Part 17

I called on W. T. Stead one day in his office of _The Review of Reviews_, which afterward I was to edit for a year. It was just before lunch time, and Stead had an engagement with Spender of _The Westminster Gazette_. But he grabbed me by the arm, in his genial way, and said, “Listen to this for a minute, and tell me what you think of it.”

It appeared that he had been rather upset by Blatchford’s articles. He could not make up his mind whether they were all nonsense or had some truth at the back of them. He decided to consult the spirit world through “Julia,” his medium.

“We rang up old Bismarck, Von Moltke, and William II of Prussia. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘Is there going to be war between Germany and England?’”

The spirits of these distinguished Germans seemed uncertain. Bismarck saw a red mist approaching the coast of England. Von Moltke said the British fleet had better keep within certain degrees of latitude and longitude--which was kind of him! One of the trio--I forget which--said there would be war between Germany and England. It would break out suddenly, without warning.

“When?” asked W. T. Stead.

A date was given. _It was the month of August._ The year was not named.

I laughed heartily at Stead’s anecdote, especially when he told me the effect this announcement had upon him. He was so disturbed that he went round to the Admiralty, interviewed Lord Fisher, who was a friend of his, and revealed the dread message that the German fleet was going to attack in August. (It was then May, 1912).

Fisher leaned back in his chair, smiled grimly, and said, “_No such luck, my boy!_”

In August of that year I was engaged in trouble which did not seem connected with Germany, though I am inclined to think now that German agents were watching it very closely--especially one German baron who posed as a journalist and was always reporting on industrial unrest in Great Britain, wherever it happened to break out. I had met him at Tonypandy, in Wales, during the miners’ riots down there, and I met him again in Liverpool, which was now in the throes of a serious strike.

It was the nearest thing to civil war I have seen in any English city. I have forgotten the origin of the strike--I think it began with the dockers--but it spread until the whole of the transport service was at a standstill, and the very scavengers left their work. The Mersey was crowded for weeks with shipping from all the ports of the world, laden with merchandise, some of it perishable, which no hands would touch. No porters worked in the railway goods yards, so that trains could not be unloaded. There was no fresh meat, and no milk for babes. Not a wheel turned in Liverpool. It was like a besieged city, and presently, in hot weather, began to stink in a pestilential way, because of the refuse and muck left rotting in the streets and squares.

This refuse, among which dead rats lay, was so filthy in one of the best squares of Liverpool outside the hotel where I was staying, that a number of journalists, and myself, borrowed brooms, sallied out, swept up the rubbish heaps, and made bonfires of them, surrounded by a crowd of angry men who called us “scabs” and “blacklegs,” and threatened to “bash” us, if we did not stop work. We stuck to our job, and were rewarded by a clapping of hands from ladies and maidservants in the neighboring windows, so that our broomsticks seemed as heroic as the lances of chivalry.

Some bad things happened in Liverpool. The troops were stoned by mobs of men who were becoming sullen and savage. Shops were looted. I saw no less than forty tramcars overturned and smashed one afternoon in that sunny August, because they were being driven by men who had refused to strike.

On that afternoon I saw something of mob violence, which I should have thought incredible in England. A tramcar was going at a rapid pace, driven by a man who was in terror of his life because of a mob on each side of the road, threatening to stone him to death. Inside the car were three women and a baby. A fusillade of stones suddenly broke every window. Two of the women crouched below the window frames, and the third woman, with the baby, utterly terrified, came on to the platform outside, and prepared to jump. A stone struck her on the head, and she dropped the baby into the roadway, where it lay quite still. A gust of hoarse laughter rose from the mob, and not one man stirred to pick up the baby. Terrible, but true. It was left there until a woman ran out of a shop.... Wedged behind the men, but a witness of all that happened, I was conscious then of a cruelty lurking in the vicious elements of our great cities which, before, I had not believed to exist in England of the twentieth century. If ever there were revolution in England, it would not be made with rose water.

The troops and police were patient and splendid in their discipline, despite great provocation at times. Now and again, when the mob started looting or stone throwing, the police made baton charges, which scattered crowds of young hooligans like chaff before them, and they thrashed those they caught without mercy. At such times I had to run like a hare, for there is no discrimination in treatment of the innocent.

One afternoon the troops were ordered to fire on a crowd which made an attempt to attack an escort of prisoners, and there was a small number of casualties. That night I had an exciting narrative to dictate over the telephone to the office of _The Daily Chronicle_. But, in the middle of it, the sub-editor, MacKenna, who was taking down my message, said, “Cut it short, old man! Something is happening to-night more important than a strike in Liverpool. _The German fleet is out in the North Sea, and the British fleet is cleared for action!_”

When I put down the telephone receiver, I felt a shiver go down my spine; and I thought of Stead’s preposterous story of war in August. Had it happened?

There was nothing in next day’s papers. Some iron censorship closed down on that story of the German fleet, true or false.... As we now know, it was true. The German fleet did go out on that night in August, but finding the British fleet prepared, they went back again. It was in August of another year that Germany put all to the great hazard.

The thoughts of the English people were not obsessed with the German menace. For the most part they knew nothing about it, apart from newspaper “scares,” which they pooh-poohed, and no member of the government, getting anxious now in secret conversations, took upon himself the duty of preparing the nation for a dreadful ordeal.

England was excited by two subjects of sensational interest and increasing passion--the mania of the militant suffragettes, and the raising of armed forces in Ireland, under the leadership of Sir Edward Carson, to resist Home Rule.

I saw a good deal of both those phases of political strife in England and Ireland. The suffragette movement kept me in a continual state of mental exasperation, owing to the excesses of the militant women on one side, and the stupidity and brutality of the opponents of women’s suffrage on the other. I became a convinced supporter of “Votes for Women,” partly because of theoretical justice which denied votes to women of intellect, education, and noble work, while giving it to the lowest, most ignorant, and most brutal ruffians in the country, partly because of a sporting admiration--in spite of intellectual disapproval--of cultured women who went willingly to prison for their faith, defied the police with all their muscular strength, risked the brutality of angry mobs (which was a great risk), and all with a gay, laughing courage which mocked at the arguments, anger, and ridicule of the average man.

Many of the methods of the “militants” were outrageous, and loosened, I think, some of the decent restraints of the social code, for which we had to pay later in a kind of sexual wildness of modern young women. But they were taunted into “direct action” by Cabinet Ministers, and exasperated by the deliberate falsity and betrayal of members of Parliament, who had pledged themselves at election time to support the demand of women for the suffrage, by constitutional methods.

A number of times I watched the endeavors of the “militants” to present a petition to the Prime Minister or invade the Houses of Parliament. Always it was the same scene. The deputation would march from the Caxton Hall through a narrow lane in the midst of a vast crowd, and then be scattered in a rough and tumble scrimmage when mounted police rode among them.

Often I saw a friend of mine walking by the side of these deputations, as a solitary bodyguard. It was H. W. Nevinson, the war correspondent, with his fine ruddy face and silvered hair, a paladin of woman suffrage as of all causes which took “liberty” for their watchword. The crowd was less patient of men sympathizers of militant women than with the women themselves, and Nevinson was roughly handled. At a great demonstration at the Albert Hall, he fought single-handed against a dozen men stewards who fell upon him, when he knocked down a man who had struck a woman a heavy blow. Nevinson, though over fifty at the time, could give a good account of himself, and some of those stewards had a tough time before they overpowered him and flung him out.

Round the Houses of Parliament, on those nights of attack, there were strong bodies of police who played games of catch-as-catch-can with little old ladies, frail young women, strong-armed and lithe-limbed girls who tried to break through their cordon. One little old cripple lady used to charge the police in a wheel chair. Others caught hold of the policemen’s whistle chains, and would not let go until they were escorted to the nearest police station. One night dozens of women chained and padlocked themselves to the railings of the House of Commons, and the police had to use axes to break their chains.

There was a truly frightful scene, which made me shiver, one night, when those “militants” refused to budge before the mounted police and seized hold of their bridles and stirrup-leathers. The horses, scared out of their wits by these clinging creatures, reared, and fell, but nothing would release the grip of those determined and reckless ladies, though some of them were bruised and bleeding.

The patience and good humor of the police were marvelous, but I was sorry to see that they made class distinctions in their behavior. They were certainly very brutal to a party of factory girls brought down from the North of England. I saw them driven into a narrow alley behind Westminster Hospital, and the police pulled their hair down, wound it round their throats, and flung them about unmercifully. It was not good to see.

I had several talks at the time with the two dominant leaders of the militant section, Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel, and I was present at their trial, when they were indicted for conspiracy to incite a riot. Mrs. Pankhurst’s defense was one of the most remarkable speeches I have ever heard in a court of law, most eloquent, most moving, most emotional. Even the magistrate was moved to tears, but that did not prevent him from setting aside an unrepealed statute of Charles II (which allowed a deputation of not more than thirteen to present a petition, without let or hindrance, to the King’s ministers) and sentencing Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter to two years’ imprisonment.

I saw Christabel Pankhurst during the course of the trial, and she asked me whether I thought she would be condemned. I told her “Yes,” believing that she had the strength to hear the truth, and afterward, when she asked me how much I thought she would get, I said “Two years.” I had an idea from her previous record that she was ready for martyrdom at any cost, but to my surprise and dismay, she burst into tears. Her defense and cross-examination of witnesses were also marred by continual tears, so that it was painful to listen to her. Her spirit seemed quite broken, and she never took part again in any militant demonstrations, although she was liberated a short time after the beginning of her imprisonment. She worked quietly at propaganda in Paris.

One nation watched the mania of the “wild, wild women” with a growing belief in England’s decadence, as it was watching the Irish affairs, and industrial unrest. German agents found plenty to write home about.

XVII

One day in 1913, I was asked by Robert Donald to call on a Canadian professor who had been engaged in “a statistical survey of Europe,” whatever that may mean, and might have some interesting information to give.

When he received me, I found him a little, mild-eyed man, with gold-rimmed spectacles, behind which I presently discovered the look of one obsessed by a knowledge of some terrific secret. That was after he had surprised me by declining to talk about statistics, and asking abruptly whether I was an honest young man and a good patriot. Upon my assuring him that I was regarded as respectable by my friends and was no traitor, he bade me shut the door and listen to something which he believed it to be his duty to tell, for England’s sake.

What he told me was decidedly alarming. In pursuit of his “statistical survey of Europe” on behalf of the Canadian and American governments, he had spent two years or so in Germany. He had been received in a courteous way by German professors, civil servants, and government officials, at whose dinner tables he had met German celebrities, and high officers of the German army. They had talked freely before him after some time, and there was revealed to him, among all these people, a bitter, instinctive, relentless, and jealous hatred of England. They made no secret that the dominant thought in their souls was the necessity and inevitability of a conflict with Great Britain, in order to destroy the nation which stood athwart their own destiny as their greatest commercial competitor, and as the one rival of their own sea power, upon which the future of Germany was based. For that conflict they were preparing the mind of their own people by intensive propaganda and “speeding up” the output of their naval and military armament. “England,” said my little informant, “is menaced by the most fearful struggle in history, but seems utterly ignorant of this peril, which is coming close. Is there no one to warn her people, no one to open their eyes to this ghastly hatred across the North Sea, preparing stealthily for their destruction? Will you not tell the truth in your paper, as I now tell it to you?”

I told him it would be difficult to get such things published, and still more difficult to get them believed. I had considerable doubt myself whether he had not exaggerated the intensity of hatred in Germany, and, in any case, the possibility of their daring to challenge Great Britain, as long as our fleet maintained its strength and traditions. But I was disturbed. The little man’s words coincided with other warnings I had heard, from Lord Roberts, from visitors to Germany, from Robert Blatchford--to say nothing of W. T. Stead and his German “spooks.” ... Robert Donald, of _The Daily Chronicle_, laughed at my report of the conversation. “Utter rubbish!” was his opinion, and he refused to print a word.

“Go to Germany yourself,” he said, “and write a series of articles likely to promote friendship between our two peoples and undo the harm created by newspaper hate-doctors and jingoes. Find out what the mass of the German people think about this liar talk.”

So I went to Germany, with a number of introductions to prominent people and friends of England.

It was not the first time I had visited Germany, because the previous year, I think, I had been to Hamburg with a party of journalists, and we were received like princes, fêted sumptuously, and treated with an amazing display of public cordiality. There was private courtesy, too, most kind and amiable, and I always remember a young poet who took me to his house and introduced me to his beautiful young wife who, when I said good-by, gathered some roses from her garden, put them to her lips, and said, “Take these with my love to England.”

But something had happened in the spirit of Germany since that time. The first “friend of England” to whom I presented a letter of introduction was a newspaper editor in Düsseldorf, a man of liberal principles who had taken a great part in arranging an exchange of visits between German and British business men. He knew many of the Liberal politicians in England and could walk into the House of Commons more easily than I could.

He seemed to be rather flustered when I called upon him and explained the object of my visit, and he left me alone in his study for a while, on pretext of speaking to his wife. I think he wanted me to read his leading article, signed at the foot of the column, in a paper which he laid deliberately on his desk before me. I puzzled through its complicated argument in involved German, and through its fog of rhetoric there emerged a violent tirade against England.

When he came back, I tackled him on the subject.

“I understood that you were an advocate of friendly relations between our two peoples? That article doesn’t seem to me very friendly or helpful.”

He flushed a hot color, and said, “My views have undergone a change. England has behaved abominably.”

The particular abomination which he resented most deeply was the warning delivered by Lloyd George--of all people in England!--that Great Britain would support French interests in Morocco, and would not tolerate German aggression in that region. That was at the time of the Agadir incident. The British attitude in that affair, said the Düsseldorf editor, was a clear sign that Great Britain challenged the right of Germany to develop and expand. That challenge could not be left unanswered. Either Germany must surrender her liberty and deny her imperial destiny, at the dictation of Britain, or show that her power was equal to her aspirations. That, anyhow, was the line of his argument, which we pursued at great length over pots of lager beer, in a restaurant where we dined together.

I encountered the same argument, and more violent hostility, from a high ecclesiastic in Berlin, who was a great friend of the Kaiser’s and formerly a professed lover of England. He was a tall, thin, handsome man, who spoke English perfectly, but was not very civil to me. Presently, as we talked of the relations between our two nations, he paced up and down the room with evident emotion, with suppressed rage, indeed, which broke at last through his restraint.

“English policy,” he said, “cuts directly across our legitimate German rights. England is trying to hem in Germany, to hamper her at every turn, to humiliate her in every part of the world, and to prevent her economic development. During recent days she has not hesitated to affront us very deeply and deliberately. It is intolerable!”

He spoke of an “inevitable war” with startling candor, and when I said something about the duty of all Christian men, especially of a priest like himself, to prevent such an unbelievable horror, he asked harshly whether I had come to insult him, and touched the bell for my dismissal.

Such conversations were alarming. Yet I did not believe that they represented the general opinion of the great mass of German people. I was only able to get glimpses here and there in Düsseldorf and Frankfort, Hanover, Leipzig, Berlin, and Dresden of middle-class and working-class thought, but wherever I was able to test it in casual conversation with business men, railway porters, laborers, hotel waiters, and so on, with whom I exchanged ideas in my very crude German, or their remarkably good English (in the case of commercial men and waiters), I found utter incredulity regarding the possibility of war between England and Germany, and a contempt of the sword-rattling and “shining armor” of the Kaiser and the military caste.

I was, for instance, in a company of commercial men at _Abendessen_ in a hotel at Leipzig, when the topic of conversation was the Zabern affair, in which Lieutenant von Förstner had drawn his sword upon civilians--and a cripple--who had jeered at him for swaggering down the sidewalk like a popinjay. The Crown Prince had sent him a telegram of approbation for his defense of his uniform and caste. But, one and all, the commercial men with whom I sat expressed their loathing of this military arrogance, and were indignant with those who defended its absurdity. I remember the German who sat next to me had been a designer in a porcelain factory in the English potteries for many years. With him I talked quietly of the chance of war between England and Germany. “What is the real feeling of the ordinary folk in Germany?” I asked. He answered with what I am certain was absolute sincerity--though he was wrong, as history proved. He told me that, outside the military caste, there was no war feeling in Germany, and that the idea of a conflict with England was abhorrent and unbelievable to the German people. “If there were to be war with England,” he said, “we should weep at the greatest tragedy that could befall mankind.”

There were many people I met who held that view, without hypocrisy, and their sincerity at that time is not disproved because when the tocsin of war was sounded, the fever of hate took possession of them.

It was Edward Bernstein, the leader of the Socialists, who warned me of the instability of the pacifist faith professed by German democrats. “If war breaks out,” he said, “German Socialists will march as one man against any enemy of the Fatherland. Although theoretically they are against war, neither they nor any other Socialists have reached a plane of development which would give them the strength to resist loyalty to the Flag and the old code of patriotism, when once their nation was involved, right or wrong.”

I tried to get the ideas of German youth on the subject of war with England, and I had an excellent opportunity and an illuminating conversation with the students of Leipzig University. A group of these young men, who spoke excellent English, allowed me to question them, and were highly amused and interested.

“Do you hate England?” I asked.

There was a rousing chorus of “Yes!”

“Why do you hate England?”

One young man acted as spokesman for the others, who signified their assent from time to time. The first reason for hatred of England, he said, was because when a German boy was shown the map of the world and when he asked what all the red “splodges” on it signified, he was told that all that territory belonged to England. That aroused his natural envy. Later in life, said this young man, he understood by historical reading that England had built up the British Empire by a series of wars, explorations, and commercial adventures which gave her a just claim to possession. They had no quarrel with that. They recognized the strength and greatness of the English people in the past. But now they saw that England was no longer great. She was decadent and inefficient. Her day was done. They hated her now as a worn-out old monster who still tried to grab and hold, and prevent other races from developing their genius, but had no military power with which to defend their possessions. England was playing a game of bluff. Germany, conscious of her newborn greatness, her immense industrial genius, her vital strength, needing elbow room and free spaces of the earth, would not allow a degenerate people to stand across her path. Germany hated England for her arrogance, masking weakness, and her hypocritical professions of friendship, which concealed envy and fear.