"the warnings repeated _ad nauseam_ by the chemical profession during a
whole generation." Those warnings told us of the stupidity and peril of
neglecting science. It is not mere commercialism but science that is
needed. The help of science, it may be added, will never be gained
unless devotion is paid to it for its own sake, and not simply as a
means to money. That reward is too far off for mere commercialism. Adolf
Baeyer synthesised indigo in 1880, but it cost 17 years of laborious
investigation and the investment of nearly £1,000,000 of capital before
that synthesis could be made a commercial success. So long a chase is
not carried out by those who are thinking only of the prize. The hunt
itself must interest them. That, I personally fear, is where we in
Britain (and especially in England) are somewhat lacking.
Two other points in Professor Frankland's address I would draw attention
to. In emphasising the need of scientific men on the directorates he
asks: "What does not the firm of Messrs. Brunner, Mond and Co., for
example, owe to the late Dr. Ludwig Mond, F.R.S.?" Just so. Dr. Ludwig
Mond was a German. He came to this country and brought with him his
energy, enterprise, and his very exceptional scientific endowments. With
Mr. J. J. Brunner he was thus able to found what became the largest
alkali works in the kingdom, and undoubtedly one of the most scientific
and enterprising works we have. Incidentally it is worth mentioning that
the firm of Brunner, Mond and Co. was one of the first to introduce the
eight hours day. There are people about (a few of whom ought to know
better) asking for the exclusion of the German in the future. I would
venture to suggest that we might well exchange very many English people
of such limited brain capacity for one Ludwig Mond. To shut the door to
men is to shut the doors to talent, and talent produces its best by
cross-fertilisation.
I may at this point insert an illustration communicated to me privately.
My informant said: "When I was a very young man I determined to try to
save a business which was falling in ruin. My project was strongly
opposed by my friends, but I determined to carry it out. The works which
I took over were then employing 150 men. There was a great lack of
scientific training, and _this_ I saw was the chief cause of disaster.
So I began sending my men to Germany to be trained. The Germans have
always, at their State-supported universities, welcomed the foreigner
and given him their best knowledge. My men brought that knowledge back
to England. The result was that by the time I withdrew from active work
we were employing about three thousand men. The Germans had thus given
work to nearly three thousand Englishmen. People should remember facts
of this kind when they talk of Germans coming here and 'taking the bread
out of our mouths.'"
The wife of an interned man struggled to keep his business. She was,
however, ruined. "Serve you right," she was told, "coming here and
taking the bread out of our people's mouths." What a strange idea of
humanity! What are "our people"? If a Scotsman settles in London is he
"taking the bread out of our people's mouths'"? We forget that the
foreigner is very often an enormous accession to a State. The Norman
conquerors who organised us, the Flemings who improved our weaving, the
Huguenots who gave new ideas to our commerce, the Germans who brought
us scientific method have all been amongst the makers of England.
Exclusiveness is a constricting cord that strangles progress. Exchange
of commodities is, we know, the life of trade, and exchange of men and
ideas is the life of more than trade.
The last quotation I shall make from Professor Frankland's address has,
I venture to think, very considerable bearing on the possibilities of
future friendship:
Notwithstanding the absence of material inducements, I venture
to say without fear of contradiction that there is more original
investigation being prosecuted in this country by chemists than
by any other body of British men of science, and this I
attribute to the fact that such a large proportion of our number
have either been at German universities or are the pupils of
those who have been at these centres of research. Nor are any of
us, I am sure, even during this unfortunate crisis, unmindful of
the hospitality and inspiration which we have received in the
schools of the enemy.
One has met with so much pettiness and folly masquerading as patriotism
that it is delightful to welcome such a truly noble utterance.
The allusion to the conditions of labour in Professor Frankland's
address is also important. Most of us regard the German labourer as far
too controlled and regulated, but everyone knows that Germany was to the
fore in care for the health and well-being of the workman: "As to the
factory legislation in general, not only do they afford to children and
juveniles a greater measure of protection in regard to hours and other
conditions of work than is enforced by the English Factory Acts, but
many of their provisions for ensuring the health, comfort, and safety of
all workers go beyond the limits which are thought sufficient in this
country." (W. H. Dawson, "The Evolution of Modern Germany," p. 332.)
Insurance against sickness and old age were measures that we learned
from Germany. They were intended to increase British efficiency and
well-being, and our statesmen received every courtesy and help in
studying German methods. It will be said by many that we shall not study
those methods again. Perhaps not. They may prefer an English method as
propounded by Lord Headley when speaking at a luncheon in connection
with the Bakery and Confectionery Trades Exhibition held at Islington.
The report is from the _Glasgow Herald_ as reproduced in the _Labour
Leader_ (October 21, 1915):
In regard to many industries, the plain fact was that the
foreigner lived much more cheaply than the British workman and
charged far less for his labour. Where labour, and not
machinery, formed a small part of the cost of production we
should be able to compete with the foreigner, and that should be
the case in high class confectionery more than in anything else.
If we were to defeat the foreigner in other industries after the
war, it seemed to him that the British workman would have to
consent to work for lower wages than hitherto. At any rate, he
hoped so, in order that the country might supply itself with
necessities without having to go abroad for them.
It seems to me that in this way we should "defeat" not only the
foreigner, but the Englishman as well--except the privileged few who
could get workmen at low wages without lowering their profits. I
remember saying to a Colonial lady that we had gained much from the
science of German settlers in this country. "Damn German science," was
her reply. A certain type of employer desires two protections--protection
against the knowledge of the foreigner, and protection against the
aspirations of the worker. Both the knowledge and the aspirations of
others are a disturbance of repose.
At a Nottingham meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry the
unscientific character of British methods was again emphasised. So, too,
at the Edinburgh meeting in December, 1914.
Principal A. P. Laurie, speaking of paints and colours, said: "There
were very few cases among those he had inquired into of a chemical, a
colour product, or a pigment which was being made both in Germany and in
England in which the German product was not better than that made in
this country.... Again, it was admitted that German barytes was better
ground than English. Yet an extensive literature on barytes and barytes
mining had been published by the Germans, showing exactly how German
barytes was ground. They had not found a barytes miner in England who
owned a microscope.... The English manufacturer did not believe in or
use the man of science.
"Mr. Tatlock, speaking from the laboratory glass apparatus makers' point
of view, said that British manufacturers were finding it exceedingly
difficult to replace German and Austrian products.... Professor
Henderson had referred to the possibility of people buying more readily
goods of British manufacture. They did not find that to be the case. The
goods had to be cheaper or better; they would certainly never be bought
purely because they were British, and he did not altogether think that
they should be bought for that reason."
It is surely clear that the only wise world policy is one in which each
nation brings its own particular contribution to the common stock and in
no way tries to shut others out.
THE POLICY OF BOYCOTTING THOUGHT.
We find it impossible to shut out German music. "Germany, it must be
said to its credit," I read in the daily Press, "is not boycotting
foreign art." In the autumn of 1915 the Royal Theatres of Berlin
announced Shakespeare's "Macbeth," and "Antony and Cleopatra," and
Scribe's "Glass of Water." "Shakespeare, one hears," writes a reviewer
in the _Daily News_, of December 4, 1915, "is still being played in the
German theatres. If you go to a theatre in London you are more likely to
see a performance with a title like 'I _don't_ Think!' or 'Pass the
Mustard, Please!' Shakespeare, to tell the truth, is in England left
largely to professors and schoolboys."
A silly crusade was started in this country against German thought in
general, a crusade so petty that it made some of us wince for shame. The
upholders of creeds joined in hastily, for German investigators had
given our beliefs many uncomfortable shocks. We remember how it came
about that the President of the Training College in Mark Rutherford's
Autobiography could with such satisfaction to himself destroy the
"infidel." "The President's task was all the easier because he knew
nothing of German literature; and, indeed, the word 'German' was a term
of reproach signifying something very awful, although nobody knew
exactly what it was." The obscurantist and opponent of free thought has
shown signs of hope that the German's reputation for awfulness may turn
us from his evil companionship into the restful paths of British piety.
The Englishman (especially, I believe, the Saxon element) has too often
been prone to make a stronghold of ignorance. This stronghold has
certainly in industry proved to be a house of cards, and I think it has
proved to be equally a house of cards in religion. It would, indeed, be
a disastrous outcome of the war if it led us still more to emphasise our
insularity. Unless we are readier after the war to learn from everyone,
we shall, as a nation, be mentally moribund. It matters not in the least
whether the thought be German, French, Austrian, Swiss, Russian, or any
other. Miss Petre, in her "Reflections of a Non-Combatant," has finely
stated the wider view:
Thought and learning, art and music, may bear certain
characteristics of the country in which they are begotten; but
they are also the products of humanity itself, or they would
make no appeal to the world at large. The monuments of the
German mind are no more robbed of their intellectual value by
the national crime of this war than German mountains are robbed
of their natural grandeur, German forests of their solemnity, or
German rivers of their width and volume.
Any other attitude is extremely likely to degenerate into a petty
jealousy that is bred of fear. This is how Mr. H. G. Wells wrote of our
attitude towards Germany years ago:
We in Great Britain are now intensely jealous of Germany. We are
intensely jealous of Germany, not only because the Germans
outnumber us, and have a much larger and more diversified
country than ours, and lie in the very heart and body of Europe,
but because in the last hundred years, while we have fed on
platitudes and vanity, they have had the energy and humility to
develop a splendid system of national education, to toil at
science and art and literature, to develop social organisation,
to master and better our methods of business and industry, and
to clamber above us in the scale of civilisation. This has
humiliated and irritated rather than chastened us.
Such jealousy is a strangely short-sighted mistake. No valuable or
lasting peace will come till jealousy is exorcised. There are ominous
signs of the possible triumph of a deadly Saxon insularity, but there
are other signs that give us hope. When so ardent a combatant as Mr.
Lloyd George can speak well of the services of Germany to the world, all
is not lost. It is pleasant to be able to quote these passages from an
interview reported in the _Daily News_ of January 25, 1916:
"Mr. Lloyd George is not among those who imagine they are doing their
country a service by decrying everything German. 'I think,' he said,
'that America and all of us should realise that there were two Germanies
before the war. On the one hand, there was the industrial, the
commercial, and the intellectual Germany, and in a most remarkable way
she had blended the three elements. That Germany was rendering a great
service to civilisation. It was conquering the world by the success of
its methods and of its example, and that conquest would have proved a
very genuine blessing. It would have been the means of saving some of
the terrible waste from which most of the social evils of humanity
spring. As an ardent social reformer, I freely confess that I myself was
learning a good deal from that side of Germany, particularly in the
direction of municipal and national organisation.'" Mr. Lloyd George
goes on to say that the other Germany, the military Germany, had
overthrown the Germany from which he had drawn inspiration. Our task
then surely is to help to reduce military dominance everywhere and to
help to set free that Germany whose peaceful conquest of the world
"would have proved a very genuine blessing."
That Germany was, and still is, a Germany of simple hearts, of men and
women who can love well. I have talked to many British-born wives of
interned men. Over and over again I have heard the same story. "I could
not have had a better husband, and the children could not have had a
better father." That is why many English wives have already gone to
Germany to their husband's families.
It is time we got rid of grotesque caricatures of the German people.
Such caricatures always represent the outlook of war-time, but they do
not make for a lasting peace. There is a great German people, and that
people and ours should find each other's hearts. I am not so much
concerned as to the Germany of brilliant science and industrious
commerce. That is good, but there is something better: It is the Germany
of loving husbands and true comrades, of true wives and devoted mothers.
It is the heart that rules the world, and we need the true hearts in
Germany, England, France, and over all the world to recognise each
other. The one prayer for us all in every land in these days surely is,
"Lord, that our eyes may be opened!" When we can pray that prayer, we
shall begin to see the war to a peace of the heart--the only peace that
will not be a "patched-up peace."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 40: Lieut. Dr. Kutscher writes with obvious pleasure
of the _grande loterie de Noël_ shared out by the officers to
the children of C. in France. The children's parties went on,
too, in the New Year. (_Int. Review_, 10th Aug., 1915).]
[Footnote 41: Cf. p. 161. These are simply examples of the wild
passions war engenders, and there is not always the sergeant at
hand who says "Drop that or I shoot you." One side may be
decidedly worse than the other (as seems, _e.g._, to have been
the case in the American Civil War), but this does not alter the
character of what war does for human nature.]
[Footnote 42: See p. 36.]
[Footnote 43: "An English Girl's Adventures in Hostile Germany,"
pp. 58 and 124. For other incidents see p. 212.]
[Footnote 44: See above, p. 55. For further examples of civilian
kindness see pp. 212 ff.]
[Footnote 45: It is disconcerting to one's pride to learn that
while the sale of German newspapers in England was entirely
"verboten" in 1916, English newspapers may still be readily
obtained in Germany in the autumn of 1918. Why are we so afraid
of the other side being known?]
[Footnote 46: Cf. p. 169.]
[Footnote 47: The war has greatly increased that number.]
[Footnote 48: My aim is not political, and I do not, therefore,
touch upon the many later utterances. The protests, for example,
against the unfairness of the Brest-Litovsk Peace have in
Reichstag and Press been numerous and emphatic. For such facts
the reader should consult the "Cambridge Magazine."]
[Footnote 49: We were allowed to suppose that the Lusitania
carried no munitions, the Germans were encouraged to believe
that she carried mounted guns. Both views were incorrect. The
_New York Evening Post_ (quoted by the _Labour Leader_)
published the "manifest" of the number of cases of ammunition
carried.]
[Footnote 50: Ernest Poole in "Cassell's Magazine," No. 42.]
[Footnote 51: This seems unavoidable. "At last things quieted
down a bit, but many wounded had to be brought in between the
firing lines--dangerous work, as both sides are liable to fire
if they are seen."--An R.A.M.C. Officer in the _Times_.]
[Footnote 52: From "The Pageant of War," by Lady Margaret
Sackville.]
[Footnote 53: Cf. too p. 108.]
[Footnote 54: "There is no reason to suppose that he had seen
Germany." wrote Mr. George Long in Sir William Smith's
"Dictionary of Greek Biography and Mythology."]
[Footnote 55: Further, we must remember that "The Red Cross on a
white field is not a magic mantle that can ward off shells fired
by an artillerist at a target which he cannot see, nor against
flyers dropping bombs from thousands of feet in the air.
'Bomb-dropping flyers are the terror of the doctors and wounded
behind the lines,' remarked a doctor to me."--Karl von Wiegand,
in the _New York World_, August 17, 1916. ("Cambridge Magazine,"
_Oct_. 7, 1916.)]
[Footnote 56: "Church towers in a flat country are the only
observation points, and so they are used, and so they are
shelled."--Ernest Poole, in "Cassell's Magazine," No. 42, p.
27.]
[Footnote 57: From "Is It To Be Hate?" (Allen and Unwin), a
pamphlet which I wrote in 1915. On many points there dealt with
my second thoughts are different, as are those of many others.
We have learned much since then.]
[Footnote 58: The public is extraordinarily innocent as regards
this kind of information. It would form an interesting subject
for post-war analysis.]
[Footnote 59: Cf. p. 157.]
[Footnote 60: From "Is It To Be Hate?" by the Author.]
[Footnote 61: _La guerre devant Le Palais._ Par Gabriel Mourey.
Paris. Ollendorff 2f.--_Times_ Literary Supplement, Aug. 19,
1915.]
[Footnote 62: Cf. M. Mourey on the Uhlans at Compiègne, p. 206.]
[Footnote 63: See also p. 104.]
[Footnote 64: p. 90.]
[Footnote 65: "England," "Germany," "France," etc., in these
connections actually stand for a very small group of diplomats
controlling foreign policy. The association of the names
unfortunately makes us think of the countries as a whole, a word
fallacy that leads to illimitable disaster.]
[Footnote 66: p. 91.]
[Footnote 67: The variability of war stories may be observed
also in the columns of the _Times_ during the Crimean War. The
truth is, no doubt, that great local differences of treatment
occur, and that stories to the discredit of an enemy are more
welcomed than stories in his favour.]
[Footnote 68: In the _International Review_ of August 10, 1915,
an Austrian lady, Charlotte Frankl, gives an account of the
warm-hearted help she received in France, and the even greater
kindness she and others received in England: "Not one of us had
had unhappy experiences in England."]
[Footnote 69: War was declared upon Austria May 23, 1915, and
though formal declaration of war against Germany was delayed for
more than a year, the obvious fact was that Italy had taken
sides with the enemy.]
[Footnote 70: Cf. p. 199.]
[Footnote 71: The British Chemical Society expelled its honorary
German and Austrian Fellows, men who had worked for the whole of
humanity. The German Chemical Society was asked by some of its
members to expel an English Honorary Fellow who had attacked
German men of science with exceptional virulence. The Society
adopted the dignified course of taking no action amidst the
passions of war.]
[Footnote 72: "Whatever Mr. Ernest Lissauer and his fellows may
have set before themselves in their Tyrtæan poems of hate, in
any case it can be said of them that they knew not what they
did.... They did not know, though they should have known ...
that the solidarity of the nations ... has to-day already become
such that no great nation can aim at the very conditions of
existence of another without damaging itself at the same
time."--Ed. Bernstein in _Das Forum_ Jan., 1915.]
[Footnote 73: This is one view. Others who have seen German life
during the war report a real solidarity of the people, a
solidarity which later developments and revelations of Entente
proposals has certainly not diminished.]
[Footnote 74: From "Is It To Be Hate?" by Harold Picton (Allen
and Unwin). See footnote p. 203.]
APPENDIX
Mme. F. L. Cyon had some rather important experiences at Lille at the
time of the German attack and during the German occupation. She is a
woman of singularly cool mentality, and her evidence may be compared
with that of Dr. Ella Scarlett-Synge in a widely distant war area.
Mme. Cyon has very kindly placed her notes of her experiences at my
disposal. As the notes record also a point of view as to war in general,
it has seemed more fitting to print them as an appendix. No statement of
this kind is unbiased, for the pacifist has his own bias. Yet I am quite
certain that everything set down by Mme. Cyon has been set down in
complete sincerity and with unusual absence of mental distortion. The
record is that made by a quiet worker amidst circumstances where few
people remained sane.
THE MENTAL HAVOC WROUGHT BY THE WAR.
BY FRANÇOISE LAFITTE CYON.
During the months of September, October, November, and December, 1914, I
undertook a journey in Northern France; going first to Lille, thence to
Maubeuge, and returning to England via Brussels, Malines, Antwerp, and
Holland.
I was at Lille on October 13, 1914, when the Germans took the town.
During the first three months of my stay in France I was engaged in
nursing work at the military hospital 105 at Lille. In the early part of
December I travelled as well as I could, sometimes tramping and
sometimes making use of peasants' carts and local tramways, until I
eventually reached Holland.
It is not, however, my intention to speak much of my adventures or of
the war itself, but rather to depict, to the best of my ability, the
effect which the dreadful events of our doings have had on the minds of
the men and women I have met with over there; be they French, Belgian,
or German. This article will be an attempt to give a series of short
studies in psychology, rather than a dramatic account of a perilous
journey.
I wish my readers to bear in mind at the outset that after October 13 I
was in German territory, where, from that date onwards, I met with two
kinds of people. On the one hand, the oppressors or Germans; on the
other hand, the oppressed, namely, the French, Belgian, and a few
English.
For a psychological study to be of value, such a distinction is useful
to begin with, for one seldom finds the same frame of mind in the victor
and the vanquished, in the oppressor and the oppressed.
Whilst endeavouring to give facts, I must distinguish between three
types of people whom I met during my journey. First, civilians, French
and Belgian; secondly, the hospital staff, doctors and nurses, mostly
French, with the exception of two German doctors; thirdly, the military,
officers and men, French and German, with a few British. I am obliged to
make this division in order to make myself clear, as the events of the
war do not seem to affect the people of these three divisions in the
same way.
In what follows I shall for the most part depict types.