LAND & WATER 
bcptemoer 20, 3917 
„r«no.mr^mcnts of Vtheir historians and of their xiniver- 
S-X Sk of their national IHc-showed that such a war 
'"''Tho moment chosemifor striking the blow was that obviously 
the best suited to the aggressors. It was the moment aftci 
tho harvest of 1014 and. as wc shall see m a moment the 
method of that aggression prc.ui^oses its being planned for a 
particular hour and iit a particukir fashion 
On the other side.' the situation is equally plain. Those 
States of Europe against whicli the aggression was designed, 
;,otablv the French an.i the Russian, were not only upon the 
defensive but in a so.:t of bcM'ildcred expex;tation, which 
clearly failed to grasp the magnitude of the peril 
The congeries of force- against which the superior force of 
Prussia was about to strike were not co-ordinated. Ihe 
Government of Great BriUain had been at great pains to avoid 
anvthing like an alliance or anything like set terms and 
even within the country most menaced, which was that of 
1-rance domestic discussions of an acute kind were permitted 
to confuse the public appirecialion of what was toward. 
Misleading Views 
If we ask ourselves the reason for this confused and unpre- 
pared situation up.^n the side of what became the defensive 
Alliance against Germany, we can arrive, though with some 
difficulty at an answer. The nations to be united against the 
Prussian aggression were very disparate. Of the Russian 
Emphe its simplicity of political texiure. its complexity of 
race of religion and provincial traditions, the West knew 
hardl" anything. It wouM Vtonish a general modern reader 
I think to come across in detailed sbudy, as the professional 
historian must, the thousand indicastions of this ignorance. 
We have it on record, for instance, in a contemporary bio- 
graphy that the master of a famous College in an English 
University a very learned scholar, a. man of good European 
position was ignbrant that the Russian icuthors wrote their 
books in the Russian language, believing French to be their 
ordinary medium ! We have it also upon record that a public 
man of eminence and not unlearned hi history, whose whole 
career had been spent in parliamentiiTy discussions with the 
chancelleries of Europe, conceived of Poland as a nation 
provincial to Russia, and was ignoranbof the Polish elements 
in the German Empire. 
All this may seem fantastic to us to-day, and so m a sense 
it is. But to the Euroix^ of 1914 thingsiwere so, and of Eastern 
Europe (save where it touched on the Mediterranean), of the 
Slavonic civilisation and of what was meant by the general 
term " Russia " as a whole, even the educated West was pro- 
foundly ignorant. _ . , c t. 
Again, those who were to be the chief champions m the fight — 
the F'rench and the English - though closely linked, of course, 
in history and, indeed, enjoying a common origin and in- 
stitutions and culture, had been for centuries natural oppo- 
nents one of the other upon the European field. Each still 
lived to some degree in the old traditions of the time when 
the French Monarchy and the English aristocratic com- 
mercial polity were the only two considerable forces dividing 
the F2uropean field between them. And in the hundred 
years preceding the great war, these two neighbouring nations 
had grown to know, not more, but less the one of the other. 
The knowledge: of French literature which had been, during 
the eighteenth century, part of ftnglish cultivation, had largely 
died out among the educated classes of the nineteenth. While 
the conception formed of England in the French mind, during 
the latter part at least of the nineteenth century, was one 
quite different from the reality — a sort of simplified picture of 
what the middle-class alone in England may have been in 
the days of the Reform Bill and of the Itarly Victorians. 
There was no sympathy between the two in any detail of 
domestic or political life. Parliament was the great tra- 
ditional and national institution of the one. In the other 
it was an exeeedingly unpopular usurping oligarchy. The 
immense religious quarrels of the French were incompre- 
hensible to the English. Nor is anything commoner in the 
domestic documents of the times than the expression by Eng- 
lishmen of astonishment that the l-'rcnchman should Ijctray 
extreme emotions in matters of theology, or upon the part of 
the French that the English should seem so indifferent to 
their debates of religion. 
In other words, the union between all three parties of what 
WcLS to become tri-partite resistance to the Prussian challenge 
were elements distant in various degrees one from the other 
and morally separated the one from the other. 
In this separation it would be foolish to omit the immense 
effect of distance and physical isolation as between Russia 
and the West of liurope, of language, interests -ind the conflict 
of commercial and colonial policy as between the two Western 
Allies. 
In a word, the character of the resistance which Prussia 
was about to encounter was everywhere marked simply by the 
conception of defence. The Alliance against Prussia was 
brought into being solely because Prussia was about to 
challenge. It was cemented only by the action of Prussia. 
And it is true to say that even during the first year of the 
great war, or at any rate during the great part of that year, 
the moral cementing of the Alliance against Prussia took place 
slowly and was in a great measure effected by Prussia 
herself. 
The novel, startling, and terrifying atrocities of which 
that Power proved guilty did more to consolidate the re- 
sistance against her and the alliance of its various parts than 
anything proper to those parts themselves. 
We say then, that when the great war was launched, there 
was a clean-cut division between those who were to be the 
belligerents. On the one side the Central Powers, organised 
by, and dependent upon, Prussia alone, with one word of 
command running from the Eower Danube to the Baltic and 
from Metz to the frontiers of Roumania, set out for a brief 
war of coiKiuest, in their eyes inevitably successful (for every 
calculation was in their favour) and necessarily resulting 
in their capture of the Near East, their domination over the 
smaller Slav States and the reduction of the. F'rench to a 
secondary position in Europe. Upon the other side stood, 
at the outbreak of war, three disparate powers— F'rance, 
Russia and Great Britain (the latter of which was not a certain 
factor in the Alliance until mobilisation had already begun 
upon the Confincnt) and the purposes of that tri-partite 
agreement between the three such different partners was the 
comprehension of the conclusion to which the Central Powers 
aspired, and the preservation of European tradition and national 
independence. 
Attitude of Defence 
This attitude of necessary but imperfect defence was as clear 
and as universally admitted as was the attitude of conquest 
upon the other side. It is rare indeed in history to find any 
great conflict so simple in its issues. FIven in the case of this 
one, afterthought led to attempts at confusing the issues, 
and even to a forgettulness of those issues, as wc shall presently 
sec. 
It began to be said, for instance, upon the side of the Central 
Powers, that though they indeed had launched the war, yet 
morally the guilt of it lay on their opponents for having 
cramped the expansion and legitimate ambitions of the Ger- 
mans. It began to be circulated later in the campaign by the 
friends of the Germans in the allied countries, and by interests 
neutral in their sympathies and desiring only peace, that the 
whole tragedy was the result of some obscure misunder- 
standing which they made no attempt to dcline. But these 
confusions of the issue are negligible to the historian, and, 
indeed, take very little place in any historical discussion, 
because thev arc manifestly unreal. 
The refusal of all negotiation, the tcrnii^ of the original nota 
to the Serbian Government, the universal popularity and 
acclamation of the war among the populace of the Central 
Powers, the hesitation, tardiness and unpreparcdness of the 
Alliance constructed against them, all tell the same tale. 
Under these circumstances the tone of thought and the 
public expression of it to be discovered at the beginning of the 
campaign in France, in England, and throughout the Russian 
Empire, .'was various, while through the German-speaking 
part of the Central Powers it was homogeneous and fixed. 
In Great Britain the mass of men had not thought themselves 
near war at all. It came as a terrible and most imperfectly 
comprehensive surprise. The effort of the nation was there- 
fore limited at the very first, but the energy developed rose in a 
very rapidly steepening curve even during the early period, 
when reliance was placed upon merely voluntary action in 
every department of the national life. Further, it was but 
natural that men should be slow to sec things as they were. 
It was equally natural to the academic or teaching classes, 
for they had been trained in the Universities not only to a 
profound admiration of Prussian Germany but to think that 
they were themselves part of an imaginary and noble " (ier- 
inanic race," the origin of all good things in Europe ; such was 
the curious pedantry of the time. 
In France the intensity of domestic discussion, especially the 
passionate interest taken in t^lat country in religious divisions, 
and further the power of a small but very well organised 
group of Socialists with international theories to defend, 
somewhat divided opinion ; although the mass of the nation 
was firmly and determinedly fixed upon victory against a 
detested enemy. 
The numerous races and creeds united under the autocratic 
crown of Russia regarded the war at its outbreak with every 
variety of emotion. The great Jewish community, number- 
ing many millions, mainly German in speech and naturally 
sympathising with German culture, were at one extreme. 
