Читать книгу The Times Great War Letters: Correspondence during the First World War - James Owen - Страница 59

That is why the men at the front have the right spirit. They are so gloriously cheery because their consciences are at rest. They know they have done and are doing the right thing. They have made the great surrender. They have burnt their boats behind them and put themselves under orders. Nothing matters except to “do their bit” when they are told to. When they are not wanted they have no silly scruples about enjoying themselves, the best they can. When the whole nation knows itself to be under orders, and knows that it is doing the right thing, we shall see the same spirit of gay surrender at home; and this spirit is essential. All we want is a lead, and a strong and fearless lead.

But will the nation stand it? Politics again! Well, if it won’t, it will have to stand something infinitely more distasteful before very long. But of course the nation will stand it. The nation will welcome it with both hands, once it is given a lead, once all are treated alike, once it is told the truth—not half-truths, which are worse than lies, but the real truth—that though we are holding the enemy through the indomitable spirit and the reckless self-sacrifice of our troops, we cannot and never shall be able to crush them until we provide our fighting men with a preponderance of munitions of war over and above the apparently ample and undiminished supply of the enemy. Advancing a few yards, or retiring a few miles, or merely holding the enemy—this is not going to win the war. It may produce a peace in the long run; but it will be a peace made in Germany and not of British manufacture.

The nation will welcome national service because the temper of the nation is different from what it was. Recent events have clearly shown, even to the most phlegmatic, that we are in a perfectly real sense up against the Devil incarnate. What else is it when we are fighting against an enemy who will stop at nothing, however mean and cruel and disgusting—an enemy who will use gas, sink Lusitanias, put arsenic in running streams, and sow disease? Mere abuse won’t tame this Devil or drive him out, but a nation serving will. National Service will be welcomed once the nation learns the truth that thousands of the finest and most gallant lives that the Empire has ever produced are being thrown away because the nation has not yet realized that it is at war.

There is only one way to make the nation realize this fact, and that is by bringing every member of it under the direct orders of the State for one purpose, and one purpose only. Nothing else matters to-day.

Yours faithfully,

MICHAEL FURSE, Bishop of Pretoria

On the day that Furse’s letter was published, Asquith addressed concerns about the progress of the war by reconstituting his government as a coalition, with Lloyd George at the head of a new Ministry of Munitions.