Intro & Preface & Contents
Previous: XVIII. The Literary life
Some one, I see, is lifting up his sweet voice in praise of Conscription. It is only at long intervals that one reads this kind of thing in our reviews or newspapers, and I am happy in believing that most English people are affected by it even as I am, with the sickness of dread and of disgust. That the thing is impossible in England, who would venture to say?... Democracy is full of menace to all the finer hopes of civilization, and the revival, in not unnatural companionship with it, of monarchic power based on militarism, makes the project dubious enough. There has but to arise some Lord of Slaughter, and the nations will be tearing at each other’s throats. Let England be imperilled, and Englishmen will fight; in such extremity there is no choice...
A lettered German, speaking to me once of his year of military service, told me that, had it lasted but a month or two longer, he must have sought release in suicide...
... From a certain point of view, it would be better far that England should bleed under conquest than that she should be saved by eager, or careless, acceptance of Conscription. That view will not be held by the English people; but it would be a sorry thing for England if the day came when no one of those who love her harboured such a thought.
Alpha.
He was right here about what was coming, and only 12 years in the future. War and Conscription both. Reading this made me remember the brother who refused to fight in On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin.
World War I or “The Great War” or “The War to end all war.” I’m a student of history in general and of military history in particular, but I can’t really tell you why that war was fought. A Nervous Splendor, by Frederic Morton (one of my favorite books, about Fin-de-siècle Vienna), argues for Kaiser Wilhelm II being a dolt and an ass. The Magic Mountain seems to argue for a romantic death-wish on the part of the German people. It’s been too long since I’ve read Barbara Tuchman’s wonderful The Guns of August about the start of the war, but my recollection is that she felt the war started largely by accident -- people playing brinkmanship and everyone lost their balance and the world fell down.
After rereading A Nervous Splendor, I found myself wondering what would have happened if Crown Prince Rudolf had killed William in a “hunting accident” (this was a fantasy of his) and had gone on to push his father off his thrones. What if there had been no Great War? Would the world today be better or worse?
Unfortunately, you can’t answer a hypothetical question. This is a lesson I learned while counseling young men attempting to avoid the Vietnam War by seeking Conscientious Objector status. The rule was that you had to object to war in general, not just a specific war. The person applying for CO status would be asked if he would have refused to serve in World War 2 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The answer to this was that, being a hypothetical question, he couldn’t answer it truthfully. You can say what you hope you would do, but that may not be what you would actually do.
For me, CO status wasn’t an option because I knew I didn’t object to all war. I only objected to stupid wars. But, I honestly don’t know what I would have done if conscripted for WW1. It was as stupid as a war can be, but once begun, it also would seem to be a war you needed to see to the end. I’m glad that my paternal grandfather was able to assist the French in holding their right flank in 1918. And I’m glad he survived, and ran into my grandmother on his way home at the end of the war.
I had a creative writing teacher in college who was a mystery writer of middling success. He advised us, when we were blocked, to have a character fall down a flight of stairs... just to get things moving. It seems to me that The Great War could well have been a spectacular case of “falling down a flight of stairs.” It didn’t make a great deal of sense, but it got so much moving as a consequence.
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