England and the War

Could a nation that mistakes violence for strength end like the buffaloes—masters of the prairie, then suddenly gone? In his opening essay, Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh turns that unsettling image toward Germany as the guns awaken England.

Published in October 1914, as the First World War shook England out of complacency, Raleigh’s essay argues that the conflict tests more than armies: it puts rival ideas of power and civilization to the proof. His portrait of Germany is polemical and unsparing, yet he acknowledges its discipline and courage, and wonders what those qualities might make possible. If a war-machine can win, can it build anything worth having once the fighting stops?

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