The World War and What was Behind It; Or, The Story of the Map of Europe

by Louis Paul Bénézet

Now the great question arose as to England. The English statesmen were not blind to the German plan. They saw that Germany intended to crush France first, capturing Paris and dealing the French army such an overwhelming blow that it would take it a long time to recover. Then the German armies were to be rushed back over their marvelous system of government-owned railroads to meet the on-coming German tide of Russians.

The Germans knew that they were well provided with ammunition and all war supplies. They knew that they had invented some wonderful guns which were large enough to batter down the strongest forts in the world. They did not have very much respect for the ability of the Russian generals. They had watched them bungle badly in the Japanese war, ten years before. If once France were brought to her knees, they did not fear Russia. Then after France and Russia had been beaten, there would be plenty of time, later on, to settle with Great Britain.

The English statesmen, as we have said, were aware of this plan. They saw that if they were to fight Germany, this was the ideal time. However, Great Britain, having a government which is more in the hands of the people than even that of republican France, did not have the system of forcing her young men to do military service. Her little army in England was made up entirely of men who enlisted in it because they wished to, and because they received fair pay. If England were to enter a great war with Germany, there must be some very good reason for her doing so. Otherwise, her people, who really did not hate the Germans, would never enlist to fight against them. The question was, would anything happen to make the English people feel that they were justified in entering the war on the side of France and Russia.

You will remember that England, France, and Prussia had promised each other to protect Belgium from war. Even in the war of 1870, France and Prussia had carefully avoided bringing their troops upon Belgian soil. Now, however, with the German army invading Belgium, the English statesmen had to decide their course. As heads of one of the nations to guarantee Belgium’s freedom, they called on Germany to explain this unprovoked invasion. The Germans made no answer. They were busily attacking the city of Liége. Great Britain gave Germany twenty-four hours in which to withdraw her troops. At the end of this time, with Germany paying no attention still, England solemnly declared war and took her stand alongside of Russia and France.

The Germans were furious. They had no bitter feeling against the French. They realized that France was obliged, by the terms of her alliance, to stand by Russia, but they had confidently counted on keeping England out of the war. In fact, the German ambassador to England had assured the German emperor that England had so many troubles, with her uprising in Ireland and threatened rebellions in India and South Africa that she would never dare fight at this time.

The English people, on the other hand, were now thoroughly aroused. If there is one thing that an Englishman prides himself on, it is keeping his word. The word of the English had been given, through their government, to Belgium that this little country, if it should resist invasion, would be protected, and this word they thought must be kept at all hazards. It made no difference that, aside from her great navy, England was utterly unprepared for the war. Like the decision which Belgium had had to make the day before, this was a crucial step for the British to take, but to their everlasting honor they did not hesitate. In the case of Germany’s declaration of war the German laws say that no war can be declared by the Kaiser alone unless it is a defensive war. Therefore, as one American writer has pointed out, this is the only kind of war that the Kaiser ever declares. The German military group, having control of the newspapers, put in a lot of stories made up for the occasion about French soldiers having crossed the border and shot down Germans on August 2nd. They told how French aviators had dropped bombs on certain German cities. As a matter of fact, the French soldiers, by orders of their government, were drawn back from the frontier a distance of six miles in order to avoid any appearance of attacking the Germans. The City Council of Nuremburg, one of the cities that was said to have been bombed by the French, later gave out a formal statement saying that no bombs had fallen on their city and no French aviators had been seen near it. But the German government gave out this “news” and promptly declared a “defensive” war, and the German people had to believe what they were told.

Very different was the case in England. Here was a free people, with free schools and free newspapers. Just as every German had been taught in the schools of his country that Germany was surrounded by a ring of jealous enemies and would one day have to fight them all, so the people of England had been taught in their schools that war between civilized peoples is a hateful thing and must finally disappear from the earth.

The English labor leaders who themselves protested against the war at first, in hopes that the German Socialists would do the same, were doomed to be grievously disappointed, for in Germany the protests against war were still more feeble. The newspapers, with few exceptions, as was previously pointed out, were under the control of the military leaders and the manufacturers of war materials. These papers persuaded the German people that England, through her jealousy of Germany’s great growth in trade, had egged on Russia, France, and Serbia to attack Germany and Austria, and then had declared war herself on a flimsy pretext. At first the entire German nation believed this. Until Prince Lichnowsky, the former German ambassador to Great Britain, published a story in which he told how the German government had forced the war in spite of all that England could do to prevent it, the Germans thought, as their war chiefs told them, that the war was forced upon Germany by her jealous enemies.

Thus the military leaders of Germany, descendants of the old feudal nobles, were able to make the whole German nation hate the English people.

When the English ambassador to Berlin went to see the chancellor (as the prime-minister of the German Empire is called) and told him that unless German troops were immediately withdrawn from Belgium, England would declare war, for the Belgian government had a treaty signed by England promising them protection, the German chancellor exclaimed. “What! Would you plunge into this terrible war for the sake of a scrap of paper!” The chancellor was excited. As you have been told before, the Germans were sure that England, being unprepared for the war, would never dare to go into it. This threatened to upset all their well-laid plans for the conquest of France and then Russia. For the moment the chancellor forgot his diplomacy. He blurted out the truth. He showed the world that honor had no place in the minds of the German war lords. To the English a treaty with Belgium was a sacred pledge; to the Germans it was something which could be torn up at a moment’s notice if it stood in the way of their interests.