The Spectator

The papers of Monday published the welcome news that Britain, France, and Russia have agreed ‘not to conclude peace separately during the present war.’ Of course, it was quite unthinkable that Britain, France, or Russia should be so base as to make terms at the expense of her friends. Nevertheless, a signed pledge is an excellent thing to have, if only because it puts the matter beyond the possibility of doubt, and because it spikes the guns of German intrigue, which, if report speaks truly, had already began. It is, indeed, a pitiable situation when allies think of their own interests more than of the common cause, as William III.

From The Spectator, 12 September 1914: WE are not going to begin shouting before we are out of the wood. We say this out of no foolish superstition that it is unlucky to do so, but for the very plain and good reason that we are not out of the wood, though we admit that during the week things have gone fairly well, and that the prospects look somewhat brighter. But even so our success may well turn out to be temporary. Indeed, we might almost say that in one sense it is certain to prove temporary, because a campaign with fairly equal forces such as are now arrayed against each other is bound to sway backwards and forwards. All that we have a right to hope for is that on the balance of, say, two months the swaying in the western theatre of the war will prove to be slightly in our favour.

'The Magazines', from The Spectator, 5 September 1914: THE most interesting paper in the new Nineteenth Century is that by Sir Harry Johnston on "The German War and its Consequences." Writing as one with many German friends, he sets forth the reasons why his love for Germany has changed to righteous anger. They are, briefly, that Germany, ruled by the Hohenzollerns and inflamed by Prussian Professors, though Great Britain and France had made all reasonable concessions to her colonial and commercial aspirations, has, on the pretext of the Austro-Servian quarrel, violated the neutrality of an unoffending country and conducted the war in Belgium and France with a barbarity hitherto associated with Oriental savages.

THE WAR AND THE CIVIL SERVICE. [To the Editor of The Spectator] SIR,—May I suggest that some of the normal public services may, for the time, be curtailed in order to give patriotic young men the opportunity of serving their country in another way? The number of deliveries of letters might be reduced without serious inconvenience; a possible curtailment may be suggested in many other directions. Service with the colours is the one thing that matters now, and it should be made plain in every town and village how greatly those who are debarred from it honour and appreciate those who accept it. Everywhere the families of those who have relatives in any branch of the Service should be marked out for special consideration and special distinction.

From The Spectator, 5 September 1914: LONDON changes day by day, and the London of the first few days of the war lies far in the past, distant for all of us by differently measured aeons of time. The trainloads of troops, the horses, the hurry, the altered railway service, the packed streets, the questioning crowds, the visible stress and strain of meeting the new conditions and the new standards of the world—these are gone. London instead is very quiet, and exceedingly hard at work. The noise of preparation has ceased, and now the silence that has followed has a quality of its own. There is a new sound in it, which a Londoner returning from travel would detect at once.