Towards the Goal

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Towards the Goal

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Title: Towards The Goal
Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
Release Date: November 16, 2003 [EBook #10099]
Language: English
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TOWARDS THE GOAL
By MRS. HUMPHRY WARD Author of "ENGLAND'S EFFORT,"

etc.

With an introduction by THE HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT
1917
To ANDRÉ CHEVRILLON True Son of France True Friend of
England I dedicate this book.

INTRODUCTION
England has in this war reached a height of achievement loftier than
that which she attained in the struggle with Napoleon; and she has
reached that height in a far shorter period. Her giant effort, crowned
with a success as wonderful as the effort itself, is worthily described by
the author of this book. Mrs. Ward writes nobly on a noble theme.
This war is the greatest the world has ever seen. The vast size of the
armies, the tremendous slaughter, the loftiness of the heroism shown,
and the hideous horror of the brutalities committed, the valour of the
fighting men, and the extraordinary ingenuity of those who have
designed and built the fighting machines, the burning patriotism of the
people who defend their hearthstones, and the far-reaching complexity
of the plans of the leaders--all are on a scale so huge that nothing in
past history can be compared with them. The issues at stake are
elemental. The free peoples of the world have banded together against
tyrannous militarism and government by caste. It is not too much to say
that the outcome will largely determine, for daring and liberty-loving
souls, whether or not life is worth living. A Prussianised world would
be as intolerable as a world ruled over by Attila or by Timur the Lame.
It is in this immense world-crisis that England has played her part; a
part which has grown greater month by month. Mrs. Ward enables us to
see the awakening of the national soul which rendered it possible to
play this part; and she describes the works by which the faith of the

soul justified itself.
What she writes is of peculiar interest to the United States. We have
suffered, or are suffering, in exaggerated form, from most (not all) of
the evils that were eating into the fibre of the British character three
years ago--and in addition from some purely indigenous ills of our own.
If we are to cure ourselves it must be by our own exertions; our destiny
will certainly not be shaped for us, as was Germany's, by a few
towering autocrats of genius, such as Bismarck and Moltke. Mrs. Ward
shows us the people of England in the act of curing their own ills, of
making good, by gigantic and self-sacrificing exertion in the present,
the folly and selfishness and greed and soft slackness of the past. The
fact that England, when on the brink of destruction, gathered her
strength and strode resolutely back to safety, is a fact of happy omen
for us in America, who are now just awaking to the folly and
selfishness and greed and soft slackness that for some years we have
been showing.
As in America, so in England, a surfeit of materialism had produced a
lack of high spiritual purpose in the nation at large; there was much
confusion of ideas and ideals; and also much triviality, which was
especially offensive when it masqueraded under some high-sounding
name. An unhealthy sentimentality--the antithesis of morality--has
gone hand in hand with a peculiarly sordid and repulsive materialism.
The result was a soil in which various noxious weeds flourished rankly;
and of these the most noxious was professional pacificism. The
professional pacificist has at times festered in the diseased tissue of
almost every civilisation; but it is only within the last three-quarters of
a century that he has been a serious menace to the peace of justice and
righteousness. In consequence, decent citizens are only beginning to
understand the base immorality of his preaching and practice; and he
has been given entirely undeserved credit for good intentions. In
England as in the United States, domestic pacificism has been the most
potent ally of alien militarism. And in both countries the extreme type
has shown itself profoundly unpatriotic. The damage it has done the
nation has been limited only by its weakness