soldiers, red handkerchiefs tied to their bayonets, dashing up
and down the streets, ostensibly for the purpose of protecting
the citizens, but really for the mere joy of riding about and
being cheered. One of these trucks stands out vividly in my
mind: it contained about twenty soldiers, having in their midst
a beautiful young woman with a red banner, and a young hoodlum
astride the engine.
No one knows, at the end of the fourth year of the World War, what the
result of the Russian revolution will be. It has so far left Russia a
prey to Germany, but Germany is showing such criminal greed and
unfairness that she may find her easily gained plunder will be her
destruction, like the drowning robber with his pockets filled with
gold.
The Russian _mooshik_ has a motto, or rather a philosophy, which is
expressed by the word "_nitchevo_." This word has several meanings, one
of which is "nothing." Just what the _mooshik_ has in mind when he
says "_nitchevo_" is illustrated by the following story.
When Bismarck was Prussian ambassador at the court of Tsar Alexander
II, he was invited by the Tsar to take part in a great hunt, a dozen or
more miles out of the capital.
Bismarck started with his own horses and sledge but soon met with a
serious accident, and was obliged to call upon the Russian peasants, or
_mooshiki_, to help him by providing a horse, sledge, and driver. Soon
a peasant appeared with a very small and raw-boned horse attached to a
sledge that seemed about ready to fall to pieces.
"That looks more like a rat than a horse," growled Bismarck, but he got
into the sledge.
The peasant answered but one word, "_Nitchevo._"
Soon the horse was flying over the snow at a great rate of speed. There
was no road to be seen and the peasant was heading for the woods. "Look
out!" yelled Bismarck. "You will throw me out!" But the peasant
replied, "_Nitchevo._"
In a moment they were among the trees and were turning, now this way,
now that, to avoid hitting them. The raw-boned horse had not lessened
his speed in the least. Suddenly there was a crash. The sledge had
skidded and struck a tree. The peasant and his passenger were thrown
out headlong.
Bismarck was a man of fiery temper. When he had picked himself up, he
rushed up to the peasant, who was trying to stop his bleeding nose, and
yelled, "I will kill you." The _mooshik_ did not seem at all frightened
or troubled, and answered simply, "_Nitchevo._" He drew a piece of rope
from the sledge and began to tie the broken parts together.
"I shall be late at the hunt," yelled the angry Bismarck.
"_Nitchevo_," replied the peasant.
While the sledge was being repaired, Bismarck noticed a small piece of
iron broken from the runner and lying on the snow. He picked it up and
put it in his pocket.
The _mooshik_ soon had the sledge ready for them, and this time he
reached the hunting lodge with his distinguished passenger without
further accident or delay.
The Tsar and his companions laughed heartily at the story, as related
by Bismarck, and then explained to the Prussian that by _nitchevo_ the
_mooshik_ meant that nothing mattered, that they would get where they
had started for, if they did not let accidents or circumstances turn
them from it.
When Bismarck returned to the capital he had a ring made from the piece
of iron, and on the inside of it he had inscribed the word _nitchevo_.
The Russian _mooshik_ of to-day is the same in character and belief as
the _mooshik_ that replied "_Nitchevo_" to Bismarck. To Germany, to the
Kaiser, to the world, the Russians, amid all their sorrows and
troubles, are saying "_Nitchevo._" They will reach their goal at
length, for they look upon the dangers and delays as nothing.
* * * * *
The Russian word _Bolsheviki_, used to designate the revolutionary
party which was in power in Russia in 1918, is composed of two words:
_bolsh_, meaning many; and _vik_, meaning most. _Bolsheviki_ means the
greatest number, or the common people, as compared with the few, or the
aristocracy. _Bolshevik_, with the accent on the first syllable, is the
singular and means one of the greatest number. _Bolsheviki_, with
accents on the second and on the last syllables, is the plural.
Similarly _mooshik_ means a peasant, and _mooshiki_ means peasants.
A BALLAD OF FRENCH RIVERS[6]
Of streams that men take honor in
The Frenchman looks to three,
And each one has for origin
The hills of Burgundy;
And each has known the quivers
Of blood and tears and pain--
O gallant bleeding rivers,
The Marne, the Meuse, the Aisne.
Says Marne: "My poplar fringes
Have felt the Prussian tread,
The blood of brave men tinges
My banks with lasting red;
Let others ask due credit,
But France has me to thank;
Von Kluck himself has said it:
I turned the Boche's flank!"
Says Meuse: "I claim no winning,
No glory on the stage;
Save that, in the beginning
I strove to save Liége.
Alas! that Frankish rivers
Should share such shame as mine--
In spite of all endeavors
I flow to join the Rhine!"
Says Aisne: "My silver shallows
Are salter than the sea,
The woe of Rheims still hallows
My endless tragedy.
Of rivers rich in story
That run through green Champagne,
In agony and glory,
The chief am I, the Aisne!"
Now there are greater waters
That Frenchmen all hold dear--
The Rhone, with many daughters,
That runs so icy clear;
There's Moselle, deep and winy,
There's Loire, Garonne and Seine.
But O the valiant tiny--
The Marne, the Meuse, the Aisne!
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY.
* * * * *
A river is the most human and companionable of all inanimate things. It
has a life, a character, a voice of its own; and is as full of
good-fellowship as a sugar-maple is of sap. It can talk in various
tones, loud or low; and of many subjects, grave or gay.
HENRY VAN DYKE.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] COPYRIGHT BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
BACILLI AND BULLETS
Sir William Osler, one of the greatest medical men in the world, told
the soldiers in the English training camps that he wanted to help them
to get a true knowledge of their foes. The officers had impressed the
soldiers with the truth that it was always necessary to find out where
their enemies were and how many they were. But Sir William Osier told
them of other invisible enemies which they should most fear, and fight
against. "While the bullets from your foes are to be dreaded," he said,
"the bacilli are far more dangerous." Indeed in the wars of the world,
the two have been as Saul and David,--the one slaying thousands, the
other tens of thousands.
He continued, "I can never see a group of recruits marching to the
depot without asking what percentage of these fine fellows will die
from wounds, and what percentage will perish miserably from neglect of
ordinary sanitary precautions. It is bitter enough to lose thousands of
the best of our young men in a hideous war, but it adds terribly to the
tragedy to think that more than one half of the losses may be due to
preventable disease. Typhus fever, malaria, cholera, enteric, and
dysentery have won more victories than powder and shot. Some of the
diseases need no longer be dreaded. Typhus and malaria, which one
hundred years ago routed a great English army in the expedition against
Antwerp, are no longer formidable foes. But enough such foes remain, as
we found by sad experience in South Africa. Of the 22,000 lives lost in
that war--can you believe it?--the bullets accounted for only 8000, the
bacilli for 14,000. In the long, hard campaign before us, more men will
go into the field than ever before in the history of the Empire. Before
it is too late, let us take every possible precaution to guard against
a repetition of such disasters. I am here to warn you soldiers against
enemies more subtle, more dangerous, and more fatal than the Germans,
enemies against which no successful battle can be fought without your
intelligent coöperation. So far the world has only seen one great war
waged with the weapons of science against these foes. Our allies, the
Japanese, went into the Russian campaign prepared as fully against
bacilli as against bullets, with the result that the percentage of
deaths from disease was the lowest that has ever been attained in a
great war. Which lesson shall we learn? Which example shall we follow,
Japan, or South Africa with its sad memories?
"We are not likely to have to fight three scourges, typhus, malaria,
and cholera, though the possibility of the last has to be considered.
But there remain dysentery, pneumonia, and enteric.
"Dysentery has been for centuries one of the most terrible of camp
diseases, killing thousands, and, in its prolonged damage to health, it
is one of the most fatal of foes to armies. So far as we know, it is
conveyed by water, and only by carrying out strictly, under all
circumstances, the directions about boiling water, can it be prevented.
It is a disease which, even under the best of circumstances, cannot
always be prevented; but with care there should never again be
widespread outbreaks in camps themselves.
"Pneumonia is a much more difficult disease to prevent. Many of us,
unfortunately, carry the germ with us. In these bright days all goes
well in a holiday camp like this; but when the cold and the rain come,
and the long marches, the resisting forces of the body are lowered, the
enemy, always on the watch, overpowers the guards, rushes the defenses,
and attacks the lungs. Be careful not to neglect coughs and colds. A
man in good condition should be able to withstand the wettings and
exposures that lower the system, but in a winter campaign, pneumonia
causes a large amount of sickness and is one of the serious enemies of
the soldier.
"Above all others one disease has proved most fatal in modern
warfare--enteric, or typhoid fever. Over and over again it has killed
thousands before they ever reached the fighting line. The United States
troops had a terrible experience in the Spanish-American War. In six
months, between June and November, among 107,973 officers and men in 92
volunteer regiments, 20,738, practically one fifth of the entire
number, had typhoid fever, and 1580 died. The danger is chiefly from
persons who have already had the disease and who carry the germs in
their intestines, harmless to them, but capable of infecting barracks
or camps. It was probably by flies and by dust carrying the germs that
the bacilli were so fatal in South Africa. Take to heart these figures:
there were 57,684 cases of typhoid fever, of which 19,454 were
invalided, and 8022 died. More died from the bacilli of this disease
than from the bullets of the Boers. Do let this terrible record impress
upon you the importance of carrying out with religious care the
sanitary regulations.
"One great advance in connection with typhoid fever has been made of
late years, and of this I am come specially to ask you to take
advantage. An attack of an infectious disease so alters the body that
it is no longer susceptible to another attack of the same disease; once
a person has had scarlet fever, smallpox, or chicken pox, he is not
likely to have a second attack. He is immune. When bacilli make a
successful entry into our bodies, they overcome the forces that
naturally protect the system, and grow; but the body puts up a strong
fight, all sorts of anti-bodies are formed in the blood, and if
recovery takes place, the patient is safe for a few years at least
against that disease.
"It was an Englishman, Jenner, who, in 1798, found that it was possible
to produce this immunity by giving a person a mild attack of the
disease, or of one very much like it. Against smallpox all of you have
been vaccinated--a harmless, safe, and effective measure. Let me give
you a war illustration. General Wood of the United States Army told me
that, when he was at Santiago, reports came that in villages not far
distant smallpox was raging, and the people were without help of any
kind. He called for volunteers, all men who showed scars of
satisfactory vaccination. Groups of these soldiers went into the
villages, took care of the smallpox patients, cleaned up the houses,
stayed there until the epidemic was over, and not one of them took the
disease. Had not those men been vaccinated, at least 99 per cent of
them would have taken smallpox.
"Now what I wish to ask you is to take advantage of the knowledge that
the human body can be protected by vaccination against typhoid.
Discovered through the researches of Sir Almroth Wright, this measure
has been introduced successfully into our own regular army, into the
armies of France, the United States, Japan, and Germany. I told you a
few minutes ago about the great number of cases of typhoid fever in the
volunteer troops in America during the Spanish-American War. That
resulted largely from the wide prevalence of the disease in country
districts, so that the camps became infected; and we did not then know
the importance of the fly as a carrier. But in the regular army in the
United States, where inoculation has been practiced now for several
years, the number of cases has fallen from 3.53 per thousand men to
practically nil. In a strength of 90,646 there were, in 1913, only
three cases of typhoid fever. In France the typhoid rate among the
unvaccinated was 168.44 per thousand, and among the vaccinated .18 per
thousand. In India, where the disease has been very prevalent, the
success of the measure has been remarkable.
"In the United States, and in France, and in some other countries, this
vaccination against the disease is compulsory. It is not a serious
matter; you may feel badly for twenty-four hours, and the place of
inoculation will be tender, but I hope I have said enough to convince
you that, in the interests of the cause, you should gladly put up with
this temporary inconvenience. If the lessons of past experience count,
any expeditionary force on the Continent has much more to fear from the
bacillus of typhoid fever than from bullets and bayonets. Think again
of South Africa, with its 57,000 cases of typhoid fever! With a million
of men in the field, their efficiency will be increased one third if we
can prevent typhoid. It can be prevented, it must be prevented; but
meanwhile the decision is in your hands, and I know it will be in favor
of your King and Country."
* * * * *
The soldiers in the American army are also inoculated against measles,
scarlet fever, and the pneumonia germ.
Tetanus, or lockjaw, is one of the grave dangers faced by the wounded
soldiers; for the germ of this disease has its home in the earth, and
during a battle, soldiers with open wounds often lie for hours in the
fields and trenches. Antitoxin treatment has reduced the death-rate.
Two new diseases have been produced by the World War,--spotted typhus
and trench fever; both are carried by vermin. This was proved by
soldiers who volunteered to permit experiments to be made upon them. By
preventing and destroying the vermin, these diseases are being
conquered.
THE TORCH OF VALOR[7]
The torch of valor has been passed from one brave hand to another down
the centuries, to be held to-day by the most valiant in the long line
of heroes. Deeds have been done in Europe since August, 1914, which
rival the most stirring feats sung by Homer or Virgil, by the
minnesingers of Germany, by the troubadours of Provençe, or told in the
Norse sagas or Celtic ballads. No exploit of Ajax or Achilles excels
that of the Russian Cossack, wounded in eleven places and slaying as
many foes. The trio that held the bridge against Lars Porsena and his
cohorts have been equaled by the three men of Battery L, fighting with
their single gun in the gray and deathly dawn until the enemy's battery
was silenced. Private Wilson, who, single-handed, killed seven of the
enemy and captured a gun, sold newspapers in private life; but he need
not fear comparison with any of his ancient and radiant line. Who that
cares for courage can forget that Frenchman, forced to march in front
of a German battalion stealing to surprise his countrymen at the bridge
of Three Grietchen, near Ypres? To speak meant death for himself, to
be silent meant death for his comrades; and still the sentry gave no
alarm. So he gave it himself. "Fire! For the love of God, fire!" he
cried, his soul alive with sacrifice; and so died. The ancient hero of
romance, who gathered to his own heart the lance heads of the foe that
a gap might be made in their phalanx, did no more than that. Nelson
conveniently forgot his blind eye at Copenhagen, and even in this he
has his followers still. Bombardier Havelock was wounded in the thigh
by fragments of shell. He had his wound dressed at the ambulance and
was ordered to hospital. Instead of obeying, he returned to his
battery, to be wounded again in the back within five minutes. Once more
he was patched up by the doctor and sent to hospital, this time in
charge of an orderly. He escaped from his guardian, went back to fight,
and was wounded for the third time. Afraid to face the angry surgeon,
he lay all day beside the gun. That night he was reprimanded by his
officers--and received the V.C.! Also there are the airmen, day after
day facing appalling dangers in their frail, bullet-torn craft. Was
there ever a stouter heart than that of the aviator, wounded to death
and still planing downwards, to be found seated in his place and
grasping the controls, stone-dead? Few eyes were dry that read the
almost mystic story of that son of France who, struck blind in a storm
of fire, still navigated his machine, obedient to the instructions of
his military companion, himself mortally wounded by shrapnel and dying
even as earth was reached.
There is no need to worship the past with a too-abject devotion,
whatever in the way of glory it has been to us and done for us. Chandos
and Du Guesclin, Leonidas and De Bussy have worthy compeers to-day.
Beside them may stand Lance-Corporal O'Leary, the Irish peasant's son.
Of his own deed he merely says that he led some men to an important
position, and took it from the Huns, "killing some of their gunners and
taking a few prisoners." History will tell the tale otherwise: how this
modest soldier, outstripping his eager comrades, coolly selected a
machine gun for attack, and killed the five men tending it before they
could slew round; how he then sped onwards alone to another barricade,
which he captured, after killing three of the enemy, and making
prisoners of two more. Even officialism burst its bonds for a moment as
it records the deed:
Lance-Corporal O'Leary thus practically captured the enemy's
position by himself, and prevented the rest of the attacking
party from being fired on.
The epic of Lieutenant Leach and Sergeant Hogan, who volunteered to
recapture a trench taken by the Germans, after two failures of their
comrades, is reading to give one at once a gulp in the throat and a
song in the heart. With consummate daring they undertook the venture;
with irresistible skill they succeeded, killing eight of the enemy,
wounding two, and taking sixteen prisoners. In the words of the veteran
of Waterloo, "It was as good fighting as Boney himself would have made
a man a gineral for."
There are isolated incidents of this kind in every war; but in a
thousand different places in France and Belgium the dauntless,
nonchalant valor of Irishmen, Englishmen, Scotsmen, and Welshmen has
shown itself. Did ever the gay Gordons do a gayer or more gallant thing
than was done on the 29th of September, 1914, on the western front?
Thirty gunners of a British field battery had just been killed or
wounded. Thirty others were ordered to take their place. They knew that
they were going to certain death, and they went with a cheery "Good-by,
you fellows!" to their comrades of the reserve. Two minutes later every
man had fallen, and another thirty stepped to the front with the same
farewell, smoking their cigarettes as they went out to die--like that
"very gallant gentleman," Oates, who went forth from Scott's tent into
the blizzard and immortality. Englishmen can lift up their heads with
pride, human nature can take heart and salute the future with hope,
when the Charge of the Five Hundred at Gheluvelt is recalled. There, on
the Ypres road to Calais, 2400 British soldiers, Scots Guards, South
Wales Borderers, and the Welsh and Queen's Regiments held up 24,000
Germans in a position terribly exposed. On that glorious and bloody day
the Worcesters, 500 strong, charged the hordes of Germans, twenty times
their number, through the streets of Gheluvelt and up and beyond to the
very trenches of the foe; and in the end the ravishers of Belgium,
under the stress and storm of their valor, turned and fled. On that day
300 out of 500 of the Worcesters failed to answer the roll call when
the fight was over, and out of 2400 only 800 lived of all the remnants
of regiments engaged; but the road to Calais was blocked against the
Huns; and it remains so even to this day. Who shall say that greatness
of soul is not the possession of the modern world? Did men die better
in the days before the Cæsars?
Not any one branch of the service, not any one class of men alone has
done these deeds of valor; but in the splendid democracy of heroism,
the colonel and the private, the corporal and the lieutenant--one was
going to say, have thrown away, but no!--have offered up their lives on
the altars of sacrifice, heedless of all save that duty must be done.
But greater than such deeds, of which there have been inspiring
hundreds, is the patient endurance shown by men whose world has
narrowed down to that little corner of a great war which they are
fighting for their country. To fight on night and day in the trenches,
under avalanches of murdering metal and storms of rending shrapnel,
calls for higher qualities than those short, sharp gusts of conflict
which in former days were called battles. Then men faced death in the
open, weapon in hand, cheered by color and music and the personal
contest, man upon man outright, greatly daring for a few sharp hours.
Now all the pageantry is gone; the fight rages without ceasing; men
must eat and sleep in the line of fire; death and mutilation ravage
over them even while they rest. Nerves have given way, men have gone
mad under this prolonged strain, and the marvel is that any have borne
it; yet they have not only borne it, they have triumphed over it. These
have known the exaltation of stripping life of its impedimenta to do a
thing set for them to do; giving up all for an idea. The great
obsession is on them; they are swayed and possessed by something
greater than themselves; they live in an atmosphere which, breathing,
inflames them to the utmost of their being.
There was a corner in the British lines where men had fought for days,
until the place was a shambles; where food could only rarely reach
them; where they stood up to their knees in mud and water, where men
endured, but where Death was the companion of their fortitude. Yet
after a lull in the firing there came from some point in the battered
trench the new British battle-cry, "Are we downhearted?" And then, as
we are told, one blood-stained specter feebly raised himself above the
broken parapet, shouted "No!" and fell back dead. There spoke a spirit
of high endurance, of a shining defiance, of a courage which wants no
pity, which exalts as it wends its way hence.
SIR GILBERT PARKER.
* * * * *
Mother Earth! Are thy heroes dead?
Do they thrill the soul of the years no more?
Are the gleaming snows and the poppies red
All that is left of the brave of yore?
Are there none to fight as Theseus fought,
Far in the young world's misty dawn?
Or to teach as the gray-haired Nestor taught?
Mother Earth! Are the heroes gone?
Gone?--in a grander form they rise;
Dead?--we may clasp their hands in ours,
And catch the light of their clearer eyes,
And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers.
Wherever a noble deed is done,
'Tis the pulse of a hero's heart is stirred;
Wherever right has a triumph won
There are the heroes' voices heard.
EDNA DEAN PROCTOR.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] FROM "THE WORLD IN THE CRUCIBLE." COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY DODD, MEAD
AND COMPANY
MARSHAL FOCH