"Who made the law that men should die in meadows,
Who spake the word that blood should splash in lanes,
Who gave it forth that gardens should be boneyards,
Who spread the hills with flesh and blood and brains?
Who made the law?"
Seldom, perhaps, does a plain question receive so plain an answer as that coming direct from so qualified an authority as Prince Lichnowsky, former German Ambassador to the Court of St. James, who, in the course of his confessions, which he entitles "My Mission to London," says, simply and quite candidly, "We insisted on war." Herr Harden, too, writing in Die Zukunft in November, 1914, even if a trifle more impetuous, more brutal, is none the less frankly outspoken: "Let us drop," he protests, "our miserable attempts to excuse Germany's action.... Not against our will, nor as a nation taken by surprise, did we hurl ourselves into this gigantic venture. We willed it ... it is Germany that strikes."
And having fixed the blame, the moral responsibility, equally plain-sailing is it to establish the blood-stained guilt; evidence of it fairly "stinks" no matter where one turns to look; from emperor to general, from statesman to author, exudes the credo of Teuton Kultur; no more lurid interpretation of which can perhaps be found than in the words of Herr Hartmann, a native of Berlin, who, after serving as an artillery officer, turned his attention to matters literary, being inter alia a believer in evolutionary progress. "The enemy country," he insists, "should not be spared the devastation, the profound misery engendered by war. The burden should be and remain crushing. Immediately war is declared, terrorism becomes a primary essential absolutely imperative from the military standpoint."
There is, however, all the difference in the world between the transitive and intransitive senses of a verb, and if we take the verb to "terrorise" as an apposite example, the transition from the former sense to the latter, i.e. from terrorising to being terrorised, is apt to be very noticeable, indeed unpleasant. Granted that British and Boche ideas on the particular subject in no way harmonise, the British method ultimately of diffusing an unlimited supply of high explosive over the Boche lines nevertheless had the desired effect of "putting the fear of God" into the right individuals, at the right time, and in the right place. One employs the prefix "ultimately" of necessity, for obviously the diffusion of metal prior to the latter phases of the war was, except upon certain occasions which were few and far between, anything but unlimited; it was, in fact, at one particular period of the war of so limited a nature as to infuse into the mind of the late Lord Kitchener a fear of stalemate on the Western Front, sufficient to impel his acquiescence in that diversion, so ardently advocated by "amateur strategists" but destined to prove nothing but a prodigious and costly failure, to wit the Dardanelles expedition.
Thanks, however, to the staying powers of the workers, to the inflexible will to win by which they were animated throughout, the crushing superiority, early attributable to the enemy, gradually became less and less apparent; in fact, after hanging for a time evenly in the balance, the scales indeed tipped the other way, eventually dipping to such an extent in Entente favour as to become a source, at first of no little astonishment, then of concern, to the German "Imperial Staff of Supermen." General Ludendorff in his memoirs ["My War Memories," 1914-1918, Vols. I. & II., Hutchinson & Co. 39s.] makes no attempt to conceal his surprise, if not indeed his dismay, at the awkward trend of events. "Whereas we had hitherto been able to conduct our great war of defence" (sic), so he writes (cp. page 240, Vol. I.), "by that best means of waging war—the offensive—we were now (by the autumn of 1916) reduced to a policy of pure defence.... The equipment of the Entente armies with war material had been carried out on a scale hitherto unknown"; the boot was plainly on the other leg, for (cp. page 242, Vol. I.) "the Battle of the Somme showed us every day how great was the advantage of the enemy in this respect." Evidently the one and only Ludendorff no longer had any doubt in his own mind as to the "writing on the wall," its lettering was clear, its meaning ominous and unmistakable; from the German point of view things were going from bad to worse; "At the beginning of June (1917)," he continues (cp. pages 428, 429, Vol. II.), "the straightening of this (the Wytschaete) salient really ushered in the great Flanders battle.... The heights of Wytschaete and Messines had been the site of active mine warfare," and ultimately, "The moral effect of the explosions was simply staggering." Again in August of the same year (cp. page 480, Vol. II.), "In spite of all the concrete protection, they (the Germans) seemed more or less powerless under the enormous weight of the enemy's artillery," and "With the opening of the fifth act of the great drama in Flanders on the 22nd October (cp. page 491, Vol. II.) enormous masses of ammunition, such as the human mind had never imagined before the war, were hurled upon the bodies of men who passed a miserable existence scattered about in mud-filled shell-holes. The horror of the shell-hole area of Verdun was surpassed. It was no longer life at all. It was mere unspeakable suffering. And through this world of mud the attackers dragged themselves, slowly, but steadily, and in dense masses.... Rifle and machine-gun jammed with mud. Man fought against man, and only too often the mass was successful." The long and the short of it, in a word, amounted just to this, the Hun had "insisted on war," and now he was "getting it in the neck."
Napoleon is credited with the opinion that "Good infantry is beyond question the soul of an army, but"—and no doubt it is a big "but," as will be seen from the way in which he goes on to qualify his opinion—"but if it has to fight any considerable time against a very superior artillery, it becomes demoralised and is destroyed." In order to determine how completely has been justified this view in the light of modern warfare, one has but to turn again for the space of a brief instant to the memoirs of Ludendorff—Ludendorff who "lived only for the war," whose life had been one of work for his "Country, the Emperor, and the Army,"—the note of bitter chagrin cannot be mistaken. "Against the weight of the enemy's material" (cp. page 542, Vol. II.) "the troops no longer displayed their old stubbornness of defence; they thought with horror of fresh defensive battles."