Part 40

It is time we got rid of grotesque caricatures of the German people. Such caricatures always represent the outlook of war-time, but they do not make for a lasting peace. There is a great German people, and that people and ours should find each other's hearts. I am not so much concerned as to the Germany of brilliant science and industrious commerce. That is good, but there is something better: It is the Germany of loving husbands and true comrades, of true wives and devoted mothers. It is the heart that rules the world, and we need the true hearts in Germany, England, France, and over all the world to recognise each other. The one prayer for us all in every land in these days surely is, "Lord, that our eyes may be opened!" When we can pray that prayer, we shall begin to see the war to a peace of the heart--the only peace that will not be a "patched-up peace."

FOOTNOTES:

APPENDIX

Mme. F. L. Cyon had some rather important experiences at Lille at the time of the German attack and during the German occupation. She is a woman of singularly cool mentality, and her evidence may be compared with that of Dr. Ella Scarlett-Synge in a widely distant war area.

Mme. Cyon has very kindly placed her notes of her experiences at my disposal. As the notes record also a point of view as to war in general, it has seemed more fitting to print them as an appendix. No statement of this kind is unbiased, for the pacifist has his own bias. Yet I am quite certain that everything set down by Mme. Cyon has been set down in complete sincerity and with unusual absence of mental distortion. The record is that made by a quiet worker amidst circumstances where few people remained sane.

THE MENTAL HAVOC WROUGHT BY THE WAR.

BY FRANCOISE LAFITTE CYON.

During the months of September, October, November, and December, 1914, I undertook a journey in Northern France; going first to Lille, thence to Maubeuge, and returning to England via Brussels, Malines, Antwerp, and Holland.

I was at Lille on October 13, 1914, when the Germans took the town. During the first three months of my stay in France I was engaged in nursing work at the military hospital 105 at Lille. In the early part of December I travelled as well as I could, sometimes tramping and sometimes making use of peasants' carts and local tramways, until I eventually reached Holland.

It is not, however, my intention to speak much of my adventures or of the war itself, but rather to depict, to the best of my ability, the effect which the dreadful events of our doings have had on the minds of the men and women I have met with over there; be they French, Belgian, or German. This article will be an attempt to give a series of short studies in psychology, rather than a dramatic account of a perilous journey.

I wish my readers to bear in mind at the outset that after October 13 I was in German territory, where, from that date onwards, I met with two kinds of people. On the one hand, the oppressors or Germans; on the other hand, the oppressed, namely, the French, Belgian, and a few English.

For a psychological study to be of value, such a distinction is useful to begin with, for one seldom finds the same frame of mind in the victor and the vanquished, in the oppressor and the oppressed.

Whilst endeavouring to give facts, I must distinguish between three types of people whom I met during my journey. First, civilians, French and Belgian; secondly, the hospital staff, doctors and nurses, mostly French, with the exception of two German doctors; thirdly, the military, officers and men, French and German, with a few British. I am obliged to make this division in order to make myself clear, as the events of the war do not seem to affect the people of these three divisions in the same way.

In what follows I shall for the most part depict types.

I met first with the civilian population. When I reached Lille, I found life there much as usual, excepting that all appeared very quiet. But a few days after my arrival Lille began to show an extraordinary and sad animation. The town, which had already given shelter to many refugees from Valenciennes and villages thereabouts, was suddenly crowded by the exodus of the inhabitants of Orchies; the latter town, it was reported, had been completely burnt to the ground by the Germans, only thirty houses having been left standing.

Life in Lille became horrible. In the streets one met long processions of miserable creatures, looking haggard and exhausted. Here was a woman with three tiny children, two of them in a dilapidated perambulator, the other she carried in her arms. She looked grey with the dust of the road: I followed her. She was going to the office of some local paper, whence these poor refugees were directed where to go to find food and shelter. Waiting at the door of the office were such numbers of these worn-out human beings that many of them, too tired to stand any longer, were sitting on the pavement whilst the children were eating pieces of bread.

One morning I followed the crowd going to get bread at the town hall. I saw a little boy of four standing at his mother's side while she talked with another woman. The mother's basket had been put down on the pavement and a round loaf of bread was partly coming out of it. The little mite kneeled down on the ground and, going at it with all his might, he began to eat off the loaf in a way which told a long, sad tale.

But what one met with amongst one's friends was often more horrible than the sights in the streets. The tale of the destruction of Orchies had been believed almost everywhere before any explanation had been forthcoming, and in these days hatred began to rear its head when people talked of the Germans.

"If they had burned Orchies," said one of my acquaintances, "it is because we are too tolerant with them. To brutes we must speak only the language of brutes. We treat their prisoners like guests; let us put them all against the wall and shoot them and their wounded, too."

When I replied that we should have little right to complain of German atrocities if we did what they are reported to do, I was looked at as too soft and as if I were a woman without patriotic feeling. My friend told me this as politely as his temper allowed.

I left him and went into the street to try to find some distraction from his hatred. I chanced to meet a woman of Orchies and inquired what had happened there. I give her tale as told to me, though I have not been able to verify it.

"The Germans," said she, "behaved quite well the first time they came into our town. They were kind to the children and even gave them sweets and toys, but on their second visit they found that some of their wounded had had their ears cut off and they ordered that Orchies should be set on fire."

"It was monstrous," she added, "but I know that an African soldier was found with a necklace of sixty ears, which he had certainly taken somewhere. This, too, was monstrous. I do not excuse the Germans for their crime--I have lost everything myself--but if we allow their wounded to be mutilated at such times, what can we expect? Who can say which side is the more barbarous? I must tell you that the officer ordered to set fire to Orchies was also told to arrest the mayor and some other men and to have them shot. However, he gave them timely warning to evacuate Orchies and to make good their escape, so no one was hurt."

How far this story was true I never knew, but the effect of it on my fellow creatures I had seen too well, and I went away bearing on my heart the words of the woman of Orchies: "Who can say which side is the more barbarous?"

On October 7 we heard that the Germans were outside the city and in many quarters fear was added to the anguish already overburdening the hearts of so many. Yet one woman, hearing the Germans were near, exclaimed, "Say what you like, these men are just like our French men. War is war; you cannot expect it to be anything but cruel and barbarous. The Germans are no enemies of mine."

Her words made a bad impression on the listeners, and it was well that the kind-hearted soul had three brothers in the French Army or she would have been regarded with much suspicion.

An old lady of my acquaintance almost lost her head with fright. "How dare they," she said, speaking of the French, "let the Germans take Lille?"

"What then," said I, "of Rheims?"