When Field Marshall Kitchener of Khartoum growled, the British Cabinet used to pay attention…
Kitchener had earned his stripes on the battlefield, fighting the Mahdist Islamic State which was built on holy war, a strict Islamic code and terror over the regions of Sudan…back in 1898
What became known as the battle of Omdurman, near Khartoum, was fought between around 50 000 Mahdist troops and 8 000 British regulars supported by 17 000 Sudanese and Egyptian forces
While suffering very little casualties, the British-Egyptian force destroyed the army of Mahdist tribesmen, securing the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan for decades
Those times were long past – 16 years later to be precise – when Kitchener, the closest to an autocrat the British Empire might have had, recalled in the nick of time to become War Minister, thundered that the war would last three years…maybe even longer
“…three years will do to begin with. A nation like Germany, after having forced the issue, will only give in after it is beaten to the ground. That will take a very long time. No one living knows how long.”
The year was 1914 and the date August 4th
The prediction seemed to come out of the blue…from London and Paris to Berlin to Moscow, a certainty was shared that the war, ignited by treaties in Serbia, Austria and Russia, would be short, a matter of week or a few months, maybe four…
“You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees’ told the German Emperor to departing troops in August
There were “financial reasons why the Great Powers could not continue for long” according to a British military attaché
In effect, inspired by military theorist Clausewitz, doctrine all around Europe had it that the short-war concept preempted any other consideration, and quick, decisive victory was the German orthodoxy
“At least one good thing is that it can’t last long. We shall have peace in four months. Economically and financially, we can’t last longer than that”, said one depressed deputy of the German left to another, after Britain’s declaration of war
And this was after hearing the German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg at the Reichstag who asserted confidently that whoever was as badly threatened as were the Germans could think only of how to “hack his way through"
With good reason?
Well…here you have it, a ‘military solution’ to an ever-increasing tension, according to the German Emperor
To consider itself in a state of war with France, nothing less than acts of ‘organized hostility’, air attacks by dirigibles on Nuremberg and Karlsruhe, violation of Belgian neutrality by French aviators flying over Belgian territory and a ‘proposed’ advance of French troops along the Belgian route Givet-Namur would do
German accusations piled onto France, treating Germany with ‘malice’, and moving with an irresistible thirst for ‘revanche’ (following German annexation of French border provinces of Alsace and Lorraine in 1870)
None of which was true, or needed to be
The linchpin however was going to be Belgium’s perpetual neutrality, integrity and inviolability of its territory, guaranteed back in 1831, by the five Great Powers of the time--Great Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia
Neutrality cut both ways, in the sense that Belgium was obligated to preserve her own neutrality and could make no overt act, until one was made against her
This is how things stood when Belgium received a carefully drafted ultimatum on August 2, 1914, requiring "by the dictate of self-preservation" to ‘anticipate France’s hostile acts’ by advancing Germany’s army on Belgium soil – which Belgium was requested to accept in the name of “benevolent neutrality”
An ‘unequivocal answer’ was demanded within twelve hours…
Under the inspiring supreme command of King Albert, Belgium rejected the ultimatum and prepared to align its 6 divisions against the full thrust of the German war machine…
In the meantime, the British Cabinet had remained more divided than ever over the events looming on the European continent, lacking France’s drive for revanche as the lost Eastern provinces beckoned, and absent the spirited resistance inspired by Belgium’s King Albert
Even so, the argument of the Liberals, who held the majority in the Cabinet, about continental squabbles being none of British interests, was running out of steam
For one, Belgium’s neutrality had been the single most important act of British European policy – besides offering a key access for trade by way of the port of Antwerp – and its deliberate violation by one of the signatories was a formal ‘casus belli’
However, possibly more critically still, expansion of any Great Power across the continental expanse, whether by Napoleon’s armies more than a century ago or the German Empire on that day of August, had been resisted with Britain’s full might, taking her stand “against the unmeasured aggrandizement of any power whatsoever”
If the invasion of Belgium made Britain’s commitment to war along its allies inevitable, its willingness to fight seemed improbable to the German planners, and hard to square with the country’s social mores, its suffragettes heckling the police in the name of women’s rights and such…
In a more weighty consideration, as a relative newcomer on the world geopolitical scene, still in awe for Britain’s sprawling colonial powers and its maritime dominance, Germany could not fathom English determination to risk the loss of its preeminence, in the name of a principle
As German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg put it, making war…"all for just a word – ‘neutrality’ – just for a scrap of paper”, a statement which was to reverberate around the world…
Clearsighted up to a point, Germany understood how mutual destruction might benefit in the end a new, up-and-coming, great power, across the ocean, the United States ...
However, the die was cast
As British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey put it, on the eve of the fourth of August,
“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime”
As far as sayings go, “history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes”
From the violation of neutrality of Ukraine (which had been enacted in the Budapest Memorandum, Dec.1994, signed by Ukraine, Russia, Britain and the United States) to the dashing courage of King Albert, rising in defense of Belgium's neutral status,
From Russia’s obsessive fear of encirclement by hostile powers to Germany's made-up acts of aggression to justify its own obsession,
From its carefully laid-out plans for swift victory to plodding realities on the battlefield,
From the acts of terrorism against Ukrainian civilians (mirroring Germany's murderous advance across Belgium - “a Test of Wills”) to blind destruction of cities,
From the preconceived reluctance of ‘aging’ powers to engage to the ‘unfairness’ of those that actually do,
From Great Powers losing out to ambitious upstarts, then and now....
There is a lot to ‘rhyme’ about and a lot of ‘lamps’ seem to be going out all over Europe
Treading lightly in this minefield, an understanding of the vivacious Russian society might shed some light on the stakes – and point to an exit while there still is time - a pathway getting narrower as the coils of the war cycle tighten by the day
The quotes of this article can be found in Barbara Tuchman's 'Guns of August', analyzing the fateful spiral of violence gripping Europe in that month of 1914