NOTES
To Page 19 ("Letter to Gerhart Hauptmann")
The letter to Gerhart Hauptmann, written after the destruction of Louvain, and in the stress of the emotion aroused by the first news, was provoked by a high-sounding article of Hauptmann which appeared a few days previously. In that letter he rebutted the accusation of barbarism hurled against Germany, and returned it … against Belgium. The article ended as follows:
"… I assure M. Maeterlinck that no one in Germany thinks of imitating the act of his 'civilised nation.' We prefer to be and to remain the German barbarians for whom the women and the children of our enemies are sacred. I can assure him that we never thoughtlessly massacre and make martyrs of Belgian women and children. Our witnesses are on our frontiers; the socialist beside the bourgeois, the peasant beside the savant, and the prince beside the workman: and all fight with a full realisation of the object, for a noble and rich national treasure, for internal and external goods which aid the progress and the ascent of humanity."
To Page 41 ("Above the Battle")
My enemies have not failed to make use of this passage to attribute to me sentiments of contempt with regard to the peoples of Asia and Africa. This charge is all the less justified in that I have precious friendships amongst the intellectuals of Asia, with whom I have remained in correspondence during this war. These friends have been so little misled as to my real thought that one of them, a leading Hindu writer, Ananda Coomaraswamy, has dedicated to me an admirable essay which appeared in the New Age (December 1914), entitled "A World Policy for India," but—
1. Asiatic troops, recruited amongst races of professional warriors, in no way represent the thought of Asia, as Coomaraswamy agrees.
2. The heroism of the troops of Africa and Asia is not under discussion. There was no need for the hecatombs, which have been made during the past year, to evoke admiration for their splendid devotion.
3. As regards barbarism, I am glad to confess that now the "white-skins" can no longer reproach "skins black, red, or yellow" in this respect.
4. It is not the latter but the former whom I blame. I denounce to-day once more with as much vigour as fourteen months ago, the short-sighted policy which has introduced Africa and Asia[1] into the quarrels of Europe. The future will justify my indictment.
Printed in Great Britain by
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON
- ↑ The terms Asia and Africa have not, of course, a geographical but an ethnological signification. Turkey is not, and never has been, European; and it is difficult to decide up to what point certain of the Balkan Powers are European.