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diff --git a/5398.txt b/5398.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3183a63 --- /dev/null +++ b/5398.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2431 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Traveller in War-Time, by Winston Churchill +[The Author is the American Winston Churchill not the British] + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Traveller in War-Time + +Author: Winston Churchill + +Last Updated: March 6, 2009 +Release Date: October 6, 2006 [EBook #5398] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TRAVELLER IN WAR-TIME *** + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +A TRAVELLER IN WARTIME. + +By Winston Churchill + + + + +PREFACE + +I am reprinting here, in response to requests, certain recent +experiences in Great Britain and France. These were selected in the hope +of conveying to American readers some idea of the atmosphere, of "what +it is like" in these countries under the immediate shadow of the battle +clouds. It was what I myself most wished to know. My idea was first to +send home my impressions while they were fresh, and to refrain as far as +possible from comment and judgment until I should have had time to make +a fuller survey. Hence I chose as a title for these articles,--intended +to be preliminary, "A Traveller in War-Time." I tried to banish from my +mind all previous impressions gained from reading. I wished to be free +for the moment to accept and record the chance invitation or adventure, +wherever met with, at the Front, in the streets of Paris, in Ireland, or +on the London omnibus. Later on, I hoped to write a book summarizing the +changing social conditions as I had found them. + +Unfortunately for me, my stay was unexpectedly cut short. I was able +to avail myself of but few of the many opportunities offered. With this +apology, the articles are presented as they were written. + +I have given the impression that at the time of my visit there was no +lack of food in England, but I fear that I have not done justice to the +frugality of the people, much of which was self-imposed for the purpose +of helping to win the war. On very, good authority I have been given +to understand that food was less abundant during the winter just past; +partly because of the effect of the severe weather on our American +railroads, which had trouble in getting supplies to the coast, and +partly because more and more ships were required for transporting +American troops and supplies for these troops, to France. This +additional curtailment was most felt by families of small income, whose +earners were at the front or away on other government service. Mothers +had great difficulty in getting adequate nourishment for growing +children. But the British people cheerfully submitted to this further +deprivation. Summer is at hand. It is to be hoped that before another +winter sets in, American and British shipping will have sufficiently +increased to remedy the situation. + +In regard to what I have said of the British army, I was profoundly +struck, as were other visitors to that front, by the health and +morale of the men, by the marvel of organization accomplished in so +comparatively brief a time. It was one of the many proofs of the extent +to which the British nation had been socialized. When one thought of +that little band of regulars sent to France in 1914, who became immortal +at Mons, who shared the glory of the Marne, and in that first dreadful +winter held back the German hosts from the Channel ports, the presence +on the battle line of millions of disciplined and determined men seemed +astonishing indeed. And this had been accomplished by a nation facing +the gravest crisis in its history, under the necessity of sustaining and +financing many allies and of protecting an Empire. Since my return to +America a serious reverse has occurred. + +After the Russian peace, the Germans attempted to overwhelm the British +by hurling against them vastly superior numbers of highly trained men. +It is for the military critic of the future to analyse any tactical +errors that may have been made at the second battle of the Somme. +Apparently there was an absence of preparation, of specific orders from +high sources in the event of having to cede ground. This much can be +said, that the morale of the British Army remains unimpaired; that the +presence of mind and ability of the great majority of the officers +who, flung on their own resources, conducted the retreat, cannot be +questioned; while the accomplishment of General Carey, in stopping the +gap with an improvised force of non-combatants, will go down in history. +In an attempt to bring home to myself, as well as to my readers, a +realization of what American participation in this war means or should +mean. + + + + +A TRAVELLER IN WAR-TIME + + + + +CHAPTER I + +Toward the end of the summer of 1917 it was very hot in New York, and +hotter still aboard the transatlantic liner thrust between the piers. +One glance at our cabins, at the crowded decks and dining-room, at the +little writing-room above, where the ink had congealed in the ink-wells, +sufficed to bring home to us that the days of luxurious sea travel, of a +la carte restaurants, and Louis Seize bedrooms were gone--at least for +a period. The prospect of a voyage of nearly two weeks was not enticing. +The ship, to be sure, was far from being the best of those still +running on a line which had gained a magic reputation of immunity from +submarines; three years ago she carried only second and third class +passengers! But most of us were in a hurry to get to the countries +where war had already become a grim and terrible reality. In one way or +another we had all enlisted. + +By "we" I mean the American passengers. The first welcome discovery +among the crowd wandering aimlessly and somewhat disconsolately about +the decks was the cheerful face of a friend whom at first I did not +recognize because of his amazing disguise in uniform. Hitherto he had +been associated in my mind with dinner parties and clubs. + +That life was past. He had laid up his yacht and joined the Red Cross +and, henceforth, for an indeterminable period, he was to abide amidst +the discomforts and dangers of the Western Front, with five days' leave +every three months. The members of a group similarly attired whom I +found gathered by the after-rail were likewise cheerful. Two well-known +specialists from the Massachusetts General Hospital made significant +the hegira now taking place that threatens to leave our country, like +Britain, almost doctorless. When I reached France it seemed to me that I +met all the celebrated medical men I ever heard of. A third in the group +was a business man from the Middle West who had wound up his affairs and +left a startled family in charge of a trust company. Though his physical +activities had hitherto consisted of an occasional mild game of golf, +he wore his khaki like an old campaigner; and he seemed undaunted by +the prospect--still somewhat remotely ahead of him--of a winter journey +across the Albanian Mountains from the Aegean to the Adriatic. + +After a restless night, we sailed away in the hot dawn of a Wednesday. +The shores of America faded behind us, and as the days went by, we had +the odd sense of threading uncharted seas; we found it more and more +difficult to believe that this empty, lonesome ocean was the Atlantic +in the twentieth century. Once we saw a four-master; once a shy, silent +steamer avoided us, westward bound; and once in mid-ocean, tossed on a +sea sun-silvered under a rack of clouds, we overtook a gallant little +schooner out of New Bedford or Gloucester--a forthfarer, too. + +Meanwhile, amongst the Americans, the socializing process had begun. +Many elements which in a former stratified existence would never have +been brought into contact were fusing by the pressure of a purpose, of +a great adventure common to us all. On the upper deck, high above the +waves, was a little 'fumoir' which, by some odd trick of association, +reminded me of the villa formerly occupied by the Kaiser in +Corfu--perhaps because of the faience plaques set in the walls--although +I cannot now recall whether the villa has faience plaques or not. The +room was, of course, on the order of a French provincial cafe, and as +such delighted the bourgeoisie monopolizing the alcove tables and joking +with the fat steward. Here in this 'fumoir', lawyers, doctors, business +men of all descriptions, newspaper correspondents, movie photographers, +and millionaires who had never crossed save in a 'cabine de luxe', +rubbed elbows and exchanged views and played bridge together. There were +Y. M. C. A. people on their way to the various camps, reconstruction +workers intending to build temporary homes for the homeless French, and +youngsters in the uniform of the American Field Service, going over to +drive camions and ambulances; many of whom, without undue regret, +had left college after a freshman year. They invaded the 'fumoir', +undaunted, to practise atrocious French on the phlegmatic steward; they +took possession of a protesting piano in the banal little salon and +sang: "We'll not come back till it's over over there." And in the +evening, on the darkened decks, we listened and thrilled to the refrain: + + "There's a long, long trail a-winding + Into the land of my dreams." + +We were Argonauts--even the Red Cross ladies on their way to establish +rest camps behind the lines and brave the mud and rains of a winter +in eastern France. None, indeed, were more imbued with the forthfaring +spirit than these women, who were leaving, without regret, sheltered, +comfortable lives to face hardships and brave dangers without a +question. And no sharper proof of the failure of the old social order to +provide for human instincts and needs could be found than the conviction +they gave of new and vitalizing forces released in them. The timidities +with which their sex is supposedly encumbered had disappeared, and even +the possibility of a disaster at sea held no terrors for them. When the +sun fell down into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and the cabins +below were sealed--and thus become insupportable--they settled +themselves for the night in their steamer-chairs and smiled at the +remark of M. le Commissaire that it was a good "season" for submarines. +The moonlight filtered through the chinks in the burlap shrouding +the deck. About 3 a.m. the khaki-clad lawyer from Milwaukee became +communicative, the Red Cross ladies produced chocolate. It was the +genial hour before the final nap, from which one awoke abruptly at the +sound of squeegees and brooms to find the deck a river of sea water, on +whose banks a wild scramble for slippers and biscuit-boxes invariably +ensued. No experience could have been more socializing. + +"Well, it's a relief," one of the ladies exclaimed, "not to be +travelling with half a dozen trunks and a hat-box! Oh, yes, I realize +what I'm doing. I'm going to live in one of those flimsy portable houses +with twenty cots and no privacy and wear the same clothes for months, +but it's better than thrashing around looking for something to do and +never finding it, never getting anything real to spend one's energy-on. +I've closed my country house, I've sublet my apartment, I've done with +teas and bridge, and I'm happier than I've been in my life even if I +don't get enough sleep." + +Another lady, who looked still young, had two sons in the army. "There +was nothing for me to do but sit around the house and wait, and I +want to be useful. My husband has to stay at home; he can't leave his +business." Be useful! There she struck the new and aggressive note of +emancipation from the restricted self-sacrifice of the old order, of +wider service for the unnamed and the unknown; and, above all, for the +wider self-realization of which service is but a by-product. I recall +particularly among these women a young widow with an eager look in clear +grey eyes that gazed eastward into the unknown with hope renewed. Had +she lived a quarter of a century ago she might have been doomed to slow +desiccation. There are thousands of such women in France today, and to +them the great war has brought salvation. + +From what country other than America could so many thousands of +pilgrims--even before our nation had entered the war--have hurried +across a wide ocean to take their part? No matter what religion we +profess, whether it be Calvinism, or Catholicism, we are individualists, +pragmatists, empiricists for ever. Our faces are set toward strange +worlds presently to rise out of the sea and take on form and colour and +substance--worlds of new aspirations, of new ideas and new values. And +on this voyage I was reminded of Josiah Royce's splendid summary of the +American philosophy--of the American religion as set forth by William +James: + + "The spirit of the frontiers-man, of the gold-seeker or the + home-builder transferred to the metaphysical or to the religious + realm. There is a far-off home, our long lost spiritual fortune. + Experience alone can guide us to the place where these things are, + hence indeed you need experience. You can only win your way on the + frontier unless you are willing to live there." + +Through the pall of horror and tragedy the American sees a vision; for +him it is not merely a material and bloody contest of arms and men, +a military victory to be gained over an aggressive and wrong-minded +people. It is a world calamity, indeed, but a calamity, since it has +come, to be spiritualized and utilized for the benefit of the future +society of mankind. It must be made to serve a purpose in helping to +liberate the world from sentimentalism, ignorance, close-mindedness, and +cant. + + + +II + +One night we entered the danger zone. There had been an entertainment in +the little salon which, packed with passengers, had gradually achieved +the temperature and humidity of a Turkish bath. For the ports had been +closed as tight as gaskets could make them, the electric fans, as usual, +obstinately "refused to march." After the amateur speechmaking and +concert pieces an Italian violinist, who had thrown over a lucrative +contract to become a soldier, played exquisitely; and one of the French +sisters we had seen walking the deck with the mincing steps of the +cloister sang; somewhat precariously and pathetically, the Ave Maria. +Its pathos was of the past, and after she had finished, as we fled into +the open air, we were conscious of having turned our backs irrevocably +yet determinedly upon an era whose life and convictions the music of the +composer so beautifully expressed. And the sister's sweet withered face +was reminiscent of a missal, one bright with colour, and still shining +faintly. A missal in a library of modern books! + +On deck a fine rain was blowing through a gap in our burlap shroud, a +phosphorescent fringe of foam hissed along the sides of the ship, giving +the illusory appearance of our deadlights open and ablaze, exaggerating +the sinister blackness of the night. We were, apparently, a beacon in +that sepia waste where modern undersea monsters were lurking. + +There were on board other elements which in the normal times gone by +would have seemed disquieting enough. The evening after we had left New +York, while we were still off the coast of Long Island, I saw on the +poop a crowd of steerage passengers listening intently to harangues +by speakers addressing them from the top of a pile of life rafts. +Armenians, I was told, on their way to fight the Turks, all recruited +in America by one frenzied woman who had seen her child cut in two by +a German officer. Twilight was gathering as I joined the group, the sea +was silvered by the light of an August moon floating serenely between +swaying stays. The orator's passionate words and gestures evoked wild +responses from his hearers, whom the drag of an ancient hatred had +snatched from the peaceful asylum of the west. This smiling, happy +folk, which I had seen in our manufacturing towns and cities, were now +transformed, atavistic--all save one, a student, who stared wistfully +through his spectacles across the waters. Later, when twilight deepened, +when the moon had changed from silver to gold, the orators gave place to +a singer. He had been a bootblack in America. Now he had become a bard. +His plaintive minor chant evoked, one knew not how, the flavour of that +age-long history of oppression and wrong these were now determined to +avenge. Their conventional costumes were proof that we had harboured +them--almost, indeed, assimilated them. And suddenly they had reverted. +They were going to slaughter the Turks. + +On a bright Saturday afternoon we steamed into the wide mouth of the +Gironde, a name stirring vague memories of romance and terror. The +French passengers gazed wistfully at the low-lying strip of sand and +forest, but our uniformed pilgrims crowded the rail and hailed it as the +promised land of self-realization. A richly coloured watering-place +slid into view, as in a moving-picture show. There was, indeed, all the +reality and unreality of the cinematograph about our arrival; presently +the reel would end abruptly, and we should find ourselves pushing our +way out of the emptying theatre into a rainy street. The impression of +unreality in the face of visual evidence persisted into the night when, +after an afternoon at anchor, we glided up the river, our decks and +ports ablaze across the land. Silhouettes of tall poplars loomed against +the blackness; occasionally a lamp revealed the milky blue facade of a +house. This was France! War-torn France--at last vividly brought home +to us when a glare appeared on the sky, growing brighter and brighter +until, at a turn of the river, abruptly we came abreast of vomiting +furnaces, thousands of electric lights strung like beads over the crest +of a hill, and, below these, dim rows of houses, all of a sameness, +stretching along monotonous streets. A munitions town in the night. + +One could have tossed a biscuit on the stone wharfs where the workmen, +crouching over their tasks, straightened up at sight of us and +cheered. And one cried out hoarsely, "Vous venez nous sauver, vous +Americains"--"You come to save us"--an exclamation I was to hear again +in the days that followed. + + + +III + +All day long, as the 'rapide' hurried us through the smiling wine +country and past the well-remembered chateaux of the Loire, we wondered +how we should find Paris--beautiful Paris, saved from violation as by a +miracle! Our first discovery, after we had pushed our way out of the +dim station into the obscurity of the street, was that of the absence of +taxicabs. The horse-drawn buses ranged along the curb were reserved +for the foresighted and privileged few. Men and women were rushing +desperately about in search of conveyances, and in the midst of this +confusion, undismayed, debonnair, I spied a rugged, slouch-hatted figure +standing under a lamp--the unmistakable American soldier. + +"Aren't there any cabs in Paris?" I asked. + +"Oh, yes, they tell me they're here," he said. "I've given a man a +dollar to chase one." + +Evidently one of our millionaire privates who have aroused such burnings +in the heart of the French poilu, with his five sous a day! We left him +there, and staggered across the Seine with our bags. A French officer +approached us. "You come from America," he said. "Let me help you." +There was just enough light in the streets to prevent us from getting +utterly lost, and we recognized the dark mass of the Tuileries as we +crossed the gardens. The hotel we sought was still there, and its menu, +save for the war-bread and the tiny portion of sugar, as irreproachable +as ever. + +The next morning, as if by magic, hundreds of taxis had sprung into +existence, though they were much in demand. And in spite of the soldiers +thronging the sunlit streets, Paris was seemingly the same Paris one had +always known, gay--insouciante, pleasure-bent. The luxury shops appeared +to be thriving, the world-renowned restaurants to be doing business +as usual; to judge from the prices, a little better than usual; the +expensive hotels were full. It is not the real France, of course, yet it +seemed none the less surprising that it should still exist. Oddly enough +the presence of such overwhelming numbers of soldiers should have failed +to strike the note of war, emphasized that of lavishness, of the casting +off of mundane troubles for which the French capital has so long been +known. But so it was. Most of these soldiers were here precisely with +the object of banishing from their minds the degradations and horrors of +the region from which they had come, and which was so unbelievably near; +a few hours in an automobile--less than that in one of those dragon-fly +machines we saw intermittently hovering in the blue above our heads! + +Paris, to most Americans, means that concentrated little district +de luxe of which the Place Vendome is the centre, and we had always +unconsciously thought of it as in the possession of the Anglo-Saxons. So +it seems today. One saw hundreds of French soldiers, of course, in all +sorts of uniforms, from the new grey blue and visor to the traditional +cloth blouse and kepi; once in a while a smart French officer. The +English and Canadians, the Australians, New Zealanders, and Americans +were much in evidence. Set them down anywhere on the face of the globe, +under any conditions conceivable, and you could not surprise them; such +was the impression. The British officers and even the British Tommies +were blase, wearing the air of the 'semaine Anglaise', and the "five +o'clock tea," as the French delight to call it. That these could have +come direct from the purgatory of the trenches seemed unbelievable. +The Anzacs, with looped-up hats, strolled about, enjoying themselves, +halting before the shops in the Rue de la Paix to gaze at the priceless +jewellery there, or stopping at a sidewalk cafe to enjoy a drink. Our +soldiers had not seen the front; many of them, no doubt, were on leave +from the training-camps, others were on duty in Paris, but all seemed in +a hurry to get somewhere, bound for a definite destination. They might +have been in New York or San Francisco. It was a novel sight, indeed, +to observe them striding across the Place Vendome with out so much as +deigning to cast a glance at the column dedicated to the great +emperor who fought that other world-war a century ago; to see our +square-shouldered officers hustling around corners in Ford and Packard +automobiles. And the atmosphere of our communication headquarters was +so essentially one of "getting things done" as to make one forget the +mediaeval narrowness of the Rue Sainte Anne, and the inconvenient French +private-dwelling arrangements of the house. You were transported back +to America. Such, too, was the air of our Red Cross establishment in the +ancient building facing the Palace de la Concorde, where the unfortunate +Louis lost his head. + +History had been thrust into the background. I was never more aware of +this than when, shortly after dawn Wednesday, the massive grey pile +of the Palace of Versailles suddenly rose before me. As the motor shot +through the empty Place d'Armes I made a desperate attempt to summon +again a vivid impression, when I had first stood there many years ago, +of an angry Paris mob beating against that grill, of the Swiss guards +dying on the stairway for their Queen. But it was no use. France has +undergone some subtle change, yet I knew I was in France. I knew it when +we left Paris and sped through the dim leafy tunnels of the Bois; when +I beheld a touch of filtered sunlight on the dense blue thatch of the +'marroniers' behind the walls of a vast estate once dedicated to the +sports and pleasures of Kings; when I caught glimpses of silent chateaux +mirrored in still waters. + +I was on my way, with one of our naval officers, to visit an American +naval base on the western coast. It was France, but the laughter had +died on her lips. A few women and old men and children were to be seen +in the villages, a bent figure in a field, an occasional cart that drew +aside as we hurried at eighty kilometers an hour along deserted routes +drawn as with a ruler across the land. Sometimes the road dipped into a +canyon of poplars, and the sky between their crests was a tiny strip +of mottled blue and white. The sun crept in and out, the clouds cast +shadows on the hills; here and there the tower of lonely church or +castle broke the line of a distant ridge. Morning-glories nodded over +lodge walls where the ivy was turning crimson, and the little gardens +were masses of colours--French colours like that in the beds of the +Tuileries, brick-red geraniums and dahlias, yellow marigolds and purple +asters. + +We lunched at one of the little inns that for generations have been +tucked away in the narrow streets of provincial towns; this time a +Cheval Blanc, with an unimposing front and a blaze of sunshine in its +heart. After a dejeuner fit for the most exacting of bon viveurs we sat +in that courtyard and smoked, while an ancient waiter served us with +coffee that dripped through silver percolators into our glasses. The +tourists have fled. "If happily you should come again, monsieur," said +madame, as she led me with pardonable pride through her immaculate +bedrooms and salons with wavy floors. And I dwelt upon a future holiday +there, on the joys of sharing with a friend that historic place. The +next afternoon I lingered in another town, built on a little hill ringed +about with ancient walls, from whose battlements tide-veined marshes +stretched away to a gleaming sea. A figure flitting through the cobbled +streets, a woman in black who sat sewing, sewing in a window, only +served to heighten the impression of emptiness, to give birth to the odd +fancy that some alchemic quality in the honeyed sunlight now steeping it +must have preserved the place through the ages. But in the white close +surrounding the church were signs that life still persisted. A peasant +was drawing water at the pump, and the handle made a noise; a priest +chatted with three French ladies who had come over from a neighbouring +seaside resort. And then a woman in deep mourning emerged from a tiny +shop and took her bicycle from against the wall and spoke to me. + +"Vous etes Americain, monsieur?" + +I acknowledged it. + +"Vous venez nous sauver"--the same question I had heard on the lips of +the workman in the night. "I hope so, madame," I replied, and would +have added, "We come also to save ourselves." She looked at me with +sad, questioning eyes, and I knew that for her--and alas for many like +her--we were too late. When she had mounted her wheel and ridden away I +bought a 'Matin' and sat down on a doorstep to read about Kerensky and +the Russian Revolution. The thing seemed incredible here--war seemed +incredible, and yet its tentacles had reached out to this peaceful Old +World spot and taken a heavy toll. Once more I sought the ramparts, only +to be reminded by those crumbling, machicolated ruins that I was in a +war-ridden land. Few generations had escaped the pestilence. + +At no great distance lay the little city which had been handed over to +us by the French Government for a naval base, one of the ports where our +troops and supplies are landed. Those who know provincial France will +visualize its narrow streets and reticent shops, its grey-white and ecru +houses all more or less of the same design, with long French windows +guarded by ornamental balconies of cast iron--a city that has never +experienced such a thing as a real-estate boom. Imagine, against such +a background, the bewildering effect of the dynamic presence of a few +regiments of our new army! It is a curious commentary on this war that +one does not think of these young men as soldiers, but as citizens +engaged in a scientific undertaking of a magnitude unprecedented. You +come unexpectedly upon truck-loads of tanned youngsters, whose features, +despite flannel shirts and campaign hats, summon up memories of Harvard +Square and the Yale Yard, of campuses at Berkeley and Ithaca. The +youthful drivers of these camions are alert, intent, but a hard day's +work on the docks by no means suffices to dampen the spirits of the +passengers, who whistle ragtime airs as they bump over the cobbles. And +the note they strike is presently sustained by a glimpse, on a siding, +of an efficient-looking Baldwin, ranged alongside several of the tiny +French locomotives of yesterday; sustained, too, by an acquaintance +with the young colonel in command of the town. Though an officer of +the regular army, he brings home to one the fact that the days of the +military martinet have gone for ever. He is military, indeed-erect and +soldierly--but fortune has amazingly made him a mayor and an autocrat, +a builder, and in some sense a railway-manager and superintendent +of docks. And to these functions have been added those of police +commissioner, of administrator of social welfare and hygiene. It will +be a comfort to those at home to learn that their sons in our army in +France are cared for as no enlisted men have ever been cared for before. + + + +IV + +By the end of September I had reached England, eager to gain a fresh +impression of conditions there. + +The weather in London was mild and clear. The third evening after I had +got settled in one of those delightfully English hotels in the heart +of the city, yet removed from the traffic, with letter-boxes that still +bear the initials of Victoria, I went to visit some American naval +officers in their sitting-room on the ground floor. The cloth had not +been removed from the dinner-table, around which we were chatting, when +a certain strange sound reached our ears--a sound not to be identified +with the distant roar of the motor-busses in Pall Mall, nor with the +sharp bark of the taxi-horns, although not unlike them. We sat listening +intently, and heard the sound again. + +"The Germans have come," one of the officers remarked, as he finished +his coffee. The other looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock. "They +must have left their lines about seven," he said. + +In spite of the fact that our newspapers at home had made me familiar +with these aeroplane raids, as I sat there, amidst those comfortable +surroundings, the thing seemed absolutely incredible. To fly one hundred +and fifty miles across the Channel and southern England, bomb London, +and fly back again by midnight! We were going to be bombed! The +anti-aircraft guns were already searching the sky for the invaders. It +is sinister, and yet you are seized by an overwhelming curiosity that +draws you, first to pull aside the heavy curtains of the window, and +then to rush out into the dark street both proceedings in the worst +possible form! The little street was deserted, but in Pall Mall the dark +forms of busses could be made out scurrying for shelter, one wondered +where? Above the roar of London, the pop pop pop! of the defending guns +could be heard now almost continuously, followed by the shrieks and +moans of the shrapnel shells as they passed close overhead. They sounded +like giant rockets, and even as rockets some of them broke into a +cascade of sparks. Star shells they are called, bursting, it seemed, +among the immutable stars themselves that burned serenely on. And there +were other stars like November meteors hurrying across space--the lights +of the British planes scouring the heavens for their relentless enemies. +Everywhere the restless white rays of the searchlights pierced the +darkness, seeking, but seeking in vain. Not a sign of the intruders was +to be seen. I was induced to return to the sitting-room. + +"But what are they shooting at?" I asked. + +"Listen," said one of the officers. There came a lull in the firing +and then a faint, droning noise like the humming of insects on a still +summer day. "It's all they have to shoot at, that noise." + +"But their own planes?" I objected. + +"The Gotha has two engines, it has a slightly different noise, when you +get used to it. You'd better step out of that window. It's against the +law to show light, and if a bomb falls in the street you'd be filled +with glass." I overcame my fascination and obeyed. "It isn't only the +bombs," my friend went on, "it's the falling shrapnel, too." + +The noise made by those bombs is unmistakable, unforgetable, and quite +distinct from the chorus of the guns and shrapnel--a crashing note, +reverberating, sustained, like the E minor of some giant calliope. + +In face of the raids, which coincide with the coming of the moon, London +is calm, but naturally indignant over such methods of warfare. The +damage done is ridiculously small; the percentage of deaths and injuries +insignificant. There exists, in every large city, a riffraff to get +panicky: these are mostly foreigners; they seek the Tubes, and some +the crypt of St. Paul's, for it is wise to get under shelter during the +brief period of the raids, and most citizens obey the warnings of the +police. It is odd, indeed, that more people are not hurt by shrapnel. +The Friday following the raid I have described I went out of town for a +week-end, and returned on Tuesday to be informed that a shell had gone +through the roof outside of the room I had vacated, and the ceiling +and floor of the bedroom of one of the officers who lived below. He was +covered with dust and debris, his lights went out, but he calmly stepped +through the window. "You'd best have your dinner early, sir," I was told +by the waiter on my return. "Last night a lady had her soup up-stairs, +her chicken in the office, and her coffee in the cellar." It is worth +while noting that she had all three. Another evening, when I was dining +with Sir James Barrie, he showed me a handful of shrapnel fragments. "I +gathered them off the roof," he informed me. And a lady next to whom I +sat at luncheon told me in a matter-of-fact tone that a bomb had +fallen the night before in the garden of her town house. "It was quite +disagreeable," she said, "and broke all our windows on that side." +During the last raids before the moon disappeared, by a new and +ingenious system of barrage fire the Germans were driven off. The +question of the ethics of reprisals is agitating London. + +One "raid," which occurred at midday, is worth recording. I was on my +way to our Embassy when, in the residential quarter through which I +passed, I found all the housemaids in the areas gazing up at the sky, +and I was told by a man in a grocer's cart that the Huns had come again. +But the invader on this occasion turned out to be a British aviator from +one of the camps who was bringing a message to London. The warmth of his +reception was all that could be desired, and he alighted hastily in the +first open space that presented itself. + +Looking back to the time when I left America, I can recall the +expectation of finding a Britain beginning to show signs of distress. +I was prepared to live on a small ration. And the impression of the +scarcity of food was seemingly confirmed when the table was being set +for the first meal at my hotel; when the waiter, who chanced to be an +old friend, pointed to a little bowl half-full of sugar and exclaimed: +"I ought to warn you, sir, it's all you're to have for a week, and +I'm sorry to say you're only allowed a bit of bread, too." It is human +perversity to want a great deal of bread when bread becomes scarce; even +war bread, which, by the way, is better than white. But the rest of the +luncheon, when it came, proved that John Bull was under no necessity +of stinting himself. Save for wheat and sugar; he is not in want. +Everywhere in London you are confronted by signs of an incomprehensible +prosperity; everywhere, indeed, in Great Britain. There can be no doubt +about that of the wage-earners--nothing like it has ever been seen +before. One sure sign of this is the phenomenal sale of pianos to +households whose occupants had never dreamed of such luxuries. And not +once, but many times, have I read in the newspapers of workingmen's +families of four or five which are gaining collectively more than five +hundred pounds a year. The economic and social significance of this +tendency, the new attitude of the working classes, the ferment it is +causing need not be dwelt upon here. That England will be a changed +England is unquestionable. + +The London theatres are full, the "movies" crowded, and you have to wait +your turn for a seat at a restaurant. Bond Street and Piccadilly +are doing a thriving business--never so thriving, you are told, and +presently you are willing to believe it. The vendor beggars, so familiar +a sight a few years ago, have all but disappeared, and you may walk from +Waterloo Station to the Haymarket without so much as meeting a needy +soul anxious to carry your bag. Taxicabs are in great demand. And one +odd result of the scarcity of what the English are pleased to call +"petrol," by which they mean gasoline, is the reappearance of that +respectable, but almost obsolete animal, the family carriage-horse; +of that equally obsolete vehicle, the victoria. The men on the box are +invariably in black. In spite of taxes to make the hair of an American +turn grey, in spite of lavish charities, the wealthy classes still seem +wealthy--if the expression may be allowed. That they are not so wealthy +as they were goes without saying. In the country houses of the old +aristocracy the most rigid economy prevails. There are new fortunes, +undoubtedly, munitions and war fortunes made before certain measures +were taken to control profits; and some establishments, including a few +supported by American accumulations, still exhibit the number of men +servants and amount of gold plate formerly thought adequate. But in +most of these great houses maids have replaced the butlers and footmen; +mansions have been given over for hospitals; gardeners are fighting +in the trenches, and courts and drives of country places are often +overgrown with grass and weeds. + +"Yes, we do dine in public quite often," said a very great lady. "It's +cheaper than keeping servants." + +Two of her three sons had been killed in France, but she did not +mention this. The English do not advertise their sorrows. Still another +explanation when husbands and sons and brothers come back across the +Channel for a few days' leave after long months in the trenches, nothing +is too good for them. And when these days have flown, there is always +the possibility that there may never be another leave. Not long ago I +read a heart-rending article about the tragedies of the goodbyes in +the stations and the terminal hotels--tragedies hidden by silence and a +smile. "Well, so long," says an officer "bring back a V. C.," cries +his sister from the group on the platform, and he waves his hand in +deprecation as the train pulls out, lights his pipe, and pretends to be +reading the Sphere. + +Some evening, perchance, you happen to be in the dark street outside +of Charing Cross station. An occasional hooded lamp throws a precarious +gleam on a long line of men carrying--so gently--stretchers on which lie +the silent forms of rich and poor alike. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +For the student of history who is able to place himself within the +stream of evolution the really important events of today are not taking +place on the battle lines, but behind them. The key-note of the new era +has been struck in Russia. And as I write these words, after the Italian +retreat, a second revolution seems possible. For three years one has +thought inevitably of 1789, and of the ensuing world conflict out +of which issued the beginnings of democracy. History does not repeat +itself, yet evolution is fairly consistent. While our attention has been +focused on the military drama enacted before our eyes and recorded in +the newspapers, another drama, unpremeditated but of vastly greater +significance, is unfolding itself behind the stage. Never in the history +of the world were generals and admirals, statesmen and politicians so +sensitive to or concerned about public opinion as they are today. From +a military point of view the situation of the Allies at the present +writing is far from reassuring. Germany and her associates have the +advantage of interior lines, of a single dominating and purposeful +leadership, while our five big nations, democracies or semi-democracies, +are stretched in a huge ring with precarious connections on land, with +the submarine alert on the sea. Much of their territory is occupied. +They did not seek the war; they still lack co-ordination and leadership +in waging it. In some of these countries, at least, politicians and +statesmen are so absorbed by administrative duties, by national rather +than international problems, by the effort to sustain themselves, that +they have little time for allied strategy. Governments rise and fall, +familiar names and reputations are juggled about like numbered balls in +a shaker, come to the top to be submerged again in a new 'emeute'. There +are conferences and conferences without end. Meanwhile a social ferment +is at work, in Russia conspicuously, in Italy a little less so, in +Germany and Austria undoubtedly, in France and England, and even in our +own country--once of the most radical in the world, now become the most +conservative. + +What form will the social revolution take? Will it be unbridled, +unguided; will it run through a long period of anarchy before the +fermentation begun shall have been completed, or shall it be handled, in +all the nations concerned, by leaders who understand and sympathize with +the evolutionary trend, who are capable of controlling it, of taking +the necessary international steps of co-operation in order that it +may become secure and mutually beneficial to all? This is an age of +co-operation, and in this at least, if not in other matters, the United +States of America is in an ideal position to assume the leadership. + +To a certain extent, one is not prepared to say how far, the military +and social crises are interdependent. And undoubtedly the military +problem rests on the suppression of the submarine. If Germany continues +to destroy shipping on the seas, if we are not able to supply our new +armies and the Allied nations with food and other things, the increasing +social ferment will paralyze the military operations of the Entente. +The result of a German victory under such circumstances is impossible to +predict; but the chances are certainly not worth running. In a sense, +therefore, in a great sense, the situation is "up" to us in more +ways than one, not only to supply wise democratic leadership but to +contribute material aid and brains in suppressing the submarine, and to +build ships enough to keep Britain, France, and Italy from starving. +We are looked upon by all the Allies, and I believe justly, as being a +disinterested nation, free from the age-long jealousies of Europe. +And we can do much in bringing together and making more purposeful the +various elements represented by the nations to whose aid we have come. + +I had not intended in these early papers to comment, but to confine +myself to such of my experiences abroad as might prove interesting and +somewhat illuminating. So much I cannot refrain from saying. + +It is a pleasure to praise where praise is due, and too much cannot be +said of the personnel of our naval service--something of which I can +speak from intimate personal experience. In these days, in that part of +London near the Admiralty, you may chance to run across a tall, erect, +and broad-shouldered man in blue uniform with three stars on his collar, +striding rapidly along the sidewalk, and sometimes, in his haste, +cutting across a street. People smile at him--costermongers, clerks, +and shoppers--and whisper among themselves, "There goes the American +admiral!" and he invariably smiles back at them, especially at the +children. He is an admiral, every inch a seaman, commanding a devoted +loyalty from his staff and from the young men who are scouring the seas +with our destroyers. In France as well as in England the name Sims is a +household word, and if he chose he might be feted every day of the week. +He does not choose. He spends long hours instead in the quarters devoted +to his administration in Grosvenor Gardens, or in travelling in France +and Ireland supervising the growing forces under his command. + +It may not be out of place to relate a characteristic story of Admiral +Sims, whose career in our service, whose notable contributions to naval +gunnery are too well known to need repetition. Several years ago, on a +memorable trip to England, he was designated by the admiral of the fleet +to be present at a banquet given our sailors in the Guildhall. Of course +the lord mayor called upon him for a speech, but Commander Sims insisted +that a bluejacket should make the address. "What, a bluejacket!" +exclaimed the lord mayor in astonishment. "Do bluejackets make speeches +in your country?" "Certainly they do," said Sims. "Now there's a +fine-looking man over there, a quartermaster on my ship. Let's call on +him and see what he has to say." The quartermaster, duly summoned, rose +with aplomb and delivered himself of a speech that made the hall +ring, that formed the subject of a puzzled and amazed comment by +the newspapers of the British Capital. Nor was it ever divulged +that Commander Sims had foreseen the occasion and had picked out the +impressive quartermaster to make a reputation for oratory for the +enlisted force. + +As a matter of fact, it is no exaggeration to add that there were and +are other non-commissioned officers and enlisted men in the service who +could have acquitted themselves equally well. One has only to attend +some of their theatrical performances to be assured of it. + +But to the European mind our bluejacket is still something of an +anomaly. He is a credit to our public schools, a fruit of our system +of universal education. And he belongs to a service in which are +reconciled, paradoxically, democracy and discipline. One moment you may +hear a bluejacket talking to an officer as man to man, and the next you +will see him salute and obey an order implicitly. + +On a wet and smoky night I went from the London streets into the +brightness and warmth of that refuge for American soldiers and sailors, +the "Eagle Hut," as the Y. M. C. A. is called. The place was full, +as usual, but my glance was at once attracted by three strapping, +intelligent-looking men in sailor blouses playing pool in a corner. "I +simply can't get used to the fact that people like that are ordinary +sailors," said the lady in charge to me as we leaned against the +soda-fountain. "They're a continual pride and delight to us Americans +here--always so willing to help when there's anything to be done, and +so interesting to talk to." When I suggested that her ideas of the navy +must have been derived from Pinafore she laughed. "I can't imagine using +a cat-o'-nine-tails on them!" she exclaimed--and neither could I. +I heard many similar comments. They are indubitably American, these +sailors, youngsters with the stamp of our environment on their features, +keen and self-reliant. I am not speaking now only of those who have +enlisted since the war, but of those others, largely from the small +towns and villages of our Middle West, who in the past dozen years or so +have been recruited by an interesting and scientific system which is the +result of the genius of our naval recruiting officers. In the files at +Washington may be seen, carefully tabulated, the several reasons for +their enlisting. Some have "friends in the service"; others wish to +"perfect themselves in a trade," to "complete their education" or "see +the world"--our adventurous spirit. And they are seeing it. They are +also engaged in the most exciting and adventurous sport--with the +exception of aerial warfare ever devised or developed--that of hunting +down in all weathers over the wide spaces of the Atlantic those +modern sea monsters that prey upon the Allied shipping. For the +superdreadnought is reposing behind the nets, the battle-cruiser +ignominiously laying mines; and for the present at least, until some +wizard shall invent a more effective method of annihilation, victory +over Germany depends primarily on the airplane and the destroyer. +At three o'clock one morning I stood on the crowded deck of an Irish +mail-boat watching the full moon riding over Holyhead Mountain and +shimmering on the Irish Sea. A few hours later, in the early light, I +saw the green hills of Killarney against a washed and clearing sky, +the mud-flats beside the railway shining like purple enamel. All +the forenoon, in the train, I travelled through a country bathed in +translucent colours, a country of green pastures dotted over with white +sheep, of banked hedges and perfect trees, of shadowy blue hills in +the high distance. It reminded one of nothing so much as a +stained-glass-window depicting some delectable land of plenty and peace. +And it was Ireland! When at length I arrived at the station of the port +for which I was bound, and which the censor does not permit me to name, +I caught sight of the figure of our Admiral on the platform; and the +fact that I was in Ireland and not in Emmanuel's Land was brought home +to me by the jolting drive we took on an "outside car," the admiral +perched precariously over one wheel and I over the other. Winding up the +hill by narrow roads, we reached the gates of the Admiralty House. + +The house sits, as it were, in the emperor's seat of the amphitheatre +of the town, overlooking the panorama of a perfect harbour. A ring of +emerald hills is broken by a little gap to seaward, and in the centre +is a miniature emerald isle. The ships lying at anchor seemed like +children's boats in a pond. To the right, where a river empties in, were +scattered groups of queer, rakish craft, each with four slanting pipes +and a tiny flag floating from her halyards; a flag--as the binoculars +revealed--of crimson bars and stars on a field of blue. These were our +American destroyers. And in the midst of them, swinging to the tide, +were the big "mother ships" we have sent over to nurse them when, after +many days and nights of hazardous work at sea, they have brought their +flock of transports and merchantmen safely to port. This "mothering" by +repair-ships which are merely huge machine-shops afloat--this trick +of keeping destroyers tuned up and constantly ready for service has +inspired much favourable comment from our allies in the British +service. It is an instance of our national adaptability, learned from +an experience on long coasts where navy-yards are not too handy. Few +landsmen understand how delicate an instrument the destroyer is. + +A service so hazardous, demanding as it does such qualities as the +ability to make instantaneous decisions and powers of mental and +physical endurance, a service so irresistibly attractive to the young +and adventurous, produces a type of officer quite unmistakable. The day +I arrived in London from France, seeking a characteristically English +meal, I went to Simpson's in the Strand, where I found myself seated by +the side of two very junior officers of the British navy. It appeared +that they were celebrating what was left of a precious leave. At a +neighbouring table they spied two of our officers, almost equally +youthful. "Let's have 'em over," suggested one of the Britishers; and +they were "had" over; he raised his glass. "Here's how--as you say in +America!" he exclaimed. "You destroyer chaps are certainly top hole." +And then he added, with a blush, "I say, I hope you don't think I'm +cheeking you!" + +I saw them afloat, I saw them coming ashore in that Irish port, +these young destroyer captains, after five wakeful nights at sea, +weather-bitten, clear-eyed, trained down to the last ounce. One, with +whom I had played golf on the New England hills, carried his clubs in +his hand and invited me to have a game with him. Another, who apologized +for not being dressed at noon on Sunday--he had made the harbour at +three that morning!--was taking his racquet out of its case, preparing +to spend the afternoon on the hospitable courts of Admiralty House with +a fellow captain and two British officers. He was ashamed of his late +rising, but when it was suggested that some sleep was necessary he +explained that, on the trip just ended, it wasn't only the submarines +that kept him awake. "When these craft get jumping about in a seaway you +can't sleep even if you want to." He who has had experience with them +knows the truth of this remark. Incidentally, though he did not mention +it, this young captain was one of three who had been recommended by the +British admiral to his government for the Distinguished Service +Order. The captain's report, which I read, is terse, and needs to be +visualized. There is simply a statement of the latitude and longitude, +the time of day, the fact that the wave of a periscope was sighted at +1,500 yards by the quartermaster first class on duty; general quarters +rung, the executive officer signals full speed ahead, the commanding +officer takes charge and manoeuvres for position--and then something +happens which the censor may be fussy about mentioning. At any rate, +oil and other things rise to the surface of the sea, and the Germans are +minus another submarine. The chief machinist's mate, however, comes in +for special mention. It seems that he ignored the ladder and literally +fell down the hatch, dislocating his shoulder but getting the throttle +wide open within five seconds! + +In this town, facing the sea, is a street lined with quaint houses +painted in yellows and browns and greens, and under each house the kind +of a shop that brings back to the middleaged delectable memories of +extreme youth and nickels to spend. Up and down that street on a bright +Saturday afternoon may be seen our Middle-Western jackies chumming with +the British sailors and Tommies, or flirting with the Irish girls, or +gazing through the little panes of the show-windows, whose enterprising +proprietors have imported from the States a popular brand of chewing-gum +to make us feel more at home. In one of these shops, where I went to +choose a picture post-card, I caught sight of an artistic display of a +delicacy I had thought long obsolete--the everlasting gum-drop. But when +I produced a shilling the shopkeeper shook his head. "Sure, every day +the sailors are wanting to buy them of me, but it's for ornament I'm +keeping them," he said. "There's no more to be had till the war will +be over. Eight years they're here now, and you wouldn't get a tooth in +them, sir!" So I wandered out again, joined the admiral, and inspected +the Bluejackets' Club by the water's edge. Nothing one sees, perhaps, is +so eloquent of the change that has taken place in the life and fabric of +our navy. If you are an enlisted man, here in this commodious group of +buildings you can get a good shore meal and entertain your friends among +the Allies, you may sleep in a real bed, instead of a hammock, you may +play pool, or see a moving-picture show, or witness a vaudeville worthy +of professionals, like that recently given in honour of the visit of +the admiral of our Atlantic fleet. A band of thirty pieces furnished the +music, and in the opinion of the jackies one feature alone was lacking +to make the entertainment a complete success--the new drop-curtain had +failed to arrive from London. I happened to be present when this curtain +was first unrolled, and beheld spread out before me a most realistic +presentation of "little old New York," seen from the North River, +towering against blue American skies. And though I have never been +overfond of New York, that curtain in that place gave me a sensation! + +Such is the life of our officers and sailors in these strange times that +have descended upon us. Five to eight days of vigilance, of hardship +and danger--in short, of war--and then three days of relaxation and +enjoyment in clubs, on golf-courses and tennis-courts, barring the time +it takes to clean ship and paint. There need be no fear that the war +will be neglected. It is eminently safe to declare that our service will +be true to its traditions. + + + +III + +"Dogged does it" ought to be added to "Dieu et mon droit" and other +devices of England. On a day when I was lunching with Mr. Lloyd George +in the dining-room at 10 Downing Street that looks out over the Horse +Guards' Parade, the present premier, with a characteristic gesture, +flung out his hand toward the portrait of a young man in the panel over +the mantel. It was of the younger Pitt, who had taken his meals and +drunk his port in this very room in that other great war a hundred years +ago. The news of Austerlitz, brought to him during his illness, is said +to have killed him. But England, undismayed, fought on for a decade, +and won. Mr. Lloyd George, in spite of burdens even heavier than +Pitt's, happily retains his health; and his is the indomitable spirit +characteristic of the new Britain as well as of the old. For it is a new +Britain one sees. Mr. Lloyd George is prime minister of a transformed +Britain, a Britain modernized and democratized. Like the Englishman who, +when he first witnessed a performance of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," cried +out, "How very unlike the home life of our dear Queen!" the American who +lunches in Downing Street is inclined to exclaim: "How different from +Lord North and Palmerston!" We have, I fear, been too long accustomed +to interpret Britain in terms of these two ministers and of what they +represented to us of the rule of a George the Third or of an inimical +aristocracy. Three out of the five men who form the war cabinet of an +empire are of what would once have been termed an "humble origin." +One was, if I am not mistaken, born in Nova Scotia. General Smuts, +unofficially associated with this council, not many years ago was in +arms against Britain in South Africa, and the prime minister himself +is the son of a Welsh tailor. A situation that should mollify the most +exacting and implacable of our anti-British democrats! + +I listened to many speeches and explanations of the prejudice that +existed in the mind of the dyed-in-the-wool American against England, +and the reason most frequently given was the "school-book" reason; +our histories kept the feeling alive. Now; there is no doubt that the +histories out of which we were taught made what psychologists would +call "action patterns," or "complexes," in our brains, just as the +school-books have made similar complexes in the brains of German +children and prepared them for this war. But, after all, there was a +certain animus behind the histories. Boiled down, the sentiment was one +against the rule of a hereditary aristocracy, and our forefathers had it +long before the separation took place. The Middle-Western farmer has no +prejudice against France, because France is a republic. The French are +lovable, and worthy of all the sympathy and affection we can give them. +But Britain is still nominally a monarchy; and our patriot thinks of its +people very much as the cowboy used to regard citizens of New York. They +all lived on Fifth Avenue. For the cowboy, the residents of the dreary +side streets simply did not exist. We have been wont to think of all +the British as aristocrats, while they have returned the compliment by +visualizing all Americans as plutocrats--despite the fact that one-tenth +of our population is said to own nine-tenths of all our wealth! + +But the war will change that, is already changing it. + +'Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner'. We have been soaked in the same +common law, literature, and traditions of liberty--or of chaos, as one +likes. Whether we all be of British origin or not, it is the mind that +makes the true patriot; and there is no American so dead as not to feel +a thrill when he first sets foot on British soil. Our school-teachers +felt it when they began to travel some twenty years ago, and the +thousands of our soldiers who pass through on their way to France are +feeling it today, and writing home about it. Our soldiers and sailors +are being cared for and entertained in England just as they would be +cared for and entertained at home. So are their officers. Not long ago +one of the finest town houses in London was donated by the owner for +an American officers' club, the funds were raised by contributions +from British officers, and the club was inaugurated by the King and +Queen--and Admiral Sims. Hospitality and good-will have gone much +further than this. Any one who knows London will understand the +sacredness of those private squares, surrounded by proprietary +residences, where every tree and every blade of grass has been jealously +guarded from intrusion for a century or more. And of all these squares +that of St. James's is perhaps the most exclusive, and yet it is +precisely in St. James's there is to be built the first of those hotels +designed primarily for the benefit of American officers, where they can +get a good room for five shillings a night and breakfast at a reasonable +price. One has only to sample the war-time prices of certain hostelries +to appreciate the value of this. + + +On the first of four unforgettable days during which I was a guest +behind the British lines in France the officer who was my guide stopped +the motor in the street of an old village, beside a courtyard surrounded +by ancient barns. + +"There are some of your Americans," he remarked. + +I had recognized them, not by their uniforms but by their type. Despite +their costumes, which were negligible, they were eloquent of college +campuses in every one of our eight and forty States, lean, thin-hipped, +alert. The persistent rains had ceased, a dazzling sunlight made that +beautiful countryside as bright as a coloured picture post-card, but a +riotous cold gale was blowing; yet all wore cotton trousers that left +their knees as bare as Highlanders' kilts. Above these some had an +sweaters, others brown khaki tunics, from which I gathered that they +belonged to the officers' training corps. They were drawn up on two +lines facing each other with fixed bayonets, a grim look on their faces +that would certainly have put any Hun to flight. Between the files stood +an unmistakable gipling sergeant with a crimson face and a bristling +little chestnut moustache, talking like a machine gun. + +"Now, then, not too lidylike!--there's a Bosch in front of you! Run 'im +through! Now, then!" + +The lines surged forward, out went the bayonets, first the long thrust +and then the short, and then a man's gun was seized and by a swift +backward twist of the arm he was made helpless. + +"Do you feel it?" asked the officer, as he turned to me. I did. "Up +and down your spine," he added, and I nodded. "Those chaps will do," +he said. He had been through that terrible battle of the Somme, and he +knew. So had the sergeant. + +Presently came a resting-spell. One of the squad approached me, whom I +recognized as a young man I had met in the Harvard Union. + +"If you write about this," he said, "just tell our people that we're +going to take that sergeant home with us when the war's over. He's too +good to lose." + + + +IV + +It is trite to observe that democracies are organized--if, indeed, they +are organized at all--not for war but for peace. And nowhere is this +fact more apparent than in Britain. Even while the war is in progress +has that internal democratic process of evolution been going on, +presaging profound changes in the social fabric. And these changes must +be dealt with by statesmen, must be guided with one hand while the war +is being prosecuted with the other. The task is colossal. In no previous +war have the British given more striking proof of their inherent quality +of doggedness. Greatness, as Confucius said, does not consist in never +falling, but in rising every time you fall. The British speak with +appalling frankness of their blunders. They are fighting, indeed, for +the privilege of making blunders--since out of blunders arise new truths +and discoveries not contemplated in German philosophy. + +America must now contribute what Britain and France, with all their +energies and resources and determination, have hitherto been unable +to contribute. It must not be men, money, and material alone, but some +quality that America has had in herself during her century and a half +of independent self-realization. Mr. Chesterton, in writing about the +American Revolution, observes that the real case for the colonists is +that they felt that they could be something which England would not help +them to be. It is, in fact, the only case for separation. What may +be called the English tradition of democracy, which we inherit, grows +through conflicts and differences, through experiments and failures and +successes, toward an intellectualized unity,--experiments by states, +experiments by individuals, a widely spread development, and new +contributions to the whole. + +Democracy has arrived at the stage when it is ceasing to be national and +selfish. + +It must be said of England, in her treatment of her colonies subsequent +to our Revolution, that she took this greatest of all her national +blunders to heart. As a result, Canada and Australia and New Zealand +have sent their sons across the seas to fight for an empire that +refrains from coercion; while, thanks to the policy of the British +Liberals--which was the expression of the sentiment of the British +nation--we have the spectacle today of a Botha and a Smuts fighting +under the Union Jack. + +And how about Ireland? England has blundered there, and she admits it +freely. They exist in England who cry out for the coercion of Ireland, +and who at times have almost had their way. But to do this, of course, +would be a surrender to the German contentions, an acknowledgment of the +wisdom of the German methods against which she is protesting with all +her might. Democracy, apparently, must blunder on until that question +too, is solved. + + + +V + +Many of those picturesque features of the older England, that stir us by +their beauty and by the sense of stability and permanence they convey, +will no doubt disappear or be transformed. I am thinking of the great +estates, some of which date from Norman times; I am thinking of +the aristocracy, which we Americans repudiated in order to set up +a plutocracy instead. Let us hope that what is fine in it will +be preserved, for there is much. By the theory of the British +constitution--that unwritten but very real document--in return for +honours, emoluments, and titles, the burden of government has hitherto +been thrown on a class. Nor can it be said that they have been untrue to +their responsibility. That class developed a tradition and held fast to +it; and they had a foreign policy that guided England through centuries +of greatness. Democracy too must have a foreign policy, a tradition of +service; a trained if not hereditary group to guide it through troubled +waters. Even in an intelligent community there must be leadership. And, +if the world will no longer tolerate the old theories, a tribute may +at least be paid to those who from conviction upheld them; who ruled, +perhaps in affluence, yet were also willing to toil and, if need be, to +die for the privilege. + +One Saturday afternoon, after watching for a while the boys playing +fives and football and romping over the green lawns at Eton, on my way +to the head master's rooms I paused in one of the ancient quads. My eye +had been caught by a long column of names posted there, printed in heavy +black letters. 'Etona non, immemora'! Every week many new names are +added to those columns. On the walls of the chapel and in other quads +and passages may be found tablets and inscriptions in memory of those +who have died for England and the empire in by-gone wars. I am told that +the proportion of Etonians of killed to wounded is greater than that +of any other public school--which is saying a great deal. They go back +across the channel and back again until their names appear on the last +and highest honour list of the school and nation. + +In one of the hospitals I visited lay a wounded giant who had once been +a truckman in a little town in Kent. Incidentally, in common with his +neighbours, he had taken no interest in the war, which had seemed as +remote to him as though he had lived in North Dakota. One day a Zeppelin +dropped a bomb on that village, whereupon the able-bodied males enlisted +to a man, and he with them. A subaltern in his company was an Eton boy. +"We just couldn't think of 'im as an orficer, sir; in the camps 'e used +to play with us like a child. And then we went to France. And one night +when we was wet to the skin and the Boschs was droppin' shell all +around us we got the word. It was him leaped over the top first of all, +shouting back at us to come on. He tumbled right back and died in my +arms, 'e did, as I was climbin' up after 'im. I shan't ever forget 'im." + +As you travel about in these days you become conscious, among the people +you meet, of a certain bewilderment. A static world and a static order +are dissolving; and in England that order was so static as to make the +present spectacle the more surprising. Signs of the disintegration of +the old social strata were not lacking, indeed, in the earlier years of +the twentieth century, when labour members and north-country radicals +began to invade parliament; but the cataclysm of this war has +accelerated the process. In the muddy trenches of Flanders and France +a new comradeship has sprung up between officers and Tommies, while +time-honoured precedent has been broken by the necessity of giving +thousands of commissions to men of merit who do not belong to the +"officer caste." At the Haymarket Theatre I saw a fashionable audience +wildly applaud a play in which the local tailor becomes a major-general +and returns home to marry the daughter of the lord of a mayor whose +clothes he used to cut before the war. + +"The age of great adventure," were the words used by Mr. H. G. Wells to +describe this epoch as we discussed it. And a large proportion of +the descendants of those who have governed England for centuries are +apparently imbued with the spirit of this adventure, even though it +may spell the end of their exclusive rule. As significant of the social +mingling of elements which in the past never exchanged ideas or points +of view I shall describe a week-end party at a large country house of +Liberal complexion; on the Thames. I have reason to believe it fairly +typical. The owner of this estate holds an important position in the +Foreign Office, and the hostess has, by her wit and intelligent grasp of +affairs, made an enviable place for herself. On her right, at luncheon +on Sunday, was a labour leader, the head of one of the most powerful +unions in Britain, and next him sat a member of one of the oldest of +England's titled families. The two were on terms of Christian names. The +group included two or three women, a sculptor and an educator, another +Foreign Office official who has made a reputation since the beginning of +the war, and finally an employer of labour, the chairman of the biggest +shipbuilding company in England. + +That a company presenting such a variety of interests should have been +brought together in the frescoed dining-room of that particular house is +noteworthy. + +The thing could happen nowhere save in the England of today. At first +the talk was general, ranging over a number of subjects from that of +the personality of certain politicians to the conduct of the war and +the disturbing problem raised by the "conscientious objector"; little +by little, however, the rest of us became silent, to listen to a debate +which had begun between the labour leader and the ship-builder on the +"labour question." It is not my purpose here to record what they said. +Needless to add that they did not wholly agree, but they were much +nearer to agreement than one would have thought possible. What was +interesting was the open-mindedness with which, on both sides, the +argument was conducted, and the fact that it could seriously take place +then and there. For the subject of it had long been the supreme problem +in the lives of both these men, their feelings concerning it must at +times have been tinged with bitterness, yet they spoke with courtesy and +restraint, and though each maintained his contentions he was quick to +acknowledge a point made by the other. As one listened one was led +to hope that a happier day is perhaps at hand when such things as +"complexes" and convictions will disappear. + +The types of these two were in striking contrast. The labour leader was +stocky, chestnut-coloured, vital, possessing the bulldog quality of +the British self-made man combined with a natural wit, sharpened in the +arena, that often startled the company into an appreciative laughter. +The ship-builder, on the other hand, was one of those spare and hard +Englishmen whom no amount of business cares will induce to neglect +the exercise of his body, the obligation at all times to keep "fit"; +square-rigged, as it were, with a lean face and a wide moustache +accentuating a square chin. Occasionally a gleam of humour, a ray of +idealism, lighted his practical grey eyes. Each of these two had managed +rather marvellously to triumph over early training by self-education: +the labour leader, who had had his first lessons in life from injustices +and hard knocks; and the ship-builder, who had overcome the handicap of +the public-school tradition and of Manchester economics. + +"Yes, titles and fortunes must go," remarked our hostess with a smile as +she rose from the table and led the way out on the sunny, stone-flagged +terrace. Below us was a wide parterre whose flower-beds, laid out by a +celebrated landscape-gardener in the days of the Stuarts, were filled +with vegetables. The day was like our New England Indian summerthough +the trees were still heavy with leaves--and a gossamer-blue veil of haze +stained the hills between which the shining river ran. If the social +revolution, or evolution, takes place, one wonders what will become of +this long-cherished beauty. + +I venture to dwell upon one more experience of that week-end party. +The Friday evening of my arrival I was met at the station, not by a +limousine with a chauffeur and footman, but by a young woman with a +taxicab--one of the many reminders that a war is going on. London had +been reeking in a green-yellow fog, but here the mist was white, and +through it I caught glimpses of the silhouettes of stately trees in a +park, and presently saw the great house with its clock-tower looming up +before me. A fire was crackling in the hall, and before it my hostess +was conversing amusedly with a well-known sculptor--a sculptor typical +of these renaissance times, large, full-blooded, with vigorous opinions +on all sorts of matters. + +"A lecturer is coming down from London to talk to the wounded in the +amusement-hall of the hospital," our hostess informed us. "And you both +must come and speak too." + +The three of us got into the only motor of which the establishment now +boasts, a little runabout using a minimum of "petrol," and she guided +us rapidly by devious roads through the fog until a blur of light +proclaimed the presence of a building, one of some score or more built +on the golf-course by the British Government. I have not space hereto +describe that hospital, which is one of the best in England; but it must +be observed that its excellence and the happiness of its inmates are +almost wholly due to the efforts of the lady who now conducted us across +the stage of the amusement-hall, where all the convalescents who +could walk or who could be rolled thither in chairs were gathered. The +lecturer had not arrived. But the lady of the manor seated herself at +the speaker's table, singling out Scotch wits in the audience--for +whom she was more than a match--while the sculptor and I looked on and +grinned and resisted her blandishments to make speeches. When at last +the lecturer came he sat down informally on the table with one foot +hanging in the air and grinned, too, at her bantering but complimentary +introduction. It was then I discovered for the first time that he was +one of the best educational experts of that interesting branch of the +British Government, the Department of Reconstruction, whose business +it is to teach the convalescents the elements of social and political +science. This was not to be a lecture, he told them, but a debate in +which every man must take a part. And his first startling question was +this: + +"Why should Mr. Lloyd George, instead of getting five thousand pounds a +year for his services as prime minister, receive any more than a common +labourer?" + +The question was a poser. The speaker folded his hands and beamed down +at them; he seemed fairly to radiate benignity. + +"Now we mustn't be afraid of him, just because he seems to be +intelligent," declared our hostess. This sally was greeted with +spasmodic laughter. Her eyes flitted from bench to bench, yet met +nothing save averted glances. "Jock! Where are you, Jock? Why don't you +speak up?--you've never been downed before." + +More laughter, and craning of necks for the Jocks. This appeared to be +her generic name for the vita. But the Jocks remained obdurately modest. +The prolonged silence did not seem in the least painful to the lecturer, +who thrust his hand in his pocket and continued to beam. He had learned +how to wait. And at last his patience was rewarded. A middleaged soldier +with a very serious manner arose hesitatingly, with encouraging noises +from his comrades. + +"It's not Mr. Lloyd George I'm worrying about, sir," he said, "all I +wants is enough for the missus and me. I had trouble to get that before +the war." + +Cries of "Hear! Hear!" + +"Why did you have trouble?" inquired the lecturer mildly. + +"The wages was too low." + +"And why were the wages too low?" + +"You've got me there. I hadn't thought." + +"But isn't it your business as a voter to think?" asked the lecturer. +"That's why the government is sending me here, to start you to thinking, +to remind you that it is you soldiers who will have to take charge of +this country and run it after the war is over. And you won't be able to +do that unless you think, and think straight." + +"We've never been taught to think," was the illuminating reply. + +"And if we do think we've never been educated to express ourselves, same +as you!" shouted another man, in whom excitement had overcome timidity. + +"I'm here to help you educate yourselves," said the lecturer. "But first +let's hear any ideas you may have on the question I asked you." + +There turned out to be plenty of ideas, after all. An opinion was +ventured that Mr. Lloyd George served the nation, not for money but from +public spirit; a conservative insisted that ability should be rewarded +and rewarded well; whereupon ensued one of the most enlightening +discussions, not only as a revelation of intelligence, but of complexes +and obsessions pervading many of the minds in whose power lies the +ultimate control of democracies. One, for instance, declared that--"if +every man went to church proper of a Sunday and minded his own business +the country would get along well enough." He was evidently of the +opinion that there was too much thinking and not enough of what he would +have termed "religion." Gradually that audience split up into liberals +and conservatives; and the liberals noticeably were the younger men who +had had the advantages of better board schools, who had formed fewer +complexes and had had less time in which to get them set. Of these, a +Canadian made a plea for the American system of universal education, +whereupon a combative "stand-patter" declared that every man wasn't fit +to be educated, that the American plan made only for discontent. "Look +at them," he exclaimed, "They're never satisfied to stay in their +places." This provoked laughter, but it was too much for the +sculptor--and for me. We both broke our vows and made speeches in favour +of equality and mental opportunity, while the lecturer looked on and +smiled. Mr. Lloyd George and his salary were forgotten. By some subtle +art of the chairman the debate had been guided to the very point where +he had from the first intended to guide it--to the burning question of +our day--education as the true foundation of democracy! Perhaps, after +all, this may be our American contribution to the world's advance. + +As we walked homeward through the fog I talked to him of Professor +Dewey's work and its results, while he explained to me the methods of +the Reconstruction Department. "Out of every audience like that we get +a group and form a class," he said. "They're always a bit backward at +first, just as they were tonight, but they grow very keen. We have +a great many classes already started, and we see to it that they are +provided with text-books and teachers. Oh, no, it's not propaganda," he +added, in answer to my query; "all we do is to try to give them facts in +such a way as to make them able to draw their own conclusions and join +any political party they choose--just so they join one intelligently." +I must add that before Sunday was over he had organized his class and +arranged for their future instruction. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +I would speak first of a contrast--and yet I have come to recognize how +impossible it is to convey to the dweller in America the difference in +atmosphere between England and France on the one hand and our country on +the other. And when I use the word "atmosphere" I mean the mental state +of the peoples as well as the weather and the aspect of the skies. I +have referred in another article to the anxious, feverish prosperity one +beholds in London and Paris, to that apparent indifference, despite the +presence on the streets of crowds of soldiers to the existence of a war +of which one is ever aware. Yet, along with this, one is ever conscious +of pressure. The air is heavy; there is a corresponding lack of the +buoyancy of mind which is the normal American condition. Perhaps, +if German troops occupied New England and New York, our own mental +barometer might be lower. It is difficult to say. At any rate, after +an ocean voyage of nine days one's spirits rise perceptibly as the ship +nears Nantucket; and the icy-bright sunlight of New York harbour, the +sight of the buildings aspiring to blue skies restore the throbbing +optimism which with us is normal; and it was with an effort, when I +talked to the reporters on landing, that I was able to achieve and +express the pessimism and darkness out of which I had come. Pessimism +is perhaps too strong a word, and takes no account of the continued +unimpaired morale and determination of the greater part of the British +and French peoples. They expect much from us. Yet the impression was +instantaneous, when I set forth in the streets of New York, that we had +not fully measured the magnitude of our task--an impression that has +been amply confirmed as the weeks have passed. + +The sense of relief I felt was not only the result of bright skies and +a high barometer, of the palpable self-confidence of the pedestrians, of +the white bread on the table and the knowledge that there was more, +but also of the ease of accomplishing things. I called for a telephone +number and got it cheerfully and instantly. I sent several telegrams, +and did not have to wait twenty minutes before a wicket while a +painstaking official multiplied and added and subtracted and paused to +talk with a friend; the speed of the express in which I flew down-town +seemed emblematic of America itself. I had been transported, in fact, +into another world--my world; and in order to realize again that from +which I had come I turned to a diary recording a London filled with the +sulphur fumes of fog, through which the lamps of the taxis and buses +shone as yellow blots reflected on glistening streets; or, for some +reason a still greater contrast, a blue, blue November Sunday afternoon +in parts, the Esplanade of the Invalides black with people--sad +people--and the Invalides itself all etched in blue as seen through the +wide vista from the Seine. + +A few days later, with some children, I went to the Hippodrome. And it +remained for the Hippodrome, of all places, to give me the thrill I had +not achieved abroad, the thrill I had not experienced since the first +months of the war. Mr. George Cohan accomplished it. The transport with +steam up, is ready to leave the wharf, the khaki-clad regiment of erect +and vigorous young Americans marches across the great stage, and the +audience strains forward and begins to sing, under its breath, the words +that proclaim, as nothing else perhaps proclaims, how America feels. + + "Send the word, send the word over there... + We'll be o-ver, we're coming o-ver, + And we won't come back till it's o-ver, over there!" + +Is it the prelude of a tragedy? We have always been so successful, we +Americans. Are we to fail now? I am an American, and I do not believe we +are to fail. But I am soberer, somehow a different American than he who +sailed away in August. Shall we learn other things than those that have +hitherto been contained in our philosophy? + +Of one thing I am convinced. It is the first war of the world that is +not a miltary war, although miltary genius is demanded, although it is +the bloodiest war in history. But other qualities are required; men and +women who are not professional soldiers are fighting in it and will aid +in victory. The pomp and circumstance of other wars are lacking in this, +the greatest of all. We had the thrills, even in America, three years +ago, when Britain and France and Canada went in. We tingled when we +read of the mobilizing of the huge armies, of the leave-takings of +the soldiers. We bought every extra for news of those first battles +on Belgian soil. And I remember my sensations when in the province +of Quebec in the autumn of 1914, looking out of the car-window at the +troops gathering on the platforms who were to go across the seas +to fight for the empire and liberty. They were singing "Tipperary!" +"Tipperary!" One seldoms hears it now, and the way has proved +long--longer than we reckoned. And we are singing "Over There!" + +In those first months of the war there was, we were told, in England +and France a revival of "religion," and indeed many of the books then +written gave evidence of having been composed in exalted, mystic moods. +I remember one in particular, called "En Campagne," by a young French +officer. And then, somehow, the note of mystic exaltation died away, +to be succeeded by a period of realism. Read "Le Feu," which is most +typical, which has sold in numberless editions. Here is a picture +of that other aspect--the grimness, the monotony, and the frequent +bestiality of trench life, the horror of slaughtering millions of men +by highly specialized machinery. And yet, as an American, I strike +inevitably the note of optimism once more. Even now the truer spiritual +goal is glimpsed through the battle clouds, and has been hailed in +world-reverberating phrases by our American President. Day by day the +real issue is clearer, while the "religion" it implies embraces not +one nation, wills not one patriotism, but humanity itself. I heard a +Frenchwoman who had been deeply "religious" in the old sense exclaim: "I +no longer have any faith in God; he is on the side of the Germans." When +the war began there were many evidences of a survival of that faith that +God fights for nations, interferes in behalf of the "righteous" +cause. When General Joffre was in America he was asked by one of our +countrywomen how the battle of the Marne was won. "Madame," he is +reported to have said, "it was won by me, by my generals and soldiers." +The tendency to regard this victory, which we hope saved France and the +Western humanitarian civilization we cherish, as a special interposition +of Providence, as a miracle, has given place to the realization that +the battle was won by the resourcefulness, science, and coolness of the +French commander-in-chief. Science preserves armies, since killing, if +it has to be done, is now wholly within that realm; science heals the +wounded, transports them rapidly to the hospitals, gives the shattered +something still to live for; and, if we are able to abandon the +sentimental view and look facts in the face--as many anointed chaplains +in Europe are doing--science not only eliminates typhoid but is able to +prevent those terrible diseases that devastate armies and nations. And +science is no longer confined to the physical but has invaded the +social kingdom, is able to weave a juster fabric into the government +of peoples. On all sides we are beginning to embrace the +religion of self-reliance, a faith that God is on the side of +intelligence--intelligence with a broader meaning than the Germans have +given it, for it includes charity. + + + +II + +It seems to me that I remember, somewhere in the realistic novel I have +mentioned "Le Feu"--reading of singing soldiers, and an assumption +on the part of their hearers that such songs are prompted only by a +devil-may-care lightness of heart which the soldier achieves. A shallow +psychology (as the author points out), especially in these days of +trench warfare! The soldier sings to hide his real feelings, perhaps to +give vent to them. I am reminded of all this in connection with my trip +to the British front. I left London after lunch on one of those dreary, +grey days to which I have referred; the rain had begun to splash angrily +against the panes of the car windows before we reached the coast. At +five o'clock the boat pushed off into a black channel, whipped by a gale +that drove the rain across the decks and into every passage and gangway. +The steamer was literally loaded with human beings, officers and men +returning from a brief glimpse of home. There was nothing of the glory +of war in the embarkation, and, to add to the sad and sinister effect of +it, each man as he came aboard mounted the ladder and chose, from a pile +on the hatch combing, a sodden life-preserver, which he flung around his +shoulders as he went in search of a shelter. The saloon below, where +we had our tea, was lighted indeed, but sealed so tight as to be +insupportable; and the cabin above, stifling too, was dark as a pocket. +One stumbled over unseen passengers on the lounges, or sitting on kits +on the floor. Even the steps up which I groped my way to the deck above +were filled, while on the deck there was standing-room only and not much +of that. Mal de mer added to the discomforts of many. At length I found +an uncertain refuge in a gangway amidships, hedged in between unseen +companions; but even here the rain stung our faces and the spray of +an occasional comber drenched our feet, while through the gloom of the +night only a few yards of white water were to be discerned. For three +hours I stood there, trying to imagine what was in the minds of these +men with whose bodies I was in such intimate contact. They were going +to a foreign land to fight, many of them to die, not in one of those +adventurous campaigns of times gone by, but in the wet trenches or the +hideous No Man's Land between. What were the images they summoned up in +the darkness? Visions of long-familiar homes and long-familiar friends? +And just how were they facing the future? Even as I wondered, voices +rose in a song, English voices, soldier voices. It was not "Tipperary," +the song that thrilled us a few years ago. I strove to catch the words: + + "I want to go home! + I don't want to go back to the trenches no more, + Where there are bullets and shrapnel galore, + I want to go home!" + +It was sung boisterously, in a defiant tone of mockery of the desire it +expressed, and thus tremendously gained in pathos. They did want to go +home--naturally. It was sung with the same spirit our men sing "We won't +come back till it's over, over there!" The difference is that these +Britishers have been over there, have seen the horrors face to face, +have tasted the sweets of home, and in spite of heartsickness and +seasickness are resolved to see it through. Such is the morale of the +British army. I have not the slightest doubt that it will be the morale +of our own army also, but at present the British are holding the fort. +Tommy would never give up the war, but he has had a realistic taste of +it, and his songs reflect his experience. Other songs reached my ears +each night, above the hissing and pounding of the Channel seas, but +the unseen group returned always to this. One thought of Agincourt and +Crecy, of Waterloo, of the countless journeys across this same stormy +strip of water the ancestors of these man had made in the past, and one +wondered whether war were eternal and inevitable, after all. + +And what does Tommy think about it--this war? My own limited +experience thoroughly indorses Mr. Galsworthy's splendid analysis of +British-soldier psychology that appeared in the December North American. +The average man, with native doggedness, is fighting for the defence of +England. The British Government itself, in its reconstruction department +for the political education of the wounded, has given partial denial +to the old maxim that it is the soldier's business not to think but to +obey; and the British army is leavened with men who read and reflect +in the long nights of watching in the rain, who are gaining ideas about +conditions in the past and resolutions concerning those of the future. +The very army itself has had a miracle happen to it: it has been +democratized--and with the cheerful consent of the class to which +formerly the possession of commissions was largely confined. Gradually, +to these soldier-thinkers, as well as to the mass of others at home, +is unfolding the vision of a new social order which is indeed worth +fighting for and dying for. + + + +III + +At last, our knees cramped and our feet soaked, we saw the lights of the +French port dancing across the veil of rain, like thistledowns of fire, +and presently we were at rest at a stone quay. As I stood waiting on the +deck to have my passport vised, I tried to reconstruct the features of +this little seaport as I had seen it, many years before, on a bright +summer's day when I had motored from Paris on my way to London. The gay +line of hotels facing the water was hidden in the darkness. Suddenly I +heard my name called, and I was rescued from the group of civilians by +a British officer who introduced himself as my host. It was after nine +o'clock, and he had been on the lookout for me since half past seven. +The effect of his welcome at that time and place was electrical, and +I was further immensely cheered by the news he gave me, as we hurried +along the street, that two friends of mine were here and quite hungry, +having delayed dinner for my arrival. One of them was a young member +of Congress who had been making exhaustive studies of the situation in +Italy, France and England, and the other one of our best-known writers, +both bound for London. We sat around the table until nearly eleven, +exchanging impressions and experiences. Then my officer declared that it +was time to go home. + +"Home" proved to be the big chateau which the British Government has +leased for the kindly purpose of entertaining such American guests as +they choose to invite. It is known as the "American Chateau," and in the +early morning hours we reached it after a long drive through the gale. +We crossed a bridge over a moat and traversed a huge stone hall to +the Gothic drawing-room. Here a fire was crackling on the hearth, +refreshments were laid out, and the major in command rose from his book +to greet me. Hospitality, with these people, has attained to art, and, +though I had come here at the invitation of his government, I had the +feeling of being his personal guest in his own house. Presently he led +the way up the stone stairs and showed me the room I was to occupy. + +I awoke to the sound of the wind whistling through the open lattice, and +looking down on the ruffled blue waters of the moat I saw a great white +swan at his morning toilet, his feathers dazzling in the sun. It was one +of those rare crisp and sparkling days that remind one of our American +autumn. A green stretch of lawn made a vista through the woods. +Following the example of the swan, I plunged into the tin tub the +orderly had placed beside my bed and went down to porridge in a glow. +Porridge, for the major was Scotch, and had taught his French cook to +make it as the Scotch make it. Then, going out into the hall, from a +table on which lay a contour map of the battle region, the major picked +up a hideous mask that seemed to have been made for some barbaric +revelries. + +"We may not strike any gas," he said, "but it's as well to be on the +safe side," whereupon he made me practise inserting the tube in my +mouth, pinching the nostrils instantly with the wire-covered nippers. +He also presented me with a steel helmet. Thus equipped for any untoward +occurrence, putting on sweaters and heavy overcoats, and wrapping +ourselves in the fur rugs of the waiting automobile, we started off, +with the gale on our quarter, for the front. + +Picardy, on whose soil has been shed so much English blood, never was +more beautiful than on that October day. The trees were still in full +leaf, the fields green, though the crops had been gathered, and the +crystal air gave vivid value to every colour in the landscape. From time +to time we wound through the cobble-stoned streets of historic villages, +each having its stone church end the bodki-shaped steeple of blue slate +so characteristic of that country. And, as though we were still in +the pastoral times of peace, in the square of one of these villages a +horse-fair was in progress, blue-smocked peasants were trotting +chunky ponies over the stones. It was like a picture from one of De +Maupassant's tales. In other villages the shawled women sat knitting +behind piles of beets and cabbages and apples, their farm-carts atilt in +the sun. Again and again I tried to grasp the fact that the greatest of +world wars was being fought only a few miles away--and failed. + +We had met, indeed, an occasional officer or orderly, huddled in a +greatcoat and head against the wind, exercising those wonderful animals +that are the pride of the British cavalry and which General Sir Douglas +Haig, himself a cavalryman, some day hopes to bring into service. We +had overtaken an artillery train rumbling along toward the east, the +men laughing and joking as they rode, as though they were going to +manoeuvres. Farther on, as the soldiers along the highroads and in the +towns grew more and more numerous, they seemed so harmoniously part of +the peaceful scene that war was as difficult to visualize as ever. Many +sat about smoking their pipes and playing with the village children, +others were in squads going to drill or exercise--something the Briton +never neglects. The amazing thing to a visitor who has seen the trenches +awash on a typical wet day, who knows that even billeting in cold farms +and barns behind the lines can scarcely be compared to the comforts of +home, is how these men keep well under the conditions. To say that they +are well is to understate the fact: the ruddy faces and clear eyes and +hard muscles--even of those who once were pale London clerks--proclaim a +triumph for the system of hygiene of their army. + +Suddenly we came upon a house with a great round hole in its wall, and +then upon several in ruins beside the village street. Meanwhile, at work +under the windswept trees of the highway, were strange, dark men from +the uttermost parts of the earth, physiognomies as old as the tombs of +Pharaoh. It was, indeed, not so much the graven red profiles of priests +and soldiers that came tome at sight of these Egyptians, but the singing +fellaheen of the water-buckets of the Nile. And here, too, shovelling +the crushed rock, were East Indians oddly clad in European garb, +careless of the cold. That sense of the vastness of the British Empire, +which at times is so profound, was mingled now with a knowledge that it +was fighting for its life, marshalling all its resources for Armageddon. + +Saint Eloi is named after the good bishop who ventured to advise King +Dagobert about his costume. And the church stands--what is left of +it--all alone on the greenest of terraces jutting out toward the east; +and the tower, ruggedly picturesque against the sky, resembles that +of some crumbled abbey. As a matter of fact, it has been a target for +German gunners. Dodging an army-truck and rounding one of those military +traffic policemen one meets at every important corner we climbed +the hill and left the motor among the great trees, which are still +fortunately preserved. And we stood for a few minutes, gazing over miles +and miles of devastation. Then, taking the motor once more, we passed +through wrecked and empty villages until we came to the foot of Vimy +Ridge. Notre Dame de Lorette rose against the sky-line to the north. + +Vimy and Notre Dame de Lorette--sweet but terrible names! Only a summer +had passed since Vimy was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of +the war. From a distance the prevailing colour of the steep slope is +ochre; it gives the effect of having been scraped bare in preparation +for some gigantic enterprise. A nearer view reveals a flush of green; +nature is already striving to heal. From top to bottom it is pockmarked +by shells and scarred by trenches--trenches every few feet, and between +them tangled masses of barbed wire still clinging to the "knife +rests" and corkscrew stanchions to which it had been strung. The huge +shell-holes, revealing the chalk subsoil, were half-filled with water. +And even though the field had been cleaned by those East Indians I had +seen on the road, and the thousands who had died here buried, bits of +uniform, shoes, and accoutrements and shattered rifles were sticking +in the clay--and once we came across a portion of a bedstead, doubtless +taken by some officer from a ruined and now vanished village to his +dugout. Painfully, pausing frequently to ponder over these remnants, so +eloquent of the fury of the struggle, slipping backward at every step +and despite our care getting tangled in the wire, we made our way up +the slope. Buttercups and daisies were blooming around the edges of the +craters. + +As we drew near the crest the major warned me not to expose myself. "It +isn't because there is much chance of our being shot," he explained, +"but a matter of drawing the German fire upon others." And yet I found it +hard to believe--despite the evidence at my feet--that war existed here. +The brightness of the day, the emptiness of the place, the silence--save +for the humming of the gale--denied it. And then, when we had cautiously +rounded a hummock at the top, my steel helmet was blown off--not by a +shrapnel, but by the wind! I had neglected to tighten the chin-strap. + +Immediately below us I could make out scars like earthquake cracks +running across the meadows--the front trenches. Both armies were buried +like moles in these furrows. The country was spread out before us, +like a map, with occasionally the black contour of a coal mound rising +against the green, or a deserted shaft-head. I was gazing at the famous +battlefield of Lens. Villages, woods, whose names came back to me as the +major repeated them, lay like cloud shadows on the sunny plain, and the +faintest shadow of all, far to the eastward, was Lens itself. I marked +it by a single white tower. And suddenly another white tower, loftier +than the first, had risen up! But even as I stared its substance seemed +to change, to dissolve, and the tower was no longer to be seen. Not +until then did I realize that a monster shell had burst beside the +trenches in front of the city. Occasionally after that there came to my +ears the muffed report of some hidden gun, and a ball like a powder-puff +lay lightly on the plain, and vanished. But even the presence of these, +oddly enough, did not rob the landscape of its air of Sunday peace. + +We ate our sandwiches and drank our bottle of white wine in a sheltered +cut of the road that runs up that other ridge which the French gained +at such an appalling price, Notre Dame de Lorette, while the major +described to me some features of the Lens battle, in which he had taken +part. I discovered incidentally that he had been severely wounded at the +Somme. Though he had been a soldier all his life, and a good soldier, +his true passion was painting, and he drew my attention to the rare +greens and silver-greys of the stones above us, steeped in sunlight--all +that remained of the little church of Notre Dame--more beautiful, more +significant, perhaps, as a ruin. It reminded the major of the Turners he +had admired in his youth. After lunch we lingered in the cemetery, where +the graves and vaults had been harrowed by shells; the trenches ran +right through them. And here, in this desecrated resting-place of the +village dead, where the shattered gravestones were mingled with barbed +wire, death-dealing fragments of iron, and rusting stick-bombs that had +failed to explode, was a wooden cross, on which was rudely written the +name of Hans Siebert. Mouldering at the foot of the cross was a grey +woollen German tunic from which the buttons had been cut. + +We kept the road to the top, for Notre Dame de Lorette is as steep as +Vimy. There we looked upon the panorama of the Lens battle-field once +more, and started down the eastern slope, an apparently smooth expanse +covered now with prairie grasses, in reality a labyrinth of deep +ditches, dugouts, and pits; gruesome remnants of the battle lay +half-concealed under the grass. We walked slowly, making desperate +leaps over the trenches, sometimes perforce going through them, treading +gingerly on the "duck board" at the bottom. We stumbled over stick-bombs +and unexploded shells. No plough can be put here--the only solution for +the land for years to come is forest. Just before we gained the road +at the bottom, where the car was awaiting us, we were startled by the +sudden flight of a covey of partridges. + +The skies were grey when we reached the banal outskirts of a town where +the bourgeoise houses were modern, commonplace, save those which had +been ennobled by ruin. It was Arras, one of those few magic names, +eloquent with suggestions of mediaeval romance and art, intrigue and +chivalry; while upon their significance, since the war began, has been +superimposed still another, no less eloquent but charged with pathos. +We halted for a moment in the open space before the railroad station, a +comparatively new structure of steel and glass, designed on geometrical +curves, with an uninspiring, cheaply ornamented front. It had been, +undoubtedly, the pride of the little city. Yet finding it here had +at first something of the effect of the discovery of an +office-building--let us say--on the site of the Reims Cathedral. +Presently, however, its emptiness, its silence began to have their +effects--these and the rents one began to perceive in the roof. For +it was still the object of the intermittent yet persistent fire of +the German artillery. One began to realize that by these wounds it had +achieved a dignity that transcended the mediocre imagination of its +provincial designer. A fine rain had set in before we found the square, +and here indeed one felt a certain desolate satisfaction; despite the +wreckage there the spirit of the ancient town still poignantly haunted +it. Although the Hotel de Ville, which had expressed adequately the +longings and aspirations, the civic pride of those bygone burghers, was +razed to the ground, on three sides were still standing the varied yet +harmonious facades of Flemish houses made familiar by photographs. Of +some of these the plaster between the carved beams had been shot away, +the roofs blown off, and the tiny hewn rafters were bared to the sky. +The place was empty in the gathering gloom of the twilight. The gaiety +and warmth of the hut erected in the Public Gardens which houses the +British Officers' Club were a relief. + +The experiences of the next day will remain for ever in my memory +etched, as it were, in sepia. My guide was a younger officer who had +seen heroic service, and I wondered constantly how his delicate frame +had survived in the trenches the constant hardship of such weather +as now, warmly wrapped and with the car-curtains drawn, we faced. The +inevitable, relentless rain of that region had set in again, the rain +in which our own soldiers will have to fight, and the skies were of a +darkness seldom known in America. The countryside was no longer smiling. +After some two hours of progress we came, in that devastated district +near the front, to an expanse where many monsters were clumsily +cavorting like dinosaurs in primeval slime. At some distance from the +road others stood apparently tethered in line, awaiting their turn for +exercise. These were the far-famed tanks. Their commander, or chief +mahout--as I was inclined to call him--was a cheerful young giant of +colonial origin, who has often driven them serenely across No Man's Land +and into the German trenches. He had been expecting us, and led me +along a duck board over the morass, to where one of these leviathans +was awaiting us. You crawl through a greasy hole in the bottom, and the +inside is as full of machinery as the turret of the Pennsylvania, and +you grope your way to the seat in front beside that of the captain and +conductor, looking out through a slot in the armour over a waste of +water and mud. From here you are supposed to operate a machine gun. +Behind you two mechanics have started the engines with a deafening roar, +above which are heard the hoarse commands of the captain as he grinds in +his gears. Then you realize that the thing is actually moving, that +the bosses on the belt have managed to find a grip on the slime--and +presently you come to the brink of what appears, to your exaggerated +sense of perception, a bottomless chasm, with distant steep banks on +the farther side that look unattainable and insurmountable. It is an old +German trench which the rains have worn and widened. You brace yourself, +you grip desperately a pair of brass handles in front of you, while +leviathan hesitates, seems to sit up on his haunches, and then gently +buries his nose in the pasty clay and paws his way upward into the field +beyond. It was like sitting in a huge rocking-chair. That we might have +had a bump, and a bone-breaking one, I was informed after I had left the +scene of the adventure. It all depends upon the skill of the driver. The +monsters are not as tractable as they seem. + +That field in which the tanks manoeuvre is characteristic of the whole +of this district of levelled villages and vanished woods. Imagine a +continuous clay vacant lot in one of our Middle Western cities on the +rainiest day you can recall; and further imagine, on this limitless +lot, a network of narrow-gauge tracks and wagon roads, a scattering of +contractors' shanties, and you will have some idea of the daily life and +surroundings of one of oar American engineer regiments, which is running +a railroad behind the British front. Yet one has only to see these men +and talk with them to be convinced of the truth that human happiness and +even human health thanks to modern science--are not dependent upon an +existence in a Garden of Eden. I do not mean exactly that these men +would choose to spend the rest of their existences in this waste, but +they are happy in the consciousness of a job well done. It was really +inspiring to encounter here the familiar conductors and brakemen, +engineers and firemen, who had voluntarily, and for an ideal, left their +homes in a remote and peaceful republic three thousand miles away, to +find contentment and a new vitality, a wider vision, in the difficult +and dangerous task they were performing. They were frequently under +fire--when they brought back the wounded or fetched car-loads of +munitions to the great guns on the ridiculous little trains of flat +cars with open-work wheels, which they named--with American humour--the +Federal Express and the Twentieth Century Limited. And their officers +were equally happy. Their colonel, of our regular Army Engineer Corps, +was one of those broad-shouldered six-footers who, when they walk the +streets of Paris, compel pedestrians to turn admiringly and give one a +new pride in the manhood of our nation. Hospitably he drew us out of +the wind and rain into his little hut, and sat us down beside the stove, +cheerfully informing us that, only the night before, the gale had +blown his door in, and his roof had started for the German lines. In a +neighbouring hut, reached by a duck board, we had lunch with him and his +officers baked beans and pickles, cakes and maple syrup. The American +food, the American jokes and voices in that environment seemed strange +indeed! But as we smoked and chatted about the friends we had in common, +about political events at home and the changes that were taking place +there, it seemed as if we were in America once more. The English officer +listened and smiled in sympathy, and he remarked, after our reluctant +departure, that America was an extraordinary land. + +He directed our chauffeur to Bapaume, across that wilderness which the +Germans had so wantonly made in their retreat to the Hindenburg line. +Nothing could have been more dismal than our slow progress in the steady +rain, through the deserted streets of this town. Home after home had +been blasted--their intimate yet harrowing interiors were revealed. The +shops and cafes, which had been thoroughly looted, had their walls +blown out, but in many cases the signs of the vanished and homeless +proprietors still hung above the doors. I wondered how we should feel in +New England if such an outrage had been done to Boston, for instance, +or little Concord! The church, the great cathedral on its terrace, the +bishop's house, all dynamited, all cold and wet and filthy ruins! It was +dismal, indeed, but scarcely more dismal than that which followed; for +at Bapaume we were on the edge of the battle-field of the Somme. And I +chanced to remember that the name had first been indelibly impressed on +my consciousness at a comfortable breakfast-table at home, where I sat +looking out on a bright New England garden. In the headlines and columns +of my morning newspaper I had read again and again, during the summer of +1916, of Thiepval and La Boisselle, of Fricourt and Mametz and the Bois +des Trones. Then they had had a sinister but remote significance; now I +was to see them, or what was left of them! + +As an appropriate and characteristic setting for the tragedy which had +happened here, the indigo afternoon could not have been better chosen. +Description fails to do justice to the abomination of desolation of +that vast battle-field in the rain, and the imagination, refuses to +reconstruct the scene of peace--the chateaux and happy villages, the +forests and pastures, that flourished here so brief a time ago. In my +fancy the long, low swells of land, like those of some dreary sea, were +for the moment the subsiding waves of the cataclysm that had rolled +here and extinguished all life. Beside the road only the blood-red +soil betrayed the sites of powdered villages; and through it, in every +direction, trenches had been cut. Between the trenches the earth was +torn and tortured, as though some sudden fossilizing process, in its +moment of supreme agony, had fixed it thus. On the hummocks were graves, +graves marked by wooden crosses, others by broken rifles thrust in the +ground. Shattered gun-carriages lay in the ditches, modern cannon that +had cost priceless hours of skilled labour; and once we were confronted +by one of those monsters, wounded to the death, I had seen that morning. +The sight of this huge, helpless thing oddly recalled the emotions I had +felt, as a child, when contemplating dead elephants in a battle picture +of the army of a Persian king. + +Presently, like the peak of some submerged land, we saw lifted out of +that rolling waste the "Butt" of Warlencourt--the burial-mound of this +modern Marathon. It is honeycombed with dugouts in which the Germans who +clung to it found their graves, while the victorious British army swept +around it toward Bapaume. Everywhere along that road, which runs like an +arrow across the battle-field to Albert, were graves. Repetition seems +the only method of giving an adequate impression of their numbers; and +near what was once the village of Pozieres was the biggest grave of all, +a crater fifty feet deep and a hundred feet across. Seven months the +British sappers had toiled far below in the chalk, digging the passage +and chamber; and one summer dawn, like some tropical volcano, it had +burst directly under the German trench. Long we stood on the slippery +edge of it, gazing down at the tangled wire and litter of battle that +strewed the bottom, while the rain fell pitilessly. Just such rain, said +my officer-guide, as had drenched this country through the long winter +months of preparation. "We never got dry," he told me; and added with +a smile, in answer to my query: "Perhaps that was the reason we never +caught colds." + +When we entered Albert, the starting point of the British advance, there +was just light enough to see the statue of the Virgin leaning far above +us over the street. The church-tower on which it had once stood erect +had been struck by a German shell, but its steel rod had bent and not +broken. Local superstition declares that when the Virgin of Albert falls +the war will be ended. + + + +IV + +I come home impressed with the fact that Britain has learned more from +this war than any other nation, and will probably gain more by that +knowledge. We are all wanting, of course, to know what we shall get out +of it, since it was forced upon us; and of course the only gain worth +considering--as many of those to whom its coming has brought home the +first glimmerings of social science are beginning to see--is precisely +a newly acquired vision of the art of self-government. It has been +unfortunately necessary--or perhaps fortunately necessary--for the +great democracies to turn their energies and resources and the inventive +ingenuity of their citizens to the organization of armies and indeed of +entire populations to the purpose of killing enough Germans to +remove democracy's exterior menace. The price we pay in human life is +appallingly unfortunate. But the necessity for national organization +socializes the nation capable of it; or, to put the matter more truly, +if the socializing process had anticipated the war--as it had in Great +Britain--the ability to complete it under stress is the test of +a democratic nation; and hence the test of democracy, since the +socializing process becomes international. Britain has stood the test, +even from the old-fashioned militarist point of view, since it is +apparent that no democracy can wage a sustained great war unless it is +socialized. After the war she will probably lead all other countries in +a sane and scientific liberalization. The encouraging fact is that not +in spite of her liberalism, but because of it, she has met military +Germany on her own ground and, to use a vigorous expression, gone her +one better. In 1914, as armies go today, the British Army was a mere +handful of men whose officers belonged to a military caste. Brave men +and brave officers, indeed! But at present it is a war organization +of an excellence which the Germans never surpassed. I have no space +to enter into a description of the amazing system, of the network of +arteries converging at the channel ports and spreading out until it +feeds and clothes every man of those millions, furnishes him with +newspapers and tobacco, and gives him the greatest contentment +compatible with the conditions under which he has to live. The number of +shells flung at the enemy is only limited by the lives of the guns that +fire them. I should like to tell with what swiftness, under the stress +of battle, the wounded are hurried back to the coast and even to England +itself. I may not state the thousands carried on leave every day across +the channel and back again--in spite of submarines. But I went one day +through Saint Omer, with its beautiful church and little blue chateau, +past the rest-camps of the big regiments of guards to a seaport on the +downs, formerly a quiet little French town, transformed now into an +ordered Babel. The term is paradoxical, but I let it stand. English, +Irish, and Scotch from the British Isles and the ends of the earth +mingle there with Indians, Egyptians, and the chattering Mongolians in +queer fur caps who work in the bakeries. + +I went through one of these bakeries, almost as large as an automobile +factory, fragrant with the aroma of two hundred thousand loaves of +bread. This bakery alone sends every day to the trenches two hundred +thousand loaves made from the wheat of western Canada! Of all sights +to be seen in this place, however, the reclamation "plant" is the most +wonderful. It covers acres. Everything which is broken in war, from +a pair of officer's field-glasses to a nine-inch howitzer carriage is +mended here--if it can be mended. Here, when a battle-field is cleared, +every article that can possibly be used again is brought; and the +manager pointed with pride to the furnaces in his power-house, which +formerly burned coal and now are fed with refuse--broken wheels of +gun-carriages, sawdust, and even old shoes. Hundreds of French girls and +even German prisoners are resoling and patching shoes with the aid +of American machinery, and even the uppers of such as are otherwise +hopeless are cut in spirals into laces. Tunics, breeches, and overcoats +are mended by tailors; rusty camp cookers are retinned, and in the +foundries the precious scraps of cast iron are melted into braziers to +keep Tommy in the trenches warm. In the machine-shops the injured guns +and cannon are repaired. German prisoners are working there, too. At a +distance, in their homely grey tunics, with their bullet-shaped heads +close-cropped and the hairs standing out like the needles of a cylinder +of a music-box, they had the appearance of hard citizens who had become +rather sullen convicts. Some wore spectacles. A closer view revealed +that most of them were contented, and some actually cheerful. None, +indeed, seemed more cheerful than a recently captured group I saw later, +who were actually building the barbed-wire fence that was to confine +them. + +My last visit in this town was to the tiny but on a "corner lot," in +which the Duchess of Sutherland has lived now for some years. As we had +tea she told me she was going on a fortnight's leave to England; and no +Tommy in the trenches could have been more excited over the prospect. +Her own hospital, which occupies the rest of the lot, is one of those +marvels which individual initiative and a strong social sense such as +hers has produced in this war. Special enterprise was required to save +such desperate cases as are made a specialty of here, and all that +medical and surgical science can do has been concentrated, with +extraordinary success, on the shattered men who are brought to her +wards. That most of the horrible fractures I saw are healed, and +healed quickly--thanks largely to the drainage system of our own Doctor +Carrel--is not the least of the wonders of the remarkable times in which +we live. + +The next day, Sunday, I left for Paris, bidding farewell regretfully +to the last of my British-officer hosts. He seemed like an old, old +friend--though I had known him but a few days. I can see him now as he +waved me a good-bye from the platform in his Glengarry cap and short +tunic and plaid trousers. He is the owner of a castle and some seventy +square miles of land in Scotland alone. For the comfort of his nation's +guests, he toils like a hired courier. + + + ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + American religion as set forth by William James + Be useful! + Privilege of making blunders + Rising every time you fall (Confucius on greatness) + Sentimentalism, ignorance, close-mindedness, and cant + The English do not advertise their sorrows + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's A Traveller in War-Time, by Winston Churchill + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TRAVELLER IN WAR-TIME *** + +***** This file should be named 5398.txt or 5398.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/9/5398/ + +Produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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