The Riddle of the Sands is a bit different from previous books in that it is fiction. I've always intended to include fiction in this little project, but this one dates back to 1903, well before the war. So, then, why read it? Simply because it was a key influence in the pre-war mindset of Britain.
Aside from being one of the earliest spy novels (and considered by many to be one of the best), the novel had an outsized effect on popular thinking in the decade or so leading up to the war. The novel opens with a low-level British foreign office official, Carruthers, accepting an invitation to spend time with an old friend, Davies, sailing his yacht along the North Sea and Baltic coast of Germany. After a time, Davies informs his guest that he has slowly come to realize that the Germans are up to something along the Frisian coast, an area along the North Sea facing England composed of a string of islands and vast areas of sand that appear as the tides drop away. His vague ideas were previously solidified when a supposed German yachtsman essentially tried to get him killed during a storm by leading Davies into a dangerous area. As time goes on, Carruthers comes to believe him and the two begin an exploration of the area to better understand just what is going on, conducting a running cat and mouse game with the yachtsman (revealed later to be a former Royal Navy officer in disgraced exile, now working for the Germans), a sinister local sailor, and a German gunboat captain. The German plan, finally revealed, is to use the secret waterways through the sands to hide an armada of small craft destined to invade England when the time came. As the author concludes, he laments the fact that the Royal Navy is scattered across the world, with no significant military ports facing the North Sea to defend against aggression from the Continent.
The novel's conclusion generated a strong sentiment in Britain that they were not ready for war, feeding into efforts by those like Jackie Fisher to better prepare Britain for the possibility of war. It also helped lead to the creation of facilities like Scapa Flow to counter just the sort of threat postulated in the novel. Further, the novel came near the cusp of the British shift towards France and impending naval arms race with Germany, and clearly pointed to the potential threat from Germany. Childers also noted the potential role of submarines and torpedo craft, though this was undoubtedly less influential than his geopolitical and operational-level concerns.
So, an excellent novel; highly recommended. Also, Childers' personal life makes for a fascinating read. From hard-core Victorian imperialist, to World War One hero, to Irish gun-runner, he had quite an adventurous life, although it ended with an Irish firing squad in 1922.
Childers' book is intriguing in that it's one with a number of "What if" conflicts addressed pre-1914, including Chesney's _The Battle of Dorking_, published in 1871 and HG Wells' _War of the Worlds (1898). Chesney's was interesting as it was written in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and was clearly intended to be a wake-up call for the British about the potential, if not very real, danger that was posed by Wilhelmine Germany.
ReplyDelete_War in the Air_ (Wells) was published in 1907 and (again) involved an aggressive Germany attacking using the latest technological advances. Buchan also wrote a couple of pre-WWI stories that had the Germans as the primary antagonist.
A wiki article even throws Dracula into the mix as showing British fear of "foreign invasion." I think that's a bit of stretch, myself! H.H. Munro (Saki) also wrote what amounts to a pre-cursor to Len Deighton's SS/GB with _When William Came_, a tale of London under Hohenzollern rule.
Childers' is probably one of the more sophisticated of the lot, IMO. It is also of interest that at least one person as early as 1903 saw Germany as a certain antagonist--presents rather a contrast with supposed historical analysis that would still argue that WWI "came as a surprise" or some such.
Throw this one together with _Dreadnought_, and there's an interesting fusion of public concern regarding German intentions and strength and the build-up of the Royal Navy.
One of my favorite pre-WWI what ifs is still the Michael Palin parody in "Ripping Yarns" called Winfrey's Last Case," where the Germans are caught "trying to start WWI ahead of schedule."
It does indeed seem that at least a few more creative and thoughtful types were seeing past the traditional anti-French mentality of the 19th Century. That is interesting, as a lot of the other books (Dreadnought especially) really seemed to show a rather favorable relationship between Britain and Germany on a lot of levels. AJP Taylor, who I'm reading presently, talks about this briefly, basically saying that the two countries started as fair friends, but the war soon turned into a bitter contest between them, given Britain's leading status and Germany's rise -- in other words, the rivalry that people have been using as analogy for the rise of China vis a vis the U.S. Of course, there are no shortage of Riddle-esque novels proclaiming the potential of that rivalry!
ReplyDeletePaul Kennedy's magisterial _The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism_ really gets into the nuts and bolts of how two traditional allies became adversaries. While there certainly was an economic aspect to it (an important one), much of it seems to me to have been personality driven, especially once Wilhelm II ascends the throne and begins his antics.
ReplyDeleteYeah, hard to ignore the role of William II in this period of history. He was quite the head case, a great study in why monarchy can really be a bad thing. I have zero psychology/psychiatry background but I can pick out all sorts of patterns in his behavior that would keep a shrink busy for years.
ReplyDeleteIt would be an interesting historical/IR study to really dig into not only how allies fall out, but how enemies change their tunes. France and Britain for WWI, but there are lots of examples. I would guess mostly exogenous factors come into play, but it could be useful from a policy perspective to know techniques for turning enemies into allies (not that our current regime would possibly be skilled enough to do so).
Kennedy actually addresses some of those factors. The other intriguing case study is how France and Russia managed to have a military alliance. Not exactly two countries that saw eye to eye politically. Kennan did a book on the Franco-Russian Alliance that covered some of that, but mostly in the political-military rather than social context.
ReplyDeleteAs I have always said, Riddle of the Sands is the best novel written by a traitor. It's such a great story, both for what it says about the way novelists and readers perceived the world in the first years of the 20th century and for how the story itself remains compelling today. Like some of my other favorite books, my interest may have a lot to do with the fact that I came to this story so early in my life. But I rather think it is the combination of how it was written, the genre, and what it says about the wider world.
ReplyDeleteI think the "younger in life" aspect is true of a lot of books. But, that said, I was 45 when I first read it and enjoyed it immensely on multiple levels.
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