Bravery is the beautiful, impatient gesture of the soul at its highest
reach, baring its own breast to a fatal wound in its eagerness to deal
a fatal blow at something it abhors.
Bravery is poetry, drama in deed instead of word. It has always been
lovable and beloved.
There is distinguished valor as there is distinguished art, for there
are degrees of courage as of intelligence and talent. Many people think
beautiful thoughts: a few express them. Someone frames an old idea with
an exquisite twist of phrase and a universal proverb results. So some
one citizen expresses in one felicitous act an ideal of his people and
is accepted as their national hero.
Conspicuous bravery always owes part of its success to good fortune.
At the cry of a leader—or in this war at the arrival of “zero hour”
on the wrist watches—a whole regiment went forward, nearly every man
doing his duty with complete courage. Some heroes were dogged and
unimaginative; some revealed ingenuity or invention. But to a single
man fell the opportunity and the inspiration to do some extra task
with a certain picturesque felicity. His unluckier companions and his
generals rejoiced to celebrate him, diminishing their own prestige to
enhance his. And the story of his happy thought becomes the delight of
his nation, and perhaps of many nations.
There is a kind of injustice in it as there generally is in awards
and preferments. Where all have forgotten selfishness and comfort and
cast their lives into the furnace, it seems a pity that only a few
should emerge with fame. And yet since we can no more remember all our
heroes than we can call the roll of the stars in our sky, it would be a
mistake to favor no one, to have no crosses of war.
The schoolboys cherish the name of Leonidas and the 300 Spartans at
Thermopylæ. But they ignore the 700 Platæans who perished also, and as
bravely. This is regrettable, and yet it is better to make a watchword
of the name Leonidas than to forget the whole event because it is more
than the brain will carry.
Fame is a lottery with a few capital prizes. The winners show perhaps
no more wisdom, no more courage than all the other gamblers. In the
baseball phrase they simply “luck in.” Yet they will get their names in
the papers, people will boast of knowing them; prestige and fortune
will be theirs and oblivion will absorb the others. But if you are
going to have lotteries succeed, you must offer capital prizes and pay
them. And war is the lottery of lotteries.
There have always been wars and, unless hope shall triumph over
experience at last, there always will be wars; and there will always be
an appetite for tales of heroism. The earliest literature records them
and so must the latest.
Since no man has any more lives to give for his country than our
schoolteacher spy had, all heroisms are in a sense equal; for, since a
man risks the only life he has, it matters little how, whether from a
cave-man’s axe or a shell that shoots eighty miles.
Bravery is no new thing. It cannot be listed as one of the inventions
of this war. It is matter for enough pride that there was no failure
of it in quality, but rather an unheard-of versatility in it, and
an unequaled quantity; for never before was there a war in which so
many soldiers were engaged, or so incessantly engaged or under such
hardships, or such varied dangers. To an extent unapproached hitherto,
nations were mobilized _en masse_. For the first time they settled
down at grips in continuous lines from frontier to frontier with no
relaxation of vigilance or activity through long years of sun, snow,
rain, and mud.
It is curious to note that in this war, innumerable hosts of brave men
were dragged into glory—one might say “kicked upstairs”—by conscription.
In America we had the small Regular Army, the slightly larger and very
irregular National Guard; then armies of volunteers, followed by armies
recruited willy-nilly through the exemption boards. Not only did the
draft compel enlistment, but the very prospect of it drove many men to
volunteer before they were drawn. This is said in no derogation, for
obligations vary and many a man who could not find the way to volunteer
was glad to be coerced. And some of the men who volunteered at once
would better have stayed at home.
Though the American Armies began in various strata, in a very short
time all distinctions were abolished and everybody was “U. S.”
The glory was similarly shuffled. In the records of achievements in
ground gained, prisoners taken, casualties endured, the Regular Army,
the National Guard divisions and the draft divisions were rivals
of such close conclusion that disputes continue as to the actual
priorities. In any case the margins are narrow. Here also luck played
its part, for the morale of the enemy and the ground to be taken varied
enormously from day to day and from place to place.
Curiously, the most successful American hero of the war, judging by the
score, was a “conscientious objector,” Sergeant York. His conscience
did not lead him to the fanatic lengths of many others who defied the
government and refused to obey any commands whatever; strange perverse
creatures who were such lovers of liberty that they would do nothing
to defend it, men who abhorred the thought of killing their fellow
creatures so utterly that they would not lift a finger to put a stop to
slaughter and disarm the German butchers. Sergeant York’s religious
scruples did not carry him so far, yet he was a reluctant and a tardy
entrant into the war, and he was with difficulty persuaded to accept
the immortal fame awaiting him.
Sergeant York was a straight-shooting open-living mountaineer. Yet
there were city-bred heroes whose impetuosity led them to plunge into
the war long before it spread to America. One of these was an actor and
a dancer. Wallace McCutcheon, who pretended to British citizenship, got
in at the start, and by sheer bravery and persistence rose from private
to major. He would indeed have been a colonel if his second wound had
caught him fifteen minutes later, for his colonel was killed then and
he would have been automatically promoted.
There were sons of wealthy parents and sons of humble parents who
joined the French, the Canadian or the British forces and fought in
the skies, or on land or sea for years before the rest of the nation
decided to follow them overseas.
This was a world war indeed, a universal struggle, and there was no
race, color, condition, creed, or trade that was not represented and
brilliantly represented. Clergymen, priests, waiters, polo-players,
convicts, negroes, musicians, ditch-diggers, gunmen, farmers,
chorusmen, gamblers—the entire list of heroes would exhaust any
classification of the human race or its activities. A complete beadroll
of heroes would fill a city directory, and make the most dismal reading.
The only way in which justice can be done to anybody at all, is by
omitting even to mention the vast majority, and to select a few at
random, like a clutch of sample red apples from an enormous harvest.
It is not feasible to attempt internationalism or non-partisanship. We
must ignore the splendid heroism of other nations and leave them to the
celebration of their own heroes and the neglect of ours.
Of our own there remains too great a multitude to permit a systematic
selection of examples. Some are here because they had the luck to
be observed by skillful observers and recorders, as many kings are
remembered because their historians or poets were superior to those of
other kings.
This volume, then, has all the faults of any other anthology. Yet
the most imperfect anthology is better than no bouquet at all; and a
bouquet is the happiest representative of a garden, as a framed canvas
is the best memorial of a sunset.
In this connection, there is a quaint poem of Emily Dickinson’s; she
attached it to some flowers she selected from her garden:
I send two sunsets—
Day and I in competition ran.
I finished two, and several stars,
While He was making one.
His own is ample—
But as I was saying to a friend,
Mine is the more convenient
To carry in the hand.
So it may be said of this volume: it does not contain the entire
star-crowded firmament of the War of Wars, but it is “more convenient
to carry in the hand.”
It would be belittling the bravery of our own men and the men of the
Allies to pretend that the enemy lacked courage. The Germans and
Austrians fought brilliantly, scientifically, ruthlessly. Individuals
displayed the purest heroism and chivalry. But since it is impossible
to catalogue everybody, I imagine that this omission, at least, will be
indulgently regarded.
America entered the war late but at a time of peculiar desperation. Her
appearance on the field changed the whole balance of power.
Before this time, the _generalissimo_, Foch, was like a gambler trying
to break the bank with his last remaining gold pieces. Immediately
after, he was a man with an inexhaustible supply of remittances. What
would have been insane recklessness before now became good strategy,
and he could at last follow out his life-motto: “Attack, attack,
attack!”
On the other hand the Germans, having entered the war as cold-blooded
business men, and conducted it with all the soullessness of the
proverbial corporation, realized speedily that the investment was a
failure and made every effort to get out as cheaply as possible.
The Allies realized that their victory would be wasted if Germany were
permitted to retire with any prestige. A crushing and undeniable defeat
was of the utmost importance. Hence the Americans were called upon to
attack with human sledgehammers the hinges of the German defense and
the strong points of rearguard action. Their losses were therefore huge
for the brief time of engagement, since they ran to meet danger with an
amazing fire.
Heroes sprang up, as from sown dragon’s teeth; so fast that there was
no recording them. In air, on land and sea, and under the land and the
sea, our men wrought so godlike well that it is pitiful to leave any of
them without his meed of praise.
A word ought to be said also, for the prevented heroes, the unwilling
absentees from the battle, those who ate their hearts out in America as
instructors in camps, as dealers in supplies, plodders in paper work.
Of the Regular Army officers, who had dedicated their lives to valor,
made bravery their profession, hardly more than one-third were even
enabled to cross the sea, and a large mass of the small portion that
got across was never permitted to come within earshot of the fighting
line. War has no bitterer cruelties than the fate of such men.
There were National Guard men and officers, too, who had given a large
part of their leisure to military training only to find themselves
condemned to inaction. There was a vast amount of plucking by surgeons,
for disabilities that had not prevented men from earning success in
civil life. But trench life was so searching a test of strength that
youth was almost as essential as in the prize ring.
Many of the stay-at-homes had a rightful share in the glory of the men
they trained and sent as their delegates to the victory. Conspicuously
absent were Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who did so much to inspire his
countrymen with battle-ardor, and General Leonard Wood, who built up
the whole system of officers’ training camps, advancing us incalculably
along the road to preparedness.
Then there was the thwarted courage of the countless men who tried to
volunteer from civil life and were refused in droves, or furnished with
an almost ironical uniform to emphasize their domesticity. This was the
swivel-chair army, and the badge of service was the silver chevron. At
first granted as an honor, it proved so unwelcome that it had to be
enforced by order.
Uniforms of a sort were worn also by Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., Knights
of Columbus, Jewish Welfare Board, Salvation Army, and other
semi-civilians, thousands of whom reached the battle front and many of
whom displayed perfect gallantry.
Women to an extraordinary degree took part in this war. The Russian
Battalion of Death was the most startling verification of the Amazonian
myths, but in every country there were women unnumbered who courted
danger with a superb consecration to duty.
There is no stranger or more persistent falsehood than the claim that
women are less belligerent than men. It has been constantly reiterated
that if women had the vote, or even the say, there would be no more
wars. As if history had not abounded in women whose native ferocity or
patriotism inspired them to frenzies of wrath, or self-sacrifice!
In this war as in all wars, mothers surrendered their boys with
fortitude, or compelled them into the ranks. Mothers without sons to
give envied their luckier sisters. Women made speeches, posters, wrote
articles, poems, songs, did office work, drove ambulances, trucks, and
toiled in munitions factories where danger was more unceasing than on
the battle front.
The Red Cross women and their untrained aids, many of them women of
noble birth or of the most delicate heritages, shared the hardships of
the men. The Salvation Army women made doughnuts and pies in the front
line trenches. The Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., and numerous other
organizations crowded to the front. Actors and actresses faced death in
order to make cheer for the soldiers about to die.
The difficulty was always to keep the throngs back from the
fighting-lines rather than to whip them forward.
The fighting-line was indeed a vague term, for children were killed in
their cradles in cities far distant from the battle front. Worshipers
in a Paris church were killed on a Good Friday by a shot from a German
cannon fired eighty miles away.
The raids by Zeppelins and aeroplanes, the planting of explosives in
factories, the sowing of mines in seas, the activities of spies and
_saboteurs_ made it uncertain just where danger was. There was courage
everywhere.
The variety of dangers was beyond anything hitherto recorded, and a
certain supremacy in dauntlessness might be claimed by our generation;
for men are most easily frightened by risks they are not used to, and
every month seemed to bring some new astonishment. The submarine and
the flying machine had never been employed in wars before. They were as
terrifying to their passengers as to their targets. They brought remote
civilians and non-combatants into their field of fire by intention or
indifference.
The air-raids over London and Paris and the sinking of the _Lusitania_
and various hospital ships horrified the world. The first gas attacks
added a new shudder to war. The prolonged and hideous imprisonment
in the trenches where men stood to arms in icy mud kept the soul and
the body on the rack. The hand grenade came again into fashion with
a new deadliness. The machine-gun literally sprayed the field with
bullets, mowing men down as with the scythe of death. The tanks were
such a prodigy as the first elephants brought into battle. Depth bombs
for submarines, land-mines, cannon on railroad tracks, trench-knives,
incendiary bullets, barbed wire charged with lightning—it would be
impossible to enumerate the new devices for inflicting wounds and death.
Yet science could not invent a way to frighten men out of their wits or
out of their patriotism. The men in danger simply took what came and
held on while the scientists in the rear devised some new defense for
the new offense.
Nothing was more spectacular than the development of the air-duel and
the air-battle by whole fleets of airships. The penalty for bad luck in
such an encounter was to fall thousands of feet in a blazing machine.
But candidates for these super-chivalrous jousts were innumerable.
Naval warfare had its novelties in frightfulness as well. Vessels were
subject to destruction by a planted or a drifting mine or by a torpedo
shot from an unseen submersible. The destruction of a populous ship
was like the cataclysm that annihilates a city. The tortures of patrol
duty, the management or the pursuit of submarines, the combats with
airships, the protection of convoys, and numberless new-fangled terrors
were all superimposed on the ancient dangers of seafaring.
Besides the fighting navy there was the mercantile marine charged with
the transportation of incredible amounts of supplies and millions of
soldiers. With these ships the submarine worked fearful havoc, filling
the Seven Seas with hulks and corpses.
Yet in spite of all the surprises of science, this war, like all other
wars of the past—and it is safe to say of the future—was waged upon
the most ancient lines, and its battle-technic was reducible to simple
terms.
A, B and C attack D, E and F. A superiority in weapons must be met by
a superiority in morale or a superiority in tactics. Ability to attack
and to endure attack are the proofs of fitness to survive. The victor
will be the latter one to quit fighting. While the war must be won by
masses of men, the quality of the mass is the algebraic total of the
individual qualities.
A hero is a man plus. A coward is a man minus. A few heroes will
counteract the influence of many cowards or even lend them strength
enough to become heroes also.
In its individual heroes, moral, spiritual and physical, lies therefore
the prosperity of a nation. It is well that a nation should keep its
eye on its heroes, and reward them well, at least with fame.
This volume devoted to accounts of individual achievements is something
more than picturesque. It is as important to the record as the
consideration of any of the larger aspects of war. It strikes the human
note, and the human note is vital in so human a thing as a war; since
war gives humanity its widest and fiercest vibration from the utmost
baseness to the supreme nobility.