The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Audacious War, by Clarence W. Barron

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Title: The Audacious War

Author: Clarence W. Barron

Release Date: April 5, 2006 [eBook #18125]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUDACIOUS WAR***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE AUDACIOUS WAR

by

CLARENCE W. BARRON

Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1915
Copyright, 1914 and 1915, by the Boston News Bureau Company
Copyright, 1915, by Clarence W. Barron
All Rights Reserved
Published February 1915

THIRD IMPRESSION

IF!

  Suppose 't were done!
  The lanyard pulled on every shotted gun;
  Into the wheeling death-clutch sent
  Each millioned armament,
  To grapple there
  On land, on sea and under, and in air!
  Suppose at last 't were come—
  Now, while each bourse and shop and mill is dumb
  And arsenals and dockyards hum,—
  Now all complete, supreme,
  That vast, Satanic dream!—

  Each field were trampled, soaked,
  Each stream dyed, choked,
  Each leaguered city and blockaded port
  Made famine's sport;
  The empty wave
  Made reeling dreadnought's grave;
  Cathedral, castle, gallery, smoking fell
  'Neath bomb and shell;
  In deathlike trance
  Lay industry, finance;
  Two thousand years'
  Bequest, achievement, saving, disappears
  In blood and tears,
  In widowed woe
  That slum and palace equal know,
  In civilization's suicide,—
  What served thereby, what satisfied?
  For justice, freedom, right, what wrought?
  Naught!—

  Save, after the great cataclysm, perhap
  On the world's shaken map
  New lines, more near or far,
  Binding to king or czar
  In festering hate
  Some newly vassaled state;
  And passion, lust and pride made satiate;
  And just a trace
  Of lingering smile on Satan's face!
      —Boston News Bureau Poet.

This poem has been called the great poem of the war. It was written just preceding the war, and published August 1 by the "Boston News Bureau." Of it, and its author, Bartholomew P. Griffin, the following was written by Rev. Francis G. Peabody: "The English poets, Bridges, Kipling, Austin, and Noyes, have all tried to meet the need and all have lamentably failed. I am proud not only that an American, but that a Harvard man, should have risen to the occasion."

PREFACE

The Scotch have this proverb: "War brings poverty. Poverty brings peace. Peace brings prosperity. Prosperity brings pride. And pride brings war again." Shall the world settle down to the faith that there is no redemption from an everlasting round of pride, war, poverty, peace, prosperity, pride, and war again?

But it was not primarily to settle, or even study this problem that I crossed the ocean and the English Channel in winter. As a journalist publishing the Wall Street Journal, the Boston News Bureau, and the Philadelphia News Bureau, and directing news-gathering for the banking and financial communities, I deemed it my duty to ascertain at close hand the financial factors in this war, and the financial results therefrom.

I found myself on the other side, not only in the domain of the finance encircling this war, but unexpectedly in close touch with diplomatic and government circles. The whole of the war, its commercial causes, its financial and military forces, its tremendous human sacrifices, the conflicting principles of government, and the world-wide issues involved, all lay out in clear facts and figures after I had gathered by day and night from what appeared at first to be a tangled web.

I learned who made this war, and why at this time and for what purposes, present and prospective; and from facts that could not be set down categorically in papers of state. No papers, "white," "gray," or "yellow," could present a picture of the war in its inception and the reasons therefor.

There is no powerful organization over nations to keep the peace of Europe or of the world, as nations are in organization over states, and states over cities, to insure peace and justice, without strife or human sacrifice.

The immediate causes of this war, and I believe they have not before been presented on this side of the ocean, are connected with commercial treaties, protective tariffs, and financial progress.

It may be wondered that in our country, which is the home of the protective tariff system and boasts its great prosperity therefrom, there has been as yet no presentation of the business causes beneath this war. Our great journalists are trained to find interesting, picturesque, and saleable news features from big events. Details of war's atrocities and destructions are to most people of the greatest human interest, and rightly so. As a country we have no international policy, and European politics and policies have never interested us.

Germany is buttressed by tariffs and commercial treaties on every side. Years ago I was told in Europe that the commercial treaties wrested from France in 1871 were of more value to Germany than the billion dollars of indemnity she took as her price to quit Paris. But I did not realize until I was abroad this winter how European countries had warred by tariffs, and that Germany and Russia were preparing for a great clash at arms over the renewal of commercial and tariff treaties which expire within two years, and which had been forced by Germany upon Russia during the Japanese War.

German "Kultur" means German progress, commercially and financially. German progress is by tariffs and commercial treaties. Her armies, her arms, and her armaments, are to support this "Kultur" and this progress.

I believe I have told the story as it has never been told before. But the facts cannot be drawn forth and properly set in review without some presentation of the spirit of the peoples of the European nations.

If all the nations of Europe were of one language, the spirit, the soul of each in its distinctive characteristics might stand out even more prominently than to-day.

Then we could see even more clearly the spirit of brotherhood and nationality that stands out resplendent as the soul of France. We should see the spirit of empire and of trade, interknit with administrative justice, as the soul of Great Britain. We should see Germany an uncouth giant in the center of Europe, viewing all about him with suspicion, and demanding to know why, as the youngest, sturdiest, best organized, and hardest working European nation, he is not entitled to overseas or world empire.

But few persons on this side have comprehended the relation of this great war to the greatest commercial prizes in the world; the shores of