Produced by David Widger
A TRAVELLER IN WARTIME.
By Winston Churchill
PREFACE
I am reprinting here, in response to requests, certain recent
experiences in Great Britain and France. These were selected in the hope
of conveying to American readers some idea of the atmosphere, of “what
it is like” in these countries under the immediate shadow of the battle
clouds. It was what I myself most wished to know. My idea was first to
send home my impressions while they were fresh, and to refrain as far as
possible from comment and judgment until I should have had time to make
a fuller survey. Hence I chose as a title for these articles,--intended
to be preliminary, “A Traveller in War-Time.” I tried to banish from my
mind all previous impressions gained from reading. I wished to be free
for the moment to accept and record the chance invitation or adventure,
wherever met with, at the Front, in the streets of Paris, in Ireland, or
on the London omnibus. Later on, I hoped to write a book summarizing the
changing social conditions as I had found them.
Unfortunately for me, my stay was unexpectedly cut short. I was able
to avail myself of but few of the many opportunities offered. With this
apology, the articles are presented as they were written.
I have given the impression that at the time of my visit there was no
lack of food in England, but I fear that I have not done justice to the
frugality of the people, much of which was self-imposed for the purpose
of helping to win the war. On very, good authority I have been given
to understand that food was less abundant during the winter just past;
partly because of the effect of the severe weather on our American
railroads, which had trouble in getting supplies to the coast, and
partly because more and more ships were required for transporting
American troops and supplies for these troops, to France. This
additional curtailment was most felt by families of small income, whose
earners were at the front or away on other government service. Mothers
had great difficulty in getting adequate nourishment for growing
children. But the British people cheerfully submitted to this further
deprivation. Summer is at hand. It is to be hoped that before another
winter sets in, American and British shipping will have sufficiently
increased to remedy the situation.
In regard to what I have said of the British army, I was profoundly
struck, as were other visitors to that front, by the health and
morale of the men, by the marvel of organization accomplished in so
comparatively brief a time. It was one of the many proofs of the extent
to which the British nation had been socialized. When one thought of
that little band of regulars sent to France in 1914, who became immortal
at Mons, who shared the glory of the Marne, and in that first dreadful
winter held back the German hosts from the Channel ports, the presence
on the battle line of millions of disciplined and determined men seemed
astonishing indeed. And this had been accomplished by a nation facing
the gravest crisis in its history, under the necessity of sustaining and
financing many allies and of protecting an Empire. Since my return to
America a serious reverse has occurred.
After the Russian peace, the Germans attempted to overwhelm the British
by hurling against them vastly superior numbers of highly trained men.
It is for the military critic of the future to analyse any tactical
errors that may have been made at the second battle of the Somme.
Apparently there was an absence of preparation, of specific orders from
high sources in the event of having to cede ground. This much can be
said, that the morale of the British Army remains unimpaired; that the
presence of mind and ability of the great majority of the officers
who, flung on their own resources, conducted the retreat, cannot be
questioned; while the accomplishment of General Carey, in stopping the
gap with an improvised force of non-combatants, will go down in history.
In an attempt to bring home to myself, as well as to my readers, a
realization of what American participation in this war means or should
mean.
A TRAVELLER IN WAR-TIME
CHAPTER I
Toward the end of the summer of 1917 it was very hot in New York, and
hotter still aboard the transatlantic liner thrust between the piers.
One glance at our cabins, at the crowded decks and dining-room, at the
little writing-room above, where the ink had congealed in the ink-wells,
sufficed to bring home to us that the days of luxurious sea travel, of a
la carte restaurants, and Louis Seize bedrooms were gone--at least for
a period. The prospect of a voyage of nearly two weeks was not enticing.
The ship, to be sure, was far from being the best of those still
running on a line which had gained a magic reputation of immunity from
submarines; three years ago she carried only second and third class
passengers! But most of us were in a hurry to get to the countries
where war had already become a grim and terrible reality. In one way or
another we had all enlisted.
By “we” I mean the American passengers. The first welcome discovery
among the crowd wandering aimlessly and somewhat disconsolately about
the decks was the cheerful face of a friend whom at first I did not
recognize because of his amazing disguise in uniform. Hitherto he had
been associated in my mind with dinner parties and clubs.
That life was past. He had laid up his yacht and joined the Red Cross
and, henceforth, for an indeterminable period, he was to abide amidst
the discomforts and dangers of the Western Front, with five days' leave
every three months. The members of a group similarly attired whom I
found gathered by the after-rail were likewise cheerful. Two well-known
specialists from the Massachusetts General Hospital made significant
the hegira now taking place that threatens to leave our country, like
Britain, almost doctorless. When I reached France it seemed to me that I
met all the celebrated medical men I ever heard of. A third in the group
was a business man from the Middle West who had wound up his affairs and
left a startled family in charge of a trust company. Though his physical
activities had hitherto consisted of an occasional mild game of golf,
he wore his khaki like an old campaigner; and he seemed undaunted by
the prospect--still somewhat remotely ahead of him--of a winter journey
across the Albanian Mountains from the Aegean to the Adriatic.
After a restless night, we sailed away in the hot dawn of a Wednesday.
The shores of America faded behind us, and as the days went by, we had
the odd sense of threading uncharted seas; we found it more and more
difficult to believe that this empty, lonesome ocean was the Atlantic
in the twentieth century. Once we saw a four-master; once a shy, silent
steamer avoided us, westward bound; and once in mid-ocean, tossed on a
sea sun-silvered under a rack of clouds, we overtook a gallant little
schooner out of New Bedford or Gloucester--a forthfarer, too.
Meanwhile, amongst the Americans, the socializing process had begun.
Many elements which in a former stratified existence would never have
been brought into contact were fusing by the pressure of a purpose, of
a great adventure common to us all. On the upper deck, high above the
waves, was a little 'fumoir' which, by some odd trick of association,
reminded me of the villa formerly occupied by the Kaiser in
Corfu--perhaps because of the faience plaques set in the walls--although
I cannot now recall whether the villa has faience plaques or not. The
room was, of course, on the order of a French provincial cafe, and as
such delighted the bourgeoisie monopolizing the alcove tables and joking
with the fat steward. Here in this 'fumoir', lawyers, doctors, business
men of all descriptions, newspaper correspondents, movie photographers,
and millionaires who had never crossed save in a 'cabine de luxe',
rubbed elbows and exchanged views and played bridge together. There were
Y. M. C. A. people on their way to the various camps, reconstruction
workers intending to build temporary homes for the homeless French, and
youngsters in the uniform of the American Field Service, going over to
drive camions and ambulances; many of whom, without undue regret,
had left college after a freshman year. They invaded the 'fumoir',
undaunted, to practise atrocious French on the phlegmatic steward; they
took possession of a protesting piano in the banal little salon and
sang: “We'll not come back till it's over over there.” And in the
evening, on the darkened decks, we listened and thrilled to the refrain:
“There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams.”
We were Argonauts--even the Red Cross ladies on their way to establish
rest camps behind the lines and brave the mud and rains of a winter
in eastern France. None, indeed, were more imbued with the forthfaring
spirit than these women, who were leaving, without regret, sheltered,
comfortable lives to face hardships and brave dangers without a
question. And no sharper proof of the failure of the old social order to
provide for human instincts and needs could be found than the conviction
they gave of new and vitalizing forces released in them. The timidities
with which their sex is supposedly encumbered had disappeared, and even
the possibility of a disaster at sea held no terrors for them. When the
sun fell down into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and the cabins
below were sealed--and thus become insupportable--they settled
themselves for the night in their steamer-chairs and smiled at the
remark of M. le Commissaire that it was a good “season” for submarines.
The moonlight filtered through the chinks in the burlap shrouding
the deck. About 3 a.m. the khaki-clad lawyer from Milwaukee became
communicative, the Red Cross ladies produced chocolate. It was the
genial hour before the final nap, from which one awoke abruptly at the
sound of squeegees and brooms to find the deck a river of sea water, on
whose banks a wild scramble for slippers and biscuit-boxes invariably
ensued. No experience could have been more socializing.
“Well, it's a relief,” one of the ladies exclaimed, “not to be
travelling with half a dozen trunks and a hat-box! Oh, yes, I realize
what I'm doing. I'm going to live in one of those flimsy portable houses
with twenty cots and no privacy and wear the same clothes for months,
but it's better than thrashing around looking for something to do and
never finding it, never getting anything real to spend one's energy-on.
I've closed my country house, I've sublet my apartment, I've done with
teas and bridge, and I'm happier than I've been in my life even if I
don't get enough sleep.”
Another lady, who looked still young, had two sons in the army. “There
was nothing for me to do but sit around the house and wait, and I
want to be useful. My husband has to stay at home; he can't leave his
business.” Be useful! There she struck the new and aggressive note of
emancipation from the restricted self-sacrifice of the old order, of
wider service for the unnamed and the unknown; and, above all, for the
wider self-realization of which service is but a by-product. I recall
particularly among these women a young widow with an eager look in clear
grey eyes that gazed eastward into the unknown with hope renewed. Had
she lived a quarter of a century ago she might have been doomed to slow
desiccation. There are thousands of such women in France today, and to
them the great war has brought salvation.
From what country other than America could so many thousands of
pilgrims--even before our nation had entered the war--have hurried
across a wide ocean to take their part? No matter what religion we
profess, whether it be Calvinism, or Catholicism, we are individualists,
pragmatists, empiricists for ever. Our faces are set toward strange
worlds presently to rise out of the sea and take on form and colour and
substance--worlds of new aspirations, of new ideas and new values. And
on this voyage I was reminded of Josiah Royce's splendid summary of the
American philosophy--of the American religion as set forth by William
James:
“The spirit of the frontiers-man, of the gold-seeker or the
home-builder transferred to the metaphysical or to the religious
realm. There is a far-off home, our long lost spiritual fortune.
Experience alone can guide us to the place where these things are,
hence indeed you need experience. You can only win your way on the
frontier unless you are willing to live there.”
Through the pall of horror and tragedy the American sees a vision; for
him it is not merely a material and bloody contest of arms and men,
a military victory to be gained over an aggressive and wrong-minded
people. It is a world calamity, indeed, but a calamity, since it has
come, to be spiritualized and utilized for the benefit of the future
society of mankind. It must be made to serve a purpose in helping to
liberate the world from sentimentalism, ignorance, close-mindedness, and
cant.
II
One night we entered the danger zone. There had been an entertainment in
the little salon which, packed with passengers, had gradually achieved
the temperature and humidity of a Turkish bath. For the ports had been
closed as tight as gaskets could make them, the electric fans, as usual,
obstinately “refused to march.” After the amateur speechmaking and
concert pieces an Italian violinist, who had thrown over a lucrative
contract to become a soldier, played exquisitely; and one of the French
sisters we had seen walking the deck with the mincing steps of the
cloister sang; somewhat precariously and pathetically, the Ave Maria.
Its pathos was of the past, and after she had finished, as we fled into
the open air, we were conscious of having turned our backs irrevocably
yet determinedly upon an era whose life and convictions the music of the
composer so beautifully expressed. And the sister's sweet withered face
was reminiscent of a missal, one bright with colour, and still shining
faintly. A missal in a library of modern books!
On deck a fine rain was blowing through a gap in our burlap shroud, a
phosphorescent fringe of foam hissed along the sides of the ship, giving
the illusory appearance of our deadlights open and ablaze, exaggerating
the sinister blackness of the night. We were, apparently, a beacon in
that sepia waste where modern undersea monsters were lurking.
There were on board other elements which in the normal times gone by
would have seemed disquieting enough. The evening after we had left New
York, while we were still off the coast of Long Island, I saw on the
poop a crowd of steerage passengers listening intently to harangues
by speakers addressing them from the top of a pile of life rafts.
Armenians, I was told, on their way to fight the Turks, all recruited
in America by one frenzied woman who had seen her child cut in two by
a German officer. Twilight was gathering as I joined the group, the sea
was silvered by the light of an August moon floating serenely between
swaying stays. The orator's passionate words and gestures evoked wild
responses from his hearers, whom the drag of an ancient hatred had
snatched from the peaceful asylum of the west. This smiling, happy
folk, which I had seen in our manufacturing towns and cities, were now
transformed, atavistic--all save one, a student, who stared wistfully
through his spectacles across the waters. Later, when twilight deepened,
when the moon had changed from silver to gold, the orators gave place to
a singer. He had been a bootblack in America. Now he had become a bard.
His plaintive minor chant evoked, one knew not how, the flavour of that
age-long history of oppression and wrong these were now determined to
avenge. Their conventional costumes were proof that we had harboured
them--almost, indeed, assimilated them. And suddenly they had reverted.
They were going to slaughter the Turks.
On a bright Saturday afternoon we steamed into the wide mouth of the
Gironde, a name stirring vague memories of romance and terror. The
French passengers gazed wistfully at the low-lying strip of sand and
forest, but our uniformed pilgrims crowded the rail and hailed it as the
promised land of self-realization. A richly coloured watering-place
slid into view, as in a moving-picture show. There was, indeed, all the
reality and unreality of the cinematograph about our arrival; presently
the reel would end abruptly, and we should find ourselves pushing our
way out of the emptying theatre into a rainy street. The impression of
unreality in the face of visual evidence persisted into the night when,
after an afternoon at anchor, we glided up the river, our decks and
ports ablaze across the land. Silhouettes of tall poplars loomed against
the blackness; occasionally a lamp revealed the milky blue facade of a
house. This was France! War-torn France--at last vividly brought home
to us when a glare appeared on the sky, growing brighter and brighter
until, at a turn of the river, abruptly we came abreast of vomiting
furnaces, thousands of electric lights strung like beads over the crest
of a hill, and, below these, dim rows of houses, all of a sameness,
stretching along monotonous streets. A munitions town in the night.
One could have tossed a biscuit on the stone wharfs where the workmen,
crouching over their tasks, straightened up at sight of us and
cheered. And one cried out hoarsely, “Vous venez nous sauver, vous
Americains”--“You come to save us”--an exclamation I was to hear again
in the days that followed.
III
All day long, as the 'rapide' hurried us through the smiling wine
country and past the well-remembered chateaux of the Loire, we wondered
how we should find Paris--beautiful Paris, saved from violation as by a
miracle! Our first discovery, after we had pushed our way out of the
dim station into the obscurity of the street, was that of the absence of
taxicabs. The horse-drawn buses ranged along the curb were reserved
for the foresighted and privileged few. Men and women were rushing
desperately about in search of conveyances, and in the midst of this
confusion, undismayed, debonnair, I spied a rugged, slouch-hatted figure
standing under a lamp--the unmistakable American soldier.
“Aren't there any cabs in Paris?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, they tell me they're here,” he said. “I've given a man a
dollar to chase one.”
Evidently one of our millionaire privates who have aroused such burnings
in the heart of the French poilu, with his five sous a day! We left him
there, and staggered across the Seine with our bags. A French officer
approached us. “You come from America,” he said. “Let me help you.”
There was just enough light in the streets to prevent us from getting
utterly lost, and we recognized the dark mass of the Tuileries as we
crossed the gardens. The hotel we sought was still there, and its menu,
save for the war-bread and the tiny portion of sugar, as irreproachable
as ever.
The next morning, as if by magic, hundreds of taxis had sprung into
existence, though they were much in demand. And in spite of the soldiers
thronging the sunlit streets, Paris was seemingly the same Paris one had
always known, gay--insouciante, pleasure-bent. The luxury shops appeared
to be thriving, the world-renowned restaurants to be doing business
as usual; to judge from the prices, a little better than usual; the
expensive hotels were full. It is not the real France, of course, yet it
seemed none the less surprising that it should still exist. Oddly enough
the presence of such overwhelming numbers of soldiers should have failed
to strike the note of war, emphasized that of lavishness, of the casting
off of mundane troubles for which the French capital has so long been
known. But so it was. Most of these soldiers were here precisely with
the object of banishing from their minds the degradations and horrors of
the region from which they had come, and which was so unbelievably near;
a few hours in an automobile--less than that in one of those dragon-fly
machines we saw intermittently hovering in the blue above our heads!
Paris, to most Americans, means that concentrated little district
de luxe of which the Place Vendome is the centre, and we had always
unconsciously thought of it as in the possession of the Anglo-Saxons. So
it seems today. One saw hundreds of French soldiers, of course, in all
sorts of uniforms, from the new grey blue and visor to the traditional
cloth blouse and kepi; once in a while a smart French officer. The
English and Canadians, the Australians, New Zealanders, and Americans
were much in evidence. Set them down anywhere on the face of the globe,
under any conditions conceivable, and you could not surprise them; such
was the impression. The British officers and even the British Tommies
were blase, wearing the air of the 'semaine Anglaise', and the “five
o'clock tea,” as the French delight to call it. That these could have
come direct from the purgatory of the trenches seemed unbelievable.
The Anzacs, with looped-up hats, strolled about, enjoying themselves,
halting before the shops in the Rue de la Paix to gaze at the priceless
jewellery there, or stopping at a sidewalk cafe to enjoy a drink. Our
soldiers had not seen the front; many of them, no doubt, were on leave
from the training-camps, others were on duty in Paris, but all seemed in
a hurry to get somewhere, bound for a definite destination. They might
have been in New York or San Francisco. It was a novel sight, indeed,
to observe them striding across the Place Vendome with out so much as
deigning to cast a glance at the column dedicated to the great
emperor who fought that other world-war a century ago; to see our
square-shouldered officers hustling around corners in Ford and Packard
automobiles. And the atmosphere of our communication headquarters was
so essentially one of “getting things done” as to make one forget the
mediaeval narrowness of the Rue Sainte Anne, and the inconvenient French
private-dwelling arrangements of the house. You were transported back
to America. Such, too, was the air of our Red Cross establishment in the
ancient building facing the Palace de la Concorde, where the unfortunate
Louis lost his head.
History had been thrust into the background. I was never more aware of
this than when, shortly after dawn Wednesday, the massive grey pile
of the Palace of Versailles suddenly rose before me. As the motor shot
through the empty Place d'Armes I made a desperate attempt to summon
again a vivid impression, when I had first stood there many years ago,
of an angry Paris mob beating against that grill, of the Swiss guards
dying on the stairway for their Queen. But it was no use. France has
undergone some subtle change, yet I knew I was in France. I knew it when
we left Paris and sped through the dim leafy tunnels of the Bois; when
I beheld a touch of filtered sunlight on the dense blue thatch of the
'marroniers' behind the walls of a vast estate once dedicated to the
sports and pleasures of Kings; when I caught glimpses of silent chateaux
mirrored in still waters.
I was on my way, with one of our naval officers, to visit an American
naval base on the western coast. It was France, but the laughter had
died on her lips. A few women and old men and children were to be seen
in the villages, a bent figure in a field, an occasional cart that drew
aside as we hurried at eighty kilometers an hour along deserted routes
drawn as with a ruler across the land. Sometimes the road dipped into a
canyon of poplars, and the sky between their crests was a tiny strip
of mottled blue and white. The sun crept in and out, the clouds cast
shadows on the hills; here and there the tower of lonely church or
castle broke the line of a distant ridge. Morning-glories nodded over
lodge walls where the ivy was turning crimson, and the little gardens
were masses of colours--French colours like that in the beds of the
Tuileries, brick-red geraniums and dahlias, yellow marigolds and purple
asters.
We lunched at one of the little inns that for generations have been
tucked away in the narrow streets of provincial towns; this time a
Cheval Blanc, with an unimposing front and a blaze of sunshine in its
heart. After a dejeuner fit for the most exacting of bon viveurs we sat
in that courtyard and smoked, while an ancient waiter served us with
coffee that dripped through silver percolators into our glasses. The
tourists have fled. “If happily you should come again, monsieur,” said
madame, as she led me with pardonable pride through her immaculate
bedrooms and salons with wavy floors. And I dwelt upon a future holiday
there, on the joys of sharing with a friend that historic place. The
next afternoon I lingered in another town, built on a little hill ringed
about with ancient walls, from whose battlements tide-veined marshes
stretched away to a gleaming sea. A figure flitting through the cobbled
streets, a woman in black who sat sewing, sewing in a window, only
served to heighten the impression of emptiness, to give birth to the odd
fancy that some alchemic quality in the honeyed sunlight now steeping it
must have preserved the place through the ages. But in the white close
surrounding the church were signs that life still persisted. A peasant
was drawing water at the pump, and the handle made a noise; a priest
chatted with three French ladies who had come over from a neighbouring
seaside resort. And then a woman in deep mourning emerged from a tiny
shop and took her bicycle from against the wall and spoke to me.
“Vous etes Americain, monsieur?”
I acknowledged it.
“Vous venez nous sauver”--the same question I had heard on the lips of
the workman in the night. “I hope so, madame,” I replied, and would
have added, “We come also to save ourselves.” She looked at me with
sad, questioning eyes, and I knew that for her--and alas for many like
her--we were too late. When she had mounted her wheel and ridden away I
bought a 'Matin' and sat down on a doorstep to read about Kerensky and
the Russian Revolution. The thing seemed incredible here--war seemed
incredible, and yet its tentacles had reached out to this peaceful Old
World spot and taken a heavy toll. Once more I sought the ramparts, only
to be reminded by those crumbling, machicolated ruins that I was in a
war-ridden land. Few generations had escaped the pestilence.
At no great distance lay the little city which had been handed over to
us by the French Government for a naval base, one of the ports where our
troops and supplies are landed. Those who know provincial France will
visualize its narrow streets and reticent shops, its grey-white and ecru
houses all more or less of the same design, with long French windows
guarded by ornamental balconies of cast iron--a city that has never
experienced such a thing as a real-estate boom. Imagine, against such
a background, the bewildering effect of the dynamic presence of a few
regiments of our new army! It is a curious commentary on this war that
one does not think of these young men as soldiers, but as citizens
engaged in a scientific undertaking of a magnitude unprecedented. You
come unexpectedly upon truck-loads of tanned youngsters, whose features,
despite flannel shirts and campaign hats, summon up memories of Harvard
Square and the Yale Yard, of campuses at Berkeley and Ithaca. The
youthful drivers of these camions are alert, intent, but a hard day's
work on the docks by no means suffices to dampen the spirits of the
passengers, who whistle ragtime airs as they bump over the cobbles. And
the note they strike is presently sustained by a glimpse, on a siding,
of an efficient-looking Baldwin, ranged alongside several of the tiny
French locomotives of yesterday; sustained, too, by an acquaintance
with the young colonel in command of the town. Though an officer of
the regular army, he brings home to one the fact that the days of the
military martinet have gone for ever. He is military, indeed-erect and
soldierly--but fortune has amazingly made him a mayor and an autocrat,
a builder, and in some sense a railway-manager and superintendent
of docks. And to these functions have been added those of police
commissioner, of administrator of social welfare and hygiene. It will
be a comfort to those at home to learn that their sons in our army in
France are cared for as no enlisted men have ever been cared for before.
IV
By the end of September I had reached England, eager to gain a fresh
impression of conditions there.
The weather in London was mild and clear. The third evening after I had
got settled in one of those delightfully English hotels in the heart
of the city, yet removed from the traffic, with letter-boxes that still
bear the initials of Victoria, I went to visit some American naval
officers in their sitting-room on the ground floor. The cloth had not
been removed from the dinner-table, around which we were chatting, when
a certain strange sound reached our ears--a sound not to be identified
with the distant roar of the motor-busses in Pall Mall, nor with the
sharp bark of the taxi-horns, although not unlike them. We sat listening
intently, and heard the sound again.
“The Germans have come,” one of the officers remarked, as he finished
his coffee. The other looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock. “They
must have left their lines about seven,” he said.
In spite of the fact that our newspapers at home had made me familiar
with these aeroplane raids, as I sat there, amidst those comfortable
surroundings, the thing seemed absolutely incredible. To fly one hundred
and fifty miles across the Channel and southern England, bomb London,
and fly back again by midnight! We were going to be bombed! The
anti-aircraft guns were already searching the sky for the invaders. It
is sinister, and yet you are seized by an overwhelming curiosity that
draws you, first to pull aside the heavy curtains of the window, and
then to rush out into the dark street both proceedings in the worst
possible form! The little street was deserted, but in Pall Mall the dark
forms of busses could be made out scurrying for shelter, one wondered
where? Above the roar of London, the pop pop pop! of the defending guns
could be heard now almost continuously, followed by the shrieks and
moans of the shrapnel shells as they passed close overhead. They sounded
like giant rockets, and even as rockets some of them broke into a
cascade of sparks. Star shells they are called, bursting, it seemed,
among the immutable stars themselves that burned serenely on. And there
were other stars like November meteors hurrying across space--the lights
of the British planes scouring the heavens for their relentless enemies.
Everywhere the restless white rays of the searchlights pierced the
darkness, seeking, but seeking in vain. Not a sign of the intruders was
to be seen. I was induced to return to the sitting-room.
“But what are they shooting at?” I asked.
“Listen,” said one of the officers. There came a lull in the firing
and then a faint, droning noise like the humming of insects on a still
summer day. “It's all they have to shoot at, that noise.”
“But their own planes?” I objected.
“The Gotha has two engines, it has a slightly different noise, when you
get used to it. You'd better step out of that window. It's against the
law to show light, and if a bomb falls in the street you'd be filled
with glass.” I overcame my fascination and obeyed. “It isn't only the
bombs,” my friend went on, “it's the falling shrapnel, too.”
The noise made by those bombs is unmistakable, unforgetable, and quite
distinct from the chorus of the guns and shrapnel--a crashing note,
reverberating, sustained, like the E minor of some giant calliope.
In face of the raids, which coincide with the coming of the moon, London
is calm, but naturally indignant over such methods of warfare. The
damage done is ridiculously small; the percentage of deaths and injuries
insignificant. There exists, in every large city, a riffraff to get
panicky: these are mostly foreigners; they seek the Tubes, and some
the crypt of St. Paul's, for it is wise to get under shelter during the
brief period of the raids, and most citizens obey the warnings of the
police. It is odd, indeed, that more people are not hurt by shrapnel.
The Friday following the raid I have described I went out of town for a
week-end, and returned on Tuesday to be informed that a shell had gone
through the roof outside of the room I had vacated, and the ceiling
and floor of the bedroom of one of the officers who lived below. He was
covered with dust and debris, his lights went out, but he calmly stepped
through the window. “You'd best have your dinner early, sir,” I was told
by the waiter on my return. “Last night a lady had her soup up-stairs,
her chicken in the office, and her coffee in the cellar.” It is worth
while noting that she had all three. Another evening, when I was dining
with Sir James Barrie, he showed me a handful of shrapnel fragments. “I
gathered them off the roof,” he informed me. And a lady next to whom I
sat at luncheon told me in a matter-of-fact tone that a bomb had
fallen the night before in the garden of her town house. “It was quite
disagreeable,” she said, “and broke all our windows on that side.”
During the last raids before the moon disappeared, by a new and
ingenious system of barrage fire the Germans were driven off. The
question of the ethics of reprisals is agitating London.
One “raid,” which occurred at midday, is worth recording. I was on my
way to our Embassy when, in the residential quarter through which I
passed, I found all the housemaids in the areas gazing up at the sky,
and I was told by a man in a grocer's cart that the Huns had come again.
But the invader on this occasion turned out to be a British aviator from
one of the camps who was bringing a message to London. The warmth of his
reception was all that could be desired, and he alighted hastily in the
first open space that presented itself.
Looking back to the time when I left America, I can recall the
expectation of finding a Britain beginning to show signs of distress.
I was prepared to live on a small ration. And the impression of the
scarcity of food was seemingly confirmed when the table was being set
for the first meal at my hotel; when the waiter, who chanced to be an
old friend, pointed to a little bowl half-full of sugar and exclaimed:
“I ought to warn you, sir, it's all you're to have for a week, and
I'm sorry to say you're only allowed a bit of bread, too.” It is human
perversity to want a great deal of bread when bread becomes scarce; even
war bread, which, by the way, is better than white. But the rest of the
luncheon, when it came, proved that John Bull was under no necessity
of stinting himself. Save for wheat and sugar; he is not in want.
Everywhere in London you are confronted by signs of an incomprehensible
prosperity; everywhere, indeed, in Great Britain. There can be no doubt
about that of the wage-earners--nothing like it has ever been seen
before. One sure sign of this is the phenomenal sale of pianos to
households whose occupants had never dreamed of such luxuries. And not
once, but many times, have I read in the newspapers of workingmen's
families of four or five which are gaining collectively more than five
hundred pounds a year. The economic and social significance of this
tendency, the new attitude of the working classes, the ferment it is
causing need not be dwelt upon here. That England will be a changed
England is unquestionable.
The London theatres are full, the “movies” crowded, and you have to wait
your turn for a seat at a restaurant. Bond Street and Piccadilly
are doing a thriving business--never so thriving, you are told, and
presently you are willing to believe it. The vendor beggars, so familiar
a sight a few years ago, have all but disappeared, and you may walk from
Waterloo Station to the Haymarket without so much as meeting a needy
soul anxious to carry your bag. Taxicabs are in great demand. And one
odd result of the scarcity of what the English are pleased to call
“petrol,” by which they mean gasoline, is the reappearance of that
respectable, but almost obsolete animal, the family carriage-horse;
of that equally obsolete vehicle, the victoria. The men on the box are
invariably in black. In spite of taxes to make the hair of an American
turn grey, in spite of lavish charities, the wealthy classes still seem
wealthy--if the expression may be allowed. That they are not so wealthy
as they were goes without saying. In the country houses of the old
aristocracy the most rigid economy prevails. There are new fortunes,
undoubtedly, munitions and war fortunes made before certain measures
were taken to control profits; and some establishments, including a few
supported by American accumulations, still exhibit the number of men
servants and amount of gold plate formerly thought adequate. But in
most of these great houses maids have replaced the butlers and footmen;
mansions have been given over for hospitals; gardeners are fighting
in the trenches, and courts and drives of country places are often
overgrown with grass and weeds.
“Yes, we do dine in public quite often,” said a very great lady. “It's
cheaper than keeping servants.”
Two of her three sons had been killed in France, but she did not
mention this. The English do not advertise their sorrows. Still another
explanation when husbands and sons and brothers come back across the
Channel for a few days' leave after long months in the trenches, nothing
is too good for them. And when these days have flown, there is always
the possibility that there may never be another leave. Not long ago I
read a heart-rending article about the tragedies of the goodbyes in
the stations and the terminal hotels--tragedies hidden by silence and a
smile. “Well, so long,” says an officer “bring back a V. C.,” cries
his sister from the group on the platform, and he waves his hand in
deprecation as the train pulls out, lights his pipe, and pretends to be
reading the Sphere.
Some evening, perchance, you happen to be in the dark street outside
of Charing Cross station. An occasional hooded lamp throws a precarious
gleam on a long line of men carrying--so gently--stretchers on which lie
the silent forms of rich and poor alike.