It grew to its present dimensions because Germany, and under German pressure Austria-Hungary, rejected every proposal making for peace suggested by the present Allied Powers but especially by the United Kingdom through Sir Edward Grey.
Germany offered bribes to the United Kingdom, and to Belgium herself, to induce them to consent to a violation of the European treaty which protected Belgian independence and enforced Belgian neutrality.
Having broken like an armed burglar into Belgium, Germany was there guilty of a systematic campaign of murder, pillage, outrage, and destruction, justified, planned and ordered by her military and intellectual leaders. Such a campaign was inherent in her philosophy of politics, and of war. She stood for the gospel of force; and the sacrament of cruelty. To link with her in any wise a nation like Ireland that has always stood for spiritual freedom is an act of treason and blasphemy against our whole past.
The Allied Powers did not come into the war, and will not come before history, sinless. The past of both Great Britain and France was deeply stained with domination, that is to say, with Prussianism. Much of it was still apparent in some of their politics. But they had begun to cleanse themselves. The working out of the democratic formula would have in due course completed that process, and will complete it. Prussia, on the contrary, had adopted her vice as the highest virtue. Her philosophy did not correct her appetites, it canonised them. Therefore, speaking of main ideas, the triumph of Prussia must mean the triumph of force: the triumph of the Allies must mean the triumph of law.
In such a conflict to counsel Ireland to stand neutral in judgment, is as if one were to counsel a Christian to stand neutral in judgment between Nero and St. Peter. To counsel her to stand neutral in action would have been to abandon all her old valour and decision, and to establish in their places the new cardinal virtues of comfort and cowardice. In such matters you cannot compromise. Neutrality is already a decision, a decision of adherence to the evil side. To trim is to betray. It will be an ill end of all our “idealistic” movements when their success so transforms the young men of this nation that in this world they shall be content to be neutral, and that nothing will offer them in the next save to be blown about by the winds.
Used with the wisdom which is sown in tears and blood, this tragedy of Europe may be and must be the prologue to the two reconciliations of which all statesmen have dreamed, the reconciliation of Protestant Ulster with Ireland, and the reconciliation of Ireland with Great Britain.
In this book—pieced together amid preoccupations of a very different kind—I have reprinted certain articles on various aspects of the war published in its earlier stages. I have done so not out of vanity, the reader may rest assured, but to repel an imputation. It has been charged against us who have taken our stand with the Allies that we were merely dancing to the tune of Imperialism, that our ideas came to us from London, that we hated Prussia and Prussianism not honestly but simply to order. Our recruiting appeals have been twisted from their plain utterance and obvious meaning. Wordy young men, with no very notable public services to their record, have “stigmatised” (a word in which they delight) us all from Mr. Redmond down as renegades to Irish Nationalism. What we have said and done is to be remembered and is to rise up in judgment against us in the new Ireland that is coming. I do not know whether anybody else is pained or alarmed, but my withers are unwrung. Since I knew Prussian “culture” at close quarters I have loathed it, and written my loathing. The outbreak of war caught me in Belgium, where I was running arms for the National Volunteers, and on the 6th of August, 1914, I wrote from Brussels in the Daily News that it was a war of “civilisation against barbarians.” I assisted for many overwhelming weeks at the agony of the valiant Belgian nation. I have written no word and spoken none that was not the word of an Irish Nationalist, who had been at the trouble of thinking for himself. Ireland was my centre of reference as it was that of Mr. Redmond, Mr. T. P. O’Connor, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. Devlin in their speeches, and of Mr. Hugh A. Law in his clear and noble pamphlet, Why is Ireland at War?
It is true that we have all made two assumptions. We assumed that Ireland had a duty not only to herself but to the world; we assumed further that, whatever befell, the path taken by her must be the path of honour and justice. If these postulates are rejected there is no more to be said: the future must in that case undoubtedly belong to the friends of the burners of Louvain.
II.—The Bullying of Serbia
The first declaration of war in this world-conflict was that of Austria-Hungary against Serbia on the 27th of July, 1914. The first shots fired in the war were those fired by Austrian monitors on the Danube into Belgrade on the 29th of July, 1914. Austria-Hungary is or was then a great Empire with a population of 50,000,000 and an army of 2,500,000; Serbia is or was then a peasant State with a population of 5,000,000 and an army of 230,000.