Ten years after

by Philip Gibbs

England was “in”—all in, with all her wealth, all her manhood, all her strength, to whatever the end might be, in a struggle for life or death, in which civilisation itself was at stake.

The Ignorance of the Peoples

The peoples of Europe knew nothing of the forces which had led up to the conflict. They had never been told about the secret treaties—made by statesmen of the old school without their consent, though their lives were pledged in them—by which the Foreign Offices of Europe had played against each other for high stakes in a dangerous game called the Balance of Power. They were ignorant of the rivalries and greeds which had been inflamed for half a century by the rush for Africa, where France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Great Britain had bargained and intrigued and quarrelled with each other for slices of the Dark Continent which had put a black spell upon the imagination of Imperialists in all these countries. They did not know that German Imperialists believed, not without reason, that England and France had squared each other in order to prevent German influence in Morocco, and that she felt herself thwarted by the two powers in all her ambitions for “a place in the sun,” for the sources of raw material, and for the expansion of her trade. They were ignorant of Pan-German dreams of dominant power in Middle Europe, and of an Asiatic Empire following the line of Berlin to Bagdad. They were not aware of Pan-Slav ambitions cutting clean across Pan-German ambitions and looking forward to a future when the Russian Tsardom would have its second capital in Constantinople, and when the Russian race would stretch through Serbia to the Adriatic Sea. They had never realised the meaning of the Balkan Wars of 1912, when Russia was behind Serbia and Germany behind Turkey, in the first skirmish for these rival schemes. They were never told by their leaders that explosive forces were being stored up in Europe because of the rival Imperialisms which sooner or later were bound to result in infernal fire shattering the whole structure of European life.

All these things had been kept secret in the minds of kings and emperors, statesmen and diplomats, and the peoples in the mass went about their work without a thought of the dark destiny that was being woven for them in the looms of Fate. In Germany, it is true, the military caste, the Civil Service, and the Universities had been steeped in the poison of an Imperial philosophy based upon Brute Force and the right of the strong to seize the power and places of the weak. The Kaiser, picturing himself in “shining armour,” with God as his ally, had made himself the figurehead of this school of thought. From time to time he uttered portentous words. He threatened with “a mailed fist” all who dared to cross the path of German aspirations. He vowed that he would “dash to pieces” all those who opposed his will. Even in Germany before the War these words were ridiculed by peace-loving citizens, scorned by millions of theoretical Socialists, and ignored by the peasants who were busy with their sowing and reaping in quiet fields. In England they seemed but the bombast of a theatrical man born too late in the world’s history for such mediæval clap-trap. Outside small circles, in touch with the undercurrents of international policy and afraid of unspeakable things, or ready to risk them, the common folk knew nothing of their peril, and were not allowed to know.

The Call to Courage

Ten years ago! Who can remember the spirit of Europe then? Or his own mind? That sense of horror, chilling the heart of unimaginable things, that bewilderment because so monstrous a tragedy had come out of the blue sky, without warning, as it seemed, for trivial causes, and then ... and then ... a call to the secret courage of the soul, a dedication to service and sacrifice, a welling-up of old traditions, emotions, passions, primitive instincts, which had seemed dead and useless because of world peace and the security of civilisation.

In Great Britain it was as though the nation had been shaken by a great wind in which the Voice of God was heard. In those first days—and months—there was no degradation of the height to which the spirit of the British people was uplifted. Even their enemies admit that. The petty, squalid, rotten things of life fell from them. They put away their own quarrels, self-interests, political and industrial conflicts. This thing was too big for those trivialities. It was bigger than individual lives, loves, hates, fortunes, homes or business. The old barriers of class, strongly entrenched in the structure of English life, were broken down with one careless and noble gesture. The sons of the great old families joined up with the shop boys, the peasants, the clerks, the slum-folk, and stood in the same ranks with them as volunteers in the “war for civilisation.” The daughters of the county gentry, of the clergy, and professional classes went down on their knees with shop girls and servant girls, to scrub the floors of hospitals or do any kind of work. Those wild women who had fought the police for the Vote became ambulance drivers, nurses, farm girls, ammunition workers, needlewomen—anything for service. The rich poured out their money and the sons of the rich their blood. The poor offered their bodies and all they had. It took some time for England to understand this need of soldiers. It was not until after the Retreat from Mons and terrible despatches, revealing dreadfully that the little Regular Army was but a small outpost, half-destroyed after immortal valour against overwhelming odds in France, that the recruiting stations were stormed by the young manhood of the nation, from public schools, factories, city offices, and the little villages of the countryside. Husbands left their wives, lovers their sweethearts, fathers their children, scholars their books, and enrolled themselves, as they knew, for the chance of Death. And the women let them go, urged them to go, and hid their tears. There was not a mother in England at that time, or none that I knew or ever heard of, who, looking at the strained face of her son, held him back by any passionate plea when he raised his head and stared into her eyes and said: “I must go!”

The whole nation, apart from a few individuals, was inspired by a common loyalty to ideals which seemed very clear and bright. They believed, without any complications of thought and argument, without any secret doubts, that this war had come upon the world solely because of German brutality, unprovoked, against peaceful neighbours. Stories of German atrocity, some true and many false, in the first invasion of France and Belgium, deepened their horror for a nation which had threatened civilisation itself with a return to barbarism, and under whose rule there would be no liberty, no life worth living. The chivalry of the British people, their love of fair play, their pity, were outraged by the trampling of Belgium and the agony of France, attacked by the greatest military power in the world. That was enough for them. That was what inspired them in their first rush to the rescue. It was only later that they understood the menace to their own Island and Empire, whose existence was at stake. In those early days there was no self-interest in the spiritual uprising of England and her sister nations. There was a nobility of purpose, undimmed and untarnished, crystal clear to simple minds, knowing nothing and caring nothing for deeper causes of the war than German militarism and its brutal assault. Only the newspaper press vulgarised and degraded the splendour of this simple chivalry by its appeal to blood lust and its call to hate and many frantic lies.

The Homing Birds

From all parts of the Empire the old Mother Country saw her homing birds. From Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa came bronzed and hardy men who were the uncles or the cousins or the brothers of the boys who were still storming the recruiting stations at home. After them came wave after wave of young manhood from the far Dominions, and for the first time in history the British Empire, so loosely linked, so scattered, so jealous of restraint or control from the British Government, was seen to be a federation of English-speaking peoples more strongly bound by links of sentiment and kinship in time of peril than any Imperialist of the old school could have forged by autocratic power. They were free peoples enlisting for service, as they believed also, in the cause of civilisation and in the chivalrous defence of peace-loving peoples wantonly attacked by a brutal enemy.