PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE
Plain though these facts are, the Entente nations, and in particular
the British people, either ignore them wholly or misinterpret their
purport. Hence we continue absorbed in the pursuit of interests,
parochial and parliamentary, which though quite human, are utterly off
the line of racial and imperial progress. We obstinately shut our eyes
to the magnitude of the Sphinx question that confronts us, and we
address ourselves to one--and that the least important--of its many
facets, and content ourselves with tackling that. We descant upon the
turpitude of the Teuton who from the regions of idealism in which
Goethe, Herder and their contemporaries dwelt has sunk into shift,
treason and murder, and we proclaim our faith in the ultimate triumph
of right, justice and of the democracy in which alone they flourish.
But this frame of mind, which moves us to identify ourselves with all
that is best in humanity, if cultivated will prove fatal. It accustoms
us to dangerous hallucinations. We assume that we are the chosen
people, and we neglect the virtues which alone would justify our
election. For generations we have been reaping and wasting, instead of
ploughing and sowing. We have been living on our capital, nay, on our
credit, and have long since overdrawn our account. Our successes in
the past, sometimes the result of fortuitous circumstances, more often
of the blunders of our rivals, inspire a presumptuous confidence in
successes for the future and a conviction that come what may we are
destined to muddle through. A special providence is watching over
us--a cousin German to the Kaiser's "good old God." In truth we are
tempting Fate, postulating an exception to the law of cause and
effect, and looking for Hebrew miracles in the twentieth century after
Christ.
Were it otherwise, the nation would not have continued to entrust its
destinies to the men who misguided it consistently and perseveringly
for so many years, to the watchmen who saw nothing of the rocks and
sandbanks ahead which it was their function to discern and their duty
to avoid, and who are now unwittingly but effectually deluding the
people into believing that the present campaign, which is but a single
episode in a long-spun-out contest, is an independent event which
began in August 1914 and may end this year or the next. These same
leaders are busily inculcating the delusive notion that the diplomatic
instrument which will one day close hostilities will be a treaty of
peace. And they are seemingly prepared to negotiate its terms on that
assumption.
In truth, we are engaged in a duel which began thirty years ago, gave
the Germans such booty as Heligoland, their world-trade, their wealth,
their formidable navy, their Baghdad Railway, their various overseas
colonies, their European Allies, and the enormous resources with which
when this acute phase of the contest is over they will re-transfer the
venue to the economic and political domains and carry on the struggle
with greater vigour than before. And peace terms concluded on any
other supposition cannot be conducive to the national welfare. We are
locked in a deadly embrace with a compact people of 120,000,000, of
indomitable spirit, boundless resources, unquenchable faith and a
single aim. Yet we are already looking forward to the time in the near
future when our intercourse, however circumscribed, with this nation
will be essentially pacific, and when we can revert to our cherished
narrow interests and our easy-going dilettantism. We feed upon the
hope that in a few brief years the British nation will have got safely
back to its old beaten grooves, and not only business and sport but
everything else will go on as usual. Yet all the salient facts which
force themselves on our attention to-day, all the decisive events of
the past thirty years are cogent proofs of the unbroken sequence of a
trial of strength which the future historian and the present
statesman, if there be one, must characterize as a life-and-death
struggle between the champions of the new Teuton politico-social
ordering and the partisans of the old. But after the lapse of a
generation and with the record of all our losses before us, we have
not yet formed a right conception of the situation, and its issues, or
of the historic forces at work. In these circumstances, no degree of
sagacity can help us to devise the only policy in which salvation
resides. The prevailing mistaken conception must be rectified before
any headway can be made against the currents that are fast bearing us
down. And the time at our disposal is brief.
It needs few words to characterize the effects which the dreamy
optimism of the Entente nations had on their method of mobilizing
their resources to carry on the war. Taken unawares they had nothing
ready. Misapprehending the nature of the issues and the redoubtable
character of the contest, they pursued subordinate aims with
insufficient means. The most daring strategical moves of the enemy, in
war as in diplomacy, they ridiculed as either bluff or madness. The
journalistic campaign in neutral countries they scoffed at as vain,
and put their faith in the final triumph of truth. Their financial
measures, oscillating from one extreme to another, denoted the absence
of any settled plan, of any clear-cut picture of the needs of the
moment. The odds in their favour, which circumstance had given and
circumstance might take away again, they looked upon as inalienable,
until they ended by forfeiting them all. Viewing the campaign as a
transient event, the British Government prosecuted it by means of
make-shifts, instead of radical measures. Obligatory service was
scouted at as un-English. Discriminating customs tariffs were
condemned as heretical. It was not until the enemy had occupied
Poland, overrun Serbia, driven the Allied troops from the Dardanelles,
bent Montenegro to the yoke, threatened Egypt, Riga and Petrograd,
that some rays of light penetrated the atmosphere of ignorance and
prejudice through which the Allies surveyed the European welter. They
had begun by counting upon the breaking up of the Habsburg Monarchy.
They felt sure that the Tsar's armies would capture Budapest and
advance on Berlin. They planned the defeat of Germany by famine. They
built another fabric of hopes on "Kitchener's Great Army" in the
spring of 1915. But one after another these anticipations were belied
by events. And now the nation blithely accepts the further forecasts
of the men who are chargeable with this long sequence of avoidable
errors.
Respect for individual liberty was carried to such a point in Great
Britain that organizations against recruiting were tolerated in
England and Ireland, and strikes, which not only inflicted heavy
pecuniary losses on the nation but actually stopped its supplies of
munitions and brought it within sight of discomfiture, were treated
with soft words and immediate concessions. One cannot read even Mr.
Lloyd George's summary narrative of the preposterous doings of British
slackers without wondering whether salvation is still possible. These
men not only refused to work their best for the community, but forbade
their comrades to work well. At Enfield, we are told, a man was
obliged by trade union regulations so to regulate his work that he did
not earn more than 1_s._ an hour, though he could easily have earned
2_s._ 6_d._[118] Another man was doing two and a half days' work in
two days, and when he refused to carry out the behest of the
Ironfounders' Board to waste the other half day he was fined L1.[119]
A consequence of this anti-national attitude was that "we had to wait
for weeks in Birmingham with machinery lying idle, with our men
without rifles, with our men with a most inadequate supply of machine
guns to attack the enemy and defend themselves."[120] Every one will
re-echo the Minister's comment on the outlook, if this attitude is
persisted in--"we are making straight for disaster."
[118] Mr. Lloyd George's speech at Bristol. Cf. _Daily
Telegraph_, September 10, 1915.
[119] _Ibid._
[120] _Ibid._
Compare this state of things with that which rules in Germany. It is a
British Minister who describes it: "If you want to realize what
organized labour in this war means, read the story of the last twelve
months. By the end of September the German armies were checked. They
sustained an overwhelming defeat in France, Russia was advancing
against them towards the Carpathians, and I believe in East Prussia.
That is not the case to-day. Why? The German workmen came in;
organized labour in Germany prepared to take the field. They worked
and worked quietly, persistently, continuously, without stint or
strife, without restriction for months and months, through the autumn,
through the winter, through the spring. Then came that avalanche of
shot and shell which broke the great Russian armies and drove them
back. That was the victory of the German workmen."[121]
[121] Mr. Lloyd George's speech at Bristol. Cf. _Daily
Telegraph_, September 10, 1915.
Great Britain is the classic land of strikes. Strikers are sacred
among us. Industrial compulsion is rank heresy.
That is one of our difficulties, and by no means the least formidable.
The nation, despite the superb example of patriotic heroism given by
all classes, parties, provinces and colonies of the Empire, is still
deficient in cohesiveness. No fire of enthusiasm has yet burned
fiercely enough among all sections of the Empire and all members of
the race to fuse them in such a compact unified organism as we behold
in the Teuton's Fatherland. Read the characteristic given of us by the
ex-German Minister Dernburg, and say whether it is over-coloured.
Discoursing on the difficulties which Britain has to cope with in
carrying on the war, he says: "They are intensified ... by the
narrow-minded customs of the English trade unions, which contrast with
the patriotic behaviour of the German associations of the like nature
as night contrasts with day."[122] This is melancholy reading for
those whose hopes are fervent for a bright future of the British race,
and it prepares them to listen in anxious silence to the general
conclusion at which the Prussian ex-Minister arrives: "It is in the
highest degree improbable," he says, "that after the winding up of
this contest England will be able to keep or wield any form of
economic superiority whatever over Germany."
[122] _Berliner Tageblatt_, March 9, 1916.
In our Allies we find a strong touch of resemblance to ourselves.
Their state of unpreparedness is amazing, if less desperate than ours.
Russia, it is true, did much better at the outset than friend or foe
anticipated, and she might have done quite well if only she had been
supplied with munitions. But she had not nearly enough, and her armies
were slaughtered like sheep in consequence. Then there were no boots
for the soldiers, who were forced to wear thin canvas leggings with
leather soles. And scores of waggon-loads of incapacitated men were
taken to Petrograd and other cities whose feet had been frozen for
lack of shoe-leather. One of the urgent wants of the Tsardom are
railways, which the late Count Witte was so eager to construct. When
hostilities opened, the insufficiency of communications became one of
the decisive factors in Russia's disasters. And it was heightened by
the conduct of, shall we say, the prussianized officials,[123] who are
reported to have disposed of waggons for large sums to greedy
merchants, who used to raise the prices of the merchandise and batten
on the misery of their fellows.
[123] It is but fair to say that venality is not one of the
characteristics of the German bureaucracy. Their sense of
duty towards the State is the nearest approach to morality of
which they now seem capable.
Trains, needed to supply the fighting men at the front with food and
the wounded at the rear with medicaments, were kept back to suit the
schemes of these greedy cormorants. Gratuities, it is openly affirmed,
had to be paid by Red Cross and other officers to those subordinate
railway servants who had it in their power to send on a train or shunt
it off for days on a side-track. Bribery is working havoc in the
Tsardom. In January 1916 the Moscow municipality discussed the
advisability of voting a certain sum of money and putting it at the
disposal of the chief officer of the city, to be discreetly employed
in transactions with complacent railway officials, in order to further
the work of reducing prices on necessaries of life. The motive adduced
for this homoeopathic way of treating a social distemper were the
conditions of life in Russia and the necessity of complying with them.
But as the Statute Book does not recognize these conditions and
condemns bribery absolutely, a vote on the subject was not taken.[124]
[124] The German press gave great prominence to this item of
news. Cf. _Frankfurter Zeitung_, January 8, 1916.
Acting on instructions issued by the Finance Minister, a Member of the
Council of the Finance Ministry, D. I. Zassiadko, visited the
Kharkoff circuit for the purpose of studying the bribery problem on
the spot. M. Zassiadko acquired the conviction "on the spot" that the
railway officials do really take bribes, "and even of considerable
amounts." But, that ascertained, the representative of the Ministry
decided to delve deeper to the root of the matter. And he reached the
conclusion that railway servants belong to the class of the tempted.
The evil, he reported, resides not in the circumstance that they take
bribes, but that bribes are offered whereby these weak little souls
are seduced. The representative of the Ministry discovered an entire
category of bribes which do not bear the signs of extortion, but only
of "gratitude." To us this conclusion sounds somewhat naive. The most
widely circulated journal of Petrograd prefaces an article on the
subject as follows.[125]
[125] _The Bourse Gazette_, February 21.
"The misdeeds of the officials and bribery on the railway system cry
out to heaven," writes the organ of the Constitutional Democrats.
"Compared with the reverses on the Carpathians and in Poland, the
defeats we are sustaining in our own house and behind the enemy's back
are much greater...." On the important line Petrograd-Moscow-Perm
scandalous cases of corruption took place in which, according to
Russian journals, officials of a class who might reasonably be
regarded as unbribable were implicated. They are alleged to have let
out to firms of speculators for large sums of money, goods waggons
which were already destined to carry consignments to the front.[126]
Russia's purchases abroad have made a profound impression on the
peoples in whose midst they were effected. The principles on which
these transactions were carried on provoked lively comments. It is not
that they revealed a superlative degree of disorganization. That touch
would have merely marked the kinship of the men concerned with their
allies. By the discovery that the Russian Government's purchasing
Commissioners, the representatives of one of its embassies, the agents
of the British Government and the equally zealous agents of the French
Government were all secretly bidding against each other for the same
rifles to be delivered to the Tsar's Ministers, only a smile of
recognition was elicited. It may have seemed at once amusing and
consolatory to find that all were tarred with the same brush. But when
it was discovered that the offer of certain army necessaries was put
off for weeks and weeks, although they were to be had under cost
price, and was then accepted at a much higher price, profound sympathy
was felt for the Tsar's armies.
[126] Cf. _Reitch_ (about February 17, 1916), March 5, 1916.
Chaos, waste and a variety of abuses that pressed heavily on the
poorer classes marked the efforts made by the Russian Government to
cope with the scarcity of fuel, corn and other necessaries which began
to be felt soon after the war. The rolling stock, it was complained,
was utterly insufficient, yet it was found possible to transport
1,000,000 poods[127] weight of mineral water of doubtful quality. When
trains arrived bringing supplies to the suffering population, it
turned out that there were no hands to unload the waggons. And when
labour was requisitioned, vehicles were not to be had. In October 1915
on the rails of Moscow station five thousand waggons, laden with
life's necessaries, stood waiting and waiting in vain for the
unskilled labour which ought to have been abundant, considering the
number of the population and of the refugees. At the same time 2000
waggons were on the rails of the Petrograd station, their contents
lying unutilized.[128] It is only by the lack of order and
organization that one can explain the facts that in Petrograd the
inhabitants have no butter, while in the places where butter is made
it is being sold cheaper than before, at 12 in lieu of 16 to 18
roubles a pood. In the province of Ekaterinograd, mines which own
800,000 poods of coal cannot get more than a few waggon loads of it
every month.
[127] A pood is equal to 36.11 lbs.
[128] Cf. _Novoye Vremya_, October 9, 1915.
Russia has incomparably more than enough fuel, without importing any,
to satisfy all the needs of her 180,000,000 inhabitants. But owing to
the insufficiency of communications, and still more to the lack of
forethought and enterprise, the population of many cities and towns
underwent serious hardships in consequence of the impossibility of
acquiring coal or wood. In September 1915 the Petrograd region could
obtain no more than 65 per cent. of the necessary quantity, and a
month later only 49 per cent. In Moscow the plight of the inhabitants
was worse. In September they could get but 26 per cent. of their needs
and in October 40 per cent. According to the Minister of Commerce, who
volunteered these data, the condition of the towns of Rostoff,
Novotcherkassk, Nakhitchevan, Taganrog, Ekaterinodar and others was
not a whit better. The city of Vyatka was, according to the _Novoye
Vremya_,[129] in January 1916 without fuel, while the mercury
registered 30 degrees Reaumur below freezing-point. The unfortunate
citizens heated their homes with fragments of hoardings, tables, desks
and stools. And yet there is abundant fuel in the superb forests with
which Vyatka is surrounded, and, what is more to the point, the city
authorities had received during the preceding spring 60,000 roubles
for the purpose of purchasing a supply of wood for the winter. But
they did nothing, organization not being one of their strong points.
[129] The German press welcomes items of information like
this. Cf. _Frankfurter Zeitung_, January 13, 1916.
Live stock in Russia has diminished during the war to a much larger
extent than was anticipated. The peasantry, owing to the prohibition
of alcohol, now consume from 150 to 200 per cent. more meat than
before, and what with the refugees from Poland, the prisoners of war
and the increased needs of the army, no less than 20 per cent. of the
cattle of the entire Empire was used during the first eighteen
months[130] and 30 per cent. of the stock of all European Russia. In
consequence of the shortage and of the irregularity of the transport,
three days of abstinence from meat were ordained. Yet in January 1916
a discovery was casually made in the Kieff forests between Byelitch
and Pushtsha Voditzka, which caused considerable lifting of the
eyebrows. About 8000 head of cattle and several thousand sheep were
found with no cowherds, shepherds or owners, wandering about from
place to place. Scores of them were succumbing to hunger and cold
every day. The paths in the woods were covered with the dead bodies of
kine, calves and sheep. The journal which records this fact affirms
that these herds belong to the Union of Zemstvos, which had purchased
them from the peasants who had to flee from the occupied provinces.
The President of the Union of Zemstvos is said to have confirmed this
odd story with the qualification that the forlorn horned cattle and
sheep are the property not of the Union of Zemstvos, but of the
Ministry of Agriculture, which is alone answerable.[131]
[130] Over a hundred million head.
[131] Cf. the Russian journal, _Kieff_, also the _Frankfurter
Zeitung_, January 29, 1916.
The card system of distributing provisions that are scarce found its
way first into Germany and then into Austria and Russia. But in the
last-named empire it was much less successful than in the two first
mentioned. According to the Petrograd journals in Pskoff, where it was
tried, many individuals got no cards, and therefore no provisions.
Many who possessed the cards found nothing to buy. And some of those
who obtained the articles they wanted paid dearer for them than if
they had bought them without cards. And as with cards one has to lay
in a stock to last a fortnight, the poorer families were unable to
utilize them.[132]
[132] _Novoye Vremya_, January 1916. _Frankfurter Zeitung_,
January 21, 1916.
In France, as well as in Russia, the professional organizers,
especially the civilians, were very much adrift. In the army all the
sterling qualities of the French nation at its best, and many that
were deemed extinct, but are now seen to have been only dormant, shone
forth resplendent. Valour, fortitude, staying power, self-abnegation
for the common good, became household virtues. Friends and foes were
equally surprised. But the civil administration remained
well-meaning, patriotic and unregenerate to the last. The old Adam
lived and acted up to his reputation.
Before the war the French railway administration had been criticized
severely. It is not for a foreigner to express an opinion on the
internal ordering of a country not his own, but unbiassed French
experts found that the strictures were called for and the verdict, in
which the public acquiesced, was well grounded. Subsequently, when the
struggle began and the railway system was tested, people had reason to
remember the previous complaints, for they saw how little had been
done in the meanwhile to remove the causes of dissatisfaction. The
first drawback was the want of rolling stock. "Give us waggons and we
will execute all orders and supply the War Ministry," cried the
munitions firms. "There are no waggons in the ports, and we cannot get
the coal delivered," exclaimed the importers. "The country is
threatened with general paralysis," wrote the _Journal_;[133] "we can
neither forward nor sell anything." The railway administration asked
for a fortnight's notice, then for three weeks and finally an
indefinite period, before it could provide a single truck. "I have
fertilizing stuff to forward before the season is past," pleads the
representative of one firm. "We have no waggons," is the reply. "I
must have my produce delivered at once to the Government," argues
another, "for it is wanted for the fabrication of powder." But the
answer came promptly: "There are no waggons." "But you have waggons. I
see them over there" (the station was Cognac). "Yes, but we may not
touch them. They belong to the military engineering department."
"Well, but what are they doing there?" "Ah, that is none of our
business."[134]
[133] _Le Journal_, November 26, 1915.
[134] _Le Journal_, November 26, 1915.
And in the ports, at the termini, at intermediate stations, the
merchandise lay heaped up, immobilized, while the merchants, the
middlemen, the manufacturers, the Government, the army were waiting,
time was lapsing, and the fate of the Republic and the nation hanging
in the balance. At Havre great machines, destined for a Paris firm
which was to have delivered them to factories making shells, lay
untouched for two months. The number of shells lost in this way has
never been calculated. Yet it was well known that during all that time
there were numbers of waggons available. What had become of them? The
answer was: They are to be found everywhere, immobilized. It is a case
of general immobilization of the rolling stock. People slept in them,
turned them into cottages, used them as warehouses, each individual
reasoning that one waggon more or less would not be missed. And as
this argument was used by large numbers of easy-going, well-meaning
people the result was appalling.
The most terrific war known to history was raging in three Continents,
and one group of belligerents, unaware or heedless of the magnitude of
the issues, kept wasting its enormous resources and throwing away its
advantages. At the little station of Cognac waggons laden with all
kinds of war materials, barbed wire, galvanized wire, etc., were
detained from September 1914 until November 1915, 400 days in all,
doing nothing. Forty-two waggons ready to move were found on two
grass-covered rails. Fourteen waggons were there since September 1914.
Eight since December of the same year, twenty since June. Altogether
at the modest little station of Cognac the total recorded by Senator
Humbert's _Journal_ was 228,500 tons-days. "All this during the most
tremendous war the world has ever witnessed, in which hundreds of
thousands of men have been slain, where we have continually been short
of war material, while industry and commerce are agonizing for lack of
means of transport. It may well seem a dream."[135]
[135] _Le Journal_, November 26, 1915.
Seven hundred French railway stations were devoid of rolling stock. On
the other hand, from the beginning of the war down to November 1915,
729 waggons were lying immobilized at the station of Blanc-Mesnil.
Seven hundred and twenty-nine![136] Merchants, manufacturers,
importers, all were being literally beggared for lack of transports
while hundreds of waggons lay rotting at obscure little stations for
over a year. "The whole region of the West is encumbered," we read,
"with 30,000,000 hectolitres of apples, valued at 300,000,000 francs,
which cannot be conveyed anywhither, and which people are beginning to
bury in the earth as manure. Sugar is scarce and is rising in price,
whereas ever since last August[137] a single firm has unloaded 10,000
tons of sugar at Havre which it cannot have transported to Paris.
Innumerable army purveyors are unable to send the machines for the
shells...." An official order to the army prescribed a substitute for
barbed wire, which was not to be had at any price, yet at a single
station at least 135 tons of barbed wire were lying for a twelvemonth
unused, untouched.[138] On November 27, 1915, the military hospital
N16 at Poitiers needed coal. A request was made by telephone. The
reply received was: "We have coal at La Rochelle, but there are no
waggons to carry it." Yet there were forty-two waggons immobilized at
Cognac, 729 at Blanc-Mesnil and 121 standing laden with barbed wire
and other materials for over a year!
[136] _Le Journal_, December 2, 1915. They were photographed
and the photograph reproduced in that paper.
[137] That was published in December 1915.
[138] _Le Journal_, December 2, 1915.
Organization and intelligence!
With engines the experience was the same. The French Government,
anxious to make up for the deficiency, purchased 140 engines of
British make to be delivered some time in 1916. Yet at that time there
were at the station of Mezidon (Calvados) over 500 engines
immobilized, nobody knew why or by whom. This cemetery of locomotives
was photographed by the _Journal_. Such was the harvest reaped by the
enterprising Senator Humbert's commission at that one station. There
were others. At Marles six Belgian engines, at Serquigny twenty, etc.
The attention of the French authorities having been called to this
unqualifiable neglect, a senatorial railway commission was appointed
to inquire into the matter, and it reported that: "The engines in
question, numbering about 2000, of which 1000 on the State railway
system are now going to be repaired." "There are therefore 2000
engines scandalously abandoned," comments the _Journal_, ...
"forgotten during sixteen months, and having passed from the state of
being inutilized to that of being inutilizable. For if these machines,
which were in service before the war and came from Belgium, are
to-day, like the waggons of Blanc-Mesnil, incapable of being utilized
in their present state, as the official note puts it, the reason is
that they were left to decay in the rain and the wind without cover or
case for five hundred days."[139]
[139] _Le Journal_, December 4, 1915.
Interesting in a smaller way is the reply given by the French War
Minister to a question by a deputy, the Marquis de Ludre, who asked
for information about a consignment of knives which had been provided
for the army, but were found to be quite useless. The Minister
explained that the Generalissimus having requested the immediate
dispatch of 165,000 knives, the department charged with the execution
of the order had no time to examine the goods, and the circumstance
was overlooked that all kinds of knives were supplied, without any
reference to the purpose for which they were destined.[140] The
Minister added that no one should be blamed for this, inasmuch as it
was "the result of exaggerated but praiseworthy zeal." This
construction is charitable and may be true in fact. But the soldiers
who, in lieu of a serviceable blade, found themselves in possession of
a dessert knife may have taken a different view of the transaction.
[140] Journal Official, answer to question No. 5730.
This is hardly what is understood by organization.
Beside those scenes from chaos set this picture of order: "In a small
French town in which the supreme _etape commando_ of Kluck's army was
situated, we inspected a field postal station. On the ground floor the
letters were being received and delivered. The stream of soldiers was
endless. They were sending field postcards, which are forwarded
gratuitously. The difficult work of sorting the correspondence was
being transacted on the first storey. Every day from 1800 to 2000 post
sacks arrive, mostly with small packets and postcards, and day after
day the same difficult problem presents itself--how to find the
addressee. Many regiments, it is true, have permanent quarters, but
there are mobile columns as well. Quick transfers are possible, and
individuals may be shifted to another place or incorporated in a
different regiment. The arranging of the correspondence went forward
in a spacious room; the letters which it was difficult to deliver were
handed over to a number of specialists, who sat in an adjoining
apartment and studied all the changes caused by the transfer of
troops. They found help in an address-book containing a list of all
the field formations. About once every four days, or even oftener, a
new edition of this work was issued. By the middle of December 1914
the eighty-fourth edition was in print."[141]
[141] Karl Hildebrand, _Ein starkes Volk_, p. 108.
This talent for organization, this capacity of thought concentration
in circumstances which tend to strengthen emotion at the cost of
reason, have been constantly displayed by our enemies throughout the
entire struggle of the past thirty years, and never more conspicuously
than during the present war. Every emergency found them ready. The
most unlikely eventualities had been foreseen and provided for.
Private initiative, which "grandmotherly legislation" was supposed to
have killed, was more alert and resourceful than among any of the
Entente nations. Every German is in some respects an agent of his
Government. Each one thinks he foresees some eventuality with the
genesis of which he is especially conversant, and he forthwith
communicates his forecast and at the same time his plan for coping
with the danger to some official. And all suggestions are thankfully
received and dealt with on their intrinsic merits. For such matters
the rulers of the Empire, however engrossed by urgent problems, have
always time and money.
It is instructive and may possibly be helpful to compare this spirit
of detachment from the personal and party elements of the situation,
this accessibility to every call of patriotic duty, this
self-possession under conditions calculated to hinder calm
deliberation, with the hesitations, the bewilderment, the conflicting
decisions of the Entente leaders and their impatience of unauthorized
initiative and offers of private assistance. Outsiders are not wanted.
Their money is not rejected, but nothing else that they tender is
readily received.
In other more momentous matters the Allies also lagged behind their
adversaries. Despite their vast resources and the generous offers of
private help, the care taken of the wounded left a good deal to be
desired. The articles on this subject which were published in the
London Press provided ample food for bitter reflection. In France, at
the beginning of the war, wounded soldiers, after receiving first
aid, were conveyed for days in carts over uneven roads to the
hospitals in which they were to be treated. An American gentleman,
witnessing the sufferings of these victims of circumstance, collected
a number of motors in which to have them transported rapidly and with
relative comfort. But his offer of these conveyances was rejected by
all the departments to which he applied. And it was only after he had
spent weeks in visiting influential friends in London that he finally
obtained an introduction to the Secretary for War, who, overriding the
decisions of his subordinates, closed with the proposal and sent the
benefactor with his motors to the front.
It has been affirmed by unbiassed neutral witnesses who evinced
special interest in the subject that tens of thousands of the allied
wounded who died of their injuries might have been saved had they had
proper care. But defective organization and other avoidable causes
deprived them of efficient medical help.
By Great Britain more comprehensive measures were fitfully taken, of
which our wounded have reaped the benefit. A French journal[142]
enumerated, with a high tribute of praise, the results of the
observations made by a commission of British physicians in the Grand
Palais Hospital in Paris: "More than half, to be exact 54 per cent.,
of the wounded entrusted to the care of the doctors of the Grand
Palais since last May have been sent back to the front, completely
cured. What an achievement!" Undoubtedly it is a feat to be proud of,
if we compare it with the percentage of cured in certain other
countries and in the Dardanelles. But if we set it side by side with
what is claimed for and by the Germans, it may appear less remarkable.
It cannot be gainsaid that the British authorities have spared neither
money nor pains to alleviate the sufferings and heal the injuries of
the wounded. And if the measure of their success is still capable of
being extended, the reason certainly does not lie in any lack of good
will.
[142] _The Figaro_, February 22, 1916.
On the incapacitated German soldier every possible care is bestowed.
His every need is foreseen and when possible provided for with an eye
to thoroughness and economy. Waste and niggardliness are sedulously
eschewed. Every man is provided with a square of canvas with eyelets,
which serves as a carpet on which he lies at night, as a stretcher on
which, when wounded, he is carried to the place where he can have his
injuries attended to, and which, when he is killed, is used as a
winding-sheet. The medical organization of the army is as thorough as
the military. And the results attained justify the solicitude
displayed. From month to month the percentage of wounded who are able
to return to the front has been augmenting steadily, and the
death-rate has decreased correspondingly. During the first month of
the war, out of every hundred wounded there were 84.8 capable of
further service, 3.0 dead, and 12.2 incapacitated or sent home. In
September of the same year the number of those able to return to the
front rose to 88.1, or about 4 per cent. more. And at the same time
the death-rate sank from 3 to 2.7 per cent. In the third month the
proportion of soldiers able to resume their places in the ranks of
fighters was 88.9, while the deaths had been reduced to 2.4. During
the period beginning with November and ending in March the number of
the wounded who went back to the front oscillated between 87.3 and
88.9. In November the percentage of deaths was only 2.1 per cent., and
in December only 1.7 per cent. January 1916 showed a further
improvement, the death-rate having fallen to 1.4 and in February 1.3
per cent. During the two following months the percentage rose again to
1.4, but declined slowly until in June and July it had descended to
1.2 per cent. The number of wounded men who were sent back to their
places at the front had meanwhile increased by April to 91.2, and by
June 1915 to 91.7, and in May and July to 91.8. Seven per cent. were
wholly incapacitated or dismissed to their homes. Among the latter a
considerable percentage returned subsequently to the ranks.
Altogether, then, about 91.8 per cent. of the wounded German soldiers
who fall in battle are so well taken care of that they are able to
fight again, and no more than 1.2 per cent. of the total number
succumb to their wounds.[143]
[143] _Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift._
This strict conformity to the material and psychological conditions of
success marks the method by which the Germans proceed to realize a
grandiose plan which is understood and furthered by one and all. Their
talent for organization, their insight, their inventiveness, and their
highly developed social sense are all pressed into the service of this
patriotic cause. And it is to these permanent qualities, more even
than to their thirty years' military and economic preparation, that
they owe their many successes. The cynicism and ruthlessness of our
arch-enemy should not be allowed to blind us to his enterprise, his
stoicism, his meticulous applications of the law of cause and effect.
These are among his most valuable assets, and unless we have solid
advantages of our own to set against and outweigh them, our appeals to
the justice of our cause and our denunciations of his wicked designs
will avail us nothing. It is to our interest to seek out and note
whatever strength is inherent in himself or his methods and to
appropriate that. The struggle will ultimately be decided by the
superiority of equipment, material and moral, which one side possesses
over the other. As for the conceptions of public law and international
right which the antagonists severally stand for, they must be gauged
by quite other standards than heavy guns and asphyxiating gases. It is
not impossible that in the course of time, and by dint of reciprocal
action and reaction, the German views may be sufficiently modified and
moralized to render possible the usual process of assimilation with
which the history of speculative ideas and social movements has
rendered us familiar. Meanwhile, truth compels us to admit that part
at least of the western system is being overtaken by decay, and stands
in need of speedy and thorough renovation.