Part 16

I am not yet one of the great aces, and will not, therefore, tell you about any of my air battles. I hope some day you may read of them and that I may come to have the honor of being named with Lufbery, Guynemer, Nungesser, Fonk, Bishop, Ball, Genét, Chapman, McConnell, Prince, Putnam, and other heroes of the air.

Lieutenant R.A.J. Warneford, who won the Victoria Cross for destroying a giant Zeppelin, is one of the greatest of these; at least, he performed a feat never accomplished before and never since.

At three o'clock one morning in June, 1915, he discovered a Zeppelin returning from bombing towns along the east coast of England. The Huns shot Captain Fryatt because, as they said, he was a non-combatant and tried to defend himself. The rule that non-combatants should not attack military forces was made with the understanding that military forces would not war on non-combatants. But law, or justice, or agreements never are allowed by the Huns to stand in their way. This Zeppelin was returning from a raid in which twenty-four were killed and sixty seriously injured, nearly all women and children, and all non-combatants.

Lieutenant Warneford well knew of the dastardly deeds of the Zeppelins, and he immediately gave chase, firing as he approached. The Zeppelin returned his shots. He mounted as rapidly as possible so as to get the great gas-bag below him, until he reached over 6000 feet and the Zeppelin was about 150 feet directly below him. Both were moving very rapidly, and to hit was exceedingly difficult, but he dropped six bombs, one after the other. One of them hit the Zeppelin squarely, exploded the gas-bag, and set it afire its entire length. The explosion turned Lieutenant Warneford's airplane upside down, and although he soon righted it, he was obliged to land. He was over territory occupied by the Germans and he landed behind the German lines, but he succeeded in rising again before being captured, and returned to his hangar in safety, to tell his marvelous story. The Zeppelin and its crew were completely destroyed. A few days later Lieutenant Warneford was killed.

One of the greatest air duels, between airplanes, was during the Battle of Vimy Ridge. At that time Immelman was as great a German ace as were Boelke and Richthofen later, and Ball was the greatest of the English.

One morning Ball learned that Immelman was stationed with the Germans on the opposite line, and carried him a challenge which read:

CAPTAIN IMMELMAN: I challenge you to a man-to-man fight to take place this afternoon at two o'clock. I will meet you over the German lines. Have your anti-aircraft guns withhold their fire while we decide which is the better man. The British guns will be silent.

BALL.

Ball dropped this from his airplane behind the German lines, and soon afterward Immelman dropped his answer behind the British lines:

CAPTAIN BALL:

Your challenge is accepted. The German guns will not interfere. I will meet you promptly at two.

IMMELMAN.

A few minutes before two, the guns ceased firing, and all on both sides fixed their eyes in the air to witness a contest between two knights that would make the contests of the days of chivalry seem tame.

In an air battle, the machine that is higher up is thought to have the advantage. Both Ball and Immelman went up very high, but Ball was below and seemed uncertain what to do. The British were afraid that he had lost his nerve and courage when he found himself below, for he made no effort to get above his opponent, but was flying now this way and now that, as if "rattled."

Immelman did not delay, but went into a nose dive directly towards the machine below, which he would be able to rake with his machine gun as he approached; but just at the proper moment, Ball suddenly looped the loop and was directly above the German, and in position to fire. As the shower of bullets struck Immelman and his machine, it burst into flames and dropped like a blazing comet.

Ball returned to his hangar, got a wreath of flowers, and went into the air again to drop them upon the spot where Immelman had fallen dead.

Four days later Ball was killed in a fight with four German planes, but not until he had brought down three of them.

But the fighting planes do not get all the thrills in the air. A young English aviator and his observer who were directing artillery fire in September, 1918, showed as great devotion and courage as any ace and lived through as exciting an adventure as ever befell a fighting plane.

They were flying over No Man's Land to get the proper range for a battery which was to destroy a bridge of great value to the Huns. Their engine had been running badly and back-firing. They would have returned home had their work been of less importance.

Suddenly the pilot smelled burning wood, and looking down, saw the framework near his feet blackened and smoldering. It had caught fire from the backfire of the engine and the exhaust, but was not yet in a decided blaze. He turned off the gas and opened the throttle. Then he made a steep, swift dive, and the powerful rush of the air put the fire out.

Then he hesitated, trying to decide whether to "play safe" and go home or whether to continue their work until the battery had secured the exact range. He knew that in a very short time and with a little more observation, their work would be completely successful. So he turned to the observer and asked him what he thought. The observer leaned over and examined the damage near the pilot's feet. It did not look very bad; so he shouted, "Let's carry on."

Up they went again and in a short time had shells from the battery falling all about the bridge, which was soon destroyed. Their work was done, and well done. In the excitement they had forgotten the bad engine until they heard it give one last sputter and stop.

Then they perceived the woodwork was on fire again and really blazing this time. To dive now would only fan the flames about the pilot's feet, but they must get to the ground, and get there quickly, too.

The pilot put the machine into a side slip toward the British line. This fanned the flames away from his feet. The observer squirted the fire extinguisher on the burning wood near the pilot's feet, and thus enabled him to keep control of the rudder bar.

They were now within fifteen hundred feet of the ground, but the heat was almost unbearable. The right wing was beginning to burn. Down, down, they went, and luckily towards a fairly good landing place. One landing wheel struck the ground with such force that it was broken off, and the airplane bumped along on the other for a short distance until it finally crashed on its nose and left wing.

Both pilot and observer were unhurt. They sprang to the ground and hurried away from the burning wreck just in time, for a few seconds later the gasoline tank exploded. They looked at each other without a word, but neither of them regretted that he had stayed up until the job had been finished.

Such is the life and the danger of the flyers; but thousands of the finest young men of all the nations at war eagerly seek the service, for the aviators are the eyes of the armies and will determine always more than any other branch which side shall be finally victorious.

ALAN SEEGER[9]

As England and the world lost Rupert Brooke, so America and the world lost Alan Seeger. English poetry and lovers of beauty expressed in verse are losers to a greater extent than we can ever know.

It is not strange that these two young poets should have enlisted at the very beginning of the war, for they recognized what high-minded men mean by _noblesse oblige_. Much having been given you, much is expected from you. Those of the highest education should show the way to those less favored. So Rupert Brooke enlisted in the English navy, and Alan Seeger enlisted in the French army as one of the Foreign Legion.

He felt he owed a debt to France that could only be paid by helping her in her struggle for life and liberty. He gave his life, at the age of twenty-eight, to pay the debt.

Alan Seeger lived a life like that of many other American boys. At Staten Island where he passed his first years, he could see every day the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, the skyscrapers of New York, the ferry boats to the Jersey shore, the great ocean liners inward bound and outward bound,--all the great and significant things that say "America" to one landing for the first time at the greatest seaport of the world. Later he lived in New York and attended the Horace Mann School. His vacations were spent among the hills and mountains of New Hampshire and in southern California. He fitted for college at a famous preparatory school at Tarrytown on the Hudson, attended Harvard College, and after graduation lived for two years in New York City. All this is American, and thousands of other American boys have passed through the same or a similar experience.

Alan Seeger was romantic. So are most boys. But with most boys, romance goes no further than books and dreams. "Robinson Crusoe," "Huckleberry Finn," "Treasure Island," and other tales of adventure and of foreign lands are all the romance that many know. But, like Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger had the opportunity to live romance, as he always declared he would do. He found it in his life as a boy in Mexico, as a young man in Paris, and in the Foreign Legion of the French army. The Foreign Legion was made up of foreigners in France who volunteered to fight with the French army. Its story is a stirring one of brave deeds and tremendous losses. To have belonged to it is a great glory.

Alan Seeger enjoyed life and found the world exceedingly beautiful. He says,

From a boy I gloated on existence. Earth to me Seemed all sufficient, and my sojourn there One trembling opportunity for joy.

Like Rupert Brooke, he thought often of Death, which he feared not at all. In his beautiful poem entitled, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death," he looked forward to his own death in the spring of 1916. He lost his life on July 4 of that year while storming the village of Belloy-en-Santerre. The first two stanzas are as follows:

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple blossoms fill the air-- I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair

It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath-- It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow flowers appear.

Alan Seeger has written two poems that all Americans should know. One is entitled "Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France." It was to have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Memorial Day, 1916; but permission to go to Paris to read it did not reach Seeger in time, to the disappointment of him and many others. It is perhaps the best long poem Seeger has written, although "Champagne, 1914-15" is by many ranked ahead of it.

* * * * *

"A man is judged and ranked by that which he considers to be of the greatest value. Some men believe it is knowledge, and spend their lives in study and research; some think it is beauty, and vainly seek to capture it and hold it in song, poem, statue, or painting; some say it is goodness, and devote their lives to service, self-denial, and sacrifice; some declare it is life itself, and therefore never kill any creature and always carefully protect their own lives from disease and danger; and some are sure it is being true to the best knowledge, the greatest beauty, the highest good that one can know and feel and realize; for this alone is life, and times come when the only way to save one's life is to lose it."

FOOTNOTES:

[9] BASED ON POEMS OF ALAN SEEGER, COPYRIGHT HELD BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT?

After England had entered the war against the Central Powers, Gilbert Murray, an English writer, asked this question and answered it by saying "Yes," and giving his reasons.

He had always favored peace. He hated war, not merely for its own cruelty and folly, but because it was an enemy of good government, of friendship and gentleness, and of art, learning, and literature.

Yet he believed firmly that England was right in declaring war against Germany on August 4, 1914, and that she would have failed in her duty if she had remained neutral. France, Russia, Belgium, and Serbia had no choice. They were obliged to fight, for the war was forced upon them. Germany did not wish to fight England; but after carefully looking over the whole matter, England, of her own free will, declared war. She took upon her shoulders a great responsibility. But she was right.

With a few changes in the wording and some omissions, the argument of Gilbert Murray is as follows:

"How can such a thing be? It is easy enough to see that our cause is right, and that the German cause is wrong. It is hardly possible to study the official papers issued by the British, the German, and the Russian governments, without seeing that Germany--or some party in Germany--had plotted this war beforehand; that she chose a moment when she thought her neighbors were at a disadvantage; that she prevented Austria from making a settlement even at the last moment; that in order to get more quickly at France she violated her treaty with Belgium. Evidence shows that she has carried out the violation with a cruelty that has no equal in the wars of modern and civilized nations. Yet there may be some people who still feel doubtful. Germany's wrong-doing they think is no reason for us to do likewise. We did our best to keep the general peace; there we were right. We failed; the German government made war in spite of us. There we were unfortunate. It was a war already on an enormous scale and we decided to make it larger still. There we were wrong. Could we not have stood aside, as the United States did, ready to help refugees and sufferers, anxious to heal wounds and not make them, watchful for the first chance of putting an end to this time of horror?

"'Try for a moment,' they say, 'to realize the suffering in one small corner of a battlefield. You have seen a man here and there badly hurt in an accident; you have seen perhaps a horse with its back broken, and you can remember how dreadful it seemed to you. In that one corner how many men, how many horses, will be lying, hurt far worse, and just waiting to die? Terrible wounds, extreme torment; and all, further than any eye can see, multiplied and multiplied! And, for all your just anger against Germany, what have these wounded done? The horses are not to blame for anybody's foreign policy. They have only come where their masters took them. And the masters themselves ... though certain German rulers and leaders are wicked, these soldiers, peasants, working-men, shop-keepers, and schoolmasters, have really done nothing in particular; at least, perhaps they have now, but they had not up to the time when you, seeing they were in war and misery already, decided to make war on them also and increase their sufferings. You say that justice must be done on such wrong-doers. But as far as the rights and wrongs of the war go, you are simply condemning to death and torture innocent men, by thousands and thousands; is that the best way to satisfy your sense of justice? These innocent people, you say, are fighting to protect the guilty parties whom you are determined to reach. Well, perhaps, at the end of the war, after millions of innocent people have suffered, you may at last, if all goes well with your arms, get at the "guilty parties." You will hold an inquiry, you will decide that certain Prussians with long titles are the guilty parties, and even then you will not know what to do with them. You will probably try, and almost certainly fail, to make them somehow feel ashamed. It is likely enough that they will instead become great national heroes.

"'And after all, this is supposed to be a war in which one party is wrong and the other right, and the right wins. Suppose both are wrong; or suppose the wrong party wins? It is as likely as not; for, if the right party is helped by his good conscience, the wrong has probably taken pains to have the odds on his side before he began quarreling. In that case, all the wild waste of blood and treasure, all the suffering of innocent people and dumb animals, all the tears of women and children have not set up the right, but established the wrong. To do a little evil that great or certain good may come is all very well; but to do great evil for only a chance of getting something which half the people may think good and the other half think bad ... that is neither good morals nor good sense. Anybody not in a passion must see that it is insanity,' So they say who think war always wrong.

"Their argument is wrong. It is judging war as a profit-and-loss account. It leaves out of sight the fact that in some causes it is better to fight and be broken than to yield peacefully; that sometimes the mere act of resisting to the death is in itself a victory.

"Let us try to understand this. The Greeks who fought and died at Thermopylæ had no doubt that they were doing right to fight and die, and we all agree with them. They probably knew they would be defeated. They probably expected that, after their defeat, the Persians would easily conquer the rest of Greece, and would treat it much more harshly because it had resisted. But such thoughts did not affect them. They would not consent to their country's dishonor.

"Take again a very clear modern case: the fine story of the French tourist who was captured, together with a priest and some other white people, by Moorish robbers. The Moors gave their prisoners the choice either to trample on the Cross or to be killed. The Frenchman was not a Christian. He disliked Christianity. But he was not going to trample on the Cross at the orders of a robber. He stuck to his companions and died with them.

"Honor and dishonor are real things. I will not try to define them; but will only notice that, like religion, they admit no bargaining. Indeed, we can almost think of honor as being simply that which a free man values more than life, and dishonor as that which he avoids more than suffering or death. And the important point for us is that there are such things as honor and dishonor.

"There are some people, followers of Tolstoy, who accept this as far as dying is concerned, but will have nothing to do with killing. Passive resistance, they say, is right; martyrdom is right; but to resist violence by violence is sin.

"I was once walking with a friend of Tolstoy's in a country lane, and a little girl was running in front of us. I put to him the well-known question: 'Suppose you saw a man, wicked or drunk or mad, run out and attack that child. You are a big man, and carry a big stick: would you not stop him and, if necessary, knock him down?' 'No,' he said, 'why should I commit a sin. I would try to persuade him, I would stand in his way, I would let him kill me, but I would not strike him,' Some few people will always be found, less than one in a thousand, to take this view. They will say: 'Let the little girl be killed or carried off; let the wicked man commit another wickedness; I, at any rate, will not add to the mass of useless violence that I see all around me.'

"With such persons one cannot reason, though one can often respect them. Nearly every normal man will feel that the real sin, the real dishonor, lies in allowing such an act to be committed under your eyes while you have the strength to prevent it. And the stronger you are, the greater your chance of success, by so much the more are you bound to interfere. If the robbers are overpoweringly strong and there is no chance of beating them, then and only then should you think of martyrdom. Martyrdom is not the best possibility. It is almost the worst. It is the last resort when there is no hope of successful resistance. The best thing--suppose once the robbers are there and intent on crime--the best thing is to overawe them at once; the next best, to defeat them after a hard struggle; the third best, to resist vainly and be martyred; the worst of all, the one evil that need never be endured, is to let them have their own will without protest.

"We have noticed that in all these cases of honor there seems to be no counting of cost, no balancing of good and evil. Ordinarily we are always balancing results, but when honor or religion come on the scene, all such balancing ceases. The point of honor is the point at which a man says to some wrong proposal, 'I will not do it. I will rather die.'

"These things are far easier to see where one man is concerned than where it is a whole nation. But they arise with nations, too. In the case of a nation the material consequences are much larger, and the point of honor is apt to be less clear. But, in general, whenever one nation in dealing with another relies simply on force or fraud, and denies to its neighbor the common consideration due to human beings, a point of honor must arise.

"Austria says suddenly to Serbia: 'You are a wicked little state. I have annexed and governed against their will some millions of your countrymen, yet you are still full of anti-Austrian feeling, which I do not intend to allow. You will dismiss from your service all officials, politicians, and soldiers who do not love Austria, and I will further send you from time to time lists of persons whom you are to dismiss or put to death. And if you do not agree to this within forty-eight hours, I, being vastly stronger than you, will make you. As a matter of fact, Serbia did her very best to comply with Austria's demands; she accepted about two thirds of them, and asked for arbitration on the remaining third. But it is clear that she could not accept them all without being dishonored. That is, Serbia would have given up her freedom at the threat of force; the Serbs would no longer be a free people, and every individual Serb would have been humiliated. He would have confessed himself to be the kind of man who will yield when an Austrian bullies him. And if it is urged that under good Austrian government Serbia would become richer and safer, and the Serbian peasants get better markets, such pleas cannot be listened to. They are a price offered for slavery; and a free man will not accept slavery at any price.

"Germany, again, says to Belgium: 'We have no quarrel with you, but we intend for certain reasons to march across your territory and perhaps fight a battle or two there. We know that you are pledged by treaty not to allow any such thing, but we cannot help that. Consent, and we will pay you afterwards; refuse, and we shall make you wish you had never been born.' At that moment Belgium was a free, self-governing state. If it had yielded to Germany's demand, it would have ceased to be either free or self-governing. It is possible that, if Germany had been completely victorious, Belgium would have suffered no great material injury; but she would have taken orders from a stranger who had no right to give them, simply because he was strong. Belgium refused. She has had some of her towns destroyed, some thousands of her soldiers killed, many more thousands of her women, children, and non-combatants outraged and beggared; but she is still free. She still has her honor.