England and the War | Page 5

doctrine is to be
put to the proof. Who dares to say what the result will be? To predict
certain failure to the German arms is only a kind of boasting. Yet there
are guarded beliefs which a modest man is free to hold till they are seen
to be groundless. The Germans have taken Antwerp; they may possibly
destroy the British fleet, overrun England and France, repel Russia,
establish themselves as the dictators of Europe--in short, fulfil their
dreams. What then? At an immense cost of human suffering they will
have achieved, as it seems to us, a colossal and agonizing failure. Their
engines of destruction will never serve them to create anything so fair
as the civilization of France. Their uneasy jealousy and self-assertion is
a miserable substitute for the old laws of chivalry and regard for the
weak, which they have renounced and forgotten. The will and high
permission of all-ruling Heaven may leave them at large for a time, to
seek evil to others. When they have finished with it, the world will
have to be remade.
We cannot be sure that the Ruler of the world will forbid this. We
cannot even be sure that the destroyers, in the peace that their
destruction will procure for them, may not themselves learn to rebuild.
The Goths, who destroyed the fabric of the Roman Empire, gave their
name, in time, to the greatest mediaeval art. Nature, it is well known,
loves the strong, and gives to them, and to them alone, the chance of
becoming civilized. Are the German people strong enough to earn that
chance? That is what we are to see. They have some admirable
elements of strength, above any other European people. No other
European army can be marched, in close order, regiment after regiment,
up the slope of a glacis, under the fire of machine guns, without
flinching, to certain death. This corporate courage and corporate
discipline is so great and impressive a thing that it may well contain a
promise for the future. Moreover, they are, within the circle of their
own kin, affectionate and dutiful beyond the average of human society.
If they succeed in their worldly ambitions, it will be a triumph of plain
brute morality over all the subtler movements of the mind and heart.
On the other hand, it is true to say that history shows no precedent for
the attainment of world-wide power by a people so politically stupid as

the German people are to-day. There is no mistake about this; the
instances of German stupidity are so numerous that they make
something like a complete history of German international relations.
Here is one. Any time during the last twenty years it has been matter of
common knowledge in England that one event, and one only, would
make it impossible for England to remain a spectator in a European
war--that event being the violation of the neutrality of Holland or
Belgium. There was never any secret about this, it was quite well
known to many people who took no special interest in foreign politics.
Germany has maintained in this country, for many years, an army of
spies and secret agents; yet not one of them informed her of this
important truth. Perhaps the radical difference between the German and
the English political systems blinded the astute agents. In England
nothing really important is a secret, and the amount of privileged
political information to be gleaned in barbers' shops, even when they
are patronized by Civil servants, is distressingly small. Two hours of
sympathetic conversation with an ordinary Englishman would have told
the German Chancellor more about English politics than ever he heard
in his life. For some reason or other he was unable to make use of this
source of intelligence, so that he remained in complete ignorance of
what every one in England knew and said.
Here is another instance. The programme of German ambition has been
voluminously published for the benefit of the world. France was first to
be crushed; then Russia; then, by means of the indemnities procured
from these conquests, after some years of recuperation and effort, the
naval power of England was to be challenged and destroyed. This
programme was set forth by high authorities, and was generally
accepted; there was no criticism, and no demur. The crime against the
civilization of the world foreshadowed in the horrible words 'France is
to be crushed' is before a high tribunal; it would be idle to condemn it
here. What happened is this. The French and Russian part of the
programme was put into action last July. England, who had been told
that her turn was not yet, that Germany would be ready for her in a
matter of five or ten years, very naturally