The History of The War in the Air 1914- 1918: The Illustrated edition by Sir Walter Raleigh

Author:Sir Walter Raleigh [Raleigh, Sir Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War I
ISBN: 9781473850125
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2014-05-30T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VI

THE WAR: THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS FROM MONS TO YPRES

THE GERMAN WAR of the twentieth century, like the German wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was carefully planned and prepared by the military rulers of Prussia. To elucidate its origins and causes will be the work of many long years. Yet enough is known to make it certain that this last and greatest war conforms to the old design. The Prussians have always been proud of their doctrine of war, and have explained it to the world with perfect frankness. War has always been regarded by them as the great engine of national progress. By war they united the peoples of Germany; by war they hoped to gain for the peoples of Germany an acknowledged supremacy in the civilized world. These peoples had received unity at the hands of Prussia, and though they did not like Prussia, they believed enthusiastically in Prussian strength and Prussian wisdom. If Prussia led them to war, they were encouraged to think that the war would be unerringly designed to increase their power and prosperity. Yet many of them would have shrunk from naked assault and robbery; and Prussia, to conciliate these, invented the fable of the war of defence. That a sudden attack on her neighbours, delivered by Germany in time of peace, is a strictly defensive act has often been explained by German military and political writers, never perhaps more clearly than in a secret official report, drawn up at Berlin in the spring of 1913, on the strengthening of the German army. A copy of this report fell into the hands of the French.

‘The people,’ it says, ‘must be accustomed to think that an offensive war on our part is a necessity… We must act with prudence in order to arouse no suspicion.’

The fable of the war of defence was helped out with the fable of encirclement. Germany, being situated in the midst of Europe, had many neighbours, most of whom had more reason to fear her than to like her. Any exhibition of goodwill between these neighbours was treated by German statesmen, for years before the war, as a covert act of hostility to Germany, amply justifying reprisals. The treaty between France and Russia, wholly defensive in character, the expression of goodwill between France and England, inspired in part by fears of the restless ambitions of Germany, though both were intended to guarantee the existing state of things, were odious to Berlin. The peace of Europe hung by a thread.

On Sunday, the 28th of June 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria, and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, paid a visit to Serajevo, the capital of Bosnia, and were there murdered by Bosnian assassins. It has not been proved that Germany had any part in the murder, but she was quite willing to take advantage of it. The Kiel canal, joining the Baltic with the North Sea, had just been widened to admit the largest battleships, and the German army had just been raised to an unexampled strength.

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