AN ARMY OF CHILDREN
It is undeniably true that the humanities are failing us as the war
goes on. Not, thank God, the broad humanity of the Red Cross, but that
individual compassion of a man for his wounded brother, of which the
very fabric of mercy is woven. There is too much death, too much
suffering. Men grow calloused. As yet the loss is not irretrievable,
but the war is still only a matter of months. What if it is to be of
years?
France and Belgium were suffering from a wave of atheism before the
war. But there comes a time in the existence of nations, as in the
lives of individuals, when human endeavour seems useless, when the
world and the things thereof have failed. At such time nations and
individuals alike turn at last to a Higher Power. France is on her
knees to-day. Her churches are crowded. Not perhaps since the days of
chivalry, when men were shriven in the churches before going out to
battle, has France so generally knelt and bowed her head--but it is to
the God of Battles that she prays.
On her battlefields the priests have most signally distinguished
themselves. Some have exchanged the soutane for the uniform, and have
fought bravely and well. Others, like the priests who stood firm in
the midst of Jordan, have carried their message of hope to the dying
into the trenches.
No article on the work of the Red Cross can be complete without a
reference to the work of these priests, not perhaps affiliated with
the society, but doing yeoman work of service among the wounded. They
are everywhere, in the trenches or at the outposts, in the hospitals
and hospital trains, in hundreds of small villages, where the entire
community plus its burden of wounded turns to the _curé_ for
everything, from advice to the sacrament.
In prostrate Belgium the demands on the priests have been extremely
heavy. Subjected to insult, injury and even death during the German
invasion, where in one diocese alone thirteen were put to death--their
churches destroyed, or used as barracks by the enemy--that which was
their world has turned to chaos about them. Those who remained with
their conquered people have done their best to keep their small
communities together and to look after their material needs--which
has, indeed, been the lot of the priests of battle-scarred Flanders
for many generations.
Others have attached themselves to the hospital service. All the
Belgian trains of wounded are cared for solely by these priests, who
perform every necessary service for their men, and who, as I have said
before, administer the sacrament and make coffee to cheer the flagging
spirits of the wounded, with equal courage and resource.
Surgeons, nurses, priests, nuns, volunteer workers who substitute for
lack of training both courage and zeal, these are a part of the
machinery of mercy. There is another element--the boy scouts.
During the early days of the war the boy scouts of England, then on
school holiday, did marvellous work. Boys of fourteen made repeated
trips across the Channel, bringing back from France children,
invalids, timorous women. They volunteered in the hospitals, ran
errands, carried messages, were as useful as only willing boys can be.
They did scout service, too, guarding the railway lines and assisting
in watching the Channel coast; but with the end of the holiday most of
the English boy scouts were obliged to go back to school. Their
activities were not over, but they were largely curtailed.
There were five thousand boy scouts in Belgium at the beginning of the
war. I saw them everywhere--behind the battle lines, on the driving
seats of ambulances, at the doors of hospitals. They were very calm.
Because I know a good deal about small boys I smothered a riotous
impulse to hug them, and spoke to them as grown-up to grown-up. Thus
approached, they met my advances with dignity, but without excitement.
And after a time I learned something about them from the Chief Scout
of Belgium; perhaps it will show the boy scouts of America what they
will mean to the country in time of war. Perhaps it will make them
realise that being a scout is not, after all, only camping in the
woods, long hikes, games in the open. The long hikes fit a boy for
dispatch carrying, the camping teaches him to care for himself when,
if necessity arises, he is thrown on the country, like his older
brother, the fighting man.
A small cog, perhaps, in the machinery of mercy, but a necessary one.
A vital cog in the vast machinery of war--that is the boy scout
to-day.
The day after the declaration of war the Belgian scouts were
mobilised, by order of the minister of war--five thousand boys, then,
ranging in age from twelve to eighteen, an army of children. What a
sight they must have been! How many grown-ups can think of it with dry
eyes? What a terrible emergency was this, which must call the children
into battle!
They were placed at the service of the military authorities, to do any
and every kind of work. Some, with ordinary bicycles or motorcyles,
were made dispatch riders. The senior scouts were enlisted in the
regular army, armed, and they joined the soldiers in barracks. The
younger boys, between thirteen and sixteen, were letter-carriers,
messengers in the different ministries, or orderlies in the hospitals
that were immediately organised. Those who could drive automobiles
were given that to do.
Others of the older boys, having been well trained in scouting, were
set to watch points of importance, or given carbines and attached to
the civic guard. During the siege of Liège between forty and fifty boy
scouts were constantly employed carrying food and ammunition to the
beleaguered troops.
The Germans finally realised that every boy scout was a potential spy,
working for his country. The uniform itself then became a menace,
since boys wearing it were frequently shot. The boys abandoned it, the
older ones assuming the Belgian uniform and the younger ones returning
to civilian dress. But although, in the chaos that followed the
invasion and particularly the fall of Liège, they were virtually
disbanded, they continued their work as spies, as dispatch riders, as
stretcher-bearers.
There are still nine boy scouts with the famous Ninth Regiment, which
has been decorated by the king.
One boy scout captured, single-handed, two German officers. Somewhere
or other he had got a revolver, and with it was patrolling a road. The
officers were lost and searching for their regiments. As they stepped
out of a wood the boy confronted them, with his revolver levelled.
This happened near Liège.
Trust a boy to use his wits in emergency! Here is another lad, aged
fifteen, who found himself in Liège after its surrender, and who
wanted to get back to the Belgian Army. He offered his services as
stretcher-bearer in the German Army, and was given a German Red Cross
pass. Armed with this pass he left Liège, passed successfully many
sentries, and at last got to Antwerp by a circuitous route. On the way
he found a dead German and, being only a small boy after all, he took
off the dead man's stained uniform and bore it in his arms into
Antwerp!
There is no use explaining about that uniform. If you do not know boys
you will never understand. If you do, it requires no explanation.
Here is a fourteen-year-old lad, intrusted with a message of the
utmost importance for military headquarters in Antwerp. He left
Brussels in civilian clothing, but he had neglected to take off his
boy scout shirt--boy-fashion! The Germans captured him and stripped
him, and they burned the boy scout shirt. Then they locked him up, but
they did not find his message.
All day he lay in duress, and part of the night. Perhaps he shed a few
tears. He was very young, and things looked black for him. Boy scouts
were being shot, remember! But it never occurred to him to destroy the
message that meant his death if discovered.
He was clever with locks and such things, after the manner of boys,
and for most of the night he worked with the window and shutter lock.
Perhaps he had a nail in his pocket, or some wire. Most boys have. And
just before dawn he got window and shutter opened, and dropped, a long
drop, to the ground. He lay there for a while, getting his breath and
listening. Then, on his stomach, he slid away into the darkest hour
that is just before the dawn.
Later on that day a footsore and weary but triumphant youngster
presented himself at the headquarters of the Belgian Army in Antwerp
and insisted on seeing the minister of war. Being at last admitted, he
turned up a very travel-stained and weary little boy's foot and
proceeded to strip a piece of adhesive plaster from the sole.
Underneath the plaster was the message!
* * * * *
War is a thing of fearful and curious anomalies. It has shown that
humane units may comprise a brutal whole; that civilisation is a shirt
over a coat of mail. It has shown that hatred and love are kindred
emotions, boon companions, friends. It has shown that in every man
there are two men, devil and saint; that there are two courages, that
of the mind, which is bravest, that of the heart, which is greatest.
It has shown that government by men only is not an appeal to reason,
but an appeal to arms; that on women, without a voice to protest, must
fall the burden. It is easier to die than to send a son to death.
It has shown that a single hatred may infect a world, but it has shown
that mercy too may spread among nations. That love is greater than
cannon, greater than hate, greater than vengeance; that it triumphs
over wrath, as good triumphs over evil.
Direct descendant of the cross of the Christian faith, the Red Cross
carries onto every battlefield the words of the Man of Mercy:
"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."
On a day in March I went back to England. March in England is spring.
Masses of snowdrops lined the paths in Hyde Park. The grass was green,
the roads hard and dry under the eager feet of Kitchener's great army.
They marched gayly by. The drums beat. The passers-by stopped. Here
and there an open carriage or an automobile drew up, and pale men,
some of them still in bandages, sat and watched. In their eyes was the
same flaming eagerness, the same impatience to get back, to be loosed
against the old lion's foes.
All through England, all through France, all through the tragic corner
of Belgium that remains to her, were similar armies drilling and
waiting, equally young, equally eager, equally resolute. And the thing
that they were going to I knew. I had seen it in that mysterious
region that had swallowed up those who had gone before; in the
trenches, in the operating rooms of field hospitals, at outposts where
the sentries walked hand in hand with death.
War is not two great armies meeting in the clash and frenzy of battle.
War is a boy carried on a stretcher, looking up at God's blue sky with
bewildered eyes that are soon to close; war is a woman carrying a
child that has been injured by a shell; war is spirited horses tied in
burning buildings and waiting for death; war is the flower of a race,
battered, hungry, bleeding, up to its knees in filthy water; war is an
old woman burning a candle before the Mater Dolorosa for the son she
has given.
For King and Country!
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Kings, Queens And Pawns, by Mary Roberts Rinehart