Chapter 8
The consequence of this is that whereas Italy and the United States and other powers having a similar status can, subject to the risk of attack from an affronted belligerent, please themselves whether or not they condone a violation of their neutrality, Belgium and the other neutralized States cannot condone such violation, but must either resist all breaches of their neutrality or surrender their right to existence.
And further a neutralized State, putting faith in the treaty that guarantees its existence and its neutrality, refrains naturally from that preparation for war which would be deemed necessary in the absence of such a treaty.
There is no such thing as the "right of way" through neutralized Belgium which Mr. Shaw claims on behalf of belligerent Germany. Far from exercising a right of way Germany has violently committed a trespa.s.s, offering a German promise, a mere "sc.r.a.p of paper," as reparation. "A right of way," argues Bernard Shaw, "is not a right of conquest"; but the truth is that in pa.s.sing through Belgium Germany a.s.sumed dominion over Belgium, which dominion she has since formally a.s.serted and is seeking forcibly to maintain.
*A New Shavian Theory.*
No comprehension does Mr. Shaw display of the hurt to the Belgians'
sense of honor involved in Germany's use of their territory for purposes hostile to their friendly neighbor, France. To be forced into injuring a friend is an outrage, indeed, and Mr. Shaw surely knows too much of matters military to be unaware that to permit a right of way to one combatant amounts to making an attack upon the other, and that Germany, by the very fact of crossing Belgium soil, was forcing Belgium to be the enemy of France. Only by their great heroism were the Belgians able to escape this infamy that had been planned for them.
To be conquered does not really matter! There we have another Shavian theory. How grateful would the would-be world-ruling Kaiser feel to Mr.
Shaw were he to succeed in inoculating the peoples of Europe and of America with that theory! So would the task of putting the peoples under the German yoke (otherwise known as German culture) be made easier--and cheaper. But the spirit of national freedom, which is as precious to humanity as is the spirit of individual freedom, cannot be driven out by words any more than it can be driven out by blows. The most unlettered Belgian soldier, fighting for a truth that is at the very heart and depth of all things true, puts the mere wordmonger to shame.
That Great Britain does not fight only for Belgium is certainly a fact, though Belgium's plight alone would have been enough to bring us into the conflict. We fight also for France, because she is wrongfully attacked, and because she is by her civilization and culture one of the world's treasures. We fight for the all-sufficient reason of self-defense.
There is the case for Britain, and despite his special pleading for Germany, Mr. Shaw can show no flaw in it. He does say, however, that the British Government, instead of first seeking a mild way of preserving peace, ought to have said point blank to Germany: "If you attack France we shall attack you." I also think that such a declaration would have been the right one. To me and to many others the thought that our country might stand by and watch inactively an attack upon France was intolerable. Great was our relief when this apprehension was removed by the British Government's declaration of war. Why did not the British Government say to Germany before the war cloud burst that Britain would fight to defend France, and why did the Government delay so long in declaring war? Mr. Shaw does not give the reason, but I will give it.
It was that the Government feared opposition to our entering into the war would come from a Radico-Socialist literary clique in London, from a section of the Liberal press, and from certain Liberal and Labor politicians who had been deceived by German professors and other missionaries of the Kaiser into thinking the German peril did not exist.
When Belgium was invaded most of these misguided ones were unable to cling any longer to their "keep out of it" policy, and then the Government felt free to act. Yet the Government need not have waited, because with the facts before them the people as a whole would perfectly have understood the necessity of fighting even had Belgium not been invaded.
Henceforward the general public must be kept informed of what is happening in the international world.
Now, although undue diplomatic secrecy, always wrong, will be especially wrong when the terms of peace come to be made, sentimentality will certainly be more mischievous still. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Bernard Shaw's writings on the war are intended as an appeal to sentimentality--an appeal that Germany at the close of the war shall have treatment which, by being more than just to her, would be less than just to the countries whom she has attacked, and would mean a recurrence of this appalling war in after years.
Before the war specious words were used to cloak the German policy of aggression which has plunged the world in horror and is martyrizing peoples. In view of the coming victory of the Allies, the same tactics will be adopted by the German militarists, and it behooves Bernard Shaw to beware lest even without intent he serve as their tool. Men such as he who believe that while they can never be in the wrong, their country can never be in the right, are just the men who are in danger of stumbling at this time.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRISTABEL PANKHURST.
_Photo (C) by Underwood & Underwood._
_See Page 68_]
[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES M. BARRIE. _See Page 100_]
*Comment by Readers of Shaw*
*Shaw Has Made Minister von Jagow's Remark on a "Sc.r.a.p of Paper"
Understandable.*
_To the Editor of The New York Times_:
Most hearty thanks for that masterly "common-sense" article of Bernard Shaw. How clearly he expresses the much that many of us have felt way down inside and have not been able to formulate even to ourselves!
He has made at least one woman--and one of German parentage at that--understand what reams of public and private communications from all over the Fatherland could not make clear: just why the blunt, impetuous, shocked, and astounded Kaiser dared give utterance to that disgraceful "sc.r.a.p of paper" remark--inexcusable but also very understandable in the light of his knowledge of and confidence in a more astute miscreant; why France and Germany have always considered England more or less of a Tartuffe and a "Scheinheilige" (one who seems holy); and why every German--man, woman and child--so execrates Sir Edward Grey and colleagues.
Nothing in all the sickening present conditions, the future long-lasting woe and misery, the barbarous neutrality violations has so made me blush for my mother's country as the "sc.r.a.p of paper" incident; and it has been most bitter to listen to the extravagant, fantastic eulogies on England, with which we've been so favored without feeling honestly able to make any excuses whatever for Germany.
But now--thanks to that article--I can understand what I may not condone, and, though abhorring the Kaiser and my mother's compatriots for their share in that horror going on abroad, I can also pity the hot-headed, imperfect mere man going to war under a carefully incited and fostered misapprehension, and need no longer glorify the cool-headed, sapient policy which so cleverly duped ruler and people.
Not since the war began have I felt so undepressed, so free to sympathize where I so love, so free from having to commend those for whom I feel no love whatever. For all of which accept the warmest thanks of
KATE HUDSON.
New York, Nov. 17.
*Shaw Article Work of "Farceur."*
_To the Editor of The New York Times_:
"Common sense and Shaw!" Shaw begins his article by saying, "I am giving my views for what they are worth, with a malicious bias." Later on he says: "I am writing history." Toward the end, after having obscured with words many things which had hitherto been clear to most people, he says: "Now that we begin to see where we really are, &c." How Shavian!
There are at least two sides to all questions, and so long as they are reasonably presented one is glad to hear them even if they fail to convince, but when a farceur is allowed to occupy three whole pages usually filled by serious and interesting writers it seems time to protest. The subject itself is not one for easy paradox or false and flippant epigram.
Mr. Shaw says he does not hold his tongue easily. He certainly does not, and when it wags it wags foolishly, and, as he admits, maliciously, albeit sometimes amusingly, and with superficial brilliance. He says the Irish do not consider England their country yet. Of course they do not.
Why should the Irish consider themselves English? Neither do the Scots, nor the Welsh, nor the Canadians, nor will they ever so think. But they are all British, and so, despite all Mr. Shaw says to the contrary, Kitchener was right.
Mr. Shaw falls into a common and regrettable error when he continually writes England when he really means the British Empire. It is the British Empire that is at war, for which, though a citizen, Mr. Shaw has no authority to speak or to be considered a representative, for, as he unnecessarily admits, he is not a "British patriot"; neither is he a "Junker," for I have looked through all his definitions of the word, and none applies to him.
In what way is the "Battle of Dorking" like Bernhardi? The one he says had as a moral: "To arms! or the Germans will besiege London!" The other said: "To arms! so that the Germans may besiege London, or any other country that does not want compulsory culture!" The one was defensive, the other offensive.
He says of the war: "We" began it. Since he says he is not English, and that it is an English war, whom does he mean by "We"? If he means the British, then, should a policeman see a small boy being ill-treated by a large man and go to the help of that boy, he, the policeman, must be said to have begun the fight which would probably ensue between him and said man, notwithstanding that the policeman is only fulfilling what he has sworn to do.
Monaco, he says, "seems to be, on the whole, the most prosperous and comfortable State in Europe." If this is buffoonery it is singularly out of place. But even Monaco has an "army," has had recently a small revolution, and the Monegasques do not consider themselves ideally comfortable, and they have many "injustices." Does he hold the princ.i.p.ality up as a model administration and the source of its prosperity as above reproach?
Mr. Shaw represents no one but himself, and, like all small men, he reviles others greater than he, such as Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith, but it does not become him, looking at his own life's history, to cast cheap sneers at anonymous journalists in cheap newspapers, who, though they may lack his literary style, possess, at least, one virtue which he boasts that he has not--patriotism! Yours very truly,
LAWRENCE GRANT.
New York, Nov. 18.
*Antidote to "Long Infliction of Dreary Stuff."*
_To the Editor of The New York Times_:
Hail to Bernard Shaw! Could anything be more refres.h.i.+ng? After the long infliction upon us of the flood of dreary stuff from London and Paris, and all the talk of German militarism, and what is to become of it at the hands of such immaculately unmilitary apostles of peace and international righteousness and treaty observances as Russia, France, and England, and all the maudlin denunciations of the German Nietzsche and Bernhardi, and the terrible Kaiser, could anything be more refres.h.i.+ng than Shaw's advent in the field of current war history?
Though an Anglo-Saxon of American birth and long descent, and no believer in militarism of any sort of itself, yet I see in that no reason to distort ancient history by an attempt to make it appear that German militarism is at all the chief sinner, or, for that matter, not a very necessary and desirable thing in order that Germany may have her rightful place in the world, or any place at all.
V.A.W. Warwick, N.Y., Nov. 16.