From ‘The New “Day” and Merchant Shipping’, The Spectator, 13 February 1915:
THE Germans have such a mania for fixing a day for achieving some important purpose that we should feel guilty of a certain want of responsiveness if we grudged them anything of the pleasure they are deriving from contemplating the mystical date of February 18th. This is the new “day” on which the terrific process of starving Britain out by means of a few submarines is formally to begin. So be it it! The greatest day of all—Der Tag—was a kind of idealistic conception projected upon the screen of the future, like Messianic prophetic poetry. Naturally no actual day—a Monday, a Tuesday, or a Wednesday—could be fixed for Germany to overcome England and impose her will upon the world. But the “days” of another type have been most precisely fixed. There was a day for reaching Paris (we fancy that eleven days from the start was the original estimate of the German General Staff), there was another day for reaching Calais, another for the capture of Ypres, and yet another for the taking of Warsaw. Apparently the Germans make up for what they lose in mental variety, owing to the rigidity of their military system, by continually administering to themselves an opiate that produces beautiful visions like showers of sparks in the brain. The after-effects, as in all such cases, are deadly, but that does not seem to matter so long as it is possible to take a fresh pull from the bottle which stands always at hand. The odd thing about the wonders of February 18th is that if they occur they will be in no sense different from what Germany has already been accomplishing. She has already sunk merchantmen with innocent non-combatants on board; she has already tried to torpedo a hospital ship; and she has already tried to sink British troopships crossing the Channel—at least if she did not try to do this last thing she was more remiss in her rightful and proper naval duties than we can believe her to have been. We expect that February 18th will be rather like the day described in an anecdote by Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was arranged that on a certain day everybody on earth should shout at the top of his voice at a given moment to find out whether this enormous volume of sound would produce a response from the supposed inhabitants of the moon. Unfortunately, when the anxiously awaited moment arrived everybody acted on the same impulse. Each man told himself that his poor little voice could make no difference to the majestic noise, and that it would be much more interesting to listen to the sound than to contribute to it. Consequently at the appointed moment there had never been so deep silence upon the earth. And we think it quite possible that on February 18th we shall be able to say that never was there so little doing in the Channel and the Irish Sea.
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