Part 1 (1/2)
A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict.
by Marshall.
PREFACE
When the people of the United States heard the news of the a.s.sa.s.sination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on June 28, 1914, it was with a feeling of great regret that another sorrow had been added to the many already borne by the aged Emperor Francis Joseph. That those fatal shots would echo around the world and, flas.h.i.+ng out suddenly like a bolt from the blue, hurl nearly the whole of Europe within a week's time from a state of profound peace into one of continental war, unannounced, unexpected, unexplained, unprecedented in suddenness and enormity, was an unimaginable possibility. And yet the ringing of the church bells was suddenly drowned by the roar of cannon, the voice of the dove of peace by the blare of the trump of war, and throughout the world ran a shudder of terror at these unwonted and ominous sounds.
But in looking back through history, tracing the course of events during the past century, following the footsteps of men in war and peace from that day of upheaval when medieval feudalism went down in disarray before the arms of the people in the French Revolution, some explanation of the Great European war of 1914 may be reached. Every event in history has its roots somewhere in earlier history, and we need but dig deep enough to find them.
Such is the purpose of the present work. It proposes to lay down in a series of apposite chapters the story of the past century, beginning, in fact, rather more than a century ago with the meteoric career of Napoleon and seeking to show to what it led, and what effects it had upon the political evolution of mankind.
The French Revolution stood midway between two spheres of history, the sphere of medieval barbarism and that of modern enlightenment. It exploded like a bomb in the midst of the self-satisfied aristocracy of the earlier social system and rent it into the fragments which no hand could put together again. In this sense the career of Napoleon seems providential. The era of popular government had replaced that of autocratic and aristocratic government in France, and the armies of Napoleon spread these radical ideas throughout Europe until the oppressed people of every nation began to look upward with hope and see in the distance before them a haven of justice in the coming realm of human rights.
It required considerable time for these new conceptions to become thoroughly disseminated. A down-trodden people enchained by the theory of the ”divine right of kings” to autocratic rule, had to break the fetters one by one and gradually emerge from a state of practical serfdom to one of enlightened emanc.i.p.ation. There were many setbacks, and progress was distressingly slow but nevertheless sure.
The story of this upward progress is the history of the nineteenth century, regarded from the special point of view of political progress and the development of human rights. This is definitely shown in the present work, which is a history of the past century and of the twentieth century so far as it has gone.
Gradually the autocrat has declined in power and authority, and the principle of popular rights has risen into view. This war will not have been fought in vain if, as predicted, it will result in the complete downfall of autocracy as a political principle, and the rise of the rule of the people, so that the civilized nations of the earth may never again be driven into a frightful war of extermination against peaceful neighbors at the nod of a hereditary sovereign. Logan Marshall
Chapter I. ALL EUROPE PLUNGED INTO WAR
Dramatic Suddenness of the Outbreak - Trade and Commerce Paralyzed - Widespread Influences - Terrible Effects of War - The Tide of Destruction - Who Caused the Conflict? - Half Century to Pay Debts
At the opening of the final week of July, 1914, the whole world - with the exception of Mexico, in which the smouldering embers of the revolution still burned - was in a state of profound peace.
The clattering hammers and whirling wheels of industry were everywhere to be heard; great s.h.i.+ps furrowed the ocean waves, deep-laden with the world's products and carrying thousands of travelers bent on business or enjoyment. Countless trains of cars, drawn by smoke-belching locomotives, traversed the long leagues of iron rails, similarly laden with pa.s.sengers engaged in peaceful errands and freight intended for peaceful purposes. All seemed at rest so far as national hostile sentiments were concerned. All was in motion so far as useful industries demanded service. Europe, America, Asia, and Africa alike had settled down as if to a long holiday from war, and the advocates of universal peace were jubilant over the progress of their cause, holding peace congresses and conferences at The Hague and elsewhere, fully satisfied that the last war had been fought and that arbitration boards would settle all future disputes among nations, however serious.
Such occasions occur at frequent intervals in nature, in which a deep calm, a profound peace, rests over land and sea. The winds are hushed, the waves at rest; only the needful processes of the universe are in action, while for the time the world forgets the chained demons of unrest and destruction. But too quickly the chains are loosened, the winds and waves set free; and the hostile forces of nature rush over earth and sea, spreading terror and devastation in their path. Such energies of hostility are not confined to the elements. They exist in human communities. They underlie the political conditions of the nations, and their outbreak is at times as sudden and unlooked-for as that of the winds and waves. Such was the state of political affairs in Europe at the date mentioned, apparently calm and restful, while below the surface hostile forces which had long been fomenting unseen were ready to burst forth and whelm the world.
DRAMATIC SUDDENNESS OF THE OUTBREAK
On the night of July 25th the people of the civilized world settled down to restful slumbers, with no dreams of the turmoil that was ready to burst forth. On the morning of the 26th they rose to learn that a great war had begun, a conflict the possible width and depth of which no man was yet able to foresee; and as day after day pa.s.sed on, each day some new nation springing into the terrible arena until practically the whole of Europe was in arms and the Armageddon seemed at hand, the world stood amazed and astounded, wondering what hand had loosed so vast a catastrophe, what deep and secret causes lay below the ostensible causes of the war. The causes of this were largely unknown. As a panic at times affects a vast a.s.semblage, with no one aware of its origin, so a wave of hostile sentiment may sweep over vast communities until the air is full of urgent demands for war with scarce a man knowing why.
What is already said only feebly outlines the state of consternation into which the world was cast in that fateful week in which the doors of the Temple of Ja.n.u.s, long closed, were suddenly thrown wide open and the terrible G.o.d of War marched forth, the whole earth trembling beneath his feet. It was the breaking of a mighty storm in a placid sky, the fall of a meteor which spreads terror and destruction on all sides, the explosion of a vast bomb in a great a.s.semblage; it was everything that can be imagined of the sudden and overwhelming, of the amazing and incredible.
TRADE AND COMMERCE PARALYZED
For the moment the world stood still, plunged into a panic that stopped all its activities. The stock exchanges throughout the nations were closed, to prevent that wild and hasty action which precipitates disaster. Throughout Europe trade, industry, commerce all ceased, paralyzed at their sources. No s.h.i.+p of any of the nations concerned except Britain dared venture from port, lest it should fall a prey to the prowling sea dogs of war which made all the oceans unsafe. The hosts of American tourists who had gone abroad under the sunny skies of peace suddenly beheld the dark clouds of war rolling overhead, blotting out the sun, and casting their black shadows over all things fair.
What does this state of affairs, this sudden stoppage of the wheels of industry, this unforeseen and wide spread of the conditions of war portend? Emerson has said: ”When a great thinker comes into the world all things are at risk.” There is potency in this, and also in a variation of Emerson's text which we shall venture to make: ”When a great war comes upon the world all things are at risk.” Everything which we have looked upon as fixed and stable quakes as if from mighty hidden forces. The whole world stands irresolute and amazed. The steady-going habits and occupations of peace cease or are perilously threatened, and no one can be sure of escaping from some of the dire effects of the catastrophe.
WIDESPREAD INFLUENCES
The conditions of production vanish, to be replaced by conditions of destruction. That which had been growing in grace and beauty for years is overturned and destroyed in a moment of ravage.
Changes of this kind are not confined to the countries in which the war rages or the cities which conquering column of troops occupy. They go beyond the borders of military activity; they extend to far-off quarters of the earth. We quote from the New York WORLD a vivid picture drawn at the opening of the great European war. Its motto is ”all the world is paying the cost of the folly of Europe.”
Never before was war made so swiftly wide. News of it comes from j.a.pan, from Porto Rico, from Africa, from places where in old days news of hostilities might not travel for months.
”Non-combatants are in the vast majority, even in the countries at war, but they are not immune to its blight. Austria is isolated from the world because her ally, Germany, will take no chances of spilling military information and will not forward mails. If, telephoning in France, you use a single foreign word, even an English one, your wire is cut. Hans the German waiter, Franz the clarinettist in the little street band, is locked up as a possible spy. There are great German business houses in London and Paris; their condition is that of English and French business houses in Berlin, and that is not pleasant. Great Britain contemplates, as an act of war, the voiding of patents held by Germans in the United Kingdom.
”Nothing is too petty, nothing too great, nothing too distant in kind or miles from the field of war to feel its influence. The whole world is the loser by it, whoever at the end of all the battles may say that he has won.