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