TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE TEMPER OF THE PEOPLE.
E wonder whether any section, however small, of the German people really understand what they are " up against " in fighting the British nation—whether they have any real conception of the depth and tenacity of intent that has come to us and what it means for them. All the talk about our having " wakened up at last," of our having " got our backs up this time," of our stubbornness and bull-dog grip, is utterly inadequate to depict the present temper of the people. Not only have the times chana°ed, they in us and we in them, but a strange new clement has glided almost unobserved (alike by outside watchers and by ourselves) into the soul of the race. It has no name. It will never have a name. It has not been analysed by moralists or metaphysicians. It is in a scythe wholly unperceived by those who feel it and show it most. But it is there. It moves with us like a shadow. It lies down with us at night and rises with us in the morning. It controls every movement of the unconscious mind. No man can say when the change came. Most men are still unaware that it has come. Because it is universal there is nothing to measure it by. Again, it is a thing which the few men who recognize it do not and cannot talk about to each other. It is a mystery which they feel instinctively is strongest when shrouded. It is not the child of hate any more than it is the outcome of fear. Still less has it any rationalistic basis, any origin in a logical determination. In the last resort, it has its beginning in an understanding, a reve- lation of the things that are. Our eyes have become open, but as they have all opened together there is no need and no occasion to say that we see men as trees walking. Rather we see in the mind's eye a new heaven and a new earth and a new way of life. But the Germans do not per- ceive, even unconsciously, that we are men remade. They are too much blinded by reason and logic and by a false metaphysic. Only, like the threatened herd, there has come to them a fierce irritability and restlessness such as are felt by those who go to meet their doom. There are indications that the Germans are " fey," are going to encounter something which they dread inexpressibly, though they do not understand its nature. This makes them specially dangerous at the moment, but it is a sign we should not mistake.
Though we cannot name or analyse this new spirit in the people, we can mark its developments. It is known by its fruits. We can read it, if we look closely, in the people's eyes. What superficial observers still take for apathy or pot-bellied equanimity, ignorance, sloth, and easygoing optimism or indifference, is for the better part of the nation the quietness and patience with which men possess their souls when a great renunciation of the spirit has been made and when they are ready for sacrifice. The British people are now ready for any task, any sacrifice, every fate that may be prepared for them. A year ago we bothered ourselves with questions as to whether this or that amusement should be stopped, whether racing should be done away with, or whether some other sport should be forbidden. Now nobody worries about such things. Our Government and our leaders have only to point out a duty to ensure its fulfilment. Look at what has happened over compulsion. Who would have thought a year ago that the nation would take it as they have taken it ? We arc within ten days of the statutory date after which all unmarried men of military age will by a stroke of the legal pen become " attested soldiers." A more tremendous State stroke than that no Government here or elsewhere ever before struck on the red-hot bar upon the anvil. Yet no one is even asking how the people will stand it or what will be the consequences. We all know that, except for a few cranks or abject cowards, the colts and horses which have never yet been broken or felt the restraint of bit and bridle will go to their training as if they had been handled years before. That there may be a few " local exceptions " of course goes without saying, but they will be to the nation at large of no more account than the Parliamentary minority which would not allow the decision of the House of Commons to be recorded as unanimous. A proof of how little the Germans understand the new temper that is in the nation is to be found in the views as to peace held by them and by that large part of neutral opinion which sympathizes with them either from fear or favour—either because they have shared the demoralization that has come to so large a section of humanity through worship of the Prussian ideal, or because they hold the belief, which still stands up, though inside it is full of emptiness or corruption, that Germany must win. The Germans and their friends and followers believe that if the worst comes to the worst they can, whenever they like, call a halt, and make peace by offering "favourable terms "—i.e., by restoring the status quo to Europe plus ample compensation to Belgium and Serbia, and by making liberal amends to those parts of Russia and France upon which they have laid a bloodstained hand ! They think, in fact, that the British people are only fighting for a good settlement, and that by indulging us in this they can at any moment ring down the crimson curtain. When they try they will find how utterly they are mistaken. The British people are no longer fighting in self-defence, nor will it be possible to satisfy us with concessions, however large. Peace is not to be bought or hired, however high the bribe. It remains as true as ever that we are not fighting for domination, that we are not inspired by any hate of the German people, that the thought of vengeance is not in us, though some of us may have used wild language which sounds like a cry for vengeance. The purpose in our minds is not now a peace purpose. We are not looking or longing for an escape from war and its awful tribute of death and misery. No one is weighing what terms we can take or what is the most we can hope for. The "lore of nicely calculated less and more" is absolutely rejected.
What the nation is thinking of is security, of how to ensure that the awful doom which we have only just escaped, the utter degradation and spiritual death which would follow defeat at the hands of a group of men at once criminal and mad, shall never be the fate of our children in the future. The nation is not out for peace, but to make such a war as that begun in 1914 for ever impossible. We are not going to try to make two great wrongs into a right, or to destroy the German people, but we are going to destroy, as far as it is humanly possible, the forces of evil which made the war. In that sense we are crusaders, and will not take the Cross from our shields till we have accomplished our task. The war must go on without a thought of the heaven of peace till that erection of the negation of God into a system which we know as the Prussian domination is levelled to the ground, never to rise again. Just as no good man can found his religious beliefs on a bribe of heaven's bliss or on a coward's dread of hell, so we are not going to base our national purpose on the hope of peace any more than on the dread of defeat. We cannot hope to prevent all wars for the future, but at any rate they shall not be wars based on treachery, cruelty, and lust, international fraud and diplomatic falsehood. One fact remains burnt into the very souls of the British people, even though they have not yet found the full solution of the problem it raises. Things have come to the pass they have come to because the German people, though physically brave, have not the moral courage, the moral stamina, the intellectual sincerity, to govern themselves. The awful crimes that have been committed in Germany's name were due to the fact that the Germans, so brave as individuals, so abject in the mass, cowered before the drill sergeant personified, who at the slightest sign of resistance to wrong has ever since they were a people smitten them on the mouth with his " Hound, you mutiny " It is this national slavishness that has proved the master-curse of Europe. In some way or other we must see to it that the slaves are freed, even against their will. We must not learn their evil lesson, and destroy them for faults not really their own, or, again, do great and cruel wrongs because of our own fears. What we must do is to obtain security. But the best security, indeed we might almost say the only permanent security, is that the Germans shall become masters of their own fate, and not be allowed to entrust themselves, body and soul, to the demoralized, we had almost said dehumanized, caste that has ruled-Germany for the last half-century. -
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