The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

64 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
The air is full of rumours of War. The European nations stand
fully armed and prepared for instant mobilization. Authorities are
agreed that a GREAT WAR must break out in the immediate future, and
that this War will be fought under novel and surprising conditions.
All facts seem to indicate that the coming conflict will be the
bloodiest in history, and must involve the momentous
consequences to the whole world. At any time the incident may
occur which will precipitate the disaster. 86
I. F. Clarke, in his book Voices Prophesying War 1763–1984,
explains to what an extent the First World War “was being
prepared in fact and in fiction”:
From 1871 onwards the major European powers prepared for
the great war that Bismarck had said would come one day. And for
close on half a century, while the general staffs and the ministries
argued about weapons, estimates, and tactics, the tale of the war-tocome
was a dominant device in the field of purposive fiction.... The
period from the eighteen-eighties to the long-expected outbreak of
the next war in 1914 saw the emergence of the greatest number of
these tales of coming conflicts ever to appear in European fiction. 87
The people of that time, therefore, could not avoid being
confronted with the constant predictions of a coming great war in
Europe. The question was not if but when the Great War would
break out. Here there was room for speculations, and many of the
imaginative tales and novels suggested different dates. Specific
dates were sometimes even pointed out in the very titles of the
books, for example, Europa in Flammen. Der deutsche Zukunftskrieg
1909 (”Europe in Flames. The Coming German War of 1909”), by
Michael Wagebald, published in 1908, and The Invasion of 1910, by
W. LeQueux, published in 1906.
Politicians and statesmen, too, sometimes tried to pinpoint the
specific year for the outbreak of the expected great war. One of the
more lucky was M. Francis Delaisi, a member of the French
Chamber of Deputies. In his article “La Guerre qui Vient” (”The
Coming War”), published in the parish periodical La Guerre Sociale
in 1911, he discusses at great length the diplomatic situation,
concluding that “a terrible war between England and Germany is
preparing.” As shown by the following extracts from his article,
some of his political forecasts turned out to be remarkably
accurate:
A conflict is preparing itself compared with which the horrible
slaughter of the Russo-Japanese war [in 1904–05] will be child’s
play. In 1914 the [naval] forces of England and Germany will be
almost equal. A Prussian army corps will advance with forced
marches to occupy Antwerp. We, the French, will have to do the
fighting on the Belgian plains.
86 Quoted by I. F. Clarke in Voices Prophesying War 1763–1984 (London: Oxford
University Press, 1966), pp. 66, 67.
87 Ibid., p. 59.
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