A New Zealand officer was giving directions to a group of his soldiers.
They were in the field at the foot of Bapaume. The immediate task was
that of cutting and rolling up the barbed wire. In that territory the
Germans had left trenches foul with fever, wells filled with the corpses
of men and horses, springs polluted with every form of filth, but worst
of all, the barbed wire entanglements. Every sharp point was covered
with rust and threatened lockjaw. Looking in every direction, the whole
land was yellow with the barbed wire. The work was dangerous. The
rebound of the wire threatened the eye with its vision, threatened the
face and the hand, and all the soldiers were in a mood of rebellion. In
an angry mood, the officer exclaimed, "There are a hundred million miles
of German barbed wire in France!"
And when later I asked the first lieutenant how long this war would
last, he made the instant answer, "This war will continue forty years
more! One year for the fighting, and thirty-nine years to roll up the
wire."
Because every soldier at the front hated the wire entanglements, that
bright sentence ran up and down the entire line from Belgium to the
Swiss frontier. And for men of experience there is more truth in the
statement than one would at first blush think. It will take one more
year for the fighting, but it will take thirty-nine years more to grow
the shade trees. Five centuries ago the French began to develop the love
of the beautiful. On either side of the roads running across the land
they planted two rows of poplars, oaks or elms. When long time had
passed the fame of the French roads and the shade trees went out into
all the earth. Under these trees the French farmer stopped his cart, fed
his horses and refreshed himself beneath the shade. Under these trees
the old men at the end of their career rested themselves, and gossiped
about old friends that had gone.
And when the German found he could not hold the land and enjoy the shade
trees, the splendid orchards, the purple vineyards, he determined that
the Frenchman should not have them, and so he lifted the axe upon every
peach and pear, plum and grape, cherry and gooseberry tree. Perhaps it
was as black a crime to murder the land as it was to murder the bodies
of the farmers, since the soul is immortal.
"One more year of fighting and thirty-nine years" not to roll up the
wire, but to rebuild the cathedrals and churches, the colleges and
universities, the halls of science, the temples of art, the mills for
the weaving of cotton and linen and wool, and above all for the
rebuilding of the railways, the reconstruction of the canals and the
bridges, great and small. But the most grievous loss is the human loss.
Think of 1,500,000 crippled heroes and poor wounded invalids in the land
of France alone! Think of another 1,500,000 young widows, or lovers and
mothers! Gone the young men who promised so great things for the French
essay, the French poem, for the paintings and the bronzes! Dead the
young lawyers, physicians and educators! Gone the young farmers and
husbandmen! Perished 1,000,000 old people and 500,000 little children,
all dead of heart-break. The German beast has been in the land. Like a
wolf leaping into the sheepfold to tear the throats of the young lambs
and the mother ewes.
What! Thirty-nine years more to recover ruined France and Belgium,
Poland and Rumania? France will never be the same again. The scar of the
beast will abide. That is why no man of large mind and great heart will
ever make friends with a soldier from Germany, will ever buy an article
of German stamp, so long as he lives, will ever read another German
book, or support another German business. It is our duty to forgive the
transgressor who is repentant, but it is a crime to forget the
unspeakable atrocities, the devilish cruelties of the German Kaiser, the
German War Staff and the German army, with its 10,000,000 criminals.