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Title: How We Stand Now (March, 1916)
Author: Murray, George Gilbert Aim (1866-1957)
Date of first publication: March 1916
   [Address to the Fight for Right League]
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Faith, War, and Policy.
   Addresses and Essays on the European War.
   Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, August 1917
Date first posted: 9 December 2011
Date last updated: 9 December 2011
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #893

This ebook was produced by: James Wright, Jen Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

This ebook was produced from images generously made
available by the Internet Archive/Columbia University Libraries






VII

HOW WE STAND NOW[1]

(_March, 1916_)


A few weeks ago I was giving a lecture to a certain Scandinavian
society, and was asked after the lecture to sign my name in the
society's book. As I looked through the names of the previous
lecturers who had signed, I noticed the signature of Maximilian
Harden. I inquired about his lecture--it was given before the war, in
1913--and heard that it had been splendid. It had, in the first place,
lasted two hours--a dangerous excellence--and had dealt with Germany's
Place in the Sun. The lecturer had explained how Germany was the first
of nations in all matters that really count: first in things of the
intellect, in _Wissenschaft_, science, history, theology; first
socially and politically, inasmuch as her people were at once the most
enlightened and most contented, the freest and best organized and most
devotedly loyal; first in military power and in material and
commercial progress; most of all first in her influence over the rest
of the world and the magic of her incomparable _Kultur_. She needed to
expand and was bound to expand, both in Europe and beyond Europe. This
could be achieved without difficulty; for Europe was already half
conquered, and England had been very obliging, in the matter of
colonies. So far the first hour and a half; then came the climax. This
expansion would be of little use if it were obtained by mere peaceful
growth. Germany's power needed a stronger foundation. It must be built
on a pedestal of war and "cemented with blood and iron."

This lecture, if it could be unearthed, would form a curious comment on
Harden's recent utterances in favour of peace and good-will; but that
is not what I wish to dwell upon. I want merely to take this doctrine
as a sort of text, and carefully to consider its implications. I do
not say for a moment that it is, or ever was, the doctrine of all
Germany; but it is, I think, the doctrine that has prevailed. It is
the doctrine of Bernhardi--a writer by no means so negligible as some
critics have tried to make out. It is the doctrine of that very
remarkable German Secret Paper which appears as No. 2 in the French
Yellow Book. It is the doctrine of the leading German intellectuals
represented by Rohrbach or by Naumann. And, what is more significant,
it seems to me to be the doctrine generally held by pro-Germans in
neutral countries. Such pro-Germans seldom discuss the negotiations
of 1914 or the responsibility for the war. They take the bold line
that Germany is the finest nation in the world, and has a right, by
war or otherwise, to seize the first place. They tacitly accept the
doctrine of Harden's last half-hour, except, of course, that where
Harden expected to achieve his end by one short and triumphant war,
they now with Dr. Rohrbach only expect to realize their full hopes
"in this war, or the next, or the next, or the next after that!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Now, what is our answer, speaking--if we can--not as indignant
Britishers, but as thinking men who try to be impartial--what is our
answer to Harden's claim? If Germany is really so superior to other
nations,--and she can make out, or could before the war, a rather
plausible case,--ought we to check her? Ought we to strengthen a
comparatively backward power, like Russia, against her?

Surely our reply is quite clear. If Germany is what she claims to be,
she will get her due place by normal expansion and development. If she
is growing in wealth, in population, in material, intellectual, and
spiritual power,--no one will say she is hampered by undue modesty or
lack of advertisement,--she will inevitably gain the influence she
demands; she was already gaining it. We do not stand in her way except
as legitimate rivals. We have not balked her colonial expansion; we
agreed with her about the Bagdad Railway. But if, to make her claim
firmer, she insists on war; if she seeks to build her empire upon
innocent blood, then, both as a rival nation valuing our own rights
and as civilized men in the name of outraged humanity, we meet force
with force. We will show this empire which demands a foundation of
blood and iron, that blood at least is a slippery foundation.

       *       *       *       *       *

So much for the first question suggested by my text; now for a second.
How does the existence of this doctrine and the fact of its wide
acceptance bear upon the question of Peace? Have we blundered into
this war, through the folly of our Governments, with no fundamental
quarrel? or are we confronted with a deliberate policy--a policy
backed by an army of ten to twelve millions, which we cannot tolerate
while we exist as a free nation? It seems to me clear, and ever
increasingly clear, that the governing forces in Germany are fighting
in the spirit of Harden's speech, to create a world-power which shall
be, in the first place, hostile to ourselves, and, in the second
place, based on principles which we regard as evil.

The ideal has been most clearly expressed in Naumann's remarkable book
"Mitteleuropa," and in the immense discussion to which that book has
given rise. Some German critics think that Naumann is too moderate in
the East, some that he unduly neglects the colonies. But in general
there emerges from the whole discussion the clear ideal of a united
empire reaching from Antwerp to Bagdad, dominated, organized,
permeated, and trained for war by the German General Staff, and
developed economically by German trusts and cartels. It is the ideal
of Rohrbach and the Intellectuals who write in _Deutsche Politik_. It
is implicit in the old speeches of the Kaiser and Prince von Blow. It
is implicit equally in the recent speech of the present Chancellor,
insisting that "any possible peace" must be based "on the war
situation as every war map shows it to be."

The war situation on land already gives Germany her empire of
Mitteleuropa! Her armies reach now from Antwerp to Bagdad, from Riga
to the frontier of Egypt--that frontier which Rohrbach describes as
"the throat of the British Empire," to be held always in Germany's
grip. The colonies are gone; true. But if Germany is sufficiently
strong in Europe, it is a maxim of German policy that colonies can be
recovered.

A critic may say, "But this implies annexation; and the whole
principle of annexation is being vigorously repudiated in Germany."
Quite true. It is being repudiated; and not only by the Socialists,
but by many bourgeois politicians and professors. There has been a
curious unanimity, these last weeks, in the repudiation of the
annexation policy. What is the explanation of a phenomenon which
seems so strangely, so suspiciously, gratifying?

Remember Austria before the war! She was willing to guarantee the
territorial integrity of Serbia. She did not wish to annex territory;
no, she wanted a Vassal State. That is the clue to the problem why
Rohrbach and Harden want no annexation, why even the Chancellor is
willing to consider a policy without annexations. Germany has no need
of annexations if she can end this war as a conqueror, alone and
supreme against a world in arms.

The Chancellor has explained that he is content not to annex Belgium,
provided he can have guarantees that Germany shall have her "_due
influence in Belgium_." The same "due influence," I presume, which she
now possesses in Turkey and Bulgaria, neither of which countries she
has annexed. The same "due influence" which she will inevitably have,
if peace is made on the basis of the present military situation, in
Greece, in Rumania, in Sweden. And who imagines, after that, that
Denmark or Holland can hold out? Peace on the basis of the present
military situation establishes at a blow the empire of Mitteleuropa,
and presents the professional German war-mongers with another
successful war.

       *       *       *       *       *

Let us here consider another objection. "If Germany is to gain this
position by mere prestige, without any annexation," it may be suggested,
"does she not clearly deserve it? Are we not wrong to object to it?" I
answer, No, she does not deserve it, and we have the right to object.
She claims that prestige on the ground that she has won the war; and
that, we maintain, is a false ground, because she has not won the war.
We mean to see whether she can win. An interesting object lesson is
now being worked out before the eyes of the smaller nations, those
semi-civilized Balkan and Asiatic communities who have had so little
experience of honest politics and such abundant experience of
international scoundrelism. They are waiting to see whether the last
word of political wisdom is to be found in the way in which Germany
treated Belgium, and Austria treated Serbia, and both Powers treated
the unhappy Balkan States at the time of the last Balkan War. They are
waiting to see whether it is safe and wise to plot evil, to lie, to
prepare, to spring upon your prey; or whether the great mass of decent
human society is in the long run strong enough to beat down any nation
that plays the assassin against its fellows.

That is how the knowledge of this policy bears on the question of
Peace. A great Scandinavian shipbuilder the other day told me that he
had one word of advice, and one only, to give us about the war. "Beat
Germany this time," he said, "for, if you do not, next time she will
beat you."

       *       *       *       *       *

I will ask you now to face with me a third question, suggested not
so much by Harden's actual speech as by the tone of my own criticism
of it. I think Harden's programme wicked; I regard the political
action and the whole manner of thought of the German leaders as both
treacherous and cruel; I think and speak of it with indignation, and
so do you. Now, have we any right to that tone?

I met in France lately an old friend of mine, who told me in a genial
way that all such indignation was hypocrisy, pure hypocrisy. "Germany
was perfectly right in all she had done, and if we had been clever
enough to think of it, we would have done the same." And he challenged
me with certain quotations from English and American writers, which I
will put before you in a moment.

Now, we all know that our indignation is not hypocritical. Whether
warranted or not, it is perfectly sincere. There is no question of
that. But I wish, before answering my friend in detail, to make one
frank admission. Our moral indignation is not hypocritical; but I
admit that it is a dangerous state of mind. As soon as we begin to
have that kind of feeling towards any national or personal enemy, a
feeling of indignant scorn for some one else coupled with a conviction
of our own great superiority, it is dangerous: we ought instantly to
collect ourselves and bear in mind, at the least, the possibility
that, "but for the grace of God, there go we and there goes Great
Britain."

"If we had been clever enough, we would have done the same": let us
see what, in this respect, Germany did. She forced on Europe a war
that could have been easily avoided; she broke her treaty in a
peculiarly treacherous way; she trampled on international law; she
practised deliberate "frightfulness" on the civil population in
Belgium and northern France; she twisted all the rules of war towards
less chivalry and greater brutality; she slew unarmed civilians
wholesale with her submarines and Zeppelins; and, if we are adding up
her list of crimes, we should not forget the most widespread and
ghastly of all, her deliberate starvation of Poland and her complicity
in the unspeakable horrors of Armenia.

Would we, could we, as a nation, ever have done these things? No
one who knows England will really argue that we would actually have
done them. But let us go further. Do we habitually harbour principles
and use arguments which would justify our doing such things, if
circumstances tempted us that way! As a nation I am clear that we do
not; but I must face some of my friend's quotations.

As for the general theory: well, our late Field Marshal, Lord Roberts,
was a great and chivalrous soldier, admired and loved by his fellow
countrymen. Yet it seems that in his "Message to the Nation" he
definitely praises and recommends for our imitation the doctrines of
General Bernhardi, and particularly admires the German Government for
pouring scorn on President Taft's proposals for arbitration treaties
(pp. 8, 9). Well, I confess I wish Lord Roberts had not written thus.
My defence must be the rather speculative one, that I do not believe
he really accepted the doctrines that he seemed to preach. At any
rate, you will not find anywhere in his long military life that he
practised them.

Again, when we speak of "scraps of paper," I find that a certain
English soldier, a member of my own clan, too, has expressed his
opinions about them even more vigorously than Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg. He
is speaking of our seizure of the Danish Fleet in 1807. "Nothing has
ever been done by any other nation more utterly in defiance of the
conventionalities of so-called international law. We considered it
advisable and necessary and expedient, and we had the power to do it;
therefore we did it. Are we ashamed of it? No, certainly not. We are
proud of it." The writer is Major Stewart-Murray in "The Future Peace
of the Anglo-Saxons." The history, of course, is incorrect, the
language is muddled; but the writer's general meaning is clear
enough. And it is certainly not for him to throw stones at professed
treaty-breakers.

My friend's next quotations are from Mr. Homer Lea. Now, I do not
feel myself responsible for Mr. Homer Lea, because after all he is
American, not English. But certainly, to judge by the quotations, his
principles would warm the hearts of Attila or Admiral von Tirpitz.

They would not, I think, have appealed to General Robert Lee, and I am
certain would have horrified Homer. Even that most sinister sentence
with which the horrors of Belgium were justified--the maxim that an
invading army should "leave the women and children nothing but their
eyes to weep with"--even that was not the invention of the Teuton. It
was welcomed and carried into practice by them; but its invention
belongs to an American general and it has been quoted with admiration
by certain English writers.

Lastly, let us take two statements of what I may call the mystical
creed of militarism. I want you to guess which of the two is German
and which English. "War gives a biologically just decision, since
its decisions arise from the very nature of things." And, again:
"War is the divinely appointed means by which the environment may be
readjusted till 'ethically fittest' and 'best' become synonymous."
Which of those two is German? Which is the more remote from good
sense? which the more characteristic in its mixture of piety and
muddle-headedness? Well, I don't know what your guesses are but the
first is from Bernhardi, and the second from Colonel Maude, on "War
and the World's Life."

In "Punch" last week there was a cartoon representing a blundering
Teutonic giant with a spiked club, advancing under the motto,
"_Weltmacht oder Niedergang!_" Naturally, when any person is kind
enough to give the rest of the world that choice, we all unanimously
say, "_Niedergang_, if you please." Yet I find in the book of a
well-known and kindly and learned English writer the statement that "a
choice is now given to England, a choice between the first place among
nations and the last; between the leadership of the human race and the
loss of empire and of all but the shadow of independence."

Of course, one sees more or less what he means; but why exaggerate?
Why insist on "leadership of the human race"? Why express the policy
you advocate in terms which must necessarily exasperate Russia,
France, the United States, and all the other great nations? Is that
the way to get allies among nations of whom each one considers itself
as good as you? Is it the spirit in which to conduct decent diplomacy,
the spirit in which to deal fairly and reasonably with the other
members of the great fraternity of Europe?

       *       *       *       *       *

What, then, is the answer to my friend's challenge? I confess myself
still unshaken by it. We must admit that these militarists, these
enthusiastic spurners of international law, these eloquent would-be
torturers of civil populations, these rejecters and despisers of
arbitration and peace, do exist among us; they exist among us, but,
thank Heaven and our own common sense, they do not control our
Government. They are not England. In Germany, they have controlled the
Government. And the world has seen the fruit of their principles when
carried into action, in all its horror and all its helpless futility.

Plato always insisted--you will excuse a Greek scholar for once
referring to Plato--on the great complexity of human character. It is
never One; it is always a mass of warring impulses; and his solution
of the problem presented by that inward war was to maintain the
character as an "aristocracy," in which the best forces should be
uppermost and the lower ones beaten down. The same rule should apply
both to the individual and to the State. I believe that--in Plato's
sense of the word, which is, of course, quite different from its
ordinary modern meaning--we do possess in Great Britain such an
"aristocracy." Our better natures on the whole rule our public action;
we give our national confidence to our better men. We have behind us a
very great tradition. In peace we are the most liberal and the most
merciful of all great empires; in war we have Napoleon's famous
testimonial, calling us "the most consistent, the most implacable, and
the most generous of his enemies." It is for us to keep up that
tradition, and I believe that the men who rule us do keep it up. The
main effort of the nation is high and noble, but in the strain and
anxiety of this long war one becomes conscious of the struggle towards
expression of something lower, something mean, angry, intemperate,
hysterical, slanderous--the barbarian slaves, as Plato would put it,
clamouring that the city itself shall be governed by barbarian slaves.

I take one case, not mentioning names because I do not wish to attack
any individual, from the "Times" of a few days back. The children of
interned aliens are fed by the Boards of Guardians on workhouse
principles. With the rise of prices an increased grant was necessary,
and was applied for by the Local Government Board. (It remained
considerably lower than the allowance for the children of our own
soldiers and sailors.) A certain Member of Parliament asked Mr. McKenna
if, before sanctioning the grant, he would give due consideration to
the increasingly bad conditions under which British civilians were now
forced to live at Ruhleben.

     Mr. McKenna: The proposals of the Local Government Board
     have already been approved. In their treatment of prisoners
     and other enemy aliens in this country, His Majesty's
     Government are guided by the dictates of humanity and the
     principles of The Hague Convention.

     Another honorable Member: Before the right honorable
     gentleman sanctions the increase, will he ascertain what
     grants are being given to the children of interned British
     prisoners in Ruhleben?

     Mr. McKenna: I do not think the two cases can be weighed
     one against the other. No matter what other Governments may
     do, this Government will continue to be actuated by the
     principles of humanity.

     The honorable Member: How does the right honorable
     gentleman expect to get better treatment for British
     prisoners in Ruhleben if he gives everything with both
     hands to the children of interned Germans here?

     Mr. McKenna: I do not think my honorable friend states the
     case quite fairly. We believe ourselves bound by certain
     principles--the rules of The Hague Convention. We have
     acted honestly and fearlessly in conformity with those
     rules, and I hope the House will support the Government in
     so doing.

I choose his incident, not from any wish to attack the honorable Members
involved, one of whom I know to be a quite kindly person, but because
it just illustrates my argument. It shows a bad and foolish and
un-English impulse struggling to obtain power and being very properly
crushed. No reasonable person really imagines that cutting down the
food of these children below what the Guardians think necessary will
help us in the faintest degree to win the war; and, above all, that
is not the way in which Great Britain makes war,--or, please God, ever
will make war,--by starving a lot of little enemy children whom we
happen to have in our hands.

I wonder sometimes that people--especially people who write letters to
newspapers--seem to have so little pride in their country. I suppose
there is some psychological luxury in making vindictive suggestions of
this kind, or in spreading wild accusations against one's leaders. But
it is the sort of luxury that ought to be strictly cut down in time of
war. It is misleading to other nations; and, with public servants as
with others, you do not get the best work by incessant scolding. For
my own part, I am more proud of Great Britain than ever in my life
before, and that largely because, in spite of this froth or scum that
sometimes floats on the surface, she is fundamentally true to her
great traditions, and treads steadily underfoot those elements which,
if they had control, would depose us from being a nation of "white
men," of rulers, of gentlemen, and bring us to the level of the enemy
whom we denounce or the "lesser breeds without the law."

Probably many of us have learned only through this war how much we
loved our country. That love depends, of course, not mainly on pride,
but on old habit and familiarity, on neighbourliness and memories of
childhood. Yet, mingling with that love for our old country, I do feel
a profound pride. I am proud of our response to the Empire's call, a
response absolutely unexampled in history, five million men and more
gathering from the ends of the earth; subjects of the British Empire
coming to offer life and limb for the Empire, not because they were
subjects, but because they were free and willed to come. I am proud of
our soldiers and our sailors, our invincible sailors! I am proud of
the retreat from Mons, the first and second battles of Ypres, the
storming of the heights of Gallipoli. No victory that the future may
bring can ever obliterate the glory of those days of darkness and
suffering, no tomb in Westminster Abbey surpass the splendour of those
violated and nameless graves.

I am proud of our men in the workshop and the factory, proud of our
men and almost more proud of our women--working one and all day after
day, with constant overtime and practically no holidays, for the most
part demanding no trade safeguards and insisting on no conditions, but
giving freely to the common cause all that they have to give.

I am proud of our political leaders and civil administrators, proud
of their resource, their devotion, their unshaken coolness, their
magnanimity in the face of intrigue and detraction, their magnificent
interpretation of the nation's will. I do not seek to palliate
mistakes or deprecate criticism, so long as it is honest and helpful
criticism. But, when almost every morning and evening newspapers
professing to be patriotic pour in their attacks on these men who are
bearing our burden,--attacks which will wither away and vanish with
our first big victory,--I will venture to state one humble citizen's
opinion: that, whether you look at the Head of the Government or
whether you look at the great Secretaryships and Administrative
Offices, from the beginning of the war till now, I doubt if at any
previous period of English history you will find a nation guided by
such a combination of experience, high character, and commanding
intellectual power.

A few days ago I was in France in the fire-zone. I had been at a field
dressing-station, which had just evacuated its wounded and dead, and
was expecting more; and, as evening was falling, full of the uncanny
strain of the whole place and slightly deafened with the shells, I
saw a body of men in full kit plodding their way up the communication
trenches to take their place in the front line. I was just going back
myself, well out of the range of guns, to a comfortable tea and a
peaceful evening; and there, in trench after trench, along all the
hundred miles of our front, day after day, night after night, were
men moving heavily up to the firing-line, to pay their regular toll
of so many killed and so many wounded, while the war drags on its
weary length. I suddenly wondered in my heart whether we or our cause
or our country is worth that sacrifice; and, with my mind full of its
awfulness, I answered clearly, Yes. Because, while I am proud of all
the things I have mentioned about Great Britain, I am most proud of
the clean hands with which we came into this contest, proud of the
Cause for which with clear vision we unsheathed our sword, and which
we mean to maintain unshaken to the bitter or the triumphant end.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Address to the Fight for Right League.




[End of How We Stand Now, by Gilbert Murray]
