collaborators were Prof. Rivière, Sergeant Bonhoff, and Director Günzel.
The performance of the Frenchman from an organ composition of his own
was most effective." There are, of course, also exhibitions of
narrow-mindedness. In Halle the police forbade a performance because one
of those who took part was an "enemy alien." (_Vorwärts_, June 1, 1915.)
On the other hand, when some Italian musicians complained of unjust
dismissal, the court awarded them damages of 700 marks. The
_Volksstimme_, of Frankfurt a.M., June 8, 1915, writing of Italy,
deprecates any hatred of Italians. As soon as the responsible
authorities had decided on war, obedience was the duty of each Italian
citizen, just as of each German.[69] This outspoken deference to
"responsible authority" is characteristically German, but the doctrine
is here applied with great fairness. Some of our militarists apply it
less fairly. And, alas, when the Italian _Avanti_ published an article
"Against the Blunders of International Hate," the wisdom of the Censor
caused it to be largely blanked out. The Censors seem to have strict
orders to keep us hating each other.[70]
BROTHERHOOD AGAIN.
And yet--"We picked up scrappily the hint, however, that 'some of the
Germans were all right.'" This from an article in the _Times_ on a
homecomer from the front. With unconscious self-revelation the writer
adds: "That somehow sounds depressing. One has heard the opposite." Just
so, it is disconcerting and depressing to have it suggested that the
enemy is a man very much like ourselves; it injures our feeling of
superiority. We "confess" any favourable impression of him as if it were
a fault of our own. A correspondent of the _Petit Parisien_ tells of the
capture of a German officer of Hussars, near Arras. "I confess," he
says, "that the impression he produced was rather favourable than
otherwise." (_Daily Telegraph_, June 11, 1915.)
With others the confession is less reluctant.
There's one spot in Ploegsteert Wood that German shells ought
never to reach. It's a grave with a carefully made wooden cross
on it, and the lettering says:
"Here lie two gallant German officers."
"That's rather unexpected," said a civilian who was with us.
"But they were brave," said the major. "The Germans aren't
always so bad. Five officers from my regiment were missing one
time, and we never even expected to find their bodies. But when
we drove the Germans back we found a grave on which was marked:
'Here lie five brave English officers.' We identified them all,
and their bodies were taken back to England."
We followed another sidewalk and came to a huge mound covered
with yellow flowers, which had been planted by the English
soldiers. On a neatly made cross at the head of the mound an
English soldier had patiently printed the words: "Here lie
seventeen German soldiers."
There wasn't an English grave in Ploegsteert Wood that was
better tended or more heavily beflowered than these mounds of
fallen Germans.--Mr. W. G. SHEPHERD, Special Correspondent of
the United Press.
_Daily News_, June 1, 1915.
If all the episodes of this action were recorded they would make
a long as well as a grim narrative revealing the ghastliness,
the wild passion, the self-sacrifice, and the cool cunning of
such an hour or two of modern war.
Some of the tales of the men would have been incredible except
that I heard them from soldiers who told the truth that lives on
the lips of men who have seen very close into the face of death.
It is, for instance, difficult to believe--yet true--that amidst
all this tumult and terror of noise one German prisoner was
taken as he sat very calmly in his dug-out reading a book of
religious meditations through gold-rimmed spectacles. Perhaps it
was the man--I only guess--in whose pocket-book was found a
letter to his wife saying, "The position here is hellish, and
death is certain. I only pray that it may come soon."
_Daily Telegraph_, August 16, 1915.
From Belfort in September came the report: "A German aviator this
morning flew over Belfort, dropping a wreath on the spot where Pégoud
was killed. The following inscription was placed on the wreath: 'To
Pégoud, who dies a hero. (Signed) His Adversary.'"
The following is from the _Daily News_ of October 9, 1915:
The parents of a Lance-Corporal in a Highland regiment who was
killed in the recent fighting have received particulars about
their son's death from a German lady in Frankfurt-on-Main.
The lady's eldest brother was killed last year near Ypres and
she knows, she says, how glad they were to receive any details
of his death. Another brother, who is an officer in the German
army, had written from the front, begging her to inform the dead
soldier's relatives of his fate.
In her letter the lady says: "Although we are enemies, pain and
mourning unite us. So thought my brother, too, for he wrote
everything about your son he could find out. I am sure my
brother and his comrades did all honour to their enemies."
The next extract is from the _Nation_ of November 13. 1915:
Soldiers are not reluctant to speak well of their foes. The
officer son of a friend of mine relates that beyond his line of
trenches is a German commemoration of a British advance in the
shape of a carefully wrought cross, bearing the inscription:
"Sacred to the memory of Lieutenants A---- and B---- of the
Staffordshire Regiment, who died like heroes."
From a private letter: "What impresses one most are the graveyards. All
these are beautifully kept, all the graves have been cared for, and no
distinction has been drawn between German, English, and French, who lie
side by side. 'Hier ruht ein tapferer Engländer, gefallen im Luftkampf'
(Here lies a brave Englishman, fallen in the air fight), etc., etc."
The _Daily News_ of March 10, 1919, has the following:
From a staff sergeant in Germany: "Here, in Germany, an English
officer with the 'flu was nursed by his landlady, who, when her
patient was better, succumbed to its ravages. Her daughter
caught it from the mother, and is now lying at death's door. But
merely 'Huns,' I suppose."
The roll of honour in the chapel at New College, Oxford, includes the
names of three Germans, and the words of charity: _Pro patria--Memento
fratres in Christo_.
THE WAY OF NEW RUSSIA.
In reprisals of good we may learn something from the new Russia. When
the German prisoners were set to work Kerensky said, "Prisoners or not,
they shall be paid at the same rate as other men," and they were. What
was the result? Again the movement of gratitude, which is so potent a
force, if only we would believe it. _The German prisoners presented half
their wages to the Russian Red Cross._ I have to rely on private
information for this.
THOUGHTS FROM THE OTHER SIDE.
The thoughts of the others are much like our own--that is the difficult
truth we have to learn. It is a truth that is absolutely essential to
any peace that is to be more than an armistice of fools.
The war has produced in the public opinion of the nations a
state of mind which formerly would not have been regarded as
possible in our age of internationalism and intellectuality.
National egotism and the effort to assert one's own national
interests by all and every means are dominating so exclusively
each belligerent group that it forms for itself a closed circle
of ideas, and under its influence conclusions are drawn which
are so contradictory that one is almost inclined to think that
logic and common sense have been entirely eliminated from the
thinking capacity of the warring nations....
We Germans, among the others, are subject to this
war-suggestion. We do not wish to say, after the manner of the
Pharisees, beating their breasts: "We thank Thee, Lord, that we
are not like these publicans." We know that we, too, are
prisoners of our circle of ideas, and must remain so, for we,
too, are ruled by our national egotism and by our desire to win
the war.--_Kölnische Zeitung_, as quoted by the _Daily News_,
September 3, 1915.
Ideas imprisoned, narrowed (beschränkt, as the Germans say), become
putrescent through lack of free air. It is in this putrescence that the
gospel of hate is bred. Here is a German officer's protest against the
infamy of this gospel. It is quoted from the _Kölnische Zeitung_ by Mr.
A. G. Gardiner in his book, "The War Lords":
Perhaps you will be so good as to assist, by the publication of
these lines, in freeing our troops from an evil which they feel
very strongly. I have on many occasions, when distributing among
the men the postal packets, observed among them postcards on
which the defeated French, English and Russians were derided in
a tasteless fashion. The impression made by these postcards on
our men is highly noteworthy. Scarcely anybody is pleased with
these postcards; on the contrary, every one expresses his
displeasure.
This is quite natural when one considers the position. We know
how victories are won. We also know by what tremendous
sacrifices they are obtained. We see with our own eyes the
unspeakable misery of the battlefield. We rejoice over our
victories, but our joy is damped by the recollection of the sad
pictures which we observe almost daily.
And our enemies have, in an overwhelming majority of cases,
truly not deserved to be derided in such a way. Had they not
fought bravely we should not have had to register such losses.
Insipid, therefore, as these postcards are in themselves, their
effect here on the battlefields, in face of our dead and
wounded, is only calculated to cause disgust. Such postcards are
as much out of place on the battlefield as a clown is at a
funeral. Perhaps these lines may prove instrumental in
decreasing the number of such postcards sent to our troops.
Personally, I believe this to express the soul of the real Germany and
the soul of the real England. The soul of any people is the _best_ that
is in it.
The following is from a lecture delivered by Prof. H. Gomperz in Vienna,
early in 1915:
"Ladies and gentlemen, in our day all sorts of speakers and
writers feel called upon to preach to us the doctrine of hate,
in prose and even in verse, more especially against one of the
countries opposing us. I do them the honour of assuming that
even they do not mean that we are to translate this feeling into
action; rather, even they do not dream of doing the slightest
harm to any individual Englishman in so far as it is not
necessary or inevitable for the purposes of victory. What then
does this preaching of hatred mean, if indeed it means anything
at all, and is not the mere empty clamour of some people anxious
to attract attention without rendering useful service? Do they
mean us to nurse and cherish the feeling of hate? Truly a
strange demand after nearly two thousand years of training in
the teaching of the gospel! And besides, whom are we to hate?
The individual doing his duty in the service of his country,
just as we are? Or the responsible governors of the destinies of
that country, and the irresponsible leaders of its public
opinion?" Hatred of the individual serving his country and
governed by others Prof. Gomperz does not stop to discuss. It
can obviously be the product only of what with etymological
correctness we may term _insanity_. The governors and leaders
imagined an irreconcilable antagonism. If they were right their
case is justified; if they are wrong we must no more hate them
than we should hate a patient suffering temporarily from
delusion.--_International Review_, August, 1915.
Magnus Schwantje spoke very plainly at a meeting of the Schopenhauer
Society at Düsseldorf in June, 1915. He allows that the state has a
right to wage a war of defence, but _not to force anyone to serve in the
army_. Schopenhauer, he tells us, "esteems sympathy with all that lives
and suffers more highly than love for the Fatherland.... During a war a
noble man desires such an issue as may be most beneficial to the whole
world.... With all our readiness to recognise the merit of patriotic
self-denial, we, the admirers of Schopenhauer, have to warn our
compatriots, especially during a war, of the danger of patriotism
degenerating into injustice, or even hatred and malicious joy at the
misfortune of other nations.... Not one of the European peoples can be
suppressed without heavy loss to the whole world, and not one has the
right to force its special character on the others." (_International
Review_, September, 1915.)
WAR LITERATURE.
It is the elderly gentlemen on both sides who exude vitriol. It is a
pity that they are so much in evidence. But even some of them retain
their sanity. The following is from the _Cambridge Magazine_ of May 15,
1915:
Those who, at the beginning of the war, were induced by the
Press to wonder whether any elderly German professor had
retained his mental equilibrium will now be disposed to wonder
whether the proportion of serious cases is after all larger
there than here. At any rate the Schopenhauer Society is a very
important learned body, and Prof. Deussen, of Kiel, is one of
the most distinguished of German scholars. And this is how he
writes in the fourth year book of the Schopenhauer
Society--apparently in terms of contempt for a loquacious
minority (the translation is taken from the April number of the
_Open Court_, and the italics are ours, especially the
concluding shot at the Lady Patriot):
"'Not to my contemporaries,' says Schopenhauer, 'not to my
countrymen, but to humanity do I commit my work which is now
completed, in the confidence that it will not be without value
to the race. Science, and more than every other science,
philosophy is international.' ... Foolish, very foolish,
therefore is the conduct of _certain German professors_ who have
renounced their foreign honours and titles. And what shall we
say of a member of our society who demanded that citizens of
those states which are at war with us should be excluded from
the Schopenhauer Society, and who, when it was pointed out that
our foreign members certainly condemned this infamous war as
much as we Germans, protested that she could not belong to an
association in which Frenchmen, Englishmen and Russians took
part, and announced her withdrawal from our society, indeed,
even published her brave resolution in the columns of a local
paper in her provincial town. _We shall not shed any tears_ for
her having gone."[71]
Romain Rolland bears out the idea that "in all countries the extremest
views have been expressed by writers already past middle age." So it is
in Germany, Rolland tells us. Dehmel, the enemy of war, has enlisted at
51; Gerhart Hauptmann, "the poet of brotherly love," cries out for
slaughter. But Fritz von Unruh has, from the battlefield, written "Das
Lamm": "Lamb of God, I have seen Thy look of suffering; lead us back to
the heaven of love." Rudolf Leonhard, who was caught up in the storm,
wrote afterwards on the front page of his poems: "These were written
during the madness of the first weeks. That madness has spent itself,
and only our strength is left. We shall again win control over ourselves
and love one another."
"Menschen in Not ...
Brüder dir tot ...
Krieg ist im Land ..."
No "glory" of war is in these simple, poignant words of Ludwig
Marck--simply a dire evil that we have not the sanity to avoid. "Whether
you gaze trembling into the eyes of the beloved, or mark down your enemy
with pitiless glance, think of the eye that will grow dim, of the
failing breath, the parched lips and clenched hands, the final solitude,
and the brow that grows moist in the last pangs.... Be kind....
Tenderness is wisdom. Kindness is reason.... We are strangers all upon
this earth, and die but to be reunited." Thus Franz Werfel. Since these
words cannot be called barbaric, they will perhaps be called
sentimental. It is true that to those of us who have loved our comrades,
of whatever nation, the sentiment of brotherhood does just now make a
somewhat tragic appeal. If that appeal, in these days of decimated
ideals, be at times strained and feverish, it scarcely lies in the
mouths of the apostles of hate to deride us. The sentimentality of
hatred is uglier and more fatuous than the sentimentality of
brotherhood.
Hermann Hesse is living at Berne. He has implored the writers of all
nations not to join with their pens in destroying the future of Europe.
From a poem of later date come these words: "All possessed it, but no
one prized it. Like a cool spring it has refreshed us all. What a sound
the word peace has for us now. Distant it sounds, and fearful, and heavy
with tears. No one knows or can name the day for which all sigh with
such longing."
Do not let us forget that almost everything that is most militarist is
_old_. It is only the old who affect still to glory in war--the old
newspapers, the old reviews, the old statesmen, and some, perhaps, of
the old soldiers--it is to what is newest, youngest, most creative, most
living that we look not in vain for an unshaken belief in brotherhood,
for a clear acknowledgment that any other belief would throw us back
into the ape and tiger struggle of world beginnings, but with the ape
ten thousand times more cunning and the tiger ten thousand times more
cruel. To some German publications the war is a stupid eruption of
barbarism into a workshop where work was being done. _Die Aktion_ scoffs
mercilessly at the Chauvinists and at Lissauer with his Hymn of
Hate.[72] Even Lissauer, be it remarked, has published his repentance,
and, personally, I respect him for it. The man who can say that he spoke
too strongly is always worth knowing. The man who insists elaborately on
his consistency (as the politicians do) is usually singularly devoid of
any appreciation of truth. _Die Aktion_ (1915) goes on steadily with its
appreciation of French artists, as if no war were in progress. There may
be some affectation in this attitude, but it is to be preferred, I
think, to the complete ostracism of work of the enemy called for by a
noisy but, I believe, small section on this side. _Die Weissen Blätter_
appeared in January, 1915, with the following announcement:
It seems good to us to begin the work of reconstruction in the
midst of the war. The community of Europe is at present
apparently destroyed. Is it not the duty of all of us who are
not bearing arms to live from to-day onwards according to the
dictates of our conscience, as it will be the duty of every
German when once the war is over?
Evidently the editor has in his mind a contrast between the dictates of
conscience and the dictates of officialism. He was born in Alsace, so he
may well know this contrast. We are learning it here. In the February
number the _Krieg mit dem Maul_ (war with the mouth) was most vigorously
condemned:
If journalists hope to inspire courage by insulting the enemy,
they are mistaken--we refuse such stimulants. We dare to
maintain our opinion that the humblest volunteer of the enemy,
who, from an unreasoned but exalted sentiment of patriotism,
fires upon us from an ambush, knowing well what he risks, is
much superior to those journalists who profit by the public
feeling of the day, and under cover of high-sounding words of
patriotism do not fight the enemy, but spit on him.
I am reminded of words used by one of my Swiss friends: "As soon as
soldiers must get their fighting force from suggestions of puerile
besmirching of the enemy, then war indeed becomes intolerably base."
Annette Kolb, daughter of a German father and a French mother, had the
courage to proclaim openly in a public lecture at Dresden that _she was
faithful to both sides_, and to express her regret that Germany should
fail to understand France. After all, German intolerance must have its
limits for such a bold speech to be possible.
Wilhelm Herzog in the Munich _Forum_ has attacked the intellectual
fire-eaters, the patriots who insult other peoples and the Chauvinists
generally. He defends France, the French army and French civilisation,
against the brilliant novelist, Thomas Mann. Above all does he condemn
the intellectual babble: "The wrong that these privy councillors and
professors have done us with their 'Aufklärungsarbeit' can hardly be
measured. They have isolated themselves from humanity by their inability
to realise the feelings of others."
Mr. Lowes Dickinson has called attention in the _Hibbert_ of October,
1915, to a pamphlet by Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Förster, entitled
"Deutschlands Jugend und der Weltkrieg." The same pamphlet is quoted in
_The Ethical Movement_ of the same date. Here are some extracts:
"Hate disorganises, love disciplines. Fill yourselves with
deepest sympathy for all who suffer in war, whose hearts are
crushed, whose bodies are broken, whose homes are burned ...
and win a peace which shall make the recurrence of such things
for ever impossible. Such a purification from the passion of
hate is often easier on the field than at home. Those who remain
behind have an abstract enemy in view. The soldier sees living
men who suffer and die like himself." It will startle the
English reader to find Dr. Förster pleading earnestly that the
English soldier is not responsible for the ways of his
government or of his leaders. The Germans are to remain true to
themselves whatever the others may do. Each side, observe,
accuses the other of barbarous methods, and impartiality is
impossible. The most that one can expect of the ardent partisan
is perhaps that he should, like Dr. Förster, urge those on his
side to remain true to their ideals, whatever the enemy may do.
"England has given us also the Salvation Army, and invaluable
higher points of view for the treatment of Labour questions and
social work. She has taught our revolutionary spirits and
moderated our party passions. Let us always remember this, and
in that remembrance grasp again in the future the proffered
hand." For Dr. Förster it is for this better England that
Germany now fights, just as for many an Englishman it is for the
better Germany that England is fighting. "And it is better for
us to fight for that better England than to rage and spit upon
... Grey and his followers. In sleepless nights kindle the
eternal light of Christ in your souls and try to love your
enemies. Think of that great William Booth and of all the
English greatness and goodness embodied in him; of Florence
Nightingale, the heroine and saint, whose pioneer work is still
binding up to-day unnumbered wounds; and think of Carlyle,
Ruskin, and Toynbee and of those mighty forces of conscience
which spoke in their words and gave to us Germans, and will give
us yet, so much that is great."
Again:
"Christ stands against war and above war. He who loses sight of
this truth slays that deep conscience of civilisation which is
meant to goad us unceasingly on to allay this fury of war. We
know well that if we were Christians there would be no war."
Förster denounces the bawling haters "who must open their mouths
42 centimetres wide," and think that he who does not do it is no
patriot.
"To conquer and silence them must be your first task, young men
of the new Germany; you who have been purified by sacrifice and
suffering. For what would it profit our people if it gained the
whole world and lost its own soul?" May we not, _mutatis
mutandis_, take this appeal to heart ourselves?
Again:
"The essence and foundation of the State is precisely the
opposite of power, viz., law, treaty, fellowship between opposed
interests, and the whole outer strength of a State rests upon
the depth and firmness of these, its inner conditions and links.
Therefore the first commandment of life for the State is not to
create for itself might but to care for the ethical unity of its
members, for the supremacy of the conscience and the sense of
law above rude self-interest."--(Quoted in the _Ethical
Movement_, October, 1915.)
Granted that voices such as those of Herzog, Förster, Schücking,
Schwantje are a minority, it is yet plain that they represent more than
themselves. The existence of such reviews and utterances implies the
existence of at least many thousands who have not been deluded by their
governors. Of those who have been deluded into enmity, but who have
never dreamed of world dominance, there are, I am convinced, many
millions. Bernhardi was introduced to Germany by England. There were
four million Social Democrats. They have defended their country, but
they have never dreamed of aggression. The time will come to claim the
help of these men and the many others of the wiser Germany. That wiser
Germany will yet live to be, not an army of destruction, but an army of
progress.