Let us be not at all astonished, then, that the resistance is enormous and prolonged beyond all that experience of war has taught us. Our prompt and easy defeat was written in the annals of destiny. We had against us all the force of aggression acquired since the origin of Europe. We have to reverse the wheel of history. We are on the point of succeeding; and if it is true that intelligent beings on the heights of other worlds are watching us, they are doubtless contemplating the most curious spectacle that our planet has offered them since they discovered it in the star dust scintillating around them in space. They must be saying to themselves, disconcerted, that age-long and fundamental laws are being unexpectedly transgressed.
Unexpectedly? That is too much to say. This transgression of an inferior law, no longer as high as man, has long been in process of preparation; but it came very near to being frightfully punished. Its success will be due only to the aid of a part of those who formerly swelled the great flood which today they are resisting with us, as if something in the history of the world or in the plans of destiny had been changed; or, rather, as if we had finally succeeded in changing something, and in bending laws to which we have hitherto been entirely subject.
But we need not think that after victory the struggle will be ended. The profound forces of earth (brute force) will not lay down their arms so soon, and the invisible war will go on for a long time under peace. If we do not take care, victory will be even more fatal than defeat. In fact, this defeat, like its predecessors, would have been only an adjourned victory. It would have worn out, scattered, absorbed, the adversary by dispersing his energies over the world, while our victory will bring us a double danger. It will leave our enemies in a fierce isolation, where, massed upon themselves, fenced in, purified by misfortune and misery, they will secretly strengthen their formidable virtues, while we, no longer held in check by their intolerable but salutary menace, may give free rein to defects and vices which, soon or late, will place us at their mercy. Before thinking of peace, therefore, it would be well to assure ourselves of the future and make it powerless to harm us. We cannot take too many precautions when going, as we are, against the manifest desire of the power that is carrying us.
This is why our effort is painful and meritorious. We are going, it cannot be too often repeated, against the law of force. Our adversaries are driven forward by a power that drives us back. They are advancing in the direction of nature, whereas we are swimming against the great current that flows around the globe. Earth has an idea that is no longer ours. She is convinced that man is an animal in all respects like other animals. She has not yet noticed that he has drawn away from the herd. She does not yet know that he has climbed her highest mountains. She has not yet heard of justice, of pity, of loyalty, of honor; she knows not what these are, or she confuses them with weakness, inefficiency, stupidity, and fear. She has held to the original certitudes that were indispensable in the beginnings of life. She is falling behind us, and the space between is growing rapidly. She thinks less swiftly and has yet had the time to comprehend us. Besides, she does not count as we do, and the ages for her are less than our years. She is slow because she is almost eternal, while we are swift because we have not many hours before us. It is possible that her thought may some day rejoin ours; meanwhile, we have to defend our advance and prove to ourselves, as we are beginning to do, that it is permitted to be right against her will, that our advance is not fatal, and that it is possible to maintain it.
For it is beginning to be difficult to maintain that earth, or nature, or brute force, is always right, and that those who do not blindly follow its mandates are doomed to perish. We have learned to observe nature more attentively and have acquired the right to judge her. We have ascertained that, far from being infallible, she never ceases to deceive herself. She hesitates, she gropes. She does not know just what she wants. She begins with enormous blunders. She first peoples the world with fantastic and inchoate monsters, not one of which is stable, and they all disappear. Gradually, at the expense of the life which she creates, she acquires an experience which is the cruel fruit of innumerable sufferings inflicted with indifference. In the long run she grows wiser, learns moderation, corrects herself, retraces her steps, redresses her errors, and devotes to their reparation the best of her intelligence and of her forces. It is incontestable that she is perfecting her methods and that she is showing herself more able, more prudent, less given to excess, than in the beginning. It is none the less true that in all reigns, in all organisms, and even in our own bodies, the bad workmanship, the double uses, the inadvertencies, the things repented of, the absurdities, the useless complications, the sordid economies, and the senseless wastes continue.
There is no reason, therefore, to believe that our enemies have the truth on their side because nature's primal force is with them. Nature does not possess the truth any more than we do. She searches for it as we do, and does not find it any more easily. She does not seem to know any more than we where she is going or whither she is being led by that which leads all things. We do not have to obey her without questioning, and there is no need to be disturbed or to despair if one is not of her opinion. We are not dealing with an infallible and immutable wisdom against which it would be madness to oppose one's thought. We are on the way to prove to her that she is in error, that the raison d'être of man is higher than that which she has provisionally assigned to him, that he has already surpassed her previsions, and that she is wrong to retard his march. Besides, she is full of good-will, knows how to recognize her faults on occasion, to avoid their disastrous consequences, and never stiffens herself in an inflexible and majestic self-esteem. We can convince her if we can persevere. It will take a great deal of time, for, I repeat, she is slow, but not at all obstinate. It will take a great deal of time, because it involves a very long future, a very great change of direction, and the most important victory for which man has ever hoped.
The Battle of Jutland
Debatable Phases of the Great Naval Conflict Reviewed by Eminent British Experts
By ADMIRAL SIR CYPRIAN BRIDGE, G. C. B.