[1] Some people take great pleasure in analysing White
Books and Grey Books and Orange Books and Yellow Books
without end, and proving this or that from them—as
of course out of such a mass of material they can
easily do, according to their fancy. But when
one remembers that almost all the documents in these
books have been written with a view to their
later publication; and when one remembers also that,
however incompetent diplomatists as a class may be,
no one supposes them to be such fools as to entrust
their most important ententes and understandings
with each other to printed records—why,
one comes to the conclusion that the analysis of all
these State papers is not a very profitable occupation.
WAR-MADNESS
September, 1914.
How mad, how hopelessly mad, it all seems I With fifteen
to twenty million soldiers already mobilized, and
more than half that number in the fighting lines;
with engines of appalling destruction by land and
sea, and over the land and under the sea; with Northern
France, Belgium, and parts of Germany, Poland, Russia,
Servia, and Austria drenched in blood; the nations
exhausting their human and material resources in savage
conflict—this war, marking the climax, and
(let us hope) the finale of our commercial
civilization, is the most monstrous the old Earth
has ever seen. And yet, as in a hundred earlier
and lesser wars, we hardly know the why and wherefore
of it. It is like the sorriest squabbles of children
and schoolboys—utterly senseless and unreasoning.
But broken bodies and limbs and broken hearts and an
endless river of blood and suffering are the outcome.
THE ROOTS OF THE GREAT WAR[2]
October, 1914.
In the present chapter I wish especially to dwell
on (1) the danger to society, mentioned in the Introduction,
of class-ascendancy and class-rule; and (2) the hope
for the future in the international solidarity of
the workers.
Through all the mist of lies and slander created on
such an occasion—by which each nation after
a time succeeds in proving that its own cause is holy
while that of its opponent is wicked and devilish;
through the appeals to God and Justice, common to
both sides; through the shufflings and windings of
diplomats, and the calculated attitudes of politicians,
adopted for public approval; through the very real
rage and curses of soldiers, the desperate tears and
agony of women, the murder of babes, and the smoke
of burning towns and villages: it is difficult,
indeed, to arrive at clear and just conclusions.
