The Crimes of England

THE CRIMES OF ENGLAND
BY GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
MCMXVI
1916
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
SOME WORDS TO PROFESSOR WHIRLWIND
The German Professor, his need of Education for Debate--Three
Mistakes of German Controversialists--The Multiplicity of
Excuses--Falsehood against Experience-- Kultur preached by
Unkultur--The Mistake about Bernard Shaw--German Lack of
Welt-Politik--Where England is really Wrong.
CHAPTER II
THE PROTESTANT HERO
Suitable Finale for the German Emperor--Frederick II. and the Power
of Fear--German Influence in England since Lather--Our German
Kings and Allies-- Triumph of Frederick the Great.
CHAPTER III
THE ENIGMA OF WATERLOO
How we helped Napoleon--The Revolution and the Two
Germanics--Religious Resistance of Austria and Russia--Irreligious
Resistance of Prussia and England--Negative Irreligion of England--its

Idealism in Snobbishness--Positive Irreligion of Prussia; no Idealism in
Anything--Allegory and the French Revolution--The Dual Personality
of England; the Double Battle--Triumph of Blucher.
CHAPTER IV
THE COMING OF THE JANISSARIES
The Sad Story of Lord Salisbury--Ireland and Heligoland--The Young
Men of Ireland--The Dirty Work--The Use of German
Mercenaries--The Unholy Alliance--Triumph of the German
Mercenaries.
CHAPTER V
THE LOST ENGLAND
Truth about England and Ireland--Murder and the Two Travellers--Real
Defence of England--The Lost Revolution--Story of Cobbett and the
Germans--Historical Accuracy of Cobbett--Violence of the English
Language--Exaggerated Truths versus Exaggerated Lies--Defeat of the
People--Triumph of the German Mercenaries.
CHAPTER VI
HAMLET AND THE DANES
Degeneration of Grimm's Fairy Tales--From Tales of Terror to Tales of
Terrorism--German Mistake of being Deep--The Germanisation of
Shakespeare--Carlyle and the Spoilt Child--The Test of Teutonism--
Hell or Hans Andersen--Causes of English Inaction--Barbarism and
Splendid Isolation-- The Peace of the Plutocrats--Hamlet the
Englishman--The Triumph of Bismarck.
CHAPTER VII
THE MIDNIGHT OF EUROPE

The Two Napoleons--Their Ultimate Success--The Interlude of
Sedan--The Meaning of an Emperor--The Triumph of Versailles--The
True Innocence of England-- Triumph of the Kaiser.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WRONG HORSE
Lord Salisbury Again--The Influence of 1870--The Fairy Tale of
Teutonism--The Adoration of the Crescent--The Reign of the
Cynics--Last Words to Professor Whirlwind.
CHAPTER IX
THE AWAKENING OF ENGLAND
The March of Montenegro--The Anti-Servile State--The Prussian
Preparation--The Sleep of England--The Awakening of England.
CHAPTER X
THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE
The Hour of Peril--The Human Deluge--The English at the Marne.
THE CRIMES OF ENGLAND

I--Some Words to Professor Whirlwind
DEAR PROFESSOR WHIRLWIND,
Your name in the original German is too much for me; and this is the
nearest I propose to get to it: but under the majestic image of pure wind
marching in a movement wholly circular I seem to see, as in a vision,
something of your mind. But the grand isolation of your thoughts leads
you to express them in such words as are gratifying to yourself, and
have an inconspicuous or even an unfortunate effect upon others. If

anything were really to be made of your moral campaign against the
English nation, it was clearly necessary that somebody, if it were only
an Englishman, should show you how to leave off professing
philosophy and begin to practise it. I have therefore sold myself into
the Prussian service, and in return for a cast-off suit of the Emperor's
clothes (the uniform of an English midshipman), a German hausfrau's
recipe for poison gas, two penny cigars, and twenty-five Iron Crosses, I
have consented to instruct you in the rudiments of international
controversy. Of this part of my task I have here little to say that is not
covered by a general adjuration to you to observe certain elementary
rules. They are, roughly speaking, as follows:--
First, stick to one excuse. Thus if a tradesman, with whom your social
relations are slight, should chance to find you toying with the coppers
in his till, you may possibly explain that you are interested in
Numismatics and are a Collector of Coins; and he may possibly believe
you. But if you tell him afterwards that you pitied him for being
overloaded with unwieldy copper discs, and were in the act of replacing
them by a silver sixpence of your own, this further explanation, so far
from increasing his confidence in your motives, will (strangely enough)
actually decrease it. And if you are so unwise as to be struck by yet
another brilliant idea, and tell him that the pennies were all bad pennies,
which you were concealing to save him from a police prosecution for
coining, the tradesman may even be so wayward as to institute a police
prosecution himself. Now this is not in any way an exaggeration of the
way in which you have knocked the bottom out of any case you may
ever conceivably have had in such matters as the sinking of the
Lusitania. With my own eyes I have seen the following explanations,
apparently proceeding from your pen, (i) that the ship was a troop-ship
carrying soldiers from Canada; (ii) that if it wasn't, it was a
merchant-ship unlawfully carrying munitions for the soldiers in France;
(iii)