compelled German admiration. The French have become the most tolerable
of all her enemies, and it is an open secret that for many months
Germany has desired to win France away from her allies by an honorable,
even advantageous peace. Meantime French prisoners are favored in the
German prison camps, being accorded a treatment altogether more humane
than that given the English prisoners or the Russians. But France has
replied to the dishonorable advances no more than to the calumnies.
One of the astonishing revelations of national psychology unfolded in
the war has been the taciturnity of the French, their silent tenacity.
For nearly two generations the nation has lived in expectation of an
ultimate struggle for existence with the barbarian: now that it has
come with more than the feared ferocity the French have no time or
energy to waste in comment. They must expel the barbarian from their
home and put a limit "for an hundred years" to the menace of his
barbarism.
That is in part why the clear-headed Latin has learned the German
lesson faster than his allies.
* * * * *
What everybody knows by this time, and in America is repeating with
sickening fluency, is that Germany is "efficient," not only militarily
efficient, but socially and economically efficient--which these days
amounts to the same thing. Germany is "organized" both for peace and
war more efficiently than any other nation in the world. The two terms
that this war has driven into all men's consciousness are "efficiency"
and "organization." We in America, prone to admire the sheen of tin,
have bowed down in greater admiration than any other people to German
"efficiency." For efficiency values in the operations of life are just
the ones we are most capable of appreciating, although our government
and general social organization remain as lamentably inefficient as,
say, the English. But being a business people we are fitted to admire
business qualities above all others. The German army, the German state
are magnificently run businesses! To some of us, however, the term
"efficiency" has become nauseating because it has been associated with
so much else that we loathe from the bottom of our souls. If we cannot
have an "efficient" civilization without paying the price for it that
Germany has paid,--the price of humanity, of beauty, the price of her
soul,--let us return to the primitive inefficiency of a Sicilian
village!
Germany under a highly autocratic system of government has created
a social machine of unexampled and formidable efficiency. The German
realized before his rivals that war had become, like all other human
activities, a matter of business on a huge scale. And he had prepared
not merely the special instruments of war, but also the tributary
business on this scale of modern magnitude: he had converted his state
into a powerful war machine. All this which is now commonplace has
become more glaringly evident to us onlookers because of the lamentable
failure of England and Russia especially to meet the requirements of
the new business. So incapable do they seem of learning the German
lesson that to some Americans the cause of the Allies is doomed already
to disaster. Certainly the English and the Russians have justified many
of those bitter German taunts.
It has not been so with France. The French also were caught
unprepared--to their honor--like their allies. Can a real democracy
ever be prepared for war? France, suffering grievously from the first
blow dealt by the enemy, looked destruction in the face before the
stand at the Marne. The famous victory of the Marne, I believe, is
still unknown in Germany--I have been so informed by an American who
spent last winter in Germany. The battle of the Marne may not rank
in history as quite the greatest battle in the history of the world.
The French may exaggerate its importance as a military event. The
English have certainly exaggerated the part played by their little
expeditionary force of less than a hundred thousand in "saving France."
That is for others to dispute. But it was without any question a great
moral victory for the French of the utmost tonic value to the nation.
It saved France from despair, possibly from the annihilation that
follows despair. And ever since the Marne victory, French confidence
and _élan_ have been rapidly growing. During that bloody September week
they realized that the barbarian was not invincible, the machine was
not so perfect but that human will and human courage could resist it.
Moreover, the machine lacked that quality of spirit which the French
felt in themselves. As the months have dragged around an entire year
and more in the trenches, almost contempt has grown in the mind of
the French soldier for the formidable German machine. Strong as it
is, it yet lacks something--that something of human spirit without
which permanent victories cannot be achieved. Its strength can be
imitated. The spirit cannot be "organized."
French confidence is more than an official phrase, a mere bluff!
* * * * *
But--and just here lies the profound significance of it all--the
French realized at once that in order to conquer the German machine
they must create an equally efficient and powerful machine, which
with that plus of human spirit and the inspiration of their cause
would carry them over into victory. So while the English were berating
the barbarian for his atrocious misconduct, advertising "business as
usual," and filching what German trade they could, bungling at this
and that, until they have become a spectacle to themselves, the French
nation concentrated all its energies upon preparing an organization
fit to meet the German organization. While General Joffre held the
Germans behind the four hundred miles of trenches, France made itself
over into a society organized for war--the new business kind of war
which is waged in factory and railway terminal, not by gallant charges.
"_Organiser_" has become in the Frenchman's vocabulary the next most
popular word to "_patrie_." One implies, these days, the other.
It is said that when Germany invaded France, the French had not a
ton of their chief high explosive on hand. Some of its ingredients
they had been getting from Germany! France lost her coal and iron
mines and her largest factories the first weeks of the war and has
not regained them. Yet early in last April, according to the official
announcement, France was turning out six times as much ammunition as
was deemed, before the war, the maximum requirement, and would shortly
turn out ten times as much, which has ere this probably been greatly
exceeded. Meanwhile, by April the artillery had been increased
sevenfold. In attaining these results, France has accomplished a
greater marvel relatively speaking than the most boasted German
efficiency. She has had to get her coal from England, her ores from
Spain, her machines for making guns and shells from us. She has had
to improvise shell factories and gun plants from automobile factories,
electric plants, railway repair shops--from anything and everything.
I visited a small tile factory that was being utilized to make hand
grenades. Innumerable small shops in Paris are engaged in munition
work. The amount of ammunition bought in America by France has been
grossly exaggerated by the German press. Latterly, France has employed
American engineers to build large munition plants in France that will
become the property of the Government.
Throughout the spring the Paris newspapers appeared every morning
with large headlines: "More guns! More ammunition!!" And they got
them, made them. The headlines are no longer needed, for the
superiority in shell and guns rests with the French, not with the
Germans, on the western front.
* * * * *
France, industrially crippled, has accomplished this marvel in
one short year. The country has become one vast workshop for war.
The Latin genius for organization on the small scale has met the
German genius for organization on the large scale. The industrial
transformation has been facilitated by the system of conscription
over which the English have wrangled so long and so futilely to the
mystery of their keener-witted allies. To the Frenchman conscription
means merely the most effective method of applying patriotism, of
coöperation for the common cause. France has mobilized not only her
men, but her women and children, it might be said, so thoroughly have
the civilian elements worked into the shops and other non-military
labor. To sort out their labor and put it where it was most effective,
to substitute women workers for men wherever possible, were the first
steps in the huge work of social reorganization. There were no labor
troubles to contend with, thanks to the conscription system and to
the awakened patriotism of every element in society. France looked
on aghast when her necessary supplies of coal were threatened by the
strike of Welsh miners, averted only by the personal pleadings of a
popular minister! To the Latin, more disciplined and more alive to
the real dangers of the situation than the Anglo-Saxon, the English
attitude was simply incomprehensible. Also France has not had her
efficiency so seriously threatened by the liquor problem as has
England: the military authorities have taken stern measures against
this danger and have carried them out firmly. So far as the army
itself is concerned, the drink evil does not exist.
The manufacture of ammunition and cannon is but one element in the new
warfare. France has had to feed, clothe, and maintain her armies under
the same handicap, to meet all the unexpected requirements in material
of the trench war. The French have rediscovered the hand grenade and
developed it into the characteristic weapon of the war, have unearthed
all their old mortars from the arsenals and adapted them to the trench,
and created the best aerial service of all the combatants. Incidentally
they have effectually protected Paris from air raids since the first
months of the war by their careful aerial patrol. All this is aside from
the task of putting the nation socially and economically on the war
basis--in providing for the wounded, the dependent women and children,
and also for a perpetual stream of refugees from Belgium and the invaded
provinces, a burden that Germany has not yet had to carry.
Not all this huge work of reorganization could be done immediately
with equal success. The sanitary service suffered grievously, especially
at the beginning,--needed all the help that generous outsiders could
give,--still needs it. The percentage of death among the wounded is too
high, of those returned to the army too low. There have been wastes in
other directions due to haste, inexperience, political interference, but
nothing like the wastes that England has suffered from the same causes,
infinitely less than we should suffer judging from the ineptitudes we
displayed in our little Spanish War.
Probably France is not as well organized to-day for the war business
as is Germany. Very possibly she never will be, which is not to the
discredit of her people. The nation has had to do in one short year,
grievously handicapped at the start, what Germany has done at her leisure
during forty years. Moreover, the Latin temperament is intolerant of the
mechanical, the routine, which is the glory of the German. Although the
French have realized with marvelous quickness the necessity of war
organization and have adapted themselves to it,--have learned the German
lesson,--they are spiritually above making it the supreme ideal of
national effort. Without argument they have accepted the conditions
imposed upon them, but they do not regard the modern war business as
the flower of human civilization.
* * * * *
Mere preparation, no matter how scientific and thorough, is by no
means the whole of the German lesson. The first months of the war
we heard too much about German preparedness, too little about German
character. By this time the world is realizing that military preparation
is but one manifestation of that German character, and the real danger
is German character itself. According to reports in her own newspapers
Germany found herself running short of war materials after the first
weeks of this extraordinarily prodigal war, which exceeded even her
prudent calculations. But Germany had the habit of preparation and the
social machinery ready to enlarge her war product. Without advertising
her situation to the world, she provided for the new requirements so
abundantly that she has not yet betrayed any deficiency in material.
And while she was sweeping victoriously across northern France toward
Paris, with the belief that the city must fall before her big guns,
nevertheless her engineers took pains to prepare the Aisne line of
defense, which saved her armies from disaster and enabled them to keep
their tenacious grip on Belgium and northern France. This is the real
strength of Germany, the real import of the bitter lesson she is
teaching the world--the habit of preparation, discipline, organization,
thrift. On the specifically military side the French seem to have learned
this lesson well. They have fortified the ground between the present
front and Paris with line after line of defensive works. The fields are
gray with barbed wire. A few miles outside of the suburbs of Paris may
be seen as complete a system of trenches as on the front, and the _képi_
of the territorial digging a trench is a familiar sight almost anywhere
in eastern France. It is inconceivable that any "drive" on the western
front could be successful. The confidence of the French rests in part
on these precautions.
Whether the French can apply the inner meaning of the German lesson,
can incorporate it into their characters and transmit it to their
children, is a larger question for us as well as for them, for the
whole world. But their success in applying it in this war is all
the more noteworthy in contrast with the failure of their two great
allies, who were not invaded, not handicapped at the start, as was
France. The failure of Great Britain and of Russia to master the
lesson is so obvious, so lamentable, that it needs no emphasis here.
France, with the brunt of invasion only a few miles from the gates
of Paris, her factories and mines lost, has provided herself very
largely, has supplied Serbia with ammunition, Italy with artillery,
Russia, England, and Italy with aeroplanes. For many months the
thirty miles of the western front held by the English was defended
with the assistance of French artillery.
The Slav one expected to fail in getting his German lesson, for
obvious reasons, especially because of his reactionary and corrupt
bureaucracy. But not the Anglo-Saxon! As a clever French staff
officer remarked,--"The two disappointments of the war have been
the Zeppelins and the English." Without making a _post mortem_ on
the English case, the Latin superiority is a phenomenon worth
pondering. For the Anglo-Saxon, cousin to the Teuton, would supposably
be the better fitted to receive the German lesson of organization
and discipline. But that ideal of individual liberty, which England
surely did not inherit from her Germanic ancestors, seems to have
degenerated into a license that threatens her very existence as a
great state. The English still talk of "muddling through somehow"!
If the end of autocracy is barbarism, the end of liberty is anarchy.
The Latin has kept the mean between the two extremes. The French,
having fought more desperately in their great revolution for individual
freedom than any other people, seem able to recognize its necessary
limits and to subordinate the individual at necessity to the salvation
of the nation. In the Latin blood, however modified, there remains
always the tradition of the greatest empire the world has known, which
for centuries withstood the assaults of ancient barbarism. The wonderful
resistance and adaptability of the French to-day is of more than
sentimental importance to mankind. All the world, including their foes,
pay homage to the gallantry and greatness of the French spirit in their
dire struggle, but what has not been sufficiently recognized is the
significance to the future of the recovery by the Latin peoples of the
leadership of civilization. We Americans who have both traditions in our
blood, with many modifications, are as much concerned in this world
decision as the combatants themselves.
So much has become involved in the titanic struggle, so many
subordinate issues have risen to cloud the one cardinal spiritual
issue at stake, that we are likely to forget it or deny that there
is any. Is the world to be barbarized again or not?
* * * * *
This reiterated use of the term "barbarism" is not merely rhetorical
nor cheap invective. It is exact. One of the Olympian jests of this
world tragedy has been the passionate verbal battles over the claims
of respective "_Kulturs_" to the favor of survival. Why deny that the
barbarian can have a very superior form of "_Kultur_" and yet remain
a barbarian in soul? These pages on the German lesson are a tribute
to Germany's special contribution to the world. Social and industrial
organization, systematic instead of loose ways of doing things,
prudence, thrift, obedience and subordination of the individual to
the state, discipline--in a word, an efficient society. It is a great
lesson! No one to-day can belittle its meaning. Possibly the remote,
hidden reason for all this seemingly useless bloody sacrifice in our
prosperous modern world is to teach the primary principles of the
lesson. God knows that we all need it--we in America most after the
Russian, and next to us the English. If the world can learn the lesson
which Germany is pounding in with ruin, slaughter, and misery,--can
discipline itself without becoming Teutonized,--the sacrifice is not
too great. If the non-Germanic peoples cannot learn the lesson
sufficiently well, then the Teuton must rule the world with "his old
German God." His boasted superiority will become fact, destiny.
That is the momentous decision which is being wrought out these days
in Europe with blood and tears--the relative importance to mankind of
discipline and liberty. The ideal is to have both, as much of one as
is consistent with the other. In this country and in England may be
seen the evil of an individualism run into license--the waste, the
folly of it. And in Germany may be seen the monstrous result of an
idolatrous devotion to the other ideal--the man-made machine without
a soul. Between the two lies the fairest road into the future, and
that road, with an unerring instinct, the Latin follows.
* * * * *
The German lesson is not the whole truth: it is the poorer half of
the truth. An undisciplined world is more in God's image than a world
from which beauty, humanity, and chivalry have been exterminated. But
discipline is the primal condition of survival. Between these two poles,
between its body and its soul, mankind must struggle as it has always
struggled from the beginning of time....
When I looked on the sensitive, suffering faces of Frenchwomen in
their mourning, the wistful eyes of crippled youths, the limp forms
of wounded men, the tense, bent figures of dirty _poilus_ in their
muddy trenches, I knew that through their souls and bodies was
passing the full agony of this struggle.
V
_The Faith of the French_
I do not mean religious faith, although that too has been evoked,
reaffirmed by the trials and griefs of the war, but I mean faith in
themselves, in their cause, in life. The unshakable faith of the French
is the one most exhilarating, abiding impression that the visitor takes
from France these days. It is so universal, so pervasive, so contagious
that he too becomes irresistibly convinced, no matter how dark the present
may be, how many victories German arms may win, that the ultimate triumph
of the cause is merely deferred.
There has never been the slightest panic in France, not during the
mobilization when white-faced men and women realized that the dreaded
hour had struck, not even in those days of suspense when the public
began to realize that the first reports of French victories in Alsace
were deceptive and that the enemy was almost at the gates of Paris.
A million or so people left the city with the Government in order to
escape the expected siege, but there was no panic, not even among the
wretched creatures driven from their homes in the provinces before the
blast of the German cyclone.
Ever since the battle of the Marne the tide of confidence has been
steadily rising, in spite of the tedious disappointments of trench
warfare, the small gains of ground, the steady toll of lives, in
spite of reverses in Galicia and Poland and the mistakes in the
Dardanelles, in spite of English sluggishness and Russian weakness.
Each reverse has been courageously accepted, analyzed, and found not
decisive, merely temporary. Victory must come to the ones who can
endure to the end, and the French know now that they can endure.
"We can do it all alone, if we have to!" Again, "The Germans know
that they are beaten already: they know it in Berlin as well as we
do." This confidence is based on realities--first on the success with
which France has learned the German lesson and completely reorganized
her life for the business of war. "We were not ready last August--but
we are now." Her machine is growing stronger in spite of the daily
waste of life, while the German machine is weakening steadily.
* * * * *
The farther one gets into the military zone, the more fervent and
evident is this confidence, until on the front it is an irresistible
conviction that inspires men and officers alike. Even a novice like
myself began to understand why the army is sure of ultimate victory,
and the longer one stays at the front the more this faith of the
French seems justified. In the first place, they have so well got
that German lesson! The supply of shell and gun is so abundant, also
of fresh troops in reserve thanks to "Papa" Joffre's frugality with
human lives; the first, second, third lines--on _ad infinitum_ to
Paris--are so carefully fortified, so alertly held against any "drive"!
And the troops are so fit! They have made themselves at home in their
new camping life behind the lines of dugouts and caves; they have
become gnomes, woodsmen, cavemen, taking on the earth colors of the
primitive world to which they have been forced to return in order
to free the soil of their country. Then one sees the steady creeping
forward of the front itself, not much as it looks on a small-scale
map, but as the officers point out the blasted woods, or the brow of
a hill over which the trenches have been slowly pushed metre by metre
throughout the interminable weeks of constant struggle, one sees that
gradually the French have got the upper hand, the commanding positions
in long stretches of the trench wall. They are on the hills, their
artillery commands the level fields before them. It is like the struggle
between two titanic wrestlers who have swayed back and forth over the
same ground so long that the spectator can see no advance for either.
But one wrestler knows that the inches gained from his adversary count,
that the body in his grasp is growing weaker, that the collapse will
come soon--with a rush. He cannot tell fully why he feels this
superiority, but he knows that his adversary is weakening.
Perhaps a colonel on the front will tell you with elation,--"We know
that the Boches across the way are discouraged, because our prisoners
say so,--we take prisoners more easily than we did,--and they are all
mixed up in their formations. We know that they have to drive their men
to the job, that the lines about here are stripped as bare as they dare
keep them. There used to be a lot of reserve troops behind their lines,
but our aviators say there aren't any in X----any more! And they aren't
as free with their _obus_ as they used to be, and they are 'old
nightingales,' not first quality." Perhaps the staff officers will smile,
knowing that the enemy is massing his forces elsewhere on the long front,
but this trick of rapid change is becoming harder to perform, and more
exhausting. At any rate, the plain _poilus_ in the front trenches are
instinctively sure: "We'll have 'em now soon!" They have watched that
grim gray wall opposite so long that, like animals, they can feel what
is going on there on the other side.
* * * * *