You will agree with me, even now, that war, if not Hell, is cousin to it, cousin German. To condemn humanity to pass through that chamber of torture is a decision so grave and terrible that even emperors might well tremble before it. In the lineaments of the obscurest man slain in battle stands written the judgment of the rulers of the earth. Can your Austria face her conscience? I know that at the question you will be disposed to parry with a gibe at “English self-righteousness.” But, as it happens, I am not English, and mere self-righteousness does not survive the ordeal of battle. Living through this nightmare of blood you cannot but ask yourself how it began. The diplomatic correspondence is there to answer the question. These documents, the most memorable in secular history, are the charter of justification behind every decree of death that passes from the Allied lines to yours. Your Austria had grounds, tragical grounds, of complaint against some Serbians: you sought not justice, but the destruction of Serbian independence. You leagued yourself with Prussia—that blood-and-iron-monger—to break the faith of Europe and the homes of Belgium. You have heard all this before? You will hear it again, till the end of time. Not all the babbling savants of Berlin can ever erase the record of those two bully’s blows. They are the Alpha and the Omega of the war. Of course, it is true that there were other forces behind this reversion to violence and barbarism. All the explosive sediment of history was behind it, but it was your touch on the trigger that released all that imprisoned damnation.
Your natural place was not with Prussia. You, who were once the master, are now the valet of Germanism. You had not elaborated through forty years a religion of murder. Like us Irish, you were perhaps more fascinating than successful; you were a nation of gentlemen. You had grace, delicacy and honour. You listened to the crowned commercial traveller from Potsdam, who promised you a short war and a golden guerdon of trade. We know now that it was he who forced your hand in the Serbian negotiations. To be allured by such a bribe is no new sin in our experience; every nation of the Alliance, at some time or other in the bad past, has fallen in similar wise. Does it seem to you that Mephistopheles is in the way of keeping his promise? I notice in your newspapers that your people are impressed by the area of enemy territory you occupy. The present truth of the military situation is that you occupy only as a detected burglar “occupies” the house he has attempted to rifle—that is to say, pending the arrival of the police. And, Franz, the police, although as usual somewhat slow, have arrived. There is no doubt of that.
It seems to me quite candidly that the time has come to separate Habsburg from Hohenzollern. We are willing to believe that you acted under duress. During the war you have not befouled your name beyond forgiveness: no Cavell or Fryatt looms up in judgment against you. Your base and cynical over-lord, having compelled you to a gamble in blood, now begins to exhibit the nakedness of soul of every cut-throat cut-purse who finds that he has caught a Tartar. I do not know that any deep hatred of Austria is nourished by anyone in the Allied countries who understands the inner economy of the Central Empires. A locus pœnitentiæ will not be refused you. Come back to the civilisation to which you belong. Make it possible for me once again to renew our old Bruderschaft in Innsbruck, and to rejoice together that the Twilight of the Gods of Cruelty has deepened into enduring night.
SILHOUETTES FROM THE FRONT
I.—The Way to the Trenches
They have a saying among the followers of Mohammed, “Shun him who has thrice made the pilgrimage to Mecca, the Holy City! His conversation is an offence.” It is, indeed, the vice of travellers that they will talk. No man is safe from us if only we have been anywhere he has not been—from Birr, as the song says, to Bareilly. But the temptation of the trenches is the most formidable of all. Who has resisted it? Raw and ripe we have each of us tried to daub his own picture of that amazing fact, of the strange shifts and incredible devisings to which civilised nations have been forced to resort in order to save civilisation. One brush will add a stroke that escapes another. All the brushes and books, and all the cinema films together will never come near the reality. That is the sole rationale of these thumb-nail silhouettes.
If you were to ask any patron of the present Continental tour for his first impression, he would probably note the excellence of the travelling arrangements. Tickets are free, or rather they are not necessary. It is impossible to miss your train: the columns of them thunder without haste and without rest from the remotest station back at home to the ultimate railhead where their thunder dies in that of the guns. The sea-lacunæ are obliterated by an all but unbroken bridge of untorpedoed transports. Delays due to loss of luggage are unknown. You may, indeed, lose your luggage, but you do not delay. There are no tips on this journey, and it would be idle to book seats in advance. An avoidable expense, for you will get there without them. Either with a draft, a post of minor importance but yet of some; or with your battalion in all the pomp and circumstance of war; or, likely enough, in these latter days as an isolated officer reinforcement with a typed telegram and a moving order, you will arrive. Of course there are incidental divagations. With traffic rigidly scheduled and regulated as it must be, an occasional traveller is to be found who has lost his way and has perhaps accomplished ten kilometres between dawn and dusk. I met one such, and said—
“You seem to have lost your unit?”
“Lost my unit?” he replied with intense rancour. “I have lost my company, lost my battalion, lost my brigade, lost my division, my corps. A little more and I shall have lost the b——y British Expeditionary Force.”