Part 36

If all the episodes of this action were recorded they would make a long as well as a grim narrative revealing the ghastliness, the wild passion, the self-sacrifice, and the cool cunning of such an hour or two of modern war.

Some of the tales of the men would have been incredible except that I heard them from soldiers who told the truth that lives on the lips of men who have seen very close into the face of death.

It is, for instance, difficult to believe--yet true--that amidst all this tumult and terror of noise one German prisoner was taken as he sat very calmly in his dug-out reading a book of religious meditations through gold-rimmed spectacles. Perhaps it was the man--I only guess--in whose pocket-book was found a letter to his wife saying, "The position here is hellish, and death is certain. I only pray that it may come soon."

Daily Telegraph, August 16, 1915.

From Belfort in September came the report: "A German aviator this morning flew over Belfort, dropping a wreath on the spot where Pegoud was killed. The following inscription was placed on the wreath: 'To Pegoud, who dies a hero. (Signed) His Adversary.'"

The following is from the Daily News of October 9, 1915:

The parents of a Lance-Corporal in a Highland regiment who was killed in the recent fighting have received particulars about their son's death from a German lady in Frankfurt-on-Main.

The lady's eldest brother was killed last year near Ypres and she knows, she says, how glad they were to receive any details of his death. Another brother, who is an officer in the German army, had written from the front, begging her to inform the dead soldier's relatives of his fate.

In her letter the lady says: "Although we are enemies, pain and mourning unite us. So thought my brother, too, for he wrote everything about your son he could find out. I am sure my brother and his comrades did all honour to their enemies."

The next extract is from the Nation of November 13. 1915:

Soldiers are not reluctant to speak well of their foes. The officer son of a friend of mine relates that beyond his line of trenches is a German commemoration of a British advance in the shape of a carefully wrought cross, bearing the inscription: "Sacred to the memory of Lieutenants A---- and B---- of the Staffordshire Regiment, who died like heroes."

From a private letter: "What impresses one most are the graveyards. All these are beautifully kept, all the graves have been cared for, and no distinction has been drawn between German, English, and French, who lie side by side. 'Hier ruht ein tapferer Englaender, gefallen im Luftkampf' (Here lies a brave Englishman, fallen in the air fight), etc., etc."

The Daily News of March 10, 1919, has the following:

From a staff sergeant in Germany: "Here, in Germany, an English officer with the 'flu was nursed by his landlady, who, when her patient was better, succumbed to its ravages. Her daughter caught it from the mother, and is now lying at death's door. But merely 'Huns,' I suppose."

The roll of honour in the chapel at New College, Oxford, includes the names of three Germans, and the words of charity: Pro patria--Memento fratres in Christo.

THE WAY OF NEW RUSSIA.

In reprisals of good we may learn something from the new Russia. When the German prisoners were set to work Kerensky said, "Prisoners or not, they shall be paid at the same rate as other men," and they were. What was the result? Again the movement of gratitude, which is so potent a force, if only we would believe it. The German prisoners presented half their wages to the Russian Red Cross. I have to rely on private information for this.

THOUGHTS FROM THE OTHER SIDE.

The thoughts of the others are much like our own--that is the difficult truth we have to learn. It is a truth that is absolutely essential to any peace that is to be more than an armistice of fools.

The war has produced in the public opinion of the nations a state of mind which formerly would not have been regarded as possible in our age of internationalism and intellectuality. National egotism and the effort to assert one's own national interests by all and every means are dominating so exclusively each belligerent group that it forms for itself a closed circle of ideas, and under its influence conclusions are drawn which are so contradictory that one is almost inclined to think that logic and common sense have been entirely eliminated from the thinking capacity of the warring nations....

We Germans, among the others, are subject to this war-suggestion. We do not wish to say, after the manner of the Pharisees, beating their breasts: "We thank Thee, Lord, that we are not like these publicans." We know that we, too, are prisoners of our circle of ideas, and must remain so, for we, too, are ruled by our national egotism and by our desire to win the war.--Koelnische Zeitung, as quoted by the Daily News, September 3, 1915.

Ideas imprisoned, narrowed (beschraenkt, as the Germans say), become putrescent through lack of free air. It is in this putrescence that the gospel of hate is bred. Here is a German officer's protest against the infamy of this gospel. It is quoted from the Koelnische Zeitung by Mr. A. G. Gardiner in his book, "The War Lords":

Perhaps you will be so good as to assist, by the publication of these lines, in freeing our troops from an evil which they feel very strongly. I have on many occasions, when distributing among the men the postal packets, observed among them postcards on which the defeated French, English and Russians were derided in a tasteless fashion. The impression made by these postcards on our men is highly noteworthy. Scarcely anybody is pleased with these postcards; on the contrary, every one expresses his displeasure.

This is quite natural when one considers the position. We know how victories are won. We also know by what tremendous sacrifices they are obtained. We see with our own eyes the unspeakable misery of the battlefield. We rejoice over our victories, but our joy is damped by the recollection of the sad pictures which we observe almost daily.

And our enemies have, in an overwhelming majority of cases, truly not deserved to be derided in such a way. Had they not fought bravely we should not have had to register such losses.

Insipid, therefore, as these postcards are in themselves, their effect here on the battlefields, in face of our dead and wounded, is only calculated to cause disgust. Such postcards are as much out of place on the battlefield as a clown is at a funeral. Perhaps these lines may prove instrumental in decreasing the number of such postcards sent to our troops.

Personally, I believe this to express the soul of the real Germany and the soul of the real England. The soul of any people is the best that is in it.

The following is from a lecture delivered by Prof. H. Gomperz in Vienna, early in 1915: