[4] We may sympathise with the endeavour of
the European soldiers of old to civilise warfare, and we may admire the
remarkable extent to which they succeeded in doing so. But we cannot
help feeling that their romantic and chivalrous notions of warfare were
absurdly incongruous.
The world in general might have been content with that incongruity. But
Germany, or more precisely Prussia, with its ancient genius for
warfare, has in the present war taken the decisive step in initiating
the abolition of that incongruity by placing warfare definitely on the
basis of scientific barbarism. To do this is, in a sense, we must
remember, not a step backwards, but a step forward. It involved the
recognition of the fact that War is not a game to be played for its own
sake, by a professional caste, in accordance with fixed rules which it
would be dishonourable to break, but a method, carried out by the whole
organised manhood of the nation, of effectively attaining an end
desired by the State, in accordance with the famous statement of
Clausewitz that war is State policy continued by a different method. If
by the chivalrous method of old, which was indeed in large part still
their own method in the previous Franco-German war, the Germans had
resisted the temptation to violate the neutrality of Luxemburg and
Belgium in order to rush behind the French defences, and had battered
instead at the Gap of Belfort, they would have won the sympathy of the
world, but they certainly would not have won the possession of the
greater part of Belgium and a third part of France.
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