Ordeal by Battle

by Frederick Scott Oliver

The objects which Germany sought to gain by the cruelties perpetrated, under orders, by her soldiers in Belgium and Northern France are clear enough. These objects were certainly of considerable value in a military as well as in a political sense. One wonders, however, if even Germany herself now considers them to have been worth the abhorrence and disgust which they have earned for her throughout the civilised world.

In nothing is the sham super-man more easily detected than in the confidence and self-complacency with which he pounces upon the immediate small advantage, regardless of the penalty he will have to pay in the future. By spreading death and devastation broadcast in Belgium the Germans hoped to attain three things, and it is not impossible that they have succeeded in attaining them all. They sought to secure their communications by putting the fear of death, and worse than death, into the hearts of the civil population. They sought to send the countryside fleeing terror-stricken before their advance, choking and cumbering the highways; than which nothing is ever more hampering to the operations of an army in retreat, or more depressing to its spirits. But chiefly they desired to set a ruthless object-lesson before the eyes of Holland, in order to show her the consequences of resistance; so that when it came to her turn to answer a summons to surrender she might have the good sense not to make a fuss. They desired in their dully-calculating, official minds that Holland might never forget the clouds of smoke, from burning villages and homesteads, which the August breezes carried far across her frontiers; the sights of horror, the tales of suffering and ruin which tens of thousands of starved, forlorn, and hurrying fugitives brought with them when they came seeking sanctuary in her territories. But if the Germans gained all this, and even if they gained in addition the loving admiration of the Young Turks, was it worth while to purchase these advantages at such a price? It seems a poor bargain to save your communications, if thereby you lose the good opinion of the whole world.

What is of most interest to ourselves, however, in the long list of miscalculations, is the confidence of Germany that Britain would remain neutral. For a variety of reasons which satisfied the able bureaucrats at Berlin, it was apparently taken for granted by them that we were determined to stand out; and indeed that we were in no position to come in even if we would. We conjecture that the reports of German ambassadors, councillors, consuls, and secret service agents must have been very certain and unanimous in this prediction.

According to the German theory, the British race, at home and abroad, was wholly immersed in gain, and in a kind of pseudo-philanthropy—in making money, and in paying blackmail to the working-classes in order to be allowed to go on making money. Our social legislation and our 'People's Budgets' were regarded in Germany with contempt, as sops and shams, wanting in thoroughness and tainted with hypocrisy.

English politicians, acting upon the advice of obliging financiers, had been engaged during recent years (so grossly was the situation misjudged by our neighbours) in imposing taxation which hit the trader, manufacturer, and country-gentleman as hard as possible; which also hit the working-class hard, though indirectly; but which left holes through which the financiers themselves—by virtue of their international connections and affiliations—could glide easily into comparative immunity.

From these faulty premisses, Germans concluded that Britain was held in leading-strings by certain sentimentalists who wanted vaguely to do good; and that these sentimentalists, again, were helped and guided by certain money-lenders and exploiters, who were all very much in favour of paying ransom out of other people's pockets. A nation which had come to this pass would be ready enough to sacrifice future interests—being blind to them—for the comforts of a present peace.

The Governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions were largely influenced—so it was believed at Berlin—by crooks and cranks of various sorts, by speculators and 'speculatists,'[[2]] many of them of foreign origin or descent—who preached day in and day out the doctrine that war was an anachronism, vieux jeu, even an impossibility in the present situation of the world.

[[2]] 'Speculatists' was a term used by contemporary American writers to describe the eloquent theorists who played so large a part in the French Revolution.

The British Government appeared to treat these materially-minded visionaries with the highest favour. Their advice was constantly sought; they were recipients of the confidences of Ministers; they played the part of Lords Bountiful to the party organisations; they were loaded with titles, if not with honour. Their abhorrence of militarism knew no bounds, and to a large extent it seemed to German, and even to English eyes, as if they carried the Cabinet, the party-machine, and the press along with them.