Part 57

"I made my sketch of the Royal Exchange. I want Americans to see what can happen if His Imperial Lowness over on the Continent sees fit to send his Zeppelins to England. Not being big enough nor strong enough to injure England vitally, he can take this method of injury, he can injure women and children and maim horses, destroy business and works of art and blow up the congested districts.

"We have seen what the Savior of the World's Culture could do in France and Belgium; it is small wonder that all England has in the back of her head surmises as to what he might accomplish if some of his air craft crossed the Channel. By which I do not mean to say that the English are apprehensive. They are not nervous. I have spent more than a month with them, among my own friends, learning the general temper of the country.

"There are no demonstrations, there is no boasting, no display. London is much the same as it always was. At night London is darkened, in accordance with the order of Oct. 9, but that is about all the difference. It is so dark that you can hardly get up Piccadilly, but London takes her amusements about as usual. The theatres are not overcrowded, but neither are they empty. For luncheons and for dinners Prince's is full, the Carlton is full. The searchlights are playing over the city looking for those Zeppelins. That is a new wrinkle to me; the idea of blinding the men up there at the wheel with a powerful light is a good one.

"These Englishmen have their teeth set. They know perfectly well that they are fighting for their existence. All this talk of the necessity of drumming up patriotism in England is bosh. England has no organized publicity bureau such as Germany, and in contrast she may have seemed quiet to the point of apathy. But don't fancy that Englishmen are apathetic. They are slow and they are sure. They are just beginning to realize that they have these fellows by the back of the necks. Before I left London I saw every day in the Temple Gardens, down by the Embankment, that steady drill of thousands of young men in straw hats, yellow shoes, and business suits. I felt their spirit.

"There is a great fundamental difference between the spirit of Germany and the spirit of the Allies, and the whole world has recognized it. With the Allies there has been no boasting, even now when they realize that the top is reached and this war is on the down grade. There is determination, but there is no cock-sureness, no goose-step. There is no insolence.

"Why, in the last analysis, is the whole world against Germany? Because of her insufferable insolence. It is an insolence which has been fairly bred in the bone of every German soldier. I can give you a little concrete instance. My daughter-in-law had been serving in one of the Paris hospitals ever since the war broke out. She was finally placed on a committee which was to meet the trainloads of wounded soldiers when they first arrived.

"In one of the cars one day there was a wounded officer, a German. He spoke no French, and a young French Lieutenant, very courteous, was trying to make him understand something. My daughter, too, had no success. Finally a young German, a common soldier who was in the same car, said to this German officer: 'I am an Alsatian; I can interpret for you.'

"'How dare you!' And the German officer turned to him in perfect fury. 'How do you, a common soldier, dare to speak to me, an officer!' And with that he struck the Alsatian full in the face with what little strength he had left.

"Now there is an example of the attitude to which the German military has been trained.

"On another occasion, when a French officer, after one of the battles, came courteously to the commanding German officer of the division and said, 'Sir, you are my prisoner,' the German spat in his face. That is all very dramatic and you may say that he showed much spirit, but you could hardly call it a sporting spirit, surely not a civilized spirit.

"It is this domineering spirit that the whole world is resenting. Nothing that Germany can do through her well-organized press agents can conceal that insolence which has been a continuous policy for many years. American opinion is almost unanimous in its opposition to Germany for this one reason.

"Sir Gilbert Parker recently sent me a whole bundle of papers asking me to judge England's case fairly and ask my friends in America to do the same. I wrote back and asked him: 'Why do you waste stamps sending evidence to America? America has the evidence, and if there has been any anti-English feeling in America, von Bernstorff and Dernburg long since demolished it.'

"The world has never witnessed anything so far-reaching as this policy of insolence. Men who in daily life are cultured and fine, whose ideals are high and noble, who have achieved names for themselves in literature, art, and science--we all have many friends among them--have become unconsciously tinctured with this policy. They are intelligent men, but, by the gods, when they get on this subject of Germany's place in the sun, they become paranoiacs! This idea of their pre-eminence has become a disease with Germany. Germany is actually sick with it, and the medicine that will cure her will be pretty bitter.

"I see that George Bernard Shaw presumes to announce that this policy of insolence, this extreme militarism, has been just as prominent in England and in France. Mr. Shaw is great fun and very wise about a lot of things; moreover, he has lived in England a great deal longer than I have, but just the same he is dead wrong when he makes such a statement. I have many old friends in the army and the navy, many in politics, and some of them are of the pronounced soldier, the militarist type. Not one of them would ever dare to write such a book as Bernhardi has written, and I don't believe there's one of them that would take any stock in a man like Nietzsche. Mr. Shaw is dead wrong here; worse than that, he is writing nonsense.

"We live from day to day hoping that the end will be the absolute annihilation of the militarist principle, this get-off-the-earth attitude.

"And what has all this," concluded Mr. Smith suddenly, "to do with art? I'm sure I don't know. No one is thinking about art now."

"But you haven't told me where your sympathies are in this war, Mr. Smith."

"Hey? I don't have any sympathies, as you see. I'm neutral as President Wilson bids me be; I don't care who licks Germany, not even if it is Japan."

*The Helpless Victims*

*By Mrs. Nina Larrey Duryee.*

Hotel Windsor.

DINARD, France, Sept. 1, 1914.

To the Editor of The New York Times:

This is written in great haste to catch the rare boat to England. The author is an American woman, who has spent nine happy Summers in this beautiful corner of France, where thousands of her compatriots have likewise enjoyed Brittany's kindly hospitality.

Yesterday I saw issuing through St. Malo's eleventh century gates 300 Belgian refugees, headed by our Dinard Mayor, M. Cralard. I try to write calmly of that procession of the half-starved, terror-ridden throng, but with the memory of those pinched faces and the stories we heard of murder, carnage, burning towns, insulted women, it is difficult to restrain indignation. They had come from Charleroi and Mons--old men, women, and little children. Not a man of strength or middle age among them, for they are dead or away fighting the barbarians who invested their little country against all honorable dealings.

Such a procession! They had slept in fields, eaten berries, carrots dug from the earth by their hands; drunk from muddy pools, always with those beings behind them who had driven them at the point of their bayonets from their poor homes. Looking back, they had seen flames against the sky, heard screams for pity from those too ill to leave, silenced by bullets.

Here are some of the tales, which our Mayor vouches for, which I heard:

One young mother, who had seen her husband shot, tried to put aside the rifle of the assassin. She was holding her year-old baby on her breast. The butt of that rifle was beaten down, crushing in her baby's chest. It still lives, and I heard it's gasping breath.