Chapter 1

Chapter 13,610 wordsPublic domain

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GOLDEN LADS

ARTHUR GLEASON

AND

HELEN HAYES GLEASON

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

_"Golden Lads and Girls all must, As chimney sweepers, come to dust."_

TORONTO McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD & STEWART, LIMITED 1916

_Published, April, 1916_

(_Printed in the U. S. A._)

TO THE SAILORS OF BRITTANY THE BOY SOLDIERS OF THE FRENCH FUSILIERS MARINS WHOSE WOUNDED IT WAS OUR PRIVILEGE TO CARRY IN FROM THE FIELD OF HONOR AT MELLE, DIXMUDE, AND NIEUPORT

Profits from the sale of this book will go to "The American Committee for Training in Suitable Trades the Maimed Soldiers of France."

CONCERNING THIS BOOK

It would be futile to publish one more war-book, unless the writer had been an eye-witness of unusual things. I am an American who saw atrocities which are recorded in the Bryce Report. This book grows out of months of day-by-day living in the war zone. I have been a member of the Hector Munro Ambulance Corps, which was permitted to work at the front because the Prime Minister of Belgium placed his son in military command of us. That young man, being brave and adventurous, led us along the first line of trenches, and into villages under shell fire, so that we saw the armies in action.

We started at Ghent in September, 1914, came to Furnes, worked in Dixmude, Pervyse, Nieuport and Ypres, during moments of pressure on those strategic points. In the summer of 1915, we were attached to the French Fusiliers Marins. My wife's experience covers a period of twelve months in Belgium. My own time at the front was five months.

Observers at long-distance that are neutral sometimes fail to see fundamentals in the present conflict, and talk of "negotiations" between right and wrong. It is easy for people who have not suffered to be tolerant toward wrongdoing. This war is a long war because of German methods of frightfulness. These practices have bred an enduring will to conquer in Frenchman and Briton and Belgian which will not pause till victory is thorough. Because the German military power has sinned against women and children, it will be fought with till it is overthrown. I wish to make clear this determination of the Allies. They hate the army of Aerschot and Lorraine as a mother hates the defiler of her child.

There are two wars on the Western Front. One is the war of aggression. It was led up to by years of treachery. It was consummated in frightfulness. It is warfare by machine. Of that war, as carried on by the "Conquerors," the first half of this book tells. On points that have been in dispute since the outbreak, I am able to say "I saw." When the Army of Invasion fell on the little people, I witnessed the signs of its passage as it wrote them by flame and bayonet on peasant homes and peasant bodies.

In the second half of the book, I have tried to tell of a people's uprising--the fight of the living spirit against the war-machine. A righteous defensive war, such as Belgium and France are waging, does not brutalize the nation. It reveals a beauty of sacrifice which makes common men into "golden lads."

Was this struggle forced on an unwilling Germany, or was she the aggressor?

I believe we have the answer of history in such evidences as I have seen of her patient ancient spy system that honeycombed Belgium.

Is she waging a "holy war," ringed around by jealous foes?

I believe we have the final answer in such atrocities as I witnessed. A hideous officially ordered method is proof of unrighteousness in the cause itself.

Are you indicting a nation?

No, only a military system that ordered the slow sapping of friendly neighboring powers.

Only the host of "tourists," clerks, waiters, gentlemanly officers, that betrayed the hospitality of people of good will.

Only an army that practised mutilation and murder on children, and mothers, and old people,--and that carried it through coldly, systematically, with admirable discipline.

I believe there are multitudes of common soldiers who are sorry that they have outraged the helpless.

An army of half a million men will return to the home-land with very bitter memories. Many a simple German of this generation will be unable to look into the face of his own child without remembering some tiny peasant face of pain--the child whom he bayoneted, or whom he saw his comrade bayonet, having failed to put his body between the little one and death.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE CONQUERORS

PAGE THE SPY 3 THE ATROCITY 26 BALLAD OF THE GERMANS 45 THE STEAM ROLLER 48 MY EXPERIENCE WITH BAEDEKER 66

GOLDEN LADS

THE PLAY-BOYS OF BRITTANY 79 "ENCHANTED CIGARETTES" 95 WAS IT REAL? 113 "CHANTONS, BELGES! CHANTONS!" 127 FLIES: A FANTASY 152 WOMEN UNDER FIRE 168 HOW WAR SEEMS TO A WOMAN 192 LES TRAVAILLEURS DE LA GUERRE 234 REMAKING FRANCE 253

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Play-boys of the Western Front _Frontispiece_

Peasants' cottages burned by Germans 8

The home of a German spy near Coxyde Bains, Belgium 13

The green pass, used only by soldiers and officers of the Belgian Army 33

Church in Termonde which the writer saw 42

One of the dangerous Belgian franc-tireurs 51

Fifteenth century Gothic church in Nieuport 69

Sailors lifting a wounded comrade into the motor-ambulance 87

Door chalked by the Germans 105

Street fighting in Alost 123

Belgian officer on the last strip of his country 134

A Belgian boy soldier in the uniform of the first army which served at Liège and Namur 139

Belgians in their new Khaki uniform, in praise of which they wrote a song 145

Breton sailors ready for their noon meal in a village under daily shell fire 187

Sleeping quarters for Belgian soldiers 206

Belgian soldiers telephoning to an anti-aircraft gun the approach of a German taube 215

Postcards sketched and blocked by a Belgian workman, A. Van Doorne 229

INTRODUCTION

By Theodore Roosevelt

On August 4, 1914, the issue of this war for the conscience of the world was Belgium. Now, in the spring of 1916, the issue remains Belgium. For eighteen months, our people were bidden by their representative at Washington to feel no resentment against a hideous wrong. They were taught to tame their human feelings by polished phrases of neutrality. Because they lacked the proper outlet of expression, they grew indifferent to a supreme injustice. They temporarily lost the capacity to react powerfully against wrongdoing.

But today they are at last becoming alive to the iniquity of the crushing of Belgium. Belgium is the battleground of the war on the western front. But Belgium is also the battleground of the struggle in our country between the forces of good and of evil. In the ranks of evil are ranged all the pacifist sentimentalists, the cowards who possess the gift of clothing their cowardice in soothing and attractive words, the materialists whose souls have been rotted by exclusive devotion to the things of the body, the sincere persons who are cursed with a deficient sense of reality, and all who lack foresight or who are uninformed. Against them stand the great mass of loyal Americans, who, when they see the right, and receive moral leadership, show that they have in their souls as much of the valor of righteousness as the men of 1860 and of 1776. The literary bureau at Washington has acted as a soporific on the mind and conscience of the American people. Fine words, designed to work confusion between right and wrong, have put them to sleep. But they now stir in their sleep.

The proceeds from the sale of this book are to be used for a charity in which every intelligent American feels a personal interest. The training of maimed soldiers in suitable trades is making possible the reconstruction of an entire nation. It is work carried on by citizens of the neutral nations. The cause itself is so admirable that it deserves wide support. It gives an outlet for the ethical feelings of our people, feelings that have been unnaturally dammed for nearly two years by the cold and timid policy of our Government.

The testimony of the book is the first-hand witness of an American citizen who was present when the Army of Invasion blotted out a little nation. This is an eye-witness report on the disputed points of this war. The author saw the wrongs perpetrated on helpless non-combatants by direct military orders. He shows that the frightfulness practiced on peasant women and children was the carrying out of a Government policy, planned in advance, ordered from above. It was not the product of irresponsible individual drunken soldiers. His testimony is clear on this point. He goes still further, and shows that individual soldiers resented their orders, and most unwillingly carried through the cruelty that was forced on them from Berlin. In his testimony he is kindlier to the German race, to the hosts of peasants, clerks and simple soldiers, than the defenders of Belgium's obliteration have been. They seek to excuse acts of infamy. But the author shows that the average German is sorry for those acts.

It is fair to remember in reading Mr. Gleason's testimony concerning these deeds of the German Army that he has never received a dollar of money for anything he has spoken or written on the subject. He gave without payment the articles on the Spy, the Atrocity, and the Steam Roller to the New York _Tribune_. The profits from the lectures he has delivered on the same subject have been used for well-known public charities. The book itself is a gift to a war fund.

Of Mr. Gleason's testimony on atrocities I have already written (see page 38).

What he saw was reported to the Bryce Committee by the young British subject who accompanied him, and these atrocities, which Mr. Gleason witnessed, appear in the Bryce Report under the heading of Alost. It is of value to know that an American witnessed atrocities recorded in the Bryce Report, as it disposes of the German rejoinders that the Report is ex-parte and of second-hand rumor.

His chapter on the Spy System answers the charge that it was Belgium who violated her own neutrality, and forced an unwilling Germany, threatened by a ring of foes, to defend herself.

The chapter on the Steam Roller shows that the same policy of injustice that was responsible for the original atrocities is today operating to flatten out what is left of a free nation.

The entire book is a protest against the craven attitude of our Government.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT. _March 28, 1916._

THE CONQUERORS

THE SPY

Germany uses three methods in turning a free nation into a vassal state. By a spy system, operated through years, she saps the national strength. By sudden invasion, accompanied by atrocity, she conquers the territory, already prepared. By continuing occupation, she flattens out what is left of a once independent people. In England and North America, she has used her first method. France has experienced both the spy and the atrocity. It has been reserved for Belgium to be submitted to the threefold process. I shall tell what I have seen of the spy system, the use of frightfulness, and the enforced occupation.

It is a mistake for us to think that the worst thing Germany has done is to torture and kill many thousands of women and children. She undermines a country with her secret agents before she lays it waste. In time of peace, with her spy system, she works like a mole through a wide area till the ground is ready to cave in. She plays on the good will and trustfulness of other peoples till she has tapped the available information. That betrayal of hospitality, that taking advantage of human feeling, is a baser thing than her unique savagery in war time.

During my months in Belgium I have been surrounded by evidences of this spy system, the long, slow preparedness which Germany makes in another country ahead of her deadly pounce. It is a silent, peaceful invasion, as destructive as the house-to-house burning and the killing of babies and mothers to which it later leads.

The German military power, which is the modern Germany, is able to obtain agents to carry out this policy, and make its will prevail, by disseminating a new ethic, a philosophy of life, which came to expression with Bismarck and has gone on extending its influence since the victories of 1870-'71. The German people believe they serve a higher God than the rest of us. We serve (very imperfectly and only part of the time) such ideals as mercy, pity, and loyalty to the giver of the bread we eat. The Germans serve (efficiently and all the time) the State, a supreme deity, who sends them to spy out a land in peace time, to build gun foundations in innocent-looking houses, buy up poverty-stricken peasants, measure distances, win friendship, and worm out secrets. With that information digested and those preparations completed, the State (an entity beyond good and evil) calls on its citizens to make war, and, in making it, to practise frightfulness. It orders its servants to lay aside pity and burn peasants in their homes, to bayonet women and children, to shoot old men. Of course, there are exceptions to this. There are Germans of the vintage of '48, and later, many of them honest and peaceable dwellers in the country which shelters them. But the imperial system has little use for them. They do not serve its purpose.

The issue of the war, as Belgium and France see it, is this: Are they to live or die? Are they to be charted out once again through years till their hidden weakness is accurately located, and then is an army to be let loose on them that will visit a universal outrage on their children and wives? Peace will be intolerable till this menace is removed. The restoration of territory in Belgium and Northern France and the return to the _status quo_ before the war, are not sufficient guarantees for the future. The _status quo_ before the war means another insidious invasion, carried on unremittingly month by month by business agents, commercial travelers, genial tourists, and studious gentlemen in villas. A crippled, broken Teutonic military power is the only guarantee that a new army of spies will not take the road to Brussels and Paris on the day that peace is signed. No simple solution like, "Call it all off, we'll start in fresh; bygones are bygones," meets the real situation. The Allied nations have been infested with a cloud of witnesses for many years. Are they to submit once again to that secret process of the Germans?

The French, for instance, want to clear their country of a cloud which has been thick and black for forty-three years. They always said the Germans would come again with the looting and the torture and the foulness. This time they will their fight to a finish. They are sick of hate, so they are fighting to end war. But it is not an empty peace that they want--peace, with a new drive when the Krupp howitzers are big enough, and the spies in Paris thick enough, to make the death of France a six weeks' picnic. They want a lasting peace, that will take fear from the wife's heart, and make it a happiness to have a child, not a horror. They want to blow the ashes off of Lorraine. Peace, as preached by our Woman's Peace Party and by our pacifist clergy and by the signers of the plea for an embargo on the ammunitions that are freeing France from her invaders, is a German peace. If successfully consummated, it will grant Germany just time enough to rest and breed and lay the traps, and then release another universal massacre. How can the Allies state their terms of peace in other than a militant way? There is nothing here to be arbitrated. Pleasant sentiments of brotherhood evade the point at issue. The way of just peace is by "converting" Germany. There is only one cure for long-continued treachery, and that is to demonstrate its failure. To pause short of a thorough victory over the deep, inset habits and methods of Germany is to destroy the spirit of France. It will not be well for a premier race of the world to go down in defeat. We need her thrifty Lorraine peasants and Brittany sailors, her unfailing gift to the light of the world, more than we need a thorough German spy system and a soldiery obedient to commands of vileness.

Very much more slowly England, too, is learning what the fight is about.

It is German violation of the fundamental decencies that makes it difficult to find common ground to build on for the future. It is at this point that the spy system of slow-seeping treachery and the atrocity program of dramatic frightfulness overlap. It is in part out of the habit of betraying hospitality that the atrocities have emerged. It isn't as if they were extemporized--a sudden flare, with no background. They are the logical result of doing secretly for years that which humanity has agreed not to do.

Some of the members of our Red Cross unit--the Hector Munro Ambulance Corps--worked for a full year with the French Fusiliers Marins, perhaps the most famous 6000 fighting men in the western line. They were sailor boys. They covered the retreat of the Belgian army. They consolidated the Yser position by holding Dixmude for three weeks against a German force that outnumbered them. Then for a year, up to a few months ago, they helped to hold the Nieuport section, the last northern point of the Allied line. When they entered the fight at Melle in October, 1914, our corps worked with one of their doctors, and came to know him. Later he took charge of a dressing station near St. George. Here one day the Germans made a sudden sortie, drove back the Fusiliers for a few minutes, and killed the Red Cross roomful, bayoneting the wounded men. The Fusiliers shortly won back their position, found their favorite doctor dead, and in a fury wiped out the Germans who had murdered him and his patients, saving one man alive. They sent him back to the enemy's lines to say:

"Tell your men how we fight when you bayonet our wounded."

That sudden act of German falseness was the product of slow, careful undermining of moral values.

One of the best known women in Belgium, whose name I dare not give, told me of her friends, the G----'s, at L---- (she gave me name and address). When the first German rush came down on Belgium the household was asked to shelter German officers, one of whom the lady had known socially in peace days. The next morning soldiers went through the house, destroying paintings with the bayonet and wrecking furniture. The lady appealed to the officer.

"I know you," she said. "We have met as equals and friends. How can you let this be done?"

"This is war," he replied.

No call of chivalry, of the loyalties of guest and host, is to be listened to. And for the perpetrating of this cold program years of silent spy treachery were a perfect preparation. It was no sudden unrelated horror to which Germans had to force themselves. It was an astonishing thing to simple Belgian gentlemen and gentlewomen to see the old friendly German faces of tourists and social guests show up, on horseback, riding into the cities as conquerors where they had so often been entertained as friends. Let me give you the testimony of a Belgian lady whom we know. She is now inside the German lines, so I cannot give her name.

"When the German troops entered Brussels," she states, "we suddenly discovered that our good friends had been secret agents and were now officers in charge of the invasion. As the army came in, with their trumpets and flags and goose-stepping, we picked out our friends entertained by us in our salons--dinner guests for years. They had originally come with every recommendation possible--letters from friends, themselves men of good birth. They had worked their way into the social-political life of Brussels. They had won their place in our friendly feeling. And here they had returned to us at the head of troops to conquer us, after having served as secret agents through the years of friendly social intercourse."

After becoming proficient in that kind of betrayal the officers found it only a slight wrench to pass on to the wholesale murder of the people whose bread they had eaten and whom they had tricked. The treachery explains the atrocity. It is worth while to repeat and emphasize this point. Many persons have asked me, "How do you account for these terrible acts of mutilation?" The answer is, what the Germans did suddenly by flame and bayonet is only a continuation of what they have done for years by poison.

Here follows the testimony of a man whom I know, Doctor George Sarton, of the University of Ghent: