London to Paris, the shortest spell of torment in crossing the British
Channel. It was a point where one felt infinite relief or sad physical
anticipations. In the last days of November Calais became the symbol of
a struggle for world power. The British and the French were fighting to
hold Calais; the Germans to get it. In Calais Germany would have her
foot on the Atlantic coast. She could look across only twenty-two miles
of water to the chalk cliffs at Dover. She would be as near her rival
as twice the length of Manhattan Island; within the range of a modern
gun; within an hour by steamer and twenty minutes by aeroplane.
The long battle-front from Switzerland to the North Sea had been
established. There was no getting around the Allied flank; there
had ceased to be a flank. To win Calais, Germany must crush through
without any manœuvre by main force. From the cafés where the British
newspaper men gathered England received its news, which they gleaned
from refugees and stragglers and passing officers. They wrote something
every day, for England must have something about that dizzy head-on
wrestle in the mud, that writhing line of changing positions, of new
trenches rising behind the old destroyed by German artillery. The
British were fighting with their last reserves on the Ypres-Armentieres
line. The French divisions to the south were suffering no less heavily,
and beyond them the Belgians were trying to hold the last strip of
their land under Belgian sovereignty. Cordons of guards which kept back
the observer from the struggle could not keep back the truth. Something
ominous was in the air.
It was worth while being in that old town as it waited on the issue in
the late October rains. Its fishermen crept out in the mornings from
the shelter of its quays, where refugees gathered in crowds hoping to
get away by steamer. Like lost souls, carrying all the possessions
they could on their backs, these refugees. There was numbness in their
movements and their faces were blank--the paralysis of brain from
sudden disaster. The children did not cry, but munched the dry bread
which their parents gave them mechanically.
The newspaper men said that “refugee stuff” was already stale; eviction
and misery were stale. Was Calais to be saved? That was the only
question. If the Germans came, one thought that Madame at the hotel
would still be at her desk, unruffled, businesslike, and she would
still serve an excellent salad for _déjeuner_; the fishermen would
still go out to sea for their daily catch.
What was going to happen? What might not happen? It was human
helplessness to the last degree for all behind the wrestlers. Fate
was in the battle-line. There could be no resisting that fate. If
the Germans came, they came. Belgian staff officers with their
high-crowned, gilt-braided caps went flying by in their cars. There
always seemed a great many Belgian staff officers back of the Belgian
army in the restaurants and cafés. Habit is strong, even in war. They
did not often miss their _déjeuners_. On the Dixmude line all that
remained of the active Belgian Army was in a death struggle in the
rain and mud. To these _shipperkes_, honour without stint, as to their
gallant king.
Slightly wounded Belgians and Belgian stragglers roamed the streets of
Calais. Some had a few belongings wrapped up in handkerchiefs. Others
had only the clothes on their backs. Yet they were cheerful; this was
the amazing thing. They moved about, laughing and chatting in groups.
Perhaps this was the best way. Possibly the relief at being out of
the hell at the front was the only emotion they could feel. But their
cheerfulness was none the less a dash of sunlight for Calais.
The French were grim. They were still polite; they went on with their
work. No unwounded French soldiers were to be seen, except the old
Territorials guarding the railroad and the highways. The military
organisation of France, which knew what war meant and had expected war,
had drawn every man to his place and held him there with the inexorable
hand of military and racial discipline. Calais had never considered
caring for wounded, and the wounded poured in. I saw an automobile
with a wounded man stop at a crowded corner, in the midst of refugees
and soldiers; a doctor was leaning over him, and he died while the car
waited.
But the newspaper men were saying that stories of wounded men were
likewise stale. So they were, for Europe was red with wounded. Train
after train brought in its load from the front, and Calais tried to
care for them. At least, it had buildings which would give shelter from
the rain. On the floor of a railroad freight shed the wounded lay in
long rows, with just enough space between them to make an alley. Those
in the row against one of the walls were German prisoners. Their green
uniforms melted into the stone of the wall and did not show the mud
stains. Two slightly wounded had their heads together whispering. They
were helplessly tired, though not as tired as most of the others, those
two stalwart young men; but they seemed to be relieved, almost happy.
It did not matter what happened to them, now, so long as they could
rest.
Next to them a German was dying, and others badly hit were glassy-eyed
in their fatigue and exhaustion. This was the word, exhaustion, for all
the wounded. They had not the strength for passion or emotion. The fuel
for those fires was in ashes. All they wanted in this world was to lie
quiet; and some fell asleep not knowing or caring probably whether they
were in Germany or in France. In the other rows, in contrast with this
chameleon, baffling green, were the red trousers of the French and the
dark blue of the Belgian uniforms, sharing the democracy of exhaustion
with their foe.
A misty rain was falling. In a bright spot of light through a window
one by one the wounded were being lifted up on to a seat, if they were
not too badly hit, and onto an operating-table if they were very badly
hit. A doctor and a sturdy Frenchwoman of about thirty, in spotless
white, were in charge. Another woman undid the first-aid bandage and
others applied a spray. No time was lost; there were too many wounded
to care for. The thing must be done as rapidly as possible before
another train-load came in. If these attendants were tired, they did
not know it any more than the wounded had realised their fatigue in the
passion of battle. The improvised arrangement to meet an emergency had
an appeal which more elaborate arrangements of organisation which I
had seen lacked. It made war a little more red; humanity a little more
human and kind and helpless under the scourge which it had brought on
itself.
Though Calais was not prepared for wounded, when they came the women
of energy and courage turned to the work without jealousy, without
regard to red tape, without fastidiousness. I have in mind half a dozen
other women about the streets that day in uniforms of short skirts and
helmets, who belonged to some volunteer organisation which had taken
some care as to its regimentals. They were types not characteristic of
the whole, of whom one practical English doctor said: “We don’t mind
as long as they do not get in the way.” Their criticisms of Calais
and the arrangements were outspoken; nothing was adequate; conditions
were filthy; it was shameful. They were going to write to the English
newspapers about it and appeal for money. When they had organised
a proper hospital, one should see how the thing ought to be done.
Meantime, these volunteer Frenchwomen were doing the best they knew how
and doing it now.
A fine-looking young Frenchman who had a shell-wound in the thigh was
being lifted onto the table. He shuddered with pain, as he clenched
his teeth; yet when the dressing was finished he was able to breathe
his thanks. On the seat was a Congo negro who had been with one of the
Belgian regiments, coal black and thick-lipped, with bloodshot eyes;
an unsensitised human organism, his face as expressionless as his
bare back with holes made by shell-fragments. A young Frenchwoman--
she could not have been more than nineteen--with a face of singular
refinement, sprayed his wounds with the definiteness of one trained to
such work, though two days before it had probably never occurred to her
as being in the possibilities of her existence. Her coolness and the
coolness of the other women in their silent activity had a charm that
went with one’s devout respect.
The French wounded, too, were silent, as if in the presence of a
crisis which overwhelmed their personal thoughts. Help was needed at
the front; they knew it. On sixty trains in one day sixty thousand
French passed through Calais. With a pass from the French commandant
at Calais, I got aboard one of these trains down at the railroad yards
at dawn. This lot were Turcos, in command of a white-haired veteran of
African campaigns. An utter change of atmosphere from the freight shed!
Perhaps it is only the wounded who have time to think. My companions
in the officers’ car were as cheery as the brown devils whom they led.
They had come from the trenches on the Marne, and their commissariat
was a boiled ham, some bread and red wine. Enough! It was war time, as
they said.
“We were in the Paris railroad yards. That is all we saw of Paris, and
in the night. Hard luck!”
They had left the Marne the previous day. By night they could be in the
fight. It did not take long to send reinforcements when the line was
closed to all except military traffic and one train followed close on
the heels of another.
They did not know where they were going. One never knew where. Probably
they would get orders at Dunkirk. Father Joffre, when there was a call
for reinforcements never was in a panicky hurry about it. He seemed to
understand that the general who made the call could hold out a little
longer; but the reinforcements were always up on time. A long head had
Father Joffre.
Now I am going to say that life was going on as usual at Dunkirk;
that is the obvious thing to say. The nearer the enemy, the more
characteristic that trite observation of those who have followed the
roads of war in Europe. At Dunkirk you might have a good meal within
sound of the thunder of the guns of the British monitors which were
helping the Belgians to hold their line. At Dunkirk most excellent
pastry was for sale in a confectionery shop. Why shouldn’t tartmakers
go on making tarts and selling them? The British naval reserve officers
used to take tea in this shop. Little crowds of citizens who had
nothing to do, which is the most miserable of vocations in such a
crisis, gathered to look at armoured motor cars which had come in from
the front with bullet dents, which gave them the atmosphere of battle.
Beyond Dunkirk, one might see wounded Belgians fresh from the
front, staggering in, crawling in, hobbling in from under the havoc
of shell-fire, their first-aid bandages saturated with mud, their
ungainly and impracticable uniforms oozing mud, ghosts of men--these
_shipperkes_ of the nation that was unprepared for war, who had done
their part, when the only military thought was for more men, unwounded
men, British, French, Belgian, to stem the German tide. Yet many of
these Belgians, even these, were cheerful. They could still smile and
say, “_Bonne chance!_”
Indeed, there seemed no limit to the cheerfulness of Belgians. At a
hospital in Calais I met a Belgian professor with his head a white ball
of bandages, showing a hole for one eye and a slit for the mouth. He
had been one of the cyclist force which took account of many German
cavalry scouts in the first two weeks of the war. A staff automobile
had run over him on the road.
“I think the driver of the car was careless,” he said mildly, as if he
were giving a gentle reproof to a student.
By contrast, he had reason to be thankful for his lot. Looked after by
a brave man attendant in another room were the wounded who were too
horrible to see; who must die. Then in another, you had a picture of a
smiling British regular, with a British nurse and an Englishwoman of
Calais to look after him. They read to him, they talked to him, they
vied with each other in rearranging his pillows or bedclothes. He was a
hero of a story; but it rather puzzled him why he should be. Why were a
lot of people paying so much attention to him for doing his duty?
In the cavalry, he had been separated from his regiment on the retreat
from Mons. Wandering about the country, he came up with a regiment of
cuirassiers and asked if he might not fight with them. A number of the
cuirassiers spoke English. They took him into the ranks. The regiment
went far over on the Marne, through towns with French names which he
could not pronounce, this man in khaki with the French troopers. He
was marked. _C’est un Anglais!_ People cheered him and threw flowers
to him in regions which had never seen one of the soldiers of the Ally
before.
Yes, officers and gentlemen invited him to dine, like he was a
gentleman, he said, and not a Tommy, and the French Government had
given him a decoration called the Legion of Honour or something like
that. This was all very fine; but the best thing was that his own
colonel, when he returned, had him up before his company and made a
speech to him for fighting with the French when he could not find his
own regiment. He was supremely happy, this Tommy. In waiting Calais one
might witness about all the emotions and contrasts of war--and many
which one does not find at the front.
VII
IN GERMANY
The other side of the shield--A German guard--A people organised--
A machine of psychical force--“A people who think only in the
offensive”--A nation trained to win--At a Berlin hotel--
Bluffing the nation into confidence--A “normal” city--
Officially instilled hate--England the cause--A Red Cross
comparison--Everything to win!--“Are you for or against us?”--
The German point of view--A hothouse mind trained by a diligent
paternalism--The “brand of the _Lusitania_.”
Never had the war seemed a more monstrous satire than on that first
day in Germany as the train took me to Berlin. It was the other side
of the wall of gun and rifle-fire, where another set of human beings
were giving life in order to take life. The Lord had fashioned them in
the same pattern on both sides. Their children were born in the same
way; they bled from wounds in the same way--but why go on in this
vicious circle of thought? My impressions of Germany were brief and the
clearer, perhaps, for being brief and drawn on the fresh background of
Paris and Calais waiting to know their fate; of England staring across
the Channel in a suspense which her phlegmatic nature would not confess
to learn the result of the battle for the Channel ports; of England and
France straining with all their strength to hold, while the Germans
exerted all theirs to gain, a goal; of Holland, solid mistress of her
neutrality, fearing for it and profiting by it while she took in the
Belgian foundlings dropped on her steps--Holland, that little land at
peace, with the storms lashing around her.
The stiff and soldierly appearing reserve officer with bristling
Kaiserian moustache, so professedly alert and efficient, who looked at
the mottled back of my passport and frowned at the recent visa, “_A
la Place de Calais, bon pour aller à Dunkerque, P. O. Le Chef d’État
Major_,” but let me by without questions or fuss, aroused visions of a
frontier stone wall studded with bayonets.
For something about him expressed a certain character of downright
militancy lacking in either an English or a French guard. I could
imagine his contempt for both and particularly for a “sloppy,
undisciplined” American guard, as he would have called one of ours.
Personal feelings did not enter into his thoughts. He had none; only
national feelings, this outpost of the national organism. The mood of
the moment was friendliness to Americans. Germany wished to create the
impression on the outside world through the agency of the neutral press
that she was in danger of starving, while she amassed munitions for her
summer campaign and the Allies were lulled into confidence of siege by
famine rather than by arms. A double, a treble purpose the starving
campaign served; for it also ensured economy of foodstuffs, while
nothing so puts the steel into a soldier’s heart as the thought that
the enemy is trying to beat him through taking the bread out of his
mouth and the mouths of the women and children dependent upon him.
Tears and laughter and moods and passions organised! Seventy million in
the union of determined earnestness of a life-and-death issue! Germany
had studied more than how to make war with an army. She had studied
how the people at home should help an army to make war.
“With our immense army, which consists of all the able-bodied youth of
the people,” as a German officer said, “when we go to war the people
must all be passionate for war. Their impulse must be the impulse of
the army. Their spirit will drive the army on. They must be drilled,
too, in their part. No item in national organisation is too small to
have its effect.”
Compared to the French, who had turned grim and gave their prayers as
individuals to hearten their soldiers, the Germans were as responsive
as a stringed instrument to the master musician’s touch. A whisper in
Berlin was enough to set a new wave of passion in motion, which spread
to the trenches east and west. Something like the team work of the
“rah-rah” of college athletics was applied to the nation. The soft
pedal on this emotion, the loud on that, or a new cry inaugurated which
all took up, not with the noisy, paid insincerity of a claque, but with
the vibrant force of a trained orchestra with the brasses predominant.
There seemed less of the spontaneity of an individualistic people than
of the exaltation of a religious revival. If the army were a machine
of material force, then the people were a machine of psychical force.
Though the thing might leave the observer cold, as a religious revival
leaves the sceptic, yet he must admire. I was told that I should
succumb to the contagion as others had; but it was not the optimism
which was dinned into my ears that affected me as much as side lights.
When Corey and I took a walk away from a railway station where I had
to make a train connection, I saw a German reservist of forty-five,
who was helping with one hand to thresh the wheat from his farm, on a
grey, lowering winter day. The other hand was in a bandage. He had been
allowed to go home until he was well enough to fight again. The same
sort of scene I had witnessed in France; the wounded man trying to make
up to his family the loss of his labour during his absence at the front.
Only, that man in France was on the defensive; he was fighting to
hold what he had and on his own soil. The German had been fighting
on the enemy’s soil to gain more land. He, too, thought of it as the
defensive. All Germany insisted that it was on the defensive. But it
was the defensive of a people who think only in the offensive. That
was it--that was the vital impression of Germany revealed in every
conversation and every act.
The Englishman leans back on his oars; the German leans forward. The
Englishman’s phrase is “stick it,” which means to hold what you have;
the German’s phrase is “onward.” It was national youth against national
middle age. A vessel with pressure of increase from within was about
to expand or burst. A vessel which is large and comfortable for its
contents was resisting pressure from without. The French were saying,
What if we should lose? and the Germans were saying, What if we should
not win all that we are entitled to? Germany had been thinking of
a mightier to-morrow and England of a to-morrow as good as to-day.
Germany looked forward to a fortune to be won at thirty; England
considered the safeguarding of her fortune at fifty.
It is not professions that count so much as the thing that works out
from the nature of a situation and the contemporaneous bent of a
people. The English thought of his defence as keeping what he already
had; the German was defending what he considered that he was entitled
to. If he could make more of Calais than the French, then Calais ought
to be his. A nation with the “closed in” culture of the French on one
side and the enormous, unwieldy mass of Russia on the other, convinced
of its superiority and its ability to beat either foe, thought that
it was the friend of peace because it had withheld the blow. When the
striking time came, it struck hard and forced the battle on enemy soil,
which proved, to its logic, that it was only receiving payment of a
debt owed it by destiny.
Bred to win, confident that the German system was the right system
of life, it could imagine the German Michael as the missionary of
the system, converting the Philistine with machine guns. Confidence,
the confidence which must get new vessels for the energy that has
overflowed, the confidence of all classes in the realisation of the
long-promised day of the “place in the sun” for all the immense
population drilled in the system, was the keynote. They knew that they
could lick the other fellow and went at him from the start as if they
expected to lick him, with a diligence which made the most of their
training and preparation.
When I asked for a room with a bath in a leading Berlin hotel, the
clerk at the desk said, “I will see, sir.” He ran his eye up and down
the list methodically before he added: “Yes, we have a good room on
the second floor.” Afterward, I learned that all except the first and
second floors of the hotel were closed. The small dining-room only was
open, and every effort was made to make the small dining-room appear
normal.
He was an efficient clerk; the buttons boy who opened the room door,
a goose-stepping, alert sprout of German militarism, exhibited a
punctiliousness of attention which produced a further effect of
normality. Those Germans who were not doing their part at the front
were doing it at home by bluffing the other Germans and themselves into
confidence. The clerk believed that some day he would have more guests
than ever and a bigger hotel. All who suffered from the war could
afford to wait. Germany was winning; the programme was being carried
out. The Kaiser said so. In proof of it, multitudes of Russian soldiers
were tilling the soil in place of Germans, who were at the front taking
more Russian soldiers.
Everybody that one met kept telling him that everything was perfectly
normal. No intending purchaser of real estate in a boom town was ever
treated to more optimistic propaganda. Perfectly normal--when one
found only three customers in a large department store! Perfectly
normal--when the big steamship offices presented in their windows
bare blue seas which had once been charted with the going and coming
of German ships! Perfectly normal--when the spool of the killed and
wounded rolled out by yards like that of a ticker on a busy day on the
Stock Exchange! Perfectly normal--when women tried to smile in the
streets with eyes which had plainly been weeping at home! Are you for
us or against us? The question was put straight to the stranger. Let
him say that he was a neutral and they took it for granted that he was
pro-Ally. He must be pro-something.
As Corey and I returned to the railway station after our walk,
a soldier took us in charge and marched us to the office of the
military commandant. “Are you an Englishman?” was his first question.
The guttural military emphasis which he put on Englishman was most
significant. Which brings us to another factor in the psychology of
war: hate.
“If men are to fight well,” said a German officer, “it is necessary
that they hate. They must be exalted by a great passion when they
charge into machine guns.”
Hate was officially distilled and then instilled--hate against
England, almost exclusively. The public rose to that. If England had
not come in, the German military plan would have succeeded: first, the
crushing of France; then, the crushing of Russia. The despised Belgian,
that small boy who had tripped the giant and then hugged the giant’s
knees, delaying him on the road to Paris, was having a rest. For he
had been hated very hard for a while with the hate of contempt--that
miserable pigmy who interfered with the plans of the machine.