Philip Gibbs

“ The German Army, in spite of many blunders in High Command, had shewn a dynamic energy, a driving force, a relentless will, and a marvellous valour which was wellnigh irresistible. The German soldiers were no less brave than the British or French, no less wonderful in self-sacrifice, no less enduring in agony. Their final effort, when they put in the last of their man power, was a supreme achievement to which we must render homage if we have any chivalry in our souls, in spite of a loathing of war which now makes all such retrospect a nauseous horror. ”

“ I.—THE WORLD WAR Ten years ago, as I write these words, a spiritual tremor, as though the last trump were sounding for the judgment of God, shook the souls of many peoples. Something incredible, inconceivable, frightful, was about to happen in a world which believed it could not happen. It was the beginning of the World War in which the most civilised nations on earth, as they believed themselves to be, were to be hurled against each other, with all their power, science, manhood, wealth, in a struggle to the death. ”

“ Is it too much for humanity to get that same impulse for the cause of peace, to get back to that comradeship and co-operation within those nations for other purposes than that of war, to rise above self-interest for the commonwealth of civilisation?
It is very difficult, almost impossible I think, without tremendous leadership which we cannot yet perceive. War is a shock which thrills every soul by its terrific portent. Peace is a state in which the smaller interests of life seem more important than great issues. ”

“ The British people had no quarrel with any great Power. All talk about a German menace, we thought, was the delusion of foolish old gentlemen in military clubs, or the scaremongering of newspapers out for circulation and sensation. The heart of England beat steadily to the old rhythm of life in country houses and fields and workshops and mean streets. Beneath the surface of modern change, progress and accidental novelties, the spirit of England and of its sister peoples was deep-rooted in the past and slow-moving towards new ideas. ”

“ The United States Army was pouring into France with great tides of men, magnificent in physique, keen in spirit, and unscarred as yet by the fires of the war. They were untrained, ignorant of lessons that could only be learnt by deadly experience, and their Generals were novices in the organisation and handling of vast masses of troops, as the British had been. They were bound to make ghastly mistakes. They would waste their men as ours had been wasted, by faulty staff work; but sheer weight of numbers and the spirit of brave men would in the long run be irresistible. ”

“ There was no sense of menace against them such as Great Britain had partly felt. There was nothing they desired to gain for themselves. It was a crusade on behalf of civilisation. It was also unconsciously a desire in the American mind to prove that in spite of all their material wealth, their comfort of life, their peace and security, they were ready to suffer, to make sacrifice, to spend their energy, and their dollars, to give their manhood and their courage for a spiritual ideal. The United States would prove to the world that it had a national soul. ”

“ The British were in the low ground everywhere, with the Germans on the high ground, so that they could not march or move by daylight, or light a fire, or cross a road, without being signalled to watchful eyes and shelled without mercy. They were lousy in every seam of their shirts. There was no chance of cleanliness unless they were far behind the lines. Young gentlemen of England—and of Scotland, Ireland and Wales—found themselves like cave men: eating, sleeping, living in filth and the stench of corruption, under winged death searching for their bodies. ”

“ If only there had been one great leader in the world who had cried: “We were all involved in this crime against humanity, although Germany’s guilt was greatest; let us in the hour of victory put vengeance on one side and so shape the peace that the common folk of the world will have a better chance of life,” I believe that in the time when the agony was great and the wounds were still bleeding the hearts of people would have leapt up to him. ”

“ In the United States of America, as in England and France, the cry for help that came out of Russia, so long cut off from human intercourse, so long hidden by closed doors behind which lay the tragedy of a great people, many men and women, shocked to their inmost soul by stories of Bolshevik atrocities, refused to listen to the voice of charity. Many were certain that any food or help sent to Russia would be used by the Communist leaders to save themselves from destruction or to support the Red Army and the Reign of Terror. ”

“ The Krupp works which had made great guns and all the monstrous machinery of war converted their plant to the instruments of peace, produced ploughs, steam-engines, safety razors, cash registers, everything that is made of metal for the use of life. Every factory in Germany got to work again. There were no unemployed as in England, because the workers accepted low wages, and desired work almost as much as bread in a fever of industrial energy, to wipe out the War and build up the prosperity of a peace. Defeat was better than victory in its moral effect upon the German people. ”

“ Greater than the little ruthless men in Moscow, or the fanatics there, or the idealists, or the atheistic “intellectuals” is the life in the fields of Russia with its obedience to the laws of nature—very cruel sometimes—its family love, its faith, its superstition, its dignity, labour, courage, simplicity, and ordinary human passions. The danger to Europe and the world is the control of Russian manhood by a small group whose orders must be obeyed because they hold the power of life and death, and in any case are the leaders of the Russian race for weal or woe, in peace or war. ”

“ I think that in the spirit of the world, almost everywhere, there is a growing consciousness that the perils of new conflict are so frightful that civilisation might actually go down in chaos if the forces of evil are not subdued. At the back of many minds is the awful thought that machinery threatens to become the master of men and that science threatens to destroy humanity unless it is controlled. What were human valour, spiritual courage, superb physique, in that last war, up against long-range guns, aerial torpedoes, high explosives in concentrated fire, poison gas? ”

“ By the world war we gained a truer appreciation and a better realisation of war’s unspeakable waste, its dreadful hardships, its cruel slaughter, and its aftermath of loneliness, sorrow and broken hearts. We now know that as a means of solving the world’s problems and removing international discord, war is a delusion and a lie. We know that no matter how much a nation may desire to hold itself aloof and to keep apart from the struggle it cannot escape war’s terrible effects. ”

“ Old dreams of liberty, new philosophies of democracy, united for a time to overthrow the Government and all its powers. Revolution, bloody and cruel, raged in Russia, and the beast leapt up in peasant minds. Kerensky tried to control this anarchy but was swept on one side like a straw by stronger forces. Lenin and his crowd took command, and their new philosophy of Communism, fair-sounding, theoretically righteous, based upon the principles of equality and brotherhood and peace, put a spell upon the simple minds of the Russian folk. ”

“ In many ways the recovery of Europe was more rapid in its fundamental needs of life than seemed possible after the devastation of war. Human energy, faith and hope repaired the material damage of war in an almost miraculous degree. Walking day by day across the battlefields of France and Flanders it seemed impossible to me and to all others that the ground upheaved by high explosives, criss-crossed with deep trenches, and sown with unexploded shells would return within the lifetime of the present generation to harvest fields and pleasant pasture. ”

“ Looking back now with disgust of war and all its filthiness and death in our inmost souls, after years of disillusion with the results of that war, with a more complicated knowledge of its causes back in history; with a legacy of debt; unsettled problems; with new causes of hate, revenge, conflict; with justice no longer all on one side, nor injustice, one must still acknowledge the splendour of that spiritual comradeship which made all classes offer themselves for service and sacrifice to the uttermost, which was death. ”

“ To Hell with a civilisation which had allowed this kind of thing! No, when peace came, there were millions of men who did not rejoice much, because they were sick and tired and all enthusiasm was dead within them. They were like convicts after long years of hard labour standing at the prison gates open to them with liberty and life beyond. What’s the good of life to men whose spirit has been sapped, or of liberty to men deprived of it so long they were almost afraid of it? Strange, conflicting emotions, hardly to be analysed, tore at men’s hearts on the night of armistice. ”

“ Not all the goodwill in the world will cure some of the troubles to which I have alluded. It will not eliminate the competition between cheap labour and dear labour. It will not restore the wealth wasted in the war nor the youth that died with splendid quality of blood and spirit. It will not relieve the pressure of enormous populations seeking, and not finding, their old markets or new fields of trade. ”

“ The work and spirit of Geneva was one source of light in a world of darkness, in those dreadful years from which we have just emerged, and for that reason it raised a standard of idealism round which millions of men and women in many countries—even in the United States—rallied as the one hope of the future.
It may be said without exaggeration that for the six years following the war civilised humanity has been sharply divided into two camps of thought—those who believe in the spirit of the League of Nations, with its message of international co-operation and its faith in peace by arbitration ”

“ At a distance of forty miles a platoon of men might be wiped out by a casual shell loosed from a fifteen-inch howitzer. What was the value of discipline, ardour, human strength, centuries of character building to produce the fine flower of civilisation, in the face of that explosive force which tore men’s bodies to bits far from the sight of their enemy, without means of resistance on their part, with no more defence than if a thunderbolt had struck them? That is not war between human forces. It is war with engines constructed by men but overpowering. ”

“ If we have an unrestricted commercial war, a savage and ruthless competition between great powers out for world trade at all costs against each other, the other things will happen. The human tribes in the next phase of history, now approaching, must co-operate or perish.
There is no one cure for all these troubles, but they may be lessened, and their greatest perils averted surely by a spirit of reason against unreason, by tolerance against intolerance, by ideals of peace against ideals of force, by conciliation against conflict, by a change of heart in the individual as well as in the nation. ”