New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 1, No. 1: From the Beginning to March, 1915, With IndexVarious
History
New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 1, No. 1: From the Beginning to March, 1915, With Index
Various
World War, 1914-1918
the Navy League, the imposition of an Imperialist Foreign Secretary on
the Liberal Cabinet, Mr. Wells's _War in the Air_ (well worth re-reading
just now), and the Dreadnoughts. Throughout all these agitations the
enemy, the villain of the piece, the White Peril, was Prussia and her
millions of German conscripts. At first, in _The Battle of Dorking_
phase, the note was mainly defensive. But from the moment when the
Kaiser began to copy our Armada policy by building a big fleet, the
anti-German agitation became openly aggressive; and the cry that the
German fleet or ours must sink, and that a war between England and
Germany was bound to come some day, speedily ceased to be merely a cry
with our Militarists and became an axiom with them. And what our
Militarists said our Junkers echoed; and our Junker diplomatists played
for. The story of how they manoeuvred to hem Germany and Austria in with
an Anglo-Franco-Russian combination will be found told with soldierly
directness and with the proud candor of a man who can see things from
his own side only in the article by Lord Roberts in the current number
of _The Hibbert Journal_ (October, 1914). There you shall see also,
after the usual nonsense about Nietzsche, the vision of "British
administrators bearing the White Man's Burden," of "young men, fresh
from the public schools of Britain, coming eagerly forward to carry on
the high traditions of Imperial Britain in each new dependency which
comes under our care," of "our fitness as an Imperial race," of "a great
task committed to us by Providence," of "the will to conquer that has
never failed us," of our task of "assuming control of one-fifth of the
earth's surface and the care of one in five of all the inhabitants of
the world." Not a suggestion that the inhabitants of the world are
perhaps able to take care of themselves. Not even a passing recollection
when that White Man's Burden is in question that the men outside the
British Empire, and even inside the German Empire, are by no means
exclusively black. Only the _sancta simplicitas_ that glories in "the
proud position of England," the "sympathy, tolerance, prudence and
benevolence of our rule" in the east (as shown, the Kaiser is no doubt
sarcastically remarking, in the Delhi sedition trial), the chivalrous
feeling that it is our highest duty to save the world from the horrible
misfortune of being governed by anybody but those young men fresh from
the public schools of Britain. Change the words Britain and British to
Germany and German, and the Kaiser will sign the article with
enthusiasm. _His_ opinion, _his_ attitude (subject to that merely verbal
change) word for word.
*Six of One: Half-a-Dozen of The Other.*
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account