Chapter 4

Should he look? Yet he must look. The Kaiser looked; and saw a window shining and a neat room in the cottage: there was nothing dreadful there; thank the good German God for that; it was all right, after all. The Kaiser had had a fright, but it was all right; there was only a woman with a baby sitting before the fire, and two small children and a man. And it was quite a jolly room. And the man was a young soldier; and, why, he was a Prussian Guardsman,--there was his helmet hanging on the wall,--so everything was all right. They were jolly German children; that was well. How nice and homely the room was. There shone before him, and showed far off in the night, the visible reward of German thrift and industry. It was all so tidy and neat, and yet they were quite poor people. The man had done his work for the Fatherland, and yet beyond all that had been able to afford all those little knickknacks that make a home so pleasant and that in their humble little way were luxury. And while the Kaiser looked the two young children laughed as they played on the floor, not seeing that face at the window.

Why! Look at the helmet. That was lucky. A bullet hole right through the front of it. That must have gone very close to the man’s head. How ever did it get through? It must have glanced upwards as bullets sometimes do. The hole was quite low in the helmet. It would be dreadful to have bullets coming by close like that. The firelight flickered, and the lamp shone on, and the children played on the floor, and the man was smoking out of a china pipe; he was strong and able and young, one of the wealth-winners of Germany.

“Have you seen?” said the phantom.

“Yes,” said the Kaiser. It was well, he thought, that a Kaiser should see how his people lived.

At once the fire went out and the lamp faded away, the room fell sombrely into neglect and squalor, and the soldier and the children faded away with the room; all disappeared phantasmally, and nothing remained but the helmet in a kind of glow on the wall, and the woman sitting all by herself in the darkness.

“It has all gone,” said the Kaiser.

“It has never been,” said the phantom.

The Kaiser looked again. Yes, there was nothing there, it was just a vision. There were the grey walls all damp and uncared for, and that helmet standing out solid and round, like the only real thing among fancies. No, it had never been. It was just a vision.

“It might have been,” said the phantom.

Might have been? How might it have been?

“Come,” said the phantom.

They drifted away down a little lane that in summer would have had roses, and came to an Uhlan’s house; in times of peace a small farmer. Farm buildings in good repair showed even in the night, and the black shapes of haystacks; again a well-kept garden lay by the house. The phantom and the Kaiser stood in the garden; before them a window glowed in a lamplit room.

“Look,” said the phantom.

The Kaiser looked again and saw a young couple; the woman played with a baby, and all was prosperous in the merry room. Again the hard-won wealth of Germany shone out for all to see, the cosy comfortable furniture spoke of acres well cared for, spoke of victory in the struggle with the seasons on which wealth of nations depends.

“It might have been,” said the phantom. Again the fire died out and the merry scene faded away, leaving a melancholy, ill-kept room, with poverty and mourning haunting dusty corners and the woman sitting alone.

“Why do you show me this?” said the Kaiser. “Why do you show me these visions?”

“Come,” said the phantom.

“What is it?” said the Kaiser. “Where are you bringing me?”

“Come,” said the phantom.

They went from window to window, from land to land. You had seen, had you been out that night in Germany, and able to see visions, an imperious figure passing from place to place, looking on many scenes. He looked on them, and families withered away, and happy scenes faded, and the phantom said to him “Come.” He expostulated but obeyed; and so they went from window to window of hundreds of farms in Prussia, till they came to the Prussian border and went on into Saxony; and always you would have heard, could you hear spirits speak, “It might have been,” “It might have been,” repeated from window to window.

They went down through Saxony, heading for Austria. And for long the Kaiser kept that callous, imperious look. But at last he, even he, at last he nearly wept. And the phantom turned then and swept him back over Saxony, and into Prussia again and over the sentries’ heads, back to his comfortable bed where it was so hard to sleep.

And though they had seen thousands of merry homes, homes that can never be merry now, shrines of perpetual mourning; though they had seen thousands of smiling German children, who will never be born now, but were only the visions of hopes blasted by him; for all the leagues over which he had been so ruthlessly hurried, dawn was yet barely breaking.

He had looked on the first few thousand homes of which he had robbed all time, and which he must see with his eyes before he may go hence. The first night of the Kaiser’s punishment was accomplished.

The English Spirit

By the end of the South African war Sergeant Cane had got one thing very well fixed in his mind, and that was that war was an overrated amusement. He said he “was fed up with it,” partly because that misused metaphor was then new, partly because every one was saying it: he felt it right down in his bones, and he had a long memory. So when wonderful rumours came to the East Anglian village where he lived, on August 1, 1914, Sergeant Cane said: “That means war,” and decided then and there to have nothing to do with it: it was somebody else’s turn; he felt he had done enough. Then came August 4th, and England true to her destiny, and then Lord Kitchener’s appeal for men. Sergeant Cane had a family to look after and a nice little house: he had left the army ten years.

In the next week all the men went who had been in the army before, all that were young enough, and a good sprinkling of the young men too who had never been in the army. Men asked Cane if he was going, and he said straight out “No.”

By the middle of August Cane was affecting the situation. He was a little rallying point for men who did not want to go. “He knows what it’s like,” they said.

In the smoking room of the Big House sat the Squire and his son, Arthur Smith; and Sir Munion Boomer-Platt, the Member for the division. The Squire’s son had been in the last war as a boy, and like Sergeant Cane had left the army since. All the morning he had been cursing an imaginary general, seated in the War Office at an imaginary desk with Smith’s own letter before him, in full view but unopened. Why on earth didn’t he answer it, Smith thought. But he was calmer now, and the Squire and Sir Munion were talking of Sergeant Cane.

“Leave him to me,” said Sir Munion.

“Very well,” said the Squire. So Sir Munion Boomer-Platt went off and called on Sergeant Cane.

Mrs Cane knew what he had come for.

“Don’t let him talk you over, Bill,” she said.

“Not he,” said Sergeant Cane.

Sir Munion came on Sergeant Cane in his garden.

“A fine day,” said Sir Munion. And from that he went on to the war. “If you enlist,” he said, “they will make you a sergeant again at once. You will get a sergeant’s pay, and your wife will get the new separation allowance.”

“Sooner have Cane,” said Mrs Cane.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Sir Munion. “But then there is the medal, probably two or three medals, and the glory of it, and it is such a splendid life.”

Sir Munion did warm to a thing whenever he began to hear his own words. He painted war as it has always been painted, one of the most beautiful things you could imagine. And then it mustn’t be supposed that it was like those wars that there used to be, a long way off. There would be houses where you would be billeted, and good food, and shady trees and villages wherever you went. And it was such an opportunity of seeing the Continent (“the Continent as it really is,” Sir Munion called it) as would never come again, and he only wished he were younger. Sir Munion really did wish it, as he spoke, for his own words stirred him profoundly; but somehow or other they did not stir Sergeant Cane. No, he had done his share, and he had a family to look after.

Sir Munion could not understand him: he went back to the Big House and said so. He had told him all the advantages he could think of that were there to be had for the asking, and Sergeant Cane merely neglected them.

“Let me have a try,” said Arthur Smith. “He soldiered with me before.”

Sir Munion shrugged his shoulders. He had all the advantages at his fingers’ ends, from pay to billeting: there was nothing more to be said. Nevertheless young Smith went.

“Hullo, Sergeant Cane,” said Smith.

“Hello, sir,” said the sergeant.

“Do you remember that night at Reit River?”

“Don’t I, sir,” said Cane.

“One blanket each and no ground sheet?”

“I remember, sir,” said Cane.

“Didn’t it rain,” said Smith.

“It rained that night, proper.”

“Drowned a few of the lice, I suppose.”

“Not many,” said Cane.

“No, not many,” Smith reflected. “The Boers had the range all right that time.”

“Gave it us proper,” said Cane.

“We were hungry that night,” said Smith. “I could have eaten biltong.”

“I did eat some of it,” said Cane. “Not bad stuff, what there was of it, only not enough.”

“I don’t think,” said Smith, “that I’ve ever slept on the bare earth since.”

“No, sir?” said Cane. “It’s hard. You get used to it. But it will always be hard.”

“Yes, it will always be hard,” said Smith. “Do you remember the time we were thirsty?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said Cane, “I remember that. One doesn’t forget that.”

“No. I still dream of it sometimes,” said Smith. “It makes a nasty dream. I wake with my mouth all dry too, when I dream that.”

“Yes,” said Cane, “one doesn’t forget being thirsty.”

“Well,” said Smith, “I suppose we’re for it all over again?”

“I suppose so, sir,” said Cane.

An Investigation Into the Causes and Origin of the War

The German imperial barber has been called up. He must have been called up quite early in the war. I have seen photographs in papers that leave no doubt of that. Who he is I do not know: I once read his name in an article but have forgotten it; few even know if he still lives. And yet what harm he has done! What vast evils he has unwittingly originated! Many years ago he invented a frivolity, a jeu d’esprit easily forgivable to an artist in the heyday of his youth, to whom his art was new and even perhaps wonderful. A craft, of course, rather than an art, and a humble craft at that; but then, the man was young, and what will not seem wonderful to youth?

He must have taken the craft very seriously, but as youth takes things seriously, fantastically and with laughter. He must have determined to outshine rivals: he must have gone away and thought, burning candles late perhaps, when all the palace was still. But how can youth think seriously? And there had come to him this absurd, this fantastical conceit. What else would have come? The more seriously he took the tonsorial art, the more he studied its tricks and phrases and heard old barbers lecture, the more sure were the imps of youth to prompt him to laughter and urge him to something outrageous and ridiculous. The background of the dull pomp of Potsdam must have made all this more certain. It was bound to come.

And so one day, or, as I have suggested, suddenly late one night, there came to the young artist bending over tonsorial books that quaint, mad, odd, preposterous inspiration. Ah, what pleasure there is in the madness of youth; it is not like the madness of age, clinging to outworn formulæ; it is the madness of breaking away, of galloping among precipices, of dallying with the impossible, of courting the absurd. And this inspiration, it was in none of the books; the lecturer barbers had not lectured on it, could not dream of it and did not dare to; there was no tradition for it, no precedent; it was mad; and to introduce it into the pomp of Potsdam, that was the daring of madness. And this preposterous inspiration of the absurd young barber-madman was nothing less than a moustache that without any curve at all, or any suggestion of sanity, should go suddenly up at the ends very nearly as high as the eyes!

He must have told his young fellow craftsmen first, for youth goes first to youth with its hallucinations. And they, what could they have said? You cannot say of madness that it is mad, you cannot call absurdity absurd. To have criticized would have revealed jealousy; and as for praise you could not praise a thing like that. They probably shrugged, made gestures; and perhaps one friend warned him. But you cannot warn a man against a madness; if the madness is in possession it will not be warned away: why should it? And then perhaps he went to the old barbers of the Court. You can picture their anger. Age does not learn from youth in any case. But there was the insult to their ancient craft, bad enough if only imagined, but here openly spoken of. And what would come of it? They must have feared, on the one hand, dishonour to their craft if this young barber were treated as his levity deserved; and, on the other hand, could they have feared his success? I think they could not have guessed it.

And then the young idiot with his preposterous inspiration must have looked about to see where he could practise his new absurdity. It should have been enough to have talked about it among his fellow barbers; they would have gone with new zest to their work next day for this delirious interlude, and no harm would have been done. “Fritz,” (or Hans) they would have said, “was a bit on last night, a bit full up,” or whatever phrase they use to touch on drunkenness; and the thing would have been forgotten. We all have our fancies. But this young fool wanted to get his fancy mixed up with practice: that’s where he was mad. And in Potsdam, of all places.

He probably tried his friends first, young barbers at the Court and others of his own standing. None of them were fools enough to be seen going about like that. They had jobs to lose. A Court barber is one thing, a man who cuts ordinary hair is quite another. Why should they become outcasts because their friend chose to be mad?

He probably tried his inferiors then, but they would have been timid folk; they must have seen the thing was absurd, and of course daren’t risk it. Again, why should they?

Did he try to get some noble then to patronize his invention? Probably the first refusals he had soon inflamed his madness more, and he threw caution insanely to the winds, and went straight to the Emperor.

It was probably about the time that the Emperor dismissed Bismarck; certainly the drawings of that time show him still with a sane moustache.

The young barber probably chanced on him in this period, finding him bereft of an adviser, and ready to be swayed by whatever whim should come. Perhaps he was attracted by the barber’s hardihood, perhaps the absurdity of his inspiration had some fascination for him, perhaps he merely saw that the thing was new and, feeling jaded, let the barber have his way. And so the frivolity became a fact, the absurdity became visible, and honour and riches came the way of the barber.

A small thing, you might say, however fantastical. And yet I believe the absurdity of that barber to be among the great evils that have brought death nearer to man; whimsical and farcical as it was, yet a thing deadlier than Helen’s beauty or Tamerlane’s love of skulls. For just as character is outwardly shown so outward things react upon the character; and who, with that daring barber’s ludicrous fancy visible always on his face, could quite go the sober way of beneficent monarchs? The fantasy must be mitigated here, set off there; had you such a figure to dress, say for amateur theatricals, you would realize the difficulty. The heavy silver eagle to balance it; the glittering cuirass lower down, preventing the eye from dwelling too long on the barber’s absurdity. And then the pose to go with the cuirass and to carry off the wild conceit of that mad, mad barber. He has much to answer for, that eccentric man whose name so few remember. For pose led to actions; and just when Europe most needed a man of wise counsels, restraining the passions of great empires, just then she had ruling over Germany and, unhappily, dominating Austria, a man who every year grew more akin to the folly of that silly barber’s youthful inspiration.

Let us forgive the barber. For long I have known from pictures that I have seen of the Kaiser that he has gone to the trenches. Probably he is dead. Let us forgive the barber. But let us bear in mind that the futile fancies of youth may be deadly things, and that one of them falling on a fickle mind may so stir its shallows as to urge it to disturb and set in motion the avalanches of illimitable grief.

Lost

Describing a visit, say the papers of March 28th, which the Kaiser paid incognito to Cologne Cathedral on March 18th before the great battle, the Cologne correspondent of the Tyd says:

There were only a few persons in the building. Under high arches and in spacious solitude the Kaiser sat, as if in deep thought, before the priests’ choir. Behind him his military staff stood respectfully at a distance. Still musing as he rose, the monarch resting both hands on his walking-stick remains standing immovable for some minutes... I shall never forget this picture of the musing monarch praying in Cologne Cathedral on the eve of the great battle.

Probably he won’t forget it. The German casualty lists will help to remind him. But what is more to the point is that this expert propagandist has presumably received orders that we are not to forget it, and that the sinister originator of the then impending holocaust should be toned down a little in the eyes at least of the Tyd to something a little more amiable.

And no doubt the little piece of propaganda gave every satisfaction to those who ordered it, or they would not have passed it out to the Tyd, and the touching little scene would never have reached our eyes. At the same time the little tale would have been better suited to the psychology of other countries if he had made the War Lord kneel when he prayed in Cologne Cathedral, and if he had represented the Military Staff as standing out of respect to One who, outside Germany, is held in greater respect than the All Highest.

And had the War Lord really knelt is it not possible that he might have found pity, humility, or even contrition? Things easily overlooked in so large a cathedral when sitting erect, as a War Lord, before the priests’ choir, but to be noticed perhaps with one’s eyes turned to the ground.

Perhaps he nearly found one of those things. Perhaps he felt (who knows?) just for a moment, that in the dimness of those enormous aisles was something he had lost a long, long while ago.

One is not mistaken to credit the very bad with feeling far, faint appeals from things of glory like Cologne Cathedral; it is that the appeals come to them too far and faint on their headlong descent to ruin.

For what was the War Lord seeking? Did he know that pity for his poor slaughtered people, huddled by him on to our ceaseless machine guns, might be found by seeking there? Or was it only that the lost thing, whatever it was, made that faint appeal to him, passing the door by chance, and drew him in, as the scent of some herb or flower in a moment draws us back years to look for something lost in our youth; we gaze back, wondering, and do not find it.

And to think that perhaps he lost it by very little! That, but for that proud attitude and the respectful staff, he might have seen what was lost, and have come out bringing pity for his people. Might have said to the crowd that gave him that ovation, as we read, outside the door: “My pride has driven you to this needless war, my ambition has made a sacrifice of millions, but it is over, and it shall be no more; I will make no more conquests.”

They would have killed him. But for that renunciation, perhaps, however late, the curses of the widows of his people might have kept away from his grave.

But he did not find it. He sat at prayer. Then he stood. Then he marched out: and his staff marched out behind him. And in the gloom of the floor of the vast Cologne Cathedral lie the things that the Kaiser did not find and never will find now. Unnoticed thus, and in some silent moment, passes a man’s last chance.

The Last Mirage

The desolation that the German offensive has added to the dominions of the Kaiser cannot easily be imagined by any one who has never seen a desert. Look at it on the map and it is full of the names of towns and villages; it is in Europe, where there are no deserts; it is a fertile province among places of famous names. Surely it is a proud addition to an ambitious monarch’s possessions. Surely there is something there that it is worth while to have conquered at the cost of army corps. No, nothing. They are mirage towns. The farms grow Dead Sea fruit. France recedes before the imperial clutch. France smiles, but not for him. His new towns seem to be his because their names have not yet been removed from any map, but they crumble at his approach because France is not for him. His deadly ambition makes a waste before it as it goes, clutching for cities. It comes to them and the cities are not there.

I have seen mirages and have heard others told of, but the best mirages of all we never hear described; the mirage that waterless travellers see at the last. Those fountains rising out of onyx basins, blue and straight into incredible heights, and falling and flooding cool white marble; the haze of spray above their feathery heads through which the pale green domes of weathered copper shimmer and shake a little; mysterious temples, the tombs of unknown kings; the cataracts coming down from rose-quartz cliffs, far off but seen quite clearly, growing to rivers bearing curious barges to the golden courts of Sahara. These things we never see; they are seen at the last by men who die of thirst.

Even so has the Kaiser looked at the smiling plains of France. Even so has he looked on her famous ancient cities and the farms and the fertile fields and the woods and orchards of Picardy. With effort and trouble he has moved towards them. As he comes near to them the cities crumble, the woods shrivel and fall, the farms fade out of Picardy, even the hedgerows go; it is bare, bare desert. He had been sure of Paris, he had dreamed of Versailles and some monstrous coronation, he had thought his insatiable avarice would be sated. For he had plotted for conquest of the world, that boundless greed of his goading him on as a man in the grip of thirst broods upon lakes.

He sees victory near him now. That also will fade in the desert of old barbed wire and weeds. When will he see that a doom is over all his ambitions? For his dreams of victory are like those last dreams that come in deceptive deserts to dying men.

There is nothing good for him in the desert of the Somme. Bapaume is not really there, though it be marked on his maps; it is only a wilderness of slates and brick. Peronne looks like a city a long way off, but when you come near it is only the shells of houses. Pozière, Le Sars, Sapigny, are gone altogether.

And all is Dead Sea fruit in a visible desert. The reports of German victories there are mirage like all the rest; they too will fade into weeds and old barbed wire.

And the advances that look like victories, and the ruins that look like cities, and the shell-beaten broken fields that look like farms,--they and the dreams of conquest and all the plots and ambitions, they are all the mirage of a dying dynasty in a desert it made for its doom.