England and the War

England and the War, by Walter
Raleigh

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Title: England and the War
Author: Walter Raleigh
Release Date: November 20, 2003 [EBook #10159]
Language: English
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ENGLAND AND THE WAR
being

SUNDRY ADDRESSES
delivered during the war and now first collected
by
WALTER RALEIGH
OXFORD
1918

CONTENTS
PREFACE
MIGHT IS RIGHT First published as one of the Oxford Pamphlets,
October 1914.
THE WAR OF IDEAS An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute,
December 12, 1916.
THE FAITH OF ENGLAND An Address to the Union Society of
University College, London, March 22, 1917.
SOME GAINS OF THE WAR An Address to the Royal Colonial
Institute, February 13, 1918.
THE WAR AND THE PRESS A Paper read to the Essay Society, Eton
College, March 14, 1918.
SHAKESPEARE AND ENGLAND The Annual Shakespeare Lecture
of the British Academy, delivered July 4, 1918.

PREFACE

This book was not planned, but grew out of the troubles of the time.
When, on one occasion or another, I was invited to lecture, I did not
find, with Milton's Satan, that the mind is its own place; I could speak
only of what I was thinking of, and my mind was fixed on the War. I
am unacquainted with military science, so my treatment of the War was
limited to an estimate of the characters of the antagonists.
The character of Germany and the Germans is a riddle. I have seen no
convincing solution of it by any Englishman, and hardly any confident
attempt at a solution which did not speak the uncontrolled language of
passion. There is the same difficulty with the lower animals; our
description of them tends to be a description of nothing but our own
loves and hates. Who has ever fathomed the mind of a rhinoceros; or
has remembered, while he faces the beast, that a good rhinoceros is a
pleasant member of the community in which his life is passed? We see
only the folded hide, the horn, and the angry little eye. We know that
he is strong and cunning, and that his desires and instincts are
inconsistent with our welfare. Yet a rhinoceros is a simpler creature
than a German, and does not trouble our thought by conforming, on
occasion, to civilized standards and humane conditions.
It seems unreasonable to lay great stress on racial differences. The
insuperable barrier that divides England from Germany has grown out
of circumstance and habit and thought. For many hundreds of years the
German peoples have stood to arms in their own defence against the
encroachments of successive empires; and modern Germany learned
the doctrine of the omnipotence of force by prolonged suffering at the
hands of the greatest master of that immoral school--the Emperor
Napoleon. No German can understand the attitude of disinterested
patronage which the English mind quite naturally assumes when it is
brought into contact with foreigners. The best example of this
superiority of attitude is to be seen in the people who are called
pacifists. They are a peculiarly English type, and they are the most
arrogant of all the English. The idea that they should ever have to fight
for their lives is to them supremely absurd. There must be some
mistake, they think, which can be easily remedied once it is pointed out.
Their title to existence is so clear to themselves that they are convinced

it will be universally recognized; it must not be made a matter of
international conflict. Partly, no doubt, this belief is fostered by lack of
imagination. The sheltered conditions and leisured life which they
enjoy as the parasites of a dominant race have produced in them a false
sense of security. But there is something also of the English strength
and obstinacy of character in their self-confidence, and if ever Germany
were to conquer England some of them would spring to their full
stature as the heroes of an age-long and indomitable resistance. They
are not held in much esteem to-day among their own people; they are
useless for the work in hand; and their credit has suffered from the
multitude of pretenders who make principle a cover for cowardice. But
for all that, they are kin to the makers of England, and the fact that
Germany would never tolerate them for an instant is not without its