1914

“ If the Germans' long preparations for war were to bear any fruit, countless facts pointed to the summer of 1914 as the time when the army should strike that great and sudden blow at the liberties of the world. ”

“ Since August, 1914, the turmoil and anguish incidental to the world's greatest war have accentuated every human type,—heroic, base, keen, and evasive. The strain of five years' fighting was borne with astounding fortitude, and Allied statesmen and publicists saw to it that the clear outline of events should not be blurred by ignorance or misrepresentation. If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes. ”

“ Old countries when thoroughly moved can leap like the hart. The French Revolution demonstrated how vigorously one of the oldest nations of Europe could tear along unbroken tracks when impelled by a new passion. And I saw Britain spring to arms in 1914, when five millions of men joined the colours without the lash of compulsion to stir their blood. England renewed her youth, and her movements had the energy, the audacity, and the endurance of a people untired by a march of centuries. ”

“ Whoever has lived through those great days of August 1914, and witnessed the wonderful enthusiasm of the German nation, will never forget that within a few days more than a million volunteers entered German barracks to prepare to fight the enemies who were hemming in Germany. Workmen, students, peasants, townspeople, teachers, traders, officials, high and low, all hastened to join the colours. ”

“ On September 4, 1914, the bugler of Destiny sounded the "Halt!" to the retreat of the armies of the Allies from the Belgian frontier. The marvelous fighting machine of the German armies, perhaps the most superb organization of military potency that has been conceived by the mind of man, seemed to reach its limit of range. Success had perched upon the German eagles, and for two weeks there had been a steady succession of victories. Nevertheless the British and French armies were not crushed. ”

“ The next twenty years will see mighty changes among the nations of the earth." And it was just twenty years, or in the summer of 1914, when the terrible strife that has wrought so many mighty changes swept like a whirlwind over the nations. ”

“ Every day and every hour they had been compelled to retreat, giving up, giving up all that they loved even better than life itself to these brutes, until the brain of the French army said on the evening of September 5, 1914, "You have gone so far in order that you may now stand successfully." ”

“ I am fully convinced that if every Officer and man who joined up in 1914 after the outbreak of war, had joined the Territorial Force and made himself efficient before August, 1914, there would have been no war. ”

“ There is another more obvious difference from 1914. The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women and children. The fronts are everywhere. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the Balcony of the Palace, Berlin, July 31, 1914.
A fateful hour has fallen for Germany.
Envious peoples everywhere are compelling us to our just defense.
The sword is being forced into our hand. I hope that if my efforts at the last hour do not succeed in bringing our opponents to see eye to eye with us and in maintaining peace we shall with God's help so wield the sword that we shall restore it to its sheath again with honor.
War would demand enormous sacrifices of blood and property from the German people, but we should show our enemies what it means to provoke Germany. ”

“ In every country where we motored there was scarcely an hour which did not bring the sound of drums, the sight of barracks, of soldiers drilling or on the march. Whether in Germany, Austria, Italy, or France, there were the same sights of preparation for war. The sacrifices of peace in 1914 are hardly less exhausting than were the sacrifices of war in 1813. ”

“ THE GREAT WAR OF 1914 opened the floodgates of hatred between the nations which took part and this stirring story, written when feelings were at their highest, conveys a true impression of the attitude adopted towards our enemies. ”

“ About the future it is useless to prophesy, but the horrible war of 1914 is certain to exert for many years a controlling influence on the thought and literature of both England and the whole world, an influence which, it may be hoped, will ultimately prove stimulating and renovating. ”

“ It all sounded fine and high and noble, and on the 30th day of July, 1914, there could have been hardly a thousand men in the world, apart from those in the secret, who would not have said—there were not a thousand in Europe who did not believe—that man in his{320} regular progress from lower ever to higher things had achieved a plane where the wars and savagery and lies of the past were no longer possible. ”

“ Let it be remembered that the men who are fighting the battles of France, and of all civilisation, on French soil in these closing months of 1914 are not like the veterans with whom Napoleon won his battles. ”

“ The events of the first week of August 1914, where the interdependence of countries is concerned, might and did throw some light on the journalistic mirror into which civilized man looks morning by morning, but it was light of the crudest kind. ”

“ You bring in a crowd of men whose sole qualification in August 1914 to be considered soldiers was an intense and national love of games. You pit them against a machine perfect in technique, in which every part had been trained from earliest infancy in the trade of soldiering, and the trade of ruthless killing. ”

“ Let us now consider the idea so generally held in America, though not in Europe, that in 1914, England and the Continental nations were not expecting war and not prepared for war. The fact is that Europe was as thoroughly organized for war as it could possibly be. The point to which that organization was carried by England, France and Russia, as compared with Germany and Austria, may to some extent be indicated by statistics. ”

“ There is no more brilliant campaign in history than the advance of our armies against the Western Powers in August and early September 1914. The weak French attacks into Alsace, the short-lived effort to beat back the centre and right wing of our striking-force, the active defence of the Allied hostile armies and the passive resistance of the great Belgian and French fortresses, all failed to stop our triumphal march. ”

“ There is no question, among those who have taken the trouble to inform themselves, but that the War of 1914 was fought for economic and commercial advantage. The same rivalries that preceded 1914 are more active in the world to-day than ever before. Hence the possibilities of war are greater by exactly that amount. The imperial struggle is being continued and a part of the imperial struggle is war. ”

“ Upon the evening of August 4th, 1914, I was sitting in a London office beside a ticking tape machine awaiting the message that the Germans had declined our ultimatum to withdraw from Belgium, and that war had been declared. “There will be a big sea battle this evening,” observed my companion. “There has been a big battle,” observed I, “but it is now over.” ”

“ Great Britain had in 1914 only 137,500 officers and men in her navy and 26,200 reserves, a wholly insignificant number compared to the millions that formed the army of Germany and gave a military color to the whole life and thought of the nation. ”

“ THE WINTER LULL OF 1914 Increase of the Array—Formation of the Fifth Corps—The visit of the King—Third Division at Petit Bois—The fight at Givenchy—Heavy losses of the Indians—Fine advance of 1st Manchesters—Advance of the First Division—Singular scenes at Christmas.
The winter lull may be said to have extended from the great combats at Ypres of the middle of November 1914 to the opening of the spring campaign in March 1915; but we will only follow it here up to the end of the year. It was a period of alternate rest and discomfort for the troops with an ever-present salt of danger. ”

“ It has not been my privilege to say farewell to fireside and dear ones and then leave for the front in field-gray or khaki, but no soldier-man anywhere in this war has torn himself away from home ties more sorrowfully than I turned my back in the gathering dusk of August 5, 1914, on dear old Helmstedter-strasse. ”

“ Now that we are entering on the third year of the war so shamelessly brought about by Germany, the accompanying correspondence, commencing in August 1914, may interest your readers. It indicates the extreme rancour against our country of a leading and capable German manufacturer, not merely evoked by our declaration of war, but pre-existing for a long time and very carefully concealed from his English friends. ”

“ As I have said, from the tenth of August, 1914, to the twenty-fifth of September, 1915, the Emperor continually refused to receive me on the ground that he would not receive the Ambassador of a country which furnished munitions to the enemies of Germany; and we were thoroughly black-listed by all the German royalties. ”

“ The conflict that began in 1914 was not a war hurled into the midst of a white peace, it was only a military war arising in the centre of a far greater social war, for there is no other word that is descriptive. ”

“ When the deadlock came, in the fall of 1914, and the opposing armies lay entrenched, from the North Sea to Switzerland, it found the Germans occupying the dominating heights, with our forces hanging on, as best they could, to positions on the lower ground. ”

“ For such methods of warfare posterity, like the present generation, will find no excuse. It will say that the campaign of 1914 in Belgium and in Northern France, where these harrowing scenes occurred over and over again, brought dishonour both to the German army and to its Emperor. ”

“ Cologne to Paris (via Liege) ; Verdun to Berlin; Verdun to Strassburg; Liege to Paris; Warsaw to Berlin. What is the length of the Belgian coast-line; of the Dutch coast-line; of the Franco-German frontier? 3. Collect pictures and charts illustrative of trench warfare, and of devastated areas of Belgium and France. 4. Explain fully the influence of geography upon the campaigns of 1914. 5. Define neutrality; guarantee; treaty. 6. On an outline map of Europe indicate the countries fighting against Germany at the close of 1914. Indicate those fighting on the side of Germany at that time. ”

“ By a singular coincidence, the year 1914 will also mark the one hundredth anniversary of the last war between French speaking and English speaking peoples. It would seem to me a most lamentable thing if this celebration were not made a double celebration in commemoration of the one hundred years of peace between the great French speaking [79] peoples and English speaking peoples as well as between the English speaking peoples. ”

“ The hard fighting of 1914 and the first four months of 1915 had caused a considerable drain on the personnel of the army, and though many reinforcements had come out both as drafts and as units—the latter for the most part Territorial troops—yet the great bulk of the New Army was still in England, and could not be expected to turn the balance decisively in our favour until well on in 1916. ”

“ In 1918 there was nothing to choose between British divisions which had had no existence in August 1914 and those which had fought as the point of England's lance at Le Cateau, on the Marne and on the Aisne. But wars will not always last four years. Nor will the belligerent who has to create entirely new armies to carry on the struggle always prove victorious in the end. ”

“ America's plain folks, by merely following the doctrine, "My country, right or wrong—America first!" will find themselves, at no very distant date, exactly where the German people found themselves in 1914. ”

“ Every year, on the eighteenth of April, all able-bodied young Frenchmen who have reached the age of twenty go up for a two years’ military training. Just before the war the term was lengthened to three years. Their term completed, they are placed in the reserves, ready at any time to be mobilized and fight.
The world well remembers how in late July, 1914, the tocsin sounded all over France, calling from field and factory, counting room and office the glorious citizen army that rushed out against the barbarian invasion, turned it at the Marne, and saved the life of civilization. ”

“ It is possible, of course, that this cataclysm marks the end of centuries of progress, and it is possible that man in 1914 crossed over the watershed of civilization and is now to descend on the other side towards steadily growing barbarism and the steadily extending rule of force. ”

“ The book appears at a most opportune date, for most of us nowadays are military critics, and here we can, if we like, compare the Russian methods of 1812 with those of 1914. On the other hand, in these strenuous days we may not have the time, even if we have the inclination, to devote ourselves to campaigns a hundred years old. ”

“ The more one reads memoirs and books written in the various countries of what happened before the first of August, 1914, the more one realizes that no one at the head of affairs quite meant war at that stage. ”

“ Wars are the birth-pangs of new eras. A new day dawned for the Young Men's Christian Association with the present war. At midnight on August 4, 1914, the British Association as it had been for seventy years was buried and forgotten, and a new movement arose on the ruins of the old. Ninety per cent of its former workers left to join the colors, but a new army of over thirty thousand men and women was mustered and trained within its huts for the service of the British soldiers. The Y M C A had suddenly to "think imperially," and to minister to a world at war. ”