I
The advance of the Allied Armies towards the Rhine was by definite,
slow stages, enabling the German Army to withdraw in advance of us
with as much material of war as was left to them by the conditions of
the Armistice. On that retreat of theirs they abandoned so much that
it was clearly impossible for them to resist our demands by fighting
again, however hard might be the Peace Terms. Their acceptance of the
Armistice drawn up by Marshal Foch with a relentless severity in every
clause, so that the whole document was a sentence of death to the
German military system, proved that they had no more “fight” in them.
It was the most abject and humiliating surrender ever made by a great
nation in the hour of defeat, and an acknowledgment before the whole
world that their armies had broken to bits, in organisation and in
spirit.
On the roads for hundreds of kilometres out from Mons and Le Cateau,
past Brussels and Liège and Namur, was the visible proof of the
disintegration and downfall of what had been the greatest military
machine in the world. Mile after mile and score after score of miles,
on each side of the long straight roads, down which, four years before,
the first German Armies had marched in endless columns after the first
brief check at Liège, with absolute faith in victory, there lay now
abandoned guns, trench mortars, aeroplanes, motor-lorries, motor-cars
and transport-wagons. Those monstrous guns which had pounded so much
of our young flesh to pulp, year after year, were now tossed into the
ditches, or upturned in the wayside fields, with broken breach-blocks
or without their sights. It was good to see them there. Field-guns
captured thrust their muzzles into the mud, and Belgian peasant-boys
made cock-shies of them. I liked to see them at that game. Here also
was the spectacle of a war machine which had worn out until, like
the “One Hoss Shay,” it had fallen to pieces. Those motor-lorries,
motor-cars, and transport-wagons were in the last stage of decrepitude,
their axles and spokes all rusty, their woodwork cracked, their wheels
tied round with bits of iron in the place of tyres. Everywhere were
dead horses worn to skin and bones before they had fallen. For lack of
food and fats and rubber and labour the German material of war was in
a sorry state before the failure of their man-power in the fighting
fields after those years of massacre brought home to them the awful
fact that they had no more strength to resist our onslaughts.
One of those who pointed the moral of all this was the little American
doctor, Edward Small, and he found an immense satisfaction in the sight
of those derelict wrecks of the German war-devils. He and I travelled
together for some time, meeting Brand, Harding, and other friends, in
towns like Liège and Namur. I remember him now, standing by a German
howitzer--a colossus--sprawling out of a ditch. He chuckled in a goblin
way, with his little grey beard thrust up by a muffler which he had
tied over his field-cap and under his chin. (It was cold, with a white
mist which clung damply to our faces.) He went so far in his pleasure
as to pick up a big stone (like those Belgian boys) and heave it at
the monster.
“Fine!” he said. “That devil will never again vomit out death upon men
crouching low in ditches--fifteen miles away. Never again will it smash
through the roofs of farmhouses where people desired to live in peace,
or bash big holes in little old churches where folk worshipped through
the centuries--a loving God!... Sonny, this damned thing is symbolical.
Its overthrow means the downfall of all the machinery of slaughter
which has been accumulated by civilised peoples afraid of each other.
In a little while, if there’s any sense in humanity after this fearful
lesson, we shall put all our guns on to the scrap-heap, and start a new
era of reasonable intercourse between the peoples of the world.”
“Doctor,” I answered, “there’s a mighty big If in that long sentence of
yours.”
He blinked at me with beads of mist on his lashes.
“Don’t you go wet-blanketing my faith in a step-up for the human race!
During the next few months we’re going to rearrange life. We are going
to give Fear the knock-out blow.... It was Fear that was the cause of
all this horrible insanity and all this need of sacrifice. Germany was
afraid of being ‘hemmed in’ by England, France and Russia. Fear, more
than the lust of power, was at the back of her big armies. France was
afraid of Germany trampling over her frontiers again. Russian Czardom
was afraid of Revolution within her own borders and looked to war as
a safety-valve. England was afraid of the German Navy, and afraid of
Germans at Calais and Dunkirk. All the little Powers were afraid of the
Big Powers, and made their beastly little alliances as a life insurance
against the time when they would be dragged into the dog-fight. Now,
with the German bogey killed--the most formidable and frightful
bogey--Austria disintegrated, Russia groping her way with bloodshot
eyes to a new democracy, a complete set of Fears has been removed. The
spirits of the peoples will be uplifted, the darkness of fear having
passed from them. We are coming out into the broad sunlight of sanity,
and mankind will march to better conquests than those of conscript
armies. Thank God, the United States of America (and don’t you forget
it!) will play a part in this advance to another New World.”
It was absurd to argue with the little man in a sodden field on the
road to Liège. Besides, though I saw weak links in his chain of
reasoning, I did not want to argue. I wanted to believe also that
our victory would not be a mere vulgar triumph of the old kind, one
military power rising upon the ruins of its rival, one great yell (or
many) of “Yah!--we told you so!” but that it would be a victory for
all humanity, shamed by the degradation of its orgy of blood, in spite
of all pride in long-enduring manhood, and that the peoples of the
world, with one common, enormous, generous instinct, would cry out,
“The horror has passed! Never again shall it come upon us.... Let us
pay back to the dead by contriving a better way of life for them who
follow!” The chance of that lay with living youth, if they would not
allow themselves to be betrayed by their Old Men. That also was a
mighty “If,” but I clung to the hope with as passionate a faith as that
of the little American doctor....
The way to the Rhine lay through many cities liberated from hostile
rule, through many wonderful scenes in which emotion surged like a
white flame above great crowds. There was a pageantry of life, which
I had never before seen in war or in peace, and those of us who went
that way became dazed by the endless riot of colour, and our ears were
tired by a tumult of joyous sound. In Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Liège,
Namur, Verviers, banners waved above every house. Flags--flags--flags,
of many nations and designs, decorated the house-fronts, were draped
on the balconies, were entwined in the windows, came like flames
above the heads of marching crowds. Everywhere there was the sound of
singing by multitudes, and through those weeks one song was always
in the air, triumphant, exultant, intoxicating, almost maddening in
its effect upon crowds and individuals--the old song of liberty and
revolt: “_La Marseillaise_.” With it, not so universal, but haunting in
constant refrain between the outbursts of that other tune, they sang
“_La Brabançonne_” of Belgium, and quaint old folk-songs that came to
life again with the spirit of the people. Bells pealed from churches in
which the Germans had left them by special favour. The belfry of Bruges
had not lost its carillon. In Ghent when the King of the Belgians rode
in along flower-strewn ways under banners that made one great canopy,
while cheers swept up and around him, to his grave, tanned, melancholy
face, unchanged by victory--so I had seen him in his ruined towns among
his dead--I heard the great boom of the Cathedral bell. In Brussels,
when he rode in later, there were many bells ringing and clashing, and
wild cheering which to me, lying in an upper room, after a smash on
the Field of Waterloo, seemed uncanny and inhuman, like the murmur of
innumerable ghost-voices. Into these towns, and along the roads through
Belgium to the Meuse, bands were playing and soldiers singing, and
on each man’s rifle was a flag or a flower. In every city there was
carnival. It was the carnival of human joy after long fasting from the
pleasure of life. Soldiers and civilians, men and women, sang together,
linked arms, danced together, through many streets, in many towns. In
the darkness of those nights of Armistice one saw the eyes of people,
sparkling, laughing, burning; the eyes of girls lit up by inner fires,
eager, roving, alluring, untamed; and the eyes of soldiers surprised,
amused, adventurous, drunken, ready for any kind of fun; and sometimes
in those crowds, dead eyes, or tortured eyes, staring inwards and not
outwards because of some remembrance which came like a ghost between
them and carnival.
In Ghent there were other sounds besides music and laughter, and
illuminations too fierce and ruddy in their glow to give me pleasure.
At night I heard the screams of women. I had no need to ask the meaning
of them. I had heard such screams before, when Pierre Nesle’s sister
Marthe was in the hands of the mob. But one man told me, as though I
did not know.
“They are cutting off some ladies’ hair. Six of them--the hussies. They
were too friendly with the Germans, you understand? Now they are being
stripped, for shame. There are others, _monsieur_. Many, many, if one
only knew. Hark at their howling!”
He laughed heartily, without any touch of pity. I tried to push my way
nearer, to try by some word of protest to stop that merry sport with
hunted women. The crowds were too dense, the women too far away. In any
case no word of mine would have had effect. I went into a restaurant
and ordered dinner, though not hungry. Brand was there, sitting alone
till I joined him. The place was filled with French and Belgian
officers, and womenfolk. The swing-door opened and another woman came
in and sat a few tables away from ours. She was a tall girl, rather
handsome, and better dressed than the ordinary bourgeoisie of Ghent. At
least so it seemed to me when she hung up some heavy furs on the peg
above her chair.
A waiter advanced towards her, and then, standing stock-still, began to
shout, with a thrill of fury in his voice. He shouted frightful words
in French and one sentence which I remember now.
“A week ago you sat there with a German officer!”
The Belgian officers were listening, gravely. One of them half-rose
from his chair with a flushed, wolfish face. I was staring at the girl.
She was white to the lips and held on to a brass rail as though about
to faint. Then, controlling herself, instantly, she fumbled at the
peg, pulled down her furs and fled through the swing-door.... She was
another Marthe.
Somebody laughed in the restaurant, but only one voice. For a moment
there was silence, then conversation was resumed, as though no figure
of tragedy had passed. The waiter who had denounced the woman swept
some crumbs off a table and went to fetch some soup.
Brand did not touch his food.
“I feel sick,” he said.
He pushed his plate away and paid the bill.
“Let’s go.”
He forgot to ask whether I wanted to eat--he was absent-minded in that
way--but I felt like him, and avoiding the Grande Place we walked by
hazard to a part of the city where some fires were burning. The sky was
reddened and we smelt smoke, and presently felt the heat of flames.
“What new devilry?” asked Brand. “Can’t these people enjoy Peace?
Hasn’t there been enough violence?”
“Possibly a bonfire,” I said, “symbolical of joy and warmth after cold
years!”
Coming closer, I saw that Brand was right. Black figures like dancing
devils were in the ruddy glare of a savage fire up a side street of
Ghent. In other streets were other fires. Close to where we stood
was an old inn called the Hôtel de la Demie-Lune--the Hotel of the
Half-Moon--and its windows had been heaved out, and inside the rooms
Belgian soldiers and citizens were flinging out tables and chairs and
planks and wainscoting to feed the bonfire below, and every time the
flames licked up to the new fuel there were shouts of joy from the
crowd.
“What does it mean?” asked Brand, and a man in the crowd told us that
the house had been used as the headquarters of a German organisation
for “Flemish Activists”--or Flamagands, as they were called--whose
object was to divide the Walloons, or French-speaking Belgians, from
the Flemings, in the interests of Germany.
“It is the people’s revenge for those who have tried to sow seeds of
hatred among them,” said the man.
Other people standing by spoke disapprovingly of the scene.
“The Germans have made too many fires in this war,” said an elderly man
in a black hat with a high crown and broad brim, like a portrait by
Franz Hals. “We don’t want to destroy our own houses now the enemy has
gone. That is madness.”
“It seems unnecessary!” said Brand.
As we made our way back we saw the light of other fires, and heard the
noise of smashing glass and a splintering of wood-work. The mob was
sacking shops which had traded notoriously with the Germans. Out of
one alley a man came running like a hunted animal. We heard his breath
panting as he passed. A shout of “Flamagand! Flamagand!” followed him,
and in another second a mob had caught him. We heard his death-cry,
before they killed him like a rat.
Never before in the history of the world had such crowds gathered
together as now in Brussels, Ghent or Liège. French and English
soldiers walked the same streets, khaki and sky-blue mingling. These
two races had met before, not as friends, in some of these towns--five
centuries and more before in history. But here also were men from
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the New World which
had come to the old world on this adventure, paying back something
to the old blood and the old ghosts because of their heritage, yet
strangely aloof on the whole from these continental peoples, not
understanding them, despising them.
The English soldier took it all as it came, with that queer
adaptability of his to any environment or any adventure, with his
simple human touch.
“Better than the old Ypres salient,” said one of them, grinning at me
after a game of Kiss-in-the-Ring at Verviers. He wiped the sweat from
his face and neck, and as he raised his arm I saw by his gold stripes
that he had been three times wounded. Yes, that was better than the old
Hell. He roared with laughter when one of his comrades went into the
ring with a buxom girl while the crowd danced round him, holding hands,
singing, laughing, pulling him this side and that.
The man who had just left the ring spoke to me again in a confidential
way.
“My wife wouldn’t like it if she’d seen me just then. I shan’t tell
’er. She wouldn’t understand. Nobody can understand the things we’ve
done, the things we’ve thought, nor the things we’ve seen, unless
they’ve been through with us ... and we don’t understand, neither!”
“Who does?” I asked, to express agreement with him, but he took my
words as a question to be answered.
“P’raps Gord knows. If so ’E’s a Clever One,’E is!... I wish I ’ad ’alf
’Is sense.”
He drifted away from me with a gurgle of laughter at a girl who pushed
his cap on one side.
Along the kerbstone of the market-place some transport-wagons were
halted, and the drivers were cooking their evening meal over a
charcoal stove, as though on one of the roads of war, while a crowd
of Belgians roared with laughter at their by-play with clasp-knives,
leaden spoons, and dixies. One of them was a cockney humourist--his
type was always to be found in any group of English soldiers--and was
performing a pantomime for the edification of the onlookers, and his
own pleasure.
A woman standing on the edge of this scene touched me on the sleeve.
“Are you going forward to the Rhine, _mon lieutenant_?”