Carlyle and the war

Preface

If, as was my wish and endeavour, this book had been published in England, I should have written no Preface to it. Now, however, in putting it before the American public, some word of preface does seem desirable.

For the title, 'Carlyle and the War,' this, to thoughtful readers, should at once be sufficiently significant. But these readers will know too well how lamentably ignorant of Carlyle the general public is; and they must have constantly reflected how impossible it would have been for the delirious defamation of the German, which now stuns every ear, to have again found credence had his words been hearkened to. Carlyle was the greatest man of the nineteenth century. And he knew Germany, German character, and German history, as no other Briton has ever done; in his 'History of Frederick the Great,' especially, rendered such True Report thereof, as it is indeed something more than lamentable should be so little known or remembered, as it is altogether disgraceful to the American, as well as to the Briton, who attempts to judge of these matters, that he is not familiar with. For each present Event is but a part of the Past and of the Future; and this War is no accidental eddy, but very evidently an issue of the great world-currents.

Nor is it only, or even mainly, in regard to Germany that Carlyle 's life and teaching is of such importance here. Quite as much in the Democracy issue: Wherein he so nobly upheld what is verily priceless in Democracy, even as he banned what is vicious.

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But, above all that, Carlyle was one of those Seers who are for all time and all men; who taught and exemplified the imperishable moral grandeurs of man's soul and his eternal duties. He lived in what, in the sorrow of his hearty he deliberately named the Latter Days of England, her 'penultimate ages, or times immediately before the last'; wherein he warned her that, if she did not repent and turn from the course she was on, nothing save destruction could lie before her. England has not repented, nor turned from the course she was on. Neither merely continued on it; but, in the height of a blind and prideful enmity, has turned to wreck herself upon the Nation he revealed the natural peer of whatsoever was noblest and best in herself. And, in the fateful days we live in, Carlyle 's words come home again to us as those of a man once more sent of heaven to a People wedded to delusion, with the offer of redemption to them: Whose words must remain for the world, though the People, as usual, would not hear.

I, who here speak to you, am a Briton, long confessedly a follower of Carlyle 's. And, in looking at the Present with my own eyes, giving such account of it as able, I have referred to him where the Past is concerned ; largely, also, appealed for Justice in his name, and called on the alone real aristoi of Britain to rouse themselves, if they would not see their country consummate iniquity beyond all hope.

The non-British reader will do well to remember that I wrote primarily to Britons and for Britain; that, had it been otherwise, the manner of my address would have been different. Since a man may speak to his fellow countrymen as he would not of them, much less at them. I am sensible, too, that there is some change in this respect toward the latter part of the book. Namely, that when

PREFACE yii

it became apparent to me that British popular obsession had reached such a depth, it was only in America I could hope for a hearing. I gradually, without thinking of it, wrote more to the American, less to the Briton.

For the Briton, I repeat, I have no explanation to offer: He may take the book as it stands, and make of it what he can. In other words: He, if not possessed with the mob 's fanaticism, will need no explanation ; whilst, if so possessed, he will listen to none.

The American is supposedly neutral. Now, in the current dialect, this Neutral covers with a gentle forgiveness whatsoever damns the German, yet finds whatsoever speaks well of him, condemns the British, too partisan for Yankees' equity to relish: I am afraid I cannot help this sort of American either; have little respect for the 'dispassionate' pleadings pleasing to one who so levels at the truth.

There are Americans of another sort. And I can well believe that some of these may wish that I had written in a different tone. It is just admitted that, if American, I had done so. No word here was written in any wish to stir up American feeling against England: I have never, either, reckoned that there was any peril in that direction. America's danger has been, and is, to plunge into a war she has no call to take part in from Anti- German bias. I have written simply to try to make the truth more evident; and, if this involve the declaring of guilt, and terrible guilt, in the British, I cannot help it, Gentlemen.

Among the German-Americans, and German sympathisers in America, there is one point of view very prevalent just now, which is perhaps natural and pardonable, yet surely very erroneous. I mean that of looking upon Sir Edward Grey as chief author of the war, and a sort viii PREFACE

of surpassing lago, who, at every step, purposefully plotted for war, and had the diabolical satisfaction of seeing all the puppets dance according to his prearranged programme. A simple enough seeming ease can thus be made out ; but, truly, one only suitable for the nurseries. We have to do with actual flesh and blood; and these arch-fiends, with their super-human foreknowledges and cunning which makes mere mortal shudder, are creatures of the fancy. Neither is it by any means a simple case, but a highly complex! To be studied and meditated with earnestness and in a wide humanity, would we really see anything of it at all.

Briton, Frank and Russ, with all the world to help, and damn the German cur, is the Mob-cry of the hour. But Briton with German had been a better bond for peace in Europe; and, if America is ever to be a Mediator, she will need to cease tier swelling of that Mob-cry. Will need to search a little for the Almighty's justice: Whose judgments are, for certain, abroad in the world to-day as of yore.

Marshall Kelly.

August, 1915.

Contents

CHAPTEB

I. Concert of Europe

II. Ostensible Causes

Conclusion

1- 10

11- 22

23- 56

57- 73

75- 95

97-121

123-299

125-131

131-159

159-170

171-183

183-224

224-254

254^262

262-283

283-295

295-299

301-327

CARLYLE AND THE WAR

It is loudly asseverated that the British Empire is of one mind in regard to this war against Germany; and, by the arithmetical count of heads, it probably is so to an overwhelming extent, as it has long been in other matters. But one wonders how many, or how few, there may be who reflect, with a depth of stable conviction altogether diverse from the popular unanimities, that the British are in this war, as in so very much else, acting in an express defiance of the teaching of the validest Sage and Hero-soul that has lately lived among them. Yea, in a witting defiance of the clearest revelation of indubitable facts, made by the Best of themselves in their midst, vitally connected with this very matter; which it preeminently behoved the British to have learnt and laid to heart, as basis and guide for their whole relation to Germany, Few, indeed, I fear, are those who know thus, if compared to the millions neglectful; yet possibly more numerous than those denying millions dream of, and certainly, were it unit against the rest of the race, of more weight in the final count. These, in their musings on the war, its Causes and its Issues, will have their rock-based Certainties; also their profound Dubieties; their confidence in Eternal's justice, and joy in iniquity's overthrow; their submission to His decree, however terrible the desolation, however complete and hideous-seeming the triumpli of 111. Silent for tlie most part, and waiting the Event unforeseeable. For the nation does not ask their counsel; spurns it if offered; and follows, as most chosen of the Lord, the Demagogues which at each moment best mouth its own impious will. Moreover, so long as anything like a flaming success shall crown its effort, no contrary word will be listened to. Should adversity befall, it might prove otherwise; and in either, or in any, case we have and shall have our thoughts and our duties both during and after : Thoughts and duties which might perhaps gain a little in clearness if earnestly imparted, deliberated of.

To start with a small Certainty, surely shareable by many complexions : This attempt, of the Newspapers and Parliamentary Leaders, which has been and is all too successful, to work the whole nation up into a state of foamlipped furor against the Germans, cannot conduce to wisdom in the council or valour in the field. This is not just indignation, and no profit can lie in it for Man. Neither strength to us, nor danger to the German, — save as the human may be sore bested by numberless pack.

Brutal barbarian and modern Hun, ruthless in savage atrocity ; Military Autocracy, domineering of temper, bent on self-aggrandisement, destructive of freedom and seeking the tyrannous; most to be dreaded embodiment of Satanic power, whose threatened encroachments all the nations of the earth should gather together to stem, fairest of the justice-loving unite with darkest minister to cut down and destroy: — Surely there are men in number, true British, indeed, who have an assurance, not to be shaken by any amount of rabid clamour, that such current imagination of the German bears no manner of resemblance to the German of fact; men who could fight to some purpose in a cause that was just, unmoved by campaigns of persuasion far removed from all spirit of justice; who, demanded to draw in this quarrel, thrust the blade further home in its sheath, with some uttered or mute Videat AlUssimum, shamed of their country's deeds, appealing to their captain's Captain. Yea, mindful of, and worthily obeying, their earthly captain also, he, the greatest, noblest, justest of all modern men, Carlyle: Who bore witness of mightily different tenor to the German, his history, military and other organisation, and whose witness they know to have been true. Wide and stable testimony by constant brother man, lucent with true heaven's inspiration; somewhat more sufficing than the Devil's Head in phosphorus — drawn, alas, upon no dungeon's walls,^ but gleaming hideous in souls mendacious walking freely in the daylight, profane in insolent denial of the Seer whom the Almighty sent to them. To us at least ; not to them, unless penitent ; and may we be worthy to say to us.

His testimony, testimony to Briton and German alike, was true: That we know. Has it any way ceased to be presently applicable? Demagogues and mob that plunged into this war of their diligent seeking, lips babbling of endeavours for peace, build on no such hypothesis ; for they have denied him always throughout, and root still in belief of the lies he left naked: Their new false imagination is the outcome and successor of the old false. But we, we know that much has changed since he declared the truth of the Past and his own time; that the Present, sure descendant and inheritor, is not the same; and, whilst ever endeavouring to the better understand Carlyle 's spirit, far be it from us to assume that we possess it, or could tell

* Carlyle likened Voltaire 's Life of Frederick the Great to a picture of some flaming Devil's Head done in phosphorus on the walls of a dungeon, by an artist whom you had locked up there over night, — not without reason.

what he would have thought and done in this new time and circumstance. Our part to look, with such eyes as we have, and try to learn what the justice is, or may be; in reverent loyalty to, instead of insolent rejection of his so much more cosmic wisdom, — ^which also never supposed it could fathom all, but, resolute in insight given, rested in submissive faith. Thus, though, for other Certainties, we may know completely both that no British nation which had hearkened to Carlyle's word could by any possibility have got into this war, and that all the nation 's articulated pleas of justification for having got into the war are charged with a spirit very perverse, yet, among the great Dubieties, we must own that it nowise therefore necessarily follows that Britain's action is devoid of the least just basis, cannot have mutely in it any instinctive bias which is in accord with the deeper verities. Carlyle himself repeatedly defined the French Revolution, mutinous, anarchies sequent, raging at King, as a search, most unconscious, for true king. If that blind grope, cleaving to its very conscious Bedlam Faith, do meet the Sane and hurl itself unitedly, in league too with its own chiefly anathematised worst representative of the ancient exploded, upon such Finder more victoriously progressing toward solution of the problem it still welters in, — ^Why, if so, the attempt is a damned one; if successful, will prolong the rotheap 's slow moulder ; if unsuccessful, precipitate the attempting nation's own collapse, unless it can desist in time, learn, through defeat manfully accepted, where to turn for its own salvation also. If so! There is Dubiety. For the victorious Solver, or the veracious progenitor living toward his realisation on earth, rooted indeed in the true of the Past, must be of the Newborn, broad-based in progressive humanity and ruling in very wide grasp; abhorring all closure, and never imagining that the swor(J can keep peace, bring beneficent victory, unless wielded in valiance long suffering as severe. One knows not surely how much, or even whether, such element is really in the quarrel, though in negative sort its presence there he vociferously asserted. But we must leave this till later, here only forecasting of drift.

Empire of one mind, they say; and one among you evidently does not rejoice altogether! Some of the Colonies, too, have not supported quite gratis, if they have been accorded a desirable safety to thieve so. Yet the solidarity of the Empire, taken alone, is a fact of much significance ; more grateful, it may be, in many respects, to the unrejoicing unit than the outraged reader would be willing to credit. You can, then, still stand shoulder to shoulder unitedly, sinking all minor differences for the major, and front the world a Nation: It was not seriously debatable, at least for the start and in a cause popular successful, though clamour of civil war imminent, only cut short by the outbreak of foreign, may to some Austrian heads have seemed an item that helped to render the moment opportune. In the name of humanity, let us hope that that consideration had no weight with Liberal Ministry hoping fresh lease of power by enterprise abroad? In wantonness, it were to me wholly incredible it had any; in foregone persuasion the war must come sooner or later, I have no clear confidence the home crisis was without influence in decision, then let it come now. When a nation cannot stand united against outer world, all is over with it; and even the capacity to do this did hang uncertain through the middle of last century. But that doubt has passed for a while, though sure to return if the boasted union be not in true faith for the just. England is no Poland, whose grandees can be carried in ambitious neighbour's pockets; Faction has not reached that height among us; it cares for nothing else; and the once perilous indifference of mother to her colonies has given place to a warm reciprocity. Name the common bond of Empire nothing save a mutual recognition of profit by the union, you know the hypothesis untenable: For no faithless egotism is ever competent to steadily live as one of a whole, to perceive with the least constancy that its profit does lie in such union. And the loyal cooperation of all ranks here at home, staunch support of distant sections of the race, is a thing that certifies the existence of a priceless fund of virtue; which man would fain see directed on blest enterprise, then founded for hundredfold increase, not squandered in impious to its own wreck also. It cannot certify the war just, nor even honestly believed so. Neither can it bring victory in spite of Heaven, if possibly in its greater condemnation.

It is true that United Action is solely permanently possible in a seeing faith and for the just; that final ruin to a nation, once established in great possession, scarcely ever comes till it have lost the power to front the world a unity, fallen wholly internecine. Why, then, should Mr. Churchill speak as if defeat in this war must disrupt the Empire, sweep England into the past? It does not argue much of a manful conviction of justice in entering it, of faith in the quality of the unanimous British response he glories in, would persuade the Yankee to second, as himself next on the world-devourer 's list. "We, too, may be aware of enormous perils ; yet, if this danger do exist, know for certain that it cannot have come by the war, but must have been long already extant; self -gendered, and waiting only for some crisis to be precipitated. Pugnacious Winston's trepidations, fears of social institutions, so darling to him, getting pulverized by mailed fist, do not augur well of his faith in their being inspired by the spirit which endures forever, conquering and to conquer. Perhaps a gentle modesty, natural to the godly? Such as shrinks from asserting that deity inhabits the poor house its hands have laboured to build. And, should the Germans prove victorious, would bow mute before the confirmation by Heaven of all that he had chiefly hated? Though we have not observed him much remarkable for sentiments of that description. Surely one could believe it very possible for a soundly based Solidarity to come through in a gained strength, whatever the issue. If defeated in what seemed just, to accept the worsting without too deep an abashment. If overthrown in unjust, dire indeed must be that depth of rottenness which cannot confess penitent, anew make honourable front, no citadel left. Yea, this applies to all; and, for God's sake, clear yourself of this inflated, most vulgar. Proclamation of Magnitude, which meets you on every side. Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Asquith, all the vocal tribes, announcing with wide throat : The hugest thing that ever yet befell. Thucydides commences his history by similar insistence the war he is going to chronicle was the greatest ever known, foreseen so by himself; meaning thereby mere size and number, just as these moderns do. What wretched pettiness and suicidal nothing his great war was we know: Forfend the omen! Let us leave all that. It does not emanate from gravity, nor indicate staid noble consciousness of weighty fates in balance. Nations, and the World, have stood worse shocks ere now; time was, too, when it was thought that Man could stand unmoved should the mountains melt and stars tumble from their courses.

It is not to be forgotten either that a People may ponderate irresistibly in a right direction when they do not see at all, when their spoken reasons are beyond comment.

Carlyle found this to be eminently true of both Briton and German. It is, in fact, as he taught, partly true of all veridical men whatsoever; no utterable intelligence worth' much that does not rest on dumb bias, on a totality of instinct whereof the clearest intuition can only render very fractional account. Partly true because veracity, unable to say why, prefers silence to babblement. But, where that silence is, the fools will babble with so much the less hinderance; and thus it often haps that, with so composite an entity as a nation, the act is really done by those who never gave a reason; merely apparently prompted by the baseless and iniquitous pleas put forward as its explanation, justification, condemnation. It may even be safely affirmed usually done so, though never happily when so. But united action can temporarily be from all manner of causes ; very terrible deeds done in popular delusions more wide embracing, more spontaneous in their Solidarity, than have ever been exampled by concordance in a god-commanded duty. Again, though unions informed by mere egoism are transient enough, there are others, informed by a false faith, maintained in blind obstinacy, which are capable of long continuance, which grow ever the madder, the more fiercely determined in insistence, the more wrongful the faith, the greater defeat they meet. This, too, is a thing the world has witnessed many times ; and nothing the English have ever exhibited, or, one hopes, ever will exhibit in that bad sort, has equalled the toughness of the Jews when their destruction came. Whole towns committing suicide rather than yield, so that even their enemies could take no pleasure in it. They too swore (and have continued to swear) that their faith was true, themselves the People ; but it availed them nothing. Marry, they met an earthly power more powerful than themselves. Do you suppose that it would have availed them had they been huge Empire, so preponderate in number, strength, and vast resources that they could have crushed all opposite? They could only have filled the cup of their iniquity the fuller.

But, although the case of an already great nation, still sound within itself and progressing in manhood, overthrown by hostile league may never have been seen yet, it is obviously just as possible as the similar destruction of an individual, if unreckonably rarer.

Concerning the question of war or peace in Europe, apart from this or that nation : Great hopes were entertained of the effects of more general culture, more rapid means of transit, in bringing about a closer intercourse, better mutual understanding, and the century of peace, so called, may have seemed to strengthen promise. Goethe hoped so after the last general war, and Carlyle shared in the hope in his earlier years, not in his later. With the why of that latter fact before us, the hope is not one that I, personally, have ever shared at all. I have no belief that wars will ever cease ; absolutely none that culture and ease of interchange can in themselves do anything considerable to so much as hinder them. For long one could believe them the more likely the nobler the forces at work, and Peace Movements would never deign to speak of at all; unctuous futilities not issuing from the sterling of any race or persuasion. Universal reawakening of a sufficient leaven in every rank of every nation to the infinite nature of duty; profound gravity in each unit, earnest for his soul's salvation, and irradiating the whole mundane with ethereal light; hearts set on eternal being, and chiefs of the State elect for highest manhood: — this, and' nothing short of this, could ever put an end to Wars, and only then if so established dominant every vicious contrariant could see the hopelessness of combat without trial. Among Peoples unleavened by intelligence of the highest; still mumming with extinct religions long after even the Jesuit profession has fallen flaccid; pledged universally, in a spontaneous enthusiasm, to political faiths that are baseless, sordid absurd even where pure, doubly accursed where mendaciously compounded with the maintenance of a nominal sovereignty in ancient relics, and malignantly hostile at the least hint of a sovereignty actual ; genuine only in the terrene; and whose best zeal, devoted to sociology projects, is unsound, sincere for easement alone ; neither privately aspiring to the infinite nor in public resolute for the inexorably just: — Among such, the outbreak of general war is not surprising. For the unscrupulous greeds remain, and are not controllable by a lying spirit; the Bedlam Faiths themselves very ready to plunge headlong. Fear of catastrophe, also^ could never avert it: The noble, recognizing dread possibilities, may take wise measures shall prevent, or mitigate them: but the devices of ignoble men, if they do stave for the instant, can only worsen the ultimate. Devil's diplomacy, deliberately plotting for war, has not, I believe, been the prevailing phenomenon in recent years, rather strenuous endeavours to preserve Peace by whatever arrangement the Big Bullies could contrive to agree upon, the so troublesome Small be compelled to accept : which is the first thing we have to look at.

Chapter I Concert Of Europe

It may be as well to note here that the subject matters of the first four chapters of this book, which are to be labelled respectively Concert of Europe, Ostensible Causes, Balance of Power, and System of Alliances, are so intimately connected that the four are almost as one.

It is very lamentable and terribly significant how widespread and genuine a persuasion has got abroad, even among the good people, that this Concert of the Powers was a sort of a sacred thing. Colours of the vulpine do often succeed in deceiving as they wittingly propose ; and a righteous indignation at the vulpine, when their true motives are disclosed, may be justified. But the concurrent belauding as holy a base policy whereof the motives have been correctly announced augurs a pravity which, if it come to know truth, can have no title to be indignant, must rather confess its own guilt. Yet even here, however stern a man's recognition of the sin, he knows the too commonly irresistible influence of a general consensus in perverting those of a bias truly virtuous. Some sixteen years, or so, ago, one time when reports of Turkish atrocities in Armenia were causing such emotion in England that many were crying for armed intervention, I remember being urged to read a speech of Lord Rosebery's. A judicious wet-cloth, of course, but equally of course, since by British Liberal Statesman of this epoch, not a speech astutely contrived to simply dissuade from enterprise inconvenient for Ministry occupied in concerns privately more profitable to its members; on the contrary, tbe sincere utterance of a man self-sympathizing with the emotion, wishful for the Turks' correction, yet arguing: Husht! Dread sequel if we stir alone; in the Concert solely is there safety and salvation. And, with such unction did he perorate, the Public, in awakened sense, holily restrained its rage for its salvation's sake, — and possibly the Turk's, not quite the Armenian's.

I refused at the moment to look at the thing, pained with emotions of another kind; so far as the urger knew, never looked at it; yet did, as you see, afterwards read, in resolute suppression, and for more exact knowledge of its guessed tenor. ' You should read that, my son ; that is a speech everybody ought to read. ' About the same time the same woman said to me, upon laying down a book entitled Fire and Sword in the Soudan, 'I suppose he could not help himself, but I cannot feel any respect or sympathy for that man,' the author, one Slaten, to wit. Very gently said, but she couldn't; yet thought the Rosebery address delivered in right spirit for the pulpit. How many have met the like ! How many have thought the like ! Too many that have innocently drunk in a belief this Concert was a sacred thing. Yet the case of that Turkish instance was, if possible, even grosser than the subsequent Balkan ones. A dark, brutal, wretch, whatever ill he do, let no man hinder, lest his coveted den breed contention. The devil to be kept afoot in some measure ; prudently maintained in possession of Eden, because the godly might fall out with one another, were so lovely a spot left free to their entry. If a murderous thief have money in his pocket, or the bank, let every constable be wary; never dare to run him in, unless the Judges are agreed on how to share the spoil. In Decorum's name, what is a little outrage in the streets compared to quarrel on the Bench? The results of that are too frightful to contemplate. Hasty zeal would defeat its own end, destroy the very means of bringing offender to judgment; for without a judicious unanimity no lawful verdict were obtainable. Lawful verdicts are frequently unobtainable, sometimes too obtainable; and justice never reached so, yet capable of being done and left for verdict. Methinks, if man might seriously question Have I real errand to correct this particular and so distant abuse? the question shall I wait on Concert with the covetous to do it? would be out of his debate. And yet I honour policy, and know the multiple involute of practical fact. There, however, it is clear, had the dubitating (and dubious) Knight Errant stood wholly out, the covetous neighbours, with or without some brush of comparatively trifling battle, would long since have contrived to share in some tolerable manner; the Balkans in whole have settled themselves the better without the meddling of such a disinterested Umpire.

Truly, Prince von Kaunitz Reitberg's text, that Great Courts should understand one another, then the Small would be less troublesome, has found fat mother to breed in, and grown enormously since his day; ever the more pronounced virtuously assured of morality, up to the very moment of catastrophe from the start inevitable for it. For it? Perhaps not. The text may be meet enough for unscrupulous voracious fellow; have a real truthfulness to nature there, be well allowed by heaven, and run on to happy fulfilment so far. Voracity may be perfectly veracious ; and I never blame a shark for swallowing small fry with his utmost gusto. The sight of half a dozen sharks gracefully manoeuvring in Concert, for the more dexterous satisfaction of several appetites, may also have its own seemliness, the gastric desires of highest mortal confess a certain sympathy. But for creatures that have once guessed themselves made in their Maker's image, to whom a sense of the infinite of right and wrong has announced that the gaining of the whole world could not profit if achieved in treason to that image; — for them to