My year of the war, including an account of experiences with the troops in France, and the record of a visit to the grand fleet

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FREDERICK PALMER

LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

SANTA BARBARA

PRESENTED BY

A. RUSSELL BUCHANAN

CLIVEDEN LIBRARY

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Number

Date ..-La. 1.2

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MY YEAR OF THE WAR

MY YEAR OF THE WAR

INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF EXPERIENCES

WITH THE TROOPS IN FRANCE, AND THE

RECORD OF A VISIT TO THE GRAND

FLEET, WHICH IS HERE GIVEN

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN

ITS COMPLETE

FORM

By FREDERICK PALMER

(Accredited American Correspondent at the British Front)

AUTHOR OF "THE LAST SHOT," "WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA,"
"THE VAGABOND," ETC.

LONDON :
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1 9 16

Published
Reprinted
Reprinted
Reprinted

November, 19 15

December, 1 9 1 5

December, 191 5

January, 1916

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

TO THE READER vii

I. "LE BRAVE BELGEI" I

II. MONS AND PARIS g

III. PARIS WAITS 15

IV. ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK - - 24
V. AND CALAIS WAITS 47

VI. IN GERMANY 55

VII. HOW THE KAISER LEADS - 66

VIII. IN BELGIUM UNDER THE GERMANS - 81

IX. CHRISTMAS IN BELGIUM - 95

X. THE FUTURE OF BELGIUM - - - 106

XL WINTER IN LORRAINE - - - - 120

XII. SMILES AMONG RUINS - - - - 136

XIII. A ROAD OF WAR I KNOW - - - 155

XIV. TRENCHES IN WINTER - - - - 167
XV. IN NEUVE CHAPELLE - - - - 177

XVI. NEARER THE GERMANS - - - - 194

XVII. WITH THE GUNS 206

XVIII. ARCHIBALD THE ARCHER - - - 225

XIX. TRENCHES IN SUMMER - - - - 230

XX. A SCHOOL IN BOMBING - - - - 247

XXL MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT - - 252

XXII. MORE BEST DAY 268

XXIII. WINNING AND LOSING - - - - 276

XXIV. THE MAPLE LEAF FOLK - - - 281
XXV. MANY PICTURES 296

XXVI. FINDING THE GRAND FLEET - - 308

XXVII. ON A DESTROYER 313

XXVIII. SHIPS THAT HAVE FOUGHT - -3*7

v

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XXIX. ON THE INFLEXIBLE - - - - 330

XXX. ON THE FLEET FLAGSHIP - - - 336

XXXI. SIMPLY HARD WORK - - - - 346

XXXII. HUNTING THE SUBMARINE - - - 353

XXXIII. THE FLEET PUTS TO SEA - - - 356

XXXIV. BRITISH PROBLEMS 363

INDEX 381

TO THE READER

In The Last Shot, which appeared only a few months
before the Great War began, drawing from my experi-
ence in many wars, I attempted to describe the charac-
ter of a conflict between two great European land-
powers, such as France and Germany.

" You were wrong in some ways," a friend writes to
me, " but in other ways it is almost as if you had
written a play and they were following your script and
stage business."

Wrong as to the duration of the struggle and its
bitterness and the atrocious disregard of treaties and
the laws of war by one side ; right about the part
which artillery would play ; right in suggesting the
stalemate of intrenchments when vast masses of troops
occupied the length of a frontier. Had the Germans
not gone through Belgium and attacked on the shorter
line of the Franco-German boundary, the parallel of
fact with that of prediction would have been more com
plete. As for the ideal of The Last Shot, we must await
the outcome to see how far it shall be fulfilled by a last -
ing peace.

Then my friend asks, " How does it make you feel ? '
Not as a prophet ; only as an eager observer, who finds
that imagination pales beside reality. If sometimes an
incident seemed a page out of my novel, I was reminded
how much better I might have done that page from
life ; and from life I am writing now.

I have seen too much of the war and yet not enough
to assume the pose of a military expert ; which is easy

Vll

viii INTRODUCTION

when seated in a chair at home before maps and news
dispatches, but becomes fantastic after one has lived at
the front. One waits on more information before he
forms conclusions about campaigns. He is certain only
that the Marne was a decisive battle for civilization ;
that if England had not gone into the war the Germanic
Powers would have won in three months.

No words can exaggerate the heroism and sacrifice
of the French or the importance of the part which the
British have played, which we shall not realize till the
war is over. In England no newspapers were sup-
pressed ; casualty lists were published ; she gave
publicity to dissensions and mistakes which others
concealed, in keeping with her ancient birthright of free
institutions which work out conclusions through dis-
cussion rather than take them ready-made from any
ruler or leader.

Whatever value this book has is the reflection of
personal observation and the thoughts which have
occurred to me when I have walked around my experi-
ences and measured them and found what was worth
while and what was not. Such as they are, they are
real.

Most vital of all in sheer expression of military power
was the visit to the British Grand Fleet ; most humanly
appealing, the time spent in Belgium under German
rule ; most dramatic, the French victory on the Marne ;
most precious, my long stay at the British front.

A traveller's view I had of Germany in the early
period of the war ; but I was never with the German
army, which made Americans particularly welcome for
obvious reasons. Between right and wrong one can-
not be a neutral. In foregoing the diversion of shaking
hands and passing the time of day on the Germanic
fronts, I escaped any bargain with my conscience by
accepting the hospitality of those warring for a cause
and in a manner obnoxious to me. I was among

INTRODUCTION ix

friends, living the life of one army and seeing war in all
its aspects from day to day, instead of having tourist
glimpses.

Chapters which deal with the British army in France
and with the British fleet have been submitted to
the censor. Though the censor may delete military
secrets, he may not prompt opinions. Whatever notes
of praise and of affection which you may read between
the lines or in them spring from the mind and heart.
Undemonstratively, cheerily as they would go for a
walk, with something of old-fashioned chivalry, the
British went to death.

Their national weaknesses and strength, revealed
under external differences by association, are more
akin to ours than we shall realize until we face our own
inevitable crisis. Though one's ancestors had been in
America for nearly three centuries, he was continually
finding how much of custom, of law, of habit, and of
instinct he had in common with them ; and how
Americans who were not of British blood also shared
these as an applied inheritance that has been the most
formative element in the American crucible.

My grateful acknowledgments are due to the Ameri-
can press associations who considered me worthy to be
the accredited American correspondent at the British
front, and to Collier's and Everybody's ; and may an
author who has not had the opportunity to read proofs
request the reader's indulgence.

Frederick Palmer.

British Headquarters, France.

MY YEAR OF THE WAR

" LE BRAVE BELGE! "

The rush from Monterey, in Mexico, when a telegram
said that general European war was inevitable ; the
run and jump on board the Lusitania at New York the
night that war was declared by England against Ger-
many ; the Atlantic passage on the liner of ineffaceable
memory, a suspense broken by fragments of war news
by wireless ; the arrival in England before the war was
a week old ; the journey to Belgium in the hope of
reaching the scene of action! — as I write, all seem to
have the perspective of history, so final are the pro-
cesses of war, so swift their execution, and so eager is
everyone for each day's developments. As one grows
older the years seem shorter ; but the first year of the
Great War is the longest year most of us have ever known.

Le brave Beige ! One must be honest about him.
The man who lets his heart run away with his judgment
does his mind an injustice. A fellow-countryman who
was in London and fresh from home in the eighth
month of the war, asked me for my views of the relative
efficiency of the different armies engaged.

' Do you mean that I am to speak without regard to
personal sympathies ? " I asked.

" Certainly," he replied.

When he had my opinion he exclaimed :
1 You have mentioned them all except the Belgian
army. I thought it was the best of all."

' Is that what they think at home ? " I asked.

" Yes, of course."

" The Atlantic is broad," I suggested.

2 "LE BRAVE BELGE!"

This man of affairs, an exponent of the efficiency of
business, was a sentimentalist when it came to war, as
Anglo-Saxons usually are. The side which they favour
— that is the efficient side. When I ventured to
suggest that the Belgian army, in a professional sense,
was hardly to be considered as an army, it was clear
that he had ceased to associate my experience with any
real knowledge.

In business he was one who saw his rivals, their
abilities, the organization of their concerns, and their
resources of competition with a clear eye. He could
say of his best personal friend : " I like him, but he has
a poor head for affairs." Yet he was the type who, if
he had been a trained soldier, would have been a busi-
ness man of war who would have wanted a sharp,
ready sword in a well-trained hand and to leave nothing
to chance in a battle for the right. In Germany,
where some of the best brains of the country are given
to making war a business, he might have been a
soldier who would rise to a position on the staff. In
America he was the employer of three thousand men
— a general of civil life.

"But look how the Belgians have fought!" he
exclaimed. " They stopped the whole German army
for two weeks! "

The best army was best because it had his sympathy.
His view was the popular view in America : the view of
the heart. America saw the pigmy fighting the giant
rather than let him pass over Belgian soil. On that
day when a gallant young king cried, " To arms! " all
his people became gallant to the imagination.

When I think of Belgium's part in the war I always
think of the little Belgian dog, the schipperke who lives
on the canal boats. He is a home-staying dog, loyal,
affectionate, domestic, who never goes out on the tow-
path to pick quarrels with other dogs ; but let anything
on two or four feet try to go on board when his master

AN UNWARLIKE PEOPLE 3

is away and he will fight with every ounce of strength
in him. The King had the schipperke spirit. All the
Belgians who had the schipperke spirit tried to sink
their teeth in the calves of the invader.

One's heart was with the Belgians on that eigh-
teenth day of August, 19 14, when one set out toward
the front in a motor-car from a Brussels rejoicing over
bulletins of victory, its streets walled with bunting ;
but there was something brewing in one's mind which
was as treason to one's desires. Let Brussels enjoy its
flags and its capture of German cavalry patrols while
it might !

On the hills back of Louvain we came upon some
Belgian troops in their long, cumbersome coats, dark
silhouettes against the field, digging shallow trenches
in an uncertain sort of way. Whether it was due to the
troops or to Belgian staff officers hurrying by in their
cars, I had the impression of the will and not the way
and a parallel of raw militia in uniforms taken from
grandfather's trunk facing the trained antagonists of
an Austerlitz, or a Waterloo, or a Gettysburg.

Le brave Beige ! The question on that day was not,
Are you brave ? but, Do you know how to fight ? Also,
Would the French and the British arrive in time to help
you ? Of a thousand rumours about the positions of
the French and the British armies, one was as good as
another. All the observer knew was that he was an
atom in a motor-car and all he saw for the defence of
Belgium was a regiment of Belgians digging trenches.
He need not have been in Belgium before to realize that
here was an unwarlike people, living by intensive
thrift and caution — a most domesticated civilization in
the most thickly-populated workshop in Europe, count-
ing every blade of grass and every kernel of wheat and
making its pleasures go a long way at small cost ; a
hothouse of a land, with the door about to be opened to
the withering blast of war.

4 "LE BRAVE BELGE! "

Out of the Hotel de Ville at Lou vain, as our car
halted by the cathedral door, came an elderly French
officer, walking with a light, quick step, his cloak
thrown back over his shoulders, and hurriedly entered
a car ; and after him came a tall British officer, walking
more slowly, imperturbably, as a man who meant to let
nothing disturb him or beat him — both characteristic
types of race. This was the break-up of the last mili-
tary conference held at Louvain, which had now ceased
to be Belgian Headquarters.

How little you knew and how much they knew ! The
sight of them was helpful. One was the representative
of a force of millions of Frenchman ; of the army. I
had always believed in the French army, and have
more reason now than ever to believe in it. There was
no doubt that if a French corps and a German corps
were set the task of marching a hundred miles to a
strategic position, the French would arrive first and
win the day in a pitched battle. But no one knew this
better than that German Staff whose superiority, as
von Moltke said, would always ensure victory. Was
the French army ready ? Could it bring the fullness of
its strength into the first and perhaps the deciding
shock of arms ? Where was the French army ?

The other officer who came out of the Hotel de Ville
was the representative of a little army — a handful of
regulars — hard as nails and ready to the last button.
Where was the British army ? The restaurant keeper
where we had luncheon at Louvain — he knew. He
whispered his military secret to me. The British army
was toward Antwerp, waiting to crush the Germans in
the flank should they advance on Brussels. We were
" drawing them on! " Most cheerful, most confident,
mine host! When I went back to Louvain under
German rule his restaurant was in ruins.

We were on our way to as near the front as we would
go, with a pass which was written for us by a Belgian

LEARNING TO HATE 5

reservist in Brussels between sips of beer brought him
by a boy scout. It was a unique, a most accommo-
dating pass ; the only one I have received from the
Allies' side which would have taken me into the German
lines.

The front which we saw was in the square of the little
town of Haelen, where some dogs of a dog machine-gun
battery lay panting in their traces. A Belgian officer in
command there I recollect for his passionate repetition
of, "Assassins! The barbarians!" which seemed to
choke out any other words whenever he spoke of the
Germans. His was a fresh, livid hate, born of recent
fighting. We could go where we pleased, he said ; and
the Germans were " out there," not far away. Very
tired he was, except for the flash of hate in his eyes ;
as tired as the dogs of the machine-gun battery.

We went outside to see the scene of " the battle," as
it was called in the dispatches ; a field in the first flush
of the war, where the headless lances of Belgian and
German cavalrymen were still scattered about. The
peasants had broken off the lance-heads for the steel,
which was something to pay for the grain smouldering
in the barn which had been shelled and burned.

A battle ! It was a battle because the reporters could
get some account of it, and the fighting in Alsace was
hidden under the cloud of secrecy. A superficial survey
was enough to show that it had been only a reconnais-
sance by the Germans with some infantry and guns as
well as cavalry. Their defeat had been an incident to
the thrust of a tiny feeling finger of the German octopus
for information. The scouting of the German cavalry
patrols here and there had the same object. Waiting
behind hedges or sweeping around in the rear of a
patrol with their own cavalry when the word came by
telephone, the Belgians bagged many a German, man
and horse, dead and alive.

Brussels and London and New York, too, thrilled

6 "LE BRAVE BELGE! "

over these exploits supplied to eager readers. It was
the Uhlan week of the war ; for every German cavalry-
man was a Uhlan, according to popular conception.
These Uhlans seemed to have more temerity than sense
fiom the accounts that you read. But if one out of a
dozen of these mounted youths, with horses fresh and a
trooper's zest in the first flush of war, returned to say
that he had ridden to such and such points without
finding any signs of British or French forces, he had
paid for the loss of the others. The Germans had
plenty of cavalry. They used it as the eyes of the army,
in co-operation with the aerial eyes of the planes.

A peasant woman came out of the house beside the
battlefield with her children around her ; a flat-chested,
thin woman, prematurely old with toil. " Les Anglais ! "
she cried at sight of us. Seeing that we had some lances
in the car, she rushed into her house and brought out
half a dozen more. If the English wanted lances they
should have them. She knew only a few words of
French, not enough to express the question which she
made understood by gestures. Her eyes were burning
with appeal to us and flashing with hate as she shook her
fist toward the Germans.

When were the English coming ? All her trust was in
the English, the invincible English, to save her country.
Probably the average European would have passed her
by as an excited peasant woman. But pitiful she was
to me, more pitiful than the raging officer and his dog
battery, or the infantry awkwardly intrenching back of
Louvain, or flag-bedecked Brussels believing in victory :
one of the Belgians with the true schipperke spirit. She
was shaking her fist at a dam which was about to burst
in a flood.

It was strange to an American, who comes from a
land where everyone learns a single language, English,
that she and her ancestors, through centuries of living
neighbour in a thickly-populated country to people who

WHERE IS THE ENEMY? 7

speak French and to French civilization, should never
have learned to express themselves in any but their
own tongue — singular, almost incredible, tenacity in the
age of popular education! She would save the lance-
heads and garner every grain of wheat ; she economized
in all but racial animosity. This racial stubbornness of
Europe — perhaps it keeps Europe powerful in jealous
competition of race with race.

The thought that went home was that she did not
want the Germans to come ; no Belgian wanted them ;
and this was the fact decisive in the scales of justice.
She said, as the officer had said, that the Germans were
' out there." Across the fields one saw nothing on that
still August day ; no sign of war unless a Taube over-
head, the first enemy aeroplane I had seen in war. For
the last two days the German patrols had ceased to
come. Liege, we knew, had fallen. Looking at the
map, we prayed that Namur would hold.

' Out there " beyond the quiet fields, that mighty
force which was to swing through Belgium in flank was
massed and ready to move when the German Staff
opened the throttle. A mile or so away a patrol of
Belgian cyclists stopped us as we turned toward
Brussels. They were dust-covered and weary ; the
voice of their captain was faint with fatigue. For over
two weeks he had been on the hunt of Uhlan patrols.
Another schipperke he, who could not only hate but
fight as best he knew how.

" We had an alarm," he said. " Have you heard
anything? "

When we told him no, he pedalled on more slowly,
and oh, how wearily! to the front. Rather pitiful that,
too, when you thought of what was " out there."

One had learned enough to know, without the confi-
dential information that he received, that the Germans
could take Brussels if they chose. But the people of
Brussels still thronged the streets under the blankets of

B

8 "LE BRAVE BELGE! "

bunting. If bunting could save Brussels, it was in no
danger.

There was a mockery about my dinner that night.
The waiter who laid the white cloth on a marble table
was unctuously suggestive as to menu. Luscious
grapes and crisp salad, which Belgian gardeners grow
with meticulous care, I remember of it. You might
linger over your coffee, knowing the truth, and look out
at the people who did not know it. When they were not
buying more buttons with the allied colours, or more
flags, or dropping nickel pieces in Red Cross boxes, they
were thronging to the kiosks for the latest edition of the
evening papers, which told them nothing.

A man had to make up his mind. Clearly, he had only
to keep in his room in his hotel in order to have a great
experience. He might see the German troops enter
Belgium. His American passport would protect him as
a neutral. He could depend upon the legation to get
him out of trouble.

" Stick to the army you are with! " an eminent
American had told me.

" Yes, but I prefer to choose my army," I had
replied.

The army I chose was not about to enter Brussels.
It was that of " mine own people " on the side of the
schipperke dog machine-gun battery which I had seen in
the streets of Haelen, and the peasant woman who
shook her fist at the invader, and all who had the
schipperke spirit.

My empty appointment as the representative of the
American Press with the British army was, at least,
taken seriously by the policeman at the War Office in
London when I returned from trips to Paris. The day
came when it was good for British trenches and gun-
positions ; when it was worth all the waiting, because
it was the army of my race and tongue.

II

MONS AND PARIS

Back from Belgium to England ; then across the
Channel again to Boulogne, where I saw the last of the
French garrison march away, their red trousers a
throbbing target along the road. From Boulogne the
British had advanced into Belgium. Now their base
was moved on to Havre. Boulogne, which two weeks
before had been cheering the advent of " Tommee
Atkeens " singing " Why should we be downhearted ? '
was ominously lifeless. It was a town without soldiers ;
a town of brick and mortar and pavements whose very
defencelessness was its best security should the Ger-
mans come.

The only British there were a few stray wounded
officers and men who had found their way back from
Mors. They had no idea where the British army was.
All they realized were sleepless nights, the shock of
combat, overpowering artillery fire, and resisting the
onslaught of outnumbering masses.

An officer of Lancers, who had ridden through the
German cavalry with his squadron, dwelt on the glory
of that moment. What did his wound matter ? It had
come with the burst of a shell in a village street which
killed his horse after the charge. He had hobbled away,
reached a railroad train, and got on board. That was
all he knew.

A Scotch private had been lying with his battalion in
a trench when a German aeroplane was sighted. It had
hardly passed by when showers of shrapnel descended,
and the Germans, in that grey-green so hard to see,
were coming on as thick as locusts. Then the orders

io MONS AND PARIS

came to fall back, and he was hit as his battalion made
another stand. He had crawled a mile across the fields in
the night with a bullet in his arm. A medical corps
officer told him to find any transportation he could ;
and he, too, was able to get aboard a train. That was all
he knew.

These wounded had been tossed aside into eddies by
the maelstrom of action. They were interesting because
they were the first British wounded that I had seen ;
because the war was young.

Back to London again to catch the steamer with an
article. One was to take a season ticket to the war from
London as home. It was a base whence one sallied
forth to get peeps through the curtain of military
secrecy at the mighty spectacle. You soaked in Eng-
land at intervals and the war at intervals. Whenever
you stepped on the pier at Folkestone it was with a
breath of relief, born of a sense of freedom long associ-
ated with fields and hedges on the other side of the chalk
cliffs which seemed to make the sequestering barrier of
the sea complete.

Those days of late August and early September, 19 14,
were gripping days to the memory. Eager armies were
pressing forward to a cataclysm no longer of dread
imagination but of reality. That ever-deepening and
spreading stain from Switzerland to the North Sea was
as yet only a splash of fresh blood. You still wondered
if you might not wake up in the morning and find the
war a nightmare. Pictures that grow clearer with time,
which the personal memory chooses for its own, dis-
sociate themselves from a background of detail.

They were very quiet, this pair that sat at the next
table in the dining-room of a London hotel. I never
spoke to them, but only stole discreet glances, as we all
will in irresistible temptation at any newly-wedded
couple. Neither was of the worldly type. One knew
that to this young girl London was strange ; one knew

THE BEST OF ENGLAND n

the type of country home which had given her that
simple charm which cities cannot breed ; one knew,
too, that this young officer, her husband, waited for
word to go to the front.

Unconsciously she would play with her wedding-ring.
She stole covert glances at it and at him, of the kind
that bring a catch in the throat, when he was not look-
ing at her — which he was most of the time, for reasons
which were good and sufficient to others besides him-
self. Apprehended in "wool-gathering," she mustered
a smile which was so exclusively for him that the
neighbour felt that he ought to be forgiven his
peeps from the tail of his eye at it because it was so
precious.

They attempted little flights of talk about everything
except the war. He was most solicitous that she should
have something which she liked to eat, whilst she was
equally solicitous about him. Wasn't he going " out
there ? " And out there he would have to live on army
fare. It was all appealing to the old traveller. And
then the next morning — she was alone, after she had
given him that precious smile in parting. The incident
was one of the thousands before the war had become an
institution, death a matter of routine, and it was a
commonplace for young wives to see young husbands
away to the front with a smile.

One such incident does for all, whether the war be
young or old. There is nothing else to tell, even when
you know wife and husband. I was rather glad that I
did not know this pair. If I had known them I should
be looking at the casualty list for his name and I
might not enjoy my faith that he will return alive.
These two seemed to me the best of England. I used
to think of them when gossip sought the latest turn of
intrigue under the mantle of censorship, when Parlia-
ment poured out its oral floods and the newspapers their
volumes of words. The man went off to fight ; the

12 MONS AND PARIS

woman returned to her country home. It was the hour
of war, not of talk.

On that Sunday in London when the truth about
Mons appeared stark to all England, another young
man happened to buy a special edition at a street
corner at the same time as myself. By all criteria, the
world and his tailor had treated him well and he de-
served well of the world. We spoke together about the
news. Already the new democracy which the war has
developed was in evidence. Everybody had common
thoughts and a common thing at stake, with values
reckoned in lives, and this makes for equality.

" It's clear that we have had a bad knock. Why deny
it ? " he said. Then he added quietly, after a pause :
" This is a personal call for me. I'm going to enlist."

England's answer to that " bad knock " was out of
her experience. She had never won at first, bat she had
always won in the end ; she had won the last battle.
The next day's news was worse and the next day's still
worse. The Germans seemed to be approaching Paris
by forced marches. Paris might fall — no matter!
Though the French army were shattered, one heard
Englishmen say that the British would create an army
to wrest victory from defeat. The spirit of this was
fine, but one realized the enormity of the task ; should
the mighty German machine crush the French machine,
the Allies had lost. To say so then was heresy, when the
world was inclined to think poorly of the French army
and saw Russian numbers as irresistible.

The personal call was to Paris before the fate of Paris
was to be decided. My first crossing of the Channel had
been to Ostend ; the second, farther south to Boulogne ;
the third was still farther south, to Dieppe. Where
next ? To Havre ! Events were moving with the speed
which had been foreseen with myriads of soldiers ready
to be thrown into battle by the quick march of the
railroad trains.

FROM DIEPPE TO PARIS 13

Every event was hidden under the " fog of war,"
then a current expression — meagre official bulletins
which read like hope in their brief lines, while the
imagination might read as it chose between the lines.
The marvel was that any but troop trains should ran.
All night in that third-class coach from Dieppe to Paris !
Tired and preoccupied passengers ; everyone's heart
heavy ; everyone's soul wrenched ; everyone prepared
for the worst ! You cared for no other man's views ;
the one thing you wanted was no bad news. France
had known that when the war came it would be to the
death. From the first no Frenchman could have had
any illusions. England had not realized yet that her
fate was with the soldiers of France, or France that her
fate and all the world's was with the British fleet.

An Italian in our compartment would talk, however,
and he would keep the topic down to red trousers, and
to the red trousers of a French Territorial opposite, with
an index finger when his gesticulatory knowledge of the
French language, which was excellent, came to the
rescue of his verbal knowledge, which was poor. The
Frenchman agreed that red trousers were a mistake, but
pointed to the blue covering which he had for his cap —
which made it all right. The Italian insisted on keeping
to the trousers. He talked red trousers till the French-
man got out at his station, and then turned to me to
confirm his views on this fatal strategic and tactical
error of the French. After all, he was more pertinent
than most of the military experts trying to write on the
basis of the military bulletins. It was droll to listen to
this sartorial discourse, when at least two hundred
thousand men lay dead and wounded from that day's
fight on the soil of France. Red trousers were respon-
sible for the death of a lot of those men.

Dawn, early September dawn, on dew-moist fields,
where the harvest lay unfinished as the workers,
hastening to the call of war, had left the work. Across

14 MONS AND PARIS

Paris, which seemed as silent as the fields, to an hotel
with empty rooms! Five hundred empty rooms, with
a clock ticking busily in every room ! War or no war,
that old man who wound the clocks was making his
rounds softly through the halls from door to door. He
was a good soldier, who had heeded Joffre's request that
everyone should go on with his day's work.

"They're done!" said an American in the foyer.
" The French cannot stand up against the Germans —
anybody could see that! It's too bad, but the French
are licked. The Germans will be here to-morrow or the
next day."

I could not and would not believe it. Such a disaster
was against all one's belief in the French army and in
the real character of the French people. It meant that
autocracy was making sport of democracy ; it meant
disaster to all one's precepts ; a personal disaster.

" Look at that interior line which the French now
hold. Think of the power of the defensive with modern
arms. No! The French have not had their battle yet ! "
I said.

And the British Expeditionary Force was still intact ;
still an army, with lots of fight left in it.

Ill

PARIS WAITS

It was then that people were speaking of Paris as a dead
city — a Paris without theatres, without young men,
without omnibuses, with the shutters of its shops down
and its cafes and restaurants in gloomy emptiness.

The Paris the host of the idler and the traveller ; the
Paris of the boulevards and the night life provided for
the tourist ; the Paris that sparkled and smiled in enter-
tainment ; the Paris exploited to the average American
through Sunday supplements and the reminiscences of
smoking-rooms of transatlantic liners, was dead. Those
who knew no other Paris and conjectured no other Paris
departed as from the tomb of the pleasures which had
been the passing extravaganza of relief from dull lives
elsewhere. The Parisienne of that Paris spent a thous-
and francs to get her pet dog safely away to Marseilles.
Politicians of a craven type, who are the curse of all
democracies, had gone to keep her company, leaving
Paris cleaner than ever she was after the streets had had
their morning bath on a spring day when the horse
chestnuts were in bloom and madame was arranging
her early editions on the table of her kiosk — a spiritually
clean Paris.

Monsieur, would you have America judged by the
White Way ? What has the White Way to do with the
New York of Seventy-Second Street or Harlem ? It
serves the same purpose as the boulevards of furnishing
scandalous little paragraphs for foreign newspapers.
Foreigners visit it and think that they understand how
Americans live in Stockbridge, Mass., or Springfield,
111. Empty its hotels and nobody but sightseers and

'5

16 PARIS WAITS

people interested in the White Way would know the
difference.

The other Paris, making ready to stand siege, with
the Government gone to Bordeaux with all the gold of
the Bank of France, with the enemy's guns audible in
the suburbs and old men cutting down trees and tearing
up paving-stones to barricade the streets — never had
that Paris been more alive. It was after the death of
the old and the birth of the new Paris that an elderly
man, seeing a group of women at tea in one of the few
fashionable refreshment places which were open, stopped
and said :

" Can you find nothing better than that to do, ladies,
in a time like this ? "

And the Latin temperament gave the world a sur-
prise. Those who judged France by her playful Paris
thought that if a Frenchman gesticulated so emotion-
ally in the course of everyday existence, he would get
overwhelmingly excited in a great emergency. One
evening, after the repulse of the Germans on the Marne,
I saw two French reserves dining in a famous restaurant
where, at this time of the year, four out of five diners
ordinarily would be foreigners surveying one another in
a study of Parisian life. They were big, rosy-cheeked
men, country born and bred, belonging to the new
France of sports, of action, of temperate habits, and
they were joking about dining there just as two sturdy
Westerners might about dining in a deserted Broadway.
The foreigners and demimondaines were noticeably
absent ; a pair of Frenchmen were in the place of
the absentees ; and after their dinner they smoked
their black brier-root pipes in that fashionable
restaurant.

Among the picture post-cards then on sale was one of
Marianne, who is France, bound for the front in an
aeroplane with a crowing French cock sitting on the
brace above her. Marianne looked as happy as if she

THE FRENCH SPIRIT 17

were going to the races ; the cock as triumphant as if he
had a spur through the German eagle's throat. How-
ever, there was little sale for picture post-cards or other
trifles, while Paris waited for the siege. They did not
help to win victories. News and not jeux d'esprit,
victory and not wit, was wanted.

For Marianne went to war with her liberty cap drawn
tight over her brow, a beat in her temples, and her heart
in her throat ; and the cock had his head down and
pointed at the enemy. She was relieved in a way, as
all Europe was, that the thing had come ; at last an end
of the straining of competitive taxation and prepara-
tion ; at last the test. She had no Channel, as England
had, between her and the foe. Defeat meant the heel
of the enemy on her soil, German sentries in her streets,
submission. Long and hard she had trained ; while the
outside world, thinking of the Paris of the boulevards,
thought that she could not resist the Kaiser's legions.
She was effeminate, effete. She was all right to run
cafes and make artificial flowers, but she lacked beef.
All the prestige was with her enemy. In '70 all the
prestige had been with her. For there is no prestige
like military prestige. It is all with those who won the
last war.

" But if we must succumb, let it be now," said the
French.

On, on — the German corps were coming like some
machine-controlled avalanche of armed men. Every
report brought them a little nearer Paris. Ah, mon-
sieur, they had numbers, those Germans! Every
German mother has many sons ; a French mother only
one or two.

How could one believe those official communiques
which kept saying that the position of the French
armies was favourable and then admitted that von
Kluck had advanced another twenty miles ? The heart
of Paris stopped beating. Paris held its breath. Per-

8 PARIS WAITS

haps the reason there was no panic was that Parisians
had been prepared for the worst.

What silence! The old men and the women in the
streets moved as under a spell, which was the sense of
their own helplessness. But few people were abroad,
and those going on errands apparently. The absence of
traffic and pedestrians heightened the sepulchral
appearance to superficial observation. At the windows
of flats, inside the little shops, and on by-streets, you
saw waiting faces, everyone with the weight of national
grief become personal. Was Paris alive ? Yes, if Paris
is human and not bricks and stone. Every Parisian was
living a century in a week. So, too, was one who loved
France. In the prospect of its loss he realized the value
of all that France stands for, her genius, her democracy,
her spirit.

One recalled how German officers had said that the
next war would be the end of France. An indemnity
which would crush out her power of recovery would be
imposed on her. Her northern ports would be taken.
France, the most homogeneous of nations, would be
divided into separate nationalities — even this the
Germans had planned. Those who read their Shake-
speare in the language they learned in childhood had no
doubt of England's coming out of the war secure ; but
if we thought which foreign civilization brought us the
most in our lives, it was that of France.

What would the world be without French civilization ?
To think of France dead was to think of cells in your
own brain that had gone lifeless ; of something irrepar-
able extinguished to every man to whom civilization
means more than material power of destruction. The
sense of what might be lost was revealed to you at every
turn in scenes once merely characteristic of a whole,
each with an appeal of its own now ; in the types of
people who, by their conduct in this hour of trial,
showed that Spartan hearts might beat in Paris — the

A CITY'S SOUL 19

Spartan hearts of the mass of everyday, workaday
Parisians.

Those waiting at home calmly with their thoughts, in
a France of apprehension, knew that their fate was out
of their hands in the hands of their youth. The tide of
battle wavering from Meaux to Verdun might engulf
them ; it might recede ; but Paris would resist to the
last. That was something. She would resist in a
manner worthy of Paris ; and one could live on very
little food. Their fathers had. Every day that Paris
held out would be a day lost to the Germans and a day
gained for Joffre and Sir John French to bring up
reserves.

The street lamps should not reveal to Zeppelins or
Taubes the location of precious monuments. You
might walk the length of the Champs Elysees without
meeting a vehicle or more than two or three pedestrians.
The avenue was all your own ; you might appreciate it
as an avenue for itself ; and every building and even
the skyline of the streets you might appreciate, free of
any association except the thought of the results of
man's planning and building. Silent, deserted Paris by
moonlight, without street lamps — few had ever seen
that. Millionaire tourists with retinues of servants
following them in motor-cars may never know this
effect ; nor the Parisienne who paid a thousand francs
to send her pet dog to Marseilles.

The moonlight threw the Arc de Triomphe in exagger-
ated spectral relief, sprinkled the leaves of the long
rows of trees, glistened on the upsweep of the broad
pavements, gleamed on the Seine. Paris was majestic,
as scornful of Prussian eagles as the Parthenon of
Roman eagles. A column of soldiery marching in
triumph under the Arc might possess as a policeman
possesses ; but not by arms could they gain the quality
that made Paris, any more than the Roman legionary
became a Greek scholar by doing sentry go in front of

20 PARIS WAITS

the Parthenon. Every Parisian felt anew how dear
Paris was to him ; how worthy of some great sacrifice !

If New York were in danger of falling to an enemy,
the splendid length of Fifth Avenue and the majesty
of the skyscrapers of lower Broadway and the bay and
the rivers would become vivid to you in a way they
never had before ; or Washington, or San Francisco,
or Boston — or your own town. The thing that is a
commonplace, when you are about to lose it takes on
a cherished value.

To-morrow the German guns might be thundering in
front of the fortifications. The communiques from Joffre
became less frequent and more laconic. Their wording
was like some trembling, fateful needle of a barometer,
pausing, reacting a little, but going down, down, down,
indicator of the heart-pressure of Paris, shrivelling the
flesh, tightening the nerves. Already Paris was in a
state of siege, in one sense. Her exits were guarded
against all who were not in uniform and going to fight ;
to all who had no purpose except to see what was pass-
ing where two hundred miles resounded with strife. It
was enough to see Paris itself awaiting the siege ;
fighting one was yet to see to repletion.

The situation must be very bad or the Government
would not have gone to Bordeaux. Alors, one must
trust the army and the army must trust Joffre. There
is no trust like that of a democracy when it gives its
heart to a cause ; the trust of the mass in the strength
of the mass which sweeps away the middlemen of
intrigue.

And silence, only silence in Paris ; the silence of the
old men and the women, and of children who had ceased
to play and could not understand. No one might see
what was going on unless he carried a rifle. No one
might see even the wounded. Paris was spared this,
isolated in the midst of war. The wounded were sent
out of reach of the Germans in case they should come.

THE BAROMETER RISES 21

Then the indicator stopped falling. It throbbed up-
ward. The communiques became more definite ; they
told of positions regained, and borne in the ether by the
wireless of telepathy was something which confirmed
the communiques. At first Paris was uneasy with the
news, so set had history been on repeating itself, so
remorselessly certain had seemed the German advance.
But it was true, true — the Germans were going, with the
French in pursuit, now twenty, now thirty, now forty,
now fifty, sixty, seventy miles away from Paris. Yes,
monsieur, seventy!

With the needle rising, did Paris gather in crowds
and surge through the streets, singing and shouting
itself hoarse, as it ought to have done according to the
popular international idea ? No, monsieur, Paris will
not riot in joy in the presence of the dead on the battle-
fields and while German troops are still within the
boundaries of France. Paris, which had been with
heart standing still and breathing hard, began to breathe
regularly again and the glow of life to run through her
veins. In the markets, whither madame brought succu-
lent melons, pears, and grapes with commonplace
vegetables, the talk of bargaining housewives with their
baskets had something of its old vivacity and madame
stiffened prices a little, for there will be heavy taxes to
pay for the war. Children, so susceptible to surround-
ings, broke out of the quiet alleys and doorways in play
again.

A Sunday of relief, with a radiant September sun
shining, followed a Sunday of depression. The old
taxicabs and the horse vehicles with their venerable
steeds and drivers too old for service at the front, ex-
humed from the catacomb of the hours of doubt, ran
up and down the Champs Elysees with airing parties.
At Notre Dame the religious rejoicing was expressed.
A great service of prayer was held by the priests who
were not away fighting for France, as three thousand

22 PARIS WAITS

are, while joyful prayers of thanks shone on the faces of
that democratic people who have not hesitated to dis-
cipline the church as they have disciplined their rulers.
Groups gathered in the cafes or sauntered slowly, talk-
ing less than usual, gesticulating little, rolling over the
good news in their minds as something beyond the
power of expression. How banal to say, " C'est chic,
(a ! " or " C'est epatant ! " Language is for little things.

That pile of posters at the American Embassy had
already become historical souvenirs which won a smile.
The name of every American resident in Paris and his
address had been filled in the blank space. He had only
to put up the warning over his door that the premises
were under the Embassy's protection. Ambassador
Herrick, suave, decisive, resourceful, possessed the gift
of acting in a great emergency with the same ease and
simplicity as in a small one, which is a gift sometimes
found wanting when a crisis breaks upon the routine of
official life.

He had the courage to act and the ability to secure a
favour for an American when it was reasonable ; and
the courage to say " No " if it were unreasonable or
impracticable. No one of the throngs who had business
with him was kept long at the door in uncertainty. In
its organization for facilitating the home-going of the
thousands of Americans in Paris and the Americans
coming to Paris from other parts of Europe, the Ameri-
can Embassy in Paris seemed as well mobilized for its
part in the war as the German army.

In spite of '70, France still lived. You noted the faces
of the women in fresh black for their dead at the front,
a little drawn but proud and victorious. The son or
brother or husband had died for the country. When a
fast motor-car bearing officers had a German helmet or
two displayed, the people stopped to look. A captured
German in the flesh on a front seat beside a soldier-
chauffeur brought the knots to a standstill. " Voild!

PARIS IS SAFE 23

C'est un Allemand ! " ran the exclamation. But Paris
soon became used to these stray German prisoners,
left-overs from the German retreat coming in from the
fields to surrender. The batches went through by train
without stopping for Paris, southward to the camps
where they were to be interned ; and the trains of
wounded to winter resorts, whose hotels became hos-
pitals, the verandas occupied by convalescents instead
of gossiping tourists. It is tres a la mode to be wounded,
monsieur — tres a la mode all over Europe.

And, monsieur, all those barricades put up for noth-
ing! They will not need the cattle gathered on Long-
champs race-track and in the parks at Versailles for a
siege. The people who laid in stocks of tinned goods till
the groceries of Paris were empty of everything in tins —
they will either have to live on canned food or confess
that they were pigs, hein? Those volunteers, whether
young men who had been excused because they were only
sons or for weak hearts which now let them past the
surgeons, whether big, hulking farmers, or labourers, or
stooped clerks, drilling in awkward squads in the suburbs
till they are dizzy, they will not have to defend Paris ;
but, perhaps, help to regain Alsace and Lorraine.

Then there were stories going the rounds ; stories of
French courage and elan which were cheering to the
ears of those who had to remain at home. Did you hear
about the big French peasant soldier who captured a
Prussian eagle in Alsace ? They had him come to Paris
to give him the Legion of Honour and the great men
made a ceremony of it, gathering around him at the
Ministry of War. The simple fellow looked from one to
another of the group, surprised at all this attention. It
did not occur to him that he had done anything remark-
able. He had seen a Prussian with a standard and taken
the standard away from the Prussian.

" If you like this so well," said that droll one, "I'll
try to get another! "
c

IV

ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

Though the Germans were going, the siege by the
cordon of French guards around Paris had not been
raised. To them every civilian was a possible spy. So
they let no civilians by. Must one remain for ever in
Paris, screened from any view of the great drama ?
Was there no way of securing a blue card which would
open the road to war for an atom of humanity who
wanted to see Frenchmen in action and not to pry into
generals' plans ?

Happily, an army winning is more hospitable than
an army losing ; and bonds of friendship which stretch
around the world could be linked with authority which
has only to say the word, in order that one might have
a day's glimpse of the fields where von Kluck's Germans
were showing their heels to the French.

Ours, I think, was the pioneer of the sight-seeing
parties which afterwards became the accepted form of
war correspondence with the French. None could have
been under more delightful auspices in companionship
or in the event. Victory was in the hearts of our hosts,
who included M. Paul Doumer, formerly President of
the Chamber of Deputies and Governor of French Indo-
China and now a senator, and General Febrier, of the
French Medical Service, who was to have had charge of
the sanitation of Paris in case of a siege.

M. Doumer was acting as Chef de Cabinet to General
Gallieni, the commandant of Paris, and he and General
Febrier and two other officers of Gallieni's staff, who
would have been up to their eyes in work if there had
been a siege, wanted to see something of that army

24

AT THE FRENCH FRONT 25

whose valour had given them a holiday. Why should
not Roberts and myself come along ? which is the pleas-
ant way the French have of putting an invitation.

Oh, the magic of a military pass and the companion-
ship of an officer in uniform ! It separates you from the
crowd of millions on the other side of the blank wall of
military secrecy and takes you into the area of the
millions in uniform ; it wins a nod of consent on a road
from that middle-aged reservist whose bayonet has the
police power of millions of bayonets in support of its
authority.

At last one was to see ; the measure of his impres-
sions was to be his own eyes and not written reports.
Other passes I have had since, which gave me the run
of trenches and shell-fire areas ; but this pass opened
the first door to the war. That day we ran by Meaux
and Chateau Thierry to Soissons and back by Senlis
to Paris. We saw a finger's breadth of battle area ; a
pin-point of army front. Only a ride along a broad,
fine road out of Paris, at first ; a road which our cars
had all to themselves. Then at Claye we came to the
high-water mark of the German invasion in this region.
Thus close to Paris in that direction and no closer had
the Germans come.

There was the field where their skirmishers had
turned back. Farther on, the branches of the avenue of
trees which shaded the road had been slashed as if by a
whirlwind of knives, where the French soixante-qninze
field-guns had found a target. Under that sudden bath
of projectiles, with the French infantry pressing forward
on their front, the German gunners could not wait to
take away the cord of five-inch shells which they had
piled to blaze their way to Paris. One guessed their
haste and their irritation. They were within range of
the fortifications ; within two hours' march of the sub-
urbs ; of the Mecca of forty years' preparation. After
all that march from Belgium, with no break in the pro-

26 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

gramme of success, the thunders broke and lightning
flashed out of the sky as Manoury's army rushed upon
von Kluck's flank.

"It was not the way that they wanted us to get the
shells," said a French peasant who was taking one of
the shell-baskets for a souvenir. It would make an
excellent umbrella stand.

For the French it had been the turn of the tide ; for
that little British army which had fought its way back
from Mons it was the sweet dream, which had kept men
up on the retreat, come true. Weary Germans, after a
fearful two weeks of effort, became the driven. Weary
British and French turned drivers. A hypodermic of
victory renewed their energy. Paris was at their back
and the German backs in front. They were no longer
leaving their dead and wounded behind to the foe ; they
were sweeping past the dead and wounded of the foe.

But their happiness, that of a winning action, exalted
and passionate, had not the depths of that of the refu-
gees who had fled before the German hosts and were
returning to their homes in the wake of their victorious
army. We passed farmers with children perched on
top of carts laden with household goods and drawn by
broad-backed farm-horses, with usually another horse
or a milch cow tied behind. The real power of France,
these peasants holding fast to the acres they own, with
the fire of the French nature under their thrifty con-
servatism. Others on foot were villagers who had
lacked horses or carts to transport their belongings. In
the packs on their backs were a few precious things
which they had borne away and were now bearing back.

Soon they would know what the Germans had done
to the homes. What the Germans had done to one
piano was evident. It stood in the yard of a house
where grass and flowers had been trodden by horses and
men. In the sport of victory the piano had been dragged
out of the little drawing-room, while Fritz and Hans

THE GAMBLE OF WAR 27

played and sang in the intoxication of a Paris gained, a
France in submission. They did not know what Joffre
had in pickle for them. It had all gone according to
programme up to that moment. Nothing can stop us
Germans! Champagne instead of beer! Set the glass
on top of the piano and sing ! Haven't we waited forty
years for this day ?

Captured diaries of German officers, which reflect the
seventh heaven of elation suddenly turned into grim
depression, taken in connection with what one saw on
the battlefield, reconstruct the scene around that piano.
The cup to the lips ; then dashed away. How those
orders to retreat must have hurt!

The state of the refugees' homes all depended upon
the chances of war. War's lightning might have hit
your roof-tree and it might not. It plays no favourites
between the honest and the dishonest ; the thrifty and
the shiftless. We passed villages which exhibited no
signs of destruction or of looting. German troops had
marched through in the advance and in the retreat
without being billeted. A hurrying army with another
on its heels has no time for looting. Other villages had
been points of topical importance ; they had been in
the midst of a fight. General Mauvaise Chance had it
in for them. Shells had wrecked some houses ; others
were burned. Where a German non-commissioned officer
came to the door of a French family and said that room
must be made for German soldiers in that house and if
anyone dared to interfere with them he would be shot,
there the exhausted human nature of a people trained
to think that " Krieg ist Krieg " and that the spoils of
war are to the victor had its way.

It takes generations to lift a man up a single degree ;
but so swift is the effect of war, when men live a year in
a day, that he is demonized in a month. Before the
occupants had to go, often windows were broken,
crockery smashed, closets and drawers rifled. The

28 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

soldiery which could not have its Paris " took it out "
of the property of their hosts. Looting, destruction,
one can forgive in the orgy of war which is organized
destruction ; one can even understand rapine and
atrocities when armies, which include latent vile and
criminal elements, are aroused to the kind of insane
passion which war kindles in human beings. But some
indecencies one could not understand in civilized men.
All with a military purpose, it is said ; for in the nice
calculations of a staff system which grinds so very fine,
nothing must be excluded that will embarrass the enemy.
A certain foully disgusting practice was too common
not to have had the approval of at least some officers,
whose conduct in several chateaux includes them as
accomplices. Not all officers, not all soldiers. That
there should be a few is enough to sicken you of belong-
ing to the human species. Nothing worse in Central
America ; nothing worse where civilized degeneracy
disgraces savagery.

But do not think that destruction for destruction's
sake was done in all houses where German soldiers were
billeted. If the good principle was not sufficiently
impressed, Belgium must have impressed it ; a looting
army is a disorderly army. The soldier has burden
enough to carry in heavy marching order without
souvenirs. That collector of the stoppers of carafes
who had thirty on his person when taken prisoner was
bound to be a laggard in the retreat.

To their surprise and relief, returning farmers found
their big, conical haystacks untouched, though nothing
could be more tempting to the wantonness of an army
on enemy soil. Strike a match and up goes the harvest !
Perhaps the Germans as they advanced had in mind to
save the forage for their own horses, and either they were
running too fast to stop or the staff overlooked the detail
on the retreat.

It was amazing how few signs of battle there were in

WHERE THE TIDE TURNED 29

the open. Occasionally one saw the hastily-made
shelter-trenches of a skirmish line ; and again, the
emplacements for batteries — hurried field-emplace-
ments, so puny beside those of trench warfare. It had
been open fighting ; the tide of an army sweeping for-
ward and then, pursued, sweeping back. One side was
trying to get away ; the other to overtake. Here, a
rearguard made a determined action which would have
had the character of a battle in other days ; there, a
rearguard was pinched as the French or the British got
around it.

Swift marching and quick manoeuvres of the type which
gave war some of its old sport and zest ; the advance
all the while gathering force like the neap tide ! Crowds
of men hurrying across a harvested wheatfield or a
pasture after all leave few marks of passage. A day's
rain will wash away bloodstains and liven trampled
vegetation. Nature hastens with a kind of contempt of
man to repair the damage done by his murderous wrath.

The cyclone past, the people turned out to put things
in order. Peasants too old to fight, who had paid the
taxes which paid for the rifles and guns and shell-fire,
were moving across the fields with spades, burying the
bodies of the young men and the horses that were war's
victims. Long trenches full of dead told where the
eddy of battle had been fierce and the casualties
numerous ; scattered mounds of fresh earth where they
were light ; and, sometimes, when the burying was
unfinished — well, one draws the curtain over scenes
like that in the woods at Betz, where Frenchmen died
knowing that Paris was saved and Germans died know-
ing that they had failed to take Paris.

Whenever we halted our statesman, M. Doumer, was
active. Did we have difficulties over a culvert which
had been hastily mended, he was out of the car and in
command. Always he was meeting some man whom he
knew and shaking hands like a senator at home. At one

30 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

place a private soldier, a man of education by his
speech, came running across the street at sight of him.

" Son of an old friend of mine, from my town," said
our statesman. Being a French private meant being
any kind of a Frenchman. All inequalities are levelled
in the ranks of a great conscript army.

Be it through towns unharmed or towns that had
been looted and shelled, the people had the smile of
victory, the look of victory in their eyes. Children and
old men and women, the stay-at-homes, waved to our
car in holiday spirit. The laugh of a sturdy young
woman who threw some flowers into the tonneau as we
passed, in her tribute to the uniform of the army that
had saved France, had the spirit of victorious France
— France after forty years' waiting throwing back a
foe that had two soldiers to every one of hers. All the
land, rich fields and neat gardens and green stretches of
woods in the fair, rolling landscape, basked in victory.
Dead the spirit of anyone who could not, for the time
being, catch the infection of it and feel himself a
Frenchman. Far from the Paris of gay show for the
tourist one seemed ; in the midst of the France of the
farms and the villages which had saved Paris and France.

The car sped on over the hard road. Staff officers in
other cars whom we passed alone suggested that there
was war somewhere ahead. Were we never going to
reach the battle-line, the magnet of our speed when a
French army chauffeur made all speed laws obsolete ?

Shooting out of a grove, a valley made a channel for
sound that brought to our ears the thunder of guns,
with firing so rapid that it was like the roll of some
cyclopean snare-drum beaten with sticks the size of
ship-masts. From the crest of the next hill we had a
glimpse of an open sweep of park-like country toward
wooded hills. As far as we could see against the back-
ground of the foliage which threw it into relief was a
continuous cloud of smoke from bursting shells,

ARMY TRANSPORT 31

renewed with fresh, soft, blue puffs as fast as it was
dissipated.

This, then, was a battle. No soldiers, no guns, in
sight ; only against masses of autumn green a diapha-
nous, man-made nimbus which was raining steel hail.
Ten miles of this, one would say ; and under it lines of
men in blue coats and red trousers and green uniforms
hugging the earth, as unseen as a battalion of ants at
work in the tall grass. Even if a charge swept across a
field one would have been able to detect nothing except
moving pin-points on a carpet.

There was hard fighting ; a lot of French and German
were being killed in the direction of Compiegne and
Noyon to-day. Another dip into another valley and
the thir-r-r of a rapid-firer and the muffled firing of a
line of infantry were audible. Yes, we were getting up
with the army, with one tiny section of it operating along
the road on which we were. Multiply this by a thousand
and you have the whole.

Ahead was the army's larder on wheels ; a pro-
cession of big motor transport trucks keeping their
intervals of distance with the precision of a battleship
fleet at sea. We should have known that they belonged
to the army by the deafness of the drivers to appeals to
let us pass. All army transports are like that. What
the deuced right has anybody to pass ? They are the
transport, and only fighting men belong in front of
them. Our car in trying to go by to one side got stuck
in a rut that an American car, built for bad roads,
would have made nothing of ; which proves again how
closely European armies are tied to their fine highways.
We got out, and here again was our statesman putting
his shoulder to the wheel. That is the way of the
French in war. Everybody tries to help. By this time
the transport chauffeurs remembered that they also were
Frenchmen ; and as Frenchmen are polite even in time
of war, they let us by.

32 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

A motor-cyclist approached with his hand up.

" Stop here! " he called.

Those transport chauffeurs who were deaf to ex-
premiers heard instantly and obeyed. In front of them
was a line of single horse-drawn carts, with an extra
horse in the rear. They could take paths that the motor
trucks could not. Archaic they seemed, yet friendly, as
a relic of how armies were fed in other days. For the
first time I was realizing what the motor truck means
to war. It brings the army impedimenta close up to
the army's rear ; it means a reduction of road space
occupied by transport by three-quarters ; ease in keep-
ing pace with food with the advance, speed in falling
back in case of retreat.

All that day I did not see a single piece of French
army transport broken down. And this army had been
fighting for weeks ; it had been an army on the road.
The valuable part of our experience was exactly in this :
a glimpse of an army in action after it had been through
all the vicissitudes that an army may have in marching
and counter-marching and attack. Order one expected
afterwards, behind the siege line of trenches, when there
had been time to establish a routine ; organization and
smooth organization you had here at the climax of a
month's strain. It told the story of the character of
the French army and the reasons for its success other
than its courage. The brains were not all with the
German Staff.

That winding road, with a new picture at every turn,
now revealed the town of Soissons in the valley of the
River Aisne. Soissons was ours, we knew, since
yesterday. How much farther had we gone ? Was our
advance still continuing ? For then, winter trench-
fighting was unforeseen and the sightseers thought of
the French army as following up success with success.
Paris, rising from gloom to optimism, hoped to see the
Germans speedily put out of France. The appetite for

FRENCH RESERVES 33

victory grew, after a week's bulletins which moved the
flags forward on the map every day.

Another turn and Soissons was hidden from view by
a woodland. Here we came upon what looked like a
leisurely family party of reserves. The French army,
a small section of French army, along a road ! And thus,
if one would see the whole it must be in bits along the
roads, when not on the firing-line. They were sprawl-
ing in the fields in the genial afternoon sun, looking as
if they had no concern except to rest. Uniforms dusty
and faces tanned and bearded told their story of the
last month.

The duty of a portion of a force is always to wait on
what is being done by the others at the front. These
were waiting near a fork which could take them to the
right or the left, as the situation demanded. At the
rear, their supply of small arms ammunition ; in front,
caissons of shells for a battery speaking from the woods
near by ; a troop of cavalry drawn up, the men dis-
mounted, ready ; and ahead of them more reserves
ready ; everything ready.

This was where the general wanted the body of men
and equipment to be, and here they were. There were
no dragging ends in the rear, so far as I could see ; no-
body complaining that food or ammunition was not up ;
no aide looking for somebody who could not be found ;
no excited staff officer rushing about shouting for
somebody to look sharp for somebody had made a mis-
take. The thing was unwarlike ; it was like a particu-
larly well-thought-out route march. Yet at the word
that company of cavalry might be in the thick of it, at
the point where they were wanted ; the infantry rush-
ing to the support of the firing-line ; the motor trans-
port facing around for withdrawal, if need be. It was
only a little way, indeed, into the zone of death from
the rear of that compact column.

Thousands of such compact bodies on many roads,

34 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

each seemingly a force by itself and each a part of the
whole, which could be a dependable whole only when
every part was ready, alert, and where it belonged!
Nothing can be left to chance in a battle-line three
hundred miles long. The general must know what to
depend on, mile by mile, in his plans. Millions of
human units are grouped in increasingly larger units,
harmonized according to set forms. The most complex
of all machines is that of a vast army, which yet must
be kept most simple. No unit acts without regard to
the others ; every one must know how to do its part.
The parts of the machine are standardized. One is
like the other in training, uniform, and every detail, so
that one can replace another. Oldest of all trades this
of war ; old experts the French. What one saw was
like manoeuvres. It must be like manoeuvres or the
army would not hold together. Manoeuvres are to
teach armies coherence ; war tries out that coherence,
which you may not have if someone does not know just
what to do ; if he is uncertain in his role. Haste leads
to confusion ; haste is only for supreme moments. In
order to know how to hasten when the hurry call comes,
the mighty organism must move in its routine with the
smoothness of a well-rehearsed play.

Joffre and the others who directed the machine must
know more than the mechanics of staff-control. They
must know the character of the man-material in the
machine. It was their duty as real Frenchmen to
understand Frenchmen, their verve, their restlessness
for the offensive, their individualism, their democratic
intelligence, the value of their elation, the drawback
of their tendency to depression and to think for them-
selves. Indeed, the leader must counteract the faults
of his people and make the most of their virtues.

Thus, we had a French army's historical part
reversed : a French army falling back and concentrat-
ing on the Marne to receive the enemy blow. Equally

A WELCOME GIFT 35

alive to German racial traits, the German Staff had
organized in their mass offensive the elan which means
fast marching and hard blows. So, we found the
supposedly excitable French digging in to receive the
onslaught of the supposedly phlegmatic German.
When the time came for the charge — ah, you can
always depend on a Frenchman to charge !

Those reserves were pawns on a chessboard. They
appeared like it ; one thought that they realized it.
Their individual intelligence and democracy had
reasoned out the value of obedience and homogeneity,
rather than accepted it as the dictum of any war lord.
Difficult to think that each one had left a vacancy at
a family board ; difficult to think that all were not
automatons in a process of endless routine of war ; but
not difficult to learn that they were Frenchmen once
we had thrown our bombs in the midst of the group.

Of old, one knew the wants of soldiers. One needed
no hint of what was welcome at the front. Never at
any front were there enough newspapers or tobacco.
Men smoke twice as much as usual in the strain of
waiting for action ; men who do not use tobacco at all
get the habit. Ask the G.A.R. men who fought in our
great war if this is not true. Then, too, when your
country is at war, when back at home hands stretch
out for every fresh edition and you at the front know
only what happens in your alley, think what a news-
paper from Paris means out on the battle-line seventy
miles from Paris ! So I had brought a bundle of news-
papers and many packets of cigarettes.

Monsieur, the sensation is beyond even the French
language to express — the sensation of sitting down by
the roadside with this morning's edition and the first
cigarette for twenty-four hours.

" C'est epatant ! C'est chic, (a ! C'est magnifique !
Alors, nom de Dieu ! Tiens ! Helas ! Voild ! Merci,
mille r enter ciments ! " — it was an army of Frenchmen

36 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

with ready words, quick, telling gestures, pouring
out their volume of thanks as the car sped by and
we tossed out our newspapers at intervals, so that
all should have a look.

An Echo de Paris that fell into the road was the centre
of a flag-rush, which included an officer. Most un-
military — an officer scrambling at the same time as his
men ! In the name of the Kaiser, what discipline !

Then the car stopped long enough for me to see a
private give the paper to his officer, who was plainly
sensible of a loss of dignity, with a courtesy which said,
" A thousand pardons, mon capitaine ! ' and the
capitaine began reading the newspaper aloud to his
men. Scores of human touches which were French,
republican, democratic !

With half our cigarettes gone, we fell in with some
brown-skinned, native African troops, the Moham-
medan Turcos. Their white teeth gleaming, their
black eyes devilishly eager, they began climbing on to
the car. We gave them all the cigarettes in sight ;
but fortunately our reserve supply was not visible, and
an officer's sharp command saved us from being in-
vested by storm.

As we came into Soissons we left the reserves behind.
They were kept back out of range of the German shells,
making the town a dead space between them and the
firing-line, which was beyond. When the Germans
retreated through the streets the French had taken
care, as it was their town, to keep their fire away from
the cathedral and the main square to the outskirts and
along the river. Not so the German guns when the
French infantry passed through. Soissons was not a
German town.

We alighted from the car in a deserted street, with
all the shutters of shops that had not been torn down by
shell-fire closed. Soissons was as silent as the grave,
within easy range of many enemy guns. War seemed

THE HIDDEN BATTERY 37

only for the time being in this valley bottom shut in
from the roar of artillery a few miles away, except for a
French battery which was firing methodically and
slowly, its shells whizzing toward the ridge back of the
town.

The next thing that one wanted most was to go into
that battery and see the soixante-quinze and their skil-
ful gunners. Our statesman said that he would try to
locate it. We thought that it was in the direction of
the river, that famous Aisne which has since given its
name to the longest siege-line in history ; a small,
winding stream in the bottom of an irregular valley.
Both bridges across it had been cut by the Germans.
If that battery were on the other side under cover of
any one of a score of blots of foliage we could not reach
it. Another shot — and we were not sure that the
battery was not on the opposite side of the town ; a
crack out of the landscape : this was modern artillery
fire to one who faced it. Apparently the guns of the
battery were scattered, according to the accepted
practice, and from the central firing-station word to fire
was being passed first to one gun and then to another.

Beside the buttress of one bridge lay two still figures
of Algerian Zouaves. These were fresh dead, fallen in
the taking of the town. Only two men! There were
dead by thousands which one might see in other places.
These two had leaped out from cover to dash forward
and bullets were waiting for them. They had rolled
over on their backs, their rigid hands still in the position
of grasping their rifles after the manner of crouching
skirmishers.

Our statesman said that we had better give up trying
to locate the battery ; and one of the officers called
a halt to trying to go up to the firing-line on the part of a
personally-conducted party, after we stopped a private
hurrying back from the front on some errand. With
his alertness, the easy swing of his walk, his light step,

38 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

and his freedom of spirit and appearance, he typified
the thing which the French call elan. Whenever one
asked a question of a French private you could depend
upon a direct answer. He knew or he did not know.
This definiteness, the result of military training as well
as of Gallic lucidity of thought, is not the least of the
human factors in making an efficient army, where
every man and every unit must definitely know his
part. This young man, you realized, had tasted the
" salt of life," as Lord Kitchener calls it. He had
heard the close sing of bullets ; he had known the
intoxication of a charge.

" Does everything go well ? " M. Doumer asked.

" It is not going at all, now. It is sticking," was the
answer. " Some Germans were busy up there in the
stone quarries while the others were falling back. They
have a covered trench and rapid-fire-gun positions to
sweep a zone of fire which they have cleared."

Famous stone quarries of Soissons, providing ready-
made dug-outs as shelter from shells !

There is a story of how before Marengo Napoleon
heard a private saying : " Now this is what the general
ought to do! " It was Napoleon's own plan revealed.
" You keep still ! " he said. " This army has too many
generals."

" They mean to make a stand," the private went on.
" It's an ideal place for it. There is no use of an attack
in front. We'd be mowed down by machine-guns."
The br-r-r of a dozen shots from a German machine-
gun gave point to his conclusion. ' Our infantry is
hugging what we have and intrenching. You'd better
not go up. One has to know the way, or he'll walk
right into a sharpshooter's bullet " — instructions that
would have been applicable a year later when one was
about to visit a British trench in almost the same
location.

The siege-warfare of the Aisne line had already

THE FATALISTS OF SOISSONS 39

begun. It was singular to get the first news of it from
a private in Soissons and then to return to Paris and
London, on the other side of the curtain of secrecy,
where the public thought that the Allied advance would
continue.

" Allons ! " said our statesman, and we went to the
town square, where German guns had carpeted the
ground with branches of shade trees and torn off the
fronts of houses, revealing sections of looted interior
which had been further messed by shell-bursts. Some
women and children and a crippled man came out of
doors at sight of us. M. Doumer introduced himself
and shook hands all around. They were glad to meet
him in much the same way as if he had been on an
election campaign.

" A German shell struck there across the square only
half an hour ago," said one of the women.

" What do you do when there is shelling ? " asked
M. Doumer.

" If it is bad we go into the cellar," was the answer ;
an answer which implied that peculiar fearlessness of
women, who get accustomed to fire easier than men.
These were the fatalists of the town, who would not
turn refugee ; helpless to fight, but grimly staying
with their homes and accepting what came with an
incomprehensible stoicism, which possibly had its
origin in a race-feeling so proud and bitter that they
would not admit that they could be afraid of anything
German, even a shell.

" And how did the Germans act ? "
' They made themselves at home in our houses and
slept in our beds, while we slept in the kitchen," she
answered. " They said that if we kept indoors and
gave them what they wanted we should not be harmed.
But if anyone fired a shot at their troops or any arms
were found in our houses, they would burn the town.
When they were going back in a great hurry — how they

D

40 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

scattered from our shells ! We went out in the square
to see our shells, monsieur! "

What mattered the ruins of her home ? " Our "
shells had returned vengeance.

Arrows with directions in German, " This way to the
river," " This way to Villers-Cotteret," were chalked
on the standing walls ; and on door-casings the names
of the detachments of the Prussian Guard billeted
there, all in systematic Teutonic fashion.

" Prince Albrecht Joachim, one of the Kaiser's sons,
was here and I talked with him," said the Mayor, who
thought we would enjoy a morsel from court circles in
exchange for a copy of the Echo de Paris, which con-
tained the news that Prince Albrecht had been wounded
later. The Mayor looked tired, this local man of the
people, who had to play the shepherd of a stricken
flock. Afterwards, they said that he deserted his
charge and a lady, Mme. Macherez, took his place. All
I know is that he was present that day ; or, at least, a
man who was introduced to me as mayor ; and he was
French enough to make a bon mot by saying that he
feared there was some fault in his hospitality because
he had been unable to keep his guest.

"May I have this confiture?" asked a battle-
stained French orderly, coming up to him. " I found
it in that ruined house there — all the Germans had left.
I haven't had a confiture for a long time, and, monsieur,
you cannot imagine what a hunger I have for con-
fitures."

All the while the French battery kept on firing
slowly, then again rapidly, their cracks trilling off like
the drum of knuckles on a table-top. Another effort
to locate one of the guns before we started back to
Paris failed. Speeding on, we had again a glimpse of
the landscape* toward Noyon, sprinkled with shell-
bursts. The reserves were around their camp-fires
making savoury stews for the evening meal. They

TWO GERMANS AND A FRENCHMAN 41

would sleep where night found them on the sward under
the stars, as in wars of old. That scene remains
indelible as one of many while the army was yet
mobile, before the contest became one of the mole and
the beaver.

Though one had already seen many German prisoners
in groups and convoys, the sight of two on the road
fixed the attention because of the surroundings and the
contrast suggested between French and German
natures. Both were young, in the very prime of life,
and both Prussian. One was dark-complexioned, with
a scrubbly beard which was the product of the war. He
marched with such rigidity that I should not have been
surprised to see him break into a goose-step. The
other was of that mild, blue-eyed, tow-haired type
from the Baltic provinces, with the thin, white skin
which does not tan but burns. He was frailer than the
other and he was tired ! He would lag and then stiffen
back his shoulders and draw in his chin and force a
trifle more energy into his steps.

A typical, lively French soldier was escorting the
pair. He looked pretty tired, too, but he was getting
over the ground in the natural, easy way in which man
is meant to walk. The aboriginal races, who have a
genius for long distances on foot, do not march in the
German fashion, which looks impressive, but lacks
endurance. By the same logic, the cowboy pony's gait
is better for thirty miles day in and day out than the
gait of the high-stepping carriage horse.

You could realize the contempt which those two
martial Germans had for their captor. Four or five
peasant women refugees by the roadside loosened their
tongues in piercing feminine satire and upbraiding.

! You are going to Paris, after all ! This is what you
get for invading our country ; and you'll get more of
it! "

The little French soldier held up his hand to the

42 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

women and shook his head. He was a chivalrous
fellow, with imagination enough to appreciate the
feelings of an enemy who has fought hard and lost.
Such as he would fight fair and hold this war of the
civilizations up to something like the standards of
civilization.

The very tired German stiffened up again, as his
drill sergeant had taught him, and both stared straight
ahead, proud and contemptuous, as their Kaiser would
wish them to do. I should recognize the faces of those
two Germans and of that little French guard if I saw
them ten years hence. In ten years, what will be the
Germans' attitude toward this war and their military
lords ?

It is not often that one has a senator for a guide ; and
I never knew a more efficient one than our statesman.
His own curiosity was the best possible aid in satisfying
our own. Having seen the compactness and simplicity
of an army column at the front, we were to find that
the same thing applied to high command. A sentry
and a small flag at the doorway of a village hotel : this
was the headquarters of the Sixth Army, which
General Manoury had formed in haste and flung at
von Kluck with a spirit which crowned his white hairs
with the audacity of youth. He was absent, but we
might see something of the central direction of one
hundred and fifty thousand men in the course of one of
the most brilliant manoeuvres of the war, before staffs
had settled down to office existence in permanent
quarters. That is, we might see the little there was to
see : a soldier telegrapher in one bedroom, a soldier
typewritist in another, officers at work in others. One
realized that they could pack up everything and move
in the time it takes to toss enough clothes into a bag to
spend a night away from home. Apparently, when the
French fought they left red tape behind with the
bureaucracy.

MANOURY'S HEADQUARTERS 43

From his seat before a series of maps on a sitting-
room table an officer of about thirty-five rose to receive
us. It struck me that he exemplified self-possessed
intelligence and definite knowledge ; that he had cool-
ness and steadiness plus that acuteness of perception
and clarity of statement which are the gift of the
French. You felt sure that no orders which left his
hand wasted any words or lacked explicitness. The
Staff is the brains of the army, and he had brains

" All goes well! " he said, as if there were no more
to say. All goes well! He would say it when things
looked black or when they looked bright, and in a way
that would make others believe it.

Outside the hotel were no cavalry escorts or com-
manders, no hurrying orderlies, none of the legendary
activity that is associated with an army headquarters.
A motor-car drove up, an officer got out ; another
officer descended the stairs to enter a waiting car. The
wires carry word faster than the cars. Each sub-
ordinate commander was in his place along that line
where we had seen the puffs of smoke against the land-
scape, ready to answer a question or obey an order.
That simplicity, like art itself, which seems so easy is
the most difficult accomplishment of all in war.

After dark, in a drizzling rain, we came to what
seemed to be a town, for our motor-car lamps spread
their radiant streams over wet pavements. But these
were the only lights. Tongues of loose bricks had been
shot across the cobblestones and dimly the jagged sky-
line of broken walls of buildings on either side could be
discerned. It was Senlis, the first town I had seen which
could be classified as a town in ruins. Afterwards, one
became a sort of specialist in ruins, comparing the
latest with previous examples of destruction.

Approaching footsteps broke the silence. A small,
very small, French soldier — he was not more than five
feet two — appeared, and we followed him to an ambu-

44 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

lance that had broken down for want of petrol. It
belonged to the Societe de Femmes de France. The
little soldier had put on a uniform as a volunteer for the
only service his stature would permit. In those days
many volunteer organizations were busy seeking to
" help." There was a kind of competition among them
for wounded. This ambulance had got one and was
taking him to Paris, off the regular route of the wounded
who were being sent south. The boot-soles of a pros-
trate figure showed out of the dark recess of the
interior. This French officer, a major, had been hit in
the shoulder. He tried to control the catch in his voice
which belied his assertion that he was suffering little
pain. The drizzling rain was chilly. It was a long way
to Paris yet.

" We will make inquiries," said our kindly general.

A man who came out of the gloom said that there
was a hospital kept by some Sisters of Charity in Senlis
which had escaped destruction. The question was put
into the recesses of the ambulance :

" Would you prefer to spend the night here and go
on in the morning ? "

"Yes, monsieur, I — should — like — that — better!"
The tone left no doubt of the relief that the journey in
a car with poor springs was not to be continued after
hours of waiting, marooned in the street of a ruined
town.

Whilst the ambulance passed inside the hospital gate,
I spoke with an elderly woman who came to a near-by
door. Cool and definite she was as a French soldier,
bringing home the character of the women of France
which this war has made so well known to the world.

" Were you here during the fighting ? "

"Yes, monsieur, and during the shelling and the burn-
ing. The shelling was not enough. The Germans said
that someone fired on their soldiers — a boy, I believe —
so they set fire to the houses. One could only look and

THE GERMANS RUN 45

hate and pray as their soldiers passed through, looking
so unconquerable, making all seem so terrible for France.
Was it to be '70 over again ? One's heart was of stone,
monsieur. Tiens ! They came back faster than they
went. A mitrailleuse was down there at the end of the
street, our mitrailleuse ! The bullets went cracking by.
They crack, the bullets ; they do not whistle like the
stories say. Then the street was empty of Germans
who could run. The dead they could not run, nor the
wounded. Then the French came up the street, running
too — running after the Germans. It was good, mon-
sieur, good, good! My heart was not of stone then,
monsieur. It could not beat fast enough for happiness.
It was the heart of a girl. I remember it all very
clearly. I always shall, monsieur."

" Allons ! " said our statesman. " The officer is well
cared for."

The world seemed normal again as we passed through
other towns unharmed and swept by the dark country-
side, till a red light rose in our path and a sharp " Qui
vive ? " came out of the night as we slowed down. This
was not the only sentry call from a French Territorial
in front of a barricade.

At a second halt we found a chain as well as a barri-
cade across the road. For a moment it seemed that
even the suave parliamentarism of our statesman and
the authority of our general and our passes could not
convince one grizzled reservist, doing his duty for
France at the rear whilst the young men were at the
front, that we had any right to be going into Paris at
that hour of the night. The password, which was
" Paris," helped, and we felt it a most appropriate pass-
word as we came to the broad streets of the city that
was safe.

There is a popular idea that Napoleon was a super-
genius who won his battles single-handed. It is wrong.
He had a lot of Frenchmen along to help. Much the same

46 ON THE HEELS OF VON KLUCK

kind of Frenchmen live to-day. Not until they fought
again would the world believe this. It seems that the
excitable Gaul, whom some people thought would
become demoralized in face of German organization,
merely talks with his hands. In a great crisis he is cool,
as he always was. I like the French for their democracy
and humanity. I like them, too, for leaving their war
to France and Marianne ; for not dragging in God as
do the Germans. For it is just possible that God is not
in the fight. We don't know that He even approved of
the war.

V

AND CALAIS WAITS

To the traveller, Calais had been the symbol of the
shortest route from London to Paris, the shortest spell
of torment in crossing the British Channel. It was a
point where one felt infinite relief or sad physical antici-
pations. In the last days of November Calais became
the symbol of a struggle for world-power. The British
and the French were fighting to hold Calais ; the Ger-
mans to get it. In Calais, Germany would have her foot
on the Atlantic coast. She could look across only
twenty-two miles of water to the chalk cliffs of Dover.
She would be as near her rival as twice the length of
Manhattan Island ; within the range of a modern gun ;
within an hour by steamer and twenty minutes by
aeroplane.

The long battle-front from Switzerland to the North
Sea had been established. There was no getting around
the Allied flank ; there had ceased to be a flank. To
win Calais, Germany must crush through by main force,
without any manoeuvre. From the cafes where the
British journalists gathered England received its news,
which they gleaned from refugees and stragglers and
passing officers. They wrote something every day, for
England must have something about that dizzy, head-
on wrestle in the mud, that writhing line of changing
positions of new trenches rising behind the old des-
troyed by German artillery. The British were fighting
with their last reserves on the Ypres-Armentieres line.
The French divisions to the north were suffering no less
heavily, and beyond them the Belgians were trying to
hold the last strip of their land which remained under

47

48 AND CALAIS WAITS

Belgian sovereignty. Cordons of guards which kept
back the observer from the struggle could not keep back
the truth. Something ominous was in the air.

It was worth while being in that old town as it waited
on the issue in the late October rains. Its fishermen
crept out in the mornings from the shelter of its quays,
where refugees gathered in crowds hoping to get away
by steamer. Like lost souls, carrying all the possessions
they could on their backs, these refugees. There was
numbness in their movements and their faces were
blank — the paralysis of brain from sudden disaster.
The children did not cry, but mechanically munched
the dry bread given them by their parents.

The newspaper men said that " refugee stuff " was
already stale ; eviction and misery were stale. Was
Calais to be saved ? That was the only question. If
the Germans came, one thought that madame at the
hotel would still be at her desk, unruffled, businesslike,
and she would still serve an excellent salad for dejeuner ;
the fishermen would still go to sea for their daily catch.

What was going to happen? What might not happen?
It was human helplessness to the last degree for all
behind the wrestlers. Fate was in the battle-line. There
could be no resisting that fate. If the Germans came,
they came. Belgian staff officers with their high-
crowned, gilt-braided caps went flying by in their cars.
There always seemed a great many Belgian staff officers
back of the Belgian army in the restaurants and cafes.
Habit is strong, even in war. They did not often miss
their dejeuners. On the Dixmude line all that remained
of the active Belgian army was in a death struggle in
the rain and mud. To these "schipperkes' ' honour without
stint, as to their gallant king.

Slightly-wounded Belgians and Belgian stragglers
roamed the streets of Calais. Some had a few belong-
ings wrapped up in handkerchiefs. Others had only the
clothes they wore. Yet they were cheerful ; this was

WOUNDED POUR IN 49

the amazing thing. They moved about, laughing and
chatting in groups. Perhaps this was the best way.
Possibly relief at being out of the hell at the front was
the only emotion they could feel. But their cheerful-
ness was none the less a dash of sunlight for Calais.

The French were grim. They were still polite ; they
went on with their work. No unwounded French
soldiers were to be seen, except the old Territorials
guarding the railroad and the highways. The military
organization of France, which knew what war meant and
had expected war, had drawn every man to his place
and held him there with the inexorable hand of military
and racial discipline. Calais had never considered
caring for wounded, and the wounded poured in. I saw
a motor-car with a wounded man stop at a crowded
corner, in the midst of refugees and soldiers ; a doctor
was leaning over him, and he died whilst the car
waited.

But the journalists were saying that stories of wounded
men were likewise stale. So they were, for Europe was
red with wounded. Train after train brought in its load
from the front, and Calais tried to care for them. At
least, it had buildings which would give shelter from
the rain. On the floor of a railway freight shed the
wounded lay in long rows, with just enough space be-
tween them to make an alley. Those in the row against
one of the walls were German prisoners. Their green
uniforms melted into the stone of the wall and did not
show the mud stains. Two slightly wounded had their
heads together whispering. They were helplessly tired,
though not as tired as most of the others, those two
stalwart young men ; but they seemed to be relieved,
almost happy. It did not matter what happened to
them, now, so long as they could rest.

Next to them a German was dying, and others badly
hit were glassy-eyed in their fatigue and exhaustion.
This was the word, exhaustion, for all the wounded.

50 AND CALAIS WAITS

They had not the strength for passion or emotion. The
fuel for those fires was in ashes. All they wanted in this
world was to lie quiet ; and some fell asleep not know-
ing or caring probably whether they were in Germany
or in France. In the other rows, in contrast with this
chameleon, baffling green, were the red trousers of the
French and the dark blue of the Belgian uniforms,
sharing the democracy of exhaustion with their foe.

A misty rain was falling. In a bright spot of light
through a window one by one the wounded were being
lifted up on to a seat, if they were not too badly hit, and
on to an operating-table if their condition were serious.
A doctor and a sturdy Frenchwoman of about thirty,
in spotless white, were in charge. Another woman undid
the first-aid bandage and still another applied a spray.
No time was lost ; there were too many wounded to
care for. The thing must be done as rapidly as possible
before another train-load came in. If these attendants
were tired, they did not know it any more than the
wounded had realized their fatigue in the passion of
battle. The improvized arrangement to meet an
emergency had an appeal which more elaborate arrange-
ments of organization which I had seen lacked. It
made war a little more red ; humanity a little more
human and kind and helpless under the scourge which
it had brought on itself.

Though Calais was not prepared for wounded, when
they came the women of energy and courage turned to
the work without jealousy, without regard to red tape,
without fastidiousness. I have in mind half a dozen
other women about the streets that day in uniforms of
short skirts and helmets, who belonged to a volunteer
organization which had taken some care as to its regi-
mentals. They were types not characteristic of the
whole, of whom one practical English doctor said :
" We don't mind as long as they do not get in the way."
Their criticisms of Calais and the arrangements were

HELPFUL FRENCHWOMEN 51

outspoken ; nothing was adequate ; conditions were
filthy ; it was shameful. They were going to write to
the English newspapers about it and appeal for money.
When they had organized a proper hospital, one should
see how the thing ought to be done. Meantime, these
volunteer Frenchwomen were doing the best they knew
how and doing it now.

A fine-looking young Frenchman who had a shell-
wound in the thigh was being lifted on to the table.
He shuddered with pain, as he clenched his teeth ; yet
when the dressing was finished he was able to breathe
his thanks. On the seat was a Congo negro who had
been with one of the Belgian regiments, coal black and
thick-lipped, with bloodshot eyes ; an unsensitized
human organism, his face as expressionless as his bare
back with holes made by shell-fragments. A young
Frenchwoman — she could not have been more than
nineteen — with a face of singular refinement, sprayed his
wounds with the definiteness of one trained to such work,
though two days before it had probably never occurred
to her as being within the possibilities of her existence.
Her coolness and the coolness of the other women in
their silent activity had a charm that added to one's
devout respect.

The French wounded, too, were silent, as if in the
presence of a crisis which overwhelmed personal
thoughts. Help was needed at the front ; they knew it.
On sixty trains in one day sixty thousand French
passed through Calais. With a pass from the French
commandant at Calais, I got on board one of these
trains down at the railroad yards at dawn. This lot were
Turcos, under the command of a white-haired veteran of
African campaigns. An utter change of atmosphere from
the freight shed! Perhaps it is only the wounded who
have time to think. My companions in the officers' car
were as cheery as the brown devils whom they led. They
had come from the trenches on the Marne, and their

52 AND CALAIS WAITS

commissariat was a boiled ham, some bread and red
wine. Enough ! It was war time, as they said.

" We were in the Paris railroad yards. That is all we
saw of Paris — and in the night. Hard luck ! "

They had left the Marne the previous day. By night
they could be in the fight. It did not take long to send
reinforcements when the line was closed to all except
military traffic and one train followed close on the heels
of another.

They did not know where they were going ; one
never knew. Probably they would get orders at Dun-
kirk. Father Joffre, when there was a call for rein-
forcements, never was in a panicky hurry. He seemed
to understand that the general who made the call could
hold out a little longer ; but thereinforcements were
always up on time. A long head had Father Joffre.

Now I am going to say that life was going on as usual
at Dunkirk ; that is the obvious thing to say. The
nearer the enemy, the more characteristic that trite
observation of those who have followed the roads of
war in Europe. At Dunkirk you might have a good
meal within sound of the thunder of the guns of the
British monitors which were helping the Belgians to
hold their line. At Dunkirk most excellent patisserie
was for sale in a confectionery shop. Why shouldn't
tartmakers go on making tarts and selling them ? The
British naval reserve officers used to take tea in this
shop. Little crowds of citizens who had nothing to do,
which is the most miserable of vocations in such a crisis,
gathered to look at armoured motor-cars which had
come in from the front with bullet dents, which gave
them the atmosphere of battle.

Beyond Dunkirk, one might see wounded Belgians,
fresh from the field of battle, staggering in, crawling in,
hobbling in from the havoc of shell-fire, their first-aid
bandages saturated with mud, their ungainly and im-
practicable uniforms oozing mud, ghosts of men — these

"C'EST UN ANGLAIS!" 53

" schipperkes" of the nation that was unprepared for war
who had done their part, when the only military thought
was for more men, unwounded men, British, French,
Belgian, to stem the German tide. Yet many of these
Belgians, even these, were cheerful. They could still
smile and say, " Bonne chance ! "

Indeed, there seemed no limit to the cheerfulness of
Belgians. At a hospital in Calais I met a Belgian pro-
fessor with his head a white ball of bandages, showing
a hole for one eye and a slit for the mouth. He had
been one of the cyclist force which took account of many
German cavalry scouts in the first two weeks of the
war. A staff motor-car had run over him on the road.
' I think the driver of the car was careless," he said
mildly, as if he were giving a gentle reproof to a student.

By contrast, he had reason to be thankful for his lot.
Looked after by a brave man attendant in another
room were the wounded who were too horrible to see ;
who must die. Then, in another, you had a picture of
a smiling British regular, with a British nurse and an
Englishwoman of Calais to look after him. They read
to him, they talked to him, they vied with each other in
rearranging his pillows or bedclothes. He was a hero
of a story ; but it rather puzzled him why he should be.
Why were a lot of people paying so much attention to
him for doing his duty ?

In the cavalry, he had been separated from his regi-
ment on the retreat from Mons. Wandering about the
country, he came up with a regiment of cuirassiers and
asked if he might not fight with them. A number of the
cuirassiers spoke English. They took him into the
ranks. The regiment went far over on the Marne,
through towns with French names which he could not
pronounce, this man in khaki with the French troopers.
He was marked. C'est un Anglais! People cheered
him and threw flowers to him in regions which had never
seen one of the soldiers of the Ally before.

54 AND CALAIS WAITS

Yes, officers and gentlemen invited him to dine, like
he was a gentleman, he said, and not a Tommy, and the
French Government had given him a decoration called
the Legion of Honour or something like that. This was
all very fine ; but the best thing was that his own
colonel, when he returned, had him up before his com-
pany and made a speech to him for fighting with the
French when he could not find his own regiment. He
was supremely happy, this Tommy. In waiting Calais
one might witness about all the emotions and contrasts
of war — and many which one does not find at the front.

VI

IN GERMANY

Never had the war seemed a more monstrous satire
than on that first day in Germany as the train took me
to Berlin. It was the other side of the wall of gun and
rifle-fire where another set of human beings were giving
life in order to take life. The Lord had fashioned them
in the same pattern on both sides of the wall. Their
children were born in the same way ; they bled from
wounds in the same way — but why go on in this vicious
circle of thought ?

My impressions of Germany were brief, and the clearer
perhaps for being brief, and drawn on the fresh back-
ground of Paris and Calais waiting to know their fate ;
of England staring across the Channel, in a suspense
which her stoicism would not confess, to learn the
result of the battle for the Channel ports ; of England
and France straining with all their strength to hold,
while the Germans exerted all theirs to gain, a goal ; of
Holland, stolid mistress of her neutrality, fearing for it
and profiting by it while she took in the Belgian found-
lings dropped on her steps — Holland, that little land at
peace, with the storms lashing around her.

The stiff and soldierly-appearing reserve officer with
bristling Kaiserian moustache, so professedly alert and
efficient, who looked at the mottled back of my pass-
port and frowned at the recent visa, " A la Place de
Calais, bon pour alley a Dunkerque, P.O. Le Chefd'Etat-
Major," but let me by without questions or fuss, aroused
visions of a frontier stone wall studded with bayonets.

For something about him expressed a certain char-
acter of downright militancy lacking in either an

55
E

56 IN GERMANY

English or a French guard. I could imagine his con-
tempt for both and particularly for a " sloppy, undis-
ciplined " American guard, as he would have called one
of ours. Personal feelings did not enter into his
thoughts. He had none ; only national feelings, this
outpost of the national organism. The mood of the
moment was friendliness to Americans. Germany
wished to create the impression on the outside world
through the agency of the neutral press that she was in
danger of starving, whilst she amassed munitions for her
summer campaign and the Allies were lulled into confi-
dence of siege by famine rather than by arms. A
double, a treble purpose the starving campaign served ;
for it also ensured economy of foodstuffs, whilst nothing
so puts the steel into a soldier's heart as the thought that
the enemy is trying to beat him through taking the
bread out of his mouth and the mouths of the women
and children dependent upon him.

Tears and laughter and moods and passions organ-
ized! Seventy millions in the union of determined
earnestness of a life-and-death issue! Germany had
studied more than how to make war with an army.
She had studied how the people at home should help
an army to make war.

" With our immense army, which consists of all the
able-bodied youth of the people," as a German officer
said, " when we go to war the people must be passionate
for war. Their impulse must be the impulse of the army.
Their spirit will drive the army on. They must be
drilled, too, in their part. No item in national organiza-
tion is too small to have its effect."

Compared to the French, who had turned grim and
gave their prayers as individuals to hearten their
soldiers, the Germans were as responsive as a stringed
instrument to the master musician's touch. A whisper
in Berlin was enough to set a new wave of passion in
motion, which spread to the trenches east and west.

AN ORGANIZED NATION 57

Something like the team-work of the " rah-rah " of
college athletics was applied to the nation. The soft
pedal on this emotion, the loud on that, or a new cry
inaugurated which all took up, not with the noisy, paid
insincerity of a claque, but with the vibrant force of a
trained orchestra with the brasses predominant.

There seemed less of the spontaneity of an individu-
alistic people than of the exaltation of a religious revival.
If the army were a machine of material force, then the
people were a machine of psychical force. Though the
thing might leave the observer cold, as a religious
revival leaves the sceptic, yet he must admire. I was
told that I should succumb to the contagion as others
had ; but it was not the optimism which was dinned
into my ears that affected me as much as sidelights.

When I took a walk away from a railway station
where I had to make a train connection, I saw a German
reservist of forty-five who was helping with one hand
to thresh the wheat from his farm, on a grey, lowering
winter day. The other hand was in a bandage. He had
been allowed to go home until he was well enough to
fight again. The same sort of scene I had witnessed in
France ; the wounded man trying to make up to his
family the loss of his labour during his absence at the
front.

Only, that man in France was on the defensive ; he
was fighting to hold what he had and on his own soil.
The German had been fighting on the enemy's soil to
gain more land. He, too, thought of it as the defensive.
All Germany insisted that it was on the defensive. But
it was the defensive of a people who think only in the
offensive. That was it — that was the vital impression
of Germany revealed in every conversation and every
act.

The Englishman leans back on his oars ; the German
leans forward. The Englishman's phrase is "Stick it,"
which means to hold what you have ; the German's

58 IN GERMANY

phrase is "Onward." It was national youth against
national middle-age. A vessel with pressure of increase
from within was about to expand or burst. A vessel
which is large and comfortable for its contents was
resisting pressure from without. The French were
saying, What if we should lose ? And the Germans
were saying, What if we should not win all that we are
entitled to ? Germany had been thinking of a mightier
to-morrow and England of a to-morrow as good as
to-day. Germany looked forward to a fortune to be
won at thirty ; England considered the safeguarding
of her fortune at fifty.

It is not professions that count so much as the thing
that works out from the nature of a situation and the
contemporaneous bent of a people. The Englishman
thought of his defence as keeping what he already had ;
the German was defending what he considered that he
was entitled to. If he could make more of Calais than
the French, then Calais ought to be his. A nation, with
the " closed in " culture of the French on one side and
the enormous, unwieldy mass of Russia on the other,
convinced of its superiority and its ability to beat either
foe, thought that it was the friend of peace because it
had withheld the blow. When the striking time came, it
struck hard and forced the battle on enemy soil, which
proved, to its logic, that it was only receiving payment
of a debt owed it by destiny.

Bred to win, confident that the German system was
the right system of life, it could imagine the German
Michael as the missionary of the system, converting the
Philistine with machine-guns. Confidence, the confi-
dence which must get new vessels for the energy that
has overflowed, the confidence of all classes in the reali-
zation of the long-promised day of the " place in the
sun " for the immense population drilled in the system,
was the keynote. They knew that they could lick the
other fellow and went at him from the start as if they

"PERFECTLY NORMAL" 59

expected to lick him, with a diligence which made the
most of their training and preparation.

When I asked for a room with a bath in a leading
Berlin hotel, the clerk at the desk said, " I will see, sir."
He ran his eye up and down the list methodically before
he added : " Yes, we have a good room on the second
floor." Afterwards, I learned that all except the first
and second floors of the hotel were closed. The small
dining-room only was open, and every effort was made
to make the small dining-room appear normal.

He was an efficient clerk ; the buttons who opened
the room door, a goose-stepping, alert sprout of German
militarism, exhibiting a punctiliousness of attention
which produced a further effect of normality. Those
Germans who were not doing their part at the front
were doing it at home by bluffing the other Germans
and themselves into confidence. The clerk believed
that some day he would have more guests than ever and
a bigger hotel. All who suffered from the war could
afford to wait. Germany was winning ; the programme
was being carried out. The Kaiser said so. In proof of
it, multitudes of Russian soldiers were tilling the soil
in place of Germans, who were at the front taking more
Russian soldiers.

Everybody that one met kept telling him that every-
thing was perfectly normal. No intending purchaser of
real estate in a boom town was ever treated to more
optimistic propaganda. Perfectly normal — when one
found only three customers in a large department
store! Perfectly normal — when the big steamship
offices presented in their windows bare blue seas which
had once been charted with the going and coming of
German ships! Perfectly normal — when the spool of
the killed and wounded rolled out by yards like that of
a ticker on a busy day on the Stock Exchange! Per-
fectly normal — when women tried to smile in the streets
with eyes which had plainly been weeping at home!

60 IN GERMANY

Are you for us or against us ? The question was put
straight to the stranger. Let him say that he was a
neutral and they took it for granted that he was a pro-
Ally. He must be pro-something.

As I returned to the railway station after my walk, a
soldier took me in charge and marched me to the office
of the military commandant. " Are you an English-
man ? " was his first question. The guttural, military
emphasis which he put on " Englishman " was most
significant. Which brings us to another factor in the
psychology of war : hate.

" If men are to fight well," said a German officer,
" it is necessary that they hate. They must be exalted
by a great passion when they charge into machine-
guns."

Hate was officially distilled and then instilled — hate
against England, almost exclusively. The public rose
to that. If England had not come in, the German
military plan would have succeeded : first, the crushing
of France ; then, the crushing of Russia. The despised
Belgian, that small boy who had tripped the giant and
then hugged the giant's knees, delaying him on the road
to Paris, was having a rest. For he had been hated very
hard for a while with the hate of contempt — that miser-
able pigmy who had interfered with the plans of the
machine.

The French were almost popular. The Kaiser had
spoken of them as " brave foes." What quarrel could
France and Germany have ? France had been the dupe
of England. Cartoons of the hairy, barbarous Russian
and the futile little Frenchman in his long coat, borne
on German bayonets or pecking at the boots of a giant
Michael, were not in fashion. For Germany was then
trying to arrange a separate peace with both France and
Russia. She was ready to yield at least part of Alsace-
Lorraine to France. When the negotiations fell through,
cartoonists were again free to make sport of the aenemic

THE GOSPEL OF HATE 61

Gaul and the untutored Slav. It was not alone in
Germany that a responsive Press played the weather
vane to Government wishes ; but in Germany the
machinery ran smoothest.

For the first time I knew what it was to have a human
being whom I had never seen before hate me. At sight
of me a woman who had been a good Samaritan, with
human kindness and charity in her eyes, turned a malig-
nant devil. Stalwart as Minerva she was, a fair-haired
German type of about thirty-five, square-shouldered
and robustly attractive in her Red Cross uniform.
Being hungry at the station at Hanover, rushed out
of the train to get something to eat, and saw some
Frankfurter sandwiches on a table in front of me as I
alighted.

My hand went out for one, when I was conscious of
a movement and an exclamation which was hostile, and
looked up to see Minerva, as her hand shot out to arrest
the movement of mine, with a blaze of hate, hard,
merciless hate, in her eyes, while her lips framed the
word, " Englisher! " If looks were daggers I should
have been pierced through the heart. Perhaps an
English overcoat accounted for her error. Certainly,
I promptly recognized mine when I saw that this was a
Red Cross buffet. An Englishman had dared to try to
buy a sandwich meant for German soldiers ! She might
at least glory in the fact that her majestic glare had
made me most uncomfortable as I murmured an apology
which she received with a stony frown.

A moment later a soldier approached the buffet. She
leaned over, smiling, as gentle as she had been fierce and
malignant a moment before, making a picture, as she
put some mustard on a sandwich for him, which re-
called that of the Frenchwoman among the wounded in
the freight shed at Calais — a simile which would anger
them both.

The Frenchwoman, too, had a Red Cross uniform ;

62 IN GERMANY

she, too, expressed the mercy and gentle ministration
which we like to associate with woman. But there was
the difference of the old culture and the new ; of the
race which was fighting to have and the race which was
fighting to hold. The tactics which we call the offensive
was in the German woman's, as in every German's,
nature. It had been in the Frenchwoman's in Napo-
leon's time. Many racial hates the war has developed ;
but that of the German is a seventeen-inch-howitzer,
asphyxiating-gas hate.

If hates help to win, why not hate as hard as you can ?
Don't you go to war to win ? There is no use talking of
sporting rules and saying that this and that is " not
done " in humane circles — win! The Germans meant
to win. Always I thought of them as having the spirit
of the Middle Ages in their hearts, organized for victory
by every modern method. Three strata of civilization
were really fighting, perhaps : The French, with its
inherent individual patriotism which makes a French-
man always a Frenchman, its philosophy which pre-
vents increase of numbers, its thrift and its tenacity ;
the German, with its newborn patriotism, its discovery
of what it thinks is the golden system, its fecundity, its
aggressiveness, its industry, its ambition ; and the
Russian, patient and unbeatable, vague, glamorous,
immense.

The American is an outsider to them all ; some
strange melting-pot product of many races which is
trying to forget the prejudices and hates of the old
world and perhaps not succeeding very well, but not
yet convinced that the best means of producing patriotic
unity is war. After this and other experiences, after
being given a compartment all to myself by men who
glanced at me with eyes of hate and passed on to
another compartment which was already crowded or
stood up in the aisle of the car, I made a point of buying
an American flag for my buttonhole.

ARE YOU FOR OR AGAINST US? 63

This helped ; but still there was my name, which
belonged to an ancestor who had gone from England to
Connecticut nearly three hundred years ago. Palmer
did not belong to the Germanic tribe. He must be pro
the other side. He could not be a neutral and belong to
the human kind with such a name. Only Swenson, or
Gansevoort, or Ah Fong could really be a neutral ; and
even they were expected to be on your side secretly.
If they weren't they must be on the other. Are you for
us ? or, Are you against us ? I grew weary of the ques-
tion in Germany. If I had been for them I should have
" dug in " and not told them. In France and England
they asked you objectively the state of sentiment in
America. But, possibly, the direct, forcible way is the
better for war purposes when you mean to win ; for the
Germans have made a study of war. They are experts
in war.

However, the rosy-cheeked German boy, in his green
uniform which could not be washed clean of all the
stains of campaigning, whom I met in the palace
grounds at Charlottenberg, did not put this tiresome
question to me. He was the only person I saw in the
grounds, whose quiet I had sought for an hour's respite
from war. One could be shown through the palace by
the lonely old caretaker, who missed the American
tourist, without hearing a guide's monotone explaining
who the gentleman in the frame was and what he did
and who painted his picture. This boy could have more
influence in making me see the German view-point than
the propagandist men in the Government offices and
the belligerent German-Americans in hotel lobbies —
those German- Americans who were so frequently in
trouble in other days for disobeying the verbotens and
then asking our State Department to get them out of it,
now pluming themselves over victories won by another
type of German.

About twenty-one years old this boy, round-faced and

64 IN GERMANY

blue-eyed, who saw in Queen Louisa the most beautiful
heroine of all history. The hole in his blouse which the
bullet had made was nicely sewed up and his wound had
healed. He was fighting in France when he was hit ;
the name of the place he did not know. Karl, his chum,
had been killed. The doctor had given him the bullet,
which he exhibited proudly as if it were different from
other bullets, as it was to him. In a few days he must
return to the front. Perhaps the war would be over
soon ; he hoped so.

The French were brave ; but they hated the Germans
and thought that they must make war on the Germans,
and they were a cruel people, guilty of many atrocities.
So the Fatherland had fought to conquer the enemies
who planned her destruction. A peculiar, childlike
naivete accompanied his intelligence, trained to run in
certain grooves, which is the product of the German
type of popular education ; that trust in his superiors
which comes from a diligent and efficient paternalism.
He knew nothing of the atrocities which Germans were
said to have committed in Belgium. The British and
the French had set Belgium against Germany and
Germany had to strike Belgium for playing false to her
treaties. But he did think that the French were brave ;
only misled by their Government. And the Kaiser ?
His eyes lighted in a way that suggested that the Kaiser
was almost a god to him. He had heard of the things
that the British said against the Kaiser and they made
him want to fight for his Kaiser. He was only one
German — but the one was millions.

In actual learning which comes from schoolbooks, I
think that he was better informed than the average
Frenchman of his class ; but I should say that he
had thought less ; that his mind was more of a hot-
house product of a skilful nurseryman's hand, who
knew the value of training and feeding and pruning
the plant if you were to make it yield well. A

BRANDED BY A SUBMARINE 65

kindly, willing, likable boy, peculiarly simple and
unspoiled, it seemed a pity that all his life he
should have to bear the brand of the Lusitania on his
brow ; that event which history cannot yet put in its
true perspective. Other races will think of the Lusitania
when they meet a German long after the Belgian
atrocities are forgotten. It will endure to plague a
people like the exile of the Acadians, the guillotining of
innocents in the French Revolution, and the burning
of the Salem witches. But he had nothing to do with it.
A German admiral gave an order as a matter of policy
to make an impression that his submarine campaign
was succeeding and to interfere with the transport of
munitions, and the Kaiser told this boy that it was
right. One liked the boy, his loyalty and his courage ;
liked him as a human being. But one wished that he
might think more. Perhaps he will one of these days,
if he survives the war.

VII

HOW THE KAISER LEADS

Only a week before I had seen wounded Germans in
the freight shed at Calais ; and all the prisoners that I
had seen elsewhere, whether in ones or twos, brought
in fresh from the front or in columns under escort, had
been Germans. The sharpest contrast of all in war
which the neutral may observe is seeing the men of one
army which, from the other side, he had watched march
into battle — armed, confident, disciplined parts of an
organization, ready to sweep all before them in a
charge — become so many sheep, disarmed, disorganized,
rounded up like vagrants in a bread-line and surrounded
by a fold of barbed wire and sentries.

Such was the lot of the nine thousand British, French,
and Russians whom I saw at Doberitz, near Berlin.
This was a show camp, I was told, but it suffices.
Conditions at other camps might be worse ; doubtless
were. England treated its prisoners best, unless my
information from unprejudiced observers be wrong.
But Germany had enormous numbers of prisoners. A
nation in her frame of mind thought only of the care of
the men who could fight for her, not of those who had
fought against her.

Then, the German nature is one thing and the British
another. Crossing the Atlantic on the Lusitania we had
a German reserve officer who was already on board
when the evening editions arrived at the pier with news
that England had declared war on Germany. Naturally
he must become a prisoner upon his arrival at Liver-
pool. He was a steadfast German. When a wireless
report of the German repulse at Liege came, he would
not believe it. Germany had the system and Germany

66

A GERMAN PRISON CAMP 67

would win. But when he said, " I should rather be a
German on board a British ship than a Briton on board
a German ship, under the circumstances," his remark
was significant in more ways than one.

His English fellow-passengers on that splendid liner
which a German submarine was to send to the bottom
showed him no discourtesy. They passed the time of
day with him and seemed to want to make his awkward
situation easy. Yet it was apparent that he regarded
their kindliness as racial weakness. Krieg ist Krieg.
When Germany made war she made war.

So allowances are in order. One prison camp was like
another in this sense, that it deprived a man of his
liberty. It put him in jail. The British regular, who is
a soldier by profession, was, in a way, in a separate
class. But the others were men of civil industries and
settled homes. Except during their term in the army,
they went to the shop or the office every day, or tilled
their farms. They were free ; they had their work to
occupy their minds during the day and freedom of
movement when they came home in the evening. They
might read the news by their firesides ; they were
normal human beings in civilized surroundings.

Here, they were pacing animals in a cage, com-
manded by two field-guns, who might walk up and down
and play games and go through the daily drill under
their own non-commissioned officers. It was the mental
stagnation of the thing that was appalling. Think of
such a lot for a man used to action in civil life — and
they call war action ! Think of a writer, a business man,
a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, reduced to this fenced-in
existence, when he had been the kind who got impatient
if he had to wait for a train that was late ! Shut your-
self up in your own backyard with a man with a rifle
watching you for twenty-four hours and see whether,
if you have the brain of a mouse, prison-camp life can
be made comfortable, no matter how many greasy

68 HOW THE KAISER LEADS

packs of cards you have. And lousy, besides! At
times one had to laugh over what Mark Twain called
" the damfool human race."

Inside a cookhouse at one end of the enclosure was a
row of soup-boilers. Outside was a series of railings,
forming stalls for the prisoners when they lined up for
meals. In the morning, some oatmeal and coffee ; at
noon, some cabbage soup boiled with desiccated meat and
some bread ; at night, more coffee and bread. How one
thrived on this fare depended much upon how he liked
cabbage soup. The Russians liked it. They were used to it.

" We never keep the waiter late by tarrying over our
liqueurs," said a Frenchman.

Our reservist guide had run away to America in
youth, where he had worked at anything he could find
to do ; but he had returned to Berlin, where he had a
" good little business " before the war. He was stout
and cheery, and he referred to the prisoners as " boys."
The French and Russians were good boys ; but the
English were bad boys, who had no discipline. He said
that all received the same food as German soldiers. It
seemed almost ridiculous chivalry that men who had
fought against you and were living inactive lives should
be as well fed as the men who were fighting for you.
The rations that I saw given to German soldiers were
better. But that was what the guide said.

" This is our little sitting-room for the English non-
commissioned officers," he explained, as he opened the
door of a shanty which had a pane of glass for a
window. Some men sitting around a small stove arose.
One, a big sergeant-major, towered over the others ;
he had the colours of the South African campaign on
the breast of his worn khaki blouse and stood very
straight as if on parade. By the window was a Scot in
kilts, who was equally tall. He looked around over his
shoulder and then turned his face away with the pride
of a man who does not care to be regarded as a show.

BRITISH PRISONERS 69

His uniform was as neat as if he were at inspection ; and
the way he held his head, the haughtiness of his profile
against the stream of light, recalled the unconquerable
spirit of the Prussian prisoner whom I had seen on the
road during the fighting along the Aisne. Only a
regular, but he was upholding the dignity of Britain in
that prison camp better than many a member of Parlia-
ment on the floor of the House of Commons. I asked
our guide about him.

" A good boy that! All his boys obey him and he
obeys all the regulations. But he acts as if we Germans
were his prisoners."

The British might not be good boys, but they would
be clean. They were diligent in the chase in their under-
clothes ; their tents were free from odour ; and there
was something resolute about a Tommy who was bare
to the waist in that freezing wind, making an effort at
a bath. I heard tales of Mr. Atkins' characteristic
thoughtlessness. While the French took good care of
their clothes and kept their tents neat, he was likely to
sell his coat or his blanket if he got a chance in order to
buy something that he liked to eat. One Tommy who
sat on his straw tick inside the tent was knitting. When
I asked him where he had learned to knit, he replied :
" India! " and gave me a look as much as to say," Now
pass on to the next cage."

The British looked the most pallid of all, I thought.
They were not used to cabbage soup. Their stomachs
did not take hold of it, as one said ; and they loathed
the black bread. No white bread and no jam! Only
when you have seen Mr. Atkins with a pot of jam and a
loaf of white bread and some bacon frizzling near by can
you realize the hardship which cabbage soup meant to
that British regular who gets lavish rations of the kind
he likes along with his shilling a day for professional
soldiering.

" You see, the boys go about as they please," said our

7o HOW THE KAISER LEADS

guide. " They don't have a bad time. Three meals a
day and nothing to do."

Members of a laughing circle which included some
British were taking turns at a kind of Russian blind
man's buff, which seemed to me about in keeping with
the mental capacity of a prison camp

" No French! " I remarked.

" The French keep to themselves, but they are good
boys," he replied. " Maybe it is because we have only
a few of them here."

Every time one sounded the subject he was struck by
the attitude of the Germans toward the French, not
alone explained by the policy of the hour which hoped
for a separate peace with France. Perhaps it was best
traceable to the Frenchman's sense of amour propre, his
philosophy, his politeness, or an indefinable quality in
the grain of the man.

The Germans affected to look down on the French ;
yet there was something about the Frenchmen which
the Germans had to respect — something not won by
war. I heard admiration for them at the same time as
contempt for their red trousers and their unprepared-
ness. While we are in this avenue, German officers had
respect for the dignity of British officers, the leisurely,
easy quality of superiority which they preserved in any
circumstances. The qualities of a race come out in
adversity no less than in prosperity. Thus, their captors
regarded the Russians as big, good-natured children.

" Yes, they play games and we give the English an
English newspaper to read twice a week," said our
affable guide, unconscious, I think, of any irony in the
remark. For the paper was the Continental News,
published in " the American language " for American
visitors. You make take it for granted that it did not
exaggerate any success of the Allies.

" We have a prince and the son of a rich man among
the Russian prisoners — yes, quite in the Four Hundred,"

SOME FAVOURITES 71

the guide went on. " They were such good boys we put
them to work in the cookhouse. Star boarders, eh ?
They like it. They get more to eat."

These two men were called out for exhibition.
Youngsters of the first line they were and even in their
privates' uniform they bore the unmistakable signs of
belonging to the Russian upper class. Each saluted and
made his bow, as if he had come on to do a turn before
the footlights. It was not the first time they had been
paraded before visitors. In the prince's eye I noted a
twinkle, which as much as said : " Well, why not ?
We don't mind."

When we were taken through the cookhouse I asked
about a little Frenchman who was sitting with his nose
in a soup bowl He seemed too near-sighted ever to get
into any army. His face was distinctly that of a man
of culture ; one would have guessed that he was an
artist.

' Shrapnel injury," explained the guide. " He will
never be able to see much again. We let him come in
here to eat."

I wanted to talk with him, but these exhibits are
supposed to be all in pantomime ; a question and you
are urged along to the next exhibit. He was young and
all his life he was to be like that — like some poor, blind
kitten !

The last among a number of Russians returning to
the enclosure from some fatigue duty was given a blow
in the seat of his baggy trousers with a stick which one
of the guards carried. The Russian quickened his steps
and seemed to think nothing of the incident. But to
me it was the worst thing that I saw at Doberitz, this
act of physical violence against a man by one who has
power over him. The personal equation was inevitable
to the observer. Struck in that way, could one fail to
strike back ? Would not he strike in red anger, without
stopping to think of consequences ? There is something

F

72 HOW THE KAISER LEADS

bred into the Anglo-Saxon which resents a physical
blow. We courtmartial an officer for laying hands on a
private, though that private may get ten years in prison
on his trial. Yet the Russian thought nothing of it, or
the guard, either. An officer in the German or the Rus-
sian army may strike a man.

" Would the guard hit a Frenchman in that way ? '
I asked. Our guide said not ; the French were good
boys. Or an Englishman ? He had not seen it done.
The Englishman would swear and curse, he was sure,
and might fight, they were such undisciplined boys.
But the Russians — " they are like kids. It was only a
slap. Didn't hurt him any."

New barracks for the prisoners were being built
which would be comfortable, if crowded, even in winter.
The worst thing, I repeat, was the deadly monotony of
the confinement for a period which would end only
when the war ended. Any labour should be welcome
to a healthy-minded man. It was a mercy that the
Germans set prisoners to grading roads, to hoeing and
harvesting, retrieving thus a little of the wastage of
war. Or was it only the bland insistence that con-
ditions were luxurious that one objected to ? — not that
they were really bad. The Germans had a horde of
prisoners to care for ; vast armies to maintain ; and a
new volunteer force of a million or more — two millions
was the official report — to train.

While we were at the prison camp we heard at inter-
vals the rap-rap of a machine-gun at the practice range
near by, drilling to take more prisoners, and on the way
back to Berlin we passed companies of volunteers re-
turning from drill with that sturdy march character-
istic of German infantry.

In Berlin I was told again that everything was per-
fectly normal. Trains were running as usual to Ham-
burg, if one cared to go there. " As usual " in war time
was the ratio of one to five in peace time.

BOMBARDING HAMBURG 73

At Hamburg, in sight of steamers with cold boilers
and the forests of masts of idle ships, one saw what sea
power meant. That city of eager shippers and traders,
that doorstep of Germany, was as dead as Ypres, with-
out a building being wrecked by shells. Hamburgers
tried to make the best of it ; they assumed an air of
optimism ; they still had faith that richer cargoes than
ever might come over the sea, while a ghost, that of
bankruptcy, walked the streets, looking at office-
windows and the portholes of ships.

For one had only to scratch the cuticle of that opti-
mism to find that the corpuscles did not run red. They
were blue. Hamburg's citizens had to exhibit the forti-
tude of those of Rheims under another kind of bombard-
ment : that of the silent guns of British Dreadnoughts
far out of range. They were good Germans ; they
meant to play the game ; but that once prosperous
business man of past middle age, too old to serve, who
had little to do but think, found it hard to keep step
with the propagandist attitude of Berlin.

A free city, a commercial city, a city unto itself,
Hamburg had been in other days a cosmopolitan trader
with the rest of the world. It had even been called an
English city, owing to the number of English business
men there as agents of the immense commerce between
England and Germany. Everyone who was a clerk or
an employer spoke English ; and through all the irrita-
tion between the two countries which led up to the war,
English and German business men kept on the good
terms which commerce requires and met at luncheons and
dinners and in their clubs. Englishmen were married
to German women and Germans to Englishwomen, while
both prayed that their governments would keep the peace.

Now the English husband of the German woman,
though he had spent most of his life in Hamburg,
though perhaps he had been born in Germany, had been
interned and, however large his bank account, was

74 HOW THE KAISER LEADS

taking his place with his pannikin in the stalls in front
of some cookhouse for his ration of cabbage soup.
Germans were kind to English friends personally ; but
when it came to the national feeling of Germany against
England, nowhere was it so bitter as in Hamburg. Here
the hate was born of more than national sentiment ; it
was of the pocket ; of seeing fortunes that had been
laboriously built dwindling, once thriving businesses in
suspended animation. There was no moratorium in
name ; there was worse than one in fact. A patriotic
freemasonry in misfortune took its place. No business
man could press another for the payment of debts lest
he be pressed in turn. What would happen when the
war was over ? How long would it last ?

It was not quite as cruel to give one's opinion as two
years to the inquirers in Hamburg as to the director of
the great Rudolph Virchow Hospital in Berlin. Here,
again, the system ; the submergence of the individual
in the organization. The wounded men seemed parts
of a machine ; the human touch which may lead to
disorganization was less in evidence than with us, where
the thought is : This is an individual human being,
with his own peculiarities of temperament, his own
theories of life, his own ego ; not just a quantity of
brain, tissue, blood and bone which is required for the
organism called man. A human mechanism wounded
at the German front needed repairs and repairs were
made to that mechanism. The niceties might be lacking
but the repair factory ran steadily and efficiently at full
blast. Germany had to care for her wounded by the
millions and by the millions she cared for them.

" Two years! "

I was sorry that I had said this to the director, for its
effect on him was like a blow in the chest. The vision
of more and more wounded seemed to rise before the
eyes of this man, weary with the strain of doing the
work which he knew so well how to do as a cog in the

OPERA IN BERLIN 75

system. But for only a moment. He stiffened ; he
became the drillmaster again ; and the tragic look in
his eyes was succeeded by one of that strange exaltation
I had seen in the eyes of so many Germans, which ap-
peared to carry their mind away from you and their
surroundings to the battlefield where they were righting
for their " place in the sun."

" Two years, then. We shall see it through! '

He had a son who had been living in a French family
near Lille studying French and he had heard nothing
of him since the war began. They were good people,
this French family ; his son liked them. They would
be kind to him ; but what might not the French Govern-
ment do to him, a German! He had heard terrible
stories — the kind of stories that hardened the fighting
spirit of German soldiers — about the treatment German
civilians had received in France. He could think of one
French family which he knew as being kind, but not
of the whole French people as a family. As soon as the
national and racial element were considered the enemy
became a beast.

To him, at least, Berlin was not normal ; nor was it
to that keeper of a small shop off Unter den Linden
which sold prints and etchings and cartoons. What a
boon my order of cartoons was! He forgot his psych-
ology code and turned human and confidential. The
war had been hard on him ; there was no business at
all, not even in cartoons.

The Opera alone seemed something like normal to
one who trusted his eyes rather than his ears for infor-
mation. There was almost a full house for the " Rosen-
kavalier " ; for music is a solace in time of trouble, as
other capitals than Berlin revealed. Officers with
close-cropped heads, wearing Iron Crosses, some with
arms in slings, promenaded in the refreshment room of
the Berlin Opera House between the acts. This in the
hour of victory should mean a picture of gaiety. But

76 HOW THE KAISER LEADS

there was a telling hush about the scene. Possibly
music had brought out the truth in men's hearts that
war, this kind of war, was not gay or romantic, only
murderous and destructive. One had noticed already
that the Prussian officer, so conscious of his caste, who
had worked so indefatigably to make an efficient army,
had become chastened. He had found that common
men, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers,
could be as brave for their Kaiser as he. And more of
these officers had the Iron Cross than not.

The prevalence of Iron Crosses appealed to the risibili-
ties of the superficial observer. But in this, too, there
was system. An officer who had been in several battles
without winning one must feel a trifle declassed and
that it was time for him to make amends to his pride.
If many Crosses were given to privates, then the average
soldier would not think the Cross a prize for the few who
had luck, but something that he, too, might win by
courage and prompt obedience to orders.

The masterful calculation, the splendid pretence and
magnificent offence could not hide the suspense and
suffering. Nowhere were you able to forget the war or
to escape the all-pervading influence of the Kaiser.
The empty royal box at the Opera, His Opera, called
him to mind. What would happen before he reappeared
there for a gala performance ? When again, in the
shuffle of European politics, would the audience see the
Tsar of Russia or the King of England by the Kaiser's
side?

It was his Berlin, the heart of his Berlin, that was
before you when you left the Opera — the new Berlin,
which he had fathered in its boom growth, taking few
pages of a guidebook compared to Paris. In front of
his palace Russian field-guns taken by von Hindenburg
at Tannenberg were exhibited as the spoils of his war ;
while not far away the never-to-be-forgotten grand-
father in bronze rode home in triumph from Paris.

THE KAISER AND HIS ANCESTORS 77

One wondered what all the people in the ocean of
Berlin flats were thinking as one walked past the statue
of Frederick the Great, with his sharp nose pointing the
way for future conquerors, and on along Unter den
Linden, with its broad pavements gleaming in a charac-
teristic misty winter night, through the Brandenburg
Gate of his Brandenburg dynasty, or to the statue of the
blood-and-iron Bismarck, with his strong jaw and pug-
nacious nose — the statesman militant in uniform with
a helmet over his bushy brow — who had made the Ger-
man Empire, that young empire which had not yet
known defeat because of the system which makes ready
and chooses the hour for its blow.

Not far away one had glimpses of the white statues
of My Ancestors of the Sieges Allee, or avenue of victory
— the present Kaiser's own idea — with the great men
of the time on their right and left hands. People
whose sense of taste, not to say of humour, may limit
their statecraft had smiled at this monotonous and
grandiose row of the dead bones of distinguished and
mediocre royalty immortalized in marble to the exact
number of thirty- two. But they were My Ancestors,
O Germans, who made you what you are! Right dress
and keep that line of royalty in mind ! It is your royal
line, older than the trees in the garden, firm as the rocks,
Germany itself. The last is not the least in might nor
the least advertised in the age of publicity. He is to
make the next step in advance for Germany and bring
more tribute home, if all Germans will be loyal to him

One paused to look at the photograph of the Kaiser
in a shop window ; a big photograph of that man whose
photograph is everywhere in Germany. It is a stern
face, this face, as the leader wishes his people to see him,
with its erectile moustache, the lips firm set, the eyes
challenging and the chin held so as to make it symbolic
of strength : a face that strives to say in that pose :
" Onward! I lead! " Germans have seen it every day

78 HOW THE KAISER LEADS

for a quarter of a century. They have lived with it
and the character of it has grown into their natures.

In the same window was a smaller photograph of the
Crown Prince, with his cap rakishly on the side of his
head, as if to give himself a distinctive characteristic in
the German eye ; but his is the face of a man who is not
mature for his years, and a trifle dissipated. For a
while after the war began he, as leader of the war party,
knew the joy of being more popular than the Kaiser.
But the tide turned soon in favour of a father who
appeared to be drawn reluctantly into the ordeal of
death and wounds for his people in " defence of the
Fatherland " and against a son who had clamoured for
the horror which his people had begun to realize,
particularly as his promised entry into Paris had failed.
There can be no question which of the two has the wise
head.

The Crown Prince had passed into the background.
He was marooned with ennui in the face of French
trenches in the West, whilst all the glory was being
won in the East. Indeed, father had put son in his
place. One day, the gossips said, son might have to ask
father, in the name of the Hohenzollerns, to help him
recover his popularity. His photograph had been
taken down from shop windows and in its place, on the
right hand of the Kaiser in the Sieges Allee of con-
temporary fame, was the bull-dog face of von Hinden-
burg, victor of Tannenberg. The Kaiser shared von
Hindenburg's glory ; he has shared the glory of all
victorious generals ; such is his histrionic gift in the age
of the spotlight.

Make no mistake — his people, deluded or not, love
him not only because he is Kaiser, but also for himself.
He is a clever man, who began his career with the
enormous capital of being emperor and made the most
of his position to amaze the world with a more versatile
and also a more inscrutable personality than most

MACHINERY OF THE THRONE 79

people realize. Poseur, perhaps, but an emperor
these days may need to be a poseur in order to wear the
ermine of Divine Right convincingly to most of his
subjects.

His pose is always that of the anointed King of My
People. He has never given down on that point, how-
ever much he has applied State Socialism to appease
the Socialistic agitation. He has personified Germany
and German ambition with an adroit egoism and the
sentiment of his inheritance. Those critics who see the
machinery of the throne may say that he has the mind
of a journalist, quick of perception, ready of assimila-
tion, knowing many things in their essentials, but no
one thing thoroughly. But this is the kind of mind
that a ruler requires, plus the craft of the politician.

Is he a good man ? Is he a great man ? Banal
questions ! He is the Kaiser on the background of the
Sieges Allee, who has first promoted himself, then the
Hohenzollerns, and then the interests of Germany,
with all the zest of the foremost shareholder and
chairman of the corporation. No German in the
German hothouse of industry has worked harder than
he. He has kept himself up to the mark and tried to
keep his people up to the mark. It may be the wrong
kind of a mark. Indeed, without threshing the old straw
of argument, most of the people of the civilized world
are convinced that it is.

That young private I met in the grounds at Charlot-
tenberg, that wounded man helping with the harvest,
that tired hospital director, the small trader in Ham-
burg, the sturdy Red Cross woman in the station at
Hanover, the peasants and the workers throughout
Germany, kept unimaginatively at their tasks, do not
see the machinery of the throne, only the man in the
photograph who supplies them with a national imagi-
nation. His indefatigable goings and comings and his
poses fill their minds with a personality which typifies

80 HOW THE KAISER LEADS

the national spirit. Will this change after the war ?
But that, too, is not a subject for speculation here.

Through the war his pose has met the needs of the
hour. An emperor bowed down with the weight of his
people's sacrifice, a grey, determined emperor hasten-
ing to honour the victors, covering up defeats, urging
his legions on, himself at the front, never seen by the
general public in the rear ; a mysterious figure, not
saying much and that foolish to the Allies but appealing
to the Germans, rather appearing to submerge his own
personality in the united patriotism of the struggle —
such is the picture which the throne machinery has
impressed on the German mind. The histrionic gift
may be at its best in creating a saga.

Always the offensive! Germany would keep on
striking as long as she had strength for a blow, whilst
making the pretence that she had the strength for still
heavier blows. One wonders, should she gain peace by
her blows, if the Allies would awaken after the treaty
was signed to find how near exhaustion she had been,
or that she was so self-contained in her production of
war material that she had only borrowed from Hans
to pay Fritz, who were both Germans. Russia did not
know how nearly she had Japan beaten until after
Portsmouth. Japan's method was the German method ;
she learned it from Germany.

At the end of my journey I was hearing the same din
of systematic optimism in my ears as in the beginning.

" Warsaw, then Paris, then our Zeppelins will finish
London," said the restaurant keeper on the German
side of the Dutch frontier ; " and our submarines will
settle the British navy before the summer is over. No,
the war will not last a year."

" And is America next on the programme? " I asked.

" No. America is too strong ; too far away."

I was guilty of a faint suspicion that he was a diplo-
matist.

VIII

IN BELGIUM UNDER THE GERMANS

No week at the front, where war is made, left the mind
so full as this week beyond the sound of the guns with
war's results. It taught the meaning of the simple
words life and death, hunger and food, love and hate.
One was in a house with sealed doors where a family of
seven millions sat in silence and idleness, thinking of
nothing but war and feeling nothing but war. He had
war cold as the fragments of an exploded shell beside a
dead man on a frozen road ; war analysed and docketed
for exhibition, without its noise, its distraction, and its
hot passion.

In Ostend I had seen the Belgian refugees in flight,
and I had seen them pouring into London stations,
bedraggled outcasts of every class, with the staring
uncertainty of the helpless human flock flying from the
storm. England, who considered that they had
suffered for her sake, opened her purse and her heart
to them ; she opened her homes, both modest suburban
homes and big country houses which are particular
about their guests in time of peace. No British family
without a Belgian was doing its duty. Bishop's wife
and publican's wife took whatever Belgian was sent to
her. The refugee packet arrived without the nature
of contents on the address tag. All Belgians had
become heroic and noble by grace of the defenders of
Liege.

Perhaps the bishop's wife received a young woman
who smoked cigarettes, and asked her hostess for
rouge, and the publican's wife received a countess.
Mrs. Smith, of Clapham, who had brought up her
children in the strictest propriety, welcomed as play-

Si

82 IN BELGIUM UNDER THE GERMANS

mates for her dears, whom she had kept away from the
contaminating associations of the alleys, Belgian
children from the toughest quarters of Antwerp, who
had a precocity that led to baffling confusion in Mrs.
Smith's mind between parental responsibility and
patriotic duty. Smart society gave the run of its
houses sometimes to gentry who were used to getting
the run of that kind of houses by lifting a window with
a jemmy on a dark night. It was a refugee lottery.
When two hosts met one said : " My Belgian is charm-
ing ! " and the other said: " Mine isn't. Just listen "

But the English are game ; they are loyal ; they bear
their burden of hospitality bravely.

The strange things that happened were not the more
agreeable because of the attitude of some refugees who,
when they were getting better fare than they ever had
at home, thought that, as they had given their " all '
for England, they should be getting still better, not to
mention wine on the table in temperance families ;
whilst there was a disinclination towards self-support
by means of work on the part of certain heroes by
proxy which promised a Belgian occupation of England
that would last as long as the German occupation of
Belgium. England was learning that there are Bel-
gians and Belgians. She had received not a few of the
" and Belgians."

It was only natural. When the German cruisers
bombarded Scarborough and the Hartlepools, the first
to the station were not the finest and sturdiest. Those
with good bank accounts and a disinclination to take
any bodily or gastronomic risks, the young idler who
stands on the street corner ogling girls and the girls
who are always in the street to be ogled, the flighty-
minded, the irresponsible, the tramp, the selfish, and
the cowardly, are bound to be in the van of flight from
any sudden disaster and to make the most of the gener-
ous sympathy of those who succour them.

BELGIAN REFUGEES IN HOLLAND 83

The courageous, the responsible, those with homes
and property at stake, those with an inborn sense of
real patriotism which means loyalty to locality and to
their neighbours, are more inclined to remain with
their homes and their property. Besides, a refugee
hardly appears at his best. He is in a strange country,
forlorn, homesick, a hostage of fate and personal mis-
fortune. The Belgian nation had taken the Allies'
side and now individual Belgians expected help from
the Allies.

England did not get the worst of the refugees. They
could travel no farther than Holland, where the Dutch
Government appropriated money to care for them at
the same time that it was under the expense of keeping
its army mobilized. Looking at the refugees in the
camp at Bergen-op-Zoom, an observer might share
some of the contempt of the Germans for the Belgians.
Crowded in temporary huts in the chill, misty weather
of a Dutch winter, they seemed listless, marooned human
wreckage. They would not dig ditches to drain their
camp ; they were given to pilfering from one another
the clothes which the world's charity supplied. The
heart was out of them. They were numbed by dis-
aster.

' Are all these men and women who are living to-
gether married ? " I asked the Dutch officer in charge.

' It is not for us to inquire," he replied. ' Most of
them say that they have lost their marriage certifi-
cates."

They were from the slums of that polyglot seaport
town Antwerp, which Belgians say is anything but
real Belgium. To judge Belgium by them is like
judging an American town by the worst of its back
streets, where saloons and pawnshops are numerous
and red lights twinkle from dark doorways.

Around a table in a Rotterdam hotel one met some
generals who were organizing a different kind of cam-

84 IN BELGIUM UNDER THE GERMANS

paign from that which brought glory to the generals
who conquered Belgium. It was odd that Dr. Rose —
that Dr. Rose who had discovered and fought the hook
worm among the mountaineers of the Southern States —
should be succouring Belgium, and yet only natural.
Where else should he and Henry James, Jr., of the
Rockefeller Foundation, and Mr. Bicknell, of the
American Red Cross, be, if not here directing the use of
an endowment fund set aside for just such purposes ?

They had been all over Belgium and up into the
Northern Departments of France occupied by the
Germans, investigating conditions. For they were
practical men, trained for solving the problem of
charity with wisdom, who wanted to know that their
money was well spent. They had nothing for the
refugees in London, but they found that the people who
had stayed at home in Belgium were worthy of help.
The fund was allowing five hundred thousand dollars a
month for the American Commission for Relief in
Belgium, which was the amount that the Germans had
spent in a single day in the destruction of the town of
Ypres with shells. Later they were to go to Poland ;
then to Serbia.

With them was Herbert C. Hoover, a celebrated
mining engineer, the head of the Commission. When
American tourists were stranded over Europe at the
outset of the war, with letters of credit which could not
be cashed, their route homeward must lie through
London. They must have steamer passage. Hoover
took charge. When this work was done and Belgium
must be helped, he took charge of a task that could be
done only by a neutral. For the adjutants and field
officers of his force he turned to American business
men in London, to Rhodes scholars at Oxford, and to
other volunteers hastening from America.

When " Harvard, 1914/ ' who had lent a hand in the
American refugees' trials, appeared in Hoover's office

A LANDSTURM GUARD 85

to volunteer for the new campaign, Hoover said :
' You are going to Rotterdam to-night."
' So I am! " said Harvard, 1914, and started accord-
ingly. Action and not red tape must prevail in such
an organization.

The Belgians whom I wished to see were those behind
the line of guards on the Belgo-Dutch frontier; those
who had remained at home under the Germans to face
humiliation and hunger. This was possible if you had
the right sort of influence and your passport the right
sort of vises to accompany a Bescheinigung, according
to the form of " 31 Oktober, 1914, Sect. 616, Nr. 1083,"
signed by the German consul at Rotterdam, which put
me in the same motor-car with Harvard, 1914, that
stopped one blustery, snowy day of late December
before a gate, with Belgium on one side and Holland
on the other side of it, on the Rosendaal- Antwerp road.
' Once more! " said Harvard, 1914, who had made
this journey many times as a dispatch rider.

One of the conquerors, the sentry representing the
majesty of German authority in Belgium, examined the
pass. The conqueror was a good deal larger around the
middle than when he was young, but not so large as
when he went to war. He had a scarf tied over his ears
under a cracked old patent-leather helmet, which the
Saxon Landsturm must have taken from their garrets
when the Kaiser sent the old fellows to keep the Belgians
in order so that the young men could be spared to get
rheumatism in the trenches if they escaped death.

You could see that the conqueror missed his wife's
cooking and Sunday afternoon in the beer garden with
his family. However much he loved the Kaiser, it did
not make him love home any the less. His nod ad-
mitted us into German-ruled Belgium. He looked so
lonely that as our car started I sent him a smile.
Surprise broke on his face. Somebody not a German
in uniform had actually smiled at him in Belgium!

86 IN BELGIUM UNDER THE GERMANS

My last glimpse of him was of a grin spreading under
the scarf toward his ears.

Belgium was webbed with these old Landsturm
guards. If your Passierschein was not right, you might
survive the first set of sentries and even the second, but
the third, and if not the third some succeeding one of
the dozens on the way to Brussels, would hale you
before a Kommandatur . Then you were in trouble. In
travelling about Europe I became so used to passes that
when I returned to New York I could not have thought
of going to Hoboken without the German consul's visa
or of dining at a French restaurant without the French
consul's.

" And again! " said Harvard, 1914, as we came to
another sentry. There was good reason why Harvard
had his pass in a leather-bound case under a celluloid
face. Otherwise, it would soon have been worn out in
showing. He had been warned by the Commission not to
talk and he did not talk. He was neutrality personified.
All he did was to show his pass. He could be silent in
three languages. The only time I got anything like
partisanship out of him and two sentences in succession
was when I mentioned the Harvard- Yale football game.

"My! Wasn't that a smear! In their new stadium,
too! Oh, my! Wish I had been there ! "

When the car broke a spring half-way to Antwerp, he
remarked, " Naturally! " or, rather, a more expressive
monosyllable which did not sound neutral.

While he and the Belgian chauffeur, with the help of
a Belgian farmer as spectator, were patching up the
broken spring, I had a look at the farm. The winter
crops were in ; the cabbages and Brussels sprouts in the
garden were untouched. It happened that the scorch-
ing finger of war's destruction had not been laid on this
little property. In the yard the wife was doing the
week's washing, her hands in hot water and her arms
exposed to weather so cold that I felt none too warm in

PERSONAL MEANING OF INVASION 87

a heavy overcoat. At first sight she gave me a frown,
which instantly dissipated into a smile when she saw
that I was not German.

If not German, I must be a friend. Yet if I were I
would not dare talk — not with German sentries all
about. She lifted her hand from the suds and swung it
out to the west toward England and France with an
eager, craving fire in her eyes, and then she swept it
across in front of her as if she were sweeping a spider
off a table. When it stopped at arm's length there was
the triumph of hate in her eyes. I thought of the lid of
a cauldron raised to let out a burst of steam as she asked
" When ? " When ? When would the Allies come and
turn the Germans out ?

She was a kind, hardworking woman, who would help
any stranger in trouble the best she knew how. Prob-
ably that Saxon whose smile had spread under his scarf
had much the same kind of wife. Yet I knew that if
the Allies' guns were heard driving the Germans past
her house and her husband had a rifle, he would put a
shot in that Saxon's back, or she would pour boiling
water on his head if she could. Then, if the Germans
had time, they would burn the farmhouse and kill the
husband who had shot one of their comrades.

I recollect a youth who had been in a railroad acci-
dent saying: "That was the first time I had ever seen
death ; the first time I realized what death was."
Exactly. You don't know death till you have seen it ;
you don't know invasion till you have felt it. However
wise, however able the conquerors, life under them is a
living death. True, the farmer's property was untouched,
but his liberty was gone. If you, a well-behaved citizen,
have ever been arrested and marched through the
streets of your home town by a policeman, how did you
like it ? Give the policeman a rifle and a fixed bayonet
and a full cartridge-box and transform him into a foreigner
and the experience would not be any more pleasant.

G

88 IN BELGIUM UNDER THE GERMANS

That farmer could not go to the next town without
the permission of the sentries. He could not even mail
a letter to his son who was in the trenches with the
Allies. The Germans had taken his horse ; theirs the
power to take anything he had — the power of the
bayonet. If he wanted to send his produce to a foreign
market, if he wanted to buy food in a foreign market,
the British naval blockade closed the sea to him. He
was sitting on a chair of steel spikes, hands tied and
mouth gagged, whilst his mind seethed, solacing its hate
with hope through the long winter months. If you lived
in Kansas and could not get your wheat to Chicago, or
any groceries or newspapers from the nearest town, or
learn whether your son in Wyoming were alive or dead,
or whether the man who owned your mortgage in New
York had foreclosed it or not — well, that is enough
without the German sentry.

Only, instead of newspapers or word about the mort-
gage, the thing you needed past that blockade was
bread to keep you from starving. America opened a
window and slipped a loaf into the empty larder. Those
Belgian soldiers whom I had seen at Dixmude, wounded,
exhausted, mud-caked, shivering, were happy beside the
people at home. They were in the fight. It is not the
destruction of towns and houses that impresses you
most, but the misery expressed by that peasant woman
over her washtub.

A writer can make a lot of the burst of a single shell ;
a photographer showing the ruins of a block of buildings
or a church makes it appear that all blocks and all
churches are in ruins. Running through Antwerp in a
car, one saw few signs of destruction from the bombard-
ment. You will see them if you are specially conducted.
Shops were open, people were moving about in the
streets, which were well lighted. No need of darkness
for fear of bombs dropping here ! German barracks had
safe shelter from aerial raids in a city whose people

THE CHASM TO BE BRIDGED 89

were the allies of England and France. But at intervals
marched the German patrols.

When our car stopped before a restaurant a knot
gathered around it. Their faces were like all the other
faces I saw in Belgium — unless German — with that
restrained, drawn look of passive resistance, persistent
even when they smiled. When ? When were the Allies
coming ? Their eyes asked the question which their
tongues dared not. Inside the restaurant a score of
German officers served by Belgian waiters were dining.
Who were our little party ? What were we doing there
and speaking English — English, the hateful language of
the hated enemy ? Oh, yes ! We were Americans con-
nected with the relief work. But between the officers'
stares at the sound of English and the appealing inquiry
of the faces in the street lay an abyss of war's fierce
suspicion and national policies and racial enmity, which
America had to bridge.

Before we could help Belgium, England, blockading
Germany to keep her from getting foodstuffs, had to con-
sent. She would consent only if none of the food reached
German mouths. Germany had to agree not to re-
quisition any of the food. Someone not German and
not British must see to its distribution. Those rigid
German military authorities, holding fast to their
military secrets, must consent to scores of foreigners
moving about Belgium and sending messages across
that Belgo-Dutch frontier which had been closed to all
except official German messages. This called for men
whom both the German and the British duellists would
trust to succour the human beings crouched and help-
less under the circling flashes of their steel.

Fortunately, our Minister to Belgium was Brand
Whitlock. He is no Talleyrand or Metternich. If he
were, the Belgians might not have been fed, because
he might have been suspected of being too much of
a diplomatist. When an Englishman, or a German, or a

90 IN BELGIUM UNDER THE GERMANS

Hottentot, or any other kind of a human being gets to
know Whitlock, he recognizes that here is an honest
man with a big heart. When leading Belgians came to
him and said that winter would find Belgium without
bread, he turned from the land that has the least food
to that which has the most — his own land.

For Belgium is a great shop in the midst of a garden.
Her towns are so close together that they seem only
suburbs of Brussels and Antwerp. She has the densest
population in Europe. She produces only enough food
to last her for two months of the year. The food for the
other ten months she buys with the products of her
factories. In 1914-15 Belgium could not send out her
products ; so we were to help feed her without pay, and
England and France were to give money to buy what
food we did not give.

But with the British navy generously allowing food
to pass the blockade, the problem was far from solved.
Ships laden with supplies steaming to Rotterdam — this
was a matter of easy organization. How get the bread
to the hungry mouths when the Germans were using
Belgian railroads for military purposes ? Germany was
not inclined to allow a carload of wheat to keep a car-
load of soldiers from reaching the front, or to let food
for Belgians keep the men in the trenches from getting
theirs regularly. Horse and cart transport would be
cumbersome, and the Germans would not permit
Belgian teamsters to move about with such freedom.
As likely as not they might be spies.

Anybody who can walk or ride may be a spy. There-
fore, the way to stop spying is not to let anyone walk or
ride. Besides, Germany had requisitioned most of the
horses that could do more than draw an empty phaeton
on a level. But she had not drawn the water out of the
canals ; though the Belgians, always whispering jokes
at the expense of the conquerors, said that the canals
might have been emptied if their contents had been

THE RELIEF COMMISSION'S WORK 91

beer. There were plenty of idle boats in Holland,
whose canals connect with the web of canals in Belgium.
You had only to seal the cargoes against requisition,
the seal to be broken only by a representative of the
Relief Commission, and start them to their destination.

And how make sure that those who had money
should pay for their bread, while all who had not should
be reached ? The solution was simple compared to the
distribution of relief after the San Francisco earthquake
and fire, for example, in our own land, where a sparser
population makes social organization comparatively
loose.

The people to be relieved were in their homes.
Belgium is so old a country, her population so dense,
she is so much like one big workshop, that the Govern-
ment must keep a complete set of books. Every
Belgian is registered and docketed. You know just
how he makes his living and where he lives. Upon
marriage a Belgian gets a little book, giving his name
and his wife's, their ages, their occupations, and address.
As children are born their names are added. A Belgian
holds as fast to this book as a woman to a piece of
jewellery that is an heirloom.

With few exceptions, Belgian local officials had not
fled the country. They realized that this was a time
when they were particularly needed on the job to pro-
tect the people from German exactions and from their
own rashness. There were also any number of volunteers.
The thing was to get the food to them and let them
organize local distribution.

The small force of Americans required to oversee the
transit must watch that the Germans did not take any
of the food and retain both British and German confi-
dence in the absolute good faith of their intentions.
The volunteers were paid their expenses ; the rest of their
reward was experience, and it was " soom expeerience,"
as a Belgian said who was learning a little American

92 IN BELGIUM UNDER THE GERMANS

slang. They talked' about canal-boat cargoes as if
they had been from Buffalo to Albany on the Erie Canal
for years ; they spoke of " my province " and compared
bread-lines and the efficiency of local officials. And the
Germans took none of the food ; orders from Berlin
were obeyed. Berlin knew that any requisitioning of
relief supplies meant that the Relief Commission would
cease work and announce to the world the reason.

However many times Americans were arrested they
must be patient. That exception who said, when he
was put in a cell overnight because he entered the mili-
tary zone by mistake, that, he would not have been
treated that way in England, needed a little more
coaching in preserving his mask of neutrality. For
I must say that nine out of ten of these young men,
leaning over backward to be neutral, were pro-Ally,
including some with German names. But publicly you
could hardly get an admission out of them that there
was any war. As for Harvard, 1914, hang a passport
carrier around the Sphinx's neck and you have him
done in stone.

Fancy any Belgian trying to get him to carry a
contraband letter or a German commander trying to
work him for a few sacks of flour ! When I asked him
what career he had chosen he said, " Business! " with
out any waste of words. I think that he will succeed in
a way to surprise his family. It is he and all those
young Americans of whom he is a type, as distinctive of
America in manner, looks, and thought as a Frenchman
is of France or a German of Germany, who carried the
torch of Peace's kindly work into war-ridden Belgium.
They made you want to tickle the eagle on the throat
so he would let out a gentle, well-modulated scream ;
of course, strictly in keeping with neutrality.

Red lanterns took the place of red flags swung by
Landsturm sentries on the run to Brussels as darkness
fell. There was no relaxation of watchfulness at night.

THREE MONTHS' CHANGES 93

All the twenty-four hours the systematic conquerors
held the net tight. Once when my companion repeated his
' Again! " and held out the pass in the lantern's rays,
I broke into a laugh, which excited his curiosity, for you
soon get out of the habit of laughing in Belgium.

" It has just occurred to me that my guidebook
states that passports are not required in Belgium! "
I explained.

The editor of that guidebook will have a busy time
before he issues the next edition. For example, he will
have a lot of new information about Malines, whose
ruins were revealed by the motor-lamps in shadowy
broken walls on either side of the main street. Other
places where less damage had been done were equally
silent. In the smaller towns and villages the population
must keep indoors at night ; for egress and ingress are
more difficult to control there than in large cities, where
guards at every corner suffice — watching, watching,
these disciplined pawns of remorselessly efficient mili-
tarism ; watching every human being in Belgium.

" The last time I saw that statue of Liege," I re-
marked, peering into the darkness as we rode into the
city, " the Legion of Honour conferred by France on
Liege for its brave defence was hung on its breast. I
suppose it is gone now."

" I guess yes," said Harvard, 1914.

We went to the hotel at Brussels which I had left the
day before the city's fall. English railway signs on the
walls of the corridor had not been disturbed. More
ancient relic still seemed a bulletin board with its
announcement of seven passages a day to England,
traversing the Channel in " fifty-five minutes via
Calais " and " three hours via Ostend," with the space
blank where the state of the weather for the despair or
the delight of intending voyagers had been chalked up
in happier days. The same men were in attendance at
the office as before ; but they seemed older and their

94 IN BELGIUM UNDER THE GERMANS

politeness that of cheerless automatons. For five
months they had been serving German officers as guests
with hate in their hearts and, in turn, trying to protect
their property.

A story is told of how that hotel had filled with officers
after the arrival of the Germanic flood and how one day,
when it was learned that the proprietor was a French-
man, guards were suddenly placed at the doors and the
hall was filled with luggage as every officer, acting with
characteristic official solidarity, vacated his room and
bestowed his presence elsewhere. Then the proprietor
was informed that his guests would return if he would
agree to employ German help and buy his supplies from
Germany. He refused, for practical as well as for senti-
mental reasons. If he had consented, think what the
Belgians would have done to him after the Germans
were gone ! However, officers were gradually returning,
for this was the best hotel in town, and even conquerors
are human and German conquerors have particularly
human stomachs.

IX

CHRISTMAS IN BELGIUM

Christmas in Belgium with the bayonet and the wolf
at the door taught me to value Christmas at home for
more than its gifts and the cheer of the fireside. It
taught me what it meant to belong to a free people and
how precious is that old English saying that a man's
house is his castle, which was the inception of so much
in our lives which we accept as a commonplace. If such
a commonplace can be made secure only by fighting,
then it is best to fight. At any time a foreign soldier
might enter the house of a Belgian and take him away
for trial before a military court.

Breakfast in the same restaurant as before the city's
fall! Again the big grapes which are a luxury of the
rich man's table or an extravagance for a sick friend
with us! The hothouses still grew them. What else
was there for the hothouses to do, though the export of
their products was impossible ? A shortage of the long,
white-leafed chicory that we call endive in New York
restaurants ? There were piles of it in the Brussels
market and on the hucksters' carts ; nothing so cheap !
One might have excellent steaks and roasts and
delicious veal ; for the heifers were being butchered
as the Germans had taken all fodder. But the bread was
the Commission's brown, which everyone had to eat.
Belgium, growing quality on scanty acres with intensive
farming, had food luxuries but not the staff of life.

I looked out of the windows on to the square which
four months before I had seen crowded with people
bedecked with the Allies' colours and eagerly buying
the latest editions containing the communiques of hollow

95

96 CHRISTMAS IN BELGIUM

optimism. No flag in sight now except a German flag
flying over the station! But small revenges may be
enjoyed. A German soldier tried to jump on the tail of
a cart driven by a Belgian, but the Belgian whipped up
his horse and the German fell off on to the pavement,
whilst the cart sped around a corner.

Out of the station came a score of German soldiers
returning from the trenches, on their way to barracks
to regain strength in order that they could bear the
ordeal of standing in icy water again. They were not
the kind exhibited on Press tours to illustrate the
" vigour of our indomitable army." Eyelids drooped
over hollow eye-sockets ; sore, numbed feet moved like
feet which are asleep in their vain effort to keep step.
Sensitiveness to surroundings, almost to existence,
seemed to have been lost.

One was a corporal, young, tall, and full-bearded.
He might have been handsome if he had not been so
haggard. He gave the lead to the others ; he seemed
to know where they were going, and they shuffled on
after him in dogged painfulness. Four months ago that
corporal, with the spring of the energy of youth when
the war was young, was perhaps in that green column
that went through the streets of Brussels in the thun-
derous beat of their regular tread on their way to Paris.
The group was an object lesson in how much the victor
must suffer in war in order to make his victim suffer.

Some officers were at breakfast, too. Mostly they
were reservists ; mostly bespectacled, with middle age
swelling their girth and hollowing their chests, but
sturdy enough to apply the regulations made for con-
duct of the conquered. Whilst stronger men were under
shell-fire at the front, they were under the fire of
Belgian hate as relentless as their own hate of England.
You saw them always in the good restaurants, but
never in the company of Belgians, these ostracized
rulers. In four months they had made no friends ; at

THE IRON HEEL 97

least, no friends who would appear with them in public
A few thousand guards in Belgium in the companion-
ship of conquest and seven million Belgians in the
companionship of a common helplessness! Bayonets
may make a man silent, but they cannot stop his
thinking.

At the breakfast table on that Christmas morning in
London, Paris, or Berlin the patriot could find the kind
of news that he liked. His racial and national predi-
lections and animosities were solaced. If there were
good news it was " played up " ; if there were bad news,
it was not published or it was explained. L'Echo Beige
and L' Independence Beige and all the Brussels papers
were either out of business or being issued as single
sheets in Holland and England.

The Belgian, keenest of all the peoples at war for
news, having less occupation to keep his mind off the
war, must read the newspapers established under
German auspices, which fed him with the pabulum that
German chefs provided, reflective of the stumbling
degeneracy of England, French weariness of the war,
Russian clumsiness, and the invincibility of Germany.
If an Englishman had to read German, or a German
English, newspapers every morning he might have
understood how the Belgian felt.

Those who had sons or fathers or husbands in the
Belgian army could not send or receive letters, let alone
presents. Families scattered in different parts of
Belgium could not hold reunions. But at mass I saw a
Belgian standard in the centre of the church. That
flag was proscribed, but the priests knew it was safe in
that sacred place and the worshippers might feast their
eyes on it as they said their aves.

A Bavarian soldier came in softly and stood a little
apart from the worshippers, many in mourning, at the
rear ; a man who was of the same faith as the Belgians
and who crossed himself with the others in the house of

98 CHRISTMAS IN BELGIUM

brotherly love. He would go outside to obey orders ;
and the others to nurse their hate of him and his race.
This private in his faded green, bowing his head before
that flag in the shadows of the nave, was war-sick, as
most soldiers were ; and the Belgians were heartsick.
They had the one solace in common. But if you had
suggested to him to give up Belgium, his answer would
have been that of the other Germans : " Not after all
we have suffered to take it ! " Christians have a peculiar
way of applying Christianity. Yet, if it were not for
Christianity and that infernal thing called the world's
opinion, which did not exist in the days of Caesar and the
Belgae, the Belgians might have been worse off than they
were. More of them might have been dead. When they
were saying, " Give us this day our daily bread " they
were thinking, " An eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth," if ever their turn came.

A satirist might have repeated the apochryphal
naivete of Marie Antoinette, who asked why the people
wanted bread when they could buy such nice cakes for
a sou ! For all the patisserie shops were open. Brussels
is famous for its French pastry. With a store of pre-
serves, why shouldn't the bakeshops go on making tarts
with heavy crusts of the brown flour, when war had not
robbed the bakers of their art ? It gave work to them ;
it helped the shops to keep open and make a show of
normality. But I noticed that they were doing little
business. Stocks were small and bravely displayed.
Only the rich could afford such luxuries, which in
ordinary times were what ice-cream cones are to us.
Even the jewellery shops were open, with diamond
rings flashing in the windows.

" You must pay rent ; you don't want to discharge
your employees," said a jeweller. " There is no place
to go except your shop. If you closed it would look as
if you were afraid of the Germans. It would make you
blue and the people in the street blue. One tries to go

THE BELGIAN BREAD-LINE 99

through the motions of normal existence, anyway. But,
of course, you don't sell anything. This week I have
repaired a locket which carried the portrait of a soldier
at the front and I've put a mainspring in a watch. I'll
warrant that is more than some of my competitors
have done."

Swing around the circle in Brussels of a winter's
morning and look at the only crowds that the Germans
allow to gather, and any doubt that Belgium would have
gone hungry if she had not received provisions from the
outside was dispelled. Whenever I think of a bread-
line again I shall see the faces of a Belgian bread-line.
They blot out the memory of those at home, where men
are free to go and come ; where war has not robbed the
thrifty of food.

It was fitting that the great central soup kitchen
should be established in the central express office of the
city. For in Belgium these days there is no express
business except in German troops to the front and
wounded to the rear. The dispatch of parcels is stopped,
no less than the other channels of trade, in a country
where trade was so rife, a country that lived by trade.
On the stone floor, where once packages were arranged
for fonvarding to the towns whose names are on the
walls, were many great cauldrons in clusters of three,
to economize space and fuel.

" We don't lack cooks," said a chef who had been in
a leading hotel. " So many of us are out of work. Our
society of hotel and restaurant keepers took charge.
We know the practical side of the business. I suppose
you have the same kind of a society in New York and
would turn to it for help if the Germans occupied New
York ? "

He gave me a printed report in which I read, for
example, that " M. Arndt, professor of the ficole
Normale, had been good enough to take charge of
accounts," and " M. Catteau had been specially

ioo CHRISTMAS IN BELGIUM

appointed to look after the distribution of bread."
Most appetizing that soup prepared under direction
of the best chefs in the city! The meat and green
vegetables in it were Belgian and the peas American.
Steaming hot in big cans it was sent to the communal
centres, where lines of people with pots, pitchers, and
pails waited to receive their daily allowance. A demo-
cracy was in that bread-line such as I have never seen
anywhere except at San Francisco after the earthquake.
Each person had a blue or a yellow ticket, with numbers
to be punched, like a commuter. The blue tickets were
for those who had proved to the communal authorities
that they could not pay ; the yellow for those who paid
five centimes for each person served. A flutter of blue
and yellow tickets all over Belgium, and in return life!
With each serving of soup went a loaf of the American
brown bread. The faces in the line were not those of
people starving — they had been saved from starvation.
There was none of the emaciation which pictures of
famine in the Orient have made familiar ; but they
were pinched faces, bloodless faces, the faces of people
on short rations.

To the Belgian bread is not only the staff of life ; it
is the legs. At home we think of bread as something
that goes with the rest of the meal ; to the poorer classes
of Belgians the rest of the meal is something that goes
with bread. To you and me food has meant the pay-
ment of money to the baker and the butcher and the
grocer, or the hotel-keeper. You get your money by
work or from investments. What if there were no bread
to be had for work or money ? Sitting on a mountain of
gold in the desert of Sahara would not quench thirst.

Three hundred grammes, a minimum calculation —
about half what the British soldier gets — was the ration.
That small boy sent by his mother got five loaves ; his
ticket called for an allowance for a family of five. An
old woman got one loaf, for she was alone in the world.

PERSONAL TOUCH OF THE WAR 101

Each one as he hurried by had a personal story of what
war had meant to him. They answered your questions
frankly, gladly, with the Belgian cheerfulness which
was amazing considering the circumstances. A tall,
distinguished-looking man was an artist.

" No work for artists these days," he said.

No work in a community of workers where every link
of the chain of economic life had been broken. No
work for the next man, a chauffeur, or the next, a brass
worker ; the next, a teamster ; the next, a bank clerk ;
the next, a doorkeeper of a Government office ; whilst
the wives of those who still had work were buying in the
only market they had. But the husbands of some were
not at home. Each answer about the absent one had
an appeal that nothing can picture better than the
simple words or the looks that accompanied the words.

" The last I heard of my husband he was fighting at
Dixmude — two months ago."

" Mine is wounded, somewhere in France."

" Mine was with the army, too. I don't know
whether he is alive or dead. I have not heard since
Brussels was taken. He cannot get my letters and I
cannot get his."

" Mine was killed at Liege, but we have a son."

So you out in Nebraska who gave a handful of wheat
might know that said handful of wheat reached its
destination in an empty stomach. If you sent a suit of
clothes, or a cap, or a pair of socks, come along to the
skating-rink, where ice-polo was played and matches
and carnivals were held in better days, and look on at
the boxes, packed tight with gifts of every manner of
thing that men and women and children wear except
silk hats, which are being opened and sorted and
distributed into hastily-constructed cribs and com-
partments.

A Belgian woman whose father was one of Belgium's
leading lawyers — her husband was at the front — was

102 CHRISTMAS IN BELGIUM

the busy head of this organization, because, as she said,

the busier she was the more it " keeps my mind off "

and she did not finish the sentence. How many times

I heard that " keeps my mind off " a sentence that

was the more telling for not being finished. She and
some other women began sewing and patching and
collecting garments ; " but our business grew so fast" —
the business of relief is the one kind in Belgium that
does grow these days — " that now we have hundreds
of helpers. I begin to feel that I am what you would
call in America a captainess of industry."

Some of the good mothers in America were a little
too thoughtful in their kindness. An odour in a box
that had evidently travelled across the Atlantic close
to the ship's boilers was traced to the pocket of a boy's
suit, which contained the hardly-distinguishable re-
mains of a ham sandwich, meant to be ready to hand
for the hungry Belgian boy who got that suit. Broken
pots of jam were quite frequent. But no matter. Soap
and water and Belgian industry saved the suit, if not
the sandwich. Sweaters and underclothes and overcoats
almost new, and shiny old morning coats and trousers
with holes in seat and knees might represent equal
sacrifice on the part of some American three thousand
miles away, and all were welcome. Needlewomen were
given work cutting up the worn-outs of grown-ups
and making them over into astonishingly good suits or
dresses for youngsters.

" We've really turned the rink into a kind of depart-
ment store," said the lady. " Come into our boot
department. We had some leather left in Belgium that
the Germans did not requisition, so we bought it and
that gave more Belgians work in the shoe factories.
Work, you see, is what we want to keep our minds
off "

Blue and yellow tickets here, too ! Boots for children
and thick-set working- women and watery-eyed old men !

SYSTEMATIC RELIEF WORK 103

And each was required to leave behind the pair he was
wearing.

" Sometimes we can patch up the cast-off&^-whlch
means work for the cobblers," said the captainess
of industry. "And who are our clerks? Why, the
people who put on the skates for the patrons of the
rink, of course! " /

One could write volumes on this systematic relief
work, the businesslike industry of succouring BelgjJtim-
by the businesslike Belgians, with Anoerftan help.
Certainly one cannot leave outJiioSeoId men stragglers
from Louvain and Bruges and Ghent — venerable chil-
dren with no offspring to give them paternal care —
who took their turn in getting bread, which they soaked
thoroughly in their soup for reasons that would be no
military secret, not even in the military zone. On
Christmas Day an American, himself a smoker, think-
ing what class of children he could make happiest on a
limited purse, remembered the ring around the stove
and bought a basket of cheap brier pipes and tobacco.
By Christmas night some toothless gums were sore, but
a beatific smile of satiation played in white beards.

Nor can one leave out the very young babies at home,
who get their milk if grown people do not, and the older
babies beyond milk but not yet old enough for bread
and meat, whose mothers return from the bread-line to
bring their children to another line, where they got
portions of a syrupy mixture which those who know
say is the right provender. On such occasions men are
quite helpless. They can only look on with a frog in the
throat at pale, improperly nourished mothers with
bundles of potential manhood and womanhood in their
arms. For this was woman's work for woman. Belgian
women of every class joined in it : the competent wife
of a workman, or the wife of a millionaire who had to
walk like everybody else now that her motor-car was
requisitioned by the army.

H

104 CHRISTMAS IN BELGIUM

Pop-eyed children, ruddy-cheeked, aggressive chil-
dren, pinched-faced children, kept warm by sweaters
that some American or English children spared, happy
in that they did not know what their elders knew!
Not the danger of physical starvation so much as the
actual presence of mental starvation was the thing that
got on your nerves in a land where the sun is seldom
seen in winter and rainy days are the rule. It was bad
enough in the " zone of occupation," so called, a line
running from Antwerp past Brussels to Mons. One
could guess what it was like in the military zone to the
westward, where only an occasional American relief
representative might go.

This is not saying that the Germans were stricter than
necessary, if we excuse the exasperation of their mili-
tarism, in order to prevent information from passing
out, when a multitude of Belgians would have risked
their lives gladly to help the Allies. One spy bringing
accurate information might cost the German army
thousands of casualties ; perhaps decide the fate of a
campaign. They saw the Belgians as enemies. They
were fighting to take the lives of their enemies and save
their own lives, which made it tough for them and the
French and the British— tough all round, but very
particularly tough for the Belgians.

It was good for a vagrant American to dine at the
American Legation, where Mr. and Mrs. Whitlock were
far, very far, from the days in Toledo, Ohio, where he
was mayor. Some said that the place of the Minister to
Belgium was at Havre, where the Belgian Government
had its offices ; but neither Whitlock nor the Belgian
people thought so, nor the German Government, since
they had realized his prestige with the Belgians and
how they would listen to him in any crisis when their
passions might break the bonds of wisdom. Hugh
Gibson, being the omnipresent Secretary of Legation in
four languages, naturally was also present. We recalled

WHEN? WHEN? WHEN? 105

dining together in Honduras, when he was in the thick
of vexations.

Trouble accommodatingly waits for him wherever he
goes, because he has a gift for taking care of trouble, in
the ascendancy of a cheerful spirit and much knowledge
of international law. His present for the Minister, who
daily received stacks of letters from all sources asking
the impossible, as well as from Americans who wanted
to be sure that the food they gave was not being pur-
loined by the Germans, was a rubber stamp, " Blame-it-
all-there 's-a-state-of-war-in-Belgium ! " which he sug-
gested might save typewriting — a recommendation
which the Minister refused to accept, not to Gibson's
surprise.

On that Christmas afternoon and evening, the people
promenaded the streets as usual. You might have
thought it a characteristic Christmas afternoon or
evening except for the Landsturm patrols. But there
was an absence of the old gaiety, and they were moving
as if from habit and moving was all there was to do.

They had heard the sound of the guns at Dixmude
the night before. Didn't the sound seem a little nearer ?
No. The wind from that direction was stronger.
When ? When would the Allies come ?

THE FUTURE OF BELGIUM

In former days the traveller hardly thought of Belgium
as possessing patriotic homogeneity. It was a land of
two languages, French and Flemish. He was puzzled
to meet people who looked like well-to-do mechanics,
artisans, or peasants and find that they could not
answer a simple question in French. This explained
why a people so close to France, though they made
Brussels a little Paris, would not join the French family
and enter into the spirit and body of that great civiliza-
tion on their borders, whose language was that of their
own literature. Belgium seemed to have no character.
Its nationality was the artificial product of European
politics ; a buffer divided in itself, which would be
neither French, nor German, nor definitely Belgian.

In later times Belgium had prospered enormously.
It had developed the resources of the Congo in a way
that had aroused a storm of criticism. Old King Leo-
pold made the most of his neutral position to gain
advantages which no one of the great Powers might
enjoy because of jealousies. The International Sleeping
Car Company was Belgian and Belgian capitalists
secured concessions here and there, wherever the small
tradesman might slip into openings suitable to his size.
Leopold was not above crumbs ; he made them profit-
able ; he liked to make money ; and Belgians liked to
make money.

Her defence guaranteed by neutrality, Belgium need
have no thought except of thrift. Her ideals were those
of prosperity. No ambition of national expansion
stirred her imagination as Germany's was stirred ;

106

CITIZEN v. TRAINED SOLDIERY 107

there was no fire in her soul as in that of France in
apprehension of the day when she would have to fight
for her life against Germany ; no national cause to
harden the sinews of patriotism. The immensity of her
urban population contributed its effect in depriving her
of the sterner stuff of which warriors are made. Success
meant more comforts and luxuries. In towns like
Brussels and Antwerp this doubtless had its effect on
the moralities, which were hardly of the New England
Puritan standard. She had a small standing army ; a
militia system in the process of reform against the con-
viction of the majority, unlike that of the Swiss
mountaineers, that Belgium would never have any need
for soldiers.

If militarism means conscription as it exists in France
and Germany, then militarism has improved the phys-
ique of races in an age when people are leaving the land
for the factory. The prospect of battle's test un-
questionably develops in a people certain sturdy
qualities which can and ought to be developed in some
other way than with the prospect of spending money
for shells to kill people.

With the world making every Belgian man a hero and
the unknowing convinced that a citizen soldiery at
Liege — defended by the Belgian standing army — had
rushed from their homes with rifles and beaten German
infantry, it is right to repeat that the schipperke spirit
was not universal, that at no time had Belgium more
than a hundred thousand men under arms, and that on
the Dixmude line she maintained never more than
eighty thousand men out of a population of seven
millions, which should yield from seven hundred thous-
and to a million ; while they lost a good deal of sym-
pathy both in England and in France, from all I heard,
through the number of able-bodied refugees who were
disinclined to serve. It was a mistaken idealism that
swept over the world, early in the war, characterizing

io8 THE FUTURE OF BELGIUM

a whole nation with the gallantry of its young king
and his little army.

The spirit of the Boers or of the Minute Men at
Lexington was not in the Belgian people. It could not
be from their very situation and method of life. They
did not believe in war ; they did not expect to practise
war ; but war came to them out of the still blue heavens
as it came to the prosperous Incas of Peru.

Where one was wrong was in the expectation that her
bankers and capitalists — an aristocracy of money not
given to the simple life — and her manufacturers, arti-
sans, and traders, if not her peasants, would soon make
truce with Caesar for individual profit. Therein,
Belgium showed that she was not lacking in the moral
spirit which, with the schipperke's, became a fighting
spirit. It seemed as if the metal of many Belgians,
struck to a white heat in the furnace of war, had cooled
under German occupation to the tempered steel of a
new nationalism.

When you travelled over Belgium after it was
pacified, the logic of German methods became clear.
What was haphazard in their reign of terror was due
to the inevitable excesses of a soldiery taking the cal-
culated redress ordered by superiors as licence in the
first red passion of war to a war-mad nation, which was
sullen because Belgians had not given up the keys of the
gate to France.

The extent of the ruins in Belgium east of the Yser
has been exaggerated. They were the first ruins, most
photographed, most advertised ; bad enough, inexcus-
able enough, and warrantedly causing a spell of horror
throughout the civilized world. We have heard all
about them, mind, while hearing nothing about those
in Lorraine, where the Bavarians exceeded Prussian
ruthlessness in reprisals. I mean, that to have read the
newspapers in early September, 1914, one would have
thought that half the towns of Belgium were debris,

ORGANIZED DESTRUCTION 109

while the truth is that only a small percentage are —
those in the path of the German army's advance. Two-
thirds of Louvain itself is unharmed ; though the fact
alone of its venerable library being in ashes is sufficient
outrage, if not another building had been harmed.

The German army planned destruction with all the
regularity that it billeted troops, or requisitioned sup-
plies, or laid war indemnities. It did not destroy by
shells exclusively. It deliberately burned homes. No
matter whether the owners were innocent or not, the
homes were burned as an example. The principle applied
was that of punishing half a dozen or all the boys in the
class in the hope of getting the real culprit.

Cold ruins mark blocks where sniping was thought
to have occurred. The Germans insist that theirs was
the merciful way. Krieg ist Krieg. When a hundred
citizens of Louvain were gathered and shot because
they were the first citizens of Louvain to hand, the
purpose was the security of the mass at the expense of
the individual, according to the war-is-war machine
reasoning No doubt there was firing on German troops
by civilians. What did the Germans expect after the
way that they had invaded Belgium ? If they had
bothered with trials and investigations, the conquerors
say, sniping would have kept up. They may have taken
innocent lives and burned the homes of the innocent,
they admit, but their defence is that thereby they
saved many thousands of their soldiers and of Belgians,
and prevented the feud between the rulers and the
ruled from becoming more embittered.

Sniping over, the next step in policy was to keep the
population quiet with a minimum of soldiery, which
would permit a maximum at the front. In a thickly-
settled country, so easily policed, in a land with the
population inured to peace, the wisdom of keeping quiet
was soon evident to the people. What if Boers had been
in the Belgians' place ? Would they have attempted

no THE FUTURE OF BELGIUM

guerrilla warfare ? Would you or I want to bring des-
truction on neighbours in a land without any rural
fastnesses as a rendezvous for operations ? One could
tell only if a section of our country were invaded.

A burned block cost less than a dead German soldier.
The system was efficacious. It was mercilessness mixed
with craft. When Prussian brusqueness was found to
be unnecessarily irritating to the population, causing
rash Belgians to turn desperate, the elders of the Saxon
and Bavarian coreligionists were called in. They were
amiable fathers of families, who would obey orders
without taking the law into their own hands. The
occupation was strictly military. It concerned itself
with the business of national suffocation. All the
functions of government were in German hands. But
Belgian policemen guided the street traffic, arrested
culprits for ordinary misdemeanours, and took them
before Belgian judges. This concession, which also
meant a saving in soldiers, only aggravated to the
Belgian the regulations directed against his personal
freedom.

" Eat, drink, and live as usual. Go to your own police
courts for misdemeanours," was the German edict in a
word ; " but remember that ours is the military power,
and no act that aids the enemy, that helps the cause of
Belgium in this war, is permitted. Observe that parti-
cular affiche about a spy, please. He was shot."

At every opportunity Belgians were told that the
British and the French could never come to their rescue.
The Allies were beaten. It was the British who got
Belgium into trouble ; the British who were responsible
for the idleness, the penury, the hunger and the suffering
in Belgium. The British had used Belgium as a cat's-
paw ; then they had deserted her. But Belgians
remained mostly unconvinced. They were making war
with mind and spirit, if not with arms.

" We know how to surfer in Belgium," said a Belgian

UNYIELDING BELGIAN ATTITUDE ill

jurist. " Our ability to suffer and to hold fast to our
hearths has kept us going through the centuries.
Flemish and French, we have stubbornness in common.
Now a ruffian has come into our house and taken us
by the throat. He can choke us to death, or he can
slowly starve us to death, but he cannot make us yield.
No, we shall never forgive! "

" You too hate, then ? " I asked.

" Of course I hate. For the first time in my life I
know what it is to hate ; and so do my countrymen.
I begin to enjoy my hate. It is one of the privileges of
our present existence. We cannot stand on chairs and
tables as they do in Berlin cafes and sing our hate, but
no one can stop our hating in secret."

Beside the latest verboten and regulation of Belgian
conduct on the city walls were posted German official
news bulletins. The Belgians stopped to read ; they
paused to re-read. And these were the rare occasions
when they smiled, and they liked to have a German
sentry see that smile.

" Pour les enfants ! " they whispered, as if talking to
one another about a creche. Little ones, be good ! Here
is a new fairy tale !

When a German wanted to buy something he got
frigid politeness and attention — very frigid, telling
politeness — from the clerk, which said :

"Beast! Invader! I do not ask you to buy, but as
you ask, I sell ; and as I sell I hate ! I hate!! I hate!!!"

An officer entering a shop and seeing a picture of
King Albert on the wall, said :

" The orders are to take that down! "

" But don't you love your Kaiser? " asked the woman
who kept the shop.

"Certainly!"

" And I love my King! " was the answer. " I like to
look at his picture just as much as you like to look at
your Kaiser's."

H2 THE FUTURE OF BELGIUM

' ' I had not thought of it in that way ! ' ' said the officer.

Indeed, it is very hard for any conqueror to think of
it in that way. So the picture remained on the wall.

How many soldiers would it take to enforce the regu-
lation that no Belgian was to wear the Belgian colours ?
Imagine thousands and thousands of Landsturm men
moving about and plucking King Albert's face or the
black, yellow and red from Belgian buttonholes! No
sooner would a buttonhole be cleared in front than the
emblem would appear in a buttonhole in the rear. The
Landsturm would face counter, flank, frontal, and rear
attacks in a most amusing military manoeuvre, which
would put those middle-aged conquerors fearfully out
of breath and be rare sport for the Belgians. You could
not arrest the whole population and lead them off to
jail ; and if you bayoneted a few — which really those
phlegmatic, comfortable old Landsturms would not
have the heart to do for such a little thing — why, it
would get into the American Press, and the Berlin Foreign
Office would say :

' There you are, you soldiers, breaking all the crock-
ery again! "

In the smaller towns, where the Germans were billeted
in Belgian houses, of course the hosts had to serve their
unwelcome guests.

" Yet we managed to let them know what was in our
hearts," said one woman. " Some tried to be friendly.
They said they had wives and children at home ; and
we said : ' How glad your wives and children would be
to see you! Why don't you go home ? ' "

When a report reached the commander in Ghent that
an old man had concealed arms, a sergeant with a
guard was sent to search the house.

" Yes, my son has a rifle."

"Where is it? "

"In his hands on the Yser, if he is not dead, monsieur.
You are welcome to search, monsieur."

INVADERS CANNOT BE FRIENDS 113

Belgium was developing a new humour, a humour at
the expense of the Germans. In their homes they
mimicked their rulers as freely as they pleased. To carry
mimickry into the streets meant arrest for the elders, but
not always for the children. You have heard the story,
which is true, of how some gamins put carrots in old
bowler hats to represent the spikes of German helmets,
and at their leader's command of "On to Paris! " did
a goose-step backwards. There is another which you
may not have heard of a small boy who put on grand-
father's spectacles, a pillow under his coat, and a card
on his cap, " Officer of the Landsturm." The conquerors
had enough sense not to interfere with the battalion
which was taking Paris ; but the pseudo-Landsturm
officer was chased into a doorway and got a cuff after
his placard was taken away from him.

When a united public opinion faces bayonets it is not
altogether helpless to reply. By the atmospheric force
of mass it enjoys a conquest of its own. If a German
officer or soldier entered a street car, women drew aside
in a way to indicate that they did not want their gar-
ments contaminated. People walked by the sentries in
the streets giving them room as you would give a mangy
dog room, yet as if they did not see the sentries ; as if
no sentries existed.

The Germans said that they wanted to be friendly.
They even expressed surprise that the Belgians would
not return their advances. They sent out invitations
to social functions in Brussels, but no one came — not
even to a ball given by the soldiers to the daughters of
the poor. Belgium stared its inhospitality, its contempt,
its cynical drolleries at the invader.

I kept thinking of a story I heard in Alaska of a man
who had shown himself yellow by cheating his partner
out of a mine. He appeared one day hungry at a cabin
occupied by half a dozen men who knew him. They
gave him food and a bunk that night ; they gave him

H4 THE FUTURE OF BELGIUM

breakfast ; they even carried his blanket-roll out to his
sled and harnessed his dogs as a hint, and saw him go
without one man having spoken to him. No matter if
that man believed he had done no wrong, he would have
needed a rhinoceros hide not to have felt this silence.
Such treatment the Belgians have given to the Germans,
except that they furnished the shelter and harnessed
the team under duress, as they so specifically indicate
by every act. No wonder, then, that the old Landsturm
guards, used at home to saying " Wie gehts ? " and get-
ting a cheery answer from the people they passed in the
streets, were lonely.

Not only stubborn, but shrewd, these Belgians. Both
qualities were brought out in the officials who had to deal
with the Germans, particularly in the small towns and
where destruction had been worst. Take, for example,
M. Nerincx, of Louvain, who has energy enough to carry
him buoyantly through an American political campaign,
speaking from morning to midnight. He had been in
America. I insisted that he ought to give up his professor-
ship, get naturalized, and run for office in America. I know
that he would soon be mayor of a town, or in Congress.

When the war began he was professor of international
law at the ancient university whose walls alone stand,
surrounding the ashes of its priceless volumes, across
from the ruined cathedral. With the burgomaster a
refugee from the horrors of that orgy, he turned man of
action on behalf of the demoralized people of the town
with a thousand homes in ruins. Very lucky the client
in its lawyer. He is the kind of man who makes the
best of the situation ; picks up the fragments of the
pitcher, cements them together with the first material
at hand, and goes for more milk. It was he who got a
German commander to sign an agreement not to " kill,
burn, or plunder " any more, and the signs were still up
on some houses saying that " This house is not to be
burned except by official order."

A MAN OF ACTION 115

There in the Hotel de Ville, which is quite unharmed,
he had his office, within reach of the German comman-
der. He yielded to Caesar and protected his own people
day in and day out, diplomatic, watchful, Belgian.
And he was cheerful. What other people could have
retained any vestige of cheer ! Sometimes one wondered
if it were not partly due to an absence of keen nerve-
sensibilities, or to some other of the traits which are a
product of the Belgian hothouse and Belgian inheritance.

I might tell you about M. Nerincx's currency system ;
how he issued paper promises to pay when he gave
employment to the idle in repairing those houses which
permitted of being repaired, and cleaned the streets of
debris, till ruined Louvain looked as shipshape as ruined
Pompeii ; and how he got a little real money from
Brussels to stop depreciation when the storekeepers
came to him and said that they had stacks of his notes
which no mercantile concern would cash.

M. Nerincx was practising in the life about all that he
ever learned and taught at the university, " which we
shall rebuild! " he declared, with cheery confidence.
" You will help us in America," he said. "I'm going to
America to lecture one of these days about Louvain ! "

"You have the most famous ruins, unless it is Rheims,"
I assured him. " You will get flocks of tourists " —
particularly if he fenced in the ruins of the library and
burned leaves of ancient books were on sale.

" Then you will not only have fed, but have helped
to rebuild Belgium," he added.

A shadow of apprehension overhung his anticipation
of the day of Belgium's delivery. Many a Belgian had
arms hidden from the alert eye of German espionage,
and his bitterness was solaced by the thought ; " I'll
have a shot at the Germans when they go! " The lot
of the last German soldier to leave a town, unless the
garrison slips away overnight, would hardly make him
a good life-insurance risk.

n6 THE FUTURE OF BELGIUM

My last look at a Belgian bread-line was at Liege,
that town which had had a blaze of fame in August,
1914, and was now almost forgotten. An industrial
town, its mines and works were idle. The Germans had
removed the machinery for rifle-making, which has
become the most valuable kind of machinery in the
world next to that for making guns and shells. If skilled
Belgians here or elsewhere were called upon to serve the
Germans at their craft, they suddenly became butter-
fingered. So that bread-line at Liege was long, its
queue stretching the breadth of the cathedral square.

As most of the regular German officers in Belgium
were cavalrymen — there was nothing for cavalry to do
on the Aisne line of trenches — it was quite in keeping
that the aide to the commandant of Liege, who looked
after my pass to leave the country, should be a young
officer of Hussars. He spoke English well ; he was
amiable and intelligent. While I waited for the com-
mandant to sign the pass the aide chatted of his adven-
tures on the pursuit of the British to the Marne. The
British fought like devils, he said. It was a question if
their new army would be so good. He showed me a
photograph of himself in a British Tommy's overcoat.

" When we took some prisoners I was interested in
their overcoats," he explained. " I asked one of the
Tommies to let me try on his. It fitted me perfectly,
so I kept it as a souvenir and had this photograph made
to show my friends."

Perhaps a shade of surprise passed over my face.

" You don't understand," he said. " That Tommy
had to give me his coat ! He was a prisoner."

On my way out from Liege I was to see Vise — the
town of the gateway — the first town of the war to suffer
from frightfulness. I had thought of it as entirely
destroyed. A part of it had survived.

A delightful old Bavarian Landsturm man searched
me for contraband letters when our cart stopped on the

THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE 117

Belgian side of a barricade at Maastricht, with Dutch
soldiers on the other side. His examination was a little
perfunctory, almost apologetic, and he did want to be
friendly. You guessed that he was thinking he would
like to go around the corner and have " ein Glas Bier "
rather than search me. What a hearty " Auf wieder-
sehen ! " he gave me when he saw that I was inclined
to be friendly, too!

I was glad to be across that frontier, with a last
stamp on my Passierschein ; glad to be out of the
land of those ghostly Belgian millions in their living
death ; glad not to have to answer again their
ravenously whispered " When ? " When would the
Allies come ?

The next time that I was in Belgium it was in the
British lines of the Ypres salient, two months later.
When should I be next in Brussels ? With a victorious
British army, I hoped. A long wait it was to be for a
conquered people, listening each day and trying to
think that the sound of gun fire was nearer.

The stubborn, passive resistance and self-sacrifice
that I have pictured was that of a moral leadership of a
majority shaming the minority ; of an ostracism of all
who had relations with the enemy. Of course, it was
not the spirit of the whole. The American Commission,
as charity usually must, had to overcome obstacles set
in its path by those whom it would aid. Belgian
politicians, in keeping with the weakness of their craft,
could no more forego playing politics in time of distress
than some that we had in San Francisco and some we
have heard of only across the British Channel from
Belgium.

Zealous leaders exaggerated the famine of their
districts in order to get larger supplies ; communities
in great need without spokesmen must be reached ;
powerful towns found excuses for not forwarding food
to small villages which were without influence. Natural

n8 THE FUTURE OF BELGIUM

greed got the better of men used to turning a penny
any way they could. Rascally bakers who sifted the
brown flour to get the white to sell to patisserie shops
and the well-to-do while the bread-line got the bran,
required shrewd handling, and it was found that the
best punishment was to let the public know the pariah
part they had played. In fact that soon put a stop to
the practice. It meant that the baker's business was
ruined and he had lost his friends.

A certain percentage of Belgians, as would happen in
any country, saw the invasion only as a visitation of
disaster, like an earthquake. A flat country of gardens
limits one's horizon. They fell into line with the senti-
ment of the mass. But as time wore on into the summer
and autumn of the second year, some of them began to
think, What was the use ? German propaganda was
active. All that the Allies had cared for Belgium was
to use her to check the German tide to Paris and the
Channel ports! Perfidious England had betrayed
Belgium! German business and banking influences,
which had been considerable in Belgium before the war,
and the numerous German residents who had returned,
formed a busy circle of appeal to Belgian business men,
who were told that the British navy stood between
them and a return to prosperity. Germany was only
too willing that they should resume their trade with the
rest of the world.

Why should not Belgium come into the German
customs union ? Why should not Belgium make the
best of her unfortunate situation, as became a practical
and thrifty people ? But be it a customs union or an-
nexation that Germany plans, the steel had entered the
hearts of all Belgians with red corpuscles; and King Albert
and his "schipperkes " were still fighting the Germans
at Dixmude. A British army appearing before Brussels
would end casuistry ; and pessimism would pass, and
the German residents, too, with the huzzas of all Belgium

ENGLAND'S GENEROSITY 119

as the gallant king once more ascended the steps of his
palace.

Worthy of England at her best was her consent to
allow the Commission's food to pass, which she accom-
panied by generous giving. She might seem slow in
making ready her army — though I do not think that she
was — but give she could and give she did. It was a
grave question if her consent was in keeping with the
military policy which believes that any concession to
sentiment in the grim business of war is unwise.
Certainly, the Krieg ist Krieg of Germany would not
have permitted it.

There is the very point of the war that ought to make
any neutral take sides. If the Belgians had not received
bread from the outside world, then Germany would
either have had to spare enough to keep them from
starving or faced the desperation of a people who would
fight for food with such weapons as they had. This
must have brought a holocaust of reprisals that would
have made the orgy of Louvain comparatively insignifi-
cant. However much the Germans hampered the Com-
mission with red tape and worse than red tape through
the activities of German residents in Belgium, Germany
did not want the Commission to withdraw. It was
helping her to economize her food supplies. And
England answered a human appeal at the cost of hard-
and-fast military policy. She was still true to the ideals
which have set their stamp on half the world.

XI

WINTER IN LORRAINE

Only a winding black streak, that four hundred and
fifty miles of trenches on a flat map. It is difficult to
visualize the whole as you see it in your morning paper,
or to realize the labour it represents in its course through
the mire and over mountain slopes, through villages and
thick forests and across open fields.

Every mile of it was located by the struggle of guns
and rifles and men coming to a stalemate of effort, when
both dug into the earth and neither could budge the
other. It is a line of countless battles and broken hopes;
of charges as brave as men ever made ; a symbol of
skill and dogged patience and eternal vigilance of
striving foe against striving foe.

From the first, the sector from Rheims to Flanders was
most familiar to the public. The world still thinks of
the battle of the Marne as an affair at the door of Paris,
though the heaviest fighting was from Vitry-le-Francois
eastward and the fate of Paris was no less decided on the
fields of Lorraine than on the fields of Champagne. The
storming of Rheims Cathedral became the theme of
thousands of words of print to one word for the defence
of the Plateau d'Amance or the struggle around Lune-
ville. Our knowledge of the war is from glimpses
through the curtain of military secrecy which was
drawn tight over Lorraine and the Vosges, shrouded in
mountain mists. This is about Lorraine in winter,
when the war was six months old.

But first, on our way, a word about Paris, which I had
not seen since September. At the outset of the war,
Parisians who had not gone to the front were in a

120

PARIS THREE MONTHS LATER 121

trance of suspense ; they were magnetized by the
tragic possibilities of the hour. The fear of disaster was
in their hearts, though they might deny it to themselves.
They could think of nothing but France. Now they
realized that the best way to help France was by going
on with their work at home. Paris was trying to be
normal, but no Parisian was making the bluff that Paris
was normal. The Gallic lucidity of mind prevented
such self-deception.

Is it normal to have your sons, brothers, and hus-
bands up to their knees in icy water in the trenches, in
danger of death every minute ? This attitude seems
human ; it seems logical. One liked the French for it.
One liked them for boasting so little. In their effort at
normality they had accomplished more than they
realized ; for one-sixth of the wealth of France was in
German hands. A line of steel made the rest safe for
those not at the front to pursue the routine of peace.

When I had been in Paris in September there was no
certainty about railroad connections anywhere. You
went to the station and took your chances, governed by
the movement of troops, not to mention other con-
ditions. This time I took the regular noon express to
Nancy, as I might have done to Marseilles, or Rome, or
Madrid, had I chosen. The sprinkling of quiet army
officers on the train were in the new uniform of peculiar
steely grey, in place of the target blue and red. But for
them and the number of women in mourning and one
other circumstance, the train might have been bound
for Berlin, with Nancy only a stop on the way.

The other circumstance was the presence of a soldier
in the vestibule who said : " Voire laisser-passer, mon-
sieur, s'il vous plait ! " If you had a laisser-passer, he
was most polite ; but if you lacked one, he would also
have been most polite and so would the guard that took
you in charge at the next station. In other words,
monsieur, you must have something besides a railroad

122 WINTER IN LORRAINE

ticket if you are on a train that runs past the fortress of
Toul and your destination is Nancy. You must have a
military pass, which was never given to foreigners if
they were travelling alone in the zone of military
operations. The pulse of the Frenchman beats high, his
imagination bounds, when he looks eastward. To the
east are the lost provinces and the frontier drawn by the
war of '70 between French Lorraine and German
Lorraine. This gave our journey interest.

Nancy, capital of French Lorraine, is so near Metz,
the great German fortress town of German Lorraine,
that excursion trains used to run to Nancy in the opera
season. " They are not running this winter," say the
wits of Nancy. " For one reason, we have no opera —
and there are other reasons."

An aeroplane from the German lines has only to toss
a bomb in the course of an average reconnaissance on
Nancy if it chooses; for Zeppelins are within easy
reach of Nancy. But here was Nancy as brilliantly
lighted at nine in the evening as any city of its size at
home. Our train, too, had run with the windows un-
shaded. After the darkness of London, and after
English trains with every window-shade closely drawn,
this was a surprise.

It was a threat, an anticipation, that darkened
London, while Nancy knew fulfilment. Bombardment
and bomb-dropping were nothing new to Nancy. The
spice of danger gives a fillip to business to the town
whose population heard the din of the most thunder-
ously spectacular action of the war echoing among the
surrounding hills. Nancy saw the enemy beaten back.
Now she was so close to the front that she felt the throb
of the army's life.

" Don't you ever worry about aerial raids ? " I asked
madame behind the counter at the hotel.

" Do the men in the trenches worry about them ? "
she answered. " We have a much easier time than they.

LIFE IN NANCY 123

Why shouldn't we share some of their dangers ? And
when a Zeppelin appears and our guns begin firing, we
all feel like soldiers under fire."

" Are all the population here as usual ? '

" Certainly, monsieur! " she said. " The Germans
can never take Nancy. The French are going to take
Metz!"

The meal which that hotel restaurant served was as
good as in peace times. Who deserves a good meal if
not the officer who comes in from the front ? And
madame sees that he gets it. She is as proud of her
poulet en casserole as any commander of a soixante-
quinze battery of its practice. There was steam heat,
too, in the hotel, which gave an American a homelike
feeling.

In a score of places in the Eastern States you see
landscapes with high hills like the spurs of the Vosges
around Nancy sprinkled with snow and under a blue
mist. And the air was dry ; it had the life of our air.
Old Civil War men who had been in the Tennessee
Mountains or the Shenandoah Valley would feel per-
fectly at home in such surroundings ; only the fore-
ground of farm land which merges into the crests
covered with trees in the distance is more finished. The
people were tilling it hundreds of years before we began
tilling ours. They till well ; they make Lorraine a rich
province of France.

With guns pounding in the distance, boys in their
capes were skipping and frolicking on their way to
school ; housewives were going to market, and the
streets were spotlessly clean. All the men of Nancy not
in the army pursued their regular routine while the
army went about its business of throwing shells at the
Germans. On the dead walls of the buildings were
M. Deschanel's speech in the Chamber of Deputies,
breathing endurance till victory, and the call for the
class of recruits of 1915, which you will find on the walls

124 WINTER IN LORRAINE

of the towns of all France beside that of the order of
mobilization in August, now weather-stained. Nancy
seemed, if anything, more French than any interior
French town. Though near the border, there is no
touch of German influence. When you walked through
the old Place Stanislaus, so expressive of the archi-
tectural taste bred for centuries in the French, you
understand the glow in the hearts of this very French
population which made them unconscious of danger
while their flag was flying over this very French city.

No two Christian peoples we know are quite so differ-
ent as the French and the Germans. To each every
national thought and habit incarnates a patriotism
which is in defiance of that on the other side of the
frontier. Over in America you may see the good in
both sides, but no Frenchman and no German can on
the Lorraine frontier. If he should, he would no longer
be a Frenchman or a German in time of war.

At our service in front of the hotel were waiting two
mortals in goatskin coats, with scarfs around their ears
and French military caps on top of the scarfs. They
were official army chauffeurs. If you have ridden through
the Alleghenies in winter in an open car, why explain
that seeing the Vosges front in a motor-car may be a
joy ride to an Eskimo, but not to your humble servant ?
But the roads were perfect ; as good wherever we went
in this mountain country as from New York to Pough-
keepsie. I need not tell you this if you have been in
France ; but you will be interested to know that Lor-
raine keeps her roads in perfect repair even in war time.

Crossing the swollen Moselle on a military bridge,
twisting in and out of valleys and speeding through
villages, one saw who were guarding the army's secrets,
but little of the army itself and few signs of transporta-
tion on a bleak, snowy day. At the outskirts of every
village, at every bridge, and at intervals along the road,
Territorial sentries stopped the car. Having an officer

ROAD SCENES IN THE VOSGES 125

along was not sufficient to let you whizz by important
posts. He must show his pass. Every sentry was a
reminder of the hopelessness of being a correspondent
these days without official sanction.

The sentries were men in the thirties. In Belgium,
their German counterpart, the Landsturm, were the
monitors of a journey that I made. No troops are more
military than the first line Germans ; but in the snap
and spirit of his salute the French Territorial has an
elan, a martial fervour, which the phlegmatic German
in the thirties lacks.

Occasionally we passed scattered soldiers in the village
streets, or a door opened to show a soldier figure in the
doorway. The reason that we were not seeing anything
of the army was the same that keeps the men and boys
who are on the steps of the country grocery in summer
at home around the stove in winter. All these villages
were full of reservists who were indoors. They could
be formed in the street ready for the march to any part
of the line where a concentrated attack was made almost
as soon after the alarm as a fire engine starts to a fire.

Now, imagine your view of a cricket match limited
to the bowler : and that is all you see in the low country
of Flanders. You have no grasp of what all the noise
and struggle means, for you cannot see over the
shoulders of the crowd. But in Lorraine you have only
to ascend a hill and the moves in the chess game of war
are clear.

A panorama unfolds as our car takes a rising grade to
the village of Ste. Genevieve. We alight and walk along
a bridge, where the sentry of a lookout is on watch. He
seems quite alone, but at our approach a dozen of his
comrades come out of their " home " dug in the hillside.
Wherever you go about the frozen country of Lorraine
it is a case of flushing soldiers from their shelters. A
small, semicircular table is set up before the lookout,
like his compass before a mariner. Here run blue pencil

126 WINTER IN LORRAINE

lines of direction pointing to Pont-a-Mousson, to
Chateau-Salins, and other towns. Before us to the
east rose the tree-clad crests of the famous Grand
Couronne of Nancy, and faintly in the distance we could
see Metz.

" Those guns that I hear, are they firing across the
frontier ? " I asked. For some French batteries com-
mand one of the outer forts of Metz.

" No, they are near Pont-a-Mousson."

To the north the little town of Pont-a-Mousson lay in
the lap of the river bottom, and across the valley, to the
west, the famous Bois le Pretre. More guns were speak-
ing from the forest depths, which showed great scars
where the trees had been cut to give fields of fire. This
was well to the rear of our position, marking the
boundaries of the wedge that the Germans drove into
the French lines, with its point at St. Mihiel, in trying
to isolate the forts of Verdun and Toul. Doubtless you
have noticed that wedge on the snake maps and have
wondered about it, as I have. It looks so narrow that
the French ought to be able to shoot across it from both
sides. If so, why don't the Germans widen it ?

Well, for one thing, a quarter of an inch on a map is
a good many miles of ground. The Germans cannot
spread their wedge because they would have to climb the
walls of an alley. That was a fact as clear to the eye as
the valley of the Hudson from West Point. The Ger-
mans occupy an alley within an alley, as it were. They
have their own natural defences for the edges of their
wedge ; or, where they do not, they lie cheek by jowl
with the French in such thick woods as the Bois le Pretre.

At our feet, looking toward Metz, an apron of culti-
vated land swept down for a mile or more to a forest
edge. This was cut by lines of trenches, whose barbed-
wire protection pricked a blanket of snow.

" Our front is in those woods," explained the colonel
who was in command of the point.

VETERAN FRENCH SOLDIERS 127

" A major when the war began and an officer of
reserves," mon capitaine, who had brought us out from
Paris, explained about the colonel. We were soon used
to hearing that a colonel had been a major or a major a
captain before the Kaiser had tried to get Nancy.
There was quick death and speedy promotion at the
great battle of Lorraine, as there was at Gettysburg and
Antietam.

" They charged out of the woods, and we had a
battalion of reserves — here are some of them — mes
poilus ! "

He turned affectionately to the bearded fellows in
scarfs who had come out of the shelter. They smiled
back. Now, as we all chatted together, ofhcer-and-man
distinction disappeared. We were in a family party.

It was all very simple to mes poilus, that first fight.
They had been told to hold. If Ste. Genevieve were
lost, the Amance plateau was in danger, and the loss of
the Amance plateau meant the fall of Nancy. Some
military martinets say that the soldiers of France think
too much. In this case thinking may have taught them
responsibility. So they held ; they lay tight, these
reserves, and kept on firing as the Germans swarmed
out of the woods.

" And the Germans stopped there, monsieur. They
hadn't very far to go, had they ? But the last fifty
yards, monsieur, are the hardest travelling when you
are trying to take a trench."

They knew, these poilus, these veterans. Every
soldier who serves in Lorraine knows. They themselves
have tried to rush out of the edge of a woods across an
open space against intrenched Germans and found the
shoe on the other foot.

Now the fields in the foreground down to the woods'
edge were bare of any living thing. You had to take
mon capitaine' s word for it that there were any soldiers
in front of us.

12 WINTER IN LORRAINE

" The Boches are a good distance away at this point,"
he said. " They are in the next woods."

A broad stretch of snow lay between the two clumps
of woods. It was not worth while for either side to try
to get possession of the intervening space. At the first
movement by either French or Germans the woods
opposite would hum with rifle fire and echo with cannon-
ading. So, like rival parties of Arctic explorers waiting
out the Arctic winter, they watched each other. But
if one force or the other napped and the other caught
him at it, then winter would not stay a brigade com-
mander's ambition. Three days later in this region the
French, by a quick movement, got a good bag of prisoners
to make a welcome item for the daily French official
bulletin.

" We wait and the Germans wait on spring for any
big movement," said the colonel. " Men can't lie out
all night in the advance in weather like this. In that

direction " He indicated a part of the line where

the two armies were facing each other across the old
frontier. Back and forth they had fought, only to
arrive where they had begun.

There was something else which the colonel wished us
to see before we left the hill of Ste. Genevieve. It
appealed to his Gallic sentiment, this quadrilateral of
stone on the highest point where legend tells that
" Jovin, a Christian and very faithful, vanquished the
German barbarians 366 A.D."

" We have to do as well in our day as Jovin in his,"
remarked the colonel.

The church of Ste. Genevieve was badly smashed by
shell. So was the church in the village on the Plateau
d'Amance, as are most churches in this district of Lor-
raine. Framed through a great gap in the wall of the
church of Amance was an immense Christ on the cross
without a single abrasion, and a pile of debris at its feet.
After seeing as many ruined churches as I have, one

A FRENCH OFFENSIVE 129

becomes almost superstitious at how often the figures
of Christ escape. But I have also seen effigies of Christ
blown to bits.

Anyone who, from an eminence, has seen one battle
fought visualizes another readily when the positions lie
at his feet. Looking out on the field of Gettysburg from
Round Top, I can always get the same thrill that I had
when, seated in a gallery above the Russian and the
Japanese armies, I saw the battle of Liao-yang. In
sight of that Plateau d'Amance, which rises like a great
knuckle above the surrounding country, a battle cover-
ing twenty times the extent of Gettysburg raged, and
one could have looked over a battle-line as far as the
eye may see from a steamer's mast.

An icy gale swept across the white crest of the plateau
on this January day, but it was nothing to the gale of
shells that descended on it in late August and early
September. Forty thousand shells, it is estimated, fell
there. One kicked up fragments of steel on the field
like peanut-shells after a circus has gone. Here were the
emplacements of a battery of French soixante-quinze
within a circle of holes torn by its adversaries' replies
to its fire ; a little farther along, concealed by shrubbery,
the position of another battery which the enemy had
not located.

So that was it! The struggle on the immense
landscape, where at least a quarter of a million men
were killed and wounded, became as simple as some
Brobdingnagian football match. Before the war began
the French would not move a man within five miles of
the frontier lest it be provocative ; but once the issue
was joined they sprang for Alsace and Lorraine, their
imagination magnetized by the thought of the recovery
of the lost provinces. Their Alpine chasseurs, mountain
men of the Alpine and the Pyrenees districts, were
concentrated for the purpose.

I recalled a remark I had heard : " What a pitiful

130 WINTER IN LORRAINE

little offensive that was ! " It was made by one of those
armchair " military experts" who look at a map and
jump at a conclusion. They appear very wise in their
wordiness when real military experts are silent for want
of knowledge. Pitiful, was it ? Ask the Germans who
faced it what they think. Pitiful, that sweep over those
mountain walls and through the passes ? Pitiful, per-
haps, because it failed, though not until it had taken
Chateau-Salins in the north and Mulhouse in the south.
Ask the Germans if they think that it was pitiful ! The
Confederates also failed at Antietam and at Gettysburg,
but the Union army never thought of their efforts as
pitiful.

The French fell back because all the weight of the
German army was thrown against France, while the
Austrians were left to look after the slowly mobilizing
Russians. Two million five hundred thousand men on
their first line the Germans had, as we know now,
against the French twelve hundred thousand and Sir
John French's army fighting one against four. To make
sure of saving Paris as the Germans swung their mighty
flanking column through Belgium, Joffre had to draw
in his lines. The Germans came over the hills as splen-
didly as the French had gone. They struck in all
directions toward Paris. In Lorraine was their left
flank, the Bavarians, meant to play the same part to
the east that von Kluck played to the west. We heard
only of von Kluck ; nothing of this terrific struggle
in Lorraine.

From the Plateau d'Amance you may see how far the
Germans came and what was their object. Between
the fortresses of Epinal and of Toul lies the Trouee de
Mirecourt — the Gap of Mirecourt. It is said that the
French had purposely left it open when they were think-
ing of fighting the Germans on their own frontier and
not on that of Belgium. They wanted the Germans to
make their trial here — and wisely, for with all the des-

A HOST OF GERMAN GUNS 131

perate and courageous efforts of the Bavarian and Saxon
armies they never got near the gap.

If they had forced it, however, with von Kluck
swinging on the other flank, they might have got around
the French army. Such was the dream of German
strategy, whose realization was so boldly and skilfully
undertaken. The Germans counted on their immense
force of artillery, built for this war in the last two years
and out-ranging the French, to demoralize the French
infantry. But the French infantry called the big shells
marmites (saucepans), and made a joke of them and
the death they spread as they tore up the fields in clouds
of earth.

Ah, it took more than artillery to beat back the best
troops of France in a country like this — a country of
rolling hills and fenceless fields cut by many streams
and set among thick woods, where infantry on a bank
or at a forest's edge with rifles and rapid-firers and guns
kept their barrels cool until the charge developed in the
open. Some of these forests are only a few acres in
extent ; others are hundreds of acres. In the dark
depths of one a frozen lake was seen glistening from our
viewpoint on the Plateau d'Amance.

" Indescribable that scene which we witnessed from
here," said an officer who had been on the plateau
throughout the fighting. " All the splendid majesty of
war was set on a stage before you. It was intoxication.
We could see the lines of troops in their retreat and
advance, batteries and charges shrouded in shrapnel
smoke. What hosts of guns the Germans had! They
seemed to be sowing the whole face of the earth with
shells. The roar of the thing was like that of chaos
itself. It was the exhilaration of the spectacle that kept
us from dropping from fatigue. Two weeks of this
business! Two weeks with every unit of artillery and
infantry always ready, if not actually engaged! '

The general in command was directing not one but

132 WINTER IN LORRAINE

many battles, each with a general of its own ; manoeuv-
ring troops across streams and open places, seeking
the cover of forests, with the aeroplanes unable to learn
how many of the enemy were hidden in the forests on
his front, while he tried to keep his men out of angles
and make his movements correspond with those of the
divisions on his right and left. Skill this required ; skill
equivalent to German skill ; the skill which you cannot
command in a month after calling for a million volun-
teers, but which grows through years of organization.

Shall I call the general in chief command Gene-
ral X ? This is according to the custom of anony-
mity. A great modern army like the French is a
machine ; any man, high or low, only a unit of the
machine. In this case the real name of X is Castelnau.
If it lacks the fame which seems its due, that may
be because he was too busy to take the Press into his
confidence. Fame is not the business of French generals
nowadays. It is war. What counted for France was
that he never let the Germans get near the gap at
Mirecourt.

Having failed to reach the gap, the Germans, with
that stubbornness of the offensive which characterizes
them, tried to take Nancy. They got a battery of heavy
guns within range of the city. From a high hill it is
said that the Kaiser watched the bombardment. But
here is a story. As the German infantry advanced to-
ward their new objective they passed a French artillery
officer in a tree. He was able to locate that heavy
battery and able to signal its position back to his own
side. The French concentrated sufficient fire to silence
it after it had thrown forty shells into Nancy. The
same report tells how the Kaiser folded his cloak around
him and walked in silence from his eminence, where the
sun blazed on his helmet. It was not the Germans'
fault that they failed to take Nancy. It was due to the
French,

STRUGGLE FOR NANCY 133

Some time a tablet will be put up to denote the high-
water mark of the German invasion of Lorraine. It
will be between the edge of the forest of Champenoux
and the heights. When the Germans charged from the
cover of the forest to get possession of the road to Nancy,
the French artillery and machine-guns which had held
their fire turned loose. The rest of the story is how the
French infantry, impatient at being held back, swept
down in a counter-attack, and the Germans had to give
up their campaign in Lorraine as they gave up their
campaign against Paris in the early part of September.
Saddest of all lost opportunities to the correspondent
in this war is this fighting in Lorraine. One had only
to climb a hill in order to see everything !

In half an hour, as the officer outlined the positions,
we had lived through the two weeks' fighting ; and,
thanks to the fairness of his story — that of a profes-
sional soldier without illusions — we felt that we had
been hearing history while it was very fresh.

" They are very brave and skilful, the Germans," he
said. " We still have a battery of heavy guns on the
plateau. Let us go and see it."

We went, picking our way among the snow-covered
shell-pits. At one point we crossed a communication
trench, where soldiers could go and come to the guns
and the infantry positions without being exposed to
shell-fire. I noticed that it carried a telephone wire.

" Yes," said the officer ; "we had no ditch during
the fight with the Germans, and we were short of tele-
phone wire for a while ; so we had to carry messages
back and forth as in the old days. It was a pretty warm
kind of messenger service when the German marmites
were falling their thickest."

At length he stopped before a small mound of earth
not in any way distinctive at a short distance on the
uneven surface of the plateau. I did not even notice
that there were three other such mounds. He pointed

134 WINTER IN LORRAINE

to a hole in the ground. I had been used to going through
a manhole in a battleship turret, but not through one
into a field-gun position before aeroplanes played a part
in war.

" Entrez, monsieur ! "

And I stepped down to face the breech of a gun whose
muzzle pointed out of another hole in the timbered roof
covered with earth.

" It's very cosy! " I remarked.

" Oh, this is the shop! The living room is below —
here!"

I descended a ladder into a cellar ten feet below the
gun level, where some of the gunners were lying on a
thick carpet of perfectly dry straw.

" You are not doing much firing these days ? " I
suggested.

" Oh, we gave the Boches a couple this morning so
they shouldn't get cocky thinking they were safe It's
necessary to keep your hand in even in the winter."

" Don't you get lonesome ? "

" No, we shift on and off. We're not here all the
while. It is quite warm in our salon, monsieur, and we
have good comrades. It is war. It is for France.
What would you ? "

Four other gun-positions and four other cellars like
this! Thousands of gun-positions and thousands of
cellars! Man invents new powers of destruction and
man finds a way of escaping them.

As we left the battery we started forward, and sud-
denly out of the dusk came a sharp call. A young
corporal confronted us. Who were we and what busi-
ness had we prowling about on that hill ? If there had
been no officer along and I had not had a laisser-passer
on my person, the American Ambassador to France
would probably have had to get another countryman
out of trouble.

The incident shows how thoroughly the army is

FRENCH SOLDIER CHARACTER 135

policed and how surely. Editors who wonder why their
correspondents are not in the front line catching bullets,
please take notice.

It was dark when we returned to the little village on
the plateau where we had left the car. The place seemed
uninhabited with all the blinds closed. But through one
uncovered window I saw a room full of chatting soldiers.
We went to pay our respects to the colonel in command,
and found him and his staff around a table covered with
oilcloth in the main living-room of a villager's house.
He spoke of his men, of their loyalty and cheerfulness,
as the other commanders had, as if this were his only
boast. These French officers have little " side " ; none
of that toe-the-mark, strutting militarism which the
Germans think necessary to efficiency. They live very
simply on campaign, though if they do get to town for
a few hours they enjoy a good meal. If they did not,
madame at the restaurant would feel that she was not
doing her duty to France.

XII

SMILES AMONG RUINS

Scorched piles of brick and mortar where a home has
been ought to make about the same impression any-
where. When you have gone from Belgium to French
Lorraine, however, you will know quite the contrary.
In Belgium I suffered all the depression which a night-
mare of war's misery can bring ; in French Lorraine I
found myself sharing something of the elation of a man
who looks at a bruised knuckle with the consciousness
that it broke a burglar's jaw.

A Belgian repairing the wreck of his house was a grim,
heartbreaking picture ; a Frenchman of Lorraine re-
pairing the wreck of his house had the light of hard-won
victory, of confidence, of sacrifice made to a great
purpose, of freedom secure for future generations, in his
eyes. The difference was this : The Germans were still
in Belgium ; they were out of French Lorraine for good.
" What matters a shell-hole through my walls and
my torn roof! " said a Lorraine farmer. " Work will
make my house whole. But nothing could ever have
made my heart and soul whole while the Germans
remained. I saw them go, monsieur ; they left us ruins,
but France is ours! "

I had thought it a pretty good thing to see something
of the Eastern French front ; but a better thing was the
happiness I found there.

Mon capitaine had come out from the Ministry of War
in Paris ; but when we set out from Nancy southward,
we had a different local guide, a major belonging to the
command in charge of the region which we were to visit.
He was another example which upsets certain popular
notions of Frenchmen as gesticulating, excitable little
men. Some six feet two in height, he had an eye that
looked straight into yours, a very square chin, and a fine

136

EFFECT OF ARMY LIFE 137

forehead. You had only to look at him and size him up
on points to conclude that he was all there ; that he
knew his work.

" Well, we've got good weather for it to-day, mon-
sieur," said a voice out of a goatskin coat, and I found
we had the same chauffeur as before.

The sun was shining — a warm winter sun like that of
a February thaw in our Northern States — glistening on
the snowy fields and slopes among the forests and tree-
clad hills of the mountainous country. Faces ambushed
in whiskers thought it was a good day for trimming
beards and washing clothes. The sentries along the
roads had their scarfs around their necks instead of over
their ears. A French soldier makes ear muffs, chest
protector, nightcap, and a blanket out of the scarf
which wife or sister knits for him. If any woman who
reads this knits one to send to France she may be sure
that the fellow who received it will get every stitch's
worth out of it.

To-day, then, it was war without mittens. You did
not have to sound the bugle to get soldiers out of their
burrows or their houses. Our first stop was at our own
request, in a village where groups of soldiers were taking
a sun bath. More came out of the doors as we alighted.
They were all in the late twenties or early thirties, men
of a reserve regiment. Some had been clerks, some
labourers, some farmers, some employers, when the
war began. Then they were piou-pious, in French slang ;
then all France prayed godspeed to its beloved piou-
pious. Then you knew the clerk by his pallor ; the
labourer by his hard hands ; the employer by his
manner of command. Now they were poilus — bearded,
hard-eyed veterans ; you could not tell the clerk from
the labourer or the employer from the peasant.

Anyone who saw the tenderfoot pilgrimage to the
Alaskan goldfield in '97-8 and the same crowd six
months later will understand what had happened to

138 SMILES AMONG RUINS

these men. The puny had put on muscle ; the city
dweller had blown his lungs ; the fat man had lost some
adipose ; social differences of habit had disappeared.
The gentleman used to his bath and linen sheets and
the hard-living farmer or labourer — both had had to eat
the same kind of food, do the same work, run the same
risks in battle, and sleep side by side in the houses where
they were lodged and in the dug-outs of the trenches
when it was their turn to occupy them through the
winter. Any " snob " had his edges trimmed by the
banter of his comrades. Their beards accentuated the
likeness of type. A cheery lot of faces and intelligent,
these, which greeted us with curious interest.

' ' Perhaps President Wilson will make peace, ' ' one said.

" When ? "

A shrug of the shoulder, a gesture to the East, and the
answer was :

" When we have Alsace-Lorraine back."

Under a shed their dejeuner was cooking. This meal
at noon is the meal of the day to the average Frenchman
who has only bread and coffee in the morning. They say
that he objects to fighting at luncheon time. That is
the hour when he wants to sit down and forget his work
and laugh and talk and enjoy his eating. The Germans
found this out and tried to take his trenches at the noon
hour. Interference with his gastronomic habits made
him so angry that he dropped the knife and fork for the
bayonet and took back any lost ground in a ferocious
counter-attack. He would teach those " Boches " to
leave him to eat his dejeuner in peace.

That appetizing stew in the kettles in the shed once
more proved that Frenchmen know how to cook. I
didn't blame them for objecting to being shot at by the
Germans when they were about to eat it. The average
French soldier is better fed than at home ; he gets more
meat, for a hungry soldier is usually a poor soldier. It
is a very simple problem with France's fine roads to feed

COMRADESHIP 139

that long line when it is stationary. It is like feeding a
city stretched out over a distance of four hundred and
fifty miles ; a stated number of ounces each day for
each man and a known number of men to feed. From
the railway head trucks and motor-buses take the sup-
plies up to the distributing points. At one place I saw
ten Paris motor-buses, their signs painted over in a
steel-grey to hide them from aeroplanes, and not one of
them had broken down through the war. The French
take good care of their equipment and their clothes ;
they waste no food. As a people is so is their army, and
the French are thrifty by nature.

Father Joffre, as the soldiers call him, is running the
next largest boarding establishment in Europe after the
Kaiser and the Tsar. And he has a happy family. It
seemed to me that life ought to have been utterly dull
for this characteristic group of poilus, living crowded
together all winter in a remote village. Civilians
sequestered in this fashion away from home are inclined
to get grouchy on one another.

One of the officers in speaking of this said that early
in the autumn the reserves were pretty homesick. They
wanted to get back to their wives and children. Nos-
talgia, next to hunger, is the worst thing for a soldier.
Commanders were worried. But as winter wore on the
spirit changed. The soldiers began to feel the spell of
their democratic comradeship. The fact that they had
fought together and survived together played its part ;
and individualism was sunk in the one thought that
they were there for France. The fellowship of a cause
taught them patience, brought them cheer. Another
thing was the increasing sense of team play, of confidence
in victory, which holds a ball team, a business enter-
prise, or an army together. Every day the organization
of the army was improving ; every day that indescri-
bable and subtle element of satisfaction that the
Germans were securely held was growing.

i4o SMILES AMONG RUINS

Every Frenchman saves something of his income ;
madame sees to it that he does. He knows that if he
dies he will not leave wife and children penniless. His
son, not yet old enough to fight, will come on to take
his place. Men at home of twenty-two or -three years
and unmarried, men of twenty-eight or thirty years and
not long married, and men of forty with some money
put by, will, in turn , understand how their own class feels.

In ten minutes you had entered into the hearts of this
single company in a way that made you feel that you
had got into the heart of the whole French army. When
you asked them if they would like to go home they didn't
say " No! " all in a chorus, as if that were what the
colonel had told them to say. They obey the colonel,
but their thoughts are their own. Otherwise, these
ruddy, healthy men, representing the people of France
and not the cafes of Paris, would not keep France a
republic.

Yes, they did want to go home. They did want to go
home. They wanted their wives and babies ; they
wanted to sit down to morning coffee at their own tables.
Lumps rose in their throats at the suggestion. But
they were not going until the German peril was over
for ever. Why stop now, only to have another terrible
war in thirty or forty years ? A peace that would en-
dure must be won. They had thought that out for
themselves. They would not stick to their determina-
tion if they had not. This is the way of democracies.
Thus, everyone was conscious that he was fighting not
merely to win, but for future generations.

"It happened that this great struggle which we had
long feared came in our day, and to us is the duty," said
one. You caught the spirit of comradeship passing the
time with jests at one another's expense. One of the
men who was not a full thirty-third-degree poilu had
compromised with the razor on a moustache as blazing
red as his shock of hair.

\

A CHEERFUL ARMY 141

" I think that the colonel gave him the tip that he
would light the way for Zeppelins ! " said a comrade.

" Envy! Sheer envy! " was the retort. " Look at
him ! " and he pointed at some scraggly bunches on chin
and cheeks which resembled a young grass plat that
had come up badly.

" I don't believe in air-tight beards," was the response.

When I produced a camera, the effect was the same
as it always is with soldiers at the front. They all
wanted to be in the photograph, on the chance that the
folks at home might see how the absent son or father
looked. Would I send them one ? And the address was
like this : " Monsieur Benevent, Corporal of Infantry
18th Company, 5th Battalion, 299th Regiment of
Infantry, Postal Sector No. 121." by which you will
know the rural free delivery methods along the French
front. This address is the one rift in the blank wall of
anonymity which hides the individuality of the millions
under Joffre. Only the army knows the sector and the
numbers of the regiment in that sector. By the same
kind of a card-index system Joffre might lay his hand
on any one of his millions, each a human being with all
a human being's individual emotions, who, to be a good
soldier, must be only one of the vast multitude of
obedient chessmen.

" We are ready to go after them when Father Joffre
says the word," all agreed. Joffre has proved himself
to the democracy, which means the enthusiastic loyalty
of a democracy's intelligence.

" If there are any homesick ones we should find them
among the lot here," said mon capitaine.

These were the men who had not been long married.
They were not yet past the honeymoon period ; they
had young children at home ; perhaps they had become
fathers since they went to war. The younger men of
the first line had the irresponsibility and the ardour of
youth which makes comradeship easy.

142 SMILES AMONG RUINS

But the older men, the Territorials as they are called,
in the late thirties and early forties, have settled down
in life. Their families are established ; their careers
settled ; some of them, perhaps, may enjoy a vacation
from the wife ; for you know madame, in France, with
all her thrift, can be a little bossy, which is not saying
that this is not a proper tonic for her lord. So the old
boys seem the most content in the fellowship of winter
quarters. What they cannot stand are repeated, long,
hard marches ; their legs give out under the load of rifle
and pack. But their hearts are in the war, and right
there is one very practical reason why they will fight
well — and they have fought better as they hardened
with time and the old French spirit revived in their blood.

" Allons, messieurs ! " said the tall major, who wanted
us to see battlefields. It required no escort to tell us
where the battlefield was. We knew it when we came to
it, as you know the point reached by high tide on the
sands — this field where many Gettysburgs were fought
in one through that terrible fortnight in late August and
early September, when the future of France and the
whole world hung in the balance — as the Germans sought
to reach Paris and win a decisive victory over the French
army. Where destruction ended there the German
invasion reached its limit.

Forests and streams and ditches and railway culverts
played their part in tactical surprises, as they did at
Gettysburg ; and cemetery walls, too. In all my battle-
field visits in Europe I have not seen a single cemetery
wall that was not loopholed. But the fences, which
throughout the Civil War offered impediment to charges
and screen to the troops which could reach them first,
were missing. The fields lay in bold stretches, because
it is the business of young boys and girls in Lorraine to
watch the cows and keep them out of the corn.

We stopped at a cross-roads where charges met and
wrestled back and forth in and out of the ditches. Frag-

THE LORRAINE BATTLEFIELD 143

ments of shells appeared as steps scuffed away the thin
coating of snow. I picked up an old French cap, with a
slash in the top that told how its owner came to his end,
and near by a German helmet. For there are souvenirs
in plenty lying in the young wheat which was sown after
the battle was over. Millions of little nickel bullets are
ploughed in with the blood of those who died to take the
Kaiser to Paris and those who died to keep him out in
this fighting across the fields and through the forests,
in a tug-of-war of give-and-take, of men exhausted after
nights and days under fire, men with bloodshot eyes
sunk deep in the sockets, dust-laden, blood-spattered,
with forty years of latent human powder breaking forth
into hell when the war was only a month old and passion
was at a white heat.

Hasty shelter-trenches gridiron the land ; such
trenches as breathless men, dropping after a charge,
threw up hurriedly with the spades that they carry on
their backs to give them a little cover. And there is the
trench that stopped the Germans — the trench which
they charged but could not take. It lies among shell-
holes so thick that you can step from one to another. In
places its crest is torn away, which means that half a
dozen men were killed in a group. But reserves filled
their places. They kept pouring out their stream of lead
which German courage could not endure. Thus far and
no farther the invasion came in that wheat-field which
will be ever memorable.

We went up a hill once crowned by one of those
clusters of farm-buildings of stone and mortar, where
house and stables and granaries are close together. All
around were bare fields. Those farm-buildings stood up
like a mountain peak. The French had the hill and lost
it and recovered it. Whichever side had it, the other
was bound to bathe it in shells because it commanded
the country around. The value of property meant noth-
ing. All that counted was military advantage. Because

144 SMILES AMONG RUINS

churches are often on hill-tops, because they are bound
to be used for lookouts, is why they get torn to pieces.
When two men are fighting for life they don't bother
about upsetting a table with a vase, or notice any "Keep
off the grass " signs ; no, not even if the family Bible
be underfoot.

None of the roof, none of the superstructure of these
farm-buildings was left ; only the lower walls, which
were eighteen inches thick and in places penetrated by
the shells. For when a Frenchman builds a farmhouse
he builds it to last a few hundred years. The farm wind-
mill was as twisted as a birdcage that has been rolled
under a trolley car, but a large hayrake was unharmed.
Such is the luck of war. I made up my mind that if I
ever got under shell-fire I would make for the hayrake
and avoid the windmill.

Our tall major pointed out all the fluctuating posi-
tions during the battle. It was like hearing a chess
match explained from memory by an expert. Words to
him were something precious. He made each one count
as he would the shots from his cannon. His narrative
had the lucidity of a terse judge reviewing evidence.
The battlefield was etched on his mind in every im-
portant phase of its action.

Not once did he speak in abuse of the enemy. The
staff officer who directs steel ringing on steel is too busy
thrusting and keeping guard to indulge in diatribes. To
him the enemy is a powerful impersonal devil, who must
be beaten. When I asked about the conduct of the
Germans in the towns they occupied, his lip tightened
and his eyes grew hard.

" I'm afraid it was pretty bad ! " he said ; as if he felt,
besides the wrong to his own people, the shame that men
who had fought so bravely should act so ill. I think his
attitude toward war was this : " We will die for France,
but calling the Germans names will not help us to win.
It only takes breath."

TRENCHES AND MORE TRENCHES 145

" A lions, messieurs ! "

As our car ran up a gentle hill we noticed two soldiers
driving a load of manure. This seemed a pretty prosaic,
even humiliating, business, in a poetic sense, for the
brave poilus, veterans of Lorraine's great battle. But
Father Joffre is a true Frenchman of his time. Why
should not the soldiers help the farmers whose sons are
away at the front and perhaps helping farmers back of
some other point of the line ?

Over the crest of the hill we came on long lines of
soldiers bearing timbers and fascines for trench-building,
which explained why some of the villages were empty.
A fascine is something usually made of woven branches
which will hold dirt in position. The woven wicker
cases for shells which the German artillery uses and
leaves behind when it has to quit the field in a hurry,
make excellent fascines, and a number that I saw were
of this ready-made kind. After carrying shell for killing
Frenchmen they were to protect the lives of Frenchmen.
Near by other soldiers were turning up a strip of fresh
earth against the snow, which looked like a rip in the
frosting of a chocolate cake.

' How do you like this kind of war? " we asked. It is
the kind that irrigationists and subway excavators make.

' We've grown to be very fond of it," was the answer.

' It is a cultivated taste, which becomes a passion with

experience. After you have been shot at in the open

you want all the earth you can get between you and the

bullets."

Now we alighted from the motor-car and went for-
ward on foot. We passed some eight lines of trenches
before we came to the one where we were to stop. A
practised military eye had gone over all that ground ; a
practised military hand had laid out each trench. After
the work was done the civilian's eye could grasp the
principle. If one trench were taken, the men knew
exactly how to fall back on the next, which commanded

146 SMILES AMONG RUINS

the ground they had left. The trenches were not con-
tinuous. There were open spaces left purposely. All
that front was literally locked, and double and triple
locked, with trenches. Break through one barred door
and there is another and another confronting you. Con-
sidering the millions of burrowing and digging and
watching soldiers, it occurred to one that if a marmite
(saucepan) came along and buried our little party, our
loss would not be as much noticed as if a piece of coping
from a high building had fallen and extinguished us on
Broadway, which would be a relatively novel way of
dying. Being killed in war had long ceased to be a
novelty on the continent of Europe.

We seemed in a dead world, except for the leisurely,
hoarse, muffled reports of a French gun in the woods on
either side of the open space where we stood. Through
our glasses we could see quite clearly the line of the
German front trench, which was in the outskirts of a
village on higher ground than the French. Not a human
being was visible. Both sides were watching for any move
of the other, meanwhile lying tight under cover. By
day they were marooned. All supplies and all reliefs of
men who are to take their turn in front go out by night.

There were no men in the trench where we stood ;
those who would man it in case of danger were in the
adjoining woods, where they had only to cut down sap-
lings and make shelters to be as comfortable as in a
winter resort camp in the Adirondacks. Any minute
they might receive a call — which meant death for many.
But they were used to that, and their card games went
on none the less merrily.

" No farther ? " we asked our major.

" No farther ! " he said. " This is risk enough for you.
It looks very peaceful, but the enemy could toss in some
marmites if it pleased him." Perhaps he was exagger-
ating the risk for the sake of a realistic effect on the
sightseers. No matter ! In time one was to have risks

" BOTHERING " A GERMAN TRENCH 147

enough in trenches. It was on such an occasion as this,
on another part of the French line, that two correspon-
dents slipped away from the officers conducting them,
though their word of honour was given not to do so —
which adds another reason for military suspicion of the
Press. The officers rang up the nearest telephone which
connected with the front trenches, the batteries, and
regimental and brigade headquarters, to apprehend two
men of such-and-such description. They were taken as
easily as a one-eyed, one-eared man, with a wooden leg
and red hair would be in trying to get out of police head-
quarters when the doormen had his Bertillon photo-
graph and measurements to go by.

That battery hidden from aerial observation in the
thick forest kept up its slow firing at intervals. It was
" bothering " one of the German trenches. Fiendish
the consistent regularity with which it kept on, and so
easy for the gunners. They had only to slip in a shell,
swing a breech-lock home, and pull a lanyard. The
German guns did not respond because they could not
locate the French battery. They may have known that
it was somewhere in the forest, but firing at two or three
hundred acres of wood on the chance of reaching some
guns heavily protected by earth and timbering was
about like tossing a pea from the top of the Washington
Monument on the chance of hitting a four-leafed clover
on the lawn below.

Our little group remained, not standing in the trench
but back of it, in full relief for some time ; for the Ger-
man gunners refused to play for realism by sending us a
marmite. Probably they had seen us through the tele-
scope at the start and concluded we weren't worth a
shot. In the first months of the war such a target would
have received a burst of shells, for the fun of seeing us
scatter, if nothing else. Then ammunition was plentiful
and the sport of shooting had not lost its zest ; but in
these winter days orders were not to waste ammunition.

148 SMILES AMONG RUINS

The factories must manufacture a supply ahead for the
summer campaign. There must be fifteen dollars' worth
of target in sight, say, for the smallest shell costs that ;
and the shorter you are of shells the more valuable the
target must be. Besides, firing a cannon had become as
commonplace a function to both French and German
gunners as getting up to put another stick of wood in
the stove or going to open the door to take a letter from
the postman.

We had glimpses of other trenches ; but this is not
the place in this book to write of trenches. We shall
see trenches till we are weary of them later. We are
going direct to Gerbeviller which was — emphasis on the
past tense — a typical little Lorraine town of fifteen hun-
dred inhabitants. Look where you would now, as we
drove along the road, and you saw churches without
steeples, houses with roofs standing on sections of walls,
houses smashed into bits.

" I saw no such widespread destruction as this in
Belgium! " I exclaimed.

"There was no such fighting in Belgium," was the
answer.

Of course not, except in the south-western corner,
where the armies still face each other.

" Not all the damage was done by the Germans," the
major explained. " Naturally, when they were pouring
in death from the cover of a house, our guns let drive at
that house," he went on. " The owners of the houses
that were hit by our shells are rather proud — proud of
our marksmanship, proud that we gave the unwelcome
guest a hot pill to swallow."

For ten days the Bavarians had Gerbeviller. They
tore it to pieces before they got it, then burned the re-
mains because they said the population sniped at them.
All the orgy of Louvain was repeated here, unchronicled
to our people at home. The church looks like a Swiss
cheese from shell-holes. Its steeple was bound to be an

SISTER JULIE 149

observation post, reasoned the Germans ; so they poured
shells into it. But the brewery had a tall chimney which
was an even better lookout, and the brewery is the one
building unharmed in the town. The Bavarians knew
that they would need that for their commissariat. For
a Bavarian will not fight without his beer. The land was
littered with barrels after they had gone. I saw some in
trenches occupied by Bavarian reserves not far back of
where their firing-line had been.

' However, the fact that the brewery is intact and the
church in ruins does not prove that a brewery is better
than a church. It only proves which is the Lord's side in
this war," said Sister Julie. But I get ahead of my story.

In the middle of the main street were half a dozen
smoke-blackened houses which remained standing, an
oasis in the sea of destruction, with doors and windows
intact facing gaps where doors and windows had been.
We entered with a sense of awe of the chance which had
spared these buildings.

" Sister Julie! " the major called.

A short, sturdy nun of about sixty years answered
cheerily and appeared in the dark hall. She led us into
the sitting-room, where she spryly placed chairs for our
little party. She was smiling ; her eyes were sparkling
with a hospitable and kindly interest in us, while I felt,
on my part, that thrill of curiosity that one always has
when he meets some celebrated person for the first time
— curiosity no less keen than if I were to meet Barbara
Frietchie.

Through all that battle of ten days, with the cannon
never silent day or night, with shells screaming over-
head and crashing into houses ; through ten days of
thunder and lightning and earthquake, she and her four
sister associates remained in Gerbeviller. When the
town was fired they moved from one building to another.
They nursed both wounded French and Germans : also
wounded townspeople who could not flee with the others.

150 SMILES AMONG RUINS

" You were not frightened ? You did not think of
going away ? " she was asked.

" Frightened ? " she answered. " I had not time to
think of that. Go away ? How could I when the Lord's
work had come to me ?

President Poincare went in person to give her the
Legion of Honour, the first given to a woman in this war ;
so rarely given to a woman, and here bestowed with the
love of a nation. Sister Marie was in the kitchen at the
time, cooking the meal for the sick for whom the sisters
are still caring. So Sister Julie took the President of
France into the kitchen to meet Sister Marie, quite as
she would take you or me. A human being is simply a
human being to Sister Julie, to be treated courteously ;
and great men may not cause a meal for the sick to burn.
After the complexity of French politics, President Poin-
care was anything but unfavourably impressed by the
incident.

" He was such a little man, I could not believe at
first that he could be President," she said. " I thought
that the President of France would be a big man. But
he was very agreeable and, I am sure, very wise. Then
there were other men with him, a Monsieur de-de-Des-
chanel, who was president of something or other in
Paris, and Monsieur du-du — yes, that was it, Du Bag.
He also is president of something in Paris. They were
very agreeable, too."

" And your Legion of Honour ? "

"Oh, my medal that M. le President gave me ! I keep
that in a drawer. I do not wear it every day when I am
in my working-clothes."

" Have you ever been to Paris ? "

" No, monsieur."

" They will make a great ado over you when you go."

" I must stay in Gerbeviller. If I stayed during the
fighting and when the Germans were here, why should I
leave now ? Gerbeviller is my home. There is much to

WHAT THE NUNS SAW 151

do here and there will be more to do when the people
who were driven away return."

These nuns saw their townspeople stood up against a
wall and shot ; they saw their townspeople killed by
shells. The cornucopia of war's horrors was emptied at
their door. And women of a provincial town, who had
led peaceful, cloistered lives, they did not blench or
falter in the presence of ghastliness which only men are
supposed to have the stoicism to witness.

What feature of the nightmare had held most vividly
in Sister Julie's mind? Itishardtosay; but the one which
she dwelt on was about the boy and the cow. The in-
vaders, when they came in, ordered that no inhabitant
leave his house, on pain of death. A boy of ten took his
cow to pasture in the morning as usual. He did not see
anything wrong in that. The cow ought to go to pasture.
And he was shot, for he broke a military regulation. He
might have been a spy using the cow as a blind. War
does not bother to discriminate. It kills.

Sister Julie can enjoy a joke, particularly on the Ger-
mans, and her cheerful smile and genuine laugh are a
lesson to all people who draw long faces in time of
trouble and weep over spilt milk. A buoyant tempera-
ment and unshaken faith carried her through her ordeal.
Though her hair is white, youth's optimism and confi-
dence in the future and the joy of victory for France
overshadowed the present. The town and church would
be rebuilt ; children would play in the streets again ;
there was a lot of the Lord's work to do yet.

In every word and thought she is French — French in
her liveliness of spirit and quickness of comprehension ;
wholly French there on the borderland of Germany. If
we only went to the outskirts of the town, she reminded
us, we could see how the soldiers of her beloved France
fought and why she was happy to have remained in
Gerbeviller to welcome them back.

In sight of that intact brewery and that wreck of a

152 SMILES AMONG RUINS

church is a gentle slope of open field, cut by a road.
Along the crest were many mounds as thick as the
graves of a cemetery, and by the side of the road was a
temporary monument above a big mound, surrounded
by a sanded walk and a fence . The dead had been thickest
at this point, and here they had been laid in a vast grave.
The surviving comrades had made that monument ;
and, in memory of what the dead had fought for, the liv-
ing said that they were not yet ready to quit fighting.

Standing on this crest, you were a thousand yards
away from the edge of a woods. German aeroplanes had
seen the French massing for a charge under the cover of
that crest ; but French aeroplanes could not see what
was in the woods. Rifles and machine-guns poured a
spray of lead across the crest when the French appeared.
But the French, who were fighting for Sister Julie's
town, would not stop their rush at first. They kept on,
as Pickett's men did when the Federal guns riddled their
ranks with grapeshot. This accounts for many of the
mounds being well beyond the crest. The Germans
made a mistake in firing too soon. They would have
made a heavier killing if they had allowed the charge to
go farther. After the French fell back, for two days and
nights their wounded lay out on that field without water
or food, between the two forces, and if their comrades
approached to give succour the machine-guns blazed
more death, because the Germans did not want to let
the French dig a trench on the crest. After two days
the French forced the Germans out of the woods by
hitting them from another point.

We went over the field of another charge half a mile
away. There a French regiment put a stream with a
single bridge at their back — which requires some nerve
— and charged a German trench on rising ground. They
took it. Then they tried to take the woods beyond.
Before they were checked twenty-two officers out of a
total of thirty fell. But they did not give up the ground

IN LUNEVILLE AGAIN 153

they had won. They burrowed into the earth in a
trench of their own, and when help came they put the
Germans out of the woods.

The men of this regiment were not first line, but the
older fellows — men of the type we stopped to chat with
in the village — hastening to the front when the war
began. Their officers were mostly reserves, too, who left
civil occupations at the call to arms. One of the eight
survivors of the thirty was with us, a stocky little man,
hardly looking the hero or the soldier. I expressed my
admiration, and he answered quietly : "It was for
France ! ' How often I have heard that as a reason for
courage or sacrifice! The enemies of France have
learned to respect it, though they had a poor opinion of
the French army before the war began.

" That railroad bridge yonder the Germans left intact
when they occupied it because they were certain that
they would need it to supply their troops when they
took the Gap of Mirecourt and surrounded the French
army," I was told. " However, they had to go in such a
hurry that they failed to mine it. They must have fired
five hundred shells afterwards to destroy it, in vain."

It was dusk when we entered the city of Luneville for
the second time. Whole blocks lay in ruins ; others
only showed where shells had crashed into walls. It is
hard to estimate just how much damage shell-fire has
done to a town, for you see the effects only where they
have struck on the street sides and not when they strike
in the centre of the block. But Luneville has certainly
suffered as much as Louvain, only we did not hear about
it. Grim, sad Louvain, with its German sentries among
the ruins! Happy, triumphant Luneville, with its
poilus instead of German sentries !

" We are going to meet the mayor," said the major.

First we went to his office. But that was a mistake.
We were invited to his house, which was a fine, old,
eighteenth-century building. If you could transport it

154 SMILES AMONG RUINS

to New York some arms-and-ammunition millionaire
would give half a million dollars for it. The hallway was
smoke-blackened and a burnt spot showed where the
enemy had tried to set it on fire before evacuating the
town. Ascending a handsome old staircase, we were in
rooms with gilded mirrors and carved mantels, where
we were introduced to His Honour, a lively man of some
forty years.

" I have been in Amerique two months. So much
English do I speak. No more ! " said the mayor merrily,
and introduced us in turn to his wife, who spoke not even
"so much" English, but French as fast and a^ piquantly
as none but a Frenchwoman can. Her only son, who was
seventeen, was going up with the 1916 class of recruits
very soon. He was a sturdy youngster ; a type of
Young France who will make the France of the future.

" You hate to see him go ? " I asked.

" It is for France! " she answered.

We had cakes and tea and a merrier — at least, a more
heartfelt — party than at any mayor's reception in time
of peace. Everybody talked. For the French do know
how to talk, when they have not turned grim, silent
soldiers. I heard story on story of the German occupa-
tion ; and how the mayor was put in jail and held as a
hostage ; and what a German general said to him when
he was brought in as a prisoner to be interrogated in his
own house, which the general occupied as headquarters.

Among the guests was the wife of a French general in
her Red Cross cap. She might see her husband once a
week by meeting him on the road between the city and
the front. He could not afford to be any farther from
his post, lest the Germans spring a surprise. The extent
of the information which he gave her was that all went
well for France. Father Joffre plays no favourites in
his discipline.

Happy , happy Lorraine in the midst of its ruins ! Happy
because her adored tricolour floats over those ruins.

XIII

A ROAD OF WAR I KNOW

Other armies go to war across the land, but the British
go across the sea. They take the Channel ferry in order
to reach the front. Theirs is the home road of war to
me ; the road of my affections, where men speak my
mother tongue. It begins on the platform at Victoria
Station, with the khaki of officers and men, returning
from leave, relieved by the warmer colours of women
who have come to say good-bye to those they love. In
five hours from the time of starting one may be across
that ribbon of salt water, which means much in isolation
and little in distance, and in the trenches.

That veteran regular — let us separate him from the
crowd — is a type I have often seen, a type that has be-
come as familiar as one's neighbours in one's own town.
We will call him the tenth man. That is, of every ten
men who went to the front a year ago in his battalion,
nine are gone. All of the hardships and all of the terrors
of war he has witnessed : men dropped neatly by a
bullet ; men mangled by shells.

His khaki is spotless, thanks to his wife, who has
dressed in her best for the occasion. Terrible as war
itself, but new, that hat of hers, which probably repre-
sented a good deal of looking into windows and pricing ;
and her gown of the cheapest material, drooping from
her round shoulders, is the product of the poor dress-
making skill of hands which show only too well who does
all the housework at home. The children, a boy of four
and a girl of seven, are in their best, too, with faces
scrubbed till they shine.

You will see like scenes in stations at home when the
father has found work in a distant city and is going on

*55

156 A ROAD OF WAR I KNOW

ahead to get established before the family follow him.
Such incidents are common in civil life ; they became
common at Victoria Station. What is common has no
significance, editors say.

When the time came to go through the gate, the
veteran picked the boy up in his arms and pressed him
very close and the little girl looked on wonderingly,
while the mother was not going to make it any harder
for the father by tears. " Good-bye, Tom! " she said.
So his name was Tom, this tenth man.

I spoke with him. His battalion was full with recruits.
It had been kept full. But, considering the law of
chance, what about the surviving one out of an original
ten?

" Yes, I've had my luck with me," he said. " Pro-
bably my turn will come. Maybe I'll never see the
wife and kids again."

The morning roar of London had begun. That station
was a small spot in the city. There were not enough
officers and men taking the train to make up a day's
casualty list ; for ours was only a small party returning
from leave. The transports, unseen, carried the multi-
tudes. Wherever one had gone in England he had seen
soldiers and wherever he went in France he was to see
still more soldiers. England had become an armed
camp ; and England plodded on, " muddled " on, pre-
paring, ever preparing, to forge in time of war the
thunderbolt for war which was undreamed of in time of
peace when other nations were forging their thunder-
bolts.

Still the recruiting posters called for more soldiers and
the casualty lists appeared day after day with the regu-
larity of want advertisements. Imagine eight million
men under arms in the United States and you have the
equivalent to what England did by the volunteer sys-
tem. The more there were the more pessimistic became
the British Press. Pessimism brought in recruits. Bad

CROSSING THE CHANNEL 157

news made England take another deep breath of energiz-
ing determination. It was the last battle which was de-
cisive. She had always won that. She would win it again.

They talk of war aboard the Pullman, after officers
have waved their hands out of the windows to their
wives, quite as if they were going to Scotland for a week-
end instead of back to the firing-line. British phlegm
this is called. No, British habit, I should say, the race-
bred, individualistic quality of never parading emotions
in public ; the instinct of keeping things which are one's
own to one's self. Personally, I like this way. In one
form or another, as the hedges fly by the train windows,
the subject is always war. War creeps into golf, or
shooting, or investments, or politics. Only one sugges-
tion quite frees the mind from the omnipresent theme :
Will the Channel be smooth ? The Germans have noth-
ing to do with that. It is purely a matter of weather.
Bad sailors are more worried about the crossing than
about the shell-fire they are going to face.

With bad sailors or good sailors, the significant thing
which had become a commonplace was that the Channel
was a safely-guarded British sea lane. In all my cross-
ings I was never delayed. For England had one thunder-
bolt ready forged when the war began. The only sub-
marines, or destroyers, or dirigibles that one saw were
hers. Antennae these of the great fleet waiting with the
threat of stored lightning ready to be flashed from gun-
mouths ; a threat as efficacious as action, in nowise
mysterious or subtle, but definite as steel and powder,
speaking the will of a people in their chosen field of
power, felt over all the seas of the world, coast of Maine
and the Carolinas no less than Labrador. Thousands of
transports had come and gone, carrying hundreds of
thousands of soldiers and food for men and guns to India ;
and on the high road to India, to Australia, to San
Francisco, shipping went its way undisturbed by any-
thing that dives or flies.

158 A ROAD OF WAR I KNOW

The same white hospital ships lying in that French
harbour ; the same line of grey, dusty-looking ambu-
lances parked on the quay ! Everybody in the one-time
sleepy, week-end tourist resort seems to be in uniform ;
to have something to do with war. All surroundings
become those of war long before you reach the front.
That knot of civilians, waiting their turn for another
examination of the same kind as that on the other side
of the Channel, have shown good reasons for going to
Paris to the French Consul in London, or they might not
proceed even this far on the road of war. They seem
outcasts — a humble lot in the variegated costumes of
the civil world — outcasts from the disciplined world in
its pattern garb of khaki. Their excuse for not being in
the game is that they are too old or that they are women.
For now the war has sucked into its vortex the great
majority of those who are strong enough to fight or
work.

A traveller might be a spy ; hence, all this red tape
for the many to catch the one. Even red tape seems now
to have become normal. War is normal. It would seem
strange to cross the Channel in time of peace ; the har-
bour would not look like itself with civilians not having
to show passports, and without the white hospital ships,
and the white-bearded landing-officer at the foot of the
gangway, and the board held up with lists of names of
officers who have telegrams waiting for them.

For the civilians a yellow card of disembarkation and
for the military a white card. The officers and soldiers
walk off at once and the queue of civilians waits. One
civilian with a white card, who belongs to no regiment,
who is not even a chaplain or a nurse, puzzles the landing-
officer for a moment. But there is something to go with
it — a correspondent's licence and a letter from a general
who looks after such things. They show that you " be-
long " ; and if you don't belong on the road of war you
will not get far. As well try to walk past the doorman

THE WAR CORRESPONDENTS 159

and take a seat in the United States Senate chamber
during a session.

Most precious that magical piece of paper. I happen
to be the only American with one, unless he is in the
fighting line — which is one sure way to get to the front.
The price of all the opera boxes at the Metropolitan will
not buy it ; and it is the passport to the welcoming
smile from an army chauffeur, whom I almost regard as
my own. But its real value appears at the outskirts of
the city. There the dead line is drawn ; there the sheep
are finally separated from the goats by a French sentry
guarding the winding passageway between some carts,
which have been in the same place in the road for months.

The car spins over the broad, hard French road, in a
land where for many miles you see no signs of war, until
it turns into the grounds of a small chateau opposite a
village church. The proprietor of a dry goods store in a
neighbouring city spends his summers here ; but this
summer he is in town, because the Press wanted a place
to live and he was good enough to rent us his country
place. So this is home, where the five British and one
American correspondents live and mess. The expense
of our cars costs us treble all the rest of our expenses.
They take us where we want to go. We go where we
please, but we may not write what we please. We see
something like a thousand times more than we can tell.
The conditions are such as to make a news reporter
throw up his hands and faint. But if he had his un-
bridled way, one day he might feel the responsibility for
the loss of hundreds of British soldiers' lives.

" It may be all right for war correspondents, but it is
a devil of a poor place for a newspaper man," as one
editor said. Yet it is the only place where you can really
know anything about the war.

We become part of the machinery of the great organ-
ization that encloses us in its regular processes. No
one in his heart envies the press officer who holds the

160 A ROAD OF WAR I KNOW

blue pencil over us. He has to " take it both going and
coming." He labours on our behalf and sometimes we
labour with him. The staff are willing enough to let us
watch the army at work, but they do not care whether
or not we write about their war ; he wants us both to
see it and to write about it. He tells us some big piece
of news, and then says : " That is for yourselves ; you
may not write it."

People do not want to read about the correspondents,
of course. They want to read what the correspondents
have to tell about the war ; but the conditions of our
work are interesting because we are the link between the
army and the reading public. All that it learns from
actual observation of what the army is doing comes
through us.

We may not give the names of regiments and brigades
until weeks after a fight, because that will tell the enemy
what troops are engaged ; we may not give the names
of officers, for that is glorifying one when possibly
another did his duty equally well. It is the anonymity
of the struggle that makes it all seem distant and unreal
— till the telegram comes from the War Office to say that
the one among the millions who is dear to you is dead or
wounded. Otherwise, it is a torment of unidentified
elements behind a curtain, which is parted for an
announcement of gain or loss, or to give out a list of the
fallen.

The world wants to read that Peter Smith led the
King's Own Particular Fusiliers in a charge. It may not
know Peter Smith, but his name and that of his regi-
ment make the information seem definite. The state-
ment that a well-known millionaire yesterday gave a
million dollars to charity, or that a man in a checked
suit swam from the Battery to Coney Island, is not con-
vincing ; nor is the fact that one private unnamed held
back the Germans with bombs in the traverse of a trench
for hours until help came. We at the front, however, do

THE CENSORSHIP 161

know the names ; we meet the officers and men. Ours
is the intimacy which we may not interpret except in
general terms.

Every article, every dispatch, every letter, passes
through the censor's hand. But we are never told what
to write. The liberty of the Press is too old an institu-
tion in England for that. Always we may learn why an
excision is made. The purpose is to keep information
from the enemy. It is not like fighting Boers or Fili-
pinos, this war of walls of men who can turn the smallest
bit of information to advantage.

Intelligence officers speak of their work as piecing
together the parts of a jig-saw puzzle. What seems a
most innocent fact by itself may furnish the bit which
gives the figure in the picture its face. It does not follow
because you are an officer that you know what may and
what may not be of service to the enemy.

A former British officer who had become a well-known
military critic, in an account of a visit to the front men-
tioned having seen a battle from a certain church tower.
Publication of the account was followed by a tornado of
shell-fire that killed and wounded many British soldiers.
Only a staff specialist, trained in intelligence work and in
constant touch with the intelligence department, can be
a safe censor. At the same time, he is the best friend of
the correspondent. He knows what is harmless and
what may not be allowed. He wants the Press to have
as much as possible. For the more the public knows
about its soldiers, the better the morale of the people,
which reflects itself in the morale of the army.

The published casualty lists giving the names of
officers and men and their battalions is a means of caus-
ing casualties. From a prisoner taken the enemy learns
what battalions were present at a given fight ; he adds
up the numbers reported killed and wounded and ascer-
tains what the fight cost the enemy and, in turn, the
effect of the fire from his side. But the British public

162 A ROAD OF WAR I KNOW

demanded to see the casualty lists and the British Press
were allowed to gratify the desire. They appeared in the
newspapers, of course, days after the nearest relative of
the dead or wounded man had received official notifica-
tion from the War Office.

Officers' letters from the front, so freely published
earlier in the war, amazed experienced correspondents
by their unconscious indiscretions. The line officer who
had been in a fight told all that he saw. Twenty officers
doing the same along a stretch of front and the jig-saw
experts, plus what information they had from spies,
were in clover. Editors said : " But these men are
officers. They ought to know when they are imparting
military secrets."

Alas, they do not know ! It is not to be expected that
they should. Their business is to fight ; the business of
other experts is to safeguard information. For a long
time the British army kept correspondents from the
front on the principle that the business of a correspon-
dent must be to tell what ought not to be told. Yet they
were to learn that the accredited correspondent, an
expert at his profession, working in harmony with the
experts of the staff, let no military secrets pass.

At our mess we get the Berlin dailies promptly. Soon
after the Germans are reading the war correspondence
from their own front we are reading it, and laughing at
jokes in their comic papers and at cartoons which ex-
hibit John Bull as a stricken old ogre and Britannia who
Rules the Waves with the corners of her mouth drawn
down to the bottom of her chin, as she sees the havoc
that von Tirpitz is making with submarines which do
not stop us from receiving our German jokes regularly
across the Channel.

Doubtless the German messes get their Punch and the
London illustrated weeklies regularly. In the time that
it took the English daily with the account of the action
seen from the church tower to reach Berlin and the news

THE AMERICAN COUSIN 163

to be wired to the front, the German guns made use of
the information. Neutral little Holland is the telltale of
both sides ; the ally and the enemy of all intelligence
corps. Scores of experts in jig-saw puzzles on both sides
seize every scrap of information and piece them together.
Each time that one gets a bit from a newspaper he is for
a sharper Press censorship on his side and a more liberal
one on the other.

We six correspondents have our insignia, as must
everyone who is free to move along the lines. By a
glance you may tell everybody's branch and rank in
that complicated and disciplined world, where no man
acts for himself, but always on someone else's orders.

' Don't you know who they are ? They are the
correspondents," I heard a soldier say. " D. Chron.,
that's the Daily Chronicle ; M. Post, that's the Morning
Post ; D. Mail, that's the Daily Mail. There's one with
U.S.A. What paper is that ? "

' It ain't a paper," said another. " It's the States —
he's a Yank!"

The War Office put it on the American cousin's arm,
and wherever it goes it seems welcome. It may puzzle
the gunners when the American says, "That was a peach
of a shot, right across the pan ! " or the infantry when he
says, " It cuts no ice! " and there is no ice visible in
Flanders ; he speaks about typhoid to the medical corps
which calls it enteric ; and " fly-swatting " is a new
word to the sanitarians, who are none the less busily
engaged in that noble art. Lessons for the British in the
" American language " while you wait! In return, the
American is learning what a " stout-hearted thruster "
and other phrases mean in the Simon-pure English.

The correspondents are the spoiled spectators of the
army's work ; the itinerants of the road of war. No-
body sees so much as we, because we have nothing to do
but to see. An officer looking at the towers of Ypres
Cathedral a mile away from the trench where he was,

164 A ROAD OF WAR I KNOW

said : " No, I've never been in Ypres. Our regiment
has not been stationed in that part of the line."

We have sampled all the trenches ; we have studied
the ruins of Ypres with an archaeologist's eye; we know
the names of the estaminets of the villages, from " The
Good Farmer " to " The Harvester's Rest " and " The
Good Cousin," not to mention " The Omnibus Stop "
on the Cassel Hill. Madame who keeps the hotel in the
G.H.Q. town knows me so well that we wave hands to
each other as I pass the door ; and the clerks in a certain
shop have learned that the American likes his fruit raw,
instead of stewed in the English fashion, and plenty of
it, especially if it comes from the South out of season, as
it does from Florida or California to pampered human
beings at home, who, if they could see as much of this
war as I have seen, would appreciate what a fortunate
lot they are to have not a ribbon of saltwater but a broad
sea full of it, and the British navy, too, between them
and the thing on the other side of the zone of death.

G.H.Q. means General Headquarters and B.E.F.,
which shows the way for your letters from England,
means British Expeditionary Force. The high leading,
the brains of the army, are theoretically at G.H.Q. That
word theoretically is used advisedly in view of opinion
at other points. An officer sent from G.H.Q. to
command a brigade had not been long out before he
began to talk about those confounded one-thing-and-
another fellows at G.H.Q. When he was at G.H.Q. he
used to talk about those confounded one-thing-and-
another fellows who commanded corps, divisions, and
brigades at the front. The philosophers of G.H.Q.
smiled and the philosophers of the army smiled — it was
the old story of the staff and the line ; of the main office
and the branches. But the line did the most smiling to
see the new brigadier getting a taste of his own medicine.

G.H.Q. directs the whole ; here every department of
all that vast concern which supplies the hundreds of

G.H.Q. 165

thousands of men and prepares for the other hundreds
of thousands is focussed. The symbol of its authority is
a red band round the cap, which means that you are a
staff officer. No war at G.H.Q., only the driving force
of war. It seems as far removed from the front as the
New York office of a string of manufacturing plants.

If one follows a red-banded cap into a door he sees
other officers and clerks and typewriters, and a sign
which says that a department chief has his desk in the
drawing-room of a private house — where he has had it
for months. Go to one mess and you will hear talk
about garbage pails and how to kill flies ; to another,
about hospitals and clearing stations for the wounded ;
to another, about barbed wire, sandbags, spades, tim-
ber, and galvanized iron — the engineers ; to another,
about guns, shells, rifles, bullets, mortars, bombs, bayo-
nets, and high explosives — the ordnance ; to another,
about jam, bread, bacon, uniforms, iron rations, socks,
underclothes, tinned goods, fresh beef, and motor-trucks
— the Army Service Corps ; to another, about attacks,
counter-attacks, and salients, and about what the others
are doing and will have to do — the operations.

The Chief of Staff drives the eight-horse team. He
works sixteen hours a day. So do most of the others.
This is how you prove to the line that you have a right
to be at G.H.Q. When you get to know G.H.Q. it seems
like any other business institution. Many are there who
do not want to be there; but they have been found out.
They are specialists, who know how to do one thing
particularly well and are kept doing it. No use of
growling that you would like a " fighting job."

G.H.Q. is the main station on the road of war, which
hears the sound of the guns faintly. Beyond is the
region of all the activities that it commands, up to the
trenches, where all roads end and all efforts consummate.
One has seen dreary flat lands of mud and leafless trees
become fair with the spring, the growing harvest reaped,

166 A ROAD OF WAR I KNOW

and the leaves begin to fall. Always the factory of war
was in the same place ; the soldiers billeted in the same
towns ; the puffs of shrapnel smoke over the same belt
of landscape ; the ruins of the same villages being
pounded by high explosives. Always the sound of guns;
always the wastage of life, as passing ambulances, the
curtains drawn, speed by, their part swiftly and covertly
done. The enormity of the thing holds the imagination ;
its sure and orderly processes of an organized civilization
working at destruction win the admiration. There is a
thrill in the courage and sacrifice and the drilled readi-
ness of response to orders.

The spectator is under varying spells. To-day he
seems in a fantastic world, whose horror makes it im-
possible of realization. To-morrow, as his car takes him
along a pleasant by-road among wheat-fields where
peasants are working and no soldier is in sight, it is a
world of peace and one thinks that he has mistaken the
roar of a train for the distant roar of gun-fire. Again, it
seems the most real of worlds, an exclusive man's world,
where nothing counts but organized material force, and
all those cleanly, well-behaved men in khaki are a part
of the permanent population.

One sees the war as a colossal dynamo, where force is
perpetual like the energy of the sun. The war is going
on for ever. The reaper cuts the harvest, but another
harvest comes. War feeds on itself, renews itself. Live
men replace the dead. There seems no end to supplies
of men. The pounding of the guns, like the roar of
Niagara, becomes eternal. Nothing can stop it.

XIV

TRENCHES IN WINTER

The difference between trench warfare in winter and in
summer is that between sleeping on the lawn in March
and in July. It was in the mud and winds of March
that I first saw the British front. The winds were
much like the seasonal winds at home ; but the Flanders
mud is like no other mud, in the judgment of the
British soldier. It is mixed with glue. When I re-
turned to the front in June for a longer stay, the mud
had become clouds of dust that trailed behind the
motor-car.

In March my eagerness to see a trench was that of one
from the Western prairies to get his first glimpse of the
ocean. Once I might go into a trench as often as
I pleased I became " fed up ,: with trenches, as the
British say. They did not mean much more than an
alley or a railway cutting. One came to think of the
average peaceful trench as a ditch where some men were
eating marmalade and bully beef and looking across a
field at some more men who were eating sausage and
" K.K." bread, each party taking care that the other
did not see him.

Writers have served us trenches in every possible
literary style that censorship will permit. Whoever
"tours" them is convinced that none of the descriptions
published heretofore has been adequate and writes one
of his own which will be final. All agree that it is not
like what they thought it was. But, despite all the
descriptions, the public still fails to visualize a trench.
You do not see a trench with your eyes so much as with
your mind and imagination. That long line where all

167

M

168 TRENCHES IN WINTER

the powers of destruction within man's command are in
deadlock has become a symbol for something which
cannot be expressed by words. No one has yet really
described a shell-burst, or a flash of lightning, or
Niagara Falls ; and no one will ever describe a trench.
He cannot put anyone else there. He can only be
there himself.

The first time that I looked over a British parapet
was in the edge of a wood. Board walks ran across the
spongy earth here and there ; the doors of little
shanties with earth roofs opened on to those streets,
which were called Piccadilly and the Strand. I was
reminded of a pleasant prospector's camp in Alaska.
Only, everybody was in uniform and occasionally
something whished through the branches of the trees.
One looked up to see what it was and where it was going,
this stray bullet, without being any wiser.

We passed along one of the walks until we came to a
wall of sandbags — simply white bags about three-
quarters of the size of an ordinary pillowslip, filled with
earth and laid one on top of another like bags of grain.
You stood beside a man who had a rifle laid across the
top of the pile. Of course, you did not wear a white
hat or wave a handkerchief. One does not do that
when he plays hide-and-seek.

Or, if you preferred, you might look into a chip of
glass, with your head wholly screened by the wall of
sandbags, which got a reflection from another chip of
glass above the parapet. This is the trench periscope ;
the principle of all of them is the same. They have no
more variety than the fashion in knives, forks and
spoons on the dinner table.

One hundred and fifty yards away across a dead
field was another wall of sandbags. The distance is
important. It is always stated in all descriptions.
One hundred and fifty yards is not much. Only when
you get within forty or fifty yards have you something

INFLUENCE OF THE UNSEEN 169

to brag about. Yet three hundred yards may be more
dangerous than fifteen, if an artillery " hate " is on.

Look for an hour, and all you see is the wall of sand-
bags. Not even a rabbit runs across that dead space.
The situation gets its power of suggestion from the fact
that there are Germans behind the other wall — real,
live Germans. They are trying to kill the British on
our side and we are trying to kill them ; and they are as
coyly unaccommodating about putting up their heads
as we are. The emotion of the situation is in the fact
that a sharpshooter might send a shot at your cap ; he
might smash a periscope ; a shell might come. A rifle
cracks — that is all. Nearly everyone has heard the
sound, which is no different at the front than elsewhere.
And the sound is the only information you get. It is
not so interesting as shooting at a deer, for you can tell
whether you hit him or not. The man who fires from a
trench is not even certain whether he saw a German or
not. He shot at some shadow or object along the crest
which might have been a German head.

Thus, one must take the word of those present that
there is any more life behind than in front of the sand-
bags. However, if you are sceptical you may have
conviction by starting to crawl over the top of the
British parapet. After dark the soldiers will slip over
and bring back your body. It is this something you do
not see, this something visualized by the imagination,
which convinces you that you ought to be considerate
enough of posterity to write the real description of a
trench. Look for an hour at that wall of sandbags and
your imagination sees more and more, while your eye
sees only sandbags. What does this war mean to you ?
There it is : only you can describe what this war means
to you.

Many a soldier who has spent months in trenches has
not seen a German. I boast that I have seen real
Germans through my glasses. They were walking

170 TRENCHES IN WINTER

along a road back of their trenches. It was most
fascinating. All the Germans I had ever seen in Ger-
many were not half so interesting. I strained my eyes
watching those wonderful beings as I might strain
them at the first visiting party from Mars to earth.
There must have been at least ten out of the Kaiser's
millions.

In summer that wood had become a sylvan bower,
or a pastoral paradise, or a leafy nook, as you please.
The sun played through the branches in a patchwork ;
flowers bloomed on the dirt roofs of the shanties, and a
swallow had a nest — famous swallow! — on one of the
parapets. True, it was not on the front parapet ; it was
on the reserve. The swallow knew what he was about.
He was taking a reasonable amount of risk and playing
reasonably secure to get a front seat, according to the
ethics of the war correspondent. The two walls of sand-
bags were in the same place that they had been six months
previously. A little patching had been done after some
shells had hit the mark, though not many had come.

For this was a quiet corner. Neither side was inter-
ested in stirring up the hornets' nest. If a member of
Parliament wished to see what trench life was like he
was brought here, because it was one of the safest places
for a few minutes' look at the sandbags which Mr. Atkins
stared at week in and week out. Some Conservatives,
however, in the case of Radical members, would have
chosen a different kind of trench to show ; for example,
that one which was suggested to me by the staff officer
with the twinkle in his eye on my best day at the front.

In want of an army pass to the front in order to write
your own description, then, put up a wall of sandbags in
a vacant lot and another one hundred and fifty yards
away and fire a rifle occasionally from your wall at the
head of a man on the opposite side, who will shoot at
yours — and there you are. If you prefer the realistic to
the romantic school and wish to appreciate the nature of

REALISTIC TRENCH LIFE AT HOME 171

trench life in winter, find a piece of wet, flat country, dig
a ditch seven or eight feet deep, stand in icy water look-
ing across at another ditch, and sleep in a cellar that you
have dug in the wall, and you are near understanding
what Mr. Atkins has been doing for his country. The
ditch should be cut zigzag in and out, like the lines divid-
ing the squares of a checker-board ; that makes more
work and localizes the burst of shells.

Of course, the moist walls will be continually falling in
and require mending in a drenching, freezing rain of the
kind that the Lord visits on all who wage war under-
ground in Flanders. Incidentally, you must look after
the pumps, lest the water rise to your neck. For all the
while you are fighting Flanders mud as well as the
Germans.

To carry realism to the limit of the Grand Guignol
school, then, arrange some bags of bullets with dyna-
mite charges on a wire, which will do for shrapnel ;
plant some dynamite in the parapet, which will do for
high explosive shells that burst on contact ; sink heavier
charges of dynamite under your feet, which will do for
mines, and set them off, while you engage someone to
toss grenades and bombs at you.

Though scores of officers' letters had given their ac-
count of trench life with the vividness of personal
experience, I must mention my first trench in Flanders
in winter when, with other correspondents, I saw the
real thing under the guidance of the commanding officer
of that particular section, a slight, wiry man who wore
the ribbon of the Victoria Cross won in another war for
helping to " save the guns." He made seeing trenches
in the mud seem a pleasure trip. He was the kind who
would walk up to his ball as if he knew how to play golf,
send out a clean, fair, long drive, and then use his iron as
if he knew how to use an iron, without talking about his
game on the way around or when he returned to the
club-house. Men could go into danger behind him with-

172 TRENCHES IN WINTER

out realizing that they were in danger ; they could share
hardship without realizing that there were any hard-
ships. Such as he put faith and backbone into a soldier
by their very manner ; and if their professional training
equal their talents, when war comes they win victories.

We had rubber boots, electric torches, and wore
British warms, those short, thick coats which collect a
modicum of mud for you to carry besides what you are
carrying on your boots. We walked along a hard road
in the dark toward an aurora borealis of German flares,
which popped into the sky like Roman candles and
burst in circles of light. They seemed to be saying :
" Come on ! Try to crawl up on us and play us a trick
and our eyes will find you and our marksmen will stop
you. Come on! We make the night into day, and watch-
ing never ceases from our parapet."

Occasional rifle-shots and a machine-gun's ter-rut
were audible from the direction of the jumping red
glare, which stretched right and left as far as the eye
could see. We broke off the road into a morass of mud,
as one might cross fields when he had lost his way, and
plunged on till the commanding officer said, " We go in
here! " and we descended into a black chasm in the
earth. The wonder was that any ditch could be cut in
soil which the rains had turned into syrup. Mud oozed
from the sandbags, through the wire netting, and between
the wooden supports which held the walls in place. It
was just as bad over in the German trenches. General
Mud laid siege to both armies. The field of battle where
he gathered his gay knights was a slough. His tug of
war was strife against landslides, rheumatism, pneu-
monia, and frozen feet.

The soldier tries to kill his adversary ; he tries to pre-
vent his adversary from killing him. He is as busy in
safeguarding as in taking life. While he breathes,
thinks, fights mud, he blesses as well as curses mud.
Mother Earth is still unconquerable. In her bosom man

LIVING IN MUD 173

still finds security ; such security that " dug in "he can
defy at a hundred yards' distance rifles that carry death
three thousand yards. She it is that has made the dead-
lock in the trenches and plastered their occupants with
her miry hands.

The C.O. lifted a curtain of bagging as you might lift
a hanging over an alcove bookcase, and a young officer,
rising from his blankets in his house in the trench wall to
a stooping posture, said that all was quiet. His uniform
seemed fleckless. Was it possible that he wore some
kind of cloth which shed mud spatters ? He was another

of the type of Captain Q , my host at Neuve

Chapelle ; a type formed on the type of seniors such as
his C.O. Unanalysable this quality, but there is some-
thing distinguished about it and delightfully appealing.
A man who can be the same in a trench in Flanders
in mid-winter as in a drawing-room has my admiration.
They never lose their manner, these English officers.
They carry it into the charge and back in the ambulance
with them to England, where they wish nothing so
much as that their friends will " cut out the hero stuff,"
as our own officers say.

In other dank cellars soldiers who were off guard were
lying or sitting. The radiance of the flares lighted the
profiles of those on guard, whose faces were half-hidden
by coat-collars or ear-flaps — imperturbable, silent, ma-
rooned and marooning, watchful and fearless. The
thing had to be done and they were doing it ; and they
were going to keep on doing it.

There was nothing dry in that trench, unless it was
the bowl of a man's pipe. There were not even any
braziers. In your nostrils was the odour of the soil of
Flanders cultivated by many generations through many
wars. As night wore on the sky was brightened by cold,
winter stars and their soft light became noticeable
between the disagreeable flashes of the flares.

We walked on and on. It was like walking in a wind-

174 TRENCHES IN WINTER

ing ditch ; that was all. The same kind of walls at every
turn ; the same kind of dim figures in saturated, heavy
army overcoats. Slipping off the board walk into the
ooze, one was thrown against the mud wall as his foot
sank. Then he held fast to his boot-straps lest the boot
remain in the mud while his foot came out. Only the
CO. never slipped. He knew how to tour trenches.
Beside him the others were as clumsy as if they were
trying to walk a tight-rope.

" Good-night! " he said to each group of men as he
passed, with the cheer of one who brings a confident
spirit to vigils in the mud and with that note of affection
of the commander who has learned to love his men by
the token of ordeals when he saw them hold fast against
odds.

"Good-night, sir!" they answered; and in their
tone was something which you liked to hear — a finer
tribute to the CO. than medals which kings can bestow.
It was affection and trust. They were ready to follow
him, for they knew that he knew how to lead. I was not
surprised when I heard of his promotion, later. I shall
not be surprised when I hear of it again. For he had
brain and heart and the gift of command.

" Shall we go on or shall we go back ? " he asked when
we had gone about a mile. " Have you had enough ? '

We had, without a dissenting voice. A ditch in the
mud, that was all, no matter how much farther we went.
So we passed out of the trench into a soapy, slippery
mud which had been ploughed ground in the autumn,
now become lathery with the beat of men's steps. Our
party became separated when some foundered and tried
to hoist themselves with both boot-straps at once. The
CO. called out in order to locate us in the darkness, and
the voice of an officer in the trenches cut in, "Keep
still ! The Germans are only a hundred yards away ! "

" Sorry! " whispered the CO. " I ought to have
known better."

SPYING SEARCHLIGHTS 175

Then one of the German searchlights that had been
swinging its stream of light across the paths of the flares
lay its fierce, comet eye on us, glistening on the froth-
streaked mud and showing each mud-splashed figure
in heavy coat in weird silhouette.

"Standstill!"

That is the order whenever the searchlights come spy-
ing in your direction. So we stood still in the mud,
looking at one another and wondering. It was the one
tense second of the night, which lifted our thoughts out
of the mud with the elation of risk. That searchlight
was the eye of death looking for a target. With the first
crack of a bullet we should have known that we were
discovered and that it was no longer good tactics to
stand still. We should have dropped on all fours into
the porridge. The searchlight swept on. Perhaps Hans
at the machine-gun was nodding or perhaps he did not
think us worth while. Either supposition was equally
agreeable to us.

We kept moving our mud-poulticed feet forward,
with the flares at our backs, till we came to a road where
we saw dimly a silent company of soldiers drawn up and
behind them the supplies for the trench. Through the
mud and under cover of darkness every bit of barbed
wire, every board, every ounce of food, must go up to
the moles in the ditch. The searchlights and the flares
and the machine-guns waited for the relief. They must
be fooled. But in this operation most of the casualties
in the average trenches, both British and German,
occurred. Without a chance to strike back, the soldier
was shot at by an assassin in the night.

When the men who had been serving their turn of
duty in the trenches came out, a magnet drew their
weary steps — cleanliness. They thought of nothing
except soap and water. For a week they need not fight
mud or Germans or parasites, which, like General Mud,
waged war against both British and Germans. Standing

176 TRENCHES IN WINTER

on the slats of the concrete floor of a factory, they peeled
off the filthy, saturated outer skin of clothing with its
hideous, crawling inhabitants and, naked, leapt into
great steaming vats, where they scrubbed and gurgled
and gurgled and scrubbed. When they sprang out to
apply the towels, they were men with the feel of new
bodies in another world.

Waiting for them were clean clothes, which had been
boiled and disinfected ; and waiting, too, was the shelter
of their billets in the houses of French towns and vill-
ages, and rest and food and food and rest, and news-
papers and tobacco and gossip — but chiefly rest and the
joy of lethargy as tissue was rebuilt after the first long
sleep, often twelve hours at a stretch. They knew all
the sensations of physical man, man battling with
nature, in contrasts of exhaustion and danger and
recuperation and security, as the pendulum swung
slowly back from fatigue to the glow of strength.

Those who came out of the trenches quite " done up,"
Colonel Bate, Irish and genial, fatherly and not lean,
claimed for his own. After the washing they lay on cots
under a glass roof, and they might play dominoes and
read the papers when they were well enough to sit up.
They had the food which Colonel Bate knew was good
for them, just as he knew what was deadly for the in-
habitants whom they brought into that isolated room
which every man must pass through before he was
admitted to the full radiance of the colonel's curative
smile. When they were able to return to the trenches,
each was written down as one unit more in the colonel's
weekly statistical reports. In summer he entertained
al fresco in an open-air camp.

XV

IN NEUVE CHAPELLE

Typical of many others, this quiet village in a flat coun-
try of rich farming land, with a church, a school, a post-
office, and stores where the farmer could buy a pound of
sugar or a spool of thread, employ a notary, or get a pair
of shoes cobbled or a horse shod, without having to go
to the neighbouring town of Bethune, Neuve Chapelle
became famous only after it had ceased to exist — unless
a village remains a village after it has been reduced to
its original elements by shell-fire.

It was the scene of one of those actions in the long
siege line which have the dignity of a battle ; the losses
on either side, about sixteen thousand, were two-thirds
of those at Waterloo or Gettysburg. Here the British
after the long winter's stalemate in the mud, where they
stuck when the exhausted Germans could press no
farther, took the offensive, with the sap of spring rising
in their veins.

The guns blazed the way and the infantry charged in
the path of the guns' destruction ; and they kept on
while the shield of shell-fire held. When it left an open-
ing for the German machine-guns through its curtain
and the German guns visited on the British what their
guns had been visiting on the Germans, the British
stopped. A lesson was learned ; a principle established.
A gain was made, if no goal were reached.

The human stone wall had moved. It had broken
some barriers and come to rest before others, again to
become a stone wall. But it knew that the thing could
be done with guns and shells enough — and only with
enough. This means a good deal when you have been

177

178 IN NEUVE CHAPELLE

under dog for a long time. Months were to pass waiting
for enough shells and guns, with many little actions and
their steady drain of life, while everyone looked back to
Neuve Chapelle as a landmark. It was something defi-
nite for a man to say that he had been wounded at Neuve
Chapelle and quite indefinite to say that he had been
wounded in the course of the day's work in the trenches.

No one might see the battle in that sea of mud. He
might as well have looked at the smoke of Vesuvius with
an idea of learning what was going on inside of the crater.
I make no further attempt at describing it. My view
came after the battle was over and the cauldron was
still steaming.

Though in March, 1914, one would hardly have given
Neuve Chapelle, intact and peaceful, a passing glance
from a motor-car, in March, 1915, Neuve Chapelle in
ruins was the one town in Europe which I most wanted
to see. Correspondents had not then established them-
selves. The staff officer whom I asked if I might spend a
night in the new British line was a cautious man. He
bade me sign a paper freeing the British army from any
responsibility. Judging by the general attitude of the
Staff, one could hardly take the request seriously. One
correspondent less ought to please any Staff ; but he
said that he had an affection for the regulars and knew
that there were always plenty of recruits to take their
places without resorting to conscription. The real
responsibility was with the Germans. He suggested
that I might go out to the German trenches and see if I
could obtain a paper from them. He thought if I were
quick about it I might get at least a yard in front of the
British parapet in daylight. His sense of humour I had
recognized when we had met in Bulgaria.

Any traveller is bound to meet men whom he has met
before in the travelled British army. At the brigade
headquarters town, which, as one of the officers said,
proved that bricks and mortar can float in mud, the face

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE 179

of the brigadier seemed familiar to me. I found that I
had met him in Shanghai in the Boxer campaign, when
he had come across a riotous China from India on one of
those journeys in remote Asia which British officers are
fond of making. He was " all there," whether dealing
with a mob of Orientals or with Germans in the trenches.
I made myself at home in the parlour of the private
house occupied by himself and staff, while he went on
with his work. No flag outside the house ; no sign that
it was headquarters. Motor-cars stopped only long
enough for an officer to enter or alight. Brigade head-
quarters is precisely the target that German aeroplanes
or spies like to locate for their guns.

' Are you ready ? Have you your rubber boots ? "
the brigadier asked a few minutes later, as he put his
head in at the parlour door. It would not do to approach
the trenches until after dark. Of course, I had rubber
boots. One might as well try to go to sea without a
boat as to trenches without rubber boots in winter.
' I'll take my constitutional," he added ; " the trouble
with this kind of war is that you get no exercise."

He was a small man, but how he could walk ! I began
to understand why the Boxers could not catch him. He
turned back after we had gone a mile or more and one of
his staff went on with me to a point where, just at dusk,
I was turned over to another pilot, an aide from battalion
headquarters, and we set out across sodden fields that
had yielded beetroot in the last harvest, taking care not
to step in shell-holes. Dusk settled into darkness. No
human being was in sight except ourselves.

' There's the first line of German trenches before the
attack," said my companion. " Our guns got fairly on
them." Dimly I saw what seemed like a huge, long,
irregular furrow of earth which had been torn almost out
of the shape of a trench by British shells. " There was
no living in it when the guns began all together. The
only thing to do was to get out."

180 IN NEUVE CHAPELLE

Around us was utter silence, where the hell of thun-
ders and destruction by the artillery had raged during
the battle. Then a spent or ricochet bullet swept over-
head, with the whistle of complaint of spent bullets at
having travelled far without hitting any object. It had
gone high over the British trenches ; it had carried the
full range, and the chance of its hitting anyone was
ridiculously small. But the nearer you get to the
trenches, the more likely these strays are to find a vic-
tim. " Hit by a stray bullet! " is a very common
saying at the front.

At last we felt the solidity of a paved road under our
feet, and following this we came to a peasant's cottage.
Inside, two soldiers were sitting beside telephone and
telegraph instruments, behind a window stuffed with
sandbags. On our way across the fields we had stepped
on wires laid on the ground ; we had stooped to avoid
wires stretched on poles — the wires that form the web
of the army's intelligence.

Of course, no two units of communication are depen-
dent on one wire. There is always a duplicate. If one
is broken it is immediately repaired. The factories spin
out wire to talk over and barbed wire for entanglements
in front of trenches and weave millions of bags to be
filled with sand for breastworks to protect men from
bullets. If Sir John French wished, he could talk with
Lord Kitchener in London and this battalion head-
quarters at Neuve Chapelle within the same space of
time that a railroad president may speak over the Long
Distance from Chicago to New York and order dinner
out in the suburbs.

These two men at the table, their faces tanned by
exposure, men in the thirties, had the British regular of
long service stamped all over them. War was an old
story to them ; and an old story, too, laying signal wires
under fire.

" We're very comfortable," said one. " No danger

A POSSIBLE SPY 181

from stray bullets or from shrapnel ; but if one of the
Jack Johnsons come in, why, there's no more cottage
and no more argument between you and me. We're
dead and maybe buried, or maybe scattered over the
landscape, along with the broken pieces of the roof."

A soldier was on guard with bayonet fixed inside that
little room, which had passageway to the cellar past the
table, among straw beds. This seemed rather peculiar.
The reason lay on one of the beds in a private's khaki.
He had come into the battalion's trenches from our

front and said that he belonged to the D regiment

and had been out on patrol and lost his way.

It was two miles to that regiment and two miles is a
long distance to stray between two lines of trenches so
close together, when at any point in your own line you
will find friends. It was possible that this fellow's real
name was Hans Schmidt, who had learned cockney
English in childhood in London, and in a dead British
private's uniform had come into the British trenches to
get information to which he was anything but welcome.

He was to be sent under guard to the D regiment

for identification ; and if he were found to be a Hans
and not a Tommy — well, though he had tried a very
stupid dodge he must have known what to expect when
he was found out, if his officers had properly trained him
in German rules of war.

I had a glimpse of him in the candlelight before stoop-
ing to feel my way down three or four narrow steps to
the cellar, where the farmer ordinarily kept potatoes and
vegetables. There were straw beds around the walls
here, too. The major commanding the battalion rose
from his seat at a table on which were some cutlery, a
jam pot, tobacco, pipes, a newspaper or two, and army
telegraph forms and maps.

If the hosts of mansions could only make their hospi-
tality as simple as the major's, there would be less
affectation in the world. He introduced me to an officer

182 IN NEUVE CHAPELLE

sitting on the other side of the table and to one lying in
his blankets against the wall, who lifted his head and
blinked and said that he was very glad to see me.

It is a small world, for China cropped up here, as it
had at brigade headquarters. The major had been in
garrison at Peking when the war began. If my ship-
mate on a long battleship cruise, Lt.-Col. Dion Williams,
U.S.M.C, reads this out in Peking let it tell him that the
major is just as urbane in the cellar of a second-rate
farmhouse on the outskirts of Neuve Chapelle as he
would be in a corner of the Peking Club.

" How is it? Painful now?" asked the major of
Captain P , on the other side of the table.

" Oh, no ! It's quite all right," said the captain.

"Using the sling? "

" Part of the time. Hardly need it, though."

Captain P was one of those men whose eyes are

always smiling ; who seems, wherever he is, to be glad
that he is not in a worse place ; who goes right on smiling
at the mud in the trenches and bullets and shells and
death. They are not emotional, the British, perhaps,
but they are given to cheeriness, if not to laughter, and
they have a way of smiling at times when smiles are
much needed. The smile is more often found at the
front than back at headquarters ; or perhaps it is more
noticeable there.

" You see, he got a bullet through the arm yesterday,"
the major explained. " He was reported wounded, but
remained on duty in the trench." I saw that the cap-
tain would rather not have publicity given to such an
ordinary incident. He did not see why people should
talk about his arm. " You are to go with him into the
trench for the night," the major added ; and I thought
myself very lucky in my companion.

" Aren't you going to have dinner with us ? " the
major asked him.

" Why, I had something to eat not very long ago,"

THE WORK OF SHELLS 183

said Captain P . One was not sure whether he had

or not.

" There's plenty," said the major.

" In that event, I don't see why I shouldn't eat when
I have a chance," the captain returned ; which I
found was a characteristic trench habit, particularly in
winter when exposure to the raw, cold air calls for
plenty of body-furnace heat.

We had a ration soup and ration ham and ration
prunes and cheese ; what Tommy Atkins gets. When
we were outside the house and starting for the trench
this captain, with his wounded arm, wanted to carry
my knapsack. He seemed to think that refusal was
breaking the Hague conventions.

Where we turned off the road, broken finger-points of
brick walls in the faint moonlight indicated the site
of Neuve Chapelle ; other fragments of walls in front
of us were the remains of a house ; and that broken
tree- trunk showed what a big shell can do. The trunk,
a good eighteen inches in diameter, had not only been
cut in two by one of the monsters of the new British
artillery, but had been carried on for ten feet and left
lying solidly in the bed of splinters of the top of the
stump. All this had been in the field of that battle of a
day, which was as fierce as the fiercest day at Gettys-
burg, and fought within about the same space. Every
tree, every square rod of ground, had been paid for by
shells, bullets, and human life.

But now we were near the trenches ; or, rather, the
breastworks. We are always speaking of the trenches,
while not all parts of the line are held by trenches. A
trench is dug in the ground ; a breastwork is raised
from the level of the ground. At some points a trench
becomes practically a breastwork, as its wall is raised to
get free of the mud and water.

We came into the open and heard the sound of voices
and saw a spotty white wall ; for some of the sandbags

N

184 IN NEUVE CHAPELLE

of the new British breastworks still retained their
original colour. On the reverse side of this wall lifles
were leaning in readiness, their fixed bayonets faintly
gleaming in the moonlight. I felt of the edge of one
and it was sharp, quite prepared for business. In the
surroundings of damp earth and mud-bespattered men,
this rifle seemed the cleanest thing of all, meticulously
clean, that ready weapon whose well-aimed and telling
fire, in obedient and cool hands, was the object of all
the drill of the new infantry in England ; of all the
drill of all infantry. Where pickets watched in the
open in the old days before armies met in pitched battle,
an occasional soldier now stands with rifle laid on the
parapet, watching.

Across a reach of field faintly were made out the
white spots of another wall of breastworks, the German,
at the edge of a stretch of woods, the Bois du Bies.
The British reached these woods in their advance ; but,
their aeroplanes being unable to spot the fall of shells in
the mist, they had to fall back for want of artillery
support. Along this line where we stood outside the
village they stopped ; and to stop is to set the spades
going to begin the defences which, later, had risen to a
man's height, and with rifles and machine-guns had
riddled the German counter-attack.

And the Germans had to go back to the edge of the
woods, where they, too, began digging and building
their new line. So the enemies were fixed again behind
their walls of earth, facing each other across the open,
where it was death for any man to expose himself
by day.

" Will you have a shot, sir? " one of the sentries
asked me.

" At what ? "

" Why, at the top of the trench over there, or at any-
thing you see moving," he said.

But I did not think that it was an invitation for a

A HOME IN THE MUD 185

non-combatant to accept. If the bullet went over the
top of the trench it had still two thousand yards and
more to go, and it might find a target before it died. So, in
view of the law of probabilities, no bullet is quite waste.

" Now, which is my house ? " asked Captain P .

" I really can't find my own home in the dark."

Behind the breastwork were many little houses three
or four feet in height, all of the same pattern, and made
of boards and mud. The mud is put on top to keep out
shrapnel bullets.

" Here you are, sir! " said a soldier.

Asking me to wait until he made a light, the captain
bent over as if about to crawl under the top rail of
a fence and his head disappeared. After he had put a
match to a candle and stuck it on a stick thrust into
the wall, I could see the interior of his habitation. A
rubber sheet spread on the moist earth served as floor,
carpet, mattress, and bed. At a squeeze there was
room for two others besides himself. They did not
need any doormat, for when they lay down their feet
would be at the door.

' Quite cosy, don't you think? " remarked the cap-
tain. He seemed to feel that he had a royal chamber.
But, then, he was the kind of man who might sleep in a
muddy field under a wagon and regard the shelter of
the wagon body as a luxury. " Leave your knapsack
here," he continued, " and we'll see what is doing along
the line."

In other words, after you had left your bag in the
host's hall, he suggested a stroll in the village or across
the fields. But only to see war would he have asked
you to walk in such mud.

" Not quite so loud! " he warned a soldier who was
bringing up boards from the rear under cover of dark-
ness. ' If the Germans hear they may start firing."

Two other men were piling mud on top of a section of
breastwork at an angle to the main line.

186 IN NEUVE CHAPELLE

" What is that for? " the captain asked.

" They get an enfilade on us here, sir, and Mr.

(the lieutenant) told me to make this higher."

" That's no good. A bullet will go right through,"
said the captain. " We'll have to wait until we get
more sandbags."

A little farther on we came to an open space, with no
protection between us and the Germans Half a dozen
men were piling earth against a staked chicken wire to
extend the breastworks. Rather, they were piling
mud, and they were besmirched from head to foot.
They looked like reeking Neptunes rising from a slough.
In the same position in daylight, standing full height
before German rifles at three hundred yards, they would
have been shot dead before they could leap to cover.

" How does it go ? " asked the captain.

" Very well, sir ; though what we need is sandbags."

" We'll have some up to-morrow."

At the moment there was no firing in the vicinity.
Faintly I heard the Germans pounding stakes, at work
improving their own breastworks.

A British soldier appeared out of the darkness in

front.

" We've found two of our men out there with their
heads blown off by shells," he said. " Have we per-
mission to go out and bury them, sir ? "

" Yes."

They would be as safe as the fellows piling mud
against the chicken wire, unless the Germans opened
fire. If they did, we could fire on their working-party,
or in the direction of the sound. For that matter, we
knew through our glasses by day the location of any
weak places in their breastworks, and they knew where
ours were. A sort of " after-you-gentlemen-if-you-fire-
we-shall " understanding sometimes exists between the
foes up to a certain point. Each side understands
instinctively the limitation of that point. Too much

COMMONPLACES OF TRENCH LIFE 187

noise in working, a number of men going out to bury
dead or making enough noise to be heard, and the ball
begins. A deep, broad ditch filled with water made a
break in our line. No doubt a German machine-gun
was trained on it.

" A little bridging is required here," said the captain.
" We'll have it done to-morrow night. The break is no
disadvantage if they attack ; in fact, we'd rather like
to have them try for it. But it makes movement along
the line difficult by day."

When we were across and once more behind the
breastworks, he called my attention to some high ground
in the rear.

" One of our officers took a short cut across there in
daylight," he said. " He was quite exposed, and they
drew a bead on him from the German trench and got
him through the arm. Not a serious hit. It wasn't
cricket for anyone to go out to bring him in. He
realized this, and called out to leave him to himself, and
crawled to cover."

I was getting the commonplaces of trench life. Thus
far it had been a quiet night and was to remain so.
Reddish, flickering swaths of light were thrown across
the fields between the trenches by the enemy's Roman
candle flares. One tried to estimate how many flares
the Germans must use every night from Switzerland to
the North Sea.

On our side, the only light was from our braziers.
Thomas Atkins has become a patron of braziers made
by punching holes in buckets ; and so have the Ger-
mans. Punch holes in a bucket, start a fire inside, and
you have cheer and warmth and light through the long
night vigils. Two or three days before we had located a
sniper between the lines by seeing him swing his fire-pot
to make a draught against the embers.

If you have ever sat around a camp-fire in the forest
or on the plains you need be told nothing further. One

188 IN NEUVE CHAPELLE

of the old, glamorous features of war survives in these
glowing braziers, spreading their genial rays among the
little houses and lighting the faces of the men who stand
or squat in encircling groups around the coals, which
dry wet clothes, slake the moisture of a section of earth,
make the bayonets against the walls glisten, and reveal
the position of a machine-gun with its tape ready for
firing.

Values are relative, and a brazier in the trenches
makes the satisfaction of a steam-heated room in winter
very superficial and artificial. You are at home there
with Tommy Atkins, regular of an old line English regi-
ment, in his heavy khaki overcoat and solid boots and
wool puttees, a sturdy, hardened man of a terrific war.
He, the regular, the shilling-a-day policeman of the
empire, was still doing the fighting at the front. The
new army, which embraces all classes, was not yet in
action.

This man and that one were at Mons. This one and
that one had been through the whole campaign without
once seeing Mother England for whom they were fight-
ing. The affection in which Captain P was held

extended through his regiment, for we had left his own
company behind. At every turn he was asked about his
arm.

" You've made a mistake, sir. This isn't a hospital,"
as one man expressed it. Oh, but the captain was bored
with hearing about that arm ! If he is wounded again
I am sure that he will try to keep the fact a secret.

These veterans could " grouse," as the British call it.
Grousing is one of Tommy's privileges. When they got
to grousing worst on the retreat from Mons, their officers
knew that what they really wanted was to make another
stand. They were tired of falling back ; they meant to
take a rest and fight a while. Their language was yours,
the language in which our own laws and schoolbooks
are written. They made the old blood call. For months

SOLDIER ARGUMENT 189

they had been taking bitter medicine ; very bitter for a
British soldier. The way they took it will, perhaps,
remain a greater tribute than any part they play in
future victories.

" How do they feel in the States ? " I was asked.
" Against us ? "

" No. By no means."

' I don't see how they could be ! " Tommy exclaimed.

Tommy may not be much on argument as it is devel-
oped by the controversial spirit of college professors, but
he had said about all there was to say. How can we be ?
Hardly, after you come to knowT. Atkins and his officers
and talk English with them around their camp-fires.

' The Germans are always sending up flares," I re-
marked. " You send up none. How about it ? "

" It cheers them. They're downhearted! " said one
of the group. " You wouldn't deny them their fire-
works, would you, sir ? "

"That shows who is top dog, "said another. "They're
the ones that are worried."

I had heard of trench exhaustion, trench despair, but
there was no sign of it in a regiment that had been through
all the hell and mire that the British army had known
since the war began. To no one had Neuve Chapelle
meant so much as to these common soldiers. It was
their first real victory. They were standing on soil won
from the Germans.

" We're going to Berlin! " said a big fellow who was
standing, palms downward to the fire. " It's settled.
We're going to Berlin."

A smaller man with his back against the sandbags
disagreed. There was a trench argument.

" No, we're going to the Rhine," he said. " The
Russians are going to Berlin." (This was in March,
1915, remember.)

" How can they when they ain't over the Balkans
yet ? "

igo IN NEUVE CHAPELLE

" The Carpathians, you mean."

" Well, they're both mountains and the Russians have
got to cross them. And there's a place called Cracow in
that region. What's the matter of a pair of mountain
ranges between you and me, Bill ? You're strong on
geography, but you fail to follow the campaign."

"The Rhine, I say! "

" It's the Rhine first, but Berlin is what you want to
keep your mind on."

Then I asked if they had ever had any doubt that
they would reach the Rhine.

" How could we, sir ? "

" And how about the Germans. Do you hate them ?"

" Hate ! " exclaimed the big man. " What good would
it do to hate them ? No, we don't hate. We get our
blood up when we're fighting and when they don't play
the game. But hate! Don't you think that's kind of
ridiculous, sir ? "

" How do they fight ? "

" They take a bit of beating, do the Boches! "

" So you call them Boches! "

" Yes. They don't like that. But sometimes we call
them Allemands, which is Germans in French. Oh,
we're getting quite French scholars! "

" They're good soldiers. Not many tricks they're not
up to. But in my opinion they're overdoing the hate.
You can't keep up to your work on hate, sir. I should
think it would be weakening to the mind, too."

" Still, you would like the war over ? You'd like to
go home ? "

They certainly would. Back to the barracks, out of
the trenches ! They certainly would.

"And call it a draw? "

" Call it a draw, now! Call it a draw, after all we've
been through "

" Spring is coming. The ground will dry up and it
will be warm."

A NEW TYPE OF PRIVATE 191

" And the going will be good to Berlin, as it was back
from Paris in August, we tell the Boches."

" Good for the Russians going over the Carpathians,
or the Pyrenees, or whatever those mountains are, too.
I read they're all covered with snow in winter."

It was good, regular soldier talk, very " homey " to
me. As you will observe, I have not elided the h's.
Indeed, Tommy has a way of prefixing his h's to the
right vowels more frequently than a generation ago.
The Soldiers Three type has passed. Popular education
will have its way and induce better habits. Believing in
the old remedy for exhaustion and exposure to cold, the
army served out a tot of rum every day to the men. But
many of them are teetotalers, these hardy regulars, and
not even Mulvaney will think them effeminate when they
have seen fighting which makes anything Mulvaney
ever saw child's play. So they asked for candy and
chocolate, instead of rum.

Some people have said that Tommy hasno patriotism.
He fights because he is paid and it is his business. That
is an insinuation. Tommy doesn't care for the " hero
stuff," or for waving flags and speechmaking. Possibly
he knows how few Germans that sort of thing kills. His
weapons are bullets. To put it cogently, he is fighting
because he doesn't want any Kaiser " in his."

Is not that what all the speeches in Parliament are
about and all the editorials and the recruiting campaign?
Is not that what England and France are fighting for ?
It seems to me that Tommy's is a very practical patriot-
ism, free from cant ; and the way that he refuses to hate
or to get excited, but sticks to it, must be very irritating
to the Germans.

' Would you like a Boche helmet for a souvenir, sir ? "
asked a soldier who appeared on the outer edge of the
group. He was the small, active type, a British soldier
with the elan of the Frenchman. " There are lots of
them out among the German dead " — the unburied

192 IN NEUVE CHAPELLE

German dead who fell like grass before the mower in a
desperate and futile counter-attack to recover Neuve
Chapelle. " I'll have one for you on your way
back."
There was no stopping him ; he had gone.
" Matty's a devil ! " said the big man. " He'll get it,
all right. He's equal to reaching over the Bodies'
parapet and picking one off a Boche's head! "

As we proceeded on our way, officers came out of the

little houses to meet Captain P and the stranger

civilian. They had to come out, as there was no room
to take us inside ; and sometimes they talked shop
together after I had answered the usual question, " Is
America against us ? " There seemed to be an idea that
we were, possibly because of the prodigious advertising
tactics of a minority. But any feeling that we might be
did not interfere with their simple courtesy, or lead them
to express any bitterness or break into argument.
" How are things going on over your side ? "
" Nicely."
" Any shelling? "

" A little this morning. No harm done."
" We cleaned out one bad sniper to-day."
" Ought to have some sandbags up to-night."
" It's a bad place there. They've got a machine-gun
trained which has quite a sweep. I asked if the artillery
shouldn't put in a word, but the general didn't think it
worth while."

" You must run across that break. Three or four
shots at you every time. We're gradually getting ship-
shape, though."

Just then a couple of bullets went singing overhead.
The group paid no attention to them. If you paid
attention to bullets over the parapet you would have no
time for anything else. But these bullets have a way of
picking off tall officers who are standing up among their
nouses. In the course of their talk they happened to

TRENCH TALK 193

speak of such an instance, though not with reference to
the two bullets I have mentioned.

" poor S did not last long. He had been out only

three weeks."

" How is J ? Hit badly ? "

" Through the shoulder ; not seriously."

" H is back. Recovered very quickly."

Normal trench talk, this! A crack which signifies
that the bullet has hit — another man down. One grows
accustomed to it, and one of this group of officers might
be gone to-morrow.

" I have one, sir," said Matty, exhibiting a helmet
when we returned past his station. " Bullet went right
through the head and came out the peak! "

It was time that Captain P was back to his own

command. As we came to his company's line word was
just being passed from sentry to sentry :

" No firing. Patrols going out."

It was midnight now.

" We'll go in the other direction," said Captain P

when he had learned that there was no news.

This brought us to an Irish regiment. The Irish
naturally had something to say.

XVI

NEARER THE GERMANS

Here, not the Irish Sea lay between the broad a and the
brogue, but the space between two sentries or between
two rifles with bayonets fixed, lying against the wall of
the breastworks ready for their owners' hands when
called to arms in case of an alarm. One stepped from
England into Ireland ; and my prediction that the
Irish would have something to say was correct.

The first man who made his presence felt was a good
six feet in height, with a heavy moustache and the ear-
pieces of his cap tied under his chin, though the night
was not cold. He placed himself fairly in front of me in
the narrow path back of the breastworks and he looked
a cowled and sinister figure in the faint glow from a
brazier. I certainly did not want any physical argument
with a man of his build.

" Who are you ? " he demanded, as stiffly as if I had
broken in at the veranda window with a jemmy.

For the nearer you come to the front, the more you
feel that you are in the way. You are a stray extra piece
of baggage ; a dead human weight. Everyone is doing
something definite as a part of the machine except your-
self ; and in your civilian clothes you feel the self-
conscious conspicuousness of appearing on a dancing-
floor in a dressing-gown.

Captain P was a little way back in another pas-
sage. I was alone and in a rough tweed suit — a strange
figure in that world of khaki and rifles.

" A German spy ! That's why I am dressed this way,
so as not to excite suspicion," I was going to say, when a

call from Captain P identified me, and the sentry's

attitude changed as suddenly as if the inspector of police

194

IRISH CHAFFING 195

had come along and told a patrolman that I might pass
through the fire lines.

" So it's you, is it, right from America ? " he said.
" I've a sister living at Nashua, New Hampshire, U.S.A.
with three brothers in the United States army."

Whether he had or not you can judge as well as I by
the twinkle in his eye. He might have had five, and
again he might not have one. I was a tenderfoot seeing
the trenches.

" It's mesilf that's going to America when me sarvice
in the army is up in one year and six months," he con-
tinued. " That's some time yet. I'm going if I'm not
killed by the Germans. It's a way that they have, or
we wouldn't be killing them."

" What are you going to do in America ? Enlist in
the army ? "

" No. I'm looking for a better job. I'm thinking I'll
be one of your millionaires. Shure, but that would be
to me taste."

Not one Irishman was speaking really, but a dozen.
They came out of their little houses and dug-outs to
gather around the brazier ; and for every remark I
made I received a fusillade in reply. It was an event,
an American appearing in the trench in the small hours
of the morning.

A trench-toughened, battle-toughened old sergeant
was sitting in the doorway of his dug-out, frying a strip
of bacon over one rim of the brazier and making tea over
the other. The bacon sizzled with an appetizing aroma
and a bullet sizzled harmlessly overhead. Behind that
wall of sandbags all were perfectly safe, unless a shell
came. But who worries about shells ? It is like worry-
ing about being struck by lightning when clouds gather
in a summer sky.

" It looks like good bacon," I remarked.

" It is that! " said the sergeant. " And the hungrier
ye are the better. It's your nose that's telling ye so

196 NEARER THE GERMANS

this minute. I can see that ye're hungry yoursilf ! "

" Then you're pretty well fed ? "

" Well fed, is it ? It's stuffed we are, like the geese
that grow the paty-what-do-you-call-it ? Eating is our
pastime. We eat when we've nothing else to do and
when we've got something to do. We get eggs up here
— a fine man is Lord Kitchener — yes, sir, eggs up here in
the trenches! " ,

When they seemed to think that I was sceptical, he
produced some eggs in evidence.

" And if ye'll not have the bacon, ye'll have a drop of
tea. Mind now, while your tongue is trying to be polite,
your stomach is calling your tongue a liar! "

Wouldn't I have a souvenir ? Out came German
bullets and buckles and officers' whistles and helmets
and fragments of shells and German diaries.

" It's easy to get them out there where the Germans
fell that thick! " I was told. " And will ye look at this
and take it home to give your pro-German Irish in
America, to show what their friends are shooting at the
Irish ? I found them mesilf on a dead German."

He passed me a clip of German bullets with the blunt
ends instead of the pointed ends out. The change is
readily made, for the German bullet is easily pulled out
of the cartridge case and the pointed end thrust against
the powder. Thus fired, it goes accurately four or five
hundred yards, which is more than the average distance
between German and British trenches. When it strikes
flesh the effect is that of a dum-dum and worse ; for the
jacket splits into slivers, which spread through the pulpy
mass caused by the explosion. A leg or an arm thus hit
must almost invariably be amputated. I am not sug-
gesting that this is a regular practice with German
soldiers, but it shows what wickedness is in the power of
the sinister one.

" But ye'll take the tea," said the sergeant, " with a
little rum hot in it. 'Twill take the chill out of your bones. "

SIXTY YARDS FROM THE GERMANS 197

" What if I haven't a chill in my bones ? "

" Maybe it's there without speaking to ye and it will
be speaking before an hour longer — or afther ye're home
between the sheets with the rheumatiz, and ye'll be say-
ing, ' Why didn't I take that glass ? ' which I'm holding
out to ye this minute, steaming its invitation to be drunk. ' '

It was a memorable drink. Snatches of brogue
followed me from the brazier's glow when I insisted
that I must be going.

Now our breastworks took a turn and we were ap-
proaching closer to the German breastworks. Both
lines remained where they had " dug in " after the
counter-attacks which followed the battle had ceased.
Ground is too precious in this siege warfare to yield
a foot. Soldiers become misers of soil. Where the
flood is checked there you build your dam against
another flood.

" We are within about sixty yards of the Germans,"

said Captain P at length, after we had gone in and

out of the traverses and left the braziers well behind.

Between the spotty, whitish wall of German sandbags,
quite distinct in the moonlight, and our parapet were
two mounds of sandbags about twenty feet apart. Snug
behind one was a German and behind the other an Irish-
man, both listening. They were within easy bombing
range, but the homicidal advantage of position of either
resulted in a truce. Sixty yards ! Pace it off. It is not
far. In other places the enemies have been as close as five
yards — only a wall of earth between them. Where a bomb-
ing operation ends in an attack, a German is naturally
on one side of a traverse and a Briton on the other.

The Germans were as busy as beavers dam-building.
They had a lot of work to do before they had their new
defences right. We heard them driving stakes and
spading ; we heard their voices with snatches of sen-
tences intelligible, and occasionally the energetic,
shouted, guttural commands of their officers. All

198 NEARER THE GERMANS

through that night I never heard a British officer speak
above a conversational tone. The orders were definite
enough, but given with a certain companionable kindli-
ness. I have spoken of the genuine affection which his

men showed for Captain P , and I was beginning to

appreciate that it was not a particular instance.

" What if you should shout at Tommy in the German
fashion ? " I asked.

" He wouldn't have it ; he'd get rebellious," was the
reply. " No, you mustn't yell at Tommy. He's a little
temperamental about some things and he will not be
treated as if he were just a human machine."

Yet no one will question the discipline of the British
soldier. Discipline means that the officer knows his men,
and British discipline, which bears a retreat like that
from Mons, requires that the man likes to follow his
officers, believes in his officers, loves his officers. Each
army and each people to its own ways.

Sixty yards ! And the dead between the trenches and
death lurking ready at a trigger's pull should life show
itself ! When daylight comes the British sing out their
" Good-morning, Germans! " and the Germans answer,
" Good-morning, British! " without adding, " We hope
to kill some of you to-day! " Ragging banter and jest
and worse than jest and grim defiance are exchanged
between the trenches when they are within such easy
hearing distance of each other ; but always from a safe
position behind the parapet which the adversaries
squint across through their periscopes. At the gibe
business the German is, perhaps, better than the Briton.

Early in the evening a regiment on our right broke
into a busy fusillade at some fancied movement of the
enemy. In trench talk that is getting " jumpy." The
Germans in front roared out their contempt in a chorus
of guying laughter. Toward morning, these same Ger-
mans also became " jumpy " and began tearing the air
with bullets, firing against nothing but the blackness of

UNBURIED GERMAN DEAD 199

night. Tommy Atkins only made some characteristic
comments ; for he is a quiet fellow, except when he is
played on the music-hall stage. Possibly he feels the
inconsistency of laughter when you are killing human
beings ; for, as his officers say, he is temperamental and
never goes to the trouble of analysing his emotions. A
very real person and a good deal of a philosopher is Mr.
Atkins, Britain's professional fighting man, who was the
only kind of fighting man she had ready for the war.

Any small boy who had never had enough fireworks
in his life might be given a job in the German trenches,
with the privilege of firing flares till he fell asleep from
exhaustion. All night they were going, with the regu-
larity of clockwork. The only ones sent up from our
side that night were shot in order that I might get a
better view of the German dead.

You know how water lies in the low places on the
ground after a heavy rain. Well, the patches of dead
were like that, and dark in the spots where they were
very thick — dark as with the darkness of deeper water.
There were also irregular tongues of dead and scattered
dead, with arms outstretched or under them as they fell,
and faces white even in the reddish glare of the rockets
and turned toward you in the charge that failed under
the withering blasts of machine-guns, ripping out two or
three hundred shots a minute, and well-aimed rifle-
bullets, each bullet getting its man. Threatening that
charge would have seemed to a recruit, but measured
and calculated in certainty of failure in the minds of
veteran defenders, who knew that the wheat could not
stand before their mowers. Man's flesh is soft and a
bullet is hard and travels fast.

One bit of satire which Tommy sent across the field
covered with its burden of slaughter to the Germans
who are given to song, ought to have gone home. It
was : " Why don't you stop singing and bury your
dead ? ' But the Germans, having given no armistice
o

200 NEARER THE GERMANS

in other times when British dead lay before the trenches,
asked for none here. The dead were nearer to the British
than to the Germans. The discomfort would be in
British and not German nostrils. And the dead can-
not fight ; they can help no more to win victory for the
Fatherland ; and the time is a.d. 1915. Two or three
thousand German dead altogether, perhaps — not many
out of the Kaiser's millions. Yet they seemed a great
many to one who saw them lying there.

We stopped to read by the light of a brazier some
German soldiers' diaries that the Irishmen had. They
were cheap little books, bought for a few cents, each one
telling the dead man's story and revealing the monotony
of a soldier's existence in Europe to-day. These pawns of
war had been marched here and there, they never knew
why. The last notes were when orders came entraining
them. They did not know that they were to be sent out
of those woods yonder to recover Neuve Chapelle — out
of ' those woods in the test of all their drill and waiting.

A. Bavarian officer — for these were Bavarians — actu-
ally rode in that charge. He must have worked himself
up to a strangely exalted optimism and contempt of
British fire. Or was it that he, too, did not know what
he was going against? that only the German general
knew ? Neither he nor his horse lasted long ; not more
than a dozen seconds. The thing was so splendidly fool-
hardy that in some little war it might have become the
saga of a regiment, the subject of ballads and paintings.
In this war it was an incident heralded for a day in one
command and forgotten the next.

" Good-night! " called the Irish.

" Good-night and good luck! "

"Tell them in America that the Irish are still fighting!"

" Good luck, and may your travelling be aisy ; but if
ye trip, may ye fall into a gold mine! "

We were back with the British regulars ; and here,
also, many of the men remained up around the braziers.

"TOMMY'S" CLEANLINESS 201

The hours of duty of the few on watch do not take many
of the twenty-four hours. One may sleep when he
chooses in the little houses behind the breastworks.
Night melts into day and day into night in the mono-
tony of mud and sniping rifle-fire. By-and-by it is your
turn to go into reserve ; your turn to get out of your
clothes — for there are no pyjamas for officers or men in
these " crawls," as they are sometimes called. Boots
off is the only undressing ; boots off and puttees un-
loosed, which saves the feet. Yes, by-and-by the march
back to the rear, where there are tubs filled with hot
water and an outfit of clean clothes awaiting you, and
nothing to do but rest and sleep.

" How soon after we leave the trenches may we
cheer? " officers have been asked in the dead of winter,
when water stood deep over the porous mud and
morning found a scale of ice around the legs.

You, nicely testing the temperature of your morning
tub ; you, satisfied only with faucets of hot and cold
water and a mat to stand on — you know nothing about
the joy of bathing. Your bath is a mere part of the daily
routine of existence. Try the trenches and get itchy
with vermin ; then you will know that heaven consists
of soap and hot water.

No bad odour assails your nostrils wherever you may
go in the British lines. Its cleanliness, if nothing else,
would make British army comradeship enjoyable. My
wonder never ceases how Tommy keeps himself so neat ;
how he manages to shave every day and get a part, at
least, of the mud off his uniform. This care makes him
feel more as if he were " at home " in barracks.

From the breastworks, Captain P and I went for

a stroll in the village, or the site of the village, silent
except for the occasional singing of a bullet. When we
returned he lighted the candle on a stick stuck into the
wall of his earth-roofed house and suggested a nap. It
was three o'clock in the morning. Now I could see that

202 NEARER THE GERMANS

my rubber boots had grown so heavy because I was
carrying so much of the soil of Northern France. It
looked as if I had gout in both feet — the over-bandaged,
stage type of gout — which were encased in large mud
poultices. I tried to stamp off the incubus, but it would
not go. I tried scraping one foot on the other, and what
I scraped off seemed to reattach itself as fast as I could
remove it.

" Don't try! " said the captain. " Lie down and pull
your boots off in the doorway. Perhaps you will get
some sleep before daybreak."

Sleep ! Does a debutante go to sleep at her first ball ?
Sleep in such good company, the company of this cap-
tain who was smiling all the while with his eyes ; smiling
at his mud house, at the hardships in the trenches, and, I
hope, at having a guest who had been with armies before !

It was the first time that I had been in the trenches all
night ; the first time, indeed, when I had not been taken
into them by an escort in a kind of promenade. On this
account I was in the family. If it is the right kind of a
family, that is the way to get a good impression. There
would be plenty of time to sleep when I returned to
London.

So Captain P and I lay there talking. I felt

the dampness of the earth under my body and the walls
exuded moisture. The average cellar was dry by com-
parison. " You will get your death of cold ! " any mother
would cry in alarm if her boy were found even sitting on
such cold, wet ground. For it was a clammy night of
early spring. Yet, peculiarly enough, few men get colds
from this exposure. One gets colds from draughts in
overheated rooms much oftener. Luckily, it was not
raining ; it had been raining most of the winter in the
flat country of Northern France and Flanders.

" It is very horrible, this kind of warfare," said the
captain. He was thinking of the method of it, rather
than of the discomforts. " All war is very horrible, of

A CAPTAIN'S OPINIONS 203

course." Regular soldiers rarely take any other view.
They know war.

" With your wounded arm you might be back in
England on leave," I suggested.

" Oh, that arm is all right! " he replied. " This is
what I am paid for " — which I had heard regulars say
before. " And it is for England ! "he added, in his quiet
way. " Sometimes I think we should fight better if we
officers could hate the Germans," he went on. " The
German idea is that you must hate if you are going to
fight well. But we can't hate."

Sound views he had about the war ; sounder than I
have heard from the lips of Cabinet ministers. For
these regular officers are specialists in war.

"Do you think that we shall starve the Germans out ? ' '

" No. We must win by fighting," he replied. This
was in March, 1915. " You know," he went on, taking
another tack, " when one gets back to England out of
this muck he wants good linen and everything very nice. ' '

" Yes. I've found the same after roughing it," I
agreed. " One is most particular that he has every
comfort to which civilization entitles him."

We chatted on. Much of our talk was soldier shop
talk, which you will not care to hear. Twice we were
interrupted by an outburst of firing, and the captain
hurried out to ascertain the reason. Some false alarm had
started the rifles speaking from both sides. A fusillade for
two or three minutes and the firing died down to silence.

Dawn broke and it was time for me to go ; and with
daylight, when danger of a night surprise was over, the
captain would have his sleep. I was leaving him to his
mud house and his bed on the wet ground without a
blanket. It was more important to have sandbags up
for the breastworks than to have blankets ; and as the
men had not yet received theirs, he had none himself.

" It's not fair to the men," he said. " I don't want
anything they don't have."

204 NEARER THE GERMANS

No better food and no better house and no warmer
garments! He spoke not in any sense of stated duty,
but in the affection of the comradeship of war ; the
affection born of that imperturbable courage of his
soldiers who had stood a stone wall of cool resolution
against German charges when it seemed as if they must
go. The glamour of war may have departed, but not
the brotherhood of hardship and dangers shared.

What had been a routine night to him had been a
great night to me ; one of the most memorable of my life.

" I was glad you could come," he said, as I made my
adieu, quite as if he were saying adieu to a guest at home
in England.

Some of the soldiers called their cheery good-byes ;
and with a lieutenant to guide me, I set out while the
light was still dusky, leaving the comforting parapet to
the rear to go into the open, four hundred yards from
the Germans. A German, though he could not have
seen us distinctly, must have noted something moving.
Two of his bullets came rather close before we passed
out of his vision among some trees.

In a few minutes I was again entering the peasant's
cottage that was battalion headquarters ; this time by
daylight. Its walls were chipped by bullets that had
come over the breastworks. The major was just get-
ting up from his blankets in the cellar. By this time I
had a real trench appetite. Not until after breakfast
did it occur to me, with some surprise, that I had not
washed my face.

" The food was just as good, wasn't it ? " remarked
the major. " We get quite used to such breaches of
convention. Besides, you had been up all night, so
your breakfast might be called your after-the-theatre
supper."

With him I went to see what the ruins of Neuve
Chapelle looked like by daylight. The destruction was
not all the result of one bombardment, for the British

THE REMAINS OF NEUVE CHAPELLE 205

had been shelling Neuve Chapelle off and on all winter.
Of course, there is the old earthquake comparison. All
writers have used it. But it is quite too feeble for
Neuve Chapelle. An earthquake merely shakes down
houses. The shells had done a good deal more than
that. They had crushed the remains of the houses as
under the pestle-head in a mortar ; blown walls into
dust ; taken bricks from the east side of the house over to
the west and thrown them back with another explosion.

Neuve Chapelle had been literally flailed with the
high explosive projectiles of the new British artillery,
which the British had to make after the war began in
order to compete with what the Germans already had ;
for poor, lone, wronged, bullied Germany, quite unpre-
pared— Austria with her fifty millions does not count —
was fighting on the defensive against wicked, aggres-
sive enemies who were fully prepared. This explains
why she invaded France and took possession of towns
like Neuve Chapelle to defend her poor, unready people
from the French, who had been plotting and planning
" the day " when they would conquer the Germans.

Bits of German equipment were mixed with ruins of
clocks and family pictures and household utensils. I
noticed a bicycle which had been cut in two, its parts
separated by twenty feet ; one wheel was twisted into
a spool of wire, the other simply smashed.

Where was the man who had kept the shop with a
few letters of his name still visible on a splintered bit of
board ? Where the children who had played in the
littered square in front of the church, with its steeples
and walls piles of stone that had crushed the worship-
pers' benches ? Refugees somewhere back of the
British lines, working on the roads if strong enough,
helping France in any way they could, not murmuring,
even smiling, and praying for victory, which would let
them return to their homes and daily duties. To their
homes !

XVII

WITH THE GUNS

It is a war of explosions, from bombs thrown by hand
within ten yards of the enemy to shells thrown as far as
twenty miles and to mines laid under the enemy's
trenches ; a war of guns, from seventeen-inch down to
three-inch and machine-guns ; a war of machinery,
with man still the pre-eminent machine.

Guns mark the limit of the danger zone. Their
screaming shells laugh at the sentries at the entrances
to towns and at cross-roads who demand passes of all
other travellers. Anyone who tried to keep out of
range of the guns would never get anywhere near the
front. It is all a matter of chance with long odds or
short odds, according to the neighbourhood you are in.
If shells come, they come without warning and without
ceremony. Nobody is afraid of shells and everybody
is — at least, I am.

" Gawd! Wat a 'ole ! " remarks Mr. Thomas Atkins
casually, at sight of an excavation in the earth made by
a thousand-pound projectile.

It is only eighteen years since I saw, at the battle
of Domoko in the Greco-Turkish war, half a dozen
Turkish batteries swing out on the plain of Thessaly,
limber up in the open, and discharge salvos with black
powder, in the good, old battle-panorama style. One
battery of modern field guns unseen would wipe out
the lot in five minutes. Only ten years ago, at the
battle of Liao-yang, as I watched a cloud of shrapnel
smoke sending down steel showers over the little hill of
Manjanyama, which sent up showers of earth from
shells burst by impact on the ground, a Japanese
military attache remarked :

206

SURPRISE IMPORTANT 207

" There you have a prophecy of what a European
war will be like! "

He was right. He knew his business as a military
attache. But the Allies might also make guns and go
on making them till they have enough. The voices of
the guns along the front seem never silent. In some
direction they are always firing. When one night the
reports from a certain quarter seemed rather heavy, I
asked the reason the next day.

" No, not very heavy. No attack," a division staff
officer explained. " The Boches had been builing a
redoubt, and we turned on some h.e.s." — meaning high
explosive shells.

Night after night, under cover of darkness, the Ger-
mans had been labouring on that redoubt, thinking
that they were unobserved. They had kept extremely
quiet, too, slipping their spades into the earth softly
and hammering a nail ever so lightly ; and, of course,
the redoubt was placed behind a screen of foliage which
hid it from the view of the British trenches. Such is
the hide-and-seek character of modern war.

What the German builders did not know was that a
British aeroplane had been watching them day by day,
and that the spot was nicely registered on a British
gunner's map. On this map it was a certain numbered
point. Press a button, as it were, and you ring the bell
with a shell at that point. And the gunners waited till
the house of cards was up before knocking it to pieces.

Surprise is the thing with the guns. A town may go
for weeks without getting a single shell. Then it may
get a score of shells in ten minutes ; or it may be shelled
regularly every day for ensuing weeks. "They are
shelling X again," or, " They have been leaving Z alone
for a long time," is a part of the gossip up and down the
line. Towns are proud of having escaped altogether,
and proud of the number and size of the shells received.

" Did you get any ? " I asked the division staff officer

208 WITH THE GUNS

who had told me about the session the six-inch how-
itzers had enjoyed. A common question that, at the
front, " Did you get any ? " (meaning Germans). A
practical question, too. It has nothing to do with the
form of play or any bit of sensational fielding ; only
with the score, with results, with casualties.

" Yes, quite a number," said the officer. " Our ob-
server saw them lying about."

The guns are watching for the targets at all hours —
the ever-hungry, ever-ready, murderous, cunning, quick,
scientifically-calculating, marvellously-accurate and also
the guessing, wondering, blind, groping, helpless guns,
which toss their steel messengers over streams, wood-
lands, and towns, searching for unseen prey in a wide
landscape.

Accurate and murderous they seem when you drop
low behind a trench wall or huddle in a dug-out as you
hear an approaching scream and the earth trembles and
the air is wracked by a concussion, and the cry of a man
a few yards away tells of a hit. Very accurate when still
others, sent from muzzles six or seven thousand yards
distant, fall in that same line of trench ! Very accurate
when, before an infantry attack, with bursts of shrapnel
bullets they cut to bits the barbed-wire entanglements
in front of a trench ! The power of chaos that they seem
to possess when the firing-trench and the dug-outs and
all the human warrens which protect the defenders are
beaten as flour is kneaded!

Blind and groping they seem when a dozen shells fall
harmlessly in a field ; when they send their missiles
toward objects which may not be worth shooting at ;
when no one sees where the shells hit and the amount of
damage they have done is all guesswork ; and helpless
without the infantry to protect them, the aeroplanes
and the observers to see for them.

One thinks of them as demons with subtle intelligence
and long reach, their gigantic fists striking here and

GUARDING THE GUNS 209

there at will, without a visible arm behind the blow.
An army guards against the blows of an enemy's
demons with every kind of cover, every kind of decep-
tion, with all resources of scientific ingenuity and inven-
tion ; and an army guards its own demons in their lairs
as preciously as if they were made of some delicate
substance which would go up in smoke at a glance from
the enemy's eye, instead of having barrels of the strong-
est steel that can be forged.

Your personal feeling for the demons on your side is
in ratio to the amount of hell sent by the enemy's which
you have tasted. After you have been scared stiff,
while pretending that you were not, by sharing with
Mr. Atkins an accurate bombardment of a trench and
are convinced that the next shell is bound to get you,
you fall into the attitude of the army. You want to pat
the demon on the back and say, " Nice old demon! "
and watch him toss a shell three or four miles into the
German lines from the end of his fiery tongue. Indeed,
nothing so quickly develops interest in the British guns
as having the German gunners take too much personal
interest in you.

You must have someone to show you the way or you
would not find any guns. A man with a dog trained to
hunt guns might spend a week on the gun-position area
covering ten miles of the front and not locate half the
guns. He might miss " Grandmother " and " Sister "
and " Betsy " and " Mike " and even " Mister Archi-
bald," who is the only one who does not altogether try
to avoid publicity.

When an attack or an artillery bombardment is on
and you go to as high ground as possible for a bird's-eye
view of battle, all that you see is the explosion of the
shells ; never anything of the guns which are firing. In
the distance over the German lines and in the foreground
over the British lines is a balloon, shaped like a cater-
pillar with folded wings — a chrysalis of a caterpillar.

210 WITH THE GUNS

Tugging at its moorings, it turns this way and that with
the breeze. The speck directly beneath it through the
glasses becomes an ordinary balloon basket and other
specks attached to a guy rope play the part of the tail of
a kite, helping to steady the type of balloon which has
taken the place of the old spherical type for observation.

Anyone who has been up in a captive spherical balloon
knows how difficult it is to keep his glasses focussed on
any object, because of the jerking and pitching and
trembling due to the envelope's response to air-move-
ments. The new type partly overcomes this drawback.
To shrapnel their thin envelope is as vulnerable as a
paper drum-head to a knife ; but I have seen them re-
main up defiantly when shells were bursting within
three or four hundred yards, which their commanders
seemed to understand was the limit of the German
battery's reach.

Again, I have seen a shrapnel burst alongside within
range ; and five minutes later the balloon was down and
out of sight. No balloon observer hopes to see the
enemy's guns. He is watching for shell-bursts, in order
to inform the guns of his side whether they are on the
target or not.

Riding along the roads at the front one may know
that there is a battery a stone's throw away only when
a blast from a hidden gun-muzzle warns him of its pres-
ence. It is wonderful to me that the artillery general
who took me gun-seeing knew where his own guns were,
let alone the enemy's. I imagine that he could return
to a field and locate a four-leafed clover that he had seen
on a previous stroll. His dogs of war had become foxes
of war, burrowing in places which wise old father foxes
knew were safest from detection. Hereafter, I shall not
be surprised to see a muzzle poking its head out of an
oven, or from under grandfather's chair or a farm
wagon, or up a tree, or in a garret. Think of the last
place in the world for emplacing a gun and one may be

HIDDEN GUN-POSITIONS 211

there ; think of the most likely place and one may be there.

You might be walking across the fields and minded to
go through a hedge, and bump into a black ring of steel
with a gun's crew grinning behind it. They would grin
because you had given proof of how well their gun was
concealed. But they wouldn't grin as much as they
would if they saw the enemy plunking shells into another
hedge two hundred yards distant, where the German
aeroplane observer thought he had seen a battery and
had not.

" I'll show you a big one, first! " said the general.

We left the car at a cottage and walked along a lane.
I looked all about the premises and could see only some
artillerymen. An officer led me up to a gun-breech ;
at least, I know a gun-breech when it is one foot from
my nose and a soldier has removed its covering. But I
shall not tell how that gun was concealed ; the method
was so audacious that it was entirely successful. The
Germans would like to know and we don't want them to
know. A little pencil-point on their map for identifica-
tion,and they would send a whirlwind of shells at that gun.

And then ?

Would the gun try to fire back ? No. Its gunners
probably would not know the location of any of the guns
of the German battery which had concentrated on their
treasure. They would desert the gun. If they did not,
they ought to be court-martialled for needlessly risking
the precious lives of trained men. They would make for
the " funk-pits," as they call the dug-outs, just as the
gunners of any other Power would.

The chances are that the gun itself would not be hit
bodily by a shell. Fragments might strike it without
causing more than an abrasion ; for big guns have
pretty thick cuticles. When the storm was over, the
gunners would move their treasure to another hiding-
place ; which would mean a good deal of work, on
account of its size.

212 WITH THE GUNS

It is the inability of gun to see gun, and even when
seen to knock out gun, which has put an end to the so-
called artillery duel of pitched-battle days, when cannon
walloped cannon to keep cannon from walloping the
infantry. Now when there is an action, though guns
still go after guns if they know where they are, most of
the firing is done against trenches and to support
trenches and infantry works, or with a view to demoral-
izing the infantry. Concentration of artillery fire will
demolish an enemy's trench and let your infantry take
possession of the wreckage remaining ; but then the
enemy's artillery concentrates on your infantry and
frequently makes their new habitation untenable.

Noiselessly except for a little click, with chickens
clucking in a field near by, the big breech-block which
held the shell fast, sending all the power of the explosion
out of the muzzle, was swung back and one looked
through the shining tube of steel, with its rifling which
caught the driving band and gave the shell its rotation
and accuracy in its long journey, which would close
when, descending at the end of its parabola, its nose
struck building, earth, or pavement and it exploded.

Wheels that lift and depress and swing the muzzle,
and gadgets with figures, and other scales which play
between the map and the gadgets, and atmospheric
pressure and wind- variation, all worked out with the
same precision under a French hedge as on board a
battleship where the gun-mounting is fast to massive
ribs of steel — it seemed a matter of book-keeping and
trigonometry rather than war.

If a shell from this gun were to hit at the corner of
Wall Street and Broadway at the noon hour, it would
probably kill and wound a hundred men. If it went into
the dug-out of a support trench it would get everybody
there ; but if it went ten yards beyond the trench into
the open field, it would probably get nobody.

" Cover! " someone exclaimed, while we were looking

GUNNERS LOVE THEIR GUNS 213

at the gun ; and everybody promptly got under the
branches of a tree or a shed. A German aeroplane was
cruising in our direction. If the aviator saw a group of
men standing about he might draw conclusions and pass
the wireless word to send in some shells at whatever
number on the German gunners' map was ours.

These gunners loved their gun ; loved it for the power
which it could put into a blow under their trained hands;
loved it for the care and the labour it had meant for
them. It is the way of gunners to love their gun, or they
would not be good gunners. Of all the guns I saw that
day, I think that two big howitzers meant the most to
their masters. These had just arrived. They had been
set up only two days. They had not yet fired against
the enemy. For many months the gunners had drilled
in England, and they had tried their " eight-inch hows "
out on the target range and brought them across the
Channel and nursed them along French roads, and finally
set them up in their hidden lair. Now they waited for
observers to assist them in registration.

When the general approached there was a call to turn
out the guard ; but the general stopped that. At the
front there is an end of the ceremoniousness of the
barracks. Military formality disappears. Discipline, as
well as other things, is simpler and more real. The men
went on with their recess playing football in a near-by
field.

The officers possibly were a trifle diffident and uncer-
tain ; they had not yet the veteran's manner. It was
clear that they had done everything required by the
textbook of theory — the latest, up-to-date textbook of
experience at the front as taught in England. When
they showed us how they had stored their stock of shells
to be safe from a shot by the enemy, one remarked that
the method was according to the latest directions,
though there was some difference among military ex-
perts on the subject. When there is a difference, what

214 WITH THE GUNS

is the beginner to do ? An old hand, of course, does it
his way until an order makes him do otherwise. The
general had a suggestion about the application of the
method. He had little to say, the general, and all was
in the spirit of comradeship and quite to the point.
Not much escaped his observation.

It seems fairly true that one who knows his work well
in any branch of human endeavour makes it appear
easy. Once a gunner always a gunner is characteristic
of all armies. The general had spent his life with guns.
He was a specialist visiting his plant ; one of the staff
specialists responsible to a corps commander for the
work of the guns on a certain section of map, for accu-
racy and promptness of fire when it was required in the
commander's plans.

If the newcomers put their shells into the target on
their first trial they had qualified ; and sometimes new-
comers shoot quite as well as veterans, which is a sur-
prise to both and the best kind of news for the general
who is in charge of an expanding plant. The war will
be decided by gunners and infantry that knew nothing
of guns or drill when the war began.

" Here are some who have been in France from the
first," said the general, when we came to a battery of
field guns ; of the eighteen-pounders, the fellows you see
behind the galloping horses, the " hell-for-leather ,;
guns, the guns which bring the gleam of affection into
the eyes of men who think of pursuits and covering
retreats and the pitched-battle conditions before armies
settled down in trenches and growled and hissed at each
other day after day and brought up guns of calibres
which we associate with battleships and coast fortifi-
cations.

These are called " light stuff " and " whizz-bangs '
now, in army parlance. They throw only an eighteen-
pound shell which carries three hundred bullets, but so
fast that they chase one another through the air. There

THE USEFUL EIGHTEEN-POUNDER 215

has been so much talk about the need of heavy guns,
you might think that eighteen-pounders were too small
for consideration. Were the German line broken, these
are the ones which could gallop on the heels of the
infantry.

They are the boys who weave the " curtain of fire "
which you read about in the official bulletins as checking
an infantry charge; which demolish the barbed- wire
entanglements to let an infantry charge get into a
trench. If a general wants a shower of bullets over any
part of the German line he has only to call up the
eighteen-pounders and it is sent as promptly as the
pressure of a button brings a pitcher of iced-water to a
room in a first-class hotel. A veteran eighteen-pounder
crew in action is a poem in precision and speed of move-
ment. The gun itself seems to possess intelligence.

There was the finesse of gunners' craft worthy of
veterans in the way that these eighteen-pounders were
concealed. The Germans had put some shells in the
neighbourhood, but without fooling the old hands. They
did not change the location of their battery and their
judgment that the shots which came near were chance
shots fired at another object was justified. Particularly
I should like to mention the nature of their " funk-pits,"
which kept them safe from the heaviest shells. For the
veterans knew how to take care of themselves ; they
had an eye to the protection which comes of experience
with German high explosives. Their expert knowledge
of all the ins and outs of the business had been fought
into them for over a year.

Another field battery, also, I have in mind, placed in
an orchard. Which orchard of all the thousands of
orchards along the British front the German staff may
guess, if they choose. If German guns fired at all the
orchards, one by one, they might locate it — and then
again they might not. Besides, this is a peculiar sort
of orchard.

216 WITH THE GUNS

It is a characteristic of gunners to be neat and to
have an eye for the comeliness of things. These men
had a lawn and a garden, tables and chairs. If you are
familiar with the tidiness of a retired New England sailor,
who regards his porch as a quarter-deck and sallies forth
to remove each descending autumn leaf from the grass,
then you know how scrupulous they were about litter.

For weeks they had been in the same position, unseen
by German aeroplanes. They had daily baths ; they
did their weekly laundry, taking care not to hang it
where it would be visible from the sky. Every day they
received the London papers and letters from home.
When they were needed to help in making war, all they
had to do was to slip a shell in the breech and send it
with their compliments to the Germans. They were
camping out at His Majesty's expense in the pleasant
land of France in the joyous summer time ; and on the
roof of sod over their guns were pots of flowers, undis-
turbed by blasts from the gun-muzzles.

It was when leaving another battery that out of
the tail of my eye I caught a lurid flash through a hedge,
followed by the sharp, ear-piercing crack that comes
from being in line with a gun-muzzle when a shot is
fired. We followed a path which took us to the rear of
the report, where we stepped through undergrowth
among the busy group around the breeches of some guns
of one of the larger calibres.

An order for some " heavy stuff " at a certain point
on the map was being filled. Sturdy men were moving
in a pantomime under the shade of a willow tree, each
doing exactly his part in a process that seemed as simple
as opening a cupboard door, slipping in a package of
concentrated destruction, and closing the door. All that
detail of range-finding and mathematical adjustment of
aim at the unseen target which takes so long to explain
was applied as automatically as an adding-machine adds
up a column of figures. Everybody was as practice-per-

MECHANICS OF FIRING 217

feet in his part as performers who have made hundreds
of appearances in the same act on the stage.

All ready, the word given, a thunder peal and through
the air you saw a wingless, black object in a faint curve
against the soft blue sky, which it seemed to sweep with
a sound something like the escape of water through a
break in the garden hose multiplied by ten, rising to its
zenith and then descending, till it passed out of sight
behind a green bank of foliage on the horizon.

After the scream had been lost to the ear you heard
the faint, thudding boom of an explosion from the burst
of that conical piece of steel which you had seen slipped
into the breech. This was the gunners' part in chess-
board war, where the moves are made over signal wires,
while the infantry endure the explosions in their trenches
and fight in their charges in the traverses of trenches at
as close quarters as in the days of the cave-dwellers.

There was no stopping work when the general came,
of course. It would have been the same had Lord
Kitchener been present. The battery commander ex-
pressed his regret that he could not show me his guns
without any sense of irony ; meaning that he was sorry
he was too busy to tell about his battery. In about the
time that it took a telegraph key to click after each one
of those distant bursts, he knew whether or not the shot
was on the target and what variation of degree to make
in the next if it were not ; or, if the word came, to shift
the point of aim a little, when you are trying to shake
up the enemy here and there along a certain length
of trench.

At another wire-end someone was spotting the bursts.
Perhaps he was in the kind of place where I found one
observer, who was sitting on a cushion looking out
through a chink in a wall, with a signal corps operator
near by. It was a small chink, just large enough to
allow the lens of a pair of glasses or a telescope a range of
vision ; and even then I was given certain warnings

218 WITH THE GUNS

before the cover over the chink was removed, though
there could not have been any German in uniform nearer
than four thousand yards. But there may be spies
within your own lines, looking for such holes.

From this post I could make out the British and the
German trenches in muddy white lines of sandbags run-
ning snake-like across the fields, and the officer identi-
fied points on the map to me. Every tree and hedge
and ditch in the panorama were graven on his mind ; all
had language for him. His work was engrossing. It had
risk, too ; there was no telling when a shell might lift
him off the cushion and provide a hole for the burial of
his remains.

If he were shelled, the observer would go to a funk-
pit, as the gunners do, until the storm had passed ; and
then he would move on with his cushion and his tele-
graph instrument and make a hole in another wall,
if he did not find a tree or some other eminence
which suited his purpose better. Meanwhile, he was not
the only observer in that section. There were others
nearer the trenches, perhaps actually in the trenches.
The two armies, seeming chained to their trenches, are
set with veiled eyes at the end of wires ; veiled eyes
trying to locate the other's eyes, the other's guns and
troops and the least movement which indicates any
attempt to gain an advantage.

" Gunnery is navigation, dead reckoning, with the
spotting observer the sun by which you correct your
figures," said one of the artillery officers.

Firing enough one had seen — landscape bathed in
smoke and dust and reverberating with explosions ; but
all as a spectacle from an orchestra seat, not too close at
hand for comfort. This time I was to see the guns fire
and the results of the firing in detail. Both can rarely
be seen at the same time. It was not show firing this
that we watched from an observing station, but part of
the day's work for the guns and the general. First, the

A BIT OF THE DAY'S WORK 219

map, " Here and there," as an officer's finger pointed ;
and then one looked across fields, green and brown and
golden with the summer crops.

Item I. The Germans were fortifying a certain point
on a certain farm. We were going to put some " heavy
stuff " in there and some " light stuff," too. The burst
of our shells could be located in relation to a certain tree.

Item II. Our planes thought that the Germans had a
wireless station in a certain building. " Heavy stuff "
exclusively for this. No enemy's wireless station ought
to be enjoying serene summer weather without inter-
ruption ; and no German working-party ought to be
allowed to build redoubts within range of our guns
without a break in the monotony of their drudgery.

Six lyddites were the order for the wireless station ;
six high explosives which burst on contact and make a
hole in the earth large enough for a grave for the Kaiser
and all his field marshals. Frequently, not only the
number of shells to be fired, but also the intervals be-
tween them is given by the artillery commander, as part
of his plan in his understanding of the object to be ac-
complished ; and it is quite clear that the system is the
same with the Germans.

One side no sooner develops an idea than the other
adopts it. By effect of the enemy's shells you judge
what the effect of yours must be. Months of experience
have done away with all theories and practice has be-
come much the same by either adversary. For example,
let a German or a British airman be winged by anti-
aircraft gun-fire and the guns instantly loosen up on the
point over his own lines, if he regains them, where he is
seen to fall. All the soldiers in the neighbourhood are
expected to run to his assistance ; and, at any rate, you
may get a trained aviator, whose life is a valuable asset
on one side of the ledger and whose death an asset on the
other. There is no sentiment left in war, you see. It is
all killing and avoiding being killed.

220 WITH THE GUNS

By the scream of a shell the practised ear of the artil-
leryman can tell whether it comes from a gun with a
low trajectory or from a howitzer, whose projectile rises
higher and falls at a sharper angle which enables it to
enter the trenches ; and he can even tell approximately
the calibre.

A scream sweeping past from our rear, and we knew
that this was for the redoubt, as that was to have the
first turn. A volume of dust and smoke breaking from
the earth short of the redoubt, and after the second's
delay of hearing the engine whistle after the burst of
steam in the distance on a winter day, came the sound of
the burst. The next was over. With the third the
" heavy stuff " ought to be right on.

But don't forget that there was also an order for some
" light stuff," identified as shrapnel by its soft, nimbus-
like puff which was scattering bullets as if giving chase
to that working-party as it hastened to cover. There
you had the ugly method of this modern artillery fire :
death shot downward from the air and leaping up out of
the earth. Unhappily, the third was not on, nor the
fourth — not exactly on. Exactly on is the way that
British gunners like to fill an order f.o.b., express
charges prepaid, for the Germans.

Ten years ago it would have seemed good shooting.
It was not very good in the twelfth month of the war ;
for war beats the target range in developing accuracy.
At five or six or seven or eight thousand yards' range
the shells were bursting thirty or forty yards away from
where they should.

No, not very good ; the general murmured as much.
He did not need to say so aloud to the artillery officer
responsible for that shooting, who was in touch with his
batteries by wire. The officer knew it. He was the high-
strung, ambitious sort. You had better not become a
gunner unless you are. Any " good-enough " tempera-
ment is ruled off wasting munitions. Red was creeping

RIGHT ON THE TARGET 221

through the tan from his throat to the roots of his hair.
To have this happen in the presence of that veteran
general, after all his efforts to try to remedy the error
in those guns!

But the general was quite human. He was not the
" strafing " kind.

" I know those guns have an error! " he said, as he
put his hand on the officer's arm. That was all ; and
that was a good deal to the officer. Evidently, the
general not only knew guns ; he knew men. The officer
had suffered admonition enough from his own injured
pride.

Besides, what we did to the supposed wireless station
ought to keep any general from being downhearted.
Neither guns, nor the powder which sent the big shells
on their errand, nor the calculations of the gunners, nor
their adjustment of the gadgets, had any error. With
the first one, a great burst of the black smoke of deadly
lyddite rose from the target.

"Right on!"

And again and again — right on ! The ugly, spreading,
low-hanging, dense cloud was renewed from its heart by
successive bursts in the same place. If the aeroplane's
conclusions were right, that wireless station must be
very much wireless, now. The only safe discount for
the life insurance of the operators was one hundred per
cent.

" Here, they are firing more than six! " said the
general. " It's always hard to hold these gunners down
when they are on the target like that."

He spoke as if it would have been difficult for him to
resist the temptation himself. The wireless station got
two extra shells for full measure. Perhaps those two
were waste ; perhaps the first two had been enough.
Conservation of shells has become a first principle of the
artillerists' duty. The number fired by either side in the
course of the routine of an average so-called peaceful

222 WITH THE GUNS

day is surprising. Economy would be easier if it were
harder to slip a shell into a gun-breech. The men in the
trenches are always calling for shells. They want a tree
or a house which is the hiding-place of a sniper knocked
down. The men at the guns would be glad to accom-
modate them, but the say as to that is with commanders
who know the situation.

" The Boches will be coming back at us soon, you will
see ! " said one of the officers who was at our observation
post. " They always do. The other day they chose this
particular spot for their target " — which was a good
reason why they would not this time, an optimist
thought.

Let either side start a bombardment and the other
responds. There is a you-hit-me-and-Fll-hit-you charac-
ter about siege warfare. Gun-fire provokes gun-fire.
Neither adversary stays quiet under a blow. It was not
long before we heard the whish of German shells passing
some distance away.

They say sport is out of war. Perhaps, but not its
enthralling and horrible fascination. Knowing what the
target is, knowing the object of the fire, hearing the
scream of the projectile on the way and watching to see
if it is to be a hit, when the British are fighting the Ger-
mans on the soil of France, has an intensive thrill which
is missing to the spectator who looks on at the Home
Sports Club shooting at clay pigeons — which is not in
justification of war. It does explain, however, the at-
traction of gunnery to gunners. One forgets, for the
instant, that men are being killed and mangled. He
thinks only of points scored in a contest which requires
all the wit and strength and fortitude of man and all his
cunning in the manufacture and control of material.

You want your side to win ; in this case, because it is
the side of humanity and of that kindly general and the
things that he and the army he represents stand for.
The blows which the demons from the British lairs

A CANADIAN BATTERY 223

strike are to you the blows of justice ; and you are glad
when they go home. They are your blows. You have
a better reason for keeping an army's artillery secrets
than for keeping secret the signals of your 'Varsity
football team, which anyone instinctively keeps — the
reason of a world cause.

Yet another thing to see — an aeroplane assisting a
battery by spotting the fall of its shells, which is en-
grossing enough, too, and amazingly simple. Of course
this battery was proud of its method of concealment.
Each battery commander will tell you that a British
plane has flown very low, as a test, without being
able to locate his battery. If it is located, there is more
work due in " make-up " to complete the disguise.
Competition among batteries is as keen as among
battleships of our North Atlantic fleet.

Situation favoured this battery, which was Canadian.
It was as nicely at home as a first-class Adirondack
camp. At any rate, no other battery had a dug-out
for a litter of eight pups, with clean straw for their bed,
right between two gun-emplacements.

" We found the mother wild, out there in the woods,"
one of the men explained. " She, too, was a victim of
war ; a refugee from some home destroyed by shell-fire.
At first she wouldn't let us approach her, and we tossed
her pieces of meat from a safe distance. I think those
pups will bring us luck. We'll take them along to the
Rhine. Some mascots, eh ?

On our way back to the general's headquarters we
must have passed other batteries hidden from sight
only a stone's throw away ; and yet in an illustrated
paper recently I saw a drawing of some guns emplaced
on the crest of a bare hill, naked to all the batteries of
the enemy, but engaged in destroying all the enemy's
batteries, according to the account. Twelve months
of war have not shaken conventional ideas about
gunnery ; which is one reason for writing this chapter.

224 WITH THE GUNS

Also, on our way back we learned the object of the
German fire in answer to our bombardment of the
redoubt and the wireless station. They had shelled a
cross-roads and a certain village again. As we passed
through the village we noticed a new hole in the church
tower, and three holes in the churchyard, which had
scattered clods of earth about the pavement. A shop-
keeper was engaged in repairing a window-frame that
had been broken by a shell-fragment.

There is no flustering the French population. That
very day I heard of an old peasant who asked a British
soldier if he could not get permission for the old farmer
to wear some kind of an armband which both sides
would respect, so that he could cut his field of wheat
between the trenches. Why not ? Wasn't it his
wheat ? Didn't he need the crop ?

And the Germans fire into villages and towns ; for
the women and children there are the women and
children of the enemy. But those in the German lines
belong to the ally of England. Besides, they are
women and children. So British gunners avoid towns
— which is, in one sense, a professional handicap.

XVIII

ARCHIBALD THE ARCHER

There is another kind of gun, vagrant and free lance,
which deserves a chapter by itself. It has the same
bark as the eighteen-pounder field piece ; the flight of
the shell makes the same kind of sound. But its
scream, instead of passing in a long parabola toward
the German lines, goes up in the heavens toward some-
thing as large as your hand against the light blue of the
summer sky — a German aeroplane.

At a height of seven or eight thousand feet the target
seems almost stationary, when really it is going some-
where between fifty and ninety miles an hour. It has
all the heavens to itself, and to the British it is a
sinister, prying eye that wants to see if we are building
any new trenches, if we are moving bodies of troops or
of transport, and where our batteries are in hiding.
That aviator three miles above the earth has many
waiting guns at his command. A few signals from his
wireless and they would let loose on the target he
indicated.

If the planes might fly as low as they pleased, they
would know all that was going on in an enemy's lines.
They must keep up so high that through the aviator's
glasses a man on the road is the size of a pin-head. To
descend low is as certain death as to put your head over
the parapet of a trench when the enemy's trench is only
a hundred yards away. There are dead lines in the air,
no less than on the earth.

Archibald, the anti-aircraft gun, sets the dead line.
He watches over it as a cat watches a mouse. The
trick of sneaking up under cover of a noonday cloud

225

226 ARCHIBALD THE ARCHER

and all the other man-bird tricks he knows. A couple
of seconds after that crack a tiny puff of smoke breaks
about a hundred yards behind the Taube. A soft
thistledown against the blue it seems at that altitude ;
but it would not if it were about your ears. Then it
would sound like a bit of dynamite on an anvil struck
by a hammer and you would hear the whizz of scores of
bullets and fragments.

The smoking brass shell-case is out of Archibald's
steel throat, and another shell-case with its charge
slipped into place and started on its way before the
first puff breaks. The aviator knows what is coming.
He knows that one means many, once he is in range.

Archibald rushes the fighting ; it is the business of
the Taube to side-step. The aviator cannot hit back
except through his allies, the German batteries, on the
earth. They would take care of Archibald if they knew
where he was. But all that the aviator can see is
mottled landscape. From his side Archibald flies no
goal flags. He is one of ten thousand tiny objects
under the aviator's eye.

Archibald's propensities are entirely peripatetic. He
is the vagabond of the army lines. Locate him and he
is gone. His home is where night finds him and the
day's duties take him. He is the only gun that keeps
regular hours like a Christian gentleman. All the others,
great and small, raucous-voiced and shrill- voiced, fire
at any hour, night or day. Aeroplanes rarely go up at
night ; and when no aeroplanes are up, Archibald has
no interest in the war. But he is alert at the first
flush of dawn, on the look-out for game with the
avidity of a pointer dog ; for aviators are also up early.

Why he was named Archibald nobody knows. As
his full name is Archibald the Archer, possibly it comes
from some association with the idea of archery. If
there were ten thousand anti-aircraft guns in the
British army, every one would be known as Archibald.

THE ENEMY OF THE TAUBE 227

When the British Expeditionary Force went to France
it had none. All the British could do was to bang away
at Taubes with thousands of rounds of rifle-bullets,
which might fall in their own lines, and with the field
guns.

It was pie in those days for the Taubes! Easy to
keep out of the range of both rifles and guns and observe
well ! If the Germans did not know the progress of the
British retreat from on high it was their own fault.
Now, the business of firing at Taubes is left entirely to
Archibald. When you see how hard it is for Archibald,
after all his practice, to get a Taube, you understand
how foolish it was for the field guns to try to get one.

Archibald, who is quite the " swaggerist " of the gun
tribe, has his own private car built especially for him.
Such of the cavalry's former part as the planes do not
play he plays. He keeps off the enemy's scouts. Do
you seek team-work, spirit of corps, and smartness in
this theatre of France, where all the old glamour of war
is supposed to be lacking ? You will find it in the
attendants of Archibald. They have pride, elan, alert-
ness, pepper, and all the other appetizers and condi-
ments. They are as neat as a private yacht's crew, and
as lively as an infield of a major league team. The
Archibaldians are naturally bound to think rather well
of themselves.

Watch them there, every man knowing his part, as
they send their shells after the Taube! There is not
enough waste motion among the lot to tip over the
range-finder, or the telescopes, or the score board, or
any of the other paraphernalia assisting the man who is
looking through the sight in knowing where to aim next,
as a screw answers softly to his touch.

Is the sport of war dead ? Not for Archibald !
Here you see your target — which is so rare these days
when British infantrymen have stormed and taken
trenches without ever seeing a German — and the target

228 ARCHIBALD THE ARCHER

is a bird, a man-bird. Puffs of smoke with bursting
hearts of death are clustered around the Taube. One
follows another in quick succession, for more than one
Archibald is firing, before your entranced eye.

You are staring like the crowd of a county fair at a
parachute act. For the next puff may get him. Who
knows this better than the aviator ? He is, likely, an
old hand at the game ; or, if he is not, he has all the
experience of other veterans to go by. His ruse is the
same as that of the escaped prisoner who runs from the
fire of a guard in a zigzag course, and more than that.
If a puff comes near on the right, he turns to the left ;
if one comes near on the left, he turns to the right ;
if one comes under, he rises ; over, he dips. This means
that the next shell fired at the same point will be wide of
the target.

Looking through the sight, it seems easy to hit a
plane. But here is the difficulty. It takes two seconds,
say, for the shell to travel to the range of the plane.
The gunner must wait for its burst before he can spot
his shot. Ninety miles an hour is a mile and a half
a minute. Divide that by thirty and you have about a
hundred yards which the plane has travelled from the
time the shell left the gun-muzzle till it burst. It
becomes a matter of discounting the aviator's speed and
guessing from experience which way he will turn next.

That ought to have got him — the burst was right
under. No! He rises. Surely that one got him!
The puff is right in front, partly hiding the Taube from
view. You see the plane tremble as if struck by a
violent gust of wind. Close! Within thirty or forty
yards, the telescope says. But at that range the naked
eye is easily deceived about distance. Probably some
of the bullets have cut his plane.

But you must hit the man or the machine in a vital
spot in order to bring down your bird. The explosions
must be very close to count. It is amazing how much

DARING AEROPLANES 229

shell-fire an aeroplane can stand. Aviators are accus-
tomed to the whizz of shell-fragments and bullets, and
to have their planes punctured and ripped. Though
their engines are put out of commission, and frequently
though the man be wounded, they are able to volplane
back to the cover of their own lines.

To make a proper story we ought to have brought
down this particular bird. But it had the luck, which
most planes, British or German have, to escape anti-
aircraft gun-fire. It had begun edging away after the
first shot and soon was out of range. Archibald had
served the purpose of his existence. He had sent the
prying aerial eye home.

A fight between planes in the air very rarely happens,
except in the imagination. Planes do not go up to
fight other planes, but for observation. Their business
is to see and learn and bring home their news.

XIX

TRENCHES IN SUMMER

It was the same trench in June, still a relatively
" quiet corner," which I had seen in March ; but I
would never have known it if its location had not been
the same on the map. One was puzzled how a place
that had been so wet could become so dry.

This time the approach was made in daylight
through a long communication ditch, which brought us
to a shell-wrecked farmhouse. We passed through this
and stepped down at the back door into deep traverses
cut among the roots of an orchard ; then behind walls
of earth high above our heads to battalion headquarters
in a neat little shanty, where I deposited the first of the
cakes I had brought on the table beside some battalion
reports. A cake is the right gift for the trenches,
though less so in summer than in winter when appetites
are less keen. The adjutant tried a slice while the
colonel conferred with the general, who had accom-
panied me this far, and he glanced up at a sheet of
writing with a line opposite hours of the day, pinned to
a post of his dug-out.

" I wanted to see if it were time to make another
report," he said. " We are always making reports.
Everybody is, so that whoever is superior to someone
else knows what is happening in his subordinate's
department."

Then in and out in a maze, between walls with straight
faces of the hard, dry earth, testifying to the benefi-
cence of summer weather in constructing fastnesses
from artillery fire, until we were in the firing-trench,
where I was at home among the officers and men of a

230

HEROES OF YPRES 231

company. General Mud was " down and out." He

waited on the winter rains to take command again.

But winter would find an army prepared against his

kind of campaign. Life in the trenches in summer was

not so unpleasant but that some preferred it, with the

excitement of sniping, to the boredom of billets.
* * * * *

" What hopes! " was the current phrase I heard
among the men in these trenches. It shared honours
with strafe. You have only one life to live and you
may lose that any second — what hopes ! Dig, dig, dig,
and set off a mine that sends Germans skyward in a
cloud of dust — what hopes! Bully beef from Chicago
and Argentina is no food for babes, but better than
' K.K." bread — what hopes! Mr. Thomas Atkins,
British regular, takes things as they come — and a lot of
them come — shells, bullets, asphyxiating gas, grenades,
and bombs.

There is much to be thankful for. The King's Own
Particular Fusiliers, as we shall call this regiment, had
only three men hit yesterday. On every man's cap is a
metal badge crowded with battle honours, from the
storming of Quebec to the relief of Ladysmith. Heroic
its history ; but no battle honours equal that of the
regiment's part in the second battle of Ypres ; and no
heroes of the regiment's story, whom you picture in
imagination with haloes of glory in the wish that you
might have met them in the flesh in their scarlet coats,
are the equal of these survivors in plain khaki manning
a ditch in a.d. 1915, whom anyone may meet.

But do not tell them that they are heroes. They
will deny it on the evidence of themselves as eye-
witnesses of the action. To remark that the K.O.P.F.
are brave is like remarking that water flows down hill.
It is the business of the K.O.P.F. to be brave. Why
talk about it ?

One of the three men hit was killed. Well, every-
Q

232 TRENCHES IN SUMMER

body in the war rather expects to be killed. The other
two " got tickets to England," as they say. My lady
will take the convalescents joy-riding in her car, and
afterwards seat them in easy chairs, arranging the
cushions with her own hands, and feed them slices of
cold chicken in place of bully beef and strawberries and
cream in place of ration marmalade. Oh, my ! What
hopes!

Mr. Atkins does not mind being a hero for the purposes
of such treatment. Then, with never a twinkle in his
eye, he will tell my lady that he does not want to return
to the front ; he has had enough of it, he has. My
lady's patriotism will be a trifle shocked, as Mr. Atkins
knows it will be ; and she will wonder if the " stick it '
quality of the British soldier is weakening, as Mr.
Atkins knows she will. For he has more kinks in his
mental equipment than mere nobility ever guesses, and
he is having the time of his life in more respects than
strawberries and cream. What hopes! Of course, he
will return and hold on in the face of all that the
Germans can give, without any pretence to bravery.

If you go as a stranger into the trenches on a sight-
seeing tour and says, " How are you ? " and, " Are you
going to Berlin ? " and, " Are you comfortable ? " etc.,
Tommy Atkins will say, " Yes, sir," and " Very well,
sir," as becomes all polite regular soldier men ; and
you get to know him about as well as you know the
members of a club if you are shown the library and dine
at a corner table with a friend.

Spend the night in the trenches and you are taken
into the family, into that very human family of soldier-
dom in a quiet corner ; and the old, care-free spirit of
war, which some people thought had passed, is found
to be no less alive in siege warfare than on a march of
regulars on the Indian frontier or in the Philippines.
Gaiety and laughter and comradeship and " joshing "
are here among men to whom wounds and death are a

SNIPERS 233

part of the game. One may challenge high explosives
with a smile, no less than ancient round shot. Settle
down behind the parapet, and the little incongruities of a
trench, paltry without the intimacy of men and locality,
make for humour no less than in a shop or a factory.

Under the parapet runs the tangle of barbed wire —
barbed wire from Switzerland to Belgium — to welcome
visitors from that direction, which, to say the least,
would be an impolitic direction of approach for any
stranger.

" All sightseers should come into the trenches from
the rear," says Mr. Atkins. " Put it down in the
guidebooks."

Beyond the barbed wire in the open field the wheat
which some farmer sowed before positions were estab-
lished in this area is now in head, rippling with the
breeze, making a golden sea up to the wall of sandbags
which is the enemy's line. It was late June at its
loveliest ; no signs of war except the sound of our guns
some distance away and an occasional sniper's bullet.
One cracked past as I was looking through my glasses
to see if there were any evidence of life in the German
trenches.

"Your hat, sir!"

Another moved a sandbag slightly, but not until
after the hat had come down and the head under it,
most expeditiously. Up to eight hundred yards a
bullet cracks ; beyond that range it whistles, sighs,
even wheezes. An elevation gives snipers, who are
always trained shots, an angle of advantage. In
winter they had to rely for cover on buildings, which
often came tumbling down with them when hit by a
shell. The foliage of summer is a boon to their craft.

" Does it look to you like an opening in the branches
of that tree — the big one at the right ? "

In the mass of leaves a dark spot was visible. It
might be natural, or it might be a space cut away for

234 TRENCHES IN SUMMER

the swing of a rifle-barrel. Perhaps sitting up there
snugly behind a bullet-proof shield fastened to the limbs
was a German sharpshooter, watching for a shot with the
patience of a hound for a rabbit to come out of its hole.

" It's about time we gave that tree a spray good for
that kind of fungus, from a machine-gun ! "

A bullet coming from our side swept overhead. One
of our own sharpshooters had seen something to shoot at.

" Not giving you much excitement ! " said Tommy.

" I suppose I'd get a little if I stood up on the para-
pet ? " I asked.

" You wouldn't get a ticket for England ; you'd get
a box!"

" There's a cemetery just behind the lines if you'd
prefer to stay in France ! "

I had passed that cemetery with its fresh wooden
crosses on my way to the trench. These tender-
hearted soldiers who joked with death had placed
flowers on the graves of fallen comrades and bought
elaborate French funeral wreaths with their meagre
pay — which is another side of Mr. Thomas Atkins.
There is sentiment in him. Yes, he's loaded with
sentiment, but not for the " movies."

" Keep your head down there, Eames! " called a
corporal. " I don't want to be taking an inventory of
your kit."

Eames did not even realize that his head was above
the parapet. The hardest thing to teach a soldier
is not to expose himself. Officers keep iterating
warnings and then forget to practise what they preach.
That morning a soldier had been shot through the heart
and arm sideways behind the trench. He had lain
down unnoticed for a nap in the sun, it was supposed.
When he awoke, presumably he sat up and yawned and
Herr Schmidt, from some platform in a tree, had a
bloody reward for his patience.

The next morning I saw the British take their

QUIET EVENING TALK 235

revenge. Some German who thought that he could not
be seen in the mist of dawn was walking along the
German parapet. What hopes ! Four or five men took
careful aim and fired. That dim figure collapsed in a
way that was convincing.

As I swept the line of German trenches with the
glasses I saw a wisp of flag clinging to its pole in the
still air far down to the left. Flags are as unusual
above trenches as men standing up in full view of the
enemy. Then a breeze caught the folds, and I saw that
it was the tricolour of France.

" A Boche joke! " Tommy explained.

" Probably they are hating the French to-day ? "

" No, it's been there for some days. They want us
to shoot at the flag of our ally. They'd get a laugh out
of that — a regular Boche notion of humour."

" If it were a German flag ? " I suggested.

" What hopes! We'd make it into a lace curtain! "

Even the guns had ceased firing. The birds in their
evensong had all the war to themselves. It was difficult
to believe that if you stood on top of the parapet any-
body would shoot at you ; no, not even if you walked
down the road that ran through the wheatfield, every-
thing was so peaceful. One grew sceptical of there
being any Germans in the trenches opposite.

: There are three or four sharpshooters and a fat old
Boche professor in spectacles, who moves a machine-
gun up and down for a bluff," said a soldier, and another
corrected him :

" No, the old professor's the one that walks along at
night sending up flares! "

" Munching K.K. bread with his false teeth! "

" And singing the hymn of hate! "

Thus the talk ran on in the quiet of evening, till we
heard a concussion and a quarter of a mile away, behind
a screen of trees, a pillar of smoke rose to the height of
two or three hundred feet.

236 TRENCHES IN SUMMER

"A mine! "

" In front of the th brigade! "

" Ours or the Bodies'? "

" Ours, from the way the smoke went — our fuse! "

"No, theirs! "

Our colonel telephoned down to know if we knew
whose mine it was, which was the question we wanted
to ask him. The guns from both sides became busy
under the column of smoke. Oh, yes, there were Ger-
mans in the trenches which had appeared vacant. Their
shots and ours merged in the hissing medley of a tempest.

" Not enough guns — not enough noise for an attack!"
said experienced Tommy, who knew what an attack
was like.

The commander of the adjoining brigade telephoned
to the division commander, who passed the word
through to our colonel, who passed it to us that the
mine was German and had burst thirty yards short of
the British trench.

" After all that digging, wasting Boche powder in that
fashion! The Kaiser won't like it! " said Mr. Atkins.
" We exploded one under them yesterday and it made
them hate so hard they couldn't wait. They've awful
tempers, the Bodies! " And he finished the job on
which he was engaged when interrupted, eating a large
piece of ration bread surmounted by all the ration jam it
could hold ; while one of the company officers reminded
me that it was about dinner time.

"What do you think I am? A blooming traffic police-
man ? " growled the cook to two soldiers who had found
themselves in a blind alley in the maze of streets back of
the firing-trench. "My word! Is His Majesty's army
becoming illiterate ? Strafe that sign at the corner !
What do you think we put it up for ? To show what a
beautiful hand we had at printing ? "

The sign on a board fastened against the earth wall

A HOMELY ATMOSPHERE 237

read, " No thoroughfare! " The soldier-cook, withfa
fork in his hand, his sleeves rolled up, his shirt open at
his tanned throat, looked formidable. He was preoccu-
pied ; he was at close quarters roasting a chicken over a
small stove. Yes, they have cook-stoves in the trenches.
Why not ? The line had been in the same position for
six months.

" Little by little we improve our happy home," said
the cook.

The latest acquisition was a lace curtain for the offi-
cers' mess hall, bought at a shop in the nearest town.

When the cook was inside his kitchen there was no
room to spill anything on the floor. The kitchen was
about three feet square, with boarded walls, and a roof
covered with tar paper and a layer of earth set level
with the trench parapet. The chicken roasted and the
frying potatoes sizzled as an occasional bullet passed
overhead, even as flies buzz about the screen door when
Mary is making cakes for tea.

The officers' mess hall, next to the kitchen and built
in the same fashion, had some boards nailed on posts
sunk in the ground for a table, which was proof against
tipping when you climbed over it or squeezed around it
to your place. The chairs were rifle-ammunition boxes,
whose contents had been emptied with individual care,
bullet by bullet, at the Germans in the trench on the
other side of the wheatfield. Dinner was at nine in the
evening, when it was still twilight in the longest days of
the year in this region. The hour fits in with trench
routine, when night is the time to be on guard and you
sleep by day. Breakfast comes at nine in the morning.
I was invited to help eat the chicken and to spend the
night.

Now, the general commanding the brigade who ac-
companied me to the trenches had been hit twice. So
had the colonel, a man about forty. From forty, ages
among the regimental officers dropped into the twenties.

238 TRENCHES IN SUMMER

Many of the older men who started in the war had been
killed, or were back in England wounded, or had been
promoted to other commands where their experience
was more useful. To youth, life is sweet and danger is
life. The oldest of the officers of the proud old K.O.P.F.
who gathered for dinner was about twenty-five, though
when he assumed an air of authority he seemed to be
forty. It was not right to ask the youngest his age.
Parenthetically, let it be said that he is trying to start a
moustache. They had come fresh from Sandhurst to
swift tuition in gruelling, incessant warfare.

" Has anyone asked him it yet ? " one inquired, re-
ferring to some question to the guest.

" Not yet ? Then all together : When do you think
that the war will be over ? "

It was the eternal question of the trenches, the army,
and the world. We had it over with before the soldier-
cook brought on the roast chicken, which was received
with a befitting chorus of approbation.

Who would carve ? Who knew how to carve ?
Modesty passed the honour to her neighbour, till a
brave man said :

" I will! I will strafe the chicken ! "

Gott strafe England I Strafe has become a noun, a
verb, an adjective, a cussword, and a term of greeting.
Soldier asks soldier how he is strafing to-day. When the
Germans are not called Boches they are called Strafers.
" Won't you strafe a little for us ? " Tommy sings out to
the German trenches when they are close. What hopes?

That gallant youngster of the K.O.P.F. in the midst
of bantering advice succeeded in separating the meat
from the bones without landing a leg in anybody's lap
or a wing in anybody's eye. Timid spectators who had
hung back where he had dared might criticize his form,
but they could not deny the efficiency of his execution.
He was appointed permanent strafer of all the fowls that
came to table.

LIGHTHEARTED YOUTH 239

Everybody talked and joked about everything, from
plays in London to the Germans. There were arguments
about favourite actors and military methods. The sense
of danger was as absent as if we had been dining in a
summer garden. It was the parents and relatives in
pleasant English homes in fear of a dread telegram who
were worrying, not the sons and brothers in danger.
Isn't it better that way ? Would not the parents prefer
it that way ? Wasn't it the way of the ancestors in the
scarlet coats and the Merrie England of their day ?
With the elasticity of youth my hosts adapted them-
selves to circumstances. In their lightheartedness they
made war seem a keen sport. They lived war for all it
was worth. If it gets on their nerves their efficiency is
spoiled. There is no room for a jumpy, excitable man
in the trenches. Youth's resources defy monotony and
death at the same time.

An expedition had been planned for that night. A
patrol the previous night had brought in word that the
Germans had been sneaking up and piling sandbags in
the wheatfield. The plan was to slip out as soon as it
was really dark with a machine-gun and a dozen men,
get behind the Germans' own sandbags, and give them a
perfectly informal reception when they returned to go
on with their work.

Before dinner, however, J , who was to be the

general of the expedition, and his subordinates made a
reconnaissance. Two or more officers or men always go
out together on any trip of this kind in that ticklish
space between the trenches, where it is almost certain
death to be seen by the enemy. If one is hit the other
can help him back. If one survives he will bring back
the result of his investigations.

J had his own ideas about comfort in trousers in

the trench in summer. He wore shorts with his knees
bare. When he had to do a " crawl " he unwound his
puttees and wound them over his knees. He and the

240 TRENCHES IN SUMMER

others slipped over the parapet without attracting the
attention of the enemy's sharpshooters. On hands and
knees, like boy scouts playing Indians, they passed
through a narrow avenue in the ugly barbed wire, and
still not a shot at them. A matter of the commonplace
to the men in the trench held the spectator in suspense.
There was a fascination about the thing, too; that of the
sporting chance, without a full realization that failure
in this hide-and-seek game might mean a spray of
bullets and death for these young men.

They entered the wheat, moving slowly like two land
turtles. The grain parted in swaths over them. Surely
the Germans might see the turtles' heads as they were
raised to look around. No officer can be too young and
supple for this kind of work. Here the company officer
just out of school is in his element, with an advantage
over older officers. That pair were used to crawling.
They did not keep their heads up long. They knew just
how far they might expose themselves. They passed
out of sight, and reappeared and slipped back over the
parapet again without the Germans being any the wiser.

Hard luck ! It is an unaccommodating world ! They
found that the patrol which had examined the bags at
night had failed to discern that they were old and must
have been there for some time.

" I'll take the machine-gun out, anyhow, if the colonel

will permit it," said J . For the colonel puts on the

brakes. Otherwise, there is no telling what risks youth
might take with machine-guns.

We were half through dinner when a corporal came to
report that a soldier on watch thought that he had seen
some Germans moving in the wheat very near our barbed
wire. Probably a false alarm ; but no one in a trench
ever acts on the theory that any alarm is false. Eternal
vigilance is the price of holding a trench. Either side is
cudgelling its brains day and night to spring some new
trick on the other. If one side succeeds with a trick, the

AN INTERRUPTED DINNER 241

other immediately adopts it. No international copy-
right in strategy is recognized. We rushed out of the
mess hall into the firing-trench, where we found the men
on the alert, rifles laid on the spot where the Germans
were supposed to have been seen.

" Who are you? Answer, or we fire! " called the
ranking young lieutenant.

If any persons present out in front in the face of thirty
rifles knew the English language and had not lost the
instinct of self-preservation, they would certainly have
become articulate in response to such an unveiled hint.
Not a sound came. Probably a rabbit running through
the wheat had been the cause of the alarm. But you
take no risks. The order was given, and the men combed
the wheat with a fusillade.

" Enough! Cease fire! " said the officer. " Nobody
there. If there had been we should have heard the groan
of a wounded man or seen the wheat stir as the Germans
hugged closer to the earth for cover."

This he knew by experience. It was not the first time
he had used a fusillade in this kind of a test.

After dinner J rolled his puttees up around his

bare knees again, for the colonel had not withdrawn per-
mission for the machine-gun expedition. J 's knees

were black and blue in spots ; they were also — well,
there is not much water for washing purposes in the
trenches. Great sport that, crawling through the dew-
moist wheat in the faint moonlight, looking for a bunch
of Germans in the hope of turning a machine-gun on
them before they turn one on you !

" One man hit by a stray bullet," said J on his

return.

" I heard the bullet go th-ip into the earth after it
went through his leg," said the other officer.

' ' Bly the was a recruit and he had asked me to take him
out the first time there was anything doing. I promised
that I would, and he got about the only shot fired at us."

242 TRENCHES IN SUMMER

" Need a stretcher ? "

" No."

Blythe came hobbling through the traverse to the
communication trench, seeming well pleased with him-
self. The soft part of the leg is not a bad place to receive
a bullet if one is due to hit you.

*****

Night is always the time in the trenches when life
grows more interesting and death more likely.

" It's dark enough, now," said one of the youngsters
who was out on another scout. " We'll go out with the
patrol."

By day, the slightest movement of the enemy is easily
and instantly detected. Light keeps the combatants to
the warrens which protect them from shell and bullet-
fire. At night there is no telling what mischief the
enemy may be up to ; you must depend upon the ear
rather than the eye for watching. Then the human
soldier-fox comes out of his burrow and sneaks forth on
the lookout for prey ; both sides are on the prowl.

" Trained owls would be the most valuable scouts we
could have," said the young officer. " They would be
more useful than aeroplanes in locating the enemy's
gun-positions. A properly reliable owl would come back
and say that a German patrol was out in the wheatfield
at such a point and a machine-gun would wipe out
that patrol."

We turned into a side trench, an alley off the main
street, leading out of the front trench toward the
Germans.

" Anybody out ? " he asked a soldier who was on
guard at the end of it.

" Yes, two."

Climbing out of the ditch, we were in the midst of a
tangle of barbed wire protecting the trench front, which
was faintly visible in the starlight. There was a break in
the tangle, a narrow cut in the hedge, as it were, kept

OUT WITH THE PATROL 243

open for just such purposes as this. When the patrol
returned it closed the gate again.

" Look out for that wire — just there ! Do you see it ?
We've everything to keep the Boches off our front lawn
except ' Keep off the grass! ' signs."

It was perfectly still, a warm summer night without a
cat's-paw of breeze. Through the dark curtain of the
sky in a parabola rising from the German trenches swept
the brilliant sputter of red light of a German flare. It
was coming as straight toward us as if it had been
aimed at us. It cast a searching, uncanny glare over
the tall wheat in head between the trenches.

" Down flat! " whispered the officer.

It seemed foolish to grovel before a piece of fireworks.
There was no firing in our neighbourhood ; nothing to
indicate a state of war between the British Empire and
Germany ; no visual evidence of any German army in
France except that flare. However, if a guide who knows
as much about war as this one says you are to pros-
trate yourself when you are out between two lines of
machine-guns and rifles — between the fighting powers
of England and Germany — you take the hint. The flare
sank into earth a few yards away, after a last insulting,
ugly fling of sparks in our faces.

" What if we had been seen ? "

" They'd have combed the wheat in this part
thoroughly, and they might have got us."

" It's hard to believe," I said.

So it was, he agreed. That was the exasperating
thing. Always hard to believe, perhaps, until after all
the cries of wolf the wolf came ; until after nineteen
harmless flares the twentieth revealed to the watching
enemy the figure of a man above the wheat, when a
crackling chorus of bullets would suddenly break the
silence of night by concentrating on a target. Keeping
cover from German flares is a part of the minute, pains-
taking economy of war.

244 TRENCHES IN SUMMER

We crawled on slowly, taking care to make no noise,
till we brought up behind two soldiers hugging the earth,
rifles in hand ready to fire instantly. It was their busi-
ness not only to see the enemy first, but to shoot first,
and to capture or kill any German patrol. The officer
spoke to them and they answered. It was unnecessary
for them to say that they had seen nothing. If they had
we should have known it. He was out there less to scout
himself than to make sure that they were on the job ;
that they knew how to watch. The visit was part of his
routine. We did not even whisper. Preferably, all
whispering would be done by any German patrol out to
have a look at our barbed wire and overheard by us.

Silence and the starlight and the damp wheat ; but,
yes, there was war. You heard gun-fire half a mile, per-
haps a mile, away ; and raising your head you saw
auroras from bursting shells. We heard at our backs
faintly snatches of talk from our trenches and faintly in
front the talk from theirs. It sounded rather inviting
and friendly from both sides, like that around some
camp-fire on the plains.

It seemed quite within the bounds of possibility that
you might have crawled on up to the Germans and said,
" Howdy! " But by the time you reached the edge of
their barbed wire and before you could present your
visiting-card, if not sooner, you would have been full of
holes. That was just the kind of diversion from trench
monotony for which the Germans were looking.

" Well, shall we go back ? " asked the officer.

There seemed no particular purpose in spending the
night prone in the wheat with your ears cocked like a
pointer-dog's. Besides, he had other duties, exacting
duties laid down by the colonel as the result of trench
experience in his responsibility for the command of a
company of men.

It happened as we crawled back into the trench, that
a fury of shots broke out from a point along the line two

SOUND SLEEPERS 245

or three hundred yards away ; sharp, vicious shots on the
still night air, stabbing, merciless death in their sound.
Oh, yes, there was war in France ; unrelenting, shrewd,
tireless war. A touch of suspicion anywhere and the
hornets swarmed^.

It was two a.m. From the dug-outs came unmistak-
able sounds of slumber. Men off duty were not kept
awake by cold and moisture in summer. They had
fashioned for themselves comfortable dormitories in the
hard earth walls. A cot in an officer's bedchamber was
indicated as mine. The walls had been hung with cuts
from illustrated papers and bagging spread on the floor
to make it " home-like." He lay down on the floor be-
cause he was nearer the door in case he had to respond
to an alarm ; besides, he said I would soon appreciate
that I was not the object of favouritism. So I did. It
was a trench-made cot, fashioned by some private of
engineers, I fancy, who had Germans rather than the
American cousin in mind.

' The wall side of the rib that runs down the middle is
the comfortable side, I have found," said my host. " It
may not appear so at first, but you will find it works out
that way."

Nevertheless, I slept, my last recollection that of
sniping shots, to be awakened with the first streaks of
day by the sound of a fusillade — the " morning hate " or
the " morning strafe " as it is called. After the vigil
of darkness it breaks the monotony to salute the dawn
with a burst of rifle-shots. Eyes strained through the
mist over the wheatfield watching for some one of the
enemy who may be exposing himself, unconscious that
it is light enough for him to be visible. Objects which
are not men but look as if they might be in the hazy dis-
tance, called for attention on the chance. For ten
minutes, perhaps, the serenade lasted, and then things
settled down to the normal. The men were yawning and

246 TRENCHES IN SUMMER

stirring from their dug-outs. After the muster they
would take the places of those who had been " on the
bridge " through the night.

" It's a case of how little water you can wash with,
isn't it ? ' I said to the cook, who appreciated my
thoughtfulness when I made shift with a dipperful, as I
had done on desert journeys. We were in a trench that
was inundated with water in winter, and not more than
two miles from a town which had water laid on. But
bringing a water supply in pails along narrow trenches
is a poor pastime, though better than bringing it up
under the rifle-sights of snipers across the fields back of
the trenches.

" Don't expect much for breakfast," said the strafer
of the chicken. But it was eggs and bacon, the British
stand-by in all weathers, at home and abroad.

J was going to turn in and sleep. These young-
sters could sleep at any time ; for one hour, or two hours,
or five, or ten, if they had a chance. A sudden burst of
rifle-fire was the alarm clock which always promptly
awakened them. The recollection of cheery hospitality
and their fine, buoyant spirit is even clearer now than
when I left the trench.

XX

A SCHOOL IN BOMBING

It was at a bombing school on a French farm, where
chosen soldiers brought back from the trenches were
being trained in the use of the anarchists' weapon, which
has now become as respectable as the rifle. The war has
steadily developed specialism. M.B. degrees for Master
Bombers are not beyond the range of possibilities.

Present was the chief instructor, a Scottish subaltern
with blue eyes, a pleasant smile, and a Cock-o'-the-
North spirit. He might have been twenty years old,
though he did not look it. On his breast was the purple
and white ribbon of the new order of the Military Cross,
which you get for doing something in this war which
would have won you a Victoria Cross in one of the other
wars.

Also present was the assistant instructor, a sergeant of
regulars — and very much of a regular — who had three
ribbons which he had won in previous campaigns. He,
too, had blue eyes, bland blue eyes. These two under-
stood each other.

" If you don't drop it, why, it's all right! " said the
sergeant. " Of course, if you do "

I did not drop it.

" And when you throw it, sir, you must look out and
not hit the man behind you and knock the bomb out of
your hand. That has happened before to an absent-
minded fellow who was about to toss one at the Boches,
and it doesn't do to be absent-minded when you throw
bombs."

" They say that you sometimes pick up the German
bombs and chuck them back before they explode," I
suggested.

247

R

248 A SCHOOL IN BOMBING

" Yes, sir, I've read things like that in some of the
accounts of the reporters who write from Somewhere in
France. You don't happen to know where that is, sir ?
All I can say is that if you are going to do it you
must be quick about it. I shouldn't advise delaying
decision, sir, or perhaps when you reached down to pick
it up, neither your hand nor the bomb would be there.
They'd have gone off together, sir."

"Have you ever been hurt in your handling of
bombs?" I asked.

Surprise in the bland blue eyes.

" Oh, no, sir! Bombs are well behaved if you treat
them right. It's all in being thoughtful and considerate
of them ! " Meanwhile, he was jerking at some kind of a
patent fuse set in a shell of high explosive. " This is
a poor kind, sir. It's been discarded, but I thought that
you might like to see it. Never did like it. Always
making trouble! "

More distance between the audience and the performer.

" Now I've got it, sir — get down, sir! "

The audience carried out instructions to the letter, as
army regulations require. It got behind the protection
of one of the practice-trench traverses. He threw the
discard behind another wall of earth. There was a sharp
report, a burst of smoke, and some fragments of earth
were tossed into the air.

In a small affair of two hundred yards of trench a
week before, it was estimated that the British and the
Germans together threw about five thousand bombs in
this fashion. It was enough to sadden any Minister of
Munitions. However, the British kept the trench.

" Do the men like to become bombers ? " I asked the
subaltern.

" I should say so ! It puts them up in front. It gives
them a chance to throw something, and they don't get
much cricket in France, you see. We had a pupil here
last week who broke the throwing record for distance.

A LESSON IN TRENCH TAKING 249

He was as pleased as Punch with himself. A first-class
bombing detachment has a lot of pride of corps."

To bomb soon became as common a verb with the
army as to bayonet. " We bombed them out " meant a
section of trench taken by throwing bombs. As you
know, a trench is dug and built with sandbags in zigzag
traverses. In following the course of a trench it is as if
you followed the sides of the squares of a checker board
up and down and across on the same tier of squares. The
square itself is a bank of earth, with the cut on either
side and in front of it. When a bombing-party bombs
its way into possession of a section of German trench,
there are Germans under cover of the traverses on either
side. They are waiting around the corner to shoot the
first British head that shows itself.

" It is important that you and not the Boches chuck
the bombs over first," explained the subaltern. " Also,
that you get them into the right traverse, or they may
be as troublesome to you as to the enemy."

With bombs bursting in their faces, the Germans who
are not put out of action are blinded and stunned. In
that moment when they are off guard, the aggressors
leap around the corner.

" And then ? "

" Stick 'em, sir! " said the matter-of-fact sergeant.
" Yes, the cold steel is best. And do it first! As Mr.
MacPherson said, it's very important to do it first."

It has been found that something short is handy for
this kind of work. In such cramped quarters — a ditch
six feet deep and from two to three feet broad — the rifle
is an awkward length to permit of prompt and skilful
use of the bayonet.

" Yes, sir, you can mix it up better with something
handy — to think that British soldiers would come to
fighting like assassins ! " said the sergeant. " You must
be spry on such occasions. It's no time for wool-
gathering."

250 A SCHOOL IN BOMBING

Not a smile from him or the subaltern all the time. They
were the kind you would like to have along in a tight
corner, whether you had to fight with knives, fists, or
seventeen-inch howitzers.

The sergeant took us into the storehouse where he
kept his supply of bombs.

" What if a German shell should strike your store-
house ? " I asked.

" Then, sir, I expect that most of the bombs would be
exploded. Bombs are very peculiar in their habits.
What do you think, sir ? "

It was no trouble to show stock, as clerks at the stores
say. He brought forth all the different kinds of bombs
that British ingenuity had invented — but no, not all
invented. These would mount into the thousands.
Every British inventor who knows anything about ex-
plosives has tried his hand at a new kind of bomb. One
means all the kinds which the British War Office has
considered worth a practice test. The spectator was
allowed to handle each one as much as he pleased.
There had been occasions, that boyish Scottish subaltern
told me, when the men who were examining the prod-
ucts of British ingenuity — well, the subaltern had sandy
hair, too, which heightened the effect of his blue eyes.

There were yellow and green and blue and black and
striped bombs ; egg-shaped, barrel-shaped, conical, and
concave bombs ; bombs that were exploded by pulling
a string and by pressing a button — all these to be thrown
by hand, without mentioning grenades and other larger
varieties to be thrown by mechanical means, which
would have made a Chinese warrior of Confucius' time
or a Roman legionary feel at home.

" This was the first-born," the subaltern explained,
" the first thing we could lay our hands on when the
close quarters' trench warfare began."

It was as out of date as grandfather's smooth-bore,
the tin-pot bomb that both sides used early in the

HOME-MADE BOMBS 251

winter. A wick was attached to the high explosive,
wrapped in cloth and stuck in an ordinary army jam tin.

" Quite home-made, as you see, sir," remarked the
sergeant. " Used to fix them up ourselves in the trenches
in odd hours — saved burying the refuse jam tins accord-
ing to medical corps directions — and you threw them at
the Boches. Had to use a match to light it. Very old-
fashioned, sir. I wonder if that old fuse has got damp,
No, it's going all right " — and he threw the jam pot.
which made a good explosion. Later, when he began
hammering the end of another he looked up in mild sur-
prise at the dignified back-stepping of the spectators.

" Is that fuse out ? " someone asked.

" Yes, sir. Of course, sir," he replied. " It's safer.
But here is the best ; we're discarding the others," he
went on, as he picked up a bomb.

It was a pleasure to throw this crowning achievement
of experiments. It fitted your hand nicely ; it threw
easily ; it did the business ; it was fool-proof against a
man in love or a war-poet.

' We saw as soon as this style came out," said the
sergeant, " that it was bound to be popular. Everybody
asks for it — except the Boches, sir."

XXI

MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT

It was the best day because one ran the gamut of the
mechanics and emotions of modern war within a single
experience— and oh, the twinkle in that staff officer's
eye!

It was on a Monday that I first met him in the ball-
room of a large chateau. Here another officer was talk-
ing over a telephone in an explicit, businesslike fashion
about " sending up more bombs," while we looked at
maps spread out on narrow, improvised tables, such as
are used for a buffet at a reception. Those maps showed
all the British trenches and all the German trenches —
spider-weblike lines that cunning human spiders had
spun with spades — in that region ; and where our bat-
teries were and where some of the German batteries
were, if our aeroplane observations were correct.

To the layman they were simply blue prints, such as
he sees in the office of an engineer or an architect, or
elaborate printed maps with many blue and red pencil-
lings. To the general in command they were alive with
rifle-power and gun-power and other powers mysterious
to us ; the sword with which he thrust and feinted and
guarded in the ceaseless fencing of trench warfare, while
higher authorities than he kept their secrets as he kept
his and bided their day.

That morning one of the battalions which had its
pencilled place on the map had taken a section of trench
from the Germans about the length of two city blocks.
It got into the official bulletins of both sides several
times, this two hundred yards at Pilken in the ever-
lastingly " hot corner" north of Ypres. So it was of

252

TO TAKE AND TO HOLD 253

some importance, though not on account of its length.

To take two hundred yards of trench because it is two
hundred yards of trench is not good war, tacticians agree.
Good war is to have millions of shells and vast reserves
ready and to go in over a broad area and keep on going
night and day, with a Niagara of artillery, as fresh
battalions are fed into the conflict.

But the Germans had command of some rising ground
in front of the British line at this point. They could fire
down and crosswise into our trench. It was as if we
were in the alley and they were in a first-floor window.
This meant many casualties. It was man-economy and
fire-economy to take that two hundred yards. A section
of trench may always be taken if worth while. Reduce
it to dust with shells and then dash into the breach and
drive the enemy back from zigzag traverse to traverse
with bombs. But such a small action requires as careful
planning as a big operation of other days. We had taken
the two hundred yards. The thing was to hold them.
That is always the difficulty ; for the enemy will con-
centrate his guns to give you the same dose that you
gave him. In an hour after they were in, the British
soldiers, who knew exactly what they had to do and how
to doit, after months of experience, had turned the wreck
of the German trench into a British trench which
faced toward Berlin, rather than Calais.

In their official bulletin the Germans said that they
had recovered the trench. They did recover part of it
for a few hours. It was then that the commander on the
German side must have sent in his report to catch the
late evening editions. Commanders do not like to con-
fess the loss of trenches. It is the sort of thing that
makes headquarters ask : " What is the matter with
you over there, anyway ? " There was a time when the
German bulletins about the Western front seemed rather
truthful ; but of late they have been getting into bad
habits.

254 MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT

The British general knew what was coming ; he knew
that he would start the German hornets out of their nest
when he took the trench ; he knew, too, that he could
rely upon his men to hold till they were told to retire or
there were none left to retire. The British are a home-
loving people, who do not like to be changing their habi-
tations. In succeeding days the question up and down
the lines was, " Have we still got that trench? " Only
two hundred yards of ditch on the continent of Europe !
But was it still ours ? Had the Germans succeeded in
" strafing " us out of it yet ? They had shelled, all the
trenches in the region of the lost trench and had made
three determined and unsuccessful counter-attacks
when, on the fifth day, we returned to the chateau to
ask if it were practicable to visit the new trench.

" At your own risk ! " said the staff officer. If we pre-
ferred we could sit on the veranda where there were
easy chairs, on a pleasant summer day. Very peaceful
the sweep of the well-kept grounds and the shade of the
stately trees of that sequestered world of landscape.
Who was at war ? Why was anyone at war ? Two staff
motor-cars awaiting orders on the drive and a dust-laden
dispatch rider with messages, who went past toward the
rear of the house, were the only visual evidence of war.

The staff officer served us with helmets for protection
in case we got into a gas attack. He said that we might
enter our front trenches at a certain point and then work
our way as near the new part as we could ; division
headquarters, four or five miles distant, would show us
the way. It was then that the twinkle in the staff
officer's eye as it looked straight into yours became
manifest. You can never tell, I have learned, just what
a twinkle in a British staff officer's eye may portend.
These fellows who are promoted up from the trenches to
join the " brain-trust " in the chateau, know a great
deal more about what is going on than you can learn by
standing in the road far from the front and listening to

A QUIET COUNTRY ROAD 255

the sound of the guns. We encountered a twinkle in
another eye at division headquarters, which may have
been telephoned ahead along with the instructions, " At
their own risk."

There are British staff officers who would not mind
pulling a correspondent's leg on a summer day ; though,
perhaps, it was really the Germans who pulled ours, in
this instance. Somebody did remark at some head-
quarters, I recall, that "You never know!" which
shows that staff officers do not know everything. The
Germans possess half the knowledge — and they are at
great pains not to part with their half.

We proceeded in our car along country roads, quiet,
normal country roads off the main highway. It has
been written again and again, and it cannot be written
too many times, that life is going on as usual in the rear
of the army. Nothing could be more wonderful and yet
nothing more natural. All the men of fighting age were
absent. White-capped grandmothers, too old to join
the rest of the family in the fields, sat in doorways sew-
ing. Everybody was at work and the crops were grow-
ing. You never tire of remarking the fact. It brings
you back from the destructive orgy of war to the simple,
constructive things of life. An industrious people go on
cultivating the land and the land keeps on producing.
It is pleasant to think that the crops of Northern France
were good in 1915. That is cheering news from home for
the soldiers of France at the front.

At an indicated point we left the car to go forward on
foot, and the chauffeur was told to wait for us at another
point. If the car went any farther it might draw shell-
fire. Army authorities know how far they may take
cars with reasonable safety as well as a pilot knows the
rocks and shoals at a harbour entrance.

There was an end of white-capped grandmothers in
doorways ; an end of people working in the fields.
Rents in the roofless walls of unoccupiedhousesstared at

256 MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT

the passer-by. We were in a dead land. One of two
soldiers whom we met coming from the opposite direc-
tion pointed at what looked like a small miner's cabin
half covered with earth, screened by a tree, as the next
headquarters which we were seeking in our progress.

It was not for sightseers to take the time of the general
who received us at the door of his dug-out. German
guns had concentrated on a section of his trenches in a
way that indicated that another attack was coming.
One company already had suffered heavy losses. It was
an hour of responsibility for the general, isolated in the
midst of silent fields and houses, waiting for news from
a region hidden from his view by trees and hedges in
that flat country. He might not move from headquarters,
for then he would be out of communication with his
command. His men were being pounded by shells and
the inexorable law of organization kept him at the rear.
Up in the trench he might have been one helpless human
being in a havoc of shells which had cut the wires. His
place was where he could be in touch with his sub-
ordinates and his superiors.

True, we wanted to go to the trench that the Germans
had lost and his section was the short cut. Modesty was
not the only reason for not taking it. As we started
along a road parallel to the front, the head of a soldier
popped out of the earth and told us that orders were to
walk in the ditch. I judged that he was less con-
cerned with our fate than with the likelihood of our
drawing fire, which he and the others in a concealed
trench would suffer after we had passed on.

There were three of us, two correspondents, L

and myself, and R , an officer, which is quite enough

for an expedition of this kind. Now we were finding our
own way, with the help of the large scale army map which
had every house, every farm, and every group of trees
marked. The farms had been given such names as
Joffre, Kitchener, French, Botha, and others which the

IMPORTANCE OF SHELLS 257

Germans would not like. We cut across fields with the
same confidence that, following a diagram of city
streets in a guidebook, a man turns to the left for the
public library and to the right for the museum.

Our own guns were speaking here and there from their
hiding-places ; and overhead an occasional German
shrapnel burst. This seemed a waste of the Kaiser's
munitions as there was no one in sight. Yet there was
purpose in the desultory scattering of bullets from on
high. They were policing the district ; they were warn-
ing the hated British in reserve not to play cricket in
those fields or march along those deserted roads.

The more bother in taking cover that the Germans
can make the British, the better they like it ; and the
British return the compliment in kind. Anything that
harasses your enemy is counted to the good. If every
shell fired had killed a man in this war, there would be
no soldiers left to fight on either side ; yet never have
shells been so important in war as now. They can reach
the burrowing human beings in shelters which are bullet-
proof ; they are the omnipresent threat of death. The
firing of shells from batteries securely hidden and em-
placed represents no cost of life to your side ; only cost
of material, which ridicules the foolish conclusion that
machinery and not men count. It is because man is
still the most precious machine — a machine that money
cannot reproduce — that gun-machinery is so much in
favour, and every commander wants to use shells as
freely as you use city water when you do not pay for it
by meter.

Now another headquarters and another general, also
isolated in a dug-out, holding the reins of his wires over
a section of line adjoining the section we had just
left. Before we proceeded we must look over his shelter
from shell-storms. The only time that British generals
become boastful is over their dug-outs. They take all
the pride in them of the man who has bought a plot of

258 MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT

land and built himself a home ; and, like him, they keep
on making improvements and calling attention to them.

I must say that this was one of the best shelters I have
seen anywhere in the tornado belt ; and whatever I am
not, I am certainly an expert in dug-outs. Of course,
this general, too, said, " At your own risk! " He was
good enough to send a young officer with us up to the
trenches ; then we should not make any mistakes about
direction if we wanted to reach the neighbourhood of the
two hundred yards which we had taken from the Ger-
mans. When we thanked him and said " Good-bye! "
he remarked :

" We never say good-bye up here. It does not sound
pleasant. Make it au revoir." He, too, had a twinkle
in his eye.

By this time, one leg ought to have been so much
longer than the other that one would have walked in a
circle if he had not had a guide.

That battery which had been near the dug-out kept
on with its regular firing, its shells sweeping overhead.
We had not gone far before we came to a board nailed to
a tree, with the caution, " Keep to the right ! " If you
went to the left you might be seen by the enemy, though
we were seeing nothing of him, nor of our own trenches
yet. Every square yard of this ground had been tested
by actual experience, at the cost of dead and wounded
men, till safe lanes of approach had been found.

Next was a clearing station, where the wounded are
brought in from the trenches for transfer to ambulances.
A glance at the burden on a stretcher just arrived auto-
matically framed the word, " Shell-fire! " The stains
over-running on tanned skin beyond the edge of the
white bandage were bright in the sunlight. A khaki
blouse torn open, or a trousers leg or a sleeve cut down
the seam, revealing the white of the first aid and a
splash of red, means one man wounded ; and by the
ones the thousands come.

WOUNDED MEN AND WOUNDED TREES 259

Fifty wounded men on the floor of a clearing station
and the individual is lost in the crowd. When you see
the one borne past, if there is nothing else to distract
attention you always ask two questions : Will he die ?
Has he been maimed for life ? If the answers to both
are no, you feel a sense of triumph, as if you had seen a
human play, built skilfully around a life to arouse your
emotions, turn out happily.

The man has fought in an honourable cause ; he has
felt the touch of death's fingers. How happy he is when
he knows that he will get well! In prospect, as his
wound heals into the scar which will be the lasting deco-
ration of his courage, his home and all that it means to
him. What kind of a home has he, this private soldier ?
In the slums, with a slattern wife, or in a cottage with a
flower garden in front, only a few minutes' walk from
the green fields of the English countryside ? But we set
out to tell you about the kind of inferno in which this
man got his splash of red.

We come to the banks of a canal which has carried the
traffic of the Low Countries for many centuries ; the
canal where British and French had fought many a
Thermopylae in the last eight months. Along its banks
run rows of fine trees, narrowing in perspective before
the eye. Some have been cut in two by the direct hit of
a heavy shell and others splintered down, bit by bit.
Others still standing have been hit many times. There
are cuts as fresh as if the chips had just flown from the
axeman's blow, and there are scars from cuts made last
autumn which nature's sap, rising as it does in the veins
of wounded men, has healed, while from the remaining
branches it sent forth leaves in answer to the call of spring.

In this section the earth is many-mouthed with caves
and cut with passages running from cave to cave, so
that the inhabitants may go and come hidden from
sight. Jawbone and Hairyman and Lowbrow, of the
Stone Age, would be at home there, squatting on their

26o MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT

hunkers and tearing at their raw kill with their long in-
cisors. It does not seem a place for men who walk erect,
wear woven fabrics, enjoy a written language, and use
soap and safety razors. One would not be surprised to
see some figure swing down by a long, hairy arm from a
branch of a tree and leap on all fours into one of the
caves, where he would receive a gibbering welcome to
the bosom of his family.

Not so ! Huddled in these holes in the earth are free-
born men of an old civilization, who read the daily
papers and eat jam on their bread. They do not want
to be there, but they would not consider themselves
worthy of the inheritance of free-born men if they were
not. Only civilized man is capable of such stoicism as
theirs. They have reverted to the cave-dweller's pro-
tection because their civilization is so highly developed
that they can throw a piece of steel weighing from eight-
een to two thousand pounds anywhere from five to
twenty miles with merciless accuracy, and because the
flesh of man is even more tender than in the cave-
dweller's time, not to mention that his brain-case is a
larger target.

An officer calls attention to a shell-proof shelter with
the civic pride of a member of a chamber of commerce
pointing out the new Union Station.

"Not even a high explosive " — the kind that bursts
on impact after penetration — " could get into that ! " he
says. " We make them for generals and colonels and
others who have precious heads on their shoulders."

With material and labour, the same might have been
constructed for the soldiers, which brings us back to the
question of munitions in the economic balance against a
human life. It was the first shelter of this kind which
I had seen. You never go up to the trenches without
seeing something new. The defensive is tireless in its
ingenuity in saving lives and the offensive in taking
them. Safeguards and salvage compete with destruc-

SENSATIONS UNDER SHELL-FIRE 261

tion. And what labour all that excavation and con-
struction represented — the cumulative labour of months
and day-by-day repairs of the damage done by shells !
After a bombardment, dig out the filled trenches and
renew the smashed dug-outs to be ready for another go !

The walls of that communication trench were two feet
above our heads. We noticed that all the men were in
their dug-outs ; none were walking about in the open.
One knew the meaning of this barometer — stormy. The
German gunners were " strafing " in a very lively
way this afternoon.

Already we had noticed many shells bursting five or
six hundred yards away, in the direction of the new
British trench ; but at that distance they do not count.
Then a railroad train seemed to have jumped the track
and started to fly. Fortunately and unfortunately,
sound travels faster than big shells of low velocity ;
fortunately, because it gives you time to be undignified
in taking cover ; unfortunately, because it gives you a
fraction of a second to reflect whether or not that shell
has your name and your number on Dug-out Street.

I was certain that it was a big shell, of the kind that
will blow a dug-out to pieces. Anyone who had never
heard a shell before would have " scrooched," as the
small boys say, as instinctively as you draw back when
the through express tears past the station. It is the
kind of scream that makes you want to roll yourself into
a package about the size of a pea, while you feel as tall
and large as a cathedral, judging by the sensation that
travels down your backbone.

Once I was being hoisted up a cliff in a basket, when
the rope on the creaking windlass above slipped a few
inches. Well, it is like that, or like taking a false step on
the edge of a precipice. Is the clock about to strike twelve
or not ? Not this time ! The burst was thirty yards
away, along the path we had just traversed, and the
sound was like the burst of a shell and like nothing else

262 MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT

in the world, just as the swirling, boring, growing scream
of a shell is like no other scream in the world. A gigantic
hammer-head sweeps through the air and breaks a steel
drum-head.

If we had come along half a minute later we should
have had a better view, and perhaps now we should
have been on a bed in a hospital worrying how we were
going to pay the rent, or in the place where, hopefully,
we shall have no worries at all. Between walls of earth the
report was deadened to our ears in the same way as a re-
volver report in an adjoining room ; and not much earth
had gone down the backs of our necks from the concussion.

Looking over the parapet, we saw a cloud of thick,
black smoke ; and we heard the outcry of a man who
had been hit. That was all. The shell might have
struck nearer without our having seen or heard any
more. Shut in by the gallery walls, one knows as little
of what happens in an adjoining cave as a clam buried
in the sand knows of what is happening to a neighbour
clam. A young soldier came half-stumbling into the
nearest dug-out. He was shaking his head and batting
his ears as if he had sand in them. Evidently he was
returning to his home cave from a call on a neighbour
which had brought him close to the burst.

" That must have been about six or seven-inch," I
said to the officer, trying to be moderate and casual in
my estimate, which is the correct form on such occasions.
My actual impression was forty-inch.

" Nine-inch, h.e.," replied the expert.

This was gratifying. It was the first time that I had
been so near to a nine-inch-shell explosion. Its " eat-
'em-alive " f rightfulness was depressing. But the ex-
perience was worth having. You want all the experi-
ences there are — but only " close." A delightful word
that word close, at the front !

The Germans were generous that afternoon. Another
scream seemed aimed at my head. L disagreed

WAITING FOR THE CALL 263

with me ; he said that it was aimed at his. We did not
argue the matter to the point of a personal quarrel, for
it might have got both our heads. It burst back of the
trench about as far away as the other shell. After all, a
trench is a pretty narrow ribbon, even on a gunner's
large scale map, to hit. It is wonderful how, firing at
such long range, he is able to hit a trench at all.

This was all of the nine-inch variety for the time
being. We got some fours and fives as we walked along.
Three bursting as near together as the ticks of a clock
made almost no smoke, as they brought some tree limbs
down and tore away a section of a trunk. Then the
thunderstorm moved on to another part of the line.
Only, unlike the thunderstorms of nature, this, which is
man-made and controlled as a fireman controls the nozzle
of his hose, may sweep back again and yet again over its
path. All depends upon the decision of a German artil-
lery officer, just as whether or not a flower-bed shall get
another sprinkle depends upon the will of the gardener.
We were glad to turn out of the support trench into a
communication trench leading toward the front trench ;
into another gallery cut deep in the fields, with scattered
shell-pits on either side. Still more soldiers, leaning
against the walls or seated with their legs stretched out
across the bottom of the ditch ; more waiting soldiers,
only strung out in a line and as used to the passing of
shells as people living along the elevated railroad line to
the passing of trains. They did not look up at the
screams boring the air any more than one who lives
under the trains looks up every time that one passes.
Theirs was the passivity of a queue waiting in line be-
fore the entrance to a theatre or a ball-grounds.

A senator or a lawyer, used to coolness in debate, or
to presiding over great meetings, or to facing crowds,
who happened to visit the trenches could have got re-
assurance from the faces of any one of these private
soldiers, who had been trained not to worry about death
s

264 MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT

till death came. Harrowing every one of these screams,
taken by itself. Instinctively, unnecessarily, you dodged
at those which were low — unnecessarily, because they
were from British guns. No danger from them unless
there was a short fuse. To the soldiers, the low screams
brought the delight of having blows struck from their
side at the enemy, whom they themselves could not
strike from their reserve position.

For we were under the curving sweep of both the
British and the German shells, as they passed in the air
on the way to their targets. It was like standing be-
tween two railway tracks with trains going in opposite
directions. You came to differentiate between the
multitudinous screams. " Ours! " you exclaimed, with
the same delight as when you see that your side has the ball .
The spirit of battle contest rose in you. There was an end
of philosophy. These soldiers in the trenches were your
partisans. Every British shell was working for them and
for you, giving blow for blow.

The score of the contest of battle is in men down ; in
killed and wounded. For every man down on your side
you want two men down on the enemy's. Sport ceases. It
is the fight against a burglar with a revolver in his hand
and a knife between his teeth ; and a wounded man
brought along the trench, a visible, intimate proof of a
hit by the enemy, calls for more and harder blows.

Looking over the parapet of the communication
trench you saw fields, lifeless except for the singing birds
in the wheat, who had also the spirit of battle. The
more shells, the more they warble. It was always so on
summer days. Between the screams you hear their full-
pitched chorus, striving to make itself heard in compe-
tition with the song of German invasion and British
resistance. Mostly, the birds seemed to take cover like
mankind ; but I saw one sweep up from the golden sea
of ripening grain toward the men-brothers with their
wings of cloth.

BRITISH AIRMEN 265

Was this real, or was it extravaganza ? Painted air-
ships and a painted summer sky ? The audacity of those
British airmen ! Two of them were spotting the work of
British guns by their shell-bursts and watching for gun-
flashes which would reveal concealed German battery-
positions, and whispering results by wireless to their
own batteries.

It is a great game. Seven or eight thousand feet high,
directly over the British planes, is a single Taube cruis-
ing for the same purpose. It looks like a beetle with
gossamer wings suspended from a light cloud. The
British aviators are so low that the bull's-eye identifica-
tion marks are distinctly visible to the naked eye. They
are playing in and out, like the short stop and second
baseman around second, there in the very arc of the
passing shells from both sides fired at other targets. But
scores of other shells are most decidedly meant for them.
In the midst of a lacework of puffs of shrapnel-bursts,
which slowly spread in the still air, from the German
anti-aircraft guns, they dip and rise and turn in skilful
dodging. At length, one retires for good ; probably his
plane-cloth has become too much like a sieve from
shrapnel-fragments to remain aloft longer.

Come down, Herr Taube, come down where we can
have a shot at you! Get in the game! You can see
better at the altitude of the British airmen ! But Herr
Taube always stays high — the Br'er Fox of the air. Of
course, it was not so exciting as the pictures that artists
draw, but it was real.

Every kind of shell was being fired, low and high
velocity, small and large calibre. One-two-three-four in
as quick succession as the roll of a drum, four German
shells burst in line up in the region where we have made
ourselves masters of the German trench. British shells
responded.

"Ours again! "

But I had already ducked before I spoke, as you

266 MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT

might if a pellet of steel weighing a couple of hundred
pounds, going at the rate of a thousand yards a second
or more, passed within a few yards of your head —
ducked to find myself looking into the face of a soldier
who was smiling. The smile was not scornful, but it was
at least amused at the expense of the sightseer who had
dodged one of our own shells. In addition to the respi-
rators in case of a possible gas attack, supplied by that
staff officer with a twinkle in his eye, we needed a steel
rod fastened to the back of our necks and running down
our spinal columns in order to preserve our dignity.

We were witnessing what is called the " artillery pre-
paration for an infantry attack," which was to try to
recover that two hundred yards of trench from the Brit-
ish. Only the Germans did not limit their attention to
the lost trench. It was hottest there around the bend of
our line, from our view-point ; for there they must maul
the trench into formless debris and cut the barbed wire
in front of it before the charge was made.

" They touch up all the trenches in the neighbourhood
to keep us guessing," said the officer, " before they make
their final concentration. So it's pretty thick around
this part."

" Which might include the communication trench ? "

" Certainly. This makes a good line shot. No doubt
they will spare us a few when they think it is our turn.
We do the same thing. So it goes."

From the variety of screams of big shells and little
shells and screams harrowingly close and reassuringly
high, which were indicated as ours, one was warranted
in suggesting that the British were doing considerable
artillery preparation themselves.

' ' We must give them as good as they send — and better. ' '

Better seemed correct.

" Those close ones you hear are doubtless meant for
the front German trench, which accounts for their low
trajectory ; the others for their support trenches or

A HIT 267

any battery-positions that our planes have located."
We could not see where the British shells were striking.
We could judge only of the accuracy of some of the Ger-
man fire. Considering the storm being visited on the
support trench which we had just left, we were more
than ever glad to be out of it. Artillery is the war
burglar's jemmy ; but it has to batter the house into
ruins and blow up the safe and kill most of the family
before the burglar can enter. Clouds of dust rose from
the explosions ; limbs of trees were lopped off by tor-
nadoes of steel hail.

" There ! Look at that tree ! "

In front of a portion of the British support trench a
few of a line of stately shade trees were still standing. A
German shell, about an eight-inch, one judged, struck
fairly in the trunk of one about the same height from
the ground as the lumberman sinks his axe in the bark.
The shimmer of hot gas spread out from the point of
explosion. Through it as through an aureole one saw
that twelve inches of green wood had been cut in two
as neatly as a thistle-stem is severed by a sharp blow
from a walking-stick. The body of the tree was carried
across the splintered stump with crushing impact from
the power of its flight, plus the power of the burst of the
explosive charge which broke the shell- jacket into slash-
ing fragments ; and the towering column of limbs,
branches, and foliage laid its length on the ground with
a majestic dignity. Which shows what one shell can do,
one of three which burst not far away at the same time.
In time, the shells would get all the trees ; make them
into chips and splinters and toothpicks.

' I'd rather that it would hit a tree-trunk than my

trunk," said L .

' But you would not have got it as badly as the tree,"
said the officer reassuringly. " The substance would
have been too soft for sufficient impact for a burst. It
would have gone right through ! "

XXII

MORE BEST DAY

At battalion headquarters in the front trenches the
battalion surgeon had just amputated an arm which had
been mauled by a shell.

" Without any anaesthetic," he explained. " No
chance if we sent him back to the hospital. He would
die on the way. Stood it very well. Already chirking
up."

A family practitioner at home, the doctor, when the
war began, had left his practice to go with his Territorial
battalion. He retains the family practitioner's cheery,
assuring manner. He is the kind of man who makes you
feel better immediately he comes into the sick-room ;
who has already made you forget yourself when he puts
his finger on your pulse.

" The same thing that we might have done in the
Crimea," he continued, " only we have antiseptics now.
It's wonderful how little you can work with and how
excellent the results. Strong, healthy men, these, with
great recuperative power and discipline and resolution
— very different patients from those we usually operate
on."

Tea was served inside the battalion commander's dug-
out. Tea is as essential every afternoon to the British
as ice to the average American in summer. They do not
think of getting on without it if they can possibly have
it, and it is part of the rations. As well take cigarettes
away from those who smoke as tea from the British
soldier.

It was very much like tea outside the trenches, so far
as any signs of perturbation about shells and casualties

268

GOOD NEWS 269

were concerned. In that the battalion commander had
to answer telegrams, it had the aspect of a busy man's
sandwich at his desk for luncheon. Good news to cheer
the function had just come over the network of wires
which connects up the whole army, from trenches to
headquarters — good news in the midst of the shells.

German West Africa had fallen. Botha, who was
fighting against the British fifteen years ago, had taken
it fighting for the British. A suggestive thought that.
It is British character that brings enemies like Botha into
the fold; the old, good-natured, sportsmanlike live-and-
let-live idea, which has something to do with keeping
the United States intact. A board with the news on it
in German was put up over the British trenches. Natu-
rally, the board was shot full of holes ; for it is clear
that the Germans are not yet ready to come into the
British Empire.

"Hans and Jacob we have named them," said the
colonel, referring to two Germans who were buried back
of his dug-out. " It's dull up here when the Boches are
not shelling, so we let our imaginations play. We hold
conversations with Hans and Jacob in our long watches.
Hans is fat and cheerful and trusting. He believes every
thing that the Kaiser tells him and has a cheerful dis-
position. But Jacob is a professor and a fearful 'strafer.'
It seems a little gruesome, doesn't it, but not after you
have been in the trenches for a while."

A little gruesome — true ! Not in the trenches — true,
too! Where all is satire, no incongruity seems out of
place. Life plays in and out with death ; they inter-
mingle ; they look each other in the face and say : "I
know you. We dwell together. Let us smile when we
may, at what we may, to hide the character of our com-
radeship ; for to-morrow "

Only half an hour before one of the officers had been
shot through the head by a sniper. He was a popular
officer. The others had messed with him and marched

270 MORE BEST DAY

with him and known him in the fullness of affection of
comradeship in arms and dangers shared. A heartbreak
for some home in England. No one dwelt on the inci-
dent. What was there to say ? The trembling lip,
trembling in spite of itself, was the only outward sign of
the depth of feeling that words could not reflect, at tea
in the dug-out. The subject was changed to something
about the living. One must carry on cheerfully ; one
must be on the alert ; one must play his part serenely,
unflinchingly, for the sake of the nerves around him and
for his own sake. Such fortitude becomes automatic, it
would seem. Please, I must not hesitate about having a
slice of cake. They managed cake without any diffi-
culty up there in the trenches. And who if not men in
the trenches was entitled to cake, I should like to know ?

" It was here that he was hit," another officer said, as
we moved on in the trench. " He was saying that the
sandbags were a little weak and a bullet might go through
and catch a man who thought himself safely under cover
as he walked along. He had started to fix the sandbags
himself when he got it. The bullet came right through
the top of one of the bags in front of him."

A ballet makes the merciful wound ; and a bullet
through the head is a simple way of going. The bad
wounds come mostly from shells ; but there is some-
thing about seeing anyone hit by a sniper which is more
horrible. It is a cold-blooded kind of killing, more
suggestive of murder, this single shot from a sharpshooter
waiting as patiently as a cat for a mouse, aimed defi-
nitely to take the life of a man.

Again we move on in that narrow cut of earth with its
waiting soldiers, which the world knows so well from
reading tours of the trenches. No one not on watch
might show his head on an afternoon like this. The
men were prisoners between those walls of earth ; not
even spectators of what the guns were doing ; simply
moles. They took it all as a part of the day's work, with

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE TRENCHES 271

that singular, redoubtable combination of British
phlegm and cheerfulness.

Of course, some of them were eating bread and mar-
malade and making tea. Where all the marmalade goes
which Mr. Atkins uses for his personal munition in
fighting the Germans puzzles the Army Service Corps,
whose business it is to see that he is never without it.
How could he sit so calmly under shell-fire without
marmalade ? Never ! He would get fidgety and forget
his lesson, I am sure, like the boy who had the button
which he was used to fingering removed before he went
to recite.

Any minute a shell may come. Mr. Atkins does not
think of that. Time enough to think after it has
arrived. Then perhaps the burial party will be doing
your thinking for you ; or if not, the doctors and the
nurses who look after you will.

I noted certain acts of fellowship of comrades who are
all in the same boat and have learned unselfishness.
When they got up to let you pass and you smiled your
thanks, you received a much pleasanter smile in return
than you will from many a well-fed gentleman who has
to stand aside to let you enter a restaurant. The
manners of the trenches are good, better than in some
places where good manners are a cult.

There is no better place to send a spoiled, undisci-
plined, bumptious youth than to a British trench. He
will learn that there are other men in the world besides
himself and that a shell can kill a rich brute or a selfish
brute as readily as a poor man. Democracy there is in
the trenches ; the democracy where all men are in the
presence of death and " hazing " parties need not be
organized among the students.

But there is another and a greater element in the
practical psychology of the trenches. These good-
natured men, fighting the bitterest kind of warfare
without the signs of brutality which we associate with

272 MORE BEST DAY

the prize-fighter and the bully in their faces, know why
they are fighting. They consider that their duty is in
that trench, and that they could not have a title to
manhood if they were not there. After the war the
men who have been in the trenches will rule England.
Their spirit and their thinking will fashion the new
trend of civilization, and the men who have not fought
will bear the worst scars from the war.

Ridiculous it is that men should be moles, perhaps ;
but at the same time there is something sublime in the
fellowship of their courage and purpose, as they " sit
and take it," or guard against attacks, without the
passion of battle of the old days of excited charges and
quick results, and watch the toll passby f romhour to hour.
Borne by comrades pickaback we saw the wounded
carried along that passage too narrow for a litter. A
splash of blood, a white bandage, a limp form!

For the second permissible — periscopes are tempting
targets — I looked through one over the top of the para-
pet. Another film! A big British lyddite shell went
crashing into the German parapet. The dust from
sandbags and dug-outs merged into an immense cloud
of ugly, black smoke. As the cloud rose, one saw the
figure of a German dart out of sight ; then nothing was
visible but the gap which the explosion had made. No
wise German would show himself. British snipers were
watching for him. At least half a dozen, perhaps a
score, of men had been put out by this single " direct
hit " of an h.e. (high explosive). Yes, the British
gunners were shooting well, too. Other periscopic
glimpses proved it.

Through the periscope we learned also that the two
lines of sandbags of German and British trenches were
drawing nearer together. Another wounded man was
brought by.

" They're bombing up ahead. He has just been hit."

As we drew aside to make room for him to pass, once

UNDER FIRE 273

more the civilian realized his helplessness and un-
importance. One soldier was worth ten Prime Minis-
ters in that place. We were as conspicuously mat d
propos as an outsider at a bank directors' meeting or in
a football scrimmage. The officer politely reminded
us of the necessity of elbow room in the narrow quarters
for the bombers, who were hidden from view by the zig-
zag traverses, and I was not sorry, though perhaps my
companions were. If so, they did not say so, not being
talkative men. We were not going to see the two
hundred yards of captured trench that were beyond the
bombing action, after all. Oh, the twinkle in that
staff officer's eye !

' A Boche gas shell! " we were told, as we passed an
informal excavation in the communication trench on
our way back. " Asphyxiating effect. No time to
put on respirators when one explodes. Laid out half a
dozen men like fish, gasping for air, but they will
recover."

" The Boches want us to hurry! " exclaimed L .

They were giving the communication trench a turn
at " strafing," now, and shells were urgently dropping
behind us. There was no use trying to respond to one's
natural inclination to run away from the pursuing
shower when you had to squeeze past soldiers as you
went.

" But look at what we are going into! This is like
beating up grouse to the guns, and we are the birds!
I am wondering if I like it."

We could tell what had happened in our absence in
the support trench by the litter of branches and leaves
and by the excavations made by shells. It was still
happening, too. Another nine-inch, with your only
view of surroundings the wall of earth which you
hugged. Crash — and safe again !

" Pretty! " L said, smiling. He was referring

to the cloud of black smoke from the burst. Pretty

274 MORE BEST DAY

is a favourite word of his. I find that men use habitual

exclamations on such occasions. R , also smiling,

had said, " A black business, this! " a favourite expres-
sion with him.

' Yes — pretty! " R and I exclaimed together.

L took a sliver off his coat and offered it to us as

a souvenir. He did not know that he had said "Pretty!"

or R that he had said " A black business! "

several times that afternoon ; nor did I know that I had
exclaimed, "For the love of Mike!" Psychologists
take notice ; and golfers are reminded that their
favourite expletives when they foozle will come per-
fectly natural to them when the Germans are " straf-
ing." Then another nine-inch, when we were out of
the gallery in front of the warrens. My companions
happened to be near a dug-out. They did not go in
tandem, but abreast. It was a " dead heat." All
that I could see in the way of cover was a wall of sand-
bags, which looked about as comforting as tissue paper
in such a crisis.

At least, one faintly realized what it meant to be in
the support trenches, where the men were still huddled
in their caves. They never get a shot at the enemy or
a chance to throw a bomb, unless they are sent forward
to assist the front trenches in resisting an attack. It
is for this purpose that they are kept within easy
reach of the front trenches. They are like the prisoner
tied to a chair-back, facing a gun.

" Yes, this was pretty heavy shell-fire," said an
officer who ought to know. " Not so bad as on the
trenches which the infantry are to attack — that is the
first degree. You might call this the second."

It was heavy enough to keep any writer from being
bored. The second degree vail do. We will leave the
first until another time.

Later, when we were walking along a paved road, I
heard again what seemed the siren call of a nine-inch.

A NEEDLESS RUN 275

Once, in another war, I had been on a paved road
when — well, I did not care to be on this one if a nine-
inch hit it and turned fragments of paving-stones into
projectiles. An effort to " run out the bunt " —
Caesar's ghost ! It was one of our own shells ! Nerves !
Shame! Two stretcher-bearers with a wounded man
looked up in surprise, wondering what kind of a hide-
and-seek game we were playing. They made a picture
of imperturbability of the kind that is a cure for nerves
under fire. If the other fellow is not scared it does not
do for you to be scared.

" Did you get any shells in your neighbourhood? "
we asked the chauffeur — also British and imperturb-
able— whom we found waiting at a clearing station for
wounded.

" Yes, sir, I saw several, but none hit the car."

As we came to the first cross-roads in that dead land
back of the trenches which was still being shelled by
shrapnel, though not another car was in sight, and ours
had no business there (as we were told afterwards),
that chauffeur, as he slowed up before turning, held out
his hand from habit as he would have done in Piccadilly.

Two or three days later things were normal along the
front again, with Mr. Atkins still stuffing himself with
marmalade in that two hundred yards of trench.

XXIII

WINNING AND LOSING

Seeming an immovable black line set as a frontier in
peace, that Western front on your map which you
bought early in the war in anticipation of rearranging
the flags in keeping with each day's news was, in
reality, a pulsating, changing line.

At times you thought of it as an enormous rope under
the constant pressure of soldiers on either side, who
now and then, with an " all together " of a tug-of-war at
a given point, straightened or made a bend, with the
result imperceptible except as you measured it by a
tree or a house. Battles as severe as the most impor-
tant in South Africa, battles severe enough to have
decided famous campaigns in Europe in former days,
when one king rode forth against another, became
landmark incidents of the give and take, the wrangling
and the wrestling of siege operations.

The sensation of victory or defeat for those engaged
was none the less vivid because victory meant the gain
of so little ground and defeat the loss of so little ; per-
haps the more vivid in want of the movement of pursu-
ing or of being pursued in the shock of arms as in past
times, when an army front hardly covered that of one
brigade in the trenches. For winners and losers,
returning to their billets in French villages as other
battalions took their places, had time to think over the
action.

The offensive was mostly with the British through the
summer of 1915 ; any thrust by the Germans was
usually to retake a section of trenches which they had
lost. But our attacks did not all succeed, of course.

276

MANLY LOSERS 277

Battalions knew success and failure ; and their narra-
tives were mine to share, just as one would share the
good luck or the bad luck of his neighbours.

You may have a story of heartbreak or triumph an
hour after you have been chatting with playing children
in a village street, as the car speeds toward the zone
where reserves are billeted and the occasional shell is a
warning that peace lies behind you. First, we alighted
near the headquarters of two battalions which have
been in an attack that failed. The colonel of the one
to the left of the road was killed. We went across the
fields to the right. Among the surviving officers rest-
ing in their shelter tents, where there is plenty of room
now, is the adjutant, tall, boyish, looking tired, but
still with no outward display of what he has gone
through and what it has meant to him. I have seen
him by the hundreds, this buoyant type of English
youth.

In army language, theirs had not been a " good
show." We had heard the account of it with that
matter-of-fact prefix from G.H.O., where they took
results with the necessarily cold eye of logic. The two
battalions were set to take a trench ; that was all. In
the midst of merciless shell-fire they had waited for
their own guns to draw all the teeth out of the trench.
When the given moment came they swept forward.
But our artillery had not " connected up " properly.

The German machine-guns were not out of commis-
sion, and for them it was like working a loom playing
bullets back and forth across the zone of a hundred
yards which the British had to traverse. The British
had been told to charge and they charged. Theirs not
to reason why ; that was the glory of the thing.
Nothing more gallant in warfare than their persistence,
till they found that it was like trying to swim in a
cataract of lead. One officer got within fifty yards of
the German parapet before he fell. At last they

278 WINNING AND LOSING

realized that it could not be done — later than they
should, but they were a proud regiment, and though
they had been too brave, there was something splendid
about it.

With a soldier's winning frankness and simplicity
they told what had happened. Even before they
charged they knew the machine-guns were in place ;
they knew what they had to face. One man spoke of
seeing, as they lay waiting, a German officer standing
up in the midst of the British shell-fire.

" A stout-hearted fighter ! We had to admire him ! "
said the adjutant.

It was a chivalrous thought with a deep appeal, con-
sidering what he had been through. Oh, these English !
They will not hate ; they cannot be separated from
their sense of sportsmanship.

It was not the first time the guns had not " connected
up " for either side, and German charges on many
occasions had met a like fate. Calm enough, these
officers, true to their birthright of phlegm. They did
not make excuses. Success is the criterion of battle.
They had failed. Their unblinking recognition of the
fact was a sort of self-punishment which cut deep into
your own sensitiveness. One young lieutenant could
not keep his lip from trembling over that naked, grim
thought. Pride of regiment had been struck a whip-
blow, which meant more to the soldier than any injury
to his personal pride.

But next time! They wanted another try for that
trench, these survivors. No matter about anything
else — the battalion must have another chance. You
appreciated this from a few words and more from the
stubborn resolution in the bearing of all. There was
no " let-us-at-'em-again " f rightfulness. In order to
end this war you must " lick " one side or the other, and
these men were not "licked." You were sorry that you
had gone to see them. It was like lacerating a wound.

A SUCCESSFUL ATTACK 279

One could only assure them, in his faith in their gallan-
try, that they would win next time. And oh, how you
wanted them to win! They deserved to win because
they were such manly losers.

At home in their rough wooden houses in camp we
found a battalion which had won — the same un-
demonstrative type as the one that had lost ; the same
simplicity and kindly hospitality, which gives life at the
front a charm in the midst of its tragedy, from these
men of one of the dependable line regiments. This
colonel knew the other colonel, and he said about the
other what his fellow-ofhcers had said : it was not his
fault ; he was a good man. If the guns were not " on,"
what happened to him was bound to happen to any-
body. They had been " on " for the winning battalion ;
perfectly " on." They had buried the machine-guns
and the Germans with them.

When a man goes into the kind of charge that either
battalion made he gives himself up for lost. The psych-
ology is simple. You are going to keep on until !

Well, as Mr. Atkins has remarked in his own terse way,
a battle was a lot of noise all around you and suddenly a
big bang in your ear ; and then somebody said, " please
open your mouth and take this ! "and you found yourself
in a white, quiet place full of cots.

The winning battalion was amazed how easily the
thing was done. They had " walked in." They were a
little surprised to be alive — thanks to the guns. " Here
we are! Here we are again! " as the song at the front
goes. It is all a lottery. Make up your mind to draw
the death number ; and if you don't, that is "velvet."
Army courage these days is highly sensitized steel in
response to will.

They had won ; there was a credit mark in the regi-
mental record. All had won ; nobody in particular, but
the battalion, the lot of them. They did not boast about
it. The thing just happened. They were alive and

28o WINNING AND LOSING

enjoying the sheer fact of life, writing letters home, re-
reading letters from home, looking at the pictures in
illustrated papers, as they leaned back and smoked their
brier-wood pipes and discussed politics with that free-
dom and directness of opinion which is an Englishman's
pastime and his birthright.

The captain who was describing the fight had retired
from the army, gone into business, and returned as a
reserve officer. The guns were to stop firing at a given
moment. As the minute-hand lay over the figure on his
wrist-watch he dashed for the broken parapet, still in
the haze of dust from shell-bursts, to find not a German
in sight. All were under cover. He enacted the ridi-
culous scene with humorous appreciation of how he
came face to face with a German as he turned a traverse.
He was ready with his revolver and the other was not,
and the other was his prisoner.

There was nothing gruesome about listening to a diffi-
dent soldier explaining how he " bombed them out,"
and you shared his amusement over the surprise of a
German who stuck up his head from a dug-out within a
foot of the face of a British soldier who was peeping
inside to see if any more Germans were at home. You
rejoiced with this battalion. Victory is sweet.

When on the way back to quarters you passed some
of the new army men, " the Keetcheenaires," as the
French call them, you were reminded that although the
war was old the British army was young. There was a
" Watch our city grow! " atmosphere about it. Little
by little, some great force seemed steadily pushing up
from the rear. It made that business institution at
G.H.Q. feel like bankers with an enormous, increasing
surplus. In this the British is like no other army. One
has watched it in the making.

XXIV

THE MAPLE LEAF FOLK

These were " home folks " to the American. You
might know all by their maple-leaf symbol ; but even
before you saw that, with its bronze none too prominent
against the khaki, you knew those who were not recent
emigrants from England to Canada by their accent and
by certain slang phrases which pay no customs duty at
the border.

When, on a dark February night cruising in a slough
of a road, I heard out of a wall of blackness back of the
trenches, " Gee ! Get on to the bus ! " which referred to
our car, and also, " Cut out the noise! " I was certain
that I might dispense with an interpreter. After I had
remarked that I came from New York, which is only
across the street from Montreal as distances go in our
countries, the American batting about the front at
midnight was welcomed with a " glad hand " across
that imaginary line which has and ever shall have no
fortresses.

What a strange place to find Canadians — at the front
in Europe ! I could never quite accommodate myself to
the wonder of a man from Winnipeg, and perhaps a
' neutral " from Wyoming in his company, fighting
Germans in Flanders. A man used to a downy couch
and an easy chair by the fire and steam-heated rooms,
who had ten thousand a year in Toronto, when you
found him in a chill, damp cellar of a peasant's cottage
in range of the enemy's shells was getting something
more than novel, if not more picturesque, than dog-
mushing and prospecting on the Yukon ; for we are
quite used to that contrast.

281

282 THE MAPLE LEAF FOLK

All I asked of the Canadians was to allow a little of the
glory they had won — they had such a lot — to nib off on
their neighbours. If there must be war, and no Canadian
believed in it as an institution, why, to my mind, the
Canadians did a fine thing for civilization's sake. It
hurt sometimes to think that we also could not be in the
fight for the good cause, particularly after the Lusitania
was sunk, when my own feelings had lost all semblance
of neutrality.

The Canadians enlivened life at the front ; for they
have a little more zip to them than the thorough-going
British. Their climate spells " hustle," and we are all
the product of climate to a large degree, whether in
England, on the Mississippi flatlands, or in Manitoba.
Eager and high-strung the Canadian born, quick to see
and to act. Very restless they were when held up on
Salisbury Plain, after they had come three-four-five-six
thousand miles to fight and there was nothing to fight
but mud in an English winter.

One from the American contingent knew what ailed
them ; they wanted action. They may have seemed
undisciplined to a drill sergeant ; but the kind of disci-
pline they needed was a sight of the real thing. They
wanted to know, What for ? And Lord Kitchener was
kinder to them, though many were beginners, than to
his own new army ; he could be, as they were ready
with guns and equipment. So he sent them over to
France before it was too late in the spring to get frozen
feet from standing in icy water looking over a parapet
at a German parapet. They liked Flanders mud better
than Salisbury Plain mud, because it meant that there
was " something doing."

It was in their first trenches that I saw them, and they
were " on the job, all right," in face of scattered shell-
fire and the sweep of searchlights and flares. They had
become the most ardent of pupils, for here was that real
thing which steadied them and proved their metal.

THE SPIRIT OF CANADA 283

They refashioned their trenches and drained them with
the fastidiousness of good housekeepers who had a
frontiersman's experience for an inheritance. In a week
they appeared to be old hands at the business.

" Their discipline is different from ours," said a Brit-
ish general, " but it works out. They are splendid. I
ask for no better troops."

They may have lacked the etiquette of discipline of
British regulars, but they had the natural discipline of
self-reliance and of " go to it " when a crisis came. This
trench was only an introduction, a preparation for a
thing which was about as real as ever fell to the lot of
any soldiers. It is not for me to tell here the story of
their part in the second battle of Ypres, when the gas
fumes rolled in upon them. I should like to tell it and
also the story of the deeds of many British regiments,
from the time of Mons to Festubert. All Canada knows
it in detail from their own correspondents and their
record officer. England will one day know about her
regiments ; her stubborn regiments of the line, her
county regiments, who have won the admiration of all
the crack regiments, whether English or Scots.

" When that gas came along," said one Canadian,
who expressed the Canadian spirit, "we knew the Boches
were springing a new one on us. You know how it is if
a man is hit in the face by a cloud of smoke when he is
going into a burning building to get somebody out.
He draws back — and then he goes in. We went in. We
charged — well, it was the way we felt about it.
We wanted to get at them and we were boiling mad
over such a dastardly kind of attack."

Higher authorities than any civilian have testified to
how that charge helped, if it did not save, the situation.
And then at Givenchy — straight work into the enemy's
trenches under the guns. Canada is part of the British
Empire and a precious part ; but the Canadians, all
imperial politics aside, fought their way into the affec-

284 THE MAPLE LEAF FOLK

tion of the British army, if they did not already possess
it. They made the Rocky Mountains seem more
majestic and the Thousand Islands more lovely.

If there are some people in the United States busy
with their own affairs who look on the Canadians as
living up north somewhere toward the Arctic Circle and
not very numerous, that old criterion of worth which
discovers in the glare of battle's publicity merit which
already existed has given to the name Canadian a glory
which can be appreciated only with the perspective of
time. The Civil War left us a martial tradition ; they
have won theirs. Some day a few of their neutral neigh-
bours who fought by their side will be joining in their
army reunions and remarking, " Wasn't that mud in
Flanders " etc.

My thanks to the Canadians for being at the front.
They brought me back to the plains and the North- West,
and they snowed the Germans on some occasions what a
blizzard is like when expressed in bullets instead of in
snowflakes, by men who know how to shoot. I had
continental pride in them. They had the dry, pungent
philosophy and the indomitable optimism which the air
of the plains and the St. Lawrence valley seems to
develop. They were not afraid to be a little emotional
and sentimental. There is room for that sort of thing
between Vancouver and Halifax. They had been in
some " tough scraps " which they saw clear-eyed, as
they would see a boxing-match or a spill from a canoe
into a Canadian rapids.

As for the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infan-
try, old soldiers of the South African campaign almost
without exception, knowing and hardened, their veteran
experience gave them an earlier opportunity in the
trenches than the first Canadian division. Brigaded with
British regulars, the Princess Pat's were a sort of corps
d'Uite. Colonel Francis Farquhar, known as " Fanny,"
was their colonel, and he knew his men. After he was

STORY OF THE PRINCESS PAT'S 285

killed his spirit remained with them. Asked if they could
stick they said, " Yes, sir! " cheerily, as he would have
wanted them to say it.

I am going to tell the story of their fight of May 8th,
not to single them out from any other Canadian battalion,
or any British battalions, but because the story came to
me and it seemed illuminative of what other battalions
had endured, this one picturesquely because of its
membership and its distance from home.

Losses in that Ypres salient at St. Eloi the P.P.s had
suffered in the winter, dribbling, day-by-day losses, and
heavier ones when they had made attacks and repulsed
attacks. They had been holding down the lid of hell
heretofore, as one said graphically, and on May 8th, to
use his simile again, they held on to the edge of the open-
ing by the skin of their teeth and looked down into the
bowels of hell after the Germans had blown the lid off
with high explosives.

It was in a big chateau that I heard the story — a
story characteristic of modern warfare at its highest
pitch — and felt its thrill when told by the tongues of its
participants. There were twenty bedrooms in that
chateau. If I wished to stay all night I might occupy
three or four. As for the bathroom, paradise to men
who have been buried in filthy mud by high explosives,
the Frenchman who planned it had the most spacious
ideas of immersion. A tub, or a shower, or a hose, as you
pleased. Some bathroom, that !

For nothing in the British army was too good for the
Princess Pat's before May 8th; and since May 8th noth-
ing is quite good enough. Ask the generals in whose
command they have served if you have any doubts.
There is one way to win praise at the front : by fighting.
The P.P.s knew the way.

" Too bad Gault is not here. He's in England re-
covering from his wound. Gault is six feet tall and five
feet of him legs. All day in that trench with a shell-

286 THE MAPLE LEAF FOLK

wound in his thigh and arm. God ! How he was suffer-
ing ! But not a moan, his face twitching and trying to
make the twitch into a smile, and telling us to stick.

" Buller away, too. He was the second in command.
Gault succeeded him. Buller was hit on May 5th and
missed the big show — piece of shell in the eye.

" And Charlie Stewart, who was shot through the
stomach. How we miss him ! If ever there were a ' live-
wire ' it's Charlie. Up or down, he's smiling and ready
for the next adventure. Once he made thirty thousand
dollars in the Yukon and spent it on the way to Van-
couver. The first job he could get was washing dishes ;
but he wasn't washing them long. Again, he started
out in the North-West on an expedition with four hun-
dred traps, to cut into the fur business of the Hudson
Bay Company. His Indians got sick. He wouldn't
desert them, and before he was through he had a time
which beat anything yet opened up for us by the Ger-
mans in Flanders. But you have heard such stories
from the North- West before. Being shot through the
stomach the way he was, all the doctors agreed that
Charlie would die. It was like Charlie to disagree with
them. He always had his own point of view. So he is
getting well. Charlie came out to the war with the
packing-case which had been used by his grandfather,
who was an officer in the Crimean War. He said that it
would bring him luck."

The 4th of May was bad enough, a ghastly forerunner
for the 8th. On the 4th the P.P.s, after having been
under shell-fire throughout the second battle of Ypres,
the " gas battle," were ordered forward to a new line to
the south-east of Ypres. To the north of Ypres the
British line had been driven back by the concentration
of shell-fire and the rolling, deadly march of the clouds
of asphyxiating gas.

The Germans were still determined to take the town,
which they had showered with four million dollars'

GRUELLING SHELL-FIRE 287

worth of shells. It would be big news : the fall of Ypres
as a prelude to the fall of Przemysl and of Lemberg in
their summer campaign of 1915. A wicked salient was
produced in the British line to the south-east by the
cave-in to the north. It seems to be the lot of the P.P.s
to get into salients. On the 4th they lost twenty-eight
men killed and ninety-eight wounded from a gruelling
all-day shell-fire and stone-walling. That night they
got relief and were out for two days, when they were
back in the front trenches again. The 5th and the 6th
were fairly quiet ; that is, what the P.P.s or Mr. Thomas
Atkins would call quiet. Average mortals wouldn't.
They would try to appear unconcerned and say they had
been under pretty heavy fire, which means shells all over
the place and machine-guns combing the parapet. Very
dull, indeed. Only three men killed and seventeen
wounded.

On the night of May 7th the P.P.s had a muster of
six hundred and thirty-five men. This was a good deal
less than half of the original total in the battalion, in-
cluding recruits who had come out to fill the gaps caused
by death, wounds, and sickness. Bear in mind that
before this war a force was supposed to prepare for
retreat with a loss of ten per cent, and get under way to
the rear with the loss of fifteen per cent., and that with
the loss of thirty per cent, it was supposed to have borne
all that can be expected of the best trained soldiers.

The Germans were quiet that night, suggestively
quiet. At 4.30 a.m. the prelude began ; by 5.30 the
German gunners had fairly warmed to their work. They
were using every kind of shell they had in the locker.
Every signal wire the P.P.s possessed had been cut.
The brigade commander could not know what was
happening to them and they could not know his wishes ;
except that it may be taken for granted that the orders of
any British brigade commanderare always to" stickit."

The shell-fire was as thick at the P.P.s' backs as in

288 THE MAPLE LEAF FOLK

front of them ; they were fenced in by it. And they were
infantry taking what the guns gave in order to put them
out of business so that the way would be clear for the
German infantry to charge. In theory they ought to
have been buried and mangled beyond the power of re-
sistance by what is called " the artillery preparation for
the infantry in attack."

Every man of the P.P.s knew what was coming.
There was relief in their hearts when they saw the Ger-
mans break from their trenches and start down the
slope of the hill in front. Now they could take it out of
the German infantry in payment for what the German
guns were doing to them. This was their only thought.
Being good shots, with the instinct of the man who is
used to shooting at game, the P.P.s " shoot to kill " and
at individual targets. The light green of the German
uniform is more visible on the deep green background of
spring grass and foliage than against the tints of autumn.

At two or three or four hundred yards neither Corporal
Christy, the old bear-hunter, lying on the parapet nor
other marksmen of the P.P.s could miss their marks.
They kept on knocking down Germans ; they didn't
know that men around them were being hit ; they did
not know they were being shelled except when a burst
shook their aim or filled their eyes with dust. In that
case they wiped the dust out of their eyes and went on.

The first that many of them realized that the German
attack was broken was when they saw green blots in
front of the standing figures, which were now going in
the other direction. Then the thing was to keep as
many of these as possible from returning over the hill.
After that they could dress the wounded and make the
dying a little more comfortable. For there was no
taking the wounded to the rear. They had to remain
there in the trench perhaps to be wounded again,
spectators of their comrades' valour without the
preoccupation of action.

A TERRIBLE TOLL 289

In the official war journal where a battalion keeps its
records — that precious historical document which will
be safeguarded in fireproof vaults one of these days —
you may read in cold, official language what happened
in one section of the British line on the 8th of May.
Thus :

" 7 a.m. Fire trench on right blown in at several
points ... 9 a.m. Lieutenants Martin and Triggs were
hit and came out of left communicating trench with
number of wounded . . . Captain Still and Lieutenant
de Bay hit also . . . 9.30 a.m. All machine-guns were
buried (by high explosive shells) but two were dug out
and mounted again. A shell killed every man in one
section . . . 10.30 a.m. Lieutenant Edwards was
killed . . . Lieutenant Crawford, who was most gallant,
was severely wounded . . . Captain Adamson, who had
been handing out ammunition, was hit in the shoulder,
but continued to work with only one arm useful . . .
Sergeant-Major Frazer, who was also handing out am-
munition to support trenches, was killed instantly by a
bullet in the head."

At 10.30 only four officers remained fit for action.
All were lieutenants. The ranking one of these was
Niven, in command after Gault was wounded at 7 a.m.
We have all met the Niven type anywhere from the Gulf
of Mexico to the Arctic Circle, the high-strung, wiry type
who moves about too fast to carry any loose flesh and
accumulates none because he does move about so fast.
A little man Niven, rancher and horseman, with a good
education and a knowledge of men. He rather fits the
old saying about licking his weight in wild cats — wild
cats being nearer his size than lions or tigers.

Eight months before he had not known any more
about war than thousands of other Canadians of his
type, except that soldiers carried rifles over their
shoulders and kept step. But he had " Fanny " Far-
quhar, of the British army, for his teacher ; and he

2qo THE MAPLE LEAF FOLK

studied the book of war in the midst of shells and bullets,
which means that the lessons stick in the same way as
the lesson the small boy receives when he touches the
red-hot end of a poker to ascertain how it feels.

Writing in the midst of ruined trenches rocked by the
concussion of shells, every message he sent that day,
every report he made by orderly after the wires were
down was written out very explicitly ; which Farquhar
had taught him was the army way. The record is there
of his coolness when the lid was blown off of hell. For
all you can tell by the firm chirography, he might have
been sending a note to a ranch foreman.

When his communications were cut, he was not certain
how much support he had on his flanks. It looked for a
time as if he had none. After the first charge was re-
pulsed, he made contact with the King's Royal Rifle
Corps on his right. He knew from the nature of the
first German charge that the second would be worse than
the first. The Germans had advanced some machine-
guns ; they would be able to place their increased
artillery fire more accurately.

Again green figures started down that hill and again
they were put back. Then Niven was able to establish
contact with the Shropshire Light Infantry, another
regiment on his left. So he knew that right and left he
was supported, and by seasoned British regulars. This
was very, very comforting, especially when German
machine-gun fire was not only coming from the front but
in enfilade, which is most trying to a soldier's steadiness.
In other words, the P.P.s were shooting at Germans in
front, while bullets were whipping crosswise of their
trenches and of the regulars on their flanks, too. Some
of the German infantrymen who had not been hit or had
not fallen back had dug themselves cover and were firing
at a closer range.

The Germans had located the points in the P.P.s'
trench occupied by machine-guns. At least, t^ey could

DELUGED WITH SHELLS 291

put these hornets' nests out of business if not all the
individual riflemen. So they concentrated high explos-
ive shells on the guns. This did the trick ; it buried them.
But a buried machine-gun may be dug out and fired
again. It may be dug out two or three times and keep
on firing as long as it will work and there is anyone to
man it.

While the machine-guns were being exhumed every
man in one sector of the trench was killed. Then the
left half of the right fire trench had three or four shells,
one after another, bang into it. There was no trench
left ; only macerated earth and mangled men. Those
emerging alive were told to retreat to the communica-
tion trench. Next, the right end of the left fire trench
was blown in. When the survivors fell back to the com-
munication trench that also was blown in their face.

" Oh, but we were having a merry party! " as
Lieutenant Vandenberg put it.

Niven and his lieutenants were moving here and there
to the point of each new explosion to ascertain the
amount of damage and to decide what was to be done
as the result. One soldier described Niven's eyes as
sparks emitted from two holes in his dust-caked face.

Pappineau tells how a tree outside the trench was cut
in two by a shell and its trunk laid across the breach of
the trench caused by another shell ; and lying over the
trunk, limp and lifeless where he had fallen, was a man
killed by still another shell.

" I remember how he looked because I had to step
around him and over the trunk," said Pappineau.

Unless you did have to step around a dead or a
wounded man there was no time to observe his appear-
ance ; for by noon there were as many dead and wounded
in the P.P.s' trench as there were men fit for action.

Those unhurt did not have to be steadied by their
superiors. Knocked down by a concussion they sprang
up with the promptness of disgust of one thrown off a

292 THE MAPLE LEAF FOLK

horse or tripped by a wire. When told to move from
one part of the trench to another where there was des-
perate need, a word was sufficient. They understood
what was wanted of them, these veterans. They went.
They seized every lull to drop the rifle for the spade and
repair the breaches. When they were not shooting they
were digging. The officers had only to keep reminding
them not to expose themselves in the breaches. For in
the thick of it, and the thicker the more so, they must
try to keep some dirt between all of their bodies except
the head and arm which had to be up in order to fire.

At 1.30 p.m. a cheer rose from that trench. It was in
greeting of a platoon of the King's Royal Rifles which
had come as a reinforcement. Oh, but this band of
Tommies did look good to the P.P.s! And the little
prize package that the very reliable Mr. Atkins had with
him — the machine-gun ! You can always count on Mr.
Atkins to remain " among those present " to the last on
such occasions.

Now Niven got word by messenger to go to the near-
est point where the telephone was working and tell the
brigade commander the complete details of the situa-
tion. The brigade commander asked him if he could
stick, and he said," Yes, sir! " which is what Colonel
" Fanny " Farquhar would have said. This trip was
hardly what would be called peaceful. The orderly
whom Niven had with him both going and coming was
hit by high explosive shells. Niven is so small that it is
difficult to hit him. He is about up to Major Gault's
shoulder.

He had been worrying about his supply of rifle-cart-
ridges. There were not enough to take care of another
German infantry charge, which was surely coming.
After repelling two charges, think of failing to repel the
third for want of ammunition! Think of Corporal
Christy, the bear-hunter, with the Germans thick in
front of him and no bullets for his rifle ! But appeared

NO TIME TO RETIRE 293

again Mr. Thomas Atkins, another platoon of him, with
twenty boxes of cartridges, which was rather a risky
burden to bring through shell-fire. The relief as these
were distributed was that of having something at your
throat which threatens to strangle you removed.

Making another tour of his trenches a little later in
the afternoon, Niven found that there was a gap of fifty
yards between his left and the right of the adjoining
regiment. Fifty yards is the inch on the end of a man's
nose in trench-warfare on such an occasion. He was
able to place eight men in the gap. At least, they could
keep a look out and tell him what was going on.

It was not cheering news to learn that the regiments
on his left had withdrawn to trenches about three hun-
dred yards to the rear — a long distance in trench
warfare. But the P.P.s had no time to retire. They
could have gone only in the panic of men who think of
nothing in their demoralization except to flee from the
danger in front, regardless of more danger to the rear.
They were held where they were under what cover they
had by the renewed blasts of shells, putting the machine-
guns out of action.

Now the Germans were coming on again in their
supreme effort. It was as a nightmare, in which only
the objective of effort is recalled and all else is a vague
struggle of every ounce of strength which one can exert
against smothering odds. No use to ask these men what
they thought. What do you think when you are climb-
ing up a rope whose strands are breaking over the edge
of a precipice ? You climb ; that is all.

The P.P.s shot at Germans. After a night without
sleep, after a day among their dead and wounded, after
torrents of shell-fire, after breathing smoke, dust and
gas, these veterans were in a state of exaltation entirely
oblivious of danger, of their surroundings, mindless of
what came next, automatically shooting to kill as they
were trained to do, even as a man pulls with all his

294 THE MAPLE LEAF FOLK

might in the crucial test of a tug of war. Old Corporal
Christy, bear-hunter of the North-West, who could
"shoot the eye off an ant," as Niven said, leaned out
over the parapet, or what was left of it, because he
could take better aim lying down and the Germans
were so thick that he could not afford any misses.

Corporal Dover had to give up firing his machine-gun
at last. Wounded, he had dug it out of the earth after
an explosion and set it up again. The explosion which
destroyed the gun finally crushed his leg and arm. He
crawled out of the debris toward the support trench
which had become the fire trench, only to be killed by a
bullet.

The Germans got possession of a section of the P.P.s'
trench where, it is believed, no Canadians were left.
But the German effort died there. It could get no far-
ther. This was as near to Ypres as the Germans were to
go in this direction. When the day's work was done,
there, in sight of the field scattered with German dead,
the P.P.s counted their numbers. Of the six hundred
and thirty-five men who had begun the fight at day-
break, one hundred and fifty men and four officers,
Niven, Pappineau, Clark and Vandenberg, remained fit
for duty.

Vandenberg is a Hollander, but mostly he is Vanden-
berg. To him the call of youth is the call to arms. He
knows the roads of Europe and the roads of Chihuahua.
He was at home fighting with Villa at Zacetecas and at
home fighting with the P.P.s in front of Ypres.

Darkness found all the survivors among the P.P.s in
the support and communication trenches. The fire
trench had become an untenable dust-heap. They crept
out only to bring in any wounded unable to help them-
selves ; and wounded and rescuers were more than once
hit in the process. It was too dangerous to attempt to
bury the dead who were in the fire trench. Most of
them had already been buried by shells. For them and

KEEPING THEIR WORD 295

for the dead in the support trenches interred by their
living comrades, Niven recited such portions as he could
recall of the Church of England service for the dead —
recited them with a tight throat. Then the P.P.s, un-
beaten, marched out, leaving the position to their relief,
a battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps. Corporal
Christy, the bear-hunter, had his " luck with him." He
had not even a scratch.

Such is the story of a hard fight by one battalion in
the kind of warfare waged in Europe these days, a story
only partially told ; a story to make a book. All the
praise that the P.P.s, millionaire or labourer, scape-
grace or respectable pillar of society, ask is that they are
worthy of fighting side by side with Mr. Thomas Atkins,
regular. At best, one poor, little, finite mind only ob-
serves through a rift in the black smoke and yellow smoke
of high explosives and the clouds of dust and military
secrecy something of what has happened many times in
a small section of that long line from Switzerland to the
North Sea.

Leaning against the wall in a corner of the dining-
room of the French chateau were the P.P.s colours.
Major Niven took off the wrapper in order that I might
see the flag with the initials of the battalion which Prin-
cess Patricia embroidered with her own hands. There
is room, one repeats, for a little sentiment and a little
emotion, too, between Halifax and Vancouver.

" Of course we could not take our colours into action,"
said Niven. " They would have been torn into tatters
or buried in a shell-crater. But we've always kept them
up at battalion headquarters. I believe we are the only
battalion that has. We promised the Princess that we
would."

In her honour, an old custom has been renewed in
France : knights are fighting in the name of a fair lady.

u

XXV

MANY PICTURES

A single incident, an impression photographic in its
swiftness, a chance remark, may be more illuminating
than a day's experiences. One does not need to go to
the front for them. Sometimes they come to the gateway
of our chateau. They are pages at random out of a
library of overwhelming information.
*****

One of the aviation grounds is not far away. Look
skyward at almost any hour of the day and you will see
a plane, its propeller a roar or a hum according to its
altitude. Sometimes it is circling in practice ; again, it
is off to the front. At break of day the planes appear ;
in the gloaming they return to roost.

If an aviator has leave for two or three days in summer
he starts in the late afternoon, flashing over that streak
of Channel in half an hour, and may be at home for
dinner without getting any dust on his clothes or having
to bother with military red tape at steamer gangways or
customs houses.

The airmen are a type which one associates with cer-
tain marked characteristics. No nervous man is wanted,
and it is time for an aviator to take a rest at the first
sign of nerves. They seem rather shy, men given to
observation rather than to talking ; accustomed to
using their eyes and hands. It is difficult to realize that
some quiet, young fellow who is pointed out has had so
many hairbreadth escapes. What tales, worthy of
Arabian Nights' heroes who are borne away on magic
carpets, they bring home, relating them as matter-of-
factly as if they had broken a shoelace.

296

SCHOOL AT THE FRONT 297

Up in their seat, a whir of the motor, and they are off
on another adventure. They have all the spirit of corps
of the oldest regiments, and, besides, a spirit peculiar to
the newest branch in the service of war. Anonymity
is absolute. Everything is done by the corps for the
corps. Possibly because it is so young, because it
started with chosen men, the British Aviation Corps is
unsurpassed ; but partly it is because of the British
temperament, with that combination of coolness and
innate love of risk which the British manner sometimes
belies. Something of the old spirit of knighthood
characterizes air service. It is individual work ; its
numbers are relatively few.

*****

Some mornings ago I saw several young soldiers with
notebooks going about our village street. They were
from the cadet school where privates, from the trenches,
take a course and return with chocolate drops on their
sleeve-bands as commissioned officers. This was a
course in billeting. For ours is not an army in tents,
but one living in French houses and barns. The pupils
were learning how to carry out this delicate task ; for
delicate it is. A stranger speaking another language be-
comes the guest of the host for whom he is fighting.
Mr. Atkins receives only shelter ; he supplies his own
meals. His excess of marmalade one sees yellowing the
cheeks of the children in the family where he is at home.
Madame objects only to his efforts to cook in her
kitchen ; womanlike, she would rather handle the pots
and pans herself.

Tommy is thoroughly instructed in his duty as guest
and under a discipline that is merciless so far as conduct
toward the population goes ; so the two get on better
than French and English military authorities feared
that they might. Time has taught them to understand
each other and to see that difference in race does not

298 MANY PICTURES

mean absence of human qualities in common, though
differently expressed. Many armies I have seen, but
never one better behaved than the British army in
France and Flanders in its respect for property and the
rights of the population.

And while the fledgling officers are going on with their
billeting, we hear the t-r-r-t of a machine-gun at a
machine-gun school about a mile distant, where picked
men also from the trenches receive instruction in the use
of an arm new to them. There are other schools within
sound of the guns teaching the art of war to an expanding
army in the midst of war, with the teachers bringing
their experience from the battle-line.

"Their shops and their houses all have frontsof glass,"
wrote a Sikh soldier home, " and even the poor are rich
in this bountiful land."

Sikhs and Ghurkas and Rajputs and Pathans and
Gharwalis, the brown-skinned tribesmen in India, have
been on a strange Odyssey, bringing picturesqueness to
the khaki tone of modern war. Aeroplanes interested
them less than a trotting dog in a wheel for drawing
water. They would watch that for hours.

Still fresh in mind is a scene when the air seemed a
moist sponge and all above the earth was dripping and
all under foot a mire. I was homesick for the flash on
the windows of the New York skyscrapers or the gleam
on the Hudson of that bright sunlight in a drier air, that
is the secret of the American's nervous energy. It
seemed to me that it was enough to have to exist in
Northern France at that season of the year, let alone
fighting Germans.

Out of the drizzly, misty rain along a muddy road and
turning past us came the Indian cavalry, which, like the
British cavalry, had fought on foot in the trenches,
while their horses led the leisurely life of true equine

BROWN-SKINNED FIGHTERS 299

gentry. Erect in their saddles, their martial spirit
defiant of weather, their black eyes flashing as they
looked toward the reviewing officers, troop after troop
of these sons of the East passed by, everyone seeming as
fit for review as if he had cleaned his uniform and equip-
ment in his home barracks instead of in French barns.

You asked who had trained them ; who had fashioned
the brown clay into resolute and loyal obedience which
stood the test of a Flanders winter ? What was the
force which could win them to cross the seas to fight for
England ? Among the brown faces topped with turbans
appeared occasional white faces. These were the men ;
these the force.

The marvel was not that the Indians were able to
fight as well as they did in that climate, but that they
fought at all. What welcome summer brought from
their gleaming black eyes ! July or August could not be
too hot for them. On a plateau one afternoon I saw
them in a gymkhana. It was a treat for the King of
the Belgians, who has had few holidays, indeed, this
last year, and for the French peasants who came from
the neighbourhood. Yelling, wild as they were in tribal
days before the British brought order and peace to
India, the horsemen galloped across the open space,
picking up handkerchiefs from the ground and impaling
tent pegs on their lances. The French peasants clapped
their hands and the British Indian officers said, " Good !"
when the performer succeeded, or, " Too bad! " when
he failed.

If you asked the officers for the secret of the Indian
Empire they said : " We try to be fair to the natives ! "
which means that they are just and even-tempered. An
enormous, loose-jointed machine the British Empire,
which seems sometimes to creak a bit, yet holds
together for that very reason. Imperial weight may
have interfered with British adaptability to the kind of
warfare which was the one kind that the Germans had

300 MANY^PICTURES

to train for ; but certainly some Englishmen must
know how to rule.

That church bell across the street from our chateau
begins its clangor at dawn, summoning the French
women and children and the old men to the fields in
harvest time. But its peal carrying across the farm-
lands is softened by distance and sweet to the tired
workers in the evening. In the morning it tells them
that the day is long and they have much to do
before dark. After that thought I never complained
because it robbed me of my sleep. I felt ashamed not
to be up and doing myself, and worked with a better
spirit.

" Will they do it ? "

We asked this question as often in our mess in those
August days as, Will the Russians lose Warsaw ?
Would the peasants be able to get in their crops, with
all the able-bodied men away ? I had inside informa-
tion from the village mayor and the blacksmith and the
baker that they would. A financial expert, the baker.
Of course, he said, France would go on fighting till
the Germans were beaten, just as the old men and the
women and children said, whether the church bell
were clanging the matins or the angelus. But there was
the question of finances. It took money' to fight. The
Americans, he knew, had more money than they knew
what to do with — as Europeans universally think, only,
personally, I find that I was overlooked in the distribu-
tion— and if they would lend the Allies some of their
spare billions, Germany was surely beaten.

A busy man, the blacksmith, and brawny, if he had
no spreading chestnut tree ; busy not only shoeing
f armhorses, but repairing American reapers and binders,
whose owners profited exceedingly and saved the day.
But not all farmers felt that they could afford the charge.

FRENCH FARMERS 301

These kept at their small patches with sickles. Gradu-
ally the carpets of gold waving in the breeze became
bundles lying on the stubble, and great, conical harvest
stacks rose, while children gathered the stray stems
left on the ground by the reapers till they had immense
bouquets of wheat-heads under their arms, enough to
make two or three loaves of the pain de menage that the
baker sold. So the peasants did it ; they won ; and
this was some compensation for the loss of Warsaw.

One morning we heard troops marching past, which
was not unusual. But these were French troops in the
British zone, en route from somewhere in France to
somewhere else in France. There was not a person left
in any house in that village. Everybody was out, with
affection glowing in their eyes. For these were their
own — their soldiers of France !

When you see a certain big limousine flying a small
British flag pass you know that it belongs to the Com-
mander-in-Chief ; and though it may be occupied only
by one of his aides, often you will have a glimpse of a
man with a square chin and a drooping white mous-
tache, who is the sole one among the hundreds of thou-
sands at the British front who wears the wreath-circled
crossed batons of a field-marshal.

It is erroneous to think that Sir John French or any
other commander, though that is the case in time of
action, spends all his time in the private house occupied
as headquarters, designated by two wisps of flags, study-
ing a map and sending and receiving messages, when the
trench-line remains stationary. He goes here and there
on inspections. It is the only way that a modern leader
may let his officers and men know that he is a being of
flesh and blood and not a name signed to reports and

302 MANY PICTURES

orders. A machine-gun company I knew had a surprise
when resting in a field waiting for orders. They suddenly
recognized in a figure coming through an opening in a
hedge the supreme head of the British army in France.
No need of a call to attention. The effect was like an
electric shock, which sent every man to his place and
made his backbone a steel rod. Those crossed batons
represented a dizzy altitude to that battery which had
just come out from England. Sir John walked up and
down, looking over men and guns after their nine months'
drill at home, and said, " Very good! " and was away to
other inspections where he might not necessarily say,
"Very good!"

Frequently his inspections are formal. A battalion
or a brigade is drawn up in a field, or they march past.
Then he usually makes a short speech. On one occasion
the officers had arranged a platform for the speech-
making. Sir John gave it a glance and that was enough.
It was the last of such platforms erected for him.

" Inspections! They are second nature to us! " said
a new army man. " We were inspected and inspected
at home and we are inspected and inspected out here.
If there is anything wrong with us it is the general's own
fault if it isn't found out. When a general is not
inspecting, some man from the medical corps is dis-
infecting."

Battalions of the new army are frequently billeted for
two or three days in our village. The barn up the road
I know is capable of housing twenty men and one officer,
for this is chalked on the door. Before they turn in for
the night the men frequently sing, and the sound of their
voices is pleasant.

A typical inspection was one that I saw in the main
street. The battalion was drawn up in full marching
equipment on the road. Of those officers with packs on
their backs one was only nineteen. This is the limit of
youth to acquire a chocolate drop on the sleeve. The

THE NEW ARMY ARRIVES 303

sergeant-major was an old regular, the knowing back-
bone of the battalion, who had taken the men of clay
and taught them their letters and then how to spell and
to add and subtract and divide. One of those im-
pressive red caps arrived in a car, and the general who
wore it went slowly up and down the line, front and
rear, examining rifles and equipment, while the young
officers and the old sergeant were hoping that Jones or
Smith hadn't got some dust in his rifle-barrel at the
last moment.

Brokers and carpenters, bankers and mechanics,
clerks and labourers, the new army is like the army of
France, composed of all classes. One evening I had a
chat with two young fellows in a battalion quartered in
the village, who were seated beside the road. Both
came from Buckinghamshire. One was a schoolmaster
and the other an architect. They were " bunkies,"
pals, chums.

" When did you enlist ? " I asked.

" In early September, after the Marne retreat. We
thought that it was our duty, then ; but we've been a
long time arriving."

" How do you like it ? "

" We are not yet masters of the language, we find,"
said the schoolmaster, " though I had a pretty good
book knowledge of it."

"I'm learning the gestures fast, though," said the
architect.

" The French are glad to see us," said the school-
master. " They call us the Keetcheenaires. I fancy
they thought we were a long time coming. But now we
are here, I think they will find that we can keep up our
end."

They had the fresh complexions which come from
healthy, outdoor work. There was something engaging
in their boyishness and their views. For they had a
wider range of interests than that professional soldier,

304 MANY PICTURES

Mr. Atkins, these citizens who had taken up arms. They
knew what trench-fighting meant by work in practice
trenches at home.

" Of course it will not be quite the same ; theory and
practice never are," said the schoolmaster.

"We ought to be well grounded in the principles," said
the architect thoughtfully, " and they say that in a week
or two of actual experience you will have mastered the
details that could not be taught in England. Then,
too, having shells burst around you will be strange at
first. But I think our battalion will give a good account
of itself, sir. All the Bucks men have ! " There crept in
the pride of regiment, of locality, which is so character-
istically Anglo-Saxon.

They change life at the front, these new army men.
If a carpenter, a lawyer, a sign-painter, an accountant,
is wanted, you have only to speak to a new army
battalion commander and one is forthcoming — a mil-
lionaire, too, for that matter, who gets his shilling a day
for serving his country. Their intelligence permitted
the architect and the schoolmaster to have no illusions
about the character of the war they had to face. The
pity was that such a fine force as the new army, which
had not become trench stale, could not have a free space
in which to make a great turning movement, instead of
having to go against that solid battle front from Swit-
zerland to the North Sea.

We have heard enough — quite enough for most of us
— about the German Crown Prince. But there is also a
prince with the British army in France. No lieutenant
looks younger for his years than this one in the Grena-
dier Guards, and he seems of the same type as the others
when you see him marching with his regiment or off for
a walk smoking a brier-wood pipe. There are some
officers who would rather not accompany him on his

THE PRINCE OF WALES 305

walks, for he can go fast and far. He makes regular
reports of his observations, and he has opportunities for
learning which other subalterns lack, for he may have
both the staff and the army as personal instructors.
Otherwise, his life is that of any other subaltern ; for
there is an instrument called the British Constitution
which regulates many things. A little shy, very desirous
to learn, is Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, heir to the
throne of Great Britain and Ireland and the Empire of
India. He might be called the willing prince.

This was one of the shells that hit — one of the hun-
dred that hit. The time was summer ; the place, the
La Bassee region. Probably the fighting was all the
harder here because it is so largely blind. When you
cannot see what an enemy is doing you keep on pump-
ing shells into the area which he occupies ; you take no
risks with him.

The visitor may see about as much of what is going on
in the La Bassee region as an ant can see of the sur-
rounding landscape when promenading in the grass.
The only variation in the flatness of the land is the over-
worked ditches which try to drain it. Look upward, and
rows of poplar trees along the level, and a hedge, a
grove, a cottage, or trees and shrubs around it, limit
your vision. Thus, if a breeze starts timidly in a field
it is stopped before it goes far. That " hot corner "
is all the hotter for a burning July sun. The army
water-carts which run back to wells of cool water
are busy filling empty canteens, while shrapnel trims
the hedges.

A stretcher was being borne into the doorway of an
estaminet which had escaped destruction by shells, and
above the door was chalked some lettering which indi-
cated that it was a first clearing station for the wounded.
Lying on other stretchers on the floor were some wounded

306 MANY PICTURES

men. Of the two nearest, one had a bandage around his
head and one a bandage around his arm. They had
been stunned, which was only natural when you have
been as close as they had to a shell-burst — a shell that
made a hit. The concussion was bound to have this
effect.

A third man was the best illustration of shell-destruc-
tiveness. Bullets make only holes. Shells make gouges,
fractures, pulp. He, too, had a bandaged head and had
been hit in several places ; but the worst wound was in
the leg, where an artery had been cut. He was weak,
with a sort of where-am-I look in his eyes. If the frag-
ment which had hit his leg had hit his head, or his neck,
or his abdomen, he would have been killed instantly.
He was also an illustration of how hard it is to kill a
man even with several shell-fragments, unless some of
them strike in the right place. For he was going to
live ; the surgeon had whispered the fact in his ear,
that one important fact. He had beaten the German
shell, after all.

Returning by the same road by which we came a
motor-car ran swiftly by, the only kind of car allowed on
that road. We had a glimpse of the big, painted red
cross on an ambulance side, and at the rear, where the
curtains were rolled up for ventilation, of four pairs of
soldier boot-soles at the end of four stretchers, which
had been slid into place at the estaminet by the sturdy,
kindly, experienced medical corps men.

Before we reached the village where our car waited,
the ambulance passed us on the way back to the estami-
net. Very soon after the shell-burst, a telephone bell
had rung down the line from the extreme front calling
for an ambulance and stating the number of men hit, so
that everybody would know what to prepare for. At
the village, which was outside the immediate danger
zone, was another clearing station. Here the stretchers
were taken into a house — taken without a jolt by men

CARING FOR THE WOUNDED 307

who were specialists in handling stretchers — for any re-
dressing if necessary, before another ambulance started
them on a journey, with motor-trucks and staff motor-
cars giving right of way, to a spotless, white hospital
ship which would take them home to England the next
night.

It had been an incident of life at the front, and of the
organization of war, causing less flurry than an ambu-
lance call to an accident in a great city.

XXVI

FINDING THE GRAND FLEET

Good fortune slipped a message across the Channel to
the British front, which became the magic carpet of
transition from the life of the burrowing army in its
trenches to the life of battleships ; from motors trailing
dust over French roads, to destroyers trailing foam in
choppy seas off English coasts.

But there was more than one place to go in that
wonderful week ; more than ships to see if one would
know something of the intricate, busy world of the
Admiralty's work, which makes coastguards a part of its
personnel. The transition is less sudden if we begin with
a ride in an open car along the coast of Scotland. Dusk
had fallen on the purple cloudlands of heather dotted
with the white spots of grazing sheep in the Scottish
Highlands under changing skies, with headlands stretch-
ing out into the misty reaches of the North Sea, forbid-
ding in the chill air after the warmth of France and
suggestive of the uninviting theatre where, in approach-
ing winter, patrols and trawlers and mine-sweepers
carried on their work to within range of the guns of
Heligoland. A people who lived in such a chill land, in
sight of such a chill sea, and who spoke of their " Bonnie
Scotland forever, "were worthy to be masters of that sea.

The Americans who think of Britain as a small island
forget the distance from Land's End to John o' Groat's,
which represents coast line to be guarded ; and we may
find a lesson, too, we who must make our real defence by
sea, in tireless vigils which may be our own if the old
Armageddon beast ever comes threatening the far-
longer coast line that we have to defend. For you may

308

GUARDING A NAVY'S SECRETS 309

never know what war is till war comes. Not even the
Germans knew, though they had practised with a lifelike
dummy behind the curtains for forty years.

At intervals, just as in the military zone in France,
sentries stopped us and took the number of our car ; but
this time sentries who were guarding a navy's rather
than an army's secrets. With darkness we passed the
light of an occasional inn, while cottage lights made a
scattered sprinkling among the dim masses of the hills.
A man might have been puzzled as to where all the kilted
Highland soldiers whom he had seen at the front came
from, if he had not known that the canny Highlanders
enlist Lowlanders in kilty regiments.

The Frenchmen of our party — M. Stephen Pichon,
former Foreign Minister, M. Rene Bazin, of the Acad-
emie Francaise, M. Joseph Reinach, of the Figaro, M.
Pierre Mille, of Le Temps, and M. Henri Ponsot — who
had never been in Scotland before, were on the look out
for a civilian Scots in kilts and were grievously dis-
appointed not to find a single one.

This night ride convinced me that however many
Germans might be moving about in England under the
guise of cockney or of Lancashire dialects in quest of
information, none has any chance in Scotland. He
could never get the burr, I am sure, unless born in Scot-
land ; and if he were, once he had it the triumph ought
to make him a Scotsman at heart.

The officer of the Royal Navy who was in the car with
me confessed to less faith in his symbol of authority
than in the generations'-bred burr of our chauffeur to
carry conviction of our genuineness ; so arguments were
left to him and successfully, including two or three with
Scotch cattle, which seemed to be co-operating with the
sentries to block the road.

After an hour's run inland, as the car rose over a
ridge and descended on a sharp grade, in the distance
under the moonlight we saw the floor of the sea again,

310 FINDING THE GRAND FLEET

melting into opaqueness, with curving fringes of foam
along the irregular shore cut by the indentations of the
firths. Now the sentries were more frequent and more
particular. Our single light gave dim form to the figures
of sailors, soldiers, and boy scouts on patrol.

" They have done remarkably well, these boys! '
said the officer. "Our fears that, boy like, they would
see all kinds of things which didn't exist were quite
needless. The work has taught them a sense of respon-
sibility which will remain with them after the war, when
their experience will be a precious memory. They
realize that it isn't play, but a serious business, and act
accordingly."

With all the houses and the countryside dark, the
rays of our lamp seemed an invading comet to the men
who held up lanterns with red twinkles of warning.

" The patrol boats have complained about your lights,
sir! " said one obdurate sentry.

We looked out into the black wall in the direction of
the sea and could see no sign of a patrol boat. How had
it been able to inform this lone sentry of that flying ray
which disclosed the line of a coastal road to anyone at
sea ? He would not accept the best argumentative burr
that our chauffeur could produce as sufficient explanation
or guarantee. Most Scottish of Scots in physiognomy
and shrewd matter-of-factness, as revealed in the glare
of the lantern, he might have been on watch in the High-
land fastnesses in Prince Charlie's time.

" Captain R , of the Royal Navy! " explained the

officer, introducing himself.

" I'll take your name and address! " said the sentry.

" The Admiralty. I take the responsibility."

" As I'll report, sir! " said the sentry, not so con-
vinced but he burred something further into the chauf-
feur's ear.

This seems to have little to do with the navy, but it
has much, indeed, as a part of unfathomable, compli-

THE NAVY'S HOME 311

cated business of guards within guards, intelligence
battling with intelligence, deceiving raiders by land or
sea, of those responsible for the safety of England and
the mastery of the seas.

*****

It is from the navy yard that the ships go forth to
battle and to the navy yard they must return for sup-
plies and for the grooming beat of hammers in the dry
dock. Those who work at a navy yard keep the navy's
house ; welcome home all the family, from Dread-
noughts to trawlers, give them cheer and shelter and
bind up their wounds.

The quarter-deck of action for Admiral Lowry, com-
manding the great base on the Forth, which was begun
before the war and hastened to completion since, was a
substantial brick building. Adjoining his office, where
he worked with engineers' blue prints as well as with sea
charts, he had fitted up a small bedroom where he slept,
to be at hand if an emergency arose.

Partly we walked, as he showed us over his domain of
steam-shovels, machine shops, cement factories, of
building and repairs, of coaling and docking, and partly
we rode on a car that ran over temporary rails laid for
trucks loaded with rocks and dirt. Borrowing from
Peter to pay Paul, a river bottom had been filled in back
of the quays with material that had been excavated to
form a vast basin with cement walls, where squadrons of
Dreadnoughts might rest and await their turn to be
warped into the great dry docks which open off it in
chasmlike galleries.

' The largest contract in all England," said the con-
tractor. "And here is the man who checks up my work,"
he added, nodding to the lean, Scottish naval engineer
who was with us. It was clear from his looks that only
material of the best quality and work that was true
would be acceptable to this canny mentor of efficiency.

312 FINDING THE GRAND FLEET

" And the workers? Have you had any strikes here ?"
" No. We have employed double the usual number of
men from the start of the war," he said. ' I'm afraid
that the Welsh coal troubles have been accepted as
characteristic. Our men have been reasonable and
patriotic. They have shown the right spirit. If they
hadn't, how could we have accomplished that ? '

We were looking down into the depths of a dry dock
blasted out of the rock, which had been begun and com-
pleted within the year. And we had heard nothing of
all this through those twelve months! No writer, no
photographer, chronicled this silent labour! Double
lines of guards surrounded the place day and night.
Only tried patriots might enter this world of a busy army
in smudged workmen's clothes, bending to their tasks
with that ordered discipline of industrialism which
wears no uniforms, marches without beat of drums, and
toils that the ships shall want nothing to ensure victory.

XXVII

ON A DESTROYER

Now we were on our way to the great thing — to our
look behind the curtain at the hidden hosts of sea-power.
Of some eight hundred tons burden our steed, doing
eighteen knots, which was a dog-trot for one of herspeed.

" A destroyer is like a motor-car," said the com-
mander. " If you rush her all the time she wears out.
We give her the limit only when necessary."

On the bridge the zest of travel on a dolphin of steel
held the bridle on eagerness to reach the journey's end.
We all like to see things well done, and here one had his
first taste of how well things are done in the British
navy, which did not have to make ready for war after
the war began. With an open eye one went, and the
experience of other navies as a balance for his observa-
tion ; but one lost one's heart to the British navy and
might as well confess it now. A six months' cruise with
our own battleship fleet was a proper introduction to
the experience.

After the arduous monotony of the trenches and after
the traffic of London, it was freedom and sport and
ecstasy to be there, with the rush of salt air on the face !
Our commander was under thirty years of age ; and
that destroyer responded to his will like a stringed
instrument. He seemed a part of her, her nerves
welded to his.

" Specialized in torpedo work," he said, in answer to
a question. "That is the way of the British navy : to
learn one thing well before you go on with another. If
in the course of it you learn how to command, larger
responsibilities await you. If not — there's retired pay."

Behind a shield which sheltered them from the spray

313

314 ON A DESTROYER

on the forward deck, significantly free of everything but
that four-inch gun, its crew was stationed. The com-
mander had only to lean over and speak through a tube
and give a range, and the music began. For the tube
was bifurcated at the end to an ear-mask over a young-
ster's head ; a youngster who had real sailor's smiling
blue eyes, like the commander's own. For hours he
would sit waiting in the hope that game would be
sighted. No fisherman could be more patient or more
cheerful.

"Before he came into the navy he was a chauffeur.
He likes this," said the commander.

" In case of a submarine you do not want to lose any
time ; is that it ? "

" Yes," he replied. " You never can tell when we
might have a chance to put a shot into Fritz's periscope
or ram him — Fritz is our name for submarines."

Were all the commanders of destroyers up to his
mark ? How many more had the British navy caught
young and trained to such quickness of decision and in
the art of imparting it to his men ?

Three hundred revolutions ! The destroyer changed
speed. Five hundred! She changed speed again. Out
of the mist in the distance flashed a white ribbon knot
that seemed to be tied to a destroyer's bow and behind
it another destroyer, and still others, lean, catlike, but
running as if legless, with greased bodies sliding over the
sea. We snapped out a message to them and they an-
swered like passing birds on the wing, before they swept
out of sight behind a headland with uncanny ease of
speed. Literal swarms of destroyers England had run-
ning to and fro in the North Sea, keen for the chase and
too quick at dodging and too fast to be in any danger of
the under-water dagger thrust of the assassins whom
they sought. There cannot be too many. They are the
eyes of the navy ; they gather information and carry a
sting in their torpedo tubes.

NORTH SEA MOODS 315

It was chilly there on the bridge, with the prospect
too entrancing not to remain even if one froze. But
here stepped in naval preparedness with thick, short
coats of llama wool.

" Served out to all the men last winter, when we were
in the thick of it patrolling," the commander explained.
" You'll not get cold in that! "

" And yourself ? " was suggested to the commander.

" Oh, it is not cold enough for that in September!
We're hardened to it. You come from the land and feel
the change of air ; we are at sea all the time," he replied,
He was without a great-coat ; and the ease with which
he held his footing made landlubbers feel their awk-
wardness.

A jumpy, uncertain tidal sea was running. Yet our
destroyer slipped over the waves, cut through them,
played with them, and let them seem to play with her,
all the while laughing at them in the confident power of
her softly purring vitals.

' Look out! " which at the front in France was a
signal to jump for a " funk pit." We ducked, as a cloud
of spray passed above the heavy canvas and clattered
like hail against the smokestack. " There won't be any
more! " said the commander. He was right. He knew
that passage. One wondered if he did not know every
gallon of water in the North Sea, which he had experi-
enced in all its moods.

Sheltered by the smokestack down on the main deck,
one of our party, who loved not the sea for its own sake,
but endured it as a passageway to the sight of the Grand
Fleet, had found warmth, if not comfort. Not for him
that invitation to come below given by the chief
engineer, who rose out of a round hole with a pleasant
" How d'y' do!" air to get a sniff of the fresh breeze,
wizard of the mysterious power of the turbines which
sent the destroyer marching so noiselessly. He was the
one who transferred the commander's orders into that

316 ON A DESTROYER

symphony in mechanism. Turn a lever and you had a
dozen more knots ; not with a leap or a jerk, but like a
cat's sleek stretching of muscles. Not by the slightest
tremor did you realize the acceleration ; only by watch-
ing some stationary object as you flew past.

Now a sweep of smooth water at the entrance to a
harbour, and a turn — and there it was: the sea-power
of England!

XXVIII

SHIPS THAT HAVE FOUGHT

But was that really it — that spread of greyish blue-
green dots set on a huge greyish blue-green platter ?
One could not discern where ships began and water and
sky which held them suspended left off. Invisible fleet
it had been called. At first glance it seemed to be com-
posed of phantoms, baffling, absorbing the tone of its
background. Admiralty secrecy must be the result of a
naval dislike of publicity.

Still as if they were rooted, these leviathans! How
could such a shy, peaceful-looking array send out broad-
sides of twelve and thirteen-five and fifteen-inch shells ?
What a paradise for a German submarine ! Each ship
seemed an inviting target. Only there were many gates
and doors to the paradise, closed to all things that travel
on and under the water without a proper identification.
Submarines that had tried to pick one of the locks were
like the fish who found going good into the trap. A sub-
marine had about the same chance of reaching that
anchorage as a German in the uniform of the Death's
Head Hussars, with a bomb under his arm, of reaching
the vaults of the Bank of England.

And was this all of the greatest naval force ever
gathered under a single command, these two or three
lines of ships ? But as the destroyer drew nearer the
question changed. How many more ? Was there no
end to greyish blue-green monsters, in order as precise
as the trees of a California orchard, that appeared out of
the greyish blue-green background? First to claim
attention was the Queen Elizabeth, with her eight fif teen-

3*7

318 SHIPS THAT HAVE FOUGHT

inch guns on a platform which could travel at nearly the
speed of the average railroad train.

The contrast of sea and land warfare appealed the
more vividly to one fresh from the front in France.
What infinite labour for an army to get one big gun into
position ! How heralded the snail-like travels of the big
German howitzer! Here was ship after ship, whose
guns seemed innumerable. One found it hard to realize
the resisting power of their armour, painted to look as
liquid as the sea, and the stability of their construction,
which was able to bear the strain of firing the great shells
that travelled ten miles to their target.

Sea-power, indeed! And world-power, too, there in
the hollow of a nation's hand, to throw in whatever
direction she pleased. If an American had a lump in
his throat at the thought of what it meant, what might
it not mean to an Englishman ? Probably the English-
man would say, " I think that the fleet is all right, don't
you ? "

Land-power, too! On the continent vast armies
wrestled for some square miles of earth. France has,
say, three million soldiers ; Germany, five ; Austria,
four — and England had, perhaps, a hundred thousand
men, perhaps more, on board this fleet which defended
the English land and lands far overseas without firing a
shot. A battalion of infantry is more than sufficient in
numbers to man a Dreadnought. How precious, then,
the skill of that crew ! Man-power is as concentrated as
gun-power with a navy. Ride three hundred miles in a
motor-car along an army front, with glimpses of units
of soldiers, and you have seen little of a modern army.
Here, moving down the lanes that separated these grey
fighters, one could compass the whole !

Four gold letters, spelling the word Lion, awakened
the imagination to the actual fact of the Bliicher turning
her bottom skyward before she sank off the Dogger Bank
under the fire of the guns of the Lion and the Tiger,

MODERN NAVAL WAR 319

astern of her, and the Princess Royal and the New Zea-
land, of the latest fashion in battle-cruiser squadrons
which are known as the " cat " squadron. This work
brought them into their own ; proved how the British,
who built the first Dreadnought, have kept a little ahead
of their rivals in construction. With almost the gun-
power of Dreadnoughts, better than three to two against
the best battleships, with the speed of cruisers and cap-
able of overpowering cruisers, or of pursuing any battle-
ship, or getting out of range, they can run or strike, as
they please.

Ascend that gangway, so amazingly clean, as were the
decks above and below and everything about the Lion
or the Tiger, and you were on board one of the few major
ships which had been under heavy fire. Her officers and
men knew what modern naval war was like ; her guns
knew the difference between the wall of cloth of a towed
target and an enemy's wall of armour.

In the battle of Tsushima Straits, Russian and
Japanese ships had fought at three and four thousand
yards and closed into much shorter range. Since then,
we had had the new method of marksmanship. Tsush-
ima ceased to be a criterion. The Dogger Bank multi-
plied the range by five. A hundred years since Eng-
land, all the while the most powerfully armed nation at
sea, had been in a naval war of the first magnitude ;
and to the Lion and the Tiger had come the test. The
Germans said that they had sunk the Tiger ; but the
Tiger afloat purred a contented denial.

You could not fail to identify among the group of
officers on the quarter-deck Vice-Admiral Sir David
Beatty, for his victory had impressed his features on the
public's eye. Had his portrait not appeared in the
press, one would have been inclined to say that a first
lieutenant had put on a vice-admiral's coat by mistake.
He was about the age of the first lieutenant of one of our
battleships. Even as it was, one was inclined to exclaim

320 SHIPS THAT HAVE FOUGHT

" There is some mistake ! You are too young! " The
Who is Who book says that he is all of forty-four years
old and it must be right, though it disagrees with his
appearance by five years.

A vice-admiral at forty-four ! A man who is a rear-
admiral with us at fifty-five is very precocious. And all
the men around him were young. The British navy did
not wait for war to teach again the lesson of " youth for
action! " They saved time by putting youth in charge
at once.

Their simple uniforms, the directness, alertness, and
defmiteness of these officers who had been with a fleet
ready for a year to go into battle on a minute's notice,
was in keeping with their surroundings of decks cleared
for action and the absence of anything which did not
suggest that hitting a target was the business of their life.

" I had heard that you took your admirals from the
schoolroom," said one of the Frenchmen, " but I begin
to believe that it is the nursery."

Night and day they must be on watch. No easy
chairs ; their shop is their home. They must have the
vitality that endures a strain. One error in battle by
any one of them might wreck the British Empire.

It is difficult to write about any man-of-war and not
be technical ; for everything about her seems technical
and mechanical except the fact that she floats. Her
officers and crew are engaged in work which is legerde-
main to the civilian.

" Was it like what you thought it would be after all
your training for a naval action ? " one asked.

" Yes, quite ; pretty much as we reasoned it out,"
was the reply. " Indeed, this was the most remarkable
thing. It was battle practice — with the other fellow
shooting at you! "

The fire-control officers, who were aloft, all agreed
about one unexpected sensation, which had not occurred
to any expert scientifically predicting what action

SHOOTING AT LONG RANGE 321

would be like. They are the only ones who may really
" see " the battle in the full sense.

" When the shells burst against the armour," said one
of these officers, " the fragments were visible as they
flew about. We had a desire, in the midst of preoccu-
pation with our work, to reach out and catch them.
Singular mental phenomenon, wasn't it? "

At eight or nine thousand yards one knew that the
modern battleship could tear a target to pieces. But
eighteen thousand — was accuracy possible at that
distance ?

" Did one in five German shells hit at that range ? "
I asked.

"No!"

Or in ten ? No ! In twenty ? Still no, though less
decisively. You got a conviction, then, that the day of
holding your fire until you were close in enough for a
large percentage of hits was past. Accuracy was still
vital and decisive, but generic accuracy. At eighteen
thousand yards all the factors which send a thousand or
fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds of steel that
long distance cannot be so gauged that each one will
strike in exactly the same line when ten issue from the
gun-muzzles in a broadside. But if one out of twenty is
on at eighteen thousand yards, it may mean a turret out
of action. Again, four or five might hit, or none. So,
no risk of waiting may be taken, in face of the danger of
a chance shot at long range. It was a chance shot which
struck the Lion's feed tank and disabled her and kept
the cat squadron from doing to the other German
cruisers what they had done to the Bliicher.

' And the noise of it to you aloft, spotting the shots ?"
I suggested. " It must have been a lonely place in such
a tornado."

" Yes. Besides the crashing blasts from our own guns
we had the screams of the shells that went over and the
cataracts of water from those short sprinkling the ship

322 SHIPS THAT HAVE FOUGHT

with spray. But this was what one expected. Every-
thing was what one expected, except that desire to catch
the fragments. Naturally, one was too busy to think
much of anything except the enemy's ships — to learn
where your shells were striking."

" You could tell ? "

" Yes — just as well and better than at target practice ;
for the target was larger and solid. It was enthralling,
this watching the flight of our shells toward their target. ' '

Where were the scars from the wounds ? One looked
for them on both the Lion and the Tiger. An armour
patch on the sloping top of a turret might have escaped
attention if it had not been pointed out. A shell struck
there and a fair blow, too. And what happened inside ?
Was the turret gear put out of order ?

To one who has lived in a wardroom a score of ques-
tions were on the tongue's end. The turret is the basket
which holds the precious eggs. A turret out of action
means two guns out of action ; a broken knuckle for the
pugilist.

Constructors have racked their brains over the sub-
ject of turrets in the old contest between gun-power and
protection. Too much gun-power, too little armour!
Too much armour, too little gun-power! Finally, re-
sults depend on how good is your armour, how sound
your machinery which rotates the turret. That shell
did not go through bodily, only a fragment, which killed
one man and wounded another. The turret would still
rotate ; the other gun kept in action and the one under
the shell-burst was soon back in action. Very satis-
factory to the naval constructors.

Up and down the all but perpendicular steel ladders
with their narrow steps, and through the winding pass-
ages below decks in those cities of steel, one followed his
guide, receiving so much information and so many im-
pressions that he was confused as to details between the
two veterans, the Lion, which was hit fifteen times, and

SOME HITS 323

the Tiger, which was hit eight. Wherever you went
every square inch of space and every bit of equipment
seemed to serve some purpose.

A beautiful hit, indeed, was that into a small hooded
aperture where an observer looked out from a turret.
He was killed and another man took his place. Fresh
armour and no sign of where the shot had struck. Then
below, into a compartment between the side of the ship
and the armoured barbette which protects the delicate
machinery for feeding shells and powder from the maga-
zine deep below the water to the guns.

"H was killed here. Impact of the shell passing

through the outer plates burst it inside ; and, of course,
the fragments struck harmlessly against the barbette."

" Bang in the dug-out! " one exclaimed, from army
habit.

" Precisely! No harm done next door."

Trench traverses and " funk-pit shelters " for local-
izing the effects of shell-bursts are the terrestrial expres-
sion of marine construction. No one shell happened to
get many men either on the Lion or the Tiger. But the
effect of the burst was felt in the passages, for the air-
pressure is bound to be pronounced in enclosed spaces
which allow of little room for expansion of the gases.

Then up more ladders out of the electric light into the
daylight, hugging a wall of armour whose thickness was
revealed in the cut made for the small doorway which
you were bidden to enter. Now you were in one of the
brain-centres of the ship, where the action is directed.
Through slits in that massive shelter of the hardest steel
one had a narrow view. Above them on the white wall
were silhouetted diagrams of the different types of Ger-
man ships, which one found in all observing stations.
They were the most popular form of mural decoration in
the British navy.

Underneath the slits was a literal panoply of the brass
fittings of speaking-tubes and levers and push-buttons,

324 SHIPS THAT HAVE FOUGHT

which would have puzzled even the " Hello, Central "
girl. To look at them revealed nothing more than the
eye saw ; nothing more than the face of a watch reveals
of the character of its works. There was no telling how
they ran in duplicate below the water line or under the
protection of armour to the guns and the engines.

" We got one in here, too. It was a good one! " said
the host.

" Junk, of course," was how he expressed the result.
Here, too, a man stepped forward to take the place of
the man who was killed, just as the first lieutenant takes
the place of a captain of infantry who falls. With the
whole telephone apparatus blown off the wall, as it were,
how did he communicate ?

" There! " The host pointed toward an opening at
his feet. If that failed there was still another way. In
the final alternative, each turret could go on firing by
itself. So the Germans must have done on the Blucher
and on the Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst in their last
ghastly moments of bloody chaos.

" If this is carried away and then that is, why, then,

we have " as one had often heard officers say on

board our own ships. But that was hypothesis. Here
was demonstration, which made a glimpse of the Lion
and the Tiger so interesting. The Lion had had a
narrow escape from going down after being hit in the
feed tank ; but once in dry dock, all her damaged parts
had been renewed. Particularly it required imagination
to realize that this tower had ever been struck ; visually
more convincing was a plate elsewhere which had been
left unpainted, showing a spatter of dents from shell-
fragments.

" We thought that we ought to have something to
prove that we had been in battle," said the host. " I
think I've shown all the hits. There were not many."

Having seen the results of German gun-fire, we were
next to see the methods of British gun-fire ; something

HUMAN MACHINERY 325

of the guns and the men who did things to the Germans.
I stooped under the overhang of the turret armour
from the barbette and climbed up through an opening
which allowed no spare room for the generously built,
and out of the dim light appeared the glint of the mas-
sive steel breech block and gun, set in its heavy recoil
mountings with roots of steel supports sunk into the
very structure of the ship. It was like other guns of the
latest improved type ; but it had been in action, and
you kept thinking of this fact which gave it a sort of
majestic prestige. You wished that it might look a little
different from the others, as the right of a veteran.

As the plugman swung the breech open I had in mind
a giant plugman on the U.S.S. Connecticut whom I used
to watch at drills and target practice. Shall I ever for-
get ,the flash in his eye if there were a fraction of a
second's delay in the firing after the breech had gone
home ! The way in which he made that enormous block
obey his touch in oily obsequiousness suggested the
apotheosis of the whole business of naval war. I don't
know whether the plugman of H.M.S. Lion or the plug-
man of the U.S.S. Connecticut was the better. It would
take a superman to improve on either.

Like the block, it seemed as if the man knew only the
movements of the drill ; as if he had been bred and his
muscles formed for that. You could conceive of him as
playing diavolo with that breech. He belonged to the
finest part of all the machinery, the human element,
which made the parts of a steel machine play together
in a beautiful harmony.

The plugman's is the most showy part ; others play-
ing equally important parts are in the cavern below the
turret ; and most important of all is that of the man
who keeps the gun on the target, whose true right eye
may send twenty-five thousand tons of battleship to
perdition. No one eye of any enlisted man can be as
important as the gun-layer's. His the eye and the nerve

326 SHIPS THAT HAVE FOUGHT

trained as finely as the plugman's muscles. He does
nothing else, thinks of nothing else. In common with
painters and poets, gun-layers are born with a gift, and
that gift is trained and trained and trained. It seems
simple to keep right on, but it is not. Try twenty men
in the most rudimentary test and you will find that it is
not ; then think of the nerve it takes to keep right on in
battle, with your ship shaken by the enemy's hit.

How long had the plugman been on his job? Six
years. And the gun-layer? Seven. Twelve years is
the term of enlistment in the British navy. Not too
fast but thoroughly is the British way. The idea is to
make a plugman or a gun-layer the same kind of expert
as a master artisan in any other walk of life, by long
service and selection.

None of all the men serving these guns from the
depths to the turret saw anything of the battle, except
the gun-layer. It was easier for them than for him to be
letter-perfect in the test, as he had to guard against the
exhilaration of having an enemy's ship instead of a cloth
target under his eye. Super-drilled he was to that even-
tuality ; super-drilled all the others through the years,
till each one knew his part as well as one knows how to
turn the key of a drawer in his desk. Used to the shock
of the discharges of their own guns at battle practice,
many of the crew did not even know that their ship was
hit, so preoccupied was each with his own duty and the
need of going on with it until an order or a shell's havoc
stopped him. Every mind was closed except to the
thing which had been so established by drill in his nature
that he did it instinctively.

A few minutes later one was looking down from the
upper bridge on the top of this turret and the black-
lined planking of the deck eighty-five feet below, with
the sweep of the firm lines of the sides converging to-
ward the bow on the background of the water. Sud-
denly the ship seemed to have grown large, impressive ;

A CITY OF SHIPS 327

her structure had a rocklike solidity. Her beauty was
in her unadorned strength. One was absorbing the
majesty of a city from a cathedral tower after having
been it its thoroughfares and seen the detail of its throb-
bing industry.

Beyond the Lion's bow were more ships, and port and
starboard and aft were still more ships. The compass
range filled the eye with the stately precision of the
many squadrons and divisions of leviathans. One could
see all the fleet. This seemed to be the scenic climax ;
but it was not, as we were to learn later when we should
see the fleet go to sea. Then we were to behold the
mountains on the march.

You glanced back at the deck and around the bridge
with a sort of relief. The infinite was making you dizzy.
You wanted to be in touch with the finite again. But it
is the writer, not the practical, hardened seaman, who is
affected in this way. To the seaman,' here was a battle-
cruiser with her sister battle-cruisers astern, and there
around her were Dreadnoughts of different types and
pre-Dreadnoughts and cruisers and all manner of other
craft which could fight each in its way, each repre-
senting so much speed and so much metal which could
be thrown a certain distance.

" Homogeneity ! " Another favourite word, I remem-
ber, from our own wardrooms. Here it was applied in
the large. No experimental ships there, no freak varia-
tions of type, but each successive type as a unit of action.
Homogeneous, yes — remorselessly homogeneous. The
British do not simply build some ships ; they build a
navy. And of course the experts are not satisfied with
it ; if they were, the British navy would be in a bad way.
But a layman was ; he was overwhelmed.

From this bridge of the Lion on the morning of the
24th of January, 1915, Vice- Admiral Sir David Beatty
saw appear on the horizon a sight inexpressibly welcome
to any commander who has scoured the seas in the hope
Y

328 SHIPS THAT HAVE FOUGHT

that the enemy will come out in the open and give battle.
Once that German battle-cruiser squadron had slipped
across the North Sea and, under cover of the mist which
has ever been the friend of the pirate, bombarded the
women and children of Scarborough and the Hartle-
pools with shells meant to be fired at hardened adult
males sheltered behind armour ; and then, thanks to
the mist, they had slipped back to Heligoland with
cheering news to the women and children of Germany.
This time when they came out they encountered a
British battle-cruiser squadron of superior speed and
power, and they had to fight as they ran for home.

Now, the place of an admiral is in his conning tower
after he has made his deployments and the firing has
begun. He, too, is a part of the machine ; his position
defined, no less than the plugman's and the gun-layer's.
Sir David watched the ranging shots which fell short at
first, until finally they were on, and the Germans were
beginning to reply. When his staff warned him that he
ought to go below, he put them off with a preoccupied
shake of his head. He could not resist the temptation
to remain where he was, instead of being shut up look-
ing through the slits of a visor.

But an admiral is as vulnerable to shell-fragments as
a midshipman, and the staff did its duty, which had been
thought out beforehand like everything else. The argu-
ment was on their side ; the commander really had none
on his. It was then that Vice-Admiral Beatty sent Sir
David Beatty to the conning tower, much to the personal
disgust of Sir David, who envied the observing officers
aloft their free sweep of vision.

Youth in Sir David's case meant suppleness of limb
as well as youth's spirit and dash. When the Lion was
disabled by the shot in her feed tank and had to fall
out of line, Sir David must transfer his flag. He sig-
nalled for his destroyer, the Attack. When she came
alongside he did not wait for a ladder, but jumped on

ESCAPING FROM SUBMARINES 329

board her from the deck of the Lion. An aged vice-
admiral with chalky bones might have broken some
of them, or at least received a shock to his presence of
mind.

Before he left the Lion Sir David had been the first to
see the periscope of a German submarine in the distance,
which sighted the wounded ship as inviting prey.
Officers of the Lion dwelt more on the cruise home than
on the battle. It was a case of being towed at five knots
an hour by the Indomitable. If ever submarines had a
fair chance to show what they could do it was then
against that battleship at a snail's pace. But it is one
thing to torpedo a merchant craft and another to get a
major fighting ship, bristling with torpedo defence guns
and surrounded by destroyers. The Lion reached port
without further injury.

XXIX

ON THE " INFLEXIBLE "

What Englishman, let alone an American, knows the
names of even all the British Dreadnoughts ? With a
few exceptions, the units of the Grand Fleet seem anon-
ymous. The Warspite was quite unknown to the fame
which her sister ship the Queen Elizabeth had won. For
" Lizzie " was back in the fold from the Dardanelles ;
and so was the Inflexible, heroine of the battle of the
Falkland Islands. Of all the ships which Sir John
Jellicoe had sent away on special missions, the Inflexible
had had the grandest Odyssey. She, too, had been at
the Dardanelles.

The Queen Elizabeth was disappointing so far as
wounds went. She had been so much in the public eye
that one expected to find her badly battered, and she
had suffered little, indeed, for the amount of sport she
had had in tossing her fifteen-inch shells across the
Gallipoli peninsula into the Turkish batteries and the
amount of risk she had run from Turkish mines. Some
of these monsters contained only eleven thousand shrap-
nel bullets. A strange business for a fifteen-inch naval
gun to be firing shrapnel. A year ago no one could have
imagined that one day the most powerful British ship,
built with the single thought of overwhelming an
enemy's Dreadnought, would ever be trying to force
the Dardanelles.

The trouble was that she could not fire an army corps
ashore along with her shells to take possession of the
land after she had put batteries out of action. She had
some grand target practice ; she escaped the mines ;
she kept out of reach of the German shells, and returned

33°

STURDEE'S TASK 331

to report to Sir John with just enough scars to give zest
to the recollection of her extraordinary adventure. All
the fleet was relieved to see her back in her proper place.
It is not the business of super-Dreadnoughts to be
steaming around mine-fields, but to be surrounded by
destroyers and light cruisers and submarines safeguard-
ing her giant guns, which are depressed and elevated as
easily as if they were drum-sticks. One had an abrasion,
a tracery of dents.

" That was from a Turkish shell," said an officer.
" And you are standing where a shell hit."

I looked down to see an irregular outline of fresh
planking.

" An accident when we did not happen to be out of
their reach. We had the range of them," he added.

" The range of them " is a great phrase. Sir Frederick
Doveton Sturdee used it in speaking of the battle of the
Falkland Islands. " The range of them " seems a sure
prescription for victory. Nothing in all the history of
the war appeals to me as quite so smooth a bit of tactics
as the Falkland affair. It was so smooth that it was
velvety ; and it is worth telling again, as I understand
it. Sir Frederick is another young admiral. Otherwise,
how could the British navy have entrusted him with so
important a task? He is a different type from Beatty,
who in an army one judges might have been in the
cavalry. Along with the peculiar charm and alertness
which we associate with sailors — they imbibe it from the
salt air and from meeting all kinds of weather and all
kinds of men, I think — he has the quality of the scholar,
with a suspicion of merriness in his eye.

He was Chief of the War Staff at the Admiralty in the
early stages of the war, which means, I take it, that he as-
sisted in planning the moves on the chessboard. It fell to
him to act ; to apply the strategy and tactics which he
planned for others at sea while he sat at a desk. It was
his wit against von Spee's, who was not deficient in this

332 ON THE INFLEXIBLE

respect. If he had been he might not have steamed into
the trap. The trouble was that von Spee had some wit,
but not enough. It would have been better for him if he
had been as guileless as a parson.

Sir Frederick is so gentle-mannered that one would
never suspect him of a " double bluff," which was what
he played on von Spee. After von Spee's victory over
Cradock, Sturdee slipped across to the South Atlantic,
without anyone knowing that he had gone, with a
squadron strong enough to do unto von Spee what von
Spee had done unto Cradock.

But before you wing your bird you must flush him.
The thing was to find von Spee and force him to give
battle ; for the South Atlantic is broad and von Spee,
it is supposed, was in an Emden mood and bent on
reaching harbour in German South- West Africa, whence
he could sally out to destroy British shipping on the
Cape route. When he intercepted a British wireless
message — Sturdee had left off the sender's name and
location — telling the plodding old Canopus seeking
home or assistance before von Spee overtook her, that
she would be perfectly safe in the harbour at Port
William, as guns had been erected for her protection,
von Spee guessed that this was a bluff, and rightly. But
it was only Bluff Number One. He steamed to the
Falklands with a view to finishing off the old Canopus
on the way across to Africa. There he fell foul of Bluff
Number Two. Sturdee did not have to seek him ; he
came to Sturdee.

There was no convenient Dogger Bank fog in that
latitude to cover his flight. Sturdee had the speed of
von Spee and he had to fight. It was the one bit of
strategy of the war which is like that of the story books
and worked out as strategy always does in proper
story books. Practically the twelve-inch guns of the
Inflexible and the Invincible had only to keep their dis-
tance and hang on to the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau

HARD FIGHTING 333

in order to do the trick. Light-weights or middle-
weights have no business trafficking with heavy-weights
in naval warfare.

" Von Spee made a brave fight," said Sir Frederick,
" but we kept him at a distance that suited us, without
letting him get out of range."

He had had the fortune to prove an established prin-
ciple in action. It was all in the course of duty, which is
the way that all the officers and all the men look at their
work. Only a few ships have had a chance to fight, and
these are emblazoned on the public memory. But they
did no better and no worse, probably, than the others
would have done. If the public singles out ships, the
navy does not. Whatever is done and whoever does it,
why, it is to the credit of the family, according to the
spirit of service that promotes uniformity of efficiency.
Leaders and ships which have won renown are resolved
into the whole in that harbour where the fleet is the
thing ; and the good opinion they most desire is that of
their fellows. If they have that they will earn the pub-
lic's when the test comes.

Belonging to the class of the first of battle-cruisers is
the Inflexible, which received a few taps in the Falk-
lands and a blow that was nearly the death of her in the
Dardanelles. Tribute enough for its courage — the tri-
bute of a chivalrous enemy — von Spee's squadron re-
ceives from the officers and men of the Inflexible, who
saw them go down into the sea tinged with sunset red
with their colours still flying. Then in the sunset red
the British saved as many of those afloat as they could.

Those dripping German officers who had seen one of
their battered turrets carried away bodily into the sea
by a British twelve-inch shell, who had endured a fury
of concussions and destruction, with steel missiles
cracking steel structures into fragments, came on board
the Inflexible looking for signs of some blows delivered
in return for the crushing blows that had beaten their

334 ON THE INFLEXIBLE

ships into the sea and saw none until they were invited
into the wardroom, which was in chaos — and then they
smiled.

At least, they had sent one shell home. The sight was
sweet to them, so sweet that, in respect to the feeling of
the vanquished, the victors held silence with a knightly
consideration. But where had the shell entered ? There
was no sign of any hole. Then they learned that the fire
of the guns of the starboard turret midships over the
wardroom, which was on the port side, had deposited a
great many things on the floor which did not belong
there ; and their expression changed. Even this com-
fort was taken from them.

" We had the range of you! " the British explained.

The chaplain of the Inflexible was bound to have an
anecdote. I don't know why, except that a chaplain's
is not a fighting part and he may look on. His place was
down behind the armour with the doctor, waiting for
wounded. He stood in his particular steel cave listening
to the tremendous blasts of her guns which shook the
Inflexible s frame, and still no wounded arrived. Then
he ran up a ladder to the deck and had a look around
and saw the little points of the German ships with the
shells sweeping toward them and the smoke of explo-
sions which burst on board them. It was not the British
who needed his prayers that day, but the Germans.
Personally, I think the Germans are more in need of
prayers at all times because of the damnable way they
act.

Perhaps the spirit of the Inflexible s story was best
given by a midshipman with the down still on his cheek.
Considering how young the British take their officer-
beginners to sea, the admirals are not young, at least,
in point of sea service. He got more out of the action
than his elders ; his impressions of the long cruises and
the actions had the vividness of boyhood. Down in one
of the caves, doing his part as the shells were sent up to

AS GOOD AS EVER 335

feed the thundering guns above, the whispered news of
the progress of battle was passed on at intervals till,
finally, the guns were silent. Then he hurried on deck
in the elation of victory, succeeded by the desire to save
those whom they had fought. It had all been so simple;
so like drill. You had only to go on shooting — that was
all.

Yes, he had been lucky. From the Falklands to the
Dardanelles, which was a more picturesque business
than the battle. Any minute off the Straits you did not
know but a submarine would have a try at you or you
might bump into a mine. And the Inflexible did bump
into one. She had two thousand tons of water on board.
It was fast work to keep the remainder of the sea from
coming in, too, and the same kind of dramatic experience
as the Lion's in reaching port. Yes, he had been very
lucky. It was all a lark to that boy.

"It never occurs to midshipmen to be afraid of any-
thing," said one of the officers. " The more danger, the
better they like it."

In the wardroom was a piece of the mine or the tor-
pedo, whichever it was, that struck the Inflexible ; a
strange, twisted, annealed bit of metal. Every ship
which had been in action had some souvenir which the
enemy had sent on board in anger and which was pre-
served with a collector's enthusiasm.

The Inflexible seemed as good as ever she was. Such
is the way of naval warfare. Either it is to the bottom of
the sea or to dry docks and repairs. There is nothing
half-way. So it is well to take care that you have
" the range of them."

XXX

ON THE FLEET FLAGSHIP

Thus far we have skirted around the heart of things,
which in a fleet is always the Commander-in-Chief's
flagship. Our handy, agile destroyer ran alongside a
battleship with as much nonchalance as she would go
alongside a pier. I should not have been surprised to
see her pirouette over the hills or take to flying.

There was a time when those majestic and pampered
ladies, the battleships — particularly if there were a sea
running as in this harbour at the time — having in mind
the pride of paint, begged all destroyers to keep off with
the superciliousness of grandes dames holding their skirts
aloof from contact with nimble, audacious street gamins,
who dodged in and out of the traffic of muddy streets. But
destroyers have learned better manners, perhaps, and
battleships have been democratized. It is the day of
Russian dancers and when aeroplanes loop the loop, and
we have grown used to all kinds of marvels.

But the sea has refused to be trained. It is the same
old sea that it was in Columbus' time, without any loss
of trickiness in bumping small craft against towering
sides. The way that this destroyer slid up to the flag-
ship without any fuss and the way her bluejackets held
her off from the paint, as she rose on the crests and slipped
back into the trough, did not tell the whole story. A
part of it was how, at the right interval, they assisted
the landlubber to step from gunwale to gangway,
making him feel perfectly safe when he would have been
perfectly helpless but for them.

I had often watched our own bluejackets at the same
thing. They did not grin — not when you were looking

336

A CENTURY AFTER NELSON 337

at them. Nor did the British. Bluejackets are noted
for their official politeness. I should like to have heard
their remarks — they have a gift for remarks — about
those invaders of their uniformed world in Scottish caps
and other kinds of caps and the different kinds of
clothes which tailors make for civilians. Without any
intention of eavesdropping, I did overhear one asking
another whence came these strange birds.

You knew the flagship by the admirals' barges astern,
as you know the location of an army headquarters by its
motor-cars. It seemed in the centre of the fleet at
anchor, if that is a nautical expression. Where its place
would be in action is one of those secrets as important
to the enemy as the location of a general's shell-proof
shelter in Flanders. Perhaps Sir John Jellicoe may be
on some other ship in battle. If there is any one foolish
question which you should not ask it is this.

As you mounted the gangway of this mighty super-
Dreadnought you were bound to think — at least, an
American was — of another flagship in Portsmouth har-
bour, Nelson's Victory. Probably an Englishman would
not indulge in such a commonplace. I would like to
know how many Englishmen had ever seen the old
Victory. But then, how many Americans have been to
Mount Vernon and Gettysburg ?

It was a hundred years, one repeats, since the British
had fought a first-class naval war. Nelson did his part
so well that he did not leave any fighting to be done by
his successors. Maintaining herself as mistress of the
seas by the threat of superior strength — except in the
late 'fifties, when the French innovation of iron ships
gave France a temporary lead on paper — ship after ship,
through all the grades of progress in naval construction,
has gone to the scrap heap without firing a shot in anger.

The Victory was one landmark, or seamark, if you
please, and this flagship was another. Between the two
were generations of officers and men, working through

338 ON THE FLEET FLAGSHIP

the change from stagecoach to motors and aeroplanes
and seaplanes, who had kept up to a standard of effici-
ency in view of a test that never came. A year of war
and still the test had not come, for the old reason that
England had superior strength. Her outnumbering
guns which had kept the peace of the seas still kept it.

All second nature to the Englishman this, as the de-
fence of the immense distances of the steppes to the
Russian or the Rocky Mountain wall and the Missis-
sippi's flow to the man in Kansas. But the American kept
thinking about it ; and he wanted the Kansans to think
about it, too. When he was about to meet Sir John
Jellicoe he envisaged the tall column in Trafalgar
Square, surmounted by the one-armed figure turned
toward the wireless skein on top of the Admiralty
building.

I first heard of Jellicoe fifteen years ago when he
was Chief of Staff to Sir Edward Seymour, then Com-
mander-in-Chief of the Asiatic Squadron. Indeed, you
were always hearing about Jellicoe in those days on the
China coast. He was the kind of man whom people talk
about after they have met him, which means personality.
It was in China seas, you may remember, that when a
few British seamen were hard pressed in a fight that was
not ours the phrase, " Blood is thicker than water,"
sprang from the lips of an American commander, who
waited not on international etiquette but went to the
assistance of the British.

Nor will anyone who was present in the summer of '98
forget how Sir Edward Chichester stood loyally by
Admiral George Dewey, when the German squadron
was empire-fishing in the waters of Manila Bay, until
our Atlantic fleet had won the battle of Santiago and
Admiral Dewey had received reinforcements and, east
and west, we were able to look after the Germans. The
British bluejackets said that the rations of frozen mut-
ton from Australia which we sent alongside were excel-

TWO STRONG PERSONALITIES 339

lent ; but the Germans were in no position to judge,
doubtless through an oversight in the detail of hospital-
ity by one of Admiral Dewey's staff. Let us be officially
correct and say there was no mutton to spare after the
British had been supplied.

In the gallant effort of the Allied force of sailors to
relieve the legations against some hundreds of thousands
of Boxers, Captain Bowman McCalla and his Americans
worked with Admiral Seymour and his Britons in the
most trying and picturesque adventure of its kind in
modern history. McCalla, too, was always talking of
Jellicoe, who was wounded on the expedition ; and Sir
John's face lighted at mention of McCalla's name. He
recalled how McCalla had painted on the superstructure
of the little Newark that saying of Farragut's, " The
best protection against an enemy's fire is a well-directed
fire of your own " ; which has been said in other ways
and cannot be said too often.

" We called McCalla Mr. Lead," said Sir John ; " he
had been wounded so many times and yet was able to
hobble along and keep on fighting. We corresponded
regularly until his death."

Beatty, too, was on that expedition ; and he, too,
was another personality one kept hearing about. It
seemed odd that two men who had played a part in work
which was a soldier's far from home should have become
so conspicuous in the Great War. If on that day when,
with ammunition exhausted, all members of the expedi-
tion had given up hope of ever returning alive, they had
not accidentally come upon the Shi-kou arsenal, one
would not be commanding the Grand Fleet and the other
its battle-cruiser squadron.

Before the war, I am told, when Admiralty Lords and
others who had the decision to make were discussing
who should command in case of war, opinion ran some-
thing like this : "Jellicoe! He has the brains." "Jelli-
coe ! He has the health to endure the strain, with years

340 ON THE FLEET FLAGSHIP

enough and not too many." " Jellicoe! He has the
confidence of the service." The choice literally made
itself. When anyone is undertaking the gravest respon-
sibility which has been an Englishman's for a hundred
years, this kind of a recommendation helps. He had the
guns ; he had supreme command ; he must deliver
victory — such was England's message to him.

When I mentioned in a dispatch that all that differ-
entiated him from the officers around him was the broad-
er band of gold lace on his arm, an English naval critic
wanted to know if I expected to find him in cloth of
gold. No ; nor in full dress with all his medals on, as I
saw him appear on the screen at a theatre in London.

Any general of high command must be surrounded by
more pomp than an admiral in time of action. A head-
quarters cannot have the simplicity of the quarter-deck.
The force which the general commands is not in sight ;
the admiral's is. You saw the commander and you saw
what it was that he commanded. Within the sweep of
vision from the quarter-deck was the terrific power
which the man with the broad gold band on his arm
directed. At a signal from him it would move or it
would stand still. That command of Joshua's if given
by Sir John one thought might have been obeyed.

One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hun-
dred twelve-inch guns and larger, which could carry two
hundred tons of metal in a single broadside for a distance
of eighteen thousand yards ! But do not forget the little
guns, bristling under the big guns like needles from a
cushion, which would keep off the torpedo assassins ; or
the light cruisers, or the colliers, or the destroyers, or the
2,300 trawlers and mine-layers, and what not, all under
his direction. He had submarines, too, double the num-
ber of the German. But with all the German men-of-
war in harbour, they had no targets. Where were they?
You did not ask questions which would not be answered.
The whole British fleet was waiting for the Germans to

AVOIDING GERMAN TRAPS 341

show their heads, while cruisers were abroad scouting
in the North Sea.

At the outset of the war the German fleet might have
had one chance in ten of getting a turn of fortune in its
favour by an unexpected stroke of strategy. This was
the danger against which Jellicoe had to guard. For in
one sense, the Germans had the tactical offensive by sea
as well as by land ; theirs the outward thrust from the
centre. They could choose when to come out of their
harbour ; when to strike. The British had to keep
watch all the time and be ready whenever the enemy
should come.

Thus, the British Grand Fleet was at sea in the early
part of the war, cruising here and there, begging for
battle. Then it was that it learned how to avoid
submarines and mine-fields. Submarines had played a
greater part than expected, because Germany had
chosen a guerrilla naval warfare : to harass, to wound,
to wear down. Doubtless she hoped to reduce the
number of British fighting units by attrition.

Weak England might be in plants for making arms
for an army, but not in ship-building. Here was her
true genius. She was a maritime power ; Germany
a land power. Her part as an ally of France and
Russia being to command the sea, all demands of the
Admiralty for material must take precedence over
demands of the War Office. At the end of the first year
she had increased her fighting power by sea to a still
higher ratio of preponderance over the Germans ; in
another year she would increase it further.

Admiral von Tirpitz wanted nothing so much as to
draw the British fleet under the guns of Heligoland or
into a mine-field and submarine trap. But Sir John
Jellicoe refused the bait. When he had completed his
precautions and his organization to meet new condi-
tions, his fleet need not go into the open. His Dread-
noughts could rest at anchor at a base, while his scouts

342 ON THE FLEET FLAGSHIP

kept in touch with all that was passing, and his auxili-
aries and destroyers fought the submarines. Without
a British Dreadnought having fired a shot at a German
Dreadnought, nowhere on the face of the seas might a
single vessel show the German flag except by thrusting
it above the water for a few minutes.

If von Tirpitz sent his fleet out he, too, might find
himself in a trap of mines and submarines. He was
losing submarines and England was building more.
His naval force rather than Sir John's was suffering
from attrition. The blockade was complete from Ice-
land to the North Sea. While the world knew of the
work of the armies, the care that this task required, the
hardships endured, the enormous expenditure of
energy, were all hidden behind that veil of secrecy
which obviously must be more closely drawn over naval
than over army operations.

From the flagship the campaign was directed. One
would think that many offices and many clerks would be
required. But the offices and the clerks were at the
Admiralty. Here was the execution. In a room per-
haps four feet by six was the wireless focus which
received all reports and sent all orders, with trim
bluejackets at the keys. " Go! " and " Come! " the
messages were saying ; they wasted no words. Officers
of the staff did their work in narrow space, yet seemed
to have plenty of room. Red tape is inflammable.
There is no more place for it on board a flagship prepared
for action than for unnecessary woodwork.

At every turn compression and concentration of
power were like the guns and the decks, cleared for
action, significant in directness of purpose. The
system was planetary in its impressive simplicity, the
more striking as nothing that man has ever made is
more complicated or includes more kinds of machinery
than a battleship. One battleship was one unit, one
chessman on the naval board.

THE MAN JELLICOE 343

Not all famous leaders are likeable, as every world
traveller knows. They all have the magnetism of
force, which is quite another thing from the magnet-
ism of charm. What the public demands is that they
shall win victories, whether personally likeable or not.
But if they are likeable and simple and human and a
sailor besides — well, we know what that means.

Perhaps Sir John Jellicoe is not a great man. It is
not for a civilian even to presume to judge. We have
the word of those who ought to know, however, that he
is. I hope that he is, because I like to think that great
commanders need not necessarily appear formidable.
Nelson refused to be cast for the heavy part, and so did
Farragut. It may be a sailor characteristic. I predict
that after this war is over, whatever honours or titles
they may bestow upon him, the English are going to
like Sir John Jellicoe not alone for his service to the
nation, but for himself.

Admiral Jellicoe is one with Captain Jellicoe, whose
cheeriness even when wounded kept up the spirits of
the others on the relief expedition of Boxer days. " He
could do it, too! " one thought, having in mind Sir
David Beatty's leap to the deck of a destroyer. Spare,
of medium height, ruddy, and fifty-seven — so much for
the health qualification which the Admiralty Lords
dwelt upon as important. After he had been at sea for
a year he seemed a human machine, much of the type
of the destroyer as a steel machine — a thirty-knot
human machine, capable of three hundred or five
hundred revolutions, engines running smoothly, with
no waste energy, slipping over the waves and cutting
through them ; a quick man, quick of movement,
quick of comprehension and observation, of speech and
of thought, with a delightful self-possession — for there are
many kinds — which is instantly responsive with decision.

A telescope under his arm, too, as he received his
guests. You liked that. He keeps watch over the

344 ON THE FLEET FLAGSHIP

fleet himself when he is on the quarter-deck. You had
a feeling that nothing could happen in all his range of
vision, stretching down the "avenues of Dreadnoughts"
to the light-cruiser squadron, and escape his attention.
It hardly seems possible that he was ever bored.
Everything around interests him. Energy he has,
electric energy in this electric age, this man chosen to
command the greatest war product of modern energy.

Fastened to the superstructure near the ladder to his
quarters was a new broom which South Africa had sent
him. He was highly pleased with the present ; only
the broom was Tromp's emblem, while Blake's had
been the whip. Possibly the South African Dutch-
men, now fighting on England's side, knew that he
already had the whip and they wanted him to have the
Dutch broom, too.

He had been using both, and many other devices in
his campaign against von Tirpitz's " unter See" boats,
as was illustrated by one of the maps hung in his
cabin. Quite different this from maps in a general's
headquarters, with the front trenches and support and
reserve trenches and the gun-positions marked in vari-
coloured pencillings. Instantly a submarine was sighted
anywhere, Sir John had word of it, and a dot went down
on the spot where it had been seen. In places the sea
looked like a pepper-box cover. Dots were plentiful
outside the harbour where we were ; but well outside,
like flies around sugar which they could not reach.

Seeing Sir John among his admirals and guests one
had a glimpse of the life of a sort of mysterious, busy
brotherhood. I was still searching for an admiral with
white hair. If there were none among these seniors, then
all must be on shore. Spirit, I think, that is the word ;
the spirit of youth, of corps, of service, of the sea, of a
ready, buoyant definiteness — yes, spirit was the word to
characterize these leaders. Sir John moved from one to
another in his quick way, asking a question, listening,

YOUTH AT THE HELM 345

giving a direction, his face smiling and expressive with
a sort of infectious confidence.

' He is the man! " said an admiral. I mean, several
admirals and captains said so. They seemed to like to
say it. Whenever he approached one noted an eagerness,
a tightening of nerves. Natural leadership expresses
itself in many ways ; Sir John gave it a sailor's attrac-
tiveness. But I learned that there was steel under his
happy smile ; and they liked him for that, too. Watch
out when he is not smiling, and sometimes when he is
smiling, they say.

For failure is never excused in the fleet, as more than
one commander knows. It is a luxury of consideration
which the British nation cannot afford by sea in time of
war. The scene which one witnessed in the cabin of the
Dreadnought flagship could not have been unlike that of
Nelson and his young captains on the Victory, in the
animation of youth governed with one thought under the
one rule that you must make good.

Splendid as the sight of the power which Sir John
directed from his quarter-deck while the ships lay still in
their plotted moorings, it paled beside that when the
anchor chains began to rumble and, column by column,
they took on life slowly and, majestically gaining speed,
one after another turned toward the harbour's entrance.

XXXI

SIMPLY HARD WORK

Besides the simple word spirit, there is the simple word
work. Take the two together, mixing with them the
proper quantity of intelligence, and you have something
finer than Dreadnoughts ; for it builds Dreadnoughts,
or tunnels mountains, or wins victories.

In no organization would it be so easy as in the navy
to become slack. If the public sees a naval review it
knows that its ships can steam and keep their formations ;
if it goes on board it knows that the ships are clean — at
least, the limited part of them which it sees ; and it
knows that there are turrets and guns.

But how does it know that the armour of the turrets
is good, or that the guns will fire accurately ? Indeed,
all that it sees is the shell. The rest must be taken on
trust. A navy may look all right and be quite bad. The
nation gives a certain amount of money to build ships
which are taken in charge by officers and men who, shut
off from public observation, may do about as they please.

The result rests with their industry and responsibility.
If they are true to the character of the nation by and large
that is all the nation may expect ; if they are better,
then the nation has reason to be grateful. Englishmen
take more interest in their navy than Americans in
theirs. They give it the best that is in them and they
expect the best from it in return. Every youngster who
hopes to be an officer knows that the navy is no place
for idling ; every man who enlists knows that he is in
for no junket on a pleasure yacht. The British navy, I
judged, had a relatively large percentage of the brains
and application of England.

" It is not so different from what it was for ten years

346

ALWAYS READY 347

preceding the war," said one of the officers. " We did
all the work we could stand then ; and whether cruising
or lying in harbour, life is almost normal for us to-day."

The British fleet was always on a war footing. It
must be. Lack of naval preparedness is more dangerous
than lack of land preparedness. It is fatal. I know of
officers who had had only a week's leave in a year in
time of peace ; their pay is less than our officers'.
Patriotism kept them up to the mark.

And another thing : once a sailor, always a sailor, is
an old saying ; but it has a new application in modern
navies. They become fascinated with the very drudg-
ery of ship existence. They like their world, which is
their house and their shop. It has the attraction of a
world of priestcraft, with them alone understanding the
ritual. Their drill at the guns becomes the preparation
for the great sport of target practice, which beats any
big-game shooting when guns compete with guns, with
battle practice greater sport than target practice.
Bringing a ship into harbour well, holding her to her
place in the formation, roaming over the seas in a des-
troyer— all means eternal effort at the mastery of
material, with the results positively demonstrated.

On one of the Dreadnoughts I saw a gun's crew drill-
ing with a dummy six-inch ; weight, one hundred pounds.

" Isn't that boy pretty young to handle that big
shell ? " an admiral asked a junior officer.

" He doesn't think so," the officer replied. " We
haven't anyone who could handle it better. It would
break his heart if we changed his position."

Not one of fifty German prisoners whom I had seen
filing by over in France was as sturdy as this youngster.
In the ranks of an infantry company of any army he
would have been above the average of physique ; but
among the rest of the gun's crew he did appear slight.
Need more be said about the physical standard of the
crews of the fighting ships of the Grand Fleet ?

348 SIMPLY HARD WORK

You had an eye to more than guns and machinery
and to more than the character of the officers. You
wanted to get better acquainted with the personnel of
the men behind the guns. They formed patches of
blue on the decks, as one looked around the fleet,
against the background of the dull, painted bulwarks
of steel — the human element whose skill gave the ships
life — deep-chested, vigorous men in their prime, who
had the air of men grounded in their work by long
experience. I noted when an order was given that
it was obeyed quickly by one who knew what he had to
do because he had done it thousands of times.

There are all kinds of bluejackets, as there are all
kinds of other men. Before the war some took more
than was good for them when on shore ; some took
nothing stronger than tea ; some enjoyed the sailor's
privilege of growling ; some had to be kept up to the
mark sharply ; an occasional one might get rebellious
against the merciless repetition of drills.

The war imparted eagerness to all, the officers said.
Infractions of discipline ceased. Days pass without
anyone of the crew of a Dreadnought having to be
called up as a defaulter, I am told. And their health ?
At first thought, one would say that life in the steel
caves of a Dreadnought would mean pasty complexions
and flabby muscles. For a year the crews had been
prisoners of that readiness which must not lose a
minute in putting to sea if von Tirpitz should ever try
the desperate gamble of battle.

After a turn in the trenches the soldiers can at least
stretch their legs in billets. A certain number of a
ship's company now and then get a tramp on shore ;
not real leave, but a personally conducted outing not
far from the boats which will hurry them back to their
stations on signal. However, all that one needs to
keep well is fresh air and exercise. The blowers carry
fresh air to every part of the ship ; the breezes which

THE LONG WAIT 349

sweep the deck from the North Sea are fresh enough in
summer and a little too fresh in winter. There is
exercise in the regular drills, supplemented by setting-
up exercises. The food is good and no man drinks or
eats what he ought not to, as he may on shore. So
there is the fact and the reason for the fact : the health of
the men, as well as their conduct, had never been so good.

" Perhaps we are not quite so clean as we were before
the war," said an officer. " We wash decks only twice
a week instead of every day. This means that quarters
are not so moist, and the men have more freedom of
movement. We want them to have as much freedom
as possible."

Waiting, waiting, in such confinement for thirteen
months ; waiting for battle ! Think of the strain of it !
The British temperament is well fitted to undergo such
a test, and particularly well fitted are these sturdy sea-
men of mature years. An enemy may imagine them
wearing down their efficiency on the leash. They want
a fight ; naturally, they want nothing quite so much.
But they have the seaman's philosophy. Old von
Tirpitz may come out and he may not. It is for him to
do the worrying. They sit tight. The men's ardour is
not imposed upon. Care is taken that they should not
be worked stale ; for the marksman who puts a dozen
shots through the bull's-eye had better not keep on
firing, lest he begin rimming it and get into bad habits.

Where an army officer has a change when he leaves
the trench for his billet, there is none for the naval
officer, who, unlike the army officer, is Spartan-bred to
confinement. The army pays its daily toll of casualties ;
it lies cramped in dug-outs, not knowing what minute
extinction may come. The Grand Fleet has its usual
comforts ; it is safe from submarines in a quiet harbour.
Many naval officers spoke of this contrast with deep
feeling, as if fate were playing favourites, though I have
never heard an army officer mention it.

350 SIMPLY HARD WORK

The army can give each day fresh proof of its courage
in face of the enemy. Courage! It takes on a new
meaning with the Grand Fleet. The individual element
of gallantry merges into gallantry of the whole. You
have the very communism of courage. The thought is to
keep a cool head and do your part as a cog in the vast
machine. Courage is as much taken for granted as the
breath of life. Thus, Cradock's men fought till they
went down. It was according to the programme laid
out for each turret and each gun in a turret.

Smith, of the army, leads a bomb-throwing party
from traverse to traverse ; Smith, of the navy, turns
one lever at the right second. Army gunners are im-
proving their practice day by day against the enemy ;
all the improving by navy gunners must be done before
the battle. No sieges in trenches ; no attacks and
counter-attacks : a decision within a few hours — per-
haps within an hour.

This partially explains the love of the navy for its
work ; its cheerful repetition of the drills which seem
such a wearisome business to the civilian. The men
know the reason of their drudgery. It is an all-con-
vincing bull's-eye reason. Ping-ping! One heard the
familiar sound of sub-calibre practice, which seems as
out of proportion in a fifteen-inch gun as a mouse-squeak
from an elephant whom you expect to trumpet. As the
result appears in sub-calibre practice, so it is practically
bound to appear in target practice ; as it appears in
target practice, so it is bound to appear in battle practice.

It was on the flagship that I saw a device which Sir
John referred to as the next best thing to having the
Germans come out. He took as much delight in it as
the gun-layers, who were firing at German Dreadnoughts
of the first line, as large as your thumb, which were in
front of a sort of hooded arrangement with the guns of a
British Dreadnought inside — the rest I censor myself
before the regular censor sees it.

TARGET PRACTICE AS USUAL 351

When we heard a report like that of a small target
rifle inside the arrangement a small red or a small white
splash rose from the metallic platter of a sea. Thus the
whole German navy has been pounded to pieces again
and again. It is a great game. The gun-layers never
tire of it and they think they know the reason as well as
anybody why von Tirpitz keeps his Dreadnoughts at
home.

But elsewhere I saw some real firing ; for ships must
have their regular target practice, war or no war. If
those cruisers steaming across the range had been send-
ing six or eight-inch shrapnel, we should have preferred
not to be so near that towed square of canvas. Flashes
from turrets indistinguishable at a distance from the
neutral-toned bodies of the vessels and the shells struck,
making great splashes just beyond the target, which
was where they ought to go.

A familiar scene, but with a new meaning when the
time is one of war. So far as my observation is worth
anything, it was very good shooting, indeed. One broad-
side would have put a destroyer out of business as easily
as a " Jack Johnson " does for a dug-out ; and it would
have made a cruiser of the same class as the one firing
pretty groggy — this not from any experience of being on
a light cruiser or any desire to be on one when it receives
such a salute. But it seems to be waiting for the Ger-
mans any time that they want it.

Oh, that towed square of canvas ! It is the symbol of
the object of all building of guns, armour, and ships, all
the nursing in dry dock, all the admiral's plans, all the
parliamentary appropriations, all the striving on board
ship in man's competition with man, crew with crew,
gun with gun, and ship with ship. One had in mind
some vast factory plant where every unit was efficiently
organized ; but that comparison would not do. None
will. The Grand Fleet is the Grand Fleet.

Ability gets its reward, as in the competition of civil

352 SIMPLY HARD WORK

life. There is no linear promotion indulgent to medioc-
rity and inferiority which are satisfied to keep step and
harassing to those whom nature and application meant
to lead. Armchairs and retirement for those whose in-
clinations run that way ; the captain's bridge for those
who are fit to command. Officers' records are the cri-
terion when superiors come to making promotions. But
does not outside influence play a part ? you ask. If
professional conscience is not enough to prevent this,
another thing appears to be : that the British nation
lives or dies with its navy. Besides, the British public
has said to all and sundry outsiders : " Hands off the
navy! " All honour to the British public, much criti-
cized and often most displeased with its servants and
itself, for keeping its eye on that canvas square of cloth !

The language on board was the same as on our ships ;
the technical phraseology practically the same ; we had
inherited British traditions. But a man from Kansas
and a man from Dorset live far apart. If they have a
good deal in common they rarely meet to learn that
they have. Our seamen do meet British seamen and
share a fraternity which is more than that of the sea.
Close one's eyes to the difference in uniform, discount
the difference in accent, and one imagined that he
might be with our North Atlantic fleet.

The same sort of shop talk and banter in the ward-
room, which trims and polishes human edges ; the same
fellowship of a world apart. Securely ready the British
fleet waits. Enough drill and not too much ; occasional
visits between ships ; books and newspapers and a
lighthearted relaxation of scattered conversation in the
mess. One wardroom had a thirty-five-second record
for getting past all the pitfalls in the popular " Silver
Bullet " game, if I remember correctly.

XXXII

HUNTING THE SUBMARINE

Seaplanes cut practice circles over the fleet and then
flew away on their errands, to be lost in the sky beyond
the harbour entrance. With their floats, they were like
ducks when they came to rest on the water, sturdy and
a little clumsy looking compared to those hawks the
army planes, soaring to higher altitudes.

The hawk had a broad, level field for its roost; the
duck, bobbing with the waves after it came down, had
its wings folded as became a bird at rest, after its engines
stopped, and, a dead thing, was lifted on board its
floating home with a crane, as cargo is swung into the
hold.

On shipboard there must be shipshapeness ; and that
capacious, one-time popular Atlantic liner had under-
gone changes to prepare it for its mothering part, with
platforms in place of the promenades where people had
lounged during the voyage and bombs in place of deck-
quoits and dining-saloons turned into workshops. Of
course, one was shown the different sizes and types of
bombs. Aviators exhibit them with the pride of a col-
lector showing his porcelains. Every time they seem to
me to have grown larger and more diabolical. Where
will aerial progress end ? Will the next war be fought
by forces that dive and fly like fishes and birds ?

" I'd like to drop that hundred-pounder on to a
Zeppelin ! " said one of the aviators. All the population
of London would like to see him do it. And Fritz, the
submarine, does not like to see the shadow of man's
wings above the water.

Seaplanes and destroyers carry the imagination away

353

354 HUNTING THE SUBMARINE

from the fleet to another sphere of activity, which I had
not the fortune to see. An aviator can see Fritz below a
smooth surface ; for he cannot travel much deeper than
thirty or forty feet. He leaves a characteristic ripple
and tell-tale bubbles of air and streaks of oil. When the
planes have located him they tell the hunters where to
go. Sometimes it is known that a submarine is in a
certain region ; he is lost sight of and seen again ; a
squall may cover his track a second time, and the hunters,
keeping touch with the planes by signals, course here
and there on the look out for another glimpse. Perhaps
he escapes altogether. It is a tireless game of hide and
seek, like gunnery at the front. Naval ingenuity has
invented no end of methods, and no end of experiments
have been tried. Strictest kept of naval secrets, these.
Fritz is not to be told what to avoid and what not to
avoid.

Very thin is the skin of a submarine ; very fragile and
complicated its machinery. It does not take much of a
shock to put it out of order or a large charge of ex-
plosives to dent the skin beyond repair. It being in the
nature of submarines to sink, how does the hunter know
when he has struck a mortal blow ? If oil and bubbles
come up for some time in one place, or if they come up
with a rush, that is suggestive. Then, it does not re-
quire a nautical mind to realize that by casting about on
the bottom with a grapnel you will learn if an object
with the bulk and size of a submarine is there. The
Admiralty accept no guesswork from the hunters about
their exploits ; they must bring the brush to prove the
kill.

With Admiral Crawford I went to see the submarine
defences of the harbour. It reminded one of the days of
the drawbridge to a castle, when a friend rode freely in
and an enemy might try to swim the moat and scale the
walls if he pleased.

"Take care ! There is a tide here ! "the coxswain was

A NEW KIND OF FISH 355

warned, lest the barge should get into some of the
troubles meant for Fritz. " A cunning fellow, Fritz.
We must give him no openings."

The openings appear long enough to permit British
craft, whether trawlers, or flotillas, or cruiser squadrons,
to go and come. Lying as close together as fish in a
basket, I saw at one place a number of torpedo boats
home from a week at sea.

" Here to-day and gone to-morrow," said an officer.
" What a time they had last winter! You know how
cold the North Sea is — no, you cannot, unless you have
been out in a torpedo boat dancing the tango in the
teeth of that bitter wind, with the spray whipping up to
the tops of the smoke-stacks. In the dead of night they
would come into this pitch-dark harbour. How they
found their way is past me. It's a trick of those young
fellows, who command."

Stationary they seemed now as the quay itself ; but
let a signal speak, an alarm come, and they would soon
be as alive as leaping porpoises. The sport is to those
who scout and hunt. But do not forget those who
watch, those who keep the blockade, from the Channel
to Iceland, and the trawlers that plod over plotted sea-
squares with the regularity of mowing-machines cutting
a harvest, on their way back and forth sweeping up
mines. They were fishermen before the war and are
fishermen still. Night and day they keep at it. They
come into the harbours stiff with cold, thaw out, and
return to hardships which would make many a man
prefer the trenches. Tributes to their patient courage,
which came from the heart, were heard on board the
battleships.

" It is when we think of them," said an officer, " that
we are most eager to have the German fleet come out,
so that we can do our part."

XXXIII

THE FLEET PUTS TO SEA

There is another test besides that of gun-drills and
target practice which reflects the efficiency of individual
ships, and the larger the number of ships the more im-
portant it is. For the business of a fleet is to go to sea.
At anchor, it is in garrison rather than on campaign, an
assembly of floating forts. Navies one has seen which
seemed excellent when in harbour, but when they
started to get under way the result was hardly reassur-
ing. Some erring sister fouled her anchor chain ;
another had engine-room trouble ; another lagged for
some other reason ; there was fidgeting on the bridges.
Then one asked, What if a summons to battle had come?

Our own officers were authority enough that the
British had no superiors in any of the tests. But strange
reports dodged in and out of the alleys of pessimism in
the company of German insistence that the Tiger and
other ships which one saw afloat had been sunk. Was
the fleet really held prisoner by fear of submarines ? If
it could go and come freely when it chose, the harbour
was the place for it while it waited. If not, then, indeed,
the submarine had revolutionized naval warfare.
Admiral Jellicoe might lose some of his battleships
before he could get into action against the Germans.

" Oh, to hear the hoarse rattle of the anchor chains ! "
I kept thinking while I was with the fleet. " Oh, to see
all these monsters on the move! "

A vain wish it seemed, but it came true. A message
from the Admiralty arrived while we were on the flag-
ship. Admiral Jellicoe called his Flag Lieutenant and
spoke a word to him, which was passed in a twinkling

THE ORDER OF PROCESSION 357

from flagship to squadron and division and ship. He
made it as simple as ordering his barge alongside, this
sending of the Grand Fleet to sea.

From the bridge of a destroyer beyond the harbour
entrance we saw it go. I shall not attempt to describe
the spectacle, which convinced me that language is the
vehicle for making small things seem great and great
things seem small. If you wish words invite splendid
and magnificent and overwhelming and all the reliable
old friends to come forth in glad apparel from the dic-
tionary. Personally, I was inarticulate at sight of that
sea-march of dull-toned, unadorned power.

First came the outriders of majesty, the destroyers ;
then the graceful light cruisers. How many destroyers
has the British navy ? I am only certain that it has not
as many as it seems to have, which would mean thou-
sands. Trying to count them is like trying to count the
bees in the garden. You cannot keep your eye on the
individual bees. You are bound to count some twice,
so busy are their manoeuvres.

" Don't you worry, great ladies! " you imagined the
destroyers were saying to the battleships. " We will
clear the road. We will keep watch against snipers and
assassins."

" And if any knocks are coming, we will take them
for you, great ladies! " said the cruisers. " If one of us
went down, the loss would not be great. Keep your big
guns safe to beat other battleships into scrap."

For you may be sure that Fritz was on the watch in
the open. He always is, like the highwayman hiding
behind a hedge and envying people who have comfort-
able beds. Probably from a distance he had a peep
through his periscope at the Grand Fleet before the
approach of the policeman destroyers made him duck
beneath the water ; and probably he tried to count the
number of ships and identify their classes in order to
take the information home to Kiel. Besides, he always

358 THE FLEET PUTS TO SEA

has his fingers crossed. He hopes that some day he may
get a shot at something more warlike than a merchant
steamer or an auxiliary ; only that prospect becomes
poorer as life for him grows harder. Except a miracle
happened, the steaming fleet, with its cordons of des-
troyers, is as safe from him as from any other kind of
fish.

The harbour which is the fleet's home is landlocked by
low hills. There is an eclipse of the sun by the smoke
from the ships getting under way ; streaming, soaring
columns of smoke on the move rise above the skyline
from the funnels of the battleships before they appear
around a bend. Indefinite masses as yet they are, under
their night-black plumes. Each ship seems too immense
to respond to any will except its own. But there is some-
thing automatic in the regularity with which, one after
another, they take the bend, as if a stop watch had been
held on twenty thousand tons of steel for a second's
variation. As they approach they become more dis-
tinct and, showing less smoke, there seems less effort.
Their motive-power seems inherent, perpetual.

There is some sea running outside the entrance,
enough to make a destroyer roll. But the battleships
disdain any notice of its existence. It is no more to
them than a ripple of dust to a motor truck. They
plough through it.

Though you were within twenty yards of them you
would feel quite safe. An express train was in no more
danger of jumping the track. Mast in line with mast,
they held the course with a majestic steadiness. Now
the leading ship makes a turn of a few points. At the
same spot, as if it were marked by the grooves of tyres
in a road, the others make it. Any variation of speed
between them would have been instantly noticeable, as
one forged ahead or lagged ; but the distance between
bows and sterns did not change. A line of one length
would do for each interval so far as one could discern.

SEVERE CRITICS 359

It was difficult to think that they were not attached to
some taut, moving cable under water. How could such
apparently unwieldy monsters, in such a slippery ele-
ment as the sea, be made to obey their masters with
such fine precision ?

The answer again is sheer hard work ! Drills as
arduous in the engine-room as at the guns ; machinery
kept in tune ; traditions in manoeuvring in all weathers,
which is kept up with tireless practice.

Though all seemed perfection to the lay eye, let it be
repeated that this was not so to the eyes of admirals.
It never can be. Perfection is the thing striven for.
Officers dwell on faults ; all are critics. Thus you have
the healthiest kind of spirit, which means that there
will be no cessation in the striving.

' Look at that ! " exclaimed an officer on the des-
troyer. ' They ought to try another painting on her
and see if they can't do better."

Ever changing that northern light. For an instant
the sun's rays, strained by a patch of peculiar cloud,
playing on a Dreadnought's side, made her colour
appear molten, exaggerating her size till she seemed as
colossal to the eye as to the thought.

' But look, now ! " said another officer. She was out
of the patch and seemed miles farther away to the vision,
a dim shape in the sea-haze.

" You can't have it right for every atmospheric mood
of the North Sea, I suppose ! " muttered the critic.
Still, it hurt his professional pride that a battleship
should show up as such a glaring target even for a
moment.

The power of the fleet was more patent in movement
than at rest ; for the sea-lion was out of his lair on the
hunt. Fluttering with flags at a review at Spithead,
the battleships seemed out of their element ; giants
trying for a fairy's part. Display is not for them. It
ill becomes them, as does a pink ribbon on a bulldog.

A2

36o THE FLEET PUTS TO SEA

Irresistibly ploughing their way they presented a
picture of resolute utility — guns and turrets and speed.
No spot of bright colour was visible on board. The
crew was at the guns, I took it. Turn the turrets, give
the range, lay the sights on the enemy's ships, and the
battle was on.

" There is the old Dreadnought," said an officer.

The old Dreadnought — all of ten years of age, the
senile old thing ! What a mystery she was when she
was building! The mystery accentuated her celebrity
— and almost forgotten now, while the Queen Elizabeth
and the Warspite, and others of their class with their
fifteen-inch guns, would be in the public eye as the
latest type till a new type came. A parade of naval
types was passing. One seemed to shade into the other
in harmonious effect. But here was an outsider, whom
one noted instantly as he studied those rugged sil-
houettes of steel. She had twelve twelve-inch guns,
with turret piled on turret in an exotic fashion — one of
the two Turkish battleships building in England at the
time of the war and taken over by the British.

One division, two divisions, four ships, eight Dread-
noughts— even a squadron coming out of a harbour
numbs the faculties with a sense of its might. Sixteen —
twenty — twenty-four — it was the unending numbers of
this procession of sea-power which was most im-
pressive. An hour passed and all were not by. One sat
down for a few minutes behind the wind-screen of the
destroyer's bridge, only to look back and see more
Dreadnoughts going by. A spectator had not realized
that there were so many in the harbour. He had a sus-
picion that Admiral Jellicoe was a conjuror who could
take Dreadnoughts out of a hat.

The first was lost in the gathering darkness far out in
the North Sea, and still the cloud of smoke over the
anchorage was as thick as ever ; still the black plumes
kept appearing around the bend. The King Edward

PROTECTING THE WORLD 361

VII. class with their four twelve-inch guns and other
ancients of the pre-Dreadnought era, which are still
powerful antagonists, were yet to come. One's eyes
ached. Those who saw a German corps march through
Brussels said that it seemed irresistible. What if they
had seen the whole German army ? Here was the
counterpart of the whole German army in sea-power
and in land-power, too.

The destroyer commander looked at his watch.

" Time! " he said. " I'll put you on shore."

He must take his place in the fleet at a given moment.
A word to the engine-room and the next thing we knew
we were off at thirty knots an hour, cutting straight
across the bows of a Dreadnought steaming at twenty
knots, towering over us threateningly, with a bone in
her teeth.

Imagination sped across seas where a man had
cruised into harbours that he knew and across contin-
ents that he knew. He was trying to visualize the
whole globe — all of it except the Baltic seas and a
thumb-mark in the centre of Europe. Hong-Kong,
Melbourne, Sydney, Halifax, Cape Town, Bombay —
yes, and Rio and Valparaiso, Shanghai, San Francisco,
New York, Boston, these and the lands back of them,
where countless millions dwell, were all safe behind the
barrier of that fleet.

Then back through the land where Shakespeare wrote
to London, with its glare of recruiting posters and the
throbbing of that individual freedom which is on trial
in battle with the Prussian system — and as one is going
to bed the sound of guns in the heart of the city ! From
the window one looked upward to see, under a search-
light's play, the silken sheen of a cigar-shaped sort of
aerial phantom which was dropping bombs on women
and children, while never a shot is fired at those sturdy
men behind armour.

When you have travelled far ; when you think of

362 THE FLEET PUTS TO SEA

Botha and his Boers fighting for England ; when you
have found justice and fair play and open markets
under the British flag ; when you compare the vocifera-
tions of von Tirpitz, glorying in the torpedoing of a
Lusitania, with the quiet manner of Sir John Jellicoe,
you need only a little spark of conscience to prefer the
way that the British have used their sea-power to the
way that the men who send out Zeppelins to war on
women and children would use that power if they had it.

XXXIV

BRITISH PROBLEMS

Throughout the summer of 1915 the world was asking,
What about the new British army ? Why was it not
attacking at the opportune moment when Germany was
throwing her weight against Russia ? A facile answer is
easy ; indeed, facile answers are always easy. Un-
happily, they are rarely correct. None that was given
in this instance was, to my mind. They sought to put
a finger on one definite cause ; again, on an individual
or a set of individuals.

The reasons were manifold ; as old as Waterloo, as
fresh as the last speech in Parliament. They were
inherent in the Anglo-Saxon race. Whoever raised a
voice and said, This, or that, or you, are responsible!
should first have looked into his own mind and into the
history of his race and then into a mirror. Least of all
should any American have been puzzled by the delay.

" Oh, we should have done better than that — we are
Americans! " I hear my countrymen say. Perhaps
we should. I hope so ; I believe so. The British public
thought that they were going to do better ; military
men were surprised that they did as well.

Along with laws and language we have inherited our
military ideas from England. In many qualities we are
different — a distinct type ; but in nothing are we more
like the British than in our attitude toward the soldier
and toward war. The character of any army reflects
the character of its people. An army is the fist ; but
the muscle, the strength, of the physical organism

363

364 BRITISH PROBLEMS

behind the blow in the long run belong to the people.
What they have prepared for in peace they receive in
war, which decides whether they have been living in
the paradise of a fool or of a wise man.

As a boy I was brought up to believe, as an inheritance
of the American Revolution, that one American could
whip two Englishmen and five or six of any other
nationality, which made the feathers of the eagle
perched on the national escutcheon look glossy. It was
a satisfying sort of faith. Americans had never tried
five or six of any first-class fighting race ; but that was
not a thought which occurred to me. As we had won
victories over the English and the English had whipped
the French at Waterloo, the conclusion seemed obvious.

English boys, I understand, also had been brought up
to believe that one Englishman could whip five or six
men of any other nationality, but, I take it for granted,
only two Americans. This clothed the British lion with
majesty, while the lower ratio of superiority over
Americans returned the compliment in kind from the
sons of the lion to the sons of the eagle.

After I began to read history for myself and to think
as I read, I found that when British and Americans had
met, the generals on either side were solicitous about
having superior forces, and in case of odds of two to one
they made a " strategic retreat." When either side
was beaten, the other always explained that he was
overcome by superior numbers, though perhaps the
adversary had not more than ten or fifteen per cent,
advantage. Then I learned that the British had not
whipped five or six times their number on the continent
of Europe. The British Expeditionary Force made as
fine an effort to do so at Mons as was ever attempted in
history, but they did not succeed.

It was a regular army that fought at Mons. The only
two first-class nations which depend upon regulars to do
their fighting are the British and the American. This is

CONSCRIPTS AND VOLUNTEERS 365

the vital point of similarity which is the practical mani-
festation of our military ideas. We have been the earth's
spoiled children, thanks to the salt seas between us and
other powerful military nations. Before any other
Power could reach the United States it must overwhelm
the British navy, and then it must overwhelm ours and
bring its forces in transports. Sea-power, you say.
That is the facile word, so ready to the lips that we do
not realize the wonder of it any more than of the sun
rising and setting.

When we want soldiers our plan still is to advertise
for them. The ways of our ancestors remain ours. We
think that the volunteer must necessarily make the best
soldier because he offers his services ; while the con-
script— rather a term of opprobrium to us — must be
lukewarm. It hardly occurs to us that some forms of
persuasion may amount to conscription, or that the
volunteer, won by oratorical appeal to his emotions or
by social pressure, may suffer a reaction after enlistment
which will make him lukewarm also, particularly as he
sees others, also young and fit, hanging back. Nor does
it occur to us that there may be virtue in that fervour of
national patriotism aroused by the command that all
must serve, which, on the continent in this war, has
meant universal exaltation to sacrifice. The life of
Jones means as much to him as the life of Smith does to
him ; and when the whole nation is called to arms there
ought to be no favourites in life-giving.

For the last hundred years, if we except the American
Civil War, ours have been comparatively little wars.
The British regular army has policed an empire and sent
punitive expeditions against rebellious tribes with
paucity of numbers, in a work which the British so well
understand. Our little regular army took care of the
Red Indians as our frontier advanced from the Alle-
ghenies to the Pacific. To put it bluntly, we have hired
someone to do our fighting for us.

366 BRITISH PROBLEMS

Without ever seriously studying the business of
soldiering, the average Anglo-Saxon thought of himself
as a potential soldier, taking his sense of martial
superiority largely from the work of the long-service,
severely drilled regular. Also, we used our fists rather
than daggers or duelling swords in personal encounters
and, man to man, unequipped with fire-arms or blades,
the quality which is responsible for our sturdy pioneer-
ing individualism gave us confidence in our physical
prowess.

Alas ! modern wars are not fought with fists. A knock-
kneed man who knows how to use a machine-gun and
has one to use — which is also quite important — could
mow down all the leading heavy-weights of the United
States and England, with the latest champion leading
the charge.

Now, this regular who won our little wars was not
representative of the people as a whole. He was the
man " down on his luck," who went to the recruiting
depot. Soldiering became his profession. He was in a
class, like priests and vagabonds. When you passed
him in the street you thought of him as a strange being,
but one of the necessities of national existence. It did
not interest you to be a soldier ; but as there must be
soldiers, you were glad that men who would be soldiers
were forthcoming.

When trouble broke, how you needed him ! When the
wires brought news of his gallantry you accepted the
deeds of this man whom you had paid as the reflection
of national courage, which thrilled you with a sense of
national superiority. To him, it was in the course of
duty ; what he had been paid to do. He did not care
about being called a hero ; but it pleased the public to
make him one — this professional who fights for a shilling
a day in England and $17.50 a month in the United
States.

Though when the campaign went well the public was

PRIDE OF REGIMENT 367

ready to take the credit as a personal tribute, when the
campaign went badly they sought a scapegoat, and the
general who might have been a hero was sent to the
wilderness perhaps because those busy men in Congress
or Parliament thought that the army could do without
that little appropriation which was needed for some
other purpose. The army had failed to deliver the
goods which it was paid to produce. The army was to
blame, when, of course, under free institutions the
public was to blame, as the public is master of the army
and not the army of the public.

A first impression of the British army is always that
of the regiment. Pride of regiment sometimes appears
almost more deep-seated than army pride to the out-
sider. It has been so long a part of British martial
inheritance that it is bred in the blood. In the old days
of small armies and in the later days of small wars, while
Europe was making every man a soldier by conscription,
regiment vying with regiment won the battles of empire.
The memory of the part each regiment played is the
inspiration of its present ; its existence is inseparable
from the traditions of its long list of battle honours.

The British public loves to read of its Guards' regi-
ment and to watch them in their brilliant uniforms at
review. When a cadet comes out of Sandhurst he
names the regiment which he wishes to join, instead of
being ordered to a certain regiment, as at West Point.
It rests with the regimental commander whether or not
he is accepted. Frequently the young man of wealth or
family serves in the Guards or another crack regiment
for awhile and resigns, usually to enjoy the semi-
leisurely life which is the fortune of his inheritance.

Then there are the county line regiments, such as the
Yorkshires, the Rents, and the Durhams. In this war
each county wanted to read about its own regiments at
the same time as about the Guards, just as Ransans at
home would want to read about the Ransas regiment and

368 BRITISH PROBLEMS

Georgians about the Georgia regiment. The most trying
feature of the censorship to the British public was its
refusal to allow the exploitation of regiments. The
staff was adamant on this point ; for the staff was
thinking for the whole and of the interests of the whole.
In the French and the German armies, as in our regular
army, regiments are known by numbers.

The young man who lives in the big house on the hill,
the son of the man of wealth and power in the community,
as a rule does not go to West Point. None of the youth
of our self-called aristocracy which came up the golden
road in a generation past those in modest circumstances
who have generations of another sort back of them, think
of going into the First Cavalry or the First Infantry for
a few years as a part of the career of their class. A few
rich men's sons enter our army, but only enough to
prove the rule by the exception. They do not regard
thejarmy as " the thing." It does not occur to them
that they ought to do something for their country.
Rather, their country ought to do something for them.

But sink the plummet a little deeper and these are not
our aristocracy nor our ruling class, which is too numer-
ous and too sound of thought and principle for them to
feel at home in that company. Any boy, however
humble his origin, may go to West Point if he can pass
the competitive examination. Europe, particularly
Germany, would not approve of this ; but we think it
the best way. The average graduate of the Point,
whether the son of a doctor, a lawyer, or a farmer, sticks
to the army as his profession. We maintain the Aca-
demy for the strict business purpose of teaching young
men how to train our army in time of peace and to lead
and direct it in time of action.

Our future officers enter West Point when they are
two years younger than is the average at Sandhurst;
the course is four years compared with two at Sandhurst.
I should venture to say that West Point is the harder

AMERICAN MILITARY TRAINING 369

grind ; that the graduate of the Point has a more speci-
fically academic military training than the graduate of
Sandhurst. This is not saying that he may be any
better in the performance of the simple duties of a com-
pany officer. It is not a new criticism that we train
everybody at West Point to be a general, when many
of the students may never rise above the command
of a battalion. However, it is a significant fact that at
the close of the Civil War every army commander was
a West Point man and so were most of the corps com-
manders.

The doors are open in the British army for a man to
rise from the ranks ; not as wide as in our army, but
open. The Chief of Staff of the British Expeditionary
Force, Sir William Robertson, was in the ranks for ten
years. No man not a West Pointer had a position
equivalent in importance to his at the close of the Civil
War. His rise would have been possible in no other
European army.

But West Point sets the stamp on the American army,
and Sandhurst and Woolwich, the engineering and
artillery school, on the British army. At the end of the
four years at West Point the men who survive the hard
course may be tried by courtmartial not for conduct
unbecoming an officer, but an officer and a gentleman.
They are supposed, whatever their origin, to have
absorbed certain qualities, if they were not inborn,
which are not easily described but which we all recog-
nize in any man. If they are absent it is not the fault
of West Point ; and if a man cannot acquire them
there, then nature never meant them for him. From
the time he entered the school the government has paid
his way ; and he is cared for until he dies, if he keeps
step and avoids courtmartials.

His position in life is secure. His pay, counting every-
thing, is better than that of the average graduate of a
university or a first-class professional school who prac-

370 BRITISH PROBLEMS

tises a profession. Yet only three boys, I remember,
wanted to go to West Point from our congressional
district in my youth. Nothing could better illustrate
the fact that we are not a military people. From
West Point they go out to' the little army which is to
fight our wars ; to the posts and the Philippines, and
become a world in themselves ; an isolated caste in
spite of themselves. I am not at all certain that either
the British or the American officer works as hard as the
German in time of peace. Neither has the practical
incentive nor the determined driver behind him.

For it takes a soldier Secretary of War to drive a
soldier ; for example, Lord Kitchener. Those British
officers who applied themselves in peace to the mastery
of their profession and were not content with the day's
routine requirements, had to play chess without chess-
men ; practise manoeuvres on a board rather than with
brigades, divisions, corps, and armies. They became
the rallying points in the concourse of untrained
recruits.

German and French officers had the incentive and the
chessmen. The Great War could not take them by sur-
prise. They took the road with a machine whose parts
had been long assembled. They had been trained for
big war ; their ambition and intelligence were under the
whip of a definite anticipation.

A factor overlooked, but even more significant than
training or staff work, was that what might be called
martial team-play had become an instinct with the
continental peoples through the necessity of their situa-
tion. This the Japanese also possess. It is the right
material ready to hand for the builder. Not that it is
the kind of material one admires ; but it is the right
material for making a war-machine. One had only to
read the expert military criticism in the British and the
American Press at the outset of the war to realize how
vague was the truth of the continental situation to the

THE LITTLE BRITISH ARMY 371

average Englishman or American — but not to the
trained British Staff.

So that little British Expeditionary Force, in ratio of
number one to twenty or thirty of the French army,
crossed the Channel to help save Belgium. Gallantry
it had worthy of the brightest chapter in the immortal
history of its regiments from Quebec to Kandahar, from
Agincourt, Blenheim and Waterloo to South Africa,
Guards and Hussars, Highlanders and Lowlanders, kilts
and breeks, Connaught Rangers and Royal Fusiliers,
Duke of Wellington's and Prince of Wales' Own, come
again to Flanders. The best blood of England was
leading Tommy Atkins. Whatever British aristocracy
is or is not, it never forgets its duty to the England of
its fathers. It is never ingrate to its fortune. The time
had come to go out and die for England, if need be, and
these officers went as their ancestors had gone before
them, as they would go to lectures at Oxford, to the
cricket field and the polo field, in outward phlegm, but
with a mighty passion in their hearts.

The Germans affected to despise this little army. It
had not been trained in the mass tactics which hurl
columns of flesh forward to gain tactical points that
have been mauled by artillery fire. You do not use
mass tactics against Boers, nor against Afridis, nor
Filipinos. It is difficult to combine the two kinds of
efficiency. Those who were on the march to the relief
of the Peking Legations recall how the Germans were as
ill at ease in that kind of work as the Americans and
British were at home. It made us misjudge the Germans
and the Germans misjudge us when they thought of us
as trying to make war on the continent of Europe. A
small, mobile, regular army, formed to go overseas and
march long distances, was to fight in a war where
millions were engaged and a day's march would cover
an immense stretch of territory in international calcu-
lations of gain and loss.

372 BRITISH PROBLEMS

For its own purposes, the British Expeditionary
Force was well-nigh a perfect instrument. As quantity
of ammunition was an important factor in transport in
the kind of campaign which it was prepared for, its guns
were the most accurate on a given point and its system
of fire adapted to that end ; but the French system of
fire, with plentiful ammunition from near bases over fine
roads, was better adapted for a continental campaign.

To the last button that little army was prepared.
Man for man and regiment for regiment, I should say it
was the best force that ever fired a shot in Europe ; this
without regard to national character. As England must
make every regular soldier count, and as she depended
upon the efficiency of the few rather than on numbers,
she had trained her men in musketry. No continental
army could afford to allow its soldiers to expend the
amount of ammunition on the target range that the
British had expended. Only by practice can you learn
how to shoot. This gives the soldier confidence. He
stays in his trench and keeps on shooting because he
knows that he can hit those advancing figures and that
this is his best protection. The more I learn, the more I
am convinced that the Germans ought to have got the
British Expeditionary Force ; and the Germans were
very surprised that they did not get it. With their
surprise developed a respect for British arms, reported
by all visitors to Germany.

Mr. Thomas Atkins, none other, is the hero of that
retreat from Mons. The first statue raised in London
after the war ought to be of him. If there had been five
hundred thousand of him in Belgium at the end of the
second week in August, Brussels would now be under
the Belgian flag. Like many other good things in this
world, including the French army, there were not enough
of him. Many a company on that retreat simply got
tired of retreating, though orders were to fall back. It
dug a trench and lay down and kept on firing — accu-

UNEXPECTED DEMANDS 373

rately, in the regular, businesslike way, reinforced by
the " stick it " British character — until killed or en-
gulfed. This held back the flood long enough for the
remainder of the army to retire.

Not all the generalship emanated from generals. I
like best that story of the cross-roads where, with Ger-
mans pressing hard on all sides, two columns in retreat
fell in together, uncertain which way to go. With con-
fusion developing for want of instructions, a lone, ex-
hausted staff officer who happened along took charge,
and standing at the junction in the midst of shell-fire
told every doubting unit what to do, with a one-two-
three alacrity of decision. His work finished, he and his
red cap disappeared, and I never could find anyone who
knew who he was.

After the retreat and after the victory of the Marne,
what was England's position ? The average Englishman
had thought that England's part in the alliance was to
send a small army to France and to take care of the
German fleet. England's fleet was her first considera-
tion ; that must be served. France's demand for rifles
and supplies must be attended to before the British
demand. Serbia needed supplies ; Russia needed sup-
plies ; a rebellion threatened in South Africa ; the
Turks threatened the invasion of Egypt. England had
to spread her energy out over a vast empire with an
army that had barely escaped annihilation. Every
soldier who fought must be supplied overseas. German
officers put a man on a railroad train and he detrained
near the front. Every British soldier had to go on board
a train and then a ship and then disembark from the
ship and go on board another train. Every article of
ordnance, engineering, medical supply, food supply,
must be handled four times, while in Germany they
need be handled but twice. Any railway traffic manager
will understand what this means. Both the British
supply system and the medical corps were marvels.

374 BRITISH PROBLEMS

Germany was stronger than the British public thought.
Germany and Austria could put at the front in the
first six months of the war practically double the num-
ber which the Allies could maintain. Russia had multi-
tudes to draw from in reserve, but the need was multi-
tudes at the front. There she was only as strong as the
number she could feed and equip. In the first year of
the war England suffered 380,000 casualties on land,
more than three times the number of men that she had
at Mons. This wastage must be met before she could
begin to increase her forces. The length of line on the
western front that she was holding was not the criterion
of her effort. The French who shared with the British
that terrible Ypres salient realized this.

Apart from the regulars she had the Territorials, who
are much the same as our National Guard and vary in
quality in the same way. Native Indian troops were
brought to France to face the diabolical shell-fire of
modern guns, and Territorials went out to India to take
the place of the British regulars who were withdrawn
for France. Every rifle that England could bring to
the assistance of the French in their heroic stand was a
rifle to the good.

Meanwhile, she was making her new army. For the
first time since Cromwell's day, all classes in England
were going to war. Making an army out of the raw is
like building a factory to be manned by expert labour
which you have to train. Let us even suppose that the
factory is ready and that the proprietor must mobilize
his managers, overseers, foremen, and labour from far
and near — a force individually competent, but which
had never before worked together. It would require
some time to organize team-play, wouldn't it ? Particu-
larly it would if you were short of managers, overseers,
and foremen. To express my meaning from another
angle, in talking once with an English pottery manu-
facturer he said :

STARTING WITH RAW MATERIAL 375

" We do not train our labour in the pottery district.
We breed it from generation to generation."

In Germany they have not only been training
soldiers, but breeding them from generation to genera-
tion. You may think that system is wrong. It may
be contrary to our ideals. But in fighting against that
system for your ideals when war is violence and killing,
you must have weapons as effective as the enemy's.
You express only a part of Germany's preparedness by
saying that the men who left the plough and the shop,
the factory and the office, became trained soldiers at
the command of the staff as soon as they were in uni-
form and had rifles. These men had the instinct of
military co-ordination bred in them, and so had their
officers, while England had to take men from the plough
and the shop, the factory and the office, and equip
them and teach them the rudiments of soldiering before
she could consider making them into an army.

It was one thing for the spirit of British manhood to
rise to the emergency. Another and even more im-
portant requisite went with it. If my country ever
faces such a crisis I hope that we also may have the
courage of wisdom which leaves an expert's work to an
expert. England had Lord Kitchener, who could hold
the imagination and the confidence of the nation
through the long months of preparation, when there
was little to show except repetition of drills here and
there on gloomy winter days. It required a man with
a big conception and patience and authority to carry
it through, and recruits with an unflinching sense of
duty. The immensity of the task of transforming a
non-military people into a great fighting force grew on
one in all its humdrum and vital details as he watched
the new army forming. ' ' Are you learning to think in
big numbers ? " was Lord Kitchener's question to his
generals.

Half of the regular officers were killed or wounded.

B2

376 BRITISH PROBLEMS

Where the leaders? Where the drillmasters for the
new army ? Old officers came out of retirement,
where they had become used to an easy life as a rule, to
twelve hours a day of hard application. " Dug-outs "
they were called. Veteran non-commissioned officers
had to drill new ones. It was demonstrated that a
good infantry soldier can be made in six months ; per-
haps in three. But it takes seven months to build a
rifle-plant ; many more months to make guns — and the
navy must never be stinted. Probably the English are
slow ; slow and thoroughgoing. They are good at the
finish, but not quick at the start. They are used to
winning the last battle, which they say is the one that
counts. The complacency of empire with a century's
power was a handicap, no doubt. We are inclined to
lean forward on our oars, they to lean back — which
does not mean that they cannot lean forward in an
emergency or that they lack reserve strength. It may
lead us to misjudge them.

Public impatience was inevitable. It could not be
kept silent ; that is the English of it — the American,
too. It demands to know what is being done. It was
not silent in the Civil War. From the time McClellan
started forming his new army until the Peninsular
campaign was six months, if I remember rightly. Von
Moltke, who built the German staff system, said that
the Civil War was a strife between two armed mobs ;
though I think if he had brought his Prussians to
Virginia a year later, in '63, which would have ended
the Civil War there and then, he would have had an
interesting time before he returned to Berlin.

The British new army was not to face another new
army, but the most thoroughly organized military
machine that the world has ever known. Not only
this, but the Germans, with a good start and their
system established, were not standing still and waiting
for the British to catch up, so that the two could begin

ENGLISH LIBERALITY 377

again even, but were adapting themselves to the new
features of the war. They had been the world's arms-
makers. With vast munition plants ready, their
feudal socialistic organization could make the most of
their resources in men and material.

More than two million Englishmen went to the
recruiting depots, though no invader had set foot on
their soil, and offered to serve in France or wherever
they were needed overseas. If no magic could put
rifles in their hands or summon batteries of guns to
follow them on the march, the fact of their volunteer-
ing, when they knew by watching from day to day the
drudgery that it meant and what trench warfare was,
shows at least that the race is not yet decadent. Per-
haps we should have done better. No one can know
until we try it. If liberal treatment by the government
and the course set by Secretary Root means anything,
our staff ought to be better equipped for such a task
than the English were ; this, too, only war can decide.

Whatsoever of pessimism appeared in the British
Press was telegraphed to America. Pessimism was not
permitted in the German Press. Imagine Germany
holding control of the cable and allowing press dis-
patches from Germany to pass over it with the freedom
that England allowed. Imagine Germany having
waited as long as England before making cotton contra-
band. The British Press demanded information from
the government which the German Press would never
have dared to ask. I have known an American corres-
pondent, fed out of hand in Germany and thankful for
anything that the fearful German war-machine might
vouchsafe, turning a belligerent when he was in London
for privileges which he would never have thought of
demanding in Berlin.

If an English ship were reported sunk, he believed it
must be, despite the government's denial. Did he go
to the Germans and demand that he might publish the

378 BRITISH PROBLEMS

rumours of what had happened to the Moltke in the
Gulf of Riga, or how many submarines Germany had
really lost ? Indeed, he was unconsciously paying a
compliment to British free institutions. He expected
more in England ; it seemed a right to him, as it would
at home. Englishmen talked frankly to him about
mistakes ; he heard all the gossip ; and sometimes he
concluded that England was in a bad way. In Ger-
many such talk was not allowed. Every German said
that the government was absolutely truthful ; every
German believed all of its reports. But ask this
critical American how he would like to live under
German rule, and then you found how anti-German he
was at heart. Nothing succeeds like success, and
Germany was winning and telling no one if she had any
setbacks.

If there were a strike, the British Press made the most
of it, for it was big news. Pessimism is the English-
man's natural way of arousing himself to fresh energy.
It is also against habit to be demonstrative in his
effort ; so it is not easy to understand how much he is
doing. Then, pessimism brought recruits ; it made
the Englishman say, "I've got to put my back into it ! "
Muddling there was and mistakes, such as that of the
method of attack at Gallipoli ; but in the midst of all
this dispiriting pessimism, no Englishman thought of
anything but of putting his back into it more and more.
Lord Kitchener had said that it was to be a long war
and evidently it must be. Of course, England's mis-
fortune was in having the war catch her in the transi-
tion from an old order of things to social reforms.

But if the war shows anything it is that basically
English character has not changed. She still has un-
conquerable, dogged persistence, and her defects for
this kind of war are not among the least admirable of
her traits to those who desire to live their own lives in
their own way, as the English-speaking people have

WHAT ENGLAND IS FIGHTING FOR 379

done for five hundred years, without having a verboten
sign on every street corner.

It is still the law that when a company of infantry
marches through London it must be escorted by a
policeman. This means a good deal : that civil power
is superior to military power. It is a symbol of what
Englishmen have fought for with spades and pitch-
forks, and what we have fought Englishmen for. My
own idea is that England is fighting for it in this
struggle ; and starting unready against a foe which was
ready, as the free peoples always have done, she was
fighting for time and experience before she could strike
her sturdiest blows.

INDEX

Accuracy at long range, 321.

Adamson, Captain, 289.

Admiral, place of an, 328.

Admirals, young, 320, 331.

Admiralty, Chief of the War
Staff at the, 331.

Aeroplanes, German, 7, 9, 225.

Aeroplanes, uses of, 207, 223.

Aisne line, the, 38.

Aisne river, the, 37.

Albrecht Joachim, Prince, 40.

Algerian Zouaves, dead, 37.

Alpine chasseurs, French, 129.

Alsace-Lorraine, 23, 60, 129.

Ambulances, 306.

America next ? 80.

American, the, 6, 8, 14, 62.

American army, the little regu-
lar, 365.

American Civil War, the, 369,

37°-
American Embassy in Paris, 22.

American, the, and "home
folks," 281.

American Red Cross, 84.

American Relief Commission,
84, 91, 117, 119.

American residents in Paris, 22.

American Revolution, inherit-
ance of the, 364.

American tourists, stranded, 84.

Ammunition, being careful of,
147.

Amputation without anaesthe-
tics, 268.

Anglo-Saxons, 2.

Anglo-Saxons as soldiers, the,
366.

Anti-aircraft gun, the, 225.

Antwerp, 88.

Arc de Triomphe, the, 19.

Archibald the Archer, 225.

Are you for us ? 63.

Armies, relative efficiency of, 1.

Armour v. gun-power, 322.

Army chauffeurs, 124, 137, 159,

Army life, effect of, 137.

Arndt, M., 99.

Artillery order, filling an, 219.

Artillery preparation for attack,

266.
Artilleryman's ear, the, 220.
Asiatic Squadron, the British,

338.
Atkins, Mr. Thomas, 279, 292,

293. 297-
Atkins, Mr. Thomas, hero of

Mons, 372.
Attack, a broken German, 288.
Attack that failed, a British, 277.
At your own risk, 254.
August, 1914, 10.
Aviation corps, British, 297.
Aviators and submarines, 354.

B

Baker's financial views, a French

300.
Bank of France, the, 16.
Bate, Colonel, 176.
Battalion's record, a, 289.
Batteries, concealed, 210.
Battle, coming to a, 30.
Battle cruisers, power of, 319.
Battle, few signs of, 28.
Battle, a first, 5.
Battle scars, naval, 323, 330.
Battle, waiting for, 349.
Bavarian reprisals, 108.
Bazin, M. Rene, 309.

381

3§2

INDEX

Beatty, Vice-Admiral Sir David,

319. 327. 339, 343-

Belgian army, the, 1.

Belgian army, American view of,
2.

Belgian bread-lines, 98, 116.

Belgian canals, 90.

Belgian cheerfulness, 49, 53.

Belgian chefs, work of, 99.

Belgian cyclists, 7.

Belgian farm, a, 86.

Belgian flag in church, the, 98.

Belgian hate, 5, 87, 96, 111, 113.

Belgian humour, 113.

Belgian man of action, a, 114.

Belgian newspapers, 97.

Belgian officers, 48.

Belgian politicians, 117.

Belgian refugees, 48, 81, 83.

Belgian refugees' camp, 83.

Belgian shops, 98.

Belgian wounded, 48, 52.

Belgians, King of the, 108, 299.

Belgians, the, an unwarlike
people, 3.

Belgium, Christmas in, 95.

Belgium, the future of, 106.

Belgium, plans for relief of, 84.

Belgium, relief work in, 103.

Belgium, ruins in, 108.

Belgium thickly populated, 3.

Belgium, in, under the Germans,
81.

Belgium's ideals, 106.

Belgium's part, 2.

Bergen-op-Zoom, 83.

Berlin, 56, 72.

Berlin hotel methods, 59.

Berlin, the new, 77.

Berlin opera, at the, 75.

Berlin, Rudolph Virchow hos-
pital in, 74.

Betz, 29.

Bicknell, Mr., 84.

Billeted German soldiers, 27.

Billeting, 297.

Blake's emblem, 344.

Blockade, the naval, 342.

" Blood thicker than water,"
338.

Bhtcker, the, 318, 321, 324.

Blue and yellow tickets, 100.
Bluejackets, all kinds of, 348.
Bluejackets, politeness of, 336.
Bluff, a double, 332.
Bois du Bies, 184.
Bois le Pretre, 126.
Bombing, a school in, 247.
Bombs, old and new styles of,

250.
Bordeaux, 16, 20.
Botha, General, 269.
Boulevards in Paris, 15.
Boulogne, 9, 12.
Boy and cow, story of, 151.
Boy scouts, 310.
Brain-centre of a ship, a, 323.
Brandenburg Gate, the, 77.
Braziers, 187.
Bread, a ration of, 100.
Bread-line stories, 10 1.
Bread-lines, Belgian, 99, 100,116,
Breastworks, 183.
Breeding soldiers, 375.
Brigade headquarters, 179.
British airmen, 265, 296.
British and American naval

friendship, 338.
British army, 26.
British army, behaviour of, 298.
British army discipline, 198.
British Asiatic squadron, 338.
British attack that failed, 277.
British aviation corps, 297.
British army, the, cannot hate,

203.
British Crown Prince, the, 305.
British Dreadnoughts, 342.
British Expeditionary Force, 14,

364, 37J. 372-
British fleet, 13.

British and German natures, the,

377-
British and German press, the,

377-
British hero, a wounded, 53.
British navy, 365.
British offensive, a, 177, 276.
British pride of regiment, 367.
British as prisoners, the, 68.
British private, a new type of,

191.

INDEX

383

British problems, 363.
British regular array, the, 365.
British regular's affection for his

officers, 188.
British sailors, physique of, 347.
British shooting, 272.
British soldier's cleanliness, the,

69, 175. 201.
British Territorials, 374.
British veteran regular, the, 155.
British wounded, the first, 9.
Brussels, 3, 7, 93.
Brussels hotel, a, 94.
Brussels markets, 95.
Buller, Captain, 286.
Bullets, German, 196.
Burying the dead, 29.
Buttons-boy, the German, 59.

Cadet school at the front, a, 297.
Calais, 47, 54, 66.
Canadian army reunion, 284.
Canadian battery, a, 223.
Canadian discipline, 283.
Canadians, the, 281.
Canadians emotional, 284.
Canadians and a gas attack, 283.
Canals in Belgium, 90.
Canopus, the 332.
Castelnau, General, 132.
" Cat " squadron, the, 319.
Catteau, M., 99.
Cavalry, German, 5, 6.
Cavalry, the Indian, 299.
Cave-dwellers, modern, 260.
Censorship, 161.
Champs Elysees, the, 19, 21.
Chance shots, 321.
Channel, safeguarding the Brit-
ish, 157.
Chaplain of the Inflexible, 334.
Charlottenberg, 63, 79.
Chateau-Salins, 126, 130.
Chateau Thierry, 25.
Cheerfulness, Belgian, 49, 53.
Chefs, work of Belgian, 99.
Chichester, Sir Edward, 338.
Chief engineer's duty, 315.
Christmas in Belgium, 95.
Christy, Corporal, 288, 292, 294.

Church of England service for

dead, 295.
Citizen soldiery, 107.
Civilization, French, 18.
Civil War, the American, 284.
Clark, Lieut., 294.
Claye, 25.
Cleanliness, the British soldier's,

69, 175, 201.
Clocks, winding the, 14.
Commandant of Paris, the, 24.
Commander, a young, 313.
Comradeship, 139, 204, 271.
Communique's, the, 17, 20, 21, 95.
Compiegne, 31.
Connecticut, U.S.S., 325.
Conquerors, lonely, 85.
Conscription, 365.
Contrasts, 281.
Coolness of soldiers, 263.
Cradock, Sir Christopher, 332.
Cradock's men, 350.
Crawford, Admiral, 354.
Crawford, Lieut., 289.
Crown Prince, the British, 305.
Crown Prince, the German, 77.
Culture, difference between old

and new, 62.
Curtain of fire, the, 215.

D

Dead city, a, 15.
Dead, the unburied German, 199.
Death, a living, 87.
De Bay, Lieut., 289.
De'jeuner, 48, 138.
Demands on England, 373.
Democracy, trust of a, 20.
Demonized soldiery, 27.
Department store, a new kind of,

102.
Deschanel, M., 123, 150.
Destroyer, on a, 313.
Destroyer, speed of a, 314.
Destroyers, nimble, 336.
Destruction, organized, 109.
Dewey, Admiral George, 338.
Diaries, German, 27, 200.
Dieppe, 12, 13.
Discipline, British, 198.
Discipline, Canadian, 283.

3§4

INDEX

Dixmude, 48, 88.
Doberitz, prison camp at, 66, 71.
Dog machine-gun battery, a, 5, 8.
Dogger Bank, battle of the, 206,

318, 319, 327-
Domoko, battle of, 206.
Doumer, M. Paul, 24, 29, 38, 39.
Dover, Corporal, 294.
Dreadnoughts, 318, 319, 342.
Dreadnoughts, the colour of, 359.
Dreadnoughts, the old, 360.
Dry docks, 312.
Du Bag, M., 150.
Dunkirk, 52.

Edwards, Lieut., 289.

Eighteen-pounders, useful, 214.

Emden, the, 332.

England, the best of, 10.

England, demands on, 373.

England's generosity, 119.

England's help to Belgian re-
fugees, 81.

English character, 378.

English and German attitude,
the, 57.

English military ideas, 363.

English, trust in the, 6.

Falkland Islands, battle of the,

330-4-
False alarm, a, 241.

Farquhar, Colonel Francis, 284,

292.
Farquhar's footsteps, following

in, 289.
Farragut, Admiral, 343.
Farragut, a saying of, 339.
Fascines, 145.

Fatherland.the, whyit fought, 64.
Febrier, General, 24.
Feeding the French army, 138.
Festubert, 283.

Field-gun positions, French, 133.
Fifth Avenue, 20.
Figaro, Le, 309.
Fire-control officers' sensations

in naval battle, 320.

Firing, the mechanics of, 217.

First open door to war, the, 25.

Flag, Princess Patricia's, 295.

Flagship, the Commander-in-
Chief's, 336.

Flares, 172, 187, 189, 243.

Fleet flagship, on the, 336.

Fleet formation, perfect, 358.

Fleet puts to sea, the, 356.

Folkestone, 10.

Foodstuffs for Belgium, 89.

Forth, naval base on the, 311.

France, German plan to crush, 18.

France, harvesting in, 301.

France, meaning of defeat for, 17.

France, military organization of,
49-

Frazer, Sergeant-Major, 289.

Frederick the Great, 77.

French Alpine Chasseurs, 129.

French army, character of the,
32.

French chauffeurs, 124, 137.

French army, feeding the, 138.

French baker's financial views
a, 300.

French charge, a, 152.
French civilization, 18.
French, the, experts in war, 34.
French field-gun positions, 133.
French government at Bordeaux,

16, 20.
French gunners, 134.
French harbour, scene in a, 158.
French harvesters, 300.
French homes, destruction of, 26.
French nurses, volunteer, 50, 51.
French patriotism, 62.
French peasants, power of the, 26,
French people unafraid, 122, 224.
French private, the, 38, 137.
French reserves at camp-fires,

40.
French reserves, two in Paris, 16.
French reserves waiting, 33.
French sentries, 124.
French Territorials, 49, 125, 142.
French turned grim, 49, 56.
French, Sir John, 130, 301.
Fritz, the submarine, 314, 353,
355, 357-

INDEX

3«5

Front, my best day at the, 252.
" Funk-pits," 211, 315, 323.
Future of Belgium, the, 106.

Gallieni, General, 24.

Gallipoli, 330, 378.

Gas shells, 273.

Gathering the French harvest,

301.
Gaul, the, cool in crises, 46.
Gault, Major A. H., D.S.O., 285.
G. H. Q., 164.
Generalship, great, 131.
Gerbeviller, the Bavarians in,

148.
Gerbeviller, the nuns of, 149.
German advance on Paris

checked, 21.
German aeroplanes, 7, 9, 225.
German-Americans, 63.
German attack broken, a, 288.
German attitude toward the

French, 70.
German bullets, 196.
German buttons-boy, a, 59.
German cavalry, 5, 6.
German conduct in French

towns, 144.
German Crown Prince, the, 77.
German dead, the unburied, 199.
German defence of destruction,

109.
German diaries, 27, 200.
German empire, 77.
German exaltation, 57.
German fleet's one chance, the,

34i-
German hate, 60-2.

German hotel clerk, a, 59.

German methods, the logic of,
108-10.

German military plans, 60.

German nation, team-work of
the, 57.

German naval officers disap-
pointed, 333.

German officer, 55, 116, 197.

German plan to crush France,
the, 18.

German prison camp food, 68.

German private's views, a, 63.
German propaganda, no, 118.
German reasoning, 58.
German officer on Lusitania,

treatment of, 66.
German restrictions on Belgians,

97-
German soldiers, actions of

billeted, 27.
German soldiers, tired, 96.
German South-West Africa, 362.
German squadron in Manila Bay,

the, 338.
German staff, the, 4, 7.
German strategy, the dream of

131-
German submarines, paradise

for, 317.
German uniforms, 288.
German wedge, a, 126.
German West Africa, fall of, 269.
German wounded, 49.
Germans approaching Paris, 12.
Germans in Lorraine, highwater

mark of, 133.
Germans, sixty yards from the,

197-8.
Germany, in, 55-65.
Germany, strength of, 374.
Germany's preparedness, 375.
Gettysburg, 127, 129, 142, 177,

183.
Gibson, Hugh, 104.
Givenchy, 283.
Gneisenau, the, 324, 332
Good-byes, 155, 258.
Good management, 33.
Goose-step, 41.
Grand Fleet, finding the, 308.
Great fleet, antennje of the, 157.
Guarded day and night, 92.
Guarding a coast line, 308.
Guards' regiment, 367.
Gun-layer's game, a, 350.
Gun-layer's part, the, 325.
Gun-power v. armour, 322.
Gun, a veteran naval, 325.
Gunners, French, 134.
Gunners love their guns, 213.
Gunners, neatness of, 216.
Guns are " on," when the, 279.

386

INDEX

Guns, big naval, 318.
Guns, guarding the, 209.
Guns, hidden, 210-11.
Guns, hosts of German, 131.
Guns, subtle intelligence of, 208.
Guns, surprise important with,

207.
Guns, a war of, 206.
Gymkana, Indians in a, 299.

H

Haelen, 5. 8.

Hamburg, bitter hate in, 74.

Hamburg, interned Englishmen

at, 73.
Hans and Jacob, 269.
Harbour defences, 354.
" Harvard, 1914," 84-6, 92-3.
Harvest in France, the, 300.
Hate, Belgian, 5, 87, 96, 111, 113.
Hate, the British cannot, 203.
Hate, bitter, in Hamburg, 74.
Hate, German, 60-2.
Havre, 9, 12.

Health of sailors, the, 348.
" Heavy stuff," 216, 219.
Heligoland, 328.
Hell, holding down lid of, 285,

290.
Herrick, U.S. Ambassador, 22.
Highlanders and Lowlanders,

3°9-
Highwater mark of invasion, 25.
Hit, a beautiful, 323.
Hit, a German shell, 267.
Hohenzollerns, the, 79.
Holland, 55.

Holland, Belgian refugees in, 83.
Hoover, Herbert C, 84.
Hosts of German guns, 131.
*' Hot corner," the, 253, 305.
Hotel clerk, a German, 59.
Hotel de Ville, 4.
Hurrying reserves to the front,

51.

I

Indexing an army, 141.
Indian cavalry, the, 299.
Indian Empire, secret of the, 300.

Indian tribesmen in France, 298.

Indians, the, in a gymkana, 299.

Indians, the, who has trained,
299.

Indomitable, the, 329.

Inflexible, the, 330, 332-5.

Inspections, 302.

International Sleeping Car Co.,
106.

Interned Englishmen at Ham-
burg, 73.

Invincible, the, 332.

Irish, the, 194.

Iron Crosses, 75-6.

James, Henry, jr., 84.

Jellicoe, Sir John, 330, 337-45,

356, 360.
Joffre, General, 14, 19, 20, 27,

34. 52, 130, 139, 141-
Jovin, 128.

K

Kaiser, the, 76-9.

Kaiser leads, how the, 66.

" Keetchenaires," 280, 303.

King of the Belgians, the, 108,

299.
King of the Belgians, portrait of,

in.
King Edward VII class of ship,

361.
King's Royal Rifle Corps, 290,

292.
Kitchener, Lord, 270, 282.
Kitchener's question, 375.
Krieg ist Krieg, 27, 67, 109, 119.

La Bassee region, the, 305.
Landsturm guards, 85, 92, 112,

114, 116.
Larder the army's, 31.
Latin temperament, 16.
" Le Brave Beige ! " 1.
Legion of Honour, the, 23, 93,

150.
Leopold, King, 106.
Liao-yang, battle of, 129, 206.
Liege, 7, 93, 116.

INDEX

387

Lightheadedness, 239.

" Light stuff," 214, 220.

Lion, the, 318-19, 321-5, 327-9.

Listening-posts, 197.

London, 10, 12.

Long range accuracy, 321.

Lorraine, battle in, 127, 130.

Lorraine, battlefield, 142.

Lorraine, highwater mark of

Germans in, 133.
Lorraine, ruins in, 108, 137.
Lorraine, winter in, 120.
Louvain, 3, 4, 109, 153.
Louvain, another orgy, 148.
Louvain library, 115.
Lowry, Admiral, 311.
Luneville, 153.
Luneville, mayor of, 154.
Lusitania, the, 1, 65, 66, 282,

362.
Lyddite shells, 272.

M

McCalla, Captain Bowman, 339.

Macherez, Madame, 40.

Machine-gun expedition, a, 241.

Machine-gun school, 298.

Machine-guns, buried, 291.

Machine-guns, German, 277.

Machine, a human, 343.

Malines, 93.

Manila Bay. 338.

Manly losers, 279.

Manoury's, General, head-
quarters, 42.

Many pictures, 296.

Maple Leaf folk, the, 281.

Marianne, 17.

Marmalade, 271.

Marmiies, 131, 146.

Marne, the, 52.

Marne, England's position after
the, 373.

Martial team-play, 370.

Martin, Lieut., 289.

Meaux, 19, 25.

Mechanics of firing, the, 217.

Men behind the guns, 348.

Metz, 122, 126.

Middle Ages, spirit of, 62.

Midshipman on the Inflexible,

334-
Militarism, 107.

Military ideas, English, 363.

Military organization of France,

49-
Mille, M. Pierre, 309.
Mirecourt, Gap of, 130, 132, 153.
Mons, 9, 12, 26, 364, 374.
Mons, hero of retreat from, 372.
Mons and Paris, 9.
Montreal, 287.
Moonlight, Paris by, 19.
" Morning hate," the, 245.
Motor-trucks, 32.
Mud, living in, 173, 185.
Mulhouse, 130.
My ancestors! 77.

N

Namur, 7.

Nancy, 121-4.

Nancy, Grand Couronne of, 126.

Nancy, attempt to take, 132.

Napoleon, 38, 45.

Naval base on the Forth, 311.

Naval campaign, directing the,

342-

Naval efficiency, test of, 356.

Naval force, the greatest, 317.

Naval friendship, British and
American, 338.

Naval officers, disappointed Ger-
man, 333.

Naval pomp, lack of, 340.

Naval preparedness, 315, 347.

Naval types, homogeneous, 327.

Naval sentries, 309.

Naval souvenirs of battle, 335.

Navy, industry of, 346.

Navy and outside influence, 352.

Navy yard, a, 311.

Nelson, Admiral, 313.

Nerincx, M., 114.

Nerves, 296.

Neutral's work, a, 84.

Neuve Chapelle, in, 177, 205.

New army, the, 280, 363.

New army, composition of the,

303-4-
New army, making the, 374-6.

388

INDEX

Newspapers, Belgian, 97.
Newspapers and cigarettes, 36.
New York, 5, 15, 20.
New Zealand, the, 319.
Nine-inch shells, 262, 274.
Niven, Major Hugh W., 289, 295.
Normal life behind the army, 255.
North Sea, 328, 355.
Notre Dame, 21.
Noyon, 31, 40.

Nuns of Gerbeviller, the, 149.
Nurses, volunteer, 50-1.

Priests fighting, 21.

Princess Patricia's Canadian

Light Infantry, 284.
Princess Royal, the, 319.
Prison camp at Doberitz, 66, 71.
Prison camp food, 68.
Prisoners, the best, 68.
Prisoners, German, 22, 41.
Problems to bridge, 89.
Problems, British, 363.
Prussian eagle, a captured, 23.
Prussian officer, the, 76.
Psychology of the trenches, 271.

Offensive, the British, 177, 276.
Officer's bedchamber, an, 245.
Opera house in Berlin, 75.
Organized destruction, 109.
Ostend, 12, 81.

P.P.s, the, 285, 287, 295.

Pappineau, Lieut., 291.

Paris, 12-23, 25, 29, 120.

Paris, American residents in, 22.

Paris markets, 21.

Paris by moonlight, 20.

Paris not normal, 121.

Paris waits, 15.

Passions, organized, 56.

Patrol, going out with the, 242.

Peace, a separate, 60.

" Perfectly normal," 59, 72.

Pessimism, 377.

Pichon, M. Stephen, 309.

Pilken, 253.

Pioneer sightseeing party, 24.

" Piou-pious," 137.

Pitiful little offensive, a, 130.

Place Stanislaus, 124.

Place in the sun, the, 58.

Plateau d'Amance, 120, 127, 128,

13°. i3i-
Plugman's part, the, 325.
"Poilus," 137, 139, 145-
Poincare, President, 150.
Ponsot, M. Henri, 309.
Pont-a-Mousson, 126.
Port William, 332.
Pride of regiment, 367.

Queen Elizabeth, the, 317, 330,

360.
Question often asked, a, 87, 89.

Range, having the, 331, 334.

Ranks, rising from the, 369.

Reconnaissance, a, 239.

Red trousers, 13.

Refugees, Belgian, 48, 81, 83.

Regiment, pride of, 367.

Regular, the British veteran, 155.

Reinach, M. Joseph, 309.

Relief work in Belgium, 103.

Reserves, waiting, 263.

Rhodes scholars, 84.

Road of war I know, a, 155.

Roberts, Elmer, 25.

Robertson, Sir William, 369.

Rockefeller Foundation, 84.

Root, Secretary Elihu, 377.

Rose, Dr., 84.

Rotterdam, 83.

Royal Navy, officer of the, 309,
310.

Rudolph Virchow Hospital, di-
rector of, 74.

Runaway correspondents, the,
147.

Russia and Japan, 80.

Russian prince, a, 71.

Russian prisoners, 71.

Sailors' health, 348.
St. Eloi, 285.

INDEX

389

St. Mihiel, 126.
Ste. Genevieve, 125, 127.
Salient, Ypres, 285, 287, 374.
Salisbury Plain mud, 282.
Sandhurst, 367-9.
Scharnhorst, the, 324, 332.
Schipperke spirit, 2, 6-8, 48, 53,

107.
School in bombing, a, 247.
Seaplanes, 353.
Sea-power, 318, 361.
Searchlights and flares, 175.
Secretary of War, a soldier, 370.
Seine, 19.
Senlis, 25, 43-5.
September, 1914, 10, 13, 121,

129, 133, 142.
Seymour, Sir Edward, 338-9.
Sharpshooting, 270.
Shell-fire, sensations under, 261.
Shell-wounds, 306.
Shells, gas, 273.
Shells, importance of, 257.
Shells, nine-inch, 274.
Shells, the work of, 183.
Shi-kou arsenal, 339.
Ship drudgery, 347, 350.
Ship life in war-time, 348.
Ship target practice, 351.
Ships, a city of, 327.
Ships that have fought, 317.
Shooting good, 272.
Shooting to kill, 288.
Shropshire Light Infantry, 290.
Sieges Allee, the, 77, 79.
" Silver Bullet " game, 352.
Sister Julie, 149.
Sister Marie, 150.
Sixty yards from the Germans,

197-
Smiles among ruins, 136.
Snipers, 233, 269.
Societe de Femmes de France,

44.
Soissons, 25, 32, 36, 38.
Soissons, mayor of, 40.
Soixante-quinze guns, 25, 37, 129.
Soldiers' wants, 35.
Soup-kitchens, 99.
South African Dutchmen's gift,

344-

South-West Africa, German, 332.

Specializing in the navy, 313.

Spotting shell-bursts, 217.

Spy, a possible, 181.

Staff, the German, 4, 7.

Star boarders, 71.

Stewart, Lieut Charles, 286.

Still, Captain, 289.

Stone Age men. 259.

Strafe, 238.

Strength of Germany, the, 374.

Strikes, no, 312.

Sturdee, Sir Frederick Doveton,

331-3-
Submarine hunting, 353.

Submarine maps, 344.

Submarines and aviators, 354.

Submarines, paradise for, 317.

Submarines, the part of, 341.

Submarines, tracks of, 354.

Successful attack, an, 280.

Super-drilled, 326.

Surgeon, a battalion, 268.

Tannenberg, 7b, 78.
Target, right on the, 221.
Taube, the enemy of the, 226-8.
Taubes, 7, 19, 265.
Tea in the trenches, 268.
Team-work of German nation,

57-
Temps, Le, 309.
Territorials, British, 374.
Territorials, French, 49, 125, 142.
Thermopylae, a British and

French, 259.
Tickets, blue and yellow, 100.
Tiger, the, 318, 319, 322-4, 356.
" Towed square of canvas," the,

35i-
Trawlers, 340, 355.
Trench-building, 145.
Trench, hard to visualize a, 167.
Trench home, a, 237.
Trench rations, 195.
Trench, seeing a, 172.
Trench soldier talk, 189, 235.
Trench, taking and holding a,

253-

39°

INDEX

Trench taking, a lesson in, 249.
Trench, what is a ? 171.
Trenches, after duty in the, 175.
Trenches, influence of the unseen

in the, 169.
Trenches in summer, 230.
Trenches in winter, 167.
Trenches, psychology of the, 271.
Trenches, repairing the, 185.
Trenches, tea in the, 268.
Triggs, Lieut., 289.
Tromp's emblem, 344.
Tsushima Straits, battle of, 319.
Tug-of-war, 276.
Turcos, the, 36, 51.
Turkish battleship, a, 360.
Turkish shell, hit from a, 331.
Turrets, 322.

Twinkle in the eye, a, 254.
Two hundred yards of trench,

253-

U

Uhlans, 6, 7.
Un Anglais .'53.
Uniforms, colour of, 49.
Uniforms, German, 288.
Unselfishness, 271.
Unter den Linden, 77.
Unwarlike people, an, 3.

Vandenberg, Lieut., 291.

Verdun, 18, 126.

Victoria Station, 155.

Victory, the look of, 30.

Victory, the, 337, 345.

Vise, 116.

Vitry-le-Francois, 120.

Volunteer nurses, 50, 51.

Volunteers, 365-6.

Von Hindenburg, 78.

Von Kluck, 17, 24, 130.

Von Kluck, on the heels of, 24.

Von Moltke, 4, 376.

Von Spee, 331-3.

Von Tirpitz, Admiral, 341, 344.

Vosges, the, 120, 123.

W

War correspondents, 159.

War, a day's experience in, 252.

War, effect on sailors, 348.

War, fascination of, 222.

War-machine, the, 34, 370.

War, modern, 366.

Warspite, the, 330, 360.

Waterloo, 177.

West Africa, German, fall of,

269.
Western front, the, 276.
West Point, 367-70.
White Way, 15.
Whitlock, U.S. Minister Brand,

89, 104.
Williams, Lieut. -Colonel Dion,

U.S.M.C., 182.
Winning battalion, a, 279.
Winning and losing, 276.
Winnipeg, 281.
Wires, 180.

Women, fearlessness of, 39.
Women of France, 44.
Woolwich, 369.
Work, simply hard, 346, 359.
Wounded, Belgian, 52.
Wounded, British, 9, 10, 53, 258.
Wounded, Calais unprepared for,

49.
Wounded, a first clearing station

for, 258, 306.
Wounded, German, 49.
Wounded, hospital competition

for, 44.
Wounded, rapid care for, 50.
Wyoming, 281.

Ypres, 84.

Ypres-Armentieres line, 47.
Ypres, supreme effort for, 293.
Ypres salient, 117, 285, 287, 374.
Ypres, second battle of. 283, 286.
Yukon, the, 281.

Zeppelins, 19, 80, 123, 361.

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