Chapter X: Part 10

The following letter is from the _Vossische Zeitung_. A soldier's young sister had written asking him to "kill a lot of Russians" and "to gain a new victory in order to cheer us up." "'Kill a lot of Russians.' You have not seen them lying about--those poor dead, with their singularly solemn faces.... You have not seen the battle which preceded, and the bad wounds which so many of my friends got in trying to kill a lot of them. You do not think of the fact that those dead men had parents, brothers, and sisters whom they loved. And you have not seen the harrowing destruction of the villages and towns--how the poor, hunted-down population is running away, leaving everything they had behind them to be consumed by the flames.... And then, remember, we are not fighting in order to cheer you up--we are not lying about in the open-air day and night, starved and suffering from wounds and homesickness, in order that you at home may be cheerful at the tea or beer table. We are fighting and bearing this terrible wretchedness in order that you may he spared the horrors of war, and that Germany's future may be bright." That is, I believe, what the enormous majority of Germany's soldiers are fighting for. Soldiers on both sides have similar and quite reconcilable aims; but government is too complex to express the simple will of the people. In every country, it seems to me, anti-militarist opinion only needs its chance. I was struck by the frequency with which such an opinion cropped up when I was travelling a few weeks in Germany not long before the war. On the top of the Belchen I encountered it in talking to a native of Würtemberg. Again in a walk with a young German to the Feldberg; again in a book-shop at Freiburg; again in chance railway talk with a very well-educated German on my way to Berlin. In Berlin itself a giant Westphalian accosted me, as he wanted to make the acquaintance of "one of these terrible fellows who mean to smash up Germany." His political ideal consisted in the belief that England and Germany, understanding each other, could keep the peace of the world.

ALBERT KLEIN.

Dr. Albert Klein, of Giessen, who was killed in the Champagne in February, felt compelled to side with his Government, as so many do in times of crisis. To that extent his was a biased judgment. It is a bias that one has seen possessing almost everywhere the noblest souls. But Klein could write thus:

When I read all this inflated stuff in the papers--written by
men guiltily conscious of being very safe in their offices at
home--to the effect that every soldier is a hero, I feel
positively disgusted. Heroism is far too rare to form a basis
for a national army. What is needed to make and keep that a
coherent whole is that men must respect their leaders and fear
them more than the enemy, and that leaders must be
conscientious, true to their duty, well informed, resourceful
and self-controlled. Thank God, there is plenty of the good old
discipline yet. But these fine fellows come along, concoct a
mess of New Year reflections and Centenary speeches and boldly
declaim about the German spirit that is to heal mankind. They
pick up all the filth of the foreign Press and fling it back
with threefold interest. It is just because I am so passionately
devoted to all that the noblest Germans have done for the
civilisation of the world that I do not desire to see us
burdened with a task we cannot accomplish.

If Germany's contribution to the world's civilisation is the
highest we can strive for, we must seek afresh to live in peace
and concord with the other nations. Then we shall cease calling
every Englishman a hypocrite and every Frenchman empty-headed,
quite apart from the daily proofs we get of their military
ability. Oh, my dear friends, believe me, the man on the spot
who sees and experiences all this, does not talk so complacently
of death and sacrifice and victory, as those who, far from the
front, ring the bells, make fine speeches and write the papers.
He resigns himself to the bitter necessity of suffering and
death when the hour comes, and he knows and sees how many, too
many sacrifices have already been made, knows it is time, high
time that all this devastation ceased, not only on our side, but
on the other side, too.

It is just in seeing all this suffering that we feel a new bond
of sympathy (and you, my dear ones, would feel just the same,
yes, I know, you feel it already) uniting us with the enemy.

If, as I hardly dare to hope, I return from this murderous war,
it will be one of my most welcome duties to steep my mind in the
culture of those that now oppose us. I mean to build up on a
broader basis the aim and purpose of my life, namely, historical
and philosophical meditation on culture in its highest form.

Last night I was strangely moved, having an opportunity of
seeing a convoy of prisoners and speaking to one of them, a
colleague, a classical philologist from Vigeac. Such a frank,
intelligent man, with an excellent military training, as indeed
were all the company with him! He told me how terrible it had
been to endure the firing of our machine-guns (démoralisant, he
called it)--and showed me clearly the utter senselessness of
war. How we should like to be friends with people so like us in
education, habits of life, thought and interest.

We soon got into conversation about a book on Rousseau and
began a regular argument, like two old philologists. He saw the
ribbon in my button-hole and when he heard it was the Iron Cross
he said: "Félicitations!" His sparkling interest in the striped
ribbon seemed to me so characteristic of a Southern Frenchman
and very touching.

How alike we are in worth and merit! How untrue all these tales
told by our papers of the French being broken and spent! Just as
untrue as all that the _Temps_ writes about us. And all he said,
this French colleague of mine, betrayed so much independent
thought and respect for German mind and character. Why should
we, fated to be friends, always be divided? I was deeply
troubled, and sat there for a long time lost in thought, but all
my brooding brought me no solution.

And the end not in sight yet, the end of this war, that for six
months has been gorging itself with human life and prosperity
and happiness! The same feeling amongst us and amongst them!
Always the same picture! We are so much alike, we achieve the
same, we suffer the same, just because we happen to be such
bitter enemies.--(From the _International Review_.)

The following is another extract given by M. Romain Rolland. It is taken from the letter of a German soldier to a Swiss professor:

The longing for peace is intense with us. At least with all
those who are at the front, forced to kill and to be killed. The
newspapers say that it is not possible to stem the war-like
passion of the soldiers. They lie, knowingly or unknowingly. Our
pastors deny that this passion is abating. You cannot think how
indignant we are at such nonsense. Let them hold their tongues
and not speak of things they do not understand. Or, rather, let
them come here, not as chaplains in the rear, but in the line of
fire, with arms in their hands. Perhaps then they will perceive
the inner change which is going on in thousands of us. In the
eyes of these parsons a man who has no passion for war is
unworthy of his age. But it seems to me that we who are
faithfully doing our duty without enthusiasm for the war, and
hating it from the bottom of our souls, are finer heroes than
the others. They speak of a Holy War. I know of no Holy War. I
only know one war, and that is the sum of everything that is
inhuman, impious, and beastly in man, a visitation of God and a
call to repentance to the people who rushed into it, or allowed
themselves to be drawn into it. God has plunged men into this
Hell in order to teach them to love Heaven. As for the German
people, the war seems to be a chastisement and a call to
contrition--addressed first of all to our German Church.

GERMANY IN PEACE TIME.

Enough has been cited to give a glimpse of the better Germany in the time of this war. Let us remember, too, what she has been in peace. "After all, in our saner moments we all of us know that the Germans are a great people, with a great part in the world to play. Their boasts about their 'culture' are not idle boasts, and, when one comes to think of it, it is rather important to have in our midst a people that _cares_ to boast about its culture. The Englishman is more given to complaining than boasting, and when he does boast it is certainly not about culture. As it seems to me, the Germans excel in two things--simple tenderness of sentiment and the work of patient observation. I am aware that it has for a considerable time been the mode in England to slight German literature. Personally, I consider this one of those temporary poses to which superior persons are liable. Leave out all the great names if you will--Goethe, Schiller, Heine, and the rest--and we still have the folk-songs. A nation that can produce those folk-songs has got unusual gifts for the world. And, of course, we envy the Germans their music. Of all the contemptible utterances that this war has produced (and it has produced a good many) none has been worse than the silly blathering against German music just because it is German. What have Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner got to do with the politics of the present war? Leaving the arts aside, it is quite certain that in any region where careful observation and painstaking thought are required, no one can afford to neglect Germany. Recently I was looking through May's 'Guide to the Roman Pottery in the York Museum.' Among the names of those dealing with the subject of Roman pottery I suppose the best known are those of Déchelette and Dragendorff--the one French, the other German. Among the other references I found fourteen to German publications and four to English, one of the latter being merely a museum catalogue. No one can study philosophy without continual reference to German thought. Even in a subject so English as the study of Shakespeare the work of Gervinus is fundamental, and from the time of Lessing to that of Ten Brink there has been a succession of German commentators. Those of us who have worked at all at science know only too well what we owe to Germany there. It has, indeed, been at times painful to compare the mass of the German output with the comparatively thin stream of English work. Of course, there has been splendid English research, but as a people we are not lovers of knowledge, and we are specially loath to apply it. Again and again our scientific papers have been filled with diatribes against our English neglect of science, and the diatribes were needed. I remember asking a British firm of repute to construct for me a resistance 'bridge' of a simple kind. I explained the whole purpose of the apparatus, but when it came back to me the resistance wire was soldered down in two places to broad bands of brass. This, of course, altered the resistance and rendered the apparatus useless. A rudimentary knowledge of electricity would have made such a mistake impossible. Contrast this with the following: When I was a student a lecturer wished to prepare a rather rare compound for some work of his. We both tried for long to prepare a specimen, but failed, probably because the temperature of our furnace was not high enough. We then sent to a German firm of manufacturing chemists, and they prepared it for us at once. I remarked recently to an English scientific chemist, 'No English firm would have done that.' 'Well, if you had pressed them,' he replied, 'they would have sent over to ---- (a German firm) and then put their own label on the bottle.' A 'chemist' in too many of our works has too often been a lad who has picked up some routine knowledge, but who has no more scientific equipment than a farm labourer. Contrast this with the state of things at the _Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik_, where as many as _sixty_ trained chemists are employed.

"I have often thought of these things when I have heard manufacturers bewailing German competition. The war has produced many strange intellectual somersaults, and it is curious to notice how many Free Traders are now eager for the destruction, not temporarily, but permanently, of German trade. A few months ago they would have preached in season and out on the advantage to England of receiving cheap goods, they would have extolled German scientific methods, and they would (with every right) have pointed out that a customer who buys forty million pounds' worth of our goods is scarcely one whom we should wish to destroy. All these facts remain absolutely unaltered by the war. All that has happened is that a half-ashamed jealousy is no longer ashamed, and is masquerading as patriotism so successful as to have misled the majority of our countrymen--for a time. The day of reckoning will come, and we shall not then find it any better than previously to buy dear goods to please the manufacturers. Moreover, our men of business will not have learned scientific methods by the end of the war. A publisher's circular that I recently received appealed, on patriotic grounds, for the purchase of a book on applied science. I am not very cynical, but I confess that I distrust these trade appeals to patriotism. The true patriot does not advertise his patriotism in order to make money. In this case the work was well known and important, but it was interesting to observe that almost every one of the contributors was German, and that the rest were German-Swiss. Surely, in spite of its horror, there are many things in this contest to make the gods laugh."[74]

BRITISH RECOGNITION.

It is pleasant to find recognition of Germany's commercial deserts among British commercial men. The annual conference of the United Kingdom Commercial Travellers' Association was opened at the Town Hall, Manchester, on May 24, 1915. Sir William Mather, who was unanimously elected president, referred to Germany as follows:

The position of Germany in the world of commerce had been
attained as the result of years of patient and persistent
organisation, of close application to business, of exhaustive
and careful research work, and full appreciation of the
requirements and necessities of the markets for which she was
catering, and a determination to meet those requirements in
strict accordance with the wishes and needs of her potential
customers. Behind all the efforts had been lavish financial
support by the German Government, and the pledging of national
credit for individual and private enterprise.

The position secured by Germany as a result of her persistent
application of these methods was not to be seriously challenged,
nor would she be deprived of her hold upon it by anything other
than the use by Englishmen of the same skill, the same
elasticity, the same persistence, and the same efficiency in
every branch of commerce.

Commercial travellers, as one of the most important parts of the
mechanism, must, if the desired result be obtained, make
themselves fully efficient for their part in the work. They had
been perhaps, as vocal as any section of the community as to the
necessity and possibility of extending English trade, but it was
much to be regretted that when opportunities were given and
facilities provided, more particularly for the younger men to
equip themselves for the work which had to be done in extending
British commerce abroad, the response was extremely
inadequate.--(_Daily Telegraph_, May 25, 1915.)

As regards chemical research there also fortunately remain those who still ungrudgingly admit our enormous indebtedness to Germany. In March, 1915, Professor Percy Frankland, F.R.S., addressed the Birmingham Section of the Society of Chemical Industry on "The Chemical Industries of Germany." With true and chivalrous courtesy, Professor Frankland, in a footnote to his printed address, writes: "The author has much pleasure in acknowledging the assistance he has received from the valuable compilation by Professor Lepsius of Berlin, 'Deutschlands Chem. Industrie, 1888-1913,' and from that by Dr. Duisberg, of Elberfeld, 'Wissenschaft und Technik,' 1911." I believe such courtesy is more characteristically British than the lack of it sometimes shown by others. The following quotations from Professor Frankland's address are of interest:

INDUSTRIES DEPENDENT ON SYNTHETIC ORGANIC CHEMISTRY.

... During the major part of the [past] 60 years the great bulk
of the discoveries in this domain have been made in Germany.
Organic chemistry is, perhaps, the branch of science which more
perfectly suits the German mind and temperament. It involves the
possession of those qualities in which Germans are so
pre-eminent--the capacity for taking an infinitude of pains, the
capacity to anticipate difficulties and organise means to
circumvent them.... It is in the possession of such schools of
research, both in the universities and in the chemical
factories, that Germany has by two generations the lead of all
other countries in the world.... The chemical manufacturers in
this country have, with some notable exceptions, failed to
establish anything worthy of the name of research laboratories
in connection with their works.... Whereas the artificial colour
industry started in England, that of artificial drugs is
entirely of German origin, and may be said to begin with the
discovery by Liebig of chloroform in 1831, and of chloral
hydrate in 1832.... The composition of the personnel who carry
on these German colour works is at the bottom of their success.
Take the works of Messrs. Meister, Lucius, und Brüning as an
example. In 1913, the composition was as follows: Workmen,
7,680; managers, 374; expert chemists, 307; technologists, 74;
commercial staff, 611. Contrast with the above the fact that the
six English factories now producing dyestuffs employ altogether
only 35 chemists, whilst evidence of their relative activities
is again furnished by the circumstance that between 1886 and
1900 the English firms took out only 86 patents, whereas the six
principal German firms were responsible for 948 during the same
period. Having shown that these German coal-tar colour
manufacturers are without rivals from the commercial point of
view, I feel it to be my duty to point out also that their
industry is carried on under conditions of labour which are
highly creditable to the management.

Professor Frankland goes on to urge that we should at least pay heed to "the warnings repeated _ad nauseam_ by the chemical profession during a whole generation." Those warnings told us of the stupidity and peril of neglecting science. It is not mere commercialism but science that is needed. The help of science, it may be added, will never be gained unless devotion is paid to it for its own sake, and not simply as a means to money. That reward is too far off for mere commercialism. Adolf Baeyer synthesised indigo in 1880, but it cost 17 years of laborious investigation and the investment of nearly £1,000,000 of capital before that synthesis could be made a commercial success. So long a chase is not carried out by those who are thinking only of the prize. The hunt itself must interest them. That, I personally fear, is where we in Britain (and especially in England) are somewhat lacking.

Two other points in Professor Frankland's address I would draw attention to. In emphasising the need of scientific men on the directorates he asks: "What does not the firm of Messrs. Brunner, Mond and Co., for example, owe to the late Dr. Ludwig Mond, F.R.S.?" Just so. Dr. Ludwig Mond was a German. He came to this country and brought with him his energy, enterprise, and his very exceptional scientific endowments. With Mr. J. J. Brunner he was thus able to found what became the largest alkali works in the kingdom, and undoubtedly one of the most scientific and enterprising works we have. Incidentally it is worth mentioning that the firm of Brunner, Mond and Co. was one of the first to introduce the eight hours day. There are people about (a few of whom ought to know better) asking for the exclusion of the German in the future. I would venture to suggest that we might well exchange very many English people of such limited brain capacity for one Ludwig Mond. To shut the door to men is to shut the doors to talent, and talent produces its best by cross-fertilisation.

I may at this point insert an illustration communicated to me privately. My informant said: "When I was a very young man I determined to try to save a business which was falling in ruin. My project was strongly opposed by my friends, but I determined to carry it out. The works which I took over were then employing 150 men. There was a great lack of scientific training, and _this_ I saw was the chief cause of disaster. So I began sending my men to Germany to be trained. The Germans have always, at their State-supported universities, welcomed the foreigner and given him their best knowledge. My men brought that knowledge back to England. The result was that by the time I withdrew from active work we were employing about three thousand men. The Germans had thus given work to nearly three thousand Englishmen. People should remember facts of this kind when they talk of Germans coming here and 'taking the bread out of our mouths.'"

The wife of an interned man struggled to keep his business. She was, however, ruined. "Serve you right," she was told, "coming here and taking the bread out of our people's mouths." What a strange idea of humanity! What are "our people"? If a Scotsman settles in London is he "taking the bread out of our people's mouths'"? We forget that the foreigner is very often an enormous accession to a State. The Norman conquerors who organised us, the Flemings who improved our weaving, the Huguenots who gave new ideas to our commerce, the Germans who brought us scientific method have all been amongst the makers of England. Exclusiveness is a constricting cord that strangles progress. Exchange of commodities is, we know, the life of trade, and exchange of men and ideas is the life of more than trade.

The last quotation I shall make from Professor Frankland's address has, I venture to think, very considerable bearing on the possibilities of future friendship:

Notwithstanding the absence of material inducements, I venture
to say without fear of contradiction that there is more original
investigation being prosecuted in this country by chemists than
by any other body of British men of science, and this I
attribute to the fact that such a large proportion of our number
have either been at German universities or are the pupils of
those who have been at these centres of research. Nor are any of
us, I am sure, even during this unfortunate crisis, unmindful of
the hospitality and inspiration which we have received in the
schools of the enemy.

One has met with so much pettiness and folly masquerading as patriotism that it is delightful to welcome such a truly noble utterance.

The allusion to the conditions of labour in Professor Frankland's address is also important. Most of us regard the German labourer as far too controlled and regulated, but everyone knows that Germany was to the fore in care for the health and well-being of the workman: "As to the factory legislation in general, not only do they afford to children and juveniles a greater measure of protection in regard to hours and other conditions of work than is enforced by the English Factory Acts, but many of their provisions for ensuring the health, comfort, and safety of all workers go beyond the limits which are thought sufficient in this country." (W. H. Dawson, "The Evolution of Modern Germany," p. 332.)

Insurance against sickness and old age were measures that we learned from Germany. They were intended to increase British efficiency and well-being, and our statesmen received every courtesy and help in studying German methods. It will be said by many that we shall not study those methods again. Perhaps not. They may prefer an English method as propounded by Lord Headley when speaking at a luncheon in connection with the Bakery and Confectionery Trades Exhibition held at Islington. The report is from the _Glasgow Herald_ as reproduced in the _Labour Leader_ (October 21, 1915):

In regard to many industries, the plain fact was that the
foreigner lived much more cheaply than the British workman and
charged far less for his labour. Where labour, and not
machinery, formed a small part of the cost of production we
should be able to compete with the foreigner, and that should be
the case in high class confectionery more than in anything else.
If we were to defeat the foreigner in other industries after the
war, it seemed to him that the British workman would have to
consent to work for lower wages than hitherto. At any rate, he
hoped so, in order that the country might supply itself with
necessities without having to go abroad for them.

It seems to me that in this way we should "defeat" not only the foreigner, but the Englishman as well--except the privileged few who could get workmen at low wages without lowering their profits. I remember saying to a Colonial lady that we had gained much from the science of German settlers in this country. "Damn German science," was her reply. A certain type of employer desires two protections--protection against the knowledge of the foreigner, and protection against the aspirations of the worker. Both the knowledge and the aspirations of others are a disturbance of repose.

At a Nottingham meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry the unscientific character of British methods was again emphasised. So, too, at the Edinburgh meeting in December, 1914.

Principal A. P. Laurie, speaking of paints and colours, said: "There were very few cases among those he had inquired into of a chemical, a colour product, or a pigment which was being made both in Germany and in England in which the German product was not better than that made in this country.... Again, it was admitted that German barytes was better ground than English. Yet an extensive literature on barytes and barytes mining had been published by the Germans, showing exactly how German barytes was ground. They had not found a barytes miner in England who owned a microscope.... The English manufacturer did not believe in or use the man of science.

"Mr. Tatlock, speaking from the laboratory glass apparatus makers' point of view, said that British manufacturers were finding it exceedingly difficult to replace German and Austrian products.... Professor Henderson had referred to the possibility of people buying more readily goods of British manufacture. They did not find that to be the case. The goods had to be cheaper or better; they would certainly never be bought purely because they were British, and he did not altogether think that they should be bought for that reason."

It is surely clear that the only wise world policy is one in which each nation brings its own particular contribution to the common stock and in no way tries to shut others out.

THE POLICY OF BOYCOTTING THOUGHT.

We find it impossible to shut out German music. "Germany, it must be said to its credit," I read in the daily Press, "is not boycotting foreign art." In the autumn of 1915 the Royal Theatres of Berlin announced Shakespeare's "Macbeth," and "Antony and Cleopatra," and Scribe's "Glass of Water." "Shakespeare, one hears," writes a reviewer in the _Daily News_, of December 4, 1915, "is still being played in the German theatres. If you go to a theatre in London you are more likely to see a performance with a title like 'I _don't_ Think!' or 'Pass the Mustard, Please!' Shakespeare, to tell the truth, is in England left largely to professors and schoolboys."

A silly crusade was started in this country against German thought in general, a crusade so petty that it made some of us wince for shame. The upholders of creeds joined in hastily, for German investigators had given our beliefs many uncomfortable shocks. We remember how it came about that the President of the Training College in Mark Rutherford's Autobiography could with such satisfaction to himself destroy the "infidel." "The President's task was all the easier because he knew nothing of German literature; and, indeed, the word 'German' was a term of reproach signifying something very awful, although nobody knew exactly what it was." The obscurantist and opponent of free thought has shown signs of hope that the German's reputation for awfulness may turn us from his evil companionship into the restful paths of British piety. The Englishman (especially, I believe, the Saxon element) has too often been prone to make a stronghold of ignorance. This stronghold has certainly in industry proved to be a house of cards, and I think it has proved to be equally a house of cards in religion. It would, indeed, be a disastrous outcome of the war if it led us still more to emphasise our insularity. Unless we are readier after the war to learn from everyone, we shall, as a nation, be mentally moribund. It matters not in the least whether the thought be German, French, Austrian, Swiss, Russian, or any other. Miss Petre, in her "Reflections of a Non-Combatant," has finely stated the wider view:

Thought and learning, art and music, may bear certain
characteristics of the country in which they are begotten; but
they are also the products of humanity itself, or they would
make no appeal to the world at large. The monuments of the
German mind are no more robbed of their intellectual value by
the national crime of this war than German mountains are robbed
of their natural grandeur, German forests of their solemnity, or
German rivers of their width and volume.

Any other attitude is extremely likely to degenerate into a petty jealousy that is bred of fear. This is how Mr. H. G. Wells wrote of our attitude towards Germany years ago:

We in Great Britain are now intensely jealous of Germany. We are
intensely jealous of Germany, not only because the Germans
outnumber us, and have a much larger and more diversified
country than ours, and lie in the very heart and body of Europe,
but because in the last hundred years, while we have fed on
platitudes and vanity, they have had the energy and humility to
develop a splendid system of national education, to toil at
science and art and literature, to develop social organisation,
to master and better our methods of business and industry, and
to clamber above us in the scale of civilisation. This has
humiliated and irritated rather than chastened us.

Such jealousy is a strangely short-sighted mistake. No valuable or lasting peace will come till jealousy is exorcised. There are ominous signs of the possible triumph of a deadly Saxon insularity, but there are other signs that give us hope. When so ardent a combatant as Mr. Lloyd George can speak well of the services of Germany to the world, all is not lost. It is pleasant to be able to quote these passages from an interview reported in the _Daily News_ of January 25, 1916:

"Mr. Lloyd George is not among those who imagine they are doing their country a service by decrying everything German. 'I think,' he said, 'that America and all of us should realise that there were two Germanies before the war. On the one hand, there was the industrial, the commercial, and the intellectual Germany, and in a most remarkable way she had blended the three elements. That Germany was rendering a great service to civilisation. It was conquering the world by the success of its methods and of its example, and that conquest would have proved a very genuine blessing. It would have been the means of saving some of the terrible waste from which most of the social evils of humanity spring. As an ardent social reformer, I freely confess that I myself was learning a good deal from that side of Germany, particularly in the direction of municipal and national organisation.'" Mr. Lloyd George goes on to say that the other Germany, the military Germany, had overthrown the Germany from which he had drawn inspiration. Our task then surely is to help to reduce military dominance everywhere and to help to set free that Germany whose peaceful conquest of the world "would have proved a very genuine blessing."

That Germany was, and still is, a Germany of simple hearts, of men and women who can love well. I have talked to many British-born wives of interned men. Over and over again I have heard the same story. "I could not have had a better husband, and the children could not have had a better father." That is why many English wives have already gone to Germany to their husband's families.

It is time we got rid of grotesque caricatures of the German people. Such caricatures always represent the outlook of war-time, but they do not make for a lasting peace. There is a great German people, and that people and ours should find each other's hearts. I am not so much concerned as to the Germany of brilliant science and industrious commerce. That is good, but there is something better: It is the Germany of loving husbands and true comrades, of true wives and devoted mothers. It is the heart that rules the world, and we need the true hearts in Germany, England, France, and over all the world to recognise each other. The one prayer for us all in every land in these days surely is, "Lord, that our eyes may be opened!" When we can pray that prayer, we shall begin to see the war to a peace of the heart--the only peace that will not be a "patched-up peace."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 40: Lieut. Dr. Kutscher writes with obvious pleasure
of the _grande loterie de Noël_ shared out by the officers to
the children of C. in France. The children's parties went on,
too, in the New Year. (_Int. Review_, 10th Aug., 1915).]

[Footnote 41: Cf. p. 161. These are simply examples of the wild
passions war engenders, and there is not always the sergeant at
hand who says "Drop that or I shoot you." One side may be
decidedly worse than the other (as seems, _e.g._, to have been
the case in the American Civil War), but this does not alter the
character of what war does for human nature.]

[Footnote 42: See p. 36.]

[Footnote 43: "An English Girl's Adventures in Hostile Germany,"
pp. 58 and 124. For other incidents see p. 212.]

[Footnote 44: See above, p. 55. For further examples of civilian
kindness see pp. 212 ff.]

[Footnote 45: It is disconcerting to one's pride to learn that
while the sale of German newspapers in England was entirely
"verboten" in 1916, English newspapers may still be readily
obtained in Germany in the autumn of 1918. Why are we so afraid
of the other side being known?]

[Footnote 46: Cf. p. 169.]

[Footnote 47: The war has greatly increased that number.]

[Footnote 48: My aim is not political, and I do not, therefore,
touch upon the many later utterances. The protests, for example,
against the unfairness of the Brest-Litovsk Peace have in
Reichstag and Press been numerous and emphatic. For such facts
the reader should consult the "Cambridge Magazine."]

[Footnote 49: We were allowed to suppose that the Lusitania
carried no munitions, the Germans were encouraged to believe
that she carried mounted guns. Both views were incorrect. The
_New York Evening Post_ (quoted by the _Labour Leader_)
published the "manifest" of the number of cases of ammunition
carried.]

[Footnote 50: Ernest Poole in "Cassell's Magazine," No. 42.]

[Footnote 51: This seems unavoidable. "At last things quieted
down a bit, but many wounded had to be brought in between the
firing lines--dangerous work, as both sides are liable to fire
if they are seen."--An R.A.M.C. Officer in the _Times_.]

[Footnote 52: From "The Pageant of War," by Lady Margaret
Sackville.]

[Footnote 53: Cf. too p. 108.]

[Footnote 54: "There is no reason to suppose that he had seen
Germany." wrote Mr. George Long in Sir William Smith's
"Dictionary of Greek Biography and Mythology."]

[Footnote 55: Further, we must remember that "The Red Cross on a
white field is not a magic mantle that can ward off shells fired
by an artillerist at a target which he cannot see, nor against
flyers dropping bombs from thousands of feet in the air.
'Bomb-dropping flyers are the terror of the doctors and wounded
behind the lines,' remarked a doctor to me."--Karl von Wiegand,
in the _New York World_, August 17, 1916. ("Cambridge Magazine,"
_Oct_. 7, 1916.)]

[Footnote 56: "Church towers in a flat country are the only
observation points, and so they are used, and so they are
shelled."--Ernest Poole, in "Cassell's Magazine," No. 42, p.
27.]

[Footnote 57: From "Is It To Be Hate?" (Allen and Unwin), a
pamphlet which I wrote in 1915. On many points there dealt with
my second thoughts are different, as are those of many others.
We have learned much since then.]

[Footnote 58: The public is extraordinarily innocent as regards
this kind of information. It would form an interesting subject
for post-war analysis.]

[Footnote 59: Cf. p. 157.]

[Footnote 60: From "Is It To Be Hate?" by the Author.]

[Footnote 61: _La guerre devant Le Palais._ Par Gabriel Mourey.
Paris. Ollendorff 2f.--_Times_ Literary Supplement, Aug. 19,
1915.]

[Footnote 62: Cf. M. Mourey on the Uhlans at Compiègne, p. 206.]

[Footnote 63: See also p. 104.]

[Footnote 64: p. 90.]

[Footnote 65: "England," "Germany," "France," etc., in these
connections actually stand for a very small group of diplomats
controlling foreign policy. The association of the names
unfortunately makes us think of the countries as a whole, a word
fallacy that leads to illimitable disaster.]

[Footnote 66: p. 91.]

[Footnote 67: The variability of war stories may be observed
also in the columns of the _Times_ during the Crimean War. The
truth is, no doubt, that great local differences of treatment
occur, and that stories to the discredit of an enemy are more
welcomed than stories in his favour.]

[Footnote 68: In the _International Review_ of August 10, 1915,
an Austrian lady, Charlotte Frankl, gives an account of the
warm-hearted help she received in France, and the even greater
kindness she and others received in England: "Not one of us had
had unhappy experiences in England."]

[Footnote 69: War was declared upon Austria May 23, 1915, and
though formal declaration of war against Germany was delayed for
more than a year, the obvious fact was that Italy had taken
sides with the enemy.]

[Footnote 70: Cf. p. 199.]

[Footnote 71: The British Chemical Society expelled its honorary
German and Austrian Fellows, men who had worked for the whole of
humanity. The German Chemical Society was asked by some of its
members to expel an English Honorary Fellow who had attacked
German men of science with exceptional virulence. The Society
adopted the dignified course of taking no action amidst the
passions of war.]

[Footnote 72: "Whatever Mr. Ernest Lissauer and his fellows may
have set before themselves in their Tyrtæan poems of hate, in
any case it can be said of them that they knew not what they
did.... They did not know, though they should have known ...
that the solidarity of the nations ... has to-day already become
such that no great nation can aim at the very conditions of
existence of another without damaging itself at the same
time."--Ed. Bernstein in _Das Forum_ Jan., 1915.]

[Footnote 73: This is one view. Others who have seen German life
during the war report a real solidarity of the people, a
solidarity which later developments and revelations of Entente
proposals has certainly not diminished.]

[Footnote 74: From "Is It To Be Hate?" by Harold Picton (Allen
and Unwin). See footnote p. 203.]

APPENDIX

Mme. F. L. Cyon had some rather important experiences at Lille at the time of the German attack and during the German occupation. She is a woman of singularly cool mentality, and her evidence may be compared with that of Dr. Ella Scarlett-Synge in a widely distant war area.

Mme. Cyon has very kindly placed her notes of her experiences at my disposal. As the notes record also a point of view as to war in general, it has seemed more fitting to print them as an appendix. No statement of this kind is unbiased, for the pacifist has his own bias. Yet I am quite certain that everything set down by Mme. Cyon has been set down in complete sincerity and with unusual absence of mental distortion. The record is that made by a quiet worker amidst circumstances where few people remained sane.

THE MENTAL HAVOC WROUGHT BY THE WAR.

BY FRANÇOISE LAFITTE CYON.

During the months of September, October, November, and December, 1914, I undertook a journey in Northern France; going first to Lille, thence to Maubeuge, and returning to England via Brussels, Malines, Antwerp, and Holland.

I was at Lille on October 13, 1914, when the Germans took the town. During the first three months of my stay in France I was engaged in nursing work at the military hospital 105 at Lille. In the early part of December I travelled as well as I could, sometimes tramping and sometimes making use of peasants' carts and local tramways, until I eventually reached Holland.

It is not, however, my intention to speak much of my adventures or of the war itself, but rather to depict, to the best of my ability, the effect which the dreadful events of our doings have had on the minds of the men and women I have met with over there; be they French, Belgian, or German. This article will be an attempt to give a series of short studies in psychology, rather than a dramatic account of a perilous journey.

I wish my readers to bear in mind at the outset that after October 13 I was in German territory, where, from that date onwards, I met with two kinds of people. On the one hand, the oppressors or Germans; on the other hand, the oppressed, namely, the French, Belgian, and a few English.

For a psychological study to be of value, such a distinction is useful to begin with, for one seldom finds the same frame of mind in the victor and the vanquished, in the oppressor and the oppressed.

Whilst endeavouring to give facts, I must distinguish between three types of people whom I met during my journey. First, civilians, French and Belgian; secondly, the hospital staff, doctors and nurses, mostly French, with the exception of two German doctors; thirdly, the military, officers and men, French and German, with a few British. I am obliged to make this division in order to make myself clear, as the events of the war do not seem to affect the people of these three divisions in the same way.

In what follows I shall for the most part depict types.

I met first with the civilian population. When I reached Lille, I found life there much as usual, excepting that all appeared very quiet. But a few days after my arrival Lille began to show an extraordinary and sad animation. The town, which had already given shelter to many refugees from Valenciennes and villages thereabouts, was suddenly crowded by the exodus of the inhabitants of Orchies; the latter town, it was reported, had been completely burnt to the ground by the Germans, only thirty houses having been left standing.

Life in Lille became horrible. In the streets one met long processions of miserable creatures, looking haggard and exhausted. Here was a woman with three tiny children, two of them in a dilapidated perambulator, the other she carried in her arms. She looked grey with the dust of the road: I followed her. She was going to the office of some local paper, whence these poor refugees were directed where to go to find food and shelter. Waiting at the door of the office were such numbers of these worn-out human beings that many of them, too tired to stand any longer, were sitting on the pavement whilst the children were eating pieces of bread.

One morning I followed the crowd going to get bread at the town hall. I saw a little boy of four standing at his mother's side while she talked with another woman. The mother's basket had been put down on the pavement and a round loaf of bread was partly coming out of it. The little mite kneeled down on the ground and, going at it with all his might, he began to eat off the loaf in a way which told a long, sad tale.

But what one met with amongst one's friends was often more horrible than the sights in the streets. The tale of the destruction of Orchies had been believed almost everywhere before any explanation had been forthcoming, and in these days hatred began to rear its head when people talked of the Germans.

"If they had burned Orchies," said one of my acquaintances, "it is because we are too tolerant with them. To brutes we must speak only the language of brutes. We treat their prisoners like guests; let us put them all against the wall and shoot them and their wounded, too."

When I replied that we should have little right to complain of German atrocities if we did what they are reported to do, I was looked at as too soft and as if I were a woman without patriotic feeling. My friend told me this as politely as his temper allowed.

I left him and went into the street to try to find some distraction from his hatred. I chanced to meet a woman of Orchies and inquired what had happened there. I give her tale as told to me, though I have not been able to verify it.

"The Germans," said she, "behaved quite well the first time they came into our town. They were kind to the children and even gave them sweets and toys, but on their second visit they found that some of their wounded had had their ears cut off and they ordered that Orchies should be set on fire."

"It was monstrous," she added, "but I know that an African soldier was found with a necklace of sixty ears, which he had certainly taken somewhere. This, too, was monstrous. I do not excuse the Germans for their crime--I have lost everything myself--but if we allow their wounded to be mutilated at such times, what can we expect? Who can say which side is the more barbarous? I must tell you that the officer ordered to set fire to Orchies was also told to arrest the mayor and some other men and to have them shot. However, he gave them timely warning to evacuate Orchies and to make good their escape, so no one was hurt."

How far this story was true I never knew, but the effect of it on my fellow creatures I had seen too well, and I went away bearing on my heart the words of the woman of Orchies: "Who can say which side is the more barbarous?"

On October 7 we heard that the Germans were outside the city and in many quarters fear was added to the anguish already overburdening the hearts of so many. Yet one woman, hearing the Germans were near, exclaimed, "Say what you like, these men are just like our French men. War is war; you cannot expect it to be anything but cruel and barbarous. The Germans are no enemies of mine."

Her words made a bad impression on the listeners, and it was well that the kind-hearted soul had three brothers in the French Army or she would have been regarded with much suspicion.

An old lady of my acquaintance almost lost her head with fright. "How dare they," she said, speaking of the French, "let the Germans take Lille?"

"What then," said I, "of Rheims?"

"Yes, Rheims, I know it was horrible! But Lille, the most beautiful town of the North, it is a crime to make it suffer."

Whilst discussing with me the doings of the French Army the old lady had often argued that Rheims and Arras had had to suffer because this was necessary to the success of the French operations. Recalling her own words, I asked: "But what could you say if for the good of the common cause Lille must suffer as did Rheims and Arras?"

But in her terror, forgetful of what she had said previously, she only exclaimed: "Lille! It is a crime. What shall we do? How shall we live?"

And I could see fear in her eyes, fear for her belongings as well as for her life, fear which made her forget for a moment the "good cause of this war" as she had often put it to me, fear which made her heart give out a note of real selfishness.

So far as I can remember it was on October 8 that all the gates of the city were closed, and that there was fighting on the Grand Boulevard, the great wide thoroughfare which connects Lille with its sister-cities of Roubaix and Tourcoing. There was also fighting near one of the gates.

On the following day, on returning from my work in Hospital 105, the people with whom I was living told me of the terrible spectacle they had witnessed when they had gone to get news of some relations living near the gate where the fight had taken place. One woman said:

"The fight was on the bridge, which was covered in the evening with the dead bodies of Germans, amongst them two wounded men whom the Germans had left behind. By the bridge there is an inn, and we have been told that five men, civilians, who were there, killed the two 'Boches' by strangling them. This makes two less of them!"

I looked at her in horror, thinking that fright had turned her brain. I could find no words to reply. I turned to go to my own room, when she added:

"In any case, the 'Boches' won't know of it for the bodies are buried under a heap of stones."

I left her with the words of the woman of Orchies echoing through my brain: "Who can tell which side is the more barbarous?"

Some of these people I had known before the war to be peaceful, quiet citizens; they now appeared to me to have suddenly turned into devils. Fear and danger had made them crazy with hatred. Everywhere one went it was the same. If I tried to escape it, and took refuge in the street, I seemed to feel hatred rising from the very ground.

Amongst the fugitives one saw, many had run away before even seeing a German helmet, but all were full of atrocious tales, all were mad with hatred and revenge.

Not until the actual shelling of the town began did I fully realise the havoc that fear and hatred can work! To feel helpless while shells go whirling over one's head at the rate of sixty a minute, while houses are burning on either side of one, is a horrible experience. To have to bear all these horrors without being able to put a stop to them, is maddening. At such moments one feels like a mouse caught in a trap. One would have to be more than human not to feel terror.

We all felt this at Lille, the great majority were so panic-stricken that they made for the gates, quite oblivious of the fact that the gates were closed and that fighting was going on there.

It is usually in these moments of supreme fear that the lurking hatred in the soul takes full possession of it, distorting the imagination, bringing back the most atavistic moral ideas, giving birth to falsehoods of every description, and widening the gulf of misunderstanding which seems to part the nations.

I have always known that hatred is the offspring of war. I am well aware that ever since the beginning of the present crisis the newspapers and the warmongers have been daily adding fuel to the fire of hatred for fear that if the fire died out the war would do the same. But over there, at Lille, I felt that hatred had fallen on the hearts of many people like a fatal malediction with which they are to be cursed all their life long and which they will transmit to their descendants.