War and Peace
WAR AND PEACE
These Latter Days
By Olive Tilford Dargan
(From “Path Flower.”)
Take down thy stars, O God! We look not up.
In vain thou hangest there thy changeless sign.
We lift our eyes to power’s glowing cup,
Nor care if blood make strong that wizard wine,
So we but drink and feel the sorcery
Of conquest in our veins, of wits grown keen
In strain and strife for flesh-sweet sovereignty,—
The fatal thrill of kingship over men.
What though the soul be from the body shrunk,
And we array the temple, but no god?
What though the cup of golden greed once drunk,
Our dust be laid in a dishonored sod,
While thy loud hosts proclaim the end of wars?
We read no sign. O, God, take down thy stars!
Breeding Machines
By Marion Craig Wentworth
(From “War Brides,” a drama of protest, popularized by the Russian
actress, Nazimova.)
HOFFMAN: When we are gone—the best of us,—what will the country do if it
has no children?
HEDWIG: Why didn’t you think of that before?—before you started this
wicked war?
HOFFMAN—I tell you it is a glory to be a war bride. There!
HEDWIG (with a shrug): A breeding machine! (They all draw back). Why not
call it what it is? Speak the naked truth for once?
...
HOFFMAN: That isn’t the question now. We are going away—the best of us—to
be shot, most likely. Don’t you suppose we want to send some part of
ourselves into the future, since we can’t live ourselves? There, that’s
straight; and right, too.
HEDWIG: What I said—to breed a soldier for the empire; to restock the
land. (Fiercely). And for what? For food for the next generation’s
cannon. Oh, it is an insult to our womanhood! You violate all that makes
marriage sacred! (Agitated, she walks about the room). Are we women never
to get up out of the dust? You never asked us if we wanted this war, yet
you ask us to gather in the crops, cut the wood, keep the world going,
drudge and slave, and wait, and agonize, lose our all, and go on bearing
more men—and more—to be shot down! If we breed the men for you, why don’t
you let us say what is to become of them? Do we want them shot—the very
breath of our life?
HOFFMAN: It is for the fatherland.
HEDWIG: You use us, and use us,—dolls, beasts of burden, and you expect
us to bear it forever dumbly; but I won’t! I shall cry out till I die.
And now you say it almost out loud, “Go and breed for the empire.” War
brides! Pah!
HOFFMAN: I never would dream of speaking to Amelia like that. She is the
sweetest girl I have seen for many a day.
HEDWIG: What will happen to Amelia? Have you thought of that? No; I
warrant you haven’t. Well, look. A few kisses and sweet words, the
excitement of the ceremony, the cheers of the crowd, some days of living
together,—I won’t call it marriage, for Franz and I are the ones who know
what real marriage is, and how sacred it is,—then what? Before you know
it, an order to march. No husband to wait with her, to watch over her.
Think of her anxiety if she learns to love you. What kind of a child
will it be? Look at me. What kind of a child would I have, do you think?
I can hardly breathe for thinking of my Franz, waiting, never knowing
from minute to minute. From the way I feel, I should think my child
would be born mad, I’m that wild with worrying. And then for Amelia to
go through the agony alone! No husband to help her through the terrible
hour. What solace can the state give then? And after that, if you don’t
come back, who is going to earn the bread for her child? Struggle and
struggle to feed herself and her child; and the fine-sounding name you
trick us with—war-bride! Humph! That will all be forgotten then. Only one
thing can make it worth while, and do you know what that is? Love! Well
struggle through fire and water for that, but without it....
Babies Bred for War
By Mary Field
(In “Everyman.”)
Said Prince Bismarck with a shrug of his shoulder to a comment on the
great number of men killed in one of the Franco-Prussian battles, “Oh,
well, we will have another crop in twenty years!”
It is crops of men that governments depend upon. At the outbreak of
the war the military nations of Europe took immediate steps to provide
for the next crop of soldiers. Before the ranks mobilized the seed of
warriors was sown. In Germany all soldiers were urged to marry before
leaving for the front. In many churches hundreds of couples were married
simultaneously that no time might be lost. One of the Emperor’s own sons
set the example which thousands of marriageable men immediately followed.
In some villages “holy matrimony” was recognized as the equivalent of an
engagement. Everywhere throughout the fatherland distinctions between
legitimate and illegitimate have become indistinct. An illegitimate
son receives the support of the government. To bear children for
the fatherland is of greater virtue than that they shall be born of
wedlock, for thrones are greater than altars and exigencies greater than
ceremonies.
War Cripples
By Madeline Z. Doty
(In “The New Republic.”)
France says little and does much. She is proud; she is heroic; she fights
on. But the heart and life of France is being crushed. It is impossible
to see this and do nothing. I offer my services as assistant nurse at the
American ambulance and am accepted....
On the second morning as I hurry down a long hospital corridor I see
a familiar face. A short, dark-haired, dark-eyed young man is coming
toward me. He is one of the wounded and his right arm is gone. His eye
catches mine. He stops bewildered. Then comes recognition. It is Zeni
Peshkoff—Maxim Gorki’s adopted son. Eight years ago when this man was a
boy I had known him in America. I grasp the left hand, and my eyes drop
before the empty right sleeve. But Zeni Peshkoff is still gay, laughing
Zeni. He makes light of his trouble. Not until later do I understand
the terrible suffering there is from the missing arm or realize how he
struggles to use what is not. Peshkoff had been in the trenches for
months. He had been through battles and bayonet charges and escaped
unhurt, but at last his day had come. A bursting shell destroyed the
right arm. He knew the danger, and struggling to his feet, walked from
the battlefield. With the left hand he supported the bleeding, broken
right arm. As he stumbled back past trenches full of German prisoners his
plight was so pitiful, his pluck so great, that instinctively these men
saluted. At the Place de Secours eight hundred wounded had been brought
in. There were accommodations for one hundred and fifty.
All night young Peshkoff lay unattended, for there were others worse
hurt. Gangrene developed, and he watched it spread from fingers to hand
and from hand to arm. In the morning a friendly lieutenant noticed
him. “There’s one chance,” he said, “and that’s a hospital. If you can
walk, come with me.” Slowly young Peshkoff arose. Half fainting he
dressed and went with the lieutenant—first by taxi to the train and then
twelve torturing hours to Paris. As the hours passed the gangrene crept
higher and higher. The sick man grew giddy with fever. At each station
his carriage companions, fearing death, wished to leave him upon the
platform. But the lieutenant was firm. The one chance for life was the
hospital. Finally, Paris was reached; a waiting ambulance rushed him to
the hospital. Immediately he was taken to the operating room and the arm
amputated. A half hour more and his arm could not have been saved. But
this dramatic incident is only one of many. The pluck of the average
soldier is unbelievable. Operations are accepted without question. There
are no protests—only the murmured “_C’est la guerre, que voulez-vous_.”
I asked Zeni Peshkoff, Socialist, what his sensations were when he went
out to kill. “It didn’t seem real, it doesn’t now. Before my last charge
the lieutenant and I were filled with the beauty of the night. We sat
gazing at the stars. Then the command came, and we rushed forward. It
did not seem possible I was killing human beings.” It is this unreality
that sustains men. Germans are not human beings—only the enemy. For
the wounded French soldier will tell you he loathes war and longs for
peace. He fights for one object—a permanent peace. He fights to save his
children from fighting.
The Devonshire Mother
By Marjorie Wilson
(In “The Westminster Gazette.”)
The king have called the Devon lads and they be answering fine—
But shadows seem to hide this way, for all the sun do shine,
For there’s Squire’s son have gone for one, and Parson’s son—and mine.
I mind the day mine went from me—the skies were all aglow—
The cows deep in our little lanes was comin’ home so slow—
“And don’t ’ee never grieve yourself,” he said, “because I go.”
His arms were strong around me, then he turned and went away—
I heard the little childer dear a’ singin’ at their play;
The meanin’ of an achin’ heart is hid from such as they.
And scarce a day goes by now but I set my door ajar,
And watch the road that Jan went up, the time he went to war,
That when he’ll come again to me, I’ll see him from afar.
And in my chimney seat o’ nights, when quiet grows the farm,
I pray the Lord he be not cold, while I have fire to warm—
And give the mothers humble hearts whose boys are kept from harm.
And then I take the Book and read before I seek my rest,
Of how that other Son went forth (them parts I like the best),
And left his mother lone for him she’d cuddled on her breast.
I like to think when nights were dark, and Him at prayer, maybe,
Upon the gurt dark mountain side, or in His boat at sea,
He worried just a bit for her, who’d learnt Him at her knee.
And maybe when He minds her ways, He will not let Jan fall—
I’m thinkin’ He will know my boy, with his dear ways an’ all—
With his tanned face, his eyes of blue, and he so strappin’ tall.
The Last Racial War
By Clara Zetkin
(Well-known Socialist leader of Germany. Many times imprisoned for her
denunciation of the present war. The following is from “Die Gleichheit,”
a woman’s paper, edited by herself.)
Above the horror of this dark hour do we not see the light of certainty
that the longing of the poor and weak for free humanity must again unite
the peoples in one ideal and effort? We women hear the voices which in
this time of blood and iron speak low and painfully, but nobly, of and
for the future. Let us interpret them for our children. Let us guard
against the hollow din which fills our streets today, when cheap racial
pride defeats humanity. In our children we must have a pledge that this
most fearful of all wars is the last racial struggle. The blood of dead
and wounded must have become a stream to divide what present need and
future hope unite. It must be a chain to bind eternally.
The Early Morning Funeral
By Edna Elliott-Carr
(In “The Living Age.”)
One of the sad sights is the early morning funeral to be met almost daily
in the streets of Paris—the lonely journey of a dead hero from his bed of
suffering to the Garden of Sleep.
One sunny morning as I turned from the wide Champs Elysees into a side
street, I found waiting near the back entrance of a large hotel hospital
a small company of gendarmes with bowed heads, their banner bearing the
crêpe ribbons of mourning. Near them a few passers-by were standing
reverently looking on. I waited. The hearse drove closer to the door,
and later bore away the coffin. No military pomp or display! A splendid
hero had given his life for his country, and this was his simple funeral.
Above, on the window balconies, some maids stood looking down, crying,
and wiping their tears away with their aprons. This “colonel” had lain
only four days in the house of suffering, but in so short a time had been
beloved enough to be missed. The gendarmes followed slowly, and in the
rear a motor car bore a military official. That was all!
The sun seemed to cease shining, and the world looked cold and gray. A
taxi cab hovered in sight. I hailed it, and, entering, bade the driver
accompany the solemn cortage slowly. I had a sudden wish to follow this
soldier to his last resting place, and as I did so, my thoughts were sad
ones. How many thousands of such deaths could this war already account
for, and how many thousands of hearts had it broken?
Russian Women in Time of War
By Sarah Kropotkin-Lebedeff
(In “The Outlook” for October 21, 1914. Madame Lebedeff is the daughter
of the Russian Prince, Peter Kropotkin, known the world over for his
brilliant books, and his revolutionary ideas.)
It is not for nothing that the Russian peasant woman is respected by
her men and counted as their equal in all labor. She plows and sows and
reaps with them, rising before the sun and ceasing work only when the
day fades. And the work she has to undertake when her men have gone
to war is no light one. Each family has at least five or six acres to
cultivate. The pasture land the village holds is common. It is usually
the custom in time of stress for the workers to do all the field work in
common. At three in the morning the women, and even the children, turn
out to work; at eleven they have a meal of dry black bread and perhaps
a small cucumber. Then, while the sun is high, they sleep; and from four
o’clock they work again, till sunset.... There is other work for the
women to do—shoeing horses, mending plows, scythes, wheels, and so on.
The blacksmith has gone to the war, the wheelwright also; so the peasant
woman wields the hammer and sends the chips flying with the ax. In the
summer she fells the trees and shears the sheep. And all the winter she
spins and weaves, waiting for her men to come back, hoping always, and
teaching her children to love their country and their father, who has
gone to defend them against a strange foe.
Red Easter
By Marion Brown
(In “Femina.”)
This is a spring that has no Easter Day.
Even the little children must be told
That all the beauty of the world is sold;
And in the grim, gray ranks of war’s array
Christ’s carols turn to knells of loud dismay.
Nor women’s tears nor kingly power nor gold
Can resurrect the forms the trenches hold.
Ah, children murmur softly at your play
Lest your sweet mirth like poisoned darts be sped
Swift to the widowed mother hearts reviled
Twice over as they clasp their still-born dead.
Pray, children, for the world’s unreconciled!
Ye are our only lilies undefiled—
The others are incarnadined too red.
The Rising Value of a Baby
By Mabel Potter Daggett
(From “What the War Really Means to Women” in “Pictorial Review.”)
Thus is explained quite simply over the world to-day the rising value of
a baby. Civilization is running short in the supply of men. We don’t know
exactly how short. There are Red Cross returns that say in the first six
months alone of the war there were 2,146,000 men killed in battle and
1,150,000 more seriously wounded. Figures, however, of cold statistics,
as always, may be challenged. There is a living figure that may not be.
See the woman in black all over Europe, and to-morrow we shall meet her
in Broadway. There are so many of her in every belligerent land over
there that her crêpe veil flutters across her country’s flag like the
smoke that dims the landscape in a factory town. It is the mourning
emblem of her grief, unmistakably symbolizing the dark catastrophe of
civilization that has signaled Parliaments to assemble in important
session. Population is being killed off at such an appalling rate at the
front that the means for replacing it behind the lines must be speeded up
without delay. To-day registrar-generals in every land, in white-faced
panic, are scanning the figures of the birth-rates that continue to show
steadily diminishing returns. And in every house of government in the
world, above all the debates on aeroplanes and submarines and shipping
and shells, there is the rising alarm of another demand. Fill the
cradles! In the defense of the State, men bear arms. It is women who must
bear the armies.
Wars Will Cease
By Anna A. Maley
(Prominent Socialist speaker and writer. Socialist nominee for Governor
of Washington in 1912.)
Wars will cease when the conditions which cause them are abolished.
The present war is no more of an “accident” than have been the wars of
the past. But it is terrible and far-reaching enough in its effects to
warrant a reconstruction of our political and industrial systems.
The Prussians in Poland
By Laura de Turczynowicz
(Nee Blackwell)
(The story of an American woman, the wife of a Polish nobleman, caught in
her home by the floodtide of German invasion of the ancient Kingdom of
Poland. From “When the Prussians Came to Poland.”[16])
“Manya did not come when I rang—for Jacob.... A long time afterward my
cook came. She had difficulty in controlling herself, but finally made me
understand. The doctor had taken Manya—not yet seventeen! God help her!...
“Four days after Manya’s disappearance, news was brought that she was in
the house of an old Jewess, a cigarette maker. Leaving the cook with the
children, and hardly able to drag myself along, I went with Jacob to find
her.... After many difficulties we finally found the place, and paying no
attention to the soldiers about, pushed our way into the room where Manya
was—what _had_ been Manya. When she, poor creature, saw us, she threw
herself on the floor sobbing. An officer came in to ask our business
with the girl.
“She is my maid—stolen! This is her father. I have come to take her home.
“‘I am very sorry, but you are not allowed to take her, she belongs to
the soldiers.’
“Don’t you see, Herr Officer, the girl is dying?
“‘Ill she is, and shall have the best of care. We have doctors to attend
just such cases.’ And I had to leave her! Jacob’s face was without
expression, he seemed to have lost the power to think or feel—his little
girl—!”
[16] Grosset & Dunlap.
The Deserter
By Ellen N. LaMotte
(The story of the human wreckage of the battlefield, as witnessed by an
American hospital nurse a few miles behind the French lines. From “The
Backwash of War.”[17])
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof
of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye,
and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into an
ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field
hospital. The journey was made in double quick time, over rough Belgian
roads. To save his life, he must reach the hospital without delay, and
if he was bounced to death jolting along at break-neck speed, it did not
matter. That was understood. He was a deserter, and discipline must be
maintained. Since he had failed on the job, his life must be saved, he
must be nursed back to health, until he was well enough to be stood up
against a wall and shot. This is War. Things like this also happen in
peace time, but not so obviously.
At the hospital he behaved abominably. The ambulance men declared that
he had tried to throw himself out of the back of the ambulance, that he
had yelled and hurled himself about, and spat blood all over the floor
and blankets—in short, he was very disagreeable. Upon the operating table
he was no more reasonable. He shouted and screamed and threw himself
from side to side, and it took a dozen leather straps and four or five
orderlies to hold him in position, so that the surgeon could examine him.
During this commotion his left eye rolled about loosely upon his cheek,
and from his bleeding mouth he shot great clots of stagnant blood, caring
not where they fell. One fell upon the immaculate white uniform of the
_Directrice_, and stained her from breast to shoes. It was disgusting.
They told him it was _La Directrice_, and that he must be careful. For
an instant he stopped his raving, and regarded her fixedly with his
remaining eye, then took aim afresh, and again covered her with his
cowardly blood. Truly it was disgusting.
To the _Medecin Major_ it was incomprehensible, and he said so. To
attempt to kill oneself, when, in these days, it was so easy to die in
honour upon the battlefield, was something he could not understand. So
the _Medecin Major_ stood patiently aside, his arms crossed, his supple
fingers pulling the long black hairs on his bare arms, waiting. He had
long to wait, for it was difficult to get the man under the anesthetic.
Many cans of ether were used, which went to prove that the patient was a
drinking man. Whether he had acquired the habit of hard drink before or
since the war could not be ascertained; the war had lasted a year now,
and in that time many habits may be formed. As the _Medecin Major_ stood
there, patiently fingering the hairs on his hairy arms, he calculated the
amount of ether that was expended—five cans of ether, at so many francs a
can—however, the ether was a donation from America, so it did not matter.
Even so, it was wasteful.
At last they said he was ready. He was quiet. During his struggles he
had broken out two big teeth with the mouth gag, and that added a little
more blood to the blood already choking him. Then the _Medecin Major_
did a very skillful operation. He trephined the skull, extracted the
bullet that had lodged beneath it, and bound back in place that erratic
eye. After which the man was sent back to the ward, while the surgeon
returned hungrily to his dinner, long overdue. In the ward, he was a bad
patient. He insisted upon tearing off his bandages, although they told
him that this meant bleeding to death. His mind seemed fixed on death.
He seemed to want to die, and was thoroughly unreasonable, although
quite conscious. All of which meant that he required constant watching
and was a perfect nuisance. He was so different from the other patients,
who wanted to live. It was a joy to nurse them. By expert surgery, by
expert nursing, some of these were to be returned to their homes again,
_reformes_, mutilated for life, a burden to themselves and to society;
others were to be nursed back to health, to a point at which they could
again shoulder eighty pounds of marching kit, and be torn to pieces again
on the firing lines. It was a pleasure to nurse such as these. It called
forth all one’s skill, all one’s humanity. But to nurse back to health a
man who was to be court-martialled and shot, truly that was a dead-end
occupation....
Dawn filtered in through the little square windows of the ward. Two of
the patients rolled on their sides, that they might talk to one another.
In the silence of early morning their voices rang clear.
“Dost thou know, _mon ami_, that when we captured that German battery a
few days ago, we found gunners chained to their guns?”
[17] Putnam Sons.
The Prayer of the Toilers
By Rose Mills Powers
(In “The Survey.”)
Lord of the peaceful Toilers, hark to the toiler’s plea:
The kings of the earth assemble, pawns in their hands are we.
Now as the battle thickens, out of the blood and flame,
Lord of the Toilers, hear us; forgive us who play the game.
Lord of the cheerful reapers, the harvest was fair and good.
Hard by our quiet hearth stones, the yellowing wheat fields stood,
But the scythe has become a sabre in meadow and glebe and glen.
Lord of the Toilers, hear us; forgive as we cut down men!
Lord of the cunning craftsmen: The vision of Thee a lad,
Working with plane and measure, kept us content and glad;
Now, as we charge, red-handed, wielding the tools that kill,
Lord of the Toilers, hear us: Forgive us the blood we spill.
Lord of the visioning learners: out of our cloistered halls,
Parchment and tomb abandoned, we march when the bugle calls,
Death and destruction hurling, havoc to babes and wives,
Lord of the Toilers, hear us: Forgive us these broken lives.
Lord of the keen-eyed traders: our vessels went up and down,
Our shores were alive with traffic in village and mart and town,
But our harbors are red with slaughter, the markets in ruins lie,
Lord of the Toilers, hear us; forgive as we strike and die!
Lord of the peaceful Toilers, husbandman, craftsman, clerk,
Student and sage and trader, torn from the world’s good work,
Dead in the King’s arena, pawns who were not to blame,
Lord of the Toilers, hear us: end now the awful game!
Righteous Wars
By Beulah Marie Dix
(From the drama, “Across the Border.”)
THE JUNIOR LIEUTENANT: Children crying—hungry, freezing, tortured.
Hundreds of ’em. Poor little devils! Old women—starving, stumbling,
driven, mumbling their prayers that nobody minds. Mothers crying over
the smashed-up things that were their kids. Ah-h! That’s the horses
screeching. Don’t you hear them? When a shell rips them up they look at
you beseeching. But you can’t waste shot on them.... That’s the chaps in
the hospital now—drying up with typhoid, rotting with dysentery—chaps on
the battlefield, torn and smashed and mangled, two days of it, three days
of it, and the wheels of the big guns grinding them to pulp. Ah-h! That’s
some chaps caught in the granary. It’s burning. The flames are at them.
That’s a train load of wounded, smashing through a bridge, stifling,
drowning, helpless, rats in a trap. Men and women and children,—hundreds
of ’em, thousands of ’em, millions of ’em—O my God! My God! Why don’t
you stop it? Why don’t you stop it?
THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE: Did you do anything to stop it? It’s drifted
through here, that wail of the world, for a long time now. Years.
Centuries. Ages. God hears it. It repented Him that He made the world.
Always the crying comes up to us. Always misery and to spare. But it’s
worse when you are making your righteous wars. For they’re all righteous.
There’s never a man comes here but says, as you said, that his cause
is just and God is on his side. It’s wonderful how many ages through,
as you reckon time, you men have fought your righteous wars to advance
civilization, and you’re advancing it today just the same way you did
when Attilia was king.
By Ellen Key
(See page 143)
If war should stand as an eternal phantom against the horizon of the
world, then all social work for the elevating and purifying of humanity
might as well be laid down forever.