SCENES IN THE GREAT WAR
WE BELIEVED IT
We believed it. I am compelled to count
myself among the number of my countrymen who
through many years believed that story—that
the accident of Germany's disadvantageous geographical
position, not her desire to break
British supremacy on the sea, made it necessary
for her to enlarge her navy. I did my best to believe
it when I had to sail through the Kiel Canal
in a steamer from Cuxhaven to Copenhagen,
which was forced to shoulder her way through an
ever-increasing swarm of German battleships. I
did my best to believe it when I had to sail under
the threatening fortresses of Heligoland which
stood anchored out at the mouth of the Bight
like a mastiff at the end of his chain snarling at
the sea. I did my best to believe it when I had
to travel to Cologne by night, and the darkened
railway carriages were lit up by fierce flashes
from gigantic furnaces which were making
mountains of munitions for the evil day when
frail man would have to face the murderous
slaughter of machine-guns. I did my best to
believe it even in Berlin when German friends
of the scholastic classes accounted for their
tolerance of conscription and of the tyranny of
clanking soldiery in the streets, the cafes, and
the hotels on the ground of disciplinary usefulness
rather than military necessity.
