The Pentecost of calamity

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Eoer the fiery Pentecost

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THE

PENTECOST OF
CALAMITY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

THE

PENTECOST OF
CALAMITY

By

OWEN WISTER

Author of " The Virginian," etc.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1915

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1915,
BY THE CUETIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.

COPYRIGHT, 1915,
BY THE MACM1LLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1915.
Reprinted September, twice, October, twice, November,
three times; December, 1915.

NortoootJ

J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

THE PENTECOST OF
CALAMITY

Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host.

— EMERSON.
I

Y various influences and agents
the Past is summoned before
us, more vivid than a dream.
The process seems as magical as those
whereof we read in fairy legends, where cir-
cles are drawn, wands waved, mystic sylla-
bles pronounced. Adjured by these rites,
voices speak, or forms and faces shape
themselves from nothing. So, through
certain influences, not magical at all,
our brains are made to flash with visions
7

8 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

of other days. Is there among us one
to whom this experience is unknown?
For whom no particular strain of music,
or no special perfume, is linked with
an inveterate association? Music and
perfumes are among the most potent
of these evocatory agents; but many
more exist, such as words, sounds, hand-
writing. Thus almost always, at the
name of the town Cologne, the banks
of the golden stream, the German
Rhine, sweep into my sight as first I
saw them long ago ; and from a steamer's
deck I watch again, and again count, a
train composed of twenty-one locomo-
tives, moving ominous and sinister on
their new errand. That was July 19,
1870. France had declared war on
Prussia that day. Mobilization was be-
ginning before my eyes. I was ten.

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Dates and anniversaries also perform
the same office as music and perfumes.
This is the ninth of June. This day,
last year, I was in the heart of Ger-
many. The beautiful, peaceful scene is
plain yet. It seems as if I never could
forget it or cease to love it. Often
last June I thought how different the
sights I was then seeing were from those
twenty-one locomotives rolling their
heavy threat along the banks of the
Rhine. And, for the mere curiosity
of it, I looked in my German diary to
find if I had recorded anything on last
June ninth that should be worth repeat-
ing on this June ninth.

Well, at the end of the day's jotted
routine were the following sentences:
"I am constantly more impressed with
the Germans. They are a massive, on-

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going, steady race. Some unifying slow
fire is at work in them. This can be
felt, somehow." Such was my American
impression, innocent altogether, deeply
innocent, and ignorant of what the
slow fire was going to become. So
were the peasants and the other humbler
subjects of the Empire who gave me this
daily impression; they were innocent
and ignorant too. Therefore is the
German tragedy deeper even than the
Belgian.

On June twenty-eighth I was still in
the heart of Germany, but at another
beautiful place, where further signs of
Germany's great thrift, order and com-
petence had met me at every turn. It
was a Sunday, cloudless and hot, with
the mountains full of odors from the
pines. After two hours of strolling I

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reentered our hotel to find a group of
travelers before the bulletin board.
Here we read in silence the news of a
political assassination. The silence was
prolonged, not because this news touched
any of us nationally but because any
such crime must touch and shock all
thoughtful persons.

At last the silence was broken by an
old German traveler, who said: "That
is the match which will set all Europe
in a blaze." We did not know who
he was. None of our party ever knew.
On the next morning this party took
its untroubled way toward France, a
party of innocent, ignorant Americans,
in whose minds lingered no thought of
the old German's remark. That even-
ing we slept in Rheims. Our windows
opened opposite the quiet cathedral.

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It towered far above them into the
night and sky, its presence filling our
rooms with a serene and grave bene-
diction. Just to see it from one's
pillow gave to one's thoughts the quality
of prayer.

Two days later I took my leave of it
by sitting for a silent hour alone beneath
its solemn nave. I can never be too
glad that I bade it this good-by. Not
long afterward — only thirty-two days
— we recollected the old German's re-
mark, for suddenly it came true. He
had known whereof he spoke. On Au-
gust 1, 1914, Europe fell to pieces; and
during August, 1915, in a few weeks
from to-day, the anniversaries will be-
gin— public anniversaries and private.
These, like perfumes, like music, will
waken legions of visions. The days of

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the calendar, succeeding one another,
will ring in the memories of hundreds
and thousands like bells. Each date
will invest its day and the sun or the
rain thereof with special, pregnant re-
lation to the bereft and the mourning
of many faiths and languages. Thus
all Europe will be tolling with memorial
knells inaudible, yet which in those
ears that hear them will sound louder
than any noise of shrapnel or calamity.

II

n

ALAMITY, like those far-off
locomotives on the Rhine, has
again rolled out of Germany
on her neighbors. Yet this very Calam-
ity it is that has given me back my
faith in my own country. It was Ger-
many at peace which shook my faith;
and I must tell you of that peaceful,
beautiful Germany in which I rejoiced
for so many days, and of how I envied
it. Then, perhaps, among some other
things I hope you will see, you will see
that it is Germany who is, in truth, the
deepest tragedy of this war.
The Germany at peace that I saw

during May and June, 1914, was, in
B 17

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the first place, a constant pleasure to
the eye, a constant repose to the body
and mind. Look where you might,
beauty was in some form to be seen,
given its chance by the intelligence of
man — not defaced, but made the most
of; and, whether in towns or in the
country, a harmonious spectacle was
the rule. I thought of our landscape,
littered with rubbish and careless fences
and stumps of trees, hideous with glar-
ing advertisements; of the rusty junk
lying about our farms and towns and
wayside stations; and of the disfigured
Palisades along the Hudson River.
America was ugly and shabby — made
so by Americans; Germany was swept
and garnished — made so by Germans.
In Nauheim the admirable courtyard
of the bathhouses was matched by the

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admirable system within. The conven-
ience and the architecture were equally
good. For every hour of the invalid's
day the secret of his well-being seemed
to have been thought out. On one side
of the group and court of baths ran the
chief street, shady and well-kempt, with
its hotels and its very entertaining shops ;
on the other side spread a park. This
was a truly gracious little region, em-
bowered in trees, with spaces and walks
and flowers all near at hand, yet nothing
crowded. The park sloped upward to
a terrace and casino, with tables for
sitting out to eat and drink and hear
the band, and with a concert hall and
theater for the evening. Herein come-
dies and little operas and music, both
serious and light, were plaj
Nothing was far from

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baths, the doctors, the hotels, the music,
the tennis courts, the lake, the golf links
— all were fitted into a scheme laid out
with marvelous capability. Various hills
and forests, a little more distant, pro-
vided walks for those robust enough to
take them, while longer excursions in
carriages or motor cars over miles of
excellent roads were all mapped out
and tariffed in a terse but comprehensive
guidebook. Such was living at Nauheim.
Dying, I feel sure, was equally well ar-
ranged ; it was never allowed to obtrude
itself on living.

Each day began with an early hour
of routine, walking and water-drinking
before breakfast, amid surroundings
equally well planned — an arcade in-
closing a large level space, with an ex-
panse of water, a band playing, flowers

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growing in the open, cut flowers for sale
in the arcade and comfortable seats
where the doctor permitted pausing,
but no permanent settling down. Thus
went the whole day. Everything was
well planned and everything worked. I
thought of America, where so many
things look beautiful on paper and so
few things work, because nobody keeps
the rules. I thought of our college
elective system, by which every boy
was free to study what best fitted him
for his career, and nearly every boy
did study what he could most easily
pass examinations in. There was no
elective system in Nauheim. Every-
body kept the rules. There was no
breakdown, no failure.

Moreover, the civility of the various
ministrants to the invalid, from the

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eminent professor-doctor down through
hotel porters and bath attendants to
the elevator boy, was well-nigh perfect.
If you asked for something out of the
routine, either it was permitted or it
was satisfactorily explained why it could
not be permitted. Whether at the bank,
the bookshop, the hotel, the railway
station or in the street, your questions
were not merely understood — the Ger-
mans knew the answers to them. And
every day the street was charming with
fresh flowers and fresh fruit in abundance
at many corners and booths — cherries,
strawberries, plums, apricots, grapes,
both cheap and good, as here they never
are. But the great luxury, the great
repose, was that each person fitted his
job, did it well, took it seriously. After
our American way of taking it as a joke,

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particularly when you fumble it, this
German way was almost enough to
cure a sick man without further treat-
ment.

Ill

Ill

HIS serenity of living was not
got up for the stranger; it
was not to meet his market
that a complex and artificial ease had
been constructed, bearing no relation to
what lay beyond its limits. That sort
of thing is to be found among ourselves
in isolated spots, though far less perfect
and far more expensive. Nauheim was
merely a blossom on the general tree.
It was when I began my walks in the
country and found everywhere a corre-
sponding, ordered excellence, and came
to talk more and more with the peasants
and to notice the men, women and chil-
dren, that the scheme of Germany grew
impressive to me.

27

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So had it not been in 1870, as I looked
back on my early impressions, reading
them now in my maturer judgment's
light. So had it not been even in 1882
and 1883, when I had again seen the
country. We various invalids of Nau-
heim presently began to compare notes.
All of us were going about the country,
among the gardens and the farms, or
across the plain through the fruit trees
to little Friedberg on its hill — an old
castle, a steep village, a clean Teutonic
gem, dropped perfect out of the Middle
Ages into the present, yet perfectly
keeping up with the present. Many
of the peasants in the plain, men and
women, were of those who brought
their flowers and produce to sell in
Nauheim — humble people, poor in what
you call worldly goods, but seemingly

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 29

very few of them poor in the great es-
sential possession.

We invalids compared notes and
found ourselves all of one mind. Ten
or twelve of us were, at the several
hotels, acquaintances at home ; every one
had been struck with the contentment
in the German face. Contentment !
Among the old and young of both
sexes this was the dominating note,
the great essential possession. The
question arose: What is the best sign
that a government is doing well by its
people — is agreeing with its people,
so to speak? None of us were quite
so sure as we used to be that our native
formula, "Of the people, by the people,
for the people," is the universal ultimate
truth.

Twice two is four, wherever you go;

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this is as certain in Berlin as it is at
Washington or in the cannibal islands.
But, until mankind grows uniform, can
government be treated as you treat
mathematics? Until mankind grows
uniform, will any form of government
be likely to fit the whole world like a
glove? So long as mankind continues
as various as men's digestions, better
to look at government as if it were a sort
of diet or treatment. How is the gov-
ernment agreeing with its people? This
is the question to ask in each country.
And what is the surest sign? Could
any sign be surer than the general ex-
pression, the composite face of the
people themselves? This goes deeper
than skyscrapers and other material
aspects.
I had sailed away from skyscrapers

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and limited expresses; from farmers
sowing crops wastefully; from houses
burned through carelessness; from
forests burned through carelessness;
from heaps of fruit rotting on the ground
in one place and hundreds of men hungry
in another place. I had sailed away
from the city face and the country face
of America, and neither one was the
face of content. They looked driven,
unpeaceful, dissatisfied. The hasty
American was not looking after his
country himself, and nobody was there
to make him look after it while he rushed
about climbing, climbing — and to what ?
A higher skyscraper. It was very rest-
ful to come to a place where the spirit of
man was in stable equilibrium; where
man's lot was in stable equilibrium;
where never a schoolboy had been told

32 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

he might become President and every
schoolboy knew he could not be Emperor.

The students on a walking holiday
from their universities often wandered
singing through Nauheim. Somewhat
Tyrolese in get-up, sometimes with odd,
Byronic collars, too much open at the
neck, they wore their knapsacks and the
caps that showed their guild. They
came generally in the early morning
while the invalids were strolling at the
Sprudel. The sound of their young
voices singing in part-chorus would be
heard, growing near, passing close, then
dying away melodiously among the trees.

A single little sharp discord vibrated
through all this German harmony one
day when I learned that in the Empire
more children committed suicide than
in any other country.

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But soon this discord was lost amid
the massive Teutonic polyphony of well-
being. Of this well-being knowledge
was enlarged by excursions to various
towns. To Worms, for instance, that
we might see the famous Luther Monu-
ment. Part of the journey thither lay
through a fine forest. This the city
of Frankfurt-am-Main owns and has
forested for seven hundred years; using
the wood all the time, but so wisely
that the supply has maintained itself
against the demand. I thought of our
own forests, looted and leveled, and of
ourselves boasting our glorious future
while we obliterated that future's re-
sources. Frankfurt was there to teach
us better, had we chosen to learn.

IV

IV

N Frankfurt-am-Main was born
one of the three supreme poets
since Greece and Rome — Goethe
— from whom I shall quote more than
once ; but Frankfurt has present glories
that I saw. It is one of many beauti-
fully governed German cities. I grew
even fond of its Union Station, since
through this gate I entered so often the
pleasures and edifications of the town.
The trains were a symbol of the whole
Empire. About a mile north of Nauheim
the railroad passes under a bridge and
curves out of sight. The four-fifteen
was apt to be my express to Frankfurt.
I would stand on the platform, watch in
hand, looking northward for my train.
37

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At four-eleven the bridge was invariably
an empty hole. Invariably at four-
twelve the engine filled the hole; then
the train glided in quietly, and smoothly
glided on, almost punctual to the second.
So did the other trains.

The conductors were officials of dis-
ciplined courtesy and informed minds.
They appeared at the door of your
compartment, erect, requesting your
ticket in an established formula. If
you asked them something they told
you correctly and with a Teutonic
adequacy that was grave, but not gruff.
Once only in a score of journeys did I
encounter bad manners. Now I should
never choose these admirable conduc-
tors for companions, but as conductors
they were superior to the engaging
fellow citizen who took my ticket down

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in Georgia and, when I asked did his
train usually make its scheduled con-
nection at Yemassee Junction, cried
out with contagious mirth:

"My Lawd, suh, 'most nevah!"
In these German trains another little
discord jarred with some regularity:
the German passengers they brought
from Berlin, or were taking back to
Berlin, were of a heavy impenetrable
rudeness — quite another breed than
the kindly Hessians of Frankfurt.

We know the saying of a floor — that
it is so clean "you could eat your dinner
off it." All the streets of Frankfurt,
that I saw, were clean like this. The
system of street cars was lucid — and
blessedly noiseless ! — and their conduc-
tors informed with the same adequate
gravity I have already noted.

40 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

I found that I developed a special
affection for Route 19, because this took
me from the station to the opera house.
But all routes took one to and through
aspects of municipal perfection at which
one stared with envy as one thought of
home.

Oh, yes ! Frankfurt is a name to me
compact with memories — memories of
clean streets ; of streets full of by-passers
who could direct you when you asked
your way; of streets empty of beggars,
empty of all signs of desolate, drunken
or idle poverty; of streets bordered by
substantial stone dwellings, with fra-
grant gardens; of excellent shops; the
streets full of prosperous movement and
bustle ; an absence of rags, a presence of
good stout clothes ; a people of contented
faces, whether they talked or were silent

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 41

— the same firm and broad contentment,
like a tree deep-rooted, in the city face
that was in the country face.

These burghers, these Frankfurters,
seemed to be going about their business
with a sort of solid yet placid energy,
well and deliberately aimed, that would
hit the mark at once without wasting
powder. It was very different and very
superior to the ill-arranged and hectic
haste of New York and Chicago; here
nobody seemed driven as though by
invisible furies — the German business
mind was not out of breath.

Such are my memories of Frankfurt
at work. Frankfurt at leisure was to be
seen in its Palm Garden. This was the
town's place of general recreation ; large,
various, beautifully and intelligently
planned; with space for babies to roll

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in safety, and there were the babies roll-
ing, and their nurses; with courts for
tennis, and thither I saw adolescent
Frankfurt strolling in flannels and short
skirts after business hours ; with benches
where sat the more elderly, taking the air
and gazing at the games or the flowers
or the pleasant trees; with paths more
sequestered that wound among bowers,
convenient for sweethearts — but I did
not see any, because I forbore to look. A
central building held tropic plants and
basins, and large rooms for bad weather,
I suppose, with a restaurant; but on
this fine day the music played and we
dined outside.

An entrance fee, very small, served to
make you respect the Palm Garden, since
humanity seldom respects what it pays
nothing for. Most unexpected show of

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 43

all in this Palm Garden were the flowers
under glass. I had erroneously supposed
that any German scheme of color would
be heavy, and possibly garish. Never
had I beheld more exquisite subtlety on
so extended a scale of arrangement.
One walked through aisle after aisle of
roses and other blooms in these green-
houses— everywhere was the same deli-
cate sense and feeling ; the same, in fact,
in these flower schemes that one finds in
German lyric verse, and in the songs of
Schubert, Schumann and Franz.

It was in the opera house — Frankfurt
has a fine and commodious one — that
my whole impression of Germany's glory
culminated. The performances drew
their light from no Melbas or Carusos,
or other meteors, but from a fixed con-
stellation, now and then enriched by

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some visitor ; it was teamwork of drilled
and even excellence, singers, chorus,
orchestra and scenery unitedly equal to
the occasion, in operas old and new, an
immense sweep of repertory, with an
audience to match — an accustomed au-
dience, to whom music was traditional
food, music having always grown here-
about plenteously, indigenously, so that
they took it as naturally as they took
their Rhine wine, paying for it as moder-
ately, going to hear it in rather plain
clothes, as a rule — men in day dress,
women in high-neck; not an audience
that had to put on its diamonds in order
to listen conspicuously to a costly and
not comprehended exotic.

The difference between hearing opera
where it grows and hearing it in New
York is the difference between eating

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strawberries warm from their vines in
June and strawberries in January that
have come a thousand miles by freight.
Where opera grows, it is the blend of
native music, singers and listeners that
gives a ripe flavor of a warmth which
Fifth Avenue can never purchase.

This, every performance in Frankfurt
had ; but even this could be raised to a
higher key of inspiration. I walked in
one night and found myself amid a pious
ceremonial. They were giving an old
work, of bygone design, stiff in outline,
noble, remote from all present things.
Why did they revive this somewhat pale
and rigid classic ? For contrast, variety ?
Not at all. Two hundred years ago this
day, Gluck had been born. Gluck had
written this opera. For this reason,
then, Frankfurt was assembled to hear

46 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

Gluck's music and remember him ; and,
as I looked at these living Germans honor-
ing their classics, I thought it was truly
a splendid people that not only possessed
but practically nourished themselves with
these masterpieces of their great dead.

But this was not all. This was Ger-
many looking at its Past. In the Frank-
furt opera house I also learned one of the
ways in which Germany attends to its
Future. It was on a Sunday afternoon.
As I crossed the open space toward the
opera house it seemed as though I were
the only grown person bound there.
Children by threes and fours, and in little
groups, were streaming from every quar-
ter, entering every door, tripping up the
wide, handsome stairs, filling all the seats
— boys and girls; it was like the Pied
Piper of Hamelin. After a few minutes

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 47

I found that I was indeed almost alone
amid a rippling sea of children — nearly
two thousand, as I later learned. In the
boxes here and there was a parent or
two with a family party, and dotted
about the house a few scattered older
heads among the young ones.

The overture began. " Hush ! " went
several little voices; the sprightly, ex-
pectant Babel fell to silence; they
listened like a congregation in church.

Then the curtain rose. It was a gay
old opera, tuneful, full of boisterous, in-
nocent comedy and simple sentiment.
Not Gluck this tune ; Gluck would have
been a trifle severe for their young un-
derstandings. The enthusiasm and the
attention of these boys and girls, with
their clapping of hands and their laugh-
ter, soon affected the spirits of the singers

48 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

as a radiant day in spring ; it affected me.
I envied the happy parents who had their
children round them; it was like some
sort of wonderful April light. Beneath
it the quaint, sweet old opera shone like
a fruit tree in blossom. The actors
became as children again themselves ; so
did the fiddlers; so did the conductor.
I doubt if that little old opera, Czaar und
Zimmermann, had ever felt younger- in
its life; and I thought if the spirit of
Goethe were watching Frankfurt, his
city, to-day, it would add a new happi-
ness to a moment of his Eternity.

Between the acts I was full of ques-
tions. What occasion was this? I read
the program, wherein was set forth a most
interesting account of the composer —
his character, life and adventures, with :a
historic account also of Peter the Great,

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 49

the hero of the opera ; but nothing about
the occasion. So in the lobby I ad-
dressed myself to a group of the men
I had seen dotted among the rows of
children. The men were schoolmasters.
The occasion was an experiment. The
children were of the public schools of
Frankfurt — not the oldest scholars, but
the middle grades of the schools. For
the oldest, Frankfurt had already pro-
vided opera days, but this was the first
ever given for these younger boys and
girls. The cost was twelve-and-a-half
cents a seat. If it proved a success, a
second would follow in two weeks. At
the theater, throughout each winter
school term, plays were given expressly
for them in this way — the great German
classics; but never any opera before
to-day.

50 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

Well, the performance went on ; but I
was obliged, near the end of it, to hasten
away to my train for Nauheim, most re-
luctantly leaving the sight and company
of those two thousand joyous children of
the Frankfurt public schools. "Rosy
cheeks predominated; eyeglasses were
rare." — Again I quote from my own
diary: — "The children seemed between
ten and fifteen. The boys had good fore-
heads and big backs to their heads."

OTHING can efface this mem-
ory, nothing can efface the
whole impression of Germany ;
in retrospect this picture rises clear —
the fair aspect and order of the country
and the cities, the well-being of the
people, their contented faces, their
grave adequacy, their kindliness; and,
crowning all material prosperity, the feel-
ing for beauty as shown by their gardens,
and, better and more important still, the
reverent value for their great native
poets and musicians, so attentive, so
cherishing, seeing to it that the young
generation began early its acquaintance
with the masterpieces that are Germany's
heritage of inspiration.
53

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Such was the splendor of this empire as
it unrolled before me through May and
June, 1914, that by contrast the state
of its two great neighbors, France and
England, seemed distressing and unen-
viable. Paris was shabby and incoherent,
London full of unrest. Instead of Ger-
many's order, confusion prevailed in
France; instead of Germany's placidity,
disturbance prevailed in England; and
in both France and England incompetence
seemed the chief note. The French face,
alike in city or country, was too often a
face of worried sadness or revolt; men
spoke of political scandals and dissensions
petty and unpatriotic in spirit, and a
political trial, revealing depths of every
sort of baseness and dishonor, filled the
newspapers; while in England, besides
discord of suffrage and discord of labor,

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civil war seemed so imminent that no
one would have been surprised to hear of
it any day.

So that I thought: Suppose a soul,
arrived on earth from another world,
wholly ignorant of earth, without any
mortal ties whatever, were given its choice
after a survey of the nations, which it
should be born in and belong to? In
May, June and July, 1914, my choice
would have been, not France, not Eng-
land, not America, but Germany.

It was on the seventh day of June,
1914, that Frankfurt assembled her school
children in the opera house, to further
their taste and understanding of Ger-
many's supreme national art. Exactly
eleven months later, on May 7, 1915, a
German torpedo sank the Lusitania ; and
the cities of the Rhine celebrated this also
for their school children.

VI

VI

HE world is in agony. We wit-
ness the most terrible catas-
trophe known to mankind —
most terrible, not from its huge size,
but because it is a moral catastrophe.
Through centuries of suffering and
cruelty, guided by religion, we thought
we had attained to knowledge of and
belief in a public right between nations,
and an honorable warfare, if warfare
must be. This has been shattered to
pieces. No need to investigate further
the atrocities at Liege or Louvain.
These and more have indeed been amply
proved, but what need of proof after the
Lusitania school festival? In that holi-
59

60 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

day we see the feast of Kultur, the Teu-
tonic climax. How came it to pass ? Is
it the same Germany who gave those two
holidays to her school children? The
opera in Frankfurt, and this orgy of
barbaric blood-lust, guttural with the
deep basses of the fathers and shrill with
the trebles of their young ? Their young,
to whom they teach one day the gentle
melodies of Lortzing, and to exult hi
world-assassination on another?

Goethe said — and the words glow
with new prophetic light : " Germans are
of yesterday ; . . . a few centuries must
still elapse before ... it will be said
of them, 'It is long since they were
barbarians/" And again: "National
hatred is a peculiar thing. You will
always find it strongest and most violent
where there is the lowest degree of Kul-

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 61

tur." But how came it to pass? Do
the two holidays proceed from the same
Kultur, the same Fatherland?

They do; and nothing in the whole
story of mankind is more strange than
the case of Germany — how Germany
through generations has been carefully
trained for this wild spring at the throat
of Europe that she has made. The Ser-
vian assassination has nothing to do
with it, save that it accidentally struck
the hour. Months and years before
that, Germany was crouching for her
spring. In one respect the war she has
incubated is the old assault of Xerxes,
of Alexander, of Napoleon, of every one
who has been visited by the dangerous
dream of world conquest. Only, never
before has the dream been taught to a
people on such a scale, not merely be-

62 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

cause of the vast modern apparatus, but
much more because no subjects of any
despot have ever been so politically docile
and credulous as the Germans.

In another respect this war resembles
strikingly our own and the French Revo-
lution. All three were prepared and
fomented by books, by teachings from
books. The American brain seized hold
of certain doctrines and generalizations
of Locke, Montesquieu, Burlamaqui and
Beccaria concerning the rights of man
and the consent of the governed. The
French brain nourished and inspired
itself with some theorems of the ency-
clopedists and of Rousseau about man's
natural innocence and the social con-
tract. The Teutonic brain assimilated
some diplomatic and philosophic pre-
cepts laid down by Machiavelli,

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 63

Nietzsche and Treitschke. Indeed,
Fichte, during the Winter of 1807-08,
at the University of Berlin, made an
address to the German people which
may be accounted the first famous aca-
demic harbinger and source of the present
Teutonic state of mind. Here the
parallel stops. With America and
France, war made way for independence,
liberty and freedom, political and moral ;
Germany would establish everywhere her
absolute military despotism. We shall
reach in due course the full statement of
her creed ; we are not ready for it yet.

VII

VII

iLFTEN of late I have thought

o

of those twenty-one locomo-
tives moving along the bank
of the Rhine. They were a symbol.
They stood for the House of Hohen-
zollern; they carried Caesar and all
his fortunes, which had begun long
before locomotives were invented. July
19, 1870, is one of the dates that does not
remain of the same size, but grows, has
not done growing yet, will be one of His-
tory's enormous dates before it is done
growing. The heavier descendants of
those locomotives have been lugging to
France a larger destruction, and more
hideous, than their ancestors dragged
67

68 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

there; but this new freight belongs to
the same haul, forms part of one vast
organic materialistic growth, and spiritual
eclipse, of which 1870 and 1914 are im-
portant parts, but by no means the
whole.

Woven with it is the struggle of
nations for the possession of their own
soul. Consider 1870 in this light:
Through that war France took her soul
out of the custody of an Emperor and
handed it to the people; through the
same war Germany placed her soul in
the hands of an Emperor. Defeated
France, rid of her Bonapartes; victori-
ous Germany, shackled to her Hohen-
zollern ! In the light of forty-five years
how those two opposite actions gleam
with significance, and how in the same
light the two words defeat and victory

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 69

grow lambent with shifting import !
Unless our democratic faith be vain,
France walked forward then, and Ger-
many backward. But this did not seem
so last June.

VIII

vni

A.D it not culminated before
our eyes, the case of Ger-
many would be perfectly
incredible. As it stands to-day, the
truly incredible thing is that she should
have made her spring at the throat of
an unexpecting, unprepared world.
Now that she has sprung, the diagnosis
of her case has been often and ably made
- before the event, Dr. Charles Sarolea,
a Belgian gentleman, made it notably;
but prophets are seldom recognized
except by posterity. The case of Ger-
many is a hospital case, a case for the
alienist ; the mania of grandeur, comple-
mented by the mania of persecution,
73

74 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

Very well do I remember the first
dawning hint I had of this diseased men-
tal state. It was Wednesday, August 5,
1914. We were in mid-ocean. Before
the bulletin board we passengers were
clustered to read that day's marconigram
and learn what more of Europe had
fallen to pieces since yesterday. This
morning was posted the Kaiser's proc-
lamation, quoting Hamlet, calling on his
subjects "to be or not to be," and to
defy a world conspired against them.
In these words there was such a wild,
incoherent ring of exaltation that I said
to a friend : "Can he be off his head?"

Later in that vpyage we sped silent
and unlanterned through the fog from
two German cruisers, of which nobody
seemed personally afraid but one
stewardess. She said : " They're all

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 75

wild beasts. They would send us all to
the bottom." No one believed her.
Since then we believe her. Since then
we have heard the wild incoherent ring in
many German voices besides the Kaiser's,
and we know to-day that Germany's
mania is analogous to those mental epi-
demics of the Middle Ages, when fanati-
cism, usually religious, sent entire com-
munities into various forms of madness.
The case of Germany is the Prussian-
izing of Germany. Long after all of
us are gone, men will still be studying
this war; and, whatever responsibility
for it be apportioned among the nations,
the huge weight and bulk of guilt will
be laid on Prussia and the Hohenzollern
— unless, indeed, it befall that Germany
conquer the world and the Kaiser dic-
tate his version of History to us all,

76 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

suppressing all other versions, as he
has conducted the training of his sub-
jects since 1888. But this will not be;
whatever comes first, this cannot be
the end. If I believed that the earth
would be Prussianized, life would cease
to be desirable.

To me the whole case of Germany,
the whole process, seems a fatalistic
thing, destined, inevitable ; cosmic forces
above and beyond men's comprehension
flooding this northern land with their
high tide, as once they flooded southern
coasts; giving to this Teuton race its
turn, its day, its hour of white heat
and of bloom, its temperamental great-
ness, its strength and excess of vital
sap, intellectual, procreative — all this
grandeur to be hurled into tragedy by
its own action.

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 77

The process goes back a long way
behind Napoleon — who stayed it for
a while — to years when we see the
Germany of the Reformation, Poetry,
Music, the grand Germany, blossoming
in the very same moment that the
Prussian poison was also germinating.
About 1830, Heine perceived and wrote
scornfully concerning the new and evil
influence. This was a germination of
state and family ambition combined, fer-
menting at last into lust for world do-
minion. It grows quite visible first in
Frederick the Great. By him the Prus-
sian state of mind and international ethics
began to be formulated. By force and
fraud he annexed weak peoples' territory.
He cut Poland's body in three, blas-
phemously inviting Russia and Austria
to partake with him of his Eucharist.

78 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

Theft has followed theft since Freder-
ick's. His cynical, strong spirit guided
Prussia after Waterloo, guided first the
predecessor of Bismarck and next Bis-
marck himself, with his stealing of
Schleswig-Holstein, his dishonest muti-
lation of the telegram at Ems and the
subsequent rape of Alsace and Lorraine
in 1870. Very plain it is to see now,
and very sad, why the small separate
German states that had indeed produced
their giants — their Luthers, Goethes,
Beethovens — but had always suffered
military defeat, had been the shambles
of their conquerors for centuries, should
after 1870 hail their new-created
Emperor. Had he not led them united
to the first glory and conquest they
had ever known? Had he not got
them back Alsace and Lorraine, which

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 79

France had stolen from them two hun-
dred years ago? So they handed their
soul to the Hohenzollern. This marks
the beginning of the end.

IX

w

IX

E can hardly emphasize too
much, or sufficiently under-
line, the moral effect of
1870 on the German nature, the in-
fluence it had on the German mind.
It is essential to a clear understanding
of the full Prussianizing process that
now set in. On the German's innate
docility and credulity many have dwelt,
but few on what 1870 did to this. Only
with Bismarck's quick, tremendous vic-
tory over France as the final explanation
is the abject and servile faith that the
Germans thenceforth put in Prussia
rendered conceivable to reason. They
blindly swallowed the sham that Bis-
marck gave them as universal suffrage.
83

84 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

They swallowed extreme political and
military restraint. They swallowed a
rigid compulsion in schools, which led
to the excess in child suicide I have
mentioned. They swallowed a state of
life where outside the indicated limits
almost nothing was permitted and
almost everything was forbidden.

But all this proscription is merely
material and has been attended by
great material welfare. Intellectual
speculation was apparently unfettered;
but he who dared philosophize about
Liberty and the Divine right of Kings
found it was not. Prussia put its uni-
form not only on German bodies but
on their brains. Literature and music
grew correspondingly sterilized. Drama,
fiction, poetry and the comic papers
became invaded by a new violence and

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 85

a new, heavy obscenity. Impatience
with the noble German classics was
bred by Prussia. What wonder, since
freedom was their essence ?

Beethoven, after Napoleon made him-
self Emperor, tore off the dedication of
his " Eroica " symphony to Napoleon.
And Goethe had said : " Napoleon affords
us an example of the danger of elevating
oneself to the Absolute and sacrificing
everything to the carrying out of an
idea." Goethe fell frankly out of date in
Berlin. Symphony orchestras could no
longer properly interpret Mozart and
Beethoven. A strange blend of frivolity
and bestiality began to pervade the
whole realm of German art. Scientific
eminence degenerated pari passu. No
originator of the dimensions of Helm-
holtz was produced, but a herd of dili-

86 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

gent and thorough workers-out of the ideas
got from England — like the aniline dyes
— or from France — like the Wassermann
tests — and seldom credited to their
sources. So poor grew the academic
tone at Berlin that a Munich professor
declined an offer of promotion thither.

For forty years German school chil-
dren and university students sat in the
thickening fumes that exhaled from
Berlin, spread everywhere by professors
chosen at the fountainhead. Any pro-
fessor or editor who dared speak any-
thing not dictated by Prussia, for
German credulity to write down on its
slate, was dealt with as a heretic.

Out of the fumes emerged three
colossal shapes — the Super-man, the
Super-race and the Super-state: the
new Trinity of German worship.

X

HITS was Germany shut in from
the world. Even her Socialist-
Democrats abjectly conformed.
China built a stone wall, Germany a wall
of the mind.

To assert that any great nation has
in these modern days deliberately built
around herself such a wall, may seem
an extreme statement, and I will there-
fore support it with an instance — only
one instance out of many, out of hun-
dreds ; it will suffice to indicate the sort
of information about the world lying
outside the wall that Germany has
carefully prepared for the children in
her schools. I quote from the letter

90 THE^ PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

of an American parent recently living in
Berlin, who placed his children in a
school there: "The text books were
unique. I suppose there was not in
any book of physics or chemistry that
they studied an admission that a citi-
zen of some other country had taken
any forward step; every step was by
some line of argument assigned to a
German. As you might expect, the
history of the modern world is the work
of German Heroes. The oddest ex-
ample, however, was the geography
used by Katherine. (His daughter, aged
thirteen.) This contained maps indi-
cating the Deutsche Gebiete (the Ger-
man "spheres of influence" in foreign
lands) in striking colors. In North
and South America, including the United
States and Canada, there are said to be

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 91

three classes of inhabitants — negroes,
Indians and Germans. For the United
States there is a black belt for negroes
and a middle-west section for Indians;
but the rest is Deutsche Gebiete. Can-
ada is occupied mainly by Indians. The
matter was brought to my attention
because one of Katherine's girl friends
asked her whether she was of negro or
Indian blood; and when she replied
she was neither her friend pointed out
that this was impossible for she surely
was not German." Information less
laughable about the morals taught in
the German schools I forbear to quote.
During forty years Germany sat within
her wall, learning and repeating Prussian
incantations. It recalls those savage
rites where the participants, by shouting
and by concerted rhythmic movements,

92 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

work themselves into a frothing state.
This has befallen Germany. Within
her wall of moral isolation her sight
has grown distorted, her sense of pro-
portion is lost ; a set of reeling delusions
possesses her — her own greatness, her
mission of Kultur, her contempt for
the rest of mankind, her grievance that
mankind is in league to cramp and sup-
press her.

These delusions have been attended
by their proper Nemesis: Germany has
misunderstood us all — everybody and
everything outside her wall.

Like the bewitched dwarfs in certain
old magic tales, whose talk reveals their
evil without their knowing it, Germans
constantly utter words of the most naif
and grotesque self-betrayal — as when
the German ambassador was being «s-

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 93

corted away from England and was
urged by his escort not to be so down-
cast; the war being no fault of his.
He answered in sincere sadness:

"Oh, you don't realize! My future
is broken. I was sent to watch England
and tell my Emperor the right moment
for him to strike, when England's in-
ternal disturbances would make it im-
possible for her to fight us. I told him
the moment had come."

Or again, when a German hi Brussels
said to an American :

- "We were sincerely sorry for Belgium;
but we feel it is better for that country
to suffer, even to disappear, than for
our Empire, so much larger and more
important, to be torpedoed by our
treacherous enemies."

Or again, when Doctor Dernburg

94 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

shows us why Germany had to murder
eleven hundred passengers:

"It has been the custom heretofore
to take off passengers and crew. . . .
But a submarine . . . cannot do it.
The submarine is a frail craft and may
easily be rammed, and a speedy ship is
capable of running away from it."

No more than the dwarf has Germany
any conception what such candid words
reveal of herself to ears outside her
Teutonic wall — that she has walked
back to the morality of the Stone Age
and made ancient warfare more hideous
through the devices of modern science.

Thus her Nemesis is to misunderstand
the world. She blundered as to what
Belgium would do, what France would
do, what Russia would do; and she
most desperately blundered as to what

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 95

England would do. And she expected
American sympathy.

Summarized thus, the Prussianizing
of Germany seems fantastic; fantastic,
too, and not of the real world, the utter
credulity, the abject, fervent faith of
the hypnotized young men. Yet here
are a young German's recent words.
I have seen his letter, written to a friend
of mine. He was tutor to my friend's
children. Delightful, of admirable edu-
cation, there was no sign in him of
hypnotism. He went home to fight.
There he inhaled afresh the Prussian
fumes. Presently his letter came, just
such a letter as one would wish from an
ardent, sincere, patriotic youth — for
the first pages. Then the fumes show
their work and he suddenly breaks out
in the following intellectual vertigo:

96 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

" Individual life has become worthless ;
even the uneducated men feel that
something greater than individual hap-
piness is at stake, and the educated know
that it is the culture of Europe. By
her shameless lies and cold-blooded
hypocrisy England has forfeited her
claim to the title of a country of culture.
France has passed her prime anyway,
your country is too far behind in its
development, the other countries are
too small to carry on the heritage of
Greek culture and Christian faith — the
two main components of every higher
culture to-day; so we have to do it,
and we shall do it — even if we and
millions more of us should have to die."

There you have it ! A cultivated
student, a noble nature, a character of
promise, Prussianized, with millions like

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 97

him, into a gibbering maniac, and flung
into a caldron of blood ! Could tragedy
be deeper? Goethe's young Wilhelm
Meister thus images the ruin of Ham-
let's mind and how it came about :
"An oak tree is planted in a costly vase,
which should only have borne beautiful
flowers hi its bosom; the roots expand
and the vase is shattered." Thus has
Prussia, planted in Germany, cracked
the Empire.

XI

XI

ND now we are ready for the
Prussian Creed. The follow-
ing is an embodiment, a com-
posite statement, of Prussianism, com-
piled sentence by sentence from the
utterances of Prussians, the Kaiser and
his generals, professors, editors, and
Nietzsche, part of it said in cold
blood, years before this war, and all of
it a declaration of faith now being
ratified by action:

"We Hohenzollerns take our crown
from God alone. On me the Spirit of
God has descended. I regard my whole
. . . task as appointed by heaven. Who
opposes me I shall crush to pieces.
101

102 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

Nothing must be settled in this world
without the intervention ... of ...
the German Emperor. He who listens
to public opinion runs a danger of in-
flicting immense harm on ... the State.
When one occupies certain positions in
the world one ought to make dupes
rather than friends. Christian morality
cannot be political. Treaties are only
a disguise to conceal other political
aims. Remember that the German
people are the chosen of God.

"Might is right and ... is decided
by war. Every youth who enters a
beer-drinking and dueling club will re-
ceive the true direction of his life. War
in itself is a good thing. God will see
to it that war always recurs. The
efforts directed toward the abolition
of war must not only be termed foolish,

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 103

but absolutely immoral. The peace of
Europe is only a secondary matter for
us. The sight of suffering does one
good; the infliction of suffering does
one more good. This war must be con-
ducted as ruthlessly as possible.

"The Belgians should not be shot
dead. They should be ... so left as
to make impossible all hope of recovery.
The troops are to treat the Belgian
civil population with unrelenting severity
and frightfulness. Weak nations have
not the same right to live as powerful
. . . nations. The world has no longer
need of little nationalities. We Germans
have little esteem and less respect . . .
for Holland. We need to enlarge our
colonial possessions; such territorial ac-
quisitions we can only realize,
cost of other states.

104 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

"Russia must no longer be our frontier.
The Polish press should be annihilated
. . . likewise the French and Dan-
ish. . . . The Poles should be allowed
. . . three privileges: to pay taxes,
serve in the army, and shut their jaws.
France must be so completely crushed
that she will never again cross our path.
You must remember that we have not
come to make war on the French people,
but to bring them the higher Civiliza-
tion. The French have shown them-
selves decadent and without respect
for the Divine law. Against England
we fight for booty. Our real enemy is
England. We have to ... crush ab-
solutely perfidious Albion . . . subdue
her to such an extent that her influence
all over the world is broken forever.

"German should replace English as

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 105

the world language. English, the bas-
tard tongue . . . must be swept into
the remotest corners . . . until it has
returned to its original elements of an
insignificant pirate dialect. The Ger-
man language acts as a blessing which,
coming direct from the hand of God,
sinks into the heart like a precious
balm. To us, more than any other
nation, is intrusted the true structure
of human existence. Our own country,
by employing military power, has at-
tained a degree of Culture which it
could never have reached by peaceful
means.

"The civilization of mankind suffers
every tune a German becomes an Amer-
ican. Let us drop our miserable at-
tempts to excuse Germany's action.
We willed it. Our might shall create

106 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

a new law in Europe. It is Germany
that strikes. We are morally and in-
tellectually superior beyond all com-
parison. . . . We must . . . fight with
Russian beasts, English mercenaries and
Belgian fanatics. We have nothing to
apologize for. It is no consequence
whatever if all the monuments ever
created, all the pictures ever painted,
all the buildings ever erected by the
great architects of the world, be de-
stroyed. . . . The ugliest stone placed
to mark the burial of a German grenadier
is a more glorious monument than all
the cathedrals of Europe put together.
No respect for the tombs of Shake-
speare, Newton and Faraday.

"They call us barbarians. What of
it? The German claim must be: . . .
Education to hate. . . . Organization

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 107

of hatred. . . . Education to the de-
sire for hatred. Let us abolish unripe
and false shame. ... To us is given
faith, hope and hatred; but hatred is
the greatest among them."

XII

XII

AN the splendid land of
Goethe unlearn its Prussian
lesson and regain its own
noble sanity, or has it too long inhaled
the fumes? There is no saying yet.
Still they sit inside their wall. Like a
trained chorus they still repeat that
England made the war, that Louvain
was not destroyed, that Rheims was
not bombarded, that their Fatherland
is the unoffending victim of world-
jealousy. When travelers ask what
proofs they have, the trained chorus
has but one reply: "Our government
officials tell us so." Berlin, Cologne,
Munich — all their cities — give this
111

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

answer to the traveler. Nothing that
we know do they know. It is kept from
them. Their brains still wear the Prus-
sian uniform and go mechanically through
the Prussian drill. Will adversity lift
this curse?

Something happened at Louvain —
a little thing, but let it give us hope.
In the house of a professor at the Uni-
versity some German soldiers were quar-
tered, friendly, considerate, doing no
harm. Suddenly one day, in obedience
to new orders, they fell on this home,
burned books, wrecked rooms, destroyed
the house and all its possessions. Its
master is dead. His wife, looking on
with her helpless children, saw a soldier
give an apple to a child.

"Thank you," she said; "you, at
least, have a heart."

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 113

"No, madam," said the German; "it
is broken."

Goethe said : " He who wishes to
exert a useful influence must be careful
to insult nothing. . . . We are become
too humane to enjoy the triumphs of
Caesar." Ninety years after he said
this Germany took the Belgian women
from their ruined villages — some of
these women being so infirm that for
months they had not been out-of-doors
— and loaded them on trains like cattle,
and during several weeks exposed them
publicly to the jeers and scoffs and in-
sults of German crowds through city
after city.

Perhaps the German soldier whose
heart was broken by Louvain will be
one of a legion, and thus, perhaps,
through thousands of broken German

114 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

hearts, Germany may become herself
again. She has hurled calamity on a
continent. She has struck to pieces a
Europe whose very unpreparedness an-
swers her ridiculous falsehood that she
was attacked first. Never shall Europe
be again as it was. Our brains, could
they take in the whole of this war,
would burst.

But Calamity has its Pentecost.
When its mighty wind rushed over
Belgium and France, and its tongues of
fire sat on each of them, they, too, like
the apostles in the New Testament,
began to speak as the Spirit gave them
utterance. Their words and deeds have
filled the world with a splendor the world
had lost. The flesh, that has dominated
our day and generation, fell away in
the presence of the Spirit. I have

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 115

heard Belgians bless the martyrdom
and awakening of their nation. They
have said:

"Do not talk of our suffering; talk
of our glory. We have found our-
selves."

Frenchmen have said to me: "For
forty-four years we have been unhappy,
in darkness, without health, without
faith, believing the true France dead.
Resurrection has come to us." I heard
the French Ambassador, Jules Jusse-
rand, say in a noble speech: "George
Eliot profoundly observes that to every
man comes a crisis when in a moment,
without chance for reflection, he must
decide and act instantly. What de-
termines his decision? His whole past,
the daily choices between good and evil
that he has made throughout his previous

116 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

years — these determine his decision.
Such a crisis fell in a moment on France ;
she acted instantly, true to her historic
honor and courage."

Every day deeds of faith, love and
renunciation are done by the score and
the hundred which will never be re-
corded, and every one of which is noble
enough to make an immortal song. All
over the broken map of Europe, through
stricken thousands of square miles, such
deeds are being done by Servians, Rus-
sians, Poles, Belgians, French and Eng-
lish,— yes, and Germans too, — the souls
of men and women rising above their
bodies, flinging them away for the sake
of a cause. Think of one incident only,
only one of the white-hot gleams of the
Spirit that have reached us from the
raging furnace. Out from the burning

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 117

cathedral of Rheims they were dragging
the wounded German prisoners lying
helpless inside on straw that had begun
to burn. In front of the church the
French mob was about to shoot or tear
to pieces those crippled, defenseless
enemies. You and I might well want
to kill an enemy who had set fire to
Mount Vernon, the house of the Father
of our Country.

For more than seven hundred years
that great church of Rheims had been
the sacred shrine of France. One minute
more and those Germans lying or crawl-
ing outside the church door would have
been destroyed by the furious people.
But above the crash of rafters and glass,
the fall of statues, the thunder of bom-
barding cannon, and the cries of French
execration, rose one man's voice. There

118 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

on the steps of the ruined church stood
a priest. He lifted his arms and said:

"Stop; remember the ancient ways
and chivalry of France. It is not French-
men who trample on a maimed and fallen
foe. Let us not descend to the level of

our enemies."

It was enough. The French remem-
bered France. Those Germans were
conveyed in safety to their appointed
shelter — and far away, across the lands
and oceans, hearts throbbed and eyes
grew wet that had never looked on
Rheims.

These are the tongues of fire ; this is
the Pentecost of Calamity. Often it
must have made brothers again of
those who found themselves prone on
the battlefield, neighbors awaiting the
grave. In Flanders a French officer

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 119

of cavalry, shot through the chest, lay
dying, but with life enough still to write
his story to the lady of his heart. He
wrote thus:

"There are two other men lying near
me, and I do not think there is much
hope for them either. One is an officer
of a Scottish regiment and the other a
private in the uhlans. They were struck
down after me, and when I came to my-
self I found them bending over me,
rendering first aid. The Britisher was
pouring water down my throat from
his flask, while the German was en-
deavoring to stanch my wound with
an antiseptic preparation served out to
their troops by the medical corps. The
Highlander had one of his legs shattered,
and the German had several pieces of
shrapnel buried in his side.

120 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

"In spite of their own sufferings, they
were trying to help me; and when I
was fully conscious again the German
gave us a morphia injection and took
one himself. His medical corps had
also provided him with the injection
and the needle, together with printed
instructions for their use. After the
injection, feeling wonderfully at ease,
we spoke of the lives we had lived before
the war. We all spoke English, and we
talked of the women we had left at home.
Both the German and the Britisher had
been married only a year. . . .

" I wondered — and I suppose the
others did — why we had fought each
other at all. I looked at the High-
lander, who was falling to sleep, ex-
hausted, and, in spite of his drawn
face and mud-stained uniform, he looked

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

the embodiment of freedom. Then I
thought of the Tricolor of France and
all that France had done for liberty.
Then I watched the German, who had
ceased to speak. He had taken a prayer
book from his knapsack, and was try-
ing to read a service for soldiers wounded
in battle. And . . . while I watched
him I realized what we were fighting
for. . . . He was dying in vain, while the
Britisher and myself, by our deaths, would
probably contribute something toward
the cause of civilization and peace."

Thus wrote this young French officer
of cavalry to the lady of his heart, the
American lady to whom he was engaged.
The Red Cross found the letter at his
side. Through it she learned the man-
ner of his death. This, too, is the
Pentecost of Calamity.

XIII

XIII

ND what do the women say
— the women who lose such
men? Thus do they decline
to attend at The Hague the Peace Con-
gress of foolish women who have lost
nobody :

" How would it be possible, in an hour
like this, for us to meet women of the
enemy's countries ? . . . Have they dis-
avowed the . . . crimes of their govern-
ment? Have they protested against
the violation of Belgium's neutrality?
Against offenses to the law of nations?
Against the crimes of their army and
navy ? If their voices had been raised
it was too feebly for the echo of their
125

126 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

protest to reach us across our violated
and devastated territories. . . ."

And one celebrated lady writes to a
delegate at The Hague :

" Madam, are you really English ? . . .
I confess I understand better English-
women who wish to fight. ... To ask
Frenchwomen in such an hour to come
and talk of arbitration and mediation
and discourse of an armistice is to ask
them to deny their nation. . . . All
that Frenchwomen could desire is to
awake and acclaim in their children,
their husbands and brothers, and in
their very fathers, the conviction that
defensive war is a thing so holy that all
must be abandoned, forgotten, sacrificed,
and death must be faced heroically to
defend and save that which is most
sacred . . . our country. ... It would

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 127

be to deny my dead to look for any-
thing beside that which is and ought
to be ! — if the God of right and jus-
tice, the enemy of the devil and of
force and crazy pride, is the true God."
Thus awakened and transfigured by
Calamity do men and women rise in
their full spiritual nature, efface them-
selves, and utter sacred words. Ca-
lamity, when the Lusitania went down,
wrung from the lips of an awakened
German, Kuno Francke, this noble burst
of patriotism:

Ends Europe so? Then, in Thy mercy,

God,
Out of the foundering planet's gruesome

night
Pluck Thou my people's souL From rage

and craze

128 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

Of the staled Earth, 0 lift Thou it aloft,
Re-youthed, and through transfiguration

cleansed;

So beaming shall it light the newer time,
And heavenly, on a world refreshed, un-
fold.
Soul of my race, thou sinkest not to dust.

If Germany's tragedy be, as I think,
the deepest of all, the hope is that she,
too, will be touched by the Pentecost
of Calamity, and pluck her soul from
Prussia, to whom she gave it in 1870.
Thus shall the curse be lifted.

XIV

XIV

ND what of ourselves in this
well-nigh world-wide cloud-
burst?

Every man has walked at night
through gloom where objects were dun
and hard to see, when suddenly a flash
of lightning has struck the landscape
livid. Trees close by, fences far off,
houses, fields, animals and the faces of
people — all things stand transfixed by
a piercing distinctness. So now, in this
thunderstorm of war, each nation and
every man and woman is searchingly
revealed by the perpetual lightnings.
Whatever this American nation is, what-
ever aspect, noble or ignoble, our De-
131

132 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

mocracy shows in the glare of this
cataclysm, is even already engraved on
the page of History, will be the portrait
of the United States in 1914-15 for all
time.

I want no better photograph of any
individual than his opinion of this war.
If he has none, that is a photograph of
him. Last autumn there were Americans
who wished the papers would stop print-
ing war news and give their readers a
change. So we have their photographs,
as well as those of other Americans who
merely calculated the extra dollars they
could squeeze out of Europe's need and
agony. But that — thank God ! — is
not what we look like as a whole.
Our sympathy has poured out for Bel-
gium a springtide of help and relief; it
has flowed to the wounded and afflicted

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 133

of Poland, Servia, France and England.
A continuous publishing of books, maga-
zine articles and editorials, full of jus-
tice and of anger at Prussia's long-
prepared and malignant assault, should
prove to Europe that American hearts
and heads by the thousand and hundred
thousand are in the right place. Merely
the stand taken by the New York Sun,
New York Times, Outlook and Philadel-
phia Public Ledger — to name no more
— saves us from the reproach of moral
neutrality : saves us as individuals.

Yet, somehow, in Europe's eyes we
fall short. The Allies, in spite of their
recognition of our material generosity,
find us spiritually wanting. In the
London Punch, on the sinking of the
Lusitania, Britannia stands perplexed
and indignant behind the bowed figure

134 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

of America, and, with a hand on her
shoulder, addresses her thus :

In silence you have looked on felon blows,
On butcher's work of which the waste

lands reek;
Now, in God's name, from Whom your

greatness flows,
Sister, will you not speak ?

This is asked of us not as individuals
but as a nation; and as a nation our
only spokesman is our Government:
"Sister, will you not speak?" Well-
we did speak; but after nine months
of silence. This silence, in the opinion
of French and Belgian emissaries who
have talked to me with courteous frank-
ness, constitutes our moral failure.

"When this war began" — they say
— "we all looked to you. You were the

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 135

great Democracy; you were not in-
volved; you would speak the justifying
word we longed for. We knew you
must keep out politically; this was
your true part and your great strength.
We altogether agreed with your Presi-
dent there. But why did your univer-
sities remain dumb? The University of
Chicago stopped the mouth of a Belgian
professor who was going to present Bel-
gium's case in public. Your press has
been divided. The word we expected
from you has never come. You sent us
your charity; but what we wanted was
justice, ratification of our cause."

To this I have answered :

" First — Our universities do not and
cannot sit like yours in high seats, in-
spiring public opinion. I wish they did.
Second — We are not yet melted into

136 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

one nationality; we are a mosaic of
languages and bloods; yet, even so,
never in my life have I seen the Ameri-
can press and people so united on any
question. Third — Our charity is our
very way — the only way we have — of
telling you we are with you. I am glad
you recognize the necessity of our po-
litical neutrality. Anything else would
have been, both historically and as an
act of folly, unprecedented. Fourth —
Do not forget that George Washington
advised us to mind our own business."

But they reply : " Isn't this your own
business?" And there they touch the
core of the matter.

Across the sea the deadliest assault
ever made on Democracy has been
going on, month after month. We
send bread and bandages to the

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 137

wounded; individually we denounce the
assault. Columbia and Uncle Sam stand
looking on. Is this quite enough ? War
being out of the question, was there
nothing else? No protest to register?
Did the wide ocean wholly let Columbia
out? Europe, weltering in her own
failure, had turned towards us a wistful
look.

I cannot tell what George Washington
would have thought; I only know that
my answer to my European friends
leaves them unconvinced — and there-
fore how can it quite satisfy me ? Minds
are exalted now, and white-hot. When
they cool, what will our historic likeness
be as revealed in the lightnings of this
cosmic emergency? Will it be the por-
trait of a people who sold its birthright
for a mess of pottage? Viewing how

138 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

we have given, and the tone of our press,
perhaps this would hardly be just. Yet
I can not but regret that we did not pro-
test. What we lost in not doing so I
see clearly; I can not see clearly what
we gained. We may argue thus, in our
defense : If it is deemed that we missed
a great opportunity in not protesting as
signatories of the violated Hague con-
ventions, are not our proofs of the vio-
lations more authentic now than at the
time? WTiat we heard was incredible
to American minds. We had never
made or known such war. By the time
the truth was established a protest might
have seemed somewhat belated. Well,
this is all the explanation we can offer.
Is it enough ?

It is too early to answer; certain it is
that not as we see ourselves but as

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 139

others see us, so shall we forever be.
Certain it is also, and eternally, that
through suffering alone men and nations
find their greater selves. It is fifty years
since we Americans knew the Pentecost
of Calamity. These years have been too
easy. We have not had to live danger-
ously enough. We have prospered, we
have been immune, and our prosperity
has proved somewhat a curse in disguise.
In these times that uncover men's
souls and the souls of nations, has our
soul come to light, or only our huge,
lavish body? In 1865 we had found
our soul indeed. Where is it gone ? We
have been witnessing many "scholarly
retreats," and every day we have had
to hear the "maxims of a low prudence."
Have they sunk to the core and killed
it? God forbid! But since August, 1914,

140 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

we have stood listening to the cry of our
European brothers-in-Liberty. They did
not ask our feeble arm to strike in their
cause, but they yearned for our voice
and did not get it. Will History acquit
us of this silence ?

Meanwhile, the maxims of a low pru-
dence, masquerading as Christianity,
daily counsel us to keep our arm feeble.
It was not so that Washington survived
Valley Forge, or Lincoln won through
to Appomattox. If the Fourth of July
and the Declaration it celebrates still
mean anything to us, let our arm be
strong.

This for our own sake. For the sake
of mankind, if this war brings home to
us that we now sit in the council of na-
tions and share directly in the general
responsibility for the world's well-being,

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 141

we shall have taken a great stride in
national and spiritual maturity, and our
talk about the brotherhood of man may
progress from rhetoric towards realiza-
tion.

XV

XV

rhave yet to find our
greater selves. We have
also yet to realize that

Europe, since the Spanish War, has
counted us in the concert of great na-
tions far more than we have counted
ourselves.

Somebody wrote in the New York
Sun:

We are not English, German, Swede,
Or Austrian, Russian, French or Pole;

But we have made a separate breed
And gained a separate soul.

It sounds well ; it means nothing ; its
sum total is zero. America asserts the
K 145

146 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

brotherhood of man and then talks about
a separate soul !

To speak of the Old World and the
New World is to speak in a dead lan-
guage. The world is one. All hu-
manity is in the same boat. The
passengers multiply, but the boat re-
mains the same size. And people who
rock the boat must be stopped by force.
America can no more separate itself
from the destiny of Europe than it can
escape the natural laws of the universe.

Because we declared political inde-
pendence, does any one still harbor the
delusion that we are independent of the
acts and fortunes of monarchs? If so,
let him consider only these four events :
In 1492 a Spanish Queen financed a
sailor named Columbus — and Europe
reached out and laid a hand on this

THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY 147

hemisphere. In 1685 a French King
revoked an edict — and thousands of
Huguenots enriched our stock. In 1803
a French consul, to spite Britain, sold us
some land — it was pretty much every-
thing west of the Mississippi. One
might well have supposed we were inde-
pendent of the heir of Austria. In
1914 they killed him, and Europe fell
to pieces — and that fall is shaking
our ship of state from stem to stern.
There may be some citizens down in
the hold who do not know it — among a
hundred million people you cannot ex-
pect to have no imbeciles.

Thus, from Palos, in 1492, to Sarajevo,
in 1914, the hand of Europe has drawn
us ever and ever closer.

Yes, indeed; we are all in the same
boat. Europe has never forgotten some

148 THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY

words spoken here once: "That govern-
ment of the people, by the people, for
the people, shall not perish from the
earth." She waited to hear us repeat
that in some form when The Hague
conventions we signed were torn to scraps
of paper. Perhaps nothing save calam-
ity will teach us what Europe is thank-
ful to have learned again — that some
things are worse than war, and that you
can pay too high a price for peace ; but
that you cannot pay too high for the
finding and keeping of your own soul.

[ FINIS 1

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i i T LJ r-\n +

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525

The Pentecost of calami tv .

DATE DUE

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lister, Owen.

The Ifentecost of calamity .W55

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