Chapter IV: Part 4

I am aware of the existence in England of such a body of peace propagandists as the Union of Democratic Control, and in Holland of some French pacifists, and scattered here and there of Internationalists. But of all the men and women with whom I casually talked there was not one who shared these gentlemen's views.

Of all the French statements of reasons why the war must go on, which were iterated and reiterated to me, the best came from a prince, a retired naval captain and a little dressmaker. Unfortunately, they may not be quoted by name.

The prince said: "After this taste of blood the world can never remain long at peace while any powerful nation dedicates itself to the ideals and instincts of militarism. Germany, under the guidance of Prussia, is to-day such a nation. These aims and instincts have been so thoroughly absorbed by her people that, even if they sincerely wished to, these people could not eliminate them inside of two or three generations. It is ludicrous to imagine that these characteristics, which have become nearly if not quite hereditary, could be negotiated out of them. They must be subjugated out of the German people."

The naval captain said: "It is a mere matter of arithmetic. It can be easily demonstrated that at the end of this war, with its cost on her shoulders, if France does not immediately reduce her armaments to a minimum she is absolutely bound to go bankrupt. Now, as we cannot conceivably trust any mere promises of disarmament which Germany might make, it is obvious that we must go on with this war until we have reduced her to such a condition that we can enforce disarmament upon her, and thus safely enjoy its benefits ourselves."

The little dressmaker said: "My husband has been fighting at the front for months. It would be natural for me to wish the war to end to-morrow, no matter on what terms, if I could get my husband back before he is killed. But I want the war to go on until the 'Boches' are crushed; otherwise in another ten years or so there will be a new war, and then they will come and take away not only my husband, but my son as well."

In England the same line of reasoning prevailed. And the fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that this reasoning did not take the shape of stock arguments devised by politicians to bolster up some expedient course and drilled into the people for parrot-like repetition. The arguments were the spontaneous expression of the heartfelt convictions of all these people.

Intelligent opinion in England ranges between the two statements made to me, respectively, by a very famous Tory statesman and administrator, and by one of the best-known Liberal statesmen in English public life to-day.

The first of these was terse and to the point:

"It is the greatest mistake for your Government to feel that the United States can, by remaining neutral, help to bring the war to a close. This war will be fought to a point where no mediation will be possible or needed. No peace with Germany, signed with a Hohenzollern in power, would be worth more than twenty years' peace to the world. To make Germany's promises binding on her, her people have got to have a share in her foreign policy, and that they cannot have under the present dynasty or system."

The second statement was:

"The best information that I can obtain from Germany is that, if she wins, the advanced party, which is in the ascendancy, plans to erect Poland into a semi-independent kingdom, contributing to it that portion of Poland which Germany herself now possesses. She will annex Belgium, probably a strip of Northern France, and possibly enough of Holland to give her command of the mouths of the Scheldt and Rhine.

"Personally I cannot feel it to be unreasonable from her point of view that she should plan to correct a situation where her great water artery, the Rhine, is bottled up at its outlet. She will also take all Courland, and this, too, is not so unreasonable, since the population is far more German than Russian. Nevertheless, if such geographical and ethnological changes as these were accomplished and to be maintained, who can conceivably imagine that Germany can afford to modify her militarism?

"My own views as to what the general terms of peace should be if the Allies win are shared by men in both England and France whose opinions will have weight in the peace negotiations. They are:

"To erect an independent Polish kingdom or state; to reconstitute Belgium with indemnity; to hold a plebiscite in Alsace-Lorraine, taken by a neutral, preferably the United States, in order to determine to whom they should belong, and in what proportions; to dismember Turkey, excepting Anatolia, which, being strictly Turkish, should be left to the Turks; to enforce a very large degree of disarmament upon Germany and Europe; to leave the German-speaking German Empire intact. (This talk about the deposition of the Hohenzollerns as one of the peace terms is sheer impertinence.)

"Now, you must readily perceive that any peace made in the near future must conform or approximate to the German plans which I have outlined and must involve a continuance of militarism and a standing incitement to fresh wars. While a peace on the terms which we favor, a peace that will perpetuate peace, must be wrung from a decisively beaten Germany, and is therefore a long way off. That is why we shall have to go through a very bad time of it for some period to come, and why our ultimate victory will be at least one year, and possibly two or three years off."

The keenest realization that victory will be slow, the completest confidence that its certainty is axiomatic, is to be found in the allied armies. There, ungrudgingly, they give the Germans fullest credit for their preparedness, for their foresight, for their powers of systematic and sustained labor, for their inventiveness. And they do not waste their time trying to devise discrediting substitutes for such words as "ability" in talking of their Generals, "courageousness" in talking of their soldiers, and "patriotism" in talking of their people. It is only when you get far behind the firing line that manliness merges into meanness in estimating the enemy.

Yet these very officers who paid such soldierly tributes to their antagonists were so wholly assured of eventual victory that any scepticism on my part did not irritate them, but merely moved them to good-natured smiles.

"So far," an English staff-officer remarked to me, "we English have been bungling amateurs in the art of war contending against trained professional specialists. But with a couple of years' more experience I believe we shall know as much about it as they do, and then we shall win."

"In the last analysis, talking from the military standpoint, this war, like every war, will be won by men," said a French staff-officer. "The Germans will not be beaten through lack of guns or ammunition or machinery or supplies, but through lack of men. How long by the aid of mechanics they can postpone the hour when the lack of men becomes fatal to them I do not know--one year, two years. But in the end, with the allied man-power steadily growing, and the German man-power steadily lessening, their military collapse is inevitable."

These are typical of a score of similar views advanced by officers, from Generals down to subalterns.

In the French army, as they show you their elaborate machine-shops mounted on motor-lorries for the repair of all the vehicles in the transport service, they will say with the most complete conviction: "This mobility is not of much importance now, but when we begin the pursuit of the 'Boches' then they will come in handy!"

When they show you their great parks of supply-trains, each carrying three days' complete provisions for one army corps, they will tell you earnestly:

"Not much use now when the railroads do most of the carrying of supplies to the armies, but wait till the advance begins and then we shall be useful!"

When they let you examine their wonderful 75's, mounted on an automobile capable of doing over thirty miles an hour over the road, and of starting a stream of twenty-five shells a minute one minute after coming to a standstill, they will shrug their shoulders and say: "Something of a waste just now, perhaps, but when the advance is on they will do wonderful work!"

The advance! The advance! is in all their minds.

"But when will the advance begin?" you ask a chalk-powdered infantryman sweating in the sun-soaked trenches.

"Ah!" he will answer with complete unconcern. "Not yet, Monsieur. They say next spring or next summer. But then 'On les aura!'" ("We'll get them!")

And that unconcern means far more than appears on the surface. It means that the "poilu" knows he will have another winter in the trenches, with all the terrible discomforts that soldiers dread so much more than they dread danger. He knows it, and is completely reconciled to it.

"That was the one thing we feared"--a French General admitted to me--"the effect on the men's _morale_ of the certainty that they would have another winter in the trenches. But they know it now, and 'ils s'en fichent!'" (to which the nearest American slang equivalent would be "they should worry!")

In the amazing New France (which the French prefer to consider a reincarnated rather than a transformed France) the people are as determined as the army. A short time ago, when the authorities first began to give the soldiers at the front their "permissions" to go home for three days, they did so with considerable apprehension that the home influence on the soldier might be a disheartening one.

But, on the contrary, the reunion seemed to give mutual encouragement. The soldier braced up the "home folks'" confidence and pride in the army, and the home folks stimulated the soldier's confidence and pride in himself. Thus the experiment has turned out a great success.

The politicians and their fermentations are, in France, the bugbears of the army officers. This feeling of aversion and contempt extends, so far as I could make out, down through the rank and file. They feel that when a nation is at death-grips with its enemy even the most beautiful of democratic theories should be safely locked away with other luxuries; that the politicians should confine their activities to voting the funds necessary for the successful prosecution of the war, and should leave the conduct of the war severely alone.

But in France even those politicians who hanker after a finger in the military pie are unanimous for seeing the war through to a decisive victory. They may play politics about whether the Government should or should not have been removed from Paris to Bordeaux last September; they may squabble over whether General Sarrail is the persecuted military genius of the war or an incompetent officer whose removal from Verdun should never have been sugar-coated by his appointment to Gallipoli; they may intrigue to oust Millerand from the War Ministry and try to get together on Briand for his place; they may stick loyally to Joffre because an old man who is fond of fishing is not likely to become an old man on horseback.

But, whether tirading against the evils of a bureaucracy or perorating against the iniquities of the censorship, you will find the politicians of France, Royalists, Clericals, Conservatives, Radicals and Socialists with all their subtle subdivisions, having proved their patriotism by the greatest sacrifice of which a politician is capable--having for nigh on ten months kept silent!--earnestly and honestly working for their country. They are striving, not for the quick peace of compromise which would relegate the silent, efficient soldiers to their subordinate powers and would restore to themselves all the prestige of full-throated eloquence, but for the deferred and definitive peace of victory, with all the continuance of second-fiddling to which such a postponement subjects them.

It is indeed fortunate for the alliance that France--Army, Government and People--is united in the determination to fight this war through to its logical conclusion. For France is apt to be the nation which pays the piper. England is physically safe behind her fleets, Russia proper is physically safe behind her distances, for the German invasion is not apt to go far beyond her alien provinces of Courland and Poland.

But France is not at sword's length, but at dagger's point, with her enemy--one little slip by any one, from an absent-minded General down to a sleeping sentinel, and she may become not a defeated, but a conquered nation.

And this you can see in the faces of the French to-day. Not anger, not bitterness, not sadness; neither excitement nor despondency is in their faces, but a look of hushed and solemn suspense. It is a nation with straining ears, with straining eyes, with bated breath, waiting, waiting.

After leaving the hush of France, England appears at a disadvantage largely undeserved. Compared with the atmosphere of strain in Paris, the atmosphere of London seems one of relaxation. Contrasted with the breathless struggle for self-preservation in France, the British attitude toward the war seems almost dilettante.

This is unquestionably due in part to the fact that in England a very literal-minded race is shipping its soldiers to fight in merely geographical localities for seemingly abstract principles. The trouble is that England has the Channel and France has the imagination. It is obvious how markedly stronger the combination would be if Britain were fighting an invader and France were fighting for a sentiment.

The superficial impression of holiday soldiering that one gets in England is emphasized by the British hatred of the dramatic and the British worship of sport. The British go on laughing, dining, play-going, dancing, supping; in fact, frivolling, because they think it would be melodramatic to forswear these pursuits because of the war. They go on cricketing, racing, fishing, shooting, hunting, because they go on eating, drinking, sleeping and bathing. These are part of the bodily functions of the Briton.

To any other nation, sport, no matter how intimate a part of the national life, in certain emergencies becomes trivial. To say that to an Englishman would be equivalent to saying that under any circumstances childbirth or prayer could be trivial. It is a national characteristic which must simply be accepted.

The impression made on superficial observers by these manners and habits of casual unconcern does England a certain injustice. For as far as her duties to her allies are concerned she has undoubtedly gone far beyond her obligations.

As one of her Cabinet members (a man who may well be her next Prime Minister) put it to me:

"The best two ways that I know of to prove one's devotion to a cause are to pay for it and to die for it. England is voluntarily doing both in far greater measure than her commitments call for. When the war started she agreed to help France on land with an army of 150,000 men. She has now raised an army of 3,000,000 men.

"When the war started she agreed to assume the naval responsibility of protecting the coast of France. She has not only done that, and incidentally driven Germany from the seas, but she has thrown her ships into the attack on the Dardanelles and has helped Russia with her submarines in the Baltic.

"When the war started there was a financial understanding between England and France. England has not only carried out her share in this understanding, but has been instrumental in the financing of Italy, and stands ready to assume further similar responsibilities in the Balkans.

"How any candid mind in the face of such a record can charge Great Britain with shirking her share in the war passes my understanding."

There is no doubt about the truth of this. To get the voluntary gift of three million lives within one year, to get the voluntary loan of £600,000,000 in less than one month is probably an unparalleled achievement. Great Britain has done far more than her duty to others called for. And yet the question will not be smothered: Is she doing all that is called for by a strong, far-seeing nation's duty to itself?

She has thrown into the scales all the peculiar assets of a democracy in spontaneous zeal and voluntary sacrifice. But can a really great nation in such a crisis as this afford to be the recipient of only those contributions, no matter how prodigal, which are spontaneous and voluntary? Can a really proud nation afford to base its career at such a time upon the charity of its citizens? With Russia on the one hand purging herself of the bureaucratic evils of absolutism and forcing upon herself the pains of democratization, with France, on the other hand, sacrificing for the time her most cherished principles of republicanism in order to substitute the efficiency of Authority for the waste motions of Democracy, can England afford to remain complacently convinced that she represents the happy mean between these two extremes--a mean which needs no modifying?

Can England as a nation continue with admiring acquiescence to watch the cream of her manhood spend itself in Flanders and the Dardanelles; continue with deprecating acquiescence to watch the skimmed milk of her manhood preserve itself at home for the sacred duty of fathering a future generation?

Can England acquiesce placidly in the professional, the business, the financial sacrifices generally which so many Englishmen are splendidly making, and acquiesce plaintively in the disgusting treason whose guilt was shared in varying measure by the gouging coal-owners and the striking coal-miners of Wales?

Can England set out to curb the drunkenness which in certain parts is crippling her ammunition production and then sink back into acquiescence in the temporizing compromise which taxed drunkenness instead of terminating it?

Can England, in fine, afford to preserve Personal Liberty at the slightest risk of imperilling National Liberty?

Perhaps England can. Perhaps England must.

So long as England fulfils and far exceeds her covenants with her allies it is not a question for them to answer. It is assuredly not a question to which any neutral visitor can with seemliness hazard a solution.

It is not even a question, in my opinion, which is apt to affect the ultimate outcome of this particular war.

But it is a question to which on some future day Macaulay's New Zealander will, with positiveness and propriety, be in a position to find the answer.

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Transcriber's note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Printer's inconsistencies in the use of accents, hyphens, and punctuation have been retained. The original spelling has been used except where there was good reason to correct it. Any such changes are noted below.

The following misprints and misspellings have been corrected:

Page 3, "avions de reglage" changed to "avions de réglage". (their "avions de réglage," or "regulating aeroplanes.")

Page 4, "aviatiks" changed to "Aviatiks". (Aviatiks of the enemy)

Page 4, "fusilage" changed to "fuselage". (projected over the bow of the fuselage)

Page 11, "pilot- spotted" changed to "pilot spotted". (puffs of smoke in the hazy distance the pilot spotted unerringly)

Page 33, "practise" changed to "practice". (And practice in this matter)

Page 57, "departs" changed to '"départs"'. (distant reports of the "départs")

Page 86, "leant themselves" changed to "lent themselves". (and clay lent themselves to effects which)

Page 100, "scrupulously cleanly," changed to "scrupulously clean,". (I found them scrupulously clean, very patient)

Page 136, "drommelfeuer" changed to "trommelfeuer". (the famous "trommelfeuer" ... "drum-roll fire," as the Germans call it)

There is in the book the single use of the word "exterpreting" (page 78) for which no adequate definition has been found. It is not a spelling mistake. From the context it might be an amusing play on the word "interpreting."