The Soul of the War | Page 6

were good friendly fellows and I liked
them. In various towns of Germany I found myself admiring the
cheerful, bustling gemutlichkeit of the people, the splendid

organization of their civic life, their industry and national spirit.
Walking among them sometimes, I used to ponder over the possibility
of that unvermeidliche krieg--that "unavoidable war" which was being
discussed in all the newspapers. Did these people want war with
England or with anyone? The laughter of the clerks and shop-girls
swarming down the Friedrichstrasse, the peaceful enjoyment of the
middle-class crowds of husbands and wives, lovers and sweethearts,
steaming in the heat of brilliantly lighted beer-halls seemed to make my
question preposterous. The spirit of the German people was essentially
peaceful and democratic. Surely the weight of all this middle-class
common sense would save them from any criminal adventures
proposed by a military caste rattling its sabre on state occasions? So I
came back with a conflict of ideas....

9

A little bald-headed man came into London about two years ago, and
his arrival was noted in a newspaper paragraph. It appeared that he was
a great statistician. He had been appointed by the Governments of
Canada and the United States jointly to prepare a "statistical survey of
Europe," whatever that may mean. I was sent down to call upon him
somewhere in the Temple, and I was to get him to talk about his
statistics.
But after my introduction he shut the door carefully and, with an air of
anxious inquiry through his gold-rimmed spectacles, asked a strange
question:
"Are you an honest young man and a good patriot?"
I could produce no credentials for honesty or patriotism, but hoped that
I might not fail in either.
"I suppose you have come to talk to me about my statistics," he said.

I admitted that this was my mission.
"They are unimportant," he said, "compared with what I have to tell
you. I am going to talk to you about Germany. The English people
ought to know what I have learnt during a year's experience in that
country, where I have lived all the time in the company of public
officials. Sir, it seems to me that the English people do not know that
the entire genius of intellectual Germany is directed to a war against
England. It dominates their thoughts and dreams, and the whole activity
of their national intelligence."
For an hour the little bald-headed man spoke to me of all he had heard
and learnt of Germany's enmity to England during twelve months in
official circles. He desired to give this information to an English
newspaper of standing and authority. He thought the English people
had a right to know.
I went back to my office more disturbed than I cared to admit even to
myself. There had been a kind of terror in the voice of the little man
who had found time for other interests besides his "statistical survey of
Europe." It seemed that he believed himself in the possession of an
enormous and terrible secret threatening the destiny of our Empire. Yet
nobody would believe him when he told it, however fervently. My
editor would not believe him, and none of his words were published, in
my paper or any other. But sometimes I used to remember him and
wonder whether perhaps in all such warnings that came to us there
were not a horrible truth which one day, when brutally revealed, would
make a mockery of all those men in England who pooh-poohed the
peril, and of the idealists who believed that friendly relations with
Germany could be secured by friendly words. Meanwhile the Foreign
Office did not reveal its secrets or give any clear guidance to the people
as to perils or policy--to the people who would pay in blood for
ignorance.
10
When I stood on the deck of the Channel boat in Dover Harbour
looking back on England, whose white cliffs gleamed faintly through

the darkness, a sense of tragic certainty came to me that a summons of
war would come to England, asking for her manhood. Perhaps it would
come to-night. The second mate of the boat came to the side of the
steamer and stared across the inky waters, on which there were shifting
pathways of white radiance, as the searchlights of distant warships
swept the sea.
"God!" he said, in a low voice.
"Do you think it will come to-night?" I asked, in the same tone of voice.
We spoke as though our words were dangerous.
"It's likely. The German fleet won't wait for any declaration, I should
say, if they thought they could catch us napping. But they won't. I fancy
we're ready for them--here, anyhow!"
He jerked his thumb at some dark masses looming through the darkness
in