Armageddon—and After

CHAPTER I. Problems of the Future

PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE

The newspapers have lately been making large quotations from the poems of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. They might, if they had been so minded, have laid under similar contribution the Revelation of St. John the Divine. There, too, with all the imagery usual in Apocalyptic literature, is to be found a description of vague and confused fighting, when most of the Kings of the earth come together to fight a last and desperate battle. The Seven Angels go forth, each armed with a vial, the first poisoning the earth, the second the sea, the third the rivers and fountains of waters, the fourth the sun. Then out of the mouth of the dragon, of the beast, and of the Antichrist come the lying spirits which persuade the Kings of the earth to gather all the people for that great day of God Almighty "into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon." Translated into our language the account might very well serve for the modern assemblage of troops in which nearly all the kingdoms of the earth have to play their part, with few, and not very important, exceptions. It is almost absurd to speak of the events of the past three months as though they were merely incidents in a great and important campaign. There is nothing in history like them so far as we are aware. In the clash of the two great European organisations--the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente--we have all those wild features of universal chaos which the writer of the Apocalypse saw with prophetic eye as ushering in the great day of the Lord, and paving the way for a New Heaven and a New Earth.

A COLOSSAL UPHEAVAL

It is a colossal upheaval. But what sort of New Heaven and New Earth is it likely to usher in? This is a question which it is hardly too early to discuss, for it makes a vast difference, to us English in especial, if, fighting for what we deem to be a just cause, we can look forward to an issue in the long run beneficial to ourselves and the world. We know the character of the desperate conflict which has yet to be accomplished before our eyes. Everything points to a long stern war, which cannot be completed in a single campaign. Every one knows that Lord Kitchener is supposed to have prophesied a war of three years, and we can hardly ignore the opinion of so good a judge. If we ask why, the obvious answer is that every nation engaged is not fighting for mere victory in battle, nor yet for extension of territory; but for something more important than these. They fight for the triumph of their respective ideas, and it will make the greatest difference to Europe and the world which of the ideas is eventually conqueror. Supposing the German invasion of France ends in failure; that, clearly, will not finish the war. Supposing even that Berlin is taken by the Russians, we cannot affirm that so great an event will necessarily complete the campaign. The whole of Germany will have to be invaded and subdued, and that is a process which will take a very long time even under the most favourable auspices. Or take the opposite hypothesis. Let us suppose that the Germans capture Paris, and manage by forced marches to defend their country against the Muscovite incursion. Even so, nothing is accomplished of a lasting character. France will go on fighting as she did after 1870, and we shall be found at her side. Or, assuming the worst hypothesis of all, that France lies prostrate under the heel of her German conqueror, does any one suppose that Great Britain will desist from fighting? We know perfectly well that, with the aid of our Fleet, we shall still be in a position to defy the German invader and make use of our enormous reserves to wear out even Teutonic obstinacy. The great sign and seal of this battle to the death is the recent covenant entered into by the three members of the Triple Entente. They have declared in the most formal fashion, over the signatures of their three representatives, Sir Edward Grey, M. Paul Cambon, and Count Benckendorff, that they will not make a separate peace, that they will continue to act in unison, and fight, not as three nations, but as one. Perhaps one of the least expected results of the present conjuncture is that the Triple Entente, which was supposed to possess less cohesive efficiency than the rival organisation, has proved, on the contrary, the stronger of the two. The Triple Alliance is not true to its name. Italy, the third and unwilling member, still preserves her neutrality, and declares that her interests are not immediately involved.

Subsequently joined by Japan.

NEVER AGAIN!

In order to attempt to discover the vast changes that are likely to come as a direct consequence of the present Armageddon, it is necessary to refer in brief retrospect to some of the main causes and features of the great European war. Meanwhile, I think the general feeling amongst all thoughtful men is best expressed in the phrase, "Never again." Never again must we have to face the possibility of such a world-wide catastrophe. Never again must it be possible for the pursuit of merely selfish interests to work such colossal havoc. Never again must we have war as the only solution of national differences. Never again must all the arts of peace be suspended while Europe rings to the tramp of armed millions. Never again must spiritual, moral, artistic culture be submerged under a wave of barbarism. Never again must the Ruler of this Universe be addressed as the "God of battles." Never again shall a new Wordsworth hail "carnage" as "God's daughter." The illogicality of it all is too patent. That everything which we respect and revere in the way of science or thought, or culture, or music, or poetry, or drama, should be cast into the melting-pot to satisfy dynastic ambition is a thing too puerile as well as too appalling to be even considered. And the horror of it all is something more than our nerves will stand. The best brains and intellects of Europe, the brightest and most promising youths, all the manhood everywhere in Europe to be shrivelled and consumed in a holocaust like this--it is such a reign of the Devil and Antichrist on earth that it must be banished in perpetuity if civilisation and progress are to endure. Never again!

UNEXPECTED WAR

How did we get into such a stupid and appalling calamity? Let us think for a moment. I do not suppose it would be wrong to say that no one ever expected war in our days. Take up any of the recent books. With the exception of the fiery martial pamphlets of Germany, the work of a von der Goltz or a Treitschke, or a Bernhardi, we shall find a general consensus of opinion that war on a large scale was impossible because too ruinous, that the very size of the European armaments made war impracticable. Or else, to take the extreme case of Mr. Norman Angell, the entanglements of modern finance were said to have put war out of count as an absurdity. We were a little too hasty in our judgments. It is clear that a single determined man, if he is powerful enough, may embroil Europe. However destructive modern armaments may be, and however costly a campaign may prove, yet there are men who will face the cost and confront the wholesale destruction of life that modern warfare entails. How pitiful it is, how strange also, to look back upon the solemn asseveration of the Kaiser and the Tsar, not so many months ago (Port Baltic, July 1912), that the division of Europe into the two great confederations known as the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente provided a safeguard against hostilities! We were constantly assured that diplomats were working for a Balance of Power, such an equilibrium of rival forces that the total result would be stability and peace. Arbitration, too, was considered by many as the panacea, to say nothing of the Hague Palace of Peace. And now we discover that nations may possibly refer to arbitration points of small importance in their quarrels, but that the greater things which are supposed to touch national honour and the preservation of national life are tacitly, if not formally, exempted from the category of arbitrable disputes. Diplomacy, Arbitration, Palaces of Peace seem equally useless.

PROXIMATE AND ULTIMATE CAUSES

In attempting to understand how Europe has (to use Lord Rosebery's phrase) "rattled into barbarism" in the uncompromising fashion which we see before our eyes, we must distinguish between recent operative causes and those more slowly evolving antecedent conditions which play a considerable, though not necessarily an obvious part in the result. Recent operative causes are such things as the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Serajevo, the consequent Austrian ultimatum to Servia, the hasty and intemperate action of the Kaiser in forcing war, and--from a more general point of view--the particular form of militarism prevalent in Germany. Ulterior antecedent conditions are to be found in the changing history of European States and their mutual relations in the last quarter of a century; the ambition of Germany to create an Imperial fleet; the ambition of Germany to have "a place in the sun" and become a large colonial power; the formation of a Triple Entente following on the formation of a Triple Alliance; the rivalry between Teuton and Slav; and the mutations of diplomacy and Real-politik. It is not always possible to keep the two sets of causes, the recent and the ulterior, separate, for they naturally tend either to overlap or to interpenetrate one another. German Militarism, for instance, is only a specific form of the general ambition of Germany, and the Austrian desire to avenge herself on Servia is a part of her secular animosity towards Slavdom and its protector, Russia. Nor yet, when we are considering the present debacle of civilisation, need we interest ourselves overmuch in the immediate occasions and circumstances of the huge quarrel. We want to know not how Europe flared into war, but why. Our object is so to understand the present imbroglio as to prevent, if we can, the possibility for the future of any similar world-wide catastrophe.

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