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I. COMMON SENSE ABOUT ? THE…

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I COMMON SENSE ABOUT ? THE WAR.  EXCERPTS FROM MR. BERNARD SHANN"S I EXCERPTS FROM MR. BERNARD SHAW'S NEW PAMPHLET. The most brilliant and convincing article which the war has yet produc- ed is that by George Bernard Shaw, which appeared as a 22-page supple- ment in the New Statesman" for November 14 It lias attracted uni- versal attention, not only for its won- derful brilliance, intermixed by a bit- ing sarcasm, and a faithful hai»diing of our statesmen, but also for the way in which the historic -facts are set forth in cleat- and unmistakable language- The following extracts will give PIONEER readers an example of the article as a whole, which we advise all our readers to buy and wad leisurely and carefully — I Mutual Detestation. And first. I do not see this war as one which has welded Governments and peoples into complete and sympa- thetic solidarity as against the com- mon enemy. I see the people of Eng- land united in a fierce detestation and defiance of the act of Prussian Jun- kerism, and I see the German people stirred to the depths by a similar anti- pathy to English Junkerism, and an-G gered at the apparent treachery and du plicity of the attack made on them by us in their extremest Peril from France and Russia. I see both nations dup- ed, but al! not quite unwillingly duped, by their Junkers and Militar- ists into wreaking on one another the wrath they should have spent in de- stroying Junkerism and Militarism in their own country. And I see the Jun- kers and Militarists of England and Germany jumping at the chance they have longed for in vain for many yea r: of smashing one another and establish- ing their own oligarchy as the domin- ant military power in the world. Let me, therefore, break it gently by expatiating for a while on the sub- ject of Junkerism and Militarism generally. I beg the patience of my reader* during this painful operation. If it becomes unbearable, they can always put the paper down and relieve them- selves by calling the Kaiser Attila and Mr. Keir Hardie a traitor twenty times or so. Then they will feel. I hope, refreshed enough to resume. For. af- ter all, abusing the Kaiser or Keir Hardie or me will not hurt the Ger- mans. whereas a clearer view of the political situation will certainly help us Besides I do not believe that the true-born Englishman in his secret soul relishes the pose of Injured Inno- cence any more than I do myself. He puts it on only because he is told that it is respectable. I A Word to Radicals. I Though often horribly wrong in principle, they were quite right in prac- tice as far as they went. But they must stand to their guns now that the guns are- going off. They must not pre- tend that they were harmless Radical lovers of peace, and that the propa- ganda. of Militarism and of inevitable war between Engand and Germany is a Prussian infamy for which the Kai- ser must be severely punished. That is not fair, not true, not gentlemanly. We began it; and if they met us half- way. as they certainly did, it is not for Its to reproach them. When the German fire-eaters drank to The Day (of Arniaged<Io11TTT1 ey were drinking to the day of which our Navy League fire-eaters had first said, "It's bound to come." Therefore, let us have no more nonsense about the Prussian Wolf and the British Lamb, the Prussian Machiavelli and the English Evange- list. W« cannot shout for yeans that we are boys of the bulldog breed, and t' en suddenly pose as Gazelles. Xo. When Europe and America come to settle the treaty that will end this business (for America is concerned in it as much as we are) they will not deal with n, as the lovable and innocent victims of a, treacherous tyrant and a savage soldiery. They will have to consider how these two incorrigibly pugnacious and inveterately snobbish peoples, who have snarlcd at one an- other for forty years with bristling- hair anfd grinning fangs, and are now rolling over with their teeth in one other's throats, ar.e to be tamed into trusty watchdogs of the jieat'e of the world. I am sorry to spoil the saintly image with a halo which the British Jingo journalist ses just now when he looks in the glass: but it must be done if we are to behave reasonably in the imminent day of reckoning. A Forecast. Suppose France rises from the war victorious, happy and glorious, with Alsace and Lorraine Regained. Rheims Catheda,a( repaired in the modern trade style, and a prodigious indemnity in her pocket! Suppose we tow the German fleet into Portsmouth, and leave HohenzoH<.rn metaphorically 1111- der the heel of Homanotf and actually in a comfortable villa- in Chislehurst. the hero of all its t-ea. parties and the judge of all its gymskamw! VS ell. cry the Militarists, suppoe it by all mean could we desire anything bet- ter.- Now I happen to have a some- what active imagination aud it flat- ly refuses to stop at this convenient point. I must go on supposing. Sup- pose Fance. with its military prestige J raised once more to the Napoleonic i point, spends its indemnity in building an invincible Armacla. stronger and nearer to us than the German one we are now out to destroy! Suppose Sir Ikiward Grey remonstrates, and Mon- sieur Delcasse replies Russia and l? iissia an d France have humbled one liupei-iall Bully, and are prepared to humble an- other. I have not forgotten Fashoda. Stop us if you can: or turn, if you like, ion help to the Germany we have smashed and disarmed!" Of what iise will all this bloodshed be then. with the old situation reproduced in an ag- gravated form. tthe enemy closer to shores, a raid more fea.srble. the tradi-j turn of "natural enmity" to steel the foe. and Waterloo to be wiped out like Sedan A child in arms should be able to see that this idiotic notion of relax- ing the military pressure on us by smashing this or that particular Power is like trying to alter the pressure of the ocean by dipping a bucket of wa- ter from the North Sea and pouring it into the Bay of Biscay. I pur- posely omit more eastery supposing* as to what victorious Russia might do. Diplomatic History of the War. The evidence of how the Junker di- plomatists of our Foreign Office let us in for the war is in the White Paper, Miscellaneous No. 6 (1914), containing correspondence respecting the Europe- au crisis, and since re-issued, with a later White Paper and some extra matter, as a penny bluebook in minia- ture. In these much-cited and little- read documents we see the Junkers of all the nations, the men who have been saying for years, It's bound to come," and clamouring in England for compulsory military sea-vioe and expe- ditionary forces, momentarily stagger- ed and not a little frightened by the sudden realisation that it has come at last. They rush round from foreign of- fice to embassy, and from embassy to palace, twittering "This is awful. Can't you stop it I- Won't you be reasona ble: Think of the consequen- ces. etc., etc. One man among them keeps his head and looks the facts in the face. That man is Sazonoff, the Russian Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He "keeps steadily trying to make Sir Edward Grey face the inevitable. He says and reiterates, in effect. "You know very well that you cannot keep out of a European war. You know you are pledged to fight Germany if Germany attacks France. You know that your arrangements for the fight are actually made that already the | British army is commanded by a Fran- co-British Council of War that there is no possible honourable i-etreat for you. You know that this old man in Austria, who would have been super- annuated years ago if he had been an exciseman, is resolved to make war on Servia. and sent that silly forty-eight hours' ultimatum when we were all out of town. so that he could begin fight- ing before we could get back to sit on his head. You know that he has the Jingo mob of Vienna behind him. You know that if he makes war. Russia must mobilise. You know that France is hound to come in with us as you. are with Fance. You know that the moment we mobilie. Germany, the old man's ally, will have only one desperate chance of victory, and that is to over- whelm our ally. France, with one su- perb rush of her millions, and then sweep back and meet us on the Vis- tula. You know that nothing can stop this except Germany remonstrating with Austria, and insisting on the Ser- vian case being dealt with by an in- ternational tribunal and not by war. You know that Germany dares not do this, because her alliance with Austria is her defence against the -Franco-Hus- sian Atliauce. and that s he does not wa lit to do it in any case, because the Kaiser naturally has a strong class prejudice against the blowing up of Royal personages by irresponsible re- volutionists, and thinks nothing too bad for Servia aftcr the assassination of the Archduke." • Sir Edward could not see it. He is a member of a Liberal Governm%J*t in a country where there is no political career for the man who does not put his party's tenure of office before ev- ery other consideration. Instead, he persuaded us all that he was under no obligation whatever to fight. He persuaded Germany that he had not the slightest serious inten- tion of fighting. Sir Owen Seaman wrote in "Punch" an amusing and wit- ty No-Intervention po^m. Sporting Liberals offered any odds thilt there would be no war for England. And Germany, confident that with Aust- tria's help sue could break Fiance with one hand, and Russia with the other if England held aloof, let Austria throw the match into the magazine. Then the Foreign Office, always act- ing through its amiable and popular but confused instrument Sit- Edward, unmasked the Junker-Militarist bat- tery. He suddenly announced thaV Eng- land must take a hand III the war, tiiougii lie did not yet tell the English people so. it being against the diplù- matic tradition to tell them anything until it is too late for them to object But he told the German Ambassador. Prince Lichnowsky caught in a death trap. pleaded desperately for peace with Great Britain. Would we promise to spare Germany if Belgium were left touched No. Would we say on what conditions we would spare Germany? Xo. Not if the Germans promised not to annex French territory No. Not even if they promised not to touch" the French C-oloniesr No. Was there no way out' Sir Edward Grey was frank He admitted there waa just one chance: that Liberal opinion might not stand the war if the neutrality of Belgium were not violated. And he provided against that chance by com- mitting Engand to the war the day be- fore he let the cat out of the hag In Parliament. All this is recorded in the language of diplomacy in the White Papez, or between the lines. That language is not so straightforward as my language. but at the crucial points it is clear enough. Sazonoff's tone is politely di- plomatic in No. 6: but in No. 17 he lets himself go. "*I do not believe that Germany really wants war but her attiude is decided by yours. If yoti take your stand firmly with France and Russia there will be no war. If you fail them now. rivers of blood will now. and you will in the end be drag- ged into war." He was precisely right: but he did not realise that wat- was exactly what our Junkers want- ed. They did not dare to tell them- selves so: and naturally they did not dare to tell him so. I I Honesty Wanted. He (Bernard Shaw) had advised Eng- land to arm to the teeth regardless of an expense which w us would have been a mere fleabite, and tell Germany that if she laid a finger on Fance we would unite with France to defeat her, offering her at the same time as consolation for that threat, the assur- ance that we would do as much.. to France if she wantonly broke the peace in the like faahion by atacking Ger- many. No unofficial Englishman worth his salt wanted to snivel hypocritically about our love of peace and our res- pect for treaties and our solemn ac- ceptance of a painful duty, and all the rest of the nauseous mixtures of school master's twaddle, parish magazme cant, and cinematograph melodrama with which we were deluged. We were perfectly ready to knock: the Kai- ser's head off just to teach him that if he thought he was going to ride roughshod over Ciirope. including our tiew friends the French, and the pluoky little Belgians, he was reckoning with- out old England. And in thia pugna- cious latit perfectly straightforward and human attitude the nation needed no excuses because the nation honestly did not know that We were taking the Kai- ser at a disadvantage, or that the Franco-Russian alliance had been jufft as much a menace to peace 86 the Austro-Grman one. But the Foreign Office knew that very well, and there- fore began to manufacture superfluous, disingenuous, and rather sickening ex- cuses at a great rate. Tie nation had a clean conscience, and was really in- nocent of any aggressive strategy the .Foreign Office was redhanded, and did not want to be found ouf;. Henc* its sermons. Belgium Crucified Between the European Pewers. And now, before I leave the subject, of Belgium, what have we done far Belgium? Have we saved her soil from inva.sion Were we at her side with half a million when when The ara- lanehe fell on her? Or were we 8816 iu our own country praising her hero- ism in paragraphs which all contrived to convey an idea that the Belgian soldier is about four feet high, but immensely plucky for hia rize- Alas, when the Belgian soldier oried "Where are the English?" the reply was "a mass of concrete as large a* a big room. blown into the air by a Ger- man siege gun, falling back and enisli- ng him into the earth we had not suc- ceeded in saving from the worst of the horroiis of war. We have not protected Belgium: fwlg-inlll ha protected uo a.t the cost of Winu conquered by Ger- many. It is now our sacred duty to drive the Germans out of Belgium. XKAV STATESMAN, 6d. weekly. Of all newsagents. Published by The Statesman Publishing Co.. Ltd.. 10 Great Queen Sweet, Kingsway. Lon- (ion.

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