A New Shavian Theory.

No comprehension does Mr. Shaw display of the hurt to the Belgians’ sense of honor involved in Germany’s use of their territory for purposes hostile to their friendly neighbor, France.  To be forced into injuring a friend is an outrage, indeed, and Mr. Shaw surely knows too much of matters military to be unaware that to permit a right of way to one combatant amounts to making an attack upon the other, and that Germany, by the very fact of crossing Belgium soil, was forcing Belgium to be the enemy of France.  Only by their great heroism were the Belgians able to escape this infamy that had been planned for them.

To be conquered does not really matter!  There we have another Shavian theory.  How grateful would the would-be world-ruling Kaiser feel to Mr. Shaw were he to succeed in inoculating the peoples of Europe and of America with that theory!  So would the task of putting the peoples under the German yoke (otherwise known as German culture) be made easier—­and cheaper.  But the spirit of national freedom, which is as precious to humanity as is the spirit of individual freedom, cannot be driven out by words any more than it can be driven out by blows.  The most unlettered Belgian soldier, fighting for a truth that is at the very heart and depth of all things true, puts the mere wordmonger to shame.

That Great Britain does not fight only for Belgium is certainly a fact, though Belgium’s plight alone would have been enough to bring us into the conflict.  We fight also for France, because she is wrongfully attacked, and because she is by her civilization and culture one of the world’s treasures.  We fight for the all-sufficient reason of self-defense.

There is the case for Britain, and despite his special pleading for Germany, Mr. Shaw can show no flaw in it.  He does say, however, that the British Government, instead of first seeking a mild way of preserving peace, ought to have said point blank to Germany:  “If you attack France we shall attack you.”  I also think that such a declaration would have been the right one.  To me and to many others the thought that our country might stand by and watch inactively an attack upon France was intolerable.  Great was our relief when this apprehension was removed by the British Government’s declaration of war.  Why did not the British Government say to Germany before the war cloud burst that Britain would fight to defend France, and why did the Government delay so long in declaring war?  Mr. Shaw does not give the reason, but I will give it.

It was that the Government feared opposition to our entering into the war would come from a Radico-Socialist literary clique in London, from a section of the Liberal press, and from certain Liberal and Labor politicians who had been deceived by German professors and other missionaries of the Kaiser into thinking the German peril did not exist.  When Belgium was invaded most of these misguided ones were unable to cling any longer to their “keep out of it” policy, and then the Government felt free to act.  Yet the Government need not have waited, because with the facts before them the people as a whole would perfectly have understood the necessity of fighting even had Belgium not been invaded.