Chapter 11
JANE ELLEN HARRISON, sometime Fellow and Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge University; writer of many standard works on cla.s.sical religion, literature, and life.
ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS, (ANTHONY HOPE,) author of popular historical romance and sketches of modern society, including "The Prisoner of Zenda."
MAURICE HEWLETT, poet and romantic novelist, author of "Earthworks Out of Tuscany" and other mediaeval tales.
ROBERT HICHENS, novelist, author of "The Garden of Allah," "Bella Donna," and other stories.
JEROME K. JEROME, humorist, famous for "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow"
and the "Three Men" series, and for his play "The Pa.s.sing of the Third Floor Back."
HENRY ARTHUR JONES, dramatist, author of "The Silver King," "The Hypocrites," and other plays.
RUDYARD KIPLING needs no introduction to people who read the English language.
WILLIAM J. LOCKE, author of "The Morals of Marcus," "Septimus," and "The Beloved Vagabond," which have been made into successful plays.
EDWARD VERRAL LUCAS, a.s.sociate editor of Punch and editor of several popular anthologies, author of "A Wanderer in Holland."
JOHN WILLIAM MACKAIL, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, author and editor of many volumes dealing with ancient Greek and Roman literature.
JOHN MASEFIELD, known chiefly for his long poems of life among the British poor.
ALFRED EDWARD WOODLEY MASON, writer of romantic novels, of which "The Four Feathers" and "The Turnstile" are perhaps the best known, and of several popular dramas.
GILBERT MURRAY, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University since 1908, editor and translator of Greek cla.s.sics, perhaps the greatest Greek scholar now living.
HENRY NEWBOLT, "laureate of the British Navy," author of "Drake's Drum"
and many other songs.
BARRY PAIN, author of "Eliza" and other novels and short stories of adventure, of many well-known parodies and poems.
SIR GILBERT PARKER, of Canadian birth, poet and author of romantic novels, including "The Judgment House," and "The Right of Way."
EDEN PHILLPOTTS, realistic novelist, noted for his exact portraits of the English rustic, author of "Down Dartmoor Way."
SIR ARTHUR WING PINERO, one of the most popular of living dramatists.
His plays include "Sweet Lavender" and "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray."
SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University, poet, novelist, and writer of short stories.
SIR OWEN SEAMAN, since 1906 editor of Punch, writer of parodies and light verse.
GEORGE R. SIMS, journalist, poet, and author of many popular dramas, including "The Lights of London," "Two Little Vagabonds," and "Harbour Lights."
MAY SINCLAIR, writer of novels dealing with modern moral problems, "The Divine Fire" and "The Combined Maze" being best known.
FLORA ANNIE STEEL, author of "Tales from the Punjab," "On the Face of the Waters," "A Prince of Dreamers," and other novels and short stories, most of which deal with life in India.
ALFRED SUTRO, dramatist, author of "The Walls of Jericho," "The Barrier," and other plays of modern society."
GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; author of "England Under the Stuarts," and other historical and biographical works.
RT. HON. GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN, historian, biographer of Macaulay, and author of a four-volume work on the American Revolution.
HUMPHRY WARD, journalist and author, sometime Fellow of Brasenose College, editor of several biographical and historical works.
MARY A. WARD, (Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD,) best known of contemporary women novelists; her first success was "Robert Elsmere."
H.G. WELLS, novelist, author of "Tono Bungay" and "Ann Veronica."
MARGARET L. WOODS, poet; her "Wild Justice" and "The Invader" have placed her in the front rank.
ISRAEL ZANGWILL, novelist, poet, dramatist, interpreter of the modern Jewish spirit.
*The Fourth of August--Europe at War*
*By H.G. Wells.*
_Copyright_, 1914, _by The New York Times Company_.
Europe is at war!
The monstrous vanity that was begotten by the easy victories of '70 and '71 has challenged the world, and Germany prepares to reap the harvest Bismarck sowed. That trampling, drilling foolery in the heart of Europe, that has arrested civilization and darkened the hopes of mankind for forty years. German imperialism, German militarism, has struck its inevitable blow. The victory of Germany will mean the permanent enthronement of the War G.o.d over all human affairs. The defeat of Germany may open the way to disarmament and peace throughout the earth.
To those who love peace there can be no other hope in the present conflict than the defeat, the utter discrediting of the German legend, the ending for good and all of the blood and iron superst.i.tion, of Krupp, flag-wagging Teutonic Kiplingism, and all that criminal, sham efficiency that centres in Berlin. Never was war so righteous as war against Germany now. Never has any State in the world so clamored for punishment.
But be it remembered that Europe's quarrel is with the
Disaster to the German Army, if it is unaccompanied by any such memorable wrong as dismemberment or intolerable indignity, will mean the restoration of the greatest people in Europe to the fellows.h.i.+p of Western nations. The role of England in this huge struggle is plain as daylight. We have to fight. If only on account of the Luxemburg outrage, we have to fight. If we do not fight, England will cease to be a country to be proud of; it will be a dirt-bath to escape from. But it is inconceivable that we should not fight. And having fought, then in the hour of victory it will be for us to save the liberated Germans from vindictive treatment, to secure for this great people their right, as one united German-speaking State, to a place in the sun.
First we have to save ourselves and Europe, and then we have to stand between German on the one hand and the Cossack and revenge on the other.
For my own part, I do not doubt that Germany and Austria are doomed to defeat in this war. It may not be catastrophic defeat, though even that is possible, but it is defeat. There is no destiny in the stars and every sign is false if this is not so.
They have provoked an overwhelming combination of enemies. They have underrated France. They are hampered by a bad social and military tradition. The German is not naturally a good soldier; he is orderly and obedient, but he is not nimble nor quick-witted; since his sole considerable military achievement, his not very lengthy march to Paris in '70 and '71, the conditions of modern warfare have been almost completely revolutionized and in a direction that subordinates the ma.s.sed fighting of unintelligent men to the rapid initiative of individualized soldiers. And, on the other hand, since those years of disaster, the Frenchman has learned the lesson of humility; he is prepared now sombrely for a sombre struggle; his is the gravity that precedes astonis.h.i.+ng victories. In the air, in the open field, with guns and machines, it is doubtful if any one fully realizes the superiority of his quality to the German. This sudden attack may take him aback for a week or so, though I doubt even that, but in the end I think he will hold his own; even without us he will hold his own, and with us then I venture to prophesy that within three months from now his tricolor will be over the Rhine. And even suppose his line gets broken by the first rush. Even then I do not see how the Germans are to get to Paris or anywhere near Paris. I do not see how against the strength of the modern defensive and the stinging power of an intelligent enemy in retreat, of which we had a little foretaste in South Africa, the exploit of Sedan can be repeated. A retiring German army, on the other hand, will be far less formidable than a retiring French army, because it has less "devil"
in it, because it is made up of men taught to obey in ma.s.ses, because its intelligence is concentrated in its aristocratic officers, because it is dismayed when it breaks ranks. The German Army is everything the conscriptionists dreamed of making our people; it is, in fact, an army about twenty years behind the requirements of contemporary conditions.
On the eastern frontier the issue is more doubtful because of the uncertainty of Russian things. The peculiar military strength of Russia, a strength it was not able to display in Manchuria, lies in its vast resources of mounted men. A set invasion of Prussia may be a matter of many weeks, but the raiding possibilities in Eastern Germany are enormous. It is difficult to guess how far the Russian attack will be guided by intelligence, and how far Russia will blunder, but Russia will have to blunder very disastrously indeed before she can be put upon the defensive. A Russian raid is far more likely to threaten Berlin than a German to reach Paris.
Meanwhile there is the struggle on the sea. In that I am prepared for some rude shocks. The Germans have devoted an amount of energy to the creation of an aggressive navy that would have been spent more wisely in consolidating their European position. It is probably a thoroughly good navy and s.h.i.+p for s.h.i.+p the equal of our own. But the same lack of invention, the same relative uncreativeness that has kept the German behind the Frenchman in things aerial has made him, regardless of his shallow seas, follow our lead in naval matters, and if we have erred, and I believe we have erred, in overrating the importance of the big battles.h.i.+p, the German has at least very obligingly fallen in with our error. The safest, most effective place for the German fleet at the present time is the Baltic Sea. On this side of the Kiel Ca.n.a.l, unless I overrate the powers of the waterplane, there is no safe harbor for it.
If it goes into port anywhere that port can be ruined, and the bottled-up s.h.i.+ps can be destroyed at leisure by aerial bombs. So that if they are on this side of the Kiel Ca.n.a.l they must keep the sea and fight, if we let them, before their coal runs short. Battle in the open sea in this case is their only chance. They will fight against odds, and with every prospect of a smas.h.i.+ng, albeit we shall certainly have to pay for that victory in s.h.i.+ps and men. In the Baltic we shall not be able to get at them without the partic.i.p.ation of Denmark, and they may have a considerable use against Russia. But in the end even there mine and aeroplane and destroyer should do their work.
So I reckon that Germany will be held east and west, and that she will get her fleet practically destroyed. We ought also to be able to sweep her s.h.i.+pping off the seas, and lower her flag forever in Africa and Asia and the Pacific. All the probabilities, it seems to me, point to that.
There is no reason why Italy should not stick to her present neutrality, and there is considerable inducement close at hand for both Denmark and j.a.pan to join in, directly they are convinced of the failure of the first big rush on the part of Germany. All these issues will be more or less definitely decided within the next two or three months. By that time I believe German imperialism will be shattered, and it may be possible to antic.i.p.ate the end of the armaments phase of European history. France, Italy, England, and all the smaller powers of Europe are now pacific countries; Russia, after this huge war, will be too exhausted for further adventure; a shattered Germany will be a revolutionary Germany, as sick of uniforms and the imperialist idea as France was in 1871, as disillusioned about predominance as Bulgaria is today. The way will be open at last for all these western powers to organize peace. That is why I, with my declared horror of war, have not signed any of these "stop-the-war" appeals and declarations that have appeared in the last few days. Every sword that is drawn against Germany now is a sword drawn for peace.