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The Barbarism of Berlin By: G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) |
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BY G.K. CHESTERTON First Published 1914
Contents
INTRODUCTION: THE FACTS OF THE CASE I. THE WAR ON THE WORD II. THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY III. THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY IV. THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY INTRODUCTION. THE FACTS OF THE CASE. Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewildering
business a story: and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as
madness. If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may illuminate
many other people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be that the master
of the house was burned because he was drunk: it may be that the mistress
of the house was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about
the expense of a fire escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they
both were burned because I set fire to their house. That is the story
of the thing. The mere facts of the story about the present European
conflagration are quite as easy to tell. Before we go on to the deeper things which make this war the most sincere
war of human history, it is as easy to answer the question of why England
came to be in it at all, as it is to ask how a man fell down a coal hole,
or failed to keep an appointment. Facts are not the whole truth. But
facts are facts, and in this case the facts are few and simple. Prussia,
France, and England had all promised not to invade Belgium. Prussia
proposed to invade Belgium, because it was the safest way of invading
France. But Prussia promised that if she might break in, through her own
broken promise and ours, she would break in and not steal. In other words,
we were offered at the same instant a promise of faith in the future and
a proposal of perjury in the present. Those interested in human origins
may refer to an old Victorian writer of English, who, in the last and most
restrained of his historical essays, wrote of Frederick the Great, the
founder of this unchanging Prussian policy. After describing how Frederick
broke the guarantee he had signed on behalf of Maria Theresa, he then
describes how Frederick sought to put things straight by a promise that
was an insult. "If she would but let him have Silesia, he would, he said,
stand by her against any power which should try to deprive her of her other
dominions, as if he was not already bound to stand by her, or as if his new
promise could be of more value than the old one." That passage was written
by Macaulay, but so far as the mere contemporary facts are concerned it
might have been written by me. Upon the immediate logical and legal origin of the English interest
there can be no rational debate. There are some things so simple that
one can almost prove them with plans and diagrams, as in Euclid. One
could make a kind of comic calendar of what would have happened to the
English diplomatist, if he had been silenced every time by Prussian
diplomacy. Suppose we arrange it in the form of a kind of diary: July 24: Germany invades Belgium. July 25: England declares war. July 26: Germany promises not to annex Belgium. July 27: England withdraws from the war. July 28: Germany annexes Belgium, England declares war. July 29: Germany promises not to annex France, England withdraws from the
war. July 30: Germany annexes France, England declares war. July 31: Germany promises not to annex England. Aug. 1: England withdraws from the war. Germany invades England. How long is anybody expected to go on with that sort of game; or keep peace
at that illimitable price? How long must we pursue a road in which promises
are all fetishes in front of us; and all fragments behind us? No; upon the
cold facts of the final negotiations, as told by any of the diplomatists in
any of the documents, there is no doubt about the story. And no doubt about
the villain of the story. These are the last facts; the facts which involved England. It is equally
easy to state the first facts; the facts which involved Europe. The
prince who practically ruled Austria was shot by certain persons whom the
Austrian Government believed to be conspirators from Servia... Continue reading book >>
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