Part 7 (2/2)
THE LAST WAR
_The last war!_ I heard the phrase for the first time on the evening after Great Britain had declared war. I was in Quebec en route for England, wondering whether my s.h.i.+p was to be allowed to sail. There had been great excitement all day, bands playing the Ma.r.s.eillaise, Frenchmen marching arm-in-arm singing, orators, gesticulating and haranguing from balconies, street-corners and the base of statues.
Now that the blue August night was falling and every one was released from work, the excitement was redoubled. Quebec was finding in war an opportunity for carnival. Throughout all the pyramided city the Tri-colour and the Union Jack were waving. At the foot of the Heights, the broad basin of the St. Lawrence was a-drift in the dusk with fluttering pennons. They looked like homing birds, settling in dovecotes of the masts and rigging.
As night deepened, Chinese lanterns were lighted and carried on poles through the narrow streets. Troops of merry-makers followed them, blowing horns, dragging bells, tin-cans, anything that would make a noise and express high spirits. They linked arms with girls as they marched and were lost, laughing in the dusk. If a French reservist could be found who was sailing in the first s.h.i.+p bound for the slaughter, he became the hero of the hour and was lifted shoulder high at the head of the procession. War was a brave game at which to play.
This was to be a short war and a merry one. Down with the Germans! Up with France! Hurrah for the entente cordiale!
Beneath the coronet of stars on the Heights of Abraham the spirit of Wolfe kept watch and brooded. It was under these circ.u.mstances, that I heard the phrase for the first time--_the last war_.
The street was blocked with a gaping crowd. All the faces were raised to an open window, two storeys up, from which the frame had been taken out. Inside the building one could hear the pounding of machinery, for it was here that the most important paper of Quebec was printed.
Across a huge white sheet a man on a hanging platform painted the latest European cables. A cl.u.s.ter of electric lights illuminated him strongly; but he was not the centre of the crowd's attention. In the window stood another man. Like myself he was waiting for his s.h.i.+p to sail, but not to England--to France. He was a returning French reservist. Across the many miles of ocean the hand of duty had stretched and touched him; he was ecstatically glad that he was wanted. In those first days this ecstasy of gladness was a little hard to understand. Thank G.o.d we all share it instinctively now. He was speaking excitedly, addressing the crowd. They cheered him; they were in a mood to cheer anybody. His face was thin with earnestness; he was a spirit-man. He waved aside their applause with impatience. He was trying to inspire them with his own intensity. In the intervals between the shouting, I caught some of his words, ”I am setting out to fight the last war--the war of humanity which will bring universal peace and friends.h.i.+p to the world.”
A sailor behind me spat. He was drunk and feeling the need of sympathy. He began to explain to me the reason. He was a fireman on one of the steamers in the basin and a reservist in the British Navy.
He had received his orders that day to report back in England for duty; he knew that he was going to be torpedoed on his voyage across the Atlantic. How did he know? He had had a vision. Sailors always had visions before they were drowned. It was to combat this vision that he had got drunk.
I shook him off irritably. One didn't require the superst.i.tions of an alcoholic imagination to emphasize the new terror which had overtaken the world. There was enough of fear in the air already. All this spurious gaiety--what was it? Nothing but the chatter of lonely children who were afraid to listen to the silence--afraid lest they might hear the creaking footstep of death upon the stairs. And these candles, lighting up the fringes of the night--they were nothing but a vain pretence that the darkness had not gathered.
But this spirit-man framed in the window, he was genuine and different. Yesterday we should have pa.s.sed him in the street unnoticed; to-day the mantle of prophecy clothed him. Within two months he might be dead--horribly dead with a bayonet through him.
That thought was in the minds of all who watched him; it gave him an added authority. Yet he was not thinking of himself, of wounds, of death; he was not even thinking of France. He was thinking of humanity: ”I am setting out to fight the last war--the war of humanity which will bring universal peace and friends.h.i.+p to the world.”
Since the war started, how often have we heard that phrase--_the last war!_ It became the battle-cry of all recruiting-men, who would have fought under no other circ.u.mstances, joined up now so that this might be the final carnage. Nations left their desks and went into battle voluntarily, long before self-interest forced them, simply because organised murder so disgusted them that they were determined by weight of numbers to make this exhibition of brutality the last.
Before Europe burst into flames in 1914, we believed that the last war had been already fought. The most vivid endors.e.m.e.nt of this belief came out of Germany in a book which, to my mind, up to that time was the strongest peace-argument in modern literature. It was so strong that the Kaiser's Government had the author arrested and every copy that could be found destroyed. Nevertheless, over a million were secretly printed and circulated in Germany, and it was translated into every major European language. The book I refer to was known under its American t.i.tle as, _The Human Slaughter-House_. It told very simply how men who had played the army game of sticking dummies, found themselves called upon to stick their brother-men; how they obeyed at first, then sickened at sight of their own handiwork, until finally the rank and file on both sides flung down their arms, banded themselves together and refused to carry out the orders of their generals. There was no declaration of peace; in that moment national boundaries were abolished.
In 1912 this sounded probable. I remember the American press-comments.
They all agreed that national prejudices had been broken down to such an extent by socialism and friendly intercourse, that never again would statesmen be able to launch attacks of nations against nations.
Governments might declare war; the peoples whom they governed would merely overthrow them. The world had become too common-sense to commit murder on so vast a scale.
Had it? The world in general might have: but Germany had not. The argument of _The Human Slaughter-House_ proposed by a German in protest against what he foresaw was surely coming, turned out to be a bad guess. It made no allowance for what happens when a mad dog starts running through the world. One may be tender-hearted. One may not like killing dogs. One may even be an anti-vivisectionist; but when a dog is mad, the only humanitarian thing to do is to kill it. If you don't, the women and children pay the penalty.
We have had our ill.u.s.tration in Russia of what occurs when one side flings away its arms, practising the idealistic reasonings which this book propounds: the more brutal side conquers. While the Blonde Beast runs abroad spreading rabies, the only idealist who counts is the idealist who carries a rifle on his shoulder--the only gospel to which the world listens is the gospel which saviours are dying for.
The last war! It took us all by surprise. We had believed so utterly in peace; now we had to prove our faith by being prepared to die for it. If we did not die, this war would not be the last; it would be only the preface to the next. To paraphrase the words of Mr. Wells, ”We had been prepared to take life in a certain way and life had taken us, as it takes every generation, in an entirely different way. We had been prepared to be altruistic pacifists, and ...”
And here we are, in this year of 1918, engaged upon the bloodiest war of all time, harnessing the muscle and brain-power of the universe to one end--that we may contrive new and yet more deadly methods of butchering our fellow men. The men whom we kill, we do not hate individually. The men whom we kill, we do not see when they are dead.
We scald them with liquid fire; we stifle them with gas; we drop volcanoes on them from the clouds; we pull firing-levers three, ten, even fifteen miles away and hurl them into eternity unconfessed. And this we do with pity in our hearts, both for them and for ourselves.
And why? Because they have given us no choice. They have promised, unless we defend ourselves, to s.n.a.t.c.h our souls from us and fas.h.i.+on them afresh into souls which shall bear the stamp of their own image.
Of their souls we have seen samples; they date back to the dark ages--the souls of Cain, Judas and Caesar Borgia were not unlike them.
Of what such souls are capable they have given us examples in Belgium, captured France and in the living dead whom they return by way of Evian. We would rather forego our bodies than so exchange our souls.
A Germanised world is like a glimpse of madness; the very thought strikes terror to the heart. Yet it is to Germanise the world that Germany is waging war to-day--that she may confer upon us the benefits of her own proved swinishness. There is nothing left for us but to fight for our souls like men.
The last war! We believed that at first, but as the years dragged on the certainty became an optimism, the optimism a dream which we well-nigh knew to be impossible. We have always known that we would beat Germany--we have never doubted that. But could we beat her so thoroughly that she would never dare to reperpetrate this horror?
Could we prove to her that war is not and never was a paying way of conducting business? Men began to smile when we spoke of this war as the last. ”There have always been wars,” they said; ”this one is not the last--there will be others.”
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