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By MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
Author of "ENGLAND'S EFFORT," etc.
With an introduction by
THE HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT
1917
To
ANDRÉ CHEVRILLON
True Son of France
True Friend of England
I dedicate this book.
England has in this war reached a height of achievement loftier thanthat which she attained in the struggle with Napoleon; and she hasreached that height in a far shorter period. Her giant effort, crownedwith a success as wonderful as the effort itself, is worthily describedby the author of this book. Mrs. Ward writes nobly on a noble theme.
This war is the greatest the world has ever seen. The vast size of thearmies, the tremendous slaughter, the loftiness of the heroism shown,and the hideous horror of the brutalities committed, the valour of thefighting men, and the extraordinary ingenuity of those who have designedand built the fighting machines, the burning patriotism of the peoplewho defend their hearthstones, and the far-reaching complexity of theplans of the leaders—all are on a scale so huge that nothing in pasthistory can be compared with them. The issues at stake are elemental.The free peoples of the world have banded together against tyrannousmilitarism and government by caste. It is not too much to say that theoutcome will largely determine, for daring and liberty-loving souls,whether or not life is worth living. A Prussianised world would be asintolerable as a world ruled over by Attila or by Timur the Lame.
It is in this immense world-crisis that England has played her part; apart which has grown greater month by month. Mrs. Ward enables us to seethe awakening of the national soul which rendered it possible to playthis part; and she describes the works by which the faith of the souljustified itself.
What she writes is of peculiar interest to the United States. We havesuffered, or are suffering, in exaggerated form, from most (not all) ofthe evils that were eating into the fibre of the British character threeyears ago—and in addition from some purely indigenous ills of our own.If we are to cure ourselves it must be by our own exertions; our destinywill certainly not be shaped for us, as was Germany's, by a few toweringautocrats of genius, such as Bismarck and Moltke. Mrs. Ward shows us thepeople of England in the act of curing their own ills, of making good,by gigantic and self-sacrificing exertion in the present, the folly andselfishness and greed and soft slackness of the past. The fact thatEngland, when on the brink of destruction, gathered her strength andstrode resolutely back to safety, is a fact of happy omen for us inAmerica, who are now just awaking to the folly and selfishness and greedand soft slackness that for some years we have been showing.
As in America, so in England, a surfeit of materialism had produced alack of high spiritual purpose in the nation at large; there was muchconfusion of ideas and ideals; and also much triviality, which wasespecially offensive when it masqueraded under some high-sounding name.An unhealthy sentimentality—the antithesis of morality—has gone handin hand with a peculiarly sordid and repulsive materialism. The resultwas a soil in which various noxious weeds flourished rankly; and ofthese the most noxious was professional pacificism. The professionalpacificist has at times festered in the diseased tissue of almost everycivilisation; but it is only w