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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

Books by
PHILIP GIBBS

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD
PEOPLE OF DESTINY

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
Established 1817

More That Must Be Told

-y

Philip Qihhs

Author of
"People of Dbstiny" "Now It Can Be Told" etc.

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

More That Mtw. be Tolo

Copyrieht, ipai. by Harper & Brother*
Printed in the United States of America

M-V

CONTENTS

,^.« PAGE
CHAP. . .

I. Leaders of the Old Tradition i

II. Ideals of the Humanists 5°

III. The Need of the Spirit 83

IV. The New Germany .'127

V. The Price of Victory in France I7S

VI. The Social Revolution in English Life .... 213

VII. The Warning of Austria 244

VIII. The Truth About Ireland 260

IX. The United States and World Peace 339

X. The Chance of Youth 37°

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

LOOKING back at the three years of history after the
^ armistice — three years of blundering, moral degra-
dation, and reaction to the lowest traditions of national
politics — the most tolerant of minds examining into the
causes of that evil time must formulate a grave in-
dictment against one company of men. Arraigned before
an honest jury of pubHc opinion, they are a fairly small
gang of notorious persons, politically of doubtful charac-
ter and shady antecedents. They are the Leaders of
Europe — the Old Gang, still for the most part in com-
mand of the machinery of government.

These men in England, France, and Italy are those
who were playing the game of politics before the war,
fighting for place and power, taking their turn, now in,
now out, according to the revolutions of the party
wheels, but, whether in or out, belonging to the inner
circle of that system which under the fair name of
"representative government" arranges the fate of
peoples without their knowledge or consent, and by art-
ful appeals to popular passion and ignorance, by spell
words and watchwords of fine sound and empty mean-
ing, keeps the mob obedient to their directing wills, even

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

though they are led to the shambles with the enticing
cry of, "Dilly, dilly, come and be killed."

It would be ridiculous now to re-examine all the psy-
chological and political causes of the European war.
That argument has been threshed out in millions and
billions of words, in white papers and yellow papers
and red papers, and in spite of the publication of secret
documents from the Russian archives and the papers of
other governments revealing the sinister game of bluff
and bluster, intrigue and conspiracy, between the old
courts of Europe, it is certain, if anything in history is
certain, that nothing will ever reverse the verdict of
guilty given against the German military caste for having
planned, desired, and made the war. The German
bureaucracy and bourgeoisie share that guilt by crim-
inal consent, though the peasants and common folk
must be acquitted on the plea of ignorance and their
inability to resist the poison of false propaganda adminis-
tered to them by their rulers and teachers. Let us leave
it there — this terrible verdict against which there is no
court of appeal except at the judgment seat of God.

But the statesmen of Europe among the nations
which ranged themselves against the Germanic power
cannot be acquitted of all guilt, though they pleaded a
dovelike innocence when the frightful challenge of war
resounded through Europe and the armies moved to the
fields of massacre. They were guilty of maintaining,
defending, and intensifying the old regime of interna-
tional rivalry, with its political structure resting entirely
on armed force and as damnably guilty of hiding from
their own peoples the inevitability of the conflict which
was approaching them because of this grouping and
maneuvering of forces.

For many years before the war the conscience of
people without power in many countries had been
stirred by the spiritual idea of a closer brotherhood of

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

man, united by the common interests of labor and liberty.
In France there was a growing revolt against the burden
of militarism. The spirit of ''La Revanche,'" any pas-
sion of desire to recapture Alsace-Lorraine at the cost
of millions of lives, had died down and almost out in
the cold ashes of extinct fires. In Germany the Social
Democrats, quite sincerely despite their betrayal after-
ward, were antimilitarists and the advocates of inter-
national peace. In England the people were so devoid
of military ambition, so sure that war on the big scale
had been abandoned forever by the great Powers of
white civilization, that even when it happened they were
incredulous, and like the countryman who saw a giraflFe
for the first time, said, "Nell! ... I don't beheve it!"

The statesmen of Europe — English, French, Ger-
man, Russian, and others — might have allied themselves
with the new idealism stirring among the common folk
of Europe. Some of them, indeed, paid lip service to
those ideals of international peace, and with elaborate
insincerity, smiling with cynicism up their sleeves, pro-
posed resolutions at The Hague to restrict the horrors
of war and to sprinkle its stench with rose-water. But
mostly, and with intellectual atheism, they used the
immense and secret powers of their governments to
kill the pacifist instincts of democratic idealism, to break
or buy its leaders, and to secure the continuance of the
old game between courts and foreign offices for com-
mercial advantages, military alliances, unexploited
territories.

These men of the Old Gang were at least no nobler
than their predecessors through centuries of conflict.
There was not one of them inspired by any vision of
world policy higher than immediate material advantage
or imperial aggrandizement. Not a man among them,
seeing the shadow of a world war creeping nearer, ut-
tered a loud cry to the conscience of humanity or any

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warning of approaching doom or any plea for some
better argument than that of massacre. They were
industrious with squalid bargains for the "undeveloped"
spaces of the earth in Africa and Asia. From one foreign
office to another went bickering notes, claims, protests,
and threats. The Fashoda crisis menaced England with
war against France. The Agadir crisis, twenty years
later, was a challenge to Germany by England and
France — a challenge voiced by Lloyd George, the
"leader of democracy," in a speech which summoned
up the dreadful vision of Armageddon as lightly, as
carelessly as men might tell a fantastic nightmare
across the dinner table as a warning against lobster
salad. It seemed so to the British people, a little startled,
but not shocked into the tragic consciousness that Lloyd
George's message was the revelation of enormous forces
assembling and getting ready for a conflict in which the
3'outh of Europe, ignorant of that meaning, not told in
plain words, not asked for consent, v/ould be slain by
millions, because the old men of the old regime were
greedy for empire, on this side or that.

It is easy to say that Germany was the wild beast of
Europe, with devouring instincts, and that the other
nations would have been a feebler prey, ready for the
slaughterhouse, if they had been more weakened by the
idealism of world peace. That is true. So is it true
that in Napoleon's time France was the wild beast of
the European jungle, and in other times other nations.
So is it true that in England once there were seven
kings at war with one another, and in Ireland sixty. So
is it true that a century ago there were highwaymen in
Hyde Park, and that for any slight off'ense or imagined
insult one gentleman would challenge another and kill
him, if gifted with great strength or skill or luck. The
history of civilization is a gradual taming of the wild
beast in human society, an education of human intelli-

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

gence to a widening sphere of law and order and self-
restraint. So it seemed, until the last war made a
mockery of lawmakers and of gentlemen. The old
men of Europe (not old in years, but in traditions)
made never an effort to tame the wild beast in the
heart of Germany (or in their own), never once raised
ideals to which the German people might rise with a
sense of liberty and brotherhood from the spell of
Junkerdom. They made no kind of effort to get Euro-
pean civilization out of the jungle darkness to new
clearing places of light. They were all in the jungle
together. A friend of mine with bitter cynicism com-
pared the international politicians before the war with
ape-men, peering out of their caves, gibbering and
beckoning to friendly apes, frothing and mouthing to
hostile apes, collecting great stores of weapons for de-
fense and offense, strengthening the approaches to the
monkey rooks, Hstening with fear to the crashing of
the Great Ape in the undergrowth of his own jungle,
whispering together with a grave nodding of heads, a
plotting of white hairs, while the young apes played
among the trees with the ignorance and carelessness of
youth.

That simile is an outrage upon the high intelligence,
the fine manners, the culture and refinement of the
statesmen who directed the fate of Europe before the
war — men like Grey, Asquith, Delcasse, Poincare,
Viviani, Briand, Giolitti. Yet outrageous though it be,
if the European system were put into the parable of the
animal world, by the spirit of i^Esop or of Swift or of
Lafontaine, it is with jungle life and with ape life that
it could only be compared.

During the war many of the statesmen of the coun-
tries engaged in that conflict behaved with the virtue
that belongs to patriotism and to the old traditions of
national honor, I do not underrate that virtue or those

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

traditions. In their time and when necessity demands
them they call out the supreme qualities of manhood in
all classes directly engaged. When once the war was
declared and we were back again to the primitive con-
test of nation against nation, there was no other way
for honorable men than devotion to the life of one's
people, the highest service of one's soul for the national
cause, self-sacrifice even to death. In obedience to that
last law of patriotism, youth, the best of European
manhood, answered the call with illimitable courage,
and an immense spiritual fervor never seen on such a
scale in human history. Without a murmur of revolt,
upUfted by enthusiasm, at least in the early days of war,
the legions of British, French, Italian, Russian, and
German youth marched to the fields of death and
largely died. Diflferent motives impelled them, differ-
ent professions of faith were theirs, but on both sides of
the fighting lines there was the one common primitive
instinct that the life and liberty of one's people could
be saved only by the death of the enemy. It was a war
to the death without mercy, without chivalry, except in
rare cases, on either side — the worst war the world has
seen.

The old leaders of Europe handed over a great deal
of their directive power to the military mind, which
despised them with a traditional contempt for politi-
cians, reciprocated heartily by those gentlemen who
were impatient with the rigid self-conceit, the abrupt
and undiplomatic manners, the complete lack of sym-
pathy and candor among many members of the High
Command. In all countries the politicians responsible
for the civil organization of the state complained bit-
terly of the autocratic methods, the intellectual narrow-
ness of the military command. In all countries the

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

High Command — German, French, British — accused the
politicians of "betraying" them and undermining the
chances of victory.

Outwardly a political truce had been called in all
countries. Party opposition had been silenced by Coali-
tion governments in which all parties were represented.
There was what the French called "L'Union Sacree"
before the enemy. Secretly, and with but a thin camou-
flage of decency, there were continual intrigues, con-
spiracies, and plots among the various groups of po-
litical personalities, aided and abetted by people of high
rank and social influence. In France and England in-
trigues were rife in the Cabinet and the War Office.
Kitchener was beset by enemies in high places and low
places intent upon pulling him down by fair means or
foul. The early failures of the war, the ghastly mis-
takes, the endless slaughter, called for victims. Every
man in public life, and every woman of social influence,
backed his or her fancy for the War Ministry, the Com-
mander in Chief, the chief of staff", the army, corps, or
divisional generals, and had a private personal alle-
giance to this man or that, or a bitter vindictive grudge
against him. There were cabals for and against Kitch-
ener and Robertson, French and Haig, Fisher and Jelli-
coe. Newspaper editors were invited to breakfast,
luncheon, dinner, by ministers of state and generals of
the High Command, in order to enlist their influence
by subtle suggestions in leading articles, or personal
paragraphs or open attacks, for or against the latest
favorite or the latest scapegoat. Military critics, war
correspondents home on leave. Parliamentary corre-
spondents and lobby men, were favored by these danger-
ous attentions. The press became a hotbed of favoritism
and conspiracy. The commanders in the field, Joff"re
as well as French, Retain as well as Haig, endeavored to
counter-attack the conspirators by forming their own

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

bodyguard of political adherents, and directing the press.
Colonel Repington, military critic of the Times, busy as
Warwick the king-maker, was invited to Sir John
French's headquarters and told all the secret history of
the relations between the Commander in Chief and the
Secretary of War. The war correspondent of the Daily
Mail (at that time Mr. Valentine WiUiams, afterward
a captain in the Irish Guards) was also a "white-headed
boy" at the headquarters of Sir John French. The
Daily Mail worked up a sensation about the shortage
of high-explosive shells and attacked Lord Kitchener
with a ferocity which for a while so angered the British
public that they burned their favorite paper in public
places — and then renewed their subscriptions.

Sir John French's enemies were too strong for him
after the ghastly failure of the Loos battle. Haig's
friends triumphed; Robertson succeeded in supreme
command when Kitchener was drowned, to the great
relief of many patriots. Major-General Sir Frederic
Maurice, on Sir John French's staff until his fall, was
raised to a higher place as Director of Military Opera-
tions on the Imperial General Staff, under Sir William
Robertson. Then another set of intrigues went on, and
never finished until the ending of the war. Asquith,
hounded down by the Daily Mail and betrayed by his
own supporters, was succeeded by Lloyd George as
Prime Minister of England. Then Repington, the cor-
respondent, wonderfully confidential with Robertson,
Chief of the Imperial General Staff, in close liaison with
Maurice, Director of Military Operations, conducted a
long-range attack upon the new Prime Minister for his
conduct of the war, and revealed the most jealously
guarded secrets of the Supreme War Council. Haig in
France, obstinate against the idea of a unified com-
mand which would place him under the authority of
a French generalissimo, conscious that Lloyd George

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

had little faith in his generalship after the enormous
slaughter of the Somme battles and the still more fright-
ful losses in Flanders, had his attention diverted from
the state of his front to the political danger behind
him. With Retain in command of the French armies,
he was arranging plans which would keep Foch out of
supreme command — a system of mutual defense which
broke down utterly when the Germans attacked in
March of 1918 and nearly won the war.

Officers home on leave, hearing some of those rumors of
intrigue and private rancor, could not reconcile the spirit
of it with the marvelous optimism of public men — those
very people — in public print. I remember dining with
Lord Burnham in London of war time. I had come home
on leave from the mud of Flanders, where I had seen
the tragic slaughter of our youth, the daily harvest of
the wounded boys. I had no notion that it was more
than a tete-a-tete with Lord Burnham at the Garrick
Club, so, coming up from the country and arriving late
in town, did not put on evening clothes. It was a hu-
miliation to me (more hurtful to one's vanity than moral
delinquency) when I found a company of great people,
including Sir William Robertson, Lord Charles Beresford
(old "Charlie B.," as he was always called), and a
variety of peers and politicians who were helping in
divers ways and offices to "win the war." They were
the people, anyhow, who pulled many wires of our
imperial activities, knew all the secrets of the war on
land and sea, and held in their hands the decision of
peace, if there ever could be peace, which then seemed
doubtful. My ears were alert to catch any words of
hope which might be a reprieve to thousands of boys —
those I passed daily on the Albert-Bapaume road and
other highways of abomination — who otherwise would
be condemned to death. These people knew whether
the Germans were weakening. To them came all the
2 9

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reports of spies, the ** peace feelers" through neutral
countries, the secret views of our allies, beneath
official proclamations and triumphant propaganda.
God! Here I was in the company of those who held the
keys of knowledge and the power of fate in this great
drama of tragic history.

They talked freely. One to another they kept the
conversation going without a pause. Only one man
was silent, and that w^as Robertson. I made out that
the navy was not doing well. That the sinking of our
ships by German submarines was more serious than the
nation knew. (Not good news, I thought, for the boys
at the front!) Haig seemed to be hopeless. His battles
were bloody but indecisive. It was nonsense to make
out that we were winning. It was mere folly to pretend
that our losses were lighter than the enemy's. The Ger-
mans still had immense reserves of man power. (So the
optimism of our Chief of Intelligence did not cheer the
company!) The French were troublesome again, letting
us down deliberately, not working in close or loyal
liaison, intriguing for supreme command. Our reserves
were wearing pretty thin, in spite of the high percentage
of recovery among lightly wounded men. The war might
go on easily for another two years, or three, if the
peoples did not break before then. ... I listened with a
sinking heart. This was gloomy and dreadful talk,
more gloomy than my own forebodings in miserable
hours. Here was no hope for boys I knew who would
be marching to-night to the line again, sitting again in
the dirty ditches under infernal fire, praying with blas-
phemous oaths for some miracle that would bring them
a reprieve and peace.

"Well, gentlemen," said Sir William Robertson at
last, "you are all very pessimistic! All I can say is if
we're a bit winded, the enemy is just as puffed. It's a
case of who holds on the longest."

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

One man there had written to the Times that very
day ridiculing the German "peace" offers and pro-
claiming our certainty of victory in the end. He had
no certainty of faith at dinner that night, but spoke
despairingly. Through all the conversation there was
a note of querulous irritation against the men in high
command, hardly camouflaged even against Robertson,
sitting there with them, not answering their criticism of
failure and loss.

It was a rainy night, and dark in Garrick Street when
I went out. A soldier home on leave lurched by drunk-
enly and uttered a foul oath. Away in Flanders his
pals would be listening to "crumps" and the whining
of high velocities passing overhead and the hiss of the
gas shells. The stretcher-bearers would be busy with
the usual casualties — arm wounds, stomach wounds,
gassed, the ordinary muck of a night's work in the
line. ... I had no hope to take out to them. Our leaders
were just carrying on, hoping for the odd trick after
years more of slaughter. "Just a question," said
Robertson, "of who holds out the longest." That was
the highest hope of our highest Generalship! . . , And
Robertson was right.

Tragic history! Is it worth while washing so much
dirty linen in public as that exposed to the vulgar gaze
in the memoirs of Colonel Repington, Captain Peter
Wright, Doctor Dillon, and many others? There is
only one purpose to be served, and that was not, I
think, Repington's purpose. It is to give a frightful
warning to the world that the leaders who were respon-
sible for the destiny of civilization in that time of
monstrous conflict were unsafe guides, uncertain of
their own way, distrustful of one another. They were
but httle men playing a game of hazard with millions of
lives. They had, with few exceptions, no vision greater
than the safety of their own jobs and the continuance

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of their own prestige. These same men, long in power
after all their failures, their intrigues, and their errors,
proved themselves incapable of leading the way to new
heights which we must attain unless we resign ourselves
to a deeper sinking into the abyss of ruin. There was
no spiritual light in them, not much of nobility, no in-
spiration of genius. They groped and fumbled their
way to victory which came by the valor of the youth
that died, and then was worthless because of what they
have done with it. They put out the best that was in
them, but it was not good enough — not big enough,
without virtue.

Ill

There never was a time in modern history when
there was such a readiness for spiritual guidance among
the peoples of Europe. Their guides led them into
degradation. They appealed to the lowest instincts of
human nature, and not to the highest. Dehberately
they chose the lowest.

It began with the Peace Treaty. That document,
which, for a little while, had been the promise of a new
great charter for the liberties of common folk in all na-
tions, was discovered to be nothing better than the
intensification of old hatreds by new frontiers, and the
aggrandizement of victorious powers by the dismember-
ment of defeated empires. Not deliberately, I think,
but as a compromise of greedy interests in conflict, it
violated in a hundred ways the principles proclaimed by
President Wilson as the ideals of peace, and accepted,
for a little while, by victors and vanquished. What be-
came of the self-determination of peoples? Austria was
put under Italian rule and Czech rule and Slovak rule,
Germans under Poles, Turks under Greeks, Arabs under
French and British. It was not a Peace for the rebuilding
of civilization out of the ruins upon nobler lines, but a

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

Peace of vengeance, and a Peace of greed, and a Peace
of hypocrisy.

The old politicians who had played the game of
politics before the war, gambling with the lives and souls
of men for new territory, privileged markets, oil fields,
native races, coaling stations, and imperial prestige,
grabbed the pool which the German gamblers had lost
when their last bluff was called, and quarreled over its
distribution. The "mandates" obtained by Great
Britain and France in Africa and Asia made the cynics
chortle with laughter and the politicians of the smaller
powers squirm with envy. Italy denounced them all
as robbers because her share of loot was small. France
was aggrieved with England because she had taken the
lion's share. But the statesmen of Europe dividing
the world afresh, and reconciling their spoils with the
high words of justice and retribution, imagined in their
ignorance of world conditions after a war of exhaustion
that what they took they could hold, and that out of the
ruin of their enemies they could gain great wealth. They
did not understand then, nor after three years do they
now understand, that not only all their own wealth was
spent in four and a half years of destruction, but that
all the former wealth of Europe, in all nations engaged
in the conflict, had disappeared in shell fire and in blood.

Not to them was it revealed that the paper money
which circulated in European countries was but a re-
minder of enormous debt, unredeemed and unredeem-
able, and a promissory note on the future industry of
peoples. No single statesman of the old regime helping
to draw up the Treaty of Versailles had intelligence
enough to see, or honesty enough to admit, that after
the scourge that had passed over Europe, killing the
flower of its youth, its young tillers of the soil, its
laborers, only mutual helpfulness between one nation
and another, former friends and enemies, could bring

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a chance of recovery and economic health. The com-
plete ruin of Austria, condemned to death by the Peace
Treaty, did but place a pauper population upon the
books of the "Reparations Committee." It was just a
hospital of starving children and a casual ward of adult
unemployed, unable to buy from us or anyone, unable
to work for themselves or us (because they could not
buy the raw material of industry), just lapsing into
decay and death, whose corruption would spread to sur-
rounding countries.

So little did the politicians know of economic laws in
modern commerce, that they did not foresee the loss to
their own trades in the closing of enemy markets, nor
the futility of their own industry if there were no cus-
tomers to buy their products. They did not even guess
that by enlarging their imperial territory, in "man-
dates" over races who disliked them, they were relying
upon armies that could not be raised (unless we raised
the dead) and wasting more millions of borrowed money
in new administration, when their imperial treasury was
empty except of unpaid debts, and the citizens of empire
were already in revolt against the tax collectors.

Yet we must be fair to the leaders of the old tradition.
Looking at the Treaty of Versailles upon the plane of
thought no higher than that of the statesmen who
framed it — that is, as a document carving up Europe
according to the old ethics of victors deahng with van-
quished and demanding retribution and reparation, it
is difficult to see, except in minor details of unnecessary
injustice, how a better peace could have been made.
The convulsion of Europe had been so great, the conflict
so widespread, that the structure of human society
everywhere had been immensely upheaved and no
group of politicians thinking upon the old lines of
thought, each trying to make the best bargain for his
own nation or empire, and to secure immediate advan-

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

tage without much thought of the future or the com-
monwealth of Europe, could reconcile all conflicting
interests, rearrange frontiers on reasonable lines, and
safeguard the economic life of all peoples. Such an ideal
arrangement was indeed impossible of achievement,
owing to the geographical confusion of races and na-
tionalities. Therefore all criticism of the Peace Treaty
is futile, if it is conducted on the basis of the old philos-
ophy of international relations in Europe with its balance
of power, its rival groups, and the claim of the victor to
exact the price of war from the vanquished.

The hope which for a little while leaped up in the
hearts of many people was for a Treaty which would
give a new call to humanity and, leading it clear away
from its old jungle law, would break down the old
frontiers, demobilize armed force everywhere, and
unite the democracies of Europe in the common interests
of labor, liberty, and peace. Whether the peoples of
Europe could have risen to such an ideal at that time is
uncertain. The mere thought of "letting off" Ger-
many would have aroused fury among the Chauvinists
in France, England, and the United States. It is im-
possible to say with any sure evidence whether the
people of Europe would have been capable of rising to a
height of idealism which, as we now see, would have
been also good business on the most materialistic lines,
as true idealism is always good business according to the
old adage that honesty is the best policy, and the
Christian precept, "Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you."

A mutual cancellation of our debts by a stroke of the
pen in the Treaty would have been a supreme act of
faith in the future of humanity which would have
lighted the soul of the world. Yet in a niggling way,
by the sheer impossibility of paying even the interest
on those debts, or of extracting reparation out of the

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

ruin of Austria, and getting a healthy interchange
of commerce, we are bound to come to that in the long
run, without any light of splendid renunciation in the
soul of the world, but only lamentation and recrim-
ination.

The rapid demobilization of armies in France as well
as in Germany would have been another act of faith,
helpful and glorious to the life of Europe. Militarism
would have been dethroned, so that the purpose pro-
claimed by us in the war would have been fulfilled. In
a practical way it would have saved France more than
she will ever get from Germany and helped her to recon-
struct more rapidly the devastated districts which are
still in ruins.

A spiritual appeal to the German people, not based
on threats of force, but calling with the voice of one
people to another across the fields of dead, might have
been answered by the offer of a whole nation to repair
the damage they had done, to atone by immense self-
sacrifice and service, because of the liberation of their
spirit from hatred and from bondage to evil ideas in a
new era of fellowship after the agony of universal war.
On the plane of realism it would have been better busi-
ness, for the Allies would have gained more by consent
than they have gained by force, and the impulse to
vengeance, burning and smoldering in the heart of
Germany now, after so many threats and so much
hatred, might not have existed, but might have been
melted away in the enthusiasm of the new-found move-
ment of humanity.

Such idealism was impossible without great leader-
ship, a spiritual leader so high in virtue, so on fire
with human charity, so clear and shining in vision that
the people of Europe would have been caught up and

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

carried on by his call to the New World. If we had had
such a man, I believe firmly in my soul that this would
have happened. For at that time, immediately before
the armistice, and for a little while afterward, there
was a mass emotion in Europe, after the long agony of
the years, which would have risen to any great call.
Europe was stricken, shell shocked, hysterical. And it
is by the emotion of peoples that great leaders are
able to fulfill their aspirations. In millions of homes
families were mourning their dead, aghast at the cruelty
of life, hopeless except for a vague hope of spiritual
revival. The women of the world had wept until they
had no more tears to weep. The fighting men, no longer
filled with blood lust, if any of them ever were, for more
than the minutes of killing and terror, sick of the stench
of death, contemptuous of the honors and glories of
their job, cynical of civilization, looking forward to
some new scheme of life which would prevent this kind
of thing from happening ever again, were in a mood to
abandon all the old fetishes of thought which caused
this conflict, and to advance to a greater victory by
which the beauty and joy of life could be recaptured.
But we had no leaders to take advantage of that enor-
mous stirring of thought and feeling among the people
of the stricken nations so that they might have been
lifted out of the old ruts. Alas! Alas!

There seemed for a little while to be one. It was Pres-
ident Wilson, the only man in the world who, before the
armistice, WTOte words which rang true in the heart of
humanity. In dirty places where men lived under the
imminent menace of death they were read, as I know,
with hopefulness that here at last was a leader who had
a greater vision than a war of extermination or a peace
of vengeance. His words were like a new Gospel, or
the old Gospel recalled in this time of hatred and mas-
sacre. He looked across the frontiers of hostility, offered

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

just terms to all warring nations, promised a new world
to democracy if it would disown the evil of its ruling
powers. Among millions of men, to youth being sacri-
ficed, in millions of homes, death-haunted, on both sides
of No-Man's Land, his words found instant response.
They raised enormous hopes. They had a spiritual,
almost a divine sweetness. The Germans, below the
Junker caste, the German soldiers whom I met on the
battlefields, whose letters I grabbed from lousy dug-
outs or picked up as they littered the shell-churned
earth, put their faith in Wilson, hailed him as the great
arbitrator, accepted in their souls his terms of peace.
I affirm that with absolute belief. Before the armistice
they raised banners in many cities of Germany proclaim-
ing their adherence to Wilson's "Fourteen Points." After
the armistice for a little while, until one by one the
Fourteen Points were abandoned or betrayed, they clam-
ored for their fulfillment.

I saw Wilson come to London. It was as though a
savior of the world were passing. Miles deep the
crowd stood and waited while he passed. Only the fore-
most ranks caught a glimpse of his silvered hairs. But
from all those vast crowds came a roar of cheers in which
there was a note I had never heard before, and the eyes
of people about me were wet with tears. So it was in
Paris when he came.

We all know now how he failed in many ways, why
he failed — his hard, autocratic temper, so that even his
advisers like House and Lansing were kept in ignorance
of his acts and pledges, the vanity which made him
weaken to flattery, the pedagogic quality of his brain,
the fatal egotism which caused him to neglect the or-
dinary safeguards of statesmanship — consultation with
his people and winning of their consent, the right and
liberty of their Senate and Congress. He had the
greatest chance that any man has had in the whole his-

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

tory of the world, and he missed it. But his people
missed it too, by the bitterness of their political pas-
sion, by desertion of their representative (who should
have had their loyalty in this crisis of the world's fate
in spite of all his errors), and by a cruelty which killed
him as a leader and almost killed him as a man.

All that is old and tragic history. There is nothing
new to be said about it, but its tragedy remains, and
makes more difficult the task of human progress which
then was easier because of that mass emotion leaping
up to hope. Quickly came disillusionment, cynicism, a
hark back to material and selfish interests. The lowest
passions of humanity were prodded up by the press and
by the politicians. The noblest so'ds in England in all
classes were sickened and dumfounded by the moral
depravity of the appeals made to the beast instinct of
the mob by ministers of state and all their sycophants.
In the khaki election of 191 8, which gave Lloyd George
a renewal of his power, there was the promise of great
loot from the enemy's treasure and the Kaiser's head
was to be the reward of victory. The ideals for which
youth had fought in the war, at least the watchwords
which had urged them to fight — the war to end war, the
downfall of militarism — were flung away and forgotten.
The material motive of making Germany pay for all
the costs of war of all the victor nations replaced the
better hope of establishing a lasting peace between the
democracies of Europe.

Germany will be squeezed," said Sir Eric Geddes,
until the pips squeak" — a naked betrayal of Wilson's
pledge to German democracy which we had counter-
signed with our honor. Facilis decensus Averni. The
people who were ready for spiritual guidance yielded
when appeal was made to the brute in them. They
share the guilt of this degradation and are paying for it
now, but the greater guilt is that of men who, seeing

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

the light, chose the darkness. The old leaders stand
condemned. Theirs was the steepest downfall.

The story of President Wilson is tragic. Yet he never
hauled down the banner of his idealism, and, torn and
tattered though it was after his single fight with enemies
in front and behind, he nailed it to the mast with his
crippled hand and never surrendered in his poor, dazed
soul. He was faithful to the League of Nations, though
his people would have none of it. In spite of their
abandonment, weakened by the immense loss of their
alliance, the League of Nations still lives and struggles
in a futile way against unequal odds, and is a memorial
of the spirit which created it as the best hope of the
world. Even now it might become the machine by
which youth could re-create the world.

A-'

Greater than the tragedy of Mr. Wilson was that
of the other signatories of the Peace Treaty, whom,
having pledged themselves to the League of Nations
with the consent of their nations, mocked at it with
cynical laughter, flouted its authority, undermined its
purpose, and maintained the power of the Supreme
Council, whose will and acts have been in direct and
open conflict with the whole spirit of the League.
They upheld government by force alone, whereas the
League is based on government by arbitration and con',
sent. They denied the rights of small nations to a voice
in the councils of the world by declaring the will of the
great victor powers enforced by standing armies. By
sending representatives without authority to the as-
sembly of the League, they deprived it of all reality in its
decisions and of all influence in the settlement of world
problems. They betrayed it.

Tragic was the physical breakdown of Wilson, Presi-

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

dent of the United States. More tragic was the spiritual
surrender of Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England.

It is hard for English people to speak or to v/rite about
Lloyd George without passion — passion of dislike or
passion of hero worship. There have been times when
most have hated him, but it is significant that the
people who hated him once because of the things for
which I and others liked him (his democratic audacity,
his amusing vulgarity of challenge to the snob tradition
of England) are now those who like him most. I hated
him for his speech about the *' Knock-out blow" at a
time when there seemed no ending to war except by the
extermination of the world's youth. I hated him after-
ward for helping to arrange a peace which seemed to
me to guarantee the certainty of new and more dreadful
war. I hated him for handing over the fate of Ireland
to men like Sir Edward Carson, Hamar Greenwood, Sir
John French, General Tudor, and the gang of bureau-
crats and brass hats in Dublin Castle who tried to
break the spirit of a passionate people by methods of
Prussian militarism, and tried to stamp out the Sinn
Fein terror by a counter-terror which stoked up its fires,
put murderous hatred in the heart of every Irish youth,
made martyrs of those who died, and dishonored the
old fame of England by an abandonment of justice,
chivalry, and the spirit of liberty for which so much of
English youth had died. For that I hated Lloyd George,
and sometimes I think I hate him still.

Yet analyzing my own feelings I find, as so many of
his political opponents find, that not hatred, but admira-
tion strangely mingled with regret, affection twisted by
anger and annoyance, amusement causing laughter
with a groan in it, are my dominant impressions of this
amazing little man. The straight principles of honorable
men are warped under his influence. They weakened,
as I have seen them, visibly, under the spell of his babe-

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

blue eyes. Men go into his room cursing him in their
hearts, determined to resist his blandishments, reso-
lutely fixed to arguments and facts and convictions from
which they will not budge. In less than an hour with
him they have resisted nothing, have budged from all
their fixed points, and come out looking sheepish, smiling
weakly, saying, "Marvelous!" Time and time again
that has happened to trade-union leaders, political
critics, newspaper editors, ministers of state, generals.

I remember when he came out to France in the war.
It was the time when our G. H. Q. was deeply annoyed
by his way with them. Some of our generals expressed
their loathing for him openly in their messes. They
thought his visit was to spy out things, to make trouble.
The least prejudiced were convinced that he would stop
them from winning the war — though it was years
afterward that the war was won and at that time any
process of "winning" was not visible to impartial ob-
servers. The inevitable happened. I saw it happen,
and in private laughed. After a little while high officers
were treading on one another's spurs to get a word with
him, to listen to the words that fell from him. His air
of simplicity, his apparent candor, his sense of humor,
the keenness and alertness of his mind were not to be
resisted by them. They were hke school children in
the presence of an inspired schoolmaster.

Many people have had the honor of taking breakfast
with Mr. Lloyd George at No. lo Downing Street—
(Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly!) It is
a most dangerous hour to those who wish to preserve a
detached judgment. When I had the honor once of
being invited to this meal, I was very watchful of the
little great man and his menage, trying to get some
insight into the secret quality of his genius. There was
no ceremony to impress the stranger, but a homeliness
and candor far more impressive. Mr. Lloyd George

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

helped his guests to toast. Mrs. Lloyd George — a nice,
homely woman — poured out the morning coffee. Miss
Megan came down in a hurry, said, "Good morning,
Dad!" and attacked her bacon and eggs with the joyous
appetite of youth.

"How are things going in France?" asked Mrs.
Lloyd George, with a motherly sigh for all poor boys.

"Yes!" said the Prime Minister. "Dreadful mess,
that last battle, wasn't it.^ Haven't heard a word about
it from G. H. Q. First I heard was when I read your
articles." Subtle flattery and pleasing to a war cor-
respondent.

He asked straight questions, listened (unlike most
great men) to the answers, uttered indiscreet criticism
of high persons, chaffed Miss Megan, passed his cup for
some more coffee, groaned over the horror of war with
honest emotion, laughed heartily over a comic tale of
the trenches, discovered a point of fact he wanted to
know — the reason for the invitation to breakfast — and
indulged in a bright, uncomplimentary monologue about
generals, war offices and newspaper editors, until checked
by Mrs. Lloyd George, who said, "Get on with your
breakfast, dear."

Going away from that meal I had a glow of personal
vanity. This man, holding the fate of an empire, almost
the fate of the world, in his hands, had been glad to have
my views. He had listened with bright understanding
eyes to my explanation of facts. He had picked up a
phrase of mine and repeated it to his wife. Is it easy to
resist flattery like that? ... It is impossible.

That candor of his blue eye, that frankness of speech,
that readiness to alter his own opinion in view of a new
fact — ^were they just a camouflage of deep cunning,
artfulness developed into a natural habit? I do not
think so. There is in the soul of Lloyd George still a
certain simplicity, a boyishness, natural and unfeigned.

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

At Walton Heath, where he played golf to keep him fit
during the strain of war, he used to walk round a friend's
garden with a friend's daughter — a chit of a schoolgirl,
and talk to her in a comradely way, telling her funny
things that had happened in Cabinet meetings, ridiculing
the whimsical characteristics of ministers of state, chat-
ting about state secrets as though they were the gossip
of the village green. With a felt hat thrust sideways on
his shaggy locks, an old suit amazingly baggy at the
knees, and a gnarled stick like a country squire, he used
to stroll into this house, as I have seen him, and discuss
the situation breezily with a much closer realization of
the stark realities than those whom optimism blinded to
truth — yet never with any sign of weariness or despair.

Once with Lord Reading and Albert Thomas, the
French Minister of Labor, he came to the war cor-
respondents' mess in France. That was a breakfast
meal, too, and he was exceedingly vivacious. I noticed
that he was a keen listener to one comrade of mine who
has the gift of epigrammatic speech, and made a mental
note of a descriptive phrase about the battles of the
Somme which afterward he adopted as his own. So
did Shakespeare use the best he heard, if Bernard Shaw
is right.

One other time in the war I met Lloyd George, on a
night of great honor in my life, when Robert Donald
gave a dinner to me and invited many high people to the
board. It was generous of the Prime Minister to come,
and he was gracious and kind. Henry Nevinson was
there, I remember, an old friend once, and for a time a
public enemy of Lloyd George. For Nevinson — as I tell
elsevvhere in this book — was a champion of the militant
suffragettes, of whom Lloyd George was the arch antag-
onist, and he had rebuked and ridiculed Nevinson with
personal warmth. For other reasons this old comrade
of mine, fastidious in honor, always a rebel against

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

authority if he thought liberty v/ere threatened, disap-
proved of a Prime Minister, once a rebel of that kind,
too, who enforced authority against free speech, con-
scientious objection, peace propagandists, harshly in
time of war. The Prime Minister held out his hand to
Nevinson with a fine air of friendliness and pleasure,
and only for a second, with a little extra warmth of
color creeping into the ruddiness of his face, did Nevin-
son hesitate before he took it. The Prime Minister's
laugh was heartiest when the veteran war correspondent,
alluding to my greenness in my first adventure of war
(out in the Balkans), said that I did not know the
difference then between a staff officer and a fool.

I had to make a speech that night — an ordeal before
a Prime Minister of England and such an orator as this
one. Yet I kept my courage to the sticking point for
the sake of youth that was being slain so wastefully, in
such tragic masses. I wanted to tell Lloyd George the
things that happen on a battlefield, the things happening
in Flanders, every day, every night, in all the weeks and
months of days and nights, so that he should think of
the war not in the abstract, not as a conflict between
great powers, but in its actual drama, as a shambles of
boys and a world of human torture. I told him how a
battlefield looked on the morning of battle with its dead,
its stretcher-bearers searching for hunks of living flesh,
the "walking wounded" crawling on the way back,
falling, staggering up again, dropping again, the queues
of wounded outside the casualty clearing stations, the
blind boys, the men without faces, the "shell shocks."
It was not I that was making the speech. It was the
voice of the boys on the Western Front that spoke
through my lips to this man who was, to some extent at
least, the arbiter of their fate. So it seemed to me,
speaking in a trance-Uke way. General Smuts was by
my side and, though I had been talking with him, im-
3 25

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

pressed by his clear judgment and human sympathy, I
forgot him then, and all others at the table, and spoke
only to Lloyd George. When I finished I was aghast at
my own temerity, ashamed of the emotion with which
I had spoken, but he shook my hand and spoke some
words which told me that he knew and understood. . . .
He understands and has great sympathy with all the
suffering that the cruelty of life inflicts. It is because he
understands so much, feels so rightly, that one is angered
when often he supports those who stand for cruelty,
oppose peace and reconciliation, and defend evil forces.
I believe still that in his instincts Lloyd George is
always on the side of humanity and good will, though in
many of his acts he compromises with the spirit of harsh
reaction, makes friends too readily with the Mammon of
Unrighteousness, sells some quality of his soul for po-
litical power, the safety of his office, and the advantage
of immediate triumph.

A great comrade of mine in the war, with whom I went
on many strange adventures, used the name of Lloyd
George very much as Louis XIV is said to have done
that of his "brother" of England — as an irritant to the
liver. This friend, an officer in the regular cavalry,
typical of the English gentleman and officer of the old
South African war time — a good type (perhaps the best
in the world of its class and caste) but old-fashioned and
limited in imagination and knowledge — put all the evils
of England, and even the war itself, upon the head of
this little politician. Lloyd George's revolutionary
utterances, his Limehouse speech in which he outraged
the aristocracy of England by coarse abuse and reckless
libels, seemed to this cavalry officer the direct cause of
all the strikes and spirit of revolt in Great Britain.
His pro-Boer sympathies labeled him forever in my
friend's mind a traitor. His friendship with Jews and
financial crooks involving him in the Marconi scandal,

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

"from which," said the worthy captain, "he only
escaped by the skin of his teeth and the help of Sir
Edward Carson," proved the moral obliquity of the little
Welshman. His lip service to God and Nonconformity
sickened my friend as the foulest hypocrisy. He sus-
pected strongly that he was ready to betray Sir Douglas
Haig at any moment, just as he had betrayed Asquith
for the sake of the premiership, "just as he would sell
the soul of his grandmother," said the cavalry officer,
"for any dirty little trick in the political game."

I used to laugh heartily at these tirades. Indeed, to
brighten a journey up the Albert-Bapaume road or the
road to Peronne, I used to mention the name of Lloyd
George a propos of the day's news, rewarded instantly
by a warning of England's moral downfall under the
governance of a man who bribed the working classes to
work, bribed them again when they struck work, and
established the most inquisitorial system of bureaucracy
under which any people have been stifled. . . . Lloyd
George has gone a long way from the time when he
could be accused of revolutionary and subversive action,
an enemy of Capital. By slow degrees, yet very surely,
he was drawn over to the side of the Tory interest.
More and more he surrendered to the reactionary policy,
the hard materialistic outlook and rigid traditions of
Conservatives like Bonar Law and A. J. Balfour, Lord
Curzon and Sir Edward Carson, and of financial im-
periahsts like Lord Beaverbrook, by whose under-
ground work he had been raised to his high place. The
Coalition government, founded in time of war to unite
all parties in a national policy, became an assembly of
tame politicians whose job was to vote solidly for any
measure favored by the Prime Minister and his Con-
servative backers — and solidly to lean their weight
against any criticism or rebellion from independent
members. There was no more difference between a

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

Coalition Liberal and a Tory than between two tins of
canned pork differently labeled. They were men
disciplined to obey the government, to flock into the
lobbies like sheep at the crack of the government
"whips," to defend every government measure as good
and holy, to attack all critics as traitors to the country.
Whenever there was a bye-election the Coalition Liberals
were supported by the government machine, and blessed
by Tory Ministers of State, while Independent Liberals,
the last of the Old Guard of English Hberalism which
had once been the glory of the nation, of Gladstonian
tradition, were crushed by this unholy alliance.

The Prime Minister was the architect of this new
political system which has done much to deaden the
spirit of Parliament and to destroy its influence as the
tribunal before which the national interests were argued
and resolved. It could no longer be regarded as the
safeguard of British Hberty when the Cabinet possessed
an autocratic power and moderate opposition was
stifled by automatic majorities. It gave the extremists
in the Labor world their best argument. "What is the
use of appealing to constitutional government," they
asked, "when the House is packed by reactionary
forces, cleverly organized, unrepresentative of popular
will, and antagonistic to all Liberal ideas? Direct action
by strikes and threats of strikes, is the only method by
which the right of the working classes may be enforced."

Lloyd George, as many other great men have done
in the past, identifies himself with the interests of the
nation, and the interests of the nation with himself.
*' VEtat, c'est moi!" he says, with Louis XV. He is
perfectly aware that, owing to his peculiar qualities of
genius, there is as yet no other leader in England who
can challenge him or take his place. He is unrivaled in
oratory, in debate, in quickness of wit, above all in the
knowledge which is the greatest gift of generalship and

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

governance — when to attack and when to retreat.
Always he has his ear to the ground, Hstening to the
distant tramp of feet. Whenever it comes too near he
gives ground, "according to plan," and then with superb
audacity and a sure touch attacks his enemy in an un-
expected place. He retreats with the greatest grace in
the world, yielding the inevitable with a heau geste^ as a
generous gift. In debate his success is largely due to
that. He grants so much of his opponents' argument
that they are stupefied by his candor and disarmed by
his chivalry. As a rule he states their side of the case
with more persuasive oratory than they could dream of
doing. He goes farther than they would dare. It is
what he calls "taking the wind out of the enemy's sails."
Then he breaks through their line of battle with "the
Nelson touch" and destroys their last resistance with
his broadsides.

This is what he most enjoys. It makes him feel
young and fresh. His babe-blue eyes glow with the
light of battle. It appeals to that keen sense of humor
which is a large part of his power and a cause of his
weakness — a double-edged weapon. For it is his sense
of humor which enables him to preserve his mental
poise after years of intense strain bearing down upon
him from all quarters. Anxiety, dangers, attacks from
front and rear, leave him strangely unscathed because
he has the gift of laughter, sees great fun in it all, a
merry adventure. The pomposities of great gentlemen
like Lord Curzon, the preciosities of Mr. Balfour, the
conceits of Winston Churchill, afford him real amuse-
ment, and when he is weary of Cabinet discussions, tired
with high people, overstrained by the necessity of posing
as the new Napoleon, he retires gladly to a little circle
of low-class friends, and feels refreshed by their vul-
garities, their lack of high morality, their cynical knowl-
edge of life, and of him. He can take his ease among

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

them with nothing to conceal, nothing to pretend. He
knows their human frailties. They know his. They
have been well rewarded by him, and hope for more.
He likes their loyalty, their rich jests, their memories of
old times when together they heard the chimes at mid-
night. . . . Mr. Lloyd George will take his place in his-
tory as the most remarkable Prime Minister of England
since the time of the elder Pitt. It is possible also that
he will take his place in history as the man who by sur-
rendering his ideals at the time when the world was
crying out for spiritual leadership helped Europe fall
into moral degradation and material ruin.

Yet time and time again during those three years of
history his old instincts of idealism have revealed
themselves momentarily. He made a bid for peace with
the Russian people by which Bolshevism might have
been defeated, but surrendered to Winston Churchill's
military adventures on behalf of Kolchak, Denikin,
Wrangel, and others, which consolidated the power of
Trotzky, intensified the Red Terror, and broadened its
areas of agony. In dealing with the problem of German
reparations, he argued with the French government for
a reasonable policy which would give Europe a chance
of recovery and enable the German people to pay ac-
cording to possibility. But he surrendered to the
French militarists in their threat to occupy the Ruhr,
acknowledging as he did so that if this "sanction" were
fulfilled German industry would "wither" and with
this withering all hopes of European regeneration would
be quite blighted.

He made fair offers of conciliation with Ireland, but
frustrated all eflPorts of moderate men for peace by
approving the policy of reprisals, strengthening the
powers of the counter-terror, refusing to listen to all
pleas for mercy, yielding all methods of statesmanship to
the stupidity of "brass-hat" brains, dealing with the

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

Irish people, of whom 100,000 men had fought by our
side in the war, and whose soul has been heroic through
a thousand years of history, as though they were rebel
"niggers" of a slave-driving power. Whatever peace
may come to Ireland by the time this book is published,
it will not be due to Lloyd George, once the young
David who fought against the tyrant to liberty, but to
men who so loved England that they could not bear the
thought of her dishonor, as we were dishonored by the
madness and badness of our acts in Ireland. The
atrocious evil of Sinn Fein, the ferocity and cruelty of
its guerrilla warfare, were caused by no peculiar devil in
the Irish people, though the devil took possession of
the worst of them, but by our long Injustice, the falsity
of our political leaders, the irreconcilable fanaticism of
men like Sir Edward Carson and the light-hearted
cynicism of men like F. E. Smith, now Lord Birkenhead,
Lord Chancellor of England.

In the great crisis of English history, when, in these
last three years, our national life has been in danger
of ruin, and our empire itself is challenged by disintegra-
tion and decay, we have had no good fortune in leaders
whose wisdom and virtue called out the allegiance of
their peoples. Is there any soul in England who believes
in the wisdom of Winston Churchill.? Not one, I think,
in all the land. Wit he has, a bold spirit of adventure,
courage, stubborn self-conceit, the cool audacity of a
gambler who plays for big stakes, but no wisdom — no
luck, even, except in getting high office. It was aston-
ishing in the war how unlucky he was. Men with far
less ability, poor dunderheads compared with him,
blundered through to great success, or at least covered
over great failure and gained high reward. But Winston

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

Churchill had abominable luck which revealed his error
of judgment at Antwerp. The evacuation of the Dar-
danelles was a colossal revelation of failure. The Rus-
sian expeditions which he encouraged and helped to
organize were so bad that no one dares to tell the truth
of what happened. He has the instinct of the gambler,
and by a curious subconsciousness of mind speaks con-
stantly in terms of gambhng, I remember when I met
him during the war he said several times, as though it
were a fixed idea: "This war is the greatest gamble in
the history of the world. We're playing for the biggest
stakes." It did not seem to worry him that we were
gambling with the lives of boys — the counters in his
"kitty." After the great war we had "Winston's
little wars," as they were called derisively by humble
men. Mesopotamia was a gamble, too, costing us
many million pounds a year when in England the
overtaxed citizen was paying six shillings out of every
twenty of his income to an imperial exchequer whose
debts were spelled in figures beyond the imagination
of ordinary men. It was a gamble for the oil fields
of the East, but very hazardous and costly, and so
far unproductive.

I remember years ago waiting in Churchill's study. I
had gone to see him for some interview and he kept me
half an hour, so that I had time to examine the photo-
graphs on his mantelshelf and desk. There were several
of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, his illustrious
ancestor and one of the world's greatest gamblers, ad-
venturers, and generals. He was there as a youth, fine-
faced, in full-bottomed wig, and when Winston Churchill
came in I was startled by the likeness. In such a wig
he would have looked like this, amazingly. In those
days he was called "a young man in a hurry" and there
seemed no limit to the possibilities of his career. He
might have been as great as Marlborough, as un-

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

scrupulous as he was, as fortunate. But it has not been
so, though the chance seemed to be within his grasp.
Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, lured him, as other
men have been lured by their old spell, but the days of
empire are passing because of the exhaustion of men
after a war of massacre, because the idea of greater
empire has died within us and given place to new
ideals. Winston Churchill has been gambling with but
a few "chips" in his pocket, and the forces of evolution
and of fate have been heavily against him. He is not a
leader of the new ideals, but a man of yesterday, with
to-morrow coming near.

Where are the leaders of the new ideals? Are not all
our leaders men of yesterday, in England, France, even
the United States? Haphazard, I think of the leaders
of England. Lord Curzon, so grave and pompous — •
"God's butler," as the Oxford undergraduates called
their chancellor; Mr. A. J. Balfour, "dear Arthur,"
so perfect in courtesy, so philosophical in argument, so
gracious in dignity of manner, so debonair, even now,
with his silvered hairs, so hard in old ideas, so unbending
to new needs of life, so intolerant of human passions, so
cynical of enthusiasms and spiritual fervor, so stubborn
in hostility to any new adventure of liberty; Chamber-
lain, the counterfeit of a greater father, able as a bank
manager, correct as an archdeacon, cold as a statue on
the Thames Embankment, uninspired as the secretary
of an insurance office, but honorable and upright. Who
else is there that leaps to one's mind as one of the great
figures of history in this astounding period of the world's
fate? I can hardly think of the names of those who
govern England beyond those I have named. Hamar
Greenwood, the Canadian Jew, notorious and marvelous,
certainly for the unblushing daily denial of anything
undesirable in the administration of Ireland; Mr. Shortt,
his predecessor; Doctor Addison, the author of pre-

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

posterous failures; Sir Alfred Mond, the caricature of a
caricature; numbers of little men, insignificant per-
sonalities.

Sir Edward Carson, once a minister of state, for long
one of the powers behind the throne of political life,
stands out above them. In the memories of history he
is sure of a high place. For he has played a big part in
a big manner — the old style of melodrama — in the most
evil character of recent history. He has stood con-
sistently for reaction against all the influences of Liberal
progress. He has been for fanaticism instead of for con-
ciliation. He has defended cruelty instead of advocating
kindness. Upon his head more than upon any other
man alive rests the guilt of all that has happened in
Ireland. When Home Rule was passed by the British
House of Commons in 1914, he raised the banner of
rebellion with the sign of the Red Hand of Ulster. Long
before that Act was passed by a great majority of Eng-
lish Liberals and Irish members, he carried the fiery
torch among the Ulster people and with the present
Lord Chancellor, then F. E. Smith, as his "galloper"
and stump orator, beat up all the old prejudices of re-
ligious strife, racial hatred, political passion. Pro-
testing his loyalty to the King and the Flag of Union,
he raised, drilled, and commanded a rebel army pledged
to resist Home Rule by force of arms and to make a
mockery of the Act signed by George V. By his consent
and under his orders arms were smuggled into Ulster.
They were German rifles and ammunition. By a Solemn
League and Covenant he engaged the population of
Ulster by oath to resist Home Rule to the death, and
deliberately, with fiery oratory, and with every art of
inflaming passion, he set about the work of organizing
civil war.

It was only the Great War which stopped this one in
Ireland, for the time being, but he was truly the author

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

of that guerrilla warfare which has been waged by Sinn
Fein against the forces of the crown. The Irish outside
Ulster, the real Irish race, saw themselves threatened
by the rising and arming of the Ulster volunteers. They
knew the temper and purpose of these men. Some of
them had seen, as I had seen in the back slums of Bel-
fast, murderous assaults by Orangemen upon Catholic
workingmen who were kicked to death where they fell
under unprovoked attack. Some of them had seen, as I
had seen, the march past of thousands of young Ulster-
men, in military formation, well set up and well drilled,
grim, resolute, spoiling for a fight. Some of them heard,
as I heard. Sir Edward Carson's speeches promising them
"victory." The Irish of the south and west waited for
the demobilization of these men by the British govern-
ment. The news that came to them was the resignation
of British officers in the Curragh camp, who refused to
obey the orders of the War Minister to force their sur-
render of arms in Ulster. They began to raise their own
volunteers, drilled them, but could not arm them.
Then the other war happened. . . .

When it happened it seemed to promise for a time
reconciliation in Ireland in the face of a great and
common danger. Thousands of Irishmen volunteered
for service on behalf of the world's liberty, and the
Irish people of the old stock believed that at last their
country would have the right to rule herself according
to the watchwords of the war, "the self-determination
of peoples," "the right of the little nations," "the
brotherhood of man." They were treated stupidly,
tactlessly by the English War Office. Their ardor cooled,
and then something happened which seemed an insult
to every Irishman outside Ulster. It was an insult
when Sir Edward Carson, their avowed enemy, the
man who had wrecked Home Rule and raised a rebel
army against them, was made a minister of state.

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

How could they believe in the honesty or good will of
the British government with that man in the Council
Chamber? So step by step from exasperation to rebel-
lion, punished ruthlessly, though Carson went scot
free, from rebellion to general insurrection, to assassina-
tion, to guerrilla warfare, the horror of Ireland went on,
and all through its agony of murder and arson, govern-
ment reprisals and executions, Carson stood behind
Lloyd George, a sinister figure, and no word did he
speak for peace, though he is Irish, born of an Irish-
woman, no word of his was for the ending of bloodshed
by a truce of God, but only irreconcilable words, dividing
Ulster from the rest of Ireland, though at last he had
yielded to a separate Parliament.

"Do I look like a criminal?" asked Sir Edward Carson
once, in bland surprise at being called one. As G. K.
Chesterton said in answer to this question: "There is
only one answer possible. You do!" Many times in
those days before the war, when he was playing the
Napoleon of the boys of Belfast, I used to study his
face, so long and lean, with dark lines under his sunken
eyes, and a strange, cynical sneer on his lips. A power-
ful face, but without beauty in it, or any touch of kind-
ness or spiritual fire or human warmth, a haunted
face, I thought it, and guessed it might be haunted by
the memories of all the filth and corruption and greed
and cruelty which lawyers pass on their way in the
criminal courts. Sir Edward Carson himself is a man
of honor, according to the average code. He has the
manner of a great gentleman. In private life he is, I am
told, genial and good-natured. Toward the end of his
fight against Irish Home Rule he was, I think, even a
little conscience-stricken, and did at least and at last
remove his own personality from the arena of strife.
But he stands pilloried for all time as a raker-up of old
hatreds, old fanaticisms, old vendettas, old tyrannies

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

— the Man with the Muck Rake, prodding up the
lower passions of ignorant and brutal men.

VII

So, three years after war, was Great Britain governed
by men of the old ideas.

In France it was the same, though their leaders were
utterly different in type and in temperament.

Clemenceau has passed from the scene, though the
acts of his brain remain as a heritage to France. "The
Tiger," he was called by his worshipers, remembering
the ferocity of his temper, the swift strength of his intel-
lectual claws, when he was roused to action in youth and
the prime of life. I used to see him now and then in
time of war when he looked more like a walrus than a
tiger, a poor old walrus in a traveling circus. That was
when he used to visit the war zone, to talk with the
generals, to see the troops, to get a glimpse of that war
machine which he helped to create and to control — ■
perhaps to find death, as some French officers whis-
pered to me, when victory seemed impossible and de-
feat very near. I met him several times as he sat back
in a closed military car by the side of a French staff
officer, looking old and worn and sad — nothing of "The
Tiger." He went into dangerous places under fire and
there seemed no purpose in his being there. But I think
his purpose was to inflame his own heart against the
enemy, to get new stores and inspiration of hate. That
was the passion in him; and all the strength of his old
man's soul, remembering the humiliation of 1870, seeing
again the trail of the beast through his beloved country,
was to live long enough to see Germany smashed and
ground to dust.

He had his wish, and did a good deal of the grinding,
at the Peace Conference in Paris. Keynes's portrait of

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

him will live in history, that little old man wearing gray
gloves, which he never took off, shutting his eyes during
speeches and interpretations which did not affect the
essential purpose of his mind, which was the destruction
of Germany and the advantage of France, then waking
to instant activity of brain whenever those interests
were involved. His outlook upon life seemed to be
limited to the instant proof of French victory, in the
power to extort crushing indemnities from the beaten
enemy, to inflict the utmost severity of punishment,
which truly as a people they deserved. He had no pa-
tience with anyone who spoke of the perils of future
war, no tolerance with arithmeticians who tried to point
out that Germany could not pay all the costs of all the
nations after her own financial ruin, no ear to give to
others like President Wilson who proposed the ideals
of a new society of nations by which the peoples of
Europe should be relieved of military burdens and safe-
guarded by common interests. He mocked at all that
with a witty cynicism, sometimes rather blasphemous,
as when he said that Wilson imagined himself to be
Jesus Christ. It was he who invented the phrase in the
early days of the war that "the English would die to the
last Frenchman," though he made amends by later
enthusiasm for the valor and effort of the English people.
He had the gift of making a hon mot on any subject to
which his interest could be awakened, but all his best
witticisms had a touch of cruelt}^ without which, indeed,
wit becomes humor. The old man was a great French-
man, a great patriot of the old tradition. Without his
spirit, his passion, his obstinacy, his courage, France
would have been visibly weaker in her terrible ordeal.
But his narrow vision could not envisage the new ideals
for which so many men had fought and died — the de-
struction of militarism, not only in Germany, but in
France, a closer comradeship in the democracies of

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

Europe, an international tribunal before which the claims
of peoples would be brought, as a better way of argument
than national massacre. Clemenceau was one of those
who turned the world back to cynicism and national
selfishness. It might have been better for the world if he
had found death at the front in one of his expeditions.
Another mind in France intrenched, after the armis-
tice, in the spirit of the past, defying the hope of the
future, was that of Poincare, the war-time President,
the later critic of England. In war time he was a nonen-
tity, ridiculed in the revues^ the butt of Gallic wit, which
never forgot his secret retreat from Paris when the
enemy was so close to the gates in the beginning of the
evil days. They used to dress up comic figures in a
black uniform with a chauffeur's cap, and address them
as "M. le President de Bordeaux," and in such a uni-
form I saw him visiting his troops and ours, a tall man,
with a plump waxen face, expressionless and, I thought,
merely stupid. But after the war and his Presidency,
he developed a gift for journalism, and his articles had
a vicious appeal to the French public because he was
venomous in his criticism of the government which did
not make Germany "pay" — pay all those fantastic
billions of gold marks which the French in their simplicity
believed were hidden in the German treasury. It was
Poincare who inflamed French suspicion against Eng-
land, accused us of treachery to French claims in
Syria, and of low commercial interests preventing
France from reaping the fruits of victory. In all the
conferences that assembled to carry out the Treaty of
Versailles, England's influence was depicted by him as
unfriendly to French interests, hostile to French policy.
He reawakened the old tradition of "perfide Albion"
at a time when every little clerk in Paris believed that
English artfulness accounted for the fall in the value of
the franc, and French peasants (forgetful too quickly of

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

the young bodies of English boys that lie in their soil as
a pledge of friendship — six hundred thousand of them!)
said, as some of them said to me, ''Nous avons gagne la
guerrey mats VAngleterre va nous manger'" ("We won
the war, but England will devour us"). Alas! Alas! It
was not good work by M. Poincare in regard to England.
It was worse work for Europe. Because his advocacy of
an impossible sum to be paid by Germany delayed the
payment of the possible sum which could have been
exacted in punishment of her crime against the world.
It delayed the recovery of Europe, and perhaps pre-
vented it for all time, unless reason prevails very soon.

"Youth," said Herbert Hoover, in an interview I had
with him, and which I have chronicled elsewhere, "is
busy re-electing its old men. If Briand goes, he will be
followed by Poincare into deeper reaction."

Briand became Prime Minister of France, pursuing
a policy which was to obtain the military domination of
the Continent over the ruin of German militarism.

It is strange to find Aristide Briand in that role, as
it is to find Lloyd George the leader of the Conservative
party; and, indeed, the careers of these two men who
for a time have represented the reactionary policy of the
Imperialists in France and England are strangely similar
in every way.

Like Lloyd George, Aristide Briand was born of
humble parents who stinted and scraped to make their
boy a lawyer, and like Lloyd George again, the young
Briand was an ardent democrat of advanced and revolu-
tionary ideals. His "home town," as the Americans
say, was Nantes in Brittany, and here, after his legal
studies in Paris, he lounged about in cafes and wine
taverns, talking politics to the local demagogues, and
waiting for briefs which did not come. Suddenly he
leaped into fame for his defense in a cause celebre which
he made for himself.

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

It was in this way, as the story has been told to me.
A peasant murdered an agent de police in a particularly
brutal manner. To him, as he sat in his cell, went young
Aristide and asked permission to act as counsel for the
defense.

"There is no defense, m'sieu," said the peasant,
already prepared for the guillotine.

But when the case was called, Briand stood up and
said, "I will defend the prisoner." He called no wit-
nesses, for those of the prosecution told the plain, brutal
truth. But presently he began his speech for the de-
fense. He exalted the poor besotted man into the sub-
lime peasant type of France, and the agent de police
into the representative of the "brutal tyranny" of the
French government. With wonderful oratory he de-
scribed the life, the ignorance, the hard unending labor,
the very soul of peasant life in France, as Guy de Mau-
passant revealed it, as Zola made it terrible in realism.
The papers reported the speech, which lasted many
hours, and went on from one day to another. France
rocked with excitement. In the courthouse the jury
were moved to tears. The peasant was acquitted,
"without a stain on his character," and young Aristide
Briand was embraced by his friends. Nantes was not
big enough for him. He went to Paris with a few shirts
in his bag. He called on Jean Jaures, the Socialist
leader, then editing Ullumanite^ and sent up his card.

"Are you that young lawyer who defended the
peasant at Nantes?" asked Jaures.

Briand smiled and bowed.

Jaures embraced him.

"What can I do for you, mon vieux?"

"Give me three hundred francs a month and a seat
in your office," said Aristide Briand.

He became a journalist. He wrote scathing articles
against the government. He entered politics and made
4 41

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

inflammatory speeches in the country on behalf of labor.
The government began to take notice of him — began
to be afraid of him. With Jean Jaures he helped to
organize and strengthen the Confederation Generale du
Travail, and worked out a plan for a general strike
which would paralyze the government and deliver
France into the hands of the syndicates or trade unions.
Then the government offered him office. . . .

When I met Aristide Briand before the war he was a
Minister of France, hated as a renegade and traitor by
Jean Jaures, Gustave Herve, and all the leaders of labor.
He had forged the weapon of the general strike, and left
it in their hands. It was they who drew the sword to
strike him down.

The general strike was declared, and all France was
paralyzed. Not a train "marched," as they say. Not
a wheel turned. Paris was cut off from supplies, in
danger of starvation. At night it was plunged in dark-
ness, and I remember the gangs of students trooping
down from the Quartier Latin to the boulevards on the
right bank, with lanterns and bits of candle, singing
lugubrious dirges with the enjoyment of youth in any
kind of drama. But the government of France, all law
and order, were threatened by general revolution. Then
Briand showed the courage in him. He answered the
challenge of the general strike by calling all men of
several classes to the colors. That meant all the strikers.
It was penalty of death if they disobeyed orders. Would
they dare disobey.'' That was the question upon which
Briand risked not only his own life, but the life of France.
History tells that they obeyed — the strongest instinct
in the Frenchman's heart, loyalty to the flag, immediate
response to military tradition.

I saw Briand at that time face to face, in one of the
most interesting interviews I have had in my life. It
was in a room furnished in the style of Louis XV, ele-

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

gant with its long mirrors and gilded chairs, and I stood
by the side of a writing table where once Napoleon
Bonaparte sat as Emperor of the French. I chatted to
one of the secretaries, and there were others in the
room. Presently the door opened, and a tall, heavy-
shouldered man with a shock of black hair and a pale
face with somber eyes stood staring at me.

"Monsieur Briand!" whispered the secretary, hur-
riedly, because I stared back, not realizing that this was
the man, but strangely held by those dark eyes.

He talked in a friendly way, explained the gravity of
the situation in France, the need of strong action to re-
store the authority of government, his faith in the loyalty
of the French people. It was not so much what he said
that impressed me then, and now, but the personality
of the man, the look of intense fire within him, a kind
of mysticism or spiritual exaltation i the depths of that
dark gaze of his. He was more typical, I thought, of a
revolutionary leader than of French bureaucracy.

During the war he bided his time, took no great share
in national events. There were many who thought he
would be the Prime Minister of a liberal France, looking
beyond the immediate fruits of victory to a new pact of
peace in Europe between the democracies of many coun-
tries, rising to the ideal of a League of Nations. In-
stead, he demanded the advance into the Ruhr which
might have been a mortal wound to white civilization
in Europe by insuring a war of the future in which the
last of our youth would perish. For that policy could
only be maintained as long as France held the power
of the sword, and one day that will weaken.

VIII

I write these things not in blame; not even in cirti-
cism of these leaders of the old tradition in Europe.

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

By all the probabilities of psychological law not a man
who reads this book of mine would have done otherwise
than what he did, or would have been nobler, wiser than
any of them. They did their best to the height of their
quality and character, to the limit of their national
vision.

Looking at the settlement of Europe after the war,
and the terms of peace, in the Hght of old precedents,
with reference to what was done after other wars and
other victories, and with no reaching out to new ideals,
they fulfilled their duty loyally, each man, to the imme-
diate interests of his own country, as they seemed to
him, each man striving for what gain his nation might
get. One cannot blame them because as leaders they
rose no higher than the ethical average of political
morality. One cannot criticize them because they were
little statesmen and not great philosophers — the poineers
of a new world. One only laments that in this time of
enormous crisis in the world's history there appeared
no men or man among us with a genius great enough to
call humanity to a new advance upon the road of social
progress, to call upon all that surging of emotion and
ideahsm which was at work in the hearts of peoples
because of the agony they had suffered and their dreadful
disgust at the thing that had happened.

The failure of the leaders of the old tradition was due
to their utter inability to realize that the war which
had ended and the victory gained were unhke all others
in history.

They did not understand, being poor men at arith-
metic, that most of the accumulated wealth of Euro-
pean civilization had been destroyed in those four and
a half years, leading to such exhaustion among victors
as well as vanquished that the industrial Ufe of Europe
was threatened with decay and death.

They did not know that by the intricate and deHcate

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

machinery of modern industrial civilization depending
upon a liberal interchange of credits, raw material, ex-
ports, imports, and all activities of working folk, the
ruin of one great people must of necessity injure the
commerce of all surrounding countries and lower the
average of wealth, the normal standard of life, in every
other nation.

Their imagination was not educated to the power of
gauging the effect of the enormous loss of man power
and of spiritual strength, upon the work in fields and
factories of all peoples who had been stricken in the
conflict, so that for years their output would be de-
creased and their markets damaged, with the inevitable
result of widespread unemployment and increasing
poverty.

They believed, in their simplicity, that, despite the
hideous calamity of Russia, once the granary of Europe,
and a great market, notwithstanding the sentence of
death they proposed to pass on Austria, and the col-
lapse of a great part of central Europe, they could
avoid their own bankruptcy and revive their own
prosperity, by getting all the costs of war from Germany.
Some of their own economic advisers warned them that
Germany was also ruined, and that only by future indus-
try spread over innumerable years could she ever pay
for the actual damage done, and that even then, if she
paid back by an enormous output of manufactured
articles produced by the sweated labor of a slave popu-
lation, the whole balance of trade in the world would
be upset and the industry of England, France, and many
countries would be undermined. At the same time that
they wanted to make Germany pay all the costs of all
the victories, which she could only hope to do by an
enormous vitality of industry, fatal to the competition
of other countries, they wanted to keep her so damaged
and depressed that she could not rise again as a menace

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

to her enemies. The problem was stated by an American
humorist in the form of a question, **How can you keep
a mule so weak that it cannot kick you and so strong that
it can pull the plow?" I have not found an answer.

Apart altogether from the economic condition of
Europe, so desperate that it needed the wisest doctoring
of men regarding its disease, not passionately, but with
scientific gravity, with the knowledge that all European
countries are members of one body, in which the disease
of a vital organ means a spreading poison throughout
the system — the spiritual results of the war were entirely
ignored by the leaders of the old tradition. They acted
as though there had been no change in the minds of men
and women during that conflict, whereas the psychology
of peoples had undergone enormous changes.

The peoples had seen the meaning of modern war in
which the civilian was as much a part of its destructive
activity as the soldier himself, in which all humanity
was overwhelmed by monstrous engines of destruction.
The victor peoples did not desire vengeance so much as
security from future war. The vanquished, after having
spilled torrents of the blood of youth in vain, were ready,
for a little while at least, to accept all the penalties of
defeat, if they were but given the hope of regeneration.
Long before the end of the war the German peasants
and artisans had abandoned the ideals of militarism to
which they had rallied in the early days. They called
the war "The Great Swindle," as I read in hundreds of
letters captured from their dugouts. On the Russian
Front they were infected with the pacifist philosophy of
the Soviets before it became the bloody terror of the
Bolsheviks. On the Western Front they acclaimed the
Fourteen Points of President Wilson. Something might
have been made out of that new psychology by new
leaders who did not assume that the psychology of the
peoples was the same in 1919 as in 1914.

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

In Germany the leaders of the old tradition also be-
trayed the new hopes. The German people, by the stupor
of defeat, an inherited sense of obedience to their ruling
caste, and a national hatred of revolutionary violence,
failed to overthrow the caste which had led them to
disaster. The Junkers remained in their strongholds
and not one of them was hanged up to his gatepost.
The old bureaucracy of the Empire remained as the bu-
reaucracy of the Republic. Noske, Scheidemann,
Ebert, were no more democratic in spirit than Beth-
mann-Hollweg or Doctor Solf. Hindenburg and Luden-
dorff still remained heroic figures in the imagination of
men who remembered that those names had been linked
with great victories on many fronts where the German
race had fulfilled its pride. The very depths of their
defeat, the hatred of all the world to them, caused reac-
tion in the mind of the German populace, who had
cursed them as tyrants when the war was on, and now
softened to them, swung back to them in admiration,
as heroes of the time before the great humiliation. The
German people, immediately after their defeat, might
have flung off their old castes and tyrannies with a great
cry of liberation, and asked for the generosity of the
world's democracy. I believe they were for a time ready
to do so, if any great leader had been with them to
help. I believe they are ready even now, if any leader
in the world would help them. But instead, they
allowed themselves to be led by the old, crafty, auto-
cratic minds of the Prussian tradition, whose sole idea
of patriotism was to shirk honest payment on any basis
of justice and to scorn repentance for great crimes.
Their sole idea of statecraft was to bluster and bully
before the victor nations and their own people, and their
one hope of escape from the consequences of defeat was
to divide the Allies by intrigue, and to recapture their
own power by economic forces created by the slave

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

industry of their half-starved workers. The Supreme
Council of the Allies, and the chauvinists of the Allied
nations, played into the hands of the German leaders
of the old tradition. They declined to follow Wilson's
lead of giving German democracy a chance, on condition
that German Junkerdom should be destroyed.

By the many injustices of the Peace Treaty which put
large Teutonic populations under the domination of
Poles, Italians, and Czechs, killed the economic life of
Austria, and imposed burdens upon the working people
of Germany which seemed to them beyond human toler-
ance, the Allies hardened the temper of those people
and stifled their hope of deliverance from their own old
tyrannies. They were made the pariah people of the
earth. No nation would receive them. No enemy
would forgive them. No hope would be given to them.
It is no wonder that gradually they harked back to their
old national sentiment and, being denied a new inter-
national ideal, turned to the old caste again, which at
least had defended the old nationalism. They intrenched
themselves in hate against hate, abandoned thoughts of
a new freedom for the hope of a new vengeance.

I am not one of those who minimize the guilt of Ger-
many in the war. I remember great brutalities, abom-
inable wickedness. Nor do I ignore the claims of justice
for due punishment of crimes, and the absolute right of
France to the reconstruction of her devastated coun-
try and all the ruins of her state. But I believe that if
the leaders of the old tradition had been greater in
leadership and had called all people to a new philosophy
of international life for the sake of future peace and
the common weal of Europe, the German people would
have paid more willingly, according to their power, and
would have labored with all their might of industry to
build up the ruins they had caused. Because they and
their fellow workers in all countries would have been

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION

inspired with enthusiasm for the healing of wounds, so
that free peoples, cured of the old disease of war, might
march joyfully to new conquests in peace. There was a
chance of that, and I am not alone in thinking so. All
the thinking men and women I meet in many parts of
the world believe so too — realists like Hoover, idealists
like Robert Cecil, humanists like Anatole France and
H. G. Wells. But the leaders of the old tradition would
not have it so.

roEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

TN this world of cynical old people who stare forward
^ to the future with a melancholy which is masked by
an ironical contempt for human nature — has it not
proved itself incapable of wisdom or of any sane scheme
of progress ? — and who have a secret or avowed convic-
tion that Europe is doomed by the fatal consequences
of recent history, there are still numbers of men and
women, in every country, with an ardent faith in the
possibility of building a nobler system of life than that
which existed before the ruin into which war plunged
the European peoples.

These ideaHsts are brave folk! To their opponents the
cynics, they seem ridiculous, though charming — dear,
unpractical creatures looking at life through a mirage of
sentiment, ignoring plain and frightful facts, trying to
twist human nature to standards of conduct which
mankind is totally incapable of adopting, fighting, with
pretty or futile phrase, against the monstrous powers of
evolution, racial pressures, physical distress, primitive
and ineradicable instincts of greed, cruelty, and passion
which belong to the human animal.

Certainly the history of these recent years seems to
be a death blow to the idealists, and it is surprising to
find some of them still alive — some of the old guard —
scarred and wounded in their souls — but still valiant,
undeterred, ardent. Remember what they aimed at and

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

how tremendously they failed, as they knew they had
failed, on that day of August, 1914, when the greal
armies moved and Armageddon came.

Take a man like Jean Jaures, the leader of the French
Socialists, one of the old guard who fell in the fight. He
was really a sentimentalist, though he roared hke a lion.
With a gift of violent oratory at his command when-
ever he wished to stir the emotion of mobs, as I saw him
stir them in the old days of Paris, intolerant and abusive
of a religion which seemed to him the protector and ally
of the evil powers of military force and class privilege
whom he was fighting, he had a philosophy and a faith
which, in its simple motives, in spite of ironical skepti-
cism, was really Christian in its idealism. He believed,
beneath all the superficial irony of French wit and the
stark realism of French intelligence, that human nature
in the mass is capable of "salvation" and that its con-
science is divine in essence, ready to choose the way of
righteousness, rather than of animalism, if liberated
from ignorance and filth and from the false spells put
upon it by corrupt rulers. He believed — and it was a
wonderful faith for a Frenchman — that the peoples of
all countries, even of that country which still held
Alsace and Lorraine and maintained the menace of an
army which threatened France with death, might be
united in a common brotherhood, based upon the
common interests of a free democracy and upon claims
of human nature nobler than national rivalries, the love
of wife and babes; the denial of blood lust between
laboring men; the right to peace and joy in life among
peoples in possession of their soil, with ample security of
life's necessities; a little margin of wealth for beauty
and recreation for every toiler, and freedom from the
tyranny of governing classes, or overrich castes, who
made use of the bodies and souls of humbler men for
financial warfare or imperial ambitions. That in its

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

essence and impulse was the faith of Jean Jaures and of
millions of other men who listened to his flaming words.
So I heard him proclaim it once in a salle de manege
somewhere in a slum of Paris, where the bodies of two
thousand cheminots (the railway men) were pressed
closely and hotly together, when from their sweaty
clothes came a rancid odor, and the heat of their breath
was stifling in the whitewashed hall.

He was a revolutionist, though without cruelty in his
heart. He proclaimed "The International" and had a
childlike optimism in the conversion of the German peo-
ple to a pacifist gospel. He spoke grandiose words about
"the solidarity of labor" (the new spell word of the
toilers) and helped to organize the Confederation General
du Travail with Briand, who defeated it when he became
Prime Minister for the first time, because it threatened
to overthrow the social structure of France, which had
once been his own ambition.

Jean Jaures was the champion of the antimilitarists
and attacked the system of the three years' service in
France with unceasing eloquence which made him
feared and hated by those who were preparing for the
"inevitable" war with the old enemy. He was bold
enough — in France! — to denounce patriotism as a worn-
out creed, an evil perpetuation of old feuds, a narrow
passion that would lead indeed to a new and inevitable
war unless it was broadened by new meanings — and no
one who knew Jaures believed that his abuse of patri-
otism meant any lack of love for France, because he had
an adoration for the French spirit, for her poetry, for
all her beauty, for Paris in every nook and corner
haunted by old ghosts. His enemies said he had weak-
ened France by his life's work, and that I think was true
in so far as he succeeded in limiting expenditure on
armaments and military preparations. By the failure
of his philosophy, the utter breakdown of his hope to

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

build a bridge of peace between the laboring folk of
Germany and his own, all his turbulent activity had
helped to make France less certain of victory when she
was faced by the ordeal of war — because he had worked,
not for the victory of war, but of peace, when there was
no peace. On the first day of war he was struck down
by a crazy patriot, and I saw his coffin carried through
the Tuileries, followed by many who paid a false homage
to his dead body out of fear of the mobs who had loved
him. But the mobs marched with their battalions to
save France, as he would have marched now that his
hopes had failed of a v/orld united in security and
brotherhood.

In the opposite camp — among the traditional enemies
of France — there was another leader of democracy who
was working for the same ideals as those of Jaures, in a
less inspired way. It was Edward Bernstein, the leader
of the Social Democrats. He, too, had preached the
"solidarity of labor," the common interests of working
folk across the frontiers of nations, and the doctrine of
international peace. Those to whom the Jewish race
is a bogey of evil working by subterranean ways to over-
turn the structure of civilization, that Israel may reign
supreme above its ruin, will scofF at Bernstein's name
and denounce him as one of the dark hypocrites of that
frightful conspiracy. I thought him an honest man,
within the ordinary limitations of political leaders, when
I met him in Berlin before the war, and I think so still.
So honest in his estimate of actual conditions that he
confessed his despair to me and the weakness of his own
leadership because he saw the inevitability of the Arma-
geddon that was coming, owing to the conflict of powers
and castes and traditions which had more sway over
the people than any teaching of his.

I remember him now — though between then and
now is the war that was fought, and a world that has

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

changed — sitting in a swing chair before a roll-top desk,
telling me things that did not startle me, because my
imagination was incapable of adjusting itself to their
significance. His exact words I have forgotten, but he
spoke of the lack of education in international ideals
among the working classes of Germany. They had
adopted international catchwords, sincerely but super-
ficially. His teaching and that of his predecessors had
not broken down national impulses, the vainglory of
national pride, the passionate belief in the invincibility
of the German army, the sense of imperial destiny
taught in the schools, the influences of militarism,
monarchy, and racial loyalty which were inculcated by
the whole system and philosophy of German kultur.

"If war comes," said Bernstein, *'the Social Demo-
crats who have been theoretical pacifists will march as
one man against the enemy, whoever that may be. Our
ideals are still in advance of the psychology of peoples."

He spoke the exact dreadful truth, and at the out-
break of war Social Democracy in Germany betrayed its
faith, unable to resist the call to a false patriotism
which seemed higher then than any other gospel, though
its aims were devihsh. So most other pacifists in all
countries found themselves compelled to declare a
moratorium to their hopes of international comradeship
and fell back to national aspirations on behalf ot a vic-
tory which, for the time being, seemed — on both sides
of the line! — decreed by God for justice' sake and hu-
man progress.

How foolish, then, how vain and mocking to poor
human toilers in world ideals, seemed all the efforts of
their Ufe toward a larger fraternity of man! That was
one of the worst and most shocking tragedies of war,
for to these simple souls — simple most of them, in spite
of hard reading and long research into the history of
thought — all their faith came toppling down to ruin.

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

Whatever God they had worshiped in the secret
shrines of their hearts seemed to have betrayed them.
The devils laughed at them, crying, "How now, simple-
tons?" For they had believed that human nature had
reached a stage when it would refuse to go back to the
old barbarities of wholesale slaughter in the fields of
Europe, and that the level of common intelligence
among "civilized" peoples had been lifted above the
possibilities of such " a general massacre as now must
happen among them. Elementary education had made
great strides. The peoples had learned to read. They
had read the little pamphlets of the Fabian Society.
Sidney Webb had lectured to them. H. G. Wells had
written his socialistic novels for them. G. B. Shaw had
ridiculed them out of old superstitions. Across the
English Channel, Anatole France was the last of a long
series of ironists, from Rabelais onward, who had mocked
at the slavery of the common folk under the supersti-
tion of political and tyrannical dogmas which turned
them into gun fodder for the big game of war, played by
imperialists and financiers. Even out of Russia, still
under tyranny, still illiterate in the mass, had come a
new prophet of peace and human brotherhood — Tolstoy.
He had written war and peace among his other books,
stripping war bare of its old illusions, showing the falsity
of its "glory," its squalor and cruelty and stupidity.
In all great countries of Europe — except poor Russia,
still in chains — the idealists had seen with eyes of faith
a general awakening of mass intelligence to the high
sanities of life — the reasonable arrangement of inter-
national peace, the closer comradeship between "Labor"
in all countries, a higher standard of decency and com-
fort, with a little leisure and learning for all citizens of
civilized states, whose well-being at home might be
secured by the abolition of military burdens, following
the establishment of international arbitration. That

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

blessed word — arbitration! — had been the spell word of
the idealists. Long and ardently did they support the
labors of the Hague Tribunal — the great guaranty of
world peace. In big books and in booklets, how many of
them devoted their time and money to bring these ideals
to the mind of the masses in a spirit of self-sacrifice for
humanity's sake! Then out of the blue sky the bolt
fell, and with its falling destroyed all that they had
striven to do, all their spiritual toil.

In every country of Europe there were men and women
stricken like that. I knew some of them. With some of
them I had worked, now and then, half-heartedly, being
of more frivolous mind.

I saw the tragedy of one of them a few days after the
outbreak of war, in Paris, when the first trainloads of
mobilises were going eastward to Toul and Belfort and
the frontiers of Alsace and Lorraine — few northward
where the great shadow was creeping close — and all the
streets of Paris were filled with the passion of eternal
partings. It was George Herbert Perris, one of the most
untiring laborers on the road to international peace.
I describe him, not because he was a famous man, though
his activity was known in many countries, but because
he was a type of many similar minds in England. All
his working life a journalist and public speaker, his pen
had never betrayed his principles, and his enthusiasm
and ardor had been boyish, genially intolerant of all
poor blockheads and reactionaries who did not believe
with him that victory was in sight — victory for a world
court of arbitration, for general disarmament — (how
fiercely and with what joyful irony he had exposed the
commercial activities of armament firms who grew rich
out of war-making!) and for a fraternal democracy of
peoples across the frontiers of nationality. He was a

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

disciple of Tolstoy and had written his life with rever-
ence, though he could not follow the old man through all
his gospel, which, in the end, was near to madness, for
Perris was practical and in a mystical sense unspiritual.
He had sheltered Russian revolutionaries in his suburban
home, was the friend of men Hke Kropotkin, and his
pen had traveled over reams of paper recording the
martyrdom of those who struggled for Russian freedom.
He was, in his character and activities, typical of many
groups of intellectual workers who in London, Liverpool,
and other Enghsh cities devoted themselves to com-
mittee work (after hours of professional toil to keep
small homes above the poverty line) on behalf of the
*' Brotherhood of Man" and all downtrodden folk from
Camden Town to Congo.

In Paris I found him, after he had been carried back
with the tide of refugees from the frontiers of war — he
was the delegate to a meeting of the Peace League! —
and in the shabby bedroom of the little Hotel du Dauphin
in the rue St. Roch he confessed his agony to me. I
remember now the gray look of his face, and his nervous
movements in that little room, and his cry of despair.

*'This makes a mockery of all my life," he said.
"Everything that I believed is now untrue. Everything
I hoped is broken. This puts back civilization a hundred
years. There is only one explanation and that is of no
avail. It is that Germany has gone mad."

In some such words he spoke to me, hour after hour,
while down in the street Frenchmen were trudging with
their wives to the railway stations, where they would
say "Adieu!" and go to unknown horrors.

"This war," said Perris, "the abominable criminality
of the German attack, has killed me as a pacifist. Until
Germany is defeated I am a believer in war to the death,
for unless Germany is punished for this crime and utterly
broken, there can be no hope for the world."

5 57

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

He, too, like thousands of other men, declared a mora-
torium of all international ideals for so long as the
enemy remained unbeaten, but for Perris, as for some
others, this change of spirit was like tearing out his soul.
The cold passion of his hatred for the German war lords
who had caused this agony was religious in its devotion.
He became a war correspondent with the French army,
whose valor and sacrifice he learned to admire with all
the homage of his heart. One of the greatest pacifists in
England was decorated with the Legion of Honor for
his services to the French army, and kissed on both
cheeks by the French general who conferred it. After
the war I met my friend again, older by more than the
four and a half years of war, worn and frail after the
strain of it. He was at Geneva, in the Hotel du Beau
Rivage, during the Assembly of the League of Nations,
and we had long talks together. He had gone back to
his faith and philosophy before the war — indeed he
maintained that he had never changed any of his ideals.
But I think that with him, as with many men, the years
of war had been a separate adventure of soul, something
apart and distinct from all previous thought and imag-
ination, having no relation to previous qualities of
character. Afterward the experience of it vanished as
a nightmare, and men tried to pick up the threads of the
previous life as they had left them, and wondered why
they failed and fumbled.

Perris was marvelous in the way he seemed to have
gone back to his old way of thought. I think he emerged
from the war with his previous ideals sharpened and
hardened and deeper dug, though with more caution
in his method of persuasion, and with less intolerance
of opposition. But he was not so cynical as younger
men who surrounded him, and his laughter rang out
in challenge to colleagues who jeered at this work of
the League of Nations. ''Reactionaries!" he cried.

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

"This League holds all the hope of the new world that
is coming. You expect too much of it at first. We are
on the right lines and doing good work for the healing
of the wounded world." So he spoke and worked
until he died, there in Geneva, a veteran in the cause of
international peace, though the oldest and the newest
nations were even then digging new trenches against
the international ideal!

At the funeral, when I stood by the coffin of my
friend, I saluted him as one of the Old Guard. Others,
old comrades of his in the work of his life, stood up to
pay their tribute to him, and men like G. N. Barnes, the
Labor Member and Privy Councilor, remembered
the old ardent days when they, like him, had believed
that humanity, free in common sense, would have no
more of war on the universal scale . . . Perris was but
a type, and a noble one, of many self-sacrificing men in
England who did the spade work of a new world without
public recognition or hope of fame.

Ill

Rewarded by fame, immensely fortunate in material
success and recognition of many-sided genius, one
idealist is working away with the energy and precision
of an American reaper-and-binder to clear the ground
of human intellect from its undergrowth of ignorance
and prejudice, so that a fair new world, dedicated to
human reason, may be built by youth thereon. That
is H. G. Wells, one of the most whimsical prophets and
philosophers in the history of ideas. In many ways he
must take first place among the idealists who are trying
to scheme out a new social structure, because he is more
valuable than any of them, most audacious in his far-
reaching plans, most definite, precise, and practical in
his program, and not so "wild" in his methods of

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

argument as those who would tear down the existing
structure regardless of human tragedy before attempting
to build upon the ruin. H. G. Wells has the artfulness
of the "restorer" of ancient monuments, who, by under-
pinning and other architectural dodges, produces a
brand-new building without outraging public senti-
ment by obvious destruction of the old. By this method
he is able to avoid the charge of being a " revolutionary, "
his articles are printed in newspapers supported by
the defenders and producers of "Capital," and he is
invited out to dinner with moderately respectable
people, including British generals, to whose head-
quarters he went during the war with a special pass
from G. H. Q.

That is a little strange, when one considers the pres-
ent nervousness of English society and the deep sus-
picion of the military mind on the subject of revolu-
tionary literature. For H. G. Wells is more revolu-
tionary in his ideals than men of the trade unions or
of the Parliamentary Labor Party, who are branded
as "Bolsheviks" by their Conservative opponents.
While they are thinking mostly in terms of national
politics, to secure more democratic control of the national
state, H. G. Wells is theoretically flinging down fron-
tiers, overturning the last remaining dynasties, forming
a universal aUiance of Labor and establishing the
United States of the World. It is the very magnificence
of his conceptions that disarms all sense of fear among
those who are fearful. They read his visions of that new
world state as with amusement and interest they read
his "War of the Worlds" and his "Food of the Gods,"
things too fantastic to be frightening. Then, too, he is
labeled as a "funny man." The author of Kipps and
Mr. Polly and Tono Bungay, vastly entertaining even
to "nice people" of the leisured classes, is not, they
think, to be taken seriously when he begins to write

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

about God or the English political system. Perhaps
they are right, instinctively and surely. It is the
tragedy of H. G. Wells (though he is not a tragic figure)
that his sense of humor and the spirit of comedy that
presided at his birth prevent him from stirring the
faith and emotion of people who are seeking guidance
through the jungle darkness of this world. Though
he holds a light before him, sometimes a clear-shining
light of common sense, they suspect him of Pucklike
tricks that are only a lure into deep thickets. In spite
of the beauty of some of his thoughts (as in a book
like Mr. Britling Sees It Throughy where he was more
sincere, more emotional in his sense of life's tragedy
than ever before), they hear from afar his goblin laugh-
ter, sec the mischievous glint of his sideways glance.
They are not sure, either, of any divine fire in the man,
any true nobility of soul which must be the attribute
of those who would lead humanity to a higher range of
goodness. In several of his books he thrusts forward a
little vulgar man as his hero — he exaggerates his defects
— rather below the ordinary standard of the social code,
not because of the things he is pleased to do, but because
of the way he is pleased to described them. He finds a
comical pride in thrusting this vulgarian before the
fastidious, as though to say, "We are all hke this, and
I dare say so!" But the teachers of the world have
not been like that. They have been great sinners, but
not little cads. They have agonized over their frailty,
not found it rather good, and anyhow quite usual as a
habit of the times.

It was the desire of H. G. Wells to show his minute
particular knowledge of the modern type of youth and
middle age in the great new middle classes which made
him put in these touches for the sake of truth. And
they are true — true to the little lives of millions whose
adventure of soul is confined by small proprieties, and

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

whose sins are little sordid, secret immoralities. But
that microscopic treatment of modern life has hampered
Wells in his larger visions, and tripped up his devotees.
I think his sense of humor, his easy tolerance of common
weakness, not tender-hearted and all-embracing, but
critical and sarcastic, trips up his own steps toward
the higher ranges of thought. He stops to laugh at
himself, as when he said to me once, after an earnest
conversation about the attributes of the Divine Power,
"You would hardly believe how much I am nuzzling
up to God!" His mysticism fell w4th a crash; his
groping for some higher authority than human reason
was mocked by this guffaw. In his country house, in
Essex, described in all delightful detail in the first
chapters of Mr. Britling (even the German tutor was
drawn to life), and in his rooms in London I have
seen H. G. Wells among his friends and watched the
man who, beyond any doubt, is one of the leaders of
modern thought, one of the most active, untiring, ardent,
courageous "reformers" of this society. It was sur-
prising to me that I felt no sense of being in the com-
pany of greatness, nor of being inspired by the light of
genius. He made little jests, shrewd little comments,
amusing and interesting to hear, and he was very watch-
ful of his company, as I saw by the quick, penetrating,
sideways looks which registered them and all their
small tricks of manner in his photographic mind. But
he had not the sure dogmatism of a man who has grappled
with truth and with the elemental problems of Hfe and
come with some certain faith out of dark hours. Nor
had he the smiling irony of men who have come through
such hours, not with any certain faith, but with a tender
and melancholy skepticism which makes them benev-
olent to life, very tolerant, wise in the knowledge of
their ignorance. H. G. Wells is assertive, dogmatic
like a school-teacher, rapid in thought, as the well-

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

trained journalist he is, whimsical, restless, and uneasy.
In his work he is Hke that — quick, journaHstic, cock-
sure, slick in the craftsmanship of his ideas. Yet, after
all, astonishing in the universal range and energy of
his endeavors, in the courage of his ideas, the gallant
way he takes all the world for his province, all history
for his background, all the future for his prophecy, all
humanity for his microscope. He has, perhaps more
than any living writer in the EngUsh language, stirred
up the common mind to think beyond the little bound-
aries of suburban experience, to see his own little life
as in a mirror, to feel in closer touch with the big move-
ments of the human family, and to desire more knowl-
edge of history and science in order to Hft the human
race, and his own personality, to a cleaner and nobler
stage of social progress. That is a big thing to do, and
H. G. Wells, in spite of httle characteristics not belong-
ing to the highest genius, has been big in endeavor and
achievement up to that point. With the clean, sharp
weapon of his pen he is now educating the middle-
class mind in the international idea, which has the uni-
versal brotherhood of man as its great ideal.

The "Mob" (as it used to be called with contempt),
not belonging to the middle class, but to the ranks of
labor — the intelligent mechanic, the factory hand,
the skilled laborer — is being educated toward the
same ideal by pamphleteers and tract writers unknown
by name to all outside that class, and by local oratory
and debating societies, and private conversations be-
tween shifts of work, for mixed up with idealism is the
hard selfishness of narrow trade interests, a cruelty of
hatred of the class above, and the wild fervor of revolu-
tionary propaganda which has no motive but destruction.

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

Between the incalculable ferment that is at work
among the masses of working people in all countries of
Europe — as yet we do not know what will rise out of
that yeasty thought — and the theoretical adventures
in reconstruction by the intellectual reformers, there
is an immense chasm of psychology so far unbridged.
There is, as yet, no one in Europe — at least I do not
know him — who speaks with the voice of the people,
whose words find an echoing thrill in the heart of the
people, whose leadership and magic personality are
acknowledged by the people.

No writer has appeared of late to be the interpreter
of the great multitude, as Charles Dickens was in his
time and within the hmitations of his contemporary
thought. No poet hke Victor Hugo has arisen to call
to the soul of his folk with a music of words which was
magic to every Frenchman, so that they vibrated to
his rhythm, were inspired by his passion. No man of
action has humanity behind him, ready to go where he
beckons, as once Napoleon led his legions in the name
of hberty and glory to many battlefields where their
bones were strewn. No religious teacher has come out
of study or cloister to utter thunder words before which
the multitudes tremble and fall down, in obedience to
him, or words of love giving life a new sweetness even
in sacrifice, and a sense of richness in poverty. Our
leaders of thought seem to be enormously ignorant of
the instincts, ideas, and purposes of humanity in the
mass, of their suffering, their agonies, their hopes, their
passions. Too many of them talk from high, bleak
altitudes, in the accents of cultured castes, in unpop-
ular language, and without the fire of human love to
warm the heart of the crowd.

Typical of such men seems to me Lord Robert Cecil
in many ways, by many qualities, the leader of the new
political ideaUsm in English culture. He stood for

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

honesty and honor and truth at a time when the bar-
gain between half-hearted Liberals and Tory reaction-
aries had resulted in a Coalition Parliament which
voted bhndly at the dictates of the Prime Minister and
his Cabinet, surrendering their duty of criticism, de-
fending every ill-conceived act, every extravagance of
policy, all unwisdom due to the narrow reactionary
brains of the Prime Minister's masters (his very soul
was surrendered to them as a bargain for political
kingship), with a tame acquiescence hardly known
before in the history of the House of Commons. Al-
though a Conservative by instinct and education,
above all by the immense influence of his family history
and the almost sacred traditions of the House of Cecil
as the divinely appointed rulers and protectors of
England, intrenched against revolutionary change and
dangerous tendencies of thought (had it not been so
for four hundred years?). Lord Robert's sense of honor,
his sensitive repugnance to injustice and brutality,
his ethical faith in Christianity appHed to political
principles, made him revolt from the intrigues, bar-
gainings, sinister adventures, and callous indifference
to the ideals which had been the watchwords of war
— liberty, the self-determination of peoples, the war to
end war — revealed by the Ministers of the Coalition
and their rabble of sycophants. He at least was a
gentleman, fastidious and nice in his sense of honor,
contrasting with the liars, the sharpers, and low-bred
adventurers who surrounded the Prime Minister, like
Poins, Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol, and the wild cronies
of Harry's youth.

His vision of world peace was on nobler lines than
national greeds, and as the representative of South
Africa (which gave him greater liberty of action with-
out committing the Cabinet to his policy) he did more
than any other man in Europe to uphold the ideals of

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

the League of Nations and to fashion the Assembly
out of a chaotic crowd, without precedents of procedure,
into a real ParHament of Nations before which the for-
eign delegates could bring their proposals for orderly
debate.

His long, lank figure, with hunched shoulders and
ascetic, monkHke face, arrested the imagination of all
members in an Assembly which represented twenty-one
nations, and they watched his appearances on the plat-
form, his repeated risings to points of order, and the
cold fervor of his enthusiasm for abstract principles
and legal niceties, with an unabated interest in a strange
psychology. One Frenchman by my side in the gallery,
looking down upon him, made a grotesque comment
in English which I am sure was a mistranslation of the
phrase he wanted to use. "This Lord Robert," he
whispered, "is Hke a debauched clergyman!" What I
fancy he meant to say was an "unfrocked priest," and
certainly there is in Lord Robert Cecil's face and manner
the continual suggestion of a monastic soul, or, rather,
an ecclesiastical quality. He seems a dedicated man,
superior by ascetic habit to all human frailties, with
the dryness of the old schoolmen in his method of
thought. He stands as a rare figure in English political
life, fine in courtesy, never stooping to baseness, an
aristocrat of intellect and temperament. With broader
qualities, more "fire in his belly," more love and knowl-
edge of common folk, he would be the ideal leader of a
new march forward in the adventure of English life.
But that ecclesiastical manner and the legal twist of
his brain and an unconscious air of superiority to
fellow men (not insolent, but inherent in his very being)
will never gain for him the following of great legions.

Yet as one of the "Intellectuals" in England, he has
a high and worthy place, and is a standard bearer in
the spiritual conflict against the forces of evil which

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

threaten to submerge the European peoples. For the
larger liberty of Ireland, from coercion and reprisals in
a miserable time of terror and counter-terror, he has
spoken according to the old standards of English jus-
tice and honor when these were forgotten by ministers
of state and their hirelings in dirty work. For modera-
tion toward the beaten enemy, with justice based on
reason rather than passion, when all nations of Europe
must unite for economic recovery or surely perish,
he has worked with intellectual devotion and risked
the anger of a Hun-howUng press which still has power
to break a public man if they hate the virtue in him.
He has never swerved in his behef that force is the
worst way of argument if ever reason gets a chance for
settlement by consent, and that is his gospel for the
recovery of Europe, if fools will stop their folly, as he
once told me, while his long arms clasped his long legs
and his ascetic face was just as a craftsman monk would
have carved a prior in stone for a cloister effigy —
conscious of authority, strong in self-discipline, dry
in humor.

A powerful little group of Intellectuals — not revolu-
tionary, but "advanced" — surround H. W. Massing-
ham, editor of The Nation^ and he is certainly one of
the guiding spirits in the intellectual life of England. A
strange man I have always thought him, in brief en-
counters, with something dark, mysterious, and Celtic
in his psychology. Something cankered him years ago,
some secret of his soul — disappointed ambition or tragic
contempt of human nature which would not go the way
he hoped. Long before the war he was a bitter man,
darkly melancholy, and with a cold ferocity of attack
when he drove his pen against political opponents or

(>7

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

literary pretenders. He has always been prone to see
virtue in all countries but his own, and has been such a
lover of liberty that he has almost defended German
militarism itself when defeated by stronger force. Anti-
imperialist, anti-protectionist, anti-everything in which
the Tory mind has found its gospel, and the popular
crowd its war cries, he has been the most acid critic of
all that John Bull stands for in character and caricature,
and John Bull, not the paper, but the type, has hated
him for years as a traitor, a crawling pacifist, a coward,
and a dirty dog. He is not a traitor, but a sensitive
plant to any touch of brutality or injustice that seems
to him hurtful to the good name of England and to the
human family. He so hates cruelty to the under dog,
the weak, the ignorant, that he is cruel himself in his
attacks upon those who seem to him bullies in their
nature and methods. He is almost morbid in his
hatred of spiritual and physical pain, and agonizes over
the sufferings of men and women and animals and
birds in this cruel conflict of life. The war to him was
the supreme downfall of the civilized ideal, the great
darkness of our soul and time, and in his oflSce in the
Adelphi he suffered with the sufferings of all the wounded,
blinded, agonized men.

He never wanted " victoiy." He wanted only "peace."
He was what the French called a defaitiste because
for a long time before the armistice he clung to every
hope of a negotiated peace, strove by all the power of
his pen to destroy the policy of the "knock-out blow,"
and was the fierce, unrelenting critic of ministerial
stupidities in the management of the war, not because
he wanted the war better managed, but quicker ended,
by popular disgust. He had but one glimpse of war's
horror on the battlefields when he went on a few days'
visit to the western front. He had been invited by
the "propaganda" side of the Army Intelligence which

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

had a simple belief that a sight of the men in the trenches
and at the guns would convert any pacifist into a howl-
ing "Hun hater." Massingham came and saw. He
stood by a battery of six-pounders up by Posieres in
the Somme fields and every round fired seemed to hurt
him hke a nail driven through the head. The roar of
artillery and the answering scream of German shells
seemed to vibrate every quivering nerve in his body and
brain. The leprous look of those shell-plowed fields,
where no blade of grass grew under the flail of steel,
deepened the pallor of his face, and in his eyes was the
horror of a man who sees hell before him.

Yet in moral courage Massingham has had few equals,
for he dared to attack a government invested with
absolute power over the liberty of its citizens, under
the Defense of the Realm Act ("Dora" as the wits
called it), which in time of war and long afterward was
a sharp and ruthless weapon against those who spoke
or wrote against its acts, authority, and judgment.
He challenged popular opinion at a time when it was
passionate and brutal. His letter box received many
threats of violence, sometimes a menace of death. He
paid no heed to them, but one friend of mine, loyal to
this man of ice and fire, used to follow him secretly
when he left his office at night, to be close if any ruffian
made a pounce. In allegiance to Massingham, many
of them his lifelong associates in revolt against cruelty
wherever it might be found, are such men as Henry
Nevinson, J. L. Hammond, H. N. Brailsford, H. M.
Tomlinson, knights-errant of the pen, crusaders all on
behalf of the Holy Land which dwells in their vision.

For years before the Great War, Nevinson was a
follower of little wars, as an old type of war corre-

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

spondent, always hating the stupidity of that way of
argument, and its beasthness, yet always allying him-
self with any people fighting for liberty. Between the
wars of nations, he was an onlooker of revolutions and
civil strife, writing on the side of the under dog, a par-
tisan of those who challenged tyranny.

Nevinson was bravest and most quixotic when he
faced the ridicule of his own people by espousing the
cause of the militant suffragettes. Many times in the
days of that strange feminine adventure to which cold
logic, self-sacrifice for political ideals, and a sense of
humor were mixed up with wild hysteria and the vicious-
ness of thwarted women, have I seen Nevinson, as the
one male escort of suffragette demonstrators forcing
their way through rowdy and riotous mobs into which
mounted police were charging and foot police were
overwhelmed by the pressure of human weight. Nevin-
son's tall form, with silver hair and bronzed face, had a
knightly look then as always, but men chose him for
their rough handhng. He was a tough customer to
handle, and once at the Albert Hall when he sprang to
the rescue of a woman who had been struck down by a
coward's blow, he gave battle to a company of stewards
who fell upon him, and dented several of them before
they flung him out — this noble, mild-eyed man, so full
of courtesy, so benignant, so wise and witty, such a
scholar and gentleman.

We met in the Great War, in strange and menacing
places. In the first days on the Belgian coast, as when
we paced the esplanade at Nieuport when our shells
were screaming overhead from monitors at sea, and
presently German shells answered back and smashed
into the houses about us. Nevinson strolled up and
down, up and down, with a most tranquil courage. . . .
Our ways parted, and then met again toward the end

of the war when he came again to the western front,

70 •

• H

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

walked toward German machine-gun fire as though
it were but raindrops, received the surrender of German,
prisoners from a crowded dugout, though quite unarmed,
and as a war correspondent received salutes from all
the army, because he looked as a "field marshal"
would like to look.

It was inevitable that Nevinson should champion
the Irish cause. It was waiting for him. Has he not
been on the side of all little nations demanding liberty.?
In Ireland after the war he has been chronicling in his
cold, unimpassioned way the history of murder and ret-
ribution, ambush and reprisal, with an intellectual bias
in favor of the Irish people who are suffering under
all this anarchy because they will not surrender their
claim to be a nation, separated by race and faith, by
long and tragic memories, by fires of hatred inflamed
in the passion of this recent history, from England, which
seeks to impose her rule as on a subject people, by force
of arms. Death dodged Nevinson in the Great War.
Some bullet will find him in Dublin or in some civil
strife at home.

VII

And Tomlinson, whom Nevinson loves as I do —
what a strange assistant-editor to Massingham, his
chief! Massingham's blood runs cold, but Tomlinson
has a burning fever in him. Massingham has the
fastidious manner of an intellectual aristocrat, rather
arrogant in his range of classical and modern knowledge.
Tomlinson, born down Wapping way, the son of a
skipper, belongs to the people of poverty and humility,
except by a genius which lifts him above them and most
of us, however polished. In his youth he discovered
the magic of words and found that he could capture
its secret. To him words are jewels. By digging for

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

them as they lie hidden below the rubbish of common-
place speech, he finds in their sound the harmonies of
beauty that lie deep in them, and wonderful architec-
tural values when he goes building with them. Yet
he never uses words as a substitute for thought, for more
sensuous music. He is a realist in his way of thinking,
cutting his way deep and ruthlessly to truth, seeing
life with its cruelty, its stupidity, its incoherence and
fumbling. He has written two good books, The Sea
and the Jungle and The Port of London, but it is
as a journalist, mainly anonymous, that he has done
much of his best work. More than as a writer, his
personality counts with those who know him — a whim-
sical personality, with a face like a friendly gargoyle
on a Gothic church, smiling down at humanity passing.
He has an ironical humor that makes one laugh with
twisted entrails when he is mocking at life's pomposi-
ties. A son of the people, he remains a lover of the peo-
ple, though he knows their ignorance, their sheeplike
instincts, their frenzies and passions. The war, of
which he saw much as a war correspondent, left him with
a bleeding soul. He groaned over the agonies of youth,
over all that wasted flower of Hfe, and afterward he
understood the agony hidden in little homes in mean
streets — ^the homes of the people he knows best — and
all his passion burned in him, consuming him with rage
and bitterness, because of the misery of broken manhood
and womanhood caused by the brutal sacrificial cruelty
of war — of that war which in his soul he believed was
forced upon the world not only by the Germans, but by
evil forces of greed and corruption in high places on
both sides of the fighting line, using the spirit and
bodies of humble folk, spellbound by false watchwords,
as the counters in this game of deVils.

A most humorous ironical man, in spite of his sense
of tragedy, I remember his comical grimaces in strange

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

places of the war, as when, through a snowstorm, we
came out of the shattered village of Kemmel in Flanders
— ^where the old dead in the little cemetery had been
torn out of their coffins by shell fire — and passed a
civiUan in evening dress without an overcoat, walking
quietly to this hunting ground of death. Tomlinson
smiled at me most whimsically, tapped his big forehead,
and said, with a kind of joy, as though the sight con-
firmed all his convictions: "Mad! Mad! We're all
mad!"

In the early days of the war, before he wore the
uniform of a war correspondent, he was wandering about
an ammunition dump close to the lines in darkness
illumined only by flashes of shell fire. A Tommy
stared at his strange figure hke the Ancient Mariner
in a cloth cap, walked round him three times, and said,
"Who the 'ell are you?" "I'm the representative of
the Times," said the delectable Tomlinson, modestly
and hiding the awful fact that he was also represent-
ing the Daily News. "Yus, bloody Hkely!" said the
gunner, convinced of his capture of a spy. "You come
along with me. " And indeed nothing could have been
more unlikely than that Tomlinson should be the
representative of the Times, or that any civilian soul
should be about an ammunition dump at midnight
under shell fire.

Deaf in one ear, he had the advantage of that on the
battlefields, and when, outside Bapaume, a monstrous
shell came screaming, he cocked his head on one side
and asked, very simply, "What bird is that?" But the
best memory I have of Tomlinson is when with quiet
ardor he converted a typical British general to a
tolerance of socialistic ideals. . . . The general after-
ward lost his job, undermined perhaps by this phi-
losophy.

And now Tomlinson is among the idealists, trying to
<5 73

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

argue the world to sanity and stinging stupidity with
whips of irony.

VIII

These men whom I have taken haphazard as types
of intellectual leadership in the world after war are all
members of groups thinking, talking, writing, organizing,
and each group and every individual in each group is
backed up by friendship and correspondence with
other minds in England, and through Europe, of the
same sympathies and ethical outlook. It is to some
extent a secret confraternity whose members know one
another not by any badge of membership or by fellow-
ship of political parties, clubs, and committees, but by
the exchange of a smile, an ironical hfting of eyebrows,
a quiet comment on some new act of government, a
new tyranny of reactionary powers, another stupidity
of passion thwarting the reconciliation and peace of
people. They meet, as I meet them, in railways trains
on the Continent, in wine taverns and tea shops, in
newspaper offices, in apartment houses of New York
and Washington and Paris, and in London drawing-
rooms after dinner, where little groups gather for con-
versation, as once before the Revolution in France the
Intellectuals came to the salons to discuss the existence
of God and the social origins of humanity. All over
the world now, as far as I know it, such groups of men
and women are talking, talking, in very much the same
way, with the same doubtfulness about the future of
civilization and a faith in certain ethical remedies which
they think alone may save us.

In an apartment house of Washington, where one lady
and five men sat curled up in easy chairs, smoking ciga-
rettes, sipping the last drops of some precious liquid,
discussing the present troubles of Europe and the way
of escape, I thought then, with an uncanny sense of the

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

intellectual communion of human thought, of all the
millions of such little companies who then, at that hour,
in poor rooms or splendid rooms, were talking in the
same strain, reaching out to the same hopes, relapsing
perhaps into the same melancholy. One brain among
us dominated the general discussion, the cold, analytical
brain of Frank Simonds, one of the greatest journalists
in the world, who did not sit back, like the others, in
an easy chair, but at a desk, alert and keen. He sorted
out the intellectual actions and reactions of the United
States, England, France, and central Europe, as a
chemist analyzing some compound. He balanced the
credit and debit side of European economy, finding all
in a bankrupt state. He examined the claim of the
Allies to German reparation and dismissed them as
impossible by the laws of arithmetic, and then weighed
the advantage against the disadvantage of a strong
Germany undermining the trade of the world by enor-
mous exports, by which alone she could pay the money
demanded, and a weak, dismembered Germany, ruining
the world by lack of power to trade at all, to buy raw
material, to send back manufactured goods. He
sketched out the inevitable policy of France, keener to
kill Germany than to save herself, discovering that by
no freak of luck could she get back the price of all her
losses so that her next chance of satisfaction lay in
thrusting Germany deep into the mire, though all
Europe would slip after her into the bog of ruin. His
eyes bright with intellectual vision, his shrill, discordant
voice rising into ironical laughter whenever sentiment
tried to challenge his realism, leaving no loophole which
could trip him up in argument, he prophesied the doom
of Europe. A doom inevitable, except through one
door of escape, and that a quicker abandonment of
national egotism, a fellowship of nations, tearing down
thdr trade barriers, demobilizing old hatreds and stand-

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

ing armies, forgiving one another's debts, exchanging
their fruits of industry on terms of free trade.

It was the same conclusion reached by a Hungarian
who came to see me in London. "Europe," he said,
after terrible tales of misery in the old Austrian Empire,
"is utterly doomed unless we abandon the old super-
stitions of hatred, wash out the indemnities of war,
and start afresh on a new phase of economic union
among the countries of Europe. But there are too
many fools about. We ought to start an International
Society for the Suppression of Imbeciles!" He laughed
when I told him that so many of us might be disquahfied.

It was in the Lotos Club of New York that I listened
to one of the great leaders of the world, one of the
great doctors of humanity, when Herbert C. Hoover
sat in my bedroom and talked of the things he had seen
and done and failed to do for stricken people. That
was in March of 192 1, just before his appointment under
the new President, Harding.

My room was littered with shirts and collars, dis-
ordered clothes, opened and unopened letters, for I
had had no long warning of his coming, and no time
(after a long journey) for tidiness. He paid no heed
to that, but for a hour and a half sat in a big armchair,
talking moodily, almost introspectively, with a look
of sadness, except just now an^ then, when a glint of
humor sparkled in his eyes for a second and then died
out again. He is a square-built man, with a puggy,
clean-shaven face, broad forehead and brown eyes,
and has the simplicity of a peasant and the brain of a
scientist who sees the problems of life without passion,
without preconceived ideas, without sentiment, but in
its essential truth.

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

He spoke of the state of Europe. The condition of
Austria, he said, was worse now than a year ago, fed
by charity which he was still organizing in America,
but not being healed of its social disease, for charity
could do no real good, though it was a duty to do what
it could in rescuing. He described his own work after
the armistice as a kind of economic dictator, a position
of which he was glad to get **quit."

America had "pulled out" after spending a billion
and a half dollars upon the relief of the stricken coun-
tries, and for a time he had organized a system of credits
and supplies which had helped to keep central Europe
from certain starvation. But he could do nothing
with European statesmen. They would agree on a
reasonable conclusion when assembled round a table,
and then go away and do nothing to carry out the idea
— do everything to thwart it. All the new states got
busy putting up frontiers against one another, with
customs dues and all kinds of barriers to free intercourse
and exchange.

The Poles would not help themselves, and endless
intrigue prevented recovery and health. From the
Poles in America lOO million dollars had been sent to
committees, and if that money had been used as credit
for food supplies, the starving population would have
been well nourished; but the money was passed through
clearing houses of London and Paris so that Poland
received perfumes, soaps, luxuries for her profiteers,
instead of food for her people.

In Serbia there was an immense store of surplus food
which would have been easy of transport to the stricken
populations of central Europe. But Serbia would not
sell it eastward. She sought higher profits and sent
it to Italy, France, and England, while food for her
neighbors had to be sent all the way from America to
keep them alive.

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

"Europe must unite on economic lines or perish,"
said Hoover, and he did not speak hghtly nor use care-
less phrases. Those words on his lips were a sentence
of death, if Europe did not heed his warning.

I spoke to him of my hope in a new leadership, and in
the coming of youth, and he smiled when he answered
and said: "Youth is busy re-electing the old men.
If Briand goes, he will be followed by Poincare into
deeper reaction." He had seen no signs of a new
faith in the League of Nations, but only the old men
burking the real issues and playing with truth.

Then he turned his thoughts to America and told
me the tremendous difficulty of moving American imagi-
nation in the direction of a world policy. The size of
America, the provincial character of the American
mind in the great Middle West and over the whole
continent, makes them incapable of understanding
how they are touched by disease in central Europe.
He had tried to make them understand. When farm-
ers of the Middle West had asked him: "What is
Europe to us? Why is the price of hogs dropping
down?" he had told them that before the war each
individual German had obtained 25 grams of fat per
day (if I remember the figures), which was not enough
even then for the mass of industrial workers, and now
they obtained only 12 grams of fat. The price of
hogs in the Middle West depends on the German stand-
ard of fat supply. . . . But th^y could not understand
and do not remember.

Hoover hoped that President Harding would call a
World council and help to build up a new economic
union in Europe and cause a plea for gradual and gen-
eral disarmament. But he feared that if he did so the
old diplomats of Europe would come to thwart it with
their old animosities and subtleties and national in-
trigues. Yet he hoped. ... It was because he hoped

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

In a growing common sense, in the promise of youth,
in the spreading of truth, that he went on working,
instead of retiring to a private yacht in some sun-
soaked sea, abandoning the world to its doom. . . .
He saw just a gUmmer of hght ahead.

I perceived among all these individuals and all these
groups, clubs, committees, and associations of Intellec-
tuals in Europe and America, certain clear, definite, and
simple ideas, however vaguely or subtly expressed,
however complicated by social and ethical philosophy.
They amount just to this: That the war was a homi-
cidal insanity which exhausted all the reserves of wealth
in Europe, and left such burdens of debt that they will
never be redeemed. That, in spite of great human
heroism on all sides, it left human nature in Europe
demoralized and spiritually weakened. That the
arrangement of peace ignored the devastating effects of
war in all nations and the complete upheaval of its
economic machinery, and created new boundaries,
burdens, and rivalries which can only be maintained
until another explosion happens, more monstrous than
the last and destructive of white civiUzation as we
know it and Hke it.

What way out, then? What escape from this ap-
proaching doom, whose shadow creeps over the souls of
men ? Not by diplomatic conferences of the old school,
establishing some new balance of power, not by one
nation grabbing at the last reserves of another, not by
military occupation of defaulting countries, nor finan-
cial juggUngs to postpone an evil day of reckoning in
this nation or that, nor by assaults on Capital by Labor
or attacks on Labor by Capital, but rather by a com-
plete change in the structure of civilization and in the

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

hearts of peoples. Under the impending menace of
general ruin they believe that humanity in Europe may
be inspired to make a clean jump across the abyss that
opens before them, instead of crawling slowly to it
and falling in. It must be a jump to a new world in
which there must be utter abandonment of the herit-
age of national hatred and superstitions, spell words
and fetishes. The idealists demand a new religion of
humanity based not upon force, but upon spiritual
comradeship among common folk. They preach not a
revolution by blood, but a revolution by love. They
believe in love of country — ^the love of the beauty of
one's countryside, of one's speech, of one's poetry —
but not in the hatred of other people whose speech is
different, though their beauty is as ours. They believe
in the liberty of nations, but in a communion of inter-
national peoples, not denying one another's liberty,
rather protecting it, because of common interests,
sympathies, and understandings across the present
frontiers. Their hope in a possible cessation of war is
founded upon their faith in the common sense of human-
ity, if it can be liberated from superstitions, and the
baser ignorance in which it is kept by artful brains, now
that frightful experience has taught them the lesson
of its folly. They admit the passions and cruelties
and greeds still inherent in the heart of man, but they
have a wonderful optimism in the power of ideals and the
average virtue of common folk. . . .

Unpractical visionaries! Dreamers out of touch with
reality! Sentimentalists regardless of plain facts! Rev-
olutionists with rose water! "Intellectuals" playing
with the fires which will consume them when the pas-
sion of brutality, brutal life itself, makes an auto da fe
of such weaklings. So the brutal mind, sure of history,
with no faith but in force, gibes at them.

Gibe for gibe, the Intellectuals can hold their own.

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS

With witty poniard they can stick the bull fellow who
rages at them. They know they will never live to see
the fulfillment of their hopes, nor any quick harvest
come from the seeds they sow. In secret hours they
despair because of so much stupidity. Often they face
the futility of their ideahsm. Many times they mock
at their own little prescriptions for a world disease, and
stare moodily at the approach of a greater downfall in
which all Europe will be engulfed. Yet they go on
talking, writing, trying to Hnk up with one another, and
to leaven a mass of ignorance, attacking tyranny in its
strongholds, brutality everywhere, cruelty which hurts
them more than its victims, teaching beauty, liberty
of thought, large toleration, the right of humanity to
joy and peace. Of another world beyond the grave
they have no definite belief — not many of them. God
means mostly to them the ideal love in the minds of
men. They are humanists with their eyes on the pur-
pose and the agony and the compensations of this life
of men and women. Perhaps if they claimed religious
authority, spoke as men ordained by a Divine Spirit,
they would get a greater following, and lead the world
forward on the impulse of some new religious fervor.
But this would alter all their character. It would rob
them of irony, of self-mockery. They would no longer
have a tolerant understanding of human weakness,
an indifference to the smaller frailties, a delicate sense
of humor. They are not priests, prophets, or fanat-
ics, but humanists. It is doubtful if many of them are
of the stuff" of martyrs, though I think Tomlinson would
die with a whimsical melancholy on behalf of the truth
as he sees it, and others, like Nevinson, are careless of
death.

They are not of much power in the world. There are
other forces moving secretly, stirring in the psychology
of peoples, working in subconscious evolutionary ways

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

toward some great change in our social state. But
they have some little measure of influence on the acts
and thoughts of peoples, and if they could get closer to
their kind in all countries, in more intimate association
inspired by great leadership, they might lift Europe
out of its present morass to a cleaner and brighter height
of human progress.

III

Ill

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

TTHE spiritual fires of white civilization seem to have
•■• burnt low since the war. • In many countries they
seem to have flickered out, leaving nothing but the dead
ash of a hard materialism or the red embers of selfish
passion — nowhere very visible the white light of the
sacrificial flame.

Many simple souls were startled by the rapid decline
in ordinary morality which happened in war time, still
more by the manifest lowering of spiritual ideals after
the armistice among those who had seemed exalted to
wonderful heights of self-sacrifice and spiritual purpose.
They could not understand — it was hard to understand
— how men who had been so obedient to discipline in
the face of death, so reckless of their own lives and
self-interest for their country's sake, should come
home with sordid, squalid instincts, hating work,
desiring nothing but material pleasure, striking, some-
times rioting, in senseless conflicts between Capital and
Labor, rebelling against authority, demanding the
fleshpots of life with hungry appetite. Still less could
they understand — those aloof, observing souls — how the
w^ar, which seemed to lift up human nature by the enor-
mous enthusiasm of patriotism, could be followed by so
many revelations of widespread immorality, general
laxity of relationship between men and women, and
distressing signs of a coarseness and cruelty of mind —

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

in all classes — not noticeable before the war. Minis-
ters of religion are aghast at the materialism of the times,
and cry out in horror from their pulpits, not acknowledg-
ing their own share of guilt. Newspaper morahsts
record each new aspect of social degeneracy, forgetting
that the press which pays them is in a great measure
the malign influence producing this mental condition
of mass psychology.

The fundamental mistake of those now surprised by
the sudden "slump" in idealism is that the war was
really a time of spiritual exaltation to all the people
engaged in its passionate drama. To many it was.
To many young men about to die for their country's
sake, in the early days at least, it was a time of divine
renunciation of earthly hopes, as one sees in the poems
of Rupert Brooks and in the letters of thousands of
boys to thousands of mothers. So also among the
civilian peoples behind the lines there was a great stir-
ring of spiritual faith in the excitement of unaccustomed
service and sacrifice for their country's sake. The
love of their fighting men was a great love, and that was
good. They were iready to deny themselves everything
so that "the boys" might have an extra touch of com-
fort, some proof of love in their ordeal. They were
ready to suffer privation, danger of air raids, the nervous
rack of war time, not only for the sake of their youth
in the fields of battle, but for the sake of the victory of
ideals over the forces of evil. They were simple, clear-
cut ideals in simple minds. Right over wrong, liberty
over tyranny, and the safety of the mother country —
or of the fatherland! Nothing can ever lessen the
miracle of all that, at its best, in its purest nobility.

Alas for the frailty of human nature, there were other
strains of emotion, not pure or noble, in the deep tides
and currents of war enthusiasm. All passions were
intensified in that time, evil as well as good, low as well

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

as high. The love of country and of young kinsmen
was horribly blended with hatred and blood lust in
the minds of many men, and more women, in whom
the emotion of hate had a degrading and coarsening
action. It was inflamed and kept at fever heat by
atrocity stories — many of them false — and by a long,
careful propaganda of hate, not ending with the end
of the war, but continuing long after peace. It was the
press (sometimes the pulpit) which stirred up and poked
about the lowest instincts of the mob mind, with appeals
to vengeance, cupidity, cruelty. That is not good
food for the soul for seven years. It has a poisonous
reaction, and deadens the sensitive nerve cells of the
mind.

In England after the war I have been astonished often
by the insensitive quality of the popular mind to events
which formerly would have aroused instant emotion,
of indignation or pity. Horrible accounts of the star-
vation of children in central Europe, narratives of
whole populations, as in Vienna, striken by disease
for lack of fats, did not touch the imagination of many
people. Others reacted to such stories with harsh
hostility. "Let them die!" was the answer I had from
ladies I know. "Why should we feed boy babies who
will grow up to be Huns.?" That was logical in its
cruelty and perfectly reasonable, if life is to be based on
the law of cruelty and human nature to be divided
always between "Huns" and "Allies." But it was
new in modern England that women — not all, of course,
but quite a lot of them — should be so callous of suffering
childhood, even in the enemy's country.

More surprising, more callous, was the indifference of
the mass of English people to the reign of terror in
Ireland. It was not that they hated the Sinn Feiners,
or upheld the policy of reprisals by the Black-and-Tans.
Theoretically the ranks of labor were sympathetic

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

to the Irish rebels and hostile to the government's
policy of coercion. Actually they did not care. The
dreadful episodes of that struggle, ambushes and arson,
assassinations by this side and the other, men dragged
out of their beds and shot before their wives and chil-
dren, the hanging of boys in batches, all that horror
of guerrilla warfare and military repression, left English
psychology stone-cold or just mildly interested. Before
the war a storm of passion would have swept over
England. There would have been a fierce partisanship,
wild meetings, passionate protests, mob demonstrations.
After the war only small groups of "intellectuals"
excited themselves about the state of Ireland. In the
streets I used to read newspaper placards with a sense
of sickness — "Cork in Flames" — "British Soldiers Am-
bushed near Dublin" — "Five More Policemen Shot in
Ireland" — "Extensive Raids in Irish Towns" — "More
Creameries Destroyed by Crown Forces." But the
crowds went by, indifferent, in the Strand. No flame
of indignation lit up their lackluster eyes. Ireland
might be swept clean by fire and sword, for all they
cared. Some filthy divorce case, the legal argument as
to whether an archdeacon stayed at a hotel with an
unknown lady, and always the latest betting results,
were of far more importance in the mind of the people.
The murder of a girl at the seaside by two degenerate
young soldiers filled columns of the daily papers and the
reports were read eagerly by miUions. It was the sex
interest which lured them and made those dull eyes light
up. The killing of women in Ireland by British soldiers
"shooting up" Irish villages did not raise a flicker of
interest among the general public in England, nor
command more than a few paragraphs in English papers.
Enormous calamities, like the great famine in China,
did not arouse one throb of emotion, one pitiful tear, as
far as I could find, among English folk, and I was, like

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

them, unable to respond emotionally to the most tragic
happenings, unless they were of immediate personal
interest. The immense long-continued tragedy of war
had destroyed all power of emotional reaction to new
and more remote abominations. "Oh, hell!" was the
attitude of mind of the average man to any such epi-
sode. A subtle coarsening process had overtaken the
most refined minds and blunted their finer sensibilities.
The least refined minds had just relapsed into brutish-
ness, no longer held up to decency by the ethical stand-
ard of the world.

For some time after the demobilization of the armies
civilian populations were astonished and shocked by the
disorderly conduct of many home-coming soldiers.
Indeed, signs of trouble appeared immediately after the
armistice, and the very men who had done their best to
win the war, which was won, suddenly adopted an atti-
tude of revolt against all discipline. On the western
front there were disorderly demonstrations by bodies
of men demanding instant demobilization and insulting
elderly officers who threatened them with field punish-
ment. To Whitehall and the War Office — ^the very
Holy of Holies — came troops of soldiers from seaside
camps in lorries and ambulances seized without per-
mission. They demanded instant hearing from any
general in authority. They were not to be awed by
red tabs or brass hats. The power of life and death
seemed to have gone out of those symbols of command,
to the profound annoyance of those who wore them.
"The men have been infected with Bolshevism. Foreign
agents have been at work among 'em," were words
spoken in a frightened way by elderly gentlemen in
London clubs. " I 'd turn the machine guns on to them,"
was the advice of others who, not long before, had been

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

acclaiming those men as heroes and the saviors of old
England. What had happened? In another book —
Now It Can Be Told — I have shown a little of what
had happened in the spirit of the men who had fought
— their disillusionment with the ideals of war, their
bitterness with the old men in the high places of com-
mand, responsible for much unnecessary slaughter,
their sudden revulsion against discipline when the com-
ing of peace seemed to break all need of it, their des-
perate desire to get out of khaki and into **civies"
again, and their utter sickening weariness of "spit and
polish," parade, all the deadening routine of military
life as soon as the passionate purpose of the war had gone
out of it. It was not Bolshevism that had been at
work, but the ordinary actions and reactions of human
nature.

Worse things happened later, things not so natural
or pardonable as the haste of men to be demobilized,
though partly due to the fret ^f waiting for freedom.
Soldiers — and especially Canadian soldiers — ran amuck
in camps and towns, attacked poHce, looted shops,
stormed town halls, fought in a brutal, demoniacal way
with the guardians of law and order. There was some-
thing unreasonable in these sudden gusts of fury, some-
thing that looked like madness, as in the case of young
officers even who took part in these affrays and after-
ward swore, as I think sincerely, that they could re-
member nothing of how they came to be mixed up in
the rioting, or what they had done. It was just a sud-
den lack of self-control, a sudden uprising of ungov-
ernable and unreasoning passion.

It was part of that general disease which doctors called
"shell shock," though it afflicted men and women far
behind the lines, aloof from shell fire, the long nagging
of the war upon the nervous system until it was all
worn and frayed, the high tension of war excitement

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

which suddenly snapped when the armistice was signed,
and the subconscious effect of war's Hberating influences
upon the animal and moral restraints of civilized nature.
The killing of men had been the work of life, the purpose
of hfe, for four and a half years. To the gentle lady
knitting comforters for the Red Cross that purpose had
been a subconscious influence. She was aware of
death in the mass, the slaughter of the world's youth,
the blood and iron of war. Her gentility had been a
little hardened. She was no longer shrinking and sen-
sitive at the thought of life's brutality. Even she,
with her taper fingers, had lost something of refinement.
How much more the man who had walked through
fields of dead, whose daily training was to kill better, who
had killed! The miracle is that so many thousands of
decent men — so many millions — remained decent, un-
tainted by blood lust, clean in mind and heart. It
was inevitable that others should be brutalized, and that
when, after the war, some accidental happening stirred
their anger, or their lust, they behaved like primitive
men. They had been taught "caveman stuff," as the
Americans call it, while they sat in lousy dugouts
under fire. There was an epidemic of foul crime in
England, France, Italy, other countries. Young soldiers
murdered lonely girls after horrible brutality. In
drunken brawls they fought one another like gorillas. . . .
During the great coal strike in England, the govern-
ment called up the Reservists to maintain order in case
of rioting by the miners and the army of unemployed.
For the most part the miners behaved like lambs, but
at Aldershot, Woolwich, and other places the Reservists,
all "veterans" of the Great War, broke bounds and
started looting and rioting until they were dispersed by
cavalry. "Bolshevism!" whispered frightened politi-
cians, using the new spell word to explain every symp-
tom of social unrest. But in this case what was happen-
7 89

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

ing was the disgust of men thrust back into the discipline
from which they had escaped, after too much of it
and after they had thrown it to the four winds in the
Hberty they had found in peace. Some of them, by
that sudden relaxation of restraint, after a life in which
every hour of their day was ordered, had lapsed into a
weak lawlessness of soul, incapable of self-control,
nervy, restless, lazy not of set purpose, but spiritually
lax, and with a mental and physical resentment to
concentrated work. In the mass psychology of peoples
with the war experience, there was this loosening of old
restraints, and after the enormous, driving impulses of
war, life seemed purposeless and without any sanc-
tions for discipline. No new impluse higher than self-
interest replaced the spiritual ideal of sacrifice. The
mob, without leadership* contemptuous of those who
claimed to be leaders, cynical of ideahsts who had brought
the world to a sorry pass, followed its own instincts,
devoted itself to its own immediate interests, while
many people lower than the average of the crowd (whose
instincts are mainly sound) just dropped back into the
selfishness of the brutes and adopted the brute code as
their law of life.

Ill

One strange after-efi'ect of war, startling the moralist
— ^judge or jurymen — by its devastating epidemic, was
the ruin of homes by divorce. Here it seems, except
to fanatics who favor divorce as something good and
admirable in itself, is a clear proof of degradation in
social morality — the slippery slope to perdition in Chris-
tian civilization. I hate figures because often they
confuse the mind instead of clearing it, but I must
quote here the divorce statistics of England, which
truly show in a dramatic and shocking way the feverish

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

increase in numbers of those who, in a country still in-
stinctively jealous of the marriage laws, have gone to
law to break their partnership.

Year

I913
I914

I9IS
I916

I917
I918
I919
1920

Dissolution of Marriage

Nullity of Marriage

Husbands'

Wives '

Husbands'

Wives'

Petition

312

234

436

397

348

320

SIS

421

641

30s

727

3SS

1,216

413

2,3Si

690

In 1 92 1, for which I have not the complete figures,
the numbers mount higher, and in one week at the
beginning of May six hundred cases were heard in
the courts.

It will be seen that in 1920 there were over three
thousand divorce cases, or ten times as many as in
the year before the war. Yet it is probable that that
number is insignificant in comparison with all the
homes in which husbands and wives live in miserable
alliance, their spiritual bond having been utterly broken,
though they do not apply for dissolution of marriage for
lack of money or in fear of scandal. It has been a
world malady directly due to the war in many strange,
subtle ways. "I do not know one man who went to
France now living with his wife again," I was told by
an American lady of high social standing. I protested
against her exaggeration, knowing many American
soldiers still happily married, and asked her to think
again and modify her statement, but she said: "I may
be unfortunate in my friends, but that is actually my
experience of their home life. "

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

How can one account for this tragedy of lives? What
was the influence of environment and adventure which
led to such disloyalty between those who had loved ?
For in many cases these divorces are not revelations of
ordinary immorality by men and women of low character.
On the contrary, many of them have been brought before
the law by people of exceptional culture, of good social
reputation, and of long-tried virtue. Middle-aged men,
fathers of families, who lived honest humdrum lives,
contented and happy to all appearances, suddenly
broke away, changed all their character, betrayed
women who had been utterly faithful to them. So
was it with many women. With younger couples it
is easier to unflerstand. During war time they married
in haste and in peace time repented at leisure. When
the menace of the war was present, youth took what it
could quickly, before death could intervene, grabbed at
life and immediate joy. I knew many boys — airmen
and company officers, machine gunners, and observ-
ers— who knew that seven days' leave might be their
last chance of life. One more little "stunt" above the
clouds, one more little *'show" across No-Man's Land,
and for them no more. They loved life. Its beauty
was boundless to them. They felt their youth with
vital intensity of desire. To get "all in" while they
had the time was their philosophy, and marriage with
a pretty girl was part of the life they would not miss,
though it might be only for a splendid week. It was so
easy. The girls were of the same philosophy. They
too were grabbing at life, seeking fulfillment of youth,
before all the boys died. It did not matter very much
which boy they married. They were all so splendid
and so brave. They were life — under the menace of
death. . . .

Youth was right. In the mass it was wise, with sure
instinct. Mother Nature created their impulses to

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

repair so much destruction of life. But there were
penalties. Life's little ironies broke in to mock at
romance. Many of the boys did not die, though the
odds were against them. They came home, badly
or lightly wounded, nerve shaken, fretful with the
strange and deadly boredom of peace for which they
had longed. They could not get jobs, so many of them,
for so long a time, and after trudging for jobs came back
home dispirited, bad-tempered, quick to resent the little
irritations of domestic ways. Young wives were very
lonely in war, and hated loneliness and sought the
companionship of their husbands' friends, home on
leave. "Allah is great, but juxtaposition is greater."
Poor children of life, so ignorant of their own quality,
their own emotion, the tides of human nature. Here
is nothing to marvel at, especially at a time when all
laws of life were being rudely challenged, all faith was
being questioned, and religion was irreconcilable in many
souls with war's peculiar code.

More difficult to understand was the sudden break-
down of older men, not ignorant of their own nature,
and with long records of loyalty. "How is it," I was
asked by a frank-spoken lady, "that men with ladies
as their wives, beautiful women, all the highest refine-
ment of civilization in their homes, and all the tradi-
tion of training behind them, fell to the first little slut
they saw in the streets of Paris, or went astray in low
haunts .f*" It was not quite so bad as that, though it
was bad.

I explain such mysteries in a groping way. The war
was a mighty aberration of all restraints built up by
the careful checks and boundaries of the civilized code,
that powerful system, stronger than religion, which
we know as Public Opinion. Human nature is always
secretly in revolt against these checks. There is an
errant libertism in the soul of every man who sees en-

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

ticing byways of pleasure, deductive short cuts to joy,
across which is written the harsh word of the social
law, "No Thoroughfare." Everywhere through the
quiet hfe of peace in quiet towns, these signboards are
staring in the sight of men, and because of the watchful
eyes of Public Opinion they dare not trespass. But
war flung all these signboards down. Public Opinion
altered its own bearings. Its fixed principles shpped.
In the convulsion of war it lost its faith. Men went
out to France or other fronts in an adventure which
changed all life and themselves utterly. It had no
hnk with the past, and its future was most uncertain.
These men in khaki uniforms were mDt the same men
as those who had been in civil clothes, with white
collars and cuffs and all, in city offices or pleasant
drawing-rooms. They were in a different world and a
different life, doing things utterly rem.ote from all
their previous experience, and for the most part skep-
tical of ever returning to the life they had known.
They were revitalized. The old trammels fell from
them. They were but soldiers of fortune in an un-
ending war. They, too, had to grab quickly at any
passing chance of pleasure, lest they should be too
late. And the job they had to do was ugly, dirty,
cruel. It would end, perhaps, in a dirty kind of
death. Once up in the trenches and they would be
far from any kind of life's beauty. Behind the lines,
in Paris, Amiens, London, there was still beauty,
feminine softness, which was the opposite of all that
harshness of war's discipline. The rustle of silk sounded
better than the scream of a shell. They were not dis-
loyal to their wives at home. They were other men
in another world — born anew. So they argued, and
wondered at themselves.

After the war they were different again. When they
went home they pretended they were the same. They

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

dressed up in the same old clothes, sat at the same old
table, and knew, so many of them, that the men they
pretended to be were dead and that they were mas-
queraders of their own ghosts. The woman opposite
was no longer the wife of this man who sat glancing at
her now and then with searching eyes. She had changed,
too, during these years of war. She too had had secret
adventures of the soul. They had actually been divorced
before quarrels, open infidelities, passionate endeavors
for reconciliation, the cold and dreadful certainty that
the old love was dead, led them to state their case before
the court.

Strange and terrible revelations! After twenty years
of married life, men with grown-up children whom they
had loved devotedly sought a dissolution of marriage
with women who had believed in their eternal faith —
or it was the other way about. Some hideous, tremendous
im-pulse, long hidden in subconsciousness, had broken
its fetters. Men after the years of war had a sense of
second youth at their home-coming. They did not
desire a return to the old life, but the beginning of a
new life. Some other woman offered them that. After
the tremendous excitement of the war impulse they
craved for some new impulse equally dominating and
exciting. New love or its counterfeit provided them
with this sensation. I believe in hundreds of cases this
was the psychology of their broken partnership, and
in the woman's case it was no different. Yet by
explaining we do not condone. " Tout savoir, c'est
tout pardonner! " That is true, but the weakening of
resistance in human nature to the evil of disloyalty is
a serious matter for civilization. Lack of self-control
is not to be lightly disregarded, nor replaced by easy
allegiance to "the spirit of liberty." Christianity,
anyhow, must be shipwrecked on these shifting sands,
and even the inherited code of morals which in many

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

countries, as in England, is for the mass of people the
sole remaining heritage of Christian faith.

Is Christianity itself going down, after nineteen cen-
turies of struggle to hold its authority as the religion
in which humanity may find its ultimate reason for
obedience and sacrifice, and its supreme comfort in a
world of discomfort — ^this "vale of tears"? Even
before the war there had been a steady growth of skep-
ticism and revolt, less passionate, but more deadly than
in the centuries of conflict between Protestantism and
Catholicism, or the days of challenge between science
and faith. That old warfare had quieted down. In
intellectual circles there was a wider tolerance, on both
sides. Science had yielded some of .its "certainties"
to faith. Religion, even inside the Catholic Church,
had adopted some of the claims of science, admitting
the possibility of evolution, though not accepting asser-
tions of absolute proof, revising its geological dates, not
standing rigidly to the literal interpretation of Old
Testament stories. In many ways religion seemed to
be regaining old ground, capturing new fields of mission-
ary enterprise. The advance of Catholicism in England
and the United States was remarkable in mere num-
bers, although it must be reckoned with the increase
in population. But among Protestant denominations,
and in nominally Catholic countries, like France and
Italy, there had been a steady abandonment of reUgious
fervor, a quite definite undermining of faith in Chris-
tian dogma by skeptical philosophy, reaching down to
the humblest classes. It was not, as I have said, a
fierce skepticism. It was stolid indifference. People
could not be "bothered" with religious controversy.
There had been too much of it. They had no ill will

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

to folk who liked to go to church — any old church —
but they preferred to stay away. Less and less to the
middle classes and laboring classes did religion seem
to have any real relationship with Ufe and death. The
parsons talked a lot of stuff which was obviously in-
sincere. At any rate, they were all quarreling with
one another as to what it really meant — flatly contradict-
ing one another. In France and Italy the old Latin
skepticism and cynicism was prevaihng, even in the
peasantry, and the young intellectuals of France, in
spite of new movements among them, to make religion
"good form" again, could not resist the genial incre-
dulities of Anatole France, literary successor to Vol-
taire, Rabelais, and all the master skeptics of their
literary heritage. The harsh and brutal reahsm of
Zola and his school, their onslaught upon faith, had
become old-fashioned. As in England, indifference
rather than challenge was the new spirit. Even CathoHc
Frenchmen, or many of them, thought themselves
among the faithful if they married in church, baptized
their children, and received the last sacraments before
death. Otherwise they did not trouble the church,
though they doffed their hats to the village priest and
thought him a very good fellow if he did not poke his
nose into their private affairs.

The state of religious life before the war in France
was rather stagnant, Hke this. Only in the universi-
ties and among the aristocracy was there an attempt,
not altogether unsuccessful, to revive the Catholic
spirit as part of the noble heritage of France, and to
associate it with a patriotism which foresaw the new
ordeal of war with Germany. The army chiefs, like
Foch and Castelnau — the inner cHque of the High
Command — were Catholics of the old school, devout
and firm in the faith that France was ordained by
God to attain a new and spiritual victory over the

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

barbarians who were now called "Boches." The
cult of Jeanne d'Arc became the fashion. On the
other side the syndicalists and labor parties generally-
attacked the Church with contempt and scurriHty as
the great power of reaction, and France was ruled by
politicians who had supported destruction of Church
and state, and denounced Catholicism with ridicule
and blasphemy.

In Prussia, the chosen kingdom of "the good old
German God" as the Kaiser used to say, with an air
of genial patronage, there had been a rapid dechne in
religious and spiritual standards, according to many
competent observers, even of their own race. Ever
since the victory of 1870 the Prussian people had
become more and more arrogant, selfish, and material-
istic. Their Protestantism had always been harsh in
its character, without the kindness and sweet-tempered
quality of our own denominations after the mellowing
of the old Puritan austerities or the mild and sentimen-
tal spirit of the old German tradition in other parts of
the Empire. But the Prussian character deteriorated
when its Protestantism was abandoned for a gross
materialism, a blatant and bullying atheism, with no
more exalted faith than that of world empire under
Prussian domination. I am not one of those who be-
lieve that every Prussian is possessed by seven devils,
that by the very shape of his head he is outside the
kinship of the European family, and that the mark of
the beast is upon him. That seems to me an exagger-
ation convicting us of self-conceit, national self-com-
placency, and Phariseeism closely approaching the very
characteristics we are condemning. If the Prussian
believed before the war that he was the noblest type
of human being, and that the Empire he had founded
had the close support of God, and that his destiny, his
very duty, was to rule less civilized peoples, it must

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

be admitted that there have been Englishmen with
the same conceit of themselves. I have met them at
club dinners, and have listened to their proclamation
of such simple faith. But in Prussia, and perhaps to
a less degree in other parts of Germany, this stirring
of national confidence in a future of enormous conquest
was supported by brutal qualities deliberately devel-
oped by education and public opinion, and as that
educational influence deepened it created a degrada-
tion of morality. Spiritual values sank to a low level,
and in their painting, their architecture, their drama,
and their social amusements one saw a kind of morbid
defiance of all that is gentle and refining in life. The
word "stark" was a kind of spell upon them. Worse
than that, though that was bad and enervating, a
strain of degenerate vice attacked them. Without
raking up the filth of war propaganda, it must be said
that night life in Berlin, for instance, was worse than
anything in cities like Paris or London (whose virtue
was not unchallenged!), worse in coarseness and com-
plete abandonment of any decent code. In the army
the Prussian military caste was tainted with very
abominable corruption. Prussia, in spite of many
fair qualities and many good people, was governed by
a spirit of evil. As far back as 1872 one old watcher
of life. Cardinal Manning, saw the sowing of these
weeds in the Prussian spirit, and in prophetic words
foretold what now has happened:

The aberrations of a false philosophy — the inflation of false
science — the pride of unbelief — and the contemptuous scorn of those
who believe — are preparing Germany for an overthrow or for suicide.

All was not well with Christianity before the war.
When war came it was in danger. Its own priests and
ministers endangered it. Adopting the material watch-
words, in England as well as in Germany, proclaiming

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

God and the justice of God to be on the side of their
own battalions, in Germany as well as in England and
France, in Austria as well as in Italy, they forgot that
simple lads who had been to church or had at least
heard the words "God is Love," or "Thou shalt not
kill, " or "Love one another, " or " Forgive your enemies,"
asked themselves in dugouts and ditches whether there
could be any divine authority for such commands
when they were told, by the very men who preached
them, not to love, but to hate; not to forgive, but to kill.
They were quite certain they had to kill. That was
obvious, disgusting though it was to most of them.
Therefore what was the truth of a religion which said,
"Thou shalt not kill".? Many of them after a time, by
fear or by weariness or by some queer idealism, inartic-
ulate, but becoming more clearly conscious and con-
vincing as the war dragged on in what seemed inter-
minable slaughter, came to criticize the whole meaning
of the war, to thrust its guilt not only upon Germany,
but upon the system of civilization which had made
it possible, and the leaders of that civilization, and the
teachers.

They worried out crude little syllogisms. "If Christi-
anity is right, then war is wrong, or if war is right (or
this war), then Christianity is a lie. " And again: "Every-
thing that I was taught not to do I am now taught to
do, and ordered to do. That means that the whole
moral code under which I was brought up was hypoc-
risy to keep me quiet. I was taught not to lie, but the
newspapers and the politicians lie all the time, and make
a virtue of it. I was taught to say my prayers to a good,
kind, loving God Who would answer them. But when
my pal Bill prayed that he might get through that raid
for the sake of his wife and kids (I heard him when he
thought I slept), a shell came and blew his blooming
head off — and anyhow I don't see any signs of a good,

lOO

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

kind, loving God. . . . Where is God, anyway, in this
year 1914 (or 1917), and what proot is there of His
interest in humanity ? Or what proof is there of human-
ity's interest in Him? Christianity has been going a
long time. Is this the result of it? It's all a queer
mix-up. The Germans seem a pious crowd. Before
every battle they pray and take the sacraments, just
like some of us, only more so. Is God helping them or
us.^ . . . . By God! the weather seems to favor 'em?"

Less crudely than that, but with higher perplexities,
secret indignation of soul, other men, more cultured,
questioned the truth of Christian faith, and could not
reconcile it with the business in hand. Nor could they
acquit its ministers of insincerity. They became
skeptics even in the presence of death, or found some
queer little shrine of faith of their own, some pagan
creed of stoicism or fatalism, at which they worshiped,
for comfort's sake.

Many of them were like that, as I have told in other
writings. Many of them in spite of others who were
glad of their chaplains, who became more fervent in
religious duties, who became converts to Catholicism
and then fell in battle like Christian martyrs to the
beasts, who carved the sign of the Cross in the chalk
of their dugouts — I have one of those chalk crosses
now in a cabinet of relics — or, like the French at Ver-
melles, made a little altar to Notre Dame des Tranchees,
and crowded round a soldier priest with bent heads,
receiving from his earthy hands the body of Christ in
the mystery of the Sacrament, with childlike faith,
before they died. (Not one escaped in that part of
the line.)

I will not dwell on what happened in war. I have
written that. Here I would write of what happened

lOI

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

after the war and is now in action. There has been
no spiritual revival. Christianity has not marched to
new victories. It is still menaced with heavy losses,
a general retreat all along the line of human society.
Christian priests and pastors have not yet dispelled
the doubt and darkness that came over the spirit of
many men. Their authority and their faith are still
challenged and a greater indifference than that before
the war is in the minds of people toward the claims
of Christian dogma.

The enormous turmoils of war loosened all the con-
trols of character, upheaved old traditions of thought
and conduct and behef. The enormous turmioil of
peace loosened them still more, until they rattle. The
brakes of the civilized world will not hold back the
social machine as it speeds downhill.

The effect of peace was, at the time, like a sudden
liberation of souls in bondage. The world breathed a
deep sigh and then ran riot. I think now as I write of
all the wild scenes I saw in Beligum and France and
England during the celebration of the armistice and
peace. They were not Christian in their general
manifestation. It is true that the churches were
thronged, that many prayers of thanksgiving were
uttered, but in the streets of great cities and of small
it was a Bacchanalia absolutely pagan. The women
behaved like maenads and hamadryads, dancing, sing-
ing, giving themselves up to the joy of life which had
been so long denied. Wild-eyed, ecstatic, with abandon-
ment of all restraint, they went to the festivals of the
streets to celebrate the return of the heroes. Youth
had been reprieved. Old Man Death had been
cheated of his last harvest of boys. Love had come
back.

Love was unlicensed In the streets. Quick greetings,
quick meetings, what mattered in the weeks of armis-

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THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

tice? The soldiers of the Allies — English, French,
Belgian, American, Italian — the prisoners of all the
armies swarming through the lines again, the women
who had waited for them, the girls who had been im-
patient of their coming, mingled in the crowds of joy
and knew no law but that. Only those who were cold
and old resisted the carnival. Only those who were
sad and solitary with remembrance.

It was then that the dancing mania took possession
of Europe. Even in Germany, defeated, despondent,
still a little hungry, youth danced in the Bierhalle and
Weinstube, as I saw them on the Rhine. Even in
Vienna, where children starved and could not sit up
with rickety limbs, there was dancing in the gilded
restaurants. I made a tour in Europe through many
cities and countries, and everywhere the music of jazz
bands, the wild rhythm of them, throbbed in my ears
to the beat of dancing feet.

I remember now one little picture among many
others of that dancing time. It was on the digue at
Zoute Knocke, close to Zeebrugge, where there was
the hell of war and where still the wreckage of it lay
about.

There were charming girls there of the best Belgian
families, and English girls, and Americans, and Russians,
and Poles, and Czecho-Slovaks, with young men who,
I found, had been prisoners in Germany, or officers at
Dixmude, or in a pleasant exile in England, during the
war.

The orchestra for the dance was not magnificent. It
was a simple piano-organ worked by the untiring arms
of a humble philanthropist, not without reward. It
played "Tipperary" and "The Broken Doll" un-
ceasingly, to the rhythm of the fox-trot and the
one-step.

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The light from the cafe windows splashed across the
roadway, making shadow pictures on the pavement of
the dancers who came within its gleam, whose frocks
and faces were touched by its glamour until they danced
into the gloom beyond that range of radiance where
there was night and the pale sea.

Outside the cafes sat the fathers and mothers of the
dancers, smiling as they watched the swaying of young
couples, the fantastic steps, the queer rhythmic kaleido-
scope of that dance on the digue.

The wind was strong. It caught many a tress and
blew it across the laughing face of a girl. It wafted
off the hats of the boys and made their hair wild. Frocks
were tossed into billows above long white stockings and
long black stockings, and in and out of the grown-up
dancers small children danced, wonderfully learned in
the latest steps, like little marionettes.

Next to me sat a man who had factories at Ypres and
Bailleul and Messines, where now there are only ashes
and the rags and bones of buildings. Some of his girls
were dancing there, and he smiled as he watched them
pass, greeting him with their eyes, over the shoulders
of their cavaliers.

"It is youth that dances on the edge of ruin," he
said in French. *'It is youth that dances to the tune
of life."

Another picture comes to my mind — night in the
Grande Place of Brussels with shadow pictures in the
windows of the old guildhouses near the Hotel de Ville
and the Maison du Roi.

Here three centuries ago princes and princesses sat
down to banquets in those mansions, and the old Place
itself with its beauty of gilded pillars and sculptured
stonework, still holding all the memory of the golden
age in Flanders, was crowded with nobles and ladies and
great merchants coming and going up the flights of steps,

104

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

hollowed out now by the tread of many feet, which
lead into the paneled rooms.

I heard music through open windows and went up-
stairs into one of those old rooms. It was thronged
with young men and women of humble class, dancing
together.

In the minstrel's gallery sat a company of large musi-
cians playing large instruments loudly. To the blaring
noise of it the Flemish dancers surged round, doing the
fox-trot and the two-step. The boys danced in bowler
hats and billycocks, and the ladies combed their hair
between the dances. A negro in a black suit and felt
hat came in with a big black box and opened it solemnly.
I expected to see a magic carpet brought out, or some
wizardry, but he sold lollipops to girls who tried to
steal them. The boys banged the girls about good-
naturedly in the Flemish style. The girls danced often
with each other, with a wonderful knowledge of the
latest steps. Now and then a boy and girl sat down
heavily together on the boards, and there were shrieks
of laughter. Two girls spoke to me in English. One
of them showed me the portraits of her lovers. There
were twenty of them, and all young English soldiers.
She was sorry the war was over. . . . Another girl,
waxen-faced, dark-eyed, ugly, kept telling me about a
boy named Harry whom she had loved. They had
lived together for a month, and when he went she wept
her heart away.

A young Belgian soldier spoke to me and explained
the spirit of the company.

"For five years there was war," he said; "now there
is pleasure. We wish to make up for those five years.
It is the same with everybody. We are forgetting the
war and finding the pleasure of life. "

"Are there any who remember?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "The poor devils with
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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

only one leg, or no legs, cannot dance. There are others
who are blind. Some are rotten with disease. The
lucky ones dance. It is our luck."

And everywhere in Europe the lucky ones danced.

Then gradually came disillusionment, disgust, except
where youth refused to renounce its rights. For a
year or more in some countries like England, for much
less in others, governments and peoples maintained
a fictitious show of prosperity, persuaded themselves
that their debts did not exist, that their prosperity was
assured, now that victory had come. In England the
demobihzed soldiers lived on doles and pensions, and
the time of their withdrawal, when they must go to work
again, was several times postponed. France was buoyed
up by large promises of the fruits of victory, and, though
prices soared to a fantastic height, wages rose, too, to
most of them. I, and many others wiser than I, prophe-
sied the coming of reality and was called a gloomy dog
for such dark forebodings. But it came. Steadily
reality bore down again the fiction of national arith-
metic, international rivalry. Paper money would not
buy real things. Real things must be made by hard
work. Those who could not work must starve.
Disease in one part of Europe would cause ill health
in other parts, and Russia, Poland, Austria, were
stricken with social ruin. Manufacturers would find
production futile if they could find no markets to buy
their goods. They could not longer pay high wages,
or any wages, if markets were shut against them. Unem-
ployment would grow apace if Europe did not set its
house in order by reconciliation and free trade in
peace. . . .

Those things happened in England, in many countries,

1 06

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

even in the United States of America, untouched, as
they beheved, by European conditions. And as they
happened, the psychology of peoples was affected by
bitterness and ill will and suspicion and anger. Where
were all the fine promises made to them in war? "A
land fit for heroes to live in!" That was the promise
to British soldiers. "The fruits of victory!" had
been the promise to the peoples of France. Instead,
taxation bore down with crushing burdens. Poverty
showed its ugly head, men who had been heroes in
the war broke their hearts against the hardness of this
peace.

Even that was insecure. Wars and rumors of war
shook the ground of eastern Europe and of Asia with
tremblements de terre that caused uneasiness and alarm
on our side of the Continent. The future, for boys old
enough to rejoice at peace, was covered with a black
pall. The great conflict had been called "a war to
end war. " This peace looked like a peace to end peace.
By old stupidities or new devilries, the statesmen of
Europe seemed to have made a hopeless mess of victory.
The peoples looked for new leaders who did not come.
Under the tightening pressure of war burdens and peace
failures, they became hard, cynical, selfish. It was a
fight now, not for high ideals, but for wages that would
not be below the 1914 standard of living, reckoned in
actual values. It was no longer to be a search for a
new world, but a struggle for existence. Not idealism,
but materialism, was the gospel of many who for a time
had been generous in sacrifice, splendidly forgetful of
self. In that state of selfishness are we now, as I write
this book.

Yet, by a strange and tragic contradiction, there has
been no time in modern history when the peoples of
the old civilization have been so desperately eager for
spiritual guidance. There is a great thirst for spiritual

IQ7

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

refreshment among those in the dry desert of our present
discontent. I find expression of that among many men
and women not ''rehgious" in temperament nor of
sentimental type, but rather among cynics and ironists
and reahsts. In conversation, at the end of pessimism,
they are apt to admit that "nothing can save us all
but some new prophet of God." Or they cry out for
some new faith to inspire nations with some tremendous
spiritual impulse leading to renunciation of selfish
ambitions, to a cleansing of hearts. Out of the House
of Commons, that assembly of "hard-faced men who
look as if they had done extremely well out of the war,"
out of that House of Worldly Wisemen, came a plea
for "a spiritual lead."

In the Middle Ages western Europe was united by a single idea
which sent the common man in his hundreds of thousands away
to the Crusades; which enshrined itself in countless wonderful
cathedrals, abbeys, churches; which produced great schools of
philosophy and art, great epic poems, and great institutions. It
expressed itself in a theory of government manifested in Holy
Roman Empire and Holy Catholic Church. It expressed itself
likewise in the lives of great men and in the royalty of St. Louis, the
sainthood of St. Francis, the statesmanship of Hildebrand. This
ideal, like all the ideals by which the great societies of men in the
long past of our race have been fashioned, wore out. . . . To-day we
possess no common ideal. We thrill with no common hope. We
tremble at no common terror. The nations of Europe are all adrift
one from another, and the classes within each nation have Hkewise
fallen asunder. The respect for real superiorities has vanished,
along with that for the traditional superiorities. Rank rests on no
recognized sanction. We are all one as good as another. Vulgar
ostentation replaces true distinction. The old catchwords are
meaningless. . . . The world of our day languishes for a new St.
Francis who shall call it to a new knowledge of itself. He will not
have to go far for his message. It is not in Heaven, neither is it
beyond the sea, "but the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth,
and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." Who will utter the word
in all simplicity ? The world is waiting for his voice. Let him plainly
set before us "life and good, and death and evil." There is no doubt
which we shall choose.

Io8

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

So wrote from the smoking room of the House of
Commons — reeking with cynicism and haunted by the
betrayal of all ideals — Sir Martin Conway, M.P., to
the office of the Times.

"We thrill with no common hope," he said; "we trem-
ble at no common terror. " He is right in thinking so, in
so far as nations are still divided and peoples are unable
to link up their hopes and their terror in one united
faith and action. Yet I see beneath the Europe of our
present state the same hopes and the same terror stirring
among all people, and out of them will come, I believe,
the salvation of civilization, if it is to be saved. Even
this materialism of which I have been writing is largely
the bitterness of peoples whose ideals have been frus-
trated but not killed, and wjao grab at petty, selfish
things because they seem the way to larger hopes. A
good deal of the social unrest, the spirit of revolt among
us, the violence of revolution, is due to "common
hopes" and "common terror," working crudely in
many minds in many nations. The terror is the fear
of new and devastating wars thrust upon the peoples
by evil statesmanship or created by their own passions.
To avoid that terror, the spirit of democracy is running
about like a rat in a trap, wild-eyed, fierce with fear.
It was not the love of militarism, but the fear of another
war, which caused the French people to demand ruthless
sanctions against the Germans, to support the Polish
alliance, to flame with anger against the English who
spoke of fair play even to Germany. And it was not a
different motive, but the same, which led the EngHsh
democrats to protest against too harsh a treatment of
Germany, because they believed that only by reconcili-
ation and generosity to the beaten enemy, whose strength
would one day be great again, could Europe, and France
herself, be saved from another orgy of massacre. The
dangerous philosophy of revolutionary labor, the wild

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insanity of Bolshevism itself, and its reaction in many
countries like Italy and England, fostered by men of
evil, with evil manifestations of bloodshed and violence,
had their influence over the simple minds of the masses
because of their fair promise of fulfilUng the "common
hopes" of humanity and averting the ''common terror. "
Those hopes were and are the abandonment of slaughter
as a method of argument between one nation and
another, a closer brotherhood of men under international
law, the security of the individual and of his family
from degrading poverty, the abolition of rivalry between
class and class by greater equality of service and reward,
the raising of the general standard of life so that all t

men and women shall have a fair share of life's beauty I

and joy. These are the ideals astir in the democracies -,

of England, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, the United '}

States. They are good ideals. They could be blessed |

by Pope and priests and pastors. They are indeed the !

ideals of society set out in the Gospel of Christ for which j

we have all been struggling through centuries of travail. ^

They are now astir, passionately, in the little houses in ■*

mean streets, in peasants' hovels, in city slums, in revo-
lutionary committees, in Red armies, in literary debat-
ing societies, in the private apartments of the Pope of
Rome. Most of the troubles of Europe to-day are due
to the desperate eflPorts of peoples to fulfill those ideals. |

In their human bhndness and folly they adopt evil to |

attain the ideal good. English workingmen, like those j

in other countries, think that by striking continually !

they can maintain their wages to the level of a high I

standard of living, whereas the}'' are killing their own
source of wealth. The communists believe that by
killing capital they can secure equality, which perhaps
is true, though it is an equality of ruin. To abolisli
war and create an international society, Trotzky raised
his Red armies, and Lenin launched his ultimatum

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

against all governments, thereby leading to appalling
atrocities and to incessant bloodshed. The failure of
European statesmen to create a new world out of the
ruins of the old, and the power of reactionary leaders to
crush the hopes of the idealists looking forward to a
reconstruction of society with less inequality between
those who work and those who profit, have poisoned
the brains of many people not otherwise evil. Indig-
nation against "profiteers," a sense of injustice, an
impatience with old ways of political argument and
with old calls to loyalty and obedience from men who
gained most and suffered least when their calls were
answered, are seething in the caldron of mass psychol-
ogy. Yet the "common hopes, " masked by materialism,
expressed in violence, are in their essence the general
aspiration of humanity toward a higher phase of social
life. Here is a great power of idealism, which some new
leader might call upon for immense service. Cleansed
from its grossness, lifted above selfishness, spiritualized,
it might now very quickly reform the world and lead us
forward to new conquests of civilization.

VII

I have said that the ideals of the time are the same in
the antechambers of the Pope as in the thatched cot of
the peasant. That sounds like an affected phrase, yet
not long after the war it was in the Pope's own room, and
from the Pope himself, that I heard the proof of that.
Looking back upon that interview I had with him in the
Vatican, I am astonished at the temerity with which I
asked for it and the rapidity with which it was granted,
for it was against all precedents and contrary to the
austere etiquette and privacy which surround the
Vatican. It was not merely the desire for a
newspaper "scoop," the vulgarity of which I loathe,

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

which led me to Rome, with the ardent wish to speak
with that httle man who, as the Holy Father, has the
loyalty of millions of men and women in all countries
of Christendom. I was distressed with the agony of
the world, almost as great in peace as in war, and it
seemed to me then, as it does now, that a spiritual
message was needed to give a lead to democracy. I
remembered how, through the war, many people, not
Catholics, had looked to the Pope as the one man who
might rise above the conflict and in thundering words,
or perhaps in a voice of penetrating sweetness, call the
world back to sanity and Christian brotherhood. That
did not happen. Sorrowful messages came from him,
deploring the "fratricidal strife"; privately he offered
himself as mediator and peacemaker, but no message
came to stir the hearts of peoples with burning words,
irresistible in appeal or command. In England we
thought him pro-German. In Germany they thought
him pro-Ally. The world ignored him and his own
priests were with the world. But even now he might
say something worth hearing by peoples looking for
leadership. Through the Daily Chronicle of London
and the Times of New York I could get the words
read by millions of plain folk — ^the nobodies of life
who were looking for a spiritual lead. That quite
simply and truly was why I asked to interview the
Pope.

My intermediary was a certain Monsignor Ceretti,
well known in the United States and Australia, where
he had learned to speak English with a slight American
accent and breezy unconventionality of manner which
encouraged audacity. He laughed heartily when I
told him of my desire. "Impossible!" he said. "They
don't allow journaHsts, even at a public audience."
We spoke of other things. Tactfully I abandoned my
request until the end of the conversation, when I said,

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

"Of course there is no chance?" He smiled and said,
"I will let you know."

Of course there was no chance, and I put the idea out
of my head until at the Hotel Bristol I received a card
permitting me to be received in private audience by
iS^ Saintete for twenty minutes, at noon on the following
day. The impossible had happened!

It was of course a great honor — President Wilson
himself had been granted this same time limit — and to
me a great adventure. I remember now my nervous-
ness, as I put on evening dress on the morning of the
interview — according to etiquette — and wrecked a white
tie so miserably that I had to borrow a waiter's, and
made a hopeless botch of it. So through the golden
sunHght of an October day in Rome, in the year 19 19,
I drove in an old carozza to the Vatican. I felt like a
man with a great mission, I was going to get a message
which might help the sick old world a little. As the
great dome of St. Peter's came into view, with the wide-
embracing sweep of its colonnades — those mighty
columns on each side of the cathedral square — I thought
of the great popes who had raised the magnificence of
this shrine and whose acts had made Rome the head-
quarters of Christendom through every age. Some of
them had been evil men, weak men, but many were
strong, with a burning passion in them which had
lighted new fires of faith, active in charity, unyielding
in their assertion of authority, immensely powerful,
not only by virtue of their office, but by force of charac-
ter, splendor of justice, love of humanity, sainthood.
The world needed such leadership now.

In the white entrance hall of the Vatican, to the right
of St. Peter's, I was saluted by the halberdiers in their
striped tunics and hose, passed up a long flight of marble
steps, walked through many antechambers in which
stood groups of papal guards, and in a smaller room

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

was greeted by a chamberlain who knew my business.
Five minutes passed, which seemed longer than ten.
A door opened and a monk came out with a smile about
his lips as though satisfied with words spoken to him.
The chamberlain beckoned me. At the doorway stood
Benedict XV.

He was a simple figure, dressed in white, not so tall
as I had expected — a tiny man — and with a scholar's
look, a little austere at first glance. Only at a glance,
for, after my first salute and when I asked him for
permission to speak in French, he laughed in a genial
way, and said, in French also, *'In that language we
shall understand each other. "

Then he took me by the hand and led me to a chair
close to his own, so that we sat side by side.

He asked me about America first, having heard that
I had been there not long ago, and then asked me to tell
him about the little studies I have been making of the
conditions of Europe after the war.

I spoke to him about the distress of peoples burdened
by high prices and heavy taxation, and about the curious
and rather dangerous psychology of many people in
England, France, Belgium, and Germany — probably in
Italy also — who are in revolt against present conditions,
and are disillusioned about that "new world" which
they expected after the war.

The Pope listened attentively, and then cut me short,
as I had hoped.

"Yes," he said, "the war was a scourge" — he used
that word ^^ jieau^ several times in his conversation —
"and the effects of it are enormous and incalculable.
When it began people imagined that it would be a quick
war, lasting three, four, five months. Few guessed that
it would last for nearly five years. That long period of
strife — ^that terrific scourge — will have far-reaching
and enduring results. The people must make up their

114

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

minds to endure the consequence of war. They must
steel the?nselves to suffer. At the same time we must do
everything in our power to alleviate those sufferings and
to ease the burdens of those who can least afford to
support them."

I noticed that throughout our conversation the Pope's
thoughts seemed to be concentrated mostly upon the
conditions of the working classes. He spoke of the
people rather than of their rulers, and of the poor rather
than of the rich.

When, for instance, I referred agam to the strikes and
other symptoms of social unrest in many countries,
he said:

"The people have been irritated by a sense of injus-
tice. . . . There are many men who have made money
out of this war."

He made a gesture with his forefinger and thumb, as
though touching money, and said:

"Those who grew rich out of the war will have to pay.
The burden of taxation will, no doubt, fall heavily
upon them."

He spoke of the great difficulty of the financial situ-
ation in all countries which have been at war. He
seemed to think there was no easy or quick solution of
those economic problems, nor any immediate prospect
of bringing down high prices to a normal level.

"It is difficult," he said, "difficult."

I was interested when he referred to the question of
the forced loan in Italy. That was a project by
which a levy was to be made on all capital in Italy,
starting at 5 per cent on all fortunes above £800 and
going up to 40 per cent on the largest fortunes.

The Pope did not express any definite opinion upon
this measure, but said, "Undoubtedly such taxation as
that would lay a heavy burden upon the whole

nation. "

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

For a few minutes his mind went back to the great
conflict which had caused all this financial ruin in
Europe, and he spoke of what the Catholic Church had
done and tried to do to alleviate its miseries and agonies.

"We could do very little," he said, "in comparison
with the enormous suffering caused by the war; but as
far as possible we took every opportunity of relieving
the sorrows of people by works of charity. We could
do no more than that, and it was only small compared
with all the sufl^ering, but it did bring comfort to many
poor people — ^wives and mothers, prisoners and wounded
— and mitigated some of the severities of military
acts. " }

He mentioned briefly some of the work which had I

been achieved under his direction, and referred me to a
detailed list of charitable services done during the war
by the Holy See.

Among those works which Benedict particularly
mentioned were the exchange of prisoners of war in-
capacitated for military service, following his telegram
dated December 31, 1914, to the sovereigns and heads
of belligerent states, and the liberation and exchange of
civilian prisoners.

These proposals were accepted, and the exchange of
prisoners through Switzerland proceeded quickly, so
that between March, 191 5, and November, 1916, 2,343
Germans and 8,868 Frenchmen returned to their own
countries, while in a single month 20,000 French people
passed from occupied regions to southern France.

Then the Pope mentioned to me the work done under
his direction for endeavoring to discover the where-
abouts of missing men. Soon after the war began
letters began to pour into Rome, mostly addressed to
the "Holy Father" himself, imploring news of missing
combatants. The Pope read them, took notes, and
ordered inquiries to be made, and toward the end of

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THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

1914 he instituted a special bureau, with branches
afterward at Paderborn, Freiburg, and Vienna.

"In many cases," said the Pope, **we were able to
give news to poor anxious famihes, but of course in
many other cases there was disappointment."

Over 100,000 letters were sent to the families of Italian
soldiers who were captured or missing.

He also mentioned the work done after his prolonged
negotiations with the Powers to secure a refuge in
Switzerland for the sick and wounded, and especially
for consumptives.

*'We used our influence," he said, "whenever possible,
to commute the death penalty of people condemned by
military law in Austria and Germany. In a number of
cases this was successful."

It was owing to the Pope's intervention that over a
hundred French hostages from Roubaix were liberated,
and among many other people. Princess Marie de Croy
(the friend of Nurse Cavell), who was condemned to
ten years' penal servitude for having concealed French
and Belgian soldiers, owed the mitigation of her punish-
ment and other concessions to the Pope's intercession.
It was impossible for him to act in the case of Nurse
Cavell, owing to the rapidity and secrecy of her exe-
cution.

The Pope made only a passing allusion to these serv-
ices, and said again: "It was very little. We did all
that was possible, but it only touched the great anguish
of the war."

He told me where I could get detailed accounts of the
enormous sums of money sent by the Holy See to Bel-
gium, Poland, Montenegro, and other countries, for
the purpose of feeding starving populations, and of his
repeated protests against the brutalities of war by
whomsoever they might be committed, and of his three
appeals for peace, the last of which, dated August i,

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

1917, contained concrete proposals for the beginning
of negotiations, very similar to President Wilson's
"Fourteen Points" which came later.

I tried to induce the Pope to continue upon that line
of conversation, but he came back suddenly to the con-
ditions prevailing after the war, and expressed the hope
that the disillusionment of peoples, the inevitable rise
in prices owing to taxation, and financial distress,
would not lead to violence or anarchy.

"It is the duty of all men," he said, "to endeavor to
solve these social problems in a lawful and peaceable way
and so that the burden will be fairly shared with good
will and charity. "

Speaking about the relations between capital and
labor, he referred several times to the writings or
"Encyclicals" of Leo XIII upon those subjects, which,
he said, expressed very clearly and in great detail the
Christian principles regarding the rights of working-
men and of employers, as well as the duties of the
state. He hoped those writings by Leo XIII might be
popularized, as they bore directly upon the problems of
modern social conditions.

"All their teaching," he said, "may be summed up
in two words — Justice and Charity. If men behave
justly and with real Christian charity toward one
another, many of the troubles of the world will be re-
moved. But without justice and charity there will be
no social progress. "

After a few more remarks on general subjects, in which
he showed his desire for the welfare of the people and for
an alleviation of the sufferings which now prevail in so
many countries as a direct consequence of the war,
the Pope rose from his chair and the audience ended,
after exactly twenty minutes, with his direct permission
to me to pubhsh the general course of this conversation.

The words he had spoken were not sensational, To

118

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

be quite truthful, I was disappointed with them. There
was nothing in what he had said which would call to
the hearts of peoples with trumpet notes, no great
cry of pity and appeal, no passion of spiritual leadership.
Here was a little, scholarly man, using no high-flown
phrases, but talking with keen common sense, sincere
interest in the problems of democracy, sadness at the
tragedy of the world. Most people would see nothing
but platitudes in what he told me. Yet, after all, as
I reflected, when I went out again into the sun-swept
square of St. Peter's, they were platitudes based upon
the authority of old and wise tradition, and upon a
faith in Christ, and such words spoken by a pope or by
a peasant might fall strangely upon the ears of a world
deafened by loud and hostile cries, after a war in which
such a phrase as "Christian charity" was mocked by
hatred and cruelty. After this interview I wrote a
sentence which now I read and write again: "Those
two words, now, at this present day, in this Europe
which I see so full of suffering, revolt, and passion, hold
perhaps the truth toward which mankind is groping
desperately in all manner of ways, with divers philos-
ophies. They overturned the pagan world when Peter
came to Rome, and still have power. '*

VIII

Perhaps Christianity is passing beyond the faith of
men who have no longer the simplicity of mind to
believe its mysteries. We must face that question.
If so, is there any new religion likely to arise and com-
mand the allegiance of the world with an authority which
they acknowledge as divine? For if not, it is certain
that there will be no rally up from the spiritual degra-
dation into which we have fallen, but still further a
lowering of moral standards, a grosser materialism.

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All the experience of human life in history goes to show
that mankind will not be obedient long to any law of
self-restraint and self-denial unless it is imposed upon
their conscience by a supernatural authority which they
believe divine. Yet without self-denial, human society
must cease to exist, even human life must end abruptly,
because men and women will not continue to raise up
children unless they are impelled by the fear of sin.
For the pursuit of human happiness ends always in
disillusion and despair, and without spiritual hope of
some compensating life beyond the grave this earthly
span will seem but mockery as always it has seemed in
the past to thoughtful souls, balancing the debit and
credit side of life's account.

There are some who believe that by "Education" |

humanity will reach greater heights of happiness and
a nobler code of moral law. That is hard to believe,
for the philosophers of the past and present have not
claimed great stores of happiness, though they were
rich in knowledge. Nor has education worked out to
virtue, as far as we may grasp the standards of the high-
est culture. Germany was, beyond doubt, the best
educated nation in Europe, but the most educated among
them were not most virtuous. They were most wicked.
In Italy of the Renaissance there were fine scholars,
great humorists, lovers of beauty, but they put no
curb on passion, nor did all their talent kill their cruelty.
The code of virtue is hard to obey. It is the martyr-
dom of passion. It is pain to the flesh and torture to
the spirit, except among rare souls who find an easy
way through life. Nor will any change in the code of
morality help human nature to be free of this penalty
of pain. Easy divorce may break a marriage which
has failed, but will not mend broken hearts. Marriage
or no marriage, love free as the four winds, the abohtion
of all law and punishment, will not take out of life its

1 20

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

hardships and Its agonies, and as we know, if the past
means anything to the present, the lack of law, the
denial of spiritual duties, ordained by a God believed
and feared by men, ends in beastiality and blood lust.
For the heart of man is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked.

It must be the old faith, or a new faith, with divine
authority, stronger over the minds of men than man-
made law. That is acknowledged, subconsciously, by
all people to-day. Those who have abandoned the old
faith are not satisfied with atheism or agnosticism.
Secretly they grope about for some other God, or Devil.
There is an immense amount of this secret groping, this
reaching out to a spirit world by means of incantations,
spells, and wizardries. It is a bad sign. It was done
in Rome before the downfall, in London at its lowest
phase, between the Middle Ages and Modernity, when
foul old James was king and Kerr with his witch-
wife was favorite in Paris before the Revolution.
INo new faith to lead humanity forward seems
hkely to come from spirit-rappings, table-turnings,
planchettes, and all the incoherent revelations of the
subconscious mind exhibited in the "spirit-writings'*
of Vale Owen and his kind, which have deluded so many
simple minds craving for spiritual guidance, for commun-
ion with their dead, for certainty in future life.

It has, perhaps, only one redeeming quality, and that
is the proof that human beings need some high sanction
for their way of life, and reach out to a spiritual law as
their one hope of comfort.

All this stirring and strife of the world means that.
All this social unrest is but the search for the ideal happi-
ness. And everywhere, in all classes and all nations,
there are numbers of men and women filled with a pas-
sion for service, ready for self-sacrifice, desperately
eager for spiritual leadership which will give the world

Q 121

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

greater peace, and the peoples of the world a better
chance of happiness in their souls and in their lives.
There is an amount of good will in the world to-day
which would recreate all social life, if but a leader came
to guide it and unite it with a common impulse. I do
not think that leader will come, not in the old way,
singly, in sainthood, with some message of all-embracing
love. I think rather it will be by the closing up of all
these separated impulses among the plain folk, by a
sudden unity of purpose before a common peril threat-
ening them all, and by the combined leadership of many
minds, still young and unformed, in our midst, gathering
up all these ideals and emotions and hopes and giving
form to them, and order. ■

The common peril is the decay of civilization by a J

lowering of the standards of living, due to the breakdown j

of economic machinery which turned the wheels of our
old life, and the menace of another devastating war
which would stop them altogether. The peoples are
conscious of that peril. Instinctively, at least, they
are aware of It. I believe that suddenly, when it assumes
a more terrifying aspect, they will gather together in
a great and common crusade to avert its horrors. All
the myriad impulses of good will which I find everywhere
in the world beneath the hard crust of national egotism,
will flow in a broad, steady river of spiritual purpose,
and perhaps the old lamps of Christian faith will be
relit.

There is, I fancy, a troubled conscience among some of
the ministers of the Christian churches, a sense of
guilt and of fear. In the universal tragedy of the war
they were rebuked by the pettiness of their sectarian
quarrels, their utter loss of touch with the souls of men,
condemned to die because their teaching had failed.
Now, after the war, they are troubled because in that
time they were Impotent, divided into nationalities

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THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

like the warring nations, and into defenders of the
state (right or wrong), instead of being united as defend-
ers of the Faith. Surely, as they knew, religion must
be more universal than that of Juju men of the war-
painted tribes. In the Hibbert Journal at which I
glance from time to time as an adventure in psychology,
there have been great outpourings of heart, confes-
sions of failure, pleas for unity, programs for bringing
the Christian churches into closer touch with the people.
They seem to believe they have their chance now, once
more, to restore the old faith to the people, and their
last chance. I believe that the Protestant churches
will make a desperate bid for that by identifying them-
selves with the economic interests of democracy and
supporting them in all demands that are clear in justice.
This new attempt was seen very clearly in the great
British coal strike in the spring of this year, when a group
of bishops of the Anglican Church supported the case of
the miners and affirmed in the spirit of Pope Leo XIII
that the first charge on industry should be the wages
of labor sufficient for the decent livelihood of the
workers. That was a sign of a new spirit in the Church
of England which did not excite more than a passing
comment, yet it was remarkable from a body of men who
by their tradition of caste and training, since the alli-
ance between state and Church, have been aristocratic
in their intellectual outlook, stubborn opponents of
democratic progress, and, with a few notable exceptions,
stanch defenders of the power and privilege of wealth,
however unjust in its oppression. Even now the clergy
of England as a body, apait from many zealous mis-
sionaries among the poor of the cities, stand for the old
order and not for the new, for the squirearchy and not
for the peasantry, for aristocracy of rank and money
against the rising claims of the great crowd. They do
§o without corrupt intentions or conscious snobbery,

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being for the most part men of amiable character
and devoted service, abominably poor themselves in
the small parishes, but it is their intellectual heritage.

There is one among them who is an intellectual
champion of the old order, a very dangerous enemy of
democracy whose very name he loathes as a foul, ill-
flavored word. This is Dean Inge, one of the most
remarkable figures in Enghsh hfe to-day — "the gloomy
Dean," as he is called in the popuir.r press. A mel-
ancholy man, profoundly interested in all the facts of
Hfe, able to relate them to the experience of history
throughout the ages, he has an angry, irritable contempt
for the shabby ignorance, the loose thinking, the lyings,
shams, and insincerities of pohticians and pressmen.
With a gloomy vision, justified, alas, in its gloom, he re-
gards the moral slackness of the masses and the economic
misery of Europe without sentiment, and in a hard,
realistic spirit. He is contemptuous of the little ex-
pedients of humanists and intellectuals to cure the evils
of our state. He sees strong tides and currents of social
evolution sweeping all such efforts like straws before
them. He watches the checks and balances of nature,
controUing the destiny of men. He sees man himself as
a puppet of blind forces buffeted about, broken, without
power over his own direction. Disease, famine, wars,
the ebb and flow of trade, the struggle of races, the rise
and fall of empires, the progress and retrogression of
human society, are the themes with which he deals with
a sense of mastery and with a kind of savage joy in
revealing the impotence and absurdity of human en-
deavor. His arguments have brought him to the con-
clusion that the white races will go down before the
dark races unless they revert to dirt-cheap labor,
abandon all social progress for the masses, and raise
greater armies than before to maintain their heritage —
even then being bound to lose in course of time

124

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT

when the dark races will also arm and advance to
destroy.

Testimonies [he wrote] which might easily be multiplied,
and which are not contradicted, are sufficient to prove that under a
regime of peace, free trade, and unrestricted migration the colored
races would outwork, underlive, and eventually exterminate the
whites. The importance of this fact cannot be exaggerated. The
result of the European, American, and Australian labor movement
has been to produce a type of workingman who has no survival
value, and who but for protection in its extremest form, the prohi-
bition of immigration, would soon be swept out of existence. And
this protection rests entirely on armed force; in the last resort, on
war. It is useless to turn away from the facts, however unwelcome
they may be to our socialists and pacifists. The abolition of war
and the establishment of a league to secure justice and equality of
treatment for all nations, would seal the doom of the white laborer,
such as he has made himself. There was a time when we went to
war to compel the Chinese to trade with us, and when we ruined a
flourishing Indian trade by the competition of Lancaster cotton.
That was the period which it is the fashion to decry as a period of
ruthless greed and exploitation. The workingman has brought
that period to an end. To-day he is dreaming of fresh rewards,
doles, and privileges which are to make the white countries a para-
dise for his class. And all the time he is living on sufference, behind
an artificial dike of ironclads and bayonets, on the other side of
which is a mass of far more efficient labor, which would swallow
him up in a generation if the barriers were removed.

In his philosophical writings Dean Inge strives to be
unbiased, scientific in his search for truth, but through-
out them all he reveals himself as the protagonist of
aristocracy and the enemy of the mob, a believer in
slave labor, well disciplined, kept tame, subservient
to authority by force and moral obedience. He belongs
to the school of thought which in the early nineteenth
century defended the use of child labor in factories
for fourteen hours a day, fought step by step against
all the Factory Acts which gave the workers a chance
of decency and health, and opposed the trade union
which helped to gain those victories as the work of the

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

devil. The clergy of the Church of England, especially
those in comfortable livings, belonged to that school of
thought, and betrayed the Gospel of Christ by their
toadyism to the cruelest company of industrial slave
drivers that have ever escaped hanging by outraged
humanity. It was their callousness to the sufferings of
the people that divorced the Church of England from
the masses. If Dean Inge prevails over his brethren,
the Church of England will disappear under a wave of
wrath. But he is a lonely man these days.

Everywhere, in all classes and in all nations, the
spirit of the people is rising, claiming new rewards, a
bigger share of life's good gifts, and seeking some way
of escape from the eternal menace of war, the crushing
burdens of armaments, the idiocy of international strife.
Ever3rwhere the spirit of good will is gathering strength
to fight the spirit of ill will, to obtain union over disunion,
and construction instead of destruction. Even Dean
Inge ought to see that if the peril of the dark races is
real, the only answer is the unity of the white races,
rather than endless rivalry with bouts of massacre. |

The people begin to see that. They demand leadership |

to that end. They will produce their own leaders. It
is the hope of Europe.

THE NEW GERMANY

DURING the war the German people were put out-
side the pale of civilization by the Allied propagan-
dists and by public opinion, fever-heated not only by
those engineers of passion (enormously efficient), but by
their own nightmares of imagination and ferocity. The
French called them "Bodies" and "Barbares, " the
British called them "Huns," and the readers of the
Daily Mail and other popular journals believed
firmly, and here and there continue to believe, that
"German" means the same thing as "Devil," and that
German human nature is in none of its characteris-
tics similar to the nature of the rest of the human
family, but a thing apart — obscene, monstrously cruel,
abominable.

Most of these characteristics were recorded, in mil-
lions of words, within the first six weeks of war, and
became fixed for all the war, and for years to come, in
miUions of minds. The invasion of Belgium was the
first shock under which the imagination of people who
knew nothing of modern warfare (none of us knew)
reeled and saw red. Then followed atrocity stories —
the cutting off of babies' hands and women's breasts,
the shooting of civilians, the burnings in Alost and
Louvain, abominable outrages on women and children.
These things, told day after day by correspondents,
repeated with whispered words of horror in every house

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

in France and England, reiterated and confirmed (it
seemed) by the Bryce Report — created a hatred of the
German race too deep for words, in masses of simple
hearts. Those people were surely devilish! Not Attila
and his Huns had done worse things in the dawn of his-
tory. They were human gorillas, monsters. The re-
moval of the women of Lille and other towns for en-
forced labor away from their own folks aroused the
fury to flaming heights again. The use of poison gas,
their treatment of prisoners, and, later, the sinking of
merchant ships and the Lusitania and Red Cross ships
in an unrestricted U-boat warfare, gave fresh food to
those greedy for the continuity of Hate. The Germans
from first to last were "Huns" of inhuman wickedness.
So many wrote, and so most of those who read believed.
I was not one of those who wrote or believed as much
as that. Never once throughout the whole war did I
call the Germans "Huns," never once, from first to
last, did I in my thoughts or in my words credit those
who put them outside the human family. I believed
always, with what seems to me now a strange obstinacy,
though I have not altered my belief, that the Germans
as a people were neither better nor worse than others in
Europe, though under the discipline of powers a little
more evil and cruel, and ruthless in cruelty, than other
powers dominating the actions of common men. I have
called this conviction of mine a "strange obstinacy"
because, looking back on it, I marvel that I withstood
the tremendous pressure of public opinion and of Ger-
man guilt. I had no blood ties or other bonds with the
German folk. Before the war I had only spent a few
weeks in their country. My affection was whole-
heartedly for the French, and during the war this devel-
oped into a deep enthusiasm. I was not a pacifist in
the sens€ of a man afraid to fight, or a "conscientious
objector" against fighting, for as a correspondent all

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THE NEW GERMANY

my soul was with the fighting men, and I risked my life
with them. Nor could any soul alive have been more
sickened by those tales of horror, and by cruelty unde-
nied and undeniable. I was there to see the manner
of German destruction, day by day, year by year, in
ruined cities and ravaged fields, and all their killing of
young manhood. Yet never did I believe in their mon-
strosity, or their place apart in the human family, as
ogre changelings. I think what was always at the back
of my mind was the belief that the German people, as
a whole, the peasants and the clerks and the manufac-
turing fellows, were but victims of a damnable discipline
and of a still more damnable philosophy, imposed upon
them by military minds of a rigid and almost religious
caste; and that those Prussian Junkers were only rather
more logical, and very much more efficient, in the
fulfillment of their ideas than certain English militarists
whom I had happened to meet along the way of life —
an opinion in which I have since been confirmed by
certain generals in Ireland and others like them in cere-
bral structure of anthropoid type.

Again and again I met German prisoners, captured
freshly on the field of battle, talked with them, watched
them, and read their letters, which I used to grab from
dugouts. They were human fellows, all right. They
hated the war and called it the "Great Swindle" years
before it ended, and cursed their officers. They were
afraid, like our men, under barrage fire. They were
mostly very civil, and glad of a civil word to them.
They loved their wives and children, like most human
animals (a little more than most, perhaps), though
doubtless they were unfaithful behind the lines in France,
being men in exile, and eager for what life could give
them before death came. In physique masses of them
were extraordinarily like English fellows of country
regiments. There was not a bean to choose between

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

them. Doubtless some of them got beastly drunk
when there was a chance, like some of ours, and men who
are beastly drunk do beastly things.

Yes, but atrocities.? . . .

Well, they had shot down civilians in cold blood, or
in hot blood, and called them, justly or unjustly, francs-
tireurs. Shots had come from Belgian windows, so
they said. They had burned Belgian homes and put
Belgian men and boys against a wall and killed them.
Horrible! — but defended in my hearing by British
officers, who said: "We should do the same. It's the
law of war. " Doubtless there had been many atroci-
ties, but I could never get evidence of any of them.
All the evidence I could get myself, throughout the war,
in the places where they were alleged to happen, was
against the truth of them. No living babies had their
hands cut off, nor women their breasts. That is cer-
tain, in spite of faked photographs. No Canadians
were crucified, though it will be believed in Canada for
all time. The evidence was analyzed and rejected by
our G. H. Q. There were no German "corpse factories,'*
though our Chief of Intelligence patronized the myth.
I myself inquired for atrocities in Lille, Liege, and
captured villages in which we rescued civilians who had
lived for years in Germans hands. I could not get any
evidence at all. The civilians themselves, while cursing
the Germans as a ''sale race^^^ did not charge them with
abominable acts resembhng in any way the atrocity
stories of the newspapers. I am convinced that much
of the evidence in the Bryce Report is utterly untrust-
worthy. Nevertheless, there were, no doubt, atrocities,
horrible and disgusting cruelties, on evidence that can-
not be Hghtly disregarded, and according to the nature
of men — peasants, drunken fellows, degenerate brutes,
living in an enemy country in time of war. We have
seen in Ireland the cruelty of human passion on both

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THE NEW GERMANY

sides. There were bad things done by German soldiers,
and there were worse things done by the orders of the
German High Command. That business of the women
in Lille was unpardonable. The sinking of hospital
ships was a degradation of humanity itself. The
smashing of French machinery in cotton mills and silk
industries revealed an evil genius corresponding to the
destruction of Irish creameries condoned by Hamar
Greenwood and providing amusement to Lloyd George.
The use of poison gas aroused an outcry from civilized
peoples — among the Allies. Our own intensive use of
it rather dulled the sensibilities of public opinion, and
our recent experiments in a more deadly form of gas
(highly successful) show that our military minds intend
to use it in the next war, should military minds still
be allowed to have their way. Yet the charge sheet
remains heavy against the Germans in the war, nor were
the people themselves guiltless in supporting acts
then which now, in defeat, they condemn. Not guilt-
less, callous of much cruelty, so that they might get
victory. Well, we find more cruelty in human nature,
outside Germany, then once we cared to believe. In
Russia it is not unknown, though Russians w^ere so good
and kind when they were still fighting on our side.
Even in England, and in Ireland, there are potentiali-
ties of cruelty which are not quite reassuring to our
self-complacency, though, on the whole, we are a kindly
and good-natured folk, unless we have swerved from
the straight line of tradition. The more I see of differ-
ent peoples, up and down the world, the more I under-
stand that they cannot be held guilty for the acts of
their rulers, for the policy of their diplomats, for the
cruelty of their fellows, or for their own ignorance and
stupidity. There is no "England" when foreign folk
say "England" does this or does that, thinks this or
that. There are millions of English people who do and

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

think quite differently, or have no share in what is done
or thought in particular cases. There is no "France"
when we say "France" is hostile to England, "France"
wants to establish a military autocracy in Europe.
There are many French people who love England still,
many who are antimilitary. So the German house-
wife, watching her children develop bulbous heads with
rickets (what they call "the English disease") because
of our blockade, had very Httle to do, as far as I can see,
with the gas attack at Ypres, and the peasant hustled
from his plow to front-line trenches was not respon-
sible directly for Von Tirpitz and the U-boat war. " But
they supported their government," says the logical
man. "They did not rise and overthrow their devilish
leaders." That is true. But English folk decline to
be branded because their government has done things
which they detest, villanious things, without honor,
dirty things which cannot bear the light of day. The
clerks, the shop girls, the farmers' boys, the mechanics,
have not overthrown a government which is the most
sinister combination of corrupt interests ever known in
EngHsh history. They have neither the power, nor
the knowledge, to control or check or defy their gov-
ernment. Most of them are too busy with their little
needs of life to bother about it.

The claim of the Germans to an ordinary share of
human characteristics was admitted by most of our
fighting men throughout the war, who called the man
on the opposite side of the way "Fritz" or "Jerry,"
with a certain sympathy, as being in the same bloody
mess, and with real admiration as a first-class fighting
man. The claim was also admitted, instantly and
astoundingly, by the British troops who occupied the

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THE NEW GERMANY

Rhine bridgeheads after the armistice. The Germans
showed no kind of hostihty against our men. On the
contrary, there was something rather humihating at
first in their show of friendhness. They went too far,
it seemed to some of us, in playing Enghsh patriotic
airs in their public restaurants, so soon after their
defeat. Fear, perhaps, as well as a desire to be gemilth-
ligf was the secret motive of their friendliness. If
British soldiers had been ugly tempered, they could have
made a hell along the Rhine. Better to keep them good
tempered !

All motives apart, there was quickly on the Rhine a
"cordial understanding" between our men and German
families in whose houses they were billeted. Whether
we hke to admit it or not, there is something German
in our own blood, in our way of hfe, in our manner of
speech. The houses were spotlessly clean, and our
Tommies liked this cleanhness. When taps were
turned on, water came out, and our men, after expe-
rience in French billets, where sanitary engineering is
not a strong science, said, "Bloody wonderful!" After-
ward some of them, under the tuition of some DeutscheS'
Mddcheriy said, "Merkiviirdig!" There German girls
were neat and clean and fair and plump, like buxom
country wenches at home. They were good inter-
preters of German life to British lads.

Our officers yielded more tardily, with certain prick-
ings of conscience, and with a stirring of old memories
and oaths of hatred, to German civility, until most of
those, too, were captured with admiration for the good
order of German social life, for their astonishing indus-
try and efficiency, for the solid comfort of their homes,
and for their habitual sense of discipline. There were
certain types of German manhood who remained re-
pulsive to Enghsh eyes and ideas — the bald-headed
vulture type — but so quickly, so utterly, did all sense

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of Hate disappear, that, sitting in some of those
restaurants in Cologne while the gospel of hate was still
in full blast at home, I used to think that English
maiden ladies and patriotic old gentlemen in St. James's
Street clubs, and newspaper leader writers, would have
been stricken dumb if suddenly confronted with these
scenes where English soldiers chinked beer mugs with
German soldiers, sat in joyous company with German
girls, and Hstened to German bands playing "The
Roast Beef of Old England" and "Britannia Rules
the Waves." It was just a recognition that these
people, anyhow, were human souls, not individually
guilty of atrocities, not "Huns" in their manners and
ideas, not particularly responsible for the war, and
jolly glad, like our people, that it was all over at last.
To me it seemed a great moral lesson in humanity.
I saw it as a hope that, after all, human nature might be
stronger than international hatreds — ^though I was
wrong, at the time, for international hatred reasserted
itself, mostly on our side, and the friendliness of men
in contact with one another could not overcome the hos-
tilities and greeds and plunder spirit of politicians and
peoples not in human contact with defeated nations.
Justice, also, had to be considered, and as Madame
Roland apostrophized liberty from the scaffold, so might
we cry out, ''Comme on t'a jouee en ton noml" (What
games they have played in thy name!").

Ill

The German people acknowledged defeat. It is a
mere newspaper myth which pretends still that they
never realized or admitted defeat. The terms of sur-
render on Armistice Day were the great acknowledg-
ment— an annihilating blow to all their military pride.
The signing of the Peace of Versailles was the knell of

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doom to any last vestige of incredulity. The German
Empire had surrendered its armies, its fleet, its mer-
cantile marine, its property in many countries, and was
pledged for years, and generations, to pay such great
sums of money in indemnities to the victor nations
that no imagination could grasp their significance
beyond the certain fact that German industry would
be taxed to the utmost limit under the pressure of irre-
sistible force. Every soldier who tore off his shoulder
straps and went back home told the tale of the last
months of war, when there were no reliefs, no reinforce-
ments, no chance of holding the front against the enemy
attacks, so that they were rounded up like sheep after
ghastly slaughter. It is true that men like Ludendorff
and other generals tried to fling the blame of defeat on
the civilian populations, wrote about "the stab in the
back," blamed the revolution for the breakdown of
the armies. That cowardly camouflage has not de-
ceived the German people, though newspaper corre-
spondents accept it on its face value.

"You have gambled. You have lost. You must
pay!" said a Socialist Deputy in the Reichstag when I
was in Berlin this summer, and he turned to the mem-
bers of the Right — representatives of the Junkers — who
tried to mock at him, but then were silent under that
lash of truth.

They knew they were defeated, the German people,
in their bodies and in their souls.

In their bodies they knew long before the ending of
the war. We do not yet realize — those, at least, who
were not in Germany at once after the armistice — how
sharp was the tooth of hunger which bit them and how
long it gnawed at them. Even rich people who could
pay any money for smuggled food, the practice of
schleichhandlung, as they call it, over and above the
allowance of their ration cards, found it hard to get

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

enough to satisfy their appetites. Even they were
always a Httle hungry, just to the point of thinking
continually of food, remembering their last good meals,
anticipating the next, so that, as I am told by them, it
became an obsession. The middle classes, not rich
enough for much in the way of schleichhandlung
(which is smuggling), and kept to the strict severity
of official rationing, never, for two years, had enough to
eat, or at least never enough nutritious food. They
indulged in chemical products, ersatz food, which
gave them a false sense of satisfaction for a time, but
no red corpuscles. They saw their children withering,
weakening. In the poorer classes there was real star-
vation, and the women and children were victims of
tuberculosis and every kind of illness due to lack of
milk and fats. Women fainted at their work. A
strange drowsiness crept over them, so that working
girls would drop asleep in tramcars, as I saw them after
the armistice, through sheer anaemic weakness. For the
children of the cities the last two years of war and the
first years of peace were doom years. They, like the
babes of Vienna, were so rickety that they did not grow
bones in their bodies, but only gristle.

It was at the beginning of 1916 that the pinch began.
By October of 1916, when the milk ordinances were in
force, most cities had lost their last chance of fat suffi-
ciency. German scientists, confirmed by British, have
worked out the statistics of "calories" required for a
workingman of middle weight as 3,300 a day.

In the summer of 1916 the German folk were reduced
to 1,985 per capitum. In the winter 1916-17 they were
reduced to 1,344, ^^^ i^i the summer of 1917 to 1,100.
The majority of the German folk were obliged to exist
on a third of the means of life necessary for normal
nourishment. The effect on childbirth and child life
was devastating. The birth rate went down during

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the war by 40 per cent, and the death rate of children
reached sinister figures.

In Prussia 50,391 children between one and fifteen
years of age died in 191 8, compared with 27,730 in the
year before the war. In Mecklenburg-Schwerin, an
agricultural state, 819 children died in 1918, compared
with 360 in 1914. Tuberculosis ravaged children of
all ages, as well as adults, mostly women, and in 191 5
there were 61,000 deaths; in 1916, 66,544; i^i 1917, 87,032;
and in 191 8 over 97,000 — from that disease, directly due
to undernourishment.

Almost worse than the deaths was the weakness of
the living, thousands of children crippled for life by hip
and joint diseases, and so weakened for life by the hard-
ships of their early da^^s that in 1919 a careful analysis
of school children proved that 60 per cent of them were
from one and a half to two years underdeveloped, accord-
ing to the normal standards of their ages. Even in this
year 1921 the percentage of children underdeveloped to
that extent in the industrial cities remains very high.

So the German people suffered, and the worst thing
that women suffered, and many men, was to see their
children weakening and dying, or never gaining in health
and strength. No wonder, poor souls, that they wished
well to a U-boat war which should break the blockade
and let food in, did not cry out against the cruelty even
of a Lusitania sinking in which the bodies of babes were
delivered to the sea, because of millions of German
children doomed to death if the blockade lasted with
its deadly grip upon German life. To break that net
anyhow, by any violence, by any cruelty, was justified
in the souls of German men and women besieged through
the years of war and watching the blight upon the
children they had brought into an evil world. So, if I
had been a German father, I should have thought, and
so would you, I guess, who read this book.
10 137

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

When the armistice was made, the German folk
looked for reUef. "At last," they said, "the blockade
will be broken and our children saved!" But month
after month, as the peace treaty was being drafted
and discussed by four or five leisurely and self-interested
men, pleased with their high mission to alter the struc-
ture of European geography and to build a new world,
the blockade was kept tight, and month after month
more German babies died, more withered, more sickened
with horrible disease. "The justice of God!" said
certain pious souls in England. If that is God's jus-
tice, it is not pitiful. But it is man's cruelty, and we
cannot shelter ourselves behind the back of God. The
German folk were bitter against us for that. I think
they had a right to be bitter, and that the verdict of
history will be against us for that. We had beaten
them into absolute surrender. Our force was enough to
impose our terms without the need of baby-starving.
Nor is it a defense to say that the Germans would have
been harsher with us if they had won. Gentlemen
do not regulate their conduct by the standard of those
whom they condemn as brutes, or should not do so, I
imagine. We had such power over our beaten enemy
that we could have forgone the privilege of cruelty in
that and other things.

There was one thing we did which was the worst form
of cruelty — cruelty to animals. That was our holding
back the prisoners of war a year and more after the
armistice. Even as I write there are still some German
prisoners in France, serving terms of punishment.
Frightful! It was justified according to the law, utterly
unjustified in human psychology. Imagine those poor
wretches, just like animals, caged, fed, powerless to
resist or protest. The war was over and they had re-
joiced at its ending. The war had finished for fighting
men, and through their barbed-wire cages they saw ours

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marching for home again, cheering, joyous. Month
after month they stayed on, sick with Heimtveh, suf-
fering torture of soul for their own women and babes. In
Germany this was torture, too. I saw postcards written
to the caged men by their women and children. "Why
don't you come home, dear father? The war is over.
Why do the EngHsh still keep you prisoners?" They
were kept as hostages of German surrender until some
went mad and tried to kill themselves.

Then at last, in the autumn of 19 19, I saw them going
back, trainloads of them, passing over a railway bridge
in Cologne. Each train was decked with branches of
green stuff; from every window the liberated prisoners
leaned out, waving red flags and red rags. I wondered
at the reason of that red color. Were they all revolu-
tionarists, going to make trouble because of their bitter-
ness? The people of Cologne rushed out to the bridge
to cheer them. But many people I saw could not cheer.
They burst into tears, and stood there weeping. Those
were truckloads of human tragedy, a year late for
peace. It would have been a larger thing if we had let
them go before. It would have done good, and no harm,
as a generous act. We had small men, with small
brains and small hearts, at the top of things.

The history of Germany after the armistice and just
before was a strange study in human psychology. Their
"revolution" was the mildest thing of its kind ever
known in the turmoil of a nations ruin. It began with
a mutiny in the fleet when the seamen marched from
Kiel with the red flag, gathering adherents of soldiers,
self-demobilized, ruffians liberated from prison, and
young boys eager for exciting adventures in the way of
shoplifting and looting. Through many towns marched

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this horde of men and boys, and in many places they
suspended the Biir germeister y disarmed the poUce, and
took over the control of the civic administration as far
as occupying the city halls and posting revolutionary
placards on walls and lamp-posts where we read them
when we made our move toward the Rhine. Some
clothing stores were looted, a good many officers were
manhandled, having their shoulder straps and badges
of rank torn from their uniforms, if they did not them-
selves remove those symbols of authority, which most
did, in a fearful way. But all that was not very terri-
ble, and there were no scenes of bloodshed or passion-
ate cruelty. Simultaneously there were moving back
through Germany the remnants of broken armies,
keeping good order, marching with the same old disci-
pline, except when, at each town, men left the ranks,
cut off their badges and buttons, and returned to civil
life. The home-coming men were received as heroes
by their folk. They were heroes, for they had fought
in many great battles, won many great victories, and
had been defeated, not by lack of courage — their rear-
guard resistance had been stubborn to the end — but
by their own dwindling numbers under the immense and
overwhelming pressure of the Allied armies. They
were garlanded with flowers as though they had won
the war; and we need not sneer at that, but rather
admire the spirit of that welcome home to broken
men.

The red-flag columns, looting and shouting and
playing at revolution, were not very terrible, as I have
said, but they terrified the German civilians, who shrank
back from the specter of anarchy suggested by these
demonstrations. Far greater was their dread of Bolshe-
vism than of Allied troops about to occupy the Rhine
towns. It is indeed a fact that they looked for our
army with anxious expectation, as guardians of law and

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order. From Cologne, in which the revolutionary
seamen had played their usual farce, came an urgent
request that our troops should occupy the city before
schedule time, and when our first patrols of cavalry,
which I accompanied, entered the Dom-Platz, they
were received not as enemies, but as friends. Strange
paradox, but easily understood by those who knew the
German dread of anarchy, their instinctive and in-
herited traditions of civic discipline, and their immense
relief that the drain of German blood had stopped at
last.

The flight of the Kaiser and the proclamation of the
Republic comprised the German revolution over the
whole territory of the old Empire, except in Berlin,
where there was some short and desperate street fight-
ing, not between supporters of the old regime and the
new Republicans, but between the new Republicans and
the communists, or Spartacists as they called them-
selves, with Bolshevik ideals, under the leadership of
Karl Liebknecht. A Provisional Government had been
form.ed by Liberal and Moderate Socialists, of whom
the chiefs were Ebert, Scheidemann, and Erzberger,
with Doctor Solf as Foreign Minister. In the background
were the Junkers and the old imperial bureaucracy,
lying low, watching events with an anxiety that was
gradually allayed when they realized that the German
people were not out for anarchy, nor for vengeance
against their old leaders, but in a vast majority were
hostile to the small bodies of Spartacists. It was also
made clear by Scheidemann and his colleagues (men
who had been loyal throughout the war and stanch
supporters of every act of military autocracy, in spite
of a thin camouflage of democratic protest) that they
were determined to establish the Republic on the old
traditions of imperialism without the Emperor, or at
least as protectors of capital and buorgeois interests.

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The military leaders [says an eyewitness of the revolution (my
friend Percy Brown, in his valuable book, Germany in Dissolution)]
were at a loss. They had expected the long-suffering masses to
turn savagely on their late masters. Hundreds of high officers had
fled the country to find that peace and defeat had found Germany
merely bewildered, without a sign of revengeful temper. They
found the sailors, the only people who really revolted, offering to
protect the property of the wealthy until order was restored! If
the General Staff had had any sort of a plan by which they could
have saved their faces, they could have suppressed the revolutionary
movement as easily and as completely as they have kept the people
down since Bismarck showed them the way.

Karl Liebknecht and his revolutionary companion,
Rosa Luxemburg, as the leaders of the Spartacist
groups, the only people who believed in a real revolution
of the laboring masses against the forces of capital
and of bourgeoisie, m the true style of Lenin, were
feared "worse than the plague," says the writer I have
already quoted. They organized revolutionary out-
breaks and took forcible possession of the Vorzvdrts
and other newspaper offices. They were given short
shrift by the Green Guards, or military police, of Berlin,
under the command of Noske, who had the brain and
temper of a Prussian general. With field artillery and
machine guns, flame throwers and bombs, the govern-
ment forces surrounded the Spartacist strongholds and
shot their defenders to pieces. Karl Liebknecht and
Rosa Luxemburg, who had believed in the quick success
of the insurrection against the Provisional Government
in Berlin, had been trying to rally up the provinces.
They remained in hiding after the collapse of their
comrades in Berlin, until captured by a trick of Noske's
officers. On their way to prison they were brutally
murdered. The ''revolution" was at an end, except
for sporadic outbursts of a feeble kind here and there.
It was no revolution at all, in the old sense of the word.
No wild wave of fury swept over the German people

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because of the ruin and defeat into which they had been
led by their rulers. There was no bloody vengeance
against the military and aristocratic caste which had
used the bodies of humble men as gun fodder for their
imperial ambitions, and poisoned their very souls by
a damnable philosophy of militarism, and for years had
disciplined them brutally into servitude. No red
flames made bonfires of the country houses into which the
Junkers had slunk sulkily. Ludendorff and Von Tirpitz
did not dangle from the crossbars of German lamp-
posts, nor any other men whose arrogant conceit had
brought their country into the deep gulfs of ruin, playing
like gamblers with the fate of an empire, and then,
when they lost, blaming the people who were victims
of this insanity. The Allied peoples would have been
more satisfied with the sincerity of a "change of heart"
among the German folk if some of their chief thugs had
been slit from ear to ear, if there had been something
in the Russian style, which they deplored in Russia but
desired in Germany. Not a bloodthirsty man myself, I
am tempted by the thought that it would have been
well if the high military caste and the Junkers of the
old regime had been swept out of the country by their
own folk under a sentence of lifelong banishment. It
would have helped the world forward, and German
democracy could have claimed greater generosity from
the peoples of other nations.

The German people whom I met after the armistice
were stupefied by the immense surrender of all their
old pride, and bewildered by the uncertain future ahead
of them. I could find no hate in them for the English,
and no hate for the authors of their own tragedy. For the
Kaiser they had no passionate enthusiasm, but a little
pity, a little contempt, and a latent sentiment which
they could not annul. They did not, and do not, believe
that he "willed the war." They regarded him as a

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figurehead used by the German High Command, and
a lover of peace. Out of the depths of their ruin they
remembered him in the old days of German splendor
and success, a fine personality, the head of the iiouse
of HohenzoUern, which was identified with the glory of
Prussia and the Empire. They would not fight to get
him back, they did not yearn to have him back, but
they had no grudge against him. So also it was with
Hindenburg, who, unlike LudendorfF — unpopular every-
where— remained with the armies to the end and asso-
ciated himself with the German people in defeat as well
as in victory. His soldiers remembered the magic of
his name when he had directed them to victory. Other
generals also, the commanders in the field, received
that tribute of remembrance which softened the charge
against them of reckless leadership to ruin. The
"revolution," therefore, was not one of popular fury
or vengeance. The very magnitude of their disaster
united the German people for self-preservation after
the war, and they saw clearly that disunion, anarchy,
would lead them into deeper and blacker pits of ruin.
That fear of anarchy to an order-loving people, long
trained in the philosophy of bourgoise life, protection
of property, industry, commerce, was the dominant
thought of the masses of German folk, overwhelming
all other instincts. . . . And always Russia was a
ghastly warning.

So they supported Ebert, Scheidemann, and the
moderate program of the Majority Socialists, with
their allegiance to bureaucratic traditions and govern-
mental authority. Later they swung more and more
to the Right rather than to the Left, to the Deutsches
Folkspartei with its imperial convictions, and to even
more reactionary groups. That was when the Treaty
of Versailles was revealed in the full measure of its
severity and ruthlessness, and when French and

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British opinion, especially the opinion of French and
British newspapers, convinced the German people
.that they were still regarded as outside the pale of
civilization, could hope for no generosity, for no mercy,
for no fair play, even, from the Allied Powers and their
Supreme Council. Under the goad of constant in-
sults— still called "Huns" and "Boches, " liars and
monsters — and under the menace of military "sanc-
tions," and in the grip still of that blockade by starva-
tion, the German spirit which had been ready for demo-
cratic union with other peoples in the League of Nations
and for liberation from its old traditions, reacted and
hardened and was filled with bitterness.

Their revolution had been real to a degree which
we do not even yet admit. It had replaced the Emperor
by Ebert the tailor, and all the other kings of Germany
had fled. More than that, it did represent a great
change in the moral and spiritual outlook of the German
people. Gone were the arrogant officers swaggering
along the sidewalks and thrusting civilians to the gutter.
Gone was all the military pomp and pride which had
assumed so great a place in their national life. The
immensity of their losses in men and wealth, the stag-
gering figures of their national debts, the inevitability
and enormity of the price they would have to pay,
shocked the soul of Germany to its innermost recesses,
uprooted the very foundations of their old faith, and
gave them an entirely new vision regarding their past
history and their future place. I am convinced from
all I heard in Germany after the armistice — though at
that time my observation was limited to the occupied
zone — that the German people would have responded
eagerly and thankfully to any touch of chivalry and to
any conviction of real justice. They did not want to
avoid punishment, but they hoped, these men and
women who were victims of war, that it would not be

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

greater than human nature itself could bear without
revolt, nor so cruel and vindictive as to reduce them to
despair. President Wilson had made great promises to
democracy in his Fourteen Points, and he had included
the German people in his pledges if they got rid of their
old rulers and established a democratic government.
Well, the German people had proclaimed their Repub-
lic, and Ebert the tailor was their President, and it
was stable and lasting and free from anarchy. They had
fulfilled their part and shared the hopes of the peoples
in open covenants openly arrived at, and the self-
determination of nations. There were mass meetings
in Berlin, with great placards on which was written
"Give us the Fourteen Points!" But they, like all
the world, saw that the peace treaty did not fulfill those
promises, and carved up Europe regardless of racial
boundaries and economic sense. Vienna was condemned
to death. The independence of Poland was created
at the expense of large German populations placed under
Polish domination. Germans and Austrians in the
Tyrol were handed over to Italy. And in every clause
of the peace treaty the German people saw themselves
doomed, as they believed sincerely, though erroneously,
I think, to an industrial and commercial servitude which
would deprive them for generations to come of all
profit out of their own labor, and all hope of recovery.
Worse to them even than that pronouncement of doom
were the menaces by which it was accompanied. English
newspapers, which had cried out to God for vengeance
against the "Hun" who sent aircraft to bomb defense-
less cities, advocated the bombing of German cities, if
the representatives of Germany refused to sign the
terms of peace. "Strong Allied airdromes on the
Rhine and in Poland," wrote the Evening News, "well
equipped with the best machines and pilots, could quickly
persuade the injiabitants of the large German cities

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of the folly of having refused to sign the peace. Those
considerations are elementary. For that reason they
may be overlooked. They are milk for babes."

That last sentence was a sneer against certain senti-
mentalists in England who desired to raise the blockade
and allow German babies to get some milk. But to
enforce the terms of peace, if refusal were contemplated,
German babies and German women were to be blown
to bits in large numbers as a means of persuasion to
their statesmen. The German women and children,
indeed, were to be the victims of our policy of enforcing
the peace, in any case, and so it happened. The Junkers
were still well fed in their country houses. LudendorfF
did not go without his meals. Von Tirpitz did not
have to swallow his whiskers. It was the women and
children, overcrowded in tenement houses, dying of
tuberculosis, ravaged by rickets, who were made the
hostages of the German government. As pointed out
by Mr. Norman Angell in his book, The Fruits of Vic-
tory^ Mr. Winston Churchill described the character of
the blockade when speaking in the House of Commons
on March 3, 1919.

"This weapon of starvation falls mainly on the women
and children, upon the old and the weak and the poor,
after all the fighting has stopped." And then he added,
not a plea for mercy, but the cold statement that we
were enforcing the blockade with vigor, and would
continue to do so.

Mr. Norman Angell is not going beyond the bounds
of justice when he shows the utter lack of connection
m the public mind or conscience between our foreign
policy and the famine in Europe.

This was revealed in a curious way at the time of the signature
of the Treaty. At the gathering of the representatives the German
delegate spoke sitting down. It turned out afterward that he was
so ill and distraught that he dared not trust himself to stand up.

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Every paper was full of the incident, as also that the paper-cutter in
front of him on the table was found afterward to be broken; that he
placed his gloves upon the copy of the Treaty, and that he had not
thrown away his cigarette on entering the room. These were the
offenses which prompted the Daily Mail to say: "After this
no one will treat the Hun as civilized or repentant." Almost the
entire Press rang with the story of "Rantzau's insult." But not
one paper, so far as I could discover, paid any attention to what
Rantzau had said. He said:

"I do not want to answer by reproaches to reproaches. . . .
Crimes in war may not be excusable, but they are committed in
the struggle for victory and in the defense of national existence, and
passions are aroused which make the conscience of peoples blunt.
The hundreds of thousands of noncombatants who have perished
since November nth by reason of the blockades were killed with
cold deliberation, after our adversaries had conquered and victory
had been assured them. Think of that when you speak of guilt
and punishment."

No one seems to have noticed this trifle in presence of the hei-
nousness of the cigarette, the glove, and the other crimes. Yet this
was an insult indeed. If true, it shamefully disgraced England —
if England is responsible. The public, presumably, did not care
whether it was true or not.

It is, of course, certain that after the signature of the
terms of peace the German officials delayed the fulfill-
ment of its provisions, did all in their power to post-
pone some of its exactions, failed, not perhaps delib-
erately (because of the weakness of undernourished
workmen), to make full deliveries of coal, and in the
figures presented to the Allied experts from time to
time, underestimated the taxable wealth of Germany
and her industrial possibilities. That was inevitable
and natural. Even people condemned to death do not
slip the noose gratefully upon their own necks and ask
to be called early for execution. With regard to figures,
no amount of anxiety for arithmetical accuracy could
prevent a wide difference of calculation between German
and Allied experts, both of whom were, and still are,
without exact evidence as to the possibilities of German

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industrial and commercial development upon which
the payments of indemnities depend. The factors
were then, and still are, uncertain. They depend upon
the capacity of other countries to buy German goods,
upon the future of Russia, the value of the German
mark, the policy of the United States regarding
credits, the attitude of France regarding Westphalia
and Siberia, the good or bad behavior of the Poles,
the health and energy of German workmen, the reason
or madness of the Supreme Council and Allied politicians,
— all very unstable and incalculable quantities upon
which to base an estimate of German wealth. Naturally
the German experts presented figures which opposed
those of the Allied experts. That was not a crime. It
was not even insincerity. It was a psychological in-
evitability. Yet we made a crime of it, and French
and British newspapers flamed into passion against the
"insults" of the German offers. "They will cheat you
yet, those Junkers!" They were proclaimed to be
"ridiculous and insulting" in the French Press, before
ever they had been received in Paris. All German
offers, even to reconstruct the devastated territories,
were denounced as "the deliberate evasion of solemn
pledges," and the months dragged on, and the years,
while "the fruits of victory" were counted on un-
planted trees, and could not be harvested.

In the Allied countries men who called themselves
statesmen and were mostly little pettifogging politi-
cians worrying about their own places and prestige and
public favor, proclaimed the most fantastic promises
to their peoples about making Germany "pay." The
Germans were to be made to pay all the war costs of
all the Allied nations, including pensions. When one

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sets out the simple fact again that England in four
and a half years of war spent as much as in two and a
half centuries before, it is self-evident that no one nation,
not even Germany, which had also exhausted her re-
sources by the same supreme effort in destructive energy,
could pay back all that expenditure of all the Allied
nations, nor any great part of it. Yet the politicians
promised, and knew that they lied. They promised
in order to keep their people quiet. They promised
to get the people's votes, but presently the time came
when the people became impatient and full of wrath —
especially the French people, who had suffered most
and had been promised most, and looked out upon their
ravaged lands. In April of 1921 the Bill of Costs was
at last presented to Germany. After many rejected
offers from the German experts the indemnities were
fixed at figures below those regarded as a minimum in
Paris, but so enormous that the figures meant nothing
to the minds of people unused to the arithmetic of inter-
national finance, and were incalculable in their effect
upon the world's markets even to financial experts.
In the Paris Resolutions, afterward modified a little in
method of payment, the Germans were called upon to
pay 226 miUiards of gold marks, spread over a period
covering forty-two years, in the following sums:

Years

Amounts

1921-22.
1923-25.
1926-28.
1929-31.
1932-62,

2 milliards of gold marks, annually
. (( << << <( <<

4
6

At the time of the presentation of this Bill of Costs
it required fifteen German paper marks to make one
gold mark, and it was of course obvious that apart from
ft transfer of currency insignificant compared with the

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total bill, and by a transfer of credits and securities of
very little value, owing to Germany's financial condi-
tion after war, the only method of payment would be
by exports of merchandise, mainly in the form of manu-
factured articles.

In order to cover their own national expenses and pay
the reparations demanded, the Germans would have to
increase their exports by at least five times the prewar
figures, exceeding the combined total exportation of
manufactured goods by America and England. To
achieve such a vast increase in exports after a devastat-
ing and ruinous war, the loss of colonies and ships, the
slaughter of two million men, the undernourishment
of many laborers during the years of war, the deteriora-
tion of machinery and rolling stock, and the heavy
taxation of capital, would require an industrial effort
amounting to the miraculous. If it were achieved,
Germany would capture the world's trade and kill
the exports of many competing nations, including
England and the United States, but at the cost, perhaps,
of her own well-being, owing to the necessity of low
wages, severe restriction of food imports, and the enor-
mous taxation upon all that terrific energy.

It was impossible for the average German to say
whether such an adventure in arithmetic were humanly
possible or not. Presented with the figures, he was
stunned by their enormity and believed that acceptance
would involve his people in a life of slavery for genera-
tions to come. He was tempted to repudiate them and
let happen what would happen. The German govern-
ment under Doctor Simon resigned rather than sign. It
seemed doubtful whether any government could be
found to sign. Days passed, and no government was
found to accept the humiHating task, while the date of
the ultimatum fast approached.

As it approached, passion rose high in France; the

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French people, with some exceptional groups, were
enraged with the delay in getting their fruits of victory,
any fruit. "Make them pay!" was the shout of the
French masses, led by the French newspapers, and
echoed, more doubtfully, in England, Aristide Briand,
Prime Minister of France, promised to make them pay
by sending "the gendarme to put his hand on the collar
of the debtor to collect the debt." His gendarme was
the 1919 class of twenty-two-year-old youths, whom he
called to the colors and sent up to the Rhine, ready to
march into Westphaha, or the Ruhr, as it was called,
and seize the German industrial cities Hke Essen, Elber-
feld, and others, with their chief coal fields and factories,
in lieu of payment. By such an act they would have
crippled Germany, but also they would have lost the
greater part of their indemnities, too. And by such an
act they would have insured another war for another
generation of French and German youth, without any
manner of doubt. But a fev/ dcLys before the ultimatum
expired, a new Chancellor, Doctor Wirth, found a gov-
ernment which agreed to sign. And the terms to
which his signature was written as a solemn pledge were
read out by him in a deadly silence of the Reichstag.
Germany had promised to pay, and thereto had
pHghted her faith, as far as human possibility.

It was not long after that pledge was made that I
went to Berlin to study the conditions of life in Germany,
and to get some clear idea, by diligent inquiry of many
minds, upon the possibility of payment and the chance
of the future in Germany.

Apart altogether from information I obtained from
German bankers, business men, political leaders, and
ordinary citizens, checked, but mostly confirmed, by

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our own financial experts, and by one very wise Amer-
ican— Raymond Swing of the New York Herald — my
personal observations of Berlin life showed me in a
very few days that a remarkable change had come over
the spirit and conditions of the people during the time
that had followed the war and the defeat. There in
Berlin, and in other cities through which I passed, the
people were no longer dejected and despairing. Most
of them, the ordinary citizens, were wonderfully cheer-
ful. Something had happened to brace them up, to
make them keen, to give them a resolute and confident
purpose. It was easy to see what had happened. It
was work. Everybody who could get any kind of job
was working at high pressure and with enthusiasm. A
peculiar phenomenon in Europe after war!

I had just left England and London, in the time of
the coal strike and of the greatest trade slump in our
modern history, when the streets of the poorer districts
Vv^ere thronged with listless, workless men, hanging round
the labor exchanges to get their government "doles,"
or rattling collecting boxes in the faces of the passers-by.
Everywhere in London then, and in other cities, one
noticed slackness in the mental attitude of men, working
or not working. They were not keen on their jobs.
They were lazy or "tired." The laboring men in trade
unions were deliberately limiting their output, so that
to watch, as some days I watched, bricklayers building
new houses, was a mixture of tragedy and comedy —
comedy because of their Pavlova-like attitudes with
hods and ladders, their languorous way with bricks
and mortar, their frequent rests between the exertion
of squaring one brick and another, their long and careful
lighting of pipes, their eloquence and argument among
one another as to the right thing to do, if ever it were
done; and tragedy because of this object lesson in the
way to lose our chance of recovery. ... In Hyde
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Park of an afternoon I saw always immense numbers
of men reading newspapers, or dozing in the sunshine,
or staring idly at the passers-by. They seemed to have
no work to do, and to have no desire for it.

In Berlin it was different. There was no lounging
during work hours. Crowds of young men and women
were hurrying about, intent on some kind of business.
Even in the hotels, the men who made a continual
traffic from entrance hall to the rooms were not there
for idle pastime or amorous dalliance. They came with
little black satchels under their arms, stuffed with
papers, and, sitting in groups, discussed estimates,
offers, exports, prices, all kinds of business. They
seemed to be doing well, doing, at least, a lot of business,
whatever their profits might be. These crowds in the
streets of Berlin were obviously satisfied with the way
things were going with their own affairs. There was
no hangdog look about them, but alertness of look.
Their clothes were rather shabby. I noticed a good
many men of the working classes still wearing their
old field-gray jackets without badge or shoulder straps
— three years after war — and the German women had
not the chic touch of French or English women, but
they were clean and neat and good to see if they were
pretty. The war strain seemed to have been lifted
from them. Hunger no longer gnawed at them. It
was clear to see that hundreds of thousands of Berlin
folk not only had enough for the necessities of life, but
a little margin beyond that for the good fun of life in
hours of leisure after a working day.

I went one evening with a British officer, two German
bankers — and brothers — and a German lady to Luna
Park, one of the popular joy places of Berlin. An
immense place of plaster buildings, fantastic as a futur-
ist nightmare, it has a vast outdoor restaurant built in
a series of terraces around the arena where at night

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there are fireworks displays and always a band playing
gay music before a painted scene of wild and whirling
women. The outdoor restaurant holds fifty thousand
people, and on the evening I went, typical, I was told,
of any other evening, there was hardly a vacant place.
I watched all these people curiously, and one of the
German bankers smiled at me and said, "Do they look
Hke barbarians — the Huns?" They were a vast crowd
of bourgeoisie — clerks, shopgirls, working-class fam-
ilies, respectable middle-class men and women with
their children. It was a hot evening, and all the girls
were in light cotton frocks, with very httle underneath,
I guess. "Cheap stuff," said the German lady by my
side, "but easily made and good to wash." Every-
body was drinking light beer or coff'ee, or sipping iced
drinks, or eating ices. I reckoned that it would cost
them about five to ten marks a head, fivepence to ten-
pence in English money, ten cents to twenty in American
money. There was no rowdyism, no drunkenness. I
only saw one policeman in the great crowds, and he was
not required by people who were enjoying themselves
in a cheerful, orderly way. The side-shows, with special
entrance fees, were crammed. People were wasting
paper marks in lotteries for chocolate and bottles of
scent, spending paper marks freely on "flip-flaps'*
and "wiggly-woggles" and scenic railways.

"How is it," I said, "that all these people have so
much money to spend? I cannot understand it, after
an inquiry into the wages of clerks and shopgirls —
seven hundred and fifty marks a month for clerks,
much less than that for shopgirls, and the mark worth
no more than twopence in purchasing power, even
within Germany, and half that in foreign exchange."

"Frankly, I cannot understand it, either," said the
German lady. "I would like to tell you that this place
gives you a false idea of our prosperity, and that there

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

is terrible poverty in the working districts. That would
not be quite true. There is terrible poverty, still, as in
all great cities of Germany, but this scene is typical
of many others. It shows that millions of people have
a little money to spend on pleasure."

She thought out an explanation. I think it was a
sound one. "It is like this. A single girl, or young
man, having to live on what she or he earns alone, has
a hard struggle. It is almost impossible to live on seven
hundred and fifty marks a month. The cheapest shirt
costs fifty marks; a pair of boots two hundred and fifty;
the simplest, cheapest meal in a restaurant twenty
marks, and then not enough for health and strength.
But families pool their earnings. If there are two or
three sisters and a brother all working and living at
home with a father and mother getting good wages,
then there is a margin for pleasure like this. They
stint and scrape at home, where they live over-
crowded, in order to come out in the evenings and
enjoy themselves. They must have this kind of
pleasure — fresh air, music, cheerful company, the joy
of youth. There is too much love of pleasure, and
it leads to immorality. Young girls will sell them-
selves for a pretty frock or a night of dancing. The
war loosened the old moralities. Youth is enormously
tempted. "

After that evening in Luna Park, I went to an office
in BerHn which has to do with the feeding of destitute
children by German charity. It was a German lady
who gave me some information about the state of child
life in Berlin. She was a young woman, with the fine
gold-spun hair of the prettiest type of Prussian girl, and
blue eyes. I guessed by her manner that she belonged
to the aristocratic caste. She spoke frankly of the im-
provement in the condition of children, thanks to the
charity of the Quakers, the Americans, and the work of

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German societies. But there was still a great deal of
tuberculosis, owing to overcrowding in tenement houses,
and undernourishment among children of parents
who could not get work because of ill health or the
crippling wounds of war. There was still a great lack of
milk for babies.

Then she spoke of the professional classes, and put
herself among them.

"We are hard hit, and do not get much help. A
pension which was good before the war is now no good at
all, owing to the fall of the mark. Even our children
do not get the care of the working classes, perhaps
because of our pride. I have a little boy — "

She hesitated at making personal revelations, but
then explained that her husband, a German officer, had
been killed in the war, and that her boy never had
enough to eat until, swallowing pride, she had sent
him to the soup kitchens. She was paid seven hundred
and fifty marks a month for her present work, which
she was lucky to get. But without family help it was
not enough for life.

"Clothes eat up our wages," she said. "In work
like this, receiving visitors, one must dress decently.
It is very difficult. One has to go to bed while one's
underclothing is in the wash!"

She shook hands and laughed.

"Perhaps things will get better presently."

That was a little glimpse behind the scenes of the
outward welfare I saw in Berlin, and doubtless there
are hundreds of women like that who have to fight a
desperate struggle for decent livelihood, as in most
countries of Europe.

That did not alter my conviction that Germany, as a
whole, was recovering from the exhaustion of war and
regaining a fair measure of prosperity, by a combined
intense industrial effort. Her factories were producing

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again at full pace, and at a price which could undersell
all competitors.

Better than statistics, clearer to the vision, in showing
the variety and activity of German manufacturers, was
a visit to a great stores, hke that of Wertheim, corre-
sponding to Harrod's, Barker's, and Selfridge's in Eng-
land, or Marshal Field's in Chicago. On floor after
floor was a display of manufactured articles, porcelain,
pottery, leather goods, metal ware, every object of house-
hold use and ornament, excellent in design, and, reckoned
in foreign exchanges, marvelously cheap. Reckoning
the mark at one penny, here was a competition which
would beat the markets of the world. I was particu-
larly struck by the book department, remembering the
shoddy appearance of English pubHcations and their
abominable cost — a bad novel on bad paper for seven-
and-sixpence, a "cheap" reprint for two shiUings, a
volume of history or philosophy for fifteen shillings,
horribly produced in flimsy bindings. These German
books were printed on splendid paper, well illustrated,
well bound, most tastefully produced. A new novel
was fifteen marks, or one-and-threepence; the classics
of the world were to be had for eight and a half
marks.

But the metal goods were even more astonishing in
their cheapness, and as I reckoned about a quarter of
the price to be found in English shops.

"Tariff or no tariff," said a friend of mine, "how are
we going to compete with German goods when, for
instance, a safety razor, equal in quality to Gillette's,
can be sold wholesale for ninepence?"

He laughed, but I detected a note of anxiety in his
voice when he said:

"Germany is working as no other people in the world,
and her workingmen are getting sevenpence halfpenny
an hour, compared with one-and-ninepence, or half a

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crown in England, producing better stuff, and without
limitation of output. What's going to be England's
chance? Hugo Stinnes and the big trusts are organiz-
ing the greatest industrial machine the world has ever

seen."

VII

Every student of German life is now talking of Stinnes
as the great industrial autocrat of Germany, and outside
Germany he is regarded as a dark, sinister figure, a
kind of evil genius, like a German Lenin, though his
philosophy is the antithesis of Bolshevism. He is,
undoubtedly, the most powerful personality in Germany
to-day, the owner of sixty newspapers serving the
interests of the Deutsches Volksparteiy and preaching
his own gospel, which is the industrial supremacy of
Germany by intensive production based upon cheap
labor and revolutionary methods of manufacture,
obtaining the highest degree of efficiency, power, combi-
nation, and distribution. Creating a gigantic trust
for the polling of immense resources of raw material,
capital, and labor, his method is to build vertically from
coal, iron, and steel to all branches of manufacture in
which these raw materials are used, and to capture the
world's markets by a quality and cheapness which will
put German goods beyond competition. As a young
man, he inherited enormous estates, mines, ironworks,
and royalties valued at seven million pounds sterling.
There was no branch of his own industries in which he
did not have technical and personal knowledge. Not
the humblest laborer in his employ could stand up and
tell him about conditions of life which he had not learned
by sweat of body and toil of mind. He had worked as
a pit boy, coal hewer, mine foreman. He had been
stoker, engineer, ship's officer, and sea captain. He
was a slave driver to his own workmen, and imported

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Polish labor to keep wages low. His philosophy of life
would have been heartily indorsed by a Manchester
mill owner of the early nineteenth century, using women
and children as slaves of the machines. The Stinnes
Trust consisted last year of six great companies employ-
ing two hundred and fifty thousand men and having a
capital of twelve million marks, but always their tenta-
cles are stretching out to more industries — of electricity,
coal, iron, shipping, and factory work, absorbing their
capital and power and extending their activities over
fresh fields. Every form of by-product is used and
marketed. Other countries are being invaded by the
Stinnes power. The blast furnaces of Austria are work-
ing again with the raw material sent to them by his
headquarters. He is negotiating in Hungary for enor-
mous ironworks. The iron ore of Upper Silesia finds
its way to his factories. His agents are active in
Russia, and he is ready to rebuild their worn - out
railways, to manufacture engines at the rate of eight
thousand a year, and trucks at the rate of sixty thou-
sand, when the time comes for Russia to do business
again.

Stinnes is only one, though the most powerful, of the
German industrial kings who are succeeding to the old
monarchies of the Empire. August Thyssen is another
employing a hundred and twenty-five thousand men,
of whom sixty-five thousand are at Muelheim, which
is one great city of furnaces and factories. Peter
Kloeckner is another of the steel and iron magnates
with a capital as great as that of old man Thyssen, and
second in the list of coal producers. More romantic
to the imagination is the transformation of Krupp's.
After the years of war and prewar activity during which
they produced nothing but great guns and armaments
of all kinds, they accepted instantly the conditions of
military defeat and with marvelous rapidity and skill

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adapted their machinery to the demands of peace.
Railway engines, agricultural implements, cash regis-
ters, every kind of metal work, are produced in vast
quantities in the sheds where great guns and machine
guns were once produced, and in every part of the world
the agents of Krupp are exploring new markets, arrang-
ing contracts, feeling the pulse of trade.

These trusts are acquiring a tremendous social power
in the German state which one day may quickly take
over the state. Already they are proposing to tax
themselves for the benefit of the German Reich, accord-
ing to their own calculations of industrial revenue
and the taxable value of their output. A certain amount
of latitude is given to the views of the workers, who are
represented by councils, and their wages are regulated
according to the standard cost of life sufficient to keep
them in working health. In the summer of 192 1 that
was reckoned at about sixty marks for a full working
day, or five shillings in English money. It is to some
extent an actual demonstration of the French syndicat
idea, and it is within the bounds of possibility that it is
a new form of government by industrial trusts grad-
ually absorbing the power and control of the state.
At present, however, political ideas are being kept
subordinate to the need of the economic reconstruction
of Germany, and it is to the industrial genius and energy-
of these organizers that Germany owes it that she is
recovering steadily from the enormous exhaustion of
war.

By the summer of 192 1 Germany's coal production
amounted to about two-thirds of the prewar quantity;
and half the amount of prewar tonnage (though largely
under foreign flags) was coming to the port of Hamburg,
which had been silent and deserted for so many years.
The deposits in the big banks had gone up by fifty per
cent in little more than a year. The effect of the

i6^

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

recovery of trade was visible in the life of the people.
When I arrived in Berlin at the beginning of June all
food cards had been done away with, except the bread
card, which was due to go within a few weeks. Mean-
while it was possible to buy white rolls, and in some
cases white bread, without cards in the shops. The
harvest reports were very good, and it was estimated
that for the first time since the end of 1916 the supply
of cereals for bread would be suflftcient. Germany's
trade was increasing in many countries. A special
push was being made in the "neutral" nations and in
South America. While in February, 1921, as compared
with February, 1920, South America's trade with the
whole of Europe went down by nearly fifty per cent,
that with Germany alone increased by twenty per cent.
In 19 1 9 Germany sent to the United States about ten
miUion dollars' worth of goods; in 1920 she sent
eighty-eight million dollars' worth. She had Great
Britain thoroughly beaten in the automobile trade
in European countries, sending to Switzerland, for
example, motor cars, motor cycles, and accessories to
sixty times the value of British exports to that country.
In Holland especially she had a stronger commercial
hold than in the year before the war.

All these facts reveal the progress of German trade,
astonishing for a country so utterly defeated, so drained
of blood and treasure, so powerless, for a time, under
the military and economic menace of Great Britain and
France. Yet this progress did not amount, even then,
to the prosperity of prewar conditions, though, to judge
from the fantasies of French and British newspapers,
one might imagine that Germany, by some economic
miracle, had gained new and enormous wealth. The
miracle really was that in two and a half years of peace
she was about two-thirds ''normal" compared with
her prewar trade and leaving out of account her vast

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war debts and the indemnities which she had pledged
herself to pay.

VIII

In Berlin I attended the meeting of the Reichstag when
Doctor Wirth, the Chancellor, outlined, broadly and
vaguely, the manner in which he proposed that Germany
should pay that Bill of Costs. All his oratory could be
reduced to four words — intense industry, economy,
efficiency. It was, nevertheless, a historic scene,
memorable and exciting to me, as to all those German
Deputies who listened to words which emphasized
heavily and without optimism the enormous burden
which Germany must support for half a century. From
the extreme Left, where sat the little communist group,
came derisive cries, and from the extreme Right of
Junker tradition occasional outbursts of anger and
scorn. But mostly those men sat silent, moody,
introspective.

To me the scene in the assembly and in the lobbies
outside was astonishing as a psychological adventure.
Here were many of the men who in this same building
had heard the declaration of war and echoed the procla-
mation of many victories, had listened exultantly to
the terms of peace which would be imposed upon Eng-
land and France, had year after year voted the sup-
plies to carry on the war, and, at last, had faced, here
again, the news of utter, irretrievable defeat and ruin.
Count BernstorfF passed me in the lobby, and I had
some words with him, watching his debonair manner,
detecting a faint trace of American accent. If he had
been a greater diplomat and an honester man, perhaps
Germany would not have lost the war. . . . Scheide-
mann went by, the Socialist who put his party at the
service of the militarists with the same patriotic fervor
as the Labor Party did in England. . . . Not many

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other men did I know, even by name, but I knew them
as those who represented the German people at a time
when any EngHshman coming to this Reichstag would
have been killed Hke a rat, and when No-Man's Land,
with its death pits, divided them and us. Queer to be
standing in the midst of them, listening to that talk!
A little shiver passed down my spine as the thought
came to me. A German coming to our House of Com-
mons for the first time after war would perhaps be
affected in the same way.

The change in the attitude of men one to another
was suggested at a dinner table in Berlin one night,
when I sat next to a German banker who had fought all
through the war, and opposite a British major who was
four years on the western front. It was the banker's
brother who made the remark, in an aside to me.

"How ridiculous is war!" he said. "Three years ago
your major and my brother would have tried to kill
each other at sight. Now they are sitting at the same
table, discussing political economy, and there is no
temptation in the knives beside their plates!"

This gentleman made another remark which interested
me. We were walking down the Friedrichstrasse,
speaking English in loud voices, because of the crowd
about us. No one turned to glance at us, there was no
hostile look because of the English speech, and the
German by my side pointed the moral.

"You see, we can speak English without arousing
dislike. It is only the Germans in foreign countries
who have to lower their voices when they speak their
hated tongue."

There is indeed in Germany now no touch of hostility
to English folk. On the contrary, their nationality
is a passport to German favor in the hotels, in the
street cars, anywhere. We are popular, strange as it
may seem, and the Germans believe in our sense of

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magnanimity and in our tradition for fair play. "Gott
strafe England!" is a forgotten song, never, as a matter
of fact, well known in Germany, though we made the
most of it in war time. The strangest, most paradox-
ical, most grotesque revulsion of popular sentiment —
yet, on the whole, hopeful to humanity — ^which struck
my imagination in BerHn during that visit was when I
stood amid a crowd of Germans reading a bulletin
from Upper Silesia on the board of a newspaper office.
It described the arrival of British troops into the dis-
puted zone between the Poles and Germans. The
Black Watch had come, and officers and men were
being carried shoulder high and garlanded with flowers
by the German population. The Black Watch! Three
years before they were called "The Ladies from Hell"
by the German soldiers, who dreaded their bayonet
work, their ruthlessness in killing. Now they were
the champions of German claims, the darlings of the
German crowds.

"The EngHsh are our friends," said a German in
the crowd. "The French will always be our enemies."

I moved away from the crowd with a sense of the irony
of life and the idiocy of men. For four and a half
years of frightful history we had called the Germans
"Huns," had exhausted all our wealth and hurled
the flower of our youth into the furnace fires in order
to kill them in great numbers, as they killed us. The
French had been our comrades, and we had (as we
thought) sealed our friendship eternally by the mystical
union of common sacrifice. Now British soldiers were
being carried shoulder high by German people, and the
French were scowling at us, even in Paris, if we spoke
English so that the passers-by could hear. The bottom
was knocked out of the meaning of the war, if ever it
had any meaning beyond the bloody rivalry of politi-
cians using the bodies and souls of men for their dirty

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game, and the insanity of mobs, deluded by race pas-
sion, inflamed by their leaders. Is there any sense at
all in the turning of the wheel of international policy,
so that our enemies of yesterday are our friends of to-day,
and our friends of to-day our enemies of to-morrow?

Norman Angell, in his book, The Fruits of Victory,
points out the absurdity of these rapid changes:

At the head of the Polish armies is Marshal Pilsudski, who fought
under Austro-German command against Russia. His ally is the
Ukrainian adventurer, General Petlura, who first made a separate
peace at Brest-Litovsk, and entreated them to let the German armies
into the Ukraine, and to deliver to them the stores of grain. These
in May, 1920, were the friends of the AlHes. The Polish Prime
Minister at the time we were aiding Poland was Baron Bilinski, a
gentleman who filled the same post in the Austrian Cabinet which
let loose the world war, insisted hotly on the ultimatum to Serbia,
helped to ruin the finances of the Hapsburg dominions by war, and
then, after the collapse, repeated the same operations in Poland.
On the other side, the command has passed, it is said, to General
Brusiloff, who again and again saved the eastern front from German
and Austrian offensives. He is now the "enemy," and his oppo-
nents our "allies." They are fighting to tear the "Ukraine, which
means all South Russia, away from the Russian state. The pre-
ceding year we sent millions to achieve the opposite result. The
French sent their troops to Odessa, and we gave our tanks to Deni-
kin, in order to enable him to recover this region for imperial Russia."

How long is this madness going to prevail in Europe.?
Is there no hope at all in the common sense of peoples,
seeing at last the monstrous absurdity of these group-
ings and regroupings of armed powers controlled and
directed now this way, now that, by the sinister ambi-
tions of statesmen who shift their principles and trans-
fer their allegiance as easily as they change their shirts?

When I was last in Germany two thoughts dominated
the mind of every man and woman with whom I spoke,

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and both thoughts were inseparably Hnked. Could
Germany pay the vast indemnities to which she was
pledged, and would France and Great Britain so divide
Upper Silesia that the Poles would remain in possession
of the greatest stronghold of German industry? That
the payment of indemnities depended upon the settle-
ment of Upper Silesia in favor of German claims and
German votes was the absolute and sincere belief not
only of the Germans themselves, but of all British
experts with whom I spoke. More even than the
economic position of Germany was involved, though
that would decide the fate of Europe. The German
people believed it to be a test case of justice and "fair
play" among the democracies of Europe. If the Polish
insurgents were allowed to hold what they had seized
against the authority of the Inter-Allied Commission
and contrary to the German votes of six to four in the
plebiscite which had been taken under Allied control,
then Germany would know that in spite of her pledge to
pay the penalties of defeat — and her payments — she
was to be given no chance of recovery, nor any justice,
and that the policy of France was to prevent her recov-
ery upon any terms whatever.

That was the talk of a group of young Germans,
obviously ex-officers, with whom I sat at table, waiting
for an interview with Herr Stresemann, the leader of
the Deutsches Volkspartei and the political representa-
tive of Hugo Stimies, the industrial magnate. The
scene was curious, for it was in the club of the Volks-
partei after Doctor Wirth 's speech in the Reichstag out-
lining the program for the payment of indemnities.
With young Raymond Swing, the American correspond-
ent, I was shown into an antechamber divided by a
curtain from a room in which Stresemann was speaking
to the members of his party. The waiter placed chairs
for us and offered us refreshment. There was nothing

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to hinder us from standing by the curtain and Hstening
to the words which Stresemann was speaking with
harsh and rapid eloquence. I could not help wondering
what would have happened if two Germans had entered
the Constitutional Club while Lord Curzon, perhaps,
was addressing a private gathering of Tories and out-
lining the future policy of his party. They would not
have been received with such friendly confidence, . . .
Presently the speech ended and there was a surging move-
ment of men, among whom were a few ladies, to the
room in which I sat with my friend. Groups took
possession of small tables, ordered beer and sand-
wiches, and discussed their leader's speech. Although
it was the eve of a day when Germany was face to face
with the gigantic burdens of her war penalties, there
was no sign of dejection in this crowd of politicians.
They were cheerful, vivacious, argumentative, and
keen. Herr Stresemann, buttonholed on all sides,
broke away to ask for my patience a little while longer
and introduced me to the group of young men who
made a place for me at their table. Instantly the con-
versation turned to Upper Silesia, and I was asked why
the Allies had allowed the Poles to "jump the claim"
at the very time when Germany was asked to pay in-
demnities which would strain all her industrial resources.
Before I could answer, Stresemann came to me and said,
"At last!" and led me away to a little table reserved for
himself.

"What were you talking about .^" he asked, glancing
at the group of men I had left; and when I said, "Upper
Silesia" and laughed, he started at once upon that
subject, which was a kind of obsession in the German
mind.

"Yes," he said, as though continuing a discussion.
"If we lose Upper Silesia, or any considerable part of
it, we shall be unable to pay the indemnities. Our

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THE NEW GERMANY

whole economic position depends on that. There lie
our main sources of raw material for manufactures.
There exist our greatest strongholds of industry. Ger-
man capital, labor, and organization have built up
the prosperity of Silesia. Take that from us and we
are crippled."

I had a long conversation with this energetic little
man, who, everybody told me, was the ablest politician
in Germany, sure of bsing Chancellor after the down-
fall of Doctor Wirth's v/eak Coalition. Reactionary in
the sense of supporting the old traditions of German
national pride and monarchist sentiment — "the Kaiser
did not will the war, " he said, very solemnly — he told
me frankly that he has no use for democracy unless
well disciplined and kept working. But he is progres-
sive according to the ideals of Stinnes, his master,
upon economic lines of advance.

He spoke to me at length about French policy and
his voice took a deeper note of passion.

**The instincts of the German people," he said, "are
for peace. Our future is in peace and not in war. We
would willingly have made friends with France and
worked to repair her ruin, if her people had been only a
little generous, only a little courteous, after our defeat.
But they have done their best, and are doing it, to
arouse feelings of enmity and rage. In our occupied
districts they have been needlessly arrogant."

He told me a story of how the French general fined
the Mayor of Duisburg (which French troops entered
to enforce the signing of the indemnities) the sum of
five thousand marks for delay in answering his summons
to appear before him, and when the mayor asked, very
civilly, "What further wishes have you?" fined him
another five thousand for using the word "wishes"
instead of "commands." ... I did not tell Herr
Stresemann many similar and more painful stories of

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the German treatment of French mayors in time of
war. I was Hstening and not talking.

"Those are but pin pricks," he said, "but in their
policy and in their Press they reveal a hatred, a desire
to humiliate, a ruthless injustice, outrageous to our
honor and dignity, which make it impossible for German
people to be on friendly terms with them. They are
deliberately stirring up a desire for revenge instead of
trying to allay the hatreds of war."

He told me the French policy was seeking to repair
three mistakes to which Napoleon confessed. Napoleon
said, "My mistakes were to let Prussia get strong, to
let Poland be weak, and to misunderstand Russia. "

"French diplomacy now," said Stresemann, "is to
weaken Prussia, strengthen Poland, and dominate
Russia, by setting up a czar as a puppet of France."

But their policy would fail, he thought, because there
is no tendency in Germany to break away from Prussia,
in spite of all French hopes and intrigues, while Poland
will always be weak and ready to fall apart because
of the inherent instability of Polish character. As
for Russia, French puppets like Denikin and Wrangel
had failed miserably, and modern France, more than
Napoleon himself, could not understand the spirit of
Russia.

Stresemann went at length Into the question of repa-
rations, and held the view that after a few years during
which Germany will desperately endeavor to fulfill
her pledges, European peoples will realize the folly of
maintaining such abnormal conditions in world trade,
and will call another conference to revise the whole
treaty of peace and develop a scheme of international
economic union by which the interests of all European
nations would be secured, with some better arrange-
ment than wild, destructive competition with tariflF
walls and national rivalries. He suggested a scheme

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which, as I previously knew, is one of the pet ideas of
Hugo Stinnes.

"The war debts of all nations could be wiped out in
a few years," said Stresemann, "by a small tax on raw
material, hke coal or cotton, paid by all purchasers and
put into a common pool for that purpose."

In his opinion Germany, with the best will in the world,
will be unable to continue her payment of indemnities
for half a century, and this will be recognized, he thinks,
by the increasing common sense of European peoples.

That, undoubtedly, was the official view of the
Deutsches Falksparteiy but while I was in Berlin it was
challenged by Rathenau, one of the greatest and most
liberal-minded of social reformers in Germany, who
said definitely in the Reichstag, as Minister of Recon-
struction, "We can pay." Stresemann 's pessimism was
also repudiated by Scheidemann, leader of the Majority
Socialists, with whom I had a talk in company with
his friend and adviser, Doctor Helphand, a millionaire
Socialist. In reply to my request for an interview,
they sent an automobile for me in Berlin, and I journeyed
out through the glorious woods of the Griinewald to the
edge of Wansee, which is one of the beautiful lakes
outside the city to which BerHners go for bathing and
boating. A most pleasant spot for any SociaHst, es-
pecially if he lived in such an elegantly furnished villa
as that of Doctor Helphand.

I was curious to see Scheidemann, who helped to
found the Republic after the war, in which he was but a
mild critic of German militarism, and a stanch supporter
of imperial policy and war credits until the great
wreck happened. He came into the room a few min-
utes after my arrival, and in a light linen suit he looked
to me like a French painter, with his tall, rather elegant
figure, his silver hair, and little pointed beard.

Scheidemann's view of Germany's future, interpreted

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in voluble French by Doctor Helphand (whose accent is
enormously Teutonic), expressed a belief in the possi-
bility of payment on condition that the German people
were given peace and fair play by France and England.
That was an utterly essential condition, but if fulfilled,
Germany could, without doubt, pay her penalties.

By demobilization of the army they would save
eighteen thousand milliards of gold marks annually,
which would go some way to pay off the yearly tribute.
They could save other sums by restricting imports of
luxuries, by more efficient organization, and by heavier
internal taxation. Then, by intensive production and
rapid trade development of countries like Russia, they
could pay their Bill of Costs in full — provided they were
helped and not hindered. If Upper Silesia were taken
Germany would be put out of business, and there would
be no possible payment of indemnities. But if the
Allies and the United States of America were prepared
to give German industry a free and full chance, it would
wipe out all debts. To do that they must have credit
and capital to renew the wear and tear of machinery
and rolling stock, enormously depreciated during the
war, and to develop their industrial possibilities. Russia
was waiting for them. As soon as the Russians returned
to ordinary methods of business Germany would be
ready also to supply them with machinery, engines,
agricultural implements, every necessity of civilized
life, so repairing her devastation. By geographical
position and old trade relations, this task of Russian
reconstruction would inevitably come to Germany, but
the German people would only be able to do it in full
measure, to the benefit of the whole world, if they were
supported by the credit of the United States, Great
Britain, and other countries. German labor and
organization would repay such credit by good interest,
the fulfillment of all pledges, and the revival of world

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trade. That was the hope of Germany. Surely, said
Scheidemann, it v/as also the hope of Europe, whose
common interests would be served.

I think these men spoke sincerely. I think that all
the people I met in Berlin, and afterward on the Rhine,
faced very frankly the realities of their situation. They
Were under no illusions. They knew and admitted
that military power had passed from them, at least for
a long time, and that they could resist nothing in the
way of armed force set in motion by France and England.
That, no doubt, is gall and wormwood to the old mili-
tary caste, the Junkers, and the nationalists who look
back to the old pomp and parade with the same ferocious
sentiment, and forward to a war of revenge with hungry
souls. But I believe, perhaps without sufficient evi-
dence, that the mass of the German people, and many
of their Republican leaders, like Scheidemann himself,
are relieved by the disappearance of militarism, and do
not want it back again, but look forward honestly to
an era of industrial peace and progress by which they
will lift Germany out of financial peril and gain great
victories, even industrial supremacy, by the energy and
genius of labor and science. Something has lifted
from the German spirit. Even in Berlin the people,
I am told by those who know them better than I do,
are more gemuthlig, good natured, and open hearted.
It is militarism which has been lifted from them. The
old word '^verboteUy" the old bullying of German
youth in the barracks and on the parade ground, has
passed as a dark spell. Everyday life is more agreeable
without the swaggering bullies on the sidewalks. Citi-
zenship is no longer oppressed by the military caste.
Defeat has not been bad for them in every way, and in
many ways may be the greatest blessing, cleansing to
the soul of Germany, bracing to her national spirit.
They see the mockery and futility of war and remember

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its enormous horror. In the heart of the German people
there is, I am almost certain, no desire for another bout
of massacre. If I am right, then Germany will gain
first the victory for which the Allies professed to fight
— the death of militarism — and she will emerge from
all those years of evil cleaner and brighter and kinder,
with a philosophy of peace which will help to save
Europe. I may be too hopeful, and the old devil in
Germany may raise its head again, the devil of military
pride, when the nation has regained its strength and the
sword of the Allies has been put aside.

I would not trust men like Stresemann or Scheidemann
too far. They belong to the old tradition. I would
not put any faith in the reform of the Junker, for his
nature is not to be converted. But I would trust these
people who bore the agony of war and now pay most
of its costs.

It is for us to help the German folk to resist the
uprising ever again of that devil in a spiked hat which
once controlled them, and we can only do this by cast-
ing out our own devil in brass hat or kepi, and the spirit
of the war makers in old and evil brains.

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

AFTER the day of armistice in 191 8 the French people
• were filled with the intoxication of victory. The faith
with which they had fought had been fulfilled. It was
the faith that, in spite of the immense power of the
Germans, their military supremacy at the beginning
of the war in man power and machine power and the
crippling blows they inflicted on France in the first
rush and afterward, they would be beaten in the end,
beaten to the dust, by the heroism of the French armies,
the genius of French generals, and the unconquerable
spirit of the French.

"On les aura!" ("We shall have them!") was the cry
of France even in days when the enemy was sprawled
over their northern provinces, when they struck close
to the heart of Paris, and when masses of French troops
reeled back from their frightful onslaughts.

It is true, as I know, that at times this faith in ulti-
mate victory burned low in the hearts of some French
men and women whose souls were staggered by the
enormous and unceasing slaughter of their youth, and
by the narrow, hair-breadth line which sometimes stood
between the safety and the death of France — as when
the Germans reached the Marne in August of the first
year, and again after years of infernal struggle which
strewed the fields of France with death, in July, 191 8.
But the hope never flickered out into absolute despair,

17s

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

rose again into a flame whenever the luck of war changed,
and became a certainty of victory when, with American
help and British, Marshal Foch hurled the enemy
across the Marne for the second time and forced them
into a retreat which only ended with absolute surrender.

So France rejoiced on the day of armistice, and on
many other days that followed. The national pride
of the French was satisfied. They were not ungrateful
for the services of their allies and friends, but they
believed that victory was due most of all to the heroic
spirit of France. They had fought most, made greatest
sacrifice, and won by the military genius of Foch. . . .
As an Englishman, who saw, through the years of
war, the valor of their men, the miseries and the
courage of their women, the marvelous, unfailing,
supernatural heroism of the whole French nation, I
agree with them, though I know (more than they will
ever know or admit) what British soldiers did, and, in
the end, the Americans, Their joy in victory was my
joy, too, though I wondered then, even in the midst of
that wild intoxication of the Parisian crowds after the
surrender of the enemy, how soon it would be before
they were sobered by the remembrance of their million
dead, their two million maimed, blind, and shell-shocked
men, their enormous war debts, their devastated fields,
their failing birth rate, their price of victory.

It was not very long before that remembrance, and
the dreadful actuality of truth, came to them. Even on
the day of armistice there were thousands of women
who wept in small rooms and in back streets. "It is
victory," they said, "but it will not bring back our
men. " Their tears were hidden because of the rejoicing
of living youth, and their cry of anguish was stifled so
that it should not be heard above the cheers which greeted
the men who had come back with victory on their
banners.

176

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

For some time after that the gradual awakening of
the French people to a sense of dismal reality was
soothed by the promises of their statesmen and diplo-
mats. There were to be great fruits of victory harvested
from the wealth of Germany. By the terms of the
peace treaty, the Germans would be made to pay for
all the damage they had done, apart from the resur-
rection of dead youth. They would be forced to pay
indemnities which would reconstruct the ravaged lands
of France, build up her ruins, wipe out the war debt,
pay for the pensions of crippled men and widowed
women. German coal from the Saar or the Ruhr
would be delivered or seized, in return for the German
destruction of the coal mines around Lens. The finan-
cial ruin of France, as revealed by the falling value of
the franc in foreign exchange, and by the budget state-
ments which admitted a lack of revenue to pay even the
interests on unimaginable debts, would be restored by
consignments of German gold. By the peace treaty
also, ruthless in the severity of its terms to an ignoble
and brutal enemy, France would be secured from the
menace of further wars, because Germany would be
so crushed and strangled and held so tightly to the
forfeit of future payments, that she would never be
allowed to recover her strength and power, however
great the industry of her workers or the genius of her
financiers.

These promises that Germany would pay for every-
thing were held up to the French people as an induce-
ment to keep quiet, settle down to work, and suffer
patiently their present poverty. There was to be a
period of reconstruction under the direction of a benevo-
lent government. For a year the word "reconstruc-
tion" was used as a kind of spell word to lull the impa-

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

tience and growing incredulity of French people. For
another year French statesmen kept up the hope or the
pretense that the fruits of victory were only delayed
and that in a little while Germany would be made to
disgorge the expenses of the war to the last sou. They
still maintained their claim to the 261 milHards of francs,
which represents more than twenty times the annual
total of German exports at their maximum figure before
the war, while Britain's claim amounted to 8,000
miUions of pounds sterhng, or, according to a financial
authority, "far more than all the world's gold produc-
tion since the dawn of history, plus the estimated con-
tents of all the gold mines at present known. "

Gradually public opinion in France became impatient
of promises. They wanted the delivery of the gold.
They wanted the fulfillment of the Treaty of Versailles,
utterly and quickly. Germany had not fulfilled it.
Her coal deliveries were shoit of the amounts required,
she had delayed disarmament, she had taken no steps
to punish her war criminals. Again and again she had
delayed and dodged the payment of her indemnities.
Even in the spring of 1921 the Allied governments had
not decided upon their final terms, and Germany was
still making offers which the whole of the French Press
and the majority of French people (with the exception
of the advanced Socialists) denounced passionately as
ridiculous and insulting. They were offers mon-
strously out of keeping with the promise of "the fruits
of victory," made by French statesmen to their people.
Passion was rising to dangerous heights in France.
Ex-President Poincare directed part of it against Eng-
land. It was per fide Albion again thwarting the fulfill-
ment of French claims by some secret pro-Germanism
among their politicians and financiers, or some jealousy
of France. Briand, the Prime Minister, had to get
ready or go. Unless he could give the Chamber a

178

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

definite guaranty that Germany would at last be pre-
sented with her bill and forced to pay, he would be flung
out of office by the representatives of the people's pas-
sion. To understand that passion, one must know the
condition of life in France and the mentality of the
French people.

To say that they were suffering from "soul sickness"
is but a mild way of describing their disillusionment
and disgust with the eff'ects of victory. In their polit-
ical activities as well as in their private Hfe they showed
an intense irritation with the state of affairs, and a
sense of fear which had followed the intoxication of
victory, a tendency to quarrel with those who were
their friends and aUies — because they thought that
they who won the greatest share of victory had gained
least of all from peace — and a desperate endeavor to
grasp by any force in their power the fulfillment of their
most fantastic hopes.

Truly the working classes and professional middle
class of France — the latter especially — had been mocked
by that phrase, "the fruits of victory. " It had been a
dead-sea fruit, bitter to the taste. The price of food-
stuffs and all necessities of life were at least five times
higher than at prewar rates. The clerk, the journalist,
the salesman in a small shop, that vast multitude of
men who in a civilized community have to eke out a
respectable livelihood on fixed salaries, that do not
depend on manual labor or provide opportunities of
profit by commercial prosperity, found themselves
pinched to the point of sharp distress.

Certain articles of food and living had risen in price
like rockets, in Paris and other cities. Mutton, for
instance, was fifteen and seventeen francs; ham, sixteen
to eighteen francs a pound. A suit of clothes which
cost a hundred francs in 1914 was not to be had from
any tailor in 192 1 for less than seven hundred francs.

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MORE THAT ' MUST BE ' TOLD

As I have said, the middle classes, and especially the
clerical classes, had suffered most. In some cases their
salaries had been tripled, but this increase was not in
proportion to that of the laboring classes. A workman,
for instance, earning six francs a day before the war,
might now get thirty francs, or even more. A ticket
collector on an omnibus got a much higher wage than a
school-teacher. But these wages were all in excess of
the possibilities of national economy, and were not
justified by the production of labor, so that unem-
ployment was bound to ensue, or the downfall of indus-
trial enterprise.

In France, as in most other countries of Europe,
exasperation at high prices was inflamed by the convic-
tion that some part of them, at least, was due to the
profiteering of unscrupulous traders, utterly callous
of the common people, and supported in a sinister way
by corrupt influences in the government, sympathiz-
ing with the old claims of a selfish capitalism in-
trenched against the growing menace of revolutionary
labor. I heard strange stories of immense stores of
vegetables left to rot in warehouses while the prices
soared to fantastic heights in the Paris markets; of
great quantities of meat going bad in the storage houses,
while small families were starved of meat. The peasant
was profiteering at the expense of the townsman, the
manufacturer was profiteering at the expense of the
peasant, and the government was juggling with the
figures of bankruptcy, by issuing paper money which
had no reality. There was truth in all these things,
and it did not make for economic recovery or health.

Ill

The magic word "reconstruction" did not have much
power over the bodies and souls of those French peas-

i8o

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

ants and villagers who returned to the long, broad belt
of country which stretches across France hke an open
wound. A year after the war had finished I went back
to that country to see new life where for more than four
years I had seen a lot of death, and the reravaging of
earth already ravaged by every kind of explosive gas
force and poisonous gas. Nothing much had altered
except that grass grew rankly on ground which was
bare and barren when the guns had done with it. Many
of the old trenches had silted in, and the shell holes
which used to be six or eight feet deep were now filled up
by the effect of rain, and the cemeteries — those little
forests of our dead — were more neatly kept. In the
general landscape there was not much difference,
though as I looked closer I saw that the peasants had
actually reclaimed many of these acres, especially
around Peronne and south of the Somme, by digging
out the chunks of steel that lay thick in the soil and
searching for unexploded shells with a care that did not
prevent many deaths. They had plowed the land,
and furrowed it, and sowed some kind of crop, and their
industry had gone on since then with untiring spirit,
so that now a broader stretch of country is under
cultivation.

I found little colonies of wooden huts, like the en-
campments of nomad folk, constructed at places like
Passchendaele and Langemarck and Gheluvelt, where
men of ours lived in dirty ditches from which they rose
on days of battle to cross through a storm of fire, in
which many fell, a score of yards or so, to where the
enemy waited with machine guns, bombs, and trench
mortars. In these wooden huts live the repatriated
peasants who fled from the red tide of war, and I talked
with many of them and heard the truth that was in
them, and the passion, and the despair.

The point of view as expressed by those people v/ho

i8i

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

had suffered and were suffering from the outrage of
war is different from what one would hear from great
people, and closer to the truth of life as it is seen in
peasants' cottages and middle-class homes.

We know what the great people think, or, at least,
say. I am sure M. Poincare would have nothing new
to tell me, if I sought the honor of an interview with
him. Even M. Briand would only utter large generali-
ties on the subject of future liberty, justice, and progress,
and the necessity of maintaining the Entente Cordiale.

From old people in wooden huts on the edge of desert
lands, from drivers of hired motor cars, from visitors
who were soldiers, from little groups of people sitting
round wooden tables in wayside inns, and from business
men trying to "reconstruct" that which had been
destroyed, I studied the popular psychology of France
after the war, and found it interesting.

These people were great realists. They faced facts
squarely and did not camouflage them by fanciful
hopes or rose-colored romance.

Not even victory, and its pageantry, covered up by
one grain of dust their realization of the immense
horror of war and of its price in blood and ruin.

Military glory had no meaning to them except in stem
duty and the endurance of abominable things which
had to be endured.

It was a waiter who expressed a kind of rebuke to me
one night, when he had been explaining the difference
between a bronze star and a silver star and a palm on a
miHtary decoration. The first is for an act of valor
"cited" to his regiment; the second "cited" (in the
orders of the day) to the division; the third to the
whole army throughout France.

He had the palm, and I said, '' Magnifique, ga!'*

He turned away for a moment with a queer, contemp-
tuous grimace,

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THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

"Magnificent! Bah! ... It is a reward for dirty-
work. Up to your knees in mud. Dead bodies every-
where. Stench, blood, fear, abomination. ... It is
better to be here, serving coffee and beer, and adding
up Httle figures. It is a better job."

This man, and others Hke him, look back to the years
of war with disgust, and not as a jolly adventure with
good comradeship and good fun between the ugly hours,
hke some of our men. They did what they did because
it was necessary to save France, but they hated it all.

And now they face the present and the future with,
mostly, an unflinching sense of truth. Even those
who have hope in the future, because of their own
strength of character, do not disguise from themselves
the slow rate of progress by which it will be possible to
clear away all this ruin about them and rebuild.

"Twenty years," "thirty years," were the figures
given by people in the devastated regions for the resur-
rection of their villages and farms.

They shrugged their shoulders at the word "recon-
struction," used as a watchword by the newspapers
and politicians, and said: "That is a fine phrase! . . .
Meanwhile we have no material, no indemnities for our
loss, no means of getting labor. The government
does nothing. Perhaps it is powerless to do anything
because of our drain of blood, this great devastation,
and the poverty of all but the profiteers."

I had a strange little meal in a wooden shanty on the
Somme battlefields, with a soldier, a farmer, and a
commercial traveler.

In the next room was a wedding feast, and we were
given what was left over, between each course, served
by the wife of an English sergeant who had settled
down in France after the war. We had to wait long,
and filled up the gaps by conversation.

It was the commercial traveler who talked most,

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and as he came from Paris, talked well, with a cynical
sense of humor, beneath which lay a real sadness, as
of a man who sees a glory that has passed.

After the usual ribaldries about the bride and bride-
groom in the next room, he spoke of the conditions of
France, and the coming elections, and the psychology
of French men and women after the war.

"The war," he said, "has finished France as a great
Power. We are going downstairs."

"We won the war," said the young farmer. "We
climbed up to victory, in spite of the power of Germany."

"We had people on each side, pushing us up," said
the commercial traveler. He enumerated the crowds
that had propped up France — "English, Scots, Irish,
Australians, Canadians, Americans, black men, yellow
men, and chocolate men.

"As a nation we are going downstairs. We have
had our last fling — and we have flung the best of our life
into the pool. Our population, what is it?

"Fortunately there are still marriages — I drink to
the health of the bride next door! but we are dwindling
down, and always Germany is producing fat boys.
Financially, too, we are down. We are beggars of the
United States."

"And England," said the soldier, who listened more
than he talked, "will gobble us up little by httle."

"That's true," said the commercial traveler.

"How's that?" I asked.

The soldier hestitated. Then he said: "We are speak-
ing frankly. England is a great country, logical,
businesslike. Our weakness will be her advantage.
She will capture our markets. She will enlarge her
empire at our expense. Even now she begrudges us
Syria."

His mind had been affected by the campaign of
propaganda which was being developed not only in

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THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

the Paris papers, but in every local sheet in France, on
the question of Syria and the "devotion of France to
the self-determination of the Egyptian people." We
were accused of hypocrisy for our policy in Egypt, and
it was not good reading.

The commercial traveler began to talk about the
elections.

"They are all faked," he said. "The French people
do not govern themselves. They are governed by a
swarm of professional politicians, who control the
whole machine of bureaucracy, which is spread like a
network over the whole of France — by swarms of little
paid officials, who do nothing but draw their salaries.

"It has been like that before the war, and will be so
after the war.

"A new party will come into power with fine words in
its mouth. Do you think they will bring water to these
devastated regions or build up destroyed villages?
Oh, monsieur, you are an optimist!"

I found everywhere this contempt for politicians.
France shrugs its shoulders at them all, and says: "It
is a game! It has no reality."

They pin their faith to local initiative, individual
energy, to build up on the ruins, yet are aghast at the
enormity of the task.

Most of the individuals I met had suffered the loss
of all their prewar possessions.

The driver of a motor car owned his own garage before
the war. The government requisitioned his cars, sold
them afterward for double the price he had given,
but as yet he has recovered no indemnity, and is now a
hired chauffeur.

The old woman who kept an inn on the Menin Road

fled from it when the German shells came near, and

was now back in a wooden shack. On the wall was a

larger poster setting forth the claims for damage which

13 i8s

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

must be made to the government before a certain date.
She had made them months ago, but had not touched
a penny.

So it was in millions of cases, and there was exaspera-
tion, just or unjust, I know not, because there was no
repayment out of the national treasury for losses in-
curred by the acts of war.

The lack of labor in France Is serious, and made
worse by the constant strikes for higher wages and by
the high scale of wages now demanded by men who are
not much inclined to work with their old industry,
whatever their reward. They will work a little bit,
and then take a holiday and enjoy themselves. They
were in the mud of the war. They lived in trenches.
They were surrounded with death. They escaped.
. . . Shall they not enjoy life now, like the profiteers
who did nothing but get rich?

So after the armistice the cafes were crowded. There
were throngs outside the cinemas. In Lille, where
conditions were very bad, they were not so bad that
they stopped the fun of the fair or failed to crowd the
circus where French clowns caused shouts of laughter,
and strong men did prodigious feats, and Japanese
wrestlers defied the laws of anatomy.

In a great tent there were four thousand people at
least, under the glare of lights. I looked at their faces,
intense, gaping, laughing at comic antics. They were
soldiers and ex-soldiers with their wives and sweethearts.
Every man there and every woman knew the tragedy
of the war in their souls. They had been prisoners,
many of them. They went through years of hell.
Now they were shouting and screaming with laughter. It
was their need in life. They must have laughter, light,
shows, pleasure. They had come out of the darkness.
Not even work must interfere too much with their vital
need, which, in this afterwar psychology, was amusement.

1 86

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

But as one man told me, and I believed him, "if the
people do not laugh they must weep, for truly victory
has not brought much joy, but only a peace which is
full of danger and a knowledge of a ruin which can only
be repaired after many generations."

Cardinal Mercier's words that "Germany is already
preparing a war of revenge which may come in fifteen
years, " struck a chill in the hearts of many people who
read these words in local papers.

It is a terrifying idea — another war.

French peasants and the bourgeoisie regret that
they could not crush Germany more. If only they had
gone to Berlin!

The idea that there may be any comradeship of democ-
racy between French workers and German workers, so
preventing another war, is held only by international
Socialists of the old type, who have many new adherents,
but do not represent the majority of the working classes
in France.

Many of them regard that as an illusion, and some
of them as a treachery.

They shrug their shoulders at a gospel of brotherhood,
and say "the Boche is a bandit, an assassin."

For England there is, in the north, where our troops
were known and where they fought, a friendly and
affectionate remembrance.

''Nous avons un bon souvenir des soldats anglais,**
iaid an old peasant woman who had served many of
them behind the lines, and such words were spoken by
many others.

But that does not prevent a growing suspicion in the
minds of many French people that England has got
**all the fat," as they say, out of the peace terms, and
that she has waxed fat herself out of the war.

It was no use telling them that we were spending twq
millions a day more than our income,

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They say: "England is rich. England is enlarging
her empire. England and America are masters of the
world. "

For some time there was, beneath the loud expression
of joy in France because the victory was hers, a secret
and sinister bitterness of revolutionary passion. Re-
member that when war broke out in 19 14 the followers
of Jean Jaures, the Socialist leader, who was murdered
on the first day (his murderer was acquitted at the end
of the war), rallied to the flag of France with exalted
patriotism. They said: "We are the enemies of war,
but this was forced on us. This is the war to end war.
By killing German militarism we shall destroy our own,
for there will be no need of it. By defeating German
tyranny we shall gain greater liberty ourselves. There
will be a * sacred union' of classes, and labor, which
will save France, by its body and by its soul, shall get
greater reward. Capitalism of the old evil kind will
be dethroned, and capital and labor shall go hand in
hand, not as enemies, but as friends and partners."

Over and over again I heard French soldiers say those
things in the early days when all France was stirred by
passionate enthusiasm and the spirit of sacrifice. . . .
They left off saying them when the war settled down
into trenches, when slaughter was piled up month after
month, when it seemed unending, and when the poliusy
in those wet ditches, thought back to Paris, where the
politicians and the rich seemed to be quite comfortable,
making lots of money out of army contracts, and ready
to go on fighting — by proxy — for years and years.
What bitterness, what suspicion, what hatred of poli-
ticians and profiteers, was in the hearts of the French
fighting men may be read in the books of Henri Bar-
busse; and I, myself, talking to those poliusy in their

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THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

trenches and dugouts and in ruined villages behind
the Hne, have heard all that passion of resentment. It
seemed to these men — and seems to some of them now
• — ^that Jean Jaures, their old leader, was right, after
all, when he said that modern warfare was made to
bolster up one set of capitalists against another set
whose markets they coveted, or whose power they
feared, and that the peoples who fought and died were
not fighting altogether for their own liberties or for
their own reward. After the war, when the French
troops were demobilized and came back to the little
homes, stinted of the barest necessities of life because of
the rising prices, while French society of the well-to-do
classes rioted in a mad kind of luxury during the peace
negotiations, these men became even more bitter, and
their spirit was menacing.

I went, one night in Paris, to a meeting of a society
called Clarte. It was founded by the friends of that
French author, Henri Barbusse, whose book, Le Feu,
gives the most realistic and dreadful picture of the ag-
onies and horrors of modern warfare, and contains the
fiercest accusation of the evil elements in civilization
which led up to the European war. Clarte means
clearness — clarity — and the idea of the society is to
bring together numbers of young men in France and
other countries who went through the war and who are
able to think clearly on the problems of life, the struc-
ture of society, and the means by which liberty, brother-
hood, and peace may prevail over injustice, hatred, and
the spirit of war. It was a night in August when I
went to a back street in Paris and the rooms in which
this meeting was being held. The rooms were so
crowded that I could hardly push my way in, and so
hot that one woman fainted, and sweat poured down
the foreheads of French soldiers, and the whole company
looked half stifled. It was a queer company, made up

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of many types and classes of men and women. Keeping
the door was a handsome young officer in the sky-blue
uniform of the Chasseurs ^ wearing many medals for
valor and service. Here and there were other officers
and private soldiers in uniform, some of them scarred
or maimed, and one of them blinded. Those were
the best types in the room. Others were clearly of
foreign origin, including many Jews and Slavs, with
rather sinister faces of a kind I have often seen in
revolutionary gatherings in London and other capitals
of Europe. With them were young women with black
eyes staring moodily out of dead-white faces, and young
men with long, uncombed hair and neurasthenic eyes,
roving restlessly, and sullen in their gaze. On a small
wooden platform sat the secretary of the society, a young
man also, smartly dressed, dapper, hke a clerk in a bank,
and with the sharp, self-confident manner of a com-
mercial traveler. He explained the objects of the
society and the progress he had to report.

Standing there at the back of the room, with my collar
going limp in the heat, and the hot breath of the people
about me making me feel sick and faint, I listened to
the program of Clarte for the reformation of life. It
was nothing more nor less than the Bolshevism of Lenin
translated into French. It advocated the abolition of
private property, the ruthless destruction of capitalism,
the control by the laboring masses of all the sources
and machinery of wealth, the promotion of an inter-
national fellowship among the workers of the world.
Old stuff, the revolutionary "dope," the old class hatred,
and the old call to violence. The company listened to it
in silence except for the noise of their breathing. I
watched the faces of the young French soldiers, to
whom all this dangerous philosophy was new, perhaps,
but I could not guess the effect it had upon them, nor
read the riddle of those mask-like faces still bronzed

190

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

with sun and wind as when I had seen them under steel
helmets staring across No-Man's Land from their
trenches and Hstening to the rush of shells which threat-
ened them with death. I thought back to bitter words
I had heard from their Hps in those days, their words
of scorn for politicians, profiteers, corrupt society,
luxurious women, old men who gained by the death of
youth. Out of that bitterness, unjust very often,
overcharged with their resentment against the fate
which had thrust them into the ditches of death, and
now, inflamed by the thought of a poor reward for all
their suffering, had come this spirit of revolt, this desire
for sweeping and violent change, expressed in the sub-
versive gospel of Clarte. ... A dangerous crowd, yet
not big enough in numbers, not representative enough
of French mentality, to be any real menace to the secu-
rity of the French government and state.

It was the young officer in the Fouragere who explained
to me the meaning and purpose of the Clarte movement.

He spoke of the horrors of the war, and shrugged his
shoulders, and said: "You know all about that. Let us
not waste words on it. . . . Men who went through
that business have come out changed, with new ideas.
In the trenches they said, 'This must not happen
again.' Then they went farther than that and said;
*To prevent this happening again we must alter
the relations of people with one another, and kill all the
old ideas which led to this massacre. Society must
start afresh, on new lines, not marked out by frontiers
of hatred. Working people of all classes must get
together and recognize that they have common interests,
to get on with their work in peace, without being flung
against one another by people on top who make wealth
out of them, or by their own passions, obedient to
foolish old traditions.'"

He pointed to a few sentences In a manifesto of the

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

new league: "The war has broken the mask of things.
It has brought to hght the lies, the old errors, the clever
sophistry which made the past a long martyrdom of
justice. Our present need is to organize social life
according to the laws of reason. It is the Intellectuals
who must prepare the reign of the spirit over that of
material force."

While the young officer talked to me I thought of
something that had happened a long time ago, very
close to the room in which we sat — a Feast to the Goddess
of Reason, whose archpriest was Robespierre, after a
Reign of Terror. Were these the same old ideas clothed
in new phrases .?

"The principles of a just society are simple," say
these young men of France, though I shook my head
and laughed when I heard that word "simple." . . .
"All great thinkers, all great moralists, all founders of
religion have always agreed on the principles. Reality
is reasonable."

I heard other ** axioms" read in that crowded room
to that strange little crowd of French "intellectuals":

"Power ought to be common to all, as an ideal. Only
work, manual or intellectual, ought to be paid for.
Speculation is a crime against the crowd. Heritage
is a theft."

Those who prepare for war prepare wars. "
It is thought which has created progress. Men of
thought must lend their life to progress."

"Those who do nothing are the militants of the status
quo."

A man by my side said, "If I stay here I shall stifle,
and I have heard these ideas before."

He used his shoulder to push his way out, and I
followed him. We talked together under the trees of
a dark street where the air was fresh. Under those
trees many young Frenchmen, through the centuries,

192

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

have talked about idealism, brotherhood of man, social
contracts, the reign of Reason. The man by my side
was, I should say, a mechanic, and something in his
deep-set eyes told me that he had been through the
realities of war.

"What do you think of it all.?" I asked.

He laughed, not in a mocking way, but with a kind of
shrug in his spirit. "Comrades of mine used to talk
like that in the trenches, until they had their heads
blown off. . . . There is some truth in it. Society is
all wrong, somehow. We ought to build something
better out of the ruin of the war. But human nature,
monsieur, is greedy, cruel, and stupid in the mass. Ideals
are at the mercy of low passions. Look at the world
now — after the war! I see no approach to the brother-
hood of man. We are beginning new hatreds, pre-
paring perhaps for new wars, worse than the last."

"Then you don't believe in the movement of the
Clarte?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"It is playing in a literary way with revolutionary
ideals which are at work among the masses. They will
write articles; they will bring out a paper; they will
hold conferences. The police will not interfere because
they are men of letters. . . . But it is the high price of
food and the falsity of German pledges which will move
the masses. The war has left us with much trouble."

He shook hands with me and said, "American?"

"No, English."

He shook hands again.

"England, too, has her troubles, like all the world."

In spite of many currents of bitter thoughts in the
minds of the French people, there is no spirit of revo-

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

lution in France, but rather an intense emotional
desire for stable government, good leadership, economy,
and reconstruction which will- bring back prosperity
and peace to France. So far from desiring to abolish
private property, the French peasant, who is his own
proprietor, the French shopkeeper and small tradesman,
the clerk and professional man, the large merchant and
the manufacturer, wish to increase the safeguards of
property, to be more fully assured of the interest on
money invested in government bonds, and to be repaid
for all those loans which were made to Russia before and
during the war. Their anger, their discontent, their
utter disgust with the effects of the peace treaty are
due to a sense of fear that their private property is
not safeguarded and that they will get nothing out of
victory to repay their losses.

All the foreign policy of France, all the irritation of
the French people with those who were her friends, are
due to their desperate anxiety to make their victory
real, permanent, and profitable. France is haunted
by the fear that her frontiers are no safer now than
they were in 1914, in spite of all her immense sacrifice
and losses and all her brilliant victories, and that she
is not sure of peace itself for more than another spell
of preparation for war. She realizes with dreadful
misgivings that her population is declining steadily.
In 1920 there were 220,000 more deaths than births,
and in another twenty, thirty, or forty years the man-
power of France will be terribly less in proportion to
the Germans on the other side of her frontiers than it
was in August of 19 14. What if Germany recovers her
wealth and strength.^ What if Germany, unrepentant
and passionate for vengeance, allies herself with Russia,
which has betrayed France and hates her.^ What if the
German peoples, now split into smaller states, with
Austria cut oflf from the supplies of life, regroup them-

194

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

selves and rearm themselves, in alliance with Russian
Bolshevism, or a Russian autocracy that may follow
Bolshevism? Dreadful, disturbing thoughts, that are
in the brain of many French men and women not only
in Ministerial chambers, but in city offices and shop
parlors, and little rooms in apartment houses.

As far as Germany is concerned, France is determined
to prevent her economic recovery at all costs, by the
strict enforcement of the peace terms, which, if carried
out to the letter, will strip her to the bone and keep her
poor for at least a generation. However hard she works,
the product of her toil will be seized to repay the damage
of war in the Allied countries. Whatever her enter-
prise in other countries, the profits of her industrial
genius will be taken if she does not pay to the full the
bill which France and England, Italy and Belgium, and
all the other countries whom she warred against have
presented to her. If it is impossible for Germany to pay
all those claims, or if she tries to dodge them, it is a
sure thing that France will try to seize her future credits
and keep her with her nose to the grindstone. If need
be, France will seize the left bank of the Rhine, and if
need be again, sit down in Berlin. That is the clear-
cut, definite policy of France, coinciding with the senti-
ment of the people with regard to the Germans, and it
is for that reason that they are perplexed, irritated,
even exasperated with England, Italy, and the United
States because they seem to see a different and con-
flicting point of view, a certain yielding weakness to
the Germans, and actual acts of concession which
seem to France a betrayal and a breach of friendship.

So it is with England's agreement with Germany not to
seize the postwar values of German enterprise abroad
in the event of her inability to pay the entire sum of
indemnities by the times required. France is enraged
with that concession, which weakens her power of keep-

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ing Germany in a permanent state of poverty. She
abominated the pressure brought to bear on her, and
the promises she was forced to make under pressure,
to present a bill of claims to Germany based upon the
present immediate capacity of Germany to pay. France
said, with a great deal of truth and justice, it is absurd
to reduce our claims now because Germany is in a state
of ruin. Twenty years from now, by industry, by the
discovery of some new chemical secret, by some inven-
tion needed by all the world, Germany may, and prob-
ably will, be the richest country in Europe. Why,
then, should we be in a hurry to present our bill for
immediate payment, based upon present resources, when
her future wealth is incalculable?

Before the final presentation of the Bill of Costs to
Germany, at the end of April, 1921, there was a severe
strain upon the friendly relations between France and
Great Britain.

England's view was based upon a different line of
reasoning, which clashed with the French view in a
fundamental way. When I say England's view I
mean the unofficial, instinctive reasoning of the ordinary
Englishman who looks at realities without passion and
in a business way. He said, and still thinks, more or
less: **This idea of keeping Germany poor for ever and
ever, of holding her in the position of a slave state
working for the rest of Europe, so that all the profits of
her industry go to the payment of her debts for several
generations, is ridiculous and unsound. In the first
place, there will be no recovery in Europe, in an economic
way, so long as Germany is poverty-stricken. We want
to trade with Germany. We want to sell our goods in
German markets. We want Germany to buy our raw

196

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

material and send us back manufactured goods in
exchange. Italy needs that more than we do. Italy-
is in a bad way because Austria and Germany, her best
markets, cannot pay for her produce. The United
States want the German markets. All the world
is hit because central Europe is paralyzed. But, apart
from all that, which is common sense, the French policy
is enormously dangerous. They think that Germany
will submit to the position of a slave state. Germany
won't. It is not in human nature. Certainly not in
the human nature of a people sullen with defeat, re-
membering their strength and pride. If the pressure
is made too severe, the punishment unbearable, Germany
will either yield to anarchy and carry the disease of
Bolshevism to the frontiers of France, or (which is much
more likely) will form a close alliance with the inevitable
autocracy of Russia under Lenin or some other, which
will substitute a military regime for communistic the-
ories, and then there will be another and more dreadful
war which France will be too weak to resist. All
civilization, as we know it, will go down, and we cannot
afford to take that risk. We must not ask of Germany
more than human nature will stand, and if possible we
must make her a peaceful partner in some kind of a
League of Nations, working with all of us for the regen-
eration of a stricken Europe. "

To that argument the French replied with scorn and
laughter, dubbing it the weakness of sentimental gibber-
ing coupled with the treachery of forgetful friends.

The French Press, inspired by their Foreign Office,
revealed a bellicose ardor which was deplored by that
disillusioned, cynical, but wise old Frenchman, Anatole
France, and a small minority of far-seeing men. Even
some of the most radical papers, like the Rappely
clamored for the immediate occupation of the whole
of Germany. The editor of the Democratie Nouvelle,

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another radical organ, insisted daily upon the occupa-
tion of the Ruhr Valley. M. Maurice Barres, one of
the most famous authors of France, was passionate in
his desire for the left bank of the Rhine, and tried to
win over English opinion to that policy by the most
fantastic argument. "It is necessary," he said, "to the
security of England. England needs a zone of security
on the Rhine. Let her allow us to organize it!" In
those words he abandoned the French argument that
the Treaty of Versailles must be kept to the letter as a
sacred document. He also challenged the English
view, deep seated in every English brain, I know, that
if the French were to take over the left bank of the Rhine
with its immense German populations, the certainty of
another war would be complete and both France and
England would have to spend all their remaining strength
and all their remaining wealth, or poverty, in preparing
for the next struggle. In the most advanced socialist
papers of France there was a prolonged campaign of
Anglophobia, due to this difference in policy, and the
editor of L'CEuvre, which used to be pacifist and inter-
national, harked back to a narrow and bitter nationahsm,
allied with violent attacks upon England, whose dead
lie thick in the fields of France.

All this stirring up of passion and prejudice was the
prelude to the political pressure brought to bear upon
the British government by Aristide Briand and the
French Foreign Office, before the final settlement of
the German reparations. Briand, former SociaUst, and
then Prime Minister of France, found himself appointed
as the representative of French nationalism to engage
in an intellectual duel with Lloyd George, former
Radical and now head of a Conservative and Imperial
Coalition. Briand chose his weapon, which was force,
based upon the strength of the French armies. He
galled up the class of 19 19 recruits, the lads of twenty-

1^8

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

two, and moved them toward the Ruhr, ready for an
immediate advance. Speaking in the French Chamber
on April 12, 192 1, he put the case with brutal frankness
and simpHcity so that the Germans, and incidentally
the British, might understand. "On the first of May
Germany will find herself confronted with the state-
ment of her obligations and how she has fulfilled them.
We have a right to execution. The bailiff having been
sent, the gendarmes must accompany him if the debtor
persists in being recalcitrant. It is not a question of
war; it is a question of pure justice." He intimated
quite clearly that France was prepared to act alone.
They had the arms. They were ready to use them.

It can hardly be doubted that Briand had the mass
of his people behind him. Press propaganda, as well as
years of disappointment with the peace, had created a
sense of rage. Yet there were men and women in France
who were not pleased at the sight of their boys leaving
the plow again and putting on uniforms. It re-
called too sharply the dreadful days of '14. Yet most
of them said, "Perhaps it is the only way of getting
our rights." Paris, always most inflammable, seemed
in a set mood for a march on the Ruhr, whether the
Germans agreed to pay or not. To capture the great
German factories of Essen, the coal fields, arsenals, and
industries, and hold them to ransom, seemed to them
the best policy and the best business. It would keep
Germany weak and drained. It would cut off fifteen
million Germans from their Fatherland. It would
provide much wealth at the expense of German labor.
So the population talked over cafe tables.

VII

Meanwhile, the experts were working feverishly at
figures, reckoning out the resources of Germany, her

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taxable capacity, the utmost burden she could bear.
It is doubtful whether even the German experts had
accurate figures before them. From a private source,
well informed, I received information that all classes
in Germany were evading internal and external taxation
by hiding what wealth they had, transferring enormous
sums into neutral countries, dodging income-tax re-
turns, hoarding paper money, buying precious stones
and objects of art of marketable value which do not
appear in any available figures. On the other hand,
the big German trusts, organized by Stinnes and
other magnates, had been developing industry with
enormous strides, and by the pooling of capital, raw
material, and profits were paying high dividends to
their shareholders. It was clear that the estimates
on each side would never agree. The Paris settlement
fixed five thousand millions as the cash value of Ger-
many's obligations, with a twelve-per-cent levy on
German exports. The payment spread over forty-two
years at five per cent interest would total eleven thou-
sand three hundred millions. The last German offer,
represented as being the utmost they could pay, recog-
nized a cash obligation of two thousand five hundred
million pounds, reaching a total of ten thousand million
pounds spread over an unstated number of years with
interest. This last offer was transmitted to the United
States of America with a plea of the arbitration of that
country, the decision of which Germany pledged her-
self to accept. It was a last desperate attempt to split
the Allies, for if the United States had accepted this
office and had abated the terms to Germany upon fair
consideration, a storm of fury would have broken out
in France which would have been dangerous to the
peace of Europe. England's agreement with the
United States, which would have been certain, would
have led to the breaking of friendship with the French

200

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

people. President Harding and his advisers saw the
danger of this trap, the utter impossibihty of acceptance,
and they notified very quickly to Germany, after cable
communications with the French and British govern-
ments, that they did not regard the German offer as
acceptable.

Historic meetings took place between Lloyd George
and Briand, with Marshal Foch, Count Sforza, the
Japanese ambassador, and others in attendance. The
experts of the Reparations Commission now fixed six
thousand six hundred million pounds as the total
obligation in cash value to be accepted by Germany
not later than May ist. All the other clauses of the
treaty respecting disarmament and the trial of war
prisoners were to be strictly enforced.

The differences between the two Premiers were
mainly limited to the question of "sanctions," the form
of pressure, and the date by which Germany was to be
compelled to pay. Briand, with Marshal Foch at his
right hand, insisted that on May ist the French armies
should march into the Ruhr if Germany had not sub-
mitted. Lloyd George held out for a period of grace.
Instinctively and intellectually the Prime Minister of
England shrank from the thought of the occupation
of the Ruhr. It seemed to him a policy of extreme dan-
ger. He did not need the private protests of a group
of British bankers, and of Mr. Asquith, Lord Robert
Cecil, and other statesmen (though their arguments
enforced his own convictions) to feel profoundly that
such an occupation would mean the "withering" of
German industry so that the indemnity could never
be paid, and the fatal assurance of a new war in the un-
known but not distant future. Those arguments he
placed before M. Briand with a certain touch of brutality
which he can use at times with great effect, but they
were countered by the burning resolve of Briand to

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

"act" alone, if need be, on behalf of France, whose
patience was exhausted, as Cardinal Dubois wrote to
the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne.

Lloyd George was faced with a stupendous dilemma.
The Germans were watching this psychological and
historical drama, with full understanding of its sig-
nificance, ready to take advantage of the slightest sign
of weakening. The whole Treaty of Versailles would
fall with a crash if the divergence of views between
France and England widened much further or did not
find some bridge of compromise. A compromise was
found. Six days' grace were given to the Germans for
unconditional acceptance. Refusing to send British
troops into the Ruhr — "not a man and not a gun" —
Lloyd George agreed to lend the British fleet for a block-
ade of German ports if Germany refused to submit to
the terms. At the same time the German ambassador
was privately notified that if his government accepted,
the British government would on their side uphold
the spirit of the treaty with the strictest regard to
German interests, as far as they were safeguarded and
as far as our honor was pledged, especially in regard
to Upper Silesia, coveted by the Poles with the tacit
approval of the French.

The German government, reconstituted under Doctor
Wirth, accepted without reservations, and of all men in
the world, Lloyd George must have breathed a sigh of
thankfulness. He made no secret of his dread of the
threatened seizure of the Ruhr by France. He did not
believe it possible that German workmen could be per-
suaded to serve their factories with enthusiastic indus-
try under the stimulus of foreign control by foreign
bayonets. He made no disguise of his conviction that
the economic recovery of Europe depends a great deal
on whether the German workmen will continue to

202

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

work. And he foresaw the time when Germany, in
alliance with Russia, would inevitably declare a war
of vengeance if she were pressed to the limit of human
patience.

Those views, held by the Prime Minister at least for a
few days — though God alone could tell how quickly he
would shift his ground or what undercurrents of polit-
ical or other interests had impelled him in that direc-
tion— did, I think, represent the average opinion of the
British people. The}^ wished a fair deal to be given to
Germany, if she agreed to pay up and made honest
efforts to do so. They were afraid of an entry into the
Ruhr, believing that it would guarantee a future war —
and the idea of a future war was to them sickening and
horrible and insane.

Aristide Briand departed from England in a state
of gloomy exaltation. To the photographers on board
his ship he said that nothing v/ould give him greater
pleasure than to see a film showing the British fleet
steaming into Hamburg. It was the blurting out of
his secret hope that the Germans would not accept,
and that the "sanctions" would have to be appHed.
The fire eaters in France, and the passion of light-headed
people, were disappointed by the German acceptance.
It was received coldly, without thankfulness or enthu-
siasm. They disbelieved in the German promises to
pay more than the first installments. It is certain
that many of them disbelieved the German power to
pay. What they wanted was the forcible possession of
German industry and means of wealth, which they would
ransom and then ruin as — do not let us forget that —
Germany had ransomed and ruined the industry of
Lille and other French cities in the time of war. There
was hardly a Frenchman who could see that the ruin
of German industry would mean the final downfall

of the European trading system upon which all our

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

hope of recovered prosperity depends. France felt
thwarted by her friends.

VIII

The attitude of France toward Russia had been
another cause of ill will and distress in French mentality.
Russia's desertion of the AUied cause when revolution
broke out and led to the peace of Brest-Litovsk was a
frightful blow to France and to all of us. In the French
mind there was no allowance made for the immense,
bloody, and futile sacrifices of Russian soldiers, sent
forward like sheep to the slaughter, badly equipped,
often without arms and ammunition, against the flail
of German machine guns and the storm of fire from
German artillery. No allowance for the savage rage
of the Russian masses against a corrupt, inefficient, and
sometimes treacherous government, so that at least
they cried out in despair and passion, "Our enemy is
not in front of us, but behind us!"

One reason for the intense bitterness of the French
against the Russians is easy to understand, and of
immense importance to the individual Frenchman.
Years before the war the French government had backed
the issue of Russian bonds and had encouraged its
people to subscribe to them. Every little shopkeeper,
every bourgeois with a sum of money to invest, had
bought Russian stock, which was the price and pledge
of Russian military aid in the event of war with Germany.
Now, with the Russian plunge into Bolshevism, all that
money was jeopardized and probably irrecoverable.
The thought worked like madness in the brains of the
French middle classes. It dictated the policy of the
French Foreign Office and French War Office, who
supported every counter-revolutionary general, pro-
viding him with arms, ammunition, and money, in the

204

THE PRrCE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

hope that the Lenin regime would be overthrown by a
new dictator who would redeem the Russian bonds.
Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel in turn became the hope
of France, and their successive disasters fell like icy
waters on the spirit of the French people.

Yet it is profoundly significant that the soldiers of
France, the men who had come out tired and resentful
from the Great War, exhausted morally and mentally,
would not engage themselves in any adventure on behalf
of Russia which would lead to renewed fighting on their
part. At the mere rumor that some of them were
going to be sent to Russia, two regiments broke into
something like mutiny. French policy was therefore
directed to the urging on of other peoples against the
Russian Bolsheviki and ardently encouraged Poland in
her "offensive-defensive" warfare, which, after many
setbacks and a retreat which looked like final disaster,
rallied under French generalship and certainly inflicted
on Trotzky's Red armies the most damaging defeat
they had ever suffered. France would have no peace
with Red Russia, and, though Europe was suffering
hunger and dearth in many countries for lack of Russian
trade and grain, France resented with exceeding wrath
certain tentative proposals by England and the United
States to arrange a commercial and political peace with
the Russian people for the sake of the world's health
and reconstruction, with the ulterior motive of over-
throwing the Bolshevik devil by letting in the hght to
the victims of its bloody rule.

France has no faith in a League of Nations. Cle-
menceau shrugged his shoulders at the idea of it, and
yielded to President Vv'ilson's dream for the sake of
practical support in the other items of the peace treaty.
The French people will not admit their German enemies
to any society of nations on terms of equality, and do
not see any kind of guaranty in such a league for their

20S

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

frontiers and their national safety. The present rulers
of France, men of ardent patriotism, not looking to any-
advance in the ideas of civiUzation, having no faith in
the virtues of human nature to resist the call of venge-
ance and of greed, take the old cynical view of the
European jungle, and rely upon the old philosophy of
alliances, groups united in self-interest, buffer states
between them and their hereditary foes, which made up
the old policy of the balance of power.

So with Belgium, with Poland, with the aristocratic
party in Hungary, with the small states formed out of
the slaughter of the Austrian Empire, France has es-
tablished secret understandings, military and economic
and political, which will safeguard her, she hopes, against
the menace of that time when Germany may have
recovered enough to be dangerous again — ^though by all
efforts of France that time will be far postponed. It is
a logical, a clear-cut, in many ways a justified policy.
The only argument against it is that it harks back to
the state of national rivalry, suspicion, diplomatic
jugglings, military engagements and burdens, v/hich
cast a black spell over Europe before the late war; and
that it is a preparation for a renewed conflict at some
future time, when this new balance of power will be
tested in the scales of fate, and Europe again will be
drenched in the blood of warring nations. In defense
of this policy the French people, who believed that the
last conflict was a war to end war, that the killing of
German militarism was to be the relief from their own
burden of military service, will have to maintain a great
standing army, and — in their present poverty — will have
to find somehow money enough to pay for it, with its
desperate struggle to keep ahead of all other military
powers in eflficiency and the invention of the machinery
of slaughter. And the mothers of babes just born will
know, as they rock them in their cradles, that they,

206

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

like their fathers, will one day be sent forward into the
fires of hell to be torn to bits by flying steel, to be choked
with poison gas, to be blinded, maimed, maddened,
or killed. Is it for that reason that just now there are net
many mothers in France^ not many babies being born?

The soul of France is not happy nor at peace. Her
agonies are too fresh, her wounds are still unhealed,
and the price of victory has been too great. Whether
one goes to the chateau of the landowner, or to the
cottage of the peasant, or to the poor rooms of city
needlewomen and workers, one is confronted instantly,
four times out of five, with the ghost of some dead
boy or man who haunts the living.

In the little wooden shanties which have been built
up on the old battlefields I spoke, as I have told, to
French people who have come back again. Several of
them told me that their gladness was spoiled by the
thought of the sons who would never help them in the
fields again, or come tramping into the kitchen, or work
for them in their old age.

One old woman said to me: **When peace came with
its excitement which made us a little mad with joy I
thought my son would come back. They told me he
was killed, but I believed he would come back. Now I
know he will not come back, and this work I do seems
useless."

Other w^omen spoke like that in some such words.

The men who have come back into these villages are
not altogether merry. Some of them are rather sullen.
There are quarrels between them and their women
folk. For five years they were away from home, ex-
cept for brief visits on leave, if they were lucky. During
their absence their villages were the billeting places of

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English, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, AustraHan and
American soldiers. There were flirtations, love aff'airs,
inevitable episodes between some of their women and
these foreign soldiers. Some women's tongues are
sharp, some of them have long memories for things done
by their sisters in time of war. Gossip, slander, back-
biting, happen in moments of malice. . . . The young
Frenchmen with sisters and sweethearts are not very
grateful to British soldiers and others for what they did
in the war. They are jealous, suspicious, resentful of
the friendship they established with the women of France.
It is an aspect, and a tragic aspect, of war psychology
which must not be left out of account in the reaction
which has injured the old comradeship between the
nations who fought together.

England has suffered most by that reaction. France
for a time has been suspicious of England, jealous of
her. Conscious that they lost more men in the war,
suffered most damage — frightful and irretrievable dam-
age to beautiful towns and churches and cathedrals
and countrysides — and that they bore the cruelest
shocks of war, they believe that England gained most
from the peace. They point to the widened spheres
of the British imperial rule, in Palestine and Mesopo-
tamia, the German colonies in Africa, and they think
that British policy now is inspired by mere commercial
selfishness, and that our power stands across the path
of French interests and bars the way of France to those
fruits of victory still unharvested from the beaten
enemy.

In May of 192 1, not a fortnight after the German ac-
ceptance of the Bill of Costs, there arose an international
crisis which put a more severe strain upon the friendly
relations between France and England. It had been

2q8

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

agreed by the Supreme Council that the question as to
the separation of Upper Silesia with its rnixed population
of Germans and Poles should be put to a plebiscite
determining whether the whole, or part of it, should re-
main within the German Reich or go to Poland. The
result of this plebiscite, superintended by an Allied
commission under the protection of French and Italian
troops, and a body of British officers, was by six to
four in favor of Germany, though it was still within
the right of the Supreme Council to decide the exact
boundary line between Germany and Poland. With-
out waiting for that decision, Korfanty, a Polish leader,
played the part of D'Annunzio in Fiume, aroused the
fervor of the Polish masses, and incited them to occupy
German districts. The French stood by without oppos-
ing their advance. The Italians resisted, and lost a
number of men before they retreated under overwhelm-
ing numbers of Polish insurgents. British officers of
the Allied mission, there to uphold international jus-
tice, in fairness to Germany as to Poland, found them-
selves in a powerless and humiliating position, surrounded
by rebels against their authority whose officers they were
compelled to salute.

When this news reached England, Lloyd George
waited a little while and then gave tongue. He spoke
raspingly, with something like violence, and the words
had an ugly sound in the ears of France. In his first
statement he did not mention France by more than a
passing reference, but inveighed against Poland, the
ally and foster-child of France, with very bitter words.
The hardest thing he said was that her part in the war
had been divided between those who fought by the side
of Russia and broke when Russia broke, and those who
fought to the end on the side of Germany against
French and British troops. She owed her nationality
to the Allies, and it was her duty to respect the Treaty

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

of Versailles which had created her as a nation. He
made it plain that he would not tolerate this invasion
of Silesia, and suggested that German troops might be
given the authority to repel it.

A storm of protest and hostile comment arose the
next morning in the French Press. Lloyd George was
warned that his words were ''dangerous," that France
would not tolerate such insults to her ally, and that
they revealed something like a pro-German spirit.
Aristide Briand, the Prime Minister, accepted the fact
that the Treaty of Versailles must be respected in
Silesia as elsewhere, but warned Germany that any
military adventure against the PoUsh insurgents would
be regarded as an act of war by France. A few days
passed, and it seemed as though the French Press had
received orders to pour oil on the troubled waters.
They made certain half-hearted apologies for the heat
of their language and said that Mr. Lloyd George's
statement had been inaccurately reported. There had
been a "misunderstanding." But Lloyd George was
resolved that there should be no misunderstanding of
his views. On the evening of May 17th he issued another
statement, more vigorous than the first, more provoc-
ative of French sentiment, not unjustified but challeng-
ing. To their Press he addressed severe and warning
words: "In all respect, I would say to the French Press
that their habit of treating every expression of Allied
opinion which does not coincide with their own as im-
pertinence, is fraught with mischief. That attitude
of mind, if persisted in, will be fatal to any entente."
In addition he used certain words which seemed to have
a sinister meaning, suggestive of a new grouping of
Powers in which France might be isolated from the
friendship of Great Britain.

"The course of the world in coming years cannot be
forecast. The mists ahead are more than usually

210

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE

dense. Much will depend on the Allies holding together.
Apart from the treaty obligations, events which can-
not be foreseen must determine the future groupings
of nations y and the future of the worlds especially of Europe y
will he determined by old or new friendships. "

That last sentence, if it had any meaning, and it was
not uttered lightly, could have only one meaning, and
that the warning that the Anglo-French entente might
be broken in favor of an Anglo-German entente. As
such it was taken by the French people, and it came to
them as a blow in the face. In every newspaper in
France this statement by the Prime Minister of England,
following his first speech about Silesia, was regarded
as an unfriendly, offensive, and brutal utterance, which
they refused to accept as representative of the views of
the English people.

They were right in refusing to accept that. In spite
of the annoyance of many of our people at the long
series of rather bitter articles appearing in French
newspapers, the thought that our friendship with France
should actually be endangered — broken — came as a
sharp shock. The thought was abominable, for if
that were to happen, if in the future groupings of nations
we should find ourselves allied to the enemies of France
and not with them, then indeed the whole of the Great
War had been but a grisly massacre without any spiritual
purpose at all, and the six hundred thousand British
dead in the fields of France had been slain for the devil's
jest in a game of mockery.

We must have differences with France. Our general
attitude toward the foundations of peace in Europe
was not the same as hers, because her peril was greater,
her sense of unforgivable injury more poignant, her
future more uncertain, her desire to keep Germany
weak and poor a desperate and all-consuming passion,
because of hideous memories and ever-present fears.

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

But though we might afford to be more generous to a
beaten enemy, and look forw2trd to a peace based upon
concihation rather than upon the mihtary supremacy
of a new balance of powder, there could be no honest
question of abandoning France for any new allegiance.
It would be the deepest, blackest dishonor, the viola-
tion of all the tragic sacrifice and the most heroic memo-
ries of that war which we have fought together. I
remember at the beginning of the war the shouts of
*'Vive les Anglais!" when the first of our boys came
marching through French villages; the tears of the men
and women w^io thrust fruit and flowers into their
hands; the cry of "Camarades!" ... I remember our
troops in the villages behind the lines year after year,
where every Tommy had friends who kissed him when
he went off to battle and cried when news came of his
death. ... I remember the entry into Lille, toward
the end of it all, when the liberated people hailed us and
wept with joy at the sight of us. Was all that to be
wiped out, forgotten, and disgraced by the quarrels of
politicians and a drifting apart.? Never; for while there
are men alive in England who fought in France, they
will remember the heroic spirit of those people, their
long, patient suffering, their gayety even in the ditches
of tragedy, their valor of soul. And in France they
remember our men, the "Tommies" they admired, the
graves they tend still with flowers kept fresh.

To me, now and always, though I see the hope of the
future with a vision impossible to many Frenchmen, the
name of France is like an old song, and I love her people,
her history, her beauty, with something like passion.
I am not alone in that, and there are between France
and England sacred ties which can only be broken if
honor is broken, and faith is defiled, and a spiritual
union in desperate sacrifice utterly forgotten.

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

TN many subtle ways, not apparent on the surface
*■ of things, the social spirit of England has been more
changed in the last six years of history than in the six
centuries preceding them. Such a statement may
seem fantastic in exaggeration for the sake of an easy
and arresting phrase, yet it is exactly true of certain
characteristics of English life and habit, for the war
was a convulsion which shook England to the core and
broke up many of its old instincts and traditions of
social faith.

In spite of the modern developments of democ-
racy and industry, the progress of education, and
the growth of cities, England remained, until the
World War, amazingly feudal in its structure and
insular in its habits of thought. The old landed
aristocracy maintained in the countryside the power
and allegiance which they had possessed for hundreds
of years, and the small farmers and tenantry, fast
rooted to their soil, had no sense of change and no desire
for change.

In counties like Somerset and Devon, Warwick and
Gloucester, Norfolk and Suffolk, the peasant laborer
was, in his ways of speech and thought, but little differ-
ent from his forefathers of Tudor and Plantagenet
times, spoke almost the language of Chaucer, so that
to the London man, modernized, quick witted, the

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

"yokel'* of the south, west, and north was incompre-
hensible in his dialect and primitive in his outlook
and understanding. The landed gentry, in old country
mansions, changed the cut of their clothes, danced the
fox-trot, adopted the latest social fashion, but instinc-
tively, in the very fiber of their bodies, in allegiance to
a tradition of life and to a certain plot of land which
was theirs, were intensely insular.

I remember a 3^ear or two before the war a startling
instance of the conservatism of English life beyond the
cities. It was when the craze for "pageants" had
caught hold of English imagination, so that in many
old towns the people dressed themselves in the costumes
of the past, reread the history of their forefathers, and
acted the drama of the centuries from Saxon times to
their own present. In Norfolk there was such a pag-
eant, and one scene of it was to represent a chapter
of history when, five hundred years ago, the gentlemen
of Norfolk, with their squires, came to pay homage to
Mary Tudor, their princess. Five centuries had passed,
but every actor in the scene bore the same name, lived
on the same soil, held the same place, as those ancestors
of his who had knelt before the Tudor princess.

In a thousand ways like this England held to the
past. The people were insular, and the sea which divided
them from the Continent was a great water of defense
against the spirit of change, except in outward, super-
ficial things.

Then the war came and changed much in the spirit
of English people. ... At first it seemed as though
it would be like other wars of England — a foreign
expedition of a little professional army, and of young
lads eager to see "foreign parts" by taking the king's
shilling. They would fight gallantly, many would be
killed, there would be exciting reading in the news-
prints, and then the bells would ring for victory, the

214

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

lads would come marching back, and English life would
go on again, hardly touched or altered. Even at Water-
loo there had been only twenty-five thousand English
soldiers. To the mass of English folk the Napoleonic
wars had been a remote and distant thing, not affect-
ing their own lives much. When the great World War
broke out the British troops who were sent, according
to the pledge with France, were called the "Expedi-
tionary Force," as in the old days. But presently the
Regular Army was spent, and presently all the youth
of the nation was sent out, the younger brothers follow-
ing the elder brothers, the married following the single
men, fathers of families conscripted like the boys at
school. England was all in — all her men, all her women,
and no escape for any of them in the service of death.
No living body in England was exempt from the menace
of destruction. Death came out of the skies and
chose old men and women, nursing mothers, babies,
anyone. The enemy attacked them in little homes in
back streets, in big factory centers, in the heart of
London. ... So England was no longer safe in her
island. An island people, uninvaded for a thousand
years, with utter reliance on her fleet as an invincible
shield, were suddenly shocked into the knowledge that
the sea about them was no longer an impassable gult
between them and all foreign foes. It was a shock
which broke up the old psychology. We have not
recovered from it yet, nor ever shall do.

English youths went out to the death fields, hundred
thousand after hundred thousand, until four million
men had gone that way. From first to last on all fronts,
the men of the English counties — not Irish nor Scots,
nor Welsh nor Canadian nor Australian — made up
sixty-four per cent of the British fighting forces. They
were English soldiers who fought most, and endured
most, and died most, because there were most of them,

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

though the world heard least of them, because the
Enghsh people don't talk most about themselves. Out
of every four men who went out to the World War one
did not come back again, and of those who came back
many are maimed and blind and some are mad. England
and the spirit and mind of England were altered by so
great an ordeal which had come to every home and
heart.

In many ways the alteration was plainly visible
during the war, especially to fighting men who came
home from the dirty ditches on three days' leave, or
seven. The home-staying people — the old and middle-
aged, the workers in the factories providing the material
and munitions of war, the government officials, clerks,
and employers of labor, even the young girls — were
possessed by a new energy, a more vital spirit, a restless
and energetic excitement. They were all "out to win."
They were all, in big ways or little, dynamic in their
activities. Caste was for a time in abeyance, though
not abolished. (That in England, where we are all
snobs, from the plumber's mate and the greengrocer's
wife to the Eton boy and the dowager duchess, would
be expecting too much, too quickly.) University pro-
fessors were acting as field laborers. Patrician women
were making munitions with factory girls. A great,
strong, spiritual wind seemed to have swept through all
classes of English life. It had cleansed even the slums
of great English cities which had seemed past cleansing.

Before the war, an immense population in England
crowded into the cities, had lived below the poverty
line or on the thin edge of it — miserably, precariously,
dirtily. There was a mass of floating, casual labor,
often out of work, huddled in the hovels of back streets,

2x6

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

in filthy conditions. Their children were ragged,
barefooted, underfed. Now those conditions had been
altered by the war. The demand for labor was so
great that every able-bodied man could get a good
wage. The government and the employers paid great
wages for skilled work. Mechanics who had found
trouble in getting forty or fifty shillings a week now
gained two hundred or three hundred shillings a week.
Any girl with her hair hanging down her back or tied
into a pigtail could get a wage that her father would
have envied before the war. Munition girls were getting
three or four pounds a week, some of them far more than
that. Small families, all working, paid by government
money, raked in an incredible weekly revenue. For
the first time they had a broad margin of money for
the fun of life as well as for its sharp necessities.

I remember being home on leave once during the war
and walking in the park of a poor district of London on
a bank holiday — when the poor people used to come out
of their slums in their rags to enjoy a little liberty.
This time there were no rags, but well-dressed children,
girls overdressed in the imitation of fashionable ladies,
a strange new look of prosperity and well-being. At
that time the workers in factory towns had more money
than they knew how to use, and bought absurd little
luxuries, and grabbed at the amusements of life without
thought of the morrow. There were pianos in the homes
of coal heavers, and the wives of laborers wore fur
coats — in summer as well as in winter.

The fighting man, back from the trenches, where
he risked death every day and every minute of every
day for one shilling and twopence, was startled by the
money made by the luckier men who worked for war
at home. He saw injustice there, inequality of service
and reward, and sometimes was bitter and blasphemous
on the subject. But on the whole, the soldier did not
15 217

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

begrudge the money earned by the home workers. They
were his folks. He was glad of their luck, though he
did not share it. He believed that when he came home —
ij he came home! — he, too, would get high wages for
any job he might get. His wrath and the wrath of
the home workers (in spite of their own prosperity)
were reserved for the manufacturers and financiers who
were making enormous profits out of government con-
tracts— vast profits out of the massacre.

"The profiteers," as they were called, sometimes
fairly and sometimes unfairly, became the worst hated
class in England as in other countries, by the masses of
working people, and by the old gentry who gave their
youth to war, according to old traditions and the law
of their caste, without any reward but that of pride
and honor. The old aristocracy saw themselves
doomed by the uprising of the New Rich. The small
landowner, the country squire, the nobleman of the old
order, aloof from trade and manufactures, gave their
wealth to the service of the state, as they gave their
sons, and upon them fell, year by year, a heavier bur-
den of taxation. Before the end of the war, and after
the end of it, many of them sold their estates, which
had been in their families for hundreds of years, sold
also their family treasures. The New Rich took pos-
session of many old mansions, bought the family heir-
looms of the old regime, renovated and vulgarized old
historic places. I know one family of the ancient order
whose history in the war is typical of others. There
were four sons, and all of them were in the army or the
navy, and two of them were killed. The daughters
became nurses and devoted themselves to the wounded
during all the years of war. The mother died by the
strain of war. Increasing taxation bore down heavily
upon an already impoverished estate. The father, a
peer whose name belongs to the great memories of Eng-

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THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

land, sold the pictures of his ancestors to an American
millionaire, then the treasures and relics of his house.
It is now an empty shell, and the eldest son, back from
the war, farms a little plot of land on the edge of the
old park which belonged to the family since the first
Charles was king.

Ill

A social revolution has been accomplished in England
by this turn in the wheel of fortune. The New Poor —
once the old gentry — are scraping along fairly well, as
they must confess, on the remnants of former wealth;
the New Rich possess many of their places, and so far
have not learned those traditions of kindness, of gener-
osity, and of noble manners which made the old gentry
pleasant people, whatever faults they had. In a way
previously unknown to a great extent in England,
small traders, little manufacturers, business adven-
turers, without capital or power, seized the chance of
war, the needs of a government reckless of all cost
provided the supplies of war came in, and made rapid
progress to great prosperity. Their profits mounted
higher and higher, and, though the government imposed
upon them an excess-profits duty, most of them dodged
it, in one way or another.

From this class there has risen up a new "smart set"
whose appearance and ways are surprising to those who
knew England before the war and came back with
observant eyes. They have invaded the places which
used to be sanctuaries of the old aristocracy — Prince's
restaurant, the Hyde Park Hotel, the royal inclosure
at Ascot, the lawns of Ranelagh and Hurlingham, the
river gardens of Henley. They dress loudly and talk
loudly, in a nasal way. The young men are singularly
lacking in good manners. They sprawl in the presence
of their women folk. Their idea of gallantry is horse-

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play with pretty girls. They pufF cigarette smoke
into the faces of their dancing partners, and play the
giddy goat in public places. It is they who crowd into
public dancing rooms with girls expensively dressed but
not expensively educated. Hour after hour they gyrate
with the grotesque movements of the modern dance,
cheek to cheek with their little ladies, yet singularly
indifferent, it seems, to amorous dalliance. It is a ritual
which they perform earnestly as part of their new duties
in life, but as far as I have observed them, they do not
get any real pleasure out of the exercise or out of the
company of the girls. They pass from one partner to
another as they would change omnibuses on the way
to the City. The girls themselves, in this particular
set, are a curious compound of feminine artificiality
and tomboy simplicity. They paint their lips, wear
hideous little frocks and openwork stockings, but they
will drive a motor car through the thickest traffic
without turning a hair, and box a boy's ears if his
"cheek" gets too much on their nerves. They are
self-possessed, bad-mannered, vulgar young people, su-
premely indifferent to public opinion, pleased to shock
the sensibilities of old-fashioned folk, yet not outrage-
ous in the larger moralities. Generally, I think, they
are able to look after themselves with perfect propriety,
though they take risks which would horrify the ghosts
of their grandmothers, and behave with a loose frivolity
which would arouse the suspicions of the most charita-
ble. Those young people are the children of those who
did well out of the war. They have not yet acquired
the refinements of wealth, though they have lost the
simplicity of the class to which their parents belonged.
Their faces, their voices, their manners betray a lowly
origin, for heredity still has something to say, and they
have not found a real place in English life, though they
make so much noise and take up so much room.

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THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

It was the middle-class man or woman that was hard-
est hit by taxation before the ending of the war, and by
the prices of life's necessities rising higher and higher
every month. The laboring classes kept mostly
beyond the pace of these rising prices by rising wages.
Well organized and fully aware of their new importance
as the workers for victory, they saw to it that their
wages should always be on the upgrade and beyond
the tide of living costs. If this did not happen, they
went on strike, and the government yielded — every
time. The government paid every kind of wage for
work, though secretly it knew that there would be a
fearful reckoning when victory was assured, if it might
be assured, v/hich was not always certain. But there
were many people between the devil and the deep sea
— between profiteers and organized labor. They were
unorganized. They were living on the interest of small
capital. They were dependent on fixed salaries or
professional fees which could not be increased. Their
rents were raised. The income-tax assessor had no
mercy on them. The cost of living frightened them.
They v/ere reduced to a state of stinting and scraping,
underfeeding, clinging to shabby clothes. They, more
than any, belonged to the New Poor. . . . Then at
last the war ended, and masses of men came back from
the battlefields, leaving an Army of Ghosts behind them
— their dead comrades. Then all things changed under
the surface of English life.

The men who came back were not the same men as
those who had gone away. They had been utterly
changed. They had gone out from villages in England
where their life had been very narrow, very limited in
ideas and speech. Many of the boys in those villages

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were as simple and unthinking as the peasants of the
Middle Ages. From the city slums they had gone
out in the big battalions, and the under-sized, under-
fed, ill-aired lads of that city had been broadened and
strengthened, well fed, well aired in an outdoor life
that was healthy and fine when it was not deadly and
dreadful. They had taken frightful risks as a daily
habit, until the thought of death was not much to them.
They had mixed and talked with men of many minds.
They had thought strange thoughts in the silence of
night watches with the instant menace of death about
them. Some of them were broken in nerve. Some of
them were brutalized and demoralized by this life of
war. Many of them were bitter and resentful of the
things they had had to do and suffer and see. All of
them hated war. Most of them had come to think
that not only the Germans were guilty of that war,
though most guilty, but that something was wrong with
civilization itself, with the governments of nations,
with the old men who had sent the young men to the
trenches because this massacre had been arranged
or allowed.

They were eager to get back home, and thousands
were kept rotting in mind and body in many far places
— as far as Mesopotamia — months after peace. When
they came home they were not eager at first to get to
work. They had earned, they thought, a hoHday, a
long rest. They had served England. England could
keep them for a bit. So for many months they idled,
played around, restlessly, never quite satisfied, not
fitting easily again into civil Hfe and home life — and
the government still kept them on unemployed doles,
piling up the national debt, printing more paper money,
which was nothing but a promissory note on future
industry. Prices did not fall; they rose higher. The
profiteers, big and small, capitalist and shopkeeper,

222

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

still demanded the same margin of profit on goods made
and sold. The ex-soldier v/as exasperated by these
prices. His government dole was not large enough to
give him much of a margin for the fun of life. Presently
he began to demand work. The mass of skilled hands
found it easily enough, on the whole, and at war wages.
But there was a great mass of unskilled labor which
could not get work. It was very skilled labor in the
art and craft of war. It was made up of expert machine
gunners, experienced airmen, riflemen, bombers, trench-
mortar experts, fellows who could use a bayonet dex-
terously. But it was utterly unskilled in the arts and
crafts of peace. These men had been boys when they
were recruits. They had gone out to war straight from
school. They had skipped apprenticeship to any trade.
They had not even learned typewriting or clerical work.
When they asked for jobs the trade-unions said:

"Where is your apprenticeship ticket?"

"I was in the army," said the unemployed man.
''*I was fighting for England and the whole damn crowd
of stay-at-homes."

"Sorry," said the trade-union foreman. "You were
little heroes, no doubt, and we're much obliged to you,
but we don't dilute skilled labor with unskilled trash.
It's against trade-union rules."

It was also, it seemed, against the principles of many
employers of labor in the great cities, the managers
of city offices. Young gentlemen who had been officers
in the infantry or the aircraft, in the tanks or machine-
gun corps, called upon them in search of clerkships.
These were the loyal gentlemen who, while the young
men were fighting and dying, said, "We will fight to
the last man — to the bitter end." But now that the
end had come, with victory, some of them looked
doubtfully at the ex-officer boys who had had the luck
to come back, and uttered disconcerting words.

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"You are hardly fitted for work in this oifice. You
have been wasting your time in the army. Probably
you have acquired habits which would not make you
useful in this business. On the whole, we prefer boys
just out of school or just down from the university."

So young ex-officers after various experiences of this
kind went away using language they had learned in
Flanders — strong, unprintable language — with great
bitterness in their hearts.

On Christmas Eve last in London, while the streets
were filled with people doing their shopping, some of
these ex-officers — heroes of the war — stood on the
sidewalks, turning the handles of piano-organs, appeal-
ing to the charity of passers-by. Probably they were
the worst and not the best of the unemployed officers,
the scallywags, but it was not good to see them. The
sight of them there sickened some of us who had been
with them in the war. I know a lieutenant colonel
who was reduced to hawking about a book from house
to house. By an irony of fate it was a History of the
Great War, in which he had played an honorable part.
On the sales of the book he was to get a small commission,
but at the end of his first week's work, when he had
agonized with shyness and shame, afraid to ask for the
"lady of the house" lest she should be one with whom
he had taken tea in better days, he was fourpence down
on his expenses. There are many men like that — some
are friends of mine — who have never been able to get a
decent job since the armistice. Civil life had no place
for them, in spite of Lord Haig's constant appeals
to the nation on their behalf. The men had a better
chance than their officers, and until recent days the
majority did get assimilated into the ranks of labor,
although a minority remained unemployed, and, in
some cases, owing to nervous debility after the shock
of war, unemployable.

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THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

The government was not unmindful of these men.
Every unemployed soldier received, and still receives,
a weekly allowance, now reduced to one pound, and this
helps a single man to scrape along without starvation,
but no more than that, and without any sense of good
reward. The man who doesn't like work makes it do.
The man who wants to work and can't receives this
dole without gratitude — with a curse in his heart at a
nation's ingratitude.

Among his rivals, keeping him out of work, were the
girls of England. During the years when manhood
was away in masses the girls came out of their homes,
took the places of men in many kinds of work — rough
work as well as soft work — and did wonderfully well.
They were happy in that work, earning good wages
which enabled them to buy pretty frocks, to amuse
themselves in holiday hours, to be magnificently inde-
pendent of the stuffy little homes in which they had
been like caged birds. English girlhood found its
wmgs in the war, and flew away from the old traditions
of inclosure to a larger liberty.

That has been an immense social change. Apart
from the peculiarities of the New Rich which I have
mentioned, it has changed the manners and spirit of
English life, and these clear-eyed girls of war-time
England, now grown to womanhood, have nothing in
common w4th the prim and timid ways of their mammas
and grandmammas, but face life without shyness of
fear — confident, frank, adventurous, out for fun at any
price — ^which is sometimes too high and horrible.

Since the war a new generation of youth — boys as
v/ell as girls — has grown up. The younger brothers
are filling the places of the elder brothers who were in
the fighting fields and did not come back. It is a new
kind of youth in England, belonging to a new life strange
to VIS older men. It is not touched by the shadow of

22§

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

war. It has got clear away from that. It refuses to
be gloomy with present conditions; it is impatient of
the tragedy that hangs over older minds. It is very
daring in its desire to cut clean away from old traditions
of thought and manner. It is joyous, reckless, amazingly
thoughtless of trouble ahead. It joins the dance of
life, eager to crowd a lot into the passing hour. The
lessons and the memories of war do not seem to sober
it or touch it with any gravity.

It seems to superficial observers, even sometimes to
men hke myself, whose job it is to observe below the
surface, that the English people have forgotten too
quickly the things that happened — the men who died,
the men who live in blindness, in madness, in hospitals
for cripples and shell-shock cases. Many times I have
been saddened by this thought of quick forgetfulness
and have been startled by the apparent callousness of
my own country after the blood sacrifice of its youth.

England is not callous. A great proof of piety and
remembrance and pride was given on the last anniver-
sary of armistice, when the body of an unknown soldier
was brought down Whitehall, past the Cenotaph, on
the way to a grave in the Abbey. The King and his
generals waited there to salute this body of a man
whom no one knew except as one of those who had fallen
in the defense of England, whom no one knew, yet
was known in the hearts of all of us. In the night
women came out into the streets of London to wait for
the dawn, to be ready for the man who was their man
— husband or lover or brother or son. Not thousands of
women, but hundreds of thousands. Men, too, mostly
ex-soldiers, came to welcome back a pal who had died
out there in that great comradeship of death. To each

sa6

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

woman the unknown soldier was her man; to each
soldier his pal. There were few tears in the crowd
when the coffin came, with an old tin hat and gas mask
on the flag which draped it. No tears, but a wonderful
silence and the spirit of remembrance. And when
the coffin passed, led by the King and his generals,
there was an endless line of folk passing by the Ceno-
taph to lay little bunches of flowers on the pedestal of
that empty shrine. All through the da^^s and nights
for a week of days and nights, never stopping, never
speaking, a living tide flowed by, paying the homage
of their souls to the dead, and for more than a week
of days and nights they passed into the Abbey, to
walk by the grave of the unknown soldier who was theirs.
The soul of England remembers.

But her people hide their wounds, and foreigners
who go to England are startled to find so little trace
of war's scars. They see the streets thronged by cheer-
ful people, well dressed, well fed, prosperous looking.
"England has recovered marvelously," they say. '*She
has returned to normal. She is the same old England. "

That is untrue. There will never be the same old
England again. It is a new and diff'erent England. Not
yet has the country recovered from the drains of war,
nor paid the price of victory.

For a long time England was the great, rich, strong
country of the Allies. In the early years of war English
gold, all the savings of centuries, was the Fortunatus's
purse of other fighting nations. We supplied France,
Italy, Russia, Greece with money and materials of
war. They borrowed and borrowed from us. Then
our wealth was exhausted and it was our turn to borrow,
from a nation richer than we had been. At the present

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

time we owe one thousand millions of pounds sterling
to the American people, and I suppose one day we shall
pay our debt, unless there is a general understanding
to wipe out the Allied debts all round. Meanwhile
the wealth of England is no more than the promise of
the future as it may be fulfilled by the industry of the
people. All the money — the paper, anyway — issued
by the government is a promissory note on the future.
Deeper and deeper the government is pledging the
future in order to make present payments. The cost
of carrying on the country is ten times more than it
was before the war, owing to the increased cost of every-
thing that is essential to the life and safety of the nation
or to the ambitions and purposes of Enghsh leaders.
After "the war to end war" the army and navy cost
two hundred and seventy millions of pounds a year, which
is much more than twice as much as the prewar annual
budget for all the purposes of national life and progress.
On our military and administrative adventure in Meso-
potamia the government spent forty millions of pounds a
year, until the pressure of public opinion forced it to
curtail this cost, which served no other purpose than to
"boost" up the oil sharks.

The interest on our national debt is each year three
hundred and forty-five miUions of pounds, nearly three
times as much as the prewar annual budget. To obtain
this revenue the Enghsh folk are taxed beyond their
patience and endurance. There is no mercy in this
taxation. Capital is squeezed of all its profits now,
and the profiteer is outraged by this capture of his
wealth. But all employers and manufacturers are
hit hard — bludgeoned — by the tax collectors. One
man I know, a big coal owner and employer of labor,
has to pay twelve shillings and sixpence out of every
twenty shillings of his revenue. The middle-class
man of small fortune pays twenty-five per cent of his

228

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

income in taxation. At the beginning of 1921, when
economic reaUties were faced for the first time, money
was so "tight" in England that the banks refused
further loans to commercial and industrial companies,
and many manufacturers found it impossible to "carry
on." They were in a tragic dilemma. The markets
of central Europe, Russia, and Asia had collapsed.
Those were unable to buy either manufactured goods
or raw material on any scale suJEficient to sustain the
old prosperity of Enghsh factories. At the same time
labor in England refused to lower its scale of wages
to anything like the prewar level, or, indeed, at all,
the consequence being that the cost of production re-
mained too high for competition in any foreign markets,
and the retail prices in England were not falling, and
could not fall, to their old level. Capital itself was nervous
of "cutting its losses" by wholesale reductions in prices,
and decided to challenge the whole position of labor
by declaring a lockout, closing down factories, and
biding its time until the rising tide of unemployment —
a tidal wave — brought the workingmen to their senses.
Unless they reduced their wage claims England would
soon be threatened with bankruptcy.

VII

The first round in the great struggle was fought out
with the coal miners. They had for a long time been a
privileged class of labor, earning high wages during
the war, yet never satisfied, even at the time of their
prosperity, owing to certain inequalities of conditions
and rewards in the various coal fields. Influenced by
local leaders, many of them men of fine character and
brain power, and by agitators of a low, revolutionary,
tub-thumping kind, they were deeply suspicious of the
owners, whose profits seemed to them out of all propor-

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tion with that of labor. They could see no reason
why men like the Duke of Northumberland or women
hke Viscountess Rhondda, by a mere accident of birth
which put them in one cradle rather than another,
should get royalties on all the mineral beneath their
inherited land, without doing a hand's turn of work to
improve the machinery or management of the mines.
For some time the idea of nationalization appealed to
them as the Magna Charta of the mine industry. If all
mines were worked by the government, their inequalities
of service and reward could be adjusted, and a greater
common wage could be secured for the workers. This
question was forced to the front after repeated strikes,
especially in South Wales, the storm center, and at
last the government under Lloyd George appointed a
commission to inquire into the whole problem of the
coal industry, with a pledge that they would not refuse
the report of the majority on the commission under
the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Sankey. After many
sittings of a dramatic character in which ducal coal
owners and others were subjected to keen cross-exami-
nation by the miners' representatives, and made but
a poor showing, as most people admitted, in defense of
their hereditary privileges and their amazing ignorance
of their own source of wealth, the Sankey report was
issued and was in favor of nationalization. The min-
ers naturally demanded the fulfillment of the govern-
ment pledges to act upon its findings, and when a year
passed and it became plain that the government had
no intention whatever of doing so, the word ''betrayal"
was used from Cardiff to Newcastle by millions of men.
From that time their confidence in the government was
destroyed. They had "no use" for Lloyd George, who
once had been their hero. In 1920, when the export of
coal to foreign countries was still a source of great profit,
owing to exorbitant rates charged to foreign countries,

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THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

the miners tried their strength by striking for a bigger
share of those profits. To win the favor of pubHc
opinion, they also demanded that fourteen shilhngs and
sixpence a ton should be taken off the price to home
consumers. They were beaten on both issues, and
surrendered temporarily, not without anger and smol-
dering discontent.

Then in the spring of 192 1 the government flung a
bombshell into the coal industry by an abrupt abandon-
ment of "control." Throughout the war and for two
and a half years afterward the government had
"controlled" the industry by an arrangement with
the owners by which they received a certain share of
profit in return for subsidizing the cost of production
in order to maintain the men's wages at the level agreed
upon from time to time. It had been officially an-
nounced that the government control would continue
until August, but without warning the date was altered
to March. Again the miners used the word "betrayal,"
and even some of the mine owners protested against
the alteration. What had happened to alter the gov-
ernment plans was a sudden icy blast of fear on the sub-
ject of national finance. Expert advisers warned the
Cabinet that if their policy of expenditure, at home and
abroad, were continued much longer, the bottom would
fall out of the Treasury. The millions of pounds spent
on pensions, doles, and subsidies, to say nothing of
imperial expenditure, could not be balanced by income
from the national industry, which was showing signs of
rapid declirle. The burden of taxation on capital was
crippling all enterprise and development. Employers
of labor were shutting down their works on all sides,
and our export trade suddenly "slumped" to an alarm-
ing degree. Coal exports above all dropped with a rush
for lack of orders. France, Italy, and other countries
which had been forced to pay our high prices in their

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desperate need of fuel after the war, could now do
without ours. The German deliveries were beyond
the capacity of France to use in her own factories.
The surplus she sold to Italy and others. American
coal was coming cheaper to the Continent, across the
Atlantic, than we could sell it from South Wales. The
cost of production in our coal fields, owing to the high
standard of wages and low standard of output, was no
longer possible in respect of these new conditions. It
was then that the government abandoned control and
handed back the mines to the owners, with the sugges-
tion that they must make the best of a bad business.
Between mine owners, managers, and Cabinet Ministers
there were a few whispered words, a slight deflection of
eyelids, a nod of assent. "The men must be brought
to heel. A drastic cut in wages! Of course they'll
fight, but now is the time, and it's got to be done."
It was done in the worst possible way and led to the
gravest risk. It was the risk of civil war.

It is hardly to be denied by honest thinkers with
some knowledge of human passion that England was
very near to revolution in the critical days of the coal
crisis in the spring of 1921. Only a few hours and a
few men were between the challenge and the conflict.
If ten o'clock had struck on Friday night, the 15th of
April, without a repeal of the notices to the railway and
transport men, there would have been, certainly, a
class warfare leading to bloodshed and civil disorder of
the wildest kind.

That was not in any way because the miners and
their allies desired revolution. But when certain forces
are set in motion certain results are bound to happen,
according to all laws of human experience, and those
forces were assembling on two sides, directly hostile,
ready for action. On the one side were millions of

men believing honestly that there was a powerful con-

232

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

spiracy against them on the part of the employers of
labor and the government to force them to the accept-
ance of wages below the level of decent livelihood and
to smash the power of their labor organization by which
they had obtained protection and a decent wage rate
after centuries of struggle. On the other side was the
government supported by the aristocracy and mid-
dle class (from whom they were recruiting a powerful
Defense Force) believing with equal sincerity, and more
fear, that the general strike was a revolutionary blow
at the life of the nation, and a deliberate menace to all
constitutional authority which must be defended by
all available force. If that is not setting the hsts for
an ordeal by battle between two great classes then
history is a mockery of fact.

It is not difficult to tell what would have happened.
I have seen strikes in England before, and in other
countries, localized and trivial in comparison with this
one menaced, which give me a fair idea of the larger
scale. The members of all the trades in the Triple
AUiance would have been divided. Many of the rail-
way men and transport workers would have refused
to obey the strike orders. It was for that reason that
J. H. Thomas withdrew them. But this division among
the men themselves would have led inevitably to passion
and violence with the cry of "Scabs" and "Blacklegs."
The government, with crowds of volunteers from the
middle class and the ranks of the nonstrikers, would
have carried out an effective service for the elementary
necessities of national life — not more than that. This
success would have still further embittered milHons
of men, standing idle, loafing about goods yards and
station entrances, congregating in mobs around fire-
eating orators, among whom would have been the
revolutionar}^ fanatics, the communists ready for social
destruction at all costs, and the usual minority of young

16 233

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thieves and blackguards scenting loot, with itching
fingers for other folks' property. Presently there
would have been restlessness among the out-of-works,
sullen boredom, then hunger. There would have been
darkness in the great cities, the wailing of ill-fed children
in workless homes, the excitement of women, the sense
of fear, which is the father of cruelty. A riot, an order
to fire, a young officer losing his head, new recruits
shooting into unarmed mobs — ^what could prevent
that sequence of events in many places often repeated .?
Then the fury of mobs denouncing "bloody tyranny,"
"the butchery of the people," and shouting for venge-
ance. Among the Defense Force, the "White Guards,"
as they were already called derisively by the communist
group — there were great numbers of miners, thousands
of laborers glad to get "back to the army again"
because they had been out of a job, but not keen to
kill their own class, . . . One's imagination need go on
no farther. It might have completed the ruin of old
England, of all Great Britain, and brought the Empire
down.

Now what brought England to such a possibility — ■
so near, so horribly near? The answer to this is the
same as in most conflicts which risk the use of force by
which no victory may be gained except at the price of
ruin. Sheer stupidity and a little wickedness. It is
clear that there was astonishing stupidity on both sides
and something of the other.

To take the government and the mine owners first.
They showed an immense lack ot foresight, a crass
ignorance of ordinary psychology, in allowing the situ-
ation to come to the crisis with a crash, by the abrupt
decontrol of the coal industry six months earlier than
their promise, without any system by which the decrease
in wages could be gradually adjusted to the falling of
prices in the cost of living, or any warning to the men.

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THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

' Did they think the miners would accept the new con-
, ditions, so paralyzing to their standard of hving during
the period of subsidized prosperity, without a desperate
struggle which would inevitably cost the nation more
than a transitional period of financial aid? The cost
of the Defense Force was nearly a million pounds a
I week, out of the pockets of the taxpayers. The loss
in coal output and trade was many millions a week- —
far more than a decreasing scale of assistance which
would tide over the time of "slump," while wages
were being readjusted gradually.

And the mine owners — did they believe when they
issued the lockout notices and flung the new scale of
wages at the miners, with a "take it" or "leave it,"
that those men would say: "How good and kind you are,
dear gentlemen! Of course we will work for wages
which will reduce a million of us to the old standards of
sweated industries, because we love our country so
much!" The mine owners knew perfectly well that the
men would reject this new scale utterly. They knew,
and they have afterward admitted, under pressure,
that the proposed wage "cuts" were excessively severe,
unreasonable, and unacceptable, to such an extent
that afterward they were forced to revise them sub-
stantially in favor of the poorer classes of mine labor.
Why this admission after the conflict had begun?
Why not have put reasonable, instead of unreasonable,
proposals before the miners and the public, some months
before the lockout notices were posted, so that all
would have had full warning and time for discussion,
negotiation, and compromise while the pits were still
working ? It is the curse of our national life that these
industrial troubles are conducted on lines of warfare
between capital and labor — secret mobifizing, a sud-
den ultimatum, wild and whirling appeals to preju-
dice by the propaganda departments, then clearing

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for action. In this crisis the mine owners risked the
whole Hfe of the nation by adopting that method of
argument, with a willful and wicked disregard of con-
sequences. Their ultimatum to the miners was as
provocative as the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia which
led to the World War. It was unacceptable by self-
respecting men, anxious for the decent living of wives
and children. It was intended to be unacceptable — and
that is the guilt of the mine owners, with the secret
connivance of the government.

The miners were equally lacking in wisdom, and, in
one particular, criminal in their folly. They were
right in rejecting terms which would have reduced at
least a million of them to wages in real value below the
line of bare necessity, wages, for instance, which in
the case of South Wales laborers would be cut by
forty-nine and a half per cent, reducing them to 38j-.
i\d. per week, reckoned in purchasing power as ijs.
at 1914 prices — a slave wage. Their insanity was in
alienating the vast majority of the nation by the threat
to wreck the mines, their own future livelihood, and the
industry of the country itself, by the withdrawal of
the safety men and violent opposition to volunteers.
It is true that the mine owners handed the lockout
notices to the pump men as to all others, thereby asking
for the trouble that came, but the miners should have
made themselves guardians of their own source of life,
according to the elementary rules of common sense and
a quality of spirit nobler than blind passion.

The Triple Alliance conducted its negotiations and
its strategy with a staggering lack of discretion, and a
recklessness of national consequence which would have
sent us all hurtling into the gulfs of ruin but for a sudden
confession of their own "bluff" on the edge of the chasm.
The leaders of the railway and transport workers knew

that they would not get the allegiance of great numbers

236

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

of their men to the call for a general strike. They knew
that such a strike would develop into a class warfare in
which their own members would be divided against
each other. ... It is to the credit of J. H. Thomas and
some others that in the end they forced the extremists
to look at the stark realities of the ruin they faced in-
stead of mouthing passionate nonsense and leading
broken battalions to disaster.

The cross-examination of the mine owners and of
Frank Hodges, the miners' young leader, in a committee
room of the House of Commons by a crowd of members,
inspired at last by the gravity of national danger to
act like respectable men instead of like a flock of sheep
under the discipline of the Welsh shepherd, was one
of the most dramatic episodes in English history, and
did something to restore the position and independence
of the private members which had been utterly lost. It
revealed facts which had been concealed by the vague
generalities of challenge and counter-challenge. It
tore out the falsity of propaganda from the case of the
mine owners, dragged admissions from them about
the injustice of the new wage proposals. From Frank
Hodges it produced the possibility of concessions from
the points ot pride and passion, and made new negotia-
tions possible, giving J. H. Thomas his chance of escape
from "direct action" and the suicide of the General
Strike.

The second breakdown of negotiations between the
miners, owners, and government produced a reaction
of public sympathy against the miners, who had won
a good deal of sympathy by the earlier presentation of
their case. The offer of a temporary subsidy of ten
millions of pounds from the government seemed a
generous departure from the rigid principle they had
laid down, and the miners' renewed insistence upon a
national pool seemed to superficial minds, especially to

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

those who have Bolshevism on the brain, the revelation
of a sinister motive, plainly political and revolutionary
instead of economic.

This accusation, made as his last word in the House of
Commons by Sir Robert Home, in his gloomy announce-
ment of the breakdown of negotiations, was repudiated
firmly by the miners' leaders, and it was clear to all
who followed the arguments of Frank Hodges with
care and understanding that his conviction was stub-
born on the point that without some kind of a national
pool, regulating district wages, there could be no chance
of equality in earnings between those who worked just
as hard in places of poorer possibilities. However much
one might disagree with the idea of "pooling," upon
general principles related to all industry, it was surely
not "political" in its argument, and it was difficult
to understand the stubborn refusal of the government
to enter even into a discussion of the plan unless they
were partisans, unconsciously or consciously, of the
mine owners.

VIII

One thing was made clear by this disastrous conflict
which in a few weeks inflicted enormous and irretriev-
able damage upon the main industries of Great Britain,
produced widespread unemployment which will not
soon be remedied, and startled the world by a revelation
of social strife in this country at a time when they
were looking for our leadership in reconstruction. It
is the urgent, desperate need of a new spirit of under-
standing and self-sacrifice among employers and em-
ployed for the sake of the nation itself which is drawing
rapidly near to economic disaster. The men must be
educated in the knowledge that British industry is so
crippled that there must be harder work and less wages,
or no work and no wages. The employers must be

238

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

led to realize that they must guarantee a decent living
wage and reduce their standards and hopes of profit
accordingly, or lose all they have in a general bank-
ruptcy. There is no other way out than self-sacrifice
all round.

But what tragedy it all has been, and Is — this ma-
neuvering for positions in a national conflict, this lack
of candor and reason on both sides, this playing with
fire, this refusal by the leaders of the nation, the news-
papers and the people, to look truth in the face, and to
understand the real causes and conditions of our present
state! We are still playing the fool with facts, concen-
trating on quack remedies for minor ailments, while
we are stricken by a disease which can only be cured by
a combined national policy based upon understanding
of larger issues, enormous courage, general sacrifice,
and spiritual magnanimity.

What is now the character and temper of British
labor? Upon that answer depends not only the
future of England, and of the British Empire, but to
a great extent the future of white civilization in Europe.
For England is still the rock upon which the European
nations largely cling for safety — a moral as well as a
material rock. If England were to go the way of
revolution, or fall into chaos and anarchy, it is my
firm conviction that there would be no hope at all for
Europe, which w^ould fall rapidly itself into decay and
despair. France cannot save herself without English
help; Italy cannot; there would be no indemnities from
Germany. Russian Bolshevism would find open gates;
the Mohammedan powers would sweep down upon
defenseless minorities; the moral structure of Europe
would collapse. All that is certain, beyond all arguments
or dispute. What, then, is the character and temper
of English labor?

It is truculent, aggressive, and, in minorities here and

239

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

there, revolutionary. The actual labor leaders, men
like Thomas, G. N. Barnes, Clynes, Lansbury, and
others, are more moderate than the rank and file be-
hind them. Thomas especially is a man of statesmanlike
views, much education and experience, who has no desire
to become a revolutionary figure or to work the machine
of labor organization by violent and shattering con-
flict. Behind the moderate leaders, however, there
is a strong pressure of younger and more reckless men
who are eager to use the power of the trade-union for
political as well as economic purposes — ^which is a new
claim as far as English labor is concerned. Several
times they have tried their strength in this way, with
doubtful results, because it is contrary to the instincts
of the great body of middle-class folk who still repre-
sent the deciding factor in English hfe. The attempt
of the coal miners to dictate the policy of the govern-
ment beyond the arbitrament of wages, to regulate
prices to the consumer, failed quickly and resulted in
surrender. But there was recently another action
on the part of organized labor which proved the poUti-
cal power of their organization when supported by the
general conviction of the country. It was when there
was a rumor, not unsupported by evidence, that the
government proposed to raise a military expedition for
the attempted overthrow of the Soviet regime in Russia,
in defense of Poland. This was more than mere popular
rumor. It was sufficiently grave to cause a leading
article in the London Times announcing that England
was as near to a new great war, calling upon all the
strength and sacrifice of the people, as in 1914. The
trade-unions set up overnight a central committee
which they called a Council of Action, and sent word
to the government that the whole power of organized
labor in England would be used to prevent any such
war. The government repUed that they had no inten-

240

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

tion of preparing a new military expedition. ... It
did not take place.

All this is undoubtedly revolutionary in its spirit. It
is a new phase of the labor movement in England,
which up to recent years was entirely limited to the
economic conditions of industrial life. It is stoked up
and inflamed by the outpost leaders of Bolshevism who
have estabhshed themselves strongly in Glasgow, Liver-
pool, and Wales. They are out for destruction. They
want to smash all the structure of English government,
all order, all law. They are in direct touch with Russian
and other foreign communists, and they do not shrink
from the thought of the same methods and the same
results as those in the Russian upheaval. Lately,
however, the communist theory has been discredited
and largely abandoned by the mass of English workers,
many of whom, for a time, were inclined to believe
that this was the new and true gospel of democratic
progress. The visits of English labor leaders to Russia,
and their unanimous condemnation of the Bolshevik
autocracy and the slave state of the Russian workers,
undeceived the majority even of the younger hotheads.
But although the philosophy of communism has been
dropped hke a sharp-edged weapon cutting the hand
that held it, there is still a vague, loose, and dangerous
current of revolutionary impulse in English labor ranks,
not less menacing because undecided in its purpose.

The successive waves of unemployment which many
of the workers believe to be deliberately engineered by
employers in order to keep down prices are intensifying
the spirit of revolt and of challenge to the present order
of things. This spirit is patronized, rather flattered,
by a number of the younger intellectuals, who play
about with the idea of revolution as children with fire,
not knowing that they will be burned up if the red
embers jump out of the grate.

241

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

It is certain that the actions of the Coahtion govern-
ment since the war have created a sense of exasperation
and distrust in the minds of the people, and at the pres-
ent time there is a wide, unbridgeable gulf between that
government and the spirit and ideals of the nation as
a whole. The capitahst as well as the workingman is
aghast at the reckless expenditure of the government
on imperial adventures, on the army and navy, and on
purposes that seem to them wasteful and sinister.
Disappointment with the effects of peace, the increasing
troubles of industry, the spread of social decay in
central Europe, the burden of armaments still pressing
heavily, and the fear of new wars have reacted against
all confidence in the men who still control the destiny
of England. They have settled nothing. They have
failed in the larger vision. They are acting in Ireland
with passion and no wisdom. They have tried to buy
off trouble in England by promises which cannot be
redeemed. This failure — almost inevitable without
great leadership, which is lacking — has produced a
seething discontent which will lead to unpleasant
events, serious disturbances, in the order of English
life. And the state of Europe, its general malady, is
beginning to touch England very closely.

Yet, though I see the gravity of all this, and its
darkness, I believe that England will pull through and
carry on. There is in Enghsh character still an intui-
tive, inarticulate wisdom. In spite of all the modi-
fications caused by war, there is a solid common sense,
a sense of compromise and the middle way, which be-
longs to centuries of English tradition and is not yet
deadened. The passion of the extremists leaves the
main body of English men and women cold as ice. Dis-
content, distress, exasperation, lead to violent speech,
but rarely to violent action within the heart of England
untouched by the fire of the Celtic fringe. In the past

242

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE

centuries there have been worse times than now, but
people have suffered them with patience, with hard
resolution, with high and noble valor. They have
always taken the middle way. I think they will now.
Out of present trouble England will emerge with her old
spirit of stolidity, resource, and energy. If not, then
other peoples will be hurt, grievously. If England
goes down in decay, so will all Europe, and even America
will not be scathless. If the British Empire, depend-
ent still on England as the axle wheel of its progress,
breaks up or falls apart, there will be a flaming anarchy
in its ancient possessions — in India, Egypt, Africa — ■
before which the horrors of the last war will be but
playful things. If the English people take the road to
revolution no country will be safe for democracy, or in
any way secure of life, and white civilization, as we now
know it and like it, will be doomed. Other races, not
white, will press forward over our ruin and decadence.
But that, by the grace of God and the spirit of a great
race, shall not happen yet, unless madness overtakes
all sanity, which must not happen.

VII

THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA

THE new Republic of Austria created by the Treaty of
Versailles — that is to say, by certain elderly diplomats
sitting round a table and rearranging the map of the
world without much knowledge of the human hopes
and agonies involved in their decisions — became a
tragic object lesson of all that was most miserable, hope-
less, and diseased in the malady of Europe after the
war. All the economic evils that afflicted such a country
as Italy and threatened many other countries like France
and Germany, and to some extent England, reached
their fullest development in Austria.

Other countries were overburdened by war debts,
weakened by the decreasing production of labor, and
poverty-stricken by the inflation of money, which was
turned out easily enough from the printing presses but
had not reality enough to buy raw material or the ele-
mentary necessities of life from more prosperous parts
of the world, so that the value of this paper money
dropped low in foreign exchanges, while prices soared
to fantastic heights and wages struggled to keep pace
with them — and failed. Even England was touched by
that disease — England which was envied by all her
neighbors as rich and fat in her prosperity — and
France and Italy were seriously sick of the same eco-
nomic malady. But Austria was more than sick —

Austria was dying.

244

THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA

It was a ghoulish thing to sit at the deathbed of those
Austrian people, as I did, studying the symptoms of
this mortality, watching the death agony, probing into
the cause of this scourge. Yet if Europe would save
herself from something like the same doom and find a
way of escape from a general danger which was creeping
closer to many countries, the truth must be known.
For the state of Austria was a tremendous rebuke to
the shortsighted diplomacy which utterly failed to
realize that a rearrangement of political frontiers must
be based upon the physical needs and conditions of the
people within those boundaries, and that it is not possi-
ble to violate historical evolution for the sake of a theory
without upsetting a natural equilibrium. It was also
a tragic warning to all the nations of Europe that if they
harked back to an intense national egotism, building
barriers between themselves and their neighbors,
checking the natural flow of trade and refusing co-oper-
ation and mutual helpfulness, their own vitality and
wealth would be impoverished and their own Hfe men-
aced by the illness of surrounding peoples. That lesson
has not yet been learned.

Poor Austria was the world's most horrible example
of the results of political cruelty and stupidity, and
yet by a strange irony of fate was also the most striking
case of a general desire in the hearts of mankind for
charity and brotherhood leading to some new system of
international politics which might give real life and
power to a League of Nations. That was a most ex-
traordinary state of things which startled one as soon as
one entered the city of Vienna with its stricken popu-
lation. The psychology of those two and a half million
people almost defied analysis because of this conflict
between cruelty and charity of which they were the vic-
tims. They saw themselves literally sentenced to death
by the provisions of the peace treaty. Once belonging

245

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

to the capital of a great empire, a highly civilized,
artistic, music-loving folk, living on the products of
other people's labor, on the business of exchange,
finance, clerkship, the handling of merchandise, the
demand and supply of Hfe's little luxuries, the profits
of administration and officialism, like so many of the
inhabitants of other great cities, such as London, Paris,
and New York, they saw themselves cut off from all
their old sources of supply and from all their trade rela-
tions with surrounding peoples who had once been under
their government. The diplomats at Versailles who
drew the boundaries of the new Austrian Republic as an
isolation camp in the center of the old Austrian Empire —
divided now into groups of peoples of different races —
cut off the head of the empire from its body, so that
Vienna is a bulbous-headed thing without a torso.

It is exactly as though New York were suddenly
amputated from the United States, or as though London
were bounded on one side by Surrey and Sussex and on
the north by the shires of Bedford and Warwick,
divorced from its great industrial centers, its shipping
trade, its mineral wealth, and its imperial business. A
state of six and a half million inhabitants, Austria is
obliged to import nearly ninety per cent of her coal,
lacks all raw material necessary for her factories, with
the exception of wood and iron ore, has neither wool,
linen, leather, nor copper, possesses no more agricultural
land than at its maximum may support its inhabitants
for three months a year, and is surrounded by new
states Hke Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia and Hun-
gary, once of her own em.pire, which now are so narrow
in their national egotism that they will not send any
supplies to the relief of Vienna except under the pressure
of foreign influence.

But here comes the strange dilemma in Austrian
minds. Aghast as they were at the doom which befell

246

THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA

them, they might well have hated the nations who were
their judges and their executioners. But the very
peoples who condemned them to death were those who
by charity and not by cruelty endeavored to postpone
execution and to keep them alive. Sir William Goode,
who went to Vienna as chairman of the reparation com-
mittee charged with the task of securing the indemnity
according to the treaty, found himself obliged by all
the instincts of humanity, with the consent of the govern-
ments he represented, to transform his reparation com-
mittee into a committee of relief. Great Britain voted
a sum of thirty-five miUion pounds for the relief of
Austria. The Swiss Red Cross, first to attempt rescue
of the stricken Austrians, was followed by the enormous
organization of Mr. Hoover, distributing supplies from
the United States and Canada. The Scandinavian
nations co-operated in this work of international charity,
which, as Mr. Joseph Redlich, the Austrian represent-
ative on the League of Nations, has written, was the
first, and for some time the only, manifestation of that
spirit of national solidarity which during the war had
been preached by President Wilson in his famous
messages. This distinguished Austrian reveals the
gratitude of his people in the following words:

''This work of international charity has saved the
lives of thousands of babies in Vienna. It has, through
the organization of the Society of Friends of England,
healed innumerable mothers. It has, by the energy and
humanity of Mr. Hoover and his compatriots, nourished
for more than two years hundreds of thousands of chil-
dren in the schools of Vienna and industrial centers.
It has lavished on us inestimable consolations, because
not only have we benefited by such magnificent charity,
but all humanity itself, crushed by this terrible war,
has obtained moral profit from it. It is, therefore,
the sacred duty of an Austrian to celebrate with all his

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

heart such a manifestation of brotherhood. Never-
theless, the misery of the masses, and still more of the
middle classes, which still continues in spite of all this
charity should not be misunderstood. It is not the result
of a temporary situation or the passing incapacity of a
people unable to re-establish themselves. On the con-
trary, the material and moral causes are too powerful
to be conquered by an enfeebled and stricken people. "

When I went to the city of Vienna, after a long and
dreadful journey from Trieste, the train in which I
traveled was crowded with men and women who seemed
desperately anxious to reach that city, and I wondered
then, and wonder now, what evil spell enticed them that
way. For Vienna had no room for them, no food for
them except at monstrous prices, no fuel, no trade, and
no hope for any of them, if they were of Austrian race.
Yet every day I stayed there more people were crowd-
ing into the city and not leaving it, owing to some freak
of psychology at which I could only guess — a desire
for a mad kind of gayety in their world of ruin, a herd-
ing together of doomed people, the old spirit which in
times of plague made men "eat, drink, and be merry;
for to-morrow we die." There were others who came
as vultures follow the trail of death and feed upon the
corpses. They were human vultures growing fat on
the disease of a nation by financial jugglings and com-
mercial adventures in bankrupt stock. They were
rich enemies of Austria, once within her empire, now
getting the value of the foreign exchange which made
their money worth ten times or fifty times as much as
the Austrian paper money. They were the profiteers
of her own people, who even in the general ruin had
managed to loot fortunes, so that they could fling about

248

THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA

these paper notes from vast stocks of paper with reck-
less hands. So every hotel in a city of hotels was
crowded with people sleeping on sofas, in bathrooms
and drawing-rooms — anywhere for shelter.

On the night of my arrival I hired a cab with two
horses driven by a man who had the skill and passion
of a Roman charioteer. At a furious gallop through
a wet darkness he took me to many hotels in different
parts of the city, laughed heartily when I was refused
admittance time and time again, and shook hands like
a friend and a brother when by a wild stroke of luck
I managed to struggle into a small hotel owing to the
favor of an Austrian waiter who had fond memories
of Leicester Square. I paid my driver what I thought
was three times his proper fare, but he scrunched up
the notes and said: "I have to live! This would
not buy me a packet of cigarettes!" In the end I
gave him a hundred kronen and thought I had been
robbed, but one day in Vienna was enough to teach me
that this sum would hardly buy a meal in any modest
restaurant.

On that first night in Vienna a dreadful gloom, spiritual
as well as physical, encompassed me when I went out
into the streets for an evening walk — those streets
which I remembered as so full of light and gayety and
music before the war. Only a few lights glimmered.
The great arc lamps were not burning. No gleam came
through the shuttered windows. At six o'clock all
the shops were closed, and there were not many people
about in the darkness. They passed me like ghosts, and
I saw through the gloom pale, haggard faces of men
and women who shivered as they walked. Children
with bare feet padded past on the wet pavements. One
woman with a baby in her arms stopped before me and
held out a skinny, clawlike hand and begged for money.
Truly, I thought, I have come to a city of tragedy.
17 249

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

After other nights in Vienna I knew that it was indeed
a city of tragedy, more tragic than any other city I
have seen in the world after the years of war, filled with
masses of people, semistarved or three-quarters starved,
with rickety children so wizened and weak that they
looked like little monkeys after six months or more of
life, with diseased mothers unable to feed them at the
breast, with men of good education and good birth
starving slowly but very surely on a diet of cabbage
soup, with beautiful girls selling their beauty for one
night's meal, and middle-class women watching their
children wither and die, and a hopeless misery among
these millions in the back streets of that great and splen-
did city, with its palaces, its picture galleries, its glorious
gardens, its noble architecture of banks and offices
and mansions.

Yet here were strange, bewildering contrasts between
reckless luxury and starving poverty, between gayety and
despair, which deceived many observers who saw only
one side, or could not reconcile both sides with any
reason. Night after night, after exploring the back
streets and the places of malady, the hospitals and
babies' creches, the feeding centers of charity, I used
to push through the swing doors of some restaurant
or concert hall and sit there to watch the crowd and listen
to the music and find some clue to the riddle of things.

These places were always crowded, and the crowd
was always made up of the same types. There were
great numbers of prosperous-looking men who seemed
to have ilhmitable supplies of paper money. Some of
them were Italians, some of them Greeks, Czechs, Serb-
ians, Hungarians, and Jews. Many of them were
Jews of no certain nationality and speaking every kind
of language. Here and there were Austrian families,
sitting here for the light and warmth, and lingering for
a long time over cups of coffee and glasses of cold water,

250

THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA

while the band played piece after piece with a brilliant
gayety which seemed to pretend that life is very merry,
free from care, full of sunshine, beauty, laughter, love.

There was plenty of love in these places, but not of a
kind good to see on the whole. Now and then my eyes
were taken by young Austrian couples, who sat hand in
hand or with their faces very close together and their
eyes Hghted by each other's light, and I thought they
were pitiful to see, yet beautiful, like lovers shipwrecked
on a desert place, with death about them and drawing
near, so that perhaps this love was all they had, and
enough. But mostly the lovemaking was bought by
the prosperous-looking men, who were giving wine and
cake to girls who, I guessed, had had no sohd food
that day and were paying for it by laughter and flirta-
tion and the open marketing of their youth. They
seemed nice girls, as good as your sisters or mine, of
middle class, of decent upbringing, but now citizens
of Vienna, which is starving, victims of a hfe where
death is on the prowl, and a creeping disease of weakness,
and where hunger is a familiar and frightening thing.
Here in these places of luxury there was the glitter of
Hght and warmth, at least of human breath and bodies,
and the splendor of marble halls and the blare of jazz
bands and fancy cakes for those whose purses bulged
with paper money. Such a chatter! Such ripples of
laughter! Such a joyous rhythm in the music of the
band! But I thought of the hours, of the days, I had
spent am.ong rickety children, scrofulous children, and
children who are saved from the hunger death only
by the charity of their former enemies. I thought of
words spoken to me by one of the men who know best
the conditions of their country:

"Unless the powers formulate some policy — on a
broader line than free meals and temporary aid —
the Austrian people are doomed beyond any hope of

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

life, and there will be a morbid poison in the heart of
Europe."

Those laughing people around me — how could they
laugh and listen to light music and spend those kronen
like counters in a game ? Some of them were living on
the last of their capital. Others were parasites of
profiteers. Others preferred laughter to tears, and
came to listen to this gay music for forgetfulness. They
were like the people in Boccaccio's novels who, with
plague raging around them, gathered together and
told amorous, wicked tales and wondered idly when
death would touch them on the shoulder. Was Austria
alone hke that? Were there not many countries of
Europe, perhaps even England — so rich and fat, as she
was called until the unrealities of her arithmetic were
put to the cruel test of truth — who were playing at the
gay old game of life carelessly while outside disease
crept nearer — ^the European malady which must be
cured quickly lest we die ?

Profiteering was shameless in Vienna during the war,
and there were still millionaires — in paper money — ^who
were able to afford the necessities and even the luxuries
of life in spite of the wild insanity of the prices charged.
It was they and the foreigners and middle-class folk
who had saved up money who entirely ignored the
market prices controlled by the government — theoret-
ically— and adopted a system of smuggling — Schleich-
handlung as it is called — so open and unabashed that it
was a mockery of its name. The rich folk hired their
smugglers. The middle-class folk did their own job,
and on several days a week the tramcars going out to
the market gardens and small farms in the country out-
side the city were crowded with young men who had

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THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA

gone to buy their week's supplies direct from the peas-
ants. Those country folk demanded more and more
paper money for their eggs and butter and bacon and
vegetables. In some districts they would not deHver
their goods for any price in paper, but insisted upon a
system of barter by which in return for food they got
tobacco, boots, clothes, and manufactured articles.

I know the case of a man who went to one of these
peasants to buy food for his wedding. He wore a new
jacket which he had saved for his wedding day.

The peasant farmer refused his paper money, made
an ugly grimace at it, and said: "That filth is no good
to me. I will give you a sucking pig for that jacket.'*

The bargain was made, and the bridegroom went
home in his shirt sleeves with his wedding feast under
his arm.

The peasant's point of view is more apparent when I
say that a cheap suit of clothes in Vienna cost four
thousand kronen when I was in that city. After that
prices steadily mounted in paper values, and price of
meat and fat had risen by a third and even a half, so
that one pound of lard cost, nominally, five pounds, or
twenty-five dollars in American money, with exchange
at the normal rate, at the end of last year. The peas-
ants raised the price of flour to such an extent that it
was beyond the reach of all but the robber profiteers —
those gangs of financial harpies who still, by juggling
with the money market and gambling in the rise and
fall of Austrian securities, contrived to amass vast
stocks of paper currency. It was they and the foreign-
ers crowding into the city who spent five hundred kronen
for a single person at dinner, and five times that amount
if they indulged in expensive wines. The cost of a
dinner followed by a dance, given by an American and
his wife to members of Viennese society at the Hotel
Bristol was more than a million kronen, worth forty-two

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thousand pounds in English money, according to the
prewar value of Austrian kronen.

It will be said by my readers: "But, after all, that
means very little, because the money is turned out of
the printing presses and has hardly any real value."

That is true for those who can get hold of the print-
ing press, as it were, but it is not true in the case of
the struggling middle-class folk — clerks, schoolmasters,
doctors, university professors, workingwomen with little
homes and hungry babes, and the whole class of
laboring men. They do not get unlimited supplies
of this paper. I asked a young clerk in a newspaper
ojBice how much he was paid a week, and he told me a
hundred and sixty kronen. I remembered that it had
cost me more than a hundred kronen to get a meal of
three thin courses which left me hungry.

"How do you live?" I asked.

"I don't," he said.

In a babies' clinic filled with haggard, anaemic women
who had brought their terrible little babes, all scrofu-
lous and boneless, for medical examination, I spoke to
a young Austrian doctor, and he told me very frankly
that his own case was hopeless.

"I get under two hundred kronen a week," he said,
"and for three years I have lived mostly on cabbage
soup, with now and then potatoes for a treat. Not in
all this time have I eaten meat. These clothes I wear
date from before the war. You see they have been
turned. When they wear out and fall away from me
I shall be like old Adam, for how can I buy a new suit.?
My case is no worse than thousands of others. It is
beggary and starvation."

In the great hospitals of Vienna, the best medical
schools in the world before the w^ar by universal repu-
tation, it became almost impossible to carry on the work,
owing to the dearth of supplies. Fuel was their great

254

THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA

need, and many of the wards closed down because they
could not be heated at all, and the patients were crowded
together for warmth's sake in spite of the dangers of
bad ventilation. Coal was almost out of the question,
and wood was gathered from the neighboring country-
side as much as possible. It was the only source of
fuel for poor folk, and one of the sights of Vienna was
the crowd of wood gatherers coming back laden with
logs and branches under which children and women
staggered to their hearthsides.

In the midst of all this misery, and of the false, mad
gayety which mocks at it, the relief committees, American
and British, the Society of Friends, and other charitable
agencies bring some light and joy by the enormous
rescue work they continue to do among the children
and nursing mothers. The network of this organiza-
tion is on a wide-reaching scale, and one of the most
moving and pathetic sights that have ever met my eyes
was when I went to the old palace of the Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, whose death was the straw which set
Europe alight, and watched the feeding of more than a
thousand children under the direction of an American
officer and his assistants.

I talked with many of the little ones as they bent
over the bowls of soup and offered up a grace to God
before their first spoonful. For many of them it was
the first meal of the day, and for some the only meal.
They were grateful for it, with the smiling gratitude of
children who were born to suffering as a usual, common
thing. But in spite of all this international work of
charity, the large sums of money poured into Vienna
from many countries, there is still a large population
there which is not touched by the work of rescue. The

255

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

grown-up folk do not get free meals. Genteel poverty
in Vienna is unaided. The workingmen in the factories
do not get enough raw material any more for their own
bodies than for the machines they mind. Both are un-
dernourished. In the National Assembly the Social
Democrats and Christian Socialists have vied with each
other in the fierceness of their denunciations of the
rationed bread which is baked with a fifty-per-cent
ingredient of uneatable maize flour producing horrible
eff"ects upon the bodies of those who eat it. In Decem-
ber last many railway men and other workers went on
strike as a protest against this filthy food, and the Social
Democrats announced to the Assembly that they found
it hard to calm the workmen in the factories, bitter
and despairing because of their hunger, for hunger is
the food of revolution.

The conditions I have described still prevail.

Intellectually as well as physically the people of
Vienna are at least half starved. The university cannot
afford to buy foreign books, the science men cannot
keep abreast with modern research for the same reason.
Even in the elementary schools teaching suff'ers because
both teachers and scholars are listless with weakness at
their work. So in all departments of life in Vienna
one sees a devitalizing process, a slow death of all na-
tional and individual energies, a creeping paralysis in
the social body.

Yet so cruel is the extent to which national egotism
and intensification of selfishness and cynicism have been
developed since the war by a failure to reshape the society
of nations on more ideal lines that the neighbors of
Austria, and even her own peasants, are abominably
callous to that agony in Vienna. Jugo-Slavia and
Czecho-Slovakia, once of the Austrian Empire, and
now republican states, will not forgive Vienna for her

old political domination and tyranny, and will not lift

256

THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA

a hand to rescue the Viennese. The Czechs, with
those old memories still rankling, deal contemptuously
and tyrannically with the German minorities in their
midst, and make it a crime for them to use their own
language in the streets and public places of towns
where they form a great part of the population. There
is no hope for Vienna nor — carrying the argument over
to other countries — for Europe itself, if that national
and racial enmity is maintained.

This state of things in Austria ought to be a tremen-
dous warning to all Europeans. What is happening in
Vienna so acutely — all those symptoms of disease —
will become apparent in many other countries of Europe
unless there is a speedy cure. These symptoms of social
plague are the inflation of paper money, which is a mere
sham covering the lack of real values; the difficulty of
procuring raw material from more prosperous countries
owing to the difference in exchange; the gradual weaken-
ing of the individual worker and of the nation as a
whole in physical well-being and moral will power;
the debility of children, working mothers and laboring
men, so that the future of the race is endangered and
the birth rate is lowered, while the death rate goes up;
a spiritual carelessness as to these evil conditions so
that they come to be accepted as inevitable, and a levity
of the social mind among those who still have money to
spend, which disregards the necessity of urgent action,
desperate remedies, in order to maintain the old stand-
ards of civilization.

It is difficult for ordinary minds to think in terms of
Europe or beyond the frontiers of nationality; but if
one studies the health chart of Europe as a whole one
will find very clearly a spreading blackness correspond-
ing to the areas constantly enlarging and embracing
new peoples, in which there is economic disease and what
I may call the withering of civilized hfe. The whole

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of Russia is in this condition, as far as we can get scien-
tific evidence, owing to the break-up of its poHtical
machine and economic machine, bad as they were,
followed by the wearing out of transport material and
the lowering of production both in agriculture and in in-
dustry— all this due more to the exhaustion and effort of
war than to the methods of the Bolshevik regime. It
is certain that Russia is dropping not so much into
barbarism as into a material and spiritual decadence,
so that all the impulses toward a higher type of civiliza-
tion are for a time at least deadened. Its people are
fighting with hunger, fighting with disease, fighting for
the barest necessities of life, and not for beauty, art and
luxury and joy, in which civilization comes to flower.

The Russian disease is reaching out to neighboring
states like Esthonia and Lithuania. They, too, are
withering from the same causes — lack of abundant food,
devitalizing of labor, physical disease, general debility.
Poland is a strong soul with a stricken body.

Is this plague creeping westward.? Is there any
certainty that it will stop at the frontiers of Germany ?
Austria is engulfed already, as I have shown, and
there are signs that in spite of German efforts to get
back to the old standards of work, the enormous energy
and profit of the big trusts to recapture old markets,
her people are sickening.

Already at the end of last year hundreds of thousands
of children in Germany were suffering from malnutri-
tion, and not only the children, but workingmen.
Seven hundred thousand children and mothers were
being fed on charity, and everywhere in the big cities
the shadow of starvation, if not actual hunger in its
acute and terrible stage, was creeping over the country.

So far, Austria, whose condition I have described at
length, is the worst case of national decay, and all
students of humanity and of social history must take

258

THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA

it as the outstanding example of tragedy, due not to
inherent weakness, but to the evil structure of inter-
national relations. There is only one hope of rescue for
Austria, and that is the breaking down of the hatred
round her, the opening of trade relationships with her
neighbors, a give-and-take in the matter of raw material,
labor and commercial credit, co-operation instead of
isolation and rivalry, Christian fellowship for mutual
help and protection, instead of the cutthroat code of
the old tribal laws. And that, in my humble judgment,
is the one hope of rescue not only for Austria, but for
Europe as a whole.

VIII

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

TO England as well as to Ireland friendship between
our two peoples is utterly necessary for the sake of
liberty, progress, honor, and peace of mind. The
self-government of the Irish people is essential to the
liberties of the English people, because until that is
obtained we who are English or Scottish will never
be free from a political conflict within our own island
which cuts across every party issue, obscures our own
domestic interests, and gives passionate war cries on
one side or the other, to politicians who prefer passion
as a bait for votes rather than intellectual argument.

But England needs peace with Ireland for higher
reasons than that. She needs it to regain her moral
character in the judgment of foreign nations and of her
own people in the far dominions; she needs it for her
own soul's sake.

The Irish tragedy poisoned the mind of the world
against us, and the wells of our own faith. It convicted
us against our will, against our own sense of truth and
honor, against the noblest and most generous instincts
of the best among us, of most damnable hypocrisy.
•Justly or unjustly, by truth or by lies — I will tell
what I think is the truth — ^the Irish people were able
to charge us with that vice and bring down upon us
the scorn or wrath of all our enemies (and we have many),
while arousing suspicion or surprise among our few best

260

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

friends. During the war we had proclaimed high
ideals for humanity, and hundreds of thousands of our
men died, as many of them thought, to make them
prevail. It was, we said, a spiritual fight against
the brute force of militarism. It was a war against
Prussianism in all its forms. Afterward, when peace
should come, we would demand the self-determination
of oppressed nations, we should protect the right of the
little peoples, we should establish a reign of liberty
within a League of Nations governed by an international
court of justice administering a new code of world-
wide peace. Into these high sentiments, expressed
fervently by English idealists, came inevitably at
pubhc meetings one sharp interjection — "What about
Ireland?" That question was what a friend of mine
calls a "conversation stopper." At best it would make
the most fluent speaker pause a moment in his rush of
oratory.

Yes, after all, what about Ireland? We had estab-
lished martial law there of a kind never known even in
Austria or Russia on such a scale in proportion to popu-
lation, v/ith tanks, armored cars, machine guns, air-
planes, all the equipment of modern warfare, after
"the war to end war." Justly or unjustly, we had at
least adopted Prussian methods, after killing Prussian
militarism. In Ireland, rightly or wrongly, we had
abandoned the ideal of self-determination. And plead-
ing abominable provocation, the essential justice of
checking a murder campaign, the right to repress
rebellion against the Crown, we were allowing our
military and police forces to adopt the old primitive
law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, without any
reference at all to other laws of a more recent and more
civilized kind.

All civil law was abolished in Ireland, at a time when

English idealists were pleading for its extension to inter-

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national affairs as a nobler method of argument than
that of war. In Ireland trial by jury had been replaced
by courts-martial, in which the accused were often
the judges. Inquests on the bodies of murdered civilians
had been replaced by military inquiries in which no
evidence was admitted if distasteful to the court. Any
Irish man or woman could be arrested without a charge
and imprisoned without trial, and thousands of them
were thus arrested and imprisoned. Though Ministers
of the Crown referred to the strife in Ireland as "war,"
we shot or hanged our prisoners if taken with arms in
their hands, and though for many months the same
Ministers denied that our soldiers and police took re-
venge for their own losses by "reprisals" against Irish
people and property, that system of meeting terror by
counter-terror was afterward admitted and made
official. When, therefore, our Prime Minister and his
colleagues, or any other public or private person, spoke
of the spiritual hopes of the world, the right of majori-
ties to the liberty of self-government, the duty of France
to demobihze her armies and her hatreds, the justice
of the punishment inflicted upon Austria for her former
tyrannies against subject peoples, or the cruelties of
Germany in Belgium, that cry of, "What about Ire-
land?" came as a confusing and conscience-pricking
interruption.

For it is not in the English character to be insensitive
to criticism or satire so poignant as that. If we are
hypocritical as a people, it is not through insincerity,
but through stupidity or ignorance, or particular preju-
dice. We do not and cannot, as a nation, ride rough-
shod over justice, or hberty, or fair play, without stir-
rings of conscience that hurt horribly. Not deliberately,
or without an immense amount of argument in self-
justification, can we, as a people, accept a policy of
l^rutality or tyranny. There is an inexhaustible store

262

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

of generous feeling among English folk, amounting
almost to weakness, in regard to smaller people than
themselves, to all helpless and little things, to all under
dogs. That generosity can only be overwhelmed by a
wave of passion, or blinded by ignorance that tyranny
is at work or injustice established. This Irish tragedy,
therefore, has been England's tragedy as well, for it
tortured many minds among us, and was bitterly re-
sented by those who desired to crush the rebellion by
all ways of force, as well as by those who detested the
methods and morals of military repression, because
the very name of Ireland laid us open to attack, put
disgrace upon us, challenged our honor and our decent
reputation in the world. The Irish made use of that
weapon, more powerful against our prestige than the
revolvers of their "gunmen." They knew that we
were vulnerable to that form of attack, because, what-
ever our faults may be, we stand or fall in the world by
our reputation for justice, and not by the power of
guns. So Ireland felt sure of winning most of what she
wanted if she could put us in the wrong, and our poli-
ticians gave them a thousand chances.

Irish propaganda — hke all propaganda one-sided
and not careful of exact truth — was wonderfully organ-
ized and far reaching. It found its way, day after
day, month after month, into the newspapers of Amer-
ica, France (when France was annoyed with us), Italy,
Russia, Poland, and all our own dominions, where its
accounts of raids and imprisonings, shootings, hangings,
and burnings stirred the deepest emotion of people
who had Irish blood in their veins, or a sense of chivalry
and indignation among others. The darker, murderous
side of Sinn Fein outrages were but lightly touched, and
the Irish picture presented to the world through its
hterary agents was the simple and stirring spectacle of
a little people fighting with heroic spirit against a brutal

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

and obstinate tyranny. Such friends as we had were
disconcerted and mystified.

Their first incredulity was overborne by apparent
weight of evidence and by repetition, and they were
aghast at the reign of anarchy which England had made
in her sister island. "How is it," they asked, "that
the English, who are not a brutal people, whose men (as
the war proved) are generally kind-hearted, even to
their enemies, who for centuries have led the way to
civil progress in Europe, should lose their moral qualities
and betray their best ideals in the case of Ireland.''
We cannot understand!"

So spoke our friends in America, in France, and in
other countries, as I knew by letters I received. Even
the French people, who are not soft in putting down
rebellion, who are not tolerant of political revolt, were
scandalized by the English treatment of Ireland. From
one Frenchman who served with our armies in the war
on the western front, I had a letter in which he ex-
plained his perplexity about Ireland and added a post-
script in which he summed up his indignation in one
savage little sentence," Your government disgusts us!"

If our friends talked like that, what of our enemies?
They found this Irish business to their liking. It
provided them with one more proof of the incurable
abomination of England. "John Bull," they said,
"always was and always will be a hypocrite and a bully.
For centuries he has prated about liberty while he has
thrust his fist into the face of all rivals, trodden down the
native races of his colonial and captured territories,
increased and held his empire by brute force, exercised
the most cynical diplomatic policy, and done all things
in the names of righteousness and God. His present
terrorism in Ireland is only one more proof of his tradi-
tional brutality, and does not surprise us in the least."
That, in a mild way, was the verdict of England's

•264

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

enemies in every part of the world to which Irish propa-
ganda reached.

It reached every civilized country except England.
Owing to the government control of many newspapers
(bought by members of the Coalition to stifle criticism
and spread political propaganda of their own), and on
account of the timidity or incredulity or dishonesty
of others not so bought, the only facts published in the
majority of English newspapers after the Irish rebellion
of 1916 were those provided by Dublin Castle or the
Front Bench in the House of Commons. In that way
there was, for a long time, an almost complete boycott
of any news which tended to discredit our officials or
armed forces in Ireland, while on the other hand full
pubhcity was given to all Sinn Fein outrages and crimes.
A few journals, like the Daily News, the Manchester
Guardian, and The Nation, succeeded in breaking through
this conspiracy of silence, but they only reached a
limited public and were under suspicion as unpatriotic
or revolutionary sheets by readers who think that all
criticism of government is unpatriotic and that all
truth which disturbs the self-righteousness of the
Enghsh conservative mind is revolutionary.

The Sinn Fein activists of the "Irish Republican
Army," described more briefly as the "Irish gunmen,"
spoiled the beautiful picture of a heroic people fighting
nobly for liberty's sake, by acts of brutality and methods
of warfare which could not be condoned or forgiven by
any soul alive who hated cruelty and still had faith
in Christian ethics. These acts were reported to the
English people without mention of reprisals or cruelties
on the other side, or with absolute denials by public
officials of any such charge against themselves and their
agents. Only by rumors, by tales told privately, in
whispers, by seeing smoke and suspecting fire, was the
average Englishman aware of any dirty work which

18 26s

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

might smirch our honor in the world. That was so
for at least a year after the ending of the war, until
admissions were made in the House of Commons, and
facts were admitted in papers like the Times, which
charged our Irish administration with action and policy
contrary — to say the least — to our traditions of honor
and justice. I think our only excuse in history, as a
people, for permitting the dishonesty and villainy of
some of our statesmen, who played into^the hands of
Sinn Fein by adopting evil as a cure for evil, is our
general ignorance of what was happening, and the wide,
unbridgeable gulf that lies between English and Irish
mentality.

There is, of course, one type of mind in England
which made any reasonable settlement of Ireland im-
possible through the centuries, and will make it impos-
sible now if he can. He is actually the old type of John
Bull Englishman, hardly exaggerated by his carica-
ture, but utterly unrepresentative of the nation as a
whole — hard in his imperialism, narrow in his Protes-
tantism, reactionary against any effort of change or
progress, sure that the Englishman of his own type is
the noblest effort of God, disliking all aliens, including
Irish, Welsh, and Scotch, and a firm believer in ''reso-
lute rule" with machine guns and tanks for all rebellious
people, such as native races, and workingmen who
want more wages. He was the defender of the Amritsar
massacre. He is all for shooting down the unemployed
if they make themselves annoying. He would hke to
see a rounding up of all socialists, labor leaders, and
intellectual theorists who are endeavoring to change
the old structure of English life with its Heaven-sent
prerogatives of great landed estates for the "good
famihes, " high profits for the capitalists, and low

266

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

wages for the working class. His ideas on Ireland are
clear and sharp. "The Irish people," he says, "are just
savages, and they must be dealt with as such. Shoot
'em down wholesale if they won't obey English law.
Reprisals? Certainly, and plenty of them. More power
to their elbow! as Mr Balfour said. Let our men have
a free hand and teach 'em what's what! If necessary,
have a new conquest of Ireland, with blood and fire,
and do it well this time. The best thing would be to
sink the whole damned island."

That type of man is still to be found in many places
and classes of English life, and it was his type which
supported Sir Hamar Greenwood and the Prime Minis-
ter's Tory masters in their policy of reprisals and coun-
ter-terror. He is to be found in sporting clubs down
Pall Mall and St. James's Street, on the race course at
Epsom, in the crowd that goes to see a prize fight, in
the manor house of a country squire, often in the rectory
of a country parish. But his type — not without use in
its time — is old-fashioned and dwindling away. Even
before the war he was passing, and when the war came
his dogmatic opinions were heard with laughter at
mess tables where young officers of ours who had been
thinking hard about many problems of life and death,
the causes of the war and the hopes of the world, were
not taking his blusterings as the last word in the way
of wisdom. But he still exists, and writes letters to
the Morning Post, which is published exclusively for
his class and ideas. Throughout the Irish trouble he
sat solid in the Coalition Government, fuming and
fretting over the weakness of the Prime Minister who
was always tempted to compromise with the forces
of disorder and hardly restrained. He snorted with
laughter when Terence McSwiney — with mistaken fa-
naticism, perhaps, but with no ignoble motive and a
burning love for Ireland in his heart — died in his hunger

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

strike, and he became purple in the face with rage when
the pohcy of reprisals was challenged by Mr. Asquith.
It was his belief in force — and force alone — as a means
of settlement that enabled the government to abandon
statesmanship in all their dealings with Ireland, and to
leave it to the devil.

But all through these recent years that type of mind
has been a small minority, though powerful in its com-
mand of the political machine. It did not represent
the great body of moderate EngHshmen who during the
years of this tragedy were anxious to know the truth,
but could not, and to find some kind of reasonable
solution to the Irish problem, which seemed insoluble.

This average Enghshman, as I met him in tramcars,
teashops, and other places of middle-class circumstance,
was mightily perplexed about the whole business, and
had poor sources of information. He did not under-
stand the Irish temperament, nor see any way out of
the Irish problem. He still clung to old sentiments
and old illusions. For one thing, he could not bring
himself to believe that the Irish had any real hatred,
or cause of hatred, for England and the English. He
saw no adequate reason for hatred, and argued that the
Irish with whom he came in contact in London or else-
where were nice people, with a simple faith and a sense
of humor, not at all murderous in their instincts. He
liked most of their men, and all their women, as far
as he knew them, and believed firmly, in spite of all
evidence to the contrary, that Sinn Fein and its "wild
m.en" were only a minority of extremists who did not
at all represent the great body of Irish people, and that,
therefore, their violence was artificially engineered, and
if defeated by English resolution would be followed by a
renewal of friendship between our two peoples, provided
Ireland was given a generous measure of Home Rule.

It was only after Sinn Fein had killed many police-

^68

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

men and soldiers that be began to tbink tbat tbere were
some qualities in tbe Irish character which baffled him.
His remembrance of old novels by Charles Lever,
Samuel Lover, and other writers, as well as the stage
type of Irishman traditional for a long time in England,
still held his imagination with the figure of a breezy,
laughing, devil-may-care, romantic soul who helped
to win most of England's battles and was loyal to the
flag. Gradually he was aware that there was something
wrong in that picture. He found an unexpected cruelty
in the Irish people, the cruelty of the peasant mind
brooding over old grievances, unforgiving, relentless in
the pursuit of vengeance. Where he expected weakness
he found surprising strength — most obstinate resistance
to English "reason." Where he looked for sentiment,
especially in the war with Germany, he found the hard-
est realism, a most selfish refusal of allegiance, and,
worst of all, black treachery to Old England in her hour
of need. What was the meaning of that? "What the
devil," he asked, plaintively, "is the matter with these
people?"

It must be remembered that the average Englishman
knows very little of Irish history. He does not read
it in his school books; he does not find it in his news-
papers. Vaguely he knows and admits that England
in the old days was "rather rough" on Ireland, and,
generously, as it seems to him, he wishes to make amends.
He thinks he made amends by the Wyndham Land
Acts which enabled the peasants to buy their land with
English credit, and for the life of him he cannot under-
stand why the Irish hark back to the past and refuse to
recognize that England is a good friend.

He does not realize that anything England does for
Ireland, or has done, or will do, is not received with
gratitude as a favor, or as a generous act, but is re-
garded as a long-delayed concession forced from us,

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and as dust in the balance compared with half a thousand
years of tyranny, robbery, and brutality. He does
not understand that the claim for national independence
has never been abandoned for all that time, and that,
though the spark burns dim in times of misery, it flames
up again and spreads, as nov/ it spreads again, like
a prairie fire throughout those island people with their
frightful remembrance of history, their cherished faith,
their undying pride.

The average Englishman, of whom I was one, was
shocked to his inmost soul by the rebellion of 1916. I
shall never forget when that dreadful news came to us
on the western front. We had been through a ghastly
winter when the Germans held all the good positions
against us on the ridges in Flanders, while we were in
the flats and swamps at a time when we were still weak
in artillery, so that they pounded our men with shell
fire and we could answer back but feebly. Day after
day, night after night, our men were blown to bits, our
casualty lists lengthened with the names of our noblest
youth, and we knew that the Germans were hardly
touched in strength, while on the other fronts they were
winning stupendous victories and England's Ufe was
menaced. At that very time the Irish tried to stab us
in the back — did stab us in the back. Young officers
of ours, and of theirs, on leave in Dublin, were shot
down, sometimes without arms in their hands. Young
Irish boys sniped English soldiers from the roofs, though
some of our officers would not give the word of command
to fire back on them, as I know, because of the youth
of those lads. There was proof since, admitted without
shame, that the Irish leaders were in negotiation with
the Germans for active help. They expected German
ships to arrive with arms and ammunition, and with
fighting men. They were willing to get any kind of
German help in order to defeat England in her time of

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THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

peril. Count Plunkett, I am told, went in disguise to
Germany to negotiate this aid. Casement in Germany
was acting on his own initiative, tortured by his con-
science and by his fears. When that news came to us
it seemed at first incredible, and then unforgivable.
It is still hard to forget or forgive by any Englishman,
and by some Irishmen. An Irish general said to me:
"I can never go back to Ireland — never! I can never
take off my hat to an Irishman again." There were
tears in his eyes as he spoke.

The average Englishman did not know the Irish
defense of that act of rebeUion, and, if he knew, would
not admit a word of it. I know, and will set it out with
fairness. The Sinn Feiner said, as one of their leaders
said to me: *'We would have fought for you if you had
guaranteed our national claims. We would have fought
for you if you had let us fight under our own flag and
in our own Irish brigades. The NationaHst leaders
(wrongly, as we now think) arranged a scheme of re-
cruiting— ^which was turned down by your War Office.
Hundreds of thousands of young Irishmen (stupidly, as
we now believe) did volunteer and were drafted, not in
their own brigade, as a rule, but in English battalions,
and died in heaps to save the liberty of England while
strengthening England's tyranny in Ireland. Gradually
we saw this. England's fight for liberty was not to be
our liberty. What was happening in Ulster? The
Ulster volunteers who had been allowed to arm against
us in I9i4were still kept back in Ulster, while our men
were being massacred in Gallipoli and France. They
stood solid as a menace to southern Ireland, with
preferential treatment and secret help from England.
Very well! We began to recruit our own volunteers.
At first there w^ere two groups — John Redmond's,
designed for the help of England, and James Connolly's,
for the liberty of Ireland. A split took place, led by

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Connolly. Presently the Redmond men drifted over
to Connolly's side — for Ireland and not for England.
Then we thought we saw our chance of victory. Eng-
land was hard pressed. Germany seemed certain of
victory. It was Ireland's chance of liberty. There
were divided counsels — some wanting to wait until we
were stronger. Pearse was overborne by the spirit of
Connolly. But the arrangements were faulty, and the
aflPair was a tactical mistake. At first the people of
Dublin were against us. They cursed us for our fool-
hardy act. After three days, when the 'rebels,' as
England called them, were hard pressed and losing, and
being killed in large numbers, the people were all for us.
They were set on fire by the heroism of those boys, and
the spirit of Ireland, the soul of Ireland, was stirred
to its depths by pity, by pride, by the old call of nation-
ality, and then by an undying hatred of England, when
General Maxwell began his Bloody Assizes, executed
James Connolly and fourteen others, and swept into
prison, with unnecessary brutalities and horrors, three
thousand young Irish lads. After that Sinn Fein was
established in every Irish home outside Protestant
Ulster, and the whole people were dedicated anew to the
liberty of their nation. "

The liberty of their nation! Were they, then, groan-
ing under a brutal tyranny, these Irish people, who
talked like that with a passionate sincerity which could
not be doubted, because so many of them were ready to
die, and did die, for their faith? It is that which baffled
the English mind, not conscious of imposing tyranny on
Ireland before they rose in rebellion.

Ill

Now what is the actual truth about all this tragedy.?
Was Ireland utterly right, or utterly wrong, in rising

272

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

in revolt against our rule and going to all lengths in
guerrilla warfare with complete ruthlessness, to obtain
her desires? Or was England utterly right — or utterly-
wrong — in regarding this warfare as murder and trying
to stamp it out by methods as ruthless as those used
against her? Will England be justified in history —
or Ireland? Above all, by what madness, or badness,
or insanity, or stupidity, on one side or on both sides,
did our two peoples come to such a pass when all law
was abandoned for a bloody struggle of civil strife,
ghastly in its commentary on those hopes of inter-
national peace and the progress of humanity which
surged up in many hearts out of the utter horror of the
European war?

To answer these questions one must go back to ancient
history, and deal with passion as well as with facts, and
with illusion as well as with reaUty, for there can be no
understanding of what has happened in recent days
without a knowledge of the past.

The past calls to the present in the Irish mind, like
the cry of the banshee wailing through the ages of Irish
history. The English forget their past, at least in its
most hideous aspect, looking at the present with reaHs-
tic eyes and forward to the future with what hope they
have. But the Irish have a long, bitter, relentless mem-
ory which is a morbid wound in their psychology.
The English say, "Let the dead past bury its dead,"
but the Irish rake over old bones and make relics of them
for animating their passion afresh.

I saw the strength and passion of Irish memory before
the war, in Dublin. On a Saturday night there would
be little groups of people at the corners of back streets
listening to young men or girls standing on orange boxes
and singing or reciting old songs and ballads. I listened
to them sometimes, and always they were ballads of
Irish episodes long forgotten and meaningless in the

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

English mind. They were about the battles of Limerick
and the Boyne, and the siege of Drogheda, and the old
evictions of Irish peasants, and the shooting of Irish
by English redcoats. Hardly one EngUshman in two
million could tell anything at all about those battles.
He would not know when they were fought, or by whom
they were fought, or what side won. But in the Irish
memory they belong to yesterday.

Their songs are filled with a mournful spirit and with
the passion of a people under tyranny, and they are sung
in Irish ears from the cradle to the grave. I remember
going one night to a httle place called "Mooney's
Oyster Bar" with some Irish and English friends and
one young Jew. Outside in the yard an Irish girl was
playing a fiddle and we called her in and asked her to
play some jig tunes for our gayety. But presently the
tunes she played made us all sad because of the notes
of tragedy that broke even through her jigs, and when
the Irishmen in our company began to sing old songs to
her fiddle, the young Jew with us, who was a little drunk,
wept in sympathy, and claimed as his excuse that he was
descended from one of the kings of Ireland! If that
was the effect on a Jew, what must happen in the spirit
of an Irish Catholic when he hears these old ballads of
his race? They are crooned into his ears as he lies in
his cradle, or is carried in the arms of a peasant mother.
From the time he learns to speak he hears old tales and
old songs, in which the Irish have but one enemy — the
Enghsh. And from the time he begins to read, his books
are filled with "the wrongs of Ireland," the bloody
tyranny of the Saxon. From a thousand years ago the
ghosts of Irish history call to him. In old wells, and in
the ruins of chapels, castles, shrines, he hears their
voices, telling him of the glory of Ireland when it was
an island of saints and scholars, poets and painters,
whose illuminated missals and golden chalices and em-

274

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

broidered gowns and all the arts and crafts of life gave
them a civilization and a culture at a time when England
was inhabited by brutal, unlettered Saxons, and when
northern Europe was still uncultured.

Some of that is true, but what is less known to the
Irish is the downfall of their own glory by an internecine
strife in which the English had no part, when their own
"kings" — at one time no less than sixty — fought against
one another until the island was laid waste and its people
reduced to misery by the incessant raids and ravagings,
burnings and slaughterings, of rival clans.

"Why did the English ever go to Ireland? Who
asked them to go, anyway .f*" shouted a voice from the
gallery of a hall in New York when I was lecturing there,
and not to score a point, but as a fact of history, I gave
the answer that the English went at the request of Pope
Adrian IV, in the reign of Henry II, "to check the tide
of crime, to restore Christian worship, and to reform
the manners of the people," as he wrote in his papal
bull. But, as I admitted to the New York audience,
also in the interests of truth and history, the advent of
the English and their subsequent acts did not give the
world, or the Irish, an object lesson in good manners. Our
manners were disgusting, and our methods abominable.

They were Normans rather than English who went to
Ireland with the consent of Henry II, and they parceled
out Ireland, after fierce fights with the Irish chieftains,
very much as their predecessors had invaded and par-
titioned England in the time of William the Conqueror.
But there was always a territory which the Norman chiefs
in Ireland never penetrated, and in this country "be-
yond the pale," as it was called, the Irish kept to their
own customs and laws until they captured their conquer-
ors by the beauty of their women, and many of the Nor-
man invaders, like the Geraldines, became "more Irish
than the Irish."

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It was in the sixteenth century, during the reign of
Henry VH, that EngHsh law began to press heavily
upon the Irish people, and that was due to the policy
of the Anglo-Irish chieftains who supported the two
impostors, Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel, in
their claim to the English crown. In retaliation,
Tudor Henry sent over a strong army under Sir Edward
Poynings, and at Drogheda he forced the Irish Parlia-
ment to pass a measure called Poyning's Act, which
declared that all Enghsh laws should have force in
Ireland and that all legislation in the Irish Parliament
should be confined to measures which had first been
approved by the King and the Privy Council in England.
That was really the beginning of the long and desperate
struggle between the Irish and the English peoples.
Always there have been patriots in Ireland to raise
revolt against the power and practice of that Act, always
the ruling caste in England has endeavored to enforce
its authority, though its very name was forgotten except
by lawyers and historians.

The story of that beginning is forgotten in Ireland
itself, but they still remember the heroic O'Neills who
defied the English right to rule in Ireland, and the
bloody massacres by Elizabeth's Earl of Essex, who was
sent to suppress their uprisings.

A fatal thing, the worst of all for England as for
Ireland, happened when the Stuarts followed the
Tudors. It was under James I that Ireland, weak after
long strife, was first colonized by Scottish and Protes-
tant settlers in Ulster, whose numbers were increased,
after a massacre in 1641 by Irish CathoHcs, when Oliver
Cromwell came over to revenge himself for the Irish
support of Charles I, and to crush their claim to inde-
pendence under another O'Neill. By that colonization
of Ulster, Ireland became no longer one people, but two
peoples, divided in race, in religion, in every strain of

276

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

temperament, in every political tradition. It was the
sowing of dragon's teeth in Ireland.

OUver and his Roundheads killed the Irish CathoHcs
with the joy of religious fanaticism, and the deeds they
did in the name of the Lord are remembered with the
sweat of agony in Irish blood. Oliver had his own plan
to end all Irish trouble. It was to fill the island with
more Scots and English, and transport the Irish to
penal settlements beyond the sea, where most of them
might die. In some measure his plan was fulfilled.
Connaught alone was made into a reservation for the
Irish, into which thousands of them were driven like
cattle, and Irish women and girls were shipped off to
slavery in the West Indies. It was a crime that cried
out to God for vengeance, and Sinn Fein has remembered
it after three centuries. What is one of the miracles
of history is the survival of the Irish spirit and of their
race and faith. With one brief respite in the reign of
James II, for whom they rose when he lost the English
crown, and then the Irish harp, at the battle of the
Boyne, the policy of Protestant England for those three
hundred years or so was to kill Catholicism in Ireland,
and destroy the Catholic Irish, if not by physical ex-
termination, at least by causing the death of their trade,
their industries, their political power, their racial spirit,
their language, their laws, and their religion.

William III enacted the penal laws which in successive
reigns ruled out a Catholic Irishman from all human
dignity. No Catholic was allowed to sit in the Irish
Parliament (whose privileges were constantly reduced),
nor to have any voice in making the laws of his own
land, nor to hold any public office. His priests were
hunted like vermin from hovel to hovel, and killed when
caught. No Irishman, as late as the nineteenth cen-
tury, could own a horse worth more than five pounds,

and any Protestant enemy might demand it from him

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

on payment of that sum. The Irish peasantry were
the serfs of English, or Anglo-Irish, landlords — worse,
indeed, than slaves, who are well fed by their owners,
for they had to scrape their own livelihood out of plots
they hired at a rental beyond their means, and were
dispossessed of the land if they could not pay their
rents, increased remorselessly if the value of the land
went up owing to their industry and their improvements.

So great was the misery of the people, and yet so won-
derful their spirit, so infamous was the injustice of
English rule which deHberately destroyed Irish industry
lest it should compete with English trade, that even
the Protestant members of the Irish Parliament, like
Henry Grattan, revolted against the suppression of the
Catholics and voted for their emancipation. It was at
the time of the American War of Independence, and
Grattan was supported by a large number of Irish
volunteers who had enrolled themselves as a defense
force against American attack. Under the pressure of
this movement, the British government agreed to pass
an Act of Catholic emancipation, but George HI, with
the Catholic bogey always in his mad old mind, took
fright, at the eleventh hour, and refused his assent. It
was then that the volunteers, who had been a loyal
force, under the name of United Irishmen, turned to
rebellion. In the time of the French Revolution they
made overtures to Napoleon to help them in their cause,
as a century later, without the same excuse, another
body of Irishmen turned to Germany for the same kind
of aid. A French fleet was wrecked by storms, and
the United Irishmen were crushed by Sir Ralph Aber-
crombie with his English redcoats in a bloody and ruth-
less way.

278

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

In 1782, before the outburst of that rebellion, but
when there was a demand for coercive measures against
the Irish volunteers, Charles James Fox warned the
British government of the danger of such policy, and
the liberality and wisdom of his words might have rung
in the ears of British Ministers when, after a hundred
and thirty years, history repeated itself.

The Irish, finding that they had nothing to expect
in the British House of Commons from the justice of
their demands, found resources in themselves; they
armed; their Parliament spoke out; and the very next
year, the same Minister who had before put a negative
on all their expectations, came down to the House and
made the amende honorable for his past conduct, gave
to the demands of an armed people infinitely more than
he had refused to the modest application of an unarmed,
humble nation. Such had been the conduct of the
then Minister and his colleagues; and this was the les-
son which the Irish had been taught: "If you want
anything, seek for it not unarmed and humbly, but
take up arms and speak manfully and boldly to the
British Ministry, and you will obtain more than at
first you might have ventured to expect."

This was the consequence, said Fox, of the ill use
of the superintending power of the British Parliament,
which had made millions of subjects rise against a Power
which they felt only as a scourge. At the same time
Fox made it plain that he yielded to the demands of
the Irish for the right to legislate for themselves with-
out interference because he believed them to be founded
on justice, and not because they were demanded with
the force of arms :

"He must be a shallow politician who would resort
to such means (those taken in the war with America)
to enforce obedience to laws which were odious to those
whom they were made to bind." For his part, he would

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rather see Ireland totally separated from the Crown of
England than kept in obedience only by force. Un-
willing subjects were little better than enemies; it
would be better not to have subjects at all than to have
such as would be continually on the watch to seize the
opportunity of making themselves free. If this country
should attempt to coerce Ireland, and succeed in the
attempt, the consequence would be that, at the breaking
out of war with every foreign Power, the first step
must be to send troops over to secure Ireland instead
of calling upon her to give a willing support to the
common cause. . . . He desired to look forward to
that happy period when Ireland should experience the
blessings that attend freedom of trade and constitution;
when by the richness and fertility of her soil, the indus-
try of her manufacturers, and the increase of her popu-
lation she should become a powerful country. Then
might England look for powerful assistance in seamen
to man her fleets, and soldiers to fight her battles.
England renouncing all right to legislate for Ireland, the
latter would more cordially support the former as a
friend whom she loved. If this country, on the other
hand, was to assume the powers of making laws for
Ireland, she must only make an enemy instead of a
friend; for where there was not a community of inter-
ests, and a mutual regard for those interests, there the
party whose interests were sacrificed became an enemy.

After the failure of the Irish rebellion, Pitt and his
agents set to work to unite Ireland and England under
one legislature, and they found bribery an easy way.
By payments of money, and land, and places, the Irish
votes in the Dublin Parliam.ent were bought in numbers
sufficient to pass the Act of Union.

It was an Act which Mr. Gladstone said "was carried
by means so indescribably foul and vile that it can have
no moral title to existence whatever."

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THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

And, as Lecky wrote: "In a country where the sen-
timent of nationality was as intense as in any part of
Europe, it destroyed the national legislature contrary
to the manifest wish of the people, and by means so
corrupt, treacherous, and shameful that they are never
likely to be forgotten. The Union of 1800 was not only
a great crime, but, like most crimes — a great blunder."

After that, in the beginning of the industrial era of
England, the work of ruin in Ireland was completed
by "Cutthroat Castlereagh" and the manufacturing
interests in the English House of Commons, who put
up tariff walls against Irish industries, so blockading
the commercial life of that unhappy island. Catholic
emancipation was gained at last by the renewal of
revolt under Daniel O'Connell, to which George IV
yielded on the advice of the Duke of Wellington, who
said he "wanted no more war," but the spiritual relief of
the victory was overwhelmed by the agony of another
tragedy in Irish history — the great famine of 1845.

I fell into trouble in America by saying that the
English were not responsible at least for that act of
nature, which was caused by the blight of the potato
crop, upon which the main bulk of the people lived. And
perhaps my critics were right in saying that, though we
did not cause the blight, the famine itself would not
have come if the Irish people had not been reduced to
such a single source of Ufe by our brutahties. Indeed,
they were right. We cannot even claim that as com-
fort to our conscience. It was a chapter as terrible as
anything in human history. Thousands perished of
starvation and disease. They fell dead on the roadsides,
and children like living skeletons climbed about the
corpses of their mothers until they too died. One
woman went mad and ate her own child. The Irish
people fled from their own island as though it were
plague-stricken, as indeed it was. They crowded into
19 281

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

any kind of vessel which would carry them to America,
and many died in the holds before they could reach the
promised land. The tide of emigration which then
began ceased only for a spell when war broke out in
1914, and the population of Ireland dwindled down in
every decade, as these figures show:

1841 8,170,000

1851 6,sss,ooo

1861 5,790,000

1871 5,410,000

1881 5,170,000

1891 4,700,000

1901 4,450,000

1911 4,390,000

The figures for 1 921 will perhaps never be known, for
the Census was opposed by Sinn Fein. It is certain,
however, that they show an increase over 191 1, on
account of the ban upon emigration by the leaders of
the Irish Republican Army, who wished to retain Irish
youth for their guerrilla warfare.

These figures of depopulation tell a tragic tale, yet
the significance of them is exaggerated by Irish writers,
for if there had been no famine, the lure of America
would have led to a great emigration from a Httle island
not large enough to support its population after inten-
sive agriculture had been replaced by cattle farming
after the repeal of the corn laws. Nevertheless, in its
first phase it was due to famine.

What is the use of raking up that old, old history.? . . .
Because unless we remind ourselves from time to
time of its leading facts, we cannot begin to under-
stand the things that have happened in these recent
years. What I have told in a few pages is but the
outline of the story which in Ireland is celebrated in all
its details of horror — and they are horrible — written

282

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

and rewritten, read and reread in history books and
romances, told and retold with wrath, and tears, and
pity, and pride (pride in the Irish spirit of resistance,
its unbreakable spirit through the centuries), in every
Irish school, among every Irish group of "intellectuals,"
and by every Irish priest. All that black drama is in
the background of the Irish mind, as a tradition stronger
than all modern influence, as a national heritage of the
soil which inspires all their folk songs, and as a passion
which may burn low at times but is ready to flame up
again when the embers are stirred.

It burned low, that old passion of remembrance, some
years before the war. There was almost a chance of
its dying out at the end of the last century, when the
Irish peasants were doing well and liberty was no longer
outraged. But at that very time of increasing prosperity
there was a renaissance of Irish culture, which began to
stir up the embers — poets like W. B. Yeats and George
Russell, historians hke Barry O'Brien and Gavin Duffy,
and a group of brilliant young men, both Protestant
and Catholic, called back to the past and summoned
up its ghosts. At first it was a purely literary move-
ment. The Gaelic League was started to revive the
Irish language and literature. Irish literary societies
were estabhshed in many cities. Irish art and music,
from the tenth century onward, were rediscovered and
made popular. All that intellectual activity, not
rebellious in its purpose, brilliant and scholarly in its
expression, accepted with sympathy and enthusiasm by
English students, was a new flowering time of the Irish
spirit, reveahng anew its wonderful endurance and its
great sources of inspiration. But it awakened the old
national instincts, and opened the old wounds so that
they bled afresh.

Another thing happened, not without tragic con-
sequences in the future. The Irish priesthood had

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

formerly received its training outside Ireland, in Eng-
land, in France, and other countries, where these young
men, the sons of small Irish farmers for the most part,
broadened their vision of life, and realized that Ireland
was not the only country in the world nor the one which
had all the troubles. But the Catholic hierarchy
established Maynooth as the training college for Irish
priests and it became the training ground also for Sinn
Fein. For there, in an Irish atmosphere, among Irish
books, meeting none but Irish minds, these candidates
for the priesthood were closed in from the outside world
and became intensely national and introspective. The
woes of Ireland in the past worked in their brains.
The glory of Ireland a thousand years ago was their
starting point in historical vision. The martyrdom of
Catholic Ireland in the days of the penal laws fired them
with their own faith and enthusiasm. The crimes of
England burned also in their hearts again, and in their
narrow sphere of life they could not dissociate the past
from the present in their view of English character.
Those young men became the parish priests of Ireland,
the teachers in the schools, the leaders of every Httle
group of adult scholars, the chairmen of political meet-
ings, and the dominating influence in social and rehgious
life of rural districts. It was they above all who re-
vived old memories and, with them, their bitterness and
their hate. Afterward, when Sinn Fein replaced the
old Nationalists and raised the Republican flag, it was
the priests from Maynooth who gave a spiritual sanc-
tion to the guerrilla war, inflamed the ardors of Irish
boys, comforted the wounded and the prisoners, ab-
solved those condemned to execution, and promised
the crown of martyrdom to those who died for Ireland's
sake. It was no harder for them to reconcile their
faith in Christ with this way of warfare than for our
own chaplains to reconcile theirs with the endless killing

284

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

of Germans — though how it was done in either case was
hard to understand by many simple men who beheved
that Christ's message was one of peace and charity
rather than war and hate, at least among people who
professed to worship the same God.

The intensity with which the Irish mind has been
fixed upon the tragedy of Irish history has a morbid
effect not unlike the "persecution mania" of advanced
melancholia. To hear an Irishman talk of all the woes
of the distressful isle, one might imagine that other
people — and especially the English — enjoyed full liberty
of self-government, a human code of laws, and great
material prosperity throughout those centuries when
Ireland was under the tyranny of a despotic Power,
miserably impoverished, and crushed by the brutality
of the penal laws. Nothing can ever excuse the abomi-
nable treatment of Ireland by English kings and states-
men prior to the Victorian era, and I shall write nothing
to whitewash that black injustice, but the Irish people
should broaden the horizon of their imagination by a
wider knowledge of world history, including that of
England. At the time when Catholics in Ireland
were being hunted for their faith, there was no mercy to
Catholics in England. Their priests were chased,
tortured, and killed, and by unrelenting severity the
old faith was destroyed throughout the length and
breadth of the land. The peasants of England were
hardly better than serfs, and had no land of their own,
but were the hired men of the tenant farmers, paid
wretched wages and thrust into miserable hovels.
Even as late as the year of the last European war the
farm laborers of Somersetshire and many parts of
England were paid no more than fourteen shillings a
week, upon which they had to keep their families. As
for liberty, it needed a long and desperate struggle
before the English masses were able to vote as free men

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and to share in the making of the laws which governed
them. Chartist riots, the "Peterloo" massacre, the
threat and fear of revolutions in the early nineteenth
century, preceded the granting of the franchise to the
working classes. In the industrial era which followed
the invention of the steam engine and the "spinning
jenny," it is doubtful whether the life of Irish peasants
in the poorest parts of Connaught, and in the worst
period of English misrule and cruelty, was not prefer-
able by far to that of the factory hands in such towns as
Manchester, Bolton, Oldham, Wigan, and Sheffield.
The Irish peasant, if he did not die in the famine of '45,
lived at least a human Hfe, under God's free sky. He
preserved his manhood and dignity of soul, and his
women and children kept their beauty and grace. But
in the industrial towns of England, men and women and
little children endured a w^orse form of slavery than that
of ancient Rome, suffered more cruelty in their bodies
and souls, and were stunted and made inhuman by the
hardships and filthy conditions of their Hfe. They
worked fourteen hours and more a day in overcrowded
and insanitary mills, without sufficient hght and air
for human beings, and their children were made slaves
of the machines and werea bominably ill used before
they had known the first joys of childhood or any kind
of joy. Their hovels were worse than Irish hovels,
more foul, more pestilential, and the hard-faced manu-
facturers of the North and Midlands were more cruel
taskmasters than the Anglo-Irish landlords, who in
many cases were kindly and easy-going men. Where
was the liberty of the English folk in the eighteenth
century? It is our ignorance of history which pretends
they had the right or power to govern themselves. They
were ruled, brutally, by the same people who made
the tragedy of Ireland. The Irish penal laws were
infamous. So also were the penal laws of England in

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that cruel century of history which preceded the Act of
Union, and afterward.

As I write, I have by my side a document which I
picked up by hazard in the Old Bailey of London,
before a new Court of Justice replaced the former
building. It reveals in a blinding Ught the social state
of England in the Napoleonic era. It is a list of one
hundred convicts ''embarked on board the Morly for
New South Wales from the Dolphin Hulk at Chatham,
this 29th day of July 1829, pursuant to the Right Honour-
able Robert Peel's order of the 15th day of July 1829."
Most of the men were under middle age, many of them
young boys, and all of them were sentenced to terms
varying from fourteen years to penal servitude for life
and transportation to Botany Bay, for petty crimes
which now would be dealt with under the First Offend-
ders Act, without imprisonment.

Thomas Cook, a boy of fifteen, gets a life sentence
(which in many cases meant a death sentence, as all
know who have read the story of those prison ships on
their way to Australia) — for stealing an apron.

Peter Haigh, eighteen years of age, is sentenced to
penal servitude for life for stealing a piece of printed
cotton.

For stealing a candlestick, Thomas Porter, sixteen
j'^ears of age, is sentenced to fourteen years and trans-
portation. For stealing a piece of worsted, James
JefFeries, aged seventeen, is sentenced to fourteen years
and transportation; and so on throughout the list. For
breaking a threshing machine (in the time of the machin-
ery riots); for stealing handkerchiefs, or bread when
they were starving, girls, as well as boys, were sentenced
to death and hanged in batches as late as the early
nineteenth century, in Merrie England. Looking back
upon that time, I fancy Ireland was a happier isle in
spite of all her misery. It was a cruel time everywhere

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and until recent years most of us believed that we had
got beyond it, to an age of greater human kindness.
But the European war, and history that has happened
afterward, spoiled that illusion, with many others.

When all is said and done, England used the enhghten-
ment that came to her in happier times, to make amends
in Ireland. Liberal thought in England did at last
prevail as our people struggled forward to greater liberty
of their own, and at last regained it. The Irish are not
grateful, and pretend that we have behaved always
toward them with the same intolerance and the same
selfishness, but that is not the verdict of impartial his-
tory. The series of Land Acts which have enabled
the Irish peasantry to possess their own soil by means
of English credits were generous in their inspiration
and beneficent in their result. Nor is it true to say, as
Irish writers say, that those concessions were forced
upon the House of Commons by the power of the
Nationahst votes, for though Mr. Gladstone's first
Home Rule bill of 1 886 may have been influenced by
that thought, the great Land Act of 1903 was passed by
a Parliament in which Unionists were in a great majority
over Liberals and Nationalists combined.

The story of the land in Ireland is, of course, the key
to many of her historical troubles, from the time the
Normans seized most of it, and the best of it, from the
Irish chieftains. Throughout the centuries the people
were mainly agricultural, and it was the repeal of the
Corn Laws in the middle of the nineteenth century
which diminished wheat-growing in Ireland (as well
as in England) and changed it to a cattle-raising
country. This had an immense effect upon the small

288

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

tenant farmers, for the landlords desired to get rid of
them from their holdings, in order to increase the pas-
ture land. Evictions took place with pitiable scenes,
and, unable to get work in factories like the English
peasants who were also pushed off the land, their only
chance was emigration to the United States. That,
as well as the famine, was, as I have said, the cause of
the human tide flowing from Ireland to America.

It was in 1870 that a first attempt was made to reform
the miserable land system of Ireland, and the tenant
was recognized in a limited way as part owner of the
soil on which he labored. Later, in 1881, Mr. Gladstone
still further improved the status of the Irish tenant
farmer by an Act known as the Three F's — Fair Rent,
Free Sale, and Fixity of Tenure. But the beginning
of prosperity in Ireland was made a reality by the Land
Acts of 1 891 and 1905, founded by George Wyndham,
a descendant of the Irish Geraldines and a brilliant,
sympathetic man, under Mr. Balfour's administration,
enabling tenants to purchase their holdings on money
advanced by the British government to a special Land
Stock, bearing interest at 2^ per cent. Compulsory
powers of purchase were given to the commissions
appointed to administer these Acts, so that landlords
could not refuse to part with their soil when it was
desperately needed.

The total amount of money advanced by us for land
purchase in Ireland from 1870 to 1919 was a hun-
dred and five and a half million pounds— an immense
amount of money, even now when our minds have
been stunned by the grotesque figures of war debts.
Nor were the Irish people asked to pay a higher interest
when by war exhaustion England was forced to beg and
borrow. While we were raising loans at 6 per cent,
we were lending to Ireland at less than 3 per cent.
In addition to the hundred and five and a half miUions

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mentioned above, we advanced nearly five million
pounds to the Irish rural district councils for the build-
ing of laborers' cottages.

The world ought to know these facts, and that is
why I am writing them — in case a few people in the
world may read them. For it is fair and just to say
that the English people had made some amends at least,
not inconsiderable, not ungenerous, for their bad treat-
ment of Ireland, and that in material prosperity as well
as in the affairs of local government they were already
a world away from the misery that followed the famine
of '45. This cannot be disputed with any honesty by
Irish writers. It is undeniable, and confirmed by many
of their own leaders. Take, for instance, words spoken
by John Redmond, a year after the beginning of the
Great War. Though he lost favor with his own people
before dying with a broken heart, no Irishman, if he has
any honesty, will deny that he was a great patriot and a
great gentleman, whose whole life was devoted to the
country he loved. It was John Redmond who made
the following statement in Australia, comparing the
condition of Ireland with what it was thirty years
earlier.

I went to Australia to make an appeal on behalf of an enslaved,
famine-hunted, despairing people, a people in the throes of semi-
revolution, bereft of all political liberties and engaged in a life-and-
death struggle with the system of a most brutal and drastic coercion.
Only thirty-three or thirty-four years have passed since then, but
what a revolution has occurred in the interval. To-day the people,
broadly speaking, own the soil; to-day the laborers live in decent
habitations; to-day there is absolute freedom in the local government
and the local taxation of the country; to-day we have the widest
Parliament in the municipal franchise; to-day we know that the
evicted tenants who are the wounded soldiers of the land war have
been restored to their homes, or to other homes as good as those
from which they had been originally driven. We know that the
congested districts, the scene of some of the most awful horrors of

290

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

the old famine days, have been transformed, that the farms have been
enlarged, decent dwellings have been provided, and a new spirit of
hope and independence is to-day among the people. We know
that in the towns legislation has been passed facilitating the housing
of the working classes. So far as the town tenants are concerned,
we have this consolation, that we have passed for Ireland an Act
whereby they are protected against arbitrary eviction, and are given
compensation not only for disturbance from their homes, but for
the good-will of the business they had created, a piece of legislation
far in advance of anything obtained for the town tenants of England.
I may add, far in advance of any legislation obtained for the town
tenants of any other country. We know that we have at least won
educational freedom in university education for most of the youth
of Ireland, and we know that in primary and standard education the
thirty-four years that have passed have witnessed an enormous
advance in efficiency and in the means provided for bringing effi-
ciency about. To-day we have a system of old-age pensions in Ire-
land whereby every old man and woman over seventy is saved from
the workhouse, free to spend their last days in comparative comfort.
We have a system of national industrial insurance which provides
for the health of the people and makes it impossible for the poor
hard-working man and woman, when sickness comes to the door,
to be carried away to the workhouse hospital, and makes it certain
that they will receive decent, Christian treatment during their
illness.

In her material, and, indeed, in her spiritual state,
Ireland, therefore, was no longer wretched and down-
trodden, but well fed, gaining in wealth, with a sense
of well-being. So it was before the war; and after the
War, and throughout the war, Ireland was prosperous as
few other countries, and suffered none of the privations
which came to England. At a time when middle-class
English households were strictly rationed, when middle-
class Enghsh mothers were standing in long queues in
the dark, wet days, to get their allowances of meat or
groceries, when milk was difficult to get for babes,
when butter could not be got, and eggs had disappeared,
the Irish folk had all these good things in rich abun-

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

dance. Their imports jumped up, from seventy-three
miUion pounds sterling in 1914, to a hundred and twenty-
six million pounds in 191 8, and their exports from
seventy-seven million pounds sterling in 1914 to a
hundred and fifty-two millions in 1918. In 1916 the
value of cattle and beef exported from Ireland to Great
Britain far exceeded the value imported from any other
country. From Ireland it amounted to £20,580,000;
from the Argentine, £12,785,000, and from the United
States, £3,520,000. As an exporter of bacon, hams,
pork, and pigs, Ireland stood second to the United
States. Her exports of poultry and eggs to Great
Britain were higher than those from any other country.
In butter she stood second to Denmark, and in oats
third to the United States and the Argentine. Her in-
crease in private wealth during the years of war is shown
to some extent by the Irish Bank deposits, which were
£61,955,000 in 1914, and £91,361,000 in 1917.

Nobody in England begrudges Ireland this advance
in prosperity. It does not pay back for centuries of
poverty due to misrule, and for many extortions of
Anglo-Irish lords and gentlemen. But at least it is a
proof that the evil regime had ended and that Ireland
was well on the road to national welfare. They had no
need to whine about their misery, for they were not
miserable.

I, for one, however, understand that material well-
being is not the greatest thing in Ufe, and that the
satisfaction of national sentiment, racial pride, liberty
of self-government, are desires of the human heart
stronger and nobler, if nobly expressed, than wealth
or comfort. The Irish were still denied their old claim
to rule themselves as a separate people, and material
progress did not weaken, but rather strengthened, their
passion for political liberty; and the European war,
which intensified all ideals, hopes, fears, hatreds, and

292

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

other emotions of men and women in the whole world,
caused a profound stirring up of passion in Ireland.

Before this happened, other things had happened
which were fatal links in the chain of Irish tragedy. A
Home Rule Act (limited and imperfect, it is true) had
at last been placed upon the statute book, after more
than half a century of pohtical strife, and Ulster had
refused to acknowledge it.

The history of that half century of struggle in the
House of Commons by a solid block of Irish members,
under leaders Hke Parnell and Redmond, preceding
that Act by Asquith's government, is too long and
complicated to summarize, and is anyhow the record
of a dismal and depressing drama. The Irish Nation-
alists had to fight against a dead weight of English
prejudice throughout the Victorian era, which seemed
invincible in its smugness and self-complacency, un-
breakable in its intolerance and arrogance. The Queen
herself symbolized, in a royal way, the narrow bigotry
of the English middle class, which only broadened and
mellowed to Liberal ideas when the Education Act of
1870 and other enlightening influences had begun to
operate. The new imperialism of the Cecil Rhodes
type, popularized by Kipling, made a political creed
by Chamberlain, helped later to create an atmosphere
of intolerance toward Irish claims for self-government.
Religious prejudice acted also against Irish interests,
for the Protestant cry of "No Popery" still had power
to stir popular passion and to raise votes against any
concessions to a Catholic people, lest Home Rule should
spell Rome Rule, with the Inquisition at work again,
with new Bartholomew massacres, with Jesuits in dis-
guise conspiring against the Protestant Crown, and

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

with all the bogeys which still lurked in the memory
of Puritan England from the days when the Catholic
Church was regarded as "The Scarlet Woman" and
"The Whore of Babylon."

Gradually that rehgious bigotry was softened by
many influences which broke the spell of Victorianism
— on one side the Oxford Movement, with its return to
Catholic mysticism; on the other side the wave of
agnosticism reflected in such popular books as Robert
Elsmere by Mrs. Humphry Ward, the progress of
science, and a wider knowledge of history. The group
of Irish members in the House of Commons were defeated
decade after decade by that solid wall of prejudice still
existing in the mass psychology of mid-Victorian
England; and their own faction fights, their utter dis-
regard of English sensibilities, their own fanaticism, and
the Celtic temperament which no Englishman could
even dimly apprehend, destroyed their political strategy
time and time again. Not even Gladstone's oratory,
the fire of his spirit, his wizard spell over the imagina-
tion of Liberal minds, could break down the sinister
fears which belonged to the old Conservative instincts
of the English people in their dealings with CathoHc
Ireland. Yet by a curious paradox, due to a privilege
of caste stronger than religious sympathy, the English
Catholics of the old aristocracy were as bitterly hostile
to Irish Home Rule as the Protestants of the most
Puritan type.

One fatality dogged the efforts of the Irish Nation-
alists to obtain victory by political pressure. Over
and over again their chances were spoiled by the acts
of crime committed by secret gangs in Ireland. Im-
patient of political strategy, stirred by passionate
incitements of Irish exiles in America, young Irishmen
adopted terrorism as their weapon, and always it was
double-edged, hurting their own cause most. The

294

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

hedgerow murders and sinister conspiracies of Moon-
lighters and Fenians hardened the EngHsh mind against
any measure of Home Rule, made them stubborn against
a plea for Hberty by a people who used American dollars
to organize assassination, cattle maiming, and boy-
cotting.

Another source of anger and of political hatred against
the Irish Nationalists was the manner in which their
block in the House of Commons used their voting powers
as a threat or as a bribe to English political parties.
The Irish vote could turn out a government or wreck a
bill which had nothing to do with Irish interests, and
with relentless strategy the Irish leaders made use of
this power whenever it suited their purpose, utterly
indifferent to the welfare of the English people. That,
at least, was a nagging thought among our politicians,
though it is doubtful whether the Irish party thwarted
any important measures which lay outside the interests
of Ireland. Be that as it may, there were many people
who cried out to be rid of that hostile, alien group on
the Irish benches, with their cynical wit and mocking
laughter, so that we ourselves might enjoy Home Rule
for England.

It was John Redmond, as leader of the Nationalists,
who at last succeeded in securing a majority in the House
of Commons for Irish Home Rule, so winning victory,
it seemed, after the long and uphill struggle.

That was after something like a political revolution
in England, which, with the help of the Irish votes, had
destroyed the veto of the House of Lords by pressure
brought to bear upon the King to create sufficient peers
to overthrow them if they did not surrender their own
power. They surrendered at the eleventh hour, and as
one of the first fruits of victory for the Liberals in the
Commons, the Home Rule bill became law. But two
things happened to spill these fruits out of the basket

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

of hope. One was the menace of civil war, the other
was the coming of the Great War.

VII

Looking back at the recent horrors in Ireland, it
seems to me, and to most men I know, unless they are
blinded by passion, that they are directly due to what
happened in Ulster before the passing of the Home Rule
bill. What happened there was the raking up of old
passions and bigotries by men like Carson and F. E.
Smith (who is now Lord Birkenhead and Lord Chan-
cellor of England), and the public organization of a
rebel army whose avowed purpose was to resist an Act
of ParUament by force of arms, to defy the King's
authority, and, if need be, the King's troops. It is
true that they proclaimed their loyalty, but one banner
which flaunted across a Belfast street was not con-
vincing in its patriotism. It said, "We would rather
be ruled by the Kaiser than by the Pope of Rome."
In view of what happened on August 4, 1914, that refer-
ence to the Kaiser was at least unfortunate. It is also
hard now to remember that the rifles which were smug-
gled into Ulster for the arming of the volunteers were
mostly of German manufacture.

I saw a good deal of Belfast in those days, and what
I saw I did not like. I saw an ugly intolerance of mind
among the leaders of the Orange lodges toward their
fellow Irishmen of Catholic faith, which startled me
by its mingled quality of sheer brutality and religious
fanaticism. One decade of the twentieth century
had passed (and the European war had not yet come
with new revelations of human cruelty), yet in this era
of enlightenment and civilization men of good stand-
ing, ministers of religion, great lawyers of the English
bar were talking stufi^ which might have been uttered,

296

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

in better language, by Oliver Cromwell himself — stuff
belonging to the old, dark bigotries of the Thirty Years*
War or the Rise of the Dutch Republic; stuff of igno-
rance, of hatred, and of cruelty which left me aghast,
because I believed we had passed beyond all that. This
verbosity of intolerance was translated into acts, as I
saw with my own eyes in back streets of Belfast and in
the neighborhood of Queen's Island, where Protestant
laborers fell upon Catholic workingmen and kicked
them to death, or bruised and battered them so that
the hospitals were busy with these casualties. At that
time, anyhow, the Catholic Irish were not the aggres-
sors, nor in places where there were Protestant minori-
ties did they take vengeance by reprisals.

In March of 1914 a large consignment of arms was
landed at Larne without let or hindrance from govern-
ment officials, thereby persuading John Redmond to
encourage recruiting of his own volunteers. But when
in July the Irish volunteers tried to distribute arms
they were opposed by troops who afterward fired on an
unarmed crowd in Dubhn.

After the swearing of the "Covenant," the drilling
of battalions, and the establishment of a "Provisional
Government" by the Ulster leaders, there happened
the incident at the Curragh when Gough and other
cavalry officers gave clear notice that they would refuse
to obey orders if they were called upon to disarm the
Ulster volunteers. If any man was a rebel, Carson was
a rebel. If any body of men were conspiring with armed
forces to defeat the authority of the Crown and Parlia-
ment, those men were the Ulster volunteers. Yet no
action was taken against Sir Edward Carson or his
riflemen, though a search was made for arm.s in southern
Ireland when the Catholics raised their own volunteers
in defense of the threats of war by Ulster.

The Great War came, and for a time washed out all

2U 297

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

smaller strife in a sea of blood. The cavalry officers of
the Curragh camp went out first of all to meet the Uhlans
of Germany. Irishmen of north and south, Protestants
and Catholics, offered themselves to defend their
country against the common enemy.

"I say to the government," proclaimed John Red-
mond, "that they may to-morrow withdraw every one
of their troops from Ireland. Ireland will be defended
by her armed sons from invasion, and for that purpose
the armed Catholics in the south will be only too glad to
join with the armed Protestant Ulster men."

It was the great chance to end the historic feud be-
tween Great Britain and Ireland. Greater men than
we had would have seized it, calling upon the heroic
spirit of Ireland, with a full and fair pledge of self-govern-
ment as a sister nation. Instead, pettifogging minds
at the War Office got to work, ignoring or thwarting all
plans of Irish recruiting in the south and west, and
playing up to Ulster as the only "loyalists." The
Catholic Irish wanted to fight in their own brigades,
under their own flag, and with their priests as chaplains.
Why not, in God's name? Instead, Irish volunteers
were drafted into English battalions, Irish gentlemen
were not allowed to command their own men. All
offers of raising bodies of Irish youth were discouraged.
Even Lloyd George admitted afterward that he was
aghast at the methods adopted toward Irish recruiting,
and confessed that it seemed as if "malignancy" had
been at work. He did not add that those sinister in-
fluences were the work of his own colleagues.

The first fires of enthusiasm were damped down, and
died out. They were put clean out for the Catholic
Irish when Sir Edward Carson, their avowed enemy, the
leader of the Ulster volunteers, the rebel, was made a
Cabinet Minister, with a seat in the War Council. It
seemed to them a deliberate affront, a public declaration

298

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

of partisanship with those who had sworn to resist
Home Rule. On our side it was a colossal blunder,
Worse than a crime, and showed an ignorance of Irish
psychology only equal to the German ignorance of
our own.

Meanwhile a hundred thousand Catholic Irish were
fighting for the liberty of civilization and for the safety
of Great Britain. At first they believed that they were
fighting also for the liberty of their own little isle, but
gradually that belief left them and they w^ere sadder
and wiser men. Yet they went on fighting, gallantly,
desperately, in the Dardanelles, on the western front,
in Palestine, cut off from their own folk, reinforced by
drafts from EngHsh battalions, commanded by ojfficers
not of their faith or race.

I was often with the troops of the i6th Irish Divi-
sion in France and Planders, because I wanted to give
them what honor I could, by recording their valor and
their loyalty at a time when they felt isolated from their
own folk and from ours. They played their pipes for
me in old French barns outside of Arras, and these
Irish lads made whimsical jokes about the Jerry boys,
as they called the Germans, and about their way of
life and death. I remember one boy sitting in the straw
below the rafters of a barn, who told me in a fine brogue
that the place swarmed with rats who sat up on their
hind legs and sang "God save Ireland" — "And sure,"
he said, "it's the truth I'm after telling you!" I saw
them go into battle at Guillemont and Guinchy "when
the Jerry boys ran so fast you couldn't see their tails
for dust," and come out again across the shell-ravaged
fields through the roar of guns, with all their officers
gone, and sergeants or corporals leading little groups of
tired, staggering men who were the few that were left
out of the strong companies that had marched into that
hell on earth. I stood by the side of their brigadier,

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

not an Irishman, but a lover of these boys in his com-
mand, and the tears ran down his face as he shouted
words of praise to them.

"Bravo, Connaughts! Bravo, Munsters! You did
damn well, Dublins!"

At the sight of him standing there, at those words of
his, they pulled themselves up, turned eyes left, were
glad of this tribute to a heroism not surpassed in the
"war to end war," as we called it in our simplicity.

The Irish division did not get a fair deal. It was
left in the trenches month after month, shifted from
one part of the line to another, without a rest, and in
August of 1917, in Flanders, up against the German
pill boxes at "Beck House" and "Borry Farm" it was
just a massacre. They were alongside the Ulster men,
who shared their sacrifice, and with whom they were
comrades, forgetful, there, in France and Flanders, of
political and religious feuds, but Irishmen together.
Left for three weeks in ditches of death, under a cease-
less storm of German gunfire, each of these two Irish
divisions lost nearly two thousand men and over a
hundred and fifty oflScers before they were sent "over
the top" in a great assault. And then without mercy
for their losses they were pushed into a battle which
cost them another two thousand men for each division,
and almost the last of their officers. Some of their
battahons lost 64, and even 66 per cent of their
fighting strength. Some companies were almost anni-
hilated. It was not war. It was a murder of men
who fought to the extreme limits of human heroism
in impossible conditions and in obedience to outrageous
orders.

For General Hickey, their divisional commander, I
had a warm regard. He had a charming Irish way
and was proud of his men, but I think he failed in getting

fair play for them and allowed them to be used too

300

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

ruthlessly by our High Command. Both divisions
were remade by scraping up drafts of men from conva-
lescent camps and from English depots. In the German
offensive of 191 8 they were holding the line in the Fifth
Army front, and fought again until they were almost
destroyed. On the outskirts of Amiens, after a terrible
week against the overwhelming tide, General Nugent,
commanding the Ulster division, was asked by a
French general coming up to our relief, to make another
attack while the French troops detrained. General
Nugent's answer to the message was a revelation of
his tragedy. "Tell your general," he said, "that I
have only three hundred men who can stand up" —
three hundred out of a whole division! — "but they will
attack again."

Any man who denies the valor of the Irish in the
war is a liar. They had not the same discipline as the
English (their temperament was different), some of
their officers were not so well trained, but their courage
was magnificent and their spirit heroic. As an English-
man, I am glad to pay them this tribute in truth and
honesty, and especially because, in Ireland, that re-
belHon in Easter week of 1916, before the battles of
the Somme, before their agony in those fields and in
Flanders, cut them off from their own people and put
them to a supreme test of loyalty.

VIII

For that rebellion there is no excuse. Not even the
tragic heritage of Irish history, nor our own stupidities
in dealing with a temperamental people, nor Carson's
sinister influence, palliates the black treachery of that
act. It was treachery not only against the English
people, who, whatever the acts of their government,

had been patient with Ireland, generously inclined,

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

but treachery to civilization itself, to our French allies,
to the whole code of honor. The enemy was desper-
ately strong against us. We were hard pressed, and the
Irish troops themselves, as I have told, were being mowed
down by German gun fire and German machine-gun
bullets. If Germany had won, more would have gone
down than England. Irish liberty would have gone
down with ours. Europe would have been Prussianized,
and there would have been no mercy under German
Pickelhauben for Irish rebels. The Prussian does not
believe in rebels when they have served his purpose.
He has a short way with them. The British Empire
would have been broken up, and the ruin of England
would not have helped Ireland, but would have made her
poverty-stricken with us, and fellow slaves under the
yoke of a real tyranny. The Irish rebellion was mad-
ness as well as badness.

Of the compHcity of the Irish conspirators with our
enemy there is no doubt. Roger Casement was not
the only man in correspondence with Germany. Through
Irish-Americans and Count BernstorfF in Washington,
the leaders of the rebelUon were in direct touch with the
German government. Their whole plans were based
upon German assistance, as P. H. Pearse admitted in a
letter written the night before his execution:

The help I expected from Germany failed; the British sank the
ships.

Judge Cohalan in the United States requested Count
Bernstorff to forward the following message to the
German Foreign Office:

The Irish revolt can only succeed if assisted by Germany. Other-
wise England will be able to crush it, although after a severe struggle.
Assistance required. There should be an air raid on England and a
naval attack timed to coincide with the rising, followed by a landing of
troops and munitions and also of some officers, perhaps from a warship.

202

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

It might then be possible to close the Irish harbors against England,
set up bases for submarines, and cut off food export to England. A
successful rising may decide the war.

John Devoy was the leader of the revolutionary plot
in the United States, and in close and constant commu-
nication with the German ambassador at Washington.
On February i8, 1916, Count Bernstorff attached the
following message surreptitiously to a note regarding
the Lusitania negotiations, sanctioned and passed
through by the State Department of the American
government :

The Irish leader, John Devoy, informs me that rising is to begin
in Ireland on Easter Sunday. Please send arms to (arrive at)
Limerick, west coast of Ireland, between Good Friday and Easter
Sunday. To put it oflF longer is impossible. Let me know if help
may be expected from Germany.

Bernstorff.

There is one mitigating fact in the indictment of the
Irish people regarding the rebellion which broke out in
Dublin during that Easter week and led to the death
of many English soldiers, many Irish boys, hundreds
of casualties on both sides, the destruction of the best
part of Dublin from artillery fire, and the abomination
of martial law. Its outbreak was bitterly condemned
and resented by the majority of Irish citizens, who re-
garded it, for the first day or two at least, as an act of
criminal madness. From many sources of information,
English as v/ell as Irish, I have evidence of that. But
when its failure was assured and large numbers of Irish
lads and their leaders were surrounded by superior
forces and strong artillery, without a dog's chance of
escape, sentiment was intensely stirred and every
Irish heart bled at the thought of their inevitable death
unless they surrendered. Whatever the original folly
or crime, all people must feel like that for their fellow

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countrymen, as we felt in the time of the Jameson
raid. National sentiment, pity, horror, and then a flame
of hatred swept over Ireland when, after the rebellion,
the Irish prisons were crowded with captives to the
number of one thousand eight hundred and forty,
and fifteen of their leaders were picked out for the
Bloody Assizes under General Maxwell, sentenced to
death, and executed. According to all laws of all
countries, those executions were justified. In compar-
ison with what other countries would have done —
Germany, France, even the United States — I think —
we were mild in punishment. But if we had been more
merciful we should have been more wise. Those men
like Pearse, Macdonagh, and Connolly were not evil
men in their nature, though they had done a mad, bad
thing. They were men of lofty ideals, patriots and
visionaries, though grievously misguided by fanaticism.
We might have known that to execute them would
make martyrs of them, and that the spirit of the Irish
people would be flung into allegiance with the extrem-
ists by their tragic deaths, by their last words of love
for Ireland, by the tranquil courage with which they went
to execution. It is knowledge of psychology which
makes great statesmen and leaders. A man like Gen-
eral Maxwell has as much knowledge of psychology as a
German drill sergeant. He has the brass-hat brain.
Our own statesmen were not big enough for generosity,
not brave enough to risk an error on the side of mercy.
They went by the book of the old code of law, and
stood by "the need of justice. " Any schoolboy might
have quoted Shakespeare to them for a text —

The quality of mercy is not strained . . .

• ••••••

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice. . . .

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THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

From the lowest point of view, the low cunning of
political strategy, we should have done better to have
kept those men in prison for a while, to have treated
them with chivalry, as now and again in the past English
kings treated rebellious subjects, and then have called
to the heart of Ireland for loyalty on generous terms.
So General Botha dealt with the rebelHon of De Wet
in the early days of the war. For the leaders there
were short terms of imprisonment, then a general
amnesty. "We want to put that out of our memories,"
he said. That way might have failed in Ireland, for
the Irish are a Celtic people and many of them are not
easily forgetful of what they think is unfair and are cynical
of generous dealing, which they mistake for weakness,
and incurably suspicious. Mercy might have failed to
win their thanks. But lack of mercy was bound to fail.

It did fail most horribly. The most moderate men
and women in Ireland revolted against the "martyrdom"
of the Sinn Fein leaders, and the Irish Republican Army,
as the Irish volunteers now called themselves, received
recruits from the great body of Irish youth. On the
western front many Irish soldiers, still fighting for us,
dedicated themselves anew to Irish freedom, and
after the war, if they had the luck, or misfortune, to
live, joined the ranks of the rebel forces.

Abortive attempts were made by Mr. Asquith, in the
last months of his office as Prime Minister, to reshape
the government of Ireland, and he appointed Lloyd
George to negotiate with John Redmond and Sir Edward
Carson, in order that the first principles of a new bill
might be agreed upon. Redmond obtained a written
document which oucHned the government proposals,
for setting up an Irish Parliament, with a responsible
Irish executive, and arranging to leave out the six
counties of Ulster during the war, upon the ending of
which the problem of partition would be raised again

30s

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

before a council of the Empire. In the meantime the
original number of Irish members would sit at West-
minster. These proposals were carried at a Nation-
alist convention, and accepted by the Ulster Council
in June, 1916. Later, however, Lord Lansdowne, as
leader of the Unionist peers, refused to agree to the
terms of Redmond's document, Sir Edward Carson
interpreted the government promises as meaning the
permanent partition of Ireland, and Bonar Law repu-
diated the binding nature of the pledge given to the
Irish leader, so the poor John Redmond knew that his
own people would have their worst suspicions confirmed
and would repudiate his leadership.

The war was still going on and the minds of people
in England, Scotland, and Wales had no room for polit-
ical strife in Ireland, but were obsessed, and agonized,
and deadened by the continuing and increasing slaugh-
ter in France and Flanders, without a hope or illusion
left of rapid victory. In spite of tremendous battles,
with their long death rolls, our generals did not seem
to get in sight of any promised land. They called for
more men, and still more, for the dreadful sacrifice.
Intrigue was rife at home, because of long disappoint-
ment, and criticism of the conduct of the war, leading
to behef that a change of leadership might quicken the
chance of victory. By a political intrigue in which
Bonar Law and Lloyd George were the principals, with
a Canadian journalist and pubhcity man — the present
Lord Beaverbrook — as chief wirepuller — Asquith was
unseated and Lloyd George became Prime Minister of
the Coalition, dependent on the support of Carson and
Bonar Law, with their Orange fanaticism still unabated,
and on the backing of press favorites to whom he prom-
ised largesse in the future, which later he richly paid, so
that Fleet Street is now paved w^ith coronets and its

purheus infested with barons.

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THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

Lloyd George had great qualities of leadership which
might have made him more powerful than those who kept
the rein upon his finer instincts. He had imagination,
sympathy, generous impulses, splendid audacity, re-
vealed from time to time in spite of all those hide-bound
pettifogging brains which surrounded him closely and
watchfully and suspiciously, and whose power over
other people of their kind was able to thwart him or
change his direction, whenever he tried to be free of them.

So it was in his dealings with Ireland. His first
action was maganimous and he set free large numbers
of young Irishmen who had been imprisoned since the
rebellion of Easter week in 1916, though he refused to
annul the sentences of those who were in penal servitude.
But when Sinn Fein began to win by-elections —
Count Plunkett being elected for Roscommon in Feb-
ruary 1917 — he allowed himself to be influenced by the
fears of his supporters and gave his consent to a new
campaign of coercion, with wholesale arrests, house-to-
house searches, imprisonment without trial, and all
the rigors of military rule. In the House of Commons
Major Willie Redmond made a moving and noble
appeal for peaceful settlement by a quick and generous
measure of self-government for Ireland. "In the name
of God, we here, who are perhaps about to die, ask you
to do that which largely induced us to leave our homes."

I read that speech of Major Redmond's, much stirred
by its pathos, when I was recording the daily routine of
the war, and three months later, when I went among
the Irish battalions on a great day of battle at Messines,
I remembered his words, when an Irish soldier told me
that "Major WilHe" had been killed not far from where
I stood, by Wytschaete Wood. A few days later I was
present at his graveside in a convent garden when
soldiers of Protestant Ulster and CathoHc Ireland fired
the last salute above his dust. He had died Uke many

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of his comrades in the vain hope that by their loyalty
to the Empire Ireland might gain her heart's -desire.

But in Ireland and in England there was no reconciling
spirit. Less in Ireland than in England, then, for once
again prisoners were released — among them being De
Valera, afterward appointed leader of Sinn Fein and
President of the *' Irish Republic" — and when an Irish
convention was summoned to discuss a plan for the
self-government of Ireland, within the Empire, by all
parties of the Irish people, Sinn Fein refused to send
representatives, having nailed its RepubHcan flag to the
mast.

All through the autumn and winter of 1917 the Irish
people became more and more skeptical of the conven-
tion, as news reached them that Ulster was as irrecon-
cilable as ever, and would not abate a jot of her claims
to separation, for the sake of national unity. Yet
under the chairmanship of Sir Horace Plunkett, a wise,
devoted, and patriotic Irishman, the convention repre-
sented all shades of opinion in Ireland, apart from Sinn
Fein. Among its members were five Nationalists, five
Ulster Unionists, three southern Unionists, four Cath-
olic bishops, two bishops of the Church of Ireland,
thirty-one chairmen of county councils, four mayors,
eight urban councilors, seven labor representatives,
and such great Irishmen as "A. E.," Sir Horace Windle,
Lord MacDowell, Lord Desert, and Doctor MahafFy,
provost of Trinity College.

They could not agree. Before the end, John Redmond
resigned, and died of soul shock. Yet its report pre-
sented to Lloyd George the faith and convictions of
men who knew the psychology of their countrymen and
who in many solemn and inspiring words proclaimed
the age-long aspirations of Ireland to political liberty.
They were mostly agreed to a Federal scheme which
would give Ireland a constitution within the Empire,

308

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

and there is hardly a doubt that even then a full promise
of Dominion Home Rule for Ireland, with a temporary
arrangement for Ulster, would have received the alle-
giance of the great majority of Irish people, if it had been
made without reservation and as a great act of recon-
cihation and justice by the British government. But
the British government ignored the points of agreement
in the report, the common bond of national sentiment
that united all but the Ulster group, and Lloyd George
put all the work of the convention on one side, as a
failure from which there was nothing to be learned. He
learned nothing, not even the unanimous conviction of
the subcommittee on national defense that, after all
that had happened, there could be no conscription in
Ireland without the consent of an Irish Parliament.
After the German offensive of 1918 he announced that
conscription would be extended to Ireland, and there
was not a single party in that island, hardly an indi-
vidual, who did not regard that statement as the final
breaking of all pledges and as an outrageous insult
to Irish pride. For as a people they would not allow
their men to be taken without the consent of their own
National Assembly, as though they were but slaves of
the English who denied them the rights of common
freedom.

It is hard for the Enghsh people, even now, to under-
stand that point of view. We keep on harping on the
fact that Ireland "belongs" to England. We have in
our bones the feeUng that the Irish and the Enghsh
are blood relations, united under the King, with the
same interests, the same duties, the same loyalties.
In the war, when the best of our manhood was being
sent to the shambles, it seemed black treachery or cow-
ardice that Irish youth should escape scot free while
ours was fighting for "the liberty of the world." Even
now, the majority of people in England hold that view,

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and it would, I think, be a right view, if Ireland had
indeed been a partner with us in the same interests, the
same duties, and the same loyalties. But that was not
so. The Irish people believed that we had forfeited our
right to loyalty by violating their interests, trampling
on their loyalty, and absolving them from all duty by
refusing their liberty.

Again one must go back to the grim old past and to
the intrigues, trickeries, stupidities, misunderstandings,
and irreconcilable passions of present politics, to under-
stand the fire of indignation which swept over Ireland
at that threat of conscription. The Irish people rose
as one man to resist it. At the Mansion House in
Dublin representatives of the Nationalists, Labor
party, Sinn Fein, and all-for-Ireland group met in
conference, and on April i8, 1918, issued the following
declaration:

Taking our stand on Ireland's separate and distinct nation-
hood, and affirming the principle of Hberty that the governments of
nations derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,
we deny the right of the British government or any external authority
to impose compulsory military service in Ireland against the clearly
expressed will of the Irish people. The passing of the Conscription
bill by the British House of Commons must be regarded as a decla-
ration of war on the Irish nation. The alternative to accepting it
as such is to surrender our liberties and to acknowledge ourselves
slaves. It is in direct violation of the rights of small nationalities
to self-determination, which even the Prime Minister of England
■ — now preparing to employ naked militarism and force his Act
upon Ireland — himself announced as an essential condition for
peace at the Peace Congress. The attempt to enforce it is an un-
warrantable aggression which we call upon all Irishmen to resist
by the most effective means at their disposal.

The Irish Catholic bishops also issued a declaration
which contained the following words:

In view especially of the historic relations between the two
countries from the very beginning up to this moment, we consider

310

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

that conscription is an oppressive and inhuman law which the Irish
people have a right to resist by every means that are consonant with
the law of God.

The British government did not try to enforce con-
scription in Ireland in face of this storm of popular
indignation, but from that time forward they turned
the screw of martial law with ever-increasing severity.

In 191 8 there were over eleven hundred arrests, and
several Irishmen had been bayoneted or shot for re-
sisting arrest or trying to escape, while others had died
in prison. Up to the end of that year only one police-
man had been killed. British officers, and the Royal
Irish Constabulary acting under their orders, were
intolerant of Irish sentiment, customs, and free speech,
behaving with oppressive attempts to break the spirit
of the people, which had the effect of hardening that
spirit into a cold hatred and contempt of English
''tyranny." It was tyranny, as we must confess, done,
not by the will of the Enghsh people, who were utterly
ignorant of what was happening in Ireland, owing to the
boycott of Irish news in a bought or partisan press, but
by military and police officials with the narrow intelli-
gence, the pride in a little brief authority, the exagger-
ated sense of "discipline," and the spirit of "We'll
teach 'em what's what!" which are characteristic
qualities of many professional soldiers and of all police.

Men were arrested and imprisoned for^ "offenses"
of the most trivial kind, or for mere political opinions.
For being in possession of Sinn Fein literature, for read-
ing, or listening to, political manifestoes they were sen-
tenced to years of captivity. Boys and girls were
imprisoned for "whistling derisively" at the police
(just as French and Belgian boys and girls were impris-
oned by the Germans for mocking at the "goose step"),
or for singing old Irish songs, or speaking the Irish lan-
guage. Small crowds of farmers, with their women folk,

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in village market places, were broken up, and fairs,
necessary for country life and trade, were forbidden.
Not a day passed without some act of oppression or
intolerance which excited the anger of Irish folk, who
among all the people in the world are quickest to take
offense and most remembering of insult and injustice.

In December, 191 8, there was a general election in
Ireland which revealed the temper of the people. The
Nationalists of the old Irish party were swept on one
side, and only seven were returned. Sinn Fein captured
seventy-three seats, and pledged themselves not to sit
at Westminster, but to establish their own ParHament,
called Dail Eirann, to set up their own courts of justice,
to administer the republic they had proclaimed. This
they proceeded to do with an efficiency, an organizing
genius, and a respect for the rules of justice and equity
which astonished all who had believed that the Irish
people were incapable of ruling themselves. The best
brains in Ireland, their most distinguished lawyers and
magistrates, served in those courts, and settled innu-
merable disputes in regard to land and property with
advantage to the Irish people, according to all the
evidence we have. But instead of turning a blind eye
to a system of training in self-government which could
have been adapted to a generous measure of Home
Rule, still promised but still delayed, the British govern-
ment increased their military forces in Ireland and made
innumerable raids, house-to-house searches, and arrests,
for the purpose of breaking up the courts, until most
of the RepubHcan leaders were in prison or in hiding.

The Irish people had one great hope — illusory and
vain. It was that in the Peace Conference, when many
small nations were being given the right of "self-deter-
mination," and when, out of the wreckage of old em-
pires, new republics, like that of Jugo-SIavia and
Czecho-Slovakia, were being created, the claims of

312

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

Ireland would be given a hearing, and admitted by the
great Powers, especially by the United States of America.
Through the influence of Irish-Americans great pressure
was brought to bear upon President Wilson, and Irish
emissaries dogged the precincts of Versailles, with
urgent pleas to obtain a hearing. It was of course im-
possible for Great Britain to put the case of Ireland on
to the conference table. It would have been a surrender
of pride and a confession of impotence which her
people would not tolerate for a second, even in imagina-
tion. Only the simpHcity of the Irish mind, simple
even with all its shrewdness and its cunning, could have
hoped for such a surrender — in the days of England's
victory. It is foolish to ask something beyond the
bounds of human nature as it is now constituted, and
that was one thing. Lloyd George merely smiled at
such audacity, or was impatient at the mention of it.
President Wilson bluntly told his Irish-Americans that
that question belonged to Great Britain's domestic
politics, and could not be touched by other Powers.

Yet the high-sounding phrases on the Hps of our
statesmen during the peace discussions were but a mock-
ery so long as Ireland remained under martial law,
and the more honest men at least who related their
phrases to their deeds, and who were touched by the
inspiration of victory which after long agony and a
heritage of ruin promised the beginning of a new chap-
ter in the history of the world, would have put themselves
right with their conscience by a magnanimous settlement
in Ireland. There was no magnanimity. While there
was talk of a more generous measure of Home Rule, and
houses were being searched for arms in Catholic Ireland
(but never one in Protestant Ireland), Sir Edward
Carson went to Ireland and threatened to renew his
rebellion if the government brought in a Home Rule
bill of which he did not approve. He was not arrested

21 313

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

for rebellious speech. On the contrary, Mr. Bonar Law
and his friends found no harm in it, though in Catholic
Ireland a man was sentenced to two years' imprisonment
for singing an old rebel song.

When at last the Irish people saw their hopes of the
peace treaty dashed to the ground, when they found
that they were still at the mercy of military and police
governance (with all their best men in jail), something
broke in them and the floodgates of passion were
opened, and out of the bitterness of their hearts came the
spirit of vengeance, and the will to kill.

It was the beginning of a horrible guerrilla warfare,
worse even than modern war between regular armies,
because of its moral degradation, its secret acts, its
individual cruelties, its action among women and
children, its effect upon the psychology of the rival
forces, its red Indian methods. The boys who enlisted
in the "Irish Republican Army" wore no uniforms,
were not distinguishable from the civilian population,
and carried out their work of killing by craft and cun-
ning rather than by open courage. Their first attacks
were upon the Royal Irish Constabulary, whom they
regarded as the agents of an alien tyranny, or as spies
and informers. One by one, these men were killed like
dogs, without a dog's chance of self-defense. The
British government tried to stamp out this campaign
of death by unlimited coercion. According to Erskine
Childers, in his book. Military Rule in Ireland, there
were, between January, 1919, and March, 1920, 22,279
raids on houses, 2,332 political arrests, 151 deportations,
429 proclamations suppressing meetings and newspapers.

By the autumn of 1920 one hundred and six constables
had been killed by Sinn Feiners, and in the summer of

314

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

that year, abandoning all policy of reconciliation, the
British government passed an Act which took away all
civil rights from the Irish people. Courts-martial were
established, civil inquests were abandoned; any Irish
man, woman, or child could be arrested on suspicion,
and imprisoned without trial, for holding political
opinions with which British officers did not agree, for
belonging to societies which upheld the Irish claim to
self-government, for any act or word or gesture, or the
absence of any act or word, to the annoyance of any
patrol of military or police, drunk or sober. That was
not the legal wording of the Act, but those were the pow-
ers it gave and the powers that were used.

The policy of coercion was intrusted by the British
government to the Chief Secretary, Sir Hamar Green-
wood, a Canadian Jew, who in my judgment has done
more to dishonor the British Empire than any Hving
man. He owed his position to that group of interests
led by Lord Beaverbrook (formerly Max Aitken of
Canada) with the approval of Bonar Law and the
sanction of Lloyd George, and he held it by a bluff,
breezy, John Bull manner, which was the camouflage
of craft, and by a courage and obstinacy in a dangerous
policy which was the admiration of Tory minds with
Prussian instincts, while he astonished and delighted
them by his blank denials of undeniable evidence, his
utter contempt for criticism and rebuke, his audacious
handling of truth, his superb refusal to be intimidated
by accusations of dishonor, lying, brutality, and con-
nivance with crime. In Ireland, General Macready,
old and artful in war and civil strife, was put in com-
mand of military operations, and General Tudor, who
has the soul of a Welsh chieftain in the eleventh century,
was made responsible for the police, including a special
body of volunteers, recruits from the unemployed soldiers
of the Great War, at a high rate of pay, and known by

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

their nickname of Black-and-Tans, which will live in
history, with unenviable fame.

The stage was set for the dirtiest kind of warfare
which has ever happened in modern times.

The Sinn Feiners adopted the ambush method as
their main system of attack, their first purpose being
the capture of arms and ammunition. It was an easy,
though dangerous, game for them to come at night into
a district away from their own homes, and to lie in wait
for a military convoy or a lorry full of soldiers, from
whom they were concealed behind hedges or walls.
Irish chemists had concocted bombs for them which
would blow a lorry to bits or make a mess of a party
of soldiers. I am told they were "better" bombs than
those used in the European war. Later, by attacks on
Irish "barracks" — generally a small house or white-
washed building, containing a few constables, whom
they isolated first by feUing trees across the roads of
approach and cutting telephone wires — they obtained
small stores of arms, and then as their strength increased
and they were able to attack stronger garrisons, large
stores of arms.

Their "Intelligence" was highly efficient, as they had
their recruits in every town and village of Ireland, in
every post office, at every railway station, in banks and
government buildings, even in Dublin Castle itself.
By clever strategy and the ruthless use of firearms,
they captured many mails and discovered the plans and
activities of British officers, police constables, and
private individuals. Any man of English, Scottish, or
Irish race who conveyed information against members
of the Irish Republican Army was marked down for
execution as a spy, and with long patience and cunning
they tracked him down until one day his body was
riddled with bullets by a sudden attack in a lonely
place, and left there with the words, "Spy, tried, con-

316

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

victed and shot. I. R. A." as a warning to others of
his kind. They shot some of their own women for
"conversation" with the enemy, or cut off their hair
in the market place, as I saw women treated in Belgium
for the same offense with Germans. No enemy of
theirs was safe, eating or drinking, praying or sleeping,
indoors or out, with wife and children or with fellow
worshipers in church. Into lonely farmhouses broke
parties of masked men, to drag out some trembling
fellow, in spite of the shrieks of his women folk, to shoot
him in the back yard, or, if he struggled, in the presence
of his wife and children. A British officer, retired after
the European war, sat at table with his wife in a house
near Dublin. As usual, his revolver lay ready at his
elbow. It was the wife who noticed movements of men
first. The husband had time to raise his hand and
dodge as two men came in and fired. His hand received
the bullet, and he shot his enemy through the stomach.
The wife seized the other man by the throat and grabbed
his revolver. He fled after a second of struggle, and
the husband and wife escaped that night from Ireland,
more lucky than others. More lucky, for instance,
than the unfortunate officers who were billeted in
Dublin and murdered in their bedrooms in the presence
of their wives. ... If women were in the way, there
was no mercy for them, at least in the case of an officer
named Blake, who had been playing tennis with a
friend until dark, and then joined two ladies in a motor
car. After a short drive, he got down to open a park
gate, and as he did so a party of men leaped out and
shot him. One of the ladies (who was expecting a
child) flung herself between the assassins and the
second officer, and shared his fate, which was death.
The other lady was allowed to escape. Such incidents
were not rare.

Inspired by a cold hatred of any man in British

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uniform, embittered by prison treatment, which is
never a reconciling remedy, and inflamed by the rough
handhng of soldiers or jailers, by the terror inflicted on
mothers and sisters in midnight searches, when often they
had to submit to the brutal insults of drunken men,
and above all by a fanatical beUef in the justice of
their cause, young Irishmen in all parts of the country
engaged in this red Indian warfare, and had no kind of
human pity, no softening touch of conscience, when it
came to the killing of a "spy," the ambush of troops, or
the execution of men whom they called murderers
because in courts-martial they had condemned Irish
rebels to death.

These Irish boys received their orders from head-
quarters, and obeyed them with the knowledge that if
they disobeyed they would be condemned as cowards
and traitors. By all laws of human nature there must
have been boys among them who had no spirit for the
fight, who hated the thought of kilUng or being killed —
gentle lads, taught to love Christ and the peace of
Christ — and I am told that some of them wept and
agonized when the secret orders came. But for the most
part, as I am told also by their friends, they were eager
to go into "action," impatient to get the order for an
ambush, grim, resolute, and cunning in this way of
attack, and heroic in their off"er of death for Ireland's
sake, as they believed, if they were shot in action or
hanged in jail.

These boys were incited, inspired, and comforted
by many of their women and many of their priests,
who regarded them as soldiers in a war of liberation,
justified in the sight of God and by the code of human
honor. To the reproach that they were not in uniform,
they talked about the Boers. To the accusation of
murder, they asked what England did to German spies.
To a death sentence for carrying firearms or being

318

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

caught In an ambush, they rebuked their judges — Brit-'
ish officers of courts-martial — for killing their prison-
ers. And theoretically there was logic in those answers,
as British officers I know admit. But the logic of this
kind of war is devil's logic. Not even for liberty's sake
is the kiUing of men in cold blood or before their women
folk justified. Not even savage warfare could be more
cruel than some of the acts committed by the I. R. A.,
like the assassination of officers on leave in Dublin.

The spirit of it belongs to the Paleolithic Age, and
is not to be reconciled with the Christian faith by any
casuistry, though Catholic priests gave it their blessing
and inspired its action by their own ardor. Now and
again some of their bishops protested against the horror
of this way of war and denounced it in solemn words.

In his Advent pastoral. Cardinal Logue wrote the
following words referring to the murder of fifteen officers
in Dublin:

The tragedies of last Sunday have oppressed me with a deep
sense of sadness and a feeling akin to despair. I have never hesitated
to condemn, in the strongest terms at my command, such deeds of
blood, from whatever source they may have sprung. I believe
that every man and woman in Ireland who retains a spark of Chris-
tian feeling, or even the instincts of humanity, deplores, detests,
and condemns the cold-blooded murders of Sunday morning. No
object could excuse them; no motive could justify them; no heart,
unless hardened and steeled against pity, could tolerate their cruelty.
Patriotism is a noble virtue when it pursues its object by means
that are sincere, honorable, just, and in strict accordance with
God's law; otherwise it degenerates into a blind, brutal, reckless
passion, inspired not by love of country, but by Satan, "who was a
murderer from the beginning." The perpetrators of such crimes
are not real patriots, but the enemies of their country, robbing her
of just sympathy and raising obstacles to her progress and im-
pressing a deep stain on her fair fame.

The cardinal also condemned in the same pastoral
the general, indiscriminate massacre of innocent and

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

inoffensive victims which was perpetrated by the forces
of the Crown in Croke Park on Sunday evening —
when Black-and-Tans fired into a football crowd, causing
fifty casualties, as a retaliation for the morning crimes.
A week later fifteen of the auxiliary cadets were am-
bushed in County Cork and the wounded were killed
to a man, in revenge for their action at Croke Park.
In revenge again for that the police burned down a large
sector of the most prosperous quarter of Cork.

On December 12, 1920, Doctor Cohalan, the Catholic
Bishop of Cork, issued a proclamation in reference to
ambushes, kidnapping, and murder. He said that
besides the guilt involved in these acts by reason of
their opposition to the law of God, anyone who should
within the diocese of Cork organize or take part in an
ambush, or in kidnapping, or otherwise should be
guilty of murder or attempt at murder, should incur,
by the very act, the censure of excommunication.

In the course of his sermon at the cathedral. Bishop
Cohalan said it was a safe exploit to murder a police-
man from behind a screen, and until reprisals began
there was no danger to the general community, but, even
leaving aside the moral aspect of the question for the
moment, what has the country gained pohtically by
the murder of policemen? Some Republicans spoke
of such and such districts of the country being deHvered
from British sway when policemen were murdered and
barracks burned. It was a narrow view, and v/ho
would now mention any district that had been delivered
from British rule by the murder of the old Royal Irish
Constabulary men and the burning of barracks? No,
the killing of the Royal Irish Constabulary men was
murder, and the burning of barracks was simply the de-
struction of Irish property.

The bishop continued that reprisals began with the
murder of the late Lord Mayor MacCurtain, and now

320

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

it was like a devil's competition between some members
of the Republicans and agents of the Crown, in feats of
murder and arson. Recently ambushes had taken
place with serious loss of Ufe, and he would say this
about ambushes (leaving out of the question for the
moment their moral aspect) — the ambushers come to
a place from no one knows where, and when their work
is done they depart to no one knows what destination.
There is not much risk to the ambushers personally,
but by this time boys or men taking part in ambushes
must know that by their criminal acts they are expos-
ing perhaps a whole countryside, perhaps a town or
city, to the danger of terrible reprisals; that when they
depart and disperse in safety they are leaving the hves
and property of a number of innocent people unprotected
and undefended, to the fury of reprisals at the hands of
servants of the government. Then, over and above
all, there was the moral aspect of these ambushes. Let
there be no doubt about it — there was no doubt about
it — that these ambushers were murderers, and every
life taken in an ambush was a murder. Notwithstanding
repeated condemnations of murder, and repeated warn-
ing, terrible murders had been committed these past
few weeks. As a result of the ambush the previous
night at Dillon's Cross, the city had suffered, the bishop
thought, as much damage at the hands of the servants
of the government as Dublin had suffered during the
rebellion of 1916. It was all very well to talk of the
city of Cork being under the care and solicitude of the
Republican Army. The city was nearly a ruin, and the
ruin had followed on the murderous ambush at Dillon's
Cross. If any section or member of the volunteer
organization refused to hear the Church's teaching
about murder, there was no remedy but the extreme
remedy of excommunication from the Church, and
the bishop said he would certainly issue a decree ex-

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

communicating anyone who, after that notice, should
take part in an ambush or in kidnapping, or otherwise
should be guilty of murder or attempted murder, or
arson.

The bishop concluded by asking the congregation to
pray that God in His mercy would vouchsafe an honor-
able peace which would of itself be an effective means
of putting an end to crime and re-establishing order.

Those pastoral denunciations fell on deaf ears, not
without consequences which the CathoUc Church in
Ireland will rue for many a long day, as for the first
time in history Irishmen in great numbers broke free
from the authority of their ecclesiastical leaders, and
denied their right to interfere in this political and
national struggle by any religious call to obedience and
discipline.

That is one side of the picture. Sinn Fein murders,
ambushes, and raids, the blowing up of trains, the
burning down of old mansions, the terrorism of armed
and secret bands undistinguished by any sign or badge
among ordinary civilians, unless they were caught
red-handed.

There is another side, and in all honesty we must
bring it to the light of truth. The forces of "law and
order" in Ireland, above all that force known as the
Black-and-Tans (because of black belts on khaki tunics),
under General Tudor, committed acts exactly like those
of the Sinn Fein "gunmen," not more justified. A
famous case which could not be hushed up was the
murder of Mr. McCurtain, Lord Mayor of Cork, by
masked men who killed him at dead of night before his
wife's eyes. In spite of all government denials there is
little doubt in the public mind, both in Ireland and in
England, that the Lord Mayor was the victim of a police

322

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

reprisal. That was only one of many less-known cases.
This guerrilla warfare became a vendetta like that of
Sicilian bandits. The Sinn Feiners killed a British
soldier or policeman. To revenge his death, British
troops or police — mostly General Tudor's "lions" —
killed the first Sinn Feiners they could lay hands on.
A British patrol was ambushed near a village. Shortly
afterward troops would appear in lorries shooting up
the street, spraying bullets from machine guns, and
at their leisure burning a few houses, the local stores,
or the creamery. Men would be dragged out of their
beds and shot, young boys would be battered in their
back yards, and women frightened out of their wits
by midnight raids.

Then the next chapter would begin. Those troops
would be marked down, their officers identified by private
letters captured in the mails, and there would be fresh
ambushes, fresh murders, leading to more reprisals,
more raids, more burnings, and the "accidental" shoot-
ing of women standing at their shop doors, children
playing in the village street, old men working in their
fields, young men who ran away when called to halt,
knowing that if they halted they would, as likely as not,
be shot or bayoneted or clubbed — innocent or guilty.

I can understand the psychology of our men, as I
imagine (perhaps quite falsely) that I understand the
psychology of the Sinn Feiners, though I loathe their
way of war. It is indeed easy to understand the men-
tality of a body of young British soldiers or "Black-and-
Tans," sent to a district in Ireland. In the beginning
they thought it was going to be "a soft job." They
had visions of a brush or two with Irish rebels who
would then be good boys and see the folly of their game,
up against tanks, machine guns, and well-trained troops
who had been through the Great War. There would be
flirtations with pretty Irish lasses, plenty of milk in the

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

farmhouses, a gay time in Dublin or Cork, and friendly
greetings on the "long, long way to Tipperary." . . .

What was the reality? They found themselves in
a hostile population in which there were enemies who
might kill them if they walked alone, by a shot in the
back at the next turn of the road, between the village
stores and the post office, at the corner of a country
lane, at any time of the day or night. Whichever way
they looked, they saw hostile eyes staring at them,
eyes w4th hatred in them, eyes which had a menace of
death. If they spoke to a pretty girl she did not smile,
like the girls in France, but became pale with fear or
red with anger. There was a sense of menace always
about them. Out of a crowd in a market place there
might come a group of men to shoot them down like
dogs when they were buying picture postcards. Pres-
ently they were not allowed to go about, except in
military formation or in armored cars and lorries.
They were cooped up in barracks where they could
drink as much as they liked. There was nothing to
do except drink and play cards, until night came and
they were ordered to form search parties. They were
taught their duty. General Tudor gave lectures to
his officers about the short way with rebels. The
officers passed the word on to the men. There was no
sentiment about it. No gentle chivalry! . . .

Passion took hold of them at times. A favorite
comrade had been shot in a lonely place. They had been
sniped as they passed down a village street. A mess
of flesh and blood was all that was left of some pals in a
lorry proceeding up a country road near a lonely farm-
house or wayside inn or little Irish town. Where was
the enemy? Nowhere — and everywhere. How could
one distinguish between innocent and guilty? They
were all guilty — "Sinn Fein up to the neck," as the
British soldier said. "Give them a taste of their own

324

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

poison!" ... So reprisals happened. They were as
logical as hell — but not a credit to the fame of England,
or Scotland, not in our old code of honor, not good for
pubUcation.

The only place in which they were not reported for
publication was in the newspaper press of Great Britain.
Mr. Lloyd George's newspaper friends did not like to
hurt his feelings. Other papers did not Hke to hurt
the feelings of readers more interested in our nobility
of ideals or our divorce-court cases. Questions were
asked in the House, and Sir Hamar Greenwood showed
his quality in answering them. He first denied all
accusations blankly and firmly. Reprisals? Certainly
not! Never! No such thing! Sinn Fein propaganda!
General Tudor's young gentlemen were noble fellows —
heroes of the Great War. He could find no evidence
at all — after careful inquiry — for any alleged acts of
violence.

In every country in the world Sinn Fein was report-
ing tragic episodes, shocking misdeeds, by men wearing
British uniforms, arousing the suspicion or horror of
our friends, the hatred of our enemies. But in England
for a long time we heard nothing but Sinn Fein atroci-
ties, in full detail. The English people were unable to
obtain evidence of things done to their dishonor, and
it is to their credit that without such evidence they were
slow to believe that British Ministers or British officers
would connive at a policy of terrorism which violated all
our best traditions. Presently ugly facts did begin
to thrust through the screen of silence. The represent-
atives of some newspapers like the Times ^ the Daily
NezvSy and the Manchester Guardian were allowed by
their editors to tell the things they had seen and the
evidence they had gained. Mr. Hugh Martin, of the
Daily News, was especially courageous in unmasking
the truth, and his reports of the burning and sacking of

325

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

Irish villages, the flogging and battering of Irish boys,
the shooting of civilians in cold blood by bodies of
Black-and-Tans, and the terrori /.ation of Irish women in
midnight raids by drunken or brutalized mihtary police,
could not be denied, excepting by Sir Hamar Greenwood.

One of the most notorious cases, not more terrible
than many others, but less easy to conceal because a
resident magistrate risked his life by giving evidence,
was the murder of Canon Magner and Timothy Crowley.
The facts, as officially admitted, were that at i p.m.
on December 17, 1920, about thirty auxiliary police
left Dunmanway, in two motor lorries, with a cadet
named Hart in charge, to go to Cork to attend the
funeral of one of their force who was recently shot dead
at Cork. About a mile on the road they met Canon
Magner, the seventy-three-year-old parish priest of
Dunmanway, and Timothy Crowley, aged twenty-four,
a farmer's son. The cadet in charge stopped the lor-
ries, walked up to Timothy Crowley, asked him for a
permit, and then shot him dead with his revolver.
He then turned to the priest and, according to the evi-
dence of one of the police, "started talking to him."
Two other cadets went toward him, but he turned round,
waving his revolver. While they were returning.
Cadet Hart seized the hat from the priest's head and
threw it on the ground and made him kneel down. He
fired and wounded him, and then fired again, killing
him. He went through the priest's pockets. Mr.
Brady, the resident magistrate, who was a witness of
the murder, was also threatened with death, but took
cover and escaped. It was evident that Cadet Hart
had been drinking heavily. He was arrested, and
certified as "insane" by his superior officers.

In the House of Commons, on March 3, 1921, Com-
mander Kenworthy asked Sir Hamar Greenwood whether
he was aware that Mr. Brady, resident magistrate,

326

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

present at the murder of Crowley and Canon Magner,
stated that the other cadets in the lorry made no attempt
to interfere, that Mr. Brady's house was subsequently
raided; whether Mr. Brady was called as a witness at
the special investigation; whether these other cadets
were punished in any way, and whether any of them are
now employed in Ireland.

Sir Hamar Greenwood answered:

A written statement by Mr. Brady, setting out the
full circumstances of the murder, was fully considered
in the course of the official investigation into the con-
duct of the cadets who were witnesses of the occurrence.
As a result of this investigation it was decided that
these cadets were in no v/ay responsible for the crime
and that no action was called for in their case.

On March 19th, three months after the murder,
Ministers were asked whether Mr. Brady's house had
been raided by the auxiliaries, whether they had threat-
ened him, and whether he had left the country on the
advice of the right honorable gentleman's responsible
officers.

Replying for Sir Hamar Greenwood, Mr. Henry
could not deny this statement, but professed ignorance
of the whereabouts of Mr. Brady, who had obtained
leave of absence and was "broken down in nerves."

It was in September, 1920, that the burning and loot-
ing of Balbriggan drew national attention to a policy
of reprisals that had already been in force and could no
longer be denied by the British government. Lord
Grey, Lord Robert Cecil, Mr. Asquith, and Mr. Hender-
son called for an inquiry, and that was replied to
flippantly by Mr. Lloyd George, who seemed to find
singular amusement in the destruction of Irish cream-
eries. Mr. Winston Churchill defended the conduct of
the military and police in Ireland, and said that if the
armed forces of the Crown were punished for their

327

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

conduct they would revolt. General Macready had
already admitted that it was "a delicate and difficult
matter" to punish men who, under his authority, did
acts of indiscipline in the way of reprisals. Later, at
Carnarvon, the Prime Minister of England admitted
and defended reprisals in a speech of memorable bru-
tality.

The Irish Catholic bishops issued a manifesto denounc-
ing the reign of terror caused by reprisals as solemnly
as they denounced the Sinn Fein warfare.

We know that latterly, at least, all pretense of strict discipline
has been thrown to the winds and that those who profess to be the
guardians of law and order have become the most ardent votaries
of lawlessness and disorder; that they are running wild through the
country, making night hideous by raids; that reckless and indis-
criminate shootings in crowded places have made many innocent
victims; that towns are sacked as in the rude warfare of earlier ages;
that those who run through fear are shot at sight. . . . For all
this not the men, but their masters, are chiefly to blame. It is not
a question of hasty reprisals, which, however unjustifiable, might
be attributed to extreme provocation, nor of quick retaliation on
evildoers, nor of lynch law for miscreants — much less of self-defense
of any kind whatsoever. It is an indiscriminate vengeance delib-
erately wreaked on a whole countryside, without any proof of its
complicity in crime, by those who ostensibly are employed by the
British government to protect the lives and property of the people
and restore order in Ireland.

While this was happening, the Home Rule Act was
annulled and a new and utterly inadequate measure
was passed through Parliament, disregarding the advice,
warning, and pleading of English Liberals and Irish
Moderates. It divided Ireland into two nations, one
with a population of three and a quarter millions, the
other of one and a quarter, and there could not be a
single legislature unless the majority agreed to give
half the representation to the minority. That alone
secured its condemnation by every Irishman in the

}2S

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

South and West; neither Protestant Ulster nor Cath-
olic Ireland believed in it as a promise of peace.

All through the year of 1920 and half the year of 1921
the reign of terror continued in Ireland, with increasing
ruthlessness on both sides, and with a complete aban-
donment of statesmanship by the British government in
favor of what was called by the Lord Chancellor of
England, in sinister words, *'The Reconquest of Ire-
land"! Yet it was denied that we were at war with
the Irish people, until June, 1921, when the word "war"
was used by Ministers in the House of Commons, not
carelessly, I think, but as a preparation of the public
mind for an intensive military campaign in Catholic
Ireland after the inauguration of the Ulster Parliament.
Because we were not officially at war with the Irish peo-
ple, it was permissible to shoot or hang our captives as
rebels and murderers, and not as prisoners of war.

On November i, 1920, a youth named Kevin Barry,
captured in action, was hanged in DubHn. He met his
death with a cheerful and heroic courage, while outside
the prison vast crowds of Irish people wept and prayed
for him.

On February i, 1921, Cornelius Murphy was shot
at Cork for being in possession of a revolver and ammu-
nition. On February 26th five Irish lads were shot at
Cork for "levying war." On February 28th another
man was shot for "being improperly in possession
of a revolver and ammunition." On March 14th six
men were hanged in batches at Dublin — two on a charge
of murder, and four on a charge of "high treason and
levying war." Ten others followed to their death by
shooting or hanging in Dublin and Cork "for being
improperly in possession of arms and ammunition,"
22 329

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

a charge which would condemn the entire youth of
Ireland to death, in Ulster (where no arrest was
ever made on such a charge) as well as in the Catholic
provinces.

There was no cessation of hostilities or of reprisals
as the day came nearer when the Home Rule Act of 1920
was to be put into operation. It was known in advance
that no single Sinn Fein member would attend the
Southern Parliament, but the British were determined
to set up the Ulster Parliament as a preliminary to "re-
conquest" in the other parts.

On June ist, only a few weeks before that new era in
Irish history, Sir Hamar Greenwood made a speech on
reprisals in Ireland, in which he made the following
statement:

I have said at this bar time and again, in reference to reprisals,
that no one tried more strenuously than I have to put them down,
and I think I have succeeded in doing so.

Those words of his will become a mockery in history,
for during his administration, which began on April 3,
1920, the ''unofficial" and "official" reprisals increased
at a monstrous rate. Whereas in April there were
eleven buildings in Ireland wholly or partially destroyed,
in May there were thirty-eight, in June twenty-four,
in July two hundred and forty-four, in August two
hundred and two, and in the first five months of 192 1
over one thousand.

Sir Hamar Greenwood also said that in the non-
martial law area, which comprises the great part of
Ireland, there never have been official reprisals.

"Reprisals are rare. Unofficial reprisals are now
rare indeed, so rare that we may say they never occur
in Ireland." That statement, soothing to our British
conscience, was immediately challenged by the Irish
people, who issued the following rejoinder:

330

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

Unofficial Reprisals in the Non-martial Law Area

The havoc in Headford, Co. Galway, on January i8th, 1920, and
subsequent days when 19 residences, farmhouses and shops were
destroyed, was only one of many "unofficial" reprisals in that
month. The wrecking of Donegal town in which 100 shops and
residences were destroyed or damaged occurred in February. The
town of Clifden, Connemara, was sacked on March i6th. Sixteen
buildings were wholly or partially destroyed in the town of West-
port, Co. Mayo, on March 26th. During the month of April many
residences, shops and other premises were destroyed in fifteen towns
not in the Martial Law area. And in one week ending May 21st,
ten farmhouses, seven private residences, four shops, two hotels,
a granary and a mill were destroyed in the Non-martial Law counties
of Galway, Mayo and Offaly (King's Co.).

Unofficial Reprisals in the Martial Law Area

So much for some of the "Unofficial" reprisals, "so rare that we
may say that they never occur." There are others. In the eight
counties under Martial Law the number of buildings and property
of all kinds destroyed "unofficially" by British forces was more
than twice the number of the buildings and property officially de-
stroyed. The following is a comparison covering the period January
1st, 1921, to May 28th, 1921, between the premises and property
destroyed or damaged by order of the British Military Governors in
the Martial Law area and those destroyed or damaged by roving
bands of Constables and Troops. The phrase "Premises and
Property" covers crops, furniture and personal effects, as well as
shops, farmhouses, residences, public halls, factories and works:

Year 1921

Premises and property

destroyed or damaged

under official order

Premises and property

destroyed or damaged

unofficially

January

February

March

April

May (ist-28th)

172

162

354

The wholesale destruction of the houses of non-
combatant Irish men and women, "officially" and

331

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

"unofficially" — and I can see no distinction in the evil
of either method of collective punishment — failed to
terrorize them into a surrender of their claim to self-
government, though their daily life was haunted by
fear and their nights were terror-stricken. Sir Hamar
Greenwood, faced with his failure, sought refuge in
the pretense that the destruction of property was not
considerable. In the words of an Irish leader, "over
three thousand ruined buildings in Ireland gave him
the lie."

XII

I have set down what I believe to be the true facts
about Ireland, impartially, without special pleading for
one side or the other. For that is how history will be
written and we shall not be able to dodge its verdict.
To my mind now looking at the whole tragedy as it is
close to us, I think the verdict will be against England,
or at least against British statesmen who betrayed the
honor and good name of England, and the ideals for
which so many of our men died in the European war.
By their lack of generosity in early days when it would
have been so easy to be generous, and so fruitful of
friendship, by their utter disregard of the Irish temper-
ament and traditions, by their malign favoritism toward
the truculance of Ulster — the first to take up arms and
proclaim rebelUon — by their poHtical intrigues and
breaking of pledges, by their adoption of Prussian
methods after a war for Hberty, by their abandonment
of government in Ireland to military and police officials
with narrow brains and soulless instincts, by conniving
at the indiscIpHne and private vengeance of armed police,
among whom were men of evil character tempted by
opportunity, and provoked into passion, by ridiculing
all efforts at peace and reconcihation by thousands of
liberal minds in England, and faUing back upon old

332

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

traditions of tyranny and coercion, by hiding the happen-
ings in Ireland from pubHc knowledge in England, and
by proceeding stubbornly upon a line of policy which
was bound to fail according to all historical experience,
and was essentially evil in its principles, they raised up
enemies against us in all parts of the world, and so
blackened^^our reputation that it will need the saving
grace of time to wash it clean again in years of nobler
leadership.

Yet, having written these words, which are not
pleasant to write, it is impossible to acquit the Irish
people of evil acts and obstinate stupidities which
would make one despair of them if they were not re-
deemed by fine qualities of spirit and character. That
guerrilla warfare of theirs was a dirty business, not
justified by any claim to liberty. It was a hark back to
the cave men, not a lead forward to a new era of civili-
zation and human progress. There are limits even to
the claims of hberty, for otherwise all governments
would go down in a welter of bloody anarchy, because a
majority or minority accused them of "tyranny." The
Irish people had a right to demand self-government
within the Empire, by all methods consistent with a
decent code of honor. Personally I cannot think that
the Easter rebellion belonged to that code. Because,
whatever the measure of our misdeeds in the past and
our tactlessness or stupidity in the beginning of the war,
Ireland was not suffering under any grinding tyranny
which justified such action. Her people were prosper-
ous. They were free in all but separate government.
At that time they were not arrested or imprisoned or
coerced for political reasons. They had freedom in
their faith. The English people had not been hostile
to them. There were ties of friendship and of love
between many English and many Irish. Their writers,
players, painters, had been accepted with enthusiastic

333/

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

homage in England. Their claim for Home Rule was
supported by all liberal Englishmen. In spite of all
that happened afterward, their cold-blooded killing of
policemen and soldiers went outside the bounds of
legitimate warfare, even if we grant their right to resist
coercive measures by force of arms.

Their way of argument, as well as their way of warfare,
was cunningly unfair. They adopted, to the world,
the pose of an innocent people suffering Christian mar-
tyrdom under a bloody and ruthless terror, not acknowl-
edging that at least in bloodshed they took the lead,
and that men who are attacked have the right to retali-
ate according to all human law. They seemed to
beheve, at least for propaganda purposes, that British
troops should allow themselves to be ambushed with
impunity, that officers or men should allow themselves
to be murdered in the presence of their wives, without
a gesture of self-defense, that very grim and terrible
deeds might be done in the name of Irish liberty, and
become ennobled. In the name of Russian liberty the
Bolsheviki massacred the Tsar and his daughters with
dreadful cruelty, killed thousands of political prisoners,
committed acts of great atrocity which are not made
white as snow because there was tyranny under Tsardom
or cruelty under counter-revolutionary generals of the
old regime.

Nor did Sinn Fein reveal any knowledge of English
psychology, by imagining that our people would be
frightened or fought into surrender. Every ambush
they made on British troops was a setback in their
claim to self-government, for it choked sympathy and
hardened hearts. Every ''gunman" they sent to
England to burn signal boxes or shipyards was an enemy
of people striving for peace with Ireland. The English
people were shamed and sickened and startled, not by
the ambushes of the I. R. A., but by the policy of

334

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

reprisals. Their desire for a peaceful settlement was
due not to fear, but to that generosity of soul which the
Irish denied. When Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor
of Cork, died in Brixton prison by hunger striking,
there were sarcastic comments, it is true, in the House
of Commons, but in the streets of London, when his
body passed with a guard of honor in Sinn Fein uniform,
the people doffed their hats and were pitiful. And in
June of 1 92 1, before the King's visit to Belfast, when
the Irish ambushes were in full swing and English
soldiers were being killed, there were Sinn Fein proces-
sions in London, with the Irish carrying the Republican
flags, playing their pipes, singing old rebel songs, and
shouting, " Up, Sinn Fein ! " The London crowds watched
them without hostility, without a scuffle, even with
smiling sympathy, for there is something in us which
might seem Hke weakness but for our record in the
Great War, and it is not weakness, but a generous
spirit toward liberty and those who struggle for it,
even though our own government is for a while opposed
to it in spirit and in act. I doubt whether any other
people in the world would have been so magnanimous,
so "sporting." I doubt whether the Irish themselves
will learn a lesson from it, for in spite of many beautiful
qualities of Irish character, they are, as a Celtic people,
unforgiving, ungenerous to those they call their enemy,
likely to receive a gift as an insult, to answer fair play
by ill will, and good humor with ill temper, nourishing
grievances for their own sake.

So it was, to cite a trivial instance, when I went to
the United States. I was scrupulously fair to the
Irish, and though I denounced the acts of Sinn Fein,
as I have denounced them here, I also denounced the
acts of "reprisals" in stronger terms still. I gave the
facts of Irish history as I have given them here, fairly,
without bias, except, perhaps, leaning a little to the

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Irish side — because I am English — with strict regard
to historical truth, as far as I know it. But the Irish-
Americans shouted me down in New York, Chicago,
and other cities, and they shouted louder when I spoke
fair things about the Irish than when I admitted the
injustice of England in the past. They did not want
fair play. They wanted passionate unreason, excuse
for violence, more food for hatred; and it seemed to me
that their love of Ireland was less than their hatred of
England.

All that is in the bad old past. As I write there is
new hope for Ireland, as for England and the world.

On the eve of the King's visit to Belfast to open the
Ulster Parliament on June 22d there had been Cabinet
dissensions which still belong to secret political history.
Unionists and Coalition Liberals were violently divided
as to the future policy in Ireland, some demanding a
new offer of concihation, some urging a stronger measure
of military coercion in the South and West. The Prime
Minister was, it seems, for coercion, and that night in
the House of Lords, Lord Birkenhead, who, at the
Cabinet, was for concihation, made a truculent speech
which seemed to close all doors of hope. In reply to
some Irish Unionist peers who pressed for the enlarge-
ment of the financial powers given to the two Parlia-
ments of Ireland under the new Act, he said that such
expedients were useless, that there was war in Ireland,
and that the Irish must be crushed by the dispatch of
large bodies of fresh troops.

At the same time the Sinn Fein leaders intercepted a
letter dated June i6th, from Sir Henry Wilson, chief
of the Imperial General Staff, to Sir James Craig, Premier
of the Northern Parliament, regretting that he could not
attend the opening of that Parliament, as he was engaged
in dispatching large reinforcements to Ireland for the
purpose of finally crushing the Sinn Fein rebellion.

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THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND

In such black thunderclouds of political strife the
King and Queen set out for Belfast, risking their lives
gladly for the sake of peace in Ireland, though their
Ministers were afraid to risk their jobs. Belfast gave
them a great welcome, and the heart of Ireland itself
was touched by this courageous act and by the King's
speech, in which he declared his love for the Irish people
and prayed that they might work together in the cause
of peace. The text for his speech was "Let us forget
and forgive."

The effect of this call from the King was instanta-
neous throughout the world, and in every country there
was an appeal for a new policy of conciliation, and a
stern criticism of the contrast between the King's
magnanimity and the harshness of that speech by the
Lord Chancellor, "the keeper of his conscience."

On that night, June 22d, De Valera, "President of
the Irish Republic," was arrested in a house at Black-
rock, Dublin, but released next day, when his identity
was discovered; and on June 26th a letter was dispatched
to him by the Prime Minister of England:

June 24th, 1921.
Sir:

The British Government are deeply anxious that so far as they
can assure it, the King's appeal for reconciliation in Ireland shall
not have been made in vain. Rather than allow yet another oppor-
tunity of settlement in Ireland to be cast aside, they feel it incum-
bent upon them to make a final appeal in the spirit of the King's
words for a conference between themselves and the representatives
of Southern and Northern Ireland.

I write, therefore, to convey the following invitation to you as
the chosen leader of the great majority in Southern Ireland, and to
Sir James Craig, the Premier of Northern Ireland.

(i) That you should attend a conference here in London, in
company with Sir James Craig, to explore to the utmost the pos-
sibility of a settlement.

(2) That you should bring with you for the purpose any col-
leagues whom you may select. The Government will of course

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

give a safe conduct to all who may be chosen to participate in the
conference.

We make this invitation with a fervent desire to end the ruin-
ous conflict which has for centuries divided Ireland and embittered
the relations of the peoples of these two islands, who ought to live
in neighbourly harmony with each other, and whose co-operation
would mean so much not only to the Empire but to humanity.

We wish that no endeavour should be lacking on our part to
realize the King's prayer, and we ask you to meet us, as we will
meet you, in the spirit of conciliation for which His Majesty appealed.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,

(Signed) D. Lloyd George.

This invitation to a conference was accepted by Sir
James Craig, to whom it was sent in the same terms, and
De Valera replied guardedly that, while earnestly de-
siring to help in bringing about a lasting peace between
the people of these two islands, he saw no means by
which it could be reached if the Prime Minister denied
Ireland's essential unity and set aside the principle of
national self-determination. Before replying more fully
he desired to consult with representatives of the "political
minority" in Ireland.

Those consultations with the Irish Unionists followed
by conferences with the British government are now
taking place, and it is the prayer of the English and
Irish peoples that out of the darkness of long and tragic
strife there may come the light of a lasting peace between
two peoples whose union in liberty and in affection will
be a promise of hope for the youth that is coming to
make the new world.

The tragedy of Ireland through a thousand years of
history may be replaced by the happiness of her future,
free among the federation of British peoples, and in the
society of all the nations.

THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

IN the beginning of 192 1 I had an opportunity of
studying at first hand, and with extraordinary opportu-
nities of knowledge, one of the most important questions
of the world, upon which the future of civilization, and
especially of our European life, largely depends. It was
the question of what the United States of America
would do under the new leadership which had come to
her with President Harding, and what part her people
would play in international policy. That question is
not yet answered in full, because the future holds its
own secrets, but as far as we know it the reply is
hopeful.

For whether we like it or not — and there are some who
don't — America has largely in her hands the great deci-
sion as to whether white civilization, as we know it,
and as most of us like it, will progress in an orderly way
to a higher plane of development in peaceful industry,
with a little more comfort for plain folk, with a good
margin for the little things of art and beauty which
make up the joy of life, greater security against the
menace of war, and a relief from the deadening weight
of armaments, or whether it will fall, as some European
nations have already fallen, into decay and disease,
poverty-stricken, underfed, staggering and fainting
through a jungle darkness.

If America withdrew into herself, holding herself aloof

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from the world problems, demanding full payment of
her loans, refusing extension of credit, and hardening
into antagonism against the Allies in the war, it would
be impossible, I am sure, to heal the wounds of Europe.
We cannot do without American grains, fats, raw mate-
rial, and manufactured goods. Who thinks so is a fool,
without any knowledge of world conditions. More than
that, Europe needs the moral support and judgment and
friendliness of the United States. The League of Na-
tions is at present, in spite of the good efforts of many
good men, utterly impotent to deal with the vital prob-
lems of world peace and health or to enforce its decisions
upon conflicting nationalities, interests, and rivalries,
so long as the most powerful nation in the world to-day
stays outside the family council. That is as clear as
sunlight to a thinking mind. On the other hand, the
entry of the United States into a league of peoples, or
at least a world council called to consider the way of
recovery and a rebuilding of international relations,
will make real what is now unreal and give immense
strength to any common agreement. America can
support her will by strong argument, because we are
all so deeply in her debt, and in the future will need
desperately her surplus of food supplies on easy terms.
Do not let us forget that the United States of America,
being made up of human beings, might be more than
aloof and disinterested in the welfare of Europe, which
is bad enough, because it checks the chance of quick
recovery. Her people might become unfriendly, hos-
tile— swept by passion if we played the fool with them,
beyond patience, by a series of blunders, the stupidities
of statesmen, the tit-for-tat game in the Press. She
can take a clear choice between the part of destroyer
and the part of builder. In a little while she could
raise the greatest army in the world, in a little while
she will have the biggest navy. She could destroy the

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

last chance of civilized progress in Europe, and, hav-
ing done that, would be herself destroyed. But that
choice is hers, if she likes to take it, and the power
is hers.

She can choose, as I beheve she will, the part of
builder. It is her national quality. Her people are
builders and not destroyers. They have already built
a great New World, splendid and strong, in spite of
evil elements. Under her new leadership she could
help to build another New World, better than her own,
ours as well as hers, that New World to which we all
look forward with the coming of youth. Will she do
that.'* In what way will she help in reconstruction and
the new building on the ruins that were made?

I found some clue to the answer after a visit of eight
weeks in the United States, when every day was filled
with the experience of meeting large numbers of men
and women eager to get some trustworthy evidence
about the actual conditions of Europe, anxious for
some guiding principles upon which their country may
fix its faith in dealing with those present problems,
and keen to "put me wise" about the stresses and
strains of American Hfe in this crisis of the world's
history.

During those two crowded months I visited about
thirty cities, going no farther west than Chicago and
Milwaukee. Most of them are cities about equal in
size to our nothern industrial towns, like Bolton and
Wigan, but with more comfort for the individual citizen,
more opportunities for social recreation, more luxury
for the rich and less squalor for the poor, than in the
same type of town in England. Here, in these places,
I found the real America, more than in New York, which
is so vast, so complicated with alien populations, and so
cosmopolitan in its interests, that is has no single and
definite character. But in places like Worcester, Troy,

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Scranton, Utica, Wilkes-Barre, and Detroit one finds
the typical qualities of American character and Ufe.
I met the people of good standing — men who had built
up their fortunes in the industry of these cities and have
a local pride and patriotism, the leading manufacturers
and business men, lawyers, doctors, and school-teachers,
newspaper proprietors and editors, and the women,
their wives and daughters — who organize, ceaselessly
and strenuously, the innumerable charities of the
town, women's clubs (far more important than our own
in size and activity), literary and musical societies,
Red Cross and relief works, and all kinds of "leagues"
and labors of social service.

These people are ''provincial" in the sense that their
experience of life is mostly Umited to their own cities,
though many of them go fairly often to New York,
spend their summer hoHdays on the coast of Maine, or
California, and look back to a European trip or two with
abiding memories. The women, especially, are great
readers of contemporary literature, and do not limit
themselves to works of fiction, but concentrate more on
biographies, memoirs, and books of an ethical kind which
contain some "spiritual upUft." Everywhere they
were reading Mrs. Asquith's autobiography, startled,
more than a little scandalized, but highly amused by its
indiscretions. H. G. Wells's Outline of History was a
first favorite at the moment, and they found it an easy
guide to the enormous adventure of the ages. Main
Street, by Sinclair Lewis, was the "best seller" among
their own novels, and with photographic realism pic-
tures the narrow interests, the local scandals, the
small world, of the ordinary American citizen in the
Middle West towns, utterly out of touch with any other
style of civilization, knowing nothing and caring noth-
ing about problems of the human family remote from
his own petty and selfish interests.

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

I did not meet the Main Street type. The people
I met — and I met hundreds of them in those brief
eight weeks — were of better intellectual standing and
wider human sympathy, and I look back upon a long
portrait gallery of keen, energetic, thoughtful men, and
of kind, frank, generous-mannered women, who were
thinking hard and talking hard about what America
would do now that Harding had succeeded Wilson, and
now that the nation had to make up its mind about its
future policy in the world. There are milHons of such
people in the United States, and, though I only met hun-
dreds of them, I believe that I was able to get from them
the general convictions and tendency of thought of
their class and kind.

Those I met were nearly all Republicans. They had
voted against Wilson and the Wilsonian policy, partly,
I imagine, because they believed that Wilson had flouted
the Constitution and the instincts of his people by
playing "a. lone hand" in Europe, without getting the
advice or consent of the Senate and Congress, partly
because they resented the length of time he had kept them
out of the war, but largely because they believed he
had failed in his handling of the European situation,
to the hurt of American prestige and interests. The
immense defeat of the Democrats, and of Mr. Wilson, was
not entirely a proof of desire to wash their hands of
international obligations. A deep sense of resentment
against Mr. Wilson himself was reinforced by irrita-
tions with American administration during the war,
which had hurt individual susceptibilities. As a friend
of mine put it briefly, the question asked in the presi-
dential election was, "Are you sick and tired of the
present administration.?" and the answer was, "By
God! we are!" The Irish-Americans flung their weight
against Wilson because of non-interference in the matter

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of Ireland; the German-Americans, because of his
share in the peace treaty.

For some time after the war enthusiasm had died
out there was the same lethargy and exhaustion of
emotion in the United States as had overtaken other
countries. No new impulse had replaced that emotion,
no new national ideal. The spirit of the American
people had drawn back into itself. They were dis-
gusted with European rivalries and greeds. They
said, in effect: *'Let us leave those Europeans to stew
in their own juice. We can't do anything with them,
anyhow. Let us get an administration which will
pull us out of that mess, collect the debts owing to us,
keep us free from entanglements and obligations with
alien peoples, and concentrate upon an exclusively
American policy according to our old historic traditions."
Not an unreasonable policy, if it were possible.

When I arrived in the United States two things were
happening which were already beginning to modify,
among the educated classes, this philosophy of national
isolation and independence. One was the financial
situation leading to heavy losses in almost every branch
of commerce, and a rising tide of unemployment. The
other was the coming into office of President Harding
and his colleagues and the anxious questioning of all
serious citizens as to whether, after all, the new President,
and the men whom he was selecting as his counselors,
would be equal to the increasing difficulties of the gov-
erning task. Even during my short stay I was able
to observe a change of view. . . .

Financially the United States was going through a
bad time — worse than most of us in England realized.
Over and over again in the smoking cars of long-distance

344

THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

trains I overheard business men deploring the heavy
losses they had suffered. Prices were toppling down
everywhere. Buyers of any kind of stocks — copper,
i leather, grain, motor cars, railroads — had been badly
hit, in many cases ruined. Exporters were choked
up with undelivered goods which they had bought
at a high price and could not sell at cutthroat rates.
Manufacturers had overproduced, and the cost of
production was so great, owing to the price of labor,
that they could not hope to compete in foreign markets.
There were five and a half million unemployed men in
the United States. Real distress was creeping up in
cities like Detroit, from where there was an exodus of
factory hands back to the land. The situation improved
a little, but not much.

Now the American mind was searching around for
the reasons behind this sudden *'slump," and was
inclined to attribute it to local conditions, the aggres-
sive wage demands of labor, and temporary causes.
At first the American "plain man" resented the sug-
gestion that the simple cause of this stagnation in trade
was, and is, the collapse of the world markets, the social
rot that has overtaken Russia, Poland, Austria, the
heavy burden of taxation that destroys the purchasing
power of France, Italy, Germany, and England. At
first I found people challenge me when in my lectures I
pointed out the economic impossibility of the United
States existing with anything like the measure of her
present prosperity without entering into a close trade
relationship with the European nations. They were
silent for a little while when I stated that America was
almost as dependent upon Europe, as Europe upon
America. They were inclined to shrink back from the
logical result of my argument, when I urged them, for
their own sakes, as well as for white civilization itself,
to come into an association of nations — never mind
23 345

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

whether it is called the League of Nations — to extend
long credits to the poorer countries, to lead the way to
gradual disarmament, and to aid the recovery of the
world by a free exchange of raw material and manufac-
tured goods. But I perceived before the end of my stay
a general recognition of these facts, not due to my poor
speeches, but to pressure of events.

The American mind, at least among the thinking,
reading classes, was already abandoning the idea of
''isolation." The well-to-do business man in places
like Worcester and Troy had already reached the posi-
tion of the high financier in New York, that America
must come into the settlement of the world crisis, and
must ease the burden of the stricken peoples even to
the extent, if need be, of holding over the payment of
their debts. The women had come to that conclusion
before the men.

Then, after the sound and fury of the presidential
election and all the bitter, personal vendetta against
Mr. Wilson, there was a sense of anxiety about Presi-
dent Harding and his administration. People were
asking themselves whether Mr. Harding would rise
to anything like the leadership they desired, whether
he was able to call to the heart and soul of the people,
giving them some enthusiasm and ideal higher than
"big business." It may seem sentimental and untrue,
but I am certain that I am right when I say that great
numbers of American people, after temporary reaction,
are craving for some impulse higher than m.ere material
satisfaction. They wish that to be secured first — and
they see no security in the present state of affairs —
but beyond and above that, they yearn for a touch of
nobility in national policy — for some high leadership
which would guide them in a spiritual way. They did
not expect that from Mr. Harding, though they found
him honest and a man of good will, but rather "Main

346

THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

Street" in his mind. They comforted themselves with
the hope that there would be good teamwork, and
some of them clung to the name of Hoover as the shining
star to which they yoked their faith. But here again
they hesitated. Would Hoover — the man who organ-
ized the food supplies of starving Europe, the food
dictator of the world (for that he was) — play up to the
party machine, compromise with men hke Daugherty,
the new Attorney-General, and be tactful with the
wirepullers of the machine which breaks any man who
tries to put a spoke in its wheels or give them a different
kind of spin? They were afraid that Hoover might get
out, or be put out, before he had gone very far.

Secretary Hughes was the greatest hope of the Repub-
lican party in the field of foreign affairs, though some of
them thought he had too much of the ''lawyer mind."
I have met Mr. Hughes several times, and have had
long talks with him — not for pubHcation. He has a
penetrating mind, clear, cool judgment, complete in-
tellectual honesty, and I found in him (what others are
surprised to find) a humane outlook upon fife, a sensi-
tive sympathy with the sufferings of stricken people.
Yet people doubted whether he would obtain the
allegiance of the Senate in altruistic ideals.

So many told me, as to a friend, candidly, and I
saw in this anxiety the wistfulness of people who have
been disappointed with the official actions of their
country, felt just a little conscience-stricken because of
a failure to come up to their own ideals, and desired
earnestly to fulfill their duty to the world, whatever
that might be. They wanted to get on to the plane of
idealism again, if only it could be squared with reality
and common sense. They would even raise an exten-
uating word for Wilson — though they hated him, so
many of them. "He did put up certain broad ideals
to which we must feel our way forward. Perhaps his

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

ideals will be remembered when his personal faults
have been forgotten." Now and then in big audiences
I heard a section fire of applause, or isolated handclaps,
when I mentioned Wilson's name. They pitied him,
anyhow, for the immensity of his personal tragedy.

The League of Nations still had its adherents, and
was gaining more every day. I tested that in the same
way, and it never failed to get a quick response, espe-
cially from the women. But they would prefer to come
in to an assembly of nations called by some other name.
It is a matter of pride with the Senate especially, which
killed the League in order to kill Wilson. They cannot
accept the name of Wilson's instrument. But they
must "come in." They felt that in every place where
I touched the pulse of public opinion. As one great
American leader put it to me — his influence extends to
a million people — "it isn't a question of 'coming in.*
It's much rather a question of 'getting out.' We are
in already. We were in when we sent over our first
transports of troops. We are in up to the neck, be-
cause we have debts to the value of five billion dollars.
We are in because our trade depends upon the markets
of the world. The question is, how are we to get out
of this world crisis with any business and security and
honor." But that amounts to the same thing. The
very laws of economics will force America to come into a
council of nations, and by the power of her natural
resources, her immense reserves of industry, her means
of granting credits, it is certain that she will take the
lead in the reconstruction of Europe, which means as
much to her as to ourselves.

Ill

In nearly every section of American society which I
touched — I was unable to come in contact with the

348

THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

factory hands and working classes, which was a great
omission — I found a genuine friendship, often an emo-
tional sentiment, for England and Great Britain.
This was voiced by the President, with whom I had a
personal interview, lasting only for a minute or two,
in the White House, a few days after his inauguration.
A number of visitors were wanting to see him, trooping
in through the open gates (shut during Wilson's term
of office) and sitting about the antechambers. They
were Senators and Congressmen from the West and
Middle West, an old general of Civil War days, a hand-
some young colonel of the air-craft corps, several ladies
of social standing, a little girl sitting with folded hands,
looking wide-eyed through big spectacles with tortoise-
shell rims, a group of newspaper men smoking cigarettes
incessantly. The President's secretary chatted with
the visitors as he sat at a desk on which was a great
bouquet of roses. This social atmosphere of the White
House was simple, informal — a striking contrast, I was
told, to the austerity of Mr. Wilson's time. The new
President was giving "the glad hand" to everybody,
keeping open house, breaking the autocratic spell of
his predecessor.

One of his secretaries beckoned me, and I went in and
found Mr. Harding receiving his visitors — a tall, heavily
built man with a powerful face, deeply lined, puffed
under his eyes, square of jaw, with a good-humored
mouth and kind eyes, and silver hair. He gripped my
hand and asked a few questions, and was a little startled,
I fancy, when I asked him suddenly for a message to
the English people. He laughed, and could not think
of one on the spur of the moment, alluding to newspaper
controversy, and bitter things said on both sides, in
disjointed sentences. Then he spoke earnestly, with
real emotion, I thought, while he still held my hand in
a strong grasp.

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

"Friendship between the United States and Great
Britain," he said, "is essential for the welfare of the
world. Americans of the old stock look upon England
as the mother country, and we regard that always as
a cherished inheritance, not to be forgotten,"

What the President said was told me in other words
by hundreds of other people — I could say thousands,
without exaggeration — and with absolute sincerity.
Senator Knox was one of those who spoke to me about
the misunderstanding of the American attitude to
England, the mistaken idea that there was an underlying
hostility likely to lead one day to war.

"The mere idea of it is impossible and ridiculous,"
he said, and he mentioned the wave of indignation and
incredulity which had passed through America like an
electric shock when such words as "drifting toward
war" were used (or reported as having been used, which
is quite a different thing) by one of our representatives.
He admitted that there were historical prejudices,
fostered in the school book, which created a bad impres-
sion in the minds of American children, hard to eradi-
cate. But that impression of England's bad action in
the past was counterbalanced by other influences of
literature and tradition, and in any case the universities
were helping to form a fairer point of view about the
War of Independence and other periods. He once
astonished a fellow Senator during a visit to Windsor
Castle by laying a bunch of flowers reverently before a
statue of George HI.

"What on earth are you doing that for?" asked his
friend.

"I am paying a tribute to the Father of the American
Republic," said Senator Knox. "If that fellow hadn't
been such an old blockhead w^e might still have been ^
under British rule." H

The only trace of hostility I found was among the ^g

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

extreme section of the Irish-Americans, and certainly
that was fierce, unreasoning, and dangerous. At my
first lecture in the Carnegie Hall, New York, I had only
been going five minutes or so before the first interruption
began, in a rich Irish brogue, from a top gallery. I
heard the words, "Why don't you take the marbles out
of your mouth?" And thinking this was merely a
friendly criticism of my hopelessly "English" accent, I
squared my chest and spoke louder. But that was only
the beginning of trouble, deliberate and hostile, to what-
ever I said, and I was speaking about Austria, and not
Ireland. Amidst a hubbub of sound and fury I heard
the words, "English poltroon," "Cutthroat English,"
and, "What about Egypt .f*" I tried to tell a story about
a young Austrian doctor. Several times I began a
description of his suflPering. Then I had to abandon
him to his fate. Standing alone on a big platform, I
heard waves of tumultuous noise, and could see in the
galleries a series of running fights, separate skirmishes,
the pounce of small groups on isolated individuals.
I felt curiously far off and aloof, intensely interested
in that drama which seemed to have nothing to do with
me. Down in the stalls a fat man wedged in his chair
was bellowing incoherently until silenced by his neigh-
bors. A voice below the platform called up to me,
"We have sent for the police." Presently I went on
talking, with spasmodic interruptions from the galleries.
I was able to get through my address, and I found that
any simple words of mine about England and Anglo-
American friendship aroused wonderful applause. The
great audience desired to express to me their utter dis-
gust with the Irish demonstration, their friendly feeling
to an Englishman on the platform, to England for
whom he spoke with fairness to Ireland. The hostile
element was in a minority of fifty to three thousand or
more.

3.SI

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

After that I had other experiences, as at Chicago, on
the eve of St. Patrick's Day, when it was forty-five min-
utes before I could finish my first sentence. Immediately
I stepped on the platform, the din began, deafening
and menacing. Fifty young Irishmen shouted orations
at me from the galleries. Two hundred or more hooted
and yelled. In the top gallery a gang of girls catcalled
in shrill unison. The men were angry and violent.
They desired, it seemed, to tear me limb from Hmb, and
fought desperately with the police when at last they
were ejected. For the first time in my life I was com-
pelled to accept a bodyguard of detectives. They ex-
plained politely that it was not so much for my sake
as for theirs that they wished to sit by my side in a
taxicab, to walk with me on the way to the hotel.
" It's our reputation w^e want to safeguard," they
said. **If anything happens to you we should get the
kick."

Even on my last night in New York, when I received
the greatest honor of my Hfe at a banquet to me by a
thousand people under the auspices of the Allied Loyalty
League, there came to my table all through the dinner
hostile messages from the world outside. I opened
one letter and it said, "You are a dirty English rat."
I opened another, and it said, "You are the hell-hound
of a dirty race." Outside the Biltmore Hotel small boys,
paid a few cents for their job, distributed leaflets accus-
ing me of horrible lies.

"This man has insulted every loyal American," said
one of the leaflets. "All who associate with him, dine
with him., or honor him in any way are disloyal Amer-
icans. This man should be deported at once."

The violence of the Irish-American sentiment, the
amazing lack of reason in their methods, may be judged
by this series of attacks upon me, for in Ireland I was
known as a good friend, and in England I had not hesi-

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

tated to criticize and condemn the British government
for what I considered the stupidity and brutahty of
many of their actions in Ireland. So in America I spoke
honestly and fairly, setting out the plain truth, allowing
all that could be allowed to the Irish point of view,
pleading for reconciliation and peace which should give
liberty to Ireland under Dominion Home Rule, if they
were wilUng to abandon their guerrilla warfare. But
nothing that I said made the sUghtest difference. They
howled at me as an Englishman, and in their pamphlets
and leaflets made no secret of their desire to force a war
between America and Great Britain.

It had that amount of importance that it was linked
up with other sinister movements — Bolshevik and Pan-
German — and with the persistent, venomous anti-
British propaganda of Hearst's newspapers, with their
immense popular circulation among the masses of
working people. It was important enough in its in-
fluence upon unthinking crowds, unable to discriminate
between falsity and truth, and quickly moved to passion,
to be a warning to the British government to settle the
Irish question rapidly, sensibly, without temper or
passion, with a return to sanity and statesmanship. For
so long as it remained unsettled there would be this
cancerous poison, spreading ill will in the minds of a
section of the American people. Apart from that it
had no influence upon the American mind as a whole.
On the contrary, the unjust, ridiculous, and ill-mannered
methods of the Sinn Fein minority among the Irish-
Americans disgusted all decent citizens and produced
a warm reaction in favor of England. An Irish-German-
American demonstration, Deutschland-go-Bragh, as it
was called by a wit, in Madison Square Garden, where
disloyal speeches were made, was followed by the mon-
ster counter-demonstration at which General Pershing
and other speakers proclaimed the loyalty of America to

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those with whom they had fought in the war, amidst
scenes of enormous enthusiasm.

In a personal but wonderful way I gained by the same
reaction against violence and lack of fair play. The
Sinn Fein disturbers of my meetings were never more
than 5 per cent. The other 95, angered by what hap-
pened, gave me tremendous ovations for England's
sake, so that I was uphfted on waves of enthusiastic
applause.

America has many difficult problems to face, some
fears haunt the minds of the people, inherited, tradi-
tional habits of mind drag her back from a free vision
of new necessities, and her political leaders are not, on
the whole, representative of the best instincts of her
wisest folk. Her difficulties with labor are intensifying,
for men who enjoyed high wages and became used to a
higher standard of life do not lightly drop back to a
lower scale, especially when there is such a wide gulf
between their highest wage and the great luxury of the
very rich. Among her ahen populations not quickly
assimilated in the melting pot there are dangerous
currents of thought. But the risk is being minimized
by the falling prices, and wise concessions by employers
of labor in many great industries.

One fear she has, especially on the Pacific coast, is
that of Japan, and when I was last in the United States
there was uneasy talk about an ''inevitable war"
among people who, I think, exaggerated the menace.
It was that thought which gave aid to the demand for
a big navy, at a time when the world was ready for a
call to disarmament. In America, as in all countries
anxious of great power, there is an imperialist group
eager to acquire new territory as a proof of power, and
now and then one hears loose talk about "clearing up

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Mexico," But that is quite opposed to the instincts
of the people as a whole, who hate the thought of such
adventures.

The poHtical machine in America, controlled in
Washington, is antiquated in its views of life, I fancy,
and a heavy drag upon the progress of liberal and gen-
erous ideals. At a time when the whole world was in
need of free trade, including America herself, it was
proposed to put up a tariff against Canadian wheat and
other tariffs against foreign goods — a muddle-headed
arithmetic which would hurt American commerce and
limit its activities. At a time when, as I am certain,
the great body of American people who read and think
and feel are eager to help in the reconstruction of Europe
and the recovery of the world's markets by carrying on
the work they began when they sent their boys to
France, or went themselves, old Senators from the
West, Congressmen from "Main Street," are harking
back to the policy of isolation, calling themselves " lOO
per cent American" and believing that that means the
narrow selfishness of the Chinese wall. They will, it
is certain, try to pull at the coat-tails of President
Harding whenever he wishes to take a step forward into
a larger relationship with the human family. They will
shout to him, "We put you in to keep us out!" and the
ignorant masses, no more ignorant than ours, but more
remote from Europe, will give their backing to those old
and unwise men.

As an Englishman I ought not, perhaps, to write
these things, yet the American people will forgive me,
for I have been frank with them on all things, and
candid in any criticism of English faults. I believe,
too, unlike some of their own pessimists, among whom
is the most brilliant brain they have in the field of
journalism — my friend Frank Simonds — that liberal
ideas will prevail over narrow instincts, and that the

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

generous impulses of the intellectuals will move the
sluggish, inert mass of unthinking folk.

Steadily through this year of 1921 the Harding
administration gave unmistakable signs of abandoning
the policy of "isolation" and of coming in to the coun-
cils of the nations with good will and helpfulness, as I
had ventured to prophesy after my visit. In spite of
the apparent inconsistency of voting great credits for a
big navy, due, as I have said, to anxiety about Japan,
President Harding intimated very quickly his intention
of summoning the Powers of the world to a conference
for the discussion of a practical measure of all-round
reduction in armaments and the establishment of an
international tribunal to arbitrate on all matters of
potential dispute. That intention was fulfilled in July
of this year, when the President made a definite pro-
posal to the Allied Powers for a conference on disarma-
ment, thereby making a practical appeal to the human
race to abandon war as an argument. It is a good
memory of mine that I was able to put in some words
on behalf of that proposal at the Capitol in Washington,
when I had the rare honor of being invited to give evi-
dence before the committee of Congress on naval
affairs, on the possibility and scope of such a conference.

Before his great appeal, the President, acting upon
the advice of Secretary Hughes, decided that as America
had an interest in the question of German reparations,
it would be logical to have a representative on the
Reparations Committee, and that as the supreme coun-
cil of the Allies was dealing with the world affairs which
intensely affected the interests of the United States,
it would be only reasonable to have an American am-
bassador present at least while the deliberations were in
progress. People in England, as well as people in Amer-
ica, watched these moves away from isolation toward
international partnership, and drew their breath a little

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

and said, "Perhaps, after all, there is a chance for the
League of Nations!" Strange! for in America the doom
of the League has long ago been sealed in yard-long
headings across American newspapers:

"The League is dead!"

A friend of mine, named Lowell Mallett, one of the
shrewdest observers of American politics, described
the psychological effect in Washington of finding sud-
denly that that cry may have been rather premature.

"Solemnly or exultantly, prayerfully or profanely,
earnestly or indifferently, one has heard it proclaimed in
America every day since Harding was elected. Those
who desired the League's death have announced the
consummation of their wish so frequently that they have
come to believe it true. Of course they have had to
presuppose that because America was not a member
there wasn't any League, but they have been quite
equal to this presupposition.

"'The League is . . . I*

"The familiar phase was broken in two on a day not
long ago. It was the day that President Harding and
Secretary Hughes announced their decision to partici-
pate, to some extent, in the councils of the Allies. The
suspended exclamation might have been heard in the
cloakrooms of Congress where our statesmen gather to
smoke and talk about themselves. It was completed
by one such statesman in this manner —

'Alive! My gosh! the blamed thing lives!'
'This Senator accepted the decision to participate
in Allied councils as the beginning of the end of the
struggle that has been going on under cover within the
administration since March 4th. And his view is shared
by many other bitter opponents of the League. It is not
accepted gracefully, however. It is fairly safe to predict
that Washington will witness the bitterest sort of a
death battle over the question, but more than one oppo-

357

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

nent of the League, who is bravely kissing his wife and
little ones farewell and preparing to march forth to
take part in that battle, is already admitting that he is
going forth to glory, not to victory.

"For they are not bUnd to the situation. They knew
all the time they were chanting the League's requiem
that they ran the risk of having the late lamented rise
up from the bier to ask what all the fuss was about.
They knew they could only keep it dead so long as they
kept Harding convinced that the people of the United
States had decreed its death. Harding in his campaign
for election committed himself fairly firmly in favor of
both hfe and death for the League. The opponents of
the League have been more vociferous in claiming it
was their victory when the returns made him President,
but the RepubHcan supporters of the League idea, while
saying not a great deal, were equally sure that the elec-
tion meant nothing of the kind."

American financiers and business men were no longer
so hostile to the League idea, at least to a share in the
councils of Europe. For the sake of their increasing
investments in European commercial ventures, the time
had come to cease playing politics with international
affairs. In the twelve months preceding June, 1921,
three hundred and fifty million dollars had been loaned
to foreign borrowers by private American capital,
despite widespread economic depression in the United
States. As Mallett said, "With approximately a mil-
lion dollars daily flowing from their vaults into foreign
fields, American bankers are fairly unanimous in favor-
ing a policy that will protect those dollars." If not by
the League, or the League "idea," at least not by
isolation.

A mighty whack at the League was declared by
Colonel Harvey, the American ambassador at the
Court of St. James's, in his first pubUc speech in

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London. He banged, barred, and bolted the door, it
seemed, upon any American participation in any kind
of League of Nations. More interesting than his speech,
however, were the comments upon it in the American
Press. There was a widespread expression of opinion
that the ambassador had gone beyond his book and had
not spoken the mind of the American people as a whole,
nor of the Harding administration, which, as I was
informed on good authority, *'was busily searching the
dictionary for some other word than "League"!

I am not a fanatic on the subject of the League. I
believe that the general good will of people and their
spiritual renaissance are more important to the world
than any machinery of international justice. Never-
theless, good will itself needs an organization by which
it may express its ideals and give orderly effect to its
agreements. For that purpose the League of Nations
provides an organized system by which all nations may
come into conference and consider their national prob-
lems in relation to the rest of the world, and gain the
free consent and support of other peoples for their
national interests and rights and claims, while consent-
ing themselves to equal rights for all other peoples,
provided they do not inflict damage upon the family of
nations.

It should be a parliament of peoples, whose power is
based not upon force, but on agreement, at least, on
moral force rather than on physical force. The decrees
of its assembly should advise rather than command, and
the work of its councilors should be scientific and not
political. It will never be a super state, dominating
in its power over peoples who try to resist its decrees
or who dispute its authority, though the expression of a

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great majority of national representatives would have
an influence not lightly to be disregarded, if they had
the real support of their own governments and peoples.
The failures of the League, in so far as it has failed, have
been due to the insincerity of delegates, or to their im-
potence, because while dealing with the world problems
on lines of scientific argument the statesmen of Europe
were dealing with the same problems on lines of passion
and political intrigue. That weakness of the League
will not be overcome until its delegates are truly repre-
sentative of their parliaments, so that when they speak
their words are responsible, and that will only be attained
when the peoples themselves insist upon that respon-
sibility and insure its fulfillment. Another and fatal
cause of weakness in the present League is that it is
only half a League, or at least incomplete, with many
empty chairs. Without Germany, Russia, and the United
States, no proposal or agreement on affairs aflPecting the
interests of those nations could have authority.

In spite of that, and of many other limitations, be-
cause the spiritual state of the world has been at a
low ebb in the years after the war, not rising to the high
ideal of international justice preached by the leaders
of the war spirit and then flung to the devil as out-
worn rubbish, the League of Nations has done useful
work. Alone it has upheld the banner of that idealism
before the imagination of the peoples, and has gathered
to itself forces of plain folk who believe in its watchwords,
though some of its spokesmen are cynical and others
disheartened. Outside the Assembly where the talking
is done, there has been a body of scientific work prepared
by experts whose enthusiasm is real and devoted. They
have the young spirit for which the world has been
waiting. In committees formed by economists, organ-
izers, scientists, of many nations, among those forty-
eight who belong to the League, and of some who do not

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

belong thereto (like the United States of America),
keen brains and untired hearts have been studying
world problems of health, commerce, wages, hourt of
work, armaments, transport, communication, and
finance, not in a political way, limited by national
egotism, but in a scientific way, across the frontiers of
prejudice and rivalry. They have been learning to
think internationally. They have been preparing the
groundwork for the new architecture of human progress.
They have actual achievements to their credit for the
reshaping of international relations in the thoughts of
statesmen and financiers, if not yet in law.

The financial conference produced a scheme of inter-
national credits which is the basis of all present discus-
sion in America and Europe.

The Barcelona conference set out a number of valua-
ble methods of securing freedom of communication and
transit.

The international health organization will, without
doubt, be a new charter for the prevention of epidemic
disease and other scourges of the human race.

Another committee has devised means of co-ordinating
preventive measures against the traffic in opium, cocaine,
and other dangerous drugs.

Recommendations have been made for breaking down
the world-wide conspiracy of the white-slave traffic.

Plans have been prepared for the institution of a
permanent court of international justice, and com-
mittees have been at work on the possibility of limiting
armaments among the great Powers and prohibiting the
introduction of arms and ammunition among savage or
semicivilized races.

That work may be thrown on one side by the wicked-
ness of governments or the indifference of peoples, but,
whatever insanity may take possession of the world,
that work has been for sanity and well done.
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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

The United States of America, whose late President
was part author of the League idea, did not share in
that work officially, and their ambassador declared that
his government "will not have anything whatsoever
to do with the League, directly or indirectly, openly or
furtively." Experience of history and realities of life
challenged the ambassador. The case has been well
put by Reginald Berkeley, secretary of the League of
Nations Union.

Suppose that in two or three years' time a serious dispute between
two great Powers threatened the peace of the world — suppose one
broke out to-morrow. Suppose that dispute came before the League
of Nations, and, whilst it was still in the process of settlement, and
in spite of the provisions of the Covenant, one of these great Powers
suddenly mobilized its forces, thus threatening by implication at any
moment to break the Covenant and throw itself upon its opponent:
an act of war against the whole League. It is surely inconceivable
that in such circumstances the United States would not throw in
its weight on the side of the League for the preservation of peace.
This does not mean that the United States would then be liable to
send its troops to Europe. Now as formerly that would be entirely
its own affair. But it does mean that the immense moral forces of
America would be ranged, as they have always been ranged, on the
side of law and order. One nation alone, however powerful, cannot
kill a League of forty-eight others by abstaining from it, and it is as
certain as anything in this world can be said to be, that if the League
proves by its deeds its usefulness to mankind, no nation will be able
or willing to stand aside from it for long.

Outside the League or inside, America cannot and
will not ignore its evidence and its hopes. President
Harding himself has said so in clear words. "We never
were and never will be able to maintain isolation." And
again, "We are ready to associate ourselves with the
nations of the world, great and small, for conference and
for counsel, to seek the world's opinion. . . . We must
understand that ties of trade alone bind nations in
closest intimacy, and none may receive except he gives."

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

If that spirit is fulfilled, it is good enough. In friendly
alHance with the League of Nations — a League vivified
by the interests and allegiance of millions of nobodies
— America will exercise her influence in Europe, and share
the counsels of the world. In England there is a growing
allegiance for the purpose of the League, rather moving
and revealing in its manifestations, as when tens of
thousands gathered together in the parks of English
cities on a summer day this year, and proclaimed their
faith anew in its purpose and possibilities. The idea
had taken root in little houses of back streets, in simple
minds stricken by the misery of war and looking for a
new wisdom of men, in the hearts of many mothers of
boys. They came out in their masses for no selfish
interest of class or trade, but for the new hope of human-
ity symboHzed at least by the League as a supreme court
of international justice. For as my friend G. H. Perris
said in the last words he wrote before his death in the
service of the League —

Internationalism is not a negative thing, a state of continual
protestation; it is a positive growth towards a fuller and finer life.
This is but a first hesitating step. I look forward to the day — not
in my lifetime — when all Nations of the world will be in permanent
combination not only for arbitration instead of war, for the regula-
tion of their traffic and their laws, for the abolition of disease and of
slave-trade, but in the effort to grapple with that terrible enemy —
the periodic trade crisis — and to join in turning the forces of nature
to the highest account for the universal benefit. The immediate
task and the distant vision, both are essential to a full life.

That, after all, is the idea of the League, and though
the United States may never enter the League itself,
many milHons of her people, as I know, not by second-
hand report, but by what I have seen and heard, have
already given their allegiance to the idea, and in every
city of the United States there is, I am certain, a group of
men and women whose forward-looking imagination sees

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that vision of world governance in some such form as
outUned in the dying words of that friend I have quoted.

Despite the strains and stresses of national life, the
pride and egotism of a virile people untouched by the
sadness of the Old World, the noisy expression of a selfish
"Americanism" by newspapers and public orators, the
individual men and women, as I have met them, in the
United States, have a profound belief in the increasing
sense of human nature, which will abolish the old bar-
barisms, break down the old frontiers, and make human
life cleaner, more efficient, better organized for general
happiness. People who believe that are already work-
ing members of a League of good will, and in so far as
the American people fulfill that spirit, which is theirs as
a national faith and a working rule of life, they are with
us all the way, and sometimes take the lead, as in the
rescue of starving people and the call to disarmament — •
a lead not to be kept if they are directed by mere self-
ishness, or misled by passionate claims and conflicts
with other nations of the world.

Quietly, behind the scenes, in ways that will never be
recorded, American business men have all through this
year been working for world peace on economic lines,
and their financial knowledge and advice have had no
small influence upon the policy of Europe. I have had
the advantage of meeting many of these American
bankers and business men, both in the United States and
England, and always I have come away from such meet-
ings with the conviction that these men are not only
wide-eyed and alert to the reaUties of international
commerce, and free from the inherited hatreds and sus-
picions which clog the machinery of Europe, but as far as
human nature permits of altruism with self-defense,

3^4

THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

wonderfully Idealistic in their outlook. I mean that
they want to help, and not merely to profit. They
want to restore the health of Europe as well as to safe-
guard their own trade, both objects going hand in hand.

That was the spirit with which the delegates on the
International Chamber of Conferences made their pro-
posals in London, and especially of the group of experts
in association with Mr. Filene. They based their
philosophy of international finance for the restoration
of Europe on the resolutions of the Brussels conference,
which, in their conviction, gave to the world the first
statement of the necessary steps which must be taken
by each country, in order to start Europe on the road to
a sound financial and economic condition. The most
important advice they gave to Europe was the necessity
of a strict policy regarding taxation and economy, the
avoidance of additional borrowing, and the deflation
of currency. Mr. Filene and his friends made plain their
belief that ruin and revolution are unavoidable unless
the nations of Europe disarm and economize, and they
wished this belief to be publicly and widely expressed,
so that governments might be strengthened in action
which would be, inevitably, unpopular and unpleasant,
when they tried to square the illusions of public hope
with the stern realities of economic laws. So far many
governments have been overthrown by their people
whenever they tried to enforce such a policy or to hint
plainly at disagreeable truth. It is only by a campaign
of truthtelling that economy may be accepted by people
still thirsting for the "fruits of victory" promised them
by politicians in return for votes.

On the other hand, many business men of the United
States have not been grudging in their promise to grant
credits to impoverished nations, in order to recover their
own prosperity of trade and revive the activities of
European laborers. I am not good enough as an

3 ^^5

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

economist to weigh up the relative values of the vari-
ous resolutions adopted by the London conference or
proposed by the American groups. I can only judge of
their general spirit as I judge most things, and that is by
psychological impressions, and after meeting the Ameri-
can delegates I had a sense of hopefulness for the stricken
countries of Europe because these men were so keen to
help, so quick to understand, so high above the mere
sordid interests of a little trade advantage here and there.
They were looking at the problem of world trade as
scientists, without prejudice, with a knowledge of cause
and effect.

All details of finance, however, are of minor impor-
tance after all, compared with the general trend and
purpose of the United States as a world power. I am
not blind to certain elements of weakness, and of evil,
and of danger, in the character of the American people
(as in that of all peoples not exalted above the ordinary
frailties of nature), though I am an enthusiastic admirer
of all their splendid qualities, and have a devoted friend-
ship for them which nothing will change or weaken.
Their strength, their self-confidence, and their sense
of youth give them a certain intolerance of mind to-
ward those who differ from them in opinion or in action.
In the mass they have no use for halftones of thought and
sentiment, and do not compromise between convictions
and doubts, or balance conflicting evidence in dehcate
scales of judgment. They think in blacks and whites, in
sharp and clear lines, approving wholly or condemning
utterly. As a people they cannot understand, and do
not like, the easy tolerances of the English mind which
enabled our crowds, for instance, to smile at Sinn Fein
flags passing down the Strand when Sinn Fein gunmen
were shooting British soldiers. That seemed to the
American mind intellectual insincerity. They cannot
understand a people who admired the Irish for their

366

THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

resistance to British coercion (while supporting coer-
cion), who cHnked beer mugs with German soldiers a
few days after armistice, who allow anarchists to talk
their folly in the parks, and who criticize their own
government, as I have done, with profound love for
their country, whose faults they also admit and ex-
aggerate. The American mind has a religious reverence
for "the state," which sometimes lends itself to intel-
lectual tyranny and to a hard intolerance of minorities,
cranks, conscientious objectors, passive resisters, radi-
cals, and "reformers."

Majority opinion in the United States is all-powerful,
and too powerful, and the clear-cut mind of the American
citizen, with his straight verdict on all questions of life,
is hkely to lead to trouble, perhaps even to conflict,
within the state or without, when it comes sharp up
against a challenge of forces which may only be avoided
by delicate compromise, by understanding of opposing
views, and by a little yielding to other folks' ideas.
As a nation the American people are self-conscious and
oversensitive to criticism, at least in comparison w^th
the English people, who have a weakness for self-criti-
cism and depreciation. I write these things frankly,
with the privilege of friendship which must be sincere
without being fulsome. But I have written at length
my impressions of American life and character in another
book, and need not repeat them here, but will only say
that I believe with all my heart and soul that the spirit
of the people in the mass, and among those I know with
individual friendship, is inspired by a splendid common
sense, by a fine simplicity of outlook, and by an instinc-
tive desire to act in honor and in justice to all the world.
Despite some elements of hostility due to foreign in-
fluence, among groups of people still stirred by the
rivalries of race in Europe, the heart of the American
people, as a whole, and the sentiment of most of its

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intellectual leaders, desire friendship with the British
people and offer it with generous emotion, believing, as I
believe and know, that we two peoples have more in
common, by heritage, by speech, by law, and by ideals,
than any other peoples in the world, and that any con-
flict between us would be a death blow to civilization
from w^hich the white race itself would not recover. In
many cities of the United States I found a proof of that
faith and of that friendship expressed with a sincerity
of emotion beyond all doubt, with a generosity that was
wonderfully kind. We may have differences, and per-
haps must have them, and the evil part of the Press in
both countries, which now in its lowest form is very
evil, and other forces in the dark caves of thought and
passion, in both countries, will make the most of them,
and try to fan up hatred and passion and popular sus-
picions, but unless we give them just cause of quarrel
by some madness or badness in our own future leadership,
there is a body of opinion in America strong and sane
and chivalrous, which will overwhelm such treachery
to the hopes of humanity.

I remember on my last visit, in a small city a thousand
miles west of New York, having luncheon with a company
of leading men of the community, and our host was an
old gentleman whom all the others honored. He was
courteous and gay in his old-fashioned way, making
little jests to keep the table bright. But presently his
face became grave, and he rose and raised his glass and
said with profound emotion: ''Gentlemen, I give you a
toast: To the deathless friendship between the United
States and Great Britain," and at that all the men rose
and drank in silence, I have seen many demonstrations
of enthusiasm and friendly tribute between our two
peoples, but somehow that scene in a private house of a
Middle West town always comes back to my mind as a
kind of symbol and pledge. In millions of other houses

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE

throughout the United States there is this hope for
unbroken friendship between our two peoples, and on
our side we have in our bones so strong a sense of our
common heritage of history and tradition that we are
apt to presume on it too much and be a Httle too free in
comment and in criticism, as though actually we were
members of the same family who may dispense with
formal courtesies.

We are not the same people. Our psychology has
many differences. Our angle of vision is from opposite
sides of the world. Little accidental ways of manner
and speech and custom may irritate one another
now and then. But in all large things, in all the things
that matter, we may, I think, count upon each other
and work together. That is one of the best guaranties
of hope for the future of the whole family, unless it is
spoiled by some unknown folly waiting in the years to
come for its time of madness and of ruin.

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

AMONG certain common Ideas which seemed to ger-
minate and develop strongly in millions of minds all
over the world during the war — minds separated from
one another by barbed wire and deep trenches and
poison gas, as well as by geographical distances — there
was one which I imagined would have a revolutionary
effect upon the world when the war ended, if, as then
seemed doubtful, it ever ended for this generation of
men. It was the idea of youth that the old men were
responsible for the massacre, "the bloody mess," as
they called it, and guilty of supporting a social and
political philosophy in Europe which had made all that
inevitable. Youth hated the old men.

In the war the boys who were ordered to go out on
raids when the chances were all against them and no
useful purpose served, hated the elderly generals of
divisions, corps, and armies, who sat well behind the
lines and engaged in competitions as to the number of
raids they could report to G. H. Q., and the number
of casualties they could record as a proof of activity
and "the fighting spirit." They hated these same
white-haired old buffers who held chatty and cheery
conferences in the sunny chateaux of France, and
arranged bloody battles against the enemy's strongest
positions with a light-hearted optimism which invari-
ably underestimated the enemy's fighting quality and

370

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

never failed to incur enormous casualties on our side for
no perceptible advantage of position or ascendancy.
Young officers and young private soldiers cursed the old
men for their orders and counter-orders, for their
"spit-and-polish" discipline, for their "eye wash," and
their sham heroics. This attitude of mind was not
limited to British soldiers. As far as I can find out, it
was prevalent in all armies.

But the detestation of youth for the old men went
much farther back than the headquarters staffs. It went
back intensively to the elderly civilians at home who
kept reiterating, year after year, with splendid patriot-
ism, "We will fight to the last man." Or in French,
^^ Jusqu'au bout!" I have heard language not to be
repeated about those old gentlemen in Parliament, in
government offices, in the City, and in the great indus-
tries devoted, for the time being, to war contracts.
The suggestion in one mess that those elderly patriots
should be used as sand bags to prop up the front-line
parapets was received with uproarious applause. The
conviction that in the next war — if ever human insanity
"asked" for another — the rule should be made, "Old
men first," was unanimously approved. Young poets
of the trenches wrote mordant sonnets to their old
murderers, to those fat and prosperous men who made
fortunes out of the carnival of death, to the hard-faced
men who ordered youth into the shambles, to the old
ruffians who gained honors and rewards until they had
flower-borders on their breasts, in "cushy" jobs beyond
sound of the guns.

This condemnation of the old men was unkind, and
in great numbers of cases unjust. Fathers bled at the
heart for their sons, were killed themselves by a slow
and agonizing death when the boy they loved best in
the world went down. They played up gamely, so
many of the old buffers, showed that they had the

371

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

stuff of courage and sacrifice. But broadly, in its general
accusation, the argument of youth was right. The old
men zvere responsible for the thing that happened.

Not consciously and deliberately were they guilty,
but they will be condemned by history, as by youth,
because they upheld the old ideas of international
rivalry, the old traditions of diplomacy, military power,
force as the basis of argument, the narrowest patriotism
or national egotism, as the supreme virtue of citizenship,
class privilege, and caste pride, regardless of the economic
needs of peoples, and did not foresee that their system
of governance, or their obedience to that system, was
bound to produce the monstrous conflict which has now
been recorded, and if continued must lead as surely
to another. The old men with the old ideas cannot be
condemned individually, "for they are all honorable
men" (with exceptions!), but they must be condemned
generally, as their predecessors who burned old women
as witches, or defended slavery as a sacred right, or
forced women and children to labor fourteen hours a
day in their factories, or (as late as 1830 in England)
sentenced boys and girls to death and hanged them in
batches for pilfering and petty crimes, caused by their
own economic cruelties. As such, representatives of
an old order evil in its morality and achievement, and
in its sinister betrayal of new ideals and new hopes,
youth, during the war, and afterward, brought in a
verdict against them.

They have pleaded guilty. Over and over again I
have heard gray-headed men since the war say: "Noth-
ing can be done until the old men disappear. The
world must wait for the rising generation. It is up to
youth to save civilization." The failure of the peace
treaty to secure any permanency of peace, the betrayal
of the League of Nations by those who had paid lip
service to its ideals, the regrouping of Powers in Europe,

372

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

the corruption and cynical disregard of the peoples*
interests by the old politicians who still keep a firm grip
on the party machines, have still further convinced
men of hope in a better and cleaner phase of civilization
governed by reason instead of passion and by economic
unity instead of greedy rivalry, that the malady of
our strife is incurable until the old men pass away and
youth leaps into the saddle. I am one of those who
think so, though youth is no longer mine.

I think that is the great hope of civilization, but I do
not think it is a certain hope. At the present time there
is no assurance that the young men who were in the war
and came back again, or were young enough to escape
the experience, are going to lead the world forward to a
new plane of material and spiritual quality. What has
youth done since the war.? In what way has it carried
out its challenge.? As Herbert Hoover said to me
sadly, in New York, when I expressed my hope, "Youth
has been busy re-electing the old men." And that is
true, in all countries that I know. The old men are
still in command, supported by the young men. The
very men most cursed and damned by youth have
received their allegiance. The House of Commons
in England is still, at the time I write, filled with "the
hard-faced men who did extremely well out of the war."
By-elections have not brought a younger, fresher
type to the fore. General Townshend, "the hero of
Kut," hated by all the men who slogged back through
the sun-baked desert, fainting and dying as prisoners
of the Turk, while he received all courtesies and com-
forts on the isle of Prinkipo, was one of those sent as
a new member to the House, where in his speeches on
Ireland he revealed the Prussianism of the brass-hat
brain. The Antiwaste candidates brought in by
triumphant majorities as a protest against the insane
and callous betrayal of national security by the Coali-

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

tion were, for the most part, not young men of ardent
ideals, but bald-headed, pot-beHied old reactionaries,
scared by the thought of being more heavily taxed,
and eager to beat down the workingman in his stand-
ard of life to the degradation of tame and cheap
labor by which their own profits would be increased.
Winston Churchill, imperial gambler, the advocate of
diastrous adventures, the most reckless spendthrift
of public money in profitless campaigns, remained as
a maker of trouble three years after war, and in the
pages of Punchy which made a hero of him, his plump,
smiHng face, under absurd and clownish hats, failed
to arouse the fury of youth by its self-complacent smirk.
Lord Curzon, with his narrow, mid-Victorian mind, his
impregnable conceit, still conducted the foreign policy
of a people who had bled white because men hke him-
self had controlled their destiny. In France, in Italy,
in Germany (though less in Germany) the old type
of brain, heirs to the old traditions, rearranged the
policy and structure of Europe and made a new and
ghastly mess of it. Where was youth? What was it
doing?

As I have described elsewhere in this book, youth
was doing a lot of dancing, making up for lost time in
the fun of life, not worrying much about the future, not
worrying at all about the damned old past. That was
all right. That was the privilege and nature of youth.

But many of us expected that, in so far as youth was
active, thoughtful, interested in the affairs of life out-
side the desire for good fun, it would reveal itself on
new lines and moving in a hopeful direction toward a
new philosophy. We expected that those who had
cursed the folly of the war so heartily would at least
depart from that particular kind of folly, and that those

-.374

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

who had looked forward to a new era of common sense,
and of liberty, would stand for those ideals.

Looking around the world, what did one see in the
way of youth's adventure? In Ireland one saw, cer-
tainly, an intense, ardent, fanatical demand for national
liberty, not without a spiritual virtue, because the youth
of Ireland was willing to die for its faith, and did die,
on the scaffold and in the streets, with heroic courage for
Ireland's sake, as they truly thought. But they adopted
old, bloody, and evil methods, as old as sin. If this Irish
youth had put up some form of passive resistance to a
governance they hated, if they had relied only on spirit-
ual force, or Christian sacrifice, according to their
faith, they would, I am certain, have captured the
allegiance of all lovers of liberty in England as in all
countries, and would have gained their hearts' desire
more rapidly, more certainly, and more completely.
No power on earth, and least of all England, whose
people are instinctively on the side of liberty, could have
resisted their spirit, if revealed in that way. But Irish
youth did not leap forward to a new idea or a new way.
They went back to "cave-man stuff." Their methods
of warfare were as far back as those of ancient Britons
or of paleoHthic men, though they had modern weapons
for their killing. They laid traps for their enemy —
our soldiers — and shot them to pieces. They were as
cruel as dogs of hell, some of those Irish lads who shot
men before the eyes of their women, and shot women
who were friendly to our men. Their burnings of
signal boxes, warehouses, docks, in England as well as
Ireland, their execution in cold blood of men whom they
labeled, rightly or wrongly, as "spies," were not worse,
perhaps, than what has been done by other people
fighting for national liberty, but were not any advance
in spiritual methods or in the code of war, since the time
of the anthropoid ape fighting for the liberty of his rock^

375

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

dwelling, or of Russian Bolsheviki fighting for the
liberty of Soviet governance. The spiritual faith of
the Irish people, wonderful through many centuries,
was spoiled by the savagery of those young gunmen.

On the other side were the Black-and-Tans. Was
that service good enough for English and Scottish youth
which had fought for the liberty of the world in France
and many other fields.'' Was a guinea a day a decent
excuse to suppress the claim of a little nation for self-
government .f' Was their job of counter-terror, repri-
sals, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a creamery
for a barracks, a private house of a maiden lady for
the bombing of a patrol, a step forward by youth to
the new hope of the world, after a war to end war, a
war to stamp out militarism?

In Italy youth was active. When I happened to be
there the youth of the masses had organized itself into
bands of communists, sacking factories and shops,
terrorizing respectable citizens, raising the red flag with
a call to revolution. Then the youth of the classes
organized a counter-terror, under the name of Fascisti,
and those White Guards beat unarmed men to death,
smashed up the furniture in restaurants, let loose revol-
vers in a casual way, fell in gangs upon political oppo-
nents, and surrounded the polHng booths with murder
in their hearts and in their hands, for those who might
dare to vote against them. Nothing new in all that!
Only a hark-back to the days of Dante, of Bianchi and
Negri, Montague and Capulets, when out of dark
courtyards in Florence, Padua, and Verona young
noblemen and their retainers clashed with their rival
houses, and spitted each other on their swords, and
stabbed each other through the throat, and did not settle
any argument. Must, then, the vitality and courage of
youth still find their outlet in these old-fashioned ways?
Is youth not moving forward, but rather going back to

376

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

liberated passion, the code of the Elizabethan swash-
buckler, the young bravado with a quick turn of the
wrist, the days when every man was a law to himself
and very free in his judgment?

Less than three years had passed since France listened
with a strange wonder, as in the presence of a blessed
miracle, to the silence that followed the long laboring
of guns. The hospitals were still filled with the wreckage
of young men maimed horribly, blinded, shell-shocked.
Across France was the belt of horror . . . when Aristide
Briand called up the 1919 class to march, if need be, into
the Ruhr, to enforce the payment of indemnities. They
were lads of twenty-two. All of them had been witnesses
of the misery of war, which had robbed them of fathers,
elder brothers, so many comrades. But I am told by
Frenchmen that many of those lads looked forward to
''trouble" with the Germans hopefully. They wanted
a taste of war, a little street fighting, work with machine
guns and bayonets.

An American friend of mine went for a tour through
the Belgian battlefields not long after the silence of the
guns. Those fields had not yet been cleaned up. The
unburied dead still lay there amidst the chaos of broken
weapons, unexploded shells, gun wheels, the rags and
tatters of uniforms, sand bags, the litter of the life and
death that had passed. A young Belgian officer was
his guide. Some mention was made of Holland, and
instantly the Belgian officer "went up into the air"
(as the American said), and in a blaze of passion declared
that Belgium ought to knock hell out of Holland. He
wanted more war. The ruin in which he stood had not
satisfied him.

Over in the United States there was no ruin. In the

university of Yale there was a crowd of youth whose

knowledge of war was limited to newspaper reports and

the talk of older men who had been to France and back

25 377

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

again, and the sight of long banners in American halls
spangled with golden stars for those who died in action.
I had luncheon with some of the undergraduates — a
fresh and cheery ^' bunch" of men. One of them, rather
older than the others, had been in the marines and had
served in France. He had a fine gravity, and spoke
thoughtfully as I walked with him alone after the
luncheon party.

"What do those fellows think of the war?" I asked
him.

He glanced at me sideways.

''Which one? The last, or the next?"

When I cried out against that "next," he told me
that most of the Yale men who had been too young to
get into the war were just kicking themselves for losing
that experience. They were jealous of their elder
brothers. They, too, wanted to be captains of air-craft,
machine gunners, infantry officers. They wanted the
great adventure of it all. "Of course they don't under-
stand," he said.

I told him that what he was telling me was the worst
thing I had heard in the United States, and he grinned
when he said, "That's so!"

So before the old trenches have silted in and the ruin
has been cleared away, the youth of the world is looking
forward to "the great adventure" again! Their vitality,
their pluck, the desire of youth to get out of the humdrum
boredom of everyday life lure them on to the drama of
war, in spite of the recent experience of war's enormous
tragedy, the aftermath of its ruin, the bloodcurdling
tales of men who came back from the hunting fields of
death. If that were true of youth everywhere, then it
is futile to hand on to them the experience of agony,
or the lessons of that last war's folly, or the certainty
that civilization itself will suffer shipwreck if another
happens on the grand scale. If I thought youth were

378

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

incorrigible in that way, I for one should abandon hope
of any step forward by the human race.

I have not abandoned hope yet, though I confess
that, so far, youth is disappointing, slow to seize its
chance, reactionary in its present mood, if judged only
by surface appearances. What is happening below the
surface, in the subconscious minds of young men who
are thinking out, not consciously or deliberately, but
in a groping, secretive way, the line of action ahead of
them.'' It is hard to find that out. I try to get a lead
from Oxford, where the new men are being formed,
perhaps, for the next phase of Enghsh history, unless, as
may be more probable, they come from less privileged
places. But the undergraduates at Oxford do not give
me more encouragement than those at Yale.

''What do you talk about?" I ask some of them,
and their answer is, "Just the usual things — college
sports, personalities, dances, motor cars, the Australian
cricketers, all that sort of tosh."

"Politics.?"

Not much of that. They glance at the headlines of
the Daily Mail. They don't bother to wade through
Parliamentary reports, unless they have to mug them
up for an insincere debate in which they speak to a brief.
Of course there is a political crowd. There are clubs in
which the political and economical problems of the world
are discussed with a certain amount of intensity, but
without any real conviction or any new school of thought.
The old traditions prevail, — the belief that a pohtical
career depends upon party patronage, and is the same
old game of "ins" and "outs." Men discuss whether
it will be better to link up with the Coalition or the
Independent Liberals, or even with labor, for the sake of
a career, office, and rewards. There is no sign, except
among a few wild birds, of soaring clear away from the
old party groups to a new political philosophy. There is

379

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

no Oxford Movement, it seems, which will change the
current of English Ufe. The men fall naturally into the
old divisions of class prejudice and tradition. The
Ruskin College men are still fair game because they dress
badly, drop their h's, utter crude nonsense round the
Martyrs' Memorial, and ask for trouble, and get it. At
the beginning of the coal conflict, when Lloyd George
revived his ''Defense Force" to put down any civil
disorder that might arise among millions of unemployed
men, Oxford undergraduates volunteered with their
motor bikes, and were ready for service on the side of
their own class, without heartburnings as to the rights
of laboring men to resist *'wage cuts" which were
afterward acknowledged to be too severe even by the
owners who had issued them. No message came from
young Oxford on behalf of Irish peace or in favor of a
wiser policy of international peace — or in protest against
a government leading the nation to the edge of economic
ruin. Oxford remained a sanctuary aloof from the stress
and strain of social England, cut off from the running
tide of popular thought, and exclusively interested in
the work and pleasure of university life. That, at least,
was the report given to me by some of the undergrad-
uates, surprised themselves that the immense convul-
sion of war in which they had been caught up should
leave the spirit of Oxford so untouched and unchanged,
as far as they could see. Perhaps they did not see very
far. It seems to me certain that those undergraduates
have a diflPerent outlook on life from their predecessors
of 1913, and that, unknown to themselves, they belong
to a different epoch, utterly divorced in its instincts
and impulses from that prewar time. Their background
is not the same. It is the background of Armageddon.
Their horizon of vision is not the same. They look out
upon a changing world. In ten years from now pre-
war England will seem as remote and archaic as the

380

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

eighteenth century. It seems to me likely that the
first-year and the second-year men at Oxford now will
see the last phase of that University history when caste
and wealth maintained their pleasant privilege almost
unchallenged. Democracy, with its rough accent, will
break in.

Ill

A change, visible, unmistakable, aggressive, has over-
taken the youth of democracy itself. The boys of the
laboring classes in England, and of what we still call, with
our fine distinction of caste, **the lower middle class,"
have developed into a new type, and are reaching out to
new ideas which, beyond any doubt at all, will either de-
stroy England or transform it. These lads of eighteen,
nineteen, or so were more intimately touched by the war
than those of their same age in higher ranks of English
life. They were far more closely involved in the terrific
churning up of English mass psychology, and habits of
life and labor. Born and bred in the back streets of
London and great cities, their first memories of childhood
go back to prewar days when their parents lived un-
easily, hardly, on the edge of dire poverty. Life then
was a humdrum routine of work on small wages with a
little margin at the best for small pleasures. It seemed
unchanging and unchangeable, as inevitable as the laws
of nature. It was rather squalid, dreary, and uninspir-
ing. There was not much adventure in it, except for
rare and daring souls, such as Lipton, Lever, and some
others, who broke away and climbed high beyond the
luck of those in the ruck of ill-paid toil. Then the war
came, knocking at those small doors in mean streets.
The first knocks were a summons to the older brothers
or the younger fathers — "Your King and country need
you!" Well, that was rather wonderful! They had
never been needed before so urgently and importantly

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

by King and country. They answered the summons,
exalted out of the old ruck, proud and glad, eager for
an adventure which made life less squalid, and gave it
a nobler meaning. The little houses in the back streets
poured forth the youngish men, who went away to
strange places, leaving their women folk, and the small
boys and the hobbledehoy lads too young to serve.
Then came other knocks at the doors. It was death
that came knocking. The youngish father or the elder
brother had fallen on the field of honor or was
"wounded, reported missing." As the years passed,
single knocks became double knocks at the hearts of
women as well as at the doors of houses. First one
lad, then another — in some houses three or four — now
gone forever. The little houses in the mean streets of
London and great cities, and cottages in country villages,
provided the great majority of casualties — these long
daily lists of deaths, in "other ranks." Small boys,
growing big, saw their mothers weeping, heard of fathers'
deaths, and wondered and thought about the meaning
of it all. But other things were happening in their
little homes. Things not so miserable, rather wonder-
ful. Boys too young to serve as soldiers were old
enough to work in munition factories and get good
wages. Girls' hands were wanted as well as male hands.
Wages kept rising. Money was plentiful. Never had
these little households seen so much good money flowing
in week by week.

Separation allowances made a good beginning. Pen-
sions for badly wounded men helped to comfort their
women. With two or three girls in the family, a growing
boy or two, an older lad exempted because of his trade,
or the father too old to be taken, the week's wages in
war time amounted to a little fortune. Easy come,
easy go. No stinting of food for working families.
Good clothes and good boots. The "pictures" twice a

382

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

week, a gramophone in the parlor. After all, for lucky
households where death did not come knocking at the
door the war was not so bad. It was not at all bad for
boys of jRfteen and sixteen and seventeen, who jingled
money in their pockets Hke young lords, stood treat to
the girls whenever they Hked, felt gloriously independent.
They remembered the early days before the war, when
there had been stinting and scraping, how miserable
and squalid they were! Well, they would never go back
to that. Labor had come into its own.

So it seemed, until the war ended and long after the
war ended, until gradually unemployment grew apace,
and the men who came back could not get jobs, or would
not work, or struck for wages which presently could
not be granted because victory had cost a lot of money
and trade disappeared.

The lads of nineteen, twenty, twenty-one have been
through the gamut of that experience, have seen the
pendulum swing visibly this way and that, and have
listened to exciting conversations in small parlors and
back kitchens, where these rapid changes now happened
to the Hves of working famiHes. They have heard the
tales of returned soldiers, their fathers and brothers
who escaped, and listened to their curses against war,
and their blasphemous comments on peace without re-
ward. The shrill talk of working mothers, inveighing
against injustice, has been in their ears. And they
have done a deal of thinking and talking at street
comers.

Some of them have been reading a bit, and learning
to debate in local clubs, and getting hold of books and
facts to help them in debate. The youth of democracy
is not indifferent to the affairs of Ufe. Not indifferent,
but ignorant of any larger truth than they find in venom-
ous little pamphlets or lying little paragraphs of revo-
idtionary rags inciting them to a holy war against the

383

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

"idle rich." Their knowledge of economics is limited
to the rate of wages compared with the cost of life,
and they have no notion of the interdependence of
nations, or of the effect of dear labor and limited output
upon a country like their own which gained its commer-
cial prosperity by cheap labor and large output. They
are taught, and they believe, that "capital" has such
inexhaustible resources of wealth that if its unjust
profits are distributed among those who do the hardest
toil there could be large wages and short hours for all
of them. Not yet has it been brought home to them that
after a war which destroyed the savings of centuries and
mortgaged the industry of future generations the only
escape from ruin is by way of longer hours, less pay,
and increased efficiency. The youth of democracy,
inspired by a one-eyed propaganda, fed on half truths
and false science, see the progress of life only in terms
of class conflict, view it all as a union of classes moving
toward a common goal. Capital is the "enemy" of
labor. The idea that it might be the ally of labor
does not enter into their imagination.

After all, those boys of the back streets see the facts
of Hfe shrewdly, as far as they can be visualized in their
own experience, and cannot be expected to have a wider
vision, without any kind of guidance. They see the little
cheats and corruptions and robberies of the retail trades-
man whom they serve as shopboys and counterjumpers.
They see the ruthless grind of small employers of labor
who became war profiteers by exploiting the needs of
the people with unashamed dishonesty. They saw
those profiteers in the making, were witnesses of their
tricks and dodges, watched their progress to prosperity
while young men died in dirty ditches for ideals loudly
proclaimed by these old bandits who wanted the war to
go on forever and were callous of its massacres. No
wonder the boys of the back streets are cynical and

384

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

selfish in their own aims. The capitalists and the govern-
ment do not act in a way to disarm their hostility. With
but a thin camouflage of justice, capital and its po-
litical defenders play their own game, protect their own
interests, and "dig in" for a trench warfare against the
claims of democracy for a greater share of reward, a
greater knowledge of secret diplomacy, a closer co-opera-
tion in the management of the business in which they
happen to be working. During the war labor was petted
and pampered, promised an immense harvest of the
fruits of victory, a land fit for heroes to live in, and
security of Hfe and limb. Those promises were flung
away with cynical contempt when the war ended. The
governments of Europe arranged a peace which was to
be a preparation for new wars. They ignored the
economics of life for political adventures paid for out of
the poverty of exhausted peoples. Reckless of the finan-
cial ruin of their countries after the exhaustion of war,
they increased the burdens of taxation by a wild levity
of extravagance, as though stricken mad by victory,
I'ntil, brought abruptly to a check by panic, they tried
to save themselves by a sudden onslaught upon working-
men's wages. There was no attempt, in England, any-
how, to arrange a gradual reduction of wages according
to a gradual descent in costs of living, no kind of attempt
to organize a new fellowship between capital and labor,
by means of which the interests of both would be served,
greater efficiency might be secured, and the prosperity
of the nation saved from the menace of complete de-
struction. Just as labor declared war on capital, so
capital declared war on labor (after licking its boots in
time of need), and neither side had any vision beyond
the narrow conflict. Youth failed to come forward with
a new call to its battalions. Youth played into the hands
of corrupt old politicians, or else did not bother. At the
time of writing this book, youth is still lagging behind,

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

afraid to take its place, or not wanting its place. Yet
the chance of youth is the hope of the world.

What is that chance? . . . That is hard to define. It
would be great audacity to outline a program for the
youth of the world, and any such attempt would be,
rightly, ridiculed by the younger generation. They
will not be bound by hard and fast rules laid down for
their guidance by the old men whom they despise.
They are not to be tied to labels or enrolled into new
parties of high-sounding names. They will not make
an act of faith in any ready-made creed of political
philosophy, or be governed by laws laid down by
ancient precedent. The youth of the coming world
will, like its predecessors, indulge in a free play of
ideas and individual liberty of opinion, ranging itself
instinctively, by hereditary influences, or conditions of
character, temper, prejudice, and passion, with con-
flicting groups. There will be the eternal fight between
those who see differing aspects of truth and think their
view is the full and perfect vision, between the activists
and the passivists, the vitalists and the mechanists, the
egotists and the altruists. The House of Youth will
have its Guelphs and its Ghibellines, its Negri and
Bianchi, as throughout the history of the world. And
that is good, for it would be a bad world if the ardor
of youth, its gay sense of adventure, its valors, should
be marshaled into one disciplined force, obeying some
single idea imposed by the tyranny of a theoretical
monster, or by some new fanaticism. Yet with perfect
liberty and a myriad diflPerences of ideas and methods,
there may surely be a new jumping-off ground for the
race of youth to new goals. There may be general
consent about certain undoubted facts of life, as there

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THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

is about the sun shining in the heavens, in spite of
Relativity, and about the need of food to human life,
though doctors may differ about the number of calories
required for human sustenance.

The new jumping-ofF ground might well be a line
cutting across history on November li, 191 8, and
dividing the Old World from the New, as Before the War
and After the War. Youth might at least say: "What
happened Before the War was all wrong. It is for us to
see that its immense stupidity of wrongness shall not
happen again." From that starting point they could
go ahead, casting away all the old baggage of racial and
historical hatreds, diplomatic intrigues and sacrifices,
military traditions and superstitions. If youth cannot
yet formulate a positive faith, they can at least assert a
negative faith annihilating the folly of the past.

*'I do not believe in war as a reasonable way of
argument.

"I do not believe that preparation for war is a pre-
ventive of war.

*'I do not believe that armed conflict is necessary to
the spiritual vigor of mankind.

"I do not believe that the victory of one nation over
another increases the wealth of the victor nation.

*'I do not believe that national egotism is the supreme
virtue of the individual and the state.

*'I do not believe that there must be an eternal con-
flict between those who do the rough work of the world
and those who organize the produce of their labor.

"I do not beheve that civilization reached its highest
phase in 1914.

"I do not beheve that cruelty is an essential element
of human nature, that selfishness is the highest and
strongest motive of individuals and nations, and that
the pursuit of spiritual truth and beauty are mere
illusions of disordered minds.

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"I do not believe that the poHtical and economic
system of Europe as laid down in the Treaty of Ver-
sailles was divinely inspired by Heaven-sent messengers
named Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau, and
therefore unalterable by human effort without grievous
sin.

"I do not believe that men and women are incapable
of simple reasoning, and of actions which may preserve
them from otherwise certain famine, disease, slaughter,
and extermination." ^

It is not too much to ask youth to accept these nega-
tions, after a little argument and a call for evidence.
Indeed, my own belief is that the younger generation
is satisfied with the evidence, and has already cleared
all that useless lumber out of its mind. As far as I know
some of these younger men, they do not believe that war
is a reasonable way of argument. They see no sense in
it at all, though they may see a nonsensical adventure
which provides an escape from boredom, or an unpleasant
way of life. I fancy they would grant without further
debate (except for the amusement of debate) the other
negatives I have set out, and if they would only get
positive about a new system of Hfe and thought starting
cleanly from the sponging out of old traditions, the
world would move apace beyond its present state of
misery. "Perhaps to new and unknown miseries!"
cries the pessimist. Alas, yes! But I think of the
latest definition I heard of a pessimist — a man who
wears two pairs of braces and a belt. One can't move a
step without a risk.

It is even possible to set up the goal posts for the new
race of youth, and hope that they will start in that
direction without a backward glance, and with good
wind and heart. The world knows its own quagmires,
its own danger spots, the place of the precipice over
which we all must plunge if we go much farther in that

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THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

direction. Battlefields are not the only danger spots —
and perhaps I am inclined to harp too much on the peril
of a new war, not saying so much about the peril of
world famine, of disease, of moral and spiritual de-
cadence. But it is certain to all thinking minds that a
new war on the scale of the last (and a new war would
be worse than the last) would lead to all those other
plagues, and end all our hopes. The danger of it is so
great and evident that at least any new goal set up by
youth must first of all avoid that old pitfall. Why not.''
What is the difficulty? I see none, if youth will say with
conviction, "I do not beheve in war as a reasonable way
of argument"; still less, if there may be less than none
(which is possible), if youth will say with positive and
triumphant assertion, "I do believe in peace!"

Given that assertion, there is a program ready for
youth, not too formal or cut and dried, but nobly out-
lined, as a fine clear vision across a fair field unexplored
by pioneers.

There is one man in Europe to-day — not belonging to
the battalion of youth, yet never one of the old men,
though he stood among them, aghast at their stupidity,
indignant with their wickedness — who has marked out
the goal for the younger generation of the English-
speaking world, in the field of foreign policy. That is
General Smuts, who looks forward with courage, and
not in a cowardly way, backward. I think his speech
before the imperial conference in June of 1921, reported
in scraps and mostly ignored in the gutter press, gave
a clear call to youth for their work in the building of a
new world — to the youth of the English-speaking
peoples in the great family of the British Empire. His
first words were but a repetition of one word ringing like

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a bell In the ears of those who listened, and it rang again
and again throughout his speech:

''What the world most needs to-day," he said, "is
peace, a return to a peaceful temper, and to the resump-
tion of peaceful and normal industry. To my mind that
is the test of all true policy to-day. Peace is wanted by
the world. Peace is wanted especially by the peoples
of the British Empire. We are a peaceful empire; our
very nature is such that peace is necessary for us. We
have no military aims to serve, we have no militarist
ideals, and it is only in a peaceful world that our ideals
can be realized.

"It should therefore be the main — in fact the only —
object of the British policy," said General Smuts, "to
secure real peace for the empire and the world generally.
The question of reparations, which was, perhaps, the
most difficult and intricate with which we had to deal
in Paris, has finally been ehminated, in a settlement
which, I venture to hope, will prove final and workable.
That is a very great advance. The other great advance
that has been made — and it is an enormous advance —
is the final disarmament of Germany. That the greatest
miHtary empire that ever existed in history should be
reduced to a peace estabUshment of 100,000 men is
something which I considered practically impossible.
It is a great achievement, so- far reaching, indeed, that
it ought to become the basis of a new departure in world
policy."

He pointed out that "we cannot stop with Germany,
we cannot stop with the disarmament of Germany. It
is impossible for us to continue to envisage the future
of the world from the point of view of war. . . . Such a
policy would be criminal, it would be the betrayal of the
causes for which we fought during the war, and if we
embarked on such a policy it would be our undoing.
If we are to go forward into the future staggering under

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THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

the load of military and naval armaments, while our
competitors in central Europe are free from the incubus
of great armies, we shall be severely handicapped and
in the end we shall have the fruits of victory lost to us
by our postwar policy. Already under the operation of
inexorable economic factors we find that the position is
developing to the advantage of central Europe.

"Armaments depend upon policy, and therefore,"
said Smuts, "I press very strongly that our policy should
be such as to make the race for armaments impossible.
That should be the cardinal feature of our foreign
policy. We should not go into the future under this
awful handicap of having to support great armaments,
build new fleets, raise new armies, while our economic
competitors are free of that hability under the peace
treaty.

"The most fatal mistake of all in my humble opinion
would be a race of armaments against America. America
is the nation that is closest to us in all the human ties.
The Dominions look upon her as the oldest of them.
She is the relation with whom we most closely agree
and with whom we can most cordially work together.
She left our circle a long time ago because of a great
historic mistake. I am not sure that a wise policy after
the great events through which we have recently passed
might not repair the effects of that great historic error
and once more bring America on to lines of general
co-operation with the British Empire.

"To my mind it seems clear that the only path of
safety for the British Empire is a path on which she can
walk together with America. In saying this I do not
wish to be understood as advocating an American
alliance. Nothing of the kind. I do not advocate an
alliance or any exclusive arrangement with America.
It would be undesirable, it would be impossible and un-
necessary. The British Empire is not in need of exclu-

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sive allies. It emerged from the war quite the greatest
power in the world, and it is only unwisdom or unsound
policy that could rob her of that great position. She
does not want exclusive alliances. What she wants to
see established is more universal friendship in the
world. The nations of the British Empire work to
make all the nations of the world more friendly to one
another. We wish to remove grounds for misunder-
standings and causes of friction, and to bring together
all the free peoples of the world in a system of friendly
conferences and consultations in regard to their difficul-
ties. We wish to see a real society of nations, away
from the old ideas and practices of national domination
or imperial domination, which were the real root causes
of the Great War. Although America is not a member
of the League of Nations, there is no doubt that co-
operation between her and the British Empire would be
the easy and natural thing, and there is no doubt it
would be the wise thing.

*'In shaping our course for the future, we must bear
in mind that the whole world position has radic?lly
altered as a result of the war. The old viewpoint from
which we considered Europe has completely altered.
She suffers from an exhaustion which is the most ap-
palling fact of history; and the victorious countries of
Europe are not much better off than the vanquished.
No, the scene has shifted on the great stage. To my
mind that is the most important fact in the world to-
day, and the fact to which our foreign policy should
have special regard. Our temptation is still to look upon
the European stage as of the first importance. It is no
longer so; and I suggest that we should not be too
deeply preoccupied with it. . . . Therefore, not from
feelings of selfishness, but in a spirit of wisdom, one
would counsel prudence and reserve in our continental
commitments; that we do not let ourselves in for

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THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

European entanglements more than is necessary, and
that we be impartial, friendly, and helpful to all alike,
and avoid any partisan attitude in the concerns of the
Continent of Europe.

"Undoubtedly the scene has shifted away from Eu-
rope to the Far East and to the Pacific. The problems
of the Pacific are to my mind the world problems of
the next fifty years or more. In these problems we are,
as an empire, very vitally interested. Three of the Do-
minions border on the Pacific; India is next door; there,
too, are the United States and Japan. There also is
China; the fate of the greatest human population on
earth will have to be decided. There Europe, Asia, and
America are meeting, and there, I beHeve, the next
great chapter in human history will be enacted. I ask
myself what will be the character of that history.

"Shall we act in continuous friendly consultation in
the true spirit of a society of nations, or will there once
more be a repetition of rival groups, of exclusive alli-
ances, and finally of a terrible catastrophe more fatal
than the one we have passed through? That, to my
mind, is the alternative. That is the parting of the
ways at which we have arrived now."

With a plea that the British Empire should act as
mediator between the East and West, General Smuts
turned to the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, with the
reminder of something that that man had helped to
create and afterward had tried to kill, by contempt and
neglect. It was the reminder that the world had at hand
an instrument of comparison, consultation, and inter-
national justice which might be used to Hft the world
out of its morass. That instrument was the League of
Nations, which even yet could be made good in fulfill-
ment of the hopes for which it had been shaped.

There is a policy which youth might adopt, within the
English-speaking world. It is a free policy, not fixed to
26 393

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

narrow lines, not tied up to tradition, not defined as an
austere dogma, but points the goal that may be reached
by many ways and methods if the spirit of the army
leaders is directed toward the ideal of world peace, not
only with white races, but with black, and brown, and
yellow races.

Youth should find this a great adventure. Its soul
will not be cramped for lack of opportunity, and looking
near at hand in that Europe from which, as General
Smuts thinks, the balance of power is shifting, there is
other work to do, not without ability and adventurous
intelligence. The nations of Europe have still to re-
shape their internal life, to revitalize their own energies,
to start afresh in a new era of hope and social effort.
We are tired, now, in Europe. Our countries are filled
with people who became old in the four years of war,
and stayed weary with continuing lassitude. We are
unable to rouse ourselves to new efforts, to begin the
world again. But in a little while we old, tired people
will go to rest, and youth, with its freshness, not de-
jected by that aging experience, that inward weariness
of soul caused by the tension of a long-drawn agony,
will be ready for new beginnings. They will do well if
they make a clean sweep of old watchwords and old
labels. They will start well if they sweep away at once
the labels of the old quack remedies of political cheap-
jacks — Tory, Liberal, Communist, Socialist, Bolshevist.
If they must have labels and quack remedies, let them
be new and freshly mixed, for the others have grown
musty and soured. I think the spirit of youth should
get to work first to reconstruct national life by a new
philosophy of social duty. That sounds rather hard and
dogmatic, but it seems to me that no reconstruction

394

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

may be well done unless it is based upon certain laws of
which we can have new knowledge.

It is certain, for instance, and very clear to all minds
after three years of muddled peace, that there can be no
recovery of Europe so long as nations do not recognize
their economic interplay, or so long as there is this
wild confusion of interests, this madness of hostility
between sections of society, within the nations them-
selves. Experiments have been made of many old ideas
which seemed to hold some virtue in them until their
failure and falsity were proved to all the world.

Communism had its chance in Russia, and its destruc-
tion of capital and private property and individual
liberty, and all the delicate machinery of modern life,
in a desperate effort for absolute equality, has given to
the world a ghastly exhibition of famine, typhus, and
tyranny. It has proved itself wrong in psychology as
well as in economic science. Lenin was defeated by
the instincts of human nature more than by the break-
down of transport and supplies.

There have been other experiments which now belong
to the long catalogue of human folly. The German ex-
periment of a world dominance by military power came
to a very ruinous result, and this, too, was defeated, not
so much by counter-forces of the same kind as by cer-
tain spiritual powers working in the minds of humble
men and rallying them to passionate resistance. There
has been the general breakdown of a materialistic
philosophy which had Europe, and the whole world,
indeed, within its grips. The very objects which the
human family was striving to attain have been proved
false.

Happiness is, after all, the main purpose of human
life, but there was no great sum of human happiness
visible in the world before the war, even among those
people who seemed to have gained all that others were

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

striving and failing to gain. Material comfort, the
relaxations of life, the power of wealth, the pleasures of
the world, seemed to promise satisfaction to their pos-
sessors and to be the unattainable good to people in the
squalor and peril of poverty. All civilized society was
engaged in a desperate struggle to reach or hold those
material values, and it was a cutthroat conflict between
possessors and dispossessed. Yet the successful man did
not seem to bask in his success. He seemed balked by
some psychological bunker. He had no restfulness of
soul, but strove always for more wealth and more power.
The pleasures of life did not seem wonderfully pleasing
to those who wallowed in them. Indeed, one cynic said
that Hfe would be endurable but for its pleasures. Eng-
lish society before the war had secured all there was in
the way of material happiness, yet to an outside observer
like myself there was not much evidence that those
people were really happy, or even honestly amused.
They were weary with the pleasures of the London sea-
son, they were bored at Ascot and bored again at Cowes.
In their country houses they quarreled with their wives
more savagely than less lucky men in country cottages.
They had a sense of emptiness which they tried to fill
by artificial means, Hke gambling or playing dangerous
games with other men's women or w4th other women's
men. If, then, the possession of all that society desires
in material prosperity brings no satisfaction, it seems
clearly demonstrated that society is pursuing an illu-
sion in the search for happiness. The very goal of their
desire is a mirage leading them on through desperate
ways to a waterless desert. There must be some other
conception of human happiness. Mere materiaUsm is not
good enough. Manchester, Wigan, Pittsburgh, and
Chicago, Essen and Elberfeld, even London, Paris, New
York, and Berlin, do not demonstrate in their richer
quarters a high standard of human happiness, though

396

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

in their poorer quarters and in other parts or their
civilized jungles there is a frightful conflict for some
share of it.

Here is a problem for the coming youth to solve, and
surely the solution is that material and spiritual progress
must be intertwined, that poverty of spirit is as bad as
poverty in material things, or worse, and that the ideal
of human happiness is not to be found in mere posses-
sion, but perhaps in the honor of service, in work which
has a spiritual purpose as well as material reward, in
security rather than in wealth, in energy rather than in
idleness, in welfare of mind as well as of body, and in the
pursuit of an ideal not wholly selfish.

It is perhaps possible that youth may reconstruct
society on a more spiritual basis which would tend to
abolish the jungle conflict between classes and in-
dividuals by the modification of human greed, and by a
union of interests instead of open warfare, within the
nation. In home aff'airs as well as in international
politics, warfare has been proved a senseless form of
argument, and very wasteful.

Force has failed definitely, for just as in wars between
modern nations victory hurts as much as defeat, because
energy given to destruction has no productive value, so
in industrial warfare successful strikes or successful
strike breaking means unsuccessful trade to both sides.
All these sectional conflicts lessen the wealth of a people,
whichever way they go, and at a time now, when, after
the exhaustion of war, there is no energy at all for
waste.

It is clear that if labor in England demands and gains
wages at war rates, or double war rates, such victory
will be without value to them in our present conditions
of trade. For with exports down by 50 per cent, and cost
of production higher than the means of home or foreign
markets, and taxation reducing the purchasing power of

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

all consumers, these high wages will not balance with
high prices, nor create prosperity by which they may
be justified. They will result only in the increase of
poverty and unemployment, and the wages themselves
will have no more than a fictitious value, as in Germany,
where the workingman is now paid sixty marks a day
instead of five marks as in prewar days. The German
workman has therefore multipHed his wages by twelve
times, but he is not so simple as to think that he has
gained a stupendous victory in material progress. On
the contrary, he knows that his sixty marks are worth
less to him in real value than the five marks of a happier
time.

On the other hand, employers of labor in Great Britain
will gain no victory by smashing the trade unions and
beating labor to its knees. That process will be costly,
dangerous, and disastrous. They will lose more by such
a conflict than by an orderly, just, and reasonable ar-
rangement based upon the consent of free and spirited
men. They lost millions of pounds more in the great
coal conflict of this year, 1921, by a ruthless ultimatum
cutting the wages of the miners by nearly 50 per cent
than if they had made an easy sliding scale spread over
a long period and adjusted to falling prices. The govern-
ment, supporting their poUcy of ruthlessness, expended
vast sums of public money in raising a Defense Force to
protect the nation in case of riots (which did not happen)
and to pay the pensions of two million men outside the
mining districts unemployed because factories were shut
down for lack of fuel. It is impossible to estimate the
loss to Great Britain due to that insane method of con-
ducting national industry, for apart from the direct
costs and losses amounting to at least two million pounds
a day during the whole period of the struggle, covering
the third part of a working year, the indirect loss of
trade which will not be recovered for many years, if

398

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

ever at all, is incalculable. One expert reckons it as
two hundred and forty million pounds.

Yet that injury to the nation was caused not by
inevitable forces coming into conflict, nor by any prin-
ciple of justice against injustice, which must be fought
out lest the soul should perish, but by sheer stupidity
on both sides. The owners with their funny little bureau-
cratic brains, their greedy insincerities, their pose of
being "strong men," whereas they are weak men of
feeble vision and petulant character, flung a wage
schedule at the colliers' heads with a "Take it or leave
it," knowing, as they afterward admitted, that the
proposed wages were below the minimum standard of
life compared with the existing costs of life's necessities.
On the other side, colliers failed to understand the
realities of national and international arithmetic and
believed that the government should continue to sub-
sidize unprofitable mines. No man among them all, on
both sides of the struggle, had any broader vision than
that of hostility — cat-and-dog politics — nor saw what
Vv^as clear to all outsiders, that by friendly understanding
of facts and figures, a union of common interests for the
good of the industry, an increased efl&ciency of organiza-
tion and output, a rigid economy of management and
cost, a combined effort for renewed prosperity by a tem-
porary abatement of profits all round, and an intensifi-
cation of energy, above all, perhaps, by the elimination
of corrupt and greedy middlemen so that the price of
coal at the pit-head should not be monstrously increased
when it arrived at the coal cellar, the greater part of the
trouble might be overcome to the benefit of everybody.

That case is typical of all industrial "unrest" in Great
Britain. All sections of society are thinking in terms
of conflict and not in terms of combination. They are
adopting the tactics of warfare instead of the policy of
conciliation. The principles of the League of Nations,

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so enthusiastically applauded by *'labor" as the hope
of the world, for the sake of world peace and inter-
national justice, are utterly ignored in home affairs.

VII

It is surely *'up to youth," the intelligence of the
coming generation, to abandon these absurdities of the
old tradition, and to estabhsh a new system by breaking
down the old frontiers of hostility between classes as
well as nations. The curse of English hfe, which is
snobbishness — snobbishness of the masses as well as
snobbishness of the classes — must go first of all, for there
will be no hope so long as the workingman has a silly
pride in his own exclusive caste which forbids him to
associate on equal terms with a man working just as
hard in a black coat instead of corduroys, and as long
as the black-coated fellow resents comradeship with
those who wear clothes of a different cut and spend their
days without a collar. It must be recognized in the
New World that manual labor is not less "genteel"
than intellectual labor, provided the laborer plays the
game, does his job well, and looks at life without a
squint. It must also be acknowledged by the "prole-
tariat" (one of those words to be condemned by the
makers of the New Dictionary) that the brain worker,
the artist, the writer of books, is also entitled to his
wages, according to the value of his output, and is not
necessarily a "parasite," gorging himself on the blood of
the toiling masses, but, on the contrary, in many cases,
a harder-working person, a more indefatigable and
enthusiastic craftsman, than the bricklayer or the car-
penter, and, now and then, a greater benefactor of
human society.

The snobbishness of labor, its self-conceit, its unrea-

400

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

sonable hatred of the intellectuals, must be severely-
checked.

Here, then, is another task for youth — a great icon-
oclasm, a joyous destruction of all those Aunt Sallies
smirking in Vanity Fair, and a smashing of all fetishes
which belong to the tribal days when a nation was
divided, as now, into hostile bands calling themselves
SociaUsts, Individualists, Tories, Radicals, and other
totem names, each convinced that it holds the true
faith, and each ignoring the common interests of the
nation for the narrow and sectional interests of its
own denomination.

I have granted that youth will always be divided in
ideas, for without that there would be no liberty, but I
have a theory that the way of division may in future be
vertical rather than horizontal. Now it is clearly hori-
zontal. Straight lines are drawn between classes so
that they are Uke the strata of world-old rocks. But a
vertical division would divide industries rather than
classes, activities rather than possessions, methods rather
than objects. It is hard to explain, unless one imagines
a nursery full of children playing with a box of bricks.
They have the same number of bricks, and each one de-
sires to build a high house. Some build in one way, some
in another, according to fancy. But they are all building
up from the base and not overlaying one another's bricks.
Their differences are expressed not horizontally, but ver-
tically. So in the business of life and the structure of
society it may be possible to build up from the common
base of national resource, all efforts mounting higher,
according to varying ideals, and not overlaying one
another and crushing one another into the hard strata
of castes, but working with the same impulse of attain-
ment, though with different ideas, different methods,
different results.

Germany is attempting something of that sort in the

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industrial organization by great combinations of raw
material, labor, and mechanical energy, building up
from that base to every branch of manufacture. There
are at least twenty such combinations in Germany to-
day, embracing practically the whole of her industrial
life. Their common impulse is to restore the economic
health of their country and to attain industrial su-
premacy in Europe. It is true that there is still the
under dog and the top dog in that vertical system, and
that German labor is badly paid, but within the great
German trusts there is such a general desire for effi-
ciency, and such a general spirit of service, that the
wages of the men are not being considered as subject to
the old ruthless laws of economics, but in relation to
human factors of efficiency — the need of food, the need
of leisure, the need of health, the need of mental satis-
faction— and because labor is recognized as the basis
of all energy and the source of all wealth, the position
of labor in Germany to-day is powerful and admit-
ted, and it is by consent and not by tyranny that
its wages are arranged. In each factory, and in each
bank, indeed, there is a council which represents he
interests of the employees, puts forward claims for in-
creased wages, better conditions of service, and so on,
and in spite of the German spirit of discipline, and the
industrial autocracy of men Hke Stinnes, these repre-
sentatives are given a fair hearing and in most cases the
claims are conceded if based on the interests of the
business, the first principle of which is efficiency. Upon
such lines as that, the lines of co-operation between the
various branches of industrial activity, youth might
organize a new system of service which would eliminate
some at least of our present evils by greater equality of
reward for good service (though not absolute equality
which would destroy initiative) and by giving workers

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THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

greater interest in their toil because a real partnership
in the progress and profits of the industry.

VIII

Looking with unprejudiced vision at the problem of
Hfe, it is possible that the younger generation — that
new spirit which I call Youth, though its leaders may
not be beardless boys — will largely abandon industri-
aUsm as we now know it, and reshape civilization on
simpler and more natural foundations. It is indeed
likely that we are seeing the last of the industrial era
as it is composed of monstrous, overcrowded cities filled
with people who live on the exchange of artificial com-
modities and unnecessary luxuries, and sustained by
the joyless labor of men and women in unhealthy fac-
tories where their toil is machine-minding and their
activity of mind and body limited to the damnable
iteration of some small gesture. This will sound like
heresy to the big manufacturers, but I believe that hu-
manity is already in revolt against that kind of labor.
They are breaking away from its deadening influence.
Limitation of output, and the claim to short, and still
shorter, hours, are but symptoms of a general detesta-
tion of grinding, unimaginative, and inhuman toil.

The war with all its horrors was not without one great
joy. It liberated masses of men from their machine-like
life, took them back to nature, gave them liberty of
movement, change of scene, infinite variety. Millions
of men who had that experience, feeling their humanity,
decline to go back again to the dead mechanism of their
previous work, or, if they go back for sheer need of bread,
use the strike as a means of temporary hberation, and
go slow in their effort of production. The economic
change in Europe is likely to destroy big cities as well as

403

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

big industries, or at least to diminish their size and
importance.

Both of them depend for their life largely upon the
exchange and manufacture of luxuries. But the poverty
that is creeping over Europe will not permit of luxuries
to anything like the old extent. It is idle to manufac-
ture expensive porcelain, grand pianos, silk robes,
all the gauds and toys of rich life, if there is no margin
of wealth left to buy them, and that is happening. It
has happened in Russia, in Austria, in Poland. It is
beginning to happen in Germany, in France, and in
England. In those first three countries I have mentioned
and in others that I have lately visited, like Italy, the
reality of wealth is in the hands of one class. Richer than
a Russian noble with millions of rubles (worthless as
waste paper) is the Russian peasant with a plot of earth
from which he receives a crop of grain or on which he
feeds a flock of sheep. Luckier than the aristocracy of
Vienna (watching their clothes wear out and their flesh
wear thin) is the Austrian peasantry, getting enough to
eat out of their soil and ready to sell their surplus — not
for money, not for wads of paper — in exchange for
boots, plows, tobacco, smocks, or other garments for
their women.

There is a growing hostility among the peasantry in
many countries to the city-dwelling folk. They call
them parasites, and names not so nice as that. FeeHng
in Austria was so bitter that, rather than sell their stuff
to Vienna, some of the peasants burned their surplus
stores of food! The great industrial cities in England
are not threatened with such hostility, for England, alas!
has destroyed its peasantry. But they are threatened
with starvation. They are already besieged by the
menace of economic death. Their manufactures are
not being bought much in the world's markets. Their
export trade is dwindling down to nothing in com-

404

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

parison with their needs of life, for these great popula-
tions of English industrial cities depend for their food
upon the exchange of imports for exports. There is not
enough food produced in England to last for three
months on fair rations. All supplies for the other nine
months have to be bought and paid for in foreign coun-
tries. They can only be paid for by excess of exports
over imports. Therefore if the export trade of England
does not recover mighty quick (and German reparations
will not help recovery!) there will be an exodus of starv-
ing folk from Manchester, Wigan, Sheffield, Cardiff, a
hundred other cities. The factories will be deserted for
the fields again. Life will be simpler, more primitive in
its conditions and amusements (if there is to be any
kind of fun!), and it will be the task of youth — the new
leadership — to reconstruct national life on a ground
plan of agricultural industry, as in the springtime of our
history. Perhaps the individual will be happier again,
and Merrie England will be filled with song and laughter
which were silent when machinery whirred above its
wheels.

Civilization may not work out that way — it is im-
possible to forecast the near future, still less the distant
vision, but, whatever happens, youth has its chance of
building anew, on cleaner, straighter lines, with ideals
of beauty and human happiness, and spiritual service,
broader than the boundaries of a caste or class, nobler
than the interest of wealth or wages.

Science must be the servant of youth, and not its
master; machinery must not overpower men. In the
last war human courage, physical excellence, the highest
virtue of manhood, were at the mercy of big engines.
At the tug of a string twenty miles away by some low-
browed churl in charge of a gun, a knight sans peur et
sans reproche was made into a mess of blood and pulp,
without a chance of self-defense, without warning of his

405

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD

peril, as he lay asleep in a cottage or joked over his
bowl of soup.

Science used its secrets, not for human happiness, but
for misery and destruction. The very victory of the air,
won entirely by the valor of boys playing pranks with
death high above the earth, was used for the increase of
human slaughter and not for joy and liberation. Even
now, after the war, with its bloody agony still fresh in
the imagination of peoples, scientists, betraying their
souls, are at work in laboratories, in the United States
and in England, inventing devilish gases to enlarge the
area of their spreading poison for "the next war," which
is now in preparation by dark minds. There are experi-
ments of pilotless airplanes, controlled from wireless
stations, and equipped with clockwork bombs for the
dropping of the poison vapors which will choke whole
cities and blast all vegetation and any kind of life
where it falls.

Youth, if it has any new spiritual purpose, any valor
for the rescue of humanity, will declare war upon scien-
tists who work with such evil intent, will rescue science
itself from its lunacy, and dedicate it anew to the service
of human happiness.

There is much to be done by youth, no lack of worlds
to conquer. A crusade of health is a desperate need of
our days, for disease is creeping apace over many peoples
and countries, eating into the physique of the white
races and ordaining a new massacre of innocents. Tu-
berculosis, rickets, horrible plagues that have their
origin in filth, and a general decadence of physical
standards caused by ill nourishment, overcrowding,
lack of exercise, stinking conditions of life, threaten vast
populations. In England war-time conscription revealed
an alarming degeneracy of physical quality. The third-
line troops were a poor and weedy lot in many battalions,
arousing the astonishment and contempt of Dominion

406

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH

troops, who said, "Something's wrong with Mother Eng-
land if these are her sons!" I shall never forget the ap-
pearance of the bantam divisions on the British front
in 1916. They were recruited from the undersized fel-
lows of the industrial districts, and their average height
was about five feet. Some of them were smart little
fellows, with the spirit of Hop-o'-My-Thumb, keen and
valiant, but many more were stunted in mind as well as
in body, with button heads and weedy legs, hollow chests
and match-stick arms. When they came into General
Haldane's corps he went down their lines, pointing his
stick at those obviously unfit for fighting ranks, and
put back two-thirds of them for work behind the fines.
French peasants watching the Bantam Brigade marching
up the roads cried out in pity : " Cre nom de Dieu! UAn-
gleterre envoie ses enfantsi" They thought these little
undersized men were boys from school.

England and France, above all, must look to their
natural physique. The best of their men, the flower of
their youth, were cut down in swaths. The unfit, the
**C 3" class, the poor weeds of city life, were left alive
to be the fathers of the next generation. Only by a
national system of physical training, and by a return to
natural conditions of fife, shall we restore the old stand-
ards of our race and raise the splendor of our youth again.
It is up to youth to defend its own rights to physical
excellence, to raise itself to heroic heights, and, having
gained that glory of manhood, to refuse in their souls to
let it be destroyed again in the hard wastefulness of
senseless wars.

The youth of the new world that is coming need have
no fear that peace will rob it of romance and adventure.
The building of that new world upon the ruins of the
old; the reshaping of social relations between classes
and nations; the pursuit of spiritual truth and beauty;
the killing of cruel and evil powers; the conquest of dis-

407

MORE THAT IVIUST BE TOLD g

ease; the resurrection of art and poetry and lovely j

handicrafts; the calhng back of song and laughter to
human Hfe; the joy of flight made safe from death; the
prolongation of human life by new discoveries of science; ,

and the reconciling of life and death by faith re-estab-
lished in the soul of the world — will be adventure enough
to last, let us say, a thousand years from now. ,

That is the chance of youth, standing now at the '

open door, wondering what there is to do and which |

way to take to meet the future. God! If I had youth j

again, I should hke that good adventure, and take the
chance.

THE END

ZJ.

THE LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Santa Barbara

THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW.

Series 9482

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

AA 000 295 213 3

-'JO' .'i •■■"■■■ ''*'%>«V1

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