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THE END
The war came to an end when men refused to fight.
Attempts to achieve peace through negotiation
before 1918 came to nothing. The Germans were determined to keep all
the territory they had occupied. The Allies were equally determined
that Germany should gain nothing by her aggression and that her
military power should be totally crushed so that she would never
fight again.
IT MIGHT HAVE ENDED IN SEPTEMBER, 1914
Peace proposals were discussed before the war
started, and in the early days of the war President Woodrow Wilson
of the United States was busy trying to find a peace formula. The
newspaper the Evening World, published in New York on 17th
September 1914, carried a stunning report, "based on the highest
diplomatic authority," on the Kaiser's response to Wilson. The
Kaiser appears, in these remarks to be a man of wisdom and vision,
proposing a settlement remarkably close to that eventually agreed
after over four years' of warfare.
The Kaiser's main points:
Germany would not stop fighting so long as
Britain continued daily to declare that the war must be a fight to
the finish, until Germany had been crushed.
If the world at large hoped for disarmament then
the crushing of Germans would be the poorest way to accomplish it: a
crushed Germany would "repeat the era after the Napoleonic wars and
arm every man, child, cat and dog in the Empire for the day of
revenge."
Germany was willing to call the war a draw [!].
If this were agreed it would be the most conducive solution towards
future peace in Europe and to disarmament. Complete victory on
either side would not lead to stable conditions.
Germany would not agree to being dismembered. The German colonies
might be discussed.
Germany's borders must not be interfered with by
surrounding states. "Every man in the German Empire believes
sincerely and honestly today that the war is one of self-defence
against the hostile encroachment of Russia, France and England. Live
and let live is the policy that Germany wishes its enemies to
observe."1
1Evening
World, New York, 17 September, 1914.
AMERICAN PEACE MOVES
In November 1917 President Wilson put forward a
proposal for a negotiated peace settlement. Only the ageing Emperor
of Austria expressed interest in the idea, but unfortunately he died
before the month was out.
In December Wilson invited the nations involved
in the war to state their aims as a basis for negotiation.
Politicians did not wish to be wholly frank on this matter and in
the case of the Germans they would say nothing of their aims.
Wilson's significant move came on 8th January
1918 when he issued his fourteen point peace plan which included
Germany returning all captured Russian territory, returning and
restoring Belgium, and returning the area of Alsace and Lorraine
which Germany seized in 1871. National armaments of all countries
would be reduced to a minimum. National groups, including the Poles,
would have self-determination. A "general association of nations"
would be set up to safeguard the independence of all nations, great
and small.
TURNING POINT
On 8th August, 1918, the German armies near Amien
were suddenly turned back by Australian, Canadian, British and
French troops. From then on they were in continual retreat and their
faith in their ability to win the war was shattered. German soldiers
refused to advance. There were mass surrenders. The German High
Command was in a state of shock, and a new spirit of confidence
began to develop in the Allied armies.
[Roberts Graves's poem Defeat of the Rebels,
appears in full in Minds at War - the first time in print for over
50 years. It cannot be printed here for copyright reasons.
It tells of the British soldiers' response to the German retreat and
suggests a ruthless violence and cruelty. Lines include "The enemy
forces are in wild flight... It falls to us to shoot them down...
Where they shiver behind rocks or in ditches... [Such prisoners were
unprofitable."]
The situation as seen by a German soldier
Our lines are falling back. There are too many
fresh English and American regiments over there. There's too much
corned beef and white wheaten bread. Too many new guns. Too many
aeroplanes.
But we are emaciated and starved. Our food is bad
and mixed up with so much substitute stuff that it makes us ill. The
factory owners in Germany have grown wealthy; - dysentry dissolves
our bowels. The latrine poles are always densely crowded; the people
at home ought to be shown these grey, yellow, miserable, wasted
faces here, these silent figures from whose bodies the colic wrings
out the blood. . .
Our artillery is fired out, it has too few shells
and the barrels are so worn that they shoot uncertainly, and scatter
so widely as even to fall on ourselves. We have too few horses. Our
fresh troops are anaemic boys in need of rest, who
cannot carry a pack, but merely know how to die. By thousands. . .
The summer of 1918 is the most bloody and the most terrible. The
days stand like angels in blue and gold, incomprehensible, above the
ring of annihilation. Every man here knows we are losing the war.
Not much is said about it, we are falling back, we will not be able
to attack again after this big offensive, we have no more men and no
more ammunition.
Still the campaign goes on - the dying goes on -
Erich Maria Remarque in All Quiet on the Western Front.
Victory - an agonised cry - a French
interpretation. Rodin's sculpture in a main street in Verdun.
THE BRITISH PREPARE FOR VICTORY
WHAT'S THE USE OF WORRYING?
What's the use of worrying?
It never was worth while,
So pack up your troubles
In your old kit bag
And smile, smile, smile.
Popular soldier's song of the First World War
SMILE, SMILE, SMILE
Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned,
"For," said the paper, "when this war is done
The men's first instincts will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
It being certain war has but begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, -
The sons we offered might regret they died
If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified..
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
Who kept this nation in integrity."
Nation? - The half-limbed readers did not chafe
But smiled at one another curiously
Like secret men who know their secret safe.
(This is the thing they know and never speak,
That England one by one had fled to France,
Not many elsewhere now, save under France.)
Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
And people in whose voice real feeling rings
Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.
Wilfred Owen, late September 1918.
[This next poem was Owen's view of what the end would be like. It
was written in May 1917.]
THE END
After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot Throne;
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased,
And by the bronze west long retreat is blown,
Shall life renew these bodies? Of a truth,
All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
Or fill these void veins full again with youth,
And wash, with an immortal water, age?
When I do ask white Age, he saith not so:
"My head hangs weighed with snow."
And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith:
"My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death.
Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified,
Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried."
Wilfred Owen
Terms of the Armistice
In 1914 George Bernard Shaw had warned, "Unless we are all
prepared to fight Militarism at home as well as abroad, the
cessation of hostilities will last only until the belligerents have
recovered from their exhaustion."
By the terms of the armistice Germany agreed:
- to remove all troops and personnel from: Belgium, France,
Luxembourg, Alsace, and Lorraine
- to remove all troops in the east that occupied Russia; to
restore eastern frontiers to their 1914 status
- to return all prisoners and deported civilians from these areas
- to hand over their means of making war, including, 5,000 heavy
guns, 25,000 machine guns, 1,700 aeroplanes, 5,000 railway engines,
150,000 railway wagons, 5,000 lorries, 10 battleships, and all their
submarines
- to make good all damage and loss in Belgium and northern
France.
Hysteria swept the country. There was little sign of magnanimity
in victory: instead a mood of ruthless revenge. Countless public
meetings were held at which the most popular cries were, "Make
Germany pay!" and "Hang the Kaiser!"
WHAT HAD BEEN ACHIEVED?
AN IMPERIAL ELEGY
Not one corner of a foreign field
But a span as wide as Europe;
An appearance of a Titan's grave,
And the length thereof a thousand miles.
It crossed all Europe like a mystic road,
Or as the Spirits' Pathway lieth on the night.
And I heard a voice crying,
This is the Path of Glory.
Wilfred Owen
Human failure
Ten million soldiers dead. Perhaps twenty million
maimed. Perhaps twenty million children without fathers. Perhaps
thirty million families bereaved, handicapped, distressed as a
direct result of the fighting. Thousands of homes destroyed, land
ruined. Mass deportation into slavery. Hundreds of thousands dead of
starvation. One million Armenians massacred by the Turks. Triumph
no-where. Human dignity, self-respect; torn to pieces. A monumental
failure for mankind - a failure to speak and listen, to find common
ground, to negotiate. A futile, illogical and mindless reliance on
the use of force which devastated the user and victim alike,
illustrating the fact that no other species is capable of causing
horror and distress on such a scale. Man had created powers that
collectively he had neither the intelligence nor the morality to
control. Man had released a genie. - The significance of human
foolishness and aggression had been hugely magnified by the
technological powers at his disposal - military, scientific, and the
media. The need for wisdom in national leaders became important as
never before.
The century of war
More than a hundred million people have died in
wars this century. The twentieth century has been the century of
war; and the First World War was merely an overture. Yet those who
ordered their nations into action, and less still, those who so
willingly obeyed the call to war had no clear concept of what it was
meant to achieve. They fought for crudely nationalistic and personal
reasons.
Once the British people had committed themselves
to war to save Belgium (and Britain) from the German invasion they
accepted extensions of the war without a murmur of protest. They
found themselves fighting and dying in other parts of the world for
reasons that probably made little sense. Britain declared war on
Austria-Hungary, an Empire with whom we had no quarrel, on 12th
August 1914, and on Turkey on 6th November. British troops fought in
Africa, Palestine and Italy. No-one seemed to question this, yet
tens of thousands died in these peripheral wars.
Belgium
And did they save Belgium? Or did Belgium save
France and Britain by absorbing the speed and force of the German
attack?
At the end of the war her independence was
restored, but only after she had first been devastated. Within weeks
of marching into this neutral country savage reprisals had taken
place against civilians who had attempted to harass the German
forces. Scores of civilians including children, teenagers and old
people had been rounded up and killed by firing squads. Villages,
including churches, had been totally destroyed. Hostages had been
seized by the German armies as a guarantee of "good behaviour" by
Belgian communities. The Belgians were forced to pay for upkeep of
the occupying forces.
Thousands fled the country. Seven hundred
thousand men had been deported to Germany as slave labourers. Famine
had broken out which had been relieved by charitable help from
overseas - but even this humanitarian aid had been less successful
than it might because many supply ships were sunk by German
submarines. Hunger was everywhere. The birthrate fell by 75 per
cent. The university city of Louvain had been set on fire. The town
of Ypres had been blasted to rubble. Farmlands were ruined by
trenches and shells.
Art treasures had been looted and shipped to
Germany. Machinery from factories was taken to Germany and what
could not be moved had been destroyed. Blast furnaces had been blown
up; coal mines had been flooded.
This was how the Allies saved Belgium, yet it was a basis for a
renewal of life. What would Belgium's fate have been without
opposing Germany?
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