The Spectator

From ‘A review of the war’, The Spectator, 19 September 1914: It is the duty of all English publicists to make people here understand the splendid heroism with which the Servians have fought. They have contributed very greatly to the overthrow of Austria, and their brave Army and nation deserve all the help and encouragement that the Allies can give. We and the French very properly guaranteed a loan to Belgium. We, France, and the Russians ought to do the same by Servia, for the little nation’s finances must by this time be very nearly exhausted.

From ‘News of the Week’ in The Spectator, 19 September 1914: As friends of Italy, we feel bound to point out once more that she will make a capital error if she does not take action at once and join the Entente, and join it not in a half-hearted but in a whole-hearted way. To put the matter quite plainly, if Italy does not join in when her help would be valuable, but waits till no one has any particular need for her assistance, she will be told that nobody can receive the reward of a rescuer who encumbers with his help a man who has reached the shore by his own exertions.

From The Spectator, 19 September 1914: WHAT a nefarious little person is the captious critic! His watchword is caution, and he goes about damping down the fires of enthusiasm, only happy when be can hear some aspiring little flame fizzling out. At present he is enjoying himself hugely. All good people are registering rash vows to be of some use at a supreme crisis, and he is busy explaining to them in detail that it is of no sort of good for them to try. All their attempts, he would have them believe, are defeating themselves. They had better do nothing than what they are doing, he persuades them. Their efforts are involving a very great risk. A woman cannot so much as make a shirt for a sick soldier but he is down upon her.

A reader’s letter from The Spectator, 12 September 1914: [To the Editor of The Spectator] Sir, I am afraid your correspondent "Ex-Scholar" (Spectator, September 5th), in quoting a "howler," has committed a little one himself. The incident of the sacred chickens to which he alludes did not take place in the "first sea fight between Romans and Carthaginians," nor was Duilins the commander who flouted the State system of auguries. It was Claudius Pulcher who (as the Romans thought, in consequence of his blasphemy) was defeated in 249 B.C. by the Carthaginians under Adherbal off Drepana (Lilybaeum) in Sicily. It was his sister, a true scion of the arrogant Clandian stock, who, incommoded by the crowds leaving the games, said : "Oh that my brother were alive and in command of our ships!

From The Spectator, 12 September 1914: The King's message addressed "To the Governments and Peoples of My Self-Governing Dominions," published to the world on Wednesday, is noble in its sincerity of word and thought. What could be said better or with a truer dignity than the following: ‘Had I stood aside when, in defiance of pledges to which my kingdom was a party, the soil of Belgium was violated and her cities laid desolate, when the very life of the French nation was threatened with extinction I should have sacrificed my honour and given to destruction the liberties of my Empire and of man- kind. I rejoice that every part of the Empire is with me in this decision.