About Face: The New Age and Russia on the Eve of War

First post in a while--I'm hoping to add targeted essays to my usual program of surveying single issues of the little magazines. This post is about the representation of Germany and Russia in The New Age, in particular how quickly it changed. Between August 13 and August 20th, A. R. Orage and S. Verdad moved from indicting Germany's foolishness in distracting the West from its struggle with Russia to calling all Germans irredeemable barbarians. The Russians, however, are redrawn as an ancient and mystical culture. Observe:

August 13th, 1914 (two weeks after war was declared):

Orage 337:

For  another  thing,  the German navy  was  not merely a dangerous  luxury  for  Germany herself,  but  its  creation involved the  weakening of the defence of Western against Eastern Europe. Against what Power is it necessary for Western civilised Europe, and  England  in  particular,  to  be  armed if not Russia?  But  against  Russia  the-British  Navy  was sufficient  in itself to equip  navally the whole  combination of Western Europe. In the discharge of the mere daily duty of our Empire we were compelled to maintain a Navy that could, always  be depended  upon by civilisation to equal  Russia’s possible navy. No need therefore  existed to supplement  it by a fresh  Navy or  to  tax  Western Europe  with  the  cost of multiplying  ships  already  sufficient. By insisting upon  building a navy  Germany  has, in fact, not only squandered her own money which might well have been  spent to better  purpose  against  our common Russian enemy, but she has compelled her Western colleagues to  squander  much of theirs  as well.

Russia is the real danger--the vision is a combined front of "civilisation" against their barbarism. The British Navy is the European Navy, or would be, if not for Germany's blunder. Germany is again

S. Verdad, 339:

"Now let us see where we stand. Ever since the Turkish Revolution of 1908 it was a race between the
Teutonic Powers, Germany and Austria, and, on the other side, the Slav Power, Russia, as to which should reach the Aegean first. (S. Verdad, August 13, 339).

S. Verdad represents the conflict as a racial war (though he uses "race" in its other sense here)--in phrases premonitive of Hitler, nations are more important than states. Verdad accuses Germany of an "incalculable" error in starting the war, but places the motivation for the war firmly in the East.


August 20, 1914.

But, by August 20, the tone of each writer has changed. Orage excoriates the barbarism of the Germans, while rallying the English people to the war:

"The working classes of England have realised, as quickly as any other class, that the present war is a
struggle, for national existence, reluctantly undertaken and forced upon us, if we may adapt an anthropological expression, by a few survivals. The Kaiser is an anachronism; he belongs to the pre-Christian era." (Orage 362)

Etc. etc. Examples of how awful the Germans are abound. This makes me think of Wyndham Lewis' Tarr more than anything else--and Tarr will be published during the war.

S. Verdad works on a similar theme, but takes time to boost Russians as a category vs. Germans as a category:

Mr. G. K. Chesterton, I think, who has only recently referred to the Russians as natural mystics. The description is felicitous. The dreamy Slav has a longer, nobler, and more powerful culture at the back of him than the Teuton; and, spiritually, he is far superior. (S. Verdad 365)

After this, he explains that Russia may be a longer-term threat. However:

In the immediate present, however, Germany, and Germany alone, is the enemy.  Compared with ourselves the Germans are, frankly, barbarous people; worthy descendants of their forerunner, Arminius, who, when serving in the Roman army, betrayed his general and helped the Teutons to cut his former comrades in arms to pieces in the Teutoberger Wald." (S. Verdad 365). Comparisons to the Huns follow.


In these passages and the articles I extracted them from, I noticed how deeply World War One was seen as a macrohistorical struggle between races. This journal, supposedly devoted to economics, moves into racialist discourse very quickly. Rallying the people to fight the Germans seems antithetical to their socialist and class-based long term goals (which they admit), but their nationalist bent takes over at this point. Nationalist socialists with racially conditioned worldviews--a dangerous combination.