Volume II Part 10 (1/2)
_To Frank N. Doubleday and Others_
London, Christmas, 1915.
DEAR D.P. & Co.
... Now, since we're talking about the war, let me deliver my opinion and leave the subject. They're killing one another all right; you needn't have any doubt about that--so many thousand every day, whether there's any battle or not. When there's ”nothing to report” from France, that means the regular 5,000 casualties that happen every day. There isn't any way of getting rid of men that has been forgotten or neglected. Women and children, too, of course, starve in Serbia and Poland and are ma.s.sacred in Turkey.
England, though she has by very much the largest army she ever had, has the smallest of all the big armies and yet I don't know a family that had men of fighting age which hasn't lost one or more members. And the worst is to come. But you never hear a complaint.
Poor Mr. Dent[29], for instance (two sons dead), says: ”It's all right. England must be saved.”
And this Kingdom alone, as you know, is spending twenty-five million dollars a day. The big loan placed in the United States[30]
would last but twenty days! if this pace of slaughter and of spending go on long enough, there won't be any men or any money left on this side the world. Yet there will be both left, of course; for somehow things never quite go to the ultimate smash that seems to come. Read the history of the French Revolution. How did the French nation survive?
It will go on, unless some unexpected dramatic military event end it, for something like another year at least--many say for two years more, and some, three years more. It'll stop, of course, whenever Germany will propose terms that the Allies can consider--or something near such terms; and it won't stop before.
By blockade pressure and by fighting, the Allies are gradually wearing the Germans out. We can see here the gradual pressure of events in that direction. My guess is that they won't go into a third winter.
Well, dear gentlemen, however you may feel about it, that's enough for me. My day--every day--is divided into these parts: (1) two to three hours listening to Americans or their agents here whose cargoes are stopped, to sorrowing American parents whose boys have run away and gone into the English Army, to nurses and doctors and sh.e.l.l makers who wish to go to France, to bereaved English men and women whose sons are ”missing”: can I have them found in Germany?
(2) to answering letters about these same cheerful subjects; (3) to going over cases and doc.u.ments prepared about all these sorts of troubles and forty other sorts, by the eight or ten secretaries of the Emba.s.sy, and a conference with every one of them; (4) the reading of two books of telegrams, one incoming, the other outgoing, and the preparation of a lot of answers; (5) going to the Foreign Office, not every day but often, to discuss more troubles there; (6) home to dinner at 8 o'clock--at home or somewhere else, and there is more talk about the war or about the political troubles. That for a regular daily routine for pretty nearly a year and a half! As I say, if anybody is keeping the war up for my entertainment, he now has my permission to stop. No time to read, no time to write, little time to think, little or no time to see the people you most wish to see, I often don't know the day of the week or of the month: it's a sort of life in the trenches, without the immediate physical danger. Then I have my cabinet meetings, my financial reports (money we spend for four governments: I had till recently about a million dollars subject to my check); then the commission for the relief of Belgium; then the Amba.s.sadors and Ministers of the other neutral states--our task is worse than war!
Well, praise G.o.d for sleep. I get from seven to nine hours a night, unbroken; and I don't take Armageddon to bed with me.
I don't mind telling _you_ (n.o.body else) that the more I see just how great statesmen work and manage great governments--the more I see of them at close range--whether in Was.h.i.+ngton or London or Berlin or Vienna or Constantinople (for these are _my_ Capitals), the more I admire the methods of the Long Island farmers. Boys, I swear I could take our crowd and do a better job than many of these great men do. I have to spend a lot of time to correct their moves before the other fellow finds out the mistake. For instance I know I spent $2,000 in telegrams before I could make the German Government understand the British military age, and the British Government understand the German military age, for exchanging prisoners who had lost two legs or arms or both eyes; and I've had to send a man to Berlin to get a financial report from one man on one floor of a building there and to take it to another man on the floor above. Just yesterday I was reminded that I had made eighteen requests for the same information of the British Government, when the nineteenth request for it came from Was.h.i.+ngton; and I have now telegraphed that same thing nineteen times since the war began. Of course everybody's worked to death. But something else ails a lot of 'em all the way from Constantinople to London. Leaving out common gutter lying (and there's much of it) the sheer stupidity of governments is amazing. They are all so human, so mighty human! I wouldn't be a government for any earthly consideration. I'd rather be a brindled dog and trot under the wagon.
But it has been an inexpressibly interesting experience to find all this out for myself. There's a sort of weary satisfaction in feeling that you've seen too much of them to be fooled by 'em any more. And, although most men now engaged in this game of government are mere common mortals with most of the common mortal weaknesses, now and then a really big man does stumble into the business. I have my doubts whether a really big man ever deliberately goes into it. And most of the men who the crowd for the moment thinks are big men don't really turn out so. It's a game like bull fighting. The bull is likely to kill you--pretty sure to do so if you keep at the business long enough; but in the meantime you have some exciting experiences and the applause of the audience. When you get killed, they forget you--immediately. There are two rather big men in this Government, and you wouldn't guess in three rounds who they are.
But in general the war hasn't so far developed very big men in any country. Else we are yet too close to them to recognize their greatness. Joffre seems to have great stuff in him; and (I a.s.sure you) you needn't ever laugh at a Frenchman again. They are a great people. As for the British, there was never such a race. It's odd--I hear that it happens just now to be the fas.h.i.+on in the United States to say that the British are not doing their share.
There never was a greater slander. They absolutely hold the Seven Seas. They have caught about seventy submarines and some of them are now destroying German s.h.i.+ps in the Baltic Sea. They've sent to France by several times the largest army that any people ever sent over the sea. They are financing most of their allies and they have turned this whole island into gun and sh.e.l.l factories. They made a great mistake at the Dardanelles and they are slower than death to change their set methods. But no family in the land, from charcoal burners to dukes, hesitates one moment to send its sons into the army. When the news comes of their death, they never whimper. When you come right down to hard facts, the courage and the endurance of the British and the French excel anything ever before seen on this planet. All the old stories of bravery from Homer down are outdone every day by these people. I see these British at close range, full-dress and undress; and I've got to know a lot of 'em as well as we can ever come to know anybody after we get grown. There is simply no end to the silly sides of their character. But, when the real trial comes, they don't flinch; and (except the thoroughbred American) there are no such men in the world.
A seven-foot Kansas lawyer (Kansas all over him) came to see me yesterday. He came here a month ago on some legal business. He told me yesterday that he had always despised Englishmen. He's seen a few with stud-horse clothes and white spats and monocles on who had gone through Kansas to shoot in the Rocky Mountains. He couldn't understand 'em and he didn't like 'em. ”So infernally uppish,” said he.
”Well, what do you think of 'em now?”
”The very best people in the world,” said he. I think he has a notion of enlisting!
You're still publis.h.i.+ng books, I hear. That's a good occupation.
I'd like to be doing it myself. But I can't even get time to read 'em now.
But, as you know, n.o.body's writing anything but war books--from Kipling to Hall Caine. Poor Kipling!--his boy's dead. I have no doubt of it. I've had all the German hospitals and prison camps searched for him in vain. These writing men and women, by the way, are as true blue and as thoroughbred as any other cla.s.s. I can never forget Maurice Hewlett's brave behaviour when he thought that his flying corps son had been killed by the Germans or drowned at sea. He's no prig, but a real man. And the women are as fine as the men....
To go back to books: Of course n.o.body can tell what effect the war will have on the writing of them, nor what sort of new writers may come up. You may be sure that everything is stirred to its profoundest depths and will be stirred still more. Some old stagers will be laid on the shelf; that's certain. What sort of new ones will come? I asked H.G. Wells this question. He has promised to think it out and tell me. He has the power to guess some things very well. I'll put that question to Conrad when I next see him.
Does anybody in the United States take the Prime Minister, Mr.
Asquith, to be a great man? His wife is a brilliant woman; and she has kept a diary ever since he became Prime Minister; and he now has pa.s.sed the longest single term in English history. Mr. Dent thinks he's the biggest man alive, and Dent has some mighty good instincts.
Talk about troubles! Think of poor Northcliffe. He thinks he's saved the nation from its miserable government, and the government now openly abuses him in the House of Commons. Northcliffe puts on his bra.s.s knuckles and turns the _Times_ building upside down and sets all the _Daily Mail_ machine guns going, and has to go to bed to rest his nerves, while the row spreads and deepens. The Government keeps h.e.l.l in the prayer-book because without it they wouldn't know what to do with Northcliffe; and Northcliffe is just as sure that he has saved England as he is sure the Duke of Wellington did.
To come back to the war. (We always do.) Since I wrote the first part of this letter, I spent an evening with a member of the Cabinet and he told me so much bad military news, which they prevent the papers from publis.h.i.+ng or even hearing, that to-night I almost share this man's opinion that the war will last till 1918.
That isn't impossible. If that happens the offer that I heard a n.o.ble old buck make to a group of ladies the other night may be accepted. This old codger is about seventy-five, ruddy and saucy yet. ”My dear ladies,” said he, ”if the war goes on and on we shall have no young men left. A double duty will fall on the old fellows.
I shall be ready, when the need comes, to take four extra wives, and I daresay there are others of my generation who are as patriotic as I am.”