New York Times Current History The European War, Vol 1, No. 1 Part 17

Given this, it is indeed true that behind these facts there are truths--truths of a terrible, of a spiritual sort. In mere fact the Germanic power has been wrong about Servia, wrong about Russia, wrong about Belgium, wrong about England, wrong about Italy. But there was a reason for its being wrong everywhere, and of that root reason, which has moved half the world against it, I shall speak later in this series.

For that is something too omnipresent to be proved, too indisputable to be helped by detail. It is nothing less than the locating, after more than a hundred years of recriminations and wrong explanations, of the modern European evil--the finding of the fountain from which poison has flowed upon all the nations of the earth.

*II.*

*Russian or Prussian Barbarism?*

It will hardly be denied that there is one lingering doubt in many who recognize unavoidable self-defense in the instant parry of the English sword and who have no great love for the sweeping sabre of Sadowa and Sedan. That doubt is the doubt of whether Russia, as compared with Prussia, is sufficiently decent and democratic to be the ally of liberal and civilized powers. I take first, therefore, this matter of civilization.

It is vital in a discussion like this that we should make sure we are going by meanings and not by mere words. It is not necessary in any argument to settle what a word means or ought to mean. But it is necessary in every argument to settle what we propose to mean by the word. So long as our opponent understands what is the thing of which we are talking, it does not matter to the argument whether the word is or is not the one he would have chosen. A soldier does not say, "We were ordered to go to Mechlin, but I would rather go to Malines." He may discuss the etymology and archaeology of the difference on the march, but the point is that he knows where to go. So long as we know what a given word is to mean in a given discussion, it does not even matter if it means something else in some other and quite distinct discussion. We have a perfect right to say that the width of a window comes to four feet, even if we instantly and cheerfully change the subject to the larger mammals and say that an elephant has four feet. The ident.i.ty of the words does not matter, because there is no doubt at all about the meanings, because n.o.body is likely to think of an elephant as four feet long, or of a window as having tusks and a curly trunk.

*Two Meanings of "Barbarian."*

It is essential to emphasize this consciousness of the thing under discussion in connection with two or three words that are, as it were, the keywords of this war. One of them is the word "barbarian." The Prussians apply it to the Russians, the Russians apply it to the Prussians. Both, I think, really mean something that really exists, name or no name. Both mean different things. And if we ask what these different things are we shall understand why England and France prefer Russia, and consider Prussia the really dangerous barbarian of the two.

To begin with, it goes so much deeper even than atrocities; of which, in the past, at least, all the three empires of Central Europe have partaken pretty equally; as they partook of Poland. An English writer, seeking to avert the war by warnings against Russian influence, said that the flogged backs of Polish women stood between us and the Alliance. But not long before the flogging of women by an Austrian General led to that officer being thrashed in the streets of London by Barclay and Perkins draymen. And as for the third power, the Prussians, it seems clear that they have treated Belgian women in a style compared with which flogging might be called an official formality.

But, as I say, something much deeper than any such recrimination lies behind the use of the word on either side. When the German Emperor complains of our allying ourselves with a barbaric and half Oriental power, he is not (I a.s.sure you) shedding tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And when I say (as I do most heartily) that the German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not merely expressing any prejudices I may have against the profanation of churches or of children. My countrymen and I mean a certain and intelligible thing when we call the Prussians barbarians. It is quite different from the thing attributed to Russians; and it could not possibly be attributed to Russians. It is very important that the neutral world should understand what this thing is.

If the German calls the Russian barbarous, he presumably means imperfectly civilized. There is a certain path along which Western nations have proceeded in recent times; and it is tenable that Russia has not proceeded so far as the others; that she has less of the special modern system in science, commerce, machinery, travel, or political const.i.tution. The Russ plows with an old plow; he wears a wild beard; he adores relics; his life is as rude and hard as that of a subject of Alfred the Great. Therefore, he is, in the German sense, a barbarian.

Poor fellows, like Gorky and Dostoieffsky, have to form their own reflections on the scenery, without the a.s.sistance of large quotations from Schiller on garden seats; or inscriptions directing them to pause and thank the All-Father for the finest view in Hesse-Pumpernickel. The Russians, having nothing but their faith, their fields, their great courage, and their self-governing communes, are quite cut off from what is called (in the fashionable street in Frankfort) the true, the beautiful, and the good. There is a real sense in which one can call such backwardness barbaric, by comparison with the Kaiserstra.s.se; and in that sense it is true of Russia.

Now we, the French and English, do not mean this when we call the Prussians barbarians. If their cities soared higher than their flying ships, if their trains traveled faster than their bullets, we should still call them barbarians. We should know exactly what we meant by it; and we should know that it is true. For we do not mean anything that is an imperfect civilization by accident. We mean something that is the enemy of civilization by design. We mean something that is willfully at war with the principles by which human society has been made possible hitherto. Of course, it must be partly civilized even to destroy civilization. Such ruin could not be wrought by the savages that are merely undeveloped or inert. You could not have even Huns without horses or horses without horsemanship. You could not have even Danish pirates without ships, or ships without seamanship.

*The "Positive Barbarian."*

This person, whom I may call the positive barbarian, must be rather more superficially up to date than what I may call the negative barbarian.

Alaric was an officer in the Roman legions, but for all that he destroyed Rome. n.o.body supposes that Eskimos could have done it at all neatly. But (in our meaning) barbarism is not a matter of methods but of aims. We say that these veneered vandals have the perfectly serious aim of destroying certain ideas which, as they think, the world has outgrown; without which, as we think, the world will die.

It is essential that this perilous peculiarity in the Pruss, or positive barbarian, should be seized. He has what he fancies is a new idea, and he is going to apply it to everybody. As a fact, it is simply a false generalization, but he is really trying to make it general. This does not apply to the negative barbarian; it does not apply to the Russian or the Servian, even if they are barbarians. If a Russian peasant does beat his wife, he does it because his fathers did it before him; he is likely to beat less rather than more as the past fades away. He does not think, as the Prussian would, that he has made a new discovery in physiology in finding that a woman is weaker than a man. If a Servian does knife his rival without a word, he does it because other Servians have done it. He may regard it even as piety--but certainly not as progress. He does not think, as the Prussian does, that he founds a new school of horology by starting before the word "Go." He does not think he is in advance of the world in militarism--merely because he is behind it in morals.

No; the danger of the Pruss is that he is prepared to fight for old errors as if they were new truths. He has somehow heard of certain shallow simplifications, and imagines that we have never heard of them.

And, as I have said, his limited but very sincere lunacy concentrates chiefly in a desire to destroy two ideas, the twin root ideas, of national society. The first is the idea of record and promise; the second is the idea of reciprocity.

It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through time, is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, but from brutes and reptiles. This was noted by the shrewdness of the Old Testament when it summed up the dark, irresponsible enormity of Leviathan in the words, "Will he make a pact with thee?" The promise, like the wind, is unknown in nature and is the first mark of man.

Referring only to human civilization, it may be said with seriousness that in the beginning was the Word. The vow is to the man what the song is to the bird or the bark to the dog; his voice, whereby he is known.

Just as a man who cannot keep an appointment is not fit to fight a duel, so the man who cannot keep an appointment with himself is not sane enough even for suicide. It is not easy to mention anything on which the enormous apparatus of human life can be said to depend. But if it depends on anything it is on this frail cord, flung from the forgotten hills of yesterday to the invisible mountains of tomorrow. On that solitary string hangs everything from Armageddon to an almanac, from a successful revolution to a return ticket. On that solitary string the barbarian is hacking heavily with a sabre which is fortunately blunt.

*Prussia's Great Discovery.*

Any one can see this well enough merely by reading the last negotiations between London and Berlin. The Prussians had made a new discovery in international politics--that it may often be convenient to make a promise, and yet curiously inconvenient to keep it. They were charmed, in their simple way, with this scientific discovery and desired to communicate it to the world. They therefore promised England a promise on condition that she broke a promise, and on the implied condition that the new promise might be broken as easily as the old one. To the profound astonishment of Prussia, this reasonable offer was refused. I believe that the astonishment of Prussia was quite sincere. That is what I mean when I say that the barbarian is trying to cut away that cord of honesty and clear record on which hangs all that men have made.

The friends of the German cause have complained that Asiatics and Africans upon the very verge of savagery have been brought against them from India and Algiers. And in ordinary circ.u.mstances I should sympathize with such a complaint made by a European people. But the circ.u.mstances are not ordinary. Here again the quite unique barbarism of Prussia goes deeper than what we call barbarities. About mere barbarities, it is true, the Turco and the Sikh would have very good reply to the superior Teuton. The general and just reason for not using non-European tribes against Europeans is that given by Chatham against the use of the red Indian--that such allies might do very diabolical things. But the poor Turco might not unreasonably ask, after a week-end in Belgium, what more diabolical things he could do than the highly cultured Germans were doing themselves.

Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any extra-European aid goes deeper than by any such details. It rests upon the fact that even other civilizations, even much lower civilizations, even remote and repulsive civilizations, depend as much as our own on this primary principle on which the supermorality of Potsdam declares open war. Even savages promise things, and respect those who keep their promises. Even Orientals write things down; and though they write them from right to left, they know the importance of a sc.r.a.p of paper. Many merchants will tell you that the word of the sinister and almost unhuman Chinaman is often as good as his bond; and it was amid palm trees and Syrian pavilions that the great utterance opened the tabernacle to him that sweareth to his hurt and changeth not. There is doubtless a dense labyrinth of duplicity in the East; and perhaps more guile in the individual Asiatic than in the individual German. But we are not talking of the violations of human morality in various parts of the world.

*A Fight Against Anarchy.*

We are talking about a new inhuman morality which denies altogether the day of obligation. The Prussians have been told by their literary men that everything depends upon "mood," and by their politicians that all arrangements dissolve before "necessity." That is the importance of the German Chancellor's phrase. He did not allege some special excuse in the case of Belgium, which might make it seem an exception that proved the rule. He distinctly argued, as on a principle applicable to other cases, that victory was a necessity and honor was a sc.r.a.p of paper. And it is evident that the half-educated Prussian imagination really cannot get any further than this. It cannot see that if everybody's action were entirely incalculable from hour to hour, it would not only be the end of all promises but the end of all projects.

In not being able to see that, the Berlin philosopher is really on a lower mental level than the Arab who respects the salt, or the Brahmin who preserves the caste. And in this quarrel we have a right to come with scimitars as well as sabres, with bows as well as rifles, with a.s.segai and tomahawk and boomerang, because there is in all these at least a seed of civilization that these intellectual anarchists would kill. And if they should find us in our last stand girt with such strange swords and following unfamiliar ensigns and ask us for what we fight in so singular a company, we shall know what to reply: "We fight for the trust and for the tryst; for fixed memories and the possible meeting of men; for all that makes life anything but an uncontrollable nightmare. We fight for the long arm of honor and remembrance; for all that can lift a man above the quicksands of his needs and give him the mastery of time."

*III.*

*Disposing of Germany's Civilizing Mission*

In the last summary I suggested that barbarism, as we mean it, is not mere ignorance or even mere cruelty. It has a more precise sense, and means militant hostility to certain necessary human ideas. I took the case of the vow or the contract which Prussian intellectualism would destroy. I urged that the Prussian is a spiritual barbarian, because he is not bound by his own past, any more than a man in a dream. He avows that when he promised to respect a frontier on Monday he did not foresee what he calls "the necessity" of not respecting it on Tuesday. In short, he is like a child who at the end of all reasonable explanations and reminders of admitted arrangements has no answer except "But I want to."

There is another idea in human arrangements so fundamental as to be forgotten, but now for the first time denied. It may be called the idea of reciprocity; or, in better English, of give and take. The Prussian appears to be quite intellectually incapable of this thought. He cannot, I think, conceive the idea that is the foundation of all comedy--that in the eyes of the other man he is only the other man. And if we carry this clue through the inst.i.tutions of Prussianized Germany we shall find how curiously his mind has been limited in the matter. The German differs from other patriots in the inability to understand patriotism. Other European peoples pity the Poles or the Welsh for their violated borders, but Germans only pity themselves. They might take forcible possession of the Severn or the Danube, of the Thames or the Tiber, of the Garry or the Garonne--and they would still be singing sadly about how fast and true stands the watch on the Rhine and what a shame it would be if any one took their own little river away from them. That is what I mean by not being reciprocal; and you will find it in all that they do, as in all that is done by savages.

*"Laughs When He Hurts You."*

Here again it is very necessary to avoid confusing this soul of the savage with mere savagery in the sense of brutality or butchery, in which the Greeks, the French, and all the most civilized nations have indulged in hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Accusations of cruelty are generally mutual. But it is the point about the Prussian that with him nothing is mutual. The definition of the true savage does not concern itself even with how much more he hurts strangers or captives than do the other tribes of men. The definition of the true savage is that he laughs when he hurts you and howls when you hurt him. This extraordinary inequality in the mind is in every act and word that comes from Berlin.

For instance, no man of the world believes all he sees in the newspapers, and no journalist believes a quarter of it. We should therefore be quite ready in the ordinary way to take a great deal off the tales of German atrocities; to doubt this story or deny that. But there is one thing that we cannot doubt or deny--the seal and authority of the Emperor. In the imperial proclamation the fact that certain "frightful" things have been done is admitted and justified on the ground of their frightfulness. It was a military necessity to terrify the peaceful populations with something that was not civilized, something that was hardly human.

*"Howls When You Hurt Him."*

Very well. That is an intelligible policy; and in that sense an intelligible argument. An army endangered by foreigners may do the most frightful things. But then we turn the next page of the Kaiser's public diary, and we find him writing to the President of the United States to complain that the English are using dumdum bullets and violating various regulations of The Hague Conference. I pa.s.s for the present the question of whether there is a word of truth in these charges. I am content to gaze rapturously at the blinking eyes of the true, or positive, barbarian. I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we said that violating The Hague Conference was "a military necessity" to us; or that the rules of the conference were only a sc.r.a.p of paper. He would be quite pained if we said that dumdum bullets "by their very frightfulness" would be very useful to keep conquered Germans in order. Do what he will, he cannot get outside the idea that he, because he is he and not you, is free to break the law and also to appeal to the law. It is said that the Prussian officers play at a game called Kriegspiel, or the war game. But in truth they could not play at any game, for the essence of every game is that the rules are the same on both sides.

But, taking every German inst.i.tution in turn, the case is the same; and it is not a case of mere bloodshed or military bravado. The duel, for example, can legitimately be called a barbaric thing, but the word is here used in another sense. There are duels in Germany; but so there are in France, Italy, Belgium, Spain; indeed, there are duels wherever there are dentists, newspapers, Turkish baths, time tables, and all the curses of civilization--except in England and a corner of America. You may happen to regard the duel as a historic relic of the more barbaric States on which these modern States were built. It might equally well be maintained that the duel is everywhere the sign of high civilization, being the sign of its more delicate sense of honor, its more vulnerable vanity, or its greater dread of social disrepute. But whichever of the two views you take, you must concede that the essence of the duel is an armed equality. I should not, therefore, apply the word barbaric, as I am using it, to the duels of German officers, or even the broadsword combats that are conventional among the German students. I do not see why a young Prussian should not have scars all over his face if he likes them; nay, they are often the redeeming points of interest on an otherwise somewhat unenlightening countenance. The duel may be defended; the sham duel may be defended.

*The One-Sided Prussian Duel.*

What cannot be defended is something really peculiar to Prussia, of which we hear numberless stories, some of them certainly true. It might be called the one-sided duel. I mean the idea that there is some sort of dignity in drawing the sword upon a man who has not got a sword--a waiter, or a shop a.s.sistant, or even a schoolboy. One of the officers of the Kaiser in the affair at Zabern was found industriously hacking at a cripple. In all these matters I would avoid sentiment. We must not lose our tempers at the mere cruelty of the thing, but pursue the strict psychological distinction. Others besides German soldiers have slain the defenseless, for loot or l.u.s.t or private malice, like any other murderer. The point is that nowhere else but in Prussian Germany is any theory of honor mixed up with such things, any more than with poisoning or picking pockets. No French, English, Italian, or American gentleman would think he had in some way cleared his own character by sticking his sabre through some ridiculous greengrocer who had nothing in his hand but a cuc.u.mber. It would seem as if the word which is translated from the German as "honor" must really mean something quite different in German. It seems to mean something more like what we should call "prestige."

*Absence of the Reciprocal Idea.*

The fundamental fact, however, is the absence of the reciprocal idea.

The Prussian is not sufficiently civilized for the duel. Even when he crosses swords with us his thoughts are not as our thoughts; when we both glorify war we are glorifying different things. Our medals are wrought like his, but they do not mean the same thing; our regiments are cheered as his are, but the thought in the heart is not the same; the Iron Cross is on the bosom of his King, but it is not the sign of our G.o.d. For we, alas! follow our G.o.d with many relapses and self-contradictions, but he follows his very consistently. Through all the things that we have examined, the view of national boundaries, the view of military methods, the view of personal honor and self-defense, there runs in their case something of an atrocious simplicity; something too simple for us to understand; the idea that glory consists in holding the steel, and not in facing it.

If further examples were necessary it would be easy to give hundreds of them. Let us leave, for the moment, the relations between man and man in the thing called the duel. Let us take the relation between man and woman, in that immortal duel which we call a marriage. Here again we shall find that other Christian civilizations aim at some kind of equality, even if the balance be irrational or dangerous. Thus, the two extremes of the treatment of women might be represented by what are called the respectable cla.s.ses in America and in France. In America they choose the risk of comradeship, in France the compensation of courtesy.

In America it is practically possible for any young gentleman to take any young lady for what he calls (I deeply regret to say) a joy ride; but at least the man goes with the woman as much as the woman with the man. In France the young woman is protected like a nun while she is unmarried; but when she is a mother she is really a holy woman; and when she is a grandmother she is a holy terror.