The Errors of Vansittartism
Gooch, G. P.
The Errors of Vansittartism By G. P. Gooch Y0U c»nnot indict a whole nation, declared Burke, but this is precisely what Sir Robert Vansittart has set out to do. Kipling used to say that the...
...Other people have performed the feat...
...The Brazen Horde has not „l.,..—~i .I,,,.,, ii...
...Because she has not yet really tried...
...The Errors of Vansittartism By G. P. Gooch Y0U c»nnot indict a whole nation, declared Burke, but this is precisely what Sir Robert Vansittart has set out to do...
...The butcher-bird got throe wars before 1914...
...History, declared Froude, is a child's box of letters: you can spell with them any word-you will...
...But how can the story be fairly or Intelligibly told without also describing the conduct of those neighbors, for instance, Louis XIV -and Napoleon T For centuries, right down to 1903, Englishmen regarded Frsnce as the black sheep in the flock, the eternal enemy, the French as the incorrigible aggressors, msking war their national Industry, thirsting for glory, greedy for territory...
...It will take at least a generation...
...His voice is unvaryingly shnill...
...Alas...
...The pages on Bismarck and William II, who are presented as lovers of war and megalomaniacs, reveal a curious ignorance...
...We hear nothing of the French determination to secure control of Morocco...
...Germans in the plural are the Brazen Horde...
...He should lay to heart the profound observation of Renan, La verite est dant let nuancet...
...Why not Germany...
...In such propagandist compilations there is always a considerable element of truth, for no country can show an unblemished record, but they are totally lacking in the judicial spirit...
...Nothing is impossible in history, as Sir Robert reminds us, but we cannot expect miracles...
...The first duty of a serious historian is to see his subject in broad perspective, whether it is a civilisation, a race, a country, a period or o man...
...Other peoples as well aa the Germans have indulged snd still indulge in unprovoked sggression...
...Sir Robert would do well to read the Prime Minister's magnificent life of Marlborough, who fought to save the liberties of Europe and to preserve the Balance of Power...
...Sir Nevile Henderson, who confessed his liking for Goring, is reminded that he — is "a dope-fiend, a wholesale thief and still more a wholesale murderer...
...Force and fraud, fraud and force: that is the old German gospel...
...It would indeed be difficult to exaggerate the cruelty, the perfidy, the intolerance, the corruption, the spiritual darkness of the Nazi regime which has plunged Europe into war and which must be utterly destroyed if civilisation as we know it is to survive...
...This sounds encouraging...
...There wss another narrow squeak in 1911...
...The present reviewer, like the author, never shared the illusions which prevailed in Downing Street and elsewhere about the men who came to power in 1933...
...Our author spells "Black Record...
...Forgetting apparently that we British ourselves derive in large measure from the same Teutonic stork, he selects missiles from Caesar snd Tncitus and hurls them at the foe, though the "Germania" happens to contain more compliments thsn criticisms...
...When the goal was reached the man of three wars became one of the pillars of European peace...
...Reventlow, for instance, wrote a furious book during the last war entitled The Vampire of the Continent...
...The leopard does not change its spots nor the butcher-bird its ferocious habits...
...The Nazis, we may hope, will be swept away, but other malefactors will come...
...The sole theme of tha book, we are told, ia the conduct of Germans towards their neighbors...
...Few if any of Sir Robert's numerous readers will dissent from his verdict on the "fanatical, efficient gangsters" who hold the unhappy German people—and today many others as well— in their deadly grip...
...The Pan-Germans regarded him as a coward on account of his notorious disinclination to fight...
...The regeneration of the Brazen Horde," we read'in the final broadcast, "is not impossible...
...But the butcher-bird landed the fourth war right enough in 1914...
...Kipling used to say that the world was divided into men, women and Germans, and this little book preaches the same doctrine of differentiation...
...German barbarism first crushed Latin civilisation in 378 at the battle of Adrianople," we afe told, without a suggestion that the Roman Empire was dying from within and that the rejuvenation of Europe by the so-called barbarians has not been usually regarded as an unmixed evil...
...He leaves scarcely a rag to cover the nakedness of a nation which he seems to have disliked ever since his school days...
...iniquity...
...He should remember the aphorism of Bishop Creighton that the good are not so good as they think themselves, the bad not so bad as the/good think them...
...William II wss a stage hero, not a warrior...
...Oar owa empire, the greatest ia history, waa not constructed by men wearing kid gloves...
...That Austria, Russia ana Serbia had a share in the catastrophe is discreetly omitted...
...Thus is history written by the Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the Government: it is not a model to imitate...
...To accept the Nasi clsim thst practically the whole country is with them is to play straight into their hands...
...Uninstrueted readers will conclude from the snthor's excursions into history that the esse of Germany ia unique...
...We hear nothing of the French march to Fes...
...Here is an eloquent and impassioned speech for the prosecution of the same one-sided character as Germans and other writers have often hurled against perfidious Albion...
...We should probably be nearer the truth if we say that millions, particularly among the young, are their ardent supporters, millions more, particularly among the town workers of the north, are their opponents, and perhaps a still larger number go about their day's work without taking sides * » » 1*11 K chief fault of the book is that Sir Robert overdoes his case...
...He should continually bear in mind the record of other communities, so that he may have a certain standard of national conduct at a given time by which to pronounce judgment...
...These may be counsels of perfection at a time when we are fighting for our lives, but we ignore them at our peril if we are seeking for truth...
...but if the picture painted by this artist is true to life, csn we reasonably anticipate such an integral eonvenionl Surely not...
...If we accept Sir Robert aa oar guide through German history snd our interpreter of the German character, there is very little hope for the world...
...The old Germanic gospel" haa been preached and practised all over the world from the daw a of history...
...He should avoid sweeping generalizations and over-simplifications, for instance the explanation of the relations of a great people with its neighbors in terms of original sin...
...tion has been working in them for generations...
...It ia not...
...He admits that individual Germans are occasionally decent folk, but argues that these have always been too few to turn the scale...
...Then in 1995 it nearly got another war...
...The last time that they were given a chance of expressing their opinions was in the Rekhstsg election of March 1933, when despite the growing terror, the Nazis only secured 44 per rent of the votes...
...The whole book is ¦ sermon on the text that the Germans sre incorrigible aggressors, unique in wickedness, devotees of the hideous colt of force and fraud...
...but he had a strictly limited and, as most people used to think, a legitimate aim—to fashion a nation-state for a people who, owing to disunion and lack of natural frontiers, had suffered for many centuries from the miseries of civil war and invasion...
...Without a fundamental change of soul, no other cure, no mere administrative or technical tinkering can be permanent...
...It was Cavour who said: "If we did for ourselves what we do for our countries, what rascals we.should be...
...v . Hitler, tin) ex-Kaioor, Bismarck, away back into the dank record, you will find nothing hut a proeeaSef mirthless braggarts ruling over jry robots..., The lust of world dssajaa...
...His marc k was indeed a ruthless realist...
...The cure will have to be drastic and largely self-administered...
...As a polemic Mark Record takes high rank, for it is brilliantly written, but as a contribution to historical understanding it is less successful...
...His famous saying about blood and iron" is quoted without its limitations...
...That he or Bethmann desired war in 1914 is a delusion...
...If Bismarck was a butcher bud, so was Csvour, who prepsred the war against Austria in 1869 Ss carefully Ss Mussolini was to prepsre the attack on Abyssinia in 1936...
...FREDERICK THE GREAT, as Sir Robert re-* marks, was an unpleasant creature, and the tape of Silesia was an abomination...
...but Napoleon was infinitely worse...
...he loved to rattle the sword but was afraid to use it...
...When, however, we are assured that Hitler "gives the great majority of Germans exactly what they have hitherto liked and wanted" the critical reader will ask: How do you know...
...The soul of a people can be changed...
...To mankind as s whole Germans have brought nothing hot misery in all its forms...
...There, have of course been plebiscites since then, but we all reslize how that political instrument operates in a totalitarian state...
...The want of background, the neglect of the comparative method, the nssumption of a double dose of original sin in a partirulsr nation, the weak sense of historical causation, put the whole picture out of focus...
...Yet perhaps "Black Record" is not the whole story after all...
...The writers are always so obsessed by the wickedness of the enemy they are denouncing that they lose their aense of proportion, omit vital facts, distort motives, pile up the horrors, and try to produce the impressions that there' never were such monsters of...
Vol. 27 • January 1944 • No. 5
