CHAPTER VII
A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS
It may be said—up to the very outbreak of war it was said very frequently—that the mere power and opportunity to make an outrageous attack are nothing without the will to do so. And this is true enough. Every barber who holds his client by the nose could cut his throat as easily as shave his chin. Every horse could kick the groom, who rubs him down, into the next world if he chose to do so. What sense, then, could there be in allowing our minds to be disturbed by base suspicions of our enterprising and cultured neighbour? What iota of proof was there that Germany nourished evil thoughts, or was brooding on visions of conquest and rapine?
So ran the argument of almost the whole Liberal press; and a considerable portion of the Unionist press echoed it. Warnings were not heeded. They came only from unofficial quarters, and therefore lacked authority. Only the Government could have spoken with authority; and the main concern of members of the Government, when addressing parliamentary or popular audiences, appeared to be to prove that there was no need for anxiety. They went further in many instances, and denounced those persons who ventured to express a different opinion from this, as either madmen or malefactors. Nevertheless a good deal of proof had already been published to the world—a good deal more was known privately to the British Government—all of which went to show that Germany had both the will and intention to provoke war, if a favourable opportunity for doing so should present itself.
For many years past—in a multitude of books, pamphlets, leading articles, speeches, and university lectures—the Germans had been scolding us, and threatening us with attack at their own chosen moment. When Mr. Churchill stated bluntly, in 1912, that the German fleet was intended as a challenge to the British Empire, he was only repeating, in shorter form and more sober language, the boasts which had been uttered with yearly increasing emphasis and fury, by hundreds of German patriots and professors.
With an engaging candour and in every fount of type, unofficial Germany had made it abundantly clear how she intended to carry her designs into execution—how, first of all, France was to be crushed by a swift and overwhelming attack—how Russia was then to be punished at leisure—how after that, some of the nations of Europe were to be forced into an alliance against the British Empire, and the rest into a neutrality favourable to Germany—how finally the great war, which aimed at making an end of our existence, was to begin. And though, from time to time, there were bland official utterances which disavowed or ignored these outpourings, the outpourings continued all the same. And each year they became more copious, and achieved a readier sale.
Those, however, who were responsible for British policy appear to have given more credit to the assurances of German diplomacy than to this mass of popular incitement. The British nation has always chosen to plume itself upon the fact that the hearts of British statesmen are stronger than their heads; and possibly their amiable credulity, in the present instance, might have been forgiven, had their means of ascertaining truth been confined to the statements of incontinent publicists and responsible statesmen. But there were other proofs available besides words of either sort.
THE FIRST WARNING