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THE INVISIBLE CONFLICT
THE INVISIBLE CONFLICT
Mr. Maeterlinck has lately propounded the theory {*} that what we call the war is neither more nor less than the visible expression of a vast invisible conflict. The unseen forces of good and evil in the universe are using man as a means of contention. On the result of the struggle the destiny of humanity on this planet depends. Is the Angel to prevail? Or is the Beast to prolong his malignant existence? The issue hangs on Fate, which does not, however, deny the exercise of the will of man. Myst
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PEN-PORTRAIT OF THE KAISER
PEN-PORTRAIT OF THE KAISER
Other whisperings there were of the storm that was so soon to burst on the world. In the ominous silence there were rumours of a certain change that was coming over the spirit of the Kaiser. For long years he had been credited with a sincere love of peace, and a ceaseless desire to restrain the forces about him that were making for war. Although constantly occupied with the making of a big army, and inspiring it with great ideals, he was thought to have as little desire for actual warfare as his
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PEN-PORTRAIT OF THE CROWN PRINCE
PEN-PORTRAIT OF THE CROWN PRINCE
And then the Crown Prince. In August of last year nine out of every ten of us would have said that not the father, but the son, of the Royal family of Germany had been the chief provocative cause of the war. Subsequent events have lessened the weight of that opinion. But the young man’s known popularity among an active section of the officers of the army; their subterranean schemes to set him off against his father; a vague suspicion of the Kaiser’s jealousy of his eldest son—all these facts and
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SOME SALUTARY LESSONS
SOME SALUTARY LESSONS
Only it was not Prussia we were living in, and it was not the year 1720, so the air tingled occasionally with other tales of little salutary lessons administered to our Royal upstart on his style of pursuing the pleasures considered suitable to a Prince. One day it was told of him that, having given a cup to be raced for on the Bob-run, he was wroth to find on the notice-board of entries the names of a team of highly respectable little Englishmen who are familiar on the racecourse; and, taking o
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PEN-PORTRAIT OF THE ARCHDUKE FERDINAND
PEN-PORTRAIT OF THE ARCHDUKE FERDINAND
Then the Archduke Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary, whose assassination was the ostensible cause of this devastating war—what kind of man was he? Quite a different person from the Crown Prince, and yet, so far as I could judge, just as little worthy of the appalling sacrifice of human life which his death has occasioned. Not long before his tragic end I spent a month under the same roof with him, and though the house was only an hotel, it was situated in a remote place, and though I was not in any se
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ONE OF THE OLDEST, FEEBLEST, AND LEAST CAPABLE OF MEN
ONE OF THE OLDEST, FEEBLEST, AND LEAST CAPABLE OF MEN
That time, as we now know, never came, but a still more fatal time did come—the cruel, ironical, and sinister time of July 28, 1914, when one of the oldest, feeblest, and least capable of living men, the Emperor of Austria, under the pretence of avenging the death of the heir-presumptive to his throne, signed with his trembling hand, which could scarcely hold the pen, the first of his many proclamations of war, and so touched the button of the monstrous engine that set Europe aflame. The Archduk
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“GOOD GOD, MAN, DO YOU MEAN TO SAY...”
“GOOD GOD, MAN, DO YOU MEAN TO SAY...”
“We have tried in vain to localize the just vengeance of our Austrian neighbour for an abominable royal murder,” said the Germans, knowing well that the royal murder was nothing but a shameless pretext for an opportunity to test their strength against the French, and give law to the rest of Europe. “Let us pass over your territory in order to attack our enemy in the West, and we promise to respect your independence and to recompense you for any loss you may possibly sustain,” said Germany to Bel
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A GERMAN HIGH PRIEST OF PEACE
A GERMAN HIGH PRIEST OF PEACE
Nor did the theologians, publicists, and authors of Germany show a more sensitive conscience than her statesmen. One of the theologians was Adolf Harnack, professor of Church History in Berlin and intimate acquaintance of the Kaiser. Not long before the war he published a book entitled “What is Christianity?” which began with the words, “John Stuart Mill used to say humanity could not be too often reminded that there was once a man named Socrates. That is true, but still more important it is to
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“WE SHALL NEVER MASSACRE BELGIAN WOMEN”
“WE SHALL NEVER MASSACRE BELGIAN WOMEN”
One of the writers who performed the same kind of moral somersault was Gerhart Hauptmann, author of a Socialist drama called “The Weavers,” and, rumour says, protégé (what frightful irony!) of the Crown Prince, Hauptmann knew well (none better) that a vast proportion of the human family live perpetually on the borderland of want, and that of all who suffer by war the poor suffer most. Yet he wrote (and a degenerate son of the great Norwegian liberator, Bjôrnsen, published) a letter, in which, af
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THE OLD GERMAN ADAM
THE OLD GERMAN ADAM
It was the old historic story of German duplicity, and the nations of Europe had no excuse for being surprised. When the Prussian Monarchy was first bestowed on the relatively humble family of the Höhenzollerns, they found their territory for the most part sterile, the soil round Berlin and about Potsdam—the favourite residence of the Margraves—a sandy desert that could scarcely be made to yield a crop of rye or oats, so they set themselves to enlarge and enrich it by help of an army out of all
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A CONVERSATION WITH LORD ROBERTS
A CONVERSATION WITH LORD ROBERTS
Meantime what had been happening among ourselves? The far-off murmur of the approaching wind had been heard by all of us, but as none can hope to describe the effect on the whole Empire, perhaps each may be allowed to indicate the character of the warning as it came to his own ears. It was at Naples, not long after the event, that I heard how the late King had felt about his last visit to Berlin. I was then on my way home from Egypt, where I had spent some days at Mena, while Lord Roberts was st
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“WE’LL FIGHT AND FIGHT SOON”
“WE’LL FIGHT AND FIGHT SOON”
By that time I had, in common with the majority of my countrymen who travelled much abroad, been compelled to recognize the ever-increasing hostility of the German and British peoples whenever they encountered each other on the highways of the world—their constant cross-purposes on steamships, in railway trains, hotels, casinos, post and telegraph offices—making social intercourse difficult and friendship impossible. The overbearing manners of many German travellers, their aggressive and dominee
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“HE KNOWS, DOESN’T HE?”
“HE KNOWS, DOESN’T HE?”
I was staying in a neutral country at an hotel much frequented by the German governing classes when an English newspaper proprietor, after a visit to Berlin, published in his most popular journal a map of a portion of Northern Europe in order to show at sight his view of the extent of the forthcoming German aggression. The paper was lying open between a group of gentlemen whose names have since become prominent in relation to the war when I stepped up to the table. The men were obviously angry,
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WE BELIEVED IT
WE BELIEVED IT
We believed it. I am compelled to count myself among the number of my countrymen who through many years believed that story—that the accident of Germany’s disadvantageous geographical position, not her desire to break British supremacy on the sea, made it necessary for her to enlarge her navy. I did my best to believe it when I had to sail through the Kiel Canal in a steamer from Lubeck to Copenhagen, which was forced to shoulder her way through an ever-increasing swarm of German battleships. I
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THE FALLING OF THE THUNDERBOLT
THE FALLING OF THE THUNDERBOLT
Into such an unpromising atmosphere of national hostility the war came down on us, in July 1914, like a thunderbolt. In spite of grave warnings few or none in this country were at that moment giving a thought to it. On the contrary, we were thinking of all manner of immeasurably smaller things, for Great Britain, although governing more than one-fifth of the habitable globe, has an extraordinary capacity for becoming absorbed in the affairs of its two little islands. It was so in the autumn of 1
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THE PART CHANCE PLAYED
THE PART CHANCE PLAYED
But chance plays the largest part in the drama of life, and accident often confounds the plans of men. Not feeling entirely sure of his letter the pacifist Minister put it in his pocket when he dressed that night to go out to dinner. And when he sat down at table he found himself seated next to the able, earnest, and passionately patriotic Minister for Belgium. Perhaps he was urging some objections to British intervention, when his neighbour said: “But what about Belgium? You have promised to pr
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“WHY ISN’T THE HOUSE CHEERING?”
“WHY ISN’T THE HOUSE CHEERING?”
Then came our Prime Minister’s passionate, fiery, yet dignified and even exalted denunciation of the proposal of Germany that we should trade with her in our neutrality by committing treachery to France and Belgium—(“To accept your infamous offer would be to cover the glorious name of England with undying shame”); then the announcement of the ultimatum sent by Great Britain to Germany demanding an assurance that the neutrality of Belgium should be respected; and finally that speech of John Redmo
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THE NIGHT OF OUR ULTIMATUM
THE NIGHT OF OUR ULTIMATUM
Our nation knew everything now, and had made her choice, yet the twelve hours’ interval between noon and midnight of August 4 were perhaps the gravest moments in her modern history. I am tempted, not without some misgivings, but with the confidence of a good intention, to trespass so far on personal information as to lift the curtain on a private scene in the tremendous tragic drama. The place is a room in the Prime Minister’s house in Downing Street. The Prime Minister himself and three of the
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THE THUNDERSTROKE OF FATE
THE THUNDERSTROKE OF FATE
Suddenly one of the little company remembers something which everybody has hitherto forgotten—the difference of an hour between the time in London and the time in Berlin. Midnight by mid-European time would be eleven o’clock in London. Germany would naturally understand the demand for a reply by midnight to mean midnight in the country of dispatch. Therefore at eleven o’clock by London time the period for the reply will expire. It is now approaching eleven. As the clock ticks out the remaining m
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THE MORNING AFTER
THE MORNING AFTER
If Mr. Maeterlinck’s theory is sound, that this war is the visible reflection of a vast, invisible conflict, what a gigantic battle of the unseen forces of good and evil must have been raging throughout the universe when Europe rose on the morning of August 5, 1914! Think what had happened. 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 y
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“YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU”
“YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU”
What a mockery! What a waste! What a hideous reversion! What a confession of blank failure on the part of civilization, including morality and religion! But, happily, the invisible powers of evil had not got it all their own way, even on that morning of August 5. Out of the very shadow of battle great things were already being born among the children of men, and chief among them were the spirits of sacrifice and brotherhood. Even the cruel loss of nearly all that makes human life worth living—cl
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THE PART PLAYED BY THE BRITISH NAVY
THE PART PLAYED BY THE BRITISH NAVY
Perhaps the first of the flashes as of lightning by which we have seen the drama of the past 365 days is that which shows us the part played by the British Navy. What a part it has been! Do we even yet recognize its importance? Have our faithful and loyal Allies a full sense of its tremendous effect on the fortunes of the campaign? On Sunday, August 2, two days before the dispatch of Great Britain’s ultimatum to Germany, we saw thousands of our naval reserve flying off by special boats and train
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THE PART PLAYED BY BELGIUM
THE PART PLAYED BY BELGIUM
One of the earliest, and perhaps one of the most inspiring, of the flashes as of lightning whereby we saw the drama of the war was that which revealed the part played by Belgium. Has history any record of greater heroism and greater suffering? Such courage for the right! Such strength of soul against overwhelming odds and the criminal suddenness of surprise! Although the world has been told by Germany’s spokesmen, including Herr Ballin, Prince von Bülow, and even Professor Harnack (all “honourab
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WHAT KING ALBERT DID FOR KINGSHIP
WHAT KING ALBERT DID FOR KINGSHIP
But there were flashes of almost divine light in the black darkness of Belgium’s tragedy, and perhaps the brightest of them surrounded the person of her King. What King Albert did in those dark days of August 1914, to keep the soul of his nation alive in the midst of the immense sorrow of her utter overthrow his nation alone can fully know. But we who are not Belgians were thrilled again and again by the inspired tones of a great Spirit speaking to his subjects with that authority, dignity, and
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“WHY SHOULDN’T THEY, SINCE THEY WERE ENGLISHMEN?”
“WHY SHOULDN’T THEY, SINCE THEY WERE ENGLISHMEN?”
The next flash as of lightning that revealed to us the progress of the drama of the past 365 days came at the end of the first month of the war with the terrible story of Mons. That touched us yet more closely than the tragedy of Belgium, for it seemed at first to be our own tragedy. Between the departure of an army and the first news of victory or defeat there is always a time of exhausting suspense. At what moment our first Expeditionary Force had left England no one quite knew, but after we l
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“BUT LIBERTY MUST GO ON, AND... ENGLAND.”
“BUT LIBERTY MUST GO ON, AND... ENGLAND.”
What startling surprises! We of the lower, the middle, or the upper-middle classes had come to believe that too many of the young men of our nobility had grown effeminate in idleness and selfish pleasure indulged in on the borderland of a kind of aristocratic Bohemia, but, behold! they were fighting and dying with the bravest. We had thought too many of their young women (as thoughtless and capricious creatures of fashion) had sacrificed the finest bloom of modest and courageous womanhood in lux
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THE PART PLAYED BY FRANCE
THE PART PLAYED BY FRANCE
Perhaps the next great flash as of lightning whereby we saw the drama of the past 365 days was that which revealed at its sublimest moment the part played by France. In those evil days of July 1914, when German diplomacy was carrying on the indecent pretence of quarrelling with France about Austria’s right to punish Serbia for the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, there were Frenchmen still living who had vivid memories of three bloody campaigns. Some could remember the Crimean War. More
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THE SOUL OF FRANCE
THE SOUL OF FRANCE
Then when the men had gone there came that anxious silence in which every ear was strained to catch the first cry from the army. Would it be victory or defeat? In the strength of her new-born spirit France was ready for either fate. The streets of Paris were darkened; the theatres were shut up; the cafés were ordered to close at nine o’clock; the sale of absinthe was prohibited that Frenchmen might have every faculty alert to meet their destiny; and the principal hotels were transformed into hos
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THE MOTHERHOOD OF FRANCE
THE MOTHERHOOD OF FRANCE
Still the soul of France did not fail her. It heard the second approach of that monstrous Prussian horde, which, like a broad, irresistible tide, sweeping across one half of Europe, came down, down, down from Mons until the thunder of its guns could again be heard on the boulevards. And then came the great miracle! Just as the sea itself can rise no higher when it has reached the top of the flood, so the mighty army of Germany had to stop its advance thirty kilomètres north of Paris, and when it
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FIVE MONTHS AFTER
FIVE MONTHS AFTER
The next of the flashes as of lightning that revealed the drama of the past 365 days came to us at Christmas. The war had then been going on five months, showing us many strange and terrible sights, but nothing stranger and more terrible than the changed aspect of warfare itself. A battlefield had ceased to be a scene of pomp and of personal prowess, with the charging of galloping cavalry, the clash of glittering arms, and the advancing and retiring of vast numbers of soldiery. It was now a broa
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THE COMING OF WINTER
THE COMING OF WINTER
Then, as the year deepened towards winter, the rains came, torrential rains such as we thought we had never known the like of before. We heard that the trenches were flooded, and that our soldiers were eating, sleeping, and fighting ankle-deep (sometimes knee-deep) in water. At night, on going to our white beds at home, we had remorseful visions of those slimy red ruts in Flanders where our boys were lying out in the drenching rain under the heavy darkness of the sky. It was hard to believe that
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CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES
CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES
Then Christmas in the trenches—we had glimpses of that, too. The people who governed nations from their Parliament Houses might have doubts about the peace-dream of the poets, the Utopia of universal brotherhood which gleams somewhere ahead in the far future of humanity, but the soldiers on the battlefields, even in the welter of blood and death had somehow heard the call of it. The appeal of the Pope for a truce to hostilities during the days sacred to the Christian faith had fallen on deaf ear
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THE COMING OF SPRING
THE COMING OF SPRING
But perhaps, as Zola says, it is only the soft-hearted philosophers who are loud in their curses of war, and the truer wisdom was that of the stoical ancients, who could look with indifference on the massacre of millions. To keep manly, to remind ourselves that the generations come and go, that after all people die, and that more die one year than another—this should be the wise man’s way of reconciling himself to the inhumanities of war. It is horrible doctrine, but certainly nature seems to sp
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NATURE GOES HER OWN WAY
NATURE GOES HER OWN WAY
We found it heart-breaking. But it has been always so. I was in Naples during the whole period of the last great eruption of Vesuvius, and, looking through the gloom of the heavens, piled high with the whorls of fire and smoke that were covering the Vesuvian valleys and villages with a grey shroud, waist deep, of volcanic dust, I thought the face of Nature in that sweet spot could never be the same again; but when I went back to it a year later I could see no difference. I sailed south through t
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THE SOUL OF THE MAN WHO SANK THE LUSITANIA
THE SOUL OF THE MAN WHO SANK THE LUSITANIA
The crowning horror of Germany’s barbarities came with the sinking of the Lusitania . Perhaps nothing less shocking could have made us see how much less cruel Nature is at her worst than man in his madness may be. Three years before the Titanic had been sunk on a clear and quiet night, because a great iceberg formed in the frozen north had floated silently down to where, crossing the ship’s course in mid-Atlantic, it struck her the slanting blow that sent her to the bottom. Thus a great, blind,
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THE GERMAN TOWER OF BABEL
THE GERMAN TOWER OF BABEL
For the credit of human nature we feel compelled, in sight of such enormities, to go back to Mr. Maeterlinck’s theory that invisible powers of evil are using man for the execution of devilish designs. But if so, they have had no mercy on their creatures. We read that when, in fear of another flood, not trusting the promises of the Almighty, the children of Noah began to build a Tower of Babel, the Lord sent a confusion of tongues among them to bring their design to destruction. The excuses the G
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THE ALIEN PERIL
THE ALIEN PERIL
But out of this failure of logic on the part of “deep-thinking Germany” a danger came to us from nearer home than the battlefield. One of the most vivid flashes as of lightning whereby we have seen the drama of the past 365 days was that which, immediately after the sinking of the Lusitania , showed us the full depths of the “alien peril.” Before the war we had had fifty thousand German-born persons living in our midst. They had enjoyed the whole freedom of our commerce, the whole justice of our
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HYMNS OF HATE
HYMNS OF HATE
About this time also we became conscious of a fierce, delirious, intoxicating hate of our people which was developing in the hearts of our enemies. Before the outbreaking of the war it had been Russia and the Russians who had (by inherited antipathy from the founder of the German Empire) been the chief objects of German hatred. Now it was Britain and the British. Hymns of Hate (our enemies called it “sacred hate”) were composed, recited, and sung: England was not moved to retaliate in kind. We r
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THE PART PLAYED BY RUSSIA
THE PART PLAYED BY RUSSIA
And then Russia! Distance from the scene of action, the great length of the line of operations and the vast area behind it have made it difficult or impossible for us to see the drama of the Russian campaign as we have seen that of France, Belgium, and our own Empire. But we have seen something, and it has been enough to give the lie to certain of the emphatic protestations with which Germany made war. We had heard it said by the German Chancellor that the fact that Russia was mobilizing in thos
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THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT DEATH
THE SHADOW OF THE GREAT DEATH
The truth, as everybody knows who knows Russia, is that “barbarous,” the classic taunt of the German against Russia, is, of all words, the least proper as a description of the Russian mind and character. I have myself been only once in Russia, but it was on a long visit and under conditions which were calculated, beyond anything that has happened since down to to-day, to reveal to me the whole secret of the Russian soul, In 1892, when the cholera had come sweeping up from the south, I travelled
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THE RUSSIAN SOUL
THE RUSSIAN SOUL
The truth is, too, that there is not in the world a more religious people than the Russian—a people more submissive to what they conceive (not always wisely) to be the will of the Almighty, the governance of the unseen forces. As opposed to the average German intellect, which for the past fifty years has been struggling day and night to materialize the spiritual, the Russian intellect seems to be always trying to spiritualize the material. No one can doubt this who has seen the Russian peasants
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THE RUSSIAN MOUJIK MOBILIZING
THE RUSSIAN MOUJIK MOBILIZING
So the flashes as of lightning that have shown us the part Russia has played in the drama of the past 365 days have revealed a people acting under something very like a religious impulse. We have seen the moujiks being mobilized in remote parts of the vast country, and have found it a moving picture. It is probable that the war had been going on for weeks before they heard anything about it. Almost certainly they had no clear idea of where the fighting was, or what it was about, the theatre of t
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HOW THE RUSSIANS MAKE WAR
HOW THE RUSSIANS MAKE WAR
From some of the greater cities of Western Russia there came flashes of similar scenes. The memory of that time of the cholera is closely involved for me in the thought of these tragic days, and by the light of what I saw in Kief, in Sosnowitz, in Lublin, in Cracow, in Warsaw, and along the line of front in poor, stricken Poland, where, as I write, men are being mown down like grass, I seem to see what took place there at the beginning of August 1914, and is taking place now. I see the churches
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THE PART PLAYED BY POLAND
THE PART PLAYED BY POLAND
And then Poland. Down to the end of the first year of war the part played by Poland has been that of absolute martyr. Like the water-mill in Zola’s story she has first been disabled by the attack of her enemies and then destroyed by the defence of her friends. Three times the armies of the belligerents have rolled over her, and now that they are gone she lies stricken afresh, even yet more fiercely, under the famine and pestilence which have stalked in the wake of war. No more pitiful and abject
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THE SOUL OF POLAND
THE SOUL OF POLAND
It is a fearful thing to murder, or attempt to murder, the soul of a nation. The call that comes to a people’s heart from the soil that gave them birth is a spiritual force which no conquering empire should dare to kill. How powerful it is, how mysterious, how unaccountable, and how infinitely pathetic! The land of one’s country may be so bleak, so bare, so barren, that the stranger may think God can never have intended that it should be trodden by the foot of man, yet it seems to us, who were b
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THE OLD SOLDIER OF LIBERTY
THE OLD SOLDIER OF LIBERTY
And Italy! Although it is only since May that Italy has stood by our side on the battle-front, in an effort to avert from the world a new military domination, we have known from the beginning that her heart was with the Allies, and she was willing to stake all, when her time came, for the same principles of humanity and freedom. A Roman friend tells me that he heard an Italian statesman say, “Italy always meant war.” We can well believe it. We have believed it from the first. On one of the early
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THE PART PLAYED BY ITALY
THE PART PLAYED BY ITALY
The Triple Alliance was a secret document, but everybody knew that it required Italy to join with Austria and Germany in the event of their being compelled to engage in a defensive war. Therefore the first question for Italy was whether the war declared by Austria against Serbia and by Germany against Belgium, although apparently aggressive, was in reality defensive. There was a further question for Italy—what would happen to her if she decided against her Allies? She did decide against them, th
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HOW THE WAR ENTERED ITALY
HOW THE WAR ENTERED ITALY
Then, by one of the most vivid, if pathetic, of the flashes as of lightning that have shown us the drama of the past 365 days, we saw the actual war come to Italy. It came in a profoundly impressive form—the dead body of young Bruno Garibaldi, grandson of the Liberator. Fighting for France, Bruno had fallen in a gallant charge at the front, and his brother, who was by his side, had carried his body out of the trenches and brought it home. We who know Rome do not need to be told how it was receiv
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THE ITALIAN SOUL
THE ITALIAN SOUL
That was the great and awful hour when Italy stood on the threshold of her fate; but though Great Britain’s heart was bleeding from the sacrifices she had already made, and had still to make, and though Italy’s intervention meant so much to us, we did not feel that we had a right to ask for it. And neither was it necessary that we should do so. The treaty that bound Italy to England was not written on a scrap of paper. It was in our blood, born of our devotion to humanity, to justice, to liberty
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THE PART PLAYED BY THE NEUTRAL NATIONS
THE PART PLAYED BY THE NEUTRAL NATIONS
And then the neutral countries—what is the part which they have played in the drama of the past 365 days? I think I may fairly claim to have had better opportunities than most people for studying one aspect of it, its moral aspect, and therefore I trust I may be forgiven if I make a personal reference. Seeing, in the earliest days of the war, that Germany was doing her best to divert the eye of the world from the crime she had committed in Belgium, and being convinced that Britain’s hope both no
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THE PART PLAYED BY THE UNITED STATES
THE PART PLAYED BY THE UNITED STATES
Perhaps the most tragic of these vistas of the sufferings of great souls in neutral countries came from the United States. Profoundly affecting were nearly all President Wilson’s public utterances, even when, as sometimes occurred, our sympathy could not follow them. And certainly one of the most vivid of the flashes as of lightning, whereby we have seen the war in its moral aspect, was that which showed us the United States, at his proclamation, arresting for a whole day, on October 4, 1914, th
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THE THUNDERCLAP THAT FELL ON ENGLAND
THE THUNDERCLAP THAT FELL ON ENGLAND
Among the flashes as of lightning that revealed to us the drama of the past 365 days, some of the most vivid were those that lit up the condition at home towards the end of Spring. The war had been going on ten months when it fell on our ears like a thunderclap that all was not well with us in England. In the ominous unrest that followed there was danger of serious division, with the risk of a breakdown in that national unity without which there could be no true strength. The result was a Coalit
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A GLIMPSE OP THE KING’S SON
A GLIMPSE OP THE KING’S SON
One glimpse at the end of my little motor tour seemed to send a flash of light through the drama of the past 365 days. It was of our young Prince of Wales, home for a short holiday from the front. I had seen the King’s son only once before—at his investiture in Carnarvon Castle. How long ago that seemed! In actual truth “no human creature dreamt of war” that day, although the shadow of it was even then hanging over our heads. Some of us who have witnessed most of the great pageants of the world
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THE PART PLAYED BY WOMAN
THE PART PLAYED BY WOMAN
The latest and perhaps the most vivid of the flashes as of lightning which have revealed the drama of the past 365 days has shown us the part played by woman. What a part that has been! Nearly always in the histories of the great world-wars of the past the sympathy of the spectator has been more or less diverted from the unrecorded martyrdom of the myriads of forgotten women who have lost sons and husbands by the machinations of the few vain and selfish women who have governed continents by play
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THE WORD OF WOMAN
THE WORD OF WOMAN
But long before July 17, 1915, woman’s part in this war began. It began on August 5, 1914, when the first hundred thousand of our voluntary army sprang into being as by a miracle. The miracle (if I am asked to account for it) had its origin in the word of woman. Without that word we should have had no Kitchener’s Army, for “on the decision of the women, above everything else, lay the issues of the men’s choice.” {*} It needs little imagination to lift, as it were, the roofs off a hundred homes,
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THE NEW SCARLET LETTER
THE NEW SCARLET LETTER
It is brave in a man to face death on the battlefield, instantaneous death, or, what is worse, death after long suffering, after lying between trenches, perhaps, on the “no-man’s ground” which neither friend nor foe can reach, grasping the earth in agony, seeing the dark night coming on, and then dying in the cold shiver of the dawn. Yes, it is brave in a man to face death like that. But perhaps it is even braver in a woman to face life, with three or four fatherless children to provide for, on
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AND... AFTER?
AND... AFTER?
Such is the drama of the war as I have seen it. How far it has gone, when it will close and the curtain fall on it none of us can say. With five millions already dead, twice as many wounded, one kingdom in ruins, another desolate from disease, the larger part of Europe under arms, civil life paralysed, social existence overshadowed by a mourning that enters into nearly every household; with a war still in progress compared with which all other wars sink into insignificance; with a public debt wh
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WAR’S SPIRITUAL COMPENSATIONS
WAR’S SPIRITUAL COMPENSATIONS
But, thank God, there is another side to the picture, both for young and old. If we are to be poorer we shall be more free. If we are to be weak and faint from loss of blood we shall rest at night without dread of that shadow of the sword which has darkened the sleep of humanity for forty years. If the countries of our enemies are to be closed to some of us in the future, the countries of our Allies will be more than ever open; nay, they will be almost the same to us as our own. France will be o
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LET US PRAY FOR VICTORY
LET US PRAY FOR VICTORY
“It is good to pray for peace, but it is better to pray for justice. It is better to pray for liberty. It is better to pray for the triumph of the right, for the victory of human freedom.” {*} Then let us pray for victory over our enemies, having no qualms, no shame, and no remorse. We know that Christ pronounced a death sentence on war, and that as soon as Christianity shall have established an ascendancy war will cease. But if anybody tells us in the meantime that by Christ’s law we are to sta
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