To End All Wars_ A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 - Adam Hochschild [43]
In high places more voices were predicting war. Von Moltke pushed for a hefty enlargement of the German army and bluntly told the country's chancellor, "All sides are preparing for European War, which all sides expect sooner or later." Not only were all sides preparing, but the high commands had detailed plans for how the war would unfold. Should Germany attack France, British and French officers had already worked out which French ports British troops would disembark at, how many French railway cars and interpreters would meet them, and where their jumping-off points for combat would probably be. Little of the preparations, however, took into account that weapon meant to slaughter "natives," the machine gun. As British, French, and German generals spread their maps on war ministry tables, they spent inordinate amounts of time planning where to place their cavalry divisions.
Where were the Germans likely to attack? Obviously not across the frontier they shared with France, where they would run up against heavy French fortifications. They were expected instead to sweep through neutral Belgium, making use of the country's well-developed rail system and sturdy, granite-block roads, and then turn south toward Paris. In fact, the British and French were counting on it. Only an assault on Belgium could make Britain's entry into the war easy to justify, for all the major powers had signed a treaty recognizing Belgian neutrality. On no account, one high British official warned a French colleague, "let the French commanders be led into being the first to cross the Belgian frontier!"—for then the British public would never countenance going to war.
Since all of the nation's wars in living memory had been victorious, many influential Britons expected that a brisk campaign in Europe would be a welcome spine-stiffener for a country in danger of going soft. "Peace may and has ruined many a nationality with its surfeit of everything except those tonics of privation and sacrifice," wrote a commentator in the Daily Mail in 1912. "But the severest war wreaks little practical injury."
Others were less sanguine about the nature of the war, but very certain it would come. Charles Beresford, a member of Parliament and former admiral of the Channel Fleet, began each day with the greeting "Good morning, one day nearer the German war." Beresford was a friend of Kipling, whose writing pulsed with exasperation at those who did not see that war was imminent. Kipling fretted about the German naval buildup, complained loudly that his fellow Britons were "camping comfortably on the raw edge of a volcano," and began speaking of Germans as "Huns" or "Goths." In his poetry he fulminated against a government that was spending money on social reforms instead of more arms:
And because there was need of more pay for the shouters and marchers,
They disbanded in face of their foemen their bowmen and archers.
His son John's bad eyesight had defeated his hopes for joining the navy, but Kipling began pulling strings to see if he could get John into Sandhurst, sending him to a "crammer" to prepare for the military academy's entrance exam, in hopes that he could make an army career instead.
A century later, it is easy enough to see the incremental steps that primed an entire continent for war. But to Britons at the time, the bloodshed that seemed most likely lay at home. Labor union membership was surging and militance on the rise: in 1911 a transport workers' strike stopped traffic for weeks in most ports, and more strikes followed. During that year and the next, the government called out a total of 50,000 troops in response, and even sent two warships to Liverpool. In that city alone, in battles with soldiers