Three months have passed, and I add a few lines to my page proofs. Many events have illustrated and confirmed the main arguments of this monograph. Everywhere defenceless bridges have been the cause of much anxiety, and dozens have been destroyed because they could not be turned into rearguard defences. Wellington said that his sappers in five minutes could blow up a modern bridge. In the present campaign sappers have done this work under fire, mining strategic highways being a simple job. How ludicrously tragic is the contrast between the building of a modern bridge and its easy demolition! A little common sense would have flanked each entrance with a Brialmont fort, and would have given to the bridge itself an armoured efficiency. Every bridge between the French frontiers and Paris ought to have been as effective as a super-Dreadnought. So the use of battleship steel in bridge-building is one thing that engineers must consider with the utmost care after Germany has been overthrown. If they do no more than follow their foolish old routine, then their work will be a crime against patriotism.
In other respects the Great War has been a wondrous varied surprise, bringing weakness to the strong and power to the weak. Germany has been humbled both by little Belgium and by the little British army; her prestige has dwindled so much that fighting mechanisms are regarded no longer as superior to fighting men. In true discipline there is an art of humane pride, and Germany has crushed it out of her automatic battalions, preferring an organised cruelty as insensitive as a railway accident, and a system of lying that rivals Munchausen’s. Even her learned professors fill current history with explosive lies, just as her seamen before the declaration of hostilities dropped mines in the North Sea from trawlers that flew the British flag. If victory could be won by vile misdeeds, Germany would be unconquerable. Never before has a powerful nation been so corrupted by forty years of unscrupulous vainglory. Her ambition is to Europe what cancer is to a human body—a ravaging disease which may break out again after the best surgeons have finished their work. Already she has tried to postpone the operation by making overtures to stop the necessary bloodshed. Germany wants to give in before the British Empire can put a million troops in the field, because she knows not only that Allies often quarrel during the negotiations that rearrange maps, but that such quarrels occur most often when a great country has a little army in absolute antagonism with widespread interests of a vital sort. And this, moreover, is not the only peril. In the British Isles many thousands of peace-fanatics bide their time; some of them are active already as pro-Germans; many others declare that they have no wish to humble the German people, who now approve every act of a Hunnish despotism elaborated by their Government; and when our British sentimentalists, aided by several Radical newspapers, begin a campaign of shrieking claptrap, a just resentment will be felt by France and Russia. So the warfare of diplomacy may be more dangerous to the Allies than the warfare of stricken fields. We must wait and see. But the present position confirms another argument in this monograph: namely, that those who decline to see the perpetual strife that reigns in all human affairs, and who babble in a routine of fixed ideas about the illusion called peace, are quite as perilous to a country as were the creeds of bloodshed which many German writers advertised, taking liberties with the ingenuous pacifism coddled by British Governments.
Let us delete from every dictionary the lying word peace; and let us believe firmly in the simple truth that strife everywhere is the historian of life. The strife in all its phases ought to be well trained and chivalric, of course; and it needs vast improvements in the campaigns of business warfare. Every slum, for example, is very much worse than the longest battle with firearms, because it endures for ages; and what chivalry in the wars of trade is as noble as that which grants to young men the privilege of defending the old age of their country from danger and dishonour?
FOOTNOTES:
[136] It is worth noting, as an example of British apathy in home defence, that the railway from Aldershot toward Southampton is for many miles a single line only, and that it passes over a good many gimcrack bridges and between some narrow and steep embankments, as in the neighbourhood of Medstead. The line is an open trap; it could be shut up in a dozen places by a few intelligent spies, if spying did not generate an excessive caution as futile as cowardice.
[137] This bridge is 250 metres long, and the five arches have equal spans of 40 metres. Perronet died in 1791, at the age of eighty-three, and we study his best work at Mantes, Orléans, Nogent-sur-Seine, Pont-Saint-Maxence, Château-Thierry, and Neuilly-sur-Seine.
[138] His words run as follows: “I think that it may be prudent, when designing bridges for rivers of great width, to introduce some strong piers, which in case of need may serve as abutments, putting them at distances of three or four arches apart. Moreover, this arrangement will enable us to construct long bridges in different parts successively, and each part may be considered as a complete bridge, having its own independent abutments; but strict care should be taken not to contract the beds of rivers by using too many thick piers.” One of Perronet’s immediate predecessors, the engineer Gabriel, built a bridge of this sort, over the Loire at Blois. He spaced his plan into eleven fine arches, and erected two abutment piers, placing them at four bays from each bankside, and leaving three bays between them. By this means his bridge was divided into three independent parts.
[139] Examples: See the index under the headings [“Trezzo,”] [“Ticino,”] [“Pavia,”] and [“Ammanati’s Trinità at Florence.”]
[140] See Degrand’s “Ponts en Maçonnerie,” Tom. 2, p. 24, note 3. See also Dalquié’s translation of Kircher’s book, published at Amsterdam in 1670. There is a reference to iron in a bridge on p. 288, but Degrand’s information must be taken from the following passage: “L’on voit un pont dans la Province de Junnan, qu’on a basti sur un torrent, lequel roule ses flots impetueux dans le panchant d’une profonde vallée. C’est un commun sentiment qu’il fût basti en l’an 65 après la naissance de Jesus Christ par l’ordre de l’Empereur Mingus, sorti de la famille Hame; il n’est pas fait de brique ny de pierre; mais on a attaché de grosses chaisnes [chaînes] à ces deux montagnes qui vont d’une extremité à l’autre, au-dessus desquelles on a mis des ais pour faciliter le passage des voyageurs. Ce pont, qui a vingt chaisnes, a 20 perches de long qui font 140 pieds: l’on dit que quand beaucoup de personnes passent dessus, ou qu’il y a quelque grand fardeau, il branle si fort qu’il fait peur à ceux qui y sont” (p. 289). This description is vivid, and M. Degrand regards the chains as chains of iron. He says: “Kircher mentionne l’existence ... d’un pont composé de chaînes de fer supportant, en travers d’une vallée profonde, un tablier en charpente d’une grande longueur, c’est-à-dire un véritable pont suspendu, ayant précédé sans doute de plusieurs siècles les ponts du même genre construits à l’époque moderne en Europe et aux États-Unis.”
[141] See Index for other references to Mr. Jackson.