World War I - 9 Book Collection: Nelson's History of the War, The Battle of Jutland & The Battle of the Somme. Buchan John
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We must, then, I think, suspend our judgment as to the real causes of war till time and documents give us the clue. Perhaps the pregnant word “mobilization” may explain much. Meanwhile we can only conjecture by the light of a few facts.
Even if this history does not affix the deadly responsibility, and confines itself to the war, it is limiting itself to the unlimited.
Europe quakes to the tramp of armed races, compared to which the hosts of the past sink into insignificance. There must be nearer thirty millions than twenty of armed men in Europe clutching each other’s throats this year. France, Austria, Russia, and Germany are hurling their nations at each other. Great Britain, Servia, and Belgium have all launched great armies into the field. Montenegro has sent her people. Armed, but not fighting, are the troops of Italy and Rumania, straining at the leash of their neutrality; while Turkey frowns and intrigues.
That is the European situation at this moment. It may change from day to day, but not in the direction of peace. It is truly a vast canvas for the historical painter.
Then as to the conflict itself, it is at present enveloped in the impenetrable smoke of battle, the shifting clouds of lies, and the reticent discipline of the Press censor. Little or nothing emerges, except some salient fact like the fall of Antwerp. Our nation, always at its best under the silent stress of anxiety, has to content itself with the rare but masterly dispatches of our General, and that most delightful form of literature, the gay, modest letters of officers and men at the front, as well as the racy narratives of our splendid Tommies, who carry with cheerful and imperturbable courage the British Empire on their backs.
Then there are few battles to trace, for each is a campaign. In France, it would seem, a million men or more, over a line of 250 or 300 miles, are trying to push another million or more out of entrenchments almost, if not quite, impervious. Russia, on the other side, is conducting at least two huge campaigns, which it is difficult for any but the most expert geographer to trace. Brooding over the North Sea is the Armada of Britain, the silent sentry guarding our food and commerce, and watching the menacing inaction of the German fleet. While in Asia and Africa, off South America, and in the islands of the Pacific, the world-wide struggle is raging.
The writer who can disentangle this vast labyrinth of armaments, and assist his contemporaries to comprehend the theatre of conflict, undertakes an heroic task, and will be entitled to the gratitude of his country; though the definite history of these simultaneous and colossal wars must still be remote.
We only know something of the first act of this drama. But it will not be complete till we know the fifth. If the Prussians are victorious we need not trouble our heads. That supremacy means, it would seem, the end of liberty, of civilization, and religion as we have understood them to be, and we shall be compelled to kneel before the Dagon of brute force. That contingency, however, we all exclude. But what will follow the victory of the Allies? Will it be a cessation of the burden of armaments, and the establishment of a more balanced equipoise of power in Europe? None can tell; but the answer to these questions, to be unfolded in the fifth act, makes it much the most momentous.
Part of the task, however, is easy and pleasant. War is an accursed thing, which punishes the innocent and generally lets the guilty go free. But our chronicler cannot fail to enlarge upon the incalculable blessing which the damnable invasion of Belgium has conferred incidentally upon ourselves. For it has revealed to the world the enthusiastic and weatherproof unity of the British Empire; or, rather, the loyalty of the three connected empires to the Mother country. That would be worth any ordinary war, and is not, perhaps, too dearly bought even by such an appalling conflagration as this. And this unity, as it is not the beginning, so Is not the end. Blood shed in common is the cement of nations, and we and our sons may look to see a beneficence of empire, not such as the Prussians dreamed of, not a war-lordship over other nations, not a nightmare of oppression, but a world-wide British influence which shall be a guarantee of liberty and peace, and which, hand in hand with our Allies in Europe, and with our kindred in the United States, should go far to make another war such as this impossible. That would be a crowning glory to fight for; a gain for humanity such as no other war has achieved, and yet not an impracticable dream.
EARL OF ROSEBERY, K. G.
October 1914.
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