[496] The general reader who wants some picture in his mind of the recent state of Russia should read Ernest Poole’s The Village. Pre-revolutionary Russia is admirably sketched in Maurice Baring’s Mainsprings of Russia, The Russian People, and A Year in Russia. A small, very illuminating book on the Russian revolution is M. H. Barber’s A British Nurse in Bolshevik Russia.
[497] One very good reason for the provisional retention of the Philippines under American control is the certainty that the “Moros,” the Muhammadan peoples of Palawan, and the southern islands of the main groups would proceed to conquer the “Christian” Filipinos, and that after a welter of civil war and destruction, Japan or some other outside power would be appealed to to intervene.—H. H. J.
[498] An unfriendly critic might denounce the treaty-making power of the United States, and the machinery by which it operates, as complicated and cumbersome, ill adapted to the complex demands of international intercourse, slow in action and uncertain in outcome. The requirement of a two-thirds rather than a majority vote in the Senate he might criticize not unjustly as a dubious excess of caution.... Believe me, the American people are like for many years to accomplish through this means their compacts with mankind. The checks and balances by which it is surrounded, the free and full debate which it allows, are in their eyes virtues rather than defects. They rejoice in the fact that all engagements which affect their destinies must be spread upon the public records, and that there is not, and there never can be, a secret treaty binding them either in law or in morals. Looking back upon a diplomatic history which is not without its chapters of success, they feel that on the whole the scheme the fathers builded has served the children well. With a conservatism in matters of government as great perhaps as that of any people in the world, they will suffer much inconvenience and run the risk of occasional misunderstanding before they make a change.—J. W. Davis (U. S. A. Ambassador to Britain), The Treaty Making Power of the United States. (Oxf. Univ. Brit. Am. Club. Paper No. 1.)
[499] I think his policy was quite clear. He said to Germany, “If you bring on war, you must expect England to support France and Russia.” To France and Russia he said: “If you are unreasonable, do not expect England to support you.” He thus brought pressure to bear on both sides.—G. M.
An illuminating book on the causes of the war is Lord Loreburn’s How the War Came.—H. H. J.
[500] Kautsky’s report on the origin of the war.
[501] For the common soldier’s view of the war there is no better book than Le Feu by Barbusse. An illustrated book of great quaintness, beauty, and veracity is André Hellé’s Le Livre des Heures. No other book recalls so completely the feel and effect of the phases of the war. An admirably written and very wise book is Philip Gibbs’ Realities of War. Some light upon the peculiar difference of the fighting of the Great War from any previous warfare will be found in McCurdy’s War Neuroses and Eder’s book on the same subject.
[502] “What mainly was wrong with our generalship was the system which put the High Command into the hands of a group of men belonging to the old school of war, unable by reason of their age and traditions to get away from rigid methods, and to become elastic in face of new conditions. Our Staff College had been hopelessly inefficient in its system of training, if I am justified in forming such an opinion from specimens produced by it, who had the brains of canaries and the manners of Potsdam. There was also a close corporation among the officers of the Regular Army, so that they took the lion’s share of Staff appointments, thus keeping out brilliant young men of the New Armies, whose brain power, to say the least of it, was on a higher level than that of the Sandhurst standard.” Philip Gibbs, Realities of War.
[503] “The smart society of G.H.Q. was best seen at the Officers’ Club at dinnertime. It was as much like musical comedy as any stage setting of war at the Gaiety. The band played rag-time and light music while the warriors fed, and all these generals and staff officers, with their decorations and Army bands, and polished buttons and crossed swords, were waited upon by little W.A.A.C.s., with the G.H.Q. colours tied up in bows on their hair, and khaki stockings under their short skirts, and fancy aprons. Such a chatter! Such bursts of light-hearted laughter! Such whisperings of secrets, of intrigues, and scandals in high places! Such callous-hearted courage when British soldiers were being blown to bits, gassed, blinded, maimed, and shell-shocked in places that were far, so very far, from G.H.Q.”—Phillip Gibbs, The Realities of War.
[504] But see Roch, Mr. Lloyd George and the War, and Arthur’s Life of Lord Kitchener.