World War I - 9 Book Collection: Nelson's History of the War, The Battle of Jutland & The Battle of the Somme. Buchan John

writer who can disentangle this vast labyrinth of armaments, and assist his contemporaries to comprehend the theatre of conflict, undertakes an heroic task, and will be entitled to the gratitude of his country; though the definite history of these simultaneous and colossal wars must still be remote.

      We only know something of the first act of this drama. But it will not be complete till we know the fifth. If the Prussians are victorious we need not trouble our heads. That supremacy means, it would seem, the end of liberty, of civilization, and religion as we have understood them to be, and we shall be compelled to kneel before the Dagon of brute force. That contingency, however, we all exclude. But what will follow the victory of the Allies? Will it be a cessation of the burden of armaments, and the establishment of a more balanced equipoise of power in Europe? None can tell; but the answer to these questions, to be unfolded in the fifth act, makes it much the most momentous.

      Part of the task, however, is easy and pleasant. War is an accursed thing, which punishes the innocent and generally lets the guilty go free. But our chronicler cannot fail to enlarge upon the incalculable blessing which the damnable invasion of Belgium has conferred incidentally upon ourselves. For it has revealed to the world the enthusiastic and weatherproof unity of the British Empire; or, rather, the loyalty of the three connected empires to the Mother country. That would be worth any ordinary war, and is not, perhaps, too dearly bought even by such an appalling conflagration as this. And this unity, as it is not the beginning, so Is not the end. Blood shed in common is the cement of nations, and we and our sons may look to see a beneficence of empire, not such as the Prussians dreamed of, not a war-lordship over other nations, not a nightmare of oppression, but a world-wide British influence which shall be a guarantee of liberty and peace, and which, hand in hand with our Allies in Europe, and with our kindred in the United States, should go far to make another war such as this impossible. That would be a crowning glory to fight for; a gain for humanity such as no other war has achieved, and yet not an impracticable dream.

      EARL OF ROSEBERY, K. G.

      October 1914.