As regards myself, I am not what is called a pro-German. The Germans would not respect me, were I at such a time as this, when all thoughts of culture have vanished, not to stand by my people. But also, I am not an anti-German. The war brings us all on to the same plane of savagery. Every London coster can stick his bayonet deeper into the stomach of Richard Strauss than Richard Strauss would care to do to him.
Militarism has just now compelled me to pay a thousand pounds war taxation in order that some "brave little Servian" may be facilitated in cutting your throat or, that a Russian mujik may cleave your skull in twain, although I would gladly pay twice that sum to save your life, or to buy some beautiful picture in Vienna for our National Gallery.
Shaw has always condemned militarism because of the type of mind it engenders in officers and men. But he has never been opposed to preparedness or to the use of force. In the London Daily News of January 1, 1914,—note the date,—he said:
I like courage (like most constitutionally timid civilians) and the active use of strength for the salvation of the world. It is good to have a giant's strength and it is not at all tyrannous to use it like a giant provided you are a decent sort of giant. What on earth is strength for but to be used and will any reasonable man tell me that we are using our strength now to any purpose?
Let us get the value of our money in strength and influence instead of casting every new cannon in an ecstasy of terror and then being afraid to aim it at anybody.
At that time, seven months before the storm burst, he not only anticipated the war, but said that it might be averted,
By politely announcing that war between France and Germany would be so inconvenient to England that the latter country is prepared to pledge herself to defend either country if attacked by the other.
If we are asked how we are to decide which nation is really the aggressor we can reply that we shall take our choice, or when the problem is unsolvable we shall toss up, but that we will take a hand in the war anyhow.
International warfare is an unmitigated nuisance. Have as much character-building civil war as you like, but there must be no sowing of dragon's teeth like the Franco-Prussian War. England can put a stop to such a crime single-handed easily enough if she can keep her knees from knocking together in her present militarist fashion.
Of course Shaw may have been wrong in supposing that an open announcement of Great Britain's determination to enter the war would have deterred Germany, but as we now know from the White Paper this same opinion was held by the governments of both France and Russia. On July 30 the President of France said to the British Ambassador at Paris that
If His Majesty's Government announced that England would come to the aid of France in the event of a conflict between France and Germany as a result of the present differences between Austria and Servia, there would be no war, for Germany would at once modify her attitude.
And on July 25, M. Sazonof, the Russian Foreign Minister, said to the British Ambassador at Petrograd that
He did not believe that Germany really wanted war, but her attitude was decided by ours. If we took our stand firmly with France and Russia, there would be no war. If we failed her now, rivers of blood would flow, and we would in the end be dragged into war.
Shaw now gives the same advice to the United States that he gave to his own country before the war, that is, to increase its armament and not be afraid to use it. In a recent letter to the American Intercollegiate Socialist he said: