D 525 .C69 Copy 1 ie Significance of e Great War Issued by The Victorian Club of Boston Copies may be had from the Secretary 12 Pearl St., Boston, Mass. The Significance of The Great War A Speech before the Victorian Club of Boston on 8th October, 1914 By Ralph Adams Cram Litt.D. F.A.I.A. F.R.G.S. " Christianity — and this is its highest merit — has in some degree softened, but it could not destroy, the brutal German joy of battle. When once the taming talisman, the Cross, breaks in tivo, the savagery of the old fighters, the senseless Berserker fury of which the northern poets sing and say so much, will gush up anew. That talisman is decayed, and the day will come when it will piteously collapse. Then the old stone gods 'will rise from the silent ruins, and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes. Thor, with his giant" s hammer, will at last spring up, and shatter to bits the Gothic cathedrals. ' ' Heinrich Heine. Issued by The Victorian Club of Boston 1914 rg The Significance of the Great War Mr. President and Members of the Vic- torian Club: When the last accounts are made up of this War of Wars, and high honour is measured out as well as eternal dishonour, there will be enough of each for every nation to receive its due share, but to two nations will be accorded honour in a very singular degree, and you, gentlemen, will justify me in naming Belgium first and Great Britain second. It would be impossible for me adequately to express my deep appreciation of the fact that you of this second greatly distinguished people give me the privilege of speaking to you tonight, for in a very real sense the Victorian Club is the official representative in Boston of the English people, and in speaking to you I speak to them, a task for which I am most indiffer- ently fitted. When I consider the title of my talk to you tonight I realize that, were I to deal with the subject as I might, I should be guilty of false [3] pretenses. There are many points of view from which I might regard the question. I might deal with it in the light of diplomacy, tracing the tortuous and sinister scheming of European chancelleries through the second Balkan War to the first of that name, and so, step by step, to the Treaty of Berlin, the Franco- Prussian War, the Partition of Poland, the wars of Frederick the Great and the Spanish Succession; through the personalities of Bis- marck, Disraeli, Metternich, Frederick, Mazarin, Richelieu, to Macchiavelli, where they centre at last in dishonourable focus. I might consider it from a dynastic stand- point, narrating the rise of the houses of Hohenzollern and Hapsburg, Romanoff and Bonaparte, and the endless convolutions of personal and family intrigue; or from that of politics, with the growth of a new democracy and constitutional monarchy in bitter contest with that absolutism that was the product of the Renaissance; or from that of race, with its conflict of Latin and Teuton, and Anglo-Saxon and Slav. I might deal with it on the basis of economic factors, noting the recent incredible develop- ment of "labour-saving" machines, with its resulting over-production; the widening and aggrandizement of trade; the increase of popu- lation and material wealth; the development [4] of the colonial system with, in the latter cate- gory, the virtual defeat of the Teuton at every turn. In each of these considerations, I should lack that exact knowledge necessary to justification, but I propose to approach the subject from a wholly different quarter, for while all the ele- ments I have named are contributory to the final catastrophe, not one is fundamental, nor are all when taken together. Behind lies something that has made this war unique, something that differentiates it from all other wars, so that even those nations not as yet in- volved are in eager sympathy with the Allies. Why is it that in one week universal peace has given place to universal war, where old alliances are broken, old animosities buried, old prejudices forgotten, and a world rallies to arms against two empires? Belgium did not stand for a technicality when she defied the hordes of the War Lord who was to be to her Attila in all his savagery; France did not rush to arms to regain her lost provinces; Russia is not fighting for Slav supremacy; England did not rise to defend her colonial markets, nor is it fear of loss of trade that is fast rousing the rest of the world to a point that will soon brook no further control. If these considerations have played a part, as they may, in the councils of Governments, they are negligible features in (si the great uprising that has spread in the West, from Belgium through France and Great Britain, and is finding its echoes in distant empires and in the islands of the sea. Suddenly, and like a nightmare transforma- tion, a veil fell, and all the world knew it faced an economic peril, indeed, but also an evil and an awful thing that meant the down- fall of such civilization as we have retained. For very long we have lived in a "fool's paradise." Our inconceivable discoveries and triumphs in natural science, the astounding industrial and mechanical devices that have made the last century and this a wonder in history, our unprecedented increase in visible wealth and in luxury of living, with a brilliant and plausible philosophy universally accepted and justifying it all, have had issue in that Gospel of Efficiency linked to a cancerous and ingrowing self-sufficiency that has blinded the world to the actual conditions that exist. And all the while and in all nations religion was either ignored or savagely assailed, education was ruthlessly secularized and severed from all ethical considerations, and morality was cast out of business and political relations to such a degree that men eagerly engaged in conduct from which a Parisian Apache or a dweller in Whitechapel would turn with disgust as beneath his elementary standards of personal honour. [6] It was a "fool's paradise," and as we believed in our unchallenged supremacy, so we denied that any power in heaven or hell or on earth could shake it by war or revolution. Socialism, threatening reform in methods, but based on an identical glorification of purely material things, asserted that the proletariat, at last come into its own, would veto any action towards war; finance, with its network of tentacles ramifying through Europe and America and exerting a control it piously denied over governments and over the very question of peace and war, gave assurance that without its consent war would never happen again; while millionaires and pacificists, build- ing Peace Palaces and organizing Peace Foun- dations and Peace Congresses, roundly declared that the end of war was at hand. And all the while our widespread charity and philanthropy and our popular mania for social service gave colour to the smug preten- sions of evolutionary philosophy that, in ac- cordance with the "laws" of the survival of the fittest, and progressive evolution, and the ascent of man, the world had now reached a point in its progress so immeasurably above anything recorded in past history that those same barbarous acts that were not inconsistent with Medievalism or Antiquity were no longer possible. [73 It was inevitable that all this, for our blind and ignorant folly, should somewhere find its culmination. You cannot initiate or acquiesce in a definite course of development, giving it free rein, without this result. Nor were we without sufficient evidence where this was taking place; the sequence, Treitschke, Nietzsche, von Bernhardi, combined with the military cabal that has been supreme for a genera- tion, could only have issue in that Pan-Ger- manism that has just thrown off its mask in these latter days. When the Kaiser dismissed von Bismarck the act indicated one of two things; either that he proposed to reverse the historic policy of "Blood and Iron," estab- lishing for his country and for Europe a lasting peace, or that he had determined on a course of procedure towards ultimate Teutonic suprem- acy to which even the unscrupulous Chancellor would not submit. Was there any man then who believed the first alternative was the cor- rect one? Is there any man here tonight who believes that for a moment the Kaiser con- templated this pacific course, even in spite of the long years of peace he imposed on Europe while the blow was being prepared? No. If we had eyes to see, eyes not purblind with self-conceit, we should have known a generation ago that the culmination of our consistent course for four centuries would take [8 ] place in Prussia, and that when the proper moment came that power would strike for European dominion and then for world control. The moment came, and never in history was there a time when so many things occurred simultaneously to lead to a certain course. The Kiel Canal, which at a stroke doubled the offensive power of the German navy, was opened; the reorganization of the Russian army, begun after the Japanese war, was not yet completed; the French army had been declared in the Chamber of Deputies to be in a most ineffective condition, and this allega- tion was admitted by the Ministry of War itself; England was supposed to be on the very brink of civil war, while the Balkan Alliance, engi- neered in the beginning by Germany to pull its chestnuts from the Moslem fire, but out of hand in the end, to the dismay of Teuton diplomacy, had been destroyed by the second Balkan War, which was Germany's masterly counter-check to developments she had little anticipated. On the other hand Germany was fully pre- pared, as she had been at any time during the past ten years. Austria was as ready as could ever be hoped, while whatever was to be done must be done before the death of Franz Joseph. Italy was securely bound to the Triple Alliance, Belgium did not count anyway, and [9l the United States had its hands full in Mexico. If ever, the stroke must come now, and from the standpoint of the controlling influence in Teutonic councils, the murder of the Arch- duke of Austria and his wife was the most providential thing that could have happened. The plan was a knife in the back for France by means of a violation of Belgian neutrality and a dash through its territories, the capture of Paris, the driving of the French armies south where Italy could take them in the rear, then a quick change of front to crush Russia, held in temporary check by Austria who also was to silence and intimidate the Balkans. What lay behind this? Nothing less than the effective control of Europe through the annexing of Belgium and Holland, Russian Poland, the Baltic Provinces and possibly Denmark. With the death of Franz Joseph Austria-Hungary was to be assimilated, while the Balkans were to be seized and an outlet to the iEgean obtained and also a through line to the Persian Gulf. Such French colonies were to be taken over as were useful, and British colonies also, if Great Britain came into the war, or shortly thereafter if she did not. In a word the end aimed at was the crushing of the British Empire and France and the driving of Russia back into Asia. It was a dream of empire such as appeals to [ 10 1 the parvenu, to Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Prussia: for Prussia is essentially parvenu, with no ancient history, no cultural tradition comparable with those of the nations that surround her and, in the south, extend the German Empire and make up that of Austria-Hungary ; and the heart of this Sa- tanic dream was material supremacy founded on force and the denial of abstract right and wrong. And here let me emphasize one point. In trying to bring home to one agency the cause of a damnable war, I try always to say Prussia rather than Germany. Against the Germans in the large sense the world has no enmity, for as a race they are a great and a noble people. I know from several sources, each of them so high that they can neither be questioned nor quoted, that Bavaria, Saxony, Wurttemberg and Baden were, through the great majority of their people, bitterly opposed to the Kaiser in his determination to wage this war. Between the Catholic Germany of the south and the Lutheran-agnostic Prussia of the north, there is a gulf never wholly closed since the enforced union at Versailles, and now daily growing wider. The common enemy is not the kindly, pious, industrious German; it is the militar- philosophical Prussian, concentrated in the cabal at Berlin, with its lieutenant in Vienna, In] that has been fostered by Kaiser Wilhelm, if not created by him. Now, when the veil fell, there came on all nations a great fear, not alone for their lives and their trade and their wealth, but more than all because they saw that the whole world was threatened with the reign of Anti- christ and the armies now assembling for Armageddon. On the one side were all the powers of a godless materialism, on the other all those forces that were ready to rise up in defense of Christian society. And the skirts of no nation were clean; what they saw they themselves had helped to build. In so far as England and France and Italy and America had forgotten honesty in their business dealings, had abandoned high ideals in developing their finance, manufacture and trade, had perjured themselves through cynical diplomacy, had degraded education to an empty intellectualism, and built hospitals and libraries and churches to hide their denial of Christianity and honour and decent morals, they had been guilty, and in equal measure, with Austria and Prussia. In a flash of reveal- ing light they saw the pit they had digged and they turned — some of them — from their blind stumbling, and rose up, heroically and unself- ishly, to do battle against the common enemy, even at the eleventh hour. [12] I am far from denying that material con- siderations have entered in to play their part in determining action. Undoubtedly so far as the Governments of Russia and France and Great Britain are concerned they did do so, as they should, though I doubt if these alone would have been sufficient. As Chesterton has so well said, however, in speaking of England's defense of Belgium, "Surely it cannot be more wicked to keep your word for selfish reasons than it is to break your word for selfish reasons . . . even if it were true that Germany acted from the high, sincere motive of forcing all human beings to sit out a play by Sudermann, or that England acted from the low, selfish motive of protecting the English ports." In any case, no question of ports or trade was the sufficient cause for the universal up- rising in every quarter of the globe on the part of the people themselves, that astonishing phenomenon so like the earliest Crusades. Nothing less than what may well be a divine revelation to all tongues and all peoples of the real significance of the War can explain this great rising of men for united battle against an enemy whose nature is clearly perceived. And we must rejoice — that is a strange word to use — we must be grateful in a sense, that [13] the methods of warfare thus far pursued by the new Attila and his Huns are consonant with their cause, since they remove the last lingering doubt. We are warned not to believe the stories of Prussian atrocities, but there is no denial that Germany tried to bribe Belgium and England and Spain with the prospective plunder of their allies and defenders; there is no denial — there is frank avowal — that Germany broke her solemn treaty with a little State, calling it "only a scrap of paper" in order that she might garrote another nation who had left herself comparatively defenseless along these neutral frontiers, confiding in their neutrality; there is no denial that Germany solemnly reassured Belgium even while the armies were in motion that were to violate her frontiers; there is no denial that German air- ships are dropping death and mutilation on the old men, women and children in cities far from the firing line; there is no denial that for one shot from a non-combatant in an occupied town, driven mad by insult and outrage, hun- dreds of innocent citizens are lined up against walls and killed in cold blood; there is no denial that whole cities are looted and burned in revenge, and that the Catholic University of Louvain was given to the flames with all its treasures, or that Rheims, the wonder of the world, with Red Cross flags on its towers, and [14] its nave full of wounded Germans and French nurses, was shelled for days and reduced to a hopeless and pitiful ruin. And further — I received yesterday morn- ing from the Duke of Argyle a letter in which he says that already little Belgian children are being received and adopted in England, whose arms and hands have been sawed and cut off, so that they at least, if they live, shall never fight for their homes or their country. This talk about discrediting all stories of German cruelty is mawkish sentiment; already the evidence is overwhelming, and we know that the policy of positive force and negative morals is working itself out through logical and consistent methods, and at the same moment justifying itself by a cynical and antichristian philosophy. As Pope Pius IX said at the fall of Rome, "It is the work of the devil, but God will turn it into a blessing. ,, Out of this welter of carnage, cruelty and apostacy will come utter world-weariness and international bankruptcy, but after these things will follow a new sal- vation. Victory will in the end follow the Allies, for unrighteousness never endures but for a season. The day has come, "The Day" so often toasted in Prussian military circles; its dawn is very like what was anticipated, but its close will be very different. And after? We [I5l cannot go back, we must go forward. You — I wish I could say we — are waging a war whose driving force is righteousness, and any going back on that is now unthinkable. There can be no issue of this war except unconditional surrender of the enemy, and any man who talks at this time of peace on the basis of the status quo, or on any other basis except that of unconditional surrender, is guilty of treason against civilization. And when, after a few weeks, or months, or years, or a generation if necessary, this end is achieved, there will come a new condition of life so different to the last as to form almost a new dispensation. We have learned our lesson in blood and tears, and as I say, we cannot go back. Once more Christian morals will become operative in the affairs of estates and nations of men, with a new standard of comparative values, a new sense of honour that is also the old. In politics, in manufacture, in trade, in conduct of life, we shall find again our lost ideals, and though we can hope for no golden age — for men are always men and social evolution only a lie — we at least can look forward to a condition of things at least more consonant with our verbal pretensions, more worthy of comparison with the best that man has achieved in the past. And in all these changes there is none I think that will be more [16] profound, as there will be none more significant, than the restoration of religion once more as the underlying, controlling and directing ele- ment in human life. When at last all is accomplished and the Council of Kings sits in Berlin for the settle- ment of the affairs of Europe, it will be directed by a very different spirit to that which pre- vailed at the former Convention of Berlin when for the last time Macchiavelli sat supreme in the persons of Bismarck and Disraeli. In the making of the new map of Europe and safe- guarding it for years to come, the controlling considerations will be founded on racial and religious foundations. Apart from life, liberty and the right to work, there are few of what are carelessly called "natural rights," but amongst these is certainly that of men to de- termine their governmental units on the basis of legitimate racial aspirations and religious affiliations. At present many of the great empires are such because of a complete denial of these principles, but I believe that the day of these great empires is nearly at an end, and in their place will come many small and in- dependent states with their integrity guaran- teed, not by ephemeral "Alliances" and "Ententes," but by international agreements that will make aggression on the part of one nation against another an ipso facto declara- [17] tion of war against all the others. With this must go some universal agreement that will reduce armaments to a point where that of each state shall bear a definite ratio to popula- tion or revenue and be sufficient only to assure internal order. What will be the aspect of the new Europe under these conditions? Let me outline my own vision, since there is nothing more absorb- ing than prediction before the event. In the east, Russian, Prussian and Austrian Poland, with Dantzic and eastern Pomerania, are reunited, made independent, and the Kingdom of Poland lives again. Think what this means, to say once more "the Kingdom of Poland!" It brings a thrill of exultation novel and unexampled. The action of Russia in voluntarily promising autonomy to such a state establishes a new principle in statecraft, and gives a new hope for the future. East Prussia, with the Baltic Provinces, German to a great extent, will form a new kingdom over which Russia is suzerain, and Finland will have the same treatment. On the west, Alsace and Lorrarine return to France; Schleswig is given back to Denmark, with the Kiel Canal, which is neutralized; Luxemburg is doubled in territory by accessions to the west, while Belgium, in formal recognition of her immortal heroism and in compensation for her terrible [ i8 1 sorrows, acquires all the German lands as far as the Rhine and the Moselle, the remainder of Germany south of these rivers, determining for itself whether it shall be joined to Belgium or France, or become independent as a restored Palatinate; Bavaria, Saxony, Wurttemberg and Baden are constituted a new Germanic state, closely united both racially and reli- giously, and north Germany, with the exception of Silesia, becomes Prussia again, under its own king, and the name of " Germany" is removed from the map. So, also, the name " Austria-Hungary' ' ceases to exist, Bohemia and Moravia become a new Kingdom of Bohemia — or rather the ancient Kingdom restored to life — German and Aus- trian Silesia being given the option of uniting themselves to Poland, Bohemia or Prussia, or be- coming independent. Hungary cedes the Rou- manian portions of Transylvania to Roumania and is made independent, while the Tyrol determines for itself whether it shall be an- nexed to Bavaria, or Switzerland, or whether it will remain under the Austrian crown, and Croatia and Slavonia are given similar liberty of choice as between Hungary, Austria, Servia or independence. Upper and lower Austria, with Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, become the new Austrian Kingdom. Italy regains the Trentino, Trieste and Istria, while Bosnia [19] goes to Servia and Herzegovina to Monte- negro, together with southern Dalmatia. In the Balkans, the thoroughly bad Treaty of Bucharest is disregarded. Montenegro gains Scutari, Servia nothern Albania, Greece southern Albania, Bulgaria Adrianople, with the strip ceded to Roumania, while the fron- tiers between her and Servia and Greece are rectified with fuller regard to race, language and religion. Gentlemen ask why I do not speak of Con- stantinople: the answer is because this involves the question of Russia also, and I confess the problem is so complicated that even I shrink from an attempted solution. I will say this, however; Russia, for her part in this war, deserves far more than that indemnity in cash she will exact from the enemy, particularly if she carries out her promise to reconstitute Poland on an autonomous basis, as of course she will, and possibly extend this to actual independence. On the basis we have estab- lished of the racial and religious rights of peoples, she could not claim further European territory — why then should she not have Constantinople, with Trebizond, and rever- sionary rights over Asia Minor as the Moslem power slowly dies away? I assume that in any case the Bosporus will be neutralized, but for my own part I cannot now see why Con- [20] stantinople should not be given into her hands. I know that it has long been a superstition in England that Russian control of the Bos- porus meant England's ruin, but, gentlemen, England no longer has anything to fear in this direction. One more point. You will have noticed that I have consistently spoken of new kingdoms, with no reference to the possibility of new re- publics. It seems to me that there is nothing more amazing in connection with this war than the persistent efforts of individuals and news- papers to discover false motives underlying it. One of the most egregious of these is the theory that it is in some way a great conflict between democracy and monarchy, and that the result will be the overthrow of the last of the kings in Europe and the establishing of universal republics. There is nothing in the past or the present to give the slightest basis for this assumption; the republican tendency in Europe has been growing weaker and weaker for half a century and is no longer to be reckoned with. The strange superstition that democracies guarantee justice, prosperity, good govern- ment and peace, while monarchies assure op- pression, poverty, corruption and war, is one of these mad phenomena that alleviated the general dullness of the XlXth century. There is no governmental system that is sacrosanct: [21 ] a republic is good if well administrated, a monarchy good under the same conditions. In the system itself there is nothing whatever to guarantee results that are either one or the other. One would think that it would only be necessary for those who hold otherwise to look across the Rio Grande, now or at any time in the past, and for any distance, to find the conclusive negation of their postulates — so far at least as democratic government is concerned. Mr. President and gentlemen, the year 1914 is the most fatal year since the fall of Rome. Civilization is being sifted as wheat, and into the chaff is going much that we have been taught to look on as precious grain. The world is offered the Great Choice: what is to be its answer? If we choose as Prussia has chosen, and Austria, then this civilization is at an end and before us looms a new epoch of Dark Ages. If on the other hand we choose as Belgium has chosen, and Great Britain, and Russia and France, then we achieve a new salvation and before us opens an era of true enlightenment and of Christian living. Is there any doubt as to what the choice will be? Mr. President and gentlemen, it is hard to be neutral even if one's President, under earlier and quite different conditions, solemnly asked for such neutrality. In my own mind there is [22] a lingering suspicion that I myself have not wholly succeeded in preserving this judicial attitude. Gentlemen, I do not care! There is more at stake than the formalities of a stereo- typed diplomacy: your battle is our battle, and at last we are coming to realize the fact. I would avoid overt violation of the laws of neutrality, but this I will say. We want peace; peace with honour and jus- tice, and peace that shall be a fact not a phrase, and we want it as soon as possible in order that this ghastly slaughter, this carnival of sacrilege and spoliation, may come to an end before it is too late and international bankruptcy com- pletes the work of international catastrophe. Unless we can patiently look forward to a war of years, with endless disappointments and reverses in its course and with red ruin at the end, the world must unite against the common enemy. I wish from the bottom of my heart that the United States would say to Italy and Spain, "We ask you, on a certain date, to unite with us in a declaration of war, jointly and severally, against the Empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary, in order that the war may be brought to an end, and peace restored on a basis of stability and permanence." And I will say this further. If this is not done, and, which God forbid, the fortunes of war turn against the Allies, we, alone or in [23] concert with all Europe, shall be forced to join unhesitatingly with you in defense of our common heritage. God save King George and his allies; give to their military and naval forces the final victory, and to the world an enduring peace! 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