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Liquidating Our War Illusions

Author(s): Melvin M. KnightSource: The Journal of International Relations, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Apr., 1922), pp. 485-504Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29738514 .

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LIQUIDATINGOURWAR ILLUSIONSBy Melvin M. Knight, Ph. D., Assisstant Professor ofHistory,

Barnard CollegeI. The Rise of the Importance of Public Opinion

in War MoralePrevious to the French Revolution, public opinion did not

play a very important r?le in war. Professional armieswere the rule, and morale in their ranks was hardly a matterof civilian concern. The French Revolutionary leaders dis?covered the lev?e en masse as a formidable military instru?ment. By the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, the ideaof "the nation in arms" was pretty well established in bothFrance and Germany, though nearly a century was to elapsebefore practically every nation in Europe was organized intoa war machine, down to the last person and the last wheelof industry. With the whole nation involved in war, pub?lic morale became one of the most intimate concerns of

governments.The industrial revolution made literacy an economic asset,and illiteracy practically disappeared from the highly indus?

trialized districts of the world. Working class people col?lected in towns, at work which threw them more and moreinto conscious groups demanding opportunity, educationand a voice in affairs. Railway and steamboat building, im?

proved mail service and the telegraph integrated nations andbound the world together with a web of trade. Finally thetelephone, the cable, the radio outfit and the daily news?paper made the world's happenings common property almostinstantaneously. In this way the tribal spirit was given anational scope. The narrowness of local provincialism wastransferred to an entire country. With the standardizationof news identical or similar stimuli reached millions ofcitizens in every country. Further, rapid communication

485

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486 MELVIN M. KNIGHT

over a world wide area served to make all conscious of anyreal or alleged affronts offered to the citizen of any countryin the most remote region of the world. In 1800, the insult?ing of an American in Timbuctoo would have remained un?known to the State Department for months and probablyforever to the mass of the citizens; in 1900, it would haveinflamed American opinion in every class of citizens intwenty-four hours.

Public opinion helped form the policies of governmentsas early as the twenties of the last century, when Lord Byronand others inflamed Europe over the Greek war of indepen?dence. William Howard Russell of the London Times im?

mortalized himself as the correspondent of the Crimean Warthirty years later. Learning of government blunders andthe sufferings of soldiers, the English public turned out a

ministry. Florence Nightingale's attempt to reorganize thescandalously inefficient hospital service provoked thefamous remark of the French General Bosquet: "C'est mag?

nifique, mais ce n7est pas la guerre" Public opinion in Eng?land sided with her?the conduct of war had ceased to bethe exclusive province of generals.

The same Russell was in America at the outbreak andduring the first year of our Civil War. His dispatches formone of the best war books ever written. The circumstancesof his departure form a commentary on the tremendous im?portance public opinion had achieved by 1862. There beingno cable in operation, it took a month for his account of thebattle of Bull Run to cross the ocean twice and reach thiscountry in print. Fair as it looks now, it did such violenceto the Northern illusions at the time that the writer wasdubbed "Bull Run Russell" and practically hounded out ofthe country.

From that time forward, since declarations of war mustbe at least nominally concurred in by the public and theactual hostilities carried on by whole nations, governmentsseriously grappled with the problem of mobilizing and gal?vanizing public opinion. For instance, it was carefully doneby both sides in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Thenatural device, which has never been improved upon except



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LIQUIDATING OUR WAR ILLUSIONS 487

in detail of execution, is to create a one-sided "epic" of thewar, force this version upon practically the entire public byreiterated suggestion, and silence serious critics by threatsor imprisonment. Added complication of this task of pro?paganda is lent by the importance of gaining and holdingneutral sympathy.

II. The Generation of the Dualistic WartimeEpic in 1914

The material facts about the outbreak of the war seem tobe: That both England and Germany tried to prevent ageneral war at the end of July, 1914, but were checkmatedby the Russian general mobilization, which inevitablyproduced the great war because of secret treaties and

military conventions known to the parliaments of none ofthe countries involved. This takes us back to the meritsof the Austro-Russian quarrel which precipitated the war.The South-Slav activities against the integrity of AustriaHungary, especially from 1908-14, were known to andbacked by the Tsar's government. They involved Franceand England through the secret treaties and conventions,just as the opposing activities of the Dual Monarchyinvolved another set of secret alliances and conventions.

This pivotal question of Austro-Serbian relations between1908 and 1914 has recently received a good deal of atten?tion; but the candid historian must suspect that there isyet a good deal which the diplomats have not revealed.So great is the hysteria at the outbreak of a war that thevarious publics involved will swallow myths of the cheapest

medodramatic type. Recognition of the importance of fearinwar psychology is seen in the stress laid by both sides uponproofs that the enemy is the aggressor and that one's coun?try is in imminent danger of invasion. Each side attacksthe other's epic on points of fact, but these assaults are forhome and neutral consumption, since no candid weighing ofthe evidence is tolerated in either warring camp.Let us attempt a brief historical analysis of the allied warepic of 1914-18, the one best known to the American reader.It can surely do no harm now, since the story has fully



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served its purpose of carrying public morale through tovictory. The Central Powers, according to this Allied ver?sion of the war, had long premeditated an assault upon theirneighbors, with nothing less than world dominion in view.Seizing upon the occasion of an assassinated archduke, theGerman Kaiser called a secret meeting in Potsdam in July,1914, at which it was decided to force a war upon the peaceloving and unprepared Entente powers?France, Russia and

England. This Entente or"

cordial understanding" waspurely defensive, whereas the Triple Alliance of centralEurope deliberately forged an aggressive war. France, andespecially England, tried desperately to settle the disputepeaceably, but Austria, backed and egged on by Germany,followed impossible demands upon Serbia by an armed in?vasion. Even though Russia had begun mobilizing in thesouth (only), a general European conflict might have beenavoided had not Germany broken off negotiations, mobilizedher whole army and attacked France through Belgium, acountry whose neutrality all nations were under peculiarlysacred obligations not to violate. This act outraged thesensibilit?s of England, and incidentally made her uneasy forFrance's safety and for her own, so that she was drawn intothe conflict. She was in honor bound to intervene. Ger?

many treated her sacred covenants as mere scraps of paperin entering Belgium, since she had signed the 1839 treaty.Moreover, her soldiers behaved in such a manner as toplace the German nation beyond the pale of civilization.They swept through the country like Huns, wantonly rapingand burning, cutting off children's hands and crucifyingprisoners.

According to the German war epic, on the contrary, theTriple Alliance had always been for strictly defensive pur?poses. In the case of Rumania, its tentative fourth memberit was merely personal between the rulers, the parliamentsnever having even ratified it. The Triple Entente, however,which had slowly grown since 1892 was of a very differentcharacter. Russia had been scheming with Serbia since1908 to dissolve the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Francebacked Russia in the hope of getting Alsace and Lorraine,



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liquidating our war illusions 489

provinces which she had wrenched from the German statesin the 17th century and lost in the 19th. England was inthe coalition because of jealousy of the increasing menace of

German trade rivalry, because German Eas? Africa cut herCape-to-Cairo railway in two, because German SouthwestAfrica wa? threatening her diamond monopoly, and out ofjealousy of the German r?le in the development of Turkey.Thoroughly laid plans of England and France included theuse of supposedly neutral Belgium as a military base againstGermany, with the collusion of the Belgian government.France and her allies had even attempted to sap Germany'sdefensive strength by a secret agreement with Italy behindher back. When the trap was ready to be sprung, theAustrian Archduke was murdered with obvious connivanceon the part of Serbia, and Jaur?s, the one Frenchman whoseriously threatened to expose and foil the plot, was likewiseassassinated. Russia was the first great nation to decreea general mobilization, but kept the fact secret?so thatGermany would be obliged to mobilize in self-defence, butEngland and France could throw dust in neutral eyes andpose as coming in on the defensive. This in spite of thefact that the Russian mobilization involved the French andthe French the English! Belgium, secretly one of the agres?sive group, had to be treated sternly because her citizensput themselves beyond the pale of civilization by sniping,pouring boiling liquids on captured Germans and othernameless atrocities. France brought into Europe blackAfrican savages, thus making herself responsible for horrible

methods of warfare such as had not been tolerated in westernEurope for centuries. Moreover, the French had begun thewar on the western front by aerial attacks, just as theRussians had begun it on the eastern by the first generalmobilization. England starved German women and chil?dren by a flagrantly illegal high-seas blockade. Hardest ofall to endure, the group of allied nations which had cunninglyplanned all this ruin were hypocritically attempting to laythe blame for it at the door of the intended victims. Suchwas the German version.



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Both epics were mixtures of truth and falsehood. Neitherside experienced much difficulty in innoculating its ownpublic opinion with its version. In the opening months ofthe struggle civilians and soldiers thought remarkably alike;but before many months had passed a large and growingbody of soldiers, men who had been exposed to death on thebattlefield until they had gotten used to it, began to separatefrom the conventional body of public opinion in the rear.

This sharp cleavage between the psychology of the front andthe psychology of the rear marked the beginning of wardisillusionment.

III. The Development and Mechanisms of WartimePropaganda

In the meantime the governments involved were employ?ing all their resources of ingenuity to convert neutrals totheir respective war epics. Their propaganda to their ownpeople was not quite the same as it would have been if ithad not been designed to fit neutral opinion as well.

Germany made one colossal blunder. It was sound financeto pay for her war as she went along, but it was disastrousdiplomacy. If Germany had sold big issues of war bonds inthe western hemispheres, the questions of high-seas blockadeand arbitrary allied definitions of contraband would havebeen dealt with very differently. The Americas would havehad a direct incentive to listen to both epics impartially, toinsist on both sides staying within international legality.Surely no properly informed, reflective person of any na?tionality can doubt that the unrestricted submarine warfareand the complete shutting off from central Europe of allkinds of goods from across the sea were balancing aspects ofthe same flagrant situation. Further, the Germans werepathetically na?ve in the openness with which they expressedtheir aims as regards annexations and indemnities, in theevent of a German victory. While the allied countries kepttheir secret treaties sowell hidden that President Wilson didnot know of their existence when he left America for the peaceconference and that they made good news for the New YorkTimes as late as March 5, 1922, the Germans were easily



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and rapidly convicted of aggressive ambitions "out of theirown mouths."

The question of responsibility for the original aggressionmay be postponed for the time being, since each side firmlybelieved its own version and this issue had comparativelylittle practical effect at the outset on relations with neutrals.Each party firmly believed, and not without foundation,that the other had systematic and well-laid plans for theoccupation of Belgium. When it became certain that astruggle between central Europe and a French-Russian com?bination was an impending fact, no one in his senses doubtedthat the initial shock would be on the western front?leastof all the military staffs in both camps, who had looked for?ward to just this event for years. The key industries ofFrance and Germany?especially the latter?are too nearthe frontier to risk any other manoeuvre. The same roughlyapplies to Belgium. Two of her land frontiers were too nearthe heart of the industrial districts of France and Germanyrespectively for any risk to be intentionally taken?to saynothing of her sea frontier and England.

Early in the war, the psychological interest centers on avery primitive aspect of the heroic-epics. This is a slightlydefined modern version of the conception of the nakedsavage?"the people" (his tribal group), vs. "the others" or"the enemy." In 1914, the war was conceived as a melo?drama, the two sides playing the respective r?les of hero andvillain. This myth of a fundamental difference between twokinds of people engaged was created and kept alive by acurious substitution of abstract for concrete ideas which Ihave not seen set down in simple language, and will there?fore explain as follows: Modern armies, being cross-sectionsof the nations they represent, are made up of good, bad andindifferent men. The bad men, stimulated and given op?

portunity by the circumstances of war, commit some crimes,such as pillage, rape and incendiarism. This is peculiarlyapplicable to an army swiftly advancing through foreignterritory, but the statement will probably pass withoutquestion that some of these crimes occurred in every armymobilized between 1914 and 1918. But the war epics are



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in melodramatic form?the nations are viewed as persons inthe action. This attitude is sedulously cultivated by thegovernments and is highly effective for propagandist pur?poses. To a Frenchman, "Germany" is an abstraction, nota group of individual people, good, bad and indifferent.This Frenchman does not think concretely of Fritz Kreislerwhom he knows to be a good man, or the unknown HansSchmidt, a blacksmith in St. Goar with a wife and threechildren. If Kurt Schwartz, a drunken dragoon, commitsrape, then it is the abstract Germany which has committedrape. If a half-dozen well-authenticated murders and othercrimes can be collected, the abstract enemy is demonstratedto be a villian of the deepest dye. A probable story is asgood for purposes of propaganda and morale as a true one.

As the sources of the fury-generating ideas, they seem tobe chiefly: (1) Old wars and tradition?there is little needto invent new tales, inasmuch as nearly all the best oneshave been told over and over of previous struggles, read overand over by the people they are expected to affect; (2)Actualcredible tales about the current war, industriouslygathered by the "intelligence sections" and fitted into thepopular myth with greater or less skill by the organizedagencies for propaganda.Of the first of these, the myth of the crucified Canadianin the recent war is a good example. The intelligence sec?tions tried in vain to verify it, but of course kept still abouttheir failure. It was doubtless suggested by the literatureof previous wars in which such things actually occurred.Another example of this hackneyed type of war myth is thecutting off by enemy soldiers of children's hands, or women'sbreasts. No such case was established in the western arenaof the recent war?by established is meant proved beyond areasonable doubt. Two of these cases came under the

writer's personal observation, and may be instructive as tothe possible origin of the tales. The first was a Frenchrefugee child returning home by way of Switzerland. Thestory was that a soldier had reached him to a limb some tenfeet from the ground and left him hanging by his handsuntil his grip loosened and he fell, breaking his back.



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Numerous refugees repeated the story, but none of them hadpersonally seen the occurrence. The only evidence was thatthe child obviously had something wrong with his back.The other case was two Rumanian children, minus theirhands. This was quite realistic enough to convince warhypnotized people, but an inquiry at the hospital where theywere first treated yielded the information that a hand-gre?nade, picked up on an old battlefield where they were play?ing, had exploded and somaimed the members that they hadto be amputated.

The second class of war-myth is still more realistic anddangerous because founded on fact. It is the case pre?viously suggested, where an isolated case of actual crimeis accepted as typical of the conduct of millions of people.This is the well-known logical fallacy of mistaking part forthe whole. For example, it would not be fair to judge allthe conduct of the whole American army in the war by thefact that the very first German prisoner taken by Americansoldiers was stabbed to death after he had surrendered.Such abstractions are made in the rear and are readilyadopted by civilians, near the propaganda factories and farfrom any individual enemies. Very likely this is the key tothe relative humanity and reasonableness of the fightingsoldier as compared to the ferocious psychology of the saferear. The fighter, indaily contact with the enemy, is obligedto see a group of individuals much like himself, and has dif?ficulty in conjuring up the abstraction. He finds the enemysoldier brave and resourceful. Talking with or watchingprisoners, he sees human beings, whose reactions to hardshipand danger he can enter into completely. He can hardlyremain blind to the fact that their discipline, like his, forcesthem to kill or be killed. Indeed, he often feelsmore kinshipwith them than with his own fury-saturated civilians athome whose blind hate, costing them nothing and him every?thing, he often resents or holds in contempt. Prevention offraternizing has been a very hard problem in discipline, thesoldiers have so much in common and so little to separatethem except barbed wire and civilian frenzy.



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IV. The Gradual Disintegration of the WarIllusion

The first shock of war tends to crystallize public opinion,but sustained hostilities gradually disintegrate it again,from the front rearwards. War is in a vague way analogousto college: it offers a tangible aim in time and space as asubstitute for the intangible goals of life and civilization.

This makes possible an extraordinary concentration of re?sources and attention, but makes for an artificial attitudeof mind. At the outbreak of war, there is a certain breakingdown of class and caste?all rush to take part in the heroicadventure. Victory will come quickly?this is one of theperennial illusions. This melodramatic attitude soon passesand the ordinary motives and habits reassert themselves.

Barbusse voiced a common belief of common soldiers whenhe affirmed that war very soon degenerates into an overdonetragedy, with workers and peasants killing each other forreasons they cannot fathom. The caste lines are graduallyredrawn, the lower classes getting the bulk of the dirty work.

The soldiers may draw cartoons, crack jokes or edit funnypapers to take their minds off the hardships, boredom andapprehension, but that is not what is at the bottom of their

minds, as Siegfried Sassoon has set down in immortal verse.In 1915 and 1916, the war was a personal matter out there,though in the rear is still remained abstract. With the

veteran hate had become largely perfunctory or entirelyabsent?the thing which nerved him to drive his bayonethome was the hope that the thrust brought peace nearer.

Hate is drunken, and living by the month in the shadow ofdeath is conducive to a certain inward sobriety. There is?to put it mildly?a certain irresponsibility about the mob

madness of the safe civilian, a certain lack of human dignitywhich might make such an individual blush ten years after,if he could get a correct reproduction of his own emotionsat the earlier period. Of course, he rarely does. It isamong the well-known universal illusions of man that healways believed what he has later discovered to be true.



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By 1917, Europe was about ready to call it a stalemate?the universal desire of the soldier to see it ended before hewas killed had penetrated to the rear. Bereavement wasso common that it had ceased to be a social distinction.Paul Geraldy has done a fine bit of literary analysis in LaGuerre, Madame. The soldier starts on his leave meaningto tell those complacent people back there what a horrible,intolerable mistake it all is from his point of view. Parisfriends conventionalize him into a hero?thrust upon himthe part he is supposed to play. In a stinking box-car withthirty-nine of his fellows, bound for the front, he suddenlyrealizes that his leave is ended and that he has not said a

word of what was on his mind. So he goes out and dies."Tomorrow we attack," said a French soldier to the writerin 1917. "Two miles gained, perhaps, and ten thousandmen shot to pieces.How far do you think it isfrom here to Germany, my old one?" Sometimes they

mutinied?failed to advance when the order came.When the disillusionment was just creeping back fromfront to rear, with the psychology of peace in the offing,America entered the war. So the French soldier had to doanother year and a half, now that the rear saw a chance to

win after all. But American aid came slowly, and most ofit seemed to be cluttering up the rear. The Frenchman hadto spend another awful winter in the slimy ditches beforehe saw Americans in the fighting lines in such numbers as topromise real support. Russia had collapsed. The Caporetto disaster in Italy dispensed gloom. French soldiersfumed at the thought of the hordes of young Americansback in their towns. They were jealous?jealous not onlybecause of their women, but likewise of the better rationsand quarters, of the comparative immunity from danger ofthose foreigners back there.In the spring of 1918, hopelessness and bitterness hadagain penetrated to the rear. It was all over France. Inthe street in front of a house with many people in hearingdistance, I heard a woman tell bitterly of the death of thethird and last son of her neighbor. It was just after thedisaster of the Chemin des Dames?the second since winter?

THE JOURNALOP INTERNATIONALRELATIONS,VOL. 12, NO. 4, 1922



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and the Germans were still advancing. "My God," sheshouted, "are they going to keep it up until all the French?men are dead?" Young Americans who had not yet beenunder fire sometimes expressed a thirst for carnage, buttrainloads of Frenchmen came back shouting "Down with

Clemenceau" and "End theWar." Many American officersabout headquarters have doubtless forgotten by this timewhat they thought and said then. The French had away ofsaying: "We appreciate your help?but you came too late."The war was still a gamble that last spring, and not afew high allied officers thought the odds were with the

Germans. The situation was thoroughly out of control.Then, through Foch's skill and our luck, German mistakesand ill luck, the tide of victory suddenly turned in our di?rection. Both sides had been gambling with their veryexistence. Ludendorff admits this, but the allied com?

manders can well afford to park their reputations securelybehind a fait accompli.Armistice day was more of a thrill than a surprise. TheGerman line in France had given way, and the enemy hadsuffered irreparable losses in material and men. Let us notforget, however, that the allied armies had sustained terrificlosses too, that in the rapid pursuit our lines of communica?tion were in hopeless confusion in many places, and manyunits absolutely required rest and reforming. Operationscould not have continued many more days without a haltand a reorganization. But that meant giving the enemy achance to finish organizing his new line of defense. In thefall this might well mean another winter in the trenches anda spring campaign in which the Germans had not a ghost ofa show of victory. All Europe seemed on the verge of eco?nomic and moral collapse, and neither side felt like riskinguniversal ruin when the final result could not be in doubt.The political revolution in Germany and the attitude of thenew government made it morally compulsory for the alliesto sign an armistice on the basis of President Wilson'spublished program for a peace of reconciliation. To repu?diate that program meant to sacrifice neutral opinion and sowdisaffection among the moderates at home.



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"Victory?it is victory," the French captain who lunchedwith me on the great day kept saying. "Who would havethought it a few months ago?who would have dared hopefor so much?"

In a few moments, we had a demonstration of one of thepermanent illusions of peoples. It was a hospital town, andpresently we were joined by two or three Americans, in?cluding a lady doctor in Red Cross uniform. "At least Iam glad," said the Frenchman, as though speaking to him?self, "that our troops did not get into Germany."

"Why?" asked the lady doctor."There are always some things to be regretted when an

army invades an enemy's country. We should be glad thatFrenchmen do not have to answer for them this time," hesaid. Then :"It was so even in your Civil War, was it not? 'yIt developed that he was very familiar with the acridcontroversy over the accusations against one of Sherman'sdivisions, and the burning of a certain South Carolina city.

Upon the writer's admission that such charges had beenmade, and that of course it was possible that there was sometruth back of them, the lady doctor fairly gasped. "It isnot true," she almost shouted."I will not sithere and hear my country.belied!" TheFrenchman adroitly changed the subject.

Except possibly some American and other troops who hadnot been long engaged, the war illusions of the fightingarmies were pretty well liquidated at the end of 1918. Somehad vanished years earlier, and there were plenty of soldiersin the universal-compulsory-service French army who hadnever had any. One of them was on his way to the trenchesjust in front of Esne, Verdun sector, in July 1917, withoutany gun, so the writer, then an ambulance driver, gave hima lift. In his pockets the soldier carried a number of smallbooks?among them Pascal's Pens?es. Questioned abouthis gun, he said:

"I have no gun. I shall pick up a discarded one atEsne." Upon the protest that it might be stopped withrust, he smiled: "But I do not want to shoot with it. Ihave never killed anybody, and do not wish to. I am a



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philosophie anarchist; but these silly governments force usall to make at least a pretense of murder."

Another, a sergeant, doing the best he could at his dis?tasteful task nevertheless, remarked with a shrug : "Enemy?

What enemy? All the peoples are good, but all the govern?ments are scoundrels." The real hate reservoir?the last

to be emptied?is the civilian population.It will occur to the reader that the public was not quiteuniformly illusioned?the innoculations with war myths didnot all "take" with equal virulence. At first no oppositionis tolerated. Immunity to the melodramatic epic is enoughto put one under suspicion. The slightest active symptomsof the "disease" of reason, to ward off which the "dope" hasbeen concocted, is likely to bring ostracism or prison. Thereare many people of a calmer turn of mind, however, whoare sane enough not to get the general frenzy but at thesame time practical enough to realize the futility of tryingto stem it at once. They are inconspicuous for a time and

may appear to be drifting, but many are really taking sound?ings and testing the current. The disillusioned fighter isnot as completely without sympathy in the hypnotized mobto his rear as he thinks.

This takes us back to the larger aspects of the war epicwhich we passed over temporarily in order to glance at themore personal items which the soldier learns to write off byhimself, by virtue of his situation. High emotional tensiontends to relax as time goes by, even in the rear. Normalhuman motives begins to reassert themselves. The psychol?ogy of bargaining slowly seeps back. A tendency appearsfor the astute and privileged to find the places where pres?tige and remuneration are to be had for the most economicaloutlay of effort and risk. By 1917, even proven heroesof three years' standing were succumbing to the temptationof easier, safer or more comfortable posts further back.

The writer knew well one French sergeant who did this aftera terrific wrestling with his conscience and against the sternadmonitions of his father-confessor, though a devout Catho?lic. The man had been repeatedly wounded and decorated.

He wanted to live, and he saw the others practicing thephilosophy of sauve qui peut.



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The full effect of the Russian collapse upon the war epicwas not felt at once. Late in 1917, the new Russian govern?ment released to the world startling evidence from the trialsof ministers and generals of the old r?gime, hopelessly under?

mining the theory of a war hatched in a Potsdam conferenceand thrust upon a Russia striving for peace. The Germanultimatum to Russia, which expired on August 1, 1914, didnot precede the Russian general mobilization order, but fol?lowed it after nearly two days. What western Europeanpeoples had been told was a partial mobilization by Russia,in the south only, was general, which made the Tsaristgovernment the inital aggressor among the great powers.

Many of these facts were immediately put into English byH. N. Brailsford in the appendix to his League ofNations.This and other papers presented to the western Europeanpublic by the end of 1917 made it fairly evident to fair

minded people that the war was really made by AustriaHungary and Russia, and that the vicious system of allianceshad simply drawn in the other combatants. As we shall see,Germany's surmise that by the terms of the secret FrancoRussian alliance the Russian mobilization must inevitably befollowed by the French was correct. Professor Fay's articlesin the American Historical Review have supplied many addeddetails, but the broad outlines of the 1914 situation werefairly apparent at the end of 1917. What did not appearuntil later was the further certainty that the French partici?pation in the war thus precipitated by Austria and Russiainevitably involved England. What threw genuine con?sternation into European diplomatic circles was the spread?ing by the Russians before the world of the secret archivesof the Foreign Office. Secret treaties, agreements andalliances appeared one after another, and no allied powerexcept the United States was spared the humiliation ofseeing its real motives given up to the light of day. Thefull sordidness of the 1915 Rome agreement, republishedfrom Russian sources by the Manchester Guardian gotbeneath the skins of some thoughtful people who had pre?viously given no thought to the tissue of corruption anda morality which is European diplomacy.



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Eventually, the exposures from unfriendly sources of thehistory and nature of the Franco-Russian alliance becameso alarmingly full that a French "yellow book" was broughtout. This statement out of their own mouths leaves theallied war epic spurlos versenkt, even without the volumesof official correspondence being poured out by the Russianand German governments. The old German governmentis in no sense exonerated from blame?a scoundrel is notexcused by the proof that there are others.

The patent fact is that there was nothing passive aboutthe longing of the Serbian and Russian governments that theDual Monarchy might founder. That they had lon,gplayeda deliberate game for just this stake is no longer in doubt.The dissolution of Austria-Hungary could not occur withoutwar. No more is there any question that the French foreignoffice knew about this game and its probable consequences.It is impossible to believe that English diplomatic circleswere left in darkness. The demonstrated completeness oftheir long-standing plans to land soldiers on the continentagainst a specific enemy, Germany, acquits them of any suchidiocy. In their sudden war-hysteria, even well-informedpeople forgot the known fact that French and Russian staffofficiers had repeatedly gone over the two fronts and for?

mulated plans which could be set inmotion in a few minutes.Any one who supposes that the Mediterranean-North Seadivision of naval responsibility between the French andEnglish was arrived at without any general understandingas to what responsibilities were involved is singularly inno?cent of how such things are done. Had it been mere coinci?dence, what a miraculously fortunate coincidence that thegreat English review concentrated ships in the North Seain the summer of 1914! The similar tactics of the CentralPowers have been gone over ad nauseam in the war literature.The peoples of Europe stood over a powder magazine in1914?one deliberately accumulated for years by inner circlesin the governments. These diplomatic groups, including afew trusted military chiefs, knew that the explosion was duesoon, but each cunningly planned that the catastropheshould take place under circumstances which would tend toleave the other morally responsible to outward appearances.



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V. The Allied Epic and the PeaceAt least the foreign officesmight have had a decent respectfor the memory of the millions slain in the belief that

they were making a repetition of this thing impossible. Itwas not so. The war fictions must be imposed a little whilelonger, until peace could be made on the hero-villian hypoth?esis. The necessary machinery for controlling public opin?ion to that end was already created. Nations had turnedtheir consciences and sense of truth and fair play over togroups of old cynics and young zealots organized into "intel?ligence sections." Their custody of these departments ofour souls was continued on the basis of the legal technicalitythat the war was not yet over. There was nothing of thefrank and above-board about the methods of these people.Scientific dissimulation was a cult with them, and bull?dozing the swift resort if that failed.At the end ofNovember, 1918, the writer was quizzed fora half hour by a beardless member of this "third section."The game?leading questions and wild assertions in thegeneral direction of the war epic whence the quarry is sus?pected of wandering, all under the guise of candid conversa?tion?was extravagantly overdone. After fruitless attemptsto gain assent to his fantastic statements, the schoolboylieutenant finally answered the repeated counter question asto what the interview was really about. A Frenchmansomewhere in western France where the writer was settlingwar contracts had resented a perfectly amiable exception tothe man's statement that he would never speak to a Germanagain, buy any goods made by one, or speak to anybody whodid. It had seemed to the bored listener to his tirade thatthe actual value of goods was a stronger force in the longrun than emotional prejudice. Why should this create afuror after the guns were silent and our troops in victoriousoccupation of the enemy's territory? People simply couldnot get used to unstandardized opinions, nor were theirgovernments yet ready to allow it. Being asked finally ifthere was any other question at issue than what the allpowerful military wanted said, the lieutenant answered, in



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a sudden burst of confidence : "That's it exactly. We knowwhat we want said and what we don't want said, and we'vegot the power to get what we want. It's not a question ofwhat's true or not?that's got nothing to do with it. It'sa question of force, and we've got the force." Whereuponwe both laughed, conventionally expressed satisfaction thattwo people who understood each other so well should have

met, and parted.The next year (1919) the information and opinion lidwasdown just as tight upon the commissions to eastern Europe.

Our letters went home via the State Department, and theinformation sections were presided over by people who knew

what was wanted. Ostensibly we were there solely to feedthe starving, clothe the ragged and heal the sick. One ofthe colonels in charge had a way of saying that he considered"fighting Bolshevism" his chief function. Whatever thecolonel and his information section did not like was "Bol?shevism"?by definition.

Keynes and the major prophets of disillusionment tookimmediate hold on the parts of Europe already suffering.

Looking back upon it now, it looks as though that state ofmind became general in various parts of the world about thetime that general economic dislocation hit them. Our turncame in 1920. The Paris Conference was anathema with thepractically unrepresented small nations long before it brokeup. Neutrals were more caustically if less bitterly facetiousabout it than the small allies it spoke of so solicitously, inthe abstract.

A glance at the personnel of allied ministries since thewar suggests that foreign affairs in Europe are being man?aged largely by the victorious half of the same crew whichworked at secret alliances and doped public opinion beforeand during the war. There is no use trying to graft on suchpoisonous roots as that. If diplomacy in the old sense can?not be abolished and public affairs transacted in broad day?light, then the world cannot be made a decent place to livein, and we would as well give up and sink. That seems to

be the present verdict of thoughtful Americans, and who cancriticize it? The Paris attempt was never more than half



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hearted, and it failed. Will the Washington and Genoaattempts come to a like end?

As to European diplomacy, our illusions are pretty wellliquidated. Outside of a vague tendency to romance, our

war illusions seem pretty well cleared out excepting onealone. It is the oldest one, and perhaps it is permanent.Our fighting forces were different. Armies may be as likeas two peas, unless one of them is ours. Barbusse maywrite all the books he likes about French army life in its lessbewitching aspects. Siegfried Sassoon's disenchantingverses we may regard with enthusiasm. Let Sir Philip Gibbswrite a library on things that can now be told?about Euro?pean armies. But let John Dos Passos write an imaginativelittle novel about three soldiers under the star-spangled ban?ner who were bored by the life and occasionally found theofficers discourteous, and what happens? We swing in?stantly to the mentality of a Patagonian aborigine, clothedin his narrow string and conscious superiority. It may beopen-season occasionally for "the others," but we insist onclinging to some robust illusions about "the people."1

1Bibliographical Note.?This article is primarily a psychological inter?pretation of what its author presumes to be facts generally accepted byhistorians, rather than a r?sum? of the proofs for such facts. It is hardlynecessary to cite such works as Barbusse's Le Feu (Under Fire), Sassoon'sverses or Geraldy's The War, Madame, available in any good library.Gibbs' Now It Can be Told andMore thaiMust beTold are thoroughly goodfor the attitude of the soldier. If the civilian's memory cannot be trustedfor his own attitude, he may consult the plethora of books and articleswhich held his attention at the time. William Howard Russell's My Diary,North and South (Boston, 1863) can be found in good city or universitylibraries, and is one of the sanest, best war books ever written. Keynes'Economic Consequences of the Peace marked the turning of the public mindfrom the mythical to the realistic phase. For general arraignments of war,the author merely suggests three of the best: Palmer's Folly of Nations,Irwin's The Next War, and AngelFs The Fruits of Victory. Gibbs' books

play this r?le as well as the one mentioned above.The writer has not been tempted to insert any of his own slight experi?ences with bursting shells or his feelings about them, but has relied uponinterviews with common soldiers who had faced war's realities for years.

These were diligently compared as soon as possible with interviews gatheredin the rear. Notebooks, carefully kept, and treasured clippings frominnumerable sources are the real bibliography of this paper.As to the later writings on the origins of the war, it is only fair to sug?gest some, so that the reader may know what the writer considers to be



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504 MELVIN M. KNIGHTevidence. Pevet's Les Responsables de la Guerre and Loreburn's How the

War Came are worth perusal. Nock's The Myth of the Guilty National isdescribed by the title. Hoeniger's Russlands Vorbereitung zum Kriegsaus?bruch is too long and tedious for the ordinary reader. The appendix toBrailsford's A League of Nations is astonishingly explicit and satisfactory,considering that it appeared in 1917, in the heat of the conflict. He doesnot say so, but I fancy the Russian material may have come from a Swisspamphlet uSuchomlinow,,, printed by Ferdinand Wyss in Bern, 1917, whichis somewhat fuller. The Manchester Guardian published some of it in

December, 1917. Professor Fay's series, "New Light on the Origins ofthe World War," in American Historical Review for 1920-21 admirably sum?

marizes the whole question, including the dramatic myth that the warsprouted from a Potsdam conference which floated one Ambassador Morganthau to easy fame. International Conciliation, issues for 1919, furnishestranslations of the peace treaty and the replies of the German delegation.

A good summary of the part dealing with Germany's r?le in the outbreak ofthe war in 1914 is gathered in the German 1919 White-Booh entitled "Is

Germany Guilty" (Eng. trans.).The reader will do well to scan through Rohrbach's Massenverhetzung u.

Volkskrieg in Belgien (Berlin, 1916) as an offset to the well-known Brycereport on Belgium. The German work deals ably with such questions assniping, and is strewn with photographic reproductions of clippings from

Belgian newspapers, marked and dated.Siebert & Schreiner's Entente Diplomacy and the World (KnickerbockerPress, 1921) gives 760 pp. of documents and letters from the RussianEmbassy in London which throw much light on the French 1918 YellowBooh on the Russo-French alliance and military convention.

This French Yellow-Booh (Documents Diplomatiques?L'Alliance FrancoRusse) seems to have been made necessary by the publication of the secretdocuments and correspondence of the Tsarist government, beginning in1917, by the Soviets. Some of the French documents in the book areextremely interesting, as even the best historians had been kept literallyguessing in the dark about the alliance. It was certainty urigoreusementsecret" (Doc. 82), "au moment o? les circonstances n?cessiteront la mise enex?cution de la pr?sente convention" (i.e., until a war should actually breakout). How literally secret it was from even the French parliament can beappreciated only by a tedious following of the parliamentary debates,wherein repeated questions of the representatives of the French nationwere met by bland subterfuges and throttled with votes of confidence.In this connection, attention is called to the reference in Document 84to the necessity to "rien divulguer qui ne soit absolument indispensable/7and to exercise such precautions that the "caract?re pacifique du trait?"can be insisted upon "dans le but de bien ?tablir vis-?-vis de l'Europe le r?led'attaqu?es1 qu} auraient la France et la Russie, point tr?s essentiel au momentde r ex?cution " This "very essential point" that the parties to the con?vention shall be able to play the r?le of the party attacked before the eyesof Europe is repeated in the vast correspondence now made public with aninsistency which seems to speak for itself. Nothing is based, in this article,

upon the mass of secret diplomatic correspondence now released to thepublic by the newer governments of Russia and Germany, though this hasnot been successfully contradicted, and much if it fits too nicely intounquestionable documents to have been manufactured out of whole cloth.