Chapter 24

For the true Germany--we have today the sad but immovable conviction of this--was never that of Goethe, of Beethoven, nor of Heine. It was that of implacable Landgraves and fierce soldiers.

For thousands of years Germany has let loose its hordes upon Europe; Vandals, Visigoths, Alains, Franks, Herules. Germany continues to do this at the present day. It is Germany's terrible and sinister function.

Only let us not deceive ourselves as to this point in future, Germany is the dangerous nation because it is the uncivilizable nation, because its castles, its fields, and its barracks have remained the inexhausted, and perhaps the inexhaustible, reservoirs of human ferocity.

EMILE VERHAEREN.

Retreat in the Rain.

By O.C.A. CHILD.

Those Uhlans now are working in too near, Their carbines crackle louder every shot. I say! our chaps a-plodding in the rear Are getting it--and most uncommon hot! It's not much fun retreating in the night, Through all this mess of rain and reeking slime-- It seems to me this boot's infernal tight! I must have hurt me when I slipped that time. Whew! that was close and there's a fellow gone! I know too well that heavy, sickening thud; It's bitter hard that we must keep right on And leave our wounded helpless in the mud. My foot hurts so that I can hardly see-- I'll have to stop for just a breathing space. What's that? It's blood!--those fiends have got me now! It's double time and I can't stand the pace! I'll use my rifle as a crutch. But, no! I'll stand and fight; they have me sure as day! It's death for death--then I will meet it so And make a Uhlan pay the price I pay. And here they come! Great God, they're coming fast-- Are almost on me! Ah, I got that one! Just one more shot--a good one for the last! Those iron hoofs have crushed me--I am done!

War a Game for Love and Honor

By Jerome K. Jerome

The chivalrous spirit of the present conflict informs this article, which appeared originally in The London Daily News under the title "The Greatest Game of All: The True Spirit of War," and is here reproduced by special permission of Mr. Jerome.

War has been described as the greatest of games. I am not going to quarrel with the definition. I am going to accept it. From that point of view there is something to be said for it. As a game it can be respectable; as a business it is contemptible. Wars for profit--for gold mines, for mere extension of territory, for markets--degrade a people. It is like playing cricket for money. A gentleman--man or nation--does not do such things. But war for love--for love of the barren hillside, for love of the tattered flag, for love of the far-off dream--played for a hope, a vision, a faith, with life and death as the stakes! Yes, there is something to be said for it.

Looked at practically, what, after all, does it matter whether Germany or Britannia rules the waves? Our tea and our 'baccy, one takes it, would still be obtainable; one would pay for it in marks instead of shillings. Our sailor men, instead of answering "Aye, aye, Sir," in response to Captain's orders, would learn to grunt "Jawohl." Their wages, their rations would be much the same.

These peaceful Old World villages through which I love to wander with my dogs; these old gray churches round which our dead have crept to rest; these lonely farmsteads in quiet valleys musical with the sound of mother creatures calling to their young; these old men with ruddy faces; these maidens with quiet eyes who give me greeting as we pass by in the winding lanes between the hedgerows; the gentle, patient horses nodding gravely on their homeward way; these tiny cottages behind their trim bright gardens; this lilliputian riot round the schoolhouse door; the little timid things in fur and feather peering anxious, bright-eyed from their hiding places! Suppose the miracle to happen. Suppose the weather-beaten board nailed to the old beech tree warning us in faded lettering as we pass beneath it of the penalties awaiting trespassers were to be superseded by a notice headed "Verboten!" What essential difference would there be--that a wise man need vex his soul concerning? We should no longer call it England. That would be all. The sweep of the hills would not be changed; the path would still wind through the woodland. Yet just for a name we are ready to face ruin and death.

It certainly is not business. A business man would stop to weigh the pros and cons. A German invasion! It would bring what so many of us desire: Conscription, tariff reform. It might even get rid of Lloyd George and the Insurance act. And yet that this thing shall not be, Tory Squire and Laborer Hodge, looking forward to a lifelong wage of twelve-and-six-pence a week, will fight shoulder to shoulder, die together, if need be, in the same ditch. Just for a symbol, a faith we call England. I should say Britain.

Can we explain it even to ourselves? Thousands of Germans come over to England to live. They prosper among us, take their pleasures with us, adapt themselves to our English ways, and learn to prefer them. Thousands of Englishmen make their homes in German cities; find German ways of living, if anything, suit them better. Suddenly there arises the question, shall English ways of life or German ways of life prevail: English or German culture--which shall it be? And the English who have lived contentedly in Germany for years hasten back to fight for England, and the desire of every German in England is to break up his pleasant home among us and fight to bring all Europe into German ways of thinking.

Clearly the definition is a right one. It is just a game.

Just as all life is a game; joy and sorrow the zest of it, suffering the strength-giving worth of it. Till Death rings his bell, and the game is over--for the present. What have we learned from it? What have we gained from it? Have we played it to our souls' salvation, learning from it courage, manhood? Or has it broken us, teaching us mean fear and hate?

I quote from the letter of a young cavalry officer writing from the trenches:

Although I can't pretend to like this nightmare, I cannot help realizing that it is doing something for those of us who are going through it that we otherwise would have missed; it brings out either the best or worst in a man. It makes character.

He speaks of a little black dog. They are living in two feet of water, he and his men. The German lines are a hundred yards off; wounds, disease, and death are around them. They are worried about this wretched little dog. He has, it seems, lost his people, and is not to be comforted. It is a curious picture. One sees the straggling line of grimy, mud-stained men. They are there to kill; their own life hangs on a thread. A nightmare of blood and dust and horror, and in the midst of it, growing there as if the soil suited it, this flower of pity for a little fellow-creature.

I quote from another letter:

I can assure you there is none of that insensate hatred that one hears about out here. We are out to kill, and kill we do at every opportunity. But when it is all over the splendid universal soldier spirit comes over all the men. Just to give you some idea of what I mean, the other night four German snipers were shot on our wire. The next night our men went out and brought one in who was near and getatable and buried him. They did it with just the same reverence and sadness as they do our own dear fellows. I went to look at the grave next morning, and one of the most uncouth-looking men in my company had placed a cross at the head of the grave, and had written on it:

Here lies a German, We don't know his name, He died bravely fighting For his Fatherland.

And under that "Got mitt uns," (sic,) that being the highest effort of all the men at German.

"Got mitt uns." One has the idea that He is--when the game is played in that spirit. God with us both, shaping brotherhood out of enmity.

Bernard Shaw in a moment of inspiration thinks that some way will have to be found enabling England and Germany to live together peaceably for the future. It is an idea that may possibly have occurred to others. Well, perhaps this is the way. Shaw would not approve of it. But then there is so much in human nature that Shaw does not approve of. There are times when one is compelled to a great pity for Shaw. He seems to have got into the wrong world. He is for ever thanking God that he is not as we other men--we Englishmen and Germans, mere publicans and sinners. It is a difficult world to understand, I admit, my dear Shaw, full of inconsistencies and contradictions. Perhaps there is a meaning in it somewhere that you have missed.

Perhaps we have got to fight one another before we understand one another. In the old Norse mythology Love is the wife of Strife; when we come to consider the nature of man, not such an odd union as it appears.

So long as the law runs that in sorrow woman shall bring forth her child; so long as the ground shall yield to the sons of Adam thorns also and thistles, so long will there be strife between man and man. So long, when the last word has been spoken and has failed, will there be war between the nations. The only hope of civilization is to treat it as a game. You cannot enforce a law without a policeman. You can only appeal to a man's honor--to his sporting instincts.

The mistake Germany is making is in not treating war as a game. To do so would be weakness and frivolity. War must be ruthless, must be frightful. It is not to be bound down by laws human or Divine. And even then she is not logical. Two German officers interned in Holland are released on parole. Taking their country at her word, they hasten back to rejoin their regiments. The German Staff is shocked, sends them back to be imprisoned.

So there really are rules to the game. An officer and gentleman may not lie. If a Sub-Lieutenant may not lie for the sake of his country, then what argument gives the right to the German Government to tear up its treaties, to the German Military Staff to disregard its Ambassador's signature to The Hague Convention?

Come, shade of Bismarck, and your disciples in Germany and other countries, (including a few in my own,) make up your mind. To be ruthless and frightful in a half-hearted, nervous, vacillating fashion is ridiculous. You have either got to go back to the beginning of things, and make war a battle of wild beasts, or you have got to go forward and make it a game--a grim game, I grant you, but one that the nations can play at and shake hands afterward. We have tried the ruthless and frightful method. We used to slaughter the entire population. To shoot a selected few is to court a maximum of contempt for a minimum of advantage. We used to lay waste the land. We did not content ourselves with knocking down a church spire and burning a library. We left not one stone upon another. We sowed salt where the cities had been. We tortured our prisoners before the ramparts. We did not "leave them their eyes to weep with"; we burned them out with hot irons; surely a much swifter means of striking terror! Why not return to these methods? They sound most effective.

They were not effective. God's chosen people--according to themselves--did not annihilate the Philistines, not even with the help of the Ark of the Covenant. The Philistines tightened their belts and acquitted themselves like men. Today the heathen rules in Canaan. Where Mohammed failed the shade of Bismarck is not likely to succeed. Poland is still a sore in European politics. The whole force of the Vatican could not suppress a handful of reformers. All the bloodthirsty edicts of the Revolution could not annihilate a few thousand aristocrats. These things cannot be done. War finishes nothing, it only interrupts. A nation cannot be killed; it can only die. This war is not going to be the end of all things either for Germany or for us. Germany can be beaten to her knees, as she beat France to her knees in 1870; as more than once before that France has beaten her. Later on we have all got to live together in peace, for a while.

Come, gentlemen, let us make an honorable contest of it, that shall leave as little of bitterness behind it as may be. Let us see if we cannot make a fine game of it that we shall be all the better for having played out to the end. From which we shall all come back home cleaner minded, clearer seeing, made kinder to one another by suffering. Come, gentlemen, you believe that God has called upon you to spread German culture through the lands. You are ready to die for your faith. And we believe God has a use for the thing called England. Well, let us fight it out. There seems no other way. You for St. Michael and we for St. George; and God be with us both.

But do not let us lose our common humanity in the struggle. That were the worst defeat of all--the only defeat that would really matter, that would really be lasting.

Let us call it a game. After all, what else is it? We have been playing it since the dawn of creation; and it has settled nothing--but the names of things. Its victories, its defeats! Time wipes them off the slate, with a smile.

I quote from a letter written by the officer who boarded the Emden. He speaks of the German officers: "A thoroughly nice fellow"--"also a good fellow." The order is given that there be no cheering from the Sydney when entering the harbor with her prisoners. English sailormen have fought with German sailormen; have killed a good many of them. It is over. No crowing, gentlemen--over fellow-sailormen. Our writer discusses the fight generally with Captain von Muller. "We agreed it was our job to knock one another out. But there was no malice in it."

We shall do better to regard war as a game--a game to be played for love, for honor, without hatred, without malice. So only shall we profit by it.

THE BELGIAN WAR MOTHERS

By Charlotte Porter

I.

_The Dominant Voice, shrieking:_ Rancor unspeakable, white-hot wrath Spring in your furrow, rise in your path! Harvest you vengeance from Belgian dust, Ye who have turnèd love unto lust!

_Subdominant Voices, murmuring:_ _Month of Mary, may ye breed Vengers out of the August seed! Nourish'd hate of father-foe-- Grow, ye War-babes, grow, grow!_

II.

_The Dominant Voice:_ Anger implacable, brand with fire, Sear out the soul of the bestial sire! Impotent render the insolent boor-- Dead to the love and the life to endure!

_Subdominant Voices:_ _Month of Mary, ye shall breed Vengers out of the August seed, Cradled hate of father-foe-- Grow, ye War-babes, grow, grow!_

III.

_The Dominant Voice:_ Miracle-May-month, fathered in death, Bred in corruption to breathe new breath Into foul body-dregs, breathe thy life Into the hate-sired babes of strife!

_Subdominant Voices:_ _Month of Mary, ye shall feed Saviours from the Judas-deed-- Gods of life to quell that woe. Grow, ye War-babes, grow, grow!_

IV.

_The Dominant Voice:_ Ruin the arrogant hate of love! Ruin the haters, God above! Bless Thou their harvest to quell their sin-- Honor the sinned-against, God within!

_All Voices:_ _Warring nations, bleed, bleed, But to let the leaders lead! Springs to come from Falls to go, Love's lords, Life's lords, show, show!_

How England Prevented an Understanding With Germany

By Dr. Th. Schiemann.

The writings of Professor Schiemann of the University of Berlin, who is also the leading editorial writer of the Kreuz Zeitung, are regarded as inspired by the Kaiser's Government, and in some degree by the Kaiser himself. Dr. Schiemann is often spoken of as an intimate personal friend of the Kaiser. The subjoined article was, in the original, sent by Dr. Schiemann to Professor John Bates Clark of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with the special request that it be translated and forwarded for publication in THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY.

After the great crisis of the first world war, which terminated in the Congress of Vienna, the relations of England to the German States were fairly good. People lived in the protecting shade of the great alliance; England was busy digesting the enormous prey which it had seized at the expense of all the other powers that had taken part in the war; Continental Europe was endeavoring, as best it could, to heal the wounds and sores which had remained behind as mementos of oppressive but, despite all, glorious years. France recuperated most rapidly; by the Treaties of Paris there had been recovered from it only part of the abundant harvest which it had gathered in consequence of the victories and the coercive policy of Napoleon; the national soil was still fertile and the national consciousness was still imbued with the "gloire" which the Corsican General, with the help of his own and of foreign troops, had won for the French name. The great disturbances of world peace that marked the years 1830, 1854, and 1870 were attributable to an incessant pursuit of new "gloire," to which all other aims were subordinate. Parallel with this French striving for new "gloire" was England's endeavor to keep the Continent in a feverish condition; this was the policy of Lord Palmerston, and with it was combined a hysterical fear of attack on the part of possible enemies that were thought to exist in Russia, and especially in France. At the same time an arrogant challenge was constantly held forth to all the nations of the earth, and an almost uninterrupted war was carried on against the small States adjoining England's colonies in Asia and Africa. Between the years 1856 and 1900 England waged no less than thirty-four such wars, and by so doing acquired 4,000,000 square miles of land and 57,000,000 subjects. In Europe after the year 1815 England, for the most part, kept peace; the Crimean war, which was a coalition war, constitutes an exception, and it was not England's fault that Prussia, too, was not drawn into that war, which concerned a specifically English interest. At that time English threats were quite as numerous as they were in the year 1863, when The Daily News declared King William I. an outlaw, and The Daily Mail proclaimed for him the fate of Charles I. The cause of this, however, was that in London it was looked upon as an interference with English interests that Bismarck, by his attitude during the Polish insurrection, had prevented the effectuation of a coalition directed against Russia. During the war of 1864 over Schleswig-Holstein the threats were renewed, and even then we began to hear the watchwords with which public opinion in England for a decade has been mobilized against us: A Germany organized on a military basis, and with a fleet at its command besides, indicates that the goal of that State's policy, even more than in the case of France, is world rule. At that time, too, however, France and Russia were regarded by English war makers as the country's real enemies, and this conviction, rather than ideal considerations of any kind whatsoever, accounts for the fact that in the years 1870 and 1871 English policy followed a neutral course. England wished to see France weakened, had not foreseen Germany's great success, and had reserved for future opportunities the settlement of accounts with Russia, its very annoying rival in Asia.

In other respects, however, Bismarck was by no means satisfied with the way in which England pursued its policy of "neutrality." He had expected, at least, that the English would condemn the war, begun, as it was, in such a criminal manner, and not that they would carry on with France a flourishing trade in weapons. "It is a surprising fact, pregnant with warning," he wrote in May, 1874, "that Mr. Gladstone succeeded so easily in holding the country to an attitude directly opposed to the traditional hostility of the English masses toward France." He had all the more reason to expect a different attitude in view of the fact that, as was well known in England, it had been out of regard for England that Bismarck in December, 1870, had refused an offer of peace from Thiers, which rested on the condition that Belgium should be united to France under the rule of King Leopold. After the battle of Sedan Lord Odo Russell and Disraeli aroused the fears of the English people over the possibility of a German invasion; but Bismarck, nevertheless, was thinking of an English-German alliance, which, on account of the blood relationship of the two dynasties, was by no means impracticable, and which to Queen Victoria would have seemed a natural combination. Subsequently, in the years 1873 and 1874, Bismarck negotiated with Lord Odo Russell in Berlin regarding a German-English alliance, and through Münster he also took up the matter with Disraeli, who denied very emphatically that he had French sympathies. Nothing, he said, was more incorrect. The two peoples, he alleged further, who alone could proceed hand in hand, and who must become more and more cognizant of that fact, were Germany and England. The power of France, he added, was on the wane, a fact regarding which the demoralization of the empire, the decrease of population, and the course of recent events left no room for doubt. Notwithstanding Disraeli's views, however, the alliance with England, as is well known, was never formed. The most serious obstacle was created by the fact that party government in England rendered binding obligations extraordinarily difficult. Then came all sorts of pinpricks, as, for instance, Derby's advocacy in the year 1875 of Gortchakoff's famous rescue campaign. But despite all Bismarck held fast to the idea of bringing about closer relations with England, and the formation of the alliance with Austria-Hungary confirmed him in that purpose. "We shall have to adjust our attitude more and more," he wrote to Schweinitz in March, 1880, "with the object of increasing the security of our relations with Austria and England." It was this political desire that prompted him to reject a Russian proposal to unite the four Eastern powers in a common protest against England's isolated procedure in connection with the occupation of Egypt. He wished to prevent England from being humiliated by a prearranged coalition. A letter from Bismarck to Salisbury (July 8, 1885) has been preserved, which is very characteristic of this friendly attitude of German policy. "As to politics," he writes, "I have not the slightest doubt that the traditional friendly relations between the two dynasties, as well as between the two nations, will give sufficient security for settling every existing or arising question in a conciliatory way."