Ten Years' War

“ The meaning of the war in those men’s minds had become less simple and clear-cut since the days when it seemed a straight fight between idealism and brutality—the Allies with all the right on their side against the Germans with all the wrong. To the end some men thought like that, and they were lucky. They were the generals, the statesmen, and, now and then, the fighting men with unbending will and purpose. ”

“ If in two years we have been reduced from sixty thousand fighting men to half that number, where will our army be after another ten years of war? It is clear enough to me that if we go on any longer, we shall be compelled to surrender. Would it not be better to come to some agreement with the enemy, while we have the opportunity? We have all received the gift of reason ”

“ I believe that before it is likely to happen the common folk of all countries will revolt from such a method of argument and demand some other means of settlement. The memory of the last war endures among those who realised its agony. Its futility is understood even by those who directed its forces. In Great Britain the generals—or many of them—are most convinced of the need of peace. In France Marshal Foch and many of those who led France to a victory at frightful cost wish to avoid another conflict beyond any other consideration. ”

“ What mighty ills have not been done by woman? Who was't betray'd the capitol?—a woman! Who lost Mark Antony the world?—a woman! Who was the cause of a long ten years' war, And laid at last old Troy in ashes?—Woman! Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman! ”

“ But I do believe that the massacre of the world war and some of its lessons and watchwords have aroused passions and ambitions among the dark-skinned races which will lead to many new problems and perils. The British Empire is face to face with these in India, Egypt and Asia. France, Italy and Spain will have to face them in Northern Africa. America will have to face them in her own southern states and on the Pacific coast. ”

“ The whole nation, apart from a few individuals, was inspired by a common loyalty to ideals which seemed very clear and bright. They believed, without any complications of thought and argument, without any secret doubts, that this war had come upon the world solely because of German brutality, unprovoked, against peaceful neighbours. ”

“ The first three years after the world war provided terrible proofs of the disaster which had happened to humanity in that deadly struggle. Those who wish to convince the future generations of the devastating effect of modern warfare upon highly organised nations, as a frightful warning, must summon up the picture of Europe in 1919, 1920 and 1921. ”

“ The whole burden of the frightful issues involved for Great Britain, France, Belgium, Russia, Germany—for Europe, for the world, for civilization, for religion itself, seems to be gathered up in these last few moments. If war comes now it will be the most frightful tragedy the world has ever witnessed. Twenty millions of dead perhaps, and civil life crippled for a hundred years. Which is it to be, peace or war? Terrible to think that as they sit there the electric wires may be flashing the awful tidings, like a flying angel of life or death, through the dark air all over Europe. ”

“ But this country which I have been in part describing is now the scene of one of the greatest calamities that can afflict mankind. After seventy years of almost uninterrupted peace, it has become the scene of a civil war, more gigantic, perhaps, than any that we have any record of with regard to any other nation or any other people; for the scene of this warfare is so extended as to embrace a region almost equal in size to the whole of Europe. ”

“ Granet replied.
“It will be a peace that will cost us much, but nothing more than we deserve. For generations the war has been the perfectly obvious and apparent sequence of European events. It threw its warning shadow across our path for years, and our statesmen deliberately turned their heads the other way or walked blindfolded. ”

“ So this great Forty Years’ War began, in which there was to be no single grand, decisive engagement, but a thousand petty skirmishes and little raids, infinitely more vexatious and exhausting, and was waged until the weaker of the combatants, literally worn out in the fray, had laid down her arms and her life together, and was at peace at last, under the sheet in the darkened parlor. ”

“ I remember being told by a right hon. gentleman, in the course of a private conversation in the House, that 'if an angel came down from heaven to write my dispatches, I could not prevent Europe from a war in six months'. Well, Sir, not months, but years, rolled by, and no war took place. It was the anxious desire of the Government of Earl Grey to prevent war; and the maintenance of peace was one of the objects at which they expressly aimed, and succeeded. ”

“ Is it not full sixty whole years since the first French revolution, and six whole years since the revolution of all Europe? Bah!—change is a thing of the past, and tragedy a myth of our forefathers; war a bad habit of old barbarians, eradicated by the spread of an enlightened philanthropy. ”

“ While the light was dawning, the sun was rising, and the birds were singing over Europe, the greater nations were preparing to turn a thousand square miles of it into a gigantic slaughter-house. After forty years of unbroken peace, in which civilization, as represented by law, science, surgery, medicine, art, music, literature, and above all religion, in their ancient and central home, had been striving to lift up man to the place he is entitled to in the scheme of creation, war had suddenly stepped in to drag him back to the condition of the barbarian. ”

“ I am not, indeed, presumptuous enough to suppose that, when I name fifteen years, I am not naming a period in which events may arise which human foresight cannot reach, and which may baffle all our conjectures. We must not count with certainty on a continuance of our present prosperity during such an interval; but unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country, when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace than at the present moment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus qualified, thus armed for destruction, the genius of the French revolution marched forth, the terror and dismay of the world. Every nation has in its turn been the witness, many have been the victims, of its principles, and it is left for us to decide whether we will compromise with such a danger, while we have yet resources to supply the sinews of war, while the heart and spirit of the country is yet unbroken, and while we have the means of calling forth and supporting a powerful co-operation in Europe. ”

“ How mad, how hopelessly mad, it all seems I With fifteen to twenty million soldiers already mobilized, and more than half that number in the fighting lines; with engines of appalling destruction by land and sea, and over the land and under the sea; with Northern France, Belgium, and parts of Germany, Poland, Russia, Servia, and Austria drenched in blood; the nations exhausting their human and material resources in savage conflict—this war, marking the climax, and (let us hope) the finale of our commercial civilization, is the most monstrous the old Earth has ever seen. ”

“ For the thirty years’ war in its wearisome progress makes the outward history of Germany, in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, little more than a record of battles and sieges, with scant breathing-spaces of peace, not long enough for the towns to recover from exhausting occupations of foreign troops. ”

“ To watchers of the present conflict it seems an intolerable thought that, after the fighting is done, we should once more return to a condition of “armed peace,” with jealous, distrustful, and revengeful Powers piling up armaments and plotting singly or in groups against their neighbors until Europe is plunged into another war more terrible, more bloody, and more costly than this. ”

“ It is certain that, during the last fifty years, the period in which peace societies have been at work, armies have been growing steadily larger, the means of destruction have been multiplying, and wars have been as frequent and as bloody as ever before; and, what is worse, the popular heart goes into war as it has never done in past ages. ”

“ This being so, it is necessary to recognise also that increased humanity in the mode of making war has in reality followed upon the gradual softening of manners. Only compare the horrors of the Thirty Years' War with the struggles of modern times. ”

“ While the nation's life hung in the balance, and the dread artillery of war drowned, alike, the voices of commerce, politics, religion, and reform, all hearts were filled with anxious forebodings, all hands were busy in solemn preparations for the awful tragedies to come. ”

“ But our old, rich, and beautiful country, with all the accumulations on its soil of the labour, the art, the thought of uncounted generations, has been in this war the buffer between German savagery and the rest of Europe. Just as our armies bore the first brunt and held the pass, till civilisation could rally to its own defence, so our old towns and villages have died, that our neighbours might live secure. We have suffered most in war—we claim the first thought in peace. We live in the heart and on the brink of danger. ”

“ The Germans asked constantly, 'When do you think the war will end?' We answered, 'Perhaps in five years, but in the end we will smash you,' and this made them very angry, so our people went about with their heads up, scornful, refusing to complain against any severity or any hardship. ”

“ If only the country could be contented, and willing to let well enough alone, it might enjoy many long years of prosperity. But unfortunately there is a cloud in the sky. The last war has left the seeds of another war. Its disastrous issue was so unexpected and so galling to the most proud and sensitive people in Europe, that they will never rest satisfied till its terrible humiliation is redressed. The resentment might not be so bitter but for the taking of its two provinces. ”

“ And then it was worth a world of suffering to realize the first-fruits of that golden age of brotherhood among all the nations of the earth (except those of our enemy) which has been the peace-dream of humanity for countless centuries.
We in Great Britain have no reason to be ashamed of how our country answered the call. A few years before the outbreak of war I talked about conscription with a British admiral in the cabin of his flagship. “There’s not the slightest necessity for it in this country,” said the admiral. The moment war was declared the whole nation would rise to it. ”

“ Wars, as the Greek philosopher said, are set in motion by trivial causee, but owe their existence to great causes. The trivial causes of the Thirty Years' War were the succession to the duchies of Cleves and Juliers, and the revolt of Bohemia from the Austrian succession. ”

“ France and England, abusing their strength, may long defer the period of its utter exhaustion; but I will venture to say, that the fate of all civilised nations is concerned in the termination of a war, the flames of which are raging throughout the whole world. ”

“ The bloodiest war is sometimes the least costly on balance. The greatest war of all history ended but seven years ago, and already the beaten nations have healed up their wounds and are looking forward to the future with greater confidence than many of the “victorious” nations. ”

“ I will not dwell on the sixteen remaining years of the Thirty Years' War. It is too horrible a picture to paint. The desolation and misery which overwhelmed Germany were most frightful and revolting. The war was carried on without system or genius. "Expeditions were undertaken apparently with no other view than to desolate hostile provinces, till in the end provisions and winter quarters formed the principal object of the summer campaigns." "Disease, famine, and want of discipline swept away whole armies before they had seen an enemy." ”

“ It will be so easy, when the right moment comes, to befool you. It will be so easy for the wolf to appear in sheep’s clothing; to masquerade as a victim; to pretend that Germany has been invaded; to give to a war of aggression and conquest the sacred aspect of a war of national defence!
“Let us suppose that, through ill-luck, the war ends in a German success. Good-bye, then, to your dreams, to European idealism, to democratic dogmas. Great will be the discomfiture of your Tugendbund. ”

“ According to statistics of the pacifists, from the year 1496 b.c. to the year 1861 a.d.—a period of 3,357 years—there were 227 years of peace and 3,130 years of war—thirteen years of war for every year of peace. Now, if what we are told about the degenerative effects of war is true, since we know that war has been prevalent in all ages, the natural conclusion is, what a lot of rapscallions we must be! If war, instead of tending to secure the survival of the fit, secures the survival of the unfit, then after a thousand centuries of strife we must be signally unfit. ”