Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/163

 write good poetry or fiction. How long will you be contented with sugared sonnets among your private friends? Sooner or later you will want to publish it and let the world see how clever you are. And so when you have the perfect army or navy, perfectly knit into the structure of the state, you will find some impulse which you may not at the time analyze, urging you toward its proof in action.

Germany did. There was never such a glittering display of military power as in the old summer manœvres before the war. Doubtless any German who saw that great charge of massed cavalry by which they always ended, felt somewhere in him a glow as he thought of what Germany might do in real battle. The cloud gathered. With Germany—as even most Germans now admit—lay the decision for peace or war; and she chose war. It is absurd to blame the Kaiser alone; almost equally absurd to blame his counsellors alone. They were carried along, all of them, by a flood which had been rolling up in Germany for forty years.

Yet even then, they maintained the fiction to their people—and half to themselves—that they were fighting a defensive war against the “ring of foes.” The average German soldier whom I saw in Belgium during 1914 believed this devoutly. Barbarous Russia and envious England had attacked the Fatherland. He fought in her defence. France must be crushed because she had foolishly joined these major enemies. Poor France! Now, if they