The Commandant in the nickel-steel skull-cap worn inside his khaki capPage 121COMMANDANT L—— IN THE NICKEL-STEEL SKULL-CAP WHICHHE WORE INSIDE HIS KHAKI CAP
Page 121COMMANDANT L—— IN THE NICKEL-STEEL SKULL-CAP WHICHHE WORE INSIDE HIS KHAKI CAP
Page 121
COMMANDANT L—— IN THE NICKEL-STEEL SKULL-CAP WHICH
HE WORE INSIDE HIS KHAKI CAP
More and more of the French officers are wearing these helmets, and he had just ordered his from Paris. It is an admirable protection, very tough, not at all heavy, tucked inside the sweatband of the cap and entirely invisible. If a bullet hits it straight point-blank it will, of course, penetrate and carry a piece of thesteel helmet into the wearer's head with it. But a bullet hitting thus would be fatal anyway. While if the bullet is spent, or if it hits at an angle, the helmet will deflect it.
On the way to the trenches we stopped off at the Belgian aerodrome, where an Aviation Captain showed and explained to me the details of the Voisin and Nieuport machines, which were chiefly used, including the ingenious bomb-dropping mechanism and the wireless apparatus.
The Belgians certainly deserve the utmost credit for the way in which they have developed their air service from nothing at the beginning of the war to a highly efficient aviation corps. But for that matter their whole army has been reorganized on an admirable basis.
One must realize the shattered condition in which they were swept from Antwerp back to the very fringe of their country behind the Yser. One must realize that they are practically an army without a country. One must understand that when they get furloughs they cannot spend them with their families in their homes, getting comfort and encouragement. They either stay within sound of the firing or spend a bleak six days among the strangers ofEngland or of Northern France. When all this is considered their material reorganization and the preservation of theirmoralein its present splendid shape is a remarkable achievement.
And let no one forget that if the British proudly saved the French by their retreat from Mons (which no one seems likely to be allowed to forget) it is equally certain that the shattered Belgian army humbly saved the British on the Yser.
Rolling along the straight highroad to Y—— we passed the usual congestion of troop-filled trolley-cars, lorries, ambulances, farm-wagons, officers' autos and motor-cyclists. Our military motor was an excellent one, with the one fault that it seemed extremely difficult for the chauffeur to shift his gear from neutral into low speed, and he would frequently get hung up for several seconds with the car at a standstill till finally he got his gears in mesh.
At one point we stopped to see an interesting manifestation of the newly developing art of war. A giant 12-inch British naval gun was mounted on a specially designed railroad truck. It stood on a railway siding, with its ammunition-car coupled on behind. A kind of crane stood ready to swing the huge shells from theammunition-car to the breech of the gun. When some object was found worth firing 12-inch shells at, the engine backed up to the gun-truck with steam up. The track was cleared.
Then the great gun did its firing at the object, and forthwith was whisked away one, five or ten miles down the track out of danger of the German replies. This is what, officers seem agreed, will take the place of the antiquated fixed fortresses—miles of railway loops and sidings running behind artificial concealments or in semi-open cuts, with batteries of heavy fortress guns shuttling to and fro, firing and changing position constantly.
We motored on till we neared the point where the Belgian army ends and the French begins. Here we paid our respects to the General in command of the division we were visiting. He promptly asked us to lunch, and a very good lunch it was: Vegetable soup, some entrée which I could not identify, shoulder of mutton with potatoes and beans, cantaloupe, cheese and black coffee, with a choice between beer, claret and white wine to drink at lunch, a glass of champagne at dessert, and liqueurs with the coffee.
The conversation of the officers turned largely on what was happening to their friends and acquaintances in Belgium, about whom they heard by mail through Switzerland or Holland. One young countess aroused considerable discussion. She had been sitting in a street-car in Brussels with a Belgian friend when a German officer boarded the car. Her friend bowed to the officer.
"What! You bow to a pig like that!" cried the countess. Whereupon the officer had stopped the car and placed her under arrest. She had been given her choice between two months in prison or ten thousand francs' fine, and had paid the fine.
Certain of the officers held that she had been unpatriotic in not accepting imprisonment rather than help the German exchequer. Others felt she had done enough in insulting the officer and rebuking her friend. The talk dwelt, too, on certain other Belgian ladies who had compromised with their patriotism to the extent of taking up social relations with the invaders. From what I heard I feel sorry for these over-hospitable ladies when the Belgians are once more masters of their own country.
After lunch I began to feel more and more impatient to get started for the trenches, but I had already learned too much of etiquette at the front to show it. For the officers of all the armies feel that it is infinitely more important to prove to you that they can give you a good cup of coffee and a good cigar than it is to show you the most beautiful battle that was ever fought. They are, too, all alike obsessed with the very human fallacy that the little ingenuities and contrivances which they have devised for their personal comfort, safety or delectation must be of infinitely more absorbing interest to the visitor than the guns and the trenches, which to them are such an old and boring story.
So now we had to admire the way one officer had had his sleeping-shack wall-papered, how another had invented some home-made shower-baths, how a third had had a genuine heavy wooden bedstead installed instead of a camp cot.
However, finally we made our adieus and motored away with full directions from the General as to how to meet him at 4 o'clock at an observation-post from which he was towitness an interesting bombardment. As it was then a quarter to 3, my hopes of getting into the trenches began to look slim.
We were now motoring straight toward the front over a stretch of country which the Germans had been profusely bombarding. The road was full of holes where the Belgian blocks had been torn out by shells. We bumped over the shallower ones and dodged the deeper ones, but every now and then the chauffeur would miscalculate the depth of a hole and the car would come down on its axle with a prodigious thump. By shutting one's eyes one could easily imagine one's self taxicabbing along a New York side-street.
The shattered churchPage 127"THE CHAUFFEUR REACHED THEOPEN PLACE BY THE CHURCH"The crucifix on the shattered churchPage 127ON THE SHATTERED CHURCH HUNGTHIS CRUCIFIX INTACT THOUGHSURROUNDED BY SHRAPNEL HOLES
The shattered churchPage 127"THE CHAUFFEUR REACHED THEOPEN PLACE BY THE CHURCH"
Page 127"THE CHAUFFEUR REACHED THEOPEN PLACE BY THE CHURCH"
Page 127
"THE CHAUFFEUR REACHED THE
OPEN PLACE BY THE CHURCH"
The crucifix on the shattered churchPage 127ON THE SHATTERED CHURCH HUNGTHIS CRUCIFIX INTACT THOUGHSURROUNDED BY SHRAPNEL HOLES
Page 127ON THE SHATTERED CHURCH HUNGTHIS CRUCIFIX INTACT THOUGHSURROUNDED BY SHRAPNEL HOLES
Page 127
ON THE SHATTERED CHURCH HUNG
THIS CRUCIFIX INTACT THOUGH
SURROUNDED BY SHRAPNEL HOLES
The guns had, of course, by now resumed work after their lunch-time siesta and were grumbling away at each other in great shape. Presently we came to a deserted village, which could be seen from some of the German artillery positions and which they shelled on the slightest provocation. The General had particularly told us to run through the village in a hurry, especially across the open place around the church. When we got safely out of the other end of the place, he had said, we mightleave our motor and sneak back on foot to take photographs. This having been carefully explained to the chauffeur, he bumped us swiftly down the ruined main street, reached the open place by the church, where he had to turn to the right, came suddenly on top of a big, deep shell-hole, just dodged it by slapping on his emergency, and stood stock-still trying to get into first speed.
The Commandant cursed and I swore, the Commandant's orderly sitting next the chauffeur shook his fist at the chauffeur, and the chauffeur shook one fist at his gears while with the other he wrenched and hauled at his lever.
There is no use denying that we were all equally nervous. Every instant we expected to see the first of a stream of shells explode near us. Finally, after the suspense had in reality lasted not more than six or eight seconds, the accursed low gear meekly meshed and we bumped off down the side-street, heaving deep sighs of relief.
Outside the utterly ruined village we left our car behind a clump of trees and walked back to take some photographs of what had been the church. Then into the motor and onagain till we stopped at the cross-road which led directly to the front.
Here we left our motor. The rain suddenly beginning to come down in sheets, we ducked into a ruined house whose roof some freak of the shells had allowed to remain quite intact. We were quickly joined by about fifty infantrymen who had been working at a reserve line of intrenchments in the fields outside. Here we all waited for ten minutes till the rain-squall stopped.
It may not be a particularly pretty subject, but I think it well worth stating that that mass of soldiers, packed into the small inclosed space, left the air as pure and untainted at the end of those ten minutes as it had been before they jammed their way in. I had noticed the same thing the day before during the two hours that I had spent by the howitzer with the nine men of the crew. There is no doubt about it that even the English—who of course originally invented and patented personal cleanliness in this world—will have to scrub exceedingly hard to keep up with the Belgians.
The rain having stopped, we slipped and slithered on foot along the byroad till we cameto a prairie-dog village of bomb-proofs with soldiers' heads popping out of the little openings and then popping in again. Here we met a young First Lieutenant, who very kindly offered to show us the quickest way to the communicating trench, and off we marched.
At this point we were just about half-way between the two opposing bodies of artillery. High in air, right above our heads, the shells of the two armies, hurtling along in opposite directions, met and passed each other on their way. These big projectiles in passing over us sounded exactly as if they were running along aerial rails. You could hear them rattling along these rails, bumping over the rail joints, banging over switches. It was a perfect illusion. By closing your eyes you could have sworn that you were standing under Brooklyn Bridge hearing the procession of street-cars, with silenced gongs, roll by at express speed overhead. First there would be a distant report, then silence as the shell rose, and then suddenly it would get on the rails, rattle up to the top of its grade, coast down the grade the other side and leave the tracks a second or two before the final explosion.
Some ten minutes later we were walking along a broad road, with the noise of exploding shells getting louder and louder ahead. Then suddenly a perfect swarm of bullets came chirping past us.
"Just this little bit of the road is visible from the German lines," remarked the Lieutenant. "They are about 500 metres away from us here."
It must have been comical to see the way in which the Commandant, his orderly and I did an Indian war-dance down that road, all three bent double. The Lieutenant must have caught the contagion from us, for, as more bullets came by, zeup! zeup! zeup! he doubled up himself. In a few seconds, however, he said we were out of sight again, and so we straightened up and walked forward proudly erect, although every little while when some bullets went by just over our heads we showed distinct tendencies to collapse anew.
Now we came to the communication trench and climbed down into it one after the other. It was very different from the French "boyaux," or communicating trenches. Those were dug a good seven feet deep almost everywhere, andnever less than six feet. So that one could walk about in them at one's ease without paying any attention to the bullets that cracked up above. Only a shell plunging directly into one of these three feet wide, seven feet deep ditches could be dangerous.
But the Belgians could not dig down more than about two and one-half feet at the most without striking water. That, with an earth and sod rampart about two feet high, gave a protection never more than five feet at its highest and often under four feet in height. Now, it probably sounds very easy to keep sheltered while walking along behind four feet of ditch and parapet, but if any one tries it for more than five minutes at a time he will know what a real backache feels like.
This trench, which ran forward in very short abrupt zigzags, was floored with pieces of wicker-work to prevent sinking into the mud. The half-hour's rain had filled long stretches of it ankle-deep with water.
Crouched double, we waded along in single file, the Lieutenant, myself, the Commandant and his orderly. The bullets were striking some ruined farm buildings close on our left withsharp cracks. They hit the breastworks with muffled thuds and passed close over the breastwork with a kind of buzzing whistle. We paddled along till suddenly we came to a place where, for some unaccountable reason, the trench stopped, renewing itself again perhaps three or four yards further on. Across the unsheltered surface of the ground which intervened ran a slack telephone wire some two feet above the ground.
"You'd better hurry up across here," remarked the Lieutenant as he scrambled out of the trench, took a couple of strides, swung first one leg and then the other over the telephone wire, took a couple of strides more and dropped into the trench beyond.
There is not the slightest question as to the hurry in which I negotiated this obstacle. Then, to see what I must have looked like, I turned to watch the two who were following me. The Commandant, I must confess, managed to accomplish the feat in a fashion not wholly destitute of dignity. But the way his orderly bounded out of the trench, hurdled the telephone wire and with one lithe leap descended upon us in the other trench was a sight for soreeyes. It certainly must have drawn a chuckle from the German sharpshooters witnessing it through their telescopic sights.
A hundred yards or so further on we came to a halt at an angle in the communication trench from which could be had a good view of the front.
Lifting my head cautiously till my eyes were just above the edge of the rampart, I could see some 250 yards ahead the chocolate-colored back of the Belgian front trench. For where the chalky soil of Champagne makes the trenches there very white in color, the boggy soil of Belgium is a rich brown.
Beyond the Belgian front trench ran a line of tall trees; beyond the line of trees again ran another brown line.
"That's the German front line, I suppose?" I said to the Lieutenant.
"No, that's their second line you're looking at. Raise your head a little more, and right over the top of our front-line trenches you'll see their front line."
I craned my neck, and, sure enough, another brown line hove into view apparently only a few yards ahead of the Belgian front line, with the usual barbed-wire tangle in front of it.
"That trench is about 100 metres from our front trench," said the Lieutenant. "The Germans have got all that barbed wire before their front trench, but we don't need wire because we have the Y—— Canal right before our front trench. Only it flows so close under the breastworks that you can't see it from here."
A great cloud of jet-black smoke suddenly welled up from the Belgian front trench.
"Ah, that's a six-inch bomb they've thrown into our trench with one of their 'minenwerfer,'" exclaimed the Lieutenant.
The report of the explosion from where we stood, not more than 250 metres away, was not loud.
The artillery was hard at it. Big clouds of black smoke rose sluggishly by the German trench where the Belgian high-explosive shells were bursting. Livelier clouds of white indicated the shrapnel explosions.
I was craning my neck to see what damage was being done the German trench when a whole swarm of bullets struck very close indeed to my head. The Lieutenant pulled me down into the trench.
"They shot at you that time, all right!" he laughed.
"Impossible!" I answered. "I can only barely see their trench over the top of your first-line trench, so how could they possibly see me from there?"
"Ah, but they were not shooting at you from there. They are up in the tops of some of those trees," he explained, pointing to the row of tall, innocent-looking trees. "Their sharpshooters climb up at night and snipe from there all day, and those of them whom we do not locate and kill climb down again the next night. They have telescopic sights on their rifles, and these rifles are mounted on little tripods so that they can fix their aim immovably on some spot where they think they have seen a movement; and the next time the movement comes, ping! Only I don't think they can use the tripods up in the trees."
At the Lieutenant's suggestion we scattered down along the trench in case our little crowd might have been observed from a tree and an artilleryman might try his luck on us.
Further down the trench where I took my new stand I went on watching the shells burst,and listening to the projectiles from the opposing sides go rattling along their invisible rails high overhead.
A little off to our right the French 75's were firing so quickly that I hoped it would develop into the famous "trommelfeuer" ("drum-roll fire," as the Germans call it), but it did not. We had received word that they were going to fire 400 rounds at some objective whose nature I did not learn. They certainly were firing them, and losing no time about it, either.
I could not see their shells burst, as the lines took a turn just to our right and disappeared behind some trees.
At the points where the armies of different nationalities connect they are always scrupulously careful to inform each other what artillery work they have in preparation, so that a sudden violent cannonade on the part of one army will not alarm the next with the idea that a German assault is being resisted.
Under fire in a Belgian communicating-trenchPage 135UNDER HEAVY FIRE IN A BELGIAN COMMUNICATING-TRENCH.(THE FIGURE STANDING UPRIGHT JUST BEHIND THE AUTHORIS THE LIEUTENANT, WHO STRAIGHTENED UP DURING THEMOMENT THE SNAPSHOT WAS BEING TAKEN BUT WAS NOT HIT)
Page 135UNDER HEAVY FIRE IN A BELGIAN COMMUNICATING-TRENCH.(THE FIGURE STANDING UPRIGHT JUST BEHIND THE AUTHORIS THE LIEUTENANT, WHO STRAIGHTENED UP DURING THEMOMENT THE SNAPSHOT WAS BEING TAKEN BUT WAS NOT HIT)
Page 135
UNDER HEAVY FIRE IN A BELGIAN COMMUNICATING-TRENCH.
(THE FIGURE STANDING UPRIGHT JUST BEHIND THE AUTHOR
IS THE LIEUTENANT, WHO STRAIGHTENED UP DURING THE
MOMENT THE SNAPSHOT WAS BEING TAKEN BUT WAS NOT HIT)
It was particularly interesting to watch the Belgian soldiers, who every few yards squatted placidly in the trench, short spades and trowels in hand, busily engaged in digging little pits about two feet deep in the bottom of the trench,and then scooping out little channels running to these pits. These channels would drain the surrounding yard or two of trench bottom into the pits, leaving muddy patches where a moment before three or four inches of water had stood. There the Belgian soldiers squatted like children making mud pies at the seashore, and chatted complacently in Flemish while they fought the enemy, who was only less hateful to them than the Germans. A splendid, cool, nerveless lot of men, doing their work unostentatiously but efficiently, neither dashing on the one hand nor dogged on the other, but gifted with the admirablemoraleof the imperturbably matter-of-fact.
Suddenly I heard an exclamation from one of the soldiers. Looking where he pointed, I saw, just beyond the Belgian front trench, a huge column of muddy water standing bolt upright against the horizon. It stood there motionless until I began to think it would remain a permanent fixture in the landscape. Then it suddenly collapsed. A Belgian shell falling short had soused down into the Y—— Canal and exploded, sending up this five-story waterspout.
It seemed a shame not to go forward into the front trench, but with the Germans lobbing six-inch bombs in there with their "mine throwers" and the artillery getting busier all the time, the Commandant thought it would be taking too great risks. So we turned and crouched along back. As we did so, it is worthy of comment, three German shells struck not far to our left at not more than half-a-minute intervals and not one of the three exploded. It was a striking example of faulty explosives.
We returned by a different trench, so that we did not have to repeat the acrobatic feat over the telephone wire. But we had a little excitement to make up for it, for, as I splashed along with a most intense crick in my bent back, one of the German projectiles, which was apparently running on perfect schedule along its overhead rails on its way toward the Belgian artillery, suddenly jumped the track and came hissing down toward us.
Simultaneously with the crash of the explosion I saw the men ahead of me passionately hugging the bottom of the trench, and I found myself on my knees and elbows, not a whit behind them in my devotion.
"That was a close one," said Captain L——.
"What was it—a 75?" I asked.
"Seventy-five nothing," he replied; "that was a 150 millimetre, and it exploded within thirty metres of your head. There—see for yourself. If we had not been in the trench that would have caught us nicely!"
I peeped over the edge of the trench and there, sure enough, was a big cloud of sooty black smoke wallowing up from behind some broken masonry not more than thirty yards off.
"Filons!" ("Let us beat it!") said the Commandant tersely, and we did.
The great lesson that a visit to England, France and what remains of Belgium to-day will teach any one who is willing to be taught by hard facts and not by wistful visions is that peace in the near future is quite impossible. For the only peace, in the conviction of the Allies, that will end this war is a peace neither of conciliation nor of compromise, but a peace whose terms are arbitrarily imposed by one side and of necessity submitted to by the other.
That is the end to which the Allies are determined to fight, whether that end is achieved by the more merciful method of decisive military victory or must be gained by the more terrible pressure of complete financial, industrial and economic prostration.
Any attempt to abort this object by mediatoryproposals, whether Pontifical or Presidential, the Allies frankly declare they would consider an inopportune impertinence.
I have had the privilege of studying the spirit of the English, the French and the Belgians at a time when that spirit was being severely tested—when their fortunes were at their lowest ebb since the days just before the battle of the Marne. Their spring advance had utterly failed to materialize; throughout the summer they had been held in almost complete check by the Germans' depleted line. The Dardanelles had turned out to be a slaughter-house, with success appearing more and more precarious, and the only alternative to success seeming to be disaster.
The starvation of Germany had become a conceded impossibility. Her dearth of rubber, copper, cotton, etc., had assumed more and more the nature of a superable handicap rather than a decisive crippling. Her financial situation had already made fools of so many economic seers that they had become less and less didactic regarding her impending bankruptcy.
The practical success of allied diplomacyamong the Balkan neutrals had grown to seem more and more dubious.
Finally, Russia had been so manhandled that in the opinion of British and French military authorities with whom I talked it would take her from one to two years to reorganize her armies into condition for an effective offensive.
Yet, in spite of all these admitted disadvantages, I did not meet a single Frenchman, Englishman or Belgian who was not sincerely confident of ultimate victory. But only an ultimate peace could, in their conviction, be victorious. An immediate peace, or a peace in the near future, no matter what the German concessions, would for the Allies be the peace of defeat.
From Germany must come, not concessions, but abandonments, or the war, with all its hideous sacrifices unredeemed, would be a failure. Such an artificially fabricated peace, such a compromise between irreconcilable principles, would be but the prelude, more or less dragged out, to a fresh conflict.
I have talked to men and women of many classes, of many degrees of education and ofmany grades of intelligence. I found their views unanimous and their reasons for these views so constantly the same as finally to seem almost hackneyed.
I am aware of the existence in England of such a body of peace propagandists as the Union of Democratic Control, and in Holland of some French pacifists, and scattered here and there of Internationalists. But of all the men and women with whom I casually talked there was not one who shared these gentlemen's views.
Of all the French statements of reasons why the war must go on, which were iterated and reiterated to me, the best came from a prince, a retired naval captain and a little dressmaker. Unfortunately, they may not be quoted by name.
The prince said: "After this taste of blood the world can never remain long at peace while any powerful nation dedicates itself to the ideals and instincts of militarism. Germany, under the guidance of Prussia, is to-day such a nation. These aims and instincts have been so thoroughly absorbed by her people that, even if they sincerely wished to,these people could not eliminate them inside of two or three generations. It is ludicrous to imagine that these characteristics, which have become nearly if not quite hereditary, could be negotiated out of them. They must be subjugated out of the German people."
The naval captain said: "It is a mere matter of arithmetic. It can be easily demonstrated that at the end of this war, with its cost on her shoulders, if France does not immediately reduce her armaments to a minimum she is absolutely bound to go bankrupt. Now, as we cannot conceivably trust any mere promises of disarmament which Germany might make, it is obvious that we must go on with this war until we have reduced her to such a condition that we can enforce disarmament upon her, and thus safely enjoy its benefits ourselves."
The little dressmaker said: "My husband has been fighting at the front for months. It would be natural for me to wish the war to end to-morrow, no matter on what terms, if I could get my husband back before he is killed. But I want the war to go on until the 'Boches' are crushed; otherwise in another ten years orso there will be a new war, and then they will come and take away not only my husband, but my son as well."
In England the same line of reasoning prevailed. And the fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that this reasoning did not take the shape of stock arguments devised by politicians to bolster up some expedient course and drilled into the people for parrot-like repetition. The arguments were the spontaneous expression of the heartfelt convictions of all these people.
Intelligent opinion in England ranges between the two statements made to me, respectively, by a very famous Tory statesman and administrator, and by one of the best-known Liberal statesmen in English public life to-day.
The first of these was terse and to the point:
"It is the greatest mistake for your Government to feel that the United States can, by remaining neutral, help to bring the war to a close. This war will be fought to a point where no mediation will be possible or needed. No peace with Germany, signed with a Hohenzollern in power, would be worth more than twenty years' peace to the world. To makeGermany's promises binding on her, her people have got to have a share in her foreign policy, and that they cannot have under the present dynasty or system."
The second statement was:
"The best information that I can obtain from Germany is that, if she wins, the advanced party, which is in the ascendancy, plans to erect Poland into a semi-independent kingdom, contributing to it that portion of Poland which Germany herself now possesses. She will annex Belgium, probably a strip of Northern France, and possibly enough of Holland to give her command of the mouths of the Scheldt and Rhine.
"Personally I cannot feel it to be unreasonable from her point of view that she should plan to correct a situation where her great water artery, the Rhine, is bottled up at its outlet. She will also take all Courland, and this, too, is not so unreasonable, since the population is far more German than Russian. Nevertheless, if such geographical and ethnological changes as these were accomplished and to be maintained, who can conceivably imagine that Germany can afford to modify her militarism?
"My own views as to what the general terms of peace should be if the Allies win are shared by men in both England and France whose opinions will have weight in the peace negotiations. They are:
"To erect an independent Polish kingdom or state; to reconstitute Belgium with indemnity; to hold a plebiscite in Alsace-Lorraine, taken by a neutral, preferably the United States, in order to determine to whom they should belong, and in what proportions; to dismember Turkey, excepting Anatolia, which, being strictly Turkish, should be left to the Turks; to enforce a very large degree of disarmament upon Germany and Europe; to leave the German-speaking German Empire intact. (This talk about the deposition of the Hohenzollerns as one of the peace terms is sheer impertinence.)
"Now, you must readily perceive that any peace made in the near future must conform or approximate to the German plans which I have outlined and must involve a continuance of militarism and a standing incitement to fresh wars. While a peace on the terms which we favor, a peace that will perpetuate peace,must be wrung from a decisively beaten Germany, and is therefore a long way off. That is why we shall have to go through a very bad time of it for some period to come, and why our ultimate victory will be at least one year, and possibly two or three years off."
The keenest realization that victory will be slow, the completest confidence that its certainty is axiomatic, is to be found in the allied armies. There, ungrudgingly, they give the Germans fullest credit for their preparedness, for their foresight, for their powers of systematic and sustained labor, for their inventiveness. And they do not waste their time trying to devise discrediting substitutes for such words as "ability" in talking of their Generals, "courageousness" in talking of their soldiers, and "patriotism" in talking of their people. It is only when you get far behind the firing line that manliness merges into meanness in estimating the enemy.
Yet these very officers who paid such soldierly tributes to their antagonists were so wholly assured of eventual victory that any scepticism on my part did not irritate them, but merely moved them to good-natured smiles.
"So far," an English staff-officer remarked to me, "we English have been bungling amateurs in the art of war contending against trained professional specialists. But with a couple of years' more experience I believe we shall know as much about it as they do, and then we shall win."
"In the last analysis, talking from the military standpoint, this war, like every war, will be won by men," said a French staff-officer. "The Germans will not be beaten through lack of guns or ammunition or machinery or supplies, but through lack of men. How long by the aid of mechanics they can postpone the hour when the lack of men becomes fatal to them I do not know—one year, two years. But in the end, with the allied man-power steadily growing, and the German man-power steadily lessening, their military collapse is inevitable."
These are typical of a score of similar views advanced by officers, from Generals down to subalterns.
In the French army, as they show you their elaborate machine-shops mounted on motor-lorries for the repair of all the vehicles in thetransport service, they will say with the most complete conviction: "This mobility is not of much importance now, but when we begin the pursuit of the 'Boches' then they will come in handy!"
When they show you their great parks of supply-trains, each carrying three days' complete provisions for one army corps, they will tell you earnestly:
"Not much use now when the railroads do most of the carrying of supplies to the armies, but wait till the advance begins and then we shall be useful!"
When they let you examine their wonderful 75's, mounted on an automobile capable of doing over thirty miles an hour over the road, and of starting a stream of twenty-five shells a minute one minute after coming to a standstill, they will shrug their shoulders and say: "Something of a waste just now, perhaps, but when the advance is on they will do wonderful work!"
The advance! The advance! is in all their minds.
"But when will the advance begin?" you ask a chalk-powdered infantryman sweating in the sun-soaked trenches.
"Ah!" he will answer with complete unconcern. "Not yet, Monsieur. They say next spring or next summer. But then 'On les aura!'" ("We'll get them!")
And that unconcern means far more than appears on the surface. It means that the "poilu" knows he will have another winter in the trenches, with all the terrible discomforts that soldiers dread so much more than they dread danger. He knows it, and is completely reconciled to it.
"That was the one thing we feared"—a French General admitted to me—"the effect on the men'smoraleof the certainty that they would have another winter in the trenches. But they know it now, and 'ils s'en fichent!'" (to which the nearest American slang equivalent would be "they should worry!")
In the amazing New France (which the French prefer to consider a reincarnated rather than a transformed France) the people are as determined as the army. A short time ago, when the authorities first began to give the soldiers at the front their "permissions" to go home for three days, they did so with considerable apprehension that the homeinfluence on the soldier might be a disheartening one.
But, on the contrary, the reunion seemed to give mutual encouragement. The soldier braced up the "home folks'" confidence and pride in the army, and the home folks stimulated the soldier's confidence and pride in himself. Thus the experiment has turned out a great success.
The politicians and their fermentations are, in France, the bugbears of the army officers. This feeling of aversion and contempt extends, so far as I could make out, down through the rank and file. They feel that when a nation is at death-grips with its enemy even the most beautiful of democratic theories should be safely locked away with other luxuries; that the politicians should confine their activities to voting the funds necessary for the successful prosecution of the war, and should leave the conduct of the war severely alone.
But in France even those politicians who hanker after a finger in the military pie are unanimous for seeing the war through to a decisive victory. They may play politics about whether the Government should or should not have been removed from Paris to Bordeauxlast September; they may squabble over whether General Sarrail is the persecuted military genius of the war or an incompetent officer whose removal from Verdun should never have been sugar-coated by his appointment to Gallipoli; they may intrigue to oust Millerand from the War Ministry and try to get together on Briand for his place; they may stick loyally to Joffre because an old man who is fond of fishing is not likely to become an old man on horseback.
But, whether tirading against the evils of a bureaucracy or perorating against the iniquities of the censorship, you will find the politicians of France, Royalists, Clericals, Conservatives, Radicals and Socialists with all their subtle subdivisions, having proved their patriotism by the greatest sacrifice of which a politician is capable—having for nigh on ten months kept silent!—earnestly and honestly working for their country. They are striving, not for the quick peace of compromise which would relegate the silent, efficient soldiers to their subordinate powers and would restore to themselves all the prestige of full-throated eloquence, but for the deferred and definitive peace ofvictory, with all the continuance of second-fiddling to which such a postponement subjects them.
It is indeed fortunate for the alliance that France—Army, Government and People—is united in the determination to fight this war through to its logical conclusion. For France is apt to be the nation which pays the piper. England is physically safe behind her fleets, Russia proper is physically safe behind her distances, for the German invasion is not apt to go far beyond her alien provinces of Courland and Poland.
But France is not at sword's length, but at dagger's point, with her enemy—one little slip by any one, from an absent-minded General down to a sleeping sentinel, and she may become not a defeated, but a conquered nation.
And this you can see in the faces of the French to-day. Not anger, not bitterness, not sadness; neither excitement nor despondency is in their faces, but a look of hushed and solemn suspense. It is a nation with straining ears, with straining eyes, with bated breath, waiting, waiting.
After leaving the hush of France, England appears at a disadvantage largely undeserved.Compared with the atmosphere of strain in Paris, the atmosphere of London seems one of relaxation. Contrasted with the breathless struggle for self-preservation in France, the British attitude toward the war seems almost dilettante.
This is unquestionably due in part to the fact that in England a very literal-minded race is shipping its soldiers to fight in merely geographical localities for seemingly abstract principles. The trouble is that England has the Channel and France has the imagination. It is obvious how markedly stronger the combination would be if Britain were fighting an invader and France were fighting for a sentiment.
The superficial impression of holiday soldiering that one gets in England is emphasized by the British hatred of the dramatic and the British worship of sport. The British go on laughing, dining, play-going, dancing, supping; in fact, frivolling, because they think it would be melodramatic to forswear these pursuits because of the war. They go on cricketing, racing, fishing, shooting, hunting, because they go on eating, drinking, sleeping and bathing. These are part of the bodily functions of the Briton.
To any other nation, sport, no matter how intimate a part of the national life, in certain emergencies becomes trivial. To say that to an Englishman would be equivalent to saying that under any circumstances childbirth or prayer could be trivial. It is a national characteristic which must simply be accepted.
The impression made on superficial observers by these manners and habits of casual unconcern does England a certain injustice. For as far as her duties to her allies are concerned she has undoubtedly gone far beyond her obligations.
As one of her Cabinet members (a man who may well be her next Prime Minister) put it to me:
"The best two ways that I know of to prove one's devotion to a cause are to pay for it and to die for it. England is voluntarily doing both in far greater measure than her commitments call for. When the war started she agreed to help France on land with an army of 150,000 men. She has now raised an army of 3,000,000 men.
"When the war started she agreed to assume the naval responsibility of protecting the coast of France. She has not only done that, andincidentally driven Germany from the seas, but she has thrown her ships into the attack on the Dardanelles and has helped Russia with her submarines in the Baltic.
"When the war started there was a financial understanding between England and France. England has not only carried out her share in this understanding, but has been instrumental in the financing of Italy, and stands ready to assume further similar responsibilities in the Balkans.
"How any candid mind in the face of such a record can charge Great Britain with shirking her share in the war passes my understanding."
There is no doubt about the truth of this. To get the voluntary gift of three million lives within one year, to get the voluntary loan of £600,000,000 in less than one month is probably an unparalleled achievement. Great Britain has done far more than her duty to others called for. And yet the question will not be smothered: Is she doing all that is called for by a strong, far-seeing nation's duty to itself?
She has thrown into the scales all the peculiar assets of a democracy in spontaneous zeal and voluntary sacrifice. But can a really greatnation in such a crisis as this afford to be the recipient of only those contributions, no matter how prodigal, which are spontaneous and voluntary? Can a really proud nation afford to base its career at such a time upon the charity of its citizens? With Russia on the one hand purging herself of the bureaucratic evils of absolutism and forcing upon herself the pains of democratization, with France, on the other hand, sacrificing for the time her most cherished principles of republicanism in order to substitute the efficiency of Authority for the waste motions of Democracy, can England afford to remain complacently convinced that she represents the happy mean between these two extremes—a mean which needs no modifying?
Can England as a nation continue with admiring acquiescence to watch the cream of her manhood spend itself in Flanders and the Dardanelles; continue with deprecating acquiescence to watch the skimmed milk of her manhood preserve itself at home for the sacred duty of fathering a future generation?
Can England acquiesce placidly in the professional, the business, the financial sacrifices generally which so many Englishmen are splendidlymaking, and acquiesce plaintively in the disgusting treason whose guilt was shared in varying measure by the gouging coal-owners and the striking coal-miners of Wales?
Can England set out to curb the drunkenness which in certain parts is crippling her ammunition production and then sink back into acquiescence in the temporizing compromise which taxed drunkenness instead of terminating it?
Can England, in fine, afford to preserve Personal Liberty at the slightest risk of imperilling National Liberty?
Perhaps England can. Perhaps England must.
So long as England fulfils and far exceeds her covenants with her allies it is not a question for them to answer. It is assuredly not a question to which any neutral visitor can with seemliness hazard a solution.
It is not even a question, in my opinion, which is apt to affect the ultimate outcome of this particular war.
But it is a question to which on some future day Macaulay's New Zealander will, with positiveness and propriety, be in a position to find the answer.