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The Message, a novel by Alec John Dawson |
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Part 2. The Awakening - Chapter 17. The Penalty |
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_ PART II. THE AWAKENING CHAPTER XVII. THE PENALTY
It would be distinctly a work of supererogation for me to attempt to tell the story of the Anglo-German war--of all modern wars the most remarkable in some ways, and certainly the war which has been most exhaustively treated by modern historians. A. Low says in the concluding chapter of his fine history: "Putting aside the fighting in South Africa, and after the initial destruction of both the German Navy and its Army in England (as effective forces), we must revert to the wars of more than a century ago to find parallels for this remarkable conflict. There can be no doubt that at the time of the invasion of England Germany's effective fighting strength was enormous. Its growth had been very rapid; its decline must be dated from General von Fuechter's occupation of London on Black Saturday. "At that moment everything appeared to bode well for the realization of the Emperor's ambition to be Dictator of Europe, as the ruler of by far the greatest Power in the Old World. From that moment the German people, but more particularly the German official and governing class, and her naval and military men, would appear to have imbibed of some distillation of their Emperor's exaggerated pride, and found it too heady an elixir for their sanity. It would ill become us to dilate at length upon the extremes into which their arrogance and luxuriousness led them. With regard, at all events, to the luxury and indulgence, we ourselves had been very far from guiltless. But it may be that our extravagance was less deadly, for the reason that it was of slower growth. Certain it is, that before ever an English shot was fired the fighting strength of Germany waned rapidly from the period of the invasion. By some writers this has been attributed to the insidious spread of Socialism. But it must be remembered that the deterioration was far more notable in the higher than in the lower walks of life; and most of all it was notable among the naval and military official nobility, who swore loudest by lineage and the divine privileges of ancient pedigrees. "When the German army of occupation in England was disarmed, prisoners in barracks and camps, and the German Navy had, to all intents and purposes, been destroyed, the Imperial German Government adopted the extraordinary course of simply defying England to strike further blows. Germany practically ceased to fight (no reinforcements were ever landed in South Africa, and the German troops already engaged there had no other choice than to continue fighting, though left entirely without Imperial backing), but emphatically refused to consider the extremely moderate terms offered by Britain, which, at that time, did not even include an indemnity. But this extraordinary policy was not so purely callous and cynical as was supposed. Like most things in this world, it had its different component parts. There was the cynical arrogance of the Prussian Court upon the one side; but upon the other side there was the ominous disaffection of the lesser German States, and the rampant, angry Socialism of the lower and middle classes throughout the Empire, which had become steadily more and more virulent from the time of the reactionary elections of the early part of 1907, in which the Socialists felt that they had been tricked by the Court party. In reality Germany had two mouthpieces. The Court defied Britain; the people refused to back that defiance with action." For a brief summary of the causes leading up to the strange half-year which followed our receipt of the American offer of assistance, I think we have nothing more lucid than this passage of Low's important work. That the forces at work in Germany, which he described from the vantage-point of a later date, were pretty clearly understood, even at that time, by our Government, is proved, I think, by the tactics we adopted throughout that troublous period. In South Africa our troops, though amply strong, never adopted an aggressive line. They defended our frontiers, and that defence led to some heavy fighting. But, after the first outbreak of hostilities, our men never carried the war into the enemy's camp. There was a considerable party in the House of Commons which favoured an actively aggressive policy in the matter of seizing the Mediterranean strongholds ceded to Germany at the time of the invasion. It was even suggested that we should land a great Citizen army in Germany and enforce our demands at the point of the sword. In this John Crondall rendered good service to the Government by absolutely refusing to allow his name to be used in calling out The Citizens for such a purpose. But, in any case, wiser counsels prevailed without much difficulty. There was never any real danger of our returning to the bad old days of a divided Parliament. The gospel of Duty taught by the Canadian preachers, and the stern sentiment behind The Citizens' watchword, had far too strong a hold upon the country for that. Accordingly, the Government policy had free play. No other policy could have been more effective, more humane, or more truly direct and economical. In effect, the outworking of it meant a strictly defensive attitude in Africa, and in the north a naval siege of Germany. Germany had no Navy to attack, and, because they believed England would never risk landing an army in Germany, the purblind camarilla who stood between the Emperor's arrogance and the realities of life assumed that England would be powerless to carry hostilities further. Or if the Imperial Court did not actually believe this, it was ostensibly the Government theory, the poor sop they flung to a disaffected people while filling their official organs with news of wonderful successes achieved by the German forces in South Africa. But within three months our Navy had taught the German people that the truth lay in quite another direction. The whole strength of the British Navy which could be spared from southern and eastern bases was concentrated now upon the task of blocking Germany's oversea trade. Practically no loss of life was involved, but day by day the ocean-going vessels of Germany's mercantile marine were being transferred to the British flag. The great oversea carrying trade, whose growth had been the pride of Germany, was absolutely and wholly destroyed during that half-year. The destruction of her export trade spelt ruin for Germany's most important industries; but it was the cutting off of her imports which finally robbed even the German Emperor of the power to shut his eyes any longer to the fact that his Empire had in reality ceased to exist. The actual overthrow of monarchical government in Prussia was not accomplished without scenes of excess and violence in the capital. But, in justice to the German people as a whole, it should be remembered that the revolution was carried out at remarkably small cost; that the people displayed wonderful patience and self-control, in circumstances of maddening difficulty, which were aggravated at every turn by the Emperor's arbitrary edicts and arrogant obtrusion of his personal will, and by the insolence of the official class. One must remember that for several decades Germany had been essentially an industrial country, and that a very large proportion of her population were at once strongly imbued with Socialistic theories, and wholly dependent upon industrial activity. Bearing these things in mind, one is moved to wonder that the German people could have endured so long as they did the practically despotic sway of a Ruler who, in the gratification of his own insensate pride, allowed their country to be laid waste by the stoppage of trade, and their homes to be devastated by the famine of an unemployed people whose communications with the rest of the world were completely severed. That such a ruler and such a Court should have met with no worse fate than deposition, exile, and dispersal is something of a tribute to the temperate character of the Teutonic race. Bavaria, Wuerttemberg, Saxony, and the southern Grand Duchies elected to retain their independent forms of government under hereditary rule; and to this no objection was raised by the new Prussian Republic, in which all but one of the northern principalities were incorporated. Within, forty-eight hours of the election of Dr. Carl Moeller to the Presidency of the new Republic, hostilities ceased between Great Britain and Germany, and three weeks later the Peace was signed in London and Berlin. Even hostile critics have admitted that the British terms were not ungenerous. The war was the result of Germany's unprovoked invasion of our shores. The British terms were, in lieu of indemnity, the cession of all German possessions in the African continent to the British Crown, unreservedly. For the rest, Britain demanded no more than a complete and unqualified withdrawal of all German claims and pretensions in the matter of the Peace terms enforced after the invasion by General Baron von Fuechter, including, of course, the immediate evacuation of all those points of British territory which had been claimed in the invasion treaty, an instrument now null and void. The new Republic was well advised in its grateful acceptance of these terms, for they involved no monetary outlay, and offered no obstacle to the new Government's task of restoration. At that early stage, at all events, the Prussian Republic had no colonial ambitions, and needed all its straitened financial resources for the rehabilitation of its home life. (In the twelve months following the declaration of war between Great Britain and Germany, the number of Germans who emigrated reached the amazing total of 1,134,378.) To me, one of the most interesting and significant features of the actual conclusion of the Peace--which added just over one million square miles to Britain's African possessions, and left the Empire, in certain vital respects, infinitely richer and more powerful than ever before in its history--is not so much as mentioned in any history of the war I have ever read, though it did figure, modestly, in the report of the Commissioner of Police for that year. As a sidelight upon the development of our national character since the arrival of the Canadian preachers and the organization of The Citizens, this one brief passage in an official record is to my mind more luminous than anything I could possibly say, and far more precious than the fact of our territorial acquisitions: "The news of the signature of the Peace was published in the early editions of the evening papers on Saturday, 11 March. Returns show that the custom of the public-houses and places of entertainment during the remainder of that day was 37-1/2 per cent. below the average Saturday returns. Divisional reports show that the streets were more empty of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, than on any ordinary week-day. Police-court cases on the following Monday were 28-1/2 per cent. below the average, and included, in the metropolitan area, only five cases of drunkenness or disorderly conduct. All reports indicate the prevalence throughout the metropolitan area of private indoor celebrations of the Peace. All London churches and chapels held Thanksgiving Services on Sunday, 12 March, and the attendances were abnormally large." Withal, I am certain that the people of London had never before during my life experienced a deeper sense of gladness, a more general consciousness of rejoicing. Not for nothing has "British Christianity" earned its Parisian name of "New Century Puritanism." As the President of the French Republic said in his recent speech at Lyons: "It is the 'New Century Puritanism' which leads the new century's civilization, and maintains the world's peace." _ |
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