A safe stronghold our God is still,A trusty shield and weapon;He'll help us clear from all the illThat hath us now o'ertaken.The ancient prince of HellHath risen with purpose fell;Strong mail of craft and powerHe weareth in this hour;On earth is not his fellow.
A safe stronghold our God is still,A trusty shield and weapon;He'll help us clear from all the illThat hath us now o'ertaken.The ancient prince of HellHath risen with purpose fell;Strong mail of craft and powerHe weareth in this hour;On earth is not his fellow.
A safe stronghold our God is still,A trusty shield and weapon;He'll help us clear from all the illThat hath us now o'ertaken.The ancient prince of HellHath risen with purpose fell;Strong mail of craft and powerHe weareth in this hour;On earth is not his fellow.
A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon;
He'll help us clear from all the ill
That hath us now o'ertaken.
The ancient prince of Hell
Hath risen with purpose fell;
Strong mail of craft and power
He weareth in this hour;
On earth is not his fellow.
After that a sudden extraordinary and fascinating thing happened. The preacher, with his strong, calm voice invited the audience to pray with him; Pater noster.... The men stood, the women knelt down with the children, struck by a sort of mystic terror.
"Vater unser der du bist im Himmel...."
Five thousand people of all classes, of all social conditions, everyone with a father or a brother or a husband to pray for, recited the Paternoster in the theatre.
They recited it in a low voice, like the murmur of a quiet river.
Then there was a short silence followed by the benediction, recited by the black-bearded monk, and the crowd walked out quietly.
I walked out with the others, and I found myself a little distance from one of the smartest concert-halls in Berlin, in which a certain Professor Blüthner was to deliver a lecture, the title of which had attracted my attention when I had seen it announced in the morning newspapers; it was, "Us, Italy, and England."
As I was just in time I stepped in.
The audience was very select, the five marks admission being devoted to the fund for soldiers fighting at the front. Most of what is left of Berlin society was there.
With polished words the lecturer served out to his hearers the most astonishing theory: England took part in the struggle, not in defence of Belgian neutrality, but in fear of Italy becoming a great Mediterranean Power.
How? The explanation, according to the lecturer, was simple.
The Anglo-French Naval Convention imposed on France the necessity of keeping her fleet in the Mediterranean. If England had kept neutral she would have allowed France to bring her fleet out to protect her defenceless coast; but in that case Italy would have been master of the situation in the Mediterranean.
That is why England preferred to declare war. Clever and simple, this explanation, is it not? What will Italy do?
Mr. Blüthner knows quite well.
Italy, he is quite certain, will decide to join Germany before long. Is she not the motherland of Machiavelli, and Machiavelli, we all know, was decidedly against any form of neutrality. Neutrals, said the lecturer, willbe hated by the beaten nations at the end of the war and despised by the victors.
Therefore Italy will join the German side, and the old ideal of the German Empire (as wrote Bernhardi) will again come to life in a federation of Germany, Austria, and Italy.
I wonder if, in a few months' time, this delightful Mr. Blüthner will be of the same opinion?
During my first visit to Berlin travel by railway was almost impossible, so slow, crowded, and irregular was the service at that time. Now it has been completely restored, and, if anything, probably better than it ever was, thanks to the small number of passengers. Even dining and sleeping cars are obtainable on the principal lines.
In the train which took me from Berlin to Vienna the civilian passengers were no more than half a dozen; all the other passengers were officers and soldiers, mostly wounded Austrians returning to their motherland. Some were very seriously injured and groaned continuously; others had horrible woundsbadly bandaged; some were disfigured; some had had limbs amputated.
They begged from the other passengers a few coppers to buy fruits or cigars, but hardly anybody took any notice of them. They were nearly all cavalrymen, and, as is usual in Austrian regiments, were of different nationalities. This explains the lack of fellowship among them—the lack of a sentiment which generally so much sustains soldiers of other nations.
At a frontier station we were able to buy some Austrian papers. They gave us a sort of foretaste of life in Vienna. There was very little news, but talk about wonderful victories in Galicia and Serbia (official), followed by a long white space where a comment had been cut out by the Censor.
Two hours before publication a complete proof of every Austrian paper must be presented to the Censor. Anything not considered fit for publication is cut away; consequently the paper is often much ornamented with blank spaces.
The big station at Vienna presents a really astonishing sight. Wounded soldiers and refugees are everywhere. Outside the station it is the same—and it is the same in the large central streets, in the parks, in the churches. Vienna is the first great town completely transformed by the war that I have seen.
On the broad footways at the sides of the streets there are two unending processions of tired, famished-looking refugees. Most of them are from Galicia, but there are thousands also from other provinces of the Empire.
The authorities do not know where to place them; they do not know what to do. They make the refugees walk with all that they still possess on their shoulders. Often a sack and an old chair or some other piece of furniture will be carried about for days and days.
These people have the eyes of those who have seen the horrors of war without knowing what it is all about, without asking or beingable to understand why their fields should be destroyed, their houses burned, and their pacific existences overturned by the calamity. Vienna does not know what to do with them.
The subscription list started for the refugees has not been successful, and Vienna is invaded by an enormous number of women, children, and old men, penniless, without clothes, and with no means of subsistence. It is very difficult to suggest a solution to such a condition of things. The Government has sent 60,000 to 70,000 of the fugitives to towns in the west; but there the same phenomenon repeats itself on a smaller scale.
The first effect of such a condition of things is the enormous increase in the prices of foodstuffs. Milk, potatoes, meat, sugar, etc., are double the usual price; eggs have become a food for the rich, and bread, even of very bad quality, is expensive and scarce.
Special decrees have been issued with the purpose of restricting the use of flour to no more than 50 per cent. in bread and 60 percent. in cakes, which are not allowed to be made, even in private houses, more often than twice a week.
In the restaurants almost every dish has become more expensive, and there are no more dinners at fixed prices.
Coal is a luxury, it being an absolute impossibility to get any from the Westphalian mines. Gas has nearly doubled in price, and poor people who could not pay their bills had it cut off immediately.
Most of the hotels are full of families of the Galician aristocracy. These families seem to be living a very gay, frivolous, and expensive life. Smart carriages and motor cars run about the streets that are full of starving people; while ladies, in £1,000 furs, and gentlemen, smoking half-sovereign cigars, lounge about the hotels. I have never in my life seen a more insolent and less appropriate display of wealth. The rich Galicians show no inclination to help the poorer refugees. "We are refugees, too," they say.
Outside the stations I saw a crowd ofpeople waiting for soldiers to arrive. Having lost faith in what the newspapers say, and aching for news, the population is trying to get it directly from those coming from the front. Nearly all the decently dressed Viennese people wear mourning and nearly all have the armlet of the Red Cross.
The number of wounded in Vienna is astonishing. All the schools, public buildings, assembly rooms, most of the theatres and halls, and even some of the pavilions which generally shelter picture shows and other attractions, including the famous Circus, have been converted into hospitals. All the Viennese are trying to nurse soldiers to the best of their ability; but everything is scarce, from bandages to medicines, from cotton wool to beds and litters.
A new calamity seems to be approaching now. Smallpox is breaking out in the poorer quarters and is claiming many victims, especially amongst the refugees. Another epidemic that is visiting Vienna is cholera.The fact is being kept very dark by the authorities to avoid panic; but it seems that during one week more than 500 lives were lost through the terrible disease.
While taking my after-lunch coffee I was astonished to hear at my back a conversation taking place in the Venetian dialect; two soldiers were talking about the war, and their accents did not leave me in any doubt as to their nationality. I went to them and, after a few minutes, won their confidence and got them to talk.
They had been wounded in Serbia and had been sent back to Vienna to be cured. Now they were well and were going back to the front again next day. I shall never forget the two poor young fellows; one of them was just twenty, the other about twenty-five; and both were natives of Trieste.
They confirmed all that has been said about the system of the Austrian officers, and added things which I should not have believed had I not heard them from the victims of the atrocities themselves.
They told me that in the Austrian Army the word of reproach has been substituted by a spit in the face or a stroke with a switch; the whip and the revolver in the hands of officers at the back of their men serves to send them forward. The hesitation of a second is punished by a shot. The soldiers obey; but during the struggle there is always a bullet for the brutal officer which does not come from the enemy's lines, and which avenges the murdered private.
All sorts of tortures and insults are inflicted on the soldiers.
I could not find a word of consolation for the poor chaps who were going back to such an infernal life. I shook hands with them and walked away.
All the other soldiers—German or French, Russian or Serbian—are, after all, fighting somebody they detest for the victory of their Motherland; but these poor chaps, forced to give their lives for a nation they detest, to fight men against whom they have no hate and who could perhaps help them to get backtheir independence, are the most pathetic figures of the whole war.
* * *
The Austrian war loan seems to have been an absolute failure. Nobody wants to buy shares, and the few millions subscribed were taken by Government employees, who were forced to do so. The high financial world and the aristocracy have been very stingy; so now the Government is trying to get at the small purses.
On the café table, at the post offices, and in the hotels numerous pamphlets are to be found saying that everybody ought to subscribe at least twenty-five crowns, not only as a contribution to the nation's need, but also as an excellent investment. Nobody seems to be anxious to make the excellent investment.
It is the middle class which is said to be suffering most under these conditions, for they have no money in the bank, they hardly manage to make any money at all at the present moment, and, at the same time, theydon't want to admit that they are in need of anything.
Vienna has, at the present moment, scores of families—well-dressed and well-connected—who are starving at home, families which, before the war, used to live up to their full income and generally above it, and which, now the father is unemployed or at the front, are absolutely penniless and too proud to accept anything from public charity.
But the Viennese is certainly one of the most light-hearted persons on earth—the war is going badly, the town is full of starving people, the empire is engaged in a dangerous adventure, the end of which he does not take the trouble to prognosticate; but what does it matter? He talks about the war to crack a joke on the subject; he sees and laughs at the faults of his allies; he manages to have a good time as far as possible. The few theatres left open are crowded, as well as the cafés, the cabarets, and all other places of amusement.
About politics, or the conduct of the war,he does not care to talk. The argument is sad and it is not even very safe to say exactly what one thinks on the subject.
If anybody is heard talking pessimistically about the war he is denounced to the authorities. A case is made against him, and the imprudent chatterer is almost certain to be condemned. I know of a man who got two months' imprisonment for having said that he did not believe the newspapers.
* * *
Besides the hospitals fixed up in numerous picture-galleries, theatres, university buildings and private houses, the Prater's constructions given up to depôts, magazines, and aeroplane sheds, and the complicated system arranged for the collection of money and comforts for the troops, all of which have altered considerably the general appearance of the city, the thing which astonished me most was the activity of a society which bears the harmonious name of "K. u. K. Oesterreich-Ungarischer-National-Sprachen-Gebrauchs-Verein," the nearest translationof which I can think of is "Society for the exclusive use of the national language in the Austro-Hungarian Empire."
Vienna is certainly one of the towns outside France which shows a strong French character, and the language, as well as the life of the whole city, bears evident marks of it. Well, this society wants to rid the Viennese slang of French words, as well as of all words not in the German dictionary. The first effects of this movement have been to make numerous hotels, cafés, and cabarets change names, and the publication of pamphlets, distributed freely all over the town, in which are full lists of thetaboowords, as well as of the numerous French and English Christian names which are quite usual in Vienna, and which, it is requested, should now be given up.
However, the great majority of Viennese people laugh at this mania; the Chauvinistic spirit is not very much developed in Vienna, and the hatred of England, which is Berlin's strongest feeling, is hardly noticeable here.
* * *
We have become so used to regarding Switzerland as an all-the-year-round playground, and the Swiss as a race of hotel-keepers, waiters, and guides, that many people were quite surprised to learn, when Switzerland mobilised, that she could put an army of 250,000 in the field.
Switzerland, which has been for centuries the battlefield of European nations, has understood that even her perpetual neutrality, guaranteed by the Powers, could not save her from the danger of an invasion if she did not boast a fairly strong army, and in 1874 she organised a proper military service.
A regular army as known in other countries Switzerland does not possess, but she has an admirably organised militia, an army of citizen soldiers. The German Emperor, during his last visit to Switzerland, in September, 1912 (during the first one, nineteen years before, he had a much more enthusiastic reception), assisted at the manœuvres of the Swiss army, and his dream of a German Switzerland as a "Germanic Dependence" must have had a very severe shock.
His reception was nothing more than polite, and all the shouting and flag-waving part had to be done by a large portion of the 300,000 German subjects living in Switzerland, who took the trouble to go to Berne specially to see their Kaiser in his carefully chosen uniform. William II., being now aware that the Swiss nation does not mean to preserve her neutrality by sending troops only to the Franco-Italian frontier, will realise that the fact that the Swiss President carefully avoided showing him, or any of his officers, the fortificationsof the German frontier was not a mere coincidence.
It was just a few days after this famous visit that a Franco-Swiss newspaper printed this wonderful little paragraph about the German Emperor:—"People have so often talked about the cult of peace without believing in it that one may finally be permitted to believe in it without talking about it."
In any case, the Kaiser, as soon as he was back in Berlin, sent to the Swiss Government 2,000 yards of grey-blue cloth to dress a group of the Swiss infantry troops, which at that time were still wearing very dark uniforms. The Kaiser observed that those uniforms would be very conspicuous in wartime, and his present of cloth was most appreciated, and lately, with a slight modification in the shade, adopted.
Troops dressed in this way are now watching the German frontier.
Though the Swiss recruit has a very short training, he is quite effective as a soldier.As a schoolboy he has a proper physical training, and when he leaves school he generally joins a rifle club. At twenty he is liable to military service, which for every Swiss lasts a period of twenty-five years. During the first year he is called out for recruits' service, which in the infantry lasts forty-five days, in the cavalry eighty days, and in the field artillery fifty-five days. On completing his first year he joins the Élite, or active army, and remains in it for twelve years. On leaving the Élite men pass to the Landwehr, in which they remain until their twenty-fifth year of service.
A third line of troops for home defence is furnished by the Landsturm, which is composed of all able-bodied citizens between the ages of seventeen and fifty who are not embodied in the Élite or Landwehr.
The Federal Army thus constructed may be said in round numbers to consist of:—Élite, 135,000; Landwehr, 82,000; and Landsturm, 63,000; total, 280,000—an astonishing figure if one considers the totalpopulation of Switzerland and how cheaply this army is obtained.
* * *
Before the beginning of this war one must admit there was a sort of ill-feeling in the Swiss Confederation against France. To protect her national industries the Republic used to be very strict on the subject of imports from Switzerland, and the custom tariffs for exportation of goods to France used to be much higher than those upon exports into Germany or Italy. Since the war broke out everything has changed; the example of Belgium and of what happened to that unfortunate nation, for the sole reason that she was "in the way of the Germans," has made Switzerland think how analogous is her own situation with the situation of Belgium.
The so-called "verbal treaty" existing with Germany stood little chance of being respected after the way in which the regular treaty with Belgium had been violated.
At the very beginning of the campaignthere was great fear of France trying to pass through Switzerland, fear increased artificially by the Swiss Press, which has always been frankly in favour of Germany. But now the Swiss population begins to realise how things are really going, and their attitude is really and strictly neutral.
It appears that the respect and ingratiating attitude towards Germany shown by Switzerland at the beginning of the war was the usual behaviour of the small weak boy towards the school bully. Moreover, there was some excuse for this. It is very difficult to obtain any papers other than German in Switzerland, and all the calumnies printed in them were taken by the Swiss population for gospel truth.
Now some of the Berne papers begin to show a little more independence, and print side by side the different officialcommuniquésof the various nations.
The Government has begun to think seriously about the food supply question. Supposing Italy should go to war—which, itis realised, may quite well happen any day—what would happen to Switzerland, surrounded by Germany, Austria, France, and Italy? Where could she get the foodstuffs she is bound to import?
Large depôts and stores of all kinds have been arranged, and severe measures have been taken against contraband runners, who up to October last were carrying on extensive operations. The Government has monopolised the mills and the whole of the wheat reserves, as well as all imports, which are taken up by the Government and sold at standard prices and in no larger quantities than is absolutely indispensable.
All the Swiss people I came across seemed to be occupied more by their commercial interests, badly hit as they are by the war, than by anything else. They only wish for the war to cease, the sooner the better.
There are hardly any foreigners in Switzerland, though some Swiss hotel-keepers have been advertising both in England and Germany: in England thatthe German managers and waiters had been removed; in Germany that no English guests would be received in their hotels.
However, business was very slack, and everybody seemed very pessimistic about the coming summer season.
Though the sentence, "Politically we have nothing to get and nothing to lose," is often repeated, I met somebody who showed me that the great crisis has awakened hopes of national development even in this quiet, business-like little country.
At the Bubenberg, a large Berne café of world-wide fame, I met a Swiss ex-officer whose white hair saved him from the danger of the Landsturm service. In front of him, on the marble table, a large map of East Switzerland was wide open, and he was tracing a few mysterious lines on it with a blue pencil. When I asked him about it, he told me that the north frontier of Switzerland could never be safe unless it was a "natural" one.
"Our canton of Shaffausen," said he, "iscompletely isolated among German land. We want this little piece of territory between Ludnigshafen, on the Boden-see, and Bargen. We want also the Wutach frontier, from the spot where this river marks our frontier with Germany down to the Rhine."
"And what about your neutrality?" I asked him.
"Oh, the neutrality,mon ami, could not mean much in a general modification of the European map; and beside that,vous savez l'apetit vient en mangeant; and if everybody has a piece of Germany, why should we keep out of the feast?"
It will be just a hundred years next September since the Prussian Principality of Neuchatel became a Swiss canton. Well, after all, the old Swiss captain's idea would be a rather smart way of celebrating a centenary.
"What will Italy do?" The question is often repeated in the newspapers of the capitals of Europe. The interest in the attitude of Italy, the only Great European Power which has not, to the time of writing, taken a part in the war, seems to increase every day.
For one who is here, in Rome, the answer can hardly be doubtful. Italy looks very much like a country getting ready for war; like a country that understands to the utmost that this is an occasion on which to fulfil her national ambition—an occasion that will never return.
When the war broke out, Italy foundherself in a peculiar position. Bound by the decrepit Triple Alliance to Austria and Germany, but with her interests, feeling, and sympathies on the side of the Entente, Italy did not, unfortunately, feel strong enough to take a decision straight away. Her army, especially the artillery, was in need of much material; the Tripoli war, the plan and conduct of which was marred by the very same mistakes England committed in the South African War, had swallowed up more money and men than had been expected. Her diplomats, though warned of the approaching storm, did not believe that it would break so soon, and under such a condition of things, neutrality seemed for the moment the only possible attitude.
Italy fully realised that if she wanted to take her part in this war, or at least if she wanted to safeguard her own interests, she had to get ready first. The large quantity of guns, which had been ordered at Krupp's, was not supplied, and Italy had to make good the deficiencies with her national industrialresources. Nearly all the large metal-works in Italy started making guns under the supervision of artillery officers; new uniforms, new boots, ammunition, sanitary necessities, etc., have been prepared in very large quantities. The fortresses on the Alps and the eastern frontiers have been reinforced, and a number of regiments generally quartered in South and Central Italy have been moved steadily to the northern towns.
This as far as the Government goes. As for the spirit of the army, it could not be keener. In the barracks the old songs of the "Risorgimento" have been resurrected and have taken the place of the Neapolitan melodies.
Many officers told me that their men kept asking, "When are we going to fight?" just as if Italy was already at war. The aspiration to the possession of Trento and Trieste, which, during the last twenty years seemed to have weakened considerably, has now reawakened as strong as ever, and the many inhabitants of Dalmatia and Istria, who haveleft their homes for Italy during the last months, to escape persecutions and vexations of all kinds, are carrying on an active propaganda.
Almost every day there are demonstrations in favour of going to war. The university towns of Italy are like powder-magazines ready to explode at the first spark of war, and the professors have to use all their authority to keep their students quiet and to prevent them running away to enlist in France or Montenegro. Before the war the most educated Italian classes gave to Germany a place of honour amongst the cultivated nations of the world. Now this feeling has completely disappeared and its place has been taken by disgust and hate for the country which has disguised her incurable barbarism under a mask of more or less real culture. German people in Italy have never got on very well with the majority of the population, but now they are having a very hard time. Everybody tries to avoid them, in the way of business and relations of allother kinds, and most of those who did not go back to fight for their country have left for America, or have become naturalised Italian citizens.
Public opinion in Italy varies from province to province. While all the south is frankly eager for war as soon as possible, in the northern provinces, the richest and most industrial of Italy, the population is just now recovering from the financial losses inflicted by the last war, and would prefer Italy to keep neutral as far as possible.
This does not mean that the war would be unpopular there. Rich provinces are a little like wealthy people; they would rather keep quiet and continue in their profitable business, but when the danger is near and fighting is unavoidable they give up without regret their everyday habits and bravely do their duty.
The different tendencies of the north and south meet in Rome. Though there are no more convinced adherents of the Triple Alliance left in Italy, and though you cannotfind a single Italian who will say that his country ought to have fought side by side with Austria and Germany, the neutralist party is still very strong, and the idea of makingcause communewith France still keeps some of the intransigent Catholics from joining the War Party. The Socialists have assumed a sort of wait-and-see attitude which will easily be changed at the right moment to frank support of the war; and the new Nationalist Party, though only a few years old, is making gigantic progress.
The most important part of the Italian Press has never ceased, since the beginning of the war, to try and make the nation feel the disadvantages of an uncertain position.
Without England or France having supported them, or even treated particularly well their correspondents (many Italian journalists, Barzini included, were arrested and sent back to Paris when found too near the front), the Italian Press, with few and not important exceptions, has opposed the idea of neutral policy. One of the most importantof Italian journals printed as a sub-title to its heading in big type the sentence of Machiavelli: "Neutrality is never suitable to a nation, for a State who keeps neutral loses her friends, does not gain advantages and, when the war is over, ingenerates such diffidence about her future conduct that no other nation cares to conclude an alliance with her."
Germany and Austria, recognising the trend of public opinion in Italy, did not economise money or trouble in an endeavour to change its course if possible. Two or three newspapers were bought by a sort of secret trust which depends upon "Palazzo Venezia," the Austrian Embassy in Rome; some others were largely subventioned; news made in Germany was sent out, not only to all newspapers, but to private houses. A friend of mine kept a full collection of such pamphlets right from the beginning of the war. The circulars are issued every two or three weeks, and generally begin with a formal denial of everything that has beenstated by the French, English, and Russian official bulletins. Accusations of pillage, robbery, murder, and cruelties of every possible kind are made against the Allies, and areprovedby bogus letters from German officers and soldiers. This system, though it certainly does not succeed amongst the more educated classes, scores a little more amongst the lower-class folk, who are highly flattered to see amongst their weekly correspondence a large letter bearing for crest the Austrian or German eagle.
Another system largely employed by Germany in their attempted work of modifying Italy's public opinion is the free supply of photographs and sketches to illustrated newspapers. Above all, however, they have concentrated their endeavours upon the kinema.
The picture-house has ceased to be the means of spending an hour far from business and worry, in a restfully darkened room, watching a moderately amusing and, possibly, highly moral film, which does not suffer if one misses part of it. Now it hasbecome an instrument used by Governments for educating the people.
Germany produces a large number of war films, both for home display and for abroad. There are descriptive, allegoric, sentimental, even comic films inspired by the war: the soldiers of the Kaiser do the most wonderful things. They are strong, generous, good-humoured. Most of these scenes are arranged, and only slices of real life in the case of military revues and parades are introduced.
The German authorities seem to be specially anxious to prove one thing: that the German soldiers are behaving like gentlemen, and that the stories about their deeds in Belgium and France are calumnies.
Perhaps this very earnestness in trying to alter a prevalent belief proves that Germany has not quite a clear conscience on the subject.
So, at least, seem to think the Italian public; and when some such pictures were shown lately in Rome and Milan, nobodytook them seriously, and they were considered as childish fakes.
Such films are offered to picture-house managers on extremely tempting terms by special agents, who tour all over Italy. Nearly all the atrocities which were proved to have been committed by the Germans themselves are attributed in these films to the Belgians. In one of them a Belgian woman sets fire to the bed on which three wounded German soldiers are dying, and runs away after taking their watches and pocket-books. In another picture the old tale of thetreacheryof the Louvain inhabitants is staged in a very fierce manner; I have also seen a picture of a cavalry charge given as having been actually taken during the war in Flanders, but which was really part of a two years' old manœuvre film, easily recognisable because the uniforms have changed since then.
As no English or French war pictures reach Italy, the local firms have to make their own war-films to suit the taste of their public. In the country round about Milan, Turin,and Rome, the principal centres of the Italian film industry, cardboard Belgian villages and churches, trenches, and terrible-looking fortresses have been constructed, and one can often see hundreds of "Tommies" in khaki, French "pioupious" and helmeted Germans fighting miniature battles.
Another of Germany's devices to capture Italian public opinion was the famous tour of Italian journalists, organised by a well-known German emissary, who, by the way, has been arrested lately as a spy in Naples.
None of Italy's best-known journalists, nor any correspondents of predominant papers, accepted the invitation, and only about twelve young men, belonging to second-rate journals, went, chaperoned by the vigilant Herr Sweinhart.
But they were only allowed to see parades and specially prepared trenches, or batteries which had never been exposed to the fire. They were shown a concentration camp, but were not allowed to speak to the prisoners.They were taken to Liège to see the forts, but not to the destroyed towns in Belgium. Then they had to go back to Berlin and were kept there in one of the principal hotels, waiting for the moment when everything should have been arranged for them on some quiet spot of the Russian frontier. The tour came to a sudden and rather unfortunate end, as the journalists, having realised that they were allowed to see nothing of interest, but only what pleased Herr Sweinhart, decided to return to Italy at their own expense, and did not write a line about their experiences so as not to excite the hearty laughter of their wiser colleagues.
The cleverest move of the Austro-Germans in the direction of keeping Italy quiet as long as possible was certainly the sending of von Buelow to Rome as German Ambassador.
The personal charm of this clever diplomat probably accounts for Italy's attitude during the last months. He acted, and is still acting, like a rubber cushion between theTeutonic ruggedness and the Italian susceptibility.
* * *
In the little "Trattoria" near Piazza Colonna, in which most parliamentary men meet in preference to the big, gilded, French-style restaurants, where the food is excellent, the wine taken with a gay murmur from large barrels showing at the back, and where hardly any "outsider" or any foreigners dare enter, so modest is the appearance of the establishment, half-a-dozen world-known writers, politicians, and journalists were enjoying a "fritto di pesce," abundantly accompanied by the light wine, "delli Castelli." The subject of the conversation was, of course, the war. All the sympathies were on the side of the Entente. A copy ofThe Timeswas passed from one to another, and the most important news was translated for the benefit of the few of the company who were not familiar with English. A well-known writer of military criticism in one of the principal Italian papers, a former Majorin the army, produced a letter from one of his sons, now fighting with the French army in Alsace. The letter was very enthusiastic about everything and everybody at the front; the young man was one of the very last to manage to join the voluntary corps, Italy having, since December last, stopped completely the granting of passports to young men liable for military service.
The wonderful work of the "Dante Alighieri," the society which has been struggling hard during the last years to keep the Italian language alive in the provinces under foreign domination, the last poem of D'Annunzio on the war, the concentration of troops near Verona, were, in turn, subjects of conversation. I got the impression that for them the question was not, "Are we going to war?" but, "When are we going to war?"
* * *
Italy has suffered very much already for this war. All her commerce with the Continent has been stopped, as well as hershipping lines trading with Constantinople and the Black Sea. The shortage of petroleum, coal and wood has hit many of her industries, and some foodstuffs have increased considerably in prices.
Moreover, the annual tide of foreigners which is the principal resource of many Italian towns has not come this year, and Italy begins to realise that if she is not going to war now, she has made enormous financial sacrifices to equip her army. She will have shared all the disadvantages of the fighting countries without being able to get any of the recompense.
It is now for Italy to make a great decision. If she believes in her destiny, if she feels that there are in her energies, intelligence, and possibilities of taking her real place amongst the great Powers of Europe, she has to fight.
If she feels she is not equal to such a task, then she had better become at once the first of the defensive countries and renounce all her dreams of empire; she had better sellher fleet, economise on armaments, and invest the money saved in first-class hotels, casinos, and spas. She has certainly beauty and natural advantages enough to out-rival Switzerland, Spain, or Norway.
But the modern Italian is rather tired of being the citizen of a country admired only for her blue skies, her Roman monuments, and her rich museums. He is more proud of her industrial enterprise, of the wide expansion, of the wonderful progress of his country in the last fifty years, than of the fair pages of her history. He will not hear about renouncing what he calls the third renaissance of Italy.
That is why I believe Italy is going to fight.
Notes taken while Motoring on the Riviera.
Mentone.
In the southern sunshine it is a strain to realise that France is at war, that, in the north, the biggest war the world has ever seen is being fought out desperately day after day. The only unusual sight is the groups of Senegalais, the French Colonial soldiers, and the blackest niggers I have ever seen, walking at leisure on the parade with a curious movement of the arms and of the whole body, which reminds one, at the same time, of a bear in his cage and the balancing efforts of a dancer on the tight-rope. Theyare waiting expectantly to be sent to the battlefield, and in the meantime enjoying themselves, walking about holding each other's hands, and laughing at everything with a wide, good-natured laugh. Everybody likes them and spoils them. To see the Senegalais walking amongst the palm trees under the tropical sky of Mentone, clad in dark blue with the wide scarlet belt round their waists, is really a pleasure to the eyes.
They look and feel at home. When I see a coloured man or a Chinaman in the Strand I generally feel sorry for the poor beggar; he would be all right in Pernambuco or in Canton, but in London he looks like a violation of the natural order of things. That's why I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the Senegalais of Mentone. Most of them are very fine fellows, well over six feet, and quite a number show wound scars and medals, which prove that they will not be new to fire when they take the field.
In addition to the coloured troops, notmany soldiers are seen now in Mentone, as the wounded sent down here are still in the hospitals, and only very few risk the air. But a few may be seen in the sunshine, surrounded by a small crowd of admiring children and of sympathetic grown-ups of both sexes. The temporary hospitals have been arranged in a number of the larger hotels which were formerly owned by Germans, and prove now most useful and comfortable for the French wounded.
Mentone had during the last few years acquired the fame of being one of the most Germanised towns of France. This sort of pacific invasion was encouraged by the German Government in the hope that Italy would stick to Germany in the long-expected struggle, and she could then have a sort ofavant-gardeof friends in French territory at the beginning of hostilities. Instead, when the war broke out, after a week's hesitation France withdrew practically the whole of her frontier troops and guns, while Italy was doing the same at the other side.
When the Germans were forced to leave, one of the expelled hotel-keepers, after passing the Italian frontier, which is at a few yards' distance from the last houses of Mentone, showing his fist to the crowd still on French territory, shouted: "Au revoir!In two weeks in Paris!" His hotel has been the only German house in Mentone wrecked by the population.
* * *
Monte Carlo.
In every small town along the Riviera I came across I never failed to ask: "Are there any British wounded here?"
The answer was always the same "No, not yet, but we are expecting some, sir"; or, "Mrs. or Miss So-and-So has offered her villa, with doctors and nurses and everything, so they are bound to come soon."
And this is perfectly true. Everywhere, even in small villages like La Turbie, English ladies have offered to equip their villas as hospitals for British wounded. Butno one has been sent yet, and the beautiful houses in that wondrous climate, which would certainly mean a delightful and quick convalescence, still remain empty.
If no use is made of such generous offers the fault will more easily be found in England than in France.
During a long motor trip all along the Upper Corniche Road I saw hundreds of French wounded who have become quite well and will go back to the front in a few days' time.
I spoke to some of them, and all admitted that there is nothing like staying, even for a very short time, on the Riviera to pick one up after the life of the trenches.
Not only wealthy people in their villas, but many among the middle classes and even poor folk find room for convalescent wounded in their homes; a doctor goes round every morning, but all the nursing is done by the families who take charge of the sick men.
Motoring on the Riviera is now a fairlycomplicated business, in spite of the passports and other documents which everyone now carries. At every control—and there is a control at every village—there are difficulties.
This severity rather surprised me, considering how easily one can get into France from England, Switzerland, or Italy.
The explanation was given me by a lieutenant, who said that, during the last few months, German spies had been pouring into France continuously, either by means of the passports of neutral nations, or by landing in the seaside towns near the frontier from a small boat. This accounts also for the fact that sailing or boating has been forbidden, except in special cases, and for fishing purposes.
The war has affected the Riviera in one curious way. Certain articles have become quite cheap, others more expensive than usual, owing to the fact that the goods service with Paris is infrequent and too slow for perishable stuff, and that Italy,since the war broke out, has stopped any exportation of foodstuffs.
Eggs, cheese, and butter are getting dearer, while flowers, oranges, &c., which generally are exported to Austria, Russia, and England, are now obtainable at extremely low prices.
This last Christmastide the Riviera suffered a famine of Christmas-trees. The young pines used for this purpose generally arrive in large quantities during the week preceding Christmas and come from Col di Tenda, on the other side of the frontier.
But wood is amongst the things the exportation of which from Italy has been stopped, and as it was too late to get pines from somewhere else, the children, for the most part, had to be content with curious substitutes; while the Senegalais in Mentone had their first, and let us hope last, Christmas-tree made with a huge laurel.
Life is altogether considerably cheaper than usual in Monte Carlo, at least for thewinter visitors. Most of the hotels have reduced their tariffs, and I could name more than one very first-class house which, probably for the first time in their existence, have quoteden pensionterms.
Summer is naturally the quiet season on the Riviera, and it is then that Monte Carlo proceeds with her yearly toilet, undergoes transformations and improvements. Quite a number of embellishments had just been started when the war broke out, and at the moment these constructions remain unfinished, waiting for quieter times.
For instance, the familiar square in front of the Casino, and the Hotel de Paris, with its lawns and flower-beds, has become an enormous hole, an excavation which looks like a quarry. In a day still distant it will become an underground garage in which the cars of the visitors of the Casino can wait instead of crowding all along the Avenue des Palmiers.
The work, which was begun last summerand should have been finished by December, was interrupted by the war. The Casino is open, with Louis Ganne, of "Marche Lorraine" fame, Caruso, and all the other great artists. None of the usual Russian and American customers are seen in thesalles-de-jeu.
When I entered the roulette room the gambling was very slack. There were only eight or nine people round the green table. Three old ladies of the special kind one sees only in the Casinos of the Riviera—blonde wig, wrinkles patiently filled up with pink paint, and a small, sickly dog emerging from a fur-lined bag—were playing very methodically with very small stakes; two Americans were staking high and losing a fair amount; an elderly Englishman of the retired major type was goingen pleinevery now and again after consulting each time a small red-bound book, in which all theen pleinsof perhaps twenty years were marked, while a party of Spaniards, evidently new to the green table, were playing irregularlyin a foolish way and losing nearly every time.
A young French artillery officer, still limping, and with his right arm suspended by a black silk bandage, entered the room, came straight to the table and put two louis on the 14 a second or so before therien ne va pluswas pronounced.
The little ball stopped on the 15.
A lady who was with the officer excitedly pinched his undamaged arm.
"You never listened to me, Jean," she called out. "You forgot the little mark on your left shoulder."
Everyone within earshot, the imperturbable croupier included, smiled. The officer himself joined in, and could not help giving some explanation.
"My wife," he said, "insisted on putting my money on the number corresponding to the number of my wounds. I have fourteen to speak of, but I did not count a tiny scratch which a bullet made on my left shoulder."
Then, addressing his wife: "The nexttime I come back we will count everything. We'll get anen pleinthen!"
* * *
Nice.
Though the affluence of foreign people at Nice is, this year, greatly reduced, the population of the town is perhaps higher than when the season is in full swing.
Nice has, this year, an unusual class of guests, people who, up to a few months ago, used to think of Nice as a sort of earthly paradise reserved to the plutocracy of the new and old world, and who would never have seen the Côte d'Azur if the war had not chased them from their homes in the east of France and in Belgium.
Nice has, at the present moment, five or six thousand refugees, and more are expected. I saw groups of them walking along the long dusty road that runs at the side of the Paillon, the little torrent which, in winter, looks quite a respectable river.
Here is nothing of the Nice that Englishpeople know; no hotels, no palm trees, no flower-beds, no smart shops.
The town in its eastern part has preserved its look of sixty years ago, the only new constructions being two huge hive-like barracks. It is probably uglier and dirtier than the commercial quarter of Marseilles itself.
The refugees have chosen as their favourite promenade this dingy quarter. Here they meet the soldiers who are coming back or are going to their country, here the Corporation of Nice distributes twice a day free soup to the poor.
The refugees are not often seen in the smart part of the town. The Promenade des Anglais, the Jetée, and the Place Massena are a background too much in contrast with their ragged clothes. They don't care to walk near the well-dressed people lounging in basket-chairs along the promenade.
Most of the refugees have taken with them all they could manage to carry, and it is touching to see how, amongst all theirtroubles, seldom have they forgotten the little mongrel dog, faithful companion in the happy days before the war.
I was contemplating the refugees, and walking down the irregular pavement of a Genoese-looking street, when a strange sight met my eyes.
Behind a brick wall an extraordinary structure of long wooden bars, osiers, canes, wire-work, and such-like material, emerged and reached a height of perhaps twenty feet.
After a minute's uncertitude, I remembered that I was in Nice, the motherland of the famous Carnival. This complicated construction could only be the skeleton of His Majesty King Carnival himself, the jolly deity who presides at the Riviera winter festivities.
"I thought you always burnt your King Carnival at the end of the season," I said to a native. "How is it that you preserved last year's dummy?"
"This, sir," he answered, "is not the last Roi Carnival, but the next Roi Carnival.Nobody thought we were going to take him round the town this year, but we shall probably have him finished up with canvas and plaster all the same.
"Of course, it will not be one of our great Carnivals; we have no money to throw away this winter, but His Majesty will go round the streets with a German helmet on his head and two upstanding moustaches, and everybody will enjoy more than usual the moment, at the beginning of Lent, when the figure will be set on fire."
Really, Nice does not look like a town which will, this year, have festivities of any kind. There are too many wounded and too many hospitals; the restrictions imposed by the Government are too strict, and the people do not seem to want any such amusement. Most of the luxury shops remain closed, and there is no chance of having an opera season or the famous Veglione at the Opera.
When walking about in Nice one gets the impression that France's military resourcesare almost unlimited. I don't know how many soldiers are in the town at the present moment, but certainly more than half the men one meets in the streets are in uniform. The long, straight Avenue de la Gare, the Oxford Street of Nice, is the favourite promenade of the military element.
Chasseurs des Alpes and Turcos, Colonial troops and helmeted cavalry, lend a gay look to the wide, handsome street, and the red and gold of their uniforms moving about in all directions reminds one of the bright setting of a patriotic ballet.
Here are the offices of the leading local newspaper. The latest war news is written in large characters on a huge board hanging from the second-floor windows. A permanent crowd waits there, commenting on the cables, with an astonishing abundance of gestures, in a curious mixed dialect of Italian, French, and Provençal.
Inside the offices is a sort of picture gallery. Photographs of all the officers and soldiers, natives of Nice who have fallenduring the war, with a record of their deeds, and newspaper cuttings about them, sometimes in English as well as in French, are hung round the room, to the respectful admiration of the people.
Pious hands daily place fresh flowers beneath these photographs. All the men inspect the collection with hats off. An old lady placed some superb white roses round the picture of a young lieutenant; a black-haired young girl of the working-class went round with a bunch of scarlet carnations, and decorated the photos of those soldiers who had no other fresh flowers.
* * *
Paris,February.
"Paris is desperately dull," said a club acquaintance whose weakness it is to affect ablasémanner. He made the remark to me just before I left London, he being newly returned from a tour in France. "Nothing on; nothing left of what we call Paris! It is really the most boring place on earth."
So it would be for most people, I amafraid—people who have always refused to see Paris as it is, but who pretend to see it as a town in which pleasure and habits, life and morals, are abnormal, different, and possibly opposite to those of all other places on earth.
Such people have never seen—or, at any rate, never understood Paris. They have only seen the gay if somewhat professional, amusing if somewhat vulgar, mask the capital of France shows to most foreigners who do not trouble or who do not wish to see her real face.
At the moment of the declaration of war this mask suddenly dropped, and Paris appeared to the few foreigners who were there at that time to be completely altered; anxiety instead of cynicism; patriotism instead of that curious pose of French people which makes them enjoy running down their rulers and reading about Government scandals.
All these sentiments, which were either asleep or kept concealed because they werethought to be much toovieux jeux, came out again. The motto of Republican France,Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité(which appears so often on the buildings of Paris), ceased to sound ironic and anachronistic.
Maybe all this seems extremely boring to the more or less realviveur, who cannot conceive Paris withoutcafés du nuitand absinthe, shocking little theatres, and all the rest of Parisian pleasures which are by no means only Parisian nowadays, and which, in any case, are mostly organised for foreigners and by foreigners.
To my eyes, Paris has never been so wonderful a city as since the war broke out.
I saw it astonished and overrun by the mobilising troops at the beginning of the war; ready to fight the invaders and to again undergo the calamities of 1871, when the investment of the town appeared unavoidable; full of hope when the tide of the German advance was suddenly stopped, not a day too soon; decided to make all efforts and sacrifices to end the war as soon and asgloriously as possible now that everybody in France is certain of final victory.
It is certainly impossible in hurried notes of this kind to try and analyse Paris in 1915. It is a subject fit for treatment only in a book, and a large book, too. The new wave of sincerity and self-sacrifice has swept away habits and men, affectation and vices; and one feels that in the future Paris will never again be quite the same as before the war.
Forty-five years ago the siege destroyed for ever the society Zola has snapshotted for us in the "Rougon-Macquard." Probably Paris will come out of the present crisis purified of thearrivistes, politicians, snobs, and pseudo-artists that we all know, thanks to French literature and the French theatre of to-day.
Then there will be room for a new society, possibly as bad as the former, and, for a few writers, not quite as entertaining to write about.
During my war wanderings I crossed Holland several times, and each time I spent a few days there. I did this because of the difficulty of getting the signatures of the different foreign Consuls, because of the irregular service run by the Channel boats, and because I wanted to witness the change which, little by little, came over Dutch public opinion and altered the Germanophile tendencies of the early days of the war to the sympathy for the Entente of the last months.
This does not mean to say that Holland was wildly pro-German in August and is enthusiastically pro-British now.
Holland is essentially pro-Holland, for can we blame her for this attitude, which has been christened by an eminent writer of a neutral country "sacred egoism"?
We who belong to nations numbered, since a more or less long time, among the great Powers, love our country and our independence in a different way from that of the subject of a small nation. We love it, as a matter of fact, without thinking and without speaking very much about it; we know she is in a position to defend herself if attacked, and that she is able to make other nations respect her.
But a Dutchman, like a native of all little States, loves his country and cherishes her independence with the tender and anxious feeling we feel for a person we might easily lose. He knows how difficult is the position of his country, and the example of what happened to Belgium has made him even more thoughtful about it.
The bygone sympathy for Germany was not of a very demonstrative sort, and wasinspired in the Dutch population by the undeniable affinity of race, as well as by the never-completely-extinguished jealousy of Belgium and the ill-feeling against England due to the Transvaal War.
But a distinction has to be made; if the Dutch people were rather inclined towards Germany on account of her activity, her commercial prosperity, and her wonderful development (which, indirectly, has done a lot of good to Holland—intermediary and natural channel between Germany and the sea), they felt the opposite sentiments towards Prussia. "Prussia" means, in Holland, the military caste, the Hohenzollern system, the competition in armaments, the general predominance of the soldier over the civilian.
This Holland could never like. She belongs to the hen type, and not to the eagle type. She will fight if she is forced to do so, and fight well too, but she leads a useful existence, and does not understand nor appreciate the system of life of the otherbird and his mania for space, for dominion, for prey.
Then came the war, and Holland had to arm, and the refugees began to pour in from the Belgian frontier, and with them their tales of horror; then the action of England protecting the weak against the strong captured the sympathies of the Dutch public; the rudeness and clumsiness of the German Government, its system of war, its campaign of paid articles in the Dutch papers and spies all over the Dutch country, its unfortunate diplomatic conduct, did the rest.
Each time I visited Holland during this war I received the impression that England had acquired, and Germany lost, some more friends.
In the meantime, the Government proceeded to look after the defensive works, and the mobilisation, which was thought at the beginning of the war to be a temporary measure, became a permanent thing. In Holland, before the war, a soldier or an officer was a curiosity. I remember thatduring my first visit, years ago, I wanted to see the different uniforms of the Dutch Army, but could never manage to do so, so scarce were the soldiers. Even at the Hague one used to see very few officers, and I remember asking a Dutch friend, "Where do you keep your army, please?" To which he answered, "I am not quite certain if we have one!"
Now soldiers are everywhere, and good, solid, sturdy soldiers they look too. I saw them drilling in the grounds near Haarlem, on the long straight avenue that leads to Scheveningen, in the narrow lanes which run by the side of the canals, and I received the most favourable impression.
But the elementManis necessarily of secondary importance in the defence of a country like Holland. The only effective system of protecting her well-developed frontiers is by fortifications, and to this Holland has turned her attention long since. During the last forty years the Dutch Government has carried out, at greatexpense, the construction of a line of forts, complete with channels, blockhouses, and redoubts, all along the German and Belgian frontiers.
Recently these forts were all armed with modern guns, and the capital, Amsterdam, was also fortified in a modern and efficient manner.
But this does not mean that the defence of the country would be carried out without much trouble; on the contrary, if Holland went to war, the forts would offer a temporary resistance against the gigantic modern artillery, and then the sluices would be opened and the whole of the country, with the exception of a few eastern provinces, would be covered by the water of the Zuyder Zee, the level of which, as everybody knows, is higher than the level of Holland. The towns and villages would be kept out of water by means of a system of strategic dykes, and the country would probably resist for a long period.
But what an enormous price Hollandwould have to pay! The century-long work which has transformed a sea-bed into the productive, modern Holland would be completely wasted. For years and years to come the industrial life of Holland would be spoiled, and it is almost certain that the little kingdom, instead of being one of the richest, would become one of the poorest countries on earth.
This is certainly one of the many reasons why Holland does all she possibly can to remain neutral.
Up to the present she has succeeded in the difficult task, thanks not only to the action of her Government, but also to the behaviour of her subjects.
When you speak to a Dutchman who happens to have been near the frontier and to have spoken to Belgian refugees, he may let himself go and use a bitter phrase against Germany, but he will suddenly stop with the sentence: "Of course, I am a neutral, and this does not really concern me."
It is wonderful to see how the singleindividual understands the fragility of his country, which reminds one of the earthenware pitcher travelling with the bronze vase. Even when he had to suffer personally from German manners (and many inhabitants of Holland trading with Belgium were treated in the most disgusting way), the Dutchman will generally add, as a sort of excuse, after relating his adventures: "But, of course, they are at war, and probably one cannot help doing such things even to neutrals when one's country is at war."
* * *
If Holland is "the most neutral of neutral States," it does not mean that the war is not felt financially in the country. In Amsterdam a member of the Chamber of Commerce told me that Holland's trade since the war began has been reduced gradually by more than 65 per cent., and that this figure is continually mounting higher.
Moreover, the refugees from Belgium who have found asylum in the western provinces cost the nation a fair amount of money, notto consider the expense of the fully-mobilised army's upkeep and the high prices paid for the hurried fortification works carried out since the beginning of the war.
"Dutch people are said to have made a good deal of money out of Germany, up to December or even later, by selling her foodstuffs and other articles at very high prices," I remarked, remembering what I had heard both in England and Germany.
"Somebody certainly has," admitted the Dutchman. "Since August, 1914, our Government has stopped the exportation of wheat, etc., but some German private agents used to buy it and send it to private addresses in Germany; we really don't know what happened to that stuff, and as the prices offered by the Germans were very good, I know that a lot of merchants here were only too glad to make business with them. Now the new customs regulations have completely stopped this, and I can tell you that lately Germany has not managed to get anything through the frontiers. The German agentsare still here, as well as in Rotterdam and other towns, but they have realised that it is impossible to send to Germany the foodstuffs, etc., which they have already stored for the purpose, and now they have stopped buying."