ia College ^Ci
FROM THE LIBRARY OF
L. E. HORNING, B.A., Ph.D.
(1858-1925)
PROFESSOR OF TEUTONIC
PHILOLOGY
VICTORIA COLLEGE
THE
BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
( LE LIVRE DES SANS-FOTER )
EDITED BY EDITH WHARTON
Original Articles in Verse and Prose
Illustrations reproduced from Original Paintings & Drawings
THE BOOK IS SOLD
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE AMERICAN HOSTELS FOR REFUGEES
(WITH THE FOYER FRANCO-BELGE)
AND OF THE CHILDREN OF FLANDERS RESCUE COMMITTEE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
MDCCCCXVI
PN loo
Wr
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
37
D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON, U. S. A.
LETTRE DU GENERAL JOFFRE
Jlrm&es de I'Esl REPUBLIQUE FRAN^AISE
Le Commandant en Chef
Jhi Grand Quartier General, le 18 Jlo6l, 1915
Les Etats- Unis d' Amerique n'ont pas oublie que la premiere
page de I'Histoire de leur independance a ete ecrite avec un
pen de sangjran$ais.
Par leur inepuisable generosite et leur grande sympathie,
Us apportent aujourd'hui a la France, qui combat pour sa
liberte, I' aide la plus precieuse et le plus puissant r'econ-
fort.
J. JOFFRE
LETTER FROM GENERAL JOFFRE
[ TRANSLATION ]
Headquarters of the Commander-in-chief
of the Armies of the French Republic August 1 8*A, 1915
The United States of America have never forgotten that the
first page of the history of their independence was partly
written in French blood.
Inexhaustibly generous and profoundly sympathetic, these
same United States now bring aid and solace to France in
the hour of her struggle for liberty.
J. JOFFRE
INTRODUCTION
IT is not only a pleasure but a duty to write the introduction which Mrs.
Wharton requests for "The Book of the Homeless." At the outset of this
war I said that hideous though the atrocities had been and dreadful though
the suffering, yet we must not believe that these atrocities and this suf-
fering paralleled the dreadful condition that had obtained in European
warfare during, for example, the seventeenth century. It is lamentable to
have to confess that I was probably in error. The fate that has befallen
Belgium is as terrible as any that befell the countries of Middle Europe
during the Thirty Years' War and the wars of the following half-century.
There is no higher duty than to care for the refugees and above all the
child refugees who have fled from Belgium. This book is being sold for the
benefit of the American Hostels for Refugees and for the benefit of The
Children of Flanders Relief Committee, founded in Paris by Mrs. Whar-
ton in November, 1914, and enlarged by her in April, 1915, and chiefly
maintained hitherto by American subscriptions. My daughter, who in No-
vember and December last was in Paris with her husband, Dr. Derby,
in connection with the American Ambulance, has told me much about
the harrowing tragedies of the poor souls who were driven from their
country and on the verge of starvation, without food or shelter, without
hope, and with the members of the family all separated from one an-
other, none knowing where the others were to be found, and who had
drifted into Paris and into other parts of France and across the Channel
to England as a result of Belgium being trampled into bloody mire. In
April last the Belgian Government asked Mrs. Wharton to take charge
of some six hundred and fifty children and a number of helpless old
men and women from the ruined towns and farms of Flanders. This is
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
the effort which has now turned into The Children of Flanders Rescue
Committee.
• I appeal to the American people to picture to themselves the plight
of these poor creatures and to endeavor in practical fashion to secure
that they shall be saved from further avoidable suffering. Nothing that
our people can do will remedy the frightful wrong that has been com-
mitted on these families. Nothing that can now be done by the civilized
world, even if the neutral nations of the civilized world should at last
wake up to the performance of the duty they have so shamefully failed
to perform, can undo the dreadful. wrong of which these unhappy chil-
dren, these old men and women, have been the victims. All that can be
done surely should be done to ease their suffering. The part that Amer-
ica has played in this great tragedy is not an exalted part; and there is
all the more reason why Americans should hold up the hands of those
of their number who, like Mrs. Wharton, are endeavoring to some ex-
tent to remedy the national shortcomings. We owe to Mrs. Wharton all
the assistance we can give. We owe this assistance to the good name of
America, and above all for the cause of humanity we owe it to the chil-
dren, the women and the old men who have suffered such dreadful wrong
for absolutely no fault of theirs.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
c
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTIONS OF WRITERS AND MUSICIANS
MAURICE BARRES PAGE
Les Freres 59
Translation: The Brothers 61
SARAH BERNHARDT
Une Promesse 64
Translation: A Promise 64
LAURENCE BINYON
The Orphans of Flanders. Poem 3
PAUL BOURGET
Apres un An 65
Translation: One Year Later 67
RUPERT BROOKE
The Dance. A Song 4
PAUL CLAUDEL
Le Precieux Sang. Poem 5
Translation: The Precious Blood 6
JEAN COCTEAU
La Mort des Jeunes Gens de la Divine Hellade. Fragment. Poem 9
C xi H
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
Translation : How the Young Men died in Hellas. A Fragment 1 1
JOSEPH CONRAD
Poland Revisited 71
VINCENT D'lNDY
Musical Score: La legende de Saint Christophe (Acte /, Sc, III) 55
ELEONORA DUSE
Liberta nella Vita 98
Translation: The Right to Liberty 98
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Harvest 99
EDMUND GOSSE
The Arrogance and Servility of Germany 101
ROBERT GRANT
A Message. Poem 14
THOMAS HARDY
Cry of the Homeless. Poem 16
PAUL HERVIEU
Science et Conscience 105
Translation: Science and Conscience 106
C xii 1
CONTRIBUTIONS OF WRITERS & MUSICIANS
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
The Little Children. Poem 1 7
GENERAL HUMBERT
Les Arabes avaient Raison 109
Translation: An Heroic Stand 111
HENRY JAMES
The Long Wards 115
FRANCIS JAMMES
Epitaphe. Poem 18
Translation: An Epitaph 19
\
GENERAL JOFFRE
Lettre du General Joffre vii
Translation: Letter from General Joffre viii
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
Notre Heritage 12?
Translation: Our Inheritance 127
EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN
We Who Sit Afar Off 129
ALICE MEYNELL
In Sleep. Poem 20
C xiii 3
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
PAUL ELMER MORE
A Moment of Tragic Purgation 133
COMTESSE DE NOAILLES
Nos Morts. Poem 21
Translation: Our Dead 21
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY
Two Songs of a Year: 1914-1915
I. Children's Kisses 23
II. The Sans-Foyer 25
LILLA CABOT PERRY
Rain in Belgium. Poem 26
AGNES REPPLIER
The Russian Bogyman 139
HENRI DE REGNIER
L'Exile. Poem 27
Translation: The Exile 28
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Introduction ix
EDMOND ROSTAND
Horreur et Beaute. Poem 30
CONTRIBUTIONS OF WRITERS & MUSICIANS
Translation : Horror and Beauty , 30
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Undergraduate Killed in Battle. Poem 32
IGOR STRAVINSKY
Musical Score: Souvenir d'une marche boche 49
ANDRE SUARES
Chant des Galloises 143
Translation: Song of the Welsh Women 147
EDITH M. THOMAS
The Children and the Flag. Poem 33
HERBERT TRENCH
The Troubler of Telaro. Poem 34
EMILE VERHAEREN
Le Printemps de 1915. Poem 37
Translation: The New Spring 38
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD (MARY A. WARD)
Wordsworth's Valley in War-time 151
BARRETT WENDELL
1915. Poem 40
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
EDITH WHARTON
Preface xix
The Tryst. Poem 41
MARGARET L. WOODS
Finisterre. Poem 43
W. B. YEATS
A Reason for Keeping Silent. Poem 45
The French poems, except M. Rostand's Sonnet
are translated by Mrs. Wharton
[ xvi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ARTISTS
LEON BAKST FOLLOWING PAGE
Portrait of Jean Cocteau. From an unpublished crayon sketch 8
Menade. From a water-colour sketch 126
MAX BEERBOHM
A Gracious Act. (Caricature.) From a water-colour sketch 104
JACQUES-EMILE BLANCHE
Portrait of Thomas Hardy. From a photograph of the painting 16
Portrait of George Moore. From a photograph of the painting 138
Portrait of Igor Stravinsky. From a study in oils 46
EDWIN ROWLAND BLASHFIELD
A Woman's Head. From the original drawing 142
LEON BONNAT
Pegasus. From a pencil and pen-and-ink sketch 70
P. A. J. DAGNAN-BOUVERET
Brittany Woman. From a drawing in coloured crayons 42
WALTER GAY
Interior. From an original water-colour sketch 32
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
J. L. GEROME
Turkish Soldier. From the original pencil drawing made in 1857 108
CHARLES DANA GIBSON
"The Girl he left behind Him/' From a pen-and-ink sketch 26
EMILE-RENE MENARD
Nude Figure. From a sketch in coloured crayon 150
CLAUDE MONET
Landscape. From an early coloured pastel 22
Boats on a Beach. From an early crayon drawing 100
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR
Portrait of his Son, wounded in the War. From a charcoal sketch 64
AUGUSTE RODIN
Two Women. From an original water-colour sketch 98
THEO VAN RYSSELBERGHE
Portrait of Andre Gide. From a pencil drawing 4
Portrait of Emile Verhaeren. From a pencil drawing 36
Portrait of Vincent d'Indy. From a photograph of the painting 52
JOHN SINGER SARGENT, R.A.
Portrait of Henry James. From a photograph of the painting 114
Two Heads. From a pencil drawing 132
C xviii ]
PREFACE
LAST year, among the waifs swept to Paris by the great torrent of the
flight from the North, there came to the American Hostels a little acrobat
from a strolling circus. He was not much more than a boy, and he had
never before been separated from his family or from his circus. All his
people were mummers or contortionists, and he himself was a mere mote
of the lime-light, knowing life only in terms of the tent and the platform,
the big drum, the dancing dogs, the tight-rope and the spangles.
In the sad preoccupied Paris of last winter it was not -easy to find a
corner for this little figure. But the lad could not be left in the streets, and
after a while he was placed as page in a big hotel. He was given good
pay, and put into a good livery, and told to be a good boy. He tried . . .
he really tried . . . but the life was too lonely. Nobody knew anything
about the only things he knew, or was particularly interested in the
programme of the last performance the company had given at Liege or
Maubeuge. The little acrobat could not understand. He told his friends
at the Hostels how lonely and puzzled he was, and they tried to help
him. But he could n't sleep at night, because he was used to being up
till nearly daylight; and one night he went up to the attic of the hotel,
broke open several trunks full of valuables stored there by rich lodgers,
and made oflf with some of the contents. He was caught, of course, and
the things he had stolen were produced in court. They were the spangled
dresses belonging to a Turkish family, and the embroidered coats of a
lady's lap-dog. . . .
I have told this poor little story to illustrate a fact which, as time passes,
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
is beginning to be lost sight of: the fact that we workers among the
refugees are trying, first and foremost, to help a homesick people. We are
not preparing for their new life an army of voluntary colonists ; we are
seeking to console for the ruin of their old life a throng of bewildered
fugitives. It is our business not only to feed and clothe and keep alive
these people, but to reassure and guide them. And that has been, for the
last year, the task of the American Hostels for Refugees.
The work was started in November, 1914, and since that time we have
assisted some 9,300 refugees, given more than 235,000 meals, and dis-
tributed 48,333 garments.
But this is only the elementary part of our work. We have done many
more difficult things. Our employment agency has found work for over
3,500 men. Our work-rooms occupy about 120 women, and while they
sew, their babies are kept busy and happy in a cheerful day-nursery, and
the older children are taught in a separate class.
The British Young Women's Christian Association of Paris has shown
its interest in our work by supplying us with teachers for the grown-up
students who realize the importance of learning English as a part of their
business equipment; and these classes are eagerly followed.
Lastly, we have a free clinic where 3,500 sick people have received
medical advice, and a dispensary where 4,500 have been given first aid
and nursing care ; and during the summer we sent many delicate children
to the seaside in the care of various Vacation Colonies.
This is but the briefest sketch of our complicated task ; a task under-
taken a year ago by a small group of French and American friendsmoved
to pity by the thousands of fugitives wandering through the streets of
Paris and sleeping on straw in the railway-stations.
We thought then that the burden we were assuming would not have
C xx ]
PREFACE
to be borne for more than three or four months, and we were confident
of receiving the necessary financial help. We were not mistaken; and
America has kept the American Hostels alive for a year. But we are
now entering on our second year, with a larger number to care for, and
a more delicate task to perform. The longer the exile of these poor people
lasts, the more carefully and discriminatingly must we deal with them.
They are not all King Alberts and Queen Elisabeths, as some idealists
apparently expected them to be. Some are hard to help, others unappre-
ciative of what is done for them. But many, many more are grateful, ap-
preciative, and eager to help us to help them. And of all of them we must
say, as Henri de Regnier says for us in the poem written for this Book :
He who, flying from the fate of slaves
With brow indignant and with empty hand,
Has left his house, his country and his graves,
Comes like a Pilgrim from a Holy Land.
Receive him thus, if in his blood there be
One drop of Belgium's immortality.
ii
THE CHILDREN
One day last August the members of the " Children of Flanders Res-
cue Committee " were waiting at the door of the Villa Bethanie, a large
seminary near Paris which had been put at the disposal of the committee
for the use of the refugee children.
The house stands in a park with fine old trees and a wide view over
the lovely rolling country to the northwest of Paris. The day was beau-
tiful, the borders of the drive were glowing with roses, the lawns were
[ xxi 3
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
fragrant with miniature hay-cocks, and the flower-beds about the court
had been edged with garlands of little Belgian flags.
Suddenly we heard a noise of motor-horns, and the gates of the park
were thrown open. Down toward us, between the rose-borders, a pro-
cession was beginning to pour: first a band of crippled and infirm old
men, then a dozen Sisters of Charity in their white caps, and lastly about
ninety small boys, each with his little bundle on his back.
They were a lamentable collection of human beings, in pitiful contrast
to the summer day and the bright flowers. The old men, for the most
part, were too tired and dazed to know where they were, or what was
happening to them, and the Sisters were crying from fatigue and home-
sickness. The boys looked grave too, but suddenly they caught sight of
the flowers, the hay-cocks, and the wide house-front with all its windows
smiling in the sun. They took a long look and then, of their own accord,
without a hint from their elders, they all broke out together into the Bel-
gian national hymn. The sound of that chorus repaid the friends who
were waiting to welcome them for a good deal of worry and hard work.
The flight from western Flanders began last April, when Ypres, Pop-
eringhe, and all the open towns of uninvaded Belgium were swept by
a senseless and savage bombardment. Even then it took a long time to
induce the inhabitants to give up the ruins of their homes ; and before
going away themselves they sent their children.
Train-load after train-load of Flemish children poured into Paris last
spring. They were gathered in from the ruins, from the trenches, from
the hospices where the Sisters of Charity had been caring for them, and
where, in many cases, they had been huddled in with the soldiers quar-
tered in the same buildings. Before each convoy started, a young lady
C xx" H
PREFACE
with fair hair and very blue eyes walked through the train, distributing
chocolate and sandwiches to the children and speaking to each of them
in turn, very kindly; and all but the very littlest children understood
that this lady was their Queen. . . .
The Belgian government, knowing that I had been working for the
refugees, asked me to take charge of sixty little girls, and of the Sisters
accompanying them. We found a house, fitted it up, begged for money
and clothes, and started The Children of Flanders Rescue Committee.
Now, after six months, we have five houses, and are caring for nearly
900 people, among whom are about 200 infirm old men and women
whom the Sisters had to bring because there was no one left to look
after them in the bombarded towns.
Every war-work, if it has any vitality in it, is bound to increase in this
way, and is almost certain to find the help it needs to keep it growing.
We have always been so confident of this that we have tried to do for
our Children of Flanders what the Hostels have done for the grown-up
refugees: not only to feed and clothe and shelter, but also to train and
develop them. Some of the Sisters are skilled lace-makers; and we have
founded lace-schools in three of our houses. There is a dearth of lace
at present, owing to the ruin of the industry in Belgium and Northern
France, and our little lace-makers have already received large orders
for Valenciennes and other laces. The smallest children are kept busy
in "classes of the " Montessori " type, provided by the generosity of an
American friend, and the boys, out of school-hours, are taught garden-
ing and a little carpentry. We hope later to have the means to enlarge
this attempt at industrial training.
This is what we are doing for the Children of Flanders ; but, above and
beyond all, we are caring for their health and their physical develop-
xxiii
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
ment. The present hope of France and Belgium is in its children, and in
the hygienic education of those who have them in charge ; and we have
taught the good Sisters many things they did not know before concern-
ing the physical care of the children. The results have been better than
we could have hoped ; and those who saw the arrival of the piteous waifs
a few months ago would scarcely recognize them in the round and rosy
children playing in the gardens of our Houses.
in
THE BOOK
I said just now that when we founded our two refugee charities we
were confident of getting money enough to carry them on. So we were ;
and so we had a right to be ; for at the end of the first twelvemonth we
are still alive and solvent.
But we never dreamed, at the start, that the work would last longer
than a year, or that its demands would be so complex and increasing.
And when we saw before us the certainty of having to carry this poor
burden of humanity for another twelve months, we began to wonder
how we should get the help to do it.
Then the thought of this Book occurred to me. I appealed to my friends
who write and paint and compose, and they to other friends of theirs,
writers, painters, composers, statesmen and dramatic artists; and so the
Book gradually built itself up, page by page and picture by picture.
You will see from the names of the builders what a gallant piece of
architecture it is, what delightful pictures hang on its walls, and what
noble music echoes through them. But what I should have liked to show
is the readiness, the kindliness, the eagerness, with which all the col-
xxv
PREFACE
laborators, from first to last, have lent a hand to the building. Perhaps
you will guess it for yourselves when you read their names and see the
beauty and variety of what they have given. So I efface myself from the
threshold and ask you to walk in.
EDITH WHARTON
Paris, November, 1915
Gifts of money for the American Hostels for Refugees, and the Children of Flanders
Rescue Committee should be addressed to Mrs. Wharton, 53 rue de Varenne,
Paris, or to Henry W. Munroe, Treasurer, care of Mrs. Cadwalader Jones, 21
East Eleventh Street, New York.
Gifts in kind should be forwarded to the American War Relief Clearing House,
5 rue Frangois Ier, Paris (with Mrs. Wharton1 s name in the left-hand corner}, via
the American offices of the Clearing House, 15 Broad Street, New York.
c xxv J
CONTRIBUTORS OF POETRY AND MUSIC
LAURENCE BINYON
RUPERT BROOKE
PAUL CLAUDEL
JEAN COCTEAU
ROBERT GRANT
THOMAS HARDY
W. D. HOWELLS
FRANCIS JAMMES
ALICE MEYNELL
COMTESSE DE NOAILLES
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY
LILLA CABOT PERRY
HENRI DE REGNIER
EDMOND ROSTAND
GEORGE SANTAYANA
EDITH M. THOMAS
HERBERT TRENCH
EMILE VERHAEREN
BARRETT WENDELL
EDITH WHARTON
MARGARET L. WOODS
W. B. YEATS
•
IGOR STRAVINSKY
VINCENT D'INDY
THE ORPHANS OF FLANDERS
Vv HERE is the land that fathered, nourished, poured
The sap of a strong race into your veins, —
Land of wide tilth, of farms and granaries stored,
And old towers chiming over peaceful plains?
It is become a vision, barred away
Like light in cloud, a memory, a belief.
On those lost plains the Glory of yesterday
Builds her dark towers for the bells of Grief.
It is become a splendour-circled name
For all the world. A torch against the skies
Burns from that blood-spot, the unpardoned shame
Of them that conquered: but your homeless eyes
See rather some brown pond by a white wall,
Red cattle crowding in the rutty lane,
Some garden where the hollyhocks were tall
In the Augusts that shall never be again.
There your thoughts cling as the long-thrusting root
Clings in the ground ; your orphaned hearts are there.
O mates of sunburnt earth, your love is mute
But strong like thirst and deeper than despair.
You have endured what pity can but grope
To feel; into that darkness enters none.
We have but hands to help: yours is the hope
Whose silent courage rises with the sun.
LAURENCE BINYON
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
THE DANCE
A SONG
As the Wind and as the Wind
In a corner of the way,
Goes stepping, stands twirling,
Invisibly, comes whirling,
Bows before and skips behind
In a grave, an endless play —
So my Heart and so my Heart
Following where your feet have gone,
Stirs dust of old dreams there ;
He turns a toe; he gleams there,
Treading you a dance apart.
But you see not. You pass on.
RUPERT BROOKE
c
THEO FAN RTSSELBERGHE
PORTRAIT OF ANDRE GIDE
FROM A PENCIL DRAWING
PAUL CLAUDEL
LE PRECIEUX SANG
-OEIGNEUR, qui pour un verre d'eau nous avez promis
la mer illimitee,
Qui salt si vous n'avez pas soif aussi?
Et que ce sang qui est tout ce que nous avons soit propre
a vous desalterer,
C'est vrai, puisque vous Favez dit!
Si vraiment il y a une source en nous, eh bien, c'est ce
que nous aliens voir!
Si ce vin a quelque vertu
Et si notre sang est rouge, comme vous le dites, com-
ment le savoir
Autrement que quand il est repandu?
Si notre sang est vraiment precieux, comme vous le dites,
si vraiment il est comme de Tor,
S'il sert, pourquoi le garder?
Et sans savoir ce qu'on peut acheter avec, pourquoi le
reserver comme un tresor,
Mon Dieu, quand vous nous le demandez?
Nos peches sont grands, nous le savons, et qu'il faut
absolument faire penitence,
Mais il est difficile pour un homme de pleurer.
Voici notre sang au lieu de larmes que nous avons re-
pandu pour la France:
Faites-en ce que vous voudrez.
Prenez-le, nous vous le donnons, tirez-en vous-meme
usage et benefice,
Nous ne vous faisons point de demande
c 5
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
Mais si vous avez besoin de notre amour autant que nous
avons besoin de votre justice,
Alors c'est que votre soif est grande!
P. CLAUDEL
Juillet 1915
THE PRECIOUS BLOOD
[TRANSLATION]
OH, what if Thou, that for a cup of water promisest
The illimitable sea,
Thou, Lord, dost also thirst?
Hast Thou not said, our blood shall quench Thee best
And first
Of any drink there be ?
If then there be such virtue in it, Lord,
Ah, let us prove it now!
And, save by seeing it at Thy footstool poured,
How, Lord — oh, how?
If it indeed be precious and like gold,
As Thou hast taught,
Why hoard it? There's no wealth in gems unsold,
Nor joy in gems unbought.
Our sins are great, we know it; and we know
We must redeem our guilt;
Even so.
C eH
PAUL CLAUDEL
But tears are difficult for a man to shed,
And here is our blood poured out for France instead,
To do with as Thou wilt!
Take it, O Lord ! And make it Thine indeed,
Void of all lien and fee.
Nought else we ask of Thee ;
But if Thou needst our Love as we Thy Justice need,
Great must Thine hunger be !
PAUL CLAUDEL
LEON BAKST
PORTRAIT OF JEAN COCTEAU
FROM AN UNPUBLISHED CRAYON SKETCH
JEAN COCTEAU
LA MORT DES JEUNES GENS DE
LA DIVINE HELLADE
FRAGMENT
ANTIGONE criant et marchant au supplice
N'avait pas de la mort leur sublime respect;
Ce n'etait pas pour eux une funeste paix,
C'etait un ordre auquel il faut qu'on obeisse.
Us ne subissaient pas roffense qu'il fit beau
Que le soleil murit les grappes de glycine;
Us etaient souriant en face du tombeau,
Les rossignols elus que la rose assassine.
Us ne regrettaient pas les tendres soirs futurs,
Les conversations sur les places d'Athenes,
Ou, le col altere de poussiere et d'azur,
Pallas, comme un pigeon, pleure au bord des fontaines.
Ils ne regrettaient pas les gradins decouverts
Ou le public trepigne, insiste,
Pour regarder, avant qu'ils montent sur la piste,
Les cochers bleus riant avec les cochers verts.
Ils ne regrettaient pas ce loisir disparate
D'une ville qui semble un sordide palais,
Ou Ton se reunit pour entendre Socrate
Et pour jouer aux osselets.
Ils etaient eblouis de tumulte et de risque,
Mais, si la fourbe mort les designait soudain,
C 9 3
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
Us laissaient sans gemir sur Therbe du jardin
Les livres et le disque.
Ce n'etait pas pour eux Tinsupportable affront,
Us se couchaient sans choc, sans lutte, sans tapage,
Comme on voit, ayant bien remue sous le front,
Un vers definitif s'etendre sur la page.
Us etaient resignes, vetus, rigides, prets
Pour cette experience etrange,
Comme Hyacinthe en fleur indolemment se change
Et comme Cyparis se transforme en cypres.
Us ne regrettaient rien de vivre en lonie,
D'etre libres, d'avoir des meres et des soeurs,
Et de sentir ce lourd sommeil envahisseur
Apres une courte insomnie.
Us rentraient au sejour qui n'a plus de saison,
Ou notre faible orgueil se refuse a descendre,
Sachant que 1'urne etroite ou git un peu de cendre
Sera tout le jardin et toute la maison.
Jadis j'ai vu mourir des freres de mon age,
J'ai vu monter en eux I'indicible torpeur.
Us avaient tous si mal! Us avaient tous si peur!
Us se prenaient la tete avec des mains en nage.
Us ne pouvaient pas croire, ayant si soif, si faim,
Un tel desir de tout avec un cceur si jeune,
A ce desert sans source, a cet immense jeune,
A ce terme confus qui n 'a jamais de fin.
c 1° :
JEAJY COCTEAU
Us n 'attendaient plus rien de la tendresse humaine
Et cherchaient a chasser d'un effort douloureux
L'Ange noir qui se couche a plat ventre sur eux
Et qui les considere avant qu'il les emmene.
JEAN COCTEAU
HOW THE YOUNG MEN DIED IN HELLAS
A FRAGMENT
[TRANSLATION]
ANTIGONE went wailing to the dust.
She reverenced not the face of Death like these
To whom it came as no enfeebling peace
But a command relentless and august.
These grieved not at the beauty of the morn,
Nor that the sun was on the ripening flower ;
Smiling they faced the sacrificial hour,
Blithe nightingales against the fatal thorn.
They grieved not that their feet no more should rove
The Athenian porticoes in twilight leisure,
Where Pallas, drunk with summer's gold and azure,
Brooded above the fountains like a dove.
They grieved not- for the theatre's high-banked tiers,
Where restlessly the noisy crowd leans over,
With laughter and with jostling, to discover
The blue and green of chaffing charioteers.
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
Nor for the fluted shafts, the carven stones
Of that sole city, bright above the seas,
Where young men met to talk with Socrates
Or toss the ivory bones.
Their eyes were lit with tumult and with risk,
But when they felt Death touch their hands and pass
They followed, dropping on the garden grass
The parchment and the disk.
X
It seemed no wrong to them that they must go.
They laid their lives down as the poet lays
On the white page the poem that shall praise
His memory when the hand that wrote is low.
Erect they stood and, festally arrayed,
Serenely waited the transforming hour,
Softly as Hyacinth slid from youth to flower,
Or the shade of Cyparis to a cypress shade.
They wept not for the lost Ionian days,
Nor liberty, nor household love and laughter,
Nor the long leaden slumber that comes after
Life's little wakefulness.
Fearless they sought the land no sunsets see,
Whence our weak pride shrinks back, and would return,
Knowing a pinch of ashes in an urn
Henceforth our garden and our house shall be.
Young men, my brothers, you whose morning skies
I have seen the deathly lassitude invade,
JEAJV COCTEAU
Oh, how you suffered! How you were afraid!
What death-damp hands you locked about your eyes!
You, so insatiably athirst to spend
The young desires in your hearts abloom,
How could you think the desert was your doom,
The waterless fountain and the endless end?
You yearned not for the face of love, grown dim,
But only fought your anguished bones to wrest
From the Black Angel crouched upon your breast,
Who scanned you ere he led you down with him.
JEAN COCTEAU
C 13
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
A MESSAGE
THIS is our gift to the Homeless.
What shall it bear from me
Safe in a land that prospers
Girded by leagues of sea? —
Tear moistened words of pity,
Bountiful sympathy.
Clearly we see the picture,
Horror has fixed our eyes.
Fighting to guard its hearthstones
A nation mangled lies.
Fire has charred its beauty,
Murder has stilled its cries;
And truths we love and cherish
Hang in the trembling scale.
If you win, we win by proxy,
If you fail, we are doomed to fail.
The world is beset by a monster,
Yet we watch to see who shall prevail.
Our souls are racked and quickened,
But prudence counsels no.
So we lavish our gold and pity
And wait to see how it will go, —
This pivotal war of the ages
With its heartrending ebb and flow.
c 14
ROBERT GRANT
For ever there comes the moment
When destiny bids "choose."
By the edge of the sword men perish,
By selfishness all they lose.
So Belgium stands transfigured
As the one who did not refuse.
ROBERT GRANT
15
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
CRY OF THE HOMELESS
INSTIGATOR of the ruin —
Whichsoever thou mayst be
Of the mastering minds of Europe
That contrived our misery-
Hear the wormwood-worded greeting
From each city, shore, and lea
Of thy victims:
"Enemy, all hail to thee!"
Yea: "All hail!" we grimly shout thee
That wast author, fount, and head
Of these wounds, whoever proven
When our times are throughly read.
" May thy dearest ones be blighted
And forsaken/' be it said
By thy victims,
"And thy children beg their bread!"
Nay: too much the malediction. —
Rather let this thing befall
In the unfurling of the future,
On the night when comes thy call:
That compassion dew thy pillow
And absorb thy senses all
For thy victims,
Till death dark thee with his pall.
THOMAS HARDY
August, 1915
C 16 ]
JACQUES-EMILE BLANCHE
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS HARDY
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
THE LITTLE CHILDREN
SUFFER little children to come unto me/'
Christ said, and answering with infernal glee,
"Take them ! "the arch-fiend scoffed, and from the tottering walls
Of their wrecked homes, and from the cattle's stalls,
And the dogs' kennels, and the cold
Of the waste fields, and from the hapless hold
Of their dead mothers' arms, famished and bare,
And maimed by shot and shell,
The master-spirit of hell
Caught them up, and through the shuddering air
Of the hope-forsaken world
The little ones he hurled,
Mocking that Pity in his pitiless might —
The Anti-Christ of Schrecklickeit.
W. D. HOWELLS
C 17 ]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
EPITAPHE
CI-GIT un tel, mort pour la France et qui, vivant,
Poussait sa voiturette a travers les villages
Pour vendre un peu de fil, de sel ou de fromage,
Sous les portails d'azur aux feuillages mouvants.
II a gagne son pain comme au Commandement
Que donne aux hommes Dieu dans le beau Livre sage.
Puis, un jour, sur sa tete a creve le nuage
Que lance Forageux canon de TAllemand.
Ce heros, dans Feclair qui delivra son ame,
Aura vu tout en noir ses enfants et sa femme
Contem plants anxieux son pauvre gagne-pain:
Ce chariot plus beau que n'est celui de 1'Ourse
Et qu'il a fait rouler pendant la dure course
Qui sur terre commence un celeste destin.
FRANCIS JAMMES
Orthez, 29 Juillet 1915
C 18
FRANCIS JAMMES
AN EPITAPH
[TRANSLATION]
HERE such an one lies dead for France. His trade
To push a barrow stocked with thread, cheese, salt
From town to town, under the azure vault,
Through endless corridors of rustling shade.
True to the sacred law of toil, he made
His humble living as the Book commands,
Till suddenly there burst upon his lands
The thunder of the German cannonade.
Poor hero! In the flash that smote him dead
He saw his wife and children all in black
Weeping about the cart that earned their bread —
The cart that, by his passionate impulse sped
On immortality's celestial track,
Shone brighter than the Wain above his head.
FRANCIS JAMMES
I 19
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
IN SLEEP
I DREAMT (no "dream" awake — a dream indeed)
A wrathful man was talking in the Park :
; Where are the Higher Powers who know our need,
Yet leave us in the dark?
There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart
In God, no love" — his oratory here,
Taking the paupers' and the cripples' part,
Was broken by a tear.
And next it seemed that One who did invent
Compassion, who alone created pity,
Walked, as though called, and hastened as He went
Out from the muttering city;
Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass,
Bent o'er the speaker close, saw the tear rise,
And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass,
In those impassioned eyes.
ALICE MEYNELL
C 20
\
COMTESSE DE NOAILLES
NOS MORTS
ASTRES qui regardez les mondes ou nous sommes,
Pure armee au repos dans la hauteur des cieux,
Campement eternel, leger, silencieux,
Que pensez-vous de voir s'aneantir les hommes?
A n'etre pas sublime aucun ne condescend,
Comme un cri vers la nue on voit jaillir leur sang
Qui sur nos coeurs contrits lentement se rabaisse.
— Morts divins, portez-nous un plausible secours!
Notre douleur n'est pas la soeur de votre ivresse.
Vous mourez ! Concevez que c'est un poids trop lourd
Pour ceux qui dans leur grave et brulante tristesse
Ont toujours confondu la Vie avec TAmour.
COMTESSE DE NOAILLES
OUR DEAD
[TRANSLATION]
STARS that behold our world upon its way,
Pure legions camped upon the plains of night,
Mute watchful hosts of heaven, what must you say
When men destroy each other in their might?
Upon their deadly race each runner starts,
Nor one but will his brothers all outrun !
Ah, see their blood jet upward to the sun
Like living fountains refluent on our hearts!
O dead divinely for so great a faith,
2,
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
Help us, whose agony is but begun,
For bitterly we yield you up to death,
We who had dreamed that Life and Love were one.
COMTESSE DE NoAILLES
C 22
CLAUDE MONET
LANDSCAPE
FROM AN EARLY COLOURED PASTEL
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODT
TWO SONGS OF A YEAR
1914-1915
i
CHILDREN'S KISSES
So; it is nightfall then.
The valley flush
That beckoned home the way for herds and men
Is hardly spent:
Down the bright pathway winds, through veils of hush
And wonderment.
Unuttered yet the chime
That tells of folding-time;
Hardly the sun has set; —
The trees are sweetly troubled with bright words
From new-alighted birds.
And yet, . . .
Here, round my neck, are come to cling and twine,
The arms, the folding arms, close, close and fain,
All mine! —
I pleaded to, in vain,
I reached for, only to their dimpled scorning,
Down the blue halls of morning;—
Where all things else could lure them on and on,
Now here, now gone,
From bush to bush, from beckoning bough to bough,
With bird-calls of Come Hither! —
Ah, but now . . .
Now it is dusk. — And from his heaven of mirth,
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
A wilding skylark sudden dropt to earth
Along the last low sunbeam yellow-moted, —
Athrob with joy, —
There pushes here, a little golden Boy,
Still gazing with great eyes:
And wonder-wise,
All fragrancy, all valor silver-throated,
My daughterling, my swan,
My Alison.
Closer than homing lambs against the bars
At folding-time, that crowd, all mother-warm,
They crowd, they cling, they wreathe; —
And thick as sparkles of the thronging stars,
Their kisses swarm.
O Rose of Being at whose heart I breathe,
Fold over, hold me fast
In the dim Eden of a blinding kiss.
And lightning heart's desire, be still at last.
Heart can no more,—
Life can no more
Than this.
[ 24
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODT
ii
THE SANS-FOYER
LOVE, that Love cannot share, —
Now turn to air!
And fade to ashes, O my daily bread,
Save only if you may
Bless you, to be the stay
Of the uncomforted.
Behold, you far-off lights, —
From smoke-veiled heights,
If there be dwelling in our wilderness !
For Love the refugee,
No stronghold can there be, —
No shelter more, while these go shelterless.
Love hath no home, beside
His own two arms spread wide;—
The only home, among all walls that are :
So there may come to cling,
Some yet forlorner thing
Feeling its way, along this blackened star.
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
RAIN IN BELGIUM
THE heavy rain falls down, falls down,
On city streets whence all have fled,
Where tottering ruins skyward frown
Above the staring silent dead.
Here shall ye raise your Kaiser's throne,
Stained with the blood for freedom shed.
Here where men choked for breath in vain
Who in fair fight had all withstood,
Here on this poison-haunted plain,
Made rich with babes' and women's blood,
Here shall ye plant your German grain,
Here shall ye reap your children's food.
The harvest ripens — Reaper come!
Bring children singing Songs of Hate
Taught by the mother in the home —
Fit comrade she for such a mate.
Soon shall ye reap what ye have sown ;
God's mills grind thoroughly though late.
The heavy rain beats down, beats down;
I hear in it the tramp of Fate !
LILLA CABOT PERRY
C
CHARLES DANA GIBSON
"THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM"
FROM A PEN-AND-INK SKETCH
HENRI DE REGNIER
L'EXILE
O DEUIL de ne pouvoir emporter sur la mer
Dans 1'ecume salee et dans le vent amer,
L'epi de son labeur et le fruit de sa treille,
Ni la rose que 1'aurore fait plus vermeille
Ni rien de tout de ce qui, selon chaque saison,
Pare divinement le seuil de la maison !
Mais, puisque mon foyer n'est plus qu'un peu de cendre,
Et que, dans mon jardin, je ne dois plus entendre
Sur les arbres chanter les oiseaux du printemps;
Que nul ne reviendra de tous ceux que j 'attends,
S'abriter sous le toit ou nichaient les colombes,
Adieu done, doux pays ou nous avions nos tombes,
Ou nous devions, a 1'heure ou se ferment les yeux,
Nous endormir aupres du sommeil des ai'eux!
Nous partons. Ne nous pleurez pas, tendres fontaines,
Terre que nous quittons pour des terres lointaines,
O toi que le brutal talon du conquerant
A foulee et qu'au loin, de sa lueur de sang,
Empourpre la bataille et rougit 1'incendie!
Qu'un barbare vainqueur nous chasse et qu'il chatie
En nous le saint amour que nous avons pour toi,
C'est bien. La force pour un jour, prime le droit,
Mais 1'exil qu'on subit pour ta cause, Justice,
Laisse au destin vengeur le temps qu'il s'accomplisse.
Nous reviendrons. Et soit que nous passions la mer
Parmi 1'embrun cinglant et dans le vent amer,
Soit que le sort cruel rudement nous disperse,
Troupeau errant, sous la rafale ou sous 1'averse,
C
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
Ne nous plains pas, cher hote, en nous tendant la main,
Car n'est-il pas pour toi un etranger divin
Celui qui, le front haut et les yeux pleins de flamme,
A quitte sa maison pour fuir un joug infame
Et dont le fier genou n'a pas voulu ployer
Et qui, pauvre, exile, sans pain et sans foyer,
Sent monter, de son coeur a sa face palie,
Ce meme sang sacre que saigne la Patrie.
HENRI DE REGNIER
de V Academic Franqaise
THE EXILE
[TRANSLATION]
ijiTTER our fate, that may not bear away
On the harsh winds and through the alien spray
Sheaves of our fields and fruit from the warm wall,
The rose that reddens at the morning's call,
Nor aught of all wherewith the turning year
Our doorway garlanded, from green to sere. . . .
But since the ash is cold upon the hearth,
And dumb the birds in garden and in garth,
Since none shall come again, of all our loves,
Back to this roof that crooned with nesting doves,
Now let us bid farewell to all our dead,
And that dear corner of earth where they are laid,
And where in turn it had been good to lay
Our kindred heads on the appointed day.
Weep not, O springs and fountains, that we go,
And thou, dear earth, the earth our footsteps know,
[ 28 3
HENRI DE REGNIER
Weep not, thou desecrated, shamed and rent,
Consumed with fire and with blood-shed spent.
Small strength have they that hunt us from thy fold
To loosen love's indissoluble hold,
And brighter than the flames about thy pyre
Our exiled faith shall spring for thee, and higher.
We shall return. Let Time reverse the glass.
Homeless and scattered from thy face we pass,
Through rain and tempest flying from our doors,
On seas unfriendly swept to stranger shores.
But, O you friends unknown that wait us there,
We ask no pity, though your bread we share.
For he who, flying from the fate of slaves
With brow indignant and with empty hand,
Has left his house, his country and his graves,
Comes like a Pilgrim from a Holy Land.
Receive him thus, if in his blood there be
One drop of Belgium's immortality.
HENRI DE REGNIER
de t Academic Franqaise
I 39
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
HORREUR ET BEAUTE
SABREUR de mains d'enfants qui demandaient du pain,
Bruleur de basilique et de bibliotheque,
Geste obscene, oeil sanglant, front d'anthropopitheque,
L'homme ne s'est jamais plus hideusement peint.
Mais Roncevaux n'a rien de plus beau, sous son Pin,
Rien de plus pur, sous son Laurier, la fable Grecque,
Que ce jeune Monarque et son vieil Archeveque:
C'est Achille et Nestor, c'est Roland et Turpin.
Roi, d'un juste reflux puissions-nous voir la vague!
Et toi, puisque ta main eleva dans sa bague
Le seul reflet de ciel qui benit cet Enfer,
Que la pourpre sur toi soit plus cardinalice,
Pretre ! et que de la Croix qui n'etait pas de Fer
Un Christ plus abondant coule dans ton calice!
EDMOND ROSTAND
C so
EDMOND ROSTAJVD
HORROR AND BEAUTY
[ TRANSLATION ]
GASHED hands of children who cry out for bread —
While as the flames from sacred places rise
The Blonde Beast, hideous, with blood-shot eyes
And obscene gesture mutilates the dead—
But neither Roncesvalles where Roland bled
With Turpin, nor Greek deeds of high emprise
Can to a pitch of purer beauty rise
Than the Young King, the Priest, unconquered.
Oh King, soon all thy foes may'st thou repel!
And thou, High-Priest, from whose ring, raised to men,
Shone the one gleam of Heaven in that Hell,
May thy empurpled vestments so avail
That from the Cross — not made of Iron then —
A richer Christ glow in thy holy grail.
EDMOND ROSTAND
Translated by Walter F. R. Berry
I 31
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
THE UNDERGRADUATE KILLED IN BATTLE
SWEET as the lawn beneath his sandalled tread
Or the scarce rippled stream beneath his oar,
For its still, channelled current constant more,
His life was, and the few blithe words he said.
One or two poets read he, and reread ;
One or two friends in boyish ardour wore
Next to his heart, incurious of the lore
Dodonian woods might murmur o'er his head.
Ah, demons of the whirlwind, have a care
What, trumpeting your triumphs, ye undo!
The earth once won, begins your long despair
That never, never is his bliss for you.
He breathed betimes this clement island air
And in unwitting lordship saw the blue.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Oxford, August, 1915
32
WALTER GAT
INTERIOR
FROM AN ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
EDITH M. THOMAS
THE CHILDREN AND THE FLAG
The little children in my country kiss the American flag.
MADAME VANDERVELDE
HAT of those children over the sea
That are beating about the world's rough ways,
Like the tender blossoms from off a tree
That a sudden gale in Spring betrays?
The children? Oh, let them look for the sign
Of a wave-borne flag, thou land of mine!
On the old gray sea its course it holds,
Life for the famished is in its gift. . . .
And the children are crowding to kiss its folds,
While the tears of their mothers fall free and swift.
And what of the flag their lips have pressed ?
Oh, guard it for ever — That flag is blest.
EDITH M. THOMAS
C 33]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
THE TROUBLER OF TELARO
i
VT ARM vines bloom now along thy rampart steeps
Thy shelves of olives, undercliffs of azure,
And like a lizard of the red rock sleeps
The wrinkled Tuscan sea, panting for pleasure.
Nets, too, festooned about thine elfin port,
Telaro, in the Etrurian mountain's side,
Heavings of golden luggers scarce distort
The image of thy belfry where they ride.
But thee, Telaro, on a night long gone
That grey and holy tower upon the mole
Suddenly summoned, while yet lightnings shone
And hard gale lingered, with a ceaseless toll
That choked, with its disastrous monotone,
All the narrow channels of the hamlet's soul.
For what despair, fire, shipwreck, treachery?
Was it for threat that from the macchia sprang
For Genoa's feud, the oppressor's piracy,
Or the Falcon of Sarzana that it rang ?
Was the boat-guild's silver plundered ? Blood should pay.
Hard won the footing of the fishers' clan
The sea-cloud-watchers. — Loud above the spray
The maddening iron cry, the appeal of man,
Washed through the torchless midnight on and on.
Are not enough the jeopardies of day?
Riot arose — fear's Self began the fray:
C 34 H
HERBERT TRENCH
But the tower proved empty. By the lightning's ray
They found no human ringer in the room. . . .
The bell-rope quivered out in the sea-spume. . . .
3
A creature fierce, soft, witless of itself,
A morbid mouth, circled by writhing arms,
By its own grasp entangled on that shelf,
Had dragged the rope and spread the death-alarms;
Insensitive, light-forgotten, up from slime,
From shelter betwixt rocks, issuing for prey
Disguised, had used man's language of dismay.
The spawn of perished times had late in time
Emerged, and griefs upon man's grief imposed
Incalculable.
But the fishers closed
The blind mouth, and cut off the suckers cold.
Two thousand fathoms the disturber rolled
From trough to trough into the gulf Tyrrhene ;
And fear sank with it back into its night obscene.
HERBERT TRENCH
C 35 ]
THEO FAN RTSSELBERGHE
PORTRAIT OF EMILE VERHAEREN
FROM A PENCIL DRAWING
EMILE VERHAEREN
LE PRINTEMPS DE 1915
1 u me disais de ta voix douce,
Tu me disais en insistant:
— Y a-t-il encor un Printemps
Et les feuilles repoussent-elles ?
La guerre accapare le del
Les eaux, les monts, les bois, la terre:
Ou sont les fleurs couleur de miel
Pour les abeilles volontaires?
Ou sont les pousses des roncerois
Et les boutons des anemones?
Ou sont les flutes dans les bois
Des oiseaux sombres aux bees jaunes?
— Helas! plus n'est de floraison
Que celle des feux dans Pespace:
Bouquet de rage et de menace
S'eparpillant sur Fhorizon.
Plus n'est, helas ! de splendeur rouge
Que celle, helas! des boulets fous
Eclaboussant de larges coups
Clochers, hameaux, fermes et bouges.
C'est le printemps de ce temps-ci:
Le vent repand de plaine en plaine,
C 37 ]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
La-bas, ces feuillaisons de haine;
C'est la terreur de ce temps-ci.
EMILE VERHAEREN
Saint- Cloud, le 31 Juillet 1915
THE NEW SPRING
[ TRANSLATION ]
SADLY your dear voice said:
"Is the old spring-time dead,
And shall we never see
New leaves upon the tree?
" Shall the black wings of war
Blot out sun, moon and star,
And never a bud unfold
To the bee its secret gold ?
"Where are the wind-flowers streaked,
And the wayward bramble shoots,
And the black-birds yellow-beaked
With a note like woodland flutes?"
No flower shall bloom this year
But the wild flame of fear
Wreathing the evil night
With burst of deadly light.
C 38
EMILE FERHAEREN
No splendour of petals red
But that which the cannon shed,
Raining their death-bloom down
On farm and tower and town.
This is the scarlet doom
By the wild sea-winds hurled
Over a land of gloom,
Over a grave-strewn world.
EMILE VERHAEREN
C 39 ]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
1915
THOUGH desolation stain their foiled advance,
In ashen ruins hearth-stones linger whole:
Do what they may, they cannot master France;
Do what they can, they cannot quell the soul.
BARRETT WENDELL
C 40 ]
EDITH WHARTON
THE TRYST
I SAID to the woman: Whence do you come,
With your bundle in your hand ?
She said: In the North I made my home,
Where slow streams fatten the fruitful loam,
And the endless wheat-fields run like foam
To the edge of the endless sand.
I said: What look have your houses there,
And the rivers that glass your sky?
Do the steeples that call your people to prayer
Lift fretted fronts to the silver air,
And the stones of your streets, are they washed and fair
When the Sunday folk go by?
My house is ill to find, she said,
For it has no roof but the sky ;
The tongue is torn from the steeple-head,
The streets are foul with the slime of the dead,
And all the rivers run poison-red
With the bodies drifting by.
I said: Is there none to come at your call
In all this throng astray?
They shot my husband against a wall,
And my child ( she said ) , too little to crawl,
Held up its hands to catch the ball
When the gun-muzzle turned its way.
[ 41
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
I said: There are countries far from here
Where the friendly church-bells call,
And fields where the rivers run cool and clear,
And streets where the weary may walk without fear,
And a quiet bed, with a green tree near,
To sleep at the end of it all.
She answered: Your land is too remote,
And what if I chanced to roam
When the bells fly back to the steeples' throat,
And the sky with banners is all afloat,
And the streets of my city rock like a boat
With the tramp of her men come home?
I shall crouch by the door till the bolt is down,
And then go in to my dead.
Where my husband fell I will put a stone,
And mother a child instead of my own,
And stand and laugh on my bare hearth-stone
When the King rides by, she said.
EDITH WHARTON
Paris, August 27th, 1915
42
P. A. J. DAGNAN-BOUFERET
BRITTANY WOMAN
FROM A DRAWING IN COLOURED CRAYONS
MARGARET L. WOODS
FINISTERRE
O THAT on some forsaken strand,
Lone ending of a lonely land,
On such an eve we two were lying,
To hear the quiet water sighing
And feel the coolness of the sand.
\
A red and broken moon would grow
Out of the dusk and even so
As here to-night the street she faces,
Between the half-distinguished spaces
Of sea and sky would burn and go.
The moon would go and overhead,
Like tapers lighted o'er the dead,
Star after silver star would glimmer,
The lonely night grow calmer, dimmer,
The quiet sea sink in its bed.
We, at the end of Time and Fate,
Might unconcerned with love or hate
As the sea's voices, talk together,
Wherefore we went apart and whither,
And all the exiled years relate.
Thus were life's grey chance- 'ravelled sleave'
Outspread, we something might perceive
Which never would to chance surrender,
But through the tangled woof its slender
Golden, elusive pattern weave.
c 43 :
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
Then while the great stars larger shone
Leaned on the sea, and drew thereon
Faint paths of light, across them faring
Might steal the ship that comes for bearing
Sore-wounded souls to Avalon.
MARGARET L. WOODS
44
W. B. TEATS
A REASON FOR KEEPING SILENT
I THINK it better that at times like these
We poets keep our mouths shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He 's had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth
Or an old man upon a winter's night.
W. B. YEATS
II 45 ]
J4CQUES-EMILE BLANCHE
PORTRAIT OF IGOR STRAVINSKY
FROM A STUDY IN OILS
MUSICAL SCORE
IGOR STRAVINSKY
SOUVENIR D'UNE MARCHE BOCHE
t- •*- iwmj
-**•
THEO FAN RTSSELBERGHE
PORTRAIT OF VINCENT D'INDY
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING
MUSICAL SCORE
VINCENT D'lNDT
LA LEGENDE DE SAINT CHRISTOPHE
PAGE OF SCORE OF UNPUBLISHED OPERA
[ACTE i, SCENE in]
Za partition est editee fiar Rauart, Lerolle tf Cze.,
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
tit Fran9ois tout crible de balles. Un peu plus loin il re9ut une blessure
a 1'epaule.
Son capitaine lui ordonna d'aller se faire panser. II refusa, continua et
fut blesse d'une balle dans la tete.
Les corps furent ramasses et ramenes dans les ruines du village. Les
sapeurs du s6e dirent alors:
— On n'enterrera pas ce bon petit sous-lieutenant sans un cercueil.
Nous allons lui en faire un.
Us se mirent a scier et a clouer.
Ceux du 27e dirent alors:
— II ne faut pas traiter differemment les deux freres. Nous allons, nous
aussi, faire un cercueil pour notre lieutenant.
Au soir, on se preparait a leg enterrer cote a cote quand une vieille
femme eleva la voix.
C'etait une vieille si pauvre qu'elle avait obstinement refuse d'aban-
donner le village. "J'aime mieux mourir ici," avait-elle dit. On 1'avait
laissee. Elle gitait miserablement dans sa cabane sur la paille et n'avait
pas d'autre nourriture que celle que lui donnaient les soldats. Quand elle
vit les deux jeunes cadavres et les preparatifs, elle dit:
— Attendez un instant avant de les enfermer. Je vais chercher quelque
chose.
Elle alia fouiller la paille sur laquelle elle couchait et en tira le drap
qu'elle gardait pour sa sepulture. Et revenant:
— On n'enfermera pas, dit-elle, ces beaux gar9ons le visage contre les
planches. Je veux les ensevelir.
Elle coupa la toile en deux et les mit chacun dans son suaire, puis elle
leur posa un baiser sur le front, en disant chaque fois :
— Pour la mere, mon cher enfant.
Nous nous tumes quand le General cut ainsi parle et il n'etait pas le
60
MAURICE BARRES
seul a avoir des larmes dans les yeux. Une priere d'amour se formait
dans nos coeurs pour la France.
MAURICE BARRES
de r Academic Francaise
1915
THE BROTHERS
[TRANSLATION]
I 'M not fond of telling this story, said the General, because each time,
like the old fool I am, it brings tears to my eyes . . . but the best of
France is in it.
It's about two boys, astonishingly gifted, full of heart and brains, that
nobody could meet without liking. I knew them when they were tiny
little fellows. At the time war broke out, the younger one, Fra^ois, had
just passed his examinations for St. Cyr. He had no time to enter; he was
rushed along in the wholesale promotion and made second lieutenant
then and there. Fancy what it meant to him — epaulettes and battles at
nineteen ! His elder brother, Jacques, a boy of twenty, — a really remark-
able fellow in his studies, was hard at work in the Law School, where he
had taken honors. He went off to the front as second lieutenant, too.
The two brothers were thrown together for the first time in the same
brigade of the " iron division," as it was called — the younger in the 26th
of the line, the other in the 27th. They were quartered in a ruined vil-
lage, and each day they met, making themselves liked everywhere and
enjoying a great popularity with the soldiers on account of their youth
and friendliness.
It soon got round that the St. Cyr boy's regiment was going to get
some hot fighting. Jacques said nothing, but he went to his colonel and
asked for permission to take the place of his brother, whom he consid-
ered too little prepared for what promised to be a violent engagement.
c 61 :
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
The colonel recognized the generosity of this request, but he cut the
young man short.
"An officer can't be transferred from his own corps to another/' he
said.
The day fixed for the attack came. The first company — Fra^ois'
company — was sent ahead to skirmish. It was simply mowed down.
Another followed, and then another. They finally had to fall back, leav-
ing their dead and part of the wounded on the field. The little second
lieutenant was not among those who returned.
Two days later our men took the offensive again. The elder brother,
storming the German trenches with his regiment, passed close by the
body of his little Fran9ois as it lay there all shot to pieces. A bit farther
on, a bullet caught him in the shoulder.
His captain ordered him back to have the wound dressed; he refused,
kept on, and was hit full in the forehead.
The bodies, were taken up and carried back to the ruins of the village.
The sappers of the 26th said:
"He was a fine fellow, that little second lieutenant. He shan't go un-
derground without a coffin, at any rate. Let's make one for him."
And they began sawing and hammering.
Then the men of the 27th put their heads together and said:
"There must be no difference between the two brothers. We might
as well make a coffin for our lieutenant, too."
By nightfall, when they were ready to bury the brothers side by side,
an old woman spoke up. She was a wretched old creature, so poor and
broken that she stubbornly refused to leave the village. " I 've lived here,
I'll die here," she kept on saying. She lay huddled up on some straw
in her little hovel, and her only food was the leavings of the soldiers.
When she saw the bodies of the two lads and understood what was
going on, she said:
"Wait a minute before you nail the covers on. I'm going to fetch
something."
MAURICE BARRES
She hobbled away, fumbled around in the straw she slept on, and
pulled out a piece of cloth that she was keeping for her shroud.
"They shan't nail those boys up with their faces against the boards.
I want to shroud them," she said.
She cut the shroud in two and wrapped each in a half of it. Then she
kissed each one of them on the forehead, saying,
"That's for your mother, dearie."
No one spoke when the General ended. And he was not the only one
to have wet eyes. In each of our hearts there was a prayer for France.
MAURICE BARRES
de V Academic Franchise
1915
£63
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
UNE PROMESSE
SECHEZ vos larmes, Enfants des Flandres !
Car les canons, les mitrailleuses, les fusils, les sabres et les bras n'arre-
teront leur elan que lorsque Fennemi vaincu vous rendra vos foyers !
Et ces foyers; nous, les femmes de France, d'Angleterre , de Russie et
d'ltalie, nous les ensoleillerons.
SARAH BERNHARDT
1915
A PROMISE
[TRANSLATION]
CHILDREN of Flanders, dry your tears !
For all the mighty machinery of war, and the stout hearts of brave
men, shall strive together till the vanquished foe has given you back
your homes!
And to those homes made desolate, we, the women of France, of Eng-
land, of Russia and of Italy, will bring again happiness and sunlight!
SARAH BERNHARDT
64
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR
PORTRAIT OF HIS SON, WOUNDED IN THE WAR
FROM A CHARCOAL SKETCH
Ss^%vv|felN
Kfi^Ws
• !,
\A
\
«
'
PAUL BOURGET
APRES UN AN
JE me trouvais, au debut de ce mois d'aout 1915, voyager en automo-
bile dans une des provinces du centre de la France, que j'avais traver-
see de meme, juste une annee auparavant, quand la mobilisation com-
men9ante remplissait les routes de camions, de canons, de troupes en
marche. Une annee! Que de morts depuis! Mais la resolution demeure
la meme qu'a cette epoque ou le Pays tout entier n'eut qu'un mot d'ordre:
y aller. Non. Rien n'a change de cette volonte de bataille. J'entre dans
un hotel, pour y dejeuner. La patronne, que je connais pour m'arreter
la chaque fois que je passe par la petite ville, est entierement vetue de
noir. Elle a perdu son frere en Alsace. Son mari est dans un depot a la
veille de partir au front. "Faites-vous des affaires?" lui demande-je.
— "Pas beaucoup. Personne ne circule, et tous les mobilises s'en vont. La
caserne se vide. Encore ce matin — " — "C'est bien long," lui dis-je,
pour la tenter. — " Oui, monsieur," repond-elle,"mais puisqu'il faut 93. — "
Et elle recommence d'ecrire ses menus, sans une plainte. Dans la salle
a manger, deux servantes, dont une aussi tout en noir. Je la questionne.
Son mari a etc tue sur 1'Yser. Son visage est tres triste. Mais pas une
recrimination non plus. Elle est comme sa maitresse. Elle accepte " puis-
qu'il faut 93." Un sous-officier ouvre la porte. II est suivi d'une femme en
grand deuil, d'un enfant et d'un homme age. — Sa femme, son fils et son
pere, ai-je su depuis. Je le vois de profil, et j 'observe dans son regard
une fixite qui m'etonne. II refuse une place dans le fond, et marche vers
la fenetre: " J'ai besoin d'avoir plus de jour maintenant," repete-t-il, d'un
accent singulier. A peine est-il assis avec sa famille, qu'un des convives
de la table d'hote, en train de dejeuner, se leve, et vient le saluer avec
une exclamation de surprise. "Vous ici! Vous etes done debout? D'ail-
leurs, vous avez tres belle mine." —"Oui," dit le sous-officier," $a n'em-
peche pas qu'il est en verre — " Et il montre son ceil droit. En quel-
ques mots, tres simplement, il raconte qu'une balle lui a enleve cet ceil
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
droit en Argonne. "C'est dommage," continue-t-il, "on etait si bien, si
contents de n'etre plus dans 1'eau et dans la boue." Et 1'autre de s 'eerier :
" Vous etes tous comme 93, dans 1'armee, si braves, si modestes ! Nous
autres, les vieux, nous n'avons ete que de la Saint-Jean a cote de vous.
70, qu'est-ce que c'etait? Rien du tout. Mais 93 finira autrement." —"II
le faut," dit le sous-officier, " et pour nous, et pour ces pauvres Beiges a
qui nous devons d'avoir eu du temps. Oui," insiste-t-il, en posant sa main
sur la tete de son enfant, "pour ceux-la aussi il le faut." — "Qui est ce
monsieur?" dis-je a la servante. — "Ce sous-officier?" repond-elle, " un
negociant de Paris. Le frere de sa dame a ete tue." Je regard e manger
ces gens, si eprouves. Us sont bien serieux, bien accables, mais si dignes.
Les mots que ce borgne heroique a prononces, cet " il le faut " donne a tous
leurs gestes une emouvante gravite.
Je reprends ma route, et je le retrouve cet "il le faut" du sergent, ce
"puisqu'il faut 93" de I'hoteliere, comme ecrit dans tous les aspects de cet
horizon. C'est le moment de la moisson. Des femmes y travaillent, des
gar9onnets, des petites filles. La suppleance du mari, du pere, du frere
absents, s'est faite simplement, sans qu'il y ait eu besoin d'aucun appel,
d'aucun decret. Sur deux charrettes que je croise, une est menee par une
femme. Des femmes conduisent les troupeaux. Des femmes etaient der-
riere les guichets de la Banque ou je suis descendu chercher de la mon-
naie, dans la petite ville. Un de mes amis, qui a de gros interets dans le
midi,me racontait que son homme d'affaires est aux Dardanelles: "Sa
femme gere mes proprietes a sa place. Elle est etonnante d 'intelligence
et de bravoure." Oui, c'est toujours ce meme tranquille stoicisme, cette
totale absence de plainte. Un bataillon de territoriaux defile. Us ne sont
plus jeunes. Leur existence etait etablie. Elle est bouleversee. Us subis-
sent Fepreuve sans un murmure et marquent le pas sur la route brulee
de soleil avec une energie qui revele, chez eux aussi, le sentiment de la
necessite. C'est, pour moi, le caractere pathetique de cette guerre. Elle a
la grandeur auguste des actions vitales de la nature. Elle est le geste d'un
pays qui ne veut pas mourir, et qui ne mourra pas, ni lui ni cette noble
PAUL BOURGET
Belgique, dont parlait le sous-officier, et qui, elle, a prononce avec autant
de fermete resolue son "il le faut," quand TAllemand l'a provoquee, et
plus pathetiquement encore. Ce n'etait pas pour la vie qu'elle allait se
battre, c'etait pour 1'honneur, pour la probite. II n'est pas un Fran9ais qui
ne le sente, et qui ne confonde sa propre cause avec celle des admirables
sujets de I'admirable Roi Albert.
PAUL BOURGET
de V Academic Francaise
ONE YEAR LATER
[ TRANSLATION ]
DURING the first days of August, 1915, 1 found myself motoring in one
of the central provinces of France. I had crossed the same region in the
same way just a year before, when the beginning of mobilization was
crowding the roads with waggons, with artillery and with marching
troops. Only one year! How many men are dead since! But the high
resolve of the nation is as firm as it was then, when all through the land
there was only one impulse — to go forward. The willingness to fight and
to endure has not grown less.
I went into an hotel for luncheon. I know the woman who keeps it,
because I always stop there when I go through the little town. I found
her dressed in black: she had lost her brother in Alsace. Her husband
was waiting to be sent to the front. I asked her if she were doing any
business. "Not much," she answered. "Nobody is travelling, and all the
mobilized men are gone. The barracks are empty; why, only this morn-
ing— " "It seems a long time/' I said, to draw her on. " Yes," she said,
"but since we must ..." and she went back without complaint to the
task of writing her bills of fare. There were two maids in the dining-
room, one of them also in black. I questioned her and learnt that her
C 67 ]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
husband had been killed on the Yser. Her face was full of sorrow, but
like her mistress she blamed no one, and accepted her loss because it
"must" be so.
Soon a non-commissioned officer came in, followed by a woman in deep
mourning, a little boy, and an elderly man; I learnt afterwards that they
were the sergeant's wife, his son, and his father. I saw his profile, and
noticed that he seemed to stare fixedly. He declined a place at the back
of the room, and came toward the window. " I need plenty of light now/'
he said in an odd voice. Heand his family had just seated themselves when
one of the guests at the long table d'hote rose with an exclamation of
surprise and came over to him, saying: "Why, are you out again? How
well you look ! " " Yes," said the sergeant; " but all the same this one is
glass," pointing to his right eye, and in a few words he told how it had
been knocked out by a bullet in the Argonne. "It was such a pity," he
said, "for we were all so glad when the fighting began, and we got out
of the mud and water in the trenches." "You are all just like that in the
army!" said his friend, "all so plucky and so simple! We old fellows
were only amateurs compared to you ! What was the war of 1 870 to this
one? This time there will be a different ending." "There must be," said
the sergeant," not only for us but for the Belgians, who gained us so much
1 q^h I time." And he repeated, laying his hand on his boy's head, "Yes, for
I these little chaps also it must be so."
Presently I found a chance to ask the maid what she knew about the
soldier who had been speaking. " That sergeant? He is a Paris shopkeeper.
His wife's brother has been killed." I watched these people at table, so
serious, so sorely tried, but so full of dignity, and the words which the
half-blinded man had pronounced seemed to make even his ordinary ges-
tures impressive.
All along the road, for the rest of that journey the "it must be" of
the hotel-keeper and the sergeant seemed to be written over the whole
country-side. It was harvest-time, and women, lads and little girls were
working in the fields, replacing absent husbands, fathers and brothers.
£68 ]
PAUL BOURGET
They were doing it quite simply, not drawn by any appeal, nor compelled
by any order. Every other cart I met was driven by a woman. Women
were herding the cattle. There was a woman at the cashier's desk of the
bank in the town where I went to get some money changed.
One of my friends, who has large interests in the south of France, told
me that his man of business was at the Dardanelles. " His wife looks
after my property in his place. She is astonishingly intelligent and capable."
Everywhere the same tranquil stoicism, the same entire absence of com-
plaint.
A battalion of territorials marched past. They were not young men.
All of them had had fixed duties and habits which were now broken
up. Yet they submitted without a murmur, marching along the hot and
dusty road with an energy which revealed in them also the same sense of
compelling necessity. That, to my mind, gives to this war its pathetic
side. It has all the imposing grandeur of the vital forces of nature; it
is the heroic movement of a country which defies death, which is not
meant to die. Nor will she allow Belgium to die — the Belgium to whom
the sergeant paid his tribute, and whose "we must" rang out with such
poignant firmness under the German menace. It was not for life alone
that Belgium fought, but for honour and for justice. No Frenchman lives
who does not feel this, and who does not merge his own cause in that
of the indomitable subjects of Belgium's indomitable King.
PAUL BOURGET
de F Academic Franchise
[69
(A
•\
LEON BONNAT
PEGASUS
FROM A PENCIL AND PEN-AND-INK SKETCH
JOSEPH CONRAD
POLAND REVISITED
i
I HAVE never believed in political assassination as a means to an end, and
least of all if the assassination is of the dynastic order. I don't know how
far murder can ever approach the efficiency of a fine art, but looked
upon with the cold eye of reason it seems but a crude expedient either
of impatient hope or hurried despair. There are few men whose prema-
ture death could influence human affairs more than on the surface. The
deeper stream of causes depends not on individualities which, like the
mass of mankind, are carried on by the destiny which no murder had
ever been able to placate, divert or arrest.
In July of £1914] I was a stranger in a strange city and particularly
out of touch with the world's politics. Never a very diligent reader of
newspapers, there were at that time reasons of a private order which
caused me to be even less informed than usual on public affairs as pre-
sented from day to day in that particular atmosphere-less, perspective-
lessness of the daily papers which somehow for a man with some historic
sense robs them of all real interest. I don't think I had looked at a daily
for a month past.
But though a stranger in a strange city I was not lonely, thanks to a
friend who had travelled there with me out of pure kindness, to bear me
company in a conjuncture which, in a most private sense, was somewhat
trying.
It was this friend who one morning at breakfast informed me of the
murder of the Archduke Ferdinand.
The impression was mediocre. I was barely aware that such a man
existed. I remembered only that not long before he had visited London,
but that memory was lost in a cloud of insignificant printed words his
presence in this country provoked. Various opinions had been expressed
of him, but his importance had been archducal, dynastic, purely acciden-
c 71 n
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
tal. Can there be in the world of real men anything more shadowy than
an archduke? And now he was no more, and with a certain atrocity of
circumstance which made one more sensible of his humanity than when
he was in life. I knew nothing of his journey. I did not connect that crime
with Balkanic plots and aspirations. I asked where it had happened. My
friend told me it was in Serajevo, and wondered what would be the
consequences of that grave event. He asked me what I thought would
happen next.
It was with perfect sincerity that I said "Nothing," and I dismissed the
subject, having a great repugnance to consider murder as an engine of
politics. It fitted with my ethical sense that an act cruel and absurd should
be also useless. I had also the vision of a crowd of shadowy archdukes in
the background out of which one would step forward to take the place of
that dead man in the sun of European politics. And then, to speak the whole
truth, there was no man capable of forming a judgement who attended
so little to the march of events as I did at that time. What for want of a
more definite term I must call my mind was fixed on my own affairs,
not because they were in a bad posture, but because of their fascinat-
ing, holiday promising aspect. I obtained my information as to Europe at
second hand, from friends good enough to come down now and then to
see us with their pockets full of crumpled papers, and who imparted it
to me casually with gentle smiles of scepticism as to the reality of my
interest. And yet I was not indifferent; but the tension in the Balkans
had become chronic after the acute crisis, and one could not help being
less conscious of it. It had wearied out one's attention. Who could have
guessed that on that wild stage we had just been looking at a miniature
rehearsal of the great world drama, the reduced model of the very pas-
sions and violences of what the future held in store for the powers of
the Old World? Here and there, perhaps, rare minds had a suspicion of
that possibility while watching the collective Europe stage managing a
little contemptuously in a feeling of conscious superiority, by means of
notes and conferences, the prophetic reproduction of its awaiting fate. It
C 7* ]]
JOSEPH CONRAD
was wonderfully exact in the spirit, same roar of guns, same protestations
of superiority, same words in the air: race, liberation, justice, and the same
mood of trivial demonstration. You could not take to-day a ticket for
Petersburg, however roundabout the route. "You mean Petrograd,"
would say the booking-clerk. Shortly after the fall of Adrianople a friend
of mine passing through Sophia asked for some " cafe turc" at the end of
his lunch.
— " Monsieur veut dire cafe balkanique," the patriotic waiter corrected
him austerely.
I will not say that I had not seen something of that instructive aspect
in the war of the Balkans, both in its first and even in its second phase.
But those with whom I touched upon that vision were pleased to see in
it the evidence of an alarmist cynicism. As to alarm I pointed out that
fear is natural to man and even salutary. It has done as much as cour-
age for the preservation of races and institutions. But from a charge
of cynicism I have always shrunk instinctively. It is like a charge of
being blind in one eye, a moral disablement, a sort of disgraceful calam-
ity that must be carried off by a jaunty bearing — a sort of thing I am not
capable of. Rather than be thought to be a mere jaunty cripple I allowed
myself to be blinded by the gross obviousness of the usual arguments.
It had been pointed out to me that those were nations not far removed
from a savage state. Their economics. were yet at the stage of scratch-
ing the earth and feeding pigs. The complex material civilization of
Europe could not allow itself to be disturbed by war. The industry and
the finance could not allow themselves to be disorganised by the ambi-
tions of the idle class or even the aspirations, whatever they might be,
of the masses.
Very plausible all this sounded. War does not pay. There had been
even a book written on that theme — an attempt to put pacifism on a ma-
terial basis. Nothing more solid could have been imagined on this trad-
ing and manufacturing globe. War was bad business! This was final.
But truth to say on this fateful July I reflected but little on the con-
[ 73 1
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
dition of the civilised world. Whatever sinister passions were heaving
under its splendid and complex surface, I was too agitated by a simple
and innocent desire to notice the signs, or to interpret them correctly. The
most innocent of passions takes the edge off one's judgement. The desire
which obsessed me was simply the desire of travel. And that being so,
it would have taken something very plain in the way of symptoms to
shake my simple trust in the stability of things on the continent. My sen-
timent and not my reason was engaged there. My eyes were turned
to the past, not to the future — the past that one cannot suspect and
mistrust, the shadowy and unquestionable moral possession, the darkest
struggles of which wear a halo of glory and peace.
In the preceding month of May we had received an invitation to spend
some weeks in Poland in a country house in the neighbourhood of Cracow
but on the other side of the Russian frontier. The enterprise at first seemed
to be considerable. Since leaving the sea to which I have been faithful for
so many years, I have discovered that there is in my composition very
little stuff from which travellers are made. I confess it with shame, my
first idea about a projected journey is to leave it alone.
But that invitation, received at first with a sort of uneasiness, awoke the
dormant energies in my feelings. Cracow is the town where I spent with
my father the last eighteen months of his life. It was in that old royal
and academical city that I ceased to be a child, became a boy, knew the
friendships, the admirations, the thoughts and the indignation of that age.
It was between those historic walls that I began to understand things,
form affections, lay up a store of memories and a fund of sensations with
which I was to break violently by throwing myself into an unrelated life
which permitted me but seldom to look back that way. The wings of
time were spread over all this, and I feared at first that if I ventured bod-
ily in there I would find that I who have evoked so many imaginary lives
had been embracing mere shadows in my youth. I feared. But fear in
itself may become a fascination. Men have gone alone, trembling, into
graveyards at midnight — just to see what would happen. And this ad-
JOSEPH CONRAD
venture was to be pursued in sunshine. Neither would it be pursued alone.
The invitation was extended to us all. This journey would have something
of a migratory character, the invasion of a tribe. My present, all that gave
solidity and value to it at any rate, would stand by me in this test of the
reality of my past. I was pleased to show my companions what Polish coun-
try life was like and the town where I was at school, before my boys got
too old, and gaining an individual past of their own should lose the fresh
sympathies of their age. It is only in this short understanding of youth that
perhaps we have the faculty of coming out of ourselves to see dimly the
visions and share the trouble of another soul. For youth all is reality, and
with justice; since they can apprehend so vividly its images behind which
a longer life makes one doubt whether there is any substance. I trusted to
the fresh receptivity of these young beings in whom, unless heredity is
merely a phantasy, there should have been fibre which would quicken at
the sight, the atmosphere, the memories, of that corner of the earth where
my own boyhood received its first independent impressions.
The first of the third week in July, while the telegraph wires hummed
with the words of enormous import which were to fill blue-books, yellow-
books, white-books and rouse the wonder of the world, was taken up
with light-hearted preparation for the journey. What was it but just a
rush through Germany to get over as quickly as possible?
It is the part of the earth's solid surface of which I know the least. In
my life I had been across it only twice. I may well say of it, " Vidi tan-
tum," and that very little I saw through the window of a railway carriage
at express speed. Those journeys were more like pilgrimages when one
hurries on towards the goal without looking to the right or left for the
satisfaction of deeper need than curiosity. In this last instance, too, I was
so uncurious that I would have liked to fall asleep on the shores of Eng-
land and open my eyes only, if it were possible, on the other side of the
Silesian frontier.
Yet in truth, as many others have done, I had "sensed it," that prom-
ised land of steel, of chemical dyes, of method, of efficiency; that race
c 75 :
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
planted in the middle of Europe, assuming in grotesque vanity the atti-
tude of Europeans amongst effete Asiatics or mere niggers, and with a
feeling of superiority freeing their hands of all moral bonds and anxious
to take up, if I may express myself so, the "perfect man's burden."
Meantime in a clearing of the Teutonic forest their sages were rearing
a Tree of cynical wisdom, a sort of Upas tree, whose shade may be seen
lying now over the prostrate body of Belgium. It must be said that they
laboured open enough, watering it from the most authentic sources of
all evil, and watching with bespectacled eyes the slow ripening of the glo-
rious blood-red fruit. The sincerest words of peace, words of menace,
and I verily believe, words of abasement even, if there had been a voice
vile enough to utter them, would have been wasted on their ecstasy. For
when a fruit ripens on a branch, it must fall. There is nothing on earth
that can prevent it.
ii
For reasons which at first seemed to me somewhat obscure, that one of
my companions whose wishes are law decided that our travels should
begin in an unusual way by the crossing of the North Sea. We should
proceed from Harwich to Hamburg. Besides being thirty-six times longer
than the usual Dover-Calais passage this rather unusual route had an air
of adventure in better keeping with the romantic feeling of this Polish
journey, which for so many years had been before us in a state of a
project full of colour and promise, but always retreating, elusive, like an
enticing mirage.
And, after all, it had turned out to be no mirage. No wonder they
were excited. It's no mean experience to lay your hands on a mirage.
The day of departure had come, the very hour had struck. The luggage
was coming downstairs. It was most convincing. Poland then, if erased
from the map, yet existed in reality ; it was not a mere "pays du reve,"
where you can travel only in imagination. For no man, they argued, not
even father, an habitual pursuer of dreams, would push the love of the
JOSEPH CONRAD
novelist's art of make-believe to the point of burdening himself with real
trunks for a voyage "au pays du reve."
As we left the door of our house, nestling in, perhaps, the most peace-
ful nook in Kent, the sky, after weeks of perfectly brazen serenity, veiled
its blue depths and started to weep fine tears for the refreshment of the
parched fields. A pearly blurr settled over them ; a light sifted of all glare,
of everything unkindly and searching that dwells in the splendour of
unveiled skies. All unconscious of going towards the very scenes of war,
I carried off in my eye this tiny fragment of Great Britain: a few fields,
a wooded rise, a clump of trees or two, with a short stretch of road, and
here and there a gleam of red wall and tiled roof above the darkening
hedges wrapped up in soft mist and peace. And I felt that all this had a
very strong hold on me as the embodiment of a beneficent and gentle
spirit; that it was dear to me not as an inheritance, but as an acquisition,
as a conquest in the sense in which a woman is conquered — by love,
which is a sort of surrender.
Those were strange, as if disproportionate thoughts to the matter in
hand, which was the simplest sort of a Continental holiday. And I am
certain that my companions, near as they are to me, felt no other trouble
but the suppressed excitement of pleasurable anticipation. The forms and
the spirit of the land before their eyes were their inheritance, not their
conquest — which is a thing precarious, and, therefore, the more precious,
possessing you if only by the fear of un worthiness, rather than possessed
by you. Moreover, as we sat together in the same railway carriage, they
were looking forward to a voyage in space, whereas I felt more and more
plainly that what I had started on was a journey in time, into the past;
a fearful enough prospect for the most consistent, but to him who had
not known how to preserve against his impulses the order and continu-
ity of his life — so that at times it presented itself to his conscience as a
series of betrayals — still more dreadful.
I confess here my thoughts so exclusively personal to explain why
there was no room in my consciousness for the apprehension of a Euro-
C 77 I]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
pean war. I don't mean to say I ignored the possibility. I simply did not
think of it. And it made no difference; for, if I had thought of it, it could
only have been in the lame and inconclusive way of the common unin-
itiated mortals ; and I am sure that nothing short of intellectual certitude
— obviously unattainable by the man in the street — could have stayed
me on that journey which now that I had started on it seemed an irre-
vocable thing, a necessity of my self-respect.
London — the London of before the war, flaunting its enormous glare
as of a monstrous conflagration up into the black sky — received us with
its best Venice-like aspect of rainy evenings, the wet, asphalted streets
lying with the sheen of sleeping water in winding canals, and the great
houses of the city towering all dark like empty palaces above the re-
flected lights of the glistening roadway.
Everything in the subdued incomplete night life around the Mansion
House went on normally, with its fascinating air of a dead commercial
city of sombre walls through which the inextinguishable night life of
millions streamed East and West in a brilliant flow of lighted vehicles.
In Liverpool Street, as usual too, through the double gates, a contin-
uous line of taxicabs glided down the inclined approach and up again,
like an endless chain of dredger-buckets pouring in the passengers, and
dipping them out of the great railway station under the inexorable pallid
face of the clock telling off the diminishing minutes of peace. It was the
hour of the boat trains to Holland, to Hamburg, and there seemed to be
no lack of people, fearless, reckless, or ignorant, who wanted to go to
these places. The station was normally crowded, and if there was a great
flutter of evening papers in the multitude of hands, there were no signs
of extraordinary emotion on that multitude of faces. There was nothing
in them to distract me from the thought that it was singularly appropri-
ate that I should start from this station on the retraced way of my exist-
ence. For this was the station at which, thirty-six years ago, I arrived
on my first visit to London. Not the same building, but the same spot.
At eighteen years of age, after a period of probation and training I had
C 78 ]
JOSEPH CONRAD
imposed upon myself as ordinary seaman on board a North Sea coaster,
I had come up from Lowestoft — my first long railway journey in Eng-
land— to "sign on" for an Antipodean voyage in a deep-water ship.
Straight from a railway carriage I had walked into the great city with
something of the feeling of a traveller penetrating into a vast and unex-
plored wilderness. No explorer could have been more lonely. I did not
know a single soul of all these millions that all around me peopled the
mysterious distances of the streets. I cannot say I was free from a little
youthful awe, but at that age one's feelings are simple. I was elated. I
was pursuing a clear aim. I was carrying out a deliberate plan of mak-
ing out of myself, in the first place, a seaman worthy of the service, good
enough to work by the side of the men with whom I was to live ; and in
the second place, I had to justify my existence to myself, to redeem
a tacit moral pledge. Both these aims were to be attained by the same
effort. How simple seemed the problem of life then, on that hazy day of
early September in the year 1878, when I entered London for the first
time.
From that point of view — youth and a straightforward scheme of con-
duct— it was certainly a year of grace. All the help I had to get in touch
with the world I was invading was a piece of paper not much bigger
than the palm of my hand — in which I held it — torn out of a larger plan
of London for the greater facility of reference. It had been the object
of careful study for some days past. The fact that I could take a convey-
ance at the station had never occurred to my mind, no, not even when
I got out into the street and stood, taking my anxious bearings, in the
midst, so to speak, of twenty thousand cabs. A strange absence of mind
or unconscious conviction that one cannot approach an important mo-
ment of one's life by means of a hired carriage? Yes, it would have been
a preposterous proceeding. And indeed I was to make an Australian voy-
age and encircle the globe before ever entering a London hansom.
Another document, a cutting from a newspaper, containing the address
of an obscure agent, was in my pocket. And I needed not to take it out.
C 79 ]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
That address was as if graven deep in my brain. I muttered its words
to myself as I walked on, navigating the sea of London by the chart con-
cealed in the palm of my hand ; for I had vowed to myself not to inquire
my way from any one. Youth is the time of rash pledges. Had I taken
a wrong turn I would have been lost; and if faithful to my pledge I
might have remained lost for days, for weeks, have left perhaps my
bones to be discovered bleaching in some blind alley of the Whitechapel
district, as had happened to lonely travellers lost in the bush. But I walked
on to my destination without hesitation or mistake, showing there, for the
first time, something of that faculty to absorb and make my own correctly
the imaged topography of a chart, which in later years was to help me in
regions of intricate navigation to keep the ships entrusted to me off the
ground. And the place I was bound to was not so easy to find, either. It
was one of those courts hidden away from the charted and navigable
streets, lost amongst the thick growth of houses, like a dark pool in the
depths of a forest, approached by an inconspicuous archway, as if by a
secret path; a Dickensian nook of London, that wonder-city, the growth
of which bears no sign of intelligent design, but many traces of freakishly
sombre phantasy which the great Master knew so well how to bring out
by magic of his great and understanding love. And the office I entered
was Dickensian too. The dust of the Waterloo year lay on the panes and
frames of its windows; early Georgian grime clung to its sombre wains-
coting.
It was one o'clock in the afternoon, but the day was gloomy. By the
light of a single gas-jet depending from the smoked ceiling I saw an
elderly man, in a long coat of black broadcloth. He had a grey beard,
a big nose, thick lips, and broad shoulders. His longish white hair and
the general character of his head recalled vaguely a burly apostle in
the"barocco" style of Italian art. Standing up at a tall, shabby, slanting
desk, his silver-rimmed spectacles pushed up high on his forehead, he
was eating a mutton chop, which had been just brought to him from some
Dickensian eating-house round the corner.
c 8° n
\
JOSEPH COJVRAD
Without ceasing to eat he turned to me his barocco apostle's head with
an expression of inquiry.
I produced elaborately a series of vocal sounds which must have borne
sufficient resemblance to the phonetics of English speech ; for his face
broke into a smile of comprehension almost at once. — " Oh it's you who
wrote a letter to me the other day from Lowestoft about getting a ship/'
I had written to him from Lowestoft. I can't remember a single word
of that letter now. It was my very first composition in the English lan-
guage. And he had understood it; because he spoke to the point at once,
explaining that his business, mainly, was to find good ships for young
gentlemen who wanted to go to sea as premium apprentices with a view
of being trained for officers. But he gathered that this was not my object.
I did not desire to be apprenticed. Was that the case?
It was. He was good enough to say then, " Of course I see that you
are a gentleman too. But your wish is to get a berth before the mast as
an Able Seaman if possible. Is that it?"
It was certainly my wish; but he stated doubtfully that he feared
he could not help me much in this. There was an Act of Parliament
which made it penal to procure ships for sailors. " An Act — of — Parlia-
ment. A law," he took pains to impress it again and again on my foreign
understanding, while I looked at him in consternation.
I had not been half an hour in London before I had run my head
against an Act of Parliament! What a hopeless adventure! However, the
barocco apostle was a resourceful person in his way, and we managed
to get round the hard letter of it without damage to its fine spirit. Yet,
strictly speaking, it was not the conduct of a good citizen. And in retro-
spect there is an unfilial flavour about that early sin. For this Act of Par-
liament, the Merchant Shipping Act of the mid-Victorian era, had been
in a manner of speaking a father and mother to me. For many years it
had regulated and disciplined my life, prescribed my food and the amount
of my breathing space, had looked after my health and tried as much as
possible to secure my personal safety in a risky calling. It isn't such a
c si :
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
bad thing to lead a life of hard toil and plain duty within the four corners
of an honest Act of Parliament. And I am glad to say that its severities
have never been applied to me.
In the year 1 878, the year of Peace with Honour, I had walked as lone
as any human being in the streets of London, out of Liverpool Street
Station, to surrender myself to its care. And now, in the year of the
war waged for honour and conscience more than for any other cause, I
was there again, no longer alone, but a man of infinitely dear and close
ties grown since that time, of work done, of words written, of friend-
ship secured. It was like the closing of a thirty-six years' cycle.
All unaware of the War Angel already waiting with the trumpet at
its lips the stroke of the fatal hour, I sat there, thinking that this life of
ours is neither long nor short, but that it can appear very wonderful,
entertaining, and pathetic, with symbolic images and bizarre associations
crowded into one half-hour of retrospective musing.
I felt, too, that this journey so suddenly entered upon was bound to
take me away from daily life's actualities at every step. I felt it more
than ever when presently we steamed out into the North Sea, on a dark
night fitful with gusts of wind, and I lingered on deck, alone of all the
tale of the ship's passengers. That sea was to me something unforgettable,
something much more than a name. It had been for a time the school-
room of my trade. On it, I may safely say, I had learned, too, my first
words of English. A wild and stormy abode, sometimes, was that fine,
narrow- waters academy of seamanship from which I launched myself on
the wide oceans. My teachers had been the coasting sailors of the Norfolk
shore. Coast men, with steady eyes, mighty limbs, and gentle voice. Men
of very few words, which, at least, were never bare of meaning. Honest,
strong, steady men, sobered by domestic ties, one and all as far as I can
remember.
That is what years ago the North Sea, I could hear growling in the
dark all round the ship, had been for me. And I fancied that I must have
been carrying its voice in my ear ever since, for nothing could be more
c so
JOSEPH CONRAD
familiar than those short, angry sounds I was listening to with a smile
of affectionate recognition.
I could not guess that before many days my schoolroom would be
desecrated by violence, littered with wrecks, with death walking its waves,
hiding under the waters. Perhaps while I am writing these words the
children, or maybe the grandchildren, of my pacific teachers are out irt
drifters under the naval flag, dredging for German submarine mines.
in
I have said that the North Sea was my finishing school of seamanship
before I launched myself on the wider oceans. Confined as it is in com-
parison with the vast stage of this water-girt globe, I did not know it in
all its parts. My classroom was the region of the English East Coast
which, in the year of Peace with Honour, had long forgotten the war epi-
sodes belonging to its maritime history. It was a peaceful coast, agricul-
tural, industrial, the home of fishermen. At night the lights of its many
towns played on the clouds, or in clear weather lay still, here and there,
in brilliant pools above the ink-black outline of the shore. On many a
night I have hauled at the braces under the very shadow of that coast,
envying, as sailors will, the people ashore sleeping quietly in their beds
within sound of the sea. I imagine that not one head on these envied
pillows was made uneasy by the slightest premonition of the realities
of naval war the short lifetime of one generation was to bring to their
peaceful shores.
Though far away from that region of kindly memories and traversing
a part of the North Sea much less known to me, I was deeply conscious
of the familiarity of my surroundings. It was a cloudy, nasty day, and
the aspects of nature don't change, unless in the course of thousands of
years — or, perhaps, centuries. The Phoenicians, its first discoverers, the
Romans, the first imperial rulers of that sea, had experienced days like
this, so different in the wintry quality of the light even on that July after-
C 83 3
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
noon, from anything they had ever known in their native Mediterranean.
For my self, a very late comer into that sea and its former pupil,! accorded
amused recognition to the characteristic aspect so well remembered from
my daysof training.The same old thing. A grey-green expanse of smudgy
waters grinning angrily at one with white foam-ridges, and over all a
cheerless, unglowing canopy, apparently made of wet blotting-paper.
From time to time a flurry of fine rain blew along like a puff of smoke
across the dots of distant fishing boats, very few, very scattered, very solid
and motionless against an ever dissolving, ever re-forming sky-line.
Those flurries, and the steady rolling of the ship, accounted for the
emptiness of the decks favouring my reminiscent mood.
It might have been a day of five-and-thirty years ago, when there was
on this and every other sea more sails and less smoke-stacks to be seen.
Yet, thanks to the unchangeable sea, I could have given myself up to the
illusion bringing the past close to the future, if it had not been for the
periodical transit across my gaze of a German passenger. He was march-
ing round and round the boat-deck with characteristic determination. Two
sturdy boys gambolled round him in his progress like two small disor-
derly satellites round their parent planet. He was bringing them home
from their school in England for their holiday. What could have induced
him to entrust his offspring to the unhealthy influences of that effete,
corrupt, rotten and criminal country, I cannot imagine. It could hardly
have been from motives of economy. I did not speak to him. He trod
the deck of that decadent British ship with a scornful foot, while his breast
(and to some extent his stomach, too) appeared expanded by the con-
sciousness of a superior destiny. Later, I could observe the same trucu-
lent bearing, touched with the racial grotesqueness, in the men of the
Landwehr corps, the first that passed through Cracow to reinforce the
Austrian Army in Eastern Galicia. Indeed, the haughty passenger might
very well have been, most probably was, an officer of the Landwehr; and
perhaps those two fine, active boys are orphans by now. Thus things
acquire significance by the lapse of time. A citizen, a father, a warrior, a
[ 84 ]
JOSEPH CONRAD
mote in the dust-cloud of six million of fighting particles, still tossed East
or West in the lurid tempest, or already snapped up, an unconsidered
trifle, in the jaws of war, his very humanity was not consciously impressed
on my mind at the time. Mainly, for me, he was a sharp tapping of heels
round the corner of the deck-house, a white yachting-cap and a green
overcoat getting periodically between imy eyes and the shifting cloud-
horizon of the ashy-green North Sea. He was but a shadowy intrusion
and a disregarded one, for far away there to the West, in the direction
of the Dogger Bank, where fishermen go seeking their daily bread and
sometimes find their graves, I could behold an experience of my own in
the winter of 1 88 1 , not of war truly, but of a fairly lively contest with the
elements which were very angry indeed.
There had been a troublesome week of it, including one hateful night —
or a night of hate ( it is n't for nothing that the North Sea is also called the
German Ocean) — when all the fury stored in its heart seemed concen-
trated on one ship which could do no better than to float on her side in an
unnatural, disagreeable, precarious, and altogether intolerable manner.
There were on board besides myself, seventeen men, all good and true,
including a round enormous Dutchman who, in those hours between sun-
set and sunrise, managed to lose his blown-out appearance somehow,
became as it were deflated, and thereafter for a long time moved in
our midst wrinkled and slack all over like a half-collapsed balloon. The
whimpering of our deck-boy, a skinny, impressionable little scarecrow
out of a training-ship, for whom, because of the tender immaturity of his
nerves, this display of German Ocean frightfulness was too' much ( before
the year was out he developed into a sufficiently cheeky young ruffian ) ,
his desolate whimpering, I say, heard between the gusts of that black,
savage night, was much more present to my mind and indeed to my
senses, than the green overcoat and the white cap of the German passen-
ger circling the deck indefatigably, attended by his two gyrating children.
"That's a very nice gentleman/' This information, together with the
fact that he was a widower and a regular passenger twice a year by
[ 85 1
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
the ship, was communicated to me suddenly by our captain. At intervals
through the day he would pop out of his cabin and offer me short snatches
of conversation. He owned a simple soul and a not very entertaining
mind, and he was, without malice and, I believe, quite unconsciously, a
warm Germanophil. And no wonder! As he told me himself, he had
been fifteen years on that run, and spent almost as much of his life in
Germany as in England.
" Wonderful people they are/' he repeated from time to time, with-
out entering into particulars, but with many nods of sagacious obstinacy.
What he knew of them, I suppose, were a few commercial travellers and
small merchants, most likely. But I had observed long before that Ger-
man genius has a hypnotising power over half-baked souls and half-
lighted minds. There is an immense force of suggestion in highly organ-
ised mediocrity. Had it not hypnotised half Europe? My man was very
much under the spell of German excellence. On the other hand, his con-
tempt for France was equally general and unbounded. I tried to advance
some arguments against this position, but I only succeeded in making him
hostile to myself. " I believe you are a Frenchman yourself," he snarled
at last, giving me an intensely suspicious look ; and forthwith broke off
communications with a man of such unsound sympathies.
Hour by hour the blotting-paper sky and the great flat greenish smudge
of the sea had been taking on a darker tone, without any change in their
colouring and texture. Evening was coming on over the North Sea. Black
uninteresting hummocks of land appeared, dotting the duskiness of water
and clouds in the eastern board ; tops of islands fringing the German
shore. While I was looking at their antics amongst the waves — and for
all their manifest solidity they were very elusive things in the failing light
—another passenger came out on deck. This one wore a dark overcoat
and a grey cap. The yellow leather strap of his binocular-case crossed
his chest. His elderly red cheeks nourished but a very thin crop of short
white hairs, and the end of his nose was so perfectly round that it deter-
mined the whole character of his physiognomy. Indeed, nothing else in it
C 86]
JOSEPH CONRAD
had the slightest chance to assert itself. His disposition, unlike the wid-
ower's, appeared to be mild and humane. He offered me the loan of his
glasses. He had a wife and some small children concealed in the depths
of the ship, and he thought that they were very well where they were.
His eldest son was about the decks somewhere.
" We are Americans," he remarked weightily, but in a rather peculiar
tone. He spoke English with the accent of our captain's "wonderful
people," and proceeded to give me the history of the family's crossing
the Atlantic in a White Star ship. They remained in England just the
time necessary for a railway journey from Liverpool to Harwich. His
people (those in the depths of the ship, I suppose) were naturally a little
tired.
At that moment a young man of about twenty, his son, rushed up to
us from the fore-deck in a state of intense elation. "Hurrah!" he cried
under his breath, "The first German light! Hurrah!"
And those two American citizens shook hands on it with the greatest
fervour, while I turned away and received full in the eyes the brilliant
wink of the Borkum lighthouse squatting low down in the darkness. The
shade of the night had settled on the North Sea.
I do not think I have ever seen before a night so full of lights. The
great change of sea-life since my time was brought home to me. I had
been conscious all day of an interminable procession of steamers. They
went on and on as if in chase of each other, the Baltic trade, the trade of
Scandinavia, of Denmark, of Germany, pitching heavily into a head-sea
and bound for the gateway of Dover Strait. Singly, and in small compa-
nies of two or three, they emerged from the dull, colourless, sunless dis-
tances ahead, as if the supply of rather roughly finished mechanical toys
were inexhaustible in some mysterious cheap store, away there, below
the grey curve of the earth. Cargo steam-vessels have reached by this
time a height of utilitarian ugliness which, when one reflects that this is
the product of human ingenuity, strikes hopeless awe into one. These
dismal creations look still uglier at sea than in port, and with an added
C 87 ]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
touch of the ridiculous. Their rolling waddle when seen at a certain angle,
their abrupt clockwork nodding in a seaway, so unlike the soaring lift and
swing of a craft under sail, have in them something caricatural, a sug-
gestion of low parody directed at noble predecessors by an improved
generation of dull, mechanical toilers, conceited and without grace.
When they switched on ( each of these unlovely cargo-tanks carried
tame lightning within its slab-sided body ) , when they switched on their
lamps they spangled the night with the cheap, electric, shop-glitter, here,
there, and everywhere, as of some High Street, broken up and washed
out to sea. Later, Heligoland cut into the overhead darkness with its
powerful beam, infinitely prolonged out of unfathomable night under the
clouds.
I remained on deck till we stopped and a steam pilot-boat, so over-
lighted amidships that one could not make out her complete shape, glided
across our bows and sent a pilot on board. I fear that the oar, as a work-
ing implement, shall become presently as obsolete as the sail. The pilot
boarded us in a motor dinghy. More and more is mankind reducing its
physical activities to pulling levers and twirling little wheels. Progress !
Yet the older methods of meeting natural forces demanded intelligence
too ; an equally fine readiness of wits. And readiness of wits working in
combination with the strength of muscles made a more complete man.
It was really a surprisingly small dinghy, and it ran to and fro like a
water-insect fussing noisily down there with immense self-importance.
Within hail of us the hull of the Elbe Lightship floated all dark and silent
under its enormous, round, service lantern; a faithful black shadow watch-
ing the broad estuary full of lights.
Such was my first view of the Elbe approached under the wings of
peace already spread for a flight away from the luckless shores of Eu-
rope. Our visual impressions remain with us so persistently that I find it
extremely difficult to hold fast to the rational belief that now everything
is dark over there, that the Elbe Lightship has been towed away from
its post of duty, the triumphant beam of Heligoland extinguished, and
C 88 ]
JOSEPH CONRAD
the pilot-boat laid up, or turned to warlike uses for lack of its proper
work to do. And obviously it must be so.
Any trickle of oversea trade that passes yet that way must be creep-
ing along cautiously, with the unlighted, war-blighted, black coast close
on one, and sudden death on the other hand. For all the space we steamed
through on that Sunday evening must be now one great mine field, sown
thickly with the seeds of hate; while submarines steal out to sea, over
the very spot, perhaps, where the insect-dinghy put a pilot on board of
us with so much fussy importance. Mines, submarines. The last word in
sea warfare! Progress — impressively disclosed by this war.
There have been other wars ! Wars not inferior in the greatness of the
stake, and in the fierce animosity of feelings. During that one which was
finished a hundred years ago, it happened that while the English fleet
was keeping watch on Brest, an American, perhaps Fulton himself, of-
fered to the maritime Prefect of the port and to the French Admiral,
an invention which would sink the unsuspecting English ships one after
another — or at any rate, most of them. The offer was not even taken into
consideration ; and the Prefect ends his report to the Minister of Marine
in Paris with a fine phrase of indignation : " It is not the sort of death one
would deal to brave men."
And, behold, before history had time to hatch another war of the like
proportions in the intensity of aroused passions and the greatness of is-
sues, the dead flavour of archaism descended on the manly sentiment
of those self-denying words. Mankind had been demoralised since by its
own mastery of mechanical appliances. Its spirit apparently is so weak
now, and its flesh has grown so strong, that it will face any deadly horror
of destruction and cannot resist the temptation to use any stealthy, mur-
derous contrivance. It has become the intoxicated slave of its own de-
testable ingenuity. It is true, too, that since the Napoleonic times another
sort of war doctrine has been inculcated to a nation, and held out to the
world.
C 89 II
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
IV
On this journey of ours, which for me was essentially not a progress but
a retracing of footsteps on a road travelled before, I had no beacons to
look out for in Germany. I had never lingered in that land, which, as
a whole, is so singularly barren of memorable manifestations of gener-
ous sympathies and magnanimous impulses. An ineradicable, invincible
provincialism of envy and vanity clings to the forms of its thought like
a frowsy garment. Even while yet very young I turned my eyes away
from it instinctively, as from a threatening phantom. I believe that chil-
dren and dogs have, in their innocence, a special power of perception as
far as spectral apparitions and coming misfortunes are concerned.
I let myself be carried through Germany as if it were pure space,
without sights, without sounds. No whispers of the war reached my vol-
untary abstraction. And perhaps not so very voluntary, after all! Each of
us is a fascinating spectacle to himself, and I had to watch my own per-
sonality returning from another world, as it were, to revisit the glimpses
of old moons. Considering the condition of humanity, I am, perhaps, not
so much to blame for giving myself up to that occupation. We prize the
sensation of our continuity, and we can only capture it in that way. By
watching.
We arrived in Cracow late at night. After a scrambly supper, I said
to my eldest boy, " I can't go to bed. I must go out for a look round.
Coming?"
He was ready enough. For him all this was part of the interesting ad-
venture of the whole journey. We stepped out of the portal of the hotel
into an empty street, very silent and bright with moonlight. I was indeed
revisiting the glimpses of the moon. I felt so much like a ghost that the
discovery that I could remember such material things as the right turn to
take and the general direction of the street gave me a moment of wist-
ful surprise.
The street, straight and narrow, ran into the great Central Square
C 90 1
JOSEPH COJVRAD
of the town, the centre of its affairs and of the lighter side of its life. We
could see at the far end of the street a promising widening of space. At
the corner an unassuming (but armed) policeman, wearing ceremoni-
ously at midnight a pair of white gloves, which made his big hands ex-
tremely noticeable, turned his head to look at the grizzled foreigner
holding forth in a strange tongue to a youth on whose arm he leaned.
The square, immense in its solitude, was full to the brim of moonlight.
The garland of lights at the foot of the houses seemed to burn at the bot-
tom of a bluish pool. I noticed with intimate satisfaction that the unneces-
sary trees the Municipality persisted in sticking between the stones had
been steadily refusing to grow. They were not a bit bigger than the poor
victims I could remember. Also, the paving operations seemed to be
exactly at the same point at which I left them forty years before. There
were the dull, torn-up patches on that lighted expanse, the piles of pav-
ing material looking ominously black, like heads of rocks on a silvery
sea. Who was it that said Time works wonders? What an exploded su-
perstition ! As far as these trees and these paving-stones were concerned
it had worked nothing. The suspicion of the unchangeableness of things
already vaguely suggested to my senses by our rapid drive from the rail-
way station and by the short walk, was agreeably strengthened within
me.
" We are now on the line A.B.," I said to my companion, importantly.
It was the name bestowed in my time to that side of the square by the
senior students of that town of classical learning and historical relics. The
common citizens knew nothing of it, and even if they had, would not have
dreamed of taking it seriously. He who used it was of the initiated, be-
longed to the Schools. We youngsters regarded that name as a fine jest,
the invention of a most excellent fancy. Even as I uttered it to my boy
I experienced again that sense of privilege, of initiation. And then, hap-
pening to look up at the wall, I saw in the light of the corner lamp, a
white, cast-iron tablet fixed thereon, bearing an inscription in raised black
letters, thus: "Line A.B." Heavens! The name had been adopted offi-
C 91 3
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
daily ! Any town urchin, any guttersnipe, any herb-selling woman of the
market-place, any wandering Beotian, was free to talk of the line A.B., to
walk on the line A.B., to appoint to meet his friends on the line A.B. It
had become a mere name in a directory. I was stunned by the extreme
mutability of things. Time could work wonders, and no mistake. A Muni-
cipality had stolen an invention of excellent fancy, and a fine jest had
turned into a horrid piece of cast iron.
I proposed that we should walk to the other end of the line, using the
profaned name, not only without gusto, but with positive distaste. And
this, too, was one of the wonders of Time, for a bare minute had worked
that change. There was at the end of the line a certain street I wanted
to look at, I explained to my companion.
To our right the unequal massive towers of St. Mary's Church soared
aloft into the ethereal radiance of the air, very black on their shaded sides,
glowing with a soft phosphorescent sheen on the others. In the distance
the Florian Gate, thick and squat under its pointed roof, barred the street
with the square shoulders of the old city wall. In the narrow brilliantly
pale vista of bluish flagstones and silvery fronts of houses, its black arch-
way stood out small but very distinct.
There was not a soul in sight, and not even the echo of a footstep for
our ears. Into this coldly illuminated and dumb emptiness there issued
out of my aroused memory a small boy of eleven, wending his way, not
very fast, to a preparatory school for day-pupils on the second floor of
the third house down from Florian Gate. It was in the winter months of
1868. At eight o'clock of every morning that God made, sleet or shine,
I walked up Florian Street. But of the school I remember very little. I
believe that one of my co-sufferers there has become a much appreciated
editor of historical documents. But I did n't suffer very much from the
various imperfections of my first school. I was rather indifferent to school
troubles. I had a private gnawing worm of my own. This was the time
of my father's last illness. Every evening at seven, turning my back on
the Florian Gate, I walked all the way to a big old house in a quiet little
: 92 n
JOSEPH CONRAD
street a good distance beyond the Great Square .There, in a large draw-
ing-room, panelled and bare, with heavy cornices and a lofty ceiling, in
a little oasis of light made by two candles in a desert of dusk, I sat at a
little table to worry and ink myself all over till the task of preparation
was done. The table of my toil faced a tall white double door which was
kept closed; but now and then it would come ajar and a nun in a white
coif would squeeze herself through, glide across the room and disappear.
There were two of these noiseless nursing nuns. Their voices were sel-
dom heard. For indeed what could they have to say! When they did
speak to me, it was with their lips hardly moving, in a claustral clear
whisper. Domestic matters were ordered by the elderly housekeeper of
our neighbour on the second floor, a Canon of the Cathedral, lent for
the emergency. She too spoke but seldom. She wore a black dress with
a cross hanging by a chain on her ample bosom. And though when she
spoke she moved her lips more than the nuns, she never let her voice
rise above a peacefully murmuring note. The air around me was all piety,
resignation and silence.
I don't know what would have become of me if I had not been a read-
ing boy. My lessons done I would have had nothing to do but sit and
watch the awful stillness of the sick-room flow out through the closed
white door and coldly enfold my scared heart. I suppose that in a futile
childish way I would have gone crazy. But I was a reading boy. There
were many books about, lying on consoles, on tables, and even on the
floor, for we had not had time to settle down. I read! What did I not
read! Sometimes the eldest nun gliding up and casting a mistrustful glance
at the open pages would lay her hand lightly on my head and suggest
in a doubtful whisper: " Perhaps it is n't very good for you to read these
books." I would raise my eyes to her face mutely and with a vague ges-
ture of giving it up she would glide away.
Later in the evening, but not always, I would be permitted to tiptoe
into the sick-room to say good-night to the figure prone on the bed
which often could not recognise my presence but by a slow movement of
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
the eyes, put my lips dutifully to the nerveless hand lying on the cover-
let, and tiptoe out again. Then I would go to bed, in a room at the end
of a corridor, and often, not always, cry myself into a good, sound sleep.
I looked forward to what was coming with an incredulous terror. I
turned my eyes from it, sometimes with success; and yet all the time I
had an awful sensation of the inevitable. I had also moments of revolt
which stripped off me some of my simple trust in the government of the
universe. But when the inevitable entered the sick-room and the white
door was thrown wide open, I don't think I found a single tear to shed.
I have a suspicion that the Canon's housekeeper looked upon me as the
most callous little wretch on earth.
The day of the funeral came in due course, and all the generous
"Youth of the Schools," the grave Senate of the University, the dele-
gations of the trade-guilds, might have obtained (if they cared) de visu
evidence of the callousness of the little wretch. There was nothing in my
aching head but a few words, some such stupid sentences as: " It's done,"
or "It's accomplished" (in Polish it is much shorter), or something of
the sort, repeating itself endlessly. The long procession moved on out of
the little street, down a long street, past the Gothic portal of St. Mary's
between its unequal towers, towards the Florian Gate.
In the moonlight-flooded silence of the old town of glorious tombs and
tragic memories I could see again the small boy of that day following a
hearse; a space kept clear in which I walked alone, conscious of an enor-
mous following, the clumsy swaying of the tall black machine, the chant-
ing of the surpliced clergy at the head, the flames of tapers passing
under the low archway of the gate, the rows of bared heads on the pave-
ments with fixed, serious eyes. Half the population had turned out on
that fine May afternoon. They had not come to honour a great achieve-
ment, or even some splendid failure. The dead and they were victims
alike of an unrelenting destiny which cut them off from every path of
merit and glory. They had come only to render homage to the ardent
fidelity of the man whose life had been a fearless confession in word and
[ 94 ]
\
JOSEPH COJVRAD
deed of a creed which the simplest heart in that crowd could feel and
understand.
It seemed to me that if I remained longer there in that narrow street
I should become the helpless prey of the Shadows I had called up. They
were crowding upon me, enigmatic and insistent, in their clinging air of
the grave that tasted of dust and in the bitter vanity of all hopes.
"Let's go back to the hotel, my boy," I said. "It's getting late."
It will be easily understood that I neither thought nor dreamt that night
of a possible war. For the next two days I went about amongst my fel-
low men, who welcomed me with the utmost consideration and friendli-
ness, but unanimously derided my fears of a war. They would not believe
in it. It was impossible. On the evening of the second day I was in the
hotel's smoking-room, an irrationally private apartment, a sanctuary for
a few choice minds of the town, always pervaded by a dim religious light,
and more hushed than any club reading-room I've ever been in. Gath-
ered into a small knot, we were discussing the situation in subdued tones
suitable to the genius of the place.
A gentleman with a fine head of white hair suddenly pointed an impa-
tient finger in my direction and apostrophised me.
"What I want to know is whether, should there be war, England
would come in."
The time to draw a breath, and I spoke out for the Cabinet without
faltering.
" Most assuredly. I should think all Europe knows that by this time."
He took hold of the lapel of my coat and, giving it a slight jerk for
greater emphasis, said forcibly:
"Then if England will, as you say, and all the world knows it, there
can be no war. Germany won't be so mad as that."
On the morrow by noon we read of the German ultimatum. The day
after came the declaration of war and the Austrian mobilisation order.
We were fairly caught. All that remained for me to do was to get my
party out of the way of eventual shells. The best move which occurred
C 95 3
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
to me was to snatch them up instantly into the mountains to a Polish
health resort of great repute — which I did (at the rate of one hundred
miles in eleven hours ) by the last civilian train permitted to leave Cra-
cow for the next three weeks.
And there we remained amongst the Poles from all parts of Poland,
not officially interned, but simply unable to obtain permission to travel
by train or road. It was a wonderful, a poignant two months. This is not
the time, and perhaps not the place, to enlarge upon the tragic charac-
ter of the situation ; a whole people seeing the culmination of its misfor-
tunes in a final catastrophe, unable to trust any one, to appeal to any one,
to look for help from any quarter; deprived of all hope, and even of its
last illusions, and unable in the trouble of minds and the unrest of con-
sciences to take refuge in stoical acceptance. I have seen all this. And I
am glad I have not so many years left me to remember that appalling
feeling of inexorable Fate, tangible, palpable, come after so many cruel
years, a figure of dread, murmuring with iron lips the final words:
" Ruin — and Extinction/'
But enough of this. For our little band there was the awful anguish
of incertitude as to the real nature of events in the West. It is difficult
to give an idea how ugly and dangerous things looked to us over there.
Belgium knocked down and trampled out of existence, France giving in
under repeated blows, a military collapse like that of 1870, and England
involved in that disastrous alliance, her army sacrificed, her people in a
panic! Polish papers, of course, had no other than German sources of
information. Naturally, we did not believe all we heard, but it was some-
times excessively difficult to react with sufficient firmness. We used to
shut our door, and there, away from everybody, we sat weighing the
news, hunting up discrepancies, scenting lies, finding reasons for hope-
fulness, and generally cheering each other up. But it was a beastly time.
People used to come to me with very serious news and ask, " What do
you think of it?" And my invariable answer was, "Whatever has hap-
pened or is going to happen, whoever wants to make peace, you may
C 96 ]
JOSEPH CONRAD
be certain that England will not make it, not for ten years, if necessary.'1
But enough of this, too. Through the unremitting efforts of Polish
friends we obtained at last the permission to travel to Vienna. Once there,
the wing of the American Eagle was extended over our uneasy heads.
We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the American Ambassador (who
all along interested himself in our fate ) for his exertions on our behalf,
his invaluable assistance, and the real friendliness of his reception in
Vienna. Owing to Mr. Penfield's action we obtained permission to leave
Austria. And it was a near thing, for his Excellency has informed my
American publishers since that a week later orders were issued to have
us detained until the end of the war. However, we effected our hair's-
breadth escape into Italy and, reaching Genoa, took passage in a Dutch
mail-steamer, homeward bound from Java, with London as a port of call.
On that sea route I might have picked up a memory at every mile if the
past had not been eclipsed by the tremendous actuality. We saw the signs
of it in the emptiness of the Mediterranean, the aspect of Gibraltar, the
misty glimpse in the Bay of Biscay of an outward-bound convoy of trans-
ports, in the presence of British submarines in the Channel. Innumerable
drifters flying the naval flag dotted the narrow waters, and two naval
officers coming on board off the South Foreland piloted the ship through
the Downs.
The Downs! There they were, thick with the memories of my sea
life. But what were to me now the futilities of individual past! As our
ship's head swung into the estuary of the Thames a deep, yet faint, con-
cussion passed through the air, a shock rather than a sound, which, miss-
ing my ear, found its way straight into my heart. Turning instinctively
to look at my boys, I happened to meet my wife's eyes. She also had
felt profoundly, coming from far away across the grey distances of the
sea, the faint boom of the big guns at work on the coast of Flanders—
shaping the future.
JOSEPH CONRAD
C 97 3
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
LIBERTA NELLA VITA
DA un' anno, T orror della guerra, e 1' affanno della coscienza, per com-
prenderne la inevitabile necessita. L' Antico Libro dice: "La spada levata
per uccidere guarisce taholta," e a nostri giorni, una povera donna del po-
polo firmo una carta questo affirmando: " Sia la guerra^ per distrugger la
guerra; " e la povera donna del popolo ha due figlioli al fronte.
— Infinita e la strage, e in ogni terra, disperazione e protesta!
-Per tanto dolore nel mondo, per ogni giovane esistenza troncata,
sia conquista e diritto, per ogni Patria, usommo dei beni : La liberta
nella Vita.
ELEONORA DUSE
// Cferro,
Boscolungo Pistoiese
THE RIGHT TO LIBERTY
[TRANSLATION]
FOR the past year the horror of war, and the struggle of our minds to
comprehend its inevitable necessity ! — Holy Writ says :" For all they that
take the sword shall perish with the sword," and now in our day a poor
woman of the people ends her letter with these words: "There must be
war, that war may perish" — and this poor woman of the people has two
sons at the front.
Infinite is the suffering, and over the earth wailing and despair!
Through all this sorrow in the world, through all these young lives
cut short, may victory bring to every land the crown of life — the right
to Liberty.
ELEONORA DUSE
// Cferro,
Boscolungo Pistoiese
C 98 I
AUGUSTE RODIN
TWO WOMEN
FROM AN ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
JOHN GALSWORTHY
HARVEST
THE sky to-night looks as if a million bright angels were passing — a
gleaming cloudTmesh drawn across the heaven. One star, very clear,
shines beside a full moon white as the globe-campion flower. The wan
hills and valleys, the corn-stooks, casting each its shadows, the grey boles
of the beeches — all have the remoteness of an ineffable peace. And the
past day was so soft, so glamorous ; such a hum, such brightness, and the
harvest going on. ...
This last year millions have died with energy but one third spent ; mil-
lions more unripe for death will yet herald us into the long shades before
these shambles cease — boys born just to be the meat of war, spitted on
each others' reddened bayonets, without inkling of guilt or knowledge.
To what shall we turn that we may keep sane, watching this green, un-
ripe corn, field on field, being scythed by Death for none to eat? There
is no solace in the thought: Death is nothing! — save to those who still
believe they go straight to Paradise. To us who dare not to know the
workings of the Unknowable, and in our heart of hearts cannot tell what,
if anything, becomes of us, — to us, the great majority of the modern
world — life is valuable, good, a thing worth living out for its natural
span. For, if it were not, long ere this we should have sat with folded
arms, lifting no hand till the last sighing breath of the human race had
whispered itself out into the wind, and a final darkness come; sat, like
the Hindu Yogi, watching the sun and moon a little, and expired. The
moon would be as white, and the sun as golden if we were gone, the hills
and valleys as mysterious, the beech-trees just as they are, only the stooks
of corn would vanish with those who garner them. If life were not good we
should make of ourselves dust indifferently — we human beings ; quietly,
peacefully ; not in murderous horror reaped by the curving volleys, mown
off by rains of shrapnel, and the long yellow scythe of the foul gases.
But life is good, and no living thing wishes to die; even they who kill
: 99 n
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
themselves, despairing, resign out of sheer love of life; out of craving
for what they have found too mutilated and starved, out of yearning for
their meed of joy cruelly frustrated. And they who die that others may
live are but those in whom the life-flame burns so hot and bright that
they can feel the life and the longing to live in others as if it were their
own — more than their own. Yea, life carries with it a very passion for
existence.
To what then shall we turn that we may keep sane, watching this har-
vest of too young deaths, the harvest of the brave, whose stooks are
raised before us, casting, each its shadow in the ironic moonlight? Green
corn ! Green corn !
If, having watched those unripe blades reaped off and stacked so piti-
fully, watched the great dark Waggoner clear those unmellowed fields,
we let their sacrifice be vain; if we sow not, hereafter, in a peaceful
Earth that which shall become harvest more golden than the world has
seen — then Shame on us, unending, in whatever land we dwell. . . .
This harvest night is still. And yet, up there, the bright angels are
passing over the moon. One Star!
JOHN GALSWORTHY
August 28, 1915
100
CLAUDE MONET
BOATS ON A BEACH
FROM AN EARLY CRAYON DRAWING
EDMUND GOSSE
THE ARROGANCE AND SERVILITY OF GERMANY
abound, while the war progresses, with examples of the calculated
ferocity of the Germans, of their lack of humanity, of their scorn of the
generous convention of behaviour. But there is a great danger that on
reflection, we may be tempted to regard these developments of savagery
as due to the fact of war itself, to a sudden madness of blood-lust, to
rage in the face of unanticipated resistance, even to alarm, the emotion
of terror being a fruitful source of cruelty as well as of cowardice. It is
well, therefore, lest we be tempted to excuse the barbarism of the enemy,
to cast our eyes backward and to endeavour to recall what he was in
times of peace, in his domestic surroundings, unassailed by anger or fear
or ill-humour. I make no apology, then, for recounting an anecdote which
illustrates, I think, certain qualities which distinguish the German men-
tality from that of all the other races which call themselves civilised. The
incident which I will proceed to describe was a trifling one, but the im-
pression it left upon my memory was profound.
In the early summer of 1911 my wife and I joined our dear friends,
the Dutch novelist Maarten Maartens and his daughter, in a motor-trip
through parts of the Rhine Province, and in particular the romantic and
volcanic districts of the Eiffel. Maarten Maartens ( who died in Holland
so lately as the 3rd of August, 1915) was the most delightful travelling
companion, and the perfection of his linguistic gifts — for he spoke Eng-
lish, French, Italian and German in each case like a native — made the
face of Europe one wide home to him. Our tour was nearly over; we
had descended the Moselle, and had paused where the Benedictine Abbey
of Laach, on the edge of its serene and wood-encircled crater-lake offers
hospitality to the stranger; and then we went down to the Rhine and
reached Konigswinter late one afternoon. At Konigs winter, as travellers
know, there is an hotel which Germans brag of as "the best in the world."
It is, in fact, or was then, very large, sumptuously furnished, nobly situ-
c
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
ated on the bastion of the Rhine, looking right over to Drachenfels. The
service was rapid and noiseless, the cooking as good as a Teuton kitchen
can produce. It had the air of highly-organised prosperity, of a machine
exactly suited to harmonise with wealth. To call it " the best hotel in the
world" is to show a false conception of excellence as applied to hotels,
but it presented everything that German luxury could demand.
We were given a row of excellent rooms on the first floor, with long
windows opening on to a terrace which roofed the great restaurant, and
whence there was a noble prospect. We went to bed early , and soon the
whole vast establishment seemed wrapped in velvet silence. Not a sound
broke in the dark warm summer night, not even a whisper from the
river. Suddenly an amazing, an unintelligible riot woke the row of us from
slumber. The electric light, switched hurriedly on, revealed that the hour
was three. In front of us, apparently on our terrace, a turmoil was pro-
ceeding of a character to wake the dead. Explosions of glass, what seemed
the deeper note of crockery, strange shrieks of metal, bassoon-like and
drum-like noises, a deafening roar. Turning off the light, with face pressed
to the window, there were dimly to be distinguished phantom -objects de-
scending from above our heads, a shower of vague orbs and bosses, splin-
ters of light, a chaos of the indescribable. Presently the hubbub ceased,
deep silence reigned again, and after whispered and bewildered confabu-
lation from door to door, we fell again to dreamless sleep.
In the morning, the riot of the night was our only subject. The terrace
in front of our windows showed not the slightest evidence of any dis-
turbance, and we almost doubted our senses. At breakfast, the man who
served us knew nothing ; he had not wakened all night, he declared.
Maarten Maartens,more and more intrigued, insisted on asking the head-
waiter. The answer of that worthy was, "There was no disturbance at
any time last night. If there had been, I could not have failed to hear it."
Maarten Maartens broke from this sturdy liar, and went off to the bureau
of the Hotel. Here he found the manager, with whom he was personally
acquainted, seated at his desk; two or three other people were near. To
[ 102 ]
EDMUND GOSSE
the Dutch novelist's inquiry the manager answered — " There was no
noise in any part of the hotel at any time last night. You were dream-
ing,— you had a nightmare/' Maarten Maartens, now thoroughly baf-
fled, almost began to think that the noise must have been a delusion of
the brain ; when the manager, coming to him along a passage, and glan-
cing hither and thither to make sure no one was listening, said, "The
officers of a crack regiment from Cologne were supping last night here,
in the large private room on the second floor. At three o'clock, as they
were leaving, they threw everything that was on the table, — glass,
china, silver, everything, — out of window on to the terrace below. But
before four o'clock my waiters had removed every trace of what the of-
ficers had done. I tell you the facts because you are so persistent, but I
must beg you to ask no more questions and make no more remarks. If
it were known to the authorities that any complaints had been made, my
licence would be withdrawn. My people are so well disciplined, that not
a single man or woman employed in the hotel would admit that any in-
cident had taken place." Maarten Maartens said, " But would you allow
civilians to behave like that?" "Civilians!" exclaimed the manager; "in
their case I should telephone to the police at the crash of the first wine-
glass."
Before we left Konigswinter that day we went with Maarten Maartens
to call on the publisher of the German edition of his writings, which had
a very large sale. We were received with much ceremony in a modern
house, sumptuously furnished, and set in an enchanting park which goes
down to the Rhine. The civility of the great publisher and of his family
was extreme. In the course of conversation Maarten Maartens, in whom
the nocturnal bombardment of his bed-room rankled, told the story with
a great deal of humour and liveliness. When he had finished there was a
silence, and then the publisher said, very sententiously, " We never criti-
cise the Army ! Allow me to show you that part of the garden which has
been finished since your last visit ! "
This, then, is the spirit in which Germany has arrived at her present
103
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
amazing development. It renders her unique. Can any one conceive a
party of English officers, dining at the Ritz, and hurling all their plates
and dishes into the street below ? Can any one conceive a party of French
civilians, of all classes, accepting a tyranny of arms so humiliating ? The
arrogance and wantonness of a military aristocracy balanced by an un-
questioning servility of the great bulk of the nation. A Kultur of which
the watchword is, "We never criticise the Army!" An army in which
the qualities of self-respect and respect for others are totally ignored.
An amalgam of these contrasted elements makes up the atrocious and
formidable temperament of our enemy.
EDMUND GOSSE
104
MAX BEERBOHM
A GRACIOUS ACT. (CARICATURE)
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
*
.\
PAUL HERVIEU
SCIENCE ET CONSCIENCE
LA caracteristique de ce conflit europeen sera sans doute, aux yeux de
nos descendants, qu'il aura ete Finstant ou la science aura failli a sa mis-
sion. La science, cet attribut des dieux dont Fanoblissement s'est etendu
aux mortels depuis le temps de Promethee, la science, cette conquete pure,
cette bienfaitrice, cette aieule tutelaire, oui ! la celeste science, nous Favons
vue, en certaines mains, devenir provisoirement scelerate. Elle a choye
Fincendie, rendu pratiques les milliers d'assassinats par noyade.Elle s'est
faite empoisonneuse des poumons, vitrioleuse des visages. Les savants
d'outre-Rhin auront passe leurs nuits a chercher quel nouvel attentat aux
lois divines et humaines, quel crime inedit pourraient etre lances en defi
aux nations, par le mauvais genie de leur science a eux, par cette science
qui a reussi a rendre la guerre plus hideuse encore qu'elle n'etait de
naissance.
Si c'etaient ces innovations impies qui dussent ouvrir les chemins que
prendra Favenir,alors une guerre future s'emploierait a rendre veneneux
les epis du froment, sophistiquerait les nuages pour que leur ondee verse
les epidemics dont les germes sont actuellement decouverts ou celles que
creerait le travail des laboratoires allemands. La Kultur drainerait les
laves desvolcans sous les villes,et arreteraitd'avance les etendues d'ecorce
terrestre a projeter dans Fespace. Et ceux des diverses planetes, qui sont
a lorgner la notre, constateraient, aux siecles prochains, qu'une monstru-
euse science aurait fait de notre Terre, une seconde Lune, sans espece
vivante ni atmosphere, autour de laquelle des satellites soudain mort-nes
seraient les continents exploses de FAncien-Monde, ou de 1'une et 1'autre
Ameriques.
Mais non ! Le vieux maitre ecrivain Fran9ois Rabelais a ecrit: " Science
sans conscience est la ruine de Fame." La science sans conscience sera
la ruine aussi des gens qui Font choisie pour base de leur empire. La
science demoniaque verra briser ses ailes de chauve-souris, par ce pouvoir
C
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
invisible et imponderable qui, ange gardien des hommes, s'appelle la con-
science.
Depuis que la civilisation est en marche, elle va lentement, patiem-
ment, irresistiblement, vers le mieux, vers le bien. Elle a constitue Fin-
epuisable reserve, Finvincible armee des valeurs morales, d'ou sortent les
affranchissements, les justices, les dignites de la race et toute loi de verite.
Cette puissance morale, on a 1'Histoire pour en demontrer la constante
victoire centre les tyrannies les plus solides, contre les violences les mieux
organisees. Mais je n'en veux que la demonstration suivante:
L'Etat qui a dit que la force prime le droit, 1'Etat qui a pietine effroy-
ablement toute faiblesse et qui n'a d'egards que pour ce qui est fort, d'ou
vient que cet Etat jugea necessaire de mentir a son peuple, et a la face
de tous les peuples sur les vraies causes de la guerre et sur les vrais
auteurs responsables? D'ou vient que cet Etat ne manque pas, a chaque
occasion, de reediter le mensonge et de s'y gargariser vainement, ridi-
culement, follement? II a marque ainsi son effroi de la conscience univer-
selle. Celui qui ne s'inquietait, il y a un an, ni du ciel ni de 1'enfer, avait
pourtant senti tout de suite, il ne cesse de sentir, aujourd'hui, Faction
vengeresse et triomphale s'elaborant dans toutes les consciences de 1'hu-
manite, ennemies, neutres, et meme sujettes.
PAUL HERVIEU
de V Academic Francaise
31 Juillet 1915
SCIENCE AND CONSCIENCE
[ TRANSLATION ]
IT will be left to our descendants to realize that the chief significance of
this European conflict lies in its marking the moment when Science failed
in her mission. Science, our heritage from the gods, whose high destiny
has been fulfilling itself among mortals since the days of Prometheus:
Science, mankind's purest conquest, the benefactress, the tutelary guar-
C 106 3
PAUL HERVIEU
dian — celestial Science, corrupted by strange teachings, has turned and
rent us. She has let loose the horror of fire and set her hand to the mur-
der of thousands by drowning. She has poisoned the air that men breathe,
and flung vitriol in their faces. Her votaries beyond the Rhine have passed
the watches of the night in seeking some new violation of laws human
and divine — some undreamt outrage to be launched against the nations
by the evil genius of that Science of theirs which has made War, hideous
as it was at birth, more loathsome still.
If these unholy innovations were to blaze the way for the future, we
should find the war-makers of to-morrow causing the wheat-fields to bear
a poisoned harvest and forcing the very clouds in heaven to rain down pes-
tilences whose germs are known to us now, or would in time be brought
to birth in the alembics of German laboratories. Kultur would channel
the lava of volcanoes under great cities, and hurl into space vast stretches
of the earth's crust. The planets of the universe, watching, would learn
in centuries to come that a monstrous Science had .transformed our World
into another Moon, void of life and air, around which swim still-born
satellites that were once the blasted continents of the Old World or the
Americas.
But this is not to be. The old master- writer, Fran£ois Rabelais, has said :
"Science without conscience spells ruin to the soul." And so Science
without conscience must mean the destruction of that nation which has
chosen it as the foundation of empire. Demoniacal Science, dragon- winged,
will be shattered against that invisible and imponderable force, the guard-
ian angel of mankind, which is called Conscience.
From the dawn of civilization it has moved slowly, patiently, irresist-
ibly toward the better, toward the good. It has constituted the inexhaust-
ible reserve, the invincible army of moral values, out of which the lib-
erties, the justices, the dignities of the race, and every law of truth, have
come to being. History stands ready to number the victories of this moral
force over the most strongly organized lawlessness and the mightiest
tyrannies. And I ask no better demonstration than this:
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
The State which has declared that might is right, which has trampled
under foot all weakness and respects only that which is strong — how
comes it that this State finds itself constrained to lie to its own people and
to all the nations about the true causes of this war and the men who are
responsible for it? How comes it that this State never fails, whenever
chance offers, to repeat the dreary lie and mouth it over desperately, ab-
surdly, vainly ? Thus does it betray its terror of the universal Conscience.
The power which, one year ago, feared neither heaven nor hell, felt
instantly and must ever feel the avenging and triumphant assault of all
the consciences of humanity — enemy, neutral, and even subject to itself.
PAUL HERVIEU
de V Academic Franqaise
My 31, 1915
C 108 ]
J. L. GEROME
TURKISH SOLDIER
FROM THE ORIGINAL PENCIL DRAWING MADE IN 1857
! | , L
ii?
GENERAL HUMBERT
LES ARABES AVAIENT RAISON
LE 28 aout 1914, apres une sanglante bataille, la Pre Division du Maroc
avait refoule Fennemi de la Fosse a FEau dans la direction de Thin-le-
Moutiers.
La nuit venue, malgre des pertes cruelles, la satisfaction etait grande:
chacun esperait pour le lendemain Fachevement de la victoire.
Mais contrairement a ces previsions, Fordre arriva, sur le coup de onze
heures du soir, de se degager au plus vite et de marcher en retraite vers
les plateaux qui dominent a FEst la route de Mezieres a Rethel.
Ce mouvement etait une consequence de la manoeuvre geniale con9ue
des le 25 aout par le General JOFFRE et qui devait aboutir, comme chacun
sait, a la victoire de la Marne; mais nous Fignorions.
Done, il fallut se"decrocher" immediatement. La nuit etait tres noire;
les troupes accablees par une dure journee de combat, couchaient sur leurs
positions.
Neanmoins, les ordres se transmirent rapidement et, a minuit, dans
un silence complet, la Division retraitait en plusieurs colonnes face a
FEst.
L'ennemi allait-il eventer le mouvement ? II faillait craindre en tout cas
qu'a Faube, c'est a dire apres 3 heures de marche, il ne s'en aper9ut et ne
commen9at une poursuite qui aurait ete fort genante.
II nous aurait en effet rattrapes au pied du plateau, alors que la Division
etait obligee de se former en une colonne de route unique pour y acceder.
Mais, contrairement a nos craintes rien ne gena notre operation; a midi,
les troupes etaient rassemblees et en ordre parfait dans les environs de
Neuvizy, a FEst de Launois.
Que s'etait-il passe? L'ennemi etait-il reste sur place? Avait-il lui-meme
battu en retraite?
C'est dans la journee seulement que Fexplication de son attitude nous
fut connue.
C 1Q9 H
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
Par suite de 1'obscurite de la nuit ou pour tout autre motif, un batail-
lon de Tirailleurs Algeriens, celui du Commandant MIGNEROT, n'avait
pas etc touche par Fordre de repliement.
II etait en toute premiere ligne et ne possedait d'autre ordre que celui
qu'il avait re9u la veille en fin de journee: " Avant-postes de combat;
resister a tout prix."
Aussi a 1'aube, lorsque Fennemi se rendant compte enfin de notre de-
robade, voulut pousser de Favant, il trouva, au centre de notre front, tel
qu'il etait la veille, ce bataillon en position, ferme, resolu a executer son
ordre coute que coute.
La lutte, au dire des temoins, fut homerique; accable par des forces su-
perieures, ecrase par Fartillerie, le bataillon resista sur place d'abord, puis
lorsqu'il fut enveloppe sur ses ailes, recula pas a pas, defendant vigou-
reusement chaque pouce de terrain.
C'est cette superbe attitude qui, a mon insu, assura a la Division, le
temps voulu pour executer son ascension sur le plateau.
Mais, helas, ce fut au prix des plus douloureux sacrifices ; ce magni-
fique bataillon qui comptait plus de 1,000 combattants avait perdu le
Commandant, la plupart des officiers et 600 hommes.
Au cours de cette glorieuse resistance se produisit Fincident que je veux
raconter.
Lorsque le repli commen9a, il ne pouvait etre question de relever morts
ou blesses. — Grande fut la stupefaction des Arabes. C'etaient de vieux
soldats, qui avaient combattu un peu partout, en Algerie, au Maroc; tou-
jours ils avaient vu leurs chefs veiller soigneusement a ce qu'aucun blesse,
aucun cadavre ne risquat d'etre massacre ou profane par Fennemi — le
Berbere ou le Chleuh. — Voici que cette fois, on abandonnait les blesses et
les morts. Ils n'en croyaient pas leurs yeux. Des murmures s'eleverent
dans les rangs; un vieux sergent alia meme jusqu'a menacer de son fusil
un officier en Fappelant traitre.
On eut toutes les peines du monde a leur rappeler ce qu'on leur avait
pourtant dit: dans les armees de FEurope, les blesses, les morts, lorsqu'ils
c no ]
GENERAL HUMBERT
tombent aux mains de 1'ennemi constituent un depot sacre ; ils sont traites
avec humanite, avec respect.
Helas, les Arabes avaient raison. Combien de fois Favons-nous con-
state avec indignation et colere !
Mais, au debut de la guerre, qui de nous n'eut pas accorde a Tennemi
les sentiments qui sont Thonneur d'une armee: la generosite, rhumanite,
le respect des conventions, de la parole donne?
Qui eut imagine que 45 ans de " Kultur" produiraient de si tristes re-
sultats ?
Heureusement, nous avons trouve a ces desillusions de douces conso-
lations:
Comme tout se compense dans Tunivers, il s'est rencontre des ames
exquises qui se sont ingeniees a opposer aux miseres de la guerre, les
remedes les plus touchants.
Telle est Foeuvre des Sans-Foyer.
Pour les bienfaits qu'elle a prodigues, pour les nombreux affliges qu'elle
a secourus, notre reconnaissance lui est acquise.
Honneur a ses Fondateurs.
GENERAL HUMBERT
Q. G. Ill' Armie, 28 Aoiit 1915
AN HEROIC STAND
[TRANSLATION]
ON the 28th of August, 1914, after a hard-fought battle, the First Mo-
roccan Division drove the enemy back from la Fosse a 1'Eau, in the direc-
tion of Thin-le-Moutiers.
Despite our many losses we were exultant when night fell, and con-
fident of winning a decisive victory the next morning.
But at eleven o'clock, contrary to our expectations, we got an order
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
to retreat at once towards the east, in the direction of the heights which
command the road from Mezieres to Rethel.
This movement was part of the strategic plan made by General Joffre
on the 25th of August, a plan which led, as every one now knows, to
the victory of the Marne — but of that we knew nothing at the time.
The night was pitch dark. The men, worn out by the long day's fight-
ing, had fallen asleep where they had halted, but the order was rapidly
transmitted, and at midnight, in dead silence, the columns of our Division
set their faces eastward.
There was a chance that the enemy might discover our purpose. We
feared that in three hours when daylight came, we should be pursued,
and if we were overtaken it might be awkward, for, to mount to the
plateau that lay ahead of us the Division would be obliged to take the
narrow road in single column.
Nothing, however, interfered with us; we carried our movement
through successfully, and soon the troops were assembled in perfect order
to the east of Launois, near Neuvizy.
We could not understand why we had not been molested. Had the
enemy remained where we left him, or had he retreated?
Later in the day we learnt the reason of our security. Because of the dark-
ness, or for some other reason, the order to fall back was not transmitted
to a battalion of the Tirailleurs Algeriens, led by Commandant Mignerot.
The battalion therefore remained where it was, in the first fighting
line, in obedience to an order of the day before, which had been to hold
its ground at whatever cost.
Thus at dawn, when the enemy found we had given him the slip, and
tried to follow us up, this battalion, bent on carrying out the only order
it had received, was there to face him.
Those who saw the battle said it was Homeric. Overwhelmed by supe-
rior numbers, crushed by artillery, the battalion at first fought where it
stood, and then, enveloped on both wings, fell back step by step, fiercely
contesting every inch of ground.
GENERAL HUMBERT
That splendid stand gave the Division time to climb the heights in
safety. But a heavy price was paid; when the fight began the battalion
numbered more than a thousand ; when it was over the Commandant,
almost all his officers and six hundred of his men were dead.
It was in the course of this glorious resistance that the following in-
cident took place. When the battalion was forced back it was impossible
to carry off the dead and wounded. The Arabs were amazed. They were
old soldiers who had fought all over Morocco and Algeria, and they had
always seen their leaders take the utmost care that no wounded com-
rades, no corpse of a brave man, should be left behind to be massacred
or defiled by savage tribesmen. And now they were abandoning their
wounded and their dead. They could not believe their eyes; murmurs
arose from the ranks; one old sergeant went so far as to menace his
officer with his rifle and call him "traitor."
Often as they had been told by their chiefs of the respect with which
the dead and wounded are treated by European armies, it was almost
impossible to reassure them as to the fate of their comrades.
How often since, alas, with bitter wrath, we have had reason to recall
their instinctive distrust of the foe !
But in those early days of the war, which one of us would have hesi-
tated to give our enemies credit for the feelings which are part of an
Army's very soul: generosity, humanity, respect for the word of honour?
Who could have imagined that forty-five years of "Kultur" would
have borne such fruit?
Fortunately there is consolation even for such disillusionment. This is
a universe of compensations, and compassionate souls are striving to
lessen the inevitable misery of this most terrible of wars.
Among them we gladly reckon those who come to the aid of the Home-
less. And in the name of the many helpless sufferers whom they relieve
we offer them our gratitude.
GENERAL HUMBERT
Commanding- the Third Army of France
C ^s H
JOHN SINGER SARGENT, R.A.
PORTRAIT OF HENRY JAMES
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING
HENRT JAMES
THE LONG WARDS
THERE comes back to me out of the distant past an impression of the
citizen soldier at once in his collective grouping and in his impaired, his
more or less war-worn state, which was to serve me for long years as
the most intimate vision of him that my span of life was likely to dis-
close. This was a limited affair indeed, I recognise as I try to recover it,
but I mention it because I was to find at the end of time that I had kept
it in reserve, left it lurking deep down in my sense of things, however
shyly and dimly, however confusedly even, as a term of comparison, a
glimpse of something by the loss of which I should have been the poorer;
such a residuary possession of the spirit, in fine, as only needed dark-
ness to close round it a little from without in order to give forth a vague
phosphorescent light. It was early, it must have been very early, in our
Civil War, yet not so early but that a large number of those who had
answered President Lincoln's first call for an army had had time to put
in their short period (the first term was so short then, as was likewise
the first number,) and reappear again in camp, one of those of their small
New England State, under what seemed to me at the hour, that of a splen-
did autumn afternoon, the thickest mantle of heroic history. If I speak of
the impression as confused I certainly justify that mark of it by my fail-
ure to be clear at this moment as to how much they were in general the
worse for wear — since they can't have been exhibited to me, through
their waterside settlement of tents and improvised shanties, in anything
like hospital conditions. However, I cherish the rich ambiguity, and have
always cherished it, for the sake alone of the general note exhaled, the
thing that has most kept remembrance unbroken. I carried away from
the place the impression, the one that not only was never to fade, but
was to show itself susceptible of extraordinary eventual enrichment. I
may not pretend now to refer it to the more particular sources it drew
upon at that summer's end of 1861 , or to say why my repatriated war-
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
riors were, if not somehow definitely stricken, so largely either lying in
apparent helplessness or moving about in confessed languor: it suffices
me that I have always thought of them as expressing themselves at al-
most every point in the minor key, and that this has been the reason of
their interest. What I call the note therefore is the characteristic the most
of the essence and the most inspiring — inspiring I mean for considera-
tion of the admirable sincerity that we thus catch in the act: the note of
the quite abysmal softness, the exemplary genius for accommodation, that
forms the alternative aspect, the passive as distinguished from the active,
of the fighting man whose business is in the first instance formidably to
bristle. This aspect has been produced, I of course recognise, amid the
horrors that the German powers had, up to a twelvemonth ago, been for
years conspiring to let loose upon the world by such appalling engines
and agencies as mankind had never before dreamed of; but just that is
the lively interest of the fact unfolded to us now on a scale beside which,
and though save indeed for a single restriction, the whole previous illus-
tration of history turns pale. Even if I catch but in a generalising blur
that exhibition of the first American levies as a measure of experience
had stamped and harrowed them, the signally attaching mark that I refer
to is what I most recall ; so that if I didn't fear, for the connection, to ap-
pear to compare the slighter things with the so much greater, the dimin-
ished shadow with the far-spread substance, I should speak of my small
old scrap of truth, miserably small in contrast with the immense evidence
even then to have been gathered, but in respect to which latter occasion
did n't come to me, as having contained possibilities of development that
I must have languished well-nigh during a lifetime to crown it with.
One had during the long interval not lacked opportunity for a vision
of the soldier at peace, moving to and fro with a professional eye on the
horizon, but not fished out of the bloody welter and laid down to pant,
as we actually see him among the Allies, almost on the very bank and
within sound and sight of his deepest element. The effect of many of the
elapsing years, the time in England and France and Italy, had indeed
HENRT JAMES
been to work his collective presence so closely and familiarly into any
human scene pretending to a full illustration of our most generally ap-
proved conditions that I confess to having missed him rather distressfully
from the picture of things offered me during a series of months spent
not long ago in a few American cities after years of disconnection. I can
scarce say why I missed him sadly rather than gladly — I might so easily
have prefigured one's delight in his absence; but certain it is that my
almost outraged consciousness of our practically doing without him amid
American conditions was a revelation of the degree in which his great
imaging, his great reminding and enhancing function is rooted in the
European basis. I felt his non-existence on the American positively pro-
duce a void which nothing else, as a vivifying substitute, hurried forward
to fill; this being indeed the case with many of the other voids, the most
aching, which left the habituated eye to cast about as for something to
nibble in a state of dearth. We never know, I think, how much these
wanting elements have to suggest to the pampered mind till we feel it
living in view of the community from which they have been simplified
away. On these occasions they conspire with the effect of certain other,
certain similar expressions, examples of social life proceeding as by the
serene, the possibly too serene, process of mere ignorance, to bring to
a head for the fond observer the wonder of what is supposed to strike,
for the projection of a furnished world, the note that they are not there to
strike. However, as I quite grant the hypothesis of an observer still fond
and yet remarking the lapse of the purple patch of militarism but with a
joy unclouded, I limit myself to the merely personal point that the fancy
of a particular brooding analyst could so sharply suffer from a vague-
ness of privation, something like an unseasoned observational diet, and
then, rather to his relief, find the mystery cleared up. And the strict rele-
vancy of the bewilderment I glance at, moreover, becomes questionable,
further, by reason of my having, with the outbreak of the horrors in
which we are actually steeped, caught myself staring at the exhibited
militarism of the general British scene not much less ruefully than I could
C H7 I]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
remember to have stared, a little before, at the utter American deficit.
Which proves after all that the rigour of the case had begun at a bound
to defy the largest luxury of thought ; so that the presence of the mili-
tary in the picture on the mere moderate insular scale struck one as
"furnishing" a menaced order but in a pitiful and pathetic degree.
The degree was to alter, however, by swift shades, just as one's com-
prehension of the change grew and grew with it ; and thus it was that,
to cut short the record of our steps and stages, we have left immeasur-
ably behind us here the question of what might or what should have
been. That belonged, with whatever beguiled or amused ways of looking
at it, to the abyss of our past delusion, a collective state of mind in which
it had literally been possible to certain sophists to argue that, so far from
not having soldiers enough, we had more than we were likely to know
any respectable public call for. It was in the very fewest weeks that we
replaced a pettifogging consciousness by the most splendidly liberal, and,
having swept through all the first phases of anxiety and suspense, found
no small part of our measure of the matter settle down to an almost lux-
urious study of our multiplied defenders after the fact, as I may call it, or
in the light of that acquaintance with them as products supremely tried
and tested which I began by speaking of. We were up to our necks in
this relation before we could turn round, and what upwards of a year's
experience of it has done in the contributive and enriching way may now
well be imagined. I might feel that my marked generalisation, the main
hospital impression, steeps the case in too strong or too stupid a synthesis,
were it not that to consult my memory, a recollection of countless asso-
ciative contacts, is to see the emphasis almost absurdly thrown on my
quasi-paradox. Just so it is of singular interest for the witnessing mind
itself to feel the happy truth stoutly resist any qualifying hint — since I
am so struck with the charm, as I can only call it, of the tone and temper
of the man of action, the creature appointed to advance and explode and
destroy, and elaborately instructed as to how to do these things, reduced
to helplessness in the innumerable instances now surrounding us. It
C H8 ]
HENRT JAMES
doesn't in the least take the edge from my impression that his sweet
reasonableness, representing the opposite end of his wondrous scale, is
probably the very oldest story of the touching kind in the world ; so far
indeed from my claiming the least originality for the appealing appear-
ance as it has lately reached me from so many sides, I find its suggestion
of vast communities, communities of patience and placidity, acceptance
submission pushed to the last point, to be just what makes the whole
show most illuminating.
" Wonderful that, from east to west, they must all be like this," one
says to one's self in presence of certain consistencies, certain positive mo-
notonies of aspect; "wonderful that if joy of battle (for the classic term,
in spite of new horrors, seems clearly still to keep its old sense,) has, to
so attested a pitch, animated these forms, the disconnection of spirit should
be so prompt and complete, should hand the creature over as by the easiest
turn to the last refinements of accommodation. The disconnection of the
flesh, of physical function in whatever ravaged area, that may well be
measureless; but how interesting, if the futility of such praise doesn't too
much dishonour the subject, the exquisite anomaly of the intimate read-
justment of the really more inflamed and exasperated part, or in other
words of the imagination, the captured, the haunted vision, to life at its
most innocent and most ordered ! " To that point one's unvarying thought
of the matter; which yet, though but a meditation without a conclusion,
becomes the very air in which fond attention spends itself. So far as com-
merce of the acceptable, the tentatively helpful kind goes, one looks for
the key to success then, among the victims, exactly on that ground of
the apprehension pacified and almost, so to call it, trivialised. The attach-
ing thing becomes thus one's intercourse with the imagination of the par-
ticular patient subject, the individual himself, in the measure in which this
interest bears us up and carries us along ; which name for the life of his
spirit has to cover, by a considerable stretch, all the ground. By the stretch
of the name, moreover, I am far from meaning any stretch of the faculty
itself — which remains for the most part a considerably contracted or inert
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
force, a force in fact often so undeveloped as to be insusceptible of mea-
surement at all, so that one has to resort, in face of the happy fact that
communion still does hold good, to some other descriptive sign for it.
That sign, however, fortunately presents itself with inordinate prompti-
tude and fits to its innocent head with the last perfection the cap, in fact
the very crown, of an office that we can only appraise as predetermined
goodnature. We after this fashion score our very highest on behalf of a
conclusion, I think, in feeling that whether or no the British warrior's
goodnature has much range of fancy, his imagination, whatever there
may be of it, is at least so goodnatured as to show absolutely everything
it touches, everything without exception, even the worst machinations of
the enemy, in that colour. Variety and diversity of exhibition, in a world
virtually divided as now into hospitals and the preparation of subjects for
them, are, I accordingly conceive, to be looked for quite away from the
question of physical patience, of the general consent to suffering and
mutilation, and, instead of that, in this connection of the sort of mind and
thought, the sort of moral attitude, that are born of the sufferer's other
relations; which I like to think of as being different from country to coun-
try, from class to class, and as having their fullest national and circum-
stantial play.
It would be of the essence of these remarks, could I give them within
my space all the particular applications naturally awaiting them, that they
pretend to refer here to the British private soldier only — generalisation
about his officers would take us so considerably further and so much
enlarge our view. The high average of the beauty and modesty of these,
in the stricken state, causes them to affect me, I frankly confess, as proba-
bly the very flower of the human race. One's apprehension of " Tommy "
— and I scarce know whether more to dislike the liberty this mode of
reference takes with him, or to incline to retain it for the tenderness really
latent in it — is in itself a theme for fine notation, but it has brought me
thus only to the door of the boundless hospital ward in which, these
many months, I have seen the successive and the so strangely quiet tides
12°
HENRT JAMES
of his presence ebb and flow, and it stays me there before the incalcu-
lable vista. The perspective stretches away, in its mild order, after the
fashion of a tunnel boring into the very character of the people, and so
going on forever — never arriving or coming out, that is, at anything in
the nature of a station, a junction or a terminus. So it draws off through
the infinite of the common personal life, but planted and bordered, all
along its passage, with the thick-growing flower of the individual illus-
tration, this sometimes vivid enough and sometimes pathetically pale.
The great fact, to my now so informed vision, is that it undiscourageably
continues and that an unceasing repetition of its testifying particulars
seems never either to exhaust its sense or to satisfy that of the beholder.
Its sense indeed, if I may so far simplify, is pretty well always the same,
that of the jolly fatalism above-mentioned, a state of moral hospitality
to the practices of fortune, however outrageous, that may at times fairly
be felt as providing amusement, providing a new and thereby a refresh-
ing turn of the personal situation, for the most interested party. It is true
that one may be sometimes moved to wonder which is the most inter-
ested party, the stricken subject in his numbered bed or the friendly, the
unsated inquirer who has tried to forearm himself against such a measure
of the "criticism of life" as might well be expected to break upon him
from the couch in question, and who yet, a thousand occasions for it hav-
ing been, all round him, inevitably neglected, finds this ingenious provi-
sion quite left on his hands. He may well ask himself what he is to do with
people who so consistently and so comfortably content themselves with
being — being for the most part incuriously and instinctively admirable
—that nothing whatever is left of them for reflection as distinguished
from their own practice; but the only answer that comes is the repro-
duction of the note. He may, in the interest of appreciation, try the ex-
periment of lending them some scrap of a complaint or a curse in order
that they shall meet him on congruous ground, the ground of encourage-
ment to his own participating impulse. They are imaged, under that pos-
sibility, after the manner of those unfortunates, the very poor, the vie-
C
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
tims of a fire or shipwreck, to whom you have to lend something to wear
before they can come to thank you for helping them. The inmates of the
long wards, however, have no use for any imputed or derivative senti-
ments or reasons ; they feel in their own way, they feel a great deal, they
don't at all conceal from you that to have seen what they have seen is to
have seen things horrible and monstrous — but there is no estimate of
them for which they seek to be indebted to you, and nothing they less
invite from you than to show them that such visions must have poisoned
their world. Their world is n't in the least poisoned: they have assimilated
their experience by a process scarce at all to be distinguished from their
having healthily got rid of it.
The case thus becomes for you that they consist wholly of their applied
virtue, which is accompanied with no waste of consciousness whatever.
The virtue may strike you as having been, and as still being, greater in
some examples than others, but it has throughout the same sign of dif-
fering at almost no point from a supreme amiability. How can creatures
so amiable, you allow yourself vaguely to wonder, have welcomed even
for five minutes the stress of carnage? and how can the stress of carnage,
the murderous impulse at the highest pitch, have left so little distortion
of the moral nature? It has left none at all that one has at the end of
many months been able to discover; so that perhaps the most steadying
and refreshing effect of intercourse with these hospital friends is through
the almost complete rest from the facing of generalisations to which it
treats you. One would even like perhaps, as a stimulus to talk, more gen-
eralisation ; but one gets enough of that out in the world, and one does n't
get there nearly so much of what one gets in this perspective, the
particular perfect sufficiency of the extraordinary principle, whatever it
is, which makes the practical answer so supersede any question or any
argument that it seems fairly to have acted by chronic instinctive antici-
pation, the habit of freely throwing the personal weight into any obvious
opening. The personal weight, in its various forms and degrees, is what
lies there with a head on the pillow and whatever wise bandages there-
[ 122 ]
HENRT JAMES
about or elsewhere, and it becomes interesting in itself, and just in pro-
portion, I think, to its having had all its history after the fact. All its
history is that of the particular application which has brought it to the
pass at which you find it, and is a stream roundabout which you have to
press a little hard to make it flow clear. Then, in many a case, it does
flow, certainly, as clear as one could wish, and with the strain that it is
always somehow English history and illustrates afresh the English way
of doing things and regarding them, of feeling and naming them. The
sketch extracted is apt to be least coloured when the prostrate historian,
as I may call him, is an Englishman of the English; it has more point,
though not perhaps more essential tone, when he is a Scot of the Scots,
and has most when he is an Irishman of the Irish; but there is absolutely
no difference, in the light of race and save as by inevitable variation from
individual to individual, about the really constant and precious matter,
the attested possession on the part of the contributor of a free loose un-
disciplined quantity of being to contribute.
This is the palpable and ponderable, the admirably appreciable, re-
siduum— as to which if I be asked just how it is that I pluck the flower
of amiability from the bramble of an individualism so bristling with ac-
cents, I am afraid I can only say that the accents would seem by the
mercy of chance to fall together in the very sense that permits us to de-
tach the rose with the fewest scratches. The rose of active goodnature,
irreducible, incurable, or in other words all irreflective, that is the vari-
ety which the individualistic tradition happens, up and down these islands,
to wear upon its ample breast — even it may be with a considerable effect
of monotony. There it is, for what it is, and the very simplest summary
of one's poor bedside practice is perhaps to confess that one has most of
all kept one's nose buried in it. There hangs about the poor practitioner
by that fact, I profess, an aroma not doubtless at all mixed or in the least
mystical, but so unpervertedly wholesome that what can I pronounce it
with any sort of conscience but sweet? That is the rough, unless I rather
say the smooth, report of it; which covers of course, I hasten to add, a
123
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
constant shift of impression within the happy limits. Did I not, by way
of introduction to these awaiters of articulate acknowledgment, find my-
self first of all, early in the autumn, in presence of the first aligned rows
of lacerated Belgians? — the eloquence of whose mere mute expression
of their state, and thereby of their cause, remains to me a vision unforget-
table forever, and this even though I may not here stretch my scale to
make them, Flemings of Flanders though they were, fit into my remarks
with the English of the English and the Scotch of the Scotch. If other
witnesses might indeed here fit in they would decidedly come nearest,
for there were aspects under which one might almost have taken them
simply for Britons comparatively starved of sport and, to make up for
that, on straighter and homelier terms with their other senses and appe-
tites. But their effect, thanks to their being so seated in everything that
their ripe and rounded temperament had done for them, was to make
their English entertainers, and their successors in the long wards espe-
cially, seem ever so much more complicated — besides making of what
had happened to themselves, for that matter, an enormity of outrage
beyond all thought and all pity. Their fate had cut into their spirit to a
peculiar degree through their flesh, as if they had had an unusual thick-
ness of this, so to speak — which up to that time had protected while it
now but the more exposed and, collectively, entrapped them ; so that
the ravaged and plundered domesticity that one felt in them, which
was mainly what they had to oppose, made the terms of their exile and
their suffering an extension of the possible and the dreadful. But all that
vision is a chapter by itself — the essence of which is perhaps that it has
been the privilege of this placid and sturdy people to show the world
a new shade and measure of the tragic and the horrific. The first wash
of the great Flemish tide ebbed at any rate from the hospitals — creating
moreover the vast needs that were to be so unprecedentedly met, and
the native procession which has prompted these remarks set steadily in.
I have played too uncertain a light, I am well aware, not arresting it at
half the possible points, yet with one aspect of the case staring out so
HENRT JAMES
straight as to form the vivid moral that asks to be drawn. The deepest
impression from the sore human stuff with which such observation deals
is that of its being strong and sound in an extraordinary degree for the
conditions producing it. These conditions represent, one feels at the best,
the crude and the waste, the ignored and neglected state ; and under the
sense of the small care and scant provision that have attended such hearty
and happy growths, struggling into life and air with no furtherance to
speak of, the question comes pressingly home of what a better economy
might, or verily might n't, result in. If this abundance all slighted and
unencouraged can still comfort us, what would n't it do for us tended and
fostered and cultivated ? That is my moral, for I believe in Culture —
speaking strictly now of the honest and of our own congruous kind.
HENRY JAMES
125
LEON BAKST
MENADE
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
NOTRE HERITAGE
Si Ton pouvait suivre des yeux ce qui se passe dans le monde ideal qui
nous domine de toutes parts, on constaterait sans nul doute que rien ne
se perd sur les champs de bataille. Ce que nos admirables morts aban-
donnent, c'est a nous qu'ils le leguent ; et quand ils perissent pour nous,
ce n'est pas metaphoriquement et d'une maniere detournee, mais tres re-
ellement et d'une fa9on directe qu'ils nous laissent leur vie. Tout homme
qui succombe 'dans un acte de gloire emet une vertu qui redescend sur
nous, et dans la violence d'une fin prematuree, rien ne s'egare et rien ne
s'evapore. II donne en grand et d'un seul coup ce qu'il eut donne dans
une longue existence de devoir et d'amour. La mort n'entame pas la vie;
elle ne peut rien contre elle. Le total de celle-ci demeure toujours pareil.
Ce qu'elle enleve a ceux qui tombent passe en ceux qui restent debout.
La mort ne gagne rien tant qu'il y a des vivants. Plus elle exerce ses
ravages, plus elle augmente 1'intensite de ce qu'elle n'atteint point; plus
elle poursuit ses victoires illusoires, mieux elle nous prouve que 1'hu-
manite finira par la vaincre.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
OUR INHERITANCE
[ TRANSLATION ]
I F our vision could open on that unseen world which dominates us from
all sides, we should unquestionably learn that on the battlefields there can
be no loss. The heritage which our splendid soldiers yield up in dying
is bequeathed to us; and when they perish for our sakes, they give us
their lives in no metaphoric, roundabout sense, but really and directly.
From every man who meets death gloriously there goes forth a virtue
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
which enters into us, and even in the violence of an untimely end nothing
goes astray or vanishes. In one short moment the soldier gives open-
handed the offering of an entire lifetime of love and duty. Death is power-
less to prevail over Life. Its total remains forever unchanged. That which
is taken from the fallen passes on to those left standing. While men still
live, Death can win nothing. The more desperate its efforts, the brighter
burns the flame it would fain extinguish ; the more cruelly it pursues its
phantom victories, the clearer is it proven that in the end Humanity must
surely vanquish.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
Translated by J. G. D. Paul
128
EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN
WE WHO SIT AFAR QFF
I, SKEPTIC though I am, am, like every Englishman, a mystic. I see in
this war almost literally a fight between God and the Devil. . . . With
all my soul I believe that the ideal of pity is the noblest thing we have,
and that its denial which waves on every German flag is the denial of
all that the greatest men have striven for for centuries. ... I feel that
the two enormous spirits that move this world are showing their weapons
almost visibly, and that never was the garment of the living world so
thin over the gods that it conceals.
" I am not much elated by the thought. I have little opinion of Provi-
dence as an ally, and I am surprised at the weakness the Kaiser shows
for his pocket deity. What we have to do, in my opinion, we do our-
selves, and our task is none the lighter that we defend the right. But I
am hardened and set by the thing I believe. We feel that we are fighting
for the life of England — yes, for the safety of France — yes, for the sanc-
tity of treaties — yes, but behind these secondary and comparatively mate-
rial issues, for something far deeper, far greater, for something so great
and deep that if our efforts fail I pray God I may die before I see it."
These are words from a letter of an English physician with the Brit-
ish expeditionary force to an American physician who had sent him Dr.
Eliot's war-book. He, in the war, disclosing how he feels about it, has
described also how it seems to thousands of us who are looking on. We
too are mystics in our feelings about this war. We too have, and have
had almost from the first, this profound sense of a fundamental conflict
between the powers of good and evil, the soul of the world at grips with
its body.
And while we feel so profoundly that the Allies are on the Lord's side,
a good many of us at least prefer the English doctor's small reliance
on Providence as an ally to the Kaiser's proprietary confidence in the
Almighty's backing. It is not safe to count on Providence to win for us.
C 129 H
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
He knows us much better than we know ourselves, and may have views
for our improvement and the world's which our minds do not fathom
and which do not match our plans. Nevertheless, in a vast crisis to feel
one's self on the Lord's side, there to fight, win or lose, there to stay, alive
or dead, is an enormous stay to the spirit. " I am hardened and set," says
the English doctor, "by the thing I believe." Then truly is Providence
his ally.
To work is to pray ; to fight is to pray ; to tend the wounded in hospi-
tals and avert disease is to pray. The people in action are quickened and
sustained in their faith by their exertions, but what of us who sit afar off
in safety and look on at Armageddon?
Our case is pretty trying. When the war first came it was hard for
the thousands of us who cared, to sleep in our beds. We felt it was our
war, too, and it was, for we too are Europeans, and have besides as great
a stake in civilization as any one has. We have kept up our habit of sleep-
ing in our beds because that was more convenient and there was no ad-
vantage to any one in our doing otherwise. And we have gone on without
much outward change in our work and our habits of life. And we have
grown a little callous, and doubtless a little torpid, and lost some of the
ardor that came with the first shock. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands
of Americans have had one continuing, underlying thought for a year and
a quarter — the war, the great conflict between good and evil, and what
to do about it.
There never has been a moment's doubt about which side would be
ours if we went in. But how get in ? Where lies duty ? By what course
may we best help? Is it our war? When and how will the mandate come
to us, too, to resist the crushing of civilization under the Prussian jack-
boot? There are millions of Americans who want to get into the war,
but there are more millions who want to keep out. Our English doctor
appreciates the predicament of neutral countries, and this is what he
says about it:
"War being what it is, it is hopeless to expect that any nation will
[ 130 n
EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN
engage in it who does not fear great loss or hope great gain. Nations
will always be swayed by the influences which are now swaying Italy,
Greece, Bulgaria and Rumania. No desire of justice would lead those
countries to join us. I doubt if it would justify their rulers in declar-
ing war."
Perhaps that is another way of saying that no country will get into
the war that dares to stay out. Nations, especially democratic nations, are
not much like men. They may not say, " I will fight for you ; I will spend
my strength and treasure for you; I will die for you and your cause."
Individuals may feel, say, do all that, but individuals are not nations. A
nation says: "The laws of my being must determine my conduct. I must
go my own gait according to those rules. But if war stretches across my
path I need not turn out for it."
How far this war has still to go, no one knows. It may still, any day,
stretch across the path of the United States, so that the natural drive of
our procedure will carry us into it.
EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN
C
JOHN SINGER SARGENT, R.A.
TWO HEADS
FROM A PENCIL DRAWING
PAUL ELMER MORE
A MOMENT OF TRAGIC PURGATION
LET me say forthwith that this is a book which I shall read with deep
interest, but to which I contribute reluctantly. There is gloom enough
in the air, and I see no profit in adding the scruples and doubts of
my troubled mind to the general sum. For I can find little reason for
hope in the evils that have fallen upon the world; and where are the
signs of the wisdom that is to be born of these calamitous times? When
all is over and in the hush of desolation we have leisure to reckon up the
cost of our madness, will it appear that we have learned the meaning of
the sentimental shirking of realities ? Or shall we continue, as we have done
for a century and more, to place sympathy above justice, and to forget
the responsibility of the individual in our insistence on the obligations of
society ; inflaming the passions of men by rebellious outcries against the
unequal dealings of Fate, relaxing the immediate bonds of duty by vague
dreams of the brotherhood of man, weakening character by reluctance to
pursue crime with punishment, preparing the way for outbursts of hatred
by fostering the emotions at the expense of reason; and then, in alarm
at our effeminacy, rushing to the opposite glorification of sheer force and
efficiency? One naturally hesitates to add this note of discouragement to
a book in which others of clearer vision will no doubt record the signs of
returning balance and sanity among men.
Meanwhile, I have found, if not hope, at least moments of tragic pur-
gation in another sort of reading. By chance I have been going through
some of the plays of Euripides this summer, particularly those that deal
with the disasters of Troy and Troy's besiegers, and the pathos of these
scenes has blended strangely with the news that reaches me once a day
from the city. Inevitably the imagination turns to comparisons between
the present and the remote past. So, for instance, the very day that brought
me the request to contribute to the Belgian relief I was reading the story
C 133 *]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
of Iphigenia, sacrificed in order that the Greek army might sail from
Aulis and reach its destination;
0 father ! were the tongue of Orpheus mine,
To charm the stones with song to follow me,
And throw the spell of words on whom I would,
So should I speak. But now, as I am wise
In tears, and only tears, I speak through these.
This body which my mother bore to thee,
Low at thy knees I lay, imploring thus
To spare my unripe youth. Sweet is the light
To human eyes ; oh ! force me not to see
Those dark things under earth ! I first of all
Called thee by name of "father"; heard "my child";
1 first here on thy knees gave and received
The little, dear, caressing joys of love.
And I recall thy words: "O girl," thou saidst,
"Shall ever I behold thee in thy home
Happy and prosperous as becomes thy sire?"
And my words too, while then my tiny hand
Clung to thy beard, as now I cling: "And I,
Some day when thou art old, within my halls,
Dearer for this, shall I receive thee, father;
And with such love repay thy fostering care?"
These words still in my memory lodge; but thou
Must have forgotten, willing now my death.
By Pelops and thy father Atreus, oh,
And by my mother, who a second time
Must travail for my life, oh, hear my prayer!
Why should the wrongs of Helen fall on me,
Or why came Paris for my evil fate?
Yet turn thine eyes upon me, look and kiss,
C
PAUL ELMER MORE
That dying I at least may have of thee
This pledge of memory, if my prayer is vain.
O brother, little and of little aid,
Yet add thy tears to mine, and with them plead
To save thy sister. For in children still
Some sense of coming evil moves the heart.
See, father, how he pleads who cannot speak ;
Thou wilt have mercy and regard my youth.
From this passage, which furnished Landor with the theme of one of
the most beautiful, in some respects the most classical, of modern poems,
it is natural to turn to the still more exquisite account of the death of
Polyxena, the youngest daughter of Hecuba, slain as a peace-offering
to the shade of Achilles. The brave words and self-surrender of the girl
are related to the stricken mother by the herald Talthybius:
" O Argives, ye have brought my city low,
And I will die ; yet, for I bare my throat,
Myself unflinching, touch me not at all.
As ye would please your gods, let me die free
Who have lived free; and slay me as ye will.
For I am queenly born, and would not go
As a slave goes to be among the dead."
Then all the people shouted, and the king
Called to the youths to set the maiden free ;
And at the sheer command the young men heard,
And drew their hands away, and touched her not.
And she too heard the cry and the command;
Then straightway grasped her mantle at the knot,
And rent it downwards to the middle waist,
So standing like a statue, with her breast
And bosom bared, most beautiful, a moment;
Then kneeling spoke her last heroic words :
C 135 H
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
"This is my breast, O youth, if here the blow
Must fall; or if thou choose my neck,
Strike ; it is ready/'
And Achilles' son,
Willing and willing not, for very ruth,
Cleft with his iron blade the slender throat,
And let the life out there. And this is true,
That even in death she kept her maiden shame,
And falling drew her robe against men's eyes.
These pathetic scenes, we should remember, were enacted before the
people of Athens at a time when the lust of empire and the greed of ex-
panding commerce had thrown Greece into a war which was to leave
the land distracted and impoverished of its men, to be a prey to the am-
bitions of Alexander and the armies of Rome. What deep and poignant
emotions Euripides stirred in the breasts of the spectators those can guess
who have seen his Iphigenia and Trojan Women acted in English in these
similar days of trial. And the catharsis, or tragic purgation, was the same
then as now, only more perfect, no doubt, and purer. By these echoes of
cruel deeds, ancient even in the years of the Peloponnesian war, the mind
is turned from immediate calamities and apprehensions to reflecting on
the fatality of sin and madness that rests on mankind, not now alone but
at all times. With the tears shed for strange, far-off things, some part of
the bitterness of our personal grief is carried away ; the constriction of
resentment, as if somehow Fate were our special enemy, is loosened,
and the hatred of cruel men that clutches the heart is relaxed in pity for
the everlasting tragedy of human life. Instead of rebellion we learn resig-
nation. When at last Iphigenia surrenders herself to be a victim for the
host, the chorus commend her act and draw this moral:
Noble and well, it is with thee, O child;
The will of fortune and the god is sick.
C 136 3
PAUL ELMER MORE
In later times Lucretius was to take up this thought, and in repeating
the story of Iphigenia was to denounce the very notion of divine inter-
ference in perhaps the most terrible line that ever poet wrote:
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
That is one way of regarding the evils of human destiny, as if they were
the work of blind chance, but not the wise way; for at the end of such
atheism only madness lies. The truer counsel is in that humility which
faces the facts, yet acknowledges the impotence of man's reason to act
as judge in these high matters. Christianity and paganism come close
together in the lesson taught by Euripides:
O daughter, God is strange and all his ways
Past finding out. So for his own good will
He turns the fortunes of mankind about,
And hither thither moves.
That is the element of religious purgation which Euripides brought to
the people of Athens when their whole horizon was darkened by war.
But this is not all. Indeed, were this all, we should reject such consola-
tion indignantly, as being akin to that form of humanitarianism which has
been disintegrating modern society by throwing the responsibility for
crime anywhere except on the individual delinquent. Euripides may have
found alleviation in the universal mystery of evil, but neither he, in his
better moments, nor any other of the true Greeks turned consolation into
license, or doubted that a sure nernesis followed the infractions of justice,
or the insolence of pride, or the errors of guilty ignorance :
Strong are the gods, and stronger yet the law
That sways them ; even as by the law we know
The gods exist, and in our life divide
The bounds of right and wrong.
The madness of Troy and the Achaean army may have been the work
of heaven, but no small part of Greek tragedy, from the Agamemnon of
C 137 H
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
Aeschylus to the Hecuba of Euripides, is taken up with the tale of retri-
bution that came to this man and that for his arrogance or folly. So are
consolation and admonition bound together. If their union in ancient eth-
ics seems paradoxical, or even contradictory, it is nevertheless confirmed
by the teaching of Christianity: For evil must come into the world, but
woe unto him through whom it comes.
It is a curious and disquieting fact that the poet who was able to com-
press the moral of Greek tragedy into a single memorable stanza, belongs
to the people who, if there is any truth in that moral, must shortly reckon
with the nemesis appointed for sins of presumption and cruelty.
Ihr zieht ins Leben uns hinein ;
Ihr lasst den armen schuldig werden ;
Dann iiberlasst ihr ihn der Pein ;
Denn alle Schuld racht sich auf Erden.
PAUL ELMER MORE
C 138
JACQUES-EMILE BLANCHE
PORTRAIT OF GEORGE MOORE
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING
AGNES REPPLIER
THE RUSSIAN BOGYMAN
THE devastating war in Europe has robbed the United States of one
familiar figure, of one cherished illusion. In the stage setting of the nations,
we have long expected Russia to play the villain's role. We have de-
pended on her for dark deeds, we have owed to her our finest thrills of
virtuous indignation. From the days when Mr. George Kennan worked
the prolific Siberian prison vein ( our own prison system was not then
calculated to make us unduly proud), down to the summer of 1914, we
have never failed to respond to any outcry against a nation about which
we were reliably misinformed.lt was quite the fashion, when I was young,
for some thousands, or perhaps some millions of modest American citi-
zens to sign a protest to the Czar, whenever we disapproved of the im-
perial policy. What became of these protests, nobody knew; the chance
of the Czar's reading the millions of names seemed, even to us, unlikely;
but it was our nearest approach to intimacy with the great and wicked
ones of earth, and we felt we were doing our best to stem the tide of
tyranny.
A great deal of this popular sentiment came to us from England, where
hostility to Russia was bred of national fear. A great deal of it was
fostered by Jewish immigrants in the United States. But the dislike of
democracy for autocracy was responsible for our most cherished illu-
sions.
Some god this severance rules.
A well-told story like Mr. Kipling's "The Man Who Was" seemed to
us an indictment of a nation. Popular magazines cultivated a school of
fiction in which Russian nobles were portrayed as living the unfettered
lives, and enjoying the unfettered pastimes, of Dahomey chiefs. Popular
melodrama showed us the heads of the Russian police department de-
voting themselves unreservedly to the persecution of innocent maiden-
C 139 ]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
hood. The only good Russian ever presented to us was the nihilist, some
one who, like Mademoiselle Ixe, spent her time in pursuit of a nameless
official, and shot him for a nameless crime. Even our admiration for Count
Tolstoy was founded on his revolt from the established order of things
in his own country. It seldom occurred to us that the established order
of things in any other country would have been equally obnoxious to this
thorough-paced reformer. New York would have been as little to his
taste as was St. Petersburg.
The exigencies of a political alliance have impelled England to lay aside
her former animosities, and bury them in oblivion. For many months she
has tried hard to reinstate Russia in popular opinion, chiefly by means
of serious papers in serious periodicals, which the populace never reads.
Mr. Bernard Shaw is perhaps the only man left in the United Kingdom
who clings desperately to the good old Russian bogy man, as we cling to
the ogre of our infancy, and the pirate of our tender youth. Mr. Shaw's
Russia is not merely a land where pure-minded, noble-hearted disturbers
of the peace are subject to shameful captivity. It is a land where "people
whose worst crime is to find the Daily News a congenial newspaper are
hanged, flogged, or sent to Siberia, as a matter of daily routine. " This is
worse than Dahomey, where the perils of the press are happily unknown.
Most of us would change our morning paper rather than be hanged.
Few of us would find any journal "congenial/' which paved the long way
to Siberia.
England sympathized with Japan in the Japanese-Russian war from
interested motives. We did the same out of pure unadulterated sentiment.
Japan was an unfriendly power, given to hostile mutterings. Russia was
a friendly power, which had done us more than one good turn. But Japan
was little, and Russia was big. " How," asks the experienced Mr. Vin-
cent Crummies, " are you to get up the sympathies of an audience in a
legitimate manner, if there is n't a little man contending against a big
one?" Japan, moreover, was the innocent land of cherry blossoms, and
Russia was the land of knouts, and spies, and Cossacks. Russia wor-
AGNES REPPLIER
shipped God with rites and ceremonies, displeasing to pious Americans.
Japan belonged to Heathendom, and merited enlightened tolerance.
A fresh deal in international policy may at any time sever and re-unite
the troubled powers of Europe. Their boundary lines are hostages to for-
tune. But we, with two oceans sweeping our shores, have lost our bogy-
man beyond all hope of recovery. It is not with us a question of altered
interests, but of altered values. Germany's campaign in Belgium has
changed forever our standards of perfidy and of frightfulness. We can
never go back to the old ones. Once we spoke of Russia as a nation
Which to the good old maxim clings,
That treaties are the pawns of Kings.
Now we know that Germany outstrips her far in faithlessness. Once we
called Russia oppressive, cruel, unjust. Now the devastated homes of
Flanders teach us the meaning of those words. Once we reproached
Russia for being the least civilized of Christian nations. Now we have seen
a potent civilization crash down into pure savagery, its flimsy restraints
of no avail before the loosened passions of men.
And for our own share of injury and insult? Is it possible that a few
years ago we deeply resented Russia's disrespect for American passports;
that we abrogated a treaty because she dared to turn back from her
frontiers American citizens armed with these sacred guarantees? To-day
our dead lie under the ocean ; and Germany, who sent them there, sings
comic songs in her music halls to celebrate the rare jest of their drowning.
Our sensitive pride which could brook no slight from the friendly hand of
Russia, is now humbled to the dust by Germany's mailed fist. She has
spared us no hurt, and she has spared us no jibe. Bleeding and bewildered,
we have come to a realization of things as they are, we have seen the
naked truth, and we can never go back to our illusions. We enjoyed our
old bogyman, our shivers of horror, our exalted sentiments, our comfort-
able conviction of superiority. Now nothing is left but sorrow for our dead,
and shame for the wrongs which have been done us. As long as history
C 141
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
is taught, the tale of this terrible year will silence all other tales of horror.
Not for us only, but for the listening world, the standard of uttermost
evil has been forever changed.
AGNES REPPLIER
[ 142
EDWIN ROWLAND BLASHFIELD
A WOMAN'S HEAD
FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAWING
- . .,;
ANDRE SUARES
CHANT DES GALLOISES
i
V oici que le soir tombe, avec 1'orage. Et le soleil passionne descend,
comme un blesse se traine avec lenteur sur la colline: il descend sur la
mer, avec un sourire, tout en sang. Et tout a Fheure, le divin Heros sera
couche sur le lit qu'il prefere.
Voici que le soir tombe. Les jeunes filles de FOuest viennent sur la
prairie; et viennent aussi les jeunes femmes de la douce terre. Elles
sont deux chceurs qui se rencontrent dans 1'herbe fleurie et Fodeur du
ble noir, qui sont le miel et la vanille.
Elles s'avancent les unes vers les autres, les vierges et celles qui le
furent, les nids a baisers et celles qui voudraient Favoir etc. Elles desi-
reraient de danser: mais ni les amants, ni les fiances ne sont plus la. Est-ce
qu'ils sont tous morts ? Us sont tous partis pour Foeuvre dure et pour la
guerre. Elles ne pourront plus fouler le raisin de la joie dans la danse.
Et elles ne veulent pas danser aux bras Fune de Fautre. II ne leur reste
qu'a lancer leur ame dans le chant.
Chantez, les belles ! L'heure du chant sonne pour vous, sur la prairie
brulante, entre le mur des chenes et les levres de Focean. Allez, mes
belles! Mettez-vous, les libres jeunes filles, au bord de la vague verte.
Et vous, les jeunes femmes, centre la haie des feuilles au cceur dechi-
quete, qui vous separe de FOrient.
ii
LA JEUNE FILLE
Amour! un an de guerre ! et les treize mois sont revolus! O fiancees que
nous sommes ! Douloureuses, pleines de sourires, avides de danser et tant
deques, ou etes-vous, nos fiances?
Notre voix est toute chaude. Notre voix vient du feu, pour vous ap-
[ 143 1
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
peler. Beaux fiances, ou etes-vous, si doux, si chers a celles qui vous
attendent ?
Nous ne danserons plus. Nous chanterons notre peine.
Une sceur, hier, a frappe dans la nuit, toe toe, sur nos portes, a la
chambre des vierges.
Et vierge comme nous, elle est entree tout en pleurs et nous a dit: " Je
suis Poleska, la jeune fille de Pologne. Soeurs de Bretagne, soeurs gal-
loises, savez-vous la danse et le chant, cet etc, de vos soeurs polonaises?
Elles sont la couronne et le tombeau. Elles vont, coquelicots de deuil et
bleuets, par la plaine; et la beche a la main, du matin au soir, elles creu-
sent des fosses. Elles mettent dans la terre leurs fiances et leurs amants.
Voila Fete de la Pologne, et nos couches nuptiales, 6 soeurs de FOccident."
Ayant dit son message, elle a pali, la brune jeune fille de FOrient, aux
yeux si bleus, au visage si blanc; et baissant son col souple sur sa gorge,
elle est morte en pleurant.
Et vous, qui etes centre la haie, apres ce long hiver dans la brume, 6
tendres veuves du baiser, quel fut votre printemps? et quel est votreete?
Vers nous levez les yeux, belles emeraudes mouillees. Repondez, blondes
orphelines du soleil, cheres soeurs galloises.
in
LA JEUNE FEMME
Nous sommes les amantes et les jeunes femmes. Petites soeurs, vous
n'etes que les fiancees.
Un an de devorante amour et de regret ! Une annee dans le gouffre
de Fombre seche! Un an de solitude et de douleur.
O petites soeurs, vous esperez la vie, meme quand vous la pleurez.
Mais nous, elle nous devore.
Nous voici pretes a mourir d'amour. Et vainement. Et nul ne veut
notre don. Et notre coeur est inutile. Ah! C'est bien la le pis. Nous mou-
rons de nous-memes et de tout.
ANDRE SUARES
Au plus tendre de nous, le desespoir ronge ce que le souvenir dechire.
Fiancees, fiancees, vous ne savez pas les ardeurs des amantes, et que
leurs larmes sont du sang.
Vous ne savez pas non plus, tu Tignores encore, toi qui chantes, suave
jeune fille, quelle moisson nous avons faite, et quel est ce cortege, la-bas,
ouvrant la haie, qui s'avance sur la prairie, portant un tresor cache, comme
une chasse dans les bles.
O ma soeur, toi qui es si chaude et la plus pale, viens dans mes bras,
si tu ne veux tomber.
Celui que ces jeunes femmes promenent sur leurs epaules, parmi les
fleurs, c'est ton beau fiance.
II est mort d'amour pour Notre Dame, entre la mer et la Marne.
II aimait.
IV
Comme le soleil rougit, d'yne derniere effusion, toute la mer verte, on
couche le beau jeune homme dans les seigles.
II est mort. II est nu, il est blanc dans les epis. Blanche est sa bouche,
et ses yeux sont clos comme les portes du jour: silence eternel sur le rire,
la lumiere et le bruit.
Ses levres sont de cendres. La double flamme est morte. Plus de tison.
Et la fleur virile est a jamais fauchee. Qu'il est beau, le jeune corps de
rhomme! Et le heros est toujours pur.
Elles le baisent toutes, cent fois,suavement, comme on mange le raisin a
la grappe ; et les unes pleurent ; les autres sourient,telles de tendres folles.
C'est moi, Famant! C'est moi le fiance, que vous portez ainsi, mes
belles. C'est moi, le soc de la terre et le coutre d'amour que vous allez
ensevelir dans Fherbe.
Et celle qui eut ete mon champ, mourra sans fleurs et sans epis.
Du moins, sauvez-moi de la mort froide et de 1'oubli.
C 145 H
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
Prenez moi dans votre paradis de femmes, entre vos levres.
Une heure encore, tenez moi et me serrez dans votre doux giron qui
sent la menthe fraiche, le miel, le romarin et la brulante giroflee.
Gardez moi, je vous prie, dans la chambre des baisers. Je me suis separe
de mes autres armes: immortelles, elles n'ont pas besoin de moi.
Et puisqu'il faut un linceul, cousez moi dans vos cheveux avec vos
larmes. Cousez moi, a longues aiguillees de pleurs, dans vos ardents che-
veux.
Si nous ne sommes amour, que sommes nous? Toutes, ici, nous voici
vouees, adieu semailles ! au soleil qui s'en va chaque soir et aux cruelles
pluies.
Amants, nos bien aimes, tel est done Famour pour qui nous sommes
nees? Meres, pourquoi fites-vous ces filles malheureuses? Nos ames bon-
dissent en revoke. Et tous nos cceurs qui veulent sortir de nous !
Baisons nous, sceurs cheries, au nom de Famour et de la mort: et du
Seigneur qui aime, qui ouvre au ciel les sources, et les pares d'amour,
pour tous les Aimes, au paradis.
— O belles, 6 douloureuses, chantent les jeunes filles, vous qui etes
separees de votre chair et de vos baisers, venez.
— Et vous, petites filles, disent les jeunes femmes, 6 delicieuses, divi-
sees de vos desirs, privees de votre attente et des caresses, venez.
— Chers cceurs !
— Cheres femmes !
Elles pleurent, et se baisent doucement aux levres, avec un sourire.
Puis elles se sont saluees, en chantant, sous le portique de la nuit, tan-
dis que Focean devorait les derniers tisons et les ceillets supremes du
couchant.
ANDRE SUARES
C 146 ]
ANDR& SUARES
SONG OF THE WELSH WOMEN
[TRANSLATION]
HERE comes the night, with the storm. Slowly the passionate sun goes
down ; like a wounded man he drags himself over the hill ; swimming in
blood he sinks toward the sea. Soon the divine Hero will be laid on the
bed of his choice.
Here comes the night. The maidens of the West come out across the
meadows, and the young women of the land come out to meet them.
Two singing choirs, they mingle in the flowered grass, and in the smell
of the black wheat that is like the smell of honey and vanilla.
Forward they go to meet each other, maids and they that once were
maids — nests of kisses, and those that willingly would be so. They long
to dance, but lovers and bridegrooms are far away: all have gone out
to the stern work of war. No more can the women tread the red wine of
joy in the dance; they have no mind to dance with one another, and so
they sing instead.
Begin, fair women ! The hour of your song has come, in the hot mead-
ows between the dark wall of oaks and the pale lips of ocean. Come!
Take your places, you free-limbed maidens, by the green wave, and you,
young women, by the hedge-rows with fretted leaves that stand between
you and the east.
ir
THE YOUNG GIRL SPEAKS
Love ! — and a year of war! The twelvemonth has fulfilled itself, and one
month more ! Sorrowful and full of smiles, eager to dance and pale with
waiting — tell us, our lovers, where you linger!
Our voices are warm, our voices come from the fire to call you. Where
are you, our lovers, you that are so dear to those who wait?
C 147 ]
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
We have forsworn the dance, and grief shall be the burden of our song.
Yesterday, in the night, a sister came knock-knocking at our door,
the door of the virgins. A maid as we are maids, she came in to us, all
weeping, and said:
"I am the daughter of Poland. Sisters of Britain, sisters of Wales, do
you know the dance that your Polish sisters dance, and the songs they
sing ? The grave and the funeral garland are their song. Like black pop-
pies and dark corn-flowers sprinkled on the plain, they move in sad lines,
from night to morning digging graves ; and in those graves they lay their
bridegrooms and their lovers. This, my sisters, has the summer brought
to Poland, and these have been our bridal beds/'
And having spoken, the daughter of the East grew pale, and drooped
her dark head upon her neck and died.
And you who stand beside the hedge-rows, what was your spring-time,
what your heavy summer? Turn toward us the wet emeralds of your
eyes : answer, golden daughters of the sun — our sisters of Wales !
m
THE YOUNG WOMAN SPEAKS
We are the young women and the beloved. Little sisters, what are you
but the betrothed?
A year of devouring love, a year of longing ; long year in the valley
of parched shadow — year of loneliness and grief!
See, we are dying of love, and none to slake us. Worst waste of all,
our hearts are useless; we are dying of ourselves and of all life. O young
girls, little do you know of the hearts of women beloved, and lovers'
tears like blood!
Little do you know of the harvest we have reaped, or of the mean-
ing of that funeral train that comes across the meadows, parting the
hedges to right and left and bearing a hidden treasure like a monstrance
born across the wheat.
148
ANDRE SUARES
O my sister, burning hot and palest, come to me lest you fall, and let
me hold you.
He whom the young women carry on their shoulders, knee-deep in
flowers, was your once lover.
Between the sea and the Marne he died for love of our Lady, the
Blessed Virgin. He loved . . .
IV
As the last flush of sunset suffuses the green ocean the young man is
laid amid the wheat.
He is dead. White and naked he lies among the wheat-ears. White
are his lips, and his eyes are closed like the eyes of the day. His laughter,
the light and sound of him , are gone.
His mouth is ashes. The double flame of his lips is dead. In its flower
his manhood is cut down. How beautiful is the young man's body! And
stainless is the body of the hero.
The women bend to kiss him one by one, slowly,lingeringly,as grapes
are eaten from the vine; and some weep, and others laugh, beside them-
selves for grieving.
I am the lover, whom you thus bear upon your shoulders ; young maid-
ens, I am the betrothed. I am the ploughshare in the wheatfield, whom
thus you lay down for burial. And she who should have been my field
and my harvest shall die without flower and without ripening.
Save me at least, O pitying women, from the cold earth and from ob-
livion. Keep me warm in the paradise of your lips, an hour longer keep
me among you, in the sweet air that smells of honey and rosemary, of
clove-pinks and the flowering mint.
Build about me the warm chamber of your kisses. My sword and my
shield are gone from me ; deathless, they have no need of the dead.
And for my shrouding, women, wind me about with your long hair,
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
and sew my shroud with your tears. With the long needles of your tears
sew me fast into your burning hair.
If we are not Love and the food of Love, what are we? Our blossoming
cut down, we follow the setting sun into darkness and the night of rain.
Lovers, our beloved, is this the love for which our mothers bore
us? O mothers, why bring us forth to such grieving? Our souls leap up
against our fate, and our hearts break from our bosoms.
Kiss us, young sisters, in the name of Love and Death ; and of the Lord
of Love, who is King of its fountains and gardens, and opens their gates
to the Beloved in Paradise.
O fair and stricken and undone — the young maids answer — come to
us, you who are parted from the lips that cherished you and the flesh of
your flesh.
And you, young maidens — the mourning women reply to them — you,
who have missed your dream and your fruition, come to us, dear hearts.
Poor wives . . . Poor maids!
They weep, and kiss each other, and clasp each other smiling through
their sorrow.
Then, singing, they part beneath the roof of night, while Ocean con-
sumes the last embers of day, and darkens under the sky incarnadine.
ANDRE SUARES
[ 150
EMILE-RENE MENARD
FIGURE
FROM A SKETCH IN COLOURED CRAYON
MRS. HUMPHRT WARD
WORDSWORTH'S 'VALLEY IN WAR-TIME
AUGUST 8th, 1915. It is now four days since, in this village of Gras-
mere, at my feet, we attended one of those anniversary meetings, mark-
ing the first completed year of this appalling war, which were being
called on that night over the length and breadth of England. Our meet-
ing was held in the village schoolroom; the farmers, tradesmen, inn-
keeper and summer visitors of Grasmere were present, and we passed
the resolution which all England was passing at the same moment,
pledging ourselves, separately and collectively, to help the war and con-
tinue the war, till the purposes of England were attained, by the libera-
tion of Belgium and northern France, and the chastisement of Germany.
A year and four days, then, since the war began, and in a remote
garden on the banks of the Forth, my husband and I passed, breathless,
to each other, the sheets of the evening paper brought from Edinburgh
by the last train, containing the greater part of Sir Edward Grey's speech
delivered in the House of Commons that afternoon — War for Belgium —
for national honour — and, in the long run, for national existence! War!
—after these long years of peace; war, with its dimly foreseen horrors,
and its unfathomed possibilities: — England paused and shivered as the
grim spectre stepped across her path.
And I stand to-night on this lovely mountain-side, looking out upon
the harvest fields of another August, and soon another evening news-
paper sent up from the village below will bring the latest list of our dead
and our maimed, for which English mothers and wives have looked in
terror, day after day, through this twelve months.
And yet, but for the brooding care in every English mind, how could
one dream of war in this peaceful Grasmere?
Is it really true that somewhere in this summer world, beyond those
furthest fells, and the Yorkshire moors behind them, beyond the silver
sea dashing its waves upon our Eastern coasts, there is still going on the
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
ruin, the agony, the fury, of this hideous struggle into which Germany
plunged the world, a year ago? It is past eight o'clock ; but the sun which
is just dipping behind Silver How is still full on Loughrigg, the beautiful
fell which closes in the southern end of the lake. Between me and these
illumined slopes lies the lake — shadowed and still, broken by its one
green island. I can just see the white cups of the water-lilies floating
above the mirrored woods and rocks that plunge so deep into the infin-
ity below.
The square tower of the church rises to my left. The ashes of Words-
worth lie just beyond it — of Wordsworth, and that sister with the "wild
eyes/' who is scarcely less sure of immortality than himself, of Mary
Wordsworth too, the "perfect woman, nobly planned," at whose feet, in
her white-haired old age, I myself as a small child of five can remember
sitting, nearly sixty years ago. A little further, trees and buildings hide
what was once the grassy margin of the lake, and the old coach road
from Ambleside, with Wordsworth's cottage upon it. Dove Cottage, where
"mighty poets" gathered, and poetry that England will never let die
was written, is now, as all the world knows, a national possession, and is
full of memorials not only of Wordsworth, his sister and his wife, but of
all the other famous men who haunted there — De Quincey, who lived
therefor more than twenty years, Southey and Coleridge; or of Words-
worth's younger contemporaries and neighbours in the Lakes, such as
Arnold of Rugby, and Arnold's poet son Matthew. Generally the tiny
house and garden are thronged by Americans in August, who crowd -
in the Homeric phrase — about the charming place, like flies about the
milk pails in summer.
But this year there are no Americans, there are few visitors, indeed,
of any kind as yet, though the coaches are beginning to bring them—
scantily. But Grasmere does not distress itself as it would in other years,
Wordsworth's village is thinking too much about the war. Before the war
— so I learn from a gentle lady, who is one of the most eager guardians of
Grasmere traditions, and has made remarkable and successful efforts,
C 152 ]
MRS. HUMPHRT WARD
through the annual "Grasmere play," which is her creation, to maintain
the rich old dialect of the dales — there were two Grasmere men in the
Navy, two soldiers in the Regular army, and three Reservists — out of a
total male population of all ages of three hundred and eighty-nine. No
one ever saw a soldier, and wages, as all over the north, were high. There
was some perplexity of mind among the dale-folk when war broke out.
France and Belgium seemed a long way off — more than "t'oother side o'
Kendal," a common measure of distance in the mind of the old folks,
whose schooling lies far behind them; and fighting seemed a strange thing
to these men of peace. "What! — there'll be nea fightinT' said an old
man in the village, the day before war was declared. "There 's nea blacks
amongst 'em ^meaning the Germans J — they'se civilised beings!" But
the fighting came, and Grasmere did as Grasmere did in 1803, when Pitt
called for volunteers for Home Defence. "At Grasmere," wrote Words-
worth, "we have turned out almost to a man/' Last year, within a few
months of the outbreak of war, seventy young men from the village
offered themselves to the army; over fifty are serving. Their women left
behind have been steadily knitting and sewing since they left. Every man
from Grasmere got a Christmas present of two pairs of socks. Two sisters,
washerwomen, and hard worked, made a pair each, in four consecutive
weeks, getting up at four in the morning to knit. Day after day, women
from the village have gone up to the fells to gather the absorbent sphag-
num moss, which they dry and clean, and send to a manufacturing chem-
ist to be prepared for hospital use. Half a ton of feather-weight moss has
been collected and cleaned by women and school-children. One old wo-
man who could not give money gathered the tufts of wool which the sheep
leave behind them on the brambles and fern, washed them, and made
them into the little pillows which prop wounded limbs in hospital. The
cottages and farms send eggs every week to the wounded in France. The
school-children alone bring fifty a week. One woman, whose main re-
source was her fowls, offered twelve eggs a week ; which meant starving
herself. And all the time, two pence, three pence, six pence a week was
C 153 H
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
being collected by the people themselves, from the poorest homes, to-
wards the support of the Belgian colony in the neighbouring village of
Ambleside.
One sits and ponders these things, as the golden light recedes from
Loughrigg, and that high crag above Wordsworth's cottage. Little Gras-
mere has indeed done all she could, and in this lovely valley, the heart
of Wordsworth's people, the descendants of those dalesmen and dales-
women whom he brought into literature,is one — passionately one — with
the heart of the Allies. Lately the war has bitten harder into the life of
the village. Of its fifty young sons, many are now in the thick of the Dar-
danelles struggle ; three are prisoners of war, two are said to have gone
down in the Royal Edward, one officer has fallen, others are wounded.
Grasmere has learnt much geography and history this last year ; and it
has shared to the full in the general deepening and uplifting of the Eng-
lish soul, which the war has brought about. France, that France which
Wordsworth loved in his first generous youth, is in all our hearts, —
France, and the sufferings of France; Belgium, too, the trampled and out-
raged victim of a Germany eternally dishonoured. And where shall we
find nobler words in which to clothe the feeling of England towards a
France which has lost Rheims, or a Belgium which has endured Lou vain,
than those written a hundred years ago in that cottage across the lake ?
Air, earth and skies —
There's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind!
To Germany, then, the initial weight of big battalions, the initial successes
of a murderous science : to the nations leagued against her, the uncon-
querable power of those moral faiths which fire our clay, and in the end
mould the history of men !
. . . Along the mountain-side, the evening wind rises. The swell and
C 154 H
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
beat of it among the rocks and fern, as the crags catch it, echo it, and
throw it back reverberate, are as the sound of marching feet. . . .
I hear it in the tread — irresistible, inexorable — of an avenging Hu-
manity. The living and the dead are there, and in their hands they bear
both Doom and Comforting.
MARY A. WARD
Of this book, in addition to the regular edition, there have been printed
and numbered one hundred and seventy-Jive copies de luxe, of larger format.
Numbers 1—50 on French hand-made paper, containing four facsimiles of manu-
scripts and a second set of illustrations in portfolio.
Numbers 51-175 on Fan G elder paper.
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