The Crimes of England - Public Domain

About The Crimes of England - Public Domain

This book is another volume in Chesterton's works during the First World War which justified the British participation in the war. In it, Chesterton takes the unusual and highly controversial position that, while Germany is to blame for the war through her aggression and barbarism, it is really England who is at least partially to blame for Germany's crimes by aiding and abetting previous behavior by Prussia for centuries. Indeed, just as Prussia used naked aggression to partition Poland, to wrest Silesia from Austria and Alsace-Lorraine from France in the 18th and 19th Century, so had England displayed similar behavior against the Irish and other minorities in the past. Such a position would not be popular among his fellow Englishmen during wartime, but it was a courageous position to take. Unfortunately, I do not believe that Chesterton did a sufficient job in proving his position.

While it is true that England took the side of Prussia, and indeed of other Germanic nations such as Holland, because these peoples were fellow Germanic Protestants. Indeed, when England overthrew her Stuart monarchs in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, it wasn't to France, Spain or Austria that England went to find a replacement for the throne. Instead, she went to Holland to take on the House of Orange, and then to Germany to install the house of Hanover. Once England joined the Protestant camp in Europe, she was wedded, for better or worse, to that small group of nations who also embraced Protestantism. And, because of this, England was inclined to side with these nations in the wars of the 17th - 19th centuries. But this does not mean that England had embraced barbarism per se. It merely meant that England was inclined to side with those who she considered to be her brethren against the Catholic camp. Chesterton addresses this brilliantly, but he draws the wrong conclusions from it.