Читать книгу The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days: Scenes In The Great War - Sir Hall Caine - Страница 10

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That time, as we now know, never came, but a still more fatal time did come—the cruel, ironical, and sinister time of July 28, 1914, when one of the oldest, feeblest, and least capable of living men, the Emperor of Austria, under the pretence of avenging the death of the heir-presumptive to his throne, signed with his trembling hand, which could scarcely hold the pen, the first of his many proclamations of war, and so touched the button of the monstrous engine that set Europe aflame.

The Archduke Ferdinand was foully done to death in discharging a patriotic duty, but to think that the penalty imposed on the world for the assassination of a man of his calibre and capacity for usefulness (or yet for the violation of the principles of public safety, thereby involved) has been the murdering of millions of men of many nationalities, the destruction of an entire kingdom, the burning of historic cities, the impoverishment of the rich and the starvation of the poor, the outraging of women and the slaughter of children, is also to think that for the past 365 days the destinies of humanity have been controlled by demons, who must be shrieking with laughter at the stupidities of mankind.

Thank God, we are not required to think anything quite so foolish, although we can not escape from a conclusion almost equally degrading. Victor Hugo used to say that only kings desired war, and that with the celebration of the United States of Europe we should see the beginning of the golden age of Peace. But the events of the tremendous days from July 28 to August 4,1914, show us with humiliating distinctness that though Kaisers, Emperors, Crown Princes, and Archdukes may be the accidental instruments of invisible powers in plunging humanity into seas of blood, a war is no sooner declared by any of them, however feeble or fatuous, than all the nations concerned make it their own. That was what happened in Central Europe the moment Austria declared war on Serbia, and the history of man on this planet has no record of anything more pitiful than the spectacle of Germany—“sincere, calm, deep-thinking Germany,” as Carlyle called her, whose triumph in 1870 was “the hopefullest fact” of his time—stifling her conscience in order to justify her participation in the conflict.