In many ways the recovery of Europe was more rapid in its fundamental
needs of life than seemed possible after the devastation of war. Human
energy, faith and hope repaired the material damage of war in an almost
miraculous degree. Walking day by day across the battlefields of France
and Flanders it seemed impossible to me and to all others that the
ground upheaved by high explosives, criss-crossed with deep trenches,
and sown with unexploded shells would return within the lifetime of
the present generation to harvest fields and pleasant pasture. It was
incredible that all those villages blown off the map, so that there
were only rubbish heaps to mark their site, should be rebuilt within
half a century with new walls and sheltering roofs for the people who
had fled from them.
I never expected to see a new city of Ypres, or to walk past shop
windows in Arras, or to see a harvest gathered on the outskirts of a
new Peronne. The infernal track of war from Belgium to Switzerland,
littered with dead bodies and the wreckage of battle, could not be
wiped out, I thought, from the eyes of living men. But that has
happened at least along some parts of the line ten years after. There
are red roofs and busy streets in Ypres and Arras. The fields are
smooth and green around Peronne. There are houses at Passchendaele.
It is difficult to see the scars of war in Amiens. It is hard to find
trenches and dug-outs or places where monstrous battles happened
beyond the Menin Gate of Ypres or down by Lens, beyond the Vimy Ridge.
Peasants dug out the unexploded shells. The trenches silted in or were
ploughed in. The Belgians were as busy as bees when they returned to
the hive. French contractors hired Poles and Czechs to supplement their
French labour and made enormous fortunes in the reconstruction of
destroyed towns at the cost of the French Government, which accepted
all their claims until an orgy of corruption broke all bounds. In East
Prussia, destroyed by Russian cavalry, little red houses were put up
even more quickly because of German industry. In Italy many wounds were
hidden and healed. There is still much work to be done, especially
in France, most terribly mutilated; but, ten years after, the work
of reconstruction by the energy of men and women, desperate in their
desire to blot out the years of agony and get back to peaceful labours
and their old home life, is a splendid victory over the forces of
destruction. Life triumphs over death, as always in history.
So also the stricken peoples staggered up from the bog of misery into
which they were deep sunk after war. The land saved the cities, and the
peasants found the source of life in the kind earth again. One nation
above all helped them to tide over the lean years and live until they
could reap new harvests. Without that rescue, millions more would have
died and Europe would have been swept by pestilence and famine. The
people of the United States did a work of charity on behalf of the
starving folk of Europe, more especially in the rescue of the starving
children, which absolves them, if they need absolution, from the charge
of utter selfishness and indifference to the sufferings of that Europe
from which they drew back in a policy of isolation.
It is one of the paradoxes of recent history that while the American
people, hardened against the Wilson ideal of co-operation with Europe,
drew away from the League of Nations as an accursed thing with which
they would have no part or lot, and reasserted the Monroe Doctrine with
a new interpretation of narrow exclusiveness, they gave with their left
hand, nearest to the heart, what their right hand refused. Publicly
they said, “Let Europe stew in its own broth.” Privately they poured
out their dollars in charity for European relief.