A Letter from London
Amy Lowell
August 28, 1914.
AsI sit here, I can see out of my window the Red Cross flag flying over Devonshire House. Only one short month ago I sat at this same window and looked at Devonshire House, glistening with lights, and all its doors wide open, for the duke and duchess were giving an evening party. Powdered footmen stood under the porte-cochère, and the yard was filled with motors; it was all extremely well-ordered and gay.
I watched the people arriving and leaving, for a long time. It was a very late party, and it was not only broad daylight, but brilliant sunshine, before they went home. They did have such a good time, those boys and girls, and they ended by coming out on the balcony and shouting and hurrahing for fully ten minutes. How many of those young men were among the “two thousand casualties” at the Battle of Charleroi, of which we have just got news?
Devonshire House is as busy this afternoon, but it is no longer gay. In the yard is a long wooden shed, with a corrugated iron roof; there are two doors on opposite sides, like barn doors, and black against the light of the farther door I can see men sitting at a table, and boy scouts running upon errands. The yard is filled with motors again, and there is a buzz of coming and going. Yesterday a man brought a sort of double-decked portable stretcher, with a place above and below, and a group stood round it and talked about it for a long time. For this is the headquarters of the Red Cross Society. So, in one short month, has life changed, here in London.
A month ago I toiled up the narrow stairs of a little outhouse behind the Poetry Bookshop, and in an atmosphere of overwhelming sentimentality, listened to Mr. Rupert Brooke whispering his poems. To himself, it seemed, as nobody else could hear him. It was all artificial and precious. One longed to shout, to chuck up one’s hat in the street when one got outside; anything, to show that one was not quite a mummy, yet.
Now, I could weep for those poor, silly people. After all they were happy; the world they lived in was secure. Today this horrible thing has fallen upon them, and not for fifty years, say those who know, can Europe recover herself and continue her development. Was the world too “precious”, did it need these violent realities to keep its vitality alive? History may have something to say about that; we who are here can only see the pity and waste of it.
So little expectation of war was there, so academic the “conversations” between the powers seemed, that on the Friday, preceding the declarationof war, we went down to Dorchester and Bath for a week-end outing. It was rather a shock to find the market-place at Salisbury filled with cannon, and the town echoing with soldiers. The waiter at the inn, however, assured us that it was only manœuvres. But the next day our chauffeur, who had been fraternizing with the soldiers, told us that it was not manœuvres; they had started for manœuvres, but had been turned round, and were now on their way back to their barracks.
As we came back from Bath, on Monday, we were told that gasolene was over five shillings a can. That was practically saying that England had gone to war. But she had not, nor did she, until twelve o’clock that night. When we reached our hotel we found a state bordering on panic. There was no money to be got, and all day long, for two days, people (Americans) had been arriving from the Continent. Without their trunks, naturally. There was no one to handle trunks at the stations in Paris. These refugees were all somewhat hysterical; perhaps they exaggerated when they spoke of disorder in Paris; later arrivals seemed to think so. But we are untried in war—war round the corner. It is a terrifying nightmare which we cannot take for reality. Or could not. For it is now three weeks since the war burst over us, and already we accustom ourselves to the new condition. That is perhaps the most horrible part of it.
But that first night in London I shall never forget. A great crowd of people with flags marched down Piccadilly, shouting: “We want war! We want war!” They sang the Marseillaise, and it sounded savage, abominable. The blood-lust was coming back, which we had hoped was gone forever from civilized races.
But the Londoners are a wonderful people. Or perhaps they have no imagination. London goes on, and goes on just as it did before, as far as I can see. I understand that the American papers, possibly taking their cue from the German papers, say that London is like a military camp, that soldiers swarm in the streets, and that its usual activities are all stopped. It is not true. “Business as usual” has become a sort of motto. And it is as usual,—perhaps a bit too much so. The mass of the people cannot be brought to realize the possibility of an invasion. In vain the papers warn them, they believe the navy to be invincible. And Heaven grant that it is!
When, that first week of the war, bank holiday was extended to four days instead of one; when the moratorium was declared, which exempted the banks from paying on travellers cheques and letters-of-credit; and when, to add to that, so many boats were taken off, and there were no sailings to be got for love or money, something closely approaching a panic broke out among the Americans. And what wonder! They felt caught like rats in a trap, with the impassable sea on one side and the advancing Germans on the other. For Americans have not been brought up with the tradition of England’s invincibility at sea. They have heard of John Paul Jones and the “Bonhomme Richard.” And they have imagination. I was told that onewoman had killed herself in an access of fear, and I have heard of another who has had to be put in an asylum, her mind given way under the strain. Many of these people had no money, and they could not get any; they came from the Continent and had to find lodgings, and they could offer neither money nor credit. The Embassy had no way of meeting the strain flung upon it. The Ambassador is not a rich man, and the calls for money were endless. Finally some public-spirited American gentlemen started a Committee, with offices at the Hotel Savoy, to help stranded Americans. And the work they have done has been so admirable that it is hard to find words to describe it. The Committee cashes cheques, gets steamship bookings, suggests hotels and lodgings, provides clothes, meets trains. I cannot write the half it does, but it makes one exceedingly proud. I do not believe that there is an American in London who has not helped the Committee with time or money, or been helped by it.
Perhaps the panicky ones have all been cared for and gone home, or perhaps man is a very adaptable animal. But we who are still in London have settled down and accepted things. The town is not like a camp, but still regiments of soldiers in khaki pass along fairly often. And during the few days when it was my duty to meet trains at Victoria Station, no train from the South Coast either arrived or left without its quota of soldiers. We motored down to Portsmouth last Sunday, and we were stopped at the entrance to the town and asked to prove that we were not Germans. It was not a very difficult task. Portsmouth is swarming with soldiers, but until we reached it, the only evidence of changed conditions was the strange absence of cyclists and motor-cyclists on the roads.
The other day I was waiting on a street corner. I was going to cross over and buy a paper. (The papers bring out new editions all day long, and in taxis, on buses, walking along the street, every one is reading a paper.) Suddenly I heard someone shout my name, and there were Richard Aldington and F. G. Flint. They were in excellent spirits; Richard Aldington had just been down to put his name on the roster of those willing to enlist. Flint cannot enlist; he is already serving his country in the Post Office, and sits all day long in the most important and most dangerous building in the world next to the Bank of England. It is guarded by soldiers and surrounded by bomb-nets, but London is full of spies! I thought of the exquisite and delicate work of these two men in theAnthologie Des Imagistes, and it seemed barbarous that war should touch them—as cruel and useless as the shattering of a Greek vase by a cannon ball. I remembered the letters of Henri Régnault I had read, long ago. I remembered how he gave up his studio in Algiers and came back to fight for France, and died in the trenches. We read of these things, but when we find ourselves standing on a street corner talking to two young poets who are preparing to face the same experiences—Well! It is different!
This is one side. There is, unhappily, another. Something that onefeared, and is not glad to see. There is not that realization that there should be of the danger England is in, nor that rush to defend her that one associates with the English temper. They are not enlisting as they should, and that is the bare truth of the matter.[1]And there is a certain hysteria beginning to show, which is terribly un-English, as “English” has hitherto been. The appeal to men to enlist has become almost a scream of terror. The papers are full of it, in editorials, in letters from private persons. And still the Government delays to declare general mobilization. Instead, it adopts measures which seem positively childish. Lord Kitchener asks the taxi-cabs to carry placards urging enlistment, and when some of the union cab-drivers refuse, the papers solemnly urge a patriotic public to boycott the placardless cabs. And all England is supposed to be under martial law! Could anything be more miserably humorous? It is hard to imagine Wellington asking favors of cabmen, and, when he was refused, begging the populace to punish the offenders. The following advertisement in this morning’sTimesillustrates the enthusiasm and the apathy which are rife at the same time:
Doctor’s wife, middle-aged, will undertake to perform the work of any tramway conductor, coachman, shop-assistant, or other married worker with children, provided that worker will undertake to enlist and fight for his country in our hour of need. All wages earned will be paid over to the wife and family.—Apply Mrs. Lowry, 1, Priory-terrace, Kew Green, S.W.
Doctor’s wife, middle-aged, will undertake to perform the work of any tramway conductor, coachman, shop-assistant, or other married worker with children, provided that worker will undertake to enlist and fight for his country in our hour of need. All wages earned will be paid over to the wife and family.—Apply Mrs. Lowry, 1, Priory-terrace, Kew Green, S.W.
Perhaps one of the saddest evidences of a changed England is Mr. H. G. Wells’s letter to Americans inThe Chronicleof August 24th. For an Englishman toimplorea foreign country to do or not to do anything, is new. Englishmen have not been used to beg weakly, with tears in their eyes. Whatever one may think of Mr. Wells’s contention in this letter, the tone in which it is written is a lamentable evidence of panic. Panic has never been an English trait, and neither has whining servility. And the Americans are the last people in the world to be moved by it. We are a just people, and we admire valor. I think Mr. Wells need not havestoopedto ask us for justice or sympathy.
After all, it purports little to point out the spots on the sun. England is still the mother-country of most Americans, even if that was a good while ago. And we love her. She has given us not only our blood, but our civilization. Since this war broke out she has harbored us and kept her ships running for us. In Paris, one must get a permit from the police to stay or leave. In England, one is free and unmolested. England has always been the refuge of oppressed peoples. Does she need to ask our sympathy now that she is, herself, oppressed? Neutral we must be, and neutral we shall be, but we are not a military nation, and despotism can never attract us.
Every American would rather a bungling democracy than the wisest despot who ever breathed.
[1]This condition has somewhat improved since above was written.