Chapter VII: Part 7

Thus, before the outbreak of war, the Prussians, knowing that we were in the main a commercial people, immediately deduced the conclusion that we should never fight for any other purpose than that of making money. They found themselves in error. Similarly, after our intervention, they looked up their documents and, discovering that we had never had a very large army, concluded that we were not to be reckoned with seriously in the field of military operations. Our naval power they allowed for, for they could count the ships and had them all duly docketed. But our army was “contemptible,” and would certainly remain so.

That a nation, not originally military, could transform itself into a nation in arms by the mere action of patriotic enthusiasm and anger was a thing altogether undreamed of in the Prussian philosophy. The revelation that the thing was so has produced first, incredulity, and then a sort of bewilderment, as if all the foundations of “scientific thought,” as the Germans understand it, had collapsed--as, indeed, they had.

The thing that has not collapsed is the eternal strength which belongs to a nation utterly convinced with the justice of its cause. The thing is not possible to Prussians; but it is possible to Englishmen, as the Prussians are already beginning to know.

CECIL CHESTERTON

ORDER OF THE CROWN PRINCE OF BAVARIA: “You must give those English heavy blows.”

TOMMY (_to prisoners after Neuve Chapelle_): “Weren’t they heavy?”]

Atrocities

The lecturer, with true German casuistry, minimises the rhinoceros and magnifies the fly, so that there is “very little difference” between them, as far as his arguments are concerned. Fortunately for the cause of the Allies, casuistry is not a military asset; had it been one, Germany would long since have won the war, and that not only on this count, for the saying that “the wish is father to the thought” is nowhere more true than in Germany.

There, the people are now firmly convinced that the war was forced on them, thanks to the casuistry of their leaders; they honestly believe, if professorial writings have any sincerity in them, that the invasion of Belgium was justified by their need, and that scraps of paper are only scraps of paper where they, the chosen nation for the spread of culture, are concerned; they believe that Britain’s blockade is barbarous and unjust, that France is an effete nation, that Russia is peopled by a horde of savages, that the starvation of their civilian prisoners instead of exchanging them is a just measure on their part--and many other things which sane reasoning shows to be false. They have, apparently, an endless credulity.

If one would question the cause for this, the answer lies in one word--“Pan-Germanism,” that disease which has sapped away the moral fibre of a nation and implanted colossal conceit in its place. No statement is more true than that Germany is devoid of a sense of humour, for this sense is in its essence that of proportion, and not only in her methods of war and her dealings with the rest of the world has Germany lost all sense of proportion, but also in her estimate of herself and her place in the scheme of things. A proper sense of proportion is incompatible with Pan-Germanism.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN

THE LECTURER: “From a comparison of the two subjects, gentlemen, you will perceive that there is very little difference between Germany and the Allies.”]

“Is it You, Mother?”

Since the opening of hostilities in the present war the Scottish regiments have given repeated proofs of a valour which adds new lustre to the great traditions of Scottish soldiership. Through all the early operations--on the retreat from Mons and at the battles of the Marne and the Aisne--the Royal Scots Guards, the Scots Greys, the Gordon, the Seaforth and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the King’s Own Scottish Borderers gained many fresh laurels by their heroism and undaunted spirit. The London Scottish Territorials, too, have shown a prowess as signal as that of the Scots of the Regular Army; while the mettle of men of Scottish descent has made glorious contribution in France and elsewhere to the fine records of the Overseas armies.

It is the inevitable corollary that death should levy a heavy toll on Scottish soldiers in the field. Thousands of kilted youth have suffered the fate which Raemaekers depicts in the accompanying cartoon. It is not, of course, only the young Scot whose thought turns in the moment of death to the hearth of his home with vivid memories of his mother. But the word “home” and all that the word connotes often makes a more urgent appeal to the Scot abroad than to the man of another nationality. There is significance in the fact that, far as the Scots are wont to wander over the world’s surface, they should, under every sky and in every turning fortune, treasure as a national anthem the song which has the refrain:--

“For it’s hame, an’ it’s hame, fain wad I be,
O! it’s hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!”

The German soldier in this war would seem to have lost well nigh all touch of humanity. Yet the draughtsman here suggests that even the German soldier on occasion yields to the pathos of the young Scot’s death-cry for home and mother. There is grim irony in the dying man’s blurred vision, which mistakes the hand of his mortal foe for that of his mother.

Of such trying scenes is the drama of war composed.

SIDNEY LEE

Germany’s Dummy

England has without doubt been Germany’s favourite bug-a-boo for the war. Once she threatened to exalt France to pride of place, but her allegiance soon returned to John Bull, and she has left no trick of hate untried to place him in the pillory before her own subjects and neutral nations.

“Let shame,” said Herr Maximilian Harden, who, as a German-Jew, may perhaps view the wider issues with some detachment and plead to his adopted people for philosophy and self-control--“let shame spread a thick veil over self-deification and enemy-bedevilment.” A futile appeal must this be to a nation that knows no shame, from its Emperor to his humblest slave. Self-deification is the marrow in German bones, the oil in German joints; while as to bedevilment of the enemy, in this they naturally excel, since supreme power of detraction is a complement of envy and jealousy: the one involves the others.

Michael’s dummy “John Bull” was, however, very clearly made in Germany, and Holland is not deceived. She adjoins Belgium--a circumstance the man behind the scarecrow perhaps forgot--and they who have been watching Germany at work in their neighbour’s country are not going to be alarmed at this silly German “John Bull.” They know the real John Bull at first hand, and his methods of conducting commerce and practising war. It was not John Bull who torpedoed the _Tubantia_ and committed a thousand other pirate and brigand acts against this neutral power. It was not John Bull who in August of last year wrote to the Burgomaster of little Wavre and demanded £120,000, failing which Wavre would be set on fire and destroyed “without distinction of persons, the innocent to suffer with the guilty.”

Holland is staunch, for she knows that Germany’s care for the weak nations is the good wife’s love for the chickens and the butcher’s for the lamb. Michael would like to thrust his revolver into John’s hand and pretend afterwards that he had pulled the trigger; but the smiling Dutch frontier guard is in no danger of being deceived.

EDEN PHILLPOTTS

THE DUTCHMAN: “Come out from behind there, Michael, you can’t frighten me.”]

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Transcriber’s Notes

Spelling inconsistencies were not changed, as several different people wrote the commentaries.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

The “SPECIAL NOTICE” and order slip at the end of the book originally were found between pages 48 and 49. The sheet of paper on which they were printed appears to have been tipped into the book, not bound, and was moved so as to not interrupt the flow of the rest of the book.