sans-culottes 
 were to be superseded by a young Corsican who 
 knew how to use artillery even better than they 
 did, and from that day to this artillery has been 
 the Frenchman's chief weapon. Napoleon har- 
 nessed the French Revolution : he found it like a 
 vast rush of steam hissing its way through a rent 
 it had torn in the side of its enclosing boiler ; he 
 managed by applying the right machinery for the 
 purpose to turn all this waste energy to account. 
 The enthusiasm of the Revolution, in short, was 
 the driving force behind Napoleon's armies. 
 Napoleon could not afford to play the high and 
 mighty King of kings r61e even at the height of 
 his glory ; and many a tale, from the story of his 
 washerwoman "the Duchess of Dantzic" onwards, 
 turns on the contrast between Napoleon the ad- 
 venturer and Napoleon the Lord of Europe. We 
 have therefore to regard Napoleon as the rider on 
 the whirlwind of the Revolution, and under his 
 leadership French armies were in a very real 
 sense a liberating force in Europe. "I war," 
 Napoleon said in effect, "against Governments, 
 not against peoples" ; and as a matter of fact the 
 French armies were usually welcomed by the in- 
 habitants of the districts they invaded. Thus 
 
 169 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 Napoleon, though a military absolutist, was also 
 at the same time ruler of a Liberal State and 
 representative at the head of his army of Liberal 
 principles. His violence was the beneficent vio- 
 lence of the plough : not that Napoleon was in- 
 tentionally a benefactor, but because his own self- 
 aggrandizement happened to coincide with the 
 triumphs of revolutionary principles enforced by 
 French arms. He and his people were optimists, 
 fighting — for their own glory, yes, but through 
 that for a brighter era ahead of them (whereas 
 Germany, bemused as she is by the idea of evolu- 
 tion through brutality, is fighting the desperate 
 cause of Pessimism and doing her best to reverse 
 the tide of human development and send it flow- 
 ing back into the Dark Ages of Attila and his 
 Huns — who passed away without leaving any- 
 thing but a wake of destruction). 
 
 If we need evidence of Napoleon's liberalizing 
 ideas, we have simply to turn to his reconstruc- 
 tion of Poland : Nicholas II is simply repeating 
 Napoleon's work at the interval of a century; 
 and if Napoleon had only been able to halt on 
 the Eussian frontiers of Poland and refuse that 
 fatal invasion of Eussia, how different would the 
 fate of Europe have been! The impulse of the 
 French Eevolution was felt beyond the area of 
 even Napoleon's campaigns; and the rising of 
 the subject States of the Balkans against their 
 Turkish masters early in the nineteenth century 
 
 170 
 
France 
 
 is due to it. We shall have, however, to con- 
 sider this movement in our next essay. 
 
 Nor must we think of Napoleon as liberal on 
 his campaigns only. Mr. J. E. C. Bodley has 
 written a very big book on France to show how 
 largely all that is stable and solid in the France 
 of to-day is the work of Napoleon. He and not 
 the Eevolutionists remoulded France. He tact- 
 fully shelved the eccentricities which represented 
 the heart's desire of the worshippers of Reason : 
 Brumiere and the rest — it is not so easy to re- 
 mould eflPectively as to destroy effectively; and 
 with the re-establishment of Anno Domini he 
 re-established also relations with the Church and 
 drew up a Concordat which remained effective 
 for a century — ^until a few years ago, indeed, 
 when the Associations Law broke the agreement 
 and turned the monks out of France. The Civil 
 Code, the Code Napoleon, is the body of law 
 administered in the French courts to-day. Nor 
 did he disdain to look after the material con- 
 cerns of his Empire. The great French roads 
 owe much to him; and he established the beet- 
 sugar industry. 
 
 But for all his glory and real greatness he 
 was overthrown. Moscow, Leipsic, Waterloo 
 mark his downfall, and France was forced to 
 take back the long-exiled Bourbons. A Holy 
 Alliance tried to stamp out in Europe the seeds 
 of liberty that France had sown; and it looked 
 as though the great volcanic upheaval of the 
 
 171 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War ■ 
 
 Revolution and the glittering glories of the Em- 
 pire had been in vain. But the forces of benefi- 
 cent destruction were only slumbering beneath 
 their crater, Paris; and in 1848 the second 
 French Revolution awoke a sympathetic thrill 
 throughout Europe: even Prussia felt it, as we 
 have seen, and remote Schleswig-Holstein. But 
 this second outburst, interesting though it is in 
 so many ways — ^we might do worse than look 
 into the working of the Ateliers Puhliques of 
 the period (some people say they were planned 
 to fail from the beginning) — must not detain 
 us. Though a great deal of the theorizing which 
 has made its appearance of late years in the 
 ranks of Labor can be traced to the leaders of 
 this Revolution, and though the leaders did not 
 stop at theory but ventured to put some at least 
 of their theories to the test of practice, yet we 
 must leave this second and less well-known 
 French Revolution with this : that not only had 
 France proved herself yet once again the foun- 
 tain-head of ideas and the stimulator of Liberal 
 movements throughout Europe, but she had 
 again fallen under the spell of a military adven- 
 turer. Louis Napoleon repeats almost in detail 
 the steps by which his much greater uncle, 
 Napoleon I, gained the Imperial Throne. And 
 thus we arrive at the second Empire — a far less 
 wholesome and glorious regime than that of 
 Napoleon I. But it shared with the first Empire 
 the essential characteristic of military adventure. 
 
 172 
 
France 
 
 No Buonaparte could hope to retain his hold on 
 the imagination of France, and therefore on her 
 loyalty, without victories. So Napoleon III set 
 out on his wars. (Napoleon II neVer reigned. 
 He was the son of Napoleon I and Marie Louise 
 and faded .away in the lifeless Court of Vienna.) 
 But Napoleon III was no Heaven-sent leader of 
 armies. It is true he defeated Austria, but that 
 was no great achievement: she is the most un- 
 lucky State in Europe as far as war is concerned, 
 and she is not too lucky in other ways. It is 
 true again that by defeating Austria and driv- 
 ing her out of Italy he helped indirectly — as we 
 have already seen — ^in the founding of a United 
 Italy under Victor Emmanuel, King of Sardinia 
 and grandfather of the present King of Italy. 
 It is true also that he helped England against 
 Russia in the Crimea and that he interfered in 
 the affairs of Mexico. More important perhaps 
 because more successful was the canal building 
 of French engineers at this period — the accom- 
 plished Suez Canal, which his uncle Napoleon I 
 had first considered in 1798, and the projected 
 Panama Canal. But none of these minor and 
 uninspiring successes compares for a moment 
 with even the smallest of the great Napoleonic 
 campaigns; and the disasters of 1870 — due as 
 they were to the carelessness and slackness of 
 the Imperial Government, to its over-confidence 
 in itself and ignorance of Prussian preparedness 
 — entirely shattered the military prestige, such 
 
 173 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 as it was, of Napoleon the Little, broke up Ms 
 Empire, drove him and his wife Eugenie as exiles 
 to England, and plunged France into the horrors 
 of the Commune of 1871. As M. G. K. Chester- 
 ton points out in his "Victorian Literature," 
 1870 was the death of Liberalism. "Liberalism 
 had been barricaded by Bismarck with blood 
 and iron, and by Darwin with blood and bone," 
 he says. Bismarck founded the German Empire, 
 Darwin supplied the Survival of the Fittest idea 
 which, distorted and misapplied, has inspired 
 Bismarck's Empire from its foundation onwards. 
 But the third Revolution of the Commune did 
 not give rise to a third military dictatorship, 
 for the simple reason that France had only just 
 rid herself — with the help of Germany — of the 
 ineffective militarism of Napoleon III. Instead, 
 a Republic, the third Republic, was founded: 
 not because it moved any single Frenchman to 
 enthusiasm, but simply because it was that form 
 of government which divided Frenchmen least. 
 Indeed, many of those who had done most to 
 bring the Republic about fully expected it to 
 collapse very quickly; and the first President, 
 Marshal MacMahon, regarded himself as prac- 
 tically nothing more than a warming-pan for 
 the Bourbons. But, as usual, the Bourbons had 
 learned nothing and their chance passed — so 
 completely, indeed, that to-day they cannot even 
 enlist as privates in the French Army. The 
 Buonapartes were of course impossible: and so 
 
 174 
 
France 
 
 the Republic managed to survive. Yet the ever- 
 recurring desire of France for a military leader 
 has been an ever-present source of danger to the 
 Republic. Even such a circus-Napoleon as Gen- 
 eral Boulanger on his white horse seemed at one 
 time as though he might come within measurable 
 distance of a coup d'Uat and its resultant autoc- 
 racy: only he shot himself on a lady's grave 
 and the Republic breathed again. But once more 
 it was threatened. The Dreyfus case had raised 
 the dangerous problem of the Army against the 
 Nation, and at the funeral of President F61ix 
 Faure — of whom more anon — Paul Deroul^de, 
 a great Anti-Dreyfus leader and an ardent sup- 
 porter of the Army, actually stepped out from 
 the crowds lining the streets, seized the bridle 
 of the horse on which the Military Governor of 
 Paris — I think it was — sat, and tried to turn him 
 towards the Presidential House. "A I'Elys^e!" 
 he said. Had the Governor allowed himself to be 
 led thus out of his course, a coup d'etat might 
 have resulted, since Paris was full of soldiers 
 and the Anti-Dreyfusards had a large following 
 among the Parisians. 
 
 Thus it becomes clear that France dearly loves 
 a soldier — ^whereas Germany goose-steps to the 
 word of command — and her martial instincts, 
 thwarted and misdirected, play havoc with her 
 internal peace. But once these same instincts 
 find their true sphere, France is herself again. 
 Her troublesome period was her period of isola- 
 
 175 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 tion and soreness: of revenge-dreaming and re- 
 covery-planning. When, however, she was able 
 to hold her head up again among the Powers of 
 Europe and feel that the future held something 
 for her after all, many of her domestic troubles 
 disappeared. 
 
 The Eussian Alliance was the turn of the tide 
 in the affairs of France. When Witte began 
 his work of developing Russian resources — ^rail- 
 ways, manufactures, mines, and so forth — ^he 
 looked round for the capital his projects de- 
 manded : and he found that the readiest lenders 
 were the French peasants. And for this reason : 
 the French peasant is a very thrifty person, the 
 hardest worker perhaps in Europe. Paris, indeed, 
 gives one quite a wrong idea of France, which in 
 its rural districts at least is a solemn and 
 serious, almost a dour, land. The French farmer 
 tills his own fields and his wife keeps his ac- 
 counts. The man does the handwork, the woman 
 the headwork: with the result that there are 
 always funds waiting for investment. Now the 
 one thing which that admirable business woman, 
 the farmer's wife, wants in an investment is not 
 high interest but security: so she is always on 
 the look-out for gilt-edged Stock, of which the 
 most secure is of course Government Loans. 
 Thus it was that the gold of French peasants 
 helped to build the railways and factories of 
 Bussia and to sink her mines. Thus it was that 
 the two States, one on eiher side of Germany 
 
 176 
 
France 
 
 (who after Bismarck's fall had cancelled Bis- 
 marck's wise treaty with Russia), were drawn 
 together by community of interest. I well re- 
 member the thrill which went through Europe, 
 and especially France, when the Czar proposed 
 the health of the Allied Nations at a lunch he 
 gave on, I think, his yacht the Standart in the 
 Baltic to President Faure. It was as though 
 France, neglected and forlorn, had received sud- 
 denly and unexpectedly a splendid offer of mar- 
 riage. One of the finest bridges which spans the 
 Seine to-day is the Alexander III Bridge. Near 
 by is the figure of Strasburg, so long seated amid 
 her mourning wreaths in the Place de la Con- 
 corde, but now once again sitting as clear-cut 
 in the sunshine as any of her sister cities in the 
 Place. 
 
 The Alliance with Russia was followed by the 
 Entente with England, the work of that "good 
 European," Edward VII, who was quite as much 
 at home in Paris as he was in London. This 
 Entente, which followed the troublesome inci- 
 dent of Fashoda, when the French tried to es- 
 tablish themselves on the Upper Nile, recognized 
 that England should be left undisturbed and 
 given a free hand in Egypt while France enjoyed 
 a similar freedom in Morocco. But here we get 
 back again to the ground we were traversing 
 in our German studies, so there is no need to 
 retread it now. 
 
 177 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 I undertook in this essay to show what France 
 had accomplished for civilization in her glorious- 
 ly diversified career. I feel that the record of 
 France even in my brief summary of it stands 
 on its own feet: it needs no apologist. Never- 
 theless I should like to give a few more illustra- 
 tions of that spirit which made France so great 
 under Louis XIV, and which has continued to 
 inform her national life ever since — the spirit 
 of Art. 
 
 Paris is the one capital in Western Europe 
 where it is better to be an artist or a writer than 
 a merely successful man of business. France 
 has a belief in education which beats even that 
 of Germany, if we may judge by the way in which 
 professors in the French Lyc^es are treated. They 
 have only some seven or eight hours' teaching a 
 week, and they retire on a two-thirds pension at 
 fifty-five or sixty with a remainder to their wid- 
 ows. They have no disciplinary or administra- 
 tive duties : these are undertaken by their subor- 
 dinates, the rip^titeurs. But they are expected 
 to ergage in original work in their own subject, 
 as only in this way, the Government argue, can 
 the teacher be kept efficient for his vitally im- 
 portant work. The University staffs are chosen 
 from the best of the school professors; and re- 
 cently when the question of increasing the teach- 
 ing hours in the Lyc6es was raised, it was de- 
 cided that there would be no real economy in do- 
 ing so. When, some two or three years ago, I 
 
 178 
 
France 
 
 arranged to work weekly for the same number 
 of teaching hours as a French Lyc6e professor, I 
 was obliged at the same time to drop more than 
 half my salary, as my Education Committee said 
 I was working only part time. When, again, in 
 a former situation I wished to undertake original 
 work, I was told that I must do it in my holidays, 
 as it would interfere with my work in school if 
 I attempted it in addition to my teaching. Self- 
 improvement is thus for English teachers a holi- 
 day task to be undertaken in summer schools. 
 We may say, then, that France is as disciplined 
 in the things of the mind as is Germany, yet with 
 this difference: that whereas German training 
 brings up the German to reverence and appre- 
 ciate what his teachers hold to be great, the 
 French training furnishes its people with a still 
 keener edge to their naturally strong individual- 
 ity, a still finer critical sense than that with 
 which Nature has gifted them, because it is a 
 critical sense sharpened, not blunted, on 
 masterpieces. Whereas German Imperialism can 
 heap up a monstrous box of bricks and call it a 
 Liberation monument, the opinion of the man 
 in the street is a constant check on the French 
 architect and sculptor. 
 
 When Napoleon wanted to distract his 
 Parisians' thoughts from the bad news that was 
 dribbling through from Moscow, he ordered the 
 dome of the Invalides to be gilt, knowing how 
 such an innovation would fill the mind of the 
 
 179 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 Parisians. If such a piece of work were under- 
 taken in a provincial town in England, public 
 interest would be centered on the one question : 
 Who has the contract? In London probably 
 nobody would know anything at all about it till 
 the work was done past recall. In England 
 we may be mildly critical of the cameo-like 
 beauties of a new English postage stamp ; but 
 we care nothing for the Shakespeare National 
 Memorial Scheme, which ought to mature in 
 1916, but which is by this time, I suppose, hope- 
 lessly forgotten. If we had a Napoleon over us 
 at the present moment, he would at once begin 
 the National Theatre out of public funds, and 
 on a splendid scale. If there were no national 
 funds, he would not hesitate to use the Prince 
 of Wales' Fund for the purpose. But we are 
 not under Napoleon, and perhaps, after all, we 
 are not ready for a National Theatre, since "It's 
 a long way to Tipperary" in the battlefield of 
 Art as in the battlefield of Arms. 
 
 Napoleon's interest in the State theatres of 
 France was certainly keen. Even during his 
 short stay in Moscow before it took fire he 
 busied himself with revising the constitution of 
 Moli^re's theatre, the ComMie Frangaise. We 
 can imagine the comment of the British tax- 
 payer if he had heard that Lord Roberts or Lord 
 Kitchener had given time to the police regula- 
 tions of, let us say, the Johannesburg "Empire" 
 — if there is such a place — during the Boer War. 
 
 180 
 
France 
 
 "Why, sir," I can hear him saying, "why is he 
 wasting his time and our money over such non- 
 sense? Let him give his attention to the affairs 
 of another Empire — ^the British Empire!" and 
 his wife would look up at him admiringly 
 through her spectacles. 
 
 Napoleon had a catholic taste in Art. Not 
 only was he interested in the drama, and num- 
 bered Talma, the great actor of the period, 
 among his friends, but he followed Marlborough's 
 example, and brought home with him from his 
 campaigns many of the finest works of art of 
 the lands he had subdued — the bronze horses 
 from the portico of St. Mark's, Venice, for in- 
 stance. Paris was indeed a treasure-house in 
 the days of the First Empire; but of course all 
 these works had to be restored in 1815. 
 
 The Republican and Napoleonic eras are not, 
 however, merely eras of destruction and accumu- 
 lation. They originated and left behind them 
 their own distinctive styles, and we have to add 
 to those we mentioned as belonging to Louis 
 XIV those also of the Directoire and Empire; 
 while still, of course, Paris is the headquarters 
 of the painters, the sculptors, and the designers. 
 
 But perhaps it is not the French love of art 
 which appeals most to Englishmen. I think 
 they have been more struck by the dash and 
 daring with which the French have put their 
 theories to the test of actual application, not 
 only in the world of politics but in the world of 
 
 181 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 mechanics also. It was a Frenchman, ^Mont- 
 golfier, who first risked going up in a balloon, 
 and that a fire balloon, the idea of which he had 
 obtained from Cavendish's work. Most of the 
 machines the perfection of which comes with the 
 experience gained in the dangerous use of their 
 earliest forms — the motor, the motor-cycle, the 
 submarine, the aeroplane, and so forth — are of 
 French origin. Prudent and practical England 
 looks on while quixotic Frenchmen dash them- 
 selves to pieces in the practical application of 
 theoretic formulae, and then, when most of the 
 risk has been taken, adopts and develops the ma- 
 chine. I well remember the comment of a pro- 
 vincial newspaper — I will not name it as I am 
 none too sure of our delightful English law of 
 libel — when the first aviator looped the loop — 
 a Frenchman, of course. It was all very well 
 for a Frenchman, it said, to do the trick, but 
 Englishmen had better be careful. However, 
 the trick once done, our men soon took it up, 
 and probably at the present moment an English- 
 man holds the record for the number of loops; 
 nevertheless, the glory and risk, first of the idea 
 itself, then of its carrying out, with all their 
 spiritual value, are the inalienable possession 
 of the French, not of their imitators, English 
 and other. Even in the world of mere physical 
 prowess the French have given us some fairly 
 startling results. I was never so delighted as 
 when Oarpentier — ^now an airman — knocked out 
 
 182 
 
France 
 
 Wells in I forget how few rounds. We thought, 
 at least, that we could box, whereas the French- 
 man only kicked. A French Rugby team at play 
 is also a sight worth seeing, whatever lack of 
 finish they may show. 
 
 So, then, what shall we say in conclusion? 
 This merely: That if we fought the relatively 
 liberal, humane, and generous Imperialism ' of 
 Napoleon — an optimistic Imperialism which shot 
 like lava from the depths of the French Revolu- 
 tion and, disintegrating, formed most fertile soil 
 — till he had destroyed it, how much more are we 
 prepared to fight the leaden, lowering, cynical, 
 and brutal Imperialism of the Germans, with its 
 materialistic pessimism and its step backward 
 in the scale of civilization? The spirit of France 
 is the very antithesis of that of Germany; the 
 war between them is more than a war of con- 
 flicting armies and interests: it is a war of con- 
 flicting ideals of life, between Rousseau's in- 
 dividualism and Treitschke's Imperialism: it is 
 a struggle between opposite national tempera- 
 ments. Germany will doubtless continue her 
 steady plod towards her ideals by one road or 
 another, whichever roads may be closed to her 
 by the present war; but if ever her road takes 
 her across the path of the French in any sphere, 
 the age-long struggle is sure to be renewed. 
 Germany will ever elaborate her machinery 
 while all the time ignoring the human factor, 
 which, like our accidental impunity in a chem- 
 
 183 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 ical synthesis, entirely alters the expected result ; 
 France will continue that incomparable regime 
 of gaiety and exactness which is the very salt 
 of a healthy humanity. 
 
 And what can we learn from France? She 
 holds out to us the same lesson as Germany does 
 — the lesson of high seriousness and strenuous 
 honesty of thought, of the need for a clear 
 vision and a definite ideal, and of continuous 
 endeavor along a. well-considered line of advance. 
 There was a time, as we shall see presently, 
 when England also felt herself equal to such 
 efforts ; but of late we have grown too diffusive, 
 too slack and undisciplined, too frivolous, in 
 fact, though the word sounds strange when ap- 
 plied to such a solemn people, to be able to face 
 such exacting conceptions of public duty with 
 cheerfulness. We have tasted of the pleasures 
 of drift and of a short-sighted enjoyment of the 
 present; and concentrated effort of any kind, 
 especially concentrated thinking, is repugnant, 
 and may soon be impossi-ble to us. This, then, 
 is the tonic of French example. Just as a couple 
 of French soldiers once called Goethe from his 
 bed, so France to-day calls, not Germany — Ger- 
 many is fully awake — ^but England, whose bed 
 is always so warm and soft, so cosy and com- 
 fortable, to be up and doing, and, above all, 
 thinking: hard. 
 
 184 
 
PAET THREE 
 
 THE SLAVS AND THEIR PROBLEMS 
 
 In our mancBuvring round the fixed point of the 
 war we have dealt with the same set of facts 
 from the points of view of the two most con- 
 tinuously and temperamentally opposed of the 
 combatants — the Germans and the French. And 
 now from Pan-Germanism we turn to Pan-Slav- 
 ism, although at the beginning we must bear in 
 mind that there is not the same unity, either of 
 problem or of purpose, among the Slavs as there 
 is among the Germans. Whereas German aims 
 and ambitions are clear, concrete, and urgent, 
 Slav aspirations are vaguer, more temperament- 
 al, and less material. Perhaps that is why the 
 Germans profess to dread the Slav oncoming, 
 to regard their civilization as inferior to their 
 own; it is certainly different. 
 
 It is thus much more difficult to deal with 
 pan-Slavism, especially as so many Slav peoples 
 are still subject peoples or else only of late 
 emerged from subjection, than it was with the 
 far compacter and more definite problems of 
 
 185 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 Germany. Indeed, although I propose to give 
 some slight thread of history to keep my subject 
 from breaking utterly loose, yet for the most 
 part I shall aim at giving rather an impression 
 of the sort of people the Slavs have struck me 
 as being, in so far as I have been among them, 
 because I fieel this mogt strongly : we must know 
 all we can about the sort of people who are 
 helping us. Already we have seen what the 
 French stand for in the advance of humanity. 
 We have also decided that it- is necessary to 
 study our German enemy if we are to cope with 
 him successfully. Far more necessary, there- 
 fore, it seems to me, is it that we should get to 
 know all we can of a people with whom we are 
 as a rule but little in touch, about whom, there- 
 fore, we know little and have yet heard much 
 that is misleading without being able to criticise 
 what we hear, but who will ultimately have a 
 greater effect than any other force in that vor- 
 tex of forces we call the war. Slav ideals as 
 much as Slav arms will influence the settlement 
 profoundly. The war is likely to lead to a Slav 
 leadership in Europe. How important it is, there- 
 fore, to get to know what the Slavs are like, what 
 they stand for in the civilization of Europe, what, 
 in the war of cultures which is behind, yet not 
 far behind, all the actual field-fighting. Slavism 
 really connotes. And in dealing with this vast 
 and urgent problem I have preferred, or rather 
 been compelled by ignorance, to rely more on 
 
 186 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 my personal impressions than on my reading. 
 
 The Germans are a compact but only recently 
 united people in a Slav pocket; the French are 
 a still more compact people, who owe much of 
 their achievement to highly centralized institu- 
 tions dating back for centuries. But when we 
 turn to the outer mass — ^the Slav pocket itself — 
 what do we find? A people with common char- 
 acteristics indeed, but also great diversities; a 
 people who stretch over vast tracts from the 
 Artie Circle right down into the deep-blue waters 
 of the sub-tropical Mediterranean ; a people who 
 include races as widely separated in space and 
 characteristics as Poles and Serbians, Bohemians 
 and Bulgars, Russians and Slovenians: too 
 diverse almost for even the Sokol movement to 
 unite. 
 
 Now, in the presence of such diversity, what 
 unifying principle can we discern? "Well, once 
 more we are driven back on religion for the net 
 which, as in the miraculous draught of fishes, 
 holds the mass together. 
 
 When we were considering the break-up qf 
 Eome we found that the eastern flank of Chris- 
 teildom was protected for over a thousand years 
 by Constantinople, the real bulwark of the west ; 
 and it is this same Constantinople which really 
 holds the Slavs together still, even though to-day 
 it is the Turkish capital, and the head of the 
 Christians there is almost powerless to resist the 
 arbitrary exactions of the Mohammedans, who 
 
 187 ' 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 hold him responsible for the good behavior of all 
 the Christians throughout Turkey. 
 
 Thus we have to take up our story at the point 
 when the thousand years of Byzantine Christian- 
 ity is succeeded by the five centuries of Moslem 
 rule — at the point when St. Sophia ceases to be a 
 Basilica and becomes a Mosque. Nor is the value 
 of this starting-point vitiated by the fact that, of 
 the western Slavs, the Poles are Eoman Catho- 
 lics; while it was among their Slav neighbors, 
 the Bohemians, that John Huss, influenced by 
 our own Wicliffe, was preaching the Reforma- 
 tion before Luther, and suffering martyrdom at 
 the Council of Constance, saving Luther from a 
 similar fate at Worms, perhaps, by the- horror 
 excited throughout Europe at the treachery of 
 the Emperor, who let the Church burn Huss. I 
 ought to say also that, though the Eussian 
 Church exists apart from that of Constantinople, 
 although its language is a Russian which bears 
 about the same relation to modern Russian that 
 the English of the Old Testament bears to mod- 
 ern English, yet in its essentials it is at one with 
 the Eastern Church, at one in its married priests, 
 in its rejection of images and mechanical music, 
 and in the intimacy of the relation between priest 
 and people which arises out of the use of the 
 common everyday language for the purposes of 
 worship instead of a separate liturgical language 
 like the Latin of the Church of Rome. 
 
 T am glad to have hit on this beginning to my 
 188 
 
The 8lavs and Their Problems 
 
 subject, for not only is the eastern form of Chris- 
 tianity the unifying fact of the Slavs as a whole, 
 but also the word "religion" strikes the dominant 
 note in the Slav character, particularly in Eus- 
 sia. The Eussian alphabet is modelled on the 
 Greek, which came to Eussia with Byzantine 
 Christianity. Similarly Eussian civilization is 
 to-day organized on as definitely Christian a basis 
 as was our own manorial system in the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 So much by way of preliminary. We have just 
 seen both the distribution and the unification of 
 the Slavs. Let us now see what the downfall of 
 the eastern capital in 1453 meant to these 
 peoples. To Europe generally it meant first the 
 Eenaissance, then the Eeformation. But what 
 did it mean to the Slavs? < 
 
 To the Balkan Slavs it meant submergence, 
 though not extinction. I have already mentioned 
 the Patriarch of Constantinople, and described 
 him as existing, as it were, on sufferance in the 
 Turkish capital. The Turks have a very rudi- 
 mentary notion of the State. With them State 
 and Church are one. They are, like the old Jews, 
 theocratic, with God as their actual King, and 
 the Sultan simply as His Viceroy. When, there- 
 fore, they had to control a conquered people of 
 another faith than their own, the only machinery 
 they could think of for the purpose was the or- 
 ganization which already held the Slavs together 
 a.3 a single people — the Eastern Church ; and thus 
 
 189 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 the Head of the Eastern Church, the Patriarch 
 of Constantinople, became to the Turks a sort of 
 Vicegerent or Vicery of Christ on earth, subject 
 to the Sultan, who was Vicegerent of Allah. 
 
 During the last five centuries, then, the Balkan 
 Christians have been living a curiously unsatis- 
 fying life. Buried, overrun, and controlled, 
 though not ruled, by a people whose one achieve- 
 ment and only strength lies in its fanatical fight- 
 ing power, the Christian Slavs of the Balkans 
 have lived in a State of unprogressive, suspended 
 animation, never really crushed by the Turks, 
 but so sealed up and cut off from the progressive 
 Christian world beyond the frontiers of Turkey 
 that they have fallen centuries behind Western 
 Europe in civilization, yet without ever losing 
 either their religion or their sense of nationality. 
 
 In speaking of Islam I pointed out what a 
 stimulating effect the faith produced on back- 
 ward and savage races by the clear-cut creed and 
 positive rules of conduct which Mohammed had 
 provided in the Koran. Now, however, we see 
 that when Islam comes into contact with a higher 
 civilization and a more spiritual faith than its 
 own, it cannot kill that faith and civilization, 
 but merely checks its development. Progress is 
 unknown in Mohammedan countries, either 
 among the True Believers or among their subject 
 peoples. 
 
 So much for the Balkan Slavs. What about 
 the rest? , 
 
 190 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 Now the Turks were not content with having 
 conquered merely the Balkans. Crossing the 
 Danube and streaming north-west, they made as 
 though they would reach the Baltic and thus 
 drive a wedge in between Eastern and Western 
 Christendom — ^between Germany and Russia 
 that is to say. fiut they were stopped and 
 turned back by a Slav people ' that has now 
 long ceased to exist as an independent State — 
 the Poles. 
 
 In 1683 John Sobieski, King of Poland, de- 
 feated and drove back the Turks who were 
 threatening Vienna, and so rendered Christendom 
 the same service as Charlemagne nine hundred 
 years earlier. But how different was his reward ! 
 Whereas Charlemagne was made Emperor and 
 ruler over the West, Poland was cut up again 
 and again. Whenever its neighbors, from the 
 days of Frederick the Great onwards, wished to 
 expand, they did so at the expense of a Polish 
 province or two. And thus for over a century 
 Poland was subject to a series of vivisections, 
 until at last there is nothing left of the original 
 State. In its stead we find three portions: one 
 German, one Austrian, and one Russian. 
 
 Probably the Poles themselves are partly to 
 blame for disaster. They were a very quarrel- 
 some and disunited people, and their internal dis- 
 sensions, of course, helped their enemies to dis- 
 member their native land. It might not, indeed, 
 be fanciful to describe them as a people of over- 
 
 191 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 developed artistic temperament: too eager for 
 self-expression ever to be welded into a great 
 national whole; too Greek in temper to become 
 a solid Imperial people like the Eomans or the 
 English. At any rate, the world is full of Polish 
 artists to-day, and we may well imagine that 
 Paderewski, the De Eeszkes, and many others 
 one could name are only the fine flower and per- 
 fect realization of a national yearning after 
 artistic expression. 1 had once a Polish friend 
 whose name — of eleven letters — had long been 
 famous in the annals of his race. He came over 
 to England to look into our educational system, 
 and when he was going back he made me an offer. 
 He was anxious to start a school in Poland for 
 the sons of nobles and influential men, and he 
 asked me whether I would go with him and help 
 him in his work. I asked what he would wish 
 me to teach, and I was rather surprised at his 
 reply. He said he was extremely anxious to in- 
 troduce Association football among his fellow- 
 countrymen, and since in those days I was still a 
 player he wanted me to teach the boys football — 
 not Kugby, which he regarded as too much of a 
 hurly-burly, nor yet cricket, which was too in- 
 dividualized, but Association, which seemed to 
 him to combine in ideal proportions the usually 
 conflicting excellences of individual brilliancy 
 and combined action. I refused, since in those 
 days I was head of a school of my own ; but some- 
 times I regret that I did not go over and help 
 
 192 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 him nurture among his beloved people — ^he always 
 spoke of them, though divided among three Em- 
 pires, as one — the spirit of united action and in- 
 dividual sacrifice which he saw immanent in our 
 national winter game, and which was so neces- 
 sary, he felt, to Polish unity. Elsewhere, also, 
 on the Continent I have come across the same 
 belief in football. I have already mentioned 
 I'rench Eugby teams, and, apart altogether from 
 the big international matches which English 
 teams play regularly now in so many European 
 centres, one finds attempts at football through- 
 out Germany — solemn pot-shotting at goal on 
 gravel grounds through blazing Sunday after- 
 jioons in mid-August. When one comes back to 
 England in September and finds oneself in the 
 presence once more of the machinery of the 
 League and the Southern League, and the Second 
 Division and Heaven knows what, one wonders 
 whether even in our sports we have not killed 
 the spirit by over-developing the medium, and 
 thus allowed materialism again to conquer, as is 
 our national weakness in most things. One sees 
 the point of the German caricature in which the 
 English soldier is saying, "Well, if we can't beat 
 the Germans in battle we can always beat them 
 at football !" 
 
 So much for the curiously related subjects of 
 Poland and football. Napoleon's idea of a re- 
 instated Poland, followed as it has been by the 
 offer of Nicholas II almost exactly a hundred 
 
 193 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 years later, is only an act of reparation to a 
 State which, with all her faults, has done much 
 for the cause of Christendom, and suffered much 
 at the hands of her neighbors. Perhaps, in view 
 of her past, it will be as well for the new Poland 
 to exist under the protection of the one Empire 
 of the three who is of the same Slav race and has 
 had the courage to say "Peccavi" and to offer 
 atonement and reparation to the people it has so 
 gi'ievously wronged in the past. Certainly Prus- 
 sian treatment of Poland has been unsympathetic. 
 The Prussian believes in making himself felt, and 
 his training is such that even if he believed in 
 conciliation and peaceful absorption he would 
 find himself debarred, by the effects of two cen- 
 turies of drill-sergeantry and forty years of 
 master-morality, from practising methods milder 
 than those he has always used on peoples under 
 his rule. Austria is kinder, it is true, but never- 
 theless Austria is German. So only Bussia re- 
 mains as the protector Poland would certainly 
 need in a reconstituted Europe. 
 
 Let us turn now to Bohemia, a corner of 
 Europe which, as far as I can judge, seems to 
 have been almost entirely forgotten during the 
 present struggle. Yet it, too, has played its part 
 in its day in the affairs of Europe. "Good King 
 Wenceslas" was King of Bohemia; his statue 
 stands on the bridge over the Moldau at Prague. 
 It was from the blind King of Bohemia, who was 
 killed at Cr6cy in 1346, that the Prince of Wales 
 
 194 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 took the tliree feathers ■w;hich form his badge. 
 Anne of Bohemia was wife to our English King 
 Eichard II, and may have been instrumental in 
 bringing back Lollardry to her own people from 
 England (I believe that ancient copies of Wic- 
 liffe's works have been found in the libraries of 
 Prague). Huss I have already spoken about; 
 but the Reformation owes yet another step to 
 Bohemia, because it was the driving out of the 
 Elector Palatine and his wife, "the Winter 
 Queen," as she was called (she was a daughter 
 of James I of England, sister to Charles I, and 
 mother of Prince Rupert, of our own Civil War; 
 at Heidelberg still stand the remnants of the 
 wing of the castle which her husband prepared 
 for her) — it was their flight from Prague that 
 started the Thirty Years War and which had 
 such terrible effects in Germany, as we have 
 already seen. 
 
 Yet, in spite of this close connection with 
 European events of the first importance, in spite 
 even of its repeated connection with our own 
 history, we have forgotten altogether about 
 Bohemia, and when we hear of the Czechs we 
 wonder who they are. We may have heard of 
 Austrian regiments surrounding and shooting 
 down Czech regiments, and thereupon have prob- 
 ably concluded that the Czech is some sort of 
 Russian, and so turn to see what the German 
 Emden, who sank £2,000,000 worth of ships in 
 her three months as commerce-raider, or a British 
 
 195 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Qreat War 
 
 aeroplane has been doing. But the Czechs are 
 not Eussians; they are Bohemians. 
 
 Now, why should these people have been for- 
 gotten when other Slav peoples are exciting so 
 much interest? I think it is because they are in 
 a German pocket, just as the Germans in their 
 turn are now in a Slav pocket; in other words, the 
 Czechs are so surrounded by the Pan-G«rmans — 
 i.e. Germany on one side, Austria on the other — 
 that they seem almost stifled, just as the Germans 
 proclaim that unless they hack their way through 
 they also will be stifled by the Pan-Slavic mass 
 of the Eussians and their wing the Balkan peo- 
 ples. Yet I think there may be an end of the 
 oblivion under which the Czechs suffer. If the 
 silent Hradchin, that desolate range of palaces 
 on the heights above the shallow Moldau at 
 Prague, should become the temporary seat of the 
 Austrian Government in the course of the vary- 
 ing fortunes of war, the interest of Europe in 
 Prague will revive. 
 
 I was in Prague a few years ago, (and well 
 remember the impression of quiet and grave 
 beauty that this ancient capital of Bohemia made 
 on me. I had gone from Dresden up the Elbe by 
 steamer as far as Bodenbach — and there is no 
 finer or cheaper holiday stretch of river in Eur- 
 ope than that of the Elbe through Saxon Switzer- 
 land ; it beats the Ehine hollow — and then on by 
 train. At the hotel I found that the porter had 
 perfected himself in English. He had learned 
 
 196 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 it from textbooks and the study of our best litera- 
 ture. His diction was thereifore slow and dis- 
 tinguished, and he was delighted with the oppor- 
 tunity to practice which I gave him. "For," he 
 said, "we are but rarely visited. On the one 
 hand, our language presents difficulties; on the 
 other, our town is liable to demonstrations." 
 
 To demonstrations ! I felt rather curious and 
 looked out for demonstrations next day; and I 
 found them sure enough, since the next day hap- 
 pened to be the birthday of the Emperor of 
 Austria, and the great black and yellow flag of 
 Austria was to be seen streaming from the highest 
 windows almost to the pavement of many a 
 hc>use. But for everv black and yellow flag thus 
 pushed forth another was flown of Bohemian 
 colors — ^red and white, as long and still more 
 striking. Thus the battle of nationality waved 
 up and down the streets throughout the day, 
 while when the evening closed in and the most 
 beautiful light effects I ever remember to have 
 seen began to displace the rioting color of the 
 afternoon, the regimental bands, which climbed 
 with many a halt the steep streets towards the 
 Hradchin, playing wherever they halted ( the big 
 drum, I noticed, was mounted on a light horse- 
 trailer), were followed by crowds more critical 
 than enthusiastic, until at last, at the top of the 
 long climb, the band played its flnal tune in front 
 of the Cardinal's palace, and his Eminence came 
 
 197 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 out on the balcony from the inner light of the 
 dining-room and bowed his thanks. There at 
 last the band seemed to find full appreciation, 
 because the Emperor is most closely linked with 
 the Holy See; he is still the shadowy sovereign 
 of that ancient Empire whose rule was the rule 
 of Pope and Emperor. And thus it was that the 
 Cardinal left his soup to bow to the band while 
 the Prague folk looked quizzically on. But if one 
 hapi)ens to be in Carlsbad or Marienbad on the 
 Emperor's birthday one will see nothing but 
 black and yellow. Eed and white is nowhere to 
 be seen. Yet both are in Bohemia. But they are 
 also, alas! denationalized, cosmopolitanized, and 
 given over to the disgusting cure of obesity. They 
 "cure" the alimentary canal of Europe after its 
 too heavy dinners, and tone it up to conquer 
 the winter series as far as possible — and such 
 a process needs calm: the red and white of a 
 forgotten nationality would be out of place 
 in an area consecrated to such great pur- 
 poses. 
 
 In my further journeying through Prague I 
 came to yet another evidence of the intensity 
 with which the Bohemian — ^think of actually 
 being a Bohemian by birth! — fights for his 
 national existence. I came to the Czech Theatre 
 — a noble building on the banks of the Moldau 
 which costs the Bohemian Government I know 
 not how many thousands a year, probably from 
 five to ten. And its maintenance is for one single 
 
 198 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 purpose: to keep alive tlie Czech language at a 
 literary standard, and, with that, the Czech 
 nationality. 
 
 We have already seen the importance of lan- 
 guage in the maintenance of nationality and the 
 attempts of the Germans to kill alien tongues. 
 We have also seen the place occupied by the 
 theatre in foreign schemes of national well-being. 
 When therefore we combine these two influences 
 we can understand how the Bohemians regard 
 their theatre. So far from being a mere place of 
 amusement for an occasional evening, it repre- 
 sents their national existence, the focus and altar 
 of their patriotism. It is the shrine of Bohemia. 
 It serves, indeed, the same purpose as a'Welsh or 
 Gaelic church, but with this dfference : the Celts 
 of Great Britain have no terrible alien pressure 
 to resist; they are free and welcome — nay, en- 
 couraged — to keep up their national language 
 and literature. The Government pays grants for 
 the teaching of Welsh in the schools; it is the 
 Celts' own fault if ever it dies down; even the 
 Irish are free to revive their ancient speech (in 
 Dublin the streets are named both in Irish and 
 in English) if they wish. But in Bohemia the 
 tongue has to fight against authority, and re- 
 cently the fight was carried, I believe, even into' 
 the command words of the Army. Thus we see 
 that the theatre, so far from being at the other 
 pole from the Church, comes nearer to it, perhaps, 
 in the case of this Czech theatre than it has ever 
 
 199 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War ^ 
 
 been since the days of Greece and the Miracle 
 plays of mediaeval Europe. 
 
 Another point which struck me was the inten- 
 sity of the Bohemian's admiration of the beauty 
 of his capital. Whereas in the days of my visit 
 the picture-postcards of German towns were as a 
 rule crudely tinted photographs, those of Prague 
 were either beautiful reproductions of water- 
 color drawings (I saw several artists working on 
 new views during my stay) or else little etchings, 
 or else photographs taken at night to show the 
 effects of artificial light on familiar scenes — an 
 idea which was developed with success several 
 years later as regards London. 
 
 Now, surely a people with such a history and 
 such capacities for the beautiful ought not to be 
 ignored in the European settlement. What can 
 b« done for them I do not know; I do not even 
 know what they want. But I would give some- 
 thing to see the veil lifted from the face of 
 Prague— and it ought to be possible to discover 
 why she mourns. 
 
 Spruner's Historical Atlas shows Bohemia 
 existing as a Duchy in 843, when, as we saw, the 
 division of Verdun split Charlemagne's Einpire 
 into three. At the same date there was no Aus- 
 tria, and the name of Vienna does not even figure 
 or. the map. For long Bohemia marched, border 
 by border, with her northern Slav neighbor 
 Poland. Later, however, Bohemia and Poland 
 were separated by Silesia, which was originally 
 
 200 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 a Polish province but became Austrian, and later, 
 through the high-handedness of Frederick the 
 Great, Prussian. Whether it would be possible 
 so to reconstitute Poland as to take her borders 
 all the way to Bohemia and thus lift Bohemia 
 herself out of the German pocket, and so make 
 her the western advance guard of Slavism, which 
 would then stretch continuously eastward from 
 Bohemian Carlsbad through Poland into Eussia, 
 and at the same time, for her protection, also to 
 make her another vassal State of Bussia, like 
 reconstituted Poland, is more than I can say. 
 
 So, then, we must leave these two distin- 
 guished, artistic, but forgotten western Slav 
 States with these words: It has been their fate 
 as the frontiers of Slavdom to fall victims piece- 
 meal to the encroachments of the Teutons from 
 the west. How far they can and should be re- 
 covered from their present Teutonic holders is 
 a very big question, for the settled rule of cen- 
 turies — as, e.g., in the case of Pomerania, West 
 Prussia, and Silesia — ^may well make funda- 
 mental changes in a people's outlook; and it 
 would be as great a mistake now to dismember 
 Germany in the interest of Spruner's maps of 
 mediaeval Europe as it was originally to dismem- 
 ber Poland herself. It would not only be a crime 
 but — ^what is worse — also a blunder, since it 
 would start an agitation for the retransference 
 to Germany of provinces which, in the dim and 
 distant past, were doubtless Polish, but which 
 
 301 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 by long association with Germany by this time 
 have become predominantly German. Evidently 
 some sort of provincial plebiscite is required, 
 the sort of vpte suggested during the Home Rule 
 debates for our own Ulster counties, together 
 perhaps with some such re-sorting of the various 
 populations as has settled the religious troubles 
 of Swiss cantons, where Boman Catholics and 
 Protestants, once mixed, concentrated them- 
 selves by mutual agreement in specified districts. 
 But whatever- may be the upshot of the war as 
 far as Poland is concerned, it should not be for- 
 gotten that Bohemia also is Slav, that she too 
 has her troubles, and therefore her claim on the 
 Allies. At present all we can say is that it is per- 
 fectly easy to see why some Austrian regiments 
 surrender so readily to the Eussian forces. 
 Austria feels the pull of the Slavs on her north- 
 ern as well as on her southern frontiers : she is 
 now paying the penalty of .having grown at the 
 expense of the Slavs by finding it increasingly 
 difficult to keep the loyalty of the rapidly in- 
 creasing Slav peoples under her rule when they 
 are attracted by the success of their fellow-Slavs 
 both in Russia and in the Balkans and yet sent 
 to fight against them. The dominant race in an 
 Empire built up of such a diversity of peoples 
 as that of Austria must have a remarkably tough 
 and quick digestion if the various peoples it 
 swallows to increase its size are to be assimilated 
 sufficiently to increase the power of the Imperial 
 
 202 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 State and not to prove a source of weakness in 
 the day of battle. And the Germans have no 
 such power of assimilation; they tend, indeed, 
 rather to be assimilated, as we have seen earlier. 
 
 Let us turn now from these northern Slavs 
 that we have been dealing with, the Slavs to the 
 north of Austria, to the less developed southern 
 Slavs — those, namely, in the Balkans to the 
 south of Austria, who have been the immediate 
 cause of all the trouble. 
 
 When first the war broke out many people 
 asked me in amazement how it was that a little 
 State like Serbia could set Europe by the ears 
 as it has done. To clear up this difficulty I must 
 enlarge on what I said earlier about the Balkan 
 Slavs. 
 
 We have already seen that these Slavs lived 
 for centuries in a state of suspended animation, 
 keeping alive as far as religion and nationality 
 were concerned, but merely marking time while 
 the rest of Christendom were marching along 
 the path of civilization. So long as Turkey re- 
 mained a solid Power south of the Danube these 
 peoples had no chance; but early in the nine- 
 teenth century the Turkish Empire — a merely 
 militarist dominion without any claim to gov- 
 erning skill or statesmanship— began to break 
 up, and gradually the Christian States of the 
 Balkans, stitaulated by the enthusiasm of the 
 French Revolution, began to emerge either as 
 independent nations or else as principalities more 
 
 203 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 or less tributary to Turkey. We in England 
 were, of course, most interested in the Greek 
 struggle for independence because the Greeks 
 were helped by Lord Byron, but we must not 
 forget that this was only one State among sev- 
 eral who were all working towards the same end 
 — freedom from Turkey. This movement has 
 continued from that day to this, and is even yet 
 not finished. 
 
 Bryon was not much impressed by the Greeks 
 he helped; indeed, he said — 
 
 For Greeks a blush, for Greece a tear, 
 
 or words to that effect; and I must confess that 
 the other Balkan peoples carried on their respec- 
 tive Wars of Liberation ( at about the same date, 
 be it noted, that Prussia was building up her 
 strength in those wonderful years which suc- 
 ceeded her own War of Liberation) by methods 
 not immeasurably superior to those of the Turks 
 they were fighting against. Nor should the im- 
 partial student wonder at that or blame them. 
 It was not their fault that they had emerged in 
 the nineteenth century with the ethics and morals 
 of the sixteenth and seventeenth, that they had 
 been effectively preserved from the decay of 
 progress (as Nietzsche and Bernhardi would 
 doubtless call it) by the all-pervading presence 
 of militant Mohammedanism. But it is very 
 much to the credit of the Balkan Slav States, 
 and also an indication of the stimulating power 
 
 204 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 of the French Revolution, that they emerged at 
 all from the stagnation of an alien race and 
 faith, the brutalizing effects of which cannot but 
 have left their mark on the peoples who so brave- 
 ly struggled free from it in the course of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 Thus it comes to pass that the Serbians, the 
 Bulgarians, and the others step on to our stage 
 like young men who have somehow escaped the 
 vigilance of the school attendance officer and 
 thus missed all the advantages of compulsory 
 Board School education. They are backward, 
 but not therefore by any means necessarily dull 
 or malevolent. They may be fierce and quick 
 to act, but they are not therefore prejudiced 
 against the learning and civilization of the more 
 fortunately placed among their Christian neigh- 
 bors. Indeed, the younger generation of South 
 Slavs seem to be much ahead of our own school- 
 boys as regards political instincts. Recently, 
 for example, the Bosnian school-children went 
 on strike as a protest against the action of Aus- 
 tria. In the matter of appliances also the Balkan 
 States are only too ready to avail themselves — 
 as were the Japanese — of all that Western 
 Europe can offer. I do not mean to suggest that 
 Serbian ambulances or Bulgarian artillery are 
 sixteenth or seventeenth or even nineteenth cen- 
 tury organizations. What I had in mind was 
 rather the way in which they used their forces, 
 the steps they- were prepared to take to secure 
 
 205 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 their ends. But all the edge of what I should 
 have had to say months ago has been taken 
 off by the German invasion of Belgium. Beside 
 the horrors of that deluge the acts of Serbia I 
 must speak about are relatively mild. Never- 
 theless, in themselves, and not in comparison 
 with the latest practices of German culture, 
 these acts must be termed — ^well, at least as bar- 
 barous as the French massacre of St. Bartholo- 
 mew, or the murders of Bizzio and Darnley in 
 the history of Mary Queen of Scots. These are 
 sixteenth-century events, and I have already 
 described Serbia and the rest as sixteenth or 
 seventeenth century in all but appliances. They 
 have electric light, telephones, and machine guns, 
 but they use them in a way that reminds us of 
 the Tudors. Just as, however, in the matter of 
 material they have become twentieth century 
 with a vengeance, there is no reason to think 
 that, now that they have finally shaken off the 
 bondage of Turkey, they should not with equal 
 quickness make up for lost time, and, taking a 
 two-hundred-year leap, bring their ideas and 
 methods into harmony with those of Western 
 Europe — always excepting Germany, if we are 
 to take her atrocities as representing her real 
 character. 
 
 What, then, are the incidents I have in mind? 
 They are incidents which are important not only 
 as indicating the temper and present develop- 
 ment of the Serbians, but also as starting per- 
 
 206 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 haps, certainly strengthening, the national for- 
 ward movement in Serbia which has meant so 
 much to us all. 
 
 Some few years back high military officials 
 broke into the sleeping apartments of the King 
 and Queen of Serbia, murdered them, and threw 
 their bodies out of the window, it is said, with 
 the knowledge if not the connivance of the Aus- 
 trian Government. Then the conspirators in- 
 vited a Serbian Prince who was at the time liv- 
 ing at Geneva to take the throne. He did so, 
 and as King Peter he showed himself a good 
 deal more national and far less inclined towards 
 Austria than had his predecessor, Alexander. 
 He can also be credited with having translated 
 Mill's "Liberty" into Serbian, and with having 
 fought for France in 1870. 
 
 Now this coup d'etat was an undoubted act of 
 violence, and for some three or four years Great 
 Britain would have nothing to say to Serbia, 
 just as the States refused to recognize Huerta 
 in Mexico. But time brought kindlier feelings, 
 and now we remember that Milton, our greatest 
 poet after Shakespeare, advocated regicide; 
 while among the Cavaliers (only about two hun- 
 dred and fifty years ago, and when England 
 was by no means a barbarous State), "Killing no 
 Murder," a pamphlet advocating the assassina- 
 tion of Cromwell, was held to be merely loyalty 
 to Charles II, who had offered a price for the 
 Protector's head, of which, by the way, a photo- 
 
 207 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 graph recently appeared in a daily paper. 
 (Cromwell was dug up out of Westminster Ab- 
 bey at the Eestoration in 1660, hung in chains at 
 Tyburn, and his head stuck on Temple Bar. 
 There it stayed till it rotted, and blew down one 
 night into the arms of a watchman. He kept 
 it as a curiosity; hence the recent photograph 
 with a wooden stake through the skull. Yet 
 when we hear of a Turco carrying a dead Ger- 
 man's head about with him in his knapsack, we 
 murmur, "How barbarous!" We have traveled 
 far indeed, so we think, in the last couple of cen- 
 turies.) Perhaps "Arms and the Man," by 
 Bernard Shaw, will help us to understand the 
 Balkan character, with its curious contrasts 
 and emotional facets. Anthony Hope has also 
 made use of the fusion of modern and sixteenth- 
 century civilizations which is to be found in 
 the Balkans for his adventure stories, "The 
 Prisoner of Zenda," and others. On the other 
 hand, the poetry of a primitive people is still 
 to be found among the Serbians — who lost all 
 their nobles in their fight against the Turks — 
 and the bards and professional versifiers who 
 tell the troops around the camp fires the stories 
 of the great heroes of Old Servia add to these 
 ancient stories the stories of great deeds done 
 in the three wars which Serbia — in utter de- 
 fiance of the theories of Mr. Norman Angell — 
 has carried or is carrying through, because she 
 is still able to provide food and war material. 
 
 208 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 Nor must we forget that these Slav peoples 
 are also religious enthusiasts. The Bulgarians, 
 who in temper seem to be more the Prussians 
 of the Balkans than are the Serbians, were 
 buoyed up in their war against Turkey by the 
 prospect of singing once more a Te Deum in the 
 Hagia Sofia at Constantinople. That in itself 
 would have been a S'Ufficient reward. They might 
 have marched out of the city after the Te Deum 
 with the feeling that they had won. It reminds 
 one of Henry of Navarre and his famous "Paris 
 is worth a Mass." Unfortunately, the Bulgar- 
 ians were never in a position to test the relative 
 strength of their motives as regards Constanti- 
 nople, for they never reached the Turkish cap- 
 ital; and Germany, at any rate, and perhaps 
 others were glad to have the Turk's head still in 
 chancery on the Bosphorus, since Turkey's body 
 had been dismembered and the balance of 
 Europe entirely destroyed in consequence. ( The 
 entry of Turkey into the war makes no vital 
 difference except to herself. She began too late 
 and too obviously under German coercion to 
 stampede Islam into a religious war. Islam was 
 already fighting for France, England, and 
 Kussia; and thus Turkey failed to do the dam- 
 age which the Germans hoped for when they 
 forced her to fight.) 
 
 It speaks well for the' future of the Balkans 
 that the present difficulties of Serbia have not 
 been too strong a temptation for Bulgaria, whom 
 
 209 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 Serbia defeated, when the creation of an artifi- 
 cial Albania in the interests of Austria had cut 
 Serbia off from th-e Adriatic and compelled her 
 to try to get to the ^gean — an enterprise in 
 which she had to meet the rivalry of her former 
 ally. As to the future we can say nothing — as 
 to what Eoumania, Greece, and Italy may or 
 may not do during the present war, and how the 
 Balkans may settle down in the near future. I 
 may, however, have suggested something in the 
 way of a line along which one may be able to 
 think oneself into the future; that is all a his- 
 torian can claim to do. 
 
 The road is now clear for dealing with the 
 greatest by far of all the Slav States, Holy Rus- 
 sia herself ; and as I think of her vast extent, her 
 endless variety, her limitless resources, my 
 courage almost fails me. But I hope to steer 
 my way through by following the principle I laid 
 down at the beginning of this essay — to write 
 as far as I can from personal experience, and to 
 keep just a thread of history to serve as a con- 
 trolling line through the intricacies of my sub- 
 ject. 
 
 Another name for Russia is Muscovy, for a 
 Russian a Muscovite. These names remind us 
 of the days when Moscow, and not that new city 
 on the Neva which we used to call St. Peters- 
 burg, but which we are now gradually learning 
 to call Petrograd, was the capital of Russia. 
 
 Into the still further past, into the days when 
 210 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 Kieff was the capital and civilization was enter- 
 ing Eussia from Sweden under leaders like 
 Rurik, and Christianity was working northwards 
 from Constantinople, we need not plunge. 
 
 When I went through the private apartments 
 of the Czars at Tsarskoe Selo, I saw many intim- 
 ate details which were strongly contrasted with 
 the gorgeousness of the State apartments up- 
 stairs. But one relic impressed me above all the 
 others. This was a long iron rod, sharpened at 
 one end, which I was allowed to hold for a mo- 
 ment. It was the rod of Ivan the Terrible, who 
 ruled in Moscow during the reign of our Queen 
 Elizabeth — ^indeed, ambassadors of Elizabeth 
 visited him. And it was his fierce custom (he 
 was probably mad) to thrust this spear of his 
 through the feet of those who stood before him 
 with evil tidings. The spear reminded me of 
 Saul in his darker moods. But it also reminded 
 me how remote from our own day was the Eussia 
 of even three centuries back. 
 
 Three hundred years ago the present ruling 
 House, the House of Eomanoff, came to the 
 throne. They were nobles or Boyars among fel- 
 lOw-nobles, and ruled much as the early French 
 kings ruled, as first among equals. (The word 
 "peer" means, indeed, equal with the King.) 
 But we need not trouble ourselves with the 
 greater part of these three centuries during 
 which Russia is more Asiatic than European 
 in its mode of life, save, of course, that it is 
 
 21X 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 Christian. It is not, indeed, until our own 
 Dutch William is well planted on the English 
 throne and using English armies against his 
 powerful foe and neighbor in Holland, Louis 
 XIV, that Eussia becomes important to us; but 
 from that moment its importance is continually 
 and rapidly increasing. 
 
 In the reign of William III, then, the people 
 of Chatham had a surprise: nothing less than 
 the appearance of a Russian Czar in their midst, 
 moving about the dockyards and building slips, 
 and not only studying but also helping in the 
 construction of the wooden walls of Old Eng- 
 land. This unconventional potentate, who liked 
 to go about as a common workman, was-, of 
 course, Peter the Great — a very different figure 
 from Frederick the Great, whose service to his 
 State was almost all of it fighting service, where- 
 as Peter gave most of his energies to dragging 
 his people into contact with Western Europe 
 when he had once broken the bonds which held 
 them down. These bonds were of two sorts — 
 hostile Powers to the north and south of his in- 
 land State round Moscow, and a strong aristoc- 
 racy entrenched behind immemorial custom and 
 with all the immobility of the East in their souls. 
 It was against both these that Peter threw him- 
 self with an energy that was bound to shear its 
 way through all obstacles. 
 
 He broke the power of Sweden under Charles 
 XII, who was trying to play the part on the 
 
 212 
 
The Slavs and Their Prohlems 
 
 mainland played in the Thirty Years War by his 
 predecessor, Gustavus Adolphus, and in break- 
 ing the Swedish monopoly of the Baltic he 
 brought Eussia within measurable distance of 
 West Europe. He also broke the power of the 
 Cossacks to the south of him and so reached out 
 another hand to the Black Sea. 
 
 But this stretching of the Eussian giant as 
 he awoke from his age-long sleep under the blows 
 of the violent Peter was a painful process. His 
 limbs cracked and he groaned aloud, but still 
 Peter kept on. When his nobles refused to trim 
 their beards and cut their hair in accordance 
 with the fashion Peter had brought home with 
 Mm from abroad, Peter sheared them like so 
 many sheep, it is said, with his own hands. At 
 any rate, before long he had turned his sleepy, 
 indolent. Oriental Court of Moscow into a very 
 passable imitation of the jack-bootedness of 
 Berlin, for just as Prussia was influenced by 
 France, so was Eussia influenced in her turn by 
 Prussia. 
 
 But so long as Eussia remained buried in verst 
 after verst of plainland she would never really 
 awaken. At Moscow, with its many gilded 
 churches and its bells and beauty, it was always 
 afternoon ; a more bracing capital was required. 
 
 Moreover, Peter had grasped the importance 
 of the sea on his visits to Holland and England 
 — ^both at that time, of course, under one ruler, 
 William of Orange. Hence the great move north- 
 
 213 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 eastwards which so dismayed his nobles. Peter 
 had determined on a new capital, and had fixed 
 on the swamps of the Neva (of all places) as 
 the site: a cold and dreary region, frozen hard 
 for months at a time — and so very different from 
 Moscow. 
 
 Nevertheless, there was no gainsaying the 
 ardent Czar, and the work proceeded — the titanic 
 work of building a new capital on a swamp with 
 a violent river hurling down blocks and sheets 
 of ice from the great inland sea, Ladoga, that 
 it drains, and bursting its banks as often as it had 
 been confined for a space. Even to-day this city 
 of Peter suffers from the violence of the winter 
 frosts, and is being continually rebuilt in con- 
 sequence. But nothing daunted Peter, and bit 
 by bit the city rose. When I was there in 1912 
 I made a point of seeing the log hut Peter put 
 up, the first house of the new capital, and the 
 house in which he lived during the long progress 
 of the work. It is now covered over, and visited 
 in the same spirit as that other spot which has 
 been covered over by the costliest church in 
 Europe — the point on a canal side where the en- 
 lightened Alexander II, the liberator of the 
 serfs, was assassinated in 1881. 
 
 Peter was then a greedy worker at the actual 
 details as well as the great outlines of domestic 
 progress. He had dragged his people to the sea 
 which let in the world of the West ; albeit he had 
 nothing better to offer them on the coast than 
 
 214 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 an artificial town, planted by main force on the 
 swampy banks of a turbulent river, and of so 
 provisional a nature that even to-day it looks 
 unfinished and Wild West-like, with roughly 
 cobbled streets and many wooden houses, which, 
 during the hot days I spent there, blazed up 
 night after night and lit the sky first in one 
 direction and then in another, till I grew quite 
 used to the nightly glare. Among the buildings 
 thus destroyed, by the way, happened to be a 
 wooden theatre put up by Peter on an island. 
 
 Peter's death is of a piece with his life. On 
 the banks of the Neva — at last restrained by 
 heavy stone copings, though still groaning and 
 crunching with ice-floes every spring — stands a 
 group in bronze representing this most human of 
 all autocrats struggling out of the water with a 
 half-drowned sailor. It was from the exhaus- 
 tion of this rescue that Peter died. Can we 
 wonder at the Eussians calling their Czar 
 "Little Father"? 
 
 Another extremely interesting statue in Peter's 
 City is that of an Empress — the remarkable 
 woman who took up and carried on the work of 
 Peter after a period of over thirty years' con- 
 fusion had greatly weakened what Peter had 
 accomplished. This woman was Catherine II, 
 and she is quite as worthy of being called "the 
 Great" as Peter himself. There she stands alone 
 on her pedestal, while round the base are group- 
 ed the men she befriended, and among them the 
 
 215 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 one-eyed Potiomkin about whom Bernard Shaw 
 wrote his amusing little piece "Great Catherine." 
 
 It was with Catherine that German influence 
 grew strongest. She was German, and her hus- 
 band, Paul, had died somewhat mysteriously; 
 nevertheless it was she and Potiomkin who start- 
 ed Eussia on that road of territorial expansion 
 which she has continued to tread ever since. 
 
 This expansion was all with one more or less 
 conscious object. Like Imperial Germany, Rus- 
 sia had come too late into European politics, and 
 was too deeply embedded in the land, too far 
 from the sea to gain the easy and ample access 
 to the open ocean which her future demanded. 
 It is true that Peter had thrust one arm north 
 and planted St. Petersburg and another south 
 to Odessa, but a look at the map shows how use- 
 less these two centres really are from the point 
 of view of sea power. The Baltic is a land-locked 
 sheet with the key in the hands of Denmark. 
 The Black Sea is doubly — nay, trebly locked: 
 by the Bosphorus, then by the Dardanelles, both 
 in Turkish hands, and lastly — for the Dardan- 
 elles lead only into the land-locked Mediterran- 
 ean^ — ^by England at Gibraltar and Suez. 
 
 Nor did the capture of Finland, at a later date 
 from Sweden improve matters, for Finland is 
 simply a Baltic State. All that the capture of 
 Finland (a Magyar or Hunnish State in origin) 
 really did for Russia was to give her a consti- 
 tutional people to subdue and to earn her the 
 
 216 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 enmity of Sweden, who had lost the province. 
 That is why Sweden, though neutral, is some- 
 what well disposed towards Germany in the pres- 
 ent war. At any rate, in view of the Czar's wise 
 liberality towards Poland, it is not perhaps ex- 
 pecting too much to hope that he will find him- 
 self able to make a similar offer to his enlight- 
 ened Finnish subjects. 
 
 As regards the Black Sea outlet Bussia has 
 been no more fortunate. She has fought two 
 wars in this region, and in neither has she been 
 successful in overcoming the difficulties of her 
 position and reaching freely even the land-locked 
 Mediterranean. 
 
 First there was the Crimea, in which she had 
 to fight the allied armies of France and England. 
 Then again in 1877 Eussia fought a second time 
 for a way out of the Black Sea. She championed 
 — as she has done ever since — the Christian 
 subjects of Turkey, that stands astride both the 
 Bosphorus and the Dardanelles like a Colossus, 
 which, though crumbling, has never yet actually 
 fallen. 
 
 In this war Europe left Turkey to her fate at 
 first, but, much to the surprise of Europe, Tur- 
 key was well able to look after herself. When, 
 however, Eussia really "got going," the days 
 of Constantinople were numbered. Then it was 
 that Europe intervened. The Jingo song of the 
 great MacDermott crystallized the opinion of 
 England thus; — 
 
 217 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 We don't want to fight, but by Jingo if we do, 
 
 WeVe got the men, we've got the ships, we've got the 
 
 money too; 
 We've fought the Bear before, and we'll fight the Bear 
 
 again. 
 
 But the Bussians shall not have Constantinople. 
 
 This, expressed rather more formally, was the 
 opinion of the Congress at Berlin, at which the 
 Treaty of Berlin was signed in 1878, and from 
 which Disraeli and the young Lord Cranborne 
 — afterwards Lord Salisbury — brought us "peace 
 with honor" — words to be seen among the 
 wreaths which decorate Lord Beaconsfield's 
 statue in Parliament Square on Primrose Day. 
 It is this Treaty which states quite clearly the 
 position of the various Balkan States — e.g. 
 Bosnia and Herzegovina, provinces of Old Serbia, 
 as protectorates of Austro-Hungary ; it is this 
 Treaty, therefore, which Austria tore up, with 
 the connivance of Germany, when she assumed 
 full sovereignty over these provinces after the 
 overthrow of Abdul Hamid by the Young Turk 
 party — an act which marks, as we have seen al- 
 ready, the first stage in the developments which 
 led to the present war. 
 
 The only European port Bussia has which 
 stands on the open ocean is therefore Archangel, 
 but that is terribly tucked away behind the 
 North Cape, and, moreover, frozen half the year. 
 Nevertheless it is an open way, and the legend 
 of Cossacks coming through Archangel and 
 
 218 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 thence through England to the battlefields of 
 France shows that an eye to sea routes and con- 
 structive imagination are not so decayed among 
 us as many people thought. 
 
 So much, then, for Russia's position in 
 Europe — a position like Germany's, only worse, 
 since Germany has at least a North Sea coast. 
 Fortunately, however, Russia possesses what 
 Germany has not got— a way out, a hinterland, 
 and it is in the use she makes of her hinterland, 
 Siberia, that the interest next centres. 
 
 I remember a cartoon in Punch which repre- 
 sented Britannia as looking up at the starry skies. 
 The drawing was called "What of the Night?"; 
 but in the next issue a letter appeared in the 
 paper calling attention to a serious error in the 
 composition: the Great Bear had been put in 
 upside down. Punch was quick to reply, "Of 
 course, because Russia has recently suffered a 
 reverse in Asia." Those were the days when the 
 Bear and the Lion faced each other on the Khyber 
 Pass — ^the gap in our North- West Indian fron- 
 tier; of Abdur Rahman, Ameer of Afghanistan; 
 of expeditions galore, from Roberts' march to 
 Kandahar to — ^well, I really forget the rest, I am 
 ashamed to say. 
 
 Foiled in Central Asia and in her projects on 
 India — if ever she had any — Russia was driven 
 still farther east, and determined on the heroic 
 scheme of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was 
 to be Russia's road, she hoped, to the warm 
 
 219 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 water, her deliverance from bondage to Den- 
 mark, Turkey, England, and the ice of Archangel. 
 Unfortunately, however, no Eussian Pacific port 
 is really ice-free, and so Russia schemed to get 
 one a good deal farther south. This she managed 
 when she became possessed of Port Arthur, on 
 the Yellow Sea. Soon this valuable port was 
 linked up with the Trans-Siberian by a line run- 
 ning across Manchuria; and Eussia was always 
 showing a tendency to spread from that line over 
 the face of the Chinese province through which it 
 ran. Now the eastward extension of Eussia had 
 already disturbed Japan, and Japan began to 
 feel still more uneasy and angry when Eussia 
 seemed to be preparing to absorb Manchuria, 
 even than she had felt when Eussia, Germany, 
 and France had combined to force her to forgo 
 the fruits of her victory in China in 1895 and 
 Eussia had kept Port Arthur for herself. By 
 1897, then, Eussia was established at Port 
 Arthur, but with a very jealous, alert, and injured 
 neighbor watching her intently across the water 
 — Japan. When, therefore, Eussia ventured still 
 farther south and began to get concessions in the 
 woods and forests of the queer peninsula of 
 Korea, which hangs like a great tongue between 
 Japan and China, Japan felt that she was bound 
 to interfere. For a Eussian occupation of Korea 
 would have shut Japanese influence out of China, 
 and reduced Japan to the position of a string of 
 unimportant islands off the coast of Asia. Japan 
 
 220 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 felt towards Korea, indeed, exactly as we have 
 always felt towards Belgium. She felt herself 
 bound, that is to say, to fight in the interest of her 
 continental vis-a-vis j and thus we arrive at the 
 Eusso-Japanese War of 1904-5, in which Japan 
 enjoyed much the same sort of success as Turkey 
 had enjoyed against Russia at the beginning of 
 the war of 1877 — i.e. Eussia was beaten before 
 she really "got going" Her long line of railway 
 served her wonderfully, but nevertheless she 
 fought at a tremendous disadvantage by reason 
 of her distance from her base. A Japanese naval 
 officer to whom I was once talking told me that 
 the Japanese used often to wonder how ever the 
 Russians managed to deal with their returned 
 empties, for the rail was largely a single one, and 
 it was not till he himself traveled over the rail 
 after the war that he realized what the Eussians 
 had done. He said that there were no returned 
 empties, or rather that much of the rolling-stock 
 was never sent back at all, but was used at the 
 rail-head for huts, sheds, even firewood. Such is 
 the incidental waste of war. 
 
 During the war, England, the ally of Japan, 
 and France, the ally of Eussia, kept the ring, 
 and therefore prevented the war from spreading 
 to Europe. Nevertheless, the effects of the war 
 were very widespread. The Japanese had won 
 largely because of their philosophic contempt for 
 death. Like the Chinese, the Japanese hold their 
 life cheap, and are willing to lay it down at the 
 
 221 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 command of their Emperor-Pope, "ancestored of 
 the gods," and himself God Incarnate, the 
 Mikado. Nor are the Russians any the less ready 
 to lay down their lives for the Little Father in a 
 cause which stirs them, but, as I heard Professor 
 Vinogradoff say at Sheffield recently, the Rus- 
 sians did not believe in war, and public support 
 of it was not strong enough to overcome the 
 drawbacks of bureaucratic inefficiency. It was, 
 moreover, a war for seaports. When, therefore, 
 the Russian fleet was destroyed and Port Arthur 
 taken, Russia could gain nothing by going on 
 with the fight. Once more, Russia was repulsed 
 from the warm water. 
 
 But the effect of the war went farther even 
 than that. We felt the effect in India, where the 
 Oriental agitator was encouraged by the defeat 
 of a great European Power by a small Eastern 
 Empire. And of course Russia felt the effect 
 even more severely than we did. 
 
 It is remarkable how war has modified the 
 course of internal development in Russia. The 
 Crimea ultimately gave freedom to the serfs, and 
 the Japanese War gave Russia the beginnings of 
 a Constitution — the Duma — ^but not until a great 
 revolutionary movement had first worked itself 
 uot, a movement which was stormy enough to 
 drive the Czar for safety on to his yacht, and 
 which reached its climax in the killing of 
 Father Gapon. I came back from Russia in 1912 
 with English managers of Russian factories, who 
 
 222 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 told me some grim tales of the period of internal 
 trouble which succeeded the war. 
 
 Having failed in her Par East project, Eussia 
 turned once more to the question of an outlet. At 
 an earlier date she seemed to have thought that a 
 port on the Persian Gulf might suit her purpose 
 and there were rumors that she might try to make 
 of Koweit a second Port Arthur. But Lord 
 Curzon, at the time Viceroy of India, undertook 
 a viceregal voyage in the Persian Gulf, and thus 
 advertised the fact of England's predominant 
 interest in those waters. 
 
 So there for the moment the matter rests. In 
 1907 England and Eussia squared their differ 
 ences, and Eussia established a controlling in- 
 fluence in northern Persia, while we looked more 
 particularly over the south. But nothing was 
 said or done about a warm-water port for Eussia 
 and it is quite easy to- imagine that so long as 
 Eussia does not get the outlet she needs she wil 
 never be really settled. Will she now get dowr 
 to Constantinople, I wonder. 
 
 For the time being, however, the question rests 
 and Eussia has formed an alliance with her earliei 
 enemy, Japan. As we also are allied with Japan 
 a sort of informal Triplice has sprung up, and 
 of course the Triple Entente in Europe includes 
 also France : and thus we see how it is that five 
 Powers are linked together against the Germans 
 and also how it is that Japan has seized the oc- 
 casion of the present war to wrest from Germany 
 
 223 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Chreat "War 
 
 the Chinese port she once held. Japan has a 
 long memory, and we cannot wonder that she 
 has taken this opportunity of avenging herself 
 on the Power which had organized the interven- 
 tion that robbed Japan of the fruits of her tri- 
 umph over China in 1895. 
 
 We have thus brought the Russian story up 
 to date. Eussia again turns westward ; she once 
 more faces the problems of her European position 
 now that her hinterland or Siberian ventures 
 have proved, for the time being at least, abortive. 
 
 In dealing with Germany and France I was 
 careful to show, as best I could in so short a 
 space, not only the steps by which they had 
 reached their present position but also the sort 
 of ideas and aims fostered in each ; and now that 
 we have arrived at the end of our slight historical 
 survey of Eussia it is still more important to 
 consider what are the ideas Eussia believes in, 
 what are the objects (other than the merely 
 political objects we have been dealing with) that 
 she keeps in view. 
 
 I said that the Japanese War was responsible 
 for a great deal — first for revolution, then for the 
 Duma, and, lastly, perhaps even for the change 
 of heart which has been the most striking feature 
 of the present war. While this war has revealed 
 Germany as a ruthless destroyer, it has shown 
 to the world and to the Eussians themselves that 
 given a great and intelligible cause, Eussia can 
 
 224 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 come together in a way which nobody who re- 
 members the Japanese fiasco — and the Germans 
 with their blinkered minds have remembered it 
 so tenaciously that they seem to have had no 
 room for any other notion about Bussia — could 
 believe to be possible. 
 
 The spirit of Russia has at last managed, it 
 would seem, to infuse itself into the Government; 
 and the Czar has apparently been able to use the 
 new and wonderful unity of his people for free- 
 ing himself and the State, to some extent at least, 
 from the bounds of bureaucracy. German 
 methods, which have been more or less dominant 
 since the days of Catherine the Great, seem to 
 be falling into discredit and Slav methods seem 
 to be taking their place. Thus Peter's city was 
 . renamed Petrograd. The Czar, by offering re- 
 constitution and Home Eule to Poland, has taken 
 only another step in the direction he took when 
 he bade his Minister reintroduce into the Duma 
 a Bill for the restoration of the Polish language 
 after the Bill had been rejected by the ex-bureau- 
 crats who constitute the Council of the Empire. 
 Again the Czar's personal note comes out clearly, 
 I think, also in the following rescript after^ a 
 journey through Russia to his Minister of 
 Finance : — 
 
 "To my profound sorrow I had to contemplate 
 the mournful picture of popular debility, house- 
 hold distress, neglected business — the inevitable 
 consequence of an intemperate life — and oc- 
 
 225 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 casionally the spectacle of popular enterprises 
 deprived at critical moments of pecuniary aid in 
 the form of properly organized and accessible 
 credit. ... I have come to the firm conviction 
 that the duty lies upon me, before God and 
 Bussia, to introduce into the management of the 
 State finances and the economic problems of the 
 country fundamental reforms for the welfare of 
 my beloved people." 
 
 As a result of this pronouncement the State is 
 no longer to make revenue out of the sale of 
 spirits, and the Eussian Army is to avoid the 
 drunkenness of the German. It is not so long 
 since English Chancellors of the Exchequer used 
 to say that if the Treasury were low England 
 could always drink herself solvent — that is to 
 say, send up the revenue from Customs and Ex- 
 cise to, the necessary height. Even to-day we 
 spend £160,000,000 every year on drink, so we 
 see how much in earnest the Czar must have been 
 when he sacrificed a similar revenue in Bussia. 
 
 Lastly, the words of the Czar in his proclama- 
 tion on the Austrian declaration of war strike an 
 unexpectedly fine note — I mean a personal and 
 by no means an official note, for he speaks of 
 Bussia going into the war with the Sword in her 
 hand and the Cross in her heart — quite Eussian, 
 quite on the lines of his people's own thoughts, 
 the very antithesis of the Kaiser's variants on the 
 Ego et Rex mens ("I and the good old God 
 above") theme, in Whose Name Germans are to 
 
 226 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems > 
 
 emulate those evanescent Huns of Attila. Such 
 is the difference between the War Lord of the 
 Germans and the Little Father of Holy Bussia, 
 who, on the three-hundredth anniversary of the 
 accession of his house, made a pious pilgrimage 
 to the relatively humble tombs and centres which 
 are the real origins of the Imperial line. 
 
 Let us turn now from the Czar himself to a 
 great Russian, Paul Vinogradoff, who has been a 
 Professor in Oxford for many years past. Re- 
 cently he was offered a ministerial post in Russia 
 — for Russia never renounces her claims to the 
 services of Russians abroad: a denaturalized 
 Russian is almost an apostate from the national 
 faith — but he declined, since at that time he felt 
 himself more advanced than the other 'members 
 of the Ministry ; but as soon as war broke out he 
 becaine a strong supporter of the Government, 
 although to all intents and purposes he is a polit- 
 ical refugee in our midst. This is how he speaks 
 of his fellow-Russians: — 
 
 "These simple people cling to a belief that there 
 is something else in God's world besides toil and 
 greed; they flock towards the light and find it in 
 the justification of their human craving for peace 
 and mercy. For the Russian peoples have the 
 Christian virtue of patience in suffering; their 
 pity for the poor and oppressed is more than an 
 occasional manifestation of individual feeling — 
 it is deeply rooted in national psychology. Their 
 frame of mind has been scorned as fit for slaves ! 
 
 227 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 It is a case where the learning of philosophers is 
 put to shame by the insight of the sihiple-minded. 
 
 "A book like that of General von Bernhardi 
 would be impossible in Eussia. If anybody were 
 to publish it, it would not only fall flat but would 
 earn its author the reputation of a bloodhound." 
 
 Recently I heard this scholar, who speaks such 
 a different language from that of the holders of 
 so many German professorial chairs, lecture in 
 Sheffield, and I gained from his lecture still 
 further information with regard to the state of 
 Eussia. Eighty per cent, of the 170 millions of 
 Eussians are, he said, peasants; hence the fine 
 material of the Eussian Army as noticed by Sir 
 Ian Hamilton, who was with the Japanese Head- 
 quarter Staff in 1905. 
 
 The Cossacks are yeoman farmers, holding 
 their land on a feudal tenure; but even the 
 peasants are smallholders, and thus in a far 
 better position than is our own landless agri- 
 cultural laborer, dependent as he is on his em- 
 ployer's wages for his entire subsistence. Then, 
 again, each Eussian peasant community enjoys 
 such an amount of local self-government that it 
 might be said that every village in Eussia enjoys 
 home rule, whereas we have seen that in Ger- 
 many only the great towns enjoy it, and in Eng- 
 land, as we well know, nobody enjoys it. 
 
 Thus when we hear of England as the land of 
 liberty and Eussia as the land of oppression we 
 have to ask: In what sense are these terms used? 
 
 228 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 I 
 
 Who enjoys most opportunities of getting his 
 own way — the Englishman with a vote he has a 
 chance of using in a vague and complicated 
 general election once every five years or so, but 
 who is bound hand and foot by ground-landlords, 
 leases, and a hundred and one other shackles, or 
 the Bussian, who is largely his own master on 
 his own land, co-operates freely and extensively 
 with his fellow peasant-proprietors in communal 
 and farming enterprises, and may even have a 
 vote for a Duma representative — if he wishes to 
 use it? It is thus quite arguable that Eussia 
 with her self-governing village communities is the 
 most free country in Europe in all essentials. 
 Indeed, while in these respects Eussia enjoys all 
 the healthy freedom of the mediaevaj manor, she 
 has also managed to secure many of the benefits 
 of an industrial system without suffering from 
 the evils of Industrialism to anything like the 
 same extent as that to which England is still 
 suffering, and from which Germany escaped only 
 by giving thought to every step she took. 
 
 M. Vinogradoff was also hopeful as to the 
 future of the Central Government. By a joint 
 effort of the Ministry of Justice and the Univer- 
 sities, the Law Courts were reformed in the 
 "glorious 'Sixties," and he sees no reason why the 
 Bureaucracy should not be similarly reformed — 
 and with the Bureaucracy also the Police organ- 
 ization, which often works unfairly in rural dis- 
 tricts. He sees also in the giving of honors to 
 
 229 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 Jewish soldiers of distinguished service a pros 
 pect of full citizenship for Jews in Russia. 
 
 Leaving now the words of the Czar and the 
 scholar, let me give the experiences of a humble 
 traveler. The first contact I had with Russia was 
 distinctly beaureaucratic. I, with all the others 
 who had just reached the frontier, had to stand 
 wa,iting by my baggage while my passport was 
 examined ; and at St. Petersburg, again, the same 
 passport was carried off to the police by the 
 porter of the Evangelical hospice in which I 
 stayed. But once these formalities were past, 
 I found myself free to go where I would. I have 
 already mentioned some of my wanderings. Now 
 I propose to describe those only which have a 
 bearing on the character of the Russians. The 
 streets are of course full of instruction. One 
 realizes in them how different the Russian of- 
 ficer is from the German and the Russian parish 
 priest from the Roman Catholic. Both officers 
 and priests are to be seen out shopping with their 
 wives, the officers in uniform and often carrying 
 parcels, the priests in wide, long-sleeved robes 
 of black, dark blue, or dark purple and hair as 
 long as their wives'. The churches, too, with 
 their wonderful unaccompanied singing — a great 
 Tc Deum on the Czarevitch's birthday in the 
 Kazan Cathedral, for example — their ikons, their 
 devout crowds; the droshky-drivers, with their 
 Oriental habit of bargaining; the high prices 
 everywhere (the rouble of over two shillings goes 
 
 330 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 about as far as a shilling in England) ; the way 
 one can get in, if properly guided, to galleries 
 and museums which are closed for cleaning (I 
 shall never forget how the workmen and attend- 
 ants in the Hermitage Gallery handled the mas- 
 terpieces, standing two or three deep on the floor 
 while the walls were being cleaned ; if we wished 
 to see a picture which stood behind some others 
 they moved those which were in the way almost 
 as if they had been prints in a portfolio) ; the 
 effect of perpetual sunlight produced by the 
 light-blue glass in the Nicholas II Memorial 
 Cathedral; the bells and the sunsets; the vast 
 barges filled with logs; the gilded spire of the 
 Admiralty building and of the Peter-Paul For- 
 tress church opposite it on the other bank of the 
 Neva; the perfectly English crowd of boys and 
 girls ogling each other in the Embankment Gar- 
 dens — ^all had their significance to the visitor 
 who came across them for the first time. 
 
 The places of amusement were still more full 
 of interest to me. From the fashionable open-air 
 orchestra promenade, supper-room suburb of 
 Petropavlovsk, where the crowd made the band 
 play Tchaikovsky instead of Wagner at the out- 
 break of the war, to the People's Palace at the 
 back of that harmless old Bastile, the Peter-Paul 
 Fortress, I wandered, continually learning. The 
 People's Palace was a wonderful place. I paid, 
 I think, about sixpence — ^the admission ticket 
 bore a tax for the poor — and that amount made 
 
 231 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 me free of the whole place. I could walk round 
 the open-air orchestra or go into the theatre 
 where Russian opera was being performed. Per- 
 haps the biggest surpirise I ever had in my life 
 was when I saw opera-glasses lying about loose 
 in the racks behind the seats in this theatre for 
 the use of the audience. In some theatres in 
 England managers tried a sixpence-in-the-slofc 
 opera-glass arrangement for a time, but I think 
 it has been discontinued, possibly because the 
 leakage in glasses was greater than the flow of 
 sixpences. 
 
 To a Russian, however, national opera is a 
 sort of religion, and it would be almost sacrilege 
 to carry off one of the vessels or instruments of 
 the service. 
 
 But my most illuminating experience was when 
 I saw the Czar. He had arranged to review the 
 Cadets — a sort of Boy Scouts body, which goes 
 back, I believe, to the days of Peter the Great — 
 and he came by water from Peterhof. The 
 bridges were closed while he passed and the river 
 kept clear. The crowd near thfe review ground 
 was so great that although the policeman coolly 
 took us out and placed us in front of people 
 already in position (I felt terribly apologetic, 
 but the people whose view we shut out seemed 
 to take it as a matter of course), yet we saw 
 practically nothing. So we decided to go down 
 to the river and see the Czar return. Of course 
 the embankment for some hundred yards on 
 
 oqo 
 
The Sla/vs and Their Problems 
 
 either side of the landing-stage was closed ; neyer- 
 theless a sprinkling of people, chiefly women and 
 children, were allowed along the pavement to 
 prevent the area from looking bare, and appar- 
 ently because we were foreigners and looked 
 harmless enough, we were allowed to join this 
 sprinkling. There were of course plenty of 
 soldiers and police, many of them in plain 
 clothes, but so long as we did not stand with our 
 toes overhanging the curbstone they said nothing. 
 Every now and then, however, a spectator would 
 draw back an inch or two at some oflScial's re- 
 quest. While we waited, a tug, with a barge in 
 tow, came under the bridge, hooting loudly. Im- 
 mediately a couple of police boats put off to order 
 her back. In explaining to my companion what 
 was going on, I happened to point once or twice ; 
 wereupon a workman (in appearance) came up 
 and said something to me — what, I knew not. 
 My companion looked a trifle serious, and a by- 
 stander said that I had been told not to point. 
 I laughed, whereupon the disguised policemen 
 round about, and the man who had spoken to me, 
 laughed also. I was relieved at that, for if you 
 laugh at a policeman in Germany you only make 
 matters worse. Then, turning to my companion, 
 I said I would put my hands in my pockets for 
 fear I should unintentionally be making mofe 
 signals, for such the police evidently took my 
 pointing to be, but my companion said I had 
 better not, because once the police had noticed 
 
 S33 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 me they might think I had bombs in my pockets. 
 So, like an awkward actor or a boy reciting a 
 poem, I did not for once know what to do with 
 my hands. 
 
 Soon, after this the space filled up with naval 
 officers in white summer uniforms, and the Czar 
 came along. I had expected that he would have 
 driven up to the landing-stage and just passed- 
 quickly into the boat; but instead of that, he 
 strolled leisurely out through the gates of, I 
 think, the Marble Palace, with four Cossack of- 
 ficers before him, his son by his side and two of 
 his daughters immediately behind him, then a 
 group of secretaries and officials. Now I had 
 thought that after all the precautions the police 
 had taken nobody would have had the slightest 
 chance of getting near the Czar. What was my 
 surprise, therefore, to see a woman and a girl of 
 about fourteen dart off the pavement some six 
 yards from me and run quickly up to the Czar, 
 kneel down, and hand him a couple of notes. He 
 took them quietly and gently, handed them to an 
 official, and passed on. 
 
 The police made a rush — the presence of the 
 Czar seemed to have hypnotized them: that is 
 the only way in which I can account for their 
 letting the two petitioners through. Now, how- 
 ever, to make up for their slackness, several of 
 them took hold of the couple, and — I was watch- 
 ing closely all the time — simply led them back 
 without any signs of violence or anger to the 
 
 234 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 pavement. The women were, of course, agitated, 
 and the Czar's daughters looked round more than 
 once at the group they made. But the point that 
 impressed me was the homeliness and the gentle- 
 ness of it all, the Little Father actually among 
 his children. The dropping of butt-ends on toes 
 which came too far forward, rough handling, lack 
 of consideration, seemed almost impossible to 
 imagine in the scene as I remembered it. In- 
 deed, if it had all been arranged for a film pro- 
 ducer it could not have been more pleasant. The 
 film-producer would probably have demanded a 
 good deal inore heightening of the effect in the 
 removal of the petitioners at any rate. 
 
 I was told afterwards that petitions of this 
 description are as a rule for the better educa- 
 tion of the petitioner's children, and that they 
 are almost always granted. The petitioners are 
 taken to the police-station, told that they have 
 been indiscreet, because others might come 
 with bombs instead of petitions, and then let go. 
 Such was Russia as far as I saw it in 1912, the 
 centenary of its triumph over Napoleon. 
 
 Russians paying a visit to England are equally 
 surprised. I well remember a couple asking me 
 where the State Theatre, the State Opera, and 
 the State Orchestra of Sheffield were to be found. 
 One of the most objectionable sights in English 
 towns was, in their opinion, the display of sets 
 of grinning false teeth in the dentists' shops. 
 Decayed teeth are almost unknown in Russia; 
 
 235 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Oreat War 
 
 the Kussians have not reached so far along the 
 path of civilization as the false tooth. 
 
 My Russian friends went to such theatres as 
 we have in ShefBeld, and reported that our play- 
 ers were good, but that our plays were naught. 
 They went to hear the "1812" Symphony played 
 in a music-hall, but came out when attendants 
 behind the scenes fired off revolvers. "They used 
 firearms," they reported. Still more shocked 
 were they when the Parks Committee fired off 
 bombs during an open-air performance of the 
 same symphony, and then put the finishing touch 
 by calling them scenic effects. (And yet we 
 profess to feel horror at atrocities!) 
 
 How, then, are we to sum up the strange peo- 
 ple whose calendar is just fourteen days behind 
 our own, but whose civilization is in many ways 
 in advance of our own ; what lesson can we draw 
 from them? 
 
 Professor Vinogradoff described the Russians 
 as crusaders, and I think that enthusiasm in a 
 great cause, which the term "crusader" implies, 
 is a notable characteristic of the Russians. They 
 are a people of temperament and fervor, where- 
 as their allies, the French, are a people of in- 
 tellect and form, with the courage of their con- 
 victions by way of motive power. If the French- 
 man embodies Reason, the Russian embodies 
 Faith. The alliance is thus an alliance of the 
 intellectual and the spiritual, with tenacity, the 
 British bulldog, on the doorstep, not worried 
 
 §30 
 
The Slavs and Their Problems 
 
 overmuch by ideas, ideals, Art, and all those 
 moulding forces, which, unfortunately, he would 
 rather leave to his Allies. 
 
 The Russian temperament expresses itself in 
 many forms: in religion, in eternal argument, 
 in conspiracy — read Joseph Conrad's "Under 
 Western Eyes" — ^and secret societies, in music, 
 in dancing, in fiction; and the intense emotional 
 and imaginative force of the race, working to- 
 wards expression in these so diverse media, has 
 given to Europe the most wonderful imaginative 
 art and literature of the last thirty years, while 
 as for Eussian music and Russian ballet, they 
 are as much at home to-day and as welcome in 
 London and Paris as they are in their native 
 land. We have seen how readily the Art Theatre 
 at Moscow took up Gordon Craig's work ; we have 
 to admire the thoroughness of its whole year of 
 rehearsal before his "Hamlet" was given to the 
 public. We have but to turn to the works of 
 Dostoieffsky (Laurence Irving's "Unwritten 
 Law" was based on one of his novels, "Crime and 
 Punishment"), Pushkin, Tourgu6nie£f, and Tol- 
 stoy, to see the Eussian great in fiction; to 
 Verestchagin, in painting ; Mendel6eff and Metch- 
 nikofif in science ; Pavlova in dancing ; Tchertkoff 
 in drama ; and Lydia Yavoska, who has recently 
 brought Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" round the 
 provinces, and whose list of acted parts throws 
 that of English actresses quite into the shade, 
 in the art of the actor. 
 
 237 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 And thus when we are faced with the fact of 
 an alliance with a people so vast, so gifted, so 
 spiritual, in many ways so different from our- 
 selves, we are forced to admit that we have much 
 to learn, many prejudices to fight down, and 
 many misconceptions to set right. We find that 
 the Russians -speak of themselves and their future 
 in the same tone of guarded hopefulness as is to 
 be found among the Americans. Both are alike, 
 indeed, in this, that both are citizens of new and 
 rapidly developing States in which growing pains 
 are a healthy sign. In 1913, for instance, Eus- 
 sia's revenue was thirty millions more than it 
 had been in 1912, yet without any increase in 
 taxation. 
 
 This, then, should be England's attitude: a 
 desire to understand as fully as may be the point 
 of view of the Russians : to enter as fully as pos- 
 sible into their hopes and aspirations. And if 
 it seems difficult for us to cast ourselves back 
 into the ages of faith and the days of the cru- 
 saders, with their contempt for death, we must 
 remember that we have lost as well as gained t)y 
 our longer experience and greater development. 
 But perhaps the best thing Russia has to teach 
 us is the truth of that fine French saying — a say- 
 ing which no Brandenburger could accept : "Let 
 me but make the songs of a people, I care not 
 who makes the laws." 
 
 The Russians have preserved right into the 
 Twentieth Century much of the spiritual and 
 
 238 
 
The SloAPS and Their Problems 
 
 social beauty of the age of faith; they are still 
 in many ways mediaeval, and the most absorbing 
 question with respect to them is this : Can they 
 transform the co-operative social ideas of the 
 Middle Ages into effective Twentieth-Century 
 organizations of similar type Can they turn the 
 Christian Syndicalism of the Middle Ages into 
 the Industrial Syndicalism of these latter days 
 without having to repeat all the blind gropings 
 of the period of experimentation : the -S^ineteenth- 
 Century empirical formulae of laisses-favre, in- 
 dividualism, the "dismal science," competitive 
 capitalism, trades unionism, Socialism, and the 
 general strike? If they can short-circuit their 
 evolution by avoiding, or at any rate minimizing, 
 these deviations, they will have done more for 
 themselves and humanity than perhaps they 
 realize, for they will have kept intact the com- 
 munal spirit which we West Europeans with our 
 more roundabout pioneering have lost and are 
 now trying hard to recover. The remarkable 
 power they have shown of self-reform in the 
 matter of the vodka monopoly — which used to 
 bring to the Gdvernment a quarter of its revenue 
 — ^is a bright augury. A people which can peti- 
 tion its ruler to make Prohibition permanent 
 after only a few weeks' experience of its benefits 
 as a purely temporary measure is a people which 
 can go both far and fast, and need not necessarily 
 tread the painful path of experimental failure 
 which has been the lot of its Western neighbors. 
 
 239 
 
PAKT FOUR 
 
 ENGLAND AND 'SEA POWER 
 
 I HAVE now given my final twist to the kaleido- 
 scope, and the familiar elements of the European 
 situation are now in their last grouping : we are 
 to look finally at the war from over the water, 
 from the standpoint of our right little, tight 
 little island. 
 
 And a lucky thing it is for us that our coun- 
 try is an island, although there are obvious draw- 
 backs to our good fortune. The sea protects us 
 from invasion, but it also protects us from the 
 invasion of ideas and of experiences that we 
 ought not to miss. We live on an island, and so 
 we have become insular. Our security is so great 
 that we are apt to take it for granted, and to 
 forget that even in our case also it is true that 
 the strong man armed guards his house only 
 until a stronger than he appears. Our mind is 
 so given up to trade and commerce and material 
 prosperity that we are apt to forget how unstable 
 a basis that affords by itself for national great- 
 ness. 
 
 240 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 And all the pomps of yesterday 
 Are one with Nineveh and lyre — 
 
 Tyre, the great trading city of antiquity which 
 left nothing by which we may remember her save 
 a purple dye and the tradition that once she was 
 very rich. As we shall see presently, we are not 
 from time immemorial a purely trading and 
 manufacturing nation. Even when Napoleon 
 called us a "nation of shopkeepers" we were less 
 given over to money-making than we are to-day, 
 and we were far better prepared to fight for our 
 own cause than we are now, when our belief in 
 the power of money has grown so great that it 
 has made us rely on a hireling or mercenary 
 army, whereas among our continental neighbors 
 — -and rivals — military service is a duty of citi- 
 zenship. Carthage, the daughter of Tyre, fell 
 because of her belief in the power of .the purse 
 to buy fighting men. Now I do not suggest that 
 this fate is likely to overtake us. For, as I have 
 already said, we are still, -in spite of the cor- 
 ruption of four generations of industrialism 
 and laissez-faire, by no means a purely money- 
 grubbing people, and, fortunately, our mercen- 
 aries are men of our own race, who do our fight- 
 ing for other motives than merely the shilling a 
 day we pay them. Yet the Germans, who regard 
 killing as a stern and high State duty and not 
 a matter of wage-earning, excuse themselves for 
 occasional cruelty to English prisoners by call- 
 ing them "mercenary pigs who. get money for 
 
 241 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 their dirty work," and Ulk makes an English 
 soldier ask a French and a Belgian Vhy they fight 
 if they are not paid to do so. But of course the 
 great thing — to our minds — is that we never use 
 the word "mercenary"; we use the word "pro- 
 ■ fessional" instead, and that makes all the dif- 
 ference in the world, and puts everything quite 
 right. What possible objections can any one 
 have to a professional army? All professions 
 are respectable, and thus we avoid a horrid term 
 by burrowing our head ostrich-like into the 
 depths of a new word, and what we no longer 
 see no longer exists. 
 
 The origin of our mercenary system ought, 
 nevertheless, to be understood. Nearly all our 
 fighting has been overseas, and foreign service 
 is a matter of furthering national policy rather 
 than of national defense. Moreover, the Feudal 
 vassals' service of forty days a year was so short 
 as to be useless in foreign war; hence the sub- 
 stitution of Scutage, or shield money, for actual 
 service, and the hiring of soldiers who would 
 fight as long as they were paid with the Scutage 
 of the Feudal tenants. Thus arose the idea of 
 the regular or professional soldier; and to-day 
 the Territorials have to volunteer specially for 
 foreign service, so different is it from home de- 
 fense, whereas abroad the one is simply an ex- 
 tension of the other — the Germans kept off a 
 French invasion by holding a line in France it- 
 self, for example. 
 
 242 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 The Ironsides of Cromwell — religious enthu- 
 siasts to a man though they were — ^were never- 
 theless hired professional soldiers ; and our pres- 
 ent Army is the direct descendant of Cromwell's 
 troops: the Coldstreams were originally one of 
 Monks's regiments, which was kept together 
 when the rest of the New Model Army was dis- 
 banded. 
 
 Until the outbreak of war recruiting was al- 
 'ways brisk when trade was bad and vice versa. 
 Busy employers disliked the disturbance to work 
 caused by Territorial organizations, and, in 
 short, the drill-sergeant had to go into the labor 
 market to hire fighting men. As a youth I often 
 talked to these sergeants in Trafalgar Square, 
 and learned from them much of the prospects 
 and pleasures of Army life but nothing of my 
 duty to King and country. And that is and must 
 be the normal line of argument : the man-killing 
 trade has its attractions and compensations, as 
 has also the ox-killing trade. If public opinion 
 is beginning to recoil from that terrible mixture 
 of warfare and business which we call Kruppism, 
 it may also begin to feel uneasy about making 
 the sternest duty of the citizen into a paid busi- 
 ness. Kruppism lets down its alien enemy em- 
 ployers, as witness the "disappointment" of 
 Antwerp by the German firm, which will ulti- 
 mately have to choose which master it will really 
 serve: Fatherland or Mammon. All armament 
 firms are in this dilemma; and no State can rely 
 
 243 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 safely on purchase either of men or material for 
 self-protection. 
 
 If Australia and New Zealand, Labor-governed 
 colonies though they are, have turned from 
 military professionalism to a system of universal 
 service, it would be as well for us to investigate 
 their reasons for the change — ^which leaves un- 
 changed their fighting spirit. . 
 
 In that illuminating book "Seems So" it ap- 
 pears that our fishing population have a real 
 feeling of duty towards naval service. Our con- 
 tinental neighbors, burdened as they are by the 
 constant anxieties of their land frontiers and 
 what is brewing beyond them, see us rather lazy, 
 pleasure-loving, not inclined to think too hard, 
 undeveloped in all the higher activities of public 
 life, caring but little for even our own mighty 
 masterpieces of art and literature (whereas 
 English classics pile the German bookstalls — 
 Tauchnitz and all our cheap series) ; they see us 
 unable to appreciate and develop the best that 
 is produced by the exceptional men now among 
 us ; slack, indifferent for the most part to higher 
 interests, but mighty keen on football, fishing, 
 pigeon-flying, films, and reading John Bull, Lon- 
 don Opinion, Chips, Tips, and the Funny 
 "Wonder; and yet, withal, and in spite of our 
 many-sided neglectfulness, so secure, so un- 
 worried, that those hard-working peoples across 
 the North Sea whose national perils keep them 
 jn a state of such terrible all-round efficiency can 
 
 244 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 hardly retain their resentment at the difference 
 of their fate. With a great price they have 
 bought security; but we, lolling at ease right 
 across the German trade routes, are free-born, 
 and, like so many fortunates who enter this 
 world with silver spoons in their jnouths, are 
 apt to be deficient in a sense of reality and to be 
 ignorant and indeed careless of the way in which 
 those who are born to toil and sorrow live. Even 
 the little fact that our drivers keep to the left 
 while all over the Continent drivers keep to the 
 right must seem almost a piece of arrogance to 
 the foreigner. Our ease and security have been 
 assured us by one saving piece of common-sense, 
 and yet of so obvious a nature that I hesitate to 
 take credit even for that. We seized quite early 
 upon the idea that the sea is our real frontier, 
 and we worked out and applied this idea early 
 enough in European history to reap the benefit 
 of our policy in the windfall of outer regions 
 which still remained to be appropriated. This 
 lucky circumstance, combined with the fact that 
 England lies in the centre of the world's land 
 masses and therefore focuses their trade — Lon- 
 don is the fulcrum of the world's money market 
 — ^has given us both our Empire and our tre- 
 mendous prosperity. Yet we must remember that 
 we neither t«wed England into its present lati- 
 tude and longitude nor did we throw stones into 
 the sea till it emerged. No, "Britain at Heaven's 
 command arose from out th* azure main," and 
 
 245 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 was given not only a charter, but a population, 
 who have come, therefore, to regard themselves 
 as God's Englishmen, so well looked after by 
 Providence that there is no need for them to 
 worry about anything whatsoever, since we too 
 are a Chosen People. 
 
 The idea of ruling the waves occurred to us 
 quite early. In the fourteenth century, while 
 the Middle Ages were still flourishing, Edward 
 III married a Flemish or Belgian princess, Phil- 
 ippa of Hainault, and so drew the two countries 
 together — and not even so far back as that for 
 the first time. Nor was the tie a merely dynastic 
 one : it was commercial also. The peace enjoyed 
 by insular England — a kingdom already firmly 
 united under one King — ^was so profound that 
 the sheep, most helpless of animals in war-time, 
 flourished here, and we exported raw wool as 
 Australia does to-day. And we exported it to 
 the West Riding of the Middle Ages, which 
 happened to be Belgium. Now the currency 
 system of those days was very defective, and so, 
 to minimize disputes and facilitate trade, Ed- 
 ward III had the rose-noble struck for circula- 
 tion in both countries, since, besides being King 
 of England, he was also Marquis of Antwerp. 
 On one side of this coin we see the King bearing 
 the arms of England on his shield and standing 
 in a ship. So, according to the rose-noble of 
 about 1340, England was already ruling the 
 waves. 
 
 246 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 England's interest in Belgium was so keen in 
 those days — Belgium bought up her wool — that 
 she went to war on her behalf. France was 
 threatening to attack Flanders, but an attack 
 would have interrupted Flemish weaving, and 
 so stopped our wool market; hence the Hundred 
 Years War, the glories of Cr^cy and Poictiers, 
 Agincourt and Troyes. The French King was 
 quite justified in calling Edward III the Wool 
 Merchant, and to-day the most dignified seat in 
 England after the thrones at Westminster and 
 Canterbury is the Lord Chancellor's Woolsack 
 in the House of Lords. Edward Ill's claim to 
 the French Crown was merely a pretext to satisfy 
 the scruples of the Flemings. They objected to 
 fighting against the King of France. "Then I'll 
 claim the French throne," said Edward III in 
 effect, "so that in fighting for me you'll be fight- 
 ing for the King of France and against a 
 usurper." 
 
 It was by the expulsion of the English from 
 France in the middle of the fifteenth century 
 (just about the date of the fall of Constanti- 
 nople to the Turks) that, as we have seen, a 
 really united France arose — the creation of the 
 miraculous Joan of Arc. And during the whole 
 of the dark period which represents our punish- 
 ment for Henry V's wicked war of aggression, 
 his cynical, short-sighted renewal of the Hundred 
 Years War to switch his subjects' interest from 
 home difficulties to foreign glories, and to stick 
 
 247 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Qreat War 
 
 his Bhakj house on the throne with the Wood 
 of the French — during the whole of the period 
 succeeding his short success of Agincourt and 
 the Troyes Treaty, the period, namely, of the 
 Wars of the Eoses, fought in the crashing dawn 
 of the Middle Ages and the dawning light of the 
 Renaissance, England's connection with Bel- 
 gium, Flanders, Burgundy — all three are one — 
 was continued, John of Gaunt — "time-honored 
 Lancaster," as Shakespeare' called him^ — ^was 
 really John of Ghent, and was born in Ghent, 
 while Margaret of York, the sister of Edward 
 IV, Eichard III, and "false, fleeting, perjur'd 
 Clarence," and aunt to the princes murdered in 
 the Tower, married our old friend Charles the 
 Bold, Duke of Burgundy. And so we could con- 
 tinue, did time permit. But we must draw on 
 our seven-league boots and take a stride across 
 the centuries until we come to Good Queen Bess. 
 Of course Elizabeth's reign to most people 
 means the Armada. Now what were the facts 
 about the Armada? Not Drake and his bowls, 
 fine story though that is, and specially useful in 
 these' days when people are allowing the war to 
 make an altogether excessive disturbance of their 
 normal interests and activities. No, the facts are 
 these : The Armada sailed for a week up-Channel 
 with our volunteer Navy, stinted of ammunition 
 and supplies, doing its best and cutting out 
 stragglers now and then, but quite unable to 
 check the stately passage of its foe. The Armada 
 
 248 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 carried out its programme, anchored off Belgian 
 shores, and prepared to take on board Parma's 
 Spanish Army, now finished with its fighting in 
 the Netherlands. There was no means in Eng- 
 land's possession of preventing this vast array 
 from carrying out its scheme to the letter, sailing, 
 that is to say, up the gaping estuary of the 
 Thames (always the weak point in our national 
 defence), landing Parma's army near London, 
 taking the capital, and establishing forthwith the 
 Inquisition and all "the devildoms of Spain." 
 The danger came to us from the shores opposite 
 our yawning Thames. Into that gaping orifice 
 the Spaniards were going to drop a bitter pill 
 indeed, and we had no means of either shutting 
 our mouth or keeping off the Spaniards. So how 
 did we save ourselves? By a mere ruse and the 
 best luck in the world. We could not cripple 
 the Spaniards, but we did manage to frighten 
 them. Our eight fire-hulks, drifting at night 
 before a freshening breeze, all ablaze, did what 
 Howard of Effingham and all the sea-dogs of 
 Elizabeth had been unable to do during the whole 
 of the previous week : they managed to break the 
 Armada. But not by strength — by panic alone, 
 The sudden blaze and the fear of those drifting 
 furnaces unnerved the Spaniards; they weighed 
 anchor, cut jcable, and drifted. "Then God blew 
 upon them, and they were scattered," as Eliza- 
 beth's commemoration medal has it. And so 
 England was saved : but let us not imagine that 
 
 249 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 England was therefore either bold or strong. 
 Elizabeth was throughout her reign anxious to 
 keep in with Spain. Drake, Ealeigh, and the rest 
 went on their piratical raids at their own risk; 
 the help Elizabeth gave to the Netherlands 
 against the Spaniards was as secret as she could 
 make it. Sir Philip Sidney, Zutphen, the singe- 
 ing of the Spanish King's beard, the defeat of 
 the Armada itself, though brilliant features in 
 history written after the event, must have been 
 spoken of under the national breath almost with 
 fear and trembling at the time of their occurrence. 
 Even the triumph over the Armada must have 
 come to the English with a shock of surprised 
 relief. 
 
 And James I was worse than Elizabeth. When 
 Ealeigh came back after an unsuccessful attack 
 on Spanish El Dorado, James executed him to 
 please the Spaniards. In his son's day England's 
 position on the seas was still more humiliating, 
 and the unfortunate business of Ship-money was 
 a real and honest attempt on Charles I's part to 
 make England safe at sea. Bead the story of 
 Lord Wimbledon's expedition to Cadiz. Think 
 of the Algerine pirates — the ancestors of the 
 French' Turcos who are fighting so fiercely in the 
 present war — ^ravaging the coasts of England and 
 carrying off stout English peasants as slaves to 
 Algiers. Yet such was' the case, and so many 
 were "the victims that prayers were being con- 
 tinually offered up for their deliverance and col- 
 
 250 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 lections taken for their ransom. Yet even in 
 these depths of naval impotence the Stuarts 
 claimed that foreign ships meeting ours in the 
 Channel should lower their main sail so as not 
 to blanket our craft. 
 
 But this hollow claim gave place to something 
 more substantial when Cromwell found himself 
 at the head of affairs. Though tried almost be- 
 yond human endurance by the difficulties of his 
 impossible position as military dictator of Eng- 
 land, he nevertheless laid the first foundations 
 of our Naval power by his Navigation Act. This 
 Act was aimed at tlie Dutch, who held in Crom- 
 well's day the position we hold to-day — ^that, 
 namely, of the world's carriers. The Dutch had 
 developed their sea power early in their struggle 
 with Spain in the fifteen hundreds, since it was 
 only by sea that Spain could reach her Nether- 
 land possessions. Hence the rise of the Beggars 
 as described in Motley's great book, and the sub- 
 sequent sea power of Holland, with her widely 
 extended colonies as a reward — in South Africa, 
 in North America ("Eip Van Winkle" is an 
 American, not a Dutch, story, remember), in 
 South America (Dutch Guiana), in India, in the 
 East Indies, and so on. This little people were 
 great at sea — their Dutch East India Company 
 was the greatest corporation of the time; and in 
 those days we felt towards the Dutch much as 
 the Germans feel in these days towards us. Hence 
 all manner of contemptuous terms in our lan- 
 
 251 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 guage — "Dutch metal," "Dutch courage," 
 "Double Dutch," "You're a Dutchman." 
 
 In matters of commerce the f aiilt of the Dutch 
 Is in giving' too little and asking too much. 
 
 Nowadays, of course, when Holland has ceased 
 to be our rival, and become simply a State with 
 a past and a number of picturesque old towns, 
 our feelings have altered, and "my dear old 
 Dutch" has become a music-hall costermonger's 
 term of endearment. But in the days of Crom- 
 well the Dutch were terrible people. They had 
 succeeded to the sea power of their ancient foes, 
 the Spaniards, and it needed courage in Crom- 
 well to defy them. Yet the challenge was thrown 
 down: the Navigation Act was passed, and the 
 struggle began. 
 
 Now the policy of the Navigation Act was to 
 prevent any goods from entering England unless 
 they came in the ships either of the country pro- 
 ducing the goods or else in English bottoms — i.e. 
 the Dutch carriers were ruled out of all but the 
 direct Dutch-English trade. The immediate ef- 
 fect of this Act was, of course, a considerable 
 scarcity of imported articles, since the usual 
 carriers had been warned off. But this scarcity 
 was intentional and expected ; it was, in fact, the 
 very lever that Cromwell had determined to use 
 for the forcing on of our English fleet, and his 
 policy succeeded. The demand for English ship- 
 ping to replace the Dutch grew so urgent that 
 
 252 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 before long English ships were sailing every sea 
 and the Dutch had been ousted. As, moreover, 
 merchant shipping grew naval power had to be 
 Increased — a relatively easy business in these 
 days, when every ship was armed for self-defence, 
 or, if circumstances warranted, for attack. But 
 the Dutch did not let the Navigation Act pass 
 unchallenged, and we come, therefore, on a series 
 of fights which continue beyond Cromwell's time 
 into the reign of Charles II. "The Admiral's 
 Broom," a fine song, tells a tale of the fights of 
 those days between van Tromp and Blake: how 
 van Tromp hoisted a broom to the masthead of 
 his ship as a sign that he meant to sweep the Eng- 
 lish off the face of the seas; and how Blake re- 
 plied with a whip, which, in the form of a pen- 
 nant or streamer, is still to be found on every 
 King's ship while in commission. 
 
 Cromwell had his reward. He was able at last 
 to challenge the power of Spain — the first Eng- 
 lish ruler to do so, in spite of the defeat of the 
 Armada sixty years earlier. Cromwell's sailors, 
 Penn and Venables, seized the Spanish island of 
 Jamaica, which thus appears as the first on our 
 list of conquered overseas possessions. England's 
 power abroad, by reason of her Navy, was 
 also sufficient to enable Milton, Cromwell's Latin 
 or Foreign Secretary, to intervene with effect in 
 European politics, as. for instance, when Mazarin 
 was persuaded to protect the Protestant Walden- 
 ses or Vaudois of Piedmont, on the border be- 
 
 253 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 tween France and Italy, from their lord, the 
 Duke of Savoy. The sonnet of Milton beginning 
 
 Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
 ' Lie whitening on the Alpine mountains cold, 
 
 is one of the finest dispatches of an English For- 
 eign Secretary that we possess, although it 
 brings the Deity into our affairs in quite Kaiser- 
 like style. 
 
 Many people are apt to contrast the Protector- 
 ate with the Restoration to the disadvantage of 
 Charles JI ; and in many ways the contrast needs 
 no emphasis — it is great enough in itself. 
 
 But as regards sea matters timers is more con- 
 tinuity than one might expect. Charles II was 
 interested in the Navy; and we may easily see 
 in the diary of Pepys, Secretary to the Navy in 
 Charles' day, that there was more conscientious 
 work put into the upkeep of the Navy than one 
 expects to find in the affairs of thei Merry Mon- 
 arch. It is true that the Dutch sailed up the 
 Medway, thus once more emphasizing the weak- 
 ness of our Thames estuary and especially the 
 danger which threatens "when the Netherlands 
 are in the hands o.f a real Power. It is, unfor- 
 tunately, also true that the Dutch ships contained 
 English sailors, who shouted to their former com- 
 panions on board the English vessels, "We used 
 to fight for paper: now we fight for dollars" — 
 words which suggest that if we do rely on mer- 
 cenaries it is just as well to pay them in coin 
 
 254 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 rather tlian in I.O.U.'s (a favorite currency with 
 the Stuarts). Nevertheless, it is easy to give 
 too much importance to this raid — for it was 
 nothing more. On the other hand, it must be 
 borne in mind that the Dutch lost to the English 
 in Charles II's reign the valuable American port 
 of New Amsterdam, which the English renamed 
 New York after the King's brother, James,. Duke 
 of York, at that time an admiral, and later, of 
 course. King James II. Other American colonies 
 were added to our overseas possessions before 
 Charles begged his courtiers to pardon him for 
 being "so unconscionable a time in dying," name- 
 ly, Carolina, so called after Charles, and Penn- 
 sylvania, granted to the Quaker son of the con- 
 queror of Jamaica. 
 
 But the rivalry of Holland ceases with the 
 union of England and Holland under William of 
 Orange — ^the ideal King of Macaulay and the 
 Orange Lodges of Belfast — and a longer-con- 
 tinued rivalry takes its place. This is the rivalry 
 with France. In dealing with Louis XIV I 
 mentioned that the chief reason why William 
 III came to the throne was to get the help of 
 England for the protection of Holland against 
 the great French king, and that if William was 
 spared from dying in the las|; ditch — as a matter 
 of f^ct he died at Hampton Court after a fall 
 from his horse, which had stumbled over a mole- 
 hill (the Jacobites toasted "the little gentleman 
 in the velvet coat" long after) — if William was 
 
 255 
 
Sistorical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 spared that damp death, it was because he mao- 
 aged to secure England's help in driving France 
 out of the Netherlands. 
 
 Thus we see how often already we have fought 
 on the Continent for the sake of keeping powerful 
 States like Spain and France out of the Nether- 
 lands, and how, when Holland herself was power- 
 ful — but not for long — ^we had to fight her also. 
 
 We come now to the great war with France, 
 which begins with William III and ends with 
 Waterloo, a veritable second Hundred Years 
 War, for, although we were not fighting every 
 year of the century and more, yet the wars fol- 
 lowed each other so fast that to all intents and 
 purposes it is a century of fighting, with breath- 
 ing spaces in between the rounds. 
 
 I have suggested by the use of that word 
 "rounds" that this war was in the nature of a 
 prize-fight. And so it was, for two reasons. 
 There was a prize, and there was training for the 
 contest. Leaving the prize to be considered later, 
 let us look now into the nature of England's 
 training. This training wa^ a regular system, 
 and had a name. It was known as the Mercan- 
 tile System; and the idea underlying the whole 
 scheme was the same as that underlying the 
 preparation of a boxer — a careful building-up of 
 the forces by 'the regulation of every side of the 
 life. England, in short, went into training, and 
 a training which had of necessity many of the 
 Spartan features of our athlete's regime. Just 
 
 256 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 as the individual is obliged to give up liis luxu- 
 ries, his cigarettes, his tea, and so forth, so was 
 the nation called upon to sacrifice many of the 
 pleasant things of life. In the words of Dr. 
 Cunningham, England had to sacrifice Plenty for 
 the sake of Power, and she made the sacrifice 
 as willingly as Germany is making it to-day — the 
 only point of difference in this respect between 
 the England and the Germany of to-day being 
 this, that the power England developed in the 
 eighteenth century was so effective and her tri- 
 umph so decisive in consequence that she has 
 been saved from the necessity of keeping herself 
 in training ever since, whereas Germany has 
 never gone out of training, and could not even if 
 she wanted to, since soldering is the foundation 
 of her existence. "Nothing succeeds like success" 
 is in many ways a very misleading proverb ; and 
 the difficulty England is now experiencing in 
 getting herself again into fighting trim after a 
 century of ease is the other side of the proverb — 
 the penalty of success. 
 
 Let us see, then, what the eighteenth century 
 war-training of England consisted in. In the first 
 place it was thorough and all-round, and reminds 
 us somewhat of Germany's reorganization after 
 Napoleon, with less emphasis on the educational 
 and more on the material aspects of national 
 strength. 
 
 The strengthening of the Navy was a chief 
 point of the policy. Already Elizabeth had seen 
 
 257 
 
Historical BaehgrounSis of the Great War 
 
 the necessity of keeping up the supply of the 
 fishermen from whom the fighting sailors are 
 drawn when she issued her political Lent procla- 
 mation — an ordinance which commanded the eat- 
 ing of fish in Lent and on Fridays, not because 
 the eating of fish had any religious significance 
 to Protestant Englishmen, but simply because 
 English fishermen must be kept employed in 
 sufficient numbers to recruit the Nary. Similarly 
 the timber needed for the "Hearts of Oak" was a 
 matter of national concern, and landowners who 
 possessed oak-trees on their estates had to re- 
 member that they held them, as it were, in trust 
 for the nation, that any chopping down of even 
 their own oaks for beams, or panelling, or furni- 
 ture, or even choir-stalls or Yule-logs meant a 
 possible weakening of the English Navy at a later 
 date. CoUingwood, Nelson's fellow-commander, 
 used to go about with a pocketful of acorns and 
 a sharp walking-stick, and wherever he thought 
 he saw a good opportunity for sowing an oak he 
 ran his stick into the soil and dropped an acorn 
 into the hole. Similarly, farmers had to sow a 
 certain breadth of land with the hemp, jute, flax 
 and other crops required for sails and cordage, 
 while warlike substances of foreign origin, like 
 saltpetre, were brought in by favoring commercial 
 treaties. 
 
 But men as well as material were required; 
 and men need not only work — she had provided 
 for that in her Poor Law measures as well as in 
 
 258 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 her Lent ordinance — but also food. And to make 
 sure that food should never fail in England, even 
 in time of war, agriculture was encouraged by 
 every means in the power of the Government, and 
 particularly by the payment of bounties on corn. 
 This part of the Mercantile System, together 
 with the general supervision of the national 
 stamina and physique which it implied, forms, 
 as we have already seen, one of the chief features 
 of modern Germany. 
 
 We have now dealt with Material and Men. A 
 third "M" remains, however, and this is Money. 
 Now war cannot be fought on anything less solid 
 than gold. It has occurred to the Germans to 
 give up their wedding-rings and receive in ex- 
 change iron ones — stamped W II — simply be- 
 cause gold is so precious to a State in time of 
 war, as without it foreign payments become an 
 impossibility. 
 
 To secure a great store of the gold a Govern- 
 ment preparing for war so much believes in, all 
 manner of curious measures were adopted by 
 England. Trade was encouraged, for instance, 
 with those States which wanted what we pro- 
 duced, but which produced articles which we 
 could do without, either through national self- 
 denial or national h.abit, or else because we pro- 
 duced them ourselves. The unfortunate country 
 upon whom we unloaded our goods was thus 
 unable to hand over her own products in return, 
 and had, accordingly, to pay us in hard cash. 
 
 259 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Oreat War 
 
 We got together a great deal of bullion by 
 these and other means, and it was the gold of Pitt 
 and of "perfidious Albion" • which was the out- 
 standing feature of the later years of this great 
 war. 
 
 During the whole of this period the idea of 
 trading with the enemy was so abhorrent to the 
 patriotic English that it affected even their 
 drinking habits: and can patriotism score a 
 higher triumph than that? No English gentle- 
 man would allow champagne, burgundy, or 
 cognac on his dinner-table — unless he were a 
 recognized eccentric like Fox — but felt in honor 
 bound to drink himself and his friends into gout 
 for the benefit of our allies, the Portuguese, 
 against our "natural enemy" — for such they were 
 for the greater part of the century in English 
 eyes — the French. 
 
 Thus England aimed patriotically and self- 
 sacrificingly to make herself strong in war, and 
 soon she began to score points in her contest with 
 France. 
 
 Round 2 was finished by 1713; and England 
 gained by it some valuable trade concessions as 
 well as Gibraltar and several portions of North 
 America. She could send one ship a year to 
 Panama (and that ship served as a port of land- 
 ing-stage through which the cargoes of the many 
 ships which accompanied her were passed and 
 thus covered by the Treaty) and she had a slave 
 monopoly. The wealth she drew from her South 
 
 260 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 American trade was great, and the English grew 
 as keen for more of it as a tiger wtich has tasted 
 blood. Thus we come to the era of frenzied 
 finance, of eighteenth-century company-promot- 
 ing, of 'Change Alley and the South Sea Bubble 
 — the South Sea being, of course, the Spanish 
 Main or South Atlantic. Then, too, there was the 
 curious Jenkins' Ear War. Jenkins was a smug- 
 gler — ^Free Trader he called himself — and his 
 risky business consisted in trading on South 
 American coasts other than that of Panama. 
 When at last the Spaniards caught him they cut 
 off his ear. Promptly Jenkins, who must have 
 had a keen eye for effect, put his ear into a box, 
 saying as he did so that he commended his soul 
 to his God (apparently he feared that more than 
 his ear was going to be cut off) and his cause to 
 his country, and sailed for England. Thereupon 
 Eound 3 began. 
 
 But I do not propose to go through the match 
 round by round. All I need say to finish off this 
 commercial aspect of the war is that the two lead- 
 ing spirits in the struggle, both the elder Pitt 
 (Chatham) and his second son, the younger Pitt, 
 who fought Napoleon, were members of a family 
 whose fortunes had been laid in commerce, and 
 who represented throughout this period the rising 
 commercial interest in England, as opposed to 
 the old territorial Whig oligarchy, which had 
 ruled ever since James II had been driven back 
 again to Louis XIV. Inasmuch as the new party 
 
 261 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 opposed the Whigs they were Tories, but the new 
 Tories were different from the old Jacobite Tories 
 of the '15 and '45. The new were commercial 
 and prepared to fight for commerce. The old 
 were forlorn supporters of a lost cause, pathetic 
 and futile. The spirit of old Governor Pitt, who 
 carried on a risky business along the Indian coast 
 and came to England with the famous Pitt dia- 
 mond hidden in a hollow in his boot-heel, inspired 
 both his descendants and the party they led. 
 From that day trade and commerce have not only 
 been increasingly influential but also increasingly 
 recognized in our Government, whereas in Ger- 
 many the commercial man has still no recognized 
 social or political status, however strong his 
 indirect influence on affairs may be. Germany 
 is still under the equivalent of our eighteenth- 
 century Whig oligarchy. 
 
 In this lengthened struggle with France, Eng- 
 land had a great disadvantage. Whereas France 
 had land frontiers, with all their complications 
 and anxieties, to worry her, England could con- 
 centrate on her one and only problem, the prob- 
 lem which Cromwell had been the first to tackle 
 with effect, the problem of sea power (another 
 instance of England's luck in being insular). 
 Thus it was possible for England to keep France 
 busy in Europe by helping her European enemies, 
 and in this way to lessen the energy she could 
 put into her Navy. Chatham showed real insight 
 when he said that he would win an overseas Em- 
 
 262 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 pire on the battlefields of Europe — ^just as Ger- 
 many hopes to do to-day as a matter of fact. But 
 whatever diversion we might create on the main- 
 land our real business was at sea, England's one 
 safeguard lay, as it still lies, in her Navy ; and in 
 seeking first national security she found some- 
 thing else added unto her, namely, an Empire, 
 and for this reason : — 
 
 To be really safe England must have a sup- 
 premely powerful Navy — a Navy so strong that 
 in time of war it is bound to win. Now when it 
 has beaten hostile fleets, what is the consequence? 
 This : that all the overseas possessions of the de- 
 feated State fall helpleiss prizes to the victor, for 
 the simple reason that the Mother Country, 
 having lost the security of sea transit for her 
 ^ troups, cannot come to their assistance. 
 
 In China there is, I believe, an elaboration of 
 the pastime of kite-flying which illustrates my 
 point. Each kite-flier tries to get a hooked knife 
 in the tail of his kite under the string of his 
 rival's kite, and thus, sooner or later, bring the 
 other kite to the ground. Now this was the game 
 being played right throughout the eighteenth 
 century. Each of the five West European nations 
 England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland 
 — were flying colonies as kites with navy lines 
 stretched across the various oceans, and since it 
 was a matter of life or death for England to be 
 stronger than any of the rest at sea — otherwise 
 she could never have remained England at all — 
 
 263 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 she was bound sooner or later to cut most of the 
 rival connections and pick up the pieces for her- 
 self. The very names of our colonies tell us that ; 
 we have already seen New Amsterdam become 
 New York, but Quebec, Montreal, and Acadie-^ 
 all obviously French — became ours through 
 Wolfe — (it was interesting to hear French- 
 Canadian soldiers talking French in London to 
 the Belgians) ; Tasmania, New Zealand, the 
 Transvaal, Orange Free State — all obviously 
 Dutch in origin — fell to us;-Goa, Trinidad, Natal, 
 and others were obviously Spanish or Portuguese 
 before they became ours — a finely mixed Empire 
 for "that heterogeneous thing an Englishman," 
 as Defoe calls him, to rule. The principles of 
 hydrostatics would seem to apply even to sea 
 power. Once we had established an effective 
 pressure in one area, that pressure was felt with 
 equal force throughout the whole water surface 
 available. Thus at the present time the pressure 
 of our concentration in the North Sea is felt very 
 much beyond the area of the German Ocean — to 
 give it its Teutonic name. 
 
 Particularly clear is the effect of sea-power in 
 the later stages of this century-long struggle, the 
 fight against Napoleon. 
 
 There is little doubt that Napoleon at the out- 
 
 ' set of his career dreamt of nothing less than the 
 
 establishment of the world Empire which France 
 
 had lost in the days before the Revolution. His 
 
 earlier ventures were all out in the Levant, in 
 
 264 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 Syria and in Egypt; one of his earliest victories 
 is the Battle of the Pyramids, for instance, and a 
 Mahommedan servant attended him through his 
 after-career. He also kept in touch with the 
 ludian princes who were giving England trouble 
 in the East. But Nelson's victory of the Nile 
 quite stopped any idea he may have had of estab- 
 lishing an Oriental Empire. Indeed, even when 
 he found himself thus restricted to the compara- 
 tively narrow field of Europe he still found that 
 England blocked his way. She was the centre 
 and paymaster of coalition after coalition. The 
 English paid the foreigner to fight the French; 
 ihey would not fight themselves, except on sea. 
 The gold of Pitt was his great enemy, so he de- 
 termined on the invasion of England. 
 
 If on a clear day as one walks the Leas of 
 Folkestone one looks across at the opposite coast 
 of France, one may be able just to distinguish 
 through glasses the shaft of a column on the cliffs 
 above Boulogne. This is the'column which marks 
 the gathering together of the army of England, 
 an army which was practised in rapid embark- 
 ing and disembarking in flat-bottomed boats, and 
 was intended to march on the capital from the 
 coast of Kent. So confident was Napoleon of 
 success that the medal he struck in anticipation 
 of victory — a giant strangling a Triton — bore 
 these words: "Frappe d,. Londres." All these 
 preparations, made openly within sight of our 
 shores, raised our anger against Napoleon to 
 
 265 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 fever heat, and our anger against "Kaiser Bill" 
 is as nothing, if we may judge by the cartoons 
 and caricatures of the time, compared with our 
 anger against the Corsican ogre. We put up 
 those Cheshire-cheesc/like Martello towers, which 
 can still be seen dotting our south-eastern coast 
 for miles (and which can how be hired for a very 
 small sum from the War Office), and we cut a 
 military canal along Eomney Marsh from Hythe 
 onwards, to stop any party which managed to 
 get across the Channel. But our real defence 
 then lay, as it does to-day, not in tower and ditch, 
 but in our Navy, which in those days was playing 
 the long, weary, watchful game which must ever 
 be the part of a master-fleet in a naval war. Until 
 Napoleon could secure the protection of the 
 French and Spanish Navies, his proposed trip 
 across the Channel was impossible. Once he 
 could secure the command of the Channel, his 
 way across would be as easy as it was for our 
 force to reach Boulogne (!) in August, 1914. 
 But his fleet was shut up in the French and 
 Spanish ports by Nelson's blockading fleets, and 
 when, in obedience to Napoleon's imperative 
 orders, they issued forth, they came out only for 
 defeat and destruction at Trafalgar. 
 
 "At Trafalgar we fought for existence, at 
 Waterloo only for victory," is a saying that con- 
 tains much fa-uth. The final loss of sea-power 
 in 1805 quite destroyed Napoleon's hopes of a 
 world Empire, and even made his position in 
 
 266 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 Europe untenable in the long run, as we shall 
 shortly see. Although the army he had gathered 
 against England gave him the crowning victory 
 of Austerlitz when moved against Austria, and 
 although the dying Pitt said, "Roll up the map 
 of Europe, it won't be wanted these twenty 
 years," nevertheless the year 1805 saw a still 
 vaster map rolled up by England before the eyes 
 of France, and that was the map of the world. 
 
 In 1905 was held the St. Louis Exhibition. 
 Now the real name of that big show was the Cen- 
 tenary of the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, and 
 thus we are carried back again to 1805. And to 
 what purpose? Simply to see Napoleon, unable 
 any longer to get across the Atlantic for the pro- 
 tection of the remaining French possessions along 
 the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis 
 (French names both), selling them to the United 
 States and thus opening to the new Eepublic the 
 door of the West and the way to the Pacific. 
 England had thus cut the French colonial kite- 
 string; and Louisiana fluttered down into the 
 hands, not of England but of her ex-colony the 
 United States of America. 
 
 But sea power can not only hamstring, as it 
 were, rival Empires, it can also put tremendous 
 pressure on areas far beyond the range of the 
 guns of the fleets which are its instruments. 
 
 Foiled in his direct attack on England, Na- 
 poleon conceived the desperate idea of ruining 
 us by a trade boycott. The obvious way to bring 
 
 267 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 low a mere nation of shopkeepers was to exclude 
 their goods from European markets. This Na- 
 poleon' attempted to carry out by issuing a couple 
 of Decrees, one, significantly enough, from con- 
 quered Berlin, the other from conquered Milan. 
 But it is easier to order the exclusion of goods 
 than to enf ore the order ; and the smuggling trade 
 of England, chiefly through Heligoland, which 
 we had taken in 1807, was enormous. 
 
 The Empress always had English stuffs in her 
 wardrobes, and people said that even the French 
 soldiers marched on English leather, so difficult 
 and complex is the subject of contrabrand of war 
 and trade in war-time. War is as likely now as 
 then to stimulate English trade as to injure it. 
 
 But however ineffective Napoleon's decrees 
 may have been, there was no doubt about the 
 effectiveness of England's reply to them. This 
 took the form of Orders in Council, instituting a 
 blockade of European ports, and since England 
 had the supremacy at sea she was able to make 
 this blockade effective. The results soon began 
 to appear. Prices rose, and" the various peoples 
 who had at first looked upon the French as 
 liberators and saviors from their own local 
 tyrannies now began to regard the French in 
 their turn as oppressors and tyrants, Who were 
 raising prices and making life unbearable. Thus 
 is to be seen the beginning of popular movements 
 against the French, and we ourselves helped on 
 more particularly the popular movement in 
 
 268 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 Spain. We sent Wellington out and fought the 
 Peninsular War, which, in spite of the smallness 
 of our numbers and the uncertainty of the sup- 
 port we received from the Spaniards and the 
 Eortuguese, proved in the long run the Achilles' 
 heel of Napoleon's Empire, the back-door as it 
 v/ere to France (as Louis XIV also had seen 
 Spain to be), through* which enemies could creep 
 while she was busy fighting across and along the 
 Khine; the Ireland, or South Africa — ^according 
 to German hopes — of Napoleon's French Empire. 
 
 While England was thus preparing to stab 
 France from behind, Bussia was growing restive 
 under the pressure of the English blockade, and 
 at last opened her ports again to English goods. 
 Nobody was more popular in those days among us 
 in England than the Czar. Such a breach in his 
 plans, such defiance of his authority, was too 
 serious a matter for Napoleon to ignore, and 
 therefore he set about the impossible task of con- 
 quering Bussia. Thus it was English sea power 
 which, by creating, through blockade, a scarcity 
 in Europe that Bussia resented, drove Napoleon 
 to his fate, which brought him up against those 
 terrible fighters, General January and General 
 February, when he had been burned out of Mos- 
 cow and had verst upon verst of snow to tramp 
 through, with a hostile Germany waiting for him 
 over the border at Leipsic. 
 
 We wonder how many English people who have 
 listened to the great Eussian "1812" Symphony 
 
 269 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 have realized why it was called "1812," and what 
 our exact share in it is. How many may haye 
 thought that the numbers refer simply to the 
 metre or rhythm in which it was written, some 
 sort of extended 3 :2 time, namely 18 :12 ! 
 
 But whatever the defects — until the present 
 war began to teach us — in our knowledge of 1812, 
 most of us know; something of 1815, for that is 
 Waterloo year. 
 
 Now Waterloo was fought in Belgium, and 
 thus we find English troops once more on Belgian 
 soil, as they have been at least once a century 
 ever since the days of Queen Eliza]jeth, to go no 
 farther back than that, though of course we easily 
 could. And our reason for our continued in- 
 terest in Belgium is indeed one with the main- 
 tainance of our sea power. Although our- very 
 earliest relations with Belgium were chiefly 
 trading, yet even in Edward Ill's day, as the 
 rose-noble shows us, the idea of sea power had 
 begun to take root in our minds and to link 
 itself with Flanders, for those flat coasts opposite 
 the gaping estuary of the Thames, once they have 
 fallen into the hands of a powerful State, threaten 
 the very heart of our land at its most vulnerable 
 point. And thus again and again have we had to 
 step in and free or help to free those coasts from 
 the powerful foreigner. We have seen Elizabeth 
 send help to the Dutch, who actually flooded their 
 country against Spain under William the Silent ; 
 we have seen the Dutch themselves the powerful 
 
 270 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 enemy whom we had to engage in the days of 
 Cromwell and Charles II ; again we saw William 
 III bring in the power of England to keep the 
 mightiest State of his time, the France of Lauis 
 XIV, out of the Netherlands, even though he had 
 tc die in the last ditch. (King Albert of Belgium 
 has heroically paralleled his determination dur- 
 ing the present war). And now we have seen 
 England joining in the fight against France, led 
 by Napoleon, because the French Eevolution, 
 Napoleon's motive-power, had boiled over into 
 Belgium. Can we wonder, then, that when a new 
 Power threatens Belgium to-day England pur- 
 sues without hesitation her traditional policy? 
 We have always guaranteed the neutrality of 
 Belgium, we have fought for it again and again. 
 
 Belgium has thus been for centuries the cock- 
 pit of Europe. 
 
 But Pitt was just as reluctant to attack France 
 as Mr. Asquith was reluctant to attack Germany. 
 Pitt welcomed the French Eevolution, not so 
 much perhaps because he approved of its prin- 
 ciples — ^he left that to Fox — as because it kept 
 France busy with her own affairs and so left him 
 free to do the one piece of work which most 
 urgently needed doing in England at the time, 
 and that was to organize the Industrial Eevolu- 
 tion. Pitt fully expected, I believe, to devote 
 his energies to internal reform, to guiding the 
 great change which was coming over the land, 
 just as during the past few years the statesmen 
 
 271 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 of the present generation have been engaged in 
 a belated attempt to patch up all the evil which 
 that change has caused. If the French Revolu- 
 tion had not worked its way into the Netherlands 
 and established itself there as the Batavian Ee- 
 public, Cobbett would probably never have had 
 an excuse for calling English manufacturing 
 towns "hell-holes," and foreigners would not now 
 be able to wonder at the poorness of our public 
 life and the wealth of false teeth in our shop- 
 windows. But since the great cauldron of the 
 Revolution could not be kept within the borders 
 of France, there was nothing for it but once 
 more wearily to shoulder the burden of war and 
 bear it through to the bitter end in 1815. 
 
 Having sent Napoleon to our island of St. 
 Helena, Europe could afford to rest and indulge 
 in a certain amout of reaction. England also 
 was now as free as she could ever wish to be to 
 indulge in her favorite pastime of money-making. 
 There would be no need of soldiers or martial 
 qualities for many a long day — if ever again. 
 And so we all turned to our Tom-Tiddler's 
 Ground and picked up gold and silver as fast as 
 ever we could for the rest of the century, and, 
 with a few vague misgivings that there might 
 possibly be other sides to the national life, into 
 the twentieth contury also. I have already 
 shown what a fearful mess England got into 
 during this money-scramble, how all her tra- 
 ditions, all her old life, with its arts and amen- 
 
 272 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 ities, disappeared, hoofed into the mud by the 
 greed of gain which was then rampant, and how 
 we are now emerging from the mud-heap, 
 smirched, degraded, ignorant of our past, indif- 
 ferent through whole areas of our land to the 
 essentials of a civilized life— and yet withal (so 
 blessed have we been by Nature) with our native 
 powers not vitally impaired, and our determina- 
 tion, once it is enlightened, as this war will en- 
 lighten it, sufficiently tenacious to replace us on 
 the great high-road which runs beside the 
 trampled mud-heap, and to carry us along by 
 forced marches till we are abreast of our Allies, 
 the French and the Eussians in the things that 
 really matter: we art now ahead of them in 
 realized wealth, that is all. 
 
 But during this century of money-making Eng- 
 land was by no means as deaf to the sorrows of 
 struggling nationalities abroad as she was to the 
 sorrows of struggling workpeople at home, where 
 her ears were assailed with the wicked nonsense 
 of laissez-faire economics and politics. Again 
 and again during the nineteenth century Eng- 
 land played the part of champion of oppressed 
 peoples. Garibaldi was received with shouts in 
 the streets of London, and indeed Palmerston was 
 so busy recognizing new Governments all over 
 the Continent, practically on his own responsi- 
 bility, that Queen Victoria and her German hus- 
 band, Albert, who may be seen sitting in gold any 
 day in Kensington Gardens, protested, since so 
 
 273 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 many of their friends and relations were losing 
 their crowns during the revolutionary period of 
 1848 with England's connifance and even en- 
 couragement. Gladstone continued this tradi- 
 tion, and Punch represented him once as a terrier 
 looking up very fiercely at the word "Armenia." 
 "Who said atrocities?" was the legend of the 
 cartoon. Once when reading in the Gladstone 
 library at Hawarden I came across a sumptuous 
 edition of Blake that had been presented to Glad- 
 stone by the Armenians he had protected from 
 the Turks, much as Milton had protected the 
 Vaudois from the Duke of Savoy. It is shameful 
 that in 1864 we did not protect Denmark from 
 Prussia as we had undertaken to do in conjunc- 
 tion with France and Russia, and thus keep 
 Prussia out of Schlesw-ig-Holstein and its North 
 Sea coast. The naval race with Germany was 
 our punishment. 
 
 More recently England has been quieter in con- 
 tinental affairs. During the equilibrium of the 
 Double and Triple Alliances, England occupied a 
 position of splendid isolation, to quote Lord 
 Salisbury, a policy which, however, did not save 
 her from the distrust and dislike of the contin- 
 ental Powers, who, fully armed, were watching 
 each other day and night over their borders. 
 
 This policy of keeping ourselves to ourselves 
 proved untenable, however, as the balance on the 
 Continent began to shift. We realized this dur- 
 ing the Boer War, when all Lord Salisbury's 
 
 274 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 efforts were needed to prevent a European co- 
 alition from forming against us. The Kaiser's 
 telegram to Kruger also reminded us forcibly of 
 the world ambitions of Germany, as well as of 
 her envy and hatred of ourselves, and her ever- 
 growing fleet caused us to revise our position. 
 We became the Allies of Japan in 1902, and thus, 
 having freed our Navy of some of its work in the 
 Pacific, we were able to concentrate more forces 
 in home waters. Later we thought even of leaving 
 the Mediterranean for the same purpose, since we 
 had fixed up our diiferences with France, and 
 the French Navy was the strongest in the inland 
 sea. Thus we were slowly, and, I think, reluct- 
 antly, veering away fi-om our position of balancer 
 in Europe to our present position in the Triple 
 Entente; and when we made an agreement with 
 Eussia similar to that we had made with France 
 shortly after Fashoda, the new position was 
 finally adopted. Eussia acknowledged that our 
 warnings as regards Japan showed our real 
 friendliness to her, whereas Germany had egged 
 her on to defeat, if not disaster, and so she came 
 into the Entente, which already included her ally 
 France. Bismarck's wise policy of friendship 
 with Eussia broke down when the present Kaiser 
 failed to renew the "Eeinsurance" treaty; and 
 though the object of this new combination was 
 in no sense to isolate Germany in Europe, as 
 Germany protested continually that it was, yet 
 we have to recognize that the effect of it was to 
 
 275 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 harden and embitter Germany's fighting temper 
 — ^if that were possible — ^by making her feel, 
 rightly or wrongly, that she was shut in not only 
 east and west by Eussia and France, but over- 
 seas by England as well. Nevertheless England 
 had no choice in the matter, since the policy of 
 Germany had fundamentally altered since 1888. 
 The undoubted European leadership which had 
 satisfied Bismarck, and which rested on a good 
 understanding with Russia, was ousted by the 
 Kaiser's dreams of world Empire: "The trident 
 must be in our fist." So direct a challenge to the 
 naval supremacy which is as essential to our 
 safety as is the German Army on its frontiers to 
 the safety of Germany could not be ignored, and 
 England began to watch the German Navy. More- 
 over, any attempt at a European dictatorship, 
 leading, as Napoleon had originally 'intended, to a 
 world dictatorship, must bring England into op- 
 position, and therefore we pledged France, who 
 under her arrangement with us had concentrated 
 her fleet in the Mediterranean, the protection of 
 our Navy against attacks by the German ships 
 upon French Atlantic ports even before that other 
 question, so vital to our own safety, of the Ger- 
 man seizure of Belgium was agitated. We are 
 always against a would-be monopolist, whether he 
 be a Spanish Philip II, a French Louis XIV, a 
 French Napoleon I, or a German William II. 
 
 In the 187b war we were saved from interven- 
 tion by the fact that both Germany and France 
 
 276 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 avoided Belgium altogether, but the iuvasion in 
 August, 1914, was as serious a menace to us as 
 the Russian penetration of Korea was to Japan. 
 The interest of an island State in the continental 
 coast just opposite it is supreme, and unfor- 
 tunately both Germany's history and also the 
 professed intentions of her responsible spokes- 
 men were such as to compel us to resist even the 
 mere passage of her troops through the State 
 whose effective neutrality has been one of the 
 most constant points in our foreign policy for 
 centuries. Even if we had had no Entente with 
 the Power she was moving against, and no in- 
 terest in preventing the establishment of a Euro- 
 pean monopoly of power, still, for the protection 
 of our own coasts and the maintenance of our 
 own first line of defence, sea power, we should 
 have been obliged to fight the moment Germany 
 crossed the Belgian frontier. Antwerp might 
 just as easily prove "a pistol held at the head of 
 England" in the hand of William II as in that 
 of Napoleon. 
 
 Perhaps it is not so clearly realized as it should 
 be why Germany chose this perilous path — a path 
 which was bound to cost her dear and is costing 
 her much dearer than she expected. Since 1870 
 the French fortresses along the German frontier 
 between Luxemburg and Switzerland have been 
 so strengthened that the breaking of an army 
 through them would be a very lengthy and ter- 
 rible business. Eather than attempt it, Germany 
 
 277 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 preferred to get round one end if possible. Hence, 
 it may be the Kaiser's recent visit to Switzerland, 
 which is, of course, partly German in popula- 
 tion ; hence, certainly, the attack on Belgium in 
 August, 1914. Our Berlin Ambassador's report, 
 of August 8, 1914, in the Government's Penny 
 Blue Book, page 78, puts the matter quite clearly. 
 England was therefore obliged to follow her tra- 
 ditional line. Eejecting the clumsy attempt of 
 Germany to bribe her first to desert France, then 
 to allow the penetration of Belgium, she neces- 
 sarily incurred the renewed hatred of Germany 
 for having disturbed German plans and having 
 refused to wait her turn at the chopping-block 
 whereon the Teuton was to dismember all his 
 enemies : "Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed !" as he 
 says to the Strasburg goose before he takes out 
 her liver for pdte de foie gras. It was evidently 
 "time for us to go" once more to the relief of 
 Belgium, as we had done so often before at about 
 the turn of the century. 
 
 When I had finished the facts about Germany, 
 France, and Eussia, T indulged in a little general- 
 izing — ^perhaps even moralizing. Now, if I fol- 
 low the same line where England is concerned, 
 what can I say? Little, unfortunately, about our 
 great belief in thought or love of art, little about 
 our popular appreciation of our own best work, 
 and what little there is to be said had perhaps 
 better come last of all. But there are certain 
 
 278 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 practical and material consequences of sea power 
 which stand out so clearly as to be unavoidable. 
 
 In the first place, sea power means freedom 
 from invasion. We are the only combatant who 
 has been spared the horrors of an oncoming 
 army, we and our Eastern counterpart, the 
 Japanese. Our only hint of an invasion was in 
 the darkening of London. And that was pure 
 gain. For the first time in my life I saw the stars 
 in Fleet Street; London, as one walked about it 
 at night, was a city of mystery and a strange 
 beauty that made it almost unrecognizable. One 
 could again recapture the beauty of the Thames 
 shot-towers that so appealed to the French im- 
 pressionist, because they no longer cheered up 
 the home-going workers on the trams with 
 thoughts of tea and whisky. The Processional 
 Avenue along the Mall was, for the first time a 
 tribute to Eoyalty, and not to the more brilliant 
 glories of Virox or whatever it is at the other 
 end. But whether the Londoner preferred all 
 this to the glare of Piccadilly Circus is another 
 matter. 
 
 Again, sea power means business as usual. 
 Our food comes to us uninterruptedly over the 
 sea at the rate of £500 a minute, and sells at 
 ordinary rates. We alone among the fighters are 
 pursuing our normal course, and pursuing it so 
 steadily that the war is apt to become to us 
 nothing more than mufflled boomings across the 
 water and staring headlines in the papers. But 
 
 279 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 so long as it does not blind us to the realities of 
 the war, this immunity is valuable. Mr. Lloyd 
 George said that our enemies could find the first 
 hundred millions as easily as we — ^but not the 
 last; and that because, I suppose, we are enjoy- 
 ing much, probably most, of our normal trade 
 income, whereas the continental combatants are 
 fighting upon accumulations; resources which 
 their vast armies are drinking up at an unheard- 
 of rate per second. But we must keep ourselves 
 from regarding finance as a substitute for men ; 
 we must avoid the false analogy which leads 
 some people to speak of our bills of exchange as 
 a sort of artillery outranging that of the other 
 side, and the "sinews of war" as the equivalent 
 of soldiers. 
 
 Again, behind the shield of our Navy, we can 
 develop increasing military forces, whereas the 
 continental Powers are compelled to put their 
 whole strength into the field at once. The result 
 is that while at the beginning of the war the 
 British were only a tough knot in a long French 
 line, yet as time goes on the size of the British 
 Army will increase much more rapidly than will 
 that of any other Power, and therefore, as the 
 war proceeds, our influence will, increase rela- 
 tively, and the increase will have taken place 
 without that terrible crippling of industry which 
 occurs when the whole manhood of a country 
 is called from its work and put into the field, 
 and which forces conscript countries to pay for 
 
 280 
 
England and 8ea Power 
 
 their imports with gold and not exports. We 
 can provide, not only the men but also the sinews 
 of war, in continuous supply at the same time 
 because of our Navy, and we are the only people 
 who can. 
 
 Again, sea power means not only the unevent- 
 ful passage of our whole Expeditionary Force 
 across to France; it means also the bringing up 
 of troops from the ends of the earth — Colonials, 
 Indians, yes, even Cossacks from Archangel, be- 
 cause, whether these particular troops were 
 brought or not, the route was a perfectly pos- 
 sible one so long as our Navy held the seas. 
 
 One other indirect result of our expenditure on 
 the Navy is also interesting. These large sums 
 are really in a sense an endowment of research. 
 So important is it for the Navy to let no chance 
 slip that the authorities often bring through 
 their experimental and non-commercial stages 
 a number of inventions like wireless telegraphy, 
 turbines, and hardened steel, which later prove 
 to be of incalculable value in industry and com- 
 merce, but which might possibly never have 
 reached the commercial stage but for the nurs- 
 ing of our Navy. The aeroplane, with all its 
 possibilities of usefulness, has, nevertheless, been 
 perfected for war. 
 
 All this — and it is a very great deal— is to the 
 good, but it is not all; and our mistake — a mis- 
 take that is costing us and Europe dear — ^has 
 been to imagine that we need not think, as it 
 
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Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 were, behind our Navy. The result is that our 
 Army has always been small j that its move- 
 ments, therefore, have usually been of necessity 
 slow and cautious. We fought Napoleon's 
 troops — not Napoleon himself — ^in Spain. But 
 what are the outstanding features of much of 
 the Peninsular War? A great retreat fought by 
 Sir John Moore to Corunna and a stubborn 
 waiting by Wellington behind the lines of Torres 
 Vedras — the very farthest limit of Portuguese 
 territory — for better times. It becomes clear, 
 then, that sea power cannot finish off any par- 
 ticular work — it is simply pressure. Like the 
 retiarius in the gladatorial contests, its trident 
 cannot deal a death-blow, and another weapon 
 is needed. We have, it is true, such a weapon 
 of fine temper and quality in our standing Army ; 
 but, though terribly sharp, it is not long enough : 
 it is a dirk, and we need a sabre. The knowledge 
 abroad that we had ready the million men whom 
 Lord Kitchener has got together at last would 
 have stopped the very idea of war last July, 
 though even that million would not have been 
 sufficient to keep the Germans out of Belgian 
 soil if they had been determined to enter. 
 
 And thus we are brought face to face with the 
 problem which, despite the warnings of Lord 
 Eoberts, who died in harness in mid-November, 
 we have been blinking at for all these years- — 
 the problem of compulsory military service. 
 
 Some people affect to believe that we alone 
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England and Sea Power 
 
 of all the European States are without a system 
 of national service; but they are quite wrong. 
 The Militia Ballot Act is still on our Statute 
 Book (in 1808-15 all men between 18 and 45, 
 except eldest sons, were called out under it, in 
 spite of the sea power Trafalgar had given us in 
 1805) ; and the right of the State to call English- 
 men to the colors is as untouched and clear as 
 it was in the days of the Fryd, the Feudal Sys- 
 tem, and the Press Gang. 
 
 We have, indeed, seen already that there is no 
 such thing as freedom against the State; all the 
 freedom we enjoy, in spite of Rousseau and the 
 Contrat Social, is the residuum which the State 
 need not take for itself. If, then, compulsory 
 military service is not usual in England, the 
 reason is to be found in the fact that for the time 
 being the State does not feel obliged to insist on 
 its rights in this matter. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is no harm in realizing 
 what some form of compulsion might mean to 
 us. Probably our military needs would never 
 compel us to stop our whole national and indus- 
 trial life, as is the result of French or German 
 mobilization; yet, without shutting down most 
 of the works and factories, a larger number of 
 soldiers might well be forthcoming than is the 
 case at present. 
 
 One of the worst defects of our present indus- 
 trial system is the blind alley — ^the employment 
 which draws boys fresh from school into boys' 
 
 283 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 work for a few years and then, when they are 
 beginning to reach man's estate and ask for a 
 man's wages, discharges them in favor of boys 
 fresh from school. A youth thus discharged is 
 practically shipwrecked at the beginning of his 
 career. Without a trade, he finds himself, when 
 nearly twenty, seeking, often in vain, for some 
 rough, unskilled work to do. Failing again and 
 again, he drops through the ranks of the unem- 
 ployed on to the ever-growing waste-heap of the 
 unemployable. 
 
 We do not propose to discuss the wisdom or 
 the ethics of letting employers grow rich by such 
 a criminal waste of the nation's manhood. It 
 would have been regarded as treason in the days 
 of Chatham and the Mercantile System. But ac- 
 cepting it as a sad fact, what better fate can 
 befall a youth at the end of the blind alley — 
 which a purblind State ought never to have 
 allowed him to enter — than to be picked up by 
 an organization which will give him discipline 
 and traditions, renew and continue his educa- 
 tion, perhaps teach him a trade, and after a few 
 years send him forth again, fresh, not from 
 school but from that rough-and-ready equivalent 
 of a people's University — the Army? It is, of 
 course, largely from the blind alley that the 
 Army already under our existing voluntary 
 system draws its men. The extension of the 
 Army might, then, still further diminish this 
 particular evil. 
 
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England and Sea Power 
 
 But the evil ought to be swept away on its 
 own grounds : to maintain the blind alley as an 
 avenue into the Army is the maddest of logic. 
 If, then, we can Imagine a statesmanship suf- 
 ficiently enlightened and powerful to abolish the 
 blind alley in face of the opposition of all those 
 interests which, like the newspapers and the dis- 
 tributing agencies, flourish on this particular 
 abuse, what would be the position of national 
 service? Stronger than ever. For, in the ab- 
 sence of a stratum of our manhood pressed by 
 want rather than patriotism into the ranks of 
 the Army, and not, therefore, representative of 
 even our average population, our citizens would 
 then have to shoulder their own rifles and no 
 longer play the risky and unworthy part of the 
 mercenary-hiring Carthaginian faced with the 
 martial and patriotic Eoman, who, in spite of 
 earlier defeats, ultimately sowed the site of 
 Carthage with salt. 
 
 They say that one volunteer is worth I forget 
 how many pressed men, but nobody can say that 
 the present war has indicated lack of fighting 
 qualities in conscripts. Of course, a long-service, 
 professional Army like our own, even though 
 its sources of supply in ordinary times are not 
 the highest, seems to have a finish, a slickness 
 about it, a pride in the perfect command of its 
 weapons, which gives it an advantage over the 
 more wholesome forces of the Continent; and 
 undoubtedly our regimental system, with the 
 
 285 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 intense enthusiasm it generates, is an institu- 
 tion of kindred nature, in which we have a very 
 decided pull over the featureless masses of con- 
 tinental infantry. When the Irish Guards 
 achieved their first battle honors they were evid- 
 ently annoyed, it is said, at the congratulations 
 of the older regiments with many battles on 
 their standards (names chiefly French and Eus- 
 sian, be it noted, and none of them German). 
 Still more striking, perhaps, was the effect of 
 the success of our first Territorial battalion to 
 reach the firing line — the London Scottish. 
 
 But all this advantage of regimental pride 
 would be retained under another method of re- 
 cruiting and its advantages still further spread 
 with larger numbers of recruits more representa- 
 tive of English manhood. 
 
 One defect of our existing system has struck 
 me particularly of late, but it is one which I 
 touch on with some degree of apprehension, be- 
 cause I may be so easily misunderstood. It is 
 this: the call of the country appeals more in- 
 stantly to the finer and more imaginative among 
 our young men than it does to that more stock- 
 ish type which forms the bulk of our recruits in 
 ordinary times, and constitutes the real per- 
 sonnel of the British Army. Now it has occurred 
 to me whether this bringing of fire and enthu- 
 siasm in large proportions into our Army is ex- 
 actly what our drill-sergeants and others require 
 to work up into our traditional battalions; but 
 
 286 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 whether this be so or not, I am quite sure of 
 this: that many a youth whose training and 
 talents are of the greatest prospective value to 
 the community is taking a place which would 
 be just as well — ^perhaps even better — filled by 
 some lounger at the street-corner whose imagin- 
 ation has not yet been fired. A universal system 
 would stop this terribly wasteful skimming-off 
 of the sensitives. They would be found in their 
 right proportion, they would not be exempt; but 
 the voluntary system in war-time, when enlist- 
 ing motives are suddenly reversed, practically 
 exempts the very people who would be best in 
 the Army by drawing in through its appeal to 
 the higher motives those who are a very precious 
 sacrifice to the brutality of war — the leaven 
 needed in the peace which follows war to leaven 
 the whole. The War Office has told school- 
 masters in charge of Officers' Training Corps 
 that they are to stay in England, training up 
 the officers of the future. "They also serve who 
 only stay and teach"; and it is significant that 
 Lord Kitchener's brother is a schoolmaster. 
 The German teachers were called up only to- 
 ward the end of October. Perhaps we might even 
 suggest that some who rush into the ranks might 
 be serving their country more faithfully in their 
 accustomed services whose dislocation in war- 
 time might well be fatal. But this is dangerous 
 ground, and a universal system would keep us 
 off it altogether. At present the position is this : 
 
 287 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 An Englishman has the right to choose; but if 
 he decides not to enlist he is faced with a cer- 
 tain amount of odium, and this is unfair and un- 
 satisfactory. Under a voluntary system it is 
 not easy to reject those who unwisely volunteer ; 
 but under universal service each man would 
 serve where he was most needed, not where he 
 was most anxious to be, and would, moreover, be 
 relieved from the ambiguity of the present 
 system. Professor Cramb, whose book on Ger- 
 many reveals his admiration of our enemy's 
 thoroughness, nevertheless says of England: 
 "Even now, in 1913, when I consider England 
 and this vast and complex fabric of Empire 
 which she has slowly reared, its colonies, its 
 dependencies, the cosmic energy which every- 
 where seems to animate the mass in its united 
 life and in its separate states and principalities, 
 all comparison with decaying empires appears 
 an irrelevance or a futility. "yVhatever be Eng- 
 land's fate, it will not be the fate of Venice or 
 Byzantium, and as a proof of the validity of this 
 impression or this conclusion I seem to discern 
 everywhere stirrings as of a new life, to hear the 
 tramp of armies fired by a newer chivalry than 
 that of Cr^cy, and on the horizon to discern the 
 outline of fleets manned by as heroic a resolve 
 as those of Nelson or Rodney." 
 
 And how, then, shall we envisage our own 
 national share of the war over and above the 
 actual fighting? By as careful and thorough a 
 
 288 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 study of the casts as we can make, by the think- 
 ing out of our ideas relative to a settlement, 
 and by such an understanding of our Allies that 
 no amount of German insinuation can disturb 
 our faith in them. We are linked on the one 
 hand with the master-mind and pioneer of Euro- 
 pean civilization — how many of us realize, I 
 wonder, the greatness of Kodin's gift of twenty 
 masterpieces to England — and on the other with 
 the great dreamer and Christian mystic who, in 
 his turn, links Europe with the east. All we 
 can do in such company is humbly to try and 
 understand our brothers-in-arms (no easy busi- 
 ness for our island-cramped wits) and to polish 
 our own powers — naturally considerable — ^into 
 comparative brightness. Opposed to us we have 
 the serried ranks of Germany, which have 
 marched to victory not only on' the battlefield 
 of arms but on many a field of science and art, 
 where we, as a people, have played too often 
 only the part of camp-followers, largely because 
 our prophets were not without honor save in 
 their own native England. Already a change 
 for the better has begun, and unless the war 
 fills us with an immense self-conceit and an in- 
 dolent self-righteousness, the movement of the 
 English heart and mind to a greater appreciation 
 of its own real achievements in the past, and 
 then of those of other peoples, will have been 
 stimulated by our present crisis. But the effort 
 really to throw ofE our numbing indifference must 
 
 289 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 be severe. I happen to live in Sheffield, and any 
 one would think that, since the Powers all come 
 to Sheffield for the guns and the armor which are 
 the instruments of their policy, interest in for- 
 eign politics would be at their keenest in the 
 steel city. But the fact is far otherwise. By a 
 wise dispensation of Providence, the human eye 
 is furnished with a blind spot in the retina 
 where the sensitiveness is so great that otherwise 
 the whole sight might be endangered. So it is 
 with Sheffield. It is the blind spot in the inter- 
 national eye, and perhaps it is as well that the 
 men at work in its gun-yards do not strike when- 
 ever called upon to work on a job for a cus- 
 tomer whose politics they disapprove. 
 
 Nevertheless we must cultivate knowledge and 
 use it as a basis for our judgments. I have more 
 than once suggested a Professor of Foreign 
 Politics as an adjunct to the technical or busi- 
 ness side of the Sheffield University — a sort of 
 weather-cock to show how the wind is blowing 
 abroad and who might be pressed to buy cruisers 
 and guns in view of possibilities in the near 
 future. But I really do feel now that our national 
 ignorance of foreign affairs is a matter too serious 
 to continue any longer, and far too serious to 
 joke about. 
 
 If we are to have our say, to express our views, 
 whether they be those of Mr. Churchill as to 
 settlement on racial lines or whether we favor 
 an extension of democracy in Germany, we must 
 
 290 
 
England and Sea Power 
 
 make inquiries, as we say, and get to know. Only 
 then can we make our convictions, probably not 
 glowing, but rather water-cooled, like our own 
 Maxim guns, known to our immediate rulers and 
 so to the world at large. This is our great duty 
 to ourselves and to humanity : to fight to a finish 
 and then to see that the great, mild principles we 
 have applied to the building up of our own Em- 
 pire receive their full weight in the counsels of 
 Europe when the time comes for a full settle- 
 ment. No partial patching-up must be thought 
 of: that way lies war upon war in an unending 
 vista. 
 
 Professor Marck said in Berlin on October 
 26th (what a part these professors have played 
 in the war!) : "This war is no misunderstanding, 
 no intrigue: it is an eruption of deadly enmity. 
 It must be. The past and the future are at stake. 
 We had to assert ourselves in the world or cease 
 to exist. The world-nation is manifesting itself. 
 It is we [Germany] who are the hero and object 
 of this war; we are also its cause: for we have 
 ceased not to be." 
 
 This is the spirit which made Krupp give a 
 million and a half to the German relief funds as 
 soon as war broke out in anticipation of distress, 
 not in response to it. Krupp alone thus beat 
 even the million Moscow gave to the Bussian 
 Fund. No such figures appear in our Prince of 
 Wales' Fund list. The same spirit stirred the 
 German women to force their jewelry on the 
 
 291 
 
Historical Backgrounds of the Great War 
 
 German Treasury officials. A similar sacrifice 
 is recorded of English women — to release Eichard 
 Coeur de Lion from captivity in the twelfth cen- 
 tury! The number of German volunteers is as 
 great as the whole of our new armies, and that in 
 addition to the conscripts, to each of whom the 
 Crown Prince of Bavaria has given a copy of 
 Jugend's "Hate Song" against England. 
 
 I will conclude with just one verse of this 
 song : — 
 
 Come, let us stand at the judgment place 
 An oath to swear to, face to face, 
 An oath of bronze no wind can shake, 
 An oath for our sons and their sons to take. 
 Come, hear the word, repeat the word. 
 Throughout the Fatherland make it heard. 
 
 And then follows the terrible chorus. 
 
 Of a truth, it is right and necessary to learn 
 from the enemy. Our sea-given privileges carry 
 their responsibilities. 
 
 THE END 
 
 292