masonry of desolate homes, and listened to these mournful sounds, I
wondered vaguely what had become of all those for whom this door had
been wont to open, where now the eyes that had looked down from these
windows many and many a time--would they ever behold again this quiet,
narrow street, would these scarred walls echo again to those same
voices and ring with joy of life and familiar laughter?
And now this desolate city became as it were peopled with the souls of
these exiles, they flitted ghostlike in the dimness behind flapping
curtains, they peered down through closed jalousies--wraiths of the men
and women and children who had lived and loved and played here before
the curse of the barbarian had driven them away.
And, as if to help this illusion, I saw many things that were eloquent
of these vanished people--glimpses through shattered windows and beyond
demolished house-fronts; here a table set for dinner, with plates and
tarnished cutlery on a dingy cloth that stirred damp and lazily in the
wind, yonder a grand piano, open and with sodden music drooping from
its rest; here again chairs drawn cosily together.
Wherever I looked were evidences of arrested life, of action suddenly
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 anyone anywhere
throughout fair France once, but now, it seemed, would never take
anyone 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 débris 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
débris 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 battle-fields 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 cause 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 -- 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.
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. It 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 demi-gods 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
inquiry 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--top-hole
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.