Great War

“ Thus began the famous Seven Years' War, during which France lost her colonial possessions, and was signally humiliated at home,--a war which developed the genius of the elder Pitt, and placed England in the proud position of mistress of the ocean; a war marked by the largest array of forces which Europe had seen since the times of Charles V., in which six hundred thousand men were marshalled under different leaders and nations, to crush a man who had insulted Europe and defied the law of nations and the laws of God. ”

“ Already in the East there were skirmishes as the prelude to the great war of the nations. All Europe, Europe that only yesterday was sceptical and apathetic, like a dead wood, was swept by the flames. All men were possessed by the desire for battle. War was ever on the point of breaking out. ”

“ The Great War through which we have passed differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. All the horrors of all the ages were brought together, and not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them. ”

“ Now I come to the point where the two little Republics are brought face to face with the military forces of war-prepared England; when war is inevitable, when the immortal gods could not prevent a clash of arms; when the first shot is fired in a struggle destined to stir the world, humiliate the English officer and lord, and destroy the name and prestige of the great degenerate British Empire. ”

“ For the dear-bought experience of our four great wars is entirely unheeded, indeed almost unknown to the mass of the people; and the army to-day, in organization as in numbers, in its influence upon the military ideas and aptitudes of the nation in peace as in its capacity for expansion in time of war, is inadequate to our needs as a great nation. ”

“ To understand the Great War it is not sufficient to read the daily happenings of military and naval events as they are told in newspapers and magazines. We must go back of the facts of to-day and find in national history and personal ambition the causes of the present struggle. Years of preparation were necessary before German military leaders could convert a nation to their views, or get ready the men, munitions, and transportation for the war they wanted. Conflicts of races for hundreds of years have made the southeastern part of Europe a firebrand in international affairs. ”

“ The Great War itself was assimilated to our idea of a beneficent fate. Whom Progress loveth it chasteneth. Instead of rendering war impossible by making it destructive and costly, it visited the earth with the greatest war of all time in order to make war impossible. ”

“ France and Great Britain were then waging deadly war against each other. In this mortal conflict, each sought to strengthen herself, or weaken her adversary by any influence to be acquired over foreign powers—by obtaining allies when allies were attainable, or securing neutrality where co-operation was not to be expected. The temper with which the American people contemplated this awful spectacle can not be forgotten. The war of our revolution, in which France fought by the side of America against Great Britain, was fresh in their recollection. ”

“ It has been said that each of the preceding centuries during a long period of European history has ended in a great war. This one which closed the nineteenth century is not, and will not become, great, as wars are measured. ”

“ Let the British people concentrate their warlike feeling on fighting the enemy in the field, and let it be said, after the war was over, that "they fought like gentlemen." Germany in her three great wars had been the terror and bully of Europe. ”

“ We are at war, and I shall not say one single sentence with regard to the policy of the war or its origin, and I know not that I shall say a single sentence with regard to the conduct of it; but the fact is that we are at war with the greatest military Power, probably, of the world, and that we are carrying on our operations at a distance of 3,000 miles from home, and in the neighbourhood of the strongest fortifications of that great military Empire. ”

“ It may be truly said that never before in history was a great war, or any war, so accurately and fully reported day by day for at least three years, subject to certain reservations which were abominably vexatious and tended to depress the spirit of the troops and to arouse the suspicion of the nation. ”

“ Those are the days which the British Empire is living through, with brilliancy and heroism, amidst the dazzling lightning and the roaring thunder of an unprecedented military conflict, with every prospect of surviving its sufferings and sacrifices with a still stronger political structure. ”

“ The great wars it has witnessed, the Franco-Italian, the Crimean, the Prusso-Austrian, the Prusso-French, and the American Civil War, have occasioned, as all great wars inevitably do, much intellectual activity and profound social changes. ”

“ A little peace-loving, industrial nation, infinitely small and almost utterly untrained, compared with the giant in arms assailing it, having no injury to avenge, no commerce to capture, no territory to annex, desiring only to be left alone in the exercise of its independence, stood up for six days against the invading horde, and hurled it back. ”

“ My Lord Mayor, from both points of view—that of our domestic interest as a kingdom and an empire, and of our settled attitude and policy in the counsels of Europe, a war such as this, which injures the one and frustrates the other, was and could only be regarded as among the worst of catastrophes—among the worst of catastrophes, but not the worst. ”

“ The entrance of England and Italy into the war against Germany was in each case brought about by causes which came into existence long before August, 1914. A person who understands, even in part, the causes of [Pg 6] this great struggle, will be in a better position to realize why America entered the war and what our nation is [Pg 7] fighting for. And better yet, he will be more ready to take part in settling the many problems of peace which must come after the war is over. ”

“ Thus ended a war which has covered us with glory—a war we did not invite, but which was forced upon us in the interests of humanity; a war which has taught European nations to respect us as a great power. ”

“ It was all done in the name of humanity; for to shorten the war was the humanest course, and the shortest way was that of the greatest destruction. The means of destruction were developed at a prodigious rate, and England became a vast laboratory of death. ”

“ The Great War has been the Great Call to humanity and humanity is answering. It is breaking down the ramparts to free the way for the entrance of a larger spirit which is to fill every single being by interflowing between them all. France, England, America—how the beacon lights flash from one to the other—the program of the British Labor Party, the speeches of our American President, the news of the indomitable courage of France—these are like the fires in Europe on St. ”

“ Each day henceforth will increase the weight of that formidable sword thrown into the balance by the great Republic of America. Who can, even in Germany, be blind to the inevitable consequences of the events we are now witnessing? ”

“ But, indifferent to the remonstrances and memorials of the potentates of Europe, Great Britain, hostile, wealthy, powerful, and proud, appeared regardless of their resentment and ready to bid defiance, and spread the waste of war among all nations. ”

“ Republican France has become one of the great nations of the world, and its democratic institutions are firmly rooted in the hearts of the people. It has been compelled to face German militarism by erecting a system of universal military training. The patriotism and self-sacrifice of all classes during the Great War have been beyond praise.
[Pg 21] Great Britain.—During the nineteenth century Great Britain did not experience any of the sudden revolutions which appeared in nearly every other country of Europe. ”

“ To push the survey further would but add to the instances, without deepening the impression, of the measureless power of the ideal element in war, alike in the history of the great races of the past and of the present. Even the wars which seem most arbitrary and, to the judgment of their contemporaries, purposeless, acquire, upon a deeper scrutiny and in after ages, a profound enough significance. ”

“ This war has shown to us that we are not at the level of earlier days. We have lost our national unity, our sense of direction. The war has revealed in us an unpreparedness in foreign and domestic policy. ”

“ Taking, roughly, the first few months of the war, apart from wastage, our enemies remain month after month far superior to either half of the Allies they are fighting—the French and English in the West, the Russians in the East. ”

“ The twentieth century, altho comparatively a time of great plenty, thus witnessed the most ferocious and bloody of all wars. An increase of riches, national and individual, had not conduced to peace, but rather to irritability and contention. ”

“ In any British war, therefore, which is to be waged with prospect of success, Great Britain's battles must be fought and won on the enemy's territory and against an army raised and maintained on the modern national principle. ”

“ The war had come suddenly upon Great Britain, but it found a Government well prepared to withstand the enemy and a Parliament and a people whose divisions—on which the Germans had staked their hopes—were rapidly closing, and whose determination to carry on the contest to a victorious issue was being quickly perfected by a growing knowledge of the real position. ”

“ In reviewing the conduct of Great Britain toward the United States our attention is necessarily drawn to the warfare just renewed by the savages on one of our extensive frontiers — a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity. ”

“ So the Old Year passed, the last of a terrible quinquennium, bringing grounds for thankfulness and hope along with the promise of unrest and upheaval: with Alsace-Lorraine reunited to France, with the British army holding its Watch on the Rhine, and with all eyes fixed on Paris, the scene of the Peace Conference, already invaded by an international army of delegates, experts, advisers, secretaries, typists, 500 American journalists, and President Wilson. ”

“ Now, to prevent false judgments of that kind and the misleading of public opinion, there is nothing more useful than to distinguish between the things in which modern war between great forces, fought with modern weapons and by men trained to utilize their powers to the utmost, differs from and resembles the wars of the past. ”

“ The initial response of Great Britain in the First World War indicated an assumption that war imposed upon a nation the necessity to adapt the machinery of the government, and especially its military arm, to the attainment of victory. ”

“ The war is a war of the Great Powers of Europe; the small States are neutral, and will join one side or the other, according to the situation on the battlefield.
Britain, France and Russia must be able to defeat Germany, Austria and Turkey—therefore Britain and Russia must raise the necessary armies, if France has already brought up her full quota of men.
28.—The political programme of the Allies: Non-German, Anti-German, European Central Europe: liberty of all nations, also of small nations. ”

“ In February 1793, War was declared by Great Britain against the republic of France—and although war is a calamity that ought always to be regretted by friends of humanity, as thousands are undoubtedly thereby involved in misery ”

“ Let no one forget for a moment that the present war, certainly NATIONAL so far as the existence of each one of the Allied States is concerned, is, above all preeminently a world's conflict which favourable [399] issue deeply concerns the destinies of all the peoples of the earthly globe. ”

“ We—that is—I had come to write of the war as seen from the German side. Good, sehr gut! He had heard the Allies, especially the English,—Verfluchte Englanderschwein!—were telling many lies in the American newspapers. How could any intelligent man believe them? ”

“ A small, mobile, regular army, formed to go over seas and march long distances, was to fight in a war where millions were engaged and a day’s march would cover an immense stretch of territory in international calculations of gain and loss. ”

“ Soldiers and civilians, writers and talkers, and even thinkers were divided into two camps, Westerners and Easterners, those who believed that the war could only be won by frontal attack in the West, and those who discerned a way round to victory in the Near or the Farther East. ”

“ “But every time there have been conquests there have been conquerors; every time there has been a revolution in any state there have been great men,” says history. ”

“ No ! we will sweep them from the face of the waters, and their name shall be heard no more among nations. 6 Shall the proud conquerors of Europe not laugh to scorn the feeble efforts of a few unorganized soldiers, undisciplined, and fresh from the plough, the hoe, and the mattock ? 7 Yea, they shall surely fall ; for they were not bred to fighting as were the servants of the king. 8 Their large cities, their towns, and their villages will we burn with consuming fire. ”

“ In France and England they asked you objectively the state of sentiment in America. But, possibly, the direct, forcible way is the better for war purposes when you mean to win; for the Germans have made a study of war. ”

“ These things form our imagination; it is our disposition to think of the war as a great conflict of physical forces in which the best mechanic won, and in which the nation that was strongest in material things, which had the largest accumulation of wealth and the greatest power of concentrating its industrial factors, was the victorious nation. ”