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ENGLAND AND THE WAR

being

SUNDRY ADDRESSES

delivered during the war
and now first collected

by

WALTER RALEIGH

OXFORD

1918




CONTENTS


PREFACE

MIGHT IS RIGHT
  First published as one of the Oxford Pamphlets,
  October 1914.

THE WAR OF IDEAS
  An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute,
  December 12, 1916.

THE FAITH OF ENGLAND
  An Address to the Union Society of University
  College, London, March 22, 1917.

SOME GAINS OF THE WAR
  An Address to the Royal Colonial Institute,
  February 13, 1918.

THE WAR AND THE PRESS
  A Paper read to the Essay Society, Eton College,
  March 14, 1918.

SHAKESPEARE AND ENGLAND
  The Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British
  Academy, delivered July 4, 1918.




PREFACE


This book was not planned, but grew out of the troubles of the time.
When, on one occasion or another, I was invited to lecture, I did not
find, with Milton's Satan, that the mind is its own place; I could speak
only of what I was thinking of, and my mind was fixed on the War. I am
unacquainted with military science, so my treatment of the War was
limited to an estimate of the characters of the antagonists.

The character of Germany and the Germans is a riddle. I have seen no
convincing solution of it by any Englishman, and hardly any confident
attempt at a solution which did not speak the uncontrolled language of
passion. There is the same difficulty with the lower animals; our
description of them tends to be a description of nothing but our own
loves and hates. Who has ever fathomed the mind of a rhinoceros; or has
remembered, while he faces the beast, that a good rhinoceros is a
pleasant member of the community in which his life is passed? We see
only the folded hide, the horn, and the angry little eye. We know that
he is strong and cunning, and that his desires and instincts are
inconsistent with our welfare. Yet a rhinoceros is a simpler creature
than a German, and does not trouble our thought by conforming, on
occasion, to civilized standards and humane conditions.

It seems unreasonable to lay great stress on racial differences. The
insuperable barrier that divides England from Germany has grown out of
circumstance and habit and thought. For many hundreds of years the
German peoples have stood to arms in their own defence against the
encroachments of successive empires; and modern Germany learned the
doctrine of the omnipotence of force by prolonged suffering at the hands
of the greatest master of that immoral school--the Emperor Napoleon. No
German can understand the attitude of disinterested patronage which the
English mind quite naturally assumes when it is brought into contact
with foreigners. The best example of this superiority of attitude is to
be seen in the people who are called pacifists. They are a peculiarly
English type, and they are the most arrogant of all the English. The
idea that they should ever have to fight for their lives is to them
supremely absurd. There must be some mistake, they think, which can be
easily remedied once it is pointed out. Their title to existence is so
clear to themselves that they are convinced it will be universally
recognized; it must not be made a matter of international conflict.
Partly, no doubt, this belief is fostered by lack of imagination. The
sheltered conditions and leisured life which they enjoy as the parasites
of a dominant race have produced in them a false sense of security. But
there is something also of the English strength and obstinacy of
character in their self-confidence, and if ever Germany were to conquer
England some of them would spring to their full stature as the heroes of
an age-long and indomitable resistance. They are not held in much esteem
to-day among their own people; they are useless for the work in hand;
and their credit has suffered from the multitude of pretenders who make
principle a cover for cowardice. But for all that, they are kin to the
makers of England, and the fact that Germany would never tolerate them
for an instant is not without its lesson.

We shall never understand the Germans. Some of their traits may possibly
be explained by their history. Their passionate devotion to the State,
their amazing vulgarity, their worship of mechanism and mechanical
efficiency, are explicable in a people who are not strong in individual
character, who have suffered much to achieve union, and who have
