Читать книгу The Times Great War Letters: Correspondence during the First World War - James Owen - Страница 40

FOOLISH OPTIMISM

6 March 1915

SIR,—I HAVE BEEN ASKED to repeat in the form of a letter to you some of the remarks that I made in the City yesterday.

I was dealing with actual and impending strikes, and I said that such action, taken by men so patriotic, could only be explained by the fact that those concerned did not in the least appreciate the extreme gravity of the crisis in which our country still finds itself. They think, or many of them think, that the crisis is past, that all is going well with the Allies, and that the war will very soon be over. How can we wonder that such a deplorable impression should exist? The Press Bureau consistently slurs over bad news and exaggerates good news. The Press lays every emphasis by poster, headline, and paragraph on all that side of the war which is flattering to our pride or soothing to our excited feelings. It keeps further in the background the news which is disagreeable to us, and the result is that our sense of proportion is being destroyed, and that perspective is ceasing to exist. I could multiply instances of what I mean. Frequently lately we have seen a roll of casualties of some battalion in Flanders amounting to 200, 300, 400 men, or even to half a battalion. These casualties took place in February, January, or December, but who can recollect that at the time he received any impression of such a loss by the news published? The fact is that these casualties have usually occurred when we have lost a trench or a line of trenches, and the men holding them have been killed or made prisoners. A day or two after this had happened we were probably told that a trench which had been lost had been brilliantly recaptured, but we had never been told previously that we had lost the trench, and we were never told at the time what the loss of the trench or its recapture had cost us.

When the Prime Minister spoke in the House of Commons the other day he spoke with quiet confidence as to the issue of the war. He was quite right, and we all share that confidence; but I do wish that he had laid more stress on the extreme difficulty and gravity of the task which still lies before us before a successful issue can be reached. The naked facts of the situation are that, notwithstanding the magnificent courage of the soldiers of the Allied Armies, the Germans are holding very nearly the same ground in France and Belgium as they held four months ago, and that the Germans and the Austrians together have been able to hold their own in the Eastern field of war against the splendid endurance of the Russian Army. The silent pressure of the Fleet has no doubt caused much inconvenience to the German Government and some hardship to the German people, but there is no more likelihood of Germany than of the Allies being starved into an early submission.

My own belief is that at the very best there are many months of cruel war before us and that we have need of every effort which every civilian in the United Kingdom can make, as well as of every effort of the seamen in the Fleet and of the soldiers in the trenches; and that far the greatest danger which now confronts us is lest slackness in the United Kingdom, from whatever cause arising, should protract the war many months beyond the time at which it could otherwise be finished. As a people we cannot be frightened or depressed into panic by bad news; we can very easily be made too confident by good news. If those who control the Press Bureau understood the temperament of their fellow-countrymen they would not only never conceal any bad news from them, they would lay all the stress upon it which it could honestly bear, and they would be very careful not to give any good news a prominence at all disproportionate to its importance in the vast scale of the war. I have said that we all agree with the Prime Minister in quiet confidence as to the issue of the war, but that confidence must be conditional on the belief that the people of the United Kingdom will fight the war through in the United Kingdom in the same spirit in which they began it.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

SELBORNE