Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

THE GREAT WAR AND NATIONAL IDENTITY 81
say, Great Britain must be ready to give herself and all her
resources at the present time if she is to be true to all that
she stands for in the world. Let us try to be fair. The German
people are a great people. The world owes much to their
genius and thoroughness. Their energy and determination are
magnificent. At one time they led the world in the struggle
for liberty. But another and a very terrible spirit has entered
into their leaders. Atheism, materialism, and greed have taken
possession of them. A philosophy which is the negation of
the spirit of Christ is dominant among them. The principal
teacher of that philosophy proclaims that Christianity is a
religion for slaves, that might is right, that the old rule must
be challenged, and in the future must be. ‘Thou shalt not love
thy neighbour as thyself’…. Justice and mercy have no place
in the German world-policy…. Solemn treaties are but ‘bits of
paper’. We see murder and outrage let loose on a people who
were not anyway involved in the original quarrel. We see
villages and cities and the harvests of the country-side given
to the flames. We see an unoffending [Belgian] population
subjected to every horror; men, women, and children shot
down without mercy…. German militarism has broken
through all law and mercy…. Let us then remember that in
this war Great Britain and her allies are fighting for the
liberation of the German people as well as for the freedom of
the world. On our part it is a war for righteousness, for the
triumph of mercy and loving kindness, for the liberty of
mankind, for the deliverance of the oppressed. 14
Alongside the moral aspect of Britain’s intervention in the war lay
what the Northern Whig described as the ‘real issue’—whether
Germany was to be allowed to impose her will on Europe, and
England in particular. It appeared to the Whig that Germany had
been playing a ‘double game’ with ‘unscrupulous audacity and
determination’. The Austrian attack on Serbia had been hatched in
Berlin in order to precipitate a war in which Germany would pose
before the world as the injured party; but Serbia’s real offence had
been that she had barred the way to German predominance in the
Balkans, the Dardenelles and the sea and land routes to India and
Egypt. The invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg, in the Whig’s
view, was to provide an outlet to the English Channel, so as to
menace the home waters of Britain, gain control of food-carrying
routes and separate the heart of the British Empire from the
‘daughter nations’ overseas. Furthermore, Germany had
undertaken to conquer France in order to pave the way for