Chapter XI: Part 11

The Australian fleet unit, the first of the Dominion navies,
which enables each to exert upon foreign policy the full
weight of its importance in the empire, was not begun until
1910. The corollary, that any Dominion Minister appointed to
reside in London should have free and constant access to the
British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, was only
conceded in January, 1912, and has not yet been taken
advantage of, even by Australia.

But the development is all true to principle. What principle?
Voluntary co-operation, as opposed to central compulsion. In
war, as in peace, each of the Britannic nations is free to do
or not to do. But we have invoked naval and military
co-ordination, with results which the Australian Navy has
already exemplified (on the Emden, &c.)

Has this system of the free Commonwealth, as distinguished
from the German principle of a centralized empire organized
primarily for war, broken down under the supreme test, as so
many of our prophets predicted? On the contrary, it has alone
saved South Africa to the empire, besides eliciting
unrestricted military aid from each part. Why change it for
something diametrically opposed to its spirit, substituting
compulsion for liberty, provinces for nation-States?

Sir Richard Jebb's sentence, specifying the nature of the Australian influence on foreign policy, seems apt reply to Sir Robert Borden's oft-repeated specification that a share in control of foreign policy should accrue to the Dominions by reason of their participation in or liability to war. This liability really compels them to engage with all their strength, lest they comfort an enemy by abstention, or by confining their armaments to self-defense, which might and would be read as disapproval of Britain's course, if the war were one of magnitude endangering her. A system more powerfully requiring Great Britain to take heed that her quarrel be just, lest she be not thrice armed by approving children, can scarcely be imagined.

On this matter I have had the pleasure and benefit, during the last twelve years, of talking with Sir Wilfrid Laurier often. In the quoted Jebb view he agreed closely when I saw him a few days ago. He remarked, with special regard to this article for THE NEW YORK TIMES, that his point of insistence at the Imperial Conferences of 1902, 1907, 1911, and on all proper occasions, has been that local autonomy--that is, complete self-government for each of the Dominions--is not only consistent with British unity but necessary thereto as promoting and conserving that unity.

When Mr. Asquith's denial of the practicability of giving the Dominions a direct share in control of Great Britain's foreign policy is considered, the Jebb-Laurier view would appear one to which Sir Robert Borden, cautious statesman, must be led by recognition that potent influence on foreign policy cannot but come to Dominions energetically providing at once for their own defense and for their power to aid Great Britain all along the line.

As to imperial federation, Sir Wilfrid remarked that he has ever been openly attracted by that aspiration toward permanent British union, on which advocacy of the vague project has ever been bottomed. He is, as he said to me, and as all his long series of political actions have manifested, British in heart and way of political thinking, as indeed substantially all his French-Canadian compatriots are. British liberality, not to say liberalism, has attached them to the British system as firmly as any community originating from the United Kingdom. It was a French-Canadian statesman who asserted, some fifty years ago, when many British-Canadians seemed tending toward union with the United States, "The last shot fired in Canada for British connection will be from a French-Canadian." That was before the civil war abolished slavery.

But, even as the Britishism of Old Country liberals is strongly tinctured by devotion to ideals which Americans are wont to regard as theirs--ideals making for settled peace, industry, the uplift of the "common people," fair room and reward for those abilities which conspicuously serve the general welfare--so Sir Wilfrid and his compatriots acknowledge their Britishism to be acutely conscious of political kinship with the American people. The French-Canadian yearning, like that of many Canadians of British origin, is rather for English-speaking union--a union of at least thorough understanding and common designs with the American people--than for the narrower exclusive British union sought by Canadian imperial federationists.

Sir Wilfrid said, in effect, (I do not profess to report his very words,) that federation of those British communities widely separated by geography, but alike in race, language, laws, principles, has always attracted him as a project of excellent intentions. It is at worst a noble dream. That dream has become less impracticable than it was formerly, he thinks, by reason of the essential diminution of the world, diminution of distances and of time by latter-day inventions.

Against the idea of general representation in a central Parliament at London, Sir Wilfrid pointed out that Edmund Burke objected "opposuit natura"--nature forbade it. The wisest of political philosophers could not foresee the telegraph, wireless, steam, airships. These have made a useful central imperial Parliament at least conceivable. Could it be more useful than the advisory council, or Imperial Conference which has become quadrennial, and might possibly become annual? That is matter for discussion. Sir Wilfrid said that such is the political genius of the British race that he would be rash who alleged any design impracticable toward which the race may tend so generally as to put it under discussion for arrangement of details. Conservation of local self-government, prime essential to agreement for union on common purposes, might prove reconcilable with federated defense.

But there is, to Sir Wilfrid's way of thinking, one large objection against now attempting imperial federation. Its agitators contemplate a scheme immense, yet not sufficiently inclusive. They do not contemplate English-speaking solidarity. They purpose leaving out the majority of English-speakers--the American people. In this they do not follow Cecil Rhodes, a chief propagandist of their main design. It is true that the idea of getting Americans to participate in any formal union with all the rest of their brethren by race and tongue seems now impractical. But time works wonders. Mr. Gladstone foresaw the United States a people of six hundred comfortable millions, living in union before the end of the next century. The hegemony of the English-speaking nations seems likely to be within attainment by that one of them which appears destined to become far the most powerful of all in numbers, in wealth, and in security of environment. Time may show to our successors in this world some effective method of establishing agreements amounting to that solidarity for English-speaking action which has been acclaimed as existent for English-speaking thinking by a mind so eminently reasonable as that of Lord Haldane.

It would be hasty, thinks Sir Wilfrid, and it might be injurious for the British countries to move toward any sort of formal union ostensibly tending to set them collectively apart from the United States. Give great beneficent ideas time to develop. Britons can well afford to take their time, since the war has shown existent among them an almost perfect union of sentiment and purpose. And this, apparently, with the blessed effect of enhancing general American good-will to Britons. From so much good understanding more may ensue, Sir Wilfrid concluded.

Such Canadians as hold Edmund Burke to have been a spokesman of consummate political wisdom are apt to regard the busy stir of doctrinaires, who scream for closer political junction of the British peoples, even as Burke regarded the hurry of some of the same kidney in his time. Resolute to bind the thirteen colonies forever to England, they proceeded to offend, outrage, and drive those colonies to independence. Be it remembered that these colonies had contributed so loyally, so liberally to England's armaments and wars that grateful London Parliaments had insisted on voting back to them the subsidies they had granted, holding the contributions too generous. To later proposals of foolish henchmen of George III., proposals that the colonies, since they had revealed themselves as strong and rich, should be dragged into some formal political subordination by which, as by latter-day Imperial Federation, they might be involuntarily mustered and taxed for imperial purposes, Burke said:

Our hold on the colonies is the close affection which grows
from common names, from kindred blood, from similar
privileges, and equal protection. These are the ties which,
though light as air, are strong as links of iron. Let the
colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated
with your Government; they will cling and grapple to you, and
no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their
allegiance....

As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority
of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple
consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and
sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces
toward you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will
have. The more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect
will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is
a weed that grows on every soil. They may have it from Spain;
they may have it from Prussia; but until you become lost to
all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity,
freedom they can have from none but you.

This is the commodity of price, of which you have the
monopoly.... Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that
your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your
sufferances, ... your letters of office and your instructions
and your suspending clauses are the things that hold together
the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do
not make your Government. Dead instruments, passive tools as
they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives
all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the
English Constitution which, infused through the mighty mass,
pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of
the empire, even to the minutest member.

And the doctrinaires of Centralization, vociferating their fad of Imperial Federation, would have that Constitution, in the moment of its supreme triumph for unity, cast away! Cast away for a new and written one by which Great Britain and all her children alike would chain themselves together! Well may practical statesmen view the doctrinaires with some disdain, not unmindful of Burke's immortal scorn of such formalists:

"A sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. To men truly initiated and rightly taught, those ruling and master principles which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together."

ENGLAND.

By JOHN E. DOLSON.

Birth land of statesmen, bards, heroes, and sages;
Mother of nations--the homes of the free;
Builder of work that will last through the ages,
Hope for Humanity centres in thee.

Now that thy bugles their clear calls are shrilling,
Now that thy battle voice echoes worldwide,
O'er the long reaches of sea rush the willing
Sons of thy children to fight by thy side.

Eager to aid thee with treasure and tissue,
Other leal millions will come to thy call.
Civilization is staked on the issue--
Woe to Mankind if thy lion should fall!

Fall he will never, till English force slacken
In the great soul of thy dominant race,
Now, as of old, do the Destinies beckon
Thee to be highest in power and place.

Conflicts now raging will pass into story,
Nations may sink in defeat or disgrace;
Long be thy future resplendent with glory,
Long be thy triumphs the pride of our race!

American Aid of France

By Eugène Brieux

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]

M. Eugène Brieux, the celebrated French poet and playwright,
who is in this country as the official representative of the
French Academy--the "Forty Immortals"--has written a
remarkable tribute to American aid of France during the
present war. The address, which is herewith presented, was
read by M. Brieux at the residence of Mrs. John Henry Hammond
of New York City recently before a gathering of two hundred
men and women who have been interested in the work of the
American Ambulance Hospital in Paris.

Miss Marie Van Vorst, who nursed the wounded at the American Ambulance in Paris, will speak to you of it as an eyewitness. From her you will receive direct news of your splendid work of humanity. While she was caring for wounded French, English, and German I was attached to another hospital at Chartres. It happens, therefore, that I have never seen the American Military Hospital created by you, but I am not in ignorance concerning it any more than any other Parisian, any more, indeed, than the majority of the French people. I know that the American Ambulance is the most remarkable hospital that the world has seen. I know that you, since the beginning of the war, have brought the aid of medical science to wounded men and that you have given not only money, but an institution, all ready, complete and of the most modern type, and, even more, that you have sent there your best surgeons and a small army of orderlies and nurses.

I know that at first one could not find a place; that there was available only a building in course of construction, intended to be the Pasteur School at Neuilly. This building was far from completion; it lacked doors and there were no stairs. I know that in three weeks your generosity, your energy, and your quick intelligence has made of this uncertain shell a modern military hospital, with white walls, electric light, baths, rooms for administering anaesthetics, operating rooms, sterilizing plants, apparatus for X-rays, and a dental clinic. I know that automobiles, admirably adapted to the service, carried the wounded. And yet I do not know all. I know only by instinct of the devotion of your young girls, of your women, and of your young men, belonging often to prominent families, who served as stretcher bearers and orderlies.

I am not ignorant of the fact that they count by the hundreds those who have been cured at the American Ambulance at Neuilly, nor of the further fact that the rate of mortality is extremely low, although they have sent you those most gravely injured. I know that it is all free; that there are no charges made for the expenses of administration; that for the service rendered by your people there is no claim, and that every cent of every dollar subscribed goes entirely and directly to the care of the wounded. I know also that the expenses at the hospital are $4,000 a day, and that ever since the beginning your charity has met this demand.

Such splendid effort has not been ignored or misunderstood. The President of the French Republic has cabled to President Wilson his appreciation and his gratitude; General Fevier, Inspector General of Hospitals of the French Army, has publicly expressed his admiration; the English physicians and public men have shared their sentiments.

As to the people of Paris, as to the French nation, they have been touched to the depths of their being. And yet in France we have found all this quite natural. I shall tell you why. We have so high a regard for you that when you do anything well no one is surprised. I believe that if a wounded soldier arriving at your hospital exclaimed, "This is wonderful!" his comrade who had been ahead of him would answer in a tone of admonition: "That surprises you? You do not know then that it is done by the Americans, by the people from the United States?" In this refusal to be astonished in the face of remarkable achievements, when they come from you, there is a tribute, a praise of high quality which your feelings and your patriotism will know how to appreciate.

I have said that all that comes from you which is good and great seems natural to us, and I have given you a reason; but there is another. In France we are accustomed to consider the Republic of the United States as an affectionate, distant sister. When one receives a gift from a stranger one is astonished and cries out his thanks, but when the gift comes from a brother or from some one who, on similar occasions, has never failed, the thanks are not so outspoken but more profound. One says: "Ah, it is you, my brother. I suffer. I expected you. I knew that you would come, for I should have gone to you had you needed me. I thank you."

And, indeed, we are closely bound together, you and we. Without doubt, common interest and an absence of possible competition helps to that end, but there is something more which unites us--it is our kindred sentiments. It is this kinship which has created our attraction for each other and which has cemented it; it is our common ground of affections, of hatreds, of hopes; our ideals rest upon the same high plane. To mention but one point, one of you has said: "The United States and France are the only two nations which have fought for an ideal." And it is that which separates us, you and us, from a certain other nation, and which has served to bring us two close together.

We love you and we are grateful for what you are doing for us. When the day came for my departure from France to represent here the French Academy I asked of Mr. Poincaré, who had visited the American Ambulance at Neuilly, if duty did not forbid me to go. "No," he said to me. "Go to the United States. Carry greetings to the great nation of America." And he gave to me, for your President, the letter with which you are familiar, where he expressed the admiration and the sympathy that he has for you.

I have been traveling North and South in the Eastern part of the United States. I have had many opportunities to admire your power and the extent of your efforts. Today, in thinking of the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris, I admire your persistence in labor. You have established this hospital. That was good. But it costs a thousand dollars a day, and yet you keep on with the work. That is doubly good. Indeed, one can understand that you have not been willing, after having created this model hospital, that some day through lack of support its doors should close and the wounded you have taken in be turned over to others; certainly those first subscribers undertook a sort of moral obligation to themselves not to permit the work to fail. But, none the less, it is admirable that it should be so. To give once is something, but it is little if one compares the value of the first gift to those which follow.

The first charity is easily understood. Suddenly war is at hand. Its horrors can be imagined and every one feels that he can in some measure lessen them, and he opens his purse. Then time passes, the war continues, and one becomes accustomed to the thoughts that were at first unbearable--it is so far away and so long. Others in this way were checked after their first impulse.

But you, you have thought that, if it is good to establish a hospital, that alone was not enough, and that each day would bring new wounded to replace those who, cured, took up their guns again and returned to the field of battle. And since at the American Ambulance the wounded are cured quickly, the very excellence of your organization, the science of your surgeons, and the greatness of your sacrifices all bring upon you other and new sacrifices to be made.

But the word "sacrifice" is badly chosen. You do not make sacrifices, for you are strong and you are good. When you decide upon some new generous act you have only to appeal to your national pride, which will never allow an American undertaking to fail. You have the knowledge of the good that you are doing, and that, for you, is sufficient. You know that, thanks to your generosity, suffering is relieved, and you know that, thanks to the science of your surgeons, this relief is not merely momentary, but that the wounded man who would have remained a cripple if he had been less ably cared for, will be, thanks to you, completely cured, and that, instead of dragging out a miserable existence, he will be able to live a normal life and support a family which will bless you. Such men will owe it all to the persistence of your generosity.

I return always to that point, and it is essential. To give once is a common impulse, common to nearly all the world. It means freeing one's self from the suffering which good souls feel when they see others suffer. But to give again after having given is a proof of reflection, of an understanding of the meaning of life; it is to work intelligently; it is to insure the value of the first effort; it means the possession of goodness which is lasting and far-seeing. That is a rare virtue. You have it. And that is why I express a three-fold thanks, for the past, for the present, and for the future--thanks that come from the bottom of the heart of a Frenchman.

A FAREWELL.

By EDNA MEAD.

Look, Love! I lay my wistful hands in thine
A little while before you seek the dark,
Untraversed ways of War and its Reward,
I cannot bear to lift my gaze and mark
The gloried light of hopeful, high emprise
That, like a bird already poised for flight,
Has waked within your eyes.
For me no proud illusions point the road,
No fancied flowers strew the paths of strife:
War only wears a horrid, hydra face,
Mocking at strength and courage, youth and life.
If you were going forth to cross your sword
In fair and open, man-to-man affray,
One might be even reconciled and say,
"This is not murder; only passion bent
On pouring out its poison"--one could pray
That the day's end might see the madness done
And saner souls rise with the morrow's sun.
But this incarnate hell that yawns before
Your bright, brave soul keyed to the fighter's clench--
This purgatory that men call the "trench"--
This modern "Black Hole" of a modern war!
Yea, Love! yet naught I say can save you, so
I lay my heart in yours and let you go.

Stories of French Courage

By Edwin L. Shuman

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]

There has just appeared in Paris a book called "La Guerre Vue d'Une Ambulance," which brings the war closer to the eye and heart than anything else I have read. It is written by Abbé Felix Klein, Chaplain of the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly, a suburb of Paris, and has the added merit of describing the noble work which American money and American Red Cross nurses are doing there for the French wounded. The abbé, by the way, has twice visited the United States in recent years, has many warm friends here, and has written several enthusiastic books about the "Land of the Strenuous Life."

When the war broke out this large-hearted priest and busy author dropped all his literary and other plans to minister to the wounded soldiers brought to the war hospital established by Americans in the fine new building of the Lycée Pasteur, which was to have received its first medical students a few weeks later. There were 250 beds at first, and later 500, with more than a hundred American automobiles carrying the wounded to it, often direct from the front.

Through all these months Abbé Klein has labored day and night among these sufferers, cheering some to recovery, easing the dying moments of others with spiritual solace, and, hardest of all, breaking the news of bereavement to parents.

From day to day, through those terrible weeks of fighting on the Aisne and the Marne, with Paris itself in danger, the good abbé wrote brief records of his hopes and fears regarding his wounded friends, and set down in living words the more heroic or touching phases of their simple stories. Let me translate a few of them for the reader.

Take, for instance, the case of Charles Marée, a blue-eyed, red-bearded hero of thirty years, an only son who had taken the place of his invalid father at the head of their factory, and who had responded to the first call to arms. During his months of suffering his parents were held in territory occupied by the enemy and could not be reached. The abbé goes on to tell his story:

Let us not be deceived by the calm smile on his face. For six
weeks Charles Marée has been undergoing an almost continual
martyrdom, his pelvis fractured, with all the consequences one
divines, weakened by hemorrhage, his back broken, capable only
of moving his head and arms.... He is one of our most fervent
Christians: I bring him the communion twice a week, and he
never complains of suffering. He is also one of our bravest
soldiers; he has received the military medal, and when I asked
him how it came about he told me the following in a firm tone
and with his hand in mine, for we are great friends:

"It was given to me the 8th of October. I had to fulfill a
mission that was a little difficult. It was at Mazingarbe,
between Béthune and Lens, and 9 o'clock in the evening. Two of
the enemy's armored auto-machine guns had just been discovered
approaching our lines. I was ordered to go and meet them with
a Pugeot of twenty-five or thirty horse power--I was
automobilist in the Thirtieth Dragoons.

"I left by the little road from Vermelles on which the two
hostile machines were reported to be approaching. After twenty
minutes I stopped, put out my lights, and waited. A quarter of
an hour of profound silence followed, and then I caught the
sound of the first mitrailleuse. With one spin of the wheel I
threw my machine across the middle of the road. That of the
enemy struck us squarely in the centre. The moment the shock
was past I rose from my seat with my revolver and killed the
chauffeur and the mechanician.

"But almost immediately the second machine gun arrived. The
two men on it comprehended what had happened. While one of
them stopped the machine, the other aimed at me under his seat
and fired a revolver ball that pierced both thighs; then they
turned their machine and retreated. My companion, happily, was
not hurt, so he could take me to Vermelles, where the
ambulance service was. The same evening they gave me the
military medal, for which I had already been proposed three
times."

After three months of suffering, borne without complaint, this man died without having been able to get a word to his parents. The abbé had become deeply attached to him, and the whole hospital corps felt the loss of his courageous presence.

Some of the horror of war is in these pages, as where the author says:

The doctors worked till 3 o'clock this morning. They had to
amputate arms and legs affected with gangrene. The operating
room was a sea of blood.

Some of the pathos of war is here, and even a little of its humor, but most of all its courage. Both of the latter are mingled in the case of an English soldier who was brought in wounded from the field of Soissons.

"I fought until such a day, when I was wounded."

"And since then?"

"Since then I have traveled."

An English infantry officer, a six-footer, brought to the hospital with his head bandaged in red rather than white, showed the abbé his cap and the bullet hole in it.

"A narrow escape," said the abbé in English, and then learned that the escape was narrower than the wounded forehead indicated. Another bullet, without touching the officer, had pierced the sole of his shoe under his foot, and a third had perforated his coat between the body and the arm without breaking the skin.

The author's attitude toward the Germans, always free from bitterness, is sufficiently indicated in such a paragraph as this:

This afternoon I gave absolution and extreme unction to an
Irishman, who has not regained consciousness since he was
brought here. He had in his portfolio a letter addressed to
his mother. The nurse is going to add a word to say that he
received the last sacraments. A Christian hope will soften the
frightful news. Emperors of Austria and Germany, if you were
present when the death is announced in that poor Irish home,
and in thousands, hundreds of thousands of others, in England,
in France, in Russia, in Servia, in Belgium, in your own
countries, in all Europe, and even in Africa and Asia!... May
God enlighten your consciences!

The French wounded in the hospital at Neuilly--during the period when the German right wing was being beaten back from Paris--frequently accused the German regulars of wanton cruelty, but testified to the humanity of the reservists. The author relates several episodes illustrating both points. Here are two:

"The regulars are no good," said a brave peasant reservist.
"They struck me with the butts of their rifles on my wound.
They broke and threw away all that I had. The reserves arrive,
and it is different; they take care of me. My comrade, wounded
in the breast, was dying of thirst; he actually died of it a
little while afterward. I dragged myself up to go and seek
water for him; the young fellows aimed their guns at me. I was
obliged to make a half-turn and lie down again."

Another, who also begins by praising the German field officers, saw soldiers of the active army stripping perfectly nude one of our men who had a perforated lung, and whom they had made prisoner after his wound:

"When they saw that they would have to abandon him, they took
away everything from him, even his shirt, and it was done in
pure wickedness, since they carried nothing away."

One of the most amazing escapes is that of a soldier from Bordeaux, told partly in his own racy idiom, and fully vouched for by the author. After relating how he left the railway at Nanteuil and traversed a hamlet pillaged by the Germans he continues:

We form ourselves into a skirmish line. The shells come. The
dirt flies: holes to bury an ox? One can see them coming:
zzz--boom! There is time to get out of the way.

Arrived at the edge of the woods, we separate as scouts. We
are ordered to advance. But, mind you, they already have our
range. The artillery makes things hum. My bugler, near me, is
killed instantly; he has not said a word, poor boy! I am
wounded in the leg. It is about two o'clock. As I cannot drag
myself further, a comrade, before leaving, hides me under
three sheaves of straw with my head under my knapsack. The
shells have peppered it full of holes, that poor sack. Without
it--ten yards away a comrade, who had his leg broken and a
piece of shell in his arm, received seven or eight more
wounds.

I stayed there all day. In the evening the soldiers of the
101st took me into the woods, where there were several French
wounded and a German Captain, wounded the evening before. He
was suffering too, poor wretch. About midnight the French
soldiers came to seek those who were transportable. They left
only my comrade, myself and the German Captain. There were
other wounded further along, and we heard their cries. It was
dreary.

These wounded men passed two whole days there without help. On the third day the Germans arrived and the narrator gave himself up for lost. But the German Captain, with whom the Frenchmen had divided their food and drink, begged that they be cared for. Ultimately they were taken to the German camp and their wounds attended to. But in a few minutes the camp became the centre of a violent attack, and again it looked as if the last day of the wounded prisoners had come.

Suddenly the Germans ran away and left everything. An hour later, when the firing ceased, they returned, carried away the wounded of both nationalities on stretchers, crowded about twenty-five of them into one wagon (the narrator's broken leg was not stretched out, and he suffered,) and all the way the wagon gave forth the odor of death. All day they rode without a bite to eat. At 1 o'clock at night they reached the village of Cuvergnon, where their wounds were well attended to. The following day the Germans departed without saying a word, but the villagers cared for the wounded, both friends and enemies, and in time the American automobiles carried them to Neuilly.

It is a paradise [added the wounded man.] Now we are saved.
But what things I have seen! I have seen an officer with his
brain hanging here, over his eye. And black corpses, and
bloated horses! The saddest time is the night. One hears
cries: "Help!" There are some who call their mothers. No one
answers.

All these recitals of soldiers are stamped with the red badge of courage. A priest serving as an Adjutant was superintending the digging of trenches close to the firing line on the Aisne. He had to expose himself for a space of three feet in going from one trench to another. In that instant a Mauser bullet struck him under the left eye, traversed the nostril, the top of the palate, the cheek bone and came out under the right ear. He felt the bullet only where it came out, but soon he fell, covered with blood and believed he was wounded to death. Then his courage returned, and he crawled into the trench. Comrades carried him to the ambulance at Ambleny, with bullets and "saucepans" raining about them from every direction. In time he was transferred to the American Hospital at Neuilly. "I'm only a little disfigured and condemned to liquids," he told his friend the abbé. "In a few weeks I shall be cured and will return to the front."

Abbé Klein tells the curious story of a Zouave and his faithful dog. In one of the zigzag corridors connecting the trenches near Arras the man was terribly wounded by a shell that killed all his companions and left him three-quarters buried in the earth. With only the dead around him, he "felt himself going to discouragement," to use the author's mild phrase, when his dog, which had never left him since the beginning of the war, arrived and began showing every sign of distress and affection. The wounded man told the author:

It is not true that he dug me out, but he roused my courage. I
commenced to free my arms, my head, the rest of my body.
Seeing this, he began scratching-with all his might around me,
and then caressed me, licking my wounds. The lower part of my
right leg was torn off, the left wounded in the calf, a piece
of shell in the back, two fingers cut off, and the right arm
burned. I dragged myself bleeding to the trench, where I
waited an hour for the litter carriers. They brought me to the
ambulance post at Roclincourt, where my foot was taken off,
shoe and all; it hung only by a tendon. From there I was
carried on a stretcher to Anzin, then in a carriage to another
ambulance post, where they carved me some more.... My dog was
present at the first operation. An hour after my departure he
escaped and came to me at Anzin.

But when the Zouave was sent to Neuilly the two friends had to separate. At the railway station he begged to take his dog along, and told his story; but the field officer, touched though he was, could not take it upon himself to send a dog on a military train. The distress of both man and beast was so evident that more than one nurse had tears in her eyes as the train pulled out.

They tried to pet the dog, dubbed him Tue-Boches, offered him dog delicacies of all sorts, but in vain. He refused all food and remained for two days "sad to death." Then some one went to the American Hospital, told how the dog had saved the Zouave, and the upshot of it was that the faithful animal, duly combed and passed through the disinfecting room, was admitted to the hospital and recovered his master and his appetite. But at last accounts his master was still very weak, and "in the short visit which the dog is allowed to make each day, he knows perfectly, after a tender and discreet good morning, how to hold himself very wisely at the foot of the bed, his eyes fixed upon his patient."

Thanks to modern science, the cases of tetanus are few in this war, but there are many deaths from gangrene, because, with no truce for the removal of the wounded, so many lie for days before receiving medical aid. Abbé Klein tells of one Breton boy, as gentle a soul as his sister--"my little Breton," he always calls him, affectionately--and comments again and again upon the boy's patient courage amid sufferings that could have but one end. The infection spread in spite of all that science could do, and even amputation could not save him. At last he ceased to live, "like a poor little bird," as his French attendant, herself a mother with three boys in the army, said with tears.

Saddest of all are the bereaved wives and mothers. The reader will find many of them in the good Chaplain's book, and they will bring the war closer than anything else. Sometimes they stand mute under the blow, looking on the dead face without a sound, and then dropping unconscious to the floor. Sometimes they cry wild things to heaven. The Chaplain's work in either case is not easy, and some of his most touching pages depict such scenes.

There was a boy of twenty years, who was slowly but surely dying of gangrene. Let the abbé tell the end of the story:

At 9 o'clock the parents arrive. Frightened at first by the
change, they are reassured to see that he is suffering so
little, and soon leave him, as they think, to rest. When they
return at 10, suddenly called, their child is dead. Their
grief is terrible. The father still masters himself, but the
mother utters cries. They are led to the chapel, while some
one comes to look for me. The poor woman, who was wandering
about stamping and wringing her hands, rushes to me and cries,
no, it is not possible that her son is dead, a child like
that, so healthy, so beautiful, so lovable; she wishes me to
reassure her, to say it is as she says. Before my silence and
the tears that come to my eyes her groans redouble, and
nothing can calm her: "But what will become of us? We had only
him."

Nothing quiets her. My words of Christian hope have no more
effect than what the father tries to say to her. For a moment
she listens to my account of the poor boy's words of faith, of
the communion yesterday, of his prayer this morning. But soon
she falls back into her distraction, and I suggest to the
husband that he try to occupy her mind, to make a diversion of
some kind; the more so, I add, as I must leave to attend a
burial. She hears this word: "I don't want him to be taken
from me. You are not going to bury him at once!" I explain
softly that no one is thinking of such a thing; that on the
contrary I am going to take her to those who will let her see
her boy. We go then to the office, and I hurry away to
commence the funeral of another.

I learn on my return that they have seen their son, such as
death has made him, and that on hearing the cries of the
mother, three other women, already agitated by the visit to
their own wounded and by the funeral preparations, have fallen
in a faint.

One day last Fall President Poincaré, accompanied by M. Viviani and General Gallieni, was received at the American Hospital by Mr. Herrick, the American Ambassador, and by the members of the Hospital Committee. Abbé Klein has words of praise not only for Mr. Herrick, but also for his predecessor, Mr. Bacon, and for his successor, Mr. Sharp. His admiration for the devoted American women who are serving as nurses in the hospital is expressed frequently in his pages. He says the labors of the American nurses and those of the French nurses complement each other admirably. Of the founding and maintenance of the hospital at Neuilly, he says:

The resources are provided wholly by the charity of Americans.
From the beginning of the war the administrative council of
their Paris hospital took the initiative in the movement. The
American colony in France, almost unaided, gave the
half-million francs that was subscribed the first month. New
York and other cities of the United States followed their
lead, and, in spite of the financial crisis that grips there
as elsewhere, one may be sure that the funds will not be
wanting. America has its Red Cross, which, justly enough, aids
the wounded of all nations; but, among the belligerents, it
has chosen to distinguish the compatriots of Lafayette and
Rochambeau; our field hospital is the witness of their
faithful gratitude. France will not forget.

Later the abbé recorded in his diary that the 500 beds would soon be filled, but added that the generous activity of the Americans would not end there. They would establish branch hospitals. Large sums had been placed at the disposal of the committee to found an "ambulance" in Belgium and another in France as near the front as prudence permitted. Toward the end of January he recorded the gift of $200,000 from Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, and its use by the committee to establish an affiliated hospital at the College of Juilly, in the Department of Seine-et-Marne. He added that still other branches were about to be founded with American funds.

Abbé Klein writes out of a full and sincere heart, whether as a priest, a patriot, or a man who loves his fellowmen; and, without seeking it, he writes as a master of phrase. His new book probably will soon be translated and published in the United States.

A TROOPER'S SOLILOQUY

By O.C.A. CHILD

'Tis very peaceful by our place the now!
Aye, Mary's home from school--the little toad--
And Jeck is likely bringing in the cow,
Away from pasture, down the hillside road.

Now Nancy, I'll be bound, is brewing tea!
She's humming at her work the way she will,
And, happen so, she maybe thinks of me
And wishes she'd another cup to fill.

'Tis very queer to sit here on this nag
And swing this bit o' blade within my hand--
To keep my eye upon that German flag
And wonder will they run or will they stand;

To watch their Uhlans forming up below,
And feel a queersome way that's like to fear;
To hope to God that I won't make a show,
And that my throat is not too dry to cheer;

To close my eyes a breath and say "God bless
And keep all safe at home, and aid us win,"
Then straighten as the bugle sounds "Right, Dress...."
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! We're going in!

American Unfriendliness

By Maximilian Harden

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]

Maximilian Harden, author of the article of which the
following is a translation, is the widely known German
journalist and publicist who has been termed "the German
George Bernard Shaw." The article was published in the second
February number of Die Zukunft.

_Japan and the United States are being wooed. Ever since the Western powers' hope of speedy decisive blows on the part of Russia have shriveled up, they would like to lure the Japanese Army, two to four hundred thousand men, to the Continent. What was scoffed at as a whim of Pinchon and Clemenceau now is unveiled as a yearning of those at the head of the Governments._

_The sentimental wish to see Germany's collapse completed by the activities of the allied European powers now ventures only shyly into the light of day. The ultimate wearing down of the German Army assures us of victory; but a speedy termination of the war under which the whole hemisphere suffers would be preferable. The Trans-Siberian Railway could bring the Japanese to Poland and East Prussia. The greatness of the expenditures therefor cannot frighten him who knows what tremendous sums each week of the war costs the Allies. Where it is a question of our life, of the existence of all free lands, every consideration must vanish. Public opinion desires an agreement with the Government of the Mikado._

These sentences I found in the Temps. England will not apply the brakes. Mr. Winston Churchill, to be sure, lauds the care-free fortune of his fatherland, which even after Trafalgar, he says, did not command the seas as freely as today; but in his inmost heart even this "savior of Calais" does not cheat himself concerning the fact that it is a matter of life and death. In order not to succumb in such a conflict, England will sacrifice its prosperous comfort and the lordly pride of the white man just as willingly as it would, if necessary, Gibraltar and Egypt, (which might be within the reach of German armies in the Spring.)

Will Japan follow the luring cry? Any price will be paid for it. What is Indo-China to the Frenchmen, whose immense colonial empire is exploited by strangers, if thereby they can purchase the bliss of no longer being "the victims of 1870"? And the yellow race that co-operated on Europe's soil in the most momentous decision of all history would live in splendor such as had never before been seen, and could keep China, the confused, reeling republic, for at least a generation in its guardianship.

The land of the Stars and Stripes is only being asked to give its neutrality the color of good-will. It is, for the time being, unlikely that the United States would stand beside our opponents with army and navy, as has been urgently counseled by Mr. Roosevelt, (who received the honorary doctor's title in Berlin and as a private citizen reviewed a brigade drill at the Kaiser's side.) Nevertheless, experience warns us to be prepared for every change of weather, from the distant West, as well as the distant East, (and to guard ourselves alike against abuse and against flattery.)

The sentiment of the Americans is unfriendly to us. In spite of Princes' travels, Fritz monuments, exchanges of professors, Kiel Week, and cable compliments? Yes, in spite of all that. We can't change it. And should avoid impetuous wooing.

The missionaries of the Foreign Office brought along with them in trunks and bundles across the sea the prettiest eagerness; but in many cases they selected useless and in some cases even injurious methods. Lectures, pamphlets, defensive writings--the number of the defenders and the abundance of their implements and talk only nursed suspicion. Whatever could be done for the explanation of the German conduct was done by Germania's active children, who know the country and the people.

The American business man never likes to climb mountains of paper. He has grown up in a different emotional zone, accustomed to a different standard of values than the Middle European. To feel his way into foreign points of view, finally to become, in ordinary daily relations, a psychologist, that will be one of the chief duties of the German of tomorrow. He may no longer demand that the stranger shall be like him; no longer denounce essential differences of temperament as a sin. The North American, among whose ancestors are Britons and Spaniards, Celts and Dutchmen, South Frenchmen and Low Germans, does not easily understand the Englishman, despite the common language; calls him surly, stiff, cold; charges him with selfishness and presumption, and has never, as a glance backward will show, shirked battle with him for great issues. For the most part, to be sure, it remains the scolding of relatives, who wish to tug at and tousel each other, not to murder each other.

Only before the comrade of Japan did the brow of Jonathan wrinkle more deeply. But every Briton swore that his kinsman would bar the yellow man's way to Hawaii, California, and the Philippines, and put him in the fields of Asia only as a terror to the Russians or a scarecrow to the Germans. A doubt remained, nevertheless; and we missed the chance of a strong insurance against Japanese encroachment. Stroked caressingly yesterday and boxed ears today:

Over there the dollar alone rules, and all diplomacy is a
pestilential swamp; decency is an infrequent guest, with scorn
grinning ever over its shoulder; the entrepreneur is a rogue,
the official a purchasable puppet, the lady a
cold-cream-covered lady-peacock.

The stubborn idealism, the cheerful ability of the American, his joy in giving, his achievements in and for art, science, culture--all that was scarcely noticed. Such a caricature could not be erased by compliments.

Before Mr. Roosevelt bared his set of stallion's teeth (Hengstgebiss) to the Berliners, he had spoken cheerfully to Admirals Dewey and Beresford concerning the possibilities of a war of the Star-Spangled Banner against Germany. And gentler fellow-countrymen of the billboard man said:

You're amazing. Yourselves devilishly greedy for profits, yet
you scoff at us because we go chasing after business. You
fetch heaps of money across the sea, and then turn up your
sublimely snuffing noses as if it stinks.

To reach an understanding would have been difficult even in times of peace. The American is unwilling to be either stiff or subservient. He does not wish to be accounted of less value as a merchant than the officer or official; wishes to do what he likes and to call the President an ox outright if he pleases. Leave him as he is; and do not continually hurt the empire and its swarms of emigrant children by the attempt to force strangers into the shell of your will and your opinion.

Is it not possible that the American is analyzing the origin of the war in his own way? That he looks upon Belgium's fate with other eyes than the German? That he groans over "the army as an end in itself" and over "militarism"? That he does not understand us any quicker than the German Michel understands him? And that he puffs furiously when, after a long period of drought, the war, a European one, now spoils his trade?

Only for months at the worst, Sam; then it will spring up again in splendor such as has never been seen before. No matter how the dice fall for us, the chief winnings are going to you. The cost of the war (expense without increment, devastation, loss of business) amounts to a hundred thousand million marks or more for old Europa; she will be loaded down with loans and taxes. Even to the gaze of the victor, customers will sink away that were yesterday capable of buying and paying. Extraordinary risks cannot be undertaken for many a year on our soil. But everybody will drift over to you--Ministers of Finance, artists, inventors, and those who scent profits. You will merely have to free yourselves from dross (and from the trust thought that cannot be stifled) and to weed out the tares of demagogy; then you will be the effective lords of the world and will travel to Europe like a great Nürnberg that teaches people subsequently to feel how once upon a time it felt to operate in the Narrows.