Literature is a nice thing in its way.  It both passes and gives us many weary hours.  It has its place.  But I submit that at present it is mere dancing on a tight rope.  Whether the war could have been avoided or not is without interest today.  In fact, there is no controversy possible after Maximilian Harden’s pronouncement.  In it he throws away the scabbard and says boldly that Germany from the first was set on war.  Hence it becomes a work of supererogation to find excuses for her, and hence, my old friend, Bernard Shaw, penned his long indictment of his hereditary enemy, England, all in vain.

We are a dull-witted race.  Although the Continent has dubbed us “Perfidious Albion,” it is hard for us to take in general ideas, and no man clearly sees the possibilities of the development of the original sin that lies dormant in him.  Thus it becomes hard for us to understand the reason why, if Germany tore up a treaty three months ago we are certain to tear up another in three years’ time.

All crystal gazing appeals but little to the average man on this side of the St. George’s channel.  It may be that we shall tear up many treaties, but the broad fact remains that hitherto we have torn up none.

The particular treaty that Germany tore up was signed by five powers in 1839, ratified again in 1870 by a special clause respected by King Frederick William in his war against the French, was often referred to in Parliament by Gladstone and by other Ministers, and was considered binding on its signatories.  Germany tore it up for her own ends, thus showing that she was a stupid though learned people, for she at once at the same time prejudiced her case to the whole world and made a military mistake.

No human motives are without alloy, but at the same time honesty in our case has proved the better policy.  Germany, no doubt, would have granted us almost anything for our assent to her march through Belgium.  We refused her offers, no doubt from mixed motives, for every Englishman is not an orphan archangel, stupid, or dull or muddle-headed, or what not.  The balance of the world is with us, not, perhaps, because they love us greatly, but because they see that we, perhaps by accident, have been forced into the right course and that all smaller nationalities such as Montenegro, Ireland, Poland, and the rest would disappear on our defeat.

CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.

Editorial Comment on Shaw

From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Nov. 5, 1914.

Mr. G. Bernard Shaw thinks that “the time has now come to pluck up courage and begin to talk and write soberly about the war.”  Our readers will find in THE TIMES Sunday Magazine this morning some of the fruits of this auto-suggestion.  They are very remarkable.  While Mr. Shaw can hardly be called a representative of any considerable class, the fact that one prominent writer, always much read, can assume Mr. Shaw’s attitude and make public