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Title: The Way to Win
Author: William Le Queux
Release Date: October 21, 2012 [EBook #41129]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY TO WIN ***
Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
The Way to Win
By William Le Queux
Published by Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co Ltd, London.
This edition dated 1916.
The Way to Win, by William Le Queux.
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THE WAY TO WIN, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.
Foreword.
I do not think anyone who has studied the progress of the War with care
and patience can deny that, during the past few months, a mighty change
has come over the aspect of the great struggle.
A year ago, when I wrote "Britain's Deadly Peril," the fortunes of the
Allies appeared to be at the lowest ebb. Indomitable energy and
perseverance have since worked wonders. To-day we plainly see that the
conquering march of the Teuton has been arrested and the process of
forcing back his hordes has begun.
Britain--the fierce Lion of Britain--is at last fully aroused to the
momentous issues which hang on the decision, and has flung herself with
all her unrivalled tenacity, and with a unanimity unparalleled in our
history, into the titanic conflict.
Russia, France, and Italy have responded to the call with equal
nobility. To-day the Allies are more than a match for the Hun in
manpower; they are equal to them, at least, in the supply of munitions,
the lack of which so badly hampered our cause last year. Finally, the
great new masses of the British Army, straining at the leash, are
eagerly awaiting the signal to hurl themselves at the foe for his
destruction.
The British Navy, silent and invincible, holds the seas of all the
world, and Germany and her Allies are to-day feeling the pinch of war in
most deadly earnest. Prices in enemy countries are rising by leaps and
bounds; the food supply is beginning to fail; money is lacking; the
value of the mark is falling, and there is every prospect of a shortage
of men--cannon-fodder they were once called by Germans--in the near
future.
We are on the eve of great events.
Already we hear the ominous rumblings which prelude the breaking of the
storm. The great clash is at hand which, for good or ill, shall settle
the destinies of our world for many generations to come--perhaps for
ever.
Can we doubt the issue? Assuredly not. The spirit of our dear old
Britain and her glorious Allies is unbroken, and still unbreakable.
Cost what it may, they are fully determined to smash, once and for ever,
the accursed Teuton attempt to dominate the world and throw back the
clock of civilisation for centuries. There will be no faltering and no
turning back on Great Britain's part until that great end is attained.
Courage and resolution and a hard fist are the keys of the situation for
the Allies. We have them in abundant measure. And unless Britain is
unthinkably false to all the traditions that have made her great, our
triumph in the Near To-morrow is assured.
William Le Queux.
Devonshire Club, London, March, 1916.
CHAPTER ONE.
THE RIFT IN THE CLOUDS.
If we could imagine a being from another planet dropped suddenly on this
old earth of ours and left with the aid of maps to figure out for
himself the real position of the world-war, we could readily imagine
that it would seem to him that the Germans were winning "hands down."
Perhaps there would be a good deal of excuse for such a belief.
He would see, in the first place, that the Germans had overrun and
captured the whole of Belgium except one very small portion. He would
see that the greater part of Northern France was in their undisputed
possession. He would see that they had driven the Russians from Poland
and penetrated far within the boundaries of Russia proper.
He would also see that they had almost completely conquered or cajoled
the Balkan States, and that German trains were running from the North
Sea to Constantinople. He would see them holding apparently impregnable
lines of defences against forces at least as strong as their own--
probably much stronger. He would see them or their Allies holding up
British forces in Persia and in Mesopotamia. He would see the Italians
apparently firmly held along the mountainous boundaries of the Austrian
Empire. He would see that a great British army had been driven out of
Gallipoli. He would unquestionably come to the conclusion that the
cause of the Allies was a lost cause, and would probably conclude that
the best thing they could do would be to make a speedy peace on the best
terms the victors could be induced to grant.
And he would be unquestionably wrong in his deduction, even though we
admit the accuracy of his facts.
For, like the thoughtless and the whimperers among us, he would for want
of knowledge leave out of his consideration certain hard facts which,
properly considered, would reverse his judgment. Like the thoughtless
and the whimperers, he would judge too much from mere appearances and
would fail to see the real essential things. He would fail to see the
wood for the trees; he would mistake the shadow for the substance. Just
so the German people to-day are making the mistake of thinking that the
occupation of enemy territory, a mere temporary advantage gained through
treacherous preparation for war at a time when they professed to be
working for peace, constitutes the victory that must be theirs before
they could hope to gain the world-dominion upon which, as we now know,
their hearts and the hearts of their rulers have been set for the last
forty years.
For eighteen months the civilised world has been struggling against the
most formidable menace to its liberties by which it has ever been faced.
For eighteen months we have seen the enemy apparently going on from
triumph to triumph. We have seen the devastation of Belgium, the
crucifixion of a little people whose only wish was that they should be
allowed to live their happy lives in peace, and whose only crime was
that they dared to resist the Prussian bully. We have seen the
martyrdom of Poland. We have seen the very heart of France--
incomparable Paris--threatened with destruction.
We have seen the stately memorials of a great civilisation, such as
Germany has never known and never can know, wrecked and plundered. We
have seen innocent civilians murdered in hundreds, women and children
sent to death or a far worse fate. We have seen the ruin of Serbia. We
have lost thousands of our best and bravest sons. We have seen the
tragic failure in the Gallipoli Peninsula--itself a mere incident of the
world-war, yet one of the greatest military undertakings upon which we
have ever embarked. We have failed conspicuously to protect the little
nations in whose cause we drew the sword, and who have gone down in ruin
under the iron heel of a ferocious tyranny beside which the worst
oppression of historic times seems mild in comparison. Can it be a
matter of wonder if the cry, "How long, O Lord, how long?" goes up from
the fainting heart of outraged civilisation?
Yet the darkest hour is ever the herald of the dawn; and if to-day we
try with a single mind to penetrate the fog and mystery with which this
greatest of all wars is surrounded, we shall see that there is really
and truly a rift in the clouds. No doubt we have still many days of
storm and stress before us. The end is not yet. But, in the noble
language of the King, the goal is drawing into sight. The sun of
victory is not yet shining fully upon us, but none the less the dawn is
at hand. Already its first faint gleams are breaking in upon our eyes;
there are abundant signs, if we lift up our hearts and our courage, that
the long period of gloom and depression is passing away.
Properly to understand the position as it exists to-day we must look
backward to the years 1870 and 1871, for in those years was born the
spirit of aggression and arrogance which ever since has been the driving
power of Germany. After years of preparation, when so far as possible
everything was ready, Germany fell suddenly upon a France torn by
internal dissensions, weak through want of preparation, and utterly
unready for war. Naturally there could be but one end to such a
conflict, and a few short months saw France helpless beneath the heel of
the invader. Germany emerged from that war with almost incalculable
profit, firmly imbued with the idea that she was invincible, and
convinced that at any moment she chose she could reach out her greedy
hands and grasp the sceptre of European domination. Then, as she
thought, she could with safety enter upon a conflict with an England
which had grown over-rich and perhaps over-lazy. Then the real enemy
could be crushed, and the world-dominion of which her megalomaniac
rulers dreamed would be within her grasp.
If a nation has determined upon war, there is never any lack of excuse,
and Germany chose her time well. Her blow fell at a time when no single
one of the Allies was prepared for war. That fact alone fixes
absolutely the responsibility for the present appalling conflict, and in
the days to come the unanimous verdict of history will be that the War
was deliberately provoked by Germany through sheer greed and lust of
power.
For, be it remembered, there was no legitimate ambition before Germany
which she was not perfectly free to enjoy. Her trade was free and
unhampered, the seas were as open to her use as to our own, she
possessed vast colonial dominions which gave her every opportunity for
all the legitimate expansion of which she could dream for centuries to
come. She had grown rich and prosperous in the exercise of the freedom
which she has ever been the first to deny to others. No one menaced her
or sought to do her injury. But she was the _nouveau riche_ among the
nations. She had been poisoned for a long course of years with the
false doctrine that the German was something essentially superior to the
peoples of other races, and she owes her approaching downfall, which is
as certain as the rising of to-morrow's sun, to the blind teachers of
the blind who have imbued her with that spirit of envy and arrogance
which may be as fatal to a nation as to an individual.
We all know only too well what happened when war broke out. Germany,
with her armies trained to the hour after years of patient preparation,
with her forces ready to the last man and the last gun, shamelessly
broke her plighted word with the invasion of Belgium. She had counted
that there, at least, she would meet with no resistance; she could not
realise that a little people, even to save its honour, would dare to
oppose the onrush of her countless hordes. In that she made her first
and, perhaps, her greatest mistake. Just as she thought that England
would not draw the sword for a "scrap of paper," so she thought that
Belgium would not dare to resist.
We know now that she was wrong; we know, too, that the heroism of the
Belgians surely saved Europe in those first days by gaining the
priceless time which enabled France and England to throw their scanty
forces across the path of the invader, which led ultimately to the great
battle of the Marne, that titanic conflict which surely and decisively
smashed once and for ever the German plans. In spite of all that has
happened since, in spite of the apparent victories Germany has won, in
spite of the territories she has occupied, the defeat of the Marne
marked the beginning of her final overthrow.
But the peril was appalling. France, Russia, and Britain were alike
unprepared for war, short of men, short of munitions, short of
everything which would have enabled them at once to meet the common
enemy on anything like equal terms. The days are gone for ever when
victory can be won by men alone; modern war is too machine-like in its
developments, the importance of supplies and organisation is far too
great to give a poorly equipped army the slightest chance of success.
Not men alone, but munitions are the secret of success to-day, and every
single advantage that Germany has won since war broke out has been won
by her superiority in mechanical equipment. Her men, considered
individually, are certainly not the equals of either the French or the
Russians or the British; they have neither the dash of the French, nor
the dogged courage and endurance of the Russians, nor the personal
_sang-froid_ and cool initiative of the British. But Germany had the
numbers and the equipment, and to numbers and equipment alone she owes
such successes as she has gained.
Caught unprepared at the outset of war, the Allies were naturally in a
position which must well have seemed hopeless. Germany reaped to the
full the advantages which she had sought in long preparation for war
under the guise of peace. Her armies plunged forward with resistless
momentum until they were within sight of the very gates of Paris, and in
the eyes of the world it was merely a matter of time as to when she
would occupy the French capital. Then came Von Kluck's amazing blunder,
the swift stroke of the French and British against the German right
wing, and the precipitate retreat which led to the defeat at the Marne.
From that day, in spite of apparent successes, the fortunes of Germany
have been on the wane.
There was no mistake about the reply of civilisation to the German
menace. France, Russia, and England threw down the guage in the most
unmistakable terms in the historic declaration that neither would
conclude a separate peace without the others. That, we have now to
recognise, is one of the main facts which must operate most powerfully
in bringing about the final defeat of Germany. In no particular can she
hope to rival the resources of the Allies, and so long as the Allies
hang together they are unmistakably on the road to final victory. It is
for this reason that at the present moment it is the main object of
German diplomacy to sow distrust and suspicion among the partners in the
Quadruple Entente. Their one and only hope--and they know it--is to
provoke a quarrel among the Allies which would not merely rob the Allies
of all hope of final victory, but would give the Huns and their dupes a
reasonable chance--indeed, more than a reasonable chance--of snatching
triumph from the very jaws of defeat.
There is a school of croakers very much in evidence in England at
present who can see nothing of good in anything which their own country
has done and is doing. They remind one of Gilbert's
Idiot who praises in enthusiastic tone
Each century but this, and every country but his own.
They are, of course, always with us, but at the present moment they are
more than usually aggressive, and we notice them perhaps more than is
good for us. They are the chief source of that dangerous form of
pessimism which we see exemplifying itself in a constant belittling of
the enormous efforts and the enormous sacrifices which this country has
made. According to these mischievous propagandists, nothing we do or
have done can possibly be sufficient or right. The effects of this
perpetual "calamity howling" on our own people is bad enough; it is far
worse upon the peoples of the Allied countries and the neutrals,
because, not understanding our national peculiarities, they are apt to
take us at a wholly absurd valuation and to think that, as our own
people are constantly accusing us of slackness in a war in which we have
so much at stake, there must be something in the charge. If plenty of
mud is thrown, some of it is tolerably sure to stick, and there can be
no doubt that the perpetual depreciation of British efforts by people in
this country has had a most dangerous effect, and has, in fact, played
the German game to perfection both here and abroad.
Those who wish to form an adequate realisation of what Britain has
really done in the cause of civilisation should try to take a longer
view, and try also to throw their minds backward to the condition of
affairs which existed when the declaration of war came eighteen months
ago. They should try, in fact, to learn something of the lessons taught
by our past history.
We can start with the indisputable and undisputed fact that so far as
the war on land was concerned this country was entirely unprepared to
take up the role it has since assumed. That is a proposition which not
even the Germans, who are so ready to accuse England of having caused
the War, can very well dispute. Throughout our history we have been a
naval and not a military Power, though it is of course true that, judged
by the standards of other days, we have now and again put forward very
considerable military efforts.
But it was many a long year since British troops had fought on the
Continent of Europe, and it is safe to assume that the great majority of
people in this country, had they been asked, would have replied without
hesitation that we should never again take part in the land fighting in
a continental war.
Now it must be obvious to anyone who takes the trouble to give the
matter a moment's thought that, for the purposes of war as it is
understood by the great military nations of Europe, the British Army as
it existed in August, 1914, was hopelessly inadequate. Our real
strength lay on the sea, where it has always lain. It is true that, for
its size, the British force which was thrown into Flanders in the early
days of the struggle was perhaps the most perfectly trained and equipped
army that ever took the field.
But no one will contend that it was adequate in size, and we know that
the Germans regarded it as a "contemptible little army" that was to be
brushed aside with hardly an effort by the German hordes. It consisted
of perhaps 120,000 men, and undoubtedly, as our French friends have
generously admitted, it played a part worthy of "the best and highest
traditions" of our race. But it was not an army on the continental
scale.
What has been done since? How have we taken up the task of creating
forces which might be regarded as commensurate to meet the menace by
which civilisation found itself faced?
Our "contemptible little army," thanks to the genius of Lord Kitchener,
has grown until to-day it numbers something in the neighbourhood of four
million men. That is a fact which the world knows and recognises, and
in itself alone it is sufficient to refute the contention of those who
are to be found preaching in and out of season that Britain's efforts
have been lamentably inadequate. Great armies are not to be made in a
day or a year, they do not spring fully armed from the earth, and the
fact that we, a naval rather than a military Power, have in the course
of eighteen months raised and equipped forces on such a scale ought to
be sufficient to confound those shallow critics who are eternally
bewailing our supposed "slackness," which, as a matter of fact, has no
existence outside their own disordered imaginations. I do not believe
there is to be found to-day a military writer whose opinion is of any
value who would not agree that the effort which Britain has made is one
of the most stupendous in all military history.
In France, in Russia, and in Italy everyone whose authority is regarded
as having any substantial basis is agreed on the point, and the Germans
themselves, however they may affect to sneer at our army of "hirelings,"
know a great deal too much about military matters not to recognise that
one of the very gravest of their perils is the growing military power of
England. That power will be exercised to the full when the time comes,
and it will assuredly be found to be of the very greatest importance in
bringing about the overthrow of German hopes and ambitions.
We all know--the whole world knows--why the military power of England
has not yet reached its full majesty. We all know that in the War of
to-day a superabundance of munitions is demanded which none could have
expected from the history of the past. Every form of military stores--
guns, rifles, shell, ammunition--all must be provided on a scale of
colossal magnitude.
It is the fact that Germany alone of all the warring nations partly
realised this, and in her careful preparations for a war of her own
seeking, for which she chose her own time, accumulated in the days of
peace such enormous reserves of munitions as she hoped would render her
to a large extent independent of manufacture during the actual period of
fighting. It is certain that Germany hoped to overthrow Russia and
France in a series of swift, brief attacks without trenching dangerously
upon her reserve stocks. We know now that she was wrong; but we know,
too, that she came within an ace of success.
That she realised her error and embarked upon the manufacture of
munitions on a vast scale is true, but none the less it is also true
that she cannot hope to compete in this respect with the united
resources of the Allies once they get into their full stride. Slowly,
perhaps, but none the less surely, she is being overtaken even in the
department which she made almost exclusively her own, and the day is
coming when she will have not the remotest prospect of keeping up an
adequate reply to the storm of high explosives which will break upon her
lines east, west, north, and south. When that day comes--and it may be
nearer than most of us think--we shall see the swiftest of changes in
the present position of the War. There will be an end at last to the
long deadlock in which we and our Allies have been forced to act on the
defensive.
Already, indeed, the change is in sight. Germany to-day, in spite of
her frantic struggles, is absolutely and firmly held in a ring of steel.
She is, in every real sense of the word, on the defensive; her
spasmodic attacks are purely defensive in their origin and conception,
and the steadily increasing pressure of her foes must sooner or later
find and break through some weak spot in lines which are already
seriously extended and must soon wear thin.
I do not pretend for a moment that everything has gone as well as we
could wish; I do not pretend that there have not been mistakes, delays,
lack of decision, lack of foresight. No war was ever fought without
mistakes; we are not a race of supermen. But I do say that we have made
such an effort as has perhaps never been made in history before to meet
a series of conditions of which neither we in particular nor the world
at large has ever experienced.
The nation that could wage war without making mistakes would very
speedily dominate the world.
If the Germans had not made mistakes at least as great as those of the
Allies, they would long ago have won a supreme and crushing victory
which would have left the whole of Europe prostrate at their feet.
Whereas what do we see to-day? The plain, unalterable fact is that in
her sudden assault upon nations wholly unprepared for it Germany has not
won a single success of the nature which is decisive. She did not
succeed in "knocking out" either of the enemies who really count, and
she soon found herself condemned to a long and dragging war of the very
nature which all her experts, for years past, have admitted must be
fatal to German hopes and ambitions. Germany has always postulated for
success swift and shattering blows; she believed she could deal such
blows at her enemies in detail before she was defeated by a prepared
unity against which she must be powerless. She hoped to shatter France
before the slow-moving Russians could get into their stride, and leave
her ruined and crushed while she turned to meet the menace from the
East. She counted on winning the hegemony of Europe before she could be
checked by a combination ready to meet her on more than level terms.
There she made the first and greatest of her mistakes, a mistake from
the effects of which she can never recover.
And will anyone contend that, in bringing the German design to hopeless
ruin, Britain has not played a worthy part? Will anyone be found bold
enough to assert that the position on the Continent to-day would not
have been very widely different if Britain had chosen the ignoble part
and refused to unsheath the sword in defence of those great principles
for which our forefathers in all ages have been ready to fight and to
die? Will anyone venture to express a doubt that, but for the
assistance of Britain, France must have been crushed? And, with France
helpless and Britain neutral, what would have been Russia's chance of
escaping disaster?
I need hardly say that I do not put these suggestions forward with any
idea of belittling the part--the very great and very heroic part--which
has been played in the great world-tragedy by France and Russia. But I
do seriously suggest--and French and Russian writers have been the first
generously to admit it--that England's assistance has made their
campaigns possible.
If we have not done the terrific fighting which has been done by France
and Russia, we have at least borne a very respectable share in the fray;
we can leave others to speak for us on this score. But we have
supported our Allies in other fields; we have, to a very large extent,
found the sinews of war; we have made of our land the workshop of the
Allies, and poured out a stream of munitions which has been of the
utmost value, even if it has not made all the difference between victory
and defeat. And, above all and beyond all, we have, by our sea power,
practically carried the campaigns of our Allies on our backs. Thanks to
our unchallenged supremacy afloat, the Allies have been able to move in
all parts of the world with a security unknown in any other war in
history. While the German Fleet skulks in the fastnesses of the Kiel
Canal, and the German flag has disappeared from the ocean highways of
the world, the ships of the Allies move almost unhindered on their daily
business, the endless supplies of men and munitions go to and fro
unchallenged except by the lurking submarines of the enemy, which, for
all their boastings, are powerless to affect vitally the ultimate issue
or to do more than inflict damage which, compared with the targets
offered them, is practically of no significance.
Has our country anything to be ashamed of in the contribution it has
thus made to the war for the liberation of civilisation from the
domination of brute force? Assuredly not. And when in the fullness of
time the opportunity is offered us for a more striking demonstration of
what British world-power means, I am confident that we shall see ample
proof that the spirit and temper of our race is as fine as ever, and
that we shall play a worthy part in the final overthrow of the common
enemy. In the meantime let us make an end of the constant stream of
self-depreciation which is far removed from real modesty and
self-respect; let us do our part in that stern and silent temper which
has for all time been part of our great heritage.
Stern work lies before us; the long-drawn agony is not yet even
approaching its close. But we can best help forward the end if we
approach our task not with empty boasting, not with perpetual
whimperings and self-reproach, but with the cool courage and dogged
determination which have carried us so far through the worst dangers
that have threatened us in the past, and which, if we play our part
without faltering, will yet bring us to a triumphant issue from the
perils which beset us to-day.
CHAPTER TWO.
OUR INVINCIBLE NAVY.
It is the brightest and most encouraging feature of the War that British
supremacy at sea is unchallenged and probably unchallengeable by
Germany.
It is true that the main German Fleet has not yet dared to give battle
in the open sea, and that the endeavours of scattered units afloat have
met with speedy disaster. It is no less true that should the "High
Canal Admiral" venture forth from the secluded shelters in which the
Imperial German Navy has for so many months concealed itself, its
prospects of dealing a successful blow at the maritime might of Britain
are exceedingly slender.
None the less, it is incredible that, sooner or later, the German Navy
will fail to attempt what German writers are fond of describing as a
"Hussar Stroke." We can contemplate that issue--and we know our sailors
do so--with every confidence. In every single particular--in ships, in
men, in moral, and in traditions--the British Navy is superior to that
of Germany. Even without the powerful help we should receive from our
French and Italian Allies, British control over the ocean highways is
supreme.
A Radical journal, which for years past has been conspicuous for its
laudation of everything German, has lately tried to make our flesh creep
with tales of the mounting in German warships of a monster gun--said to
be of 17-inch calibre--which was so utterly to outrange anything we
possess as to render our control of the North Sea doubtful and shadowy.
It is strange to find a journal which, before the War, was one of the
chief asserters of the peaceful intentions of Germany thus passing into
the ranks of the "scaremongers." When the late Lord Roberts ventured,
before the War, to point out the dangers which lay before us, he was
denounced as an "alarmist." Yet on the very doubtful supposition that a
single shell which fell into Dunkirk was a 17-inch missile the _Daily
News_ has built up a "scare" article worthy only of a race of
panic-mongers, and full of false premisses and false deductions from the
first line to the last. Such are the changed views brought about by
changed circumstances!
But even supposing that the Germans actually possess a 17-inch naval
gun, is the _Daily News_ content to assume that the Admiralty and the
Government are not fully aware of the fact and that they have taken no
steps whatever to meet the new danger? It is a literal fact that we
have always been an inch or two ahead of Germany in the calibre of our
biggest guns--the history of the Dreadnought fully proves that--and it
is incredible that we should suddenly be caught napping in a matter on
which we have led the world. I leave out of consideration the purely
technical question as to whether such guns could by any possibility be
fitted to ships designed and partly constructed to take smaller weapons;
experts say that such a change would be impossible without what would
amount to practical reconstruction.
Putting these considerations on one side, is the record of our naval
service such as to justify us in assuming that they know less than they
have always known of the plans and intentions of the enemy?
Mr Balfour's reply on the subject was plain and categorical; the naval
authorities know nothing of any such weapon, and do not believe that it
exists. In all probability we shall be quite safe in accepting their
estimate of the situation, and whatever the facts may be the Navy may be
trusted to deal with new penis as they arise. After all, a Navy is not
merely so many ships and so many men armed with so many guns of such and
such a size. That is a fact which, however imperfectly it is
appreciated in Germany, is well known here. Tradition and moral count
even more afloat than ashore; we possess both. A Navy whose chief
achievements have been the drowning of helpless non-combatants in the
infamous submarine campaign may hardly be said to possess either.
For many months now the German flag has vanished from the ocean highways
of the world. For many months British commerce has peacefully pursued
its pathways to the uttermost ends of the earth.
There have been times when the depredations of German raiders, such as
the "Emden," caused some inconvenience and considerable loss. There
have been times when the submarine campaign has apparently had a great
measure of success. But though many ships, with their cargoes and with
many innocent lives, have been sunk, nothing which the German pirates
could do was sufficient seriously to threaten our overseas trade. Very
soon the marauders were rounded up and destroyed, and in a space of time
which, before the War, would have been deemed incredible the seas were
practically free for the passage of the ships of the Allies.
In the early days of the War many good judges believed that the German
commerce raiders would have been as effective against our overseas trade
as were the French privateers in the days of the Napoleonic wars.
Certain it is that it was the universal expectation that our losses in
mercantile tonnage would have been far more grievous than has proved to
be the case.
We see now that this expectation was unduly alarmist. But it was
entertained not merely by amateur students of war, but by many of the
sailors who have given a lifetime of thought to the problems of warfare
at sea. Every lesson that could be drawn from history suggested that
the life of the German raiders would have been far longer than actually
proved to be the case. Those lessons, however, were learned in the days
when the war fleets were composed of great sailing vessels which could
keep the sea far longer without fresh supplies than is possible to-day.
Cut off from any possible sources of regular supplies of food, coal, and
ammunition, the few German ships which remained at liberty when war
broke out were quickly hunted down by superior forces and destroyed
until, a very few months after the outbreak of war, Germany's strength
afloat was closely confined to the Baltic and a very small portion of
the North Sea.
Nothing like the achievements of the British Navy has ever been
witnessed in the history of war. Not even the most enthusiastic
believer in sea power could have dreamed of such brilliant and striking
successes; not even the most enthusiastic admirer of the British Navy
could, in his most sanguine moments, have expected such results as have
been attained.
When we come to think of the expanse of ocean to be covered, the
services which the British Navy has rendered to civilisation will be
seen to be stupendous. Not merely have all the German ships which were
at liberty outside the North Sea and the Baltic been hunted down and
destroyed, but the Grand Fleet, the darling of the Kaiser's heart, the
object upon which millions have been poured out like water with the
express purpose of crushing Britain, has been penned up in the narrowest
of quarters, and from every strategical point of view has been reduced
to practical impotence. True, it succeeded, under cover of fog and
darkness, in sending a squadron of fast ships to bombard undefended
Scarborough, where its gallant efforts resulted in the killing and
wounding of some hundreds of women, children, and other non-combatants
who, had we been fighting a civilised foe, would have been perfectly
safe from harm. But a repetition of the attempt at this dastardly crime
led to such condign punishment that the effort has never been repeated,
and from that day to this German excursions at sea, so far, at least, as
British waters are concerned, have been confined to the occasional
appearance of stray torpedo craft and the campaign of submarine piracy
and murder which has left upon the name of the German Navy a stigma
which it will take centuries to eradicate.
With the one solitary exception of the unequal fight off Coronel, where
the "Good Hope" and "Monmouth" were destroyed by the greatly superior
squadron of Von Spee, the Germans have uniformly had the worse of any
sea fighting which they ventured to undertake. Even the Baltic, in
which they fondly imagined they had undisputed supremacy, has been
rendered more than "unhealthy" by the activities of British submarines--
so unhealthy, in fact, that the German attack upon the Gulf of Riga,
which was to have led to the crushing of the Russian right wing and the
advance upon Petrograd, ended in a dismal failure and the precipitate
flight of the attackers. That they will be any more successful in the
future is practically unthinkable. Stronger, both relatively and
actually, than before the War, the British Navy calmly awaits "the day,"
hoping it may soon come, when the Germans will stake their existence
upon a last desperate effort to challenge that mastery of the sea the
hope of which must be slipping for ever from their grasp.
It is only necessary to say a few words about the atrocious policy of
submarine "frightfulness" which culminated in the sinking of the
"Lusitania" and the deliberate sacrifice of the lives of some 1,200
innocent people who had nothing whatever to do with the War. That
policy, the deluded German people were solemnly assured, was to bring
Britain to her knees by cutting off supplies of food and raw material,
and starving her into submission. It is worth noting in this connection
that the Germans to-day are calling upon heaven and earth to punish the
brutal English for attempting to "starve the German people" by a
perfectly legitimate blockade carried out in strict accordance with the
rules of international law. We heard nothing of the iniquities of the
"starvation" policy as long as the Germans hoped to be able to apply it
to us in the same way that they applied it to Paris during the war of
1870-71; it was only when they realised that the submarine policy had
failed that they began the desperate series of appeals, directed
especially to the United States, that they were being unfairly treated
owing to Britain refusing to allow them the "freedom of the seas"--in
other words, refusing to sit idly by while Germany obtained from the
United States and elsewhere the food and munitions of which she stood,
and stands, in such desperate need.
As a matter of fact, the German submarine campaign has not even
succeeded in reducing appreciably the strength of the British mercantile
marine.
Despite our losses, our mercantile marine is to-day, thanks to new
building and purchases, but little weaker than when war broke out,
while, so far as we can judge, the submarine campaign has failed to
contribute in the slightest degree to the rise in food values which has
imposed so great a burden upon large classes of people in our country.
It has been in fact, a complete and absolute failure. It has cost us,
it is true, many valuable vessels and many valuable lives, but as a
means to ending the War it has achieved practically nothing. The policy
of terrifying by murder has prospered no more afloat than it did ashore,
while outside the ranks of the combatants it has done nothing but earn
for Germany the contempt of the whole civilised world, to bring Germany
within an ace of war with the United States, and to brand the German
Navy and the entire German nation with an indelible stain of blood and
crime.
The submarine policy was a policy which could have been justified only
by complete success. It may suit the German Press, led by the nose by
the Government, to tell the German people that hated England was being
rapidly subdued by the efforts of the "heroic" murderers commanding the
German U-boats. We know differently.
We have the authority of Mr Balfour for saying that the German losses
in submarines have been "formidable," and it has been stated--and not
contradicted--in the House of Commons that no fewer than fifty of these
assassins of the sea have met the fate which their infamy richly
deserved. Unofficial estimates have put the number even higher. We
shall not know the exact facts until after the War, but we know at least
that the German people have at length awakened to an uneasy realisation
of the fact that they have murdered in vain, and that they have covered
themselves with undying infamy to no real purpose.
I do not suppose that knowledge sits very hardly upon their consciences;
but even in Germany there must be people who are beginning to wonder
what judgment the civilised world will pass upon them in the future, and
how they are ever to hold up their heads again among civilised nations.
And not even a German can remain perpetually indifferent to the judgment
of the civilised world.
By every means which ingenuity could devise and daring seamanship could
carry into execution Germany's submarines have been chased, harried, and
sunk, until, as we are informed upon reliable authority, the chiefs of
the German Navy are finding it increasingly difficult to find and train
submarine crews. And small wonder! No one questions the bravery of the
German sailor, whatever we may think of his humanity. But, also, he is
human, and not the superhuman being which the Germans imagine themselves
to be. And when he sees, week after week and month after month,
submarine after submarine venturing forth into the waters of the North
Sea only to be mysteriously swallowed up in the void, one can understand
that he shrinks appalled from a prospect sufficient to shake the nerves
of men who, whatever their other qualities may be, have not been bred
for hundreds of years to the traditions and the dangers of the sea.
Small wonder that they quail from the unknown fate which for ever
threatens them! Many sally forth never to return; others, more
fortunate, on reaching home have a tale to tell which, losing nothing in
the telling, is not of a nature to encourage their fellows.
It is said that a single voyage in a German submarine is enough so
seriously to try the nerves of officers and men that they need a
prolonged rest before they are ready to resume their duties. Imagine
the conditions under which they live! Hunted day and night by the
relentless British destroyers, faced ever by strange and unfamiliar
perils and by traps of which they know nothing, it is hardly a matter of
surprise if their nerves give way.
The War has given us the most wonderful example the world has ever seen
of what sea power means. Thanks to their undisputed command of the
ocean, the Allies have been able to carry on operations in widely
separated theatres practically free from any of the difficulties which
would certainly have proved insurmountable in the presence of strong
hostile forces afloat. We and our Allies have been able to transport
men and munitions wherever we wished without serious hindrance, and even
in the presence of hostile submarines we have only lost two or three
transports in eighteen months of war. That, it must be admitted, is a
very wonderful record.
Even the tragic blunder of the Dardanelles gave us a striking instance
of what sea power can effect. We were able, thanks to the Navy, not
merely to land huge forces in the face of the enemy, but we were able
also to re-embark them without loss under circumstances which, by all
the laws of war, should have meant an appalling list of casualties.
There can be no doubt whatever that had the re-embarking troops on the
Gallipoli Pensinsula tried to reach their ships without having firm
command of the sea, not more than a very small percentage of them would
have survived.
In considering the bearings of naval power to the great struggle as a
whole, we must always keep in mind what the Germans expected and hoped
when they declared war. We know, of course, that they did not expect
Britain to enter the War. But at the same time they must have realised
that there was a possibility of our doing so, and they had formulated a
plan of campaign to meet such a contingency. We know pretty well what
that campaign was. The German theory has been put into practice since;
unfortunately for the Germans, it has not worked out quite in accordance
with the text-books. They declared for the "war of attrition"; their
idea was that, by submarine attacks, the British Fleet could be so
whittled down that at length the German main Fleet would be able to meet
it with reasonable prospects of success. Their Fleet, while the process
of attrition was going on, was to remain sheltered in the unreachable
fastnesses of the Kiel Canal. The latter, however, is the only part of
the German programme which has gone according to the book.
The "High Canal Fleet" remains in the "last ditch," and apparently, at
the time of writing, seems likely to remain there. But the process of
attrition has not made the progress the Germans hoped for. It is true
we have lost a number of ships through submarine attacks. But it will
not be overlooked by the Germans any more than by ourselves that the
greater part of our losses was sustained in the early days of the
submarine campaign. As soon as the Navy "got busy" with the submarine
pest our losses practically ceased, and it is now a long time since we
have lost a fighting unit through torpedo attack. As is usual with the
Navy, our men set themselves to grapple with unfamiliar conditions, and
their success has been very striking. Not only have they been able to
protect themselves against submarine attack, but they have made the home
seas, at any rate, too hot to hold the pirates, dozens of which have
been destroyed or captured. And when the submarine war was transferred
to the Mediterranean it was not very long before the Navy again had the
menace well in hand. In the meantime our building programme was pushed
forward at such a rate that a very large number of ships of the most
powerful class have been added to the fighting units of the Fleet, with
the result that not merely relatively to the Fleet of Germany, but
actually in point of ships, men, and guns, our Fleet to-day is stronger
than it was when war broke out. That, again, is an achievement wholly
without parallel. And it is one of the chief factors in considering the
future of the campaign. The Germans have never been able to rival us in
speed of construction even in times of peace; it is in the last degree
unlikely that they have been able to do so under the conditions that
have prevailed during the past eighteen months. I have not the least
doubt that we are fully justified in assuming that our final victory at
sea is assured--if, indeed, it is not practically won already. The
conditions are plain for everyone, both at home and abroad, to see for
himself, and we have plenty of evidence to suggest that they are fully
appreciated in Germany; the idle quays of Hamburg, the idle fleets of
German merchant ships rotting in the shelter of neutral ports, the
peaceful progress of the ships of the Allies over the seas of the world,
and the growing stringency of conditions in Germany brought about by the
British blockade are quite sufficient evidence for those Germans--and
their number is growing--who are no longer blinded by the national
megalomania.
Our Navy is a silent service; it would perhaps be better for us if at
times it were a little more vocal. For there is no disguising the fact
that there is a body of impatient grumblers at home who, because we do
not read of a great sea victory every morning with our breakfasts, are
apt to ask what the Navy is doing. We can be quite sure that that
question is not asked in Germany. There, at any rate, the answer is
plain.
We can discount, I am sure, the tales we hear of Germany starving, and
that the horrors of Paris in 1870 are being repeated. That story is no
doubt diligently spread abroad by the Germans themselves in the hope of
appealing to the sentiment, or rather the sentimentality, of certain
classes in the neutral nations. At the same time, we cannot shut our
eyes to the growing mass of evidence which goes to show that the
stringency of the British blockade is producing a great and increasing
effect throughout Germany. To begin with, her export trade, despite the
leaks in the blockade, has practically vanished, and it must be
remembered that modern Germany is the creation of trade with overseas
countries. She grew rich on commerce; she might have grown richer if
she had been content with the opportunities which were as fully open to
her as to the rest of the world. It is due to the steady strangling
process carried out by the British Navy that her long accumulation of
wealth has been decisively checked, and that she is dissipating that
accumulation in what is inevitably bound to be a sure, if slow, bleeding
to death. And, whatever may be the course of the War, Germany's
overseas trade can be resumed only by the permission or through the
destruction of the British Navy. That is a factor of supreme and
tremendous importance.
In the British blockade--in other words, in the British Fleet--we have
the factor which in the long run must make possible the final overthrow
of Germany. I am not suggesting that we can win this war by sea power
alone; the final crash must come through the defeat of Germany's land
forces, since she is a land and not a sea Power. But it is the
operation of sea power which must make the final blow possible. Sea
power, and sea power alone, will make possible the final blockade of
Germany by land as well as by sea. The ring of the blockade already is
nearly complete; and when the British and French, advancing from the
base at Salonica, link up, as they must sooner or later, with the
Russian forces coming south across the Balkans, Germany will be held in
a ring of iron from which she will have no means of escape.
She realises fully that she has not the remotest chance of breaking
through the lines of the Allies in the West; she has failed utterly to
break the Russian line in the East. It is vital for her to break the
ring by which she is nearly surrounded, and in this fact we have the
explanation of her dash across the Balkans. So far that dash has been
attended with a great measure of success owing to the failure of the
Allies to win the active support of Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria. She
has succeeded in crushing Serbia and Montenegro, and in linking up with
her Turkish Allies through the medium of the Constantinople railway.
But Salonica, firmly held by the Allies, must ever be a thorn in the
side of her progress to the East, and until she succeeds in reducing it
her flank is open to a blow which would shatter her prospects in the
East as decisively as they have already been shattered in the West. We
cannot imagine that the Allies have gone to Salonica solely for reasons
of their health, and it needs no great acquaintance with military
history to realise that the possession by the Allies of the Salonica
lines may be as fatal to Germany as the holding of the lines of Torres
Vedras by Wellington was fatal to the plans of Napoleon.
The analogy is not exact--analogies seldom are--but "the Spanish ulcer"
is sufficiently reproduced for practical purposes. German commanders in
the East can never feel safe so long as Salonica remains in our
possession. And I have no doubt that when the time is ripe we shall see
the Allies advancing through the Balkans to join hands with the Russians
and, it may be, with the Rumanians. Then Germany will be definitely
isolated, and the process of exhaustion, already considerably advanced,
will proceed with ever-growing momentum, until it reaches the point when
a combined attack on land by the whole of the Allies simultaneously will
prove irresistible. I am not one of those who believe that Germany can
be defeated by economic pressure alone. But it cannot be denied that
economic pressure offers the greatest means of so weakening her power of
resistance that her final military defeat will be rendered immeasurably
easier.
And we must always remember--there is too strong a tendency in certain
quarters to forget it--that it is the principal duty of the British
Navy, so long as the German Fleet prefers idleness to fighting, to bring
about the reduction of the German power of resistance by a remorseless
strangulation of her trade. Our policy in this respect is perfectly
definite. It is that, paying due regard to the undoubted rights of
neutral nations, we will allow nothing to reach Germany which will
assist to prolong her powers of resistance.
There has been a strong disposition in some quarters to represent the
British Navy as fighting with one hand tied behind its back owing to the
supposed apathy or worse of the Foreign Office. Sir Edward Grey, in
perhaps the greatest speech of his long career, has sufficiently
disposed of that charge. It is not denied that from a variety of
causes, some of them at least beyond our control, Germany has obtained
supplies which we would very gladly have denied to her. But,
unfortunately for us and fortunately for her, neutral nations have their
rights, which we are bound to respect unless we wish to make fresh
enemies. It is beyond doubt that supplies are leaking into Germany
through Holland and Scandinavia which we should be glad to keep out. It
is absolutely impossible to prove enemy destination in all these cases,
and it must be remembered that unless we can prove this we have no right
to interfere with the commerce of neutral nations, who are quite
entitled, if they can do so, to supply Germany with precisely the class
of goods which the United States is supplying to us.
We are too apt to overlook the fact that there is nothing criminal in
supplying guns and ammunition to Germany. Neutral nations are free to
do so--if they can. We are entitled to stop them--also if we can. But
we are not entitled to interfere with the legitimate commerce of a
neutral nation; in other words, we must prove that contraband is
intended for the use of the enemy before we can lay hands upon it.
It is this feature of international law which makes it so difficult for
us to declare an absolute blockade of Germany. And it is just this
aspect of the case which is the justification of the trade agreements of
the kind which has been concluded with Denmark. Under that agreement,
and under similar ones, we allow certain goods to be imported in normal
volume to neutral countries under the assurance that they will not be
re-exported to Germany. The agreement with Denmark has been violently
attacked, and attacked, as everyone admits who has seen it, without the
slightest justification. It is admitted that it does not give us all we
would like to have; but, on the other hand, it is also admitted by those
who have seen it that it gives us a good deal more than we could hope to
obtain by other means short of what would be practically a declaration
of war.
And even the hotheads among us would shrink from telling either Holland
or the Scandinavian countries that unless they surrender their rights
and do as we wish, we should at once declare war upon them or
practically force them to declare war upon us. We need have no shadow
of doubt what Germany would do if she wielded the power we do. She
would show, as she has shown, scant consideration for the rights of
neutrals. But, thank heaven! we are not Germany, and we fight with
clean hands.
We have to solve the problem of making our blockade as effectual as
possible while paying scrupulous regard to the rights of others. That
problem is in process of solution; the importation of commodities into
Germany is decreasing day by day; and if we are not at the end of our
difficulties in this respect, we are at least drawing into sight of the
achievement of our purpose. And the more fully that purpose can be
attained, the nearer draws the end of the great struggle and the
emancipation of the civilised world from the dominion of brute force.
CHAPTER THREE.
THE COMING VICTORY ON LAND.
No one in these days would seek to minimise the untold advantages which
sea power confers upon those who wield it.
But to say that England, supreme at sea, could conquer Germany while the
latter was undefeated on land would be to stretch the doctrine of sea
power very far beyond what is actually within the bounds of possibility.
Very few people to-day hold the doctrines of sea power which were
current coin only a few months ago. That without sea power Germany
could win a decisive victory over England is admittedly impossible.
Without sea power greater than our own she can neither destroy our trade
nor attempt an invasion of England with any prospect of success. In the
presence of the British Fleet any attempt to land on these shores
sufficient forces to act with decisive effect would be impossible. For
such an undertaking Germany must secure command of the narrow seas, even
though it might be for only a few days or even a few hours.
Under existing conditions her sole chance of doing this would be to
decoy our Fleet away from our home waters by a desperate dash of her own
squadrons, trusting to be able to carry out a surprise landing on our
shores in the interval--necessarily brief--in which she could hope to
operate undisturbed. That menace, however, is one to which the chiefs
of our Navy are fully awake, and it is indeed a forlorn hope.
Imagine Germany successful on land. Could we defeat her through our
undisputed command of the sea? Personally I do not believe we could.
In all probability she could under such circumstances obtain the
supplies which would render her self-supporting, while at the same time
doing a great trade with neutral nations or with her former antagonists
over the land routes which we could not command.
It is for this reason that the situation calls for the exercise of
military power on the part of Britain on a scale never dreamed of in
previous years.
We may, I think, take it for granted that without the military as well
as the naval assistance of Great Britain our Allies would have very
little prospect of bringing the War to a successful conclusion. It is
the military power of England, growing gradually day by day, which in
the end must turn the scale if the scale is to be turned. It is true we
have rendered to our Allies very much more than the measure of support
which we promised them when we joined them to combat the peril which
threatened all in common. We have rendered the seas safe; we have
already given assistance on land perhaps far beyond anything they either
expected or had the right to ask. Naturally, we make no special virtue
of this; the fight is one of self-preservation for ourselves just as it
is for France, Russia, and Italy. We all share a common peril; all of
us in common owe to the others the fullest mutual co-operation and
effort.
And upon us, just as much as upon our Allies, rests the duty of
developing our fighting efficiency to the highest pitch of which the
Empire is capable. Nothing less than this will be sufficient to remove
for all time the menace by which civilisation is faced. Those who say
that because Britain has gone beyond what she undertook to do it cannot
be expected that she should do more are nothing less than traitors to
the common cause. We cannot bargain with our destiny. And, assuredly,
if we fail to measure the gravity of the situation, if we fail to put
forth the whole energies of our people, destiny will take a terrible
revenge. Can it be, with the awful lessons of Belgium and Serbia before
our eyes, that this nation will be satisfied with anything less than the
maximum of effort in the prosecution of the War?
Cost what it may, the final overthrow of Germany must be effected _on
land_, and in the execution of that inflexible purpose Britain, whether
she likes it or not, must play a leading part. We have been for
centuries a great naval Power; the day has dawned when we must become a
great military Power as well. We have, indeed, already become so in
part. We have raised armies on a scale which, before the War, neither
our friends nor our enemies would have thought possible. Without unduly
flattering ourselves, we may claim to have done much; we shall yet do
more and more until the power of Prussia is finally broken. It is not
enough that we should content ourselves, as some suggest, with supplying
money and munitions to our Allies.
We must take the field as a nation fighting for everything which makes
life worth living. To those who say that we cannot afford to raise
larger armies than we have already raised, I would reply that if
necessary the last of Britain's savings, the whole strength of her
manhood, must be flung into the melting-pot of war. And I am happy to
think that at length the nation as a whole is showing a growing
realisation of this undoubted fact. We are fast getting over our
preliminary troubles (which have lasted far too long); the entire nation
is settling down in grim and deadly earnest to make an end once and for
all of the German pretensions. "Tear-'em is a good dog, but Holdfast is
better," says the old saw, and we are to-day not far from the time when,
not for the first time in the world's history, the silent, deadly,
dogged determination of the British race will be a fact with which the
entire world will have to reckon. We are out to fight this War to a
finish, and I am glad to think the nation as a whole has at last
awakened to the grim facts of the situation.
Those who are suggesting that the British Navy can by any means give the
death-blow to German aim at world-domination are, I am convinced, doing
the nation ill service. Their argument is that because we are a naval
Power we should be content with the exercise of our naval strength, and
should not venture to embark on military operations on a scale for which
our previous experience has not tended to fit us. Counsels of this
kind, however well intended, are a profound--they might well be a
fatal--mistake. They tend to deaden the brain and paralyse the arm of
the Executive; they add to the terrible perils by which we are already
surrounded. More than this, they tend greatly to prolong the conflict
and add immeasurably to the terrible toll of life and treasure which the
War is extorting from all the nations who have the misfortune to be
engaged in it. Let us put aside once and for all the comfortable theory
that as we have already done more than was expected of us there is no
need for further exertions.
There is a crying need for all that we can do, for more, indeed, than we
can hope to do.
To be sparing of effort in war is to be guilty of the greatest possible
folly. Moderation in war, as Lord Fisher is credited with saying, is
imbecility; and it is infinitely cheaper in the long run to do a thing
well than to half do it and, probably, have all the work to do over
again under still more difficult circumstances, even if it can be done
at all. A glance at the record of the Dardanelles Expedition will show
what I mean.
And unless in this hour of supreme trial Britain is true to herself and
to the great cause for which she and her Allies have unsheathed the
sword, if she is content with less than the utmost effort of which she
is capable, the historian of the future, looking backward across the
centuries, will be able to place his finger unerringly upon the day and
hour of which it will be possible to say, "Here the decline of the
British Empire began." Happily, indeed, for ourselves and civilisation
at large the awakening spirit of our people is the best possible
guarantee against any such disaster.
As I said in my opening chapter, our mythical visitor from another
planet, judging the progress of the War by the map only, might well be
excused if he came to the conclusion that the Germans had already won so
far as the land campaign was concerned. Now this is precisely the
mental position of the German people to-day. They have been told, day
by day and month by month, that Germany is everywhere victorious, and,
speaking generally, they believe it. Of course, a few of the more
thoughtful and better informed are beginning to wonder why, if the
constant tales of victory are true, they seem to be no nearer to the
sight of peace. But the German Government has to deal not with the
well-informed few, but with the ill-informed many.
So long as the mass of the people are prepared to believe what they are
told, they will go on supplying the Government with the means of war,
and, after all, that is no bad frame of mind for the conduct of a great
struggle.
No doubt the process of disillusionment, when it comes, will be all the
more violent and painful, but at present we have to face the fact that a
very large proportion of the German people believe that they are
winning. Up to recently they have shown that they are willing to put up
with the shortage and distress which are growing in Germany, looking
upon them as part of the price of victory. But, as I shall show later,
even this comfortable belief is beginning to break down before the stern
logic of facts, and, as a result, chinks and cracks are appearing even
in the iron wall of German patience and perseverance. That those chinks
and cracks will widen as time goes on is certain; and when the wall
gives way, as it assuredly will, we shall see a catastrophe which will
probably sweep away the German organisation as it exists to-day.
Now let us consider for a moment the grounds upon which Germany assumes
she has won the War. She regards the whole field of the War on land as
absolutely dominated by the German arms. German armies have occupied
practically the whole of Belgium, they have pushed their way far into
France, they have occupied the whole of Poland and a considerable slice
of Russia proper, they have overrun and devastated Serbia and
Montenegro, have won control of the Balkans, and have opened up an
uninterrupted way to Constantinople and the East. But--and it is a very
big "but" indeed--their one complete military success in the real sense
of the word has been the destruction of the fighting power of
Montenegro, the smallest and the weakest of their opponents! Not even
Serbia, properly speaking, has been destroyed as a fighting force, for
at least half of the splendid Serbian Army is intact, and will take the
field again as soon as it has rested and secured fresh equipment.
As regards Germany's more powerful opponents, the only ones which count
so far as the final decision of the War is concerned, they stand to-day
not merely with their fighting efficiency unimpaired, but, taken as a
whole, actually stronger than they were a year ago. The huge armies
which Britain is raising have not yet even taken the field; France is
certainly no more weakened relatively than is Germany herself; Russia,
recovering amazingly from her misfortunes, will soon be ready to strike
new and harder blows; Italy is steadily, if slowly, pushing forward to
the heart of her hereditary enemy. Moreover, all are absolutely united
and determined in the prosecution of the War.
Yet in the face of these indisputable facts the Germans appear to be
genuinely surprised that the Allies are not ready and willing to accept
the preposterous "peace terms" which, in their arrogance, they have been
good enough to put forward, through the usual "unofficial" channels, for
acceptance. It is a surprise to them that the Allies are not ready to
confess that they are vanquished. The fact is, of course, that they are
not vanquished or anything like it. They mean to go on, as Mr Asquith
has said, until the military power of Prussia, the _fons et origo_ of
the whole bloody struggle, is finally and completely destroyed. And
they have the means and the will to do it. The fact that Germany has
forced her way into so large an amount of the Allied territory is
merely, in the eyes of the Allies, another reason why they should
continue to fight, and a good reason why they should fight with growing
hopes of ultimate success.
Longer lines necessarily mean thinner lines, for the simple reason that
Germany has reused her maximum of man-power, while the Allies have still
large reserves as yet untouched.
There we have the bedrock fact of the War, and no amount of boasting and
bragging of German "victories" will alter it. It signifies little or
nothing that Germany shall have overrun the Balkans so long as she is
open to a smashing blow in the West, which is, and must ever be to the
end, the real heart of the War. It is in France and Flanders that the
final blow must come, and it will profit Germany nothing to hold
Constantinople while the Allies are thundering at the crossing of the
Rhine.
If Germany had succeeded in her ambitious design to capture Paris or
London or Petrograd, she might have reasonable excuse for some of the
boasting which has filled the columns of her Press; she would have still
more excuse if she had succeeded in destroying the armed forces of
Britain or of France or of Russia. But she has done none of these
things. Britain, France, Russia, and Italy are not merely still full of
fight, they are growing stronger while she is growing weaker. They are
certainly not weakening as much as she is herself in the moral sense and
in the capacity and determination to endure to the end. And while I am
no believer in the theory that a war can be won by sitting down and
waiting for exhaustion to defeat the enemy, there can be no doubt of the
fact that if the War resolves itself into a contest of endurance the
Allies are at least as well equipped as the Germans to see this thing
through to the end.
We must never lose sight of the fact that the German thrust to the East
is merely an expression of her uncomfortable consciousness that it is
her last chance of breaking the blockade by land as well as by sea which
is exercising such a strangling effect upon her. Germany, as a fact, is
in the position of a beleaguered garrison. Unless she can break the
ring around her she must inevitably perish. If we bear this fact in
mind, we shall be in a better position to appreciate at its real value
the bearing of the German successes in the direction of Constantinople,
and of her real motives in that adventure. So far Germany is closely
blockaded on three fronts--by the French and British, by the Italians,
and by the Russians. She can have no reasonable hope that she will be
able to break the blockade in either of these directions; her efforts
have already brought her disastrous failures and enormous losses. By
her success in the Balkans she has opened, for what they are worth,
fresh sources of supplies; she has secured, again for what it is worth,
the adhesion of Bulgaria; she has secured the neutrality of Greece, and,
so far, of Rumania. But she is not yet safe even here. Salonica
menaces her communications eastwards; and should the Allies take the
offensive from this base, we ought to see the last of Germany's
communications with the outer world, except through the neutral
countries, finally closed. Then, and then only, will the full influence
of the sea power of the Allies begin to make itself felt with decisive
results.
The plain fact is that those who have decried the supposed inactivity of
the British Fleet have failed to take into consideration the fact that
the German successes on land have, to some extent, neutralised British
successes afloat. Germany had every reason to hope that our failure in
the Gallipoli Peninsula would enable her to call upon the services of
some half a million Turks and to secure fresh sources of supplies of
food and raw material, not very great, perhaps, but still helpful; and
in Serbia she has won what is of real value, a fresh supply of copper.
If she could push through a really serviceable system of communication
with Bagdad and the Persian Gulf, she would gain still more solid
advantages, including, it might be, control of the British oil supplies
in Persia. But this hope has been utterly smashed by the great Russian
victory at Erzerum. I do not believe the German aims in these
directions were immediate perils, but the Germans, as we know to our
cost, take long views in matters of war, and the better we understand
their aims the better will be our chance of countering them. And in
this case a full understanding of what Germany is aiming at provides us
with a specially urgent reason for decisive action at the point where
Germany can be hit the hardest. This is unquestionably on the West
front.
The importance of closing at the earliest possible moment the gap in the
blockade--the direct road from Berlin to Constantinople and Egypt and
the East--is supreme, for Germany may very veil secure, if only for a
time, complete control of Turkey. The effect of our sea power is
gravely weakened if Germany is able to draw the supplies of men and
materials she needs through the Balkan countries. We have to
re-establish the barrier on the Eastern road with as little delay as
possible, remembering that the Germans may be trusted to make the utmost
of what must seem to our foes to be nothing less than a heaven-sent
opportunity. We know that already they have very completely looted
Serbia of everything that could be of the slightest use to them, and we
can be fairly confident that the process will be continued in Turkey and
Bulgaria.
It is for this reason that the Balkan area suddenly assumed such
importance in the War. So long as Germany keeps open the road to the
East, so long is she obtaining reinforcements in men and supplies which
enable her to prolong the War.
There are a variety of plans open to us for the purpose of countering
the latest German thrust for the open. But it must be remembered that
the majority of these partake too much of the nature of the "small
packet" to be sound from a military and strategic point of view. Most
of our troubles in the present War have sprung from a diffusion of
effort which has led us to dissipate our strength in a variety of local
attacks which have missed the point at which a decisive blow could be
dealt.
We have over and over again been too weak at the critical point. That
is a danger which I trust will be guarded against in the future by the
improved arrangements that have been made during the past few months for
a better co-ordination of the joint plans of the Allies. Joint
simultaneous action by all the Allies, each on his own front, is one of
the cardinal necessities for bringing the War to a successful
conclusion; and unless this is attained we shall always be faced with
the danger that Germany, having the advantage of operating on interior
lines, will be able, thanks to the mobility afforded her by her
magnificent system of railways, to meet and check, if not to defeat, her
enemies in detail.
It is an unhappy fact that so far there has been a lamentable lack of
co-ordination between the Allies. For some reason or another we have
never been able to bring our preparations to fruition at the same
moment. Valuable steps have been taken of late, however, to bring about
a better co-ordination of the Allies' plans, and there is therefore
reason to hope that in the coming great struggle we shall see greater
unity of action as well as more unity of control and direction.
But whatever may be the success of our efforts in this direction I have
not the least doubt that the West front will remain the decisive theatre
of the War. If the Germans are to be beaten, they will be beaten in the
West; if we can score a great success there, we can with every
confidence leave the Balkan imbroglio and the menace to Egypt and the
East to settle itself. A strong threat in the direction of the Rhine
would bring the German armies westward as fast as express trains could
carry them, would automatically open up the road across the Balkans from
Salonica, and would at once enormously facilitate the Russian recovery
of lost territory and an invasion of Germany from the East.
Moreover, it would be a blow in the decisive direction, for, after all--
and it cannot be too often repeated--it is on the Western front that the
final victory will be won.
Now there can be no doubt that the Germans themselves are fully
conscious of this fact, and that they are taking the speediest measures
to guard against the peril of a great attack by the Allies in the course
of the coming months. The Budapest correspondent of the _Morning Post_
has given us invaluable information upon this point. Great developments
are expected in Austro-German military circles in the early spring, and
preparations are being made to meet a tremendous onslaught by the Allies
on three or four fronts. One of the best informed military writers in
Hungary, Monsieur Tibor Bakos, who is known to have exceptional sources
of information, has stated that in the early spring the Allied Powers
have decided to embark upon an offensive of unparalleled magnitude.
This is the direct result of the steps that have been taken to establish
a common military and diplomatic leadership and control among the
Allies. They know well in Vienna and Berlin that at a given moment the
iron ring round the Central Empires will suddenly tighten at every
point.
"All the political leaders and generals of the Allies," says the writer,
"are absolutely certain of a great and decisive victory, and their
optimism as regards the final issue of the War is even more marked than
it was in 1914, when the War began, and in the spring of 1915, when
Italy joined the Entente."
Now, assuming that a joint scheme of attack has been decided upon, where
will these attacks be delivered? That, of course, is the secret of our
military leaders; but, within certain lines, there is ground for a
reasonable forecast. And first and foremost comes the battle-ground in
the West. In this direction Champagne and Artois seem clearly marked
out. The Russians may be expected to move on both wings of their long
lines--in the south with the idea of joining hands with the French and
British across the Balkans and of convincing Rumania, and in the north
to complete a turning movement which shall drive back the German centre.
On the Italian front the line of the Isonzo seems to be indicated.
As supplementary but still important movements we shall probably see
shrewd blows struck across Macedonia and at Turkey in the Caucasus, and
perhaps elsewhere. Indeed, the blow at Erzerum has come since these
lines were penned.
On the other hand, we have to remember that the Germans may anticipate
our blows at any or all of these points. What are the prospects of
success for us or for our enemies?
Now we are assured by those who ought to know that the strength of the
Allies in men and munitions is greater than that of the enemy. We are
assured that our supplies of shells are now fully adequate, and it is a
remarkable fact that a writer in a leading American magazine has stated
recently that we are no longer ordering shells from the United States.
We know that we and the French have vast supplies of guns. Can we, with
all these advantages, break decisively the German lines in the West,
which the enemy professes to regard as impregnable?
I believe we can, and I believe it is in the West that the real and most
deadly blow will come. No doubt it will be coupled with strong action
elsewhere, but I have seen and heard nothing to shake my conviction that
here must be the real settlement of the War. Given ample supplies of
men and guns and ammunition, I believe we have commanders who are
capable of driving the enemy out of his strong entrenchments from the
North Sea to the Swiss frontier, who are capable of forcing the crossing
of the Rhine and carrying the War into the enemy's territory. And we
must always remember that Germany is peculiarly sensitive to invasion.
We know something of the panic that was caused by the Russian advance
into East Prussia in the early days of the War. And since then the
Germans have begun to fear that in the event of invasion the measure
that they have meted out to those they had in their power will in turn
be meted out to themselves. They have, in fact, a bad conscience, and
they fear the vengeance of their foes.
In this, as in all other wars, one is faced with the fact that the
written word of to-day may be falsified by the events of to-morrow, but
as I write there is every indication that we are on the eve of a renewal
of the great struggle which shall go far to decide on the Western front
the issue of the War. Already we hear the mutterings which prelude the
breaking of the storm. We hear of German guns and reinforcements
hurrying westward, we know that our own commanders are not idle, we know
that the "deadlock" is more apparent than real, and that in war, as in
everything else, nothing ever really stands still. Every day that
passes helps us or our enemies. We cannot say that the coming struggle
will give us all we seek; we know that in any event we have many days of
trial and grievous loss before us. But we have good grounds for hope.
Our people are united and determined to an extent to which we have
hitherto been strangers.
We know that everything has been done to fit our troops to play their
great part in what may well be the final act of Armageddon. We know
they are resolute and of good courage. And if the coming great battle
of the West, of which to-day we hear and see the signs, prove, as it
well may, the most terrible conflict which this old earth has ever
witnessed, we can look forward with calm confidence to the outcome, for
we believe that Britain and France, united and determined, confident in
the justice of their cause, will be far more than a match for any effort
our enemies can make either in offence or defence. If we can secure
united and simultaneous action by all the Allies, it is my firm belief
that before the year is out we shall have set our advancing feet on the
road which leads to Berlin and victory.
CHAPTER FOUR.
OUR MASTERY OF THE AIR.
The story of the British air service in the days before the War is so
characteristically English that I must give a few lines to it if only to
make quite clear the realisation of what we have done to meet the new
dangers which, as usual, caught us unprepared.
We exhibited as a nation a most regrettable reluctance to comprehend the
value of the aeroplane and the airship as a means of making war.
We failed utterly to grasp the fact that with the coming of the
aeroplane a new factor had entered into military science, just as, in
the early days of the submarine, we neglected the new invention until we
had lagged behind other nations to an extent that, under different
circumstances, might well have proved disastrous. We made a few feeble
and futile efforts in aeroplane construction; we dallied tentatively
with airships of a microscopic pattern. The flying wing of the Army was
half starved, and the advice and remonstrances of the men who had really
studied and understood the subject were cold-shouldered by the
authorities to whom everything new and revolutionary was--and too often
is--anathema.
I have studied the progress of aviation from the time when I acted as a
judge at the first Aviation Meeting held in this country--on Doncaster
racecourse. It may perhaps be remembered that in the early days of
flying, when the _Daily Mail_ offered a prize of 10,000 pounds for the
first flight from London to Manchester, a misguided evening journal
derisively offered a prize of a million pounds for the first man who
flew, I think, ten miles.
No doubt the sneer was inspired partly by professional jealousy of the
_Daily Mail_, but it revealed, in very striking fashion, the mental
attitude, shared unfortunately by our military authorities, of those who
refused to see in the new arm anything more than a very complicated,
useless, and dangerous toy.
Time has slipped along since Sommer, Le Blon, and Cody flew at
Doncaster; the pioneers of aviation persisted in their efforts, and
within three years of the _Daily Mail's_ offer being made the prize had
been won. Tremendous progress was made in every department of flying,
and the keener students of military affairs realised that in the
aeroplane there had arrived a weapon, both of offence and defence, which
would go far to revolutionise warfare as it had been understood in the
past.
None the less, our Army lagged far behind the rest of the world. Either
the War authorities were not sufficiently insistent, or the Treasury
turned a deaf ear to their appeals for money for the development of the
new science.
The result was that while our French friends and our German enemies--for
they were our enemies even then, as we have now good reason to know--
were pushing ahead with aerial investigation and securing a lead which
might well have been fatal to us, the British air service languished in
comparative neglect. It is certainly hardly too much to say that but
for the assistance given by the _Daily Mail_ flying in England would
have been utterly and totally neglected. The result was what might have
been expected, and the outcome was characteristically British.
When the War broke out we were in a condition of decided inferiority to
the French fliers--that perhaps mattered little, as we were fighting on
the same side--and very much behindhand in relation to Germany, which
mattered a great deal. We had to make up in quality--and of the quality
of our airmen there was happily no question--what we lacked in
equipment. We were entirely without airships comparable in any way to
the Zeppelins, and we had nothing like the number of the German
"Tauben." Most happily for us the quality of our airmen proved far
beyond anything which Germany possesses, and in the matter of men we
took at once, and have since held, a commanding lead.
It was not long before the value of the new arm was signally
demonstrated. In all probability the fate of the British Army in the
early days of the War was decided by air reconnaissance. It was one of
the air scouts who discovered the enormous concentration of German
troops before Sir John French's army, and thus gave the timely warning
which made the great retreat from Mons a possibility.
What followed reproduced in striking fashion the early history of the
submarine, and proved very clearly that our deficiencies in the matter
of aircraft were not due to any defect in personnel or energy or
inventiveness. Striking advances were made when the obvious
requirements of the War became manifest.
Money, of course, had to be poured out like water, and no doubt we spent
a great deal more than would have been necessary had we made due
preparation in time of peace. But, at any rate, thanks to the British
genius for improvisation, the work was done. Men and machines were soon
forthcoming in ever-increasing numbers, and it was not many months
before Sir John French was able to announce that our airmen had
established a definite personal ascendency over the airmen of the enemy.
That ascendency has been fully maintained.
Man for man and machine for machine we lead the Germans in the matter of
flight, so far at least as the aeroplane is concerned. German losses in
aerial conflict have been very much heavier than our own, a fact that is
not surprising when the personal equation is taken into consideration.
In natural daring and personal initiative--two of the qualities
indispensable to the successful airman--the French and the British
characters are far superior to the German. We can look forward with
complete confidence to any comparison that can be made between the rival
air services so far as the heavier-than-air machines are concerned.
A good deal has been said lately about the new German Fokker machine,
and there has been a good deal of loose talk as to its formidable
possibilities. As a matter of fact, its wonders appear to have been
very much exaggerated, for it is only a powerful engine put into an
obsolete type of French machine. It is not without significance that it
is designed for purely defensive purposes, and is absolutely forbidden
to cross the German lines under any circumstances whatever. It is a
very small, very heavily engined monoplane, carrying a formidable gun,
and for short distances capable of very swift climbing and very high
speed.
For its own special purpose it is undoubtedly a first-class engine of
war, but that it has met its match in the British and French
battle-planes was clearly shown during a recent raid on Freiburg.
During that raid, a great part of which was over enemy territory, the
fighting machines which acted as escorts to the bombers fought no fewer
than ten battles with the Fokkers and Aviatiks; and when we remember
that the only aeroplane of the Allies to be lost out of the entire
squadron was compelled to descend through engine trouble, we can easily
understand that highly exaggerated reports as to the efficiency of the
rule-of-thumb Fokker had by some means got into circulation. In all
probability they arose from the comparatively numerous victims among our
flying men claimed by the German official news just after the Fokker
made its appearance. But the reason for the seeming disproportion in
numbers was very simple. We were constantly the attacking party; in
other words, our airmen were constantly over the German lines, while the
Germans, as far as they could, gave our lines a very wide berth. The
following figures, quoted in the House of Commons by Mr Tennant, are
illuminating. They relate to four weeks' fighting on the Western front,
practically all of which had taken place in German territory:
British machines lost, 13.
Enemy machines brought down, 9.
Enemy machines probably brought down, 2.
British bombing raids, 6.
Enemy bombing raids, 13.
British machines used, 138.
Enemy machines used, about 20.
Machines flown across enemy lines, 1227.
Enemy machines flown across our lines (estimated), 310.
Now we need not go farther than these figures to see that the apparently
heavier British losses are due not to any superiority on the German
side, but to the enormously greater risks taken by our men. They are
constantly flying over the German lines, whereas the German airman
appears--probably with good reason--to keep to the comparative safety of
his own territory, where he is protected by the German anti-aircraft
guns. And that when it comes to actual combat in the air the British
battle-plane has little to fear from the Fokker is shown by the
experience of one of our airmen who single-handed fought a duel with
three Fokkers and brought them all down. Moreover, we have always to
remember that when a battle is fought the defeated Fokker comes to earth
in German territory, and we cannot definitely count it as destroyed,
whereas if one of our machines is brought down the Germans are always as
sure of it as we are.
Another factor which shows how great an advantage we have over the enemy
in the matter of the air service is revealed by the comparative failure
of German bombing attacks and the havoc that has been wrought by the
French and British squadrons. Leaving the Zeppelin raids for the moment
out of the question, there can be no difference of opinion that the
Allies' air raids have been enormously the more destructive, not in the
matter of the sacrifice of civilian life--pre-eminence in that regard is
easily claimed by the Huns--but in the havoc wrought on military
objectives.
When we turn to the dirigible airship--the lighter-than-air machine--the
comparison at first sight seems hopelessly against us. We have nothing
that can be compared to the Zeppelin in either speed or power of
destruction. We have, it is true, a number of airships of different
types, but experience so far has not shown that they are of great, if of
any, practical value. Our military authorities have deliberately pinned
their faith to the aeroplane, and so far as this War is concerned it
would appear that we are hopelessly outclassed in the matter of
airships.
But we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by appearances. We must
not fail to take into consideration the fact that so far as its real
military value is concerned the Zeppelin has shown itself to be an
absolute and costly failure. This may seem at first sight a hard saying
when we think of the many victims of the Zeppelin raids, of the women
and little children slaughtered, of the civilians murdered in midnight
raids whose lives against any opponents with the slightest regard for
the laws of war or for their own good name would have been absolutely
safe.
But the facts cannot be disputed. The Zeppelin is a murder machine pure
and simple. Its military value is absolutely negligible, and the
destruction it has wrought has been of no military significance
whatever. Out of all the victims it has claimed during its frequent
nocturnal expeditions here and in France, only the barest handful have
been soldiers, and on none of the raids has any military base sustained
the slightest damage. Moreover, it has failed in its avowed object of
terrorising; neither our own people nor the French have been weakened--
rather have they been strengthened--in their determination to carry on
the War to the only issue consistent with the future existence of
civilisation. The only real and tangible results of the Zeppelin raids
from a military point of view have been to cover the Germans with a
stigma of crime and murder for which they will pay dearly in the future,
and to make the Allies more than ever determined to root out the nest of
vermin which for so long has troubled Europe. They have done more,
perhaps, than anything else except the infamous submarine campaign to
convince the civilised world that so long as Germany retains her power
of mischief there will be no peace for the nations at large.
There is no disguising the fact, however, that, for what it is worth,
the Zeppelin for the moment holds the field.
We have not yet succeeded in discovering any means either of keeping the
raiders away when the conditions are favourable for their visits, or of
dealing effectively with them when their presence is detected.
Undoubtedly the problem is a very difficult one. Zeppelins can fly so
high that gunfire is practically ineffective against them, as has been
proved in the raids on both Paris and London; the one recently brought
down by the French was flying much lower than usual. They are able to
take very effective cover behind any clouds that may be about, and the
difficulties by which the aeroplanes are faced in locating and attacking
them at night appear to be well-nigh insuperable under present
conditions. In time, perhaps, we shall have fleets of powerful
aeroplanes which will be able to take the air and not merely rise
swiftly to the height at which the Zeppelin flies, but remain aloft all
night, if need be, until the dangers inseparable from a landing in the
dark have disappeared.
But it must not be forgotten that the very factors which give the
Zeppelin its invulnerability against attack practically destroy its
value as a fighting machine. No one--not even the commanders of the
Zeppelins themselves--would pretend that, flying at a height of 12,000
feet or so on a dark and cloudy night, they can say with certainty where
they are, or that they can drop their murderous bombs with any sure hope
of hitting an object which would be their justification from a military
point of view. They simply wait until they think they are over an
inhabited area, and then drop their bombs in the hope of killing as many
people as possible, or, perhaps, luckily striking some material object
and doing real damage. That is not war as the civilised world
understands it, but simply anarchism.
A distinguished writer recently expressed the opinion that as the
Germans were essentially a practical people they would not waste effort
by dropping at haphazard bombs which they had been at such pains to
carry to this country, and that they must therefore be genuinely under
the impression that they were doing real military damage. But their
whole record in the War entirely disposes of this theory. We know quite
well--the Germans have told us so, and their acts have borne out their
words--that the policy of "frightfulness" commends itself to their
judgment. Their one idea is to terrify; they hope to do enough damage
and kill enough people to bring about in England a movement for peace.
Nothing but defeat will convince them that they are wrong.
And this consideration brings me naturally to another--the subject of
reprisals. If we cannot stop the Zeppelins coming or deal with them
adequately when they are here, can we teach the Germans a lesson which
will convince them that two can play at the game of "frightfulness," and
that in the long run we can play that game better than they can
themselves? I think we can, and I think we should.
It has been one of the most striking characteristics of the career of
Lord Rosebery that on more than one occasion he has put into terse and
vigorous expression the opinions of the great majority of the English
people. With all his apparent detachment, Lord Rosebery has a wonderful
understanding of what England is saying, and still more what it is
thinking, and the reader will call to mind more than one occasion on
which the nebulous and only half-expressed thought of England has been
suddenly crystallised in the clearest fashion through the mouth of Lord
Rosebery. This has unmistakably been the case in the matter of the
Zeppelin raids.
In a recent letter to _The Times_, dated February 3, Lord Rosebery put
the English point of view with his customary clearness and directness.
He wrote:
This last Zeppelin raid has cleared the air. There may be
difficulties from the aircraft point of view in reprisals. I am not
behind the scenes, and I do not know. But as regards policy there can
be none. We have too long displayed a passive and excessive patience.
We all remember Grey's noble lines, "To scatter plenty o'er a smiling
land." For "plenty" read "bombs" and you have the Prussian ideal. To
scatter bombs over a countryside, to destroy indiscriminately the
mansion and the cottage, the church and the school, to murder
unoffending civilians, women, children, and sucklings in their beds--
these are the noble aspirations of Prussian chivalry, acclaimed by
their nation as deeds of merit and daring.
Let them realise their triumph. Let us bring it directly to their
hearts and homes. Let us unsparingly mete out their measure to
themselves. Nothing else will make them realise their glories. And
the blood of any who may suffer will rest on their Government, not on
ours.
I am firmly convinced that in that letter Lord Rosebery expressed not
merely what the great mass of the English people are thinking and saying
to-day, but that he expressed a great and real truth.
In the early days of the War it was the fashion here in England to
affect to believe that we were at war not with the German people--
represented by the pro-Germans in our midst as a kindly, harmless, and
industrious lot of folks--but with the mysterious "military caste" who
were supposed to have usurped all authority, and to be driving the
delightful German people at large into the commission of all kinds of
bestial outrages which were entirely foreign to their wholly delightful
nature. I should imagine that fiction has long gone by the board. We
have seen the "delightful" German nation sent into paroxysms of inhuman
glee by such outrages as the sinking of the "Lusitania"; we have seen
them time and again savagely gloating over the slaughter of men, women,
and children by their murderous Zeppelins; and if those savage outbursts
of delight have done nothing else, we have at least to thank them for
teaching us the lesson that we are at war with the entire German nation,
and that between that nation and the civilised world there is a great
gulf fixed which in our time at least will not be bridged over.
Do we owe any consideration to such a nation? Do we owe to them any of
the chivalry and honourable forbearance which we have shown, not once,
but a thousand times, in our long contests with civilised adversaries on
a hundred fields in all parts of the world? Are our hands to be tied
and our people to suffer through our adherence to creeds of warfare
which the Huns evidently regard--as they regard Christianity itself--as
a lot of worn-out shibboleths?
I say emphatically "No," and I say the time has come when we should take
steps, in Lord Rosebery's words, to bring home the triumphs of the
Zeppelins to German hearts and German homes.
It is too much the fashion in this country to look upon the German as a
stolid individual with nerves of steel, who is not to be shaken from his
serenity by any of the trials which would bear hardly upon ordinary
mortals. There never was a greater mistake. I am quite ready to admit
that the German can look unmoved upon a great deal of suffering in other
people--that is a characteristic of bullies of all nations; and if the
German has not shown himself to be a super-man, he has at least
convinced the world that he is the super-bully _in excelsis_. And the
only argument that appeals to him is force, naked and unashamed. In his
heart of hearts he knows it. That is why he believes that England
to-day is cowering in impotent terror under the menace of the Zeppelins,
because he knows that is exactly what he would be doing himself if the
positions were reversed, and he cannot understand other people who are
built on very different lines. We know how one of the early raids on
Freiburg produced an instant panic flight of every German who could
afford to get away from a district which had suddenly become
"unhealthy."
Now we have it in our power to reproduce that panic in a dozen German
towns within easy reach of our lines in France. And we know something
of the real effects of a bombardment by one of the Allied squadrons. In
the recent raid on Petrich only fourteen French aeroplanes took part.
Yet the Bulgarians officially admitted that they sustained a thousand
casualties--far more than we have suffered in the twenty odd Zeppelin
raids on England.
Surely it is high time we made it clearly known that any repetition of
the bombardment of an unfortified area would be followed by reprisals of
the most merciless nature. We can imagine what the effect would be of a
big British or French squadron of aeroplanes pelting the German frontier
towns with a hail of high explosive and incendiary shells. Assuredly
the Zeppelin raids on England would seem futile in comparison. And just
as assuredly it would bring home to the German nation as nothing else
ever will that the policy of "frightfulness" in which they have elected
to indulge is one which will call down upon them a richly deserved
punishment. I believe that, speaking generally, the entire world would
approve of our action if we decided to take such measures of reprisals
as German crimes call for. The responsibility would be Germany's, not
ours. We have fought, as our French Allies have fought, with clean
hands.
I believe that stern punishment of this nature is the only possible
means of putting an end to the German campaign of murder, and it is for
that reason that I advocate it without the slightest hesitation or
compunction. The idea of those who believe that reprisals are called
for is not to punish the Germans so much as to convince them of the
error of their ways and to protect our own people. I believe that our
air squadrons could set up such a reign of terror in the Rhine towns
that even in Germany the demand for the only possible measure of
protection--the cessation of the air raids on unfortified places in
France and England--would become irresistible. The German Government
may continue to delude the German people about events that are happening
outside Germany; they could not by any possibility hide the facts if the
air war were effectively carried on to German soil.
Further, I firmly believe that half a dozen smashing aerial attacks upon
German towns and cities would do more to put a stop to Germany's
unending infraction of all the laws of civilised warfare than the futile
notes and protests of President Wilson have effected in a twelvemonth.
It will be objected by those who seek to make war in kid gloves that if
we carry out these raids German women and children must inevitably
suffer. I do not shrink from the conclusion, though I regret the
necessity which has been forced upon us by the Germans themselves. I am
not at all ashamed to say that one little English baby dead in the arms
of its weeping mother, killed not by the accident of warfare, but of
set, savage, and deliberate purpose, far outweighs in my mind any
sentimental or humanitarian considerations for our enemies. We should
have no ground of complaint if the Germans confined their raids to
proper military objects; and if, in the course of those raids, civilians
were accidentally killed, that would be one of the penalties of being at
war, and we should be justified in asking our people to bear their
sorrows with what fortitude they could. The case is widely different
when men, women, and children are slain in a foul campaign of insensate
murder; and I say again that in self-defence we are entitled to throw
mere sentiment to the winds and protect ourselves by any means in our
power. And the best means of protection we have against these murderous
raids is to hit the Hun in the same way, to give him a taste of his own
medicine; in the words of Lord Rosebery, to bring his triumph directly
to his heart and his home. Thus, and thus only, we shall convince the
German people, and through them the German militarists, that in the long
last it does not pay to outrage the conscience of civilisation.
To sum up, I think it is certainly true to say that in the domain of the
air the Allies have established and can maintain a definite superiority
over the enemy. That they have established it is plain; that they can
maintain it is, I think, equally plain, because they have the larger
resources, and because successful aerial work calls for the exercise of
qualities which both the French and the English possess in a far more
marked degree than do the Germans. Our air raids have been far more
destructive from the military point of view than anything the enemy has
been able to accomplish; they have been better devised and more capably
carried out by men who were better fitted for the task they had in hand.
It remains to be seen whether the German superiority in the
lighter-than-air machines will give them any real advantage.
At present all the arguments point to the greater value of the aeroplane
upon which the Allies have pinned their faith. In any case, it is too
late, probably, for us to take up the question of airship construction
with any hope of making effective use of it during the present War, and
we must do the best we can with what we believe to be the superior
weapon. My own view is that on the whole the superiority of the Allies
is fully assured, and that now and to the end the credit of winning the
War in the air will and must remain with us.
CHAPTER FIVE.
BRITAIN'S UNSHAKABLE RESOLVE.
This War has brought many changes, and will bring many more. But it has
brought one for which we cannot be too grateful, one which we may even
think in the days to come was the justification and the reward for all
the lives and all the treasure which the great struggle has demanded and
will yet demand from us.
It has made of us one people. And when I say one people, I am not
referring merely to the inhabitants of these small islands, which
Britons all the world over will ever regard, as they have ever regarded,
as "home." I include the great dominions over the seas--Australia,
Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and India, with their many races and
many people who live and enjoy their lives under the benign shelter of
the British flag.
Nothing the world has ever seen is equal in grandeur, and in the lesson
it has taught us, to the majestic uprising of the British peoples when
the first shock of war burst upon a startled world in those early days--
how long ago they seem to-day!--of August, 1914. From the Tropics to
the Poles not a dissentient voice was heard. It is not too much to say
that the entire British Empire, which many of us had perhaps come to
regard as somewhat a shadowy entity, leaped to arms with a unanimity
which not only surprised us, but, as we have every reason to know,
startled and bewildered our enemies.
Of our own people here at home we were always sure, provided they could
be induced to realise the magnitude of the great struggle before them.
Of that, from the earliest days of the violation of Belgium, there was
never the slightest doubt. The British people are, and have always
been, peculiarly sensitive to the sanctity of their pledged word; not
for nothing have we earned the reputation that the Englishman's word is
as good as his bond. And when our people realised that Germany, with a
cynical disregard of international honour and good faith to which
history happily offers few parallels, had deliberately attacked Belgium,
there was at once an explosion of cold rage which, could the Germans but
have understood it, would have convinced them that the British Empire
was in this War, for good or ill, until a final settlement had been
reached which would mean either absolute triumph or absolute
annihilation.
We know, as a matter of fact, that England's decision to fight over a
"scrap of paper" produced something akin to stupefaction in Berlin; we
know also that it produced an outburst of hate which found its ultimate
expression in the fatuous "Gott strafe England" which has become the
by-word of the world as an expression of impotent rage and spite. We
may take that as the greatest compliment an honest nation has ever
received from a people to whom such a thing as honour and good faith is
not only unknown, but is unimaginable. Knowing nothing of national
honour themselves, the Germans were naturally unable to forecast
accurately the course of action of either Belgium or Britain. From both
of them they have received a much-needed lesson, which I have no doubt
will be still further driven home by the stern logic of the events which
are even now shaping dimly before our eyes.
It was just this consideration of national honour which brought not only
England in particular, but the whole Empire, into the field as one man.
Great armies sprang into existence before our very eyes. From every
quarter of the globe offers of men, money, and supplies of all kinds
were poured into our lap with a profusion which was as surprising as it
was gratifying. We witnessed, in fact, what required a great national
peril to bring to birth, the nascence of the British Empire as a
fighting force. And anyone who fails to see that that fact will have a
very profound influence upon the future history of the world must be
blind indeed to the real significance of events.
The Empire has found itself. That is the one cardinal lesson which,
above all others, stands out as the greatest feature of the world-war.
Will anyone believe that Germany, with all the advantages she possesses
in the matter of organisation and long preparation for war, could in the
long last vanquish Britain, solidly united, armed to the teeth, her
deficiencies at last made good, and ready to shed the last drop of her
blood and spend her last shilling in defence of the glorious heritage
which has been won in a thousand years of strife and struggle? If she
stood alone to-day, without a single Ally in the world, Britain would
never give up the struggle which has been thrust upon her. But she is
not alone. She has powerful Allies who are as resolute as she is
herself, who realise as fully as she does all that is implied in the
threat of German domination, and who are as fully determined as she that
"the Prussian ulcer" shall be cut once and for all from the body politic
of civilisation.
Dealing for a moment with Great Britain alone, I do not hesitate to here
say that our people are united in this great quarrel as they have never
been united before.
In our other wars we have always had parties, more or less strong, but
never negligible, which seemed to see in the enemy an object for
friendship more attractive than our own people. We have always had
parties which, if not openly, at least covertly, seemed to incline to
the side of our foes. We all remember the South African campaign, when
a very large and influential section of the Liberal Party went out of
its way to champion the cause of Paul Kruger.
We do not need--and I have no desire--to dwell upon that unhappy time;
many of those who then made a great mistake have to-day atoned for their
error by their splendid efforts to vindicate the cause of Britain and
civilisation in the present struggle. I mention the fact only to show
that to-day there is no pro-German party in this country which carries
the slightest weight. The pro-German element is conspicuous by its
absence; it is represented only by a small rabble of discredited cranks
and self-advertisers for whom the nation has shown its contempt in
unmistakable fashion. The heart of the nation as a whole is sound, and
it is firmly determined that Germany's eternal attempts to annoy and
provoke her neighbours shall be once and for all suppressed.
I shall deal elsewhere with Germany's colossal blunders in regard to the
War; I will content myself with saying here that her first and greatest
mistake was in regard to the British Empire. She did not think we would
fight, but if we did she thought there would be revolution in Ireland
and India, and a sudden dropping off of our Colonial Dominions, leaving
us so weak and so torn with internal dissensions that we should be in no
shape to oppose her triumphal progress over the bodies of her enemies.
Over three million volunteers have rallied to the Colours in reply to
the German challenge. Ireland to-day, dropping all her historic feuds,
is practically solid for the Empire, and her sons, as ever, have shown
their glorious deeds under the British flag. India, with one voice and
heart, has rallied to the Empire; her men have given their blood without
stint in our cause, her princes have poured out their treasure like
water in our service, proud and glad to make what return they could for
the blessings they have enjoyed under British rule. The deeds of the
Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, have added a new and
imperishable tradition to British history. The bloodstained soil of the
Gallipoli Peninsula will remain for all time hallowed by the glory of
the men of Anzac, who, not once, but time and again, wrested seemingly
impossible triumphs from the very jaws of death and defeat.
They failed, it is true, to win the last and greatest victory, but the
story of their failure is more glorious than the story of many
successes, and so long as our race and our language endure the tale of
the landing at Suvla and the fight for the heights overlooking the
Dardanelles will be told as an example of what human flesh and blood can
achieve and endure. There is nothing greater or nobler in all our
history; and while our Empire can produce such men as those who for long
months faced the Turks in Gallipoli, we can be sure that in the British
Empire the world will have a force to be reckoned with.
Turn to South Africa. There were those among us who felt after the Boer
War that Britain was making a dangerous experiment in conferring
absolute self-government upon those who but a short time before had been
our implacable enemies. But the result was a triumph for British
principles of liberty and of trust in the essential justice and equity
of our rule. From the first, General Botha, our ablest and most
chivalrous antagonist in the war, showed absolute and unshakable loyalty
to the people who had put their trust in him. He was followed nobly by
the great mass of the people of South Africa, Dutch as well as English;
and when De Wet's misguided rebellion broke out it was suppressed with a
swift efficiency which elicited unstinted admiration, not unmixed, it
must be admitted, with surprise. Later we were to see the Union of
South Africa playing a gallant part in the expulsion of German rule from
the adjoining territories.
All this surely must have been a bitter pill for the Kaiser to swallow.
We know how he encouraged Kruger in his revolt against the British; we
know how confidently he had counted on disaffection in South Africa to
add to our difficulties; we can imagine his joy when De Wet and his
irreconcilables raised the standard of revolt, even though their motive
was much more hostility to the English than love for the German.
We know he looked upon Ireland as hopelessly disloyal and ready to fling
off for ever, perhaps with German help, the hated yoke of the Saxon. We
know he looked upon India as seething with discontent and eager to fling
herself into the arms of anyone who would give a hand in ejecting the
brutal British Raj. We know he looked upon our Dominions as ripe fruit
ready to drop off the parent tree at the slightest shake. We know he
looked upon ourselves as a decadent nation, grown rich and indolent,
caring for nothing but ease, and wrapped in a sloth from which we could
never awaken until it was too late. And, lo! upon the first touch of
war the weapons he had hoped to use shivered to fragments in his hand,
the hopes he had fondly entertained turned to Dead Sea ashes in his
mouth.
With one heart, one mind, and one unshakable purpose, the British Empire
rushed to war. Swept away in an instant were those bad old party
squabbles, those bad old party cries, with which our nation is prone to
amuse itself in times of peace to the exclusion, perhaps, of more vital
things. We seemed so desperately in earnest about our internal quarrels
that perhaps we could not expect the continental nations, least of all
the Germans, to realise that, for all our dispute, we are still one
nation, that we are still animated by precisely the same spirit that has
made England great, overlain though it may be by the dust and cobwebs
that have grown up in a century of freedom from war on a great scale.
We do not perhaps quite understand ourselves; it would be certainly too
much to expect the Germans to understand us, for they have shown an
utter inability to understand any type of mentality but their own. Had
they been better acquainted with our idiosyncrasies, I do not say that
war would have been averted, but it would certainly have been postponed
until Germany felt herself to be still stronger afloat and ashore, when
the task of defeating her would have been even harder and more
prolonged. So that perhaps we have reason to be thankful that, as the
struggle had to come--and of that there cannot be the slightest doubt--
it should have come early rather than late; we may have reason to be
thankful, despite all the miseries and losses which the War has caused,
that it was prematurely precipitated by German arrogance and greed and
blindness. How much greater would have been her chances of success if
she had been content to wait for, say, another five or ten years, when
her prospects of meeting the British Fleet on something like equal terms
would have been vastly improved!
And if our nation has closed its ranks and determined that this War
shall be fought to the only finish consistent with the continued
existence of civilisation as we understand it, what shall we say of our
Allies? What tribute can be too great for the matchless heroism of
France? How can we praise too highly the dogged courage of the Russian
soldier, which has time and again saved the situation in the West by a
display of self-sacrifice of which the world can offer few parallels?
What words can express all we owe to gallant little Serbia and
Montenegro, crushed beneath the heel of the invader, yet destined to
arise with their lustre undimmed and shining brighter than ever? How
can we show our appreciation of what Belgium, the greatest martyr of
all, has done for the sacred cause of liberty? Who can measure our debt
to Italy, flinging herself into the great battle of freedom, not at a
time when victory seemed assured, but when the clouds were thickest and
our hopes at their lowest ebb?
Can we detect any sign of weakening in the Allies' stern resolve?
Assuredly not. Bound together by a sacred pact to make no terms with
the enemy which shall not be acceptable to all, they will go on from
strength to strength, growing daily in power and resources, moved by one
mind and by one purpose, till the time comes for the dealing of the last
great blow which shall shatter finally and for ever Teutonic aspirations
to rule the world. If signs of weakness there be--and they are not
wanting--they are not to be found in the ranks of Germany's enemies.
Rather are they to be found in the camp of the enemy himself. From all
parts of the Teutonic Empires and their Allied nations come the signs
which tell of war-weariness, of a growing conviction that further
conquests are impossible, that the War has become a struggle for
existence, that the enemy is knocking ever more and more loudly at the
gate.
The scales are beginning to fall from the eyes of the German people.
They are yet far from convinced that all is lost, but at least they are
beginning to be sure that nothing is to be gained. No longer do we hear
the boastful assertion that all their losses shall be made good by huge
indemnities to be extracted from their crushed and beaten foes. A new
note is being sounded of the need for sacrifice; new warnings are ever
being given that Germany's war will have to be paid for by Germany, and
not by the rest of the world. It is too early to say that German
resolution is seriously weakened; it is not too soon to say that the
German people are beginning to realise at last the strength of the
combinations they have aroused against themselves.
On the other hand, the temper of the Allies, their confidence in their
cause, and their ability to make that cause good has never stood so
high. They have learned the lesson they needed eighteen months ago--
that the War will be something far more serious and more terrible than
they anticipated, that much remains to be done, that many sacrifices
will have to be made before success crowns their efforts. But in
learning that lesson they have also learned their own strength. They
have learned, too, to trust one another, to see that the cause of one is
the cause of all. And in the thoroughness with which they learn that
lesson lies the strongest pledge for a happy issue. The Allies cannot
be defeated so long as they remain true to themselves and to each other,
so long as they remain bound together by the bonds of loyalty and
constancy to a great and a sacred cause. That they are so bound to-day
none can dispute; that they will remain so bound to the end it would be
treason to them and to ourselves to doubt. Not to one but to each of
the Allies in turn have the Germans gone with their insulting attempts
to buy a separate peace, to achieve by sheer bribery what they have
failed to achieve by force of arms in spite of all their "victories."
By each of their opponents in turn they have been spurned with contempt.
Russia simply tore up their clumsy tenders of treason without deigning
even to reply. And, as we have since learned, even gallant little
Belgium, torn and ravished as few countries have ever been torn and
ravished in the world's history, spurned an offer which would have given
her back much of what she had lost, but would have lost for her the
priceless possession for which she fought--her national honour.
With these object-lessons before her eyes, perhaps in the days to come
even Germany, who has shown herself so thoroughly oblivious to what
honour and conscience mean, may realise that there are nations in the
world to whom there are better and higher things than mere wealth and
power, that there are principles which soar far above material
considerations, that she is face to face with something which is at
present far beyond her comprehension, and that something far mightier
than the mightiest cannon ever forged in the furnaces of Krupps' is
working for her downfall. That something is the moral sense of the
world at large, of which, as yet, the Germans have not the slightest
understanding. The German, even in the midst of his successes and
triumphs, is faced by a resolution at least as great as his own, he is
faced by men whose hearts are aflame with the sacred fire of liberty, he
is faced by men to whom honour and good faith are all in all. And in
the face of that combination even the boasted might and efficiency of
Germany will go down at last, in the fullness of time, in hopeless and
irretrievable ruin.
CHAPTER SIX.
THE TERROR IN GERMANY.
I am most emphatically not one of those who think we ought to take for
granted all the stories we get, often from German sources, of the
condition of things in Germany.
We know enough of German methods to know that for her own purposes she
is capable of flying kites of varying types and shades; and one of the
kites which was very prominently flown in the early days, comparatively
speaking, of the War was the fiction that for her own brutal and illegal
purposes England was "starving German babies" through the medium of her
infamous (in German eyes) blockade.
It mattered nothing to the Germans that in 1871 the blockade of Paris
and the starvation of the civilian people was one of the principal means
by which she enforced the capitulation. The Hun never likes his own
medicine. What was, when applied to France in 1871, a stroke of German
genius, becomes, when applied by the British Fleet to Germany in 1915, a
crime so infamous as to call down all the vengeance of heaven upon the
brutal English.
In German eyes no weapon of war is legitimate if it is applied against
the sacred persons of Germans; on the other hand, any and every device
of the devil becomes a righteous punishment if it is used against
Germany's enemies. Surely never was any people in the world so lacking
in a sense of proportion and common sense! There is no doubt, I think,
that the first "starvation" cries which emanated from Germany were a
cunningly devised plan to work upon the sympathies of neutrals and, in
particular, upon the United States. There are always in every country a
certain number of good, sentimental souls whose hearts are apt to run
away with their heads, who are apt to think or act very much as their
emotions lead them, and are entirely incapable of looking at more than
one side of any question. It was to just these people and, of course,
to the German people in America, that the first frantic "starvation"
appeals were directed. I firmly believe that at that time there was
little or no serious shortage in Germany, and that the outcry that was
raised was merely a ruse to catch the sentimentalists' attention. It
succeeded to a certain extent, and it gave the "hyphenated" section of
the American people an opportunity of which they took full advantage for
renewed girdings against England. But neither then nor at any other
time did it succeed in its real purpose, which was to procure by fair
means or foul a relaxation of the British blockade.
How serious that blockade was to become I do not believe the German
people or the German rulers realised in the early days. I do not
believe they realised that it was possible so completely to cut off
their supplies as to produce anything like grave inconvenience, to say
nothing of actual want. They have learned differently since! There is
a growing volume of testimony from competent observers that the
effectiveness of the British blockade is at last beginning to tell its
story in Germany. The "bread cards," the "butter cards," the meatless
days, the frantic appeals to the German people to give up the grease in
which they love to bathe themselves at their meals, may be, as the
Government pretends, merely a wise conservation of their resources. But
if that is all, this "conservation of energy" is being carried out on a
scale which is rapidly disheartening and discouraging the German people
in every part of the Empire.
The following extract from a Copenhagen paper no doubt puts the case so
high as to be practically a burlesque, but it at least shows that
countries adjoining Germany, and in free communication with her,
understand that the shortage of food and other supplies is far more
serious than the Germans are prepared to admit. A Reuter telegram from
Copenhagen says:
The Labour journal, _Folkets Avis_, publishes a letter from a business
man who has just returned from a six months' round tour of Germany, in
which he describes the conditions there as more desperate than those
in Paris in 1870. The writer is convinced that there is not now a
living cat or dog in the whole of Germany, all having been eaten.
Animal lovers trying to hide their pets have been betrayed by their
neighbours and punished. Storks, swallows, starlings, and all kinds
of wild birds have been systematically killed, and the result, he
declares, will be felt in Scandinavian countries in the coming spring.
All sea fowl have long since been exterminated.
I have not much doubt that this extract gives far too gloomy a picture
if it is intended to represent the condition of the great mass of the
German people; I do not believe, though I should like to, that
starvation has gone so far as this. But it is more than likely--indeed,
I believe it is practically certain--that there is in it a considerable
basis of truth.
We have to remember that owing to the demoralisation of the German
currency by the flood of paper money prices in Germany have gone up to
an enormous extent, while at the same time, owing to the complete
disappearance of her manufacturing and export business, wages have
fallen in all but a few special trades. For this reason a large
percentage of the population is feeling the pinch of want quite apart
from any actual shortage of food in the country, and there may well be a
good deal in the story of the Danish merchant that most of the wild
birds, if not the very dogs and cats, have fallen victims to the
necessity for obtaining food.
It will be convenient if we consider the shortage of necessaries in
Germany under various heads, the first of which is naturally the
deficiency in the food supply, since that is likely to exercise the
profoundest influence on the great mass of the people. On this point we
have abundant evidence, not only from neutrals who have been able to
move more or less freely about Germany, but, still more important, from
English people who have returned after being liberated by exchange or
otherwise.
One and all are agreed that the German people are suffering from an
actual shortage of food. It is not merely a question of prices, though
these are far higher than they are in England, and the wealthy folk are
still able to get almost all they want. There is, we are assured on
evidence which it is practically impossible to ignore, a very serious
shortage of many commodities of everyday use, the lack of which is
severely felt, as, owing to the very high prices ruling, they are almost
entirely beyond the reach of the people at large.
Now, in considering the question of the food supplies of Germany, it is
important to remember that in normal times Germany imports some forty
per cent, of the fodder used for feeding her sheep and cattle, and it is
the scarcity of fodder that has produced the present shortage of meat.
That such a shortage exists we know from the ordinances made by the
German Government providing for two, three, and even four meatless days
per week for everyone in Germany. In the early days of the War,
confident that the struggle would be a short one, the Germans took no
special pains to keep up their supply of cattle. It was only after the
battle of Flanders that they discovered their mistake, and that the
question of the supply of meat was destined to be critical.
Then came the panic legislation which led to the slaughtering of swine
on an enormous scale. It was decided to devote all the available fodder
to the feeding of cattle, since these would be the most difficult to
replace after the War. Pigs were killed _en masse_, orders being given
that the flesh was to be tinned to form a reserve. But it was soon
found that even this was not sufficient to save the situation. Owing to
the growing stringency of the blockade fodder for the cattle began to
give out, and then it was decided to fatten pigs. In consequence the
slaughter of cattle has increased enormously, and hence arises the
growing shortage of milk, butter, and cheese.
Now whatever may be the leakages in the British blockade, it is quite
certain that only the barest fraction of Germany's former imports is
getting through; nothing can reach her directly oversea, and our trade
agreements with neutral nations to prevent reshipment, even if they are
not all that we could desire, are certainly having a very great effect.
And it is certain that, despite smuggling on an unprecedented scale,
Germany is very far from getting anything like all that she imperatively
requires. The pinch is there, and it is growing, and that it is growing
rapidly is shown by the increasing violence of the German threats
against England and her incessant announcements that she is really
getting ready for some new "frightfulness" that shall put all her
previous efforts completely into the shade. We hear and note, but we
are in no wise terrified.
Frantic efforts are being made by the Germans to purchase and import
cattle food of all descriptions, and in addition such fats as butter,
lard, and margarine, the shortage of which has produced an enormous
effect throughout the Empire. It is our business to see that she fails;
and with our Navy given a free hand, I am confident that we can do so.
We know how serious the shortage of bread has become; we know that no
German can purchase bread without a "bread card," and that the amount he
can purchase is severely restricted. We know that he is ordered not to
eat meat on certain days of the week. We know, too, that in various
towns, even in Berlin itself, the maddened people have already broken
out into "bread riots," and that their mutinous gatherings have been
dispersed by the police. Not even the well-drilled German will consent
to go on indefinitely on an empty stomach. There have been cavalry
charges in some towns, there have been violent riots in many, people
have pillaged shops; "in fact," says the German writer of a letter found
on a prisoner, "we have a war at home as well as abroad."
Another letter sent from Munich to "cheer up" a prisoner at Oleron says,
"Wherever we go, and wherever we may be, we see nothing and hear nothing
except misery and poverty." A letter from Greiben contains similar
lamentations, and adds, "With all our strength we have accomplished
nothing, and we shall soon be ruined."
Germany's chief imports at present, secured, of course, by devious ways
since she is unable to import anything directly, are cotton, wool,
copper, lead, paraffin, rubber, nickel, oils, wheat, rye, and barley.
These are all of vital necessity to her continued existence, not merely
to her successful conduct of the War. With the food shortage growing
day by day, she must import even larger and larger quantities, and
unless she can do so the end is inevitable; a point must come at which
German moral will simply go to pieces. Our blockade is hastening that
moment. None the less, we have to remember that starvation alone will
not bring Germany to subjection; she will always obtain and grow
supplies to a certain extent, probably enough to stave off actual
starvation on a scale which would induce her to sue for peace. We have
to complete the process of attrition, valuable as it is, by force of
arms, and only a decisive military defeat will put an end to German aims
and ambitions. That is a cardinal fact of which we must never lose
sight.
There is hardly an article of food or drink for which the German
chemists have not succeeded in finding more or less satisfactory
substitutes. Bread is one of the best known instances. The German
"kriegs-brod" or "war bread," though it is nothing like so palatable or
so nourishing as ordinary bread, is yet sufficient to sustain life,
though there is reason to think it sets up digestive disorders.
Similarly, a glance at the German papers will show dozens of
advertisements offering substitutes for endless other articles of diet.
These substitutes are very interesting; whether they are satisfying is
another question, and one which we can leave the beleaguered Germans to
find out for themselves. "Acorn coffee," "artificial fats," "artificial
honeys," wooden instead of leather shoes, "German tea" (whatever that
may be), "egg substitute," "wood meal," sausage substitutes with "more
than the nutritive qualities of beef"--these are only a few picked at
random. No more convincing testimony to the value and effectiveness of
the British blockade could be asked for. These are not the
announcements of the German Government, intended to deceive, but the
advertisements of business men who have to pay good solid German cash--
or it may be notes!--for them. They speak more eloquently than any
comment of ours could do.
A good deal of surprise has been expressed that, in view of the
undoubted shortage of many necessities in Germany, there has been no
apparent falling-off in the equipment or supplies of the German Army.
In reality this is not a matter that need disturb our judgment on the
general question. We have to remember that Germany is organised on a
military basis, and that the militarist party, who most decidedly hold
the upper hand, will see to it that as long as there is a pound of food
in the country it will not be the Army that will go short. In every
department of German life everything is subordinated to the demands of
the Army, and no one can question that this is the correct policy. Any
serious shortage or discontent in the Army would bring the military
structure crashing to the ground, and there can be no doubt that the
shortage which exists will have to go much farther before its effects
are felt in the field. It will come, beyond doubt, but it is more than
likely that shortage of men will make itself felt first.
The views of Abbe Wetterle on this point are worth quoting. He was
before the War Deputy for Alsace in the Reichstag. When war broke out
he escaped to France, and has lived there since. He considers that the
Central Empires are already beaten.
"Germany is at the end of her tether, that is the truth," he says.
"She can no longer obtain credit, and the value of the mark is falling
every day. After having mobilised ten million valid and invalid
soldiers, Germany, whose losses number three and a half millions, and
whose auxiliary services behind her lines require 1,700,000 men, can
no longer fill the gaps in her Army, and her battle-line grows in
extent every day. Famine stares her population in the face. By
February or March at latest the lack of food will be severely felt.
Riots have already taken place in her large cities, and they will
gradually multiply and become more violent. Lack of men, lack of
money, lack of food--such is the danger which threatens Germany."
Now we know very well that the German newspapers are controlled by the
Government to an extent which is unknown in any other country in the
world; not even the British censorship has such drastic powers. The
columns of the German papers are therefore about the last place in which
we should expect to find any inkling of the real situation as it exists
in Germany to-day. It is the Government order that everything shall be
painted _couleur de rose_. Yet even the German Press is becoming
restive under the strain, and is beginning to say things which a very
short time ago would have been impossible. Here is a telling extract
from the Socialist paper _Vorwarts_, one of the few of the German
journals which has risked a good deal in its insistence upon letting out
at least some of the truth. It says:
In a few weeks the sowing and preparing of the fields for the new
harvest will have begun, and upon that harvest everything will depend.
The coming harvest is of immeasurable importance for the German
people. Fantastic speculations as to great imports of foodstuffs from
the Orient have now become silent. Germany depends during the
duration of the War upon her own production of food... It is evident
now that our much-praised organisation of our economic system is in no
way so good as enthusiastic amateurs would like us to believe.
This is not exactly the language of a conquering nation whose Chancellor
declares that she has sufficient for all her needs, but I have no doubt
that it represents the real situation and reflects the prevailing
anxiety much more accurately than Dr Helfferich's boasting speeches,
which are undoubtedly meant for foreign consumption.
It is not merely in the matter of food supply that Germans are face to
face with conditions which are giving her leading men cause "furiously
to think." It is true it is what makes the most immediate impression on
the public at large. But there are men in Germany who realise that
there is a world to be faced when the War is over, and that as the days
slip by Germany slips into a worse and worse position for meeting the
conditions she will have to confront after the declaration of peace. I
will first deal very briefly with some of the social aspects of
Germany's present condition.
Germany's terrific losses in killed and maimed men, coupled with the
terrible drop in the birth-rate, which has fallen far lower than it did
in the Franco-Prussian War, are causing the gravest anxiety among the
German economic thinkers. Next to the fall in the birth-rate, the rate
of mortality among newly-born children is causing alarm; and when we
remember how admirable are the German arrangements for the preservation
of infant life, we can realise that very grave causes must be at work to
account for the existing state of things. That those causes are
connected in some degree with the efficacy of the blockade is probable,
but a greater contributory cause has been the general distress caused by
the War, and the failure of the municipal authorities to provide the
necessary relief.
The pensions payable to the widows of German soldiers who have died in
action are very small; distress and misery have entered the families
where there are many children, and many of those are succumbing to the
prevailing lack of food. To such a pitch has Germany been brought by
the insane ambition of her rulers!
Orphans in Germany now number 800,000, Many of these orphans must for
years remain a tax upon the State; they will be _bouches inutiles_ until
they reach the wage-earning age, and they will provide after the War,
just as they are providing at present, a problem which will tax
Germany's economic and administrative resources to the uttermost.
Another problem with which the Germans will have to deal is the
appalling increase in crime. In spite of the fact that a great
proportion of the men of the country are serving with the Army, the
statistics of crime make appalling reading, and offences of all kinds
are especially numerous among children. The juvenile Hun behaves as a
Hun to the manner born once he is removed from the stern parental
control which in times of peace keeps him within what, for Germany, are
reasonable bounds. And even in times of peace the figures of juvenile
crime in Germany are terrible. In the year 1912 the following crimes
were committed in Germany by boys between the ages of twelve and
eighteen:
Criminal assaults, 952.
Murder and manslaughter, 107.
Bodily injuries, 8978.
Damages to property, 2938.
These figures _for boys alone_ are far more than the entire total of
such crimes ever committed in England. For instance, the yearly average
of crimes of malicious and felonious wounding in England for the ten
years 1900-1910 was 1,262; in Germany for the ten years 1897-1907 it was
172,153. And the population of Germany may be taken at 65,000,000, with
that of England at 45,000,000. These statistics give us some idea of
the real character of the nation which holds itself up as the apostle of
"kultur" to the rest of the world, and shows us what blessings we might
expect under Teutonic rule.
It is naturally very difficult to get thoroughly reliable information as
to the exact condition of things in Germany. Most of the "neutrals"
whose stories appear in the English Press appear to be rather too apt to
say the things which they think will best please English readers. None
the less, their stories cannot all be invented, and we have valuable
corroboration of many of them in the shape of reports published by
neutral observers in the neutral Press--especially in countries where
the prevailing sympathy tends to be pro-German--and from our own people
who have returned from Germany.
A particularly valuable example of the former comes from Copenhagen.
Dr Halvdan Koht, one of the foremost Norwegian historians, is known for
his distinctly pro-German leanings. Yet, after a prolonged stay in
Germany, he draws in the Christiania newspaper _Social Demokraien_ a
decidedly dismal picture of German life and of the state of public
feeling in Germany. "The people are tired of the War" is his
conclusion. It is true the whole country considers that Germany is
safe, but the whole country has arrived at the conclusion that its
adversaries, especially Great Britain, cannot be crushed. The fact that
Great Britain is still in full possession of all her territories, that
she cannot be attacked on land, and is less affected by the War than
Germany is rapidly dawning on the whole people. Moreover, it is being
realised that, in spite of her immense military strength, Germany will
never be able to enforce a definite decision in her favour. Dr Koht
interviewed a number of people of all classes on this subject, and all
expressed similar views and heartfelt weariness of the War.
On this subject I might also quote the view expressed by a lady who
reached England recently, one of the first batch of the so-called
"reprisal women" who, the Berlin authorities have decided, are eating
too much meat and butter, and must therefore be sent home. "Germans are
suffering agonies," this lady said, "especially the poor people. They
know, in spite of the lying Press, that their sufferings are merely
beginning, and they are preparing themselves for more suffering until
their rulers are forced to realise that the limits of endurance have
been reached, and then sue for peace." The Germans, she added, "are
ready to bear the financial losses and the appalling losses in men, but
life on rations is simply driving them insane. The bread cards at first
amused them like children, as one more opportunity of obeying orders, of
which they are so fond. Now they have butter cards, fat cards, and, in
some places, petroleum cards."
I do not think we can disregard all the evidence that is rapidly
accumulating as to the widespread distress in Germany to-day. And I do
not think that that distress is likely to decrease. We have it on the
authority of Mr Asquith that the tightening of the blockade is
proceeding, and the tighter we pull the strangling knot which the
British Navy has drawn round the German neck, the sooner we shall return
to the days of peace.
But, in the words of Lord Headley, "When Germany wobbles we must hit as
hard as possible in the right place and in the right way. But let us
make sure of our own set purpose and fixed resolve, that now that we
have made up our minds, there shall be no indications of wobbling on our
part." That, I think, expresses the judgment of the nation as a whole.
We do not want to sit down in the hope that the "war of attrition" will
do our business for us. It is "the long push, the strong push, and the
push all together" of Britain and her Allies which alone will bring us
to a triumphant success. The "war of attrition" is helping to bring
nearer the day when the great push will be possible, but of itself alone
it will never compel victory over an enemy who--it would be foolish to
think otherwise--will fight to the last gasp.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
GERMANY'S BANKRUPT FUTURE.
I have no hesitation in saying that from our point of view one of the
most encouraging features of the whole situation is the extraordinary
collapse of German credit--extraordinary, I mean, in comparison with her
apparent successes in the campaign on land. The heavy decline in the
value of German and Austrian money in neutral countries is an absolutely
unmistakable sign that the finances of our enemies are, after eighteen
months of War, reaching a condition which before long must prove a
source of the gravest embarrassment to the Central Powers.
As I write, the exchange value of the sovereign in the United States is
about two per cent, below normal, and the same condition exists in
Holland and Scandinavia. Considering how much we have been buying
abroad, such a trifling depreciation in our credit is a wonderful
testimony to the stability of British institutions. But if we turn to
German and Austrian currency we find that it has declined in value from
twenty to thirty per cent. In other words, neutral countries are
beginning to show themselves unwilling to take German money; and as
Germany can now buy only from neutral countries, it is quite obvious
that she not only has a difficulty in paying for her purchases, but that
she has also to pay an exceedingly inflated price for them.
My readers will remember the sensation that was caused when, owing to
our heavy purchases of food and war material from America, the value of
the sovereign dropped something like six per cent. That meant that for
every hundred pounds we paid to America for goods bought we were losing
six pounds owing to the fall in the exchange; and when it is recalled
that our purchases were on a scale which involved hundreds of millions,
it will be seen that the decline was a very serious matter for us. But
so good was our credit that there was no difficulty in floating a huge
loan in America, and the result was that the value of the sovereign at
once appreciated, and it has never seriously dropped since; in fact, it
has steadily risen. The process was helped by selling American
securities, of which we hold huge sums. We can repeat both processes as
often as we like in reason, because our credit is good, and our holdings
of American securities are still enormous. Germany can do neither--
firstly, because her credit is utterly impoverished, and, secondly,
because, whatever she may sell, she and those with whom she would like
to deal have no security that the goods would have more than a very
slender chance of getting through the British blockade. Here, again, we
see how our overwhelming sea power is helping the cause of the Allies.
In spite of the huge sums we are spending, Germany is infinitely worse
off than we are, and there is every reason to believe that the
tremendous fall which her money is now experiencing means that her
credit abroad is rapidly nearing the exhaustion point.
The fall in the value of German money tends to show that our blockade is
operating with increasing stringency and success. It seems probable
enough that Germany can still manage to obtain through the neutral
countries many of the things of which she has most pressing need. But
apparently her export trade has been much more severely hit. She
depends for this trade upon the import of raw materials, most of which
are extremely bulky and quite unlikely to escape the unremitting
vigilance of the British Navy. Consequently Germany finds herself
unable to pay for her imports by the ordinary channels of international
trade, and the difficulty of paying at all has become serious. Nearly
all modern business is done on a paper basis; that is to say, on
promises to pay--in other words, on credit--and credit obviously depends
upon the financial stability of the concern or the nation which seeks
thus to obtain goods. That is why the continued decline in the value of
the paper mark shows the declining confidence of the neutral nations in
Germany's power to redeem her pledges when the time for payment comes.
Germany's ultimate solvency depends upon her ultimate victory, and we
can see by the reluctance of the neutral nations to give credit to
Germany that they are very far from satisfied with Germany's prospect of
coming out "on top." And when neutral financiers come to the conclusion
that the War will end in Germany's absolute bankruptcy--that is, in her
inability to pay more than a few shillings in the pound of her debts--
the value of her paper promises will sink almost to vanishing point, and
there will be such a financial crash as this world has never seen. The
faith of the neutral in German stability is wavering already, while the
Allies still hold the confidence of the world. That is a factor of
supreme importance. The day will come when not a single neutral will
trade with Germany except on a gold basis, and when that day dawns the
utter collapse of the Central Powers will assuredly be close at hand.
We have just seen a very striking evidence of Germany's impoverishment
in regard to the supply of wheat which Germany desired to purchase from
Rumania. If there is one commodity which Germany needs more than any
other to-day it is wheat. Rumania demanded that the wheat should be
paid for in gold in Bucharest. The German and Austrian Governments
offered anything and everything else except gold. They offered first
ammunition, then paper, then Rumanian Treasury bonds, ammunition, and
paper. The Rumanians, however, insisted upon gold, and the deal fell
through for the simple reason that Germany had no gold to spare. Few
instances have been more eloquent of the state to which Germany is
reduced. And what Rumania says to-day the rest of the neutrals are
likely enough to say to-morrow--"Either gold or no goods." We can be
quite sure that if Germany meets with a single great defeat in the
operations which are assuredly near at hand, there will be a revulsion
of feeling in the neutral countries which will render the demand for
gold insistent. And if Germany cannot find gold to pay for the wheat
she so sorely needs from Rumania, what are her prospects of finding it
for other countries?
Now the German method of financing the War has constituted one of the
most extraordinary gambles known in the history of finance. She has
piled up an enormous debt in paper. The _Economist_ estimates the total
of Germany's war credits up to the end of December last at 1,500 million
pounds sterling, and the average monthly war expenditure at 92.350
million pounds. Towards this Germany had raised up to September 15,
1915, 1,280 million pounds. In Germany these loans have been cited as a
proof that financially the country is impregnable. But this assertion
does not convince. The loans have been obtained only by wholesale
inflation through borrowing on Treasury bills from the Reichsbank. The
amount of these bills outstanding is carefully concealed from the world,
but it is certainly enormous, and it seems to be rising rapidly again,
though Germany's third loan was floated quite recently. The amount of
these bills on January 15 was estimated at 250 million pounds. It is
easier to trace the amount of the inflation of the currency by paper,
and by paper without any gold backing. Between July, 1914, and January
15, 1916, the amount of Reichsbank notes in circulation increased from
95 million pounds to 319 million pounds and the amount of Treasury notes
from 7 million pounds to 16 million pounds, while another 54 million
pounds in paper was added in the form of Loan Office notes. That is to
say, since the outbreak of war the amount of paper currency has
increased from 101 million pounds to 389 million pounds, or about 285
per cent. How much the financial position has been worsened by the
extension of banking credits we do not know, as the bi-monthly
statements of the great banks have, most significantly, been
discontinued. It is true that during the same period the amount of gold
in the Reichsbank has been increased by 55 million pounds. But a large
part of this increase, it is believed, came from the reserve of the
Austro-Hungarian Bank, and in any case it is not nearly sufficient to
have the smallest effect in counteracting the flood of paper. The
effects of the inflation of the currency and its debasement by the huge
issues of paper money are seen in the rapid collapse of the mark and the
equally rapid rise in prices which in Germany to-day is making the lives
of the poorer people well-nigh unbearable. And it is most noteworthy
that in those countries where Germany has been able to trade with the
greatest freedom the collapse of German credit is most unmistakable.
That is for Germany, as well as for ourselves, a grave and unmistakable
fact; it is verily the writing on the wall. Germany has been weighed
and found wanting in the balance of the neutral nations who are more
friendly disposed towards her.
To meet the expense of the War Germany has issued paper to her own
population on a scale of which the world has had no experience. In
return for the paper promises of the Government they have poured out
with a lavish hand everything of which the Government stood in need, and
it is impossible not to marvel at what is either patriotism or a very
high order of gullibility carried to the extremest limits. In either
case Germany's people have lent to her vast sums for a mere paper
security, quite apart from the amounts she has expended in other
countries and which she will have to pay for in gold or exports, which
come to the same thing. What, we may well ask, will be the position
when, after the War, German merchants want money--not paper--to resume
their trading with the rest of the world, to purchase the raw material
upon which the very life of her commerce depends? How is the Government
to raise the gigantic sums that will be required not merely to pay
interest on this stupendous pile of debt, but to begin to form a sinking
fund to pay it off?
My own view--and it is shared by many others--is that Germany's
borrowings on such a stupendous scale were made possible only because
the German people, convinced that they were really and truly the
supermen they fancied themselves to be, were firmly persuaded that they
were going to win the War "hands down." They were assured _ad nauseam_
that speedy victory was certain, that France was to be instantly crushed
and Russia crippled, that Britain could not intervene in anything like
decisive fashion in time to save her Allies, and that the end of the War
would come in a few months at most, with a triumphant Germany extorting
untold millions in the shape of indemnities from her trampled and
bleeding enemies. The War was to be, in fact, a highly profitable trade
undertaking, in which Germany's losses in killed and maimed were to be
more than compensated for by increased wealth drawn from the coffers of
her enemies, and especially England, the worst enemy of all.
But the War has not quite "panned out" to schedule, and Germany is
to-day rapidly realising the fact. "In my opinion," said Lord Inchcape,
speaking at the annual meeting of the National Provincial Bank of
England, "Germany is already irretrievably beaten, and no one knows this
better than she does herself." That is a very strong expression of
opinion from a man who is in a position to know what he speaks of when
he deals with matters of finance. As I have said before, I do not
believe that money alone can win the War, but there can be no reasonable
doubt that the growing financial difficulties of Germany are swiftly
bringing her to a position in which she will find it impossible to
oppose with any hope of success the steadily growing power of the
Allies. So much at least money can do and is doing, though the final
blow must be dealt in decisive military action. Otherwise Germany will
never be convinced that she is really and truly beaten, her people will
be told again that they are unconquerable, and she will begin with all
her wonderful organising powers to prepare for a renewed campaign of
aggression in the future.
I cannot see how Germany is to be preserved from national bankruptcy; I
cannot conceive any means by which she can hope to pay off the enormous
debt she has piled up. Her export trade is utterly smashed, and it must
take years to get it back even if the Allies are foolish enough after
the War to allow her the commercial privileges she has enjoyed in the
past, which is most unlikely. Her losses in men and material have been
stupendous, she is eating herself up, she is blazing away her piled-up
wealth at a time when she cannot keep going even a fraction of her
commerce to make up for the steady drain upon her. We at least are free
to trade overseas to as great an extent as we can manufacture, and it is
a very gratifying fact that the trade of the United Kingdom has in the
past few months shown a steady increase; February showed an advance of
10 million pounds on the corresponding month of 1915. We are not losing
our markets to the extent that Germany is, for the simple reason, again,
that our Fleet can keep open our trade routes. And we have also to pay
regard to the fact that the German is not going to be a popular
individual for a good many years to come in any civilised country. At
the best he is going to have a good deal of trouble to persuade any of
the Allies to do business with him on any terms whatever; at the worst
it is more than likely that he will find himself shut out completely by
an overwhelming tariff from every British, French, Russian, Italian, and
Japanese market. How, under such conditions, Germany will ever succeed
in paying her debts I cannot understand.
Borrowing in such a War as this is unavoidable for any of the
belligerents; it is impossible to defray the stupendous cost out of
income. The whole problem to be solved is whether it is possible to
secure by taxation the interest on the increased debts and also a margin
of revenue which during the War will help to pay for it, and after the
War will provide a sinking fund to gradually pay off the sums borrowed.
Germany's paper system is all wrong, because, in the first place, she
has not the gold to back it up, and, in the second place, because no
provision has been made by taxation to raise sums sufficient to provide
interest and sinking fund. Even before the War Germany's yearly budgets
have been showing a series of deficits, and with the stupendous amount
she has added to her debts it is difficult to see how after the War is
over she will be able to avoid defaulting. She will certainly not
succeed in securing any indemnity as she did from France in 1871; she
will far more probably find herself condemned to pay at least sufficient
money to provide for the rehabilitation, so far as is possible, of
Belgium.
There is, it is true, one aspect of the case which is to some extent
favourable to Germany. A great portion of her war debt--in fact,
practically the whole of it--is held at home, and it is quite possible
that at the end of the War the people who have entrusted her with their
savings will find themselves told that they will have to wait
indefinitely for their money. Repudiation on this scale would perhaps
enable Germany to keep herself right with the rest of the world and
avoid actual default in the international sense. But the effect on her
own people would be appalling! Now it is a very remarkable fact that
though the German Government has carefully kept from the mass of the
people any real knowledge of the facts of the situation as we know it
exists, it has during the past few months been allowing certain
newspapers to warn the public in guarded terms of what is coming. The
_Berliner Post_ states openly that the situation is "terrifying." That
is a good deal of an admission for a people who a few months ago were
setting out, as they themselves said, on a conquest of the world, and
were going to extort the cost from their beaten enemies. Warning the
German people that they must be prepared for very bad times, the _Post_
goes on to say:
Even the highest war indemnity that is thinkable cannot preserve us
from a stupendous addition to the Imperial Budget for 1916-17.
Without war damages we shall have to reckon upon an increase in the
yearly taxation of at least four milliards of marks. From a technical
point of view alone such amount cannot be procured immediately by
taxation. From the political point of view it would be a great
mistake if the population was not gradually acquainted with the
situation, which, looked upon as a whole, has something terrifying
about it.
Only by slowly being made accustomed to it can the situation become
softened for the people. Probably the State Secretary for Finance,
when he introduces his proposals for the new taxation, will give as
near as possible a review of what the annual deficit will be. German
people will only then be able to understand what wounds the War has
made and what great measures will be necessary for years to come to
heal them. At present the greatest part of the people probably has no
idea of the situation.
It is perhaps permissible to ask, in view of this outburst, what the
German people, deluded and hoodwinked for so long, are likely to say
when the full facts break upon their minds. It will be noted that the
_Berliner Post_ deals with the financial situation apart from the war
expenses, and finds very little comfort in it. The German people will
find still less to be exultant about when the whole truth appears, as
sooner or later it must, for it cannot be hidden much longer. Up to the
present Germany has imposed practically no new taxes; they will be on a
crushing scale when the German people have to set themselves to pay the
damages involved in the conflagration which they so wantonly provoked.
But, doubters will ask, are we in any better case? I will quote in
answer Sir George Paish, one of our leading financial authorities. "We
may confidently expect," he recently declared, "that the nation after
the War will have as much capital for investment as before the War."
In twelve months of war Great Britain has been able to buy and to pay
for nearly 900 million pounds of Colonial and foreign produce and goods
for home consumption and for war purposes. In addition she has found
something like 350 million pounds of money for her Allies, Colonies, and
customers. She has met her own war expenses, amounting to 1,000 million
pounds, exclusive of the 350 million pounds supplied to her Allies and
Colonies for war purposes. This great amount of money has been found
with surprising ease. But it is during the current year that we shall
feel the severest strain. We have to maintain upon the seas a Fleet
even more powerful than that of last year, to provide our Allies,
Colonies, and friends with at least 400 million pounds in loans, and to
support in the field forces numbering nearly four million men, which
will cost anything up to 2,000 million pounds. And in spite of these
gigantic liabilities we find to-day that British credit stands
practically unimpaired, while that of Germany is rapidly falling, and
may soon vanish altogether. If the War has done nothing else, it has
given the world such an example of financial stability as has never been
seen.
It is the deliberate opinion of Sir George Paish that our position after
the War will be just about where we stood at the beginning. We shall
have sold a great many of our foreign securities, but, on the other
hand, we shall have bought others from our Allies, customers, and
Colonies, and, on balance, neither our home nor our foreign wealth will
have been appreciably reduced. What we shall have lost will be our new
savings. This loss amounts already to about 600 million pounds; if the
War lasts another year it will have reached 1,000 million pounds in
comparison with what our wealth would have been but for the War.
Of course, we shall have created a great debt. Already our debt,
including the pre-war debt, is about 2,200 million pounds, and the debt
charge and current Government expenses are about 300 million pounds.
But it must be remembered that some 100 million pounds of this is
interest which accrues to British investors, and that a large part of
this interest will still be available for new capital purposes. Our
losses in men will be grievous. But it must be recalled that one lesson
of the War is that the whole nation is learning to work harder and more
efficiently and that, in consequence, it is very doubtful whether our
productive capacity has been seriously, if at all, reduced. When our
men return from the War we shall have an enormous supply of labour
available, and for the full employment of that labour we shall be able
to find the capital. Will Germany be in anything like so favourable a
position?
The bold and courageous policy of Mr McKenna in grappling adequately
with the problem of finance has secured the emphatic approval of the
entire nation. New burdens have been cheerfully shouldered; the country
has shown unmistakably that it is prepared to make any sacrifices to win
the War, and we have seen the income-tax doubled with far less protest
than would have been aroused by the addition of a penny a few years ago.
The nation has set itself to meet the cost of the War in the only
possible way, by reducing all unnecessary expenditure, public and
private, and devoting itself to the maintenance of our essential
services, anxious only that so long as efficiency is secured money shall
not be spared. We have boldly faced the enormous additional taxation
rendered necessary by the gigantic war expenditure, and therein we have
a tremendous advantage over Germany, who is only now beginning to
consider the new taxes that will be required, and does not seem
particularly gratified by the prospect with which she finds herself
faced. Ominous mutterings of the coming storm are already to be heard,
and when that storm breaks not even the iron discipline with which the
Prussians have dragooned the entire German people will suffice to
protect them from the wrath of those whom they have so grossly deceived.
I do not know whether the German Government will dare to attempt to
impose anything like the taxation which would be necessary to make
provision for the war debt, but I am at least certain that as matters
stand in Germany to-day the people have neither the will nor the ability
to find the money. They have been fed with lying assurances that the
money is to be found by someone else, and their rage and disappointment
when they find out how they have been deceived will, beyond doubt, lead
to consequences little foreseen by the light-hearted blunderers who set
half the world in flames eighteen months ago.
I do not think that either now or in the future we need fear any
comparison between the financial position of Britain and of her enemy.
We are, and always have been, a far wealthier nation than the Germans;
our credit is good, while Germany's is tottering to complete collapse;
our resources in capital are as yet not seriously touched; our trade,
even though its volume be diminished by the withdrawal of men for the
Army and for munition making, still goes on as far as we can carry it.
The real financial strength of the British Empire has as yet not been
fully marshalled for the fray, and should the day ever come when money
must be found beyond the resources of ordinary taxation there are vast
reservoirs of strength which will yield supplies in abundance. For we
are in this War to win--let there be no mistake about that--and to gain
a complete and lasting victory there is no sacrifice that our people,
properly instructed, will refuse to make. "To the last man and the last
shilling" if necessary must be our motto. Our people ask only for a
definite and a strong lead; if they get that, we need have no fear of
the outcome of the greatest struggle we have ever been called upon to
wage.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
THE INVISIBLE HAND.
I may fairly claim to have taken perhaps a leading part in bringing home
to the people of this country a realisation of the perils to which our
foolish good nature has exposed us in the matter of the spy danger.
Though I am quite willing to admit that much has been done by our
excelled Intelligence Department in putting a check upon the activities
of the German spies since the War began, I cannot but confess that I
look upon the continued presence in this country of some 22,000 German
and Austrian enemies, allowed for the most part to go freely about their
business, whatever it may be, with unmixed alarm.
I raised my voice against the presence of spies among us before the War,
and since. Indeed, since the outbreak of hostilities I have addressed
over a hundred audiences upon this very vital aspect of the War.
Before the crisis--as long ago as 1906--I wrote and spoke of German
spies; but for my pains I was jeered at by the public, laughed at by
officialdom, and boycotted by a section of what is to-day known as the
"Hush-a-bye Press." Many times I sat with Lord Roberts, both of us in a
state of despondency. He had tried to do his best to awaken Britain and
point out the pitfall ahead, and I had, in my own modest way,
endeavoured to assist him. But it was all to no purpose; and when I
wrote the forecast, _The Invasion_, to which Lord Roberts wrote a
striking preface, people busy with their money-making and under the
hypnotism of the Hun, declared that the great Field Marshal was "old,"
and that I was a mere "alarmist."
In this War, united as we are to-day in the common cause, we have buried
the past. The future alone--the way to win the War--concerns us.
We know quite well, and the facts have been admitted since the War
began, that in times of peace not only our own country, but practically
every country in the world, was overrun with a horde of Germans who,
though ostensibly in business on their own account, were, in fact,
secret agents for that department known as "Number 70, Berlin." No
nation has ever carried espionage to such lengths as it has been carried
by the Germans, perhaps because there is no nation capable of so
shamelessly abusing the hospitality of others and so flagrantly
returning evil for good. I have no doubt whatever that the laxity shown
not only by ourselves, but by other nations to Germans in times of
peace, has been a matter for unmixed amusement in the secret councils of
the Kaiser at Potsdam. To live in apparent peace and friendship for the
express purpose of betraying is a Judas-like achievement in which no
nation but the barbaric Teuton could take a pride, and there is ample
evidence that before the War this was one of the favourite methods by
which the German abroad served the interests of the Fatherland. This I
have pointed out for years.
It cannot, alas, be pretended that, even since the War began, we have
taken anything like adequate steps to protect ourselves against this
grave national peril. Upon the outbreak of the War Germany took steps
at once to intern or expel every enemy alien, and thus to put them out
of the way of doing any injury. We cannot and do not complain of this;
the complaints that have been made against the German proceedings were
on the ground that the people interned were treated more like beasts
than human beings. The mere fact of expulsion or internment was a
matter of ordinary prudence, and the Germans were unquestionably right
in taking no chances in the matter of espionage. Their action was only
another instance of the thoroughness with which they had prepared for
war, for there is no doubt that the steps taken were resolved upon long
before war broke out; they could not otherwise have been taken with such
promptness and on so great a scale.
Have we been as prudent? What was our action? Of the facts with regard
to German spies in England the Government had been fully warned long
before the War, and there was and is no excuse for any shilly-shallying
with the subject. Yet for a long period hardly any action was taken to
prevent the continued existence of a great danger, and it was only when
the population became dangerously excited after the sinking of the
"Lusitania" that internment was taken in hand with anything like vigour.
And even this promise of Mr McKenna's has not been maintained, for we
are now informed officially that there are still some 22,000 Germans and
Austrians uninterned! Can it be said that these people do not
constitute a very grave and a very real danger?
I am quite willing to admit that a proportion of them are perfectly
respectable, honest folk who have no sympathy, it may be, with the cause
of Germany, and who would not do anything to harm the country of their
adoption. There are undoubtedly even Germans who are not devoid of all
decent feeling. But there can be little question that a great many of
them are of quite another way of thinking, and would be only too willing
to commit outrage, wreck trains, blow up factories, destroy munition
works, and stab us in the back if the opportunity offered itself.
Some months after the War broke out Mr McKenna, who was then Home
Secretary, published a long report in which he dealt with the steps that
had been taken to break up the German spy system in England. Possibly
the then existing spy organisation was very badly crippled--perhaps for
a time it was even destroyed. But the Germans are a pertinacious
people; they have since had time to reorganise and perfect their plans,
and I have no doubt they have done so. That we have interfered with
them is unquestionable, and thanks to the increasingly stringent
passport system--adopted shortly after it was advocated in my book
_German Spies in England_--the German agents no doubt find it
increasingly difficult to come and go undetected. It has, however, to
be recognised that no passport system can keep these gentry out
altogether; we know that even in France the German agents, whether
actually Germans by birth or not, are very active. We know, too, that
they are active here; we have caught and shot no fewer than ten of them
up to the time of writing. But will it be pretended that we have caught
them all? It is much more likely that many of them are still at large
among us, and still active, though their opportunities for mischief have
been very drastically restricted by the admittedly splendid work of our
Naval and Military Intelligence Departments.
Now I think it will be admitted that the purpose of internment is not
punitive, but preventive. We do not want to visit the misdeeds of
Germany upon those Germans who are helpless in our midst; we do not want
to inflict any unnecessary hardships on those who are not in a position
to defend themselves, and who, whatever their nationality, cannot be
held responsible for the bestiality which has made the name "German"
accursed for ever among civilised nations. But we do want, and I
maintain that we are entitled, to protect ourselves against those who,
living here unmolested, are eager to return only evil for good. If in
the course of protecting ourselves we inflict some hardships on those
who do not deserve them, we can feel regret, but we cannot blame
ourselves. The fault lies not with us, but with those who plotted and
arranged for war on an unexampled scale, and whose proceedings before
and after war broke out were of a kind which put them completely out of
court if they plead for any kind of consideration.
Without hesitation I say that it would be practically impossible for a
German spy to do any effective work here if he were not aided and
abetted by Germans resident in England. To be of any real value a spy
must have been trained as such, and he must have a base from which to
work; he must have a shelter in which he will be practically free from
suspicion; he must have messengers and go-betweens who can move about
freely without attracting undue attention. And it is quite certain that
no German spy coming to England can obtain all these things except with
the active help of Germans already domiciled here--naturalised Germans
who are enjoying absolute freedom.
More than one German prisoner has escaped from our internment camps
under circumstances which suggest very strongly that he has received
help from people outside. That those people were British I refuse to
believe. The inference is that they were Germans, and the conclusion is
that all such people ought either to be interned or bundled, bag and
baggage, out of the country. There is no safety in any middle course.
It is for these reasons that I do urge very strongly that the Government
shall at once take steps to see that all enemy aliens shall either be
expelled or interned. I am convinced that our apathy in this direction,
though it springs from feelings which are in every way creditable to our
hearts, if not to our brains, is exposing us to dangers which, in these
critical days, we should not be called upon to face.
The activity of German spies in England at the present moment needs no
demonstrating. The Government has admitted it by the drastic steps they
have taken to deal with the peril. But every nation spies during
war-time, whatever they may do in peace, and I am certainly not going to
blame the Government because German agents are able to come over here
and send home information which may be of value to their country.
Probably it would not be possible for the Government to stop them
coming, and our Intelligence Department is entitled to congratulations
upon the excellent work that has been done in detecting them. When the
full story of their activities is told--if it ever is--it will be found
how we have very often met and beaten the Hun at a game which he has
been apt to consider as peculiarly his own. At the same time I do not
think we have done all that we could and should have done, and the
readiest way of helping on the good work would be to remorselessly
intern or expel all enemy aliens, no matter what their status may be.
I am convinced that we should thus deal a formidable blow at the
activities of the spies who visit our shores from time to time. They
would be deprived at a stroke of their best protectors, and they would
be exposed to a very greatly increased risk of detection. I admit that
it would be very regrettable if some thousands of innocent Germans and
Austrians, who, it may be, have a genuine admiration for England, and
many of whom have sons serving in our Army, were thus inconvenienced.
But the plain fact is that we cannot afford to take a single unnecessary
risk, and whatever may be the inconvenience to the individual the safety
of the State must be the first consideration.
It has been shown over and over again, both here and in other countries,
that naturalisation is one of the favourite devices of the spy. It
protects him by rendering him less likely to suspicion, and enables him
to move about freely in places where the non-naturalised alien would
have no chance of going. It has been proved during the present War that
German troops have been led by men who had actually lived for many years
in the district, and had come to be looked upon almost as natives.
Naturally they made exceedingly efficient guides. Yet under cover of
naturalisation they had been able for years to carry on active espionage
work.
Then we also have the Invisible Hand. From August, 1914, to the present
day a mysterious, silent, intelligent, Anglo-phobic mailed fist has been
steadily at work for our discomfiture. Evidence of the existence of the
Invisible Hand lies broadcast. As far as I know, however, only one
person has publicly referred to it--the brilliant and well-informed
writer who chooses to be known as "Vanoc," of the _Referee_.
He has pointed out that no effort has been made to locate, to destroy,
or to intern the owner of the Invisible Hand. Yet we have seen its
deadly finger-prints in many departments and in many parts of England,
Scotland, and Wales. We recognise them and their identity with those of
our enemies.
"Vanoc" wrote on February 20, 1916, the following words, which should be
carefully weighed in all their full meaning:
Ships with steam up waiting for weeks at a time in the Channel, for
want of organisation, have cost the taxpayer thousands of pounds for
demurrage. The artificial rise in freight is itself an effective
blockade of England. That blockade is the work of the Invisible Hand.
Civilian doctors are overworked, while many doctors in Government
service are hard put to it to find work until midday. Of all the
events that have happened since the beginning of the War, the refusal
of the late Ministry to hold a court-martial on the loss of the
"Formidable" is probably the most dramatic and the most effective
demonstration of the power of the Invisible Hand. I am not free to
tell the true story. When it is told it will be found that the
Invisible Hand was hard at work during the Irish troubles and in the
Curragh Camp affair before the outbreak of war.
Captain Loxley and his faithful dog friend were drowned from the
bridge of a ship handed over to the enemy by the Invisible Hand. The
loss of Sir Christopher Craddock's squadron was the work of the
Invisible Hand. Influencing honest Britons to organise the
destruction of one of their cruiser squadrons, the deed was easily
done. Lord Fisher of Kilverstone has never consciously been under the
control of the Invisible Hand, but in his work at the Hague Conference
he and Sir Charles Otley, both most honourable and noble-minded
English gentlemen, were the unconscious instruments of the Invisible
Hand.
The bogey of the neutral Powers is a fiction concocted in the damp,
sinister palm of the Invisible Hand. At the meeting at Cannon Street
Hotel on February 14, 1916, Lord Devonport made it clear to London men
of business that an occult force is at work able to use the resources
of the British Empire to feed, arm, succour, and strengthen Germany.
The writer went on to point out that of all the triumphs of the
Invisible Hand there was none greater than its successful manipulation
of events which led to the escape of the "Goeben" and the "Breslau"; to
the war with Turkey; to the death or disablement of 206,000 men of our
race in the Gallipoli Peninsula; and in conclusion he wrote:
The finger-prints of the Invisible Hand show that it has a sense of
humour. We have not only been steadily checked or defeated on land
for eighteen months, but we have been contemptuously checked or
defeated. When the last troops left Gallipoli an aeroplane hovered
over the farewell scene. A paper was dropped on which was inscribed,
"We don't want to lose you, but we think you ought to go." Between
the Scylla of silly optimism and the Charybdis of ignorant pessimism
there is a narrow strait. To steer our course we must take the
Invisible Hand off the helm. We can win this War, but no longer can
we win it easily. That feat is possible only if the Fleet is
unshackled and the methods that are so successful at sea are applied
to the administration of the land. The appointment of Mr Joseph
Pease--a Quaker and a president of the Peace Society--to the Ministry
at the present time is a piece of work upon which the Invisible Hand
is to be warmly congratulated.
If we are to win the War, the identity of this Invisible Hand must be
exposed and its sinister influence defeated. We have seen it at work in
a hundred devious ways--the protection of the enemy alien, the amazing
leniency shown towards spies, the splendid efforts of one department
strangled by the red tape of another, the protection of German-owned
property and funds, the provision of delights at Donington Hall and
other Hun hostels; indeed, the whole of the "Don't-hurt-the-poor-German"
policy which has been the amazement of ourselves and neutrals alike.
It was this Invisible Hand which destroyed the splendid Dominion
Parliament House at Ottawa. Indeed, the Invisible Hand has been
responsible for no fewer than fifty-eight incendiary fires in factories
engaged in war work in the United States; and by its sinister direction
large quantities of our merchant shipping, with passengers and crews,
have been sent to its doom. It was the fatal Invisible Hand which blew
up the great explosive factory in Havre; the Invisible Hand which
suborned the despicable fellow Lincoln, ex-M.P., to become a traitor and
endeavour to lead our Grand Fleet into a cunningly-prepared trap laid
for it by the "Navy of the Kiel Canal." Therefore one wonders what may
be the next blow dealt against us by this mysterious unknown influence,
which seems to be the hand of Satan set upon us.
Is it, indeed, the Invisible Hand which to-day refuses to allow some of
our Government Departments to be cleansed of the Teuton taint?
Let us take off the gloves and fight this treacherous, unscrupulous, and
untrustworthy foe with a firm and heavy fist. We must coddle the Hun no
longer. In the past the Home Department has been far too lenient
towards the enemy in our midst; and though there are signs of
improvement, yet much more remains to be done.
In these days of the Zeppelin menace and daylight raids by Black Cross
aeroplanes there is a distinct and ever-present peril in allowing so
many enemy aliens to be at large. Further, it is hardly reassuring to
Englishmen that, while they are going forward to train and to fight,
their places in business and elsewhere may be taken by enemy aliens who
have been officially exempted from internment.
The last published official figures given in the House of Commons by the
Home Department show that no fewer than 7,233 enemy aliens have been
exempted. In the London area alone there were still at large 9,355 male
enemy aliens and 8,207 female enemy aliens, while 471 male enemy aliens
were still allowed to reside and wander in prohibited areas.
I maintain that if we mean to win--and we do--this state of things must
cease. I have raised my voice against it on many occasions. And
because I have dared to do so I have received many threats and warnings
of an untimely end from these uninterned gentry who are allowed to go
and come about London and other large cities, eager and ready to assist
the enemy should a raid either by air or land be attempted upon us.
Already we have seen what spies have accomplished in America, and how
widespread is all their plots. The recent proceedings in the New York
Courts and the official publication of the correspondence found upon the
spies Von Papen and Boy-Ed is still fresh in the memory of readers.
Not only in America, in Canada, and in South Africa--where maps were
found ready printed showing that colony as a German colony!--but also in
Australia, there has lately been revealed the subtle influence of this
same Invisible Hand.
The _Melbourne Age_, one of the most responsible journals in Australia,
published a long exposure of the whole series of plots in its issues in
the first week of January, 1916.
In one, under the heading "Treachery in Excelsis," it said:
We come now to Germany's supreme act of treachery in our regard. It
will be recollected that just prior to the War Australia was visited
by the British Association for the Advancement of Science for the
purpose of holding here its annual international conference. Our
visitors and guests comprised the most eminent men of science from all
countries in the world. Germany sent four of her most distinguished
professors, viz, Dr Albert Penck, Dr E. Goldstein, Dr Graebner,
and Dr Pringsheim. These learned gentlemen still lingered in the
Commonwealth when war was declared. They immediately approached the
Federal Government for permission to return to Germany, representing
that they were international scientists, and therefore neutrals, and
that although by accident of birth German citizens, they belonged to
the whole world, and ought not to be detained. The Commonwealth
Government assented to this proposition, and merely required the
savants to take the oath of neutrality. Dr Eugen Goldstein and Dr
Albert Penck promptly took the oath. The former went off to Java; the
latter took ship to England.
Dr Graebner and Dr Pringsheim appeared to be more dilatory than their
_confreres_, and raised all sorts of objections. These, however, were
overruled by the Australian authorities, and at length they took the
oath.
Proceeding, the _Age_ says:
Suspicion fell on them, and their correspondence was intercepted and
examined, luckily for us, before they sailed. Their correspondence
proved that they were spies, and they were immediately arrested and
interned. Dr Eugen Goldstein got clear away. But not so Dr Albert
Penck. The last-named professor's baggage was overhauled during his
journey to Europe under cabled instructions from the war authorities.
It contained even more complete information concerning Australia's
military preparations and intentions than the correspondence of
Graebner and Pringsheim, and it contained in addition most excellent
military contour maps of the country surrounding some of our largest
capital cities--maps which could have no vestige of use for any
purpose than to serve the ends of a German army of invasion. The maps
and other information collected by these eminent German scientists
were not the work of a day or of a month. They were of a character to
prove that Germany had sent the professors to Australia to steal our
dearest defence secrets from us, and to repay our hospitality by
paving the way for our destruction. The professors, in short, were
official German spies. When Dr Penck arrived a prisoner in England
he was recognised, moreover, as a German scientist who had in past
years led several scientific expeditions to the Isle of Wight, overtly
to examine the peculiar geology of the island, but really to spy on
Portsmouth, Britain's most important naval base in the English
Channel. It is unlikely that Dr Professor Albert Penck will ever see
Germany again. When the above facts are considered, what Australian
is there can continue to cherish any doubt as to Germany's designs
upon the Commonwealth?
From every British colony there has come to us the same story of the
clever and ingenious plotting by the enemy alien, just as we have at
home daily illustrations of him at his evil work.
Our Allies grappled quickly and drastically with the enemy alien at the
very outbreak of war. Russia led the way. Within four days of the
declaration of war the Tzar signed a ukase ordering the deportation of
all German and Austrian women and children, the internment of all
Germans and Austrians, both naturalised and unnaturalised, and, further,
the sale of all enemy-owned property by public auction!
Thus a clean and entire sweep was made of the plotters and traitors at
one blow, and the German spy system ceased to exist in the Russian
Empire.
If we desire to avoid a serious set-back, or even, perhaps, serious
disaster when the day of the hammer-blow dawns, we must adopt Russia's
example and intern all enemy aliens, both the naturalised and the
unnaturalised, irrespective of age or social distinction.
The leopard cannot change his spots, and the born German remains a
German to the end of his days. The silly naturalisation farce is far
too thin a cloak in these days of our national peril, when we are
fighting for our loved ones, our homes, and our honour. I admit that to
intern all naturalised Germans would, in many cases, inflict serious
discomfort upon many men who have lived with us for years and become to
all intents and purposes good Britishers. But in war, and in such a
world-war as this, one unfortunately cannot discriminate. Personally I
am acquainted with some good naturalised Germans, and I also know some
bad and highly suspicious ones.
But surely at this moment, when all factors point to our ultimate
victory, we will not allow the Invisible Hand to hold open the gate for
the entrance of a barbarous enemy into our land?
The hilarious farce of internment and of exemption a few weeks later
must no longer continue. Enemy aliens must no longer be allowed to go
on honeymoons, or men go down to conduct their business in the City.
Every enemy alien now at large in the United Kingdom must be put again
behind stout barbed wire, and Mr McKenna's promise, extracted by that
great demonstration of women under Lady Glanusk at the Mansion House,
must be kept to the letter to the country.
My demand is that all should be interned, irrespective of whether they
have paid their fees and taken the so-called "oath" or not. Every
German who becomes naturalised as an Englishman is a traitor to his
country, and we have no room for traitors in this country to-day.
If we are to win we must promptly curb the evil activities of these
wandering denizens of Lord Haldane's "spiritual home," a sentiment which
I express whole-heartedly, and with which I know, from the mass of
correspondence daily reaching me, is shared by a very large number of
prominent peers, politicians, and citizens.
We must break up the Black Cross of Satan for ever.
CHAPTER NINE.
COMPULSORY SERVICE BRITAIN'S MASTER-STROKE.
No greater evidence could be forthcoming of the absolute determination
of the British people to fight the War to a finish than the adoption, in
the teeth of our most cherished prejudices, of the principle of
compulsory service. Limited in its action though it may be, so watered
down, apparently of set purpose, that only a very tiny fraction of men
will or need be affected by it, the passing of the Act into law
definitely marks a new departure for Britain, and for the first time
ranges her alongside the rest of the nations of Europe in emphasising
the principle--as old as law itself--that in times of stress and danger
the State has the right to call upon all of its sons to come forward and
do personal service in defence of the common weal. That, at least, is a
very great step in advance. We can be sure it was noted with pleasure
and gratification in France and Russia, and with very much the reverse
feelings in Germany.
Of all the numerous problems which the War forced suddenly into
prominence, this was by far the most urgent and most important. No one
imagined, when the War broke out, that in less than eighteen months we
should see a measure dealing with compulsory service on the Statute Book
of England. That, however, is only to say that few, if any, people
realised what the War was going to be; I am firmly convinced that if the
problem had been boldly faced in August, 1914, and the people told
plainly what it was they were "up against," they would no more have
hesitated than they did when the time finally came for a decision. I do
not think there is the slightest doubt that, in spite of the occasional
clamour of the cranks who, like the poor, are always with us, the Act is
on the whole secure in the hearty approval of the great mass of the
people.
As those who have done me the honour of reading my books will remember,
I have been for many years a convinced advocate of the principle of
compulsory national service _for all_. The principle is now adopted in
part, and it would serve no good purpose to go again into the arguments
for and against it. But there are one or two points to which, even in
such a book as this, attention may we usefully drawn. We have to
remember that for the first time in our history we have undertaken the
responsibility of waging a land war on a national scale. That is to
say, we have taken the field with nations whose armies consist literally
of the nation in arms.
By hook or by crook we have to maintain our position. Magnificent as
has been the response to the call for volunteers, it could not be
expected that it would be sufficient under such conditions, partly, of
course, because our people were confronted by a set of conditions to
which they were absolutely strangers. It was not that there was any
real decline in their patriotism--that I do not believe for a moment.
Shirkers and slackers, of course, there were and are, as there have
always been and will always be in every nation under the sun. But upon
the whole the response of the manhood of England to the appeal for
recruits was so magnificent that we are justified in regarding it with
every feeling of pride. And, convinced as I am of the benefits which
national service confers upon the nations which adopt it, I should have
been glad from the bottom of my heart if we had been able to carry this
War to a successful conclusion on the principles of voluntarism which
has served us so long. It would have been a glorious vindication of
those very principles of liberty which this country went into the War to
uphold.
But, after all, there is no derogation from the liberty of the subject
in being called upon to serve the State which protects him and to which
he owes the very possibility of existence in peace and comfort. That
principle is as old as liberty itself; without it liberty, as we
understand it to-day, would never have been won; perhaps civilisation
itself would have been centuries farther back. It is an utter
misrepresentation to speak as though the conscript, which has been made
a word of evil omen by the very journals which a few short years ago
were holding up everything German for our admiration, were a
much-to-be-pitied individual with no rights and no liberties. Because
German drill-sergeants happen to be brutes--as the Germans _en masse_
have proved themselves to be--there is no reason for thinking that we
need share their brutality. The experience of France, of Switzerland,
of Italy--indeed, of every country except Germany that has adopted the
principle of compulsion--does not support the comfortable and lazy
theory that brutes are created by the "militarism" which some of our
facile writers fail entirely to understand. It is the innate brutality
of the Prussian which has produced the horrible results we see springing
from German militarism, not the principle of compulsion introduced as a
matter of national self-preservation.
We are an insular Power, and as such we have been able in the past to
rely almost entirely upon our Fleet for protection against our enemies;
our land campaigns of the past, glorious though they have often been,
bear little relation to the present struggle, in which the greatest
battles of bygone days--battles which have decided the fate of nations--
would be dwarfed to mere incidents hardly worth a paragraph in the
official report. The campaigns of to-day are being fought not by armies
but by nations in arms--a very important distinction. Only a few short
years ago, when armies were tiny compared with the vast hosts of to-day,
a single battle often decided a war. To-day battles which dwarf the
greatest struggles of the past into comparative insignificance are
nothing more than mere incidents in the far-flung lines of the
contending hosts. And the huge size of modern armies has been made
possible only by the system which takes the young and able-bodied and
compulsorily trains them with a view to military service when war comes.
We did not invent that system; indeed, we refused to adopt it long
after it had come into operation among all other European nations. But
we have to meet the system in operation in the field against us, and we
have hitherto been trying with hastily improvised armies to beat nations
which have spent half a century in training their manhood in the use of
arms. I rejoice that such marvellous efforts have been made, and that
such wonderful results have been achieved under the voluntary system.
But that system can never produce "the nation in arms," and it is
emphatically "the nation in arms" that is required if we are to beat the
Germans. Before this frightful struggle ends we shall certainly require
to make every effort of which we, as a nation and an Empire, are
capable.
It is a little difficult to understand the opposition to the principle
of compulsory service. By the common law of almost all nations the
State has the right to call upon the individual for assistance in
protecting the State against the common enemy. I do not see, indeed,
how this right can be disputed, for to dispute it would be to cut at the
very foundations of organised society. One can, of course, readily
understand wide differences of opinion as to the advisability or
necessity of adopting a compulsory system, especially in the middle of a
great war, but against the principle itself I fail to see any valid
argument. _Salus populi lex suprema_. If the interests of the nation
demand the introduction of compulsion, whether during a war or not, I
cannot understand how it can be opposed either in principle or as a
matter of expediency.
Now it must be quite clearly understood that, so far as Britain is
concerned, the adoption of the principle of compulsion was purely a
matter of expediency, and those lifelong opponents of compulsory service
who found themselves able to support the Act sacrificed none of their
convictions or principles in doing so. We had reached a stage in the
War when the problem of finding enough men to keep our armies in the
field up to full strength had become critical. Mr Asquith had pledged
himself--quite rightly, as I think--that the married men who enlisted
under the Derby group system should not be called up while any
considerable number of single slackers remained deaf to every call that
was made upon them. In this I believe he was absolutely right, and I
believe he had behind him the vast preponderance of intelligent opinion
in the country, including, though the fact has been disputed, the bulk
of the working-class population. We were unquestionably drafting into
the Army too large a proportion of married men, and widows and orphans
were being made at a rate that was positively appalling. It was quite
obvious that something must be done to put a stop to this condition of
things, and the famous pledge of Mr Asquith was the result. And when
it was found that the unmarried men still remained outside the Army, the
passage into law of a measure of compulsion could be nothing more than a
matter of time.
The Act was frankly a temporising measure, and my own personal belief is
that it does not go nearly far enough. Mr Asquith has declared that he
does not think the situation calls for a measure of general compulsion,
and he must be in possession of facts which are hidden from the public.
Present indications suggest that he is right; whether he was wise to
bolt and bar the door to general compulsion so emphatically as he did is
another matter. It was certainly a very remarkable statement of Lord
Kitchener, reported to the House of Commons by Mr Walter Long, that the
Act as it stood would provide all the men required to ensure victory, a
statement which seems hardly to have attracted the attention that it
deserved. Both Mr Asquith and Lord Kitchener may be right, and it is
certainly true that our prospects are brighter than they have been for
many months.
In view of what may conceivably happen in the future, there is one
misconception with regard to national service which it is perhaps worth
while to try to clear up. It is too hastily assumed that the men who
are swept into the net of a compulsory system are necessarily drafted to
the fighting ranks. This, of course, is a mistake pure and simple. One
of the greatest advantages of the compulsory system is that by its means
men can be employed just at the work where their services are most
needed. It is quite certain that had we had a compulsory service system
in operation when the War broke out we should have seen less of the
enlistment into the fighting services of men whose brains and muscles
were urgently needed in other directions. We should not, for instance,
have seen three hundred thousand miners sent to the trenches while we
were short of coal at home; we should not have seen our munition works
held up through shortage of skilled labour consequent upon high-class
mechanics joining the fighting line. Each man would have been sent to
serve where he was most needed, and this, it seems to me, is one of the
strongest arguments that can be adduced in favour of the principle of
compulsion.
Under all the circumstances the adoption of compulsion has been achieved
with wonderfully little disturbance. There have been none of those wild
outbreaks of popular passion which were so strenuously forecasted by the
thick-and-thin opponents of compulsion. As my readers are, of course,
aware, the adoption of compulsion by President Lincoln during the
American Civil War was followed by serious disturbances which had to be
suppressed by troops brought from the front, and which caused grievous
loss of life. We have seen nothing of the kind here, and I do not think
we are likely to do so. The country is united and determined to win the
War, and the anti-conscription efforts of certain misguided folk have
been received with the contempt they deserved. The quiet acceptance of
the Act is all the more remarkable when we remember that owing to the
operation of the censorship the people generally were very ill-informed
about the War, and it is certain that up to quite a recent date they did
not realise all that was involved or the magnitude of the task we had
undertaken. The wonder is not that a system of compulsion became
necessary, but that under the bad system of secrecy we succeeded in
raising armies totalling some three millions of men by the voluntary
plan. There could be no greater testimony to the genuine patriotism of
the workers of England. Happily, the country is now more fully awake to
the facts of the situation, and has achieved a better realisation of
what the struggle really means.
Nothing has been more remarkable than the attitude of Labour on this
subject. We have been told over and over again that the workers of
Britain would never accept the principle of compulsion; we have found,
in fact, that it has gained the support of all that is best in the
Labour ranks. There can be no doubt that one of the greatest
difficulties in the way was the hasty and ill-advised resolution passed
by the Trade Union Congress at Bristol in January, 1915. It is not
necessary to enter into the causes which led to the passing of that most
unhappy resolution. Suffice it to say that it put the Trade Unionists
in the position of declaring that they would prefer to see the Empire go
to ruin rather than see the principle of compulsion introduced. I felt
at the time--and subsequent events have justified my belief--that this
was a grave libel upon the patriotism of our workers. The Merthyr
by-election, when the official Liberal and Labour candidate was
decisively beaten by an Independent candidate, who won a tremendous
victory on a straight compulsion issue in a constituency which had
always been regarded as a stronghold of every idea that would be opposed
to compulsion, came as a dramatic surprise. In all probability that
election did more than any other single thing to make compulsion
possible, and it certainly showed that the working classes of this
country had changed their minds on a subject on which it was supposed
their minds were irrevocably made up. We were to learn later that their
opposition to compulsion was based not on compulsion itself, but on the
fear that conscripts would be used to settle industrial troubles as was
done in the case of the French railway strike. But the assurance on
this head given by Mr Asquith seems to have removed what latent
hostility there was to the proposals of the Government, and as a result
there is every prospect that the Act will work as smoothly as we could
desire or expect.
Under all the circumstances it is easy to sympathise with the attitude
of the Labour leaders when they met for the Trade Union Congress of
1916. They found themselves faced with the resolution passed twelve
months before under very different circumstances. They knew better--
they had been told frankly by Lord Kitchener--the extreme urgency of our
needs, and they certainly had no desire to embarrass the Government or
stand in the way of the Empire winning the victory. But we have to
recognise the facts of human nature. It is not easy for any of us to
eat our words, and yet it seemed as if the Congress must either do so or
take up a frankly disloyal attitude. They were deeply pledged against
compulsion, and it needs no very powerful effort of the imagination to
see that they were in a position of some difficulty.
Luckily, a way was found out of the seeming _impasse_. The Congress
decided to adhere to its resolution condemning compulsory service as a
matter of principle, but it decisively defeated a proposal to work for
the repeal of the Act which had already been passed. The national
spirit of compromise came strongly to the front. I wrote before the
Congress met: "However difficult it may be for them to swallow the very
definite declaration of the last Congress, I think the majority of them,
if the present recruiting movement fails, will loyally accept the
logical sequel." Those words were abundantly justified. In view of the
partial failure of Lord Derby's scheme, the Congress took the natural
and proper view. Abating none of their strongly held objections to
compulsion, they accepted the Bill as the lesser of two evils: better
put up with a modified measure of compulsion now than endure defeat,
with all the horrors that it would imply, in the future. And there can
be no reasonable doubt that that view is far more widely held among the
working classes than is shown by the voting of a caucus in which the
most extreme Socialist and Syndicalist element has secured a measure of
representation which it does not deserve.
As to whether the Act will give us all the men we need, we can only go
on and hope for the best. Lord Kitchener apparently thinks it will, and
he ought to be in a position to know. But we have to remember that in
modern warfare the drain upon an army and the wastage of men--not only
from actual casualties in fighting, but from sickness and other causes--
is appalling. It has been officially stated that our losses by wastage
from all causes amount to _fifteen per cent, per month_ of all the
forces in the field. That is to say, that if we have a million men
under arms they will have to be replaced every six months! And even
this appalling rate of loss might well be exceeded if fighting became
very severe; if, for instance, we had to fight battles such as the first
and second battles of Ypres. Fighting on an even larger scale, it must
be remembered, is only too probable if the Allies undertake the "big
push" which shall throw the Huns out of their entrenchments in the West,
to say nothing of a possible advance from Salonica and more fighting in
Mesopotamia. It will thus be seen that the requirements of the Army in
the matter of drafts during the next few months will be on a gigantic
scale, and we cannot afford to run the risk of being short of men.
The time is assuredly coming when the German reserves will begin to give
out in view of the enormous extent of front they had to defend. That
will be the opportunity of the Allies; and unless we are then in a
position swiftly to make good all possible losses and fling more and
ever more men into the fight to administer the _coup de grace_, the War
may well drag on--almost certainly it would drag on--to an inconclusive
ending which would be only one remove less disastrous than defeat. It
is against such a possibility as this that we have to guard, and we can
only do so by deciding that, cost what it may--whether by compulsion or
not, whether only the single men are taken or whether every able-bodied
man shall be swept into the ranks--the fighting lines of our armies
shall be maintained at fighting strength. So much we owe to ourselves,
to our Empire, and to the thousands of gallant souls who have given
their all in order that we may live out our lives in peace. To falter
now would be not only ingratitude to the fallen, but would be the
blackest treachery to everything which we know as civilisation.
Mr Asquith has declared that he will be no party to any further measure
of general compulsion. I can only assume that he means by this that he
is confident of victory under existing circumstances, and I hope and
believe he is right. But it would be foolish to disguise from ourselves
that war is a very "chancy" and uncertain business, and that there are
few subjects upon which it is more foolhardy to dogmatise. We have seen
something during this War of the wreck which has fallen on the
reputations of the military "experts." And, believe we never so
strongly in victory, there is no disguising the fact that our
expectations may be falsified by events. In such a case--supposing we
require more men than we can obtain by the measure of limited compulsion
that we have adopted--are we to lose the War for want of stronger
measures? That will hardly, I think, be contended, and if the men
wanted are not forthcoming they must be found by sterner measures.
"We must win or go under" is the great truth we have to keep for ever
before our eyes and before the eyes of our fellow-countrymen. And to
secure victory there must be no half-measures. If Mr Asquith finds
himself unable to undertake the task of raising the men urgently
needed--should more be required--other men and other measures must fill
the gaps. On that point, at least, there must be no faltering.
I do not believe the workers to-day are troubling themselves very
greatly about the nice ethical points for or against the principle of
compulsion. They are judging on broad lines, and I am confident they
view the question in a light very different from that in which they
regarded it when the War broke out. Since those days they have learnt
from the example of Belgium and France what is involved in German rule,
and their change of views has been helped by a realisation of the
magnitude of the task which lies before us. They know that the War is
for us a matter of self-preservation, and I believe such opposition to
compulsion as still survives comes solely from other and more
doctrinaire classes. What the country asks from the Government is a
clear and unmistakable lead. If the Government will but take the nation
fully and frankly into its confidence, if those who are entitled to
speak for the nation will call upon the nation for the greatest and
supremest effort of its history, I do not believe there will be any
hesitation in the response whether we decide to extend the principle of
compulsion or not. I believe the result will be to astonish and
confound those who have more or less openly suggested that the spirit of
England is not what it was, and that the Englishman has lost in a great
measure the stern invincibility and determination which in his
forefathers made England what she is and has always been.
So far we have adopted what Lord Lansdowne has described as "a
homeopathic dose" of compulsion. The description is apt; I hope the
dose will be sufficient to dispel the disease. But there is one point
on which we must be on our guard: the list of "reserved" trades whose
men are not to be taken for the Army is growing at an alarming rate. We
know that one of the results of this has been to cut down very seriously
the number of men who ought to have joined the colours under Lord
Derby's group scheme; we must be careful lest we lose more men than we
should from the same cause under the Compulsion Act. It is necessary,
of course, that our trade must be kept going as far as possible;
otherwise we shall not be able to pay for the War.
But we must remember at the same time that victory is and must be our
first consideration, for without this we shall have no trade to look
after. And if, in our eagerness to conserve our trade, we neglect or
starve the fighting forces, we shall pay a terrible and appalling
penalty. That is the worst of doing things by halves; one generally
finds in the long run that it would have been better and cheaper to have
made a good job at the first. It is more than likely that the
"reserved" occupations will turn out to be the crux of the whole
question, and the rapidly growing lists give rise to a feeling of
apprehension as to whether we shall not fail, if they are extended
indefinitely, to get the men we require. I earnestly hope that this
most important subject is receiving careful attention, and that we shall
have such periodical revisions of the lists as experience may show to be
necessary. All will be well so long as we do not risk, for the sake of
supposed trade advantages, any shortage of men in the actual fighting
lines.
The willing adoption by our people of the principle of compulsion has
been Britain's master-stroke in this war. Nothing else, I am convinced,
could have had such an effect upon our friends, our enemies, and the
neutral nations, whether friendly to us or the reverse. Nothing else
could have shown so clearly the unalterable determination of the British
people, or proved so unmistakably that at length--late, it is true, but
better late than never--the cold and deadly pertinacity of Britain, the
dour temper which never knows when it is beaten and never lets go, has
been fully roused. Britain, it is said, wins but one victory in every
war, but that victory is the last. That is one victory we mean to win
in this War, if it takes us ten or twenty years to do it. We fought
Napoleon for twenty years; we won the last victory at Waterloo. It will
not be twenty years before the Allies win the victory that shall put an
end to the pretensions of the upstart who aspires to be the Napoleon of
the twentieth century.
CHAPTER TEN.
GERMANY'S COLOSSAL BLUNDERS.
It is the fashion of our arm-chair critics and pessimists to talk and
write as though all the triumphs of the campaign belonged to Germany,
while all the mistakes and misfortunes were the exclusive attributes of
the Allies. The perfection of the German military machine is held up
eternally for our admiration; we are told day by day--and several times
a day--to pay tributes of wondering admiration to the marvels Germany
has accomplished. It is pointed out to us how much of her enemies'
territory she has occupied, and even, sometimes, how impossible it will
ever be to turn her out. We are even besought by certain faint-hearts
to make peace while we can on the "generous" terms which Germany has
announced herself willing to concede if we will only admit her
over-lordship of Europe, an admission we have not the slightest
intention of making either now or in the future.
Now I am not going to deny that we and the rest of the Allies have made
mistakes, alike in policy, strategy, and tactics; in fact, if you will,
in every field of the War. But the nation that can wage war without
making mistakes has yet to be discovered, and it is certain that if such
a nation ever arises it will speedily dominate the world. Let it be
admitted that we have made mistakes in plenty, and that we shall make
many more before we see the end of this terrible business. It still
remains true that the mistakes of the Allies have been as dust in the
balance compared with those made by Germany. I fear many of my readers
may think this a hard saying, but I shall try to demonstrate its literal
truth.
The first and greatest of the mistakes made by the Allied nations was
that they failed to foresee years ago that the War was inevitable, and
that Germany was firmly resolved that it should break out just when it
was most convenient to her. There we have, in a nutshell, the basis of
all our troubles. Of Germany's intentions in the matter there has not
been a shadow of doubt; thinkers like Mr Frederic Harrison, and
soldiers like Lord Roberts, saw very clearly what was coming, and even
that much-abused individual, "the man in the street," has for years had
more than an uneasy suspicion that Germany was plotting mischief. The
famous Kruger telegram, the trouble at Samoa, the visit of the "Panther"
to Agadir, the numberless occasions during the past few years when
Germany has interfered in matters which were no concern of hers, ought
surely to have been enough to put us on our guard. And on top of all
this we have Lord Haldane's bland admission that he came back from his
Berlin visit feeling "very uneasy" as to Germany's intentions. Just
after war broke out a very old friend of my own--a man who knows Germany
and the Germans well--wrote to remind me that seven or eight years ago
he prophesied that war would break out in 1914, when the Kiel Canal
widening was to be completed.
I do not see how, in the face of all these facts, we can pretend for an
instant that we had not ample warning of the cataclysm which has
overtaken the world. I do not say that we were any blinder than the
rest of those who are now on our side, but I do say that our failure to
make ready in time was the most powerful factor in bringing about the
War, and gave Germany an initial advantage which we are now only
beginning to wrest from her. For Germany was ready--ready down to the
last proverbial button on her soldiers' gaiters--and nothing but the
gigantic blunders she has made in the conduct of the War has saved
civilisation from being overrun by the hordes whom the Kaiser is proud
to recognise as the modern successors of Attila. Had the nations of
Europe dropped their mutual jealousies five years ago, and clearly
warned Germany that the first act of aggression on her part would bring
all of them into the field against her, how different would have been
the course of modern history!
Let us go back to the beginning of things and examine some of Germany's
blunders from the very outset. We have, in the first place, ample
evidence that Germany counted with confidence that the War would be
short--that she would, in effect, repeat her triumph of 1870-71 on a
grander scale. We know that this was so from the evidence of her own
writers and statesmen and people, both before and since the War began.
The programme was, on paper, delightfully simple. In view of the solemn
treaties into which Germany had entered, France had refrained from
fortifying her Belgian frontier.
This simplified matters for Germany. Belgian neutrality was to be
contemptuously violated and France attacked on her weakest front, the
inconvenient line of fortresses along the Rhine being thus carefully
avoided. Belgium, it was calculated, would not dare to resist her
mighty adversary, or, if she did, so much the worse for her. France was
to be shattered in a brief campaign--so effectively shattered, as
Germans themselves boasted, that she could never again be a menace.
England, fat and lazy England, it was confidently reckoned, would not
interfere, or could not interfere in time on land. France disabled
permanently, the victorious Germans were to turn on slow-moving Russia,
whose mobilisation could not be completed for months, and who was to be
hopelessly smashed by the weight of the combined Austro-German arms
before she could get her giant legions into the field. Serbia, of
course, the ostensible cause of all the trouble, would be of no account,
and could be crushed with hardly an effort, leaving the way open for
German domination through Bulgaria and Turkey, and on to Persian
Mesopotamia and the East. England, the chief adversary in the German
dream of world-power, was to be left to be settled with at a more
auspicious season.
Now, we have had our trials and disappointments since war broke out, and
we shall have more, but I ask in sober seriousness if a fraction of our
plans have gone wrong so completely as has every single factor upon
which Germany counted for the success of her scheme? We know what
happened. Belgium refused to barter her honour for peace, and it is
beyond question that the three weeks' delay her heroic resistance
secured for the Allies saved Europe. France showed herself as great as
of old, and her sons flung themselves into the fight with a gallantry
which has proved unconquerable. The outrage on Belgium brought England
into the fray, and her "contemptible little army" played no inglorious
part in shattering the German advance. Russia mobilised with a speed
which startled the world, and her legions were thundering at the gates
of Germany weeks ahead of what the Germans had been pleased to regard as
the "schedule time." Serbia threw back the Austrian armies in an
appalling defeat, and in a very few weeks Germany must have realised
that she had to face that long and dragging war which every single one
of her military writers had foretold must prove ruinous to her. When I
say "Germany" I mean, of course, the German military authorities; the
German people were kept in an abysmal ignorance of the facts of the
case. It is not too much to say that within three months of the
outbreak of the War the German Higher Command must have begun to realise
that whatever might be the outcome of the struggle it was not going to
be a German triumph. And we may be sure that they have since realised
it with ever-growing clearness.
It cannot, of course, be supposed that the Germans neglected altogether
the possibility that England might join the Alliance against them,
though there is very good ground for the belief that they were vastly
surprised that we should fight them over "a scrap of paper." But they
took the risk, and they took it the more readily because they had for
years been assured that England, if not too proud to fight, was at least
too wealthy and too lazy to have any stomach for such an enterprise as
an armed conflict with the supermen of Germany. Hence the insolent
offers that were made to buy us off at the expense of France. And there
is little doubt that the Germans believed that even if we did come in we
should be of trifling account in the land war, while they reckoned that
they could at least keep their Fleet in safety until their submarines
had either starved us into submission or had so weakened our Fleet that
it could hope to operate at sea with a reasonable chance of success.
They thought, in fact, that as a factor in a continental war England
could safely be neglected. Certain is it that they never for a moment
dreamed that England could raise and put into the field armies on the
scale of millions which, in respect of equipment and training, would
rival or eclipse anything that Germany could show to the world.
Yet that is precisely what England has done. Man for man the British
Army is superior to that of Germany, and it is better trained and better
equipped. And it has not yet developed its full fighting force, while
the armies of Germany, weakened by eighteen months of terrific fighting,
have long passed their zenith. Germany has squandered her best troops,
and is beginning at last to fall back on inferior organisations; we have
millions of the pick of the nation who have not yet taken the field.
They will do so in good time, and with ample reserves behind them.
"General French's contemptible little army" has been a surprise for the
Kaiser.
So much for German blunders on land; what can we say about her blunders
at sea? The policy of attrition has failed lamentably, and we are not
yet starved out by the submarines or greatly perturbed by the threats of
new "frightfulness" which periodically emanate from Berlin. Our Fleet
is actually stronger than it was when war began; Germany has lost far
more in proportion, and her losses in cruisers--the eyes and ears of the
battle squadrons--have been particularly disastrous. The German flag,
except as shown by the submarine pirates and occasional raiders, has
vanished from the oceans of the world, and with it has gone Germany's
gigantic overseas trade, which was the very life-blood of her industrial
prosperity.
The probable attitude of England towards the War must have been the
subject of a good deal of speculation in the Wilhelmstrasse before
Germany threw down the gauntlet to the world, and here again we have an
excellent example of the blundering of German diplomacy. We shall never
know exactly what advice Prince Lichnowsky gave from London to his
Imperial master. It is said that he warned the Kaiser not to allow
himself to run away with the idea that England was too much occupied
with internal disputes to fight. However that may be, there is every
reason for thinking that those who at the time were preaching the
possibility of civil war in Ireland did much to convince Germany that
the time was ripe for the great adventure. The Germans failed, in the
blundering German way, to realise that while England's troubles are her
own, her cause is the cause of humanity and civilisation, and that the
first threat of attack on either would bring her warring parties into
one formidable cohesion which would defy any possible menace of trouble
within. That is precisely what happened, and it must have been the
surprise of their lives for the German diplomats.
The Colonies, as we know, represented in the eyes of the Germans so much
ripe fruit ready at a touch to drop from the rotten parent tree. India
was seething with revolt--according to the German war party; South
Africa was represented as ready to throw itself into the lap of Germany
for the sake of shaking off the very shadowy British yoke. Can any of
the mistakes we have made in politics or strategy match this record of
blundering ineptitude? We know how India and the Dominions and South
Africa responded to the call of Empire. India, Canada, and Australia
have sealed anew with their blood the tie which binds them to the Mother
Country; to-day a Dutch South African is busy turning the Germans out of
the last bit which remains to them of their once huge Colonial Empire.
Perhaps we blundered in our diplomacy in the Balkans, but at least we
have not blundered, as the Germans have done, in every part of the world
where chance of blundering lay open to us.
So far I have dealt only with German blunders, political and military,
in anticipation of war. Let us turn now to some of her blunders in the
actual conduct of operations in the field. I do not mean the blunders
of subordinates, but the mistakes of strategy and policy which are
capable of ruining the best-planned and most carefully-thought-out
campaign.
The violation of the neutrality of Belgium may have been an advantage
from the point of view of strategy; whether it was or not, the Germans
thought it was, and that was good enough for them. If it would be an
advantage to Germany, they were prepared to undertake it, and treaty
obligations troubled them not one whit. That it would instantly range
all civilised opinion against them seems never to have entered their
heads. But even after they had crossed Belgium their grand strategy was
lamentable. They succumbed to the lure of Paris at a time when they
ought to have been thinking solely of the northern ports of France,
which were practically open to them, and Paris proved to be the magnet
which drew them on to their undoing.
The menace to Paris roused the French to fury, and produced superhuman
exertions which a contest on the soil of France elsewhere might very
possibly not have evoked. Moreover, the German threat at Paris gave the
English time to come into action with what proved to be decisive effect.
Was there no German blundering here? What, I wonder, would have been
the result if the Germans had in those early days of the War flung all
their force at the coasts of Northern France? How should we have met
the menace with the sea bases largely in German hands? What would have
been our position in the naval warfare to-day?
And even with Paris almost in their grasp, the Germans failed--failed as
lamentably as they possibly could. They never even suspected the
existence of that great army of Paris which General Manoury had formed
under their very noses, as it were. And when on that fatal day Von
Kluck found himself faced with a new danger from that great army which
issued from the gates of the French capital, what did he do? He
committed a blunder which has been condemned by every military writer by
trying to march his retreating columns across the front of the British
Army which lay parallel to the line of his retreat. No doubt he
reckoned that after its terrific gruelling in the great retreat the
British Army was in no shape to take offensive action against him. But
it was his business to know, not to think; probably his Teutonic
arrogance led him to believe that no troops after such a retreat could
stand up against the pick of the German arms. He was soon undeceived.
General Joffre struck at once and with all his might, seizing with the
truest military genius and insight the psychological moment. The French
and British flung themselves upon the badly shaken enemy, and in a few
short days the victory of the Marne had been won.
Whatever we may think of what has happened since, it is certain that the
battle of the Marne will be recognised in the future as one of the great
decisive battles of the world. For it smashed beyond repair the German
strategic scheme. German blundering alone made victory possible, for at
the time the battle was fought the Germans were unquestionably superior
to the Allies in every factor which should have given them the victory
had they acted on sound lines. The machine was there--the machine upon
which the Germans have all along relied--but the human control broke
down, and disaster followed. Among all the mistakes which had been made
by the Allies, can the keenest critic discover anything to compare with
this?
A prominent feature of the German strategy has been the attack of their
infantry in dense masses; their commanders have flung men forward in
solid columns in the hope of overwhelming their enemies by sheer weight
of numbers. This has been a matter of considered policy; attack in this
formation has been practised at the German manoeuvres for years. The
German commanders took no notice of those military critics of other
nations who assured them that with modern weapons such tactics could
only meet with irretrievable disaster. With true Prussian cocksureness,
and knowing nothing of war since the days when quick-firing guns and
magazine rifles had revolutionised war, they insisted that they were
right, and that German hardihood would be proof against even the most
appalling losses. They have practised what they preached, since there
was no possibility of re-training their men in time of war, and the
result has been daughter on such a scale as the world has never seen.
Not once, but a hundred times have German massed attacks across open
country simply melted away before the fire which greeted them, and in
this way Germany has lost untold thousands of men who, had they been
intelligently used, might have gone far to win the War.
This, again, is not an example of the mistakes made by subordinate
commanders in the field, but a settled matter of policy approved by the
highest German military experts, and proved hopelessly wrong under the
actual test of war. Attacks by massed guns and not by massed infantry
have been the most powerful factors in winning the German successes. We
saw in the appalling slaughter of the great battle of Ypres how little
infantry, resolute and well handled, have to fear from the advance of
men who simply come on in solid masses to be shot down.
It has long been a part of the German creed that "frightfulness" in war
pays. The avowed German policy is that a conquered nation shall be left
"nothing but its eyes to weep with." The idea, of course, is that any
nation which has the misfortune to incur Germany's resentment shall be
so completely terrorised and oppressed that anything in the shape of a
spirit of resistance shall be utterly crushed out in a welter of blood
and savagery before which a civilised community must sink appalled.
Here we have a simple explanation of the crimes which staggered the
world after the invasion of Belgium. It was all a part of the German
policy that the Belgian civilians should be tortured, outraged, and
murdered, that their towns should be laid waste, that monuments of an
ancient civilisation which even the Huns of old respected should be
destroyed by the newest apostles of "kultur." Eight hundred civilians
were massacred at Dinant in cold blood to show the Belgians how hopeless
it was to resist Germany; hundreds of women have been violated in the
same cause; hundreds of churches have been destroyed; dozens of villages
have been laid in ashes. And all this, let it be remembered--let it,
indeed, never be forgotten--was the result not of war-maddened soldiers
losing their heads and their manhood, but of a deliberate policy
deliberately adopted by the rulers of Germany.
In every war and in every army there happen, in hot blood, incidents
over which humanity weeps; human nature being what it is, excesses are
sometimes unavoidable. But it has been left to modern Germany to
elevate murder and violence and destruction to a science; she has in
this respect set up a record which would shame a Red Indian, and from
which the great warring and plundering nations of old would have shrunk
appalled. The history of war for centuries has given us nothing to
approach in horror the German devastation of Belgium and of Poland,
unless we except the massacres of the Armenians by Germany's Turkish
Allies with Germany's connivance and approval.
Now I am quite certain that the criminality of these proceedings
troubles the German nation not one whit. But I am equally certain that
they will be seriously troubled when they realise that "frightfulness"
is what is in their eyes far worse than a crime; it is a blunder. When
the German Hyde has recovered from his debauch of bestiality and
violence, we may expect the German Jekyll to begin assuring us that he
is really a very decent sort of fellow after all. For Jekyll will come
some day to realise that Hyde's crimes have not helped his cause, that
Hyde was really not merely a savage--that he could accept without a
pang--but that he was a sad blunderer. That, to the German, is the real
unforgivable sin. And blunderer in his campaign of "frightfulness" the
German assuredly has been and is. The policy of terrorism has been a
complete failure; it has failed in Belgium, it has failed in France, it
has failed in Serbia, it has failed in Poland, it has failed afloat, and
it has failed in the air. It is a record of blood and murder unredeemed
by a solitary success; it has steeled the hearts and the resolution of
all to whom it has been applied, and among the neutral nations it has
provoked feelings which cause nausea whenever Germany is mentioned.
In the face of unmentionable horrors--unmentionable except in the pages
of official reports--Belgium has steadily refused to have any traffic
whatever with the Huns; her soldiers are preparing to-day to take their
full meed of vengeance of those who have made a desert of her smiling
land. Serbia is still unconquered, though her land is occupied and
devastated. Poland spurns the German yoke. Britain not only is
undismayed, but is more firmly resolved than ever to make an end for
good and all of German pretensions. Russia is striking shrewd blows,
and will strike yet harder in the near future. Italy is steadily
preparing for greater things. France is her own great self, and is
waiting with unconquerable resolution for the appointed hour. Only in
Germany and her Allies do we discover a growing spirit of apprehension
and of weakening purpose. Can we say in the face of all these things
that the policy of "frightfulness" has been anything but a blunder of
the first magnitude?
It is commonly assumed that German savagery reached its height in the
sinking of the "Lusitania," and certainly that crime struck the
conscience of civilisation more forcibly than the horrors in Belgium,
partly because it was a direct object-lesson of the depths to which
modern Germany was capable of descending. But in sober truth the
"Lusitania" outrage was nothing in comparison with what had been done in
Belgium. There Germany's record of horrors was so atrocious that no
respectable newspaper could reproduce the evidence gathered by the
French Official Commission, and only those who had read the original
could form any conception of what the reality must have been. The
victims of the "Lusitania" at least died swiftly and comparatively
painlessly; Belgium's lot was in too many cases such that death would
have been infinitely preferable. But to the sinking of the "Lusitania"
is to be attributed the uprising of the wrath of the United States, who
saw over a hundred of her citizens simply murdered in cold blood.
It is not for us to criticise the action the United States may think fit
to adopt in defence of its own people, but it is certain that nine
Americans out of ten are far ahead of their Government in their opinion
of what ought to be done. What will be done is a matter for the
Americans themselves, and we have no right to interfere. But it is at
least to be regretted, in the interest of international morality and
good faith, that the United States, as the foremost of the neutral
nations, did not see fit to protest against German violation of
international law until the interests of American citizens were directly
attacked. The failure of the neutral nations to make such a protest has
probably done untold harm to the prospects of international agreements
in the future. What value, for instance, will the world, in days to
come, attach to the proceedings of a Hague Convention whose solemn
agreements Germany has been permitted to infringe without a word of
protest from neutrals who shared in its deliberations and acquiesced in
its decisions?
German disregard of the decencies of international life and her lack of
understanding of the feelings of other nations have been abundantly
shown in the conspiracy of intimidation which has been carried on in the
United States. It seemed quite natural to the Germans that their
Embassy in Washington should be made the head centre for plots which
were calculated, and intended, to provoke a conflict between the United
States and Great Britain. They seem to have been quite incapable of
realising that the United States might possibly object to being made the
cat's-paw of German diplomacy, just as they seem to have thought that
the blowing up of American munition works to prevent supplies reaching
the Allies was a proceeding about which Americans could have no real
reason to complain. In the same manner they appear to have thought that
the forgery of United States passports for the use of their spies in
England was a mere trifle, undeserving of the slightest censure,
regardless of the fact that no other nation in the world would stoop to
such unspeakable meanness.
The result of their blundering is that they have brought themselves
within measurable distance of having a war with America on their hands,
and but for the patience of President Wilson war would have broken out
long ago. It is believed, of course, that for some reasons war with the
United States would serve the German purpose at the present moment by
giving them an excuse for making peace on the plausible ground that they
could not fight the whole world; but whatever may be the truth about
this now, it was certainly not the truth in the early days of the War
when the Germans were overwhelmingly confident that they could win.
Even then they were flouting the United States in every possible way,
and showing the greatest contempt for the greatest of the neutral
nations. It was all of a piece with the blundering diplomacy which has
been exhibited in every quarter of the world.
The complete failure of Germany to placate Italy is another blunder
which will have a great effect in the final outcome of the War. Perhaps
Austria in those days was not quite so servile to her German masters as
she is to-day. In any case the attempt failed; and if we are to measure
blunders in diplomacy, we can quite justifiably set the German failure
in this respect against our own supposed failure in the Balkans with the
confidence that the Germans have at least lost as much as we did--
probably they have lost a great deal more. The Germans undoubtedly
relied upon Bulgaria to overcome the Serbian resistance, just as they
relied upon the Turk to help them turn us out of Egypt and open up a
direct German route to Persia and India and the East generally. But
what are the facts of the situation? There is every reason to believe
that relations between the Germans and their Allies are none too
cordial. Bulgar and Turk alike hate Teutonic arrogance, and both are
beginning to realise that they have been duped. There is every reason
to think that the Bulgars are already repenting of their bargain, while
the Turks, in the loss of Erzerum, see a vital blow struck by the
Russians at the very heart of their Empire. Moreover, we know that the
huge supplies which the Germans hoped to draw from both Turkey and
Bulgaria are not forthcoming for the simple reason that they do not
exist. Turkey unmistakably is tottering to her final fall, and then, we
may well ask, what becomes of the grandiose German plans for an advance
on Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India? Can we say that in this direction,
more than in others, the German plans have gone well?
The Dardanelles expedition is popularly held to be the greatest blunder
of our campaign. But are we quite so sure that, failure though it was,
it was all lost effort, or even, as things were, that it was not worth
the price we paid? That is a question which will be settled only by the
historian of the future. But to those who see in it only the failure of
a great effort and the sacrifice of many gallant lives it may be pointed
out that it had very important results.
In the first place, it held up at least half a million Turks who would
have been very useful elsewhere, it brought the enemy a loss of probably
200,000 men, it sensibly weakened his powers of resistance, and in all
probability it very materially assisted the Russians to win their great
victory at Erzerum. It undoubtedly did much to stave off the threatened
attack on Egypt and the Suez Canal, and it probably saved our expedition
in Mesopotamia from utter disaster. I do not say all these things could
not have been achieved otherwise, but I do feel that in balancing gains
and losses we have a right to claim that even in the tragedy of the
Dardanelles there are compensations to be found if we try to look at the
matter in a cool and impartial light. Most unfortunately the issue has
been clouded by the introduction of the personal element as between Mr
Churchill and Sir John Fisher, and until the heat of that controversy
has cooled down it is unlikely that the problem of the Dardanelles will
receive anything like fair and adequate consideration.
The worst of our blunders was our unpreparedness, and for it we are
paying a heavy price. But since we set our hands to the plough we have
made such efforts as no nation has ever made in the history of the
world; and if we had made no mistakes in the raising and training and
using of three millions of men in warfare of a type of which we have had
no previous experience, we should indeed have been the supermen which
the Germans proudly believe and boast themselves to be. Our mistakes
have been many and grievous; they will be many and grievous in the days
that are to come. But at least we are justified in saying that we are
not the only blunderers. Germany started the War with the inestimable
advantage of complete readiness for the fray; and if she had not made
mistakes at least equal to those of the Allies, she would long ago have
been mistress of Europe and well on the way to the dominating position
in the world of which she dreamed, but which she will never occupy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
VICTORY WITH HONOUR.
We shall not sheathe the sword, which we have not lightly drawn, until
Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than all that she has
sacrificed, until France is secured from the menace of aggression,
until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed
upon an unassailable foundation, until the military domination of
Prussia is fully and finally destroyed. That is a great task worthy
of a great nation.
Such were the magnificent phrases in which Mr Asquith, at the Guildhall
on November 9, 1914, expressed, as I hope, once and for all, the
determined resolve of the British people.
We know to-day even more fully than we did before that there can be no
peace in the world until "the military domination of Prussia" is fully
and finally destroyed.
I think, however, the British people and their Allies would make one
change in Mr Asquith's glowing speech. They would substitute "Germany"
for "Prussia." For the blood-guilt of Prussia has infected the entire
German nation as with a species of moral leprosy. The German nation as
a whole, and not merely the Prussian portion of it, has steeped itself
in the vileness of which Prussia, admittedly, was the first and greatest
exemplar.
Gone for ever is the theory that we are at war merely with
"Prussianism." Our one aim and object to-day must be the utter
destruction of the military power of the German Empire as a whole, and
the squaring of civilisation's long account with the Germanic peoples.
Assuredly until they are brought to see that the courses upon which they
have willingly embarked are vile and cruel and wrong--and they can be
taught this only by the stern argument of force--the peace of Europe
cannot long be preserved. If we falter now, if we and our Allies are
content with anything less than overwhelming and decisive victory, it is
as certain as the rising of to-morrow's sun that Germany will at once
set herself to prepare for a further war of aggression. Nothing but the
most decisive humiliation will convince her that the world has no use
for men who aim at world-domination. Nothing less will bring home to
the minds of her people the clear truth that the megalomaniac dreams of
their Emperor have been the sole source of the immeasurable disasters
which this War has inflicted upon them.
It is impossible to emphasise too strongly the undeniable truth that for
the British Empire this War is and must be decisive. If, in the face of
all perils and sacrifices, we persevere to the noble end which Mr
Asquith has sketched for us, we can surely see rising in the not very
distant future visions of an Empire more glorious even than that of
to-day.
In the madness of his dream of world-dominion, the Kaiser fondly
believed that one of the first results of the War would be the
destruction of the British Empire; he thought that its component parts
would fly apart as if by centrifugal force. Never in this world has a
rapacious and domineering ruler made a more fatal mistake. The
influence of the War upon the constituent elements of the British Empire
has been centripetal rather than centrifugal; instead of flying off at a
tangent as the Kaiser hoped, our scattered Dominions have drawn in
closer and closer still to the tiny island set in the North Sea which,
to Britons all the world over, is ever and always "home." War has truly
forged new links between us and our brothers overseas, and we may rest
content that nothing has contributed more powerfully to the shattering
of the Kaiser's dreams than the glorious story of the Anzacs in
Gallipoli, the heroism of the Canadians at Ypres, and the devotion with
which the dusky sons of India have flung themselves into the world-fray
in the cause of the British Raj. Not disruption but unity has sprung
from the War. If we preserve that glorious unity to the end,
persevering undismayed through the long days that are yet to come of
peril and darkness, we shall bequeath to our children and our children's
children a heritage which will grow brighter and fairer with the passing
of the changing years.
But there must be no faltering in our great resolve, no surrender to
weariness or pain, no looking back until our task is done. For us, very
literally, _now_ is the appointed time. If we fail now, if we put off
our harness with our task unfulfilled, if, having set our hand to the
plough, we become faint and weak, it needs no strong imagination to see
stretching out before us the downward path which must lead the British
Empire to disruption and decay.
No matter what the cost, no matter what the sacrifice, we must win this
War, and win it so decisively that the menace of Teuton aggression and
arrogance, of the immoral doctrine that brute force is the only right,
shall be ever removed from civilisation.
Great and glorious are the rewards of success; terrible indeed are the
penalties which must await on failure. I implore every single one of my
readers to do whatever in him lies to help in the great task of arousing
this nation to the fullest possible realisation of the fact that we must
either win this War or take our places, humbled and broken, among the
nations that no longer count in the councils of the world. For us, at
any rate, there is no middle course.
We have to remember that this War will never be settled decisively
unless the Allies are able to invade Germany and to inflict a crushing
defeat upon the armed force of the enemy. It may be that Germany, faced
with certain economic ruin, will sooner or later sue for peace, hoping
at least to protect her home territory, to keep her internal resources
untouched to be ready for the economic war which will follow the
declaration of peace, and to "cut her losses" rather than risk worse
things.
Such a peace would be a disaster as great as the War itself, and much
greater than the losses involved in its continuance to a decisive
ending. It would leave Germany proud in the consciousness that she had
faced, not altogether unsuccessfully, an alliance of powerful enemies,
and she would simply set to work upon fresh designs of conquest and of
preparation for a renewal of the struggle as soon as things looked
sufficiently hopeful. And we may be quite sure that Britain, which has
had so large a share in the checking of Germany's over-ambitious
designs, would be the principal enemy to be aimed at.
Never again could we hope to face Germany upon such favourable terms,
and with such powerful Allies. We do not fear the issue of a conflict
with Germany single-handed so long as we are warned in time to make our
preparations for attack, but we do not want to see the wealth of our
Empire and of the other nations wasted in the future in that mad
competition of armaments which Germany has forced on the world. Rather
would we see the years that are to come years of peace, when the nations
shall enjoy a well-earned rest from the burden of militarism which
German designs have imposed upon civilisation.
Of all the perils by which we are now threatened, perhaps the very
gravest is the conclusion of a premature peace which, in the very nature
of things, could be nothing more than a thinly veiled truce to prepare
for a new and even more titanic conflict. That is the game which the
Germans are playing to-day, and its dangers to us were admirably pointed
out by Lord Rosebery in a recent speech. He said:
There is only one thing which I sometimes fear. It is that when
successes begin there may be some weak-minded cry in this country for
a premature peace. A premature peace means a short peace, and a war
that will be even worse than this to follow. Therefore let all of us
unite in the resolve that while no exertion shall be wanting on our
part to bring the War to a triumphant conclusion and the Prussian
bloodthirsty tyrants to their knees, yet, on the other hand, not a
finger will be raised to accelerate peace before it is justly due.
To that grave and noble warning perhaps I may add the testimony of an
officer who is now serving at the front. He writes:
At the present moment there are millions of French, Belgian, Russian,
and Serbian peasants wandering about homeless, and there are thousands
besides who have died as the result of this wandering about, or who
have been actually killed by the Germans as though they had been
soldiers in uniform.
Now look at Germany--Germany who will soon be ready for peace! She
has hardly had her territory touched; her people do not know what it
means to have war waged in their own country.
What I say is that this War must not be finished until it has been
carried right into the heart of Germany, so that the German people may
know and understand what France, Belgium, Serbia, and Russia have gone
through during the last fifteen months.
It is a frightful nightmare to all of us out here that we shall
suddenly be told one morning that peace is declared while we are still
sitting on this present line of trenches through Belgium and France.
No one wants peace more than we do out here, but I--and I know most
soldiers are the same--would rather die than see a peace made before
we have shown them in Germany what the peasants of the Allies have
suffered.
It's no good being soft-hearted with the Germans. I don't think there
is any danger of the other Allies being carried away by the premature
peace talk; it's only England, who does not know what war means, who
may be.
Over and over again the Germans have attempted, with barefaced
effrontery, to buy off our Allies, to attempt to induce them to forsake
the common cause, to acquiesce, in short, in the betrayal of Britain.
That to-day is the keystone of the game of chicanery and fraud which
passes in Berlin for diplomacy. There can be no doubt that to France,
to Italy, and to Russia splendid gains are freely open as the price of a
dishonourable peace; there is to-day hardly any concession which Germany
would not willingly make to either of the Allies to secure their
withdrawal from the contest.
The one aim of Germany to-day is to detach Britain's Allies, because
Germany thinks that with Britain as her sole antagonist she would be
sure of ultimate victory. And with her warped code of national honour,
with her cynical disregard of the plighted word, she simply cannot
understand why the baits she is ready to offer are rejected on all hands
with loathing and scorn. She cannot understand the obligations of
national honour; she cannot understand that a nation may be too proud to
stoop to betrayal for the reward of a bribe. Happily, the bonds which
unite the Allies hold firm; and if the Germans cannot see and understand
the meaning of the solemn renewal of the Allies' pledge to Belgium, so
much the worse for them. Probably they think it is all a piece of
bluff, and that we are as ready as they themselves are for peace.
The German gauges every man by his own low standard. He believes that
every man has his price; nevertheless, in this belief he exempts the
English.
I have before me as I write a copy of recent instructions and advice
issued from the German Intelligence Department to its spies. This
document is a long and most illuminating one. Here are some quotations
from it:
The officer who has prepared himself by an exhaustive course of
technical study cannot fail to acquit himself in intelligence work,
_which is more fruitful of distinction than most of the duties of his
profession_.
It is rarely advisable to try to conceal one's nationality, but at the
same time it is often desirable to assume, especially when in Russia
or England, the character and accent of a South German, and to allow
it to be understood that he is a member of the Roman Catholic faith.
In England it is well to avoid making any approaches to either a
military or naval officer. _They may be regarded as incorruptible_.
The latter sentence of this secret document shows what Germany thinks of
our British officers. It shows also to our Allies what our enemies
think of us.
The Invisible Hand is ever at work, no doubt. But even the German
Intelligence Department, with all its brains and all its cunning, is
compelled to admit that we Britons are incorruptible. They have, of
course, established the canker-worm in the heart of Great Britain, and
we have with us the horde of so-called "naturalised" Germans, so many of
whom are impatiently awaiting the downfall of the country to which they
have with their traitorous oaths sworn allegiance. But this they have
also done in the territory of our Allies, and we may be sure that the
scheme which is working tortuously to split the Allies will be
persevered in until its futility becomes obvious even to the German
mind. It is this plot which explains the peace talk which is beginning
to issue so cleverly from Berlin. The design, quite obviously, is
either to weaken the solidarity of the Entente or to represent Germany
to the neutral nations as the benevolent victor who is ready with the
magnanimous offer of the olive-branch as soon as her beaten foes come to
their senses.
Such talk may deceive Germans; it may even have some effect upon the
very numerous peace body in America with its ludicrous Ford expedition
(to whom it is perhaps principally addressed); but it surely can deceive
no one else. It does not deceive "the man in the street." We have
plenty of evidence that the vast mass of people in the neutral nations
realise fully the futility of the German aims, and they are not in the
least degree likely to be tempted into proffering peace proposals which
would assuredly be instantly rejected by the Allied Powers.
Keen observers among the neutral nations are fully conscious of the fact
that Britain's determination to win the War is hardening into that stern
and immutable resolve which in all ages has been the dominant
characteristic of our people when once their dogged temper was fully
aroused. And of the determination of our Allies there is happily not
the slightest doubt. They are one and all determined to end once and
for all the German menace to the peace of the world.
I believe most firmly that we can win this War if we will. _We have
alike the power and the will to win_.
The combined resources of the Allies in men and money are, in the long
run, vastly superior to those of Germany and her miserable vassals--for
the countries she has dragged into the War with her are, and can be,
nothing more. The Central Powers are fighting to-day on four great main
fronts, and the drain on their resources is appalling. Germany, in the
words of a keen American observer, is being "bled white," and to-day she
is striving to secure some vestiges of success to hearten her people,
who are beginning to entertain some uneasy doubts as to the reality of
the "victories" of which they have heard so much. And her perils are
rapidly increasing. Her Turkish Ally has been so badly shaken that we
may well look forward to the swift progress of that demoralisation which
seems to have already commenced; if Turkey falls by the way, nothing
will keep the swelled-headed Bulgarians in the field, and probably
nothing would keep the Rumanians and Greeks out of it.
We have to remember that the South-Eastern front is the last chance
Germany has of breaking through the iron ring which is ever being drawn
tighter and tighter round her throat. Her dreams of expansion eastwards
are indeed already shattered, and with the Turkish failure in Armenia
probably goes the last hope Germany entertained of being able to call
the fight a draw. In the language of the New York _Tribune_, "Germany
is now approaching what will be her last great bid for success. But it
will not be made on the battlefield; it will be made in conferences, in
peace negotiations, and in operations through neutrals." Against that
danger it is more than ever necessary for us to be on our guard.
And that danger is undoubtedly increased by the mischievous and
traitorous chatter of the peace cranks who in our own country are slowly
recovering their courage, and are beginning to make their noisy voices
heard. These are the people who at the moment are the real enemies of
our country, the real pro-Germans. They are not very numerous, but they
are very noisy; they are not very intelligent, but they are very
persistent; and, like all "martyrs," so-called, they are imbued with the
firm conviction that they alone are right, and that all the rest of our
people are wrong. They are industrious with the industry of the true
fanatic, and they are striving by every means in their power, fair or
foul, to swing the wavering and the faint-hearted to their cause.
Already the croaking voice of the peace crank has been heard even in the
House of Lords itself, and it might have been heard still more loudly if
the public, with a just perception of the mischief these pestilent
people are doing, had not taken more than once rough-and-ready measures
to put a stop to their misguided energies.
I am no advocate of mob law, but if the peace advocates persist in
turning the principle of free speech into a licence for a traitorous
propaganda I confess I cannot sympathise deeply with their shrieks for
sympathy when an indignant public turns upon them in the only way open
to it, and refuses to allow their voices to be heard.
That the heart of the people is sound upon this question of fighting the
War to the only conclusion compatible with our national honour and
safety I am to-day firmly convinced.
Yet there is a very real risk that the cry of "Stop the War!" may make
too many converts among the unthinking sections who, like all of us, are
weary of the War and long to see peace restored. None of us desires to
see the War prolonged, with all its terrible cost in blood and treasure;
but, on the other hand, no Englishman worthy the name can fail to share
the view expressed by Lord Rosebery. It is the business of all loyal
Britons to see that the poisonous propaganda which finds its best
representation in such egregious bodies as the "Union of Democratic
Control" shall be decisively countered. It is the business of the
nation to concentrate all its energies to-day upon the winning of a
clear and unmistakable victory which shall ensure the peace of Europe
for a century to come.
It is a very striking characteristic of Germany that the better things
are going the more loudly she talks of the great things she is going to
do in the immediate future. Every trifling success she wins produces an
outburst of extravagant boasting wholly disproportionate to the
achievement. In the early days of the War, what the Germans call, with
their usual lack of good taste, the "big mouth" (_grosse Schnautze_) was
very much in evidence. It has cooled down very considerably of late,
and its place is being taken by a very much more chastened frame of
mind.
The olive-branch is much in evidence, and the mailed fist is somewhat at
a discount. "Frightfulness" is, in the main, left to the sabre-rattling
Count Reventlow, the puff-ball Captain Persius, and to that portion of
the German Press which takes its leading articles direct from the
Government lie-factory in Berlin. Ananias has his hand heavily over
Germany at the present moment. Otherwise the tone is one of a benignant
willingness to admit that Germany and all the other countries have been
very much to blame, and that it is time this terrible War was ended.
This new species of modesty by compulsion is all a part of the German
dodge to try to make a favourable peace which would leave Germany
weakened indeed--it is realised that that can hardly be avoided--but by
no means whipped. It is our business to stick to our task until the
whipping is obvious not only to the whole world, but to the German
people as well.
The times are full of perils, yet they are not without hope. Already we
see the rifts in the dark clouds which have hung over us for so long.
And if we turn a deaf ear to those who counsel the way of ignominious
ease, if we decide to persevere with all our heart and all our strength
along the path of noble purpose upon which we have embarked, we shall
reach in good time to the long-desired haven of victory and peace and
prosperity.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I defined in this hall exactly a year ago the objects without the
attainment of which the Allies will not lay down their arms. They
remain to-day as they were then. We pursue them one and all with
undiminished faith; we believe that we have advanced a long way to their
achievement. Be the journey long or short we shall not falter till we
have secured for the smaller states of Europe their charter of
Independence, and for Europe itself and for the world at large its final
emancipation from the reign of force.--_Mr Asquith, at The Guildhall,
November 9, 1915_.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
"NEVER AGAIN."
It would be nothing less than a crime against civilisation if, after the
War has come to a close, Germany is left with the power again to make
herself a menace to the peace of our modern civilised world.
We need have no sentimental considerations on this point. We want none.
Germany has shown conclusively that she is not to be bound by any
considerations of honour, and that she has deliberately aimed at what
the world will never tolerate--world-dominion in the hands of a single
Power. We and our Allies have determined that she shall not be allowed
to realise her ambitions in this direction; it is our duty to see that
for the future, in the interests of humanity as a whole, she is robbed
of the power of making herself a nuisance and a danger to her
neighbours, who wish only to live in peace.
If peace for the moment were the only object of the Allies, their wishes
could be gratified on very easy terms.
There is no doubt whatever that Germany would be glad to bring the War
to a close before she is more seriously weakened, if not utterly ruined;
it is our business and the business of our Allies to see that no
premature peace is allowed to rob them of the fruits of their great
sacrifices. For, be it remembered, their real object is not so much
victory now, except inasmuch as victory will enable them to gain
security in the future. We do not want a world kept perpetually on
tenterhooks by Germany's exhibitions of the "mailed fist"; and unless I
misread entirely the signs of the times, I do not think we are likely to
have it. Germany will have to be dealt with after the War, and no
feelings of pity or consideration for a defeated enemy can have any
influence on the settlement.
For years past Germany has deliberately elected to make economic war in
times of peace. Of this we have no reason to complain; a country's
fiscal arrangements are a matter for itself. But out of her economic
war Germany grew rich and strong enough to wage military war, and she
will do so again unless we and our Allies take steps to stop her. Now
in this matter old shibboleths have got to go by the board, and there is
every indication that, not as a matter of politics, but as a mere matter
of self-preservation, both Britain and the Allies are preparing to fight
Germany in the future with the weapon which in the past has proved so
successful against themselves.
There are very few things indeed produced by Germany which Britain or
her Allies cannot produce for themselves, and I have no hesitation in
saying that for the future our fiscal watchword ought to be, "The Allies
first and the rest nowhere." I do not want to see this or that party
snatch a party advantage out of our old quarrels on the subject of Free
Trade.
I have every hope that as a result of the War many of our old suicidal
party divisions and petty bickerings will disappear, never to return;
and for this reason I hope--perhaps it is hoping against hope--that when
the War is over we shall consider our future tariff system not as
Liberals or Conservatives, but as Imperialists pure and simple.
It is true, speaking broadly, that the Liberal Party as a whole is so
deeply pledged to Free Trade that any reversal of its policy on this
subject must be a matter of grave difficulty. But the question is no
longer Free Trade or Tariff Reform; the question to-day is, or at least
in the near future will be, the maintenance of Britain's commercial
prosperity against German attacks which are sure to be renewed the
instant peace is declared.
There are those who think--the wish is father to the thought--that
Germans will be so unpopular after the War that there will be no risk of
their doing business in any British territory, and that many of the
neutrals even will refuse to have dealings with them. I think it is
undoubtedly true that in many cases and in many countries Germans will
find that they are not received in the future as they have been in the
past. But the Fownes case shows us very clearly that there are
Englishmen who are not averse to trading with Germany even in time of
War when such trading is expressly forbidden. What reason have we,
then, to think that after peace is declared there will not be found
hundreds of firms quite ready to trade with Germans if by so doing they
can make a profit? And if this is true of England, can we blame the
neutral nations and our Allies if they are no more scrupulous?
Our policy must be to make such trading impossible because
unprofitable--firstly, to encourage our own business men throughout the
Empire and the business men belonging to the nations that are allied
with us, and, secondly, to prevent Germany gaining in the commercial
world a position which will enable her again to grow so rich and so
strong that she will be enabled in her own time again to menace our
security.
There is only one way to secure that end, and that is by a preferential
tariff which shall operate in all the Allied countries in favour of
Allied goods. At whatever cost in the sacrifice of long-held political
convictions, some such measure is imperative if we are not to be faced
with the prospect of another and more terrible war just as soon as
Germany feels herself strong enough to wage it.
Now it is very significant and very important that at least two
Ministers whose Free Trade proclivities cannot be suspected have warned
the country that in the future we shall see great alterations in our
fiscal policy. Mr Runciman and Mr Montagu have given expression to
very similar views, and perhaps I may quote a few words from the speech
which the latter made at Cambridge, when he said there were two topics
of enormous importance that every man, Liberal or Conservative, would
have to keep an open mind upon under the new conditions.
The first (he proceeded) is the fiscal system. It cannot have escaped
notice that in the House of Commons last year Liberal Free Traders and
Conservative Tariff Reformers, leaders of both parties, expressed
their opinions that the old economic condition of the relationship
between the different parts of the globe would be altered after the
War, and without saying to-day what the answer will be to those
problems I will say that it is not a part of Liberalism not to
recognise altered conditions and circumstances, and to revise or
perhaps strengthen ourselves in respect to the new conditions which
may arise. We in the past conducted trade as a peaceful pursuit, and
treated all nations as nearly as we could equally. But look at the
history of this War and see the use Germany made of her trade, and
just ask yourselves whether we can ever afford or dare to let that
happen again.
Now, when he made that speech Mr Montagu was speaking to an assemblage
of Liberals, and it is not without significance that his remarks were
received with loud cheers. There is, indeed, no doubt whatever that
Liberals and Conservatives are rapidly drawing nearer together on this
great question, and the outlook for a solution along truly Imperial
lines is brighter than it has been for many years past. So great are
the changes which have been produced by Germany's mad ambition and
greed!
Even Manchester, the home of Free Trade orthodoxy, has revolted against
the idea that there shall be free trade with Germany after the War.
The Chamber of Commerce of that city has by an overwhelming majority
declared itself opposed to anything of the kind. In London a great
meeting of business men at the Guildhall, presided over by the Lord
Mayor, has called emphatically for a policy which shall smash for ever
the German commercial-military system, shall formulate action for the
defence and improvement of trade after the War, and shall improve our
commercial relations with the Overseas Dominions and the Allies. A
strong subcommittee of the Board of Trade has reported emphatically in
favour of preference for our Allies and in favour of tariff protection
for all industries which are of national necessity. And the committee
adds, very significantly, "In view of the threatened dumping of stocks
which may be accumulated in enemy countries, the Government should take
such steps as would prevent the position of industries likely to be
affected being endangered after the War or during the period required
for a wider consideration of the whole question."
This can be done, in the committee's opinion, by import duties which,
directed against German and enemy products, would go far to shut them
out of the British Empire. The committee even goes so far as to
recommend that certain goods coming from enemy countries shall be
absolutely refused admission.
We have shown ourselves in the past very far behind the Overseas
Dominions in our willingness to advance the cause of British trade for
British traders. We must do so no longer. The enormous contributions
the Dominions have made to the Empire's cause imperatively demand that
in the future their devotion shall be recognised, and one of the
subjects upon which they feel most keenly is that we do not at present
do enough to encourage their young but rapidly growing industries.
If we adopt the policy of "Empire goods for the Empire," we shall draw
still closer the bonds which unite old England to her younger sons. And
surely, putting our own self-interest aside, our gallant Allies have
some reason to look to Britain for help in fighting the German octopus.
They as well as we are vitally interested in making peace secure after
this terrible struggle; and just as the War has been in the main brought
about by Germany's economic expansion being turned to evil purposes, so
peace will be secured only by her being prevented from waging economic
war in the future. And the best way to secure that end is to establish
in the British Empire and all the Allied nations a tariff wall that
shall amount to a virtual boycott of German products of every kind
whatever. There will be no reluctance on the part of our Allies to join
us in such a policy; Russia, indeed, has already announced that her
trade is closed to Germany for all time.
There is another reason why such a boycott should appeal specially to
England. During this War we have made advances amounting to many
hundreds of millions to the Allies who are fighting with us in the cause
of civilisation. That money will sooner or later be repaid, and on
every account it will be best repaid in the way of trade. The more
closely we can, after the War, confine our foreign trade to our Allies,
the more easily and the more quickly will they be able to reduce their
indebtedness to us. A lasting commercial compact between the Allied
Powers will not only be a powerful financial help to all of them, but it
will be perhaps the most powerful instrument that could be devised for
preserving the peace of the world.
We have seen during the past few years what the Germans meant and have
done by the methods of "peaceful penetration." Unless some remedy is
devised those methods will be put into operation again directly after
the War. Antwerp is a standing case in point. Belgians and French
alike denounced the insidious plot to make of Antwerp a purely German
port; but although ninety per cent, of the trade was handled and owned
by Germans, and brought no profit to Belgium, the scandal--for it was
nothing less--was allowed to continue. In England, especially in
London, and in our Dominions we have seen the same evil. The case of
the Merton firm, some of whose associates had secured practically the
monopoly of the world's trade in base metals, gives us an object-lesson
which I trust we shall not forget. London traders can tell strange
stories of "peaceful penetration" of British industries. They know how
countless German clerks came over to work at low wages "just to learn
the language." They found out too late that these clerks all received a
subsidy from the German Government, that they were really German
commercial spies in the pay of rival firms, and that any employer who
admitted these aliens into his establishment was sure soon to note a
falling-off in orders, due to the alien clerks having access to
confidential correspondence and advising their paymasters in Germany
accordingly. And those self-same clerks received from Germany a premium
if they married English girls! Now no tariff will furnish absolute
protection against such methods as this; the British trader will have
himself to thank if he is caught again by the same device. But we have
to remember that the Hun is amazingly ingenious in every description of
underhand work, and that fresh plans will be devised if the old ones
fail. We must take measures accordingly. And one of those measures
must be a stringent revision of the law relating to naturalisation. We
want no more Germans naturalised in this country for many a long year to
come.
We want no more Germans over here acting as spies in either the military
or the commercial field. We will tolerate none. Further, I hope that
after the War is over we shall see an effective passport system
introduced which shall apply to all foreigners, and that before any
German or Austrian is allowed even to reside in the country he will be
compelled to obtain some kind of guarantee of good behaviour from some
responsible English firm. Only by some such means can we make it
difficult or impossible for the worst class of our enemies to swarm over
here directly peace is signed.
Coupled with efficient passport restrictions, I hope to see an effective
check put upon the admission of undesirable aliens of any and every
nation. We do not want a lot of foreign wastrels whose countries are
only too glad to be rid of them swarming into England to flood the
already overcrowded labour market and, willing to live in hopeless
penury, bringing down the price of wages here to the detriment of our
own people. Something has been done of late years to reduce this
scandal; I hope still more will be done in the future.
Then we have the question of German-controlled firms operating under
English names and with English registration. This system must
absolutely stop. Whether it will be possible for German firms openly to
trade here after the War I do not know, but at any rate we must have no
more Teutons posing as British, and Huns acquiring control of British
industries. The name "German" shall be an everlasting stigma. The
powers which the Government now possess to control any firm shown to be
of enemy nationality should be continued, and there ought to be devised
some means of putting an end to the scandals which for years past have
given the Germans unrivalled opportunities for worming their way into
the English commercial world.
I have no doubt whatever that many reputable British firms will in the
future hesitate very considerably before they do any business with
Germany. But we have to recognise that there are others who will be
less scrupulous, and who will reck nothing of the danger to the country
if they see the chance of turning a more or less honest penny. Those
are the people against whom, in the interests of our Empire, we have to
be on our guard.
We have ample evidence that the awakening of the British commercial
community to the dangers which will threaten it immediately after peace
is declared has aroused the utmost consternation and resentment in
Germany. That is at once its best justification and its strongest
recommendation. The Germans have openly boasted, both before and since
war broke out, that British firms could not do business without certain
goods from Germany. The fact that we have done so for the past eighteen
months is sufficient answer, and it is enough to show that we can do so
in the future.
It is true, of course, that we had, weakly enough, allowed ourselves to
become dependent upon Germany for scores of German-made articles. Such
vital necessities as chemicals of various kinds and the aniline dyes are
good instances. Even now we are suffering from the lack of some of
them. But there is no mistaking the fact that we are very rapidly
finding substitutes for what we formerly imported from Germany. The
making of British dyes, for example, is progressing by leaps and bounds;
and there is no doubt that if our traders are given half the
encouragement that is given to German traders by the German Government,
they will very soon show that they have nothing to learn from their
German rivals. Every day we get new evidence that British firms are
more and more completely adapting themselves to the altered conditions,
and laying down extensive plant for the manufacture of just those
articles we used to purchase dearly from our Teutonic competitors. That
policy must be ours for all time.
What Germans have done we can do. The German is great at imitating and
improving, but he has little originality; he is like the Japanese, quick
to see a good thing and adapt it, but not so quick to invent. We have
to see for the future that we are as quick as he is to adapt and a great
deal quicker to invent, and unless we do so we shall in a very few
years' time see arise in a new form many of the troubles which, if we
handle the commercial position aright, ought never again to disturb us.
"Never again" must be our watchword in dealing with the accursed German
competition. Our people must be educated to a permanent boycott of
German goods; if they will not learn, they must be compelled. Our
manufacturers must be protected against the policy of dumping bounty-fed
goods throughout our Empire at rates with which it is impossible for
them to compete because the German Government makes it possible for the
German trader to sell even below cost price with the object of ousting
his British rival. Socially and commercially we must be protected
against the flood of aliens who have already done untold harm to British
labour. All this we have done for eighteen months; we must do it in
perpetuity for the future.
But when all is said and done we cannot make our position in the world
secure unless our trading classes are prepared to revise very
considerably many of the methods they have adopted for years past. The
time when British goods sold merely because they were British, and
therefore the best on the market, has gone for ever. To-day commercial
competition is keen beyond anything of which our forefathers had
knowledge, and our methods unfortunately have not kept pace with the
changing circumstances.
There has been too much of the old happy-go-lucky style about us; we
have been too much inclined to rest upon our reputation, and to think
that because all was well fifty or a hundred years ago, all must be well
to-day.
The sooner that idea disappears from the minds of our business men the
better it will be for them and for the Empire. Never was the King's
message, "Wake up, England," more urgently necessary than it is to-day.
Proper measures taken by our Government will make it easier for us to
beat the Germans in the future in the field of commerce. But no
measures which Governments can take will wholly replace business ability
and energy. Just as, given proper weapons, our soldiers can beat the
Germans in the field of war, so we can beat the Germans in the field of
commerce if our commercial soldiers are given weapons adequate to the
task they have in hand. But neither the weapons of war nor the weapons
of commerce will avail us _unless they are used by men with clear heads,
strong hearts, and unbounded energy and determination_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As this volume goes to press the Titanic struggle for Verdun--the battle
which may well decide the War--rages with undiminished fury. What the
outcome may be none can say, but, at least, the omens are good. After
over a fortnight of furious fighting, after the expenditure of many
lives and enormous quantities of ammunition, the Huns have utterly
failed to pierce the French defence. The troops of France are fighting
like heroes: her generals are serene and confident. Germany has staked
her all on this gigantic thrust. Failure would spell national
depression on an unparalleled scale, and add to the German Government's
growing difficulties. And if Verdun falls, will the victory be worth
the price? We know that almost any position can be taken if losses are
disregarded. But whether Verdun will ever be worth to the Germans the
price they will have to pay for its capture is, to say the least of it,
exceedingly doubtful. But the Germans are deeply committed to the
venture, and it may be that they will consider no price too high to
pay--for they hold "cannon-fodder" cheap--in order to save what remains
of their badly shattered national, military, and dynastic prestige.
The End.
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