Chapter 15
There are the men who are quietly going on with their work, doing their best with straitened means to keep their business going; giving employment; getting ready to meet the income tax collector, who next year one is inclined to expect will be demanding anything from half a crown to five s.h.i.+llings in the pound. There are others. But there is a certain noisy and, to me, particularly offensive man (and with him, I am sorry to say, one or two women) very much to the fore just now with whose services the country could very well dispense. He is the man who does his fighting with his mouth. Unable for reasons of his own to get at the foe in the field, he thirsts for the blood of the unfortunate unarmed and helpless Germans that the fortunes of war have left stranded in England. He writes to the paper thoughtfully suggesting plans that have occurred to him for making their existence more miserable than it must be. He generally concludes his letter with a short homily directed against the Prussian Military Staff for their lack of the higher Christian principles.
He has spies on the brain. Two quite harmless English citizens have already been shot in consequence of the funk this spy mania has created among us. The vast majority of Germans in England have come to live in England because they dislike Germany. That a certain number of spies are among us I take to be highly probable. I take it that if the Allies know their business a certain number of English spies are doing what they can for us at great personal risk to themselves in Germany. Until the German Army has landed on our sh.o.r.es German spies can do little or no harm to us. The police can be trusted to know something about them, and if any are caught red-handed the rules of war are not likely to be strained for their benefit.
*A Story from the South.*
From a small town in the South of England comes a story I can vouch for.
A couple of Boy Scouts had been set to guard the local reservoir. About noon one sunny day they remarked the approach, somewhat ostentatious, of a desperate-looking character. Undoubtedly a German spy! What can he be up to! The boys approached him and he fled, leaving behind him the d.a.m.ning evidence--a tin suggestive of sardines and labeled "Poison!"
That the gentleman should have chosen broad daylight for his nefarious design, should have been careful to label his tin, seemed to the good townsfolk under present scare conditions proof that they had at last discovered the real German spy, full of his devilish cunning. The tin was taken possession of by the police. And then the Sergeant's little daughter, who happened to have had a few lessons in French, suggested that the word on the tin was "Poisson," and the town now breathes again.
So long as the war continues the spy will be among us. I suggest that we face the problem of his activities without blue funk and hysteria. The men and women who are shrieking for vicarious vengeance upon all the Germans remaining in our midst must remember that there are thousands of English families at the present moment residing in Germany and Austria.
The majority of them, comparatively poor people, with all their belongings around them, were unable to get away. I shall, until I receive convincing proof to the contrary, continue to believe that they are living among their German neighbors unmolested. Even were it not so, I would suggest our setting the example of humanity rather than our slavishly following an example of barbarity.
We are fighting for an idea--an idea of some importance to the generations that will come after us. We are fighting to teach the Prussian Military Staff that other laws have come to stay--laws superseding those of Attila the Hun. We are fighting to teach the German people that, free men with brains to think with, they have no right to hand themselves over body and soul to their rulers to be used as mere devil's instruments; that if they do so they shall pay the penalty, and the punishment shall go hard. We are fighting to teach the German Nation respect for G.o.d! Our weapons have got to be hard blows, not hard words.
We are tearing at each other's throats; it has got to be done. It is not a time for yelping.
Jack Johnson as a boxer I respect. The thing I do not like about him is his habit of gibing and jeering at his opponent while he is fighting him. It isn't gentlemanly, and it isn't sporting. The soldiers are fighting in grim silence. When one of them does talk, it is generally to express admiration of German bravery. It is our valiant stay-at-homes, our valiant clamorers for everybody else to enlist but themselves, who would have us fight like some drunken fish hag, shrieking and spitting while she claws.
*Incredible Reports of Atrocities.*
Half of these stories of atrocities I do not believe. I remember when I was living in
Detailed accounts certified by most creditable witnesses. Such lies are the stock in trade of every tenth-rate journalist, who, careful not to expose himself to danger, slinks about the byways collecting hearsay. In every war each side, according to the other, is supposed to take a fiendish pleasure in firing upon hospitals--containing always a proportion of their own wounded. An account comes to us from a correspondent with the Belgian Army. He tells us that toward the end of the day a regrettable incident occurred. The Germans were taking off their wounded in motor cars. The Belgian sharpshooters, not noticing the red flag in the dusk, kept up a running fire, and a large number of the wounded were killed. Had the incident been the other way about it would have been cited as a deliberate piece of villainy on the part of the Germans. According to other accounts, the Germans always go into action with screens of women and children before them. The explanation, of course, is that a few poor terrified creatures are rus.h.i.+ng along the road. They get between the approaching forces, and I expect the bullets that put them out of their misery come pretty even from both sides.
The men are mad. Mad with fear, mad with hate, blinded by excitement.
Take a mere dog fight. If you interfere you have got to be prepared for your own dog turning upon you. In war half the time the men do not know what they are doing. They are little else than wild beasts. There was great indignation at the dropping of bombs into Antwerp. One now hears that a French dirigible has been dropping bombs into Luxembourg--a much more dignified retort. War is a grim game. Able editors and club-chair politicians have been clamoring for it for years past. They thought it was all goose-step and bands.
The truth is bad enough, G.o.d knows. There is no sense in making things out worse than they are. When this war is over we have got to forget it.
To build up barriers of hatred that shall stand between our children and our foemen's children is a crime against the future.
These stories of German naval officers firing on their wounded sailors in the water! They are an insult to our intelligence. At Louvain fifty of the inhabitants were taken out and shot. On Monday the fifty had grown to five hundred; both numbers vouched for by eye-witnesses, "Dutchmen who would have had no interest," &c. That the beautiful old town has been laid in ashes is undoubted. Some criminal lunatic strutting in pipeclay and mustachios was given his hour of authority and took the chance of his life. If I know anything of the German people it will go hard with him when the war is over, if he has not had the sense to get killed. But that won't rear again the grand old stones or wipe from Germany's honor the stain of that long line of murdered men and women--whatever its actual length may have been. War puts a premium on brutality and senselessness. Men with the intelligence and instincts of an ape suddenly find themselves possessed of the powers of a G.o.d. And we are astonished that they do not display the wisdom of a G.o.d!
There are other stories that have filtered through to us. There was a dying Uhlan who caught a child to his arms and kissed him. One would like to be able to kiss one's own child before one dies, but failing that--well, after all, there is a sort of family likeness between them.
The same deep wondering eyes, the same--and then the mist grows deeper.
Perhaps after all it was Baby Fritz that he kissed.
And of a Belgian woman. She had seen her two sons killed before her eyes. She tells of that and of other horrors. Among such, of the German lads she had stepped over, their blue eyes quiet in death. The pa.s.sion and the fear and the hate cleansed out of them. Just boys with their clothes torn--so like boys.
"They, too, have got mothers, poor lads!" is all she says, thinking of them lying side by side with her own.
When the madness and the folly are over, when the tender green is creeping in and out among the blackened ruins, it will be well for us to think of that dying Uhlan who had to put up with a French baby instead of his own; of that Belgian mother to whom the German youngsters were just "poor lads"--with their clothes torn.
And the savagery and the cruelty and the guiltiness that go to the making of war we will seek to forget.
*"As They Tested Our Fathers"*
*By Rudyard Kipling.*
_Following is the text of an address by Mr. Kipling to a ma.s.s meeting at Brighton, Sept. 8, 1914:_
Through no fault nor wish of ours we are at war with Germany, the power which owes its existence to three well-thought-out wars; the power which for the last twenty years has devoted itself to organizing and preparing for this war; the power which is now fighting to conquer the civilized world.
For the last two generations the Germans in their books, teachers, speeches, and schools have been carefully taught that nothing less than this world conquest was the object of their preparations and their sacrifices. They have prepared carefully and sacrificed greatly.
We must have men, and men, and men, if we with our allies are to check the onrush of organized barbarism.
Have no illusions. We are dealing with a strong and magnificently equipped enemy, whose avowed aim is our complete destruction.
The violation of Belgium, the attack on France, and the defense against Russia are only steps by the way. The Germans' real objective, as she has always told us, is England and England's wealth, trade, and worldwide possessions.
If you a.s.sume for an instant that that attack will be successful, England will not be reduced, as some people say, to the rank of a second-rate power, but we shall cease to exist as a nation. We shall become an outlying province of Germany, to be administered with what severity German safety and interest require.
We arm against such a fate. We enter into a new life in which all the facts of war that we had put behind or forgotten for the past hundred years have returned to the front and test us as they tested our fathers.
It will be a long and a hard road, beset with difficulties and discouragements, but we tread it together and we will tread it together to the end.
Our petty social divisions and barriers have been swept away at the outset of our mighty struggle. All the interests of our life of six weeks ago are dead. We have but one interest now, and that touches the naked heart of every man in this island and in the empire.
If we are to win the right for ourselves and for freedom to exist on earth, every man must offer himself for that service and that sacrifice.
*Kipling and "The Truce of the Bear"*
_STAUNTON, Va., Sept. 25, 1914.--On Sept. 5 The Staunton News printed some verses by Dr. Charles Minor Blackford, an a.s.sociate editor, addressed to Rudyard Kipling, calling attention to the apparent inconsistency of his att.i.tude of distrust of Russia as shown in his well-known poem, "The Truce of the Bear," and his present advocacy of the alliance between Russia and Great Britain.
A copy of the verses was sent to Mr. Kipling and the following reply was received from him:_
Bateman's Burwash, Suss.e.x.
Dear Sir: I am much obliged for your verses of Sept. 4. "The Truce of the Bear," to which they refer, was written sixteen years ago, in 1898.
It dealt with a situation and a menace which have long since pa.s.sed away, and with issues that are now quite dead.
The present situation, as far as England is concerned, is Germany's deliberate disregard of the neutrality of Belgium, whose integrity Germany as well as England guaranteed. She has filled Belgium with every sort of horror and atrocity, not in the heat of pa.s.sion, but as a part of settled policy of terrorism. Her avowed object is the conquest of Europe on these lines.
As you may prove for yourself if you will consult her literature of the last generation, Germany is the present menace, not to Europe alone, but to the whole civilized world. If Germany, by any means, is victorious you may rest a.s.sured that it will be a very short time before she turns her attention to the United States. If you could meet the refugees from Belgium flocking into England and have the opportunity of checking their statements of unimaginable atrocities and barbarities studiously committed, you would, I am sure, think as seriously on these matters as we do, and in your unpreparedness for modern war you would do well to think very seriously indeed. Yours truly,
RUDYARD KIPLING.
*On the Impending Crisis*
*By Norman Angell.*