tragic memories I could see again the small boy of that day following a
hearse; a space kept clear in which I walked alone, conscious of an
enormous following, the clumsy swaying of the tall black machine, the
chanting of the surpliced clergy at the head, the flames of tapers
passing under the low archway of the gate, the rows of bared heads on
the pavements with fixed, serious eyes. Half the population had turned
out on that fine May afternoon. They had not come to honour a great
achievement, or even some splendid failure. The dead and they were
victims alike of an unrelenting destiny which cut them off from every
path of merit and glory. They had come only to render homage to the
ardent fidelity of the man whose life had been a fearless confession in
word and deed of a creed which the simplest heart in that crowd could
feel and understand.
It seemed to me that if I remained longer there in that narrow street I
should become the helpless prey of the Shadows I had called up. They
were crowding upon me, enigmatic and insistent, in their clinging air of
the grave that tasted of dust and in the bitter vanity of all hopes.
“Let’s go back to the hotel, my boy,” I said. “It’s getting late.”
It will be easily understood that I neither thought nor dreamt that
night of a possible war. For the next two days I went about amongst my
fellow men, who welcomed me with the utmost consideration and
friendliness, but unanimously derided my fears of a war. They would not
believe in it. It was impossible. On the evening of the second day I was
in the hotel’s smoking-room, an irrationally private apartment, a
sanctuary for a few choice minds of the town, always pervaded by a dim
religious light, and more hushed than any club reading-room I’ve ever
been in. Gathered into a small knot, we were discussing the situation in
subdued tones suitable to the genius of the place.
A gentleman with a fine head of white hair suddenly pointed an impatient
finger in my direction and apostrophised me.
“What I want to know is whether, should there be war, England would come
in.”
The time to draw a breath, and I spoke out for the Cabinet without
faltering.
“Most assuredly. I should think all Europe knows that by this time.”
He took hold of the lapel of my coat and, giving it a slight jerk for
greater emphasis, said forcibly:
“Then if England will, as you say, and all the world knows it, there can
be no war. Germany won’t be so mad as that.”
On the morrow by noon we read of the German ultimatum. The day after
came the declaration of war and the Austrian mobilisation order. We were
fairly caught. All that remained for me to do was to get my party out of
the way of eventual shells. The best move which occurred to me was to
snatch them up instantly into the mountains to a Polish health resort of
great repute--which I did (at the rate of one hundred miles in eleven
hours) by the last civilian train permitted to leave Cracow for the next
three weeks.
And there we remained amongst the Poles from all parts of Poland, not
officially interned, but simply unable to obtain permission to travel by
train or road. It was a wonderful, a poignant two months. This is not
the time, and perhaps not the place, to enlarge upon the tragic
character of the situation; a whole people seeing the culmination of its
misfortunes in a final catastrophe, unable to trust any one, to appeal
to any one, to look for help from any quarter; deprived of all hope, and
even of its last illusions, and unable in the trouble of minds and the
unrest of consciences to take refuge in stoical acceptance. I have seen
all this. And I am glad I have not so many years left me to remember
that appalling feeling of inexorable Fate, tangible, palpable, come
after so many cruel years, a figure of dread, murmuring with iron lips
the final words: “Ruin--and Extinction.”
But enough of this. For our little band there was the awful anguish of
incertitude as to the real nature of events in the West. It is difficult
to give an idea how ugly and dangerous things looked to us over there.
Belgium knocked down and trampled out of existence, France giving in
under repeated blows, a military collapse like that of 1870, and England
involved in that disastrous alliance, her army sacrificed, her people in
a panic! Polish papers, of course, had no other than German sources of
information. Naturally, we did not believe all we heard, but it was
sometimes excessively difficult to react with sufficient firmness. We
used to shut our door, and there, away from everybody, we sat weighing
the news, hunting up discrepancies, scenting lies, finding reasons for
hopefulness, and generally cheering each other up. But it was a beastly
time. People used to come to me with very serious news and ask, “What do
you think of it?” And my invariable answer was, “Whatever has happened
or is going to happen, whoever wants to make peace, you may be certain
that England will not make it, not for ten years, if necessary.”
But enough of this, too. Through the unremitting efforts of Polish
friends we obtained at last the permission to travel to Vienna. Once
there, the wing of the American Eagle was extended over our uneasy
heads. We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the American Ambassador
(who all along interested himself in our fate) for his exertions on our
behalf, his invaluable assistance, and the real friendliness of his
reception in Vienna. Owing to Mr. Penfield’s action we obtained
permission to leave Austria. And it was a near thing, for his Excellency
has informed my American publishers since that a week later orders were
issued to have us detained until the end of the war. However, we
effected our hair’s-breadth escape into Italy and, reaching Genoa, took
passage in a Dutch mail-steamer, homeward bound from Java, with London
as a port of call.
On that sea route I might have picked up a memory at every mile if the
past had not been eclipsed by the tremendous actuality. We saw the signs
of it in the emptiness of the Mediterranean, the aspect of Gibraltar,
the misty glimpse in the Bay of Biscay of an outward-bound convoy of
transports, in the presence of British submarines in the Channel.
Innumerable drifters flying the naval flag dotted the narrow waters, and
two naval officers coming on board off the South Foreland piloted the
ship through the Downs.
The Downs! There they were, thick with the memories of my sea life. But
what were to me now the futilities of individual past! As our ship’s
head swung into the estuary of the Thames a deep, yet faint, concussion
passed through the air, a shock rather than a sound, which, missing my
ear, found its way straight into my heart. Turning instinctively to look
at my boys, I happened to meet my wife’s eyes. She also had felt
profoundly, coming from far away across the grey distances of the sea,
the faint boom of the big guns at work on the coast of Flanders--shaping
the future.
JOSEPH CONRAD
LIBERTÀ NELLA VITA
Da un’ anno, l’orror della guerra, e l’affanno della coscienza, per
comprenderne la inevitable necessità. L’Antico Libro dice: “_La spada
levata per uccidere guarisce talvolta_,” e a nostri giorni, una povera
donna del popolo firmo una carta questo affirmando: “_Sia la guerra, per
distrugger la guerra_;” e la povera donna del popolo ha due figlioli al
fronte.
--Infinita è la strage, e in ogni terra, disperazione e protesta!
--Per tanto dolore nel mondo, per ogni giovane esistenza troncata, sia
conquista e diritto, per ogni Patria, il somme dei beni: La libertà
nella Vita.
ELEONORA DUSE
_Il Cerro,
Boscolungo Pistoiese_
THE RIGHT TO LIBERTY
[TRANSLATION]
For the past year the horror of war, and the struggle of our minds to
comprehend its inevitable necessity!--Holy Writ says: “For all they that
take the sword shall perish with the sword,” and now in our day a poor
woman of the people ends her letter with these words: “There must be
war, that war may perish”--and this poor woman of the people has two
sons at the front.
Infinite is the suffering, and over the earth wailing and despair!
Through all this sorrow in the world, through all these young lives cut
short, may victory bring to every land the crown of life--the right to
Liberty.
ELEONORA DUSE
_Il Cerro,
Boscolungo Pistoiese_
[Illustration: _AUGUSTE RODIN_
TWO WOMEN
FROM AN ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR SKETCH]
_JOHN GALSWORTHY_
HARVEST
The sky to-night looks as if a million bright angels were passing--a
gleaming cloud-mesh drawn across the heaven. One star, very clear,
shines beside a full moon white as the globe-campion flower. The wan
hills and valleys, the corn-stooks, casting each its shadows, the grey
boles of the beeches--all have the remoteness of an ineffable peace. And
the past day was so soft, so glamorous; such a hum, such brightness, and
the harvest going on....
This last year millions have died with energy but one third spent;
millions more unripe for death will yet herald us into the long shades
before these shambles cease--boys born just to be the meat of war,
spitted on each others’ reddened bayonets, without inkling of guilt or
knowledge. To what shall we turn that we may keep sane, watching this
green, unripe corn, field on field, being scythed by Death for none to
eat? There is no solace in the thought: Death is nothing!--save to those
who still believe they go straight to Paradise. To us who dare not to
know the workings of the Unknowable, and in our heart of hearts cannot
tell what, if anything, becomes of us,--to us, the great majority of the
modern world--life is valuable, good, a thing worth living out for its
natural span. For, if it were not, long ere this we should have sat with
folded arms, lifting no hand till the last sighing breath of the human
race had whispered itself out into the wind, and a final darkness come;
sat, like the Hindu Yogi, watching the sun and moon a little, and
expired. The moon would be as white, and the sun as golden if we were
gone, the hills and valleys as mysterious, the beech-trees just as they
are, only the stooks of corn would vanish with those who garner them. If
life were not good we should make of ourselves dust indifferently--we
human beings; quietly, peacefully; not in murderous horror reaped by the
curving volleys, mown off by rains of shrapnel, and the long yellow
scythe of the foul gases. But life is good, and no living thing wishes
to die; even they who kill themselves, despairing, resign out of sheer
love of life; out of craving for what they have found too mutilated and
starved, out of yearning for their meed of joy cruelly frustrated. And
they who die that others may live are but those in whom the life-flame
burns so hot and bright that they can feel the life and the longing to
live in others as if it were their own--more than their own. Yea, life
carries with it a very passion for existence.
To what then shall we turn that we may keep sane, watching this harvest
of too young deaths, the harvest of the brave, whose stooks are raised
before us, casting each its shadow in the ironic moonlight? Green corn!
Green corn!
If, having watched those unripe blades reaped off and stacked so
pitifully, watched the great dark Waggoner clear those unmellowed
fields, we let their sacrifice be vain; if we sow not, hereafter, in a
peaceful Earth that which shall become harvest more golden than the
world has seen--then Shame on us, unending, in whatever land we
dwell....
This harvest night is still. And yet, up there, the bright angels are
passing over the moon. One Star!
JOHN GALSWORTHY
_August 28, 1915_
[Illustration: _CLAUDE MONET_
BOATS ON A BEACH
FROM AN EARLY CRAYON DRAWING]
_EDMUND GOSSE_
THE ARROGANCE AND SERVILITY OF GERMANY
We abound, while the war progresses, with examples of the calculated
ferocity of the Germans, of their lack of humanity, of their scorn of
the generous convention of behaviour. But there is a great danger that
on reflection, we may be tempted to regard these developments of
savagery as due to the fact of war itself, to a sudden madness of
blood-lust, to rage in the face of unanticipated resistance, even to
alarm, the emotion of terror being a fruitful source of cruelty as well
as of cowardice. It is well, therefore, lest we be tempted to excuse the
barbarism of the enemy, to cast our eyes backward and to endeavour to
recall what he was in times of peace, in his domestic surroundings,
unassailed by anger or fear or ill-humour. I make no apology, then, for
recounting an anecdote which illustrates, I think, certain qualities
which distinguish the German mentality from that of all the other races
which call themselves civilised. The incident which I will proceed to
describe was a trifling one, but the impression it left upon my memory
was profound.
In the early summer of 1911 my wife and I joined our dear friends, the
Dutch novelist Maarten Maartens and his daughter, in a motor-trip
through parts of the Rhine Province, and in particular the romantic and
volcanic districts of the Eiffel. Maarten Maartens (who died in Holland
so lately as the 3rd of August, 1915) was the most delightful travelling
companion, and the perfection of his linguistic gifts--for he spoke
English, French, Italian and German in each case like a native--made the
face of Europe one wide home to him. Our tour was nearly over; we had
descended the Moselle, and had paused where the Benedictine Abbey of
Laach, on the edge of its serene and wood-encircled crater-lake offers
hospitality to the stranger; and then we went down to the Rhine and
reached Königswinter late one afternoon. At Königswinter, as travellers
know, there is an hotel which Germans brag of as “the best in the
world.” It is, in fact, or was then, very large, sumptuously furnished,
nobly situated on the bastion of the Rhine, looking right over to
Drachenfels. The service was rapid and noiseless, the cooking as good as
a Teuton kitchen can produce. It had the air of highly-organised
prosperity, of a machine exactly suited to harmonise with wealth. To
call it “the best hotel in the world” is to show a false conception of
excellence as applied to hotels, but it presented everything that German
luxury could demand.
We were given a row of excellent rooms on the first floor, with long
windows opening on to a terrace which roofed the great restaurant, and
whence there was a noble prospect. We went to bed early, and soon the
whole vast establishment seemed wrapped in velvet silence. Not a sound
broke in the dark warm summer night, not even a whisper from the river.
Suddenly an amazing, an unintelligible riot woke the row of us from
slumber. The electric light, switched hurriedly on, revealed that the
hour was three. In front of us, apparently on our terrace, a turmoil was
proceeding of a character to wake the dead. Explosions of glass, what
seemed the deeper note of crockery, strange shrieks of metal,
bassoon-like and drum-like noises, a deafening roar. Turning off the
light, with face pressed to the window, there were dimly to be
distinguished phantom-objects descending from above our heads, a shower
of vague orbs and bosses, splinters of light, a chaos of the
indescribable. Presently the hubbub ceased, deep silence reigned again,
and after whispered and bewildered confabulation from door to door, we
fell again to dreamless sleep.
In the morning, the riot of the night was our only subject. The terrace
in front of our windows showed not the slightest evidence of any
disturbance, and we almost doubted our senses. At breakfast, the man who
served us knew nothing; he had not wakened all night, he declared.
Maarten Maartens, more and more intrigued, insisted on asking the
headwaiter. The answer of that worthy was, “There was no disturbance at
any time last night. If there had been, I could not have failed to hear
it.” Maarten Maartens broke from this sturdy liar, and went off to the
bureau of the Hotel. Here he found the manager, with whom he was
personally acquainted, seated at his desk; two or three other people
were near. To the Dutch novelist’s inquiry the manager answered--“There
was no noise in any part of the hotel at any time last night. You were
dreaming,--you had a nightmare.” Maarten Maartens, now thoroughly
baffled, almost began to think that the noise must have been a delusion
of the brain; when the manager, coming to him along a passage, and
glancing hither and thither to make sure no one was listening, said,
“The officers of a crack regiment from Cologne were supping last night
here, in the large private room on the second floor. At three o’clock,
as they were leaving, they threw everything that was on the
table,--glass, china, silver, everything,--out of window on to the
terrace below. But before four o’clock my waiters had removed every
trace of what the officers had done. I tell you the facts because you
are so persistent, but I must beg you to ask no more questions and make
no more remarks. If it were known to the authorities that any complaints
had been made, my licence would be withdrawn. My people are so well
disciplined, that not a single man or woman employed in the hotel would
admit that any incident had taken place.” Maarten Maartens said, “But
would you allow civilians to behave like that?” “Civilians!” exclaimed
the manager; “in their case I should telephone to the police at the
crash of the first wine-glass.”
Before we left Königswinter that day we went with Maarten Maartens to
call on the publisher of the German edition of his writings, which had a
very large sale. We were received with much ceremony in a modern house,
sumptuously furnished, and set in an enchanting park which goes down to
the Rhine. The civility of the great publisher and of his family was
extreme. In the course of conversation Maarten Maartens, in whom the
nocturnal bombardment of his bed-room rankled, told the story with a
great deal of humour and liveliness. When he had finished there was a
silence, and then the publisher said, very sententiously, “We never
criticise the Army! Allow me to show you that part of the garden which
has been finished since your last visit!”
This, then, is the spirit in which Germany has arrived at her present
amazing development. It renders her unique. Can any one conceive a party
of English officers, dining at the Ritz, and hurling all their plates
and dishes into the street below? Can any one conceive a party of French
civilians, of all classes, accepting a tyranny of arms so humiliating?
The arrogance and wantonness of a military aristocracy balanced by an
unquestioning servility of the great bulk of the nation. A Kultur of
which the watchword is, “We never criticise the Army!” An army in which
the qualities of self-respect and respect for others are totally
ignored. An amalgam of these contrasted elements makes up the atrocious
and formidable temperament of our enemy.
EDMUND GOSSE
[Illustration: _MAX BEERBOHM_
A GRACIOUS ACT. (CARICATURE)
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH]
_PAUL HERVIEU_
SCIENCE ET CONSCIENCE
La caractéristique de ce conflit européen sera sans doute, aux yeux de
nos descendants, qu’il aura été l’instant où la science aura failli à sa
mission. La science, cet attribut des dieux dont l’anoblissement s’est
étendu aux mortels depuis le temps de Prométhée, la science, cette
conquête pure, cette bienfaitrice, cette aïeule tutélaire, oui! la
céleste science, nous l’avons vue, en certaines mains, devenir
provisoirement scélérate. Elle a choyé l’incendie, rendu pratiques les
milliers d’assassinats par noyade. Elle s’est faite empoisonneuse des
poumons, vitrioleuse des visages. Les savants d’outre-Rhin auront passé
leurs nuits à chercher quel nouvel attentat aux lois divines et
humaines, quel crime inédit pourraient être lancés en défi aux nations,
par le mauvais génie de leur science à eux, par cette science qui a
réussi à rendre la guerre plus hideuse encore qu’elle n’était de
naissance.
Si c’étaient ces innovations impies qui dussent ouvrir les chemins que
prendra l’avenir, alors une guerre future s’emploierait à rendre
vénéneux les épis du froment, sophistiquerait les nuages pour que leur
ondée verse les épidémies dont les germes sont actuellement découverts
ou celles que créerait le travail des laboratoires allemands. La Kultur
drainerait les laves des volcans sous les villes, et arrêterait d’avance
les étendues d’écorce terrestre à projeter dans l’espace. Et ceux des
diverses planètes, qui sont à lorgner la nôtre, constateraient, aux
siècles prochains, qu’une monstrueuse science aurait fait de notre
Terre, une seconde Lune, sans espèce vivante ni atmosphère, autour de
laquelle des satellites soudain mort-nés seraient les continents
exploses de l’Ancien-Monde, ou de l’une et l’autre Amériques.
Mais non! Le vieux maître écrivain François Rabelais a écrit: “Science
sans conscience est la ruine de l’âme.” La science sans conscience sera
la ruine aussi des gens qui l’ont choisie pour base de leur empire. La
science démoniaque verra briser ses ailes de chauve-souris, par ce
pouvoir invisible et impondérable qui, ange gardien des hommes,
s’appelle la conscience.
Depuis que la civilisation est en marche, elle va lentement, patiemment,
irrésistiblement, vers le mieux, vers le bien. Elle a constitué
l’inépuisable réserve, l’invincible armée des valeurs morales, d’où
sortent les affranchissements, les justices, les dignités de la race et
toute loi de vérité. Cette puissance morale, on a l’Histoire pour en
démontrer la constante victoire contre les tyrannies les plus solides,
contre les violences les mieux organisées. Mais je n’en veux que la
démonstration suivante:
L’État qui a dit que la force prime le droit, l’État qui a piétiné
effroyablement toute faiblesse et qui n’a d’égards que pour ce qui est
fort, d’où vient que cet État jugea nécessaire de mentir à son peuple,
et à la face de tous les peuples sur les vraies causes de la guerre et
sur les vrais auteurs responsables? D’où vient que cet État ne manque
pas, à chaque occasion, de rééditer le mensonge et de s’y gargariser
vainement, ridiculement, follement? Il a marqué ainsi son effroi de la
conscience universelle. Celui qui ne s’inquiétait, il y a un an, ni du
ciel ni de l’enfer, avait pourtant senti tout de suite, il ne cesse de
sentir, aujourd’hui, l’action vengeresse et triomphale s’élaborant dans
toutes les consciences de l’humanité, ennemies, neutres, et même
sujettes.
PAUL HERVIEU
_de l’Académie Française_
_31 Juillet 1915_
SCIENCE AND CONSCIENCE
[TRANSLATION]
It will be left to our descendants to realize that the chief
significance of this European conflict lies in its marking the moment
when Science failed in her mission. Science, our heritage from the gods,
whose high destiny has been fulfilling itself among mortals since the
days of Prometheus: Science, mankind’s purest conquest, the
benefactress, the tutelary guardian--celestial Science, corrupted by
strange teachings, has turned and rent us. She has let loose the horror
of fire and set her hand to the murder of thousands by drowning. She has
poisoned the air that men breathe, and flung vitriol in their faces. Her
votaries beyond the Rhine have passed the watches of the night in
seeking some new violation of laws human and divine--some undreamt
outrage to be launched against the nations by the evil genius of that
Science of theirs which has made War, hideous as it was at birth, more
loathsome still.
If these unholy innovations were to blaze the way for the future, we
should find the war-makers of to-morrow causing the wheat-fields to bear
a poisoned harvest and forcing the very clouds in heaven to rain down
pestilences whose germs are known to us now, or would in time be brought
to birth in the alembics of German laboratories. Kultur would channel
the lava of volcanoes under great cities, and hurl into space vast
stretches of the earth’s crust. The planets of the universe, watching,
would learn in centuries to come that a monstrous Science had
transformed our World into another Moon, void of life and air, around
which swim still-born satellites that were once the blasted continents
of the Old World or the Americas.
But this is not to be. The old master-writer, François Rabelais, has
said: “Science without conscience spells ruin to the soul.” And so
Science without conscience must mean the destruction of that nation
which has chosen it as the foundation of empire. Demoniacal Science,
dragon-winged, will be shattered against that invisible and imponderable
force, the guardian angel of mankind, which is called Conscience.