From The New York Times Current History: The European War, volume II (1915) (Google Books)

War as a Game for Love and Honor

by Jerome K. Jerome

The chivalrous spirit of the present conflict Informs this article, which appeared originally in The London Daily News under the title " The Greatest Game of All : The True Spirit of War," and is here reproduced by special permission of Mr. Jerome.

WAR has been described as the greatest of games. I am not going to quarrel with the definition. I am going to accept it. From that point of view there is something to be said for it. As a game it can be respectable; as a business it is contemptible. Wars for profit —for gold mines, for mere extension of territory, for markets—degrade a people. It is like playing cricket for money. A gentleman—man or nation—does not do such things. But war for love—for love of the barren hillside, for love of the tattered flag, for love of the far-off dream—played for a hope, a vision, a faith, with life and death as the stakes! Yes, there is something to be said for it. Looked at practically, what, after all, does it matter whether Germany or Britannia rules the waves? Our tea and our 'baccy, one takes it, would still be obtainable; one would pay for it in marks instead of shillings. Our sailor men, instead of answering " Aye, aye, Sir," in response to Captain's orders, would learn to grunt " Jawohl." Their wages, their rations would be much the same.

These peaceful Old World villages through which I love to wander with my dogs; these old gray churches round which our dead have crept to rest; these lonely farmsteads in quiet valleys musical with the sound of mother creatures calling to their young; these old men with ruddy faces; these maidens with quiet eyes who give me greeting as we pass by in the winding lanes between the hedgerows; the gentle, patient horses nodding gravely on their homeward way; these tiny cottages behind their trim bright gardens; this lilliputian riot round the schoolhouse door; the Kttle timid things in fur and feather peering anxious, bright-eyed from their hiding places! Suppose the miracle to happen. Suppose the weather-beaten board nailed to the old beech tree warning us in faded lettering as we pass beneath it of the penalties awaiting trespassers were to be superseded by a notice headed " Verboten! " What essential difference would there be—that a wise man need vex his soul concerning? We should no longer call it England. That would be all. The sweep of the hills would not be changed; the path would still wind through the woodland. Yet just for a name we are ready to face ruin and death.

It certainly is not business. A business man would stop to weigh the pros and cons. A German invasion! It would bring what so many of us desire: Conscription, tariff reform. It might even get rid of Lloyd George and the Insurance act. And yet that this thing shall not be, Tory Squire and Laborer Hodge, looking forward to a lifelong wage of twelve-and-six-pence a week, will fight shoulder to shoulder, die together, if need be, in the same ditch. Just for a symbol, a faith we call England—I should say Britain.

Can we explain it even to ourselves? Thousands of Germans 'come over to England to live. They prosper among us, take their pleasures with us, adapt themselves to our English ways, and learn to prefer them. Thousands of Englishmen make their homes in German cities; find German ways of living, if anything, suit them better. Suddenly there arises the question, shall English ways of life or German ways of life prevail: English or German culture—which shall it be? And the English who have lived contentedly in Germany for years hasten back to fight for England, and the desire of every German in England is to break up his pleasant home among us and fight to bring all Europe into German ways of thinking.

Clearly the definition is a right one. It is just a game.

Just as all life is a game; joy and sorrow the zest of it, suffering the strengthgiving worth of it. Till Death rings his bell, and the game is over—for the present. What have we learned from it? What have we gained from it? Have we played it to our souls' salvation, learning from it courage, manhood? Or has it broken us, teaching us mean fear and hate?

I quote from the letter of a young cavalry officer writing from the trenches:

Although I can't pretend to like this nightmare, I cannot help realizing that it is doing something for those of us who are going through It that we otherwise would have missed; it brings out either the best or worst in a. man. It makes character.

He speaks of a little black dog. They are living in two feet of water, he and his men. The German lines are a hundred yards off; wounds, disease, and death are around them. They are worried about this wretched little dog. He has, it seems, lost his people, and is not to be comforted. It is a curious picture. One sees the straggling line of grimy, mud-stained men. They are there to kill; their own life hangs on a thread. A nightmare of blood and dust and horror, and in the midst of it, growing there as if the soil suited it, this flower of pity for a little fellow-creature. I quote from another letter: I can assure you there is none of that insensate hatred that one hears about out here. We are out to kill, and kill we do at every opportunity. But when it is all over the splendid universal soldier spirit comes over all the men. Just to give you some idea of what I mean, the other night four German snipers were shot on our wire. The next night our men went out and brought one in who was near and getatable and buried him. They did it with just the same reverence and sadness as they do our own dear fellows. 1 went to look at the grave next morning, and one of the most uncouth-looking men in

my company had placed a cross :it the head of the grave, and had written on It :

Here lies a German,

We don't know his name,

He died bravely fighting

For his Fatherland.

And under that "Got mitt uns," (sic.) that being the highest effort of all the men at German.

"Got mitt uns." One has the idea that He is—when the game is played in that spirit. God with us both, shaping brotherhood out of enmity.

Bernard Shaw in a moment of inspiration thinks that some way will have to be found enabling England and Germany to live together peaceably for the future. It is an idea that may possibly have occurred to others. Well, perhaps this is the way. Shaw would not approve of it. But then there is so much in human nature that Shaw does not approve of. There are times when one is compelled to feel great pity for Shaw. He seems to have got into the wrong world. He is for ever thanking God that he is not as we other men—we! Englishmen and Germans, mere publicans and sinners. It is a difficult world to understand, I admit, my dear Shaw, full of inconsistencies and contradictions. Perhaps there is a meaning in it somewhere that you have missed.

Perhaps we have got to fight one another before we understand one another. In the old Norse mythology Love is the wife of Strife; when we come to consider the nature of man, not such an odd union as it appears.

So long as the law runs that in sorrow woman shall bring forth her child; so long as the ground shall yield to the sons of Adam thorns also and thistles, so long will there be strife between man and man. So long, when the last word has been spoken and has failed, will there be war between the nations. The only hope of civilization is to treat it as a game. You cannot enforce a law without a policeman. You can only appeal to a man's honor—to his sporting instincts.

The mistake Germany is making is in not treating war as a game. To do so would be weakness and frivolity. War must be ruthless, must be frightful. It is not to be bound down by laws human or Divine. And even then she is not logical. Two German officers interned in Holland are released on parole. Taking their country at her word, they hasten back to rejoin their regiments. The German Staff is shocked, sends them back to be imprisoned.

So there really are rules to the game. An officer and gentleman may not lie. If a Sub-Lieutenant may not lie for the sake of his country, then what argument gives the right to the German Government to tear up its treaties, to the German Military Staff to disregard its Ambassador's signature to The Hague Convention ?

Come, shade of Bismarck, and your disciples in Germany and other countries, (including a few in my own,) make up your mind. To be ruthless and frightful in a half-hearted, nervous, vacillating fashion is ridiculous. You have either got to go back to the beginning of things, and make war a battle of wild beasts, or you have got to go forward and make it a game—a grim game, I grant you, but one that the nations can play at and shake hands afterward. We have tried the ruthless and frightful method. We used to slaughter the entire population. To shoot a selected few is to court a maximum of contempt for a minimum of advantage. We used to lay waste the land. We did not content ourselves with knocking down a church spire and burning a library. We left not one stone upon another. We sowed salt where the cities had been. We tortured our prisoners before the ramparts. We did not " leave them their eyes to weep with "; we burned them out with hot irons; surely a much swifter means of striking terror! Why not return to these methods? They sound most effective.

They were not effective. God's chosen people — according to themselves — did not annihilate the Philistines, not even with the help of the Ark of the Covenant. The Philistines tightened their belts and acquitted themselves like men. Today the heathen rules in Canaan. Where Mohammed failed the shade of

Bismarck is not likely to succeed. Poland is still a sore in European politics. The whole force of the Vatican could not suppress a handful of reformers. All the bloodthirsty edicts of the Revolution could not annihilate a few thousand aristocrats. These things cannot be done. War finishes nothing, it only interrupts. A nation cannot be killed; it can only die. This war is not going to be the end of all things either for Germany or for us. Germany can be beaten to her knees, as she beat France to her knees in 1870; as more than once before that France has beaten her. Later on we have all got to live together in peace, for a while.

Come, gentlemen, let us make an honorable contest of it, that shall leave as little of bitterness behind it as may be. Let us see if we cannot make a fine game of it that we shall be all the better for having played out to the end. From which we shall all come back home cleaner minded, clearer seeing, made kinder to one another by suffering. Come, gentlemen, you believe that God has called upon you to spread German culture through the lands. You are ready to die for your faith. And we believe God has a use for the thing called England. Well, let us fight it out. There seems no other way. You for St. Michael and we for St. George; and God be with us both.

But do not let us lose our common humanity in the struggle. That were the worst defeat of all—the only defeat that would really matter, that would really be lasting.

Let us call it a game. After all, what else is it? We have been playing it since the dawn of creation; and it has settled nothing—but the names of things. Its victories, its defeats! Time wipes them off the slate, with a smile.

I quote from a letter written by the officer who boarded the Emden. He speaks of the German officers : " A thoroughly nice fellow "—" also a good fellow." The order is given that there be no cheering from the Sydney when entering the harbor with her prisoners. English sailormen have fought with German sailormen; have killed a good many of them. It is over. No crowing gentlemen—over fellow sailormen. Our writer discusses the fight generally with Captain von Muller. “We agreed it was our job to knock one another out.But there was no malice in it.” We shall do better to regard war as a game—a game to be played for love, for honour, without hatred, without malice. So only shall we profit from it.