Part 3 (1/2)

One almost wonders whether it might not be possible to eliminate the personal element in war, so constant is the talk about victorious guns.

If guns decide everything, then let them be trained on other guns. Let the gun that drives farthest and goes surest win. If every siege is decided by the German 16-inch howitzers, then let us put up brick and mortar or steel against them, but not men. The day for the bleeding human body seems to be over now that men are mown down by sh.e.l.ls fired eight miles away. War used to be splendid because it made men strong and brave, but now a little German in spectacles can stand behind a Krupp gun and wipe out a regiment.

[Page Heading: PROTECTION OF LIFE OR PROPERTY]

I suppose women will always try to protect life because they know what it costs to produce it, and men will always try to protect property because that is what they themselves produce. At Antwerp our wounded men were begging us to go up to the hospital to fetch their purses from under their pillows! At present women are only repairers, darning socks, cleaning, was.h.i.+ng up after men, bringing up reinforcements in the way of fresh life, and patching up wounded men, but some day they must and will have to say, ”The life I produce has as much right to protection as the property you produce, and I claim my right to protect it.”

There seems to me a lack of connection between one man's desire to extend the area he occupies and young men in their teens lying with their lungs shot through or backs blown off.

_19 October._--Our time is now spent in waiting and preparing for work which will probably come soon, as there has been fighting near us again.

One hears the boom of guns a long way off, and always there is the sound of death in it. One has been too near it not to know now what it means.

Yesterday I went to church in an empty little building, but a few of our hospital men turned up and made a small congregation. In the afternoon one or two people came to tea in my bedroom as we could not make our usual expedition to de Poorter's bunshop. The pastry habit is growing on us all.

We went to the a.r.s.enal to-day to see about some repairs to our ambulances. I saw a German omnibus which had been captured, and the eagles on it had been painted out with stripes of red paint and the French colours put in their place. The omnibus was one ma.s.s of bullet-holes. I have seen waggons at Paardeberg, but I never saw anything so knocked about as that grey motor-bus. The engines and sides were shattered and the chauffeur, of course, had been killed. We went on by motor to the ”Champs des Aviateurs.” We saw one naval aeroplane man, who told us that he had been hit in his machine when it was 4,000 feet up in the air. His jacket was torn by a bullet and his machine dropped, but he was uninjured, and got away on a bicycle.

The more I see of war the more I am amazed at the courage and nerve which are shown. Death or the chance of death is everywhere, and we meet it not as fatalists do or those who believe they can earn eternal glory with a sacrifice, but lightly and with a song. An English girl at Antwerp was horribly ashamed of some Belgians who skulked behind a wall when the firing was hottest. She herself remained in the open.

It has been a great comfort to me that I have had a room to myself so far on this campaign. I find the communal spirit is not in me. The noisy meals, the heavy bowls of soup, the piles of labelled dinner-napkins, give me an unexpected feeling of oppressive seclusion and solitude, and only when I get away by myself do I feel that my soul is restored.

Mr. Gleeson, an American, joined his wife here a couple of days ago: it was odd to have a book talk again.

_21 October._--A still grey day with a level sea and a few fis.h.i.+ng-boats going out with the tide. On the long grey sh.o.r.e shrimpers are wading with their nets. The only colour in the soft grey dawn is the little wink of white that the breaking waves make on the sand. This small empty seaside place, with its row of bathing-machines drawn up on the beach, has a look about it as of a theatre seen by daylight. All the seats are empty and the players have gone away, and the theatre begins to whisper as empty buildings do. I think I know quite well some of the people who come to St. Malo les Bains, just by listening to what the empty little place is saying.

Firing has begun again. We hear that our s.h.i.+ps are sh.e.l.ling Ostend from the sea. The news that reaches us is meagre, but I prefer that to the false reports that are circulated at home.

[Page Heading: WE GO TO FURNES]

This afternoon we came out in motors and ambulances to establish ourselves at Furnes in an empty Ecclesiastical College. Nothing was ready, and everything was in confusion. The wounded from the fighting near by had not begun to come in, but the infernal sound of the guns was quite close to us, and gave one the sensation of a blow on the ear.

Night was falling as we came back to Dunkirk to sleep (for no beds were ready at Furnes), and we pa.s.sed many motor vehicles of every description going out to Furnes. Some of them were filled with bread, and one saw stacks of loaves filling to the roof some once beautifully appointed motor. Now all was dust and dirt.

All my previous ideas of men marching to war have had a touch of heroism, crudely expressed by quick-step and smart uniforms. To-day I see tired dusty men, very hungry looking and unshaved, slogging along, silent and tired, and ready to lie down whenever chance offers. They keep as near their convoy as they can, and are keen to stop and cook something. G.o.d! what is heroism? It baffles me.

_22 October. Furnes._--The bulk of our party did not return from Furnes yesterday, so we gathered that the wounded must be coming in, and we left Dunkirk early and came here. As I packed my things and rolled my rugs at 5 a.m. I thought of Mary, and ”Charles to fetch down the luggage,” and the fuss at home over my delicate health!

A French officer called Gilbert took us out to Furnes in his Brooklands racing-car, so that was a bit of an experience too, for we sat curled up on some luggage, and were told to hang on by something. The roads were empty and level, the little seats of the car were merely an appendage to its long big engines. When we got our breath back we asked Gilbert what his speed had been, and he told us 75 miles an hour.

There was a crowd of motors in the yard of the Ecclesiastical College at Furnes, engines throbbing and clutches being jerked, and we were told that all last night the fighting had gone on and the wounded had been coming in. There are three wards already fairly full, nothing quite ready, and the inevitable and reiterated ”where” heard on every side.

”Where are the stretchers?” ”Where are my forceps?” ”Where are we to dine?” ”Where are the dead to be put?” ”Where are the Germans?”

No one stops to answer. People ask everybody ten times over to do the same thing, and use anything that is lying about.

[Page Heading: THE FIGHTING AT DIXMUDE]

There are two war correspondents here--Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Ashmead Bartlett--and they told me about the fighting at Dixmude last night. I must try to get Mr. Gibbs's newspaper account of it, but nothing will ever be so simple and so dramatic as his own description. He and Mr.

Bartlett, Mr. Gleeson and Dr. Munro, with young Mr. Brockville, the War Minister's son, went to the town, which was being heavily sh.e.l.led.

Dixmude was full of wounded, and the church and the houses were falling.

The roar of things was awful, and the bursting sh.e.l.ls overhead sent shrapnel pattering on the buildings, the pavements, and the cars.