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Page 9
For there we come to the root of everything--the _unpreparedness of
England_--and what it meant. It meant simply that as a nation we never
wished for war with Germany, and, as a nation, we never expected it. Our
Governments, of course, contained men who saw more or less plainly the
dangers ahead, and had spent years of effort in trying to avoid them. On
several occasions, during the last twenty years, as we all remember, a
wave of sudden anxiety as to German aims and intentions had spread through
the thinking portion of the nation--in connection with South Africa, with
Morocco, with the Balkans. But it had always died away again. We know now
that Germany was not yet ready! Meanwhile fruitless efforts were made by
successive English Governments to limit armaments, to promote arbitration,
and extend the scope of the Hague Tribunal. In vain. Germany would have
none of them. Year by year, in a world of peace her battle-navy grew. "For
what can it be intended but to attack England?" said the alarmist. But how
few of us believed them! Our Tariff Reformers protested against the
encroachments of German trade; but, outside a handful of persons who
seemed to most of us fanatics, the emphasis lay always on care for our own
people, and not on hostility to Germany. Those who warned us passionately
that Germany meant to provoke a struggle, that the struggle must come,
were very little heeded. Nobody slept the worse at night for their
harangues. Lord Roberts's agitation for National Service, based on the
portentous growth of the German Army and Navy, made comparatively little
way. I speak from personal experience of a large Parliamentary division.
"Did you foresee it?" I said to one of the ablest and most rising men in
the Navy a fortnight ago. He thought a little. "I always felt there might
be a clash over some colonial question--a quarrel about black men. But a
war between the white nations over a European question--that Germany would
force such a war--no, that I never believed!" Nor did any of us--except
those few--those very few persons, who Cassandra-like, saw the coming
horror plainly, and spoke to a deaf country.
"There was _no_ hatred of Germany in this country"--I quote a Cabinet
Minister. "Even in those parts of the country which had most reason to
feel the trade rivalry of Germany, there was no thought of war, no wish
for war!" It came upon England like one of those sudden spates through
mountain clefts in spring, that fall with havoc on the plains beneath.
After such days of wrestling for European peace as have left their
indelible mark upon every member of the English Cabinet which declared
war on August 4th, 1914, we fought because we must, because, in Luther's
words, we "could no other."
What is the proof of this--the proof which history will accept as
final--against the vain and lying pleas of Germany?
Nothing less than the whole history of the past eighteen
months!--beginning with that initial lack of realisation, and those
harassing difficulties of organisation with which we are now so often and
so ignorantly reproached. At the word "Belgium" on August 4th, practically
the whole English nation fell into line. We felt no doubts--we knew what
we had to do. But the problem was how to do it. Outside the Navy and the
Expeditionary Force, both of them ready to the last gun and button, we had
neither men nor equipment equal to the fighting of a Continental war, and
we knew it. The fact is more than our justification--it is our glory. If
we had meant war, as Germany still hoarsely but more faintly says, week
after week, to a world that listens no longer, could any nation of sane
men have behaved as we did in the years before the war?--233,000 men on
active service--and 263,000 Territorials, against Germany's
millions!--with arsenals and equipment to match. Is it any wonder that the
country--our untouched, uninvaded country--safe as it believed itself to
be under the protection of its invincible Navy, was, in some sections of
our population at any rate, slow to realise the enormous task to
which--for the faith of treaties' sake, for self-defence's sake--it was
committed?
And yet--was it after all so slow? The day after war was declared the
Prime Minister asked Parliament to authorise the addition of half a
million of men to the Army, and a first war credit of a hundred millions
of money (five hundred million dollars). The first hundred thousand men
came rolling up into the great military centres within a few days. By
September 4th nearly three hundred thousand fresh men had enlisted--by
Christmas half a million. By May, a million men had been added to the new
Armies; by September, 1915, Sir John French alone had under his command
close on a million men on the lines in France and Flanders, and in
December, 1915, the addition of another million men to the Army was voted
by Parliament, bringing up the British military strength to approximately
four millions, excluding Colonials. And what of the Dominions? By
November, 1915, Canada and Australia alone had sent us forces more than
equal to the whole of that original Expeditionary Force, that
"contemptible little army" which, broken and strained as it was by the
sheer weight and fierceness of the German advance, yet held the gates of
the Channel till England could fling her fresh troops into the field, and
France--admirable France!--had recovered from the first onslaught of her
terrible and ruthless enemy.
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