stayed; in one bedroom a trunk open, with a pile of articles beside
it in the act of being packed; in another, a great bed, its sheets
and blankets tossed askew by hands wild with haste; while in a room
lined with bookcases a deep armchair was drawn up to the hearth,
with a small table whereon stood a decanter and a half-emptied glass,
and an open book whose damp leaves stirred in the wind, now and then,
as if touched by phantom fingers. Indeed, more than once I marvelled
to see how, amid the awful wreckage of broken floors and tumbled
ceilings, delicate vases and chinaware had miraculously escaped
destruction. Upon one cracked wall a large mirror reflected the ruin
of a massive carved sideboard, while in another house, hard by, a
magnificent ivory and ebony crucifix yet hung above an awful twisted
thing that had been a brass bedstead.
Here and there, on either side this narrow street, ugly gaps showed
where houses had once stood, comfortable homes, now only unsightly
heaps of rubbish, a confusion of broken beams and rafters, amid which
divers familiar objects obtruded themselves, broken chairs and
tables, a grandfather clock, and a shattered piano whose melody was
silenced for ever.
Through all these gloomy relics of a vanished people I went
slow-footed and heedless of direction, until by chance I came out
into the wide Place and saw before me all that remained of the
stately building which for centuries had been the Hotel de Ville, now
nothing but a crumbling ruin of noble arch and massive tower; even
so, in shattered facade and mullioned window one might yet see
something of that beauty which had made it famous.
Oblivious of driving rain I stood bethinking me of this ancient city:
how in the dark ages it had endured the horrors of battle and siege,
had fronted the catapults of Rome, heard the fierce shouts of
barbarian assailants, known the merciless savagery of religious wars,
and remained a city still only for the cultured barbarian of to-day
to make of it a desolation.
Very full of thought I turned away, but, as I crossed the desolate
square, I was aroused by a voice that hailed me, seemingly from
beneath my feet, a voice that echoed eerily in that silent Place.
Glancing about I beheld a beshawled head that rose above the littered
pavement, and, as I stared, the head nodded and smiling wanly,
accosted me again.
Coming thither I looked into a square opening with a flight of steps
leading down into a subterranean chamber, and upon these steps a
woman sat knitting busily. She enquired if I wished to view the
catacombs, and pointed where a lamp burned above another opening and
other steps descended lower yet, seemingly into the very bowels of
the earth. To her I explained that my time was limited and all I
wished to see lay above ground, and from her I learned that some few
people yet remained in ruined Arras, who, even as she, lived
underground, since every day at irregular intervals the enemy fired
into the town haphazard. Only that very morning, she told me, another
shell had struck the poor Hotel de Ville, and she pointed to a new,
white scar upon the shapeless tower. She also showed me an ugly rent
upon a certain wall near by, made by the shell which had killed her
husband. Yes, she lived all alone now, she told me, waiting for that
good day when the Boches should be driven beyond the Rhine, waiting
until the townsfolk should come back and Arras wake to life again:
meantime she knitted.
Presently I saluted this solitary woman, and, turning away, left her
amid the desolate ruin of that once busy square, her beshawled head
bowed above feverishly busy fingers, left her as I had found
her--waiting.
And now as I traversed those deserted streets it seemed that this
seemingly dead city did but swoon after all, despite its many
grievous wounds, for here was life even as the woman had said;
evidences of which I saw here and there, in battered stovepipes that
had writhed themselves snake-like through rusty cellar gratings and
holes in wall or pavement, miserable contrivances at best, whose
fumes blackened the walls whereto they clung. Still, nowhere was
there sound or sight of folk save in one small back street, where, in
a shop that apparently sold everything, from pickles to picture
postcards, two British soldiers were buying a pair of braces from a
smiling, haggard-eyed woman, and being extremely polite about it in
cryptic Anglo-French; and here I foregathered with my companions. Our
way led us through the railway station, a much-battered ruin, its
clock tower half gone, its platforms cracked and splintered, the iron
girders of its great, domed roof bent and twisted, and with never a
sheet of glass anywhere. Between the rusty tracks grass and weeds
grew and flourished, and the few waybills and excursion placards
which still showed here and there looked unutterably forlorn. In the
booking office was a confusion of broken desks, stools and overthrown
chairs, the floor littered with sodden books and ledgers, but the
racks still held thousands of tickets, bearing so many names they
might have taken any one anywhere throughout fair France once, but
now, it seemed, would never take any one anywhere.
All at once, through the battered swing doors, marched a company of
soldiers, the tramp of their feet and the lilt of their voices
filling the place with strange echoes, for, being wet and weary and
British, they sang cheerily. Packs a-swing, rifles on shoulder, they
tramped through shell-torn waiting room and booking hall and out
again into wind and wet, and I remember the burden of their chanting
was: "Smile! Smile! Smile!"
In a little while I stood amid the ruins of the great cathedral; its
mighty pillars, chipped and scarred, yet rose high in air, but its
long aisles were choked with rubble and fallen masonry, while through
the gaping rents of its lofty roof the rain fell, wetting the
shattered heap of particoloured marble that had been the high altar
once. Here and there, half buried in the debris at my feet, I saw
fragments of memorial tablets, a battered corona, the twisted remains
of a great candelabrum, and over and through this mournful ruin a
cold and rising wind moaned fitfully. Silently we clambered back over
the mountain of debris and hurried on, heedless of the devastation
around, heartsick with the gross barbarity of it all.
They tell me that churches and cathedrals must of necessity be
destroyed since they generally serve as observation posts. But I have
seen many ruined churches--usually beautified by Time and hallowed by
tradition--that by reason of site and position could never have been
so misused--and then there is the beautiful Chateau d'Eau!
Evening was falling, and as the shadows stole upon this silent city,
a gloom unrelieved by any homely twinkle of light, these dreadful
streets, these stricken homes took on an aspect more sinister and
forbidding in the half-light. Behind those flapping curtains were
pits of gloom full of unimagined terrors whence came unearthly
sounds, stealthy rustlings, groans and sighs and sobbing voices. If
ghosts did flit behind those crumbling walls, surely they were very
sad and woeful ghosts.
"Damn this rain!" murmured K. gently.
"And the wind!" said F., pulling up his collar. "Listen to it! It's
going to play the very deuce with these broken roofs and things if it
blows hard. Going to be a beastly night, and a forty-mile drive in
front of us. Listen to that wind! Come on--let's get away!"
Very soon, buried in warm rugs, we sped across dim squares, past
wind-swept ruins, under battered arch, and the dismal city was behind
us, but, for a while, her ghosts seemed all about us still.
As we plunged on through the gathering dark, past rows of trees that
leapt at us and were gone, it seemed to me that the soul of Arras was
typified in that patient, solitary woman who sat amid desolate
ruin--waiting for the great Day; and surely her patience cannot go
unrewarded. For since science has proved that nothing can be utterly
destroyed, since I for one am convinced that the soul of man through
death is but translated into a fuller and more infinite living, so
do I think that one day the woes of Arras shall be done away, and she
shall rise again, a City greater perhaps and fairer than she was.
XI
THE BATTLEFIELDS
To all who sit immune, far removed from war and all its horrors, to
those to whom when Death comes, he comes in shape as gentle as he
may--to all such I dedicate these tales of the front.
How many stories of battlefields have been written of late, written
to be scanned hastily over the breakfast table or comfortably lounged
over in an easy-chair, stories warranted not to shock or disgust,
wherein the reader may learn of the glorious achievements of our
armies, of heroic deeds and noble self-sacrifice, so that frequently
I have heard it said that war, since it produces heroes, is a goodly
thing, a necessary thing.
Can the average reader know or even faintly imagine the other side
of the picture? Surely not, for no clean human mind can compass all
the horror, all the brutal, grotesque obscenity of a modern
battlefield. Therefore I propose to write plainly, briefly, of that
which I saw on my last visit to the British front; for since in
blood-sodden France men are dying even as I pen these lines, it seems
only just that those of us for whom they are giving their lives
should at least know something of the manner of their dying. To this
end I visited four great battlefields and I would that all such as
cry up war, its necessity, its inevitability, might have gone beside
me. Though I have sometimes written of war, yet I am one that hates
war, one to whom the sight of suffering and bloodshed causes physical
pain, yet I forced myself to tread those awful fields of death and
agony, to look upon the ghastly aftermath of modern battle, that, if
it be possible, I might by my testimony in some small way help those
who know as little of war as I did once, to realise the horror of it,
that loathing it for the hellish thing it is, they may, one and all,
set their faces against war henceforth, with an unshakeable
determination that never again shall it be permitted to maim, to
destroy and blast out of being the noblest works of God.
What I write here I set down deliberately, with no idea of
phrase-making, of literary values or rounded periods; this is and
shall be a plain, trite statement of fact.
And now, one and all, come with me in spirit, lend me your mind's
eyes, and see for yourselves something of what modern war really is.
Behold then a stretch of country--a sea of mud far as the eye can
reach, a grim desolate expanse, its surface ploughed and churned by
thousands of high-explosive shells into ugly holes and tortured heaps
like muddy waves struck motionless upon this muddy sea. The guns are
silent, the cheers and frenzied shouts, the screams and groans have
long died away, and no sound is heard save the noise of my own going.
The sun shone palely and a fitful wind swept across the waste, a
noxious wind, cold and dank, that chilled me with a sudden dread even
while the sweat ran from me. I walked amid shell craters, sometimes
knee-deep in mud; I stumbled over rifles half buried in the slime, on
muddy knapsacks, over muddy bags half full of rusty bombs, and so
upon the body of a dead German soldier. With arms wide-flung and
writhen legs grotesquely twisted he lay there beneath my boot, his
head half buried in the mud, even so I could see that the maggots had
been busy, though the ....[1] had killed them where they clung. So
there he lay, this dead Boche, skull gleaming under shrunken scalp,
an awful, eyeless thing, that seemed to start, to stir and shiver as
the cold wind stirred his muddy clothing. Then nausea and a deadly
faintness seized me, but I shook it off, and shivering, sweating,
forced myself to stoop and touch that awful thing, and, with the
touch, horror and faintness passed, and in their place I felt a deep
and passionate pity, for all he was a Boche, and with pity in my
heart I turned and went my way.
[Footnote 1: Deleted by censor. J. F.]
But now, wherever I looked were other shapes, that lay in attitudes
frightfully contorted, grotesque and awful. Here the battle had raged
desperately. I stood in a very charnel-house of dead. From a mound of
earth upflung by a bursting shell a clenched fist, weather-bleached
and pallid, seemed to threaten me; from another emerged a pair of
crossed legs with knees up-drawn, very like the legs of one who dozes
gently on a hot day. Hard by, a pair of German knee-boots topped a
shell crater, and drawing near, I saw the grey-green breeches, belt
and pouches, and beyond--nothing but unspeakable corruption. I
started back in horror and stepped on something that yielded
underfoot--glanced down and saw a bloated, discoloured face, that,
even as I looked, vanished beneath my boot and left a bare and
grinning skull.
Once again the faintness seized me, and lifting my head I stared
round about me and across the desolation of this hellish waste. Far
in the distance was the road where men moved to and fro, busy with
picks and shovels, and some sang and some whistled and never sound
more welcome. Here and there across these innumerable shell holes,
solitary figures moved, men, these, who walked heedfully and with
heads down-bent. And presently I moved on, but now, like these
distant figures, I kept my gaze upon that awful mud lest again I
should trample heedlessly on something that had once lived and loved
and laughed. And they lay everywhere, here stark and stiff, with no
pitiful earth to hide their awful corruption--here again, half buried
in slimy mud; more than once my nailed boot uncovered mouldering
tunic or things more awful. And as I trod this grisly place my pity
grew, and with pity a profound wonder that the world with its so many
millions of reasoning minds should permit such things to be, until I
remembered that few, even the most imaginative, could realise the
true frightfulness of modern men-butchering machinery, and my wonder
changed to a passionate desire that such things should be recorded
and known, if only in some small measure, wherefore it is I write
these things.
I wandered on past shell holes, some deep in slime, that held
nameless ghastly messes, some a-brim with bloody water, until I came
where three men lay side by side, their hands upon their levelled
rifles. For a moment I had the foolish thought that these men were
weary and slept, until, coming near, I saw that these had died by the
same shell-burst. Near them lay yet another shape, a mangled heap,
one muddy hand yet grasping muddy rifle, while, beneath the other lay
the fragment of a sodden letter--probably the last thing those dying
eyes had looked upon.
Death in horrible shape was all about me. I saw the work wrought by
shrapnel, by gas, and the mangled red havoc of high explosive. I only
seemed unreal, like one that walked in a nightmare. Here and there
upon this sea of mud rose the twisted wreckage of aeroplanes, and
from where I stood I counted five, but as I tramped on and on these
five grew to nine. One of these lying upon my way I turned aside to
glance at, and stared through a tangle of wires into a pallid thing
that had been a face once comely and youthful; the leather jacket had
been opened at the neck for the identity disc, as I suppose, and
glancing lower, I saw that this leather jacket was discoloured,
singed, burnt--and below this, a charred and unrecognisable mass.
Is there a man in the world to-day who, beholding such horrors, would
not strive with all his strength to so order things that the hell of
war should be made impossible henceforth? Therefore, I have recorded
in some part what I have seen of war.
So now, all of you who read, I summon you in the name of our common
humanity, let us be up and doing. Americans--Anglo-Saxons, let our
common blood be a bond of brotherhood between us henceforth, a bond
indissoluble. As you have now entered the war, as you are now our
allies in deed as in spirit, let this alliance endure hereafter.
Already there is talk of some such League, which, in its might and
unity, shall secure humanity against any recurrence of the evils the
world now groans under. Here is a noble purpose, and I conceive it
the duty of each one of us, for the sake of those who shall come
after, that we should do something to further that which was once
looked upon as only an Utopian dream--the universal Brotherhood of
Man.
"The flowers o' the forest are a' faded away."
Far and wide they lie, struck down in the flush of manhood, full of
the joyous, unconquerable spirit of youth. Who knows what noble
ambitions once were theirs, what splendid works they might not have
wrought? Now they lie, each poor, shattered body a mass of loathsome
corruption. Yet that diviner part, that no bullet may slay, no steel
rend or mar, has surely entered into the fuller living, for Death is
but the gateway into Life and infinite possibilities.
But, upon all who sit immune, upon all whom as yet this bitter war
has left untouched, is the blood of these that died in the cause of
humanity, the cause of Freedom for us and the generations to come,
this blood is upon each one of us--consecrating us to the task they
have died to achieve, and it is our solemn duty to see that the
wounds they suffered, the deaths they died, have not been, and shall
not be, in vain.
XII
FLYING MEN
A few short years ago flying was in its experimental stage; to-day,
though man's conquest of the air is yet a dream unrealised, it has
developed enormously and to an amazing degree; to-day, flying is one
of the chief factors of this world war, both on sea and land. Upon
the Western front alone there are thousands upon thousands of
aeroplanes--monoplanes and biplanes--of hundreds of different makes
and designs, of varying shapes and many sizes. I have seen giants
armed with batteries of swivel guns and others mounting veritable
cannon. Here are huge bomb-dropping machines with a vast wing spread;
solid, steady-flying machines for photographic work, and the light,
swift-climbing, double-gunned battle-planes, capable of mounting two
thousand feet a minute and attaining a speed of two hundred
kilometres. Of these last they are building scores a week at a
certain factory I visited just outside Paris, and this factory is
but one of many. But the men (or rather, youths) who fly these
aerial marvels--it is of these rather than the machines that I would
tell, since of the machines I can describe little even if I would; but
I have watched them hovering unconcernedly (and quite contemptuous
of the barking attention of "Archie") above white shrapnel
bursts--fleecy, innocent-seeming puffs of smoke that go by the name
of "woolly bears." I have seen them turn and hover and swoop, swift
and graceful as great eagles. I have watched master pilots of both
armies, English and French, perform soul-shaking gyrations high in
air, feats quite impossible hitherto and never attempted until
lately. There is now a course of aerial gymnastics which every flier
must pass successfully before he may call himself a "chasing" pilot;
and, from what I have observed, it would seem that to become a pilot
one must be either all nerve or possess no nerve at all.
Conceive a biplane, thousands of feet aloft, suddenly flinging its
nose up and beginning to climb vertically as if intending to loop the
loop; conceive of its pausing suddenly and remaining, for perhaps a
full minute, poised thus upon its tail--absolutely perpendicular.
Then, the engines switched off, conceive of it falling helplessly,
tail first, reversing suddenly and plunging earthwards, spinning
giddily round and round very like the helpless flutter of a falling
leaf. Then suddenly, the engine roars again, the twisting,
fluttering, dead thing becomes instinct with life, rights itself
majestically on flashing pinions, swoops down in swift and headlong
course, and turning, mounts the wind and soars up and up as light, as
graceful, as any bird.
Other nerve-shattering things they do, these soaring young demigods
of the air, feats so marvellous to such earth-bound ones as
myself--feats indeed so wildly daring it would seem no ordinary
human could ever hope to attain unto. But in and around Paris and at
the front, I have talked with, dined with, and known many of these
bird-men, both English, French and American, and have generally found
them very human indeed, often shy, generally simple and unaffected,
and always modest of their achievements and full of admiration for
seamen and soldiers, and heartily glad that their lives are not
jeopardised aboard ships, or submarines, or in muddy trenches; which
sentiment I have heard fervently expressed--not once, but many times.
Surely the mentality of the flier is beyond poor ordinary
understanding!
It was with some such thought in my mind that with my friend N., a
well-known American correspondent, I visited one of our flying
squadrons at the front. The day was dull and cloudy, and N., deep
versed and experienced in flying and matters pertaining thereto,
shook doubtful head.
"We shan't see much to-day," he opined, "low visibility--_plafond_
only about a thousand!" Which cryptic sentence, by dint of
pertinacious questioning, I found to mean that the clouds were about
a thousand feet from earth and that it was misty. "_Plafond_", by the
way, is aeronautic for cloud strata. Thus I stood with my gaze lifted
heavenward until the Intelligence Officer joined us with a youthful
flight-captain, who, having shaken hands, looked up also and stroked
a small and very young moustache. And presently he spoke as nearly as
I remember on this wise:
"About twelve hundred! Rather rotten weather for our
business--expecting some new machines over, too."
"Has your squadron been out lately?" I enquired (I have the gift of
enquiry largely developed).
"Rather! Lost four of our chaps yesterday--'Archie' got 'em. Rotten
bad luck!"
"Are they--hurt?" I asked.
"Well, we know two are all right, and one we think is, but the
other--rather a pal of mine--"
"Do you often lose fellows?"
"Off and on--you see, we're a fighting squadron--must take a bit of
risk now and then--it's the game, y'know!"
He brought me where stood biplanes and monoplanes of all sizes and
designs, and paused beside a two-seater, gunned fore and aft, and
with ponderous, wide-flung wings.
"This," he explained, "is an old battle-plane, quite a veteran
too--jolly old bus in its way, but too slow; it's a 'pusher', you
see, and 'tractors' are all the go. We're having some over
to-day--tophole machines." Here ensued much technical discussion
between him and N. as to the relative merits of traction and
propulsion.
"Have you had many air duels?" I enquired at last, as we wandered on
through a maze of wheels and wings and propellers.
"Oh, yes, one or two," he admitted, "though nothing very much!" he
hastened to add. "Some of our chaps are pretty hot stuff, though.
There's B. now; B.'s got nine so far."
"An air fight must be rather terrible?" said I.
"Oh, I don't know!" he demurred. "Gets a bit lively sometimes. C.,
one of our chaps, had a near go coming home yesterday--attacked by
five Boche machines, well over their own territory, of course. They
swooped down on him out of a cloud. C. got one right away, but the
others got him--nearly. They shot his gear all to pieces and put his
bally gun out of commission--bullet clean through the tray. Rotten
bad luck! So, being at their mercy, C. pretended they'd got him--did
a turn-over and nose-dived through the clouds very nearly on two more
Boche machines that were waiting for him. So, thinking it was all up
with him, C. dived straight for the nearest, meaning to take a Boche
down with him, but Hans didn't think that was playing the game, and
promptly hooked it. The other fellow had been blazing away and was
getting a new drum fixed, when he saw C. was on his tail making
tremendous business with his useless gun, so Fritz immediately dived
away out of range, and C. got home with about fifty bullet holes in
his wings and his gun crocked, and--oh, here he is!"
Flight-Lieutenant C. appeared, rather younger than his Captain, a
long, slender youth, with serious brow and thoughtful eyes, whom I
forthwith questioned as diplomatically as might be.