The militarism of Prussia is a crime, springing from old roots of human savagery and barbarism which should have died long ago. The brutal War, made treacherous and bloody by new devices of destruction, the inventions of fine science misapplied, was an outbreak of stupidity on the part of an obtuse and stupid set of men, sodden with selfishness and delirious with a drunken dream of World-Power. The teachings of Treitschke and Nietzsche are the teachings of egotists with unsound and ill-balanced brains. Nietzsche went mad, and howled his philosophies to the walls of the padded room. Treitschke was covertly insane; like the “secret drinker” who in public pretends he cannot touch strong liquor, he assumed to be proud and sagacious when he was no more than crazily self-obsessed. He preached the doctrine of Hate, and no sane man ever did that. The German nation, accepting this sort of “Kultur” as gospel, accepted the ravings of the mentally deficient, and, plunging breast-high into a sea of brothers’ blood, proved itself infected by the same madness as that which poisoned the veins of its mad instructors. To any thoughtful student, looking on at such a frightful, wicked, and overwhelmingly stupid slaughter of men by machinery there can be nothing more terrible, more lonely or more accursed in all the realm of fact or fiction than the figure of the Kaiser—the miserable epileptic who is responsible for shrouding his “Fatherland” in the black veil of mourning, and for drowning its peace and progress in a flood of widows’ and orphans’ tears. Mentally unbalanced, physically inefficient, and morally lacking—living as one pursued by the Furies in an armoured cage, and surrounded by guards on earth and in air, lest by chance his “Gott” should kill him, he moves one to amazement and pity—for the whirlwind has him in its centre, twirling him round and round like a veritable mannikin of sport for the dread gods of destiny—a mannikin who hardly knows how he came to be where he is, or where he will find himself when the storm is past. Meanwhile his voice is heard above the storm shouting “To England! England! The one foe! My Mother’s land, which I hate! Would that every drop of British blood in my veins might be drained out of me!”
Well, why not? A calf has been bled before now, and not a drop of its mother’s blood has been left in its carcase—there is nothing to prevent this desirable consummation for the Kaiser since he so devoutly wishes it. The whirlwind may strip him yet, and perform this required kindness! But in the interval the arrogant and half-crazed “War Lord” has sacrificed the best flower and strength of Germany’s manhood to his criminal and insatiable lust of power. The German people have not yet realised the mercilessness of this military despot—but when they do—when they count the desolate homes, the ruined trades, the lost commerce, the ravaged lives and broken hearts which mark the “triumph” of the stagey and spectacular “hero” they have worshipped, there will be an end of the blind credulity with which they have followed a vain ideal.
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For us British, the Whirlwind is a grand thing. It is blowing us fiercely clean of Self—it is tearing away from us the silly sophistries of fashion and frivolity and showing us things in their true light. Our ape-like jesters of the press, of the Bernard Shaw type, who have mocked at all things holy, serious, and earnest, are finding their proper level, and shrinking into corners where they are scarcely seen—where it is to be hoped they may be peaceably forgotten. Our “sex-problems,” our “advanced” women, our screaming Doll Tear-sheets of militant suffrage—these trouble the air no more with the hysterics which are engendered by having nothing useful to do. We have no time for trifling. We are face to face with the long-despised Obvious—“Life is real, life is earnest”—and we are casting off the slough of political humbug and social sham, and are as one in the splendid bond of patriotism and love of country. We may trust the Storm; we may welcome the Whirlwind. It has come to clear the sky of miasma and vapour—it is making light to show us where we truly stand. If we are honest with ourselves we shall admit that in latter years we have given ourselves over-much to the pursuit of material gain and personal pleasure, we have neglected our faith in divine and high ideals, and Self has been more or less our god; it was time that we received a wholesome check and a warning before we lost all that has made us great. We have responded swiftly to the goading spur—our crust of selfishness was but thin after all, and has broken and melted away in a flood of magnificent generosity and practical sympathy—for never had nation a nobler Cause than ours, when, as brothers in arms with our brave allies, we fought to right the unspeakable wrongs of unoffending Belgium, and to aid in defending France from the invader and usurper. Should the enemy conquer in this mighty struggle the whole world will be the impoverished loser; should we and our allies win, the whole world will gain by our victory and share with us a wider, nobler freedom than before. It is for this cause that the Whirlwind has come upon us—to cleanse a cancer from our midst, and to put away from ourselves and our neighbours the dread contamination of a disease involving the whole trend of civilisation. We may thank God for it, despite all its terrors, its rain of blood, its thunders of the air and sea, its swift death dealt to thousands of innocent souls—it is a storm that was needed to clear the air. And when it is past, and the sun shines once more, we shall realise that its causes were to be found not in one nation only, but in many—in ourselves as well as in our foes—and that some great and forceful movement of destiny was urgently called for to sweep away from humanity the accumulating mass of its own self-wrought evil. And if victory should be ours, it will behove us to take it with all humility, giving thanks to God—“lest we forget!”
THE KAISER’S HARVEST OF DEATH
A CRIME OF STUPIDITY
(First published in the “Sunday Times”)
In every great national crisis, when war or revolution brings havoc on existing civilisation and works sudden and violent change in all social, political, and diplomatic relations, we are invariably able to discover One Man—or at the most, perhaps, two or three men—primarily responsible for the general upheaval.
History is impressively explicit concerning these personages. She never fails to show us how, by some strange lack of the most ordinary foresight and common sense, they stumble when apparently on the height of success, and commit irreparable blunders which hasten their careers to a disastrous close. Such was the case with Napoleon and many other would-be Alexanders of ambition; but of all the tragic blunderers of time surely none can equal or surpass the “War Lord” of Germany. Here is a man who had the splendid chance of securing for his country and people the largest share of the commerce of Europe; it lay easily within his grasp. Yet he has let it go, like a handful of sand and shells dropped by a child at play on the seashore. To satisfy the personal cravings of a vaunting, blustering Egoism for blood-and-thunder “effects” he has lost the peaceful conquest of a world!
Amazing, deplorable, and incredible folly!—when such conquest could have been gained without a blow, without the boom of a single gun, without the explosion of a single shell! It could have been attained in the only way by which any truly “civilised” nation should ever seek supremacy—through the development of industry and commerce, and the quiet assumption of the power that industry and commerce give. All that we call “progress” should fortify the stand of human resolution on this basis. It is not necessary, it is not even sane or decent that any peoples should tolerate what Carlyle describes as “the spectacle of men with clenched teeth and hell-fire eyes hacking one another’s flesh, converting precious living bodies and priceless living souls into nameless masses of putrescence, useful only for turnip manure”—which is a rough but accurate picture of war deprived of all its devilish excitement and glamour.