The Custom of War
Eternal peace is a chimera. Whatever pains we may take to avoid war, there always comes a moment when tradition and interest, passion and affection clash and bring to pass the shock which we desired to avoid, a shock which, in the conditions within which civilisation evolves, appears not merely inevitable, but salutary. So we see that philosophers and historians have generally spoken of war as a necessary evil.
But just because of the services which war is called upon to render at certain times, it is important not to keep it apart from all the wholesome, righteous and moral ideas disseminated by civilisation, some of which are an age-long gain to society. The evils which war brings with it must be reduced as much as possible. A state of war, disastrous in itself, must be made subject to laws, approved by righteousness and morality, laws which experience has shown to be practicable and salutary.
These laws are in effect the international conscience of civilised nations. They are the laws of humanity. In every case where military necessity is not absolutely involved, the nations demand that these laws should be set in motion. To reduce the enemy to[2] impotence; to make it impossible for him to resist, is the aim of belligerents: but to attain that end there is no need to disown humanity. A war humanely conducted may be speedily brought to an end. Often, even, it attains its end more quickly by declining to exasperate the enemy and by conciliating opinion. On the other hand, by resorting to terrorism and attacking the enemy’s dearest, most cherished and most sacred possessions—the lives of non-combatants, private property, works of science and art, the good name of families, religion—you renew his power of resistance, increase his moral strength, and infuse into him the spirit of hatred and vengeance.
German Military Writers’ Theory of War
German military writers have paid no attention to that. In the picture which they have drawn of force, they have left no room for justice and moderation, which alone make it worthy of respect and bring about lasting results. The triumph, such as it is, of violence, bounds their whole horizon. Clausewitz, an author who has the ear of Germany, writes, “War knows only one means: force. There is no other: it is destruction, wounds, death, and this resort to brutal force is absolutely imperative. As for that right of nations, about which its advocates talk so much, it imposes on the purpose and right of war merely insignificant and, so to speak, negligible, restrictions. In war every idea of humanity is a blunder, a dangerous absurdity. The violence and brutality of combat admit no kind of limitation.”
“Let France reflect upon the words of one who has been called ‘an immortal teacher,’” says a[3] celebrated commentator of the same Clausewitz, Baron Bronsard de Schellendorf, a former Prussian Minister of War, in another work (France under Arms). And this author adds, “If civilised nations do not scalp the vanquished, do not cut their prisoners’ throats, do not destroy towns and villages, do not set fire to farms, do not lay waste everything in their path, it is not from motives of humanity. No, it is because it is better policy to ransom the vanquished and to make use of productive territories.”
The author does not ask himself if, always from this point of view, no other limitations to the brutalities of war are imposed upon thoughtful people, limitations which are in conformity with well-understood interest, and which at the same time would win the approbation of righteousness and humanity. Wholly obsessed by the coarse intoxication of his principle of absolute violence, he adds—
“The style of old Clausewitz is a feeble affair. He was a poet who put rosewater into his inkpot. But it is only with blood that you can write about the things of war. Besides, the next war will be a terrible business. Between Germany and France it can only be a question of a duel to the death. To be or not to be: that is the question, and one, too, which will only be solved by the destruction of one of the combatants.”
Such is the tone of German military authors. Their responsibility is of the highest importance in the story we have to tell. It is they, it is their principles disseminated through Germany, which have set up like a dogma in that country the cult of force in and for itself, divorced from all the moral elements with which the thought of civilised people surrounds it. And, having been taught by such masters, the German[4] nation can in matters of war only thirst for murder and violence.
The German State of Mind on the Eve of War
These principles had their full effect as soon as the Germans thought that war was inevitable.
Do not let us here discuss the excitement which people naturally feel under such circumstances, nor the emotions of wild enthusiasm and patriotic hatred into which the rush of events leads them. If these emotions lead to excesses, we can neither wonder nor complain at it. Excess is in the nature of things and is part and parcel of a system in which material forces work for a just end—namely, the safety of the country. The general upheaval which accompanied a declaration of war cannot fail to rouse the masses and to lead to extravagant and blustering demonstrations. Nevertheless, even in that respect, there are limits which a nation will never exceed, unless it is being exploited in the interests of the gospel of frightfulness, unless the love of destruction for its own sake is the aim of its leaders and its preceptors, and is the basis of the nation’s conception of war.
That is the case with the Germans. The instincts of blind violence which men carry naturally within them and which education alone restrains, had been so carefully fostered by the Clausewitz and Schellendorf schools in the mind of the German people that, once the restraint of peace has been removed, we could postulate in them the symptoms of the most dangerous impulses: symptoms which, in the eyes of every impartial judge, appeared like the dismal omens of an appalling thirst for blood.
[5]
The correspondent of the Hovedstaden (La Capitale), a Danish journal, tells that he heard some women at Berlin uttering impassioned speeches, shouting that an attempt was being made to annihilate Germany, and urging the men to the task of destruction by fire and sword in the foreign countries to which they were going. This same correspondent records the fact that “men and women speakers followed one another in the Café Piccadilly belching out curses against Great Britain and her allies.” Such were the feelings of the public in Germany, different, one might say, from what one would naturally expect to find in such a case, for, is it human for a woman to urge on her husband, her father or her son to a work of cruel destruction? How effective must have been the doctrines disseminated by German authors like those we have quoted, if they have been able, as they have been, to destroy absolutely the finer feelings even of women, and if the thirst for violence has led women to make public attempts to incite their men-folk?
The State of Mind of German Intellectuals
But let us leave the military writers, and speak of men whose peaceful profession ought to have the effect of inspiring in them feelings of moderation. The classes whom we call the intellectuals have been the most savage of all.
“We are barbarians!” wrote the famous German journalist, Maximilian Harden, in his paper Die Zukunft, at the beginning of the war. “England is in alliance with yellow apes and rejoices to hear it said that Germans have been murdered by drunken Cossacks. The English, the Belgians, the French, the[6] northern and southern Sklavs and the Japanese cannot praise one another enough, declaring that they are the guardians and purveyors of the most refined civilisation, and calling us barbarians.
“We should be quite wrong to contradict them. For ancient Rome when it was sick unto death, the Germans who dug its grave were barbarians. Your civilisation, friends, wafts to you no fine perfumes! Accustom yourselves to the idea that on German soil live barbarians and warriors who for the moment have no time to talk soft nothings. They shall defeat your armies, overpower your general staffs, and cut your tentacles in the oceans. When Tangiers and Toulon, Antwerp and Calais are subject to barbaric power, then sometime we shall have a kindly chat with you.”
It is in this state of mind, the mark of unbridled violence, that the German people embarked on the war of 1914. A monstrous outburst followed, the desire and the firm expectation of victory, of which German patriotism had perhaps the right to be glad. But at the same time the most brutal and savage instincts of mankind were let loose.
The will to ravage, destroy, pollute everything belonging to the enemy filled the German armies, and the results of teachings printed in books could be seen written in letters of blood and fire on the page of history. The theory of blind violence openly professed in Germany for half a century, a theory which has been drilled into the very soul of the nation, and has become a principle of conduct for the individual, has borne its fruit. We shall tell the story of them.