In England this sense of peace, I remember, was strongest. It was hardly ruffled by any anxieties among the mass of our folk. There was trouble in Ireland. There always had been. The suffragettes were a horrible nuisance. Strikes were frequent and annoying. But the old order of English life went on, placid, comfortable, with a sense of absolute security. The aristocracy grumbled at the advance of democracy, but within their old houses, their parklands and walled gardens, they were undisturbed. They had great reserves of wealth. The beauty of the life they had built around them was not invaded. Their traditions of service, loyalties, sports, continued and would continue, they believed, because those things belonged to the blood and spirit of England.
Middle-class England was prosperous and contented. Business was good in “a nation of shopkeepers,” in spite of fierce competition. Life—apart from private tragedy—was comfortable, gay, with many social pleasures unknown in Victorian days, with a greater sense of liberty in thought and manners, and a higher standard of life for small folk. “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world!”—barring politics, newspaper scares, women’s claims to votes—and Ireland. The people of the British Isles felt utterly secure.
It was an inherited sense, a national tradition, an unquestioned faith. It was their island prerogative. Now and again wars happened, but they only gave a touch of Romance to life. The sons of the old families went out and died like gentlemen, or came back to the music of brass bands, after the usual victories over savage tribes, splendidly described by artists and correspondents in the illustrated papers. Some of the young lads from factories and fields went off and took the King’s Shilling, and came back bronzed, with straighter backs, and a few medals. The little Regular Army was the best in the world for its size. Not even the Boer War, with its blunders, its inefficient generalship, and its drain upon youth and money, touched in any vital way the foundations of English life, its reserves of wealth, or its utter faith in national security. The British Navy was supreme at sea.
The British people had no quarrel with any great Power. All talk about a German menace, we thought, was the delusion of foolish old gentlemen in military clubs, or the scaremongering of newspapers out for circulation and sensation. The heart of England beat steadily to the old rhythm of life in country houses and fields and workshops and mean streets. Beneath the surface of modern change, progress and accidental novelties, the spirit of England and of its sister peoples was deep-rooted in the past and slow-moving towards new ideas. Outside the big cities it was still feudal in respect for the old “quality,” the old distinctions of class and service. The English people felt themselves divided by a whole world from the Continent of Europe because of that strip of sea about them. They had nothing to do, they believed, with Continental quarrels, hatreds, fears, or armies. They were safe from invasion, and masters of their own destiny. The Empire was very useful for trade, peaceful in purpose, and easily controlled by a few regiments if troubles arose among Indian hillsmen or African tribes. They had peace in their hearts, no envy of other nations, no military ambitions.
The English-speaking peoples, including the United States, believed that the world was settling down to a long era of peace. War was abominably old-fashioned! It was out of keeping with modern civilisation and with its increasing humanity, decency, respect for life, lack of cruelty, and general comfort. The world had reached a higher stage of human brotherhood. Had not science itself made war impossible between civilised peoples? The financial interests of nations were too closely interwoven. Literature, art, education, good manners, and liberal ideas had killed the very thought of war. We had got beyond the Dark Ages.... So England and America thought, or among those who did not think, felt—without question or misgiving.
Then the War happened.
The Call to Arms
Among the common folk—and I write of them—nobody knew at first how it happened, or why. An Austrian Archduke had been murdered at some place with a queer, outlandish name. Very shocking, no doubt; but what had that to do with John Smith watering his flowers in a suburban garden, or with Mrs. Smith putting the baby to bed? Still less with John K. Smithson, of Main Street, U.S.A., winding up his “flivver.” Servia—where was Servia?—was threatened with an ultimatum by Austria. Those foreign politics! Russia was taking the matter up. What had it got to do with Russia? Kings and Emperors were exchanging telegrams; Germany was intervening, backing up Austria. France was getting excited. Why? What was it all about? Why did all that stuff, columns and columns in the newspapers, turn out the sporting news? It was all very dull and incomprehensible. Russia was “mobilising,” it seemed. Germany was threatening war with Russia, France with Germany. Why? In Heaven’s name, why? What did it all mean? In the House of Commons there were strange speeches; in the newspapers terrible warnings, that England, too, might be drawn into this conflict of nations. Preposterous! The Cabinet was sitting late, hour after hour. Sir Edward Grey—a noble soul—was working for peace, desperately. There was still a hope. Surely the world had not gone mad! Surely even now the incredible could not happen. Germany could not do this thing. The German people, good-hearted, orderly, highly civilised, in some sense our kinsfolk; surely to God they were not going to plunge the world into ruin for the sake of an Austrian Archduke! In any case it was nothing to do with England—nothing at all—until every heart stood still for a second at dreadful news.
Germany had declared war on Russia and France was threatened. German troops were moving towards the French frontier and towards the Belgian frontier. Germany was demanding a right of way through Belgium to strike at the heart of France. If the demand were resisted, she threatened to smash her way through. Through Belgium, a little neutral country, at peace with all the world, incapable of self-defence, guaranteed by Great Britain and Germany, by a treaty that the German Ambassador in London desired to treat as a “scrap of paper.” God in heaven! If that were so, then there was no law in the world, no honour among nations, no safety for civilised peoples desiring peace. How could England, with any honour, stand by and see the fields of Belgium trampled under the feet of an invading army? With any shred of honour or self-respect? This was more than a threat against Belgium. It was a slash in the face of civilisation itself, a brutal attack upon all that code of law and decency by which we had struggled out of barbarism. So the leading articles said, and there was no denial in the heart of the people, though at first they had no thrill of passion but only a stupefaction in their minds. So Great Britain was going into this war? For honour’s sake and the safety of civilisation? That would mean—who could tell what it meant? Who knew anything about modern warfare between the Great Powers with all those armies and navies and piled-up armaments? It would mean Hell, anyway.
On August 4 the British Government declared war on Germany for the violation of Belgian territory. On the following day at the mouth of the Thames the cruiser Amphion sank a German mine-layer, and so opened the first hostilities between the German and the British nations since their history began.