THE ENGLISH AT WAR

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 89, 8 January 1918, Page 8

THE ENGLISH AT WAR

AN ANTI-MILITARY NATION INTERESTING AMERICAN IMPRESSION. The English, as a people, cannot tako a glorious or romantic view of war (writes an American newspaper correspondent, Mr. William Hard)-. They are anti-militaristic. And more than an timilitaristic. They are anti-military. They are anti-war. They arc antiviolence. I was struck at once by their extraordinary pcacefulcess in their personal relations as individuals. lhey •do not go about girt with pistols and daggers in the manner of many of tho inhabitants of the pacifist districts or our American West and South. The number of murders in all England and Wales during the ton years ISIO4-13 was 2982. In the same years, tho number of murders in Chicago and in tho Borough of Manhattan, in ■York City, totalled 3561. The English aro entirely averse to bloodshed. Yet one must note that this aversencss to bloodshed in the mass of tho English people does not spring from any respect fpr authority. It springs from temperament. The mass of tho English people are peaceful simply because they want to be peaceful. Their policemen do not brandish clubs. They have to govern with their gloves. And thev have to govern in strict conpliance with tho restrictions which the temperament of the English people puts upon them. . Against authority as authority tho English erect not only regulations, but tho constant threat of outright disobedience. I used to wonder why the English Government permitted English officers to resign from the Army when they were apparently about to be sent in '1914 to fitjht the Ulstermen. I might have remembered that tho English Government was _ unable to prevent ' officers from resigning from the Army when they were about to be sent tp fight tho American Colonists in 1776. Sir Jeffrey Amherst, General .Conway. Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Earl of Effingham, and many others resigned at that time rather than take part in a war of which they did not approve; and the Corporation of the City of London thanked th\Earl of Effingham for preferring the cause of tho colonists to the cause of the Crown.

The idea that authority_ must be obeyed becauso it is authority has n<i hold on England when political or industrial issues come really to the top. The English are far, indeed, from being non-resistants. In a public cause, and especially in a public cause against tho principle of authority, they will fighf willingly and even gladly. And it happens that in this war they are pitted against a Government which symbolises authority more perfectly than any other Government in the weld. If God had tried to fit. out the English with an enemy whom they would actually love to fight, He couldn't have done better than when He made , the Germans. Everything the Germans do, even 1n the smallest details, seems to outrage tho Englishman's ardent passion for restricted authority and. his equally ardent passion for unrestricted variety, individuality and personality.

For instance, to' mention a particularly small detail and yet a most revealing one, the Germans are how engaged in "purifying" the German language. Foreign words, under official pressure, are being extruded from it. i Simultaneously in England the English language is being copiously "befouled"—or "enriched"—as one may choose to think. When Mr. Wilson's peace note readied London, one of the English papers plastered the town with placards bearing the -one word, "Napoo." Everybody understood. It mean!; "Nothing doing.'.' "Napoo"is an exclamation and it is a verb. A man in the field is "napooed" when he is obliterated, killed. The French, apparently had made much use of the expression "il n'y a-plus"—"There is i o more." Telescoped into one word, "il n'y a plus" now shines in the English language as "napoo," along with "cushy" and "Blighty" and "strafe" and a score of other welcome newcomers from French and German and Hindustani and other langnajges. To an Englishman, a Government which will tell people what words to use is a very terrible Government indeed. From such a Government he would expect the worst. He thinks he gets it. The invasion of Belgium was only a beginning. Every day that goes by shows him the German Government as more and more the perfected incarnation of subtle as well as ruthless -unrestricted authority, and shows him tile war as more and more a war against the very principle qf unrestricted authority and against unrestricted -'authority's quick~engiue—war. He knows that a free Government can never use that engine as quickly as an able authoritarian Government, He is determined to break the back of the authoritarian Government at Berlin. In so far as it is necessary to kill Germans in order to do this he will kill Germans. As soon as Belgium was invaded, the people of England desired this war. The people of England now desire to continue this war. Even those Englishmen who could have been classified as out-and-out pacifists, nine out of ten of thorn, now desire to continue this war. There are ten thousand such pacifists for every one conscientious objector. For England, this is a people s war in* a sense in which not even our own Civil War was a people's war. The Copperhead Party in the North was a large and powerful party in comparison with the Peace Party in England today. Lloyd Goorge has an easier task at home, behind his back, than Lincoln. In so far- as it is conceivable that a nation of free men could ever be a unit, England is a unit this minute for war—and more war—with no end till tho end in mind is reached— against Germany. Yet even against Germany, tho per- . feet enemv, the English can no longer have "delight of battle." It seems to me silly to sav that the reason for this is that the English are AngloSaxons. The Anglo-Saxons are a German tribe. Surely a better reason is that the Anglo-Saxon Germans, unlike the Prussian Germans, have been able, because of their geographical position, to enjoy free government and personal liberty for a long time—longer than any other tribe anywhere. They have simply outgrown "del'ght of battle,, except in so far as any decent man is like Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior — Who, if he he calicd upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or had, for human kind, Is happy as a lover and attired With sudden -brightness as a man inspired.

That inspiration, that happiness of dedication one does indeed see in England. But leaving such spiritual states aside and speaking of war itself f-s an external act. the English began with detesting it and detest it now. For fear that I might be thought to he depending too much 011 my own immediate personal observations, I summon a witness—the best possible witness—Captain Bruce Bainisfather. His cartoons are the supreme evidence of the feelings of the average intelligent— or stupid—Englishman about war. Thoy aro riotously popular. And they aie now' very numerous. L t-liiuk I linvo seen all 'of them. I do not remember one of them that 111 any way glonhes war. On tho contrary, Captain Bainisfather takes special pleasure 111 puncturing the glory of war. He loves to show the young man who thought to use his sword on the enemy now using

it to toast a piece of bread over ft brazier. He loves to show a grotip of ofiicors heroically jolly (luring tho first half-hour out of the trenches and then grotesquely miserable during ilie last half-hour before going in. Ho does not forget that the fiends m the opposition trenches have occasional more or loss human moments. One of his best efforts is the English soldier who in making an observation through a pair of field-glasses and who comfides his military discoveries to his mato in tho words: "'Ave a squint through these 'er, Bill; you can .see a ! Un pa-tin' a sausage as plain as anythinrr." But his masterpiece is adoiiblo cartoon called "The Same pld Moon. It is characteristically English m intimate combination of humour and tragedy—of ' tragedy pointed' and heightened bv humour. In the top scene a girl looks out of a. window m England and gazes affectionately at the moon and breathes r <<f lo think that it's the same dear old moon that's looking down on hini!"f'ln the lower scene "ho" is stringing bSrbed wire in front of trenches in proximity, to Germans. The same dear old moon is shining beautifully. "He" scowls at it oyer his shoulder, and This blinking moon," he feelingly observes, will be the death of us." People who go to | war in that spirit cannot do it with the heroic strut.