Can the splendid land of Goethe unlearn its Prussian lesson and regain
its own noble sanity, or has it too long inhaled the fumes? There is
no saying yet. Still they sit inside their wall. Like a trained chorus
they still repeat that England made the war, that Louvain was not
destroyed, that Rheims was not bombarded, that their Fatherland is the
unoffending victim of world-jealousy. When travelers ask what proofs
they have, the trained chorus has but one reply: "Our government
officials tell us so." Berlin, Cologne, Munich--all their cities--give
this answer to the traveler. Nothing that we know do they know. It is
kept from them. Their brains still wear the Prussian uniform and go
mechanically through the Prussian drill. Will adversity lift this curse?
Something happened at Louvain--a little thing, but let it give us
hope. In the house of a professor at the University some German
soldiers were quartered, friendly, considerate, doing no harm.
Suddenly one day, in obedience to new orders, they fell on this home,
burned books, wrecked rooms, destroyed the house and all its
possessions. Its master is dead. His wife, looking on with her
helpless children, saw a soldier give an apple to a child.
"Thank you," she said; "you, at least, have a heart."
"No, madam," said the German; "it is broken."
Goethe said: "He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful
to insult nothing.... We are become too humane to enjoy the triumphs of
Caesar." Ninety years after he said this Germany took the Belgian women
from their ruined villages--some of these women being so infirm that for
months they had not been out-of-doors--and loaded them on trains like
cattle, and during several weeks exposed them publicly to the jeers and
scoffs and insults of German crowds through city after city.
Perhaps the German soldier whose heart was broken by Louvain will be
one of a legion, and thus, perhaps, through thousands of broken
German hearts, Germany may become herself again. She has hurled
calamity on a continent. She has struck to pieces a Europe whose very
unpreparedness answers her ridiculous falsehood that she was attacked
first. Never shall Europe be again as it was. Our brains, could they
take in the whole of this war, would burst.
But Calamity has its Pentecost. When its mighty wind rushed over
Belgium and France, and its tongues of fire sat on each of them, they,
too, like the apostles in the New Testament, began to speak as the
Spirit gave them utterance. Their words and deeds have filled the
world with a splendor the world had lost. The flesh, that has
dominated our day and generation, fell away in the presence of the
Spirit. I have heard Belgians bless the martyrdom and awakening of
their nation. They have said:
"Do not talk of our suffering; talk of our glory. We have found
ourselves."
Frenchmen have said to me: "For forty-four years we have been unhappy,
in darkness, without health, without faith, believing the true France
dead. Resurrection has come to us." I heard the French Ambassador,
Jules Jusserand, say in a noble speech: "George Eliot profoundly
observes that to every man comes a crisis when in a moment, without
chance for reflection, he must decide and act instantly. What
determines his decision? His whole past, the daily choices between
good and evil that he has made throughout his previous years--these
determine his decision. Such a crisis fell in a moment on France; she
acted instantly, true to her historic honor and courage."
Every day deeds of faith, love and renunciation are done by the score
and the hundred which will never be recorded, and every one of which is
noble enough to make an immortal song. All over the broken map of
Europe, through stricken thousands of square miles, such deeds are being
done by Servians, Russians, Poles, Belgians, French and English,--yes,
and Germans too,--the souls of men and women rising above their bodies,
flinging them away for the sake of a cause. Think of one incident only,
only one of the white-hot gleams of the Spirit that have reached us from
the raging furnace. Out from the burning cathedral of Rheims they were
dragging the wounded German prisoners lying helpless inside on straw
that had begun to burn. In front of the church the French mob was about
to shoot or tear to pieces those crippled, defenseless enemies. You and
I might well want to kill an enemy who had set fire to Mount Vernon, the
house of the Father of our Country.
For more than seven hundred years that great church of Rheims had been
the sacred shrine of France. One minute more and those Germans lying
or crawling outside the church door would have been destroyed by the
furious people. But above the crash of rafters and glass, the fall of
statues, the thunder of bombarding cannon, and the cries of French
execration, rose one man's voice. There on the steps of the ruined
church stood a priest. He lifted his arms and said:
"Stop; remember the ancient ways and chivalry of France. It is not
Frenchmen who trample on a maimed and fallen foe. Let us not descend
to the level of our enemies."
It was enough. The French remembered France. Those Germans were
conveyed in safety to their appointed shelter--and far away, across
the lands and oceans, hearts throbbed and eyes grew wet that had never
looked on Rheims.
These are the tongues of fire; this is the Pentecost of Calamity. Often
it must have made brothers again of those who found themselves prone on
the battlefield, neighbors awaiting the grave. In Flanders a French
officer of cavalry, shot through the chest, lay dying, but with life
enough still to write his story to the lady of his heart. He wrote thus:
"There are two other men lying near me, and I do not think there is
much hope for them either. One is an officer of a Scottish regiment
and the other a private in the uhlans. They were struck down after me,
and when I came to myself I found them bending over me, rendering
first aid. The Britisher was pouring water down my throat from his
flask, while the German was endeavoring to stanch my wound with an
antiseptic preparation served out to their troops by the medical
corps. The Highlander had one of his legs shattered, and the German
had several pieces of shrapnel buried in his side.
"In spite of their own sufferings, they were trying to help me; and
when I was fully conscious again the German gave us a morphia
injection and took one himself. His medical corps had also provided
him with the injection and the needle, together with printed
instructions for their use. After the injection, feeling wonderfully
at ease, we spoke of the lives we had lived before the war. We all
spoke English, and we talked of the women we had left at home. Both
the German and the Britisher had been married only a year....
"I wondered--and I suppose the others did--why we had fought each
other at all. I looked at the Highlander, who was falling to sleep,
exhausted, and, in spite of his drawn face and mud-stained uniform, he
looked the embodiment of freedom. Then I thought of the Tricolor of
France and all that France had done for liberty. Then I watched the
German, who had ceased to speak. He had taken a prayer book from his
knapsack, and was trying to read a service for soldiers wounded in
battle. And ... while I watched him I realized what we were fighting
for.... He was dying in vain, while the Britisher and myself, by our
deaths, would probably contribute something toward the cause of
civilization and peace."
Thus wrote this young French officer of cavalry to the lady of his
heart, the American lady to whom he was engaged. The Red Cross found
the letter at his side. Through it she learned the manner of his
death. This, too, is the Pentecost of Calamity.