The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-TimeWile, Frederic William
History
The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time
Wile, Frederic William
World War, 1914-1918
The British Embassy was wrapped in Sabbath calm. Was not Berlin reading
with intensest gratification the Wolff Agency’s carefully selected
London dispatches saying that "powerful influences are at work to
prevent England becoming involved in the war"? Mr. Norman Angell had
written in that sense to _The Times_--the _Lokal-Anzeiger_ reported with
undisguised satisfaction. A large number of British professors, it
added, had launched a "protest" against war with Germany, "the leader in
art and science and against whom a war for Russia and Serbia would be a
crime against civilization." A "great and influential meeting of
Liberals in the Reform Club" had adopted resolutions commending Sir
Edward Grey’s efforts on behalf of peace and "energetically demanding
the strict preservation of English neutrality." The Germans took heart.
Blandly ignorant of their Government’s secret diplomatic schemings, now
in frantic progress, to keep Great Britain out of the fray, they were
lulled by their rulers and doctored press reports into thinking that the
danger of interference from the other side of the North Sea was as good
as non-existent. The German Imperial Government practised this
deception on their own people till the last possible moment. German
newspaper readers, in those fitful hours, were being led to believe that
the voice of Britain was the pacifist, pro-German voice of Radicalism as
represented by journals like _The Daily News, Westminster Gazette_ and
_The Nation_. No intimation was permitted to reach the German public
that voices like _The Times, The Observer, The Daily Mail, The Morning
Post_ and _Daily Telegraph_ were calling for the only action by the
Government consonant with British honor and British rights. The
outburst of fanatical rage against the "perfidious sister nation" so
soon to ensue was mainly due, I shall always remain convinced, to the
diabolical swindle of which the German nation was the victim at the
hands of its dark-lantern diplomatists. In that far-off day when the
scales have fallen from Teutonic eyes, I predict that the Germans will
call for vengeance on their deceivers. As they were duped about Russia,
so were they deliberately misled about England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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