I gained by my unselfishness (I did not want to go), for the Reverend
Mother met me in the corridor and stood talking to me about Eileen
O’Connor, and told me part of the girl’s story, which I found strange
in its drama, though she left out the scene of greatest interest, as I
heard later from Eileen herself.
The girl had come to Lille just before the war, as an art-mistress in
an “_École de Jeunes Filles_” (her parents in Kensington had too big
a family to keep them all), with lessons twice a week at the convent,
and private pupils in her own rooms. She learned to speak French
quickly and charmingly, and her gift of humour, her Irish frankness and
comradeship made her popular among her pupils, so that she had many
invitations to their homes and became well known in the best houses of
Lille--mostly belonging to rich manufacturers. A commonplace story till
then! But when the Germans occupied Lille this Irish girl became one
of the chief characters in a drama that was exciting and fantastic to
the point of melodrama. It was she who organised the Lille branch of a
secret society of women, with a network all over northern France and
Belgium--the world remembers Nurse Cavell at Brussels--for the escape
of young civilians of military age and prisoners of war, combining
that work (frightfully perilous) with espionage on German movements of
troops and knowledge that might be of value to the Belgian Army, and
through them to England and France. It was out of an old book of Jules
Verne called “The Cryptogram” that she copied the cypher in which she
wrote her messages (in invisible ink on linen handkerchiefs and rags),
and she had an audacity of invention in numberless small tricks and
plots which constantly broke through the meshes of the German network
of military police.
“She had a contempt for their stupidity,” said the Reverend Mother.
“Called them dunderheads, and one strange word of which I do not know
the meaning--‘yobs’--and I trembled at the risks she took.”
She lived with one maid in two rooms on the ground floor of a house
near the Jardin d’Eté, the rest of the house being used as the
headquarters of the German Intelligence Section of the Northern
District. All day long officers went in and out, and by day and night
there were always sentries at the door. Yet it was there that was
established also the headquarters of the Rescue Committee. It was
on account of her Irish name and parentage that Eileen O’Connor was
permitted to remain in the two rooms to the left of the courtyard,
entered by a separate door. The German Kommandant was a man who
firmly believed that the Irish nation was ready to break out into
revolt against the English, and that all Irish--men and women--hated
the British Empire as much as any Prussian. Eileen O’Connor played
up to this _idée fixe_, saw the value of it as a wonderful means of
camouflage, lent the Kommandant books on Irish history dealing with
the injustice of England to Ireland (in which she firmly believed as a
staunch Nationalist), and educated him so completely to the belief that
she was anti-English (as she was in politics, though not in war) that
he had no doubt of her.
Here the Reverend Mother made a remark which seemed to illuminate
Eileen O’Connor’s story, as well as her own knowledge of human nature.
“The child has beautiful eyes and a most sweet grace. Irish history may
not account for all.”
“This German Kommandant----” I asked, “what sort of a man was he?”
“For a German not altogether bad,” said the Reverend Mother. “Severe
and ruthless, like them all, but polite when there was no occasion to
be violent. He was of good family, as far as there are such things in
Germany. A man of sixty.”
Eileen O’Connor, with German permission, continued her work as
art-mistress at the _École de Jeunes Filles_. After six months she was
permitted to receive private pupils in her two rooms on the ground
floor of the Intelligence headquarters, in the same courtyard though
not in the same building. Her pupils came with drawing-boards and
paint-boxes. They were all girls with pig-tails and short frocks--not
so young as they looked, because three or four at least, including the
Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt, were older than schoolgirls. They played
the part perfectly, and the sentries smiled at them and said “_Guten
Tag, schönes Fräulein_,” as each one passed. They were the committee of
the Rescue Society:
Julienne de Quesnoy,
Marcelle Barbier,
Yvonne Marigny,
Marguérite Cléry, and Alice de Taffin, de Villers-Auxicourt.
Eileen O’Connor was the director and leading spirit. It seems to me
astonishing that they should have arranged the cypher, practised it,
written down military information gathered from German conversations
and reported to them by servants and agents under the very noses of
the German Intelligence officers, who could see into the sitting-room
as they passed through French windows and saluted Eileen O’Connor and
her young ladies if they happened to meet their eyes. It is more
astonishing that, at different times, and one at a time, many fugitives
(including five British soldiers who had escaped from the citadel)
slept in the cellar beneath that room, changed into German uniforms
belonging to men who had died at the convent hospital--the Reverend
Mother did that part of the plot--and walked quietly out in the morning
by an underground passage leading to the Jardin d’Eté. The passage had
been anciently built but was blocked up at one end by Eileen O’Connor’s
cellar, and she and the other women broke the wall, one brick at a
time, until after three months the hole was made. Their finger-nails
suffered in the process, and they were afraid that the roughness of
their hands might be noticed by the officers, but in spite of German
spectacles they saw nothing of that. Eileen O’Connor and her friends
were in constant touch with the prisoners of the Citadel and smuggled
food to them. That was easy. It was done by bribing the German sentries
with tobacco and meat-pies. They were also in communication with other
branches of the work in Belgium, so that fugitives were passed on from
town to town, and house to house. Their success made them confident,
after many horrible fears, and for a time they were lulled into a
sense of security. That was rudely crashed when Eileen O’Connor, the
young Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt, and Marcelle Barbier were arrested
one morning in September of ’17, on a charge of espionage. They were
put into separate cells of the civil prison, crowded with the vilest
women of the slums and stews, and suffered something like torture
because of the foul atmosphere, the lack of sanitation, and unspeakable
abomination.
“Only the spirit of Christian martyrdom could remain cheerful in such
terrible conditions,” said the Reverend Mother. “Our dear Eileen was
sustained by a great faith and wonderful gaiety. Her laughter, her
jokes, her patience, her courage, were an inspiration even to the poor
degraded women who were prisoners with her. They worshipped her. We,
her friends, gave her up for lost, though we prayed unceasingly that
she might escape death. Then she was brought to trial.”
She stood alone in the court. The young Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt
had died in prison owing to the shock of her arrest and a weak heart. A
weak heart, though so brave. Eileen was not allowed to see her on her
death-bed, but she sent a message almost with her last breath. It was
the one word “courage!” Mlle. Marcelle Barbier was released before the
trial, for lack of direct evidence.
Eileen’s trial was famous in Lille. The court was crowded and the
German military tribunal could not suppress the loud expressions of
sympathy and admiration which greeted her, nor the angry murmurs which
interrupted the prosecuting officer. She stood there, wonderfully calm,
between two soldiers with fixed bayonets. She looked very young and
innocent between her guards, and it is evident that her appearance made
a favourable impression on the court. The President, after peering at
her through his horn spectacles, was not so ferocious in his manner as
usual when he bade her be seated.
The evidence seemed very strong against her. “She is lost” was the
belief of all her friends in court. One of the sentries at the Citadel,
jealously savage because another man had received more tobacco than
himself--on such a trivial thing did this girl’s life hang!--betrayed
the system by which the women’s committee sent food to the French
and English prisoners. He gave the names of three of the ladies and
described Eileen O’Connor as the ringleader. The secret police watched
her, and searched her rooms at night. They discovered the cypher and
the key, a list of men who had escaped, and three German uniforms in
a secret cupboard. They had been aided in their search by Lieutenant
Franz von Kreuzenach of the Intelligence Bureau, who was the chief
witness of the prosecution, and whose name was recommended to the
Court for the vigilance and zeal he had shown in the detection of the
conspiracy against the Army and the Fatherland. It was he who had found
the secret cupboard and had solved the key to the cypher.
“We will take the lieutenant’s evidence in due course,” said the
President. “Does that complete the indictment against this prisoner?”
Apart from a savage elaboration of evidence based upon the facts
presented and a demand that the woman’s guilt, if the Court were
satisfied thereon, should be punished by death, the preliminary
indictment by the prosecution ended.
It was a terrible case, and during its revelations the people in court
were stricken with dread and pity for the girl who was now sitting
between the two soldiers. They were all staring at her, and some at
least--the Reverend Mother among them--noticed with surprise that
when the officer for the prosecution ended his speech she drew a deep
breath, raised her head, as though some weight of fear had been lifted
from her, and--laughed.
It was quite a merry laugh, with that full blackbird note of hers, and
the sound of it caused a strange sensation in the court. The President
blinked repeatedly, like an owl blinded by a ray of sunlight. He
addressed the prisoner in heavy, barbarous French.
“You are charged with conspiracy against our German martial law. The
punishment is death. It is no laughing matter, Fräulein.”
They were stern words, but there was a touch of pity in that last
sentence.
“_Ce n’est pas une affaire pour rire, Fräulein._”
Eileen O’Connor, said the Reverend Mother, who was to be called as
a witness on her behalf, bowed in a gracious way to the President,
but with a look of amusement that was amazing to the German officers
assembled for her trial. Some of them scowled, but there were others,
the younger men, who whispered, and smiled also with no attempt to
disguise their admiration of such courage.
“Perhaps it was only I,” said the Reverend Mother, “who understood the
child’s joyous relief which gave her this courage. I had waited with
terrible dread for the announcement of the discovery of the secret
passage. That it had been discovered I knew, for the German lieutenant,
Franz von Kreuzenach, had come round to me and very sternly questioned
me about a case of medicine which he had found there, stamped with the
name of our convent.”
“Then,” I said, “this Franz von Kreuzenach must have suppressed some of
the evidence. By what motive----”
The Reverend Mother interrupted me, putting her hand on my sleeve with
a touch of protest.
“The good God works through strange instruments, and may touch the
hardest heart with His grace. It was indeed a miracle.”
I would give much to have been in that court at Lille when Eileen
O’Connor was permitted to question the German lieutenant who was the
chief witness against her.
From what I have heard, not only from the Reverend Mother, but from
other people of Lille who were present at the trial, she played with
this German officer, making him look very foolish, ridiculing him in a
merry, contemptuous way before the Court. Indeed he seemed strangely
abashed before her.
“The cypher!... Have you ever been a schoolboy, or were you born a
lieutenant in the German Army?”
Franz von Kreuzenach admitted that he had once been a boy--to the
amusement of his brother-officers.
Had he ever read stories of adventure, fairy-tales, romances, or did
he spend his childhood in the study of Nietzsche, Hegel, Schopenhauer,
Kant, Goethe, von Bernhardi, Karl Marx----
When she strung off these names--so incongruous in association--even
the President permitted a slight smile to twist his thin hard mouth.
Franz von Kreuzenach said that he had read some fairy-tales and stories
of adventure. Might he ask the _gnädiges Fräulein_----
“Yes,” said the President, “what has this to do with your case,
Fräulein? I desire to give you full liberty in your defence but this is
entirely irrelevant to the evidence.”
“It is my case!” cried Miss O’Connor. “Listen to the next question,
Herr President. It is the key of my defence.”
Her next question caused laughter in court.
“I ask the Herr Lieutenant whether, as a boy, or a young man, he has
read the romances of the French writer, Jules Verne?”
Franz von Kreuzenach looked abashed, and blushed like a schoolboy. His
eyes fell before the challenging look of the Irish girl.
“I have read some novels by Jules Verne, in German translations.”
“Oh, in German translations--of course!” said Miss O’Connor. “German
boys do not learn French very well.”
“Keep to the case,” said the President. “In Heaven’s name, Fräulein,
what has this to do with your defence?”
She raised her hand, for patience, and said, “Herr President, my
innocence will soon be clear.”
She demanded of the witness for the prosecution whether he had ever
read the novel by Jules Verne called “The Cryptogram.” He said that he
had read it only a few days ago. He had discovered it in her room.
Eileen O’Connor turned round eagerly to the President.
“I demand the production of that book.”
An orderly was sent to the lieutenant’s rooms to fetch it. It was clear
that the President of the Court made a black mark against Franz von
Kreuzenach for not having mentioned its discovery to the Court. As yet,
however, he could not see the bearing of it on the case.
Then, with the book in her hand, Eileen O’Connor turned to the famous
cryptogram, showed how it corresponded exactly with her own cypher,
proved that the pieces of paper found in her rooms were copies of the
Jules Verne cypher in the handwriting of her pupils.
“You see, Herr President!” she cried eagerly.
The President admitted that this was proved, but, as he asked, leaning
forward in his chair, for what purpose had they copied out that cypher?
Cyphers were dangerous things to write in time of war. Deadly things.
Why did these ladies want to learn the cypher?
It was then that Eileen O’Connor was most brilliant. She described
in a simple and girlish way how she and her pupils worked in their
little room. While they copied freehand models, one of them read out
to the others, books of romance, love, adventure, to forget the gloom
of life and the tragedy of war. One of those books was Jules Verne’s
“Cryptogram.” It had fascinated them. It had made them forget the
misery of war. They were romantic girls, imaginative girls. Out of
sheer merriment, to pass the hours, they had tried to work out the
cypher. They had written love-letters to imaginary young men in those
secret numbers. Here Eileen, smiling ironically, read out specimens of
the letters that had been found.
“Come to the corner of the rue Esquermoise at 9:45. You will know me
because I shall be wearing a blue bow in a black hat.”
That was the romantic imagination of the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt.
“When you see a lady standing outside the Jardin d’Eté, with a little
brown dog, speak to her in French and say, ‘_Comme il fait froid
aujourd’hui, mademoiselle_.’ If she answers, ‘_Je ne vous comprends
pas, monsieur_,’ you will understand that she is to be trusted, and you
must follow her.”
That was a romantic idea to which Eileen herself pleaded guilty.
“Herr President,” said Eileen, “you cannot put old heads on young
shoulders, even in time of war. A party of girls will let their foolish
little minds run upon ideas of love, even when the sound of guns is not
far away. You, Herr President, will understand that perfectly.”
Perhaps there was something in the character of the President that made
this a chance hit. All the German officers laughed, and the President
shifted in his seat and flushed to the top of his bald, vulture-like
head.
The possession of those German uniforms was also explained in the
prettiest way by Eileen O’Connor. They were uniforms belonging to three
handsome young German soldiers who had died in hospital. They had
kept them to return to their mothers after the war, those poor German
mothers who were weeping for their sons.... This part of her defence
touched the German officers deeply. One of them had tears in his eyes.
The list of escaped fugitives was harder to explain, but again an Irish
imagination succeeded in giving it an innocent significance. It had
been compiled by a prisoner in the Citadel and given to Eileen as
a proof that his own hope of escape was not in vain, though she had
warned him of the fearful risk. “The poor man gave me the list in sheer
simplicity, and in innocence I kept it.”
Simply and touchingly she admitted her guilt in smuggling food to
French and British prisoners and to German sentries, and claimed that
her fault was only against military regulations, but in humanity was
justified.
“I am Irish,” she said. “I have in my heart the remembrance of English
crimes to Ireland--old, unforgettable crimes that still cry out for the
justice and the liberty which are denied my country.”
Some of the younger German officers shook their heads approvingly.
They liked this Irish hatred of England. It was according to their
text-books.
“But,” said the Irish girl, “the sufferings of English prisoners--you
know here of their misery, their hunger, their weakness in that Citadel
where many have died and are dying--stirred my compassion as a woman
to whom all cruelty is tragic, and all suffering of men a call to
that mother-love which is in the spirit of all their womanhood, as
you know by your German women--as I hope you know. Because they were
starved I tried to get them food, as I would to starving dogs or any
poor creatures caught in the trap of war, or of men’s sport. To that I
confess guilty, with gladness in my guilt.”
The Reverend Mother, standing there in the whitewashed corridor of the
convent, in the flickering light of an oil lantern which gleamed on the
white ruff round her neck and the silver cross on her breast, though
her face was shadowed in the cavern of her black headdress, repeated
this speech of Eileen O’Connor as though in hearing it first she had
learnt it by heart.
“The child was divinely inspired, monsieur. Our Lady stood by her side,
prompting her. I am sure of that.”
The trial lengthened out, until it was late in the evening when the
Judge summed up. He spoke again of the gravity of the accusation,
the dread punishment that must befall the prisoner if her guilt were
proved, the weight of evidence against her. For a time he seemed to
press her guilt heavily, and the Court was gloomy. The German officers
looked grave. One thing happened in the course of his speech which
affected the audience profoundly. It was when he spoke of the romantic
explanation that had been offered by the prisoner regarding the secret
cypher.
“This lady,” he said, “asks me to believe that she and her companions
were playing a simple girlish game of make-believe. Writing imaginary
letters to mythical persons. Were these young ladies--nay, is
she--herself--so lacking in woman’s charm that she has no living man to
love her and needs must write fictitious notes to nonexistent men?”
The President said these words with portentous solemnity. Perhaps only
a German could have spoken them. He paused and blinked at the German
officers below him. Suddenly into the silence of the court came a
ripple of laughter, clear and full of most mirthful significance.
Eileen O’Connor’s laugh bewitched the crowded court and there was a
roar of laughter in which all the officers joined. By that laugh more
even than by her general gaiety, her courage and eloquence, she won her
life.
“I said a decade of the rosary to our Blessed Lady,” said the Reverend
Mother, “and thanked God that this dear child’s life would not be
taken. I was certain that those men would not condemn her to death. She
was acquitted on the charge of espionage, and sentenced to two weeks’
imprisonment for smuggling food to prisoners, by a verdict of seven
against three. Only when she left the court did she fall into so deep
a swoon that for a little while we thought her dead.”
The Reverend Mother had told her story well. She held me in a deep
strained interest. It was rather to myself than to her that I spoke the
words which were my comment at the end of this narrative.
“How splendid!... But I am puzzled about that German lieutenant, Franz
von Kreuzenach. He kept the real evidence back.”
“That,” said the Reverend Mother solemnly, “was a great mystery and a
miracle.”
Wickham Brand joined us in the passage, with Eileen O’Connor by his
side.
“Not gone yet?” said Wickham.
“I have been listening to the tale of a woman’s courage,” I said, and
when Eileen gave me her hand, I raised it to my lips, in the French
style, though not in gallantry.
“Reverend Mother,” she said, “has been exalting me to the Seventh
Heaven of her dear heart.”
On my way back to Brand’s mess I told him all I had heard about
Eileen’s trial, and I remember his enthusiasm.
“Fine! Thank heaven there are women like that in this blood-soaked
world. It saves one from absolute despair.”
He made no comment about the suppression of evidence, which was a
puzzle to me.
We parted with a “So long, old man,” outside his headquarters, and I
did not see him until a few days later.
X
It was Frederick E. Small, the American doctor, attached to Brand’s
crowd, who was with me on a night in Lille before the Armistice,
when by news from the Colonel we were stirred by the tremendous
hope--almost a certainty--that the end of the war was near. I had
been into Courtrai, which the enemy had first evacuated and then was
shelling. It was not a joyous entry like that into Lille. Most of the
people were still down in their cellars, where for several days they
had been herded together until the air became foul. On the outskirts I
had passed many groups of peasants with their babies and old people,
trudging past our guns, trekking from one village to another in search
of greater safety, or standing in the fields where our artillery was
getting into action, and where new shell craters should have warned
them away, if they had had more knowledge of war. For more than four
years I had seen, at different periods, crowds like that--after the
first flight of fugitives in August of ’14, when the world seemed
to have been tilted up and great populations in France and Belgium
were in panic-stricken retreat from the advancing edge of war. I knew
the types, the attitudes, the very shape of the bundles, in these
refugee processions, the haggard look of the mothers pushing their
perambulators, the bewildered look of old men and women, the tired
sleepy look of small boys and girls, the stumbling dead-beat look of
old farm-horses dragging carts piled high with cottage furniture. As it
was at the beginning so it was at the end--for civilians caught in the
fires of war. With two other men I went into the heart of Courtrai and
found it desolate, and knew the reason why when, at the corner of the
Grande Place, a heavy shell came howling and burst inside a house with
frightful explosive noise followed by a crash of masonry. The people
were wise to keep to their cellars. Two girls not so wise made a dash
from one house to another and were caught by chunks of steel and killed
close to the church of St. Martin, where they lay all crumpled up in a
clotted pool of blood. A man came up to me, utterly careless of such
risks, and I hated to stand talking to him with the shells coming every
half-minute overhead.
There was a fire of passion in his eyes, and at every sentence he
spoke to me his voice rose and thrilled as he denounced the German
race for all they had done in Courtrai, for their robberies, their
imprisonments, their destruction of machinery, their brutality. The
last Commandant of Courtrai was von Richthofen, father of the German
aviator, and he was a hard, ruthless man and kept the city under an
iron rule.
“All that, thank God, is finished now,” said the man. “The English have
delivered us from the Beast!” As he spoke another monstrous shell came
overhead, but he took no notice of it, and said, “We are safe now from
the enemy’s evil power!” It seemed to me a comparative kind of safety.
I had no confidence in it when I sat in the parlour of an old lady who,
like Eileen O’Connor in Lille, had been an Irish governess in Courtrai,
and who now, living in miserable poverty, sat in a bed-sitting room
whose windows and woodwork had been broken by shell-splinters. “Do you
mind shutting the door, my dear?” she said. “I can’t bear those nasty
bombs.” I realised with a large, experienced knowledge that we might
be torn to fragments of flesh, at any moment, by one of those nasty
“bombs,” which were really eight-inch shells, but the old lady did not
worry, and felt safe when the door was shut.
Outside Courtrai, when I left, lay some khaki figures in a mush of
blood. They were lads whom I had seen unloading ammunition that morning
on the bank of the canal. One had asked me for a light, and said,
“What’s all this peace-talk?... Any chance?” A big chance, I had told
him. Home for Christmas, certain sure this time. The boy’s eyes had
lighted up for a moment, quicker than the match which he held in the
cup of his hands.
“Jesus! Back for good; eh?”
Then the light went out of his eyes as the match flared up.
“We’ve heard that tale, a score of times. ‘The Germans are weakening.
The Huns ’ave ’ad enough!...’ Newspaper talk. A man would be a mug----”
Now the boy lay in the mud, with half his body blown away.... I
was glad to get back to Lille for a spell, where there were no
dead bodies in the roads. And the Colonel’s news, straight from
G.H.Q., which--surely--were not playing up the old false optimism
again!--helped one to hope that perhaps in a week or two the last boys
of our race, the lucky ones, would be reprieved from that kind of
bloody death, which I had seen so often, so long, so heaped up in many
fields of France and Flanders, where the flower of our youth was killed.
Dr. Small was excited by the hope brought back by Colonel Lavington.
He sought me out in my billet, _chez Madame Chéri_, and begged me to
take a walk with him. It was a moonlight night, but no double throb of
a German air-engine came booming over Lille. He walked at a hard pace,
with the collar of his “British warm” tucked up to his ears, and talked
in a queer disjointed monologue, emotionally, whimsically. I remember
some of his words, more or less--anyhow the gist of his thoughts.
“I’m not worrying any more about how the war will end. We’ve won!
Remarkable that when one thinks back to the time, less than a year
ago, when the best thing seemed a draw. I’m thinking about the future.
What’s the world going to be afterwards? That’s my American mind--the
next job, so to speak.”
He thought hard while we paced round our side of the Jardin d’Eté where
the moonlight made the bushes glamourous, and streaked the tree-trunks
with a silver line.
“This war is going to have prodigious effect on nations. On
individuals, too. I’m scared. We’ve all been screwed up to an
intense pitch--every nerve in us is beyond the normal stretch of
nature. After the war there will be a sudden relaxing. We shall be
like bits of chewed elastic. Rather like people who have drugged
themselves to get through some big ordeal. After the ordeal their
nerves are all ragged. They crave the old stimulus though they dread
it. They’re depressed--don’t know what’s the matter--get into sudden
rages--hysterical--can’t settle to work--go out for gaiety and get
bored. I’ve seen it many times in bad cases. Europe--yes and America
too--is going to be a bad case. A neurotic world--Lord, it’ll take some
healing!”
For a time his thoughts wandered round the possible terms of peace and
the abasement of Germany. He prophesied the break-up of Germany, the
downfall of the Emperor and of other thrones.
“Crowns will be as cheap as twenty cents,” he said. He hoped for the
complete overthrow of Junkerdom--“all the dirty dogs,” as he called the
Prussian war-lords and politicians. But he hoped the Allies would be
generous with the enemy peoples--“magnanimous” was the word he used.
“We must help the spirit of democracy to rise among them,” he said. “We
must make it easy for them to exorcise the devil. If we press them too
hard, put the screw on to the torture of their souls (defeat will be
torture to a proud people), they will nourish a hope of vengeance and
go back to their devil for hope.”
I asked him whether he thought his President would lead the world to a
nobler stage of history.
He hesitated at that, groped a little, I thought, among old memories
and prejudices.
“Why,” he said, “Wilson has the biggest chance that ever came to a
human being--the biggest chance and the biggest duty. We are rich
(too darned rich) and enormously powerful when most other peoples are
poor and weak--drained of wealth and blood. That’s our luck, and a
little bit perhaps our shame, though our boys have done their bit all
right and are ready to do more, and it’s not their fault they weren’t
here before--but we’re hardly touched by this war as a people, except
spiritually. There we’ve been touched by the finger of Fate. (God, if
you like that better!) So with that strength behind him the President
is in a big way of business. He can make his voice heard, stand for a
big idea. God, sonny, I hope he’ll do it! For the world’s sake, for the
sake of all these suffering people, here in this city of Lille and in a
million little towns where people have been bashed by war.”
I asked him if he doubted Wilson’s greatness, and the question
embarrassed him.
“I’m loyal to the man,” he said. “I’ll back him if he plays straight
and big. Bigness, that’s what we want. Bigness of heart as well as
bigness of brain. Oh, he’s clever, though not wise in making so many
enemies. He has fine ideas and can write real words. Things which
speak. True things. I’d like to be sure of his character--its breadth
and strength, I mean. The world wants a Nobleman, bigger than the
little gentlemen of politics; a Leader calling to the great human heart
of our tribes, and lifting them with one grand gesture out of the
mire of old passions and vendettas and jealousies to a higher plane
of--commonsense. Out of the jungle, to the daylight of fellowship. Out
of the jungle.”
He repeated those words twice, with a reverent solemnity. He believed
that so much emotion had been created in the heart of the world that
when the war ended anything might happen if a Leader came--a new
religion of civilisation, any kind of spiritual and social revolution.
“We might kill cruelty,” he said. “My word, what a victory that would
be!”