able, to defend its country from attack. The problem before the world at the end of this war is how to eliminate the virus of an aggressive nationalism that will lead to fresh outbursts of death. It is a problem that I, for one, frankly believe will beat the powers and goodwill of all, unless there should come a radical change of Governments in Central Europe; unless the real power in Germany and Austria-Hungary passes into the hands of the people of those countries, as already it has passed in France and Britain. This is in my belief the only chance for the defeat of militarism, of that raw nationalism, which, even if beaten down at first, will ever be lying in wait, preparing secret revenge and fresh attacks. How this democratization of Central Europe can be brought about I cannot tell. It is far off as yet. But if this be not at last the outcome of the war, we may still talk in vain of the rights of little nations, of peace, disarmament, of chivalry, justice, and humanity. We may whistle for a changed world. JOHN GALSWORTHY. Singer of "La Marseillaise" By H. T. SUDDUTH [The body of Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, who composed "The Marseillaise," was placed, on July 15, 1915, in the Hotel des Invalides, Paris.] Up from the land of fair Provence, Land of the vineyard and olive green, Joyous Marseilles' Battalion came, List as the drums the quickstep beat! "Death to the tyrant! Vive le Marseillais!" Orchards and vineyards caught up the song, Sung by the sons of the South that day, Marching song of a nation's life! Days of Terror that chant ushered in, Falling of thrones and baubles and crowns Bastille walls and guillotine, Sack of Tuileries, Temple frowns. Heard that Chant of the Marseillais, "Le jour de gloire est arrivé." Reds of the Midi! The song you sung Song of a people with hearts tense-strung, Depression-Common-Sense and the Situation By Arnold Bennett Copyright, 1915, by Arnold Bennett The pessimistic attitude toward the military situation assumed by a large part of British society, after the arrival of warm weather, without the heralded concerted advance of the Allies in France and Belgium, is dealt with by Mr. Bennett in the subjoined article, which appeared in the London Daily News of June 16, 1915. It is here reproduced by Mr. Bennett's express permission. I 'N a recent article I said that for reasons discoverable and undiscoverable the military situation had been of late considerably falsified in the greater part of the Press. This saying (which by the way was later confirmed by the best military experts writing in the Press) aroused criticism both public and private. That it should. have been criticised in certain organs was natural, for these organs had certainly been colouring or manipulating their war news, including casualties, chiefly by headlines and type, and even influencing their expert analysis of warnews, to suit what happened to be at the moment their political aims. Even the invasion scare was last week revived by the "Daily Mail" as an aid to compulsion. The "Daily Mail" asserted that, whatever we might say, invasion was possible. True. It is. Most things are. But invasion is responsibly held to be so wildly improbable that our military, as distinguished from our naval, plans are permitted practically to ignore the possibility. Compulsion or no compulsion, those plans will be the same. They will be unaffected by any amount of invasion-scaring, and therefore to try to foster pessimism in the public by alarums about invasion is both silly and naughty. Newspapers quite apart, however, there has been in the country a considerable amount of pessimism which I have not been able to understand, much less sympathise with; pessimism of the kind that refuses to envisage the future at all. It has not said: "We shall be beaten." But it has groaned and looked gloomy, and asked mute questions with its eyes. It has resented confident faith and demanded with sardonic superiority the reasons for such faith. Of the tribe of pessimists I count some superlative specimens among my immediate acquaintances. The explanation of their cases is, I contend, threefold. First, they lack faith, not merely in the Allied arms, but in anything. They have not the faculty of faith. Secondly, they unconsciously enjoy depression, and this instinct distorts all phenomena for them. Thus they exhibited no satisfaction whatever at the capture of Przemysl full of men and munitions by the Russians, whereas the recapture of Przemysl empty of men and munitions by the Germans filled them with delicious woe. Thirdly, they lack patience, and therefore a long-sustained effort gets on their nerves. Others I can inoculate with my optimism, but the effect passes quickly, and each succeeding reinoculation has been less and less effective, with the monotonous questioning, ever more sardonic in tone: "How can you be deluded by the official bulletins?" or: "What do you know about war, to make you so cocksure? The truth is that I am not deluded by the official bulletins. I don't know how long it is since I learnt to appreciate official bulletins at their true value, but it is a long while ago. A full perception of the delusiveness of official bulletins can only be obtained by reading histories of the war. The latest I have read are those of Mr. John Buchan and Mr. Hillaire Belloc. (Mr. Buchan's is good. Mr. Belloc's is more than good: it is-apart from a few failures in style, due either to fatigue or to the machinery of dictation-absolutely brilliant, both militarily and politically. I am inclined to rate the last dozen pages of Mr. Belloc's book as the finest piece of writing yet produced by the war.) And when one compares, in these works, the coherent, impartial, and convincing accounts of, say, the first month of the war, with the official bulletins of the Allies during that month, one marvels that even officialism could go so far in evasion and duplicity, and the reputation of official bulletins is ruined for the whole duration of the conflict. No wonder the contents of the Allied newspapers in that period inspired the Germans with a scornful incredulity, which nothing that has since happened can shake. It is not that official bulletins are incorrect; they are incomplete, and, therefore, misleading. The policy which frames them seems now to be utterly established, but my motion that it is a ⚫ mistaken policy remains unaltered. When the policy is pushed as far as the suppression of isolated misfortunes which flame in the headlines of the enemy Press from Cologne to Constantinople, then I begin to wonder whether I am living in three dimensions or in four. If, then, he does not rely on the official bulletins, and he has no military expertise, how is the civilian justified in being optimistic? The reply is that the use of his common-sense may justify his optimism. The realm of common-sense being universal, even war comes within it. And the fact is that the major aspects of the war are no more military than they are political, social, and psychological. Take one of the most important aspects-the character of generals. It cannot be denied that after ten months, confidence in Joffre has in creased. At the beginning of the war, when the German plan was being exactly followed and was succeeding, when the Germans had an immense advantage of numbers, when their reserves of men and munitions were untouched, when everything was against us, and everything in favour of the Germans, Joffre, aided by the British, defeated the Germans. He defeated them by superior generalship. Common-sense says that now, when the boot is on the other leg, Joffre will assuredly defeat the Germans-and decisively, and commonsense is quite prepared to wait until Joffre is ready. Again, take the case of the Grand Duke. The Grand Duke has shown over and over again that he is an extremely brilliant general of the first order. In the very worst days, when everything was against him and everything in favour of the Germans, as in the West, he held his own and he has continually produced many more casualties in the German ranks than the Germans have produced in his ranks. He still has many things against him, but it is not possible reasonably to believe that the Grand Duke will let himself in for a disaster. That he should avoid a disaster is all that the West front demands of him at present. On the other side, General von Moltke, head of the German Great General Staff, has been superseded. What German General has advanced in reputation? There is only one answer-von Hindenberg. Von Hindenberg won the largest (not the most important) victory of the war in the Battle of Tannenberg. He won it because the ground was exceedingly difficult, and because he knew the ground far better than any other man on earth. He was entitled to very high credit. He got it. He became the idol of the German populace, and the bugbear of the Allied countries. But he has done nothing since. Soon after Tannenberg he made a fool of himself on the Russian frontier, and showed that success had got into his head. subsequently initiated several terrific attempts, all of which were excessively costly and none of which was carried through. If he has not ceased to be He м с an idol, he has at any rate ceased to be a bugbear. As for the average intelligence of the opposing forces, it may be said that Prussian prestige, though it dies very slowly, is dying, even in the minds of our pessimists. Their zest for elaborate organization of plan gave the Germans an immense advantage at the start, but it is proved that, once the plan has gone wrong, they are at the best not better in warfare than ourselves. Their zest for discipline, and their reserves, have enabled them to stave off a catastrophe longer than perhaps any other nation could have staved it off. But time is now showing that excessive discipline and organization produce defects which ultimately outweigh the qualities they spring from. The tenacity of the Germans is remarkable, but does it surpass ours? Man for man, a soldier of the Allies is better than a soldier of the Central Powers-or ten thousand observers have been deceived. As for the intelligence of the publics upon whose moral the opposing forces ultimately depend, it is undeniable that the German public is extremely hysterical, and far more gullible even than ourselves at cur very worst. The legends believed by the German public today are ridiculous enough to stamp Germany for a century as an arch-simpleton among nations. Its vanity is stupendous, eclipsing all previously known vanities. The Great General Staff must know fairly well how matters stand, and yet not the mere ignorant public, but the King of Bavaria himself, had the fatuity as late as last week to talk about the new territory that Germany would annex as a result of the war! In numbers we in the West had got the better of them, and were slowly increasing our lead, before Italy, by joining us, increased the Allies' advantage at a stroke by over three-quarters of a million fully mobilised men, and much more than as many reserves. In financial resources there is simply no comparison between the enemy and ourselves. We are right out of sight of the enemy in this fundamental affair. We lack nothing-neither leading, nor brains, nor numbers, nor money-save ammunition. Does any pessimist intend to argue that we shall not get all the ammunition we need? It is inconceivable that we should not get it. Whea we have got it the end can be foretold like the answer to a mathematical problem. Lastly, while the Germans have nothing to hope for in the way of further help, we have much to hope for. We have, for example, Rumania to hope for; and other things needless to mention. And we have in hand enterprises whose sudden development might completely change the face of the war in a few hours; but whose failure would not prejudice our main business, because our main business is planned and nourished independently of them. One of these enterprises is known to all men. The other is not. The Germans have no such enterprises in hand. For all the foregoing argument no military expertise is necessary. It lies on a plane above military expertise. It appeals to common-sense and it cannot be gainsaid. I have not yet met anybody of real authority who has attempted to gainsay it, or who has not endorsed it. The sole question is, not whether we shall win or lose, but when we shall win. For this reason I strongly object to statesmen, no matter who they be, going about and asserting to listening multitudes that we are fighting for our very existence as a nation. We most emphatically are not. It is just conceivable that certain unscrupulous marplots might by chicane produce such domestic discord in this country as would undermine the very basis of victory. I regard the thing as in the very highest degree improbable, but it can be conceived. The result might be an inconclusive peace, and another war, say, in twenty years, when we probably should be fighting for our very existence as a nation. But we are not now, and at the worst shall not be for a long time, fighting for our very existence as a nation. Nobody believes such an asser tion; pessimists themselves dc not believe it. And when statesmen give utterance to it in the hope of startling the working-class into a desired course of conduct, they under-rate the intelligence of the working-class and the result of such oratory is far from what they could wish. Our national existence is as safe as it has been any time this century; indeed, it is safer, for its chief menace has received a terrible blow, and the Prussian superstition is exploded. All that can be urged is that we have an international job to finish; that in order to finish it properly and within a reasonable period we must work with a will and in full concord; and that if we fail to do this the job will be botched, with a risk of sinister consequences to the next generation. The notion that to impress the public it is necessary to pile on the agony with statements that no moderately enlightened person can credit, is a wrong notion, and, like all wrong notions, can only do harm. The general public is all right, quite as all right as the present Government or any other. Had it not been so we should not be where we are to-day, but in a far less satisfactory position. Not Governments, not generals, but the masses make success in these mighty altercations. Read Tolstoi's "War and Peace." The War and Racial Progress [From the Morning Post of London, July 2, 1915] Major Leonard Darwin, in his presidential address on "Eugenics During and After the War" to the Eugenics Education Society at the Grafton Galleries yesterday, said that our military system seemed to be devised with the object of insuring that all who were defective should be exempt from risks, whilst the strong, courageous, and patriotic should be endangered. Men with noble qualities were being destroyed, whilst the unfit remained at home to become fathers of families, and this must deteriorate the natural qualities of the coming generations. The chances of stopping war were small, and we must consider how to minimize its evils. If conscription were adopted future wars would produce less injury to the race, because the casualty lists would more nearly represent a chance selection of the population; though whether a conscript army would ever fight as well as our men were doing in France was very doubtful. The injurious effects of the war on all useful sections of the community should be mitigated. Military training was eugenic if the men were kept with the colours only for short periods. Officers must, of course, be engaged for long periods, and amongst them the birth rate was very low. An increase of pay would be beneficial in this respect, but only if given in the form of an additional allowance for each living child. In the hope of increasing the birth rate attempts were likely to be made to exalt the "unmarried wife," a detestable term against which all true wives should protest. If a change in moral standards was demanded in the hope that an increase in the habit of forming irregular unions would result in an increase in the population, that plea entirely failed because the desired effect would not thus be produced. A special effort ought now to be made on eugenic as well as on other grounds to maintain the high standards of home life which had ever existed in our race, and which had been in large measure the basis of our social and racial progress in the past. If we did not now take some steps to insure our own racial progress being at least as rapid as that of our neighbours, and if our nation should in consequence cease in future to play a great part in the noble and eternal struggle for human advancement, then the fault would be ours. |