Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914. Max Hastings
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responded with serenity to the new circumstance of European conflict. In Schneidemühl, Prussia, twelve-year-old Elfriede Kuhr asked her grandmother if Germany would win. ‘We have never lost a war in my lifetime,’ answered the old woman proudly, ‘so we won’t lose this one, either.’ Her granddaughter was bemused that this supposedly earth-shattering event made little immediate impact on daily life: ‘We eat white rolls and good meat and go for a walk as if nothing had happened.’ It is a myth that most of the belligerents expected a short war. Ignorant people, and even some informed ones, cherished such a delusion partly because economists, with their accustomed paucity of judgement, assured them that Europe would swiftly run out of money. But many thoughtful soldiers of every nation recognised that a general European conflict could be protracted.
In Paris, Faust was still playing at the Opéra, and the press found space to report the death of a child run over by a milk float; a futurist conference continued its debate about the merits of excavating a tunnel under the Channel. But on 2 August the French capital declared a state of siege for the duration: the municipality surrendered to the military all public order responsibilities, with draconian powers of entry, and restriction on assemblies and entertainments. Three days later a law was passed ‘repressing indiscretions of the press in wartime’, forbidding publication of all military information save that authorised by the government or high command. Journalists were barred from entering combat zones. In the months that followed, Joffre, as army commander-in-chief, wielded the powers almost of a national dictator, provoking the envy of his German counterpart Moltke, shackled to the Kaiser. The doors of many Paris businesses bore signs declaring, with a mixture of regret and pride: ‘Maison fermé à cause du départ du patron et des employés sous le drapeau français.’ Cafés and bars now closed at 8 p.m., restaurants at 9.30 p.m. Cavalrymen bivouacked on the boulevards, tethering their horses to chestnut trees. By ten, the most vibrant city in Europe was almost silent.
Germany’s parliament agreed on 5 August to fund a war loan of 5,000 million marks, supported by the Social Democrats, even though most of their members opposed the conflict. War had become an accomplished fact, and thus patriotism trumped former convictions, as it did also in Britain and France. Socialists, sensitive to conservative taunts that they were mere vaterlandslose Gesellen – ‘stateless folk’, felt compelled to rally beneath the flag. Moreover, fear and detestation of Russia were as passionate on the left as on the right. Most Germans sincerely believed that their country was encircled by enemies. The Münchner Neueste Nachrichten reflected bitterly on 7 August about the renewal of all-too-familiar foreign hostility, a ‘hatred against Germanness, this time coming from the east’. The semi-official Kölnische Zeitung declared: ‘Now that England has shown its hand, everyone can see what is at stake: the most powerful conspiracy in the history of the world.’
The newspaper Neue Preußische Zeitung was the first to employ the word Burgfrieden to describe Germany’s new political truce. It derived from a medieval custom, forbidding private strife within the walls of an embattled castle. Now, Burgfrieden became once more a common currency. In the same spirit in France, on 4 August prime minister René Viviani coined a phrase that passed into the French language – l’union sacrée: ‘Dans la guerre qui s’engage, la France […] sera héroïquement défendue par tous ses fils, dont rien ne brisera devant l’ennemi l’union sacrée’ – ‘In the coming war, France will be heroically defended by all its sons, whose sacred union in the face of the enemy will be indissoluble.’ There was much press bellicosity. The clerical Croix d’Isère declared the struggle ‘la guerre purificatrice’, visited upon France as a punishment for its sins under the Third Republic. ‘That was the idea everywhere,’ wrote another contemporary, ‘that war would clear the air, make things pleasanter all around afterwards.’ The socialist paper Le Droit du peuple adopted a phrase: ‘the war for peace’.
In Britain also, reconciliation became a prevailing theme. On 11 August the government welcomed the excuse to remit all suffragettes’ jail sentences. Among the famous Pankhurst family, Sylvia continued to plead for peace, but her sister Christabel and their mother Emmeline denounced ‘the German peril’. The executive of Britain’s Trades Union Congress declared that it identified the war with ‘the preservation and maintenance of free and unfettered democratic government’. More than a few people believed, as do some modern historians, that hostilities with Germany averted a violent collision between British workers, employers and the government.
John Redmond, leader of the Irish Home Rulers, made a supremely enlightened conciliatory gesture when he declared in the House of Commons: ‘there are in Ireland two large bodies of Volunteers. One of them sprang into existence in the South. I say to the Government that they may tomorrow withdraw every one of their troops from Ireland. I say that the coasts of Ireland will be defended from foreign invasion by her sons, and for this purpose armed Nationalist Catholics in the South will be only too glad to join arms with the armed Protestant Ulstermen in the North.’ Redmond sat down to deafening applause, but he proved to have thus forfeited his status as the standard-bearer of Irish nationalism, and destroyed his political career.
Daily Mail executive Tom Clarke wrote in his diary on 5 August: ‘The mock warfare of Ulster is already forgotten. People speak of it in whispers of shame. The history of the past few days is a nightmare … Now we have taken the plunge one feels better already … [The British people] know we are in for a hard thing. They are confident, but not cocky. Everybody is thinking to-day of the North Sea. The decisive battle might be fought there even this night.’ The Times editorialised, in a fashion richer in schoolboy romanticism than intellectual rigour: ‘[The people of Britain] feel and know that they are summoned to draw [the sword] in the old cause – that once again, in the words which King William inscribed upon his standard, they will “maintain the liberties of Europe”. It is the cause for which Wellington fought in the Peninsula and Nelson at Trafalgar – the cause of the weak against the strong, of the small peoples against their overwhelming neighbours, of law against brute force.’
War prompted many acts of private generosity. Some were useful, others not, and most were vulnerable to abuse. A French grandee who donated his cherished motor car to the nation’s service was infuriated to glimpse it in the Rue de Rivoli a few days later, occupied by the minister of war’s mistress. Alois Fürst zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg was a rich German aristocrat with little interest in military affairs, who had previously avoided service. But now, like many of his kind, he offered a splendid automobile to the Bavarian army along with his own services as its driver, in order to have ‘a small share in the national sacrifice’. He also turned his castle at Kleinheubach into a hospital, deemed suitable for ten officers and twenty other ranks, and paid all its expenses. He was given the rank of lieutenant, and after a fortnight’s delay while his overworked tailor made uniforms, set off towards the front.
Rich people not called upon to expose themselves to shot and shell instead offered money to the common weal. King George V’s name led a list of donors to Britain’s ‘National Relief Fund’ with a gift of £5,000, the Queen adding 1,000 guineas. Sir Ernest Cassel and Lord Northcliffe each gave £5,000, Lord Derby £2,000 and lesser folk smaller amounts, but nobody could immediately decide what worthy purpose the cash should be applied to. A Serbian Relief Fund was established, which raised £100,000 by September. The Duke of Sutherland initiated a scheme whereby the aristocracy opened its vast country houses for use as hospitals, but many of the 250 residences offered proved unsuitable because of the inadequacy of their drains. The Duke then went further and announced that he could also deliver a convalescent hospital in London with a full staff ready to receive patients. A sceptical Admiralty official went to investigate, and was astonished to discover that there was indeed a ducal medical support facility in Victoria Street: it had been established on behalf of the Ulster Volunteers, in anticipation of an Irish civil war.
Millions of Germans began to contribute to Liebesgaben – gifts of food, drink, tobacco and clothing for soldiers – but sometimes enthusiasm for aiding the afflicted was deemed to go too far. The Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung warned wealthy women against inviting the children of the poor into their homes, because acquaintance with a living standard so much superior to their own was likely to make humble folk dissatisfied. Some commercial