Logan Marshall

“ On the morning of the 26th they rose to learn that a great war had begun, a conflict the possible width and depth of which no man was yet able to foresee; and as day after day passed on, each day some new nation springing into the terrible arena until practically the whole of Europe was in arms and the Armageddon seemed at hand, the world stood amazed and astounded, wondering what hand had loosed so vast a catastrophe, what deep and secret causes lay below the ostensible causes of the war. ”

“ Certainly the Kaiser of Germany, William the War Lord, had set loose in the air a nest of hornets to sting his well-trained warriors. By his side stood only Austria, a composite empire which soon found all its strength too little to hold back the mighty Russian tide that swept across its borders. Thus this one stalwart nation, with its weak auxiliary, was forced to face now east, now west, against a continent in arms. It is difficult to imagine that the Kaiser could have hoped to succeed, despite the training of his people and the strength of his artillery. ”

“ He seemed incarnate war, organized destruction; sword in hand, he dominated the nations, and victory sat on his banners with folded wings. He was, in a full sense, the man of destiny, and Europe was his prey.
Never has there been a more wonderful career. The earlier great conquerors began life at the top; Napoleon began his at the bottom. Alexander was a king; Caesar was an aristocrat of the Roman republic; Napoleon rose from the people, and was not even a native of the land which became the scene of his exploits. ”

“ The stock exchanges throughout the nations were closed, to prevent that wild and hasty action which precipitates disaster. Throughout Europe trade, industry, commerce all ceased, paralyzed at their sources. No ship of any of the nations concerned except Britain dared venture from port, lest it should fall a prey to the prowling sea dogs of war which made all the oceans unsafe. The hosts of American tourists who had gone abroad under the sunny skies of peace suddenly beheld the dark clouds of war rolling overhead, blotting out the sun, and casting their black shadows over all things fair. ”

“ Today it is not only the protection of a country related to us and unjustly attacked that must be accorded, but we must safeguard the honor, the dignity and the integrity of Russia and her position among the Great Powers.
“We believe unshakably that all our faithful subjects will rise with unanimity and devotion for the defense of Russian soil; that internal discord will be forgotten in this threatening hour; that the unity of the Emperor with his people will become still more close and that Russia, rising like one man, will repulse the insolent attack of the enemy. ”

“ Had King William received no indemnity in cash or territory from France, he must still have felt himself amply repaid for the cost of the brief but sanguinary war, for it brought him a power and prestige with which the astute diplomatist Bismarck had long been seeking to invest his name. Political changes move slowly in times of peace, rapidly in times of war. The whole of Germany, with the exception of Austria, had sent troops to the conquest of France, and every state, north and south alike, shared in the pride and glory of the result. ”

“ If Europe should be thrown into the throes of a general war, in which every nation would have its own interests to care for, Russia’s opportunity to seize upon the prize for which she had so long sought was an excellent one, there being no one in a position to say her nay. To Russia the possession of Constantinople was like the possession of a new world, and this may well have been her secret motive in springing without hesitation into the war. ”

“ In spite of her adherence to inflated militarism, she has put the whole world in her debt by her inspiring industrial and scientific achievements. Her people have taught mankind lessons of incalculable value, and her sons have enriched far distant lands with their genius. Not the least of the catastrophes inflicted by this inhuman war is that an unbridled autocracy has brought against the great German empire an indictment for arrogant assault upon the peace of nations and the security of human institutions. ”

“ In modern wars fighting of this kind has ceased. A battle has become a matter of machinery. The strong arm and stalwart heart are replaced by the bullet-flinging machine, and it is a rare event for a man to know to whose hand he owes wound or death. Such, at least, was largely the case in the war between Russia and Japan in 1905. But in recent battles we read of hordes of soldiers charging up to the muzzles of machine guns, and being mowed down like ripened wheat. ”

“ What does this state of affairs, this sudden stoppage of the wheels of industry, this unforeseen and wide spread of the conditions of war portend? Emerson has said: “When a great thinker comes into the world all things are at risk.” There is potency in this, and also in a variation of Emerson’s text which we shall venture to make: “When a great war comes upon the world all things are at risk.” Everything which we have looked upon as fixed and stable quakes as if from mighty hidden forces. The whole world stands irresolute and amazed. ”

“ Determination and courage falsified the calculations at Versailles of a quick cessation of the resistance. The republic offered a far more energetic and determined opposition to the Prussian arms than the empire had done. The government of the national defense still declaimed with stern reiteration: “Not a foot’s breadth of our country; not a stone of our fortresses!” and positively rejected all proposals of treaty based on territorial concessions. Faith in the invincibility of the republic was rooted as an indisputable dogma in the hearts of the French people. ”

“ As business became at a standstill throughout Europe and every port of entry blocked, experts wondered where the money was to come from. All agreed that, when peace should be declared and the figures were all in, the result financially would be staggering and that the heaviest burden it had ever borne would rest upon Europe for fifty years to come. For when the roar of the cannon ceases and the nations are at rest, then dawns the era of payment, inevitable, unescapable, one in which for generations every man and woman must share. ”

“ War makes business active in one direction and in one only, that of army and navy supply, of the manufacture of the implements of destruction, of vast quantities of explosives, of multitudes of death-dealing weapons. Food supplies need to be diverted in the same direction, the demands of the soldier being considered first, those of the home people last, the latter being often supplied at starvation prices. There is plenty of work to do—of its kind. But it is of a kind that injures instead of aiding the people of the nations. ”

“ A snow-fall began, so thick and dense that the armies lost sight of each other, the French columns losing their way in the gloom. When the snow ceased, after a half-hour’s fall, the French army was in a critical position. It was in a wandering and disorganized state, while the Russians were on the point of executing a vigorous turning movement.
Yet the genius of Napoleon turned the scale. He ordered a grand charge of all the cavalry of his army, driving the Russians back, occupying a hilly ground in their rear, and in the end handling them so vigorously that a final retreat began. ”

“ Africa is not only now well known, but the exploration of its interior has been followed by political changes of the most revolutionary character. It presented a virgin field for colonization, of which the land-hungry nations of Europe hastened to avail themselves, dividing up the continent between them until, by the end of the century, the partition of Africa was practically complete. It is one of the most remarkable circumstances in history that a well-known continent remained thus so long unexplored to serve in our own days as a new field for the outpouring of the nations. ”

“ Canada, at a similar width of removal from Europe, had reason to feel it still more seriously, from its close political relations with Great Britain.
In these days in which we live the cost of war is a giant to be reckoned with. With every increase in the size of cannon, the tonnage of warships, the destructiveness of weapons and ammunition, this element of cost grows proportionately greater and has in our day become stupendous. Nations may spend in our era more cold cash in a day of war than would have served for a year in the famous days of chivalry. ”

“ The dimensions of the dominion guarantee a great variety of natural attractions. There are vast grass-covered plains, thousands of square miles of untouched forest lands, multitudes of lakes and rivers, great and small, and mountains of the wildest and grandest character, whose natural beauty equals that of the far-famed Alpine peaks. In fact, the Canadian Pacific Railway is becoming a route of pilgrimage for the lovers of the beautiful and sublime, its mountain scenery being unrivaled upon the continent. ”

“ In the giant warfare here described we behold a continent, well nigh a world, in arms. Along the rivers north of Paris three powerful nations, Germany, France and Britain, wrestled like mighty behemoths for supremacy. Far eastward, on the borders of Russia, Austria and Germany, two other great Powers, Russia and Austria, with German armies to aid the latter, strove with equal fury for victory. ”

“ In three far-separated regions—China, India, and Babylonia—and in a fourth on the borders of Asia—Egypt—civilization rose and flourished for ages, while the savage and the barbarian roamed over all other regions of the earth. A still more extraordinary fact is, that during the more recent era, that of European civilization, Asia rested in the most sluggish conservatism, sleeping while Europe and America were actively moving, content with its ancient knowledge while the people of the West were pursuing new knowledge into its most secret lurking places. ”

“ For half a century Europe has been hammering upon the gates of China, but not until recently did this sleeping nation show any signs of waking to the fact that the world was moving around it. As regards the other early civilizations—Babylonia and Egypt—they long ago were utterly swamped under the tide of Turkish barbarism and exist only in their ruins. Persia, once a great and flourishing empire, likewise sank under the flood of Arabian and Turkish invasion, and today seems in danger of being swallowed up in the tide of Russian and British ambition. ”

“ An empire founded upon the army needs to give employment to that army. A monarchy sustained by the votes of a people athirst for glory needs to do something to appease that thirst. A throne filled by a Napoleon could not safely ignore the “Napoleonic Ideas,” and the first of these might be stated as “The Empire is war.” And the new emperor was by no means satisfied to pose simply as the “nephew of his uncle.” He possessed a large share of the Napoleonic ambition, and hoped by military glory to surround his throne with some of the luster of that of Napoleon the First. ”

“ GREAT BRITAIN AND THE WAR The Growth of German Importance—German Militarism—Great Britain’s Peace Efforts—Germany’s Naval Program—German Ambitions—Preparation for War—Effect on the Empire
The influence of the European War permeated everything from and through the nation to the individual, from trade and commerce and world-finance to the cost of food and the price of labor. The whole world, civilized and uncivilized, was drawn into this whirlpool of disaster—the majority of the population of the earth was actually at war. ”

“ But among all the world has so far known there has been none so stupendous in character, so portentous in purpose, so vast in fighting multitudes, so terrible in bloodshed, as the one with which we are here concerned, the lurid meeting of the nations on the blood-stained fields of battle which broke upon the quiet of the world with startling suddenness in the summer of 1914. Launched on the borders of little Servia, it soon had the continent for its field of action, and all but one of the greater nations of Europe for its participants. ”

“ Gladstone resumed his seat, it was felt that the career of the coalition ministry was assured by the genius that was discovered in its Chancellor of the Exchequer.
It was, indeed, to Gladstone’s remarkable oratorical powers that much of his success as a statesman was due. No man of his period was his equal in swaying and convincing his hearers. His rich and musical voice, his varied and animated gestures, his impressive and vigorous delivery, great fluency, and wonderful precision of statement, gave him a power over an audience which few men of the century have enjoyed. ”

“ It is interesting to trace the history of warfare from this point of view. Beginning with the club and hammer of the stone age, advancing through the bow and arrow and the sling-shot of later times, this art, even in the great days of ancient civilization, the eras of Greece and Rome, had advanced little beyond the sword and spear, crude weapons of destruction as regarded in our times. ”

“ What pride of power, what lust of ambition, what desire of imperial dominion cast the armed hosts of the nations into the field of conflict, on which multitudes of innocent victims were to be sacrificed to the insatiate hunger for blood of the modern Moloch? ”

“ To this national prejudice the Government decided to bow, and to offer a sacrifice to the popular passion. And thus the world beheld the lamentable spectacle of the commanders who had surrendered the French fortresses to the enemy being subjected to a trial by court-martial under the presidency of Marshal Baraguay d’Hilliers, and the majority of them, on account of their proved incapacity or weakness, deprived of their military honors, at a moment when all had cause to reproach themselves and endeavor to raise up a new structure on the ruins of the past. ”

“ It was Germany that hurled an ultimatum, swiftly followed by an army, at Russia. It was Germany that struck first at the French frontier. It was Germany that trampled upon solemn treaty engagements by invading the neutral states of Luxembourg and Belgium. And it was Germany that, in answer to England’s demand that the neutrality of Belgium be protected, declared war against Great Britain.
“Regardless, therefore, of questions of right and wrong, it is undeniable that in each succeeding crisis Germany has taken the aggressive. ”

“ The great social forces which move onwards in their might and majesty, and which the tumult of our debates does not for a moment impede or disturb, those great social forces are against you; they are marshaled on our side; and the banner which we now carry into this fight, though perhaps at some moment it may droop over our sinking heads, yet it soon again will float in the eye of Heaven, and it will be borne by the firm hands of the united people of the three kingdoms, perhaps not to an easy, but to a certain, and to a not far distant, victory. ”

“ Huge warships, built at a cost of millions of dollars and tenanted by hundreds of hardy sailors, are torn and rent by shot and shell and at times sent to the bottom with all on board by the explosion of torpedoes beneath their unprotected lower hulls. The torpedo boat, the submarine, with other agencies of unseen destruction, have come into play to add enormously to the horrors of naval warfare, while the bomb-dropping airships, letting fall its dire missiles from the sky, has come to add to the dread terror and torment of the battle-field. ”