Part 22 (1/2)

OUR COMMON HUMANITY.

Here is a letter found on one of the German dead, a man with ”a good face, strong and kindly,” so wrote the _Daily Mail_ correspondent. ”My dearest Heart,” runs the letter, ”when the little ones have said their prayers and prayed for their dear father, and have gone to bed, I sit and think of thee, my love. I think of all the old days when we were betrothed, and I think of all our happy married life. Oh! Ludwig, beloved of my soul, why should people fight each other? I cannot think that G.o.d would wish it....”

Here in this leafy place Quiet he lies; Cold, with his sightless face Turned to the skies; 'Tis but another dead: All you can say is said.

Carry the body hence; Kings must have slaves; Kings rise to eminence Over men's graves; So this man's eyes are dim.

Cast the earth over him.

What was that white you touched, There by his side?

Paper his hand had clutched Tight ere he died?

Message or wish, maybe?

Smooth out its folds and see.

Ah! That beside the dead Slumbered the pain!

Ah! That the hearts that bled Slept with the slain!

That the grief died. But no!

Death will not have it so.

These words of Austin Dobson were written of a French sergeant in an earlier war, yet they serve equally well for the German soldier in this.

Strange that we leave it to the dead to prove their brotherhood and ours.

Philip Gibbs tells us how in a German dug-out he picked up some letters.

”They were all written to 'dear brother Wilhelm,' from sisters and brothers, sending him their loving greetings, praying that his health might be good, promising to send him gifts of food and yearning for his home-coming.” They were anxious, for here had been no news for some time. ”Every time the postman comes we hope for a little note from you.”

Can any generous heart think of that anxious waiting unmoved? Shall we children of one Life wait till we have wholly darkened each other's homes, and then call our handiwork peace?

But by that time, by the judgment of G.o.d, our eyes will be opened.

We who are bound by the same grief for ever, When all our sons are dead may talk together, Each asking pardon of the other one, For her dead son.[52]

It is we at home who seem to yield only to this dread proof. With the fighters it is often different, as we have seen, and though the stories savour of repet.i.tion, the repet.i.tion is surely worth while. I have aimed here at no literary production, but simply at a collection of facts that may reach the heart. ”We sing,” said a soldier from Baden, ”to the accompaniment of the piano-especially during the interval for dinner.

We have indeed entered into a tacit agreement with the French to stop all fire between 12 and 1 o'clock, so that they and we might not be disturbed when we feed.” (_Zeitung am Mittag_, as quoted in the _Daily Chronicle_, November 10, 1914.) ”One of our teachers, a lieutenant in the R.F.A., who has been out most of the time, had a few days' leave some weeks ago. He said to the school, a.s.sembled to do him honour, 'Boys, do not believe the stories you read about the Germans in the newspapers. Whatever they may have done at the beginning of the war, the German is a brave and n.o.ble soldier, and after the war we must be friends.'” (From a private letter.) A soldier writes that a diary he kept was blown to bits by a sh.e.l.l. He gave what remained of it to a wounded German who pleaded for it. He had met many German Socialists in the fighting. ”It is a blessing to meet such men and amid all the slaughter brought about by our present system, it seems heaven upon earth.” (_Labour Leader_, June 24, 1915.)

ARE WE ALWAYS CHIVALROUS?

It will only be making the _amende honorable_ if we do our best now to spread reports of good deeds of the enemy, for in the early stages of the war we deliberately deleted them from messages, and we have certainly done a great deal to conceal them ever since. Writing to the _Times_ in October, 1914, Mr. Herbert Corey, the American correspondent, said: ”The _Times_ leader quotes the _Post_ as charging that I 'flatly made the charge that dispatches had been altered for the purpose of hiding the truth and blackening the German character.' I do not recollect this phrase. I did charge that dispatches of German atrocities were permitted to go through unaltered, and that sentences in other dispatches in which credit was given the Germans for courtesy and kindness were deleted. I abide by that statement.”

There have been many angry references to unfair German attempts to influence neutral opinion. A letter such as Mr. Corey's makes me able to understand why some neutrals have accused England of the very same unfairness. There is other testimony to the same effect. Mr. Edward Price Bell, London Correspondent of the _Chicago Daily News_, has, in a pamphlet published by Fisher Unwin, indicted the British censors.h.i.+p in the following terms:

I call the censors.h.i.+p chaotic because of the chaos in its administration. I call it political because it has changed or suppressed political cables. I call it discriminatory because there are flagrant instances of its not holding the scales evenly between correspondents and newspapers. I call it unchivalrous because it has been known to elide eulogies of enemy decency and enemy valour. I call it destructive because its function is to destroy; it has no constructive function whatever. I call it in effect anti-British and pro-German because its tendency-one means, of course, its unconscious tendency-often is to elevate the German name for veracity and for courage above the British. I call it ludicrous, because it has censored such matter as Kipling's ”Recessional” and Browning's poetry. I call it incompetent because one can perceive no sort of collective efficiency in its work. And because of the sum of these things I give it the final descriptive-”incredible.”-_Daily News_, January 7, 1916.

There is no doubt that people often _fear_ to tell of German good deeds.

An acquaintance of mine told me that his boy got decorated for bringing in a badly wounded comrade from near the German trenches. A little shamefacedly my informant went on: ”I don't mind telling _you_, but I _shouldn't like it to be known generally here_, that I know the Germans act well sometimes. My boy wrote he would have had no chance, but he heard the Germans give the order to cease fire.” My informant evidently feared the neighbours would call him pro-German if he told this to them, but he thought he might venture to tell a pacifist.[53]

One notices this fear sometimes in rather amusing ways. In a railway compartment with me were a loud-mouthed patriotic woman ”war-worker” and a mere soldier back from the front. I'm afraid I got a little at loggerheads with the war-worker, who adopted in argument a kind of furious grin which revealed a formidable row of teeth that in my mind-picture of her have become symbolically almost gigantic. I turned for relief to the mere soldier, and while the train was moving we had a pleasant dip into soldier philosophy. ”I've come to the conclusion that there's good and bad everywhere,” he said. ”I've known bad Germans, and I've known Germans to look after our wounded as well as a British Tommy could look after his chum.” There was more to this effect, but whenever the train stopped and our voices became audible to others, we were silent. The fear of that row of teeth was, I think in both our hearts, and I could see the mere soldier looking timid before them.