* * * * *
But I am wandering a little from Nancy, and the story of our long Sunday. The snow had disappeared, and there were voices of spring in the wind. A French Army motor arrived early, with another French officer, the Capitaine de G——, who proved to be a most interesting and stimulating guide. With him I drove slowly through the beautiful town, looking at the ruined houses, which are fairly frequent in its streets. For Nancy has had its bombardments, and there is one gun of long range in particular, surnamed by the town—"la grosse Bertha," which has done, and still does, at intervals, damage of the kind the German loves. Bombs, too, have been dropped by aeroplanes both here and at Lunéville, in streets crowded with non-combatants, with the natural result. It has been in reprisal for this and similar deeds elsewhere, and in the hope of stopping them, that the French have raided German towns across the frontier. But the spirit of Nancy remains quite undaunted. The children of its schools, drilled to run down to the cellars at the first alarm as our children are drilled to empty a school on a warning of a Zeppelin raid, are the gayest and most spirited creatures, as I saw them at their games and action songs; unless indeed it be the children of theréfugiés, in whose faces sometimes one seems to see the reflection of scenes that no child ought to have witnessed and not even a child can forget. For these children come from the frontier villages, ravaged by the German advance, and still, some of them, in German occupation. And the orgy of murder, cruelty, and arson which broke out at Nomény, Badonviller, and Gerbéviller, during the campaign of 1914, has scarcely been surpassed elsewhere—even in Belgium. Here again, as at Vareddes, the hideous deeds done were largely owing to the rage of defeat. The Germans, mainly Bavarians, on the frontier, had set their hearts on Nancy, as the troops of Von Kluck had set their hearts on Paris; and General Castelnau, commanding the Second Army, denied them Nancy, as Maunoury's Sixth Army denied Paris to Von Kluck.
But more of this presently. We started first of all for a famous point in the fighting of 1914, the farm and hill of Léomont. By this time the day had brightened into a cold sunlight, and as we sped south from Nancy on the Lunéville road, through the old town of St. Nicholas du Port, with its remarkable church, and past the great salt works at Dombasle, all the country-side was clear to view.
Good fortune indeed!—as I soon discovered when, after climbing a steep hill to the east of the road, we found ourselves in full view of the fighting lines and a wide section of the frontier, with the Forest of Parroy, which is still partly German, stretching its dark length southward on the right, while to the north ran the famous heights of the Grand Couronné;—name of good omen!—which suggests so happily the historical importance of the ridge which protects Nancy and covers the French right. Then, turning westward, one looked over the valley of the Meurthe, with its various tributaries, the Mortagne in particular, on which stands Gerbéviller; and away to the Moselle and the Meuse. But the panoramic view was really made to live and speak for me by the able man at my side. With French precision and French logic, he began with the geography of the country, its rivers and hills and plateaux, and its natural capacities for defence against the German enemy; handling the view as though it had been a great map, and pointing out, as he went, the disposition of the French frontier armies, and the use made of this feature and that by the French generals in command.
This Lorraine Campaign, at the opening of the war, is very little realised outside France. It lasted some three weeks. It was preceded by the calamitous French reverse at Morhange, where, on August 20th, portions of the 15th and 16th Corps of the Second Army, young troops drawn from south-western France—who in subsequent actions fought with great bravery—broke in rout before a tremendous German attack. The defeat almost gave the Germans Nancy. But General Castelnau and General Foch, between them, retrieved the disaster. They fell back on Nancy and the line of the Mortagne, while the Germans, advancing farther south, occupied Luneville (August 22nd) and burnt Gerbéviller. On the 23rd, 24th, and 25th there was fierce fighting on and near this hill on which we stood. Capitaine de G—— with the 2nd Battalion of Chausseurs, under General Dubail, had been in the thick of the struggle, and he described to me the action on the slopes beneath us, and how, through his glasses, he had watched the enemy on the neighbouring hill forcing parties of French civilians to bury the German dead and dig German trenches, under the fire of their own people.
The hill of Léomont, and the many graves upon it, were quiet enough as we stood talking there. The old farm was in ruins; and in the fields stretching up the hill there were the remains of trenches. All around and below us spread the beautiful Lorraine country, with its rivers and forests; and to the south-east one could just see the blue mass of Mont Donon, and the first spurs of the Vosges.
"Can you show me exactly where the French line runs?" I asked my companion. He pointed to a patch of wood some six miles away. "There is a French battalion there. And you see that other patch of wood a little farther east? There is a German battalion there. Ah!" Suddenly he broke off, and the younger officer with us, Capitaine de B——, came running up, pointing overhead. I craned my neck to look into the spring blue above us, and there—7,000 to 8,000 feet high, according to the officers—were three Boche aeroplanes pursued by two French machines. In and out a light band of white cloud, the fighters in the air chased each other, shrapnel bursting all round them like tufts of white wool. They were so high that they looked mere white specks. Yet we could follow their action perfectly—how the Germans climbed, before running for home, and how the French pursued! It was breathless while it lasted! But we did not see the end. The three Taubes were clearly driven back; and in a few seconds they and the Frenchmen had disappeared in distance and cloud towards the fighting-line. The following day, at a point farther to the north, a well-known French airman was brought down and killed, in just such a fight.
Beyond Léomont we diverged westward from the main road, and found ourselves suddenly in one of those utterly ruined villages which now bestrew the soil of Northern, Central, and Eastern France; of that France which has been pre-eminently for centuries, in spite of revolutions, the pious and watchful guardian of what the labour of dead generations has bequeathed to their sons. Vitrimont, however, was destroyed in fair fight during the campaign of 1914. Bombardment had made wreck of the solid houses, built of the warm red stone of the country. It had destroyed the church, and torn up the graveyard; and when its exiled inhabitants returned to it by degrees, even French courage and French thrift quailed before the task of reconstruction. But presently there arrived a quiet American lady, who began to make friends with the people of Vitrimont, to find out what they wanted, and to consult with all those on the spot who could help to bring the visions in her mind to pass,—with the Préfet, with the officials, local and governmental, of the neighbouring towns, with the Catholic women of the richer Lorraine families, gentle, charitable, devout, who quickly perceived her quality, and set themselves to co-operate with her. It was the American lady's intention—simply—to rebuild Vitrimont. And she is steadily accomplishing it, with the help of generous money subsidies coming, month by month, from one rich American woman—a woman of San Francisco—across the Atlantic. How one envies that American woman!
The sight of Miss Polk at work lives indeed, a warm memory, in one's heart. She has established herself in two tiny rooms in a peasant's cottage, which have been made just habitable for her. A few touches of bright colour, a picture or two, a book or two, some flowers, with furniture of the simplest—amid these surroundings on the outskirts of the ruined village, with one of its capable, kindly faced women to run theménage, Miss Polk lives and works, realising bit by bit the plans of the new Vitrimont, which have been drawn for her by the architect of the department, and following loyally old Lorraine traditions. The church has been already restored and reopened. The first mass within its thronged walls was—so the spectators say—a moving sight. "That sad word—Joy"—Landor's pregnant phrase comes back to one, as expressing the bitter-sweet of all glad things in this countryside, which has seen—so short a time ago—death and murder and outrage at their worst. The gratitude of the villagers to their friend and helper has taken various forms. The most public mark of it, so far, has been Miss Folk's formal admission to the burgess rights of Vitrimont, which is one of the old communes of France. And the village insists that she shall claim her rights! When the time came for dividing the communal wood in the neighbouring forest, her fellow citizens arrived to take her with them and show her how to obtain her share. As to the affection and confidence with which she is regarded, it was enough to walk with her through the village, to judge of its reality.
But it makes one happy to think that it is not only Americans who have done this sort of work in France. Look, for instance, at the work of the Society of Friends in the department of the Marne,—on that fragment of the battlefield which extends from Bar-le-Duc to Vitry St. François. "Go and ask," wrote a French writer in 1915, "for the village of Huiron, or that of Glannes, or that other, with its name to shudder at, splashed with blood and powder—Sermaize. Inquire for the English Quakers. Books, perhaps, have taught you to think of them as people with long black coats and long faces. Where are they? Here are only a band of workmen, smooth-faced—not like our country folk. They laugh and sing while they make the shavings fly under the plane and the saw. They are building wooden houses, and roofing them with tiles. Around them are poor people whose features are stiff and grey like those of the dead. These are the women, the old men, the children, the weaklings of our sweet France, who have lived for months in damp caves and dens, till they look like Lazarus rising from the tomb. But life is beginning to come back to their eyes and their lips. The hands they stretch out to you tremble with joy. To-night they will sleep in a house, intheirhouse. And inside there will be beds and tables and chairs, and things to cook with…. As they go in and look, they embrace each other, sobbing."
By June 1915, 150 "Friends" had rebuilt more than 400 houses, and rehoused more than seven hundred persons. They had provided ploughs and other agricultural gear, seeds for the harvest fields and for the gardens, poultry for the farmyards. And from that day to this, the adorable work has gone on. "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye love one another."
* * * * *
It is difficult to tear oneself away from themes like this, when the story one has still to tell is the story of Gerbéviller. At Vitrimont the great dream of Christianity—the City of God on earth—seems still reasonable.
At Hérémenil, and Gerbéviller, we are within sight and hearing of deeds that befoul the human name, and make one despair of a world in which they can happen.
At luncheon in a charming house of old Lorraine, with an intellectual and spiritual atmosphere that reminded me of a book that was one of the abiding joys of my younger days—theRécit d'une Soeur—we heard from the lips of some of those present an account of the arrival at Lunéville of the fugitives from Gerbéviller, after the entry of the Bavarians into the town. Women and children and old men, literally mad with terror, had escaped from the burning town, and found their way over the thirteen kilomètres that separate Gerbéviller from Lunéville. No intelligible account could be got from them; they had seen things that shatter the nerves and brain of the weak and old; they were scarcely human in their extremity of fear. And when, an hour later, we ourselves reached Gerbéviller, the terror which had inspired that frenzied flight became, as we listened to Soeur Julie, a tangible presence haunting the ruined town.
Gerbéviller and Soeur Julie are great names in France to-day. Gerbéviller, with Nomény, Badonviller, and Sermaize, stand in France for what is most famous in German infamy; Soeur Julie, the "chère soeur" of so many narratives, for that form of courage and whole-hearted devotion which is specially dear to the French, because it has in it a touch ofpanache, of audacity! It is not too meek; it gets its own back when it can, and likes to punish the sinner as well as to forgive him. Sister Julie of the Order of St. Charles of Nancy, Madame Rigard, in civil parlance, had been for years when the war broke out the head of a modest cottage hospital in the small country town of Gerbéviller. The town was prosperous and pretty; its gardens ran down to the Mortagne flowing at its feet, and it owned a country house in a park, full of treasures new and old—tapestries, pictures, books—as Lorraine likes to have such things about her.
But unfortunately, it occupied one of the central points of the fighting in the campaign of Lorraine, after the defeat of General Castelnau's Army at Morhange on August 20th, 1914. The exultant and victorious Germans pushed on rapidly after that action. Lunéville was occupied, and the fighting spread to the districts south and west of that town. The campaign, however, lasted only three weeks, and was determined by the decisive French victory of September 8th on the Grand Couronné. By September 12th Nancy was safe; Lunéville and Gerbéviller had been retaken; and the German line had been driven back to where we saw it from the hill of Léomont. But in that three weeks a hell of cruelty, in addition to all the normal sufferings of war, had been let loose on the villages of Lorraine; on Nomény to the north of Nancy, on Badonviller, Baccarat, and Gerbéviller to the south. The Bavarian troops, whose record is among the worst in the war, got terribly out of hand, especially when the tide turned against them; and if there is one criminal who, if he is still living, will deserve and, I hope, get an impartial trial some day before an international tribunal, it will be the Bavarian General, General Clauss.
Here is the first-hand testimony of M. Mirman, the Prefét of the Department. At Gerbeviller, he writes, the ruin and slaughter of the town and its inhabitants had nothing to do with legitimate war:
"We are here in presence of an inexpiable crime. The crime was signed. Such signatures are soon rubbed out. I saw that of the murderer—and I bear my testimony.
"The bandits who were at work here were assassins: I have seen the bodies of their victims, and taken the evidence on the spot. They shot down the inhabitants like rabbits, killing them haphazard in the streets, on their doorsteps, almost at arm's length. Of these victims it is still difficult to ascertain the exact number; it will be more than fifty. Most of the victims had been buried when I first entered the town; here and there, however, in a garden, at the entrance to a cellar the corpses of women still awaited burial. In a field just outside the town, I saw on the ground, their hands tied, some with their eyes bandaged—fifteen old men—murdered. They were in three groups of five. The men of each group had evidently clung to each other before death. The clenched hand of one of them still held an old pipe. They were all old men—with white hair. Some days had elapsed since their murder; but their aspect in death was still venerable; their quiet closed eyes seemed to appeal to heaven. A staff officer of the Second Army who was with me photographed the scene; with otherpièces de conviction; the photograph is in the hands of the Governmental Commission charged with investigating the crimes of the Germans during this war."
The Bavarian soldiers in Gerbéviller were not only murderers—they were incendiaries, even more deliberate and thorough-going than the soldiers of Von Kluck's army at Senlis. With the exception of a few houses beyond the hospital, spared at the entreaty of Soeur Julie, and on her promise to nurse the German wounded, the whole town was deliberately burnt out, house by house, the bare walls left standing, the rest destroyed. And as,after the fire, the place was twice taken and retaken under bombardment, its present condition may be imagined. It was during the burning that some of the worst murders and outrages took place. For there is a maddening force in triumphant cruelty, which is deadlier than that of wine; under it men become demons, and all that is human perishes.
The excuse, of course, was here as at Senlis—"les civils ont tiré!" There is not the slightest evidence in support of the charge. As at Senlis, there was a French rear-guard of 57 Chasseurs—left behind to delay the German advance as long as possible. They were told to hold their ground for five hours; they held it for eleven, fighting with reckless bravery, and firing from a street below the hospital. The Germans, taken by surprise, lost a good many men before, at small loss to themselves, the Chasseurs retreated. In their rage at the unexpected check, and feeling, no doubt, already that the whole campaign was going against them, the Germans avenged themselves on the town and its helpless inhabitants.
Our half-hour in Soeur Julie's parlour was a wonderful experience! Imagine a portly woman of sixty, with a shrewd humorous face, talking with French vivacity, and with many homely turns of phrase drawn straight from that life of the soil and the peasants amid which she worked; a woman named in one of General Castelnau's Orders of the Day and entitled to wear the Legion of Honour; a woman, too, who has seen horror face to face as few women, even in war, have seen it, yet still simple, racy, full of irony, and full of heart, talking as a mother might talk of her "grands blessés"! but always with humorous asides, and an utter absence of pose or pretence; flashing now into scorn and now into tenderness, as she described the conduct of the German officers who searched her hospital for arms, or the helplessness of the wounded men whom she protected. I will try and put down some of her talk. It threw much light for me on the psychology of two nations.
"During the fighting, we had always about 300 of our wounded (nos chers blessés) in this hospital. As fast as we sent them off, others came in. All our stores were soon exhausted. I was thankful we had some good wine in the cellars—about 200 bottles. You understand, Madame, that when we go to nurse our people in their farms, they don't pay us, but they like to give us something—very often it is a bottle of old wine, and we put it in the cellar, when it comes in handy often for our invalids. Ah! I was glad of it for ourblessés! I said to my Sisters—'Give it them! and not by thimblefuls—give them enough!' Ah, poor things!—it made some of them sleep. It was all we had. One day, I passed a soldier who was lying back in his bed with a sigh of satisfaction. 'Ah, ma Soeur, ça resusciterait un mort!' (That would bring a dead man to life!) So I stopped to ask what they had just given him. And it was a large glass of Lachryma Christi!
"But then came the day when the Commandant, the French Commandant, you understand, came to me and said—'Sister, I have sad news for you. I am going. I am taking away the wounded—and all my stores. Those are my orders.'
"'But, mon Commandant, you'll leave me some of your stores for the grands blessés, whom you leave behind—whom you can't move?What!—you must take it all away? Ah, ça—non! I don't want any extras—I won't take your chloroform—I won't take your bistouris—I won't take your electric things—but—hand over the iodine! (en avant l'iode!) hand over the cotton-wool!—hand over the gauze! Come, my Sisters!' I can tell you I plundered him!—and my Sisters came with their aprons, and the linen-baskets—we carried away all we could."
Then she described the evacuation of the French wounded at night—300 of them—all but the 19 worst cases left behind. There were no ambulances, no proper preparation of any kind.
"Oh! it was a confusion!—an ugly business!" (ce n'etait pas rose!). The Sisters tore down and split up the shutters, the doors, to serve as stretchers; they tore sheets into long strips and tied "our poor children" on to the shutters, and hoisted them into country carts of every sort and description. "Quick!—Quick!" She gave us a wonderful sense of the despairing haste in which the night retreat had to be effected. All night their work went on. The wounded never made a sound—"they let us do what we would without a word. And as for us, my Sisters bound these big fellows (ces gros et grands messieurs) on to the improvised stretchers, like a mother who fastens her child in its cot. Ah! Jésus! the poverty and the misery of that time!"
By the early morning all the French wounded were gone except the nineteen helpless cases, and all the French soldiers had cleared out of the village except the 57 Chasseurs, whose orders were to hold the place as long as they could, to cover the retreat of the rest.
Then, when the Chasseurs finally withdrew, the Bavarian troops rushed up the town in a state of furious excitement, burning it systematically as they advanced, and treating the inhabitants as M. Mirman has described. Soon Soeur Julie knew that they were coming up the hill towards the hospital. I will quote the very language—homely, Biblical, direct—in which she described her feelings. "Mes reins flottaient comme ça—ils allaient tomber à mes talons. Instantanément, pas une goutte de salive dans la bouche!" Or—to translate it in the weaker English idiom—"My heart went down into my heels—all in a moment, my mouth was dry as a bone!"
The German officers drew up, and asked for the Superior of the hospital. She went out to meet them. Here she tried to imitate the extraordinary arrogance of the German manner.
"They told me they would have to burn the hospital, as they were informed men had been shooting from it at their troops.
"I replied that if anyone had been shooting, it was the French Chasseurs, who were posted in a street close by, and had every right to shoot!"
At last they agreed to let the hospital alone, and burn no more houses, if she would take in the German wounded. So presently the wards of the little hospital were full again to overflowing. But while the German wounded were coming in the German officers insisted on searching the nineteen French wounded for arms.
"I had to make way for them—Ihadto say, 'Entrez, Messieurs!'"
Then she dropped her voice, and said between her teeth—"Think how hard that was for a Lorrainer!"
So two German officers went to the ward where the nineteen Frenchmen lay, all helpless cases, and a scene followed very like that in the hospital at Senlis. One drew his revolver and covered the beds, the other walked round, poniard in hand, throwing back the bedclothes to look for arms. But they found nothing—"only blood! For we had had neither time enough nor dressings enough to treat the wounds properly that night."
A frightful moment!—the cowering patients—the officers in a state of almost frenzied excitement, searching bed after bed. At the last bed, occupied by a badly wounded and quite helpless youth, the officer carrying the dagger brought the blade of it so near to the boy's throat that Soeur Julie rushed forward, and placed her two hands in front of the poor bare neck. The officer dropped both arms to his side, she said, "as if he had been shot," and stood staring at her, quivering all over. But from that moment she had conquered them.
For the German wounded, Soeur Julie declared she had done her best, and the officer in charge of them afterwards wrote her a letter of thanks. Then her mouth twisted a little. "But I wasn't—well, I didn'tspoilthem! (Je n'étais pas trop tendre); I didn't give them our best wine!" And one officer whose wounds she dressed, a Prussian colonel who never deigned to speak to a Bavarian captain near him, was obliged to accept a good many home truths from her. He was convinced that she would poison his leg unless he put on the dressings himself. But he allowed her to bandage him afterwards. During this operation—which she hinted she had performed in a rather Spartan fashion!—"he whimpered all the time," and she was able to give him a good deal of her mind on the war and the behaviour of his troops. He and the others, she said, were always talking about their Kaiser; "one might have thought they saw him sitting on the clouds."
In two or three days the French returned victorious, to find the burnt and outraged village. The Germans were forced, in their turn, to leave some badly wounded men behind, and the Frenchpoilusin their mingled wrath and exultation could not resist, some of them, abusing the German wounded through the windows of the hospital. But then, with a keen dramatic instinct, Soeur Julie drew a striking picture of the contrast between the behaviour of the French officer going down to the basement to visit the wounded German officers there, and that of the German officers on a similar errand. She conveyed with perfect success the cold civility of the Frenchman, beginning with a few scathing words about the treatment of the town, and then proceeding to an investigation of the personal effects of the Boche officers.
"Your papers, gentlemen? Ah! those are private letters—you may retain them. Your purses?"—he looks at them—"I hand them back to you. Your note-books?Ah! ça—c'est mon affaire!(that's my business). I wish you good morning."
Soeur Julie spoke emphatically of the drunkenness of the Germans. They discovered a store of "Mirabelle," a strong liqueur, in the town, and had soon exhausted it, with apparently the worst results.
Well!—the March afternoon ran on, and we could have sat there listening till dusk. But our French officers were growing a little impatient, and one of them gently drew "the dear sister," as every one calls her, towards the end of her tale. Then with regret one left the plain parlour, the little hospital which had played so big a part, and the brave elderly nun, in whom one seemed to see again some of those qualities which, springing from the very soil of Lorraine, and in the heart of a woman, had once, long years ago, saved France.
* * * * *
How much there would be still to say about the charm and the kindness of Lorraine, if only this letter were not already too long! But after the tragedy of Gerbéviller I must at any rate find room for the victory of Amance.
Alas!—the morning was dull and misty when we left Nancy for Amance and the Grand Couronné; so that when we stood at last on the famous ridge immediately north of the town which saw, on September 8th, 1914, the wrecking of the final German attempt on Nancy, there was not much visible except the dim lines of forest and river in the plain below. Our view ought to have ranged as far, almost, as Metz to the north and the Vosges to the south. But at any rate there, at our feet, lay the Forest of Champenoux, which was the scene of the three frantic attempts of the Germans debouching from it on September 8th to capture the hill of Amance, and the plateau on which we stood. Again and again the 75's on the hill mowed down the advancing hordes and the heavy guns behind completed their work. The Germans broke and fled, never to return. Nancy was saved, the right of the six French Armies advancing across France, at that very moment, on the heels of the retreating Germans, in the Battle of the Marne, was protected thereby from a flank attack which might have altered all the fortunes of the war, and the course of history; and General Castelnau had written his name on the memory of Europe.
But—the Kaiser was not there! Even Colonel Buchan in his admirable history of the war, and Major Whitton in his recent book on the campaign of the Marne, repeat the current legend. I can only bear witness that the two French staff officers who walked with us along the Grand Couronné—one of whom had been in the battle of September 8th—were positive that the Kaiser was not in the neighbourhood at the time, and that there was no truth at all in the famous story which describes him as watching the battle from the edge of the Forest of Champenoux, and riding off ahead of his defeated troops, instead of making, as he had reckoned, a triumphant entry into Nancy. Well, it is a pity the gods did not order it so!—"to be a tale for those that should come after."
One more incident before we leave Lorraine! On our way up to the high village of Amance, we had passed some three or four hundred French soldiers at work. They looked with wide eyes of astonishment at the two ladies in the military car. When we reached the village, Prince R——, the young staff officer from a neighbouring Headquarters who was to meet us there, had not arrived, and we spent some time in a cottage, chatting with the women who lived in it. Then—apparently—while we were on the ridge word reached the men working below, from the village, that we were English. And on the drive down we found them gathered, three or four hundred, beside the road, and as we passed them they cheered us heartily, seeing in us, for the moment, the British alliance!
So that we left the Grand Couronné with wet eyes, and hearts all passionate sympathy towards Lorraine and her people.
No. 10
June 1st, 1917.
DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,—In looking back over my two preceding letters, I realise how inadequately they express the hundredth part of that vast and insoluble debt of a guilty Germany to an injured France, the realisation of which became—for me—in Lorraine, on the Ourcq, and in Artois, a burning and overmastering thing, from which I was rarely or never free. And since I returned to England on March 16th, the conduct of the German troops, under the express orders of the German Higher Command, in the French districts evacuated since February by Hindenburg's retreating forces, has only sharpened and deepened the judgment of civilised men, with regard to the fighting German and all his ways, which has been formed long since, beyond alteration or recall.
Think of it! It cries to heaven. Think of Reims and Arras, of Verdun and Ypres, think of the hundreds of towns and villages, the thousands of individual houses and farms, that lie ruined on the old soil of France; think of the sufferings of the helpless and the old, the hideous loss of life, of stored-up wealth, of natural and artistic beauty; and then let us ask ourselves again the old, old question—why has this happened? And let us go back again to the root facts, from which, whenever he or she considers them afresh—and they should be constantly considered afresh—every citizen of the Allied nations can only draw fresh courage to endure. The long and passionate preparation for war in Germany; the half-mad literature of a glorified "force" headed by the Bernhardis and Treitschkes, and repeated by a thousand smaller folk, before the war; the far more illuminating manifestoes of the intellectuals since the war; Germany's refusal of a conference, as proposed and pressed by Great Britain, in the week before August 4th, France's acceptance of it; Germany's refusal to respect the Belgian neutrality to which she had signed her name, France's immediate consent; the provisions of mercy and of humanity signed by Germany in the Hague Convention trampled, almost with a sneer, under foot; the jubilation over theLusitania, and the arrogant defence of all that has been most cruel and most criminal in the war, as necessary to Germany's interests, and therefore moral, therefore justified; let none—none!—of these things rest forgotten in our minds until peace is here, and justice done!
The German armies are capable of "no undisciplined cruelty," said the 93 Professors, without seeing how damning was the phrase. No!—theirs was a cruelty by order, meditated, organised, and deliberate. The stories of Senlis, of Vareddes, of Gerbéviller which I have specially chosen, as free from that element of sexual horror which repels many sensitive people from even trying to realise what has happened in this war, are evidences—one must insist again—of a national mind and quality, with which civilised Europe and civilised America can make no truce. And what folly lies behind the wickedness! Let me recall to American readers some of the phrases in the report of your former Minister in Belgium—Mr. Brand Whitlock—on the Belgian deportations, the "slave hunts" that Germany has carried out in Belgium and "which have torn from nearly every humble home in the land, a husband, father, son, or brother."
These proceedings [says Mr. Whitlock] place in relief the German capacity for blundering almost as sharply as the German capacity for cruelty. They have destroyed for generations any hope whatever of friendly relations between themselves and the Belgian people. For these things were done not, as with the early atrocities, in the heat of passion and the first lust of war, but by one of those deeds that make one despair of the future of the human race—a deed coldly planned, studiously matured, and deliberately and systematically executed, a deed so cruel that German soldiers are said to have wept in its execution, and so monstrous that even German officers are now said to be ashamed.
But the average German neither weeps nor blames. He is generally amazed, when he is not amused, by the state of feeling which such proceedings excite. And if he is an "intellectual," a professor, he will exhaust himself in ingenious and utterly callous defences of all that Germany has done or may do. An astonishing race—the German professors! The year before the war there was an historical congress in London. There was a hospitality committee, and my husband and I were asked to entertain some of the learned men. I remember one in particular—an old man with white hair, who with his wife and daughter joined the party after dinner. His name was Professor Otto von Gierke of the University of Berlin. I gathered from his conversation that he and his family had been very kindly entertained in London. His manner was somewhat harsh and over-bearing, but his white hair and spectacles gave him a venerable aspect, and it was clear that he and his wife and daughter belonged to a cultivated and intelligentmilieu. But who among his English hosts could possibly have imagined the thoughts and ideas in that grey head? I find a speech of his in a most illuminating book by a Danish professor on German Chauvinist literature. [Hurrah and Hallelujah!By J. P. Bang, D.D., Professor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen, translated by Jessie Bröchner.] The speech was published in a collection calledGerman Speeches in Hard Times, which contains names once so distinguished as those of Von Wilamovitz and Harnack.
Professor von Gierke's effusion begins with the usual German falsehoods as to the origin of the war, and then continues—"But now that we Germans are plunged in war, we will have it inall its grandeur and violence! Neither fear norpityshall stay our arm before it has completely brought our enemies to the ground." They shall be reduced to such a condition that they shall never again dare even to snarl at Germany. Then German Kultur will show its full loveliness and strength, enlightening "the understanding of the foreign races absorbed and incorporated into the Empire, and making them see that only from German kultur can they derive those treasures which they need for their own particular life."
At the moment when these lines were written—for the book was published early in the war—the orgy of murder and lust and hideous brutality which had swept through Belgium in the first three weeks of the war was beginning to be known in England; the traces of it were still fresh in town after town and village after village of that tortured land; while the testimony of its victims was just beginning to be sifted by the experts of the Bryce Commission.
The hostages of Vareddes, the helpless victims of Nomény, of Gerbéviller, of Sermaize, of Sommeilles, and a score of other places in France were scarcely cold in their graves. But the old white-haired professor stands there, unashamed, unctuously offering the kultur of his criminal nation to an expectant world! "And when the victory is won," he says complacently—"the whole world will stand open to us, our war expenses will be paid by the vanquished, the black-white-and-red flag will wave over all seas; our countrymen will hold highly respected posts in all parts of the world, and we shall maintain and extend our colonies."
God, forbid!So says the whole English-speaking race, you on your side of the sea, and we on ours.
But the feeling of abhorrence which is not, at such a moment as this, sternly and incessantly translated into deeds is of no account! So let me return to a last survey of the War. On my home journey from Nancy, I passed through Paris, and was again welcomed at G.H.Q. on my way to Boulogne. In Paris, the breathless news of the Germans' quickening retreat on the Somme and the Aisne was varied one morning by the welcome tidings of the capture of Bagdad; and at the house of one of the most distinguished of European publicists, M. Joseph Reinach, of theFigaro, I met, on our passage through, the lively, vigorous man, with his look of Irish vivacity and force—M. Painlevé—who only a few days later was to succeed General Lyautey as French Minister for War. At our own headquarters, I found opinion as quietly confident as before. We were on the point of entering Bapaume; the "pushing up" was going extraordinarily well, owing to the excellence of the staff-work, and the energy and efficiency of all the auxiliary services—the Engineers, and the Labour Battalions, all the makers of roads and railways, the builders of huts, and levellers of shell-broken ground. And the vital importance of the long struggle on the Somme was becoming every day more evident. Only about Russia, both in Paris and at G.H.Q., was there a kind of silence which meant great anxiety. Lord Milner and General Castelnau had returned from Petrograd. In Paris, at any rate, it was not believed that they brought good news. All the huge efforts of the Allies to supply Russia with money, munitions, and transport, were they to go for nothing, owing to some sinister and thwarting influence which seemed to be strangling the national life?
Then a few days after my return home, the great explosion came, and when the first tumult and dust of it cleared away, there, indeed, was a strangely altered Europe! From France, Great Britain, and America went up a great cry of sympathy, of congratulation. The Tsardom was gone!—the "dark forces" had been overthrown; the political exiles were free; and Freedom seemed to stand there on the Russian soil shading her bewildered eyes against the sun of victory, amazed at her own deed.
But ten weeks have passed since then, and it would be useless to disguise that the outburst of warm and sincere rejoicing that greeted the overthrow of the Russian autocracy has passed once more into anxiety. Is Russia going to count any more in this great struggle for a liberated Europe, or will the forces of revolution devour each other, till in the course of time the fated "saviour of society" appears, and old tyrannies come back? General Smuts, himself the hero of a national struggle which has ended happily for both sides and the world, has been giving admirable expression here to the thoughts of many hearts. First of all to the emotion with which all lovers of liberty have seen the all but bloodless fall of the old tyranny. "It might have taken another fifty years or a century of tragedy and suffering to have brought it about! But the enormous strain of this war has done it, and the Russian people stand free in their own house." Now, what will they do with their freedom? Ten weeks have passed, and the Russian armies are still disorganised, the Russian future uncertain. Meanwhile Germany has been able to throw against the Allies in France, and Austria has been able to throw against Italy on the Isonzo, forces which they think they need no longer against Russia, and the pace of victory has thereby been slackened. But General Smuts makes his eloquent appeal to the Russia which once held and broke Napoleon:
"Liberty is like young wine—it mounts to your head sometimes, and liberty, as a force in the world, requires organisation and discipline…. There must be organisation, and there must be discipline. The Russian people are learning to-day the greatest lesson of life—that to be free you must work very hard and struggle very hard. They have the sensation of freedom, now that their bonds and shackles are gone, and no doubt they feel the joy, the intoxication, of their new experience; but they are living in a world which is not governed by formulas, however cleverly devised, but in a world of brute force, and unless that is smashed, even liberty itself will suffer and cannot live."
Will the newly-freed forget those that are still suffering and bound?Will Russia forget Belgium?—and forget Serbia?
"Serbia was the reason why we went to war. She was going to be crushed under the Austrian heel, and Russia said this shall not be allowed. Serbia has in that way become the occasion probably of the greatest movement for freedom the world has ever seen. Are we going to forget Serbia? No! We must stand by those martyr peoples who have stood by the great forces of the world. If the great democracies of the world become tired, if they become faint, if they halt by the way, if they leave those little ones in the lurch, then they shall pay for it in wars more horrible than human mind can foresee. I am sure we shall stand by those little ones. They have gone under, but we have not gone under. England and America, France and Russia, have not gone under, and we shall see them through, and shame on us if ever the least thought enters our minds of not seeing them through."
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Noble and sincere words! One can but hope that the echoes of them may reach the ear and heart of Russia.
But if towards Russia the sky that seemed to have cleared so suddenly is at present clouded and obscure—"westward, look, the land is bright!"
A fortnight after the abdication of the Tsar, Congress met in Washington, and President Wilson's speech announcing war between Germany and America had rung through the world. All that you, sir, the constant friend and champion of the Allies, and still more of their cause, and all that those who feel with you in the States have hoped for so long, is now to be fulfilled. It may take some time for your country, across those thousand miles of sea, torealisethe war, to feel it in every nerve, as we do. But in these seven weeks—how much you have done, as well as said! You have welcomed the British mission in a way to warm our British hearts; you have shown the French mission how passionately America feels for France. You have sent us American destroyers, which have already played their part in a substantial reduction of the submarine losses. You have lent the Allies 150 millions sterling. You have passed a Bill which will ultimately give you an army of two million men. You are raising such troops as will immediately increase the number of Americans in France to 100,000—equalling five German divisions. You are sending us ten thousand doctors to England and France, and hundreds of them have already arrived. You have doubled the personnel of your Navy, and increased your Regular Army by nearly 180,000 men. You are constructing 3,500 aeroplanes, and training 6,000 airmen. And you are now talking of 100,000 aeroplanes! Not bad, for seven weeks!
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For the Allies also those seven weeks have been full of achievement. On Easter Monday, April 9th, the Battle of Arras began, with the brilliant capture by the Canadians of that very Vimy Ridge I had seen on March 2nd, from the plateau of Notre Dame de Lorette, lying in the middle distance under the spring sunshine. That exposed hill-side—those batteries through which I had walked—those crowded roads, and travelling guns, those marching troops and piled ammunition dumps!—how the recollection of them gave accent and fire to the picture of the battle as the telegrams from the front built it up day by day before one's eyes! Week by week, afterwards, with a mastery in artillery and in aviation that nothing could withstand, the British Army pushed on through April. After the first great attack which gave us the Vimy Ridge and brought our line close to Lens in the north, and to the neighbourhood of Bullecourt in the south, the 23rd of April saw the second British advance, which gave us Gravrelle and Guemappe, and made further breaches in the Hindenburg line. On April 16th the French made their magnificent attack in Champagne, with 10,000 prisoners on the first day (increased to 31,000 by May 24th)—followed by the capture of the immensely important positions of Moronvillers and Craonne. Altogether the Allies in little more than a month took 50,000 prisoners, and large numbers of guns. General Allenby, for instance, captured 150 guns, General Home 64, while General Byng formed three "Pan-Germanic groups" out of his. We recovered many square miles of the robbed territory of France—40 villages one day, 100 villages another; while the condition in which the Germans had left both the recovered territory and its inhabitants has steeled once more the determination of the nations at war with Germany to put an end to "this particular form of ill-doing on the part of an uncivilised race."
During May there has been no such striking advance on either the French or British fronts, though Roeux and Bullecourt, both very important points, from their bearing on the Drocourt-Quéant line, behind which lie Douai and Cambrai, have been captured by the British, and the French have continuously bettered their line and defied the most desperate counter-attacks. But May has been specially Italy's month! The Italian offensive on the Isonzo, and the Carso, beginning on May 14th, in ten days achieved more than any onlooker had dared to hope. In the section between Tolmino and Gorizia where the Isonzo runs in a fine gorge, the western bank belonging to Italy, and the eastern to Austria, all the important heights on the eastern bank across the river, except one that may fall to them any day, have been carried by the superb fighting of the Italians, amongst whom Dante's fellow citizens, the Florentine regiment, and regiments drawn from the rich Tuscan hills have specially distinguished themselves. While on the Carso, that rock-wilderness which stretches between Gorizia and Trieste, where fighting, especially in hot weather, supplies a supreme test of human endurance, the Italians have pushed on and on, from point to point, till now they are within ten miles of Trieste. British artillery is with the Italian Army, and British guns have been shelling military quarters and stores in the outskirts of Trieste, while British monitors are co-operating at sea. The end is not yet, for the Austrians will fight to their last man for Trieste; and owing to the Russian situation the Austrians have been able to draw reinforcements from Galicia, which have seriously stiffened the task of Italy. But the omens are all good, and the Italian nation is more solidly behind its army than ever before.
So that in spite of the apparent lull in the Allied offensive on the French front, during the later weeks of May, all has really been going well. The only result of the furious German attempts to recover the ground lost in April has been to exhaust the strength of the attackers; and the Allied cause is steadily profited thereby. Our own troops have never been more sure of final victory. Let me quote a soldier's plain and graphic letter, recently published:
"This break-away from trench war gives us a much better time. We know now that we are the top dogs, and that we are keeping the Germans on the move. And they're busy wondering all the time; they don't know where the next whack is coming from. Mind you, I'm far from saying that we can get them out of the Hindenburg line without a lot of fighting yet, but it is only a question of time. It's a different sensation going over the top now from what it was in the early days. You see, we used to know that our guns were not nearly so many as the Germans', and that we hadn't the stuff to put over. Now we just climb out of a trench and walk behind a curtain of fire. It makes a difference. It seems to me we are steadily beating the Boche at his own game. He used to be strong in the matter of guns, but that's been taken from him. He used gas—do you remember the way the Canadians got the first lot? Well, now our gas shells are a bit too strong for him, and so are our flame shells. I bet he wishes now that he hadn't thought of his flame-throwers! … Then there's another thing, and that's the way our chaps keep improving. The Fritzes are not so good as they used to be. You get up against a bunch now and again that fight well, but we begin to see more of the 'Kamerad' business. It's as much up to the people at home to see this thing through as it is to the men out here. We need the guns and shells to blow the Germans out of the strong places that they've had years to build and dig, and the folks at home can leave the rest to us. We can do the job all right if they back us up and don't get tired. I think we've shown them that too. You'll get all that from the papers, but maybe it comes better from a soldier. You can take it from me that it's true. I've seen the beginning, and I've been in places where things were pretty desperate for us, and I've seenthe start of the finish. The difference is marvellous. I've only had an army education, and it might strike you that I'm not able to judge. I'm a soldier though, and I look at it as a soldier. I say, give us the stuff, keep on giving us the tools and the men to use them, and—it may be soon or it may be long—we'll beat the Boche to his knees."
The truth seems to be that the Germans are outmatched, first and foremost, in aircraft and in guns. You will remember the quiet certainty of our young Flight-Commander on March 1st—"When the next big offensive comes, we shall down them, just as we did on the Somme." The prophecy has been made good, abundantly good!—at the cost of many a precious life. The air observation on our side has been far better and more daring than that on the German side; and the work of our artillery has been proportionately more accurate and more effective.
As to guns and ammunition, "the number of heavy shells fired in the first week of the present offensive"—says an official account—"was nearly twice as great as it was in the first week of the Somme offensive, and in the second week it was 6-1/2 times as great as it was in the second week of the Somme offensive. As a result of this great artillery fire, which had never been exceeded in the whole course of the war, a great saving of British life has been effected." And no praise can be too high for our gunners. In a field where, two years ago, Germany had the undisputed predominance, we have now beaten her alike in the supply of guns and in the daring and efficiency of our gunners.
Nevertheless, let there be no foolish underestimate of the still formidable strength of the Germans. The British and French missions will have brought to your Government all available information on this point. There can be no doubt that a "wonderful" effort, as one of our Ministers calls it, has been made by Germany during the past winter. She has mobilised all her people for the war as she has never done yet. She has increased her munitions and put fresh divisions in the field. The estimates of her present fighting strength given by our military writers and correspondents do not differ very much.
Colonel Repington, inThe Times, puts the German fighting men on both fronts at 4,500,000, with 500,000 on the lines of communication, and a million in the German depots. Mr. Belloc's estimate is somewhat less, but not materially different. Both writers agree that we are in presence of Germany's last and greatest effort, that she has no more behind, and that if the Allies go on as they have begun—and now with the help of America—this summer should witness the fulfilment at least of that forecast which I reported to you in my earlier letters as so general among the chiefs of our Army in France—i.e."this year will see the wardecided, but may not see it ended." Since I came home, indeed, more optimistic prophecies have reached me from France. For some weeks after the American declaration of war, "We shall be home by Christmas!" was the common cry—and amongst some of the best-informed.
But the Russian situation has no doubt: reacted to some extent on these April hopes. And it is clear that, during April and early May, under the stimulus of the submarine successes, German spirits have temporarily revived. Never have the Junkers been more truculent, never have the Pan-Germans talked wilder nonsense about "annexation" and "indemnities." Until quite recently at any rate, the whole German nation—except no doubt a cautious and intelligent few at the real sources of information—believed that the submarine campaign would soon "bring England to her knees." They were so confident, that they ran the last great risk—they brought America into the War!
How does it look now? The situation is still critical and dangerous. But I recall the half-smiling prophecy of my naval host, in the middle of March, as we stood together on the deck of his ship, looking over his curtseying and newly-hatched flock of destroyers gathered round him in harbour. Was it not, perhaps, as near the mark as that of our airmen hosts on March 1st has proved itself to be? "Have patience and you'll see great things! The situation is serious, but quite healthy." Two months, and a little more, since the words were spoken:—and week by week, heavy as it still is, the toll of submarine loss is at least kept in check, and your Navy, now at work with ours—most fitting and welcome Nemesis!—is helping England to punish and baffle the "uncivilised race," who, if they had their way, would blacken and defile for ever the old and glorious record of man upon the sea. You, who store such things in your enviable memory, will recollect how in the Odyssey, that kindly race of singers and wrestlers, the Phaeacians, are the escorts and conveyers of all who need and ask for protection at sea. They keep the waterways for civilised men, against pirates and assassins, as your nation and ours mean to keep them in the future. It is true that a treacherous sea-god, jealous of any interference with his right to slay and drown at will, smote the gallant ship that bore Odysseus safely home, on her return, and made a rock of her for ever. Poseidon may stand for the Kaiser of the story. He is gone, however, with all his kin! But the humane and civilising tradition of the sea, which this legend carries back into the dawn of time—it shall be for the Allies—shall it not?—in this war, to rescue it, once and for ever, from the criminal violence which would stain the free paths of ocean with the murder and sudden death of those who have been in all history the objects of men's compassion and care—the wounded, the helpless, the woman, and the child.
* * * * *
For the rest, let me gather up a few last threads of this second instalment of our British story.
Of that vast section of the war concerned with the care and transport of the wounded, and the health of the Army, it is not my purpose to speak at length in these Letters. Like everything else it has been steadily and eagerly perfected during the past year. Never have the wounded in battle, in any war, been so tenderly and skilfully cared for;—never have such intelligence and goodwill been applied to the health conditions of such huge masses of men. Nor is it necessary to dwell again, as I did last year, on the wonderful work of women in the war. It has grown in complexity and bulk; women-workers in munitions are now nearly a fifth of the whole body; but essentially the general aspect of it has not changed much in the last twelve months.
But what has changed isthe food situation, owing partly to submarine attack, and partly to the general shortage in the food-supply of the world. In one of my earlier letters I spoke with anxiety of the still unsettled question—Will the house-wives and mothers of the nation realise—in time—our food necessities? Will their thrift-work in the homes complete the munition-work of women in the factories? Or must we submit to the ration-system, with all its cumbrous inequalities, and its hosts of officials; because the will and intelligence of our people, which have risen so remarkably to the other tasks of this war, are not equal to the task of checking food consumption without compulsion?
It looks now as though they would be equal. Since my earlier letter the country has been more and more generally covered with the National War Savings Committees which have been carrying into food-economy the energy they spent originally on the raising of the last great War Loan. The consumption of bread and flour throughout the country has gone down—not yet sufficiently—but enough to show that the idea has taken hold:—"Save bread, and help victory!" And since your declaration of war it strengthens our own effort to know that America with her boundless food-supplies is standing by, and that her man-and sea-power are now to be combined with ours in defeating the last effort of Germany to secure by submarine piracy what she cannot win on the battle-field.
Meanwhile changes which will have far-reaching consequences after the war are taking place in our own home food-supply. The long neglect of our home agriculture, the slow and painful dwindling of our country populations, are to come to an end. The Government calls for the sowing of three million additional acres of wheat in Great Britain; and throughout the country the steam tractors are at work ploughing up land which has either never borne wheat, or which has ceased to bear it for nearly a century. Thirty-five thousand acres of corn land are to be added to the national store in this county of Hertfordshire alone. The wages of agricultural labourers, have risen by more than one-third. The farmers are to be protected and encouraged as they never have been since the Cobdenite revolution; and the Corn Production Bill now passing through Parliament shows what the grim lesson of this war has done to change the old and easy optimism of our people.
As to the energy that has been thrown into other means of food-supply, let the potatoes now growing in the flower-beds in front of Buckingham Palace stand for a symbol of it! The potato-crop of this year—barring accidents—will be enormous; and the whole life of our country villages has been quickened by the effort that has been made to increase the produce of the cottage gardens and allotments. The pride and pleasure of the women and the old men in what they have been able to do at home, while their sons and husbands are fighting at the front, is moving to see. Food prices are very high; life in spite of increased wages is hard. But the heart of England is set on winning this war; and the letters which pass between the fathers and mothers in this village where I live, and the sons at the front, in whom they take a daily and hourly pride, would not give Germany much comfort could she read them. I take this little scene, as an illustration, fresh from the life of my own village:
Imagine a visitor, on behalf of the food-economy movement, endeavouring to persuade a village mother to come to some cookery lessons organised by the local committee.
Mrs. S. is discovered sitting at a table on which are preparations for a meal. She receives the visitor and the visitor's remarks with an air—quite unconscious—of tragic meditation; and her honest labour-stained hand sweeps over the things on the table.
"Cheese!"—she says, at last—"eightpencethe 'arf pound!"
A pause. The hand points in another direction.
"Lard—sevenpence—that scrubby little piece!Sugar! sixpence 'a'penny the pound. The best part of two shillin's gone! Whateverarewe comin' to?"
Gloom descends on the little kitchen. The visitor is at a loss—when suddenly the round, motherly face changes.—"Buttherenow! I'm goin' to smile, whatever 'appens. I'm not one as is goin' to give in! And we 'ad a letter from Arthur [her son in the trenches] this morning, to say 'is Company's on the list for leave, and 'e's applied.—Oh dear, Miss, just tothinkof it!"
Then, with a catch in her voice:
"But it's not the comin' home, Miss—it'sthe goin' back again! Yes,I'll come to the cookin', Miss, if Ipossiblycan!"
There's the spirit of our country folk—patriotic, patient, true.
As to labour conditions generally. I spoke, perhaps, in my first letter rather too confidently, for the moment, of the labour situation. There has been one serious strike among the engineers since I began to write, and a good many minor troubles. But neither the Tyne nor the Clyde was involved, and though valuable time was lost, in the end the men were brought back to work quite as much by the pressure of public opinion among their own comrades, men and women, as by any Government action. The Government have since taken an important step from which much is hoped, by dividing up the country into districts and appointing local commissioners to watch over and, if they can, remove the causes of "unrest"—causes which are often connected with the inevitable friction of a colossal transformation, and sometimes with the sheer fatigue of the workers, whose achievement—munition-workers, ship-wrights, engineers—during these three years has been nothing short of marvellous.
As to finance, the colossal figures of last year, of which I gave a summary inEngland's Effort,have been much surpassed. The Budget of Great Britain for this year, including advances to our Allies, reaches the astounding figure of two thousand three hundred million sterling. Our war expenditure is now close upon six million sterling a day (£5,600,000). Of this the expenditure on the Army and Navy and munitions has risen from a daily average of nearly three millions sterling, as it stood last year, to a daily average of nearly five millions.
But the nation has not spent in vain!
"Compare the first twenty-four days of the fighting on the Somme last year,"—said Mr. Bonar Law in a recent speech—"with the first twenty-four days of the operations of this spring. Four times as much territory had been taken from the enemy in this offensive as was taken in the Somme, against the resistance of double the number of German divisions. And of those divisions just one-half have had to be withdrawn—shattered—from the fighting line while the British casualties in the offensive have been from 50 to 75 per cent, less than the casualties in the Somme fighting."
Consider, too, the news which is still fresh as I finish this letter—(June 11th)—of the victory of Messines; perhaps the most complete, the most rounded success—so far—that has fallen to the British armies in the war! Last year, in three months' fighting on the Somme, we took the strongly fortified Albert ridge, and forced the German retreat of last February. On April 8th of this year began the battle of Arras which gave us the Vimy Ridge, and a free outlook over the Douai plain. And finally, on June 7th, four days ago, the Messines ridge, which I saw last year on March 2nd—apparently impregnable and inaccessible!—from a neighbouring hill, with the German trenches scored along its slopes, was captured by General Plumer and his splendid army in a few hours, after more than twelve months' preparation, with lighter casualties than have ever fallen to a British attack before, with heavy losses to the enemy, large captures of guns, and 7,000 prisoners. Our troops have since moved steadily forward; and the strategic future is rich in possibilities. The Germans have regained nothing; and the German press has not yet dared to tell the German people of the defeat. Let us remember also the victorious campaign of this year in Mesopotamia; and the welcome stroke of the past week in Greece, by which King "Tino" has been at last dismissed, and the Liberal forces of the Greek nation set free.
* * * * *
Aye, we do consider—we do remember—these things! We feel that the goal is drawing slowly but steadily nearer, that ultimate victory is certain, and with victory, the dawn of a better day for Europe. But who, least of all a woman, can part from the tragic spectacle of this war without bitterness of spirit?
"Who will give us back our children?"
Wickedness and wrong will find their punishment, and the dark Hours now passing, in the torch-race of time, will hand the light on to Hours of healing and of peace. But the dead return not. It is they whose appealing voices seem to be in the air to-day, as we think of America.
Among the Celts of ancient Brittany there was a belief which still survives in the traditions of the Breton peasants and in the name of part of the Breton coast. Every All Souls' Night, says a story at least as old as the sixth century, the souls of the dead gather on the cliffs of Brittany, above that bay which is still called the "Bai des Trépassés," waiting for their departure across the ocean to a far region of the west, where the gods sit for judgment, and the good find peace. On that night, the fishermen hear at midnight mysterious knockings at their doors. They go down to the water's edge, and behold, there are boats unknown to them, with no visible passengers. But the fishermen take the oars, and though they see nothing, they feel the presence of the souls crowding into the boats, and they row, on and on, into the west, past the farthest point of any land they know. Suddenly, they feel the boats lightened of all that weight of spirits, and the souls are gone—streaming out with solemn cries and longing into the wide illimitable ocean of the west, in search of some invisible shore.
So now the call of those hundreds of thousands who have given their young lives—so beloved, so rich in promise!—for their country and the freedom of men, is in your ears and ours. The dead are witnesses of the compact between you and us. For that cause to which they brought their ungrudged sacrifice has now laid its resistless claim on you. Together, the free peoples of Europe and America have now to carry it to victory —victory, just, necessary, and final.