The Spectator

From The Spectator, 22 August 1914: IT is gratifying to find that the public is rapidly waking up to the fact that other prospects than those of universal unemployment arise out of the present war. The daily papers of this week, instead of talking of the necessity for relief funds, have begun to talk of the tremendous commercial possibilities revealed for Great Britain by the collapse of Germany's oversea commerce. The main cause of that collapse everybody now understands. It is due to England's possession of superior sea-power. In addition, it must be noted that many German manufacturing concerns have been obliged to shut down because their work-people have gone to the front.

From The Spectator, 22 August 1914: SIR,—The article on this subject in your last issue has prompted me to write down some of the things said to me about the war by the women in my district. Our rector wished me to ask at each house whether any one from it was serving with the forces. The usual answer was: "No one from here, I'm glad to say. I shouldn't like any of mine to go." One mother said: "There's no one here could go but Eddie, and I've told him he needn't offer. If they want him they'll take him." This idea is general. One woman had heard that "they" had "taken" twenty men from B— (a neighbouring village). Eddie's grandmother had not been sleeping at nights for the fear that they would take him- " he's such a big, strong, likely fellow.

The Prime Minister has returned from his holidays, and yesterday wrote an intriguing piece in the Sunday Telegraph about the ongoing struggles in Iraq and Syria. ‘True security will only be achieved if we use all our resources – aid, diplomacy, our military prowess – to help bring about a more stable world’ he wrote, and this morning Defence Secretary Michael Fallon sounded distinctly hawkish about British involvement in Iraq. But what does any of this actually mean? Fraser Nelson tries to get to the bottom of things in our look at the week ahead, while Isabel Hardman wonders whether anyone – including Cameron – knows what our policy is anymore.

‘War and the village wives’, from The Spectator, 15 August 1914: The men and women of the village are talking unceasingly about the war. The whole aspect of the place is changed. The English silence is broken. Even on Sunday no one lolls and smokes in speechless reflection. All the men read the newspapers; none read less than the whole of one paper every day. The women, however, do not read them, and though they talk as much, they know far less than their husbands. Indeed, if one may judge by a good many chance conversations, they may be said to know nothing at all. It is the question of alliances which has confused these goodwives. A war should be between two countries, they think.

From ‘The German military mind’, The Spectator, 15 August 1914: All Englishmen are now agreed that Germany made the war, and that the moving force within the German nation was and is German militarism. The astonishing thing is in looking back is that any one here should have doubted what would happen if we either weakened our Navy below the safety points, or hesitated in the support of France and Russia. Our Navy, we admit, was not “let down,” but Germany thought she had enough evidence that Britain would remain neutral if France was attacked. For the German military mind this was good enough. Before Germany had discovered her mistake she had committed herself to war.