THE RAGPICKER
The salvage from a modern battle is a thing which I suppose few people
ever stop to think about. Where hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of
men have been engaged in shooting iron and steel as fast as they can
fire it, the amount of these metals which lies about is something almost
beyond conception. And the amount too, which buries itself beneath the
surface of the earth is enormous. The money value and military worth of
these vast quantities of metal is also a thing which must be taken into
consideration. A battle field today is little less than a great ocean of
craters which oftentimes touch one another. Most people, if they thought
about it at all, would take it for granted that this debris, this
wastage, has gone back to earth from whence it came, there to remain
until the elements in the soil and water disintegrate and metamorphose
the metals from their present form back to their original state in the
bowels of the earth. But this is usually not the case.
Walking over a battle ground after a severe fight you may see thousands
of shells which have never been shot because the regiment to which they
belonged was obliged to retreat posthaste, leaving these as well as
other valuable material behind. Frequently the Germans, having been
forced out of their positions, have abandoned thousands of unexploded
shells and hand grenades. Bayonets lie around topsy-turvy and helmets by
the hundreds are to be seen on every hand. Modern rifles dropped by
hands that will never hold another and cartridges not fired because the
company went forward, perhaps when the Germans beat a hasty retreat, are
the commonest of sights upon almost every battle field in Europe.
Certainly all of this necessary and vital material cannot be wasted. It
must not be allowed to lie unused when it is so essential to the army.
Instead, it is picked up and sorted out, classified and cleaned, and
prepared to be used again. Much of it is too dangerous to be left lying
about and most of it is too valuable to be ignored. Therefore squads of
men are organized, made up oftentimes of the older soldiers, and a few
days after an engagement you can see them groping about the earth and
stooping over the shell-scarred ground carefully examining it in a most
minute and painstaking manner.
In America the scavenger, the ragpicker, and the garbage man are looked
upon as very low in the scale of social refinement, but these ragpickers
of the battle field are honored and respected by the French Army,
because they are conserving the materials which are most vital to the
success of the Republic. Much risk is also encountered in this work of
salvage and not infrequently these men lose their lives, for shells from
the German guns often go beyond their mark.
When stores of supplies are found in good condition, of course they are
used at once, if possible, but much of the material must be sent back in
motor lorries to be sorted and remade. Some conception of the economic
saving accomplished by this work may be formed when you consider that
after one battle many tons of copper were gathered up and loaded and
sent back to the rear. Thousands of tons of steel and iron were also
rescued in the same locality and in addition hundreds of rifles with
millions of rounds of ammunition. Of course these materials are remolded
and then go back once more to Mother Earth where much of it will again
be picked up. At the close of the war, the land which is now being
fought over will be of little value for agricultural purposes because it
has been so tortured and mangled by the digging of trenches and the
gougings of the shell holes, but it will be exceedingly valuable on
account of the steel and copper which are buried there.
Scientists tell us that nothing is in reality ever lost or wasted and a
battle field gives a most striking illustration of this law of the
indestructibility of matter. We are prone to say that war is all waste,
and that the enormous quantities of iron and steel, trees and horses
(and even men), which are used up become a fearful waste in nature. Yet
it is literally true as a thoughtful Irishman said to me in France,
"Nature protects the land." In other words, Mother Earth from which
everything comes protects and perpetuates herself so that no nation or
generation can destroy her. All trees which are battered to pieces and
all the flesh which decays and rots, go back to earth once more to
fertilize and season it so that in the next generation it will bring
forth and bear plentifully. As the Good Book says: "All go to one place;
all is of the dust. The body returneth to the earth as it was and the
spirit returneth unto God who gave it."
There is no waste in the material universe. The only waste which comes
from war materially is for the present generation in that things which
were in a form which we could use have been changed to a form less
useful but which will be used sometime again. The great waste of war as
I look at it is the moral and spiritual waste where men become fiends
and go out to conquer and steal and rape and kill, thus using up their
spiritual powers and possibilities in destructive enterprises which
might have been put toward constructive elevation of the race. Men lose
their souls instead of saving them. And yet--the fiendishness of one
country brings out the angel of the other in causing men to rouse to
duty and to honor and justice, whereas without this incentive who knows
but that we might sink down in self-sufficiency and retrograde, thus all
of us losing our souls? It seems that all through God's universe there
is struggle and strife, and that moral and spiritual fiber require these
things for their best development.
The work of Christ, Christianity, prospered because it had to struggle
for existence, and when a nation or an individual ceases to struggle it
goes backward. This thought may be a Job's comforter to those who pay
the fearful price and yet we must look at it in this way. Men must
fight to get the highest freedom, not lie back and accept their fate,
else they have only the freedom of the Germans under the Hohenzollerns.
There is always some remnant of salvage out of the most fearful waste.
Thus earth goes in a cycle.