The Soul of the War | Page 4

of sporting
instincts and jaunty confidence, eager to be "in the middle of things,"
willing to go out on any terms so long as they could see "a bit of fun,"
ready to take all risks. Special correspondents, press photographers, the
youngest reporters on the staff, sub-editors emerging from little dark
rooms with a new excitement in eyes that had grown tired with proof
correcting, passed each other on the stairs and asked for their Chance. It
was a chance of seeing the greatest drama in life with real properties,
real corpses, real blood, real horrors with a devilish thrill in them. It
was not to be missed by any self-respecting journalist to whom all life
is a stage play which he describes and criticises from a free seat in the
front of the house.
Yet in those newspaper offices in Fleet Street there was no real
certainty. Even the foreign editors who are supposed to have an inside
knowledge of international politics were not definite in their assertions.
Interminable discussions took place over their maps and cablegrams.
"War is certain." "There will be no war as far as England is concerned."
"Sir Edward Grey will arrange an international conference." "Germany
is bluffing. She will climb down at the eleventh hour. How can she risk

a war with France, Russia, and England?" "England will stand out."
"But our honour? What about our understanding with France?"
There was a profound ignorance at the back of all these opinions,
assertions, discussions. Fleet Street, in spite of the dogmatism of its
leading articles, did not know the truth and had never searched for it
with a sincerity which would lead now to a certain conviction. All its
thousands of articles on the subject of our relations with Germany had
been but a clash of individual opinions coloured by the traditional
policy of each paper, by the prejudice of the writers and by the
influence of party interests. The brain of Fleet Street was but a more
intense and a more vibrant counterpart of the national psychology,
which in these hours of enormous crisis was bewildered by doubt and,
in spite of all its activity, incredulous of the tremendous possibility that
in a few days England might be engaged in the greatest war since the
Napoleonic era, fighting for her life.
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On my own lips there was the same incredulity when I said good-bye.
It was on July 29, and England had not yet picked up the gauntlet
which Germany had flung into the face of European peace.
"I shall be back in a few days. Armageddon is still a long way off. The
idea of it is too ridiculous and too damnable!"
I lay awake on the night before I left England with the credentials of a
war correspondent on a roving commission, and there came into my
head a vision of the hideous thing which was being hatched in the
council chambers of Europe, even as the little clock ticked on my
bedroom mantelpiece. I thrust back this vision of blood by old
arguments, old phrases which had become the rag-tags of political
writers.
War with Germany? A war in which half the nations of Europe would
be flung against each other in a deadly struggle--millions against
millions of men belonging to the peoples of the highest civilization? No,
it was inconceivable and impossible. Why should England make war

upon Germany or Germany upon England? We were alike in blood and
character, bound to each other by a thousand ties of tradition and
knowledge and trade and friendship. All the best intellect of Germany
was friendly to us.
7
In Hamburg two years ago I had listened to speeches about all that,
obviously sincere, emotional in their protestations of racial
comradeship. That young poet who had become my friend, who had
taken me home to his house in the country and whose beautiful wife
had plucked roses for me in her garden, and said in her pretty English,
"I send my best love with them to England"--was he a liar when he
spoke fine and stirring words about the German admiration for English
literature and life, and when--it was late in the evening and we had
drunk some wine--he passed his arm through mine and said, "If ever
there were to be a war between our two countries I and all my friends in
Hamburg would weep at the crime and the tragedy."
On that trip to Hamburg we were banqueted like kings, we English
journalists, and the tables were garlanded with flowers in our honour,
and a thousand compliments were paid to us with the friendliest
courtesy. Were they all liars, these smiling Germans who had clinked
glasses with us?
Only a few weeks before this black shadow of war had loomed