Into such an unpromising atmosphere of national hostility the war came down on us, in July 1914, like a thunderbolt. In spite of grave warnings few or none in this country were at that moment giving a thought to it.
On the contrary, we were thinking of all manner of immeasurably smaller things, for Great Britain, although governing more than one-fifth of the habitable globe, has an extraordinary capacity for becoming absorbed in the affairs of its two little islands. It was so in the autumn of 1914, when we thought Home Rule and Land Reform covered all our horizon, although a thunder-cloud that was to silence these big little guns had already gathered in the sky.
Perhaps it was not altogether our fault if secret diplomacy had too long concealed from us the storm that was so soon to break. That kind of surprise must never come to us again. Many and obvious may be the dangers of allowing the public to partic.i.p.ate in delicate and difficult negotiations between nations, but if democracy has any rights surely the chief of them is to know step by step by what means its representatives are controlling its destiny. We did not hear what was happening in the Cabinets of Europe, under that miserable disguise of the Archduke"s a.s.sa.s.sination, until the closing days of July. Consequently, we reeled under the danger that threatened us, and were not at first capable of comprehending the cause and the measure of it.
"What is this wretched conspiracy in Serbia to us, and why in G.o.d"s name should we have to fight about it?" we thought. Or perhaps, "We"ve always been told that treaties between nations are safeguards of peace, but here, heaven help us, they are dragging us into war."
So general was this sentiment of revolt during the last tragic days that it is commonly understood to have extended to the Cabinet. Six members are said to have opposed war. One of them, a philosopher and historian of high distinction, could not see his way with his colleagues, and retired from their company. Another, who came from the working-cla.s.ses, is understood to have resigned from thought of the sufferings which any war, however justifiable, must inevitably inflict upon the poor. A third, a lawyer in a position of the utmost authority, is believed to have had grave misgivings about our legal right to call Germany to account. And I have heard that a fourth, who had been prominent as a pacifist in the days of an earlier conflict, had written a letter to a colleague as late as the evening of August 1, saying that a war declared merely on grounds of problematical self-interest would create such an outcry in Great Britain as had never been heard here before--leaving us a derided and, therefore, easily-vanquished people.
THE PART CHANCE PLAYED
But chance plays the largest part in the drama of life, and accident often confounds the plans of men. Not feeling entirely sure of his letter the pacifist Minister put it in his pocket when he dressed that night to go out to dinner. And when he sat down at table he found himself seated next to the able, earnest, and pa.s.sionately patriotic Minister for Belgium. Perhaps he was urging some objections to British intervention, when his neighbour said: "But what about Belgium? You have promised to protect her, and if you don"t do so she will be destroyed."
That raised visions of the work of the little nations; memories of their immense contributions to human progress from the days of Israel downwards; thoughts of the vast loss to liberty, to morality, to religion, and to all the other fruits of the unfettered soul that would come to the world from the over-riding of the weak peoples by the strong. The result was swift and sure--the letter in the Minister"s pocket never reached the important person to whom it was addressed.
Only G.o.d knows whether this period, however short, of indecision among our people, and particularly among our responsible statesmen, with the consequent delay in dispatching a determined warning to Germany ("Hands off Belgium,") contributed to the making of the war. But it is at least an evidence of our desire for peace, and a sufficient a.s.surance that if unseen powers were working on our side also, they were the powers of good. Yet so strangely do the invisible forces confound the plans of men that the crowning proof of this came two days later--on August 8, in the Commons--when our Foreign Minister defined the British position, and practically declared for war.
It is not idle rumour that the Government went down to the House that day expecting to be resisted. The sequel was a startling surprise. Sir Edward Grey"s speech was far from a great oration. It gave the effect of being unprepared as to form, so loosely did the vehicle hang together, the sentences sometimes coming with strange inexact.i.tude for the tongue of one whose written word in dispatches has a clarity and precision that have never been excelled. But it had the supreme qualities of manifest sincerity and transparent honesty, and it derived its overwhelming effect from one transcendent characteristic of which the speaker himself may have been quite unconscious. It spoke to the British Empire as to a British gentleman. "You can"t stand by and do nothing while the friend by your side is being beaten to his knees. You can"t let a mischievous and unprincipled buccaneer tread into the dust the neighbour whom he has joined with you in swearing to protect?" There was no resisting that Our own interest might leave us cold; we might even be sceptical of our danger. But we were put on our honour, and every man in the House with the instincts of a gentleman was swept away by that appeal as by a flood.
"WHY ISN"T THE HOUSE CHEERING?"
Then came our Prime Minister"s pa.s.sionate, fiery, yet dignified and even exalted denunciation of the proposal of Germany that we should trade with her in our neutrality by committing treachery to France and Belgium--("To accept your infamous offer would be to cover the glorious name of England with undying shame"); then the announcement of the ultimatum sent by Great Britain to Germany demanding an a.s.surance that the neutrality of Belgium should be respected; and finally that speech of John Redmond"s, which, spoken on the very top of the crisis that had threatened to bring a fratricidal war into Ireland, has been, perhaps, the most thrilling and dramatic utterance yet produced by the war. "I tell the Government they may take every British soldier out of Ireland to meet the enemy of the Empire. Ireland"s sons will take care of Ireland. The Catholics of the South will stand shoulder to shoulder with their Protestant fellow-countrymen of the North to fight the common foe."
It was another appeal to the gentlemen in the British nation, and in one moment it swept the bitter waters of the Home Rule crisis out of all sight and memory. I have heard a Cabinet Minister say that, as he listened to Redmond"s speech, he was surprised at the silence with which it was received. "Why isn"t the House cheering?" he had asked himself.
But all at once he had felt his eyes swimming and his throat tightening, and then he had understood.
THE NIGHT OF OUR ULTIMATUM
Our nation knew everything now, and had made her choice, yet the twelve hours" interval between noon and midnight of August 4 were perhaps the gravest moments in her modern history. I am tempted, not without some misgivings, but with the confidence of a good intention, to trespa.s.s so far on personal information as to lift the curtain on a private scene in the tremendous tragic drama.
The place is a room in the Prime Minister"s house in Downing Street. The Prime Minister himself and three of the princ.i.p.al members of his Cabinet are waiting there for the reply to the ultimatum which they sent to Germany at noon. The time for the reply expires at midnight. It is approaching eleven o"clock. In spite of her "infamous proposal," the Ministers cannot even yet allow themselves to believe that Germany will break her pledged word.
She would be so palpably in the wrong. It is late and she has not yet replied, but she will do so--she must. There is more than an hour left, and even at the last moment the telephone bell may ring and then the reply of Germany, as handed to the British Amba.s.sador in Berlin, will have reached London.
It is a calm autumn evening, and the windows are open to St. James"s Park, which lies dark and silent as far as to Buckingham Palace in the distance. The streets of London round about the official residence are busy enough and quivering with excitement. We British people do not go in solid ma.s.ses surging and singing down our Corso, or light candles along the line of our boulevards. But nevertheless all hearts are beating high--in our theatres, our railway stations, our railway trains, our shops, and our houses. Everybody is thinking, "By twelve o"clock to-night Germany has got to say whether or not she is a perjurer and a thief."
Meanwhile, in the silent room overlooking the park time pa.s.ses slowly.
In spite of the righteousness of our cause, it is an awful thing to plunge a great empire into war. The miseries and horrors of warfare rise before the eyes of the Ministers, and the sense of personal responsibility becomes almost insupportable. Could anything be more awful than to have to ask oneself some day in the future, awakening in the middle of the night perhaps, after rivers of blood have been shed, "Did I do right after all?" The reply to the ultimatum has not even yet arrived, and the absence of a reply is equivalent to a declaration of war.
THE THUNDERSTROKE OF FATE
Suddenly one of the little company remembers something which everybody has. .h.i.therto forgotten--the difference of an hour between the time in London and the time in Berlin. Midnight by mid-European time would be eleven o"clock in London. Germany would naturally understand the demand for a reply by midnight to mean midnight in the country of dispatch.
Therefore at eleven o"clock by London time the period for the reply will expire. It is now approaching eleven.
As the clock ticks out the remaining minutes the tension becomes terrible. Talk slackens. There are long pauses. The whole burden of the frightful issues involved for Great Britain, France, Belgium, Russia, Germany--for Europe, for the world, for civilization, for religion itself, seems to be gathered up in these last few moments. If war comes now it will be the most frightful tragedy the world has ever witnessed.
Twenty millions of dead perhaps, and civil life crippled for a hundred years. Which is it to be, peace or war? Terrible to think that as they sit there the electric wires may be flashing the awful tidings, like a flying angel of life or death, through the dark air all over Europe.
The four men are waiting for the bell of the telephone to ring. It does not ring, and the fingers of the clock are moving. The world seems to be on tiptoe, listening for a thunderstroke of Fate. The Ministers at length sit silent, rigid, almost petrified, looking fixedly at floor or ceiling. Then through the awful stillness of the room and the park outside comes the deep boom of "Big Ben." Boom, boom, boom! No one moves until the last of the eleven strokes has gone reverberating through the night. Then comes a voice, heavy with emotion, yet firm with resolve, "It"s war."
When the clock struck again (at midnight) Great Britain had been at war for an hour without knowing it.
If I have done wrong in lifting the curtain on this private scene, I ask forgiveness for the sake of the purpose I put it to--that of showing that it was not in haste, not in anger, but with an awful sense of responsibility to Great Britain and to humanity that our responsible Ministers drew the sword of our country.
THE MORNING AFTER
If Mr. Maeterlinck"s theory is sound, that this war is the visible reflection of a vast, invisible conflict, what a gigantic battle of the unseen forces of good and evil must have been raging throughout the universe when Europe rose on the morning of August 5, 1914! Think what had happened. While the light was dawning, the sun was rising, and the birds were singing over Europe, the greater nations were preparing to turn a thousand square miles of it into a gigantic slaughter-house.
After forty years of unbroken peace, in which civilization, as represented by law, science, surgery, medicine, art, music, literature, and above all religion, in their ancient and central home, had been striving to lift up man to the place he is ent.i.tled to in the scheme of creation, war had suddenly stepped in to drag him back to the condition of the barbarian. From this day onward he was to live in holes in the ground, to be necessarily unclean, inevitably verminous, and liable to loathsome diseases. Although hitherto law-abiding, and perhaps even pious, with an ever-developing sense of the value and sanct.i.ty of human life, he was henceforward to take joy in the destruction of thousands of his fellow-creatures by devilish machines of death, and not to shrink from an opportunity of thrusting his bayonet down the throat of his enemy. He was to set fire to churches, to throw images of Christ into the road, and, showing no mercy to old men and women and children, to destroy all and spare none. And why? Ostensibly because one quite commonplace Austrian gentleman had been foully murdered, but really because a vain and ambitious and rapidly increasing nation, living on an arid and insufficient soil, had come to consider themselves the master-spirits of humanity, and therefore ent.i.tled to possess the earth, or at least give law to all other nations.
"We are doing wrong, but it is necessary to do wrong, and we shall make amends as soon as our military necessities have been served."
"YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU"
What a mockery! What a waste! What a hideous reversion! What a confession of blank failure on the part of civilization, including morality and religion! But, happily, the invisible powers of evil had not got it all their own way, even on that morning of August 5. Out of the very shadow of battle great things were already being born among the children of men, and chief among them were the spirits of sacrifice and brotherhood. Even the cruel loss of nearly all that makes human life worth living--cleanliness and purity and exemption from foul disease--could be borne for the defence of truth and freedom. And then it was worth a world of suffering to realize the first-fruits of that golden age of brotherhood among all the nations of the earth (except those of our enemy) which has been the peace-dream of humanity for countless centuries.
We in Great Britain have no reason to be ashamed of how our country answered the call. A few years before the outbreak of war I talked about conscription with a British admiral in the cabin of his flagship.
"There"s not the slightest necessity for it in this country," said the admiral. The moment war was declared the whole nation would rise to it.
A great thrill would pa.s.s over our people from end to end of the land, and we should have millions flocking to the colours.
The old sailor proved to be a true prophet. None of us can ever forget the spontaneous response in August 1914 to the cry, "Your King and country need you." To such as, like myself, are on the shadowed side of the hill of life, and therefore too old for service, it was a profoundly moving thing to see how swiftly our immense voluntary army sprang (as by a miracle) out of the earth, to look at the long lines of young soldiers pa.s.sing with their regular step through the streets of London, to think of the situations given up, of the young wives and little children living at home on shortened means, and of the risk taken of life being lost just when it is most precious and most sweet.
What was the motive power that impelled the young manhood of Great Britain to this tremendous sacrifice? The thought of our country"s danger? The danger to France? The danger to Belgium? The fact that a man named Palmerston had pledged his solemn word for them long years before they were born, or even the mothers who bore them were born, that they would go to their deaths rather than allow a great crime to be committed or England"s oath be broken? I don"t know. I do not believe anybody knows. But I am not ashamed of my tears when I remember it all, and sure I am that in those first critical days of the war the invisible powers of justice must have been fighting on our side.
THE PART PLAYED BY THE BRITISH NAVY
Perhaps the first of the flashes as of lightning by which we have seen the drama of the past 365 days is that which shows us the part played by the British Navy. What a part it has been! Do we even yet recognize its importance? Have our faithful and loyal Allies a full sense of its tremendous effect on the fortunes of the campaign? On Sunday, August 2, two days before the dispatch of Great Britain"s ultimatum to Germany, we saw thousands of our naval reserve flying off by special boats and trains to their ships on our east and south coasts. On Monday, August 8, the British Navy had taken possession of the North Sea.
It was a legitimate act of peace, yet never in this world was there a more complete, if bloodless, victory. The great German North Sea fleet, which (according to a calculation) had been constructed at a cost of 300,000,000 sterling, to keep open the seas of the world to German trade; the fleet which had, in our British view, been built with the sole purpose of menacing British sh.o.r.es, was shut up in one day within the narrow limits of its own waters!