ntempt for us and for human happiness and common sense; and we
just rose at it and went for it. We have set out to smash the Kaiser
exactly as we set out to smash the Mahdi. Mr. Wells never mentioned a
treaty. He said, in effect: "There stands the monster all freedom-loving
men hate; and at last we are going to fight it." And the public, bored
by the diplomatists, said: "Now you're talking!" We did not stop to ask
our consciences whether the Prussian assumption that the dominion of the
civilized earth belongs to German culture is really any more bumptious
than the English assumption that the dominion of the sea belongs to
British commerce. And in our island security we were as little able as
ever to realize the terrible military danger of Germany's geographical
position between France and England on her west flank and Russia on her
east: all three leagued for her destruction; and how unreasonable it was
to ask Germany to lose the fraction of a second (much less Sir Maurice
de Runsen's naive "a few days' delay") in dashing at her Western foe
when she could obtain no pledge as to Western intentions. "We are now in
a state of necessity; and Necessity knows no law," said the Imperial
Chancellor in the Reichstag. "It is a matter of life and death to us,"
said the German Minister for Foreign Affairs to our Ambassador in
Berlin, who had suddenly developed an extraordinary sense of the
sacredness of the Treaty of London, dated 1839, and still, as it
happened, inviolate among the torn fragments of many subsequent and
similar "scraps of paper." Our Ambassador seems to have been of Sir
Maurice's opinion that there could be no such tearing hurry. The Germans
could enter France through the line of forts between Verdun and Toul if
they were really too flustered to wait a few days on the chance of Sir
Edward Grey's persuasive conversation and charming character softening
Russia and bringing Austria to conviction of sin. Thereupon the Imperial
Chancellor, not being quite an angel, asked whether we had counted the
cost of crossing the path of an Empire fighting for its life (for these
Militarist statesmen do really believe that nations can be killed by
cannon shot). That was a threat; and as we cared nothing about Germany's
peril, and wouldn't stand being threatened any more by a Power of which
we now had the inside grip, the fat remained in the fire, blazing more
fiercely than ever. There was only one end possible to such a clash of
high